The Vergecast - Elon Musk's computer coup

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Nilay, David, and Richard Lawler take on a big week in confusing news stories. First, they talk through the latest from Elon Musk's DOGE, which is running rampant through government computer systems with little pushback. Then they explain the latest on the US government's tariff strategy, and the mass confusion it's causing across tech. Then they pivot away from politics and talk about streaming: the Super Bowl coming to Tubi, the deeply confusing forthcoming Fox streaming service, whatever Comcast is doing this year, and more. Finally, in the lightning round, they talk about Sonos's streaming box, Brendan Carr's latest assaults on free speech, OpenAI's "new" logo, and more. Further reading: DC is just waking up to Elon Musk’s takeover Elon Musk is staging a takeover of the federal budget Workers are reeling from chaos at federal agencies Can anyone stop President Musk? “For all practical purposes, I’d call that a coup.” Trump imposes sweeping tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China Canada will retaliate against Trump with tariffs on US goods Trump agrees to a one-month pause on Mexico, Canada tariffs Qwertykeys halts keyboard shipments to US over tariff costs and confusion Shein and Temu depend on a 100-year-old tariff loophole that Trump wants to close Your packages are about to get slower and more expensive USPS backtracks, will accept parcels from China after all China tariffs may already be hiking up import fees China opens Google antitrust probe in retaliation to tariffs Fox plans to launch a streaming service by the end of 2025 Super Bowl LIX will stream for free on Tubi Comcast is adding Dolby Atmos to its ‘4K’ Super Bowl broadcast this year Warner Bros. is streaming full movies for free on YouTube Disney teases ESPN’s expansive sports streaming future Disney’s streaming business posts another profit. CBS is preparing to give Harris interview materials to the FCC. FCC launches probe into Soros-backed radio station that revealed live locations of undercover ICE agents After a bruising year, Sonos readies its next big thing: a streaming box Sonos lays off 200 employees as its struggles continue Google has ‘very good ideas’ for native ads in Gemini ChatGPT’s agent can now do deep research for you Here’s OpenAI’s new logo Chairs Are Like Facebook Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompts something like,

Build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data, in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. Hello and welcome to the Richcast, the flagship podcast. The gossip about Hard Fork, our greatest rival. Ooh.

Wouldn't that be great? People would pay for that. I think you thought you wanted no ads. What you really wanted was unvarnished hard shots at Casey Newton. Do we have a podcast enemy? I feel like it, like naturally it should be hard. fork. But Casey used to work at the verge. We love Casey. We love Kevin. Like, Kevin needs more people on his side because just Bing is out here just trying to ruin his life and marriage.

Right. I'm saying Kevin needs more human beings to love him. 100%. The robots are aggressively trying to love that man. Yeah. So like Kevin, we're here for so like, who's our enemy? Can you email us and suggest an enemy for us? I would like to have one. And I'm down for fake beef. Like you want us to do a W.E. style fake beef. You let us know. The problem is that many of our would-be rivals are also our friends and people who used to work here.

This is what happens when you build the network. This is my theory of true power. Richard is like ready to go. Yeah. Enemies, you need more friends. As Rob Polika says. All right, it's the Verchast. I'm your friend, Nelai. That's Richard Lawler making a triumphant reappearance

on the Verchast. What's up, buddy? Hello. And as always, David Pierce is here. Yeah. There's a lot going on. on this week, including, like I said, just a number of random shots at Hard Fork throughout this episode. I keep saying this and now we have to deliver on it.

We did not plan to actually take a bunch of shots at Hard Fork on this episode, but we'll try. We'll do our best. There is, in fact, a lot going on this week. Elon Musk has taken over the government. That seems notable. There's tariffs, which seem boring, but will dramatically affect the prices of basically every tech product in big and small ways.

We've got to talk about those a little bit. Sonos has like a new streaming box. The Go 90 scale is here on our rundown, triumphant return of the Go 90 scale. And then we got a Lightning Round unsponsored because I'm going to continue using Lightning Round to dunk on Brendan Carr. Our truest enemy. I've come all the way around and realize that we do have an enemy here on the Virchcast. And it's FCC chair of Brennan Carr. Yeah, but he's not a podcast enemy.

Brendan, start a podcast so you can be our podcast. Don't give him ideas. Could he investigate his own podcast? This entire part of our life. lives, like of American history is tiresome bureaucrats with podcasts pretending to the voice of the people. Don't. I mean, it's fine.

All right, let's start with whatever is going on with Elon Musk and Doge. It has been a long week, a long week with highs and lows of this new cycle, stuff that isn't real, stuff that seems very real, lawsuits, the Doge being blocked from access of Treasury Department payment systems, getting only read-only access or big fight about that. Senator Ron Wyden was on Decoder this week, and he said, for all practical purposes, I'd call that a coup. We're all over the place. David, you have been sort of an impartial observer. You're just taking it all in. Explain what's going on and how people should think about it. It's simple task, really. Yeah, I think the simplest way I can put this in, in like, honest human terms is that Elon Musk and a small group of people he appointed or hired or, I don't know, met on the internet in some way. have, like, in a relatively meaningful way, taken over the federal government.

Over the course of, I would say, especially the last 10 days, but, like, it sort of ramped up all this week. They've gone from agency to agency and essentially barged in demanding complete access to everything. Like you said, they've been demanding payment information at the Treasury Department, which has obviously gigantic ramifications because that's where all the money is in the government. And there's a lot of money in the government. they've been in NOAA, the oceanic and like, the atmosphere. The atmosphere, thank you. They've been in NOAA, the Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, which is the one that does all the weather stuff. By the way, if you have never read Michael Lewis's book, The Fifth Risk, he has a whole thing about the fact that they do all the interesting work on weather and then a bunch of lobbyists have made it so that they're not allowed to do anything with it.

And so that's why you pay money for weather forecasts. That's a random aside, but it's a perfect microcosmine. of like the disaster of all of this stuff. They've essentially, for all intents and purposes, shut down US aid while Elon Musk has been tweeting conspiracy theories about how it's a criminal organization. There's just all kinds of weird stuff going on. So a lot of it is bad, but in a way we don't totally understand.

There is a sort of incredible amount of access and information that these unelected, unqualified people have access to. What that is going to mean in the short, medium and long term is still in some ways hard to know. It means a lot of people are out of jobs. It means a lot of your information is available to people to whom it should not be available. But I think we're still at the very beginning of A, people understanding that this is really happening. Like the big other push this week was a lot of people being like, how were you allowing this to happen? And we spent the whole week, I think, of a lot of people, Democrats in particular, saying they're being like, this can't be

real. They're not. Are they? Would they wouldn't? And then they're like, oh my God, they did. And so now they're starting to fight back and there are legal tests and the question of how far this Doge group is actually going to be allowed to go and what they're going to be allowed to do. I think anyone telling you they know the answer to that is lying to you. But right now it feels bad, but in a complicated and hard to fully wrap your head around way, which I think in a lot of ways is the point. Right. And there's also what I would call a bunch of fake transparency. in the mix. Because the transparency is real, but the purposes are fake or misleading. So, you know, they tore down this agency USAID, USA, which is an agency exists by creation of Congress in statute. It's funded by Congress. The executive ranch is not supposed to just show up and tear those things down. That's illegal.

It's not illegal when the judge says it's illegal. It's just illegal. Like, they're not allowed to do that. That's a big problem. That's a constitutional crisis all on its own. And then right next to that is what I, what I keep thinking of is fake transparency, which is Elon and a bunch of right wing grifters on X are looking at a website that has existed for a long time, also created by the government, called USAspending.gov. It exists. It is literally the official source of spending in the United States government, especially just a searchable database of spending. They're looking up numbers and recipients of government spending.

they're manipulating the date ranges in bizarre ways and then claiming things like Politico got $8 million from USAA, which is just flatly not true, right? Over 17 years, the government has spent a lot of money in Politico subscriptions, but those subscriptions are for political pro, which is their data service, and it costs like $20,000 per year per seat

because government bureaucrats and policy professionals and lobbyists all depend on pretty boring, like, gray suit data people doing hardcore policy analysis at Politico. It is not the front-facing Politico that's all about, like, what some senator said in the hallway right before they retired, it's their data organization. Right. Much like Bloomberg. Like, you know, like people, I think, are more familiar with Bloomberg than Politico Pro. Bloomberg is a very expensive terminal subscription that stockbrokers use to chart trades. Like, it's a high-speed data service that fronts a famously money losing newsroom in magazine, which is the, like, media

arm of the organization. Like, the part of Bloomberg, and I'll just call it Mark German, because I'm sure all of our listeners know who Mark German is, like amazing Apple reporter gets all the scoops. Is there going to be a new iPhone this year? Mark German knows that there's going to be a new iPhone this year. That whole part of the organization, Bloomberg Media, loses money because it's just brand building for the terminal, which prints money at a huge rate. Many, many media organizations have this kind of relationship.

Politico has one of them. So you're just like looking at what this like fake transparency. People are like Googling the word New York. They see the word New York Times. And they're adding up the numbers for everything that has gone to anything with the word New York in the name and saying USAID has funded the New York Times $47 million. This is just not true. The New York Times is a public company.

If they had one customer that was paying $47 million a year, We can actually verify that very quickly. This would be a scandal with its own shareholders. Right. But what you're getting is these screenshots of transparency that were not created by Doge, created by another government agency that existed forever by statute, funded by Congress. And it's being used to propel a narrative that Doge is doing something at all. When what we do know they're doing, reported by Wired, lots of great reporting company at WIRE,

by the way, reported by the New York Times, some of our own reporting. they're showing up in these systems. They're showing up these agencies. They're setting up their own email servers, which is very funny given the history, the contentious history of email servers. And Slack servers. And Slack servers.

They're forcing people out of their systems. They're writing their own code to take control of the payments. And they're basically saying, oh, we realize the government runs on computers. If we take over the computers, we will run the government. Which is the most verge thing to say. Like, what is the government?

it's a bunch of computer systems. Yeah, that it makes sense. Like, I think intuitively to us in our newsroom, I think it intuitively made sense to the wired newsroom, which is why they've done so much great reporting. Like, who runs the computers is really who runs your company, who runs your country. And so obviously Elon Musk knows this as well.

So he showed up and took control the computers. And now the question is, can you do that? Is he allowed to that? Can anyone stop him? Do any of these people even know what it means to run the computers and what it means to have read-only access, which is a real, real Dodge terminology, right?

If you have read-only access, but you are in charge of someone who has right access, it doesn't matter, right, what your individual permissions are. So there's, I think there's a lot of moves here that I think are confusing, but it boils down to like a very vergey idea, which is, yeah, if you run the computers,

you actually run the thing. But pretty simply. And I don't think a lot of elected officials realize that the country is just a bunch of computers. It's a bunch of computers that are operated by people who have and would like to keep having their jobs. Right? Like over and over and over the some of the pushback on this has been like, well, why aren't the people in these jobs doing anything about it? They're just, they're just bureaucrats. Why aren't they stopping them? It's like, what? Because they can't. Because Elon Musk rolls in and is like, you're fired

and I'm going to tweet to 200 million people your name and information. And that turns out to be pretty threatening to a lot of people if you do that. And so it's become this thing where this tiny group of people is like, it is just wild to me how far we got by everybody just assuming like something like this wouldn't happen. Like Dan Hahn, who worked for the federal government and is a long time tech guy, had a whole big long thread on. blue sky, I think yesterday, talking about this stuff. And he just kept coming back to this point that this is like, fundamentally, it is people sitting in front of computers. And people can be easily told what to do because people have like jobs and needs and

things to do. And it's very easy when you're standing over somebody's shoulder to convince them to do what you want. But also, if you just come in and are not afraid of breaking the technology, you can do pretty much anything. Right. We have all of these like very old, brittle. computing systems that touch

hundreds of millions of people. And so people, like, things don't change. And everybody gets very mad about government websites. But if you come in and you're just like, screw all of this, we're just taking it to where we're going to blow it up. It turns out you have pretty quick, like, unilateral authority to do just about

anything. Yeah. Actually, Senator Wyden, it's not out yet. You're able to be listening to this over the weekend. The Dakota interview with Senator Wyden will come out on Monday. Well, you ran the It's a coup clip on TikTok. It felt important to get out to a senator thinks it's a coup, you know, we just like ran it early. But inside of that conversation, which again will come out on Monday, he says no one thought anyone would go attack the treasury system in this way.

Right. And that's one of those things where it's like, yeah, because it's so illegal. It's so illegal to send in the unelected 25-year-olds into the treasury system to fire the people who say they shouldn't have access to it or put them. on leave and then give them access to it, prompting a number of court cases. Usually, you don't do that. Usually, and this, by the way, is even inside of like the Doge framework, right, the Vivek Ramoswamy versus Elon and Vivek gets pushed out, even inside of their own narrative, this is the tension. Because Vivek is on record saying, I wanted to do it through legal means, and Elon wanted to do it

through technical means. And it's like, oh, yeah, brute forcing a computer takeover is vastly more efficient than doing it through the legal process. Well, and, I mean, I think this is where the specific person that is Elon Musk becomes so interesting. And this was the thing that Liz Lapato on our team wrote a really great piece about this week, which is essentially Elon Musk has a pretty broad swath of evidence now that suggests that the rules don't exist.

And in fact, he can do whatever he wants. and he is now in this position where the president has appointed him to this role and there's no evidence to suggest that he is going to be stopped from doing this and also Elon Musk just has done whatever he wants for a really long time and like it mostly works out for him and so you have this combination of this like specific opportunity

and this specific person who is like, I am more or less invincible in every sort of meaningful way and this is what happens. Yeah. Two more things on this, then we should move on to terrorists, which are much more sort of immediately impactful in people's lives. The Constitution of getting run over is a big deal. I don't want to minimize that in any way.

But you can't buy mechanical keyboards. I think for verge readers, much more immediately impactful. That's just life. Like, I, that's the way it goes. But two more things on this before we talk about tariffs. One, there's a lot of just sort of general chatter about wired naming the 20-somethings and teenagers who are working for Doge. And a lot of it is, I think, mistaken, the mistaken sense that there's just pure criticism of their age, right? Young people shouldn't do stuff is like a lot of the Silicon Valley backlash to why are naming these people in their ages.

That's not it. It's when you're that young and then you're given the keys to the trillion dollar treasury payment system, people are going to worry about whether you have the expertise and knowledge to operate it correctly. Especially when it's written in COBEL, like an ancient programming language. But also, like, whoever you are, we should know your name. Like, I don't care how old you are or where you come from or what you do professionally. Like, if you have the keys to the federal budget, I should know your name. Yeah.

And that's the second part, right? Which is people are saying it's doxing to know. No, now they're government employees. Yeah. And that is life. And Elon loves naming government employees and directing harassment at them, has done it several times, has bullied government employees. out of their jobs with internet harassment, including the former FAA administrator. Wild, right?

So, like, there's a double standard here, which is the most Elon Musk thing of all, where whatever he does is fine and just and lawful and righteous. And whenever anyone else does the same things, it's illegal. And he literally is out there saying this is a crime. Mr. Free Sweet's absolutist is saying naming government employees as a crime is ridiculous. If you've been listening to the show, you know I'm on red alert about the First Amendment. We're going to come to that later in our Brendan Carr's a dummy segment. But just that's like it's the most important thing here is there's a pressure on just transparency and accountability for these guys to make that seem unlawful or illegal.

And that is the most important thing. Like that's how the government works. It's base layer. Like the American government is supposed to be transparent and accountable people. That's why there is a website called USAspending.gov. And so when you see people. tweeting information that was already public and pretending it was a secret, you should immediately distrust that person.

Like, that information has been available for a long time. And saying I'm revealing it now or a leak now or Elon made it transparent now, especially when you see a screenshot of that website in particular, that's how you know they're grifting you. And like X is particularly a platform for grifters. And it's okay to know the names of people and be worried that 19-year-olds who have signed up to scrub the all languages of DEI from government websites might be compromised in some way is pretty normal.

Like, the young men who want to get rid of racism on websites, they come from a stock of young men. And historically, movements are built around that kind of feeling. It's okay to say young men doing that is problematic for a variety of reasons. I'm just saying. Okay. So that's Doge. We're going to do more reporting on it. We have a lot of ideas about.

how to report on that stuff. Again, it's a computer takeover. It's in our zone. It's in 404's zone. They've done a lot of good reporting on this as well. So we're going to stay focused on that. It's funny this show comes out on a Friday, and I know by Monday something else will have happened. But oh, yeah, we'll stay focused on it.

Then there's the other thing that happens simultaneously. This has pretty much rock the tech world, although not as publicly as Doge. And that's tariffs. And I think there's the sense that Trump is doing a. trade war for fun while Elon does a coup. You know, like they just hand him stacks of paper to sign and he's having a good time while Elon does a coup. But the tariffs are real.

Even though the Mexico and Canada tariffs came and they got delayed for 30 days, the tariffs on China really did hit. And the de minimis exception, the trade exception for packages under $800 really did hit. And it seems, David, like the world of e-commerce is about to change dramatically. I agree. But we should back up and explain what's actually happened here. Because going back through and putting all of this together, I was struck by how many like twists and reverse, like, reverse Uno cards have been played over the last several days.

Richard, have you been tracking this closely? Can you, like, walk us through the timeline a little bit? Okay. So Trump promised tariffs, of course. Throughout much of his campaign, he started a trade war when he was president before. Unsurprisingly, he wanted. to do it again, wanted to do it very quickly, said that he would. And we have been kind of waiting. We were waiting as soon as his administration started. He then said that he was going to

establish his tariffs against Canada and Mexico and China and blamed it on fentanyl for some reason. That's what he's got. And then Canada and Mexico said, okay, by the way, we've announced some things already that we were doing to stop the fentanyl trade. How about that? And he said, cool. and did not tariff them. And maybe some small things around the edges that are new or may be negotiated. So those are paused for 30 days. However, he did not pause the changes that were coming to the tariffs on China, which included a 10% tariff also included instituting previously suspended tariffs.

So it's more than 10%. It kind of adds up and stacks up. And in addition, as you noted, this de minimis rule that maybe none of us have ever thought about, But if you've ever ordered things on TEMU or wherever where they shipped them directly from China to the United States, there was kind of a loophole that avoided these fees. And now that's gone. So those prices are about to change drastically in a lot of ways. Shipping products from China to the U.S. is changing a lot of ways very rapidly. The U.S.PS did not know what was going on on Wednesday.

Stopped everything, then unstopped everything. And now we just were kind of waiting to see how much the prices go up. It does seem like right now the confusion is the thing. And I don't know if this was deliberate or not, but this all happened so fast. Everybody was waiting for there to be tariffs, like you said, Richard. And then the prevailing theory for a long time among like economists and stuff was basically like Trump wouldn't possibly do that. It's ridiculous. Tariffs are self-defeating.

Everybody agrees. Tariffs actually help no one. There is no point in this. He won't do it. And then he did it. very quickly and in a different way than anybody expected. And so all of a sudden, everybody is just thrown into chaos, like you're saying. Like, Nel, you mentioned the story of this keyboard manufacturer, this company called Quirty Keys,

that basically just like got the news, called up DHL and was like, what are we doing? And DHL was like, okay, you're going to need, I think it was 50% of the purchase price as a customs deposit. And then there's going to be a huge new fee as this stuff gets, imported into the U.S. And the company was essentially like, all right, we're just going to stop shipping while we figure this out. Like, nobody knows what to do with this. Yeah.

And so, so, so much of what we do and the stuff that we buy and the stuff that we get is going to be caught up in this confusion. And I think it's a going to get more expensive. That's going to get messy. And like, again, there are lots of economists who have gamed this out. And pretty much everybody who thinks about this stuff agrees that tariffs are pointless. And we can get in. why if we want to. But the very first thing that's going to happen is a bunch of your stuff

is going to get more expensive. But I think at the same time, stuff is just going to stop appearing because there are just going to be a lot of companies and drop shippers and whoever who just decide the smart thing to do in this moment is just nothing. Because there is a sense that even what's happening now is impermanent and will change. And the back and forth with Mexico and Canada has already taught a lot of people that maybe if I just wait this out of it. So like, I think this idea of like, we're just going to stop. shipping for a minute until we figure out what's going on might become more pervasive pretty quickly. I don't think that's true of like Apple, which has like gigantic teams of people who do

this for a living. But like the, the Shians and Tammu's of the world, that all that stuff is going to just start to wither away both because it's just more expensive and it's just more complicated. So I'm curious about that. Sheen and Timu are built on this regulatory exception. They've built entire businesses in this country on the back of the de minimis exception. Which is $800, right? If it's under $800, it escapes the customs fees, essentially. Yeah, you don't have to go through customs inspection. You don't have to pay extra fees.

You just send the package over and here you go. I've bought. I didn't know about this. And I'm struck by thinking $800 is kind of a lot of money. Right. That's a lot of stuff that would get under $8. Just enough for a great whole video. Like, you live in an economy and an information ecosystem that is built around

$800 limits on customs inspections. That's the size of a she and all. It's real. Like that's, it's so real. It's, it's everywhere. I've bought stuff on these sites and they come direct from China. And it's just wild, right, that you get a package directly from China and you haven't paid any customs.

And now we're in a situation where I have seen people who are like, the dropshippers want my social security number so that the custom service has accountability because they have required a social security number for a shipper on this end. That's just, I mean, that's the end of these, if that's really the rule, and again, the uncertainty is the point. If that's really the outcome, like, these companies definitely go away. I don't know that it will definitely be the outcome. There are, they obviously have built large companies around a weird regulatory loophole that could have been closed at any time. And certainly the Biden administration, even the, the first Trump administration, people talked about closing this loophole. They're, they might find a way

around it, but all of those ways will increase cost. Where it's really going to hit is a bunch of small companies, right, who don't have big compliance offices like Apple, who don't know what to do, and they're just going to say, we're just pausing shipments until something gets resolved. Right. I have this thing called the Tuneshine

in my house. I love it. It's one of my favorite little gadgets. It's just a super low-res, like, LED display that you connect to whatever streaming service, and it displays album art. It's like ultra-pixelated. Yeah. It's like a light, bright for album art. It's pretty cool. It's all right for album. It's super fun. I have been

meaning to write about forever. I actually asked Tobias Butler, that's one guy who quit his tech job to build these things in his spare time. I love this. I should have written about it ages ago. But I asked him a while ago, how will tariffs hit you? And he basically said, I would love to switch to more U.S. made parts, but the quotes I've gotten in the past are 300 to 400% higher than what I pay now from Chinese to get Chinese parts. And a few of the parts don't get get made anywhere but China. So like this little company is just a guy who quit his job to like build album art light brights. He's like my parts are going to go up 300 or 400 percent. And then he says, I could also increase production by 20 to 100 times of what he makes now. He makes them all by hand.

So that's hard. But in order to do that, I would have to pay $200,000 up front. So he just has to write a $200,000 check in order to front the increase in production that would cover his tax. What you just described is the difference between being in business and being out of business. Right. And it's that simple. And I'll run. I will actually put this on a story. I've been meaningful with Tobias now that there's this actual tariff.

I emailed him before. And so I promise I will publish this story. I'm assigning myself this own story because I do love my tune shine. But he ended his note to me by saying, I'm hopeful that a big company like Apple will have enough sway in the administration to point out how much more expensive so many products will get overnight and prevent tariffs from going into place. Here we are. They're in place. Like this ecosystem is already under pressure.

The little companies are already feeling it or will already feel it. And the big companies like Apple are staring down the barrel of, oh, are we going to have to just increase iPhone prices by 10%? Because Apple is very capable of just subtly increasing prices in September to cover the bill. Right. Yeah. And they might just do it. Or they might increase ICloud prices. Hey, you know, like you're at five gigs of I cloud storage.

Like now it's $8 instead of $1. Seven, like, they can make these moves to eat it, or they can do what we have always seen Tim Cook do. They can buy themselves a tariff waiver, which he has done several times in the past. The problem is this time Trump is threatening tariffs on chips from Taiwan. He's threatening tariffs on the EU, which Apple's in a fight with. The political dimension of this is actually much more complicated for Tim Cook to navigate, and I have no idea what he's going to do. Yeah, I'm sort of at the point where I don't know how to handicap that either. but I also think if you're Apple,

you can afford to do all those things you just described, right? Like the idea of ICloud prices going up a dollar and that pays for all of this is like real. Like that's a, those are moves Apple has. Those are not moves most companies have. Like this all just rhymes to me of like the zero interest rate phenomenon stuff we've been talking about, that there was all this stuff that was possible

when everything was cheap and everybody had more access to more money all the time. And then as soon as that went away, all these companies who are operating at a loss based on being able to get more investment or were to making these like teeny tiny margins die. Like those companies are gone because money stopped being free. And it's like people underestimate how big a change everything is now 10% more expensive to customers is because it's not as simple as you ship a finished product to a person and it charges them 10% more. and even if it were that, that's problematic. But the way trade works, everything moves in so many directions all the time that this stuff is just going to cost more than you think.

Every one of these is going to be more expensive than you think. And Richard, like you're talking about, this stuff is starting to stack. And so we're getting to the point where so many of these tariffs for big companies are going to be like a big quarterly earnings headache. And like, if I'm being completely honest, I don't worry existentially for like Apple and Google's ability to weather tariffs.

Like they'll be fine. It'll be more expensive for us and that will suck. But there's a whole huge slew. Like if you're a hardware startup right now, you're host. Like this is an existential crisis for anyone in that position right now. And that sucks. And that's the thing like these companies that make these devices that aren't in huge numbers that aren't in Apple production that rely on maybe contract production or, you know, they're going on some website just to find components the same as you and I can. they just suddenly don't exist. Like, you get to a point where, as you said, they just stop existing. And you can't get around that. And what that means is that even if the tariffs were repealed the day after, those companies don't just come back into existence. Like, it does not work that way. Right.

And, of course, all these other countries have moves to, like, you know, Canada immediately launched retaliatory tariffs. Mexico said it was going to do stuff. China is now, like, antitrust investigating Google, which is hysterical. That's actually the funniest one of these all. Like, Google doesn't operate there. Weird? Yeah.

Like Google has a monopoly in China despite not existing is like, is pretty fabulous. So Google does have offices there. They have some like AI researchers there, but they don't have any products there. What they have is Android, which is forked by Chinese phone makers into whatever custom version of Android. They all want to run. I don't know. That's a monopoly. It is just very funny that they were like, ah, Google.

There was a report today that they might start investigating Apple. app store fees. And that's the big retaliation. And that is also the danger for the EU, right? The EU famously loves to regulate Apple. They're like, make the icons blue. And Apple's like, I hate you. And that's a very challenging relationship. And we've heard from Apple in various ways that one of the reasons that, you know, Tim Cook called Trump before the inauguration, all this stuff, was to warm up that relationship so that he might fight EU regulation. Mark Zuckerberg has openly said he would like Trump to advocate for American companies in the face of EU regulation. Trump has said he'll put tariffs in the EU. If the EU responds to those tariffs by saying,

no, we're going to do more investigations. Actually, we're going to turn up the heat on American companies. Like, I don't know that this actually solves the problem. I don't know that this begets a negotiation. I think it just gets more and more tense until something breaks in a way that maybe never goes back together. Yeah. I mean, it certainly seems like we are more likely to be headed in that direction than everyone just caves and gives the Trump administration. administration something. It's not super clear to me what victory looks like even. On tariffs, the Trump administration has caved, like immediately caved, right to Mexico in China.

But, you know, it's a 30-day pause. The same way the TikTok ban was a 75-day pause. And at the scale of these companies and the scale of global trade and the scale of tech industry, you cannot run these things in these weird, liminal states between yes and no. You should not operate a business the size of TikTok in a 70-day business. pause of being illegal. Like, that's not the way to go. You're not like, well, it's illegal to sell drugs.

But for 75 more days, we're doing the purge. Like, that doesn't make any sense. Like, these companies have people there who, like, have families and mortgages and jobs and careers. And you can't be like, well, for 30 more days, you're off the hook. The American automotive supply chain is off the hook for 30 more days and then something might happen. and the most likely thing that happens is it gets extended for another 30 days,

that's just, that's no way to do it. Like, the economy actually won't accept that amount of instability. So we'll see, because that's very much the Trump way of doing things, but something is going to have to give. And I suspect the reason big business is so in bed with Trump is because they need to get

to those table outcomes. And, no matter what they say or how disingenuous they sound in public, they're not stupid about the money, right? You can count on the money being self-serving in that specific way, and they will demand some kind of stability. Richard, what's your guess of what happens next here? It does feel like we're due for another turn here fairly quickly. With the tariffs, I don't know because it's so complicated.

And I think that's the thing that you struck on and how this affects Apple in particular, for example, because they have their production in China. And they have started to move some production into other places, but like so many companies, they produce so many things in China. They're such a big American company. All of the biggest American companies that we're talking about, NVIDIA, what's going to happen to their chips? And these are also inevitably the same executives that have tried to curry favor with Trump. Who wins and who is actually in control in the White House? What does China decide to do?

China has said that they're going to sue at the WTO, which may or may not mean anything. I think things are going to get worse before they get better. Okay. I just want to say one thing. before we go, which is that, like, a thing I say to you, Neelai, all the time because I want you to, like, be more outrageous in public is that you can just say things. But this has become, like, a mantra for me over the last few weeks is that you can just say things. And, like, people, people just say things. And I think we are, like, trained to believe that people

mostly say things that are, like, true and considered and thoughtful and that they believe. But you can just say things. And so much of what people say is just them saying things. Like, President Trump was like, I have a different air traffic control when I fly than everybody else. Made by a foreign government. Made by a right. And everyone was like, Israel. And it's like, what are you talking about? What?

Richard, do you know the answer to this? Can you explain this to me? Is this a real thing? I know the answer, but I can't tell you. There you go. That's right. You can just say things. And like, I think a thing we've talked about a lot with Elon Musk over the years and a thing we talked about a lot during the first Trump administration was,

how to sort out the difference between somebody just saying things and actual reality. Like I saw this great TikTok this morning where it was like this guy sitting in like, you know, podcast pose. He's got the microphone. He's talking into it. And he's like, studies say that if you get three to four hours of sleep that actually your life expectancy goes up. And he's like Harvard studies, Yale studies, these whole thing. And he goes through the whole thing. And then the camera pulls back and he goes, put some inspirational music behind that.

Everybody will believe it. And it's like, shit, everybody does believe it. That man was Andrew Huberman. You can just say things. And I think like it's... How much AG1 did you buy after you? That's what I'm saying. I haven't slept for four hours in months since I saw that.

But like, again, I think it's so important for us as like journalists, but also just as like people in the world right now to spend a lot of time going. People can just say things. And most of the time, that's all it is. And if all, that's all it is, it doesn't matter at all. High stakes, low stakes. But I would say that this, with Elon, Elon loves to just say things. Remember when he was going to build a hyperloop in Chicago to the airport? Sure.

Remember when the cars are going to drive themselves? Yeah. Yeah. He just, he loves saying stuff. Loves it. And you can. You can just say things. And usually the stakes are pretty medium.

Like, I think the people of Chicago knew there would never be a hyperloop to the airport. Like, I spent a lot of time in that city. No one was like, they're going to build a hyperloop to the airport. People are more like, we'll shoot. you if you come here. Like, it was very different. The reaction was very different. The stakes from the president says, I will build a hotel in Gaza and turn that into

the Riviera of the Middle East. The stakes of that are World War III. But that's the thing is, I'm not sure they are because it's not real. He's just saying things. You can just say things. These are the most powerful men in the world now. Elon is the richest man in the world. He might be in control of the government.

President Trump nominally is the most powerful person in the world who can launch a nuclear strike if he wants to. There's a lot going on here where I hear you, and certainly less than the first Trump administration is you can just say things. You can just say, I'm going to put 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico and then back off two hours before they go into effect because both of those governments promised to do things are already going to do. And everyone can adapt to that. There's just a there's a new level of crazy that comes with X as it is right now, with Elon realizing that he can just say stuff about the government. Yeah. that's what I'm worried about.

Like, and then Trump is Trump. Like, I, the, he, he is just the most anyone can say anything. He, he said Google was going to make a website to track the coronavirus. We tracked it every single day for a year and it never happened. I wonder how many days it's been. Thousands of days at this point. So, yeah, we can wrap this one out. I hear you and you can just say things and I believe I should start saying more artists things.

Do you know if we're just making a phone? It's going to be great. The verge could make a website to track chronotherapy. I'm just saying. We thought about it. Somehow you could get the bleach under the skin to just kill it. It would be great. Or a very powerful light.

Do you remember this? This happened. We've lived through this. Our greatest institutions are being doubted, man. Nobody believed Shams when he said that Luca was being tried it. Yeah. People doubt it. Actually, let's end it here.

Richard, I want your take on this. Do you think Luca on the Mabbs was a zero interest rate phenomenon? Yes, obviously. That's why they have to trade them. That is a deep cut for a small cross-section of our listeners, but I know you appreciated it. We got to take a break. It is true, by the way. People can just say things, and we will do our very best to call out when people just say things here.

But, boy, get used to it. We'll get back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Every thriving, successful business has to start somewhere. A good place to start is a relatively simple question. What if, given the right tools, I have. really put my all into this. One tool that can help grow your sprouting business to new heights is Shopify. Millions of businesses around the world rely on Shopify for e-commerce. They offer a host

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That's Shopify.com slash vergecast. All right, we're back. David, you labeled this section streaming, which coming off of the hot mess of the American political scene is just full of smart people making good decisions. Yeah, I would say it's really if you just imagine the least chaotic and most sort of thoughtfully put together group of companies, you would get the streaming industry, which just only makes good decisions. And everybody loves it and the prices go down all the time. It's fabulous. All right, let's start.

Let's start with Tooby. Can we start with Tube? Wow, that is the first time. What a day for you. for Tooby that just was. Nobody's ever said that about two people before. I've got the Super Bowl, man. They got the Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl is on Sunday. You know, that's exciting given that we've already seen this game. You guys watching Z-suite yet? What's the Z-suite? So Z-suite is, I think, probably Tooby's, like, biggest original programming ever. And the schick, as I understand it, is it's a, I think it's like a marketing agency in New York. and all the older, like, Gen Xers are forced out, and the zoomers come in to run it.

And so it's called the Z Suite. And it has, what's your name, Lauren Graham, Lorelei from Gilmore Girls. I'm excited. Sure. I would say that cranky Gen Xers get forced out and the zoomers come in to run it. It is both my nightmare and my dream at this point in time. Please depose me. I'm ready to go.

Just anytime you want. Also, bad day for Tooby when I'm like, Let's talk about 2B and I didn't know the name of their biggest show. I mean, listen, Richard is an aficionado, so it's fine. Richard and I, after this, are going to record our Z-suite recap podcast. No, I'm still on the golden arm, man. The real head's no. I feel so bad that I know what the golden arm is.

Dear Sweet Quibi, okay. So 2B is having its big moment. A lot of people have asked us, I think, because they assume that we pay attention to badly name streaming services in this way, why 2B has the Super Bowl. And the fascinating answer to this question is that Fox owns Tooby. And they don't make a show of this. But we've had Tooby CEO Anjali sued on Decoder. She's talked about the relationship.

Tooby is just there to be like always on. Like it's just an on-demand free streaming service. It is doing pretty well. It's growing. They bundle with a lot of TVs and streaming devices. Putting the Super Bowl there for Fox is a gross strategy. If you recall the last time Fox had the Super Bowl, tooby had an ad because Fox owns TV.

That was the one, the ad that it like popped up the interface over the TV, right? That was a good ad. It tricked a lot of people into being like, what's going on with my TV. And that was when people found out what Tube is. Exactly. It's the malware on my television. So this is their second big growth. They're going to give away for free.

It's also really interesting because traditionally this would be a horrible way to advertise your service because you would be competing with the free television that most people already have, which is their antennas. Fox is just distributed to most people over the air for free. But you can't count on that anymore. So watch 2B on your phone is actually a meaningful free television proposition now in a way that, you know, even 10 years ago, wouldn't be. So that's a big deal for 2B, which is just a weird thing to say. We'll see if it drives signups and downloads and all that stuff. But it comes right next to Fox announcing it's going to launch another streaming service by the end of this year. What is going on here?

Like if you're about to put all this money in a 2x5. team is another thing. Richard, make sense of this for me. I have nothing. I truly, I have, I cannot answer that question. I have a lot of thoughts

about the Fox streaming service, but the why on earth would you do this? And especially why would you do it now? I got nothing. Well, it's like, I think that it's like Google and messaging services. You always need one more.

And it's run by two teams that have no knowledge of each other and have never, ever spoken. There is an executive who believes his way is the way and says, and is looking at Tubin saying, yeah, that's great, but what about, what if it were just sports? No, this is, I will, I will read to you.

Lachlan Murdoch, the CEO of Fox said the subscriber expectations will be, quote, modest, which is great. And it will price the service accordingly. But we do want to reach consumers wherever they are, and there's a large population now. They're outside of the traditional cable bundle, whether cable, whether cord cutters or cord nevers. and the plan is to offer them a, quote, holistic streaming package featuring sports and news from the existing brands. So this is going to be a weird combo platter of Fox News and FS1, the marriage made in heaven. Which is basically all Fox has at this point. Like I actually went through and I was like, okay, what properties does Fox have that might sell this?

And Fox News is certainly one of them. Fox News is the dominant cable news platform. there's Fox Sports, which has some things. Fox Sports is like the one that like four times a year. I have to read download the app to watch something. That's my Fox Sports experience. And then it's pretty bleak after that, dude. Like Fox sold most of its entertainment assets to Disney many years ago.

Famously, yes. 2017, I think that was in, but arguably terrible deal for Disney, which I think massively overpaid for all of that stuff. But got all of that stuff. So like all of the streaming content that you think of as like Fox and FX, most of that is now Disney's. And so what Fox has left is essentially those two things you just named and what runs on the Fox channel on your television. And can I read you guys some of the most successful shows on the Fox network on television? Oh boy.

And what I would like to do is Richard, I'm going to make you do this. I'm going to read you the name of a show and you're going to explain to me what it's about. And I'm not going to tell you if you're right or wrong. We're just going to move on. Has that done? Into it. Love it. Okay.

The number one show on Fox in fall of 2024. The OT. That's football over time. No, that's a group of zoomers take over an ad agency. Okay. 911 Lone Star. I'm not making any of these up. It's so important to me.

Do you know this? Why Lone Star? It's a group of Cowboy Zimmers. Okay, I would watch that. It gets cowboys, but they all have iPhones. Yeah. Like that's a hit show. So, yeah, I believe that.

Okay. Then we have the mass singer, which I think everyone knows. 9-1-1 Lone Star outranking the mass singer is also big. It's tough beat. It's tough beat. It's Zoomers, but they're Baywatch. Oh, I'm sorry. I think it's Rescue Hawaii dashed surf.

Ah, well, see, there you go. Did you just read the word Hawaii wrong? It's in all caps. It's hard to tell what's worth. Sure. Yeah, yeah. And then can I interest you in the floor at number five? This is my point.

This is, if you're Fox, just call the thing Fox News. It's the only thing anyone is going to come for. They have a Fox News app. And they have Fox Nation, the streaming service. This is what I mean. If you're about to do the Super Bowl and Tube, which in the NFL does not let you do that for free, right? Right. It's not just like a little side show.

Like, oh, we're going to be on TV as well. I think you have to do that if you're Fox. Like, because to your point. Let's build up the one we have with the Super Bowl. Right. That we're going to give to a bunch of cop and cowboy zoomers for free on their phones. That's just my belief now. Why on Earth are you launching this other one so you can stream the mass singer to six to a modest number of subscribers?

This thing is all right. This thing is at 80 on the go 90 scale. This is Thursday night dinner. It's just what you have. It's just you got to do it. It's just, yeah, you open the fridge, throw some stuff in. Yeah, this is like succession style, like Lachlan Murdoch has his own children who want to run something. And he's like, do a streaming service.

And it's like fine. You can just like putter along. Okay. Go 90 scale of doom streaming services. So the classic verge cast scale of how likely a streaming service is to survive. Zero is alive. 90 is dead. Named after Go 90, Verizon's streaming service in which they wanted young people to join

a gang to compete with YouTube. I'm not kidding. That was all really what it was. There was a button. It was like, join a crew. It was very silly. I'm putting whatever this Fox Sports thing is an 80. And then just because it exists, I think Tooby clicks up to like a 70.

I would leave Tooby lower. I think I'm putting to be at like a 35 just because Tooby is A working and be a totally different business. Right. But once you start messing with all these other ones, the idea that you're going to roll 2B into this other thing and read the door's open now. Oh, that's fair. Okay, the

ongoing existence of 2B might be in threat because it'll all just get rolled into Fox Plus or whatever. Right. Do we want Fox Nation and the Fox Sports app and 2B and this new one? I mean, given Fox's history, hell yeah. More apps, more fun. I'm just

saying, like this is the thing that like they've kept by the way the Fox Sports app and the Fox Nation app apart for a long time just because of the political reality that a lot of people will not download a Fox Sports app to watch. But also those are things that you log into with your cable subscription, right? And I think there's a really interesting world of like the TV Everywhere promise that never came to fruition. Oh man. Richard and I lived through the TV Everywhere Wars, man. My, my hottest take is that TV everywhere was actually the correct idea, and that everyone who blew it should be fired, because TV everywhere was a good and right,

and we're just going to do it again, but the interface is going to be worse. Some, like, ancient grizzled TV executive popped up out of a coffin, like Dracula and was like, I knew it. Yeah, somebody, like, the history channel was like, that's what I've been saying. No way, dude. But I'm putting the idea of, like, a standalone Fox streaming service, If it's more than just the cable channel over the internet, which or the broadcast channel over the internet, which it might be like the, was it the weather channel, I think that just put out a thing that they were like for $5 a month here is just, it's just the weather channel. You can have that. That I think is fine. That can live forever and no one will subscribe to it, but it's not a lot of like marginal extra work. So it'll be fine. But if Fox is like, we're going to do Netflix with Fox properties on a strong like 82 from day one.

Yeah. Richard, where are you at? Yeah, I think that comes out in 81 for me. I'm still putting Tooby down at like 20. I believe in Tooby. All right. I just, I think they've got it. Yeah, I mean, you love shows about Zermer's taking over at agencies. So there's one thing I know about you, Richard.

Yeah, the Z suite. It's going to make it. I am going to be fascinated to see what happens to Tooby right after the Super Bowl. Because I think the thing that's going to happen is that a lot of people are going to discover, A, that Tooby exists and B, that. that there is a streaming service that you don't have to log into or pay for that just has things on all the time.

All that stuff you used to watch on Netflix, it's there. Right. And there is something different about the appeal of these free fast services that I think we don't talk about enough. That is like, it's actually in a lot of ways, like the antidote to I'm paying for too many streaming services is just go to Tube and pick something.

And I think there's like a real thing there that I think a lot of people are about to be turned on to. Yeah, and you can go listen to that, Dakota, with Anjali, because she makes that case very loudly. Yeah. Like, there's growth here, and we can see it, and the numbers are real. I think she's right. No, she's got the super old.

Yeah, because. By the way, this is all next to Disney had earnings this week. Disney plus their streaming division posted a profit, which is a big deal for Disney. They have not done that for a long time. But then they're also, like, ESPN has become a very expensive subscription sports product. And it's like, ew. Yeah.

Yeah, Richard, you and I were both reading this trying to decide whether to be, I think, surprised by the way that Disney is betting on ESPN or if this was just like obviously the way it was going to go. And of course, Disney just took a weird path to get here. But basically, venue is gone. Disney sold off. I like you said venue has gone like anyone knows what venue was. We did a whole, you know, listen, if you don't know what venue was, it doesn't matter because it's gone now. Venue, which was going to be the like big sports bundle never came alive. in the first place, Disney sold off the Hulu with Live TV thing to Fubo, which is now still

mostly owned by Disney, but like that's a separate thing that runs on itself now. And Disney is basically just like, we are all in on ESPN as the primary brand. They're launching this flagship thing later this year. They're integrating fantasy and betting and it's like, that's the big bet. And it's very weird to me that it took Disney this long to realize, oh, ESPN is an enormous brand and we should probably just bet everything on it and not the. this weird distribution thing we're trying to do. I wonder where they got that idea to have like a bundle of content that's centered around ESPN and sports.

People will pay for on a monthly basis to watch. Huh. I just... It's a pretty good idea. So it's a cool concept if they can make it work. Okay, here's the weird thing, though, right? The majority of ESPN's daytime programming now is the Pat Mac Fis show, which is also just streaming away on YouTube.

You don't have to pay for ESPN to get that show. show, which is, again, the bulk of the afternoon on ESPN. I think of that as like if ESPN could go back to the days where like cable channels just turned off for periods of time, I think ESPN would happen. It's just, it is the most filler content of all time and it's fine. And ESPN just rolls with it. Like it's, ESPN's whole thing is, is games, right? Like, they need places to show you stuff.

And for ESPN to be like, oh, we're going to make everything available to everywhere all the time always seemed weird. But instead it's like, do you want the Disney bundle? Come here and watch sports. It's like, that's cable. And it worked super well for Disney for literally decades. It's fascinating that you think that ESPN is games when I think of it as yelling guys. I mean, it's also yelling guys.

It's like, it's so much yelling guys. Yeah. Right? It's Stephen A. Smith. Like, it is. But for a long time, you can only get Stephen A. Smith on ESPN. And I think McAfee shows just a weird one. for them because it's, it's yelling guys, but they're also for free on YouTube.

And I think a bunch of streaming companies are starting to realize that they just need to make nice with YouTube. Like Warner put a bunch of full movies on YouTube for free this week. Fascinating. And I couldn't tell you why. But I think they're like, it's better to get pennies from our catalog on YouTube than $0 and lose to YouTube. I think that's exactly.

I think that for ESPN, the Pat McAfee show on YouTube is better than you listening to, you know, a podcast or sports song radio that isn't owned by ESPN. Well, I think they would be very, everyone would be very careful to say that they don't own the pat back of the show. And in fact, can barely control it and can barely influence anything about it at any time. It's just a weird moment. It's a weird moment for sports.

You know, the Super Bowl sort of always brings everything to a head. There's always rights negotiations going on. But it does seem like you're going to end up with a bunch of to be like things or a bunch of free fast services. and then a bunch of very expensive sports subscriptions. Yep. Like that feels like the breakdown of the streaming industry right now.

Yeah, it really does feel like that's where we're headed. And we've come out of an era where there was a running theory that maybe if we had enough really great high-end premium content that people would pay a lot for it, turns out that's a bad business. So we're just back to sports. We're just doing sports and reality TV again. Yeah. And it's going to get messy.

Oh, and gambling now, which is the real, ESPN thing. That's why you make the app if your ESPN is for gambling. Richard, what do you think about the rumor that the MAVs are tanking so they can move to Vegas? Another deep cut. I think there's a lot to it. I mean, if you look into it, there's a lot there. All right. That's just more conspiracy theories from Richard. Dying gas for the cable industry, by the way, at super old time. Comcast, which I should disclose through NBC Universal is a minority investor in our parent company Vox Media. I'm going to finish this segment.

You'll understand why that's relevant information. Comcast in a dying gas relevance here at the Super Bowl is announced this week. They're going to broadcast the Super Bowl in 4K Dolby Vision and now for the first time Dolby Atmos. And a lot of people send this to us because everyone knows that all I want in my life is for all of the lights on my receiver to light up with all of the formats. If I could listen to Atmos and lecture HD at the same time, I'd be so happy

and DTSX. Like, just all the lights, just light them all up. That's all I want. I'm barely watching the movie. I'm just looking for the lights. This should make me happy because I can finally get all the lights watching the Super Bowl.

Here's the problem. Comcast is a regional cable monopoly and they're not available where I live here in New York State. So problem number one, so they're dead to me. Problem number two. Super fake. Super fake.

The Atmos is fake? Atmos is fake. The 4K is fake. The HDR is, well, sort of fake. So Fox is doing a Super Bowl in 4K. They're adding more 4K cameras to the production this year, including their slum cameras, which they didn't have before, in 4K. But then they produce it in 1080P HDR and then upscale it at distribution.

And this is because Fox broadcast is at 720P. So they just picked the middle format. So they could go over the air at 720P and then out to streaming at upscale 4K. This is the worst compromise of all time. I hate it. I hate it. So the actual 4K feed from Fox is upscaled 4K from 1080P in, I believe, it's HLG, HDR, just some other format.

It's the best format for live. Comcast is taking that feed, and it's, I believe, in 5.1, Adobe Digital Strand. Comcast is taking that feed. They are rewrapping the HLG into Dolby Vision so they can claim they have Dolby Vision. So it's not right. It's weird. That's just a weird thing they're doing. And then they're up mixing the audio from 5.1 to Atmos.

It makes me think of those people who just like pour tap water into bottles and then sell it as bottled water. It's like, did we actually, did we accomplish anything here? It's good. I love the idea. And I don't know they're doing this. I will forgive Kong gas for doing this weird fake up mixing. If they actually have a guy with like an audio joystick, like making swooping. sounds, right?

Like, his job is to track the ball in flight and be like, it's over you, it's behind you. Like, I'll, fine. Show me that guy. Okay, different idea. It's just Tom Brady running around your living room. That's right. I'm saying, like, show me the guy with the track, the Atmos track pad.

You know, like, I don't know if any of you ever seen like a logic mixing setup for Atmos, it's like they have the sound field and you can move the sound object. Just show me the guy with the mouse just like moving the sound objects in real time. I'll believe you. I don't think it's happening. Should the ball always be sneaking up on you? Like, is that the right answer? That's what I'm saying.

I don't actually, I don't know what either quarterback's cadence is, but I'm just imagining Dak Prescott doing, here we go, and it's like right behind you. You're the center, and it's right behind your head yelling at you. I don't know, man. But this is Comcast effort to get you to sign up for a cable package

is fake Atmos and Vision. And again, if they want to, you know, they want to call me and complain, I'll hear them out. But there's a, there's a specific image I'm looking for. And it's the guy whose job is to real-time pan the sound of the football around the sound field. No, no. It's not the guy. It's someone moving Taylor Swift's voice very specifically around the state game. She's like, that's the thing.

She's up in the crowd. Yeah. Taylor's just strapped to the sky cam thing moving around the field. Or, or I'll just, I'll throw this one out there. know people are going to have feelings about it, a guy who, or a button in the interface that lets you select Tom Brady's voice in the sound field and turn it off. Now you're talking. And the real heads now. All right, let's take a break from this.

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That's upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's upw-R-K.com. Upwork.com. All right, we're back for lightning round, unsponsored for flavor. I don't know. Is that a thing people say? Unsponsored for flavor. Even if we're, even if we are sponsored, it's not like we turn it down because you can't buy us in that way.

But I like the idea that when we're unsponsored, it's extra spicy, yeah, I mean? Oh, sure. I see. Okay. But even if you do sponsor us, we won't listen to you. No, it's the same amount of spice either way. But I like the idea. No one, you can just say things, Nilai. Remember? You can just say things. Here's what we sell you when you buy the lightning round.

Nothing. Someone else will say your company's name and then we'll do whatever we want. It's a great deal. And I'm confident our previous sponsors have received numerous signups, whoever they were. Okay. There's one thing in the streaming section that we didn't talk about, not quite super old streaming, but pretty interesting. Sonos has been going through just convulsions. Patrick Spence, the former CEO, who we've talked to,

many, many times over the years is gone after the app debacle. They have a new CEO, Tom Conrad, who we have also known for a long time. Speaking of which, Richard, he was the CTO of Quibi. And before that, Pandora. Yeah, he's been everywhere. He was also at Snap for a minute, I think. Like, he's just, yeah, he's, that dude goes to stories. Tom's a smart guy.

We've invited him on the show. I think when things settle down at Sonos, we'll definitely talk to him. He's been on their board forever. But he's come into the company, and, you know, his first move is, He's like, we need to be smaller and flatter and more nimble. They're laying off 200 more people. So this company is some stuff is happening there. But then Chris Welch this week got more details about the streaming box that we've been hearing about for a long time.

It sounds pretty good. David, what's going on here? I agree. This is sort of the streaming box you would want there to be in the world, which I find very exciting. So the thing is called Pinewood. That's the code name that Chris Welch has heard. Mark German also, I think, reported a while ago that it was called Pinewood. I assume that's not the name because everybody gives their actual products worse names than the code names.

But that's the code name. And I would say the two biggest features of it are that A, it apparently has actual honest to God universal search across lots of different streaming services. So you can look for things across all of the services that you subscribe to, which essentially doesn't exist on any other platform. everybody has some section of them but nobody really has everybody so if in theory Sonos has actually pulled all of your streaming into a single

unified interface that would be very cool What do you think that possibility of that actually is? Low. I'm super skeptical of that for a bunch of reasons. One I don't know why any of these companies would sign up for that for Sonos in particular. It's possible that Sonos is

paying pretty handsomely for this Chris is reporting says that it's going to cost somewhere between $200 and $400 for the box, which is a lot. And maybe there's a real part of that baked in that is Sonos paid for this search product to be great. But I doubt it. Like, I just don't think these companies have any incentive to play nicely together specifically with Sonos. And to do it here, you lose all kinds of leverage. Like, suddenly Apple is just going to show up at your door and be like, listen, here we go.

Yeah, famously, Apple cannot get Netflix to play in its search product. Right. there's also the fact that this operating system is being built either in partnership or just licensed from a company called the Trade Desk, which is a digital advertising company. It's very weird. Like I would not say I have a ton of faith in this interface, period. Sonos is not famously great at user interfaces, I wouldn't say. So the idea that this is...

They were. They were. I mean, this is why they were a dominant player in their little space for a long time. No, they're really great at networking their speakers, which brings us. to the other thing that Pinewood is apparently going to be very good at is it's going to be a mix of an HDMI switch and a way to connect your whole Sonos system. So it seems like one of the animating principles for this device was a bunch of Sonos people being annoyed that it was hard to connect your TV to your Sonos devices and to all of your other home theater devices. And that

by building the thing in the middle, they could solve this problem and make it easier to do things like build a home theater setup out of your Sonos gear and all kinds of different stuff. That would be very compelling to Sonos people, and I can understand why there would be people who would pay for that, make it easier, make it eat better to connect all my stuff to my TV. Sure. That is the thing Sonos does very well and has done well for a long time until it screwed up its app really bad. So I have reasonably high hopes that it could pull that off. But then the overarching question here is like, does all of that add up to?

the most expensive set-top box on the market being worth it. Richard, let me ask you this. And again, Richard and I are old heads together. We've covered a lot of home theater ideas over the years. In a way that I think when we're older and retired, we will just tell war stories, like on a porch somewhere to children who don't care. Like, that's where Richard and I are together on this journey. But let me ask you this.

Did they just make a receiver? Because you squint at this thing. You're like, oh, it's a receiver with a Roku in it. Yeah, it's just an atmost receiver that is more expensive and has the apps built into it with Universal Search, which I'm pretty sure people have tried before. Right, but it doesn't have any amps in it, so you need to buy their wireless speaker. Right? It's a receiver that only works with one company's wireless speakers. But hasn't that been their business model basically the whole time?

So, to be fair. Right, I'm just getting it. You know, like a lot of people want to plug game consoles directly into their team. TVs to get quick media switching and VRR and whatever else you want to get out of it, right? Lower lag. Those are the people who do not want to buy a receiver because you don't want to pass through and introduce the lag of a receiver and maybe downgrade your ports and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Putting the sonose box there keeps you from plugging in directly into the TV,

which is really the only thing people are plugging into TVs anymore. Like maybe you have a streaming box, but the reason people want high-end H-end H-Termi ports on their TV, is gang consoles. Like, at the end of the day, that's really the main thing. Yeah. And so, like, Sonos being like, here's our soundbar. It plugs into your EARC port and it plays the audio. It just solves the problem already.

We should make a $400 shooting box. It's like half a receiver, but not quite. It just seems on its face very complicated to me, especially when I don't know if they can fix the user interface in the specific way that they're claiming to fix user interface. The reason I'm skeptical of the user interface is because this is the promise that everybody makes. Everybody who makes one of these things says, is we have solved content discovery.

And no one solves content discovery. I will say I've become a huge fan of the Google TV streamer, which I think does a better job of smushing all the stuff together than almost anybody. And even it does a shit job of it. Because this stuff gets delayed, it's not able to get that stuff in real time from the services that you're watching. It always updates in wacky ways. And I'm like,

I don't want to, what my kid is watching on YouTube in the morning does not need to be the first thing that appears on my television when I turn it on at night. Like, this stuff is hard. So I'm like, I'm not, I don't say this to denigrate any of these companies. This is hard and there are a million conflicting interests in it. But everybody always says they've solved it.

And so, Sonos, which again, not famously fabulous at building user interfaces and software. I just, I hope they're telling the truth, but I'm not going to believe it. Yeah. I don't know, man. Well, we'll see, like I said, where Tom's a smart guy, he's made cuts. Hopefully they can fix the app. but this is one where you've got to do something that's so much better to get people out of the ecosystems they're already in, especially when Roku's are basically free and whatever software is coming on your Tys and frame TV is already free. There's also some reporting in Chris's story that this thing is actually a little bit divisive inside of Sonos.

There are a bunch of people who think making an extremely expensive streaming service or an extremely expensive streaming box is not the right thing for Sonos to be. doing right now, which after making an extremely expensive pair of headphones, seems like a reasonable argument to make. I'm just surprised this thing is in a soundbar onto itself. I think if it was the soundbar, you could make some different arguments, but you have to buy this and the sound of a soundbar. It starts to get really complicated, especially at $400. That's a good point. I think the Roku soundbar, I know a bunch of people who have it, including my in-laws, and it's a big hit with people who have. It's just like, you just

plug the thing in and it instantly makes everything about your TV a little bit better. Like, it's a pretty good win. But that's also not Sonos' game. Sonos is not doing the, like, plug this thing into your TV and it's super easy and it just works and it's fine thing. And so I just, I don't know. I kind of can't figure out what Sonos's angle is here and why this would work. But again, I hope I'm wrong. Like, what it's describing is the set top box that I want.

So hopefully it is that. Yeah. I mean, look, I love a dumb TV gadget. Again, I've never typed into a lot of this. Sonos should have just built a television, right? We're an agreement on this. Maybe. Everyone should just build a TV because the TV market right now is bananas.

It's bananas. And David, you need to buy a new one. And we can talk about that later. All right. I'm going to segue from this version of streaming, this streaming conversation, into our new segment, Brendan Carr's Dummy. I'm going to do it seamlessly. All right?

TV industry under a lot of pressure. Lots of consolidation, lots of deals being done. CBS Paramount desperately wants to sell. itself to a company called Skydance, owned by Larry Ellison's son. The Trump administration putting pressure on this deal, and in particular, the pressure has come in from our friend Brendan Carr. That was less of a segue than like a free association slam poetry kind of thing you just did, but I liked it.

It was good. I'm into it. Yeah. I brought you home. All right? To our new segment, Brendan Carr is a dummy and the biggest threat to the First Amendment that this country currently faces. If you would like to compose theme music to this segment, I will play it every single time.

I promise. Brendan, if you're listening, just know. You're welcome on Decoder anytime. It'll be a good time. All right. So Brendan Carr putting pressure on this deal, saying the FCC is allowed to review the sale of CBS because CBS owns some broadcast licenses for some of its stations, not all of its stations, some of its stations. And that means they get to review some of this deal. In particular, he's putting pressure on them for this interview of Kamala Harris on 60 Minutes.

in which one part of an answer was aired in one part of a show and another part of an answer was aired later on CBS, I think, evening news. So they had one big interview, and they chopped up the interview and aired different bits in different parts. Which is what everyone does with every piece of content everywhere all the time. Yeah, I don't know if you have ever watched anything. Yeah. Like, how dare you only show this one play of the basketball game on Instagram?

You have to show the whole game, or else it's illegal. I demand a full uncut Avengers endgame. The whole thing. I want to see all of it. And, you know, deceptive editing and news is a problem. I'm not going to shy away from it, but it's just everywhere. You want to see some deceptive editing and news?

You watch Fox News. They do it all the time. Oh, I thought you were about to do a cool thing we'd have to edit. That's all right. We'll get them next time. I deceptively edit everything. Do you know we're starting a video of the Virgin's launching a phone? So he's putting all this pressure on CBS.

He says it's news distortion. The Trump administration has sued CBS for $10 billion. I would remind all of you that they are the winners. They won the election and they are currently in power. And so this is just some pure sore winner stuff. But CBS wants to sell itself. They want to make this deal. So instead of doing what their newsroom wants them to do,

which is ferociously fight a government speech regulation and government overreach into protected editorial speech, which is what they should do. That's just some First Amendment stuff. You're a government speech regulator. You show up to a newsroom. The newsroom should say, F off. This is what you should do.

People do it all the time. Nope, they're going to roll. So they gave the full unedited interview to the FCC. Brendan Carr published it. And now, of course, right when grifters are seizing on the dumbest stuff to quote unquote prove that the thing was edited, even though you can see for yourself, CBS ran the first part of an answer in one show

and the second part of an answer in another show. And it was just a long answer and they just picked the answer they thought was relevant to those audiences. But now you have it. You can see it. You can ironically argue that that's actually good journalism because they ran the whole answer.

You actually get to see more of the answer than you were. I think you can be very critical of CBS for not making it clear that this was one long answer and they cut it and then getting caught and then like being shady about it. I do think there was some weirdness there from CBS. I do think the, hey, we had a long conversation. We ran some part of the answers.

You can read any profile of any famous person in any magazine, and they're only running the parts of the answers that are relevant to the story that is being told on profile. Reality. Yeah. Right? In 60 Minutes in particular, it's not like a podcast, right? They are like tightly edited little story packages.

They're very good. They're famous for them. CBS 60 Minutes also not famously a bastion of like wild leftist ideas. It's a news magazine for old people. It is a very conservative program. But also, like, as journalistically buttoned up as any organization you will find anywhere. Yep. So that's one.

So he's pressuring CBS and CBS is caving because Paramount wants to make a deal with Skydance. Very dangerous. Like, I don't, I actually don't care what your politics are. That is First Amendment fire territory, right? You just don't want the government interfering with speech in this way. And the idea that because they have a broadcast license that Brennan Carr can invent some But no, you just don't do it. We haven't done it for years.

For years, Republicans and Democrats alike have said this should not be the business of the FCC. The FCC should be in the business of getting people connected to the internet. And we're not doing that anymore. We're going to go interview with CBS's speech because they want to make a merger. Weird, all the way around weird. Do not trade the first amendment for a merger. It's not going to work anyway, by the way. You're already at 80 on the go 90s scale.

Horrible. Second, Brennan Carr, same deal, started an investigation this week in into K-CBS 740 a.m. in San Francisco because their news program reported on the location of an ice raid in San Jose. So they said, we're reporting. There's an ice raid going on. We see this thing is happening. Here's the cars or whatever. And he said, oh, you're interfering with immigration. We're going to investigate your broadcast license. I'll tell you right now, every single day on social media, people are telling where there are ice raids. Yeah. It's just happening on every, on X, whatever platform you want, this is happening because it is a public interest. that this is happening.

And it is in fact happening. So to go into a news organization and say you are interfering with law enforcement, and that's somehow a crime that should lead to the FCC investigating your spectrum license, another five alarm First Amendment fire, especially when the exact same content distributed on social media, he can't say anything about it. This is just Brendan, who has some power, who's invented a new way of using power because he doles out broadcast licenses to say, can interfere with speech. And I promise you he is coming for the internet.

He is not going to be done here with the broadcast companies. He's going to find out if this works, if I've doled out a broadcast license and I can go interfere with speech and chill news organizations, he's going to find out if it works. And then he will invent a way to say the FCC should look at the content being distributed by internet service providers. And it's already happening in a variety of ways. They've tried it several times. Sopa and PIPP.

We don't want copyright infringement. We don't want pornography. We want the kids online safety. We're going to find some hook for the First Amendment to come and regulate the content of Internet service. Section 230, Brendan Too Hart, the author of the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC, says the FCC should just reinterpret Section 230 for the courts to give him power over Internet providers. All this stuff, you might not care about 60 minutes, you might not care about some AM radio station. These are all little trial balloons to see if Brendan Carr can be. the speech police for the country.

And can I just say, while he's doing all this in the background, he's putting out blog posts that are super friendly full of jokes about how he's a chiefs fan saying this is real. He released a blog post this week saying his biggest priority was a rulemaking to see if there are steps the FCC can take to make sure TV viewers aren't inundated by exceedingly loud TV commercials. Oh, no. This is a real, like, worst person you know makes a good point kind of thing, though.

Like, I do agree with that. I was taking a nap the other day and a commercial woke me up and I was like pretty annoyed by it. Oh, and he also wants to stop spam calling, which this commission has been trying to do since 500 years. They're not able to do it because they won't because the telecom companies basically own them so they won't actually do anything. Like, there are no spam calls in Europe. Are the Europeans on our team? Or like, what are you talking about? We're like, no, no, no.

If you just answer a phone call, someone will steal your identity. That's how America is now. You have to shoot your phone when it rings. But it's because Europeans regulate their telecom companies. And we have this revolving doors of weirdos and now the biggest weirdo of all Brennan Carr. I'm telling you, there's a lot of bad Trump administration stuff. And you might hate my politics, whatever you think my politics are. But I have been very consistent on this show for over a decade.

The government speech regulations are bad. And this is, here they are. They have a face. They have a name. It is Brendan Carr. He is trying. to pressure and use organizations, using the idea that the FCC can regulate the airwaves to regulate speech directly, is a trial balloon for how can the FCC regulate what's on the internet? And it's also not that big a gap from one to the next.

Like, it doesn't, it sounds like a big leap from one to the other, but it's not. It's the same playbook you can run in both places. And meanwhile, he's putting out blog posts saying he's going to make the TV commercials quieter. I'm just saying, Brandon, if you want to come on to Coder, I know, I know you, listen, I need to pay attention. I know you Google your own name. I know this because you've... I just know. I've gotten the incoming before.

Come on, Dakota. Try to defend this. It's indefensible. This is First Amendment on fire territory, and it has a face name. So we're going to just do this every week, unfortunately, because this is very dangerous stuff. And I just think we should all be far more protective of the First Amendment this, especially because he keeps talking about it in the language of free speech.

Why is he punishing CBS? Because of free speech? That makes no sense. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. I can buy Brendan Carrasadummy.com for $19 and redirect it to the Vergecast. I don't want you to be arrested.

That's how you get arrested. All right. Sorry, this is supposed to be a lightning round. Richard, what's your lightning round item? I'll stop dunking on Brendan now. Oh, my favorite story of the week. Dummy. Opening eyes new logo.

No, Richard. Can I tell you? So we published the start out the new logo. And I'll let Richard describe it. We got a bunch of, commenters being like, this is clickbait, I don't know what you're talking about. Is that real? Because you can't tell.

They're like, we changed. Like, we had a, we had a long discussion in the newsroom with me just asking, what? They say, like, and I mean, specifically, so they got a new typeface, uh, opening eye, sands. Okay, whatever. Fonts typeface is, you got them. It's, it is words. You can read it. Um, they also have that little, like, design.

that they have that you're supposed to not use by itself, I guess. But that little, what is it? It's three triangles interlocking, I guess. They're not triangles. It's like, it's their bubble. It's got a hexagon in the middle. They say it's triangles, but they don't line up. So they're not triangles.

I don't know what it is. No, they look like chain links. It's like a clover. It's like a clover leaf deal. And so they cleaned it up, but they didn't make it line up so that it's triangles like they say it is. So if you look very closely, I guess you can figure out what is different about it. But it looks the same.

No, Richard, can I tell you what's different? They made the lines a little thicker. That's it. No, the lines are, no, no, David, the lines are thinner. See? See? Ah, shit, you're right. No, that's why this is my favorite.

By far, Richard, I need you to describe the photo of the words in the sky. Because this is the greatest thing I've ever seen. It is, I mean, it is open AI. in front of clouds taken from a mountain above the clouds why I don't know this is what was in their video to tell you about their new design

which I'm sure they spent a lot of money on and congratulations to them for that but yeah do you just remember the chairs are like Facebook ad I do not you don't remember the chairs like Facebook ad had no clue what that was it was the other way it was Facebook was like a chair

no chairs like Facebook The video is titled, my friend, chairs are like Facebook. You know, it's funny that a decade later I've retcon this to make slightly more sense. And you're right. It is insanity. I'll put this link in the shout notes, but it is one of the most unhinged pieces of brand advertising I have ever seen in my entire life. It was a TV commercial that Facebook came out with in, I think, 2012 when it hit a billion users that literally compared chairs.

to Facebook. And it is like an ayahuasca trip of an advertising plan. And it's insane. And this is what this made me think of. Because Richard, in addition to the one you just described, there's another image

in which a bunch of words are just randomly superimposed on a like California mountain thing. And it just says artificial general intelligence that benefits all of humanity. Also, they didn't use AI to design this. Yeah, which is absurd. Like, have some faith in your own products, people.

Come on. Okay. It's one thing I want to say, and I will leave this as a puzzle for the listener. It's so good. The lines and the clover are both thicker and thinner. And I will allow you. Everyone can go evaluate what that means on themselves. But it's true.

They're both thicker and thinner. So, David, you were half right. But not all the right. That makes me angrier. Like, I like that less than when I was just wrong. I don't like this. The other piece of the puzzle here that is just funny if you're a design nerd, is like all rebrands.

They have a custom font. You know, it's like all the stuff they're doing. It's called Open AI Sands. Oh, whatever. They announced it in wallpaper with like the usual words of we made a design system and now we have to pretend that it means something like it's more organic and more human. But it's funny that they announced on wallpaper because wallpaper is where Johnny Ive has always gone to talk about design. And Apple's designers have always gone to talk about design.

And like, if you want to read long stories about the Apple Design Lab in which nothing. is said like wallpapers for you it's great it's i love like i want to yeah i'm saying with all sincerity i love it and i want them to publish that every day so i can read it because i will just take it in i like i love it with all my heart but it's it's not there's nothing there's never anything in there um but johnny i've working famously with sam altman on some weird open i hardware device so open ai doing a big rebrand and talking in all these design words about why they're more human and announcing wallpaper that's a lot of johnny ive and also all the a bunch of other Apple designers now at OpenEye.

So, yes, Richard, it is very silly, but there's, there's just a little evidence here that, you know, there's some Johnny I'm in the mix. By the way, opening I also announced deep research this week. Their actual product, not just a weird logo with lines that are both thicker and thinner than the old logo. Have you used it at all? Only in tiny bits and pieces so far.

I got it. I got the $200 a month, uh, chat GPT, mostly so I can test operator, uh, about which I have many feelings that I'm, I'm not ready to talk about yet because it will send me down a rabbit hole I'm not ready for. But it's really good. I mean, it's a huge leap towards, again, what if we let these things be slow

and kind of confusing and convoluted in the name of making them better. And I think in a really interesting way, that is not how most people make product, that like, if everybody just said, what if we made our apps slower? A lot of things might get better, but also people wouldn't do it.

But I think Open AI is, like on this interesting push towards what if what if this stuff is actually like useful and tells the truth and there are a lot of people out there who are using it for really complicated research things who are impressed with what they're getting so I think there's something here it appears to be very slow and very expensive to run so I don't know what to make of that exactly but but the idea that you can do things that make these systems work better appears to be true I think is really interesting Well, this is why Sam Hulman needs $500 billion.

Right. Well, and this is like the, I think the great deep seek legacy will be pushing everybody towards, oh, what if these things were better? What if you tried harder? I mean, it's like what you said on the show last week, Nealai, right? Like, there's this fundamental idea that all we have to do is throw more compute at it, and it'll eventually all work itself out. Like, the scaling laws will fix it.

And I think pretty quickly everyone has come around to, like, no, we actually need some new ideas here. Yeah. And we're starting to see the fruits of that really fast. I've done a little bit of playing with the research tool. And man, you know, it's still, it's based on searching the open web. And it's like, I just don't trust any AI tool. It's like, I learned this on the internet. It's like, eh.

That is a real question of like, how useful is this to me? Because I still have to go fact check everything it came up with. But there's something, I don't know. I'm still struck by how many of our listeners were like, I don't care if it's wrong sometimes. Yeah, there's that. I will say another funny Super Bowl note. Richard, this week you sent an email to a professor of cheese science. Can you explain what's going on here?

So a thing that Google is doing for their AI ads for the Super Bowl, they've got like one for each state. So it's like whatever your state's big business is, your marquee business, and of course for Wisconsin cheese. It's my people. And so they're partnering with this cheese company, and they're showing them using like Gemini to do whatever it is that they're doing. And at one point, they're generating text for like emails or something.

And it says something about Gouda and how that's like the most popular cheese. Now, I believe it specifically claims it's 50 to 60 percent of the cheese in the world is a Duda. Yes. And someone on the internet noticed that. And they would not let that one slide. They said, no. No, it is not. That Matt just doesn't work.

And so we heard about this. We looked into it. This was the subject of a long Reddit thread like 10 years. years ago, people trying to answer this exact question from the same exact website that the Jim and I seem to have gotten this answer from. Perfect. Completely unsourced other than this kind of spammy website. Was it like cheesefax.com?

Yes. Because of like cheese.com or something like that. Something very SEO on point. And they've got like a page about each cheese. And every cheese is the most popular on its page. Wait, is that true? they're like very carefully worded like if you if you go to like uh monticerella it's it seems like mozzarella is the most popular cheese but so every every page on cheese dot com is just gassing up

different cheese so i i said all right we need some experts and i'm you know there's like councils and professors who study like dairy in the business of dairy and emailed this guy on a Friday at like 4.40 p.m., you know, everyone is getting ready to go, basically immediately got back like six paragraphs on the cheese business and why Google's AI was wrong about cheese, in fact. He was ready. He was in the Reddit thread. Okay, this is such a total diversion from what we're talking about, but I'm now on cheese.com, and like we talk about, like, PhD theses of internet websites.

Go to cheese.com slash cheddar, and it will describe to you everything about how the internet works. There's an H2, which is a signal to Google of what's important. What is cheddar cheese? Why is cheddar orange? The answer is, cheddar cheese is a popular type of cheese that originated in the village of cheddar in Somerset, England. It is known for its distinct flavor, versatility, and vibrant orange color.

A bunch of that's already not true. In this article, we will explore what cheddar cheese is made of its taste, shelf life, nutritional value, and its origins. And there's one of these for every kind of cheese. This poor Ian Jackson, who wrote this, and I think is maybe a real person, I don't know, has written an alarming number of these. This is blowing my mind.

I'm sorry, on cheese.com, you can embark on a cheese adventure by exploring the database of 2048 different types of cheese. You can also buy cheese gifts and make someone happy. I love this website. That's all I'm saying. And I understand why the robot was like, screw it, 50 or 60% of the world's cheese is Gouda.

Anyway, so, Richard, you got an email back. What did the email say? Basically, it's hard to say what the most popular cheese is because, and also, we were speaking, to our colleagues from Europe again who have a very different opinion of cheese and wanted to make sure that everyone knows that American cheese is apparently not cheese.

Now, you don't understand. We have Thomas Rooker, our deputy editor, lives in the Netherlands. He lives in Amsterdam, which is where Gouda's from. And he was like, I don't know about Gouda, but I know your cheese is shit, which is just such an immediately agro response. Easy Europe?

Bro, I wasn't even fine. The temperature on the discussion went way up very quickly. And like, I didn't know that we were having an international trade war on cheese. And I just stepped right in the middle of this, completely unexpectedly. It went places. But there are lots of cheese. And, you know, I don't know if you've heard of, like, other countries, but everywhere

has their favorite cheese. And for basically anyone to be 60% of the market, probably not. Probably. And if it was, it would definitely be mozzarella, right? What are you doing that? We don't eat as much cheese as they do. Apparently, there are countries that eat way more. Which is a par-person than we do.

So just let you know. That's why they're better countries. So we published this story. We got a bunch of comments. We're like, why do you care, which is very funny? Why do you keep criticizing AI for getting it wrong? People get things wrong all the time, which is the new line. But I will say Richard and Emma, who wrote the story, this is impact journalism.

Google has changed the ad. They have removed the Gouda stat from the Super Bowl ad. When you watch the Super Bowl on Sunday in Wisconsin, you will not be misinformed about cheese. I do think, Jim and I learned this from an SEO website that's designed to just sell you cheese and tell you every cheese is the most popular cheese. This is what I mean. It's like, I just, that's their feedback loop. Not to make this bleaker than a delightful cheese incident really is. But the comment we got from Google, from the cloud apps president, Jerry Dishler,

basically says that in a way that I find really bleak. His response was not a hallucination. Gemini is grounded in the web, and users can always check the results and references. In this case, multiple sites across the web include the 50 to 60% stat. So what he's saying is, this is a feature, not a bug.

The thing got it wrong, and it's not our fault, because somewhere on the internet, the wrong information exists. And thus, we cannot be blamed. David, to your point, people can just say stuff. People can just say things.

You can just say Gouda is 50 to 60% of the world's cheese on your weird website that gets scraped over and over again for a decade. And then at the end of that, AI will say, you know what? Fine. That's true. Yep. People can just say things. And if you build your life based on everything that people say, you will end up lying about cheese. Watch out Elon.

All right. New goal for the Verge team. We have to get Elon to claim that Gouda is 60%. World's cheese consumption. That's it. We're aiming real low, but I think we can do this together as a team. I love it.

All right. That's it. We got to, we've been places on this episode of the Burrchcast. Richard, thank you for coming on this journey with us. You ever done. Please enjoy the Super Bowl.

Stop watching the news for even five minutes. Like, heal yourself. Root for the team, the right team. You know what I'm saying? If you have, big tubi feelings after your first to be experience, I sincerely want to hear about them.

Also, if you are in a Comcast service area and you have the utmost experience, just let me know. How many of your lights lit up? Tell us. I'm dying to know this information. All right, that's it. Happy Super Bowl.

That's the Vergecast proclamation. And that's it for the Vergecast this week. And hey, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 866 Verge 1-1. The Verge cast is a production of the Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our show is produced by Will Por, Eric Gomez, and Brandon Kiefer. And that's it. We'll see you next week.