Morning Brew Daily
Did Google Predict Venezuela Earthquakes Before it Happened? & GTA VI’s Launch Plan Irks Gaming Purists
26 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, how Google may have saved lives in the Venezuela earthquake.
Then Apple is raising prices and it's blaming AI. It's Friday, June 26th. Let's ride.
Chapter 2: How did Google potentially save lives during the Venezuela earthquakes?
The U.S. men's national team closed out their group stage campaign with a last-minute loss against Turkey last night. But no matter, after two previous victories, we're on to the round of 32, facing Bosnia and Herzegovina on Wednesday night.
Chapter 3: What factors led to Apple raising its product prices?
Pretty unfair. We have to play both of them, if you ask me. But as the other countries wrap up their group play today and tomorrow, I want to draw your attention to a bizarre situation unfolding on Saturday in Kansas City. There, Austria will play Algeria in a game nobody wants to win.
Basically, through a quirk in the tournament, the team that wins this game will likely have to play the juggernaut Spain in the next round, while the loser will face a less formidable opponent. So we may be about to watch a World Cup game in which you are disincentivized to score. Could be thrilling television.
The World Cup has run into this problem before. The infamous example came back in 1982 when West Germany and Austria entered their final group match knowing that a one-goal German win would send both teams through. Obviously, Germany scored early, and then both sides literally just casually passed the ball around in front of an increasingly angry crowd.
The match became known as the Disgrace of Gijon, which was the Spanish city where it occurred, and FIFA literally changed the rules after this 44 years later, Algeria and Australia, or in Austria, excuse me, find themselves in a very similar situation. And I say Algeria because, ironically, Algeria was the team eliminated because of the disgrace of Gijon in 1982.
History doesn't repeat itself, but it certainly does.
So they can get payback by losing.
Right. So then we might get both teams trying to lose to each other, which would be not a disgrace, actually. All right. Now a word from our sponsor, ServiceNow.
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Chapter 4: Why are oil prices falling to pre-war levels?
Neil, I feel like we're getting a lot of promises about AI taking over the work we hate doing, but lately it feels like I'm doing more work rather than getting any help.
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To put AI to work for people, visit ServiceNow.com. That's ServiceNow.com. Two powerful earthquakes rocked Venezuela Wednesday evening, killing at least 235 people, while many thousands more are feared dead. The twin quakes struck 39 seconds apart. The first, magnitude 7.2 west of the capital of Caracas at 6 p.m. local time. The next, a 7.5 less than a minute later, just three miles away.
Rapid back-to-back earthquakes is an unusual phenomenon known as a doublet and is particularly dangerous. The earthquakes were already the strongest state of the country in more than 100 years, and they could end up being the deadliest and costliest in Venezuela's history, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
President Trump, who ousted leader Nicolas Maduro at the start of the year, said the U.S. was, quote, ready, willing, and able to help and had instructed federal agencies to move quickly. We will be there for our new and great friends, he wrote on social media.
After years of economic downturn, Venezuela will need all the resources it can get for recovery, and many other countries, including Colombia, Mexico, Chile, and Qatar, have pledged help. Rescue efforts are ongoing this morning amid the rubble of collapsed buildings focused in the northern coastal state of La Guayra.
This region is typically home to a population of 500,000, but was bursting with even more people when the quakes hit because it was a national holiday on Wednesday and everyone was at the beach. Toby, lots of attention on rescue efforts now, but I want to focus on preparation because Google played a surprising role before the earthquake struck.
Yeah, I did not know this, but billions of Android phones are actually a global earthquake detection network. Every Android phone contains an accelerometer. It's the same sensor that kind of measures the physical orientation of your phone. When that accelerometer detects shaking consistent with an earthquake,
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Chapter 5: What are the details behind GTA VI's digital-only release?
Still, the bottom line is prices are going up and it's not hard to point the finger at the AI build-out. The infrastructure boom is so big with over $740 billion in spending committed by big tech this year that it's pushing up prices across the economy. All these input pieces, memory, storage, servers, everything is so in demand that things are just going to get pricier.
Neil, investors did not like seeing Apple capitulate here.
Chapter 6: How does the digital release model impact gamers?
Shares fell more than 6%, setting the stock to its worst day in over a year.
I like the way The Verge put it. Like when it comes to prices, Apple is kind of a reverse canary in the coal mine. It's not necessarily the harbinger of a crisis. It's an indication that a crisis is already full blown. I mean, think about how standardized Apple prices are. You go into an Apple store, you go online, it's AirPods are $299. iMac is this.
It's just the standard until they release a new model, and then you figure out what that price is, and then that's the price seemingly forever. So for Apple to raise prices like this, I mean, it's up to 25% too, is certainly an indication of where we are in what they're calling Ramageddon. It's not just Apple. Electronics prices are going up across the board because of what?
Elon Musk also chimed in and said, this is a, I've never seen anything like this price increase. Analysts from Gartner say, estimate that this year we're going to see hardware price increases ranging from about 10% to 20% laptops, PCs, and smartphones.
this was very strategic though. Obviously the input prices forced Apple's hand here, but the fact that they made Tim Cook do it, he's an outgoing CEO. He did not want to lay the responsibility of that unpopular decision at incoming CEO, John Ternus. So he kind of got it out of the way, taking the fall, if you will.
But then the other purpose that it served is that Apple is equipping their devices to be more AI native going forward. So They're putting more RAM into their iPhone to support their upgraded Siri. So rather than making those AI-enabled products seem pricier, they're kind of blaming it on Cook and then blaming it on the memory shortage.
So consumers are sort of warmed up to the idea that the iPhone might get more expensive. You probably have a $2,000 foldable iPhone coming as well. So I think it was a very strategic move by Apple to do this right now outside of their normal product cycle so they can prep consumers for what's coming.
I'm glad you brought up AI. I mean, we haven't brought it up on the show yet, and it's been about 10 minutes, which must be a record, because there's a raging debate about whether AI will be inflationary or disinflationary among economists. Is AI, is this revolution going to raise prices or is it going to lower prices in the long term?
At least in the short term, we're seeing evidence of AI inflation growing. all this data center build out, you mentioned $741 billion spent this year. They're all going after the same components, the same stuff that goes in your phone and your laptops also goes into a data center.
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