Anybody Got $2,000 for a Phone?  🔗 **Source:** [Anybody Got $2,000 for a Phone?](https://share.snipd.com/episode/a75b58e7-0037-4deb-96bb-967c8c99092d) ## Highlights - **Why The Foldable IPhone Feels Like A Bad Investment** - A $2,000 foldable iPhone looks less attractive when compared with ordinary phones’ longer usable lifespans. - The hinge’s hundred-plus parts may prevent simple battery replacement or DIY repair, turning premium engineering into accelerated depreciation. Transcript: John Wall The one that hits me, though, that I really just want to talk about, because this is nerding out, is the iPhone Duo, this foldable iPhone. IPhone, huge market share. It's driving the majority of their profits as the biggest taxpaying company in America. But yeah, $2,000 for this thing. I'm just like, for a phone, because as much as I'm a gearhead and a techie, I still treat phones like cars. I just need one that does all the things I need. And this is a depreciable asset. So you're talking about me burning $2,000 in like three or five years on a phone. As much as I think it's cool, I'm not going to pay that. So that's my initial hit. What's your feeling? Christopher S. Penn I'm right there with you. I mean, I don't need a tiny laptop. I mean, because they're showing like, hey, in flip mode, you have a little keyboard. Like I don't need a tiny laptop. I have an iPad already. Marcus Brown, they're just calling Apple's phablet because it really does fold into basically an iPad nano or whatever you know if you think about it when it's an unfolded mode it's Cool it looks well engineered but no I mean I'm probably going to end up spending close to 1500 bucks on the pro max regular phone because I want the enhanced scores and supposedly supposedly There's going to be a way to get access to the apple neural engines on the iPhone itself. So if you are someone who is going to be or has a home AI lab setup, we know on the A20 chipset on these things, there's a lot of GPU capacity on these very expensive devices that mostly sits Idle most of the time. So if you could plug your phone in and create your own little cluster and like double your home compute capacity, that might be the way to go. But I was looking at the Pro Max stuff. Cameras look great. First cameras with an actual physical aperture, which I thought was really, really sexy. And the ability enhanced AI to do post photo and post video changes, like changing the angle of the photo, et cetera. So I thought that's some really cool stuff. But no, $2,000 for a folding phone that doesn't even have all three cameras. No. John Wall Well, that wide open, big screen, you talk about watching video and gaming like that could be just completely nuts. And then it is. There's an interesting thing of talking about iPad mini. Like I have an iPad and I have this world where I use an iPad and a Kindle and I buy these things and then they sit on my desk and collect dust. And when I go to finally use them three months later, the batteries are dead. So, yeah. And then another one too, the engineering behind this hinge, you know, there's over a hundred parts inside that hinge. And so now you're saying, well, wait, so because the other thing I could get away with is I can buy a top end iPhone and I can have the battery swapped out after two or three years. And it's, you know, I can squeeze another two or three years out of it in good shape. But, you know, opening that thing up, that's definitely not a DIY thing. Nobody's going to do that. So, you know, unless they now maybe it's modular and the whole hinge can just be easily replaced. I don't see any reason for them to do that. That doesn't make business sense. So, all right, well, I'll throw this out. This is a great polarizing issue. We'll throw it out to the crowd. Tell us what you think. Are you going to buy one? Whoever's got one first, we'll feature you on the show and you can parade yourself around as the alpha gadget. You can mog and we would love to see what you're doing with that. ([Time 0:00:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/26ebe9f3-0d57-4e63-96d9-611a36e4562d)) - **Replace Marketing Rants With Evidence** - Challenge podcast claims with specific counterevidence rather than insults or empty complaints. - John Wall says comments like “you guys are jerks” add nothing and are usually deleted as bot-like noise. Transcript: John Wall As far as ranting, we had Christopher Lockhead on his interview. He completely goes off. And if you look at his website, his website is filled with stuff like off-putting to some, you know, this guy's a moron. You know, he's not afraid to say things that make people angry. If you're going to make comments to marketing over coffee, though, tell us what you disagree with. You know, if you have a problem, say like, he said X and the data is Y or whatever, post like, you guys are jerks or I'm leaving. Nobody wants to hear that. I'm not interested in that. If you're, you know, if you want to move the discussion forward, that's great. If you showed up just to complain, save yourself the keystrokes. Most of the time, that stuff is auto-deleted. We just presume those are bots. If you're just complaining or ranting without adding anything, that doesn't even get time of day. ([Time 0:03:47](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d829336a-1991-476b-9391-d07d42b25846)) - **The AI Pause May Be About Money** - The proposed AI pause may reflect exhausted funding and scarce high-quality data as much as safety concerns. - Open-weight models can run privately on owned hardware, making centralized restrictions ineffective against determined actors. Transcript: John Wall All right, the big news, everything dominating the headlines is this AI pause. A bunch of the leaders saying, oh, we have to stop because the Terminators are coming now to kill everyone. And my initial gut is like, oh, wait, the Chinese giving stuff away for free is really hurting you, isn't it? And you need to get the government to put up some tariffs and protection for you so you don't, you know, your stock doesn't plunge next year. That's my cynical economic take. I don't know. What's your take on this? Christopher S. Penn I mean, there's so many different conspiracy theories on this. A couple that I've heard, the labs are all basically scraping the bottom of the barrel for both data that they can train on as well as cash. They're all completely out of money. And so they have to slow down because they literally cannot conduct new model operations at the pace they've been going. Because they literally need like $4 to $6 trillion to keep going at the pace they're going. And nobody has that. And the government's not going to give that to them, surprisingly. But the government has shown no indication of being willing to subsidize this. The government wasn't even willing to subsidize Project Stargate, which was building up hundreds of data centers. So there's that angle. There is the equally cynical, this is all just fancy marketing before the IPOs so that whoever has the most dangerous models, whoever basically demonstrates the most felony incompetence, As I saw on threads, will get the IPO at all. So I didn't see that OpenAI postponed their IPO until 2027. Sam Alton was out there saying we're going to postpone, which would leave Anthropik as the fall AI IPO. I think people are waiting to see what happens with that. Supposedly, it's their valuation of the company's $2 trillion. We'll see. That sounds like monopoly money to me. There is the Chinese angle saying like we need to rein the stuff in. What people don't seem to understand is when a company like Alibaba Quinn releases an open weights model, it is not running in China. At that point, if you have the hardware, you can run it yourself. I mean, if you had like 100 grand worth of hardware, you could run it in your basement. And so all this talk about, oh, we need to rein in these models and make things safe. Dangerous actors could be using them. No, they're not. They're using the model they download on their own hardware behind a VPN so that they're not traceable. No one's using ChatGPT to try and hack into things. Or if you are, you're an idiot. ([Time 0:04:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f46b4720-1a83-423e-81f7-5f98fd2dd8d5)) - **AI Models Are Starting To Manufacture Their Own Training Data** - Training models on the open internet imports its low-quality information, so even small amounts of bad data can distort results. - Chinese labs reportedly have models generate solvable problems, solve harder versions, and train recursively without human-written examples. Transcript: Christopher S. Penn I don't buy the that stuff i know i do think that they have some very serious infrastructure problems i think uh open ai in particular has some very serious lack of knowledge about basic Cyber security uh and how to make like air gapped infrastructure like if you if you are working with something that you think is dangerous you air gap it you put it on its own server cluster In your basement somewhere that has there's no physical connection to the internet and these dummies just don't seem to know how to do that. I know like, I'm like, ask chat GPT. It will tell you how to make secure infrastructure. Right. John Wall How to do it. You hit an interesting thing. The money thing. I was like, yeah, of course there's, there's just, you know, the money is not infinite. I hadn't thought of the fact though, that pretty much everybody has sucked up the entire internet. Like there's training data is not, it's not like the wild west of four years ago where you could go grab everything. And that's, man, I went, Ahrefs is an interesting company. They've, you know, scraped so much data for so long and have such a huge store. That's an interesting angle for them. Christopher S. Penn Well, if you think about it, common crawl, everyone has, common crawl was like 85% of training data sets because they vacuum up the internet, you know, basically twice a month and that Is available for free to everybody. It's a, it's a foundation. The challenge is that a lot of folks have realized a lot of what's on the internet is garbage. And they spent, you know, and they ended up training models that were, that had serious problems, mostly because they were fed a lot of garbage. And, you know, and that's kind of like poison, right? You don't need to drink a gallon of strychnine to have it impact you, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. John Wall Yeah. Just a few bad data points is enough to exactly. Christopher S. Penn And what's coming out of China right now, there's a paper that came out last week as of the time of recording on recursive self-improvement. 13 Chinese labs published a paper on how they're doing recursive self-improvement with models. Google published a paper a week later, which is very suspicious. And essentially what the Chinese labs have been doing for a while now, more than a year with DeepSeq in particular, is that the models write their own data and then train on it, particularly Around anything that's provable and solvable. So DeepSeq has the DeepSeq math model that writes its own math problems, solves them, writes harder ones, solves them, learns from it. And so they've got a heck of a head start on building models that improve themselves. The paper was called The Last Human Written AI. And they're saying like AI after this is not going to be made by humans. It's going to be made by itself. John Wall Yeah, it's the only one smart enough to grab that and go, okay, that opens up 100 doors for us. ([Time 0:06:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/632ef3c6-cc81-43bd-b01c-e03c6ec18df3)) - **Plan For Fuel Costs To Shrink Demand** - Build forecasts around fuel-driven reductions in discretionary spending, travel, and attendance rather than assuming normal demand. - Christopher S. Penn recommends monitoring supply disruptions and even buying needed motor oil before shortages spread. Transcript: John Wall I might as well get this off the table early. Diesel going to $7 a gallon. Yeah. We've talked about inflation shock and shipping shock before. So is there anything, though, that this is affecting your radar for the rest of the year? Or what are you thinking about? Christopher S. Penn Oh, it's affecting everything. So without getting into the politics of it, there are a couple of big issues. One, the east-west pipeline in Saudi Arabia has been bombed. So that's offline. The strait of whatever is, you know, all the straits are closed. And the other thing is that there is a tremendous amount of oil being illegally refined and shipped out of Russia despite sanctions. And as the Ukrainians have correctly been bombing the crap out of them, which they should be, Russia is unable to export diesel and refined products because their refiners are all getting Blown up. And I love that for the Ukrainians. I hope they do more of it because that will force Russia's hand just to basically make them go home. Like, OK, we're going to bomb the crap out of your energy infrastructure like you've been doing to us for four years, and we'll see how you like it. Actually at a point where structural failure of the salt caverns where it's stored is imminent if we don't stop draining it. That means everything that is transported by plane, train, or diesel train, or truck is going to have substantial economic impacts. Basic things that you might want to do now. I would suggest go picking up five or 10 quarts of your favorite oil for your car, like if you need to get an oil change, because that's getting harder to get. In fact, there are some folks reporting on threads that are some shops that are either limiting the number of purchases, or saying we are just flat out of certain blends, because the Refineries can't make them anymore, there's not enough oil. And then B2B or B2C, as prices go up, the folks over at GasBuddy, Patrick DeHaan, has this great clock that shows what people have spent extra on fuel, a fuel alone. And it's in the billions of dollars. I think it's like $86 million per second extra. That's all money that's coming out of discretionary spending. The holiday gift season is going to be dampened by it, right? Non-essential purchases. If you are a company that has your products and services are discretionary spending, you are on the chopping block, right? The economy is putting you on notice. The Fed just raised interest rates because the inflation is too high. They're like, we don't know why inflation is so high. Could it be the $86 million extra per second that we're all spending on fuel? That could have something to do with it. And what tends to happen, what's been happening is that when prices go up, this is especially true to the airlines. Thanks, you jerks. When prices go up for their supplies, they raise their prices. But then when their prices go down, they don't lower our costs. That's because it's super. John Wall Right. Yeah. Right. Right. The prices stick. Christopher S. Penn Exactly. They just keep the extra profits essentially for marketing planning. Right. Or for sales planning. If you are in the forecasting business, a you're any model you have that doesn't account for this enormous economic drag on every sector. Because again, it comes by train, plane, or automobile, including people like conferences. When your airfare from Chicago to Kansas City is $900 for economy, people ain't going to come. Travel budgets are not going to be there. So everybody has to be planning for this and thinking about how can we deal with a consumer, B2B or B2C, that has less money. ([Time 0:12:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/67e97ab4-6019-4c35-a3ba-896cc9d72530)) - **Keep Researching While Buyers Hide In Their Caves** - Preserve cash during uncertain cycles, but keep researching while competitors retreat. - John Wall sees buyers hiding behind approved RFPs, while companies that stop preparing may miss the recovery entirely. Transcript: John Wall It's, you know, we just see a lot more fear and uncertainty creeping. And we were just joking this morning about how nothing's coming through the pipe that's not an RFP. Like there's no cowboys looking to make something happen and be the star of the show. Everybody's like, okay, we need to defend the budget. And if this project goes south, we need the committee to have approved it so we all don't lose our jobs. So yeah, you see these big cycles of aggressive and spending risk-taking and people trying to go for the prize. And no, we are like square in a hide in your cave until the storm is over thing. And even it's been interesting because we've seen this hit and go down to like financial organizations, insurance, medical, you know, segments that normally don't even bother to Adapt to the cyclical nature. You know, they just know that, well, it'll be tougher for a year and a half and it will bounce back. Like even those orgs are doing some cuts. And so it's, yeah, it's definitely getting tighter and scarier. And yeah, the only thing you can do is have dry powder. You know, it's like, hopefully you've saved enough when things were good so that you can just tough it out and keep pushing forward. And as always the case, the orgs and companies that continue to push and do the research during this rough stage, they get all the spoils. You know, the companies that stop spending, they immediately, as soon as things turn around, they end up, you know, it's too late and they drop. ([Time 0:15:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4238b762-4c35-45cc-a222-74294d5793f2)) - **Use AI Monitors To Spot Regulatory Shocks** - Set AI monitors to detect emergency powers, export bans, and other government signals before they disrupt your market. - A monitor flagged restrictions on rare-earth exports, revealing potential value in recovering materials from discarded batteries. Transcript: Christopher S. Penn They're really interesting ones. One thing I did was recently, I set up a Gemini Spark monitor that monitors for federal emergency powers usage to see what the government is actually saying. Like, hey, this is now an emergency powers declaration. There was one that came through about two months ago saying there's now a ban on the export of all rare earth minerals, including things like old lithium batteries and stuff, because It turns out that like all of our precision guided munitions require these elements that we no longer can get. And there's a heck of a lot of money to be made from like some like industrial scale dumpster diving to get at those rare earth minerals. They call it a black mass is what it's called. You know, tungsten, antimony and things like that. So there's money to be made there. The other thing is I would set up a monitor like that for your business to see, are there any governmental proclamations coming out saying this is now banned, this is whatever that you Can use for forecasting. Like there's no excuse now with AI agents to not have a heads up when something's coming down the pipe. ([Time 0:17:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5eb3ba5c-92c4-4fa6-ae82-99ba9b8471ed)) - **Trade Shows Can Cannibalize Their Own Budgets** - Scheduling major conferences in the same week forces sponsors, exhibitors, and attendees to divide limited budgets. - Huge venues constrain date and location choices, but overlapping events still create avoidable travel and marketing cannibalization. Transcript: Christopher S. Penn So we had this week is Dreamforce and Unbounce. John Wall So as far as CRM and marketing automation and all that stuff, yeah, you made the same face. I'm like, why are these right up against each other? Like, you know, I personally know tons of people that would go to both and now they have to pick. So, okay. You know, it's cannibalization at its best. Unfortunately, we're a little too early. Dreamforce has been running a couple of days and I did see they've overhauled some AI stuff that, you know, as they have done frequently. I haven't heard anything from Unbound. I've just seen a couple of screenshots. Have you heard anything on either of these yet at all? Christopher S. Penn I saw some very angry LinkedIn posts about Unbound, about HubSpot specifically. Some folks saying, well, HubSpot's created this new agent environment that you have to buy HubSpot credits for, and you can't ever move your data out of HubSpot, and you can't move your Agent out of HubSpot. And so they're like, why would I build anything AI in HubSpot when you're just going to hold me hostage for stuff? So there was some very angry commentary about that. I was talking to Alex from G2 this week, who was at the Spotlight Summit, which I was at, who was saying, like, yeah, we are stretched because we have to have teams at both shows simultaneously. And then it just blew up our travel budget. Yeah, right, right. John Wall Yeah, because Dreamforce just destroys San Francisco. It's insane. Hotels and everything that goes on over there for that. Christopher S. Penn So, and we think about it, you're going to get less money as the show. If your sponsors have to split their budget twice in the same, you know, it happened in the same week. Like, why would you do that? Yeah. John Wall That's completely insane. I hadn't thought about it. Yeah. Cause the exhibitor side, there's going to be plenty of vendors like, okay, we just got to pick one. Like we only have one $250,000 booth. So it's either going to be here or there. And, uh, but when I don't know, the other side of that too, though, I say all this, but I do know that both of these shows are at venues that are so huge that they don't have as much say as, you Know, it's not like some of the, like these Gartner mid tier shows where they can just go to some hotel and tell them where it's going to be and when it's going to be. And, you know, because they only have 2000 people when you have 50,000 people, you know, the list of places you can be is very short. And then if you're a smart company in this environment, you want it to be near the home office because you don't need to be paying for 30,000 flights. Christopher S. Penn So. Yeah. Cause your choices are basically what San Francisco, New York, Vegas, Orlando, or Boston. Like the big venues. And even there. Chicago too. Oh yeah, Chicago. Yeah. But basically the big convention cities, like that's it. You don't have any other choices. Right. Yeah, yeah. No, you're locked. ([Time 0:18:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/308d748b-f4d5-4423-955f-87c629057065)) - **AI Sales Automation Cannot Rescue Bad Outreach** - Use AI to enable sales research and processes, not to automate unwanted cold pitches. - AI-generated spam remains spam, and recipients already ignore the flood of automated sales messages. Transcript: Christopher S. Penn Talking about how to use, how agentic sales will work. I'm going to be talking probably a fair amount of stuff like GEO and things as well as teaching them how to use agentic AI for enabling the sales process, but not cold pitching because I've done this a couple of times. I've said to people like, how many people get AI pitches in your inbox? And then, you know, and this is to a sales card. How many of you read them? Like nobody reads them. I'm like, so why would you think that implementing AI to do your sales pitching was a good idea? Right. John Wall Spam and AI enabled spam is still spam. Exactly. Christopher S. Penn Nobody reads it. In fact, people read it even less now. So there's, there's really no point in doing that. And of course there's been that one guy, well, what are you 10X stars? I like, uh-huh, sure. John Wall 10X, 10X will always, there will always be an audience for 10X. ([Time 0:21:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0a5aae16-bfd1-4d93-86b0-42a8d1ff3f97))