The Vergecast - Android Wear 2.0, Google Smart Home, and Vizio gets caught

Episode Date: February 10, 2017

This week on Vergecast, we’re in our new office! But our studios aren’t ready yet! So Nilay and Paul set up in a conference room and Skype with Dieter to share what they learned in the tech world over the past seven days. We even recorded it for you! Here it is. 01:54 - Android Wear 2.0 14:52 - Google Assistant on phone and smart home 27:02 - Apple's Ultra Accessory Connector dashes any hopes of a USB-C iPhone 32:08 - Fidget cube 33:56 - Most smart TVs are tracking you — Vizio just got caught 43:52 - Paul’s weekly segment “Please don’t talk to me, can’t you see I’m busy?” 47:13 - Neckbuds 51:30 - The Nintendo Switch is missing a golden tablet opportunity 57:16 - Lightning round Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You were really mean last week, but that's what the people like. They like it when we tear each other down. Yeah. And then we build each other back up. Like Legos. Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of theverge.com, which is kind of been like an ephemeral media experience that just wraps around you wherever you are on the internet. That's what I'm saying now instead of a website.

And an ephemeral media experience. Yeah. It finds you. I'm great at conferences. If The Virgin is an ephemeral media experience, would that mean that the flagship is therefore a ghost ship? Yeah, it's a ghost ship. Like in the new Johnny Depp Pirates movie. This is the worst.

Worst adoring for Johnny Debt movie I've ever seen. What's it called? Pirates of Caribbean. Yeah, it's Pirates of the Caribbean. Dead Men Tell No Tales. Is that what it's called? Anyway, this is the Verge cast. We're not actually sponsored by this Johnny Depp movie, although John, if you're listening, which I'm sure you are, give me a call. And we'll boot Squarespace right out of here.

Anyway, this show is actually sponsored by a fake vodka brand that I, once again, am forcing LGG6 news onto the show so we can talk about it. The brand is called Cizzer Vodka. You can just go ahead and cut right through that night. Snip, snip, snip. There it is. Paul Miller is here.

Hello. Dieter Bone is here. Hey, hey. Just three of us today. Just a tight, very gadget-focused, gadget forward. Is that what the influence is? gadget forward. That's good.

It's like a fine wine. Let's triangulate some news. It's actually kind of, I thought there wasn't much this week because another week of endless political machinations have occurred, making everything else seem trivial. But we were looking, we were putting the rundown together. A lot of stuff happened this week. A lot of like tech news went down. So we should get right into it.

I want you to talk about Android wear because there's two new LG watches. They're sort of like, what's the new? line that they're using made with our friends at Google. That's the new, it's kind of like nexus descriptor. So, LG's like, we've got this friend Google and we did exactly what they said. And then these are the watches they made. There's a sport and the style and a new version of Android wear. I think, Dieter, you've been wearing one.

Yeah, I've been wearing the sport, which is huge. It is just a really giant, giant, giant watch. and then the style is a little bit too small. They didn't make the Goldilocks watch is what I'm saying to you now. So the whole point of Android Wear 2.0 is they basically did the same thing that Apple did last year, which was look at their smartwatch platform and go, huh, this is too much. This is really kind of complicated. And they like stripped out a bunch of stuff.

And then they put in the stuff that everybody wanted them to put into it, which was third-party complications. on the watch face, and they, like, fixed up Google fit a little bit. And then because they're Google and they're beholden to pleasing wireless carriers, which is my new theme, by the way, Google, totally over the barrel from wireless carriers, they made it fully support LTE, which... Wait, why do you think that has anything to do with wireless carriers? Right.

I mean, that's where all these devices are going, right? They're all going to have independent wireless connections. Well, probably, but it's not a quinky dink that Verizon announced a rando white label watch called the Ware 24. Oh, God. It's not a quinky dink that in order to get these watches to not be a huge pain, you have to spend the money on the wireless plan to have a second device that shares your phone number. Right. And that's, you know, that costs money, which, by the way, why does that cost money? It's not clear to me.

It's not like you're, you know, using extra data. You're straight up paying for like the fact that you've got another node on their network. Yeah. But I'm hard pressed to believe that really is worth $10 a month to, you know, I don't believe that at all. I don't believe that at all. I don't believe that at all. I'm like, chasing this Google's beholden the carriers is it's, I think,

also the reason that they won't just make an iMessage clone. And they're trying, they're still trying to get RCS to happen, which is sad. But this is about Android Wear. Android Ware is just a door by which we can talk about everything else. It's interesting. It's fine. Like, it's a good upgrade. It's a good platform.

Dan thought the apps were pretty slow. I thought they were fine. The improvements to Google Fit are actually, like, surprisingly good. You get to watch, like, a little video of a dude doing push-ups on your watch. and then you do the push-ups yourself, which is kind of cool. Okay. And you're like checks to see if you're doing them right. You can stream music on it just directly.

You just like open up Google play music. You don't have to like fiddle with syncing the thing with your phone and like getting your playlist on your watch and all that crap. You just play the music you want, which is pretty neat. It automatically grabs the best connection it can, whether it's LTE or Wi-Fi or, you know, Bluetooth's from your phone or whatever. It just figures it out. And Android pay is on there now. If you can get a watch with NFC, which only one has it, and it's the LG Watch sport, and it's freaking huge.

Yeah. I mean, it's, you're wearing it right now. No, I'm wearing, I handed the sport over to Lauren Good so that she could test the exercise stuff more carefully than I could because I don't exercise. and I'm back on the Moto 360, but I got to tell you, I'm super torn because what I want is an Android Wear watch that has NFC for Android pay and maybe a heart rate monitor, I don't know, I don't exercise,

but I'm going to start someday, I swear, I promise. And you can't get that without getting the thing that has everything in it. Yeah. So I'm hoping that Google will actually get some other manufacturers to make some stuff so somebody will make something that's, in the sweet spot, which is basically the feature set that the Apple Watch has.

And by the way, the Apple Watch has everything that the Android Wear Watch has in terms of sensors, except LTE, but it's not gargantuan. Yeah. So Apple just had its earnings. We talked about them a bit last week. The Apple Watch is they sold, I think analysts are guessing now that they sold 6 million of them. By revenue, they've become the second biggest watchmaker in the world. That product is doing fine.

Sean Spicer wears one, which I think is funny, because I just imagine him getting texts from the president while he's up there. They're like, do better. Like, he just looks at his watch. It's just like, you're blowing it again. Please, please try. But like the Apple Watch is sort of everywhere, whereas I don't, outside of our staff and the occasional sort of like rage tweeter, I don't really see people wearing the Android Wear stuff. So the idea, which I don't think is going to be massively successful, but the idea is that the new Android Wear watches, will work better for iPhone users

because it has independent third-party apps on it. You can literally load up the Google Play store on the watch itself. Nonsense. And install apps? But no, you can also just go to their website. You can go to the website. You can go to the Google Play website,

which, by the way, Apple doesn't have, and then you can say install this thing and it installs directly to your watch. So you can do a lot more stuff if you're paired to an iPhone than you could have before with the last version of Androidware. So it's basically like a supercharged pebble that's probably going to have better app support than the pebble did.

But like the pebble, it won't support iMessage. Right. I mean, Dan, so Dan reviewed the thing, and he pointed out that we kind of know what these are for now. They're for the fitness stuff. And they're for notifications. And they're for these like lightweight apps. And I, so you think that Google's like bent over the carrier barrel. And that's why they added LTE.

I think they added LTE because they can't depend. on the iPhone at all. So they want to sell any meaningful number of these things. Android users are like they're not going to buy them. Like the stats on what iPhone users are willing to purchase first Android users totally skewed in favor of the iPhone owner. Right. iPhone users buy more stuff for their phones.

So they got to capture some of that iPhone market, but they can't, they're never going to get in on Apple's platform. So then their watch has to be completely independent. and the only way to do it really completely independently is to build an LTE radio into it that cost you $10 a month. I mean, Apple is just going to win this war because the iPhone

and the iPhone and the Apple Watch will always just pair better than anything else and I don't think an Apple Watch at LTE is where they're going with it yet. I just think the LTE is just from the physics standpoint. It's just never going to work. Oh yeah, this watch has wrist cancer in it.

It's just there's so much power and a certain size antenna that you need for LTE and even with the low energy LTE stuff that's coming out. I was going to say that could actually work. The low energy LTE stuff

could actually do it but it's not here yet. It is possible to make a watch that is not massive with LTE. The best tweet that I saw about the Hendred Wear stuff was, I forget who it was. They're like, man,

the LGY watch sport really makes me, you know, appreciate the galaxy gear. Woo! Yeah. And, yeah, and Samsung just, it's just a gear history. Yeah. Can I, can I, can I? Right.

Okay, I've never owned a smart watch. Yeah. I have, like, eight Apple watches. I did own a calculator watch at one point. Yeah. Uh-huh. I can't believe they're called complications. Yeah.

No, it's the opposite word of what you want for user interface. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, yeah. And I get it. They're a little present. It's like watch lingo, but come on. Oh, is that like a watch term? It's an old...

I had a reader rage tweeting me saying somebody went through your whole article and replaced all the times you wrote applications and replaced it with complications and you need to go fix it. I was like, I don't understand. But this does actually make a lot of sense to me that the watch is something that you glance at. And if it has like, it's like a little dashboard that shows like relevant information. from whatever possible app that I want to show information from. Like that it's like a mix and match thing, correct? Yeah.

Yeah. It's like a customization. I think that's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, no. I looked out of my watch. I see the weather. I see my next appointment.

I see the day of the week because I am completely incapable of remembering what the day of the week is. See the date. I see the time. And then, you know, if I want to feel bad about myself, I put my step count on there. Or yeah, your unread emails or which will call it? What's that thing that we use for website traffic? Chartbeat.

You want chartbeat on your watch? You put chartbeat on your watch. It would be awful. Instead of monitoring your heart rate, it was like chart beat, but it fed back into your heart. So if the site was doing really good, your heart was just racing. Oh, like feedback heart rate. Just like tie your heart rate to some arbitrary web statistic. Well, and one thing that I really like that they did with some of the wearable pioneers at like MIT and stuff,

they were doing stuff with like effective computing stuff that is like and there's some I think some recent I actually believe it's MIT research on this like I think they made it a watch that kind of shows you like the tone of voice in a conversation and and this idea that you can have a complication that said like hey you're you're coming across a little mean right now yeah you got like a grouchy tone oh I didn't know how to grouchy tone maybe it's like a little frowny face oh shoot I've got a grouchy tone I got a smile it just tells you to smile tells you a smile that's what you want. Like I think that those sorts of things like that you decide what is the priority and so you don't even ever really interact with the watch on a regular basis. You just look at the watch and

it tells you relevant facts for whatever your situation is in. I mean that was the big promise of the first version of Android wear which is that Google now cards would start populating it automatically. Yeah. So you'd show up at the airport. It'd be like it looks like you're, I mean basically risk clippy. And I think we all know that risk clippy conceptually doesn't work well that's so true yeah risk clipy works well but they they never like I mean let's all face it Google now did not come anywhere near achieving its promise and Google figured that out and then basically stopped doing it like I tried to use it I'll swipe over to it every now and then but there's never it's I never

have those like oh hey this thing knows what I need to know before I ask for it's a moments and It's a black box. It doesn't have a conversation with you to really figure out. It's not exactly Google now, but kind of that card functionality where Google reads your email and creates cards for you. I missed the flight. Yeah. Because Google is like, you know what? He really wants to know about his connection in Chicago.

No. You are not blaming missing a flight on Google now. Paul, I love you, but you can't blame missing a flight on Google now. This is the whole literal, okay, slow down. This is the literal whole point of technology, right? Is to augment and supplement our own abilities. Sure. Right?

I agree. Yes. Right? At the highest level, I agree with you. When do I go to my airplane place to Google? And they tell you the wrong time. No. Google failed.

No. You can't. You just, there's like a few things that you can't blame technology for. and not knowing when you need to be on an airplane, I believe is in that list. Airplanes are important. I don't know. I did.

I wanted to know, so I looked on my computer. Yeah. You don't call up the airplane people every time. Wait, what I want to come, what I want to just bring all this way back to you, why is your airline vocabulary so limited? You're like airplane stuff. I went on the fly fly.

What's going on over there, buddy? It's hard. And I wanted the technology to help. I think I just need to get you like a general aviation dictionary. All right. Speaking of conversational interfaces, Google Assistant on the phone, super weird. Now can control a bunch of smart home stuff. Which is again weird because Google Assistant.

It was ever fragmented in the first place. the Google Home could already do it. And so it's weird that they're rolling out this capability in a fragmented way. But this is kind of the story of all these assistants right now. Dieter, did you decide if you're an Alexa guy or a Google Home guy? I'm still bouncing between them. I'm thinking about turning back into an Alexa guy because Amazon just updated the tap so that it'll actually use wake words.

You don't have to tap the button anymore. Yes. And I have a tap sitting around. One of the few verge links I ever I am Becky, because we have a tap in our bathroom. I'll tell you that so she goes in there and listens to the podcast like all the time

when she's getting ready in the morning and it's so she doesn't want to like push the button and ask where because often gets it wrong but the best feature

of that thing is you push the button and say connect to my phone and then it automatically Bluetooth sinks to your phone which is an unharralded feature of that device

right and the sound quality is bad and it looks bad and our UE boom is like a hundred times better in every other way but the fact that you don't have to

fuck with the Bluetooth tooth settings. You can just be like connect to my phone and it does it. Instantly makes it the winner. So now that you can add, you don't have to put even push the button, you just walk in and say connect to my phone and play a podcast. It's amazing. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. I'm super excited about that. So I, like we're all in on Alexa. I've packed up the Google Home. Whoa. Yeah. Wow. It's like a thing. I've been using the Google Home little bit to play Netflix, which works. Yeah. The problem is the problem is you do it and then you sort of never really know whether or not you're going to get like play pause controls. Yeah. The whole Chromecasting ecosystem

very bad at like maintaining a state. So if Dieter has a Vizio TV, I have a Chromecast plugged into a TV, I do all of my streaming over that Chromecast. It's great. Super love it. Do you have this problem? I hit play on like a show or an app or something

and then I close the tablet, move on, and I come back to change something and the tablet has no idea what the fuck is going on in the TV. Yep. All the time. And it's like where do I stop this. Because it's a magical cloud video now. Yeah, but the whole point is that you're I mean, I get it. That's the thing is you're not truly casting from. Right. You're asking your TV to start watching a file. That's why it's always kind of mysterious and confusing. Also, the two main things I want to use it with, NFL, never works. Oh, always works for me. That's actually why I switched to it almost entirely. Twitch. Twitch. Twitch will pop up the Twitch logo on my TV. Actually,

the same with the NFL. The pop up the logo, like we're totally going to get. Which, what NFL app are using? Or we're using. Okay. I can cast it from the app. Yeah. When I try to do it from the browser, from Chrome, on my Mac, it's totally messed up. Same with Twitch and it with NFL. But are using the Sunday

ticket or using... No, sorry, the Game Pass. Oh, interesting. I don't know. I've never used that one. Sunday ticket works great. That's why I switched all the things to Chromecast, because the Sunday ticket app on the Apple TV literally to make it go full screen. I think I've said this on the show before. To make it go full screen, do you know what

button you hit? Pause. Just, like, just such an embarrassingly bad UI decision that I switched platforms. I would just, yeah, but with cast, it would be great if they, I don't quite know, because it's not, it's not just like a technological thing. It's like a U.X thing. Yeah. Of where should the play pause controls be now that this is happening. But the answer is like really obvious to me. It should be on, on, in your hand, on your phone. That's fine. So should there be like, I would be happy with, like, if I, like, lost my controls, that there was always, like, a cast app that I could get pulled up controls.

There is, but it's not, it just doesn't do the work. Right, right. I mean, you're deeper into this because your whole TV works this way. I don't know. They just don't leave a permanent play pause thing in any app anywhere. They're supposed to be one of the notification shade on Android, but that comes and goes. Yep. Apparently some TVs, if you, like, hit the pause button that's connected to the TV, the Chromecastle figured out.

My Samsung doesn't. My remote doesn't have one. So, yeah. What, your Vizio doesn't have that. Doesn't, it didn't come with the little remote? Doesn't have a pause button on the little remote. Yeah. My little remote has a pause button. I have to look again.

Anyway, we started with the assistant. I still, it's still a little bit aggravating. Like, the LifeHacker actually did a chart of like what the assistant can and can't do in like the four different instantiations that it currently exists. And it's just weird. And every time I yell at Google about it, they're like, yeah, you know, we'll get it. We just want to make sure that it's appropriate to the platform that you're on. So it doesn't make sense to, I don't know.

But like, it doesn't make sense to, like, turn on your smart lights by talking to Al. I'm like, yeah, you're probably right. But why not? Like, just do it. Yeah. I don't know. No, I mean, I think Google right now from a sheer execution standpoint is not doing very well. I think they started off last year with a bunch of great ideas and we were super high in them.

And then all of those ideas, an execution level, have not delivered. And I'm saying this as somebody who finally ordered a pixel phone for the six hours it was available again. And it will not be here until next month, late next month. So it's on Verizon? No, I try to order the unlocked one. I think Verizon stores get them in and out. But it's like this was their thing. Well, Verizon did like an apology headset thing that gave some people daydreams because they were so sorry.

But this was their push. They didn't get there. I think Allo and Duo is products are... Does anybody use Allo or Duo? Deeter? No. No. The only person I know who would doesn't use it.

Allo just dropped out of the top 500 most popular apps on Google Play. That is rough. That's brutal. The assistant that we're talking about, it just seems to be all over the place. The daydream VR stuff. That's not quite fair about the other. assistant. The assistant's good. They've been actually, like, low-key, adding a bunch of stuff to it. They just don't have, they just aren't doing everything like Alexa is. And it works. It's like fine.

I think that it's, it's a little bit frustrating that it's inconsistent across home, watch, phone, alo, whatever. But that's like, I don't know, it's, it's like complaining that the gear shifter in my car is a little bit twitchy when the car still drives just fine. Apple has some fragmentation with Siri. They just have less places. I don't think Siri is even in this conversation, right? I mean, Siri's just like all over the place.

I just meant holistically across all the big Google initiatives last year. It's hard to point to one that was a home run because they executed it so well. It's all of them are good ideas. They're interesting. I'm still very excited to get the pixel. I'm just going to get it halfway through its life cycle. because I was never able to order one for so long. And that's like irritating.

I think with assistant, there's this Alexa moment. Jeff Bezos gave an interview to Billboard today. They put him on like their power list. And he's like, the momentum is actually taking us a little bit by surprise, but we're going with it. You know,

we were built for this moment. And they're just off to the races. And I think the Google argument, which is we have more data. We're actually, you know, a machine learning company. we're going to win just because we're going to win. It reminds me of actually Microsoft 10 years ago

when they were looking at the phone and they're like, well, screw that. We sell all the things to everyone. All we have to do is show up and we'll win. And it's the same, the tenor of that argument is the same to me. You can also almost see the flip side. I mean, a lot of the Alexa momentum, it feels something that makes Alexa feel more inevitable to me

is how many other devices are getting. it. Yeah. Which is kind of like the Windows thing. And like, you know, I argued endlessly with my buddies down the street, you know, Mac versus PC in the 90s, you know. But no matter how polished and great, I thought OS8's UI was, you know, the power, the market power of Windows was so great because you can buy any computer at any price point

and you could get your own thing. So Joanna Stern, our friend Joanna Stern, traitorist Joanna Stern. She's just one of our founders. She did a great column of video this week, or she reviewed a bunch of stuff for a new car. She, Rage texted me all through the process of buying that car. We should have her on here and talk about cars to be fun. But the car dock that she picked, she picked one of the Anker ones, and she picked the Lodgey One Touch. We actually did a story on this this week, too.

That's like a magnetic car mount with a microphone in it. So when you take an Android phone and you click it in, it automatically pairs with your phone, launches the Logi app in the background, and offers you another voice assistant, not Google Assistant. Guess which one it offers you Alexa. Well, that is crazy to me, right? It's literally just a car mount. It's nothing. It's a couple of magnets in a microphone.

And it hijacks the Google Assistant away from your car and gives you Alexa instead, which is super interesting to me. Because now consumers have a choice. so we can see which one they prefer. I actually don't know why Google hasn't put an Android auto app on the iPhone. I think it's a huge missed opportunity for them. Yeah, they totally should. Like, just here's a Google Maps view and like some Spotify controls and like have at it. But it's interesting to me that Alexa is in a market position where a company like Logitech

wouldn't just go to Google and say, we built a car mount with a microphone. Right. Can you connect us up to Google Assistant? They went and picked Amazon. that's, I mean, it's just strange. Like, the code's already on the phone. The Google assistant's already there. But what people want, or what Logitec thinks people want is Alexa.

So they want with Alexa. I think the real answer is that Amazon's willing to play ball with anybody and everybody with Alexa. And they'll just, yeah, sure, make a thing. Here's stuff. We'll help you out. You want all the IP for how to make a microphone array? It's all here. We'll help you build it.

Yeah. And Google's like, yeah, no, we're going to win everything. and so, you know, it's, it's, when you say that they're like Microsoft, like, that's exactly right. Amazon is out there saying, everybody makes stuff, we don't care. And Google's like, yeah, no, we want to win. So everybody, hold on a second. We'll share later when we're ready. I want to make the car, too.

Oh, God. So I got to read an ad, but we should come back. We should talk about the very minor Apple accessory nonsense that happened this week. And then we talked about Vizio for five seconds, just. now, but we should talk about the tracking controversy because it's pretty interesting to me, actually. But anyway, we're right back. Today's episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by Krizal, No Gler, Wenzes. Again, people at Krizal, thank you for continuing to sponsor this podcast.

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glare, your friends and families can actually see your eyes, not just your glasses. And then they know if you're telling the fucking truth. Look better, feel better, and most importantly, be prepared for whatever comes your way with clear vision. Go to Krizal.com, that's C-R-I-Z-L-L-com and start living life in the clear. Deere, do you want to walk us through this nonsense ultra-accessory connector situation? We can do this so fast. So it came out that Apple had for the Made for I-Frode program, IMFI, said, we're going to support this ultra-accessary connector. And everyone went, oh, my God, Apple's making another connector.

No, they're not. There's already a connector called the UAC or whatever it's called. That looks like a little baby version of mini USB, basically. Yeah. And apparently the story is, headphone manufacturers want to be able to make headphones that can have cables that will work with either lightning or can work with USBC for Android phones that don't have headphone jacks.

And in order to do that, you either have to build a really expensive cable that's got electronics in the cable that will, like, you know, talk to both of them. Or you put the electronics in the headphone and use a connector there. And apparently a bunch of headphone manufacturers wanted to use that UAC connector instead of, I don't know,

whatever. And they couldn't use USBC because USBC won't talk to lightning without extra electronics, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So bottom line, this plug might show up on some headphones so that they can ship in the box a dumb lightning cable and a dumb USBC cable so that you could use them with either iPhone or Android.

So here's my question. It's a real question. By the way, if you're looking on Amazon for one of these cables, they're called a mini eight-pin flat. Okay. I have a lot to say about this. But here's my question. Simple question. What is beats going to do?

Apple owns beats. Presumably they sell some beats to people who don't have iPhones. It's one of the world's biggest headphone companies, one of the world's most profitable headphone companies. Are they going to lock everybody out who doesn't have iPhone? Are they going to make USBC specific beats? are they going to have weird lightning to... It's very confusing, because some beats headphones charge over lightning.

Like the beats pill... The new ones. ...charges over lightning. A bunch of beats headphones have mini-usb, micro-usb... Micro-usb. Micro-usb. Are they going to have the new UAC

and introduce a third connector into this mix? It's just like, what are we doing? I just wish Apple would just take that phone jack. Or, yeah, the answer is... It would be great if... Apple would use USBC. Vlad is convinced that this news means it's never going to happen. It's just, I mean, look, you're going to make fun of me.

Everyone's going to make fun of me for the rest of my career, because I think the headphone jack thing is so dumb. But this is what happens when you get rid of the universal standard. You guys want a dongle life update from the trenches? Yes. I lost my headphones that also had the dongle on them. Yeah.

Right? The only pairs of headphones I can find in my apartment are these like two pound stereo monitor type things and um in the ear pods with the lightning connector that came with the so now like every time i want to watch a video on my laptop i can't because i can't plug them into my laptop wait i don't what about your studio monitor things hmm you're just don't you don't you don't you have a regular check oh they're somewhere in my like apartment but i mean like if i'm at the coffee shop or at the office i've got my lightning headphones.

Yeah. You're screwed. I'm screwed. So, well, my, my USB is, my USBC is wonderful update as I bought and just now received finally a fin-six dart power adapter.

Which, like, what is the size of this thing? It's like half a Snickers bar, basically. Dieter's holding up to the camera. If you're in your car, imagine,

you can't see it. Dieter held up a power plug with a look of absolute joy on his face. Yeah, it's like, it's like the size of like half of snickers and it plugs in at the long end of the Snickers so that it doesn't get in the way of other power adapters. It's got a long USBC cable that comes out of it, and the USB cable has a regular female USB port on it so you can charge something else with it. It's 65 watts, so it'll charge my laptop

and my phone, both relatively quickly, and it weighs nothing, and it doesn't take up much space on a power strip. I got to get one of those. Wow. These are great. Yeah. You should, you know, put it on our ephemeral media brand. Well, here's the thing about it. about this thing. I didn't actually believe it was really going to ship. Where's my lightning review? You're what? I just made it in the format.

A lightning review. I need like two pictures and like 400 words. Okay. Well, there you go. It's on a review of lightning. You didn't think. What's more ephemeral than doing it on a podcast,

you know why? You didn't think it was going to ship? It was doing it on Snapchat, obviously. Well, you didn't, because it was a Kickstarter, right? Yeah. Well, no, it was, they make another one that comes like a slew of adapters. And then they said, we're making a USBC version. The stupid things.

think about it is that the plug on the actual adapter isn't USBC, it's something proprietary. No! I told them that. Yeah. Come on! Dude, speaking of Kickstarter. It's like we're right up to the line of the dream and everyone's like, what if this dream was a fucking

nightmare? What were you going to say? Speaking of Kickstarter, I'm like, hey, what am I going to do right now? I'll load up the verge.com. A website I love to read. Dieter Bone has friggin fidget cube from kick starter i have two of them i have two of them motherfucker i backed that uh-oh and i was like well where's my fidget cube so i go to my email that i

never check and there's an email from from the fidget cube people says uh it'll ship between like the middle of january and the middle of february but there's a tracking number click on the tracking number it's arrived but i don't have it so i don't know i don't know i He doesn't got lost in the mail. The story just really ended. It's probably stuck on the fly-fly. Stolen by this damn fly-fly people. I theoretically own a shipped fidget cube, but I do not possess one.

I understand. Ownership without possession. That's a real airport psychology book, you know, like how to live a better life. Yeah, ownership without possession. By Paul Miller. The conspiracy theory, so every Kickstarter they made a batch, and then the first batch was bad. And they're like, well, we have to redo this. And it delayed the actual release of the thing.

Story of Kickstarter. But there's a million knockoff fidget cubes on Amazon. And everybody's pretty sure that what's happened is the factory that made the first bad batch said, ah, screw it. And then they, like, sold the bad batch. And so if you go to Amazon to buy the knockoff, you're getting the original version that they produced that they decided not to sell so they can make it better. Interesting. That's the conspiracy theory anyway.

I mean, everyone loves a conspiracy theory. Speaking of which, we haven't talked about anything that's actually on the rundown for this, the second segment of the Vergecast. But let's talk about Vizio for a second. So this is actually, to me, some of the biggest news of the week. Vizio got caught, basically, not on their most recent TV, so not the smartcast stuff that I was pretty excited about. Deerelligan has a P-series Smartcast TV. So the ones that run Chromecast, they're not involved in this, but all the TV's previous, they had a bunch of user tracking turned on by default.

And this is, I think, a dirty secret of the TV industry. They're all doing it. They all basically have automatic content recognition or ACR at the display and audio driver level. So they are listening to what's going through the speakers and watching what's on the screen and basically they see what you watch. They can detect it. It's not like complicated technology. It's Shazam. Yeah.

Shouldn't HTCP block that? No. I mean, it's built into the TV. They're literally listening to the sound that comes out and they're like watching like a corner of the pixels and you just like, you need to watch just a second or two. So it's not a past. It's happening. It's happening in the panel driver.

After it's decoded. Yeah. So it's all happening at that level. So the, so Vizio had a service. Vizio is selling itself to LECO now. God only knows that that deal is going to close because Leco is like a garbage fire. But when Vizio was going to do an IPO and become a public company, their S1 filing revealed the depths of their tracking. It was actually going to become a separate part of their business.

So they were going to have a TV business and then a data business. The data business was called Inscape. They were like, we sell the most TVs in the United States. We know what everyone is doing. We know what games they're playing. We know what they're watching on Netflix. We're the only company that has Netflix ratings information because Netflix doesn't release it.

It was huge. It was like a big piece of their IPO. The tagline was going to be you can't escape. You can't escape. So they got hit with a bunch of class action lawsuits. They got hit with an FTC action. Basically what they did was they kind of hit it. So when you set up your TV, you hit a agree a bunch of times.

You didn't read anything. So you just said, okay, and they opted you with you. in. So the setting was hidden and it was opt-in. So what you would have to do is turn something off. Other TVs, they bury it, but it's opt-out. I might have this backwards. Vizio's was opt-out. So the setting was buried and turned on by default. So you didn't even know that you were accepting something because it was just on. Other TVs make you opt-in, but they hide it in a bunch of junk. So you agree to something that you don't know agreeing to. So the same effect to the consumer, but because in particular Vizio,

had an opt-out system and they were by default tracking, they got dinged by the FTC. So now a bunch of Vizio TVs, older Vizio TVs are getting pop-ups saying turn it off. There's a whole page on Vizio.com, the tracking, there's a huge outcry. I saw people being like, throw away your Vizio TV. Like, fuck this company.

There's just a fine response. Just throw your stuff away. That's what you want to do. Or turn it off. And the new TVs don't do it. But Jay, Castrancas- While you're there turning off the,

the setting for tracking, make sure that motion smoothing is off. Yeah, just do it. Please. I watched the Super Bowl, it's a friend's house, and he had motion smoothing on his TV, and he's like a pretty good friend, but he's not that kind of friend. And I was like basically sitting on my hands. I was like, I want to ruin your Super Bowl party. I have made the social faux pa.

Yeah. Showing up at somebody's house complaining about motion smoothing. And there was a little bit of like a bad, bad mood in the air. There's levels of friendship. The bottom level. where like you're not friends is like, you're a friend, but you can't like have the motion smoothing conversation. Yeah.

So you just leave. And then that's the first level. You're out. And then there's the one. And then my buddy Alex is like, I don't, something about this frame around on this TV is wrong. I was like, yes! Ah!

Someone said it, the door is open. The portal was revealed. And then his actual TV are about the batteries are dead because you're watching his cable walks. I couldn't fix it. And we just all had to sit there and take it. And I literally thought to myself, I wish my phone had an IR blaster in it because I would just fix it right now.

Yeah, it was deep. Joanna's dad, Becky and I went and visited Joanna's family two years ago, three years ago, and I turned off motion smoothing on her TV. And to this day, whenever Joanna sees her dad, he complains about me. He's like, that Neil, I screwed up my TV. I turned off the motion smoothing. Does everybody who lives with motion smoothing and prefers it, did they all love like the high frame rate hobbit?

I don't know. It's like the worst. Anyway, back to the tracking. Jake Casternakis wrote a great piece for us explaining how basically every service does this. If you have an Apple TV, you have to go and turn on limit ad tracking

because otherwise it's like collecting data about what you're watching in the service. Roku's do it. You have to go turn it off. Samsung TVs do it, and they do it hardcore. So when I'm watching football over my Chromecast and my Samsung TV, It literally detects that I'm watching football, shows me related scores and, like, news and highlights.

I can set up all at the display driver level of the TV. It's, like, crazy to me. But they don't have access to the, it's weird, because your cable box does it too. You just think, you don't think of your cable box as like generating ratings information. And then the other thing was Vizio wasn't properly aggregating the data. So, like, TiVo used to get in a lot of trouble

because they collect data and they send it out, but their whole thing was, Well, we aggregate it. So we don't say it's you. It's not identifiable. All of the markets in California or Los Angeles or something, they watch this the most. And that was fine. Everyone's like a little squeamish about it.

Vizio's like, this user, we won't identify them, but this user watched this stuff and you can target ads to them. Creepy. I think I've brought this up before, but is anybody working on a completely dumb TV? I mean, they're out there, but the biggest, highest? and most beautiful TVs are all smart TVs. Yeah, someone who wants to put, like, just the step below highest end specs in a TV, but just make it a literal HTML past,

or you plug HTML in, and then stuff comes out. But if you're a company like Vizio or Samsung and you're making this other revenue stream, that's why you can make the TV so cheap. Like, it's a whole thing. But if Samsung would sell me last year's high-end specs in a dumb TV,

I would buy that instead of this year's high-end specs. I feel like the real thing to do. Or you can just not put your TV on the internet. The real thing to do is infiltrate the corporate speaking gig market with anarchists who can convince suits to not think that being a data company is the most lucrative thing to become in the 21st century. You can't do that. I mean, A, I think it's very easy to infiltrate the corporate speaking market for us. Right. And then lie and tell them that data is not worth anything.

Well, I mean, I would say, like, being the big contrarian at the conference, that's a winning move. Right. Right? You want to show up there. You want to do your Malcolm Gladwell. Like, you thought this. Oh, yeah. But the truth is different.

Actually, that's another great, like, airport book. The truth is different. The truth is different. The fly, fly. I have, like, a naive belief and hope that, like, the company. these that do something like, I keep on thinking of Anchor for some reason. Just like super straightforward, like don't hide the specs,

don't hide the information. Just like be just a straightforward, nice company that does things cheap. Yeah. There's some sort of reward for that. But they make power bricks. I know, but they do a good job with the power. I mean, no, it's excellent. It's great.

But like they don't, they sell you stuff. Other people like sell you these things for free. experience for millennials. It's a power brick experience for millennials. It tells you you're doing a good job when you plug it in. Right. Do you want to talk about HelloFresh? I'm ready to talk about Hallow Fresh.

They want to change the way people eat forever. Hello Fresh believes everyone deserves honest, natural, delicious, healthy food. They celebrate fresh ingredients and making magic in the kitchen. They know there's a chef in everyone. That's you, Paul. You're a magic chef, which is actually a different kitchen brand. but we're talking about Hello Fresh. They think food brings people together.

Good food allows us to live longer, and good food lets us enjoy every bite of life. Look, you're learning and growing every day. You never give up and you strive to make people happy. That's why Hello Fresh started the movement. So whether you're a busy professional couple, a large family that runs at breakneck pace, or someone who simply wants to start cooking more,

Hello Fresh makes it easier, tastier, and healthier and ever to enjoy the experience of cooking new recipes and eating together at home. From creating the recipes and planning meals to grocery shopping and even delivering all the pre-measured ingredients, HelloFresh delivers right to your door so you can skip the trip. HelloFresh currently offers customers

a classic box or a veggie box, and we'll be launching a family box soon so customers can order three, four, or five different meals per week designed for other two or four people. New recipes? Created every week. HelloFresh sources, the freshest ingredients measure to the exact quantities needed

so there's no food waste. They employ a full-time registered dietitian on staff who reviews each recipe to ensure it is nutritionally balanced, and everything's delivered your doorstop in a special insulated box for free. So for $35 off your first week's deliveries, visit hellofresh.com and enter the code Verge35 when you subscribe.

That's Hellofresh.com. The code is Verge 35. Paul, you do a segment every week. Every week. Every week. It's always got the same name. And I've never missed it a single time. No one's ever blown it.

It's called, please don't talk to me. Can't you see I'm busy. So this is a Kickstarter called LuckyStartner. It's a light that you plug in over USB to your computer. And it's like a status message from like AIM to let people in your office know whether or not they can talk to you. I can do other stuff too. Or is it just a light? If it's just a lamp that says go away.

It's a light. It's like an LED that changes different colors. Okay. It could like notify you that you got any email or something like that. but there's plenty of ways to do that. Yeah. This is being pitched as a way to tell your coworkers that you're busy and you don't want to talk to them.

Yeah. Status light and productivity tool. I feel like you could get... Reduces interruptions. You could just get one of those old on-air lights. Like on eBay, you could just get an old one. But in stuff saying, on air, you just change it so it says no. And you just put that on your desk.

Have you ever worked with programmers? Yeah. You talk about flow. What's that? flow is this state that a programmer, I'm sure other people do it too, get into, and it takes about like 15 to 30 minutes to get into flow, and if you break flow, you got to start all over again trying to get back into flow. So that's why a lot of people talk about like the evils of Slack or something like that,

because you can't get into flow because you're getting, so you quit all your email apps, all your chat apps, plug in your Luxaport, and get into flow. Yeah. Wait, a flow or get into flow? It's called flow, not like a flow, but it's like you're in the flow. Yeah. You're coding and like the code is magically coming out of you and you don't have to think about it. You don't have to consciously understand what the brackets do and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You're not arguing about how many spaces a tab is where the semicolon goes. You're just doing it. You're in the flow. And then Nelai Patel walks up, hey, what you're doing over there? Yeah. And Paul's like, I'm gadget blogging. I don't code here at all. I'm using English like a human.

You know what I want? You know what I want? I want a thing where when my Bluetooth headphones get turned on and my computer, it automatically sets my notifications in Slack to snooze or, like, leave me alone. Oh, that's pretty good. That's what I want. We want Tasker for computers. Do they make a tasker for computers?

Going in. That's a thing. It's called Automator. It's called the Unix. Automator is not. Apple doesn't care about it anymore. I made my first successful automator thing the other. day.

I'm really proud of myself. So I like to write in Markdown, but then our, like Google Docs, you can copy and paste RTF, like Rich Text files, but also our, it's not called a CMS. Chorus. Our modern media stack. Our modern media stack also uses RTFs. So I can write and markdown, and then I select that, right click it, and then use my automator action, which converts Markdown to RTF, and then puts in my copy and pasteboard.

Yeah. My clipboard. Yeah. And I paste it into the course. My fly fly. Into my fly fly. Nice. But yeah.

This is... Can I confess something to you? Sure. I've been thinking about this for a long time. I think I might be ready for neck buds. Neck buds? Yeah, neck buds. Yeah, I'm in the same boat.

That's what I'm saying. Like the beats X are coming out on February. You just said Bluetooth headphones. Like, I kind of see the appeal, you know? I get it. I have the same headphones for planes that Dieter has. You might know. them is fly flies.

But I've quiet comfort 35s for the plane. We got them for Christmas. I was like, this is nice. Bluetooth, it's great. I don't want to wear those while I'm walking around the city because I'm afraid I won't hear anything and that's be killed. Because being in total isolation

when you're walking around a city is not a great idea. But AirPods, I have a pair of review AirPods. I don't think I fit my ears well. Other people love them. They just don't fit me well. So I'm like, what Bluetooth headphone should I get? And I'm like, I should get these beats X, but they're fucking neck buds.

Neck buds, man. I lived the neckbud life when it was like a horseshoe collar that you'd wear on your neck. That's still what they are. The Beets X are those. The Beets X are a wire. No, they're more flexible. Yeah, but it's still goes around. Like, there's still a thing.

Yeah, but it doesn't rest on your collarbone. Yeah. Right. I mean, if AirPods do one thing for the world, and that's like get rid of, you're wearing a Bluetooth headset, therefore you look like an idiot. And that gives me permission to wear neck buds. I think I might actually be happy with that future.

Because it's like super convenient. Just have them there and you stick them in your ear and then drop again. If I'm wearing my ear pods, now my only functional pair of headphones, like if I take them out of my ears, like I don't want to jam them into my pocket. So I unplug them from my phone and I hang them around my neck. Oh, so Paul, this is this is the, the. move. I used to commute by a bicycle. You need to run the wire for your headphones through your shirt. And then you take them off and they just like dangle from the collar of your shirt.

I definitely watched. What a pro tip. Again, I've been watching just incredibly stupid movies every night in an effort to engage in like a real-time activity that is not painful. You know, like, by the way, I just want to point out my escape from political reality was playing Last of us. Right. It's like the wrong direction. No, no, it was fine. So we ran the story.

I'm sure you saw a story about how, like, Trump time is a real thing. So every day feels super long because you're constantly in like a minor state of panic over what could happen. I'm sure you don't feel this way. I did not read this. Us bleeding heart liberals. Total state of permanent panic.

To me honest, I feel insensitive that I did not remember why you were in psychological pain. That's great, Paul. Whatever. You don't know what the word for plane is. It's at the airplane place. Anyway, again, I've been watching really stupid movies. So I watch Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and there's that scene where, what's his name,

Rupert Brand, Robert Brand, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page is in the airport. Yeah. Russell. Russell Brand. Rupert Plant. Anyway, but there's scene. And he's got the headphones on. This movie, by the way, if you watch it, the technology in this movie, it's not that old of a movie.

Ancient technology all over the place. They're FaceTiming. It's not even called FaceTime. They're using IChat video. And they're changing all the backgrounds, and it's like the hottest shit in the movie. He's got iPods. He, like, shows him a CD. It's like crazy.

Anyway. And he's got his headphones hanging out of the front of his shirt, the way the theater's describing. Yeah. And I thought to myself, I used to try to do that all the time, and it never works. right because you've got it connected to your iPod your iPods in your pocket your headphones are hanging down you move your iPod everything like goes crazy but with neck pods you could live you could live that life yeah live the dream they should let me do the beatsex marketing campaign and it's just me remaking that scene from forgetting sir marshal be like you could look this

cool i'll try to find this image of what russle brai are you googling jimmy page airport Rupert. All right, Dieter, I want you to yell about the Nintendo Switch, and then I think we should bring this to an end. The internet is pretty mad at me. Really? I said, I had an opinion about Nintendo, and that's not allowed on the internet. But there was a NeoGath thread.

I will say that is definitely not allowed. We had people in our comments who were arguing, and one of the people said to the other person, you're just a fake Nintendo fan, which is, like, incredible. And I didn't know if I should get in there, or I should just, like, let it sit there as, like, a piece of a, artwork. Like, don't disturb it.

Anyway, Dieter, continue. You're saying Neogap thread. So the Switch is not, oh, there's a Neogap thread that agreed with me. Therefore, I'm right because NeoGath. I don't know if that's how that works at all. No, I'm real mad that the Nintendo Switch is not launching with support for Netflix or web browser. It'll come later.

And my contention is that I don't trust Nintendo to do it later and do it right. I want them to do it sooner. And, you know, the whole reason the Wii was successful was that it broadened the market to non-gamers. And it's clear that, like, that's Nintendo's move. They don't just appeal to the hardcore. And what better way to broaden the market than do the basic tablet things that, you know, my ma wants to do? Like, I guarantee you, my mother keeps a Wii in the house for the grandkids. Yeah.

she is never going to go buy a switch because she'd be like, I don't need this. I'd like, we've got the Wii. But if it like would let her, you know, watch Netflix in bed

and maybe do some web browsing and like, hell, put the Kindle E-reader on that and replace her Kindle, she'd buy it in a flash, in a heartbeat. But she'd buy it because I think there's a lot of people.

Not the, well, but it would give her permission and then she'd start playing the video games. She should just buy a fire tablet. No, that's, the fire tablet's actually,

the perfect example. Like, this thing could sell to more people if they just, like, positioned it to also replace a fire tablet. The thing that's going to, the thing that brawn the market for the Wii is it was cheap, and it had, like, fun motion control so you could, like, have party time with your family. I don't think that's, that move is going to work again. Yeah. So they need some other move to get, you know, non-HartK Nintendo fans.

Why not just make it a fire tablet? Just let Amazon do it. What scares me about, you? Your thesis here is Nintendo making software. Yeah, that's fair. Right? Like, the idea of a Nintendo web browser, we've all lived through it once or twice in our lives.

Absolutely. It's not a good, they don't know what they're doing kind of situation. Like, like, the idea of them building an OS and, like, letting you, like, all of that, to me is terrifying. If they were just to, like, use Android and not skin it, which they almost certainly would. By the invadia shield just got Nugit. Yeah, there you go. And this is like substantially the same hardware.

It's basically a shield. Yeah. It's just like, I don't know why they don't just, I think there's like an easy way for them to do it, and there's the way that Nintendo thinks they should do it. And I think the way that Nintendo thinks they should do it is to design consumer-facing software. With like buttons that look like plastic blobs. Yeah, it's like Aqua. It's like they took a bunch of old Aqua box, and they're like, just people like that,

and like they don't, that's where they are. I think that's my need. jerk reaction to why I disagree with you, Dieter, is because the mental image of Nintendo, because they're also like delaying their multiplayer stuff. Yeah. Like internet, internet multiplayer. And it's like, you know what? I don't really go to Nintendo for the excellence in internet multiplayer.

So I do think the hook with the switch is this idea of playing multiplayer Mario Kart with your friends in random places so they don't always have to come over to your house. I don't think that's the hook. Dig out the game. I agree with Deere. I think one of the big hooks for the switch could be if you're the sort of person who travels with a laptop, an iPad, and a phone. And I do that all the time.

I think Deeter does that pretty regularly too. You could replace your iPad, which you're probably using, is your e-reader and Netflix device with the switch. And then you could get really good games too, and it'll have controllers and all that stuff. Yeah. And so rather than, like, make, I made that argument, but I actually think the stronger argument is

there's a bunch of people who are never going to go by a PlayStation and who are never going to go buy an Xbox, like non-gamers. But they've got like grandkids and kids and whatever and they might be interested in playing Nintendo if it was like if they could like justify it and the thing that lets them justify it is, oh, it does a few other things, right?

Like instead of thinking about it in terms of a tablet, think about it in terms of a roe- or, you know, the Wii for a while had the biggest Netflix install base of all the consoles. If they just did that, then, you know, they're going to the store like, oh, that's right, the Nintendo does that. Plus, maybe I can play a game every now and then.

And then all of a sudden, you've turned Grandma into a hardcore gamer. Good job, Nintendo. She's... I'm serious. Calling people racist names on Call of Duty. She's like, poned. Grandma, what happened to you? Well, it started with the Netflix.

Nightmaregrabma.com. Yeah, we're going to, all the people who are poining people now, they're going to eventually one day be grandfellants. I know, I think about that a lot. We just, time keeps relentlessly turning assholes into parents. It just keeps happening. Let's all, let's all just end it now. Do we need to talk about anything else here? We've got a bunch of other stuff on our list.

We don't have time to get into what's going on in the FCC. Yeah, just Jake. Everything is, everything is unregulated now. No, it's getting there. The FCC's doing much stuff. Jake is on the beat. I think as we were recording this, he put up a kind of a curtain razor talking what's going on. But Agit Pie, our buddy, Agit.

Every day I get an email about him changing some procedure at the FCC. Would you say that he's like real worked up and angry right now? He's agitated. Is that where you going? Maybe. That's going there yet. Agitated. Oh, man.

We had a chance to end the podcast. But I will say this. You should read the Jake article. We're going to do a bunch more. We've already had a bunch. But if you're listening to this, Here's what I want you to do. Agit Pi is a hardcore nerd.

Again, I think he's a super intelligent, super interesting guy, super nerdy. I know he reads The Verge. He's on the Twitter. So if you're listening to this, he's at Agit Pi FCC, A-J-I-T-P-A-I-F-C, just tweet at him. Tell him to come on the Vergecast. We can make this movement happen. That would be pretty cool.

We should do it. Paul has been asking me to do it. I did it today. Yeah. But everybody else, tweet on him. Be like, go on the Vergecast. Talk to Talk to the line ball.

Don't dox him. Don't dox it. No, no, don't be cool. Be fucking cool. Don't, don't be mean. Be super cool to him.

Yell at him. But just say. Be like Agit. Yeah, I think it's interesting because, and I would love to hear what he'd have to say because I've read a lot of his stuff

that's more oriented towards like the Wall Street Journal type audience or to a more political audience. But from a technical standpoint, I think he has some thoughts. Dude, like a Battlestar fan. Like, he belongs in the show. So AgitPy FCC, Sweden, so I'm going on a Virchcast.

I think me really fun. But anyway, a bunch of FCC stuff is happening. There's a bunch of content nonsense. Apple hired a guy, the guy who runs Amazon Fire TV to come run Apple TV. Facebook hired a woman from MTV to go run original content. HBO Now. YouTube and YouTube music and Google Play are going to maybe be the same thing. And maybe I'll finally use Google Play people.

Although I will say I love YouTube Red. It's just like stuff. There's stuff happening in the world. And all these, all of all of the gadget companies, and tech companies are becoming content companies. I think it's really interesting. But that's it. That was just the last update here.

It's a lot of content out there. Do you ever think there's too much content? Yeah. You should cut your media diet down to The Verge on every platform. Let me tell you what those platforms are. We're at Virgin Twitter. We're Virgin Snapchat. We're Virgin Instagram.

We're something on YouTube. Just type in The Verge. You'll find us. And we're at the verge.com on a platform I know and love is the World Wide Web. Nice. Check it out. Thanks, Tim Berners. You're great. You're a great guy.

Speaking of platforms, podcasts are a type of media that we make. We're a bunch of them. Walt and I host Control, Delete. We got deep on Flipboard yesterday. Whoa. Oh, we're on Flipboard, too, by the way. We're on Flipboard. There's a new version of Flipboard.

Get out there. But yeah, I was like, I miss RSS. It was basically an hour of that, so you can listen to Control Out Delete. Andrew, who's sitting right next to me because we're not yet in our new podcast studio. Andrew's doing all kinds of crazy stuff in the Verge Extra feed. Go listen to that stuff. Lauren Good, who's wonderful. Host too embarrassed to ask on the Recode side.

Karras Swisher hosts Recode Decode, Peter Kafka, host Recode Media. All this stuff is on iTunes, go find it. I usually tell you, like, give us five stars. I'm changing my little call to action this week. Tell a friend, tell an actual human being that you listen to this podcast and like it. In the Meets Face? And then take their phone away and download it on their phone for them. It's a little bit more aggressive than giving us five stars on iTunes,

but I think you'll find that you enjoy it far more. go to your friend's house. If they're the kind of friend that you can tell them to turn off motion smoothing, they're the kind of friend that you can take their phone and try to do a friendship levels chart.

That's pretty good. I cannot get my parents in the podcasts. No. Like I've tried to explain podcasts to them so many times. My parents will sit there and search YouTube

for like illegal copies of Hallmark movies to watch. But they won't download. The app's already on their phone. They won't subscribe to a podcast. Podcasts are hard to listen to. They are.

Actually, we were talking about Kara. Kara was on Ezra Klein's podcast this week, which is super interesting. You should go read it. Ezra Klein's show. Somewhere on iTunes. Listen to it, but then he's kind of runs our rival sister site. So then just tell him,

you like the verge better. And then docks him. Don't dox Ezra. Okay, sorry. Don't do that. Anyway, you should go listen to that. But I was like listening to it because I love them both. And I was like, I can't wait to just.

read the transcript of this. Because it's so much, I just consume information faster that way. I think it's hard to transition into being a podcast kind of person. Like our show, you would not want to read a transcript of this. No. Because it's nonsense. But our show like washes over you, like a comforting blanket, a friendship. Yeah.

Like the podcast I listened to for information, I'm like, I'd rather than read. Yeah, that makes sense. Rock and roll. Paul? Wait, I don't. Hold on, hold on. Hold on. Crizal.

Let this upcoming ad wash over you. Like a blanket of friendship. Also, you'll be able to see that blanket wash over you. Zero glare. Zero glare. Thank you again to Crizzal, no glare, as it's sponsoring today. If you're glasses, you know about the fingerprints,

the smudges, the scratches, the glares, they're just in your face, literally in your face. They're a huge distraction. That's why you should wear Chrisal, no glare lenses. They give you a clear suspicion of possible by offering resistance to glare,

scratches, and smudges. that means, my friends, no more blinding glares from the headlights of oncoming traffic while driving, no more fingerprint sponges from taking your glasses on off, scratches from cleaning your ones on your shirt, you look better, you feel better, and most importantly, you'll prepare it for whatever, comes your way with clear vision. Go to Crizal.com, that's C-R-I-Z-A-L dot com, and start living life in the clear. That's our show. We'll see you next week. I'm at Reckless, Paul's, Future Paul, Deeter's, at Backlon. We'll be back to haunt you forever. Rock and roll. Paul.