The Vergecast - Facebook in space

Episode Date: April 15, 2016

Nilay and Dieter bring back science reporter Loren Grush to take on this week's news in science and tech; discussing Facebook's F8 developer conference, SpaceX, and Telsa's Model S. Racked senior reporter Nicola Fumo engineers the hype matrix once again for this spaced out episode of Vergecast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast at Theverge.com. It's a good podcast. Worst flagship ever. It's fine. It's, I mean, it's 200 episodes deep. We're still afloat. We're afloat. That's the point of a ship.

People, when they see us, they remember the good times, I guess. I don't know. Anyhow, the Vergecast is brought to you by this vodka. It's a vodka brand that I made up. And then I'm just going to keep talking about it. Where's the bottle? That's over there. Oh, okay.

I'm just going to keep talking about it until somebody makes it happen. So if you have more money than cents, call me. This is vodka. Cut the night. It's good. It's working. People are tweeting at me all the time. If I could pay for a vodka brand and tweets.

Can we get Tanya to move from her job? Poor Tanya. She's going to come up again today. Oh, I'm sure. So we have some news. You've got to introduce people. Oh, damn it. All right.

Well, that's Deeter. Hi. Lauren Grush is here. Hi. She's doing great. Rockets landed on boats. It's true. We're going to get into it.

I mean, I reported on it. Yeah. That's what makes it true. I didn't do it, but I reported it. Well, you know, media has a validating function. Yeah. If something happened and the media doesn't touch it, did it happen? Nicola Fumo's here.

Hello. What's up? Oh, you know, just TikTok and along waiting for spring. So we have a big update, but then I want like a nickel. I want a deep Nicola update before we begin. Okay. What do you want to hear about? Well, just wait.

Do you think about it while we do this one? All right. Okay, we have news. Yeah. Big Deeter news. Yeah. You want to share it with the world? No.

Deeter's move. in San Francisco. I'm moving to San Francisco. That's true. No one's happy about it. I'm like emotionally broken. I don't have emotions. But you're staying with the verge. Yes, of course I'm staying with the verge. Yes, of course I'm staying with the verge. Do you want to talk about why so I can talk about the other thing? I will be on the verge cast in some way, shape, or form. But yeah, I'm moving to San Francisco because I, my wife was kind enough to move out to New York with me and now she got a job, so I'm moving out to San Francisco so I can stay married to her, which is an important thing to me. And the news about that that makes this job complicated is she is working for Oculus.

Which is really cool. Yeah, it's a very cool job, Oculus. I'll trade her jobs. I'd go to work for it. And Oculus is, of course, part of Facebook. Yeah. Yeah. Which is the Internet.

Basically. Which is really. So Deeter can't use the Internet anymore. Happily, we have experience at the verge that people just ghosting completely from the Internet. Now, Dieter's going to stay on, obviously, he's going to remain on. executive editor. We have, if you actually look at his buy on the website right now, we've put up a first rough cut at his ethics disclosure, which will put on anything that sort of touches this stuff, Facebook, Oculus. We've decided that Deeter won't review

VR headsets. I won't review VR headsets. I won't report in either of those companies, but I may say, I may express an opinion about Facebook from time to time. For example, on this podcast. For example, on this podcast, as long as it's a tap, but I will always disclose so that everybody knows. Yeah. And then you can make a question. up your own mind. There you go. But happily Lisa hasn't started at Facebook yet. That's true. And this week was F8, Facebook's developer conference. So... Right in under

the radar, guys. So what you want... Look, life is a series of uncomfortable gray areas, and you just have to find them and then just squish around. I mean, I have never been a little bit... Is gray area squishy? Ever. I mean, isn't it? I feel like, you know... I think it'd be smooth.

Great. No, like the the outsides of the lines are smooth. You're just sailing. Right. on your flagship podcast. But in the gray area, that's more of a muck. I feel like the gray area doesn't work because, like, Tanya didn't do a good job with the design spec for the color of the area. She just...

This is a really deep call that. It's like whenever Lauren's on the show, an imaginary Samsung engineer gets shit on. People tweeted, like, respect for Tanya for weeks after that. If you missed the episode, This is a while ago. We went super deep on some imaginary product managers and engineers at Samsung and how terrible they were at their job. It's like our own Samsung fan fiction.

They had some like inner office romance going. Yeah. Well, Tanya has children. Right. Yeah. She has a family to provide for. Right. Still sucks at her job.

Sometimes you used to do the work. I thought it was Gary. That was terrible. But Tanya was like trying to rise above. Gary's a good enemy. And then there was Stephanie who was trying to get out so desperately. I mean, wouldn't you? Again, a very deep callback.

I don't have kids. But if you explain, but it does explain, I think, at least metaphorically, how Samsung works. Yeah. All right, Nicola, I want a Nicola update. All right. Let's go on. Where have you been? Tell me about some wacky adventures.

I took a road trip. I went to Charleston, South Carolina and many places along the way, which was cool. Kind of nice to get out of it. I learned what it's like to listen to a podcast in a car, which you always tell me about. Right. Is that, was it good? Is that like a revelatory experience?

Well, when have I done that? I have no car. Okay. Did you drive or were you a passenger? A little of both. Ooh. What kind of car? So, a smart car, actually.

Like one of the little ones? Uh-huh. How long was this road trip in a smart car? Twelve hours each day. How does a smart car handle on an American freeway where everybody's going 75 miles an hour? I went 90, baby. In a smart car?

What? You can feel the wind. Do you have to like kind of adjust your body? That's like rally racing in a smart car. You need your entire body. The weirdest thing is that like when I told my friend, like other friends about this trip, they were like very weirded out by this and I didn't question it all. I was like, yeah, cool, we're going.

In a smart car. Was it like a car to go? No, no, no. So you know somebody who owns a smart car. Yeah. Wow. Are they super into it? What do you mean?

Super into it. I feel like you, to be a smart car owner, you have to aggressively pursue the smart car lifestyle. You're the kind of, you know how like Ferrari owners buy Ferrari keychains and tote bags? Yeah. And custom luggage to fit in the boot of their safari. No, this is more of a practical kind of like a practically. Actually, filling the thing up was only $18. Who puts key chains in the boot of their Ferrari?

No, you buy the custom luggage. Right. Okay. It's like if you bought a smart car and did you tell anyone about it, Did your smart car land on a boat like so? And did Lauren report on it? But it's kind of nice because, you know, I hate excess. So it's literally a door.

It's like you open the door and it's like, oh, the car's over. I checked the smart car. I thought it was elegant and practical. Oh. Loved it. What color? Black. All right.

Nice. A little sleek. So it looked even smaller. Yeah. It was the only one we saw in the whole south. Yeah. It was the only one. The back part was like.

being at this like roadside like food counter in North Carolina and just like roll you know what I look like you know like you know what I look like well you know maybe you don't but looking like like audio show lately northern like city person like just looking like a New Yorker in this like like Northern city person like literally people were throwing bottles of like Tabasco sauce and sauce like New York City wow um the city another it's a it's a it's a it's literally a pace picante joke. I was about to say get a rope because I remember that. There was no inside of this. Did anyone try to steal your car by loading it

into the back of their pickup truck? Driving away really fast? No. Okay, so then what was also interesting was, you know, I was experimenting with SoundCloud Go as my primary music source. Yeah. Which is good because I saved a bunch of stuff offline, which was nice. But I

actually canceled my Spotify and signed it for Apple Music instead. Wow. Just turn it for another month. See what happens. You're just skating by in one month, three trials. Well, because I was talking to Micah of your staff, and we were talking about, we were talking about, he was like, yeah, I pretty much can't believe it, but I rely on title and Apple music now, and I didn't think I was going to say that.

And I was like, me too. Like, I don't know what Spotify is serving me anymore. And it took going to SoundCloud to make me realize that I don't know if I need Spotify, and I'm such a Spotify stand. Now things are changing. Look, times change. Winter is coming to an end And it's time to let go of old relationships

And start new ones with interfaces that are bad You know what's going to happen to you Is you're going to end up subscribing to all of them And be one of those people who pays $50 a month To listen to music Welcome to my hell I'm paying I'm subscribed to three right now

Oh one more thing Saturday Oh go on Google because it's YouTube ad Apple and Spotify Yeah same Saturday is record store day So go out

buy some physical music. Get it there. Yeah, I have a record player. That's how I usually listen to my music. Yeah. I appreciate that. Well, okay, music's a big part of my life, I guess, but I would say I read more during my commutes.

Like, I'm not usually listening to music as much. Right. So it's more of like a nice thing to have when I come home. I'll put on a record and it'll be fine. But in terms of like having a playlist or like a subscription service, it's not really something I think about. You should try buying an echo and just screaming for music, which is my new favorite thing. It's true. I've stopped. I'm going to go to local music on the phone and then just yell at the echo. That's my two. That's my big plan.

So my new favorite thing is while I'm away from the echo, you can just start playing the echo from home. Oh my God. It's pretty sweet. Yeah. Oh, wait, no, I can't do it. Poor Lisa. This is why she got a new job. Yeah. You understand? She's like, I can't be in this house anymore. Wow. I listen to there we go, Discover Weekly. We're just, we're literally just watching you use listening to you use the elective. You have to narrate the whole time. I have started the Alexa playing WNYC back in my apartment at home. All right, let's talk about Facebook.

Let's just get into it. So Facebook had F8, which is a developer conference. It is fascinating to me that Facebook is now, and they're a huge company, so it's not too wild of an idea, but their developer conference is now as big a deal in the tech world as Apple's developer conference or Google's developer conference. Yeah, just in a slightly different way. Yeah. because Facebook doesn't generally say,

here's a new product you can go by. They're like, here's all the hundreds of things we're doing. Yeah, here's all the stuff we're adding to the Facebook platform. And now they have a lot of Facebook platforms. And there was a slide. The slide was incredible. I tweeted a part of it because it was labeled like Facebook product, Facebook platforms, and the future.

And you could have re-labeled the future section with like weapons and tools of psychological control. Because it was drones, lasers, lasers. virtual reality, internet access for billions. Oh my God. It's all of the things that if you just relabeled it, weaponizable products. Yeah. Drones with lasers are on that sheet.

It's amazing. But they announced a whole bunch of stuff. And it actually started with Zuckerberg coming out and basically giving a TED talk. Yeah. Well, he said this is, well, first of all, like, he said this is our 10-year plan for Facebook. Yeah. Like, that's crazy. 10-year roadmap.

And then he gave like this happy, inspirational, you know, Facebook, blah, blah, blah. And then he snuck in a Trump burn. Yeah. He's like, some people talk about building walls, but I talk about liking everything. I mean, Facebook's mission statement is now everyone should be able to share everything with everyone. But only inside Facebook. But only inside Facebook. Not outside Facebook.

Trying to save anything outside of Facebook and your phone will explode. That's so funny because it wasn't Facebook kind of founded on, like, exclusivity. Yeah. Facebook was founded on not having incredibly shitty design like MySpace. Basically. But actually, they opened up to certain colleges at once. I was very exclusive and cool.

I was one of those college students. Wow. Which colleges? I went to University of Texas. Yeah. So I was in grad school at Wisconsin, but they opened up to University of Chicago. So it was not open at Madison, but I got it in early. because we had the old student email.

Yeah, exactly. I was 16, had a summer thing in New York, taking summer classes, and my new friends from Boston told me about this Facebook, and we didn't have it yet. And I was like, well, what? And then it came out, and I guess I signed up. Right.

It's been a while since anybody's tried to, like, launch an exclusive thing. No, peach, L.O. All of those. No, but those were, like, invites, and those were, like, last year. Like, it's been a good six months before anything. is like successfully launched with an invite system.

You know what? It's a long time, man, six months. I think the reason, I mean, I've thought about this is like, I think about starting up a new profile and a new social media account and it's just, I get really exhausted thinking about it. Because think about how much you've invested in your Facebook page. Like, there's all these pictures of you. There's, you've, like, filled out all the details and stuff.

Like, do you really want to put all that time and effort into another social media platform? No. I barely want to put that time and effort into Facebook. Yeah, exactly. Facebook for me now, is it's I share articles from the verge on it and then I have another page that feeds my Twitter and I barely use any of it anymore I've realized the Twitter app for Mac is so bad I put in tweet bot and now my Twitter use is fall into zero because you hate tweet bot I just don't like using it I use tweet

text still wait I found I found this slide from this presentation so it's product platforms and in platforms is WhatsApp Instagram all their other billion user apps and then this one is labeled technologies. And the first category is, and this is the 10 of the 10 year plan. The first one is labeled connectivity. And I submit to you this one should be relabeled weapons. Drones, satellites, lasers, terrestrial solutions, telco, infra, and free basics. Those are all weapons. Like fundamentally, all of those things can be weaponized. The next one is labeled AI. Again, could just be labeled weapons. Vision, language, reasoning, and planning. Oh my God. That's Skynet. Oh my God. It's fucking Skynet.

And then bottom, VR AR, mobile VR, VR, Rift, touch, social VR AR type. That is the Matrix. Yep. Right? We're going to, like, what they have described is a world of universal connectivity by drone and satellite. They showed us the solar plane. Yep.

Zuckerberg held up an engine. It wasn't the whole engine. It was like a, it was a carbon fiber tube in which an engine goes. Yeah, that was a very strange stage. He just like just randomly just picked up this giant tube and was like, look, I have an engine here. He's like, it's very light. I made it out of carbon fiber.

And then just sat there on the stove. for the entire hour and a half. Yeah, he just sort of like awkwardly leaned it against the back wall. He's like, I got a lot of these for my drones and satellites that will be my controlled internet to you. If Facebook does destroy the world, I think the only regret is that its name is Facebook. Like, Skynet sounds kind of cool. What about Genesis?

Skynet sounds like a good enemy. Genesis sounds kind of cool. If Facebook killed us all, I mean, I think we deserve to die. Like, you know, in the end, as you're like, get a good idea. get into your like Rift Matrix and you're like, well, the drones are raining hellfire over us. But guess humanity we deserve this. Yeah. So the other reason at Facebook is definitely going to take over the world is they snagged, they poached, they grabbed.

Yes. The former head of ATAP, advanced technologies and products at Google, who before that was the head of DARPA. Yeah. Oh, I just put this all together. Yeah. This is actually happening. They hired the first. And she is a killer, by the way.

Literally. She ran DARPA. Well, yeah. I mean, she ran DARPA, and then she went, they hired her at Motorola. Her name is Regina Dugan. Walt, huge fan of her. He, he's like, he met her when she was at DARPA, insisted that she become more public and go on stage at the de-conference.

And then when she went to Motorola, insisted that she come back and be like, what are you doing at Motorola? And her whole thing was like, I've built contact lenses that augment your vision. Like, she's that person. She also had a van The Sides of Whist were covered in Velcro And she convinced me to wear an entirely Velcro suit And jump against the van So she's also a magician

She's like a hypnotist But then Google bought Motorola And then Google sold Motorola Biquette A-TAP There were a lot of rumbles Of people at Google unhappy with A-TAP Because they have Google X Which is their own advanced crazy thing

And then now she's left and gone to Facebook Which again, I'd point out Facebook is building drones, satellites, lasers, AI with vision, language, reasoning, and planning, and a complete VR system that will lock you in an alternate reality. So basically the world is over. I'm just putting it out there. It's the commercial DARPA. Yeah, it's their commercial DARPA.

And her job there is to build all this hardware around this stuff. Oh, man. So, like, that was where they started. Like, Mark Zuckerberg comes out. He's like, look, I have this tube. I built a plane. Here's the Rift. It will, like, lock you in a virtual reality.

and our 10-year plan involves planes that can fly themselves in reason with you. So Facebook had a week. But then they transitioned to bots, to bots, which is their big thing. And we talked about Microsoft's big bot plan a couple weeks ago when they had build. Yeah. It's funny because Microsoft has a huge investment in Facebook, so you see how their world sort of align. Or compete. I think that Microsoft investment in Facebook is no longer like a thing that matters.

I think they just have like a friendly relationship. Right? I think it's just always been there and Facebook, you know, Facebook, for example, doesn't run on like Google apps. Yeah. They will happily use Outlook, which is strange. But they mostly, all their comms happens inside of Facebook. My general sense is that Microsoft has like a better long-term plan for bots in terms of them connecting up to each other. Yeah.

But Facebook has them now and they're kind of bad. But they have Messenger, which people actually use for chat in a way that people, I don't think. People use Skype for, like, conference calls. Yeah. Like, that's Microsoft's end is like, look, we're building the entire cloud infrastructure. And Facebook is like, us too, also Messenger. Yeah. No, Zuckerberg, he's gotten really good on stage.

He's, like, very comfortable with himself now in a way that he didn't used to be. But he just was very casual. He's like, so here's our plan. Here's how we do things. First, we find a technology that we like. We play with it to each side. We love it. Then we roll it out.

And then we give it to a billion people. And it's like, oh, yeah, that's super. I'll just, I can do that. too. That's such a simple plan, Mark. But they've gotten really good at that. Monkey round, monkey around, monkey around, roll it out to everybody all the time. And so their bots thing, they rolled it out to Messenger. Zuckerberg did a demo where he ordered flowers for... He ordered 1,800 flowers without having to call 1,800. He was very proud of himself. Phone companies around the world quivered. Have you ever called 1,800 flowers? I'm sure I have.

They have a website. Yeah, I've only ever used the website. Yeah. What happens if you can. It's one of the best websites. Are you calling 100 flowers right now? I'm going to order flowers on the bot. Wait, is that even available? Yeah, can we raise each other into flowers? I don't know how to use it at all. This is dumb. Let's do this together, everyone.

There it is. If you're calling to place an honor, please press one. What? You can't just talk to it? Maybe you want to return your flowers. They start with sympathy or funeral honor. It's like it knows my number. It's been tracking me.

This isn't for love. All right, well, that was done. I'm just saying, 1,800 flowers burn me and assumed that all I would. Look, I buy flowers for love. For birthdays. I don't think they're assuming that you would. What about some just-because flowers? Just-because-Beket.

Yeah, 1-800 flowers is like, oh, shit, someone died. Yeah. You don't buy just-because bouquet from 1-800 flowers. You buy that from, like, the bodega the way. Yeah. Yeah. And now you can just text the bodega in Messenger. Yeah, right.

Anyway, so they're just saying when they rolled it out, And we have been, if Microsoft was like bots of the future, Slack is basically a company whose entire platform valuation is bots of the future in these integrations. Facebook is like bots of the future. And then we try to mystery and they're really slow and bad. Yeah. But think about bots. Yeah. Maybe you don't need the bot.

Like we've been making this argument forever. Like you've been making this argument forever that the companies that like didn't get to make the smartphone platform are trying to make the next platform. and they're trying to say it's bots. And the reason that Facebook especially, I think, wants it to be bots is they control a huge messaging platform. And so then instead of the iPhone being the platform, Messenger becomes the platform. And they can take a cut out of commerce on this.

And they can start winning there. And this model exists in a much more developed, cool way in Asia on services like WeChat in line and da-da-da-da. But those are actually like little internets inside of themselves. Right. They're not just texting stuff. you're like going to interfaces inside of those apps. So what do they envision the main use of these bots would be for?

So the... Is it just for getting information? Just for getting Domino's pizza. That's all anybody ever shows with thoughts. Yeah, we talked about this in the last... Yeah. Domino's has now released an app that if you just open it, it orders a pizza for you. You don't even have to use it.

I really want... You just push the button and it orders a pizza. No, it's got a 10-second time contact. So if you open it, it's like your pizza is going to be ordered in 10 seconds. What if you're just like... Yeah, what if you are drunk and stoned enough to be ordering dominoes? The answer is that you'll order some fucking dominoes. Yeah, what if you are just considering it?

And it's like, don't, you got it. No, you don't consider it. You're just like, I know. Never consider pizza. You either want pizza or you don't. Yeah. Who considers pizza? I consider pizza.

Well, among your options. No, that was like me making fun of what you were saying. Oh, I see. Thank you. Thank you, Lauren. Well, what if you're like, actually, I want chicken fingers? Because that's a state of mind you're in. Then I think you have other

Pizza That could be good What about topping? See this is the dream I think Is the third screen Of your phone home screen Is just buttons That correspond to foods

And if you push the buttons The foods come Yeah That's where we're going If that's what's gonna convince people To download apps in the app store I don't know what else can save it Everything else is too hard

But one button that orders you Bad food I'm with you I want a timeline of all of Domino's innovations of getting you pizza. I think it's a Verge eater across the area. I don't know why. It's not done.

You've already had one byline on the verge and you can have a second. Domino's. The thirstiest pizza company. In oral history. Anyway, but we're done. Shutting this down. No. No, the vision for bots is any, it's weird.

The way I think about it is anything that you would otherwise talk to a voice recognition service, you might as well just type to you. You have a clearer shot at that or anything where you want a computer to just vaguely understand what you want, run away and do something and deliver you some information or do something for you. And that is powerful. I would much rather type to, I don't know, any phone tree than sit around talking and waiting for the phone tree.

But I still feel like voice recognition services I hate more than anything. Right. So why would you rather just talk to them? Oh, I see. you could skip all that crap because the voice recognition is everyone isn't there. So the other thing that's great about bots is if we, like, at some point in the future, we're going to be in a world where you want to get something done, the computer can handle a bunch of that stuff instead of you going to the website, navigating the website, finding the thing,

clicking the button, filling your stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So they're like personal assistance in a way. Right. But the difference is the thing that's cool about bots, especially the way that Microsoft sees it, and I guess to a lesser extent the way Facebook sees it is it's, they're trying to be build open platforms where bots can live anywhere. Microsoft Talk calls them canvases or something. The messaging services are canvases.

Right. And so you talk to Siri, you only get to know the stuff that Apple has a partnership for Siri with. But the way that Microsoft is doing it with its intelligent assistant, and the way Facebook is kind of doing it with Messenger is like anybody can like plug in a bot and then you'll be able to talk to those things. So the openness of you can, anybody can make a website and do whatever how they want. the slightly less openness of anybody can make an app and do whatever the hell they want, it can come to whatever the future interfaces are. Whatever comes after point and click, whatever comes after a touchscreen, is going to be some kind of conversational interface.

And these are the tools that people are building so that that conversational interface can have the same like open, vibrant ecosystem that we got on the web and then to a lesser extent app stores. Right. And then the backend services are getting smarter too. So Google Calendar now, you can tell it, I have a goal. Like, I need you to find time in my calendar for me to go to the gym or whatever, and it will intelligently locate that time in your calendar.

So if you could tell a bot, like, I need to go to the gym this week, and the bot talks to Google Calendar and Google Calendar is like, I'm available to figure that out for you, and it does it, and it comes back, and your bot is like, I did this for you. I talked to Google Calendar and you're going to go to the gym this week. That's like the layer of abstraction. So you have the assistant, and then you have the things, assistants talk to. And that part of it, the bot part of it is where all the action is right now.

So is there a way, I mean, probably not, but is there a way to have like one like solid assistant that connects to all these different bots that through Facebook? Okay. So that's the dream because whoever wins that battle wins. Right. Right. So if Microsoft wins and everyone is opening Cortana to talk to Cortana on their phones or Amazon wins and everyone's just wandering around their house is demanding things from Alexa, which is fundamentally my dream. Well, So what's crazy is the two companies that won the last fight for the interface were Apple and Google, and they're the two companies that aren't really talking about this in a real way yet. Yeah, they're nowhere.

Yeah. And the Google Now team, as far as I can tell, like folded, basically. It just disappeared. They still have a team, but there's definitely a lot less action there than there ought to be by a huge margin. And Google's vision, which was as scary as Facebook's in many ways, which was we'll just collect and search and sort all your information for you and predictively. tell you everything that you want to know. Yeah.

Which is how Deeter's walk should work, but I don't think it does. No, Google Now has become less useful over time, like straight up. Are you using that thing with an iPhone? Yes, I am. Is it good? It's okay. He has a 360 in case you're... I have a Moto 360 paired to an iPhone right now.

That's good. And the reason I'm on an iPhone is not something I want to get into because it's heartbreaking. It's not that heartbreaking. It's super heartbreaking. Can I tell the people? It's actually hilarious. Yeah. I want to know.

Yeah. When Deeter first told me, he was. movie of San Francisco. He, and if you know Dieter, this is like a classic theater moment. He's like, we got, we have a lot of things to figure out, but the first thing I need to know is what messaging service are we going to use? Because I can't use the same one as everyone else to talk to you because you won't pay attention to me.

Which is totally true. He wanted his own beep. He wanted his own notification. Fundamentally. And then we went back and forth. And I was like, anyone, hang out, Skype, this, that. He's like, we're using fucking I message. And he went out, Rage bought an iPhone.

Yep. Turned my message back on. Turned eye message back on. And I tell you what, I would say no fewer than like seven people that I haven't talked to in three or four months are now talking to me again because I'm on I message. You type that all day right from your computer. Yeah. It's infuriating. You can do that with hands.

You can do that with Hangouts. I don't need to touch my phone. Right. No, Hangouts is a native app. What? The native app on the, it's like the argument for the native app on the laptop. Yeah. Right.

Messages is not a great native. app, but it is a native app, so people use it. The only people I can't talk to and I message are my dad, because of his phone choice, and my best friend in Mexico. Yeah. Because of her phone choice. So you just never talk to them. Yeah, I know. I got to call them both this weekend. I don't want to.

Dieter and I practiced making phone calls. It was amazing. I hate phone calls. We've made a pact that we can just hang up. Yeah. Like, there's no like, okay, bye, there's no like, we just hang up. I love still making phone calls. It's super fun. After I leave work, I usually take a moment to, like, call somebody. Really? Yeah, just

because I've been online all day. I want to have interface with somebody. You know, like, I don't know. Have you thought about texting a chat bot and stuff? All right, so that's like the big Facebook stuff. The bots, the ATAP, their plans to build a weaponized drone army. But then there was like little stuff, which is actually somewhat more interesting. So Facebook now going through all of your photos and adding alt text, so it's more accessible

to blind people, which is cool. But they're also using machine learning. to look at all your photos and describe them in machine words. Great. No, it's actually, it's, it's way less ominous than that. Yeah. Like, it is, in fact, looking at the photos, but it won't put the tags on it unless there's not one there.

And it will only put the tags on it if it is like, if it's sure that, like, I'm 90% sure that this is a pizza, then it will tell you it's a pizza. Otherwise, it won't. Okay. And so it would be like, man identified Dieter, man identified Neelai, standing next to tree in. geolocation place. Right.

Which sounds lame, except that if you're blind, all you ever had before was like, picture, comment from Nicola, OMG, comment from Eli, ha ha. It's like, what do you do with that? So that's great. And then the next part is that they're also just going to start

auto-tagging all of your photos and videos. Which is like my nightmare. I hate that. I hate that so much. It's terrifying. Is that terrifying? There is nothing worse than getting a little notification that says your friend just tagged you

in 20 photos. I got that the other day at the gym and I was like I have to leave right now and go to check on all these things My um Deadline no more my vanity has called I definitely have older family members Who will just like they'll just be at a party

Or like you know it's like Christmas And everyone's just like sitting around looking tired And they don't even know You don't even know they're taking photos And then like five minutes later It's like Christmas 2014 It's like what the fuck happened here man And so I don't even look good

No Yeah so now the computer is gonna do it for you Great. Oh, cool. Great. Awesome. Good thing. I'm not on Facebook.

So you can share everything with anyone anytime. That's like that's their... But only in Facebook. But only in Facebook. It's one I don't get it. It's their whole thing. It's you can share it one to one in Messenger. You can share it with a group of people in groups.

You can share it with the whole wide world and Instagram. That's a whole spectrum that he built. But just try and get a Facebook link onto Twitter and you're doomed. Try and email a Facebook link and you're screwed. And then I wanted to ask you about this, Nicole. Yes. They revamped in the ExploreTaltern. and Instagram.

Yeah. What do you think? They added a bunch of video, a bunch of channels, da-da-da-da. Do you, like play with it? I did, actually, just for this purpose.

I'm not a big explore person. I know that certain people really like it and I really use it. But like, what? I hate videos also, so I don't know why I would want to watch them. Future of media. I know, it's terrible.

But I'm not a big fan of videos on Instagram. I think that's it. Yeah, they don't seem to play, do they? I mean, like, is a content type of thing? No, it's like I go to Instagram for pictures. Facebook is kind of where I want the videos to be. Is your Instagram used to declining or increasing?

It's definitely declining. I feel the same way. Yeah, I barely use it. Well, I think it's just when I'm out, the idea of like, oh, I need to like pose this image for people to see. It just doesn't come to my mind. Snapchat really killed Instagram for me. So it did for me once they started auto-playing stories. because then you could just open it and like watch.

I'm loving the auto play stories. But some people hate it. So Casey said this thing on Snapchat and then I later stole his idea and tweeted it. Something about the autoplay and stories has made me realize that there are some people that are super bad at Snapchat and they treat Snapchat like it's Instagram. They're like snapping pictures of their food over and over again. Like here's a story of my whole dinner. Like no. No.

That's terrible. Not doing that. But I feel like those people burn out pretty quickly. You know what I mean? They like they do like that. I made a recipe and then they're like, wow, that takes so long. long to snap. I'm never doing that again. Yeah, no. I wish that there was a little

flash between the auto play stories because sometimes you're like looking at one thing and then the next thing happens. You're like, oh, oh, oh, it's on to the next one. Yeah. You know? They really are just making it an television. It's terrifying. Like, Snapchat is just going to replace TV and one day we're all going to be sitting around talking about

like the great new Snapchat like rom-com special that they are. You know, like they're going to start buying sitcoms and they're going to stick them in this. They're going to sell DVR. for Snapchat. And they'll only have 10 seconds at a time. Uber for TiVo for Snapchat. Then they're going to put up tiny antennas in the air and broadcast the snap stories over the air to other tiny little antennas. From the top of the Empire

State Building. When you go out of Snapchat just turned into FM radio in like every morning. All right. Okay. That's enough of this. That's enough of this Facebook garbage. Lauren, something amazing happened. Something amazing happened. Do you want to talk about it? I do. Okay. So SpaceX has been trying to land its falconine rocket first stage on a drone ship for what, almost a year and a half now. They started for the first time, or they tried for the first time, January 2015.

And they've tried four times with the ship. So for those you don't know, it's an autonomous drone ship that is like a big barge that they refurbished and it goes out into the middle of the ocean to catch the falling rocket from the sky. Okay, so why is it a drone ship? catch it.

If you're in the car, Lauren just raised her arms to the sky as though she was gently catching a baby falling from a tree. But we finally explained this in a really clear way in a really good video. I want to get, if people didn't watch it. Like, can you explain why it's important that it's a drone ship and why it's important that it's in the ocean? Yes. So, SpaceX has already shown that it can land its rocket on land, which it did in December.

We covered it and it was a big, big deal. But the problem is, like, orbital. dynamics, basically. So when you're going into space, it's not like you're going straight up. We're going a curved path. So if you see those long exposure photography of rocket launches, it's why they have this like curved beam of light. So when you're trying to come back, if you need to come back to land, you're already kind of like, this is hard to like show without you seeing me. Yeah, it's a radio show. So you've gone up and away from land. So if you need to come back to land, you kind of have to like, you have to like do 180 and like that takes a lot of fuel

to turn around and kind of get in the right position to land back on land. But if you just go and put the drone ship kind of in the right position, like if you think of it like throwing a baseball, that's why I say catch. It's because like the momentum is already in the right way so that it's like you go set up the drone ship basically down range of where it's going to land anyway. I mean, there's still some engine maneuvering that you have to do in order to get it where it needs to be, but it's less fuel that you need to do that, if that makes sense. No, absolutely it's right. I think the question is, why was it so hard and how did they get it right finally?

So what was so hard about it? So it's easier to do the maneuvering to get it to the drone ship, but landing it on the drone ship is hard. Because think about it, it's a small target in the middle of a choppy, ocean. Whereas if you want to land on land, it's like a huge expansive space that doesn't move at all. Let me ask a really dumb question. Sure. And I'm

only comfortable asking it now that they've accomplished this goal. I'm going to do it. Do it. Why isn't the drum ship huge and full of pillows? I've been wondering this for months. Like, fucking months. Because they're trying to do it the hardest way. Why not just a big

ass net? I think it's just dropping it in the water. Because you watch the video and you're like, that is so technically impressive because the rocket lands vertically, the legs extend, the water's choppy, and then it like lands and you're like, wow, that was great. And it's like, why not? Why didn't they build a Chucky

cheese ball pit that's like 500 yards wide? And put it out of the ocean. And Elon Musk is just like, oh! Well, first of all, I think if there's any, like... This is the dumbest question. I know it's

so dumb. Well, if it's not level I'm pretty sure it's going to explode. Like you've seen, even if it like falls down, it really needs to touch down gently and like not, it needs to be upright, you know, it can't like fall over on its side or there's, there's going to be damage to it. So that's the way of like preserving it intact as most intact as possible. As for why the drone ship isn't bigger, that is a really good question. Like it's a tiny ship.

I mean, it's a fairly large compared to you and me. But yeah, compared to the rocket, it is pretty small. I would hope it's large compared. It's just like a guy with a cup. It's like Dieter and I have a sheet. We're like, we got it. The rocket is a cat or the cartoon fireman at the bottom. I mean, every time you say cash, like that's what I imagine.

And then the thing actually, right, it's quite big, but it's not relatively big to the rocket. it? Yeah, I mean, I think it's, I need to look at another picture. I mean, it's pretty big compared to the rocket. It's enough space. I think that's probably it. It's their way of being like, this is a ship that has enough space to catch this thing,

but it's not going to take too much, you know, for us maneuvering from us on our end. Right. But I don't know for sure, so that is a very good question. So are they going to relaunch? So they relaunch, Blue Origin landed again on land. Yeah. But as you so excellently wrote and made a video about, their move was a lot easier. They went straight up and came straight back to them.

Yeah, yeah. Because they're, it sounds like they're basically a tourism company. For now, yeah. I mean, they have very lofty goals. I'm taking over Dieter's punning when he leaves. Oh, good. I'm so happy that that won't go away. So.

I made a really good Constantine pun the other day. Let's let Lauren continue. Wait, what were you talking about? Oh, yeah, Blue Origin. For now, they're focused on tourism. but they are planning on making an orbital vehicle. Right now, their vehicle only goes so high. It gets you to a suborbital space,

which is basically like you can be waitless for four minutes and then you come back down. So what SpaceX does, it needs a lot more power and thrust to get into orbit. And so it's a very different vehicle. So when is SpaceX going to actually reuse a rocket? Because right now they've landed, what, three? No, this is their second one.

Two, one on land and one on C. They think they're going to reuse this one. And Elon said as early as May or June. So it's coming up. Wow. Yeah. Do you think they're going to land it again or they just like let it float away forever? I mean, I would assume they would try to land it again.

I think they said like it's going to be like a couple times that they can reuse these things. Maybe like I don't know the exact number, but it's more than two. And but that would be really depressing. They tried to land it. Yeah. Yeah. It's like this. I think that's why they saved the first one, right?

Um, they, yeah, they did. They're not, they're not going to relaunch it. It was unique and they used it for testing and stuff. Right. So what, so I got to ask you this. Why, there's two questions. One is an important question about important things and one is a super dumb question. Okay.

That I've pulled from the YouTube comments. How do you know this isn't fake? The YouTube comments, the YouTube commenters all think it's totally fucking fake. I know, I know. It's incredible. They're all like, this is just in reverse. I sent those conspiracy theories to Sean who is like loves SpaceX conspiracy. theories. I mean, I guess I don't know how to verify. It's not fake. But I mean, we've seen the

rocket come back into port. There is a webcam of people like working on this first stage. Yeah. You know, they also have multiple angles of where it's coming. I mean, I don't know. No, the YouTube commenters are like, it's fake. Like they're like, whatever. I can't believe are also taken in by this. Which is funny because they, I believe in my heart that they're the same people that when Elon Musk is like, my new electric Toyota Corolla will destroy all cars. Like, yep, it totally will. All cars are fucked now. By the way, I think the Model 3 looks like the Toyota Corolla in case that joke was too deep.

Yeah, the Model 3. He had a good week. Yeah. The man had like an excellent week, right? He put out the Model 3. And then he landed a rocket. Yeah, he sold, what, 385,000 model 3? Well, sold.

Yeah. He collected $385,000 or 385,000 pre-orders at a thousand. thousand dollars apiece for the model three uh everyone was like all car companies are doomed and he was like spoiler alert this car's not coming out for two more years no i've just i have a thousand dollar i thank you for your two-year interest-free thousand dollar alone yeah um which is clever yeah um and i just so you know uh the next version of the verge will be available shortly and if you send me a thousand dollars uh maybe you'll get it just put it out there um so he did that and then he he refreshed the model S this week too,

the new front end, the biohazard defense mode, which is basically just a super hot air filter that he took from the Model X. I think new door handles? It charges faster. So it's like both of his cars are brand new, or the new car is new,

his most popular car is brand new, and then he landed his rocket on a boat. Yeah. And then tweeted, I'm on a boat. Oh my God. And then deleted it. I don't know why I deleted it.

That was so funny because I went out that night to celebrate. And I was like, guys, you all have to watch this. And everyone's like, oh, my God, that's amazing. Wait, what kind of celebration did you do? Oh, we just went out. I went out with my boyfriend and our friends. And I was trying, we ended up drinking a bit.

And I tried to explain to him how gravitational waves work. And there's a Snapchat of that somewhere. And I hope it never resurfaces. That's part of Snapchat. Oh, my God. It's gone. I was like, okay, so imagine this is Earth. This is a video that we should have made.

You kind of go out to celebrate that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to think about the last time I celebrated that didn't happen to me directly. But then right after this exciting space phone, wasn't there like a space downer? Didn't we lose Kepler? Oh, yeah. Oh, that's right. Well, it's not a downer anymore. We've recovered it. But it was a crazy. Lauren's like I was up all night hacking.

I figured it out, guys. Don't worry. No, Friday was a crazy day. Like I was a little delirious by the time I left work because I was like, wow, a lot of things just happened. So I'd been focusing all of my attention on SpaceX. And then right as it was kind of calming down, I saw the Kepler news that had gone into emergency mode. And if you know much about Kepler, it's this spacecraft. It hunts for exoplanets. It's had a pretty hectic life. Like some of its hardware broke.

And so we weren't sure if we were going to even use it anymore. So that was kind of depressing. And then after that happened, we got news. that like ULA has indefinitely postponed its rocket launches. That's the United Launch Alliance. Yeah.

They're a big competitor of SpaceX that is just nowhere near as sexy as SpaceX. They're like the corporate boys. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's like Boeing and somebody else? It's, or not Boeing.

It's ULA, SpaceX. And then you've got Orbital, but they're really only customer. No, but who's in the United Launch Alliance? Isn't it like two huge companies? Oh, oh, yeah. It's Boeing and Lockheed Market. Yeah.

Right, so in the 80s movie, John Cusack would play Elon Musk. There's no way John Cusack plays Elon Musk. I'm just telling you, the town has to go. The big corporate scooters in the ski movie, when they're racing down the mountain and there's like the guys and like the really expensive, terrible sweaters, the blonde guys.

I see what you're going. I see where you're at with the ski movie. And we are stuck with John Cusack playing Elon Musk. And if you think about it, I think it could totally have. I think you are fundamentally referencing the 80s classic ski school. No. Yes.

Better off dead. Okay. There are multiple John Cusack skiing movies. Oh, yeah. Oh, wait, yeah, the hot tub time machine. Well, I'm done. The show is so old. I don't know what we're doing here.

How do you pick anybody, if you're talking about little guy versus corporate giants with the little guy squeaks out at the end, how do you not pick John Cusack to play Elon Musk? No. Who? First of all, Elon Musk, not a little guy. Well, that's fine. Fundamentally is a PayPal billionaire. Right. He talks too much.

If you're in the car right now, literally Lauren is making little talkie furs with her fingers. This is why I'm not good for podcasts because I talk a lot with my hands. No. I'm not saying I'm happy that it's John Cusack. I'm saying that that's what the situation is. Also, Elon has like that weird South African tinge. Yeah. He's very.

That's why he gets the Oscar for it because he does the accent. No. No 80s movie of John Q's. He's like, was ever going to win an Oscar. Okay, who plays, what 80s actor plays Elon Musk? I don't know. I think we would need to turn him French. Judd Nelson?

Oh, Judd Nelson, are good. Yeah. All right. You need to turn him French? Yeah. Are we just referencing movies and actors that you have no idea? Oh my God, Judd Nelson. Who would play this?

Why did they... This is a really bad picture of him? Who plays Elon Musk in a movie? I don't see movies. You know, I don't understand. You know that. I'm thinking of the bad guy from Oceans 12.

Why is my Wi-Fi? Oh, yeah, I could see that guy. I don't know why I wanted to be French so much. No, no, no, no. The next guy, the French guy. The French guy. The French guy. The art thief.

Or the guy from a Knight's Tale. What? Here's what I've learned about this conversation. We have watched wildly different movies in the lifetime. Hold on, hold on. If you know who should play Elon Musk in the inevitable biopic, please tweet it at us. I am at Backlon.

I just don't think it's true. Lauren is at Lauren Grush. Rufus Sewell. Suil. He's always the bad guy. I don't know why he'll almost be a bad guy. You should know him as the guy from Dark City. You should know him as.

You're right. You're so right. Here's what I'm saying to you guys. I understand the scrappy underdog story we're all trying to tell. Yeah. Christian Slater. Yeah. I understand what we're trying to do here.

Yeah. He's not a scrappy underdog though. No one. Elon Musk is not a scrappy underdog. He is actually, and I'm just putting out there, real chance he's actually the villain. Yeah. Yeah, that's why I go with Revis.

And the heroic corporations are trying to stop him? Yeah, that's the tough one. Yeah. What about Jude Law? What about NASA? Wait, wait. Who plays like the heroic NASA administrator? You know who defeats him?

Oh, Jordan says Robert Downey Jr. Oh, that's a good one. That we haven't even thought of yet. Well, you know, because Tony Stark. It's the four kids. Tony Stark is modeled on Elon. Yeah. It's the four kids in Ohio.

Really, Robert Downey Jr. been playing him the whole time. Lauren. just did the hand mouths again. Talk, talk, talk, talk. Elon has a very, like, soft quality to him, and I think that needs to be echoed in the person that portrays it.

Elon has a soft quality to him where he's like, I saw him on stage of the Code Conference and Kara was like, what's your dream? Carrey Swisher was like, what's your dream? And he's like, I don't think human should live on Earth. And then like he didn't say anything. And everyone was just like, yep, that's your dream. Okay.

Okay, Lizzie says Edward Norton. Edward Norton? No. No, I'm sorry. But I figured out who defeats him. We're just taking slack messages right. It's the kids in the inertia-proof bubble that they invent in their basement. How does...

Ethan Hawke defeats Elon Musk. You guys are going to have to hear my computer. Have you ever seen The Explorers? Read the Explorers right now. I've seen Gatka. Also, Caitlin, if you're listening, you need to watch Wayne's World. That's just a thing from earlier in the week that I need to bring up. Caitlin's never seen Wayne's World.

Wow. What? What does that have to do with anything? Well, for just telling people what movies to watch. I'm telling you. Sorry, Long Rush, watching Explore. 1985. You'll love it. We need to go to lighting around. He reminds me a flight of the navigator.

He creates a bubble that's immune to inertia and they use it to fly in space. It's so good. It's fair. It's, you know. Dieter makes a solid point. That movie's good. Yeah. My computer turned itself off. Oh my God. Do you want me, do you want his mind for the lightning round? Yeah, let's go through this. Okay. All right, you ready? Yes.

Let's start with the movie theaters. Nicol, I'm going to read you a quote. Okay. This is from, I believe it's the CEO of AMC movie theaters. When you tell a 22-year-year-old. year old to turn off the phone. Don't ruin the movie. What they hear is, please cut off your left arm above the elbow. You can't tell a 22 year old to turn off their cell phone. That's not how they live their life. This man is going to build movie theaters that are cell phone

friendly. Would you go with that drive? No, they've already built movie theaters. What does the cell phone do there? Yes, they have already built. You have to use your cell phone during the movie. They're going to redo them. Yeah. My, so I was thinking, are they going to be like hoods on the scene? Yeah, like, what does this look like? You know, there's like that classic chair with the big round bubble over you. I got married in one of these chairs. That's what I'm thinking about it. Oh, I know what you're talking about. Yeah.

But, like, it's like a big hood. Or like a cone of silence. I was thinking they would just give people like really big jackets and then you would like turn up the collar of your huge jacket. Let's not even entertain this idea. Does this mean that 22-year-olds

won't do virtual reality though if they can't put their phones away? No. Okay. You can get notifications in the vibe. So. I think this is important. I tweeted out this quote today

and I got pure rage from a bunch of 22-year-olds because I think this quote is extremely condescending. Really? Because 23-year-olds, as far as I know, are pretty dumb and so... Well, then... I didn't... Oh, it is. It is. And I personally was a dumb,

selfish, 22-year-old, that I would have been insulted by this. I remember the first time I went to a movie theater, and I noticed my friend didn't have their phone turned off, and I was like, oh, my God, that's against the rules. They have a whole thing about it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, that's why this is... This is why it's insulting to millennials, because millennialsals always follow the rules. They do.

And so... That's why you've never... I've never seen any of these John Cusack movies we keep talking about. Right. But he's a rebel. But he's like not even close. What? I don't know.

John Cusack? No. You know, the funny thing is my favorite of these movie has like, has like John Cusack Light, John Cusack Wannaby. What's that? Patrick Dempsey in Camp Imi Love. So you went off the John Hughes track is what you're saying. Yeah.

All right. There's like a whole, there's a lot here between D. I would say that's not my favorite. But anyway, what's the next in the lightning round? Motor trend today. Oh, God. Tell me, you two are the media industry. Here's what Motor Trend did.

We are? All day, yes, you are. Nothing happens unless you say it does. All day yesterday, Motor Trend teased pictures of the Apple car. Oh, yeah. And said exclusive, what's coming tomorrow with like hilariously bad photoshopps of a car. Okay. And then today they released a Photoshop of not the Apple car.

Like the most ugly car. It's like, you know, there's a color right between brown and gold that's just bad? Yeah. It's that color. It's a color of an anchor steam label. Yeah, but... A little darker. No, it was darker.

And it's like shining reflecting. Yeah. It looks like that. It has like weird. It's ridiculous. And they basically got a bunch of designers to sit around and like dream of what the Apple car is.

Lightning around, react to it. Is this cool? Is this cool move by MotorChine? I mean, is it rooted in reality whatsoever? No. No. Then what I just don't see the point. Yeah.

It was very confusing. If it's based on maybe like rumors or, you know, some kind of idea of, like the structure of the car, then maybe I could see some, you know, value in it. I think it's much more based on what if, what if all of our hopes and dreams about Apple built a car? Like, what do we expect Apple to do based on what the iPad looks like? You know, it's like that kind of thought experiment. Chris Sigler tried to write a piece defending it today and valiant effort.

I just spent all day yesterday every time Motor Trend tweeted about this, you know, tease this thing. I would just reply with a picture of the Homer, the car that Homer built on the Simpsons. Yeah. Because it's like all your hopes and dreams in a car and all the, guess what, that's not working. I mean, if this is all my hopes and dreams in a car. Yeah, right, it's really bad, isn't it? It's so hideous.

Yeah. Like, that's, if the whole point of having, like, a car that you don't have to drive, like, wouldn't you want to make it look really awesome and, like, take out all the stuff that you don't? No, that thing, that thing looks like a Ford Edge that went through a really shitty body makeover. No, it's. Does anybody know what a Ford Edge is? Yeah, I know what a Ford Edge is. It looks really bad.

I was, I was going to say it looks like the, uh, the rejected, read design of the Pontiac Aztec. That's brutal. But maybe there's a new Breaking Bad. They're going to do some product placement. Yeah. Okay. The Kindle Oasis. A $290kindle with a weird external leather battery cover.

I buy by every Kindle, so I'm almost $2.20. Here's the thing about buying every Kindle. You don't get a choice. All right. When Jeff calls me, I'm like, hey, Bezzie. And he's like, what's up? Are you? Wait, yeah, I just really.

Zuckerberg is the only billionaire without a rocket. What's he doing? Bezos has a rocket. Elon has a rocket. Who else has a rocket? I'm sure Tim Cook is like, you know what? We should get a rocket. Yeah, I mean, I would have our Tim Cook.

I mean, but Zuckerberg is like legitimately like, he just doesn't, he has none of that stuff. He's in the, he's in the drones AI space. He might as well have a rocket. I think Zuckerberg kind of hitched his ride to that Star Shot idea. Oh. Oh. He doesn't have a rocket.

He's got lasers in space. Yeah. Powering tiny spaceships. All right. Doesn't Google have some sort of rocket idea? Am I crazy? I mean, they're trying to... Google's like, we have a company

that will make you live forever. Yeah, they have microsatellites to do internet around the world. As for a vehicle, I don't think so. Here's my thing with the Oasis. I would buy it in a heartbeat if it costs twice as much if it were waterproof.

Yeah. But it's not. So what the hell? What makes you upgrade a Kindle? I'm the guy who bought the voyage, even though I had a paper white. Yeah. And I'm really happy about my decision

to buy the voyage. I love the case of my paperwhite, bought a voyage, never used the voyage because I preferred the case on the paper. Well, I hate cases on Kindles. I want them as thin and light as possible. So I'm considering buying the Oasis because it like might feel better in one hand, but the idea of the case that comes with it for the battery infuriates me. Yeah. I don't want that. Lauren, you have a Kindle, right? I do.

But I just see absolutely no reason to get another one. Which Kindle do you have? The paperweight. Yeah, yeah. There's no reason for you to get another one. Wait, do you have the first paperwide or the new one with a slightly higher resolution screen? I think it's the new one with the house. Yeah.

See, that one's like perfect. It's basically a perfect. I mean, think about what a Kindle is. All you need is text to show up on a screen. Like, you don't really need that much. Well, there's like so many debates about the page turning method. Whatever. I mean, the Oasis has buttons.

All you got to do is press the screen and then the page turns and that's all you need. You burnt. This is the problem when people try to, this is my problem with technology is they try to make it more complicated than it. So the thing about the Oasis that's cool is they're like, it's unapologetically like, this is a really expensive, nice thing. You can get the exact same thing and the cheap thing, but this is really expensive, nice thing. And Sam Biford actually explained it perfectly, like, this is the cork in the wine bottle instead of the screw cap wine bottle.

The screw cap wine bottle is actually just fine. Yeah. If you feel like you want the cork, go ahead and spend the money. You get corks start happening at like $8. Well, you know, it's not like $290. The experience of it. There's also expensive wine. Where you're like, oh, this is more real wine because it has cork in it.

Yeah, I know what you're saying. Spoken like a true millennial deeter. Okay. I don't like that they stamped the Amazon on these, but they look nice. Yes, the Amazon logo on the front. Not cool. It's just like, oh. Okay.

Nickel, wait, is that your lightning round reaction to the, would you buy a $2009 a Kindle? Why? How much was the paperweight? 100 and some. Yeah, I mean. 20, 130? Yeah. I love my paperweight.

It's great. Three million teens have vaped with. What does that mean? How do they know that? Yeah, they did some surveys. How do they get that number? They hit some teens up on Snapchat. It's surveys, yeah. They ask teens, I don't know the exact methodology for this one, but it's like they ask them when, and usually within the last couple months or months when they've bathed.

And then they use that to project. To the entire population. So 3 million teens have used a e-cigarette? Yeah, yeah. I mean, how many are using regular cigarettes? Isn't smoking for teens down like dramatically? Yeah, but overall tobacco use is flat to rising because of E6. Oh.

But overall nicotine, whatever you want to call it. You shouldn't do it. Nixirlobal drug. I don't know. I'm immune to it. You're immune to it. You're immune to a drug that's more addictive than heroin. Uh-huh.

All right. If I got a vape for you. I have the jewel. I mean, yeah, I'm not a smoker myself either. And I've tried it, but never got hooked or anything. Same. So that's wonderful. Kids, don't listen.

I need to write about how bad of an addictive product the jewel is and how crazy addictive it is, but I don't want to write about it because I don't want my mom to read it. So if you're ever wondering why some pitches die, it's because you don't want your mom.

It's horrible, horrible Indian guilt. Oh, my gosh. Did you react to the HTC 10. No, okay, it's like, it's a really good phone. I think it looks really ugly, but like it's a fine camera that's too slow. The rest of the phone is great. HTC basically gave up on sense. It's very minimal.

Like, I will say that everybody on the YouTube is real mad at us for not saying this phone is the second coming. But man, it's too expensive. Like, they made a really good phone that is not much better than a Nexus 6P, which is way cheap. and doesn't give you the benefits of a better design and the gear that you get with a Samsung. Yeah, I would definitely rather buy a Nexus 6P. Yeah. In fact, I already have.

Also, it looks like garbage. It looks terrible. Yeah. Dance lines like they get a trophy of participation, which is like, yeah, good job, guys. I like the styling on these photos. Oh, the photos are beautiful. It's nice.

Yeah, James did, took nicer photos for the HGC10 than it deserved. James and I worked together this week. Oh, yeah, it's a feature for next week. Mm-hmm. Yeah. There's some saucy photos of Nicola from the website this week. I've seen him. Good.

A little off the shoulder action going. Oh, wow. They're good. I think they're going to be beautiful. But yeah, it was a little interesting photo shoot. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. Well, I mean, I won't give away the piece, but it's an incredible piece and the photos are going to be beautiful. And Nicola has, like, photo shoot face.

And it's like a really good photo shoot face. I don't have to say. Like, you have this, like, very serious, contemplative look on your face. Wow. It's good. It's all James direction. Close your eyes. relax your mouth open your eyes

yeah James and it's perfect James's direction is the best no I'm serious like he's got that beautiful British accent and so you're just like yeah well do whatever you say yeah I watched him do it with the first lady of the United States yeah he did exactly I'm sure he did the same thing he did with you he told her to look down and close her eyes and he was like look up and she was like I will

it was great what else is on this list four sequels to Avatar coming remember Avatar Avatar happened 15 years ago. Oh, you've seen Avatar. That's the one movie you've seen. Okay. I've seen Avatar.

I'm sorry. It was a mistake, too. I hate Avatar so much. It's super bad. It's one of those movies that I hate because it is so bad and other people like it. Right. So it makes my hatred more than it needs to be. And it's a tremendously bad movie.

It is. My favorite review of Avatar was it came out on VHS and Gizmodo reviewed it on VHS. Wow. And they were like, this movie. once you strip away, like, IMAX 3D, is basically the world shittiest cartoon. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And the worst part is all the subtitles are in papyrus.

Oh, great. Like a paper menu at a bad Italian restaurant. Yes. Oh, my God. That's messed up. It's just like one step below Comic Sans. Yeah, it's just worse. You know, Avatar 3 is going to be Comic Sans.

If you're hanging out with somebody and you're like, oh, man, I think I want to be friends of this person. Just ask them. So Avatar. And you see? Or so papyrus. So papyrus. You hand someone in business card and papyrs to see if they immediately shirk away.

What's your go-to fancy font? If they say papyrus, this friendship is not going anywhere. I can't believe Cameron has ideas for three more of those movies. He didn't have ideas for the first one. Yeah, I don't understand where to go from here. I just, here's what I don't understand about Avatar and it's a little risque, but I'm just say. The method by which the characters have sex is the same method by

which he gains control of a horse. Oh, but he like, takes his hair. When they, like, when they bone, they, like, link their hair up. Yeah. I feel you. And then he's, like, later on, he's like, I got to ride this horse dragon. It's like the hair USB port. It's very confusing.

Yeah. And it's just like, I get it. Like, all living things are connected, and this is the way that we express. But it's, hmm. It's a little weird. Yeah. It's a little weird. Maybe, maybe do something else.

James, maybe show some other weird ideas that you have. Anyway, it's a weird cartoon. Unobtainium. Unobtainium. The Road 1 trailer came out. Looks good. Looks really good. Yeah.

Yeah. Except for when she's like, I'm a rebel. That's great. I rebel. I love Felicity Jones, so she can do whatever. No more Star Wars movies with male leads either. Well, I'm sure. They're going to make like 50 more Star Wars.

They're going to make the Bobafet movie and they're going to make the Hans Sala movie and whatever. But like, that's good. Yeah. I'm excited. I always think that no story spends enough time in Act 2. So there's like Act 1. It's like, here are the characters. Then Act 2 is like, we got to rush to it to get to the conflict.

And then there's like a lot of that. kind of like some reasons are worse for me yeah it's like yeah we're done like we'll spend no time in this universe that we've spent elaborately creating yeah like the batman movies the the um the christian male batman movies the uh christopher nolan patman movies it's like can you just be batman for a little bit like i would really like it if we could just watch you be cool for a while but instead it's like i have to my back is broken i must leave this it's like oh fuck i thought you're gonna be batman for a while it's awful anyway you don't you didn't feel that like you You wouldn't have taken an entire TV series set between the Dark Night and whatever, Rising.

Yeah. That was a terrible movie. Right. It's like another Batman movie. But you wouldn't have taken an entire like 10 episode Netflix series set in that moment. Like in between when he just gets to be Batman? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's all I'm saying. This is what I want in the world. I just want endless act two. That's my club. Act two. Just like a constant battle. Just nothing but empire all the time. Yeah, no, it's like, you know, it's just like little small stakes.

It's like Batman's cool. He's got a car. He's got a helicopter. He's like running around. Anyway, that's, but that's the Star Wars movies. They just exist sort of an act too. Counter argument. Yeah.

Temple of Doom. Yeah. Not that good. Wait, that's the best one. No, the best. Oh, my God. Nealai. The best.

Oh, come on. What's the best one? Oh, my God. Okay. I love Temple of Doom. But I think it's just because I was excited that some people are scared of Indian people. He's a young boy in the 80s. Yeah, yeah, all right.

What's less on this? Game of Thrones. I'm so excited. It's Sunday, right? No, it's next Sunday. Next Sunday. Game of Thrones is happening. The trailers are just all over the place.

Something important about me. As much as I'm obsessed with the space, I'm also just as obsessed with Game of Thrones. Oh, my God. Are you playing the Game of Game of Thrones? I am. Nice. Oh, it's coming back, by the way. And if you know we're talking about Emily Yoshita runs the Game of Game of Thrones,

which is Game of Friends fantasy series. Fantasy League. Fantasy League. Because Game of Thrones is itself a thing. Fantasy Series. Right, right. So it's a game of, it's a fantasy series fantasy league. Glad we got through that.

Really clever. But last year she ran it and people wanted to play. This year she's partnered with a company I think called something. A fanciser. And it will be interactive. So if you wish to play in our fantasy series fantasy league, you may do that with us. And Lauren is one of the featured cast members. Featured.

That's extremely cool. Can I tell my team name or should I wait? Have you already picked team names? I've picked my team names. team name. What is it? It's maister of none. Oh my God. Wow! We're done. We're seven minutes over time and I think we've come to a close on this episode

of the version of the very much. That's pretty good. That's incredible. Yeah, I think that's it. All right, all right. Mastor of Nunn. Yeah, that's pretty good. I'm going to be maister of puppets. That's awful. It's real bad. Let's go. Let's leave. Let's leave. Okay. Nicola, do you want to tell

the people where they can find us on social media? Sure. Yeah. You got a bird. Pretty much everywhere. You're just going to start promoting rack. Virge on Twitter, Virge on Snapchat, verge on Instagram. It's pretty easy. Yeah.

What's your favorite one? Of your guys'es? I actually, I actually really like the Instagram. It's beautiful. It's all original photography. It is. James Farrah, man. And Amelia.

Well, even before him, though, you know, they even, they even came out of it. I think it's undersung. Also, the award-winning verge Tumblr, of course. Yeah. And all the side Twitters, Verge cars, Verge Teens. Those are all my favorites.

Virgin's on Verge Teens. You should go follow Virch Steens Who is running Verge Teens? Who do you think? I don't think we're allowed to know. I know. I think we can all know. Star with K?

Yeah. No? Do we know? I don't know. Is it Kasternakus Kama's Jake? Yes, it's Jake. Oh. Jake reviews teens.

That would just be great. It would be so bad. Okay, yeah. And then we've got Twitter for all of ourselves. I'm Nicola underscore Fumo. Yeah. You've got Bacchalon for Dieter. Yep.

Reckless for Nelai. Semois. Lauren is with an O. It's hard to remember. L-O-R-E-N. Yes. Grush G-R-U-S-H. Got it, nailed it.

Well done. Thanks. There's also like 500 other podcasts to listen to. There are many more. Yep. You can find them on iTunes.com. The Verge. It's one place you don't want to just type Verge.

Yeah. You also don't want to type Verge into just your browser because it goes to a site. Really? Yeah. No, let's go. I do it all the time. Thanks, Nicola.

Oh, this is a really... Gandhi.net. That's weird. This used to be owned by the Bonnier Corporation, which is a huge... Oh, that's weird. Yeah. Oh, because that was that Popsie? Yeah, that owns Popsie.

Yeah. Which is my former employer. They didn't sell it to us when we were starting to verge. Because we wanted just verge.com, and they're like, no. And then literally, we had a moment. What about the verge? And the verge.com was like a super... late 90s internet service provider

that was defunct. Oh my gosh. But they were like, we'll sell you, 14.4k bought internet. It was awful. Wow. It's somewhere on the internet. You can find it. Anyway, that was it. That was our show. Goodbye. I think it went well. Yeah. Let's close it off. I always have a good time. I just want to keep lingering. Paul.

Rock and roll. Paul. Paul Rock and roll. Goodbye. Bye. Bye. Next week.