The Vergecast - Our biggest stories and favorite things of 2024

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

2024 is almost over, somehow. So we gathered a bunch of our Verge colleagues and told them each to tell us three things from the year: the biggest story, their favorite new tech thing, and their favorite new non-tech thing. We got a collection of big stories, cool gadgets, great movies, and more good stuff from the year that was. We're also planning a special episode for Tuesday, December 10th, all about The Verge and The Vergecast. So if you have questions about how we work, what we cover, why we talk about copyright law so much, or what Nilay is actually like to work with every day, tell us! Call 866-VERGE11, or email [e-mail], and we'll answer as many as we can on the 10th. Thanks in advance! Further reading: Jay Peters: Story of the year: Google is a monopoly New thing of the year: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Non-tech thing of the year: XOXO Field Notes notebooks Jake Kastrenakes: Story of the year: All things AI New thing of the year: The Wiim Ultra amp Non-tech thing of the year: Chronoloy Justine Calma Story of the year: The US election, and the rise of nuclear power New thing of the year: Nurse Unseen Non-tech thing of the year: Sugarcane Vjeran Pavic: Story of the year: The Apple Vision Pro New thing of the year: The Fujifilm X100VI and the Kino app Non-tech thing of the year: Mountain Gazette Kylie Robison: Story of the year: Billionaire crybabies New thing of the year: Stardew Valley Non-tech thing of the year: Curated playlists Barbara Krasnoff: Story of the year: The US election New thing of the year: The Elgato Stream Deck Non-tech thing of the year: Googly eyes Alex Heath: Story of the year: The AI rat race New thing of the year: Granola Non-tech thing of the year: Shochu Ash Parrish: Story of the year: Grand Theft Auto VI and the Nintendo Switch 2, and more industry layoffs New thing of the year: The Playstation Portal Non-tech thing of the year: Bucephalus the puppy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Cozy Games. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I just bought a bunch of pens. So we've been talking a lot about notebooks and stuff on this show over the last few weeks. We're actually going to talk a little bit more about it on this show. But a thing that I should admit that I don't talk about a lot here on the Vergecast or in life is that on the side of being like a digital note-taking lunatic, I'm also kind of a notebook lunatic. I go through these phases every once in a while,

where I'm like, okay, I'm going to become a notebook guy. I spend too much time on my phone. My phone is really useful. But what I need is just when I'm going to write things down, I'm going to do it on pen and paper. It's going to be great. Love it. I always forget that the real problem is that my handwriting is awful

and that my hand hurts when I write too much. So I just buy a bunch of notebooks. I'm like, this will fix it. So I have old like five-star school notebooks. I have a bunch of like mole-skin knockoffs. I have an actual mole-skin. I have this thing called the tote book from a company called Studio Neat that I really like.

I have one that I bought at Staples. This one is my journal from high school in which I wrote a bunch of poetry to my girlfriend that no one is ever allowed to read. But the thing that I've realized most is that A, I need a notebook that is with me most of the time. So what I usually end up doing is getting like a little field notes thing

that can just sort of live in my pocket. But the main thing is I need pens, like a million pens. I don't want to spend any money on pens. So I'm on Amazon, and I bought these. They're called the Pilot Precise V5RT. I think I found them from a wire cutter review that was like, these are good pens

that you don't have to press super hard on. So I bought 12 of them, and my plan is just to put them everywhere, like one in the car, one in my backpack, one at my desk, one upstairs, one next to the bed. And then the goal is just to like always have a pen within reach. I try to carry a pen around, but I find I'm pretty good at having my notebook with me,

but terrible at having my pen with me. So I'm going with like an infinite pens situation. It's going to be great, and I'm going to write in notebooks more often. Anyway, that is not what we're here to talk about today. It's a holiday week, at least here in the U.S., it's Thanksgiving. So instead of normal newsy verge cast on a week where there's not really any news, we figured we'd do something slightly different. So what we're going to do today is we're going to talk to a bunch of different folks on our staff

about some of the biggest stories of the year. The most important things that they worked on, the most important things that we covered, their favorite new thing that happened this year, that had nothing to do with any of the stuff that we covered. It's just fun to talk to our staff and get to know them and what they're into and what they're interested in. And we've done this before on the show and I had a great time doing it and y'all seem to like it too. So we invited a bunch of people back and talk to them about some of their favorite and some of the biggest things from 2024. All that is coming up in just a second. We got a bunch of people to get to.

Lots of stuff if you're on like a long drive this weekend. Lots of stuff for you to listen to. Lots of fun versus have to hang out with. All that's coming up. But first, I really, I have to go distribute this mountain of pens all over my house. And then systematically lose them one by one until I have to buy 12 more pens. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back.

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Do you ever wonder what's in your lotion? If you look at the back of the bottle, it could contain more than a dozen ingredients. And they may not all be regulated. The threshold is so high that only 11 cosmetic ingredients have been restricted by the FDA since 1938. This week on Explain It to Me, the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. All right, before we get into it, one tiny piece of housekeeping. So on December 10th, two Tuesdays from now, we're going to do a whole episode about the Vergecast and the Verge.

We've done this before and it was really fun. And basically, I want all of your questions about how the Verge works, how the Vergecast works, what we're doing, what we're thinking, what we're planning for the future, all of it. Also, if you have thoughts on what we should be doing but aren't, I want to hear those too. Send them all our way. You can either call the hotline 866 Verge 1-1 or email at verge.com. Send us all your questions. December 10th, we're going to do that episode.

It's going to be really fun. All right, let's get into it. So we gave a bunch of folks on our staff very small bits of homework. Basically, come with what you think is the story of the year, your favorite tech thing of the year, and your favorite new non-tech thing of the year. All these things are very broad deliberately because we figured people would interpret them differently and come with different ideas about what makes for a story of the year and what constitutes new tech thing of the year. Everybody came with delightfully different and interesting answers, and I think we're going to get a swath of basically all the things the Verge cares about, kind of all in one place,

plus just a sense of some of our favorite new stuff. All right, we have eight people to go through. Let's do this. First up, Jay Peters, a news editor on our team. Jay Peters, hello. Hi, David. How are you? I'm good.

We are not going to talk about this for too long, but you're here on wired earpods that you just bought. and this is not going to factor into our discussion, but I just want to say congratulations on your wired earpods. Thank you. The best headphones on earth for $20. Yes, thank you. I am plugging them directly into my MacBook Air.

Someday I'll upgrade from my iPhone 12 Mini, and guess what? They'll plug straight into those two. It'll be fantastic. I can't wait. Honestly, all the cool kids wear wired headphones again, and I get it. It's like I was on a train the other day,

and I accidentally spent 20 minutes trying to connect my Mac to someone else's. Bose headphones instead of my Bose headphones. And I was like, oh, I have the cable and I plugged it in and it was fine. It's just life is better this way. All right, so we gave you some homework. Let's start with Story of the Year.

What was your story of the year? The Story of the Year to me is Google being ruled a monopolist. I think this is huge because depending on what happens as a result of that ruling, including a potential breakup of the company, different pieces, like it could,

fundamentally transform the way we use the internet, how we search for things, and like what the defaults on our phones are. I think this could be really, really, really massive in ways that we just don't even understand yet because we don't know what the end result's going to be. I like this one. And I also feel like the fun thing about this story is you might be correct this year and next year and the year after that and the year after that and the year after that. And then it might be nothing, which is why this story is so much fun, because it is either, I think you're right, these like single most consequential thing happening in tech, or it is going to be an awful lot of hand-wringing and nonsense and lawyer fees and ultimately amount to nothing. Yep.

What, if you, if you were a betting man, which one would you pick of those two outcomes? I'm going to say a little bit closer to the big deal end versus the nothing end. Because to me, it seems like kind of likely that the government's going to say Google can't make the default deals especially like the one in the iPhone that has made it, you know, the pervasive mobile search

on iPhone. And so like I think that it's just going to have an absolutely massive change down the line. Yeah, I tend to agree. And I think I was reading something the other day about all the ways in which this trial and the Microsoft trial from 25 years ago are just scarily similar

in the way that they're going. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And, and, And that one's a really fun case because what ultimately happened was not that much. But while Microsoft was so focused on it, the internet happened. And this company called Google, like, did a bunch of smart things that Microsoft didn't have time or energy or attention to do. And just the existence of that crazy thing screwed up Microsoft and changed the internet. And I think if you, especially if you're a believer that AI is as big a deal as people say, we're sitting in the middle of that again.

Yeah, it seems like the AI companies, I don't see like a direct like, oh, this is obviously the next Google type thing, but like it seems like there's something in that everybody is starting to realize that maybe Google isn't the only option and that could have very large ramifications in how we use tech every single day.

I'm with you. Are you using any of the AI search engines, by the way? No. I so far have not been a huge fan. of them. But I think it's also time for me to explore them a little bit more. I feel the same way. There's something in the muscle memory of it that has just been much harder for me to change than I expected. And that might just be because of my like day-to-day work of like writing news as fast as possible all the time. Like, yeah, we like Google stuff for a living. Yeah. Like it's a real way.

I have like really specific ways that I find this information that I know that it works 95% in time that like other search engines may not be strictly built for my use case, but that might also not be true. Or there might be ways that I can use those things that I haven't tried yet. Yeah. All right. What's your new thing of the year? Presumably it's not a search engine. What's your new thing? I would say my favorite new thing is a game I played this year.

It was Final Fantasy 7 rebirth. I say this is a huge fan of the original PlayStation game. I loved the remake, and so I had the really high expectations going into this one, and it totally exceeded them. It's like this just giant RPG. You're hanging out with your friends, these characters that, like, you know, I've followed and, you know, fall in love with and various, you know, for various reasons playing the games forever. And I thought Squaring is just totally delivered on this really incredible, huge, ambitious RPG. I also have a very special memory in that I played so much of it in the middle of the night while my new child was sleeping on me. So, like, I have this, like, kind of really cool attachment with, like, what that game represented,

uh, in addition to the time of my life that I'm in right now. The genre of video games you can play with a sleeping child on top of you is a, is a special, special thing. Yeah. Uh, okay. I have never had the occasion to do this to somebody on this podcast. And I'm going to make you do this right now. Okay. I have never played one second of Final Fantasy in my entire life.

Okay. Uh, not for any good reason. It's just never happened. Yeah. Uh, so can you, can you give me, like, the, the, 60-second case for someone who has never played Final Fantasy to get into specifically Final Fantasy 7 rebirth? Well, I wouldn't start with rebirth specifically because it's part two of a three-part giant story. You should start with... See, now I'm just tired already, Jay. I know, but you should,

I know. It's the problem with these games. I've already had spent so much time in it that I have to see it all the way through. If you're going to start, start with remake, which I think it captures everything that people loved about the original on the original PlayStation brings it up to, what would you call modern graphics and modern gameplay standards. And they clearly know the source material very well, and they know that people

really, they really love it, and they really treat it with, like, care and expanding it in ways that are very interesting and still feel very true to the source material. But also have some kind of new, interesting spins on the story that everybody's very familiar with from the original game into this new stuff. So like, it's long, you know, as a parent, I don't know if you're able to find

53 hours to dig into that, but like, if you really want something to like settle into and just dig into, it's, it's awesome. And it's really fun to play too. Is it the kind of game you can play in long stints or short stints? Can you play 20 minutes of Final Fantasy at a time? Yes. I would argue so, if only because that's a muscle I've had to develop since having a kid just in general is like understanding that not every session is going to be like two hours on the couch at the end of a workday. It's like 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there. And I think you can do it in that there's always like either like little quests to be doing or you can, you know, advance farther along, uh, along whatever main story path that you're doing. Um, and you can play

it on Steam Deck, which I don't know if you have a Steam Deck, but I love my Steam Deck. It's a fantastic thing for a few of a kid and just need a play game somewhere around the house free of time. I think you can do it. All right. I love it. All right, last thing. Favorite non-tech thing of the year? Well, the sentimental choice is my new child, obviously. No, that doesn't count. If I had to pick, if I had to pick something else, I got a pack of field notes notebooks from attending the XOXO conference in the final one in Portland this year.

This is like a special brand that they made just for the show. And normally, I've not ever cared about field notes, but I actually started like using them bunch and I think they're awesome. They're very pocketable. I like the little grid on the ones that I got here, just very nice for sketching random stuff. And I find that like I'm finding that writing to-do lists or outlining stories just with pen and paper and no computer has been like a really great thing for my brain to process stuff. And it's something I've done just way more than I ever expected. Like I thought as a new parent I'd be like, okay, super locked in all my tech stuff. I got to be super zeroed in on that. But sometimes just sketching in a notebook at the end of the day has been a really

good way to get a handle on things. I love that. I think field notes I have always struggled with because like you said, they are the exact right size. Like as a as notebooks go, it is the thing I want. But I have never figured out how to like hold it in my hand correctly to write in it. Let's see it. Because it's just not quite rigid enough. Yes. And there's something, I end up vacillating between these, like, giant, super sturdy notebooks that are, like, really easy to write on in any circumstance and these, like, teeny tiny ones that fit in my pocket. And I love a field notes.

They make great stuff. But there is something about it that is, like, I just occasionally find it annoying to write in, and it drives me crazy. What I think I found is I do like that your hand is the back. Like, it's the support for everything. but I'm also not doing a ton of extensive journaling. It's like, oh, I'll dash off a sentence here, or I'll write some bullets here. And that, I think, makes it so, like,

if I had to sit down and write, if I was sketching out a novel on this, this would not be my favorite place to do it. But for taking notes or thinking through ideas, and, you know, I'll write a sentence, I'll sit on something and think about it, write another sentence. It's been really perfect for me.

So I would recommend it for that. That's really good. Use case. I love that. Yeah, field notes for the win. There's like an entire corner of old head bloggers who just got very excited hearing you said that. I'm sure, yes.

Awesome. Jay, thank you as always. Appreciate it. Thanks, David. Okay, moving on. Next up, Jake Castranakis, the version executive editor. Jake, hello.

Thanks for having me. The sweater game with you is always very strong. Most people will not be able to see this, but the sweater game is very strong with Jake all the time. Can I tell you, Thomas Ricker when he came from the Netherlands? Oh, my God. Spectacular. That's the European.

PNs know what they're doing. Thomas at one point was wearing a sweater that I thought was very good. And then he put a scarf on over the sweater. And I was like, God, it's even better. And then he put a jacket on over the scarf in the sweater that was even better and tied the whole thing. It was the most incredible thing I've ever had. We're hopeless in comparison.

Truly. Truly. All right. Jake, we gave you some homework. What's your story of the year? Okay. I hate to be that guy. I really do.

I really do. But I have to tell you it's AI. Okay. I mean, sure. It's the obvious one. It's the obvious one. But, look, we came from a year where AI is the most hopelessly overhyped technology all year, nonstop. And I hate to be the person, but I think AI is actually good.

Now this is really for humanity. I don't want to say that. But just fundamentally, on a product level, I can punch a button on my phone and have a conversation with BV. I don't know what it is. It's best not to think about it. I can diagnose the problem with my air conditioning system, right? Yeah. I don't know how to do that myself.

Can I tell you my own story just from the other day? Yeah. So it's open enrollment time at Vox Media. We're all doing our benefits. I had to decide whether we wanted to do my health insurance that we get or my wife's health insurance through her job. And I looked at the summary of benefits document for, like, I swear to God, hours. And my eyes glaze over.

couldn't remember which was which. The words, I uploaded the two documents to Notebook LM and was just like, which one's better, given what I think is coming for the next year and laid out a couple of things. And it told me the answer and it was correct. It was the most incredible thing I've ever seen. In a minute and a half, it was just like, here is all the information you need about which insurance to pick. And I was like, oh, I had the same thought you did. I was like, oh, AI is good now.

I take it back. There's the thing. Everybody has that moment eventually. And it's like, I don't know that this is going to complete. revolutionize the world, at least as it is right now. But there are these small moments where it's like, that just saved me 10 minutes of Googling. Right. It's not 100% correct. But like, it got me in the ballpark. And that's actually what I need right now. I totally agree. I had somebody a while ago tell me that if you just look at AI as the world's most powerful summarization machine,

that is both a much smaller vision for it and also really cool and full of neat things that it can do. And I like, I've been thinking about that ever since. And it's like that there is a lot of lot you can do there, and that's actually a thing it's good at. I think we have these maybe impossibly high standards for AI. And look, like, it's our job to hold these companies to those high standards. That's fine. I'm going to keep demanding that they make these things better. But if you told me, you know, a year or two ago that I can on hand have somebody who will, you know, give me a ballpark correct answer or do math for me or, you know, write something for me. And it'll be like reasonably good, that would seem impossible. And I think reasonably good is still pretty

impressive. Again, problems abound. I will be the first to admit that. But these things exploded. They are suddenly in everything. I do not know if people are actually using them in most of these places. But I have a suspicion that a lot of these very minor small use cases, just writing stuff better, summarizing stuff is going to become second nature for people very quickly. Yeah, totally. And I think 2025 is, I hope, the year where the, like, high-minded rhetoric gets a little closer to the actual reality. Like, the tech is going to get a little better, but also everything just needs to

calm down about it for a minute. Everybody needs to calm down a bit. And Viti is worth like $500 trillion or something. I don't, don't quote me on that one exactly. but it's not investment advice. Something feels a little off there. Like, it's cool technology, but like, yeah, people need to chill out a little bit.

Yeah. It's not God just yet. Yeah. But maybe, you know, we'll do this again in 12 months. Who knows? All right. What's your next one? Your favorite new thing of the year?

Favorite new thing of the year? I'm cheating a little bit because it's from end of last year. I bought it this year. But I want to hype up the Weem amp. This is, if you are a site, go like me who has a bookshelf speaker system, right? You don't have an all in one, right? No sound bar. You didn't just buy some powered speakers. You have speakers that need to be powered by an amp that need different input sources fed into them. You've probably gone through the absolute

madness and chaos of having a bunch of different parts and pieces. You need the amp. You need the streamer. You need the phono amp. You need all these different things. The Weimamp, says, hey, I know it sounds better if you get 500 different things and stack them all together. What if we just skip all that? Is it going to put everything in one? It's $300. Sounds reasonably good. And it does all the things that I hate that all these fancy sound system parts do not do.

It automatically turns on and off. It doesn't get flaming hot in my cabinet. It streams things. It switches inputs automatically. My TV can control it. It's great. I love it. I cannot describe to you how convincing a pitch that just was.

I think about my parents all the time who bought this, like, as tall as me, set of speakers when I was a kid. And they still have it. And all the other parts of their system that they had, you know, the CD player and the FM radio, all that stuff is a million years old and long dead. But the speakers still sound amazing. And they have spent all this time trying to. to figure out the speakers are just sitting in the basement and they're like well what do we do with these because again like you said it's do i rebuild a room full of stuff i'm going to literally i'm going to buy this for my parents for christmas and it's going to blow their minds i'm telling you

it is it is as somebody who has done it over and over again it is not worth rebuilding like all these separate items and stringing them together it is such a hassle the sound is not that much better don't come for me um you know just just give it into the simplicity, you know, your speakers are still going to sound great. And this has basically nearly everything a sound system needs with the one exception of a phono input. It doesn't have that. That's a bummer. So you do need a separate amp for that. But otherwise, it can stream Chromecast, it can stream Airplay. I don't know. A, can hook up to your TV. It's great. I love it. All right. Well, last thing, favorite non-tech thing of the year?

Favorite non-tech thing of the year? This is a, again, not from the year I'm cheating, but for me personally. Yeah, new to you, it counts. This is a new to me thing. I found a card game that has been a hit of all of the board game nights I have been to. It is super simple. I think as I've gotten older, I have strayed from the games where they take like two and a half hours to play and need to read an instruction manual for an hour beforehand.

The game is called chronology. It is super simple. I love it. And basically it's a deck of cards. and each card has an event and a year on it. And everybody starts out with one year, right? And somebody's going to read you another one. And so in front of you, you might have something that says Apple Computers is founded and it says 1976.

That's what happened, right? Okay, so now it's your turn, David. And I'm going to read you the next card. And it says, LBJ becomes president after JFK's assassination. And you have to say, did this happen before or after? Before. Before. Easy.

Okay. Not too bad. But now you've got two cards down, right? You've got 1976 and 1986. 1963. So I say, the Beatles appear on Ed Sullivan. Was that before, after, or in between? Now it gets complicated.

Because you're like, 60. It was in between. It was in between. It was in 164. Right. And it's fun. It's really super easy to learn. Super fast party game.

And it's fun because you get to, you know, rib your friends about not knowing history. I don't know anything. Yeah, I feel like I'd be good until about the dates that you said and then it would all fall apart. For me, it's like the things where people talk about something that happened in like the Roman Empire. And I'm like, oh, that was like the 1450s, right? And they're like, that was 16 BC. I'm always like, all right, cool.

The amount of time it took me to think on, I got a Pompeii card. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure that was that was far back. But I don't know how. There's a thousand years, I would believe. It was pretty. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of people made fun for that one. Turns out it was a really long time ago.

That should be enough. Like, you should get a half point for just being like, it was before the Beatles. That's honest. I knew it was before. You get the point. I knew it was before the Beatles. That was all I needed to know.

That's pretty good. Games called chronology? Chronology. Highly recommended for a chill, fun, board game night. I like it. All right, Jake. Thank you as always. Cool.

Talk to you later. Next up on the list, Justine Kalma, our senior science reporter. Justine, hello. Hello. Hello. Coming to us from the control room of one of our podcast studios. Yes.

I love this. All right. So we gave you some homework. The first thing you had to do was come with your story of the year. What was the story of the year? Well, that for me was a no-brainer. It was definitely the U.S. presidential election. Well, the outcome of the elections.

This is, you know, this is what I'm losing sleep over leading up to next year. I mean, it just changes. It affects everything. right. For me on the science desk, I'm an environmental reporter. And so there are literally studies out there around how much more pollution we can expect with this next administration, how much more that's going to warm the planet, we cover life in the future. And so, you know, we're looking at a hotter future, all kinds of fallout. And, you know, across all of the desks that we cover, I do a lot of work with the policy team over the past year. We were covering

some major Supreme Court decisions. The Supreme Court has been absolutely made over with Trump's previous appointees. That's made it more difficult. Some of those Supreme Court decisions have made it more difficult to regulate industry. So, you know, that has wide-reaching effects. And so I, that, for me, is the story of the year going into next year. Is there anything on your mind on that front right now other than just sort of sheer, abject screaming and rage all the time.

I feel like we're in a moment now where we as reporters and also just like we as people are going to have to figure out like how to talk about this stuff other than just what sometimes feels like directionless screaming all the time. Like what's on your mind as you're thinking about kind of the stories inside of this that you're thinking about over the next year or so? One thing that's going to be really interesting to watch is what happens at the state and local level, you know, in the past, that has been where people have counteracted, what's going on at the federal level, made progress when there's been in action at the national level.

And so it'll be really interesting to see what comes out of that sort of local organizing moving forward. And then another interesting place to watch, which is like very divisive in the environmental community, but surprisingly super bipartisan, is going to be nuclear energy. I'm going to ask you about this. Okay. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, if you're looking at just my beat on the verge, I think one of the biggest stories has been this, is it too soon to say nuclear renaissance? It's probably too soon. But there's anything Renaissance is like overkill, right? But there's been a whole

lot of interest in nuclear energy, particularly from tech companies looking for electricity for energy-hungry data centers. You know, this is a growing issue with AI. We saw a slew of nuclear energy deals from Amazon, Google, Microsoft. Yeah, Three Mile Island is coming back. Like, what a, what a weird version of the timeline here. So they say we'll have to watch and see. Fair. But, but yes, but, you know, Trump has been supportive of nuclear energy in the past. It's gotten bipartisan support. If you look at Trump's pick to lead the Department of Energy, Chris Wright, he is a fossil fuel executive, CEO of a fracking company, but also sits on the board of a nuclear energy company with Sam Altman. So that'll be really interesting to see that company is developing advanced nuclear reactors. I don't know. we'll have to see what happens. Yeah. I feel like with a lot of that stuff,

I always get tripped up trying to figure out how long these things take. Because on the one hand, we have these like super pressing issues. And the three mile island guy was basically saying, like, we're ready, let's spin this back up and go back to work. Everything's going to be terrific. And then you hear about all these projects that are, you know, we're talking about like 2040 deadlines for things.

And like, God only knows where we'll be by 2040. Is this stuff going to start to become sort of, of meaningfully real next year, do you think? No. Okay. I think we may see more deals, but the earliest projections that I've seen for the first advanced nuclear reactors coming online are going to be probably the early 2030s. And so it's going to be a while before we see these new technologies.

And to be clear, those are next generation nuclear reactors that have not been deployed in the U.S. yet. You know, they still need to get all of the rest. regulatory approvals and everything, not to mention the costs because both traditional, like old school nuclear reactors, the big plants that we have today, they're really expensive to build. These next generation technologies are supposed to be smaller and cheaper, but projects have also run into rising costs too.

So yeah, so that's why a lot of this stuff is still up in the air. You have all of the regulatory and permitting delays. and then you have everything that's going on when it comes to making this actually an affordable source of energy. Got it. Okay. And I would say it doesn't seem like the regulatory state is going to get more efficient and effective in the very near future. So I would not say my hopes are super high. But hey, we'll take it. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see what this efficiency task fork does. I mean, it could just be like, go ahead, do whatever you want. I mean, fair. It would go faster than short. It would go faster. All right. What was your, uh, favorite new thing of the year. Okay, so I have to plug. I'm a really big documentary fan. I just, I love nonfiction, but I had to plug this documentary that is still in theaters called Nurse

Unseen. It's about Filipino nurses. I'm Filipino. My mom is a nurse. And, you know, at the Emmys this year, you saw the host talk about how ER went like 15 seasons without ever having a Filipino nurse. If you go into almost any hospital medical establishment, you're bound to find a lot of Filipino nurses. And so this documentary goes into the whole history of that, why there's been a pipeline of nurses coming to the U.S. from the Philippines since really World War II. The Philippines was the U.S. territory. But it also just talks about, it really focuses on how these nurses were on the front lines during the pandemic. And so I just think it really gives voice to a community that's been overlooked and has just done a lot for our health care system. So that was one of my favorite

documentaries of the year. I'm hoping that it's streaming soon. I was just about to ask, it's still, it's still in theaters right now. It's still in theaters. I have heard that they're, well, I don't know, I don't want to give anything away. I'm hoping that it's streaming soon. Fair enough. Fair enough. We'll track it down in a theater. I love a documentary on the big screen, by the way. It's like, it's sort of an unusual thing. It feels like this is going to sound less like a compliment than I mean it, but it feels like school in like the best possible way to sit in a, especially in like a little tiny like art house thing. I went to a jazz documentary. Like, frankly, I don't care about jazz, but like I just sat in a room with a bunch of people who are like,

I want to spend two hours learning about jazz. And it was delightful. And I like, I'm like, I give me more of those moments of like sitting in a lecture hall watching something really interesting together. Like, I kind of miss those days. It's good stuff. Well, okay, I'll say my guilty pleasure this year's, I did go to a cat film festival in New York City. A cat film festival. All right. Yeah, which is exactly how it sounds. It's like basically your Instagram or TikTok real full of cat videos, but on a big screen. But you don't go for the videos. You go for the community and all of the people who love cats as much as you do and like all of the like cute kids that are having a great time. And it's just, I don't know. Yeah, exactly.

You go to documentaries and yeah, those kinds of screenings to just be with your people. That's fantastic. It's like a, it's like a, it's like a, fake, or it's like a backwards way of having a cat convention. I love that very much. Yeah, exactly. We're like, we're going to pretend this is a movie, but it's just so a bunch of cat people can hang out with each other. It's going to be fine. I think, yeah, I think that film festival is on tour as well. Unbelievable idea. I have no notes on that. All right. Did you have one more pick for us? What else is on your list? Um, okay, well, okay, I did pick one other documentary that, that I also saw in theaters, but it's also streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu. It's called Sugarcane. It premiered at the 2020 Floresa Sundance Film Festival this year.

It's a really important watch. It's a tough one as well. It's about an investigation into abuse at an Indian residential school run by the Catholic Church in Canada after they found unmarked graves. It was created by an advocate who was actually a source that I've interviewed in the past. He's an environmental justice advocate, but he... his dad went to the school. And it's a really powerful story too about healing and his relationship with his dad and how they move forward. So that was another pick for me. That's a really good one. I feel like we're in this funny moment of like there are so many great documentaries out there. And my list of ones to watch now is so infuriatingly long that I just, I have to like, I need to cancel all of my. streaming services, except for the documentary ones for like six months and just catch up on documentaries.

And it's going to be great. Very excited about it. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. All right. Justine. Thank you so much. Appreciate you doing this. Yeah. Thanks. Oh, sorry. The other thing for the non-tech thing, I forgot was our 2004 package was incredible this year. Like, it just brought me back to high school and even just our talking about making that happen was just so much fun. Like all of us on the verge. like combing through our pictures, trying to find them from 2004 and discovering that they've all vanished. And then seeing the story that came out of that was awesome. The first run of people's pictures from 2004 was pretty spectacular. Everybody seemed to have like one photo from that year.

And it's always incredibly embarrassing. And it just terrific. Loved it very much. Yeah, all of my 2004 photos are just like me wearing two popped collars and like a puka shell necklace. It was not like a cool time in my history, I wouldn't say. Oh my God. Yeah, I can see that so clearly. Well, that's the meanest thing you've ever said to me.

She's seen. I first my feelings. No, no, that was, I mean, who didn't have a Puka Shell necklace, right? Listen, I got out of it. That's all I can say. There you go. It took too long to get out of it. Is it back yet?

I'm like, all that stuff is coming back, right? I'm just waiting until I see the high school students rocking it again. I assume so. I have two nephews in high school right now, and neither of them are wearing pukas, but like frosted tips, I think, are starting to come back. So, like, it's coming. The pukas are coming. It's a terrifying thought. I'm, like, I'm seeing my friends posts pictures on social media, and I can't tell if it's them or their children.

Because they're dressed, they're dressed like how my friends dressed in, like, middle school and high school. So, you know. It's real. It's real. It's real. It's real. It's real. It's real. All right. Sweet. Thank you for doing this. This is really fun. Thanks so much. All right. We've got to take a break and then we're going to come back with more folks from The Verge sharing more of their biggest and favorite stuff of the year. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Every thriving successful business has to start

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All right, we're back. Let's just keep rolling. Next up, Viren Pavich, our supervising producer on our video team. Viren, hello. Hello. You told us before we started recording that you didn't prepare at all. So this is going to go really great or really terribly, and either way, I'm very excited. It's going to go great.

I feel good about it. I'm always underprepared for everything that we do. Just under promise and over-deliver. That's the Viren story. It usually ends up pretty good, so, you know, let's try it out. I'm into it. So thing number one was the story of the year. What's your story of the year?

I'm immediately coming with a curveball here. I'm going to pick a video of the year. I am a supervising producer at The Verge. So I feel like I feel like I can pick a video. Is that okay? Can I break the rules here? Yeah, you can pick whatever you want. Okay.

For video of the year, I have to go with the Vision Pro review because it was just like one of those like classic Verge reviews that was just like way overpriced. produced in a short period of time. It was a whole team just working together, like late into the night. The script that Nilai delivered came in incredibly late and was incredibly good. It was just like one read. And it was like, this is amazing. The only problem is it's currently 35 minutes long. We're going to have to cut like a third of it out, which we did. But it was such a strong script. It was really good. And then just, you know, it was a new, new product,

category for Apple, a lot of eyes on it. Yeah, it just felt like I love the hustle. I love the hustle. I love the time crunch. I love embargoes. I love all that stuff. It is exhausting, but it was very exciting time of the year. And it was like very much at the beginning of 2024. And it feels like, I don't know, it feels like it was either like two days ago or like seven years ago. I can't decide. Yeah, I hear that. I feel like if we had been talking in February, like what are going to be the technology stories of the year for 2024, I feel like we all would have picked the Vision Pro to be one of them. And our video was very good.

The Vision Pro, less good. And I think what we've seen in the 10 months since that thing came out at this point is it kind of feels like it just died. I don't know. Does anyone you know talk about or care about the Vision Pro anymore? No, there's always like a moment on. threads maybe when somebody who has the Vision Pro is like, hey, this cool thing came out. You should look at it.

And I see a screen recording. I'm like, oh, that's great. Move on. But like two weeks ago, the ultra-wide monitor support came out. People are excited about this. Yeah. Looks pretty sick. Like pairing it with a Mac Mini and having that, like, that workspace, incredibly amazing.

You will still need a monitor. It's not like you can just live in Vision Pro. and like fully could meet yourself into it. I did use it, you know, during our testing period and everything. And that was the thing that I actually enjoyed the most, just external monitor, using it as just like an extra monitor,

like leaning into a lightroom photo, right? Or like just getting closer to it and doing some like brushes and coloring and everything, did actually feel incredibly fun. I thoroughly enjoyed that. I don't know if I can do it for hours and hours and hours, but being in the Vision Pro, like virtual monitor, using it,

that was like, that was for me the best use case for it. I do wish like Apple Pencil gets some kind of support there because it takes you away when you have to like go back to keyboard and mouse sort of thing. You know, like it's just, it's like, oh, okay, I'm still using kind of a similar, input here, even though the, like, the feature is good. So I wish there was, like, more there

to do, even just, like, zooming in or, like, doing more stuff with it. So that was, like, a good use case. So I do understand why people are very excited by the ultra-wide monitor. But, yeah, the price is just too extreme for anyone to, like, buy this and use it. But, you know, it's, it's impressive and it's just too expensive. Yeah, I could not agree more. And the improvement is increasingly far away. It seems like the solutions to this problem seem like they keep

slipping out. But let's move on. Thing number two, your favorite new thing of the year? It's the vision. No, I'm kidding. Totally good twist.

Yeah, by the way. All right, I struggle with this one a little bit because there are like two things. One also came out a long time ago, or at least it was an office a long time ago.

It's the food. GX 1006. Yep. I figured that might be your answer. I know. I'm so predictable. The thing about it is that, you know, I've had the X-100, I don't know, a second or third generation, a long time ago, and decided to get rid of it, and I've been missing it ever

since. So when this one came out, I was still a little hesitant, like, oh, do I really have spent money on yet another camera? And I did it. it took eight months for it to get delivered. So I just got it like last month, right? Eight months? Oh, wow.

Yeah, I ordered on like the day that came out. Yeah, we talked about it on this show. You were like in the middle of talking yourself into buying it. Oh my God, that is very true. I forgot. Look at this. What a beautiful first circle. So I've only been using it for a little bit.

And I've had a couple of trips, a couple of work trips. And it's just like, oh, yeah, this is my favorite thing. Like, I just love this camera so much. I've been also reviewing some bigger cameras, and they're like that difference between, like, hey, a tiny millimeter camera and a big full frame camera. It's like, I still love this little tiny camera so much. So that was, that's probably my pick. I'm also, like, incredibly, like, indecisive person. Okay.

What was your other one? Just give me 10 seconds on your honorable mention here. Kino app. Ooh. The HALID video one, right? Yeah. Okay. Like, you know, I did the iPhone review in tandem with Nilide this year,

and it was kind of the first time, a little bit of disclaimer. My personal phone was like a 13 Pro. It didn't have any of the fancy recording features. So it was like, oh, now I have ProRES. Now I have Appleog. Wow, ProRES is like so huge. I can't work with this. So Kino was the option that had the, you know,

HVC files. Use that. The lots that they have built in are really good. I like Tyler Stallman's luck the most. It's just really nice. I've been using it a lot more. So finally, I have an action button. It is programmed to open Kino. I use an iPhone as a camera a lot more this year than ever before. That's a good one. I like that. All right. Last thing. Your favorite non-tech thing of the year. This can be anything you want. It just can't be tech. this was tough. Liam was helping me out because I did ask him ahead of time. We just walked away from a meeting. And I was like, do you know what I should do? He's like, I don't know. I can be anything. Like maybe you got

good at making coffee. In fact, yes, I didn't get a coffee machine. Yeah. So that's one of the things. The other one is, yeah, it's good to step away from our tech bubble. We're all in our tech bubble. And the way that I do it recently is this magazine called Mountain Gazette.

It is absolutely massive. And I do mean like physically. It's just like a big magazine. Oh, wow. Okay, sure. But yeah, it's all about outdoorsy stuff. It's all about like, well, it depends on the season, but skiing, snowboarding, just being outdoors. It used to be a magazine a long, long time ago. And someone who lives up in Tahoe area, he decided to buy the brand back.

And now he's making this really beautifully crafted magazine. And I feel like, I don't know. I am a print person, so I do like print products, and it just feels nice to kick back, open it up, look at us some beautiful photography, and read about stuff that I really like, which is skiing and snowboarding. I love that. You know what I was thinking about the other day? I haven't bought a coffee table book in a million years because it just feels like those don't exist anymore. A, we should make one. I agree. We should. But B, like, magazine as coffee table book is kind of an incredible idea. Just like give me a big giant thing I can bring into my house. I think that would be it.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I got into. These are good answers. What coffee machine did you buy? Tell me that and then I'll let you go.

It is one of the breville ones that has a grinder on top and a milk thing on to the side. Oh, the whole, you got the whole pipeline going now. Yes. Once a milk frother becomes part of your coffee experience, there's just no going back. Yeah. Life is better and it will never go back. Yeah, it is very nice. But I did struggle at first.

It took a while so I figured out like, all right, what are you going to do here? I like went through many like bags, like beans and bags of coffee. And I'm like, great. I spent like $16 in these beans and I've got like three cups of coffee. This is bullshit. I'm going to go back to my espresso pot. No, but I finally figured it out. There's a lot of coffee shops in the neighborhood that I really like.

And every time I, like, it was in New York, I go to a few of them as well. I'm like, I need those beans. So, yeah, I really became a little bit of a snob, but not an annoying snob. But welcome, because, again, there is no going back. It costs a fortune, and it takes forever, but it is worth it. I still think it costs less than buying coffee anywhere else. So. appreciate it.

See ya. Next up on my list, Kylie Robinson, our senior AI reporter. Kylie, hello. Hello. How you feeling? You sound like you got a winter cold thing going on.

How are you holding up? I sound like shit. That's okay. You can say it. Yeah, I have a little bit of a cold, but I'm happy to be here. Good. All right.

Well, we won't keep you long. Let's just blast through this. Cool. So I'm just going to preface this with someone else already picked AI as the story of the year. So you can pick it if you want to. but just know that you'll be copying Jake.

All that said, what's your story of the year? It's going to be just a common theme of billionaire cry babies. Sorry, guys, but that's true. The common theme of the year, all I'm thinking about is Jeff Bezos stomping his feet, Elon stomping his feet, Sam stomping his feet, Sam Alman. Lots of billionaires stomping their feet over issues. and wanting their way and less regulation, that's the common theme of the year, for sure,

whether it's AI or, you know, energy or, you know, what have you, hardware. Or American politics. American politics. There are like several childish billionaires who seem to just be everywhere doing everything all the time. They're making popular podcasts now. It's like, just leave us, let us have this one.

Yeah, you put a tariff on straight men with podcasts. I think under mics put a tariff, 200%. That's a good idea. But yeah, I think that's probably something we're going to continue seeing. I feel like with the incoming Trump administration, that's something that's only going to strengthen is billionaires saying, you know, let's be chill. Be chill with my products, my company. Please, you like iPhones, right? Come on, man.

So that was the theme of this year. And I think we're just going to continue seeing that. Do you think it's going to be that or do you think the billionaires are now going to be like? like, we've won, let's go away. Like hide. Like be a good. Not even hide, but at some point, it's like they did it, right? Like, they got everything they wanted and now go enjoy all of your money in yachts or whatever.

Hmm, interesting. I think they're still going to have to argue with Trump. Again, these tariffs are so weird. And Elon has his ear. And that's something I'm thinking a lot about because I was reading the Open AI Elon lawsuit. And to me, it reads. Like, you know, I have the incoming president's ear and, look, they're being anti-competitive. And, you know, so I think these people, if Elon's on Trump's side, these people are still going to have to, like, you know, kiss up if that makes sense.

True. Or on the flip side, they get to start pointing at their enemies from inside of the White House and picking fights that way. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. Well, that's not the most uplifting one I've heard. But unfortunately, I think you can describe a lot of what's happening in the world to that small group of people. Yeah, I'm sort of delirious on Sudafed, and that is, of course, the first thing that came to mind.

It's just... Love it is. Love it. All right. What was your favorite new tech thing of the year? It was Stardue Valley. Ooh, okay. It's very, like, whenever I say that, they're like, people are like, oh, I played that in COVID. Like, why are you playing it now?

The new update just came out for the switch, which means I get different colored cats and all sorts of new ways to explore the town. But yeah, that cozy comfort games, I have a very cozy comfort house. I just love Stardue Valley. Can you just explain Stardue Valley to me? I've never played it. Of course. And I feel like everyone describes it in a way that almost never makes any sense. Wow.

Everybody says very nice things like you just said, but you just were like, now I have different colored cats. And that's like the explanation for why this game is better. Explain this to me. Teach me about Starty Valley. Do you know what Animal Crossing is? I do. Animal Crossing with combat. Oh, that is very compelling.

Yeah, it's really fun. That's a good case. Yeah, you get to, like, beat up monsters and caves, and, you know, like, you have to grind really hard for resources, almost like a Minecraft situation. You have to grind for these resources, and then you get to make, like, your cool little farm. You get to marry someone in the game. I just did an interview with somebody for The Verge that is yet to come out, but they said that they were really into Stardue. And the first thing we ask each other is who did you marry. Mine is Harvey. He's the doctor, the town's doctor.

Nice. Good for you. Yeah. Actually, V asked me that when I first started at The Verge. She said, who did you marry and start you? I can't remember her. Is this like a personality test? Do you think? Can you tell a lot about somebody? Exactly. Exactly. You knew they marry and Stardia? Okay. Interesting. But yeah, there was a new update. You can sink ungodly amounts of hours into it because it is so fun and chill and yeah, cozy comfort games.

I really have developed an affinity for games that are like pointless in the best way. Like for forever, all the games I liked were like games where you work up to the big boss and then you beat the big boss and then the game is over. Hell yeah. That was what I always played. And I would encounter games like Stardu or even like Animal Crossing or Minecraft in these games and I would just be like, what's the point of this game? And it took me so long to wrap my head around the idea that the point of the game is just to play the game. And it's like it's fun to play the game. And that's actually enough.

And there's a real like it's the friends we made along the way. kind of vibe to these games that I have like really come to appreciate in the last couple of years. Totally. Animal Crossing was a bit too pointless for me. Like I was getting too fidgety with that one. But Stardue has like, you know, stuff to work towards like goals and quests, which I really appreciate. I restarted Skyrim this year too, which is like another pointless time sync from 2011. But you got to love it. Yeah, I agree. I've also recently gone back all in on the switch. Nice. And it's going to be Stardu time.

Good choice. Hell yeah. I have this old yellow original switch. Wow. The battery is trash. Wow. But the games are awesome. I don't care.

It's amazing. I hear we might be getting another switch next year, but they've said that every year for many years. Honestly, it's getting to the point now where like every one of these Nintendo headfakes is, A, a little funnier than the last because it's a very, very funny thing that Nintendo is doing, where everybody wants a switch. And they're like, just kidding. We did a museum and an alarm clock and a music app.

Like, very funny. But also, just release the damn switch, please. I would like to have it in my house. Give me one and then keep doing these funny jokes. Right, exactly. That's fine. As long as I'm in on it. Just give you and me, just the two of us, not Andrew Webster,

because he doesn't want one at all and doesn't spend all his time thinking about this. Perfect. All right, last thing, your favorite non-tech thing of the year? My favorite non-tech thing has been, oh, it's going to sound so lame because I wrote it down and now it sounds more lame on a podcast. Curated playlists and fresh flowers. That's all you need in life is a nice little playlist. I made one for November because I've been traveling so much.

I was in New York, seeing you guys. I went on another reporting trip out of the state and I'm going to Texas for Thanksgiving break. And you need a playlist for that. And then getting to share that with everyone you like is a good time. So a little playlist to get you through. and validation from your friends about it. What's your playlisting process?

Do you like spend hours? Oh, no. Okay. No, no. Purely vibes-based. The one that I have right now is called Non-Stop November. And it's mostly like, indeed, you know who Suki Waterhouse is? Mm-hmm.

Yeah, lots of Suki Waterhouse, you know, sad, fun, autumn vibes. Yeah, non-stop November. Just what I'm looping, basically. Like, I am addicted to these songs and I need them in a playlist, and here is, you know, 100 songs. They're just like that one. It's sort of my playlist vibe. And fresh flowers. They're cheap.

They make you happy. I have a vase next to my front door and then one on my desk, so I get to flex it in my what's on your desk series. But yeah, they're simple. They make you happy. That's all you need is music and fresh flowers. Do you have a favorite kind of flower? Or is it just whatever, whatever they're selling at the bodega?

Oh, wow, the bodega. The bodega, okay. You're going to move to New York. You have to learn the word bodega. That's true. That's true. We're just starting this now. Vergecasters, if you have a sublet with fresh tulips,

yeah, it's tulips. I think that they're really pretty, and then they open slowly. And yeah. I love this for you. Thank you. It's just a cozy fall full of fresh flowers. This sounds so nice. I know, it is.

And it's pouring rain here, and I have a slight cold. and that's okay. And I'll play my cozy games. I'll write my, you know, weird AI stories about billionaires. It's a good time. You're like one oversized thing of soup away from being like a rom-com character right now. Oh my God. Wow. Wow. That's what we should all aspire to, I think. Wow. You're like, you're at the beginning of a Christmas movie. It's what's happening right now. It's going to be amazing. I would hope that, you know, in the Christmas movies, you don't have the winter cold. They leave that out for some reason. This is true. Once you come out of that and then, then everything's better. Obviously. Awesome. Kylie, feel better. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Moving on, Barbara Krasnoff, reviews editor. Here we go. Barbara, hello.

Hey there. Okay, we gave you some homework. Let's do your story of the year first. Let's start there. What was your story of the year? Well, actually, it's two or more stories of the year. It's the election coverage that we had. I was especially impressed by Addie's, the pragmatist guy to the 2024 presidential election. I mean, I read that about five times. It gave more information about what the candidates had done in the past and what they were saying now about various important issues. I just wanted to sort of print it out and mail it to everybody I knew. And that, of course, Nile's essay, a vote for Donald Trump is to vote for school shootings and measles. I mean, you got to mention that. I mean, that was just amazing. Probably the best headline we ran this year. I don't know how you topped out as a headline. honestly don't. I certainly couldn't, and I wouldn't have had the guts to put it up either. So I'm very glad that our editor-in-chief did. So those were my favorites for the year. Those are good ones. I agree with all of those. What was your tech thing of the year? I found this of all three pieces of homework we all had to do. I found this to be by far the hardest. What was yours?

Well, I bought myself a little steam deck. It's not brand new. Yeah, I'll show it to you. I've got it unplugged right now because I was playing with some stuff. But, you know, there it is. I love it. The stream deck has, I think, everyone at the verge, I think, has had a stream deck at one point or another. I think it's very good. Yeah. And I love playing with it. What are you doing with it? What's on the board right now? Well, nothing because it's unplugged. But not a great sign for the stream deck. I have to tell you. The fact that it's unplugged. Not a great sign. Well, that's because I was moving it from computer to computer. But, um, I basically use it for very quick answers to things.

So that's cool. And just to get places from one to the other. My problem is I do not have a smart home. So I can't use it for the really sexy things that Jen uses it for, for example. But also, I just like playing with it. I like playing with different things, and I'm going to play with it some more. What fun stuff have you discovered, even things that haven't stuck? I feel like I'm with you just in the sense that.

having a bunch of buttons in front of me is just endlessly fun. And I will find a bunch of wildly unproductive things to do with them just because it's fun to press buttons. Well, I've been trying to attach it to my Chromecast. Ooh, that's good. I haven't done it yet, but that's my next project. Because at home, well, we have just the one TV. And what we tend to do is we run these,

constantly, this background stuff on birds in various interests, interesting places or cute kittens because it gets the blood pressure down. And what I want to do is to be able to just press a button and have the cute kittens pop up on the TV. So that's my next project. That is an extremely good idea. I have been spending all year trying to figure out how to more quickly play a specific set of YouTube videos. My problem is I have a toddler who between three and 12,000 times a day just stares at me and demands Moana

and I've like mapped the shortcut button on the Roku remote to get there I've done a bunch of stuff I've tried to figure out like you know all these macros that will do it I love the idea of just having a button that is just like play the happy video and then he can do it himself

just play the video and also because we are we are unfortunately a Google voice household And sometimes that just does not work. And I'd much rather just press a button and have Netflix or whatever come up, then have to try to say it or have to do it the really old-fashioned way and do it on the remote. So that's where I am right now. I like that a lot.

Can I give you one other tip as a person I know who has to also use Slack all day? Using the Stream Deck to change my Slack status has been wonderful and also has made me a better coworker because I now reliably change my Slack status. So just to have a thing that's like, I have one that's like a BRB with the little hanging BRB sign. And I just have a button on it that I can press on the stream deck and it puts me up at BRB for 60 minutes. Oh, that's perfect. Game changer. That is perfect. Thank you. I will definitely take that into consideration. Happy to help. All right, what's your other thing? Non-tech thing? Totally non-tech thing is googly eyes. See this? That's so good. And the reason is basically when we had our meeting, I had been to the office for like a year. And so when we had our

meeting, I was sitting around at one of the stations and one of our colleagues basically said, I have this bag full of googly eyes. Does anyone want any? And I said, sure, I'll take a couple. And I stuck it to the back of my phone. And it's the most relaxing thing that I, anytime I get like tense or upset or whatever. I just look at these really wide, sympathetic, googly eyes. And I go, oh, things aren't too bad. So that's my totally favorite non-tech thing for right now. It does make your phone feel much nicer.

Like, I feel like I like your phone more than I like most phones now. Well, yeah, look. I mean, look at this poor, cute little thing. I basically, like, for those who are looking, I've got a dark blue backing on my pixel 6. and the two little eyes against the dark blue backing. Just looking at you wide, almost like kitten eyes, you know, and saying, hi, I love you.

You're nice. It's adorable. And they're like almost perfectly aligned, but just slightly. It's great. I'm a big fan. There's a real googly-ey-eyes thing happening in our newsroom now that I love very much. V-Song on our team, I know, instead of getting the new Mac Mini, just put googly eyes on her old Mac Mini to make herself feel better about it. And that seems to have worked very well for her.

V is the one who gave me these. There you go. She's starting a trend here. Googly eyes, all the things. Do you now look around your house being like, what else can I googly eyes? I feel like a bag of googly eyes makes someone very dangerous. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, absolutely.

In fact, you know, I'm looking on Amazon or someplace. I'm going to get a bag of those so that I can not only use them on things here, but so I can carry them with me. So if I meet somebody who's like not in a good way, I'll just hand them a couple of googly eyes. That's so good. Just hand them to Google Ayes and walk away with a no explanation. I feel like people would instantly understand what you meant. I love it.

I think so. That's really good. All right, Barbara, thank you very much. All right, very good. All right, we've got to take one more break, and then we have a couple more people to talk to you about all the favorite and biggest stuff from the air. Be right back. Buzzwords like progressive and affordability are thrown around all the time in politics. But what do they actually mean?

For me, being a progressive means at least. these two things. One, being willing to unite lots and lots of people, all of the folks that are getting screwed over against the powers that be that are making your life worse. And then second, being progressive is essentially a hopeful enterprise that you think, I think that the world can be much better, that we don't have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo. And is there a difference between what it means to the elected officials and what it means to the people? So money is essentially the root of everything. I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you have all that. That's like secondary. Third. That doesn't, that doesn't, that's not a priority.

That's this week on America actually. Let's begin. Complex and unprecedented, the Spanish authorities are calling it. 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 this morning,

and we assessed that individual. They are doing well. Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Today, Explain drops every weekday afternoon. This week on Networth and Chill, we're diving into another edition of Am I the Asshole, Finance Edition? And trust me, these money dilemmas will have you questioning everything. I'm breaking down real stories from real people who are navigating financial situations that range from mildly awkward to absolutely unhinged.

And I'm giving you my unfiltered take on who's in the right and who needs a serious reality check. Because let's be real. When it comes to mixing relationships and finances, someone's always asking if they're the asshole. Learn how to set boundaries, protect your wealth, and avoid becoming the villain in your own financial story. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on your. YouTube.com slash your rich BFF. All right, we're back. Up next, Alex Heath,

Deputy Editor at the Verge, and the author of the very good command line newsletter. Alex Heath, hello. Hi. You have an AI background, and you just alerted us to the Riverside Mac app,

and this is the greatest day of my life. So I just, all of my answers before have changed. My thing of the year is that Riverside, which we use and record this podcast, now has a desktop app, and everything will be wonderful. Happy Thanksgiving, David.

Seriously. This is what we do here. All right, so we gave you some homework. What was your story of the year? It's a theme, and I'm calling it the AI rat race, which is just this idea that all of the big tech companies and OpenAI Anthropic have just been trying to one-up each other all year long with all of these announcements

to a kind of petty, hilarious degree. And I expect that to only continue next year, but this year really felt like it ratcheted up quite a bit. And apologies if others have said something along these lines. But that's, I just, I don't think you can like seriously say there was a bigger story in tech this year than that. I agree. And I actually think I like that way of thinking about it, too, that what we've had is this like incredibly high stakes expensive game of like teeny tiny one-upsmanship all year. Yeah.

Like everybody's just doing 5% better than everybody else every three weeks. all here and spending ungodly amounts of money. Yeah, and it's, and it all blurs together, and you reflect back on the year, and it's like, I guess Chad Shoebt is a little better to use. Claude is better. Like, all of these things feel better, but I haven't felt the kind of aha, early iPhone moment this year. It's just felt very kind of constantly iterative.

Yeah, we like skipped straight to the iPhone 14 era. of AI. So you said you think it's going to continue next year. Yeah. Do you think so? Like there's another case to be made that like we're hitting sort of a slowdown with these models. Maybe there's like a bubble that's going to burst. Maybe everybody is going to finally like take a deep breath and start to ask real questions about AI. You don't think any of that's coming. Oh, David, it's like you were reading my newsletter before it even comes out. It will have come out by this time. There you go. No, that is actually an interesting point.

There is this concept in AI called the scaling wall that seems to be hitting everyone in the face, which is just this idea that everyone thought that new models would get dramatically smarter, the more compute and money you threw into training them. And that's turning out now to not be the case. So I and others have reported that Google and others are seeing diminishing returns from training their next kind of frontier models. And the consensus seems to be that that's okay because there's a lot of work that needs to be done with just building good experiences around the models that exist today. And agents are a thing I think we're going to be hearing a lot more about next year, which are basically LLMs that do

things on your behalf that can chain together multiple actions, take over a desktop interface or a phone or something like that. And you can achieve. agents with the models that exist today. It's all the magic is done in post-training and what happens after you've trained one of these large models. And the scaling wall seems to be applying to training new models, but not necessarily improving the ones that exist today. That's fair. Do you think the leaderboard has changed this year? Like, as we look at who is winning this race, it's been a wild game of kind of leapfrog. But looking back, do you feel like we're in? in a different spot than we were 12 months ago?

I think it's hard to say with a straight face that anyone other than OpenAI is the winner right now. I would say Open AI, especially with its O-1 reasoning model release, is still kind of ahead of where the puck is going. Everyone is going to be doing, I say, reasoning with air quotes, reasoning models next year. I will say it does feel like meta has significantly moved up to leaderboard this year with long. and the excitement around it and the adoption of it. Gemini seems to be doing okay. I think Google's happy with it, but wishes that more businesses we're using it. Anthropic is killing it on the business side on, you're just being accessible through every cloud provider. And OpenAI is the big consumer bet, you know, that the chat GPT is going to be the next Google or the next Facebook.

It kind of has to be to justify Open AI's insane valuation. So it's a lot of the same players. They all kind of constantly move up and down. That's why I call it a rat race. But going into the new year, going into December, and I caveat all this was saying a year ago, my Thanksgiving was ruined because Sam Altman got suddenly fired from Open AI. I guess in that sense, an awful lot has changed in 12 months.

And Nelai was at, I think, Disneyland, and we were just constantly calling each other while he was in between rides trying to confirm reporting that we had all week. long on the verge. So, you know, who knows what could happen? The AI industry moves very fast. But as of right now, it feels like Open Eye still has a little bit of an edge, but that edge is rapidly dulling, which is interesting. Yeah, yeah, I agree. All right, next thing on the list, your favorite tech thing of the year? Mm-hmm. This is not, it's not Riverside for Mac, though. I am also very happy about this. It's another app that, you know, I just think a lot of AI

apps aren't very good, but there's this one I've found that I use. on my Mac all day long called Granola. And it's a meeting note-taking app. It gets around wiretapping laws by not actually recording your calls. But what it does is it runs a hyper-miniaturized LLM live while you're on a Google meet, a Zoom, whatever, FaceTime call and transcribes it in real time. So it doesn't save the audio file or let you listen to it after, but it gives you a transcript. And then it has been kind of post-trained to really focus on.

on summarizing in an actionable way how you would want to see notes from a meeting, almost like you've got a personal assistant that's in the meeting with you. I've been using it for like our editor calls, for interviews, and it's got, you know, a pretty nice interface, and it's fairly well integrated into MacOS.

So that's my pick. It's like a simple, actually useful application of AI in a work kind of setting. Does the action items thing actually work? I feel like we've gotten a point where the transcription stuff on a lot of these services is very fast and very good. But I'm so skeptical of the thing where it's like, we're going to tell you the three most important things that happened in this meeting. Does Grinol actually do pretty well? Yeah.

It's pretty good. And it recognizes voices and it knows how to make distinctions. And, you know, it gives me like next steps after a meeting based on how we talked about it. You know, like, for example, like really long ones where a lot is said, it's actually pretty helpful at breaking all of that down. You know, it's not perfect, but it's definitely the best I've used in this context. And then it's got a bunch of like integrations with other apps. Like you can drop a summary straight into Slack or your email app or something like that. So they're continuing to build on it and I'm pretty bullish on it as a product, honestly,

just because it's it's a very good niche application of AI. Yeah, that's pretty cool actually. What about non-tech things? I went to Japan this summer. slash fall and I'm just going to pick alcohol. You know, that kind of sums up my year anyway.

I thought you were going to just pick Japan, but I like just picking alcohol just as much. That's pretty good. Yeah. I mean, Japan is awesome, but I fell in love with Shochu in Japan, which is like it's not sake, it's not soju, it's like a higher ABV, almost like whiskey,

clear, very easy to drink, earthy, smoky, Japanese spirit. And I want to find more of it in the States. But yeah, anytime I see Shochu now, I ordered immediately. How easy is it to find in the States? You know, I thought it would be easier. It's, I'm in L.A., and so it's a little bit easier here. We just, we have a lot of Japanese people and really good restaurants that are Japanese in L.A. But it's harder to find when I travel. But yeah, Shochu, it's good and strong. I have to try this. I, yeah.

Very briefly, a couple of years ago during the pandemic was like, I'm going to get into Japanese whiskey. It's so good, man. It was, it's so good, but it was, it's such a different world of booze that I just, I eventually was like, I'm going to go back to learning about like Kentucky bourbon because that's, that's as much as I can handle right now. I'm from Kentucky. I can, we can have a whole convo about bourbon at some point. I'll have to do that sometime. I like it. All right.

Alex, thank you as always. Appreciate it. Thanks, man. All right. Last, but certainly not least. Ash Parrish, the Virges Video Games reporter. Here we go. Ash, hello.

Hi. It's been a minute. We haven't done this in a while. You need to come on the show more often. I think the last time I was on, I was talking about Tears of the Kingdom. Maybe. I think that's right. We also talked about GTA 6, like 100 years ago.

We did? I don't remember that one. Because there was like that weird leak that happened forever ago. Okay, I do remember that, but I don't remember being on the Vergecast about it. You were. It was great. We had a terrific time. I enjoyed everything.

second of it. So we gave you some homework. What was the story of the year for you? So the story of the year for me, I'm going to do something a little bit different and I'm going to choose a story from my beat, which is video games, which isn't necessarily like the biggest story for the verge overall because it's like a tech website and there are a lot more important things happening in the tech world than what's going on in the world of video games. But I have like two buckets for a biggest story of the year on my beat. I've got like the actual factual, this is objectively the biggest story, and then the biggest story, like, to me

personally. So the biggest story, objectual, actual, factual is the Switch 2 and GTA6. They are these, like, almost oppressive figures looming in the distance that is, like, slowly coming towards the video game industry. And when

it hits, it's going to be this massive event. And both of those things are supposed to happen next year. Like, Nintendo is not, you know, they're being coy about exactly when, but they're saying, we are definitely, definitely going to announce the switch successor sometime before the end of Q1, 2025.

And it's just been like a constant, like, not deluge, but like Nintendo feels like with everything that they're doing now, it's like we're clearing the books, we are getting everything off of our plate, just clearing the runway for when this massive story hits. And so that's on the hardware side. And on the software side, you have GTA6, which is probably going to be the biggest video game release in our lifetimes. I don't know how else to explain it. It's just this GTA6 is just this massive, crazy, insanely popular thing that has been hyped up possibly too much.

hopefully Rockstar can deliver on, not their promises, but at least the idea that people have in their head for what this video game is supposed to be. Well, so let me actually pause on that because this is a thing that I have been wondering about a lot recently, which is, A, it's sort of wild that the two biggest things in video games right now are things that don't exist yet. And I think you're absolutely right that they have like been the stories of the year all year despite not existing. And there's like a lot of existential questions you could ask about games as a result. But I do wonder, after all of this, is it even possible for these two things to live up to the hype? Yes. You think? I do.

Okay. Good. Nintendo is Nintendo. Yes, they've had some stinkers like with the Wii U and things like that in the past. But I think no matter what it is, no matter what it does, it will be big because it's Nintendo. Like Nintendo had that alarm-o thing out. Like it's, which was just like little, you know, chinty alarm clock that was just like nothing.

And it's sold out within seconds, okay? And it's just an alarm clock that plays like Nintendo beeps and boobs. People want it because of who makes it. And that's exactly the case for both of those things. It's a rock star game. It's a Nintendo system. No matter what the kind of quality it is, it's still going to sell like gangbusters. May not perform the way.

that the bookkeepers want them to perform if they are lower quality, but it's still going to be like the massive, massive million dollar million copy thing selling thing. Okay. I just like, I don't know. I feel like we've been burned, especially on the game side,

by these huge things that just turned out to be even slightly worse than we expected and it becomes this whole giant catastrophe. And it's like if GTA6 does what like cyberpunk 2077 did, the world will collapse in on itself. And I think maybe I'm just hardening myself

against that possibility as somebody who's very excited about this game. I understand that. You know, we haven't seen very much of GTA6 outside of a trailer and leaked materials. Rockstar hasn't really told us all that much about what the game is. We haven't really seen official gameplay yet.

So we actually have no idea what to explain. expect from them. And I think that's probably smart on there. And to kind of like manage expectations. Like you can't get mad at us for something about this because we never actually told you what this thing was. We just said it was GTA6. We gave you the trailer. We put it out there. We didn't tell you to expect this, this, this, this or this. We just, you know, did our thing and put it out there. But, you know, I don't know. You're right in that there have been these big, huge releases that have been kind of underwhelming. But I don't know, like I said, doesn't matter what kind of quality it is because it's

rock to star, because it says GTA 6 on the box, it's going to sell 10 billion copies. Yeah, fair enough. All right, I believe you. Okay, so those are the big stories. What's the one nearest and dearest to your heart? So the thing that is important to me that I think is like my personal big story for the year is the story of the video game industry layoffs and the rise of Gamergate 2.0. as it were. We are in the second year of this like trend of studios being shut down of massive

and massive, massive amounts of people being laid off. We're really going to start feeling it, I believe, in 2025. There was Embracer Group put out with their earnings statement maybe a couple weeks ago stating that, you know, we've got this dried up release pipeline without really qualifying that with the fact that we closed like six different studios and laid off over a thousand of our employees. I'm like, if you don't have people working for you anymore because you close everything down and fire everybody, yeah, of course your production pipeline is going to suffer and you're not going to have games out that are going to make the money that you need to appease your shareholders. Like, we're starting to see the knock on effects of this like,

this layoff last two years, like really starting to hurt and pinch these big corporations because now they have nothing to show for it. They laid off everybody. They closed these studios. And now they have no product anymore because there's nobody around to make it. On the other end of that, you've got this rising culture war thing within video games where people are trying to attribute the problems of the video game industry with the layoffs and the closures and all, and like, you know, games failing with the idea that it's minorities and people of colors fault, which is absolutely patently absurd. Yeah, we're just doing this again somehow. Yeah, pretty much. We're doing this again.

And these people, you know, they have nothing interesting to say. They're not really paying attention to facts. They're just really upset that the culture of storytelling in video games, both like on the screen and in the development room, is shifting away from trying to appeal to, I'm going to use extremely heavy quotes because it's not true. Traditional gamers, which have always been straight, cis heterosexual white men, and into this more diverse tapestry where we're making stories that appeal to people of color, LGBTQ people, disabled folks, and we're starting to see development

rooms also reflect that diversity as well. And, you know, people can't handle change like that, and they get really mad, and they start getting mad at people for the wrong reasons. And it's important to me that these stories get covered so we can understand why they're not. they're happening and why it is not true. Well, you can counteract their narratives that like, oh, this game failed because it was woke, you know, which is ridiculous. And then this woke game that was really, really good, succeeded because actually it wasn't woke. That, which is very funny. Another, like the other side of that argument. Right. The Democrat, secretly Republican. Exactly. Yeah. Somehow it just, like, do you ever look at this industry and you're like,

oh, it just is all the, like, how many times in history is it like? How many times in history is it, like, Like Grand Theft Auto, Nintendo is doing a thing, and everybody is losing their minds and mad and we're kind of doing GamerGate. Like, it just, this is just the cycle. We're just doing it all over again. I think the problem with that is specific to the video game industry is that we do not have the kind of, like, institutional memory that other industries have because of the way that the industry is currently working in terms of journalism and in terms of, like, you know, having. a dedicated group of people that are covering these kinds of issues, but we fire them all the next day. Like, it's really, really hard to keep a job in video games journalism right now.

And because of that, because it is so hard to, you know, maintain a steady job and because these kinds of reportings doesn't necessarily move the needle, like top 10 ways you can get the most out of your switch or, you know, that kind of shit. Right. We don't have the institutional memory, say, the way, I don't know, movies do, or any other kind of like cultural thing because everybody's gone. They have to move on and go somewhere else

so they can make money and pay their bills and not, you know, be destitute. Totally. All right, well, these are good things. And again, you need to come on the show more often. This is all... You know where I metaphorically live. Why do now?

We were talking about this before. I do now. This is great news. All right, let's keep going through this. So the next thing was your favorite new thing of the year. And for most people, we've been making them say tech, but if you want to do, like, you know, games are tech enough. So if you want to do games, we can do games, tech, whatever you want.

The tech thing, it's not necessarily this year, but it came out late enough last year where I think it counts. Kind of like that window where this movie came out in 2024, but it's not eligible for the Oscars until the next year. It's that. It's the PlayStation Portal. Oh, my God. You're the PlayStation Portal fan, the one that's out there?

I am the one PlayStation Portal fan now. Now, because of the recent news that PlayStation Portal will now let you scream games from the cloud. Before that, like, I already appreciated the device because it allowed me to play my PlayStation games on the couch and still be in the same room with my husband and we can, like, watch TV or do whatever. And I appreciate that. Like, I like, I don't like being sequestered or taking away, like, the living room television from him. So, like, you know, because I have to do this thing because I am literally working, you know, he can't watch, you know, whatever silly. thing that he wants to watch. And so that kind of makes it easier for me. But the

big thing is that that kind of like breaks open this device and now makes it kind of like a must own for like anybody who has a PlayStation 5 is the idea that now you can stream games without the need of being tethered to a PlayStation 5 because it's going to let you stream cloud games.

If you've got a PlayStation Premium Plus membership, I don't remember exactly how that works. But yeah, that that makes it like, okay, now this is on the level of the state. steam deck, maybe not the same technical heavy lifting specs as a steam deck may have, but definitely the utility that I think is going to make it like, okay, this is something that I need to, that I need

to own now. That's really good. That's fair. And I have to say, I'm also personally very excited about this because the portal is such a, like, lovely little thing. Like, they made a nice object, and they just hamstrung it in such a stupid way. So it's like, it's nice to see it actually start to do the thing it should have been doing all along. Correct.

Correct. Now, if we can make it such that, you know, it doesn't drop the connection because I can't wire my PlayStation where it is, like, where I have it. Like, so we can, like, beef up the way that it, you know, streams from the PlayStation. And so I don't have to, like, reconnect every, you know, couple minutes. Then we'll be, like, cooking with gas. But until then, you know what, I can live with this. All right. I'll buy it. I love it. All right. And then last thing, your non-tech thing of the year. I think you might already know what the answer to that question is. It's my new corgi puppy boo. His real name is bucephalus because I named him after my favorite historical horse, Alexander the Great's horse, Busephalus, but we call him boo for short. Do you call him Busephalus when you're mad at him? Like, is that when you're like, you know, sternly talking to him? You know, I haven't yet, but I think that might be a thing that happens. Because I feel like that's a, like, if I heard someone yelling that at the dog park, like, ooh, that's serious stuff. When you hear someone yelling at the dog park, you're like, that is the biggest nerd that I've ever seen in my life. Also that.

But yeah, he's a three-month-old corgi who loves chewing on feet, and he's trying to chew on mine now because he's teething. And he is absolutely shit monster, but I love him to death. So that is my favorite non-tech thing of the year. I love it. So three months, he's just a terror. He's just a destroyer of worlds. He's a toe-chewing terror, that's for sure. But then he like sleeps on top of your head and you're like, all right, we're cool.

Everything's fine. Pretty much, yeah. I love this. Yeah. Then he makes his little, ow, noise when he's like yawning or something like that. And it's so, so dang cute. He is very cute. There are a bunch of dog dedicated Slack channels at the verge and Vox Media in general.

And like, it's not so much that you've, like, won those channels with Boo, but, like, you did it. It's, like, pretty hard to compete with Boo's situation right now. Yeah, that's the goal. He's doing good work. All right, Ash, thank you as always. It was great to have you. Come back soon. We have, I think, a lot of stuff to talk about in 2025.

We will definitely have a lot of stuff to talk about it in 2025, for sure. All right, we'll see you then. Thanks. All right, that is it for the Verge cast today. Thank you to all of the Verge staff who came on the show for coming on the show, for doing your homework, for talking us through all your favorite stuff. There is lots more on all this stuff. all the stories of the year, all of our favorite things, lots of it at Theverge.com. I'll put as much as I can in the show notes, but I trust that you will tell me all of the things that I forgot

to put in the show notes. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, and again, particularly if you have questions that you want us to talk about on the Vergecast, about the Vergecast, and about the verge and about the future of media, you can always email us at Vergecast at theverge.com. Call the hotline 866 Verge1-1. I want to hear all your thoughts, all your questions, all your ideas, everything. Lots of fun stuff to come in the next couple of weeks, including big thoughts about the future of media. It's going to be great. This show is produced by Liam James, Will Por, and Eric Gomez. The Verge cast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. We'll be back on Tuesday to talk about some fun, van-lifey things and some microphones.

Then we'll be back on Friday to talk about the news. It all just keeps happening, friends. We're winding towards the holidays, so we're going to get into some year-end stuff here pretty soon. but Lord knows the AI news isn't going to stop just because it's Thanksgiving. If you're in the U.S., I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I hope you have an awesome weekend. We will see you on Tuesday. Rock and roll.