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U.S. Bans New Chinese Humanoids, Zuck’s Op-Ed, eBay's $56M Lawsuit | Diet TBPN

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U.S. Bans New Chinese Humanoids, Zuck’s Op-Ed, eBay's $56M Lawsuit | Diet TBPN

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870 segments

0:01

The US government has banned Chinese

0:03

humanoid robots. US is banning new

0:06

imports of foreign made humanoid robots,

0:08

quadruped robots, robot dogs, you might

0:11

know them by.

0:12

Very controversial based on we got to

0:15

get General Catalyst to weigh in on this

0:16

cuz aren't they anti-robot dog? Wasn't

0:19

that the whole thing of the video? Maybe

0:20

I'm misremembering. So they must be

0:22

celebrating.

0:22

>> platform VCs are pro

0:25

robot dogs.

0:26

>> Everyone should be pro robot dog.

0:28

Anyway,

0:29

it's there's nothing wrong with a robot

0:31

dog unless it's a geopolitical

0:33

discussion and then there's another

0:35

another layer to the debate.

0:37

So the Federal Communications

0:39

Commission's FCC today announced some

0:42

restrictions and these apply to new

0:45

versions of those products. FCC chair

0:47

Brendan Carr said the move is intended

0:49

to quote secure America's critical

0:52

supply chains. China meanwhile has

0:54

condemned the decision as protectionism.

0:58

Is that because they're protecting the

1:00

the small children from getting smacked

1:01

in the face by the humanoid robots?

1:04

It is protectionism.

1:05

>> I know that video I think that you're

1:07

referring to.

1:08

>> Yeah, brutal.

1:09

>> Absolutely brutal. We should try to pull

1:10

it up. Try to find the humanoid kicking

1:13

a child, please.

1:14

Sounds wrong but I just want to get at

1:16

the truth.

1:17

>> Yes.

1:17

>> I just want the truth.

1:19

>> The move comes as Chinese companies have

1:21

established a commanding lead in

1:23

humanoid robot robotics. Of the roughly

1:26

15,000 humanoid robots shipped worldwide

1:29

in 2025, China's Unitree and

1:33

Agibot AGI bot, I'm not sure how you

1:35

pronounce that, each delivered

1:37

>> Okay, we have the video of the robot

1:38

kicking the child.

1:39

>> Oof, brutal. There's another one where

1:41

he's spinning around and gives him sort

1:43

of like a spinning back fist but that is

1:45

a crazy and

1:46

>> That is

1:47

>> Seeing that you're kind of like yeah, I

1:48

would I'm up for some protection.

1:50

>> Gross negligence.

1:51

>> If it's going to

1:53

if it's going to protect children, I

1:55

think it's maybe in the best interest.

1:56

Now, that's not why this is happening,

1:58

of course.

1:59

So, 5,000 units were delivered from

2:03

from

2:04

each Unitree and Agibot. By comparison,

2:07

US companies including Tesla and Figure

2:09

shipped only a few hundred robots each

2:11

if that. China is also estimated to

2:14

control about 85% of the global humanoid

2:16

robotics market and also a ton of the

2:18

deep supply chain, obviously. According

2:20

to the the Associated Press, the

2:22

restrictions are expected to add new

2:24

tension to US-China relations ahead of a

2:26

planned September meeting between

2:28

Chinese President Xi Jinping and US

2:30

President Donald Trump. The FCC argues

2:34

the measures are necessary to reduce

2:35

potential risks poised posed by

2:38

connected foreign-made devices that

2:40

could become part of critical American

2:42

infrastructure.

2:43

What's interesting here is that we're

2:45

seeing a ban on a Chinese technology

2:48

that is

2:49

so nascent that you don't have a

2:51

coalition of companies that are saying,

2:53

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. I've deployed. My

2:56

business is built on top of Unitree. I

2:59

know there's geopolitical

3:00

considerations, but I can't make the

3:02

cars that I make without them. I can't

3:05

run my business without them, and so

3:07

this is going to hurt me." No one's

3:08

really stepping up in the same way that

3:10

they are with Chinese LLMs, which a lot

3:13

of companies are like, "No, I'm actually

3:14

going to cut my inference cost by 80% if

3:16

I can

3:17

>> And you have all of the the various

3:19

cloud businesses that are already making

3:22

money

3:22

>> making money from them. Exactly.

3:24

>> Yeah, I'm I'm I saw a bunch of people

3:26

that were sort of

3:28

saying that they didn't like this, that

3:30

it was, you know, protectionist and and

3:33

that there must have been some American

3:35

humanoid or robotics companies that were

3:37

pushing lobbying for this in DC. Maybe

3:40

there were, but I personally don't want

3:44

100 million

3:46

humanoid robots in this country running

3:49

around that that not made by a US

3:51

company. Or at least a Western ally.

3:54

>> Yeah. Where since there's been the DJI

3:57

ban, there's been various surveillance

4:00

uh tools that are banned, but there's

4:01

still so many different uh pieces of

4:04

technology from that come from all over

4:06

the world. Um I wonder where people

4:09

would like to draw the line generally on

4:12

technology. Like is it okay if the Wi-Fi

4:14

router is made internationally?

4:16

>> Well, we drew the line on Huawei.

4:19

>> Yeah, on Huawei on the 5G tower

4:21

specifically, but most you can still get

4:22

a router that you know, a Wi-Fi router

4:25

for your house that comes from China. Um

4:27

and you have to imagine that many of the

4:29

actuators, the motors, the batteries,

4:31

CATL cattle that company ships batteries

4:34

for all sorts of stuff. The the Google

4:36

Waymo approach I think is probably the

4:38

correct like finding the line. So Waymo

4:41

is sourcing like almost all the parts

4:44

for the new Waymos from China, but they

4:46

are building them I believe in the

4:48

United States and all of the software is

4:50

from Google or Alphabet or Waymo. And so

4:53

you have to imagine that they're able to

4:54

tear all these pieces down and sort of

4:56

maintain their own cybersecurity

4:58

posture, which is really what this is

5:00

all about. But uh it is interesting. Do

5:03

you think this actually accelerates the

5:05

American humanoid market?

5:07

>> I mean these companies have already

5:08

raised a lot of money. Elon's putting

5:10

billions into it.

5:11

>> Yeah.

5:12

>> Figures managed to raise billions.

5:15

Uh I think that the first thing that we

5:17

need is profitable use cases for

5:20

humanoids.

5:21

Uh and so

5:22

I think there's a lot of work that the

5:24

industry needs to do to make these to

5:25

make these products like genuinely

5:27

valuable in the home, in workplaces, in

5:30

factory settings, all these things. Uh I

5:32

think that's a bigger problem. I think

5:34

if you

5:35

uh it does feel inevitable at this point

5:38

just because there's so much money going

5:40

into it, so many smart people dedicating

5:42

all their time to it. It feels

5:43

inevitable. Maybe it speeds it up a

5:45

little bit. It just felt like we were

5:47

going to end up in a situation where

5:49

they would just continue to dump

5:50

humanoids

5:51

onto our you know, you could buy

5:54

you probably still can buy Unitree robot

5:56

on Walmart.

5:57

>> I was asking Tyler about this because

5:59

you used to be able to buy a Unitree G1

6:01

I believe or one of their robots on

6:03

Walmart which was sort of crazy and the

6:05

price was accessible. I mean it was

6:07

still tens of thousands of dollars but

6:08

it was something that a research lab

6:10

could buy pretty easily. I wonder if

6:12

there will be other ways for companies

6:13

to to get access to uh this task these

6:17

products at least for benchmarking

6:18

because they will be competing

6:19

internationally like even in a world

6:21

where you know, Tesla

6:23

gets to the frontier of humanoid robots

6:25

with Optimus and then they're going up

6:28

against um

6:30

uh and a a Unitree

6:32

>> Yeah.

6:33

>> for

6:34

uh a deployment in Germany like BYD,

6:36

right? BYD and Tesla compete

6:38

internationally even though Tesla's

6:40

Tesla's can still be sold in in China

6:42

but not vice versa. Um

6:44

but uh internationally there needs to be

6:46

a lot of like what are the capabilities

6:48

so you can actually sell against your

6:49

competitor.

6:50

>> Yeah.

6:50

>> Uh even if you're

6:51

>> So far everything Unitree I'm seeing on

6:53

Walmart is out of stock. So I don't know

6:55

if they just marked it out of stock when

6:57

this went live or they had just sold

6:59

out.

7:00

>> This will probably spike if they hit

7:02

cars and bids or bring a trailer. I

7:04

think you throw a Unitree G1 last

7:06

edition final edition banned can't buy

7:09

them anymore.

7:09

>> bots and bids?

7:10

>> Bots and bids. [laughter] That might be

7:12

it. I was listening to to Elon Musk on

7:15

uh the Economist. He sat down with the

7:17

Economist for a long form interview.

7:19

There were there was a clip that went

7:20

sort of viral for some some sharp jabs

7:23

back and forth about the media and and

7:26

how the public perceives the media but

7:28

the much more interesting substance was

7:30

about his vision.

7:31

>> the crash out.

7:33

>> Yes, it was it was described as a crash

7:35

out but that seemed like a very small

7:38

section of what was actually interesting

7:39

about the more than an hour they talked.

7:42

Uh

7:42

one was um I mean he talks about

7:45

humanoid robots and he paints a very

7:48

clear vision for the Optimus program and

7:51

it made me

7:52

really hope that there's a lot of focus

7:55

there because that feels like an

7:56

industry where like he obviously has a

8:00

very strong philosophy around XAI and

8:02

Grok and you saw it in the SpaceX X S1

8:06

where the market for enterprise software

8:08

was like 22 trillion or something like

8:10

that. And so

8:12

there is some value there. It might make

8:14

sense from a business perspective, but

8:15

it was

8:17

less inspiring than rockets, less

8:20

inspiring than self-driving electric

8:21

cars because you as you go back you

8:24

think about SpaceX and you think if he

8:27

hadn't worked on that probably wouldn't

8:29

have a rocket company in America. And

8:32

same thing with the electric cars like

8:34

yeah, GM had the EV1. There were a

8:36

couple other companies that were sort of

8:38

like

8:39

testing things, but we'd probably be 10

8:41

years behind if he hadn't sort of like

8:43

sheer force of willed that into

8:44

existence. And it feels the same for

8:47

humanoid robots where if he can really

8:50

go and push that extremely hard and

8:52

marshal all the capital and do all the

8:53

difficult things to build the supply

8:55

chain, make it happen, make it work, you

8:58

you can get to a place where there is

9:00

a national champion in America, but if

9:03

if Grok stopped training and there were

9:05

no more XAI LLMs like there would still

9:09

be a massive competition between OpenAI,

9:11

Anthropic, Meta, Google. Like there's

9:13

plenty of really well-funded

9:15

hyperscalers and leading labs that are

9:18

going to provide that service of like

9:21

ask a question and get an answer or fire

9:24

off a prompt and get some code back. Um

9:26

that that that the the the American

9:29

humanoid robotics industry feels much

9:32

more fragile in the sense that if you

9:34

don't have this massive hammer of

9:36

capital and will coming to bear, you

9:39

could just wind up with it never

9:40

happening, which I worry about.

9:42

>> Yeah, and America needs to figure out

9:44

how to make billions of robots.

9:46

>> Mhm.

9:47

>> Itself.

9:48

>> I do wonder how this is going to play

9:50

into all the other discussions that are

9:52

going to happen at that US visit by

9:56

Chinese leader Xi Jinping. He's

9:57

scheduled to meet with US President

9:59

Donald Trump in September. Um

10:02

I'm I'm interested to see are they going

10:04

to be doing

10:05

>> uh can you see if we can possibly get

10:07

him on the show?

10:09

>> [laughter]

10:09

>> What if she was just like, "Yeah, I'm

10:11

meeting with the president, but I'm also

10:12

going on a 50 podcast tour while I'm

10:15

here."

10:16

>> Get him on Yeah. There's a bunch of good

10:19

shows he could he could do. Uh he should

10:22

do

10:22

>> Modern Wisdom. I want to understand his

10:24

mindset.

10:24

>> great. I'd love him to I'd love to see

10:26

him on Hot Ones.

10:28

>> Joe Rogan, of course. I mean

10:31

>> That should be kind of the

10:32

the last show.

10:33

>> But Nelk would be like the obvious his

10:35

choice.

10:35

>> Yeah.

10:36

>> A lot of world leaders

10:36

>> have a history of

10:37

>> World leaders have been on there. That's

10:39

true.

10:39

>> Controversial world leaders.

10:41

>> That's true. Why not Xi Jinping? Dean

10:43

Ball's going back and forth with Will

10:44

Maniatis. Uh Dean says, "Do we think the

10:47

Silicon Valley leaders who were so up in

10:49

arms about using Chinese LLMs last week

10:51

will be similarly outraged about the US

10:54

government's decision to ban import of

10:57

all advanced robotics from all foreign

10:59

countries? Is Maniatis going to write an

11:01

essay about how the US robot companies

11:04

need to be nationalized in exchange for

11:07

this policy favor?" Will says, "You're

11:09

welcome to tag me if you want a take."

11:11

What's your take? He does ask him for

11:13

it. And Will says, "Dean seems to not

11:15

understand that the FCC is issuing a

11:17

published rule under statutory authority

11:19

with a waiver process and judicial

11:21

review is different than a thinly veiled

11:23

suggestion that regulators carry out an

11:25

extra-legal whisper campaign to protect

11:27

the interests of his employer. The

11:29

robotics companies need not be

11:32

nationalized until they also ask for

11:34

public infrastructure preemption federal

11:36

backstop of their debt and a sweep swept

11:37

market just so they can call themselves

11:40

national institutions. When they do send

11:41

them my essay and Dean Ball says so wait

11:43

if the US straight up and Chinese LMS

11:45

using explicit statutory authorities EG

11:48

supply chain risk that wouldn't

11:49

necessitate lab nationalization but

11:51

doing it through soft law would what

11:55

your instance

11:56

that my analytic prediction was a thinly

11:58

veiled suggestion continues to be bad

12:00

faith. I wonder

12:02

I do wonder if we'll just see more you

12:05

know figure shows up in those secondary

12:07

demand tables. I wonder if this is

12:08

bullish for that. I don't know. I I I

12:11

one act just seems to be on a good path

12:13

Sunday robotics just seems to be on a

12:15

good path. We've talked to a lot of

12:17

other companies where the the regulatory

12:19

and competitive landscape has always it

12:21

hasn't seemed like it's a driver of

12:24

financing right? It's not like oh you're

12:26

waiting for approval or you're waiting

12:27

for some some rule to break. It's like

12:30

Yeah, at some point in the future

12:32

America's going to want an indigenous

12:33

like you know robotic supply chain.

12:36

>> Yeah, the compelling teams have raised

12:37

anywhere from a hundred million dollars

12:39

to billions of dollars.

12:41

And now they need to effectively deploy

12:43

that and get

12:45

commercial use cases starting to ramp

12:47

and then I expect them to be able to

12:49

raise an order of magnitude more capital

12:51

each right? So I don't again I don't

12:53

think capital is really a constraint

12:55

here

12:56

but I think they've raised their sort of

12:58

like they've raised their like five

13:00

rounds let's say.

13:01

>> Yeah, yeah.

13:02

Mark Zuckerberg is in the Wall Street

13:04

Journal. Paywalled you got to pay to

13:07

read what Mark has to say but he penned

13:10

an op-ed and he says the US should

13:13

accelerate AI development not

13:14

restricted. He says the the AI future is

13:17

for everyone.

13:19

There's some interesting quotes in here.

13:20

He's taking shots. He's taking shots at

13:22

doom fear-based marketing. He says it is

13:25

surprising that the discourse from many

13:28

of those who are developing artificial

13:31

intelligence is so filled with doom. I

13:34

don't understand why anyone who believes

13:36

that AI will eliminate most jobs and

13:39

much of humanity's relevance would rush

13:41

to build that future. The only the

13:43

notion that AI is so dangerous that the

13:46

only safe path is an extreme con-

13:49

concentration of power seems dangerous.

13:51

Historically, hoping that an absolute

13:53

power will benevolently provide for

13:55

humanity if sufficiently enlightened

13:58

>> Is he talking about machines of love and

13:59

grace?

14:00

>> I think so. Something like that. Hasn't

14:02

led to safer positive outcomes. Humanity

14:04

has witnessed many transformative

14:06

advances. Each time there is fear that

14:08

people will be left behind, but each

14:09

time humanity has come out with more

14:12

people sharing greater prosperity,

14:15

health, and freedom. We believe this

14:17

will be true with AI as well, and the

14:19

abundance of the future can be shared by

14:22

everyone. He's abundance pilled. Um And

14:25

so, I think it's good to sort of reset,

14:27

you know, where he is. He's been He's

14:29

been He's talked about AI a bunch, but

14:32

it's never been like right on the cusp,

14:34

but he's just like throwing his hat

14:36

firmly in this camp of, you know, he's

14:39

he's he's obviously playing in AI, but

14:41

has a particularly positive vision, um

14:44

and he's sort of throwing down the

14:45

gauntlet. If you think If you think AI

14:48

is so bad then stop working and and let

14:50

[laughter] me let me work on it.

14:52

>> cook.

14:52

>> I don't know. Um but not too much

14:56

like chatter around this. Um it did

14:59

stand in in opposition. You know, he's

15:01

saying you the United States should

15:03

accelerate AI development. At the same

15:05

time there's this open letter from a

15:06

bunch of lab employees saying like,

15:07

"Hey, maybe we should do a mutual pause.

15:09

Maybe we should all slow down." And uh I

15:12

I think even some meta researchers

15:14

signed that as well, but there's like a

15:16

wide group from uh OpenAI, Anthropic, a

15:19

bunch of other firms, Google, uh that

15:21

all signed. Uh John Palmer, of course,

15:24

uh

15:24

ever the TVP and promoter says TVP and

15:27

must publish an open letter against

15:28

distillation after their model was

15:30

distilled by every competitor in the

15:32

industry. And I said, "I'm advocating

15:34

for a complete and total podcast ban,

15:36

multi-federal year multi-year federal

15:39

approval process for new RSS feeds to

15:42

get issued." Uh

15:45

Uh he says, "Better hurry up and write

15:46

that open letter before Chinese

15:47

technology network launches." I think a

15:49

Chinese TVP and would actually be

15:51

electric. I think that'd be amazing.

15:53

>> to watch.

15:54

>> love that. Uh

15:55

you know, just wildly different. They

15:57

just don't do the going direct thing

15:58

over there the same way. You know, there

16:00

was like the Deep Seek Investor Meeting

16:02

4 hours that was like leaked. That's not

16:05

the same as actually sitting down with

16:07

someone that has a particular point of

16:09

view.

16:09

>> down with a stack of 200 posts and just

16:13

chit-chatting.

16:14

>> I don't know. Maybe it does exist, but

16:16

uh when Dwarkesh went to China,

16:19

>> [laughter]

16:19

>> it was such a funny observation. He had

16:21

a bunch of observations, but the one

16:22

that really stuck out to me was he was

16:24

like, "I asked everyone,

16:26

and I and it is clear, China does not

16:28

have a Joe Rogan." Like they don't have

16:30

someone who is like a larger-than-life

16:33

yapper, political commentator, just like

16:36

a guy who talks about everything

16:38

including politics. Uh and there's a

16:40

political reasons for that, but it's

16:41

also maybe cultural, and it's just

16:43

interesting because the demand for that

16:44

would be electric. I I feel like you

16:47

have to uh you have to imagine that like

16:49

Joe Rogan clips make their way around

16:50

the world and are sort of like a

16:52

barometer for where the American psyche

16:54

is at in a certain in a certain way,

16:57

like a certain group of of Americans um

17:00

feel that way. There's this other post

17:02

uh that's sort of interesting to see

17:03

where the Anthropic back and forth on

17:05

the open letter goes. Obviously,

17:07

Anthropic uh clarified their stance on

17:10

open source, not advocating for a

17:11

complete and total ban, but they're very

17:14

worried about distillation, they're very

17:15

worried about cybersecurity, and they're

17:17

very worried about authoritarian uses of

17:20

AI. All good points. Chetan over at

17:23

Benchmark says Anthropic very publicly

17:26

claiming there needs to be a crackdown

17:27

on distillation is puzzling. It's a $1

17:30

trillion company with incredible

17:31

resources and the distillation attacks

17:33

at the scale they describe would seem

17:35

easy to detect. I don't know how easy

17:37

they are to detect. I think the people

17:40

you know, harness up a whole bunch of

17:41

different VPNs and stuff. But at the

17:43

same time, it's like it's an AI company.

17:45

Put AI on the job, maybe you should be

17:47

able to detect it. So, we'll take his

17:49

point. But he says

17:50

>> be able to find a needle in the biggest

17:52

haystack of all [laughter] time.

17:54

>> Yeah. [clears throat]

17:55

>> The world's largest haystack.

17:56

>> benchmark. But he says the only cost

17:59

would be giving up the associated API

18:00

revenue. So, you should have a very

18:02

aggressive

18:04

a very aggressive internal policy around

18:07

if you're suspected of a distillation

18:09

attack, you're kicked off the API. Of

18:11

course, in a very short amount of time,

18:13

you can fire off a lot of prompts and

18:14

get a lot of tokens. And you can do that

18:16

a lot of around across all across a lot

18:18

of different accounts. What what do you

18:20

think about this?

18:21

>> Yeah, I mean,

18:22

um

18:22

detecting distillation seems like a very

18:24

hard problem. If I think if it was

18:25

trivial, they would have just done it.

18:27

>> Yeah, of course.

18:27

>> And also seems like it's not that big of

18:28

a like percentage of the revenue. Like

18:30

I'd be surprised if if like distillation

18:32

attacks accounted for a large amount of

18:34

of like

18:35

>> Yeah, I don't I don't think it I don't

18:36

think it's meaningful.

18:37

>> Also, so it does it does feel like it's

18:39

hard um

18:41

because a lot of it doesn't actually go

18:43

through the direct API necessarily. Like

18:45

it goes through a a company that is

18:48

vending a service and then someone is

18:51

prompting that service and so you're

18:53

further obfuscating it. Like there are a

18:55

number of different sort of wrappers

18:57

that effectively wrap various Frontier

18:59

APIs and and if you're getting hit

19:03

in a bunch of different you're blending

19:05

all of that together, you're looking at

19:06

open-source stuff. There's also just

19:07

people that will

19:09

like this just happened with

19:11

uh was it Matt Schumer? He He basically

19:14

uploaded to GitHub a game that he made

19:15

with Opus 5 along with the prompt. And

19:17

so you you can sort of distill on that

19:19

like it's only one data point or you

19:21

know

19:22

you know a small bag of tokens, but

19:24

there's a lot of people that will share

19:26

a prompt and the actual output. And so

19:28

you can train on that and there's no way

19:30

to detect that you found that. What's

19:32

interesting here is that the knock-on

19:34

effect of Chetan's point is that if

19:36

Anthropic takes Chetan's advice, you

19:39

wind up giving out the model less

19:41

frequently and being more closed about

19:43

it, which is something 3 months ago

19:46

everyone in the ecosystem was like this

19:48

is annoying. Like I'm a small startup. I

19:50

can't get into the mythos tier. I can't

19:53

get access to project Glasswing. I'm not

19:55

an enterprise level

19:57

you know customer. But I still So I just

20:00

don't get frontier intelligence and I

20:02

just get steamrolled by you know

20:03

Microsoft who has access to it or Apple

20:05

who has access to it or whatever. Um

20:08

and so this the whole idea of like if

20:11

the if if a

20:12

amazing intelligence and amazing model

20:14

is made, should it be widely available?

20:16

That's actually at odds with

20:18

distillation because you have to hunt

20:20

those bad actors down and you play this

20:22

whack-a-mole. So I don't know. It is it

20:24

is tricky. We'll see we'll see where it

20:25

goes. We'll see where it goes. Anyway.

20:27

>> Apparently over on Facebook Marketplace

20:29

people are adding a a sort of gold aura

20:32

to their listings. Would this make you

20:35

more likely to buy, John?

20:37

>> Ooh, it does look like a rare drop.

20:39

>> Yeah. [laughter] And

20:40

for only $25 picking up this table with

20:44

that

20:45

level of aura certainly tempting.

20:47

>> I it does make me like it more. I think

20:50

it actually works. I've seen people do

20:51

this where they add they'll add like a

20:53

woman to it as like the salesperson

20:55

basically with AI and that draws more

20:57

attention on Facebook Marketplace. I

20:59

don't know if I've ever bought anything

21:01

on Facebook Marketplace, but maybe

21:04

maybe we should try and

21:06

have Tyler do like a trade a trade a

21:09

paperclip into a car challenge. Have you

21:11

ever seen these? Ryan Trahan and there's

21:13

>> Tyler would be exceptional at that kind

21:15

of thing.

21:15

>> You think you could You think you could

21:16

trade up from something on your desk?

21:18

>> this would definitely help it.

21:19

>> Yeah.

21:19

>> Giving it some kind of something.

21:20

>> basically you have to look for the most

21:22

unoptimized listings that are

21:24

undervalued and then trade and then once

21:27

you buy them

21:28

give them the ultimate glow up on

21:31

uh on uh with AI images, put them back

21:34

up for higher price

21:36

in increase your margin, start printing.

21:39

This is a very Gary V hustle, for sure.

21:42

>> [snorts]

21:42

>> Um

21:43

>> pretty incredible story. eBay pays

21:46

couple fix $56 million

21:49

for its role in cockroach harassment

21:52

campaign.

21:53

>> That is a crazy headline. It's

21:54

>> received threatening deliveries

21:56

including funeral wreaths after

21:58

criticizing the e-commerce retailer in a

22:01

blog. So this couple, David and Inna

22:04

Steiner, were harassed, it sounds like,

22:07

for years for criticising criticizing

22:09

eBay. Who knew that criticizing eBay

22:13

could get you uh in this much trouble.

22:17

Of course, it's eBay that ended up

22:19

getting in trouble.

22:20

Um but uh

22:22

>> So they had an online e-commerce blog

22:23

called e-commerce bites and they

22:25

criticized eBay uh on that and then back

22:29

in 2019, so this has been going on for

22:30

like 7 years. There's a whole new

22:32

executive team in in in place now, but

22:35

there were actually criminal charges in

22:36

2020. Seven employees of the company

22:38

were sentenced to prison terms ranging

22:40

between 1 and 5 years.

22:42

>> And so what were they doing?

22:44

Uh eBay leadership apparently mailed a

22:46

series of threatening deliveries to the

22:49

Steiners' home in 2019.

22:51

>> That's crazy.

22:52

>> So including a box of live cockroaches,

22:55

a bloody pig's head mask. I don't even

22:58

know what that is. Is this a real pig

23:02

head that's been turned into a mask or

23:04

is it hopefully just a a sort of a

23:06

Hollywood remake of that? And a funeral

23:08

wreath, the Steiners also accuse

23:10

executives of online harassment

23:12

including online posts inviting

23:14

strangers to their house for sex.

23:18

>> Also

23:19

>> Absolutely insane. Who like

23:22

in what in what world is is a company is

23:25

a public company like eBay just getting

23:28

some criticism which all companies do

23:31

[laughter]

23:31

>> Yeah, yeah, it's like I'm sorry

23:33

>> takes it this personally that you're

23:35

going to try to ruin the lives of two

23:37

people that are already in your in your

23:39

industry and just like

23:41

>> of e-commerce bites blogs showing up in

23:44

your quarterly reports? Like was it

23:46

actually that damaging?

23:47

>> eBay pleaded guilty in 2023 in a

23:48

criminal case over harassment and paid a

23:50

$3 million penalty following criminal

23:53

charges in 2027 employees of the

23:55

companies were sentenced to prison terms

23:57

ranging from 1 to 5 years.

24:00

>> It's absolutely brutal.

24:02

>> According to court documents eBay

24:03

executives grew increasingly upset by

24:05

the Steiners critical coverage of the

24:07

company in early 2019 leading then

24:10

executive

24:11

Devin Wenig to test to text another

24:14

executive that it was time to crush

24:17

the Steiners and take her down referring

24:20

to

24:21

Ina. That summer harassment against the

24:23

Steiners escalated from threatening

24:25

messages to delivering items to their

24:26

home which also included a book about

24:29

surviving spousal bereavement.

24:31

>> like sort of a death threat I guess.

24:32

>> Yeah.

24:33

>> Right.

24:34

What's

24:35

>> Uh also sending

24:37

uh

24:37

adult magazines to neighbors homes in

24:40

the husband's name. So just like

24:42

completely trying to destroy this

24:44

couple's

24:45

life and and uh marriage. eBay employees

24:49

also traveled to Massachusetts to

24:51

vandalize the Steiners home and stalk

24:54

them around their hometown.

24:57

All the employees involved in the

24:58

harassment were fired in September 2019,

25:01

eBay said.

25:03

Uh

25:04

the lawsuit was actually started in

25:06

2021. Under the settlement, so we have a

25:09

we have a good ending here. I think it's

25:11

a fair ending. [laughter]

25:13

Under the settlement, the couple will

25:14

receive 48 million

25:16

>> Okay.

25:16

>> compensation from eBay and former

25:17

employees. eBay will also pay 6 million

25:20

to charitable charitable organizations.

25:22

>> That's good.

25:22

>> And Wenig will pay 1 million to a free

25:25

speech charity in Ina Steiner's name.

25:28

>> This is like the ultimate Streisand

25:30

effect. I never would have heard about

25:31

e-commerce bytes or their criticism of

25:33

eBay if they hadn't done all this. What

25:35

a mess.

25:37

>> e-commerce bytes

25:38

>> I'm I'm looking up exactly what they

25:40

said because eBay is,

25:43

in my opinion, just the most set it and

25:45

forget it company that's just had the

25:47

same service for 20 years, basically.

25:49

>> Well.

25:50

>> But now we're going to get to the bottom

25:51

of it. Big news out of the Fed.

25:53

Uh the Fed holds rate steady, but three

25:56

officials voted for a rate increase. The

25:58

rate has been unchanged in in this July

26:01

meeting. Uh the split shows pressure

26:03

building inside the central bank to act

26:05

on inflation two months after Chairman

26:08

Kevin Warsh took over, and the Dow skids

26:12

1,100

26:13

points as investors worry about Fed next

26:15

steps. They're thinking that there might

26:17

be a rate hike in the uh in reaction to

26:20

inflation, of course, uh somewhat driven

26:22

by energy prices, oil prices. Oil is

26:24

spiking again. And so, lots of tricky

26:27

news for the uh global economy, but

26:31

fortunately, the economy chugs on, and

26:33

the economy is strong. So,

26:35

>> I believe in it.

26:36

>> I believe in it, too. Never never black

26:38

pill. Dwar Kesh Patel certainly not

26:40

black pilling. Gavin Baker uh quote

26:43

tweeted Dwar Kesh's uh po- post that

26:46

predicted uh lab revenues in the

26:48

trillions very shortly. Uh Gavin Baker

26:50

says, "I see a

26:52

a series of fairly wild thoughts from

26:54

Dwarkesh.

26:55

I thought I was bullish, but even I am

26:57

not assuming that the price of to rent

26:59

compute continues to go up. I will say

27:02

that I am in Silicon Valley this week

27:03

and Dwarkesh is capturing the zeitgeist.

27:05

Net net, public markets would probably

27:08

be trading differently if they saw the

27:10

OpenAI, Anthropic, Grok cursor, and open

27:13

source numbers over the last 6 weeks

27:15

because everything is growing even in

27:18

you you there's so much horse race

27:20

around oh, open source is going to come

27:22

and grow and it's like, well, sometimes

27:23

open source comes and grows and

27:25

everything else grows, too. And that's

27:26

what we've seen uh, throughout the whole

27:27

deep seek saga when the lab revenues

27:29

grew a ton even though open source was

27:30

big.

27:31

>> Yeah, there's a comment here that I

27:32

think is on the nose.

27:33

>> Please.

27:34

>> J Capital says, "Timeline is very

27:35

interesting. All private AI companies

27:37

have their best 6 weeks while retail AI

27:39

/ semis have their worst 6 weeks."

27:42

>> Very, very interesting.

27:43

>> So, disconnect there.

27:44

>> Yeah. I mean, one of them uh, uh, SK

27:46

Hynix uh, 64 billion dollars in

27:49

quarterly profit was a disappointment

27:50

for chip investors and SK Hynix fell 10%

27:54

despite record results powered by the AI

27:57

boom. The the the profit increase was

28:00

incredible. I think they uh, the they

28:03

they grew profit over 500% something

28:07

like that. Uh, and still the stock

28:09

traded down because expectations are so

28:10

high, everything's priced to perfection.

28:12

Uh, in other news, HBO Max is launching

28:15

HBO Max shorts for those who don't have

28:19

the attention span to watch an episode

28:21

of TV. Uh, it's a mobile feature

28:23

designed for users to watch iconic and

28:24

memorial scenes from the HBO library in

28:27

a vertical and scrollable feed. This is

28:29

already happening on Instagram and

28:30

TikTok. Uh, you see a lot of movie

28:32

clips, just great moments, and it

28:34

actually is great content, so I can

28:35

understand why they're trying to own a

28:37

piece of that.

28:38

>> You got to get the Jeffrey Katzenberg

28:40

apology form circulated.

28:41

>> for sure. Yeah, for sure. Uh,

28:44

but yeah, uh, High Yield Harry captures

28:46

it pretty well. Watching society become

28:48

too cooked even to watch TV episode. And

28:51

this is from Idiocracy, Mike Judge's

28:54

uh, one of his best works. The creator

28:56

of Sil- HBO Silicon Valley actually. Who

28:58

will now be available in short form

29:00

because you will be able to watch short

29:02

clips from uh, from HBO Silicon Valley

29:05

on HBO Max Shorts. And sign up for our

29:09

newsletter at tbpm.com.

29:12

We'll see you

29:13

>> Love you.

29:14

>> Goodbye.

29:16

That's the outro? Goodbye.

Interactive Summary

The US government has banned imports of Chinese humanoid and quadruped robots, citing national security and critical supply chain protection, a move China has labeled as protectionism. This decision comes as Chinese companies like Unitree and Agibot hold a commanding lead in the global humanoid robotics market, contrasting with a nascent US industry. The discussion also touches on Mark Zuckerberg's advocacy for accelerating AI development, challenging doom-filled narratives, and the ongoing debate about AI model distillation. Separately, eBay was penalized $56 million for orchestrating a severe harassment campaign against a couple who criticized the company in their blog. Lastly, the Federal Reserve held interest rates steady despite internal pressure for an increase due to inflation concerns, and HBO Max is launching a new feature for short-form content.

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