The Vergecast - Hands-on with the Note 8, Android Oreo, and Verizon's new unlimited data plans

Episode Date: August 25, 2017

This week on The Verge, Dieter was able to get his hands on the new Galaxy Note 8. So on The Vergecast, Nilay, Dieter, and Paul go over the first impressions of Samsung’s latest product and what the pricing will mean for future smartphones. Next up, Loren Grush returns to the show to talk about the second episode of Space Craft, as well as her experience seeing the eclipse this week in Nashville. There’s a lot more in between, like Android Oreo’s name announcement, Verizon’s new unlimited data plans, and some new smart speakers on the horizon, so listen to it all and you’ll get it all. 02:43 - Note 8 specs and features 17:06 - Apple reportedly planning $999 price for new iPhone 26:36 - How I outran clouds to get the perfect eclipse photo with Loren Grush 34:12 - Space Craft episode two with Loren Grush 44:34 - Android O is now officially Android Oreo 47:40 - Google may take on the Echo Dot with a mini Google Home 51:26 - Samsung confirms it’s working on a smart speaker 52:13 - Paul revisits Intel’s new chip announcements 57:41 - Verizon’s good unlimited data plan is now three bad unlimited plans 1:09:38 - Paul’s weekly segment “YotaPhone 3; still Yota-ing” 1:12:07 - Apple TV is losing badly to Roku and Amazon in the living room, survey finds 1:13:28 - iOS 11 Safari will turn Google AMP links back into regular ones when sharing 1:19:34 - Nikon’s new D850 has 45.7 megapixels and enough features to tempt Canon shooters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Vergecast. The show brought to you by not Jason Bourne, but whoever Jeremy Renner was in that other movie. Jackson Bourne. The flagship podcast to Theverge.com. I don't know why we started with the Bourne supremacy, but here we are. Anyhow. It's a huge week. How come they have it made a, they should make one where he converts and they can call it Jason Bourne again.

I don't know if we're ready for like an evangelical Christian action movie. Do they have any of those, Paul? Left Behind is kind of an action movie. Like the Kirk Cameron left behind? Yeah, yeah. But it's not like really an action movie. All right. I mean, I can't say I like really studiously watch Left Behind films.

Anyhow, my point here today is not whether or not we're ascending to a higher moral plane. It's that Paul is here. Yeah. Dieter's here. Hello. I'm here. I'm Neelheim. I'm your friend, your pal.

And we have a whole bunch of news to talk about. We've got a pack show here. We got new phones. There are all kinds of phone news. Google named it Oreo, which was not a surprise to literally anyone, regardless of Google's best efforts. We got a segment with Lauren Grush coming up talking about spacecraft. Packed show, kind of a classic vibe because it's like phone season again. Here's the sad part, though.

I can't read the show notes. Yeah. Because I'm blind from looking at the song. It happened. Yeah, the eclipse happened. Worth it. Paul and I watched it together. And I will tell you confidently, he kind of looked at it.

the sun a little bit of times. I had the glasses. I kept offering them. He's like, no, no, no. I'm going to look. I wanted to see it for real. You know, we're about tech and culture. The sun, I believe, the oldest technology in the universe. That's the fact. Sure. Everyone wants to kind of look at the sun.

We were out. We went out. We were standing on the Veterans Memorial here in financial districts, like a big stair-stepy, grassy thing. Lots of people had glasses. All the suits were out. in five-eye, everyone just kind of kept on furtively glancing at the sun. I've never seen anything like... Well, no, I mean, the key thing and the failure of the user interface of the glasses is that it's apparently a human instinct.

You can look at anything when you're putting glasses on, but when you take glasses off, you look exactly at the thing. Because think about it, like, you know, like, oh, I just realized I'm looking through sunglasses. Let me pull those down. Yeah. And so every time someone would take off the glasses, like, ah! All right. Speaking of large, powerful, bright objects.

Dieter. Wow. I just went for it, man. Just went for it. The Note 8 came out this week. Yesterday, actually, in terms of when we were recording. Dieter, you did the hands-on, you've played with it. Tell us everything.

I have. It is a big, giant note. The Note 7 before it started causing explosion. Maybe even the Note 5 before. Like people started freaking out because, oh my God, is it a note if it doesn't have a removable battery? Is it too much like the Galaxy S line? And, yeah, the Node 8 feels like a slightly flatter, slightly bigger Galaxy S8 plus. But, you know, it's good.

It's fine. It has a couple new stylus tricks that I like. What are the stylus tricks? So, okay. The first stylus trick is one that's obvious and should have been there on the Note 7. which is when you pull the stylus out to take notes on the lock screen, when you pull the stylus out with the phone locks, it just gives you a black screen, you can take notes.

They added a new page button so you can take up to 100 pages of notes. Oh, my God. I didn't even know the note did that. That seems actually convenient. Yeah. Yeah. No, they aren't really good at the stylus stuff. You just start writing on the screen.

Yeah. The other style, I mean, there's a couple, like, you could, like, highlight text with it and, and, like, translate. That doesn't really feel like a stylus feature to me. It's just a feature, but whatever. The cool thing is that you can draw a message, right? Like draw a smiley face and a heart. And then when you save it, it saves the gift recording of you drawing the smiley face in the heart.

And then you can send that playback to somebody. I like it because it's like it's not proprietary. You just, you draw this thing and then you stick it in the messaging app you actually use or you stick it on Twitter or whatever. It's not I message tools. Everybody can see it. Right. So that's that. I guess the bigger innovation, the bigger.

The bigger change is they also went dual camera. They managed to not have a big camera bump doing it. And there's like two different ways to dual cameras now. Well, actually three. So there's what essential, I think Huawei have done, which is one's black and white and one is color. There's what Apple does. And what Samsung has done, which is like one is normal and one is telephoto.

And then there's one that LG has done where one is like super wide and one is normal. So Samsung's big thing is they're like, like, look, we put optical image stabilization on both lenses, and so then it'll be less shaky. Plus, you can adjust the blur in the camera app, not just in post-production. So you put those two things together. That's ostensibly better. But I don't know. We need to test it and review it.

Apparently, so you have to turn on live focus. That's what it's called. And then if you leave the camera app and come back, it's still there. it's still on by default. But if the camera app closes or you restart the phone, then you have to toggle it back on again, which I don't like. I feel like if it's not the default, then what's the point?

It's like kind of a chicken move to like make it like a weird mode for the camera. Is that because it takes more battery or something? Well, it takes more battery, but also live photo, I think has an, I think it's in live photo has an option where it will save both the wide-end, angle and the telephoto. So it actually saves like three images, the combined image that you can adjust the blur on, the telephoto image and the wide angle image. So if you leave it on, your image goes from, you know, I don't know, a meg or two to like 15 megs because it's just saving just a ton of data. Wow. So that's probably why it's not like the default because I think the US version

ships with 64 gigs of storage. It's expandable. But like you could start eating that up pretty quickly. But yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, do you like big phones? The note is like the quintessential, the OG big phone. Is it bigger than the iPhone, the plus size iPhones? It's, I didn't have a plus size iPhone there to hold it up next to. I'd have to do the online tool to measure it. It doesn't feel bigger than the plus size iPhones. Yeah, so Dan said to me too. The problem, I can't use the plus size iPhones anymore. I could barely use the pixel Excel anymore. After having used the Galaxy the S-8 and the essential phone, any phones that, like, have those big giant bezels on the top and the bottom just feel stupid.

Just dumb, dumb, dumb. Yeah. Dopey, stupid. And so it feels smaller. It might not technically be smaller, but the screen is huge. Samsung was very careful to tell us that the curve on the left and the right was less pronounced than it is on the S-8 because then you have more space to write with the stylus.

Yeah, it's almost like curving the edges of the screen is not. Great. Nobody, they keep reducing those curves. Like the first, remember it was like the S6 edge was like super curved and they're like, it's a sideways screen with features. And now they're just like, we curved it even less this time. Yeah. They did a new multitasking thing, which is maybe interesting.

Do you guys ever use split screen on your phones ever? I want to. That's my answer. Yeah. Everybody wants to. Nobody does. Yeah. I've done it a couple of times.

So what Samsung has done is you can, when you have two apps open, you can save that dual app combo, like, in your launcher or in the, like, swipe-in quick-launch thing. And you can either just launch Chrome or launch, you know, Messenger or whatever. Or you can, like, hit the dual-app icons, and it'll launch them together all the time. Or, like, whenever you hit that combo. So that's kind of neat. Yeah. I mean, I guess there's a screen that's bigger and bigger.

You've got to figure out ways to layer those windows. Yeah. But, yeah, it's one of those. things that I want to do, and I never actually do. But, I don't know, maybe I'll get a note. Maybe I get a note. I'll start doing like two hours a time. That Pixby button because use the Pixby button.

He's going to support Spotify. How one hand usable is this phone? Like I don't like big phones at all. And I don't, I basically have no fine motor controls in my hand, so I can't use a stylus. So the note is just, I'm just kind of like a clumsy. person. But no, it's useless to me. But I'm still curious.

Don't think the notes for you then, friend. Just gonna put that out there. It's not really a one-handed phone. It's not for you. Yeah. Sorry. I mean, I... It's got six gigs of RAM. I don't know. Sorry, that's a range of spec. Just threw out there. Hey, we're all about specs.

Yeah. Playing Paul's a drum. A video didn't get made from last week. No. I'm working on it. Yeah, where's that video? Where's the spec down? It's in the works. I will. tell the listener that I definitely ruined a meeting this week as Paul was talking about this video by opening garage band and just playing keyboard drums through the middle of the meeting.

I don't know why anybody invites me to meetings this organization. I'm doing everything I can to not go and when I go I'm disruptive. You should just not invite me. It's great. And yet. Interesting. That's my plan. It's my secret plan to not be a good boss. I think the note is like it's like you're saying you want to multitask with it. Like that's kind of the thing. Like, I think most people don't actually, they'll be just fine, they'll be just fine, they'll be just fine with something like an S.A.

plus or an essential phone or a pixel XL or an iPhone plus. But there's something about the note that's like, I am the most powerful thing you can get. Bam, I've got all the RAM, I've got blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That is compelling.

It's not a removal storage slot. I mean, that's like the main thing that I think of it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think of it. Yep. I mean, it's supposed to be It's waterproof and so is a stylus. That's great. I love that. Just right in the pool.

So I remember, like, remember when 17-inch laptops are kind of a new thing? And it was like this hyper-premium concept. And then companies realized that $400 17-inch laptops were really where it's at. Like, where is the $400 note? They made that. Oh, they exist. It was called like the Galaxy Mega. Remember that thing?

Yeah. Like Samsung made. There's a whole bunch of them in China. I could not tell you the vast scope of Samsung's product line, but they have a bunch of mid, low-end phones with huge screens. No, but with a stylus. Because I think one of the important things is older people who do not like typing on virtual keyboards

would be more comfortable typing with a stylus or writing their notes. Yeah. It's a theory. Again, not my demographic. Not helpful to me. I think those people are better served by the voice typing feature. That is also a thing that I see with the old people.

Yeah. The old people. We're going to be those people, Sunday. Screaming at our phones. I mean, I'm that person right now. I'm going to tell you guys. It's true. I get a lot of texts from Deidder that are very obviously dictated.

We haven't talked about the most important thing. Which is that it costs a shedload of money. I'm going to... No, no. That's the second most important thing. I'm going to build a hill for Neely to die on, and it's going to have a headphone jack in it. You know, I said last week, I don't want to... to be the face of this movement.

And then I got a lot of tweets that are like, sorry, you've dug your own grave. Samsung, and somebody tweeted me, Samsung made a big deal that still has a headphone jack, which, by the way, it can because it's huge. It's like all of Apple's arguments about saving space, whatnot. That's essential's argument to you. We saw Andy Rubin at Code. He's like, we got to make the phone smaller. This is the thing we get rid of to make the phone smaller.

Well, if you make the world's biggest phone, you have some extra space. So they have it in there. But Samsung made a big deal out of it. and I understand completely why they would. Because if you have a thing that people still want and they're obviously annoyed by it, your phone has a differentiating feature and you have it. And every Android phone is losing it.

So now you've got the one Android phone that has this that has it. And you're the one in the store and you're like, you can get this other phone that you probably haven't heard of, LG, what's that? Or you can get this tried and true Samsung that everyone's heard of and it's got this port you want. Like they're just going to have it forever.

Until something in the Android ecosystem threatened Samsung, they have no reason not to just keep playing the game they're playing. Because their hardware is really nice. And they figure out how to make the phone small and have no, like, bezels with the headphone jack and waterproof.

Yeah. You might even say the out-engineered Apple in terms of packaging. It's just an idea that I have. But yes, look, I don't love the headphone jack. Like, I used AirPods yesterday. It was great. Wonderful experience.

I'm just saying... I was looking into the Apple dongle, which I hadn't been able to buy on Amazon, but now it seems to be available on Amazon. But I looked to see how much it would be on Apple.com. Yeah. It's hard to find there. The Apple official dongle has 1.5 stars out of five on Apple's official store. What?

It's like a forum for people editorializing why it's a bad idea. idea and also talking about how the volume level that they get from the dongle they don't think is equivalent to the actual, a traditional phone's headphone jack. Wow. Sounds like I assigned you another story just now. Well, I already wrote it. Did you? I just didn't put it up yet. Oh, I see.

No, a dog ate it. That's wild. I mean, look, it's whatever. I'm just saying they created a problem. They sell $129 solution. problem. It is excellent business. Samsung should be paying Apple to keep not having a headphone jack. I mean, I don't think anyone in the universe is going to switch from iOS to Android over a headphone jack. Like, whatever. It's a good ecosystem. You're locked into it.

They saw a bunch of great products. But I just, it's annoying. And I think we should just be aware of the fact that it's annoying. That's it. That's my hill. My hill is entitled, please just be aware that this is annoying and stop lying to everyone. Would you say it's a It's not a well-titled hill. It's one of those weird Welsh hills with like endless long names. Endless what? Does anyone have a hill in Wales they can say? You know, like, Welsh names are like really long?

You know what I'm talking about? Welsh names or Welsh hills? Well, both. Names. The hills are named. The big Venn diagram of things. What do names have to do with hills? I seriously have no idea.

Because my hill is called. Oh, because the name. Then it's annoying and the stop line to everyone, which is a very long name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think in Wales, they would accept the length of that name. But you're not talking about the geography or the type of hills that are... No, I'm talking about Welsh naming conventions. Because I'm just trying to visualize the hill.

I'm thinking of like a teletogamous, like, green... Imagine a hill with a giant headphone jack in it, and Neli is dead lying on top of it. It's like a really long nail. It's like one of those hills and mini golf courses where they're like total assholes and they put the hole right at the top of like a perfect convex. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about.

I was just talking about. By the way, you can just start typing the word long Welsh and you just get lists of long Welsh names. Anyway. 900-ish. Yeah. Yeah, letters. 930, 960, 920, 14, 47 a month for 1,000 months.

Like, too many pricings. But you can just buy the damn thing unlock straight from Samsung, which is awesome so you don't get a bunch of carrier crap. But I saw way more feelings about the price than I expected. It's expensive. I don't have them. Yeah.

But you know what you can get for 500 bucks? A laptop. You know what you can get for $2,000? A laptop. You can choose whether you want to spend the money for the more expensive laptop or not. Especially the big question is... It's almost certainly a primary computing device, right? Yeah.

Is there enough differentiation between a $500 phone and a thousand dollar phone. That's the whole question. I don't get mad that it exists. I just like you have to investigate whether the speed, the multitasking, the cameras, you know, the waterproofing, the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that adds up to that much value to you. I've been thinking a lot about this and I haven't figured out how to say it yet. But there's something, it does seem like an unrealistic situation that forever that there's going to be this maximum price of like $7.99 and no phone will ever be more than $7.99. I'm thinking of the iPhone being $999 and how I feel about that. I don't feel great about it because there's something really cool about the fact that anybody who is willing to sacrifice enough to get to that point where they put maybe $200 on the table and then they got the rest of the phone by paying it with the monthly contract or whatever.

There was just like this one bar and if you hopped over that bar, you had the greatest phone on the planet outside of your storage size. and now you'll have halves and have nots just like everything in the world. Yeah. So it makes sense that there will be a $1,000 phone. I would love to see what a $2,000 phone would look like, that not just like a fashion brand. That Lamborghini phone. Yeah, not that, not crocodile skin.

But just, you know, what would the ultimate phone look like? And maybe we're entering into that phase of smartphones. But we lived in a time where everybody had, not everybody, a very large number of people all had the best phone. Yeah. I think I get it with the, it's weird to put it in the context of Apple because Apple's over a month away, presumably sometime in September. They'll put out iPhones. So it's weird to put it in the context without us knowing, although that phone has leaked so thoroughly. I feel like it.

Well, and recently the New York Times seemed pretty confident. $9.99 for the... So it's like, you know, we're putting in a somewhat speculative context. But I get what you're saying. But at the same time, there was a cheaper iPhone. There's always been a second iPhone. Like storage sizes and you could buy last year's model. Last year's model always sells well.

If I bought a car, I would at best get like a $40,000 car. That's actually way more than I could afford. But let's assume, right? But there's a really rich person who can get like... you know, a billion dollar car. I don't know how much cars go. But if I walk down the street and I'm like, you know, I'm sweating because I don't own a car and a guy who valet parked, his Lamborghini is eating in a nice restaurant, I got just as good of a phone as him. Yeah.

You know, everything about his life is superior. He eats better, drives a better car, and he's got nicer clothes and all those things for him. Well, I've got heart and the same phone. I think what the listener should know is that Paul frequently spotted New York walking up to fancy people just screaming. I've got the same phone as you. That's right. They got to know. Yeah, I'm with you.

I'm excited to see what like a really high-end phone looks like. I'm excited to see what it can do. I think that, you know, there's all the arguments about like Apple, particularly at scale. They have to price it higher so they can make fewer of the thing and get these components. I think John Gruber's been on that trip for a while. I more cynically, just to present this viewpoint, I'm not sure how much I believe it. I think they have to make their phones more exciting, right? Like in a serious way, like the current design of the iPhone, which dates back to the six,

I don't think it's ever been beautiful. I think in my initial review of the iPhone 6 plus, which is three years ago now, I was like, this thing is a surfboard because it's always been a little bit ungainly. I think this design has always looked best in the case. Now they've got the essential phone, the S8 is beautiful. Other phones, Android phones, are beginning to match the industrial design, get rid of the bezels.

They've got to do something really big and splashy, and they've got to, like, solve the problem of increasing revenue at the same amount of phone sales, because the phone sales are, like, flattening a little bit. That's a lot of problems to solve, and, like, an easy way to solve it is be like, we're going to slice off the top end of this market where people are just going to buy the best.

thing because we're Apple and a lot of people buy our best thing and charge them more for a cooler thing. And like you can view that cynically. I'm trying to present it cynically but now that I've said it all about it's like, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. It's just the thing to do. Yeah, like it's fine. I just want to mourn the passing of an era.

You know, you're still drinking the same Coca-Cola as that guy, man. That's like that Andy Warhol quote. Oh, no, he's in the, he's got that like cane sugar stuff. Flying it in from Mexico. Like, you're drinking way nicer coconut lot of me right now. Paul also bizarrely just pouring Coca-Cola and suit

guys in five-high all the time. No, that's libel. You're not disputing the screaming. I have the same phone as you. But pouring Coca-Cola is where you crossed the line. Yeah, it's wasteful. Dieter, what else do you know about the Note 8? What's the thing? Is it, you know, they made that

video about the Note 7. I think Sean described it as ridiculous, like the video of all the Note 7 owners being sad about the Note 7, like, we're really sorry. I thought that video was great. Like it was just like very heartfelt and neat and like well-executed. Well, they needed to justify the existence of

the note of like bringing it back, right? And have it be something more than just like, yeah, no, we like making this phone. And so they putting it in the context of there are like note fans, there are note loyalists who love this thing

and so we're doing it for them is like the right jiu-jitsu move for them to like address the explosions and then move immediately away from them. So that was a genius piece of marketing as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. I know. We're going to get one soon.

I'm a, you know, someone's going to review it. Like, I think it's... The big question to me is how long is the battery life going to last? Because they, you know, they were appropriately conservative on the battery size. And they didn't increase the pixel count, even though the screen is bigger. So, I mean, it still looks great, whatever. But it's not like, it's not, it's a big screen, but it's not. like a million more pixels or 10 million more pixels to push.

Yeah. But it's still a bigger screen. And so can this thing actually last a day on that battery is a very interesting question. Yeah. Just like having this conversation occurs to me. It occurs to me. Like, there's a lot of really hot competition in this market right now. In a way, I haven't seen in quite some time, right?

Like, if Apple puts out this phone that's been well leaked, which I think we all assume that they will, that thing's going to be cool. It's going to look really weird, but it's going to be cool and have, like, you know, high-end processing power, all this AR kit stuff that they seem to be really focused on. The essential phone is really interesting. The S8 continues to just, like, be a great phone. And I think Apple actually has a lot of work to do.

And the pixel Excel is coming in October. Yeah. I think Apple has a lot of work to do to catch up to the current state of Android cameras. So, like, I'm hoping to see a jump there. There's just like a lot going on. The note's cool and the pixel stuff. I think October, is that where it comes? I'm looking at the current...

For the pixel? Yeah. Yeah, the rumor is October 5th. Evan Blass said it was October 5th. Yeah. So, like, I don't know, a couple weeks. And I will say this. Our Circuit Breaker show, live show,

and Twitter starting on that October time frame. So lots of toys for us to play with. Did you just announce our Circuit Breaker live show? It's been announced. It was at New Fronts. People know we're doing it. We're doing a live show, guys. Look, just keep it on the low.

Just for Vergecast people. Don't be quiet. All of you want the Vergecast. to be a live stream. I think it should be an audio show, so now I'm going to do another thing when we play with toys on cameras. It would be great.

Don't tell anyone. It's a serious secret for Vergecast. All right. Speaking of shows, I'm going to read an ad. Lauren Grush, second episode of Spacecraft One Up. She also went and saw the eclipse in totality. So I'm going to read this ad. I spent a little bit of time talking to her

and we're going to come back. And Paul is going to tell us what's going on with Intel because he knows now. This episode of the Vergecast brought to you by TransferWise. Do you ever need to send money internationally? Maybe you're an engineer who moved to the U.S.

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Once again, that is transfer.com. Transfer is in I need to transfer money to another country. Wise is in that Confucius guy sure was wise. Another thing they've written. That's it. TransferRise.com. Send some money. Lauren Grush. Hello. How's it going? It goes great. It goes great. It goes great. It went well. It went well. All as well. In the present, not in the past. In past, present, future, all as well. Good. Okay. So I want to talk to you about your show, spacecraft, which is very exciting.

But I'm not going to start that way because what I really want to ask you about is the eclipse, because you went and saw totality. I did. I was in Nashville with my family and our former colleague, Miriam's family. It was a big party. Yeah. And it was the craziest, coolest thing. I'm so glad I went. I went, well, okay.

Of course I wanted to see the eclipse. but I also wanted to take a picture of it because I have a DSL camera and I thought, you know, I've dabbled, maybe I can do it. So I learned some tips about how I should try, got a solar filter and everything, set up my shot when we were down there.

And everything was going fine. We had found this little park by the place that I was staying. It was really off the grid. Nobody knew about it. Like a couple people started showing up. We maybe had like a couple dozen people out there. and we had set up our shots and we were just fine for most of the day. We were like, it was a little park on the water, so there was a lake, a little patch of grass where we had set up and then a bunch of trees because it was so hot.

So we would go and sit underneath the trees, go check on our cameras and then go sit back down again so we wouldn't burn up. And everything was great. I would go out, take a couple of pictures because it takes a while. You know, it was like an hour and a half before it was completely covered. and then like 30 minutes before totality you know when it's totally covered up there was this huge cloud that covered up the sun and then I realized I was like oh this is why everyone complains about clouds

because you really can't see anything it just completely goes away then the cloud went away and we were like okay we should be fine and then my dad's standing there and he's like I think you're in the clear you're fine and I was like dad you just jinxed it and sure sure enough sure enough the cloud comes back the same freaking cloud comes back and then it's just hanging out on the edge of the sun for like the next 10 minutes and we're just miriam and I are sitting there

like do we move like what do we what do we're sitting I'm starting to like freak out like I'm like oh my god it's in well I mean can you imagine it was it was clear all day up until that point and then her dad comes running over and he's like, look over there! And there's this illuminated patch of ground and me and Miriam just make that mental decision like, okay, we're going, and we just like pick up our... Because it's not easy to run with all this stuff.

It's a tripod, a camera, a huge lens, and the filter on top of it. So we were both like running across this park. I was barefoot because I'd kicked off my sandals so I'm running on like rocks and sticks and stuff. And I was like, I'm dying for my art here. and then I just want to be clear.

You looked at each other and telepathically decided that you could outrun a cloud? Yeah. I mean, there might have been a like let's go kind of thing, you know? No, I just want to, I want the listener to know. You've heard Lauren a lot.

Miriam has actually been on the verge cast before too. Oh, yeah. She was on, when we did the first lady interview in 360, Miriam was on that episode. But Lauren and Miriam, it is not surprising to me at all. that they would telepathically decide to outrun a cloud together?

It's very in character for the both of you. In sync we are for all this time of working together. Anyway, so we run to the patch, and of course Miriam sets up her shot in like two seconds. And we have two minutes, by the way. And I miss this part, but the entire time, Miriam had brought this timer that every couple minutes would be like five minutes to start of totality. Oh, my God. So it was also really helpful but also awful at the same time, because as with the cloud

was getting closer, it'd be like, three minutes to totality. And I'm like, what do I do? Make a decision. And so then we get there, it's like two minutes before, and she set up her shot. I'm like on the verge of tears because I can't find it. And just so you know, finding the sun with your solar filter on your camera is really tough because it blocks out literally everything but the sun. So you're searching in the sky.

And at this point, the sun's barely there because it's about to be covered. So I'm searching for a little bit of, like, sliver. of sun in the sky. I'm like about to cry. And then all of a sudden I just like swing the lens up and I find it. And I start screaming. I was like, I found it.

I found it. And then like one minute later, it completely covers it up. And I got it. And I got it. And then I snap my pictures. And then after a bit, I just like flung my arms back and fell on the ground and just like watched it.

Because I was like, okay, I should have to like enjoy this for myself. What was totality like? How to describe it? I really did feel like. I was on another planet. Yeah.

Because it felt like daytime and nighttime at the same time. And I know that's like a lame description, but it really did, it really felt eerie. It was not, it was, it was a like a weird twilight zone that you're in because it's still illuminated, but it's definitely dark. And you're like, oh my God, it was just daytime, you know? How is this happening right now? And probably the coolest thing was you turned around and it's sunset behind you, all the colors. I have a picture of it in the story that I wrote from Miriam's dad, actually. And it looks,

it's like red, orange hues, and it's dark sky above. It was really amazing to look at it. And everyone's screaming. That was the other thing. People were legitimately screaming in terror. Terror? You knew it was going to happen. At first, well, I remember because I was so focused on getting the picture, but then I talked with some people afterwards and I was like, was that just me or did I hear people like screaming, scared? And they were like, oh yeah, they definitely were. Like, people were terrified. I was like, wow.

Here in New York, it was only 70% in New York. And everyone was waiting for it to be totality. Like we were all out. Like, we were all standing out. There's like huge crowds. Our office in the financial districts. So there are all these like suits. you know, like with the glasses.

Great. And we were like, we should do a countdown. So we just kept on like randomly starting countdowns. It didn't work. But it was like a great moment here. Yeah. Everyone was like sharing. Did it get noticeably darker?

It got, no. It got flatter. Does that make any sense? The light got really weird and flat. Yes, I do remember that. I remember at some point before the eclipse started. It felt as if I was in a room with a lamp on. Yeah.

Did it kind of feel like that here too? Yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, like, like twilight or sunset time, like magic hour? Yeah. It's like really beautiful. Yeah. It was that color of light, but it wasn't beautiful. Yeah.

No, I know exactly what we were talking about. It was very much like this, the light source feels artificial in a way. It was just like a weird moment. Yeah. And then sort of the peak happened here. And it's funny because, you know, the sun's going, or the moon's going across the sun. Right. So there's still like another hour of eclipse.

And everyone's like, well, the peak happened. And it just like went back inside. And I was like, all right, that was it. Okay. Okay, let's talk about a show. Sure. I can talk about the eclipse all day because it was super fun. But you're making a show about space.

Making a show about space. We put up our second episode. Man, we're flying through these. We are flying through. This episode was about, so the first episode is you running around in space suits. Like real physical, you're in the thing. This one's like all VR. Right, right.

Well, this one, yeah, more simulation. So we got to do a lot when we were at NASA. We were at the Systems Engineering Simulator facility. and that one they had like a mock-up rover for driving on Mars, which we got to try out was pretty cool. But I think my favorite part was definitely doing the VR spacewalks. Yeah. And because those are that, there's a virtual reality lab at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston,

and that is a place where astronauts legitimately go and they train for their spacewalks because they can recreate whatever the spacewalk scenario is in VR. And it's really helpful for knowing, you know, exactly where, everything is going to be, you know, how far you can reach. Obviously, you can't reach very far. So it takes a little while to kind of scale. Like, if you need to get somewhere on the station, you have a better idea of, okay, I mean, I probably have to find another thing to grab onto here, and then, you know, just underneath here, grab onto that. It's just a good way of, like, having a spatial understanding. And then also how to, like, control your movement. So

in, on Earth, you'd probably pull yourself. up, you know, but in space, just moving your wrist will alter your entire body. Right, really? Yeah. Because, you know, you don't have gravity. So really the only way to move is to just slightly change, like, how you're, you know, how you twist yourself or something like that. So it's a way of kind of breaking out of that, you know, that idea of how you think you

should be moving versus how you would actually be moving in space. So that was cool. And then, of course, we did the demonstration where they flung me off the space station and I had to get back. Like to rocket yourself back to the classic Lauren Greshline, George Clooney, was so much faster. So that was like, that's an interesting rig. Like you were, it's funny because taking video VR is hard and then talking about it on like an audio show. Right, right. But you were in the big helmet and you're wearing kind of the big torso controller thing.

Yeah, yeah. I was supposed to kind of simulate the chest pieces that you have when you're wearing the actual space. But you were seated? Right. So why were you seated as opposed to like standing up or whatever? I think it's more because I don't actually know the answer, but I would assume it has more to do with the fact that you're moving your arms. Like when you're in doing a spacewalk, your legs are kind of useless. That's why they usually put you in harnesses or there's a foot restraint.

astronauts often get foot restraints just to hold them in place. Your real tools are your arms and your hands when you're doing spacewalk. So I think it was more about focusing on the upper part of your body than it was maybe. And it could also be the fact that since your legs don't really come into play, you know, you have to learn how to work without them. So maybe that had to do with why sitting was important. It's really more of just kind of like making sure you're seeing things correctly and experiencing them from the body up.

So when you were in the VR suit and they were, like, dragged you off the station, and you've got to use safer to get back. Was that as disorienting as it seemed? Oh, yeah. And it was a little nauseating. Like, when I took off the headset, I was like, oh, my stomach doesn't feel so great. And they were like, yeah, it's pretty a little nausea. But the safer, like, it puts you in a correct orientation automatically, right?

How does it do that? Oh, yeah. So, first off, safer. It's this jet backpack that you've got on with a little. Just a regular jetbackback. And it has little thrusters up near your shoulders. And yeah, so what it does is this automatic spin control type thing. So you notice I was spinning.

And once you power up the backpack, it will stop your spin. And then it's on you to get back. So the first thing I had to do once I stopped spinning was find the station. Look to my left. There it was. And then you have two controls. you have this how you spin, how you rotate. So first I rotated back, and then once I was in the position that I wanted to be,

then I switched in a translation mode, which meant I could move forward or side to side. And then basically it was just a way, it was a matter of making sure I went in a straight enough line, which is hard because you're, you know, if you move to the left just a little bit, that'll keep you go. Like, you know, you don't have anything to stop you, so just the little movements that you make, have a big impact in the long run. And I didn't actually quite make it back to the airlock that I was supposed to.

But I was like, is that okay? And they're like, no, as long as you're at the station, you're fine. But I did end up making it back safely. The best part was that I asked them how long it would, you know, you had. I said that in the video. It was like, they were like five to ten minutes usually. And then when I got out, they're like, I don't know if you made it. Really?

And then they were like, oh, actually, you did it in four minutes. And I was like, what are you talking about? I did great. Yeah, they were scurring with you. And then you also drove the rover. Yeah. Which is like the thing that I would want to do most of all in the entire world. Yeah, that one was cool.

I just like how they design their rovers. So the rovers have 12 wheels and all you need is a joystick. So pretty much anybody could drive these things. But the best part is like you move it, you push the joystick forward, it moves forward. You push the joystick sideways. All the wheels turn sideways and then the thing just moves sideways. And then you can also, if you rotate the joystick, the wheels all form in a circle and you can like spin around. It's pretty neat design.

I want one. Can I have one? It doesn't like a couple billion, right? NASA has one that you can take out for a spin. We tried to get it that one, but it was out of commission that day. So next time we have to go back. We've got to come back. Spacecraft Season 2 Greenlit, you heard it here first. One episode.

It's just me and the rover fucking going crazy. Yes. So what's like the biggest takeaway from like your VR experiences or your simulation experiences? I guess my biggest takeaway is just never, I mean, it really just changes your perception. Never assume how things are going to be out there. You know, like you think just moving, you think just scaling the wall of something is going to be easy. But it really did take me a while to get the hang of, you know, how you spin your wrist or, you know, what you need to grab onto. it's not very clear what you have that you can use out there.

So, yeah, it was just a, it was a good way of getting you out of your expectations and showing you the real challenges of just like minor tasks. Yeah. Because it's just like you think getting back to the station would be easy. I mean, George, like I said, George Clinton makes it look easy. He's like floating around, you know, doing somersaults and stuff. But just moving forward is a task, you know. You know, it's funny, I look at the comments of all these videos because I hate myself.

Good, because you're doing it for me. I'm doing it for you. No, but like one thing that comes up a lot in all of these comments, almost all of your space videos, is people are surprised that it's not like what the movies are. Right. And it's amazing to me how much the movies color our perceptions of what it's like, especially the movies that want to be taken seriously. Right. So gravity is like supposed to be so accurate. and then you're doing the actual thing.

Right. And you're like, wait, it's radically different. The problem is it would be, the movies would be so boring. But not, I mean, I think, I find all this stuff interesting. But yeah, hyper-realism means things would be a lot more slow. Yeah. And a lot harder just to do very simple things. It turns out they would just die immediately.

Yeah. Like the movie is like five minutes long. Yeah, because he's, first off, he's not supposed to be using that thing. Like, what you learn is that they never use safer. It's always meant to be a backup plan, and you're always tethered to the outside of the space station no matter what. So I don't know if her tether got broken when she was, or they were on the space shuttle, but I would assume they still had a tether. So I don't know how she got flung off or I'm sure it got disconnected. I think it would be amazing to rewatch gravity with you after the run of the series.

Oh, you don't want to. There's some parts in there where I was like, the science. Well, that's why I would want to watch her with you. All right, Spacecraft Season 3 confirmed. It's just Lauren's. Slowly watching gravity by herself and yelling. That's great. You've got another episode coming next week. What's that one about?

So this one is all about health and biology. So I feel like a lot of people, when they think about going to space, they think it's going to be just like a big old fun time. But in reality, there's a lot of health issues that you have to deal with, especially if you're going into space for a long period of time. Your body changes. You go through fluid shifts. like your fluid shift because they're not being pulled down by gravity.

And that has a host of problems. And then also most of your day is dedicated to working out. So like if you want to be a fitness buff, then yeah, you could go to space. But that's something you have to think about as well. Yeah. So it has to do with that. And then also, you know, the space environment isn't necessarily hospitable all the time. Yeah.

So we talk about that. What's the craziest thing that you did for this next episode? I did squat lips And I'm sure I'm gonna get Enjoy reading the comments on this one Nilai Because I'm sure everyone's gonna critique my form And giving me all this crap about it So I'm just really looking forward to that

Shutting off immediately We haven't even published it and somehow comments are already off It's very confusing Tuesday Tuesday On YouTube Yes And then all kinds of bits and pieces of all over Facebook

Very exciting You can get a hold of Lauren on the Twitters On the Twitters At Lauren Gresh L-O-R-A-N-G-R-U-S-H. Spacecraft comes out on Tuesdays. Thanks for stopping by again. We'll talk to you again next week.

All right. I'm looking forward to it. Squatless. I won't. And I'll never do them again. We're going to do it. We'll have another eclipse. It'll be great.

Okay. All right. Thanks, Lauren. Bye. All right. All right. We said this already, but watch the next episode of spacecraft. Actually, we were just talking about Google, but there's rumors, and we should get into those

of it. But they named it. Oreo. During the eclipse. Oh, they had the, whole event in New York where like they had an eclipse watching party and then the statue was like unveiled. Oreo statue, it's a superhero, a woman actually. First time the mascot for Oreo has had a gender.

A lot of theme for Oreos, for Android, excuse me, their whole theme for Oreo's superhero stuff, which is, I don't know, maybe a little bit overdoing it. There's stuff in Oreo. Don't get me wrong. but it's stuff like we do a better job of closing down crappy apps at each your battery and we promised this time

we promised this time Android updates will actually you know work and happen I don't want to undersell it there's some other stuff but it's other stuff like

notification dots and I'm excited to snooze notifications that's pretty cool but this like Oreo is not a massive game-changing update to Android. It's a bunch of little stuff. It's a bunch of plumbing. I'm happy about all of it, but I'm not going to have the angst about being on Android N N Nuget in November when all the

pixels have them. Really? Yeah, I'm just not going to have that much angst about it. I'm really not. It's funny. Newgett, I feel like we made a huge deal out of it. It's Android. I mean, this is like the Android thing. They announced the new one. We're like, Niggott, and I get it. And now no one talks about Android Nuget anymore because all the other Android, phones have come out and like they're running their own weird versions of Android. Well, I do feel like Nugent had a really relatively wide and rapid. Seemed like all the phones that had been announced or that had been released in the past year or so got it in a relatively quick pace.

It's install base is still 15, little less than 15% of all Android phones right now. Yeah, maybe it's just a weird perspective. There are, Android's the most popular. operating system on the planet right now. There are, you know, I don't know how many billion over a billion devices running it currently. So 15 percent of that is, you know,

not anything to sneeze at or however you want to say it. But it's still fundamentally a problem, but they can't get updates out to more devices more quickly. Yeah. But, like, we wrote all this stuff about the Note 8. I don't recall anywhere in there being like, runs Nuget.

Like, it's just like accepted and it's under this veneer of Samsung stuff. So great. Yeah. Right? I think that's like a... That's a thing that Apple definitely has in its corner where they... You know, iOS 11 is out.

People are playing with it. They're sharing with it. And then the next phone is like the ultimate embodiment of that OS. And like, you know, Google just doesn't have that... They're not playing that game quite that same way. I hope they do. I hope they find a way to make the pixel that thing. But they got a waste to go.

Other rumors, though... I mean, that is the cadence, though. Yeah. Little smart speaker, little Google Home. little baby guy to take on the dot. I continue to believe the dot is like the smartest product in Amazon's entire library of products next to the Kindle, which is wonderful, but, you know,

the dot is like the new market. I think it makes a lot of sense for Google to go cheap. And then I think it puts the home pod in this like other zone entirely. Yeah, no, they have to go cheap. I mean, the home actually originally also was cheaper than the original Echo. Yeah.

What is the price that they're rumored for this? I've lost the tab. I don't think that we know the price. This all comes from Android police who alongside the dot competitor says that they're also going to release a new Chromebook pixel at like the $800-ish price point for a Chromebook, which is not as crazy as the pixel and the Pixel 2 back in the day. But still for Chromebooks, like the best Chromebook you can get right now is about 500 bucks. There's really nothing north of that right now. It was very difficult to convince anybody that it was worth spending over $1,000 on a Chromebook, a few years ago, and that's because

it wasn't. I thought the pixel is beautiful. There are people who are pixel partisans. Like, that machine is still pretty awesome, but bang for your buckwise, like, what you're doing is spending a bunch of money to feel nice about having a pixel. You're not buying necessarily that much

better of a computer. We'll see what they do if, in fact, they do release a pixel on October. Pixel Chromebook. I think I would maybe get a baby Google Home. Yeah. I think the Chromecast feature would be cool. Yeah.

I'd like to roll into my room and say Google, play Path of Exile on YouTube. Yeah, and it just does it. And then it does it. It's the dream. I've been saying that's dream for a long time. Like it's so little value that I need to not spend very much for that device that does that. But if I could spend just a little bit for the device that does it, I think I'd be into it. I mean, too, our problem is we have an Alexa in a bathroom and an Alexa in the kitchen, or an Echo and an Echo show.

And we haven't put them on the same Amazon account because one's on mine, one's on my wife's. Yeah, no, don't do that. If you have multiple echo devices in your house, put them all in the same account because if you don't, then they all will respond to you. Because they're not aware of each other. So when I'm cooking, I'll like, I'll play NPR to listen to the radio and I'll set timers. And then I get done cooking and then, you know, sit down to eat dinner and like, what is that noise? And it's, you know, it's the bathroom on the other side of the apartment. Just playing the alarm, just going.

That's amazing. You should set different wake words. Yeah, I might do that. That's kind of a fight. That's like a real couples fight. Like, I want computer. You can't have it. That's one reason that Google Home is better, though, because it can recognize voices and play your stuff if it recognizes your voice. Yeah.

Google also deal with Walmart. to do better shopping and go home. Which I think is real strong, although Amazon is still Amazon. Like, you know, it's like Google announces like a little pair up with Walmart to make shopping on the Google Home easier. Amazon announces,

we've completed the acquisition of Whole Foods and all prices of avocados will not be cheaper and every Whole Foods will have an Amazon Prime locker in it. And the Whole Foods membership rewards is now Amazon Prime. And it's like, yeah, we hung out with Walmart. That's what we did. Google shopping is now

slightly less of a dumpster fire than it was before. It's still a dumpster. It's just not on fire now. They bought a Walmart fire extinguisher. It took a little longer to put up than you would really hope for, but it still went out there. Still work. And then there's Samsung, actually, DJ Co. at the

note, so they're going to do a smart speaker too. Which feels like an enormous waste of time. But it's Samsung. They've got to have everything. Yeah. You know, it's like someone's got the Samsung house, it's probably DJ Co. Like all the stuff at Samsung and it all works in perfect harmony because they're weird,

their weird twists on all the standards, like EniNet Plus. He's like, I love EniNet Plus. It's just really tied this house together. And everyone was like, I don't know what that is. I mean, I know AnyNet Plus exists, but if you had, if you had made up any other, like, random brand name, I would have believed that it was real. That's what I'm saying. Double whisper.

Double whisper. Samsung's newest smart home standards. Double whisper. Someone's going to believe that's true. All right, Paul. Yeah. Last week on the show, I said, hey, explain this Intel stuff to me. And I was like, I don't know what's going on.

I was really confused by it, so I actually spent the time reading up on it. Heim Gartenberg explained it to me today. It took him, I would say, three and a half minutes just to get to the basics. But I'm interested. Let's see it. I wrote out notes, so I don't get anything super wrong. But here's what I think has happened. Intel is now entered what it's called,

what it's calling its eighth generation. Yeah. But the first chips that are part of its eighth generation are what's called KB Lake Refresh. So it has slightly modified the KB Lake architecture by basically adding some more cores, more threads. And it claims you'll get about 40% improvement in performance. they also have modified the integrated graphics, but they didn't improve them. They only added like better compatible, like built-in HDCP staff

so that ostensibly you get better like 4K support. Because they change the name of their integrated graphics from HD 620 to UHD 620, but they didn't actually change the power. So it's basically 4K compatibility like with TVs for copyrighted content. Anon tech thinks these might be a little hot. Yeah. So. They're desktop chips.

No, no, no. This, what they announced are laptop chips. Oh, okay. They're the 15. It's pretty hot, right? Pretty hot laptop chip, I think. Like, it's like the U series. Oh, okay.

Please don't ask me too many questions because I wrote the facts that. These are, these are going to be a basic laptop. I was going to ask you a question. Yeah. Okay. So we normally think of. Intel chips is a tick talk. There's the tick where they reduce the nanometer size and there's a talk where they improve it. Is this like a tick talk talk? I mean, I think they've already

talked about like moving past that. Like that there's like they talked. Yeah. Yes. Thank you. There's different. There's like these multiple stages of refinement. This is we're in like 14 nanometer plus. I mean, the interesting thing is, is that they were 32 nanometers in 2011, right? That's when you're talking the process. You're mostly talking about like how big it is, right? 22 nanometers was Ivy Bridge in 2012. Then Haswell was 22 nanometers in 2013. The Broadwell was 14 nanometers in 2014. And then we've been on 14 nanometers for a while now. And we're in 14 nanometers plus. And then there's going to be. maybe coffee lake, which is part of what this whole, a lot of the confusion was, is that five

days before announcing this eighth generation, these, like, laptop processors, Intel was like, hey, here's our future plans for our ninth generation chips. And there's this thing called coffee lake. And, like, they were talking about 10, 10 nanometers. They're 10 nanometer plus, like, not the first 10 nanometer chip they would do, the ones after that. That's what. what they were talking about five days before announcing these new laptop chips, which are the KB Lake Refresh. By the way, I was wrong. Fifteen watts is pretty good. That's like an ultra-portable, right? Yeah. Most of like 28 and 45. So a non-tech thinks these might be a little hot for these, but maybe some of, like, larger laptops that were using higher power chips might be able to get enough power out of these KB Lake Refresh chips, and therefore they could get better battery life. So that's the thing.

There's a lot going on with these chips. Heim told me that he wants to write a story called Core Wars about AMD versus Intel again. I think that's... I mean, I think the thing is that there's very... This is just a tiny little minor refresh. The only reason it's confusing is because Intel has all these nomenclatures. They've got their process.

They've got their generations. They've got their lakes. Yeah. And then, you know, Obviously, they have a bunch of different power levels of chips and their desktop chips and different laptop chips and stuff like that. We should see if we can get the seat of until they sit down and just like quiz him. Coffee like, go. You know what great is just like put up a blank chart and he's got to fill in all the lakes.

All the lakes. It's a map of lakes. Yeah, like maybe we fill in one of the lakes, right? Yeah. But what nanometers does that go? Torturing Ryan Cresanage. Well, if you work at Intel, you can email us if you are able to get the CEO of Intel to fill in a lake chart. This episode of Vergecast also brought to you by Qualcomm Snapdragon Gigabit LTE, with download speeds up to seven times faster than typical home Wi-Fi,

Snapdragon Gigabit LTE can turbocharge all your connected apps. You can stream 360-degree videos in 4K resolution with minimal buffering. You can access files in the cloud nearly as fast as you would if they were stored on your phone. You can download hours of movies or music in a matter of second. To learn more, visit snapdragon.com slash gigabit today. Verizon this week announced it had an unlimited plan, and it's breaking it into three unlimited plans,

all of which are notably worse for the specific reason that Verizon is now capping video resolutions on its network. So you basically cannot get 1080P on Verizon's network anymore. Yeah, you just can't do it. the cheapest plan actually makes it even lower the throughput speeds are capped as well I think they're doing this because their network has been choked ever since they went to Unlimited

to respond to T-Mobile AT&T has been doing this as well they made less fanfare about it but a bunch of AT&T's plans now have like stream saver or whatever it is does the same thing automatically AT&T's network also kind of choked so this move to unlimited

clearly had network effects, had network effects that they weren't anticipating, and now they're like capping these video speeds. With AT&T at least, you can turn it off. Before we get into the industry stuff, I just want to point out that they took existing plans, like the unlimited plan that I am on currently, they capped the amount of tethering I can get,

and they capped the video quality I can get with 24-hour notice. Yeah. Which is bonkers. And this is a few weeks after someone caught them throttling YouTube, and they're like, oh, we just do these tests all the time. No reason to worry. And then, like, several weeks later, like, in 24 hours, we're capping your video bandwidth.

Obviously, there's net neutrality stuff, whatever, to talk about. I think that's... I think it's actually less interesting. Like, there's all these implications for it, but, like, whatever, Verizon's going to do whatever Verizon done. and it's not like this FCC is going to do anything about it. So it's there great, right? Like, it's interesting to consider.

But I think that is actually less interesting than the fact that we did that story. It popped up to the top of our charts instantly. The Wall Street Journal did that story. The Wall Street Journal has been relentlessly promoting this story. They've tweeted out every day. They've tweeted out every day for a week. The only reason any organization does that is if it's getting pickup. I think people are actually super pissed about them.

this. And I think Verizon doesn't have a great argument in response except to say we need to manage our network more tightly, which to me, if you're going to do that and then also make the argument that mobile is the future and we don't need all this like wired broadband competition, you're just kind of disproving your point that you're in this hyper-competitive market where your consumers are happy with you and you can actually manage the shift to a purely mobile environment. That's what interests me. Also, AT&T, T-Mobile,

let you turn this stuff off. You can turn off StreamSaver on AT&T and just pay the money and hit your cap and get throttled or whatever. It's a choice you can make. T-Mobile, you can pay like five bucks and get HD video for a day. A hilarious way to price that.

But I'm actually with like Paul on this. Like, I love goofy, weird pricing. Like, have some fun. Great. Like, that's a version of it. innovation. You cannot pay the money. Yeah.

That's ridiculous. That it's not even possible. It just sounds like they really overpressed and it sucks being the bearer of bad news as a company. And like this is actual bad news. This is like telling your customers, we promised that we could do a thing for you. We can't. Yeah.

And you know like John Ledger is just like, sipping his tea. Good way to spin it. Sipping his tea in his tiny, tiny coverage area. I will say I had been recently thinking of like moving a. over to Verizon. It's like, well, you know, like, I've been on T-Mobile because I like their pricing, but T-Mobile's put enough pressure on other companies to, like, improve, and, like, I've got pretty bad cell reception in, like, my prime areas right now, not everywhere, but just in certain frequently-habited spots, I just get bad, like, my office, like, all of the

area around my office. Yeah. I get bad reception on T-Mobile. No, I get full bars, no data. Yeah. No, but that's true. When we were out for the eclipse. Oh, yeah. Well, the eclipse just broke everything. But it was, Paul had full bars, no service.

I had full bars in AT&T. And it was like chugging. And so I was like, well, man, I'd love to go to a better network. But maybe Verizon can't handle it either. So I don't know. Verizon, the network since, even before the Eliminate, it's been terrible for me. It's been getting worse and worse and worse to the point where I'm seriously considering switching.

This plus all the oath ad shenanigans has you think about switching. And then I'm like, okay, who am I going to switch to? Well, AT&T also has ad shenanigans. T-Mobile does net neutrality shenanigans. I'd say I'd switch to Project FI, but the idea that I'd switch to

Google because I'm annoyed by ads. Tracking is a very hilarious, ironic thing to say out loud. Do the Xfinity. Comcast. Yeah, why not? What about Sprint? Like, until they get bought, you know, by software.

Wow. Yeah, you get a free title subscription. You get Jay-Z comes to your house. It comes to your house. He's like, what's up? I don't have a lot to do. I really appreciate you joining Sprint. We have come to a point where there are no wireless services that you could not feel shitty about.

Yeah. And that's always been that way. I suppose, but I don't know, with net neutrality back in the air and like the idea that wireless has more competition and therefore it's like going to be better than wireline for net neutrality. I just don't believe it anymore. Yeah. Like they all, they're just, they're just all bad. They're all evil. I hate them all.

And I'm just, I'm just going to give up on having internet on my phone altogether from now on. What's the point? In fact, I don't even need internet at all because all the wires go through evil companies, too. So did you read, there is a really great Vanity Fair piece about oath early this week. And basically, like, you know, they have AOL and Yahoo, and they got to mash them together and make a new company. And I actually, you know, we used to work at AOL for their current CEO, Tim Armstrong. I think Tim Armstrong is doing this thing where he's trying to create a new corporate culture by making them do crazy oath things. So everyone has to come up with a three-word oath to work at oath.

It's like a real thing. No. Yep. It's true fact. But I get smart. Because now the AOL people and the Yahoo people all hate the same thing. So they're a little family born of hatred. There's people with like religious prohibitions against like swearing to do anything.

You don't like swear fealty. It's just called an oath. Anyway, I think his personal oath is never give up. There's a wall. It's like a real thing. It's all in peace. but the most interesting part of that whole story, which I think is fascinating. AOL is going to close on this buyout of Time Warner.

Like, that's going to happen. Verizon obviously bought AOL and Yahoo. And there's an anonymous media executive who's like, Verizon's got a huge problem here because they have to look through the wreckage of AOL and Yahoo and find some media that is good enough to put. on the home screen of the phone because that's the ultimate play here. AT&T, when they finish buying time Warner, it's not even going to be a question

whether they should put HBO and Game of Thrones preloaded on the home screen of whatever phones and tablets they sell. It is not going to be a question whether AT&T can start pushing breaking CNN video across their network because that stuff is trusted and it's like premium high-end content. Verizon cannot push, I don't know. Yahoo! Answers. Yahoo!

to anyone. Like, you know, HuffPos are great, but it's not at the same level. Like, they have to find something. And I think the economics of that for Verizon are going to start to shake out in extremely uncomfortable ways. But it's also going to lead to yet another set of net neutrality questions because

AT&T is selling a garbage tablet now. What's it called? I have it on this list here. The prime time. Oh, God, yeah. So AT&T is going to sell a prime time. It's a little Android tablet. It's preloaded with all their direct TV stuff. and it's $20 a month.

And it is basically a TV that runs on their network outside your data plan stuff because they're giving directly away. It doesn't hit your data cap. It's 20 bucks a month. And it's basically an Android cable box. And like that's the model they're moving towards. And I think it's somewhat fascinating, but also like terrifying because that's the future for all of these companies. And that's different than a fire tablet because they're also a deliver.

company? I mean, so Amazon makes a bunch of TV shows, but they don't, it's not HBO and CNN. It's not like, they're not getting Harry Potter out of the deal, right? Like, it's a pretty, I mean, they're, they're competitive with Netflix. I don't, I agree with you.

I just think Time Warner is a media conglomerate. There's many, many, many times bigger than Netflix in Amazon. Right? Like, Netflix's competition is HBO. That's just one part of Time Warner. And it will be just one tiny part of AT&T.

Amazon's competition is HBO, which is just one part of this massive stack of the media properties. I mean, Amazon's competition is like Cub foods. Well, this part of it. Publix. Publix. Haniford's going down.

Can we start writing more about grocery stores? We have to now. It's the hottest tech market in America. Like new like in caps. Encaps. Like around the Super Bowl, somebody does like a really cool stack of like some soda. Jeff Bezos is in there.

Just like stacking up the chips. I don't know. Anyway, I just think it's like fast. Like what's going on in these mobile companies is fat. Their networks are choked. They're looking for other ways to make money. There's these little glimmers of what they're going to have to do.

And most of it looks like buying huge media companies and preloading content for you. And I, we can't complain a lot about carrier bloatware. And like it's bad when it's like VZW Naviguer. Gator or whatever, it's going to be worse when it's like the least important Yahoo property just starts showing up on your phone. That's it. That's my terrible vision of the future. Would you rather have buy a phone from Sprint and have the title app preloaded with the newest Jay-Z album on it or buy a phone from AT&T and have HBO Go preloaded with the most recent episode of Game of Thrones on.

Ooh. The thing is I already pay for those services. It's like I'm not getting anything out of that deal. But I'm going to go 18T. Yeah. Yeah. Dieter? Devil's choice.

Cabin in the woods. Yeah. I'm going fully off the grid. And then he goes to the grocery story. I can't escape. You can like fill in a form when you buy the phone. Yeah. For which information.

No, it's true. To get away from the tech industry now, you have to start like hunting and gathering your own food. You can't even go to the grocery store. Yeah, this is really dark because there's a really good new Unabomber documentary, so we should probably change the subject. Oh, my. I wouldn't have even made that connection. Hey, it's really good.

Apparently, he made his own glue out of deer hoofs so that they couldn't track where his glue came from. That's dedication. Oh, so terrifying. Okay, a few tiny, lightning round items. Every week. Oh, Paul. Every week. I never forget.

Never forget. This one's called Every week it's called I mean Yoda phone 3 Still Yodaing So Yoda forever

Yoda forever Yoda Not Yoda I know it's south I can't Yota Yota loaded Yota phone

Yoda Yoda things that it looks like it's like a bad Kickstarter idea and I'll never ship it and I'll never succeed and they'll definitely not make three of them but here we are so it's kind of like a mid low end phone but it's got you know it's 5.5 inch 1080p ammo lead on the front and a 5.2 inch ink display on the back it's about 600 bucks it's probably only going to china but I just love I just love this idea I just love love the idea of like a second screen on the back and it doesn't make a lot of sense and I've never purchased one.

Yeah, we should get one. But I'm just, yeah, we're definitely trying to. But I'm just happy that they're, they just keep Yoting. They're at it. Yeah. They figured out a little market. The E-A-ink screen on the back is one of those things where you, like, it feels, it's like the note.

It's, it's an aspirational thing where you, like, imagine, yeah, I'll just leave it face down and it'll show my stuff. And when I'm going to bed at night, I can read a e-book on it and it won't hurt my eyes. Yeah. Yeah, I won't get that blue screen syndrome or whatever they call it. I just got upsold super hard at Lenscrafters. I needed new glasses. And they're like, these ones are specially tinted to filter up blue light.

I was like, do they turn everything blue? And I'm like, no. Like, we figured it out. It's the same color. So I don't even know if it's working. Oh. But I was like, yeah, give that to me. There was a whole thing.

In the 90s, they were called blue blockers. Yeah, that's what I was worried about. Yellow glasses that everybody was trying to, you know, they were trying to convince everybody who ever used a computer that they needed to wear blue blockers. And you just looked like an idiot because you were just wearing yellow glasses. Yeah. Yeah.

It was for like computer users and like avid skiers. Yeah. But now, I don't know. Lenscrafter's got an extra 20 bucks out of me. We'll see how that went. See if I'm calm right night or if I need an Indian screen. All right. Two lightning round items.

Survey finds Apple TV losing badly to Roku and Amazon living room. I think we're all expecting a new Apple TV at whatever. Apple's next event is. It's all in the firmware that's been leaked 4K HDR. But Roku and Amazon stuff is real cheap. Yeah. Can Apple make a $50 Apple TV? Right. Or even cheaper. Like Roku's $35 streaming stick. It's not like the greatest experience in the world, but you know it does? It plays Netflix. Yeah. So I think that's like a huge question for Apple. I will also say this confidently. We have made so much fun of Gene Munster on the show and in our lives because he's always like, Apple's going to make a TV. They should have made a TV. I think that's a TV. I think that's

they missed the window to actually make a TV. They should have just made a TV. Why? Because everyone would have bought it. When? I don't know. Last year, two years ago. Like, they could have put out that product that's like, this is the Apple TV. A lot of people would have had it in their houses. And then they could have, like, people would have bought that, I think, more than the Apple TV.

But everyone else bought a smart TV in the meantime. Yeah. Those things are, they've hit the point of good enough. And there's very little reason to buy another box because you're not. going to get some massive upgrade. Right. And so everyone's buying the cheaper boxes for all their other TVs. And I think they missed that turn when they could have put the software on the display.

Interesting. Yeah, that's my theory. Lightning Red. Dieter, you want to talk about Safari and AMP? So, AMP, if you're not familiar, is Google's custom version of HTML that gets served usually from Google's on servers, and it's faster. But it's also a weird setup. Anyway, when you copy a link that's AMP in iOS 11 and then paste it somewhere else or share it in some other app, iOS figures out what the actual canonical web link is, not the AMP version of it, and shares that.

Which is great because, you know, most people actually prefer that even though it's slower. It's, I haven't actually, like, I was going to tweet a bunch stuff and then I was like, ah, whatever, I would think about it. But to me it feels like there's a little bit of a, like, platform proxy war happening between Google and Apple. And they're using the web as, like, the, I don't know, the hand grenade that they're, like, throwing at each other before it explodes. Like, they're pulling the pin and they go, ah, no, you catch it. Because they're changing amp links, but do you think they're changing Apple news links? Yeah, they're not. Yeah.

Because they just want to kick you back into their app. Right. So that's weird. I don't know. It's fine. It's interesting. It's, it's, what's funny is Google always said that AMP is a, you know, it's part of the web and it's, you know, it's morally superior to Apple News or I don't know if Google actually said that. But like the basic gist is, hey, you know, this is a standard.

Anybody can make an amp thing that can read AMP. And it's not proprietary to a single platform. And so therefore it's slightly better than an Apple News link or a, I, I, I, I, you know, Facebook news link, which I think is true. Man, if we're in a world where, like, there's a link and different platforms are going to be playing hijinks games about what happens when you take that link and try and put it someplace else, that's really scary, right? That's the opposite of what the web is supposed to be. And I want to be a little bit angry at Apple for playing games with a link that Google created because it's a Google thing. But I'm also mad at Google for creating a thing that looks like the web and smells like the web, but maybe isn't really fully the web.

But maybe it is, but who knows? Like, it just gets really complicated, really fast. And I'll wrap it up by saying 57% of users use apps more than they use a web browser. 50% of all mobile uses in apps, not in a web browser. And so it's not like the web. This is, it's gone. It's dead. Good night.

Sorry. I love you, links. That was very much cast, everybody. The web is dead. You heard it here first. You heard it here first. And also during every previous episode of this show for the past two years. No, it's always been is the open web dead.

Yeah. But they always, the theater's saying yes. Well, here's my read on it. It's not dead. It's just, you know, it's in hospice care. See, that's different than dead. It's only mostly dead. It takes a lot of work to go from an amp-linked.

the canonical link. Yeah. Like, it's actually much harder than you think. It's kind of, like, we serve a lot of AMP pages, right? And our AMP URL is like our regular URL. And in the middle of it, it's slash platform slash amp. But that's not what the Washington Post does. Like, they have a different AMP.

And it seems kind of random. Like, I feel like half the web pages that I end upon that are AMP, I can scroll to the top and there's a place to get the real URL. No, that's only on Google. So if you search on Google and you get, their carousel of news. Like if you search like Verge Galaxy Note 8. So it's only if I use

an AMP link from Google search. Yeah. So Twitter also serves AMP pages. So if you're in the mobile Twitter client and you click a link, a Verge link, you'll get our AMP page. There is no facility inside of the Twitter client to get you the real URL. So like Safari has to be

smart enough to know what the hell is going on. And then also smart enough so that when you hit share, it can somehow parse out the canonical URL from the AMP URL, and that means somebody had to sit there and figure it out, which is like a lot of effort for Apple, I think. Like, it's not an accident.

Like, they had to, like, engineer their way to that result. There's all this complication of what Apple is doing on iOS. Don't forget that AMP itself is also super freaking complicated. So each platform that shares AMP, either it's Google search or Twitter, can do it in a slightly different way. People who make AMP pages, it doesn't necessarily, you don't have to have a canonical URL. So when you go to Theverge.com,

We've got our mobile page, but then it also serves an AMP version of that same thing that's canonically linked back to the original. But if you want, you can just make your whole damn site out of AMP. And it's just AMP and that's all the way. Just as a technology. No, but like there's no like non-amp version to share. It just is, it's just on amp. And so it's like Apple, I have to figure that out too. Yeah.

So. I don't think anyone's made an entire AMP site though. Had they? I would. I know there have been experiments. Yeah. I would imagine that most AMP links are pages that have a canonical URL in their source code that would be pretty easy to scrape out. Yeah, but they're all different.

So it's not fixed. When you're looking at the actual address bar, but I'm saying inside of the actual HTML of the page. Right. But I'm saying because the way AMP works and the way everyone can just make AMP however they want, Apple would have to figure it out everything. time. So they would have to like parse the URL. Like you hit share. They grab the URL. They have to read the page, read the source code, find the canonical URL. Yeah. Somewhere in that page, which is a non-standard location.

But it's tagged. One hopes. Right. It's just because of what Deeter's saying, some pages won't ever even have it because they're just the whole thing is AMP. This is the longest lightning around discussion of Google AMP that has ever taken place. I'm going to end on a high note, a happy note, another. monster gadget note, which is that the Nikon D850 came out last night, like midnight.

45.7 megapixels, full frame. DSLRs are not like a thing anymore, but I've never wanted a camera more than I want this camera. Why this one? I'm a Nikon stand, like from way back. Like, I've always had Nikon. We run a Canon shop because, like, the video team uses them. Our James, our creative director has always been a Canon guy. They share lenses.

like big happy party and there's like me with my can't like the Nikon glass in the corner I don't like you know I have an iPhone again we have the eclipse we're like scurring out on the portrait mode on the iPhone it was like really fun I bought my wife in Alpha 5100

for her birthday and I was like taking pictures with it I was like these are way better than my stupid cell phone photos and then I pulled out my D7100 and I was like these are even better and that thing is ancient I think there's something he said for like

we're gonna add two more sensors to this camera one's depth one's IR like you know what great is a huge lens and a giant sensor in a mirror that flips when you push the button See that's the thing I just hate that flipping mirror I just hate that flip it No but on the Nikon you can put it in a mode

Where it just holds the mirror up as though it were a mirrorless And it actually can get a pretty good frame rate or shoot rate With the mirror just up in the live view constantly So it kind of has some of those features too Here's an idea though Just get rid of the mirror Has anybody ever tried to do that and made really great cameras.

I wonder. Oh, fine. Get out of here. All I'm saying is things are tank. All I'm saying is we're a cannon shop, but we have apparently a few Sony lenses, and because we have the A7S2 here. But those Sony lenses are really popular,

and they're always checked out. So I always have to use Canon lenses with an adapter. That's true. We have a bunch of A7S's. People love them. I love that camera, man. Yeah. All right.

But I'm happy for you and your mic. I want to buy this giant, super expensive $3,300 Nikon tank. We'll find you in your Sony. And I'm just going to slowly crush it with my tank. Just found it in a submission. It's going to be great. All right. That is the broadcast for today.

I want to tease something. Ashley Carman, who's been on the show a bunch. Caitlin Tiffany, who's been on the show bunch. They have a new show coming out, a new podcast. We're going to start over the next couple weeks piloting some segments. You hear them? The show, I'm not going to tell you what it's about. I'm going to tell you the name.

It's called, why did you push that button? I'm very excited about it. So listen for that in the coming weeks. Beyond excited about it. There's also other podcasts you can listen to. Lauren Good hosts a great podcast called Too Embarrass to Ask. Karraswisher host Recode, Decode. Peter Kafka hosts Recode Media.

All of that is on iTunes. Go check it out, listen to it. It's wonderful. You're going to love it. We've got new podcasts coming. You can also talk to us on Twitter. Paul's at Future Paul. Dieter's at Backlon. I'm at Reckless. Verges at Verge. By the way, our Instagram is great

lately. Our social media managers are doing a great job with that. So go to At Verge on Instagram. Check that out. We're doing this new thing. Zainab, one of our social media managers, doing flash reviews, which she takes her reviews and turns them into like little Instagram gallery stories. It's neat. Check that out. And I think that's it. That's right. Rock and roll. Paul. Paul. I need a catchphrase.