The Vergecast - iPod nano discontinued, Microsoft Paint's fate, and Foxconn's new factory

Episode Date: July 28, 2017

The Vergecast summer 2017 continues! This week, The Verge launched Verge Guidebook, a new guide to show you what to buy, what you shouldn't, and how to use it all. Nilay, Dieter, and Paul start off the show discussing the new review system and how-tos coming to the site. Then, there’s another set of obituaries this week: Apple nano, Adobe Flash, and Microsoft Paint. The crew pays their respects to the weird moments these products gave us. Returning for episode 3 of her series Next Level, Lauren Goode stops by to give us behind-the-scenes info on the latest episode and what’s in store for episode 4. There’s a whole lot of stuff in between, so listen to it all and you’ll get it all. 03:22 - Welcome to Verge Guidebook 16:51 - Apple confirms iPod nano and iPod shuffle have been discontinued 22:20 - Adobe will finally kill Flash in 2020 29:35 - Microsoft Paint isn’t dead yet, will live in the Windows Store for free 39:02 - Next Level episode 3 with Lauren Goode 56:12 - A Wisconsin company will let employees use microchip implants to buy snacks and open doors 1:00:20 - Pixel 2 headphone jack 1:01:21 - Apple supplier Foxconn unveils plan to build a $10 billion LCD factory in Wisconsin 1:17:18 - Paul’s weekly segment “Meizu? Me, too” 1:22:22 - Twitter stalls, fails to add new users this quarter 1:23:43 - YouTube’s head of music confirms YouTube Red and Google Play Music will merge to create a new service 1:33:23 - Elon Musk dismisses Mark Zuckerberg’s understanding of AI threat as “limited” 1:37:37 - An eight-year-old reviews the Nintendo Switch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Verge on YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and your podcast app, because that's also where we are. But here we are, everywhere that you are. Anyway, I'm Nealai Patel. I'm here. Paul Miller is here. Hello. And Dieter Bone is here. Hey, how's it going? We are all in totally different places today. It's very strange for me. yeah the the title of this episode will be Skype delay i think is where we're going to

we are i think it's amazing that that podcasting relies to this day on Skype in a way that very few other media industries rely on a single application like you know if you're like a video editor there's like a big argument between final cut and premiere if you uh i don't know, if you do, if you are an audio engineer, you can use audition or, or logic or what, like, there's all this stuff, pro tools. But if you make podcasts, there's just Skype. There's, I've literally nobody ever asked me to be in a podcast using another app than Skype. I wonder if the people at Skype know this.

I wonder if it's just like a business for them. I think it is. I feel like it Skype doesn't actually offer anything over any other, uh, chat app that you can run on a computer or on your phone, really, except that you can kind of. of trust that everybody has it and knows how to use it. Yeah, everybody installed Skype in 2009, and now we all have it. And that's the end of it. So you don't have to have the conversation of like, are we going to use FaceTime?

We're going to use this thing. Are we going to use Hangouts or the other thing? No, just just use Skype. That's all it is. It's just the default. I did a podcast over FaceTime, but it was just me and a buddy, and it was only ever us, and we never had a guest, so we didn't need that flexibility that Skype provides. Does Skype provide, like Skype doesn't have recording features.

They don't even have like high-end audio support, really. There's like a pro version of Skype. I don't think Skype even likes me. Every time I open Skype, I'm just like, who has hacked this account today? That's like basically what I think. Like how is my credit card going to get stolen out of this app today? And then there was a drama about their redesigned iOS app, which just like they decided to go crazy town. Everyone's like, uh, you're a utility guys.

Don't try and make us do stories in Skype. Stop it right now. My old Skype account that I'd had since I first learned about Skype and then I recorded all the InGadgett podcasts on basically got hacked and they won't give it back to me. I like emailed them. I'm like, no, I couldn't prove, I couldn't remember some weird detail about my past. And so they're like, nope, we're just not giving you this back. That's right.

Anyway, here's this story of the week. There's much stuff to talk about, but lots of little things. a huge week in news. So I, you know, in our rundown, I've got a bunch of little news, all this sort of stuff. We're going to talk to Lauren Good about the next episode of Next Level, which is awesome. Actually, you should watch it. We're going to talk to her in a bit about that. And then I actually tweeted out and had people just suggest things for us to talk about. So I might randomly spice those in. But we should start actually, and we rarely ever do this. We should start with some verge news because we launched a big new thing this week. It's Dieter's

project along with Dan Seafurt and a bunch of other people, Guidebook, which is our expanded reviews program. Deirdre, you want to get into it? Yeah, so we are very excited about it. We're going with this idea of guidebook because it's sort of like a city guide for tech. And what that means to us is we're going to continue to do the like high-end verge reviews that we've always done. We're going to have really great video, really like good, well-written reviews that explain what's good and like how it works and you know why it matters to you in your real life or it's still going to give them a score that whole nine but in addition to doing that we wanted to do a bunch of other stuff so we know that for example this is my next should be updated on

regular basis so we're going to do that we're bringing back what's in your bag so you know that seems to be what everybody's most excited about which i think is hilarious but that's coming back I'm dreading being asked to do what's in your bag. Why? There's nothing in my bag. It's like old phones. It's like an iPad that I haven't charged in 10 years. You don't have like a go kit.

Like I'm going to a tech event. I need to be ready set up. Yeah, but that's not my bag. That's like a, it's like I'm faking it. My bag is actually very boring. But I'll come up with something. Anyway, keep going. My bag is very interesting.

The big thing that we're doing, I'm just saying it's a waterfield. It's got a pocket for a tablet sometimes is in there. I've got a particular kind of battery that I like. I've got so many dongles. Oh, yeah. I got doll your bag is interesting. Dude, can I enter?

This very important update about guidebook to tell you about dongle life. I thought I lost my Bluetooth headphones for like two weeks. Guess where they were in my bag? In your bag. that's not an update on anything Paul I'll just let you know I mean part of Donga life is losing

Bluetooth headphones Paul Paul have you found your hat yeah yeah I was in my roommate's room It's on your head The big thing with guidebook is that we are integrating a really rigorous how to program into it

I have broken Paul I love guidebook though Guidebook is just Dieter like being a gentle parent like a gently disapproving parent for all of you in your lives. How-toes. Anyway, lots of how-toes.

We've got a big how-to series. We're going to have a regular series where we actually explain how to use all this tech. We're open to very many suggestions, you know, shoot us an email. We are going to be launching how-to stories alongside reviews so that

when we have a big review, we'll have the big review. We'll also have a bunch of stuff explaining how to use the thing. And we've also, We also got a bunch of like how to video series ideas that were really excited about. If you saw the one that Jake did along with James Vincent's usually as a password manager article, there's a lot more in that vein, but like cooler, bigger ideas coming very soon.

And basically, the Virgins of views have always sort of been backed by the sense that we're experts, right? We know this stuff. We live the stuff day and day out. we're paying attention to all of the trends and everything that's coming. And so we can put it in that tech context. But the verge is also about culture and how it affects culture. And so we can take that tech context and humanize it and then present that to you in a review format that is just as much about the gadget as a cultural object like a movie as it is about a tech object that has a processor and RAM and whatever. but taking that sense of the thing that we're very good at and marrying it to we actually are going to tell you how to use it feels like it's genuinely interesting to me and that's that's why I started by saying it's sort of like a city guide it's from somebody you trust if they tell you what you need to know but they're not going to like overload you with like insanely granular details that you don't care about and I would I would

that's guide book tell me if I'm speaking out of term but I would say most of the how tos it's a lot of the how tos it's sense, like, I would say most Vergecast listeners are already kind of citizens of that city. And, like, I think of a lot of the how-toes that we've done are things that, like, I kind of already knew how to do or I knew for sure I could figure out how to do it. But if, like, a friend or family member asked me how to do it, I wouldn't know definitively the best way. And also, I'd be kind of annoyed trying to, like, help them out. Right. It's a sort of thing where, like, if someone asks you how to do it, you're just like, just, just give you. me your phone, I'll do it for you because it's easier than trying to like walk them through it.

So we'll actually try and walk you through it. So just so you know, like when you see on the verge a how to is like, well, I already know how to do that. Yeah, but maybe somebody in your life didn't know how. And that's, we're trying to help them too. Plus, I think these phones in particular, but everything, there's so much stuff I want to do with it. And I often just need to be reminded that I can.

Right. And that's like, that's part of it too. Like, oh, I can just like spend a little time and get more out of the things I have. But I think more importantly and just in context, like we're expanding our reviews program, great. We're expanding this is my next which tells you what to buy. We're expanding this how to program, it tells you more how to get more out of what you bought. But I think another important piece of this whole puzzle to me is that I love the wire cutter. Like I think it's wonderful.

I'm very happy to read it and use it and share. I told somebody to buy a laptop off the wirecutter today. But I think that service is for people who don't love technology, right? They just, they need a service, they need utility. I think our site is for people who love this stuff, and they want to engage with it more and better. And I think there's a huge opportunity there in this space to build something that is obviously competitive with wirecutter or competitors. We love them, so it goes. But also is different, right?

and like meaningfully different and provides a different kind of service. And that space to me doesn't feel completely, like, owned or saturated. And I think there's just a big opportunity for us there. So I'm super excited about it. Yeah. And I mean, in a very similar vein, like we also love, you know, ours, technica, right? We love how, like, in depth they get with benchmarks. But that also, like, and yes, they're also competitive with us.

But we love them. But that's also not precisely the thing that we're trying to do. We're trying to do something that's particularly for a Verge audience, and we have a pretty expansive view of what that means, but it's definitely sort of assumes a basic interest in tech and what it means in your life, not necessarily knowing exactly what a, you know, Zion processor is.

I should really come up with a better, more recent nerdy processor example. Yeah, especially because I don't... They're around. I mean, like, look, if you are building a server farm, or workstation, rest assured that we will soon have a how-to article for you. Paul builds a server farm. Absolutely. You're taking a trip soon to a location in North Carolina.

We've bought a plot of land. We're not just building out like one rack. We're doing the whole building. So we've got to work in like cooling. Yeah, yeah. Solar power. Yeah, hopefully we do some of our own energy gathering as well, for sure. Yeah, how to optimize your server farm to run its own air conditioning.

system, I think is one of those verge stories that we have to do. We should do a whole series where we start with nothing but sticks and wood and branches and build our way up through all of the history of technology up to phones. Absolutely. Just every how-to will be like, how to make a fire, how to, you know, smelt metal. Just down the line. How to smelt. I'm ready for it.

It's like a skill tree. How does, I would 100% read slash watch how to smelt. Anyway, so that's guidebook. It's the big version. News of the week. I wanted to put it out there right in front. I know particularly for the Vergecast audience, it's something I hope you're interested in. It's something we're taking feedback on. We just launched the thing. We made a bunch of decisions based on what I think are good bets and like solid data about what's been popular in the past, but we're always looking

for the next thing. So give us feedback. We love it. You can tweet right at Deeter. He's at Backlon. Just let him know everything you love and hate about Guybook. And your wishes will be instantly granted. for how to articles. Chris Welch is the person to tweet. I think he's just at Chris Welch. There's other stuff that I haven't even mentioned. Like, we decided to create a new category

called Editor's Choice, where we talk about our very favorite things. There's a bunch stuff. And we could get into a long discussion about all the different discussions about scores on reviews, because I know that the Rushcast audience might love that.

Yes. We'll set that aside for now, but they're staying, we're just simplifying the system a little bit. Give them a TLDR. How are you simplifying it? Instead of like zero to 10, and you could have like a 7.7 and a 7.8.

We're just going from like we're having even numbers and then also 0.5s. Because I don't know if you've heard, Neil I gave this spiel before, but there's like this thing. He says World Window 7s. Seven is like good but not great. It's like the default score for a lot of stuff. And we found that we were like it's,

well, it's fun to argue about like a 0.3 versus a point four thing. It to us that that's actually an editor. thing. It's not like a strict like, you know, perfectly evenly scaled benchmark of like it's pure quality because our scores are contextual to the category of the thing, the time it was released, you know, the context to which it arrived. And so it's, to us, it really is more like a score on a movie review, right? Like, it is this good in this context in this world. And that, having those tiny little pip updates gives the impression that it is some sort of scientific measurement,

when really what it is is an editorial, like, I don't know, judgment. And so since that's what it is, I feel like 0.0 and 0.5 scores do a better job of conveying that to more readers. I will point out that I spent a very long time playing devil's advocate to keep the score system as complicated and have as many points as possible. Dan Seyfert and Lauren Good and Vlad Savov argued for the simpler system. We also had some crazy ideas. We considered a system where the default score was zero, and a bad device would have a negative score and a good device would have a positive score, which is like really fascinating. But I also know that like the amount of drama that would come from me saying that like

a random Android phone that was pretty good got a score of zero would not be worth switching to that system. So you're saying you... Oh, it's totally worth it. You couldn't take the heat. Yeah, basically. I'm a chicken. A stock mid-range Android phone is zero, right? Like, you buy whatever the best Qualcomm chip set is at that minute, you put a reasonably

high resolution display on it. You have a case that doesn't, like, hurt you. That's, I don't know. Like sanded the edges. Yeah, yeah. It's like not spiky or hot. in some way. And like some mediocre cameras, that's a zero.

Think about it. Oh, man. I know we just launched guidebook, but what if we unlaunch it and then relaunch it with this bonker score system? This is Jake Cashrake's score system. And when he presented it to the team, we literally were just like a gape with what a genius it was. We just sat there like, we could do this.

But then pause right. I dialed it back. I some value to scores is that people understand what they mean. Yeah, a score of negative 3.5 is not translatable out in the world. But I will tell you this. This is my promise to the reader. Every time we score something,

if you type in the right passphrase on the verge.com, I won't reveal what it is. It will translate it into a bonkers negative score. And if you ever figure out what that passphrase is, you're the winner. What? This is the longest. I'm just saying it's true. It's absolutely true.

I'm definitely not making that up. Anyway, you want to talk about news? No, I got to go figure out this password. Yeah, just keep typing into the website. Just boost those on-page times as long as you can. It works better if you open it up in multiple tabs and then type a different word into each tab. No, I'm going to look at the source code. If you watch every single video, we publish a thousand times the passcode is revealed.

Just another idea I have. Let's talk about news. So I actually asked people what we should talk about this week. It was a quiet week. And a bunch of people actually suggested this to me. It's kind of big news. I guess we're starting on a down. But a bunch of old products are going away.

So Apple today confirmed the iPod Nano and iPod shuffle are gone, which is end of an era. The iPod Touch remains. It starts at 329. I don't think the Touch has been updated in a million years. Are people out there still buying iPod Touch? Well, they just updated it with new storage for this switchover. They're not trying very hard. It's interesting because that Spotify shuffle clone just came out, right?

The Mighty. It's like $85 and it's basically an iPod shuffle that runs Spotify. So Jake wrote like a great like timeline of the like the history of the nano and I was working with him on it today. And I realized that the iPhone didn't just kill the Blackberry keyboard. It killed the iPod click wheel. Yeah. Like the right one the iPhone took off, it's like click wheel is dead. And like I realized like all the nanos after the click wheel, I have no nostalgia for.

Like it's like, well, I never had that like physical experience with this device. And yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It's sad. I mean, the last nano ran that weird iOS clone with like Circle icon. It was. Yeah. I mean, it literally looked like they.

They hired a Chinese contract manufacturer to make an iPhone clone that ran iTunes. It looked like a knockoff. I mean, I am super not sorry to see the Nano go. I am still bummed about the iPod Classic. I will say that I am pretty bummed about the shuffle. I feel like in Apple's mind, it's been replaced with the Apple Watch and Bluetooth headphones. But there's something really great, even though you had to connect it to iTunes. There's something really great about this is just a $100 thing that I can clip around that I just know has music on it.

I can plug a pair of headphones into it and go out with it. I mean, it's very gadgety now for us to think of it that way. But there's value. I mean, that's why the Mighty had garnered so much interest because there was like a gap in the market. Yeah. I'm sure that like nostalgia is not the same thing as like making sales. And so Apple can't just keep it around for an issue. nostalgia's sake, and they probably have got numbers that tell them there's no way they're going to turn this thing around.

But it's still a bummer. It's still sad because there is a thing about having just like a simple, tiny, no frills, no nonsense, single use gadget. Yeah, if Apple made a mighty, like an iPod shuffle that connects wirelessly to your phone, you make your playlists in Apple music and they're just synced there automatically, magically, and then. And it's just the light turns green and you know you're ready to go running. Now you've got a little bit of Apple Watch. That's the Apple Watch. Yeah, but the Apple Watch is a lot of money. Right. Well, you can get an old Apple Watch.

That's what you should do. I mean, it's funny if like the Mighty, if the Mighty's biggest competitors, like, used Apple Watches, that's pretty sad. I think there's also an argument here about scale. And there's been a lot of conversation about Apple's scale lately because there's all these rumors about iPhone pricing and how they might do a crazy expensive, like, like $1,500 iPhone 8 just because they can't make all of the high-end parts they would want to put into it. So they price it higher, so less people want to buy it, obviously. You know, this mighty company is a Kickstarter.

If they sell 100,000 of these, I bet it's a huge success for that company. And that's great. And that's the scale at which they live. And that's their business. And hopefully they grow that business and everyone's successful and on and on. but Apple selling 100,000 iPod shuffles is not worth it to them at all. And I think that is later on the show. Even if they could make a profit on it, it's not worth it to them because people

keep asking how many of you sold. It gets tracked by Wall Street. And it would literally, they would lose like billions of dollars in like market cap value from people being, what's going out of the shuffle? Why does this exist? How much does it do it? They would lose more money in like the perception of the company and how it affects their stock that they would make off of the shuffle if it had poor sales.

Right. And they have to support it and they have to build it into iTunes and they, they should blow up iTunes. Like if killing the shuffle is the thing that allows them to kill iTunes, like do it, right? Like that's worth, that's worthwhile. Like I'm so sorry.

Put it in the boat, light the boat on fire, send it into sea and then turn around and then kill iTunes. That's great. I think you shoot a flaming arrow at the boat. If anybody has a bunch of old shuffles and they want to fill. film the video of them launching it to sea and then lighting it on fire with an arrow. I am open to funding that project. Just let me know because I'm there for it.

We should burn it at FIG. Otherwise, that's bad for the environment to throw a bunch of molten shuffles into the sea. Yeah, I would think like take screenshots of iTunes and then print them out and then burn those. Also more flammable. True. I mean, we have we did. I'm not mad at the shuffle. The shuffle did a good job.

I'm saying I'm willing to sacrifice the shuffle. if it serves the death of iTunes. Also, iTunes is getting better. You heard it here first. No, it's not true. It's true. It's not true. The launch is faster. It's more responsive.

It's not good. You just got a new computer. No, I didn't. Are you sure? Yeah. Because that is the only plausible explanation for iTunes getting better. No, no, no, no.

Like you just threw more processor at it. No. It's improving. So something out, by the way, speaking of things that overloaded your processor and set things on fire, Adobe has announced that Flash is going away. Wait for it?

In 2020. three more years. Paul, can you explain to me why it's going to take that long? Do you know? Because that's when the next presidential election is. If Flash is good or bud for president. I mean, it seems like a time of change and rebirth in America will arrive in 2020, but... I have no idea. I'm guessing they have to, I really don't know. I mean, Flash is in a sense kind of like an operating. rating system. Like, it really, like, it takes code and interprets it and then it, like, displays the results

of that code running, you know? So it makes sense that for all the companies out there that, you know, like, think of, like, like, you know, you get HR training and it's like a weird flash app or something like that. You know, like, obviously that's like very old now, but there's, I'm sure companies still relying on it. So Adobe has to provide some sort of like, we will continue to support this thing that we sold you products to build in

for a time, but know that it will be dead then. And like how Microsoft deprecates something like Windows XP or whatever. So can I actually give a small little like appreciation to Flash? Because it did do some nice

things that we are genuinely maybe going to miss a little bit. I know it's easy to hate on it. I know that it sucks on your processor. Homestar runner is actually not a bad example. Here is the thing that Flash did that we do not have a very good one-to-one replacement for. It made it possible to go on the internet without installing any software because you probably already had it installed and play a game or watch a little fun animation without having to hope the HTML5 would work, without having to install anything, without having to set up a set up a show.

Steam account, you just go and do a thing. And somebody DM to me, he's like, it's another nail in the coffin of the open web. And I'm like, well, I don't really consider Flash part of the open web because it was all tied up with Adobe. But it did have this nice sort of cross-platform, nothing to install kind of thing, where you could go and have an experience, usually often a game, without actually having to go through the rig or more role of installing software.

setting up an account or doing whatever. And I know that the conventional wisdom now is cross-platform, stuff like Flash and, I don't know, even Java is inherently bad because it's not, doesn't feel native to the thing you're using it on. But there is a benefit to knowing that you can make a thing and not having to overthink, you know, the platforms that it's going to show up on. It's a little bit agnostic to the client, or at least it's better than some of the other stuff that's out there. And so flash, yes, it deserves to die. It was not built for mobile. They could never make it work for mobile. John Gruber made this point that it died as soon as they said they were killing the Android version.

All that is totally fair and true. But as we light this boat on fire, it is worth shedding a small tier for the thing that we're losing a little bit. And I don't see a good replacement for it on the horizon. There's not like, what's a great, like, in your browser or, like, out on the internet game replacement for Flash? There's kind of not there. It got killed by the App Store and, you know, on your phone. WebGL exists. And they're working on a GL, or not GL, like, an equivalent to, like, Vulcan, like, a project for the web.

There's Web assembly for, like, basically you can write native programs. So, like, there's basically, you know, like, OpenSin. And then, like, the actual things that Flash do did, can be done by, like, Canvas or, like, SVG. But, like, a lot of, like, the... We've heard these promises that the, like, stuff built into the HTML web platform is going to be able to replace Flash for many years. Well, think about those...

And I feel like we... It's always, like, two years away. I played... You know, those games where you're, like, a... circle and then you go roam around and try to eat other circles. They're like massively multiplayer. They're like HTML5 games. There's some pretty popular HTML5 games.

And then like the equivalent of Homestar Runner all like happens just on YouTube now. Like if it's just animation entertainment. I do see what you're saying though. I mean there is like there's no like real like new grounds equivalent right now. But but there's the tech. I mean like Unity, you can make. game in Unity and like compile it to webGL. Like it just rums and browsers.

Well, I think what Dieter's getting at what actually I think both of you are getting at is, let's use Homestar Runner as example. That was a website that I went to consistently every day. And I had a bunch of other experiences on that website and they could sell me merch and do books and all this other stuff. And they built a business around flash animations in their home, right, on their platform. Whereas now if you wanted to build a business around that, you would do it on YouTube. And you wouldn't be able to do any of the ancillary stuff the way that they were able to do at that time. Newgrounds was a whole business.

It was a massive business built on the web because of Flash. And now you can't build that same kind of business in the app store, not really at all. We live in the Lincoln bio era. The Lincoln bio. I thought you were talking about the biography of Abraham Lincoln. I was so confused. I was like, what obscure references is. I'll workshop that.

Yeah, that's a good line. Yeah, link in bio is great, right? Like, everyone is trying to get you to leave the weird proprietary platform and go to some other proprietary platform. No one is really trying to build a single place on the web where they live. And I was actually talking about this with Caitlin Tiffany, one of our culture reporters, today, that it's hard to imagine the kind of blogs that we had and we started from that led, to massive careers, like happening again right now. And what you would do right now is you'd build that off like a newsletter.

You wouldn't build it off. I started a blog about some niche interest. And then it's just like Flash enabled that moment in it. Like one of my favorite websites actually in the early odds was called Flashenabled.com. Do you remember this? No. It was just, it was a totally weird niche website. It was like right when Flash was like the hottest thing.

And like Flash enabled hardware was coming out. You could code hardware with Flash. And it was basically just a gadget blog for cool Flash things. It was just neat. It's gone. It's not relevant anymore. But it was just a moment in time that I thought was really cool. I think that's actually how I got into gadget blogs like way back when.

Speaking of other old tech that is having weird moments, Microsoft announced that it was going to kill paint and then like unkilled it in a weird way. So they announced that paint was over. They called it deprecate. deprecated. And then they were going to put some of the features into paint 3D. Deprecated is the name of the boat that you laid on fire, by the way. The HMS deprecated.

All aboard. No, so they announced they were deprecating it. And then there was like an outcry, like an actual outcry. Like people were sad about paint going away. And then they sort of reverse tack and said, we're putting it into the Windows store for free. But what we really want you to use is paint 3D. So that's a Microsoft has bad ideas

about what its customers have deep affinity and love for. Oh man, people people just love them some live tiles. They love Windows so much. Like, no, they use Windows. They don't love it.

But people love to paint. They have like nostalgic fond memories of it. And the idea that Microsoft could miss that and like space on that, they don't have that many products that people have a deep abiding love for. They should have, you know, It was a miss.

It was a mistake. And it's good that they turned it around. Yeah. And the paint 3D is the real signal to me that they're missing it. Like, do you remember that time in the Renaissance when they discovered sculpture and everybody stopped painting a 2D? Like, what are you thinking? That was a great year. I mean, I'm not that old.

Sorry. Okay. And then a few more randoms. Then I got to read an ad. I would talk to Lauren. This one, I think this is strange. So there's, Google had results this week. We'll talk about that later.

But they also released basically the final version of Android O. And inside of it is kind of an Easter egg of an octopus. And our headline, which I thought was great, was just Google think octopus is a dessert? Which is such an open question. Like, it really at really demands of the reader a semantic discussion of what dessert is. But, Dieter, have you heard anything? I've not. You can literally candy anything, though.

I mean, it's true. You just can. Dip anything and enough sugar and it could become dessert. I've been using this final release candidate, and it's pretty good. I've had a couple of like resets on my pixel, but, you know, there's a bunch of little surprising features that I really love. So they, I did this, I showed the thing on Twitter where you can, you know, you can drag shortcuts out of the pop-up menu along, press. That's fine. You can dismiss notifications when you see the little dot.

That's cool. The thing I discovered or forgot about, but I love that's around today is if you highlight some text, they're better at like selecting the thing you're trying to highlight. It uses a little bit of machine learning to do that. And then the options that pop up are actually smarter. So I highlighted a Google Doc link that hadn't been turned into a URL for some reason because the app was dumb, Slack.

but the Android's copy and paste pop-up saw that it was at docks.gov.gov.com and just gave me a button to open it so I wouldn't have to copy and paste a link and figure it out, which was really smart. Anyway, I am pretty excited for Android O. It has like, it has like those two features and that's it. But I'm still like, it's nice. Well, didn't Google promise like 11 new daydream VR phones this year? Like it's soon to be August. That's not a lot of time to announce.

11 phones and ship them. Well, they're probably counting the S8 and the S8 plus is two different phones, right? They're going to down to nine. Yeah. Nine phones. Pixel, pixel Excel, seven.

We've already got like, I don't know, the Zen phone or some random thing, six. I don't know, maybe they'll count different storage options. That's where they're going to be. I mean, here's Google's real problem with Daydream. It's not VR. I mean, it's VR.

Like nobody cares about Daydream and the scale that they do. Disclosure, my wife works for Oculus. The real problem, though, is AR. They went down this long road for tango of like, we're going to put 50 sensors on your phone, and it will understand the space around you. But if you didn't watch that aha video that somebody made with the AR kit, it is crazy.

And the idea that anybody wants to buy a whole new phone with like 10 extra sensors that make the thing cost an extra 50 or 100 bucks, to get something like that is like it's not going to happen for them and they they they got they got lapped or pantsed by apple pretty hard of the ar kit i think yeah the star the air kit demos that are coming out that aha video is like fun right they're just doing that effect like it's cool and i i just don't know where where that goes right like the only compelling thing that ar kit has shown me is like furniture companies will be able to sell me furniture more effects It's so hot for furniture.

Yeah. So the AHA video is great and cool, but it's a lot of those demos and they need to turn into something else. I think there's still room to compete if you can figure out a compelling vision for what you want to do with it. You could pull a Rumba. You could pull a Rumba and just sell people maps of the insides of their homes. That is maybe the worst handled announcement in history. So if you don't know what's going on, I robot, which makes Rumba and also, I believe, guided weapon systems, they announced their newest Rumba is what they do location mapping inside your house. As a driver in a house, they build a map of your house. And Rumba just quietly announced, oh, we're going to start selling that data. We're going to start selling maps of the inside of your house, which makes no sense because I don't even know why that information is useful to anyone, but also just handled extraordinarily poorly in terms of announcement. But look, if Rumba is If Roomba can do a rev share with me where they sell the map of my house and I get some money,

maybe I'd take it. I wouldn't take it. I'd just say, by the way, I have, I'm in the middle of this, like, what phone should I use? Because my iPhone died. And hilariously, one of the phones I want to use is my Nexus 6P that has the latest version of Android O on it. And the fact that that that version of Android is meaningfully different than the version that's on the pixel is, like, driving me crazy. Like, stock Android and pixel Android are not the same. And like it it I just don't understand it but I guess that's the way it goes with Android

But it's but I kind of like stock better is what I'm saying also really also that that phone is huge So yeah it's not the one I should use but it's I don't know there's something about it but it's just It's so big and so like unapologetic about being massive that I'm kind of into it I don't know what phone I'm gonna use I'm just gonna keep my sim card in this broken iPhone Here let's see if it does this hold on what is broken about your iPhone? I You should just get a tablet and then like a Mi-Fi and just walk around like that for a little while. The thing that is now- Skype everybody. Can I hear that?

That buzzing sound, that like clicky sound? Yes, what is? Oh, that is. Yeah. That, do you go away? It's going to come back. That is the optical stabilizer on my iPhone camera desperately trying to stabilize. Oh, my gosh.

I saw this video on Twitter. It was terrifying. So for a while, I could fix it by hitting the phone And like knocking it back into a line. So every time I took a picture, I would open the camera app and then like smack the phone against the wall I think over time I just made it worse So now you can't have a phone without a camera that works. So I got to put it in something and I'm I'm literally sitting here with four phones in front of me debating It's just going to be the iPhone 7

But I kind of want to anyway, let's move on if you have thoughts I'm eager to hear them, but we can move on. Should it be the Pixar? Ah! It's the worst. Like, the new ones are coming out, but then the hot one's going to be delayed. Do you understand? Do you know, this is the worst time for your phone to break.

The worst moment, you're in the wrong window. I have so many feelings about this. Look, this episode of the Vergecast is brought to us by parachute. Brought to you by parachute. Brought to everyone by parachute. Parachute makes the softest, comfiest sheets you'll ever own. They're made from the best fabrics and materials. In Europe's world-renowned factories, they've got a modern design with clean, minimalist styles

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That's Lauren Good's new series. Everywhere while that's going, we're going to talk to her. So listen to this. We'll get back with more of the Vergecast. Lauren, how you doing? You're back. Nilai. Hello.

How's the Vergecast going? The Vergecast so far, I have to sell you, is like a wide. ride. I've been describing as like a live Twitch scream, basically. But it's like a slow weekend news. But that gives us more time to talk about your show, which is you just did your third episode, which is wild stuff. But you talk about prescription video games, which sounds wild to me. Tell me about that. So next level, for those of you who perhaps have not seen this show yet, although I'd like to think our loyal verge cast audience is aware of it, is a show, a video show that is exploring next level concepts, prototypes, innovations, things going on behind the scenes

at tech companies, not the commercially available gadgets that you'd normally buy, but just really interesting stuff that you haven't seen yet. And we've been publishing these videos to Facebook, YouTube, and everywhere else you can usually get our videos. So for this week's episode, we went behind the scenes into the labs of UCSF Mission Bay, a lab called Neuroscape, where a group of neuroscientists have been incubating and tech. testing video games that they think could be used to improve cognitive function. And that whole area of brain training games are a little bit controversial. So I'm sure we're going to get to that.

But the interesting thing is that one of the scientists here in this lab at UCSF has also founded a company, co-founded a company called Achille. And Achilles is basically taking all of this research and they're actually trying to push it through as a commercialized FDA-approved video games. that we would be prescribed to people as medicine. That's incredible, right? And we should talk about the brain training stuff, but just start with Achilles. What kind of medicine are they trying to do? So it's really interesting because Achille is,

it kind of has these two faces based on what I know about the company. It is a Boston-based company, and that's where their headquarters are. And I haven't been there physically, but from the way it was described to me, that is sort of the corporate headquarters. It's a little bit more buttoned up. where people are working on things like the FDA approval process.

And then in Marin, which is north of San Francisco, they have another office. And this is a little bit of a smaller office, but it's where the creatives are. So you get the sense when you're in the office in Marin, which we visited. You know, this is where people are drawing things and their cartoon drawings on the wall. And it's got that very sort of loose northern California vibe to it. And the chief creative officer who's based in that office actually came from, Lucas Arts. I want to be clear.

Actually, I'm going to double check if he's from Lucas Arts or Lucas Films, but he was a director there, and so he has this really interesting background in, you know, the graphic arts world. So when you're thinking about these games, you might be thinking of things like, you know, first person shooter games and how is that going to be medicine and stuff like that. What they're actually building at Achilles is an iPad game. It's a very kind of friendly looking iPad game. What it does is it's challenging your cognitive abilities, at the same time it's challenging your motor skills.

So you're kind of using the iPad and like turning it in ways to navigate through this world and this game, which is called Project Evo right now. But at the same time, you're making cognitive decisions as you're playing it. But that's only one type of game that we saw. I mean, that is the Project Evo game that Achilles is currently trying to make a prescription game. It's interesting because when we went into the Neuroscape, Lab, which again is sort of like the foundation of all of these games. The games are actually like pretty physical in a way. Yeah, you're like running around. This is the second episode in which you've been in a headset, I think. I think so. I think there's going to be a third. Yeah, but you're like,

you're like running around. There's like motion tracking and all kinds of things happening. You're in that Vuzix thing that makes it like run in place. Describe the games. So the Neuroscape games, which again are not the ones that are necessarily going to be FDA approved, but are just at a very sort of fundamental research level right now. These are ones that are physical, and they've been designed that way. Like one of them is called body brain trainer or BBT for short, which I just kind of made me laugh because it makes me think of all of those like workout fads that are like P90X or P90D or whatever, like BBT, like can't you just picture like your friends getting really into like

BBG? BBT is my latest workout fad. But it is called BBT. and there's a Microsoft Connect that is kind of capturing your motion capture, and you connect a Bluetooth heart rate strapped to your chest so the game can read your heart rate. And you're looking at a bunch of items on this giant screen, and you have to run around the room to kind of physically select corresponding items. So if the game flashes like a green pepper at you,

and then on the four corners of the screen, there are four different kinds of vegetables, and one of them happens to be a green pepper, you have to run, physically run in the direction of that green pepper. So as you're doing it, your heart rate is actually, it's elevated. It's getting, it's getting higher because you're getting physically taxed. And what they're studying there is, and I realize, you know, as I'm saying this, I'm realizing, like, I'm not talking about the cognitive disorders they're trying to address. And I'm sorry about that. I need to get to that. But like, as you're doing all this, they're trying to see if because you're so physically engaged and you're so immersed in a game, that that makes your brain function differently.

And the kind of thing that they're all trying to address are conditions such as attention deficit disorders, potentially depression, potentially Alzheimer's disease, really anything that could impact your cognitive function or your cognitive abilities in some way. So it's like really interesting stuff. Another game I played did involve one of those crazy Omni Virtuix platforms in a VR headset. And then I found it to be, I mean, I could go on about that game forever because it was really, let me just say this. That night, after I played that game, I had a very vivid dream about being lost in a city. And that's what that game is about. That game puts you in a VR headset and puts you in one of those weird little treadmill machines where you are wandering around a city and your brain is supposed to be, you know, sort of map, you're mapping it in your brain, okay,

there's the Chase Bank, okay, there's the Starbucks. And then as each level progresses, they purposely mix up the city in a sense. So you are sort of feeling disoriented, but you're supposed to sort of be training yourselves and engaging yourselves in a way that helps you remember things, remember patterns. And I was like, wow, I mean, I found the game very challenging. And that night I really did have like an alarming dream.

Like, I'm lost in a city, which is just like crazy to think about. But those are the examples of the kinds of games they're incubating, they're incubating at Neuroscape. So, and those are supposed to obviously treat ADHD, depression, Alzheimer's. So what's the path from we've invented this game? We're doing these tests to see how well they work to actually prescribing video games. Very, very rigorous clinical trials and gathering more evidence and getting the FDA's approval. So it is a long road.

I mean, Neuroscape has been in existence for 12 years, and Achilles has been working on this now for at least a few years. So it's a long path and it's an expensive path. But, yeah, I mean, this is one of the things that Achilles hopes will set it apart from other brain training games because the whole topic of brain training is incredibly controversial. It's something that a lot of scientists have come out and spoken against openly that, you know, saying that there is very little evidence that any of these brain training games such as Lumosity or Brain HQ or cognitive. or focus education. I think even our education secretary, Betsy DeVos's family, has a brain training company. You know, like people have come out and said there's very little evidence that this type of cognitive training can help with other cognitive issues. It comes down to something that's known as the transfer effect. Scientists say that they're not really sure that training your brain

very, you know, in a focused way in one area, will help it with other tasks. It's almost like, hmm, you know, if I go to the gym and I like lift arms, is that really going to help me run faster, right? And so, or, or legs. Like, it's, you're kind of, you're, you're focusing on one task when you're training these brain games, when you're using these brain games. And so there's like, the jury is still out on whether that actually helps you in other areas of your cognitive abilities. But then there are other scientists who really believe that this can help your cognitive abilities. And especially as you get people sort of in a more immersive environment. And that's the kind of. thing that Neuroscape is trying to prove in its labs, and it's the kind of thing that Achilles hopes to prove through clinical trials. And it's currently in phase three clinical trials. So Achille has actual products, right? They have games that are going through these trials. They're not just concepts. Do you get to play with those games? Yeah, and that was the Project Evo game. That's the one that they are using right now. And they only let us, interestingly, they only let us play it for short periods of time,

and they only let us show it on camera for very brief periods of time. you know, five seconds or less, because it's in trials right now. And so that means that there are people out there, participants who are using a placebo and participants who are using the actual game they're trying to test. And they're very concerned that with extended media, you know, being out there that shows the games, that the participants could possibly see our coverage and then say, oh, wow, I'm in the placebo group. Or, you know what I mean? Or figure out that they're in the actual, the test group.

So they are, so they're very cagey about showing this game. But I did have the opportunity to play the game on the iPad. And like I said earlier, it just kind of feels like a fun sort of navigation Mario Kart-like game where you're on this road and you're kind of, you're swerving around. But it's engaging your brain at the same time that you're kind of moving the iPad around in your hands. Yeah. It's funny because there's, I think there's a racing game for Xbox called Evo. every time in the early part of this project when you're talking about it. I was like, they made a racing game?

Like, I was so confused. Yeah, like, isn't this basically Mario? Doesn't everything come back to Mario Kart? Yeah, basically. Have you ever used any of these brain training games, by the way? Like, have you ever tried Lumosity or anything like that that you play in your computer or a mobile app? Yeah, I've tried a couple. You know, I have like a really bad memory.

This is just a thing. And I've always thought, if I could just get better at faces and names, I would be a like a superhero. Like I would be unstoppable. If I could just remember people's names, right? Like, I would, I would be the best journalist in the world, right? And so I've tried a couple, like, you know, they're out there to, like, help you get better at it. And they've never really done anything for me. But I think that's just, I might just be broken. Like, maybe it's just not effective. But I mean, I've played with them. They, they just seem like games. And I think that's kind of what you're getting at this, like, transfer effect issue is I can get really good at a game,

but that doesn't, right, like I'm pretty good at Grand Theft Auto 5, but that doesn't mean I can actually rob a bank or fly a helicopter. Right, right. Or, you know, like to bring it sort of even more into the analog world, you could be great at crossword puzzles and you could practice crossword puzzles and think, well, this is great because I'm enhancing my vocabulary and my attention span and all that stuff, but that doesn't mean that you're going to be able to go, I don't know, like write a dissertation or solve a complicated math problem. Like training your brain in one area doesn't always necessarily translate

to another area. Yeah. So what's, as you came, I don't want to give away the whole episode, but as you came to the end of the episode, what's your big takeaway? I think that the idea of digital medicine or software as medicine is a really interesting concept because, you know, in recent years, there's been a new category of FDA approved medical apps, which I think are literally just called like approved medical apps, you know, mobile medical apps that fall within a certain category and, you know, are being used in a variety of different ways. But other than that, there isn't really software that's been prescribed in this way, at least according to Neuroscape and Achilles scientists. So, you know, I think that if they're able to push this through, it's interesting,

not just because of the games themselves, but because it would possibly establish or create an entirely new category of digital medicine. And obviously, healthcare and medicine is a really big topic right now in our country. And so I think the implications are possibly very big and possibly very interesting. But I do think that there are a lot of skeptics around this, you know, this topic. They do still have a lot of evidence to gather and a lot to prove. And, you know, we don't actually know at this point if their games will become prescription-based. But it's a really, it's an, for lack of a better word, and I've probably overused it, but it's a pretty interesting, it's a pretty interesting idea. And at the very least, these games are also the kind of thing that can be used

as biomarkers and other trials, even if the games are not prescribed as medicine themselves. They, you know, could sort of create things that could be used in trials for other things. So, yeah, it's a space we're certainly going to be keeping an eye on. Of course, Liz Lapato, our science editor has also written about this before, as has Rachel Becker. So once Achilles does have results from their phase three clinical trials to share, I'm sure we'll be all over it, all over the story. And, and yeah. Yeah, I think the other part of it to me that's interesting is there's so much bad, fake sham medicine out there. Like, if this works, then, you know, it's really easy to clone software. You know, you need like a patent license to manufacture prescription drugs often. You

need approval, you need regulatory approval, you need permission. Are we going to get to a place where you need permission from the government to manufacture software or develop software that works like prescription software is like a fascinating problem? And then it's like, is there going to be like the shitty goop version of this, which is just built on lies? Recentering your energy by playing a video game. Like there's there's so much good and bad that comes from this if it works. And like the way it's going to stretch out, I think is just absolutely fascinating. And the upside there could be medicine with no side effects. Software is medicine, very little side effects.

On the downside, there will be the goops of the world. So there's that. Okay, so you've got one episode left in this season of Next Level. Tell us about it. Give us a little hint. Ooh, okay. I kind of want to keep the company a secret for now. That's okay.

So you're all just going to have to wait until next. Tuesday, yeah. But we are diving into lightfield display technology. And we're talking to a company that believes the future of our interaction with, you know, digital media could potentially be smartphone free, which is a very big conversation that's happening right now among top technologists. I think Mark Zuckerberg just earlier this week on Facebook's earnings call was talking about AR, but said he believes that, you know, he doesn't seem super bullish on glasses. And he says he believes people are going to be looking at their mobile phones for a long time to come, at least I'm paraphrasing a little bit. But, you know, he's like pro smartphone right now. And then there are

other technologists who we speak to who say, yeah, what's the post-mobile world? Maybe we won't be looking at these glass rectangles in a few years. Maybe we'll all be looking at things through headsets and glasses. And so this next episode is focused on a company that has been working on some really interesting optical technology, light field display technology. And they're working this stuff into headsets in a way that they think is going to change the way we interact with, you know, the way we compute essentially. Yeah.

Well, I've tried a lot of headsets here at the verge. Yeah, I was going to say we, like, all of us between you and me and Dieter and Adi Robertson and like every next step, everybody on our staff, I feel like we've probably tried every headset out there.

Yeah. But I think, like I said, the listeners don't know, but I know because I got to read the script. It's a super exciting episode and a super exciting concept. I think the big question for me is these headsets got to get smaller, right? And like, that's the game. But you got to check it out. The show comes out on Tuesdays. Tuesdays. So this is going to be August 1st, Tuesday, August 1st. Very early in the morning.

August 1st. Final episode of this season of Next Level. And then we'll have you back on the Vergecast next week to talk about your your secret headset episode. But the seasons are going great so far. I've loved every episode. I've loved having you on the Vergecast. Thank you so much for joining us again. Thank you for having me on. Okay, so here's another story. We're back, by the way. Thank you, Lauren. Here's another story that was suggested that we talk about from Twitter. I don't know if you guys saw this. There's a company in Wisconsin that is offering to implant NFC chips into their employees' hands instead of key cards.

And obviously it was announced. No, they haven't done it yet. They're going to have a chipping party where they serve chips in salsa and put chips in the employees. Like lots of employees have signed up for it. But obviously it got announced and there was like a huge. uproar over it because it is terrifying. But like really, it's just like key cards. Does this bother you?

Like, I might be into that. It's not mandatory, right? It's not mandatory. The employees are voluntarily signing up for it because losing your key card kind of sucks. So you can have a key card or you can have the chip. What could possibly be, I don't know, sounds great. It's a digital, it's like a digital equivalent of branding you as like owned by the company is the thing that's creepy. about it. See, but that's the thing. I feel like that in my soul every time I show up to work.

Like, oh, these guys, they've got me. So now... I will say that's because I say that to Paul Yeah. Yeah, Neely says that to me a lot. I owe you. I own you. I say, this guy, he's got you. So instead of good morning, how are you doing? Neelai just says, sucker. So it's like post-irony to get yourself branded. You know what I mean? I don't know. It's not like this makes you an Instagram influencer. It just gets you into the office and makes the vending machine go faster. I mean, Addy wrote the post for us.

She actually has an NFC chip in her hand, and she has a magnet in her finger. Ben Popper has a magnet in his finger. I think we have some other people too. Ben removed the magnet because he had to get an MRI. Oh, yeah. So Adi wrote a story about how her magnet is failing. She's thinking of getting removed. And the whole biohacking movement,

and five years ago when we launched the verse, By-hacking was like a rage. Like we had a bunch of stories about it. They all did extraordinarily well. That move in seems to have subsided because, you know, the magnets are dying. And like literally, she doesn't feel anything with a magnet or finger anymore. And she, in the post about this key card, she said, I have an NFC chip in my hand. I have tried for years to get it to be my office key card and I can't get it to work.

I think that's actually the problem, right? The stuff goes obsolete and it stops working. The, like, you know, you move office buildings and you get a new like door system and your key card is not compatible with it. There was ever an argument for open standards. I think it's putting a chip in your hand. Yeah. But I would do this.

There's nothing about this that to me suggests I shouldn't or wouldn't do it. Well, I saw some research, like, I feel maybe it was almost a year ago or maybe six months ago. I'll try to dig it up. But somebody, like, made a chip that is basically uses wireless power to allow you to, like, rewrite it. So it's one... On the fly. Yeah. Oh, wow.

So the idea is that you would have it implant. I mean, it wasn't just for stuff that was implanted, stuff that had to be, like, built into buildings or something like that. But it could be updated. So, like, like, I would love it if I could, like, you know, put my credit card in my hand. But, you know, like, I get hacked. I need a new car and now my hand doesn't work. But if, you know, like, and as different systems come online, like, you know,

Some subway systems work with like those contact, you know, the tapper things and our office building works like that. Like if I could like buy a snack, swipe into work, swipe out of work and like swipe into the subway without ever pulling out my wallet. That would be pretty cool. Yeah, it could all, you know, just be attached to one single government ID and then they can track everything you to do and it'll be fine. Right. And there's like a prefix, 6666. Actually, you know what will convince me to do this is when. someone takes this reprogramable on the fly NFC chip embedded in your hand and makes it work

with Amebo so I can just like spam and hack Amebo just with it just all the time. That would be great. That would be incredible. You just wave your hand over your switch and you're just like good to go. Can someone just tweeted a thing that we should talk about is that the new pixels that leaked don't have a headphone check. Is that true? Yeah.

Or they just didn't show that angle? They didn't show that angle. they said the headphone jack wasn't confirmed. I'm looking at some renders here. Right. There's renders. That's all we got. It's possible there's one on the top.

This is the Android police article, right? Yeah. Yeah, they said... Yeah, it's renders. As to the headphone jack, we're really not sure what the status of that is. Yeah. So now I've got to put it in the pixel, so I have one last minute with a phone with that. I guess the essay it has one.

This is a real Twitch stream of a The pixel has a real big Not real big it's got a camera bump that I'm not super fond of Yeah like I said this is a real Twitch stream of a podcast It's just me reacting in real time to Twitter It's a great video game I'm playing called People Tweet at me So here's there's a bunch of Apple stuff to talk about And then we definitely have to talk about

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg getting into the fight this week So the Apple stuff that is like important on the policy side I don't even know how to begin this story. Trump, like, tweeted, Tim Cook said, promised me he's going to build three huge plants. Apple refused to confirm that that happened. They just, like, would no comment it.

So that's like a weird Trump moment. But then Foxcon announced that they're going to build a $10 billion at LCD factory in Wisconsin, which everyone assumes is somehow related to this Apple thing. But it turns out it's probably made. making, yeah. It's making TVs for Sharp. Right.

And if the rumors are true, the iPhones are going to have OLED screens. So there's a huge disconnect there. So that's something. It's a small aside. It looks like they're getting $3 billion in tax breaks if everything works out as they're saying it will. But nobody knows the Foxcon's really going to do it to the level that would give them all those tax breaks.

But if they do get all those tax breaks, that works out to possibly the equivalent of like a. million dollars in tax breaks per job created because they're saying 3,000, but maybe 13,000. Who knows? It's all very, very fuzzy. Yeah. It's like a very confusing confluence of Trump tweeting, and that has just become a phenomenon that is unlike anything else in the world, right? then Apple just like ice like just ghosting basically in the story and then Foxcon saying something that feels like it's related but might not be related and then the incentives to lure Foxcon to Wisconsin are out of control so it's great that the manufacturing things in

Wisconsin I'm from Wisconsin I'm that's great build more factories and employ more people there but it definitely seems like the way our government in the state government are is luring jobs back from China is by just straight up paying upfront money or like allowing these tax breaks to happen. So I think Bloomberg calculated that you could give everybody in Wisconsin an iPhone, you could just buy them an iPhone for the cost it will take to, for these tax breaks to go into effect. Well, so I would think of, I just read this C-steading book. You guys up on seesteading? I mean, as a man who only wants to know what it is. Yeah. Say what? Oh, I'm saying my goal in life is 100% to live upon the sea in a nation of my own making.

Great. Well, so you're already on board. So the basic, something that the- So to speak. Oh. Hey-oh. So the sea-standing, like one of the big things that a lot of the sea-standing advocates talk about is the success of the special economic zones, like Shenzhen, where Foxconn has obviously been super successful. And what I wish somebody in the U.S. government would talk about is, like,

Well, what have we just made, tried to, like, imitate China and make a Hong Kong or a Shenzhen, like, no rules just right kind of neighborhood where people can come and, and, you know, build big, because we've got a lot of land. We got a lot of places where not a lot's going on. Like, you want to want to do it, do it to, like, an existing, vibrant, successful city. But, you know, the companies that are involved in the special economic zone take on, like, extra responsibility for the. infrastructure and the building out of the city and exchange, they get way better, like, tax treatment. Because that's the thing. Like, a lot of these tax breaks are just, they won't pay as much, but, you know,

they're also going to show up at all. Like, they're not going to show up at all unless they get this tax breaks. But, you know, you don't want to get it to, like, so buddy, buddy, crony backroom deals. It would be nice if, like, if you're going to make a huge factory that's going to make big stuff, you get this deal. Like, make it something that's open to all. So anyways, read, read this book about C-steading. It's really exciting. I don't, how are you getting from, let's build a, by the way, one of the main pieces of Hong Kong is that it is remarkably more free than mainland

China, right? That's the whole point. But I don't know. How are you getting from, but we don't, the lack of taxation is a freedom. Like a, like a reduction in the amount of your profits. Like, you have to look at when you're building a factory, will this be profitable? And like, well, if they take this much of our profits, it won't be profitable. But if they take this much, then we can pull it off. Now, I'm with you.

I just think the difference between Hong Kong and mainland China and places the United States with lower taxes and other places is vastly different. And I'm also confused how you're getting from that to we should build nation states on derelict oil tankers in the ocean, Well, the idea is that a country like the U.S. won't do special economic zones, so we just got to go to the sea where we can be free. All right. Well, at the moon, isn't that officially a stateless zone?

Yeah. So here's the thing. I've always wanted to go to space because I feel like it's the only like frontier remaining to me. But I realize with the sea-steading stuff that there's a whole ocean that we could settle and that I should get in part of that movement first. and, you know, put my money where my mouth is as far as I do want to be a pioneer. Yeah. And you want to run an open nation state upon the ocean. It would not hurt the U.S. to have a special economic zone where companies could come in and build up some infrastructure, build their factories, and not get taxed to death.

So that's impossible. But that's what states are doing, right? I mean, that that's been around for a long time. Like, the reason they make BMWs in South Carolina is because the state lured BMW there. The reason, you know, like, this is true of the car industry forever. So now if it's going to be true of the tech industry, that's great. I just think, one, I'm still very confused how we're getting from like, let's build Shenzhen and Montana to Paul lives in a nation state on the ocean.

That is not clear to me. Second, and if you can bridge that cap for me, I'm all yours. Second, I just think the thing, the negative impacts of those special economic zones are real. but some of the things that they're allowed to do there are things that we already take for granted in this country. Also, it's just not clear that this is an apple plant in Wisconsin. It doesn't seem like an apple plant. My takeaway is the person whose job it is to confirm or deny things that Tim Cook has said

must be the worst because Donald Trump just like tweeted a thing. And it's like, uh, we're not going to say anything about that, which is kind of just step. I know we've been living with like weird tweets from. Donald Trump for a while, but just pause. Just take a moment. The president of the United States, the most powerful man in the free world, just said Apple's going to build a bunch of factories.

And Apple didn't confirm, didn't deny, just had no comment, which is just insane. And it's, yeah. And the last factory they had the United States to build the Mac Pro, which is still around. Promise to be updated, but hasn't updated yet. Apple won't say if the new Mac Pro is going to get built in the States.

But that factory isn't owned by Apple either. It's owned by a company called Flex. So Apple is in this contract manufacturing zone. So it's not necessarily even for them to say they should do it or not, right? I don't know. It's a weird, a deeply, deeply weird story.

And we'll just see what happens. I think it'd be cool. If you've been listening to this show, the Engadjadjadjadjad podcast for a long time. We have talked a lot about Apple's responsibility to manufacture things and where they're manufactured in the working conditions in those factories and the lack of transparency in those working conditions. It would be cool. But it's just we are definitely in a zone where the president tweeted he had a conversation with Tim Cook that Tim Cook refuses to confirm or deny.

Okay. Wait, just to be clarified, though, if three Apple partners or Foxcon announces two more big plans or something like that. Does that count as like a only kind of misstatement by Trump? Because like Apple's not going to. Well, but Paul, don't they have to make things for Apple for its kind of count?

It would make me feel better if those three things were making things for Apple as far as Trump's statement. But like nobody's going to like say Trump was a liar if unless Apple actually is making their own manufacturing plans, right? No, no, no. If final assembly for the iPhone happens in Idaho, right?

And there's three factories there that do. That's great. And if those factories are owned by Foxcon or whatever, that's fine. Okay. If Foxcon is making sharp TVs in Wisconsin. I agree. That is not what Trump said.

Right. So there's just this incredible disconnect in the story that Apple is not talking about because they're just not talking. And that's like Apple's way. Neil, I can I ask you a question that's going to make you possibly sputter? Yeah, love to sputter. How much of Apple's decision about where to put these factories do you think has actually

secretly been about patent deals in Qualcomm? Very little. Zero? Okay. Yeah, I just, you know, I'm still, I'm trying to write this big thing about the Qualcomm case because it is so crazy. People have actually tweeted that we should talk about it too. And it's just, it's starting to amp up, right?

like Intel has sued Qualcomm now. There's like a weird tangential relationship here between the state of Wisconsin and Intel and Qualcomm and Apple, right? Like Apple just had to pay a huge fine to the University of Wisconsin system because A-series processors violate a patent that was developed at the University of Wisconsin. That I went to that school that they have an arm of the university system called Wharf, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. their job is to patent inventions that happen in the engineering facilities and then go license those patents out and sue people. When I was in law school there, they were in a huge lawsuit with Intel. And that spurred a lot of conversation about whether or not universities could be patent trolls.

So there's a lot there, right? Whether any that's actually connected or it's just a bunch of hazy stuff is completely unclear to me. Right? Like, yes, there is a lot of processor patents that come out of the University of Wisconsin. What, like, you cannot, there's no evidence at all for the idea that Apple picked Wisconsin because they want to like do something here. You know, like, and they even do it. It's Foxcon and they're making sharp TVs.

So there's just a bot. There's dots. Like, those dots are probably not connected. But there they are. And it's, I don't know, this, the Qualcomm case, I am sputtering now. Good job. Yeah. The Qualcomm case to me is just, it's so deep, right?

There's something in that relationship that is so important, the relationship between Apple, Qualcomm standards, who gets to invent the standards, who gets to monetize the standards, there's something so deeply important in there that if these two companies don't figure it out and they actually break that relationship between how standards. get made and people make money from investing and making the standards, that something terrible could happen, right? And like, that's what I'm like researching and trying to figure out right now is what are the, what are the contours of the terrible thing that could happen? Because I, the case is so complicated that I'm struggling, I'm personally just struggling to understand it. And I think my suspicion is that the way Qualcomm has built its business around inventing these standards is opaque to most people. That's not the business you think about Qualcomm being in.

In seconds, Qualcomm has an ad on this show for its chips and like gigabit LTE chips. And that is in Snapchat and that's like the business you think Qualcomm is in. Right? They sell chips in the phones. You buy the phones. The phone makers presumably buy the chips. Everyone's happy. But so much of their business is inventing standards and racing ahead so that they can patent the standards ahead of time. And then there's a whole other part of that business. It's like, who pays them for the patented technology? And none of it works the way that you would think of business works. Just literally none of it. And none of how Apple pays to make iPhones works works the way that you think a business works. It just doesn't. Like, I have said this on the show before, but Apple literally

buys the phones from Foxcon. That's just not how I have ever thought about Apple's work, right? I assumed Apple paid Foxxon to make the phones, right? So they buy a bunch of parts. They pay Foxxon the work to, like, assemble the parts. They help them buy tooling and stuff. And then the phones are theirs, right? At the end of the day. Like, the same way that, I don't know, you would hire a contractor to, like, come to your house,

like, build a fence. You don't buy the fence. You buy the work, right? But they buy the phones. And so that just, like, completely changes the nature of that entire, that entire relationship. And it's wild. And so, like, what I'm saying is, I, kind of don't understand it. I've been working on figuring it out. That's how I've spent a lot of time this week and probably spend a lot of time next week. We just hired Sarah Jong, who's an absolutely brilliant tech policy reporter. I'm hoping she can help me figure it out because she's a lot smarter than I am. But if they get it wrong, if they push it, I think they could break something really important. And I think it's actually worth us talking about that in some meaningfully important way. And I think Qualcomm's in a position where their business could get corrupt.

in a way that affects how standards operate across the industry. I don't know. I could just be making it up. We could get to the end of this process. We've done all the research and I write the piece. I'm like, this is fine Apple should win. Or like, this is fine, Qualcomm should win. Like, that could be one of the outcomes too.

But I just, the more I dig into it, the more I suspect that everyone's playing with fire. This is why on my CISD. On a boat. We'll have no patent law. I'm considering copyright law. I think we keep copyright. But no. patents.

All right. That is, what about 100%? No laws, man. No, no, no patent laws.

No rules. Just the right neighborhood? That sounds like the ad for a condo building. No rules just right is Chili's slogan, I believe.

Or Outback. Outback. Outback Steakhouse. Yeah. Sad that I know that. Paul's going to live in an Outback Steakhouse on the ocean.

All right. All right. You'd want to come to that. Paul, copyright law. and a blooming onion. It's going to be... It's made out of algae.

Okay. I am going to read disclosure. Do I have to disclose the ad that I'm about to read? I don't approve these ads. They just give me the copy. So we just talked about Qualcomm, but I'm going to read this ad because the copy was given to me.

That's your disclosure for the day. This episode of the Vergecast brought to you by Qualcomm Snapdragon Gigabit LTE. With download speeds up to seven times faster than typical home Wi-Fi, Snapchat and Gigabit LTE can turbocharge all your connected apps. You can stream 360 videos at 4K resolution with minimal buffering. You can access

files in the cloud nearly as fast as you would if they were stored on your phone. And you can download hours of movies or music in a matter of seconds. To learn more, visit snapdragon.com slash gigabit today. Okay. Paul. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every week, you do a second. Without fail. Tell me about it. May zoo? Me too. All right. How do you guys say it? Mayzu or Maizu? Mezu? Mayzu.

Mayu? Yeah. All right. So, Mayu's got new phones out, the Pro 7 and the Pro 7 plus. Front of the phone looks so old. Side of the phone looks very old and thick and just not the most. Because Mayu's like pretty good at like staying like pretty cutting edge. I've just always loved this company and always been sad that they do.

never bring anything to the U.S. But they put a screen on the back, and instead of it just being like an e-ink thing, like we've seen like phones that display some small amount of information. But this is like a whole Amo-led display that's like, I don't know, a couple inches. And it can show you the weather, shows you the time, shows you alarms and stuff like that, shows weird abstract graphics. But the thing I love about it is you can use it for rear camera. selfies, which just seems really smart.

And so, like, I just think to any phone manufacturing, you know, if you got the space, got the time, got the battery life, just put a screen on it. Do you remember when point and shoot cameras just kept on adding screens to, like, the front or like swivel screens and like the harbor got insane for a minute? What was that camera with a little screen on the front? I feel like it was like a Kodak. What was it? There was so many.

I thought it was an Olympics. There was so many of these. Didn't so many of these. Didn't so many of these? dual screen like clamshell? Oh my God, sharp dual screen clamshell point and shoot camera. Sign me up. Someone get on eBay right now.

There was a time when we used to cover every point and shoot camera that came out as though it was breaking news. The time has passed. Yeah. I like this idea of the phone of the screen in the back just for the camera. Yeah. I just think it's, I mean, it makes the phone obviously thicker, probably short or battery life, but it's just like

it's like a nice option. I'm just glad to exist for people only in China. Yeah, I got a, I got a, a, a, a DGI Osmo and I would play around with it and I realized like I really would prefer to use the rear camera but there's no way to actually see what I'm shooting. I have to use the front

camera which isn't as good. So I would love to have a little screen on the back. This is the module for the essential phone that I want. Additional screen for selfies. Oh! That's smart. That's really good. That's really good. I found a

Samsung camera from 2009 and I remember this because of the They've got a front facing LCD. Like, what are we going to put on there? Like, not everybody looks the same. We can't just put a photo of a human because it's like, well, I'm not that person. Maybe it's just a sticker. So they put the picture of a clown in the press shot.

What if you don't want to pay for a screen? And you don't necessarily want that thing. You don't want to see what the back camera is seeing all the time. So you make a part of the phone. slide up and it reveals a mirror and then on the front when it slides up there's a physical

keyboard. I bet any company that runs would be very successful and continue to produce products. That phone 100% runs Android 2.3. That hardware can only be married to an early, early version of Android. No, the Palm Pre

had a mirror when you slid it up. That's what you were talking about. That was the pre. Right? Yeah, that was the pre. I don't sure. remember that investor made a terrible misogynistic statements. What was his name? With the crazy Oh, oh with the crazy hair. He looks like the scientist from, uh, from Independence Day. Yeah. He was like in like LCD sound system or some, some band. Yeah, he went on Good Morning America and just hissed release me. That was not true by the way. I did not say. Roger McNamee. Yeah. Good old Roger Mcnamy.

Uh, yeah. He was like, this is good. Look. It would be a birch cast if I didn't make a vague, weird palm reference. So it's done, and we can now end the show. That's right. Thank you. I would also buy a Palm Privy that run Android 2.3. That's the thing I would do. Dude, it existed.

It was the Sony thing that looked like a bar of soap. The Sony Android phone, it was a horizontal slider. It was amazing. Man, so much history today. I had one. It was great. We wrote about it. Okay.

We got to go ahead. Samsung TL 220 and TL225. You want to see a picture of a clown? Just saying. I'm talking about the Experian Mini Pro. All right. That's off. I've put a bunch of...

The Experian Mini Pro is great. Somebody reminded me of the HGC first yesterday, the Facebook phone. And I admitted to them that I actually really liked using that phone, although I turned off all of the Facebook features. It was just a nice piece of hardware. Yeah. You know, I put a bunch of earning news on the end here. We're kind of going to over time.

Is there anything? Google made a bunch of money, Facebook made a bunch money. Twitter did not add any users in America this last quarter. It is actually like losing some users. Is that, how do we think about that? All we said when Twitter is gone, but I'll have the same feelings about it in three years that I have about Flash today. You know what, Twitter shouldn't have killed Vine. I think it's karma.

Ooh. Like Twitter should embrace rando apps that. let you create interesting different Twitter content and not buy things and kill them. Yeah. I mean, I just, I, Twitter to me right now is such a painful thing that I, I've, I've, I've literally started using Twitter only to say like positive, funny jokes to the, like, our audience because they're great. Uh, and to promote our stuff.

And I have not tried to have a conversation on Twitter in forever because it just descends into madness instantly. And I, that's, I've never been happier with. my Twitter experience. It's like jokes and questions, like, you know, a bunch of people tweeted us about what we should talk about today. That was fun. And like, here's great links from our staff. That's great. But any real conversation that that time for me has passed on Twitter. And I think that's a huge problem for them. Last one that we should bring up, and actually I think it's really cool. Micah went to a music conference this week, saw the new head of

YouTube music, Lear Cohen, who's a big deal in the music industry, like right up there with Ivy I think in terms of stature, not in terms of like I produced Tom Petty, but in terms of stature. Anyway, Cohen said there, by the way, you should watch, if you have not watched the Defiant ones on HBO about Jimmy and Dre, you should go watch it. It's a, the last episode kind of turns into an Apple commercial. It's fine. It's what you would expect. But the early episodes are the footage that they unearthed of those two doing stuff is just worth watching. Like the first, the first thing. time Dre DJed at a club in Compton. Like, you can watch it. It's incredible. So, like, just go watch it. It's like, it's just worth it for the archive footage and the people telling store, like, oh, that's great. And at the end, they're like, and then they reinvented music again with Apple music.

And you're like, well, I'm not going to watch the last 20 minutes of this. Me. But, like, but of course. Like, you have to forgive them for it because of course that's how it ends. But it's totally worth watching. Anyway, Lear Cohen, who runs YouTube music, said that YouTube read and Google Play music are going to merge to create a new service, which I think confused a lot of people. Dieter, it seems like you have a handle on this. Can you go through it?

So Google Play Music has had a few different names for the subscription part of it, that, you know, not the free version, but the actual, like, you know, music service that you pay for. It was all access and then unlimited. And then I think it's just Google Play Music. You pay for it now, even though there's still a free version. And then they launched YouTube Red, which is don't get commercials. in YouTube and also you can download them for offline viewing. They also launched another app called YouTube Music, which was just for watching music videos and using YouTube as a like a music player.

The confusing bit is everything I just said basically. Because if you subscribe to one of those two for pay services, you get the other one included and nobody knew it and nobody knows it. There's people who bought YouTube Red and had no idea they have a free music streaming service in Google Play Music. Vice versa, there's, you know, five or ten or a dozen people who are still, sorry, that's cheap. Cheap Shot at BridgeCaststers love Google Play Music. All the Google Play Music listeners didn't necessarily know they had YouTube Red. So basically, the teams merged the YouTube music and the Google Play Music teams, I believe it was.

And so everyone saw the writing on the wall that eventually these services were going to merge, at least in terms of brand. and just like the idea of the offering. So he finally admitted it on stage of this music panel. Micah was there. Micah wrote it up. We published it. And then immediately had to like update the article because it was so clear to us that we were talking about subscription services.

But everybody on the internet who saw it in that minute last night assumed we were talking about the apps because everybody just thinks in terms of apps now. So we had to clarify that we were talking about the branding and like the idea of these subscription services. So that's what's happening. It'll probably happen next year. Google won't, by the way, Google, just like Apple wouldn't comment on Trump, Google wouldn't comment on their own executive statement about this thing beyond them saying we're looking

into what we're thinking about it. What should they call it? They should call it YouTube music. Google Prime? They absolutely should. They should. They should call it Google Prime or something they're about. They need, it needs to be a subscription service that gets you a whole bunch of Google crap.

It needs to get you YouTube read. It needs to get you Google Play Musical Access. It needs to get you cloud storage on Google Drive. It should give you a discount on YouTube TV, if not a YouTube TV subscription. It should get you like free rentals in Google Play movies. They should put together a package of stuff just like Amazon has with Prime that you get when you subscribe to Google. That's what they should definitely do. I don't think they're anywhere near having a coherent set of offerings for a consumer to make that,

possible. This is one of the reasons that Amazon is so compelling and interesting is they have with people noticing but not really paying that much attention slowly over time built up a whole cadre of services anchored to, you know, free shipping on Amazon that people just feel like you need to have a subscription to. Google could do the same thing. They just have, they don't have as firm of a foundation as Amazon did. But it's very clearly what they should do to like make it understandable that you can just use Google stuff for free or if you pay them a little money, you get like way better versions of those. In like a really weird parallel that I just noticed right now, like Google, on YouTube

has had this adpocalypse basically since like the PewDiePie stuff happened. Yeah. Around the very similar timeline, Amazon gave every single prime subscriber one free, you. Twitch subscription. So you can go to your favorite streamer and you just take your parents' prime account and give that streamer a subscription

for a month, which is the most valuable thing to Twitch subscribers. And apparently it's like huge, like as far as like it's a huge chunk of revenue for these Twitch creators, which Amazon just like out of the kindness of its heart one day decided to just give to everybody

who was already subscribing. No, that's not kindness. Actually, Ben Popper had a very smart tweet about Twitter and how they had no user growth. One of Twitter's core problems is they don't offer a way for anybody who, like, contributes to the platform, any creators on the platform to make money off of it. YouTube is as bad as they are at like Rev shared as like little money as there actually is unless you get really huge. Brought people on the platform because it gave them a way to make money. And so Amazon making it slightly easier to make money on Twitch, making it like a basically free thing for the user to, like, kick money to somebody is a genius move because it draws creators to the platform and encourages them to make stuff on the platform. So I don't see it as kindness out of Amazon's heart at all.

I see it as a very, very savvy Machiavellian move. I definitely agree with you. By the way, I completely disagree about Google Prime. I think they... Really? I think, well, yeah, just, I mean, it's a good idea. Like, sure, that'd be great. But the value of YouTube Red is so high that if you just told people for this amount of money,

you don't have to watch ads on YouTube and you get a music service, like they haven't even accomplished that so far, right? Like Google Prime is a great idea. But like the baby step of saying, hey, you already watch a, like, an incredible amount of music on YouTube, which people do. Like, just by the numbers, it's one of the biggest streaming services. YouTube as a video player saying, you already watch a lot of music on YouTube. You don't have to watch ads anymore, and you get a whole, like, streaming service over here.

That is just a compelling thing to say to people, right? Like, you don't have to do the whole thing. What if when you pay for Google Prime, they will send you a hacked old iPhone 4 that they bought, and it will allow you to use iMessage on Android because it will forward all your messages. Oh my God. That's all I need. You really thought this through. To your point.

I'm going to spend the entire weekend looking at these phones and not making decisions by the way. What we're saying, Paul? Can Google really advertise like that? Can Google's like, you know what you hate watching ads on YouTube? Well, we solve that for you. Hey, us money. Like, is that like blackmail or ransom? or something like that?

Like, is that like a bad look for them? Is that why they haven't pushed red as much as they could have? I mean, red is literally, like, of all the things, I would cancel Netflix before I'd cancel YouTube Red. Like, of all the things I pay $10-ish dollars a month for, YouTube Red is absolutely, absolutely my favorite. I would cancel Amazon Prime before I cancel YouTube Red. Wow.

I don't know about that one's tough. I watch so many YouTube videos. for work and for pleasure and not seeing ads before them is just such a great gift yeah i think they can't i mean it's the product right i mean there's youtube red originals but um i couldn't name one of those for you right now like um the thinning i that's the short my everyone's favorite show yeah everyone's favorite movie that's what i said obviously because i'm so familiar with the original content on youtube red i don't know like that's the product like just it's your product be proud of it. Like they say it's doing well. I think if they just said this is also a music service that we're

going to push as hard as we, you know, like Spotify pushes its music service. That starts to become like a real value. Like that's why you would stop paying for Spotify. Yeah. Right? But because you're already, so many people already watch music on YouTube and have Spotify. Yeah. So you can just bridge that gap together. Anyway, we are ridiculously over time. Uh, that was like a, it was like a chill wander. through our feeling this kind of verge cast. We didn't talk about Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, and I wanted to weigh in just to say that if Elon Musk says that Zuckerberg's knowledge on AI is limited, well, what's the opposite of limited?

Unlimited? Is he saying that he has unlimited knowledge about artificial intelligence? Like everybody's knowledge. Less limited? I guess so. I don't know. I just think Musk is wrong. Zuckerberg's kind of right.

but James Vincent, who wrote up our piece for The Verges, super right, that there are dangers about AI, but there's not Skynet. Here's what. I read, James' piece is great. You should read it. I read, like, other coverage, like, CNN coverage, like, like mainstream press coverage. And so many people brought up the video that Zuckerberg made about his, like, in-house, smart house with Morgan Freeman's voice. is like he built this thing powered by Morgan Freeman and it it just drove me insane because that video is so fucking fake like it's so so fake and bad that is not evidence that he

knows anything about AI it's evidence that he has a great video director and the money to pay Morgan Freeman it's Morgan Freeman right am I crazy no it's it's it's evidence that he knows how friggin hard it is to build AI like people think that we're just going to drop the jigsaw puzzle pieces of code into a hard drive one day and accidentally create some super intelligent being because the exponential curve of processor speeds hasn't slowed down and will never slow down for the next 50 years. I just think, I think, I think their knowledge is limited. Wow. I just, I don't know. Yeah, I, there's so many ways to read into this. And we don't, we just don't have time to do them all, but I think

I am happy for them to be competitive on how to build AI, right? Oh, the devil should beef. They should be beefing all the time and building stuff. But I will tell you that that video Zuckerberg made with his Morgan Freeman House is nonsense. Like, they did not, Facebook did the Facebook thing where they,

they faked it and pretended it was real, and everyone bought it because Zuckerberg's like this character, but the reality of his house is probably like fairly close to a Crestoron system with an Alexa because that is what you are able to build at this time. And it's not Morgan Freeman whispering to your child as she goes to sleep. Like, this is not how it works.

And like, meanwhile, Andy Ruben's house can, you know, scan your written and read your license plate as you drive in. So there's that. But that, like, so that was David Pierce's piece and wired about the essential phone. Like Rubin's point there is great. So like as you drive into Andy Rubin's house,

a camera reads your license plate. and like announces you because he has a database of license plates, which is crazy. But that is like a bunch of things you can do added up in a different way, right? He basically has like super if this than that in his smart house. Great. Maybe that's all essential is. Super if this than that. Zuckerberg's video, just go watch this video.

That's all I'm saying. It's like, you know, Apple made the commercial with The Rock in Siri this week. And everyone was joking. I think Joanna Stern joked and I joked. like on Twitter like Siri all these answers from Syria are going to be like

I searched the web for you but Apple is really smart and they only had the rock saying things to Siri that Siri could deliver on if you live entirely with an Apple's ecosystem but whatever fair

right it was just like the rock doing fun things in a rock day but like asking Siri to read his calendar to him and like read list to him which Siri can do Zuckerberg's video

is like it's just a science fiction movie and I think there's like just a real difference in how these two characters are perceived and what Elon Musk is saying is his knowledge of this is limited, but I'm actually building the thing, right?

Because that's like the Elon Musk way of doing things. Of course, Elon Musk also tweeted he got verbal approval to build hyperloop, so God only knows what's happening at this point in time. I didn't sputter that time, but I'm still worked up about this Morgan Freeman video. Anyway, that is the show. I want to call it one thing

that you should definitely read on the verge at the very end. Tamara Warren's son reviewed the Nintendo Switch. He's eight. He is a delight. I met him when the first time I met him, he told me you really wanted to work at the verge. And now he's got a piece on the verge. That's great. It is like the most adorable thing we've ever published.

I cannot encourage you to read it more than I am right now. Anyhow, you can follow us all over the social medias. I'm at Reckless on Twitter. Paul is Future Paul. Dieter is at Backlon. You can also follow Verge on Twitter. We're on Instagram at Verge. What is happening on Instagram stories lately is really,

great and I encourage you to look at it. We've just been playing with that a lot. You also listen to more podcasts. Lauren Good, who's on the show, host Too Embarrassed to Ask. Keras Swisher host Recode, Peter Kafka host Recode Media, which is wonderful. We're also getting ready where, like, we've had some conversations. We're about to pilot some new shows. You're going to be hearing those segments on this show at first as we test them out. So get ready for that. It's going to be cool. I really would love more ideas. Like, we're in pilot season, basically. So let me know if there's shows or formats you want to hear. I'm super into it. And you can rate and review us on iTunes, which you should do because that is ultimately how people find podcasts or tell your friends.

Just tell all your friends. And I think that's it. That's the show. Thanks for listening. Rock and roll. Paul. Paul. Snip, snip, snip.