The Vergecast - I Will Putter in RadioShack

Episode Date: February 13, 2015

We're back in the Bohn Zone this week. Nilay is away, but Dieter, Ross, Chris, and Sam are here to weave a tapestry of technology and pop culture, with a very professional introduction to kick it all off. Plus, this episode features the premiere of What's Tech, Chris Plante's new podcast. If you like What's Tech, be sure to subscribe on iTunes, or paste this feed into your favorite podcast app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome, everybody. This is The Vergecast. It's like the director's commentary for Theverge.com. My name is Dieter Bone. My name is Christopher Plant. My name is Ross Miller. My name is Sam Philip Schaeffer.

Sam Philip Sheffer. Hipe checks that intro. Wait, wait, wait. Is your name... Are you really name actually Philip? Yeah. What? I've known you for years.

I've never known you had a middle name. Yeah. And my first name is just Sam. Not just Sam. Just Sam. Not Samuel. No. Not Sam-wise.

All right. All right. So yeah, it's been a week. I think that there's been a bunch of entertainment news that we definitely want to get into later. There's a bunch, well, there's some, like, sad news. But before we get into that, I want to let everybody know that we are going to have a slightly shortened verge cast today. It's going to be a little bit shorter because we just can't maintain without an Eli. We don't know how to keep talking.

It is obvious. No, we're actually, we're going to be shorter because we are going to be premiering a episode of What's Tech. which is a new podcast from The Verge that's hosted by the friend of my left. If you're watching the live stream, Chris Plant, you want to tell us a little bit about What's Tech real quick? We're going to get into it much more later. Yeah, what's Tech is a show that is like 15 to 20 minutes because I prefer a short podcast that I can listen to on a morning commute or during like a short workout session that explains technology one kind of corner of tech at a time. So the first two episodes that are available like nowish or right after this are about drones. and smartwatches.

And it's amazing how even things that I kind of thought I did understand, like smart watches, you sit down with somebody who, like, really gets it. And like, oh, I had no clue. And the same with the drones episode. That's what's been really fun. I mean, just for me as, like, an individual is learning from each episode, which, I mean, you can't ask for anything better,

like, to come into work and, like, be paid to get to learn about, cool things from people who really, really understand them. I'm working on a special episode. We're hoping it's coming together for next Tuesday. You're already best. Now that you tease it, it better happen. Is it tech, though? It is. It is because there's a very loose definition of tech. That's something that people will find out very quickly. I imagine this show that goes on is the show is really what I want to talk about or learn about. And I just hope that people are kind of And you listen to it on a phone, so therefore tech. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I love how by episode two, you're already like just breaking the title.

Oh yeah. Yeah. I guess three, I think episode three. Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, you'll see. I mean, I'm not, I'm not giving away what this is, but I think it, I think it'll be interesting to see how far we can stretch the idea of what technology is and how it fits into our lives. I'm really looking forward to the audio episode. Okay, we're going to talk about tech news.

That's just, it's happening. It's always is the meta. All we're going to do is sit here and talk about ourselves. It's the most interesting thing ever. Microsoft. Yes. So, Satchian, Adela. has been CEO for a year, and I defy you to find somebody who doesn't think Microsoft is, like,

really kind of interesting and cool. It's definitely in a better place than it was. And, like, we were all excited when Nadella came out. And, like, he made that huge pitch, mobile first, cloud first. Which is the worst. It's the worst. You can't have two firsts. You just can't.

But, right? As close as you would have to this is what's happening. Like, they bought Sunrise. They bought Sunrise. They bought a comply. Yes. They're just buying stuff. They're buying, like, hey, we need a better.

They just bought the best one. People are saying positive things about Outlook. That's a surprise. They're letting people test Office 2016, which is insane. I cannot wait for GDC. So, no, no, this connects. The game developers conference is coming up. It's like three weeks away.

Microsoft has been very forward and not saying nothing at all. But they like, if you get messages, it's like, yeah, I don't want to talk about anything, but I want to talk about something. You're like, wait, what? What are you talking about? They're like, GDC definitely can't say anything, but I can say one thing. You'll want to be there. But no, it's good because, like, at least somebody seems like they get it and care again.

There was this weird thing where games are, one, just having the Renaissance right now on PCs, but two, it's different than Apple where games are still carrying the weight of mobile for Apple. It is what people buy, and they just don't give a shit. Oh, yeah, we're not cursing. We just don't care. And it's cool. I'm hoping to see Windows designed around games in some capacity again. I'm just really curious.

And you're right. I don't know if I'd say they're cool again yet. I don't know if Microsoft can ever really be cool, because it will always be the thing that I associate with having to go to a desk job, even though all of us use Apple products. Right. But it just feels like they keep making good choices. Yeah, well, the sunrise and accompli thing are what really get me, because these are two apps that anybody who like pays attention to productivity apps on iOS, which is presumably a pretty small sliver

of the population. But if you are part of that sliver, you probably have really, really warm, fuzzy feelings about these apps because they were legitimately great. Right. And Microsoft are like, oh, we're just going to buy the apps that everybody feels the best about. It's not just that. They're going to keep it open for iOS and Android. As far as I can, can tell. As far as they have announced, like, they're just being open. It's like, you know, we know it's not really a Windows app. It'll be on Windows. But like, we'll keep it open for everybody because everyone loves it. They just want Microsoft's branding everywhere now. So the question that I have is everybody, like people are feeling good about Microsoft.

They're being incredibly open about all the stuff that they're working on. Right. Especially for Windows 10. But Windows 10 is coming later. Well, it hit today for phones. For phone. Well, yeah, but it's for some. And, yeah, for like one specific phone for like one person. And it's a preview. Yeah. Yeah.

But it's coming. Okay. But how long can they maintain this like warm, happy feelings? When am I going to start being mad at Microsoft? As soon as you actually try it. That's the thing. The dream is great. It's beautiful.

I haven't had to touch it so nothing is spoiled by the dream. I'm enthusiastic. It also, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like this is a new model that Facebook has really nailed, which is, again, buying the warm and fuzzies, and then not touching them. Like, buying WhatsApp and being like, yeah, people love that. You know what we're going to call it?

What's that? Hey, Oculus, everyone's really jazzed about that? Cool. Let's not have our name near it. Let's not bring any positive or negative to it. Let's just say it did rename a complete outlook. There is that. There is that.

The gamble on it paid off because it made Outlook kind of cool. Right. Like I would never, my life thought Outlook would be on top of the Apple App Store, but it was for a bit. Yeah, which is insane. I don't know. The phone thing is really a bummer. Like, I don't know. I don't think that they're anywhere close to where they need to be there.

And I just don't know what this, I mean, this is the standard thing, Windows phone. Like, are they trying to win or what are they trying to do? I don't know. I think it's tough at this point because, like, I think, and, you know, this is harking back to a piece that Vlad did long, long time ago. Yeah. like choose your religion, like Apple or basically Android at this point. People are so locked in, they've bought so many apps, they have so many devices, and everything's interconnected.

I mean, the nice thing about things like Sunrise and Accomplice, you can buy a different platform, and they will all connect anyway. But I don't know. I feel like... Do you know the weird thing about that, though, about the idea of like, you've invested all your money into all these things? Yeah, yeah. Is, weirdly enough owning an iPad Mini has made the idea of making the switch they keep thinking

I'm going to do to Android so much more palatable. Really? It's like, well, sure. I have lots of games. If I want to play them, I'll use iPad Mini. I mean, at this point, I just don't use my phone for much stuff other than getting work done, which is, again, why I keep thinking I need to make the switch, because it's like, well, if I'm not using it for games. Yeah, well, you're not using it.

We've been meeting to talk with this for like two weeks now. You're not using it for cameras. Yeah, because I have my camera that I tool around. Yeah. And so what am I using it for? I'm using it to check my calendar. and use email and get work done. And right now...

You should switch to Android. Yeah, that's kind of what it's feeling like. And I don't feel bad doing it despite having spent all this money on the iTunes App Store, because if I ever want that stuff, I can pull out my iPad Mini, which weighs nothing, and I can toss my backpack. Right. Sam, hype check Microsoft right now. In this moment of time.

I mean, they are setting themselves up to be, like, cool again. very fast. I was going to say slowly, but it's like happening fast. Like Windows 10 looks beautiful. They're finally unifying it for across all their devices, although I don't know what they're going to do with their phones because it doesn't work on any of the hardware. The preview doesn't. They have a lot of cash and they're just buying stuff. Xbox one is Xbox one. And then they have the Holo whole deal. What I want for Microsoft is the apps. Needs. to be there because like people still tweet at me when I like tease the Snapchat account. People are like, well, Snapchat's not on Windows phone. And I'm like, then why the hell do you have a Windows phone? And like that Microsoft, Microsoft needs. No, like, and there's no Instagram. These are like, you know, AAA grade, however you want to rate these apps. Like these are apps that everyone, everyone uses on their phones. And Microsoft just needs to get its crap together and convince these comments.

companies to make these apps for these phones or I don't know it does have Instagram it does yeah oh you just can't post video that's what it is it's a chicken and egg thing too because there's just not enough people but they won't get the people until snapchat's there and Snapchat won't put it on there until the people are right right so Microsoft's doing everything else to can to incentivize like this is a really cool platform right maybe the customers aren't here but we've included in everything we can to make it happen all we need is Snapchat or an Instagram video right and I think go ahead oh I was going to say there is this strange thing of what it feels like, again, to someone who doesn't fully understand how you develop for Windows at this point.

But they keep talking about, oh, well, you develop for one, you develop for all, this giant cross-platform, you know, revolution. But what's strange is you think about Instagram or Snapchat, and the specificity is what makes those work. Like, what people liked about Vine early on was you couldn't just throw it on your desktop and make a perfect video. Like, it lived on your phone, and there was a reason for it just been your phone. Same with Snapchat. So there's a weird thing here where it's like, sure, you can develop for all platforms on Windows, but a lot of these companies probably don't even intend to do that. So it's just extra work.

Or, you know, it's something that you don't want to allow and then people are upset with you because you're not allowing it. And you never want to be the people off to explain to people why Instagram doesn't belong on your computer because you want the photos to look a little rough or you want there to be a grime to it in a certain way. Guys, are you going to talk about radio change? Yeah. Oh, my God. I just, I stuck my arms out.

Thank you. I was preparing. I was wondering if that was the sigh of like we're ending Microsoft or this is the sigh of we're talking about radio shock. Just, I loved me some radio shack growing up. Who didn't really? Everyone shopped at radio shack. My father is an electrical engineer.

So we would buy the kits and I would like go and like buy the wires and we put stuff together. just I would be that guy hanging out in Radio Shack. We would go from Radio Shack. No, we'd go from Axeman to Radio Shack. Okay. What is an Axeman? So Axeman is like a surplus store in Minnesota where they just sell the most insane crap imaginable and just in weird bin. So it's all stuff that like couldn't get sold at like the wholesale level.

And so like there's just like bins full of capacitors and like plastic dollheads. Did you have a recovery sales outlet? Sounds like the same thing. Well, that was like where like a train wreck happened. And they were like, well, I guess we can't ship these tans of tuna. So it's just like a whole bunch of plastic tuna. It was like that, but for mostly electronics. Oh, that sounds nice.

And like plumbing parts and like other stuff. So you, we'd go to Axeman and like, be like, oh, let's try and make a thing today. And then you'd like get all the parts that were cheap at Axeman. They'd be like, well, we need to actually make this thing for real. We need to finish it. And then we'd go to Radio Shack. And that would be our whole afternoon. And it was awesome.

Wow. And like, okay, when I was a, you know, teenager into college, I was still the nerd who hung out at Radio Shack because that was the place where you went to talk to a human being who actually understood cell phones before carrier stores happened. And, like, I would, like, shoot the shit with the Radio Shack manager. And I thought that he was kind of a cool guy, which is really depressing to think about now. But back then. Well, it was his name? Such a different thing. I don't remember.

If you remember. If I saw him on the street, I would recognize him. Really? Jay. Yeah. And like, you know, he sold me my first Erickson phone. It was a candy bar. It had like a flip, but the flip didn't actually do anything.

He sold me my first phone with Bluetooth. I asked him a careless whisperer playing in my head. So it's now, like, gone. Yeah, I mean, this thing still exists, though. It's half sprint now. Yeah, but like if I, this thing, to me is micrositter now. Do you have, have ever been to a microseenter? that is like the last

it's like if CompuSA and Radio Shack kind of like crashed into each other and they only kept the things that people actually want to use like they're actually going to fiddle around with and then the really hardcore stuff I assume they asleep to Amazon or like

an online place where you can order from I mean you go into a radio check now and it's just surreal because the front is overpriced phones it looks like or like weird like pseudo stereo Bluetooth stereo bad remote control cars

and bad yes and motorcycles and different junk and then you go to the back and it's like this is a totally separate store this is just cardboard boxes full of junk it's so weird I just I can't anytime I go in there

it's always because like it's free it's March it's super cool I desperately need like earphones because I've somehow lost them yeah it's the only place nearby last time you went to a radio show

What'd you go in for? Oh, I went in last month. I got a network adapter for this laptop. Oh, okay. So that's... Yeah. Yeah. That's legit.

But the last thing I went in for is I desperately needed a mini USB cable, not a micro-USB cable. And those are getting harder to find. And I was in San Francisco. I didn't have time. And it was the only store that had even a ghost of a chance of selling this cable. Guess how much I paid at Radio Shag for a mini USB cable? $6. Wait, how long was it?

It was four foot. $6. It was the only one they had in the same. store. Yeah. $6.10. $15. $20.

I went on the price is right. Jeez. But that's the problem with RadioShack. It's both of those things. It's one, I didn't go in there to hang out on Saturday with my father to build some cool stuff. I went in because I was desperate and I needed a USB cable, which you could get anywhere for dirt cheap, but I just needed it.

And two, they charged me $20. Mini USB cable, three feet on Amazon, $5 on Prime. Right? Right. Yeah. And if you're in this zip code, I would imagine you could do it with the Prime app on your phone. You get it an hour later. Or just go to Best Buy.

It's like, oh my God, then he charged you $40. Well, no, you get a cheap kind of piece of crap one. It's brass wire. Oh, no, it's gold. Gold wire is so much better. The data transfer just looks nice. Unfortunately, conceal under black plastic. So Radio Shack is going away.

Well, they're, yeah, kind of. Basically. They're turning into Sprint stores is kind of. of what's happening. They're going to share space. But I think the real problem is, in some ways, Radio Shack had already gone away. Yeah. The reason you went there was to, you know, do cool projects, or at least it was for me.

Yeah. And there's been a whole million think pieces about this. Like, they didn't catch on the trend of the maker. Or, like, nobody has free time anymore at all, and they just spend it playing video games. And so they're doomed. Or, you know, the classic, you know, here's all the stuff in the Radio Shack catalog from 1984. for and you do them all on your phone now.

I think, I mean, who knows? There's no way to solve the problem with how big they were and find anything that could like fill up those stores. But if Maker Etsy mashup seemed like such a great idea of like offering the tools to have like cool, make your own things, have like a retro brand and then sell some of those things that people end up making. Like incentivize people that this is a marketplace for the best ideas. That would have been, it'd be thrilling to see, I mean, we live in New York, we get to see Etsy stores every Christmas.

And they're one of the coolest things whenever they bring those out. And you can see Etsy products in real life. And you end up buying way more than you ever think you would because they're right there. And if there was a company that had a shot, at least a shot at it was radio shack. I mean, if you take the ethos of old Radio Shack and you modernize it, it would be a store with a giant 3D printer, a bunch of Arduino kits, a couple of Raspberry Pies. And like exactly you said, like, you can make your shit here. Yeah, but I mean, is that a sustainable business? God, no.

But at least it's better than, like, fake drones and a weird out commercial that they paid way too much for. So, I mean, the tragedy here, I mean, there's lots of tragedies. There's a tragedy for all the employees and how badly they've been treated over time and how a bunch of people are probably going to lose their jobs. Now, for me, the tragedy is RadioShack was a place where you could go and be a gadget nerd, IRL face-to-face with somebody and not in some form where you end up getting in a flame war with somebody on the internet that you could go and hang out at the mall and if you're like,

I'm bored, you could go and just be a gadget nerd in this space that is everywhere in the country and no matter what you'll like find time to putter. Like, you know, I hate shopping. I hate puttering around, but like I will putter in Radio Shack. Like, oh, look, there's some alligator clips for like,

built. I don't know. Like, I will find myself staring at random electronic junk at a radio shack in a way that I don't do anywhere else. Right. And that's not having that space. for people is like really depressing. Yeah.

I mean, you've seen a copy of say when circuit cities pretty much like it's gone, isn't it? Yeah, it's going forever. And so that means people

are shopping at Best Buy then? Is that like? No, definitely. Where? It's all online. So Amazon, like these.

Yeah, you can follow. I mean, this is speculation. But if you think about the type of people who would be going to this place where they were the people who were buying online

before everyone else. Exactly. And they've become more accustomed to it than anyone else. Oh, that's true. And they're going to be able to find the deals. And that's why you lose those people. Eventually, everyone becomes that.

So if I'm in any other store, it's kind of like the beginning of like when music was pirated. And then like every other industry is like, oh, this won't be a problem. I mean, sure, those were just young people. It'll never spread. They'll never grow up. And then everything ends up getting pirated. I mean, for a while, as long as they didn't need it within like two business days, it'd be fine.

I'll order it online. It's cheaper that way. And now there's same day delivery anyway. So that impetus to have to go to the store because you need it right away, it's gone. Yeah. Or it's going away. And I used to also only use online shopping for my tech stuff and now it's everything. By the way, just so everybody knows, I did get the copy of my Winnipeg with the $20.

So follow up. It was 100% worth it. That's nice. Do we want to talk about, well, before we leave radio show, I do want to make a plug. I do. I know what you're going to plug. John Boys? Yeah.

So there is John Boys, who is the author of the Breaking Madden series on SB Nation, which is, I think, one of the most essential pieces of video game criticism ever created. As funny as it is, it is also, I think, Vital, did a great piece on his experience working at Radio Shack. And it's basically a, at this point, a eulogy, and it's excellent. So, I mean, for now, until the post is live, you can Google it. It's on SB Nation, John Boyes Radio Shack. Yeah. And it's just excellent. Should we jump over to the next big thing?

Are we passing? I check Breaking Madden. Yeah. Oh. I will admit that I have never... No. No. No.

No. No. No. It's... Come on. It's been around for two seasons. Dude. I'm being honest here.

I don't... I've never seen a single episode. I don't care if you don't know what American football is. and you don't know what Madden is, it is legitimate art just on its own. I mean, like, I'm not a big football guy either, but the Breaking Madden season one finale,

I cry laughing every time I see it. Like, I'm sending your way now. Just stop everything you're doing right now and just read this. But I love John, I love John boys. Like, you know, it's nothing personally against him and just,

no, it is actually. It's a personal thing. It gives all of us. And now, and now Thoramins is going to kill me. Michael Cass is going to kill me. Jimmy Bankoff is going to like me sending you a personal real. You realize this company was founded on this.

Deep trouble. Well, since Sam failed the hype check, we have help on the hype check formula. This is Sebastian Plamauer, who's a turbine and writer on Twitter. He has submitted to us a paper, which has been peer reviewed, by the way, by Vervech commenters. Okay, but that's not exactly like Nature Journal or anything. Okay, okay. I think it's better than we ever thought we were in the community of journalists. It is an academic paper laying out the formula for hype and not just hype, but hype over time and the integral necessary for it. Okay, so this is a statistical analysis of hype.

Given that hype is a popularity of a product in a given moment, we can easily see that the hype is something that changes over time. The total hype is composed of a brand hype and product hype. For example, hype timelines based on Google Trends see figures 2.1 and 2.2. we have to integrate the hype over time. I'm going to tweet about this right now. I'm just going to put this out. There's a full analysis of the hype of the iPhone 6 versus the Nexus 5 and the hype quotient. And it's just shockingly good. If the hype quotient is lower than one, it means the post-release hype can't hold up to the pre-release hype.

The product doesn't meet its hype standard. This means that this product was overhyped. and we've got like, it's amazing. This is, this is, this is the formula for hype. I'm telling you. I wish I could, could, Ross, read this formula. Which one? The first one.

Two point, two point whatever. Okay, let's go for figure two point one. The cumulative hype is equal to the integral between time zero and time one, basically the before and the after of the hype over a period of time. It says, this is calculus. Guys, if you know calculus, please read this hype check and you will learn so much. This is, this is one of the most. This is one of the most in-depth, like, mathematical formulas that has ever come out of a Vergecast.

So we now have, not only do we have hype check, we have the hype quotient, the hype standard, the optimal hype efficiency. See, my only concern, I need to read through this. But, like, my only concern is, like, are we treating time as, like, a linear concept or is it more a logarithmic? Because once you get closer to something, the hype should be, like, naturally a little, like, more intense. So like, are we counting for that? Well, that's why you do the integral of it. So over time, you want the, you want the hype quotient to approach one. Right. Because that means if it's below one, then you haven't had enough hype and you have a hype gap that you need to match.

If it's above one, you're way overhyped and people are going to be annoyed with you. Okay. All right. All right. Dieter is smart. Is really what. Sam, hype check, hype check. It's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful work of art.

No, this is like really. I can't read it, but I love them. No, exactly right. I just, I, I can't read this because I don't know calculus. And I am just extremely thankful for Sebastian for like, this, this dude just like sat here and did this because he watches the Vergecast and like enjoys the hype check joke that's, you know, for, you know, now it's like a real thing. Like this is, this is the definition of hype check. I really hope this becomes like a dissertation or something. Like he's going for a doctor and like to say it's And, like, you can take this and just expand on it.

No, it's great. It's really great. Speaking of bad hype, let's talk about Spider-Man. That's the worst transition ever. I'm sorry. Before you do that, I'm just doing it. Can we talk about it? I'm just jumping right in.

Can I give, oh, no, I want to talk about a creepy brand thing. Okay. Okay. So before the Sam posted on the Verge account, a photo of us. And what people don't know is we remove our beer bottles before the episode, but we had not done this because the photo was taken before the episode. Okay. And somehow Brooklyn Brewery.

No. Immediately responded Always drank Brooklyn Lager. It's like What are Maybe the one photo Where we forgot to remove it And they immediately saw it

No But at the same time They forgot to put a period Before at Verge That was only for us But I am I am impressed That is a social media person

Who has an eye Right there That means they're watching The Verge cast Or they follow us on Twitter Or or something. Some sort of visual recognition software

that scans the entire. Yeah, and the labels turned around too. Like, you have to know that that's Brooklyn Lager. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I'm, oh, no, that's, yeah,

you can just kind of have to see the B. I cannot look at Twitter when I'm doing the Vergecast. Wow. It's too much. Apparently, I stared directly at the camera intently, and it drives people crazy.

So I'm not going to do that. So literally seconds after this photo was taking, and Dieter's like, get your goddamn beer bottle. Off the table. We are not a Brooklyn Brewery sponsor. And I was like, but Deeter, Brooklyn Brewery is like the best local brew in New York.

I don't know. I hear the checks don't cash if you don't say it at camera. Oh, sorry. Excuse me, guys. Brooklyn Brew. No. So speaking of. No.

There's no chance to have to. Thank you. Speaking of terrible. Terrible marketing. Speaking of the extended Marvel universe. So I didn't know. I mean, I knew, but I didn't really know that the Marvel unit. was like a thing that existed.

I'm not a comic book nerd. I'm not by all means. And I read Ross's like, we were like discussing this tweet like when we were going to put at this piece and I was just like it was like Spider-Man returns to or Spider-Man is finally going to be in the Marvel universe. Well, there's two Marvel Universe. Okay. So, so, so again, I know very, very little about this.

There's a Marvel in the Marvel Cinematic. Exactly. So, so yeah, we put up, well, let me, let's talk about the news first. I'll tell my story after. There's much more. There's a lot. There's whatever. Sam, Sam.

Earth 616 is ours, okay? We're 616. Is that real? Is that for real? Go Wiki it. Probably. Son, don't question things. Whatever.

All I know now is that I'll be able to see whoever Peter Parker is. Hopefully not. Maybe not. Spider-Man. Sorry. Yeah. Okay.

So if you don't get her, if you're under a rock, uh, traditionally for, the Spider-Man movies were under Sony Pictures control, and they own the rights to it, and they made a pretty good first one, an amazing second one,

and everything after that was just garbage. Hot, stinky garbage. But, you know, their Spider-Man in the comic books hangs out with all the other cool Marvel people. Right. And even though the movies have been going progressively worse, yeah.

Again, the box office specifically, they've been doing less and less and less each one, it's still a $4 billion franchise, which is the biggest single superhero franchise that Marvel's name could even be associated with. So it's a huge deal. It's bigger than the... Except for Iron Man 2 or Iron Man 1. It's outperformed, I think, all of them.

Yes, as a franchise, just because there's more of them too. So, okay. Marvel got Spider-Man back, right? Kind of do, kind of don't. They're leasing them, essentially. Sam, hype check ambiguity. Like, what? Can we watch? Spider-Man and Ironman and the Hulk like fight in battles like kind yes yeah

theoretically how about I'll explain the deal and maybe you can explain civil war because that'll be more complex that and do it all in do it all in three minutes we'll do it all in super super limited okay I'm just going to listen okay good so generous of you person who doesn't know anything about the topic So, okay, so Spider-Man is still owned by Sony. They basically had bought the rights a long time ago, and they're doing all these Spider-Man movies before Marvel did movies. And to retain them, they had to keep making Spider-Man movies before a certain deadlines.

Right. Like a certain amount of time could not pass without them making a Spider-Man movie or else they would lose the rights. Okay. That is why they made the most recent Spider-Man movies, and they rushed production on it because they had to get in under a certain deadline, which kind of can explain why the movies are not. good. Okay. Like movies like The Punisher and Black Panther, those used to not be owned by Marvel too, but they stopped making them so they kind of just reverted back, Daredevil as well. Okay.

So they still retain the rights to Spider-Man. Marvel has obviously wanted Spider-Man for something we're also going to talk about really quickly in a moment called Civil War, which is going to be a big part of this new phase of movies. But obviously Sony would not want to surrender it, even if the movies

are not so good, they still make quite a bit of money. And their whole big idea was like, okay, well, we can't make more Spider-Man movies if we want to do our own Avengers, but he has a lot of villains. So we'll just do a villain Avengers, and they were going to make gobs of movies about other characters in the Spider-Man universe.

It was the stupidest idea. There was a time where they were talking about making a movie about it. It was like a detective movie around his mom. Yeah, the rumor was like Aunt May. It was going to be like this kind of like old school detective noir. Wait, aunt or aunt? It depends on where you live.

I don't think. But in the Marvel universe, is it aunt or aunt? I think I was that was aunt. I have an aunt man Anyway, so So basically Sam's real mad right now What are we talking about?

Nice, here it is Under this deal Sony will still be making the movies And from my understanding They'll still get the money From the movies Specifically about Spider-Man Spider-Man and whichever actor

they cast can be used In these new Marvel movies Also They can't make a Spider-Man movie They can just have Spider-Man In the movies They're already moving So they're kind of

co-producing or something like that? So in return, instead of having to pay Sony any money for this, because they said it was more or less free, they have volunteered their expertise in crafting the movie for Sony. So what my prediction is, is this storyline, which Ross is going to talk about, they needed it to happen anyway. So they may have even already had a script essentially ready, because this movie's coming out in 2017, the standalone Spider-Man movie, which means that script needs to be ready yesterday. Right. So they probably have a script ready,

and they were like, listen, this fits into our canon, do it, and in return, you don't have to worry about a script, everything's taken care of for you, will help market and advertise it, because they're still on the rights to toys and everything around Spider-Man. They'll make a ton of money anyway,

and then we can fit them into our movie. So do you want to explain some more? Yeah, and the quick two caveats to all that, that just has been done for like, just quick two ones. Number one, the Rooster brothers, who are making the next Captain America,

which is going to come into this, huge Spider-Man fans. They tried to steal the franchise from Sony a while ago. This was in the Sony hacks. They wanted to own the Spider-Man franchise as well. That's kind of another reason this all kind of came together. The second thing, I forgot the second thing. Let's just move on to that later.

So this is the part where it gets weird. So the next Captain America is called Civil War. Now, the movies haven't followed exactly with the comics. They're kind of doing their own thing, which is good because they're cleaning up a lot of weird continuity issues. This is like a clean universe. They're keeping everything. tightly controlled.

But what Civil War is supposed to do is to take all the superheroes and just split them up. So the big event in the comics was, can superheroes identities be known? Should they be known for the greater good? Right. Which became the thing called the Superhero Registration Act. So on one side you have Iron Man. You have Tony Stark who's like, yes, we should register every Superman because they're a threat to society. If they're not checked, if the government's not watching them, then they could cause a catastrophe.

And we can't be there to save them. Okay. Captain America is like civil liberties and First Amendment and like this is wrong. I don't think Captain America sounds like that. Well, Captain America's a good old boy. No. He's not the intern from 30 Rock. You know what?

Just because I'm from the hometown of the intern for 30 Rock, you got to keep bringing it. Wait, what? Really? Yeah, yeah. He's a Georgia boy. He's a judge boy. Oh, my gosh. Gosh. Anyway, no, and I'm not taking aside either. It's an interesting way to take on it. But there are no secret identities in the Marvel movie universe. But there is a whole deal. I think everyone knows who Iron Man is.

Captain America doesn't wear a mask. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's, they can't do the same storyline per se. Spider-Man is just very important to this entire arc. And to not have him would have been strange, to say the very least. So in the movies, they're going to find some way for Iron Man and Captain America

get real mad at each other. And then, but Spider-Man has to be involved in that. Yeah. Basically. So it's like, government. Government Oversight versus Civil Liberties. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And Spider-Man's kind of the pawn slash weapon slash tool that it gets used between

the two of them. Okay. So like that's, that's like the relatable character as these two sides kind of like ideologically war. And more than likely what will happen, the obvious predictions you've seen a single trailer for Avengers 2 or whatever is that Ultron is a creation of Tony Stark. Right. He will maybe take some form of control over Iron Man's suit or something. We see this big battle between Hulk and Iron Man in the trailer.

Yeah. And as obvious guilt, which, you know, he is a great cipher for, he will go into the, you know, I need to reveal my own identity to protect myself from myself. And everybody should else. But everyone knows so. Yeah. It'll be interesting. Yeah.

Gosh, nerds. All of us. Here's my question. Mm-hmm. Can I watch the next movie without knowing all this crap? Yes. Yeah. You can absolutely.

I've skipped some of the movies, to be honest. I just read about him on Wikipedia. Yeah, that's not all I need to do. It's not all I need to do. Man, carrying into the galaxy, though. Just watch the Last Avengers and then watch the next one, and you're good. Like, you're pretty much good. Sam.

Dieter, we got to watch these together because I am so lost. Really, really. I've seen like Iron Man. So what we're going to do is we're going to watch these while I read this paper about the hype quotient to you. And that we're going to hype check these movies as we watch them. Yeah. Sounds good. Yeah.

Sounds great. Just watch Fast and the Furious and think Vin Diesel is the Hulk. The difference is every past and the furious movie is good, except for two. Wait, which is, yeah. Too bad. It is really bad. Is that too fast, too furious? It is the best title without question.

Yeah. But it is not the best movie. Guys. We're not going to talk about Fast and the Furious. All right. I'll save it for the Past and the Furious episode. Yeah. Which is every other episode.

What's Tech? Fast and Furious. I will say that the best thing about not having any emotional investment in the Fast and the Furious is I can troll the entire staff all the time. All the time. It's cruel. It's the best.

I definitely made a really, really off-color joke on Twitter earlier this week, and I feel bad about it, but I don't feel bad at all. What was it? What was it? There may have been a weekend at Bernie's reference for the next sequel. Oh. Oh.

Yeah. No, you don't need to do the pantimes. Thank goodness people who are just listening can't see what Sam just did. I know it. I'm proud of myself. It's like we defined that we had gone past the line. You're like, well, there's another line to go past.

I think it's driving fast. All right. Guys, do you want to talk about the John Stewart thing? He's gone. He's going. He's retiring. He's gone. Yeah, he's retiring.

Yeah. He's changed. I mean. So here's my question about John Stewart. Who is going to make fun of cable news now? Because Colbert is going and like running a standard late show. I just don't even care anymore. Like, a lot of people watch.

Don't you feel like those two guys held cable news in check a little bit? Not even a little? I mean, he shut down Crossfire. Yeah, he shut down Crossfire years ago. Yeah. Like, I love Stewart, and it's great, and it's biting satire and fun, but here's the thing that happened. Cable News realized they don't have to change anything, they don't care.

He may be right, but they can still do what they do. And it's great promotion for them. Exactly. Like, like, maybe things will get better. Lacking a check balance. Saying things will get better. That's how it usually is. Just a one party system.

But I will say, God. Could we speculate on who's going to replace him? Just for fun? I mean, I'm looking at Ross. I mean, I don't. Not to speculate. I'm just looking at Ross. No, no.

The names that you keep being bandied about are just like, like, just wishful thinking. You're Aisha Tyler's, you're Jessica Williams. and since the clip is out here, like Hot Top Time Machine 2 is coming next week, and their big future prediction was Jessica Williams is hosting the Daily Show in 2025. Oh, really? Which has now been a great marketing tool

for Hot Tub Time Machine 2. That's about the only great thing about Hot Tub Time Machine from what I can tell. You know, shut your mouth. I haven't seen it. You haven't even seen it. Hot Top Time Machine is funny as hell. Hot Top Time Machine is funny.

It's funny as hell. Yeah. It really is. And I'm really excited to see the second one. It is. I mean, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not. I like what's his name John Stuart Light, whoever's replacing him in hot tub time machine to Jessica Williams. Not John Cusack Light. John Cusack. Adam Scott. I like Adam Scott. A lot. And this is also,

oh yeah. This is the sixth. Oh yeah, he's much better. I got a sauce hot for Cusack. Can we also know for like one second while on this tangent that I don't make that face at me. Is it is a grumpy use. That's the point. Can we also note that Adam Scott has now done two full futuristic things in the last year. He's doing parks and rec for years in the future. Now he's doing Hot Tub Time Machine too, like 10 years in the future. He just loves drones and holograms, man.

And just keeping it real. Adam Scott is the only person where my wife and I regularly quote a thing he said that we never actually heard. It was from a written interview. And he was talking to a film critic Mike Ryan and he was asked about Dune and he was like, I love Dune.

I love David Lynch. I love Dune. And it's like, I don't even know if that's how he said it. But like, anytime we like something, we're like, listen, I love E.T. But I love Steven Spielberg. I love E.T. It's so stupid. And I don't know, like, how does that happen?

How, I, I, anyway, if you want more of this, we have a new show. It's an amazing transition. Is that it? I felt so short. No, well, yeah, we're keeping a short. We promise to keep a show. Well, it's going to end up being long because we're going to listen to a full episode of What's Tech right now. Hopefully the cameras for the live stream won't continue to record all this happen.

We're going to sit here and pick our news and listen to What's Tech. It's going to be great. I almost killed a woman and her child on a bicycle with a drone. I was at my in-laws house in Connecticut, suburban Connecticut. And I thought, this is a big backyard. I don't usually have this much space to fly. This is super safe. It's so much safer than when I fly in the city.

I won't kill a woman and her child here. I won't kill anything here. And then I was flying, and what I forgot was that the reason we call them drones in part is because they have intelligence inside and they assist you in flying. You're not in full manual. There's a GPS.

It's connected to a satellite and that helps it to stay in position. But they live in like a total dead zone. I can't use my cell phone there. And I kept losing the signal without, like, really realizing that that was happening. It was kind of like going on and off the signal. It's like losing the signal to your iPhone or your Android phone, except for this thing's flying, like 80 feet in the air.

Yeah, like I noticed that, but I made the mistake of continuing to fly. And I went up, I was doing speed runs back and forth in the backyard, just like practicing different maneuvers. And then I was hovering at maybe like 20 or 30 feet, and a big gust of wind came and pushed the drone towards the road, over the house and towards the road. And at that point, I should have gone straight up because if you go way up there, it doesn't matter where you are,

you're not going to hit anything. But instead, I tried to correct against the wind. But I had lost my orientation, and so when I pushed against the wind, I was actually going with the wind. So I doubled down on the problem, and then the drone went over the house and I couldn't see it. And then I freaked out, and I just killed the rotors. and the drone fell out of the sky and crashed into the road.

I heard that. I couldn't see it. So I made a lot of mistakes in a very short period of time. All that took, you know, a couple seconds. So then I ran around the house, and this woman was in the road, just looking back like she had seen a UFO fall out of the sky, and the drone was shattered in pieces on the road. She was on her bike with a kid in the back in a bike seat, and they were just sort of staring at the drone.

And then they were looking at me, and I was trying to apologize, and I was just sort of like collecting the drone and apologizing, and they were staring at me like I was an alien who had come out of the UFO, and then they just biked away. Like she didn't want to tell you. She didn't want an apology for me. She didn't want anything to do with me. The whole situation was incomprehensible,

and I was terrified because I realized, you know, she was like 10, 15 feet in front of the drone. I don't know where she was when it came down, but obviously it could have hit her, and then the bike could have fallen, and then there was a kid on the bike. Then I realized that my son was also outside, and I had left him, and so I had to run and go find him because he'd been alone for some time.

But that was the experience. This is our future. This is the future that we live in. Yeah. Hello, and welcome to the pilot episode of What's Tech. I am your host, Christopher Thomas Plant Senior Editor at Theverge.com. It's a website about technology and culture. And today, drones. I am joined by my colleague, my friend, my fellow Hurston,

player, business editor, Ben Popper, how are you doing today? Well, Matt, sir. Well, for those who don't know, which is, I assume the entire audience, since this is the pilot episode, what's tech is a show that answers that question? What is tech? Literally in the case of what makes anything tech. At this point, it seems like everything's tech. But also, what specifically works about the technology we have?

What is a drone? And that's kind of the big question of today's episode. What is a drone? And is it going to kill the women and children in my neighborhood? So let's start from the top. I want to know what is a drone. Okay. I have an answer.

It's extremely long. This will be edited down into something pithy. Okay. So a drone can be many different things, right? I mean, like, the word is very old, and it used to mean, like, an insect. Like, if Shakespeare is writing about a drone, he's. meant like a little bug, a gnat, a bee. Swatch, drone.

Right. And obviously, a drone can be like a sound, like stop droning on or like a whole genre of music that I detest, right? Drone music. That just goes on and on and on. But then in the 20th century, a drone was something that flew but without a person inside of it. So during like World War I and World War II, there were like these, you know, sort of self-guided like rockets that they would throw or shoot

and then they had like a little propeller and they would fly like a prototype of a missile or something terrifying paper airplanes that could explode yeah a paper airplane full of mustard gas was a drone and then more recently you know they were these military aircraft fighting in the war on terror that's how we came to recognize them

the predator drone although in that case really somebody again is like flying it the whole time they're just not sitting on like a helicopter or an airplane. And then what happened was all of these smarts that were inside of a smartphone went inside of model aircraft and remote control helicopters,

and they got really cool. It was much easier to fly. They could do all these things by themselves, and we started calling model aircraft RC helicopters drones. And now that word is really established. Like you go to CES, there's a whole, you know, section of things calling themselves drones. You watch Congress debating the safety of unmanned aerial systems, like the Congress people are calling them drones.

People get them for Christmas. They ask for a drone. That's strange to me because it seems like there are kind of three types of drones then. There's the military drone. There's the commercial drone and there's a consumer drone. Yeah. But they can be wildly different things. Like when I picture a military drone, I picture something that looks similar to a small,

plane. When I picture the drone that you would get for Christmas, it's like a quadrocopter. Sure. So they're very different things, essentially. Yeah. I mean, you know, you could say like a car and a, you know, toy car and a remote control car are all a car, but they, you know, have different functions and different capabilities. I mean, I think the important thing to understand about a drone when we talk about it now, like the idea we're trying to convey is. is it's something that flies without a person in it and it has intelligence. Sure. Am I wrong to think there's something kind of dangerous about the semantics of this?

Because you mention an RC car versus a real car, right? And if all those things were just called car and we were having these large conversations about it, it could get a bit messy. I mean, when I thought of drones probably five years ago, I thought of something that killed people and sometimes innocent people. And it was a very controversial thing, should we have drones flying over Afghanistan? I don't think that the commercial drone industry was like the nefarious creation of the military drone industry to try. You know, it's not like they were like, let's make a toy version.

And then people will come to love drones and like we'll sell them on Christmas. And like it'll soften the image of the war on terror. You know, I think they developed just sort of in parallel because of certain technologies, you know. But it is definitely true that if you were to say drone to somebody in the U.S. now, they're equally as likely to think of the toy as the killing machine. I think that's true. And maybe that does muddy the discussion of how we use drones in the war on terror. I would agree with that. Let's talk policy.

Talking about things that are exciting. What is it? Because I remember when there was all the controversy around war drones, the question was, you know, like, is this legal? Does this count as an act of war? What makes this different than someone in a vehicle killing someone? Sure. But then we have commercial and consumer policy, which, from my understanding, is next to non-existent on consumer.

Yeah. So, I mean, I think you're coming up against the central issue, which is there isn't a person on board. So if there's a person in a helicopter or an airplane, we know, hey, that person is responsible at all times. they're in control of this machine, similar to driverless cars. We know that they work, but we don't want them because who's responsible when the driverless car, you know, hit somebody? And so with the war on terror, what was the central question we were asking?

Does it make it easier to go kill people overseas if we don't have to put any of our people in danger? And is it, you know, what are the ethics of war by remote control? And so now what we have is the opportunity to create an entire new aviation industry. to do things commercially which are exciting, to do things on the consumer side which are exciting. But we have to confront the same question of if you can fly the drone out of your own site easily, which you can do with these toys, they can go a mile away.

And it's still in the air, it's still moving very fast, it's still making decisions, you know, who is responsible? How do we do that safely? How do we integrate that safely into the airspace? I mean, the real problem is that the FAA, is the agency that should be regulating this, but they don't have the money or the size to create an entire new class of aircraft and monitor that. And so they were supposed to, they're supposed to give us new rules this year.

They're mandated by Congress, 2015. This is the deadline. Give us new rules. And they're just sort of still sitting on their thumbs. Yeah. Well, it seems also like a much more difficult thing to enforce, right? Like, when a plane or a helicopter takes off, you know. Like, there's a place where people go to take off their plane or take off their helicopter.

If drones are going to be in everyone's backyard, who's left to enforce that? The police? And then are the police working with the FAA? Like, it seems, like you said, it seems messy. Yeah. I mean, I think some of the beginning solutions we can sort of take lessons from what we did with commercial airliners. Like if you had said at the beginning of the 20th century, oh, we'll have 10,000 flights crisscrossing the nation every day. People would say, well, those plants will crash into each other.

How would they ever avoid that and know what to do? And we learned how to do it and we do it all the time. So if every drone that was sold came with a transponder. And, you know, when it launched, that sent out a clear message to everyone in the area. Hey, I'm in the air. This is where I am. I know where you are. That's the kind of thing that you could draw on the knowledge of the FAA.

But the genie's already out of the box, right? Like, we're selling tens of thousands of drones every month, and they don't have that technology. There is no standard. There are no rules about, you know, needing to be part of this system and communicate with other folks. And that means that the FAA can't really approve, can't really get going the big projects we want, like package delivery by Amazon and Google. And, you know, the contention there is that if we don't do it this year, if we don't do it, soon, they're just going to go overseas. Other countries are going to beat us to it, and the U.S. is not going to be the leader

in drones the way we were the leader in the Internet. Even though we came up with a lot of this technology, and then we were pioneers, like the regulatory framework here is much more restrictive than it is in Europe or Canada, for example. Yeah, well, that's what I want to ask you as someone who I think is an expert on the topic. Do you think the regulation that is likely to be put in place will do bad? Will it do good? Will it do harm? will it, what does it look like?

Or is there literally just no, no idea of what this is going to be? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm not in the, you know, just like with any agency in the government, it's tough to predict what they'll do. It's tough to predict what, on what time frame and what all the interests are. God, it's just so hard. I just don't know.

I think that the FAA wants to bring sensible regulations to the table that allow people to, you allow people to safely fly as hobbyists, just the way they're doing now, and begin to test out on the consumer. So we have like 11, I think, and we have a number of test sites around the country, and a number of companies have been given permission, and they're already doing test flights. Just recently, a bunch of news organizations like CNN and the New York Times were given special license to go fly drones. So right there, let's just stop.

Like, many, many news organizations flew drones this year at CES. perhaps The Verge did, I don't remember. That was all technically illegal. But, of course, it happened, and it's not like the FAA is unaware of this. So everything is happening in this gray area right now. Again, I would say, like, Hollywood and TV studios are already using these drones out in the field without permission all the time. So it's not like we're not doing commerce with it all the time already.

I mean to get, like, high shots, like getting cityscape shots, getting things that used to cost tens of thousands of dollars to rent a helicopter to get Right, or a crane. Sure. And it could be dangerous if you have somebody hanging off the side of a helicopter with a camera. Yeah. Now you can do it with a drone. It's a huge advantage.

You can repeat that shot 50 times instead of having the budget to do it once. Yeah. And there's applications in firefighting, in search and rescue and farming. We know could be really great. So you already mentioned CES, the Consumer Electronics Show. It happens in Las Vegas every year right after Christmas. A perfect time to schedule something. Be away from your family for a week.

Oh, God. But there were a ton of drones there. And I'm curious, based off what you saw, what does, I mean, what do drones look like, especially for the consumer in, you know, five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now? So I had some really interesting conversations with people there. Right now, the consumer drone looks like a small one to three pound quadcopter that flies for 10 to 15 minutes that you control with a RC remote controller. looks like a joystick. In the future, the perfect consumer drone will be small enough to fit in your pocket.

It will have battery that will last way more than 15 minutes. And you won't need to be a pilot. You'll take it out of your pocket and hit a button on your phone, and it will go up and take a 360-degree selfie of you and your friends, or follow you down a ski slope and then land and go back into your pocket. It'll be like a smartphone or a GoPro camera. That's like where the industry would love to be. The battery is the big holdup.

You know, the battery doesn't improve the way chips and sensors do on Moore's Law. It doesn't always get smaller and more powerful every year. So flight takes a ton of battery. Like a drone is much bigger than a smartphone, but the battery lasts way a much shorter amount of time because it has to fly around. And so I actually had a really interesting discussion. Like maybe the perfect form factor for a drive. own is just a cover that goes on your smartphone with like four rotors. And then you want to like take a picture and you just hit a button on your phone like takes off and does it and then like lands and then like

you're done. You would have to trust that like it won't break your phone, which seems like a lot of putting a lot of faith in like a flying cell phone cover. But people are already using selfie sticks. It's like people are already walking around a four foot long steel poles that can drop at any moment from high. Right. You know, there's all kinds of really exciting applications. But for the consumer, what is a drone? It's a flying camera that can do things at your command. Right now, like, the command prompt for the drone is the joystick, and that means you have to be the pilot. And that kind of sucks because you'd rather just be the star of the film, and the drone should do everything for you. So that's where people want to go. Yeah, that's interesting. And a little weird, imagining walking

around Disneyland with, like, the slight buzz of thousands of drones following everyone. Yeah. As disconcerting as it is to see like all these people on the Brooklyn Bridge with a selfie stick, you will be like, oh, you just have a drone over your shoulder. No big deal. No big deal. You're a tourist. So one other thing I want to talk about. In the recent call of duty, now it's recent S, Black Ops 2, it featured a drone takeover of Los Angeles on a scale of unlikely to all of us being killed by drones taking home. over Los Angeles, by like just some random dude who's like, hey, you know what, I know how to hack all these drones, because apparently that's how it's going to work. What are the odds?

Well, if we lived in a world where they were all connected to some central command because they had to communicate with the FAA, maybe you could deploy a virus that would take over all of them. but in today's world, it's impossible. They're just autonomous toys hanging out in your backyard doing dangerous things. Although, I guess, if you thought about, like, what you could do with a dozen drones, you could do some really dangerous stuff. I mean, people just post videos all the time on YouTube. Hey, I flew my drone and landed on top of Cowboy Stadium. And it's like, okay, well, I didn't know you could just get up.

there, but what if you planted a bomb? So drones let us go places we could not previously access very easily. On the like scale of one to master hacker take over the universe, I'm going to say the chances are pretty slim, but I don't want to rule anything out. So you're saying it's more of a black hat than like a hack the planet? Yeah. Like I could see people, you know, using, well, for example, I know people have used drones to like deliver drugs to other people in jail. What? Like, get over the fence and, like, drop off some, like, contraband. Like, that shit happens.

Drop off like a key. That's what I want if I'm in jail. Give me a key out of here. That's apparently how jails work. There's just one. There's one key. It's like a house key. Yeah.

And it's got, like, an advertisement for, like, your fitness club on it. Yeah. So you can use them to do nefarious things, but you won't be using them to take over cities anytime soon. Well, and on that note, you can possibly take out someone that lives close to you, but likely not all of the western side of Los Angeles. You should be more worried about people spying on you. Oh. I'm taking you out.

Cool. Don't worry. I am now. Thank you for joining me, Ben. This has been the first episode of What's Tech. If you enjoyed it, do me a solid and go to the iTunes, I guess, podcast spot. There's a thing that you can do there. You can rate podcast.

And, you know, maybe you should give us five out of five stars. Why not? some nice words. It goes a long way to getting word out about the show. And then we can make more episodes, hopefully more than just this episode you're listening to right now. Until next time, I am Chris Plant. I am joined by...

Ben Popper. We'll see you later. Bye. And we're back. Oh, and I'm being back to my seat. Middline time. That was all that line. That was really impressive.

Good show. You want to tell us when we can get more of them? Sure. You can get these. Every Tuesday, we're still, I mean, it's still new. So we're figuring out how the whole getting these uploaded, not every single different podcast network. Yeah. So Tuesdays, we'll have new episodes.

And I'm looking forward to the one that we'll hear next Tuesday. Cool. Yeah. Oh, and there's another one. That's the other thing. Yeah, yeah. You just listen to the drone episode. There's one about smart watches with Dan and involves one of our coworkers getting kicked out of Applebee's.

And I assure you you want to hear that one. and that is on iTunes right now. There you go. So yeah, if you subscribe, you'll get that right away. Subscribe in iTunes. It helps if you do it there. Even if you don't use iTunes, just open it up, subscribe, and then close it again. That's what I do.

Yeah, it really does help. You know, it also helps if you subscribe to The Virgin iTunes. And if you leave us a review, if you could go and leave us a five-star review. Those are the stars that we like. And tell us your favorite Radio Shack memory. That's a good, that's a good, sad thing. I see some really depressing stories. Yeah.

No, there'll be good stories. It's just going to be depressing reading them. How does it feel off the table? I like it over there. Yeah? You can find it. We've got a convenient iTunes URL too. It's iTunes.com slash Vergecast.

That's right. Yeah, it's pretty sweet. That is a great deal. Do other social things, Sam. Okay. That's your job. So, you know where to find us, but if you don't, I'll tell you. We are at Verge on Twitter.

You should also hit us up on Snapchat. We are the real Verge there. So, yeah, there's Twitter. There's Snapchat. at Instagram or Instagram.com slash verge. We are also on Twitter. Personally, I am at Sam Sheffer. This is at Backlon and that's at Plant.

And Ross Miller is at Ono Rosco. And Ross Miller is, yes, as at Ono Rosco. And we're also on YouTube. We make YouTube videos, which you've probably seen. We did a few cool videos this week. The Dead Mouse video went up. Binaural audio went up. So we are YouTube.com slash the verge.

Gosh, I know. Binaural audio. With headphones. I would love to plug that right now because that is I say this with every video we make. It's like, that's the best one. But this, seriously, if you watch this with headphones, you will be stunned at how cool this video is.

And I think that's all I've got from the social corner here. We're coming back next week. We'll be back. And maybe the week after that, if you're good. Keep appearing. But only if you're good. Only. Thanks for watching.

That's our show. Goodbye. Bye.