And I feel like who better to do that than John Ternes? Amanda?

I wonder if there's a way to modernize the iPod.

This might be too niche of a market, but I have been writing a lot about Gen Z and Gen Alpha and how there's this emerging embrace of quote-unquote older tech, aka anything that we had when we were younger that no longer exists, where they're like, wow, CDs, that's so cool.

But I do think this is...

Like a broader cultural movement, whereas people feel more bogged down by just how techie everything is.

There's Waymos on the streets.

Everything is AI, etc.

Is there something that you have found yourself traveling with recently and then you've never used it or wondered, why did I bring this in the first place? What are the things that we shouldn't bring with us when we travel? Amanda?

And I feel like who better to do that than John Ternes? Amanda?

I wonder if there's a way to modernize the iPod.

This might be too niche of a market, but I have been writing a lot about Gen Z and Gen Alpha and how there's this emerging embrace of quote-unquote older tech, aka anything that we had when we were younger that no longer exists, where they're like, wow, CDs, that's so cool.

But I do think this is...

Like a broader cultural movement, whereas people feel more bogged down by just how techie everything is.

There's Waymos on the streets.

Everything is AI, etc.

Is there something that you have found yourself traveling with recently and then you've never used it or wondered, why did I bring this in the first place? What are the things that we shouldn't bring with us when we travel? Amanda?

What was it for you?

Yeah.

So I guess speaking of, uh, people having really strong feelings about AI.

So my story of the week is that yesterday Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, announced that it is now going to start using creators', uh, streams and videos that they post on Twitch to train Amazon's generative AI.

And the way that they framed this story, I think, is part of it, where Twitch knows that its community is creative people, that generally it's like they're playing video games or, like, people are doing all sorts of different creative stuff on Twitch.

And generally, people that are in those industries are more, um, hesitant to embrace LLMs because they see that they've often been trained on content without creator's consent, and there's just a lot of, like, understandably tense emotions going on in those spaces.

And the way that they announced it was that they said that they were rolling out a feature that would allow creators to opt out of having their, uh, streams used to train generative AI.

That's right

What was it for you?

Yeah, so I guess speaking of, uh, people having really strong feelings about AI.

So my story of the week is that yesterday Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, announced that it is now going to start using creators', uh, streams and videos that they post on Twitch to train Amazon's generative AI.

And the way that they framed this story, I think, is part of it, where Twitch knows that its community is creative people, that generally it's like they're playing video games, or, like, people are doing all sorts of different creative stuff on Twitch.

And generally people that are in those industries are more, um, hesitant to embrace LLMs because they see that they've often been trained on content without creators' consent, and there's just a lot of, like, understandably tense emotions going on in those spaces.

And the way that they announced it was that they said that they were rolling out a feature that would allow creators to opt out of having their, uh, streams used to train generative AI.

And my initial reaction, as well as I think a lot of other streamers' initial reaction, was like, "Oh, I didn't realize Twitch was even doing that to begin with."

That's right

What was it for you?

Yeah.

So I guess speaking of, uh, people having really strong feelings about AI.

So my story of the week is that yesterday Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, announced that it is now going to start using creators', uh, streams and videos that they post on Twitch to train Amazon's generative AI.

And the way that they framed this story, I think, is part of it, where Twitch knows that its community is creative people, that generally it's like they're playing video games or, like, people are doing all sorts of different creative stuff on Twitch.

And generally, people that are in those industries are more, um, hesitant to embrace LLMs because they see that they've often been trained on content without creators' consent, and there's just a lot of, like, understandably tense emotions going on in those spaces.

And the way that they announced it was that they said that they were rolling out a feature that would allow creators to opt out of having their, uh, streams used to train generative AI.

That's right

What was it for you?

Yeah.

So I guess speaking of, uh, people having really strong feelings about AI.

So my story of the week is that yesterday Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, announced that it is now going to start using creators', uh, streams and videos that they post on Twitch to train Amazon's generative AI.

And the way that they framed this story, I think, is part of it, where Twitch knows that its community is creative people, that generally it's like they're playing video games, or, like, people are doing all sorts of different creative stuff on Twitch.

And generally, people that are in those industries are more, um, hesitant to embrace LLMs because they see that they've often been trained on content without creators' consent, and there's just a lot of, like, understandably tense emotions going on in those spaces.

And the way that they announced it was that they said that they were rolling out a feature that would allow creators to opt out of having their, uh, streams used to train generative AI.

That's right

[laughs]

Yeah.

I mean, it, it never occurred to me until talking about this, but it does make a lot of sense that, like, if you're an electrician, you are trained in knowing how to do things, but you're not going to approach every single problem and be like, "I immediately know exactly what I need to do." And an AI at this point, like, robotics is not at a level where we have, like, robotic mechanics coming into people's houses.

But- Yeah, if that makes it easier for someone to, like, repair your air conditioner, if maybe they don't know the problem and they upload a picture, and then Gemini says, like, "Oh, try doing this," and then the person has the technical skills to know how to, like, get inside of the AC or whatever, like, that's, that could be helpful.

And that doesn't seem to, like, threaten those jobs to me, because you still need someone to literally do the thing.

Um, I mean, I guess you could argue that maybe that would make it easier for individual people to be like, "I'm gonna fix my own AC."

Huh.

And the people that run Light, um, one of the co-founders is a longtime phone product designer who actually worked on the Motorola Razr, which is fun.

[laughs]

Yeah.

I mean, it, it never occurred to me until talking about this, but it does make a lot of sense that, like, if you're an electrician, you are trained in knowing how to do things, but you're not going to approach every single problem and be like, "I immediately know exactly what I need to do." And, and AI at this point, like, robotics is not at a level where we have, like, robotic mechanics coming into people's houses.

But- Yeah, if that makes it easier for someone to like repair your air conditioner, if maybe they don't know the problem and they upload a picture and then Gemini says like, "Oh, try doing this," and then the person has the technical skills to know how to like get inside of the AC or whatever, like that's, that could be helpful.

And that doesn't seem to like threaten those jobs to me because you still need someone to literally do the thing.

Um, I mean, I guess you could argue that maybe that would make it easier for individual people to be like, "I'm gonna fix my own AC."

Ah

...

[laughs]

Yeah, I mean, it, it never occurred to me until talking about this, but it does make a lot of sense that, like, if you're an electrician, you are trained in knowing how to do things, but you're not going to approach every single problem and be like, "I immediately know exactly what I need to do." And an AI, at this point...

Like, robotics is not at a level where we have, like, robotic mechanics coming into people's houses.

But- Yeah, if that makes it easier for someone to, like, repair your air conditioner, if maybe they don't know the problem and they upload a picture, and then Gemini says, like, "Oh, try doing this," and then the person has the technical skills to know how to, like, get inside of the AC or whatever, like, that's, that could be helpful.

And that doesn't seem to, like, threaten those jobs to me, because you still need someone to literally do the thing.

Um, I mean, I guess you could argue that maybe that would make it easier for individual people to be like, "I'm gonna fix my own AC," but also I think there's still a lot of people that just don't want to spend the time fixing their AC.

Like, even if I knew how, I probably would hire someone, because I just don't wanna deal with that, and I-

Ah.

[laughs]

Yeah, I mean, it, it never occurred to me until talking about this, but it does make a lot of sense that, like, if you're an electrician, you are trained in knowing how to do things, but you're not going to approach every single problem and be like, "I immediately know exactly what I need to do." And an AI at this point, like, robotics is not at a level where we have, like, robotic mechanics coming into people's houses.

But- Yeah, if that makes it easier for someone to, like, repair your air conditioner, if maybe they don't know the problem and they upload a picture, and then Gemini says, like, "Oh, try doing this," and then the person has the technical skills to know how to, like, get inside of the AC or whatever, like, that's, that could be helpful.

And that doesn't seem to, like, threaten those jobs to me, because you still need someone to literally do the thing.

Um, I mean, I guess you could argue that maybe that would make it easier for individual people to be like, "I'm gonna fix my own AC," but also I think there's still a lot of people that just don't want to spend the time fixing their AC.

Like, even if I knew how, I probably would hire someone, because I just don't wanna deal with that, and I-

Ah.

And the people that run Light, um, one of the co-founders is a longtime phone product designer who actually worked on the Motorola Razr, which is fun.

[laughs]

But so Pokemon is actually, like, a really interesting benchmark for seeing how an AI model reasons through puzzles and can learn from the surroundings that it's put in.

And so playing Pokemon Red or FireRed, they're like the same game, but, um, playing Pokemon Red has been a benchmark where initially in February 2025, Anthropic, uh, published a blog post and some tweets basically explaining what it was doing here.

And so the 3.0 Sonnet model of Claude, when it tried playing Pokemon, like, it couldn't do anything.

Like, it was just like, "What am I doing?" And then a couple models later, like, it was getting stuck in corners and then saying, like...

Like, it, like, Claude wrote a letter to, like, whoever was controlling it, being like, "Hello.

I believe that I've reached a glitch in the game and you need to reset it." But it was just that it was walking in a corner and it couldn't figure out how to get out of the corner.

Mm-hmm

[laughs]

But so Pokemon is actually, like, a really interesting benchmark for seeing how an AI model reasons through puzzles and can learn from the surroundings that it's put in.

And so playing Pokemon Red or FireRed, they're, like, the same game.

But, um, playing Pokemon Red has been a benchmark where initially in February 2025, Anthropic, uh, published a blog post and some tweets basically explaining what it was doing here.

And so the 3.0 Sonnet model of Claude, when it tried playing Pokemon, like, it couldn't do anything.

Like, it was just like, "What am I doing?" And then a couple models later, like, it was getting stuck in corners and then saying, like...

Like, it, like, Claude wrote a letter to, like, whoever was controlling it, being like, "Hello.

Mm-hmm

Yeah.

But Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality had a reputation for being the most divisive Harry Potter fanfic, andIn 2019, I was living in Laos for one of those weird, like, you graduate college and then you get sent to a country to, like, do a weird nonprofit job, and it's kind of weird, and there's no infrastructure, and you're like 22 and you're like, "I'm in Laos.

What's happening?" I was, like, rereading the Harry Potter books because I was, like, so uncomfortable that I was like, "I need the comfort thing." And then I was reading a lot of fan fiction, and then I was like, "It's time for me to read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality in Laos." And then I had really bad food poisoning one weekend, and I read all of it, and it didn't make the food poisoning better, and I wouldn't recommend that experience.

Yeah

... sort of like adjacent to another argument that is happening in tech right now where people that are AI optimists are saying that AI is gonna be so good that nobody's gonna have to work anymore, and everyone's gonna just have universal basic income and no one's gonna have a job and we're all gonna be happy and everything's great.

And I would love for that to be true.

Like, if no one had to work and we all lived in a nice little utopia where we could all just play guitar in a campfire, that'd be great.

But it's not gonna happen.

Yeah, and I, I feel like-

like-For me to consider using one of these, it would have to at least support RCS.

I have generally found more that so far I've been testing a bunch of these various products, and the one I like the most so far, which also gets advertised to a lot of people on Instagram, is the Brick.

So we'll see how it goes.

Uh, but Amanda, what about for you?

The biggest issue that I have with wearables is that a lot of them are ugly.

But this company, Lumia, is making an earring back that is a fitness tracker.

It's, like, not out yet, but they're planning to sell it with either, like, you can buy the earring with it, or you can use it as an earring back on, like, whatever other earrings you have.

But I would be curious to hear your thoughts, Amanda.

Yeah, I mean, even, like, with the Light Phone, it has some features like directions so that if you need directions somewhere when you're out and about, or it has a hotspot.

So a lot of people that use the Light Phone as their primary phone also carry around their old smartphone and then just hotspot it in case they need to, like, check their email or, like, do something where they need to use their smartphone.

I wonder if that kinda defeats the point even.

Like, I wanted to do, like, a legitimate review of the Light Phone where I would, like, use that as my phone for a week, but even just the process of going back and forth between the devices was complicated and involves, like, turning off iMessage because the Light Phone doesn't support iMessage, and then also it doesn't support RCS, which is even-

Uh, but Amanda, what about for you?

The biggest issue that I have with wearables is that a lot of them are ugly, but this company, Lumia, is making an earring back that is a fitness tracker.

It's, like, not out yet, but they're planning to sell it with either, like, you can buy the earring with it, or you can use it as an earring back on, like, whatever other earrings you have, or, like, they're, they're also doing it as an ear cuff if somebody doesn't have pierced ears and is...

Mm-hmm

...

it is escalating really, really quickly.

And one of the things I wrote about was, like, two years ago I wrote an article that was basically about, like, why AI is really bad at spelling.

And in that I was trying to make examples of Mexican food menus in various different AI image generators, and talked to some AI researchers about how, um, the reason why AI spelling is so difficult is because the diffusion models, which most of these, uh, models were, just, like, aren't really built to understand, like, how do you reconstruct the tiny little pixels that make up text, and it just ki- it, it, like, didn't really work.

Um, and then ChatGPT/OpenAI will not tell us exactly what kind of model is behind, uh, Images 2.0, but I would guess that it is something different because now it can spell, and it can-

And I, I, I feel that GHG and the other group are onto something with this, personally.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I sort of think about it like, I think that in the Silicon Valley universe or, like, people that would agree with the, like, tech accelerationist movement, there's this idea of just throwing money at tech and seeing what will happen and that, like, we should just, like, let these companies cook because they're gonna figure out climate change and whatever.

Mm-hmm

...

it is escalating really, really quickly.

And one of the things I wrote about was, like, two years ago I wrote an article that was basically about, like, why AI is really bad at spelling.

And in that I was trying to make examples of Mexican food menus in various different AI image generators, and talked to some AI researchers about how, um, the reason why AI spelling is so difficult is because the diffusion models which most of these, uh, models were, just, like, aren't really built to understand, like, how do you reconstruct the tiny little pixels that make up text? And it just ki- it, it, like, didn't really work.

Um, and then ChatGPT/OpenAI will not tell us exactly what kind of model is behind, uh, Images 2.0, but I would guess that it is something different because now it can spell.

And I, I, I feel that GHG and the other group are onto something with this personally.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I sort of think about it like I think that in the Silicon Valley universe or, like, people that would agree with the, like, tech accelerationist movement, there's this idea of just throwing money at tech and seeing what will happen and that, like, we should just, like, let these companies cook because they're gonna figure out climate change and whatever.

Amanda, what are your thoughts?

I feel similarly that I think the 16E and the 17E is a little, like, I don't know who this is for exactly, but the Neo, there- there does feel like there is a clear customer.

I think especially just whenever I write these sort of, "Here's the new Apple product," posts, it's like every year they're like, "Our new M5 chip can do things at a billion times faster than you ever imagined," and the- the on-device AI and blah, blah, blah.

And, like, a lot of this is just far beyond what the average person needs, and I think that if you're someone who is a student or someone who has, like, an email job where they don't need to, like, edit video or whatever, like, you don't really need the amount of power that's in a MacBook Air.

I mean, that's kinda what makes it tempting for me, but also, then again, um, I do podcasts and things, and sometimes photography and sometimes video things, and I have a MacBook Pro through work.

And if I lost the MacBook Pro through work, I don't think a Neo would necessarily fit all of my needs, but maybe I'm wrong.

I have yet to use it, but we'll see.

[laughs]

Um, (laughs) why don't you round us out here, Amanda?

Yeah.

I just, I've gone back and forth on this all month, because when I first was like, "All right.

I'm gonna review this AI pet," I was kind of like, "Why do we need this?" Like, eh, we're just putting AI into everything, and it's not often that useful.

And like-... do you actually feel less lonely if you have a little robot? And, like, my ultimate conclusion I came to is that it's like, well, yeah, this is not gonna be as joyful or as much responsibility as having a dog or a cat or something.

But like, I like him.

I like it.

(laughs)