Meta Connect Reactions, Zuck's Beer Pong Controversy, New Bentley EV | Shalev Lifshitz & Romi Lifshitz, Leif Abraham, Diogo Almeida, Hooman Reza Nezhad, Jordan Nanos, Erika Alden DeBenedictis

Jordi Hays (0:00)

You're watching TBPN.

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Today is Thursday, September 24th, 2026 We are live from the TBPN Ultradome, the Temple of Technology, the Fortress of Finance, the Capital of Capital.

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Jordi Hays (0:29)

That's right.

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The TBPN Road to Christmas is continuing day by day. We're 91 days away.

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That's right.

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Get ready, get excited. Christmas is coming. It's around the corner.

Jordi Hays (0:39)

Great weekend to pick up a tree.

John Coogan (0:43)

If you can find one.

John Coogan (0:44)

I'm struggling to keep it alive for three months. Yeah, maybe.

Jordi Hays (0:48)

I mean, some operators I know are actually cycling through multiple trees on the Road to Christmas.

John Coogan (0:56)

Some operators. Yeah, it's like that Chinese proverb. The best day to plant a tree, ten years ago.

The second best day is today. Get started. The best day to get a Christmas tree was ten years ago. The second best day today, no matter when it is. Only 91 days away, so get ready. Anyway, Meta Connect, yesterday.

Zuck likes to go in late. He's 4 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m. Eastern for the keynote.

Jordi Hays (1:24)

Well, because he wanted to roll straight from the keynote into some beer pong.

John Coogan (1:27)

Oh, that's true. We will get into that big hot debate on the timeline over his beer pong strategy. But really, really tight keynote, very well organized, very clear, didn't overstay its welcome, did three live demos. Last year, there was a hiccup with a live demo, Wi-Fi, and I believe Boz triggered everyone's agents by using the wake word, so this time he deliberately stayed away from using that wake word and used the name of his agent, so he didn't cause a lot of chaos in the Dome or in the studio, wherever they were.

But a bunch of great announcements, really good pacing, really tight one-hour keynote, and it was fun watching Zuck sort of do the live demos and be like one down. It was high stakes, it was clearly high stakes for him, but he got through it all, no mistakes.

Jordi Hays (2:21)

Yeah, he had a funny line, he was like, and we love live demos here.

John Coogan (2:24)

Yeah, it's funny because he totally could just not do live demos, but he wants to, so he pushes through it.

Jordi Hays (2:31)

I think you need to.

John Coogan (2:32)

Do you?

Jordi Hays (2:33)

I think you absolutely need to. People have bought so many random hardware devices that you haven't met expectations.

John Coogan (2:40)

Yeah, and I guess there was that...

Jordi Hays (2:41)

With hardware, if you want people to buy it, you have to do a live demo.

John Coogan (2:43)

Yeah, there was a demo of a Gemini model running like two years ago that was like sped up in post and that faced a lot of criticism. And so I think, yeah, just demoing things as they are available in the real world is very valuable. And I think in general, like the thesis for the products was, like, meet people where they are, delivering tomorrow's technology with today's constraints. And that's just what I kept seeing as a theme was like, what do people want? And of course, the best, it basically created a huge dichotomy between like the crazy super intelligence RSI, ASI, PDOOM, XRISC crew, and then just like Muse, it's a helpful agent. Neeraj Agarwal summed it up well, anthropic marketing, we built a god only, we built a god only we can control and gave it a wet lab. Muse marketing, hey girl, I know you have dozens of unpaid parking tickets. Let's get that cleaned up. And it's funny because it's actually working. I think that if you went back to a couple months ago, the consensus was like, popularity of AI is turning, it's deeply unpopular. You need to just be quiet or not lean in or just like apologize like what a lot of the lab leaders are doing. Just being like, yeah, it is bad. I'm sorry.

But Meta has taken a very different approach. They're not fear-mongering. They're just like, it's cute. It's lovable.

And they actually are successful. The New York Times yesterday, Jensen and Ezra are duking it out over X-Risk and Acceleration. Do we need to slow down? Meanwhile, The New York Times published a really positive review of Muse. They love it. And they're a tough cookie to win over, basically. So success there.