The Vergecast - Elon Musk, Red Hydrogen, and Zuckerberg in the EU

Episode Date: May 25, 2018

Are you driving somewhere for the holiday weekend? Here at _The Verge_ we'd like to encourage you to use a car that's wholly or at least primarily powered by dirty fossil fuels. On this week's episode of _The Vergecast_, Nilay, Natt, Casey, and Paul discuss how we're financially beholden to Big Car, and what to do about it now that Elon Musk has called us out on our bias. We also got a chance to discuss Nilay's insane theory about Apple's dongle suppression campaign, Mark Zuckerberg's wacky trip to the EU, and spoke with unearned confidence about Dieter's hands-on with the Red Hydrogen One. Paul's weekly report on robots that do backflips is, of course, also something that happened. 01:50 - Elon Musk 27:54 - Red Hydrogen One hands-on 32:34 - RIP Essential? 36:37 - BlackBerry KEY2 41:19 - Dongle suppression EXPOSED 47:15 - Paul’s weekly segment “Robot backflip weekly update” 51:08 - GDPR is happening 55:54 - Mark Zuckerberg in the EU 1:03:51 - Casey shamelessly plugs Converge 1:06:35 - What’s happening in the rest of tech Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode of Vergecast is brought to you by IBM. By the end of this podcast, nearly 10,000 new malware variants will have launched. That's terrifying. But IBM has AI. They can help protect your data from threats wherever it lives with IBM security. Let's put Smart to work. Learn more at IBM.com slash smart. Hello, welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of theverge.com of Voxmedia of your life,

the automobile that you're now in. For sure. I am Eli. I'm going to tell you right now. the show. Dieter's not here. He's off. He's got the co-conference. He's got a little exclusive brewing. Deer's having a ride. So he's not here today. It's real sad. But he'll be back next week. He's going to tell us about all the things happening. But, Nack Aaron is here. Hey. Casey Newton is here. What's up? In Cross

Podcast Network Synergy. Casey, congratulations on the launch of Converge. Thank you. It finally happened. It was really fun. Yeah, I know. Let's just talk over each other for the entire hour. It's the heart of the Vurchase. No, congratulations. You really drew it out there. Thank you. You know, the podcast was in development for so long that I was beginning to routinely receive tweets from people who asked me whether the entire thing was just an elaborate con.

And I tried to explain to them that we were fermenting the show, like a fine wine, so that when we finally uncorked it, it would be rich and buttery and smooth. And indeed, I feel like it was. That's better than what I've been saying, which is Casey started with a pun, and we had to backtrack from there and figuring out what the hell was going to happen. But congratulations, my friend. I loved it. Thank you for making a podcast. We'll talk about Converge more in a minute. But Paul Miller, you here is also here.

Hello. All right. So we just got to start. I want to say, and this is a crazy thing to say, but just hear me out. I think Elon Musk has had the wildest week of his public life as a billionaire this week. The twists, the turns, the getting grimes to change her name to the symbol for the speed of light. And then an all-out assault in the past two days on the media. Casey, I asked you to help us understand what's going on.

So here's the timeline I got. Last week on Thursday or Friday, it was Friday. He had a press conference for the Boring Company, which was basically a pep rally. Liz Lapato, our science that are described as a pep rally. because he's going to build the tunnel under Los Angeles. And he had a party. He promised to give people frame throws. That's a high.

That's like an Elon Musk high. And then yesterday, he was like literally attacking Verge reporter Andy Hawkins on Twitter saying he'd lost all credibility. And like, I was feeding my baby at 4 in the morning. And I'm like, I'm holding a baby. I'm like, let's see what quiet things are happening on Twitter now. And you immediately drop the baby. I dropped the baby.

Out of shock. She was, like, doing the burps. Anyway, I was like, I'm looking at the phone. Because she's like, anyway. I promise, I'm doing excellent job of carrying for the baby. But I look at the phone, Elon Musk is still tweeting about how much he hates the media. Still goading the media. Casey, how did we go from the high of digging tunnels under the city of Los Angeles to come on media vote in the poll that I'm basing your credibility on?

Well, Nelai, it all began yesterday when he linked to an article. on a publication called Electrek that featured a note from an analyst named Ben Callow who said that, quote, there are increasingly immaterial reports about Tesla that have dominated news cycles. And Musk wrote in response, quote, The holier than now hypocrisy of big media companies who lay claim to the truth, but publish only enough to sugarcoat the lie, is why the public no longer respects them. Okay, so first of all, I just want to say, in terms of Elon tweets, that one clearly written by Grimes

because it almost makes an enormous amount of sense and then doesn't. Just like most of Grimes' lyrics. Okay. I'm down to have this conversation, but if we're going to start shitting on Grimes, I'm walking up the door.

I'm just saying, that's why the power of her music is like, it's just ambiguous enough. So that's right. And then our own Andrew J. Hawkins replied at Mr. Musk calling him a, quote, media-baiting Trump figure. year. Andy said,

Musk continues a slow transformation into a media baiting Trump figure screaming irrationally about fake news. Hope it works out for you, dude, exclamation point. And I think Andy may have been being sarcastic there. If there's one thing you should take away from this conversation, it's just never, ever be sarcastic on Twitter. And if you must be sarcastic on Twitter,

then just make a video. For me, to be sarcastic on Twitter, I just use a lot of exclamation points. That tends to help. It's like, it's like I'm screaming. but internally. I kind of like it when people misunderstand what I'm saying. Paul Miller, everybody.

All right. So, Casey, you're just like, everyone just assumes you're sarcastic. Yeah, I mean, it's to the point now where I'll say something very sincere and someone assumes it's sarcastic. That's probably bad for me long term. But, you know, if I decided to stop being sarcastic on Twitter, frankly, I wouldn't have a lot to tweet about. So, I don't know, sarcasm is fun to just kind of, like, puncture the, the, you know, craziness every once in a while. But anyway, we're sort of getting

off track from this war that Andy started. Yeah, he did start a war. Because he started a war. So after he tweets this thing, the hope it works out for you dude, Musk responds with thought you'd say that. Anytime anyone criticizes the media, the media shrieks, you're just

like Trump. Why do you think he got elected in the first place? Because no one believes you anymore. You lost your credibility a long time ago. And then, and then this was probably where it sort of went to absolute crazy town. Musk tweets,

problem is, journos are under constant pressure to get max clicks on advertising dollars or get fired. Tricky situation, as Tesla doesn't advertise, but fossil fuel companies

and gas and diesel car companies are among the world's biggest advertisers. So the implication here is that all of the media has been dragged into a conspiracy whereby gas and diesel car manufacturers are sort of buying us off with ads to make

Tesla look bad. And I, I'm just going to say, that's 100% true. Sarcasm! No, that's, okay, there's a lot. There's a lot there. Just a lot. Here's what I will say. And I think this is, again, I'm officially back next week. I'm like in the news cycle.

I'm just like dropping in and out of this all day. Elon Musk is smarter. If I always say like, the car industry is hopelessly. corrupt and then I like attacked Elon he'd be like no I'm not the car industry I don't speak for the car industry I'm set apart from the car industry so just I assume he is aware of this if I was like every subway operator in the world is a disaster you'd be like well the hyperloop is not a subway operator but I was like every rocket company is not landing the rockets you like SpaceX is landing the rockets right like industries are not the same most of them are

hyper-competitive. The media in particular is hyper-competitive. So it's like pretty weird for him to attack one reporter in a way that paints the entire media. Like that's like just your first, to me, the baseline problem. I read a pretty good take on this from Benedict Evans, who works for Andrews-Sin Horowitz, the venture firm. And his take on this was that Tesla, more so than other companies is dependent on positive media coverage. And the reason is, is that it's running out of money, right? You go through and you look at the past few financial reports from Tesla. This is a company that is burning cash. It can't hit the deadlines that it's hit for itself. And so eventually, it's going to need to go back to the capital markets and raise a bunch of money. And what makes

that very difficult is when you have the press that is raising appropriate questions about your ability to do the things that you say you're going to do. So Evan's already. was, Musk is scared because to him, bad press is actually an existential issue. And so he has the same incentive that Trump does to destroy the or to impugn the credibility of the media. If he can make you believe that the media never tells the truth about Tesla, maybe he'll be able to raise more money from the capital markets when the time comes. So I think that's largely true. I think the other problem he has, and he said this on the Tesla call the other day. We covered it. He put out the Model 3 and said this is a $35,000.

car, but he hasn't actually shipped any of those, right? He's shipping the more expensive ones. People are getting them. They're happy about them. I see a tweet from a happy Model 3 owner who took delivery, like, once a day. But they're way, way more expensive. And he said, I can't ship the cheap ones because if I do that, Tesla won't exist anymore. I have to ship the expensive ones at higher margins before I can ship these cheap ones.

And he's still in production hell, right? He's, like, sleeping at the factory every day. he's like very public about this. That combined with the issue Casey is talking about, which is as a business, even if everything was going great, they're still not ready to like run a self-sufficient business inside of Tesla. That is like really truly existential. And not for nothing, the press around the model three has not been consistently good either. So consumer reports, which I would say is a mixed bag sometimes. A problematic reviewer.

Are you attacking the media? They're a competitor. Everyone's wrong but us. Whatever. Consumer Reports tends to oversell it when they don't recommend a product, right? They do it with the iPhone every year six times in a row. They're like, we don't recommend the iPhone.

And Apple's like, we solve the one problem with like scroll animations. And consumers like, we now recommend the iPhone. Like this is a constant thing that they do. Anyway, but they- Consumer Reports is a messy bitch. that lives for drama. Sorry, go on. That's right here, Casey.

But they, you know, they said there are some breaking issues with the Model 3. There's some build issues with Model 3. When we had our Model 3 review unit, we only had it for a few hours here. And I get a close look at it. But our photographer, James Barram, came back after shooting it. And he was like, hey, do you notice the paint on that car? Like, some of the panels are different colors. And some of them have that, like, orange peel, bad paint job quality on them.

And this is the review unit they gave us. So, like, there's definitely, like, issues with the Model 3. and if that cycle continues where the people who are the most excited about it now as they're getting their expensive ones are unhappy with a car and they're being really public about it then the whole cycle of Model 3 collapses.

So I think there's just a lot of stress on Elon and the way he can do it is to utterly dismiss any criticism of his company. But that does not explain the behavior. Right? Like that's a weird like Colby understanding.

understand. Huh? Go ahead. I mean, this just goes into the realm of just pure speculation about an unknowable other person's mind. But I do have to wonder if Elon has bought the hype a little bit, right? Like, many people pointed out today that almost no one has benefited from positive press more than Elon Musk, right, in the past many years.

We have built him up into this figure. We compare him constantly to Iron Man. He's the Rocket Man. Like, we really have sort of held him up as this beacon of innovation. And certainly he's done many, many impressive things. And I wonder if in his mind he has sort of ascended to this next level where the, you know, the concerns of peons in the press no longer apply to him and he should just sort of be able to live his Ironman life. That's certainly the how he comes off. I hope he doesn't think that.

But that has been the impression I've got lately is that, you know, these concerns that we raise like don't apply to immortals like him. Yeah, but like Steve Jobs was out there tweeting, right? Like, Larry Ellison, for all I know, is like an evil mastermind. Right? He's not out there tweeting, right? Like, he's just launching lawsuit after lawsuit against Google to take down Android. Like, I get it. Like, if you want to be that person, you can be that person.

But then I think the man of the people that Elon's trying to do on Twitter cuts against him because he's providing this on the same nation. Not for nothing. neither Tesla or SpaceX can hold on to a PR staff for longer than six months. He hires professionals to help him with this, and then they literally start drinking and disappear. They're like, we're moving to the woods now. Anyhow, Casey, where do you think this all goes? He's going to launch his news.

The reason I wanted you to talk about it is because you cover social networks and democracy all the time, every day on your newsletter, the interface. And his last threat was, I'm starting a site to rank news by, its core truth, which is choice for a lot of reasons. And track the credibility score over time of each journalist editor and publication. And he said, maybe jokingly, that he would name the website Pravda, which was, of course, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. So I don't know how seriously to take this because it does feel like an elaborate troll. We just put up a piece, which I've not yet had a chance to read, about why this is a bad

idea. I think it's going to be very, ultimately what you get when you ask people to track the credibility score of a journalist or a publication is you're just going to get something that reflects the belief of whoever is making it, right? And, you know, look, I mean, there are some, like, trippy, epistemological issues in here of how do you know what you think you know, right? Like, it can get very freshman philosophy real quick when you start asking about, you know, why do you believe what you read in the media, like, which things do you believe in the media and which don't you. But, you know, there are also a lot of hardworking journalists who have a lot of credibility

you take their work very seriously. And by the way, the vast majority of the journalism done about Tesla and all of Elon Musk companies is done in good faith. And it has been the work of great journalists that has exposed, you know, some unsafe working conditions at some of his factories, has shed light on some of the high-profile car accidents that may be connected to his autopilot feature. So, you know, these are good things. And I think a better CEO, instead of trying to impugn the media, would say, hey, we're listening and we're going to try to fix this stuff.

And by the way, as somebody who writes a lot about Facebook, a company that has had even more scandals than Elon Musk has had over the past 18 months, I would say, go back and look at how they responded. Initially, they responded very poorly in a lot of ways. But then after they saw they were getting pilloried, instead of saying the media is wrong about everything, they went back, they introduced a lot of, changes into the way their software works. They held a lot of press conferences. They sent Mark Zuckerberg to do a lot of interviews. It was a much different approach. And if you look at the headlines about Facebook over the past month, they're far better than they were for Facebook than the headlines of the previous month. And I think Elon Musk could get to that place too, but it would require actually listening to his critics and unveiling some changes that might actually address some of

their concerns. So here's like a thought. If you're listening to this, you know, like an Elon Stan, We should talk about the Elon stands because they are out there. But if you're listening to this, you're all raging. You're going to tweet at us, which you can do. That's great. But here's the thought experiment about Provda you should do. There was the big Center for Investigative Journalism project story about working dishes at Tesla factories. This is not, by the way, an organization that relies on clicks in fossil fuel advertising, right?

They're like a non-profit investigative journalism operation. But they wrote Elon Musk doesn't like the color yellow. He doesn't like beeping in his factory. They had a bunch of documents and interviews from people who were like, yes, the working conditions of these factories are unsafe. They had a letter from their former safety officer that had been sent to Elon Musk saying, I know it keeps people up at night and I'm not sleeping right now at Tesla. So this is a lot.

I think it's a lot. Here are the claims. Now, there's no core truth, right, to evaluate there. Like, those are the claims that people working at Tesla are making. Elon is like, hey, there's much. miles of yellow tape in the factory. Now, you can't evaluate that someone has to go in and be like, let's look. Is this up to the standard?

Is there enough? Are the complaints that are being made by these workers accurate? Or is Elon right? Right? And, like, actually, there's a middle ground here. You can't possibly evaluate the core truth just by one person says something. And then a richer, more famous person says you're lying. I think it's interesting that Elon Musk, I think at this moment and time, definitely has more credibility on the topics of Tesla and SpaceX despite his obvious interest than the media at large.

And so it is kind of a, it doesn't seem very applicable or correct reaction from him. And like Casey points out, you know, he is someone who's enjoyed an incredible, an incredible, amount of positive press in his career. But it is, I do think there is, I do think the media lacks a lot of credibility in the United States, especially. And it tends to pick fights with people and then kind of keep piling on. And like, I really feel like, you know, for instance, take like the PewDie Pye situation. And I think that was kind of like a big wake-up call for like a lot of younger people to realize that I love PewDiePie.

I'm a fan of PewDiePie. I enjoy his content. I agree with him morally and ethically because he's basically my guru of life. Right. Now the Wallshey Journal is going to come after him by like calling up advertisers and basically break YouTube. Who am I going to side with? Right. Am I going to side with the scold, or am I going to side with PewDiePie my hero?

And so I think the media, for good or for bad, has had a lot of those moments over the past few years and is not trusted. And obviously making a provda credibility rating site is not the way to fix any of this. It's like it's broken. Doing that is broken conceptually. There's a reason why it's a powerful accusation saying you're part of the corrupt media. So I think there's a whole thing happening here, right? There's an entire world of culture on the Internet that exists that has never faced the scrutiny of other people who make culture and products. Right?

So PewDiePie lived in a bubble with his fans. The bubble is ever expanding. The size of that bubble suddenly hit the limit where the people who generally, criticize that culture and hold people to account, start taking a notice of it. And that was just a new experience for everyone. But if, I don't know, a Fox sitcom was out there making Nazi jokes, which is what Peatty Pie was doing, we would instantly and immediately hold them to account in that way. And that is like the big problem. Elon does not live in that world. Elon is a fucking billionaire.

He's always been held to that level of account. That's what he does. People, people, their livelihoods depend on him in a huge way. Like lots and lots and lots of people. Our global communications infrastructure depends on SpaceX launching their rockets

and touching him down again. Right? Like the amount of reliance we have on him is not as an entertainer, is not as a guru, is not as a lifestyle coach. Like he is a captain of industry.

So like the comparison there like falls apart a little bit because PewDiePack can rail about the media, but he is the media. I don't think it's a fair turnabout for for Elon Musk to go after the media's general unpopularity to bolster his own flagging popularity. But I will say Elon Musk fucks up and people in his factories lose their arms.

Like that's like PewDiePie fucks up. The press fucks up and people learn lies. Right. And I am seeing, I definitely in this scenario, I'm seeing a lot of people in the media who say, we want to be able to criticize people. we are the people who are keeping people safe from Elon Dup fucking up. And then if the media is attacked in a general sense, and it might not be fair, the media is like, oh, well, we've got to protect our free speech.

Like the media seems to really not react to criticism very well. But I think this is the core problem, right? Like, you can't look at it as a unified block. Like, the car industry does not react to criticism well. It's not a sentence that you would say in the way that you are currently saying it about the media. We complain about like, we complain about like ecosystems. Like the technology industry likes to create these ecosystem lock-ins and these walled gardens and beautiful handcuffs and stuff like that. Because I can pull that apart too.

And we're not saying we hate technology. We love technology, which is why we're criticizing. Yeah. The media is fiercely competitive and they have some of the same incentives and they do some of the same things. But you can't paint us all at the same brush. it just doesn't make sense, the way that we don't paint Apple and Google and Facebook all with the same brush every time we talk about the tech industry. Like, particularly on this show, which go ahead. And that's why it's such an effective criticism, right?

Because there's only one Elon Musk, but if he criticizes the media, then folks like us have to spend 30 minutes weighing, well, is the media good or bad? When the answer is, well, there's some good journalists and some bad journalists. And there's some fair stories and some unfair stories, right? And I think most fair-minded people can see that. but it's become so easy for people like Musk, and yes, like Trump, to say, oh, the media is so unfair and then, you know, go find some example of unfairness in the media. And then that becomes the discussion instead of their, you know, corruption or their unsafe working conditions or whatever the problem might be.

So, you know, of course the media is rife with problems and it will always deserve scrutiny and it will always mess up. But, man, if we get to a place where the media is seen as just another tribe and you have to decide whether you're with the media or you're with, you know, whoever the demagogue of the day is, then we're just in real deep trouble. Don't you think that's where we already are? No. It already feels like the media is a tribe.

Look, I'm more hopeful. Like, I go home every day. There's like new life in my house. I'm like, we're going to make a better world for her. I just think people want Elon to succeed. Like, that's actually the core of it. Right. There are not.

And so is the media, by the way. Right. When his pockets go up and come down, it's good for us. Yeah. We just made a video with him. Like, Lauren just shot a video with him in Swayzac. Like, we're not out to get him. We're just, it's the same as anything.

He makes a bunch of claims. And we're like, hey, is that, we're going to check your work. And right now, I think the claim that he's reacting to the most is, are you going to ship the Model 3 on time? That's just hard. Like, I don't know if the answer is yes. I don't know if he knows the answer is yes. And he's in a relationship with a girl who just changed his name, change your name to speed of light, because she's so into him.

That's a lot to deal with. That's a lot. He's sleeping at the factory. He's in a new love is blooming. He's stressed. Maybe don't tweet at that time. Well, he did end the rant yesterday with, I'm having the best week. Like, this is a great moment for me.

That's like a true sign that you were off the goddamn rails. That is like a cry for help. Like, if you are in a Twitter war with thousands of people who are like, fuck you. And you're like, I'm having the time of my life. No, not. I think more people were saying, you're awesome. than the other. But yes, go on. Oh, see, he's trying to take down a sign. I mean, like,

I just think this whole, Paul, I take your point, like, a little bit, right? Like, it is, there's a, there's a counter-narrative about Elon that is forming. It's great. It's out there. But there's an ice-cold story to write about the Model 3. There's an ice-cold story to write about the conditions

in that factory. There's an ice-cold story to write about the future of Tesla as a company. And if he actually wants that coverage to be fair, what he needs to do, what every CEO of every company needs to do, is participate in those stories to make them fair. Just to be clear, I wasn't saying that Elon wasn't deflecting. I wasn't saying he is absolutely deflecting,

and this is why it is a powerful way to deflect right now. All right, well, I'm going to deflect us to this ad for the Dollar Shave Club. And then we're going to talk about Blackberry funds. All right, this episode of Vergecast brought to us by the Dollar Shave Club, which delivers everything you need to look, feel, and smell your best. Dollar Shave Club is everything you need to get ready in the bathroom. That's a sentence. Any particular product

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I like to threaten Paul during the ad reads. I've been doing it for a long time. He's like lavender wipes Paul. See, I'm trying to... We're product reviewers, right? It's fundamentally weird for me to read these ads. Yeah. Yeah, it's always been a tension with us.

No, no, I'm not saying that none of that is weird. It's weird when you're talking about butt wipes. It's Paul, like, very angrily. You've never gotten a butt wipe like this. No, I listen to Vox Media's great podcast today explained. And they do the ads, and they get to just, like, be in the ads. Yeah. Because they're, like, reporting on politics and, like, they're not reviewing products.

They're certainly not recommending products in the content of a thing. thing, which is a thing we do all the time. Yeah, I feel like when you read it's, you look at me, it's like, I dare you to accuse me of recommending this in a professional journalistic capacity. Yeah. Or I'm just trying to gin myself up into like having a little emotion so it's not totally fine. Anyway, speaking of products, Dieter's not here, but I want to talk to the Red Hydrogen 1. Deeter went to an event, I think it was an L.A. Nat. Hollywood.

Hollywood, where Red is. Got to play with the phone. weirdly, they would not let us film the screen. Yes. To do with the display. Always a good sign. Yeah, I'm told it's because the display just doesn't translate well on camera is what their excuses.

We don't actually know what the problem is, but that is why they did not want him to photograph the screen. I mean, it plays on the same idea as a bunch of other modular phones. Like, we've seen it from Essential. We've seen a bunch of Moto phones with mods. So this is Red's version, and it's going to have an insanely expensive camera that you can attach it to, and the phone itself is also insanely expensive. $1,200. It's insane.

Yeah, it's a lot. So, yeah, like, the idea is she's like, this crazy modular phone that you can shoot, like, insane videos with, and then you can use it to, like, see your insane 3-D display. It's two cameras on the front. Yep. And you can, like, video chat with holograms? Yeah, it's like, this hollow chat thing where, yeah, you have this special screen where you can, theoretically FaceTime somebody in like a 3D effect.

It's very weird. So Deter couldn't show the screen. Right. But if you watch the video to convey the idea that it's in 3D, there's just a lot of shots of him like going around the screen. He's like, look, I'm looking at all the sides. It's great. He says it doesn't pop out of the screen,

that there's a depth to the screen. And it's not just like a simple lenticular, like two angles. It seems like there's more than two angles. But it also wasn't really at the selling point of the phone. He said it was cool, but it wasn't like, oh, my God, you have to get this phone because the screen is so cool. He was just like, it's, sure, it's neat. But like, well, so we, I don't know, we know a bunch of YouTubers.

We go to a lot of events at every event. People have built entire camera rigs around an iPhone, right? Like, they've got a mic mount. Actually, Dieter has built an entire camera rig off on the iPhone. He's got a mic mounted on it. They've got custom lenses. it's on a gimbal. If you're red and you're seeing that slowly creep towards you,

and really the thing you want to do is get all the YouTubers to, like, buy a red weapon or whatever Marquez has. I'm very jealous of this camera. Why wouldn't you build the camera that's like the phone that's the starting point for all of those people? Right? So you can be like, buy this phone. It's the best phone to begin as a filmmaker.

It's your phone. It's the most expensive purchase for making anyway. Buy the one of the best. camera and we'll build you a modular ecosystem of cool red stuff to put all around it. That's because the OS is still not Apple. But they can't get it, right? For me, the ideal situation is you make films, you need a good LCD for using with your red camera.

Might as well spend a little bit extra and get this red phone as your like monitor for filming, right? Because you could also just use it as a standalone phone. but you're not going to use it typically as your monitor for a 3D you're not most people aren't filming three in 3d yeah that ship has sailed right i just want to be clear the 3d hype what was the end of it the when the hobbit was the hobbit was in 240 and that looked horrible remember we we had a whole story about it it was like it was a different frame rate but also 3d yeah but i felt like that was like for me that felt like the end of like okay we're not allowed

to experiment with this. Peter Jackson, you're done now. People hate experimentation. They want to watch everything in 24 frames per second. Yeah. And if you make it big in 70 millimeter, they'll like that too, but don't screw with 3D or frame rates. Yeah.

And so I don't know why they, I mean, I guess it's fun. It's fun to experiment with like weird 3D technology. And I'm sure it will be like really impressive. But as far as a useful tool to filmmakers, 3D doesn't see like. That's not like the, I don't think they're, I mean, they have a distribution problem, right? Like, you can film in 3D, but then what the hell, unless you have a red phone, you're not going to watch it. I think it's, they made a neat display because they had the opportunity to make a neat display. But I think the fundamental selling point of the phone is we're going to, you're going to build this ecosystem of red stuff around it.

So when you roll into, you know, your YouTube event as a YouTuber, instead of having the iPhone and a gimbal with all the shit around it, you're going to have a red camera and a gimbal with all the shit around it. And you'll still be shooting in regular 2D4. Okay. That to me is what I read. Yeah. Okay. So as we've been recording this podcast, we had some breaking news, which is that Andy Rubin is apparently putting Essential up for sale.

Oh, you're not going to make the Essential phone too. What? So, yeah. So, one, that's a big deal. That's a huge deal. Two, it seems incredibly relevant in the context of this conversation about the Red Phone. Because Essential had the same idea, right? Which is, we're going to create a family of problems.

And the smartphone is going to be at the center of those. And so we're going to invest a lot in a really good phone. And then that is going to inspire you to buy all of these other products. They raised $300 million to do that. And they had the father of Android as their CEO. And they got nowhere with it. So I take a look at something like the red, this phone. I think it looks beautiful.

It actually looks like an old cassette tape. Like I think it looks badass. And they're selling it at a crazy high price point. And I just can't. imagine that they're going to sell more than a hundred of them. Like, I don't know who these outsiders are who are making these phones thinking that anybody wants anything other than an iPhone or a normal Android phone. So, okay, let me distinguish these two things.

I'm going to try. I agree with you, because ultimately the story of the Vergecast is the story of Android phones failing. It's true. That's what we've been covering, the life and death of Android phones. Some of them, two of them are successful. The Galaxy, well, two categories. Samsung's phones, and then everything that's happening in India in China, right?

And then everything in that middle zone in America tends to flame out. But here's how I would distinguish these things. Red is not trying to be a mainstream consumer company. They have no pretension of that. They're not making point-and-shoot cameras or whatever. They're this high-end creator company. So they just serve that audience. And, you know, sales of their high-end film cameras subsidized their, like, phone down.

They've still got like a great business going. Essential, if you remember, launched the code conference last year. This is great timing because the code conference is next week. So it's like one year to the day. This thing like failed. They launched with the phone is our first product, but really we're making something called ambient OS and we're going to put an Alexa-like device in your house that will somehow link every other device in the world together and you'll just like wander through life

speaking to Andy Rubin, who will then turn on your lights for you. And we just need to make a phone because that's the first step. And if we don't have the phone, then we can't build this OS that goes everywhere with you. So their promise was like, it was a mainstream, we're going to build another Sony curve. And they couldn't even get the phone off the ground. I think Red's promise is more like, people love us. They already buy our super high-end expensive things. Having this, like, beautiful, giant phone, it'll just be another status symbol that we can sell.

and hopefully this generation of kids that wants to be YouTubers will buy this phone instead of a Samsung. I also just don't think that this phone, as expensive as it is, if you had the money to buy a red device in the first place, it's not going to be your primary phone. This is clearly like a gadget that YouTubers or bloggers are going to play with or take with them when they're on shoots. I don't think that's going to replace their iPhone.

I think it's just like a thing that they're going to shoot with that just happens to be a little more portable. Yeah. I mean, I really want one. Yeah. I just feel like Red's core competency has been, oh, you want, we know what you want. We will be the company that builds it for you. Sony and Canon won't build that camera that you actually want.

We'll build it. It will cost a lot of money. Yeah. And like iPhone can make a phone with a really good camera, but it's not going to be at this capacity. And it's not going to work with a bunch of other stuff. It doesn't also look like you can bolt it onto the back of a Jeep Wrangler and it will survive. It really does look like you can run over it with a car and it's going to live. I just feel like they're differentiating themselves with something that their core very loyal market doesn't want.

Yeah, we'll see. All right. Being of core loyal market. Yeah, doing that. Blackberry. Still alive. With a new phone. Oh, man.

What's it called? It's called the key two because. Why is it called? Because the one before it was called Key One. Originality. Ew, still got keys. Remember those? What's going on with this?

They have dual cameras. Well, it's a teaser, but it's basically, yeah, like, it's pretty much all but confirmed that there is a new BlackBerry phone. It's running Android. It's got a keyboard, of course. It has dual cameras, and it's got... BlackBerry and is now two-division. There's the mobile division that sells the hardware, and then there's a software

division that sells their, like, security, like, software staff. A strategy that worked great for Palm. Dieter's not here. Anyway, so this phone will have the BlackBerry software stuff pre-installed. And yeah, it's very strange. I mean, like, the last time BlackBerry came out with the phone, the key one, the senior members of the team were like, this phone was a success. And then news came out that was like BlackBerry sold 850,000 units all of 2017.

We don't know how many of those. BlackBerry should put vending machines in Acela stations between New York and these. see. Those are the only people who are buying these phones, as near as I can tell. And to be fair, the phone was quite well reviewed. Like, Dan Sefert reviewed it. And he was like, you know what? Like, this is an enterprise phone. I tried it. I totally understand why people like it. The keyboard makes it so much easier to function and work and concentrate because I'm not out on Twitter putting like emojis everywhere. I'm answering emails. So it makes sense. Like, this is a phone that was created for a very targeted audience that works for them. But it didn't sell a lot of them. because people want their personal phones to also be easy to be used. Like, is it a world?

To be, I think compared, I believe the last report we had was like Nokia in quarter four of 2017 sold like 4.4 million phones. So, you know, in comparison, that it's very abysmal. So you're not taking over the world, but Android's not going anywhere as operating system. And it makes sense that there is at least one. Android phone with a physical keyboard. Yeah. And if the market for that is 850,000 people a year want to buy a phone with a physical keyboard, is that a sustainable business or is it too much work to make a phone?

It should be. There's actually a lot of hardware differentiation happening with Android right now, right? So there's the red phone that we just talked about. There's the key to this doesn't sound like I'm talking about a success story. The Vivo. The Vivo with a pop-up camera on the phone. I'm super stoked on that. The U-11, you can, like, squeeze it,

and it will do something. I don't know. That's good or bad. But, like, there's a lot of that, like, happening. U-12-plus, you can squeeze it, it'll do something. Yeah. Again. Please stop talking about squeezing your phone. Remember the U-11 that you could squeeze?

The U-12 is here. You can also squeeze it. Still squeezing. U-12 still squeezing. H-C. give me a call. I got one for you. HECC, by the way, is making a Bitcoin phone. We talked about that last week.

So I'm just putting that out there again As differentiation. That's a better idea than this one. Let me tell you what I don't like about the new Blackberry phone. It is a distraction from their now core business of just being a patent troll. This was the smartest thing Blackberry did

was just like give up on the idea of making things and just hiring a bunch of lawyers to go sue better companies to try to penalize them for innovating based on like old Blackberry designs that they never could have executed. That's what BlackBerry should focus on.

See, the world needs villains. I'm just putting it out there. Exactly. Like, what is Batman without the Joker? That's right. He's just a guy. He's just a very confused young man. All right.

I want to talk about dongles. Okay. Because there's this Apple thing about the iPhone 6, but whatever. Ben Gate? Ben Gate. I'm not going to relitigate Benegade. But I'm going to relitigate dongles every day for the rest of my life. Okay.

So I'm going to paint a conspiracy theory for you. I want all of you to tell me if you think I sound like a loon. Okay. And if I should dig up whether this is true or, wait, if I sound like a loon should drop it or whether I'm making sense. And I should dedicate my life to uncovering this conspiracy. Okay. Okay. You know what?

Actually, I'm going to keep my remarks to myself and I'll submit them to Elon Musk's new site. All right. A Belkin just put out a $30 cable that goes to lightning a 3.5. If you own beats headphones, this is the cable you have needed the whole time. Right? Without a dongle, you can just plug your beats headphones owned by Apple into your phone. My Sony headphones, this is the cable I've always needed. Just to be clear, because I know it can be confusing sometimes.

We're talking about the male jack, the 3.5 millimeter jack that goes in, into the headphones. The physical part of the... If this is not adapting to your headphone cable, this becomes your headphone. This becomes your headphone. This is the one that the beats owners

have wanted the whole time. This is the one Sony owners who wanted the whole time because they know whatever. Lots of people with cars that still plug into the Aksin. This is the cable they've always wanted, right? You don't need a dongle.

The iPhone 7 came out 18 months ago. Big, you know, Phil Schiller moment, courage. Yeah. Before he talked about wireless, before they introduced AirPods, They're like lightning audio is great.

Here's some great lightning audio devices. It has taken 18 months plus for the cable that makes Apple's own expensive headphones simpler to work with to appear. For this reason, Apple didn't allow people to make it before as near as we can tell because Apple licenses all the products that use Lightning Audio

with the made-for-I-Po iPod, MFI program, and they finally let people make it. I submit to you, sir. Oh, and there's also no, I think there's but one battery case for the iPhone 10, 8, 7 that has a headphone jack in it, which is insane to me. Because I think a lot of people would have bought that if it came out with the set. I submit to you, Apple has not allowed these products to exist in order to drive people towards wireless. And the best wireless products you can buy are Apple's own wireless products. Am I a loon?

Or should I dedicate my life to this conspiracy theory? Well, Master and Dynamics made one of these cables in April. It was like 70 bucks. Yeah. I was really thinking about it. I don't. April, by the way, was last month. So it's not quite, just a reminder, it is currently May.

If Apple was going to suppress the cables that we all need, that just seems like a lot of work. Why? They're not making anything. A lot of work to prop up, you know, whereas I think just the inconvenience and questionable utility is enough of an explanation of why these cables. If you're Belkin, all they do is make cables. It's true. They don't make any other product. You think the people at Belkin, chief cable inventor, her name is Laura.

She's out there. She's like coming to work every day. She's like, I got a great idea for a cable. You think she just forgot about this one? I don't know if her name is Laura. Did they have cable brainstorming meetings at Belkin? Huh? Yeah, that's what I'm saying?

People brainstorming meetings at Belkin where they're just like, what? Cable doesn't exist that we could make. I'd like to visit one and write a story about it. Well, Dr. Belkin, if you're listening to this. Frank Belkin, if you know of this. It's clear we don't know enough about Belkin. But if you are one of these accessory companies, this is your whole job. This is a great conspiracy theory.

I love it. Apple made life. Suck for people to promote, wait, what was it? To drive adoption of wireless. Like, speed tax and AirPods? Yeah. Well, wireless in general. Wireless in general.

So, like, if the iPhone 7 came out and then everyone bought a battery case of the headphone jack, no one would have bought any wireless headphones. But they didn't let those exist. So everyone lived the dongle life. And I'm looking at you, buddy. Yeah, I got the, Mr. I had a dongle permanently attached to your phone for a year. Conspiracy or not, I have been thoroughly defeated by Apple. Apple showed up and said, here's what we're going to do.

And I was like, oh, good don't know. And I was wrong. Nat, am I a loon? No, I don't think so. I mean, does it ever surprise me ever that Apple makes life hard for people? And for the purpose of making you buy more stuff, no. Like, none of that surprises me. Mr. Newton.

This is like an Occam's Razor situation. I just don't know what the simplest explanation. And I'm saying worldwide conspiracy. Right. Also, like, I don't remember the name of the principle, but it's like never, you know, ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence. And it sort of feels like maybe that is at play somewhere in here. He seems a lot nicer.

Two, four, one against. If you think that I should dedicate my life to uncovering this conspiracy, please tweet it, Paul. He's at future Paul. All right, I'm going to read one more ad. We got a little bit more show for you. And then we're just going to promote Casey's show for, I know, another hour or so. Now we're talking.

Here we go. This is what people came here for. This episode of Virchast is brought to you by IBM. By 2050, the world population will reach nearly 10 billion in food production will need to grow by 70%. What if artificial intelligence could help? Farmers are using it to help increase crop yields. Watson and the IBM Cloud provide access to weather data and analyze satellite imagery to help the monitor soil, moisture levels, and reduce water waste.

So as population grows, more food can be put on tables. Let's put Smart to work. Find out how at IBM.com slash smart. Paul. I will. I'm going to start threatening you at every ad now. All right, Mr. Miller. Every week, my friend, a segment occurs.

It's the weekly robot backflip update. We've got a new backflipping robot. I think we're up to two. please correct me if I'm wrong and there are more robots that backflip but Disney is working on stick man which is a imagine an acrobat that's a robot but they only have like it's like a human divided by two like one leg like I feel like one of the CS Lewis like one of the Narnia stories there's like people that just had like one big leg anyways it's it's it It's one leg robot that jackknives in the air and does a backflip and lands on pad.

It's like, it's like truly acrobat. It's like swinging, swinging through the trapeze. Whoa. It's like, I don't know. Anyways, I don't know why. I mean, to be honest, I would definitely go to a robot circus. Yeah. Right?

I feel like this segment went somewhere that you were not quite anticipating. I was just really excited. about more robot backflips. It's just really impressive. I just watch. I mean, to be fair, the last time I went to, like, an acrobatic show was in China

where I was feeling very bad because most of the gymnasts and acrobats were probably, like, underpaid children. So this is probably an area where a robot could totally stand it. I don't want to put children out of work. But do you want to put children to work?

Where do you follow on that one, Paul? I think everyone should have the right to work if they want to. Yeah. including robot. I mowed lawns when I was a kid. That's true. But if the kid doesn't want to do backflips for my entertainment,

I'm saying I'm willing to watch a robot, manufactured by children probably in trying to do backflips for me. Yeah. No, I think it would be fun to watch acrobatics without the danger. I want to be impressed by physical feats without the fear of death. And I feel like a lot of people think that what's cool about acrobatics is that fear that someone's going to die, like watching, you know, race cars.

But I think it's just the technical achievement. Yeah, but people still cringe when you see a phone drop or, like, a robot falling over. And they're like, aw, they still feel the same way about, like, robots that kind of look human-like. Again, I think we started with a robot that can jump, and we've really landed on the essential appeal of death. I'm saying it's not appealing to me.

I know. And I think now you are right. We do impute it. But that might be a good time for us. to work through these emotions that we ascribe to inanimate objects. I will say that is the best pitch for a surface, for a surface, the best pitch for a circus that I've heard in sometimes.

Like, come work through your feelings about the entertainment value of death while you watch these. They have to fill out a comment card at the end. You're like, this was great. I wasn't afraid anything was going to die. It's horrible. Empathy rating. Yeah, empathy circus.

Empathy circus, thank you. Dot com. That's when you start up. I don't really know what it does, but I think there's a circus involved. All right, Casey, I want to ask you about two things. Three things. Well, four things. One of them is your podcast, but we'll do that at the very end.

GDPR happens tomorrow. Technically, it happens 90 minutes from now because of Greenwich meantime. 90 minutes from the time of our recording. People are freaking out. Yeah. Well, by the time you listen to this, it will have happened. Yes. Done and done.

I've noticed too, and Mark Zuckerberg was in front of the European Parliament this week. That went medium, the format was completely insane. So I want to talk to you about that. And then I want to talk about Trump being ruled unconstitutional block. Trump people, it's being ruled unconstitutional for Trump to block people on critics. So let's start with GDPR. You've been covering Facebook, democracy, privacy, all this stuff for some time. Is this like the bomb going off that people think it is?

Is it just a bunch of emails that are getting filtered and ignored? What's your read on it? It's sort of both of those things. You know, I've read every take about GDPR and they cover every possible opinion. I'll start by saying where I think it is good. It creates the expectation for all companies that if they are going to use your data,

they should use it in a way that you have, given your express consent to, and then afterwards, you as a consumer, should be able to ask that company for your data and to see what data they have stored with you. I think most people would say those are pretty reasonable things to ask. Now, the implementation gets tricky. The enforcement is tricky. It will be imperfectly implemented and enforced. But companies really have been scrambling to make themselves ready for it. And we are just going to sort of have to wait and see how it shakes out. There are potentially bad consequences to what is being done.

Something that a lot of people say is that it will make it harder for startups to get started because there will be this sort of onerous new regulatory regime they have to comply with that favors big incumbents like Facebook and Google. who are already printing money and can afford all of the lawyers in the world. But I don't know, this is one where I'm just not inclined to be a nihilist and say, yeah, it's a bad regulation. I think that, again, creating that expectation

that companies should only use data in ways that they have told you they are going to use it is a good thing. And let's give it a chance and adjust. Yeah. I think the wave of we need to regulate Facebook coverage that turned today into, we're getting all these emails and they're annoying because of a regulation that took place is like that whipsaw to me is hilarious.

Like this is the thing that people want, right? If you're going to regulate Facebook, they will have to adjust their policies and communicate them to you. And then everyone else that is similar situation will have to do the same thing. Right. I think we ended up in this scenario because people don't want to think about it. Yeah. They don't want their data to be used poorly. And they also do not want to think about it at all, like, when they're giving it away.

Yeah. But you've got to, like, take some responsibility for yourself. I was talking to Joanna. You can have a bank. Data banks. Maybe you missed that episode. I probably missed that episode. It's like a bank for your data.

And the bank takes care of you? Nothing can go wrong. Yeah. No, I was talking to our friend Joanna Stern, the Wall Street Journal. And she made an incredible video that everyone should watch where she used. literally printed out all of the new privacy policies for a bunch of services. All together, they were the length of football field. And to illustrate this point, she rented a football field and unrolled them across the

football field. Was it like 30 services? Yeah. Made a football field worth of... It's just like an incredible visual stunt. But then she actually breaks them down. She's like, all these updates happen in certain categories. And what she was saying was there's something really deep here.

And what I can tell is no one cares as much as I do. And I think that is like fundamentally the problem. Okay, so you're looking expectantly at the screen. Yeah, I don't know, man. You know, on one hand, for everything that I just said, it still feels ridiculous that you think about how many emails you've gotten about GDPR, many of them don't say they're about GDPR, right? But I think most of us who's signed up for Internet services in our lives

have received what feels like an insane number of emails from people. you know, I myself have probably gotten more than 40 emails. And they all say the same thing, which is, you know, please review the changes to our privacy policy. And you start adding that up. And it really does become an unreasonable expectation. You know, most people simply can't set aside hours out of their week to understand the implications of these changes. Many people wouldn't understand the implications even if they did read it. So, you know, I don't have a good answer to that, which is probably why I focus more on, you know, the consumer benefit, you know, as opposed to sort of how they're rolling it out and what it is asking of the average citizen. Yeah.

Okay. So let's go from there to Zuckerberg in Europe because they're deeply connected. And the European lawmakers were like, do you want to be Steve Jobs or Bill Gates and help society or have you created a monster that will kill us all? Yeah. Which is, by the way, an incredible question. An amazing moment. and of course something that Zuckerberg didn't ultimately answer. So, you know, let's talk a bit about what this was.

The European Parliament held a hearing. They had long sought Zuckerberg to appear before them. Frankly, I think they saw him speaking before Congress, and they got very jealous because they thought we could do a better job asking questions. And I know that they felt insulted that he didn't go over there to bow and scrape and, you know, tell them how much he loves Europe. But he agreed to do it, and it was initially going to be behind closed doors. but they sort of prevailed upon him to have it be live streamed so they could all grand stand in

front of the cameras. And that's what they did. The format was the weirdest thing I've ever heard of. They set aside 75 minutes. There were, I'm going to say, 15 members of parliament who asked questions, and the way it worked was they would give a member of parliament seemingly an unlimited amount of time to ask as many questions they wanted. And then before Zuckerberg could answer, they would move on to the next member of parliament who could then do the exact same thing. This repeated itself 15 times and it absorbed almost

the entire 75 minutes was just members of parliament talking ostensibly in Zuckerberg, mostly to the TV cameras and sort of to each other. And then at the very end of all this, Zuckerberg, who's like been dutifully trying to categorize all of these questions into like

groups so that he can begin to address you know, these dozens and dozens of questions starts talking. But, you know, because there were so many questions, he was able to get away with answering them at the very highest level. You know, so he'd say something like, well, I noticed there were a lot of questions about false news. And let me tell you what we're doing about false news. And then he gave the same answer that he gave, you know, on his blog and in Congress.

This format sounds like legitimately the most European thing I've ever heard in my time. This is the sort of thing that makes me skeptical that GDPR is good. Yeah, which is totally fair, you know, and, you know, for all I know, this is how they signed the piece of Westphalia in 1648, and so they wanted to trot it out again. Like, I don't know, but this was what was agreed to, and they didn't get literally anywhere with any of them. And at the very end, so Zuckerberg talks for 15 minutes past the time that they had allotted, which he notes, and then he's like, you know, so maybe wrap it up. And at that point, some of the more upset members of parliament start literally screaming that they, you know, have more questions and he didn't answer the questions. And he's like, well, my team will follow up with you. And that was the hearing.

So whatever. My favorite thing about European politics in general is that every time I watch anything, there is a short period where everyone gets to yell. And I feel like that's actually really healthy. I like that. Okay. Back on board. Right. Like, it's just really healthy.

It's like, you know what? We all just need to yell for a while. and this is the time that we do it. And it's great. Like you watch the British, like, Prime Minister's Question Time. Like, that's just the government berating the Prime Minister. And then he gets to yell back and then everyone calms down.

That's British Parliament. Yeah. But it's Europe. They yell in Europe Parliament, too? All over. They're yelling. This is so good. That's so good.

It is healthy. Wait, Casey. It is healthy. I feel like we've had an ongoing conversation about, like, conservative, censorship, whatever. I feel like that was kind of. kind of addressed, right? Yeah, so he got that question from Nigel Farage, the Prime Minister of Britain, who noted

that according to him, his posts were seeing 25% less engagement than they used to, and he asked Zuckerberg to answer the question of whether Facebook was censoring conservative viewpoints. This is a question that drives me crazy because the number one publisher on Facebook last month was Fox News. And also there's nothing easier than to see a feed full of conservative news on Facebook if you wanted. But, you know, to frankly, great effect, conservatives have complained that they are seeing, you know, reduced engagement. And this must be part of some sort of conspiracy against conservative viewpoints. There were hearings about it in Congress here. Maybe there will be hearings about it in Europe. I find the whole thing a ridiculous

side show that the evidence just does not support. If you are seeing reduced engagement on Facebook, get in line, buddy, because that is how Facebook works. You put a lot of effort into it and to diminishing returns, and you get to a point where you wonder why you are there at all. Yeah. Yeah, I wonder if they could put out a number that just says, here's how much less traffic we're sending to non-friends-and-family. I, again, this is one of those, like, 4 a.m., Eli's just, like, on his phone while the kid is sleeping. But I tweeted a quote from the Weather Channel. it's like Facebook pays us

and everything but money for two years they paid us in likes and shares and none of those things feel like money and just like for three days random media people

are finding it and hitting like and retweet them and it's like it's just this moment that everyone in the media is like yep that is definitely

how I feel about Facebook like they just don't pay us in money everything but money all right last one Casey then we gotta go uh well last two I want to talk about your podcast for two minutes

but uh Trump not being allowed to block his Twitter critics. Is this in the grand scheme of social networks and democracy? Big deal, little deal. Where do you land? Big deal. So here's why it's crazy.

The court ruled that Twitter is a public forum and that an elected official cannot block access to a public forum. And that has really interesting implications because a lot of folks who argue for more content moderation will say things like, look, these are private spaces. You don't have the right to put whatever you want. It's not censorship if the government isn't doing it. No one has a right to have to see what you tweet. And that has been a line of thinking that has pushed Twitter forward as it develops features like tuning the algorithm so that you don't automatically see replies from people you don't follow, which, you know, of course, generally means that you might see less abuse. So we've sort of been going down that track. And here the court comes along and says, well, look, I mean, you know, the president's, you know, the president.

he's using his Twitter feed to run the country to some degree, to a terrifying degree, and to block people is to sort of take away their right to have a voice in this public forum. And so they said it was unconstitutional. So I don't know that I had a prediction of which way this was going to go because I'm not a lawyer. I don't understand the case law here. But the implications of this are crazy. And this is not going to happen, but I love imagining this happen. happened is Donald Trump having to go through his block list and manually unblocking every

person who he's blocked like since starting Twitter. I just love that image. It brings me joy. He's on his Galaxy S4 just like pounding away. There's a great story this week. Politico was like a little sourcing was a little up and down that he has two phones and he refuses to turn over the one with Twitter on it for security evaluations. That terrifies me.

Yeah. The one that he makes calls on, apparently he hands in every month. But the Twitter phone, he's like, that's too inconvenient. Which I don't understand because presumably he has to do nothing. Right? He just has to get another phone in his hand, and he's like, that's too inconvenient. Because he must tweet at all times. It's true.

It's terrifying. Anyway, Casey, tell us about Converge. And then we've got two minutes, we've got to bail out of here. Are you referring to the number seven ranked technology podcast in the world right now? Yes, that one. Then let me tell you about it. If you are a longtime listener of the Vergecast, you had a chance to hear us play a couple of games from it.

I played retro pitch with Paul and Neely, which I can now confirm is coming up again on an episode that we recorded yesterday. But it's an interview game show, and the feedback we've gotten so far has been great, and it's been consistent. And what we've heard a lot of people say is, you know, it's nice to have a tech show that is funny. Like, these are real interviews with very smart people,

but they're also very silly, and so we laugh a lot. And so if that sounds like something that you might want in your life, I encourage you to subscribe to Converge for a guaranteed good time. I'm into it. And by way, let me pay you this compliment. I don't know. Your first guest was a Cina Sistani. From house party.

From house party. I don't know her, but someone was tweeting. all three of us the other day. And I was like, oh, yeah, I know her. And, like, that is an incredible feeling to come away from an interview and feel like you actually know. Well, I feel like she's my best friend now. That's great.

She's wonderful. But I have a very important question. Yeah. The show starts off with a laugh track. Right. But I feel like the laugh track fades over time. Am I right? You're right.

And this was sound design by Andrew Marino. our wonderful producer and editor who did all of the sound on the show and Andrew surprised me with the laugh track he just sort of gave me the cut of the episode and I listened to it and you hear this laugh track and if he had told me he was going to do it I'm sure I would have said gosh I don't know

like that's going to sound really weird but when I listened to it I felt like it gave it the feel of a game show like that live studio audience thing and the fact that it just kind of gradually fades away into the background to the point where you sort of stopped noticing that it was there in the first place I thought it was a really cool effect

So we'll see what it sounds like. I will say it was the 100% the most controversial aspect of the show. I did get tweets from people who are like, what are you doing with this laugh track? But then I got, you know, frankly, a higher number of tweets and emails from people saying, I love the laugh track. Like, what a crazy unexpected element. So I think we're going to keep it at least for a while.

I also was curious to see. It surprised me. I love being surprised. Yeah. And it was good that it fades. But I do, I think I love it at the start. I'm adding a laugh. track to this show. Yeah. And the soundboard and one of those like crazy

hairhorn things and fart sounds. It's going to be great. Now, what's going on with our tech team that people should check out this week? Can you anything good? Gosh, what's going on with our tech team that you guys haven't talked about? I mean like a bunch of new phones there. Yeah, we have a bunch of phone reviews that are out. Dan Seafurt reviewed the one plus six, which people were very excited about. There are LGG7 reviews up. So people would check that out. Deeter has a new episode of processor by Android P gestures that you can also check out. And if you are interested in more things, Google, you can also read a small little

thing I just wrote about how Google managed to add another messaging feature to a Google product called YouTube. You can now chat on YouTube because why not? I like this, if this is just part of a running joke that Google's now in on where Google makes too many chat applications. But do you think Google is going to try to make YouTube? it's social network. It already is. By far.

Yeah. It is 100% the most popular social product Google makes. You can follow people. It has the community tab. Yeah, you can comment and talk to each. And now you can talk to each other. You can add friends.

Soon you'll be able to tweet. I hate those posts. So I'm scrolling through YouTube. And it's like, ugh. I mean, you know that like there is a theory that the long-term destination for Twitter as a thing is for YouTube. Like there are a lot of people out there,

including a lot of former Twitter executives who think it would be smart of YouTube to just buy Twitter. And because so many top YouTubers are already using Twitter as a way to talk to their fans in the world. So it is, you know, not something I count out. That would be wild.

Yeah. If only Twitter would expand YouTube links in line. That would be a good first peace offering. Hey, do you want to buy us? We've started to let people watch videos in our platform. All right. That is it.

We've got a little bit over time. Thank you, Casey, for being here. Thank you for shameless plugging your show. Nat, thank you for joining us. Of course. Paul, you're fine. Thanks. Well.

Paul, buy the products I've advertised to you. I will. Use AI for your farm, Paul. I don't know. You can follow us everywhere. Twitter, Instagram. We're at Verge. There's a new Instagram account from the Verge,

which is excellent. It is our art department. All the custom art they make for the site. All the wallpapers are doing. It is the Verge art and Instagram. Instagram, Rocket Ship, already 10,000 subscribers in one day, or followers, whatever they are on Instagram, in one day. There's also Verge Science, which is doing gangbusters on YouTube. So check out our two new channels that we're doing.

There's more podcasts to listen to. There's obviously Casey's. There's Recode Decode with Kara Swisher, and there's Recode Media with Peter Kauf. By the way, Kara, I just want to shout out Kara, who is the ultimate sometimes. Because in the middle of all the C-L-Must stuff, just war tweeted at him about coming to the Code Conference, and he reports. and he replied, hi, I'm really busy at the factory, but let's do it. And then she was like, I'll come to the factory, we'll go to the factory, I'll build a car, anything. Do you think she's going to show up at the code conference?

You know, I wouldn't rule it out. Like, he is an impulsive person, and he has been to the code conference before. And as you say, Kara Swisher, incredibly persuasive. So my fingers are crossed because it would be amazing. Yeah. It would be. And also my favorite part about this entire thing is I was out yesterday. And at 11 o'clock, I come home.

I opened my laptop. And I get an email from Deeter saying, look at this sweet. Please plan around this. I know it's going to be late your time. But please plan around this. And I said, well, I said nothing. I just closed my laptop.

Deeter, I can't do this right now. Well, Casey, you'll be at code. Deeter will be at code. We'll have coverage. That's coming up. It's going to be a big week. WDBC is next week. Two weeks.

Two weeks? Two weeks? Yes. Look, I'm not actually back at work yet. I'm officially back at work And I cannot use a calendar I haven't looked I did my best to be far away from work

I'm officially back next week The quality of this show will increase Because I will have prepared for it Instead of just winging it After changing your baby But that's it That's the show Thank you very much rock and roll