The Vergecast - FCC kills net neutrality, the iMac Pro arrives, and T-Mobile buys Layer3 TV

Episode Date: December 15, 2017

The Vergecast three-piece is back together, with Nilay leading the flagship podcast. The biggest news this week is something we’ve seen coming for a while: on Thursday, the FCC voted to repeal net neutrality rules. Nilay, Dieter, and Paul sit down to discuss the action and their viewpoints on what this means going forward for the internet. Also, the iMac Pro is now available to order and Dieter got to write about it. There’s quite a bit of talk about whether this computer is worth the price for its power. There’s a lot more in between that — like Paul’s weekly segment “The internet of claps” — so listen to the whole episode to get everything to need to know in the world of tech this week.  02:10 - The FCC just killed net neutrality 41:53 - The iMac Pro is a beast, but it’s not for everybody 57:23 - What is Layer3 TV and why is T-Mobile buying it? 1:04:16 - Paul’s weekly segment “The internet of claps” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm fired up. We're going to do a lot of things on the show. We're going to take down Ezra. Have you listened to? Oh, I've been listening. Okay. They know what's up now. Yeah.

They're aware that they got competition. Yeah. In the weeds. We're lurking. They can't see us because they're always in the weeds. They don't see us coming. I was listening to their episode on Net Neutrality and Matt Iglesias said, well, I don't want to get too far into the details.

That's great. You still listen to that show. This is just a silly, fun beef. But also, when you listen to it, leave them a comment in some form saying that we're better. Yeah. But be kind and gentle. And noting that we're the flagship. Anyway, I am here.

I'm Neely. Dieter is here in New York. I am in New York. Paul Miller's here. Hello. There's a lot going on. I think I'm fired up out of anger. Not from excessive amounts of relaxation.

I was on vacation for some time. Yeah. Now I'm back. We're really happy. You know, Neelai. Anger, anger leads to hate. Yeah. And hate leads to suffering.

And suffering leads to higher internet prices. That's what I think. So literally today, before we recorded the show this morning. Hours ago. The FCC met. And they got rid of some net neutrality. Which is, you know, you wake up, you know what's going to happen. It's like anti-climatic.

Like, we knew it was going to happen. We knew exactly what was going to happen. It happened exactly the way that we thought. Well, except for one part. Yeah. There was a thing. Point of clarification on climacticness. Yeah.

Right now, if I'm Comcast, can I just go crazy as long as I tell people? If you're Comcast, you can't. But everybody else can. Okay. Right. So if you're Comcast, you can't because when Comcast bought NBC Universal, they signed this consent decree that lasts another year. Right.

That basically imposes net neutrality on them. Disclosure of Comcast as a minority investor in Vox Media, our parent company. Just keep that disclosure close to your heart for this whole show. Just remember that the whole time. So they can't... Are these rules... The rule change effective... It's not like the tax bill, like, effective 2018.

No, it's done. It's done. FCC is a regulatory... It's change regulation. Yep. Just the same as anything. They're like, you know what? We don't like anymore?

It's national monuments. And people just start peeing on them next day. It's incredible. So I've never seen... Never so many Americans peed on the national monument. Which regulation is? I'm all over the place. I'm very relaxed, but I'm very angry at the same time.

What's going to happen is tomorrow, Time Warner is going to start strip mining uranium out of your computer. That's my understanding of what the regulation changes are. Anyway, so it was the vote. I will say our traffic today on net neutrality is crazy. People are so interested in this. The comparison I used at its peak about as big as sort of a not iPhone-Apple event, which is generally our highest sort of traffic day.

Interesting piece of inside baseball. A significant amount of the traffic about net neutrality stories. with coming from China. Interesting. Yeah. They're like, now you're like us. Yep.

Could we interest you in a firewall? It's great. That's my great firewall. Anyway, so the vote broke down along party lines. Yeah. So Ajit Pie, Michael Riley, Brendan Carr, the three Republican commissioners all gave stirring speeches. I have pies open on my computer.

We can read some of this stuff. And then Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosemary. Marcel the two Democratic commissioners issued stinging rebukes. I would say Minio Clyburn should have been on a horse with a sword. Yeah. Like rallying troops and like banging her sword on their spears. It was, it was like, it could have been the speech in the two towers right before they all die. Could have been that speech.

Yeah. I mean, so basically the way the vote happened. And then we have like literally a super cut of pie talking is, it has an agenda. So the meeting is like there's a four. four or five things on the docket. Netting Childity was number four. Really gave it prime billing. They all started to start with being in Clyburn. She spoke, right. I spoke. When the car spoke. And then it's Pi starts speaking. He's the last vote. After Clyburn spoke, he goes, well, I'm going to mark you down as a no. And everyone started laughing. Yeah. Pye starts speaking in the middle of it. He's like, I'm very sorry we all have to go on the recommendation of security.

And then the Washington Post had its YouTube feed still up. And the room was swept with dogs for a bomb. Yep. So it's like that level of crazy. Someone called a bomb threat into the net neutrality hearing today, which is completely fucking unacceptable. I know I feel very strongly about this.

We've said this on the show. Please just be respectful. It's just a policy difference. It's actually a very interesting policy difference. It's not a bomb threat. I can't think of a situation which bond threats are acceptable, but this is definitely not one of that.

You've got to at least do a declaration of independence. You've got to be all the way there. You're like, is this a Tea Party type situation? The Boston Tea Party, not the more recent one. Anyway, so Pye comes back. He finishes a speech. They vote. Net neutrality is over.

All of the companies, all of the politicians are all issuing statements. The New York State Attorney General is finally a multi-state lawsuit. How many politicians are like, hey, good job. Right? So what's interesting is that yesterday Republicans started flipping. Yep. yesterday. So there was one Republican in the House of Representatives, Susan Collins, a senator from Maine, another independent senator. They all sort of writing letters. Hey, delay this vote. Hey, don't do this. Hey, maybe we should have legislation ready to go. Yeah. Um, I doesn't care. He's not, he's not an elected official, which is cuts both ways, right, depending on your point of view. But he doesn't have to be responsive to them. He's an independent. He's an independent. He's an independent. He's an He runs an independent agency.

So they were all like, hey, stop. And he just like, p, barreled through it. So now the internet's dead. I don't know how you're getting this podcast right now. You've received this on a CD-ROM. Great. Welcome back. Yeah, now our CIA is to work today.

Well, he's got that unlocked. Yeah. So I watched all the talks. And there was something that kind of stuck out to me. The, both of the opposing commissioners talked about how the FAA T.C. would be really ineffectual. And they're talking about how it takes so long

to do anything at the FTC and that there's a really high bar at the FTC for any action. That really rubbed me the wrong way. If you ran the FTC? No, no.

Like, I don't want a government, because they also, one of the commission says something about like, we're pulling our own teeth. So, like, this idea of the FCC as like this benevolent dictator of the internet is not exciting to me. The idea that like we have swift and decisive action because we can just do whatever we want because we run the internet. Like that's, that's scary to me.

And like this idea that the FTC has rules and a procedure and standards for when it's going to do anything. Let me walk through that with you. I get what you're saying. It's not wholly wrong, right? Like, that's why it's slow because they have all these rules. But there's a reason, and I think the reason is interesting. So the reason the FTC is coming up again and again, is the FCC by moving back to Title I and then aggressively stripping the rules away from the internet.

So Pye went farther than the cable companies thought he was going to go. Yeah. Which is surprising. So now there's no rules and there's no authority with which to create those rules. The only rule left that the FCC has imposed that one of the commissioners today arrived. was like, I don't even like this rule, but I guess we have to have it. It's like crazy. The companies have to be quote unquote transparent about their network management practices.

So if they're blocking stuff or they have paid prioritization schemes, they have to disclose it. It is not specified the form of that disclosure. It's not going to be on billboards. Could be in the fine, you know, who knows? The disclosure could be as simple as Verizon saying, we offer paid prioritization services and they're not telling you who's paying them. So there's that thing. Yeah. That thing creates the opportunity for you to file a complaint at the FTC.

So the Federal Trade Commission to say this is anti-competitive or this is fraudulent or this is deceptive. Because you've now taken a regulatory thing where the FCC used to have rules and they were in charge of enforcing their own rules. And now they've turned it into a dispute mechanism at the FTC. And to get the dispute, you have to create it. You have to have a problem, right, in like a specific form. So the problem could be a classic example, sponsored ads on Instagram, right? Influencers not disclosing advertising on Instagram. Well, that's a problem because now you've got, like, free advertising.

It's deceiving consumers about whether these endorsements are real. You've got to file a thing. They've got to go investigate. They've got to, like, meet out justice. Is that in contrast to the FCC be able to just say, bam, you're wrong, you're dead? Well, that's not what the FCC did. But that's sounding like what they were lamenting. We lament having this power.

Right. Well, they had the rules and they were able to enforce the rules. The only thing that's different in form is that when the FCC had the rules, it could proactively just go and force its own rules. Like Zorro. Right. But like, Verizon or whoever at the F. FCC was enforcing the rule on, the teeth that the FCC had was they could say, hey, Verizon stop it. And then Verizon would have to stop it, but Verizon could still go to court and say,

the FCC can't tell me what to do. That happened multiple, multiple times. But in the meantime, from, you know, in your climate perspective, from the SEC's perspective at the time, in the meantime, they were doing a thing that protected consumers from being treated badly by the giant evil corporations that are running the internet. And the thing that that makes, that makes, that makes, I'm sad is now the onus is going to be on us as consumers, as the people who, like, are beholden to these giant companies to say, hey, please stop it and then file a request to the FTC, and then the FTC has to look into it, and then they have to go and yell at Verizon, and then there's another lawsuit in there.

Plus, there might be another lawsuit that we have to file. So, like, it takes the burden of fix the problem, and instead of putting it on the company to like file the lawsuit and like begin the argument. It puts it on consumers or potentially the FTC who historically like doesn't. Is they're not great at it? It's like the idea that they were like wielding this power left and right. Like I mean the bottom line is there's going to be lawsuits no matter what, right? For this particular action and in general when you're dealing with when you're dealing with Verizon, someone's getting sued.

Yeah. End of story. And so the the question to me is. while we're waiting for them, their lawsuits to wend their way through the courts, what will the like state of affairs actually be? And up until earlier today, the state of affairs was whatever the FCC says in the, you know, theoretically in the interest of keeping the internet neutral. And now it's going to be whatever Verizon says in the interest of Verizon's business interest,

and then I have to like push back on that. or the FTC does. Yeah, it's cost shifting. I mean, that's the way you should think. So the problem with Title II that was expressed by the ISPs and Pye was Title II imposes costs on us to prevent innovation. Pi said, okay, we're stripping those costs and removing this FCC. In doing that, he definitely shifted some costs of enforcement to like the people of America. Right.

So now if your ISP is screwing you over, it's very hard to leave for a variety. reasons, chiefly, that you probably don't have another option. So to get a remedy, you don't have to pay or ban together or find some public interest group to sue them at the FTC for a much narrower range of potential harmful behavior. That's like, I get it. Yeah, it was a formally powerful person being like, now I don't have any power. Yeah, but the power was like appropriately wielded. You know, like a cop coming to your house and taking all of your assets before you've been

proven guilty. No, but that's not what it was happening at all. It was just the FCC had the power to begin a proceeding on its own because they made the rule and they could look at it and say you're violating the rule. And then it's a government agency. They're good at paperwork. Like that's their powers. Like they file paperwork and then the company files paperwork and then there's a judge and

there's like an administrative action. So like a really good example, this comes up a lot, 2008, the FCC told Comcast to stop throttling bit corrent. Comcast said, whatever, we're allowed to do this, took them the court and won. The end, like, that's what happened, right? And like, the devolution of power from that, and that means the FCC can't do that. And you now have to discover Comcast's throttling BitTorrent. They may or may not have to tell you. You have to construct, as a user, construct an argument for why that is in violation of some consumer protection principle. And then you have to file a lawsuit. And, like,

BitTorrent Inc, which I believe exists. Yes, it does. But it's not like a rich company. And also, like, might not have standing to just stop a bit torrent user. Or, like, they don't, they're not being harmed by Comcast throttling BitTorrent for, like, Linux distro downloads or whatever. Like, they're a company that, like, does some other product. So they, who is going to stop, like, blocking a protocol like that? Who's going to sue?

Like, you need the costs of shift now to. people and you've got to find the right people who are actually being harmed in the right places at the right times. That sounds like the right balance to me, but it makes sense of such a thing. You often won't find those people. So if we're talking about costs, we're talking about cost shifting. The reason that I personally don't think it's the right balance is there's like an opportunity cost.

There, the thing that Pi, like Pi did a bunch of very, very, very smart, like rhetorical jujitsu moves in his... Wait, I want to follow up on... You said that sounds like the right balance. How is it the right balance if you have to find somebody with pockets deep enough to fund a lawsuit? It's the right balance if you have to find somebody who's harmed. I'm with you on that, right? So we're not all just following lawsuits.

It's somebody who's harmed who can pay for a lawsuit. That, like that throws that balance way out of whack to me. I'm guessing that I believe there are fewer scenarios where people should be successfully suing companies to do what they want them to do. Yeah, but the right answer that you and I often agree on is the right solution is you just take your money and leave the company is doing what you don't like. But if you don't have any choices. No, choices.

All right, that's where we disagree. This man did quit the internet for a year. He's very aware. Very nuclear choice. One thing that stuck out to me, there was a lot of talk about low-income internet. Let's be honest, a lot of people with low-income, use their phone as their primary method of internet. Yeah, no, that's just absolutely true.

Right. Because there is, there's no mechanism in the market for driving costs down for broadband internet because there's no competition. So their only option is an even slower connection. And also, in some cases, more expensive connection, a long term, their phone. Yeah. But it's also a choice. I disagree.

I mean, like, we have to do the work of that story, but everything I've ever read is, like, people will choose phones over almost anything. It's the most important piece of technology in your life slash the world. Yeah. So you're picking that over, right? People pick it over running water. Like it's a choice, but it's not a choice that is like a fungible choice. Right? Right.

I'm saying it's home broadband is a lot more optional of a thing than your, phone. Potentially, right? And I think that's where the part of Pai's argument, indeed I was saying, like he did a lot of rhetorical jutsu today. Yes. And I think that's where Pai's argument starts really flail, actually, because he's, he lumps it all together and he makes it sound like wireless is going to compete with wired in a way that isn't happening now and doesn't seem likely to happen in the future unless you open up the fiber. You're not going to create more, wireless access unless you have enough backhaul to do it. His fundamental argument is there are

mysterious, there are things that we might not be getting because of this regulation. This regulation might be hurting us as a country and we don't know it yet because we don't live in the alternate world where there is no regulation and a million fiber connections will bloom. Right. And the thing that we don't know whether or not a totaling it back because, you know, once you create a regulation, then you're defining the terms of what the world are

and then you're stuck in that world. That's his argument. So I'm going to read from the speech. This was the opening of his speech. Yeah, I would give anything to A, B, test this. We're kind of doing it now. Just every couple years, it flips. So this is Pye speech.

This was the opening, the opening of a speech, basically. The internet has enriched my life immeasurably. In the past few days alone, I've downloaded interesting podcasts about blockchain technology, ordered a burrito, managed my playoff-bound fantasy football team, and, as you may have seen, tweeted. What is responsible for the phenomenal development of the internet? It certainly wasn't heavy-handed government regulation.

So this is the shift that I think everyone makes. All of the things that he did on the internet are at the service and apps layer. And they run on an open internet a smaller number of companies control. So he doesn't say which, by the way, I love to humble brag about. He might literally be wrong that those things. things were enabled by either some kind of government regulation. Well, certainly. The blockchain.

Yeah. But all of those things happen because the internet is an open playing field for those technologies to develop. And he's saying, what is responsible for the phenomenal about on the internet? It wasn't heavy-handed government regulation. He consistently conflates what happens at the ISP level with what happens at the app level. And it was funny because I tweeted, none of those things are run by ISPs. but I forgot that Verizon owns Yahoo!

So there's like a real chance that he's using Yahoo Fantasy Bookball. But the only reason why we care about the ISP level is because the app level exists. If there was no app level, if there was nothing to do on the internet, then we wouldn't want to have the internet. Right. So there is some incentive for the ISPs to leave some amount of space open for innovation, but there's a much higher incentive for them to tax both sides of it. for them to say, okay, we know everybody loves Netflix. We are aware of Netflix. So imagine Brian Roberts, the Comcast wakes up every morning, screams into the void.

He rips a page off of his daily calendar. Still Netflix. He's got a magic apeal. Does Netflix exist? He checks it every day. Always did. Why, Netflix? So you can go to Netflix and he can say,

hey, do you want faster access to our customers pay up, which they have done and Netflix is paid, and then they can say to customers, hey, we can deliver an even better Netflix experience to you if you pay us more, right? So now you can charge rent on both sides of the equation where previously you were not really able to charge rent anywhere on that equation. So now you're making more money. You're not necessarily improving anything and you are certainly disadvantaging some other. So playoff fantasy. By the way, I cannot But I think it's hilarious that he said his fantasy football team is in the playoffs. Such a humble brag.

Playoff bound. Playoff bound. Also, like, the humble rag of just like, I listen to podcasts about the blockchain. He brought up Bitcoin twice in this thing. It was choice. Anyway. It's so choice. It's just like, you want that nerd cred, and you're just going to keep saying Bitcoin until you get it.

But Verizon owns Yahoo Fantasy football. Like, there is no reason for them to not make ESPN. fantasy football slower. They could just do it. And all they have to do is disclose it to you. I get that nobody

wants to shed a tear for ESPN. I get that nobody really at this point needs to shed a tier for Netflix, honestly. They're doing,

okay. I'm raising my prices, but that's fine. No problem. Yeah. But the thing, like, when I was trying

to build up to opportunity costs before, like, Pye is worried about the opportunity costs of like ISP's building more broadband,

and he doesn't think that's happening. I think he's wrong, but fine. the flip side of that is I'm worried about the opportunity cost of the next Bitcoin, the next fantasy sports, the next video streaming startup that comes into this space and doesn't have an open, equal opportunity to get in front of my eyeballs because they can't pay the dual tax.

I don't want to pay the tax that it costs to get it, and they're not going to pay the tax to Verizon on the other side. So I've heard a counter argument to that that Twitch is a good example. of a very high bandwidth, extremely expensive to deliver to the customer service that clearly succeeded. Yeah, and under open Internet rules. Well, no, long before open Internet. Yeah, but they...

No, no, no, there were open Internet rules before. Yeah. They went away in 2010 because of Verizon suing, and they came back in 2015. So they were there. The FCC passed the rules. They went away in 2010? Yes. FCC passed the rules. But like the rise of Twitch is around 2010 to 2015, 1617.

Right. So those companies, they were not blocking things. They didn't know what's going to happen, basically. Obama got elected. One of his election plans was I will take a backseat to no one on net neutrality. So your argument is that it's never been this clear that there's no rules. Yeah. Right. For now a period of time where it's fairly clear that this administration's not going to change it. Although instant lawsuits, instant congressional moves, maybe it'll change again. But it was never this obvious. Right? So the FCC had Title II rules on the phone line.

And then people move to broadband. They impose the rules. And then Verizon sued. The rules went away. President Obama said, I'll take a backseat 101 on net neutrality. The ISPs all assumed the rules would come back. The rules come back. Can I ask another kind of maybe this is a little...

And Pye keeps dancing around that, by the way. In the weeds. This is something I feel like both sides brought up is the limitations on states, what states can do. Yeah. And it's interesting. Wired, I think this was recently, I had a piece on that local regulation is one of the big reasons that we don't have

a lot of competition in broadband because local regulators make these sweetheart deals and grant exclusivity or charge a lot of money for rent, the polls and stuff like that. Yeah, what exactly are, the states aren't allowed to do certain regulation type things now? I mean, that, to me, like, that's the part where I'm like, well, if you're going to, like, say, F it and blow up all the rules, then it probably makes sense to not say, well, if states, if you want to reimpose them, go for it, because then the rules are different in Topeka than they are in New York than they are in Minneapolis.

And if you're trying to run, you know, the internet, having to change your rules. state by state, having to change the way things operate state by state gets pretty complicated, pretty fast. But pretty easy in another sense because you just pick the most restrictive rules. You assume. Right. Do a California style. Yeah, do a California style.

So sure, I mean, if we want to do, they're trying to avoid that from happening. They're trying to avoid California and New York passing that neutrality regulations and everything. Yeah. But that's a clear exercise of power, right? Yeah, I'm not super comfortable with that as a smaller government. person like I hate what states and cities have done

with the internet. Yeah but do you want sandal wearing California liberals deciding what your internet should look like? While they're driving their Priuses and sipping their herb tea? I don't know. I don't know. You're drinking California. If you are currently drinking something in California, please tweet it us. It's probably tea.

What are you drinking out there? Is it herb tea? It's in your Prius? It's even worse. It's LaCroi. Oh my God. We have LaCroix here too. But one of the commissioners, O'Reilly. again today was like, I'm super happy about these rules that we've included to stop states. And then he said something like, we will vigorously attempt to quash any conflicts. I mean, that's like, you sound like Palpatine right now.

Yeah. Like we're going to go through the Federation quash any conflicts. Like a racist mug death star. Georgia Beaks has given us a little thumbs up in the background. It's ridiculous. Look, it's just a new moment for the internet. Right? Like, we haven't been in this place where it's been so clear. The entire momentum of the past decade has been getting net neutrality rules. And then we had them for a minute. And I just, I keep reminding everybody of this, a lot of people thought Hillary Clinton was going to win that election. Yep. Just a lot of people, including all of these ISPs. And they were totally fine with it. And then Trump won. We get a jeet pie. And like all of a sudden now they're like, well, are we just can't possibly build the network

unless we get rid of these rules. And now they're totally gone. Like, they're gone farther than the ISPs thought they would be gone. Here's what I'm going to see what happens. Who's going to act? Which ISP is going to act first? Like, it's like, we're at a party,

and there's a giant cake that just got set on the table. And everyone's like, oh, a piece of cake. Who's going to go cut the cake? So here's what I think is... Is somebody going to, like, sneak up and, like, have a little frosting? Or is, like, Verizon just going to, like, run up and stick its face in the cake?

Oh, right, right, right. To Mila's point, if you're at a wedding, the bride and the groom get the first slice. So it's definitely Verizon. One hundred percent Verizon. Like, Verizon's so happy about this right now. So here's what I think is really interesting. I wrote a little bit about this day on the site. The overwhelming trend in this industry right now is for big telecom companies to buy big media companies.

Yep. So Comcast, again, our disclosure, owns NBC. NBC owns MSNBC, which I think we can all just fairly say as a somewhat liberal news organization. MSNBC is going to get immediately exempted from the data camps on Verizon. You want to stream MSNBC, you want to watch it on your Comcast connection. They can just do it. On Comcast. If you're on Comcast.

Yeah. So MSNBC rolls up to Comcast. Yes. Right. Okay. AT&T is trying to do Time Warner, so HBO and all that stuff already rolls up to AT&T. Right. They've got to complete that deal, which is interesting because it's,

Trump administration, strangely being like, what if big corporations aren't great in this case? But AT&T will own CNN. You'll buy an AT&T phone. It will stream CNN video for you for free. Verizon owns the Huffington Post, which I think we can also agree as a somewhat liberal organization. They had a really good story in Millennials recently. Actually, that sort is great. It looked great.

It's the whole thing. I mean, these are all great news organizations. They're fine. But they're all owned by telecom companies that are now incentivized. to deliver HuffPost video will now be free on Verizon. That was actually Verizon's goal in buying Yahoo AOL and collecting all these media properties. You know what this means? You thought that you could just laugh at Go 90 and ignore it, but now you can't.

So this is my neat thing. But you know what isn't included in this because 21st Century Fox just sold its movie studios to Disney and created a new smaller news organization with Fox News. Fox News doesn't have this like benefactor of a huge ISB. They got to go on to the blockchain. Tim Mobile and Sprint aren't about to buy Time Warner or Fox News. What sad like fourth rate ISP is going to buy Fox? Sprint's going to buy Fox.

Sprint's going to buy Fox News. But like that is a weird. That's a, that's a, that's a, that's an, that's not an outcome I think Republicans expected. Yeah. Right. Where suddenly the major cable news networks are going to stream over various networks for free and Fox News will not. Right. Or we're going to start to prioritize our own news divisions.

Again, the disclosure, Comcast has huge. huge investments in BuzzFeed and Box Media. We're probably great on Comcast, right? Like, man, we should make sure our investment doesn't suffer. Like, you're in the deal. Like, I don't know if that deal's going to happen, but it certainly could. You know, it's not there is the Breitbart, Daily Call. All those, they're going to have to make their own deals and they don't have these benefactors.

And I think that is going to immediately cut against what Republicans thought was going to happen, how they wanted to happen. I think this is also, you know, the Washington Post is a poll, 83% of Americans, when net neutrality explain to them, support it, including three out of four Republican voters. Republican legislatures, legislators are saying we should have these rules. This is a moment that I think is just difficult for that party to navigate. I have to say, living through these past months of being lied to constantly by Tinder, by GitHub, by Reddit, like, this is what net neutrality is because they try to put it in one sentence. And it's like, it's just always wrong. It's always wrong.

Public opinion polls do not hold a lot of sway for me on this issue. Even if people really got into it, they might still support net neutrality. I think those opinion polls reveal most of all is that people hate and distrust their ISPs. Well, I hate and distrust the government. Here's what I want. Hang on. Hang on. That's a legitimate thing to say. For sure.

Do you hate and distrust the government more? than you hate and distrust your ISP. Like, how many, how many, that's like, that's the debate at the end of the day? How many,

how many, how many nukes does Verizon have? How many tanks? It's called go 90. Okay. It's coming for your family. Here's what was a, here's mom.

I've been watching the fallout from YouTube rewind. YouTube rewind this year, because, because PewDie Pie happened to PewDiePie. Yep. PewDie Pie could obviously not be in YouTube Rewind. Right.

And basically there is a large, very successful, very important portion of YouTube that YouTube is just clearly embarrassed by it. Yeah. And then there's the whole adpocalypse, which does not just apply to people like PewDiePie Pie, but just everybody on YouTube is just terrified that they'll do something wrong and get demonetized. And also, YouTube creators really, really dislike YouTube's, what YouTube is doing. with YouTube Red is like, we could be on Netflix too. Yeah. And they're like, no, no, dude, YouTube, you already have content. We make it. Why don't you work on giving us more revenue instead of spending the profits that you make off of our content on terrible originals that nobody watches? I think there's so much dislike and distrust for YouTube that the moment is right for Verizon.

Oh, my God. Do you wait? To change the name. This is a slow roll reveal. Here's what you do. Here's what you do. Change the name because Go 90 is garbage. Cancel all originals. This platform cannot have originals.

Then what you do is you say to any YouTube creator for a year, we will match what YouTube pays for you. The revenue you get on YouTube, you don't have to pull your stuff off of YouTube. Just upload also to our service. And then we'll also show. you what you would make if if you know just through standard revenue also like you know adopt some like twitch style direct subscriptions so people don't all like tons of YouTubers are moving to Patreon like very successful regular YouTubers are moving to Patreon so give allow people to do direct donations direct subscriptions to stuff that they like never have originals

subsidize your own band with because you're Verizon and uh and then AT&T and customers can't watch it no no no no no. No, no, no, no, no. They just have to pay against, they have to use their data. Right. Yeah. But, Paul, I feel like, hey, of course. One, we've gotten.

This is a chance to take down the Titan that is YouTube. I am not engaging Go 90 taking down YouTube. I just can't. Well, I just want to, we're very far. Oh, God. Somehow we've gone from, I hate the government to let's take down YouTube. So that's a set of leaps. Yep.

We're very far away from net neutrality. We are. I want to bring it back. Okay. Second, I would just, I would just remind everyone that Paul's beautiful dream implies that Verizon has the ability to code, execute, and run a platform of any scale. And the last thing that they ever tried to do was, I believe, called VZ Navigator, which really took down Google Maps using the same playbook of being free to use on Verizon phones.

So a lot of dreams. I do not recall. A lot of dreams being expressed at this time. That does not come to my current recollection. Bam, MLB Bam, which is now, you know, is part of Disney. Yeah, yeah. Sort of, kind of. They're in there somewhere, and Disney just bought a bunch of stuff.

DC has a really good piece about... Yeah, we talk a lot on this show about deals, dealer in particular. You, as an internet consumer, as a technology, aficionado, you want to, like, make decisions about what you use and how it gets to you, and, like, we've lived in that world for a long time. We are now clearly in the world of deal-making. Yeah.

Where your connection is... There's a content company attached to it in some way. your connection will favor the content from that company. If you want to go to Disney, they're going to use their leverage to make a deal. Yeah. So I was mad about deals, but now with the end of net neutrality, now ISPs also get to make deals. So now we're living in the deals on deals world. Deals on deals.

Yeah, double deals. Double deals. Double deal in. I think it's, I think it is thrilling and excited. You are, I mean, look, I'm going to be so much weird, stupid corporate synergy that happens that is it just it just lets them take their mask off if they're really ugly behind the mask you get to see curious about whether the ISPs are ugly behind the mask yeah you see a mask you see a mask you want to know you want to know you want to know all right here's what i i think

nothing will happen in the short term i do think you're going to see per my guess is verizon will be the most aggressive to make these moves yep everyone else's moves are going to look like what AT&T was already telegraphing with their timewater acquisition. HBO will now be included with your AT&T subscription. It will stream for free. Comcast will like, you know, the Xfinity app on all your devices will run for free on the Comcast. Like all that is fine. It's going to happen.

It was already kind of happening. The next moves are going to be how far are they going to start to push it. I want to pay for a fast lane for at least some of my multiplayer video games. Verizon's forthcoming YouTube competitor. Yeah, there's already services out there that promise you like a lower latency and like League of Legends. Like I want to, I'm ready to pay for, for a better Overwatch. We'll see.

We'll just see. The thing is, it happened. Like I said, it's like a little bit anti-climatic. Like, we knew it was going to happen today and it happened. There's an endless array of court cases coming. There's an endless, Cheryl Sandberg today posted on Facebook. Like, we're going to fight this vigorously. We're taking this to court.

Like, it's coming, right? Like, the move in Congress from Republican senators in unsafe seats facing an election in 2018, they're going to say we're going to have some net neutrality rules because it's an opportunity to do something popular. Like, all of it's happening. So it's done for now in this way, but it's not done forever. And I think that we're just going to end up covering it for another year in this way. Tony Rahm at RICO, who's an excellent reporter who I recommend following on Twitter because his Twitter especially funny too. He's an excellent policy reporter. He's like, this is just Grandhog Day.

We are going to be having this net neutrality fight for the rest of our lives. Because the lawsuits are coming. More congressional action is coming. Maybe Trump goes away. There's a new FCC commissioner. That person will change them. Like, we're going to do this until we decide, like fundamentally decide how we want the internet to work. And public opinion is one way. companies are one way. Maybe Paias are right. I doubt, I very much doubt it. If you've been listening to the show, I think you know I doubt it.

But he's got a window of time to prove it. Okay, okay. If we get space internet in one decade. So whatever, what's today? December 14th, 2017. If by December 14th, 2027, we have space internet. Yeah. Does that mean Pye was right?

No. Oh. Okay, he was right if the mechanism by which we get space internet, is it? Paid prioritization. Yeah, Verizon and Comcast are so aggressive with paid prioritization, and they have so much extra money that they're like, let's just put some internet in space. I, where is that? Why would they do that? Why would they build a competitor to themselves?

I would think that it would come from that there's so much obvious room for competition because there's so much money to be made in delivering broadband. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how much money there really isn't delivering broadband. Here's the thing I don't want. You remember how you had AOL and then you realize, oh, wait, instead of just using AOL, I could use the internet. And then after a while, you're just using the internet and you're like, wait, why do I need AOL? And then you stopped using AOL. They're trying to go back to AOL. The ISPs want to be part of the content serving portion of it. They don't want to be dumb pipes. And like, that's what I'm afraid of. That's like kind of the end of it for me. Yeah. I'm going to read an ad, and then we're going to come back, and then at Fidelity Fight will continue. Probably ever and ever. While I read this ad, Paula is going to write out his business plan for Verizon executing a YouTube competitor. I already wrote it. Step one, hire engineers who know what they're doing.

I think it's seven easy steps. No, eight steps. You're just a beautiful dreamer, man. This episode of Vergecast brought to you by Squarespace. Are you ready to start new business? Why wait until the New Year's? set your plans in action. The future is coming. Again, always sounds like a threat. But you can make that future brighter with Squarespace. There's a beautiful template's created by world-class designers.

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Well, I'm sure we'll find a way. back no fear the iMac pro is available uh it costs somewhere between five and $14,000 it's not an exaggeration what's your recommended spec on that

oh I actually haven't specced out the the recommended the recommended I saw you recommended 10 cores you should get the 10 core 64 gig 2 terabyte system because you get higher clock speed yeah you don't want to go to 14 or 18 because you got to wait longer

and you don't get the higher clock speed um so uh what apple did is they gave it out to a bunch of like some like engineers and some YouTubers and some videographers and they had it for like a week or two. And then they posted some impressions earlier this week. And then yesterday, as of this recording, Apple had a bunch of journalists like roam around in packs around this like studio space and talk to various developers who have made apps or other things that are optimized for use on this high end super professional. professional computer. So we saw a guy, gravity something or other, like do some really cool, like 3D drawing and like vector movements with like 3D objects and like that full fidelity

of all the pixels and blah, blah, blah. We saw, you know, your standard like Adobe thing where they like took a picture of a thing and that turned into a surface. They could apply to another thing that they could move around in 3D and blah, blah, blah, blah, get all the reflections just right and you don't have to wait to render anything. I saw 8K video at Final Cut Pro. I saw a bunch of cool stuff. I saw one of the best VR demos I've ever seen in my life. So I was all great. And then, you know, saw the machine running.

We'd seen it before in June. It looks and acts like an I-Mac that's darker. Why didn't they get rid of the bezels? So there's a lot that I don't understand about this. They completely re-architected the inside of this machine. There is no 3.5 spinning platter hard drive. They were able to, like, solder a bunch of stuff to the board. so you really, you can't go in and change anything.

But they did all that stuff, which meant that they could like re-architect the way that air moves through it. So it comes in the bottom, spins through, shoots out the back, shoots out really hot, actually. But they're able to consistently move a ton of air so the thing doesn't have to spin up and make a lot of fan noise. But they aggressively chose to make this like millimeter for millimeter the same as the standard 27-inch IMAX 5K. It's the same body And it's a darker color But there are choices they could have made If you're already going through the work

Of re-architecting the inside of it Like yeah, make the bezel smaller Or maybe they don't want to like buy new screens And like the screen has to get driven Like the bezels actually don't bother me that much I know it's bothering much people I kind of don't care But I don't know

Put a door on it to like let people change the RAM You actually take it to a service center to upgrade the RAM Yeah it's great they do let you take the mount off yourself and put a Vesa bracket on it. You've always been able to do that with the IMA. I think you were supposed, you had to order the evasive version from Apple, and everything else was like a hack. There's already an accessory out to put some ports on the front.

But it's the same because it's the same, they probably made that accessory already for the IMA. I think there's more thunderbolts on this than a standard IMA, and it has 10 gigabit Ethernet. It can drive two, five. 5K displays. It'll work. I saw it running.

I saw one of the demos it was running two external GPUs at the same time in addition to the radiance on the inside. So that was cool. Like this thing, I don't know. I don't have full impressions because I didn't get to sit down and use it. I'm not the pro that they're looking to sell this thing to. But to me, the question is, if you want to spend the money on this thing, I feel like you need to know exactly what you're looking for to, a higher degree. of confidence that most of us do when we go out and buy a computer.

Yeah, I think that makes sense. I mean, it's not for... But first, here's my question. Yeah. Ah. I just... You're right? Yeah.

I hit the microphone and it scared me. Okay. Okay. No shock. Yeah. Edit that right out. Fuck you, Andrew. Okay, here's my question.

It's really fast, right? Yeah, it's stupid fast. Is it... I feel... like it's a cool product I'm glad it exists yeah but I feel like Apple is they were so slow that everyone's like oh my god it's so much faster but if they just put out new processors every year it would be it would just be incrementally faster that's right right mm-hmm that's right they just put a good GPU in it last year yeah it

would just be ink it's like they're they held back for so long right that just putting modern components in a Mac well they They're able to make it seen. By the way, they were much more eager to compare it to, like, the other IMAX performance and not the IMac pros, or not the Mac pros performance. Because they do claim that, like, if you are going to spec out something like this yourself, that you'd end up spending the same or more. If you're trying to build a witness machine. Sometimes minus a display, yeah. Yeah.

But I find that a little hard to believe. Zions are pretty expensive. By the way, the 10 core. But it's not, for Apple, it's not just, even if you were to build out the same thing, like, get the same radion card, get the same, you know, ECC, whatever the hell, RAM, get the same fast SSD, get equivalent display, which, by the way, is very difficult to do because the display on the IMAC is basically unparalleled, in my opinion. Like, do all that stuff. Buy all those pieces, put them in a box, and maybe it costs less.

Apple's contention is that that still won't be as good as this thing, because you need to look at a pro system like this holistically. it's not just about do you have the fastest RAM. It's is the thing that controls the RAM and also controls the SSD and gets them to talk to each other. All of that stuff, all that like subsystem stuff that runs a computer, their claim is their stuff is better than something you'd go out and build yourself. And the central piece of that claim is this T2 processor, this T2 like unit that runs all the controllers for everything and also enables a security. secure, you know, enclave that keeps the whole thing, you know, encrypted top of it. Wasn't there a big rumor this thing would have like a co-processor A10 that did T-SER. That's what that's what this, that turned into this T2, which is basically an iteration on the T1 that's in the Mac Pro, MacBook Pro with the touch bar.

Yeah. That runs the secure touch ID thing on it. This is basically a next iteration of that, but it's controlling ever more pieces of the computer. So the, I think the biggest part of the T2 is it, acts as the SSD controller, and it also acts as the fully secure place where your encryption key for your file encryption lives, and it does the decoding on that chip. So when you encrypt your files on your SSD, not only is it faster because they have a custom, you know, SSD driver thing that's built into this chip to control it, it's also like the workload of encrypting and decrypting

files happens on this custom chip that's designed for it, not on one of your, you know, 10, cores. Yeah. It's funny because it sounds like a specialized chip, but as it does more and more and more, it just becomes a general purpose co-processer. You can just see it go that way? It's very interesting. Like what else can you offload to these other chips?

Like what other... Yeah, this is like Apple's specialty, right? Yeah, I mean, to be honest, like, I hate them. But it's... I like that they're, you know, in a sense, because you buy this if you are addicted to Final Cut Pro. If you are a successful music producer and Logic,

you know, like, or if you are just cannot be bothered to understand how to build a computer. But most people do not need this much power right now. But like the other question is, there are people who do. Should the people that do, in fact,

need this much power, buy this computer or wait for the Mac Pro that's coming next year? Yeah, I think you should buy a Mac Pro. A lot of these, but some people really do genuinely need, like, just an all in one. It's just like, it's better

and more convenient. But a lot of the demos that Apple's showing you are, are fanciful. Apple would like a world where people are actually doing 3D modeling on Macs. Right. That's correct. Imagine. Yeah.

I mean, I think our entire video team wants this computer. Yeah, of course. Of course. They're already using that. Yeah, but can we afford that? I don't know. It depends on how much we have to pay to prioritize our site. Yeah.

So it's like if on the other hand, Apple had a $2,000 Mac Pro, we could probably get that for most of our video team. And they could have vastly better, vastly, vastly, vastly, vastly, vastly better performance than they have with their current IMAX. Yeah, I mean, we have to buy them all displays. But Apple wants to get there. I think this is not quite like the iPhone 8, iPhone 10 situation. I think you want to have a family of products that extends up this way. in the two form factors. So I think Dieter's right.

Some people are just going to want a bunch of high-powered iMacs for people doing high-powered work. And some people are going to want modular workstations that can rack mount. Several times during the day, people are like,

why shouldn't somebody just wait for the Mac Pro? And like the Apple employee's response to heard from several of them is, look, some people just need this thing right now. And the kind of like pro shops that need these kinds of computers, the video shops, the scientific machine learning,

learning, you know, think tanks, whatever. They cycle through computers, like, on the regular. They have project-based stuff. They buy insane computers. They use them for a year. And then they hand them off to somebody else to do some slightly lower priority tasks and get the next latest and greatest thing because they always need the latest and greatest thing.

And so in Apple's mind, there are a bunch of people who are going to go out and buy this thing and also going to go out and buy the Mac Pro later and just have this be a hand hand me down to another project. So that's the job to get. Yeah. You should have one of those jobs. We should just put a listing on the verge of jobs to get where they always buy you the best of shit. Oh, yeah.

What jobs should you get if you want the best computer no matter what all the time? Provided to you by your company. That is a very good question. By the way, you said 10 core. I think it's maker of Apple commercials. I think that's it. Yeah, I mean, like usually when Apple, the last time Apple did a Mac Pro, they did the trash can. It was years ago.

And it was a much smaller rollout. And we all went to radical media here in New York, which is a huge post house. Yeah. And I don't know. We sat down with their editors and they showed us how they used a new Mac Pro. Yeah. Like I think video editors, animators, anybody in like high-end scientific research, like, that does a lot of big data processing. Oh, big data stuff all happens in the cloud and they all run Linux.

No, but there was a bunch of stuff that I found really fascinating. There was, you know, this company that makes this architecture software, and there was another, you know, it was the 3D modeling and VR software. Like, three or four of the, like, innovative things were basically like, oh, you just figured out how to use Unreal Engine and apply to practical purposes. Like, there's a bunch of that stuff. Yeah. That I meant big data sets, not big data. Like, if you're a physics researcher, you collect big data sets of things, like, these are the kinds of computers that you use to, like, do the modeling on your desktop. Right.

It's a workstation. That's the people who bought workstation is forever. That market exists. Everybody understands it. In my, I actually put this in like the deck. The deck, it's a subheadline if you don't understand. The subheadline of the piece is pro means something different here than what you think of for most Apple computers. I wish that they had just called it like IMac workstation.

Because when people, like, I'm going to get questions from like family members that would normally go out and buy an IMac. But go, oh, should I get the I Mac Pro? because they'll like, when they were like, should I go buy a MacBook? But yeah, go get the MacBook Pro. But the MacBook Pro is a different kind of pro than this thing. What about the IBM Think Mac? Ooh, that's not bad. That's a good one.

Yeah. I think a lot of people are going to buy this computer. And then I think a lot of people are going to buy the Mac Pro. Yeah. It's just the thing that gets me about it is all of the, all of the performance measurements are against older Macs and not against current PCs. Yeah. And like, it's probably given.

the synthesized engineering of the thing, probably a little faster than like the comparable set of specs on a PC. Probably. But no, no one's done it yet. Because Apple's like, it's so much faster than the old Mac. I'm just saying, don't ask me to be grateful. Yeah, for a $5,000 computer. I think the spec you're talking about data is $8,000.

$8,000? 10 core, 64 gigabytes of memory, 2 terabytes of storage. You might want to get 128. Well, that is $9,59, To double your RAM, you add I mean, 128 of this high-quality RAM is nothing to sniff at. Right.

That's a lot. It's just, but what pisses me off is that you can't decide. You can't decide, like, you know what? What's super important to me is the best GPU in the world, which is fucking not in this computer. Yes, I know.

Like the Apple AMD friendship, the Apple only puts ABMD stuff in its computers. I'm getting tired of that, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And so maybe that's what's important to me. Because like you said, if you're going to buy this computer, you should know exactly what you want to. So maybe I know that the RAM is the absolute bottleneck.

And I only need 32 megabyte or 32 gigabytes of it, but I need the absolute best, fastest thing on the market. And I need it liquid cooled. Oh, yeah. You know, like, there are, when you're in the pro world, like, you are optimizing for certain things. Clock speed, RAM speed, you know, storage rights. Yeah. Network access. So are you going to buy a Macro?

Duh. Duh. All right, I'm going to read an ad. Yeah. And then I think we should talk about T-Mobilewining a cable company this week. We have to. We'll just do it quick. Okay.

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So this holiday season, to get an exclusive 20% discount off the softest underwear in socks you will ever wear, free shipping and 100% satisfaction guarantee, go to meundies.com slash verge. That is, meundies.com slash verge. So T-Mobile announced, what was yesterday the day before? Yeah. They're buying Layer 3 What is Layer 3? Layer 3 is a cable company

Yeah, but it's cable company that no one's ever heard of Wait, wait, wait, let me finish and finish This is my raffle, dude Don't step on my raffle Don't capture my raffle So they announce they're buying Layer 3 TV and we're like,

what is it? It's like go to layer3.com And there's a huge quote over the verge logo. It's like, Layer 3 TV is building a new kind of cable company that we're super excited. It's like, I'm like, I don't remember this. We were apparently once extremely excited about Layer 3.

It's like Google it. Yeah. Because it's on a link. So I'm like Googling, I finally find it. And I look at the byline. It says Al Plumlier. Who is El Plumier? Sometimes it seems like we don't

Take our job serious. And Al Plumliere has written a long write-up of a wired feature piece about Layer 3 TV, and it's like super excited. And I remember that Al Plumliere was Paul's stealth name when he came back to join the Verge before we announce his hiring. It's Paul Miller. It's the letters, Paul Miller all rearranged. Yeah.

El Plumliier. A brothel copter. I just feel bad. The great thing is... Like the layer of three people are like, oh man, we got to get hold this out of El Plumliere. No, Al Plumliere... Did Al Plumliere reached out?

Two layer three and explained the... I think I... At that time, I remember I did a couple things and I at least did one thing where I just told them I was Al. But I think I leveled. with. You came, you were like, I'm actually Paul Miller.

Yeah, and I found my interview notes. And they're really, I didn't like write down who I was talking to. And you say outplom me. There might have been like a background. But yeah, so layer three was a new kind of cable company. The basic idea is that all of their content would be delivered over IP. They would have no standard analog or digital. little cable going over RF. It would all be IP packets. So it's basically like internet.

Like imagine net neutrality, worst case scenario. Your ISP has gone so far that they don't even have internet anymore. They only have fast pipes. So they were just basically making a service of only fast pipes. And they, I think they started in Chicago and now they're in like DC and L.A., maybe a couple other places. So it's basically a cable company. They've got a cable box. They can add other services so you can get like I believe you can get Netflix, you can get channels and they kind of all

just kind of come right into that box. They claimed that it would be an open platform. I don't know what's happened with that. So that anybody could theoretically add a service to their service. And the big efficiency they were claiming is by being a purely IP network and being able to have like a more

advanced technological box. They could use better compression. like HVAC or whatever. Yeah. So it seems like they're a cable company. They're a cable company and their secret sauce is better compression, which is. And having no legacy systems. Yeah, but that's like Google Fiber had that advantage too, right?

Like they were also a cable internet company. Like T-Mobile is not their buying. Their specific technology that T-Mobile, if you're T-Mobile that you're interested in, is this like super high-powered compression. I think it's a standard compression algorithm, though. No, because the wired piece at that time was all about... Are we in an episode of Silicon Valley? See, this is where I was going. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

It's just like you're... They're saying they can do HD video in 4 megabits per second. Yeah, that's just a modern compression code. Yeah, 4 megabits per second. That's enough for HD, standard HD. Well, this is what their claim is. I think this is why T-Mobile bought them. I don't think they bought them for deals or because their app looks nice or...

The deals don't even usually transfer when you buy a company like this. It's like Apple bought Beats his deals and transfer Apple had to remake the deals. What Apple bought was like a streaming, a software stack to do streaming music. Which hopefully they've completely rewritten by now. So I like to use Apple Music.

The second your bandwidth drops just a little bit like on a plane, for example, the things falls apart. Like you have to put in airplane mode you can't get on the Wi-Fi and then Opel Apple Music. It will try. Oh, right.

But if you go into airplane mode, you're fine. Yeah. Great. Or you can click the only the music. This is not important to this conversation. So basically, T-Mobile owns a cable company and we don't know why. I think I know why. Like I'm saying, I think their particular software expertise is lowering the amount of bandwidth they need,

which is if you are a wireless company, because T-Mobile is not going to be out there running fiber lines to people's house. So if you're T-Mobile, you've bought a cable company and now does wireless delivery. or hyper compression. They also have their own backbone. They have a 12,000 mile backbone. Yeah. I don't think they're doing a lot of their own last mile. They said something about co-optition.

Good word. With the last mile stuff. Yeah. So I think T-Mobile's play here is they can slice off some of their own bandwidth, dedicate it to layer three, and then roll out a TV service on the T-Mobile wireless network using whatever compression they have. If that's not their play, then you're right. It is truly a mystery why they needed to buy a company to do this because they could just do it.

Sony was like, we made a TV service and they just like rolled it out. There's no reason to buy a company to do this that is relatively easy to do unless you're getting some sort of technology move. I am almost positive they use HVAC. I do think they use HVAC, but I think they're doing something crazy with it. What's interesting, though, is all the other ISPs are buying content companies. Tim MOL is buying a content delivery company. which is very different. And paying your Netflix bill.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, is Netflix off the cap too? Or is everything off the cap? What, binge on? Yeah, it's part of binjohn. Yeah. It's not like the only thing.

There's a whole bunch of stuff that you can just binge on. You can binge on it. Oh my God. So we did, in fact, come back to Telecom Paul. All right, Paul, every week. We've returned to Telecom Pauls. Al Plumliato's a segment. It's called the Eniator.

internet of claps. Oh, yeah. So there's a new clapper device. I'm very excited about this clapper device. It's called clap boss. You can program, I think there's like, was it, six different kinds of clap patterns. So I should be clear, I owned a clapper. They used to sell them at the Dwayne Reed on the corner of 14th and 3rd Avenue,

and I just walked in one day, and I walked out with a clapper, set it up. It was the best joke. So I just keep my apartment like relatively dark. Uh-huh. And every once in a while someone would accidentally clap or something and the clapper would go on or off and everybody would laugh. It was so much joy brought by completely accidental. The stealth clapper. Yeah, he hit it behind a chair or something like that.

So yeah, people would just accidentally clap and you'd get the lights turn on and is hilarious. It's the least useful way of turning on and off lights. So yeah, apparently this will listen for like six different patterns. you can hook it up with if this than that there's an LCD on the face of it for some reason it's it's like a little USB power thing but they also sell like a plate for it to plug it into a wall outlet I don't know why you'd want to LCD on something that's plugged into like a wall socket yeah you wouldn't but if you order a pizza it will maybe show a pizza icon on the LCS I don't know but clap boss clap and stuff happens on the internet

So it's if this and that with clapping. Yeah. All right, I'll take it. If clap, then that. How much does it cost? That's a good question. I'm here for the hard-hitting journalism. How much does the internet clapper cost?

$39. But it's like a, it's a Kickstarter. Eventually retail for $80. Is it real? This is the people who did free write. You know that ink typewriter, fake typewriter for hipsters? Yeah. Yeah.

Same people. And they ship that. There you go. That's a real change and ambition. Yeah. Like we're going to reinvent writing. Yeah, we want the purest distraction-free writing. We want the next great American novel to be written on this machine.

And now they're like, we made an Arduino with the sound sensor. Claps. All right, I think that's it. We've gone over. It's been a heated day. Do we have any time to talk about Game of the Year? No, it has to take forever. Let's do next week.

Why don't we have the... That's a good idea. Megan on or something. Yeah. It's a good idea. Plan on that. Get ready. One to grow on.

Yeah. Next week, Game of the Year conversation with our culture team that is actually good at talking about video games. Yeah. Probably help. We're good. It's just you that are bad. So I'm out.

Vacation. Back again. All right. Game of the Year, Madden. That was the Fergcast. What was your favorite Madden that came out to do you like? It was Madden. I bought a PS4 for that shit, man.

The pro in 4K HDR. Did you, did you like, do you, when you play Madden, do you try and like match your team's lineup to the active roster of the Packers? Yeah. You do? It's been bad for me now. So you're like when Aaron Rogers went down in real life, you took him down in Madden.

It just does it. It just updates the rosters for you. Oh, really? I'd have to, what you're asking is do I go and put him back in to like live in a fantasy world? And the answer is sometimes yes. Oh, there's like an Aaron Rogers. injury You should feel bad.

It's literally a fantasy world. It's football on a video game. I don't know, man. It's real to me. I had to buy PS4 for that shit. Is your Madden Team playoff bound? You know there's a whole story mode this year where you play like a young quarterback on the rise.

Yeah. And like Dan Marino's in it like randomly. It's like wild. It's like an RPG? Yes. You level up. You have to like make branching story choices. All of the story choices are like,

will you be a jerk or a huge jerk? It's like all of the choices. Anyway. Game of the year. Game of the year. That was a show. We have other great shows you should listen to, including Why Did You Push That Button with Ashley Carmen and Caitlin Tiffany.

This episode this week is on text threads and people delete them. Like, I never really think about this. But Nicola Fumo, he might remember from many episodes of her cast in the past. Yeah. Former Writer for Ract. She apparently has like a crazy Kim Kardashian-inspired deletion ritual. every episode of the show just like now I'm thinking about everything I do

does people are like delete their text threats That's what happens to me every episode of this podcast It's like whatever And then it's like oh my gosh I can't stop thinking about this It's great Lauren Good Host Too Embarrassed to Ask Kara Swisher It's wonderful

Kara Swisher hosts Recode Decode and Peter Kafka Hosts Recode Media which is also wonderful All great shows on iTunes go rate review them Give them five stars Give us five stars Yeah I had like some stars Yeah.

Especially, yeah. They're going to don't out of these stars, other people. Yeah. I mean, Apple Podcast is now, like, showing analytics, apparently. It's a new thing. Because, you know, until now we didn't know who the hell anybody was or what anybody did. Like, go to that podcast. Give us some stars.

Get those analytics out there. I'm into it. I love an analytic. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Rock and roll. Promocode.

No, that's right. Paul. Bye.