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Modular Tech is Cool Again!

May 02, 2025 / 01:27:37

This episode covers the Rivian R1S and R1T, the new Slate Truck, and the OnePlus 13S. Hosts Marquez, Andrew, and David discuss pre-orders for the Switch 2, new EVs, and tech headlines.

The hosts share their experiences with the Rivian R1S and R1T, noting their similarities. They also discuss the Slate Truck, a customizable electric truck that starts at $27,000. The truck is designed to be barebones, allowing buyers to add features as needed.

They debate the appeal of the Slate Truck, comparing it to Spirit Airlines and the iPhone 12 mini, emphasizing its niche market. The conversation shifts to the OnePlus 13S, a compact flagship phone, and the confusion surrounding its specifications.

Additionally, the episode touches on the Meta AI app, OpenAI's shopping experience, and the challenges of product recommendations in AI. The hosts engage in trivia related to the first OnePlus phone and other devices released in 2014.

Overall, the episode highlights the latest in tech, from electric vehicles to smartphones, while maintaining a light-hearted and humorous tone.

TL;DR

Hosts discuss Rivian trucks, Slate Truck, OnePlus 13S, and AI shopping experiences.

Episode

1:27:37
00:00:00
The Rivian already kind of proves that the R1S and the R1T are the same thing just with a different top on it. Pretty
00:00:06
close. Yeah. So, like this is just the cheaper, different version of it. Don't you dare sneeze, Ellis.
00:00:13
I'm sorry. I tried to stop it. [Music]
00:00:19
Yo, what is up people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm
00:00:24
Marquez. I'm Andrew. And I'm Nintendo Switch. It's not funny anymore. I'm sorry. I I think we did it one too many
00:00:30
times. That's fair. Now two too many times. Two too many times. Switch too many times. I'm David.
00:00:36
And today uh we Damn. This is good SEO. No, we have a
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lot of stuff. Everyone's unhappy about this. Insane. Insane intro, guys. I don't know how we're going to get
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through this pod. Um no, there was there was a lot of stuff this week. There's a lot of headlines. There was some new
00:00:53
phones. There was some new EVs, new companies, new headlines, new disasters,
00:00:58
new IO, new potential clowns and crowns, all all kinds of things happening. Yeah, new IO. Um, so it's been a lot. But I do
00:01:05
want to at least ask, did you guys actually pre-order the Switch 2? Because the date has come and gone. Yes, I remember. You did not. No, you did. I
00:01:13
did. You guys all were talking about it and I had some FOMO, but then I also didn't feel like opening my laptop, so I
00:01:18
must not be that interested. It was at midnight ET, so it was pretty annoying. I remember. Yeah. I remember I was I was
00:01:24
somewhere on the West Coast and I remember seeing that the work slack was popping off at 9:00 p.m. and I was like, "That's kind of weird. Is it midnight
00:01:30
over there?" And then I was like, "Oh, it's cuz the Switch has Yeah. Yeah. So, pretty much every single website exploded as usually happens when things
00:01:37
get dropped, pre-orders get dropped." Um, ironically, I think that these websites were releasing batches of
00:01:44
orders. So, like Walmart at 12:25 randomly, you could just start buying
00:01:49
them again. Um, and I actually had ordered one through Target and then they cancelled my order 20 minutes later. So
00:01:56
then I had to go to Walmart. Anyway, um, ironically, a lot of people had the most
00:02:02
success just going to the physical stores cuz GameStop was open at like 11:00 the next day and people just went
00:02:08
went to the GameStop and there was like eight people in line and everyone's like, "Oh, people are not used to you like buying things at anymore." Would
00:02:14
have been the smartest route to like go to a GameStop at 11. Yeah, because they have certain allocations. though.
00:02:19
Anyway, we probably won't talk about this again until uh someone actually out. Yeah. Until it's actually out. But
00:02:26
at least one switch has been secured. So, that's great. Yes. Um Okay, we got to talk about this slate truck. We got
00:02:32
all We have so many thoughts on this slate truck. I was trying to come up with an analogy actually for it. And I
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think there's actually like four or five correct analogies. One of them I think Ellis will really like. I think it's the
00:02:44
iPhone 12 mini of of trucks. I need to hear this. I also think it's I also think it's the Zen Phone 9 of trucks. I
00:02:51
also think it's the Project Aura of Trucks. Yes, there are many things. But first, we should just explain what the
00:02:56
Spirit Airlines. The Spirit, that's another good one. The Spirit Airlines. That's true. Choose your own adventure. So, the Slate Truck, what it is, it's
00:03:03
fascinating. Uh, this started making headlines uh as it was fully unveiled out of like stealth mode. Nobody kind of
00:03:09
saw this coming, but it was a new company with a new proposition for a vehicle. It's a electric truck, but it
00:03:16
is the ultimate most barebones truck possible. And then you can customize your way into the truck that you want.
00:03:22
So, this base truck will be $27,000 after incentives. Maybe about 20
00:03:28
grand. Will be will be allegedly. Allegedly. And it'll be completely
00:03:33
empty, bare bones, no stereo, no displays, no tow hitch, no paint. It's
00:03:39
just plastic, molded plastic. And if you want to change the color, you can wrap it. And if you want to add a display,
00:03:44
you can add it. If you want to add a speaker, you can do that. If you want to add power windows, you can do that. But it is fully blank to start. So the
00:03:54
appeal is obvious. It's cheap and it's customizable. Yeah. It's also small.
00:03:59
It's beautiful. Well, that's debatable. Uh it's small for sure. So, it's a two-seater with a small bed, but you
00:04:08
could actually even potentially do the add-on that turns it into a sedan. You like bolt on like a roof and some more
00:04:13
like a crossover. Like a crossover. Yeah. I also would argue the bed's not It's a 5ft bed. It's bigger than a
00:04:20
Rivian. So, a 5ft bed, but only a two-seater cab. So, yeah, small truck. It's same size as a Rivian truck bed,
00:04:28
give or take. The Rivian's like a 4 and 1/2t bed. It looks very small, which makes me very happy because in Japan
00:04:34
they have all those really tiny trucks and I really want There's like the they're called key trucks. I was looking
00:04:39
this all up this morning. They're so cool. There are so many people that like they're Subaru ones that are amazing.
00:04:45
The Subaru ones awesome. It's like the Subaru Sanam I think or something. Um but like people import these into the US
00:04:52
because they're like fairly cheap. They're manual. They're easy. The truck bed is big enough for a lot of like
00:04:58
things that wouldn't fit into the back of a big SUV. And it's it's pure function. I think someone said they're banned in New York State, the imported
00:05:06
in my town, New Jersey. Uh in New York City, I forget the exact rule, but you're not allowed to have them in New
00:05:12
York City. And they're they're pronounced K trucks. K trucks. Okay. A video I watched said key truck. So well,
00:05:18
they are KI. So So just a couple other like baseline specs to get it out the way. The essential baseline version is
00:05:26
rearw wheelel drive, single motor, roughly 150 mi of range. Uh you can
00:05:32
upgrade to an all-wheel drive drivetrain. I think that's something that they would do, not you. Uh you can
00:05:38
also upgrade to a larger battery which get you about 240 mi of range. Yeah, it's actually an additional battery that
00:05:43
they put in there. They just add battery. They added an additional battery whole other battery. And yeah,
00:05:48
there's just if you go on their website, you can play with the the custom. Wait, they do have that? I want to make the
00:05:53
most expensive slate possible. Well, so that's the thing. Oh, you can't do that yet. You have no idea how how expensive
00:05:59
the most expensive slate is because you don't know how much the extras cost. All you know is that they cost extra. So,
00:06:06
they give you the base price, which gets the headlines really going. And so, oh, this is a $20,000 truck. Yeah. Um, but
00:06:14
we don't know. I mean, I assume the the business model is higher margins on
00:06:19
accessories and eventually building you up to a 20, 30, $40, $50,000 truck when
00:06:25
you when you spec it the way you want. But, you know, that's not the appeal. The appeal is it's customized. It's exactly what you want. It's not too
00:06:31
much. It's small. I would love to go through the analogies now of why this is
00:06:36
the insert blank here of uh trucks. Yeah, Spirit Airlines, I think, is the
00:06:42
obvious one because, you know, the Spirit Airlines thing is is you get the
00:06:47
basis of it is I want a a vehicle that drives and has a bed and every other
00:06:53
thing I the the Spirit Airlines is I want to fly to a place. Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to keep your shoes on? Probably
00:06:59
another 30 bucks. Like that bag 4 in too big. More money. So, yeah. Would you uh
00:07:05
would you add power windows back? No. Do you keep the rolling windows? I love rolling windows down, man. Manually hand
00:07:11
cranking that. I love Oh, yeah. I said the same thing. Everyone said I was crazy. No, it takes me back. It takes me
00:07:17
back to a simpler time. When I was in my dad's truck and I had to do this, you know. Okay. One, how often are you
00:07:23
opening your windows all the time? It's warm out. Dude, it's getting to the point where windows open and highway
00:07:29
driving is like definitely not worth it. One, two, it's it's almost too hot already. We're doing like it's uh it's
00:07:36
about to rain and your passenger side windows open. Well, you got to you got to pull across. It's one foot on the
00:07:41
wheel. Little one foot on the gas, one foot in the grave. You know what I mean? It's plastic. You just wipe it right
00:07:46
off. Yeah, that it's okay. That's an option. Yeah, you probably add the stereo back. I'm guessing you probably
00:07:51
add I forgot the stereo. That one's Yeah, it doesn't have a stereo or a touchcreen, which is very funny. But it does come with a phone mount and you can
00:07:57
It also has a speaker mount, so you can just put a JBL Flip in there and there you go. That's your phone, you know.
00:08:03
Yeah, that's something you could do. That's fine. I got to say their website is like so cool. It has there there are
00:08:09
25 options like right on their website site showing all the things that you can do with it. And there's definitely one
00:08:15
of these that will appeal to every single person on the planet. Yeah. Which is very cute. Everyone except people who
00:08:20
buy trucks. Okay. Their SEO is terrible cuz I literally cannot find the website. I'm trying. Oh, it's because Slate is
00:08:27
also a publication and it's also just like pulling everyone else's. Slate.
00:08:32
auto. Just type that in. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. So, okay. Spirit Airlines analogy makes perfect sense. Okay.
00:08:38
Here's why I think it's the I'll go next with the uh the iPhone 12 mini. I would
00:08:44
love to. Okay. Let's hear it. Um, and this is similar to the Zen Fund, but in
00:08:50
the US where most people buy trucks, where the most popular vehicle is the
00:08:55
Ford F-150, where the second most popular vehicle is the Silverado, and where people buy massive trucks all the
00:09:02
time. Not because they're forced on people, but because that's what people just want. A small truck like this will have
00:09:10
a very enthusiastic niche community that loves it. But that community will not be
00:09:17
large enough to keep it on sale for long enough to sustain just like the iPhone 12 mini. It lasted two generations and
00:09:24
then it was canceled for what a plus a bigger phone because people buy bigger phones. And in the US, which is where
00:09:31
this company is apparently supposed to be based, where the factory is going to be, where manufacturing is going to be, where they're going to start selling, uh
00:09:38
people just don't buy small trucks. I have a counterargument. Yeah. But I also have a counter to my counterargument.
00:09:44
I'm ready. Okay, my counter-argument would be a lot of the people in the US that buy trucks don't use uh the truck.
00:09:51
Like they don't use the value of the truck. Most of them, everyone who buys a truck in the US does not use Not
00:09:57
everyone. Carpenters, 99.0 9999% like correct. And I think that like the the
00:10:04
basis of this car is that it's a truck, but that's only because you can add things onto the back to make it a
00:10:10
different kind of car. You know what I mean? So it starts as a truck, but then you can turn it into a crossover. You
00:10:15
can turn it into like a roll cage thing. You can turn whatever you want. So it's like, yes, it's a truck, but it's also
00:10:22
everything else, which I find interesting. Also, people in like smaller, well, not smaller cities, it
00:10:29
people in cities who kind of like want the flexibility of a truck, but they
00:10:34
don't want to use the truck all the time. Like having a smaller one like this is really cool. I just love that
00:10:40
idea in general. I I like Wait, sorry. Were you finished with that? Uh, I forgot my counter to my counter. Oh, I
00:10:46
thought that was the counter to your counter already. I can give you the counter to that counter. Well, I think
00:10:51
like going off of what he said almost is the counter to his counter where it's it is like this because it's cheap and
00:10:57
because it's super bare bones if you're someone who like does need the bed of a
00:11:03
truck times. Like right now, my brother-in-law parks this like 1995 F-150 in my yard because both of us use
00:11:11
it here and there and he bought it for like two grand and it's falling apart, but it just, you know, it keeps you on
00:11:17
the road for like a couple hours of like one day every two months you need it. Yeah. Like if you were to buy a a like
00:11:25
sedan that was your everyday commuter car and then this you could get that for way cheaper than an F-150. And like this
00:11:33
this bed space is a little smaller, but I think most people using the bed space of a truck don't need the giant one. If
00:11:39
you're towing, this is never gonna be your towing truck. My question also becomes like how difficult is it to take
00:11:45
off the attachments and stuff? Because most of the time I would probably want to use it to look like kind of like a
00:11:50
Subaru, like a crossover. But then sometimes if I was helping my friend move, I'd be like, "Time to break out
00:11:56
the truck part of this." I don't think that one will be easily removable. I think if you're turning it into a Jeep
00:12:02
the way it kind of looks, I think that's a more permanent alteration. Kind of like the drivetrain alterations. They said they wanted to make it easy to do
00:12:09
your own modifications for the car except for things that had high voltage. My guess if it's there's a back that
00:12:15
looks kind of similar to like the old Bronco, which is,
00:12:20
you know, a bigger version of this, but kind of similar to where like it was a truck where it had this like detachable roof on the back and like the seats
00:12:26
could come out and it could kind of be Yeah. So, like I think there might be one of these, you know, they're just
00:12:32
showing a bunch of different ways to do this, but some of these uh enclosures in
00:12:38
the backend seats looks like they may be possible to get taken out. Maybe. And then this is all speculating cuz they
00:12:44
kind of don't have answers for us on the website. Yeah, I wish there was a builder. I wish I would play with this for hours if there was a full Where is
00:12:51
it? The builder appears once you reserve one. I have to pay $50 to play with,
00:12:57
which I did. I reserved one and so they sent me a link to play with the builder.
00:13:03
Hold on, Slay. Hear me out. Okay. Add the builder before the reserve thing and
00:13:09
I can guarantee you will get more reservations. I There's like keyboard sites that do this where you can
00:13:14
customize all the different parts. I And I play with it so many times that eventually I just bought one. Like I had
00:13:20
customized one like 50 times and went, I just have to press buy this But they need the $50 to pay for the server costs
00:13:26
to run that building. So actually I bet you it would result in more reservations
00:13:31
if they let you customize all the things even without showing prices just like an idea and and messing around with it.
00:13:37
Yeah. So it is So that is the thing. It is a $50 reservation. Uh I think they
00:13:43
will get a lot of $50 reservations. Judging by how often I've seen it on social media and how often I've seen people talking about it, there's already
00:13:48
plenty of people reserving it. I'm interested in this surprise. You can get in line for $50. If you don't like the price at the end, you can cancel, but
00:13:54
it's just like 50 bucks. Yeah, sure. Let's throw in. Let's see what happens. I was going to say, where can you cancel? Because I was looking and I
00:14:00
cannot find it. I haven't looked yet. Maybe it's really hard to cancel. I don't know if you can. I think you have to like do the whole contact us through
00:14:06
the whole process. I'm sure once they come out with the builder and you realize the price of the truck you want is 40 grand, they'll have to give you a
00:14:13
way to cancel. We'll see. Maybe I'm just out 50 bucks. I really hope I mean I'll The 50 bucks is gone. I don't I don't
00:14:19
think I'm going to get that back. This is NACS as well, right? Yeah, it is. That's pretty cool. It's funny. There's
00:14:24
a couple EVs I've started to see shipping that are finally allegedly NACS
00:14:29
native. The new EV6 refresh is NACS native. I'm getting off topic. I was going to give you the counter to your
00:14:34
counter. Oh. Which is you you said a counter point. Most people in the US who buy trucks don't use it as a truck.
00:14:41
Yeah. And my counter to that counter is that's never stopped anyone from buying a truck. Yeah. Yeah. You're forgetting
00:14:47
the ego. They just buy the big truck anyway. That's true. So, it's not like, "Oh, you know, I just realized I have
00:14:52
this truck, but I don't really use it for truck things. Maybe I'll get a smaller one." No, they all just They have a really cool comparison thing here
00:14:58
where they show it versus a Silverado, a Maverick, and a 1985 Toyota SR5 pickup.
00:15:04
And it shows like a size comparison. It's like It's only like 2/3 of the size of the Silverado. Yeah. And it's smaller
00:15:10
than the Maverick. Smaller than the Maverick, which is already a small truck. And then it's about the same size, slightly bigger than the 85 Toyota
00:15:18
SR5. So, I don't know. I could probably park this in Brooklyn is all I'm saying. No, you could. Okay. My other two
00:15:24
analogies real quick. Okay. It's the Project Aura of Trucks. Yes. You remember Project Ara? Oh, absolutely.
00:15:30
What happened to Project Ara? You know, Google happened to Project AR. Can you explain Project Ara? Project Ara was the
00:15:35
dream of a fully modular smartphone where you could, you know, you parts
00:15:41
would get old and you just pop it out and pop a new piece in. Oh, speaker got old. Speaker upgrade. I'll just buy the
00:15:46
new module. Oh, it's getting a little slow. I'll pop the CPU module out, drop a new one in. Or storage. My
00:15:51
counterargument to that is that like we all know that those really
00:15:57
specific techy parts don't work very well together where like something like an EV just needs to be a good base and
00:16:03
then you pretty much can just put stuff on top cuz like the Rivian already kind of proves that the R1S and the R1T are
00:16:09
the same thing just with a different top on it. Pretty close. Yeah. So like this is just the cheaper different version of
00:16:15
it. Don't you dare sneeze Ellis. So I'm sorry I tried to stop it. I I
00:16:21
agree. I think the modular part that is closer to project Aura is that again
00:16:28
it's mostly a small niche group of people that actually care about and buy. Uh with that in mind, I guess all I
00:16:35
wanted to say is I think this is a better chance than Project R did. I think Project R has zero chance ever. Oh
00:16:41
yeah, that's fair. That's very fair. Project R was like a nerd's dream, but it was a nerd's dream because we are all
00:16:48
like, "This is very unlikely to actually work technically, but it is still a cool idea." Project Ara was like the pinnacle
00:16:55
of Kickstarter campaign cool videos back then. It was in like the peak of that
00:17:00
time. It was like you can sell on the market and you can sell different pieces, you can 3D print things, you can do this. And I was like, this is the
00:17:06
ultimate. Yeah. But there's just not a market for that. Yeah. It was it was kind of the same thing where like it was
00:17:13
such a cool universally approved idea that the video about it went viral
00:17:19
outside of the regular tech community and people were like, "Oh yeah, modular phone. Yeah, yeah, you know, the iPhone doesn't do this. Android phones don't do
00:17:25
this. We all think this is a great idea." But when it came time to actually support it and buy it, there just wasn't
00:17:31
enough. I I got a couple things about this, too. Um I know that it says it's
00:17:36
$20,000. Mhm. There's just no way. Like both one they're trying to get rid of
00:17:42
the federal tax incentive. So by the time this actually comes out that'll probably be gone. 27. So it'll be 27,000
00:17:49
without the incentive. Yeah. Right. 27,000. You could get a Ford Maverick brand new right now for like 24. Yeah. But is it electric? It's a hybrid. Oh
00:17:56
well. Uh also like the whole point is that it's a blank slate that you can add
00:18:01
on things onto. And so they're selling you this stream of modularity, but again, uh they are not saying how much
00:18:08
any of those pieces cost. So it's getting all these headlines because it's like, oh, $20,000 modular truck. By the
00:18:14
time you actually kit it out the way you want it to be, it's probably going to be over 40k. Like I'm thinking, you know, I
00:18:20
mean, there's a reason they're not telling you the price of the modules right now. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, and then last thing I just wanted to know
00:18:26
it's it is interesting that they are doing it this way because I was reading about this and apparently different
00:18:32
parts of the process of making a car are are expensive in different ways. And one of them is like painting is apparently
00:18:39
an incredibly expensive part of the process. Mhm. And so, you know, you would look at car modifications like
00:18:44
when you're buying a car and it's like $2,000 for paint. What the heck? Apparently, it costs a lot of money to paint cars. Mhm. So, not even painting
00:18:52
these cars and then just giving you like the barebones like injection like plastic instead of having metal
00:18:57
everything. So, yeah. I mean, I think it has promise and I think there's a high
00:19:03
probability that they will actually ship this thing, which is not something I have I think I've said about almost
00:19:08
every any electric startup before. Tell me why you think that. Cuz I've I've done a good amount of digging now and
00:19:14
I've read about this company and about the fact that they have uh a factory
00:19:19
building that they've acquired that they're going to tool up and apparently it doesn't need as much tooling to do
00:19:25
the plastic as the metal. But you you really are convinced that I mean they're saying winter 2026 which to me sounds to
00:19:31
me first of all okay slate is an anagram for Tesla. I know. And I just need
00:19:37
everyone who's been making fun of the Tesla Roadster not coming out for seven years and then is
00:19:43
suddenly on board for this late. I need you all to realize the irony of that, please. I need you all to understand
00:19:48
that they're the same thing. Yeah. Uh the same thing. Okay. But one's a
00:19:53
company that definitely could have put that out already, but they just keep matter your money $50,000. Yeah. Tesla
00:19:59
had a history up until that point of actually delivering what they said they would as far as hardware. uh Slate
00:20:07
doesn't and so to me they are currently in the same exact category as Canoe as
00:20:14
Fiskar doesn't really count but no compare canoe Saturday future like the companies that never got there and I
00:20:22
would say that you know we we want to believe in them but the Tesla anagram is so funny to me because it's like okay
00:20:27
this is it's a slate it's a new slate or whatever but it's the same letters as Tesla and Tesla it is very funny but yes
00:20:33
uh I I'm rooting for it because I think they have a chance at actually shipping this, but I'm curious how confident we
00:20:40
can actually be in that. Guys, what if I told you there's a car on the market
00:20:45
right now that is just it doesn't have quite as low a baseline, but it's just
00:20:51
about as configurable and customizable and modular as the Slate truck. It has
00:20:57
an extra five, excuse me, it has an extra 45 in of space in the back.
00:21:04
It can have as many seats and two extra seats added as part of its modularity.
00:21:11
And it can tow 6900 lb with the right engine option. It's a bus. No, because
00:21:18
it's it's uh it's only 40 in longer than the slate truck. It's a small bus. 40ish
00:21:25
longer. This car exists. 4 feet is a is pretty big. It's a you know, it's not compar It's still smaller than an F-150.
00:21:31
What is this car? It is the Ford Transit van, baby. Oh, the Transit van. So, it's
00:21:37
not electric, but I think it says a lot that people are geeking about this truck
00:21:43
when if you really needed all of these things, it's been on the market since the 50s. I think, but it has a roof to
00:21:50
it. Yeah. What's wrong with that? It's turn vertical space that you don't get.
00:21:55
I don't think that's the truth. Just because like here's the thing, right? When you go to Europe where there are
00:22:03
just as many plumbers, there are just as many carpenters and electricians, you never ever ever see a pickup truck on
00:22:10
the road ever. Ever. Nowhere. And it's because that quote unquote like V I
00:22:16
think you could argue actually get more vertical space in I physically do not think you can argue that it literally
00:22:23
has no top and a top. I know, but you can't you can't just stick things infinitely up in the air on a truck. I
00:22:29
know, but a lot of Ford Transit vans are almost tall enough that like you or I could pretty much stand we could pretty
00:22:35
much stand up straight in it, right? You're not going to get something six feet sticking out of a truck bed without
00:22:40
it being really annoying to drive. Also, Flex, we're 6 feet tall.
00:22:46
If you say, you're not really 6 feet, but you know what I mean? I think there's there's just like a an an aspect
00:22:53
of freedom in that where there are things that happen in there that you couldn't fit in an enclosed space. And I know what a transit van is. Yeah, maybe
00:23:00
an open trailer is better than both. I I think the the vertical space limitations
00:23:06
of the van are are vastly overrated cuz you I don't disagree with think about think about like think about what
00:23:12
driving a truck with 7 feet of pallets in the back would be like. I'd so much rather have 5t of
00:23:19
pallets with a roof over that and no air flowing through it. Yeah. I think that
00:23:24
people just really like the idea of modular anything. Oh, and it is much easier to get funding when you can say,
00:23:31
"Look at your freedom. You can do whatever you want." Oh, yeah. You get to make look at these pre-orders. I think
00:23:36
there's also and in that sense the separation from a
00:23:42
truck bed and a transit van where you're all inside like I'm going to bring this up just cuz this is the best mockup they
00:23:47
have on this. It's mulch ado about nothing. a fake mulching company where
00:23:53
having things in the bed of your truck like manure is better to have outside of
00:23:58
your truck than inside of your car. I I think and I just want to say that
00:24:03
because I think the way this succeeds is for smaller local companies that can buy
00:24:09
a like absolute baseline of this truck, wrap it in their company logo and do things like handymanning with a ladder
00:24:16
sticking out of the like handyman landscaping. Small things like that that don't involve towing but do involve a
00:24:21
bunch of, you know, crappy tools and stuff that you don't that are dirty in the back of your truck. if it's a really
00:24:28
good platform like and it's a business expense in theory like you'll save so
00:24:33
much money on repairs that it actually makes a lot of sense. But I do feel strongly that if you're the kind of
00:24:40
person who needs these things in a vehicle, that vehicle already exists and you
00:24:45
probably already own it. Yeah. I think the the best case version of this if it
00:24:51
succeeds and they actually ship this thing in a year or two, however long it takes is I think one it could be a
00:24:58
little commuter for people. You know, 150 mi of range is not much. You're not going to do road trips with it. But I think you could use it as a small
00:25:04
commuter especially in you know going around New York City and like actually parking the thing and not having a huge truck. And I think too Yeah. like the
00:25:11
local business who needs to actually trans uh transit like a small amount of
00:25:17
things. It's not going to tow five lawnmowers, like a 10,000 lbs or whatever, but it can actually be a
00:25:24
functional truck bed and you can be the the imaginary mult because again like very few people actually take advantage
00:25:30
of a giant truck. Like very few people. And uh as a counterpoint to your your
00:25:36
van thing, can you tailgate in the commuter van? I don't think so. Are you
00:25:41
kidding me? You could put a disco ball in Actually, that would be a back of your van. I don't want it to be air
00:25:46
conditioned. I want to feel the sun on my skin. Yeah. Haven't you ever seen any any anything from the ' 60s with the the
00:25:53
VW vans? It's like a they're they're party machines. Sure. Fair enough. But I want to sit in the bed. Very important
00:26:00
distinction. All right. I love how that was like 30ish minutes on something that may or may not come out. Yeah. Yeah. I
00:26:06
think it's I mean it's super interesting. I think it's like really hard to not find this interesting in
00:26:12
some sense. I'm just excited for people to get really mad when they announce the
00:26:17
prices of everything. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Would you say it's closer to Project Aura in that it never ships but has a
00:26:23
lot of interest or closer to a Zen Phone 9 or iPhone 12 mini where it does come
00:26:29
out, starts to ship, and then we discover exactly how small the demand actually is? B. agreed with be because
00:26:36
one thing we didn't mention is this is backed by Amazon, right? It's backed by allegedly. I don't know. It's got some
00:26:42
money behind it. It seems like I think it will release. I just think that it's not going to be as like good or cool as
00:26:49
people make it out to be. Also, this is one of those things where people are like, "Yeah, take out all the stuff. I
00:26:55
don't need that in my car. I don't need that in my car." And then when you start driving around without a screen and
00:27:00
without a stereo system, roll those windows up. Hey, I'm down for that. Okay, that's the one exception. Okay, I
00:27:06
got to get those arms moving. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, you got to work it up so you can watch all those YouTube
00:27:12
videos. Exactly. Of course. Like I posted a video, by the way. You got to crank in the car so you can
00:27:17
crank it home. You know what I mean? Okay. All right. I think that's our best way to move on to the next one. Zero
00:27:23
segue. Did you see OnePlus backed off their price hike of the OnePlus Watch 3 and they're refunding people who paid
00:27:29
it? Yeah. So that it would be a $500 watch and then all the headlines came out and they were like, "Whoa, $500?
00:27:35
What's going on?" And some amount of people did pay the $500 and then they get they decided, "Okay, we're actually
00:27:40
going to walk it back to be $349 up from $329." And so if you paid the $500,
00:27:46
we'll give you your $151. Maybe some people paid the $500. I'm wondering if anyone did, right? Cuz it's possible
00:27:53
they didn't sell two or three people. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. But they they moved it up by 20 bucks. So now it's 3.49. Uh
00:28:01
and they said that they figured out some supply chain adjustments so that they can keep the
00:28:08
price where it is. And they said they are not going to raise the price anymore, which is interesting. U so
00:28:13
they're basically just saying even if tariffs come for us, we will eat the cost. I think it's like a goodwill
00:28:19
thing. like this was a pretty horrible move by them and I think moving it back and then saying it will stay the same
00:28:24
price now. Uh it's just a move from them to not get people really angry at that. Refunding people is a classy move too.
00:28:30
Yeah, I mean definitely. Yeah, absolutely. Good job. So that was funny. Speaking of tariffs and prices, tariffs.
00:28:37
Okay, this is a funny story because I saw this in the Slack when it first was like hitting the news, which was
00:28:44
Amazon's going to start showing how much the tariffs are increasing the price of
00:28:49
the things you buy. Mhm. And my immediate reaction was I thought I said like two weeks ago on the podcast,
00:28:55
there's no way anyone does that. So, this is really cra Amazon. This is really crazy. And now it turns out it
00:29:01
doesn't seem like that was actually real. But it is
00:29:06
still what if they did? It might have been real. It's kind of hard to say. From what I've seen, it seems like it
00:29:13
was only ever for Amazon Hall, which is like specifically a Teimu kind of according to Amazon representatives.
00:29:20
Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I never saw what that was. And the reason it blew up is because someone asked in a press
00:29:26
briefing that's going to do this. They said it was a hostile and political act and then all hell broke loose on all of
00:29:32
it. It would make sense to do it on like Amazon Hall because that's like we've all seen Teemo and Teimu and stuff like
00:29:40
that where it's just like straight from China super super cheap and like that's obviously going to get hit the hardest.
00:29:46
Um yeah, they had apparently considered doing it with Amazon Hall. This is allegedly from the Amazon spokesperson
00:29:52
that they had had talks about maybe doing that for Amazon Hall, but it was never approved and they were definitely
00:29:58
not going to do it for regular Amazon. Yeah. According to Amazon, I just Yeah, that that makes sense. I you know, okay,
00:30:05
a direct from China thing will like label things that are more expensive with tariffs, but I just can't see them ever doing it on main Amazon because
00:30:11
that almost removes one of your levers to like changing prices. When people see tariffs go down, they'll go, "Okay, now
00:30:17
the price should go down, right?" And when tariffs go up, they'll understand the price goes up, but they'll want you to drop it down again once the tariffs
00:30:23
go down. I mean, it would be nice. It's kind of like how the price of everything went up during CO and then a lot of companies just kept the prices high
00:30:29
because they knew they could. So, you know, which is why they'll never show it. Exactly. Yeah. That's why the
00:30:35
groceries are expensive. That's why the eggs are $1,000.
00:30:40
Yeah. So, speaking of tariffs, oh my god, there's so many. Okay, one more one more story. This was uh it showed up in
00:30:46
my inbox. There was a I got an email from Bowowers and Wilkins. Yeah. And you
00:30:51
know Bowowers and Wilkins? They make like high-end audio products. They make speakers. They make uh headphones as
00:30:56
well. Yeah. Have you seen some of their headphones? They're like five, six, $700. Yeah. The PI8 in here Pix88 or
00:31:03
really pricey. So they emailed me and they said, "Hey Marquez, here's some information about these new headphones
00:31:08
we're coming out with. They're called the PX7 S3." I said, "Oh, I've heard about the S2s. They're really expensive.
00:31:14
I I'll see what's new." I read through the email and they tell me everything that's new with them and then they say, "By the way, we are not announcing a
00:31:22
price and we aren't because of the uncertainty of the tariff situation and so we're not going to be giving that
00:31:28
information at this time." Yikes. Instead, we'll have a notify me button on the website and as soon as we have
00:31:34
them on sale, you'll get an email. Yikes. And that's the first time I've seen that happen. Probably a smart move
00:31:41
to be honest. Well, yeah. I mean, when I think of Bowers and Wilkins and $700
00:31:47
headphones, I think that they've priced in quite a bit already, and I don't know that they're on like the thin razor thin
00:31:54
margin of like, have we accounted for the tariffs or not, but the tariffs have been that crazy. So, maybe that is going
00:32:00
to affect them. But, uh, yeah, that's the first time I've seen a a product announced where they're straight up going, here's our new product, here's
00:32:06
all the information about it, except for the price. We don't know. Tariffs are going crazy. What about the slate truck?
00:32:12
Well, they have a base price at least. Yeah. So, and then to round it out, LSU
00:32:17
had a tariff story you wanted to Oh, yeah. Tariff. Yeah. So, I just bought
00:32:23
this new camera and I needed an adapter for it. And so, I bought the adapter on eBay and was not paying very good
00:32:31
attention and didn't realize that I bought the adapter from China. Um, and
00:32:36
uh on May 2nd, it is currently uh April 30th at time of recording on May 2nd at
00:32:43
12. Yeah, 12:01 a.m. while you're listening to this Friday. Yeah, dimminimus supposedly. I don't know if I
00:32:50
even understand what's going on to be totally wrong. It was so confusing. But it seems like dimminimous exemptions are
00:32:56
going away. Uh, which means the $8 adapter uh I ordered will be subject to
00:33:04
a $100 postal fee followed by 141% tariff. Um, so it'll be like I
00:33:13
think that's chang. Isn't it 54% now from China? It's going to be different every time we check.
00:33:20
You will be paying between 20 and 200% on that. Well, I will definitely be
00:33:26
paying the $100 postal fee assume. So, the last I heard is Sunday at at 3:00
00:33:31
a.m. China time the international flight departed. That is the last traffic
00:33:37
notification. No, no, I so I believe it is the continental United States. It's whenever it goes through customs, I
00:33:44
believe. So, I have approximately 36 hours for this thing to go through
00:33:52
customs. Otherwise, I will be paying. You know, it's weird. I swear someone
00:33:59
told me that China was gonna pay for these things. But, you know, I guess it it'll be just
00:34:04
keep your receipts so expensive. I'm just I'm picturing a guy customs like scanning things at 11:59 like boop boop
00:34:12
boop and then it gets to Ellis's and it turns to 12:00. He's like waiting, dude. Puts it back. Like what's even so dumb
00:34:18
is like god forbid this like adapter has the wrong like flange distance or like there's something weird about it cuz
00:34:24
then even if I return it I can't I can't get the tariff money back. Yeah. It's shredding just payment. Yeah. Until you
00:34:31
open the package, you don't know. You're paying $8 or you're paying $128. So uh
00:34:36
Yeah. Well, that's that's the world we live in right now. All right. Well, speaking of the world we live in, we also live in a world where right before
00:34:43
our ad break, we do trivia. That's a That's We also live in a world where
00:34:49
sometimes we ask people to subscribe earlier, but we didn't. But now at least
00:34:54
there has been 40 minutes of rambling that you can decide if you ever want to listen to again or block us entirely.
00:35:00
Also, I I someone's going to ask I'm going to get ahead of the game. This is a Nikon 1 J5. I was going to say you
00:35:06
should tell people. Yeah. Yeah. Nikon 1 J5. Uh, and I got it cuz I wanted to
00:35:12
shoot all of my 16 mm film lenses on high megapixel camera. Yeah, so far it
00:35:17
seems pretty good. I took a really funny picture of Adam with a flash earlier. We'll put that in the show in the Yeah.
00:35:24
No, right here. It's It's over my face. You're looking at it right now. Very nice. Guys, uh, today's trivia question
00:35:30
is a little bit experimental. I don't know how it's going to go. We're trying something new. Okay. Um, just like
00:35:37
actually we tried something really experimental that came out on Wednesday, the bonus episode, Your Creator's
00:35:44
Favorite Camera, which we should have mentioned. If you haven't listened to that, go listen to it. We tried something really different. There might
00:35:50
be more in the like this in the future. There might not be more like this in the future, but if you like it, let us know
00:35:57
because we're we're really interested in maybe doing more stuff like that again. And if you uh who who who all was in
00:36:03
that episode? We got Casey Neistat in that episode. Becca Versace from LT from used to be LT. Uh
00:36:12
we got um Yeah, we we got a lot of really really Marquez Brownley. Marquez
00:36:18
Brownley. Oh yeah, he was in it too. Yeah. Experimental trivia question. Number one. According to Wikipedia,
00:36:23
slate is a fine grained foliated homogeneous metamorphic rock. Mhm. But I
00:36:30
also found through my searching that there are 10 million things called slate. 10 million. 10 million. And so
00:36:36
over the course of this episode slash whenever you know we do this music Mhm.
00:36:42
I would like you guys to write on your whiteboards every single thing you could think of that is called slate. I will
00:36:49
accept places. I will accept concepts. I will accept historical events. I will
00:36:55
accept products phrases. Okay. Okay. So, we do marker sooner than we thought. So, we should just be
00:37:01
writing over the course of this episode as the slate names hit us. Exactly. Okay. Okay. So, not the official name of
00:37:06
it. Just be called Slate. Yeah. Be like like slate. I'll give you an example.
00:37:12
Yeah. Don't use No, no, no. What if that's the only thing I've thought of so far? I if you if you know this one, I
00:37:18
will be just shocked. Okay. There is a city in Kansas called Slate, Kansas. Oh,
00:37:23
yours? Oh, you were born there. I forgot. Um, so yeah, stuff like that. Okay, cool. Yeah. So, one point per
00:37:30
answer. One point per No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Whoever writes down the most gets What in the world is this?
00:37:38
Okay. Okay. Like I said, experimental. This question might fall flat on its face. But there are so many things
00:37:44
called slate. Okay. So many. What if you get all 10 million? Then you get one point. Yeah. Get one
00:37:51
point. Get one point. And if two of you get all 10 million, no one gets the point. Okay. Bet. All
00:37:57
right. Well, we'll think about this. We will be writing all episode long. See if you can catch us. And answers will be at
00:38:03
the end like usual. We'll be right [Music]
00:38:16
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00:39:43
shopify.com/wwayform. That's [Music] shopify.com/wwayform. All right, welcome
00:39:48
back. It is time to talk about the budget phone company's budget subbrands
00:39:54
pro phone. That's right. And it's called the CMF Phone 2 Pro. Not that there is a
00:40:00
phone 2. This is something Nothing in CMF have a really hard time with is naming products in a in a way that's
00:40:06
understandable for everyone. There's a 3A Pro, but there isn't a 3 Pro. You know what the problem with the 3A Pro
00:40:12
is? Okay, it's a budget brand's uh budget phone. A series pro budget. It's
00:40:20
the budget brand's probudget phone. And so now the A series is the budget one. Yeah, it's supposed to be. So now
00:40:26
there's the budget phone nothing which has a subbrand called CMF which has a phone and this is the phone 2 but it's
00:40:33
the phone 2 pro instead of the phone 2. So there is no phone 2. It's the phone 2 pro. Subbrand subbrand pro phone. This
00:40:39
hurts me. Anyway, this is it. It's actually really good. And that's the the crazy part about it is I'm reviewing
00:40:45
this phone right now. It may be out by the time this pod is out. Maybe not. But spoiler alert, I really like it. It's
00:40:52
pretty. Now, the phone one, the nothing CMF phone one, not the nothing phone
00:40:58
one, right? The nothing the CMF phone one when it came out uh had a lot of interesting things going for it. It had this modular fun interesting design. Not
00:41:05
the best specs in the world, but it was kind of cool that you could take the back off and replace it with another back. Those modules don't all still work
00:41:12
with this phone. The Langard still does cuz they use the the little thumb screw design at the bottom corner, but the
00:41:19
rest don't. But instead, what they've done here is they've changed the system to a a sort of accessory back, which is
00:41:28
this thing right here, which has two really cool things about it. One is it
00:41:34
has a mounting point for camera lenses that will go over the top of the primary
00:41:39
sensor. Cool. And two, you see this magnet right here in the shape of the MagSafe magnet? How does that work? It
00:41:45
is the strongest Mags Safe magnet I have ever felt. ever. I've attached this to
00:41:51
the to like random other various Mags safe accessories, wireless chargers. The phone doesn't even wireless charge, by the way. I'll just pop it on wireless
00:41:58
charger just to attach it. And it's so strong. So, this back is really cool. You take the the screws off the back of
00:42:04
the phone 2 Pro. You pop the white back on. You put the screws back on. Tap the thumb screw back in. And then you can
00:42:10
pop any one of Well, there's currently two lenses that they've made. CMF made a macro lens and a fisheye lens. Yeah. Um,
00:42:19
so the concept is now here. I was looking back at the last phone. Some people made some third party accessories
00:42:25
for the first CMF phone. Uh, they didn't make any new ones after they launched it. CMF didn't. Yeah, there was a couple
00:42:31
cool backs that people made. So, I'm curious if that's going to happen again with this, if we might see some other
00:42:37
phone lenses people make for it. It kind of depends on how well the phone itself does. But, in general, it's a roughly
00:42:43
$279 phone. That's pretty good. Um, yeah, that is it's a 5,000 millah battery. It's a 3000nit 1080p 120 Hz
00:42:50
display. It's AMOLED. It's got 33 watt charging. It's 128 gigs of storage. Um,
00:42:56
it's very responsive. The software is great. It's got all the same features as a Nothing phone. It still has the essential space, too, with that extra
00:43:02
button. Triple cameras is like I think the reason they're calling it Pro. Yeah. Uh, but it is just a 1X, a 2X, and an
00:43:09
ultrawide. The 2x, I'll be honest, I don't really find it that useful. It's a dramatically worse
00:43:16
sensor than the primary and it's only 2x and the ultrawide is also a tiny sensor
00:43:21
and it's 8 megapixels but if you want to shoot ultra wides at least you have one. Uh but yeah it's it's just a really
00:43:28
allound solid phone to use. Nice big display with very small bezels. I think in general I find it uh a great value
00:43:36
for money. What is the point of these notes the screws here? Those screws are simply there to hold the new back on. So
00:43:43
you they sit there all the time. Yeah, you can take those screws off continue to use the display. But
00:43:49
yeah, that white back goes on top of the existing back. You don't take the back off anymore. I have a couple questions
00:43:55
and complaints. Yes. Uh one, why didn't they just put the magnet in the phone? I've asked that about many phones in the
00:44:01
past. It seems like uh I'm just going to leave that back on the phone all the time. That sucks because this color
00:44:07
sucks. Yeah, white. This is beautiful. Are there not other colors? I assume there were other colors. Orange. There
00:44:12
is a black and then there is this light green. But they're all matte, right? Uh yes, the orange is kind of like this
00:44:18
half half tone. Okay. Half matte, half glossy. Could maybe be interested in that. But I feel it's very pretty and
00:44:25
it's kind of sad that you're just covering it up all the time. Like I don't really see the point in having
00:44:32
these mount screws because it's like it already looks very nice and then you have to just destroy the color way. You
00:44:38
know, maybe people will make other better looking backs since it's just like a modular
00:44:44
system. That's true. But then if you did that, you wouldn't have the magnets. Yeah. Really? Those magnets are good.
00:44:50
Yeah. They hold up uh in the car dash super well. Very strong. It'd work well
00:44:55
in the slate auto truck. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Um so tell me about the accessories that they made for this
00:45:01
phone. So there's a couple. There's one, uh the lanyards is basically the same as
00:45:06
the last one. So, if you want to have your phone on a lanyard, which I learned from the comments of the last CMF review that apparently in Japan, very common.
00:45:12
Uh there's also a wallet. Now, this was my beef with the Apple wallet. You know, the Mags safe wallet on the back of the
00:45:17
iPhone. I said in the video when I first reviewed it, like this is way too weak.
00:45:23
I do not trust this. I put it in my pocket, it pops right off the back of the phone. And I got heat for that or I
00:45:28
still stand by that. It's too weak to be a wallet that I trust. This one, they also did a wallet for it and it is rock
00:45:34
solid. and I actually would trust it. It holds like two or three cards and then it also has a folding kickstand
00:45:41
mechanism. So, it's a wallet/kickstand that magnetizes to the back. That's
00:45:46
pretty cool. Um I think that that there's one more. I don't even remember what it is, but that's kind of it. It's
00:45:52
just the the lenses they've made for the cameras, the other accessories. So, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'm It's kind of sad
00:45:58
that most of the other accessories from the phone the CMF phone one do not work on this. Yeah. Uh that sort of
00:46:05
highlights the the pain points of modularity and like modular systems. This always happens. Companies come out
00:46:11
and they're like, "Look at this. We're going to have this awesome ecosystem. It's going to be so cool." What has it been like 8 to 10 months since the CMF1
00:46:19
came out and it's already it's already replaced and you can't do anything with the accessories. Like Yep. That kind of
00:46:24
sucks. Yeah. Kind of sucks. I was kind of thinking they were going to make that the screw in the bottom like the main
00:46:30
point that everything would attach to so that it could truly be like go across generations. Yeah. But now they're not
00:46:36
doing that. So yeah, I think it looks pretty solid. Interesting. So I think it looks great. The price is very good. Oh
00:46:41
yeah. Yeah. For what you're getting. So the last CMF phone was like 200 bucks roughly. It was great. It was plastic.
00:46:48
Oh, there's a couple things that they improved though from that CMF phone that I think they heard from people that like
00:46:53
kind of make it worth upgrading. Like the first CMF phone had no NFC. This
00:46:58
one, the first thing I noticed is it asked me if I wanted to add my card for payment and I was like, "Oh, they added NFC to this phone." So, you can do
00:47:04
mobile payments and all the things that come with like mass transit mobile stuff. They added that. It's NFC in this phone, which is great. Um, they still
00:47:11
don't have wireless charging, but I'm just happy it has an ultrawide at all. So, that's awesome. It's uh only the
00:47:18
bottom only the bottom camera. So the primary camera if you add one of these add-on lenses it only goes over the
00:47:24
primary camera and it just pops right in. Doesn't even have a thread. Just like push in to add the camera. Okay.
00:47:30
Got it. And then Yep. I think that's potentially a not I don't know. It doesn't feel I know you can use the
00:47:36
outside parts of it, but I feel like a pushing in means you're probably smudging the lens every time, which you
00:47:42
can wipe it off quick, but I feel like a thread would be nice. How much does the these do these lenses cost? I don't
00:47:49
know. Uh, one thing that annoyed me about the two three things that annoyed me about the lenses. One, I don't know
00:47:55
how much they cost. Two, they do smudge very easily and are not easy to clean. And three, it already uh they don't come
00:48:02
with a case of any kind, so they're kind of just loose in your pocket or something. Like you have to figure out a
00:48:07
way to carry them with you cuz you're not going to just leave it on the phone all the time. That's awkward. Yeah, cuz this would not slide into your pocket
00:48:14
very easily. It wouldn't. And you also don't want to take all your pictures in fisheye. So yeah, it is hard to carry.
00:48:20
This isn't Thrasher magazine. No, I don't know what that is. It's an old skateboarding. Old skateboarding and
00:48:27
fish eyes go together like spaghetti and meatball. I just lamb and tuna fish. It
00:48:33
kind of feels like they could have allowed you to do all of these things without the cover. Like if they had put the if they had put the magnet in it
00:48:40
inside of it. if they had just added uh I don't know, they could have made the lens a little bit thicker or something.
00:48:46
I'm very curious about the person who is actually interested in buying the fisheye and or macro because people
00:48:52
famously do not care about macro lenses at all. Yeah, that's the cheap part that
00:48:57
companies throw in the phones when they want to add a third camera. They're always like and a 2 megapixel macro lens. For sure. The first thing I
00:49:04
pictured was the person who buys a Moment lens for their iPhone. Yeah. And obviously that's a much higherend system
00:49:09
like an iPhone camera plus a moment lens is going to be different from the CMF, you know, macro and whatever's going on
00:49:15
here. Yeah. Um, which is actually a line in my video which is I don't know if
00:49:21
it's right to ponder a high-end version of this because maybe we've already seen
00:49:27
it. You remember the Moto Z and the Hasselblad mod on the back of that thing? It's like we we've tried this
00:49:32
before and it doesn't really sell. U but it is still cool that it's a thing you could do and if you ever want to spend
00:49:39
the however cheap it is and and have some fun with a macro or a fisheye, you could do it. What about the Xiaomi phone
00:49:44
with the uh the telephoto adapter thing on it? Yeah. Actual or the Vivo? Was it
00:49:50
Vivo that had the glass? Yeah, the glass uh thing we could attach to it. You know, there's higherend phones that have a fisheye and a macro built into the
00:49:57
phone and they have the magnets. Not necessarily in the phone, but that's something we would like to see more of them do. So, yes, I agree. It would be
00:50:04
nice if it was in the phone. I have some prices that I found on a nothing forum post. All right. Universal cover, uh,
00:50:11
€25, which is this. Yep. Yes. 5 for this euros. But yes, similar. It's
00:50:19
interchangeable lenses. So, I'm confused. It says interchangeable lenses, fisheye, and macro. So, you get
00:50:24
both. I think this is both. 40 bucks. 40. Oh, are you looking at my screen or
00:50:31
100? No. 35. Very good guess. Okay. Okay. Wallet stand. Do you want to guess
00:50:36
or do you want me to just I think they might upgrade a little more and go
00:50:42
I think they might I think they might go 40 just for that. 35. Okay. Okay. So, there's a bundle. There's two bundles.
00:50:48
One is the cover and the wallet or lenses.
00:50:53
Are you still 50 45? And then there's a bundle
00:50:59
too, which is the cover, wallet, and lenses. All everything 60 uh 55 65.
00:51:06
Dang. Those are weird. Like I feel like a bundle of a cover, wallet, and all the
00:51:11
like basically everything. 65 doesn't sound that bad, but just the cover at 25
00:51:16
feels Yeah. You're not going to just get the cover. I mean, you could just get the cover just to stick it on magnets or if you want the different colors of the
00:51:22
cover. True. Right. Yeah. It's an interesting strategy to be like, we're making a quoteunquote modular phone, but
00:51:29
we're charging a ton of money. It's the slate truck charging a ton of money for all
00:51:35
the for all the components. That's funny. So, this is this is another I don't know. It seems like a pretty good phone on its own. I'm really glad that
00:51:41
they brought back that they brought NFC to it. No, it really is. So, I mean, I've used this phone for a couple days now. It is all the same stuff as a
00:51:48
Nothing phone. and it's 120 Hz and it's responsive and the display gets plenty bright and it's 1080p and I feel like
00:51:54
when I use this phone it's very easy to think it's a $450 phone and it's not. So that's that's the good thing about it.
00:52:01
Okay, so yeah, shout out to the CMF Phone 2 Pro. Speaking of companies that
00:52:07
used to be OnePlus, OnePlus, um I used to I still am, but I used to
00:52:13
too. I used to as well. Hey reference. Well, OnePlus has announced the OnePlus
00:52:19
13S, which uh is supposed to be their slim phone. Is it slim or is it small? That's
00:52:27
a good question because I see the the headline is powered up, sized down. And
00:52:32
so to me, S means small. Introducing the OnePlus 13S, a powerful blend of performance and proportion. Our first
00:52:39
ever compact flagship. But does that mean slim or does that mean small? I think it means small. The picture is the
00:52:45
perfect way to create this debate because it's two phones at a 45 degree angle with everything from the bottom
00:52:52
cut down. I'd argue that those buttons look like there's the same amount of buffer as a usual side rail, which makes
00:52:59
me think it's approximately the same size. Yeah. So, yeah, a big phone these days is like 6.6 to 6.9. It says it's
00:53:07
compact and also this photo makes it seem way smaller than I'm pretty sure it is. Yeah, it's small. They're trying to make it look small. Yeah. 6.32 does not
00:53:14
seem that small. How big is not small at all? How big is the iPhone Pro? 6.2. Oh, the Pro. Oh, yeah. 6.2, right?
00:53:22
iPhone 16 Pro. Screen size 6.3. So, it's
00:53:27
the same. Yeah, cuz they they shrunk the bezel. 6.27 and they're calling this the same
00:53:32
picture. Maybe it's not slim. Okay, cuz I had a whole I had a whole rant ready for this if it was slim. Let's hear it
00:53:40
anyway. would Why don't we rant the two possibilities? Yeah, do the rant anyway. I want to hear it. Okay, I'm going to do
00:53:45
a rant for two possibilities. Okay, this is world number one where 13s means slim. Yeah, there you go. Okay, all
00:53:51
these companies, Samsung, OnePlus, allegedly Apple potentially, well, no,
00:53:58
are trying to release the slim phone because they know that Apple is making the slim phone, right? But nobody
00:54:04
actually knows if the slim phone is the thing that people want or that if it'll be a hit from Apple. Like remember when
00:54:11
the uh iPhone 13 came out and they made it thicker and everyone or was it 11? It
00:54:17
was either the 11 or the 13. I think it was the 11. When the when the iPhone 11 came out, they made it thicker with a
00:54:23
bigger battery and everyone was like, "Oh my god, incredible. Amazing. Thank thank goodness. Bigger battery. I'm glad
00:54:29
it's thicker." Does any is anyone actually asking for a slimmer phone? No.
00:54:35
Counterpoint. I'm ready. With silicon carbide batteries, Apple's going to be able to make a really big deal about
00:54:42
this razor thin phone that still has great battery life. And I think they're forecasting Apple making a big deal out
00:54:47
of it and are trying to get ahead of that so they can say they they did the thing first. I agree with that. Um it's
00:54:53
ironic that both Samsung and OnePlus just say coming soon and none of them have release dates for any of these
00:54:59
things. S25 Edge is just in limbo. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody knows when that's coming.
00:55:04
Yeah. So, I don't know. I I'm I feel like it probably will sell like the the iPhone 17 Slim. I think it will sell
00:55:12
well just because it's a different looking thing. Yeah. I'm trying to figure that out. But I think it's just a
00:55:17
good it's another product in the Air category. If they call it Air if they call it Air just fits really well. But I
00:55:23
agree. I don't know if it serves much more of a purpose. And also, we've said
00:55:29
this forever, but can can we stop like making things smaller but keeping the
00:55:34
same battery life when we come up with battery improvements? Yeah. Can we just have really awesome battery life?
00:55:40
Please. Maybe that's what the Pro will be this year. Yeah, I would love that. That would be amazing. I don't Yeah, I
00:55:46
kind of doubt they're going to use the silicon carbide batteries with the Pros. I think they're only going to use it in
00:55:52
the slim and then maybe next year they put it in the Pros. But I bet you it's a much more expensive technology to use.
00:55:58
So yeah, I mean I've seen it in a good amount of phones already this year, which is why I'm hopeful. Um, obviously
00:56:05
Samsung skipped it with the S25 Ultra, but a whole bunch of I mean, I guess this is what we've seen before, like Oppo phones, Vivo phones, silicon
00:56:12
carbon, 6,000 mAh, 6,200 mAh in regulariz phones. Even we just had the
00:56:17
Oppo Find X8 Ultra. So I want to say it's available. Maybe not at Apple
00:56:24
scale, but it's out there. Yeah. So, yeah, we'll see. Yeah, it is. Oh, right. It's silicon carbon, not silicon
00:56:30
carbide. Right. Right. Right. Somebody yelled at us for that. Silicon carbon. Silicon carbon. Yeah. So, they just have
00:56:36
a notify me button where they just don't say when it's going to come out or what the specs are besides the size. So,
00:56:43
that's interesting. I kind of wonder if I don't think it's going to be a tariffs thing because I don't think this is
00:56:48
being sold in the US. I think it's gonna it's mostly for India I believe. Okay. So, so what's the size of the OnePlus
00:56:56
13? Screen size is
00:57:02
6.82 in. Okay. So, I guess 6.4. You said three. Three. That is smaller than this.
00:57:09
But to call it compact feels feels like a stretch. David, do you have a rant for if it's a small phone? Okay. If it's a
00:57:15
small phone, nobody will buy it. And end of my rant, which we already knew, but
00:57:21
we still are cool with them making it and it probably is a small phone. We'll enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah. The Zen phone was
00:57:26
a true small phone. 5.9. RIP to the getting that back. But we're not getting that back. So I guess 6.1 is like the
00:57:33
compact now. Yeah. Last little thing before we take another uh trivia break. The Android show is a mini Google IO
00:57:40
just for Android that is coming next week. So So this is IO. Yeah. This is
00:57:46
what we care about. I think that most of IO is going to be Gemini oriented just like the last two years. Yeah. But uh
00:57:52
yeah, on Tuesday, as of time of recording, Google is doing a little Android show IO thing where they're just
00:57:59
going to talk about all the updates that are coming to Android, which I'm very excited about. So, next week we'll be talking about that on the show. So, is
00:58:05
it a stretch to say that that's the only thing I care about? Um, like if I watch that, why would I
00:58:12
watch Well, imagine what if Google announces their Gemini glasses for sale
00:58:17
at IO. What do you think? Whoa. Well, the the the same reason people love the Meta Ray-B bands is like the reason
00:58:24
people would buy a Google Gemini version of that. Yeah, I think Ray-B bands have the camera also, and we don't know. Do
00:58:29
we know if Google would camera? We don't know necessarily, but I still think
00:58:35
having Gemini available and having maybe some little text in front of you and having all of the access to your phone
00:58:40
that an Android thing could have has potential. If done well, it will be
00:58:46
cool. But I think the Ray-B bands are a success because it's a camera, not because it's AI. So if Google and it's
00:58:54
Ray-B band, so it looks nice. So if Google does a thing and it it's just, you know, Gemini, I I don't know. I
00:59:00
guess we'll see. Google launch a camera on a face again? Yeah. Only one way to find out. Gen two, baby. That would be
00:59:06
the best call. It's not called Google Glass. I think you should call it Google Glass. Google Glass 3 is what they should call it cuz they already kind of
00:59:13
had like a developer reboot. Yeah, they had the developer reboot that lasted a little bit. Oh, yeah. Yeah. New Google
00:59:19
Glass. New Google Glass 2025. It's coming. Nice. It's coming. Yeah. I mean,
00:59:24
that's coming eventually, but we'll see if it comes at IO. Anyway, I'm going to watch IO anyway cuz I'm going to Yeah, I'm going to go. It's gonna be fun.
00:59:31
Nice. Yeah. All right. With that, I think we should uh do trivia Gen two. Although, ironically, we're still
00:59:37
writing Slate names. So, yes, Slate. Can you hit the button? All right.
00:59:44
Trivia. Can you hit the button? The first OnePlus phone came out in
00:59:50
2014. Sticking to the spirit of Ellis's experiments, we are trying a new format
00:59:55
with this trivia question as well. Oh, no. So, fill in the blank. What other phones came out that year? The iPhone
01:00:04
blank. The Samsung Galaxy Note god blank. This is going to be hard. The LG
01:00:10
G blank. And the Nexus blank. I'm just going to say you guys probably shouldn't
01:00:16
write all of it down cuz you have to flip your board. I'm just waiting. One more time. What
01:00:22
are the pro the four? The iPhone blank. Okay. The Samsung Galaxy Note blank.
01:00:28
Note. The LG G Blank and the Nexus Blank. Which phones came out the same
01:00:35
year as the first OnePlus phone? Oh, I'm toast. No point. More should think of
01:00:44
more slate words. I'm definitely going to Yeah, have to think about this one. The first one plus is it like a sort of
01:00:50
one point per correct answer type thing? I'm debating. I'll see when we get to the end, but it might be one point per
01:00:55
correct answer or whoever gets the most correct gets the point. I don't know. We'll see. Okay. All right. That's
01:01:01
interesting. I'll brainstorm. Okay. And so will you, reader, you will brainstorm as well. Reader, that's the only thing
01:01:08
people are not doing with this podcast. AI trans. They're watching. They're listening, but I don't know if they're
01:01:14
reading. Subtitles. Consumer. They're consuming the episode. Creator.
01:01:20
What is the creator? You observer. So will you user? Hey, what are they using? We'll be right
01:01:28
[Music]
01:01:38
back. Welcome back. Uh, if you used Google Shopping before, which you probably didn't because not a lot of
01:01:44
people did, you would be excited to know that OpenAI has just announced their own
01:01:50
shopping experience with buy buttons and recommendations. I actually I actually did use I have used Google Shopping a
01:01:56
fair bit. Yeah, I was being a little mean. Oh, cuz people I think it's warranted. People do use it. It's just
01:02:02
not It's when I want to buy something that I don't really care where I buy it from. I just want to sort of shop around
01:02:08
prices and then figure it out. like I don't know exactly what I'm buying. I'm looking for a general item and then I
01:02:14
use Google shopping to narrow it down. My biggest gripe is when you type something in that's very obviously a product and it defaults to shopping
01:02:21
which then I just wanted to look at the images of it and now it's changed all my header things and I click on the
01:02:26
Anyways, the experience for Google Shopping has never been fantastic. Uh now OpenAI is trying to integrate that
01:02:31
into chat GPT which is interesting. I think that people are starting to use LLMs for many different use cases at
01:02:37
this point. And open basically said that people were already searching for items through uh chat GPT already, which is
01:02:44
pretty interesting. Effectively, what this is supposed to do is it's supposed to give you product recommendations based on your preferences uh as well as
01:02:51
reviews from around the internet. So the buying experience is going to show sources on the recommendations. So at
01:02:58
least if you click on a recommendation, it'll be like this is this information comes from Wired and then you can go to
01:03:03
the Wired article or whatever. Um and probably the biggest thing of all is
01:03:08
that none of the product none of the products or recommendations have sponsored placements and that is the big
01:03:14
thing that Google has been yet that we know of yet. That's the big thing that
01:03:19
Google's been really pushing Google Shopping for because they know that, oh, this is another market opportunity for
01:03:26
us to put sponsored links in these areas, right? They pushed Google Shopping a couple of years ago and they
01:03:32
just continued to push it because like this is a huge market, but no one wanted to use it. Um, that is really
01:03:38
interesting. I'm I'm very curious how the system is going to decide exactly what kind of products to show you. It's
01:03:44
supposed to be heavily based on your preferences and like the things you have asked chat GPT before because now as we
01:03:51
talked about a couple of weeks ago, they opened up the context window to be infinite. So now you're basically
01:03:56
talking to a system that just remembers everything you ever tell it which is super interesting. Which is super
01:04:01
interesting. Have you done the thing where you asked HGBT, now that you know everything about
01:04:06
me, tell me something that like I might not know about myself. Tell me a blind
01:04:11
spot that I might have. Tell me a way that I can improve my life based on what I don't know. And it does. That would
01:04:18
send me down such a dark. I have not tried it yet. I don't use it enough. It would just say, "You have anger issues
01:04:23
cuz you get mad at me every time I try and do something." I asked it to describe me. It was very, very accurate. And I asked it for some like life
01:04:29
advice. It was pretty good. Did you just go and and manually tell it like everything that you think you know about
01:04:36
yourself? No, I didn't tell it. And I didn't do any new like information giving. I just I saw that on Twitter and
01:04:43
I was like, "Let me try it." And it just did. How often do you use Chat GPT? Every day. More than Gemini.
01:04:50
Yeah. Yeah. A little bit. I guess I hasn't written a review in six months.
01:04:55
I'm not using it to write things, but I think I use Gemini and Chat GPT roughly the same amount basically. Interesting.
01:05:02
Yeah. Huh. Yeah. I think that the big question here is going to be how does affiliate revenue work anymore? Because
01:05:09
when you click on these links, they are I was like this has the opportunity to be another honey situation because
01:05:15
OpenAI could they could they could say we don't have sponsored segments but we automatically generate affiliate revenue
01:05:22
links to everything and that's a huge market for them. But they said that none of the links are sponsored. They said
01:05:28
that none of them have affiliate revenue on top. But when it's pulling the information from the websites that do
01:05:34
have affiliate links, but then it's giving you links to the products directly without the affiliate links,
01:05:40
uh, that kind of screws over like all of the publishers. Yeah. Which is pretty rough. Do you think it would pull like
01:05:46
if it pulled a wired article and then that had an affiliate link in there? Do you think it would see that link and
01:05:52
then decide, oh, I'm going to not feed that link. I'll feed it directly to the product or Yeah, I think it feeds you
01:05:58
direct links and no affiliate affiliate links, which is tough. I also have no faith that this won't eventually turn
01:06:05
into affiliate links cuz the minute I read this, I said is just the end goal for everything on the internet to be an
01:06:11
affiliate link aggregator. 100%. That's that's like what most websites on the internet are is the crab version of
01:06:18
every website affiliate link. Yeah. Affiliate link accusation. It's like
01:06:23
it's been happening. That's crazy. Yeah. I mean, they have the opportunity to be to add the value of honey on top of
01:06:31
their existing product, which is a very big opportunity. They say they will evaluate the opportunity for a affiliate
01:06:38
links in the future. So, Oh, they said that. They already said that. Sorry, I think I misspoke. They said they're
01:06:43
going to explore later down the road how affiliate links are going to work.
01:06:48
They're adding We have concepts of a plan. Yeah. which to me tells me that they're just going to generate their
01:06:54
own. Oh, for sure. Um, so that's that's pretty crazy. Do you guys feel comfortable asking an LLM for product
01:07:02
recommendations? I'm not there yet. I actually I'll take
01:07:07
that back. Asking for product recommendations, yes, but not like fully trusting it and going to the purchase. I
01:07:13
still will then go do my own research after to go to the purchase. But if I'm just starting from a baseline of what
01:07:20
mulch should I buy, I live in this area of the world and I have these goals, I will start from there and then do my own
01:07:26
research after. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's kind of the case. It's like when you go to any website and
01:07:32
you you can be recommended a product, but you want to read the reviews to make sure that it's like, you know, positive.
01:07:37
Yeah. Um, so yeah, it also says that it's using Reddit as a source, which is pretty interesting because if it's
01:07:43
actually scraping what people are recommending, and there's been so many reports of companies just basically
01:07:50
going on Reddit and recommending their own products as if they're regular users. So, I feel like there's a lot of
01:07:56
I also don't know if I trust like an LLM to understand the nuances of how what
01:08:01
Reddit comments are and like what is just an and sarcasm, right?
01:08:07
Yeah, I have a general philosophical question about LM. Uh, here we go. An hour and 30. Are they tried to nip that
01:08:15
one as fast as I consciousness? We have all, you know, how there's a generation
01:08:20
of people who grew up before smartphones and then there's a generation people who grew up never knowing what it's like
01:08:25
before smartphones. Yeah. What if Yeah. The same thing is true about LLMs and
01:08:31
hallucinations where when we were starting to get into these AI tools, it was very very early and they were
01:08:37
notorious for getting things wrong all the time. And so built into our conscience is an inherent skepticism for
01:08:43
like when I ask for these product recommendations, I'm going to double fact check everything just because some of it might just be a lie. And then at
01:08:50
some point there's a generation of people who's going to come online and will never have had to think about if
01:08:56
the LLM's lie to them or not. I think that there are already a significant
01:09:01
amount of people who don't know what a hallucination is. I was watching some video on YouTube a couple of weeks ago
01:09:07
and someone was trying to make a point and he goes and I know this is true. I looked it up on chat GBT and he was not
01:09:14
joking. Yeah. Um Grock context please. Exactly. Yeah. I I just I think most
01:09:22
people think this is basically a search engine that talks to you normally. Yeah. That's tough. So I don't even think it's
01:09:27
a generational thing. I just think it's like most people cuz people who were like early adopters got to see all the
01:09:32
hallucinations and downsides, but now people who were not even paying attention then are just like, "Oh, okay. Yeah, I'll just use chat GPT to look it
01:09:37
up." Totally. Yeah. People are worried about Tik Tok replacing Google. I think it's more of a concern that the LLM's
01:09:43
replacing Google, which is why Google was so terrified and had to get Gemini all kickstarted. Yeah. So, they made the
01:09:49
right call there, I got to say. Yeah. Researching this camera, I gave it a whack with LLM's, dude. Mhm. Nothing
01:09:57
useful. Nothing useful ever. In fact, I would say it was like wrong 85% of the
01:10:02
time. Like, does this camera have focus peaking? Absolutely. The focus peaking on this camera does not have focus
01:10:08
peaking. like like every single question it could have gotten wrong about this, it got wrong. Yeah, it was interesting.
01:10:13
I was using a an AI thing asking it to make me a pop quiz about a product that
01:10:19
I knew a lot about and then I filled out the quiz because I knew all the answers and it got some of the corrections
01:10:26
wrong. Like I'd said the answer was the actual answer and it was like actually this is the answer and I was like that's just wrong. So it was like nine out of
01:10:32
10 right but still like I still see that happening, right? So it is something that I think about. Yeah, it's tough.
01:10:39
It's tough. Speaking of uh AI and LLM model stuff, Meta just had its llama,
01:10:47
which really doesn't sound real like a Fortnite thing. They really call it that sound like a Fortnite. I also have a
01:10:52
question about this. Okay. What sound does a llama make?
01:10:58
I've heard that before. I think that's true. Okay. Um so they have decided to
01:11:04
release the Meta AI app which is a dedicated app that is focused around
01:11:10
voice uh voice interactions or it's showing right now. Can I tell a story about this particular app? Sure. I'm
01:11:16
watching the live stream because it was yesterday, the day before and and they're like, "Oh yeah, you know, we released this meta app, the AI, blah
01:11:23
blah blah." And I turn and I put it into Slack and I'm like, "Okay, I got to add this to the doc so we could like talk about it, whatever, blah blah blah." And
01:11:29
Marquez just turns around and he's like, "Oh yeah, uh, by the way, Adam, I've had that for like two weeks now." And I got
01:11:36
like, "I've had that for two weeks now in real life." He just turned around was like, "Yeah, no, I've had that." And I'm
01:11:41
like, "Oh, shocker." Yeah, of course. So, in case you're curious, Yeah. Tell me about it. the Meta AI app. It's a
01:11:47
hub. So now, so there used to just be you'd have the glasses and you'd have the app for like Meta View or whatever
01:11:52
it's called for the glasses. Yeah. And then you've got to Instagram and AI and
01:11:59
Messenger. So this is like the hub for all of it. And so you can just like talk
01:12:04
to it and ask it questions as if it's Chad GBT or whatever, Gemini. But there's also a discover feed where you
01:12:10
can scroll through the image generated results of other people's prompts. Kind of like Sora, remember? You could see
01:12:16
other people's images and what it was generated from. And so if you've ever just wanted to scroll through AI slop
01:12:22
for a while, this is this is the perfect place to do that. This is what OpenAI said they were doing with their social
01:12:28
media thing, right? Well, they didn't specifically what they were doing with that and they they never even confirmed they were making this report. No, the
01:12:35
social media app that Open was reportedly working on it would look kind of like this. It would probably look like this. And it's like it has shares
01:12:42
and comments and there's people going like, "Oh yeah, this is cool. This is
01:12:48
tiny New York City in a sphere." And it has 171 likes, 12 comments. Can you read
01:12:53
the comments? I hope they're AI generated. They are. The first three are
01:12:59
people reimagining the prompt in with different results. Okay. And then you scroll down a little bit and it's people
01:13:05
saying, "Wow, cool. Love this. These are nice." Uh, you just know every time
01:13:11
there's a new social media platform, the influencers jump on it and they're like, "I got to get on this because in case it
01:13:16
blows up and like if you're getting on the meta AI social media platform to try
01:13:21
to be an influencer on there, you need to get some help." No, I'm right here, David.
01:13:27
Yeah. I just I I Who? I don't Yes. Agreed. Yeah, I've never agreed with you
01:13:33
more, David. Thank you. Thank you. Is a fullon social network of AI
01:13:39
generated. I think that Meta is banking on the fact that this is free and like
01:13:45
chat GPT plus is $20 and Gemini Ultra 2.5 advanced with deep
01:13:53
research is pro is uh is $20. New new new. Have you noticed that? I
01:14:00
also if you go on Gemini, you have the model selector. Every single model says new and they have always all said new. I
01:14:08
also have thoughts on that that are probably too long for this podcast cuz I was going to ask like how do you select what model you use like versus based on
01:14:14
what your question is. Do I go to Perplexity? Do I go to Deep Seek? Do I go to a certain version of Chat GPT or a
01:14:20
certain version of Gemini? Do you guys even pay attention to that or That sounds like a great app that's just like
01:14:26
a six-sided die, a virtual six-sided die with all the different AIs on it and you roll it before you. Yeah, the Raycast
01:14:32
app for iOS just came out and it's like, you know what Raycast is on the Mac? So, you can like tab over and use AI chat
01:14:38
and like pick between your models and the settings. This one is literally just pick your AI model and talk to it. And
01:14:43
there's a selector and there's like 15 of them and you just jump in and you go, I like deepsey right now. I guess probably, but
01:14:50
they're all just compet like they're all competing and yes, some of them are better for code, some of them are better for specific things and I get that there
01:14:57
are advantages to them, but aren't we all working towards them all being amazing at as many things as possible? And nobody should have to know like, oh,
01:15:03
I'm supposed to use this one for the goal is like I'm going to use a search engine and they're all going to eventually get me there. Well, even if
01:15:10
you don't know, like for example, Gemini has 2.5 flash experimental, which says
01:15:15
use for advanced reasoning, and then it has 2.5 Pro experimental, which is best
01:15:20
for complex tasks. Both of those tell me nothing. Yeah. Like, yeah, if I'm trying
01:15:26
to differentiate between them, there's also I love that there's 2.5 flash, 2.5 Pro experimental, deep research with 2.5
01:15:34
Pro. There's also GPT 40, which is great for most tasks. But there's also GPT 4.5,
01:15:41
which is good for writing and exploring ideas, which is also what I use it for.
01:15:47
There's also 03, which uses advanced reasoning, so I guess I should use that. There's also O4 Mini, which is fastest
01:15:55
at advanced reasoning. 04 Mini High. What? Great at coding and visual
01:16:01
reasoning. Okay, so they're not going to combine them all, but like what? I don't even know how to pick between those. People should not. You should just talk
01:16:08
to the thing and it knows what your prompt is and it picks the right model to do your prompt. So, the next AI is
01:16:14
going to be an AI that decides which model you should use for the prompt you have. But what model does that AI use?
01:16:20
That's where we pro experimental experimental flash with deep research with Marquez research
01:16:27
advanced reasoning. I'm going to start asking AI models which ones I should use. Uh yeah, no, that's it. We'll we'll
01:16:33
continue to keep an eye on Meta's AI app. Will we? No, I don't know if we will. I don't really think we will. I
01:16:39
I'm has volunteered for the job. It's on my phone. It's on my phone for now. Sorry. I'm not looking at that social
01:16:45
media network ever. Um, okay. Last thing that is just fun and I want them and
01:16:51
Ellis doesn't like that I want them, but I really want them. Okay. There's these new headphones by KM5. They kind of look
01:16:59
like those CS headphones that are like really lightweight and really like small and they very much look like something
01:17:06
that like nothing would release kind of teenage engineering or teenage engineering x nothing but basically if
01:17:13
you know what the like the cost headphones are they're those like8s style headphones that are they're one ear they're really small they've just
01:17:19
got a metal band that gets your hair stuck in it and pulls your hair out. Um, but they have all the advanced
01:17:25
capabilities of like a newer pair of headphones. So, they charge with USBC. You can plug them in with USBC. They've
01:17:31
got uh good Bluetooth capabilities. They somehow have active noise cancellation,
01:17:36
which I do not know how that works when they're on ear headphones. Spoiler alert, it doesn't. Probably doesn't. Um,
01:17:42
they just seem really cool. And they make this this company also makes this uh CD player that looks freaking
01:17:48
amazing. David, what is the price of these? They're $189.
01:17:53
Okay. It's not as bad as I thought. Not that bad. And look how pretty they are. They're just pretty. They're pulling
01:17:59
directly at the nostalgia heartstrings of a specific generation of people. Yeah. But they're USBC.
01:18:06
Yeah. Remember those things? What if new and modern? Yeah. Yeah. And I want it.
01:18:12
It's the Ford F100 but electric. I have It's the Volkswagen bus but electric. I
01:18:17
almost impulse bought these yesterday. They also came out on my birthday, so what are you going to do? You know, wait, wait.
01:18:25
Thank you. I just blew myself a birthday. I don't know that there is anything superior about these headphones
01:18:30
other than them being maybe lightweight. Um, but you know, good for them. Good for them. They look cool. I just wanted
01:18:36
to mention these cuz they're cool looking. Shout out to KM5. All right. Well, I think that we should do trivia
01:18:43
now. It's about that time. Have you been brainstorming? Uh, no. Andrew's brainstorming right
01:18:49
now. Okay. I have a question. Yeah. Do we get him a point off if we have
01:18:54
something in that? I just I won't be added to your total slate count. Uh so I'm going to give you guys 90 more
01:19:01
seconds to sh up these lists. 10 million. I guess like how specific. That was hyperbole. I There isn't Oh, really?
01:19:08
Oh, cuz I heard that. I was just like I can just guess things. I thought you actually meant 10 million. 10 million exactly. Well, okay. There we go. I'm
01:19:16
just going to leave it where I'm at. I don't think I can do that. You know how when you get close enough to infinity, you just say infinity in math. Uh close
01:19:21
enough to infinity. I feel like in math that would be the time where you don't do that. In math, you would say that I
01:19:27
should not. As the limit approaches infinity, the limit does not exist. The limit does not exist. The asmtote the
01:19:33
asmtote, but it can't approach. Yes, it can. Marquez has a big list. It
01:19:38
totally can. If there's an asmtote, it's not approaching infinity. It's It's
01:19:45
approaching the asmtote. Anyway, no, you're right. Something I failed at math. So, uh, who wants to who
01:19:52
wants to slate first? Are we flipping them? What? We don't have to. H, you could flip them. This is This is Yeah, I
01:19:59
guess I'll just read one at a time. Okay, I'll read my slates first. You said the slate truck doesn't count. The
01:20:04
slate truck does not count. All right, so scratch that. Yeah, I had that. I have pixel slate. Awesome. Oh, I have
01:20:11
slate gray paint. Perfect. And I have I think this is a madeup one. I think I
01:20:18
think there was a Google Slate product. Well, there was the Pixelate Pixel. But was there like a whiteboard product or
01:20:23
No. Uh this is I think I'm imagining this one. That was the Jam Board. That was Jam Board. Okay. There was a And
01:20:29
there was a Microsoft tablet called the Slate PC. That's not what I was I was thinking of like Jam Board. Okay. So I
01:20:35
got Not bad. Not bad. All right. Two. All right. I have a production slate
01:20:42
like the thing we clap that I have the pixel slate. There you go. So, you said slate paint. I said
01:20:48
slate the color. That works. I'll I'll take it. And then I have a guess and I can help look it up, but I didn't want
01:20:54
to look like I was cheating. Yeah. Yeah. If there's a disc golf disc named the slate because I know there's one named
01:21:00
the slab. So, I have to So, that might be a slate. If you don't know and you just start guessing, does that I
01:21:09
I'll it would have to be called the I see slate disc as an option, but it's
01:21:15
zero disc. I don't think there's one. Unfortunately, this that's a good name for a disc. Just saying. Maybe you
01:21:21
should start a company. I'll take it. All right. Trash Panda. Trash Panda does offer their discs in a slate color.
01:21:29
Trash Trash Panda does, but I unfortunately I already put the colors. That's three. All right, that's three.
01:21:35
David, what do you have? I have Slate, Kansas. Uh, no, no, no. I I can't. No,
01:21:42
no, you don't. Well played. There are two other towns in the United States called Slate, though. Did you get any of them? Wait, so Kansas is not a real
01:21:49
place? No. Slate, Kansas is real, but I can't give it to you because I said it out loud earlier. Oh, okay.
01:21:54
That's all you had? Or Oregon. I don't know. You have to write it down. What did you Did you write down any other I wrote
01:22:01
slate the website. Awesome. Yeah, we literally talked about that. Great. Um I
01:22:08
wrote slate the color. Great. I wrote slate the car. Uh no, I can't accept that. I know. I know. I know. I put I
01:22:14
put tail slate. I will accept that as a production slate. Yes. Uh I put blank slate the song by Taylor Swift. Not a
01:22:21
song by Taylor. Not a song. I think you're thinking of blank spaces. Oh, is it singular? Sular. Okay. My bad. Oh,
01:22:26
okay. Um, I put Slate the Rock. Uh, we
01:22:31
talked about that. That was the opening example. That was the Yeah, I can't give you that one either, unfortunately. I put the bird. There's a bird called a
01:22:38
slate. I don't know, but there probably is. Wait, you just You're right. I did do that to you. No, there's a slate
01:22:45
colored bird. Yeah. Well, I also put slate the color. Yeah, we already got that. You already got that. Did we?
01:22:50
Yeah. Okay. He already said that, right? Did he already say that? Yeah. Slate color. Okay. And then I put S latte.
01:22:57
Like small latte. Wow. I want to give you that for
01:23:03
creativity, but I think latte is two T's. It is. But yeah, you can't give that. It's close. It is close. Is that
01:23:10
the tie? Like how do we break this? Should we Is there a slate bird? There's no slate bird. Slate colored solitire
01:23:15
bird. Yeah, but that's the color. Oh, you're right. Yeah, I don't know what that is. So, uh,
01:23:22
pretty good guys. We'll give the the point to both Andrew and David. Nice. Nice. Good. All right. Quick update on
01:23:28
the score. Marquez with 18. Andrew with 10 after that correct point and David
01:23:33
with 22 after that correct point. Next question. So, the first OnePlus phone
01:23:39
came out in 2014. What other phones came out that year? Fill in the blank edition. The iPhone, blank. The Samsung
01:23:48
Galaxy Note, blank. The LG G blank and the Nexus blank.
01:23:57
2014. Which? What? 2014. Yeah, 2014.
01:24:05
What are those other phones?
01:24:10
[Music] All right, flip them and read. What do you got, man? I can't I can't
01:24:20
wait. Oh, go first. David, put put the marker down. Okay, who wants to go first?
01:24:26
I'll go I'll go first. I screwed this up. I thought it was Okay. 2014. I said iPhone 6S. Correct. I said uh Samsung
01:24:35
Galaxy Note 4. Correct. Oh my god. I said LG G5.
01:24:41
Wrong. And then I said Nexus 6 and 5X.
01:24:48
Correct. Okay. So, you got three. That's pretty good. So, it's probably So, the only chance I have is the LG G3. You
01:24:55
said LG G3. Yeah. Okay. Correct. And the rest. Well, Galaxy Note 6, iPhone 7,
01:25:02
Nexus, Unless the 6P also came out, which I don't think it did. That was later. Yeah. Okay. So, you got one. I messed up when I started working here,
01:25:08
David. Okay. But LG G6. LG G6. Nope.
01:25:14
Wait, really? Yeah, it was your G3 apparently. Wow. Yeah. Okay.
01:25:20
I put the Nexus 6. Thank god. Uh I put the Galaxy Note 8, which I was very
01:25:26
wrong. And uh I don't even want to say what my iPhone one. Say it. I forgot all the S models, so I put iPhone 8/10,
01:25:35
which was 2017, not 2014. Yeah, almost. Yeah, I'm bad. All right, so you got one
01:25:40
as well. Nice. So I think I'll do each one of you gets the points. So David and
01:25:46
Andrew get one point each. Marquez gets three points. What do I So for six and
01:25:51
5X, do I just get one point for that? Yeah, it was just one point. Okay. All right. I feel cuz he said six, but he
01:25:56
didn't get 5X. So I feel like I should get a point for 5X as well. Wasn't it the 6P and the 5X came out at the same
01:26:03
time? The Huawei 6P and the LG. Yeah, the Nexus 6 launched on its own release
01:26:09
year because Okay, so it is just the six. Okay, never mind. Never mind. No 5X. Okay. Well, no, it doesn't change
01:26:14
anything. Yeah, it doesn't change anything. It's just That's fair. All right, I'll take I'll take a few points though. But Adam, that's fine, man. I'm
01:26:22
just being a baby. That was fun. Uh, okay. Fun new format. Yeah, maybe that helps us catch David cuz his score is
01:26:29
really high and we need lots of points to catch him. When is the extravagant counting down the minutes
01:26:34
till the clock runs out? Yeah, I want to win. We have to catch you. We have to catch you at like 30 or something. Yeah. Okay. Uh, that's that's it for this
01:26:41
episode. Thanks for watching. Thanks for subscribing especially. I know we didn't ask as early as we would like to, but
01:26:46
we're asking now. If you haven't subscribed already, definitely make sure to do that. And uh we'll catch you guys.
01:26:52
If you haven't already watched the bonus episode on all the favorite creators favorite cameras, we'll have a link to that below cuz the bonus episodes come
01:26:58
out and sometimes people aren't like washing dishes at their normal time on Friday and they don't know to expect that. So go check that out as well.
01:27:04
We'll be back next week on our regular schedule programming. It's going to be May. Catch you there. Peace. Waveform is
01:27:10
produced by Adam Molina and Elven, partner of the Vox Media Podcast Network. And our outro music was created by Vainil. Bingo. Bad. No, don't do
01:27:18
that.
01:27:23
[Music]
01:27:32
It's called lubricant because it doesn't work. Really?

Episode Highlights

  • The Slate Truck Unveiled
    A new electric truck that offers a customizable, barebones experience starting at $27,000.
    “It's cheap and it's customizable.”
    @ 03m 54s
    May 02, 2025
  • The iPhone 12 Mini of Trucks
    Discussing how the Slate Truck may appeal to a niche market but struggle to sustain sales.
    “A small truck like this will have a very enthusiastic niche community.”
    @ 09m 10s
    May 02, 2025
  • The Ford Transit Van
    The Ford Transit van offers modularity and space, challenging the Slate truck's appeal.
    “What is this car? It is the Ford Transit van, baby.”
    @ 21m 31s
    May 02, 2025
  • OnePlus Watch Price Hike
    OnePlus backs off a price hike for their watch after customer backlash, refunding those affected.
    “Refunding people is a classy move too.”
    @ 28m 30s
    May 02, 2025
  • Tariffs and Pricing Uncertainty
    Bowers and Wilkins delay announcing prices for new headphones due to tariff uncertainties.
    “We are not announcing a price because of the uncertainty of the tariff situation.”
    @ 31m 22s
    May 02, 2025
  • CMF Phone 2 Pro Review
    The CMF Phone 2 Pro impresses with its strong MagSafe magnet and solid performance for $279.
    “It's a roughly $279 phone. That's pretty good.”
    @ 42m 43s
    May 02, 2025
  • Modular Design Concerns
    The modular design raises questions about the practicality and aesthetics of the phone's accessories.
    “It's kind of sad that you're just covering it up all the time.”
    @ 44m 25s
    May 02, 2025
  • NFC Addition
    The addition of NFC to the CMF Phone 2 Pro is a welcomed improvement over its predecessor.
    “I'm really glad that they brought NFC to it.”
    @ 51m 41s
    May 02, 2025
  • AI Product Recommendations
    ChatGPT is evolving to provide personalized product recommendations without sponsored placements.
    “None of the products or recommendations have sponsored placements.”
    @ 01h 03m 08s
    May 02, 2025
  • Meta's AI App Launch
    Meta has released a new AI app that serves as a hub for voice interactions.
    “It's a hub for all of it.”
    @ 01h 11m 47s
    May 02, 2025
  • Quiz Challenge on Phone Releases
    The group tests their knowledge of phones released in 2014, with surprising results.
    “I can't I can't wait. Oh, go first.”
    @ 01h 24m 10s
    May 02, 2025
  • Points Distribution
    Marquez scores three points while Andrew and David each get one point.
    “So I think I'll do each one of you gets the points.”
    @ 01h 25m 40s
    May 02, 2025

Episode Quotes

  • I love rolling windows down, man.
    Modular Tech is Cool Again!
  • It's a bus. No, because it's only 40 in longer than the slate truck.
    Modular Tech is Cool Again!
  • That's the world we live in right now.
    Modular Tech is Cool Again!
  • It seems like a pretty good phone on its own.
    Modular Tech is Cool Again!
  • It's like what most websites on the internet are.
    Modular Tech is Cool Again!
  • I thought it was Okay. 2014.
    Modular Tech is Cool Again!

Key Moments

  • Spirit Airlines Comparison06:47
  • Niche Market Appeal09:10
  • Tesla Irony19:48
  • Slate Truck Discussion26:06
  • Strong Magnet41:45
  • Affordable Price42:43
  • NFC Feature46:53
  • Public Perception of LLMs1:09:22

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown

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