The Vergecast - AI agents are invading your PC

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

Like it or not, you may not be able to avoid the AI agents for long. David and Nilay discuss the ways Microsoft is pushing agents to practically every corner of Windows, and where Google plans to put Gemini 3 now that it's confident it makes the best model. After that, the hosts dig into the ruling in Meta's monopoly case, which has a lot to say about TikTok — and about the state and future of the internet. Finally, in the lightning round, it's time for an extra-long Brendan Carr is a Dummy, some thoughts on domain names, and a quick Boox screen test. Further reading: Google cracked Apple’s AirDrop and is adding it to Pixel phones Talking to Windows’ Copilot AI makes a computer feel incompetent Microsoft is turning Windows into an ‘agentic OS,’ starting with the taskbar Microsoft Agent 365 lets businesses manage AI agents like they do people  Screw it, I’m installing Linux Google is launching Gemini 3, its ‘most intelligent’ AI model yet  Google Antigravity is an ‘agent-first’ coding tool built for Gemini 3  Google’s AI Mode can now help you visualize your travel plans  Google Gemini is getting better at identifying AI fakes | The Verge Google’s Nano Banana AI image model goes Pro and is free to try | The Verge Meta is not a monopolist, judge rules FTC v. Meta: the antitrust battle over Instagram and WhatsApp  Inside the courthouse reshaping the future of the internet Europe is scaling back its landmark privacy and AI laws  Here’s the Trump executive order that would ban state AI laws  Republicans are looking for a way to bring back the AI moratorium Brendan Carr’s FCC launches probe into BBC’s Trump edit | The Verge The FCC wants to roll back steps meant to stop a repeat of a massive telecom hack | The Verge Matter 1.5 brings camera support at last — here’s what it means for your smart home  MSNBC’s website is now MS.NOW  Future Google TV devices might come with a solar-powered remote  Disney loses bid to block Sling TV’s one-day cable passes  Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And they may not all be regulated. The threshold is so high that only 11 cosmetic ingredients have been restricted by the FDA since 1938. This week on Explain It to Me, the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of asking forgiveness and not permission. I'm your friend David Pierce.

You have a hotel's here. Hello. We're in the studio. We're back. The first time I've seen your face in person in like an extremely long time. Is that real? Yeah. Huh.

It's been like a long time. It's very exciting. Glad to be here. Is this what you look like? No. Can I tell you? You've been doing the TikTok beauty filters the whole time on Zoom. I remember this like two years ago.

I came into the studio one time to do a podcast and I had this like hideous cold. And so I had this like hideous cold. And so I had the like sort of deep raspy thing going on. And we got so many comments on YouTube that were like, that's what David sounds like. His microphone at home makes it all different. I was like, no, no, no. This is just like sexy, cold having David. This is like every time I post a photo to Instagram and it's like heavily lightroomed.

And everyone's like, what camera? I'm like it doesn't matter, man. It's an hour in light room. But it's true that you do have an in person, a deep, sexy rasp. People say this. You can't even walk down the street. New York City of David Pierce. Everyone, people of all kinds,

throwing themselves out of cafes and bars, you know, like. So the person who did that once on my second date with my now waif. Thank you. I owe it all to you. All right, we have a lot of stuff to get to you. There's a lot of AI news.

There's a big meta decision that I'm vastly more interested in than you are, and we're going to get to that. We got a bunch of lightning around stuff. Brendan Carr continues to Brendan Carr. He never stops. Just our man is off doing stuff. But we have to start with some breaking news.

And I mean breaking in like every imaginable sense of the word. Just before we started doing this, Google announced that it has made it possible for Android QuickShare and Apple AirDrop to coexist. So on a pixel 10, only for now, but they say they're rolling it out to more phones, you can now send and receive AirDrop stuff with iPhones. And I've seen people testing it on Macs too. So it appears to have just reverse engineered the AirDrop protocol in order to make Android devices. starting with the pixel 10, appear as a regular sender and recipient of Airdrop stuff.

This is awesome. This is amazing. Yeah. And the wildest part about this is that I assumed, I think everyone assumed, this is Google and Apple playing nice because of some regulator somewhere, this is how this stuff usually happens.

Yeah, something EU interoperability. Do you know what I mean? Like that's usually how this goes. Yes. And then it comes out that Google just cracked Airdrop. Like they're saying in their blog post, we just figured it out. And then we asked them, hey, did you work with Apple? And they're like, no, we just figured it out.

They used the phrase, our implementation, like over and over in the statement to us, which I really enjoy it. And there's a question about whether Apple will block it, which I think is somewhat nuclear. I've been wondering about this because, like, the thing that this obviously makes come back up is like the whole Beeper mini thing, right? where like Beeper was this messaging app that was trying to bring all of your messaging apps into one place. And one of the things it did was figure out how to sort of intercept I messages.

And it started by doing that by putting all of your I messages on Mac minis in the cloud, which is like an obvious security disaster. And so Apple sort of picked that fight. But Beeper started to find more and more sort of functional ways to make it happen. But Apple kept picking the fight and kept shutting it down and kept being so aggressive

about it that eventually Bueper was like, I mean, Apple doing cat and mouse with people who find ways to open their products. That's the history of Apple. Yes. You can go back to the iPod. Right. But the difference here is, A, it's Google, right, which is like just the fact that it is a company with the size and resources of Google changes the dynamic. But also Google, with this announcement, put out this like huge detailed security assessment, basically being like, it's fine, Apple. Nothing is insecure. We're not sending it any new places. is they clearly just figured out how to appear like an Apple device. And everything else works the same.

Like that is what they have done. And so I think if it were like more sort of security weird, they're like, we're going to upload it to Google Drive and then share it to your phone. Then it's like, okay, Apple is pretty clearly. We have a bank of Mac minis in Google Cloud that logs in your ICloud. But in principle, Apple has to fight this. Like, if you're Apple and your whole thing is your Waldgarten and you didn't allow this to happen, you have to fight this.

Well, so open questions. Again, this is breaking news. Yeah. Like, we sat down and then we're like, oh, my God, there's literally breaking news as we're sitting down to do the verge of our chest. So open questions I have. Did Apple know? Google and Apple historic partners. Yeah.

Like billions of dollars in shared revenue and shared infrastructure. You mean like not did they give permission, but did they like give a head? up email. Yeah. Okay. Right. Certainly. And then outside of just being partners, sort of in security world, there's a lot of notice that's given in case you're going to find a bug or exploit. That's just part of the sure. I don't know, the etiquette of security researchers. And then all these people just like literally know each other. Right. Like it's not a big place, Silicon Valley. So it's like, did Apple know? Are they letting it happen? If they didn't know,

did Google know? Do you know what I mean? Google's a big place. I will never forget early on in the verge of the run where we told one division of Google that another division of Google was having an event on the same day.

Yes. They've cleaned it up. That was a long time ago. A little. But this is still my general impression of Google, right? It's not like a top down. So like, did the Android team just do this? Did they just fire off a blog?

post and be like, we go back to her job. I mean, I could see it. And then you just like send Rick Austerlo, the G-chat, like 10 minutes before and you're like, hey, just FYI, we found this thing. It's on the security block. Don't even worry about it. Yeah, I mean, in sort of like tech world, this is like the story of the day. Yeah.

Like in consumer tech world anyway, there are many other stories talking about. But did Google do this without telling Apple or did a team in Google do this without telling Google? Like, to me, open questions. Yeah. Obviously, they're giving statements to us. They're answering the questions. presumably Google knew, but like to what level?

Right. Like, did Sundar know? Did Sergei Brain know that AirDrop got cracked today? Like, you know? Sergey would love it. Well, you probably knowing those two. But does that is like, Apple is much more top down. Right.

So is Tim Cook going to show up to the, hey, we should run Apple Intelligence on Gemini meeting being like, you cracked AirDrop? It's so small and so big. Well, it does seem like. like you only do it this way if you're Google. It was both like out of nowhere and completely buttoned up, right? Like it was, it was, they clearly built and implemented and documented this thing in like as thoughtful and technical a way as it could. In order to make clear, this is not just like a sketchy hack that they've done to Apple's

systems that Apple should go fight for the good of the user, right? And that was the thing about the Beeper thing that I thought was really interesting is like, yes, in principle, I would prefer to be able to check my messages from anywhere. But also, it's a completely defensible thing to say, you're taking people's eye messages and you're putting them on Mac minis somewhere. And that's a security disaster. Like, of course it was. But in this case, Google has like, they got a third-party security firm to review it.

They've done the work to make sure this thing is solid. I'm just going to quote our own coverage. Allison wrote this up. She's a great job. She asked Google, how will you anticipate Apple, responding to you cracking AirDrop and Google Spock's said, we always welcome collaboration

opportunities to address interoperability issues between iOS and Android. Forgive this is not permission. This is Google daring Apple to say no. Like, Google figured out how to do this. Maybe by accident, maybe not by accident, built the thing out and is now like, okay, we've built a thing

that is cool and interoperable and objectively good for users. Like, there's been a lot of people in our comments on this story being like, oh my God, this is life-changing. And like it is. Like I live in a house where I use an iPhone and my wife uses an Android phone. And the process of sending pictures to each other is just a nightmare. Yeah. We're like R-CSing pictures to each other all day and hoping that protocol, like it's bad.

And if I could just airdrop things to her, it'd be amazing. This is like such a fundamental like quality of life improvement in people who own smartphones lives. This is why Apple didn't do it. Right. This is the walled garden. This is the thing that they jealously protect most of all is the network effect of your life is better if everyone around. It's Tim Cook saying just buy your mom and iPhone. Just buy your mom and iPhone.

And this is why my first instinct was some regulator somewhere said interoperate. Right. With RCS in particular, it wasn't the EU. It was China. Right. Like the Chinese government said, we're going to do RCS because we don't read everyone's messages. And Apple eventually just had to comply. And that's sort of like under the table, but that is the heart of my Apple eventually.

But Google also mounted this like long and aggressive pressure campaign to get Apple to do it. But it was totally ineffective. Sure. But I just mean from Google's perspective, like it's learning this playbook, right, of like we are going to loudly put the ball in your court where you have to say out loud that you're not willing to do the thing that's good for your users. And so the list, I mean, I'll just make the comparison to RCS. Apple's list for the RCS was RCS isn't good enough. It's not secure enough. The carriers get too much control.

you want to encrypt it. Again, they were basically forced to do it by the government in one of their biggest markets in China. With this, I think the reason you see Google put out a big security like framework and analysis is Apple's go-to defense is we will not compromise the privacy and security of our users. And here's Google being like, here it is, we didn't compromise privacy security users.

And, you know, in the world of policy in these conversations, Apple's retreat to security drives people bananas. There are lots and lots of people. Federal judges have said Apple's retreat to security is inappropriate in many contexts. Yeah, because it is so straightforwardly disingenuous

a lot of times. And also, like, it's not like Apple is doing a perfect job of this anyway. The United States Department of Justice under Biden, but still pursuing the case under the Trump administration, is saying Apple's fallback to security concerns is disingenuous,

it makes them to Apple. list. We will get to whether or not we are good at prosecuting monopoly cases, but that is the argument the government under two administrations has made against Apple. Right. What would you bet happens here? What's the next turn? The reporting I want is who knew what, right? I want to see the email thread. I want to see the email thread. There's no way Google just drop this without giving Apple any kinds of heads up. If they did, I think that changes the dynamics of this completely. Apple not getting a heads up while they're negotiating Gemini to run Apple. intelligence while the fate of the search deal remains sort of murky enough for grabs. This is not great. This is the sort of thing that really and truly pisses Tim Cook off. Yes, it is. I do, I mean, do you think it's, it is theoretically big enough to get in the way of that stuff? Like, that's, that's a different scale of deal and partnership that you wouldn't think would get totally thrown by some engineer reverse engineering theirdrop protocol. I, you know, the hottest company in tech right now is

Nvidia. Apple hates Nvidia. There's, you know, if you're like deep in AI world and you want to run some Nvidia GPUs to do,

if you want to play video games and you want to do Nvidia GPUs and your Mac Pro, you can't. Yeah. Because Apple hates Nvidia, because they hold a grudge from 30 years ago

when Nvidia GPUs in power books were faulty. This is not a company that lets go of grudges. It is like a grudge of a company in a very real thing. That said, if your dependency is on Google in the way that appears Apple's dependencies are on Google, maybe Google is thinking, well, what are you going to do? Yeah. You're on co-pilot? Yeah, right. Are you going to throw away Apple intelligence in order

to get AirDrop? Yeah. Or are you going to trust Sam Altman? Like, you just see sooner being like, go ahead. I think Google as a whole is feeling very powerful right now. Yeah. For some more reasons that we're actually going to get to in a few minutes. But I just, I think this last. This is my takeaway. It might be messy for a minute, but I think it's possible and maybe even likely that this interop of Airdrop just lasts.

Right now it's only on Pixel 10 devices. Google's saying it's going to come to more devices soon. The second this hits Samsung phones, or it's just part of Android, all bets are off. Well, the difference is that if you're Apple and you want to run back to security, what you say is this setting requires you

to open Airdrop to everybody, which is itself a super. security risk. You still have to like initiate sending and receiving. But the only way it works is like you can't just have it open to contacts or whatever. You have to open up yourirdrop to everybody. And you can see how Apple would be like, that's, that's a security risk. And it's like, well, it is a setting you allow on your phone. Yeah. So I don't know. But but I, I'm actually optimistic that this lasts. Or it gets formalized. Or yeah, or it gets formalized, which would be a frankly even better outcome. Like somewhere in Europe, some some bureaucrat is like, oh. like, do this one. That's good. It is possible. Yeah. All right.

So we should talk about some AI stuff because it's been a wild week of AI launches. But also, like, I sort of feel like everyone is losing their mind about AI. We're in this phase where like the world is so frothy. The bubble is so bubbly. Everything is chaos. And there's just the sense of like, you have to do more AI even faster everywhere. or else. And this is just where we are.

And that's the only way I can possibly describe what has been happening with Windows over the last, like, months, but especially, like, this week. So last week we were talking about whether Windows as a consumer brand would persist for our children. We're all very small.

And what Microsoft is doing in gaming and this appearance of retreat from consumers. This week, Microsoft was like, yeah, you guys are right. I don't know how else to explain that. But they're like, yes, you are completely correct about your assertions that we don't care about consumers. And the way that they're sort of making the case that they no longer care is by just junking up Windows with AI ideas in a way that I don't think I've ever seen backlash to Windows ever. Like even Windows 8, like they were trying to sell an idea.

Right. And some people would defend Windows 8. They were in our comments. I remember it well. There's no one in our comments defending we're going to add agents to the task bar in Windows. 12. No, I mean, not only were there, there were people who defended Windows 8, yes, but there was also like an outcry

when they moved the start button from the left to the center. And the outcry was so intense that they moved it back. And they got rid of the they got rid of the start button on Windows 8 for a hot minute. Well, right. That didn't go great either. Yeah. But so the news now is that, I

believe the phrase is a canvas for AI is what Microsoft is trying to turn Windows into. And like, basically the plan here seems to be that every surface and screen and pixel you touch on Windows should be AI-ified in some way. And they're starting with the task bar, the thing at the bottom of the screen, which is now going to have a bunch of like, agentic capabilities and you'll be able to run agents that sort of work in the task bar and they give you some kind of alert when they need your attention and you can check on them, but then they run.

And the big idea here seems to be that you just sit down and just sort of like make demands of all the agents on your computer and they go do stuff. and they tell you when they need you, and that's it. This is going to ruin the user experience of Windows. Like, either Microsoft is 100% right that agents are not only coming, but like basically here, and that we're going to start to do everything on our computer through this one kind of interface, or Windows is going to become completely unusable. And I just don't see another option here at this point. So the bet on agents, I think, is reflective of the fact that Microsoft,

is a big software developer. Sure. They have a lot of people who write software all day long. And it is largely true that tools like cursor in cloud code can do a bunch of things in the background for you

in software development world. And I, the outcome of that is interesting in software development world. There's a lot of people who will argue about quality of the work that's produced whether or not everyone should be vibe coding all day. I saw a really good joke that's like, with AI, two engineers can now produce

the technical debt of 50 people in one. That's amazing. That's very good. It's very funny. But it is true, largely. And I've talked to a bunch of developers. They're like, yeah, we needed to run a bunch of unit tests. We told CloudCo to do it.

It just did in the background. And I did some more important things. And if that is, right, you're seeing your own company, software development shop, being transformed by this, you're like, oh, agents are real. And then you try to apply that model to arbitrary tasks, not software development. And quickly it becomes clear that maybe the agentic revolution does not actually. exist. And the example that I keep using, the thing I keep calling the canary

in the coal mine is smart home assistants. Yep. Where, you know, if you kind of like squint, you're like, the smart home is just a bunch of APIs. And you should be able to go use them. And then you're like, Alexa, turn on the lights. And it's like, who are you? And then none of this word, Google hasn't shipped to a Gemini. Google might be in the lead with Gemini. And

Google Assistant can't pull it off yet. Right. You're like, use Windows. I don't. I mean, it's tricky because on the one hand, it makes total strategic sense for Microsoft, right? Because, like, Microsoft is going to win the AI wars in a big way because it has Azure. That's already happening. But if you want to be the, like, the front end to some kind of AI service, you need a place through which people interact with your products, right?

I try that with Bing. That didn't work. The whole, like, make Google dance thing didn't amount to anything. I mean, I got two great episodes of Dakota. You did. You got, it was a big, shiny moment for Neely and not a big shiny moment for Bing. You got more market share out of that than Bing. It's, you know what I mean?

But then they're trying to put this stuff into office, but they're discovering over and over that there is nowhere that workflows are more cemented than office. Wait, I kind of disagree with this. I've seen a lot of folks say copilot in Excel is actually quite helpful. Yes. So one of the things, one of the things you've seen, I was actually thinking about the, We talked about Adobe a couple of weeks ago, where one of the things Adobe is starting to train its AIs to do is just use Photoshop for you. And you can just say in words what you want this very complicated app to do, and it will go do it for you. And I think the upside in Excel is the exact same, right?

Like, you code in Excel. Like, in a very real way, people just sit in there writing Python code all day. So to be able to, like, vibe Excel is actually pretty powerful. And I think very good. And I think one of the things we're learning about this bubble or this moment is, the pure AI system may never become digital god, may never just have perfect arbitrary capabilities. But the hybrid system,

where you have a natural language interface that works with an app like Photoshop or Excel in predictable ways, and they've been designed to work together, might be very powerful. Yes. There's still a lot of problems. I don't want to...

That future has not been actually built. We've just seen a lot of shots. And some of those shots are more promising than others. Yeah. But all of that is more promising then you will have a general purpose digital god that just hangs out in Windows. But if you think there's a chance, that's the thing.

Of course you have to put it into Windows, right? Like, you could try to do it with Edge and Microsoft's kind of trying to do it with Edge. Copilot is all over Edge. Copilot is all over Office. But like, what is Microsoft's most valuable surface by a mile? It's the thing that runs your computer. Oh, I'd say this is where I disagree with you.

This is why I think the evidence is they don't care about consumers. Because if you don't care, then you're like, we'll take this random shot at Windows. Right? So you're saying Apple doesn't just ruin the iPhone out of the blue, right? They're not like, this isn't important. Microsoft is like, our business is Azure. Our business is barely gaming.

Our business is barely Windows. Like, I think Nadella has never really cared about Windows, like fundamentally. Like, a long, long time ago when he first got the job of CEO, he told me that if he could rename Windows, he would rename it to Azure Edge. This is like a hundred years ago. It's not a good name. And Windows has waxed and waned throughout fine.

He got that job a long time ago. But his mindset has always been Azure is the center of the universe, not Windows. They turned Microsoft into a cloud company. That was the goal. And he's been enormously successful doing that. I'm just saying the evidence that you don't care about Windows is you're like, we're going to re-architect Windows on a bet

because it's fundamentally not important to us. But also it is, I still. think it's the highest upside play here. Oh yeah, that's what I mean. It's high risk, high reward. Sure. Yeah, I'll give you that. The cost of this is nothing. No, because if you fail, you're like Windows sucks.

Where are you going to go to Linux, which we will come around to. No, you're not. We're going to come around to. Okay. But no, but I think it's possible that there are, I can't think of a Microsoft product that it has higher hardware switching costs for most people right now than Windows. Like literally, you're deploying to your giant company with 10, of thousands of people. Like, the kiosks in the airport are running windows. Like, where are you

going to go? But those are, that's what I mean. Those are enterprise windows installations. That's part of your enterprise deployment. That's Microsoft the B2B company. Yeah. I'm saying Microsoft doesn't care about consumers. There, you open up a new cheap Dell PC. And it's just full of like super clippies being like, I've heard you've been interested in the task. Like, they don't care. And every time you type Azure makes a nickel. Like that's the, that's, that's the play. I totally agree with that. I think that's, I think that's, this. This is evidence that the consumer market as it exists today is not important to them. Yes.

And if this works, maybe it becomes really important to them because they have executed the platform shift, which is instead of having applications, you have an agent, and the agent goes and uses the building blocks of applications in the cloud. Which is, we ran the clip last week. That is Nadella's vision of the future of computing. I don't know that any of that's true. I do know that Antonio reviewed co-pilot in Windows as it exists today. And boy, does none of that work? Nope. This is an ongoing theme that, like, a fun thing that we've started doing here at the verge that I very much appreciate is just doing the things they do in the commercials.

And it goes generally very poorly. Let me just let you this one clip from Antonio's video that he did for us. How do I go there? That's Rio Secretto. You'd fly into Cancun. How do I go there? To explore the downloads folder, you'll need to bring the File Explorer window to the front. How do I go there?

To visit the Grand Cayman Crystal Caves, you can plan a trip to the Cayman Islands and book a guided tour. How do you know this Crystal Cave is in Grand Cayman? I deduced it from the file name of the image you're viewing. The cave is actually in Mexico, but then I noticed it's just reading the file name. So then I tried changing it, and now that cave is in New Jersey. To visit the New Jersey Crystal Caves, head to the Sterling Hill Mining Museum in Augustburg. It's very good. Everyone should feel bad about this. It's not great.

No. And it is very funny that we are just doing the things that are in the ads. Yes. And I mean, again, there's like the leap it's actually going to take to make your computer understand when you say, how do I get to there, is so much bigger than anybody wants to understand. And that there are so many complicated like breakthroughs required to understand and process and deliver that input and output that we're just not close. to it. I want to say the answer

Open file name Open Filexfor is a valid answer in the mind of a computer. Sure. That's a, you know,

that's where the file is. Yes. But that's the thing is like it's so much of this stuff, I actually think that's a perfect example because so much

of this stuff pretends to be magical and complex and in reality it's reading the file name. Do you know what I mean? Like this is all mirage on top

of like very basic technology infrastructure. It's like we talked about this with the the rabbit stuff from a year or so ago, and it was like, we have this large action model that can go use. And it's like, no, we've had technology that can click a button on a website for you for a pretty long time. And it turns out it is exactly that sophisticated and no more sophisticated. And if they move the button, you're in real trouble. And this stuff isn't getting better. We're just getting better at making it look shiny on top of it reads the file name. Well, this doesn't, I don't think this looks good

on top of being, I can't do what it says in the ads. Like, this is real trouble for Microsoft, right? If they ship a version of Windows to consumers or people in the holidays buy PCs and all the advertising

and all the marketing is like, try this thing. And then it just stops working. You know where you end up? You end up with Siri and Alexa. Yeah. Where everyone stop doing anything except setting timers and asking for music

and hoping that that work. If, you know, the promise of these chatbots, and I think we see it with chat GPT is it's a magic box of which you can ask anything. And then you see people just ask for everything, down to, will you marry me, Kevin Roos on the front page of the York Times? Sure.

And there's a turn here where I think these companies are going to start showing people the wall. And the turn is agents. The turn is the promise that the computer can go off and do stuff and come back and return, like, some result that's good. When even locally, it's not even good at recognizing what's on the screen. Which, by the way, is a solved problem. Yes. Look at this YouTube video and tell me what microphone that is and let me buy. it is a problem that Google lens solved. It's a problem that Microsoft has solved. And it,

for some reason, doesn't work in this context. And I have no idea why. Well, and the thing for agents for me is the way you describe what's compelling about these things to people is totally true, but it's only true in the course of like open-ended conversation. Right. Like a thing I keep hearing from people in the AI world is you get so much grace being a bad product if you're fun to talk to. Right. And that is, that is in so many. ways, that's the runway. Like, as long as it is compelling to use, people will forgive it lots of things. But there's nothing compelling to use about me directing an agent to do something. I now have a different bar for you, which is, did you do the thing that I asked you to do? And that's,

there is no, there's no, there's no, like, possibility of, well, we had a nice time. You know what I mean? Like, you made up one of the movies you recommended, but it was, like, super fun to do this together. A post I saw about Gemini 3 was her a developer who says they prompted Gemini 3 to refactor a bunch of code from Claude. It did a lot and it was beautiful and it talked a lot of shit about Claude's code. And then they're like, this is really great. All of this is wrong. That's bad. At some point, I mean, this is what you always talk about with reviews, right? It's like at some point it either does the job or it doesn't. And being delightful and confident and silly and sycophantic along the way only matters until there is a job that you either did do or didn't do. And this is

what we're running to with agents is it's really simple to evaluate whether an agent did the job. It either did the job or it didn't. And we're now nearing a point where we're actually going to evaluate the success of AI models on whether they can do stuff. And like, spoiler alert, they mostly can. I've been thinking about this. There are some places where they can. And I think, again, the point I would make is when you put them in constrained environments, mostly enterprise environments, they can do it. And there is a lot.

We get a lot of feedback from listeners who work in enterprise environments, who build systems, like internal systems for companies. And they are saying to us, we can have an agent go and ping an MCP server we built for a store of data over here. Sure. And it comes back with some result and like, this is way better than brittle APIs. That's that, that's that, that's all working. That's just software. That's just software. That's software stuff.

Yeah. But it's not this agent is a general purpose employee of our company, which is the bet Microsoft is making. Correct. They launched a new product this week called Agent 365, which lets businesses manage their agents like their people. we're making big bets on ever-increasing capabilities of these AI tools to do stuff. And maybe consumer is just harder. Maybe it is all just going to be the future of enterprise software is a bunch of agents, like, interlinking databases in a way that was hard before. Although I suspect a lot of consultants are going to get very rich telling businesses they need to make their databases more compliant with agents.

Yes. But in consumer world, these products don't work. Like a joke we have running right now is like basically every week we can do. Did this agentic consumer product work? Then the answer is no. Like, they just don't work. The browsers don't work. Right.

Like, they, they come close to working, and then they don't work all the time, and then you might as well have just done the browsing yourself. Well, the browser is actually a fun example, because, like, if the thing that you want your browser to do is deliver you information about the tab that you're looking at, it's actually pretty good at that. Right?

Like, that's a constrained amount of context. It is a piece of information. It can sort of take in all at once, and you can summarize this webpage for me. And they're generally very good at that. at that. As soon as you're like, I have this thing, this thing, this thing, and this thing, can you collate all of that into a spreadsheet? Like, no, it just cannot. And Tonya has an example where he's asking it to just tell him which specs in a laptop benchmark chart are

bigger and it can't do it. Right. And this is the thing where, like, I think your enterprise example is a good one because basically what they're saying is like, these agents take a thing that I had to sort of manually build a bunch of if then statements to do. And it took a bunch of steps and it was brittle, and this thing is able to just sort of like barrel through the process and accomplish it, fine. What that is is like a single repeatable goal over and over and over again, right? Like AI models are pretty good at that. If you give it a box this big, you can teach it how to do a thing.

That makes sense to me. What all of these companies are promising is these like massive, multi-step open-ended tasks and they just immediately fall apart. Yeah. Like if, and what somebody said to me one time, and I've been thinking about it ever since, is they're like, if you have an AI model that has to do six things in a row and it does all six

of those things at 95% accuracy, that's pretty good. And also, it's almost certainly going to fail. You just stack this possibility of failure on every imaginable step. And because I can't control it from one thing to the next, it just falls apart.

Just none of this is for us. Like, I think you're right that this is just Microsoft being like... It's worth of the shot. Like, I don't think Microsoft sees a, achievable path to recapture the high end of the laptop market or whatever, wherever you think the most lucrative part of the desktop computer market is. I think that's why PanisPena works on Amazon now. Yeah.

And this is your shot. If you're like, you can just talk to Windows. This is the dream for some people. We get a lot of feedback that's like, I don't want to talk to my computer. But for a lot of people just talk to the computer and I'll do stuff for you is the dream. It has been the dream. And maybe this is a thing that allows Windows to do that. You might as well take the shot.

Sure. My problem is you shipped copilot vision, which is apparently just incompetent. Yeah. Just fully drunk and doesn't work. And I don't know why you would take that shot. I don't know why you would advertise these computers on the NFL. I don't know. You'd saw these computers at the hall.

Because they're just going to turn in this year again. And this is my belief that we are witnessing Microsoft go through one of the hardest pivots that has ever gone through. And they're just not talking about it. Yeah. They're just becoming an enterprise company. Yeah. The end.

I mean, I think to a large reason, they've always been an enterprise company. Now they're just fully not pretending there are anything else anymore. Yeah. And I think that's a big culture change as much as anything. But this is all happening next to Google, the other company out here. Wait, I got to say the Linux thing first. Oh, sure.

Oh, my gosh. Nathan Edwards, our reviews editor, we've been talking about all this. And he's like, I'm going to just install Linux. And I was like, you have to do it. You have to do it. And he's like, I don't have time to do it. I was like, well, you have to at least write that you're going to do it. So he wrote, screw it.

I'm switching to Linux. Which in the animal. of tech headlines is just, you could just do that any day you want. Any day for the past 20 years, you could write, it's time to switch to Linux because I'm mad at Windows, and then the thing that happened happened,

which is like 500 people left angry comments, argue out Linux. But interestingly, the tone, even of the people who are like, this will never happen. There was somebody who left a comment which was just every year since, like, 1991, crossed out, and it said 2026,

we'll be here at the Linux and stop. That's choice. That's like a great verge. fast-fuck. The number of people who said that go ahead and try, basically, was the same as everyone. That ratio is very high. The number of people said, go ahead and try, but I understand why. That's new. Sure. That's very new. And that is just a weird outcome. Right. And some of the, we're dropping support for Windows 10. I've got a laptop that I don't need to upgrade because it's just fine. I might as well put Linux on it because Microsoft is dropping me. Some of the, like,

gamers in particular are like, I just need an operator. I don't, I just need to run Steam. on this thing. The fact that Steam exists and you can run it on Linux and you can play Windows games, as Sean told us a great length last week. There's something that we're going to end up covering Linux a lot this year.

It's really upsetting. I feel really good about it. I feel really good about it. I don't know what shape it will take. Let us know how you want us to cover Linux. My instruction is basically like try stuff. Yeah.

I think Nathan is accidentally. sign himself up for a Linux diaries. Fine. But I, you know, we're just going to take some a shot of covering one. Like, tell us what you think is most interesting because we don't know. Yeah. And I think I know what's interesting. But like that has nothing to do with what the Linux community thinks is interesting. Well, there is, I mean, it's, it's an interesting casualty of this change that you're talking about at Microsoft that it would like completely upend everyone's computer buying choice. And like maybe maybe there is a world in which Linux becomes a thing you at least look at

when you're buying a computer because if Windows is no longer the thing that almost everything runs on, that is obviously just sort of the default choice unless you want to spend a lot of money on a Mac, where do you go? Google appears just continuing to do weird stuff trying to combine ChromeOS and Android into whatever mess that's

going to be. Mac is over here. I mean, this puts the idea of the cheaper Mac that we've been talking about into really interesting perspective. It's right there for it. Yeah, because now this is Apple saying, oh, this market is about to be completely abandoned. And maybe we can just show up with a $600 Mac and gobble it up. Why not?

Just to me, as Sean actually said this about NVIDIA last week. He's like, invidia used to be a gaming company. And now gaming isn't even on the chart of its revenue. Like, it's so de minimis compared. Like, this is happening to Microsoft too. Okay. Well, that's a lot of opportunity for someone to seize. Sure.

Anyway, I'm not saying 2026. is the year of Linux desktop. I'm saying maybe you could say that to us and then we would cover it. Somebody please cut words together that makes NELA say 2026 is the year of Linux

on the desktop and we will share that widely on our channel. It's going to have a flicker. We're going to see a little flicker of Linux coverage on the verge of this year. This is going to be like when you decided to go all in on decks

and that lasted like an hour and a half. One train ride of Neli using Dex and it all falls apart. We should talk about Google for a minute. We should talk about Google. Google launched Gemini 3 this week, which was like a big new model. This was hotly anticipated. Lots of people I'm talking about it for a while.

And Google is pretty bullish on Gemini 3. It like immediately rolled it out everywhere, which is a big new thing. It's now in search. It's in the Gemini app. It's available for developers. It is making Gemini 3 its model everywhere, which is not necessarily how Google has always operated. It called it the most intelligent, the most factually accurate. it had some thoughts about, what was it?

It was flattery, was the word it said it used less of. Oh, nice. We're entering this really interesting phase. It's made me think a lot about the way all the different smartphone companies think about photos, where you end up having to make like a qualitative choice about what this is supposed to feel like. We're doing this with the AI assistance, too. Like, there is a real sense that all of these companies have to, like, sit in a room and decide, what is this thing supposed to be?

And that's just weird. And we're going to land in strange places, and these companies are, like, hiring philosophers. Hayden Field has been out, like, interviewing the people whose job it is to decide, like, what AI models believe. Like, it's crazy stuff. But Gemini 3 Pro immediately jumped to the top of the charts. Grock 4.1 had just come out and was, like, at the top of the L.M. Arena charts. It had fewer votes, but a high score was the whole thing. And then Gemini 3 Pro just shows up and is, like, back at the top.

What's up? Yeah. Google definitely thinks it's one. Like, they're posturing around Gemini 3 is, we're done now. We have defeated all, yeah. You can't beat us. Right. And Google is also doing an increasingly good job of reminding people that it has a massive set of, like, huge intrinsic advantages.

A lot of people in talking about the fact that Google trained this model on TPUs, its own custom-built silicon, which is a huge deal. Because it means they don't have to just go and fight with the rest of the world for Nvidia stuff. it was talking a lot about all the stuff that is already built into. The Gemini app, I think it was 650 million monthly users. We'll see what that means. I'm suspicious of all of these user numbers in very big ways. We're soon to run out of people on Earth with phones. Yeah, like whatever.

But anyway, so it's talking about the integrations that it has with all these other apps. It can put it in search, which immediately puts it in front of tons of different people. I think AI mode and search is mostly very bad, but it's there. Lots of people are using it. that that's your user number. Yeah, right. So, but Google is in this place now where, like, it has the tech stack, it has the distribution, and if it's right that it has the model, it can just start to run away.

Like, the biggest thing Open AI has going for it, if all of that is true, OpenAI has, like, a huge brand lead with ChatGPT, just because ChadGPT is like the Kleenex of this space in a real way. But if Google can actually continue to, like, build and sustain being the best model, there's kind of nothing else that someone can take away from it at this point. Yeah, I would compare and contrast Google with Microsoft pretty directly here. Microsoft made the big bet on OpenAI. They were going to be the winner.

Open AI, you know, until recently ran only on Azure. So if you wanted access to the cutting edge model, you were running on Azure. And Microsoft was going to collect all the money. And then Microsoft is like, we're going to do Bing. AI will be in all of our products. We have the lead. we have access to the best model. That relationship has totally fractured,

and now there's a committee of anonymous theologians who will decide if St. Walton and make God. I don't know what the hell is going to go on. Google, in the meantime, right, was the laggard. That caught a lot of shit for inventing all this technology, for inventing the transformer, for writing attention is all you need,

and they're not doing anything with it really. They've since caught up. They might have the leading edge model, and the thing that they have the most is revenue that isn't AI. Right. They just run big businesses. So if they get their AI shots wrong, they're fine. Then they also have ideas about what to use AI for.

Right. Like in real meaningful ways, they have ideas on what you should deploy AI against. And maybe you hate those ideas. But they have those ideas and take those shots. And I think some of their ideas, even in the context of agents, are fascinating. Like agents, the general purpose agents that we're talking about might not work on Windows. But Google is showing off, like, anti-gravity. its entire integrated development environment for agents,

which appears to work well. Right? They're showing off new kinds of canvas in Gemini to one-shot vibe code apps, which are more interesting than ever. And it's like, I don't know if any of that stuff is good. I have mixed feelings about all of it. Sure.

But they're closer to executing the vision that Microsoft says it has than Microsoft is for sure. Yeah, I think that's right. And Google just has more surfaces that people use in which to put that stuff. Right? Like, I think the AI mode is the one I keep bringing up because it just, it's, it's, we're so

close and it would be so easy for Google to just tick the box that switches the default search thing from search results to AI mode. And like, that is coming. That's the end of the web. That's the end of the web. It is a complete change for Google's business model, but like, it's coming. That is, that is the turn Google is looking forward to making and it will make the minute it is able.

I was talking to a very smart listener of this show who very, very dire. prediction said the web maybe has the open web maybe has 250 days left goodness what's in 250 days just it was just like a yeah just an amount of time less than a year I think that you know smart viewer if you care to correct me you can tell me what exactly yeah but the flip the switch is going to flip that strikes me as increasingly not crazy uh and we should spend a lot of time talking about what that means but the the flip side of it is like it is like it is like Google has talked a lot about, and I went to a briefing right before the Gemini 3 launch, and they talked a lot about the bet they made really early on in doing a multimodal model.

Like, this is the thing Google has always talked about with Gemini, that this is not just text in and text out. It's not just an image in, image out model. They wanted to put all of this stuff into one place, which made it the work harder. It makes the models more complicated. It makes like some of the possibilities for problems much bigger. But it means if you can get all the parts right, you have built one thing that can do and be everything. And if this stuff is going to work in the way that like the agent

stuff we're talking about is going to work, it's going to need that kind of like sort of polymath abilities. And it really seems like Google is at least one full order of magnitude further down that road than almost anybody right now. It's hard to measure. You know, I, you know, Open Iowa

will tell you that GPT5 is multimodal. They will. Sure. Do you believe anything that they say? Like, who knows, right? Yeah. I just think the proof is, a pudding. Yeah. Like, this thing is only just out. The reason I want to compare it to Microsoft

is you see Microsoft say a lot of things, born of a lot of confidence of being first. Yes. But they are tied to a company and a model that is now sort of openly competing with them. And they are maybe less in control of their destiny. They're also pivoting to being this enterprise company. They maybe don't care about the polish of the consumer products. Meanwhile, Google is like just sort of diligently moving ahead in a way that is totally surprising frugal. Right. This company is more organized than I can ever remember it being. Like, is it organized? Around the time of I.O., this past I.O., definitely the notion that all of the executives

had been turned over came up several times. Like, he's like, like, the idea that Sundar fired everybody and put in new people. And gave them very clear instructions. It came up more than a few times. Yeah, I believe it. But I think like Emma Rothsch for us wrote a great piece where she did the thing and tested a bunch of the stuff. And like, it actually works. You can build. stuff, the sort of one-shot interactive visualizations that Gem and I is able to do, which is one

things I talked about, like this canvas feature you're talking about, where I think she had one thing where she asked it to create a 3D visualization of the difference in scale between a subatomic particle, an atom, a DNA strand, a beach ball, the Earth, the Sun, and the galaxy. And it, like, it, like, did it, which is

nuts. And it, the visualization looks pretty good. It's not, like, incredible, but it does the job. And this is the kind of thing that is, like, if you want to imagine what the step is past search, it's not a bunch of search results collated into a paragraph, it's this. This is how you beat search and destroy the web. And this is very much what Sundara is the hottest about at I.O. Yeah. The future of search results is one shot apps that do what you want. Yeah. I'm going to make something out of your search results for you. That is... It is unclear to me

how many times I want an app to be delivered when I ask a question of search. All right, here's what I I'm going to say. I have the Google Home app with Gemini in it. So I'm obviously not home. I'm in the studio. Correct. David. Confirmed. In his sexy voice. So it's suggestion when I click the ask box, ask your house. The first suggestion I gave me was broadcast its dinner time on all speakers. Do it. I dare you. Do it. It's like, it's so, like, aren't you AI? Shouldn't you know that I'm not at home? And it's nowhere close to dinner. It's also four o'clock. Yeah. That one's uncomplicated. This is a horrible idea. I'm doing great, everybody.

All right, I'm going to ask you the question. I'm always asking. How many lights do I have? That's a good one. And it's going to think for quite a while. Yeah. It says I have 27. This is a different answer.

Okay. Okay. I'm just going to show you the last time I asked the question. Okay, Neil, I asks, how many lights do I have total? You have 29 lights in total. How many lights do I have? You have 27 lights in your home. What is happening?

This is what I'm concerned. confused about. That's the same question twice in a row. It sure is. I asked it earlier before this and I asked it just now just to see because it's never consistent. This is where we are. It's always confused about whether I want the lights that are on or off or just the lights that exist. By the way, the technically right answer to that question is you have 20, 30 some lights connected to Google Home. But obviously many more lights than that. Yeah. All of which is a thing that it is perfectly equipped to know. Right. There are this many lights connected to the system that I have access to, but it can't count. Right. And I think it can't count because sometimes those lights get unplugged or whatever. Like there's just something about the smart home where I try to use the AI as an agent over and over and over again, run around my house and literally push these buttons. They're all in the same place. And they've been in the same place connected to the back end of Google Assistant for a long time. And Gemina is like, I, like, I. I don't, I'm drunk. Yeah, let's talk about what you mean when you say. Yeah. Have you met Kevin Ruse? Yeah.

And I can tell you, man, canary in the coal mine. For all this agent stuff, to me, that is, it is just fully the canary in the coal mine. I think you're right. Can I connect that to one other idea before we take a break? Sure. Meta's chief scientist, Jan Lecun, just left meta this week. He is maybe one of the main proponents of the idea that LLMs are not the pathway to AGI. Right.

You can't get superintelligence out of doing language. Gary Marcus is the other one that everyone knows. But the idea that you can't just do language to get yourself to true intelligence has been burbling in the background for quite a while. I've actually asked him to his face. His language is the same as intelligence. And he was like, why was that the first question, Eli? And you said, tell me. That was a hard open two years ago when I interviewed him.

And he was like, you know, a Gemini's multimodemort. That was his answer. Yeah. There's a chance that LLMs can't do it. Yeah. more than a real chance. And the people who are saying LLMs can't do it are getting pushed out of the companies.

And I look at some of this agent stuff and I'm like, this is why I think LLM's can't do it. This is the evidence because you can't language yourself through how many lights are on. Right. You actually have to know what you're looking at. And even the people who are building it

acknowledged that that's actually the hardest version of this problem is those supposedly simple computer tasks that you just can't language your way through. Yeah. Yeah. And I think like meta, speaking of companies that can just afford to fund AI projects to infinity because it has money coming from somewhere else,

I think has fallen behind in a pretty big way, and I think that is not an accident thing that the Kuna's leaving. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's a company I both have no faith in and continue to keep an eye on. But we should take a break,

and then we're going to come back and we're talking about meta a bunch more because there is a big, we've talked a lot about this antitrust trial, and it is over in the dumbest way. The dumbest way. So we're going to take a break. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Framer.

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Start building at MongoDB.com slash build. All right, we're back. So this meta monopoly trial, which is basically, was it illegal and was it monopoly maintenance for meta to acquire Instagram in particular, has been running for five years? It's been five years.

I think it's been five years. Wow. Went to trial earlier this year. We finally got a decision this week. I would say the decision, decision is fairly straightforward and it amounts to meta is not a monopoly. Why did we even do this? Would you say that's fair? Yeah. Well, no, I mean, it's fair in the sense that the B line of that was TikTok, dude. Yeah. Have you seen the internet? Yeah. So, but the reason I want to talk about this is because, A, I think it's really interesting that meta fought this huge fight. And what I've been hearing for, I mean, years now,

is that there was going to be the outcome of the Google search trial and there was going to be the outcome of the meta trial. And the whole like startup economy was waiting around to see what was going to happen because like it's been harder to, you know, buy your company, which is why all these like weird reverse acquire things are happening. Nobody was sure what the vibes were going to be like for big companies acquiring smaller companies until this. And he comes out, Judge Bostberg in this and says basically not only did meta not buy Instagram and then do shady stuff with it that in the world we live in in

2025 meta buying Instagram is like not a problem at all which is which is wild and I think the thing I really like about this is reading through the opinion you and I both love a good court opinion I would say and this is Bozberg who is he's been at the forefront of many Trump administration controversies Trump has called for him to be impeached actually and was also the one who was very loudly trying to tear Google into threads in the epic case. Yeah. But this one, I think this opinion essentially amounts to like the most cogent explanation of how the internet works that I've read in a long time.

And it just, I just really liked it. And I just want to talk through it. It is, by the way, for the listener, it's remarkable that we sat down and David's like, I want to talk about a court case. And I was like, justice means nothing in America anymore. Why even bother? And he's like, no, we have to talk about it. A stunning reversal here on the virtual.

I know. I hate this for me. You're really taken with this. I know. This is awful. But I think the basic thrusts of the case, right, was the government was arguing that meta competed in this very specific, very small market of personal social networking, right?

Like where you go on the internet to hang out with your friends? That was the market that they wanted. And Snapchat was in that market. Miwi was in that market. Like famously, me, we, an app no one has heard of or ever used, became like a key part of this case. and meta spent the whole trial just basically saying the word TikTok out loud

that like of course we compete with TikTok what on earth are you talking about the sheer existence of TikTok and YouTube mean we can't possibly be a monopoly on the internet and that's essentially where Judge Bosberg landed was like he said over and over that like at the beginning of this case maybe there was a time even five years ago

when this case was first filed that Meta and Facebook in particular and Instagram existed in this way. Now it doesn't. And then the whole rest of the opinion is basically about the incredible sameness of TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. That is in its way is a thunderous dunk on the internet.

Oh, it really is. But it, I mean, but it's just burn after burn after burn on these things. Can I just read you the very beginning? Like the first paragraph, it just brings me such joy. By the way, I think he got it wrong, but you love it. Go ahead.

You think you got it wrong? I'll tell you why, but you go ahead. You're an idiot. Wow. All right. It's been a long week. He writes, believing that the only constant in the world was changed, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Oh, sure, yeah.

Yeah, you know, that guy, posited that no man can ever step into the same river twice. This is the first line of this opinion. What are we doing? Anyway, in the online world of social media, the current runs fast, too. You know somebody wrote that. It was like, bah. The landscape that existed only five years ago when the Federal Trade Commission brought this antitrust suit has changed markedly. While it once might have made sense to partition apps into separate markets of social

networking and social media, that wall has since broken down. All right. So if I was Andrew Ferguson, the pretty dumb head of Trump's FTC, sure. And I do want to point this up. This case was brought under the Biden administration, but it's the Trump FTC who had to carry it through. So Lena Con brings this case, but Andrew Ferguson, whose personality is, I hate big tech, he's the one who like runs it through. Yeah. And he hates big tech. And he hates big tech. because it's woke. They're not, the Trump administration

are not full of great lawyers. Correct. If you pay attention to how they, how they succeed in general. Yeah. They're not great at it. If I'm Andrew Ferguson,

I read that first paragraph and I know what my appeal is, which is it doesn't matter if the effects of the illegal action don't seem to matter anymore. They were still illegal when they happened. So the illegal conduct here is by meta.

Yes. They looked at a small competitor that threatened them, and they anti-competitively found their weight into buying them. The same with WhatsApp. And that precluded competition in the market. And yes, you can fast forward and you can say, you know what? Meta forgot to buy TikTok.

And so now TikTok exists. And meta had no shot of buying YouTube, and now YouTube exists. And so it doesn't matter that they bought Instagram once upon time. That is basically the same as being like, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to drive a car into your house. Many years later, someone else will fix the house.

So I'm no longer in trouble for driving. a car into your house. Perfect. No, so, I think that is, it's just the, it is the thing that you, the, the government has said they're going to appeal this. Yeah. The FCC has said they're going to appeal this. That is the, that will be the nature of the appeal.

Let me try to run the other side of that argument. If I understand the opinion correctly, it's basic counter to that is that actually what has happened over the last five years in particular is not that all these companies have chased meta and finally caught up or whatever. is that actually meta has spent the last five years chasing these other companies, right? Because there's this whole chunk of the opinion that's about basically how things changed, right? Like people's phones got faster, their networks got faster, the cameras got better, whatever. And so suddenly you have this thing where the sort of world around these apps has changed.

And it changed away from Facebook. And it changed away from what Instagram used to be. It's all TikTok now, right? Like this thing is very focused on reels because I think as this opinion understands meta, and I think correctly, its only product now is reels and everything else is just a surface onto which you put reels.

And that is a bleak way to think about what meta is up to and I think it's not wrong. And there was this big shift away from like high percentage of people coming to see content made by their friends on that platform

to they call it, I think they call it unconnected content. It's just stuff that is based on interests that I have and things that I have watched before. It doesn't matter who I follow. It doesn't matter where I come, from. It doesn't matter who made it. It's just, it is all this interest-based graph. And TikTok shows up

in 2018 in the U.S. and just absolutely starts to eat these services alive. Because what it says is, like, who cares about the friends you've had on Facebook for 15 years? They're not interesting. I have this other thing you might like. Does a really good job of that and actually makes all of these other apps chase it. Yeah. So it's not, I think there is this real perception that actually meta is not operating from a position of like incredible super competitive strength, but of like weakness. And like it's losing. And it has had to race to catch up with this thing that just beat it. Sure.

I don't disagree that that chronology. I will just point out the most important part of that chronology is that TikTok exists at the scale it does the United States because bite dance, which is connected if not controlled by the Chinese government in important ways, showed up in America and bought. millions, if not billions of dollars in TikTok advertising on meta platforms. Yes. It juiced its whole platform on Facebook ads. That's what it did. It just bought users until it was competing with Instagram. And Meadow was too stupid to know that was happening.

That's the only thing you can say about that. Meta had a giant app install business and ByteDance was like, here's some Chinese government money. Now we have a competitor to you. Yeah. That is not a reasonable thing to ask any organic competitor to do. Sure. You can't do it.

And if that is the only condition by which a real competitor to reels can exist, then you don't have a competitive market. You simply do not. Yeah. And the one time that that was happening was when Instagram was taking off. And Mark Zucker said a bunch of emails being like, every generation has a sharing dynamic and they have it and we don't. I'm going to buy them.

And he did it for WhatsApp too. And obviously this generation has a sharing dynamic would take. TikTok. Right. And he said to clone it. But you can't be like, bite dance showed up, spent a billion dollars on advertising so the market is competitive. That makes meta being wise enough to shut down Instagram not illegal. Sure. But YouTube is the other part of this, right? Because I think the other Because by the way, you know, our headline is meta is not a monopolist, which is sort of like the big takeaway of Yeah. But like the case is not, are you a monopoly? Being a monopoly is fine. The case is, did you act anti-competitively right through monopoly when you did some stuff? And very specifically

this stuff was by Instagram and WhatsApp. The remedy is spin off Instagram. And I think the judge is saying, or the proposed remedy from the FTC was spin off Instagram and WhatsApp. And then the judge is saying, no, you don't have to, you're fine. Like there's nothing but Instagram. It does sound like what you're arguing is they just argued, the FTC argued this case completely wrong. because the case, like, in practice, really ended up not being about that. Like, for whatever reason, the actual meat of the case ended up being, are you or are you not competitive with TikTok and YouTube in particular? It was like...

It was denied market definition. Yeah. And is it is the idea of, like, places that you hang out with your friends distinct from places you go to be entertained? And I think in that case, if that's the argument, I think Judge Bosberg absolutely came the correct opinion, which is no, they're identical. They are the same thing. They have absolutely collapsed into each other. Where people go to hang out with each other is in group chats. And what they do in group chats is like send TikToks to each other. But there's this line

in there. And he says, I just always really like this. He said a decade ago, users who checked Facebook or Instagram would see a stock of updates broadcasted by their friends, a status update, a baby picture, a video posted on a friend's Facebook wall. When they wanted to share, they would post something to this ever-growing feed for all their friends to see. Now they are more likely to open the app and scroll through A, I recommended content, then share by sending that content as a private message. That is A, precisely correct, and B, like a real bomber. Yeah, I mean, if you listen to Adamessary ever, he will happily tell you that what people do is they open Instagram, they find reels, and they share with their friends. And then they're in DMs and that's where they live.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But I'm just saying that, yeah, I'm basically saying the Trump HFTC is stupid. Like. They just did it wrong. Or, you know, they needed to pivot to a more politically. amenable theory of the antitrust case.

Like, it's almost shocking. They weren't like, you should put them in jail because they're woke. Like, you know, whatever they say. Like, this case started with a different theory. I think under Lena Kahn, she had a very different theory of how big tech monopolies operate. I don't think that's shared by the Trump FTC. They don't seem to care about that in that way. What they care about is having big leverage over tech companies.

Yes. So that Trump could make deals, whether or not those deals exist. And here they ran the same. one to the end. You know, as much as Mark Zuckerberg was paying money and showing up and saying whatever he's saying, they did run this one to the end and meta one. Meta has consistently sort of won when it comes to market definition of these kinds of cases. And so I think it's kind of interesting that Trump didn't get leverage over meta with a big, I don't even know if he knew. You know, like usually you, you hear some like, you know, there's a big case.

It'd be a shame if I took your Instagram away from you unless you get less woke. Yeah. And like none of that occurred here. Maybe it's just because Meta thought it had the winning hand the whole time. But I do think there was a significant change in how they pursued the case when you went from Lena Con to Andrew Ferguson. Yes. It was the crime as perceived was not buying Instagram.

It was like what the thing had become all these years later. Yeah. Which is a very different thing. And again, being lost in market definition is where meta wins these things. Yeah. They're very good at being like, what are we really? Nothing. Is it nothing?

you can't possibly describe meta. They're not wrong. Well, and it is a forever-changing thing, right? Like, it is true that our construction of meta as a company was super different. It wouldn't call it meta five years ago. Yeah. And now it's like, if they wanted to, they could be like, well, we're fundamentally about the Metaverse. We're called Meta.

Like, this company can play so many cards in so many directions that part of me has always wondered if this kind of thing is deliberate, right? Like, when they underwent that or made big noise about that huge product, to unify the messaging systems behind all of their apps, like to basically skirt having them be opened up by European regulations. It's like, okay, well, this is both like a reasonable product idea and also like pretty clearly a reaction to make it much harder to break you up. And I sort of like the conspiracy theory that they just like bet on, they're like, okay, the only way we're going to not get broken up

is if we just try to do TikTok. And then we can convince everybody that we can compete with TikTok. Yeah, I mean, like Facebook has expressed to me if you were asking to describe it. I'd be like, this is where I get updates on snow days at school, where cranks in my town complain about EB charters being installed in Main Street, and where various fly-by-night companies try to sell parts for my 10-year-old car. That's Facebook. Yay.

That's what that is. Yeah. That's about right. And, like, fine, but, like, is that personal social networking, whatever it is? Yeah. I mean, there are other variations of this pattern, right? that the Google cases were started in the first Trump administration, pursued by the Biden administration, lost under this Trump administration.

So there are other dynamics at work. I will just note that those cases pursued by the Department of Justice whose antitrust had under even this Trump administration, sort of widely respected. I just think they have to see a different story. Fair. Fair. It's going to be really interesting to see where this goes next,

because this is about as cleanly as you could possibly let meta off the hook. Right? Like it just walks away Scott free. I'm just saying that what are you going to appeal? You're going to appeal we got sidetracked in market definitions. And the actual market is apps on phone with other people in them. For sure. Was it illegal for them to squash competition by buying Instagram at that time? Right. Maybe that's a better question. The real question I would ask is, you know who does know how to get Donald Trump's attention in effective ways? Tim Cook. Do you know what antitrust trial is coming up? Do you J.J.V. Apple. Yeah. like just get ready for solid gold iPhones to be delivered to the now demolished East Wing of White House. Like there's that one I think will tell us a lot about how the government really feels what these antitrust cases.

Yeah, I agree. All right. Well, we should take another break. This is all I just needed to do a little bit. You need to get it out of your system. I just wanted to review Greek philosophy just for a moment. We're going to take another break. We're going to come back to a lightning wrap.

We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers. That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. It's built to be your hiring partner, helping you find the right candidates faster. That way you can hire with confidence without turning it into another full-time job. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process,

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Buzzwords like progressive and affordability are thrown around all the time in politics. But what do they actually mean? For me, being a progressive means at least two things. One, being willing to unite lots and lots of people, all of the folks that are getting screwed over against the powers that be that are making your life worse. And then second, being progressive

is essentially a hopeful enterprise that you think, I think, that the world can be much better that we don't have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo. And is there a difference between what it means to the elected officials and what it means to the people?

So money is essentially the root of everything. I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you have all that. That's like second. third, like, that doesn't, that's not a priority. That's this week on America Actually. Let's dig in. Complex and unprecedented, the Spanish authorities are calling it.

Before the disembarko, asymptomatikas. Passengers who'd been stuck aboard the Hanta or maybe Hanta virus-stricken Dutch cruise ship disembarked in the Canary Islands this weekend, prompting the highest stakes game of where are they now since maybe COVID. Some of the evacuees, American and French, have since tested positive for the virus. And yet public health officials seem. remarkably calm. We do have one individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early early this morning and we assessed that individual. They are doing well. Possibly because this is

not the one to freak out over. Today Explain drops every weekday afternoon. This week on Networth and chill, we're diving into another edition of Am I the asshole finance edition. And trust me, these money dilemmas will have you questioning everything. I'm breaking down real stories from real people who are navigating financial situations that range from mildly awkward to absolutely unhinged, and I'm giving you my unfiltered take on who's in the right and who needs a serious reality check. Because let's be real, when it comes to mixing relationships and finances, someone's always asking if they're the asshole. Learn how to set boundaries, protect your wealth, and avoid becoming the villain in your own financial story. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on

YouTube.com slash you're rich BFF. All right, we're back. It's time for the lightning round. sponsored for flavor it's go. It feels good to do that. Like it's a, we got a thing going on when we're in the studio together. It's good, yeah. It feels good. I enjoy that very much. Is it is it time? Oh, it's time. Oh, my God. It's always time. It's going to be a big one too.

It's time once again for America's favorite podcast within a podcast. The man who will not let me stop doing this, Brendan Carr's dummy. He was so dumb this week. He was dumb and comically cartoonish dumb ways. Every week I get to Thursday morning and I'm like, oh, please God, tell me Brendan didn't do anything. And Brendan always did something. It's a real stack of Brendan stuff. I know. All right.

All right. Well, I'll start with the easy one. I think a couple weeks ago, we noted that Brendan wanted to roll back the FCC's rules that required telecom providers to have good cybersecurity. That vote is coming up. Oh, okay. And we're going to roll back the cybersecurity rules for telecom providers because it's a huge overreach to say don't get hacked like you did.

Yeah. How dare you require them to do a good? job just stupid and he's all like I love deleting regulations these regulations were put in place after the salt typhoon hack i don't people remember the salt typhoon like massive hacked where the united states government started telling american citizens please use encrypted messaging services we cannot guarantee the privacy and security of your carrier messages yeah that's how big the salt typhoon hack was and so then you got to do something right you're like huh that was really bad We're going to take some steps to ensure the security of our telecom infrastructure.

Here are some rules. The telecoms naturally pushed back, said, you don't have the authority to tell us what to do. We're going to be hacked as much as we want. And now Brendan is back saying the Biden FCC overreached with the one thing they accomplished. Sister damn right, you could be hacked as much as you want. I don't even know what to say more, guys. That's number one. just dumb on its face

that sucks already just like go up to anyone and be like do you think do you trust AT&T and Verizon at all end of end of question

Brendan's like they will self manage their security yeah that's gone super well which I would again point out led to an attack so big the United States government told people to use encrypted messaging services

which really ran into the whole we need a back door into the encrypted messaging services argument they were making okay that's one number two David, where would you say the BBC is located? The United Kingdom. What do you think the first letter in BBC stands for?

British. There you go. That's the one. Brendan has launched. I obviously thought that was a trick for a second. I was like, oh, God. I just want to know. How is this important in Brendan Gar's dummy?

Well, Brendan Big Dummy. That's not right. The BBC, famously, the British, broadcasting service. Now the target of a Brendan Carr investigation. What? Yep.

So there's this kerfuffle. This is a big deal for the BBC. They did a January 6th documentary, which why? It's just,

do they know they're not America? We don't know they're not America. There's a lot of in the background of all this. And I feel great sympathy for both our staff

in England and just our English listeners. Sure. dumb American cultural ideas have like now get transmitted overseas. And because they speak English, they're like, oh, we understand those. Let's do them here. I'm sorry.

It's our worst export. Anyhow, they did a January 6th documentary. There was some standards row row in the British pronunciation over whether the Trump speech where he said fight, fight, fight was misleadingly edited. Various British journalists have been fired. Why is any of this worth it? I assure you you can just point your attention. at your own monarchs, and they will also do dumb things.

Yeah. Just a fact of the BBC. Or just like screenshot a true social post. Look at the one palace and be like, are they smart? And you'll have your idea. Sorry, my people have escaped the British Crown twice. I'm Indian American. Okay.

Brennan Carr. Yeah, I still don't understand how Brendan Carr figures into this. Brendan Carr has sent a letter to the BBC, PBS, and NPR, announcing an investigation over whether the documentary, with a misleading edit of Donald Trump was ever aired to the United States. Full investigation. And he's saying this would be news distortion.

And somehow PBS and NPR, who have broadcast licenses, should then be punished on the back of news distortion for airing a thing that the BBC produced, again, in Britain. This is going to land on, like, if one person streamed it

in the BBC America app, everyone goes to jail in Britain. So Carr has asked the, CEOs of NPR, PBS, and who the former director of the BBC who resigned because of all this controversy, he said, have you provided either the audio, a video of the Spice Speech to NPR, PBS, giving transcripts and video of any possible broadcasts of the program in the United States, and then maybe I'll punish them. Again, this is not a great use of his time. No. Like a good use of your time, Brendan, would be to come up with some cybersecurity regulations that you think would be appropriate to foist on our telecom providers who were recently hacked. so badly that we told American citizens to use encrypted messaging apps instead of deleting

those regulations and then chasing after one documentary produced by a British company. But because NPR and PBS might use the airwaves, he gets used news distortion, which we talked about last week, a number of former commissioners, chairpeople, staff of the FCC have said is so problematic that he should delete it. He sent a formal letter to him being like, this power is so problematic you shouldn't have it. No one should have it. Wow. And he replied to that with only a thumbs down emoji. He says, mine. How cool is that?

So anyway, so our nation's foremost dummy has decided that he now has a power to censor British speech. Love that for him. He's like, well, I can get on a plane and get there. So it's probably America. Amazing. And then last one. My God, there's more? There's one more. This is a big Tina wins scoop.

Tina is our politics reporter. She's in D.C. She's plugged into administration in big ways. She got a draft of an executive order, which Trump was going to sign. From what we understand, he was going to sign it. And it would have dramatically punished states that had their own AI regulations. So if you will remember during the big beautiful bill negotiation, the idea that there should be a 10-year moratorium on state-level AI laws was debated. It eventually went away because the states realized they should have some AI laws.

And even Republican, like, Congress people know this. Like, Marsha Blackburn, who represents Tennessee, was like, no, we have to have state-level AI laws because Nashville is here. Right. And our state law is called the Elvis Act. This is a real thing. And an actually unknown thing about the Elvis Act is whether in banning Elvis AI deepfakes, whether it accidentally banned Elvis impersonators, but like no one isn't asked this question. It's very good. It's all this is very good.

Yeah. This is not unm messy. It's all very confident of it. Like, if you ban the theft of a likeness, did you accidentally ban an Elvis impersonator? It was like a real question. So, yeah, maybe you do want one law. And Trump has been tweeting nonstop about we can't have 50 laws. It's got to be one thing.

And Tina's doing some reporting on where all this came from and who might be behind it. And it's very contentious, even in Magna World, which is going from. Okay. The reason Brendan is involved is because his theory is that AI and broadband are the same. And so the FCC can regulate AI because it regulates broadband. And so in the same breath that he's saying he doesn't have the power to regulate telecom providers through cybersecurity, he's saying he has so much power over broadband that he can regulate AI. And then on top of that, this EO contemplates if states do pass AI regulations, they'll be punished

because Brendan will be empowered to remove their funding for rural broadband, which is just even. Oh, so that's the stick. That's the stick. If you do pass this law, we will take away your... We'll take your broadband funding away. The bead program. The ever-contentious bead program that the Biden administration had and the IRA that, you know, we didn't build broadband for people. Now we have to listen to podcasts about abundance.

Right. That thing. Brendan will take it away if you do it. Right. Which he hated, but is now happy to have as a weapon. Brendan is a dummy. And so he's going to roll up. The thing I said to Tina when she was telling me of this is a jeet pie set up Brendan to lose in the

most spectacular way possible because Pye's entire approach to broadband regulation was to write rules saying the FCC had no authority over broadband. Right. Like, none at all. So that when states passed their own net neutrality regulations in California, New York, the FCC went and sued or Verizon sued because it's always Verizon. And then judges were like, no, like, it says the FCC has no authority over broadband. You said that already.

You can't preempt the state laws because you have said you have no authority. your not authority can't be the thing that is in control because you do you see how that like the judges in these cases are like do you see what I'm going with here and Brandon's like no if you have no power you can't claim you got what I'm saying so now we're at Brandon saying I have so much power I can regulate broadband and if you do it not only will I say that I have the power I will punish you I will punish you by doing the one thing that the FCC should actually do I will take away your broadband funding This man is such a dummy.

As always, Brendan, if you want to just come on the show and tell me where you think the BBC is located, I'm willing to hear you out. It's a big table. We could put, like, a very large world map on this table in the studio. And Brendan, I have a lot of questions

about where Brendan thinks. It is true. And it is true. It's a tiny island. It used to run most of the world. Maybe you're confused. Maybe you think you're a subject of the crown, Brendan. It would explain your entire facial hair situation.

You're welcome on the show. You're welcome on Decoder. I think you're a big dummy, and I don't think you can defend yourself. I also think you're a coward. I think you'll never do it. But I know this is in your Google search results. So hello, once again, my friend,

you're always welcome here on Brennan Cars, Demy. That's it. That's what I have fun. That was good. David's like, it's over. It's just, at some point, you know, it's like the volume of it. You just sort of get numb to it.

Last week, Joanna was sitting next to me, and we got a lot of comments on YouTube that were like, you know, you know, she worship Robert Murdoch. I feel confident that Rupert Murdoch, nods along to our podcast during that part of the show. I think is the people

who run every broadcaster in America think Brendan Carr's dummy regardless of where they're situated on the ideological side. I would agree with that. Yeah. All right, my first one, we're just going to do two each today

because you just talked for like nine hours about Brandon Carr's. He did so much stuff. It's his fault, not yours. But here we are. But my first one is, I would say, the most important news of the week, which is it's about a domain name.

so MSNBC has been going through this this big shift as it becomes part of the new company Versant as it splits off from Comcast disclosure Comcast is a minority investor in Vox Media through its subsidiary NBC Universal Comcast whoever at Comcast has made this decision has made a series of very bad ones the new name of MSNBC as part of this is MS now which is bad yeah it's just very very Just bad. By the way, MS now stands for something. Wait, what was it?

It was news, our news and our world. No, no, no, no, no. That's a sentence. You said a sentence. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. It's my source, news, dot, opinion, dot, world. They're not dots or periods.

You're supposed to read it as my source, news, opinion, world. News opinion world. The three food groups, as I call them. And also, the branding makes it look. like a content for him. I'm very sorry. We, you know, we know some folks over there. They're great journalists.

Yeah. You know, everyone's working hard. But like, come on, man. Don't have Gemini vibe code your website this way. Yeah. Agreed. But anyway, so the, the big shift here has been that MS now, news opinion, world, has gone to its own website.

And that website is MS. dot now. which is bad. Yeah. And I just, I just want you to look. Let's just look at it. So,

TLDs, these top level domains have been an obsession of mine for a really long time. If you rewind back like 15 years, there was this big idea that actually what we need is a million more ways

that domains can end, right? What comes after the dot? Because we need more domains, more people are going to do more things and having like dot com and dot biz and dot org is not enough. So they had this big program

where for I think $185,000 you could own a TLD and that's how we got dot store and dot pizza and dot restaurant and all this stuff and the idea was like okay we're going to reinvent

the way that people think about demand names do you know how that went poorly and so and I've been reporting on this sort of intermittently ever since and one of the most interesting

things that's been happening over the years is that dot coms are getting just constantly more expensive yeah because it's still, the thing somebody said to me at one point was, if you have any name with a dot com at the end, you get to just be the name of your company. But if you are, if you have any other thing, the name of your company will always be your entire domain name, which I, which I've always really liked. And it's just a good way of thinking about it, right? Like if we, we get to be the verge, because we are theverge.com. But if we are theverge.com, but if we are theverge. Dot news, we would have to say theverge.

dot news over and over and over and over and over again. We should change this. And this is, if you go to MSNow.com, which I am doing right now, it's actually, I believe, MSnow.com. It is, in fact, a motorized snow vehicles. This is amazing. Retailer. Oh, it's in Korea.

Sure. but the dot now domain extension just went out I think almost exactly a year ago that that became a thing and I just cannot help but wonder if somebody at MSNBC was like we can get a dot now, guys.

Should we get a dot now? And I just, every bit of this has just been a branding disaster that has made everything worse. But I think this big push to we're going to to make this new domain structure that no one actually really understands happen. Just a mess.

I love when people try. It's not going to work. I know people have a lot of thoughts with the design of our website. You know, you're allowed to feel how you want about the Verger's website. We like it. You're allowed to hate it. It's fine. So I'm just saying I'm just, I'm accepting that, I'm pre-accepting your criticism of our website.

I look at this website and like, this is designed to confuse senior citizens into buying supplements. That's what this website looks like. It looks like a slop website. It does. It really does. And I think it's on purpose. I think the big cable channels kind of know that their audience is older people who consume news on sites that look like this high rates from Facebook. And they might as well just look like it too. Just lean in. Just what is our audience reading on Facebook all day long? Man, it's kind of true. And then you kind of scroll down to the sponsored content box and it's it's as bad as you can possibly expect. It also is two-thirds of the web page.

Two-thirds of the webpage begins with U.S. cardiologist warns aging seniors about blueberries for breakfast. Top doctor urges people over 60 stop making this huge mistake for their health. That's like that's one of the biggest stories on this page, actually. It's a sponsored content about why blueberries will kill old people. It's a tough beat. Anyway, MS. dot now. I've just said, you know.

My source. dot news opinion world By the way MS now opinion is a box which stands for my source news opinion world opinion it's fine

all right what's your next one all right my I'm gonna you get one more palette cleanser okay good thank God

Matter 1.5 is out baby and it adds camera support okay yeah this is the thing everyone's wanted it's confusing

and weird as you would expect and none of the major the major players have actually committed it. But it has camera support. You know, like you do. It has camera support in an

unknowable way that no one does anything with matter. And it probably feels like you still need like the native app and whatever. But the thing that you get is like you would buy some Aquara cameras and if you don't want the subscription or the video storage or

whatever AI features that everyone's going to foist on you they will just show up natively in whatever matter system you're in, whether it's HomeKit or Google Home or whatever. Yeah. That's good. I'll take that. And then if you do want to pay for, you know, like my ring cameras are like,

there's a dog. Like, it's freaking out constantly. You can pay ring, and that'll get you all your recording and your storage and all the backgrounds. That all sounds right. They're also adding support for garage door openers, which is a big one. Yeah. For the Vergecast audience, you know, opening and closing garage doors. Joanna's fist pumping somewhere.

Just a core part of the show. They're adding supports. They're adding, actually, garage stores are part of a thing called closures. So things that close. So like many more types of closures including more kinds of blinds Including the weird blinds we have in my house They come down from the top

Uh huh Very excited about this The hack we have right now is Both of the both sides of the blinds That come down from the top are different blinds Oh clever So they but then one is open when it's closed Which is very confusing

Matter 1.5 to the rescue everybody Who knows what it will actually be implemented? I think the camera thing is a big deal Like I make fun because this is how Matter likes to roll things out, is they're like, we have a protocol that no one understand those supports. Do you love it? Yeah. But my general assumption is that most people come to the smart home either through lights or through cameras. Yeah. Cameras are far in a way the most popular of smart homes. Yeah. Because it's the, it's the thing you put on

your doorbell, it's the security camera, it's whatever. And so I think the like making the gateway drug to the smart home be matter is in itself a huge deal. So like I think that's, I think That's great. I'm very happy about that. Yeah, and if you can push the plus button in the Apple Home app and add any camera to it, a huge win for everybody. Totally. And then, yeah, maybe you need the backend service for storage and cloud AI, whatever. We just had Jamie sent off from Ring on Decoder, and he's very much like,

give me all the camera feeds and I will use AI to stop all crime. And we talked about that for a while. But I did ask him if he was going to bring Matter and Fred Sports Ring, and he super deferred. Because he's the winner. Right. He doesn't need to. But Amazon is part of the matter standard. I think Alexa's better off

if Matter is well supported I think there's gonna be a lot of dancing back there But I'm excited about this one Jen wrote a great piece It rolled out maybe a year from now you will see cameras Yeah but it's something I'll take it

Yeah I'm gonna lose my annual prediction bet That everybody walks away from Matter And I'm frankly grateful to lose that one All right for my last one I have a question for you I've brought you a gadget This is the Books Palma 2 Pro I published a review of it this week

Roku app Yeah, dude. That's, yeah, this goes. My, you are the display guy on this show. I would say my, my bona fides is somebody who cares deeply about pixel density, leave a lot to be desired. I hate this screen's guts. Yeah, this sucks. Okay.

This makes me feel better. This is really bad. So the big additions to this, this new palma are, it has a SIM card slot, which rules. Like, I have become totally radicalized this year by absolutely everything you own should have cell connectivity, because it just becomes more useful. and the list of things you have to worry about goes down, right? Like, it's better on a watch. It's every laptop should have it. It's better on this.

Like, I bought a $20 prepaid SIM card, stuck it in, and all I need it to do is just like update my Kindle location every time I open the app. And it does that, and it's great. The other big addition is a color screen. It's for the E-Inc stands out there, it's E-Inc-Colido 3, which if you've ever wondered how an E-ink stack works, they just take the normal e-ink stack

that makes an e-ink screen work and they just boop a color filter on top of it. Sure, yeah. And so what that does is it cuts the pixel density in about half from 300 pixels per inch to 150. And it makes everything blurrier and darker and worse. And Amazon, when it came out with all of the new Kindles and stuff, the Kindle ColorSoft,

made a bunch of changes to that whole thing. stack. They spent like an hour telling me about all the things they did the display stack to make collido work better. And I was like, okay, whatever. Like, congratulations on all your accomplishments. And then I use this for two seconds. And it's like, oh, thank God, Amazon did all that. This sucks. It's, I don't know if people have been seeing my face as you've been talking. I'm just making faces. I hate the screen. It's like, it has a bluish tint. Yeah. And this camera is garb. Yeah, I mean, the camera's supposed to be bad. It's fine. Even they call it, they call the camera a document scanner, which I find very funny. But it's really like a, a, a,

This device... I don't like reading. I don't like a takeaway from it. This device is, it's just a screen. The whole thing it is a screen. They're missing what made it great, which is it was a black and white phone-sized e-reader that could run on the app. I just needed, I needed this validation from you because I published this review and I've gotten

some feedback from people who were like, that's fine. You're a jerk. No, no, whenever you say a display, as bad, someone's like, you see in a pretentious way. And it's like, no, I just, I have eyes. I can see when screens are bad. I have looked at a lot of screens. And that one sucks real bad. Yeah.

I've been, I have with me on this trip. I have the Palma one, the Palma 2 and the Palma 2 pro. So I've just been laying them out on tables in front of people being like, which one do you like best? And everybody picks the Palma 2. Okay, so that's a slightly better e-ing screen. Right. Yeah, that's the one.

Yeah, clearly. Coloring is still a long way to go. Yeah, it does. There's like, there's something about color that will be useful for people who read certain kinds of things on a device far in the future from now. The Kendall ColorSoft is good. You gave this a five? I gave it a five.

Too high? Yeah. It's $400 for screen that it like hurts you to look at. Three. 2026, we're rebooting the scores and we're going to do World and No Sevens. That's kind of fun. I just announced this. The reviews team doesn't know.

I had this idea five seconds ago. Now it's real. But yeah, that's right. That's what we do here on the first cast. All right, before we have any more terrible ideas, we should get out of here. Yeah. We just finished, by the way, just before we were in here, you and I sat with a very special guest and made a whole version history episode about the iPhone 4 that I'm tremendously

excited for people to see and hear. It's very fun. The last episode of season one of version history is about Vine. It's coming out this weekend. We're going to be back on Tuesday. We have a really fun episode. It's about how to be a running crazy person and also how to make your TV not bad. Feels like a useful thing to do over the holidays. You and I will not be here next Friday. We're going to be off for Thanksgiving. We'll be back after. that. We're going to start doing some really fun year-end stuff and a bunch of like looking ahead to 2026 stuff. We got a lot of fun stuff coming up. But for now, the Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer,

and Travis Larchuk. We are out of here. That's it. That's the Vergecast. Rock and roll.