China Kills Meta / Manus Deal (Story Of The Year) | E2281

Summary

Jason Calacanis and Lon Harris unpack two seismic AI-industry stories. First, Microsoft and OpenAI restructure their partnership: Microsoft drops its exclusive rights to resell OpenAI models, freeing OpenAI to pursue deals with Amazon and others, while Microsoft locks in a roughly 27% equity stake and revenue share through 2030 regardless of AGI. Jason frames Microsoft’s bet as “perhaps the greatest investment of all time,” potentially worth hundreds of billions in incremental equity value if OpenAI scales to multi-trillion dollar territory. Lon characterizes the new arrangement as “polyamorous” Big Tech.

The bigger story, in Jason’s view, is China’s National Development and Reform Commission blocking Meta’s attempted acquisition of Manus, a Benchmark-backed AI startup that had moved its HQ to Singapore. Jason calls this “the story of the year” and “the end of Singapore washing” — a clear signal that the CCP considers Chinese-founded IP and talent to be state property regardless of corporate domicile. The hosts trace the implications: founders trapped, Meta’s AI talent strategy disrupted, and a new front in the US-China AI war that could eventually entangle Taiwan, TikTok, and Trump.

The episode also dissects two self-driving car incidents — a Huawei HarmonyOS vehicle hitting a child in China and a Waymo grazing a child in Santa Monica — arguing that society demands superhuman, not merely human-equivalent, reaction times from autonomous systems. The “Off Duty” segment covers Russell Brand’s bizarre Piers Morgan appearance promoting his Christianity book, an “AI slop” trend of feeding palm prints into ChatGPT for digital palm readings (with attendant biometric privacy risks), and a review of the BBC crime drama Criminal Record.

Highlights

”Perhaps the greatest investment of all time”

“This is more revenue than Microsoft will make in the next 10 years. So they made this extraordinary bet, perhaps the greatest investment of all time.” — Jason Calacanis, 3:33

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”OpenAI and Microsoft agreeing to go polyamorous”

“i’ll tell you what this is this is OpenAI and Microsoft agreeing to go polyamorous” — Jason Calacanis, 7:59

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”The Chinese Communist Party canceling Meta’s acquisition of Manus is the story of the year”

“Let me just say this one more time. The Chinese Communist Party canceling Meta’s acquisition of Manis is the story of the year. This is the ultimate escalation of AI wars.” — Jason Calacanis, 14:10

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”That’s the end of Singapore washing”

“You know, there’s a great tweet from @Denise_Hu. @Denise_Hu says, ‘That’s the end of Singapore washing.’” — Jason Calacanis, 19:29

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”In self-driving, the only thing that matters is edge cases”

“So very interesting here. What we’re getting to in self-driving, what I think this speaks to, is in self-driving, the only thing that matters is edge cases.” — Jason Calacanis, 30:50

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”We will not accept a human’s reaction time”

“Computer, reaction time, not human, superhuman. This is the end of self-driving if this happens in America. I will predict here, this will happen, sadly, in America.” — Jason Calacanis, 36:00

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Key Points

Microsoft-OpenAI partnership restructured (0:50) - Microsoft drops exclusive resale rights to OpenAI models; OpenAI free to pursue Amazon/AWS and other cloud deals
Microsoft still primary cloud provider (0:50) - New OpenAI products debut first on Azure before going to other clouds; Microsoft’s planned legal action over AWS deal is off
Revenue share locked through 2030, AGI clause removed (1:21) - Previously contingent on reaching AGI; now decoupled and the can is kicked down the road
Microsoft owns ~27% of OpenAI Group (1:30) - Per Bloomberg, this stake could be worth hundreds of billions if OpenAI scales to multi-trillion valuation
AGI now independently verified (4:43) - OpenAI no longer gets to unilaterally declare AGI; third-party experts will assess
“Polyamorous” Big Tech framing (7:59) - Jason predicts chaotic, lawsuit-prone open relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI going forward
China blocks Meta’s Manus acquisition (10:21) - China’s National Development and Reform Commission ordered the deal halted
Manus had $75M from Benchmark, moved HQ to Singapore in May 2025 (11:16) - Singapore move was meant to enable foreign capital and a Meta exit
“Story of the year” — CCP escalation in AI wars (12:32) - Jason argues this is the ultimate escalation; founders may be unable to return to or leave China safely
Jack Ma precedent for founder risk (13:15) - Reference to Alibaba head being “disappeared” raises stakes for Manus founders
End of “Singapore washing” (19:29) - Chinese-founded companies can no longer launder their nationality via Singapore HQ relocation
Chinese state views companies as state property (15:41) - CCP treats Chinese-founded IP, talent, and balance sheets as ultimately belonging to the state
Meta’s AI talent strategy disrupted (21:08) - Meta is behind in the AI race and needed the Manus talent infusion
Zuckerberg’s history of trying to enter China (18:45) - Learned Chinese, courted officials; no Facebook/Instagram presence in China
Huawei HarmonyOS car hits child in China (29:43) - Reported via Epoch Times; vehicle accelerated from 24 to ~50 km/h before impact
Waymo grazes child in Santa Monica (30:27) - Similar incident; Waymo did brake; Jason argues Waymo “did the right thing”
Edge cases are everything in self-driving (30:50) - The only thing that matters is rare failure modes — cats, kids, weird geometry
AVs must be superhuman, not human-equivalent (36:00) - Society will not accept human-level reaction time from a computer driver
Russell Brand on Piers Morgan with Bible (37:41) - Promoting “How to Become Christian in 7 Days” amid open criminal cases
AI palm-reading slop and biometric risk (42:09) - Users feeding palm prints to ChatGPT; biometric data flows into LLMs; palmistry is “quackery” baked into training data

Mentions

Companies

Microsoft (0:50) - Restructured OpenAI partnership; ~27% equity stake; revenue share through 2030
OpenAI (0:50) - Freed from Microsoft exclusivity; pursuing Amazon/AWS and other partners
Amazon / AWS (0:50) - Joint product development deal with OpenAI now unblocked
Azure (0:50) - Remains primary cloud for new OpenAI product debuts
Manus (10:21) - AI startup blocked from being acquired by Meta; moved HQ to Singapore
Meta (10:21) - Attempted Manus acquisition blocked by China; behind in AI race
Benchmark (11:07) - Venture firm that controversially backed Manus with $75M in May 2025
Alibaba (13:15) - Referenced as precedent (Jack Ma “disappeared”)
Huawei (29:43) - HarmonyOS-enabled vehicle involved in fatal-style incident with child
Waymo (30:27) - Santa Monica incident where vehicle grazed a child after braking
Uber (26:13) - Jason cites his self-driving investments through Uber
xAI (21:15) - Compared to Meta-Manus: Elon’s xAI bringing in Cursor for “secret sauce”
Cursor (21:15) - Coding tool xAI is pulling in
TikTok (25:14) - Mentioned as adjacent geopolitical AI/tech flashpoint
Bloomberg (1:30) - Source for the 27% Microsoft equity figure
Epoch Times (27:20) - Source for the Huawei self-driving car video
BBC (46:59) - Maker of Criminal Record crime drama discussed in Off Duty
ChatGPT (42:09) - Center of the palm-reading “AI slop” trend

Products & Technologies

HarmonyOS (29:43) - Huawei’s operating system running on phones, TVs, wearables, and self-driving cars
GPT image / palm reading (42:09) - Trend of feeding palm photos into ChatGPT for digital palmistry
AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) (1:21) - Previously triggered Microsoft revenue-share cutoff; now decoupled and independently verified
Claude (1:36) - Hosted alongside other models on Azure
Grok (1:36) - Hosted alongside other models on Azure
Criminal Record (BBC drama) (46:59) - Crime show featuring Peter Capaldi discussed in Off Duty
Whisper / clicker mouse (48:57) - Hardware Jason reviews using middle button for transcription

People

Jason Calacanis - Host
Lon Harris - Co-host
Satya Nadella (1:36) - Microsoft CEO who agreed to drop OpenAI exclusivity
Jack Ma (13:15) - Cited as precedent for Chinese founder being “disappeared”
Mark Zuckerberg (17:03) - Behind in AI race; previously courted China and learned Chinese
Steve Hou (22:29) - Bloomberg journalist whose tweet Jason references
Denise Hu (@Denise_Hu) (19:29) - Author of the “end of Singapore washing” tweet
Elon Musk (21:15) - Referenced for xAI bringing in Cursor
Donald Trump (25:14) - Speculated involvement in escalating US-China AI tensions
Russell Brand (37:41) - Promoting Christianity book on Piers Morgan amid criminal allegations
Piers Morgan (37:41) - Host of the Russell Brand interview
Peter Capaldi (46:59) - Star of Criminal Record

Surprising Quotes

“They disappeared the head of Alibaba, Jack Ma. What would they do to the families of the Mannys founders if they don’t return? This to me feels like the story of the year. This is huge.” — Jason Calacanis, 0:28

“Okay, this is an escalation of epic proportions. I don’t know if this is saber-rattling or serious. I don’t know if this is performative or serious.” — Jason Calacanis, 12:32

“I think this is starting to speak to sovereignty, the importance of AI, AGI, superintelligence. The CCP looks at companies formed in China as their property.” — Jason Calacanis, 15:41

“Singapore washing door has closed from the Chinese side. They bolted that two-way door.” — Jason Calacanis, 19:52

“The software is going to make mistakes in edge cases, and the edge case means a kid could die. No human would ever be judged based on this.” — Jason Calacanis, 33:59

“You’re feeding your biometric signals into the AI like, is this an ops, J-Syc?” — Lon Harris, 42:27

Transcript

Jason Calacanis: 0:00 This is more revenue than Microsoft will make in the next 10 years. So they made this extraordinary bet.

Lon Harris: 0:05 Microsoft owns about 27% of OpenAI group. Let that sink in.

Jason Calacanis: 0:10 What could Microsoft do with 900 billion, with a B, dollars?

Lon Harris: 0:16 Perhaps the greatest investment of all time. If OpenAI becomes a trillion-dollar company, now triple that. Then what if it goes to 10 trillion? China is blocking Meta’s attempted takeover of Mannys, another AI company.

Jason Calacanis: 0:28 They disappeared the head of Alibaba, Jack Ma. What would they do to the families of the Mannys founders if they don’t return? This to me feels like the story of the year. This is huge.

Lon Harris: 0:39 Can we talk about some news? There’s lots of news. People want me to talk about the news, so let’s do it.

Jason Calacanis: 0:43 Which is there a story people want you to particularly talk about? Is it the OpenAI…

Lon Harris: 0:47 Why don’t you tell me your top two or three here and we just go through them. So OpenAI and Microsoft, this is probably the biggest traditional tech story of the day. They have altered their ongoing partnership. Jason, as you recall, they’ve been working together… again, they’ve been working together, it’s very complicated, there are all these different rules, they’ve sort of smoothed things out and simplified them. So, the companies have agreed to drop Microsoft’s exclusive rights to sell OpenAI models. So OpenAI is now free to pursue deals with, especially Amazon, they’re already working on a joint deal to develop products for Amazon Web. They’re going to continue doing that and then they can open up to even more. OpenAI, Microsoft was sort of weighing legal action over the AWS deal, but now that is off. However, Microsoft will remain OpenAI’s, quote-unquote, primary cloud provider, and new OpenAI products are going to debut first on Azure before they’re available across other cloud services. Now, in exchange for all of this, Microsoft no longer has to pay OpenAI a revenue share on the products it resells in Azure and the revenue share paid by OpenAI is going to be capped, though we don’t know at what level, they didn’t specify exactly where that cap will be.

Jason Calacanis: 1:19 Hmm.

Lon Harris: 1:21 Microsoft now receives rev share through 2030 regardless of the AGI. Remember it was always like it’s contingent on OpenAI reaching AGI. So that, now they’ve just locked it in through 2030 and they’re sort of kicking that can, the AGI can down the road.

Jason Calacanis: 1:30 What’s important here is how much equity Microsoft has in OpenAI. Microsoft owns about 27% of OpenAI group now, according to Bloomberg.

Lon Harris: 1:36 So why would Microsoft agree to give up the exclusive to OpenAI’s models? Right. This wasn’t a two-way exclusive, so it wasn’t like Microsoft couldn’t do Claude or Grok, they’re hosting things like that I believe on Azure. So why would Microsoft, why would Satya Nadella do this?

Jason Calacanis: 1:54 The answer is that if this becomes a 10-billion-dollar… company, and a 10 trillion dollar company and they own 27% of it. The 27% of a 2 trillion dollar OpenAI or a 3 trillion dollar OpenAI is 500, 600, it’s an incremental 600 billion dollars.

Lon Harris: 3:19 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis: 3:20 in their equity stake.

Lon Harris: 3:22 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis: 3:23 So let that sink in. What could Microsoft do with 900…

Lon Harris: 3:27 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis: 3:28 billion with a B dollars?

Lon Harris: 3:30 Yeah. That’s most of their company.

Jason Calacanis: 3:33 This is more revenue than Microsoft will make in the next 10 years. So they made this extraordinary bet, perhaps the greatest investment of all time.

Lon Harris: 3:41 Up there.

Jason Calacanis: 3:43 In OpenAI. This might be, if OpenAI becomes a 3 trillion dollar company, it’s a 1 trillion, or just under 1 trillion. Let’s call it 600 billion to 800 billion, but we’ll round it up. In the public markets it’ll become worth a trillion, it’ll get run up. Now they own 270 billion. Now triple that. Okay, now you’re at 800 billion.

Lon Harris: 4:05 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis: 4:06 Then what if it goes to 10 trillion?

Lon Harris: 4:08 That’s what most of the company… This is what analysts were saying today is that OpenAI wanted this greater flexibility, Microsoft just wanted to lock in their part ownership and make sure they were going to benefit down the road, but it seems to be all about just like the widest possible avenue for OpenAI to sort of get as big as it can.

Jason Calacanis: 4:31 Also there was probably something about this AGI, you know, when it reaches AGI, they probably put the gun to their head and said ‘we’re going to claim we’re at AGI and we’re going to be in a huge lawsuit’.

Lon Harris: 4:43 AGI progress is now going to be independently verified. That’s the change now. So it’s not up to OpenAI to say AGI’s been reached, we’re going to have to bring in some expert third party to make the official judgment.

Jason Calacanis: 4:53 I’m going to press the button on my Plaud pen, boom, it gives me a haptic, it shakes. I’ve got this on my suit. I didn’t pin it like Lon on the nice custom suit I got Lon. You don’t pin a suit like that. You use the magnet so you don’t damage the suit, Lon.

Lon Harris: 5:08 Oh. This isn’t gonna hurt it, this is fine.

Jason Calacanis: 5:11 This is the problem. You need to… this is another lesson here from your big brother. Here’s the thing. You use the magnet like this, this is the magnet that goes behind your Plaud. I have… If you take care of your suit, your suit’s gonna take care of you, Lon. Okay? That’s what you need to learn here.

Lon Harris: 5:25 I appreciate that.

Jason Calacanis: 5:26 And I’m constantly learning. I have my Plaud pen on. I give it action items. One of the action items is I have to get engaged with the new community manager, I need to explain who we’re trying to connect with in each community, what our standard is, and what our goals are. Okay, J-Cal, make a note, action item, let’s define what we’re trying to accomplish with the community before the community person gets here and get that on the ground running. You know what? It’s all now in my notes. I take this off, I put it into the cradle, it connects to Wi-Fi, it syncs, then I’m on my desktop, it’s translated, it’s put into bullet points, there’s a… thousand templates you can do all kinds of different things a mind map this that the other people are constantly making new templates for what to do with this audio file it’s absolutely fantastic over time it learns about you it learns about who you’re talking to so it knows Lon Lon’s Plaud knows me i applaud Plaud it is one of my breakout products for 2024

Lon Harris: 6:22 for sure and if your work relies on conversations you need a Plaud NotePin or NotePin S check it out at plaud.ai/twist and use the code twist to get 10% off

Jason Calacanis: 6:32 here’s the problem i’m so enthusiastic about Plaud i give them like triple the amount of airtime they’re paying for

Lon Harris: 6:39 we appreciate it we always end up talking a lot about Plaud

Jason Calacanis: 6:41 and then somebody’s like well can you do triple for me i’m like i’m sorry i’ll try my best anyway thanks for supporting the show that’s how i pay Lon’s ridiculous salary and his one month trip to Italy

Lon Harris: 6:51 i appreciate it three weeks three weeks three weeks

Jason Calacanis: 6:55 and i’m rounding up all right let’s get to it and uh it’s always interesting when people use the term interesting just anybody this is a great tweet by Jessica Lessin Jessica Lessin’s like who thinks this is interesting and then i open up my twitter and look comes up bing!

Lon Harris: 7:13 a very interesting announcement from OpenAI this morning we’re excited to make OpenAI’s models available directly to consumers on Bedrock in the coming weeks that’s from Andy Jassy of course

Jason Calacanis: 7:19 from Amazon okay so this is super interesting development here uh and wow i mean yeah i think it’s a big deal and this is uh going to be very interesting as well for the race between uh them and Claude OpenAI and Claude hmm but this is uh great for Microsoft i mean the Azure revenue the equity value this just unlocks a lot

Lon Harris: 7:54 so is this a win-win you think like everybody benefits from this new agreement

Jason Calacanis: 7:59 i’ll tell you what this is this is OpenAI and Microsoft agreeing to go polyamorous

Lon Harris: 8:07 yeah it’s an open relationship the first one in the history of tech companies

Jason Calacanis: 8:11 well i mean i think this is like they’re going to a polycube here anything’s possible you can see other people we can see other people we’re opening this relationship up anybody can do anything which means there’re going to be a lot of bad feelings and it’s going to be dicey anybody who tells you like they’re in a polycube or whatever the translation for that is chaos

Lon Harris: 8:31 it’s the old Arrested Development bit like well no this never works out for people but it might work out for us

Jason Calacanis: 8:37 yes exactly this has never worked out in the history of relationships but maybe for us it will it’s not going to work out this is going to be chaotic there’ll be a second or third lawsuit perhaps but uh i do think it cleans things up if i was Satya Nadella i would have just said i’ll do all this just give me another three points round me up to 30 percent and uh i’m good Because I think Microsoft is going to be able with their resources build enough compute and build a competitor to OpenAI. I think they just need to build their own models. Microsoft needs to get in the game, they should have an open source model, Apple should do open source model, Google should stick with proprietary, but if you’re this far behind and you’re Microsoft and Apple, this sounds like a crazy idea, Microsoft and Apple should just literally work together on open source models and just embed them into their devices and operating system and they could just build a third company and they could each contribute 100 billion to compute and talent and just make the greatest open source model ever. That would be the power move and it’s crazy to think Apple and Microsoft joining up, they’re the two furthest behind people.

Lon Harris: 10:00 Right.

Jason Calacanis: 10:01 They are the furthest behind and they have the most distribution of anybody. They’re the two that own the operating systems. The only other people that have billions of consumers are of course Meta working on their own proprietary model now and Google, the owners of DeepSeek. This is an incredible chess board. What else is in the news?

Lon Harris: 10:21 Uh, so we got two big stories about China. First, China is blocking Meta’s attempted takeover of Manus, another AI company. The government’s National Development and Reform Commission ordered the deal’s cancellation. The ruling was like one sentence. It just says we’re prohibiting foreign investment in this startup in accordance with the law and regulations and that’s it. So no further details there. So of course Manus was founded in China, the founders then relocated their HQ and staff to Singapore in 2025. Then Meta, but here’s the thing, Jason, the CCP is cancelling the deal. It’s already in progress. A lot of Manus employees already have moved over to Meta and are working out of Meta’s Singapore HQ. Bloomberg reports that capital has already been transferred, so we’re putting the brakes on a deal that is very much like in the middle.

Jason Calacanis: 11:07 Now was Manus, yeah, and I believe Manus was backed by Benchmark, the venture firm, controversially.

Lon Harris: 11:16 Yes. And so if they, they received 75 million dollars from the US from Benchmark in May 2025. That was the big thing with the Singapore move. They moved to Singapore so they could start taking this foreign investment.

Jason Calacanis: 11:30 Founders scale faster on Deel. That’s the deal. You can grow your company without borders and you can set up payroll for any country in minutes. Hire anyone, anywhere, like a modern startup or large company does, and Deel is gonna get all the visas handled fast so you can get back to building. There’s a great talent war that’s going on right now and you need people with superpowers for your startup to be competitive to beat your competitors to get your products to market. But anytime you try to grow your team with overseas hires, oh my lord, you’ve got to reinvent the wheel and you’ve got to know… Navigate a tangled web of international laws, regulations, you can’t get these things wrong, folks. You want to onboard new staffers in other countries? You want to get them set up on your network, nice and secure, IT access, all that good stuff? You want to manage their benefits? Trust me, this is all a nightmare unless you partner with Deel. They are the people stack for startups. They’re going to take care of all the onboarding, payroll, HR, IT, benefits, everything you need, quickly, in one place, done perfectly. So visit deel.com/twist. That’s D-E-E-L.com/twist. Okay, this is an escalation of epic proportions. I don’t know if this is saber-rattling or serious. I don’t know if this is performative or serious. If this is legit, the CCP might just go to the Manis office, seize everything, and just take all the employees.

Lon Harris: 12:52 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis: 12:52 The ones who haven’t already fled.

Lon Harris: 12:53 Well, and then the ones that fled to Singapore, will they go to Singapore

Jason Calacanis: 12:58 Right.

Lon Harris: 12:59 and say we want them extradited? And I don’t—listen, I’m not suggesting this at all, but they’re known for strongarm tactics.

Jason Calacanis: 13:14 They’ve used this authority.

Lon Harris: 13:15 They disappeared their Jeff Bezos. They disappeared the head of Alibaba, Jack Ma,

Jason Calacanis: 13:21 Yeah.

Lon Harris: 13:27 for two years.

Jason Calacanis: 13:30 Yeah.

Lon Harris: 13:31 If they’re willing to disappear somebody at the public level of Elon or Jeff Bezos or Sergey Brin, what would they do to the families of the Manis founders if they don’t return? And I’m not suggesting all this, but obviously, that’s something they’re capable of doing.

Jason Calacanis: 13:44 This to me feels like the story of the year.

Lon Harris: 13:45 It’s a big one.

Jason Calacanis: 13:46 This is huge. Forget about OpenAI and Microsoft.

Lon Harris: 13:48 Well, it’s also interesting from the Chinese AI—like so many of these Chinese companies making these AI products, the idea is to go international. It’s not just Chinese users they’re chasing. Everybody’s using Qwen models and Kimmy and, you know, so like, what—is this going to have a freezing impact on international AI collaboration at a much larger scale than just Manis?

Jason Calacanis: 14:10 Let me just say this one more time. The Chinese Communist Party canceling Meta’s acquisition of Manis is the story of the year. This is the ultimate escalation of AI wars. Why? Because they could now escalate this and the United States could escalate this. They could go—China can go lean on Singapore and say, give us those founders. In other words, like a red—equivalent of a red notice. Now, I don’t think China’s able to do—I don’t know if China’s part of Interpol as a communist country, I don’t suspect they are, but the countries in the West can do this kind of thing if they’re part of Interpol. Singapore does not have the wherewithal to fight China. If China says to Singapore, please deliver us— The founders and the money, the bank accounts, the servers of Manus, there is no choice but for Singapore to then either go to the United States and say, are you defending us from this? Or to China say to the Manus founders, you’re not welcome in this country. You have to leave. You can’t stay here. And then wherever they go, if they go to the United States, that’s another escalation.

Lon Harris: 15:21 Sure.

Jason Calacanis: 15:22 This is as provocative as you have to sell TikTok, if not more. This is provocative stuff, folks.

Lon Harris: 15:29 Well, because we don’t have, yeah, we don’t tell companies where they can headquarter. If an American company wants to go headquarter in another place, we’re not chasing after them around the globe.

Jason Calacanis: 15:41 We’re not. I don’t know of another instance of this, but I think this is starting to speak to sovereignty, the importance of AI, AGI, superintelligence. The CCP looks at companies formed in China as their property. That is why they have this golden board seat. I think it’s called the golden board seat or the golden vote. There is a concept with TikTok that they get this golden vote. What that means practically speaking is if something’s going down with a startup, TikTok’s algorithm being another portion of this, they get that golden vote and say, you know, TikTok algorithm’s not leaving China. It’s staying here.

Lon Harris: 16:21 Yeah, it’s a golden share. They, they give them symbolic 1% equity share which grants them the power to appoint a director on the board and gives them veto power. So that’s, that’s how the Chinese government is expressing so much control over these local companies.

Jason Calacanis: 16:36 Now, Manus’s got to make a decision. Does Manus unravel this and say to the VCs and the shareholders, okay, send us the money back.

Lon Harris: 16:46 Yeah, so it’s a weird… yeah.

Jason Calacanis: 16:47 Whatever taxes you were going to pay on that and capital gains. And did you distribute it? Did Benchmark distribute it to Harvard or Duke or whoever they’re, I don’t know who their LPs are. CalPERS?

Lon Harris: 17:00 It’s very complicated now. Oh god. Well, and also what impact is this going to have on Meta? They’re behind in the AI race. They probably needed this infusion of talent. Mark’s not throwing out these billions of dollars to buy Manus for no reason.

Jason Calacanis: 17:14 So is the CCP’s decision here performative or will they go to the mat? That’s the question.

Lon Harris: 17:20 Yeah, I think that’s the question.

Jason Calacanis: 17:21 Is this thing performative? Like, okay, we’re unwinding it. Whatever servers are still in our country, whatever employees used to have in this country, they all work for us. We’re going to move them to this sovereign, this other AI company. They do stuff like that. Remember the history of Uber in China. Uber and Didi were in a dogfight. Didi lost their license eventually. Go look that up. Didi lost the license to operate in China. Imagine President Trump just unilaterally saying to Uber or to Waymo, you can’t do any more rides because you didn’t have enough privacy in your app. And I believe it was over privacy. They lost their ability to provide rides in…

Lon Harris: 18:00 Didi. Yeah. That was a crazy moment for Didi. It, the stock tanked. I’m looking it up. I’m looking it up. I’m give it- give me one sec.

Jason Calacanis: 18:06 Oh, sorry, I was giving you the handoff. I’m like, alley-oop!

Lon Harris: 18:10 No, I’m track- yes. Chine- yeah, so this was in 2016 it looks like. Chinese ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing.

Jason Calacanis: 18:19 There was a Chinese action. They basically, if my memory serves me correct, they put them in the penalty box for 6 or 12 months. They could not provide rides. And they came up, I believe it was trumped up charges, what I was told on the back side. I don’t know where- how it ever evolved. So, we’re using my memory here of something 10 years ago. I believe they said they weren’t protecting consumer privacy or they were breaking consumer privacy, therefore, you’re out of business. And so, luckily, Meta has no- you know, there’s no Instagram, there’s no Facebook in China. Famously, Zuckerberg learned Chinese… …and spoke Chinese to, like, people over there in the government and was desperate to bring Facebook to China. It was an obsession for Zuckerberg, I understand, to operate in China and get those billion customers.

Lon Harris: 19:04 Okay, I found it. This was 2018. Didi suspended its carpooling service after there were two murders of female passengers in three months. China’s police and transport ministry said Didi had unshirkable responsibility for passengers being raped and killed by a driver in the city of Wenzhou. So, after two murders, yes, they- they cancelled this product. Didi sacked two members of staff and suspended the Hitch service nationwide. It was never relaunched in its original form.

Jason Calacanis: 19:29 You know, there’s a great tweet from @Denise_Hu. @Denise_Hu says, “That’s the end of Singapore washing.” If you hadn’t heard that term before, you know, this is what Twitter- I’m not Twitter- TikTok was accused of doing. Remember the TikTok CEO was like… “We’re not a Chinese company, we’re from Singapore.” “Yeah, I am from Singapore.” You know, like, this is- I think this is- she’s pretty accurate here. Singapore washing door has closed from the Chinese side. They bolted that two-way door. So if there’s a two-way door, you know, you get that hotel thing where, like, the adjacent room, they can make it into your room into a two-bedroom. Au contraire, mon frère, that’s the end of that. They’re locking that door. So anybody who’s a Chinese entrepreneur who says “I’m going to move my management team to Singapore”…

Lon Harris: 20:16 I think that’s over. That- they’re- they’re closing that loophole, it seems, for sure.

Jason Calacanis: 20:22 Yeah. Wow. I mean, for Meta, is Meta- what’s happened to Meta’s stock today? We should take a look. Let’s see.

Lon Harris: 20:30 I wonder. That seems material to me. Yeah, it’s at 679.60 right now. It’s- it’s up about 0.68% today.

Jason Calacanis: 20:38 Okay, so no impact. No- no real impact yet on Meta. That’s fine. I mean, I think probably people don’t believe AI has a material impact on the earnings.

Lon Harris: 21:00 Certainly not having its own thing, but what this does to MSAL, which is Meta’s super intelligence lab, I think is significant.

Jason Calacanis: 21:08 Yeah. Well, I mean, you just got to figure they were making this mega deal because they really needed that Manus talent to come join and now they’re not getting it.

Lon Harris: 21:15 Exactly, like Elon bringing in Cursor to XAI, you know, you presume he needs some sort of thing, magic secret sauce that they’ve got that his lab doesn’t have. It’s the worst nightmare of every founder. You’ve built a product, everything’s working great, then real users start flooding in and suddenly it all breaks. What a disaster. You need to get it back up and running, and you gotta do that fast. You’re looking like an amateur. That’s why you need a partner like Sentry. Applications can break in many different ways, but Sentry sees everything. You’ll get all the relevant details like stack traces, commits, releases, and even the developers who pushed that problem code in the first place. With Sentry, you’re not going to be jumping around between different tools trying to figure out what happened. And Seer, Sentry’s AI debugging agent, uses all this data and context to identify the root cause of the problem and suggest a fix. It can even take a look at your code before it ships and warn you if any problems are likely. Try Seer and Sentry for free if you’re a This Week in Startups listener at sentry.io/twist. Use the code TWIST for $240 in Sentry credits. Make sure you use that code, make sure you use that URL, sentry.io/twist, so they know your Uncle J-Cal sent you.

Jason Calacanis: 22:29 And remember I told you they had big aspirations, you know Zuckerberg specifically had big aspirations, but here’s a tweet for you. Look at this. This is from Steve Hou, H-O-U, from Bloomberg. And he says, ‘We’ve come a long way since this, just to jog our memory.’ Meta, Facebook once had big ambitions in China and here is Zuckerberg going for a run.

Lon Harris: 22:42 And I don’t think it’s overcast in this photo. You look in this photo here, with a certain picture of a politician behind him, conveniently placed. You looking at this image?

Jason Calacanis: 22:52 It’s… is there a more iconic picture? I don’t know who he’s running with here, but if you look, there’s a certain picture of a certain politician on that building.

Lon Harris: 23:13 Chairman Mao.

Jason Calacanis: 23:14 Okay, thank you sir. I don’t know what it says over there. And then do you notice the two lamp posts here? Look at the top right of this image. What do you see on the lamp posts?

Lon Harris: 23:25 Oh, it’s surveillance cameras.

Jason Calacanis: 23:26 Precisely. Mao, Zuckerberg and surveillance cameras running in a smog-filled, I’m going to assume Beijing or Singapore? I’m not sure what that building in the background is, maybe…

Lon Harris: 23:37 That’s gotta be… that’s gotta be Beijing, right? Come on.

Jason Calacanis: 23:40 It’s probably, I would think he was in Beijing. Most people are going to Singapore now for government stuff. And then here’s a little clip for the… and if you’re Chinese and you’re a member of the Noddy Gang, the Notification Gang, please let me know how he did. Now let’s introduce the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.

Lon Harris: 24:29 Okay. But supposedly he was going like multiple times a week, multiple hours a week… …to learn Mandarin.

Jason Calacanis: 24:34 Yeah, and I don’t think it was just—I believe his wife is Chinese, I’m not certain of that. Priscilla Chan.

Lon Harris: 24:40 That sounds right. I’ll look it up, make sure.

Jason Calacanis: 24:42 I’m thinking she’s Chinese but I… you can’t make an assumption there. We should definitely fact check that, get the Sinologue on here.

Lon Harris: 24:52 She’s not Chinese. She’s ethnic—ethnic Chinese. Her family fled Vietnam, grew up speaking Cantonese, not Mandarin. So she speaks Cantonese.

Jason Calacanis: 25:05 Got it. Okay. Well, that’s why you always check. Coming from an Asian, mixed-Asian household, I know this because I’ve made this mistake before. Anyway, this is the story of the year now. Could this escalate? Will Trump get involved? Is this going to then relate in some way to Taiwan? Will this in some way relate to the TikTok action? This is the kind of escalation that occurs that can be quite difficult.

Lon Harris: 25:36 There’s supposed to be a Trump and Xi meeting that got pushed back because of what’s going on in Iran. And they’re still—they’re still thinking May. That could happen in May, so obviously, like, this seems like a topic that may come up.

Jason Calacanis: 25:46 Looks like there’s a new bullet item on the docket. We’re going to have to keep watching this one. Again, I’ll just say it: performative, or is this going to be a go-to-the-mat kind of issue is what we’re going to be looking for in the coming weeks. All right, final story.

Lon Harris: 26:05 Did you—okay, so we got a few choices. I think we should talk about this accident video you sent.

Jason Calacanis: 26:13 I think this is critically important. I sent this video. You know, I have a lot of investments, not just in Uber, but in, you know, many companies in the self-driving space because I believe this will be the next wave, and I did okay in the first wave with Uber. I do believe this.

Lon Harris: 26:29 So this is a—yeah, I’ll give a little context, a disclaimer please, if you don’t want to watch it. First of all, we should say this is upsetting. If you are—like, we’re about to show a dashcam video of an accident involving a child and this self-driving car. If you think that might disturb you, give us a minute or two and then come back to the show or turn off your visuals. It is disturbing. So this is a shocking dashcam clip. Now the caption on X and some other evidence we found suggests that this is real. It was— was recorded on March 9th, 2024. Uh, the far-right international paper The Epoch Times has confirmed it. They say it happened in Chongqing.

Jason Calacanis: 27:10 And Epoch Times, just to be clear, is that the one that Falun Gong is producing?

Lon Harris: 27:16 No, no, no. I think that’s a different one, but—

Jason Calacanis: 27:20 Okay, anyway, Epoch Times is like a… I don’t know if it’s a US look at China—

Lon Harris: 27:25 Oh, you’re right, it is! Yeah, this is the Falun Gong one. Uh, so it is very— they’re very anti-Communist Party, they’re very anti-Communism in general, and they’re— they’re usually seen as being to the very far-right, and they’re the only news source that I could find that actually confirms that this is real footage.

Jason Calacanis: 27:42 And Falun Gong, they’re the—

Lon Harris: 27:46 Falun Gong. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis: 27:48 Uh, they’re that— that Chinese spiritual movement that is— uh, the government is suppressing it. Uh, they’re most famously in this country they do that Shen Yun show that you see billboards for, the Chinese dancing cultural exchange. That’s actually Falun Gong’s organization, and they put that on as a fundraiser. Uh, but yeah, it’s a— it’s a spiritual movement in China that’s being repressed by the government.

Lon Harris: 28:14 Which spiritual movements in China, no good.

Jason Calacanis: 28:17 Yes, well right. The Communist Party does not like that. And so the Uyghurs who are Muslim, in jail, sterilized, tortured, slave labor, and Falun Gong is banned.

Lon Harris: 28:29 They’re banned. They’re banned. And it’s— uh, you’ll see them, it’s— they— they do a version of what looks to us like Tai Chi where they do different movements and it’s supposed to be like a spiritual daily practice, correct.

Jason Calacanis: 28:41 So they could have— they— they could want to have— they— they have a penchant for negative stories about China. They’re going to be on the anti-CCP, anti-China sort of beat. So they— they’re confirming that this is real, uh and so I guess we can—

Lon Harris: 28:54 This looks like a back alley in China, like a side street— not back alley, this is like a side street in China. As you can see, there’s double-parked cars. China’s driving situation is a bit chaotic if you’ve ever been to China. People will drive, park on the sidewalk, go in the opposite lane, they’ll make a left turn way ahead of the intersection to cut people off. It’s a bit, um, emerging market in some locations, so it makes self-driving pretty challenging. And here as the car is coming up the street, uh a young child runs into the street with a mother following it. This could all be fake. This could be AI, uh who knows. But there’s the child—

Jason Calacanis: 29:32 Right. There’s the child.

Lon Harris: 29:34 running out and then—

Jason Calacanis: 29:37 clearly runs it over.

Lon Harris: 29:39 Seems like it disappears under the tire. So what Epoch Times says, uh here’s— here’s the quote:

Jason Calacanis: 29:43 A Harmony OS enabled vehicle that is Huawei’s operating system, it runs on smartphones, tablets, TVs, wearables, and self-driving cars. They’re saying increased its speed from 24 kilometers per hour to 31 kilometers per hour, two seconds later a toddler or approximately—

Lon Harris: 30:00 Approximately two years old, steps from the sidewalk into the vehicle lane. The car’s speed drops but it does not break in time and appears to hit the child. Locals confirmed to Epoch Times reportedly that the toddler is the child of a local shopkeeper from this street.

Jason Calacanis: 30:18 Is the kid okay? I mean, this looks like it could have killed the kid.

Lon Harris: 30:21 I do not, sadly, I do not have any confirmation on what actually happened and if the child is okay.

Jason Calacanis: 30:26 Okay.

Lon Harris: 30:27 A similar instance happened in Santa Monica, the paradoxically the People’s Republic of Santa Monica. A Waymo came around a vehicle and hit a child. It did break in time. It did hit the child at I think 5 miles an hour or something incredibly, we’ll pull up the story here in a moment, and the child was fine. The child got knocked over. So it would be like a dog running into the child.

Jason Calacanis: 30:50 So very interesting here. What we’re getting to in self-driving, what I think this speaks to, is in self-driving, the only thing that matters is edge cases. The edge case of a cat being under a car and getting run over, the bodega cat in San Francisco.

Lon Harris: 31:10 RIP KitKat.

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Lon Harris: 32:11 KitKat, stray cat, bodega cat, murdered by Waymo, hit by Waymo. And then here, the child getting hit in Santa Monica and then finally this child getting hit. If you look at those instances, these are the edge cases of edge cases. First of all, the cat was under the car. The cars do not have cameras underneath them. A human is not expected—right—if a human pulled out of a spot and there was a cat under the car and it got run over, you’d be like, okay, sorry for the cat, but you’re not required as a human driver to look under your vehicle. And it is sadly a thing that does happen all the time where people hit, accidentally hit animals or stray animals or don’t realize that there are animals under the car, yeah.

Jason Calacanis: 32:55 Correct. And then we look at the one where the child got hit in Santa Monica. Waymo did the right thing. Waymo slowed down, it was I believe the child’s fault, the child darted into the street. It’s every parent’s nightmare, you have to teach this, and there is a video, I’ll ask producer Jacob to go find it, of kids learning in Japan about- they- they show kids in Japan getting hit by a car, a kid running into the street in front of a car. So look for that, um it’s a- it’s how they educate kids in Japan about running into the street. It’s really effective and they should be doing this all over the world, you gotta scare kids about running into the street.

Lon Harris: 33:31 You didn’t have to watch any of those driver’s ed films in high school, like Blood on the Asphalt or something? We had to, where you see footage of the aftermath of car accidents.

Jason Calacanis: 33:41 No, but this is for- watch- watch this, here you go. This is Japan, so in Japan they make kids learn about safety, they send them to a safety track, they make them wear- there it goes. And you notice the kids all have numbered vests and they have the hats on or whatever, when they go to events they are very thoughtful about not losing a kid.

Lon Harris: 33:58 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis: 33:59 This is the kind of thing you have to really think for an edge case. The software is going to make mistakes in edge cases, and the edge case means a kid could die. No human would ever be judged based upon what we saw there, like if that was a human in China, that terrible instance of the kid being hit, I don’t think a human taxi driver would be brought to justice for that.

Lon Harris: 34:28 If you were inebriated, if you had been dri- like if they- if the police came and found you were intoxicated or something and you hit somebody, then yes, that would be vehicular manslaughter.

Jason Calacanis: 34:39 But that reaction time to me looks like a human’s reaction time, not a computer.

Lon Harris: 34:42 Yeah, I mean, well as a driver I think you are constantly sort of concerned about kids running in the path, you know like that’s a thing that occurs to me driving around neighborhoods all the time is to look out for kids.

Jason Calacanis: 34:51 But when you look at that China one Lon, the one that’s Epoch Times or whatever, the kid darts out, it’s very quick, I mean I would- if that was a cab driver or if that was you and I, God forbid, would you blame any of us? No, obviously that was as fast as you can react.

Lon Harris: 35:06 Probably not, yeah.

Jason Calacanis: 35:07 Probably not, yeah.

Lon Harris: 35:09 It doesn’t look like- I mean it looked like a great human reaction time, but my point is when it’s a human driver there’s someone to blame, and I think that makes people feel better in a way, like somebody’s life is going to be ruined if they hit a child in their car, and that kind of puts us all in a place of being cautious, responsible, and robots don’t have that, they’re not looking, you know like you can’t blame a robot like we could say the mother-

Jason Calacanis: 35:32 But I’m making a different point.

Lon Harris: 35:34 Right.

Jason Calacanis: 35:35 Completely different point I’m making Lon. The point I’m making here, let me try one more time. The video from China shows human reaction time, but a computer driver. We will not accept a human’s reaction time from a computer, it’ll be judged based on a computer. This video feels like human reaction time from a computer, not acceptable. Computers have to have computer- Computer, reaction time, not human, superhuman. This is the end of self-driving if this happens in America. I will predict here, this will happen, sadly, in America. It won’t be a cat next time, it’s gonna be a human. I’m not trying to be a doomerist, but I don’t think if that kid had been killed in Santa Monica or had broken his leg and it was at 12 miles an hour and the difference between 5 and 12 is nothing, I think it was 5 miles an hour if I remember correctly somebody can check. I would say Waymo would be banned right now in America.

Lon Harris: 36:33 Yeah, well, the other thing is, if this happened in America, it would be all over like we wouldn’t have to guess about whether it was real footage or not. I think we can stop showing it, Jacob. Thanks.

Jason Calacanis: 36:46 Yeah, please.

Lon Harris: 36:49 And again, I’m just going to say for the fourth time, this may not be real, we may be reacting to an AI set up. And if something like this did happen in the US, there would be no question about, well, is it real, is it authentic, is it right… it would be on the front page of every newspaper. It would be all we talked about for weeks. Kit Kat, the bodega cat getting killed was big news for three, four days.

Jason Calacanis: 37:00 Isn’t that crazy?

Lon Harris: 37:01 Yeah, so I mean, I think this is clearly a China versus the US and the government which has a very strong interest in promoting self-driving cars and automation, they have a lot more control over what Chinese people see, what gets out from Chinese media to the rest of the world. That’s why we’re playing this guessing game in the first place of did this really happen? Has this just been silenced? Or in America, it would be like the whole world would be talking about that kid who got killed by the Waymo.

Jason Calacanis: 37:38 Tell me what you have in off duty, maybe we’ll make it, we’ll tape it now and save it for another show.

Lon Harris: 37:41 All right, I got three goodies for you in off duty. The first, did you see this clip of Russell Brand on Piers Morgan’s show?

Jason Calacanis: 37:50 I did see it. Let’s play it for the audience.

Lon Harris: 37:52 Incredible. So, Russell Brand is on, he’s promoting his new book about Christianity, How to Become Christian in 7 Days, I believe is what it’s called. And so Piers Morgan says, well, you brought your Bible here to the studio. I believe this is the same Bible you were reading at court. We’ll show the clip.

Jason Calacanis: 38:08 Put it on 2X speed just for the giggles. This is 2X speed of being asked…

Lon Harris: 38:35 Getting awkward. Wait, he wrote a book about being a Christian. So you would think, what’s your favorite Bible passage? What’s a Bible passage that means something to you? You would think like, like right like that, you should be able to come up with one if it’s your, if it’s so important to you that you wrote a book.

Jason Calacanis: 38:57 This is a masterclass by Piers Morgan.

Lon Harris: 39:00 Yeah, I love him looking. He just looks at the camera. He’s letting them go.

Jason Calacanis: 39:03 The best I was looking at that day was not in this clip. Why can’t I find this? I had the verse I had today. He still has to find it. We’re on double speed.

Lon Harris: 39:10 This is from Isaiah 12. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis: 39:12 And then picks another one to read. I just want to say, Piers Morgan, exceptional job of just letting the person, you know, cook because they’re… I you could—the benefit of the doubt is, you know, he’s got—it looks like he’s got a lot of earmarks and post-it notes in that bible when he shows it from the side. So maybe he just had a hard time finding the specific one that he said in his court case and he wanted to be accurate, Russell, and he’s a podcaster. Or the cynical take from you, Lon, might be—

Lon Harris: 39:43 No, he’s full of it. I actually have two—I actually have two—I think there might be two things going on. One, he can’t really find the right verse because he doesn’t really read the bible and this whole thing is just a gimmick. I think that’s the most obvious thing to draw. But the other one is, part of me feels like he is a comedian and a comic actor. Maybe he was looking for the bible verse for a second and then he realized like, this is really funny. Like, this is a really funny—

Jason Calacanis: 39:59 Oh, so it was a bit? He was leaning into it.

Lon Harris: 40:03 Part of me does feel like—I mean if you were going to do this on a Curb Your Enthusiasm, on a Veep, on Extras, one of those Ricky Gervais shows, like that’s exactly how you would do it. You would let it play out, you would let it play out. He keeps saying like, ‘Oh, I believe this is from Isaiah,’ and then he keeps flipping. It’s like a Spinal Tap bit. So I don’t know, the cynical part of me is like Russell Brand is just a liar and he’s posing as a Christian and he’s not sincere in his beliefs, but I don’t know, it’s so funny and it goes on for so long that I’m almost like, maybe this is just he couldn’t resist a little moment of hilarity.

Jason Calacanis: 40:35 He is definitely a weird, you know, character at times. Like he is a shticky guy by design. Maybe that’s an interesting one. I interviewed him on the red carpet once, long before we knew any accusations, he was just funny British man Russell Brand, and he was very in the moment spontaneously funny.

Lon Harris: 40:52 He—I heard a clip of him on Megyn Kelly recently and he goes off on like these incredible tirades, I don’t know, like monologues, they’re monologues. He does these incredibly well-spoken monologues, but then I’m like, what’s the substance of this? And I was trying to find the substance in it. And it’s interesting, a lot of people find Christ when they’re being criticized the most.

Jason Calacanis: 41:18 Yeah, I think that’s the—the cynical take would be yes, he’s got all this sexual harassment stuff going on, it’s a bad look, oh, I’ll embrace Christianity and then a whole bunch of people will be fans of mine. It’s such a popular refuge. So I don’t know, I don’t want to besmirch the man’s religion, maybe it’s sincere, but it is a very funny clip and part of me does feel like when you’re watching it, like he’s leaning into the joke, like he’s playing it so well that it is very funny. So anyway, I wanted to show it, I wanted to get your thoughts on that one.

Lon Harris: 41:46 Okay, that’s number one. What do you got for number two?

Jason Calacanis: 41:49 Here’s another, I found this viral thread…

Lon Harris: 42:00 I will I will pull it up or or Jacob can. Linus Eckenstam shared this. So, you see these threads a lot. This one is almost too far to be believed. He’s telling people take an image of your palm, feed it into ChatGPT and ask it to read your palm and he’s got full instructions on how to do it and then if you scroll down a little bit, Jacob, you’ll see oh, you could also have it extract a palm print and show what your and it’s like, so you’re feeding your biometric signals into the AI like, is this an ops, J-Syc? Like, is this the FBI is writing this thread and telling you to put your fingerprints in their OpenAI database? Because this is very suspicious to me.

Jason Calacanis: 42:44 Wait a second. I I don’t understand the story. One more time.

Lon Harris: 42:47 Okay. Linus Eckenstam, this guy, he’s an AI evangelist and optimist. He’s got 235,000 followers on X. So this is the thread. He says, you must try this. GPT image you could do palm reading and I’m so here for it. And then here’s his full prompt. You attach a photo of your palm and then you say based on my hand, I want you to make a complete palm reading guide. Analyze the palm, the style of the guide should be clean and minimal, thin lines, rounded corners, blah, blah, blah. He’s giving him the all and then if you go down, he says, I didn’t know if this was going to work, but I also outputted my handprint. And if you look at the image there, he got OpenAI to make a image of his handprint complete with his fingerprints in it and he’s loading these into these public AI systems. We don’t know who OpenAI is sharing their data with.

Jason Calacanis: 43:34 Okay. Putting aside the privacy thing, this is just the perfect example of AI slop. There are people who’ve put onto the open crawl on the open web palm reading nonsense. Palm reading is obviously nonsense, it’s quackery. But large language models don’t understand quackery. They don’t understand chiropractic arts, which I believe are quackery. Doesn’t understand palm reading is quackery or telling the future, whatever. Or astrology. All this stuff is quackery in my mind. But because there are people who take quackery seriously online, it ingests that, it believes it and nobody’s gone through the trouble of saying to ChatGPT during training, there is no such thing as palm reading. That’s nonsense.

Lon Harris: 44:13 Right. Yeah, it’s sucked in so much writing about palm reading, astrology, tarot, all that stuff was it was trained on like all those Reddit threads from those communities of people who believe in this stuff got sucked in as data. So it is it has expertise on these things even though it may not be a thing that is real expertise. But I’m sure that palm reading chart is as good as if you went to a professional palm reader, it’s probably very similar kinds of stuff. I’m just like, I don’t think you should give them your fingerprints. Your fingerprints to ChatGPT personally I would not do that.

Jason Calacanis: 45:03 100% for the love of God don’t do that.

Lon Harris: 45:06 Don’t do that. And part of me does actually feel like if you were in the FBI and you wanted to get millions of people’s fingerprints, that’s exactly what you would do. You would create a prompt and tell people here’s how to do it. Give it to us. We’re reading your OpenAIs.

Jason Calacanis: 45:20 Okay, what’s your theory? Give us your third and final, Lon’s third and final off-duty. We like to go off-duty. I’ve been asking my team, please make me an off-duty jingle and video, and let’s have that for next week. Off-duty. Everybody loves off-duty when we talk about things that have nothing to do with startups.

Lon Harris: 45:31 Well first I’ll mention we got a comment in the YouTube chat from @consistent1 saying, Lon’s recommendation from last week, Dust Bunny, is recommended. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback by the way Jason on social media from people who watched Dust Bunny after I talked about it here on the show who enjoyed it. So big, big recommendation for me. It’s on HBO Max now, Dust Bunny. Another thing I will recommend, there is a show, a British crime show that is back for season two on Apple TV. It’s called Criminal Record. I really, I really like this one. It’s about, it’s a cop show, but a lot of cop shows it’s like the cops are geniuses and it’s about these like hero genius cops and they can’t they, you know like and I love Special Victims Unit or whatever that Law & Order show, but the cops are superheroes on that one. And what I like about Criminal Record is it’s very realistic about what it would be like to be a cop. It’s not anti-cop, it’s not pro-cop, it just really digs into all of the sort of BS and administration and the complexities of being a cop in the modern world. So Cush Jumbo is DS June Lenker, she’s always investigating these cases where she thinks the cops got it wrong, you know she’s trying to looking into cold cases trying to figure out what really happened.

Jason Calacanis: 46:58 I like it.

Lon Harris: 46:59 And then Peter Capaldi is this veteran cop, very powerful in the force, and he’s sort of on the side of like, we made the arrest, let’s let this die, let’s move on. And so they kind of come to heads but also sort of work together. It’s really well done, it’s a really engaging show, six episodes.

Jason Calacanis: 47:18 I don’t know any of these actors so I’m kind of looking forward to it.

Lon Harris: 47:22 Well Peter Capaldi, he was Doctor Who, and if you ever watched those Armando Iannucci, the guy who did Veep, Armando Iannucci, he did a show…

Jason Calacanis: 47:29 Not for me either.

Lon Harris: 47:30 …he did a show in the UK called The Thick of It that starred Peter Capaldi, who was also in the movie version In the Loop.

Jason Calacanis: 47:34 90% of the audience doesn’t know who you’re talking about, what you’re talking about, which is great, it’s great. I like to get introduced to a new actor.

Lon Harris: 47:41 A great British actor. So this is a really cool show, season two just kicked off on Apple, so you’ve got plenty of time to go back and catch up on season one and then jump into season two.

Jason Calacanis: 47:46 You know these foot pedals, everybody knows I talked about my foot pedal for doing Whisper. I like to do Whisper when I’m writing a long prompt, etc. And then, you know, my studio and my… Editor producer here So-La said, oh, you should try the Elgato pedal. Yes. This thing’s got weight to it. It’s three different pedals, one on the left, one on the right, one on the middle. Now, I’m talking to you right now, I’m not using my hands, but if I press the right pedal, it pulls up my comment browser from Perplexity, if I press the right one, it pulls up my zoom.

Lon Harris: 48:19 Wow.

Jason Calacanis: 48:20 Right, left. Now I’m always trying to put my these two things on the screen and then I have to go switch back and forth. So when you see me looking down or I’m doing my mouse, you see my keyboard, I’m on a live stream, pain in the neck, right?

Lon Harris: 48:29 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis: 48:29 Because sometimes I have to look at the docket, now I’m looking at the docket, then I press again, now I’m looking at you Lon. Docket, you don’t you can’t see it, docket, me. Boom. And uh it’s 90 bucks, the the cheap one I got for my other computer that just does one button, uh yeah, is uh you know, it’s 25 bucks, it can do whisper, it feels cheap, it’s light, it’s 20 bucks. This one’s 90, but it’s got three buttons so it’s averaging 30 bucks a per click. And then I put the middle on my whisper and I can do my whole thing. This is a game changer. I don’t know why I never had foot pedals before. But I’m thinking of eventually having two foot pedals and having six options here. It’s great for a performer.

Lon Harris: 49:13 Yeah, I think people feel like, you know, it’s going to be hard physically to sort of get in the hang of but it’s just like driving a car, like at a certain point muscle memory takes over and you just don’t even think about it anymore you just hit the pedal for the thing you want. I used to use them when I was doing a lot of transcribing like doing subtitles. You would have the foot pedal.

Jason Calacanis: 49:29 And you know what? I have both my feet resting on the pedal which is a nice feeling as well. So my feet are on the pedal right now and I’m just clicking back and forth. And this one has weight to it, like you push it down it’s got weight and then it comes with a bunch of springs. So if you don’t like the weight it comes with you can change and have different pedal stoppers and has a different spring set. So I don’t know why you’d ever do that, but maybe there’s some people who actually really care about this, but Elgato makes a lot of interesting products so kudos to them. I’ll give you one more.

Lon Harris: 50:04 Please.

Jason Calacanis: 50:05 Um there’s a company called Nothing and uh they make these Airpod competitors called Nothing Ear (3)s and uh they are really great. Uh we’ll pull it up on the screen. They’re known for making an Android phone, but I’m not going to get on Android. I keep an Android backup phone. But anyway, these Nothing Ears are really great and what’s pretty interesting about them is they come with a case and there’s a button on the case and I started to use this. So here I’m just opening up a new pack of them. Um so there’s a button over here and when you press the talk button, you press talk, it uses this like enhanced microphone that’s part of the case.

Lon Harris: 50:41 Oh, interesting.

Jason Calacanis: 50:42 So you hold it like this and you talk into it like this. So if you’re driving, you’re on the subway, now you’ve got like a podcast microphone in the case. See? See, they’re pressing it right there? Yeah. And she’s talking into it and I found the fidelity is much better and you can hold it, turn the microphone on there and then when you’re talking you’re just having a conversation with somebody. …like she’s doing there like it’s a CB. AirPods, you put them in, it’s gotta do a bunch of funky stuff. Anyway, these have like great weight to them, they fit perfectly, they’ve got a cool vibe. I like Nothing. Nothing. I like Nothing.

Lon Harris: 51:13 I like Nothing Ears. There you go.

Jason Calacanis: 51:16 All right, everybody. It’s been another amazing episode of TWIST. If you want to join the TWIST Notey Gang, show up to our YouTube channel, join the chat. If you ask us, we’ll put you into the group on the Twitter. Requires you to give us your @ handle, we’ll add you. And you can also DM the @TWISTartups handle on Twitter and say, ‘Would you add me to the Notey Gang?’. It’s the people who have notifications turned on and join us live. And then you’ll also get to see the—yeah, there it is. That’s the TWIST Notey Gang in there. And there’s about 300 of us in there just talking about startups, talking about the show every day, day in and day out. And it’s a lot of fun. You get to meet some other founders. We’re gonna have to—I think it limits—

Lon Harris: 51:59 X is limiting with their X Chat. I think it’s 350 people.

Jason Calacanis: 52:03 Yeah, so we’re almost there. So what we’ll do is we’ll do TWIST Notey 2. We’ll do a second Notey Gang, and maybe we’ll have one be for like the most hardcore people and one for the more casual people. Or maybe we just wind up having multiple ones. Fire it off. But yeah, we’ll have a community manager soon and we’ll see you all on Wednesday. Bye-bye.

Lon Harris: 52:19 Bye-bye.