The Vergecast - Galaxy S8 hands-on, FCC privacy rulings, and Ghost in the Shell

Episode Date: March 31, 2017

Welcome back! We have a great show for you today. No really! If you listen to this podcast, you know Samsung announced the Galaxy S8 this week, so Nilay and Dieter bring in senior editor and friend of the show Dan Seifert; who recently took a trip to South Korea to tour Samsung’s headquarters. Second half of the show, news editor Jake Kastrenakes joins to discuss his coverage of the FCC and privacy ruling in Congress. There’s even more! Megan Farokhmanesh is here to enlighten the crew on the culture side of site; Persona 5 and Ghost in the Shell. Theres a bunch of little topics sprinkled in between this focused episode, so listen through to find them all. 00:43 - Hands-on with the Samsung Galaxy S8 17:46 - Samsung’s Bixby assistant 33:13 - Persona 5 review 42:16 - Ghost in the Shell review 50:23 - FCC reporting Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Theverge.com. It's a podcast. That's what it is. We like it. Anyway, I'm Nealai. Dieter's here. Deeter's in the mood. I'm in an angry mood.

I just want everyone to be okay with that. If you're in your car, just know that every time Deeter talks, you're going to feel the instinct to slam on the brakes, get out of the car and run away. Because you're in fear for your life. But Megan's here. Hi, Megan. Hi. And we have special guest for the first half of the show. Dan Seifred's here.

Hey, how are you? And a little bit later, Jaycast Trankis are here to talk about the internet. internet, which is slowly being taken away from us, the people, and handed to the evil corporation. But first, we have distractions. But first, we have great distractions. Like expensive toy distractions. So the GalaxyS8 came out this week. We just got to get into it.

No preambles. I mean, you know what it is. If you're listening to the Vergecast, you know what the GalaxyS8 is, right? It's a, it's a phone. Yeah, it's a phone. It makes phone call. It's a feeling. It's a way of life.

Takes photos. Yeah. But it's a phone. It's got a, like a frisson of danger. Because it might explode. Well, we don't know that. Maybe. I mean, the odds of the S-8-

It's the same with every phone, right? It's the same odds with every phone. No, it's super not the same with every phone. So I want to get into it. Dan actually went to Korea. I want Dan to tell this whole story. Dan, you watched a battery. Samsung exploded a battery in your face, I believe.

Sure. Yeah. They were just like put it right up next to you and they're like, see, we can make these explode or not explode whenever we want, I believe. That's what Samsung said to you. Especially when we don't want. Sure. But I will say I've been thinking about this all day because Walt and I talked about whether or not the battery would explode on his show yesterday a lot.

There's no way that this phone explodes for this reason only. It's the end of Samsung if it does. And they have to know it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, they are very much aware the importance of making sure that this phone does not explode. Which just sounds stupidly obvious, but like it's not a conversation with any other phone. And it's a conversation with this phone.

because of last year. It is the opening conversation of this phone. Everywhere that I've seen, it's like, it's a joke. I mean, literally, every headline yesterday was like, Samsung put out its great new phone, it might, it better not explode. But will it explode? So I think I'm just going to set aside exploding for the duration of the show because I, it's, A, it's tired and talk about it at this point. Like, either phone's going to explode or not explode. We shall see, but they just can't be that callous.

Like they can't they can't have like been like yeah it probably fine like they thought about I mean they did they thought about it they've come up with systems they've got processes in place they are spending a ton of money I love systems and also like the the hardware of the phone is slightly thicker than last year and they did not pack insane batteries into them they're like it's slightly smaller than they otherwise could have been right it's very much status quo on the battery okay so let's so that's it's all that's all the more exploding talk we get not even the to me story? Well, I want you to tell that story. Okay. But we're just, we're just moving on from the thing. So you went to Korea. I did. I went to Korea. I got a meeting with Samsung's executives and product planners. How many of them were in jail at the time? See, it's funny. You can set aside exploding, but you can do how many of you are in jail and participating in the downfall of the South Green government. Our visiting hours were limited to an hour and there was no touching. So all the executives I talked to were free on their own volition. They were not in handcuffs or in jail.

And I was in their offices, and they were telling me all about their new phone, which is the GalaxyS8, as we know, in the S8 Plus, and all of the things that they've been doing with it and the plans that they have for it. And they also talked me about their Bixby assistant and some of the other services and stuff that they are looking forward on. So beyond the GalaxyS8 is really what. Samsung wants to think about and talk about. Because the thing in the present is the... Well, the thing in the present... The Galaxy 8 looks like, to be, by all accounts, an excellent phone. It's got a killer design, probably...

You know, easily saying the best hardware we've ever seen on a smartphone, I think Dieter would agree with that. Dieter's actually touched it. He used it. Amazing hardware, amazing design, amazing fit and finish. The display is, like, jaw-dropping. It, like, is pushed all the way to the edges of the... the phone itself, so it feels like you're just holding a screen and not an actual phone.

So in photos, it looks like it has bezels. So it does have bezels above and below the screen, because there are things they need to put in there, like a front-facing camera and sensors. It has an iris scanning feature, so it needs sensors for that. And then there's bits of electronics in the bottom. But they are, like, a third of what the bezels are on an iPhone. Like, it's so minimized or minimized, and they're black so that the edges of the black screen just kind of like meld into it. And when you're watching a video on this thing, it's a really immersive experience. And it's really cool.

But what it, you know, the things that they did was they, because they use their signature curved screens on both of these devices, they're managing to put these giant displays into smaller devices that are easier to handle and stuff like that. These are all concerns that consumers have had. They want a bigger screen in a smaller phone, so this is how Samsung's addressing it. And it's doing it in clever ways, and they are good looking and functional. It's also, but it's like a funky aspect ratio. Yeah, they're doing a funky aspect ratio.

They're not the first. I literally put a post on the site today that has, like, a lot of math in it. Or maths, as Vlad would say. Yeah, math. He can't help it. Zero. There's also a picture of an avocado at the end. It's very strange. I was very confused.

He did, like, literally the Pythagorean theorem. And at the end, he's like, it equals al-a-a-a-a-a-oh. Because they are using what is known as an 18.5 by 9 aspect ratio, which is taller. Oh, yes. The very well-known 18-5. Yes, it's very... Famous round the world. Oh, man.

All right, so I will call it the 2.25 to 1. I don't know. Oh, my God. Which is a taller aspect ratio than the 16 by 9 that we're used to on most phones. So that makes these phones taller and skinnier than we're used to seeing, which means that a 5.8 inch ratio. version of this phone does not technically have as much screen real estate as a 5.8 inch phone with a 16 by 9 aspect ratio. That said, there's still really big screens in a really small

footprint. Does having it taller feel weird? You know, I only use them for a brief amount of time. It didn't really feel that weird, especially on the small version because the smaller version is really comfortable to hold. On the bigger one, which is 6.2 inch screen, it definitely is a big phone that you're holding. Yeah. I think the smaller one is. way better, even though it has a smaller battery. They both have the same screen resolution. Because it's like a little bit narrower than you expect reaching up to the top of the screen isn't quite the disaster that it might otherwise be. I'm really curious to see if they're going to add like a notification button to the customizable soft buttons at the bottom of the phone,

the way that LG does with the G6 because it needs you don't have to reach up for the notification pane. Yeah. So it is slightly easier to adjust your grip and reach the top of the screen. But I got to say It is, we all sort of made fun of Apple's double tap, double slightly touch the home button to like bring the screen halfway down. But man, when you use an iPhone for a while and then switch over to Android phone, you really miss it. So it's going to be fine. It's not that big a deal. That in a crippling I message lock in. Yeah.

Literally, I'm going to go with the crippling lock in. I mean, it's like, I like double tapping. Well, you know, we'll have a. There's an app on Android lets you do, but you have to read your phone. You don't even need an app. It's built into the platform. You like swipe into the side. Is that Samsung? No, this is a Motorola.

This is a native Android phone thing. Use... Wait, what? Just use Allo, guys. Yeah, you just swipe in from the corner and it makes it smaller. Wait, hold on. Stop the show. Stop the show.

...with a little tutorial on how to Android. No, my pixel doesn't work on every phone, Dan. But it works on the pixel. It works on a Motorola. It works on a... Samson phone. Wait, you can't do that on a pixel. Yeah, yeah.

What gesture are you talking about? The swipe up to make the tiny phone gesture? Where in settings is that garbage? I don't know. I'm not going to spend the show trying to figure out where in settings on that. Dan has 15 minutes left to talk about the thing. And he's just going to teach us how to use Android. I thought that was a weird.

No, no. The thing is lots of phones had that feature. Yeah. You just kind of, it's just a different thing than double tapping the home button, like Deeter pointed out. Yeah. Anyhow. So what do you think of this phone? I think it's going to be a great phone.

I think it's the best Android phone of the year so far, without a doubt. I think it blows away what we've seen from LG. I feel really bad for LG. A, they fucked up their marketing, super bad, just real bad. They had a golden opportunity that could have sponsored this show. It would have been my official phone. You're going this route again. I'm just saying it was sitting in the palm of their hand.

Do you know what's really sad is there's the travel ban on flights to the Middle East with, like, laptops and things? and like literally like LG like Saudi Arabia. One of their divisions in one of these Middle Eastern countries put out an ad targeted to business travelers. It's like, don't worry, the G6 is fine on planes, and they use the fucking song. And I was like, this is not what I wanted from this moment in world history. What are royalty rates in Saudi Arabia?

Yeah, they were like, don't worry, it still flies like a G6. And it's like, oh, you're just. So I don't feel bad for LG too much because LG operates on a much different scale than Samsung or Apple. Like, the reality is LG is a much smaller player, especially in the premium smartphone space. They just do not move nearly as many units. And especially here in the West, in the U.S. and such,

they don't sell nearly as many. So, you know, LG is going to LG, and they're just going to be there. They're going to be there next year or two, and they're going to LG again. I will say that having had the pixel, I much prefer looking at LCD than an OLED screen. Really? Yep. How? I find OLEET screeners so bright.

Yeah, that's awesome. It's so, so bright. But I read so much on my phone that I prefer the somewhat like non-nuclear brightness of the LCD. You know, phones have these things called brightness sliders. It's not, it's like the color. Oh man, the night mode on pixel is like, it's like they let an intern do it. And the intern was like, it's just yellow, right? We'll just make everything yellow.

That's cool. I don't know. There's something about a great LC. If the new iPhone is OLED, it's going to be a sad day for me. me. I disagree. I think OLED is a smart move for the iPhone. Also, I can still see the pentiled matrix. You think I can't, but I got you. I know you're cheating. Megan, I just want to tell you a story. No, we're not talking about pentile on this podcast. One of the most controversial things ever published on the verge was me noting that the Motorola, what was it, the droid X,

had a shitty screen because of the arrangement of the pixels on the screen. And it got so heated that I had to take macro photography of the screen and publish it to prove that I was. wasn't crazy. Also, Motorola got so mad at me, they sent me another phone and demanded that I re-review it. It's a common move for companies. It's a garbage screen. It's still. It was a bad phone.

I might have to have LG send me another G6 because I just discovered I have a surprise, random hairline crack on the rear gorilla glass for no good reason. LG going to LG. That doesn't mean anything. The other guy's phones exploded. Like a tiny crack on the back is like not a thing. Tell me about Bixby. There's two things I want to know about for real.

The face unlock, which seems really cool but very insecure, and BigSuite. Okay, so starting with face unlock, because they're unrelated. Face Unlock is... You don't just look at the phone and a dog butler shows up. It's like, do you need help? Yet. The face unlock is yet another way to unlock your phone. You can look at it without having to put your fingerprint on it or it doesn't need to see your irises

or put in a pin and it will recognize your face and unlock. It sounds very similar to a feature Android has had since 2011 with ice cream sandwich, which was really kind of crappy at the time. It was very slow and insecure or unsecured. Insecure. It was unsure of it's like all of Android in time. It didn't quite know what it was going to be. It was a goth phase for Android.

Actually, 4.0 was like a very goth phase for Android. Yeah. That's good point. But Samsung says it's using a new engine that it developed. It's not using the standard Android feature. A shocking move from Samsung. Yeah. You know, I really think they built that in because the placement of the fingerprint

scanner sucks so much. Yeah. So they want you to forget about the fingerprint scanner and just use the face unlock because the face unlock is wildly convenient. Like, it's so fast. You can see in Deeter's video when he does a hands-on, it's literally like split second. It, like, screen wakes up. It sees your face and it's unlocked.

Like before you even have time to react and swipe the screen, it's already unlocked. So you almost never even see the lock screen. It's super convenient. It works at a comfortable distance. You pull the phone out of your pockets and unlocked. Samsung admits that it is not as secure of a unlock as a fingerprint, iris, pin, or passcode. Yeah. Like, you can't authenticate Samsung pay purchases with your face.

It won't even let you do that because it's not secure enough. It is purely a convenience thing. I think I'll probably use the hack out of it because I hate putting my pin code in, and I also kind of hate the location of that fingerprint scanner. So, but if it's a security thing, if you want the most secure way, the most secure way is to put like an alphanumeric password. on your phone, which nobody does. Well, I think Addy is...

Of course, Dieter does. Of course, Deeter does. But Deeter also has like a secondary hack where he doesn't need it or like another phone types it in for him when he enters a Macro. It's just a classic Deeter bone move, the double alpha-numeric security pro tip. Anyway, I hate you so much. I love you, man. That's why I tease.

But is that true? Who knows? I think Adi's writing a piece about the security of the face-in-lock. Because we're, not to go back to, like, airport security, but we are in a moment when people coming through TSA and DHS are, like, getting asked to unlock their phone or getting their phone search. Right. And if they can just point the phone at your face and unlock it, you're kind of fucking screwed. Right. It's not like, you know, a fingerprint's, like, one thing where they have to, like, actually physically force you to do something.

And there's, like, a legal argument over whether or not that's acceptable. But, like, if they can just take your phone and be like, and if they know that system is there and it does it, then, yeah, that's totally a valid concern. I can tell you that when we get review units in, the first thing I'm going to do is try and trick it with a printed image. Can a photo fool this? And I hope it can't, but we'll find out. Well, it would need to have some depth sensing. But it has autofocus. It must have some depth sensing.

It uses a front-facing camera. I'm sure there are... I know that Google eventually added algorithms to its face-unlock thing that looks for motion. So if you're blinking or your eyes are moving so that it doesn't get tricked by an image. But we'll find out. Maybe if I put a video up of myself talking. Or you take a print out of your face and you hold it over a mannequin head. Or a 3D print.

Or if we switch faces. As in the classic movie face off. I was going to say, Nick Cage can actually open any Galaxy S8. That's how it works. That's actually a great feature. Also, I just want to say this. I just want to admit to the audience and you guys. I super watched National Treasure 2 last night.

Oh, that's a great movie. Yeah. See, it's fine. It's fine. Now it's off my chat. So Bixby. Does Bixby know where the president's book of secrets is? If I knew anything...

By the way, Bixby definitely also sounds like a character that would be National Treasure 3. Yeah, if I knew anything about National Treasurer's plot and make a segue. What is wrong with you? Go home right now and watch... Don't you have children? You have a child. Yeah, but they're like young, man. They don't want to watch a crazy-ne-gating-case running room. This is how you introduced them to the richness of American history.

The rules about talking about Bixby... on the Verge cast are you must refer to it as a cute little terrier wearing shoes with a bow tie. And it is the sidekick to Skate's acetone. Skittles. Skittles, come on. Skittles acetone. Skittles acetone.

Who's in the roller derby. Ah, not skates again. One of our listeners, by the way, wrote like a thousand word fanfic story about their adventures. Oh, we got an email today about Skittles. Anyway, Bigsby. Yeah. So Bigsby the dog is Samsung's. spin on the virtual assistant.

It's answer to Siri and Google Assistant and Alexa and Cortana. But instead of being like a knowledge database, like all of those are, it is supposed to be something that helps you use your phone. And it's kind of a very vague way to express it, but there's a button on the side of the S8. There's an entire button dedicated to this feature that you push the button and you hold it and you talk to it like it's a walkie-talkie and you tell it things like send this picture to Neli and it knows what picture you're looking at and it like opens up a text message and it

puts in Nelai's contact info and it sends it off without having to type in things or it might be like you know turn the brightness down on my screen and it turns the brightness down all these like functions of stuff that you do on your phone that you might use the touchscreen for Bixby is supposed to allow you to do that with your voice at least that's the grand plan so let's reveal the secret of Bixby which is that it's a tiny dog it's a tiny No, it doesn't work right now. Yeah, so. Right, they haven't, they didn't demo it at the event.

So they didn't demo it at the event. We got to see some private demos of the voice actions working. So I saw someone, you know, they demoed me the controlling Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and brightness or doing things like sending messages and stuff like that. The essential problem is that it doesn't do very much now, period. Like even when you buy the phone on April 21st when it comes out, Bixby is going to be super limited. It's going to be stuck to to like 8 to 10 of Samsung's

own apps and that's it. And then they're going to be adding more app compatibility. Essentially apps have to be built to support Bixby. So the challenge of course is going to be getting third party apps to do this. Right. Which has never been a challenge that Samsung has been good at. Correct. Just look at all those wonderful apps for

Tyson. No, but that's like a A, first of all, getting Android developers to do anything is like very difficult. It's like Google was today they're like, hey, Android developers. these screens. All these tall screens are everywhere. Are you interested in that?

Android developers, like, no, basically. Well, I think it would be smart of Android developers to support those screens because those are the screens on the devices that people are actually going to buy. Yeah. And like, honestly, I have yet on the G6 anyway, I have yet to run into an app that's like, well, screw this. Like, even a bunch of the games, like, it works out fine. Like, they're already used to supporting a million different screen sizes, a slightly

taller screen size shouldn't break very many apps. Are you wearing AirPods right now? I am, yeah. Wow. How's it working? It's paired with Mac. It works fine in the office. If I try to move too fast or go anywhere that has any sort of loudness like the subway, I can't hear shit with them.

And they also fall out. But in the office, they're fine. Wait, you go ahead. I was going to say, the thing about Bixby is like the difference between it and Google Assistant is actually not as clear as Samsung would like us to believe, I think. they're like you know bixby's for controlling your phone and google's for doing google stuff but bixby also sets reminders and it also apparently can do stuff with wolf from alpha yeah they basically just didn't decide or didn't work out parent partnering with either google or bing and so they don't have the full assistant stuff yet and i doubt they would you know they will

um i feel like i think the plan is over time over time i think samsung actually does want bixby to take those other Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, blah, blah, blah, head on. They're just nowhere near being ready to do that yet. So they picked a feature set that was like justify its existence on the phone, and then later on we'll be able to build in that other stuff. I really do think they want to take them on. Well, sure, but I think the background here kind of like leads you to it. So it was there was the team that developed Siri, and they all went to work for Apple.

They sold Siri to Apple. then they hated working for Apple. They left and they started VIV, which was like their next voice assistant. And then Samsung bought VIV. So it's the same people who initially made Siri. No, you're wrong. No, Samsung built Bigsby in-house.

Really? It's a project that was running. Nothing yet. They're chilling? Technically, the acquisition I don't think is closed yet. So I don't think they're doing anything yet. My assumption is they just took VIV and made BigSpy. No, not at all.

Bixby is an in-house thing. And that's the reason that's, I think, Samsung really wants Bixby to be known now before VIV has gotten its hands into it. Because Samsung wants this impression that it can build good software services, and it can be a Google, a Microsoft, an Apple. And Bixby is an intelligent voice assistant that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning and all these other buzzwords that all the other companies talk about, but nobody thinks about it with Samsung.

And Samsung wants to be part of that conversation. And so that's why it is putting Bixby out now, even though it's very limited. That's why it announced Bixby before it announced the S8, because it wants to be that company that's more than just a company that makes products that run other people's platforms. Do they know that they named it Bixby? Do you want to hear the backstory and why it's named Bixby? Yes, I know that. DJ Coe has a tiny dog who loves wearing shoes. Also that.

It's multiple reasons. Oh, no, I got in the shoes again. One of them will not surprise you at all. they focus tested a bunch of names and Bixby tested really well with millennials for whatever reason. Wait, was that the one that wasn't supposed to surprise me? Yeah, yeah, that doesn't surprise you.

Sam's like, of course, they're going to focus test everything. No, I meant to use the millennials. Millennials. Like, I really like the names. Bixby. Yeah, that sounds like our friend. It's like vaguely British, right? It does seem kind of vaguely British.

They say that it's a good, phonetically, it's good for computers to pick up the audible sound because it's a unique word. It's like Alexa. It's got an X. Exactly. And then this might be the stretch,

but they also gave the reason that, if you think of it metaphorically as Bixby being the bridge between Samsung the hardware company and Samsung, the software and services company, it wants to be. Bigsby is that bridge, and there's an actual bridge in California called Bixby Canyon Bridge. No, it's, no.

It's remarkably dorky. Hey, look, don't shoot the messenger. Wait a minute, wait, wait, wait a minute. They are copying Apple and naming products after California landmarks. No, they just typed Bigspee into Google and they're like, oh, good, it's a bridge. And also, nobody else has used this, so we're clear on rights. Yeah, MacOS Bigspee was not on the whiteboard. I mean, look, I think the Bigspe stuff is really interesting.

I mean, the part of it that they're able to execute and bring their full visual room. The camera search part of it, where the camera search is now a system-level feature of the phone. I am shocked no one has ever done that before. Right. Like, Amazon has. It was called Firefly. It was on the wildly popular fire phone. Amazon said it before.

In fact, if you have Google Assistant on your phone and you open up the camera app and open Google Assistant at the same time, it'll use computer vision and Google goggles features right in Google Assistant. So it's not an entirely original feature. It's a feature that... It only takes like 15 different weird key combination. Yeah, yeah. No, it's Google.

But it's something that nobody thinks about because nobody really is asking for it. Or, you know, like, I don't know what the practical use of that is other than I want to buy something and I don't know how to type in a search box. Like, the only things that Amazon, or excuse me, Samsung's really shown is that you can use it to find something to buy on Amazon, or you can use it to find similar images on Pinterest. And you can use it to, like, look up a wine bottle label and landmarks. So, like, if you point it at the Empire State Building, it'll recognize that.

I just think we're clearly entering a world in which enhanced cameras are more and more part of the fabric of everything, whether it's just Snapchat filters or whether it's, Facebook's copies of Snapchat filters. Yes, he has Snapchat filters in its camera up. Of course it does. Are you kidding? Do you think Samson is going to resist that? They're like, come on, do it.

But the idea that you can point your camera at something and it will return a result to you, and we have lived in a world full of QR codes for the longest time, and everyone's like, what am I supposed to- Oh, Big Speake can reads QR codes. That's what I mean? That might be its most important feature.

Like, it makes the world understandable to you about having to download like red laser or whatever the hell it is. So, I don't know. I think that part's neat. I'm more interested in the future Bixby vision if they're able to pull it off. What they really want to do is connect all of their various products, whether it's a washing machine or a refrigerator, a TV, a phone, a watch, or whatever, with this Bixby.

And they want to use that as the link between them. And if they're able to pull all that off, that might be really super interesting to me. But that's the part of Samsung. They put out the Wi-Fi router, Samsung Connect. No, it's the Samsung Connect home, right, Deeder? And then the protocol is called Samsung Connect or the platform is called Samsung Connect. app at Samsung Connect, yeah. That's the part to me where it's like this shit isn't around in a year.

Like you're buying a Samsung router a year from now, it's not getting from our updates anymore. Well, Samsung Connect is essentially a rebranding of Smart Things. And Smart Things is a very good smart home platform. It's one of the, you know, as far as smart home platforms go, which are not great. But it's one of the better ones. Yeah, the AirPods failed. And then they came back and then Skype said, hey, there's some AirPods here. We're going to take control of your entire system audio.

And then everything just went to shit. So, Deere, we were talking about Samsung Connect. Oh, yeah, okay. So my theory is it a year from now, like, smart things will be around. That's fine. But these Wi-Fi routers are just, they're just nonsense. I mean, the Wi-Fi routers are, like, taking advantage of the hype of Ero and mesh and whatever. But like this.

I don't see this taking advantage of anything. This is what routers are now, and Samsung makes routers. Yeah. End of story. I think Samsung is clever to have tied it to Connect and their Smart Things system. They're also clever to have built in Zigby and Z-Wave and all the other. crap. Like, I'm actually,

but that's smart things. No, I know. But this is the first, like, we, nobody wants a freaking smart things hub in their house. It's like annoying and dumb. You want it built into your Apple TV or your home speaker, smart speaker, or your Wi-Fi router. And Samsung just built it into the Wi-Fi router, which is where it belongs.

It's where it's always belonged. And literally nobody else has done, like done it as simply. and cleanly and connected it to software that you actually might really use. Ironically, that was the... I'm actually really impressed with that. Yeah, it was a pitch of Google On Hub like two years ago and Google just never executed on it.

Well, it's because they... The On Hub team, like, walked over to the Nest campus and the Nest people killed them. Matt Rogers just took him out one by one. Very politely. Because Matt Rogers is very nice person. I always feel bad because, like, on a day like this, like we have a culture section.

I believe the culture section published 20 stories. yesterday, but like Samsung News just dominated the site. But did you watch any of this? Do you pay attention to it? No, not really. I use an iPhone. I don't care. There's nothing that can get you to switch from an iPhone, not a giant screen, not a dog butler voice assistant. You know what I like about the iPhone is that I can name my conversations in chats and I like being able to share location. I message lock in. I like, I message. Also like I like going on vacation and all I need is Wi-Fi to talk to people. You can do all of this. You can do all of this on Android, FYI. I hate Android though and I'm not going to use it.

Who. That is. That's fair. That's totally fair. Megan is at Megan underscore Nicolette on Twitter. I know you can, but I'm not going to. Like, I realize these features are not that special and they're available elsewhere, but I like them on my iPhone.

Yeah. I think that's like the hardest thing for these companies to get over is that you can make a strong argument right now that what is happening with Android is far more innovative and interesting than anything is happening. I mean, you get better battery life. You got a better screen. You can have better cameras. Like literally the hardware. has surpassed the iPhone in almost every measurable way.

But it doesn't matter because the iPhones is good enough on all those fronts, and then it locks you in with iMessage and other features. But also, like, I will be the first to admit I'm not super tech savvy, so it's like I don't need a lot of the fancy features. Like, the most things I take pictures of it with my camera are myself. So I don't really care if it's like... The GalaxyS8 has an 8 megapixel auto-focused front-facing camera. I think I totally agree with you.

You both just went for it. I totally agree with you, Megan. but there are things that you could appreciate, I'm sure, like better battery life. For sure. Faster charging. Easier ways to charge your phone. All this other, like, day-to-day stuff that's not, like, a nerdy spec battle type of thing. But it doesn't matter because, you know, people are willing to put up with the iPhone's battery life.

Yeah. Yeah. I think the real question for Apple is, like, they're going to redesign this phone in September. Everyone's expecting him. I would imagine it's going to look a lot like this phone. It's not going to, like, hurt them at all that they... There's not like a lot, there's not a world in which Apple can push the hardware design of the phone much farther than Samsung just pushed it. Yeah.

It'll be interesting to see what happens. Because if they do, if it does look like an S8, that means they're sourcing their displays direct from Samsung anyways. I don't think Apple will ever do a curve screen. Yeah. But like the curved screen, it's a Samsung signature, but it actually solves a real problem in that people don't want to have a big phone, but they want to have a bigger screen. And the curved screen is what enables Samsung to put a bigger screen. But isn't Apple's move? It's going to be hide everything under.

It's going to be to get rid of the bezels and hide everything under the screen itself. Yeah, but something's going to hold the screen in place, right? Like, I mean, I'm not an engineer. I don't know. It's aluminium. But they've been riding the same design for three years. Obviously, they're going to do something crazy and different this year. But, you know, if you look at things like the GeoMeMeMeX, which is a phone that has almost no bezels around it

and does not have curved sides, it's a very difficult phone. to handle because you can't really hold it without touching the screen. It's also a very big phone because in order to hide everything, they had to make it a bigger screen so there's more room to hide the stuff underneath behind it. So there's a lot of ergonomic and practical challenges with doing that. I don't know, but they have aluminum. Are you going to spend $750 in this phone? Maybe. I mean, the answer is yes. Almost all of us are, that's the thing that we do here. You're over here with my iPhone 5S chugging along with its terrible battery life. Dude, you just like dissed in a Drake song, too.

You're like, the side chick has a five-ass with a crack screen. It's actually me. What's he like? There are worse things they like to be a Drake's side-christ. By the way, this is a very unpopular opinion. I'm just going to say this. I got in a big fight with Micah Singleton and Nicola Fumo the other day about it. I think More Life is not good.

I think it sounds like a bunch of New Order reject B-sides. Wow. Yeah, that's where I'm at. I can't believe you still have your entire face attached. Nicola, Micah, here's how this conversation went. Micah took a very professorial tone with me and told me that he was going to teach me all about Grime. Nicola was like, how dare you?

That's how that conversation went with me. Anyway, we got to let you go. Sure. We got to yell about the internet. I'm going to read an ad. Megan, I want you to come back and talk about Ghost in the Shell in Percena 5. And then Jake will be here and we'll talk about this internet stuff. Bye, Dan.

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I know. I didn't stumble once. I didn't use any swear words. Buy the glasses. Buy the fucking glasses. There it is. There they are. I need you to spend longer screwing that ad up because I was going to try and get my AirPods working again.

I did. I did. All right. And now they're broken again. So, Megan, we don't have a gadgetorial this week because we have no Paul. We have no Ashley. But we have you. And I want you to talk about persona five, which you were obsessed with.

I was at South by Southwest. And we were like having our big team dinner at the end. And I was talking to Chris Plant. And like, there was a beep on his phone. He forwarded something to you. And Megan was like, this better be a fucking persona. Five invite. It was like a hostile moment between the two of you at the end of a very good week. But tell me about this game.

Okay. Persona 5 is fucking incredible. It's so good. Okay, so to give some background on the persona series, it's basically a mix of like a dungeon caller combined with like a social sim game. Persona 5 itself is just incredibly deep. So essentially you are a teenager living in Japan who by day is just like a normal kid. You go to school. You hang out with your friends. and then sort of by night you go and fight evildoers kind of. But the way they do it is that you find people who have really, who are bad people who have like distorted desires,

and then you break into a physical manifestation of those desires. They're called palaces. Okay. So for example, the first palace is a pervy high school gym teacher who considers himself to be, I know, you're giving me a look. There's a lot going on here. So this guy considers himself to be kind of like a lord of the school. He abuses students.

It's, like, really terrible. So you break in and you're trying to, like, steal his treasure to get him to confess his crimes and punish him. But the good thing about this game besides... So an easy concept that can be explained to anyone. Well, exactly. There's, like, a lot I have to, like, explain before I can be like, here's why it's good, though. That's the basic premise. You're a part of this group called the Phantom Thieves.

But the game is just good because, like, aside from those dungeon crawling moments, which are really good, the game is gorgeous. The dungeons are interesting. There's a lot of good action when you actually get enough. fights, but there's also just a lot of emphasis on, like, enjoying your life as a kid. So you spend a lot of time going to class or hanging out with friends. I know, it's the most mundane thing. Didn't we have this conversation last week about how all games now are about exactly what you would do in your regular day?

Exactly. No, and I think I like kind of mention this. Like there's, I don't know, sometimes you take the train in to go to school and sometimes you get like a seat on the train. And like, we live in New York, right? Like, I rode the train to get here. I got a seat. I was like, oh, this cool, whatever.

When it happens to me, in persona five, it's like the best day. I'm just like, oh shit, I'm going to read this book. It's going to be great. But yeah, it's just the game manages to gamify like really strange little moments and actually make it really enjoyable. Because if you get the chance to sit down and like read a book on the subway, it means that you can potentially open up a new spot or improve on your social stats. And that's cool.

You're shaking your head. I just feel like I want to develop an app that gamifies actual events in your real life. I think they have. I think those exist. I think those exist already. Like that's, that's Pokemon Go, man. Don't you see little creatures everywhere you go? I got to get back into video games in a serious way,

and every time we talk about these games that involve me simulating my life, I feel very confused about the entire situation. It's like imagine being a teenager, but being able to live the best version of your life, being able to improve yourself the way you look, the way you talk to girls, whatever. Invading people's dreams. Normal teenagers.

Stealing their treasure so they confess their pervy crimes. Yeah, it's like essentially the dream of being like, a special kid who lives in otherwise normal life, but another way's perfect life, right? Okay, I'm into it. Okay, the game is about 100 hours, so. A hundred hours? Okay, wait, but I feel like

life does not move as fast as you think. Sorry, Jake, go ahead. Is that actual playtime? That's not like on the box. By the way, everybody, Jake has an actress is here. Oh, hey, this is Jake. What's going on? Jake is here. I just walked in.

He's like, y'all talking about persona? Was there a persona one through four? Yes. Okay. Were they all this weird? Yes, I would say the older ones are actually weirder because they were still kind of like working at the Kings. Simberstone itself is a spinoff of a really weird series called Shimagami Tensei, which is like a lot of like demon fighting and there are a lot of like weird. It's like a demon that just is like a giant dick. It's actually in this game.

Yeah. When you say the demon is like a giant dick, do you just mean the demon is an asshole? Because I think demon covers that or do you mean that more literally? No, I mean like you can actually find photos of it online. Like it's essentially a monster that just looks like a huge way. Okay. When I was a teenager, I definitely thought to myself, I'd like to break into someone's dreams and kill a huge penis. Those were the best version. I'd like to put another hundred hours. Those are still my dreams. That's where you are, which generally. That sounds fast. I mean, like, the reviews of this game have been off the charts. Yeah. I mean, the game itself is really good. It's very good, yeah. The game itself is just really deep. Like, it's just very thought out and everything. Like, the way it looks, the way it plays, like everything is so detailed in a way that I don't think a lot of games do very well. So I should put 100 hours into this.

At least. What platform is this? It's PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. That is garbage. I know. This game should be on the switch. If you're going to give you a 100-hour game that isn't like that graphically intense, is it that graphically intense? It looks pretty good.

It plays on the PS3. It can't be that insane. Fair point. Let me play it on the switch. No, I totally agree with you. Actually, Persona 4, they ported it over to Vita and it's really nice because it very much is like a pickup and go kind of game. because the game progresses over the course of a year

you have actual calendar days and a day can be you go to school you come home, you like read a book and then you go to bed so it is very much like you could play a day and just turn it off. Right. That just sounds like every day.

But it's in a video game. There have been times in this description where I can't tell if you're talking about yourself or what you do in the game. You're like yeah, on the subway I get really excited. I'm like, I'm still confused. In my regular day,

I wish I could find time to read it. book. That would be really nice. Yeah, well, like I said, it is just like this, video games are power fantasies, right? And this one is a little bit more tame because half of the power fantasy is just like, if I read a book, I could improve my charm. Like, it is the idea that like you can put points to making yourself better or doing things in your life, like building your relationships and actually achieve your goals. So it's just very satisfying in that way.

Think about like a farming sim, but it's with relationships. Is this, does the game, so the game does have an ending. It's not like animal. It does have an ending. No, no, it definitely has an ending. Yeah, you kill all the perves. You kill, basically. It's not raw. It's naturally going.

Isn't there some big controversy about Switchports, though, like taking a huge amount of space or, like, downloading a thing? I think we wrote about it. I thought, well, there was also something about how, like, the memory cards, or the game cards that, for bigger games, I guess, cost more money at the factory. And so it seems like they're all trying to, like, use download. or something as a way to save. Because the Switch has a limited amount of storage space.

It's a very small. Yeah. So we wrote about it this week that like ports of Switch games in particular require massive amounts of space on the Switch as downloads. It's like, we'll see. I played with the Switch for a while this week because it's in the office now, like all hooked up to the TV real nice. Oh.

And every time I walk by, I'm like, oh, it's real colorful. Well, good news. This game is not on the Switch for that specific reason, I guess. Yeah. No, it's just interesting. I think the Switch moment with Zelda is, like, very high. But then the Switch being a console that other games like this might be on, that road seems a lot bumpier going from.

Nintendo's plan to have, have, like, what is it, an indie game a week? Like, that sounds really appealing if they can pull that off and get, like, legitimately good games and not, like, weird cell phone ports. Like, because that's what I want from games right now. I feel like the indie game scene is way more interesting than the, mainstream console hits. And that's the kind of thing that I would like to play, like, portably. I mean, I will say with the Switch,

I'm definitely in the moment where I could go and just finish Zelda right now, and I'm trying not to because I'm just trying to milk as much out of it as I can before, like, it's over. And then I have to switch to, like, whatever the next game on the Switch is, because I don't know what that's going to be. Yeah. I guess it'll be Master Blaster. Or you could buy a PS4 and Persona 5.

Yeah. I do have a. PS4. I'm thinking about Persona 5, but I don't know if I want to spend 100 hours invading the subconscious of pervy gym teachers like that. I mean, I would say that's not even half of the game because there's just so much other stuff to do. So it's like if you like, there's pervy math teachers and pervy jocks. That's just the real world. She's laughing because it's true. That's just like me on my way to work today, like getting harassed. Pervy math teachers everywhere. No, I definitely I think it's worth checking out. There's a lot to do besides just the actual like dungeon stuff.

Like the thing is like you can kind of customize the game to do whatever you want, right? So like if you want to spend all your time going through dungeons, you can ignore all the side stuff and the relationship stuff. You don't have to, but you'd be missing out of the experience. Yeah. Okay. So then there's one more thing I want you talk about before Jake and I start screaming about internet privacy. Ghost and the shell. You saw it. I did. Yeah. This movie mired in controversy. But you said earlier you think it's like fun-ish. So yeah, the controversy, I guess, has been, not a guess. Like, the controversy has been about whitewashing the lead, right?

So it's Scrowhansson, which is not obviously the case in the original. If you put all that aside, and I want to for a second, because without getting into the plot, they sort of address it, and I think they try really hard to, like, explain their way around it, and then it's like a jump and a face plant because they present an interesting idea that don't actually do a good job doing anything with that idea. And that's all I'll say about that. The movie itself, though, is not bad, like as an action film. It's pretty enjoyable. It's gorgeous. It's pretty fast moving for like a two-hour movie. I just saw Atomic Blonde at South by Southwest, and that's the last action movie I saw it in my head. I kind of compared him. And it's like I loved Atomic Blonde, but like, man, it really does drag in the middle. I was like, like, really interested in the entire time. The plot is not the deepest or most interesting, but also like keeps you hooked enough and keeps you interested enough to like make you want to see what happens.

Yeah. I think my question about this movie is so much of the end. anime has been ripped off. It's like a Eddie Van Halen guitar solo. Like you go back, like so much of that got ripped off that you go back and listen to it, it sounds like cliche now. Do they avoid that trap? Because like so much of it has been expressed in every other kind of movie. I compared it to like The Matrix in when I was writing about one of the trailers and a bunch

of commenters told me I was a complete idiot. And they're like, why, you know, like this predated The Matrix. Like, what are you talking about? these ideas were around, which like sort of excites me because I feel like there are interesting things that they could do with it and I haven't seen the anime. But it sounds like maybe this is not actually evolved upon the ideas that were presented in the original. I think it's like a mishmash of the anime as in like the show and both movies. That being said, I haven't actually watched it. So like the Verge team went to go see it. It was a mix of people who were familiar like Kwame,

who wrote the review and people who weren't like me. So to me, coming in as a fresh viewer, I think I've seen like two episodes of the anime, standalone complex. It all seemed pretty novel and interesting. But like even just looking at screenshots, like there's stuff that they've taken like bit for bit from that previous work. Yeah. I mean, the last Scarlett-Jansen action movie I saw. It's like Lucy.

Yeah. I just saw Lucy because of my tendency to watch terrible television every night to escape the news. Lucy is a fucking awful movie. Like, it starts out fine. and then it like just takes this like weird bad turn and you were describing this as like a jump in a face plant and lucy just faceplants and like i'm wondering is this like her is just like the problem with her movies like is it just the nature of action movies that like have this particular theme to them like i don't know it's like lucy she wants to be an action star like you can tell she keeps making action movies i mean i don't think she wants to be one i think she is one sure it's like it's basically like if you look at what she's done before like Kwame put it really well where he was like, this is Ghost in the Shell by way of Marvel's Black Widow and Lucy.

So it's not the deepest or most like thinking man's version of Ghosts in the Shell, but like it is still a good action movie. And she does do a good job. Like I would say there's some stuff that falls kind of short. There's one thing that threw me off like in the movie. She walks in this really weird robotic awkward way. And obviously like the idea is that well,

she doesn't feel at home in her own body. So of course she looks a little awkward, but also she is like, she's the major, right? Like she is leading a task force. But her acting sometimes falls like a little flat kind of because, again, she's a robot. That being said, like, Scarlet Johansson, I think is an excellent action star. Yeah.

No, I guess what I agree with you. She is one. She's like plays action roles. She's an action star. She's the cast her in this movie because she's going to sell tickets as an action star, right? Like that much is clear. What I mean by she wants to be one is like she has this aspiration to elevate the form because she is talented. sells tickets

and it's like both of this, like Lucy and this movie that wall the hit of like conceptualization falling flat like that's the thing that links them together. And like Black Widow in all the Marvel movies like just literally

it's like formless like you can throw any idea on the Black Widow and it gets it helps the Marvel movies continue their plot but as like a character that exists is like it just I don't know like that's like the thing particularly with Black Widow, I think that's a criticism I hear all the time. Like, whatever it needs the plot to move forward.

Like, she'll fall in love with any of them. And, like, I'd like to see her just do the thing that I think we want her to do, which is conceptually carry a movie forward. Yeah. I don't think this is the movie that does that. It doesn't do that? Do they make her do the thing that they make too many female action stars do, which is, like, do the leg take down?

They, like, spin around somebody and wrap your legs around their head and throw them. She does that as Black Widow like four times a movie. Yeah, that's like Black Widow's like main takedown movie. She spends a lot of time punching people and shooting people, but I don't recall her taking anybody down with her legs. That's great. That's really good news.

Yeah, it's a win. I'm going to see this Ghost and the Show movie. I don't know if I can commit 100 hours per son of five. I'm breaking my damn hour. But two hours for Ghosts the Show. It's a fun action movie that has some deep-rooted problems. Some deep-rooted cultural problems. Yeah.

I think that part's going to be really interesting. Just reading our very contentious comment threads about it. And having talked to Kwameen here how they address it in the movie sounds totally insane. It's not good. And not really thought through. Faceplant. Yeah. Right.

Which don't want to, I guess, spoil it anything. But it sounds like they could have addressed it better. I think the idea they're going for is interesting, but it is very much how you finish off that thought. And they don't really finish it, right? They're just like, what if this? And then that's it. There's like no ending to it. Do you think it would have been better

if they had just not touched on it in the movie or would that have made it worse? I can appreciate that I think that they tried to and that maybe there was a little bit more thought put into it. But again, like if you are going to do the thing, like you need to figure out a way to do it right, otherwise you almost make it worse. Was it like shoehorned in?

Like they clearly realized, oh, there's a controversy. We should need to throw some lines. in here. I don't think so because I think the film was probably written far before it was cast. Yeah, but they had to know. I mean, I'm sure they knew. The question is, did they care? The answer is probably no. Obviously not. This episode of the Vergecast is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Are you hiring? Do you know where to post your job to find the best candidates? Posting your job in one place isn't enough to find quality candidates. If you want to find the perfect hire, you need to post your job in all the top

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One more time to try ZipRecruiter for free, go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Verge. Hi, Vergecast, listeners. I'm Kara Swisher, the host of Recode Decode. If you like the Vergecast, I think you'll like the episode of Recode Decode where I interviewed Tim Simons, Matt Walsh, and David Mandel from HBO's beep. We talked about everything from virtual reality to deleting Twitter to how the show is reacting to President Trump. Give it a listen and then leave us a review.

Five stars, please. Find Recode Decode wherever you found this show. We're on iTunes, Google Play, SoundCloud, and more. See you there. Jake has been doing all of the FCC reporting lately at the verge. I've been doing a lot of FCC reports. And I've been pretending to do it on the side by asking Jake to do it for me. You have the show notes, which I like because I will write a thing and it will be long and, you know, let's be real, a little boring.

And then you'll just basically swear a bunch on the page. Yeah. It works. And that's the fun version of it. And so I enjoy reading that a lot. But Jake is doing actually all the work. Let's be very clear. I'm writing the angry polemics about the FCC on the side.

But a bunch of stuff happened with the FCC recently. And like we can go through it all. But the big one is this privacy move that happened in Congress. You want to walk us through it? Yeah. So after the net neutrality rules passed in 2015, the FCC, yeah, the FCC got up in charge of privacy for internet providers. So last year, they passed these privacy rules. They go through the whole process. They put it up for a proposal. They get comments. They vote on it. They vote on it again.

Then it's October. They passed the privacy rules for good. They're like, okay, they're going to go into effect next year. Then Donald Trump becomes president. So Congress now is a chance to reverse the rules. They did that this week. And so now there were these privacy rules that we're going to do a lot of things, most notably, prevent internet providers from sharing your web browsing history without your permission. And that's not going to happen because Congress didn't like it. They thought it was too confusing. They thought it was unfair. And we're just a signature away by Trump from the rules being dead. And the White House is clearly signaling today, I think. Yeah, they've put a statement. You know, Trump's advisors suggest that he sign it, Spicer.

came on today and was Oh, he had a statement today. Yeah, he said Yesterday he had no idea what he was talking about. Yes, and so he came back today with the clarification. He said, this will allow service providers to be treated fairly and consumer protection and privacy concerns to be reviewed on an equal playing field. Sure. Okay. Yeah. So there is one nuance to this that we should actually

probably be clear about. We have been talking about this privacy thing in sort of a shorthand of saying ISPs can share your browsing data without your permission, which that shorthand is a little bit

vague insofar as it doesn't look like I can go to Comcast and say, I would like to buy Jake's browsing history. How much? Right, right. Yeah. What is it precisely that they

are able to share without like, you know, getting in trouble. I mean, the thing is they're not going to do that because that would open up a whole host of problems for everyone. Yeah, it would be insane. And we know that insane things never happen in this world. Yes, that's true. I mean, the thing is that the rules are actually kind of unclear.

Me and Russ are looking into this right now. The thing is, these privacy rules, there are, in fact, still privacy laws on the books. Yeah. But they're vague and they're confusing and they're meant for phone companies. And they've been applied to Internet providers. and these rules are meant to clarify it and say what exactly they can do with your web browsing data. But instead of having that clarification, we now have nothing. So can they share specific people's privacy or web browsing history?

Probably not by name. Or maybe they could under certain circumstances. It's just entirely unclear. What's actually going to happen is that they can now use this stuff to build really hyper-specific profiles of use. to then, you know, target ads to you. And that's still pretty unsettling because your web browsing history is exceptionally revealing, and that's going to then get combined with data they can buy from, you know, other things that'll say, you know, first of all, a lot of these internet providers also know your, you know, your TV viewing habits.

They also know what you do on the phone. And then they can talk to data brokers and get even more information about what you're buying, you know, from physical stores and so on. forth. And we were going to have this chance to give consumers the opportunity to opt into this instead of having to opt out or have no say whatsoever, but that's just gone now. And we're basically trusting internet providers to behave. Which I don't at all. Right. I mean, the problem here is like this, the line that they keep using is that, you know, the consumer will express their preferences in favor of privacy and our privators will behave.

But consumers never pick privacy. They never pick it. It's not even that. It's not even that consumers never pick privacy, which is a thing that is worth saying. It's that when it comes especially to landline

internet, the idea that consumers are able to pick at all is a farce because in most places there's only one, maybe two viable high-speed broadband providers to choose from. Right. Yeah. I don't even, I completely agree.

It's not even fair to say that there is an option or that, you know, there could be some sort of competition because there's just not, right? In my apartment building, I have one option, and it's the one provider that comes to me. I could, like, maybe try to cajole my landlord into letting me put a satellite on a roof. have, the competition that you have actually that the FCC points to now is, well, you can get mobile. Right. But like, there's only four of those and they're all going to do it too. And I would, it's going to be really fun watching Netflix with my, you know, six gigabyte data cap.

Yeah. Like, that's not going to work. Well, actually, you know, they could zero rate it and give me four AP video or something. That's what you want. Yeah, that's what I want from my home. Yeah. So it's like, it's just this very, you know, we were this close to having these rules. They were literally, they were passed, they were reviewed, they were okayed.

And now, you know, it's internet providers. They are the ones who are fighting against this. There's not really anybody else who's excited about it. And, you know, it's true there are, you know, Facebook and Google, they do have this dominance in advertising right now online. They have dominance and targeted online ads. But the stuff they're doing, internet providers have always been able to do. Internet providers were not actually losing anything that put them in a worse position than Facebook or Google. They're just being lazy and going, oh, hey, you're already giving us your web browsing history.

By browsing the web on our pipes. Right. So we may as well take it and we may as well turn it into another business and make even more money off. of you, which is why it's so frustrating, right? Because you're paying them to deliver data to you. You're not, you know, it's not assumed that they're then going to take that and target more ads to you and make a second think of money off of you. You're already paying them. And, you know, right, there's something to say about some idealistic free market, da-da-da-da thing here. But that's not what consumers understand that they're buying. Yeah. It's not like internet providers are hurting here.

They're just not making as much money as they can. So over the course, because I want to be clear, Jake has been doing a lot and lot of FCC reporting over the past few months. Over the course of that, where does this rank in terms of like, because there's a lot going on with these guys right now. Like this one to me, the amount of outrage that was generated up leading to the House vote in particular, and then after the House vote, I don't know, it was surprising. It certainly didn't change any, like, legislature, like, minds.

I mean, it's like, there's a lot, right? Yeah, I mean, this is definitely. I mean, they just squeaked it over the line. They got 2.15. They really did. And the thing is, they rushed this through, right? Like, I was talking to people in the House, and they were like, oh, my God, wait, it's happening tomorrow. Yeah.

You know, they pushed this through because they knew it was getting, especially people didn't really know it was coming. And then after the Senate votes, you have a bunch of headlines saying the Senate just voted to let Internet providers share your web browsing history without permission. People freak out, right? And so then there's pressure on the House and so they just rush it through. And this is more than anything that the FCC has done so far, this is, I think, generated the most pushback because people understand how this affects them. Yeah. This is bad. Everybody knows that they visit websites that they would probably, you know, not broadcast to the world.

if possible. That's really personal information. The other stuff is a lot nerdier. It's like about broadband deployment. Or it's about like the administration of subsidy programs. And these things do have really big impacts. Like the Lifeline program is, you know, there are some restrictions on it right now,

which means that there are fewer people getting, you know, fewer low-income households getting subsidized broadband than there should be. That's hard to get people as outraged about because it's hard to put into like a quick little bite-sized thing. This privacy thing is the first, I think, really, really big thing that people are going to feel. Because this is net neutrality being chipped back in a very big way. Yeah. Well, not not neutrality, Title II.

Yes, yes. Right. So then there's the reclassification as common carriers under Title II and then all the additional power the FCC had. because of that. So that's that first reclassification. What's weird is the rhetorical dance that they're doing. They're saying we don't need these rules because Title II already provided for those rules. And then the next thing they're going to do is undo Title II.

Yeah. Well, that's – and this is the thing we're watching for now, right? Because the chairman of the FCC has said again and again, he thinks Seto 2 was a mistake. In a statement after Congress finished its vote here, he said, I still think the best thing to do. would be to return privacy oversight to the FTC, which, you know, implies he wants to undo Title II. The question is, can he do that? Does he, like, feel like battling it out politically for a year? We don't know.

He definitely wants to. The question is, you know, how difficult it will be for him, how will we go about doing it? I'm not sure that Congress is going to try just because they couldn't agree on health care. Yeah. I mean, that's like different, right? I mean, I can see them trying. I think what they're not excited about is the, they know, they know the outcry that Net Neutrality got in 2015.

They felt it, right? Like the FCC switchboard crashed, which is hilarious because they control the communication that works in the country. It's like amazing irony there. So they know that there's like popular opinion. They probably are feeling the heat from this privacy thing. So the question is, are they going to do the next one? But Pai just seems like that's what he wants.

Yeah. It's his dream, which is weird because it in many ways conflicts with his stated goal, which everyone agrees with, which is like, we need more broadband all over the country. And I think what he's thinking is if it's more profitable to build networks, people will go and build networks. Right. I think that's probably true. I mean, the question is, though, right, if he starts doing undoing the Title II proceeding, that's going to be his focus for like a year. And that's a lot of time that he could be spending

building out rural broadband under rules that are already in place and that people already understand. Yeah. By the way, that is my entire emotion about this whole situation, right? It was fine. The broadband companies were all making a lot of fucking money.

They weren't doing badly, and they were happy to invest in things like 5G. They were doing the work. Yeah. I mean, they still are. Yeah. Like, that's the thing. They keep saying that, oh, this has killed investment.

It's so horrible. The thing is, they're still investing in huge amounts. There was like a slight dip in 2015, but then last year it was back up again. And again, we were even talking about broadband investment is not the only way to measure the success of internet providers. But investment is just important for Pi and the FCC, right? Because what matters to them is that

broadband spreads to the United States. So that's the metric that they're looking at. But the thing is, as long as these companies are making a ton of money, and they are making a ton of money, they're going to try to get new subscribers. They're going to keep building other networks. And there's some

weird disconnect here where internet providers keep saying, oh, there's this regulatory uncertainty because everybody is suing over the Title II rules, but in fact, they're the ones that are suing over it. And it's like if everybody just chilled out, we would have these really firm rules in place. Everything would be super clear about what's going on. Yeah. To be super blunt, they all thought Hillary was going to win. Yes. Their businesses were not about to fail when the entire country was under the delusion that Hillary would win. Their businesses aren't in jeopardy now. They just could make more money now.

And I think that's like a really, there's a dangerous road we go down where the biggest broadband providers all control media companies as well, and they prioritize their own media companies. And I think that's actually a danger left or right. Well, and that's the, that brings it all back to the privacy thing, right? Because they have these media companies. Those media companies rely on ads. And they also get more information about what you're browsing and what you're reading, tie it in together with what these internet. subscribers are browsing and you have these hyper-targeted ads on these websites supported by these things. It's going to be really interesting to see how that plays out and it's like not

all that exciting, but this integration keeps happening. You just had a video go up earlier today that was tracking how all of the big internet providers have been creating these integrations. Verizon is the really big one. I think we need to write the Verizon story. I didn't actually like, I did it in this video, but Verizon buying a bunch of ad tech from AOL and then doing their cookies and then not at, like, I probably worked for Verizon. The dude, I mean, it was a long time. It was like 15 years ago, but he spent two years as Verizon's lawyer. And I bet he was like, ah, this is super annoying. And now he's like walking. I mean, it's just, it's wild. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that's it. We ended on a really dower note with this FCC stuff.

I'm sorry. More to come. I mean, it's like, It was really depressing yesterday. I was really down at the end of, well, I guess it was two days ago now, when this vote was taken. Because it came so close. It really was. I watched the votes come in on that shay-see-season-stead. You're like, oh, wait, maybe there's a chance. And it's like, there wasn't, there never was.

No, they squeaked it over the line. If one more Republican had gone the other way, but they literally squeaked it over the line at 2.15. And a bunch, and like, what, is 14-15 Republicans voted against? Yeah, yeah, they got a bunch against. a few abstaining, I think. It was pretty close. I feel like they only needed to flip like five people or something like that.

It was not much, which I think shows how passionately people care about this. I mean, we cover this. There are people on the Donald subreddit flipping out about this. Bright part. Bright part.

Right, right. Comments. Super against it. Here's a weird thing that means nothing, and it's a Twitter engagement stat, so it means less than nothing. When I tweet our stories

about NetNutriarchs, internet privacy, it's like thousands of retweets in the first few hours. Like people desperately want to know about this stuff and care about it. And I think we all do ourselves this disservice of pretending that people don't care. But the second it's out and you're like, Comcast is going to do a thing. Disclosure, Comcast, Fox, the listeners know, whatever. The whole disclosure is that Comcast is a minority investor in Box Media, which unsuborge. I can't like just like shade over it.

So take that for what it's worth. But people don't trust Comcast. People don't trust AT&T. They know they have, after years and years of poor service and high prices and rising prices, they know better than to trust their ISPs. And when you say to them, your ISPs are about to do something shady. They want to communicate that out with as many people as they can because they're afraid of it and they don't know how to stop it. And I think this is just one of those moments. You know, I think whatever you think of the Trump administration, they came in with this, we're going to

fix it all for the common person theme, and siding with broadband companies and ISPs does not feel like that. And it's, I think this Title II thing will get in the way of that. No, this is like a very clear instance of siding with huge businesses that people feel like have been screwing them over for a decade plus, if not longer. Right. Nobody has a great experience with these companies. They only, They don't show up on time. They overcharge you. They bill you for bizarre things.

They make you rent weird equipment that you maybe don't need. Yeah. Nobody is in love with Comcast. There's an inherent distrust, like you're saying. I definitely tried to start the end of this, the end of the show by being like, that was depressing. And then we just got, more depressing. Speaking of depressing.

Like last week, we ended in, like, dog in shoes. And this week, it's like the internet's over. Like, drew those pictures and tweeted nice things at us. Yeah. I want to remember that right now. send us a picture of of the sun shining happily that's it

we're just offering kindergarten level drawing assignments to our listeners now just go outside and stare at the sun wait no don't don't ever do that dude do you know when we're getting review into this phone when is the thing shipped it ships on April 21st

I would like to think that we will have a review before then yeah beyond that one one cannot say publicly on a podcast. That's not what I was asking. Soon we'll have phones to play with the weird iPad thing. Is that going to be out in the world soon? We can screw with that thing.

Yep. We'll have reviews next week of the G6 and the iPad. There you go. Get ready. There's tech news in this world. Yeah. I can't stop hearing the G6 song. And your ISP knows everything that you want to know about said tech news.

Look, that was the Vergecast. It ended on a dark note, which I'm sorry for it, because Jake is a delight. Turn back next week for more horrors. The complex inner life that I'd like to hear about from time to time. I actually fight high school gym teachers. Only the pervy ones, though. Oh, of course, yes. Little of fact, Jake is a vampire and doesn't eat solid food.

That is true. See, there's so much about Jake that you don't know because we make him write about the FCC all day every day. But there's more coming. We're not going to let go of this story. It's too important. there's other stuff that's going to happen. It's be great. Anyway, also, thanks again to Krizal and No Glare Lensis for sponsoring us today. If you wear glasses, then you know the fingerprint sponges, and glars can be a concert destruction of your vision, a huge distraction. That's why you

should wear Krizal no glare lenses. They give you the clearest vision possible by offering resistance to those things. Go to Crizal.com to learn more. That's C-R-I-Z-A-L.com. C-R-L, start living life in the clear. There are other shows to listen to. If you're interested in more about the S-8 and you found Dan C-Ford to be a deli- He was actually too embarrassed to ask with Lauren Good, so you can listen to that. Walt and I talked about the S8 and Internet Privacy on Control, Delete. It's also it was Walt's birthday this week. Man turned 70 years old this week.

He made a lot of very dark jokes on his show about it, which is pretty entertaining. Kara Swisher hosts Recode Decode, which is wonderful, and Peter Kafka hosts Recode Media, which is also wonderful. You can tweet at us. Jake is at Jake underscore K on Twitter. Megan is at Megan underscore Nicolette. A lot of underscores. I'm at R underscore Ecclis. D.J.

No. B underscore Aclon. Dan is D.C.C. for no underscore S.E.I. Tweeted us. We love that. We love your feedback. Go to iTunes.com slash verge.

Find all of our shows. I promise we're going to, next week when we do the rundown, and put the sad news first, and we're going to end in an upswing. That'll definitely encourage people to keep listening. Yeah. What you want is to trick people into happy emotions. You want to bring them down and then promise then. That's all happy emotions are our tricks that should play on yourself

because really we're all doomed and everything is terrible. And we all know it, but we trick ourselves into being happy. All right, that was it. That was a Vergecast. As always, we're very sorry. Rock and roll, Paul, goodbye.