The Vergecast - Emotional time zones

Episode Date: May 6, 2016

This week on Vergecast, Dieter and Nilay bring back Paul Miller to talk about this week in tech and gadgets, as well as science reporter Arielle Duhaime-Ross to discuss what it was like to spend four days with a biohacker while he tried to kill and then replace his body’s bacteria. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, welcome to the Vergecast. It's May 5th or probably in your temporal area. Is that a science phrase? Temporal area? Sure. It can be. It's probably not May 5th. But anyway, this is the Vergecast.

Your time place? Your time place. I mean, your emotional time zone. They are related. Is emotional time zone a phrase? If I was going to write a self-help book, it would be called solving your emotional time zone. Yeah. Yeah.

And like, it could be like jet lag. analogies. Sunrises. You really want to follow the sun approach to happiness. Much like an international corporation or an issue. I'd read it in an airport.

Yeah. My God, this is the flagship podcast of the Verge. The Verkast is sponsored by Czor Vodka. I have a light-up Cizor Vodka bottle. You do.

Scrolling. It's a fake vodka brand that honestly at this point there's so much media made for it. All I want is someone to just give me vodka. Somebody will launch it. I mean, we could start printing out PDFs of labels tonight.

It's gluing them on like an indie band nearly 2000s with CD press. You know what? Cizzer vodka should become like an eater prize. Yeah. Like the Eater Awards? Should just be bottles of Cidder Vodka. If we make the vodka ourselves, though, we're going to have to change a tagline from Cut Through the Night 2.

You probably won't go blind. Exactly. Well, it still has an air of mystery about it. Anyway, I'm Neil I Patel. Deeter's here. Hello, I'm Deeter. Ariel's here. Hi.

Paul Miller in the hype seat. Paul. Just trying it out over there. I didn't know this was called the hype seat until the day. So I feel like there's a lot of pressure on me. I thought this person was just hanging out. The hype seat sits at the hype desk where you'd make hype checks. Right.

Hype checks. Yeah. I'm like the new iPhone. And you guys cash the hype checks? If you want to go that way, you can. You get to create your own scale. Oh. So if you want to change things up, you can't.

Okay. It doesn't have to be one to ten. It rarely is. It rarely is. Anyway, I have some housekeeping notes. A big announcement for Vergecast listeners. Deeter is this is Dieter's last day in the New York City, Verge office. That's right.

It's very emotional for me. My emotional time zone, I would say, is like a mountain? The worst of the time zones? I don't know. No, the worst of the time zone. This is the South Bend Indiana time zone? Oh, the one that's like lonely. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that's the one. The loneliest time zone. That's where I'm at right now. Anyway, Dieter's movie in San Francisco. We obviously cannot have a Verge cast without Dieter. And, you know, we've done 200 episodes of this thing in this exact format. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to take the next two weeks off after this show.

Yeah. Maybe we'll run some, like, highlights in the feed, just keep people feeling it. And then we're going to come back, and we're not going to do it live anymore. We're going to have Dieter on Skype. It's actually going to be a podcast. You know, we're going to try to actually make a podcast out of this thing. How novel. Yeah.

I mean, whatever this is is great. I was going to leave it more mysterious about what the plan was. Maybe we'll be naked. No, that's fine. But you won't see that. I'm good. Right? You just have to listen for it.

You can hear it. The Vergecast, rebooted. Listen for the nudity. That's our new tagline. You'd have a scissor vodka folly. It's just scissors sounds. Anyhow, that's the plan. I am very eager.

We're only going to take a couple weeks off just to give Deeter some time to move and set up a studio and all the stuff we need to do out West and figure out of the hell we're going to make it. It's something that we should do, I think. So just take a couple weeks off. Just chill. Then we're going to come back bigger and better. And we're going to make a podcast. We've been trying for five years. So we might as well try again.

Anyhow. I believe. I believe, too. Just a lot of silence right now. No, I'm going to see, oh, our YouTube, our live YouTube commenters are. Yeah, they're going to be sad. They're a little sad. What's their emotional time zone?

Their emotional time zone is boo. It's not a time zone. It's going to be better. Wait, would Greenwich meantime be, like, totally neutral? Yes, except not at all because Greenwich is, you know, the set as the meantime because they couldn't figure out what it should be until like, ah, screw it, we're imperialists. We'll just put it in somewhere in the UK. I feel like this metaphor. Because it's not really working. We're just going to go for it. We're going to push it until it breaks even farther. Because latitude, you can

set the center at the equator very easily. You know where that is. But there is no way to know what the center of longitude, base longitude should be. Right. And so they had just had to pick one. Oh, so you're saying the emotional, of course they picked. GMT is an emotional time zone is sort of Arrogent. It's literally it's mean time. Yeah. See Ariel? You got to stick with it and then it happens.

And at some point it opens up. It begins to unfurl. So a strange week of news I was putting together. Oh, we're going to talk about news in this show. We're going to try. And we're going to interlace it with jokes about emotions. Just a strange. A bunch of stuff happening.

Paul's running a gadget blog at full tilt. Ariel wrote an incredible feature, months in the making, about a guy who literally replaced, or at least attempted to replace all of his bacteria. So we got a lot of stuff to talk about. But I, for whatever reason, have decided to start with cars. Let's talk about some cars.

So there's two pieces of car news that I think are interesting this week. Tesla announced a software upgrade for the Model S. The Model S comes with a 75. 5 kilowatt hour battery. It's model S-70. But they sell it with 5 kilowatt hours. Since they refreshed it sometime in the recent past, they started putting in 75-watt-hour batteries instead of 70-watt-hour batteries

and all of them because they figure what the hell it costs the same for us to make it or it costs more, but whatever we want to make it available or something. Right. So then you can pay like $3,500, push a button, and get more battery. Get more range. You have the battery. You just get to use all of it. So is that super cheap?

That feels super cheap to me. What? $3,000 feels super cheap. No, no, no, no, no. To put the capacity to like be a better car and not turn it on. Yeah, it's just a weird. Like, if I bought a laptop and I could pay more for the battery to last longer, I'd be like, screw you. Yeah, but if you bought a laptop and you wanted to pay more to like get a new piece of software, you're fine.

It's the fact that it's tied to the hardware that you just bought that's weird. And I've been like racking my brain to try and come up with some sort of corollary in the tech world where, you know, there's often in the tech world you'll get a gadget that has like a thing in it that's not turned on. And maybe they'll turn it on later, but they just put it in there because it was easier. It was like already built into like the chip. But to make you pay to turn it on, I don't, I can't think of an example of that. Yeah, I mean the last time Tesla did something like this and they weren't paying was when they turned on like you can auto drive. like you don't have to drive, right?

Then they do that at some point. But nobody flipped out about that because that's a software update. You're happy to pay for software, but are you happy to pay to have access to the thing that you bought? And I guess my question is also, are you already sort of paying for it? And then you're just only getting like a discount on the- No, so the car is cheaper. Yeah. So I know, but like we don't know their pricing scheme.

So from Tesla's perspective, their argument is like, look, it costs us something, I don't know, less than $3252 for the extra $5 kilowatt. It's like hard to talk about. But we know that like some people are going to upgrade and some people aren't. And so it nets out to like being the right price when you look at our entire customer base. So it doesn't help anybody that just bought the thing. But what if you're a customer who's like, okay, I'm not going to turn this on? Then you're good.

You're good. But in terms of their like, how are they paying for this is by making people who are turning it on overpay? Right. That's my question. No, no, no. Wait, that's what's happening. Like that has to be. You're overpaying by like $200 versus.

the price that you just bought the bigger car. Probably people who buy Teslas will turn it on. So like let's be real here. But if, hypothetically speaking, people decided, like half the people decided that we're not turning it on, that must be built into the pricing scheme somehow. Yes. That's exactly right. So they're screwing people a little bit.

A little bit. So there's the S70 and the S75, right? I think they think they can price the S70 cheaper. Yep. Which is what they're doing. So you buy the S70. It has the same physical. battery, but they sell it for cheaper because less of that capacity is available to you.

Then if you say, oh, crap, I should have bought the S75, you can pay the $3,000, and they will And it's in there. It's in there. It'll unlock the extra capacity. And then you can drive it to a Tesla dealership, and it'll actually change the badge to say S75. So that's like, which is hilarious. I get what you're saying, but I'm just wondering, like, if it's in there, then they have

to pay for that hardware that is in there that they may or may not be turned on somehow. So I think Tesla is saying it's easier, cheaper. more efficient for us to buy one kind of battery instead of two kinds of batteries. Right. And we can variably price the battery. Right. I like the wording that Chris used, in all likelihood, buyers of the 75 kilowatt hour car are effectively subsidizing. Yeah. And I think subsidizing is a term that you're pretty familiar with electric cards. And so putting it more directly, it's still weird and kind of messed up. It's probably more cost effective for them than to have to actually physically change a battery.

That's the point, right? Right. So the only other analogy I can come up with is if you buy, like, a regular car, if you buy, like, a sports car, you can go buy an aftermarket chip for that car and, like, put it in and your car, it'll change the performance nature of your car. Here's a car will make more horsepower, but maybe it'll last longer, or last less long or something. Here's my analogy.

That's not the, that doesn't feel at all the same to me. Here's my analogy. Yeah. You're driving in your car, you're about to rot a range. You know that there's more another 19 miles in then you really really. need it and you're like oh god what do i do what do i do you pay three thousand dollars to get that extra 20 miles because you need it oh it feels a little bit like when i'm playing where's my water too you know about to beat a level and then the the timer on the free to play time runs out i'm like

oh god i can pay this dollar you're buying gems right and that's it that's the future of all all business buying gems everything tesla does is fascinating in this way because they're just trying to make new ways of buying and selling cars. What if you could buy a car for like $500 and it had like a 10 mile range? Yeah. And then you could unlock all the other mileage. Yeah. I mean, Intel does this.

Someone made this comment and someone made the comment earlier in the version of someone's doing in the live comments that like Intel will make a giant die for a chip or a giant thing of chips. And then when they cut out the ones like the cheaper ones are the ones that like just disabled parts of it. Yeah. But it's like it all comes from like the same thing. Right.

Yeah. It's still not the same because you can't buy the cheaper one and like. pay Intel money to make it go faster. Right. There's something here that is just deeply... I don't want to say wrong. It's confused. It's like I already have it.

Rage out on it. But I like, there's some like weird like bloop. That's like a, there's like a... Yeah. An argumentative bloop that I can't take account for. Wait, wait. I made a terrible mistake. I'm failing the hype desk. I said Chris, but it was Jordan.

Jordan wrote this one. Yeah. I'm sorry, Jordan. Paul. I think you know what you have to do. I'm so sorry. You have to write him a hype check. you have to write it by

all right so that's that it's just to me that was among the most interesting it's small news but it has such a weird because one day all electric cars could work this way or like Paul's saying you could push the button to extend it for a while or you could just not have a car and use Uber

everywhere I don't know what's going to happen is people are going to start rooting the car like you root Android to hack into it to get the extra mileage Tesla jail break The Tesla jailbreak, but the Tesla jailbreak is going to take advantage of fundamental security flaws in the software. And so now not only do we need to worry about cars getting hacked, we need to worry about crazy people, not crazy, but you are crazy if this becomes a real problem, hacking their cars to get the extra features that they would normally have to pay for, suddenly becoming more vulnerable to hackers that want to do crazy things to people in cars. This is great. Welcome to the future.

It's great. It's great. Yeah. Hype. Is that hype? Hype. All right. It is kind of cool, though.

All right, then the other piece of car news, God only knows why I picked this car. Google and Chrysler are teaming up to make self-driving Chrysler Pacifica's minivan. I have to say, I didn't realize how universally. So the Pacifica is a brand they had that went away. And then Chrysler decided that their town and country minivan, they're going to rebrand it, relaunch it as the Pacifica. Yeah. Which is fine. By the way, you know the Chrysler only makes like two cars?

Yeah. You would think they made like a lot of cars? Well, FCA. Fiat Chrysler Fiat Chrysler but the brand Chrysler they make the 300 the 200 of the minivan

That's it Yeah I thought they had like a whole range No And Drake just dissed the 300 That's over He said it looked like a Bentley That's

I mean it whatever There's a really like They're made in Or built in Detroit Yeah Ad campaign Yeah but not enough To buy Chrysler

But Yeah I can't Anyway so here's what I So today Our video team Was like freaking out Over the Pacifica Because every

video person I know loves town and countries. Yeah. Because when they go on shoots, they have to rent a minivan, and they get real sad when they get the Dodge Caravan, but the town and countries, I'm a nice surprise. And they all love them. Who knew? The number of people in, like, the Verge newsroom, especially on the video side that are, like, shocking dads who, like, love minivans and have deep thoughts

about minivans? Trace Hallhorn. Yeah. He wants to buy a Pacifica. Jordan Ophiger. I have no thoughts about minivans. It's really hard to have a thought about a van. But if you go, I go, I can't, I've been in a new minivan. But anyway, they're full of screens. Yeah.

I'm like, why are those headphones? It's true. They're like gadget spaceships. So I can say this because I'm basically 40 now. Here's what I'll say about a minivan. It's a more honest SUV for most people. Yeah. You know, right?

But SUVs look cool. Yeah. Just putting that out there. Okay. Minivans. Says the man who's about Dwight SUV. Almost certainly about it. Yeah.

It won't look like a bar of soap. That's like the main reason I'm going to buy it. I want to buy every car. Can I have every car? This show's so sad. My emotional time zone is I want to buy every car. So the reason that they, I mean, these Pacificas are going to be like the things that they were doing with the Lexus RX, whatever, whatever's before, which it's part of the test fleet. So they're going to load it up with the LIDAR and all the other things that hang off of it.

And they're going to go testing with it. This doesn't mean that you can go by a self-driving Pacifica. It means it's a much bigger test fleet. And the thought is, I think that because it's a minivan, they can actually cram real humans into it, not just car testers, and actually start shuttling people around. I like college campuses or whatever. Interesting. So we can make fun of minivans all day long, and that's fine. But, like, for self-driving cars to become a thing, like, we're waiting for the government to allow them on city streets and freeways.

But you know where who can let self-driving cars on their thing are, like, enclosed places, like a college campus, for example, or, I don't know. you're fenced in super yuppie neighborhood. I don't know. Wherever you can make your own rules. And in those kinds of things, something that can seat more people means that it can actually function as a proper shuttle. Right. Instead of,

you know, a rich person thing that you buy. Well, Google's like making its own little, little happy car with that little guy. They are making the cute little guy. Right. But they've been looking,

Google has been searching for a car partner for a long time. Yeah. Like at CES, all the rumors that there was going to be Ford. So they found it. And Fiat Chrysler, they will just kind of do anything. They're that company right now. They're just like anything to make us seem cool.

I really like the Fiat 500. Yeah. Yeah. Which surprisingly looks like Google's cute little car. Yeah, a little bit. There's a lot going on there. Yeah, that's interesting. I can't wait to have a self-driving car.

Are you deep on self-driving cars? Cash that hype check. I don't know if that's the right phrase. I don't really like cars very much. Oh, I'm with you. Yeah, just, especially in the city, get in a car and you feel trapped. Yeah. Danger.

You feel in danger in a car in the city? Yeah, the other day I was in like an Uber ride and no, it was a yellow cab. It was definitely a yellow cab. And the guy just kept on falling asleep and running red lights and it was just terrified. Right. Wouldn't it be better for a robot was driving it? It would be. Yeah, I'm excited for this self-driving car future, but like all the little cars along the way.

Yeah. Just like, just like stepping stones to me. Yeah. You're waiting for the big, big shift. All right, that's car news. Next. Deeter's got a to move right along. We're moving. I'm holding in my hand.

I've got to get through this emotional journey. I'm refusing to have emotions. That's my move. Dieter remains both Germanic and from the Midwest. Deer is holding something that I have a crush on. Yeah, that thing is beautiful. It's a Kindle Oasis. You can't just leave that out there for the audio listeners.

It's the new Kindle Oasis. I really, really like it. So Katie Brett just reviewed this. So the first thing you need to know is it's just an e-reader. It's like functionally not any better than a Kindle voyage, which is itself $200. This thing is $280. Yeah. If you buy the top end one, your price comes out to like $380 plus tax.

So you could spend upwards of $400 on a Kindle. Yeah. But it's beautiful. It's got this battery cover. It's like a battery pack and then a leather cover that is like actually really nice leather. And then the thing, the weight goes from like seven-ish ounces to like four-ish ounces. and but all of that weight is in a on the right side or the left side depending which side you hold it on. So it all sits in your hand and the rest of it's super thin.

And so like you want it. It just feels incredibly light. Let's be clear. Dieter bought this. Yes. Yes. It just as somebody who has no intention of buying it because, oh my God, $400 for an E reader. It's ridiculous.

It feels so good in your hand. And it just like, you know, I have like this gigantic cobo and it just, it just, it just. It's not comfortable. It's not fun to hold. How did you want it with a cobo? Oh, there's good reasons about a cobo. I have feelings about this. Do you want to hear them?

Yes. Yes. Why else do I come? I keep, so I have one of Deeter's old Kindles, but I keep going back to my cobo because it has pocket integration. And that is like this killer feature that I will like use the cobo even though the store sucks, the interface sucks. Everything about the cobo is terrible except for the fact that you can just drag and drop.

e-pubs and just put them in there and that's super fun. But other than that, the cobo sucks. And it's waterproof. That's also nice. But it's pocket integration. Like, send a Kindle is the worst thing that I've ever experienced with anything. Like, I almost feel like, I don't know, I was going to say I would almost buy like a fire phone over that. That's false. You should not do that. But it's sent to Kittle is bad. The Insta paper linkage is bad. Everything like reading the web on a Kindle is excruciatingly bad, and I don't understand why they haven't fixed that yet, because the Kindle is so good at everything else. But why do you read web articles on the Kindle?

Well, long-form pieces. That's true. It feels, like, I love reading Long-form Verge stuff on the Kindle. Like, it's so good. Yeah. It's just so good. You don't lose where you're at. You just, like, you get to, you know, the distractions are gone.

It just feels way more zen and way more, like, I can actually focus on something. Yeah. And I go through my pocket Q list way faster. Really? Oh, it's ridiculous how much faster I go through it. Because I'm actually paying attention to what I'm reading. Interesting. And it's not like, I just wish Amazon would fix it.

And then Kobo would just like be out of my life entirely. Just throw it out of the window. Yes, please. I'm going to throw this in this pond. Oh, it's waterproof. Yeah. So the Oasis is not waterproof. Not waterproof. What is the deal?

Yeah. How hard is it. To waterproof. An e-reader. I didn't know everybody was so hung up on waterproofing their e-readers. Well, because you. want to use them by pools and beaches and like the tub.

My e-readers waterproof and it's great to use it like at the beach and just not worry about anything. You know my hands can be wet and it's fine. Yeah. It's the thing. Everybody wants waterproof kind of. What they've delivered instead is a $400. They've delivered a luxury device. You buy this thing for the same reason you buy an Apple Watch

edition because you're like, yo, this makes me feel, you like can show it off to somebody just like you'd show off your fancy watch and they'd be like is that Apple Watch? You're like, no, this is a $10,000. Apple Watch. Same reason for this thing. I mean, whatever. I got to say the one thing about this

that isn't luxury at all, the Amazon logo on that cover. Yeah, it's pretty bad. The Amazon logo on the cover literally looks like Mickey Mouse is yelling at you. Like, it is not a cool logo. It's not sleek.

It's just the Amazon logo. Yeah. Didn't they also get rid of the, like, adjustment for the eyes? Like the lighting adjustment? Yeah, so they got rid of the ambient light sensor, which in principle on the voyage, it's great.

In practice, like, it works a little bit. But what the ambient lights sensor on the voyage is supposed to do is you is looking at it in the dark and it starts at like a five. And then over the course of the next half an hour, it ratches itself down to like a four or a three. So it gets dimmer as you read it in the dark because your eyes have adjusted to the relative darkness. So it's not just that you turn the lights off and the thing gets dimmer,

but it does that. It's you turn the lights off and think it's dimmer and then it slowly gets even dimmer because you don't need that much brightness. So it's like really good for going to sleep. It's interesting to me that like in a $400 device, like 300 baseline, that they just like got rid of that. I mean, it was probably like not used a lot.

Amazon's line is like nobody noticed. They like tested it with and without and the people who like people just didn't notice and they're like, okay, whatever. But you're not supposed to notice. Yeah, I know. That's the whole thing. I just feel like they could have, you know, gone that extra step for something like that. Like if you're not going to waterproof it,

If you're not going to finally let people read the web, like, at least, at least do that. I just use pocket on my phone. It's like a weird. I'm thinking about this. I got to buy a cobo. Cobos are great. It's awful. Cobos are like friendlier with ePub and they're like better for, you know, the idea of not DRM'd content.

Amazon is all about DRM. Well, but Amazon's becoming like famous with Alexa of being the most interoperable and like having a relatively the open API and like allowing lots of new content from all sorts of places to come in. They're closed off for everything else. Right. Yeah. I don't know why that is. It makes no sense to me.

It's not cool. Amazon Kindle DRM is the foundation of their business, right? I mean, they, well, like, leave the Kindle DRM on your Kindle stuff. But I don't know, let me let pocket develop an app for it, I guess. Yeah. Or like create a pocket clone. Like, please just do that. I don't care.

They also make it really hard to, like, send, like, other EPUB stuff to it. The two things I think are interesting about this conversation are the pocket clones are coming. So Facebook is like, 200 million people use read later on Facebook. I don't know anybody who uses a read later on Facebook. Google just added it to inbox. Google added it to inbox. It's, Paul was saying he uses it in Safari. Yeah, I can read later.

It's been in Safari for a while. I literally, right now my workflow is I'm using Chrome for work. so because Chrome's got the little favicons but then if I find a link I want I open up Safari and then I paste it in and then I clicked the little plus button

and then I never read it just use pocket what are you doing? You should check out choosy choosy it's a little utility it's buggy as hell but it's a little utility that lets you dynamically change web browsers like when you click links

and stuff and you can also set certain certain websites to certain web browsers. I've been trying to use Chusie's... That seems like having a lot of apps open. Oh, you spend an eternity configuring it and like once you have it, you just keep on reconfiguring it. But like once every two weeks, there's this moment

where like it just magically does exactly what you want and it's great. No, I live for those moments. You're like this weird workflow hack worked this time. Yeah. Choosie's been around for a long time. That thing has always been a mess in my mind. Yeah. No, so there's

that. There's the, the idea that the reaction to the flood of content that we all get is for every service to build a save it for later function. Yeah. I mean, you just got to pick one. I honestly will like click through on Facebook to just so I can finally get Chrome so I can finally save something to pocket because I can't handle. Like I'm never going to look at the save for later on Facebook. I think you should go all in on Facebook safe for later. Do it.

You upset me. That's such a bad idea. Okay. So there's that. Yeah. There's the dynamic screen thing, which obviously took out of the oasis. But it's interesting to me. Apple's doing it now in one way with night shift.

They're doing it in a bigger or more important way. True tone. With true tone on the iPad pro, on the one iPad Pro. The iPad Pro 9.7. Just don't like saying the name. Yeah, I know. It's just an uncomfortably stupid name. Anyway, so doing it there.

It feels to me fairly obviously to do it on the next phone. They ought to. I just like the idea that, and whether or not this son. science works. I think the science of night shift is pretty shaky. But I love night shift. I think it's great. Like I look forward to my- Like it makes you feel good? Yeah. Like I look forward to my screen turning yellow in the evening. And then when the low power mode comes on and it gets like super blue, I'm like, how have I been looking at this this whole time? It's awful. I just like the idea that someone is thinking all of the screens that we're surrounded by should actually adapt to the

way that we should see things. Right. Yeah. Is really powerful and interesting. And then Amazon's like, What about a $400 candle that doesn't do that? I have to say I never turn on my light on my e-reader unless I really have to. What? Because I use a lamp next to my bed. Really? It's like that's less damaging for your eyes. Do you use a steam engine in your car?

Sorry. Is it because you're afraid of the blue back light? You think that's why it's less damaging to your eyes? Lamps. Okay. I don't know. I just feel like having light in your eyes. It bothers me.

I prefer just having a lamp. That's true. Right? Like a lamp is good. I like lamp. Lamps are good. Lamps are good. Lamps are good.

I love lamp. Nelai thought he could slam you. It's like, you old-timey people and you're lamps. Which like, all right. I just went for it. Look all around you, Nelai. You're surrounded by lamps. Where are you getting you without?

Big lamp is coming for it. It's funny because it actually is a big lamp. It's a big lamp. Lamps. This episode of the Vergecast is brought to you by Squarespace. Whether you need a landing page, a beautiful gallery, a professional blog, or an online store, it's all excluded with your Squarespace website. Squarespace is easy. Creating a website with Squarespace is a simple, intuitive process.

You add and arrange your content and features with a click of a mouse. You get a free custom domain. If you sign up for a year, you receive a free custom domain for a year. You have beautiful templates. Design a best-in-class online store of Squarespace's award-winning templates, customizable settings, and more, all without a single plugin. You also get seamless commerce tool, from nationally recognized brands to your favorite local shops. Squarespace is trusted by hundreds of thousands of shableness.

top owners around the world, including all the tools you need to track your inventory, process orders, and send custom emails in one intuitive interface. And you also get customer support. Squarespace offers 24-7 customers support. Every member of the customer care team is an experienced Squarespace user working in a Squarespace office. No matter how technically your problem or trivial seeming your question, someone is available to help you. So start your free trial today at Squarespace.com and enter the offer code Verge to get 10% off your first purchase. That's offer code Verge. We're back. Welcome back. All right, Aero, let's talk about your feature a little bit. Sure. Because it's crazy. So just set up what it is and then let's get into it and like talk about your experience actually reporting it out.

Yeah. Okay. So I published a big feature yesterday about a man, Josiah Zainer, who performed a microbiome transplant on himself. The microbiome is like the composition, like the bacterial composition that's of your body. Like your body is a habitat and there's bacteria on it. that's a microbiome. And your bacteria does a bunch of stuff for you. They produce vitamins. They help you digest food. It's this whole thing. And this guy, he has a lot of gastrointestinal issues. He and some other stuff. And he wanted to try and get rid of that by doing a transplant himself that included a fecal matter transplant, so essentially eating poop and also trying to change the bacteria on his skin, nose, mouth. You just rolled right by the lead there. So I'm not going to say I'm an expert on the fecal transplant. Sure, sure, sure, sure.

I was under the impression that was generally done in the other direction. Yeah. Oh, you mean like an enema? Yeah. Oh, the other direction. We're really going to like just like dance around those words. I always thought it was like surgical somehow. No, I don't know.

So in the last couple years there's been, it used to be mostly enema. There's also nasogastric tubes. So through the nose down to your stomach. But in the last couple years, there's been a lot of research about taking poop pills. Some of them are like frozen, some of them are not. But essentially, like a fecal matter transplant is done in a doctor's office, specifically if you have a C-DIF infection, which is a terrible infection that can be life-threatening. And if it's recurrent, if nothing else is working, then they'll give you a poop pill. And that poop has been screened and donors have been screened and things are very, very safe.

And they'll give you 30 of these pills that you'll take over the course of a couple hours, maybe up to two days, depending on the research. that you speak to. And that is 90% effective at curing you from recurrent C-DIF. Wow. Josiah does not have C-DF, the Zaner, the guy who did this. He does not have C-Dif. He tried to, there's no proof that this would ever help him with his gastroidential issues. He may have IBS or IBED. Ulcers, he's not clear on his diagnoses, but he has, you know, he has some issues. And he wanted to try and fix that, even though there's no real research that, that we're would ever kind of support the idea that this would help him. But to him, it was intuitive. He wanted to try it. He did something that was very, very dangerous. Don't do this at home.

Yeah. Or anywhere else except a doctor's office. But you can't even do it at a doctor's office. Just don't do it. No, don't do it. The FDA really regulates it. It's like human shit when it is administered by a doctor is a drug that is very tightly regulated. So it's really actually really hard to get this treatment. Well, to be clear, like, one of the reasons the site of the regulated is human shit is legitimately dangerous. Right. I mean, there are so many different types of outbreaks that have been cholera through shit.

You know, there's so many hepatitis. There are so many different things that you can get through feces. So, you know, just seeing your friend and being like, hey, let me take a sample from you, a stool sample and let me ingest that is a really, really dangerous thing to do. He did it. Yeah. You were there. I was there through the entire process.

You got to read this feature. You got to see the photos. We sent one of our directors veer in with a camera. I mean, it's like, you got to read it. So you were there. Yeah, I was there. He, I was even there during the, just wasn't in the piece, but I was there even when we collected the samples from the donor, went over to his house.

And, you know, he came out with like a huge jar covered in aluminum foil so that we wouldn't see it. And, you know, we brought that home in a hot car. Like a really, really long drive in a hot car. And I was like, and it was like Josiah and me in the backseat with the poop jar that was in his bag, but it was there. It was just a really, really interesting experience. And then that afternoon we go to his apartment and he tries to make poop pills. And it was hilarious.

The whole thing was hilarious because the capsules that he got, he bought gelatin capsules. to do this and he was trying to and gelatin capsules when you put them in your stomach they dissolve because they hit liquid but Zaner's idea was to try and you know kind of make like to inject the poop into the capsules

so to create like a saline to like mix poop with salient solution and then inject it in there but the minute that they hit the capsules they started dissolving in his hands and you know it wasn't something that he thought about which you know you gotta think about it and he just didn't. Well, give his back, we're making him, he's like a brilliant guy, right? He's got a crazy

background. He's incredibly intelligent. He has a PhD in biophysics, incredibly charming and sweet, and just an all-around interesting guy who did something that was dangerous and just so happened that he didn't get sick. And that is very, very lucky for him, but don't do it at home. He's doing an AMA on Reddit tomorrow. Yeah, he is. He's in our comments. Yeah, he was in our comments. He was answering questions. He, yeah, no, he's, he's, he's incredibly interesting. He actually is the inventor of an instrument called the chromacord that I'm he he explains it better than I do but essentially there's some bacteria that if you shine light on them depending on the intent like depending on the light that you're shining on them they will vibrate at certain intensities and you

can control that and because they vibrate you can translate that into sound so he created a kind of whole interface to translate whatever you know the vibrations of the bacteria into sound so he plays bacteria um and it sounded remember this though yeah we actually wrote about it Years ago. Katie Drummond posted something about it years ago. That's crazy. And that is actually like the whole, like the, my first interactions with Josiah were around that. That's incredible.

Yeah. So he's really, really brilliant. So you, you're in a room with him. He scrubbed the room down. Yeah, with chlorox wipes, which is incredible. Not quite sure how effective that must have been. He also was, he flushed his nose out with antibiotics that he, like, like, powder antibiotic with a netty pot and scrubbed his entire body down with the diluted antibiotics trying

to kill the bacteria on his skin. I spoke to some researchers and they told me that that would not be effective. And in fact, if you tried to kill the bacteria on your body, if you killed all of it, whatever you did would probably kill you first. So that was kind of an interesting thing to hear. But, you know, that was the idea to try and kill his bacteria. He had also been taking antibiotics for two days, which is very, very dangerous because disrupting the balance in your gut can actually, like, if you have pathogens that are dormant in your body like C-DIF, doing that can actually make you sick. So the possibility of him making himself sick, not even from the poop, but from the taking of the antibiotics, was very, very real.

So why did he do it? Certainly he knew all these dangers. Yeah, he definitely was aware of the dangers. We talked about them at length a couple times before he did it. I wanted him to, you know, I wanted to make sure that he knew. And he did. He did it because, you know, there are a lot of people who are, like, under, like, under a lot of pain. And I think that when the health care system just isn't working for you, people go to great lengths,

regardless of whether it's dangerous, to try and find some sort of relief. And that was one of the things. He also wanted to do it to teach people about science, which I have some, like, ethical questions about that, because if you're trying to teach people about science by doing something that's dangerous, and then also maybe like some people might copy him, then I think that's a questionable choice, but that was his choice and his way that he wanted to frame it.

So yeah, he's just a really, really interesting person. Yeah. And how long before he knows if it was effective? Right. Well, okay, so I'm going to say he thinks it was effective because he has gotten some relief. Right. I will say that there is absolutely no way to know if it's effective.

It's impossible. And I will say that because what he did was if that is what is making him feel better. Because he didn't do the experiment in a control situation. We don't have, you know, something to compare it to to see like, hey, he did this. You know, somebody who wasn't doing the transplant, for instance, but living under the same conditions. There is absolutely no way to know. He did some sequencing of his gut bacteria. some independent researchers sequence the Lathis microbiome.

And, you know, it does seem like the transplant had some sort of an effect, but it's, even then, I don't know if that effect is significant because there's so few samples that it's impossible to know if that's statistically significant to do the kind of analyses that a researcher would do to find out if this is actually effective. Like, there's no way to know. So, you know, it's really just based off of how what he says and how he feels. And that's not science. That's an anecdote. don't. Yeah, he felt really bad. He'd like poop like upwards of, you know, five times a day, kind of debilitating. And he says that now he only poops once a day, which, you know, fine, which is really good for him. Like, I'm happy about that. But it's hard to know. It's impossible

to know if that's why. And, you know, that's why researchers, like, it's, it's interesting to see that because, in a way, it gives you, like, an appreciation for hard science, because that is why we do the things that we do, and that is why research takes a long time is because you can't just, like, try something on somebody and say, hey, this works. Like, that is not how science is done. Theronas. Right. I mean, no comment.

I've created a revolutionary blood testing regime, just trust me. Sure. Please give me your money. That's incredible. So you've got to read the story. There's a great line of the story where he didn't like sweet foods before. He didn't like sweets, and now he, like, loves sweets. And I think that it's just one of those things where it's like, is this real?

Are you, did you just convince yourself? I mean, there's some research to indicate that like your bacteria can dictate some of your food preferences. Yeah. So, yeah, he suddenly has a sweet tooth. He lost some weight. He suddenly has a sweet tooth. There's no way to know, but maybe.

Don't do this at home. I think it's a real message that we need to send here. A hundred percent do not do this at home. Yeah, but it's incredible. You got to read it. It's a incredible story. And he seems like just a fascinating guy. He really is.

He really is. All right. Read the story. All right. Anything else? We covered it. Let's begin our lightning. around with sort of a leisurely open. Paul, what do you use to listen to music right now?

Apple Music. Yeah, I thought so. Tell me about it. Hate it. Spotify got redesigned like yesterday. Really? Maybe we'll look at it. Yeah. I'm an audio expat. Yeah. And so I feel like like Apple Music is like self-flagellation to like feel feel the pain. Yeah. Of losing Rodeo. Yeah. It's grief. It's your grief. But what, there's a redesign or something? I don't have the Spotify redesign yet. Oh, I have it. It's fine. But there's a redesign of Apple Music as well.

So, yes, the news is 9 to 5 Mac, which is excellent. And Bloomberg, I would say also excellent. Absolutely. I just doing a little media criticism on the side. Names some other excellent websites for me, Eli. Yeah, and Theverge.com, one of my faves. Excellent. Sugarbreaker.

Pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah. Anyway, both of the sites, Bloomberg and 95, report that, that probably at WWC, I think that's probably what it's leaking out now, there'll be a complete head-to-toe reboot of Apple Music. In that, you know, if you look at Apple Music now, it's very much just the existing iTunes mess

and then beats music just, like, glued onto it. Do they still have the whole, like, connect? Like, here's the, here's whatever the artist's, oh, it's still there. Yeah. Oh, it's still useless. I never see it because I turn on the parental controls to disallow the feed, which means I get to use that button for, I think,

playlists. That's, that's, that's, really. Literally saving yourself from yourself. I also turn on all the explicit lyrics filters. Dude, I know this is a tangent. It's my favorite hack. Update the macOS Twitter app. I'm like so excited.

I'm going to finally see Twitter polls. What are these all about? And in between the home button and the mentions button, the two buttons I ever push, moments. Moments. Just there to trip me up. You know what's better than, you know what the best part of the, the Mac Twitter app is. If you, I don't, I haven't checked on the new version, but you can put highlights into the

notification bar. And highlights is the best feature Twitter has ever made. And it's only available on Android phones and in the notification bar on Macs. Wait, you can finally do that? Oh. Because really, I just, I just want. Highlights are like the best tweets from the people that you follow. I just want highlights to replace the moments tab in the like mobile app, like so badly.

I don't even know why moments. Yeah. So here's my thing about Apple Music. iTunes's bad, beats bad. They put them both together, super bad. So, like, we're going to fix it. We're going to refresh it. Tell me why I should believe that Apple has the chops to figure out the user interface problem of Apple Music.

Tell me, give me the evidence of the software that they have created in the past, call it year. Call it a year and a half. Give me the evidence that Apple is able to solve a thorny UI problem. The thornyest. What thorny UI problem has Apple solved? recently. Paul's just shaking his head. Really like Apple Maps. There you go. Wait, on the phone or on the desktop?

I use it on both. You really use the desktop Apple Maps? Yeah. If I get like a link in I message and it's an address, I click on it. It's on Apple Maps. Or but sometimes I like plan my route. You know, I don't have like cell phone service. So I play in my route before I leave the house. But that's the one that the primary Apple app I can think of right now

that always does what I think it's going to do. Yeah. And they, it's like way better. They've like basically fixed it. Yeah, it's getting better. But like, I know. I switched to Android. So I don't know.

Thorny problem. It was bad when I switched. Right. Right. I mean, we could talk about the watch. TV thorny UI problem. I mean, the label for this entire section is, uh, I've labeled it quite controversially peak Apple.

Ooh. Because they had a, they had a real bad quarter. Yeah. I mean, okay. I mean, real bad for Apple. They had a real bad for Apple quarter. And the big problem was they, they missed their own guidance, which they never do.

but they still made so much money that like it's obscene. No, I disagree. The real problem, and Bloomberg, another, again, excellent, Bloomberg piece, did a whole breakdown of how Tim Cook talks about the company. And he was, a year ago, when the iPhone 6 came out and sales exploded, he was like, this is great, this is what they're going to be like forever. It's not unusual. Three months ago, when the 6S came out, they, they, he was like, it's fine, it's

the same curve. You know, S models traditionally sell better than the regular models. That did not happen. Nope. And he's like,

last year was so unusual. And I think the question is, is there a trick to make you buy another iPhone that isn't just a bigger screen? Because a bigger screen was a great reason to buy another iPhone. That was a huge driver.

And then I think that whole thing is related to what you're talking about, which is the stuff isn't very good. And we can talk, you're like, that's real bad. Apple Watch.

Like, this is, Apple Watch band is really good. This band is great. Yeah, the band is awesome. The new nylon bands that they made. Those are cool. And I, you know, I think there's the, do you guys talk about this in the show last week?

What? Apple at all? A little bit. Yeah. I don't want to hear what you think, Neela. Mm-hmm. I knew it. What's your, what's your mood zone on Apple right now?

I'm sorry, emotional time zone. Emotional time zone on Apple? Where in the dark? I don't know. A set of times up. Ruta Bega. Where is it? You know, wherever it's, it's, it's,

It's the land of always winter. That's my emotional time zone. Okay. I'm pretty sure that's a game of throne reference. No, I think that's it. It's just there's a lot of negativity around the company because they claim the watch sold better than the first iPhone, which is a totally unfair comparison because the first iPhone was available on 18T in the United States.

The watch was available around. It was singular at the time. And it wasn't subsidized. And it wasn't subsidized. It's like, yeah, it was a brand new thing from a company that was much smaller. on a totally limited market. No watch was rolled out worldwide with like celebrities running through Africa.

Like literally that was a video they showed, right? Like, yeah. And they were like posting Apple store pop-ups in like fashion markets in Paris. Like it was just a, it's a different scale. Of course they sold more. It's Apple. They can't help it.

But if you, but is the thing good is a really important question? I have always thought it's a seven. Like that was the number we gave it in the review. It's fine. When is the, Is it a reboot of the watch set for? Is it for the summer?

Is it later, like, in September? We don't know, but the latest rumors, I think, from the Wall Street Journal, are probably in the fall on the inside the iPhone. And it's like, oh, man, they're going to fix it. What are they going to do? They're going to put a faster processor in it. Fine. And maybe they'll have an LTE version. You think that's it?

That's what the WSJ had. Right. They really need a round watch. What I want is not a faster processor. I want, like, you know, pure apps. I want the screen on all the time. Way simpler, like... I want to...

Pebble in essence, but not in actual interface. I want to know what the buttons do. Yeah. I want this connect button. What are you going to... Who can I send my heartbeat to right now? A faster processor and a cell modem mean a huge battery. Yep.

Right. Are they going to run a cord up your arm? That would actually be amazing. If Apple was like the new Apple Watch with battery sleeve and you were like constantly wearing a battery sleeve. Does Casey? I've got all these people that I'm like scrolling through my contacts on the watch. What was the last time you sent your heartbeat to anyone, Deeter? Never.

If you have a heart. Definitely, the only person here that I know for sure is wearing an Apple Watch right now on my Apple Watch contact list is chow on our product team. Definitely going to send her a heartbeat. There you go. That's ridiculous. Anyway, so there's that and then there's this like Apple Music reboot. I am so excited for the Apple Music reboot. I want to use Apple Music.

That's what I've decided. If they can just make it so it looks like a store where everything is free and then playback is simple, that's all I want. If I want to listen to a song and I know what it is, then that's easy to get there. Yeah. If I was just listening to something, it's easy to get there.

Oh my God. If I wanted some suggestions from some dude that Apple pays a lot of money to tell me what's cool, like whatever, they can put that in there if they want to. Yeah. But just don't make it hard. I'm just personally, like, very upset about the whole,

like, exclusives on this platform and exclusives on this other platform. That's not going away. I know and I hate it so much. You know everything's available? BitTorrent. We don't talk about that. We talked about boom pills for about 15 minutes. I really like to pay for stuff.

I do too. I just don't want to pay for, like I don't want Spotify and Apple Music and title. And, you know, I just got, I just, I can't do it. You just need to pick a music app that lets you have a locker where you can upload your own music. And then you're good. Right. So I should do play music. is what you're telling you. You can do play music, you could do Apple music, or you could do

Amazon music. Do Amazon music. I think it's what it is to be play music. For the official position of the Vergecast. I think you should keep using your cobo. Use Facebook, save for later, and go all in on Amazon music. Dude. The worst life. Oh my God. Every single time the Echo tries to play something, like the Echo dot tries to play something from Amazon Prime, I get so upset at it because I never want to play something on Amazon Prime. Never.

No. Alexa, play my Amazon Prime music. So cruel. Terrible. What if it went like further like this? Because right now you can pay $10, let's call it $10 because it's always around $10. $10 for Hulu, $10 for Amazon, $10 for Netflix, $10 for HBO, and $10 for Showtime. I don't know.

You won't even pay for a cell phone. Like, why... This is not sustainable. Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't pay for all of those anymore. But I've had most of them at... I've never paid for Showtime. But, like, those have a small overlap of content.

And then primarily the draw is exclusive. I'm not saying this is a good idea for music. But what if music went even more like that? What if you had your title for listening to Jay-Z's friend's music? Yeah. And then you had Apple for listening to Drake. and Taylor Swift, and then you had Spotify for listening to, like, European dance music. But you see...

That's what's for. But you see what's happening in the TV market. That's terrifying, I know, right? I'm just going to cancel everything and go back to Pandora. No, but with TV and movies, what's happening is all of... A lot of the device vendors are building universal search on top of those services to disintermediate them. Yeah, but that's... That universal search stream is never...

It has yet to come true on any platform. Universal search on every single platform, whether it's phone, TV, or tablet. The only place where universal search hasn't been a disaster is the web with Google. Everywhere else, it gets interrupted by bad indexing and the fact that you need to cut deals with the people's who's apps you're indexing. And those two things put together mean that like every single universal search thing I've tried has always been a disaster, especially on TV. Right. And so, yeah. Apple TV is fine.

It's a seven. It's a seven. Just like the Apple Watch. It's Apple Watch quality search. Yeah. That's a hard burner. Yeah. It's slow.

Nobody knows how to use it. What are these buttons for? It's constantly touching you. There's force touch for some reason. When it was the last time you forced touch to Apple Watch? I guess just now. Just now because it took me five minutes to send my heartbeat to somebody because I kept on drawing instead of sending the heartbeat.

Force touch. Also, the fact that I just sent somebody a heartbeat. heartbeat, they definitely think I'm like creepy now. Because like nobody's, nobody has sent a heartbeat with the Apple Watch in literally three months in all of America. I don't know why they ever thought that was going to be a thing. That wasn't my favorite thing about the Apple Watch. It is the thing that most of all made me want to get one.

And I don't know who I would send heartbeats to. But I really thought it was in real time, right? Yeah. Right. As soon as I discovered it wasn't in real time, the dream was dead. I feel like you could really make some sort of connection with somebody. Yeah. Not like super mystically, just like, literally.

literally thinking of you right now. Hey, here's my BPM. Her idea of like, I know, I know. I feel like there's a connection there. Yeah. What, you just send somebody a winky face? Yeah. Or like a smiley

with a tongue hanging out while I'm trying. I guess Apple is weird it is. I connect with people. Anyway, let's go lightning round. Yeah. We got some TV stuff in Lightning Round. We should talk about it. Hulu and YouTube confirming plans to start streaming live TV. I think this is the future. All these, the thing that you were talking about, Paul, where you pay $10 to a bunch of different services, that's going to get wrapped up into one of these skinny bundles streaming over the top services.

Yeah, but they're all going to be different. So, Sling's going to give you a certain set of channels. Who's going to give you another set of channels? Apple's going to give you a third set of channels. So if you want NBC, ABC, like the fat bundle, the only way to get the fat bundle in the near future is still going to be to just get cable. Yeah. Do you pay for TV? I desperately want cable.

I want it so badly. It's weird, right? It's, I feel like it's the point, like, it's the point where I suddenly just, like, am crossing over into actual adulthood. Like, I want cable all the time. Like, I just, with the election season, I just want cable so badly. Yeah. I want to be able to, like, watch RuPaul's Drag Race in my apartment and not search, like, not go to a bar. I want to be able to listen to Rachel Maddow every night.

Yeah. Like, I just want cable. I'm just going to put this out there. Cable is available. Right. Well, now that I am planning a wedding, cable is going to have to wait. Yeah, congratulations. You're going to engage with weekend.

Fair. I don't know if this is still possible. When I was in college, I was very adept at stealing cable. Really, I just need a cable login. If somebody wants to give me their MSNBC login real bad, like, I just want to be able to watch Rachel Maddow. Wait, please just make that happen. But the cable apps, even if you have a cable login on like Apple, Apple,

Apple TV or the web, it's maybe a little bit better, but like, it's not a great experience yet. When Comcast's like, yeah, we'll just do apps. Like, yeah. As soon as you start doing apps well, I'll trust you. In the meantime, give me, like, a free cable box. Yeah. Or open cable box. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Okay. Anyway, it's coming. You're going to, you're going to, one day, instead of saying, I want cable, you're going to say, I want watch these channels and you're going to pay YouTube or Apple or Hulu or somebody and get a series of channels. Yeah. And that will disintermediate all this.

$10 a time chunking. TV's dead. The United States has a ban vaping for people under 18. Why do you feel about that? I thought that was already... No, they weren't even classified as tobacco products until recently.

What? It's a Wild West. I saw some of the other things that they are going to... Vap manufacturers are going to have to be approved. Is that correct? Yes. I think they have like a two-year window

to kind of like develop a plan and make sure that they are compliant. But yeah, that's the thing. They're going to have to get approved. Anything after that was made after 2007. So like all vapes really are going to have to get approved. So something about like a million dollars to get through that process? I haven't seen any estimates. It's probably going to be expensive for that.

Big bad government just messing things up because they don't like people having fun. Kids having fun specifically? Don't worry, Trump will fix it. I mean, this is going to be a really hard thing for them to regulate because a vape isn't a singular thing like a cigarette. There's the battery. There's a heating element. There's the kind of stuff. There's a kind of liquid.

There's like 50 parts that go into making a vape. Yeah. And, you know, the FDA has like very little like power, like manpower, people power. People. They don't have a lot of people. So. What do they have? People.

Also, real weird shortage of lamps. So it's going to be. It's going to be. be tougher them, but hopefully they'll try and figure that out. Yeah. It's going to be a weird transition, I think, and there's going to be, but like, it's, you know, kids probably shouldn't be vaping. So it's really interesting.

I think we wrote this too. In the UK, their health agency is like, vaping is the best. Straight up, they're like, we have learned. Let's frame that slightly differently. They say vaping is the best because it is better than smoking. Vaping in the grand scheme of things is still terrible for your health. We think. We think, yes.

No, the negative health ramifications of nicotine are very well studied. Right. And you're getting a lot of nicotine in your body when you're vape. So that is not... The idea is that you just get less of the other stuff. Right. And then maybe that means that it's better. Are they going to regulate the vapes that are like 0% nicotine?

I mean, it has to be a tobacco product. Do they regulate like those like herbal cigarettes that you can get? like those cigarettes that are like zero nicotine? I don't know if they do that. I don't know. I don't know if that falls under tobacco products. If they're not making a health claim, like the only vapes that were regulated before

were vapes that made health claims. Yeah. So if you didn't, then you were fine. I don't really know the intricacies of that. Yeah. Your next great feature is finding a person who's building the world's biggest vape. Just to go into that apartment.

Well, isn't the whole point is that it's super portable and like you just want to have it The whole point is to make sick clouds. Sure. All right. When I walk on the streets of New York, every day, like the vape batteries get bigger.

Yeah. They're not getting smaller. There's this guy on my block in, like, in Soho, and I call him the vape king. Does he know you call him the vape king? You should definitely call him vape lord. He should be vape lord. Well, whatever.

Anyways, he's this, like, very well-dressed person who, like, runs this, like, fashion store, and he walks. out like probably every two hours and he's got like a brass vap stick thing and then it's just the most amazing cloud. It's just

so, so good. All right. God only knows. Tortilla pods, Paul Miller. Yeah, somebody made a rig for tortillas. I'm so happy that that happened. Seventy-nine cents per tortilla, which is probably the

most you could ever pay for a tortilla. Did they also supply you with the like dough ball? Yeah. It's a pot. They're literal pot. It's a dough ball inside a little plastic disposal of cup. They have to like keep refrigerated. 79 cents that you can get different flavors.

So I glanced at this article and my only like positive impression of this is that at least it was a woman of color in the like video. But like otherwise seems like such terrible. What do you think about the all caps headline that I ran through the verge editorial process? I got to say this is one of our best headlines. The headline is just the word tortilla pots. That's hilarious. I have to say, this is like, we're like, we're going to go back to old school blogging. Who gives an F?

We're just going to go and we're going to have some fun. Paul's like, I got it. Tortilla pods. Tortilla pods. Oh my God, I'm just going to treat this right now. That's real good. Are we getting one of these? Well, apparently they're in Williamsburg.

Hopefully we can track. It's a Kickstarter. It might not ever be real. They've got like $80,000 so far. But if they've got a demo unit in Williamsburg, we're going to track this down. Of course. The tortilla in this video doesn't look very, like, normal. They have 27 days ago, as of this recording, they have brought in $86,973 in pledges so far.

Yeah. They say they only need 50 grand to make this thing, which seems pretty much. I have feeling everyone's pledging this thing just, just so we can get one in the office. You know, if you really love your homemade tortillas and you really don't want, wanted to go through the labor-intensive aspect of this. And if it actually makes a good product. No, but, like, there are rice cookers that are, like, super expensive, right? Like, you can get, like, a $500 rice cooker.

Yeah. Because it makes perfect rice, and it times it everything, and it, like, does everything for you. Do you have a $500 rice cooker? No, I used to have a $10 rice cooker, and I liked it a lot. Yeah. Where would you put the $500 rice cooker on the scale between not having it and cable? Ooh. What would you get first?

I mean, cable. I don't even have a rice cooker anymore, so, like, Like the question is kind of... So I haven't... Well, not even. In terms of things... But, like, I have been thinking of buying... Rice cookers are amazing.

I don't know if you notice... There's a native ad for rice cookers going on right now. Rice cookers are so... Big rice cookers made its way into the Birchcast. I have... I have not... It's not 500 dollars, but I have, like, a fancy rice cooker that I was... This is what weddings are good for.

Get ready. I know. Yes. I'm very excited about all the new cookware. We were given a fancy rice cooker when we got made. and I make rice better than that rice cooker and faster in a pan. Yeah, ricekeepers are a little slow. They're way slower.

Dude, it takes 20, 30 minutes max to make perfect rice in a pan. Currig is not about the best cup of coffee. Right. Currug is about living the Jetson life and having a little pod that becomes coffee. And this is about a little pod that becomes a tortilla. Yeah. When is somebody to make the pizza thing from back to the future? Right.

That's the one I want. A little pizza and you push the button and becomes a big pizza. I'm sitting here waiting. Get to work, Kickstarter. All right. You got one more. And this one's important, Paul. Pie message.

Pie message. This is just a call to arms. Everybody get on GitHub. Start contributing to Pi message, which is like my number. I want to try more Android, but I'm very dependent on I message. And this is literally a hack that scrapes all your. your iMessages off of a Mac and then blast them over the internet in a super insecure way to your Android phone. This guy made like the scraper. He made a server. He made a really slick Android app for all

this. Like this guy did a lot of work and I just want to push this over the finish line. Yeah. And have iMessage on Android. But don't you need to run a Mac somewhere at all times? Yes. Yes. Just to be clear. On a relatively stable IP address. Yeah, right? Oh yeah. The stable IP address is the tough one. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it would be great if you could just have, like, an I message app and just, like, be able to communicate with people who's focused solely on that.

But, like, Apple's never going to do it. And that seems incredibly inconvenient. I feel like, I don't know, maybe Apple, to say they're sorry for missing earnings. I can put out an I message app for Android. Because that's really, I just think there's something about that. Like, you know, Google and Microsoft sometimes feel a little. desperate. Like, Google still feels maybe that they've got to keep mind share in iPhone land or they might become irrelevant to those. And so Google does a really good job of putting its apps on

iOS. Microsoft is scared of becoming irrelevant in all ways and does a really good job putting its apps on iOS and Android. Apple has been pretty comfortable. Didn't feel the desperation. And I mean, for a long time, like that was a huge selling point. Right. It is. I mean, it is a selling point. It is a good point of lock-in. Good for them. But if you think about what would truly make people happier, yes, you're going to lock in more customers.

These companies don't want to make people happy. You're funny. I think you get a lot of mileage out of it. I mean, this was all my, one of my old-timey metrics was if you put Bing as your default search, you don't care about your customers. Right. Because understand, you can make a $10 million deal with Microsoft and have Bing as your default. I don't know what the actual.

deals go for. Yeah. But it says something about your company that you're less concerned about their happiness than your business's success. But your business succeeds ultimately, I think, if your customers are happy. Or if you get that sweet Bing money. Right. What's your business model?

Bing. Bing. Desperate, desperate Bing. I'm hoping to trick people into using Bing. We got to start it at half. Finally, Paul, we've got an app. It's called shenanigans. And you just open the app and you see how long you can use the app without performing a big search.

I'm into it. This is great. This is good. I think that's got to wrap this one up. We've had our share of disasters. It's been good. It's been a good run of live verge casts. Right?

What's happening? I don't know. All right. Close my laptop. It's a very cute laptop. I love that laptop. Oh, you want to talk about the review? Lauren put up, real quick.

Lauren put up the review of the new MacBook. That's your old Macbook. The new MacBook is faster. Yeah. Yeah. We talked about it this last time. Yeah. I bought one.

It's a good review. You should read it. She also did a great versus comparing it to a MacBook Air. Which one? Doesn't matter. I mean, it was like a 2014. Yeah, it's a great video. It's really funny.

She does a great job. Yeah, just wait. All MacBook errors are the same. Like, can we just admit? Like, some of them are a little bit faster, but like if you have a 2000, any MacBook era from like late 2012, whatever that last model was up to today, they're the same. They're the same. They're the same.

I put Cloud Ready on the, Becky's old MacBook, your old MacBook. Oh, did you? Yeah. It's slow. Yeah, I tried to put it on my old MacBook Pro and it destroyed it. Cool. It doesn't work anymore. Womp.

What's amazing. I try to partition the disc, which is like a weird thing to do mentally with an essentially. with an SST, I guess. And it just wasn't having it. It's like the only way you can install this OS is by blowing out the disc. And I was like, what if I just put it on this part of the disc and set?

And it just wouldn't have. No. No. But now I have a little crumbook. That's real slow. That's fine. All right. Have IOP never worked out either.

If we keep going, I'm going to start talking about USBC adapters and you do not want that. I bought so many USBC adapters out of fear. I have gone through three docks and the fourth one is waiting for me at my apartment because they're all garbage. Every single one is garbage.

That's unacceptable. Yep. Like, that's really unacceptable. That's a new technology. Technology. The whole, like, Apple build it and they will come situation. It's just, like, acceptable.

That happened with the first USB, too. Every first, all the USB devices that came out around in the first IMAQ were garbage. And they were all, for some reason, clear blue. They were all made of clear blue plastic. The IMA was clear blue. Yeah, but they never matched the color correctly. Oh, right, right.

Like, the IMAQ was at, like, aquamarini, Bondi blue, right, right. Bondi blue. And all this stuff was like, yeah, it's close enough. Like, they held up the Pantone scanner to, like, a computer screen. Like, oh, we got it. Anyway.

A sad note to end the show, I think. Melancholy. A melancholy. What is the emotional time? What is the emotional time zone of melancholy? We need to make Virchcast pods. You just put one in a machine that plays a single-serving Vergecast. Yeah.

What's the, for, and they're a D-R-R-R-Roddusts. They cost $25. No, they only cost $2, but they're single years and they have to throw them away. What's the most melancholy place? What's the time zone of that place? That's my emotional time zone. All right. I'm done with this show.

Albany? Albany. I will say Pacific time is the worst time zone. No, the worst times is... Suntler. This is over. Okay, look, that was for better or worse. Worse.

It's probably worse. Go we. This is the worst Vergecast we've ever done. That was amazing because Ariel is here. It's true that you're the only good thing about this show today. The lampchook was good. Today's Vergecast is brought to you by a lamp.

I will say, the Lambschuk fucking killed. Anyhow, that's a Vergecast. There's so many better podcasts that you can listen to on the verge.com. Liz and Emily do Verge ESP, which is great. Chris Plant does What's Tech, which is wonderful. Walt and I do Control Alt Delete, which is good.

because of Walt Mossberg. We talked about email for 40 minutes yesterday. Get in there. It's nuts. And there's a bunch of recode podcasts. Recode media. Lauren Good does too embarrassed to ask. It's wonderful.

And Kara Swisher does recode decode. Yeah. So just listen to that stuff for the next two weeks. Tell us what you like, which you don't like. And then two weeks we'll be back. There's also what's tech. Did we say what's tech? Okay.

All right. But let's say it again. What's tech is great. You can use those spots twice. If you haven't, you should follow a circuit breaker on Facebook. Facebook, Facebook.com slash circuit breaker. If you have, you should tell three friends. And if you don't, then Bill Gates will kill a baby.

And if you do tell three friends, everybody gets a free chicken. It's so, it got so dark. This is why we can't be live. Deere starts threatening people, promising chickens. If you don't forward, liking the Circuit Breaker Facebook page, Bill Gates is not going to give away free money to everybody. I was at a conference last week, and I literally walked around the conference. Friends taking people's phones and making certain. You should also follow

Verge Science. You should follow Verge Science. Yep. On Twitter. Virge Pop, entertainment. Yes, so we should do that. Verge cars, I believe. It's also one. And then the main Verge channel. Just unfollow that one. Just balance it out. All right. We're done. Thank you for listening. Thank you to Squarespace. Thank you, Deeter.

Breaking me over. Oh. Rock and Roll. Goodbye. Paul. Paul. Paul. Paul.