The Vergecast - Samsung announces Galaxy S22 Ultra / Microsoft announces open app store rules / Peloton fired 2,800 employees and gave them free Peloton memberships

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Alex Cranz, and Chris Welch discuss all the announcements from Samsung's Galaxy S22 Unpacked event. Senior reporter Adi Robertson explains Microsoft's Open App Store Principles and the other tech policy news from the week. Wearables reporter Victoria Song joins the show to discuss Peloton's business troubles. Further reading: Everything announced at Samsung’s Galaxy S22 Unpacked event Samsung’s Galaxy S22 Ultra is a Note successor with a built-in stylus Samsung’s Galaxy S22 and S22 Plus put improved cameras and performance in a samey design Samsung phones will get an extra year of Android updates versus Google’s Pixel Samsung’s new tablets go bigger than ever Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 will track your sleep with cartoon animals Microsoft announces open app store rules to prove it’s okay with new laws Microsoft hints it will open up Xbox store, changing its entire business model Microsoft says it will keep Call of Duty on PlayStation ‘beyond the existing agreement’ Everything you need to know about the bill that could blow up the app store Nvidia’s huge Arm deal has just been scrapped WarnerMedia and Discovery get US government approval to create their new media giant Anti-exploitation bill advances in Senate despite free speech concerns What on Earth is going on with Peloton? Peloton fired 2,800 employees and gave them free Peloton memberships Fired Peloton employees crash new CEO’s first all-hands Mazda head units are getting bricked by a local NPR station in Seattle Twitter finally agrees that 1x is not the only speed for watching a video Is ‘realityOS’ Apple’s newest operating system? Sports streaming is busted — the Super Bowl likely won’t be any different Apple’s Tap to Pay feature lets newer iPhones accept contactless payments Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week in the Vergecast, we talk about Samsung's new S-22 line with Chris Welch, the various tech policy bills in Congress and Microsoft planning to make Call of Duty available on the PlayStation with Addy Robertson. And we get into what's going on with Peloton with new Verge reviewer, Victoria's Song. It's the Vergecast coming up now. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of wait. waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in.

Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data and your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to Retool.com slash Vergecast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist. and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom.

And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hello and welcome to Vergecast, the flagship podcast of ill-advised tech regulation. Huh? The bag of the juices flowing? Yeah. You ready? I'm ready.

We had a marketing meeting. We got to make it more mainstream. And that's my pitch. Regulations. Anyway, I'm your friend, Eli. Deeter Bone is back. I am your prodigal son. That's a lot, Deeter.

We're going to spend the next hour unpacking that one. It's going to be a wild ride. Alex Kranz is here. I'm very worried about my wordal streak. It's bad. Our newsroom just fell into chaos. Actually, Chris Welch is here. Hi, Chris.

Good to be back, as always. Chris is part of the chaos. I was like, hey, the New York Times has its wordle up, and then I'm blaming Apple. I think whatever Apple did with cookies on the iPhone is messing with people's wordle streaks. Ruin my streak. Because technically power language.co.com. On the New York Times website is a third-party cookie. We're not allowed.

Tim Cook, I know you're listening. Please give me my streak back. Tomorrow morning at 4 a.m., he's on a treadmill listening to this. And I'm saying the whole ad tracking thing, yeah. It was bad for Facebook. The wordle thing is when it blows back on you, buddy. All right. Well, hopefully the Times Times is.

I will say this. We have reached out to the New York Times for comment on Whartle Streaks. There's a lot of news. Chris is here to help us talk about the Samsung Galaxy S-22 event, which was this week. Addy's going to join us a little bit later. There's a bunch of policy news. Microsoft put out this wild antitrust letter about app stores, the Ernit Act, passed in the Senate.

That's a 230 reform bill. Lots of action there. And then Victoria's Song, who's not been in the virtualist yet, but she's going to join us. Talk what's going on with Peloton. We're going to do a little bit of lightning around. So lots going on. Let's start. It was S-22 unpacked.

Happened this week. Chris, you have held an S-22. Tell us about it. I held all three for about an hour. And they were just what was leaked. There were no surprises at this event, as is as usual for Samsung these days. We knew the whole story weeks in advance. But so the S-22 Ultra, I guess, is the most newsy of them, since it is a note, essentially.

inform and function and feel. They gave up on the ultra from last year, changed that design back to the note. They're not calling it the note because the note is more of an overarching experience, they're saying now. That's cross device. Oh, my God.

Since the S-Pen works on the Z-Pold 3 and tablets, no one cares about the S-Pen on those devices, you know, but yes, the note. What's a note? Yeah, what's a note? The note is a feeling, it's an emotion. You know it in your heart. There was a line at the event where they're like,

we've done some amazing engineering to make the stylus go right into the phone. And it's like, didn't you, haven't you been doing that for like almost a full decade? I mean, the note, if you look at, it's the note. I just called it the note. The S-22 Ultra looks like a note. If you had just seen it next to the other phones and there were no labels on them, you were like, oh, they released two Galaxy S-22s and a note. Like, that's, it's got like the square.

It's got the curved edges. in the curved screen. It has a different style of camera bumps, which we need to talk to for the next three hours. But, like, I would not be shocked if what happened here was, they were like, we're going to bring the note back. And then the S-22 Ultra Team was like, we're going to make an Ultra 2.

And somebody at some point was like, hang on a minute. And then they just killed the S-22 Ultra. Yeah. They've been heading in this direction for two or three years now. Yeah, it seems like sales have been pretty off the mark and so clearly they're trying to like readjust and bring back an old fan favorite. Someone tweeted at me, they were like, well, the note doesn't really mean anything to people anymore because of the note seven or whichever one went up in flames.

And so they're like, well, they've moved away for that reason. And I'm like, I'm not sure if that's really the reason why. I feel like note still means more to people than ultra it is. They should have moved away with that with the note eight. Right. I feel like, if you're going to make that call, you would have done it with the one right after the one that burst into flames. Because it was only last year that they didn't release a note, right? I need to just tell everyone.

Alex and I are in the same room, and whenever I do this show in our studio, in the office of another person, I'm just like the happiest. Yes. So I apologize. It's so much. And Debo's back. I mean, it's just like, I'm going to have to hold it in. It's a big day for you. It's a lot.

It's a lot. Phones boring, Virchcast will be off the chain. But right, that idea that they would kill the note has been around for a long time. I feel like the phones just ran into each other. Yeah. They have brought the stylus to all kinds of other phones. And then importantly, I think the S line, they need to do something to get some shine back on it against the iPhone. Like, the sales have been down.

And so they need to re-differentiate it. And the stylus is like a good way of doing it. Yeah. But they could have just always bought a note. That's true. Like the note was always there. All right. But tell me about the phones.

Give me the rundown of the three phones. So the Ultra starts at $1,200, I believe. and it's really nice. It's got a nice screen, better cameras, bigger sensors, all the usual, like, very iterative year-over-year stuff. The F-22 plus is 999, 6.6-inch screen. It's got slightly worse cameras, but still really nice hardware. Like, people are saying it's boring, it's boring, it's boring. But like my angle on those two phones is Samsung is more just consistent these days than ever before when it comes to hardware. Their screen quality is always that much nicer than what's on a pixel or like other Android phones. They always say

the best components for their own hardware. So there's a screen quality is always that. There's a case to be made for buying an S-22, even if it seems boring or very iterative over last year. That's true, the S-22-plus, I think. The S-22 is a harder case because they cut quite a few things out. The S-22-plus has Wi-Fi-C, but not Wi-Fi. And the S-22 has... It's got ultra-wideband.

The S-22 doesn't, for some reason. Oh, that's wild. Yeah, not the 5G, just the ultra-wide band, like, finding technology, the location tracking stuff. For some reason, they'll cut that out. Oh, okay, okay. And then the battery is much smaller. It's 3,700 mill amps in the S-22 versus 4,500, I believe, in the S-22-plus.

So that's quite a reason to go for the larger one as well. Yeah, for... So the S-22 is 799, which is, like, at that point, it's a bit harder to, like, just a 5 versus, like, a pixel 6 or 1-plus or... Well, it's not horrifically ugly. I think it's, like, important. At that price point, what you're getting is, like, a measure of design. It's a very measured design.

Thought. Yes, and the vessels are now symmetrical. No, it has the good camera bump. It's got the... Yeah. Symmetrical basils, it's more squared off. It's got the good camera bump. How did the regular S-22 feel like size-wise? Because it's what, 6.2? 6.1 inches. Oh, it's 6.1. That counts as small now in Android world. Did it feel small? Did it feel like, oh, this is like, if you want a small Android phone, this is the one to get?

It felt like iPhone 12-13-ish size, which I guess is right, just like that, the new normal, I guess, for small phones. But, yeah, they all felt really nice, as they should. There's no more plastic on the back of the S-22, whereas there was on the S-21. So at least Samsung stepped that up for the price. But, yeah, we'll see what they do. I mean, the cameras seem nice. They're making a big deal out of the night mode this year, which they're calling nightography. They've got to brand everything. No, no.

Nightography is the new selling point of the S-20 series. No. No, no, no. That's so good. Just imagine that meaning. Yeah, so the night shots are supposed to be able to be able to be. more detailed and better. And then for the portrait mode, they claim that it can now separate like an individual

strand of hair from the background when it blurs the background, which... Oh, that would be cool? That's always been a pain point for all phones, so we'll see. Yeah, yeah. But like if they did it, did you get to test the cameras at all? I took, like, one portrait. Yeah, I didn't really see. So just wait for our review, which should be coming in the fairly near future.

Yeah. Was it really Zoom background-esque? Yeah. Okay. So, but there are Samsung phones. They're nice. The software, they now have four years of Android updates they just said this week. So when you're beating Google at software, I think that's a good thing.

That is like legitimately wild, actually. This is a really basic question. I'm sorry I'm asking it. But will the cases make the camera bump flush? Like, have you seen the case situation? Yep. There's a photo that I took of the S-22 Ultra. I don't think it's in the story.

But yes, Samsung's own cases will flatten out the camera bump. I don't know. Like, I was a fan of the S-21 Ultra, because if you're going to have that many camera holes, just own it and flaunt it. Yeah. That's a sentence I never saw myself sing in my life. But here we are.

And so I think that camera bump was great. And it looked really nice on the S-21, especially the black one. Yeah. So this is like just a bunch of holes popping out. So, yeah. Put a case on there, though, and it's flat on a table. Yeah, the ultra is definitely headed towards, you know,

what's it called? Fear of holes. Yeah. Don't say it. That's it. Everyone will, you're going to trigger it. Yeah. And I'm like looking at this. I'm like, ooh, it's...

It's the little flash that gets me. Like, everything's very symmetrical and there's a little flash in there. And I'm just like, little guy. Just make it out. Does it look better in person, the non-camera bump, like, rings around all the separate cameras? I think so. The phone in general looks a lot better in person that it did in those leaks and renders. Because the matte glass is really nice.

The colors this year, pretty nice. The green and the white especially is like... That's green? It's like a grayish green. It's one of those phones that, like, takes on a different. shift and different lighting. Oh, I see. It's got a very turquoise element to it.

Yeah. What are these, so I'm counting. Let's just go ahead and count holes here. One, two, three, four, five, and then Alex's a little flash. A little flash. What's going on here? What are these cameras? So there's the main camera.

There's the ultra-wide. And then there are two telephotos. And I think the other one is like a laser focus. It does have a little red dot. And so one's like a faster aperture portrait lens. And then the other telephoto is like the 10x optical. whole 100 times space zoom nonsense that they've had for a couple of years. So that's fascinating, right?

Because that has been a tradeoff. You can have the sort of like less zoom, better at portrait, like kind of like 50 mil-ish, 85. But that's like where the iPhone is. It's where traditional portrait photography is. And like you can pick that or you can pick the crazy lens. And now Samsung is like, what if we don't? Both lenses. And I'm just wondering, like, are we?

gonna get to a place where there's 10 lenses on the back of a phone. God, I hope so. Like, you know, it's like, it's just like, it seems very obvious that the trend line is towards more cameras rather than one, like, like, maximally useful one.

Interchangeable cameras. That's what I want. I want to just screw cameras. Yeah, like put an email on the back of one of these phones. I don't do it. Let's just go. I mean, isn't that what the red phone was supposed to? But like, implemented well. They even talk about having adapters, like MetaBone style adapters for it. Yeah, and then they're like, we're also going to do a 3D screen.

Just do one thing at a time, is what I'm saying. And that one thing is the map. Samsung did make a camera that was like an Android camera. Yes. Do you remember that thing? And it was, it was they, I think what we're all learning about super high-end photography is like, you need a lot of processing. But Samsung was like, what if we took a low-end Android phone and then that was a camera with a big lens and it was the wrong choice? It was not the right choice.

It's a nice experiment. Just trying new things. I thought that thing was going to be a revolution. I will stand up here and take that hit. I looked at that thing and I was like, this is the future of cameras. And then I held one and I was like, crap, I think I said that out loud. Abort, abort, delete. What else?

Tell me more. I mean, I don't know how much more else. They're, to say, they're super nice phones. There's Samsung phones. The software isn't a good place. I mean, pixels had all these bugs lately, whereas, like, somehow we're in this place where one UI is, like, a pretty stable, good software experience, and Google's having some issues.

They tried to one-up Google, too, right? With the updates. Yeah, with the updates. Just saying, okay, yeah, we're going to do one, four years instead of three. Is that, so, I don't know, is that real, like, in Android world, the churn is always, faster, right? And then all the carriers right now are just doing incredible trade-in deals and subsidy deals.

I wonder if they're like, we can just say this and maybe it will never come. Like, at the end of four years, there's going to be like two people with phones and we can just write them a check. Yeah, they'll be fine. Isn't the processor here? Like on stage, they like didn't say he was making the processor.

There's a little bit of an issue there. Yeah, I mean, Samsung never likes the name the processor. That's because there's two, right? In certain regions outside the U.S., they're going to get whatever their new exonosis. But here in the U.S., it's like the first mainstream phone with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. Yeah. What a beautiful name.

Yeah. I love it. Yeah, they didn't want to talk up like the speed and performance. They were talking about like heat dissipation and stuff in the ultra. It's like keep it running full throttle all the time. And so we'll see how that actually checks out. Actually, it's super fascinating that they spent more time talking about heat dissipation than they did like just speed. Like they've got like a new vapor chamber that's all fancy.

and they like using like pressed steel in a new thing and they've got like a different kind of gel in there or something. And like there has been concerns about this processor in particular just flat out running hot and just like using up a bunch of watts. And so Qualcomm, you know, the knock is they wanted to at least pretend like they were catching up to Apple a little bit. So they just like threw a ton of power at it. And it may not.

It may melt your phone. Well, but there's heat, but there's also just. battery life. This is why I'm concerned about the small S-22, is if, like, it's got a relatively small battery with the processor that we don't know much about other than, huh, it sure does like to throttle. Could we find ourselves with, like, a phone that lasts four hours and also can cook an egg? Like, is that a real possibility? Yeah. Yes. Or it lasts four hours, but it's dismally slow. Okay. That's probably more realistic. But it's, like, a full day. But it's, like, extremely slow because the vapor chamber is just doing vapor chamber stuff.

Just vaporing. I don't know how that works. By the way, we had the CEO of Qualcomm, Christianaum, on Decoder, and I was like, what is the deal? Why do you own all these markets? Right. Like, why can't anyone else ship a modem in the United States and why all these phones? Snapchat and chips. Yeah.

And Dieter, you'll be happy to hear this. He was like, yeah, the carriers demand it. It's just very much like, yeah, every phone in the United States is sold by a carrier and they have a list and we're the list. And he was like, so it goes. Like, do-to-do. Don't know what to do about that. Which is interesting because we've heard, right,

that Google might be looking at Xenos stuff for its future roadmap. So it's just kind of just a weird, I don't know what point this is, like a crossover point between the two, if you believe the pixel is like realistic competition to these phones. Right, which, me.

I mean, but also like the tensor process of the pixel is for all intents and purposes, Exenos with some, you know, Google stuff on it. You know, like, the difference between a fab and, like, the chip designer and, like, you know, who gets to put the branding on it gets very, very fuzzy there. And I don't know, not for nothing, but Samsung's Exenose chips, there's, like, they've got good years and they've got very bad years, and you never know. And so the fact that they only ship Qualcomm in the U.S. is, like, annoying from a hate monopolies perspective, but just fine in terms of bullet dodgy.

Fair enough. Okay, so here's the thing when I was watching the event that just jumped out at me, and I promised myself I wouldn't freak out in the moment. Yeah. I would wait until Chris had seen the phones. The displays have something called vision booster. And the demo in the video was like, we're always looking at the ambient light and the brightness around us.

And then we're just going to mess with the picture on your screen. No. And so the actual image was like a face and a black. in a black background. Yeah. And like with vision booster and then like you could see everything in the background. Yeah. And I was like I have a lot of concerns in that.

Like I don't think that data was there to begin with. Like that's not how JPEGs work. But it's also nuts, right? Yeah. In terms of like what people might intend for you to see. But you're watching a movie. Like you're watching Batman. It's like lit like the office because your vision booster is like freaking out.

So Chris, you saw it. Tell me it's. not as nuts. Tell me it's the nightography of display algorithms. It was hard to get a sense of like what it really does in the short time I was on the phones, but apparently it's not an option that you toggle on or off. It's just like part of the panel tech. Oh no. So it's just active all the time. It's just on always. You can't turn it off. You can't toggle it off. As far as I know, that's what they told me initially. Well, so they started by saying it was for being outside in like bright sunlight, which I buy, right? But also like if you're sitting in the dark as well,

like they want it to like turn down the brightness and like maintain all that detail, or whatever. And so it sounds like it's just part of the Samsung display tech. They've got some new, like, feature in there that'll, like, balance everything out. But we'll have to see if it looks weird once you spend more time with the phone. I want to say maybe it was Samsung even. Some TV companies have, like, flirted with this idea of, like, adjusting the gamma depending on how bright the room is and stuff.

So I, like, kind of make sense. But also, I don't want my phones intelligently. I'm putting quotes around that. Like, figuring out what I should be looking at. We're going to get the phones and we're going to review them and we're going to take photos with them and look at the photos. And we are just getting to a place where you have no idea what the display of your phone is doing. Like, just almost none at all.

It's just trying to be an artist. Like directors, I cannot wait for a director to get wind of this and be like they are, Christopher Nolan is going to like, If you went to Christopher Nolan and he'd be like, look, I think Tenet looks bad on this new galaxy phone. He would shoot you for watching his movie on a phone. Like, he'd be like, I have an idea. I'm going to go back in time and murder you. What if we, what if it, is it on the tab eight as well?

I don't think they mentioned the tabs. I think it's mostly the phones as far as I heard. Yeah. So the, I think the vision booster is I think, I could be wrong, but I think it's only on the S-22 Ultra because the S-22 Ultra has an L-TPO display, whereas the regular S-22 and S-2 plus are more traditional OLED. They all do the dynamic refresh rate stuff so they can go from, I think, Chris, it's from 10 to 120, right? Not one.

So the S-20 and S-22 plus do 10 to 120, and the ultra does 1-hertz to 120, since it is the LTPO. Gotcha. Allison is reviewing them. We're just going to have to see what they look like to her. But the thing is there's no reference point. Like, we're getting to the place where, like, truth in imagery is no longer a concept. What is a picture? Like, if you were like, this looks inaccurate compared to, like, this graphic designer's perfectly calibrated,

monitor the hood on it. Like no normal person is like, well, that's a problem. They're like, is it very bright? And so I'm telling you, color is a concept. I hate it. Is unmoored from reality. I hate it. Are we going to have to talk about primary and secondary qualities now?

Yes. Like the philosophical terms? That's why you're back. Because I don't want to do it. I tried to do stuff like that last week. Everyone just looked at me like I was nuts. It's true. Look, like we had a brief moment where we had this illusion that there was such a thing

as picture accuracy. You know, like, we got rid of CRTs and, like, terrible, you know, broadcast images. We had HD and we had Blu-ray. And, like, we could all pretend that there was such a thing as, like, the director's intent being displayed in your living room. And now that's gone. And I think that's great. We never should have pretended it existed in the first place.

I fully disagree with you. Because we've handed the power to a cabal of Samsung engineers who are, like, what if you could see in the background of every... every photo. What if there were no shadows anymore? The Samsung experience. Everything just looks like you walked into an Apple store. Like, no thank you.

We'll see. I will see. It could be cool. Poor Allison is going to get so many just like outraged slacks about color accuracy. It's going to be bad. I'm just saying, like it's the equivalent of motion smoothing, but for phones. Everybody loves motion smoothing. Everyone wants their phone to have a soap opera.

Who is the person that acts? actively loves motion smooth. Oh, no, my stepmother does. Interesting. It was really upsetting. Big fight as I calibrated a TV over Christmas. This is a true story. Joanna Stern's father, well, I went to their house one time and I like turned off motion smoothing.

And to this day, he's like, that's the kid who broke my TV. You're going to start a support group for him and my stepmom. Like I get texts from her. She's like, I'm visiting my parents. My dad's still maddie. A real situation. Okay, those are the phones. They're pretty iterative, I think, is what we're saying.

Yeah, so as far as, like, will they solve, like, Samsung sales problem or, like, cause people to, like, upgrade from an S-20? Like, is this just, like, a holding pattern until foldables become more mainstream? Yes. Who's to say? That's where Alex is. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's interesting. You know, Apple sales are through the roof.

I mean, they just had, like, a bonkers quarter, and that does not seem to be translating everywhere else. And I can't, it's some combination of the phones are really good, people really like them, people are switching, Apple's very proud of that. And also, the carriers are desperate to get people on 5G networks and they're subsidizing everything to hell on back. And even Apple will, like, tell you, like, oh, this is pretty cool. So it's not Apple TV Plus motivating people to switch. It's like one John Hamm commercial. People are like, I got to get a new phone. I mean, Samsung did bounce back a little bit last quarter.

They did have, you know, record revenue, but it was pretty dire before. So I don't think there are out of any woods yet. I mean, a lot of this is going to be like, what will carriers go nuts trying to sell this phones away they went nuts trying to sell iPhones? Yeah, Samsung has one cool deal, or if you pre-order, they'll double the storage you ordered. So if you order the 120, you'll get the 256 and like up from there, which is pretty nice. And I think some carriers are also doing that, which is pretty decent deal to move some units. But they look like Samsung phones.

They feel like Samsung phones. We'll see if the camera is really that much of a jump up. But if you missed the note, it's back. Yeah. All right. There's two other things we've got to talk about that watch for, and there's new tablets. It seems like Android tablets, like the energy is back, right? We heard, was it Rich Minor, who's a long time Google executive is now running an Android tablets group inside of Google.

Samsung is, like, actually saying out loud that it makes tablets and showing them to people in a while. in a way that it has not. Right. They've made good tablets for all the time, but they haven't. There's the enormous Android E-Inc tablet market. That's just me and four people in China. But it seems like there's a little heat on Android tablets. So let's talk about these and then talk about that generally.

Chris, what's going on with these tablets? So I saw the Ultra one. I didn't really spend too much time with any of them, honestly. But the Ultra is like big one with the notch. and that brought me back to the Samsung ads. They used to run with the family with the notch haircut back when they were making fun of the iPhone. And sure enough, here we are. But they said, you know, it's all about screen real estate, screen to body ratio.

But the screen is gorgeous. It's like a 14-whatever-inch 120-hertz OLED screen. Like you're seeing like a future iPad pro display right now, essentially. But it's just on a Samsung tablet. But it's always the software. That's the issue. You know, it's still giant Android apps. That problem hasn't really gotten any better.

But as far as the hardware, like, Samsung's on point. I just couldn't see myself paying that much money for an Android tablet, like the matter how beautiful the screen is. It's running Android 12, but it's not running, like, Android 12L isn't out yet. So the multitasking is like Samsung's take on moving Windows around an Android and then also Dex, which, um, Dex is fine. But you definitely, like, like Dan has tried to live on decks a lot. he like runs into the limitations of it all the time. As much as I trust the Vergecast listener to know what you're talking about, quickly explain what Dex is.

Dex is Samsung's desktop interface. Like that's then like you can, it used to be that they were trying to get it. So like you would like take your phone and plug it into a monitor and then you would get a desktop version of your phone on the monitor. So you could do some of that stuff with this. If you like put it on a, put a keyboard and you got a keyboard mouse and all that. They're also doing something where you can. can have it serve as a second monitor for Samsung Galaxy PCs.

So it's not continuous. It's just the second monitor stuff like the iPad is done forever. And then there are also like, there's like a couple of apps where like you can use your phone as like a satellite display for like a color palette picker or something. But, you know, I think that I would not buy this thing assuming that you could definitely like get real work done on an Android tablet until a bunch of viewers are like, holy shit, you can get. I would wait for that moment if I were you. Why didn't they just put Chrome on it?

Like, why isn't it just Chrome OS instead of Android? In the tablet form, I feel like they're functionally the same. I may be wrong here. Remember the pixel slate? I was the one person who liked it, and I still have, like, concerns that I was wrong. But I was right. You were super wrong. Android on Chrome is not there yet, and that's what the apps are.

And, you know, like, sure, I'm sure it's possible to make a very nice, Chrome OS tablet. Linuvo actually makes a pretty good low, low cost one. But if you want that whole, like, if you want apps, ChromeOS just doesn't, isn't there, not really. And I don't know, Samsung makes Chromebooks. They know how they sell. They know who they sell them to. And I'm sure they understand that the market for these tablets is very different. A hundred percent. Yeah. Nobody's spending a, was it, 1099 for a ChromeOS 14-inch tablet? No, I don't think that that is a validated market segment yet. It could be.

I mean, anything is possible. Google wants it to be. Okay, those are what happens. The reason I bring them up is only because it just seems like we're in for some action on the Android tablet front over time. I'm not saying that this represents action. It's just evidence of my belief. Last thing, we just have to talk about the sleepy animals. They're very good.

So there's a Galaxy Watch 4. and it's getting new health and fitness features. By the time this is out, actually, it should be rolling out. February 9th, it's supposed to roll out. None of this matters except the sleep tracking will be guided by animals, cartoon animals. And here, I'm just going to read the names. There's an unconcerned lion. There's a sensitive hedgehog.

There's a nervous penguin, which is a real. There's a sun-averse mole, a cautious deer, an easy-going walrus, an alligator on the hunt and then exhausted shark so I can I can connect all of these to like a sleep personality

except for alligator on the hunts what does that say about your sleep is that like insomnia yeah this is very like tag yourself situation of all these characters I'm the tired shark that's me yeah I've been an unconcerned line

the whole time let's just be honest Nervous Penguin, if you're like self-identifying as nervous penguin, like, I just want you to feel better by yourself. Like, you're great. All right, and I love you. Anyway, it's hilarious. I hope Apple copies this immediately. The end. Okay, we got to take a break.

Chris, thank you so much for being here. Absolutely. Working back, Addy is going to walk us through some of the antitrust and policy stuff happening this week. We'll wrap back. Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website building. used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Miro to move faster. With real-time collaboration and a robust CMS,

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That's upw-w-rk.com. Upwork.com. We're back. Addy Robertson's here. Hey, Addy. Hey. All right. Deeter, as we're going to break, you reminded me that you have a recurring segment. Yeah. No, we, all of us together. We together. We have as a family. We have this week in lock-in, which is our weekly never-forget about antitrust segment where we talk about how you can never escape the platform that you're on. If there's anything this show is about, it's consistency in remembering ideas that we had. Okay. So this week and lock in.

There's actually quite a lot of antitrust news this week. Adi, you had a big explainer of the Open Markets Act, which passed out of committee in the Senate last week that has some big implications. And then Microsoft just sort of like yolode out a letter that was like, we're good with this. It turns out we don't have a successful app store, except on the Xbox. So let's not talk about that. But we're good with these ideas. So we've got to unpack that.

Obviously, that's in context of Activision Blizzard. And then there's another bill that passed out of committee today called the Ernant Act, which is totally different. But just a lot of tech policy stuff. Let's start with Open App Markets Act. What is that? What's the status? What would it do?

So the Open App Markets Act was introducing. last year and just passed out of committee last week nearly unanimously, which means it's going to get a floor vote in the Senate still waiting on a House committee vote. So it's still a ways away, but it's making serious progress and there's serious momentum behind it. And the sort of TLDR of the bill is anything you've heard developers complain about Apple doing in the last year, this will stop it. So the sort of centerpiece of it is, is developer payment processing. So this is the thing that was kind of at the center of Epic versus Apple, saying that if you run an

app store of a sufficient size, it only applies to very large app stores. You can't require developers on your platform to use your in-app payment processing system. Then the other really big piece is that you have to allow installation of apps outside the App Store, which essentially is side-loading. And the important caveat is that this applies to general purpose computing platforms, quote unquote, which is basically understood as phones and computers. So there's, if you're worried about, like, is this going to apply to Xbox and PlayStation, the answers probably no. So it's overwhelmingly a, we need to make sure that Apple and Google can no longer monopolize app distribution on their platforms bill. And it came. And it came to,

out of, right, there was all those antitrust hearings that we covered, then there was like more hearings and various committees. The House did a bunch of stuff, but it's moving through the Senate faster than the House at this point. Yeah. So it's gotten a vote in committee in the Senate. It has not gotten a voting committee in the House. And then the big one for me is allowing side loading. That's a nuclear move for these platforms. They are going to fight tooth and nail against it.

But the you can use whatever payment processing service you want actually just undoes the economic model of the stores as we have come to understand them. So what's interesting to me is like there's obviously Apple and Google are pushing back furiously on this. They just don't seem to get any traction. Is that just, is this sort of bipartisan consensus about these bills? Like we can just be mad at Apple and Google and that's fine? They went very hard after Apple and Google in the markup.

They started with basically saying in the 90s, Microsoft wanted to tax everything that went over the internet. Microsoft failed. Apple and Google succeeded. And like Microsoft has come out, not ironically, somewhat fittingly in favor of this. And there's a bunch of other support behind it. The pushback on it actually is not really about Apple and Google, though. It is about the language in the bill that's a separate section that's about. preferencing, which in this is a thing that's come up in Apple's case where the argument is that

it treats its own first party apps different from third party apps by like prioritizing them. The big criticism of this is that if these platforms want to just moderate their stores by kicking things out that break their policies, then this creates this weapon to take them to court on a sort of frivolous basis. that it's an addition to the current ways that you would be able to go after them that might not necessarily fly in court, but that's going to either drag the process out to the extent that these platforms don't really want to moderate anymore,

or that's going to get them in discovery. So a bunch of potentially embarrassing, even if they're not incriminating documents come out, and, again, discourages them from moderating. I mean, they don't moderate already. Like, they only moderate when somebody, He says, hey, you should moderate that. That's the argument is that it's the parlor protection bill is what some people have dubbed it.

They do moderate sometimes. They kick out apps like Parlor, where they're just, they're doing something that the platforms find and the public finds really egregious. And then Parlor, of course, tried to sue. Well, I was thinking of all the whortle. Right, you were thinking of like wardle clones and the scams. Like all the scams and stuff. They've already struggled for years to effectively moderate the store.

Well, struggle implies that they've tried very hard and failed, right? I think we know that in the case of Apple, like, one guy there who's probably struggled. I think it's like 500 people. I think we actually know the number from the epic case, right? It's just much smaller than you would expect. And really what they care about is did you implement in-app purchases such that Apple can take it? And like this would change that dynamic in a serious way. Yeah.

I think that the flip side of that is, right, all of the attendant arguments about safety and security that come with side loading. So now you're not allowed to moderate your own store to make sure it's really safe. And you're also allowing side loading, which you can't control at all. So, like, the sort of like have your cake and eat it two aspect of side loading that I have always envisioned, which is, well, if you want the Tim Cook's internet, you can, like, go to the store and get it. and if you are an adult, you can just download and run apps yourself like every other computer in the world. And this feels like maybe it would cut off the other option that actually makes the risk worth it. But I haven't seen it addressed in that way. Yeah. Well, there's a section of the bill that tries to address security that's this kind of general. If you can say that this thing

is done for reasonable purposes of security and you couldn't do it in another way, then you're not going to be found to be violating this. But that's the kind of thing that seems really difficult to predict how it's going to be used. Yeah. And I think there's an element to all this where it's very much too clever. I'm trying not to use the word neoliberal or technocratic. Like it's they like, like, just let people do side loading.

And I would maybe solve all of the problems, right? But inside of you're like, we're going to do side loading and we're going to tightly regulate this store and try to address everything that we could. could possibly think of it as a problem with this idea. And the answer is like, I don't know that. Well, you can write that rule. The broadband carriers in America have a rule that looks just like it. Do you know if they're throttling your traffic for security reasons or not?

They're just dawdling. You're just like doing whatever they want. They do whatever they want. Like, how are you going to actually monitor whether that rule is being used the way that anyone says that they want it to? Like, it's too clever by half, I think, is kind of how it all sounds to me. But it is fascinating that it is just rocketing along the way that it is. The other wildcard is that the whole idea that getting rid of in-app purchase tying is going to suddenly, like, remove this 30% cut that Apple's taking is not necessarily a thing that people should take for granted. Yeah.

This was a big part of Epic versus Apple that Apple could at least theoretically based on the short references we've gotten in the ruling there, just say, okay, well, you have to. to just keep records and pay us 30% of everything. And also you can, you know, pay a payment processing fee for some third-party service. Yeah. And we've seen now Apple in what's the Netherlands and in Japan, they're like, we've reduced our cut if you use an outside payment processor. And it's like 27%. Yeah, it's 27%.

Which doesn't even cover the amount that most payment processors charge. So like, if you leave, don't look back, you know. Sorry, that's just an OMD song. It's a great. It's a great track. But if you leave, you're going to end up paying more. And I think the Dutch regulator was like, did we see you? Yeah.

Like, no, this doesn't comply. I think Apple's like motivated to fight tooth and nail everywhere they go. I think the question is if those are kind of like court cases and regulatory decisions, right? The Japanese case was about apps first kind of generally. The Dutch case is really weird because it's just about dating apps because Match Group filed the complaint and they only run dating apps. So you kind of just like end up with just dating apps can use outside. This is a straight up law. Like the Congress in the United States is like on its way to passing a law.

And I think that makes it more broad. I'm not sure how Apple like tries to fake it in the face of a law as opposed to like a regulatory decree that they must allow something. I think that will be very challenging. Hasn't Google done the same thing where they're like, we're going to take a smaller cut but still charge you? Yeah. I believe that's what they're doing in South Korea. Oh, yeah. So it's like countries around the world are all trying.

and Apple and Google have settled on, what if we find a loophole? Which, I guess if you're a monopoly of the scale, like, it's a reasonable position. Yeah. But I just, I think these countries' governments might notice. Like, they're full of lawyers, too. Okay, so that's the Open App Markets Act. That's the context. Yesterday, Microsoft put out this letter.

They found their loophole. They found their loophole, which is that they do not run a successful mobile app store. which is a great loophole. So strategy credit to them. They can make Apple look like a villain. Microsoft's very in favor of Open App Markets Act. Brad Smith, the president and chiefly law enforcement for Microsoft, said open app markets is going to promote competition,

ensure fairness and innovation in the app economy. By the way, Google was like, it's disappointing that Microsoft would lobby so hard. But just like, what do you think you're doing, man? Anyhow. So the Giants are mad at each other. Microsoft's into it. They release this letter.

Addie, what does the letter say? The letter is saying Microsoft's kind of just laying its cards out here. It's saying we're going to establish this set of open app store principles because we really want to acquire Activision Blizzard and also there are a bunch of laws

and we want to prove we are going to follow the laws and you should let us acquire Activision Blizzard. It's so good. It is true the letter opens with like, we know, y'all. We want to buy it. We know. So the principles are like, they're basically the Open Act Markets Act, right?

Essentially, yeah, they're grouped into some sections about sort of transparency and accountability that are a little bit wishy-washy and general. But then there is a section right at the end that says straight up, we're not going to require developers in our app store to use our payment systems. We won't require them to provide any more favorable terms. We won't prevent them from communicating directly with customers. and then also on Windows, which is a thing I'm sure we'll talk about in a moment, says that we will continue to let people side load apps. Thank you for continuing me to use my Windows PC in the way that I have been since they were first introduced. So that's fascinating.

I will say we had Nadella undecoder. He said Windows was the open one. He previewed some of this stuff. They still play a lot of games on Windows in terms of self-preferencing. Yeah. And their position is that Windows is not a store. Yeah. So they're like, they're committing to not preferencing in the store, but then Windows

itself is like, have you heard about Microsoft Edge? I love it. Have you heard the good news about Microsoft Edge? Like knocking on your door, wearing the suit, the whole thing constantly. It's fantastic. And they're like, yeah, that's our platform. That's our distribution advantage. This is the existence of Windows.

So we'll continue to allow side loading. What they're saying is, but we will tell you. at the operating system level about our stuff. Yeah. Which is fine. At least it's just telling and not forcing anymore. Except if you try and use any, you know, links in any of the surfaces inside Windows, they'll just, it'll open up Edge instead of Chrome or whatever you install.

Have you heard the good news? Edge is good. I'm using Edge right now. You're using Edge right now? It's on Edge right now. It's bold. No, Edge is a great browser. And that's like, that's actually one of the bummers about Microsoft pushing

it's so hard. You just assume that if Microsoft's pushing it so hard, it must not be that good. Yeah, you assume it's Internet Explorer all over again, but it's kind of robust. Kind of robust. I'm not going to go on like a long drive about how much I enjoy Edge versus Chrome, but it typically doesn't make my computer sound like a jet engine. So Addie, notably, we've been talking about Windows and the idea that Microsoft will graciously allow us to continue side-loading on Windows. By the way, even calling it. it side loading on Windows is bonkers. Yeah, it's just normal loading.

It's just what you do. Like, in fact, the way that they would prefer to use apps is really weird on Windows. Like, the Microsoft Windows store is weird. But anyway, that's Windows. They're doing what they're going to do on Windows. Xbox, they're open with that is different. It is also true that they do really want to buy Activision Blizzard. So they're making some commitments about supporting the PlayStation and then something.

Go through that. Yeah. So again, Microsoft is somewhat laudably laying its cards on the table here, and it's saying there's a really big difference between general purpose computing services and the app stores on them and on specialized services like consoles. And it's that lawmakers have made a bunch of regulations about general purpose computers, but not on consoles. So that's one of their arguments. The other, more seriously, they're saying, look, these things operate differently. if we have this business model on Xbox that ensures that we're going to treat developers better, which is that on consoles, you sell the hardware at a loss and you have to make it up.

And so in the current generation Xbox store, we're going to commit to some of the principles, the kind of what I was calling the wishy-washy transparency principles, but we're not going to allow side-loading. We're not going to allow alternate payment processing. And what we are going to do is make some kind of general commitment that we're going to move toward those things eventually. And in what they're calling a next generation marketplace for consoles, those are going to be a consideration. And also they've identified that regulators care a bunch about whether you can play call of duty on PlayStation. And so you will be able to.

I mean, no, if you don't want, if you're like Microsoft, we've got to get this deal over the fence. I don't know. The line. Through the finish line? Yeah, yeah. The line. Through it? Over.

Through the tape. Yeah, through the tape. That's it. And you're like, a major problem for us will be gamers calling their representatives. You're like, you're making the commitment. Yeah. Because I think that would be like what would torpedo the deal? It's like angry gamers could end this thing.

I love it. The language here is really interesting. They're committing to Call of Duty on PlayStation through the terms of the current deal, which we don't really know. There's like some reporting. I suggest it's a few years. And they're like, and then we'll like keep our options open. So it's not forever. But the specific commitment is through the terms of the current deal as far as I

understand. Like I don't, I don't see any like permanent commitment to this. That's the part that kind of scares me. Because anytime a company says we're committed to something, I immediately assume they are not committed. Or they are committed for like a very short duration. Yeah. Like, Google was committed to not doing evil.

Facebook was committed to not doing monopolies. Yeah, the line here is, we have committed to Sony that we will also make them available on PlayStation beyond the existing agreement and into the future so that Sony fans can continue to enjoy the games they love. We're also interested in taking similar steps to support Nintendo's successful platform. So, whatever. This is all part of my grand game theory in that Xbox is going to just be, one of many ways to get

to the Xbox, like the Microsoft game cloud. The Metaverse. Yeah. Here's my question. No. Why did you? We're not going there. Please. Disclosure. No. We talked about like appliance versus general computing

device console versus general computing device a ton during Epic and Apple. Does Microsoft's argument in that vein, like strike anybody is holding more water than apples in any way, shape, or form. Like, I'm particularly, like, offended by that, well, we sell it at a loss, so it's different. Well, you know, you chose to do that. Yeah, like, that's, I mean, it is a specialized thing.

Like, there's a big difference between, as any mom or dad will tell you, there's a big difference between a phone and an Xbox. Like, one is your parents want you to buy, or want to buy you, so that you could, like, they can contact you wherever, and one is like you get it on a holiday or your birthday. I see. You know, like, there is a difference between the two. It is much more a luxury item. I think the difference is, I agree, but I think from a totally abstracted perspective,

it's like what kind of commerce do you want to regulate? And if you look at the Xbox, it's like video game commerce, which is like a healthy market with multiple competitors and stores. It's just like three at this point. Well, three, but then there's also like steam on PCs where Microsoft has graciously allowed side-looking. Right, and there's like component vendors and there's lots of studios and they're always buying each other at this point and then falling apart.

There's like three studios. Right. And Microsoft owns wants to buy the third one. So like it's not a great analogy, but like it's a market that's like doing stuff and it's vibrant in its way. Yeah. And if you look at the commerce on a. phone. It's also all the money is in games.

Just pointing that. Right, but it's also all commerce. Yeah. Like what you are really discussing is like the future of all commerce. Right. Right. Like you can't buy a book on an iPhone without Apple having

some notion that there's a difference between a Kindle e-book and a physical book. And you cannot buy a book at all. Their rule is insane. Yeah. I think this came out at Epic versus Apple, right? The Apple's conception of the difference between a hardcover book and a Kindle ebook is that Amazon can verify that the physical book was delivered. Sure.

Like, should that be, like, should we allow all commerce to flow through that tortured reasoning? No. And so, like, I would just split that off. Like, you have the games market, and it is true. A ton of the money on iOS devices is through games. And I believe that Apple could have headed this all off from the beginning if they're like every app category except for games can use other payment processors. And you, Candy Crush, are going to continue funding all of Apple's R&D efforts with your whales forever. Except now we do have to get into the metaverse, which believe it, it brings me no pleasure to do.

Which is things like Roblox and 3D spaces are arguably just going to increasingly become general purpose places where people go and. and hang out. Like, Roblox isn't straightforwardly a game, and that was extremely tortured during the trial. And so eventually, like, it's going to start getting weird and hard to draw that distinction too. Yeah. And one of the stories we have been kind of, like, lightly trying to report, and I think most

of the game companies don't want to talk to us about this, is like, Apple versus creators is becoming a thing, right? if you are a creator and you want to, God forbid, you want to sell NFTs, Apple's like sitting there waiting to take a 30% cut. Neil Mohan, the chief product officer from YouTube, is on the Veritas yesterday. And he's like, we are thinking about this stuff because creators want to sell this stuff. And whether, like, obviously it's ideologically heated, but he's like, if you or us and all the creators are saying, can I just sell NFTs to my audience? Like, we have to think about it. Well, Apple is going to take a 30% cut out of the YouTube app.

Is that fair to any creator? Like, I think that gets, like, the, if you're just looking at it from that perspective, like, these are games and there's just a lot of activity in the games marketplace, and then this is everything. Dude, I don't know that answers your question, right? Are these computers different? But I think from the perspective of, are these markets different? I can feel the difference there.

I mean, that'll hold up in court. You can feel it. You know what you see it, right? That's a legal standard, isn't it? Vibe law. Vibe law. Yes. I declare vibe law.

No, you're just going to stand up in court. I just pound the table and yell, big mood. It could work. I'm saying, we've been covering an awful lot of litigation lately, and more of it is based on that exact notion than he would even remotely begin to understand. Okay, so that is the Open App Markets Act. That's Microsoft's thing. We'll see where the bill goes in the Senate.

The other really big one that we need to talk about today, the Earnit Act passed out of a Senate committee. Very oddly. Like no hearing. Lots of noise, lots of protest. This is the bill that would condition Section 230's protections on XYZ, hence Earnett. A tortured backernym. Like every backronym, I support banning those. I understand this may raise First Amendment concerns.

The government is particularly bad at these. But, Adi, what are these conditions and what is the controversy? The conditions are that if you are a platform and there is illegal child sexual abuse material on your platform, you have to make efforts to report that and to scan for it and to generally establish that you have worked to try to get it off your platform. if you want any kind of legal Section 230 protection involving that material, if you want to be, say, protected from lawsuits, if something slips past your service, like if something slips past your filters, very broadly. So like, all in its face, that sounds reasonable.

You're basically saying to big platforms, you have to try to catch this stuff. And if you don't and someone finds it, you're liable for it existing. but if you are doing it, you get the protection of not being the publisher of that. And that's a car. Like that mechanic, I think, sounds reasonable, but it's very problematic in reality, right? Yeah. So one of the things, I should mention that the Earned Act was introduced first last year. There were hearings on it at that point.

It was equally controversial and it passed out of committee but then never ended up getting a full vote is that one of the things that could potentially strip you of liability. protections, in theory, is using end-to-end encryption. So if you want to have a platform that is secure, that is potentially you giving up your Section 230 protections when it comes to any objectionable child exploitation material. And that is very bad, obviously, if you want to serve many of the people who benefit from encryption. And the other argument is the kind of general argument about most Section 230 carve-outs, which is that they incentivize this very scorched earth approach to taking down anything that might remotely trigger some kind of lawsuit. And if you have something that obviously child exploitation is horrible,

but if you want to take down just anything remotely related to sexuality that maybe someone might connect to a minor, That's also the kind of thing that people are worried about the Earnant Act incentivizing and that that stuff tends to fall really heavily for one thing on LGBT people, on people who are generally marginalized. People are connecting it to Sesta Fasta, which was the 2018 bill that did something sort of like this for what the idea was supposed to be sex trafficking. It ends up being really sex work in general. it just led to this giant purge across the internet that was really damaging to a lot of people. And based on the government reports that we've seen and the anecdotal evidence hasn't really helped people and hasn't really stopped trafficking. So in this case, the idea is, or the problem is, you would say anything, you have to build a system that scans for anything that looks like this material and do your best to get rid of it.

otherwise you're liable for it. And you can't say, our service is encrypted so we can't. So then you're a tech company and you're saying, well, we're just going to unencrypt everything and delete everything without regard for whether we're doing a good job because that liability is too high. And I should be clear that the sponsors of the bill are calling the encryption debate a red herring. Their argument is basically using encryption isn't necessarily going to strip you at. of protection, but we're leaving room in there where it's not really clear.

And so this isn't a very straightforward we're going to kill encryption bill. It is a, well, it would be pretty bad if you used encryption and then you were opened up to legal liability. The other thing that's... I'm just going to walk around moving my fists like this. And if you walk into it. The other thing that probably should be mentioned is that even child exploitation groups often say, look, the really big platforms are already doing a lot of scanning. They report a bunch of material, and then that kind of gets used to make them look bad because they're gigantic platforms and, of course, they're reporting things.

And so if there's things slipping through, it's not necessarily clear that adding more legal liability is going to make them catch this material. better. They already have incentives. They are already trying to scan it. The only way that you really stop things like this in platforms that are operating at massive scale is that you just make those platforms not operate at massive scale anymore. Yeah. There's a part here that I think is fascinating, right? If you allow the government to dictate what the platforms can scan and report and turn into lawsuits, criminal prosecutions, you can argue that the platforms become an extension of the government and then are restricted into only doing what the government would be allowed to do, which is a smaller category of harms than like a private platform can do.

So the thing to me about all this is, is obviously extremely complicated. At the heart of it, I think, is like every politician wants encryption to be magic. They all want there to be a backdoor to end-to-end encryption. They will not believe it that that is not possible. You can find any politician in America, like you're the local sanitation commissioner. And you're like, do you think end-to-end encryption has back doors? That has to be possible. Like, it doesn't matter.

Like, once you get chief office, you believe this thing. It is not possible. And to me, this feels like an entire bill that is written with that possibility in mind, that you'll be able to offer encryption but still do scanning. and still give the keys to law enforcement when it's time. Yeah, it's basically saying you have to do that one really ill-advised Apple move from last year or nothing. Actually, Adi, how do you think the Apple, the local scanning, Apple will be so mad that I call it local scanning, but let's be honest, the hash matching. How do you think that plays into this?

I mean, I should caveat that Apple didn't do it, but... That's true. For one thing, Apple's move wasn't... It was doing the kind of hash matching that a bunch of cloud services are already doing. So if anything, Apple would be on potentially shake your ground than something like Google Drive, which is very open about just, hey, look, we're scanning everything. It's true. So Apple never rolled out at CSAM thing.

But they were going to do it on the phone, right? They were trying to navigate this ability to have encryption but do the hash matching locally in your device. If they had implemented something like that, do you think it would have gotten, try to discourse through this? I mean, it potentially could have. I'm just trying to imagine someone trying to explain this in court, and I'm just having trouble imagining that going well in any way. Based on what we've seen.

So it's very difficult for me to explain, like, how this would end up standing up, because even the bill itself is, has had a just really tortured development and amendment process over the last year. So I think one of the problems is that it's really nebulous. That's my question. Like this thing, like, sneaking out a committee really fast, on a scale of one to terrified, how should I feel about like, you know, the government outlawing encryption? Like, that's the big scary end of this discussion. And it seems like there's enough nuance where like that's probably not right, but maybe it is. I don't know. It's confusing. Does this thing even have a chance of becoming law in its current form with these encryption concerns and with these concerns for, you know, marginalized at-risk communities? It has, I mean, on paper it has sort of the same chances it had last year where it also passed out of committee. One of the differences is that like you mentioned, really just tech bills in general are at this point not having hearings. Like the Open App Markets Act also didn't have a hearing.

And it was complained about during markup for that as well. There was a limited amount of time left really to pass bills. And so everyone's just trying to get the big tech bills out there. So, yeah, it seems like there's potentially more momentum behind it this time. Again, we're still, you have to wait for it to pass through both houses. They have to reconcile. There's still a long ways to go here. But it does seem like Congress is more committed to just moving things through than it was

during the period where you would have these very long, rambling hearings that were often sort of devoted to everyone just saying their peace and grandstanding. Yeah. I think my fear, Deeter, is that. this is the 230 reform bill. It's the one that has gotten to this point. Everything else has died on the vine. Josh Hawley being like, in order to get Section 230 protection,

you must light a fire every day. Like, that just didn't go anywhere. I don't know what his ideas are. They're bad. This one is like everybody wants it. It's protecting children. And then they can all go into an election cycle and say, we pass 230 reform.

Regardless of whether it's effective or meaningful 230 reform, they passed a 230 reform bill. And I think that means they're racing it forward because they know that's a winner given the absolute disaster of 230 discourse in this country. You know, it's fascinating. We'll see where it goes. There is a ton of protest about this bill, right? The tech companies are doing it. Fight for the future is doing it.

Civil rights groups are pushing back. So I don't know if this one's going to make it any farther. But you can see the political calculation is like dead ahead. All right. Last two things you should mention before we let Addie go. Speaking of deals, Nvidia was going to buy Arm, and now they're not going to. It's not happening anymore. What happened there, Alex?

Well, it seems like InVidia kind of just backed out. They realized there was a lot happening. They realized that they were under like so much scrutiny at this point about this massive, massive deal that they just said, no, cut it. And they still have to pay Arm, or not Arm, they still have to pay SoftBank. I think $1.2 billion. Wait, who has to pay? NVIDIA has to pay SoftBank. InVitya still has to pay SoftBank.

They should pay Arm that money. Well, SoftBank owns Arm. Fair enough. So they still have to pay SoftBank $1.25 billion because this didn't happen. And then the Arm CEO is still leaving. And the Arm's head of IP, Rene Haas, who used to work at NVIDIA on its arm business. Oh, I see. is still coming on, is going to come on as CEO.

So it's a little, it's a little hinky. So that deal's over. It's over. It seems like Softank is going to spin arm out. They're going to spin it out. They're going to do an IPO and make lots and lots of money that way. That's better for everybody. There should be more companies.

Yes. On the first side, Warner Media, Discovery got approval to complete its purchase of WarnerMedia from the U.S. government. Yeah. Which is hilarious. Gross. Not from the U.S. They got approval from the U.S. government. to purchase it from AT&T.

From AT&T. And yet, I think what was really upsetting is that nowhere in these filings, nowhere and there's approval, was a mandate to make HBO Max not suck. One merger condition. Just one condition. Your app has to actually be good. We will let you do this. You have to assign at least one designer to this app.

And it didn't happen. One full-time designer. It's fascinating, by the way, that when AT&T tried to buy Warner, right? Like, the government was like, no. Absolutely not. AT&T is like, we got to sell this thing. It's like, please, but all means, anybody who knows what they're doing should run this thing.

Anyone but you. We should mention in passing, there's obviously turmoil at Warner Media. There's the Jeff Zucker guy got fired. It's all a mess. We don't know what's going to happen to CNN, except they're about to launch CNN. Plus, their streaming service. That worked really well on the morning show.

And it's version. I'm the only one that watches that. David Zaslow, the CEO of Desk. Discovery Plus is watching the morning show, being like, well, don't do that. Yeah. Oh, no, no. It's a bad idea. Get rid of that.

So WarnerMedia, a somewhat troubled asset about to change chances happening at the end of the year, right? Right. It's happening by the end of the year. And it still has to be, like, voted on. Discovery shareholders have to actually vote on it and approve it. But it's seeming like it's going to happen and you'll soon be able to watch Euphoria and HGTV on the same app. It's all I care about.

I'm so excited. I hate it and I love it. Two, no, it's what, HVo Max real quick. One, pump up the volume is now available on HBO Max. That movie is easily 70% of my personality. If you want to be really honest about it. It has some problematic bits. Don't cancel me over.

I'm just saying it's on there. I was going to say, I don't know if it holds up as well as you think it does. Right, it doesn't. But it still, it was a four minute. I was like eight, man. It's not my fault. And then speaking of extremely problematic faves, you can watch all of Entourage. And if you want to take a time warp into like another media environment, just watch on.

2006, just right there. Yeah. You know, like there's this notion that time is flattened, you know, and like things, like, things made in the 60s look noticeably different than like things made in the 80s. Yeah. Like, just watch Entourage for two minutes. Like, no, time is definitely not flattened. Yeah. That definitely looks like 20 years ago.

I used to think that I remember very vividly watching Buffy. the vampire slayer and everybody was wearing like puka shell necklaces and I was like this is this is fashion it will never change from this moment this will be the future this will be constant I was very wrong it is it's great anyway those are my HBO max notes for the week pump up the volume in a trash we got to take a break adie thank you so much this is great we're gonna come back and talk about peloton with Victoria song support for this show comes from whatnot whether you're selling online or out of a storefront you already know the challenge. You're simply hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk in.

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and check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude. a.ai slash vergecast. We're back. Victoria Science here. Hey, Victoria.

Hey, how are you? I am great. We're excited to have you. Victoria is our new wearables reviewer, which kind of encompasses all of health and fitness. First time the show. Welcome. Everyone be nice to be nice Victoria. Actually, you have to be nice Victoria because she has to deal with the next

eight months of wear OS2 devices coming out even though where iOS 3 has been announced. It's like the worst job on planet Earth. I'm so sorry. We're trying to make her stay, man. What are you doing? Running her off on the verge cast. You've been gone for a month. You're coming back. You're just threatening the reporters. All right. Well, speaking of endless interminable new cycles,

we've brought you to talk about Peloton, which is not a wearable, but it is a connected fitness device. Obviously, huge amounts of turmoil. Go through it. And then we should talk about what is going on with the CEO or ex-CEO. Okay. Where do I begin? Do I start with this week?

Do I start with three months ago? Anyway, well, we all know, like, Peloton was the pandemic, darling. You know, it happened to be one of the companies that benefited from everyone being at home and being tired of being cooped up at home. And then, you know, it was all looking good for them. Then, you know, they had the Tread Plus that ended up injuring a lot of children, killing a child in one instance. And then just, you know, that wasn't the start of it per se. But right about then is when everything started just spiraling into the toilet.

They weren't making up as much money as they thought they were going to be doing. And they had spent hundreds of millions just kind of ramping up their manufacturing capabilities. during the pandemic because they were like, oh, no, who would ever want to go back to the gym? A lot of people, apparently. And then, you know, this week, they decided to just shake everything up. And CEO, John Foley, surprisingly stepped down. He's being replaced by Barry McCarthy, who used to be CFO at Netflix and Spotify. But he's not really going away, right?

He's just becoming executive chairman in the background. And then, you know, they said they were shuddering these North American manufacturing ambitions, that they were going to cut marketing spending completely for Q3 and Q4, just a lot of cost restructuring. And, you know, of course, they laid off, well, actually, they fired 2,800 of their employees, which makes up, you know, among which is 20% of their corporate workforce. So just massive layoffs. And, you know, but everyone who got fired gets to have a free year of Peloton membership in the most tone-deaf severance package in recent history. So there you go. That's the gist of what's going on there. So I want to talk about the new CEO who's always in charge.

What's interesting, the rumors are Peloton's going to sell itself any company that you can think of as being floated as an acquire. Apple will absolutely buy it. The Apple thing is nuts. It's ridiculous. They're definitely not going to buy this thing. Yeah. So, you know, everyone is just going crazy over these sales rumors. But what you have to understand is that a bunch of investors got in on Peloton when they were just, you know, riding high during the pandemic.

And, you know, these investors want to make money. They want to keep, like, Peloton used to be valued at, what, 50 billion? And now it's at $8 billion. So they've lost a lot of money. And these investors are not happy. And they're not patient. So the best way to protect what they've put into Peloton is for Peloton to sell. Whether or not that's what Peloton wants to do, my argument is that that's not what they want to do right now, just based on everything that I heard in their earnings call, which was them going, oh, we're focusing on sustained growth.

And, you know, there's so many opportunities ahead of Peloton. And we can do it without capital funding. So I was like, yeah, okay, sure. Well, also, it doesn't fully control, like, 80% of the stock? No, him and his crew, they have 80% of the voting rights, which means no deal is going through without fully basically giving the okay. So he gave, like, this BS comment to the Wall Street Journal. He's like, I would love any opportunity to provide value to shareholders. But to me, you know, it doesn't track with what his actions are.

So did the investors force him out of the CEO position? Is that why he stepped down? Well, you know, he's been under a lot of scrutiny. There's no doubt that there's been a crap ton of mismanagement with Peloton. Like, I mean, you just look at what they did. You're spending $420 million to buy Precor, which is one of the world's largest commercial fitness equipment makers. They spent another $400 million to build a factory in Ohio. So, you know, they're not spending wisely.

And Foley is a character. He's also spending hundreds of millions in patent wars with the competitors. So there's just a lot going on. And they lost, they just lost a huge patent. suit, right? So, like, one of the things about whether you would buy it, right? Because everyone, it's, like, fun to think about Nike buying or Amazon buying. Like, the Amazon argument is, like, well, Amazon's good at shipping stuff. And Pelotons are big, and it's costly to ship them. So Amazon will fix it. Or, like, you'll bundle it and, like, these, it's amazing to think about.

Like, if you're, if you have this sort of friends and family who will, like, go on this road with you, like, just name a company and you can invent a reason for the, Disney will do it. Because you can go on Encanto rides. Like, just whatever you want, is. fine. My favorite argument, I don't remember who made it, I'm sorry, was that they hope Apple buys it because that Apple will be shipping Android tablets. That's really good. I think that's one good, right? Because Peloton's screen is just a giant Android tablet. So that'd be hilarious, right? Apple's never going to buy this because Peloton never realized its own business is selling like subscription software. Yeah. And it's just realized on the bikes. But like the money is in the

thing that isn't like a huge heavy thing that you have to sell to infinitely more people. And It's like Apple is the richest company in the world, not because they have a great hardware business. Yep, they have a great hardware business. Very small hardware. Yeah. But because every button you press in the iPhone makes money. Makes money for Apple. And like Foley put like his wife in charge of a pair.

Like what is the easiest move for Peloton to make? You're watching the instructor. They're wearing the peloton gear. They could be like, buy the shirt. Is that what they call them? Buy your cycling. Jersey. Cycling shield.

What? You know, your bike trousers. I love a pair of bike trousers. I love a pair of bike trousers. Are they the ones that kind of like balloon out? You know. Like I'm just seeing somebody from like on their penny farthing driving down. Your teddy sparranted.

That's obviously. A little Pete. Who in America is not in the market for two wheel hats? Pants. Just go for it, man. So they haven't done any of the stuff. None. To extract money out of the software.

Yeah. There's no way Apple's buying a thing when they have Fitness Plus. It's great. And they could just be like, put it on any bike and we'll make our money. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Fitness Plus is, I think Fitness Plus, them deciding to do that is just showing you that, like,

they've seen what Peloton's done and they've thought, oh, we could do it better more profitably. So, and, you know, like, if you take a Fitness Plus class versus a Pelectorer, versus a Peloton class, they're extremely different vibes. Like fitness pluses, do what your body feels. Everything is great. Close your rings. That sort of thing. Whereas Peloton, I'm a little afraid of the Peloton instructors because they are super intense.

And I've been testing the tread and they're always like, can you push it just a little bit more? One percent more. And they're having me run at nine miles per hour already. So it's like, no, sir, I cannot push it. I do not want to push it anymore. This is a 640 mile you're having me run. I'm not Kijokejke. So, yeah, very, very different vibes.

Also, if Apple wanted to, they could just hire the instructors. Yeah. Like, all those instructors are probably like, huh, we should look around. Like, Apple would be like, do you just want to work here? We can pay your salaries. And you get a watch instead of a year. Yeah. Although, I've heard their salaries are insane.

Like, I don't know what Cody Rigby makes, but, Cody Rigsby has his own cult, so he's incredible. But like if you're Apple and one of your choices, like, buy all of Peloton, or it's like pay one guy's inflated salary, like, they run a TV division. They're paying Reese Witherspoon's numbers. They're like, or we can just like point a camera at this guy at the gym and make money. So I think Apple is very unlikely. What I want to talk about is these quotes about Foley the CEO, which this is all in a deck put out by a, an investor who wants him to go.

Yeah. I think he might have been self-deprecating in some of these cases. But as a guy who interviews a lot of CEOs about structure at their companies, this one jumped out to me. So they asked him, is there anything about being CEO that you don't like that you delegate? And he goes, our CFO does 99% of finance. I engage because I want to know how we're doing. But to say I don't add value to her operation is an understatement.

You can also say the same with technology. Our CTO doesn't get any help from me. I'll sometimes go months without talking to our CTO, which as CEO of a technology company, that's kind of rare. Ah, yeah. I mean. And it's like, I don't know that that's self-depri-like. The other ones, right, where are you good managers? Like, I'm not a very good man.

Like, that's what you say, and you self-deprecating. Saying the quiet part loud. Right. And if someone says, what are your strengths? The quote here is, I'm not sure I have any strengths. That's obviously just self-deprecating. To be like, I don't talk to my chief technology officer for months at a time. It's like a little too revealing.

Like, no, no, don't say that. Yeah. Anyway, it seems like what's going to happen is the new CEO who has CFO of Netflix and Spotify before, I'm told he's the real deal. People seem to really like him. But he's not making a clean break from the old guy. No. No.

No, no. They've both spoken to the press about how they look forward to working with each other, which, you know, translate that Foley is not going anywhere, really. He fully intends to be involved. And then on top of that, you know, this guy, he's walking into a powder keg. Not only have, like, 2,800 people been laid off, they were pissed at the first all hands, you know. Fired employees came and crashed the party and basically gave him a very hard time. So he has to deal with extremely low morale and he has to deal with a very, you know, tight cost restructuring plan. And he has to deal with investors who are going to be continually pushing for sale. So, like, I think the real question here is, is he coming in to shape up Peloton so it can survive on its own? Or is he coming in to shape up Peloton so that they can get a slightly higher valuation in a sell-off? And like both of those, like, I don't have a doubt that Peloton. is going to survive in some shape or form. Like Peloton fans are some of the most loyal fans you'll find out there.

They have like a 92% year-over-year subscription retention rate, which for fitness, I mean, come on, fitness. Like, it's really hard. Most people have given up on their New Year's resolutions by now. So that's very impressive to me. I think their monthly churn for Q2 was not 1%. It was 0.79%. So people are sticking with them.

That is wild. Yeah. Like, people love their Pelotons. Anytime you hear someone talk about their Pelotons or, like, you know somebody who loves their Peloton to the extent where it's a little insane, like, people want that user base. They want that subscriber base. So I really do feel like Peloton will survive and it'll, I mean, okay, this is the best

story I have for how nuts Peloton fans are. Business Insider ran a story about how after the recalls came, people, who owned the Tread Plus, which was the child killing treadmill, we're like, I have pets, I have children, my treadmill's not going anywhere. I've been thrown off this treadmill. I have injuries. I was thrown into a wall. It's not going anywhere.

I love this thing. So, you know, the company is one thing, but the product itself is really strong. And everyone I've talked to is just baffled that they can't seem to make money. Yeah, I'm telling you, cycling breastplates. The pantaloons. It's coming. I will say this. Because Foley and his crew have so much voting power at that company, I'm not sure a new CEO can come in and be like out with the old.

I think this is like a dance. Yeah. Because if you're the new CEO of Peloton, you can't be like, well, that sounds like a good job. I'll just keep doing what we were doing. You have to make change. And especially if you have the resume of this guy. So we'll see. I've heard that he's an operator.

It's amazing that they don't have just a merch store. integrated onto that tablet. That's a free idea. I'm just giving that one to you. It's just right there. I'm trying to rescue you. We'll see. All right, we got to do a little bit of a lightning round.

There's quite a bit here. Can I start with my favorite story maybe of the year so far? Yes, sure. For the rest of the year. Mazda head units in Seattle. By this is a second story about Mazda head units getting bricked by content. As a Mazda owner, I'm not thrilled. There was a really great reply all with Roman Morris.

Remember this? Yep. So there's this amazing reply-all episode where some guy, it was super tech support and someone couldn't play a specific episode of Roman Mars and they got all these other famous podcasters to make podcasts to figure out the bug. Yeah. And it was like some weird character was causing this podcast to just not play in a spot city head unit.

So that's one story. Yeah. This week, a radio, a local NPR affiliate in Seattle, broadcasting or HD Radio, which has a little image file, like station identification image file. Yeah. The image file was missing its extension. It's a true story. So the Mazda head units like locked up upon receipt of this image file.

They would only play NPR. So good. Mazza owners like pulling the batteries and their cars to figure what's going on. Head units aren't responsive. They start to lose all of their other features. Like can't play Bluetooth, can't play CDs. And it turns out the only fix for this is to replace the entire head unit. Yes.

Samasas authorizing free replacements of the head units. Yes. I love it. It's a very good. Justin Seattle. Just it's just one NPR station in Seattle. Like, I just love it. They should give them their old bricked head unit to keep as a memento in a tote bag.

Yeah. Oh, that'd be great. It's an NPR toad. Yeah. Oh. Okay. A little coffee cup. Welcome to the Vurchase, Victoria.

Oh. Who wants the next one? Dieter. Apple is enabling tap to pay on its phone. So instead of having the little square thing that you stick in the headphone jack, RIP, or having to buy a point of sale thing, you just have an iPhone. And, like, people can tap to pay it. Yeah, I mean, this thing is going to take over.

Like, every coffee shop that I go to that has a little thing. Like, if I'm Square right now, I am shaken. Well, it depends because Square runs, like, all the enterprise stuff on the back end. Square can run your whole business. I'm curious to see how this rolls out. I'm curious to see how it plays out. But I agree with you that, like Square makes custom hardware. Like, speaking, Android tablets.

Like, Square will sell you more or less than Android tablet. Or iPad. It's usually iPad, I thought. No, but now Square makes a thing. Oh, okay. Okay, well, what's yours, Alex? I'm very upset that Twitter is allowing people to watch videos faster. Why?

No. Yes, this is great. You guys are all terrible. Like, I'm all about, I'm with their... Your one-X gang. Yeah, I'm Christopher Nolan. Director's intent. This is ruining it.

It comes out on this. This plus Samsung and that S-22 note slash ultra, like the death of cinema. This is it. On Twitter. On Twitter. Twitter is where you get your cinema. And so you're outraged. The death of cinema on Twitter.

I am just beside myself. I mean, I think it is actually good. I've listened to at least one podcast and one podcast. and one book on tape faster. And sometimes you're like watching those cook prep videos. And you're like, okay, okay, I get it. I watch everything at at least 1.5. I have not set YouTube to 1X in like two years.

So like, are you always kind of stunned by like how deep people's voices are in real life? I'm stunned at how slow everyone talks all the goddamn time. If you're in your car, if you're in your car, pull over, open up the settings on whatever your podcast app is on your dashboard, unless you have a Mazda in which case it doesn't work. Don't do it. Don't do it. And just change the speed to 1.5 or even two. And then just think, see how much smarter we sound when we talk that fast. If you don't already listen that quickly. The Vergecast never goes over.

Never goes. It's always exactly an hour. I see it. I get it now. The whole show is done in like 45 minutes. It's good. It's great. And then tweeted Alex about how good it is.

And then you can get back to the road again. Alex H. Kranz. It's great. So we had Neil Mawn from YouTube on Vergechcast yesterday. and we did this like features. Like we asked the staff, what features do you want? I will not name names. One of the request was, can I watch faster than 2X?

Was it you? It was not me. Was it Cody Kek? And so we were like, are you serious? And this person was like, I'm dead serious. I know I'm weird. So we asked the head of product to YouTube, right? Like, here's our feature.

And Katie and I, like, had the usual stuff. I want surround sound on YouTube TV. Yeah. When can I get background playing in iOS? Like all the stuff you'd expect. And then we hit him with, can we go faster than 2X? and Neil was like, what? I want to find who this person is.

Everything else we mentioned is like it's on a roadmap somewhere, you know? And he was like, yeah, there's like a lot of other stuff that happens when we play a video, like captions and advertising. He's like, none of that stuff is built to go that fast. It's not happening. But he was just very much like, yeah, I don't know. It's got to be someone. I'm like, I'm trying to figure out who it is. It's got to be somebody who like grew up on VHS and just watched everything and fast forward.

I'm not going to docks her staff at this time. I understand it. I watch a lot on YouTube. It wasn't me. I didn't request this. I watched a lot of YouTube videos and no offense to YouTubers, but they have like 20 minutes in the beginning where I just don't care about your life. Just get to the part where I'm trying to look up how you cook the thing. That is the director's intent. No. I don't care. You need to respect the creator. That is the algorithm's intent because they've got to hit that eight minute mark so they can get the double ads. Every YouTube video needs to skip.

recipe button. Yes. Right? It's conceptually the same thing. It's like just get to the part where you tell me what to do. Take the cursor and then I just go, boop, and I'm there. I see.

Yeah. That's, okay. It's fine. It's fine. It's not fast forward. This is technically a lighting around. Victoria, Apple, it seems like Apple release some code that indicates its VR headset OS will be called Reality OS.

Ew. I mean, I get it. They're not, you know, all of their OSs are not particularly clever. Like, it's watchOS, iOS, I pad OS. So I get that it would be reality OS. It's just kind of, I don't know. No one's named anything for mixed reality in a cool way thus far. Like, the metaverse is lame.

I hate the name. Like, I don't know. I'm not loving the name, even though, like, and also when are we going to see this? Like we've heard this rumored for, I feel like, 12,000 years at this point. And they keep saying it's coming. But I don't know. Well, the rumor wrongers. Apple will say nothing.

Is the headset going to be called reality? So that's like, right? Right. Because you got TVOS, it's Apple TV. You got iPad OS. It's an iPad. You got MacOS. It's a Mac.

Just putting on reality. Apple reality is a product name literally sounds like a parody. Like there are YouTube comedians dressed up as Steve Jobs right now that have made videos that are like, It's Apple reality. You've got to bring Jody back for that. I mean, look, they can't do it because the FCC is going to be on them like a hawk if they try and get this thing cleared for radio interference because everybody knows that Apple's really bad at reality distortion fields.

Wow. I knew it was coming and I clocked it and it still hit me. He was like a punch to the face, Dieter. You felt it. I was like, I'm just going to have to sit here and take this fit. Brace yourself Last one We are way over

I do love being in the office It's great Super Bowl this weekend It's true My team's not in it So I don't like it I don't like it at all It's terrible

Will not be in 4K Of course No one wants to invest in this It's on NBC NBC Notably broadcasting the Olympics In 4K Because other people

Film the Olympics Like well you want us to shoot in 4K heavens no At this point And we ask them, we push at them. They're like, it's very expensive to upgrade all the cameras, to build all the infrastructure. Sure. I buy it, I'm sure.

Sure. But it's also like 2022. And you definitely have like dudes with Sony alphas and the sidelines. I know those run in 4K. Oh, yeah. I have the same, we have the same cameras. They could do it if they wanted to. That's what I choose to do.

So again, we asked Neil, we're like, why don't you just pay them to upgrade? Google has money. Use your money. Upgrade their cameras and then have an exclusive 4K. And he was like, I'll take it back to the team. Yes. So, as usual, my idea is hit a brick wall. Super Bowl, 23 on YouTube.

I think it is ridiculous to the Super Bowl son in 4K. So don't call your local NBC station. They're harried and they're trying to fix your Mazda. Call someone. Just think of a phone call. Call peacock. Does Peacock have a phone line? No. Do you think Peacock has customer service?

They have customers first. They barely have like UI designers. Okay, that's it. That's a virtual house. We've gone way over. Thank you for sticking with us. Victoria, that was great. Thank you for coming on. Thanks for having me. What's your Twitter? It's at Vic M. Song. Very clever, I know. But it's just me. Not the K-pop star. She's not on Twitter. Important. Deeter is at Backlon. Alex is Alex H. Kranz. Adi is at

the dexterity. Chris is at Chris Welch. Shout out to our making it work package. It's like the fourth one we've done. Yes. We love small business coverage at the verge. It's really cool. It looks so good. This one is all about fraudsters. It's very fun. Go check that out. Decoder this week was XFox.com editor-in-sheaf Lauren Williams. I could be honest to you. It's like the loosest, giggilyest episode of Decoder ever because we're friends. She has a new, new startup, which is really cool. Talk to her. Go listen to that. That is that. That's our chest. Rock and roll. Rock and roll.