The Vergecast - Microsoft Build 2017, Echo Show, and a Cortana speaker

Episode Date: May 12, 2017

Welcome back. This week’s episode of The Vergecast comes after Microsoft Build 2017, so Nilay and Dieter bring in Ashley Carman and first-time guest Chaim Gartenberg, two of our great Circuit Breaker reporters, to fill us in on what happened. The cast also discusses Amazon’s newest addition to the Echo lineup, the Echo Show, and what’s happening with these voice assistant products. There’s a lot more in the show, so listen to it all to get all the scoops. 01:38 - Microsoft Build 2017 20:38 - Windows Store news 22:57 - 10 S — lockdown 29:25 - Microsoft’s Story Remix app is Windows Movie Maker on steroids 24:17 - Harman Kardon teases its Cortana-powered speaker 37:13 - Amazon officially unveils touchscreen Echo Show 55:12 - Ashley’s weekly segment “Echo Gadget” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast. The flagship audio experience of Theverge.com. I think podcasts are over. Yeah. And it's about audio experiences now. Wherever you are. Podcast is like an old word. Do you have an iPod answer truthfully that you use every day?

The answer is no. I wish I had an iPod. Your phone, your iPhone is technically one-third an iPod. It's an iPod. It's an iPod. It's an iPod of phone and a revolutionary internet communicator. Yeah. It really undersold that internet communicator.

Anyway, Dieter Bone is in the studio with me. Hello, yes. I love it when that happened. You can't tell because it's an audio experience, but I'm right here looking at everybody in the face. And that's why we're going to complete one another sentences with even less delay than usual. Ashley is here as well. Hi, Ashley. Hello, hi.

And special first-time, verge cast appearance. What? Superstar, Circuit Breaker writer, tech writer, general man about town. Haim Gartenberg is here. Hi. You know he's a superstar because he's humble. He treats all the little people nice. So here is a truth, a fact.

Dieter and I have been holed up with the other editors of The Verge at our sort of mid-year hangout, talk about how things are going. So we have no idea what's going on. A little bit of an idea. We read the site. We're reading the site, but we're not like in the mix, which is fun. I actually love those moments when we just get to read the site. But there's a lot of news this week.

Tons. Tons and tons and tons of news. Most importantly, today, this very day in which we're recording, Microsoft Build occurred. Tom Warren is out in Seattle. There's a bunch of news about Windows. For example, they didn't come up with another name. So they're just going to call it the fall creators update. Creators now are now on seasons.

Do you create in the summer, spring, or fall? Here's what I thought was going to happen at Build. Nothing. Yeah. Like a couple things. I had some expectations. I expected a couple small things. But they just had the laptop event by education.

And they're going to have apparently another event in Shanghai or Taiwan. Where is it going to be later on? There's going to be another one. Yeah. Yeah. And so builds in the middle. I was like, oh, well, they'll do some stuff. But this is going to be really developer focused.

And they probably won't go like crazy. But no, I think they went crazy. I think that I think a lot of things about what they announced. Microsoft is in the unique position of being quietly one of the most interesting companies in tech because they lost in mobile so all they can do is make Windows crazy and they are just all in on how crazy Windows can be. But Hyam, you and Ashley are actually covering the method. You want to run through what happened?

So the biggest thing is Microsoft is really doubling down on putting windows everywhere. They've been doubling down on that since 1994. I mean, even more so. In the sense that they don't have a phone platform that crashed and burned badly.

So the only option left is for them to infiltrate basically everyone else's. So the new stuff is... So you're saying Windows is a virus. Yes. In an ideal world... Frank Shaw is listening. Microsoft's wonderful head of PR.

A good virus. It's a helpful, a helpful virus. It's like toxoplasmosis that makes you love cats. It may kill you eventually, but in the meantime, you have a fuzzy cat. But that means Cortana and everything. And there's this new links that will link Cortana to everything else. I need to. So you have the timeline stuff, the cloud clipboard that will bring your Windows experience with you where you go.

So when you finish a document on your computer and you go to your computer and you go to, your phone, your phone will pop up a message asking if you want to continue that document through Gortana. So it's a very like hacky sort of Apple's continuity thing, but it's one that keeps you within Microsoft's ballpark. And it transcends operating system a little bit if they can pull it off. I mean, we should talk about timeline a lot. I think timeline is might be hackier than continuity because they don't own the phone platform, but it is way more interesting to me. Because continuity, like, I never use it when I'm on an iPhone. Like sometimes the icon pops up, most of the time It doesn't.

It's like, meh. But the idea that timeline is a straight up long history of everything I've done is kind of exciting. Also a little terrifying. But like on Mac. Get into it a little bit more. What is timeline? Yeah.

Okay. So I was getting there. On a Mac, you know what's a winding journey on the podcast. It looks like, right? You swipe up, you see all your windows, right? What timeline does is it still shows you all your windows, but then as you can just scroll down to see all the windows you close. and all the stuff you were doing before.

So you get your multitasking right there. But then there's like your history tasking. Yeah. I don't know what to call it. States. States. And then they like sync that to via the Cortana app, which is a whole thing to your other devices and to your phones.

And so in the demo. I'm going to use the hell out of this. In the demo, they were actually using a Windows phone. So it looked great. Yeah. So you're like working on a power. point and you close it on your computer and then you pick up your phone and it's like hey you were

just working on that do you want to open it again or are you working on one PC and you go to the other PC and Cortana is like hey do you want to look at this stuff that you were just looking at so it's saving all this usage and state information off of your PC as you use it they're calling it Windows Graph which is something I want to unpack in a little bit because that's fascinating to me and then they're using they're offering you through Cortana as an app on your phone or as a system level service on other Windows devices, the ability to restore those states across everything. That's a big, it's a big move.

It's also, there's also a bunch of other, like, Windows stuff happening. That's, like, one of the biggest announcements at Build, but there's a bunch of others. And I just want to make sure we list on it. Can you tell us how the clipboard syncing works? Because I think that's really smart or, like, clever or something. They're doing it through, like, the Swift Key keyboard, right? Yeah. Yeah, which is wild.

It integrates the keyboard, and it's just powered directly into iOS and Android, powers right into Office. So do you have to be running Swift Key as your keyboard on iOS? If you want to use it in a non-Microsoft app, I imagine, yeah. But it's interesting because a lot of people use Swift Key. Yeah. Outside of, like, direct ones made by Apple and Google. It's beginning to make sense why Microsoft bought all the little iOS apps that it bought. It's starting to, like, figure out ways that those things form an ecosystem is a meta-layer over the Apple

ecosystem. Yeah. It's very similar to Google's approach in a lot of ways from back in the day, which is to make services and apps and not, or even like a layer deeper than Google. It's not even to make the services. It's to make the apps that live everywhere and then have everyone else supply the services and the hardware. And then like through it. Like the best email app on iOS is Outlook. The best calendar app on iOS is probably Outlook. And if Microsoft can replicate that with other stuff and tie it in with Cortana. I'm really mad that you brought this up. Like I'm furious at you.

What? Because you reminded me that Sunrise is dead. Sorry about that. You got to look. But it's not as good. It is, it is, it,

uh, some, outlook is like sunrise, if Sunrise was constantly bothering you about not visiting, it's like, you know, like you have that friend who's like, I was like,

come over there. And you're like, I don't want to go over there? I didn't have that friend. I didn't have any friends. I mean, must be clear. I was eating lunch by myself.

So I was sort of depressing. So I'm going to make you think about death. And I'm like, Deeter, I'm going to make you think about not having friends. No, but it's sunrise with more nagging about the Microsoft ecosystem. I don't like that. That's Microsoft strategy. Buy these good apps and then have them nag you about the Microsoft ecosystem. Well, isn't that everyone's strategy?

But what we were talking about right before we came on the show was all of Microsoft's competitors, if you grant, and this will be annoying, but if you grant that the most important, at least in the U.S. computing platform that people carry around is their phone, particularly the iPhone and iOS, then all of Microsoft's competitors, their big competitors, have home screen icons. So obviously Amazon has the Amazon app. People use the hell out of it. Facebook has a variety of apps, particularly the big blue Facebook app and Instagram. Google has YouTube. I think Google also comes out you through Safari, which is really interesting. Microsoft has to be there. And I think their whole thing is, well, if you use a Windows PC, we're going to ask that you install Cortana, and suddenly your Windows PC is coming at you through this app on your home screen.

That's a big move for them. Well, also suddenly, you are already in Cortana. You should just use Cortana, and so do Siri. Yeah, and then you're just going to start using Bing. Yeah. And then the dream of Balmer will come alive. I think that's hard. Like, those are hard bets,

but they're really interesting bets. And also, I think Windows, as a desktop computing platform, they announced a new design language for it called Fluent that extends all the way into their HoloLen stuff. It kind of looks like a lot like material design. It's like if material design ran into Metro and Vista, like the glassiness of Vista and the depth of material design, like the base of Metro.

The fact that it runs unmixed reality is the thing that gets, me excited. Like, material design has layers. So, like, this thing sits on top of this thing and you move them around, like digital paper. That's the whole idea of material design. That's Microsoft basically just bit it. But it's more interesting for Microsoft to have layers of a UI. And, like, if you look at the more recent piece that we just put up about, like, the email app and everything else, there's, like, hella drop shadows. Like, crazy, like, giant shadows everywhere. And you're like, this looks like crap. I wouldn't want this on my screen. No, but you

definitely want it in mixed reality. You definitely want those drop shadows that give the thing a sense of physicality in place. And so, to me, fluent is a unified design language across a desktop and HoloLens and a VR headset or a mixed reality headset. And that is incredibly smart because they take the idea of make a digital object a physical thing and then they take it to the place where digital objects are like closest to being like physical things, which is mixed reality. And for them to have developed a design language where they can maintain some kind of consistency across Windows and mixed reality is really smart because you look at classic Windows, the classic Metro design. The whole thing was designed originally on the Zoom and then for Windows phone. RIP.

And it was designed to be incredibly flat, quote unquote digital native, no layers, just like just black flatness. And it was like really smart for the time. But there is no way I would want to use that sort of style of things out in the virtual reality or mixed reality or augmented reality or whatever. What's the fourth one? There's augmented, mixed, virtual and something else. Actual. Actual. No, this is the real world.

Whatever. Anyway, I think it's really smart. I'm really hype about the stuff they announced to build today. Relentless reality. Like, this is, tell me how much, like, look at what they're doing with their desktop OS and tell me that. Sierra on the Mac is a tenth of exciting is this. Just in terms of like the ideas of what they're trying to achieve. The movement part of this is what's really cool to me.

So they have all these, they have five different aspects that come into their design language. We don't have to get into all the design. No, name all five. Name all five from memory. From memory. Okay, here we go. Oh, man. It's okay.

It's a pre-recorded audio show. No one will ever know. Okay. If you actually want to know what it is, it's light, depth, motion, material, and scale. I like that they snuck in material is one of the things, even though Google's is called material. They're like, you have material? That's just one part.

It's our world. Anyway, keep going. But the motion is what's really cool to me and kind of goes with your saying, Deeter, is we have a post up on the site now where you can see we took screenshots of pretty much everything we could find in this preview video. And one of the screenshots we captured, and there's three different views

is a desktop that some people were speculating is like a holographic desktop. And it looks awesome. There's so many different layers to it. I actually just looking even at the flat bit of it, I'm like, I want to reach out and just be like, I want to grab it. I want to touch it. And it's clearly thinking about that. And it's really cool.

Yeah. I think this is like a wild speculation. But if they're going to do it in mixed reality, if they start doing it with their tablets. So the tablets have like some motion tracking a little bit where you move them around and like... Like tango. Like tango. But tango out in the world, but like actually on the screen so you're moving the thing and the interface of elements move, there's a little. There's a little bit of that going on on the iPhone.

It's for show. But if they start to find ways to make it useful, that's really cool. I'm into it. I was just going to say something about this design. I totally lost me to thought. You want to talk about graph? They call it the Microsoft Graph. Yeah, it's because it's made a Graph paper, I think.

No. So, okay, Microsoft Graph. So there's all these crazy Windows stuff happening. It's really interesting. I do think there's a big piece of it where they didn't, They don't have a platform. They can't announce a bunch of updates to Windows phone and have anybody care. They can announce a bunch of updates to Windows and have a lot of people care because everything they do to make Windows better makes, like, work better.

And that's Microsoft's whole mission. It's like make you more productive. So they're layering all these crazy new features onto Windows. Graph to me, graph is a really loaded term in the tech industry. Yeah. So Facebook has a source. social graph. That's Facebook's, like, value in the world is the social graph that it builds. Your connections to friends, what you like, what you scroll past, the video data, when you watch

videos on Facebook, all that stuff becomes your social graph. And Facebook can use that data to do whatever it wants to do through elections and governments around the world. Google has a knowledge graph, which is its map of the web and your activity on the web. And that is their proprietary data set. Actually, Microsoft often complains that Google should be like broken up or heavily regulated, particularly by European governments, because

their knowledge graph is so superior that people will use Google and make it better and not use Bing. So Bing is at a disadvantage because of the value of Google's knowledge draft. This is actually an argument they make to like European authorities. When you make that argument in the United States, people like, they're like,

whatever, compete in Europe. They're like, oh, that's interesting. Let us take a month long holiday to think about it We'll eat cheese And think about this I don't know why I'm rushing now Anyway

The whole thing For Microsoft to roll out a product That it's calling Windows Graph Has an enormous set of implications We don't know what they are But it has this enormous set of implications That what it's going to start doing And in the video, in the demos

If you go watch the video of the demo Joe Belfiore is on stage and he's like opening a document, and then he goes to another computer, and he says, Cortana, our AI in the cloud is going to show you stuff from the Windows graph. All of that implies they are taking your data, your user data from the computer, they're putting it in the cloud, and they're doing something with it to then show you some other stuff. Now, that something could be nothing.

It could just be AI marketing babble. And all they're really doing is saying, hey, our cloud service noticed that you had this document. document over, open over here, and we're going to ask you if you want to open it over here, which is basically all continuity does, right? Apple sends your stuff in the cloud, you open another device. But if it's actually AI and it's actually a graph, that means they're scanning and analyzing your data or aggregating your data and analyzing a huge set of it, which is what you actually want to do for machine learning. And that, to me, becomes like controversial and fascinating and super interesting all at once. Right. Implicit.

Well, leader, that's... Leave that voice crack in, Andrew. Implicit in the word graph, especially when you look at the knowledge graph on Google, but also the social graph isn't just, here's a giant corpus of data that we can use to mine stuff. It's we actually understand the contents of this data. So it's easier to explain with Google.

With Google, they don't just have a knowledge graph of, like, NBA players and their names and their heights. They know what it means that this NBA player is this tall. Does it mean that they're better? That means they're better. Oh. Yeah. They can compare the height of an NBA player to Tom Cruise because, like, you could say is so-and-so

taller than Tom Cruise, and they don't just have a bunch of information you can specifically ask for, but they can do stuff with that information and, like, string together more complex things together, work for more complex queries. And if Microsoft's purporting to do the same thing with literally everything you do on your computer, that's interesting and terrifying. Right. Like, do you need an incognito mode for using your computer so that Microsoft services don't see whatever you might be doing? He's never used Cortana on your iPhone. We haven't even hit like half of the stuff they announced today.

Yeah. Keep going. What else is it? No, I don't think it's don't use Cortana or your iPhone. It's like if you have a Windows computer, is Microsoft watching you? Like, that's a question that's now open because of the graph. Yep. Like, do you need a button that says stop watching me? Yeah. If it's by default, opting. Right. Yeah. Anyway, what else? By the way, we don't know the answers to any of those questions, but just naming it graph and then suggesting that an AI is going to help you interpret that graph and put it elsewhere, I think opens the door to many, many questions.

What else? Oh, they have new VR controllers. Yeah, which seem cool. What's cool about them? They're VR motion controllers. They're very accurate. They have, like, individual finger sensing, I think. Okay.

Oh, you don't need cameras. You don't need cameras. The cameras are on the headset. They're on the headset. All the lights like point at the headset. So you can, like, go into another room and not have to set up an entire VR cave. Mm-hmm. They're also, like, cheap.

Oh, really? The entry-level bundle for the cheapest headset and the controllers is, I think, $400 from Acer. There's one Acer and one H.P, I think. I mean, they're pushing. Yeah, Acer. They're pushing into virtual reality is really interesting because they refuse to say virtual reality. They only say mixed reality to mean everything. I think Adi was like, you're just making this more confusing.

But they're pushing it really hard. It's one of the things that they do that in particular Apple doesn't do. And Google with Daydream, I think, is, wamp, right? It's weird to me that Google doesn't push Daydream harder. I think that they wanted to, and Samsung was like, no, thanks. Yeah. And so, like, they're on, like, a bunch of random phones and who cares? Can you buy a pixel right now?

This is my aunt. You can? Let's find out. What's angrily tight. Are you going to buy another pixel on the Vergecast? If I can get one. Anyway, their big push in a virtual reality is Ashley was saying they're doing a bunch of really interesting UI stuff to make that actually a platform is something other than games, which I think is fascinating. And then these controllers, their whole thing is you can buy a virtual reality headset for a must like $3.99.

Yeah. And you buy the controllers, you don't need a camera. So suddenly this becomes something that you might actually use. And you don't need a phone. You don't need a phone. Yeah. Which is awesome. But I think you need a computer.

for the 399? You need a computer. Not for the holidays, but you need a computer for the VAR-Hattons. So it's different. But computers are better than phones. If there's one thing that Vergecast listeners know, so phones are stupid and giant computers are better. It's $3.99 for the controllers,

and the headset is still way cheaper than basically any other full-scale VR thing on the market, and you don't need a set of cameras. Yeah, which is great. Yeah. So there's Windows Store News too, right? There is Windows Store News. iTunes is coming to the Windows Store.

Okay, wait, the audience literally, when they announced it, everyone goes, ooh. It was the most audible reaction of the entire presentation. The 5-inch pixel is out of stock. Ah, what are you doing? Anyway, sorry. So Tom made a good point, which is iTunes is still that people use. I use iTunes all the time. Why do you use iTunes?

I have an iPhone and I use Apple Music. And when you combine those two, you're left with. iTunes. I use Apple music on my iPhone, and I have a computer, too. If you want to listen to music on your computer, what do you do? I pull on my phone. But iTunes is one of the most searched apps for in the store. They didn't need to put it there before because who cares, but they're doing Windows 10S, which is locked to the store and locked in a bunch of other really interesting ways. Yeah, we've got to talk about that. And so if you're going to sell a Surface laptop and you don't have iTunes in your store, people, you have what with the phone, we used to call the Instagram,

problem, which is people would download a Windows phone. That's how you buy it. They would purchase a Windows phone, and they would go to download Instagram, and it wouldn't be there. So here, they're trying to solve that problem up front. It's just funny that they're big, like, it's in the store. It was like, Apple is here with iTunes. Everyone's favorite app that never makes your computer slow.

They need it for the iPhone, right? I think it's worth talking about 10S. We talked about the last thing. But actually, the other entree into that is tell us what the other thing is that's coming to the Windows store. So other than iTunes, the other thing coming is Linux. There are three Linux distros that are going to be available to just

download on the Windows store and run straight as a Windows windowed version of the operating system on your desktop. Ubuntu, Susi Linux, and Fedor, which are three of the biggest ones. Are they going to run it on 10S? I thought it was... I don't know. I think it's Susi. I believe you.

I said it on stage. Okay. That's it then. But that's a deep... In my head, I always pronounce it sous. but especially for those running on the 10S for education. Like, this is a big thing. Are they virtualized? I don't think they're virtualized. I think they can just run natively side by side in like a window.

It's very, so the tent, we're just going to get into it. Okay, no, so the deal with 10S. We're just going to get into it. If you listen to the show, you probably already know. Deere and I have been trying to get into it for like a day. It is deeply locked down in a way that is very, very similar to iOS. You can't pick a different browser. If you do manage to install a different browser,

if Chrome ever comes to it, it can't run a different rendering engine. It has to run Microsoft's browser rendering engine, just like iOS. You can't install stuff outside the store unless you pay the $50 to upgrade. And, of course, Microsoft takes a 30% cut of all apps. Wait, the $50 to upgrade

unlocks the whole... It just turns into Windows Pro. Right. So if you pay the $50 to upgrade, you can use... You can do all the other stuff. Right. It's not like Windows RT,

where you're stuck with whatever ARM apps were in the store. It is, unless you pay the $50. But it's a full... But it's a full desktop computer. It's still running full Intel hardware. It's just software locked. But it's locked down in very, very similar ways

to the way iOS is locked down. So my question... But what's fascinating about Linux is one of the ways iOS is locked down is you cannot install an app that runs code. Right. Like you can't install an app for its other JavaScript.

You can't install it. like an app that will let you create apps or like do you can't run arbitrary code inside your app. Well, there's like Swift Playgrounds. Right. Come on. You can write baby apps and Swift. This is the first like thing that we've heard since they announced with those 10S where Microsoft Windows 10S is significantly more like liberal and open in its app store policies than iOS is. I think it's strange that they're going to let you run a full-on Linux distro in a non-virtualized environment.

That's a question. Yeah. Question mark. It's not entirely clear how it's working. But they won't let Google run a web browsing engine, but you can just light up Linux and go. It's weird, right? I don't know. Here's what I got.

I can tell you that it will allow you to run command line developer tools, and it will have the same command line utilities as a native Ubuntu environment. So the open questions here. And Tom is ad built on Windows 10 Pro right now, but you got to go through a whole developer tool process. You have to install a Windows subsystem for Linux, which is an optional component, which is a one-click install, and then you can download them from the store. Sounds to me like that shit's running native code, my friend. It sounds to me like there's an open question here about whether this will run on Tennis at all. Right. Well, I've been trying to find out.

I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, that's been like the outstanding question, and we don't necessarily have an answer. but if it can, that's big because a lot of STEM education is focused on using Linux for coding. Compsi, engineering, math, people run Linux. Yeah, yeah. And that's big for an education device to make it this easy to do. I think the big question is like, is this going to run on tennis or do you need the full version?

So Tom is at build? As I rattle off these random questions I don't have the answer to. He's listening to us somehow magically. I want you to know that I'm also quietly slacking them to Tom. It's a thing that's happening in real time on this show as we record. The graph question is something that I want us to aggressively pursue. So Tom is actually asking those questions right now. The Linux thing is a little deeper and walkier.

We'll try to follow up on that as well. You know, there's a real genuine giant clipy at build, like in a suit. There's a thing. All of these things, Windows everywhere, Cortana helping you out of the blue, the even even fluent design. All of those things are old Microsoft ideas in shiny new clothes, right?

Like, Cortana is just like, it looks like you had a document open. Like, that's fucking Clippy. Right? It's just, it's like Clippy, only they're like, it's AI now. That's what it is. Was Clippy always AI?

Ooh. Plot twist. Fluent design is like this arrow. That's the original vision of Vista. like a full 3D desktop where things can live on different layers. That is the original Vista demo rule. Here's what I'm most proud of my... That never happened.

And I really hope they did this. It happened like one superpower computer and everyone else was like, yeah, no. And they turned it off. They announced Metro as a design language. Everyone loved it. And they didn't pay the grocery store that owned the trademark on the word Metro. And they had to kill the name. And they have been lost in a sea of bad names ever since.

And I just desperately hope someone asked the line. lawyer before they're like, it's called Fluent Design, because there's undoubtedly another grocery store out there that's going to fuck I'm up. That's the story of Microsoft's name. Pay the grocery store. But Fluent Design is a throwback to all the things they used to do. What was the third

one? Windows everywhere. Putting windows everywhere and like layering features onto Windows Tom had a scoop a couple days ago that they're going to do Windows Home Hub, which turns like dormant Windows computers into voice

activated speakers. That is the most classic Microsoft, like, you're interested in Amazon Echo? What if your Windows PC could do that instead? Sort of worse. Is that better? They're just like,

they're the same Microsoft ideas. I think they're expressed in a much better way, and they're much more interesting in a certain way. Yeah. But like the throwback nature of, particularly the Cortana clipy thing, is, were you working on something on your other computer?

I can open that right up for you. Like, is that going to be super useful? I don't know. Everyone misses Clippy. So, this is the stuff. I think that's a rose-tinted glasses thing. Yeah, I don't think we've come all the way around. All right, I'm going to read an ad.

Speaking of the Echo, is there anything left, talk about? There's the Cortana speakers. Oh, that's a good segue. Wait, next thing. You want to talk about that? And there's also the pen. And there's the pen stuff. There's the pen stuff.

Let's do the pen stuff. And there's the story remix. Story remix is like, okay, so tell us what story remixes. So story remix is... Is it super obvious that Deere and I crammed like little nerds before this show and are now eager to show the teacher that we know what we learned? I'm like, wow, they really must have done well in college. Yeah, we had flashcards for 30 minutes and we definitely learned everything before the test.

You can't even tell. So story remix is not that Microsoft. is adding stories to Windows. Which is a huge bummer. Which is unfortunate, but somehow the company will survive. Used to have a thing where little heads would pop up near the task bar? That's actually, that is this Windows update where you're getting, you're getting like little chat heads on your task bar now.

Okay. That's the spring creator's update. Every season comes with a new set of chat heads. Is next year going to be like not a creator's update? Is next year going to be an innovator? update? Because you can't do this spring creators update again.

Yeah. Or just do the spring 2018 creators update. We're going to get a different buzzword every year. Anyway, story, whatever it's called. Story mix. Story remix is actually the most

creator-oriented thing in the fall creators update. It's a little bit like if you took the automated videos from Google Photos and you kind of combined it with Windows Movie Maker

into this weird amalgation. is this is what would come out? Yeah. So you can just take pictures and dump them in there and it'll create you automatic videos like Google Photos. But there's like a lot of editing stuff that you can do also on top of that up to and including full like 3D stuff from some of the 3D stuff from the Spring Creators Update will be implemented in. So they have like a thing where like there's a kid running on a playground and they turn it into a kid running from a dinosaur that's just been seamlessly dropped in in a full CGI environment. Right. it's like little baby Snapchat filters in AR.

Yeah. Right? Because like a Snapchat, you can attach an emoji to a thing and then it'll follow the thing or other. So it's like that with full 3D with full 3D rendering in a video app and also the automatic videos from Google Photos. A lot of it's going to come down to how it actually works. Yeah. When people can try it out. But it could mean, it could be like interesting.

Like there's a whole like YouTube thing of the classic, you know, blue title with the white text. Oh my God. Windows Movie Maker opening. And now all that white text on blue opening will be animated dinosaurs. Animated dinosaurs. That's the default. So Ashley, you're really into I know the filters and the AR stuff. Like the person I know who's most up on what Snapchat is doing in the AR is actually.

I'm always up on the filters. It's me. I have a real question. Like I don't, I used to use I movie a lot. It was like a thing. Like I have all my photos. I used to see eye photo a lot. I'm like, I have my photos.

I'm using my PC. I'm going to edit them. and now I just use either Google Photos or I do all the sort of movie creation inside of the apps that let you do it in real time. Is there like an inch, is there like a gateway from doing that to I'm going to download video on my computer and do some AR filters there and then send it back out again? Well, with like Story Remix and also I think this kind of goes in with Apple Clips and then you also have like, Chaya mentioned the Google Photos and also Apple's photo montages. Oh my God. I think that honestly, this is all just for kids. Like YouTube creators, I'm sorry, but the YouTube game has changed.

Like, if you're using movie maker and you're trying to be an influencer on YouTube, it's not going to happen for you. Like, wow. That's the podcast, everybody. It's not going to go well for you. But it's fun for kids and it's fun for moms. Yeah, I was going to say, this thing seems designed for moms and dads. Yeah. Even the demo was a dad being like,

we gotta send this to mom, you're riding a tricycle. That's pretty much... You're never going to make it kid. That was actually the exact demo in that voice. Yeah. I think to me it's like using the pen to draw on the soccer ball and then turning the soccer ball into like a fireball. Yeah.

Super dad move. Is it? Is it any move? That's a kid move. Like, yeah. I would have done that when I was a kid. But the steps to do that is like they were showing the other demo was the soccer game and it was we took.

all the video from all the parents and put them in here. And then it made one giant video. And that just seems still like many, many steps. And to me, the whole, the whole momentum of this industry, like the movie editing consumer industry, is removing all the steps between you capturing, editing, and sharing. And so, like, clips to me is another, I think Casey has tweeted, why did Apple make clips like 500 times? It's a step between you and the share, and I think any app that fits in that zone either needs to do a lot or not exist.

I don't know. I'm battling. There's one more thing. There's pen stuff. The pen works better in more places. Dan, the resident surface user, was psyched about the pen stuff. Basically, Microsoft. That's why Dan's on the show today.

Dan, if you're listening, that was your mistake. He was so excited, guys. He's so excited. And then Cortana's speaker, the Harmon. Cardin made one or something? I don't understand that at all. They're making one in the fall. They're making one out yet.

There's no price of release date other than fall, but it is a Cortana Amazon Echo. It looks like an Amazon Echo. I don't understand this. Like, I get that you want to be in the game and you have an assistant and your Microsoft and like you just let people do stuff. What is the differentiation between that and the Echo? Like, I know what Google's differentiation is. The speaker is better because it's a Harmon Cardin.

The speaker is actually better. It has. But Lenovo has that same argument. You can't see this, but I just pointed. at Hymne and looked at Nelai. I was like, see? Yeah, and the thing is... Amazon speaker has one mid-range and one tweeter.

The Harmon Cardin has three of each is one of the main differentiators. What's up? It also has Skype built in, which is interesting in the context of the Amazon Echo View with the whole... Show. Damn it. Echo Show. We'll get in that a second. Okay.

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or do they find the tiles with the phones? They find their wallets. Ooh. Yeah. Tile loyalists, though, have to get you to use tile because tile works, the more people who use tile, the more useful it becomes everyone who uses it because it's

a crowd mesh, Bluetooth. I think they call it mesh GPS or something. something where it doesn't use GPS, but anyone who has tile and Bluetooth open can sense other tiles. Yeah. So if you leave your wallet at the office, but I have tile, without giving me your personal information and vice versa, my phone will see that your tile is there and then let you know where it is.

I'm definitely putting tiles everywhere around you all. I know where Deeter is. Okay, let's talk about the Echo Show. So, Ashley, do you want to walk us to that one? Yeah. So this week, you know, lots of us love the Amazon Echo, but Amazon has decided that we're sick of using our voices for everything and we need a screen. So this week, was it two weeks ago that Amazon introduced the Echo look? Yes.

Okay, that was the camera that's supposed to tell you if you look good depending on your clothes and give you recommendations. This is now the echo. The most troubling Echo of all time. Yeah. This is now the Echo show that introduced this week, which is now. cost $230. It is basically just a tablet speaker. It has basically a screen with Echo.

It doesn't look good. The more I look at the pictures of it. I've seen products that look like this before. And actually there's one company who's particularly very enraged about this. Really? Which company? Nucleus. Ooh, yeah.

I got a very angry email about Amazon from them. But it's kind of like supposed to be the New Age intercom, I think, as well. Yeah. Because it makes calls to other echoes and you can intercom within the house. So in addition to a screen, you can make calls now within the house, but also to others. Including the app on your phone. It all has to go through the app. You can't just call my phone number.

I have to have the Amazon app, the Alexa app installed on my phone for you to call me. So if you're like in a family, you might do that. But this is another example of we got to put another app on your screen. Yeah. And like I'm telling you that is just becoming. the game for the big companies. Like, Amazon tried to make you a phone. That was a bad idea. Didn't go well. But how did it? Didn't, didn't build well. I just said an understatement. It went the other way. But how do we put an app on your phone,

particularly your iPhone? And how do we start to capture the activities you do? So I think that's an interesting piece of this. The other thing that I think is really interesting is it doesn't run an operating system that is like a good normal operating system so it just runs Alexis skills it's not Fire OS which you were saying it I think it's genius I think if they had put

like FireOS or Android on this thing it would have been a massive failure because people would have gone and been like where are my tablet apps that would have had the Instagram problem they would have had the apps there but then they would have used it like a tablet and then it was a thing sitting on your counter

they could have made this thing with like a removable tablet that would be interesting there's a thousand ways to do this kind of thing strictly limiting it to like doing it the Alexa way with Alexa skills. It means that it's not going to be able to do as much, but you're also going to expect way less out of it. Because you expect a tablet to be as good as an iPad.

And as good as Amazon's tablets are are just not. And if they had made a removable tablet, like, you would have gone to use a thing. And the tablet wouldn't have been there. You would have been pissed off. And it would have run FireOS, which would have like had a crash or had a bad app on it. Right.

And so by stripping all of that away, they lower expectations from consumers, and they make sure the thing actually works. And I think it's a way smarter strategy than just putting an app store on there. Because if they put an app store on there, all the apps are designed for tablets. And so you would have stood there and touched on it and been pissed off at it. And some of the apps are bad. And this way they just, like, you don't expect any of that out of this thing. And they could also make it cheaper because they don't need a good processor in it. I think what they are open up to is.

Hyman and I are just like, yep. we agree with each other makes sense I think they open themselves up to comparisons with phones I actually think it's it's very smart to not put the full on tablet experience there

that people have tablets they actually have really large phones that are probably almost as big as the screen in this thing but once you have a screen the screen needs to be responsive and if the screen is one second or one millisecond

not as responsive as your phone you're not going to use this much whereas you I don't think I have never perceived a lack of responsiveness from a voice device, except for Siri when, but that's like Siri. It's like, Siri do stuff. It's like, I don't, what if I don't?

All the time with Siri. But the echo, like, you don't know when your echo is slow. So I think there's like a big danger zone where if you talk to it and the screen doesn't light up right away. Yeah. All of that is there. I mean, with the phone comparison, it's like, when the echo first came out, that was the one thing to me.

My parents love their echo. and it was always me, why can't I just say call, you know, dad or whatever and have it call? And now we're getting that functionality, but I don't have the Amazon app on my phone, or the Alexa app, whatever. So I know in the future my mom's going to call me and say, can you download the app so that I can call you off the echo? And it's like, ugh, I don't want to do that. And I feel like Amazon is really putting people in a weird position. It's like giving us half the functionality we want. and I just don't know if it's going to work out.

I don't think they can give you the full functionality. It's possible. Microsoft's doing it with Skype on the Echo knockoff. We'll be able to call through Skype regular phone numbers. Yeah. Amazon doesn't have that infrastructure. They don't. Right.

Unless they like acquire Twilio, which they could do. Somewhere in the Twilio office is someone who's like sending me an end. We figured out how this ends for us. Trilio, by the way, the company behind Call-A-Notes, the single-best phone hack of all time. You call a number and place Hall-Notes at you. Yeah. Collin- Notes.

Oh, wow. Okay. For those of you who... I'll know to investigate that further later. For those of you who are ironing, I got a tweet this week. I don't drive when I listen to the Birchcast at Iron Reliolisly. So for that one person who's ironing, I want you to know that Ashley just looked at me with pure disappointment in her. When I made a call-in-oats joke that I subsequently explained.

To be fair, I asked you to explain. It's still not cool. So are you going to get an echo show? Are you into it? I, like, instinctively pre-ordered the show. I did one just now. I had no desire to pre-order the look. See, I'm the opposite.

You ordered the look? I didn't order it, but if I was going, like, I'm really considering it. The privacy, everyone's getting all up in arms. They're like, oh, who would think of putting a camera in their room? Like, who would do this? I'm like, I don't know. My laptop has a camera. My phone has a camera.

Whatever. Does Amazon really want to see me naked? Like, okay, Amazon, go for it. I really don't care. Yeah. Like, if you know what I wear every day, again, I don't care. And that's weird because I usually do have a lot of weird privacy things because they used to report on cybersecurity. But I want fashion advice.

I asked my roommates for help all the time. Like the other day, I was in the hallway trying something on because the lighting is better. And all my roommates, I was like, guys, should I keep this? Should I not keep this? It would be sick if I didn't have to talk to my roommates. It would be awesome. I've never liked you anyway. Yeah.

I mean, this is the only interaction we have, and it's really weird. So I'm like, it'd be cool if I could just ask a robot. I won't buy what Amazon suggests. Yeah. I think that's, we talked about this one, the thing. came out. Like, they're trying to do a fashion thing. Yeah.

Yeah. That is really interesting to me. I want to dive into that more because the whole fashion industry, there's some really deep dives into this and how Amazon's coming for the fashion industry. We should send you on a stakeout of their weird little photo studio in Brooklyn. Yes, I would love that. I've definitely met some, like, very Brooklyn photographers at bars who, like, are very excited to tell me that they work for Amazon.

And I'm like, I work for the verge. And they're like, we're gone. who you forgot Where did you go? How did someone with that much hair disappear so quickly?

I didn't even feel the wind. But my parents are psyched about this product. Yeah? Yeah, because for them, their echo sits in the kitchen. Sure,

why not an end a screen to it? They'll take the other echo into the office or whatever. I mean, I'm trying to learn how to cook and if this thing can show me recipes, I'll be pretty pumped. Because we have an iPad

sitting in the kitchen that we never use. But that was essentially the idea is I would put a recipe on it and learn how to cook from it. But something simpler that I could just put the thing on. Yeah. I don't have to have like an iPad on a weird ass iPad mount, which is what I have now.

Do you have one of the cabinet ones? It's like the one that like hangs on a rail. Yeah. I had to like take a dribble to the back of it to hide the cords. I did the whole thing. Amazon's recipes come from other developers, right? Like Amazon doesn't have its own bank. No.

And they also have a YouTube integration with this thing. Oh, really? Which is fascinating. And I think they said like Netflix and Amazon. Amazon are possible as well, which is like... It's possible, but they'd have to do it. Right. Yeah.

Because anybody can just make a skill. Yeah. Yeah. But they're out in the... They're launching with YouTube, which is interesting because Amazon and Google, like, you don't think of them as immediate partners, but... It'd be great if they had, like, a Twitch skill. It's like, just show me video games.

Other people playing video games. But I think it's really, like, the recipe thing with YouTube is, like, really smart. Like, that's a way to go. I think Netflix, like, why would you ask it to play Netflix at you and, like, stand there and watch Netflix? But I think the recipe thing is really interesting. I think the part I cook a lot, and I read off an iPad, you get one tick closer to, man, I wish this had a web browser, so I could just look at a list of things. And I think that's going to be something they have to solve. Yeah.

But it's on the developers, right? Yeah, but they could figure out away. On the thing, right? Yeah. The web browsing skill. You can't make a web browsing skill. No, but the way they lay out. I feel like that's not allowed.

Yeah, but it's not an OS. Like, that's the thing. It's not an OS. It's a tightly limited. I mean, there is an OS. There's got to be like a real-time OS. Yeah, but it's not consumer facing. It's just not, it's not Android or fire.

It's Alexa. It's five gerbils. Can I just run it as fast as I can? Not included. It's four dumb dribbles and one that understands English. Her name is Alexa. Like Alexa, she's like, what? I'm sorry.

Oh, we didn't even talk about drop-in. Oh, yeah. That's the big thing. So drop-in is the video-calling aspect where what did Google call there? Knock-knock. Knock-knock. It's sort of like knock-knock where you give certain people permission to just, quote-unquote, drop-in on your home. And so when they call you for 10 seconds, they get a frosted.

This is the description I'm using frosted glass view, which I'm not. I'm kind of unclear on how frosted this frosted is, but it's like you can't see everything. And then as long as you don't deny it, they'll get the full view of your house. No, I don't think that's it. That is, nope. No, I'm pretty sure it's default. Drop in is people you whitelist. You get 10 seconds to either cancel or switch to audio only.

If you're ironing right now, I'm shocked. I'm pretty sure it's default, yeah. You have to specifically whitelist the person. Google has been, not Google, Amazon has been pitching this as like a thing for you to set up for like you set up on the echo you give to your grandparents so that you can check in on them. I do not trust any of my friends or family to not abuse this. There's absolutely a zero percent chance. They'd be like, what are you doing?

Like, what are you doing? I can't believe you have to accept. That's terrible. Yeah. No, you think so. Is there a other setting? There's regular. There's regular video calls, which you can accept as normal.

This is a special separate video call thing. But the fact that it exists is all, and this is a. is something they think people want to have. But Dan Seepard is over the moon for this because he's got little tiny kids and to have them not have to figure out how to like open the app on the iPad that they could just get the call from dad.

He's really happy about. Well, Dan lives a very different life than us. He told me by children. I mean, he's got a personal detail. He doesn't want me to share. But when his daughter hears FaceTime start ringing, she runs to go grab her stool

from like the bathroom. takes it into the kitchen so she can get up on it and grab the iPad. Oh, that's cute. That's adorable. I'm now horrified by drop in. I really thought it was like they showed you a frosted glass and then like you can come over. But it's just, you have frosted glass. If it's someone you referred, you have 10 seconds to get to that thing.

Can you just make it longer? Like five minutes? Fars I know no. But also, if you give somebody that access to your life and then you declassed, You have raised so many fucking questions about what's going on. You're like, not behind the glass today, mom. Like, oh, that's so weird. The analogy they give is like, you give like your neighbors, like a set of spare keys to your house.

But you know, just sort of rolling after 10 seconds of knocking. Yeah, no. Dude, are you going to give me drop in access? Oh, no. Although, the Amazon third party, the Alexa third party thing, the Tribi, that you stuck on your fridge, I did give Neli the Tribi app So we were making calls with the Tribby app And he could like send a message to this thing

And it would show up on the e-paper display So I'd come home and there'd be like a poop emoji on my fridge Would know exactly what happened Was that their main marketing message? Because that's why Nucleus is mad It's because they're like We were a huge seller on Amazon Amazon ripped off our idea of this video calling

Of kind of like the intercom of the house And now I'm wondering you know With this company Tribi If Amazon's super not worried about Tribby Tribby. Tribi is one of those moments at CES where you're actually drunk but you're also drunk on like gadgets

You're like everything is very dry You haven't eaten and slept in days And you're like this shit's fucking amazing Hey it was cute It was cute It was adorable It had a little flag that popped out Yeah that was great

The flag that popped out is the The true sign that you are like Vegas crazy at a gadget show. You're like, oh, this flag is the best. I love everything. You get home and like, this flag is tiny. I can't see it. It never works.

So you're saying Tribi would have succeeded if it had a bigger flag. Yeah, that's what it needed. A huge flag. Tribi version two. It's the same, but we make the flag way bigger. So there's Google Home. There's a whole suite of Echo products.

There's Cortana coming. If Apple doesn't do some shit at WWDC, Yeah. Like, what the hell are they doing? I get everyone to this. Like, that's the baffling thing. They had this way before everyone else. Right?

So there was that news this week about the Siri speaker, right? Right. So German had this group, right? Yeah, about developers at Apple are testing. This thing at home. Yeah. Here's my question. Does a Siri speaker let you send an iMessage?

And if so, how do they protect other people from sending eye messages with your account? So the best things you can do is Siri send an I message. My guess is yes, because it's the best thing you can do is Siri, and there is no good way for them to stop other people. I mean, the iPhone has a thing.

Google Home can recognize your voice, so they could do like voice recognition where we'll only send it if you say it. So the iPhone technically has that. There is a thing on iOS where it learns Hey Siri, and it can in theory tell your voices apart. Right. Hey, Siri, send an eye message to Mom.

Hi, Mom. literally did nothing. It's sitting right here. That's for the podcast listeners. It wasn't for you. Hey, Siri. Text, Dieter. That was not very nice.

Well, it didn't set off mine, so. If any listeners have a friend named Dieter, apologize to them. The best part about this is I'm trying to, I message you and you have an S8 right now. Well, I got the text. No, I didn't. Yes, I did. There it is. Oh, really?

No. Would have. Yeah, I got it. Siri, I guess Siri thinks it's a blue, you're a blue bubble. Siri is wrong. I'm not a blue bubble. Anyways, so it worked, right? I mean, it didn't set it off minds.

So they could do it. So if that works well enough, but you'd still have to train it for your individual voices of everyone in your house or just train it for yours and then no one else will be able to use it in your house. But maybe Apple's cracked it. Maybe Apple has like a really good solid solution. Well, and that's the other big thing Alexa is lacking is the multiple users, right? So that's what everyone's complaining about too. I mean, they do technically have multi-user support in the sense that if you have an Amazon account on there, you can add other accounts to it also. So you can get other calendars and emails and stuff, but it's all or nothing.

Right. If I have an Alexa set up in my house and my roommate wants to add his calendar to it, both of our calendars are accessible to everyone from every echo in the house. That's what you want. Yeah. The tradeoffs here at these devices are just terrifying. It's like people can just see you whenever they want. any rando can send a text message. Here's my calendar.

Whatever you want, as long as it's a little bit more convenient than before. That problem, I think, is probably well solved with the screen on the show, right? Because you can just say, I am this user. I wonder if Apple's going to do a screen open question. Well, Schiller said a thing that he thinks screens matter. I mean, Apple doesn't even have multi-user support on iPads. Yeah, so Apple, only if you're in education. Oh, education has it.

You want it on a speaker, though? Yeah. I mean, Apple historically not great. Apple doesn't have great multi-user on the Apple TV, the single most shared device they make. So I hope they get better at it. I mean, it's something that if they figure out how to unlock, it gets better and better and better.

And they're in a unique position to do it across their ecosystem, which I think is smart. All right. Anything else? Do you have a gadget corner, gadget world? Yeah. Every week. Ashley is here.

Ashley tells us a segment. Wow. What the fuck is that? Gadget. Gadget. Gadget echo. Echoes of gadgets. Echo gadgets.

Echoes of gadgets with Ashley Carman. Okay, this just really is a gadget for me because I grew up without cable. And so PBS is putting out an HDMI streaming stick. Okay. That runs. It has all of this preloaded PBS content. So you can take it with you on vacation or wherever. Also, it's got like storage and a bunch of kids shows.

Yeah, and you put it in the TV and it has kid content and it also comes with a little kid-friendly remote. But the best part about it is that it's green and it's a race car. Yeah. Aw. It's just really cute. It looks insane. It's so cute. You plug a race car on your TV and it plays good stuff at you.

Yes. Yes, exactly. This doesn't look real. It's on sale now. It's like my first Sesame Street, my first Sony, but it's a streaming stick. My first streaming stick. Who makes this? This is incredible.

It's PBS. Wow. But they're selling you right now only through Walmart. but then it's eventually going to be released more widely. But it can connect over Wi-Fi. And I didn't get the full details on this one, but when it's on Wi-Fi, PBS apparently partnered with all the stations around the country so that it can bring you a live channel. Oh, okay.

So if you want it connected to Wi-Fi, you can. Huh. It's great. I mean, I've been covering a lot of kid tech lately, like Amazon Fire Kid Dashboards and things like that. And this is a good idea. My opinion. And it's a race car. And it's a race car.

And it's green. And it's green. I think weird, specialized tech that is becoming really good because the commodity tech got good is, like, fascinating. Like, if you can take the guts of a Roku stick, which costs $30 and make a specialized version of that, and it's as good as a Roku stick because it's the same stuff, that gets like, to me, really interesting, really fast. Although here the idea appears to be make it look like a race car. You talk about that like it's a bad thing A kid running around with a race car Just running towards every TV they see

Yeah I think there's some dangerous there I'd rather have this like sitting on my TV stand Than I don't know Just a black box Yeah at least has some personality Yeah that's what you want Also do the wheels move because if the wheels move And you can actually drive this around as a race car on your desk

Oh, it has to. Like, it very much looks like you can use this as a toy. One is supposed to be sent to me. Does the spec bullet list include just the words vroom-v-rum? Does it have the room-v-room? Oh, PBS doesn't do spec sheets. I'm looking for, can you drive this up to a specialized doc at the base of your TV and have the H-DMI connector slot in?

Because then it teaches you hand-eye coordination and then you get rewarded with the kids. Well, there are games on this, too. Just so you know. All right. Well, we're all getting one. Yeah. Everyone's happy. And then we can spy on each other with our echo devices,

tiles, and text message each other for days. Is that the show? That's the show. Plenty, but that's enough. It's been a week. There's a lot going on in the world this week. But I think that's the big stuff. I'm really excited for more of this Microsoft stuff to come out and to poke at it.

I think Google I.O. is next week. Yeah, it's going to be wild. There's going to be a lot of stuff out of that one. Deeter will be there. Yep. And along with a ton of people. Yeah. I think we're sending a small army to Google I.

So it's that season. And then WWC is coming up. Immediately after. Almost. And then in between is the code conference. So just news on news on news is happening. But I will say Microsoft, if you think about the three big developer conferences, Microsoft one first, Google's going second, and then Apple comes a little bit later. Microsoft has set a bar.

Yep. To be just openly positive about it. They put out a lot of stuff today, like wild ideas, some which, like as I said, were throwback. but their level of like pride of execution is higher than I've seen it in forever quite honestly. But it's because they don't have to make any phone stuff. They're just like, you know what? We didn't do a good job here. No, but there's something to say that.

Like Amazon, same boat, right? Like they made a phone, it bombed and that everybody assumes that it feels that they, yeah, it freed up their minds to try some next thing. Yeah. And Microsoft tried phones. They bombed. and now they're double their focus on Windows

and I think they're doing really interesting stuff on Windows. Yeah. Everyone's trying to get an app on this home screen. All right. There are other shows to listen to. Walt and I actually talked a bunch

about the Echo show on Control and Delete. He went deep on that. So listen to that if you're interested. Lauren Good, host Too Embarrass to Ask, which is wonderful. Karras Fisher hosts Recode Decode and Peter Kafka hosts Recode Media,

which is deep and wonderful for media nerds. There's also the Verge Extras feed out in the world. It's full of experiments. I will tell the podcast listeners, we are going to start doing some crazy podcast experiments on a platform yet to be named.

I'm really excited for that. I really want to start getting into some culture stuff as a podcast. And I really want Casey Newton to wander the streets of San Francisco with a microphone, like an old school radio reporter asking millennials what the fuck is up. He's going to get assaulted. And I will tell you, everyone's favorite. platform, Facebook, now has a new excellent page, which you should like. It is a verge science

on Facebook. There's a bunch of videos on there, our science coverage is on there. Liz Lapato, our science editor and her excellent team of reporters, I think some of the best science supporters in the entire game. We really looked at Facebook. Our science content goes all over the place on Facebook. It's actually wild if you look at the numbers. And there's so much bad stuff on Facebook, I think we can put up the good fight here and give people good stuff on Facebook and science. So go Verge Science and Facebook. Like it, share it. I'll tell you there's a video coming to that page soon. And I mean this in all sincerity. That video starts with the words. The plants are fucking. And it's going to be great. Verge science. Go to it. Have that experience.

It's going to be wild. We'll be back next week post Google I.O., I think. I should be able to handle that, I think. So we'll have all of Google stuff happening next week. It's that season. We'll figure it out. Well, we can, we pre-record the show. We can just do it whenever we want. Fair. Yeah. So we'll figure that out.

And then more stuff will happen endlessly here in this actual reality. That's Vergecast. Rock and roll. Paul. Snip, snip.