Down Round

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Vibes Off Oct 01, 2025

Show notes

Vibes are up this week.
Alexandr Wang, the former Scale AI CEO who now runs Meta's new multi-billion dollar Superintelligence unit, has announced one of their first products: What if TikTok but only AI slop?
Vibes is a feed full of AI videos. That sounds like an idiotic thing to put the greatest and highest paid minds of our generation onto. Unless?
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Meta Glasses, Again Sep 25, 2025

Show notes

We all know that Meta wants to replace the smartphone with smartglasses, and be the king of the AI device game. Well, they're one step closer to their sci-fi dream with the announcement of the Meta Rayban Display.

In this ep, we dive into the announcement, and how things are coming together on the device front for Zuckerberg and Co.

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Consulting the Oracle Sep 18, 2025

Show notes

Oracle. Unless you're a big database guy, it's probably not a company you're going to be all that interested in. But it is one of the biggest companies on Earth, and its stock just pumped 40% — not something you often see for an outfit which started in the 1970s.

Why? Because it just signed a $300 billion multiyear deal with OpenAI to provide compute. In this ep, we dive into the big question on literally eveeryone's lips: what the hell is up with Oracle?

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iPhone, But Orange Sep 11, 2025

Show notes

Apple have announced their new iPhones — and they sort of stink of desperation. But one of them is orange, which may or may not appeal to you. Plus, a notable absence of Apple Intelligence chat.

The boys are back in the same room after a prolonged interregnum and break it all down for you.

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K-Pop Demon Hunters Sep 04, 2025

Show notes

We're dipping into the world of streaming and East Asian cultural dominance today, talking about Netflix's smash hit movie K-Pop Demon Hunters.

We talk about the pandemic era deal struck between Sony and Netflix, what this means for the streaming landscape, and whether it would have been as much of a cultural phenomenon if it was a traditional cinematic release.

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Copy Fight (UNLOCKED) Aug 22, 2025

Show notes

A big topic of conversation Down Under over the past couple of weeks has been copyright — namely, whether we should loosen the rules to make it easier for AI companies to operate in Australia, and for data centre companies to build here. The Productivity Commission and Tech Council boss Scott Farquhar think we should. Creatives are less enthused.

We go into the dynamics of the conversation, the asymmetry between the parties, and answer the question once and for all: how much money do artists deserve??

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GPT-5: Here We Go Again Aug 12, 2025

Show notes

After many months of hype and news stories, OpenAI has released GPT-5, the next major numbered iteration of its large language model. There have been all sorts of models since it released GPT-4 in 2023, but this is supposed to be the big dog.

In this ep, we talk about the rocky launch — starting with the fact that most people aren't that impressed with it, and ending with the much weirder world of people who developed an emotional attachment to GPT-4o and became furious that their friend is gone.

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What Are They Planning? (ft. Cam Wilson) Aug 07, 2025

Show notes

Today James is joined by previous Down Round guest Cam Wilson, who has written a new book with (another former Down Round guest) Ariel Bogle, Conspiracy Nation, which is about the Australian conspiracy community.

While Raph is living it up on the coastline of Croatia, James and Cam had a freewheeling chat about online conspiracy culture, how it has engaged with online platforms, and the future of going crazy on the computer in the age of AI. Also, we check in on Australia's teen social media ban.

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Knock On (ft. Tim Stewart) Jul 31, 2025

Show notes

Several years ago, Down Round listener Tim Stewart submitted a question to one of our Q&A mailbag episodes: when is the new rugby league video game for PlayStation 5 coming out?

We couldn't answer him, because we didn't know what the hell he was talking about. But now, years later, it has come out, and everyone seems to agree it's really not very good. So we decided to bring Tim on to finally answer his own question.

What follows is an odyssey into the world of Australian sports video games, and the virtues of pestering CEOs on Twitter.

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That's Tea Jul 26, 2025

Show notes

Tea, the app which offers what it describes as "dating safety tools which protect women", has been hacked. It follows a couple of weeks where it went viral and led the app charts in the US.

For those not familiar, it is basically an app version of those 'are we dating the same guy' Facebook groups, where women share pics, tips and intel on bad dates and dangerous men.

In this ep, we talk about the hack, the app's surge in popularity, and where it fits in range of social surveillance and trust tools that have emerged to serve an increasing scaled social ecosystem where you can no longer be sure who you're talking to.

(We actually recorded this ep for release just before the hack, and our recording was corrupted — maybe a good thing, given that it would have been immediately irrelevant.)

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