The Vergecast - Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Google I/O 2022 📲 Stablecoins struggling to survive the crypto crash, and Apple discontinues the iPod

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

Nilay Patel and David Pierce interview Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai after Google announcing a bunch of products at their I/O conference. 34:25 - Dan Seifert joins the show to discuss the hardware previewed at Google I/O 2022. 55:38 - Liz Lopatto explains "the crypto crash" in this week's Crypto Corner. 1:07:19 - Alex Cranz hops in to run through this week's gadget rumors, reviews, and announcements. Further reading: Google is making an Android-based Pixel tablet and plans to start selling it in 2023 Google finally announces the Pixel Watch The Pixel 6A includes Google’s Tensor chipset and costs $449 Here’s an early look at the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro coming this fall Google’s vision for Android 13 is to offer a little more of everything Google’s new Pixel Buds Pro come with noise cancellation and long battery life Google thinks the time is right to bring back Wallet Google Chrome is getting built-in virtual credit cards Apple will drop iPhone Lightning port in favor of USB-C in 2023, claims analyst Apple discontinues the iPod after 20 years Sony WH-1000XM5 review: new design, new sound, new price - The Verge Mark Zuckerberg’s Project Cambria demo shows off its full-color passthrough - The Verge Samsung’s next flagship foldable allegedly leaks Samsung and LG preview the future of weird phone displays DJI officially announces Mini 3 Pro Aura Strap 2 review: context — you love to see it Ford F-150 Lightning first drive: quiet storm Dish’s upcoming wireless plan might let you buy an iPhone with crypto Josh Hawley wants to punish Disney by taking copyright law back to 1909 and that sucks UiPath CEO Daniel Dines thinks automation can fight the great resignation Ploopy and the promise of an open-source trackball Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on the Vergecast, Google CEO, Sue and Arbor Chai joins us to take us through Google I.O. Afterwards, we'll talk about all their hardware announcements and the gadget news from this week. That's coming up right after this. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in.

Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all? I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for New England. 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom.

And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hello, welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast, tablets that come out a year from now. I'm your friend, Eli. We've got a huge show today. Google CEO Sundar Pichai is on the Vergecast today. David and I talked to him about everything announced at Google I.O.

and kind of the future of Google. It's a really good conversation. Then Dan Sefert joins the show. We talk about all the rest of I.O. And Alex Cranes comes on at the end. A little gadget lightning around. It's a really fun one. Let's start. Here's David and I talking to Google and Alphabet CEO, Sundar Pachai. Sunnir Pachai, you are the CEO of Google. You are the CEO and chairman of Alphabet. Welcome to the Vergecast. Well, it's a pleasure to be here. Good to see any line, David. Yeah. It's great to see you again. It's been a while since we've talked. Also, I appreciate that you're on the Vergecast. Real Ones on the verge cast to talk product.

That's like, this is where it gets serious about products. True that. So it's Google I.O. We obviously came off the keynote. The keynote was two hours long. Lots of products, lots of really hardcore AI, tech, Lambda, big language models. Here's my question for you, just kind of a big picture. And then I want to dive into some of the products themselves.

Google does a lot of things. It has a lot of research projects, a lot of far out ideas, a lot of things on the ground like maps and recommendations and obviously search. You run YouTube. Then you've got Android. Like, it's a lot of things. Kind of the theme of IO this year was you're bringing it all together and it's going to become a very focused set of products and experiences for people across the whole ecosystem.

So just from the baseline, how real is that? How much are you actually bringing Google into focus versus you're just lining up the pieces and making sure they make sense together? Well, you know, I do think a few things, which are. have tried to do with the company. One is the underlying more foundational layer that focus on AI. So when you say research, you know, it is a real deep focus on AI. In some ways, the big bet is AI is transformational across, you know, all the products and services we do. So for sure, that's been a big focus bet. And above it, a focus on knowledge and computing, right? And both

we see as core aspects of our mission. And so to me, you know, it is the same AI, which, which makes that change in search, you know, because we are able to do things in a more multimodal way. And it's that same multimodal model which in YouTube can create auto chapters and so on. So it's an underlying theme. So with which we are doing it across our key products and services. But there is a set of products which are users used multiple times for days. These are big, active user bases. And so, you know, there's a lot of focus on, be it search or Gmail or maps or YouTube, making

should those products are evolving in a way that makes sense. And so I think both are important. So on the AI front, though, there's a piece of that that's really interesting to me. Because one of the things I noticed in the keynote was that things like Lambda and Translate and Palm kept coming up kind of in different contexts. And I think one of the things that's been tricky for us to figure out is like when you say we're focused on AI, that can mean lots of things, right? AI is this huge, sprawling thing that can mean a lot of things.

Within that space, it feels like maybe Google is picking its spots, a little more, instead of kind of trying to do lots of things, you have sort of a few big bets even just within AI. Is that fair? Yeah. I mean, it's a great question. You know, you can think about it this way, right? There is, we're all making progress in state of the art MLN AI. Then there's things in terms of what we are deploying in production, which is the latest version of Peter, speech models, vision models, etc., or multimodal models, right? And then there is the future of AI, which, which is not in production yet. And that is, large language models. I think we are talking about that, and that's where Lambda and Palm and

everything comes in. And some of that will keep flowing back into cutting edge production, and, you know, and that's what keeps the innovation going. And we are talking about both of them. And I think part of that it seems like my sense would be then that your job as as CEO is in part to sort of make sure all of those things are moving at the correct speed. Because just the idea of sort of living deep in the future and two years from now and also right now, It's just, it seems impossible. You know, I think something which is probably, you know, there are two sides to the coin, right?

So, for example, when we built something like Chrome, you know, we unveiled the end to end product one day. Well, the comic book leaked two days ago, but at least, you know, it's a product in which you come out and, you know, unveil it. When it comes to things like AI, both, a lot of it, we publish research. So, you know, you're not quite can do that.

And B, because in a technology like that transparency is important too, I think. And so we are talking about it ahead of time, which is what gives a sense of, well, is this too futuristic? What of this will apply to the products? And I think it's a fair question, but I'm trying to explain why we are doing it the way we are doing it. And so that's what I think makes it a bit different. I think that kind of the classic story of I.O. has been a demo of a really impressive AI tool. I can't help but think of the one that took the fence out of the picture in the image editor. And it turns out, like, that's actually a really hard problem.

It's going to take a long time to actually ship that to consumers. But at the same time, you're demoing things in actual products like translation that are real for people or could be real today. And it's just really hard to calibrate what are we looking at that's real right now or that is a vision of what I could accomplish versus Google is one of the few companies that still demos really impressive software every time you have an event. most other companies are like, I don't know, we're going to stream some baseball games to you. You know, like, there's a really, like, very hardcore engineering component to what you showed at IO. But it's just hard to know which of it is going to come into focus and turn into a product. And which of it is Google has an intense set of capabilities. And part of Google's culture is chasing them down wherever they might.

You know, if you go back, let me give a couple examples. Like, you know, we showed Google Lens many years at IO, right? You know, the promise of what Google Lens is. It's a real product, right? and like, you know, people query it, you can access it. And we are taking, as lens matures, we are bringing those capabilities into search. And that's what, you know, helps you from a multi-search standpoint. Even the fence, you can see magic eraser in pixel, and I would argue, gets at some of that promise in the context of a product.

You know, so the goal of everything we are showing is to actually build it into a product. That's what we are trying to do. So I have no interest in being an R&D lab. We actually genuinely believe we're doing cutting-edge R&D, right? We are one of the world's largest R&D investors, you know, probably over $100 billion in the past five years. And so we are definitely doing tip-of-tree R&D, but the goal is all with a clear lens of our mission, how we will apply it and working it backwards.

And then I think both are true. So, you know, there may be times, you know, there's a probabilistic outcome. And so there may be one or two elements in it, which we face. And so there is that risk of talking ahead, and I think the failures are also obvious to the external world. But I do think if you have looked at the capabilities we are bringing in pixel, etc. That is, we are translating it into products and features. Everything to do with translation, though, you know, I would argue we've been steadily making progress, you know, be it monolingual translation or what we showed in the context of translation and transcription

in the context of the prototypes, AR-glass prototypes, those are real products we are working on. on, right? Wait, so we're just to skip ahead. You brought it up. The glasses are real? It's a real pair of glasses? Yeah, I mean, the prototypes are real. I mean, they are real use cases and, you know, people testing it out are real.

Absolutely. We are still obviously working through what the right product in terms of AR is. With the AR, we were trying to communicate two things. One is a lot of the innovation for what we are building in AR. We're building it in the context of a smartphone today. And so lens, multi-search, scene exploration, live, immersive view and maps, these are all AR experiences. We are doing it in a smartphone today, but the magic isn't fully obvious until you can live in that future. And so we are exploring

that future also in terms of hardware form factors, but that's going to take time to do, and we have a few more decisions ahead of us there. So I looked at the glasses. So if people haven't seen the video, you should wash it, it's cool. It's a pair of glasses that listens and it shows you real-time translations. Someone's speaking a different language and you get real-time translation on the screen of the glasses. I look at that, and I look at that, and I say, oh, that's really smart. Right now, all the AR experiences you're describing, they happen on a phone because a phone has a fancy camera built into it. It has a 5G network connection for whatever that's worth. It has a fast processor. It has a big battery. Putting that stuff in glasses is very difficult.

And I look at the translation glasses you demoed, and I say, oh, this is actually, you're cutting the problem way down. Now all we're doing is listening to someone, translating it, and then showing some text on a screen, which in the grand scheme of computer problems is still hard, but in the scheme of AR is like a very narrow solution. Is that how you're thinking about it, that you're going to cut it all the way down to that, and you're not going to do real-time graphic overlays and stuff that seems really far out right now?

I think it's part of how we are thinking about it, because, you know, I don't think we want to overshoot it. The more you overshoot, the longer it is away. Right. And so we are trying to find that sweet spot of, what is it that you can do something which people can wear, maybe doesn't have, you know, it's comfortable you can wear. And also doesn't have the other broader issues around, well, if you have a camera,

you have to solve a set of different issues. It's a harder system integration problem as you're pointing out and so on. So we're thinking through. I think any time, you know, constraint, I've always felt constraints help, right? You know, having constraints helps you actually deliver a product. And so I'm a fan of that. And so I think that's part of what's informing our thinking there. One of the other challenges they are, and you're kind of hinting at it, yep, there's the big, you have to develop the hardware that seems very challenging.

There's also the idea that you're going to augment reality, which just on its face seems like the world's biggest content moderation challenge. You run YouTube. YouTube is a content moderation challenge. Have you put time into thinking about, okay, we're going into an AR future. Someone's looking at the capital building. Google's going to put some information over the capital building to say what happened there. and people are going to be upset, regardless of what we put on that screen. Have you gotten all the way down that road in your thinking yet, or are you still focused on, we have to make a computer you put on your face?

No, I think, look, I think we are in earlier stages. You know, you can imagine use cases where there are products like maps or, you know, you want to listen to music when you run or, you know, the translation use cases. I think any time you show information with that, you have to think through all that, and I agree with you. But I don't think we're quite there yet, if I were to be frank, thinking all that through. Just on that timeline, do you think this is a five-year problem? Is it a 25-year problem? Is it 18 months? Well, we have that problem today, right? I think information is working at scale on the internet.

And, you know, I think we've already crossed the inflection point. So I would argue, you know, solving content moderation, you know, it's a hard enough problem today. And if I think through the future, I don't know, maybe areas where I worry about more are, you know, synthetic content and how do we deal with that? And, you know, so maybe areas like that, which is not necessarily AR as a dimension, but I think there are harder dimensions, you know, which I think we are probably thinking about a bit more. Fair enough. And I think this comes back to the kind of how you think about the company as a whole question, too. Because I think we've seen a few companies most aggressively, I think meta, make a lot of noise about AR. being like a bet the company thing, right? That this thing that is coming next is going to require everything that we have and we have

put everything we have behind it and it's going to require changing how we work. My sense is you're not shifting Google quite that aggressively. As soon as I was like, the real world's pretty good. Yeah. Which is about a heart of a shot as I've ever heard you take, man. That is true. Look, I mean, I mean, we are definitely focused more and more on the AR side in the context of the real world is important.

It's not a, it's how. we see it and we're building it. I think, look, VR has an important use case too, and there'll be mixed reality, but those things all have different timelines and access and so on. Well, I was curious, as you think about, and I mean it with AR, because eventually if AR is going to be as big

as a lot of people think it is, it's going to require basically every team at Google to build new things for it. Where are you in sort of how you're thinking about how much energy you want to put within the company onto that kind of stuff? Look, I mean, we work through, remember, you know, Google was,

came from the desktop era, right? And, you know, we have driven the shift to mobile. AI is a big shift we are driving. And so to me, I think it cuts across. And so we think about it. So I don't view it as betting the company. I mean, it is a natural evolution of the company. And I think if you're thinking deeply and building for the future, it is a big part of getting it right.

So for me, it's important. Search works in an AR context, you know, and Maps is thinking it through. And YouTube is thinking it through, right? and Google Photos is thinking it through. And so I think if you get it right that way, you're bringing the company along through these big transitions. And so maybe it's a way about how we think about it.

All right. Let's come back out of the clouds for a minute. That's a I mean, it's interesting. And I think the glasses are fascinating in the sense that by reducing the problem you're trying to solve, you actually can make a more useful product as opposed to trying to boil the ocean there. But they're still pretty far out.

you've got another problem right in front of you, which is trying to sell pixel phones and create a pixel ecosystem. Even at that for a while, we saw Pixel 7, Pixel 6A, PixelBuds Pro, you hinted at a tablet. There's a lot of energy in that space. And one of the things that Rick told David on another piece of the Vurchast is that the Android team and the pixel team are much closer together now. They're operating in harmony. historically that arrangement has made your OEMs very mad. I believe at one point Google was forced to sell Motorola because things are too close. But now you're doing it again.

Tell me about that. Is that Pixel Samsung and Lenovo and whoever else don't see Pixel as a threat so you can bring them close together? Is it you're going to spin some innovations from Pixel out into Android proper? How are you thinking about managing that dynamic? Let me step out and first answer about a focus there. you know, to me no different over the past five years if you've taken an area like YouTube or, you know, we've put a lot of focus into it. Cloud is the same thing, both as big areas and as important businesses to be built. To me, hardware and computing is equally important. I do think the

ecosystem, all of us see value in, you know, working together to make sure we make progress, particularly beyond phones, right? So where all this has been a great example. I think we've done both, Because when you're building these new categories, it's hardware, it's software, it's app developers. You all understand this well. So there is value in what we did with Samsung on wearovers, aligning. And as developers, the fact that Pixel Watch is coming and wearOS has a lot more traction. All of that matters because developers address it too. So a rising tide lifts all boats kind of a scenario, I think is genuinely what plays out. So, you know, we work super hard with Samsung on foldables and phones and, you know, and also, I think there's some added value in our approach in the sense that sometimes we have a strong view on what to do on top of Android, right? Our OEMs may have a different viewpoint. I think one of the benefits of Android is it allows both viewpoints to be expressed.

And we can do it in the context of pixel and the ecosystem we see. And Samsung can, you know, have a vision on top of Galaxy and they're a hardware ecosystem too. So I think there's some value in that too. So, you know, I don't see necessarily this being that complicated. I think the industry has evolved to this level. You can look at somebody like Microsoft with Surface and Windows, and you can ask the same question. But I think, you know, I think it's natural.

We work with Samsung, by the way. You know, our pixel division is a major customer of Samsung's competence. So we don't sit and ask, hey, Samsung is supplying. its own phones and us and like, how do you do this? And the industry has worked that way for a while. So I, you know, I see it as a natural evolution. On the ecosystem side of things, what changed your thinking about that? I think one of the things that Neil and I both noticed from IO is there was a lot of kind of resurrecting of old products and old ideas. Like tablets was a thing that it doesn't seem like Google has cared about in a while. And same with watches.

And while it is back after not being back, and it's definitely the ecosystem thinking seems to have gotten much bigger. What sort of sparked that internally? Look, I think there are two aspects to it. One is what you said, you know, the ecosystem. is important and, you know, thinking it through. And, you know, Android is open source, which means there are many different OEMs making things. So the Android team is thinking hard about better together and how do these things work together better. And the additional categories becoming more important. That's one part of it. The second part of it is why not

sooner is, you know, hardware is such an economy of scale business. There's so many things to do to get it right. You know, we have been building the capabilities, right? So, for example, we knew Tenser has been five years in the making, right? You're seeing it now, but we knew we needed that to work well to be able to do a tablet so that it shares the same silicon platform with phones. And so you had to crawl, walk, and start to run on phones before you can actually do the other things. So there's a difference between intellectually understanding it a few years earlier, versus the actual practical ability to get scale and to be able to do it all in the additional things.

So I think that's the practical side of it. But let me ask you about phones in particular and then maybe extended to tablets. You made the comparison of Microsoft. Microsoft did surface because the Windows ecosystem was not producing $1,000 laptops. Panos has been on the show. He said that to us very directly, very loudly. And so they're like, we need to reinvigorate this segment of the market. We need to compete with Apple because Apple's winning at this segment of the market.

In phones right now, right, if Pixel is a huge success, you're not necessarily, getting Apple switchers, right? You're getting Samsung switchers, or you're just moving people around the Android ecosystem. If you launch a tablet, I don't know if you're thinking you're going to get iPad switchers. You might just get like ChromeOS switchers or other Android tablet switchers. Like, how do you think about managing that competition? And then I guess the real question is, how do you think about opening the gate to get people to switch from the Apple products where however many conversations you want to have about lock in? And I promise you we will soon ask about RCS, but they seem to be pretty happy over there and not enticed to switch to your platforms.

No, look, I definitely think us doing tablets and us working better with Samsung on tablets will end up in together. Each of us both individually better off and overall, you know, Android as an ecosystem will do better than tablets. That's how the map works out, at least empirically for a while. On the phone side, too, you know, I do think on high ends, you know, we need to be competitive. Similarly, you know, you're talking about switching, but we could also lose users from the Android ecosystem because we don't have a good tablet offering as well. I mean, you've made this point before on Vurchase, but, you know, about Nexus 7 and the impact it had. We are doing it because we think we will give a clear view on how you can do these things and how they can work together. And I think it'll impact the whole ecosystem to do better.

So I see all of that playing out. I see it so far from being a zero-sum game. And to my earlier point, we end up being a very successful other self-competent to us. We buy displays. We buy memory. I mean, it's so I think it's a bit more complex than that. All right. So now I definitely have to ask the RCS question.

Shout out to our friend Dieterbone, who you ruthlessly took from us, Cinder. But, right, the noise that Google has started to make about RCS has gotten louder over the past five years. I would just say it started with, here's the new stand. We hope the carriers adopt it. We're running our own RCS servers to two days ago on stage. Everyone should adopt RCS pointed look in the direction of Cooper Tina. Right. Like you're starting to advocate now for it as a company very loudly.

There are good reasons for it. There's security. There's encryption. There's all that stuff. There's also just interoperability and ease of switching in the sense that IMS is pure lock-in for Apple. How are you bouncing all of that stuff? Is it you're more focused on this is the next generation?

of standards when you got to get there, or is there an element of competitiveness to it? Well, first of all, a few things. You know, I mean, for all the, you've had a long focus on our messaging efforts. And I would say RCS is a tribute to, I still recall, being in Mobile World Congress, maybe now, I mean, get the timing wrong, six to seven years ago. And seeing the moment where the carrier suddenly looked at us and said, we need you to do this. And historically, it had been difficult. The carrier is viewed as we don't want anyone else to come into messaging. And so it was a shift. And so I actually view it as a great example of against extraordinary odds being so focused on an area over six to seven years and being where we are at, where I think, at least on the

Android ecosystem side, RCS is on a clear path to both being a standard, supporting internet encryption and so on. So I'm super excited about the progress there. I think, look, you know, Interoperability is great here. You know, we all take it for granted in areas like email today. You know, it would be great for it to work. I think we couldn't even make the case till we had a viable alternative. So we've crossed that part. And so, you know, I think I realize teams being excited and making calls and stuff.

But to me, what's in our control is to build a compelling standard. And over time, make the compelling case. It's the benefit of everyone involved, including iOS. OS users to have that end-to-end encryption working and have that interoperability. And the rest is outside of our hands. And as you said, you know, time will tell. But, you know, I'm at least glad we've reached the stage where we are and making progress and taking data.

First of all, you guys focus a lot on products, which is great and I think unique. But the more you focus on product, you have almost like product manager type of people. And Google is always hiring product managers. So I think it comes. Yeah. You need someone who thinks about the people. I guess that's like another, I think, just big think question. And I want to ask about a more distributed future.

But just on a big perspective, right now when you think about the big companies, they have signature products. Google has a lot of signature products. As you're thinking about the future of the company and how all those products might work together and how you might layer the technologies underneath them together, are you thinking about, changing how Google operates or how it's organized. Historically, Google has just been doing a lot of things all at once. I think messaging is actually the ultimate example of this, where lots of teams at Google have built messaging products, but the strategy for messaging has only recently

begun to perhaps coalesce. Are you thinking about that more broadly across the company? Look, yes. I mean, you know, things which are really, you know, one of the things which becoming CEO was one, I wanted the company to go back and think a lot about its core mission, because I felt that it was important to ground ourselves there, and really focused on knowledge and the core of knowledge for us is on search and YouTube, it's our core consumer services, and then computing, right, it's Android, and as part of that, there was a big bet on hardware too, and then making

sure we are a world-class enterprise platform as well, with cloud and workspace. So we've done a lot of work to focus the company along those dimensions, right? And so, you know, you see those are our five big product areas, how we have structured and how we run them. And with a common view of all the cross-cutting R&D and technology, particularly AI, which really, you know, drives innovation forward there. So that's definitely, you know, that's the big picture of how I think about it. And, you know, we'll continue to be very focused. And that's why I gave the examples of, and I think it takes a lot in tech. You know, And tech is very competitive. You look at something like TikTok emerge.

You know, things happen in a very fast cycles. And so to stay on top of any significant tech product, you know, needs a lot of focus and continued innovation. And so I've always viewed as a company. We need to be very, very focused on it. And definitely we have brought focus. Some of us what looks outside as well, you're focused on these products and you're improving them.

Wow. Yes. I mean, because these are, you know, billion user products. doing important things, and I think people rely on them. And to me, there is nothing more important than making it, you know, better constantly and continually evolving it. As a web service, sometimes it's hard because, you know, if you're doing hardware or something, you get these once-in-a-year moments to go talk about it.

Something like searchware, you're shipping stuff every two weeks and you're continuously releasing them, you know, it is even more important, I think, to be very focused in making sure you're actually moving the needle. So I think it's definitely a big part of what I'm doing. think about. One of the things that I've been thinking about a lot lately is the blockchain decentralized computing. I talk to blockchain companies and CEOs, and whenever they're like Web 2, the examples they give me are always Google. It's always Google search. It's always YouTube, right? These are the Web 2 platforms that the blockchain companies are

going to disrupt. Are you making big bets? I mean, you and we're talking right now in the middle of a literal cryptocurrency crash. So I'm assuming you're not making huge bets today. But are you thinking about that next future for Google? Look, I mean, Web2 was a big part of why I joined Google and, you know, seeing the transition from the web moving from content to apps and the excitement around XML HTTP and Ajax and realizing that, you know, Maps and Gmail all represent a fundamental shift in how the web works.

So I think it's exciting to me anytime the web evolves. But the web is a big thing. there are, you know, no one person can evolve it, right? It's like, that's, that's the beauty of the web. And so, so I always look at any innovation in a excited, try to understand what of the good things coming out of it. And, and so it is still early days, though. So that's how I would probably probably say. But, you know, I'm always trying to think ahead about what are the key trends, be it on computing, be it on how the web itself is evolving and trying to see, you know, where Google can contribute, where Google can,

also lead, and it's a big part of how we should think about, not to mention AI being the most important of it all. Do you think of, let's call it Web 3, the blockchain Web 3 stuff? Right, the innovation there is not, there's a lot of cryptographic innovation, sure, but the innovation there is not necessarily technological capability. It's, I don't have to trust your database. Google is effectively like the world's most powerful database company. There's a very important database at the heart of Google that you can query and get results.

from. Do you ever think, oh, this will displace the search index or this will displace the YouTube database? Look, a decentralized model. I mean, don't forget, I think Skype worked at some point on a B2B based model. I think distributed databases are a hard, interesting computer science challenge too. So I think we get equally excited about that and, you know, and so on. I think it's important to think through user problems, what you're trying to solve, and the underlying technology. And so all of that is important, you know, end to end. But as always been, anything evolves, you know, the big part, I, to make sure you're leading in all these services, will you get disrupted?

Yeah. By definition, if you're not trying hard enough, yes, the answer is absolutely 100% yes. I'm like, we show up to work on Mondays and, yes, I worry about all of this all the time. And, you know, so maybe I'll leave it at that. So my last question is, tell me what your killer app is for smart life. We spend a lot of time debating what smart watches are for. And having now spent a lot of time building one, I'm curious, kind of what you see as like

the sort of reason for smart watches at the moment for Google. I'll probably leave it with, I want to make sure the team has something to say in September when they talk about the picks of watches. And I think they've teased it enough that, look, I'm excited because I think for me, the thing I'm excited about is it's an end-to-hand hardware portfolio. and you will see a lot of the pixel brand identity. And if you're a pixel user, a lot of the design language and some of the customize of how easy it is to change bands

and the expressiveness is great. In terms of killer apps, look, can you look at something like GPS being on phones and what happens later or the fact that XMLH3P created a whole set of apps as I talked about earlier. I'm always humble by when you create underlying capabilities, the creativity of developers outside, you know, it's not that Google will develop the killer app. You know, I think down the line someone will do something really cool with it. But I would argue one of the exciting aspects of the pixel watch is, of course, Fitbit coming

on it, right? You know, Fitbit coming as a service on it is a killer app we are putting on that watch. And, you know, so that is something I'm super excited by. Well, Sundar, thank you so much for coming on the Wordcast. It's always great to talk to you, and I always appreciate that you want to come on the hardcore nerd show. So that's very good. It's good to talk to you. Greatly enjoyed it. And thanks for all the focus on IEO. I appreciate it. All right. We've got to take a break. We'll be right back with Dan Sefert to wrap up the rest of Google I.O. Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is an enterprise-grade no-code website builder used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Murrow to move faster.

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And instead of getting buried in resumes, you get a focused shortlist that actually moves your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. we're back dan seafirt welcome hello so obviously david and i just talked to sundar he's great by the way i keep saying this it takes it takes real guts for a product CEO to come on the verge cast oh yeah decoder is like you know that's where you do your think flinching on the verge cast we're like let's get out of brass tacks so that was great we got you know big picture conversation but there's some stuff at io that we

should talk about with dan actual products what's dan you have some real feelings about this tablet I was going to say we got to start with the tablet. Yeah. This tab, I don't know why they announced it. I haven't been able to figure out why they announced this. So they pre-announced a tablet that's coming out in 2023. What we know about it is that it will have a tensor chip. Mm-hmm.

And that's what we know about it. Well, we know it will have a bigger screen than a phone. It will be rectangular. Yeah. It apparently has big white bezels. Yep, they announce bezels. The camera is on the middle of screen and landscape. They did that right.

Yeah. So big improvement over. your iPads. Yep. Credit where credits do. The back looks like plastic. There's a camera on the back as well. It does. They showed us some, they did show us some Android tablet software stuff. And yeah, and it runs Android. But they showed us, you know, here's some apps running side by side. I will say, if you just go watch the event again, watch the tablet UI presentation, just like rewatch it closely. And it is almost as though they're inventing computers. Oh, yeah. The number of things that they have not even like heard of before.

that it's like, what if you had an app? And then you went to another app. But at the same time. At one point, they're like, I love using two apps at once. And it's like, yeah, it's pretty good. It's a great, actually. I've been doing it for years. Welcome to the party.

Which is funny because you can already do that on many Android tablets. Yeah, and Android phones. You can just split screen them very easily. Okay. So then we've been sarcastic enough. What do you think they're trying to do with this tablet? It's really hard to say. You know, David talked to Rick Osterlo.

I had a chance to talk to Rick Osterlo, briefly. And every time he mentioned this tablet, he positioned it as a, quote, perfect companion to the pixel phone. He called it the pixel tablet on stage. He said it's a premium large screen device. They are like filling this gap in their lineup so that they have a full ecosystem ranging all the way from the watch that I'm sure we'll talk about through to phones, the tablets out to laptops with Chromebooks. They've got like the full device portfolio when this thing, by the time this thing launches. And so like that all makes sense. Like they could just. say, we're going to launch a tablet next year and, like, tell that same story. But for some reason,

they decided we're going to also show this hype reel of this tablet, which looks like it was designed in 2014 and is like the combination of a 2014-era Samsung tablet and like an Amazon Fire HD. Like, if you just mash those together, that's what you got the concept of this tablet. And it's really weird to like use that kind of product look to build hype for a product that's not coming for seven months a year, whatever, not this calendar year. So, like, I really don't understand this announcement at all. Well, I think there's sort of two separate things there, right? There's, like, if the tablet had been beautiful and cool and exciting, and even just, like, what it was, but with no bezels, that would have been something. And at least, I think

strategically, strategically, it makes sense, right? Because, like, the thing Google desperately needs is for people to build tablet apps. Because the reason Android tablet suck is because Android tablet apps suck. No, I disagree. Really? Oh, I have a much wilder conspiracy theory about this whole thing. Oh, okay. Let's do it. They're doing this. This is all just a front run because they said this thing, which makes no sense. They're like, there's so much developer interest in Android tablets. Oh, yeah, I don't believe that for a second. They said this on stage, and that's when I started doing my own research. developing this conspiracy. He said doing Google searches. I'm so sorry.

No, okay. The future, the only way they're going to get people to switch off the iPhone is that they beat Apple to foldables, and they create the moment, the hardware form factor moment, that rules, right? So, yep, you've got your galaxy folds and whatnots, but, like, those are still early. You got to make the mainstream,

folding phone. And if you unfold the phone and then it's a garbage tablet, you're hooped. So the developer interest is not in tablet apps. It's not in this thing. It's in what can I do when the phone unfolds? And so they're building a tablet ecosystem because they know that their big upcoming shot to recapture market share from Apple is beating Apple to folding. So, okay, I hate to burst your bubble on this. That's not a conspiracy theory. That's just true. Like Google, no, like, Google told me this. And because we were talking about it. And like, you look at the multitasking and it's, and it's like, that's a foldable

phone. And so it's like, if you just take the tablet with the two apps and folded an half, like, oh my God, what is that? And that is like, Google considers foldable phones and tablets to be functionally identical software systems. And whether or not that turns out to be a good idea, I think really remains to be seen because I'm not sure that what works well on one unfolded screen is the same as two folding screens.

But we will see. But I think you're absolutely right that, like, the bigger possible win here for Google solving larger screen Android is on foldable phones than it is on tablets. And I think, like, this idea that Google suddenly discovered the iPad is popular, I think is, like, kind of bonkers. And, yeah, it's like a little bit of a head fake. So why not tease a pixel foldable, which has been, like, rumored forever? And, like, this is not, the product that they showed off is not coming out until next year. It's got a while to go. Because they got to sell the pixel seven.

I don't. I mean, this is the. This is the company that is like, we're launching a phone in two months, but also we're launching a phone in October. Like, I mean, this is the company that has no concerns about cannibalizing hardware. No, because they don't sell any phones. They're like, the pixel six sold as much as the pixel four and the pixel five combined, which is one of the harshest self-phones that you can issue. Right. But it's also still not a lot.

So then you can announce a pixel seven or a pixel six-A and you're not like, I'm worried about tanking why successful pixel six. line. If you announce a pixel 7 and then announce a pixel foldable, like, now you're not even even going to even, now you have no hope of selling as many pixel 7s as pixels 4, 5, and 6 is combined. It's never going to happen for you. Maybe. And you got a slow roll it in this way. I think the pixel tablet, whatever this thing is, is all just a gigantic head fake to get people to think that they care about tablets. There's another theory going around because there's been this rumored product for a while now. I was going to ask you about this. This is good. that Google is working on this like Nest Hub device that has a detachable screen and becomes a tablet.

And the theory going around is what the tablet that they showed during the event is the tablet that connects to the nest hub and becomes a smart display when it's at home. And there's some like some credibility to that in that the tablet looks like the front of a Nest Hub. Like if I look at my Nest Hub Max over here, yeah, that's exactly what the tablet looks like that they showed off. So, like, sure, a lot of design similarities there. The hesitation I have with that theory is that pixel teams and Ness teams are like wholly separate. And they have separate branding and everything. And they did not call this a NEST device. They called it a pixel tablet.

And then, of course, they also didn't show any of that, like functionality or tease any of kinds of that where it would dock into a smart display screen or whatever. So, I mean, far be it from Google to do something like that, like they are the, like they've done much weirder things. And they could possibly turn that into a smart home device. or whatever, and then it becomes, it's like, well, it's primary purpose as a smart display, but then you can use it as a tablet when you want sometimes, which is, like, again, a weird way to frame something as the perfect companion to your pixel phone. Also, Lenovo built this product like six times in a row. Amazon built a product just like this, right? Like, it's not a category whatever. We'll see. We've got until 2023 to argue about these vessels. I don't know why they're

white. Like, the whole problem is they made them white. Like, like, it's like, you can have big vessels. okay, there's a place for bezels. You got to put your thumbs, you're holding the tablet or whatever. You can make that argument. Don't make them white. It's a content consumption device. We'll see.

That's my conspiracy theory, which David tells me is true. Oh, I definitely think you're right. What if it's a smart display that you take off, and then when you leave to go outside, you fold it closed? What if it's a foldable and we didn't even know? There's your conspiracy theory.

There you go. We should actually quickly talk about the Nest Hub just for one second before we talk about the Pixel Watch. They announced a bunch of features to invoke the assistant only for the NestHub Max that require you to look at it because it has a camera. And that was the one part of this whole presentation where I was like, oh, that's too far. Really? I don't want an always on camera in my, I have the little Ness because it doesn't have a camera. Yeah.

So, I mean, then you, I guess just wouldn't use this feature. But if you have a Nesthub max and you don't have the camera disabled, then it recognizes uses you already. Like that was a launch feature. Like it says, hi, Dan, when I walk up to it or whatever, and it shows my little avatar. And then in theory, if it, if Google ever got its calendar system straight where it could see my work calendar, it would show my work calendar events, as opposed to like, if my kids look at it, they would not see my calendar events. So it's already doing that. This is just kind of like the next step of like, oh, you're looking at it. We know you're looking at it.

We know you're in range of it. If you just say, like, start a timer, we don't need you to say, hey, gee, to wake up. Yeah. I don't know. The idea of the camera always looking to see if you're making eye contact with it, just like, no, thank you.

I don't need to make eye contact with the computer. Well, and I think part of this, what's so interesting about that to me is like, it's a constant reminder that it is doing that, right? Like, the thing where you walk up to it and it knows you is at least you can sort of feel

in your brain like you're doing something to enable it, even though you're not. It's just watching all the time. But this is like, they're just directly telling you via the feature. Like, it's watching you 100% of the time Anytime you look at it, it knows.

Like, don't, don't forget. Like, that's a, that's a bold thing. They said all of the right things, but it all happening locally and no device, no data leaving the device and data minimization. It's just, you know, you can't take a picture of me if there's not a camera on the thing. It's true.

I'm going to stick with the little ones until, until they force me out of the way. And then I'm going to put tape, I'm going to buy white tape. All right. There's cameras all over my house. I don't even know what I'm talking about. There's five cameras on my cell phone that I carry in my pocket.

Uh, we should talk to Pixel Watch. Dan, it seems like they're trying again in a serious way. They've got this platform they did with Samsung. What do you think? Yeah, the Pixel Watch is interesting. I mean, this thing's been rumored and leaked for over a year now, and it's still not coming out to the fall.

This is like one of the announcements along with the Pixel 7 that it's going to be released in the fall, but here's a teaser look. There's a couple of interesting things with it. I think the big move for it is that this is finally the first product of the Fitbit integration with Google that we're really seeing. in a real tangible way. Google closed. David, what was it? 2021? Excuse me? It closed, yeah, January, 2021, and they announced the acquisition in, like, mid-2019. Yeah, like a literal lifetime ago, they announced that acquisition. And now we're

finally getting a product that is using that. So they are going to have, like, a big fitness integration play, which, as we know, is what makes the Apple Watch popular. So that's, like, a smart move. The watch itself looks pretty nice, I guess. It's interesting that they only seem to show one of it as opposed to multiple sizes. It's got proprietary bands, which is, hmm, maybe. And it's round. And it's got a little control dial on the side, whatever you call one of those. The digital crown. Do you don't know this? Johnny and I've told this. It's a revolutionary input device. Yes. On par with multi-touch. Yeah. And like, you know, it's going to be running WareOS3, which is currently only available on Samsung watches. They also announced on stage that a bunch of watches from the usual Android watchmakers from Fossil and all the brands associated with that are going to be releasing WearOS 3 watches.

But so far, we've only had it on a Samsung watch and it's been very much a Samsung driven experience. So when the Pixel watch comes out, ideally we would be getting what is a Google driven experience for an Android smart watch. Is there any news on the processor battery life front? No. I mean, this is like the thing that has held this entire category back. Yeah, so like for many years, Android Wearwatches have been relying on, many of the Android Wear watches have been relying on Qualcomm processors, which Qualcomm has not really put a lot of development into its processors for wearables. And they've been slower and way behind what Apple's

doing. The only reason that the Samsung watch runs WearOS3 is because it's using a Samsung processor inside of it. The Qualcomm processors that are available thus far apparently can't run all the features of WearOS3. So it'll be interesting to see what processor they do put in this Pixel watch, they did not speak to that at all. They didn't speak to anything in terms of like battery life or features like always on display. It would assume that it would have like the Google Assistant and you could talk to it. Like you can talk to Siri on the Apple Watch. They did say that you can control Google Home stuff through it so you can control smart home stuff.

It's like all the typical smartwatch stuff we've seen for like years now. Like they're just like putting it all together in one product that will hopefully work well and not die at like 5pm, which is like a thing that they haven't been. able to do in the past. So there's a lot of unknowns here. We don't know exactly what it's going to cost. I think it's going to be more on the premium side. I would be surprised that this thing's under $300. They're using stainless steel with it, which is generally going to push the price up. And if they put a tensor chip in there, we have no idea. Yeah. I think the main thing for me is, you know, they went with a circular display, which they've been doing across where for a while. It does not seem like they have really rethought the UI. There's still a lot of scrolling of

rectangular objects in their demos. And it's like, you guys, all right, like, we've just been at smartwatches for a while. Yeah. You know, it's like, this isn't a first generation product kind of problem. But like, here we are. And it's still like, well, I guess the edges of that list item will be cut off as I scroll. That reminds me of like what Pebble did with their circular smartwatch many years ago. They would just scroll the whole page.

So it perfectly fit each circle. So you couldn't scroll line by line. They would just do an entire page. And each page was rendered to fit. the circle. Yeah. I mean, I don't think there's any great solution except for square watches. And then you're stuck with a direct Apple comparison. So I kind of get it. But we'll see. I think the Fitbit stuff is really interesting that we've been waiting. But I think the main things are like battery life. And then obviously they can only, I mean, this is like the PixelBud's

pro too, right? Like they're starting to make hardware devices that only really work well with their hardware. Yep. And that's or at least, at least Android hardware, right? Like, you know, I'm sure that the Pixel Watch will work with other Android phones, not made by Google, and the PixelBuds Pro, which they also announced will probably work with non-Google phones. Maybe there might be a feature or two that you get with a Pixel that you don't get on a Samsung phone, but like they really are not designed to work with iPhones at all. So like, you probably won't be able to pair the watch with an iPhone. You might be able to pair PixelBuds with an iPhone, but then have no access to any feature control or anything like that. They will just be like very basic Bluetooth

headphones. Just wait until the Europeans hear about this. Well, and on that same level, what do we know about how Fitbit gets integrated into things? Because one thing that is true is there are a lot of people out there in the world who love Fitbits and have used them for a long time who might theoretically want a device like this. But what I can't get a sense of is like, is Fitbit going to be a separate service like Google Fit that others can use? Is it going to be part of Android? Is it just going to be for the Pixel Watch? Like did they spend all this money on this company just for the Pixel Watch? Do we have any idea how this is going to shake out?

Yeah, it's hard to say. I know that James Park, who is Fitbit's CEO, or he was a CEO before the acquisition. I don't know what his current title is now, but he's basically the leader of Fitbit. He did say that when the Pixel Watch launches, Google Fit is still going to exist for whatever reason. Classic Google. They're going to run concurrently. Fitbit is going to be making other hardware. They've got trackers. They've got their other smart watch lines. But apparently it was his team that drove the development of the Pixel Watch. So there's a lot of Fitbit expertise. built into this, maybe in the way that the watch wears, the way it fits you, the way it kind of

works as a functional watch. It seemed like they leverage a lot of that Fitbit experience. But as far as like what the platforms do, it's still like up in the air, you know, how that's going to shake out. And are you going to have two fitness apps on your watch? Like, if you have a Samsung watch, you do, you've got Google Fit and you've got Samsung Health and you could install any others, but, you know. And I'm sure there's a team at Google working on like Android Fitness Pro and that'll come to and it'll it'll all just be really delightful. Oh, Sundar told us they were focusing, man. Ecosystems all the way down.

All right. Last thing, real quick. I feel like we can actually get through it real quick. They tease the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro. They also announced the Pixel 6A, but fine. Yeah. It's $450.50. It has a millimeter wave, which at $450, I think, might be one of the only phones. Well. Oh, no. Do they tell us something wrong?

A little bit. Yes. Shocker that Google had their Specks wrong on their wireless radios. The unlocked $450 version does not have millimeter wave. The version that Verizon is selling is $500, and it does have millimeter wave. So you get to pay a 10% tax to get millimeter wave on Verizon. Very good. Just what everybody wants. Who hasn't wanted to stand under one street corner in download in pirate movies at Blazing Fast Speeds on their $400.

dollar fun. Yeah, the other interesting thing about the pixel 6A real quick is that it is aggressively priced but it runs the same tensor processor as a pixel 6 and 6 pro, but it does not have the same camera system as the 6 and 6 pro. Instead, it appears to have the same camera system as the 5 and 5A from before it. And this is the first time that the A line, Alison Johnson on our team pointed this out that like this is the first time that the A line has a different camera system than the flagship pixels. So Google traded a better processor for an inferior camera. And it made that trade this year, which is interesting. That's obviously what Apple does with the SE line on its budget phones.

It's got the latest A15 processor, but it's got an inferior camera compared to the rest of the iPhone. So it's interesting that Google made that transition this year. Well, I think they're all focused on TensorFlow, right? They said nothing about these cameras at all. Yeah, no, other than they're 12 megapixels. Yeah. Right. And then they tease the 7 and 7 Pro, which are,

Still ugly. I don't know what else. They carry on that design language, right? And either you like it or you don't. And the one thing that they're changing with the 7 Pro is interesting is on the 6 and 6 Pro, the camera bar, or as Dieter used to call it, the shelf, was glass. If you didn't use a case and you put your phone down, you're putting the glass, like, camera lens right down. It would break the third time you did it. Yeah, very frequently broke. So they are shifting that to like an aluminum band.

that has cutouts for the camera in it. So that's going to be a little bit different of a look. Maybe it'll be more durable or what have you. The other thing we know about the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro is that they will have a second generation tensor chip in them. Yeah. They're not beautiful. Maybe I won't go all the way to the U word.

I mean, I've seen worse design. Yeah, you've seen that pixel tablet. What if you could dock your phone to your Nest's smart hub? Yeah, yeah. Didn't the Seuss do that like 10 years ago? You dock the phone to the tablet and been docked the laptop. period now where like early 2010's product innovation like enough people have forgotten it. Yep.

We're like, we're just going to do it again. Murdo's like Atrix time to shine, baby. Yeah, baby. You can turn this phone into a shit Windows computer. Let's do it. You guys heard of Linux on the desktop. This is the year. All right.

There's other stuff. They brought that wallet. I mean, it's all on the site. Just bringing back the hits. It is very much Google is in a, and again, And you just heard us talking to sooner. They're more focused. They're actually trying to deliver on this stuff.

It's interesting. I would not say they announced anything that was wildly new at this year's I. No. I mean, I think we'll see, I think the fall hardware launch will be interesting because one will obviously learn more about the pixel sevens and the pixel watch. But I have a feeling,

just a hunch, that if they're willing to tease the tablet I. I know, maybe they will tease a photoable in the fall if they're not ready to launch yet. Because that thing's been rumored forever. That's a good theory. All right.

I've been doing my own research. Yes. You've been Googling. Dan, thank you. We will see you again here soon. We're going to take a break. But before we do that, the crypto world is insane right now. And we could spend like nine hours talking about it.

But instead, we just grabbed Liz Lapato and decided to spend like 10 minutes trying to figure out what's going on in crypto. So here's that. Liz Lapato. Hi. Welcome to what we're calling Crypto Corner, the new possibly only ever happening once, segment on the first cast. Well, welcome, ladies and gentlemen, my fellow dirtbags and everybody else. Here we are. It's time to talk about money. Okay, so there's a million things we could talk about, but I think the like general story

here is crypto is falling apart. And as far as I can tell, and please correct me if I'm wrong, a lot of this comes back to Luna and Terra as like the sort of middle of all of the chaos. If you had to pick one, it seems like it's that. Is that fair? Kind of. Okay. So I'm going to like zoom way back and then we're going to zoom. forward to Luna and Terra. So one of the things about an asset like a cryptocurrency is that it's super risky. And for the last several years, we've been living with very, very low interest rates, like near zero. The reason why we've had near zero interest rate policy is to stimulate the economy during the pandemic. And so in this environment, it doesn't necessarily make sense to put

your money in safe investments because you're not going to earn enough interest to keep up with inflation. So a bunch of weird shit happened. We've got SPACs, we've got meme stocks, we've got meme stocks, We got MNFTs. And like, a lot of the, like, sort of weirdness is because there was so much money, like, sloshing around and looking for places to have returns that inevitably it spilled into some of these other areas. But also, like, I think some people got bored during the pandemic and risk can be really fun. Like, that's the point of the gambling industry. So a lot of people got involved with, like, trading. Anyway, around November, the Fed indicated that it was going to raise interest rates. And that, by the way, was the peak of the crypto market was November. And then last week, the Fed increased the interest rates by half a percentage point, which is like the biggest increase in 20 years. And so we all saw like the stocks fall, right? Crypto's been falling farther because it's much more volatile. And anybody who's looking to de-risk is probably going to start with crypto. And so to get to your question about Luna and Terra, I think maybe it's helpful to understand in the crypto ecosystem what a stable coin is.

Because stablecoins are supposed to be, like, immune to all of this. Isn't that like they're literally called stable coins, right? Like all this chaos should not be affecting stable coins. Well, that's fun because some economic research from Bruce Mizrach, he's an economist and he looked at stable coins and they're not that stable actually, like 80% of them go to zero. But the idea behind a stable coin is essentially that it's pegged to something, like let's say a dollar, just for simplicity's sake. So you have something like Tether, which is supposed to represent a dollar in the crypto ecosystem and is theoretically backed by reserves. I say theoretically because

there are a lot of questions about Tether's reserves and we'll get there at a second. But the idea is that if you want to exit, let's say, your Bitcoin position and you want to move into, let's say, Ethereum. One way to do that is to cash out through Tether or another stable coin that's about equivalent to a dollar and then move into the Ethereum ecosystem. As for why you might want to do that, well, it's really difficult to go between crypto and fiat, or what you and I understand to be money, like dollar. Real human people money, yeah. I mean, as real as money ever is. And so that's partly because of like things like, you know, anti-money laundering, regulations, stuff like that. it sometimes takes a couple of days for your crypto investment to show up in your like dollar bank account.

So if you want to do trading more quickly than that, you move into a dollar equivalent, which is a stable coin. Those are also used to do things like create loans in the defy space, a bunch of other stuff in the ecosystem. With something like Tether, it's backed by reserves. Now, like there are questions about Tether's reserves, which I got into at length last year. But the thing about Tera and Luna, about that ecosystem is that it is an algorithmic stable coin, which is, if possible, worse than a regular one. The thing about algorithmic stable coins is that I'm trying to think of a real gentle way to put this and I'm not coming up with one. I think it's increasingly not in need of a gentle explanation based on what's happened. Basically, the way that this works is you have

two coins, right? One of them is called Tara. And Tara is supposed to be worth. $1. And the other is called Luna and that value floats. So it's worth whatever somebody wants to pay for it the same as like, I don't know, Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever. Now the two can be converted into each other. So let's say Luna's worth 30, which it was recently and certainly is not right now, but like let's say it's worth 30. You can destroy Luna and get 30 terra because Terra is worth a dollar each, right? And so if Tara is worth less than a dollar and you can think to yourself, oh, great idea. I'm going to destroy, I don't know, like 45 terra to create one Luna at a discount, which, you know, decreases the supply of Terra making it more valuable,

pulling it back up to a dollar. And if you're thinking, wait a minute, but like, what makes this valuable? The answer is belief in community. And so, you know, if you believe in this stuff, if you're in Luna, this can be useful because you're like, oh, a number go out. up, this is great, and you feel like sort of backed by arbitrage. But the moment that confidence is lost, then you find yourself in a really interesting position because you can essentially buy dollars at a discounted price. So if, you know, you dump everything, then they both fail. And we've hit this point of failure. And to be clear, the people behind this project are trying to like fix things. Well, and that's the last piece of this we're going to get into before I let you go,

because it's, it gets even crazier. But yeah, like, I keep looking and I feel like every time I refresh the page, the value of Luna goes down further and further. So right now, it's worth two cents. Yikes. Which, just to be clear, like, as of, like, April 4th, it was worth $116. So some people just really got, like, wrecked in a really, really painful way that I am genuinely sorry for.

Because, like, the thing about money and the thing about investment. is that they play on human emotions. And like the biggest thing in the crypto space is like hope and greed versus fear, uncertainty, and doubt, or what people like to call fud. And so like, if you look at Tara's price right now, you know, for the, the UST, the thing that's supposed to be worth a dollar, it's worth 38 cents at the time of this recording. Which is definitively not a dollar. Correct.

And so like I love the arbitrage idea of buying a dollar for 38 cents, because that's a lot of profit for me, assuming I can exit the trade, which I may not be able to do at this point. So that's kind of what's going on. You're in a death spiral. Now, what has happened is that the people behind this ecosystem have halted the blockchain. They say to prevent governance attacks, but I think that's like the only way that you can make the death cycle stop and like reset it, if that's even possible, which I don't think it is. Just by literally not letting people continue to sell. Yeah, and like to be clear, like, this is not that unusual in the regular financial system, right?

Sure. The markets, the regular financial system close at like four. And there's some aftermarket trading, whatever, but like you can, like, you're not going to get wrecked while you're asleep. The problem with cryptocurrency ecosystem is that markets are always open. And so there's no time to like pause and like reevaluate your position and like restrategize and like get out of your feelings. because one of the biggest things that like happens during periods like this is panic selling where people sell stuff that actually might be good. But they're so freaked out about all their losses that they don't like think it all the way through and sell.

And so like, you know, if you're opportunistic, like when you see a bare market like this, you start thinking, okay, when do I want to buy in? Because like there are plenty of people who are in this space who think that, you know, cryptocurrency is going to come back because so far it has. And like I've seen a lot of people sort of reassuring each other and themselves. Like I remember when Bitcoin like plunged in, you know, 2018 and like I remember all of these crypto winters, whatever. I guess one of the things that I find myself really interested in is like, are we going to see this chaos going into the regular markets? Because, you know, there are cryptocurrencies that are on the stock exchange right now, like Coinbase. Like that's a publicly traded company. Like things going wrong for crypto means things going wrong for Coinbase and the Coinbase.

shareholders. And of course, Coinbase has been plunging also as all of this is happening. And so, like, I can't tell you for sure that this is going to stay contained to crypto. I hope it is. But there's the possibility that there are linkages between these two systems, so between, like, tradfi and crypto. But also because, like, a lot of the people who are in crypto are retail investors. And so it may just be that we're going to see a lot of retail capitulation. And so if they decide that, like, all risk assets are a problem, then there's spillover. So it's, I don't know what happens. I am absolutely riveted. And, you know, I know that some of our listeners are into crypto, into the crypto ecosystem. If you're in crypto and you want to talk about

this and like let me know what's going on from your position, like email me. I'm lizathevurge.com. I am genuinely curious about what's happening to retail investors right now. And like if this is you, like, what are you thinking? How's it going? Like, please drop me a line. I'm I think there's carnage in the markets, and I think there's more carnage coming. Fair enough. All right. Well, we're going to come back to all of that on the next episode of Crypto Corner, which is probably a segment they'll never let us do again. But I hope we do.

Thank you, Liz. Appreciate it. And we are for real going to take a break this time. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts. But time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up.

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Alex Kranz is here. Hey, Alex. Hey, I'm very excited to not talk about crypto. Well, that makes just one. Now, Liz is great. Liz is refocused. She's on the crypto beat now. So now whenever we need anything, Liz is there.

It's great. She's there. And what a time to be on the crypto beat. That said, we're not talking about that with Alex. Alex, we're talking about the lightning port. Classic verge cast. Yes. I love that there's like currently a threat to the lightning port.

A looming threat. A looming threat. It's been looming for like a decade now. But no, it's really, really looming. We're getting more and more reports that they're going to finally get rid of the lightning port on the iPhone and the AirPods and replace it with USBC. If you drop it off the iPhone, you're hooped. You've got to take it off everything. You've got to take it off everything.

Yeah. That's the end of it. There's actually, there's like some really inside tech journalism baseball here. So there's a very famous analyst, Ming Shi Quo, who issues reports, great track record on Apple Rumors. surveys the supply chains, component suppliers. He is a controversial figure. Apple hates him. Accusations that he's bribing, like all the stuff.

But he is an analyst. He is deeply sourced in the supply chains and component world. Gets a lot of Apple stuff right. Sometimes you get some stuff wrong. Sometimes. I'm only saying this to set up the fact that now they have a Twitter, which is just not what you would, like, stuff used to come out, the Mac sites would get it for sure.

Yeah. The rest of us wouldn't. Yeah, but all like percolate out from his analyst, from the analyst reports that it was like, you never quite knew where it was coming from. Somebody got an email that they sent to somebody else and then it eventually ended up on the internet. Yeah. Yeah. But now he's like, whatever. I've got Twitter.

Look, Twitter's got six months left and I'm going hard for the last six months. So he's tweeting directly now. And he says, my latest survey indicates the second half of 23, new iPhones will abandon lightning and switch to USBC. and then the suppliers, the USBC ecosystem will become, they're going to do great. So what he's basically saying is, I've talked to all the suppliers, and they're expecting USBC sales to go through the roof

because Apple's hinting it is. Is this true or not? We don't know. Good track record. But you put this next to when they announced Lightning. They said it was a, Phil Schiller said it's a connector for the next decade, and they've hit the mark. Yeah.

Is this year the decade? Yeah. They're like, they're done with it. Oh. September 2012, Phil Schiller called Lightning a modern connector for the next decade. So technically, they kept their promise. They made it a decade. That's true.

All the rumors were that they were going to go portless and just do wireless charging. And then I think they released MagSafe in wireless charging. And then every Apple executive experienced what wireless charging is like. And they're like, cables are still pretty good at this. Yeah. And they can sell cables for so much money. You can buy a 10-foot Apple cable for $40,000. And the margin's pretty good.

Yeah. Every day, Tim Cook gets a, an email that's like, this is how many $150 thunderbolt cables we sold. And he's like, well, that's the future of the business. We'll see. They have been very committed to Lightning. They have not wanted to let it go.

But it's time. Doesn't it feel like it's time? Have they been committed? Because they've already pretty much taken out of most of the iPads at this point. Yeah, it's still only in the cheapest couple. And that's about it. And it just feels like a legacy thing, much like most of those really cheap iPads. Like most of the components of them are legacy components.

So I could see, we're doing a brand new iPhone. We're doing a brand new AirPods. Yeah. USBC. And then we all cry. And there's like at least one analyst I think said they were going to shave their eyebrows if it actually happens. Oh, wow. That guy will have no eyebrows.

See, Twitter's getting weird in these last six months of Twitter. It's just getting weird up there. Just getting super weird. So see, that's the big rumor. It's funny because that came right on top of the news that Apple was going to discontinue the iPod. Well, the iPod touch. Aw. Which was like.

ancient at this point. It's an iPhone 7. Yeah, it had the iPhone 7 chip in it. But, you know, we just had Tony Fidel on Decoder. He was on his big touries and tweeting all these pictures of iPods. He got in a little, I would say, like, a respectful bro argument with Phil Schiller on Twitter. Oh, that's true. Who had the idea for the wheel and where the idea for the wheel came.

And it ended with them being like, loved working with you, man. But like in the middle of you, like, this could go another way. But it's just like, you know, a moment. The iPod had a moment in the past couple weeks because of the Fidel book. Yeah. just going to say I was thinking about how much stuff I used to have in my pockets all the time. So it was an iPod. But I always had a classic.

I always had the big dog. I had a Canon Power Shot elf. That was very important to me. And God, thank God, those pictures didn't survive. And I had a Sony candy bar phone. Always those three things in my phone. And I had to charge them all every night. And you had to wear cargo pants.

No, I didn't have cargo pants. I'm like a jacket-oriented person. I always had a jacket. Okay. Okay. Were you permanent iPod person? Oh yeah. I had a gold iPod mini that went absolutely everywhere with me for a very long time.

It was. That's incredible. Yeah. Oh, I loved it. It was one of those things like that. It got stolen out of my car. And I still remember like where I was, what the weather was like, where my car was parked. Like I remember it was one of those moments in my life that like is so scarred into me because that's when someone stole my iPod and I couldn't afford to buy anyone.

But I still had the white headphones. So I plugged those into my. crappy other MP3 player and kept using it. And it was kind of like I had an iPod. My original iPod was also disappeared. I have no idea who took it. I suspect my brother. I've never found it. It never reappeared. Well, he's listening now. I've moved many times. So if it was in any of those places, I would have found it when I moved, right? But it wasn't there. So who knows? And then I got an iPod shuffle. It was not the same. Did you have the one without any buttons? Yes, I had that one. and I had like the USB stick looking one.

Yeah. That was my favorite because I felt I would feel like a spy. I'd go to like the college computer lab and I'd be like, I'm in guys. It felt very, very cool. That's great. Cazaar. Yeah. The iPod is one of the last products that constantly changed its design every year.

Like every year it looked different. And it was very exciting. And now it's like, well, we're under the 35th year of this iPhone design. We figured out laptops. and that's what you're going to get forever. Just go, I would encourage everyone to go back in time and look at, like, what digital cameras looked like. They were all over the place. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And you could, like, everything is converged into a candy bar, which is fine. They're very powerful and they're great. And we love them, obviously. But it'd be nice. Be nice if we'd. Clickwheel. Diverge to things.

It's cool. Did you just say click wheel to people. Give it. There really was something magical about it, by the way. Like, the coolest thing about the iPod thing this week was like, everybody has an iPod. story and everybody like has feelings about iPods. They had just, they were this like cultural phenomenon for so many people for so long that I don't

feel like there's that many things like that. Like you're not going to hear people telling you like their stories about their quest two in 10 years. Like that's, it's just not the same thing anymore. Yeah. One of the actually, the things I thought about the iPod a lot this week was so much iPod usage was communal.

Like you think about it. It's like a headphones device. Like you're alone. You're like having your moment. But you were not worried about people seeing your photos. Yeah. iPods weren't locked, right? Like they had the switch on the top to prevent like butt plays.

But like you just like hand your iPod to other people or you're like plug it into their dock or like whatever. And like that was the ad campaign. It was like what it was just such a shared device. And very few of our devices are designed to be shared in that way anymore because they contain the past, present and future of our personality. melodies. And now you're like, no, you don't even look at my phone. How dare you? But also that feeling when you hand somebody your iPod and they start scrolling through your artists and judging your music taste was like, that was a real moment. It was like maybe not as high stakes as you can now scroll through all my photos. But it felt as someone with like deeply, deeply terrible music taste,

it was a tough moment. It's a lot of people who are like, wow, you have a lot of Britney Spears on your iPad. There's a lot of jangly jam bands on your iPad. Oh, so many. So many. Just like the entire jam band's discography. That was the best part of it, though. I loved having like terrible music on it and like wording it. So that was the first thing you would see on my iPod. So you'd be like what this is what we're going to have to list like anime music from the 1980s. This is what you're going to make us listen to Alex. I'm like, yeah, it's exactly what you're going to have to listen to. It was incredible. Were you a perfectly organized I scenes person? A hundred percent. Like, that was a dopamine hit.

Same. To like, I'd get in there. I'd say, I'd mess with the genre. I'd be like, is that really, is it really country western? Is it Texas country? I don't know. But I had to have it just right. When you got the weird MP3s and they had the deeply weird genre, you know, like,

do I have to be really into this now? Yeah. Because this is who I've become. Look, we're missing a lot with having. having streaming services categorize all culture. I'm just saying there was a moment with iPods and it was real. Speaking of music, Welch reviewed, I'm never going to get this right. The Sony W.H. 1000X. M5s.

You did it. I did it because I read it. I'm going to buy these headphones so fast. Yes. Even though I think that they're not going to be my favorite. Yeah, I'm a little bummed. I kind of expected them to be, Sony's just done such a good job of just making it substantially better every time that this was kind of the one where it was like,

like, okay, certain things are better. It seems like it sounds better. The noise cancellation is better. But it's more expensive for what I think is like a nicer looking, but less sort of impressive design. Yeah. And I will say this. It doesn't fold up.

That's the thing. That's the thing that kills me. The fact that it just lays flat in the case and doesn't curl in on itself to fit into, drives me absolutely insane. I just went to Samson's going back and I carried my M2s, which are dying. Yeah. and like decrepit, but like they fold up small into the case. Yeah.

And now these don't. You know what this is? This is inflation. This is inflation. They're increasing the price and giving us less like space in our bags. So Welch points out that they're going to keep selling the M4s. I hope the price will go down. And I think I'm going to end up buying M4s instead M5s because they fold up.

This is my plan. There was an interesting argument on our YouTube channel too about comfort over versus design. Like that was just sort of the question that we post. as we uploaded the video. And at least when I checked, it was like overwhelmingly comfort. People are just like, just give me a thing that is easy to wear.

And for me, I would add, to your point, like easy to carry. And it's like, will I deal with slightly worse sound in order to get that? Yes.

Like the only thing for me that I like won't trade is battery life. But beyond that, like give me comfort over just about everything else. So depressing. No, it's just like,

no matter what, if you're like, will you pick this or sound quality? People are like, whatever the other one is. Whatever. Convenience, comfort. like just like whatever it is speed like sound quality now that's it's always the lowest thing on the list

grado would be like a fortune 500 company right now if people actually cared seriously i tweeted by the way wondery announced uh podcast in atmos which we are going to have to do and i think our engineer andrews very high for us to do so we'll be sneaking all around you soon but i was like i think spatial audio is like for not movies is like a wonder laundering scheme And now the spatial audio people are out in force. Oh, no. Yeah. Are there, they're like at most bros out there?

I don't know what it. I don't know how to describe it. They're not passionate about it and they back down immediately. So they're not like Elon fans, right? They're like, I think it sounds good. You're like, I don't. You're like, to each his own. And it's like, well, that was the most pleasant online interaction ever had.

It's because they like, they wandered over from the ABS forum. And they were like, oh, you're talking, you're talking trash. the system I spent thousands of dollars on. How dare you? Do it for movies. I think it's great for movies. But I just think when we release this podcast, Natmos, which we will inevitably do, I think we will quickly discover that the value is very low. The reason I bring this up in the context of these headphones, Sony says they're going to issue an update to make them run spatial audio on Android. Classic disclaimer about trusting software update promises. Well, right, who knows. But it won't run an iOS and then on Android, you can have lossless audio or you can have pairing with multiple

devices and those are your two choices because Bluetooth is stuck. And then on Apple, you can only get AAC. I'm just going to start the clock. The next version of AirPods with these USBC connectors are going to get the win of the USBC connector and then it only works on iOS devices. We've completely made a proprietary Bluetooth protocol. I'm telling you it's coming. By the way, the 6A, the Pixel 6A, no headphone jack.

The nightmare is here, people. Yep. We're in it. Every day. I definitely sat next to somebody in the plane of back from San Francisco who looked at the movies on the Delta seat back

and held up their AirPods and then looked at the AirPods and looked at the movies. That's devastating. Oh, man. There's a number of adapters and dongles that you can, but... But then on the flip side,

did you notice when we got on with Sundar at the beginning of the show? He asked us if it was okay that he couldn't find a pair of 3.5 millimeter headphones to plug into his computer. And it's like, this is the world we live in. Like the CEO of Google cannot track down a pair of headphones that plug into a headphone jack.

We had somebody on the coder. I don't remember it was. It was another CEO of an accessory company. And they were like, I need a microphone. I was like, but you make them. That's your job. Go outside. What are you doing?

Shout. Mark Zuckerberg trying to cause a little hype situation today. Did an Instagram reel. That's what he's got it. He doesn't have a choice. Yeah. He can't tweet. anything.

No. But he tweeted a link to an Instagram video of him in the Project Cambria headset, which is the new high-end headset that's coming. Out teeth have leaked the entire roadmap. It's a high-end mixed reality headset. So the cameras in the outside, streams video to you and low-latency to your eyes, and then it does AR stuff over that video. Because no one can figure out actual AR.

So now we're just doing video, like mixed reality like that. This is all great. He says it's going to come to Quest soon in some sort of preview mode. The funniest thing about this is they blurred out selectively the headset on his face. Can't see it. Like frame by frame. So it's just him with like a blurry line over his eyes. The funniest thing for me was a lot of hype in this entire video.

And they're like, we're finally doing it. We're giving you pass through in color. And I'm like, I want you to know, color, color video has been a thing, meta. Yeah, this is not new. Yeah, I'm assuming maybe in the lab, like they started line, but they did announce color very proudly. I'm so proud. I'm so proud. I'm just wondering, like, what if you just showed us the device?

Like, leaking a headset at this point, it's going to look like a VR headset. Yeah. It's also, like, not that well blurred. It's pretty clearly just a VR headset. Like, it's also, I'm looking at this right now and the cover image on the Instagram that he shared is him, standing up sort of holding one hand out in front of you smiling with the headset on him blurred. And it's like, my dude, like, this is going to go right there with the sunscreen photo, you with the flag.

Like, this is just a meable moment. In the render, if you watch the video, at one point it zooms out of the headset. It just shows you the headset. It's very good. All of this is very hypey, very cool. This is Apple's building a version like this. That's what Alex tells us. Meadow's building this.

It's going to come out later this year. but their demo is like he's like petting an alien and then it's like what if you could work in your office and he's just sitting in his desk but the video's being passed through but then he's got virtual screens too wait wait what if you could work in your office and just pet an alien not not mad i'm going to read you the thing it says imagine being able to pull up your perfect workstation which is with as many screens as you want anywhere you go which is i mean i do imagine that from time to time yeah i do as well But this is the next step of VR-A-R.

Because no one can build the glasses. Yeah. Right? Like, even Google is like, we're not going to build the glasses. What we can build is a little display that shows you text of people talking to you. So Apple and Facebook are chasing this, like, high-end mixed reality. We'll see. It was, I don't know, they did it.

Do you think? Because I figure both Google and meta are showing this stuff off because I know WWDC is coming. And presumably we're going to see a lot more of the. Apple headset. So my question is, do you think meta hyped the color because the Apple headset will be in black and white? Maybe. That would be great if Apple released a fully black and white, like a perfect AR experience

in black and white. Like the glass is the whole thing, but it's just in black and white. Like, that's up there with like the watch that has a display that isn't on all the time. All right. Like, it doesn't have a floppy drive. Like, that's like a perfect Apple move. Just very European aesthetic. anytime you put it on.

You're in a very fancy movie. It's great. That'd be amazing. Samsung leak of the Galaxy Z-Fold 4, which actually looks beautiful. It does. They really refine this design. The bump, though. The camera bumps.

I love the camera bumps. They're three individual camera bumps. Yeah. Perfect circles. Perfect circles. I can already feel my thumb running over them and, like, having feelings. and I don't know if they'll be good or bad feelings. Like the thumb having feelings?

You might get me having feelings as like the texture. There's just something about it that like I was like, ooh, I don't know. Just they're too thick. It's amazing that they're on the fourth generation of this device. And like they're refining the design. It really, well, and it's like to your point, it's getting kind of good. I mean, obviously like a lot to see between here's a video from Samsung and an actual thing that does or does not break. when you try to touch it.

But I mean, these things are getting better fast. Like, I still think of foldable phones in my head as kind of a, like, silly prototype that are a long way away from being really competitive things. And I can still count on one hand the number of foldable phones I've seen, like, in the wild. But there's like, this is the, the Z Fold 4 was one of those things. It was like, okay, there's something here. Like, this is kind of looking like a phone. Yeah.

And then if Google figures out its tablet situation, then you unfold it and becomes a useful tablet as opposed to just a giant phone. Right. Yes. Which is what we're going on now. And then lastly, speaking of foldable displays, it was the Display Week conference this week. Obviously, the talk of the town. My favorite, honestly, one of my favorite conferences.

Yeah. Display Week and Sigrap are my two conferences, my two favorite conferences, because the weirdest stuff comes out. LG and Samsung, you get the feeling like their display teams, like, they're geared up for display week. They're like, this is it, y'all. So just lots of stuff. LG had an 8-inch foldable touchscreen, which can fold in both directions, which is wild.

You can fold it all the way back on over itself. Lots of rolling displays and like extendables, which is really cool. So you just like pull the display out and it gets longer. And we should just say, if you're wondering, why are these things useful in my life and do I need them? You're asking the wrong question. That doesn't matter. You're listening to the wrong show. Yeah.

It's if you're saying why do I want to pull up my phone two inches to see notifications on it, I don't have an answer for you. I also don't care. It looks very cool and it makes me happy. I'm just saying Samsung put out a video and at one point it just put the words wide slideable on screen and then showed a phone being like pulled out. And I was like, this are rules. Like I've been walking around being like, where are my wide slideables?

And like no one's been answering until today. Why are they though going after it in the mobile space and not in the TV space where like, The only rollable TV we have is $10,000. And I personally would like a rollable TV so I don't have a giant black square behind me in every Zoom call. I think it's because Samsung is selling more frame TVs than you can shake a stick at. That thing is so popular. They're like, yeah, what people want is a subscription to fine art, not to make your TV go away, even though it's not their best TV. I'm just saying wide slides rise up, you know, like, that's the future is wide slides.

It sounds like a catchphrase from like a Disney cartoon. I really love it. Welcome to the wide slide. Starring goofy. It's such a cool. You got to see it. It's like so let me try to describe their demo to you. So David's right.

The vertical slideable is someone's watching like a surfing video and they pull the screen up and they should in like notifications and menu stuff there. The wide slideable demo. This is real. I swear to God, this is real. It's like it's kids trick or treating. it's a video of a kid, so they're all dressed in like costumes, and they pull it out and they reveal a ghost. That's not how movies work.

No, it's like a scream costume guy, not a ghost. But it's like they pull it out and there's like a guy being like, ooh. It's just such a good demo. It looks so good that you're like, this isn't real. This looks fake. I can't stop watching. It's like they had to film it. make it and then put the words wide-slidable on it.

And there was meetings for days about this. And they're like, whose kids are going to be in the ghost video? They paid some kids to be in that video. I just love the idea that if you didn't have the ability to stretch your screen out, like, if they didn't do all of that engineering, you would never know there was a ghost. Think about all the stuff that's happening on your phone that you've just never even seen. In every movie you've ever watched, there's something off to the side that you just didn't even. You could just wide slide yourself right out there.

It's very good. I hope these are all real, and we should all have them. Other stuff we should talk about really quick. The F-150 Lightning is shipping. Andy Hawkins got to drive one. Lots of people got to drive one. By all accounts, this product is going to be a hit. Yeah.

They just can't make any of them. Like, that's the problem. Also, the tow capacity on them. Like, I love that he was talking about how it actually shows you how much your battery life is going to go down when you start towing something, but also your battery life goes way down when you start towing something. No long distance trips. This is the real Texas coming out.

It's true. I'm very worried about towing. I had to tow one time and ended up calling a friend crying because I was so upset. I was just towing like a U-Haul trailer. And she's like, you just learn how to do it. You get used to it. Very good. You do over time.

I've only towed twice, I think. Scary. It wasn't a big deal. I wasn't it was doing a very small thing. All right. Here's what we got to. Everyone's got to get a truck and we're not going to practice towing together. But no, seriously, like the product seems great.

They just got to make a lot of them. So that's great. Check out that coverage on the site. DISH, the project Gena 5Sys keeps stumbling into some sort of disaster-like reality. I would say that DISH network keeps talking about crypto in relation to its wireless network in ways that are not necessarily connected to reality. So they had an investor, an analyst event in Vegas, and I'm just going to read this to you.

This is on the slide. Imagine if there is a wireless carrier that embraced digital acceleration, the Web 3.0 trends to reshape the entireless wireless experience. Or imagine if you could turn your unused data into a real digital currency. What? What? Yeah. What do any of those words mean?

I don't know. But let me continue. Imagine if you could leverage decentralized financing to get the latest iconic devices. Imagine if there is a wireless carrier that actually paid you back. So I'm just going to tell you, if you have a Bitcoin, do not buy an iPhone with it. I don't know. At this point, the price of those two things is getting ever closer to go. It's true.

It just seems like not the right use for it. They've got to launch this thing by June. They've got all these targets to hit. It seems like we're going to be in the market for a lot of actual marketing. I would remind you that right now this network exists only in Las Vegas. The only phone that it can work with is the Motorola Edge Plus. It is not on track. I hear the O-Ran fanboys.

They're furious when I talk about this. Open radio access networks are great. I'm excited for the next generation of technology to, you know, enable competition for infrastructure. Gena Sixis. Jenna Sixes. I'm with you. man, but I think we're in for a lot of weird crypto bro market. Like, they're supposed to cover 20% of the population in the United States in just like a few weeks.

And what is not is a slide about paying for iPhones with digital currency. All I see here is dish, like desperately begging to be a meme stock. They're like, please, we love NFTs so much. Give us your money. Just meme us so hard. Oh, yeah. By the way, if you test her on the network, you get NFTs. Yeah.

Of course you do. It's all very confusing. You don't get cell service, but you do get an entity. We've just inflicted violence on Allison Johnson, our phone and network reporter this week. Every day, just being like, hey, Dish said something else about their new network that's coming. You can just hear her groaning across the country. Well, they just need to put up a network. It's not that they bet on the wrong, what's not not not that they bet on technology.

It's that they promise they would build this network faster and cheaper by using O-RAN and having all these other vendors involved that aren't the traditional vendors. And like in a normal context, that would be like the great disruptive thing to do. Yes. You know, and it would like fail and whatever. But they're only do they're doing it like the point of a gun because they only took over these assets because T-Mobile was allowed to buy Sprint. And like, it's just like this is not actually how innovation or good businesses work. Like the government was like, what if you married you and then we'll take your house and we'll give it to that guy and then that guy will build another house? It's like, what are you doing?

It's not great. But who has not wanted to turn there anytime minutes into rollover data into cryptocurrency? Do people still have rollover data? I don't know. I don't know what that means. I keep reading it. And I'm just like, imagine if there is a wireless carrier that embraced digital acceleration. comma, the Web 3.0 trends to reshape the entire wireless experience.

What does that mean? Do you know what the wireless experience is? You take your phone out of your pocket and it connects to the internet. What Web 3.0 trends are going to get in the middle of that? Okay, fine. Or imagine if you could turn your unused data into real digital currency, not that fake shit. What does that mean? You know, you've been trying to buy stuff with your data.

You can't do that anymore. They've got real money. It just implies that you will have unused data, first of all, right? Yeah. You're unused data. So I don't know if DISH is aware of this. The hottest trend in wireless is unlimited data plans. So this is DISH saying we made a network.

It's so bad. Please don't use it. We will give you money. It's not to use our terrible money. Pay you in Doge coins. I don't know, man. I'm a little worried, though, because this is coming from like the subsidiary, right? It's going to be BoostMobles network.

It's going to run. It's super unclear. They keep, like, dancing around it, but they had Boost mobile CEO out there talking about this thing. So it's a little, feels a little. Boost coins. Is it predatory? It feels a little predatory.

I mean, I don't know. All I know is that you're going to, there's the concept of unused data in 2022 for wireless plans is a new. Look, the theme of the show is everything old is new again. Yeah. True. Google's like wallet's back. Boost mobile is like limited data plans are back.

Roll over data. We're all over minutes or back, y'all. What a time to be alive. I can't wait to cover this more. By the way, if you're a Ditch Network executive and you want to come on one of our shows, the door is open to you. Just get out your Motorola Edge Plus and give us a call. You have to be in Las Vegas.

I'll come to Vegas for you. All right, we've gone over. We've got to wrap this thing up. Thank you to Sooner-Peshai for joining the Vergecast. Real ones come on the Vergecast. Decoder is the safe space for executives. You want to come into this chaos. You got to congratulations the Sundarver coming on this show.

That's the one he wanted to be on this show. So you have Decoder, the CEO of UiPath, which is a software automation company. One of my favorite nerdy things to talk about. CEO of UiPath, Daniel Dines, was on Decoder. We talked a lot about whether big companies hire UiPath to automate their software. And so there's a feedback loop happening where the people who make software are making it for robots and not people, which is just wild to think about. It's very good.

Alex's creator's miniseries on the virtual chats continues. We just had plopi touched her hearts. Next week, it's what? It's accessible game controllers. Yeah, it's controllers. We talked to Ben Heck, who, like, has been doing this for over 20 years. I've done Ben for over 10 years. He's a fascinating character.

Absolutely. And then the site looks great this week. There's all kinds of stuff. We have coverage of Josh Hawley trying to punish Disney. Addie's got some stuff on the Texas social media bill. We've got the ORA Strap 2 review. There's DJ Mini 3. Pro, which I'm buying for no reason that's on the site.

Just go read Theverge.com. That's why it exists. It's a great. It's true. Site looks great this week. That's it. Thanks, Dan. Alex, thank you.

Thank you to Soon to our one more time. That's it. Rock and roll. Thanks for listening to this week's show. And hey, we'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email at vergecast at theverge.com. And if you'd like to the show, share it with a friend. Vergecast is a production of the Verge and part of the Vox Media podcast network.

Today's episode was produced by me, Liam James. and our senior audio director, Andrew Marino. Our executive producer is Eleanor Donovan. That's it. We'll see you next week.