The Vergecast - Comcast and TWC, the Lumia Icon, and NSA protest

Episode Date: February 14, 2014

The Vergecast is a discussion of all things relevant and irreverent in the worlds of art, culture, science, and technology. On this episode, Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Adi Robertson discuss Comcast and Time Warner Cable's recently announced merger, Verizon's Lumia Icon, and how we didn't fight back on The Day We Fight Back. Audio: Download MP3 (28.1 MB) Subscribe to the podcast (iTunes audio) Subscribe to the podcast (iTunes video) Subscribe to the podcast (RSS) Subscribe to the podcast (Video RSS) Video: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast for the week of February 10th. I'm Nilai Patel, your host today. You might notice that Josh isn't here. Josh is, look, it's cold outside. He's just never coming back. And actually, there's a big snowstorm in New York today. So it was pretty hard to get people here to the office. So we called in some help from SB Nation, some co-hosts.

I have from SB Nation's Olympic coverage. I have Chip Matthews. Boris here with me today. Hey, guys. Hey, Deli. How's it going? Oh, it's going. Well, name's Chip Matthews.

That's Chip with the C. Matthews. This is my Ruski partner, Boris. Hey. He's okay by me. Yeah, because you guys have been in Sochi. You're covering the Olympics for real. Oh, yeah, it's awful. Why is it awful?

Oh, you got stray dogs running wild. You should see them drink. They can drink down vodka like none other. The dogs? Yeah, the dogs. Boris actually out drank a whole pack of dogs on the way to the drone ride over here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, you guys are there.

You've been covering it. I mean, I'm hearing Sochi's just like a crazy hell world. What's your hotel like? Well, it's like an industrial orgy. I don't know what that means. Oh, man, you would know when you saw it. There's beams everywhere. There's three toilets to a stall.

Oh, yeah. No, I've seen the pictures of that. That sounds incredible. I mean, I wouldn't say incredible. I'm incredulous. Oh, well, it's surprisingly beautiful to see three grown men team up in a way that you would never expect in a bathroom. If they have three separate toilets, why do they have to team up? Well, you know, all for one, one for all.

Okay, yeah, it's Russia. Win in Rome. So what would you say the biggest story out? I mean, you guys are covering the Olympics every day. You're doing the medal count. What's the biggest story of these Olympics? Well, you know, I've been in broadcast for quite some time. I absolutely hate it.

It terrifies me. but they've been chucking in this snow. I have not seen this much powder since the 70s. Yeah. You know. So it's been a good time there. I hear you. It's been a good time.

Yeah. It seems to have fallen asleep. He had one too many nips on the drone ride over here. So big news overnight. We should talk about some tech news. Comcast is buying Tom Warner Cable. I haven't heard either of those things. You are a broadcaster.

How do you not know about Comcast? The term broadcaster, that's pretty debatable. I mean, you got a headset. Yeah, this is just left over for my Radio Shack days. No, I mean, you're into technology, though. What kind of cell phone do you have? Well, I've had the same burner for about 18 years now. You know, the point of a burner is to throw it away.

It really just depends who you ask there, Deli. Okay. Well, look, actually, John has reminded me that we missed the biggest story of the Olympics here, which I believe truly in my heart is the biggest story. Brian Floyd from SB Nation discovered that Pony by Genuine is the best song for figure skating. I mean, you're a big genuine fan. Oh, absolutely.

I toured with him in the late 90s. Trade it. So let's just take a look at this. It's Evgeny Ploshenko, just showing us what Pony is all done. Well, Plashenko really proved himself here. Yes, he can do a quad toe, triple toe, double loop, but he's starting to learn how to work an audience, too.

Watch this. We're back. Hi, everybody. I'd like to thank Chip and Boris from SB Nation. They're doing the Olympics coverage. Every day, the SB Nation Olympic medal count is, for better or worse, hosted by Chip Matthews, Boris. There's another one, too. Duke Kingston, I think he has his name.

Oh, my God, look, it's Dieter and Addy. Not puppets. Or are we? I mean. Or are we? Oh, Neil are. Really? Really debatable.

I'd like to thank the SPHA. guys for doing that with us. That's fun. We should have kept it going. It really should have kept it going. I think there's a lot to say about Comcast, I think, if you're a puppet. Yeah. Hey guys.

How does that work? All right. So this is the Vergecast where we discuss technology, technology culture. We're going to bring up Genuine again. I'd like to end the show with Genuine. That's really where my heart lies. But actually, there's a lot going on this week. A huge, it's like there was nothing going on, and then last night everything in the

world happened all at once. And so we should just start with it. Just start. Comcast. Comcast. Comcast wants to buy Time Warner Cable for $45 billion. They swooped in. Charter had been picking around the edges. Charter's been trying to buy Time Warner Cable forever.

Yeah. And apparently Comcast decided, nope, we want to do it. Yeah, I mean, so Charter has been like, they wanted to replace the board of directors of Time Warner. Yeah. Yeah. Here's Time Warner and Time Warner Cable. They used to be one company.

They split off and they didn't change the name. So Time Warner cable is independent from Big Time Warner, which is further about to split. Yeah. Right. There's a family tree here. It's like it was AOL Time Warner. Then they split AOL and Time Warner. And Time Warner Cable split.

And then Time Inc. Is now splitting from Time Warner leaving only the media company in the middle while Time Inc is going to like make magazines. So like this conglomerator is like falling apart. and Charter was really interested in basically competing with Comcast by owning Time Warner K will becoming a much bigger player in the entire industry. And Comcast is like, nope, we're number one, we're going to buy number two. And in the process, I think telling a number of delightful lies. Addie, you've been...

At this point, nothing a Comcast executive is saying is true. Well, that's the thing, though, I don't know if... So their entire call, I was just on a call, is basically about justifying how this isn't... fault, like, this is not a threat for antitrust regulators because they suck. Yeah, that's what you're saying. They're basically like, I mean, our service is already so bad. It can't possibly get worse. They start with saying, okay, look, consumers don't have a choice anyways because there is no

overlap between these two companies. These are the, they're like the two biggest cable companies that there are, and they do not share, there is no point at which you can choose between them because you basically don't have any choice if you are. Yeah, and that's why I think that this is going to end up going through, because there There's not going to be enough consumer outrage because they already like, well, I have to pick this one company because it's all that's available. There's a monopoly in my area. And I don't really care if the name changes.

Well, it's kind of like, I mean, if you have Time Warner Cable, particularly in New York City, you're probably like, man, it can't get worse than this. Right. Maybe Comcast will come in and actually know how to run a cable company. Or you're just waiting still and you haven't gotten it installed. Yeah, Chris Sigler is moving to New York, moving to New York. Believe it when it happened. And he can't, I guess the previous tenant of his apartment had not canceled his Time Warner Service, so he can't get new Time Warner Service.

He's like trapped in like some Hellworld Catch 22. Wow. And so in retaliation, he's brought Comcast with him from Chicago to just destroy the city. And the other thing that they're doing is comparing it. They're saying, okay, look, this market is super vibrant because there's Verizon Wireless. Well, there's Verizon Wireless. And the other thing that they cited was Google Fiber. Yes.

Which is ridiculous. It's a crazy experiment. They're in... They're in two cities. They make it up and say we were in a bunch of markets. They're in two cities. Yeah.

Right. This is insane. When I say that Comcast executives are lying, the idea that Google Fiber presents any meaningful competition to Comcast is such a bald-faced lie. Yeah. No, that's not true.

Google Fiber barely presents a meaningful competition to itself. Like, it doesn't exist. It's so nebulous. I'm pretty sure Time Warner K. is also basically said there's no demand for the thing they're selling. Right. Yeah.

No, the Time Warner Cable, they've been running up and out. I mean, like, you know, we could provide Gigabit Ethernet. Nobody wants it. And it's like, yeah, that's because you price it at $400 a month. Yeah, someone asked that question on the call and they said, yeah, no, we offer 50 gigabit internet. It's just, you know, for business customers. They're the ones who want it. Yeah.

By the way, we tried, and this is a true story. The Verge launched in New York City. We had our first office here in Flatiron. We desperately wanted to get Time Warner Internet. Fact. Like, we wanted a fiber line, we wanted fast internet, and we couldn't get it. It was so bad. The service of Time Warner could provide us, it was like DSL service, which is awful.

For our whole office, we literally had to point a WiMAX antenna at the roof of the Empire State Building and have Internet beamed to us from roof to roof because Time Warner cable couldn't figure out how to give us fiber in our building. Also, it went out whenever there was a stop. Yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, it was a YMAX antenna. It was not the best technological decision. It was the only one we could make. but that's where we were at.

Middle of Manhattan, time-worn our cable was unable to provide adequate service to us. They still call me from time to time and let me know that fiber is now available in that building. It's a little late, I think. Thanks for that. It's nice. I mean, whoever is there now is getting really fast in it, I'm sure.

Look, I think this is a disaster for a wide variety of reasons, but there is one tiny little weird silver lining, which is that there has never existed a national broadband provider. Or a national cable provider. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's a lot to unpack there, the cable and broadband bundle. Right. Because they're pitching this as a merger of cable TV companies.

But what it, and that's, they keep on telling this lie, another lie, we'll have under 30% of the total cable TV market. But what they will have is over at least like 34, 35% of the broadband market, which in my estimation is far more important than the cable TV market. Is that how they actually talk? They're also saying, you know, numbers of customers are dropping. Is that how they're justifying that? cable TV customers? Yeah. So they're losing TV customers.

But they're, I don't know anybody. Like, if you live in America and you want to be a part of our current modern economy, you need the internet in your house. Yeah, and you need it fast and the DSL isn't going to cut it for 90% of the phone companies aren't competing with you. So you need to get it from your cable company,

right? And your cable company in 19 of the 20 major cities in America is going to be concast. Yeah. That is a huge problem. Like, I can't even that should just scare you straight out. Be like, you don't have a choice. Your choice is a capped wireless broadband from AT&T or Verizon or T-Mobile,

but probably not T-Mobile if you live in a number of cities that are smaller. Or capped-wired broadband from Comcast. Like, that's it. Those are your choices. So the reason that it's scary is you need to know what incentives there are for Comcast to do the things that we wanted to do. And the bigger they are and the more markets they're in, the fewer incentives there are for them to,

increase speeds, lower prices, and not someday, you know, ruin the internet by giving up on open internet and internet rules and neutrality. Such as by, you know, offering to wave data caps on a major console. Right, right. So the Comcast long time. For their own services. Got in trouble by saying we can, we'll put our live TV app on the Xbox 360. And by the way, if you use it, you won't count towards your data cap.

And everyone's like crying foul. And Comcast, their lie. Yeah. Beautiful lie. This doesn't use the internet. This uses a proprietary channel on our network. And it's like, is it, really? How many of those do you have?

Because I'd love to know more information about your proprietary Xbox video channel. And they just ever came out. I will say Comcast has been progressive in like they've waived most of their data caps. They're not doing that anymore for most of their subscribers. They are thinking of themselves more as a technology company. They are trying to do things like their X-1 platform and they're like X-1 in the cloud. The stuff that big modern cable companies should do. Well, and they also, you know, you can't give them 100% credit for this because they agreed to them as part of buying NBC.

Oh, yeah, the other terrifying part of this. Yeah, right. But they also have seven years of following these open Internet rules, which is basically like most of the core of the foundation of what we think of as net neutrality. So they're going to do that through 2018, which isn't long enough, but hopefully by then we'll actually have like real laws and regulations to protect that. Right. But yeah, so they'll have 30% of the cable TV market, some larger percent of the broadband. and they make up they're one of like the big six companies that make all of the media that 90% of people consider they own NBC Universal so they make movies TV shows they make the news yeah you know

it's gonna be really interesting watching out NBC News covers this deal like it just flat out that that's weird that's a weird phenomenon in this world that two major corporations are going to spend 45 billion dollars trying to buy each other and they happen to also own like a major media corporation yeah um all that to me is just flat out terrifying here's a disclosure by the way I should probably let you know this Podcast Ventures, where their venture capital arm, is an investor in Vox Media, which owns the verge. Oh, that's right. Yeah. That's cool.

I mean, thanks for that, guys. It was really nice of you. Thank you for believing in me. Please don't buy Time Warner Cable. I don't know what else to say to you. Look, the level of, the only way this works is if the government gets seriously involved in what they do. Right. And they say the way that the government got seriously involved with AT&T when AT&T was building a national network.

And they say, like, sure, you can have a monopoly on broadband in America. Yeah. But here are all of the rules you have to follow, and they turn them into AT&T, which I think is not great. It's not the early aughts of the 20th century. You know, it's not like 1920. Right. Whenever, like, the rules finally set out. This isn't Rockefeller in a Washington, D.C. restaurant with, like, taft, like, hammering it out, right?

When AT&T's, like, Monopoly got blessed, we had just built the railroads. We knew how to, like, regulate a national infrastructure network. We knew what was, we were putting electricity everywhere, and we understood, and like, the political forces were such that, like, you could do that. We are not in that place anymore. And I think it's very unlikely that if this goes through that we're going to, like, see the government do the kind of work that it did before to, you know, create a national, help AT&T. Harding. Run the national phone network and open access laws. And the thing it did after that was split them up.

Well, then yeah, we split them up. Yeah, which was fun. And then they reconstitute each other like fucking T-1,000. It's like, yes, that. It's like I'm so angry. I'm not acting angry. No, this is why it's going to happen because it's just like you're just going to be resigned to it. You know what?

This is terrible, but it's not. But it's not much more terrible than the status quo, right? Like most people, if you have, like I'm saying, if you have Time Warner Cable, you are probably like happy that someone's going to ride in on a billion dollar horse and maybe like make your service better because clearly the people running Time Warner. The CEO of Time Warner cable, he's a Gerald something. He was the guy who didn't know what Airplay was. Remember this?

It was a while ago. Oh, that's right. That's right. And it was like, dude, really? Like you should maybe know what the hell airplay is because it's, it is actually how I'm watching most of the Olympics right now, right? Because NBC is doing a terrible job of showing me anything other than figure skating in prime time. I hear there are other Olympic sports.

What if they showed you finger skating in prime time but only just dub pony over it instead of... I would watch that show. Nonstop. I could probably make that happen in my house. No, I mean, like, it's, you know, the Olympics, I think are a prime example. Like, there's a huge appetite to watch them. And you can watch most of them using the awful NBC Live Extra app. But you can't actually airplay that to a TV, like, properly.

You have to mirror. You have to mirror, which is terrible. So it's garbage. And it's like you're making me sign into my cable provider anyway. Like, why? What business decision have you made here? that makes sense to keep me away from this. Why don't you make an Apple TV app?

Why don't you make an Xbox app? Comcast. Like, you own NBC. Like, surely you know how to make the... Anyway, Comcast is the worst. I'm, like, it's just... All of the dangers here are super abstract and at least, like, two years away from, like, oh, my God.

I don't think they're abstract at all. I think it is, it comes down to imagine if your only choice for cell service America was Verizon. That's where we are. That's what this is. Except that that's already been... Like, that was my only service choice was AT&T for a long time, because it was the only place that did service at my house. Yeah, I mean, it depends. I mean, if you're living in a rural area,

your only choice is Verizon. I mean, realistically, unless you've relied on something else. But I don't think those people, like, Verizon, look, Verizon is adding, this is like the T-Mobile argument. We should one day, we're going to, I'm, I'm going to write this all down to put it on the internet. It's going to happen. Are you? Yeah. No, look, see, I, here I have the thing that I've been asking for my entire life, right? A beautiful, a beautiful, familialian. I bought this on, I bought this on the show last week, and now I have it, and I love it, and it's funny how much a color makes me like a phone better. No, this phone was $350.

It is competitive with the iPhone, right, in a variety of ways. It is high spec, it's fast. I think it is designed, actually in this color, designed quite well. It has a great screen, all this stuff. $350,000, unlocked. And I bought a T-Mobile SIM card and put it in it, and I don't have a contract. I'm like, that's the dream. And then the reality is that I was coming to work today in a car in New York City,

and I could not get service for most of the time. Although I've actually been using Unlocked MVNO for a year and a half now. Yeah. A year, a bit more. Through Walmart service, actually, which is ethically horrible, probably. Yeah, probably. And in AT&T SIM. There's a poor child somewhere, like frantically spinning a generator to give you cell service.

Then anyways, it's actually worked surprisingly well. But you have AT&T. Is it an AT&T? It's an AT&O. Yeah, okay. Right, but the network underlying is AT&T. I'm saying I have the dream from, like, the national carrier, and even in New York, it's, like, not great. And that's like, I get that, but at least there's that level of competition, where I can pay less money and get worse service, but I at least have the choice to do that.

For wired broadband, which is the backbone of the infrastructure of our economy, like the verge doesn't work unless most people have wired broadband. It's not going to happen, right? Like the next five years of our growth, we can't make videos and count on everybody to stream them to their phones. We can't make our features if you can't look at them on a desktop computer. Like, we'll get to the tablet stuff and we'll change it. but the biggest and best stuff we make requires you to be at a computer with a wired connection. That's actually the other funny thing about how they're comparing mobile to wired is essentially what they're saying is you do not need to use our service. Right.

Your two gigabytes is totally sufficient. And it's funny because the wireless carriers, they don't like that comparison at all. So if you go and talk to Verizon or AT&T, they're like, you need wires on the ground. AT&T loves to talk about its backhaul, which is if you're a reporter and someone trying to pitch you a story about backhaul, please, please stop talking to me. Like, this is never going to be interesting. And they do it. They'll call you up and they'll be like, we've got a great story.

We've increased our backhaul capacity throughout Vermont. And it's like, this is not a good story. Like, I don't know why you issued a press release, but they do it all of them. Do we have Comcast Internet service in this? Okay, now it's working. They just shut me down. We made for something very expensive. Yeah.

It works. Well, did you see that there's this reported Wi-Fi alliance? Google and Microsoft are going to try and spread out more Wi-Fi. Yeah. They've been trying this forever, right? Yeah. And they keep on trying to white spaces. Wi-Fi forward.

But apparently, like, AT&T and Verizon are not participating. Well, why would they? Well, AT&T for a while was, like, building the Wi-Fi network, but now they don't need it because they want to put people back on LTE. No, I think they so want that as, like, there's a backup, but they want to run their own. I don't think they want to any, I don't think AT&T wants anybody use not their Wi-Fi. Right. Just, you know, whatever. Also, don't call it Wi-Fi Forward, guys.

Why-forward? No, there's the Wi-Fi forward. There's a Fy in there. Oh, God. Yeah. It's awful. Wi-Fi forward. No, I mean, Google and Verizon, every major tech company that isn't a networking company

has been pushing for more in different kinds of Wi-Fi because they can't, they want to break around the logjam of the wireless carriers. Right. And what's amazing to me is we've done a really good job, I think, as journalists covering all of the problems of the wireless broadband industry. And it's the only reason that's true is because there's conflict there in choice, right? Right. Like whatever limited, tiny amount, and there should be more.

Yeah. But no, it gets tiring to be like, you know, you can't do anything about it immediately. You can't switch right away, you know, tomorrow to fix the problem. But it sucks. They're just constantly saying that day after day after three days. There's no point in cover in the wire broadband industry because there's no conflict. There's no choice. So, Adi, you actually were on all these calls.

So you've been doing mostly reporting today. I've been on. I've been on all of them. I think you've been two. No, I was on one. The middle one, right? The one I wanted to be on then I was doing. The 1 PM one.

Is there one after this? I was hanging out with puppets during that time. True, true story. What's your take? Where are you landing on this? I mean, I just, yeah, it feels hopeless. Like, this is going to go through. Like, it all feels sort of moot.

And that it's hard to tell, like, that there are threats, but it's kind of hard to even conceptualize them. Okay, so, like, beautiful dream hope of the future. Like, Google is not going to roll into every single. city and spread fiber. Susan Crawford had this editorial in the, in Bloomberg, I think it was, and I've heard to say this before, that the trick is mayors. Yeah. City by city.

It's city. The city, don't wait for the government to do it. Don't wait for big companies to save you. You're mayor. You're an executive at a city. You have the power to just go in and put fiber into your city, and that will eventually solve the problem. Well, that's the funny thing, though, is that they were trying to do this with municipal Wi-Fi

maybe four years ago, and then they just, the companies sued all of them. Well, so look, let me make the point as clear as I was talking about T-Mobile earlier, and I forgot to actually say why. If you look at what T-Mobile has done, right, you can criticize their service offering a lot. I have it. I think you can criticize it a lot. But they have taken some customers from AT&T. They've spooked AT&T at least into lowering prices and jiggering their plans.

They may have even spooked Verizon today. They spoof Verizon today into changing their prices and lowering their plans. plans. That is the effect of competition, right? Something good is happening for consumers because if you get more people to pay you, you make more money, right? And that's, so they're all fighting for that market share for that recognition for consumer support and loyalty for dollars. If you are a Comcast and you're in 19 of 20 major markets and there's zero competition, you have no incentive to improve your offering. Right. Zero. Outside of the mayor of your city or the governor of your state or the president of your country

saying buck up and do what I want. Yeah. And that's where we are at. That's kind of like Crawford's whole point. And her, I actually, I did an interview, hopefully we'll be able to pull it up. I interviewed her a while back, and she talked about the mayor's thing, and she's like, I've given up on the federal government. I've given up trying to get this policy. I think what you're seeing right now happening and the sort of the flip side of this with the net neutrality ruling with let's have the FCC kind of like twiddle its thumb

and sing a little song and dance about how they're going to do something, but we don't know what yet, to maybe reclassify ISPs as common carrier. like all this stuff, like all this endless lawsuits, wrangling policy debate is going to play out in Washington. And her whole point is, or you can go to the mayor of town and be like, we're going to spend some money on fiber. Or we're going to invite Google to our town to put in fiber and scare the other companies. And that's happening. Her whole point is you can do this at a big level. You can do it at a state infrastructure level.

It's Republican mayors are doing it. Democratic mayors are doing it because they know that ultimately this is how you build businesses in your town. Right. Is Seattle the city that is sort of in the middle of this, building a municipal, like, super fast in that connection? I can remember Seattle's one. I can remember. Yeah, I mean, it's little cities, actually a much little city throughout the south. Yeah.

And this is, I think this is like a moment where you see Seattle's plans are on pause. Okay. Yeah, every big city. Philly had a big Wi-Fi thing a few years ago. They, like, just got destroyed because Comcast is in Philly. I think Verizon has a deal here. that they're supposed to eventually one-day-put wire.

Los Angeles is planning something. So, but here's the big counterpoint. More T-Mobile stuff. AT&T try to buy T-Mobile. Yeah. Hugh and Cry, I actually, I made the counter-narrative that I thought would be interesting

was you could say yes to the steel government, but you have to regulate the shit out of them. Yeah. And the government was like, no, we are not reducing competition in this already choked, constrained market. I don't, there's a chance that the government will say the same exact.

And they, you know, The FCC and the FCC have been making noises about the Sprint T-Mobile. It's, you know, it's vaguely in the air, which I believe is John Lodger's, like, ultimate plan is to sell the Sprint. It's true. I'm going to write this time putting the Internet. I swear to God. And they've been saying, like, no, you can't do that. We're not going to approve that.

Why would they approve Comcast in Time Order? Well, no, that's their entire argument, though, is that it's not a horizontal merger. That's bullshit. That's, I think, a thing that actually is a, no, it's not, it is an actual thing that exists for antitrust. So that's why it's going to go through. It doesn't make it, you know, morally or even go. The government is the good thing. The FCC can only sob it if they can say this is the harm.

And I don't think that they're willing to do that. Sure, but there's a level of harm that's beyond consumers. If you're Disney and you want to sell ESPN to Comcast, or you want Comcast to pay you for ESPN, you can't now say, well, Time Warner is paying us that much. Right. Well, fine. No, I'm not saying that the threats aren't real.

What I'm saying is... That's a real... I mean, you don't think all of these programming companies are going to show up and say no. Do you really think that the FCC and the Department of Justice are going to be like, yeah, no? Yes. I mean, they're doing it to Sprint and T-Mobile right now, right? But Sprint and T-Mobile, you can make a really clear case that they're going to, you know, they're choosing one or the other. Yeah.

That consumers can choose one of the other. But it's not just consumers. It's programmers. It's other internet companies now who, without open Internet regulations, like, actively political. Like, what you have right now is Comcast is promising to not do bad. things as opposed to being legally forced to obey the law. So my best case scenario is that it goes through and the government's like, if you're going to do these, these are the regulations.

This is how it's going to work. This is how much fiber you have to fill. And so this is the tiny silver lining. But you need an activist, regulatory, interventionist government to do that. I do not. Not going to happen. You know, Tom Wheeler, the chairman of this, you know his job was before all this? Yeah.

Cable industry lobbyist. Yeah. Like, that's terrifying. Yeah, that guy's going to regulate Comcast. He's going to regulate the biggest company in the game. No, he's going to go to dinner with, what's his name, Phillips? What's the... Brian Roberts, the CEO of Comcast. He's going to go to dinner with Brian Roberts and hit the links with, like, every other lobbyist in Washington, and they're going to like, all going to shake hands and drink scotch and, like, count their money. And then he's going to leave the FCC and go back to work for the cable industry. You might be a nice guy, Tom Wheeler. I just don't trust you that you're going to be what Susan Crawford calls a cop on the beat. Yeah. Right. These are, bad things are happening in this neighborhood. Like, go fix it. And we're terrible at just identifying that the bad things are real because they lost, constantly nonstop lying to us, whether the bad things aren't happening or the bad things aren't as bad as I think they are. And all you've got to do is open your eyes and see, like, they have an extraordinary amount of market power. The reason that your cable box sucks is Comcast. That's why. They can roll out X1, they can do all this other stuff, but the X1 still kind of blows. There's no real competition. It's still kind of huge. They're not deluxe. They're not deluxe. delivering television over IP. Apple hasn't made a TV because they can't get deals with all of these companies. So that's the possible silver lining. Microsoft can't deliver a real TV solution.

If Comcast has a national network, then Apple and Microsoft and Intel will have, like, they can hash out a deal with one player and then everybody else is able to fall in line instead of having Comcast and Time Warner and Charter and all the other people play off each other and blow up every TV deal they try to make. Could the silver lining be that, like, yes, we have a horrible national monopoly that, throttles our speeds and, you know, limits our access to free internet. But at least the interface is nicer. But we'll have an Apple TV to go with it.

I mean, look, I can see, you know, Comcast sitting in front of Congress and being like, yeah, we'll make some promises. We're going to open up our TV delivery system to Apple and Microsoft. We've had productive conversations and we look forward to working with partners in the future. Yep. This is exactly what Microsoft said when they launched the actual. And John McCain will say, well, my apps update automatically and they'll say yes. I'll laugh. Stamp.

Proved. And like, sure. You can promise me everything in the world. I'm sure that that is going to come up, 100% sure that, you know, when they go and sit down in front of Congress and they ask, why should we let you do this? My service is pretty, like, you know, Mr. Roberts, I live here in New York City, and, you know, my time Warner cable service is pretty awful. And you're like, well, we look forward to improving your service. And I just want Apple to sell me a TV. You know, can you work with a company like that, you know, something really innovative?

Well, we look forward to working with all our partners in the future. and now that we have this expanded scope, you know, we really look forward to a new wave of innovation built on our innovative X1 platform. And it's like, just kill me. Like, I'm already dead, all right? Like, my body's just walking around looking sad every day of my fucking life.

So, yeah, I'm done. We should move on. Let's talk about, there's two more depressing things to talk about. Oh, yeah, I was going to say, this is not getting better. It's really not getting better. So one of the things with net neutrality, and with the NSA stuff. And now with this,

there is a lot of conversation about, like, how do we protest this? How do we stop it? How do we get involved? I think that question is really, really unanswered. Addie, there was just an NSA protest. It is still unanswered. It's still unanswered.

But this is like, it's hard to do. So let's talk about this. This is the internet trying to stop spying. So very, very short background is that there have been a lot of protests already. One of them was called Stop Watching Us. And they recorded like Maggie Jellon Hall and a bunch of whistleblowers and tons of people saying, stop watching us NSA and had a big general protest last year.

Maggie John. I believe so. So anyways, this year, some of them split off and they said, okay, look, we have this bill in the Senate now and the House, and we should actually try to get people to pass it. So they decided to model this after the SOPA protests of 2012, thinking, okay, well, this is us stopping a bill. Can't be that hard for us to stop one bill, which is Diane Feinstein's,

and then pass another one. This didn't actually work. Well, it wasn't as extreme as the source. Sopa stuff, right? I mean, Sopa stuff was the first time. Sites actually shut down, actually put up black banners. In this case, like, Reddit had a little thing in the corner. Right. Like, I was looking it up today. It's kind of hard because I don't think people collected definitive numbers on Sopa. Right. But Sopa was some like 75,000 to 100,000 sites. At the beginning of this, they had 6,000. There were maybe, like, in the millions of calls placed

through, like, Wikipedia. There were, you know, 50, no, like 70,000 calls placed. It's just, it was tiny in scope. I think getting people to say no to something is easier than getting people to affirmatively try to do something. Well, it's also that SOPA was one thing. Sopa wasn't like, oh, by the way, the internet is also copyright, they're going to take your

car and say that it's piracy and do a bunch of other things. It's like this is going to do one thing. Yeah, one thing and then once you do that, just by stopping this bill. You'll win, and then they'll do something later, whatever. But this is one part of a huge mass of things, and those other things are even worse. And if you do this thing plus this other thing, then you've got a pretty

good chance of stopping this one tiny thing, but you're still not going to feel good about the rest of it. Yeah. There's no good pay. Like if you get this payoff, like you're still going to think the rest of it is terrible if you're the kind of person who's going to join an NSA protest. Right. And I, to me, it's the question is every time I talk to anybody in government about Sopa, they get like this weird, like, thousand yards stare. They call it the Arab Spring after Yeah. What? Seriously.

Chris Dodd. I was reading an old interview and he says, no, this was, you know, it's like the Arab Spring. I'd never seen anything on this scale before. Yeah. And they're terrified of like. They have no perspective. I mean, they could really do a giant scorched earth campaign though because they made

Sopa, like, it was a bad bill. They made it a bill that was going to literally shut down the internet. Right. Everyone, like, believed that and their name was like mud. Like everyone hated them. More, maybe even more than when they were. midi, right? It never even...

Yeah. The sober protest to me was always... I mean, I wrote a thing at the time. I was like, you can only do this once. You only get to shut down the internet over something one time. Well, the funny thing that was that the EFF actually made a good point, which is that this was a giant battle because this was built on, was it Coika? Which was another similar bill that got rewritten into PIPA, the Senate version of SOPA.

Right. So this was actually a long thing. It was just that Coika, like, that all these things sort of got nipped in the bud and that they were one thing. And that they haven't happened yet. A, it's like those things are all coming back in bite-sized pieces now. They've learned how to do it. They've learned how to avoid this.

But what they never, what the lesson they should have learned from soap and PIPA was, there is an enormous constituency of people in the United States who have very deep feelings and thoughts, but how the Internet should be regulated, not regulated, distributed, built, serviced, consumed. That is, as far as you can tell, a pretty unified block. And if you can bring them together in a SOPA-like movement, it's a lot of people. And that's overwhelming to our government. Like, our government responded to the overwhelming number of people who are like, don't break the Internet. That same group of people, you can get them all to say, notice something, and call up and say,

I don't want you to do this. How is your name on this bill that's going to kill the Internet? It's harder to get them to call and say, I want you to support this bill that will stop the NSA. And I don't really know about the national security implications. And I'm sure that you can tell me a lot of things about the NSA. That's actually the funny thing is that so the NSA. New York Times, I haven't been able to, I haven't confirmed this, but they were basically saying most of the calls went to Diane Feinstein. Diane Feinstein was the bill that they were trying to stop.

Yeah, right? So everybody did that thing. Because she's way out in front, right? Yeah, well, because it passed committee. The other one hasn't yet. But yeah, so they were trying to stop the bill by calling the person who's not actually going to ever back down. Ever. Like, I mean, I'm not sure whether people have changed, directly changed positions. It was really clear after. We just need to, I mean, literally it's the question is, how do we, how do the people who use the internet who live their lives online, us, most of the people watching and listening to this, how do we talk to our government more effectively? And the answer is we did it one time with Sopa. Yep. Ultra effective. The government remembers that. So the way that we do it.

But like if I moved home, you know, like I don't believe that like my Congress people in my home state are like aware of the internet. care about it in a way that, like, is meaningful. Like, right? And that's the way that Internet native people need to talk to the government is forget about the Internet. Like, you've got to pick up a phone. You've got to write a letter. Which is what's actually SOPA did really well.

And what I think this did well, too, is that we've basically found out that you can automate this stuff. That's why, that is the big lesson of SOPA, is that you could go to Wikipedia and hit a button, and they will call your congressman, basically. Right. Or they will, like, make sure that your senator gets this message. Like, that's a thing that. that you learned.

Good. Social engineering will change the government. So you don't think the day we fought back worked? It seemed like nobody participated. I mean, people participated, and I'm sure it worked to some extent. It's just, I don't think that it probably was fair. It basically just had bad PR and that PR was kind of all that it was. And that hopefully, you know, this gets the USA Freedom Act some more votes in Congress.

Like, that would be great. Do you think it's going to work? I mean, the USA Freedom Act seems like it has a decent chance. I, it's like, you know what we need to do. I'm giving myself more homework that I'm not going to do. I'm such a bad at this. But we need to come up with like a position paper. Be like, here are all the things that need to change.

Like stop Comcast from Buying Time Warner. Like amend these two things, let us see this stuff. The Vergecast Manifesto? The Vergecast Manifesto. Yeah. The Patel plan for a better internet. I'm not kidding. I should probably do this.

I should actually make T.C. do it. There's a specter. Oh God. T.C. would totally do it. Yeah. Hanging over America. And then he would. And that Spector is the verge cast.

Look, the Patel plan for better internet. I'm going to think about it and feel guilty for not doing it. We're going to use the language from the Communist Manifesto. We're just going to change every other word. Speaking of communism, let's talk about that Lumia. What? I don't know. It was sitting there for me.

Speaking of things that look steam-powered and kind of shitty. It's like they were designed by Soviet engineers. This is why I like it, though. So you like it. This is the Nokia Lumia. It's on Verizon. and it just came out. We haven't reviewed it yet,

but we have it here, so we thought we talked about it. I think that it has a very nice camera but has otherwise a complete piece of garbage. This is the first retro futuristic phone. How is that true? It's like a prototype. No.

It's because of like the weird alien stripes on the time. It's because if you watched like a Tarkovsky movie or something and they would be like, here, I will pull out my internet telephone. Phone. Like you would just, it's giant and thick and silver and half like this weird white collar and it has these weird stripes at the top.

Yeah, it's bulgy. And the top of it has this weird, like, laminar, like, it was lacquered. Yeah, it does feel like somebody, like, poured epoxy onto it. Here's, it has a great camera, I will say it. I was playing with the camera yesterday. It has an absolutely terrific, it's like 20 megapixel, pureview camera. I just want to show this to people. What do you think that is at the top of the phone there?

See that? Right, right where my finger is? Yeah. The first time I saw it, I assumed it was a mute switch. Yep. Then I thought maybe it's a hold, or the mute, or the sleep wake. Right, right. That's the SIM card slot.

Yeah. This phone has seriously the most easily... Show you how you pull it out. You just get in there. Just take it out. Why not? Hey, I'm using my phone. Maybe it should just take out the SIM card for no apparent reason.

Because that should be easier with a phone. Yeah. You know what the iPhone has? Yeah. A little pinhole. You know what the Nexus has? A little pinhole. You know what?

I mean, that too, the most mystifying who needs to do that with a Verizon phone. No, that's what's great about that. And Evan, you know, the ambient nerd that he is, just about it. teared out of the whispers and was like, actually, you can use other SIM cards and Verizon phones. That's great, but most people have Verizon are totally locked at that network. That's why it works with the Soviet aesthetic, though, because you're going to buy a black market SIM card, and you switch it, and then you swap it so the government can't hear you on this line, and you talk to Julia, and then Big Brother catches you, and it's great.

Yeah, I mean, and I will say this, you know, whatever, we're going to review the phone. I'm sure David has, I can't even stop it. Stop it, Windows phone. See this? This is the new Windows phone. This home screen is not simple. Nothing about this interface is simple. It doesn't come that way.

You have to make it crazy yourself. I'm pretty sure this one came this one. Oh, did it really? Yeah. Well, then that's stupid. It's not good, yeah. You cannot give this to a normal person. No, but if it use this phone.

If it comes to that way, if it comes into Windows phone, that actually works. If you, if you like start with something simple and then slowly make it your own personal brand of crazy, then Windows phone is great. Yeah. And that's really what you want from a gigantic Soviet-steen-powered phone. Anyway, David will have a review soon. Please address your complaints and death threats to Pierce David. It's heavy. It's not, I mean, I don't even know what they're doing.

It's hefty. It feels good in the hand. So, Addie, you've convinced me. I mean, I get it. I understand. It looks like a phone that a Storm Trooper would have. Yes. That's exactly, that's what it looks like.

But you know what I don't want? Most things that Stormtroopers have, except for the guns. And maybe the helmet. And also the armor. That's every important. Fine. Fine. Also, they're cunning and dashing good looks.

Yeah. Okay. But so this leads me right into more Microsoft stuff. So. Yeah, crazy. Anarchy. Andarchy in Microsoft land. So Tom is reporting, Tom Warren is reporting, and I have every reason to believe him,

that Microsoft is seriously thinking about letting Android apps run on Windows and Windows phone. And then today, Google announced they're going to be allowing Windows apps to run on Chromebooks through an emulator. Okay, yeah. So the Chromebook thing, whatever, it's through an emulator. It's a cloud service. It'll be cool and fun. But, like, you know what? Citrix has been around.

Like, this is, that is not a huge deal. Yeah, but that's how they go into the enterprise, right? You say, enterprise, like, build Salesforce.com. Like, that's what most people use on these Chromebooks. Like, everybody's a Chromebook or a tablet. And then for the one weird back office stock management supply chain thing that you have, that only runs on Windows XP, which is being sunsetted, run it in VMware here while you move it to a modern system.

Right. That's the answer, right? I just think, like, it's basically chaos for Microsoft platforms. Like, Android and Windows found if they're seriously considering that, That is insane. They are basically giving up. They will 100% lose whatever power they have to make that platform differentiated in good. And it's because they're desperate because it's a failure.

Yeah. You know what running Android apps, what platform worked really well? Running Android apps? You're going to say, BlackBray time. No. Even if you do it well and presumably they're not going to try and do it themselves, they'll have some other company become an enabler. Fine.

Blue Stacks has worked pretty well. AMD had this dual OS thing. Intel had dual OS. It's not going to be as good as a native app. It's not even going to be as good as a web app on Windows phone. No. Windows phone apps, to me, they still, I mean, some of them are nice. Yeah.

By the way, whoever, there's a guy in our forums who made a Verge Windows app, and we had to, because we need to maintain our branding, we had to ask them and change the name. Right. I initially voted for the urge. That was funny. But then somebody in the forum suggested that he named it Poison. And if he's listening right now, I'm saying 100%, please release the unofficial Verge app named Poison.

Yeah. Because that is the best name for the Virch app on Windows platform. Like absolutely one. Like there's no other choice. Like now that you know that, it has to be poison in honor of, in honor of Josh Walsky, or dearly departed later. No, he's fine. I'm sure he's fine.

He's at home. He's fine. Don't worry about him. Yeah. He's totally fun. Nothing bad is happening to ever. Nothing ever bad will ever happen to him. No, I know.

He's perfectly safe. So we should, so this, I will say, like, this Microsoft and chaos at MWC, which is coming up real soon, they're rumored Nokia will be releasing an Android phone. Okay, it is absolute chaos. It's chaos. Over there. I don't. I don't know. So the thing, the one thing about the Android phone, Normandy, Normandy X, whatever it's going to be called.

One, it's just Nokia's, like, engineers, just like, you know what? We're doing it. Screw it because right before we get bought, we're showing off the work what we've been working on and we don't care. And they can't keep like, eh, I didn't get the CEO job, so go ahead, I don't care. Do what you want.

He's just rage releasing a phone. Like his table flip is like killing series 40 for Android. All right, I buy it. But it's not going to have any impact on anything because it's just like subbing in for the Asha stuff in the low end anyway. So it'll be interesting, it'll be fun, and we'll want to see how it works.

But that's stuff they're selling. I mean, if you look at what Nokia is actually selling, they're selling low-end phones, and there's one mid-range, like the 520, sells well for them, right? And you can just see how there's some middle manager at Nokia who's going to see the sales numbers for their Android platform go up because they're going to sell a lot of them and be like, we should make a slightly better phone to convert all the people who love Asha, or whatever this new Normandy platform is going to be called, into high-end customers. Right.

You know, because, you know, they got money spent. Maybe they did got a bad job. So I would believe you if they continue that plan. in six months or a year after Microsoft bought them. If that plan is still in effect and they're still selling Android phones under Microsoft's ownership, then we can talk.

But until that happens, that beautiful, we're going to sell low-end Android phones and high-end Windows phones and there's going to be a nice angled path up to ownership, I don't buy it. Because people are going to be like, oh, well, this phone's okay, but I like the apps

and the apps run better on those phones. Well, so out of year, gamer, right? you play video games. You have a gigantic Assuse gaming PC. I do. Do you have Windows anywhere else in your life other than that one PC? I dual boot Windows on that handspree that Dan gave me, but I installed Linux on it, so yeah, that's it. Yeah.

But you also have a lot of game or friends. Do they use Windows for anything other than gaming in, like, the Xbox? Whatever Xbox One they might have. I feel like the only times that I've needed to use Windows are very specific apps, which is when other people use them. And, yeah, gaming. Like that's the only reason I want it. Otherwise, I would just install Linux. Like, if Steam OS actually works, then I don't actually have to install Steam OS

because I can just install Steam on Linux, and I will just do that. Right. And I think that this is the chaos. Like, they don't have compelling reasons for people to want their stuff outside of office and a bunch of weird proprietary enterprise apps, which is why Google's doing VMware on Chrome OS. They need, this is, I think, Nadella. is the new CEO. This is why he's like,

Cloud First, Mobile First, because he's got to get office in other places because he can't keep it tied to Windows because people don't want Windows. Look, here's my number one theory about Microsoft right now. They should have paid the grocery store. I'm saying every Vergecast from here until the end of the time. Oh.

Well, it's like if Metro was supposed to be the future of Windows and the future of the company and it's everywhere, if you don't have enough, if you're not making a big enough bet to give it the name that it deserves, or any name whatsoever, because it has no name right now. Yeah.

It's just Windows stuff. It's the other, it's the bad Windows. Modern, modern, whatever. Modern UI is like maybe, it's Windows Store Apps is like the official. Windows Store Apps, UI, yeah, yeah. It's awful, right? Awful. And I get it.

Like, Metro A.G is not actually a grocery store, although they do sell groceries, and I maintain that I can call them the grocery store for the end of time. They're this huge retailer, but they wanted like $800 million. Like, that's the number they wanted. which a company of Microsoft size at a $16 billion revenue businesses is not an absurd number when you're talking

the future of your company. The future of the company. And it's not that I think you're naming it Metro would have solved their problems, but it would have created a third new brand. People love new things,

and they would have created a new brand for them and created a new thing that they could have shown people. What does Windows phone run? It runs Metro. Like what Windows phones run? It runs Metro.

Well, does the Xbox have? comparing it to like Windows. You'd be, oh, this is a new thing. Why isn't Windows working? When I was at the D conference last year, there were a bunch of Microsoft people there. And I remember they were mad. They were like, everyone on stage here was talking about iOS and Android, and no one's

talking about Windows. And I was like, well, it's because it's Windows. Like, it's inherently confusing to talk about Windows as a mobile platform and as a PC platform. And that's the bet that they made on most of their devices. Yep. Right? The phone is whatever.

It's still not the same in the last. And they didn't do it. They didn't, literally, they didn't bite the bullet, pay the grocery store, and give it the name that it's a or any name, any name whatsoever, and say, this is our future, not Windows. That Metro, that's the grocery store. And this company stopped Microsoft from giving itself clarity and definition and focus. Although, lack of focus. Hang on. Microsoft didn't have that clear, like before that lawsuit, they, they picked Windows phone with Windows phone.

It was Windows phone. It was 7 series, remember? But then it was 7 series. but the reason they called it 7 series is they picked a Windows phone name to try and give a fresh sheen to Windows Phone 6.5, which was just refreshed. Windows Mobile 6.5. Yeah, it was a mess.

Windows Phone 7 series. Right. I'm just saying they, when these phones first came out, when they showed Windows phone for the first time, Metro, people freaked out. It was great. It's a good idea. People loved that name and they talked about it.

If they had made that their new Wave OS, like a branded, they didn't try to glom, it onto Windows 8. They didn't do make all these mistakes and compromises along the way. They would have avoided the chaos that they're in now. And I'm telling, Frank Shaw, who's their head of, who's Corpcom at Microsoft, tells, reminds me over and over again. Windows still, like, I say people hate Windows. He reminds me over and over again. The brand loyalty to Windows is off the charts, the brand loyal to Mike. I don't, I don't know who they're paying for that study. They should pay somebody else. My mom and my brother. In the past three months, terrified, afraid.

went and bought Mattbooks, have no idea how to use Macs. They've used Windows... They just don't want Windows 8. They just don't want Windows 8. They're calling me like, how do I do this? I'm like, it's going to be okay. Go take the classes at the Jesus store,

the Apple store. Yeah. You'll be all right. But like, they, like, you know, before Windows 8, they just, every couple of years, they went out and bought new Windows computers, like clockwork. Yeah. And this time around, they're like,

existentially vexed. And they went out and bought MacBooks. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, this, Chromebook thing, I think, is if they, if Google makes any kind of real play into the enterprise, chaos. So they know.

He's got a lot of work, but like, I think you can pull something off. So there is something very exciting happening in Microsoft world, which is Titanfall, which is like, oh man. So, Adi, are you in the beta? I signed up earlier today. Because that's the thing is that earlier, everybody was talking about Titanfall. And it's like, okay, it looks decent, all right. And then for some reason I read, you know, our piece, I guess, yesterday.

Yeah. And I was like, oh, my God. this actually sounds awesome. Yeah. I am, it does, I mean, it looks amazing. I'm incredibly angry about Titanfall. Why? Because I had, like, decided I'm going to get a PS4, and that's easy, and I'm done.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and now. I mean, I signed up for the PC beta. God damn. I am, but you've got a gaming PC. Then I got to get a gaming PC. It was going to be so easy for Dieter. My life was set. Yeah.

And now. I mean, the reason that I wanted is it because it doesn't look like, is because I feel like it's not exactly like other first-person shooters. So I feel like I'm not going to be so behind. Because I don't really play multiplayer shooters. I don't really play Call of Duty or any of that. And so it's been years and years. Everybody knows exactly what you're supposed to do.

Most new shooters are, you know, similar enough. Yeah. But like I have a giant robot. Yeah, the robot thing. I always say, look, mecks are back. It's like I played Pac-Warrier. They came back with Hawken. Yeah.

Don't even start with Mech Warrior. No, no, no. Because I will outmage you so hard right now. Oh, God. It's going to be bad. Because you played the computer game, right? Yeah, yeah. Which was like a flight scene.

No, no, no, no. Let's talk about the tabletop battle tech game, which is it called Battletroid, and the Mech Warrior RPG. You'll be able to bring that into. All of those Mech Warrior PC games from early in the day were modeled after Flight Sims. Yeah. And so it played like, you know, like the old Microsoft thing where you were landing, you could never land, but it was all liner or whatever.

And that legacy lived on in it, so it didn't have this visceral, awesome action giant robot feel of like... Playing a card game? No, the video games Okay, yeah, I see what you're saying. The card game, it wasn't a card game first fall. There was a hexagonal map, and then you had miniatures on them and character sheets with bubbles. I just want iced tea to be saying everything that you're saying.

No, that was battle tank. The Mech Warrior did not have the map. It was all in your head, though. So you imagine this dynamic action, which Titanfall actually achieves in a way that the Mech Warrior video games never did. I also just like that free running is now totally normal in a shooter. Like, it's wonderful. In the future, everyone is constantly ready for combat, and they've done parkour.

They've done extensive parkour training in school. That's replaced gym class in the future. All right, the solution is, I'm getting it. Have everybody made the attack on Titanfall? You're getting an ex-bucharment? Because I would play that game. No, I'm getting a gaming PC because then my girlfriend can play the goat simulator. Oh, yeah.

Have you seen the goat simulator? I have not seen, I don't even know what you're talking. Oh, I hope we can get it on screen. It's a game where you play a goat. You're just a goat? Yeah. I feel like the Oculus Rift has opened up a bunch of simulators because suddenly you can make... I mean, I don't remember if this is on or not, but suddenly you can make sims and actually make a good case for them.

It's not like the EuroSim genre. Like, EuroSim, it's, you know, you're doing a relaxing thing that's a real thing, like driving a bus. But like, you know, Dragon Simulator or Chicken Simulator. Now you're like, no, you're actually a chicken. Finally, the Oculus Rift has unlocked the next wave of gaming experiences. Being a chicken. Well, that's actually what was funny, is that Sean was talking to, I forget who, and you're saying that, No, this is actually like a thing that I can do now is that it gives you, it makes you feel what it's like to be in another body.

Yeah, though that's happening. Wow, we're just watching a video of a goat. Not being very good at being a goat. Is there a score? Who care? What's this based in? What? Huh?

Oh, there is a score in the top left. That's what I'm being told. I don't know. But my point with Titanfall is like mecks are back. Like between Pacific Rim, I don't think that it's Hawking. think it was Pacific Rim and now Titanfall are going to reintroduce like mecca as a genre in an enormous way and that's exciting because I did play a lot of mec warrior the video game which was fun and you can't take it away from me I mean it was awesome it was an awesome video game like I bought

a computer like specifically because I wanted a faster computer to play the next mech warrior at one time the thing is that the first mech thing I really got into was Ava and that basically associated them with despair Right. And this is fun. Yeah. I mean, Titanfall looks amazing. Titanfall, to me, is the reason to buy an Xbox one. I think the people who are buying PS4 because it was the gaming one, this is like the first

reason I've seen to buy a next-gen console. I haven't played any other next-gen games that have been like, this is why I have this. I've actually been playing my 360 more because whenever video games happen to me, I just like to start playing my 360 more. It's very strange. I will say it's strange that Microsoft is tweaking the Xbox One controller to make it better for Titanfall. I mean, this is the level that Microsoft is all in on this game.

Yeah. I think it's going to be exciting. I'm not sent up for the beta. It's funny that the thing I remember being really hyped at E3 was Quantum Break, which we have heard nothing about. Right. Oh, that game looks incredible. It seemed pretty cool. I mean, it didn't seem like it was actually a game at E3.

It was basically videos. Yeah. But it was promising. Nothing at E3 seems like a game. Well, in that it literally does have a video component, and that was what people were getting shown. That's fair. Okay. And then the last thing we should talk about, which I think, you know, in, I think, you know,

in related all this comic cast stuff, HASS of Cards starts tonight. Yeah. Are you going to stay up until 3 am to watch it? No. Valentine's Day is going to be real rough for a lot of nerds. You know, it's a horrible, horrible confession? I never finished the first season.

What? I watched the British first series. Okay. And then I just never, yeah. Oh, so you don't know what happens. Oh, man. Is it anything like what happens in the first British series? The dog from the first episode comes back to life.

Oh, okay. Well, a giant thing happens at the end of that one. Probably. I don't think it's the same thing, though, because a certain character is coming. back. This is really hard to talk about. The dog from the first episode comes back.

He's a zombie dog. Right. And then he takes over the government. Yeah. That's what happens. Is it like when the reporter comes back in American Horror Story and she's a ghost and now she's probably a ghost in season two? Yeah.

American Horror Story to me is I don't understand how every, like I understand that it's like a mini series and they have different ones. No, it's not a miniseries. It's a season length mini series. It's an anthology series and every season is a new. Self-contained. Yeah, self-contained theme. And the character.

like the actors come back, but they're all playing different characters. It's amazing. It seems amazing. I just can't. It's like I only drop in when Becky's watching it, and so that I have no idea what's going on because I see all the same actors like, now they're an insane ensign. Now they're in prison.

The insane and silent bit was, I mean, that was actually crazy because there were about 50 different horror tropes. So yeah, it was Nazi, zombie horror. Yes, it was very strange. It was just very strange. Like I dropped into two episodes of that, and I was like, I have no idea what's going on. But I'm terrified.

So mission accomplished, I guess. I think I'm going to end up spending, assuming that tomorrow is also a snow day. I can see a lot of people taking a snow day tomorrow. By the way, good on us for... Indicate East is in New York this weekend. So what? Indicate East.

So I'm doing that. Is that your Valentine's day? Actually, it is. I would expect nothing less, actually. No, I think, wait, what were you saying? Good on us for not complaining about New York being soft about the snow. New York is super soft about the snow.

Everyone in New York is a... Dieter and I are both from Midwest. Addie is from Washington State, when school at Cornell. None of us are, like, phased by snow the way to this city. I actually have a friend coming down. I had a friend come down from Cornell yesterday. Yeah. And she's like, it's like, oh, yeah, it's five below every day.

Yeah. I mean, I will say that this snow today is particularly hailish. Like, I walked outside and I was like, this isn't snow. This is like tiny bits of hail. So that sucks. But the fact that there's a state of emergency for eight inches of snow is just ridiculous to me. And I understand other parts. of the company, or other parts of the company, other parts of the country are not as prepared for snow,

but New York is like an East Coast city. Yeah. The schools are open, is that you said, John? Yeah. Good. State of emergency, send your children out into the streets. Okay, I think that's it. Is that the Vergecast?

Is there anything else? What else happened this week? A bunch of corvettes fell in a sinkhole. Oh, yeah, the sinkhole. But I don't know what to say about that other than that happened. I really want to hear that. Facebook changed gender options. Oh, yeah, Facebook gender thing.

That's been like years in the making, right? Probably. Like, I think since Facebook rolled out, people have been like, why. Why is this a binary choice? I mean, it's just an internet-wide thing that encompasses Facebook. We were talking about all these internet quizzes. The Facebook gender choice should be a gender identity quiz, where they rank you on the sexuality spectrum. Oh, God.

But you can't say no. Like, in order to see your answer, it has to post. Yeah, exactly. Wow. Yeah. All right, Facebook. Get weird. Do it.

Yeah, I'm just saying. Just rank you on the sexuality spectrum. I'm actually going to go do a bunch of Quizzilla quizzes after this, but the ones that are, like, stories. No, I mean, look, I was, every other. everyone to college? Like the those like the quizzes that

circulated an email in college to me they're back bigger than ever on BuzzFeed. No, they're not bigger the BuzzFeed ones are terrible.

They are bad. But like, but I mean in terms of when I say bigger than ever I mean bigger in like scope. They're more popular

but they're so bland. Yeah. Like I was going back and reading them and they're cheesy and their high school stuff but they're actually interesting.

They have like they have like a feel like they're actually sort of a narrative thread and this is not. This is just like pick a bunch of random things and it'll tell you

what city you should live in. I'm going to... I'm going to... I'm going to... ...exclusive and, like, kind of licker them up on, like, wine coolers and have them write the quizzes.

Because that's where that feel came from. Yeah, I was going to say... I was going to say 15-year-olds, probably still in wine-coolers. Well, precocious college freshmen. I'm shutting down my Twitter account, and I'm only posting a live journal. Everything that goes on...

It's back. It's just going to be a link to my live journal. Have you used secret? When was the last time you're a secret? Three hours ago. Really? I've stopped you from... I've never posted.

I've not using secret. I've never posted, but I've read a lot. We talked about secret. We did. I'm just saying, I think it's dead, and I think it's already over. Really? That's my theory. The last time I looked at it was all people from Silicon Valley.

Okay. I think that was indeed the Verge cast. Thank you again to the puppets. Can we quickly cut to the puppets? Do we have more puppet footage? No, we don't. Okay, John literally made... You know what scene in Princess Bride

when, like, they turn on the death machine and, like, there's the whale? I've just taken one year of your life away. Like that's what just happened in my ear with our producer. And they're back, okay. No more puppets. Addie and I can just like make puppet faces. That was a birdcast.

There are a number of ways. Thank you for enduring this episode on this fine snow day. Hey, hey Boris. What's that, buddy? Okay. What's the verge cast? This is my Russian friend. You can tweet at me.

I'm reckless. Backlon. The Dexterarchy. You can leave a comment in the post. You should watch the puppets every day at 4 p.m. on SB Nation, the Olympic medal count. They're great. They're super funny. It was fun to have them on.

And that was it. Thanks so much for watching. You know, Josh is fun.