IPO Giga Boom, World’s Fairs of the Past | Diet TBPN

Good, great show for you today, folks. It's Friday, Friday, May 22nd. We had our Wall Street Journal stolen from us. We only have the Financial Times today, but we're making do because we have a digital subscription as well. And we're going to take you through America's IPO boom. So 3 key stories that broke since we last spoke a mere 21 hours ago. Since we podcast for 3 hours and then we come back 21 hours later.

We do it again.

We do it again. Yesterday, Politico reported that David Sachs made an 11th-hour appeal to President Trump to spike an executive order that would have created a voluntary program— voluntary program— for frontier AI companies to submit their models to the government for review 90 days before new model releases. I wonder what the benefit of that is. Obviously, it's good to have red teaming going on, good to have benchmarking, good to other eyes on the project, there's some sort of, you know, liability that happens. What's the round thing on the table? No one in the TVPN audience has ever seen this. Can you describe what this is? This round-shaped argument?

I'm still not exactly sure what we're looking at.

Yeah.

But I saw them talking about this on ESPN.

Yeah.

And people are always saying you guys are like SportsCenter for business.

Yeah. You should pick one of these up. This object.

So I had to check it out.

Yeah.

This artifact.

Brown oval object.

Yes. Cool.

Well, it looks fun.

Anyways, I was having a little bit of fun earlier throwing this—

drilling the gong.

Drilling the gong. The production team didn't like it because there's this, you know, $70,000 massive flat-screen TV next to the gong, as well as multiple cameras and lights over there. But no accidents.

Wow. Mandate of Heaven over there, right?

Yeah.

So for his part, Trump explained the last-minute cancellation by telling reporters, quote, "I didn't like certain aspects of it. I think it gets in the way of— we're leading China. We're leading everybody. And I don't want to do anything that's going to get in the way of that." The presumed text of the EO was leaked today. You can read it through this link.

Tyler, have you checked in with LessWrong?

Yeah, how are they feeling about this?

Yeah, I mean, I assume they're not happy with this. This seems to be like anti-safety.

Do they want more review from independent nonprofits, for-profit companies that are run by people with good intentions, or the government, like democratically elected?

I mean, I assume at some level it's gotta be the government, right? Because if you're super anti-IP, these things are nuclear weapons.

Yeah.

It needs to be the government. But I think on the way there, people are definitely like—

Is there anyone who says like, "No, no, no, actually like nuclear weapons are super important, but they shouldn't be regulated by the government because I don't like the government. I would rather my favorite favorite megacorp owns them, controls them. If you look at the approval rates for different organizations, there are plenty of companies that are polling above the US government. Like, people love Disney, Disney adults. They say, give Disney a nuclear weapon. They already have the rights to build a nuclear power plant. You know this?

I did not.

Disney World has, like, you know, legacy rights because when they set up EPCOT, which is an acronym, which I should look up because what does it stand for? It stands for something really cool. This also bridges into one of our future segments. Stands for— what does EPCOT stand for? Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. The idea was to build an entire city. It was the praxis of the— of its times. Yeah. And so in 1966, Walt Disney conceived it as— in 1966— as a utopian, fully functioning city. And I believe this might just be viral clickbait, but they have the permission to build a nuclear reactor to power the city of the future, the community of tomorrow, EPCOT. Yeah. And so I don't know, maybe, maybe there's some folks out there that say we can't trust the government, we can't trust the Democrats, we can't trust the Republicans with the nuclear weapons. Give them to Disney. I don't know.

I trust Bob with the nuclear weapons.

I would trust Bob. The new guy, we got to meet him. We got to get to know him.

That's right.

Bob, he can—

I've shook his hand. Yeah, I trust him.

I trust his hand on the button. Second story highlighted by Brandon Gurel in the TVPN newsletter.

The Gurelinator.

The Gurelinator in the TVPN newsletterinator. An anonymous A non-account posted yesterday.

He's sitting here with noise-canceling headphones, so he doesn't know that we're talking about him.

He's going to find this out later when he watches these clips. Anyway, a non-account posted yesterday that Microsoft had canceled its internal cloud code license after token-based billing made the cost untenable. This catalyzed a ton of commentary and discourse around X. Box CEO Aaron Levy, for example, used this post to argue that token price optimization is set to become a prevailing trend in companies reliant on LLMs. Worth noting though, that there's a proposed community note on the post right now that denies Microsoft made the move because of a cost issue. They have the money to spend billions on tokens if they want, but instead they are trying to shift the developers to use their own Copilot CLI, which I imagine they're going to build their own harness, their fork of Cloud Codecs.

I heard someone refer to it as they want to make the engineers eat dog food.

Yes, but what's the dog food made of? It could be made of dog food, GPT-5.5 tokens. It could be made of Opus 4.7 tokens.

I do think it—

I guess they will be using.

Yeah, I mean, I think the reason that Codex and Claude Code and Cursor and these other tools have gotten so good is because the engineers building them are using them all day long. And it's one thing to use those tools to build your coding tool. but being forced to constantly use the product that you're shipping is a tried and true way to build a great product.

Yeah. The third story from Brandon Groh in the TPN newsletter, the American semiconductor manufacturer Micron announced that they've begun manufacturing 1-alpha DRAM, the most advanced memory ever produced in the United States at its Manassas, Virginia headquarters or manufacturing plant. This move comes in the middle of the agent boom in AI, which requires longer context windows and thus memory. Than back and forth LLMs, which has led to an industry-wide memory shortage. Micron has been an absolute— has been on a tear. Let's see what they're doing.

$800, almost $850 billion market cap.

Remarkable. It's up 2% today, 3% over the last 5 days and 246% over the last 6 months. What an absolute run for Micron. It's up almost 1,000% over the past year. Really, really incredible performance from Micron.

Just wow.

Anyway, America's going through a mini— this is such a funny article by The Wall Street Journal. America's IPO mini boom. How is this a mini boom? You got 3 of the—

is this not a gigaboom?

This is a gigaboom. So I don't know if we have the truth on this, but it also made it to the front page of the Wall Street— of the Financial Times. They said SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic IPOs set to ignite Wall Street trading frenzy. NASDAQ loosens rules, passive investors investors could dump rival stocks. Trillionaire prospect for Musk. The blockbuster listings of SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI are set to prompt an unprecedented wave of buying and selling as new fast entry rules thrust the tech stocks straight into Wall Street indices. The rules implemented this month by NASDAQ mean billions of dollars of passive money will automatically flow to the 3 companies when they go public, driving their share prices higher and forcing investors to sell rival stocks. Elon Musk's SpaceX initial public offering next month is expected to be the largest on record, firing the starting gun on what US bankers will hope will be a blockbuster year, with OpenAI filing its IPO paperwork as soon as this week and Anthropic planning to float its shares too as well. The trio is set to raise tens of billions of dollars at a time of relentless investor appetite for companies linked to AI. The SpaceX listing will cement Musk's control of two of America's most valuable companies, SpaceX and Tesla. It is It is crazy. We're going to need a new term for the Mag Seven because Tesla has been in the Mag Seven. It's been north of $1 trillion for a long time, but SpaceX is going to go out at a higher valuation almost certainly. Where is Tesla trading at today in terms of market cap? It's at $1.34 trillion. Hard to imagine SpaceX trading below that. So you're going to have his Mag Seven company will be lagging his non-Mag Seven company. We're going to need new terms. We're going to need a bigger boat. But why did, why did the Wall Street Journal call this a mini Boom. I think it's just because it's, it's so concentrated on these 3 companies, but we will dig in and see where it goes. So too bad SpaceX and others didn't go public sooner. I agree, but they are a tribute to the US capitalist system, says the Wall Street Journal. Today's AI investor euphoria recalls the heady dot-com days of the 1990s, and it's hard to tell how these bets will shake out. SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are rushing to go public to take advantage of the favorable market economic conditions, but amid the eulogies written about American capitalism, the latest mini-IPO boom is a welcome tribute to the dynamism of US markets that no other country can match. SpaceX fired the starting gun. They're using the same language as the Financial Times over there. The starting gun has been fired. It's unanimous across the mainstream media. The rocket company founded in 2002 is a global leader in space exploration. Overnight success. It has also spread into broadband, mobile, mobile satellite internet, and data center development. Anthropic recently agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion a month to use its data centers to train models. That shows how competitors can enjoy symbiotic relationships. SpaceX says the company as a whole reported a $4.9 billion net loss last year, some of which stemmed from its X.com social media platform. Can that be that much? I have to imagine that the losses were not— I mean, I don't know how much Twitter was losing before they, before the take private. I know that the revenues cratered a bit, but there were also big layoffs and an 80% reduction in cost. The sum word there is maybe doing some of the lifting. I imagine that the losses were sort of spread over all sorts of investments.

Yeah.

You're building a new Starship rocket, which is set to launch today, 5:30 Central Time. Tune in.

The last one was scrubbed. What a critical launch.

Is it?

No, it's just because of the timing with the S-1 and the IPO.

I don't know.

All eyes on—

I think the market is valuing the launch capabilities and SpaceX and Starship in particular is like one small piece of the puzzle.

You know, it's important, but you know, people are gonna be paying way more attention to this.

Yeah, yeah. Obviously people will be excited about it, but I think even just the endless spamming Falcon 9s can get Starlink to what, $20 billion run rate or something, $10 billion run rate. You can clearly build a business off of the existing capability. Lots of excitement around Starship. There was a little bit of spice in the timeline from Everyday Astronaut because he was sort of rooting for a scrub. And everyone was like, oh, he's like against SpaceX. But he was like, no, I was like, I'm such a fan that I wanted to be there in person. I couldn't be there in person. So I was like, I hope that they scrub because I want to be there for this historic moment. So a little bit of like a misconception there. SpaceX said in its filing that it foresees $28.5 trillion. Yes, trillion in market opportunities, including data centers in space. Is anything more bullish than the future just being enterprise software. Like, you paint this massive picture, we're going to Mars. How are we going to make money? Enterprise software. $22 trillion of enterprise software.

We're going to be automating workflows for the enterprise.

I guess forever. Mr. Musk in January was awarded 1 billion performance-based restricted shares that will vest if his company, quote, establishes a permanent human colony on Mars with at least 1 million inhabitants. Do robots count as inhabitants? Do agents count?

Isn't that one of the potential?

You got to get a million. This is why he's worried about—

Wasn't there a list of like 5 or 6 things and he just has to do like 4?

I don't know. I haven't dug into that particular one. I know for Tesla there were a whole bunch of different milestones. The humanoid robots was one of the stretch goals. But Permanent human colony on Mars with at least 1 million inhabitants. That's exciting. That's a good goal. Like that feels, I don't know, that like a whole lot of enterprise software and a million people living on Mars, that's a vision I can get behind. I'm into that. I like it. What was the market cap of Tesla at IPO?

It was sub $10 billion, right?

Was it? Tesla's— Tesla might've—

$1.7.

Whoa, $1.7 billion?

Yeah.

Are you sure?

What is that? Is that a market cap for—

You got a 1,000x if you just were a day one IPO believer.

I mean, that's how you build a retail army.

So SpaceX, I mean, million people on Mars, we could be looking at 1.7 quad potentially. Anything's possible.

I don't know.

You get a 1,000x from here. If we get to Mars, that's a big, big, big opportunity.

That is so crazy that you could buy an Elon company in the public markets. At less than a $2 billion market cap.

And many people did not. I owned a little bit of Tesla at some point, but there were so many moments when it was like so wildly disconnected from other car companies or other— like it was never a Warren Buffett buy. There were always good reasons not to buy it.

Instead of going to high school, I just bought the Tesla IPO using the money I made from mowing lawns.

Yeah. You should have just been a lawnmower who DCA'd into Tesla the whole time. Probably be pretty retired right now. I mean, there's a lot of people that did that. There's a lot of people. There's also a lot of people that put money down to buy cars and then they didn't buy the stock and they're like, ah, the car depreciated and I should have bought the stock anyway. Let's check in with the Starship launch because SpaceX postponed the launch of the newly redesigned Starship, but hardly a headline if it's just a one-day postponing. Because these things happen all the time. But it's completely redesigned. It's 400 feet tall, and it stood on the launch pad at the company's Starbase complex outside Brownville, Texas. But engineers had to troubleshoot problems that kept cropping up to the end of the countdown for the flight, according to a SpaceX livestream. SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk later said in a social media post that a hydraulic pin on part of the launch tower didn't function correctly. The company could try the flight Friday if the problem is fixed overnight. So they worked all night and they fixed the hydraulic pin on the launch tower. Wow, talk about complex. Uh, the test mission was set to be the first flight for Starship V3. This is the third version, redesigned SpaceX vehicle intended to deploy bigger satellites and one day help the company potentially settle Mars. And mine asteroids. Starship is bigger and more powerful than any rocket ever built. The company has sketched out a future in which Starship flies thousands of times per year. Of course, the Mechazilla tower that grabs it, the chopsticks, that's very key to being able to stack these quickly. You can't rebuild all the infrastructure. The reusability is key to flying regularly. The rocket has yet to fly any customer satellites after 3 years of intense tests that we know of. The real conspiracy theorists. There's conspiracy theorists that think space is fake, nothing's happening, they're not actually going, the satellites don't exist. And then there's other conspiracy theorists that think, oh yeah, when they crash, they're actually deploying secret satellites and there's more stuff in space than we think. So pick your tinfoil hat theory. We'll let you be the judge of what's really going on. SpaceX's growth plans depend on Starship, according to its IPO prospectus. The document filed Wednesday listed Starship First among the risk factors facing the company. Interesting, okay, so a little bit more credit for you 'cause I was like, ah, it's not that big a deal. I care more about the data centers.

Yeah, I just mean the optic, think about like the optics and some investors are super, you know, a little bit—

It is interesting, like clearly if SpaceX is listing Starship as the first risk factor, it means like, oh yeah, like Colossus, like we're gonna be able to do that. Like that's not that hard. Like we can build a big data center. They have.

They did the impossible.

And there's less of a risk factor of like We're not gonna be able to monetize that, or we're not gonna, you know, because there are a group of investors out there that are saying like, oh, token prices will collapse, GPU depreciation, it'll get blocked, there'll be a data center ban. Like they won't be able to ramp up their terrestrial effort.

God forbid there's like a catastrophic explosion.

It'd be dramatic.

That would be potentially an omen that certain people would be looking into.

Maybe.

I have full faith.

They estimated in its IPO filing Wednesday that it has spent $15 billion developing Starship. Well, that makes a lot of sense why there's losses if you've been investing this.

EJD Solomon.

Yeah, what's going on with EJD Solomon?

Slid into Elon's DMs.

Oh, yeah.

In the bid to land lead left. Mm-hmm. The IPO with banks jockeying to get their name first on the deal for SpaceX's IPO. Solomon worked with staffers to message Musk directly. He's like, 'All right guys, help me out here. How do I send a message on X?' According to people familiar with the matter. So he's putting in the work.

He also says, 'Wow, this is how you work for the bag at Goldman Sachs.' David Solomon also had a piece in the New York Times saying that the AI apocalypse, uh, NYT, was overrated. AI is a job creator. David Solomon says, he says, I'm the CEO of Goldman Sachs. The AI job apocalypse is overblown. We'll see what he's saying in a couple of months. Ken Griffin sort of flipped, although Ken Griffin hasn't gone as far to say that there's a job apocalypse. He was just saying that the models went from like slop to usable, but he hasn't actually opined on whether or not that will change Citadel's hiring plans or his view of the American—

He also specifically said he was very excited that all of his software engineers were more efficient because he said there's no, like, cap on how much software.

I was there. I was writing Visual Basic. It was brutal. I would have loved Codex and Clock Code. I would have been working for 1 minute a day instead of an hour a day.

If you could have had Codex back then, just like a private instance of it, you would be currently—

Time traveling back in time just to become the most productive intern of all time is Elite.

That's something you would actually do.

It would be so much fun. Maybe that's what the future will hold. Intern simulator. You get to go into VR and simulate being the most elite intern with time travel technology.

Can we talk about the World's Fair?

Yes. We need to talk about the World's Fair. Tyler, you gave this a read. World's Fairs. Has someone tried to bring these back? This feels like a tech new media, we need a World's Fair thing. I could see this being something that someone tries to revive, although it'd probably be a lot of screens these days. But at the World's Fair of old, there were a lot of cool technologies, a lot of hardware, a lot of interesting exhibits. And we'll go through— I don't know how much you've studied the World's Fair in the past, but the Wall Street Journal has been reflecting on the United States of America at 250 years with a whole bunch of articles that look back and contextualize American history. And we'll go through this one on the World's Fair right now. So among the groundbreaking innovations unveiled at US-hosted exhibitions were the telephone, the Ferris wheel, and the electric— and electric lighting. Ferris really crushed it on the naming thing. You know, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Thomas Edison invented lighting, mostly. Those guys did not bake their name into the product nearly as well as Ferris. 'cause it's capital F, and I believe Ferris is the one who invented the Ferris wheel. Anyway, before splashy Silicon Valley product launches in the annual Consumer Electronics Show, the world showcased its latest innovations at high-profiled World's Fairs. These exhibits, held every few years beginning in London in 1851, gave countries a public platform to showcase new technologies, products, and ideas that were going to reshape daily life. For host countries and cities. The World's Fairs or Expositions were an opportunity to own the world.

Tyler is sharing project. The person that invented the Ferris wheel's full name was George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. That's pretty elite. That's an elite George. There's nothing stopping you from naming your child George Washington and then just slapping your, your own last name at the end.

Yes, yes.

I mean, my George Washington Cosgrove.

John Tyler was the 10th president.

Oh, true. Yeah, there you go.

That's my name.

There we go.

Okay, so many of the big expos were commemorative, says Paul Greenhalgh, Greenhalgh, a British historian and author of two books on World's Fairs and expositions. But all of them ended up doing something else. They changed the shape of cities. Much like the Olympics today, World's Fairs were large-scale planning efforts and economic investments as much as cultural events. Cities competed for the right to host them. Chicago was able to redefine its image from a gritty second city to a cultural and architectural hub after defeating New York in the bid for the 1893 Exposition. Here's a look at the U.S.-hosted World's Fairs that left the deepest mark. So fill it out.

Starting in Philly, Philly, 1876. You're not going to believe what was, what was shown, what was celebrated.

Crazy.

We had two key technologies. Telephones and ketchup.

One was disrupted much faster than the other.

Yep.

I would say that the telephone has basically disappeared. Smartphone, text messaging. Telephone's not doing well. It's on its last leg.

The iPhone might make a comeback.

But barbecue sauce has not really made, gained ground.

Real inroads.

No. Ketchup is still—

Even ranch kind of went on a run. Yeah. But really came up short.

Mustard, ultimately, it's a complement, not a substitute. There are very few people that say, "Oh, I don't need the ketchup at all." Just the mustard. Just the mustard, please. Most people, they'd—

I don't know. I do think mustard is better than ketchup.

Better than ketchup. Interesting.

Yeah, if you can believe that. America's first officially sanctioned World's Fair, the Centennial International Exhibition, arrived when the country was still defining its place among industrial nations. Unlike earlier European fairs built around single monumental halls, The Philadelphia event spread across a vast park with hundreds of structures. It was sort of like the Coachella of its time. Mm-hmm. Among the most notable exhibits were the telephone. It was initially greeted with skepticism, but the potential of the cool contraption quickly drew attention. Once people realized what had been invented, it became clear how important it was. The fair also showcased Thomas Edison's automatic telegraph as well as machinery. Such as the typewriter. Imagine you just create the automatic telegraph and then you go to launch it and demo it and somebody invents the telephone. It's like, really? Really, dude? And consumer packaged goods such as Heinz tomato ketchup. It normalized the idea that private companies, innovators, and even governments could present their work side by side, a model that amplified the country's entrepreneurial culture. I love that. Chicago, 1893. You're not going to believe it. You're not going to believe the two technologies that we got.

We got to call, call balls and strikes here. A little bit more underwhelming.

Yeah, but I don't know. I think—

tell people what was—

tell people what was two key inventions last time. Remember, we created telephones and ketchup, right? And so fast following this with the next fair, we create the first—

no, no, no, no, no. It's not fast following. 1876, the telephone.

Almost 20 years later.

Almost 20 years later, they come out with takeoff. We're so early. Telephone's cooking. What do we got?

The Ferris wheel and popcorn.

Popcorn is pretty good. Ketchup before popcorn. Pretty good. Pretty good. But yeah, Ferris wheel. Ferris wheel.

Imagine the hundreds of people that came there to demo their inventions.

If you're in telephones, pivot to Ferris wheels. There's a whole industry. Oh yeah, Ferris wheel. That'll destroy the telephone. You got to get on the Ferris wheel. It's the new thing.

Well, it is sort of funny that like— In like, if you were to look back, if we had a World's Fair, you'd have like creatine gummies and like AGI, right? Exactly. So in 1893, they had the Ferris wheel and popcorn. And then you fast forward to today, it's like we found a way to put one of the micronutrients in steak into a candy-shaped supplement. And we need you to eat 4 or 5 of these a day forever.

2020 World's Fair. We have rockets that land and we also have Allbirds. Allbirds. What, what else came out that was very silly? Bored Apes. We have, we've invented Bored Apes.

Skims shapewear.

Shapewear and GLP-1s. Somewhat related. I don't know.

Buffalo, New York, 1901.

Okay.

An electric city.

This seems pretty elite. This is pretty huge. 1901.

Though remembered mostly as the location where President William McKinley was shot, he died a week later, Buffalo's Pan-American Exposition was meant to showcase— He was shot at the World's Fair?

That's crazy. Fact check that. Buffalo's Pan-American Exposition was meant to showcase America's dominance and innovation in electrical power and infrastructure. The fair featured electric lighting and electric streetcars powered by hydroelectricity generated by Niagara Falls, reflecting a moment when electricity was beginning to move from novelty towards widespread utility.

Okay, so this is 1901.

1901.

And remember, in 1876 we created the telephone. And you fast forward to the next event in St. Louis in 1904, you're not gonna believe what we remember the 1904 World's Fair.

3 years, we created electricity, and they're like, we got something better. What do we got?

We now know this World's Fair as a snack food extravaganza.

It's really just AGI and protein gummies.

It was sort of a Cambrian explosion of snacking.

Yeah, I mean, this is the nature of our show. It's like Cerebrus and Groons. Like, this is actually what happens in America Brown.

The Louisiana Purchase Exposition was among the largest ever staged and nearly obliterated the city's finances. Oh no. Still, its pop culture influence endures. The exposition popularized a host of snack foods that would become staples of American life, including ice cream cones, peanut butter. Oh my, they went on an insane run right here. Ice cream cones, peanut butter, hot dogs, hamburgers, and cotton candy. Elite. While the foods weren't all invented for the fair, their widespread availability there— like, it's so funny. So, so people are coming there again to share their, their, their, their actual innovations. Yeah. And then like snacks had just come online. And so you can imagine like it just turns into a snack con. Conference where everyone's just snacking like crazy. They're like, wait, we have hot— you can go to a hot dog stand and then you can go get cotton candy in one place? You got to be kidding me. Uh, fast forward, 1962, Seattle Space Race. The Space Race.

That's exciting.

The World's Fair. Uh, by the mid-20th century, the World's Fairs had become games of one-upsmanship. I like that. And geopolitical rivalry feels like where we're at Today, Seattle's Century 21 Exposition took place in the shadow of the Cold War following the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik and the world's first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviets turned down an invitation. They turned it down.

Turn it down.

Turn it down. The federal government became deeply involved. There was a sense that America needed to demonstrate technological leadership. Mm-hmm. The Space Needle was constructed for the fair.

I recently saw the inside of the Space Needle because— wait, no, that's not the Space Needle. It's the Toronto version of the Space Needle because didn't Drake film a music video inside of it?

He iced it out.

Oh, he did?

He made it ice blue.

Because he's Iceman or something? Yeah. That's the name of the album. And inside you can see all of the broadcasting equipment and there's these huge radio dishes inside. It's very cool.

Anyway, fast forward just a few years, couple years. This one's a little tougher. You're not going to believe what they created, what they announced at this World's Fair.

'64.

They invent— 1964, more than just under 100 years since the telephone was invented. We invented punch cards.

Punch cards.

Which feel like a kind of early version of enterprise software in some way.

True.

World's Fair at Flushing Meadows, New York City. This is records. Yes, this is records. Visitors were dazzled by color television demonstration and the Picturephone, an early video calling system.

They had FaceTime.

Yeah, this is actually— They created FaceTime. This is sick. This is crazy.

I can't believe—

When I told Jordi Hays, '64, they invented FaceTime, he was like, did they use mirrors? And he thought it was just a periscope.

Just a mirror that you look at.

No, no, no. It's like a series of mirrors that bounce my image across, so you can be in the other room and you can see me and talk. No. No, they had full video calling, I guess. AT&T's Picture Phone, which added video to telephone calls.

Yeah, so it cost $16 for a 3-minute call. That's $121 in today's money.

That's expensive.

Yeah.

$40.

Token maxing. I wonder if there were CEOs at the time who were like, we need to be— if you're making $10 a year and you're not spending $20 a year on your picture phone, you're not going to have a job.

I wonder if they were talking about Jevons paradox.

Yes, probably. I don't know.

The last officially sanctioned World's Fair in the US was hosted in New Orleans in 1984, and it produced no truly defining technological debut.

Stagnation theory undefeated. Brutal. By that point, the function of World's Fairs had largely migrated elsewhere to museums, television, theme parks, and technology conference. As a result, the World's Fair concept gradually faded. Putting on an expo is a lost art, the author says, but when America needed it, no one did it better.

Yeah, so there was a little push. You could bring something like this back, but I feel like it would end up being like, um, to a tech conference, you know.

I wanted to talk about The robotic legs, the exoskeletons, would you rock these or would you be sitting it out? The Hypershell X Ultra S is an exoskeleton that the Wall Street Journal demoed.

Thousand-watt hips.

Thousand-watt hips. You wear these and they help you hike and run up hills. I listen to too many shows with, with Palmer Luckey where he talks about, uh, the capability of an Iron Man suit potentially just ripping you apart. And so I would be a little afraid, but I might give it a try.

Yeah, also imagine, you know, a bad actor, remember all the DJI drones had like a backdoor.

Ooh, yeah.

Bad actor takes over your suit.

Start dancing.

And then it makes you do Michael Jackson badly in front of your peers.

Potentially, potentially.

Could be wildly embarrassing.

Also, CATL, C-A-T-L, the Chinese EV battery giant is investing in Deepseek. Some big rounds going on. Also BYD.

AI is waking up.

Remember? Remember? Oh, yeah.

That's what—

this is what AI 2020— they predicted that BYD would get an F1 team.

That's right.

Which is what's happening. Which is what's happening. At least they're in talks. BYD is in talks with Christian Horner over entering F1. That would be pretty crazy. Does BYD have any gas-powered ICE engines? I don't know.

They're about to.

They're about to. Who knows? What else is going on? Go have fun. We'll see you Tuesday. Have a good rest of your day. Have a great weekend. Leave us 5 stars on Apple Podcast. And Spotify. Sign up for our newsletter at tdpn.com. Been an honor, and we will see you today, tomorrow, slash Tuesday.

Weekend, we love you.

Goodbye.