The Vergecast - HQ, selfie authentication, and solar panels turning air into water

Episode Date: December 1, 2017

Let get this out of the way: Nilay and Dieter are not on the show this week. But really, we’ve got a great show hosted by Verge podcast professionals Lauren Goode and Casey Newton. Oh and Paul is still here, too! So what are we talking about on the show today? Well, a lot. Lauren, Casey, and Paul analyze the news that was at the top of the site this week, including a glitch that left American Airlines without pilots during the week of Christmas; a rundown of the new trivia app HQ; and the reveal of the man who deactivated Trump’s Twitter account briefly a few weeks ago. Also, Lauren gives us a closer look into the newest episode of her video series Next Level, which deals with solar panels that turn air into drinking water. There’s a whole lot in between that, like Paul’s weekly segment “Whiskey pods? No.” So, listen to it all, and you know what? You’ll get it all. 02:56 - Google might merge back with Nest to make more smart home products 10:23 - The man who deactivated Trump’s Twitter account has revealed himself 17:35 - HQ 25:35 - Facebook uses selfies as login authentication for suspicious activity 29:02 - Verge holiday book recommendations 32:00 - ‘Only a few hundred’ American Airlines flights still lack pilots after massive computer glitch 34:27 - Inside the decade-long fight to expose Morgan Marquis-Boire 38:53 - Next Level season 2 episode 3 52:07 - Paul’s weekly segment “Whiskey pods? No.” 55:56 - Amazon unveils $250 AI camera and machine learning tools for businesses 1:04:50 - Is now a good time to buy a new phone / laptop / TV? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode of the Vergecast is brought to you by Simple Human. Day-to-day life has room for improvement. That's the basic thinking behind Simple Human. Their goal is to improve the way people go about day-to-day tasks, one innovative product at a time. They offer product solutions across a wide spectrum of home needs, including superbly well-lit vanity mirrors, and touch-free sensor soap pumps. Now, Simple Human has introduced another dimension of, ease and efficiency for your life with their sensor trash can with voice control.

Finally, the voice activated sensor can allows for faster and easier access to the trash when life gets a little messy. So, you can visit simplehuman.com to purchase your sensor can with voice. Enter Verge at checkout to receive 15% off any sensor cans with voice. Again, use the promo code Verge at SimpleHuman.com. for a discount on your own voice control sensor cane. Hello and welcome to the Vergecast. I'm Lauren Good and that was my not very good impression of Nilai Patel, who happens to be out this

week along with Dieter Bone. So I'm very excited because I'm joined by Paul Miller and Casey Newton. Hello. Hi, Lauren. Hi, you should say how to Paul too. Hey, Paul. Just to be nice. Hey, Casey.

This is going really well and it's going to be a really great show. I'm very excited. You know, this is like the insane. taking over the asylum and I'm quite excited about it. This is perfect because Lauren, you do a podcast. You're like a professional at this. Casey, you're starting a podcast. I am.

You're like an amateur about to go pro. That's right. And I am frequently on the show, so I should know what I'm doing. Paul, you are a pro. This is your moment, Paul. That's right. This is what it's all been building to for you is you've finally sort of overthrown your masters and now you get to create the verge cast of your dreams.

That's right. It's all about robots. Wow. That's right. And I'll just say that in lieu of scissor vodka ads during the show, we will instead be promoting our own podcasts. But rest assured listeners, there will be lots of promotion during the show. There will be indeed read by Paul about trash cans. Speaking of trash, let's see what's in the news this week. Yeah, it's been a great week for news. and by great, I mean not great at all. We work in the news, so we're obliged to write it and follow it and be immersed in it. For everyone else out there who's listening, who isn't required by their job to follow the news,

but it just has it in their face all the time anyway. I'm sorry. We are going to get started. Let's start with, this is probably not the biggest news we're going to discuss today, but I'm intrigued by it. Google and Nest. There was a report in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday that said it was likely that Nest was going to be merged back with Google, back into Google, I should say, and that all the people who've been working on Nest products will then effectively be working on Google smart home products. And this is all part of a larger initiative for Google to basically compete with Amazon. And earlier today, I called this the tech news that will surprise nobody.

But Casey, what's your take on it? I think this is long overdue. I think it's been unclear why Google had a separate hardware division from Nest. They spent $3 billion on Nest and then continued to develop their own home IoT hardware independently. And the result of that was a lot of lost time. The history of the Nest acquisition has been one of near total underperformance. They had the botched acquisition of Dropcam. It took them years to get out a second product after,

the initial thermostat. They had tons of problems with their first fire detector fire alarm. And so it's just been sort of nothing but problems over there. And I tweeted about it today. And some employees were sort of messaging me saying, listen, that's all in the past. We're in much better shape now. And I don't know maybe they are. But you know, you look at what Amazon is doing in the home, how far along they are with Alexa, how long it took Google to get home out the door. and it makes a lot of sense that they would want to just kind of get everyone together in one room and have that be the hardware IoT room. I'm sure there was tension.

Like, I don't know specific stories about it, but generally speaking, when you have rival camps set up in a company to do the same thing, there's going to be tensions over resources and all kinds of other things. So, yeah, it was always going to be a recipe for competition. And by the way, this isn't totally unusual at Google, right? You look at the fact that they have Google play music. also YouTube music, which are different apps that do the same thing, because YouTube is sort of allowed to be quasi-independent, even though it winds up competing with Google's own services. So,

there are just a handful of those spots in the company where I think Google would benefit from a more streamlined approach. And correct me if I'm wrong, but when Google first acquired Nest, Google was Google, right? That was, wasn't that pre-alphabet? So if I remember correctly, then when alphabet happened and Google created this sort of new corporate structure, and then it, you know, cast Google and Nest into completely separate entities. I think at that point it was like, well, why is this happening? Right? I mean, you have Google, which is this behemoth, and then you have this much, much smaller

entity that is making the same kind of products that Google is starting to get into. And I think from a software perspective, it actually makes more sense. I mean, hardware is hardware, right? But what matters more is the software that it's running on. So Nest has its own software. It has Nest aware. the subscription service, it has works with Nest platform, which works with all these third-party apps and stuff like that, the more Google gets into that, I mean, everybody uses Google

software in some way, right? So it just seems like it would be impossible for Nest to really build that software product out on its own. Yeah, Google bought Nest in February of 2014. Google became Alphabet in 2016, and Google's Nest acquisition was widely viewed as a failure in 2016. There we have it. Do you guys use nest products? I have a thermostat in my home that was pre-installed before I got there, and it seems fine, although not super intuitive.

It's a first-generation product. So I have no objection to it, but nor am I racing to buy additional nest products for my life. Paul, do you use it? Yeah. Now, my thermostat right now is my room is really cold, but the rest of the rest of the my apartment is really warm. So if I get too cold, I go into the living room.

That's incredibly high tech. Yeah, that's my current level of automation. Paul's like, I have a blank. That's why I want like robots, you know, not just thermostat, but a robot could pick me up out of my bed, bring me to the living room where I could be warm. You know what I mean? Or what if the robot could just blast heat at you, like out of some sort of chest-based furnace like a low-grade flame thrower.

Right. That would be great. They're probably working on that. Realistically. I have a nest camera and I have to say my favorite feature of the nest cam, which I don't use all the time, but I do use when I'm not home. Like when I'm like a way away is the fact that it has a microphone. So I can, you know, theoretically like if I had a cat, like theoretically I could talk to it when I was away. And just give it instructions that would confuse it.

Yeah. Come give me a hug. You mean a speaker. You can like talk out of the camera? Oh, excuse me. Well, yeah, it goes both ways. You are correct. Hi, I am a tech reporter. I meant the speaker, correct? So you can speak outwards, which is kind of fun. And I mean, I think that's like there are worst case scenarios where you get a notification and there's some movement in your home and you look and there's a person who's not supposed to be there and you could like scare them and be like, hey, like I'm calling the police or whatever you need to do. And then there's the really benign sweet feature of like talking to your pets or your kids. Have you ever gotten a push notification that seems scary and then you looked into it and it was totally fine? Or it was actually scary? Yeah, I have. Well, I know, no, none that were actually were scary, knock on wood. But I've gotten notifications that it would be maybe an odd time of the night or really, really early in the morning. And so I'll look and it'll just be like literally a shadow appearing because the light has changed and something has appeared in the frame that has triggered it. And so then I'm like, is there someone out there on the patio?

And it's like a shot. It's like a branch waving in the wind. And granted their software has gotten better over time. So it's gotten much, much better at that kind of detection of different objects and things like that. And I think their outdoor camera is supposed to be really good at that stuff because it's an outdoor camera. But yeah, I've had like a few moments like that where it ended up being nothing.

Yeah, but I think what you're getting at is this is all just kind of commodity hardware. Like, does it matter if you buy a nest cam or an Alexa cam or an Apple? Apple cam. Like, it's all just sort of the same. And I think what was initially so promising about Nest was that they were going to bring this kind of tender love and care to these really unloved products around your house, like a thermostat and a fire alarm. And it just kind of feels like they went from that to, eh, never mind, like, here's a drop cam. But we're calling it a Ness cam now. It's just, it's just super hard for me to get excited about it or believe that the next generation of product leadership. in home automation is going to come out of them because I just think like structurally, it just seems really messed up. Yes. And their founder is, well, one of their founders is gone. The brand name founder is gone.

Tony Fidel. Yes. He's working on Go-Carts. Yeah. No, I don't know. That was a while ago. He's working on a bunch of stuff, I'm sure. All right.

Now that we've fully dissected Google and Nest for you, you're welcome, Nest. Let's move on to the next news, which to me is just the biggest news of the week, which is that we found out that Casey Newton was not, in fact, the employee at Twitter who disabled temporarily disabled President Trump's Twitter accounts. Was it you that started that rumor that I was behind that? You know, I just figured you have so many ins at the company and you know a lot of people there and you're very passionate about changes on Twitter.

Well, you know, for what it's worth, I am not part of the crew that says ban Trump from Twitter. And there are many reasons, but like my biggest one is practical, which is let's say he did get banned from Twitter and was unable to create a new account for himself ever. He would post somewhere else and someone would write a bot.

and that bot would immediately post whatever he said to Twitter. So all you would be doing is introducing a four-second delay in between Trump posting something somewhere and that's something showing up on Twitter. So you can have all the arguments in the world for why you think Twitter should get rid of Trump. I have some colleagues who think that it would just be really funny and that's why Twitter should do it.

But at the end of the day, you know, it's not going to make any difference with regard to the president using it as a platform. That said, somebody did actually deactivate Trump's Twitter account. And this week we found out who it was. And the credit goes for this scoop to TechCrunch, who found the man who is a German citizen, whose name I am unfortunately going to butcher. He is of, I believe, Turkish descent. That's what the TechCrunch article said.

And his name is Batiar Duisak. And he was working for a staffing company, a third-party contractor called Pro Unlimited. And on his last day, he got a report. that from somebody who had reported the president's account for something, we don't know what. Now, here's where I have to become a little bit of a media critic. The TechCrunt story left a lot of really important questions unanswered. For example, they did not tell us what was the report that the contractor got. So we don't know, you know, what sort of spurred the initial action.

Two, the contractor was very cagey about what actually happened. He has said it was a mistake, but he seems to be using that word not to suggest it was an accident. In other words, it was intentional and now he feels bad about it. But that just raises so many other questions. Like, what did you think you were doing when you did this? Why did you do this? Was this politically motivated on your part? Are you sympathetic with those people who say,

that Trump should go. What's the deal? When we first found out that this was a contractor on his last day who had done this, a lot of us thought this must be somebody who's really fed up with President Trump

and wanted to just kind of give him the middle finger on his way out the door. And reading the TechRange article, that might be true or it might not be true. He simply isn't saying and they sort of didn't say, they didn't write in the article what they had asked him

that he would not answer, really, like for the most part. So it does sort of, remain a mystery. Now, I should say there are good reasons why he might want to leave some of this stuff somewhat vague. There has always been the potential that maybe the FBI would investigate. He's apparently safely back in Germany now. Right. Yeah, I read that he like set the action and motion, walked away from his desk, 11 minutes later it happened. And oh, by the way, he was going back to Germany soon. Right. And, you know, he says he wants to live an ordinary life and he doesn't

want to be defined by this forever. And, you know, I'm sure there, there might be people out there who would wish him or his family harm. And so he wants to sort of say, hey, like, please forgive me. I did this thing. But, you know, if this was a story that you followed and just wanted to know more, you still don't know almost any of the answers to the questions that you have. Except you do know that a contractor working for Twitter, Twitter has the ability to shut down the Twitter account of the leader of the free rule. That's a great point. Yes. It's really very unsettling. And, you know, I have poked around on this and people have suggested to me that there was a time when what the contractor did, it would have sort of been escalated to a supervisor

for approval, essentially. That seems not to have happened in this case. Is it that the person responsible was, had quit Twitter, it wasn't available? Like, we don't know. But it seems like there should have been some kind of secondary approval. It didn't happen here. Twitter won't comment on the specifics, but they say, if we put new safeguards in place to ensure that this never happens again. and so I think we can assume that the next time a contractor flags the president's account, it will have a second layer of review before it gets suspended. Paul, your take on this? I just love the way this article ends, Casey, your article about the TechCrunch article.

But I love Twitter, he told TechCrunch, wearing a sweater emblazoned with the stars and stripes, and I love America. What both do you say? He comes across as a little cartoonish, but like in this really lovable. way. There's a quote that he also said in the video where, like, in response to the question, how did this happen? He says, I had a wild time in America. Which is such an amazing answer to that question. It was like, hey, you deleted the, you suspended the president's Twitter. Like, what was all that about? And he says, you know,

I had a wild time in America. Like, as if this were just one of a handful of crazy hijinks that happened to him while he was abroad. I went to a six flags. He's like, I ate a bunch of hot dogs. Saw the Empire State Building, suspended the president's Twitter. God, it must be so fun to just have that attitude and then be like, peace out. You know? Yeah.

We should make him stay for several more months. Well, Casey, I'm happy to know it wasn't you just because I was worried about the FBI coming after you and then what would happen to us here. I mean, I'm always worried about the FBI coming. after me, but when they finally catch up to me, I think it'll be about something else. But I'm glad to know this is at least partially resolved, even if there are still some holes in the reporting that has been done. Yes. And worth saying that CNN also did an interview with him on Thursday, and he was equally unforthcoming. So I do suspect that TechRinch asked him some

questions that he just refused to respond to. He is keeping his cards close to the best. Let's move on to the next story, which I'm going to admit is another somewhat lighthearted story here. I heard that you guys talked a lot about net neutrality last week. And things have been pretty heavy lately. So we're lighting it up a little bit. Yeah. And we're talking about news. This is really refreshing and interesting.

We're coming up months of like the biggest product just launched. Will Apple or Google still be relevant? And now it's just like, you know, everybody's really actually on vacation until January. Yeah, yeah. And trust me, there's going to be plenty, plenty more time for reporting on the bigger stories of the day, like net neutrality, the influence of social media and elections, sexual harassment and tech and other industries. But for now, I want to talk about HQ. Taylor Lawrence from The Daily Beast wrote this fantastic article. I think it was earlier this week.

Might have been late last week. about how she went to go profile the host of this new game show slash trivia app HQ. She spoke to this host. He's blown up in popularity. And she spoke to him and he said all these very nice, benign things. And then when she went to go cross-check that with the press team at HQ, they kind of lost their minds. They were shouting on the phone. They said this guy couldn't say what his favorite salad chain was.

I mean, it's a great story, but let's back up the bus a little bit. Casey, you've been playing HQ. Tell us about it. Have you won yet? I have one. I cheated a little bit because I had an extra life because if you share your promo code and somebody signs up with the app,

then you get an extra life. And so if you miss a question, then you get to come back into the game, but you only get one extra life per attempt. So on one of these attempts, I missed one question, got back in the game, answered the rest successfully,

and for my labors, won $1.26. If you haven't played HQ, it's very simple. You sign up, download it. It's currently on iOS only. I guess that's a keynote, although presumably Android is forthcoming. Every day at 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern, you get a push notification on your phone. You open it up. There's a host, and the host does a little quiz show. And he or she asks 10 questions, I'm sorry, 12 questions. They're all multiple choice questions. There are three choices for every answer. It starts out really easy, but it gets hard in a hurry. And if you answer all 12, then you get to share in the winning. So a typical pot for them would be $1,000, but as the game has gotten more popular,

I think they've done up to $8,000 now. So some people are winning 30, 40 bucks a pop. And of course, even if you lose, it's such a brilliant idea because everyone thinks that they can answer 12 questions in a row. Like, it's just achievable enough. You will lose almost every single time, but you might win once or twice, and it's kind of enough to keep you going. They ask about everything under the sun from grammar to sports to movies to music to geography, sort of everything that you would expect to hear on Jeopardy, but they've sort of boiled it down into this really fun format. Every game takes like 12 or 15 minutes to play, and it's just, it's a lot of fun. And we've written about it.

A lot of others have written about it. And then after Taylor wrote her piece about it, it kind of blew up even more because what her piece was about was that one of the hosts of the game, Scott Ruggowski, is now the face of it and in some ways is becoming as popular as the game itself. And so it's gotten a little bit out of control and the people who are working at HQ are clearly like going a little bit insane as their app becomes much more popular. Yeah, I mean, what amazed me from Taylor's story is that this guy, Scott, I mean, he's getting recognized when he's at the ATM. People were dressing up for him as Halloween. He's legitimately become a sort of app celebrity or Insta Celebrity.

What's surprising to me most, I think, about the popularity of the HQ app, which admittedly I've not played yet, is that in general, like in the world of digital media and our app experiences today, we're not very good at appointment stuff. I mean, we want everything when we want it. There are algorithms that are tweaked to cater to our need to watch things or view things or look at photos or whatever when we want to do it when we have the time. And this is actual appointment participation. This is like two times a day.

people have, right, it's two times day. People have to be on their apps at a certain time in a specific time zone to do this thing collectively. And I just think that's kind of cool. Yeah. I mean, there hasn't really been appointment viewing on the phone before, right? Like I, you know, in high school, I would race home to watch Seinfeld on Thursday nights. That hasn't happened in either the desktop era or the mobile era until now. And so I do like the idea that you're going to be primed to open up your phone at a given time for something that is just really wholesome and fun and could make you a tiny, tiny bit of money. Paul, have you played yet? Yeah, the first day I played, Ashley wanted to get that extra life. So I signed up with her promo code and then we played that day. And that was the same day that all of this blew up. So I played a normal game and then I tuned in that night. He came.

They like, the show was like delayed for like inexplicably for half an hour. It's like, oh, he's just dead. Like he's been murdered. by his CEO and then he comes on and he I mean to his credit like I mean because the whole point is he's basically a stand-up comedian doing this quiz show and like he riffed on the the whole idea of um this is just horrible terrible PR day I think he said some joke like if you if you like answer all the questions correctly you maybe have enough money to hire a good PR firm um but it was But I kind of wonder, this disappointment viewing thing, like, you know, I've been obsessed with Twitch for a long time.

And then, you know, obviously, live streaming went mobile over the past, like, three or four years with, like, you know, Periscope and stuff like that. But, like, this is one of the first live stream interactive. Even on Twitch, there's very few actually interactive things other than, like, you know, the streamer gets notifications when you like it or, you know, the streamers are talking to comments and stuff. but this is an actual game that's interactive and combining video streaming. But I just kind of wonder how much room is there for more of these? Because, like, I'm not bothered by this push notification that I get twice a day from HQ because that's the only one. But what if there were, like, five popular live stream shows and, like, throughout the day,

I'm getting push notifications that they're going live. Like, I feel like I'd give up really quickly. Yeah, I think you have to, you probably have to pick. I mean, you know, some people watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy and some people just watch Jeopardy and you get to decide which of those people you are. I do expect there will be copycats that try out other formats. And in fact, I think something HQ should do is launch a second and a third show that we're slightly different, but use the same mechanics and try to figure out, you know, is there another kind of game show that we could do that would be even more popular?

But man, you can just sort of imagine them becoming a mobile game show network and that kind of had this mass participation. And I think it could be really fun. So, you know, I don't know. I went to a dinner last night and was talking to some venture capitalists who have looked at HQ. And they were kind of saying, they're playing a wait and see approach because this feels like the kind of thing that could just be a fad.

And that a month from now, we might all be getting tired of these notifications. And so, you know, maybe it's just kind of kind of come and go. But I don't know if I'm ready to give up on it yet. I still feel like there are a lot of things that they could do. And I would absolutely expect that you'll see something similar from a Facebook or a Snapchat sometime in the next year. Well, I could totally see one specific show being a fad, but I really think this format is very compelling. I don't think this format is a fad. Right.

Yeah, I mean, the show itself might be a fad, but the idea of playing fun games on your phone. Like, you know, the last fun game on our phone that everybody played was Pokemon Go. Pokemon Go was orders of magnitude bigger than HQ, right? Somebody told me last night was like 500 million downloads or something like that. HQ isn't nearly on that level. But man, if you can kind of capture lightning in a bottle, find the right format, it can get super popular in a hurry. And so I agree with you, Paul.

I think we're definitely going to see more stuff like this. I think we're going to see stuff like this on our Peloton bikes while we're living in some black mirror future. I mean, listen, whatever helps you get more value out of your $2,000 stationary bike. They're making a treadmill. Did you see? I've heard that it'll probably be $8,000. Can't wait to try it at CES.

Facebook. Let's talk about Facebook. Should we talk about Facebook's influence in the election as we've been doing for the past several weeks? Or should we talk about Facebook's using your selfies to verify your identity? Let's talk about the latter. Yeah. So somebody else has to explain to me what's interesting about this story. Like I use my face to log into my iPhone now. So I don't know why it seems interesting that I would log into Facebook with my actual face. Yeah. This is not entirely new. I mean, there are other types of biometrical.

authentication systems already in place. What's funny to me about this story is just that, you know, inevitably, there's going to be some backlash to people, the idea of people are having to upload their faces to Facebook for identity verification. Like, we don't upload our faces to Facebook 17 times a day already. Like, oh, I don't know, my privacy. Well, you just shared an Instagram story for the 20th time. Well, that's what, like, I don't know if I'm beating up a straw man here because maybe

nobody actually felt this way, but there did seem to be this hint of a reaction like, can you believe those guys at Facebook asking me to upload my face to them? I'm not going to let them see my face. That's exactly what they want. And I'm not going to give them the satisfaction. It's like, calm down. They have your face. They have so much of your face. Yeah. They have a 3D depth map of your face. And they will pull, like. So apparently this is for suspicious activity. It's not going to be used. At least Facebook is saying this isn't going to be used for like regular logins. As someone who is very tired of switching apps to my two-factor authenticator app all the time,

I would be very happy to use my face as a second factor. Yeah, like faces are not spoof proof. They can definitely be hacked and people have shown that. But I think we do have all of these two-step and two-f, factor authentication methods right now for verifying our identities. Once you kind of go and go over into the dark world of biometrics, it's really hard to go back. And I think as the tech industry moves more and more towards this idea of like a federated identity that exists in some way, this to me seems like it's the next obvious step. Gang, let me pitch you on an idea. You've heard

of two-factor authentication. Let me tell you about two-face authentication. And here's what I mean. you're able to log into your phone with your face, but if you want to log into Facebook, you have to upload a second face of your choosing. So you designate a second face, preferably the face of somebody who's always around you, like maybe the person who sits next to you at work or a partner, a loved one family member,

and only if you upload an accurate representation of their face can you then get into your own account. Is that the future of security? I will quit my job to start this company. Do you have to flip a coin to decide which face? I think that could be part of it. I mean, I'm open to suggestions on the product roadmap. What if? What if, what if?

The first time you logged in, you had to use your face. And the second time you logged in, you had to use a book. And you had to carry that book with you. Oh, interesting. Facebook. To Facebook authentication. And that would promote literacy. Right.

And books. Which is what this podcast is all about. That's right. We're going to get into some of our favorite books later in the show and also do some reading exercises that you can do with children. Are you reading any books right now? I'm reading a great. It's a sci-fi book, and it was recommended me from Twitter folks over the summer when I was asking for books to read,

and it's called The First 15 Lives of Harry August. How is it? I'm really enjoying it so far. It is about a person who every time he dies, he wakes up again at the beginning of his life, and he's, like, trapped in an endless loop. Does he wake up as a baby? He does. He wakes up as a baby.

and like as he matures like he sort of like gains access to more and more of his memories but it's a really kind of fun fantasy because he has a photographic memory so he he remembers everything from previous life so in in one life he learns everything he can about science and then in the next life he learns everything he can about religion and sort of like with every life he just tries to learn more and more and more which you know if you've ever like looked at a library and thought I wish I could just read all of these books like this book will resonate with you that sounds lovely are you reading anything right now I'm really I'm reading, was it somebody's cathedral?

Let me look. Who's cathedral is it? Here's the thing is I don't read. Turing's Cathedral by George Dyson. And he's talking about von Neumann who had apparently, so almost all computers nowadays used the Von Neumann architecture. Von Norman was also involved with like the atomic bomb. Von Neumann had a photographic memory.

Also apparently had a large head. and he like to drive cars very fast. Large heads are one of our biggest problems with two-face authentication is when the head doesn't fit in the frame, be a real problem. That's why you need a book. Lord, any book wrecks? Well, so I've been on the road a lot lately for this next level series, this video series I've been doing,

and my reading habits have been interrupted as a result. But I was trying to read Silent Spring, which is a 1960s book by Rachel Carson about our use of pesticides. And it's like, it's a tome. It's academic. It's a tough one, not going to lie. but I'm interested in that topic. I did recently read Barbarian Days.

It's a book about surfing. It's an autobiography about... William Finnegan. Yes, thank you. It's fantastic. It's a really, really good read. It won't appeal at surprise. And I thoroughly enjoyed that because he was surfing, I don't know,

this was decades ago when he first picked up surfing, and he used it as a way to sort of see the world and experienced life through the lens of surfing as he was coming up as a writer. And a lot of the places he discovered and waves he discovered were previously undiscovered because people didn't have apps to just look up forecasts and where things were happening. And he met a lot of interesting people along the way.

And it's just very, very good book. So there you have it. That's the Vergecast holiday book recommendations. Yeah. Give it a world. Good gift ideas. For friends and family. When you're tired of talking to your family or Alexa, just read, just read a book.

We have a couple more things to get through quickly before we take a quick break for an ad. But this might be one of my favorite stories of this week. American Airlines, a glitch in American Airlines computer system, somehow allowed their pilots to all simultaneously take Christmas week off, resulting in thousands of flights unstaffed, unpilited for the week of Christmas. they had to double back and figure out the glitch of course, but offer people time and a half to volunteer to fly during this week. They say they've got the problem somewhat solved at this point. But man, talk about not a very merry Christmas. You know, you imagine them logging into whatever horrible portal

that Oracle built for them in like 1993 so that they can request Christmas off and they all get emails thousands of pilots saying, congratulations. You get Christmas off this year and they go home and they tell their loved ones, honey, I know I haven't been home for Christmas in 17 years, but their request got to prove and they'll start crying. This is the one. They make all these huge plans. And then administrator bot.exe emails them saying, dear employee number 571, due to an error error in Server Bot 9,000, you have to fly to Shanghai on Christmas. And that happened like 18,000 times. Yes. They probably just gave them a nice lamp or something. It's probably like a leg lamp that they gave them as compensation. That's crazy.

Just like imagine feeling sympathy for major airline employees, you know, after what they've done to us. And yet, here I am. Here I am. I love it when stores are open on Christmas or Thanksgiving, but also feels just so terrible. Oh, for sure. Like you've got a tip big.

If you get coffee on Christmas, like, you gotta leave $5. Like, you just have to. Yeah. I mean, it's, I'm not going to glorify what we do, but it's kind of like the news business, too, when you're sitting at home with your family on a holiday and everyone's watching the TV and you see like broadcasters working a basketball game or they're just watching some show. You're like, well, someone's there in the studio or on the field or doing what they do, along with 150 crew members.

So, yeah, you know, people work the holidays. and apparently American Airlines pilots are going to be working them too. But that means that people get to get home for Christmas or whatever holiday they may celebrate. So that's a nice thing. Yeah, it's a Christmas miracle. Before we move on to the next segment, I do want to give a shout out to a very big story that ran in The Verge this week. Chloe Ann King reported this is a follow-up report that the Verge did about a well-known security researcher who has been accused of some pretty serious stuff, violent sexual assaults, out the community and it's all coming to light now. And it's another big story in a series

of reporting that we have been doing about sexual harassment in the technology industry. It's fair warning. It is a very explicit story and it's violent. So it might be very upsetting for some people. But if you are inclined, I recommend that you go read it. And it's a very important topic. And it's really, honestly, it's not a topic that's going away anytime soon. also reported earlier this week based on reporting from the information, full credit to the information. Andy Rubin stepped back from Essential, the new hardware startup that he recently founded because of some apparent misconduct that may have happened at his previous employer at Google. And yeah, this stuff just, it just keeps on coming. And we are, we're tuned to it.

Yeah, Dieter tweeted something that really resonated with me. It's like, you know, multiple times this week, I walk up to a group of people and I just say the name of a famous, well-respected man. And everybody knows what I'm talking about. Yeah. I mean, I'm glad this stuff. I'm glad this stuff is coming out. But, man, is wild. It is.

There was, of course, the Matt Lauer announcement earlier this week. they're obviously members of our government that have come under fire recently, and some of them, it seems, for good reason. And let me just state, too, that this is not fun for anybody. I mean, this is not fun for the women who have come out after sometimes years of harboring these experiences and are now going on the record or speaking to lawyers or talking about what happened to them. And, you know, maybe in some ways people think, oh, it's like some type of, you know, vindication. And it's not fun for anybody. It's not fun for the women who have to speak out about this.

And it's sure, not fun for a lot of women who are reading about it and who are recollecting their own experiences as well. So, but we're staying on it. So keep coming to theverge.com to read more about that. And I think we're going to take a quick break. Yeah. This week's episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by Squarespace. They did it again. Okay, I'm going to tell you a story about how I use Squarespace that I think everybody should know about.

And I don't think I've told it before. I hang out with some friends, and they've got business, right? And their business had a WordPress site. And it was broken, and they said, Paul, can you fix our WordPress? And I told them, I don't F word with WordPress, except I didn't. I really said it. and because it's just complicated. I don't like PHP and databases and stuff like that.

But I told them I would make them a new website from scratch with Squarespace if they would give me a chair so that when I'm at their place, I can just sit in a really comfortable chair. So they bought me a super comfortable chair and all I did was made a website with Squarespace and let me tell you who got the better end of the deal. That was me because it's really easy to make a, website with Squarespace. So you can go to Squarespace.com for a free trial.

When you're ready to launch your website, that's very easy to make with Squarespace, you can use the offer code Verge to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. It's Squarespace.com, offer code verge. Now, I'm going to tell you the other things about Squarespace, I'm supposed to tell you instead of telling you about a story about how I got free chair. Beautiful templates created by world-class designers. Squarespace makes it easy to turn your idea into new and unique website.

showcase your work blog or publish content, even sell products and services of all kinds and just a few clicks, customize everything, look and feel, settings and products. I think the basic thing is the future is coming, make it brighter with Squarespace. Welcome back to the Renegade Vergecast. We have stolen the microphones and the means of, we have seized the means of production and distribution, and we get to do what the heck we want with this podcast. And what I'd like to do is to talk to Lauren Good about her amazing series next level, which is back for its second season. And I just watched an episode that you did that felt it looks like magic. It feels a little too good to be true because there's a company making

solar panels that turns air into water. So tell us about what the heck this is. I'm happy to tell you about what the, I'm happy to try to explain it because I am not a material science expert. So we talked to this company in Arizona called Zero Mass. They have been working on this technology for the past six years, but just very recently, the stuff they've been working on became more widely available to consumers. We headed down to Scottsdale to their headquarters. It's kind of a cool headquarters. They've actually taken over an old car dealership, so you drive up and it's like Volvo, except they're making, they're producing water. And What they're doing is they're using this, what they say is a proprietary porous material to absorb moisture from the air.

And then they're using sunlight to heat that back up and effectively start a condensation process that then produces water. That water is then, you know, goes through a filtration system. It goes through a mineral block to add things like calcium, magnesium, you know, balance the pH. It's effectively potable water. But the interesting thing about it is that all of this is happening in a standalone sort of solar panel system. So there are no wires involved. They claim it's a very sustainable solution to getting drinking water from the air.

I mean, look, like we all know that water exists in the air. It's in the atmosphere. To actually pull it out of the air and make it drinkable is the process. And like in a lot of ways we've all experienced that happened before with our air conditioners. If you use an air conditioner, you know that you plug it in, you start the air conditioner, you get cool air, and then a byproduct of that is the condensation that forms in the air conditioner. But that happens through electricity. And in this case, they're saying, here, these totally self-contained sustainable panels that you'd set up on your roof or you'd set up in an

area where there's a problem, you know, with access to water. And then it's like this totally self-contained thing that produces water. That's their pitch. Which is amazing. Was there a particular breakthrough that enabled them to do this now? That's a really good question. My understanding is that a lot of it has to do with the materials science. So the CEO, the founder and CEO, this guy, Cody Friesen, he is a material science and engineering expert who had been teaching at Arizona State University and started to develop this while he was teaching there in the labs. There are others who have worked on this. There's a company, I believe, in Dallas that's been doing this. UC Berkeley is working on what they call a metal oxide framework, but that's a fancy way of saying, like,

material and contraption that could absorb moisture from the air. It really seems like it all comes down to this material that is going to absorb moisture from the air. And then the other processes are things that it seems like anyone can really do. Like a solar panel is not a new thing. Standard photovoltaic technology has been around for a while. Having some type of like mineral block that makes your water drinkable or purifies it in some way, not a new thing. So it seems like all of the players in this space that are trying to make this work. First, they're going to have to come up with a material that makes it happen, but then second, they're just going to have to package it and sell it in a way that makes sense. So I think this is the sort of thing, like,

to answer your question that they've just been working on for a really long time. They have the materials, they had all the parts in place, and now they're just like, okay, we're ready to try to sell this thing. We've been piloting it for a couple of years now. We're ready to try to sell it to average consumers. So let's say I've lost all access to water and I need my several liters of water a day. I think it's five liters you said you can get from one of these in a day. How much is one of these going to set me back? It is $2,000 per panel, but they're selling them in two panel arrays. So you end up paying $4,000 for the panels and $500 for an installation. $4,500 for what amounts to an average, they claim of 5 to 10 liters of water per day. Now, that, depending on how much

bottled water you drink or how much you may already be paying for processes like reverse osmosis or filtration or whatever it is, that may work out to be not a bad deal. But we also spoke to this professor, his name is Dr. Ashok Gadgill. He's at UC Berkeley. And he is this water expert. I mean, he's considered a rock star in the world of water because in the 90s, he developed this UV light system for purifying water. And he's really, his inventions have really impacted people, especially in developing markets. And he, he didn't want to speak about zero mass specifically and what they're doing, but he sort of expressed enough skepticism about the business model of it to make me think twice. Like he said, you know, I still think that it's more, I'm paraphrasing,

but I still think it's more cost efficient to think about conserving water or purifying water. Of course, he's an expert in purifying water, right? As opposed to paying up front for these panels that are going to harvest water from the air. Right. Yeah. My impression of what he said was like we'd be better off having municipalities and other sort of, you know, large systems figure out ways to reclaim water than asking consumers to pay $4,500 to make their own. But that also, yes, this technology does work. But what I wondered was how fast can the cost of this come down? And like, what are the charity implications? Is this something that the Gates Foundation might say, you know what?

We're going to just like buy 100,000 of these panels and like put them all over like Africa or Southeast Asia or other places where they may have trouble with access to water? Right. That's a really good question. In fact, I believe Cody Friesen, the CEO, was at one point a Clinton Global Initiative Fellow. And this project was somehow connected with that. that. Right now, their answer is that if you're an average consumer and you're living in a developed market and you want these panels, you're going to end up paying that $4,500 out of pockets. When they go to a place, they claimed that after Maria hit Puerto Rico, they went

and set up panels there. In that case, you're either a donor is sponsoring it, you know, giving money to have it set up, or you're working with a multilateral institution there that is able to somehow support the funding of it. It seems as though the only way this would ever really go totally mainstream, and especially in developing markets or areas where people are going through some type of disaster would have to be with some type of subsidy or donor support. So it seems like if that's the route they want to take, then yes, they would likely have to partner with some major organization that has the funding to make that happen.

But the reality is also that they may end up being a product that mostly wealthy, people get for their nice homes in Santa Barbara or they or frankly like they could I mean they could be selling to preppers for all we know you know people who are just like I really want that water off the grid preppers make sense I mean what I'm just like thinking about the business of this company is in it strikes me that the only customers who can afford their product don't need it because they already have running water right so you know if you're a rich person you have a beautiful house you know also like no no offense but the panels are kind of ugly right I mean they're like these giant giant contraptions that look like they take up a lot of space too. So you sort of need like a pretty

big roof to accommodate these suckers. You know, if you're a rich person, you might not want to put those on your roof when, again, you just turn a faucet and as many liters of water as you want come out. Right. Well, one of the, one of the homeowners we visited down in Scottsdale who had these set up, it was kind of interesting. We asked to speak to early testers, and it turned out that either they weren't available or they were investors or friends of the company. So it was like really hard to get a truly objective view on this from early testers. But one of the early testers we did speak to was a friend of the company. And he and his wife had had these panels set up on their roof for a while. And people down in this area, the Scottsdale Phoenix area, kept saying to me,

like, the water here is not very good. People are already paying for expensive filtration systems or RO reverse osmosis going on because there are concerns. about contaminants in the tap water. So it's funny because you think about just like developed markets, nice homes, you know, think about these like communities of beautiful homes like the ones we saw there and you're like, oh, they don't have problems with water. But in reality, they might. Or you think about a place like Flint, Michigan where obviously they've had serious water

problems over the past couple of years that have not been adequately addressed by the government that is supposed to be supporting them. And like you think, okay, well, there are places here in America that you're you wouldn't normally think of that people may still have a need for cleaner water. So, yeah, it's like when I asked them, who's this for and who are you best going to serve, the answer was kind of all of the above, which is, well, okay, I'm not really sure. I think it will still see. First of all, if the technology is viable, if it's economical, and if so, who's going to end up buying it?

That still all has to shake itself out. So we are somewhat skeptical about that. But also, I don't think it's fair to say, like, well, if you're in a somewhat wealthier-developed market, you don't need the water. True. Although I feel like I need to speak up in defense of Scottsdale Water since I lived there for two years.

And Scottsdale Water was like really great. At least when I was there. I mean, this was like 2004 to 2006. So maybe something like terrible has gone to rise since then. But I used to write about that city. And so I've like toured their water filtration systems. Like it's, you know, it's a rich city. And so they have a lot of money to put into infrastructure.

So it's strange to me to hear that there are people there who are worried about contaminants. But I don't know. I'll have to read up on that. Yeah. I hope it's okay. Yeah. It's no Flint, Michigan.

I'll say that, yeah. Yeah, of course. I have one question from the video. It's like every panel is connected to the internet. Is that required for water creation or is that just for their data gathering to improve it or something? That's for their data gathering. That's a good question.

Yeah, they want each panel ideally to be speaking to each other so that if one panel for whatever reason isn't, you know, producing an optimal amount of water, it could effectively communicate that to a panel nearby. They also want all of that data sent back to their network operation center so they can monitor remotely how each panel is doing and they monitor things like climate changes and stuff like that that could impact the output. I mean, one area we did not really dive into because we simply didn't have the time was like, oh, that's interesting. Let's say you have an internet connected thing. You effectively have an internet of things item like plunked down in the middle of somewhere where people may not be aware that it's internet connected

or could potentially be vulnerable in some way. But yeah, they are supposed to be connected. Maybe Ness can get into this next. Lorraine, if people want to watch this video, where are they going to check it out. They can go to Theverge.com. Go to YouTube.com slash Theverge. And you can find all of our episodes of Next Level there. You can also go to Theverge.com. You can go to Facebook where we're putting alternate cuts of the episodes on Facebook. And we have one more episode coming up for this season. It's going to be airing next week.

And it's, I don't want to spoil it too much, but it's going to be really cool. Nice. And by the way, you should check out every cut of next cut, and then let us know which one you preferred in the comments. That would be. And with that, I think it might be time to take another break. This episode of The Verge cast was also brought to you by the number eight. Actually, it's a company.

E-I-G-H-T, like the number, but it's for mattresses. So have you noticed how many mattress companies there are recently? So many. But one company is different. It's called 8. Eight is smart. It's the iPhone compared to the flip phone. Unlike its foam counterparts, the 8 Smart mattress is an innovative bed that uses real

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That's 8. E-I-G-H-T-Sleep.com slash verge and offer code Verge to redeem this special offer. Hello, and welcome back to the Vergecast. This is the part of the Vergecast. Casey and Lauren might not be familiar with, but every week I do segment. And it always has the same name. And it's called Whiskey Pod? No. So I was really excited this week to learn about this Jim Beam.

How do you say that? Jim Beam. I always thought it's Jim Bean. No, it's Jim Beam. But you should definitely say Jim Beam. It's Jim BM. Jim Beam. Beam is a time.

So it's a, it's the world's first intelligent bourbon decanter, which is basically, yeah, it's voice controlled bourbon decanter. It kind of looks like an actual just total prank, but they're selling it for $35. I was hoping this was whiskey pods and that they would sell some sort of proprietary gym beam pod that was, you know, only compatible with their voice activated decanter. But it turns out you can just pour any bourbon into this or probably any liquid. But be careful. And yeah, it's a voice assistant named Jim, which is voiced by someone named Fred. So playing the role of Jim is Fred? Fred is a master distiller at Jim Beam.

and he's real smarty. He won't actually tell you the weather or really any information, but if you ask him to pour some whiskey, he will. And yeah, so no whiskey pods. We got really close, though, and I really appreciate this sort of jokes, joke products that are real. I almost don't know where to begin on it. So all it does for your $35 is just pour your whiskey.

for you. And say sort of like Southern Witticisms. Oh, such as what? Just like folksy, homespun, wisdom. It's like, it's like, you know, if you ask you what the weather is, it's like, well, I have no idea, but it's always good, it's always the correct weather to drink bourbon. Huh.

You know, that classic Southern saying. Like, the only thing I like about this is that whenever we pay for something that's internet connected are supposed to be intelligent and it's really expensive and only provides like a minimal service. Everyone's like, for that prize, I wish it would just pour me a drink. This actually does. So I appreciate it for that. It's got built in 3G service to power the voice recognition, but your your 3G contract runs out after six months and then apparently it just doesn't work anymore. I don't know. I mean, actually that's fine because clearly this is the sort of thing that people are going to use one time and then put at the very

back of their cabinet and never see it again until they move. Yeah. I will say, you know, this is obviously a terrible product and the people involved should feel ashamed for making it. But it does sort of presage a coming world where we have technology that measures are drinking, right? Like, I kept waiting for you to say that this was going to give me analytics on my bourbon consumption, which presumably would terrify my doctor.

So I would just be very curious to see if we eventually get a Fitbit for drinking and how that may change our behavior. Well, maybe that's a good transition. So I've got a couple other topics I want to talk about in my portion of the show. You guys had your chance. So there's two new, like, smart cameras that just came out. Amazon has this $250 camera called AWS DP. lens, which I'm guessing is some sort of reference to like deep blue or that kind of classic AI. It's a camera with a computer inside and you can set it up to do different sort of AI type tasks,

like recognizing items or faces or actions. Like they have some pre-trained AI stuff or Amazon can help you train it to do whatever you want AI-wise. So it's basically an Amazon. echo look, but instead of judging your outfits at home, it's just going to judge your outfits at work. Yeah, I guess it's the idea. It's like, echo look was what we did with this tech stack. What would you do with this tech stack, maybe, is one way to think of it. Oh. Because it's like, what would you do with a camera that could run AI routines all the time and communicate with the cloud? And I think,

you know, what Casey said of like bourbon consumption, like if you think about it, like where we're going is, is we'll just have cameras on us that we'll just judge all of our activities. They'll be like, there'll be like a camera just innocuously placed at my desk somewhere. And it was like, Paul was sad that day. Paul didn't, you know, Paul was slouching way too much. And, you know, like we can do so much judging with these cameras. And that's basically what we're being set up to train these cameras to do. Like detect faces differentiate between hot dogs and not hot dogs. Is there anything remarkable about the tech, aside from the AI aspect, is there anything

remarkable about the, I don't know, the specs of the reference product? I mean, it seems like as kind of with a lot of these things, there's sort of this blend. I think the industry is still trying to figure out how much of this should be run on the local device and how much should be run in the cloud. And obviously Amazon has a big cloud bias, but they have put a decent amount of power into this machine so that you can run a lot of AI stuff locally, which I think is interesting,

but still it seems like mostly this stuff is supposed to have in the cloud. Google is also coming out with a camera called the AI-Y Vision Kit, which is, you know, the Amazon one is for industry. like $250. This is for like makers, and it's about $50. And it's for the Raspberry Pi, but they come with this vision bonnet circuit board, which is an Intel processor to run the, like to run vision type neural network stuff. So this is obviously going to be a lot lower power and, you know, less capable theoretically.

It also seems much less cloud dependent. Google's doing a lot of machine learning stuff in the cloud. But they, I don't know. It's just like, you know, we see Amazon come out with stuff like the, the, what's the look? The look, yeah, the look. That's the one that helps you get dressed. Yeah, yeah.

And then Google has clips and stuff. So they're clearly doing stuff. But it's like, we got to get this in the hands of developers. So developers create products that also help acclimate people. to having cameras on them, judging them all the time. I've been thinking, as you've been talking about this, Paul, about all of the other, like, creepy, dystopian, inevitable use cases of cameras like this.

And I'm thinking about cameras that send reports like, hey, Casey, you were sedentary for 11 hours today. Hey, Casey, you were in meetings for six hours today. You know, like, there's just all sorts of strange observations that cameras might, oh, hey, that's a third night at a bar this week, Casey. Like, you can just start to imagine all sorts of, sorts of things that a camera might tell you that maybe you're not ready to hear. Especially, so imagine this. The camera records you at all times, right? It uploads everything

to the cloud, right? You have unlimited cloud storage, and so there's, you know, maybe five or six 1080p streams in the cloud at any one time of you and your activities in your face. And then you learn about something like resting bitch face. You're like, oh, I've never heard of that term before. I wonder if I have resting bitch face. And then you like just, well, let me run the footage through. And then you get like a report, you know, a couple hours later. And like, yeah, actually, 80% of the time you look really mad and sad or mean. Yeah, it's kind of like going back through the like journals of your life.

And instead of looking at written journals and saying like, oh, that was that was a good time in my life. I was really sad for like those months or whatever it is. now it's like you have you basically have a tensor flow neural network figuring that out for you and telling it to you yeah I also just wonder how this transforms private spaces like you go over to someone's home and you're on camera you know like what happens to that footage

it's y'all it's about to get creepy up in here yeah okay okay but here's so my my first inclination when I hear about these things is to go to that dark dystopian place almost almost all the time and I do feel that in general, we're very quickly getting to the point where lines are going to be crossed with regards to personal privacy. We're pretty much already there. But what if you also think about it this way? Our phones essentially do all of this now. We carry our phones with us almost 24 hours a day or they're next to us, you know, next to our beds. They have sensors in them.

They have really smart software, you know, AI personified on it. They've got cameras, of course, all kinds of different cameras. And what if in some way these little cameras are just the phones turned around at us rather than in our pockets or us staring at them? I think there's like a sense that a phone is under your control because you do most stuff with it manually, whereas a camera kind of observing you from a distance feels a little scarier, right? Because like if it's always on, like my phone is off right now.

I guess it's listening for me to say, hey, Siri, but other than that, it's not doing anything, right? Whereas a camera is just, you know, silently judging. Yeah, it's more obtrusive. That's true. I mean, it's inevitably more obtrusive. But in terms of the packaging of the hardware and what's available and what's like what's actually happening on the device or in the cloud, it's, we're already sort of willingly giving a lot of this information away. the change happens when all of a sudden this thing is packaged in a certain way and turned to face us. Yeah, my theory is that we always do it to ourselves first. It's like we share this information with the companies before they like come looking for it or steal it from us or something like that. That's interesting.

So like because like I feel like with a lot of online services right now, like if you like if someone showed up your house, 10 years ago and they're like, hey, we'd like to make a profile about you on the internet. We'd like to take all the photos that you've taken with your friends where you look decent. And we're going to put them up and we're going to put some stats about you on there. And people can, you know, write about you like a guest book kind of thing. It's like, that sounds pretty creepy. But it's like, but if you are given the tools by Facebook to make that profile for yourself, you end up doing it. but I try to avoid, I try not to think too much about the dystopian things, but the camera ones do sound pretty dystopian.

And you're right, the stuff in our phone is very similar, like this whole Intel Movidius vision processing unit that's very similar to like the Apple's AI processor that they have. You know, our phones definitely have these things. The big thing our phones lack is the ability to stay on all. all the time, running and recording all the time, which these fixed cameras could definitely do. At what point should we tell our listeners that we've been pointing cameras at them the whole time they've been listening to this? No, they did it to themselves. You did it to yourself first.

Yeah. Listen to this podcast for free. You gave it away for free. It's not our fault. Okay, I had one more question. This is kind of the left field. And feel free to beg off of this one because it's kind of unfair. But we've had this, we've had this lot.

We plan our show in a Google Doc, and we've had this line forever where it's like, should you get a $1,000 phone, laptop, or TV? And we never end up talking about it because we always go over on time. But I change the question a little bit. Do you guys think is now a good time to buy a new phone slash laptop slash TV? Phone yes, laptop, no TV, yes. I completely agree. That was exactly where I was going to go to.

Well, this isn't a very interesting conversation then, is it? Everybody agrees. Wonderful. So my theory is that CES is coming up. The 8th-gen Intel chips are just rolling out for laptops when there's only a few on the market. At CES, we always see crazy new designs. We haven't seen the best that NVIDIA can offer with its new MaxQ designs, which are what I'm most interested with laptops.

So I think we're going to get a bunch of new great stuff, CS. But right now there are just amazing 4K TVs for very cheap. And there is a gamut of phones between $1,000 at the high end and like $500 for like the 1 plus 5T. There's really great options. I totally agree with that. I think like it's actually amazing how good of a TV you can get right now for like 600 bucks. Oh yeah, like the Roku TCL. Yeah.

When you consider like, I mean, so, you know, I have an iPhone 10 and I got it through the plan where I pay like, I don't know, like $45 a month or something like that. But, you know, over the course of two years, that's a very expensive proposition, right? But the, like, you can get a state of the art TV for 60% of the price. That's amazing. Yeah. It makes me wish that my TV would break. I'm about due for a new TV. So I may be buying one of those sub-1,000-dollar.

Yeah, mine is like 10 years old and it's completely fine and it kills me. Like I keep waiting for something to happen. I'll be like, oh, yeah, I got to get rid of this thing. And it never happens. Well, I mean, you could probably argue picture quality in that case. Or just look at it, you know, put your couch to the side of the TV for just like a few weeks and view, and look at the crappy side viewing angle with like the shadow on it and be like, and you can totally justify it.

I like that. I'm going to do this for sure. Super Bowl. Do it. Yeah. No. So my thought about the phone is that the reason why now is a good time to get a phone is not because I am enamored of any of the major phone launches this fall.

I'm really not. I've switched between the iPhone. I've used the Essential. I've used the Pixel 2. The Pixel 2 is actually pretty great. I've used the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 10 now over the past few months. And I'm not overwhelmed by the iPhone 10. I'll just put that out there.

But there isn't going to be any major other phone innovation for the foreseeable future, like at least for the next several months that we are aware of. So I think now is a time if you're worried about something coming in in the next few months and kind of usurping everything we just saw it. That's probably not going to happen. so now is a good time to get your phone. TV, we've already discussed why. Laptops, so Paul, you bring up a good point about the Intel 8th generation chips

and how that could impact things. I still think someone's got to come up with a good solution for making these laptops thinner, lighter, more powerful, and offering a better solution than dongles. Like, I'm really missing. I have a new MacBook Pro, and I'm really missing my ports. I had to be honest. I had to replace my laptop this year,

and my best option was basically to get the 2013 MacBook Air that had just had like slightly modified internals. The state of Mac laptops right now is so depressing to me because that company has led the industry with laptops for so long. And it just feels like the eye is off the ball. There are endless reports about the new keyboards breaking, being extremely susceptible to dust and other particles getting inside and ruining them. And so, you know, I have friends now who ask me like which Mac laptop to get. And I, I just sort of throw my hands up and I say, I do not have a good answer for you because there are so many tradeoffs involved with all of them.

Yeah. In case, he's like 2011 MacBook Air. I mean, Walt Mossberg has a bunker of 2011 MacBook Airs. How many full-size USB ports do you need? Is one enough? I would even say at this point, one's enough. I, so every, so right now, I guess I use, I guess I just use one, but I also use a display port port.

to connect to an external monitor. And I have an external power cable that I connect. So I have three things plugged into my laptop at all time. Oh, and also my headphones. So I'm using four ports at all times. And so the move away from ports with no accompanying, like, ease of use on anything else, it's just like driving me insane. Yeah.

I think if I had to stack rank, what I miss the most from ports on this new MacBook, which, by the way, I had to run out and buy in the middle of a, In the middle of an Amazon event, Casey and I were covering in September, yeah, because my 2012 MacBook Pro just completely died. The keyboard stopped working, and then it was, anyway, all kinds of issues. But I knew I was in the market for a new one. Anyway, stack ranking, the ports I missed the most. I would start with USB.

I would say I would love at least one standard-sized USB port, followed by SD card. We transfer a lot of photos at the verge, and I transfer a lot of photos and video clips, like, just in general, and I really, I do miss that. And then MagSafe. Although MagSafe and SD card ports are probably like pretty close, but yeah, I miss MagSafe. I'm not the first person to say that. And there's no, there's no. Meanwhile, they're.

Service laptop is still the Verges top pick right now. But that doesn't solve all those problems for you. Yeah, and also not everybody wants to switch to windows. You know, like not every, like people who like, you know, went to college 15 years ago, like me and got, actually, I had a PC in college. that's a bad example. But, you know, I started, once Intel Chips came to the IMAX, like I bought my first IMac, really got sort of absorbed into Apple World. And I have no strong desire to go back on the learning curve and relearn Windows. Like, I would prefer to just

kind of stay where I'm at and I don't have good options. So I don't know. Maybe I should check out a surface book or whatever. I have one of my desk you can use. I used it for about a month, the new Surface book. I actually use it for a month running 10S and then got the free upgrade to what is it, 10S Pro, so I could actually download external apps because prior to that, I was like, oh, this is so infuriating. And it is a really nice, beautifully built laptop, but you're totally right. Once you get hooked into an operating system, I think more so than phones. Once you get hooked into an operating system on a desktop or laptop, it's really hard to break away. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much for your input. Thank you for show. You know what?

You guys save the show. Can I say that? We really did. I have to know, I would have to agree. You saved the show. I mean, Dieter, unfortunately, fell ill. Yeah, he's really sick. Nilai's on a beach, hopefully, somewhere. Hopefully. He's having a little gym beam. But poured by a human.

So that's our show. Now is the time that we promote things. And it's great to have you here, Casey, because you got a new show coming up. What can you tell us about it? So if you love the Verge perspective on things and you'd like to hear more interviews, do I have the show for you?

Because in coming weeks, you're going to get your first listen to Converge, a weekly conversation with The Verge, hosted by myself. These will be live in-person conversations with some of Silicon Valley's most interesting people. We're going to talk to them about their backgrounds, how they got to where they are,

how they see the world, and we're hopefully going to have some fun along the way. So we're developing that for you right now, and I'm really excited to share it with you soon. Soon, like next week. not going to be next week. We want to make sure that Neely can listen to it and give it his final approval. So we have a few things that we need to do left, but it is coming together at terrifying speed. I'm very excited about that. And obviously, Lauren Good hosts too embarrassed to ask in addition to the next level video extravaganza multimedia series.

Yes, too embarrassed to ask airs Friday mornings. We answer all of your embarrassing tech questions on the show. We love getting your questions. So send them into us on Twitter or you can leave them on my Facebook page or you can email them to us. And thanks for checking out next level and for listening to our segment about it. And there's Recode Decode with Kara Swisher, Recode Media with Peter Kafka. And we can't forget, why did you push that button? Why'd you push that button? Which, can I be honest, is my favorite. It's so well done. It's really, really well done. That's with Ashley Carman and Kate

and Tiffany, and they're doing Venmo stalking, right, in the latest episode? That's right. No, that was last one. That was last week. Yeah, yeah. That was last week. And then before that, they did one about why people rewatched their own Instagram stories. Yeah, they got this guy talking about, like, addiction and, like, how companies design stuff so that we get addicted to it.

And that was awesome. What else? And we're on Twitter. You go at verge. We're on Snapchat. Verge. Instagram At word

Yeah Is that This outro Like I feel like the show is really good And then we got to the outro Yeah And then it went off the rails I don't want to leave

I wish I knew how to quit you guys I don't Okay Well I feel like I How do we follow you guys on Twitter Here's a question Keep things rolling I'm at Lauren Good

With an E at the end I'm at Casey Newton And if you go to my profile you'll also see a link to a daily newsletter. I've been doing five days a week about social networks and democracy. So if you're interested in what Facebook and Twitter mean for the world, go to my Twitter profile and maybe sign up. I didn't know we were doing other promotions too.

All right. I'm on Strava. So if you... Follow Lauren on Strava to learn where she's riding her bike. Where I'm working out. Where I'm surfing and cycling, all these things. It's just... It's private, but if you request me, maybe I don't know.

Maybe I'll let you work out. me. Where else can we promote ourselves? That's all I want to promote. We have to end this show before people unsubscribe from the Vergecast. I'm at Facebook.com slash paulmiller.biz. And thank you everybody for listening. We'll be back next week with more Vergecast. Rock and roll. Rock and roll. Rock and roll. Paul. Oh, a promo code is promo code.