The Vergecast - Meta's quest to own your face

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

 There’s a lot of gadget news this week! But we begin the show in an unprecedented way: with a bit of Brendan Carr is a Dummy, America’s favorite podcast within a podcast. Nilay pops on the show to discuss what happened to Jimmy Kimmel, why the FCC’s assault on speech is so dangerous, and why a couple of broadcast TV companies matter so much to the story. After that, Jake Kastrenakes and Richard Lawler join to talk about all of Meta’s new smart glasses, including the company’s first pair with a built-in display. Finally, in the lightning round, we talk about Reddit’s new AI deal with Google, Nvidia’s new chip deal with Intel, and Samsung’s terrible plan to put ads on your fridge. Further reading: Here’s the Jimmy Kimmel clip that got him pulled off the air  Jimmy Kimmel Live pulled after FCC threat over Charlie Kirk joke  Republicans are honoring Charlie Kirk’s memory by declaring war on the First Amendment  Charlie Kirk’s death got complicated by “extremely online” culture  The right wing is creating a society of snitches Meta Ray-Ban Display hands-on: the best smart glasses I’ve ever tried  Oakley Meta Vanguard hands-on: what athletes actually want Meta’s new Ray-Ban smart glasses have twice the battery life Conversation focus is the first new feature on deck. I sat down with Mark Zuckerberg to try Meta’s impressive new Ray-Ban Display glasses Meta is opening up its smart glasses to developers | The Verge Snap OS 2.0 is a small step towards AR glasses you might actually wear Android’s next flagship processor is the ‘Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5’  Nothing wants you to talk to your earbuds’ charging case  Nvidia invests $5 billion into Intel to jointly develop PC and data center chips  The US and China might finally have a TikTok deal  U.S. Investors, Trump Close In on TikTok Deal With China Samsung brings ads to US refrigerators Reddit wants a better AI deal with Google: users in exchange for content YouTube is inching closer to becoming a shopping channel  Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Build Me a Revenue Dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data, in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds.

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This week on Explain It to Me, the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. to the first cast, flagship podcast of parental leave. Sometimes you take it, and then sometimes things happen, and suddenly you are no longer taking it. All of which is to say, Nehai Patel is here. Hi, Eli. I would like to say that my default position is to hate and fear the government, and the fact that Brennan Carr has made me return to work early has done nothing, but underline and fortify that position, which I hold deep in my soul. I just want to imagine kind of what

your last 24 hours have been like emotionally. Can you just, can you, you're, you're in theory sitting on a couch with a, with a young baby, just living your best parenting life. Yeah. Headphone Jack Patel is doing great. He's for what, nine weeks. He found his thumb. He's doing great.

How's your baby? That's exciting. He's good. Big pacifier fan. Yeah. And we're finally out of the screams for two hours at 6 p.m. For no reason phase. So life is, life is terrific.

Our baby is very chill, which it's scary. Like, you know it's coming? Like, it's all bottled up in there. And I can feel it because yesterday we were. I was the rock and the baby. And all this Brennan Carr, Jimmy Kimmel stuff went down. And this poor child just received a full lecture on the FCC. Just a full lecture on what is going on with our nation's government.

And in particular, the incredible, completely. hypocritical Republican desire to control speech from the top levels of our government. Yeah. So we're going to get to most of the show is going to be Richard Lawler and Jake Kasternakus. We have a lot of news to talk about. We have a lot of smart glasses, stuff. We have a lot of AI things. There's a lot to talk about.

But the people demanded America's favorite podcast within a podcast. So we are going to lead the Vergecast with Brendan Carr as a dummy. And from what I understand, Jimmy Kimmel went on his show and said a relatively

milk-toast thing. We hit some new lows over the weekend with the Maga Gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. That's it. That's all that happened.

And to be clear, we have asked the FCC what about this is objectionable and they have not told us. Right. Which is, we'll get to it, which is the most dangerous thing of all. If you don't know what the rules for acceptable speech in society are,

then no speech is actually acceptable. You can tell that I'm just like amped up. Sorry, David. That is very much the point. But so, okay, so that happens. And sort of in the background there has been a lot of people on the right who don't like Jimmy Kimmel for one reason or another. Trump has posted many times about not liking Kimmel. He's just an enemy of that group of people for many reasons.

So Brendan Carr then immediately starts making the threats that Brendan Carr, as the head of the FCC, seems to always make, which is that, like, I don't like that thing you said, wouldn't it be terrible if I took away your broadcast licenses? Jimmy Kimmel's show is on ABC, which is owned by Disney. Disney has all kinds of, you know, dealings with the government over time. Like, basically goes on and I would say makes a pretty naked threat that if you don't do something about Jimmy Kimmel, I am going to use the force of the government to do something to you. It's not even a naked threat. He went on Benny Johnson's YouTube show and said, we can do this the hard way or the easy way. Right. Right. It's not, I mean, it's, he's a cartoon. Yeah. Like, this is literally what gangster say in movies. And Brendan, I don't have ever seen a picture of Brendan, he can't do it with like being physically imposing. So he's

just saying cartoon gangster stuff. The broadcasters, and you've gotten this right, are entirely different than people that use other forms of communication. They have a license granted by us at the FCC. And if that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest. And we can get into some ways that we've been trying to reinvigorate the public interest and some changes that we've seen. But frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead. And it's not Disney that has the broadcast licenses.

It's a bunch of Disney affiliates in cities and towns across the country that have broadcast licenses. And importantly, two major conglomerates that own a bunch of these local affiliates are trying to merge. So they have business before him. And so when he says we can do this a hardware or the easy way, he's putting pressure on a deal. Right. Which is just classic Trump administration stuff, right? Yes. And the two companies you're talking about are Nextar and Tegna, which would like to merge.

and if the deal goes through, that combined company would own, I think it was 80% of local affiliates around the country? No, they would reach 80% of U.S. households.

Oh, I see. Oh, okay. So there's an underlying framework here, which is important to understand. Back in the day, all media was distributed over radio waves or print newspapers.

Shout out to print newspapers. But back in the day, Broadcast media was literally broadcast from towers in cities and towns. There were big-ass, pointy towers, and that's how you got your television. But those were basically created regional monopolies, right? You're the local NBC affiliate. You own the NBC affiliate, the next town over, the next town over, the next time over. The government did not want you to also own the ABC affiliate, right?

It wanted media competition. So it set rules over how many households you could reach as an affiliate conglomerate. And the rule right now is that you can hit 39% of U.S. households. For a number of reasons, there's lots of criticism in this rule. Meta hits 100% of households. Right, Google hits 100% of assholes. Like, the media landscape has fully changed. The idea that the broadcast owner in your town is a commanding presence in the media

landscape, I think, has fallen by the wayside. Right. It's the sort of rule that, like, the spirit of it made and makes sense, but it is completely voided by the actual existence of the world in which we live now. And there are, but there are good arguments to still have the rule. People make them, right? Lots and lots of people still get a lot of their news from broadcast television. Big events like the Olympics and the Emmys.

All this stuff happens on broadcast television. There's still a lot of power there. And so one of the reasons you don't want massive consolidation of broadcast stations is then you get control over the information flow. Right. So the 39% rule has held for a long time. And in order for NextArte and Tegna to merge, they have to get a waiver of this rule. to hit 80% of U.S. households.

So now one company will have enough broadcast stations to reach 80% of U.S. households, which is literally double the women. Right. Yeah, not only do they need the actual merger to be approved, they need the rules to be changed so that the merger can be approved, which is now two points of leverage

that our buddy Brendan has over this deal for many billions of dollars. And just to stay on the, but Google and meta, hit 100% of the people. Yeah, they sure do. And this is the complaint. And I think it's a good one. Like, buy all the broadcast stations, man. Have fun.

You're dead anyway. It doesn't, you know what I mean? Like, that thing is dying. We know it's dying. But in the meantime, they're the ones who make the news. Do you know what Google and meta do not pay for? The fucking news. That's why all the websites are going out of business.

Because there isn't money from those big distributors to pay for the news. So when you think about NBC's, News Division or ABC's News Division or CBS's News Division, which just got a government monitor because they wanted a deal to go through. Well, that's where the news comes from. So you can put a lot of pressure on those news organizations. And even if they die, there isn't a parallel structure online for news. There really isn't.

Like, however you feel politically, you cannot look at the digital media landscape and say, there is a thing here that has the resources, the history. the history, the depth, and the experience of broadcast news divisions. It just doesn't exist. Maybe it will one day, but it doesn't right now. So you're just in this transition period, and Brendan Carr knows he has a lot of leverage

is those companies try to thrash their way into the future. Right. So the first companies that bend to Brendan Carr's threats on Benny Johnson's YouTube channel, like, do you ever say a sentence in your, like, how is this any of this actually what's going on? That's a thing that happened. These people are all the most terminally online posters

in history. They all run the government now, and they are playing out the most petty forum grievances. In particular, Brendan Carr, he's just a troll. Yeah. So, but some of these companies,

particularly NextR and Sinclair, two big broadcasters, they are the first ones to basically bend or cave or bite or whatever you want to call it after these threats, and they start to say, we're going to not show Jimmy Kimmel,

essentially. We're going to put on something else instead of Jimmy Kimmel's show. And then that immediately spirals into ABC saying we are going to pull Jimmy Kimmel's show indefinitely.

Which now, like, it is one of the more straightforward. Like, this is what censorship looks like, Brendan Carr, kinds of stories we've had in a while, which I think is a useful time to bring this particular second. This is just, this is the straightest line between

what we have been talking about and free speech disasters that we've had. In a pretty long time. You publish what the government wants. You broadcast what the government wants, or the government will punish you. If you publish something the government doesn't like and you don't take actions to remediate it, the government will punish you. That's what he said.

It's not even shaded. He said, we can do this the hard way or the easy way. There's no dancing around his actual statement. And then the next turn was a bunch of these stations, these big conglomerates, these are not little Heartland TV stations in the middle of the country. that just, you know, we've got a really rural audience and they don't like it. No, these are huge conglomerates in the middle of a $6.2 billion merger that are trying to get government approval to change a rule that has existed for years and years and years about how big media companies can be. And there's just, like, politically, that is just a total realignment, right? Do you want big companies to get bigger?

Maybe you do. Do you want big companies to own a bunch of speech in America? Probably you don't. And that usually cuts in a bipartisan way. Like, what have Republicans yelled about the most over the past half a decade? It's how big the platform companies are and how much control they have over speech. What does Brendan Carr say? Ben Smith from Senate 4 interviewed Brennan Carr in an event a couple months ago.

And he said, do you agree with me that the biggest threat to speech in America is the government? That's the foundation, right? Like, most people agree with this. And Brendan Carr said, no, the biggest threat to speech in America is the platform companies. and I, the government will take care of it. And it's like, no, that's still wrong. Right. And you're also kind of, you're kind of answering your own question while you try to say the other thing, right?

Yeah. The government is going to stop. Who has enough power to bring the platform companies in line? It's me, the government. It's like, no, that's why you're not supposed to use that power. That is, in fact, the problem we're trying to solve here. And so you just end up in this place where you can see this throughout, I think, the aftermath of the horrific murder of Charlie Kirk. that Republicans are totally happy to abandon everything they said about free speech and free expression on the internet when they are the ones in control of the speech.

Yep. And I, this is why, I mean, for years, I've come on the show and posted on social media, government speech regulations are bad. And the pushback is, but we should have some because you don't want racism. You don't want this. And I'm always like, but then the bad guys will be in charge. and they will do the things that always happen, which is they will start to put pressure on speech they don't like because you've given them the tools.

You've opened the door over and over and over again. We've made this point on the verge. For 15 years, we've made this point on the verge. Addie turned that story about the Republicans Raging War on the First Amendment in like five minutes. Why? Because she and I have written that story five thousand times. It's just sitting there.

Yeah. It's just, like, I think that she's auto-completed it on her computer. Like, she's got a keyboard macro that's like, do the First Amendment story. know it comes out, right? Because we've done it so many times. And Brendan, in particular, does not know he's playing with fire. Like, he knows that he has power, but he's a dummy.

He can't see the obvious hypocrisy of all of his positions add up to, now I'm the guy who canceled Jimmy Kimmel. And I actually think most Americans look at the government directly censoring speech and say, No, that's too far. That's, I don't think that's a political situation. I think the government directly saying, get this comedian off the air is like, there isn't a better way to launch Jimmy Kimmel's YouTube career than the government trying to cancel him

for not even making a joke, for running a clip of Donald Trump. This is the thing about this that I think is so interesting and is so different. And I think the thing we've learned, obviously, since Charlie Kirk was, things are different now, right? Like, there are a bunch of confusing, complicated sort of inflection points that seem to be happening after he was murdered.

And this one, just all of this is so wrapped up together. But I think your point is right that this is such a straight line from the government is telling them to cancel Jimmy Kimmel that it seems to have resonated differently for people. And I'm curious if it has felt. that way, even to you, like, you track this more closely than most because you're like a specific kind of lunatic. But I think this one just feels so visceral and so clear. And there are so few steps in the intimidation and the corruption and the coercion that it is like, people seem to get

it. And I've just even been watching this on social for the last like 18 hours. Like in all the the ways that Brendan Carr was this sort of like kind of confusing dictator, now he's just a very straightforward dictator, and that's actually like a more dangerous thing to be if you're Brendan Carr. And people see it differently now. Do you think this one is different because it is so, A, it's high profile because it's Jimmy Kimmel, who's a person everybody knows, but also just because the wrong thing is so straightforwardly obvious this time. I mean, we've just done a decade of comedians saying they can't say whatever they want. Right. Like, this thing you're saying about being legible, man, how much do I rant about Brennan Carr? Like, my wife doesn't give a ship.

Becky doesn't give a shit. Becky loves a comedy podcast. She listens to all of them. They're always on in the background of our house. And I said, Jimmy Kimmel got canceled because of Trump history, and her eyes got huge. And she said,

I can't wait to hear whatever and I has to say tomorrow. Because if you've done this much cancel culture, I've got to push back against the woke mob, you can't just say whatever you want for so long. If that is your brand, and boy, are there a lot of cultural commentators and comedians who've made that their brand.

And then you look at not even a joke, not even a Charlie Kirk joke. If what we're saying is merely saying this man's name is enough for the full force of the government to cancel your show. Well, we have a problem. I don't think that's actually very confusing at all. And underneath that is, yeah, there's a whole bunch of business stuff that's happening. Right. The broadcast television empire is fully in its last days.

it's not coming back. Sinclair, I think, said we're going to preempt Kimmel and we're going to run a special honoring Charlie Kirk instead. Yeah, dude, that's not going to do ratings. All those people are going to look at their phones instead. Like, you're not going to get numbers from that. There's no coming back. There's no bringing the audience back to broadcast television in this way.

So I don't know what's going to happen with Jimmy Kim. I'm assuming he's lawyer up. He's going to sue Disney. Everyone's going to get their money. And he's going to watch a YouTube show. And then he's going to start doing AG1 supplement brand integrations. He's going to make millions of dollars like everyone else does. Because that is the shape of the modern media.

And Brendan will get to preside over his empire of shit of decaying broadcast networks because that's where he has the statutory power to control until the day he realizes that, oh, that's not any good. And I should censor what American say on social media platforms and stuff. And you can, it's just coming. You don't have to guess. Do I want to rule over the dead thing or do I want actual control over? what Google and Facebook distribute.

And it's pretty obvious what he wants. Yeah. I mean, do you think this one comes back on Brendan in a different way because of it? Like, on the one hand, this is entirely internally consistent with everything that Brendan Carr has been doing since he has been in this job. So, like, the fact that he would play this card, not at all

surprising. But I think this one seems like it might reflect back on him differently. He's a character. I mean, like, what have we done? We've been doing nothing to try to make this guy a character. Yeah. Thank you. A huge thank you to our audience who was like, it's Nilai come back.

The people demanded this, we know. We've been paying attention to him since the beginning because this has been his move. Right. And we've been inviting him on the show since the beginning because I think he's too dumb to defend these things in it from a coherent standpoint. I actually understand them from an exercise of power standpoint. This is what censors do when given the keys. Yeah. They find leverage.

They don't immediately say, I would like, you to delete this content. They say things like, we can do this the hard way or the easy way. You can get your $6.2 billion merger, or you cannot. And to get it, you got to get Jimmy Kimmel off the year.

Carr was on CNBC, and he said, look, these are just local stations making decisions. And it's like, dude, you're trying to run. He's already trying to run. He's already trying to pretend

that these are little local TV stations just saying we are, you know, we're upset about what these big Hollywood liberals are saying. No, these are billion-dollar companies in the middle of a $6.2 billion merger that would let them reach 80% of American households.

This isn't Ma and Pa with a local ABC affiliate. What's that weird owl movie, UHF? That's what I wanted to be. It's not that. These are some of the most evil suits in America. Yeah. And what is their $6.2 billion merger going to do? It's going to lay off thousands and thousands of people.

That's the inevitable result of these murders. So I feel no sympathy for any of these characters, but I know that if Brendan came came on this show or he came on Decoder or we did a walk-and-talkie. in the streets of DC. Like, whatever you want to do it, Brendan, I just know that

all of your ideas would fall apart under the slightest scrutiny of, are these coherent? Does the way you feel about Twitter moderation and COVID

line up with the actions you are taking right now when it comes to Jimmy Kimmel? Because, boy, you were pissed about Twitter moderation during COVID. Like, super pissed about it.

And that was just Twitter. But I was like, you know, not everyone in a man. Yeah. Was that the force of the government interfering in business deals to get favorable speech? And it just doesn't line up. So, Brendan, as always, I will come back from my leave early.

I'm pretty sure the baby can take you. He's not rational and he's a little bit of a terrorist, but I'm pretty sure he can take you. Yeah. But I'll do it. Anytime you want, man. There you go. Brendan, you heard it here. Also, this is a useful time to remind people, subscribe to the verge so that we become ungovernable.

Subscribe to the verge so that there is no way anyone can stop. stop us and nothing anybody can do. My joke about AG1, first of all, I just keep, did you do this when you were on Lee David? I just have a list of stories. Oh, yeah. And my desire to ever go to a manager meeting again

is like basically zero because I just want to do my list of stories. We're going to have to figure that out. But this thing I'm describing where the money in broadcast media is just rapidly declining and the solution is scale and consolidation because that's what dying industries do.

That's real. So all that attention is going somewhere else and it's going on to platforms. The platforms do not pay enough money. to creators. Just they don't. Spotify does not pay enough money to artists. Instagram pays literally no money

to Instagram influencers. It's all brand deals. I think it was Samir from Colin and Samir was on CNBC a few weeks ago and he said literally the platforms don't pay enough money, you have to go be an advertiser. Alex Earl was at Cannes and said,

I'm not an influencer, I'm a marketer. That's the money. The advertising money has come directly into the content because the platforms themselves do not pay enough money to the people who make the work. That's just true. There's a lot to say about that.

I don't know how sustainable that is even over time. That's why I had Hank Green was guest hosting the decoder. That's why I really wanted him to talk to Amy Lansy, who's the CEO of Digitos, the big ad agency. That's good I said. That's a perspective I don't have. I'm not a creator like that. All this is to say, we don't do the brand deals.

You can't do a brand integration here. I'm saying this, and I know that the executives of Ox Media are like, why? because they want us to. That's the money. They can all see the money we're not making. And the promise that we make them is our audiences will pay us money and we'll make up the game. So that's how we're going to keep talking about it.

But the thing that I don't want to get into is, oh, boy, our big Nike brand integration is on the rocks. Because a bunch of Gamer Gators said I said Charlie Kirk's name on our show. Right. Because we invented a podcast called Branding Kara is a dummy. Yeah. You see what I'm saying? And like that is where the next set of pressures is going to come in the media ecosystem because no one's actually making enough money just making the work.

The work has been devalued to almost nothing. It's brand integrations. It's literally AG1 supplement reads. What are you going to do? That's, I mean, fine. Everyone going to make their money. I'm not, right? People have solved the problem.

I can just see where the next set of pressure points is. And like David said, I don't like it. Nope. I don't like being told what to do. So that's my pitch for this subscription. Let's have fewer things to be used against us. Make Nelai more ungovernable. Theverge.com.

Subscribe. All right, Neelai, you go back to break. We're going to take a break. I'm going to be back with Richard and Jake. We're going to talk through all the rest of the news of the week. You're going to be back with us for real in a few weeks, but not just yet. For now, go enjoy baby time. But thank you for coming to doing this.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll bring the baby next time. Yeah, good. And hopefully, hopefully, Brendan does not require this again of us. Until that,

we will. We're coming back in force. We're Brendan Cardaley is our next podcast. It's going to be amazing. Oh, boy. All right. We've got to take a break. We'll be right back.

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Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers.

That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. It's built to be your hiring partner, helping you find the right candidates faster. That way you can hire with confidence without turning it into another full-time job. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Its updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language. Nearly 60% of hirers find a candidate to interview within a week.

With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. And instead of getting buried in resumes, you get a focus shortlist that actually moves your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. All right. We're back. I will never forgive Brendan Carr or the United States government for making us do the first 20 minutes of the Vergecast about this. I will never forgive them, but it was nice to have Nelai back.

We have released Nelai into his baby care and weekend. Now let's get on with the good stuff. Jake Kastronakis is here. Hi, Jake. Hey there. What did Nelai do? Nealai just came in firing. It was nice to have him back.

Richard Luller's also here. Hi, Richard. Hello. Let's talk about sports, but not the Packers. Who have you been yelling about the FCC too recently? Steve Ballmer, of course. Richard, you and are going to do a sports thing, because one of the angry feelings I've had this summer

is that watching sports is a nightmare, and maybe I just don't like sports anymore. Maybe the simplest thing to do is just not like sports anymore. So we're going to come back to that. Do you ever like sports? Listen, not now, Richard. Not now. We're going to talk about meta,

because Meta Connect was this week. Big week for smart glasses, big week for awkward demos in front of large audiences full of people, big week for Mark Zuckerberg wearing sunglasses that may or may not look very good his face. We have a lot to talk about. So we're going to go through MetaConnect. Then we have a lightning round full of like a lot of surprisingly huge news. This is like an easy four-hour Vergecast kind of week, but we are going to do our best not to do that. Three hours maximum. But let's start

with Meta-Connect. So the top line of the news here is that Meta announced a bunch of news smart glasses. I want to get into all of them, but basically there is a new product called, and I have to Look at these names because they're such horrendous name crimes. There is the meta-rayband display, which is smart glasses with a little display that we'll get into. V-Song, who has worn all of these and reviewed all of them, said they're the best smart glasses she's ever tried. And that is not a thing V's likely. I think that's a big deal. There's also the Oakley meta Vanguard, sure.

And then there is the new meta-ray-band smart glasses. Sorry, David, that's the Ray-Ban meta. No. Unless they changed it. It's so, I thought I had it right. This is like super inside baseball, but like the original product is the Rayban Metas or Rayban meta, but like nobody knows that. We're like, oh, it's the meta Rayban.

And so it's just like writing about these on our website is just constantly switching the meta back and forth as we figure out which way it goes. They need, they need better naming. I absolutely guarantee you that behind all of these names were teams of executives and lawyers sitting in conference rooms debating whose name comes first. It's like if you ever watch the credits of a movie and you wonder, there's like, you know, they'll say a bunch of names and then at the end, it'll be like, and, you know, Alec Baldwin or like, and also guest starring, whatever, Peter Gallagher, the order in which those names appear and the, the, like, prepositions that come

before them is like endlessly litigated and contracted. And I just, I just want everyone, watching and listening to this podcast to imagine the meeting in which they decided which glasses would be the meta-rayban and which would be the Rayban meta and be so, so happy that you are not in a life that makes you be inside of that meeting. That's all I have. Just be glad that whatever choices you have made, you did not have to be in the meeting where you decided which one was the Meta-Raban and which one was the Rayban meta. They're not even names. They're just a collection of brands listed together. It has some... such like Mark by Mark Jacobs starring Mark Jacobs energy.

I'm sorry, I got to go the other way on this. You guys are out here disrespecting the meta-ray-band Gen 2. My favorite pair of smart classes. I mean, I know who makes it. Are you sure? Have you looked at their blog post, they go back and forth between calling the meta-ray-band, I'm sorry, the Ray-Ban meta-glasses gen 2. See, I did it myself.

I'm there also. and the Ray Band meta glasses Gen 2. So is Gen 2 part of the name or is it not? So even the company that wants us to buy these things doesn't know what they're actually called. This is the first time ever. I've been like maybe Sony has it right just by having endless hexadecimal situations

every time they want to sell a new phone instead of headphones. I still remember when we had to ask if it's iPod Shuffles or iPod Shuffles or iPod Shuffle. Oh, God. And Apple's whole thing where you can't put, the in front of the name. They don't call it the iPad. It's just iPad. Anyway, if we keep talking my names, I will actually go insane because I can do this forever. Let's start with the display. Well, the screen one, as we are going to call it from now on. This is one we've been hearing a lot

about for a while. Our former colleague and current contributor Alex Heath has been like scooping this roadmap for years. And we got a demo of Orion, which is, I would say, like the more impressive version of this idea last year. And then this year, this is the first sort of relatively mainstream available version of smart glasses with a screen, which we've known meta was going to be working on, but now it actually exists. Let me just run through the specs real fast, before we get into it, because I'm very curious what you both make of this, because I have reacted to this in a way that I did not expect. Basically, they look like sunglasses. They're a little thicker and a little heavier than the, even the smart glasses we've

before. They weigh 69 grams, which if that means nothing to you, it's like double the weight of an AirPods case. So just do with that what you will. Tie two of those to your head and see how it feels. They get about six hours of battery. They have 5,000 nits of brightness on this little screen that sort of shows up in front of your, it looks like your right eye. And it's just a little tiny heads-up display. It's not like a full augmented reality thing. It's just a little 600 by 600. I think it's 20-degree field of view. screen that sits right in front of your eyes. And it's very bright. And everybody who has worn it says they're able to see it even in bright light. V-Song said if you look directly into the sun,

you won't be able to see it, but also don't do that. So that's fine. It's just a, it's a pair of smart glasses with a little tiny display that does some stuff. And I think that is like, that's both kind of it and kind of enough to me. And I want to get into the control system in a minute. But the glasses alone, I feel like, are actually pretty exciting. But I'm curious, Richard, what was your reaction to these? I still wonder if there may be a little bit too early with these. And I understand they're maybe still planning only on selling limited amounts of these. I don't know how many they think they will move.

But one of the things that they mentioned, and I think we'll get to their conversation with Alex Heath, is that lots of people wear glasses already. And as a person, I don't know, David, are you glasses? contacts guy or not a glasses contacts guy oh you're one of those actually it's better than 2020 vision like not to brag it is brag I just knew there was some way of it's fine I don't have a lot going for me I've been trading the ability to look a little bit more punchable for being able to see for basically my whole life and I don't know if I want to wear a slightly thicker glasses just to have a screen and to have to charge them all

the time yeah so can I just read you the quote that Mark Zuckerberg said about this because I actually thought it was really instructive and interesting about how they're talking about this. So this is an interview with Alex Heath, and he said there are between one to two billion people who wear glasses on a daily basis today for vision correction. Is there a world where, in five or seven years, the vast majority of those glasses are AI glasses in some capacity? I think that's kind of like when the iPhone came out and everyone had flip phones. It's just a matter of time before they all become smartphones. I would say the iPhone comparison there doesn't make any sense. He just described two completely different things,

where it's not that everyone who had flip phones upgraded to smart. Like that's just, none of that is how it worked. I think it's fascinating to hear him say that our target market is people who wear glasses. Because we've had a lot of conversations on this show and elsewhere, basically asking the question,

are any of these companies going to be able to convince people who don't wear glasses to wear glasses? And I think that is a steep, steep, steep, steep, steep, hill to climb for all of these companies. But the idea that they're just saying, okay, how do we take the glasses you're already wearing and try to put some intelligence and smarts into them vastly more achievable?

Like, yes, smaller market, hard for lots of different reasons. People's prescriptions are complicated. Managing this stuff is complicated. These things get expensive really fast, like on and on. But I think thinking about that as the target market is just really interesting to me and not at all what I expected. So, like, he's after the two of you who wear glasses. And he is trying to convince you way before he tries to convince me.

me that these things are worth wearing all day every day. Also, like, to Richard's point, I'm wearing wireframe glasses right now. Like, wireframe glasses are, are, I, listen, I'm not going to put myself out there as like a fashion expert, but I feel like they're much more in than the, like, super chunky, thick hipster glasses that I think the meta-rayband display glasses are much more in line with. They had those 15 years ago, oh, man, that they would be right on target. These things are cyclical. Maybe they'll come back around. Maybe they can convince us. But right now, they're thicker than a standard pair of wayfarers. And I'm not sure that's even the most popular type right now. So look, these are a fashion product. It has to be fashionable,

first and foremost. You know, whether the tech can get there is a whole other question. So I think they have a challenge, number one, and just like bringing these two different styles of glasses. Right now it is in one style as far as I can tell, and it is bigger than a standard pair of glasses. They look, they look all right. They're like, it's stylized. It's like heavily stylized. Can they make that work in smaller pairs of glasses? It's going to take a while. And I think that's like a big part of the story here. Yeah. And for whatever sort, it does seem like meta is better set up to do that than almost anybody, right? This this huge partnership they have with Esler Luxotica is a big deal. And that's like, that's the company that,

makes most people's glasses. And so the ability to move this stuff through styles and lines and brands over time is there. But I agree, like, Jake, the gap between what we saw today and your glasses is enormous. Yeah, we're nowhere close. Even like Richard's glasses, which have some plastic to them, I don't think we're anywhere, anywhere close to this. No, it's massive. And they are big in a way that when someone sees you wearing them, they're saying, oh, you've got those on. Which as a glasses wear, I can say, it's not the thing that you want to hear from someone who has noticed that you wear glasses. Oh, you've got those on is such a real thing that's happening right now in all of these spaces. Because I think, to me, like, I have the original meta-ray bands that I like a lot, and I wear them mostly to use his headphones.

and ironically as they've become more popular, people are noticing them more on my face, which is not what I expected. Like, you expect this stuff to sort of blend in as you start to see more people wearing it. You like, you don't notice somebody wearing AirPods anymore, right? Like, you don't clock AirPods as they go by. If I wear these, I get constant notices.

Because, like, you can tell because people inadvertently make eye contact with you because they're looking at your eyes. And so as I'm walking down the street, I'm constantly getting people who are just like sort of giving me these sideways glances as I walk by them. And yeah, that is not what anybody is looking for with their pair of glasses, I don't think. The screen does seem to be good, right? They did it. It is.

And this is the thing that is, like, fascinating about this whole road that Meta is on right now is it seems like the screen works. And to me, if you're going to get a pair of glasses like this, a screen makes absolute perfect sense, right? A bunch of the stuff that they're talking about doing on this is simple things like being able to, you know, get turn-by-turn directions in your heads-up display. Perfect use case for this kind of thing. Live translation in front of your eyes as you're talking to somebody. Perfect use case for this kind of display. Like using your vision to line up a photo that you're taking with the camera in your glasses. Perfect use case for this kind of.

Like, if we're going to do smart glasses, they need displays. I think we've known that for a while, and it seems like if you're meta, you've got it, if not right, then largely right. Like, we'll have to see and use the thing and review it properly. But I think you're right. It does seem like the early returns on this thing are that meta kind of got it right. The question is just, even more so, is this a thing that I want? I don't know. And I think the thing that I'm so struck by with this one in particular is there is this, we,

kind of distant look you get in your eyes when you're looking at a heads-up display that is just awkward in life. And a lot of our coverage pointed this out. And I think it's just a strange thing that, like, no, you're not going to be able to see my screen if I'm wearing these glasses, right? Like, if you and I are just sitting here looking at each other and we're both wearing glasses, you're not going to be able to see that my screen is on. But you're going to be able to see that I'm focusing my eyes kind of up here and not on you. And a lot of the pictures I've seen kind of make it look like people are just sort of staring at nothing. And it's just this weird, distracted thing that's happening. And at the same time, the not knowing is just as big a problem to me. Like,

we went through this with glass holes and this question of like, are you recording? Is a problem. And so not only are you, are you recording, but are you listening to me? Are you paying attention to me? Are you looking at me? Is like, there's so many, like, social cues that a pair of glasses like this totally destroys. And I just, I don't know how we figure that out. I sort of worry that we are completely past that, right?

You think? Oh, yes. Because Google Glass came very early smartphone era, right? People were not used to screens and cameras being everywhere yet. You know, 10, 15 years on, you can strap 10 cameras to your face and somebody's just like, yo, what's up?

Like, that's no, right? Like, the other pair of glasses they make, their headphones and cameras on your face, nobody cares. Right, like, that's, that's kind of the point, right? Like, I think if I have a,

if I put a GoPro on my face, you, you know the answers to all of your questions already, right? Like, I'm wearing a GoPro on my face. Yes, I have a camera on that is recording you. If I'm just wearing a pair of glasses that has a camera in them,

like, the subtlety is actually the, problem in a strange way. If this thing just had a big-ass screen that, like, came out of the glasses and folded down and you just saw it right here, that would be worse in some ways, but better as a, in a, in a, like, human interaction kind of way. Because then at least I know what's going on, whereas my read of you as a person is now totally incongruous with reality.

It's like the transparency mode in AirPods, which I think this is borne out in a lot of interesting ways. Like when, if you guys are wearing headphones and you go into a store, what do you do? If you're gonna, you're like, you're, you're, you're up at the counter at the coffee shop. You have both headphones in. Do you take one out? Do you just pause your music and talk through your headphones? Like, what do you do? I usually just pause the music and talk. Okay. Jake, what do you do? Oh yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm taking them out. Yeah. It's like, it's in the way. I mean, it's like the same thing if, uh, if I, if I go into store and I'm wearing sunglasses, like I'm going to take them off to talk to somebody. I will always like performative.

take out one of my headphones to be like, like as I'm walking up just to make it very clear that like, yes, I am listening to you. Like, because I think it communicates something, right? And there's like, you can see sometimes when somebody is talking to you and you're wearing headphones. They don't know if you can hear them.

And there's just like, there's just a million things like this in modern life and smart glasses exacerbate every single one of them. And Jake, you're probably right that if we're not over that yet, we will get there quickly and everything's. I'm not saying we should. We'll get used to it or whatever. But it's just, I don't know, this is just a thing I keep thinking about.

And even looking at pictures, it's like there's something uncanny about some of the pictures we took, even a V, where she's looking at the camera, but she's not looking at the camera. And you can feel it, and it's strange. I don't know. That said, these glasses seem awesome. I'm so torn on. This is the thing, like, they've been building toward this for many years now, and they've been pretty public about the fact. they're building toward this. And they're one of many companies, right?

Snap has also been racing toward this. And it's, I don't know, it hasn't been clear to me that we were going to get to a consumer product version this quickly. And obviously we still have to test them. But, you know, in these initial demos, it seems like they have built

a reasonably functional product in a reasonably functional form factor, a little thick, a little chunky. But, you know, that's far, than I think anybody expected meta, the company that makes Facebook, to get with a hardware product, let alone to be leaders in the field. Totally. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I think this is probably where we should also talk about the neuroband, which is a thing that meta is doing differently from a lot of these other companies that I happen to think is maybe

the smartest single decision that meta has made. So the way that you control a lot of the stuff on these smart glasses is not with like eye tracking or wacky, you know, camera hand tracking and stuff. You wear this thing on your arm that actually measures and responds to your motor movements. And it uses the term is called electromyalography, which is a thing that I know a lot about. So if you'd like to talk about it, we please can't. But basically you like, you put this thing on and then you don't have to have your hands up in view of your glasses.

You don't have to have your hands anywhere. You can just sort of sit here with your hands in your lap and you, I think you pinch to select or to go back, depending contextually and where you are. You double pinch your fingers to get the display up or dismiss it. You like make a fist and sort of joystick swipe on it to do other stuff. You pinch and rotate to do zoom in photos or to change the volume. It is like the closest thing we've done yet to the Minority Report interface.

It's just like a smaller, more subtle version of Tom Cruise, like moving all the windows around with his hands. and again, this is another thing that all the demos say it works. Everybody says it is vastly more natural than what you have to do with a lot of these other devices, which is like in the Vision Pro,

you have to get used to really carefully focusing on every single thing you want to do, which is just like not how people exist in the world. And on a lot of these other devices, you spend your time like putting your hands up in front of you in order to take actions,

and that's awkward. And so I think the idea of it being a separate accessory is probably not ideal in the long run, but is to me a way better system of controlling this kind of thing than basically anything else we've seen before. Am I crazy? It's subtle, too. It looks like a wristband.

And like the immediate thought is like they're going to put a watch on this thing, right? Like, ooh, that's a good call. Like this feels like it becomes something. It seems like it's cool tech on its own regardless of the glasses. This was just, if it was like this, but also a Fitbit, like, yes. Yeah, I'm in. I'm so in. I don't even need the screen stuff.

Like, I got all the screen up here. Just give me, like, step in sleep tracking and I'll wear that thing all the time. Done. That's a great idea. Mark, get ass. I don't know. Richard, what do you think? I think that's definitely the right decision.

We've shown this is how controls work. Have you ever played a video game? Like, have you ever used a computer? we've had this battle. Like being able to use your hands to control something is just better than voice or eye tracking or like head or trying to wave in front of you at virtual things. Like even if you're not holding something,

it's just the correct way. Yeah, I agree. And I think making it like a core part of this system probably again alienates some people. Because again, it's like if the goal is just to get, people who wear glasses to wear these different glasses, you've now asked me to do

even more stuff, right? I'm spending more money on bigger glasses with a different style, and I have to wear this other thing. But for like, if you sort of back your way down from what the technology can do,

this feels like exactly the right road to be going down. Yeah, I just think, I think these are very cool, and I'm very curious to see how they do. I think, I think it was Andrew Bosworth, One of the meta executives told Alex Heath that they're only planning to make a couple hundred thousand of them,

which suggests that these are not supposed to be like a huge mainstream product. Even the Rayban Metas, we've been hearing single digit millions for what they've sold, which is like a hilariously different term. Single digit millions can mean an awful lot of different numbers. But even that compared to, you know, a couple hundred thousand makes clear really kind of what they're going for here. Which brings us to the next one, which I think I have come to think might be sneakily the coolest thing meta launched this week, which is the Oakley meta Vanguard, which are some deeply baller-ass wraparound Oakley sunglasses with a camera in the nose bridge. Like essentially, the way I've come to think about these things is it's a GoPro on your sunglasses. And that strikes me as maybe exactly the correct thing to have done.

here. Jake, you wear wraparounds to and from work every day if memory serves. Yeah, as you can tell, I'm big into extreme sports. So, whenever Jake is not on the Vergecast, I want you to picture him bass fishing. That's important to me. Even what's the opposite of extreme sports? Animal Crossing. Even that's too much for me. These look outrageous and kind of amazing. And the thing is there really is just like a big chunky camera right above your nose.

And it looks a little goofy. But also the entire vibe of these Oakley's is like boom in your face. It kind of works. And for like that, for what you're trying to film, oh, that's perfect. Well, so they do fitness tracking two and the camera bit? Yeah, they'll do, they have a heart rate monitor. they do the camera stuff and it has like a bunch of

partnerships with Strava and Garmin and you can do you can use the LED that I think is supposed to show you heart rate stuff also to give you like pacing information as you're going for runs. So there's a lot of like knowledge about who is actually buying sunglasses that look like this anyway.

Like again it's the same sort of thing we were talking about where it's like we want to take people who might buy something that look like this anyway and give them all these new things to do for this price. But instead of everyone who wears glasses, it's people who buy glasses that look like this. And that to me is such a smart way of thinking about this, right? Where like wayfarers are a choice you make

if what you want is sort of the least offensive thing that looks good on the most people kind of glasses. This is the opposite. It's like here is a slice of people and it is a very specific place of people who are going to wear tinted, rainbow, colored, cool-ass wraparounds, and we're just going to give them things that those people might want. And that is a completely different way of thinking about what smart glasses might be, but to me

is like, if you want to make one that works right now for people, that's how you do it. I also like, I think there's a really interesting distinction there. The meta rayband displays, the display smart, those are smart glasses. They're glasses with a screen that show you stuff. that all of these other ones, they are fancy headphones in the shape of a pair of glasses, right? Yes. Like, the AirPods now do heart rate tracking.

These are just AirPods that also like block the sun, right? That is the thing people want and buy, right? People like fitness tracking. People like headphones. People like sunglasses. Combining all three makes a ton of sense. And being good at one doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be good at making true smart glasses.

So I think, like, there's still a lot they have to prove out with that idea. But were they early to this, let's stuff headphones into a glasses form factor? And let's start making that, you know, even more useful and more valuable. Absolutely. And the vanguard, like, as kind of ludicrous of a product as it seems, oh, they're just putting more and more, like, useful things that people already buy and want into a pair of sunglasses, which, again, to your point, David, there's already a market for these sunglasses. Now they're just making them better. It's cool. Right.

Yeah. And it's like, I think if that's, if you're a meta and you want this stuff to be useful to people, that's the way to do it. Find sunglasses people are already buying and put the things that people are doing when they wear those sunglasses into the sunglasses. And one of those things is like bass fishing with a GoPro on. And again, there are like a bunch of features on this that suggests that who this is for again, right? The battery is even longer. It's nine hours of battery. Like you said, Jake, they're pretty chunky and thick.

But again, that's to get a pretty big camera in here. It does up to 3K and up to 120 frames per second of video, but not at the same time. The more frame rate you get, the less resolution you're going to get because otherwise you would essentially let your face on fire, I think. These things would get so hot. But yeah, they have the heart rate monitor.

It's like it is so distinctly obvious who these glasses are for. And I just think that's very smart. They are a total name crime. again, because they're the Oakley Meta vanguard's, which is just a bad name. But the other ones were just called HSTN, the last time Oakley and Meta did one together. And it's like the Houston-Houston whatever glasses.

Those were dumb. This is better. That's my take. I agree. And the Oakley of it all is so essential to it, right? Like, again, this literally is a product people are already buying. People already want these specific sunglasses from Oakley. Now you're just giving them an upgrade version.

Richard, I feel like you'd look cool in wraparounds. What are your thoughts? Never tried it, but maybe. I think a Vergecast fashion show in which you try them on no one can see and we talk about it, fabulous idea. Podcast fashion show is a thing we're going to

pioneer here on this show. It's going to be amazing. So the other device that Neta announced is the more mainstreamy Rayban smart glasses. This is like the new version of the ones that have been out there for a while. And like you said, Jake, they are headphones. Functionally,

they are like, I compare these to like Alexa devices a lot where there are technically lots of things that they can do and are for. Everybody does the same two things. And on echo devices, people play music and they set timers. And then there's a long list of other things that almost nobody does. On these glasses, you can listen to music and you can take pictures. And there's a long list of stuff that people can do, you can do the live AI. Lots of interesting ideas about what you might do with a pair of smart glasses. They are sunglasses with speakers and a camera. That's it.

That's the whole pitch. And so if that's your whole pitch, doing what meta did here, I think, is correct. The new model is, it's more expensive, which is a bummer. But pricing is goofy. Tariffs and inflation and everything has made the cost of everything insane. So like, do with the $80 price increase what you will. It's $3709 instead of $2.99. But it has double the rated battery life, eight hours on a charge, which is a big deal.

The difference between getting four hours of battery on your sunglasses and getting eight is actually the difference between like the battery being annoying and the battery not being annoying, I think in most cases, especially if you have the charging case, which puts it up to, I think it was 48 hours of total battery life. So this is like you're charging your sunglasses once a way. week kind of thing, and that's a pretty solid setup. They also have a bunch of the camera improvements, so you can do up to 3K video and up to 60 frames per second, but not at the same time, all for up to three minutes at a time, again, to keep your face from lighting on fire with the heat

of your sunglasses. That would be a tough way to go to the hospital, by the way. They're like, what happened to you? What are these third-degree burns all over your face? And you're like, well, I was taking some sweet beach picks, and here we are. But anyway, this is like, the mainstream version of this thing, and I think it continues to be good and interesting and kind of more compelling than anybody else who is doing this sort of thing. This is a tricky upgrade. Like, on one hand, double the battery. Great. They did the exact thing they should do. Perfect. Eight hours is in the ballpark of where you should be. On the other hand, you know, to keep repeating my argument, these are headphones. And they're now $379. A pair of AirPods.

Pro 3 are $250. Those things are going to be on sale for lower than that in a couple of months. So I don't know. This gets tricky. I feel like when the old model, which I guess is still available for $2.99, but when they're available at that price, I think that's closer in price to what you might pay for a pair of wireless headphones anyway. This seems like it's getting a little up there.

Maybe a little tricky. If you're a big fan of these already, maybe this makes sense. I do wonder if this is going to make it harder for them to get sort of that impulse buy that maybe they were banking on for the original model where people were kind of just like, wow, I can't believe I can get a pair of sunglasses that do that. Yeah, I think if you're at a point where it's like a $100 markup to get all this stuff in it, you start to have an easier case to make. But when it's like double the price and now it'll play music when you already own a pair of headphones, I do agree that's it's a different. set of things that meta is trying to get you to be into here. And it really depends on the AI being good. And my experience with meta's live AI and frankly all of these live AI systems is that they're

not very good. Sometimes they're good. Sometimes they're trash. And actually, wait, can I play you a clip from MetaConnect, which was, I would say, we've all been to a lot of these events. We've covered a lot of these events. we have more sympathy than most for the cringy demo fails. But in the annals of cringy demo fails,

MetaConnect was a tough one this year. So let me just set this up for you, and then I'm going to play you the full 53 seconds of this clip, because you need to experience every second of it. So in an effort to test the live AI stuff on the smart glasses, we have a chef standing up on stage, or he's standing somewhere in front of a team. table with a bunch of ingredients on it. And the idea is he's going to use the live AI with the camera

and all of the different systems, the whole multimodal AI setup to make some food. Here's what happens. You can make a Korean-inspired steak sauce using soy sauce, sesame oil. What do I do first? What do I do first? You've already combined the base ingredients. So now great a pair to add to the sauce. What do I do first? You've already combined the base ingredients, so now grate the pair and gently combine it with the base sauce. All right, I think the Wi-Fi might be messed up. Sorry, back to you, Mark.

It's all good. You know what? It's all good. It's, uh, the irony of the whole thing is that you spend years making technology and then the Wi-Fi at the day kind of catches you. All right. Um... Can we just say, first of all? That was obviously not a Wi-Fi problem. Nope. Extremely not a Wi-Fi problem. And not the only time that happened. That was the start of the demo fails of the day.

It was tough. Yeah. But that to me was so illustrative of, like, the whole AI experience. Like, imagine being in front of lots of people doing this demo and even just in your own kitchen, trying to talk to the AI, and it is like you've put all the base ingredients together, and actually what's happening is you're standing in front of an empty bowl and you've done

nothing, that experience is so awful. And because it's AI, because it's voice, because it's sort of directionless like this, it's not clear where to go. It's not clear how to go back. It's not clear how to fix things. It's not clear how to start over. Like, the UI of this is so unfinished, and the quality of it is so intermittent. I've been stuck in this thing so many times, where it's like you're just trying to ask a simple question, but you need the answer before you can do something, but because you're doing it at AI, you've gone down some insane, impossible rabbit hole.

And the idea that I'm going to, like, trust my ongoing day-to-day life to this thing that I can chat with, it's like that's, you can just see why it breaks all the time. And it's not because of the Wi-Fi. It's just not. So, okay, I'm curious, are you guys pro-the-es? live demos like do you think that

companies should still do these despite the very obvious possibility of failure embarrassment like this right because like the obvious thing is that then everybody makes fun of you right it's just very easy for them to not do these and to script these yes I mean I have spent years wondering how valuable these events are at all for these companies but also like

I I love live demos and I think the The flip side is when these live demos work and are cool, it's really impressive. What we've seen is a lot of even quote-unquote live demos are not live. So even the ones that seem live, you should take with a real grain of salt at this point. These things are so on rails. And like I think about the truck demo where the so-called self-driving truck was just rolling down the hill. Like it's some of this isn't is not real. but I genuinely applaud meta for trying to do this stuff live on stage.

And Google sometimes tries to do it live on stage, although even it is going more towards some of these canned demos. Like, it's just you should be able to do this in front of people if you're going to ship it to the world, right? Like, if the demo fails, maybe your product's not done, I think is kind of where I land. Yeah, I mean, if you're telling me this is going to work at my house, you know, sometimes the Wi-Fi is bad.

Sometimes a step has been missed or the AI just doesn't, catch something the right way. If it can't recover, then that kind of is the question. That is the whole sales pitch. And you should make it. And I think largely that when these failures happen, if the product is good when it comes out, people forget about it very quickly.

Yeah. But then when it sucks, everybody goes back to these launches and it's like, oh, right, it sucked. What they really did is they should have taught this poor chef how to actually use the glasses. Like, this is such a, like, he was given a set of things to say,

say knowing the responses he was going to get and they just put the whole demo on rails. And it's like what actually needs to happen if you want to use one of these systems is you need to learn how to use it. Like if you want to be good at AI, you need to learn how to do good prompting and you need to learn how to engage with the thing and you need to learn how to back it up and you need to learn how to start over. Like they're going to fail. And actually we've seen some of these demos.

Open AI has actually done this a lot in some of its product launches where it is people who are clearly like conversant in speaking with an AI system. And you see the difference where it's like even when stuff fails, they're able to sort of redirect and they understand how the system works and they're able to back up and start over and try new things. And that ends up actually seeming more impressive in a lot of cases because it's like, oh, this is this imperfect thing that you are interacting with, but you understand how to bend it to your will.

And it's like, if this AI stuff is going to work, that's the bar for all of us. We all have to be able to bend these things to our will because they're just going to fail otherwise. But also, like, please keep doing live demos. It's so much more fun to cover when they're live demos. Whether they're good or they fail. Anyway, we should take a break. Then we're going to come back. And we're going to do the lightning round.

And I might wear my meta-ray bands the whole time just to really freak everybody out. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from MongoDB. If you're tired of database limitations and architecture that break when you scale, it's time to think outside of rows and columns. Because let's be honest, you didn't get into tech to babysit

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Complex and unprecedented, the Spanish authorities are calling it. Before the disembarko, asymptomatikas. Passengers who'd been stuck aboard the Hanta or maybe Hanta virus-stricken Dutch cruise ship disembarked in the Canary Islands this weekend, prompting the highest stakes game of where are they now since maybe COVID? Some of the evacuees, American and French, have since tested positive for the virus. And yet public health officials seem remarkably calm.

We do have one individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early, early this morning and we assess that individual. They are doing well. Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Today, Explain drops every weekday afternoon. All right, we're back. It is time once again for the lightning round. Jake, it's been a week.

Are you over it? How are you feeling? This has hurt me to my core, David. There's not a night that passes that I don't sleep. The sound of thunder causes anxiety for me now. It's like love lost now. This is, this is, yeah. It reminds me of what things could have been.

Things were, listen, it's not, be glad that it happened. You know what I mean? Don't be sad that it's over. Be glad that it happened. The Thunder Round was a nice time that you had. And now it is dead. It was a beautiful, beautiful summer. The Lightning Round is back, unsponsored for flavor.

I have to take these off. I feel absurd wearing these glasses. This was, you look good. I had a great time. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure if Facebook is going to sell me ads based on what we've been talking about here. But let's just run through some stuff. There's actually like a surprising amount of news this week.

So we're going to try to plow through a bunch of it as quickly as we can. Richard, why don't you go first? What do you have? Reddit. If we haven't talked about enough AI already, let's talk about what really powers AI. You, posters, people who post on the Internet who have their opinions about things. Something that, and I think Josh Jeza had an article that we published a little while ago about how humans really power these AI tools that you see. and Reddit has been profiting from that.

They have a deal with Google that they've had for a while, and Bloomberg reported this week that they're trying to renegotiate. And part of it seems to be that they want not only to provide results and data for Google and other companies to process to use for AI training, but also for Google and whoever else to do things that feed back into making people post on Reddit more, which would improve those tools because they would have more data to be sourced from. And you kind of see how. how there's this

very interesting thing where we think about how generative AI works and oh it's just these computers doing things but really it's people and in this case

it's posters we broke down the type of guy who posts and you sir are very valuable this is to me it's like

this is just Reddit saying the quiet part loud right which is like we made this deal with Google the open web is just falling

into complete chaos there are no good web sites left, except the verge.com, subscribe to the verge. And without Reddit results, Google is effectively useless, which is more and more true every single day. Like, it is, at least in my own day-to-day experience, it is wild how often I end up on Reddit after doing a Google search. Like more and more all the time, it feels like that's where people land. And so Reddit is like, okay, well, you've now hitched your wagon to us because we're the only thing left on the web.

pay up. Like, this is how you make it more valuable for all of us. You're going to give us money and you're going to give us users. And in exchange, we're going to keep this whole flywheel

going for you. And I wonder if Google is already starting to regret the extent to which it is relying on Reddit because it's actually, Google specifically is making Reddit very, very, very powerful.

And I think that's so fascinating. And this company that could, for years, couldn't figure, out how to be effectively run or rub two nickels together is all of a sudden like the last bastion of the web. And boy, would I not have predicted this a couple of years ago. But it is now, and now it's in a position where like Reddit's really powerful because you're right, Richard. Like, it is, it is the most valuable, consistent resource of humans on the internet right now for so,

so many different things. Yeah. And part of the reason why it's so valuable and so consistent is because it's moderated and so many other areas aren't. Yeah. But that's really the difference. And because Reddit is willing to then structure and sell all of the data, which is like, and that's the flywheel. And I think it seems to have decided that it's fine and users will not revolt and it will be okay. And now it's just going to, it's just going to milk that for all its worth. This is such a power play from Reddit. Like we talked about this last week, right? Like every change they're making is built around the fact that they know at this moment in time,

they have a huge influx of traffic from Google. And they have the leverage. They have no idea how long it's going to last. Right. And so as they're going back, they're just being really blunt about it. Give us our users, right? Because they know long term this deal

that maybe doesn't work out for them. But right now, Reddit just is Google search. Google is just giving you Reddit results, which is bewildering. But yeah, this makes complete sense. It's like they're just trying to move Google's users over to being their users before Google cuts that fire hose off. Well, and you would think, and we talked to a little bit of that this last week, too, so we shouldn't spend too long on it. But there's one way to look at this that is like Reddit is in this incredibly precarious position, right?

Because as soon as Google turns down the algorithm, it'll die, right? So there's like, is Reddit trying to like get while the getting's good? But then the reporting we've been reading, particularly from Bloomberg, suggests that actually Reddit is trying to get a lot more money out of Google. which really makes it seem like Reddit knows Google has nowhere else to go. Like, it is genuinely possible that Reddit is the last thing keeping plain vanilla Google search from being useless for lots and lots of things. Because it's being totally overrun by AI slop and nonsense. And so for Reddit to come in and say not just like we need guarantees that you're going to keep sending us traffic, but we want more money

is such an interesting like inversion of power from the way that any other website that relies on Google for traffic is able to negotiate with Google. It's just nuts. All right, Jake, you're up. What do you got?

Okay, this has been going on for a while. We're finally coming to the end of the saga. Allegedly, the U.S. and China may finally have come to a deal on TikTok. TikTok was supposed to get banned earlier this year. There's like a federal law about this. I don't know what is held.

it up. I do not know exactly what the problem is. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. Corruption and chaos. Like, we can just say what it is. Like, that, that is correct. So apparently, maybe possibly this week or this month or soon, who really knows are these things, there's some forward motion. It sounds like they have buyers, da-da-da-da. The thing that is interesting to me, and this has been coming out of the past, like, several weeks or maybe months, but there's apparently still a point of the current deal, is that, TikTok has built a new version of its app just for the U.S. And once this deal goes through, everyone in the U.S.

is going to have to stop using the current version of TikTok and go download this new version of TikTok. And I am curious if you guys think that that is going to be a disaster for them or if everybody just can be like, okay, new TikTok, whatever. Like, that seems, that's a lot to ask of people. I think disaster. I think, like, on the one hand, my general belief is that most people don't want to download apps.

I also think TikTok is very important to society at this moment in time. So, like, if anybody could bully 100 million people into downloading an app all in the same day, it's probably TikTok. But it just feels like a mess. Like, there's just no way this transition goes any kind of smoothly. the report has been that

basically Andresa and Horowitz Silver Lake and Oracle are going to be the major owners, which is like its own mess and like what's less cool than Oracle owning TikTok? Like I literally couldn't think of a less cool owner for TikTok in the

United States. But yeah, to me it's the new app thing is like if anybody can do it, it's TikTok, but I kind of doubt anybody can do it. Well, to your last point, David, I wonder if one of the questions, have is who do you trust less with your data? The Chinese government or Larry Ellison and Anderson Horowitz? And I'm not sure what the answer to that question is. It's a terrific.

It's kind of where we are. But I think they might be able to pull it off. If they have enough support, isn't it even going to be noticeable? Like, it's going to be something where it just happens on your device. You had an app and now it has been replaced in the app store by another app. You don't even have to sign in again, and you never know. Is it still good? Is the out of the algorithm suddenly putting some very political videos in your feed all the time, or is it the same as it was? I feel like now, even sometimes, like, the TikTok algorithm can vary wildly from one session to another. But if it's still the same TikTok and if it's not too much of a lift, I mean, this is the app where people were learning Chinese and downloading Red Notes, so they need their TikTok.

That's real. Yeah, I mean, we've seen a little bit of what it looks like when you have to get to a new app to do TikTok things. I deleted TikTok off my phone for the summer because I was like on leave and just wanted fewer reasons to look at my phone. And what that actually meant is I just ended up looking at YouTube shorts a lot all summer. YouTube shorts not good.

Don't do that. It's amazing how something with 20 years of data on what videos I like is so bad. Right? I feel the same way. It's like YouTube does the thing that Instagram used to do that would always drive me crazy where it's like if you watch one short about something, and you watch it for like 45 seconds,

something in the YouTube algorithm goes, oh, that's the stuff. And then it shows me 600 consecutive videos of that thing again until I'm like, I never want to see this again as long as I live. And now the whole shorts algorithm has been ruined for me because there's no way to start over, which is like the thing that TikTok has gotten so good at is the way that it, it explores and it bounces around and it changes and it moves. Like, there is something. still different about what TikTok is doing

that no even all the ones that have tried to copy it have not successfully copied it. So we'll see. I just want to say before we move on, I call bullshit on all of this. I don't think any of this is real. I don't think the deal is going to happen. I don't think TikTok is going to get banned. I think we are just going to live in this limbo state forever. If I'm wrong, please play me this clip of me being wrong because I will be thrilled to never talk about this again.

But I think all of this is nonsense. I think that's a reasonable prediction. Yeah. All right. I have I have two that we're going to just talk very quickly. One is I would just briefly like to yell at Qualcomm for its name crime of the week, which is that it took the Snapdragon 8 Elite and updated it to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. And if you're saying, David, what about Jen's 2, 3, and 4? I don't know. They don't exist. And here is Qualcomm's blog post explaining this stupid naming decision. It says it might might look like we skip generations, but the truth is simpler and more powerful.

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 marks the fifth generation of our premium 8 series platform since we introduced our new single-digit naming and visual identity. So while the naming may look new, it's actually a continuation of our established framework. That says nothing, it means nothing, and this is a bad name. I don't understand every couple of years they have to just like fully change up the naming scheme. And I'm not saying their earlier naming scheme was good. It was like only tech obsessives could follow what, what, it was 800 series. I don't know what numbers they were at, but they incremented them.

It was fine. I could say the eight, whatever, was higher than the eight other thing. Now I don't know what they're doing. They're just adding more words. So I just want to read you the names in order. Okay. There was the Snapchat 8, Gen 1, Snapchat 8, Gen 2, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, Snapdragon 8 Elite, and Snapdragon 8 Elite.

Gen 5. Good. Very good. Well, well done, marketing team. I'm glad you are all earning salaries. You're all fired. The next thing is a brief follow-up to last week. We had seen some info on the new nothing ear three earbuds.

We got the full reveal this week. And as it turns out, we predicted what the talk button on the side of the charging case was going to be almost exactly. It is primarily meant to be used when you have your headphones paired to your phone. and it's essentially just an external microphone. You can hold it to your mouth to make phone calls, which should sound better. You can do voice notes. You can do memos into the Essential Space AI app,

which we also predicted. Like, we crushed it, and I just think, good job, us. I also think this is a very good idea. That this idea, I had this thought when I saw somebody out the other day, ear pods in, or AirPods in, holding their phone up to their mouth, talking into their phone. And I had the unbelievable urge, to be like, that's not how it works.

Your phone is accomplishing nothing with you holding it like this right now. But it is true that when you have a microphone closer to your mouth, it is going to sound better. Like one way to sound better on a phone call is to put the microphone closer to your mouth. And something like this, when you want to sound good,

whether you're like on a Zoom call out in the world or you're making content or whatever, having a thing that is like attached to the device that you're already using that is just a sort of always on immediate external microphone, I think is very clever and I think people will use this. So kudos to nothing and also to us for getting it exactly right. I second that. Richard, what's your second one? My second one. Yes, YouTube. This week they had their big made-on YouTube event that they have pretty much every year. But for this time, it's been 20 years. They were talking about the next 20 years. And one of the things they were talking about is what might actually

get the lightning round a sponsor. If we get a sponsor later, we can use AI to dynamically insert the ads. So it'll just suddenly appear with new ads. And it's one of those things that's a little change, but also kind of changes things in a big way because we've seen how creators have gotten used to saying, oh, and my sponsor for this video is blah, blah, blah, blah. But they don't have to do that if they can just change it, like next week or next year when they get a different sponsor. And the way that you make money on YouTube is getting some pretty big revamps, the way that people use AI to do different things on YouTube to enable shopping. But one of the things that it seems like is that YouTube is in a pretty significant way

becoming a shopping channel. Yes. This seems to be every video platform's best idea about how to make money. It's like, what if we just let you buy the products shown on screen? And I'm not saying that's a bad idea or the wrong one or won't work. It's just the only idea anybody has. is like ads and also click to buy the cool wraparound sunglasses that somebody is wearing. Like, that's it. That's all we're doing here.

But I agree with you that I think the dynamic ads thing is a big deal. It's going to mean a lot of deals shift for creators away from like basically making sponsored videos to, like, if you can get to the point where you just make a lot of videos that get a lot of views, that's going to be much easier to monetize than it has been in the past. Or if you have an old video that suddenly becomes popular, now you can sell a new sponsorship on it. Right. And you're going to be able to make brand deals across your whole channel all at once.

And that's like there's just a lot of ways in which YouTubers only get to make a specific kind of deal. And now this is a different new kind of deal that I think might make everyone's viewing experience much worse. Probably. But what we've seen from YouTubers is that they respond very, very quickly and I think in maybe ways that we didn't expect to change is in the way that you make money. Why does everyone make 20 minute videos now? A lot of the different things that you see.

Take it mid-rolls. When the incentives change, their actions change. Totally. And this is like yet another push from YouTube into just being live television, right? Like there's a reason every 30-minute comedy is structured the way that it is, and it's because of ad breaks. And there's like everything is tuned to, you know, know, every X number of minutes, there's going to be an ad break. And we don't have control of what's there. We don't, we're not sort of seamlessly integrating it in. We just have to stop

the thing, but make sure you come back. And like you said, I suspect we're going to start to get a lot of, like, there's going to be cliffhangers six minutes into every YouTube video so that you keep watching after. Like, all of this stuff is going to happen. And you're exactly right that the people making this stuff have absorbed and morphed to what the platform wants and especially how the platform monetizes really fast. And so I think you're going to start to see this super quickly all over YouTube. Like the era of the 30-minute multi-camera comedy on YouTube legitimately might have just begun. It's going to be fascinating.

There's also a thing that you can do now with side-by-side ads in live streams, which I hate in principle and hope no one ever uses. But I'm confident that they will. I'm going to go next because Jake, I want you to go last. Okay. My next one is a fascinating bit of weird chip machinations, which is that Nvidia just invested $5 billion into Intel, essentially just by buying a bunch of Intel stock, but they have a plan between the two companies

to jointly develop chips both for PCs and for data centers using a lot of Nvidia's technology. So I think the idea is essentially like, Intel CPU, Nvidia, GPU in chips together. It's weird times for both of these companies.

Intel just sold part of itself to the government and part of itself to SoftBank. Invita made weird revenue sharing deals with the government. Like all these companies are just like tied up with each other in really bizarre ways.

But there's just a fascinating thing here where like I think, Richard, you're you're more, I would say, up on the PC chip game than I am. But my impression recently has been that AMD is like a real threat in the mirror of both Intel and NVIDIA, and this is a way for them to combine to try and push back. Is that a fair way to look at this? I think it really is. It's something where Intel has been behind, and NVIDIA has, at least in certain ways,

been ahead. But by combining, they do some of the things that AMD has been doing, where they can do both the CPU and the GPU. side of it that is so crucial to these AI applications. And having that integration. And also kind of on a personal computing level, gaming, if you can have a system where you're buying suddenly an Nvidia GPU slash GPU, that's quite different than what we've seen before.

And it feels like, I mean, again, we'll have to see how this actually nets out. But the idea of being able to buy like Nvidia integrated graphics in your high-end laptop seems like potentially a very exciting idea. Yeah. Also, poor Intel is just like this pathetic little company that no one wants to let die, but maybe you should just die. And if this company can't figure out how to turn it around now with the support of everybody trying to keep it alive no matter what the cost, I don't know what we do here. This does feel related to that, right? Like one of the problems Intel and its founders have had is customers are like, I don't know if you're going to be here.

Like, should I make a deal with you? And, you know, I say what you will about the U.S. government taking a stake in it for money that Intel was already being given. But some of that was meant to, I think, send a signal like, hey, Intel, they're going to be here. And I think Nvidia doing the same thing is kind of in the same ballpark, right? NVIDIA is saying, like, hey, we have some faith in Intel. Not only do we have faith in Intel, we have skin in the game now. So this feels pretty meaningful for Intel in terms of their ability to turn around.

They still have to do it. They still have to do the thing and make good products, which apparently has been a challenge for them. Yeah, it's hard work. But they just got a bunch of money, and they've got, you know, Nvidia's expertise. So that certainly should help. Yeah, it was funny. There was like a huge stock rally after this because like just rubbing elbows with

NVIDIA instantly makes your company exciting to a lot of people. Like, this one's going to be fascinating to watch Shakeout. Jake, end us with some sheer abject rage. Yeah, I mean, I know you guys are always saying, like, man, the screen on my refrigerator is not big enough. The screen of my refrigerator is one of the most valuable, useful screens in my house. I wish you could do more things. I love gaming on it.

I love being productive on it. Samsung loves that screen, too. And in good news for everyone everywhere, but specifically in the U.S. where this is happening. They're now going to be advertisements displayed on the screen of your Samsung smart fridge. Okay. That's actually like I'm like, this is galling. This is like really bad, right?

They sold you a product. This is a product that lives in a major room of your house. And now they are changing the product they sold you to put ads in your face. Like this should not be allowed. Number one, this is like a terrible product. feature number two. Stop putting screens on fridges. Number three.

That's all I got. Okay. Allow me to make the other case. Oh, all right. I'm just kidding. You're going to subsidize the fridge. Go the telly route. Zero cost fridge, but it's always showing advertisements.

It's always showing advertisements. But, okay, here's how you do the advertisements on my fridge. You make it, you use the camera on my Samsung fridge to take a picture of the inside of my fridge. And then you fill it with sponsored, products. Oh my God. And you're like, wouldn't it be great if you had all this stuff in your fridge? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I can just be like, boop, boop, boop, give me those, and it immediately Instacarts them to my house. That is a perfect advertising scheme that I would fall prey to. Prime energy drinks. Yeah, you're just like, oh, dope. I have some chocolate hog andaws in my

freezer, and it's like, yeah, you don't, but you could. They would get me. But no, I think this is a total disaster. And I also think in April, Jen Toey asked Samsung executives if there were going to be ads because, like, the smart person that she is, she looked at an enormous screen in a prominent place in your house and said, I bet they're going to sell ads on that. And the quote said, they don't currently have ads, and, quote, no plans regarding the inclusion of advertisements on AI home screens,

which we took back then as like, oh, thank goodness, they're not going to do ads. Now what I'm hearing is we still haven't figured it out, but we're going to do it for sure. We just, we don't have our plan yet. Yeah, no plans is not no. Correct. No plans is not no is a useful, useful thing. This is like, genuinely like throw out your fridge and get a new one possibilities here. If they're doing this ad in the wrong, like if you play an auto playing video ad on my fridge screen,

I'm just, like that thing is going either off of network or into the, for sale section of my next door app very quickly. You don't want going to the fridge for a snack to be like pumping gas? That's not what you love? So all the podcasts that I've been listening to recently have been advertising for Jordan Peel's new movie, which is about football players. And it's this very like creepy low voice. He kind of sounds like Harrison Ford talking about it.

And I'm just imagining every time I walk into my kitchen, it's like, coming this fall. I'm just like, I'm going to walk into my fridge at 2.0. o'clock in the morning and there's just going to be some scary person on my fridge to promote Jordan Peel's new movie and I'm going to, I'm going to throw my fridge through a window. The end. This is the worst idea of all time. And I hope Samsung just immediately walks it back because it should. Jake, you're not mad enough about this.

I know. I've just been so pro fridge ads. Just all the time, I'd be like, the money they're leaving on the table. They put a screen in everybody's kitchen. No. Yeah. It's really on us for not seeing this coming. I mean, to be clear, I don't think we've been all that pro fridge.

I know there are people out there. They have screens in their fridges. I don't know how they got there. Is anyone using them? Are they valuable to you? I don't have a screen on my fridge. But, yeah. I think don't trust Samsung with that is the lesson.

Yeah. That said, if you work for telly and you. You decide to go ahead with your refrigerator. Jake would like some credit. All right, we have gone way over. There's too much happening. If everybody could just stop for like a minute and not do all of your news in September,

it would be great. We would be very grateful. There's more coming, by the way. There's an Amazon event scheduled for September 30th, so in two weeks. We think we're going to see the next generation of Echo stuff now that Alexa Plus exists, and now that Panos Panay,

who used to run Windows and hardware at Microsoft, is running the stuff over there. that should be interesting. There's some more Google stuff coming. There's just a lot going on this fall. So we'll be here a lot, but also if everybody could stop, that'd be great. But for now, we should get out of here. Richard, Jake, thank you for being here with me.

This was a delight. Neli is off doing God only knows what. We'll see him next time there are speech crimes, so presumably very soon. If you have questions about any of this or other things you want us to talk about or feelings about whatever is going on in the world, you can always email us at vergecast at the verge.com. You can call us 866 Verge1.1. one is the hotline.

There are an increasing number of people who want to get in the Slack room that automatically pulls in all the voicemails we get on the hotline. So keep them coming. We love the hotline. The Vergecast is Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. It's produced by Travis Larchuk, Brandon Kiefer, and Eric Gomez. We will be back next Tuesday. We're going to talk about YouTube.

We're going to do some more takes. I have feelings I need to get out. We're going to talk about them. See you then. Rock and roll.