The Vergecast - Samsung Galaxy S8, the politics of science, and the net neutrality debate reignited

Episode Date: January 27, 2017

Another Vergecast is up! We have a CES Twitter live show reunion, featuring Nilay, Dieter, Megan, and Paul discussing this week in news. As Nilay mentions throughout the show, the gang has senioritis as they prepare to move to new offices next week... just FYI. Also, Verge science editor Liz Lopatto returns to the show to discuss the new administration’s action toward the science world, and how the scientists are handling it. If you keep listening, you’ll come upon a talk about net neutrality — another debate sparked by the recent transfer of power. Look, we’re like 15 minutes over our regular time so theres plenty of other stuff in between that to look forward to. 03:02 - Amazon Echo’s new wake word 07:49 - Resident Evil 7 13:21 - Samsung Galaxy S8 rumors 21:24 - Trump’s phone 26:22 - LG G6 29:01 - Science, EPA, and Trump with Liz Lopatto 44:56 - Paul’s weekly segment “Dry your sweaty palms” 49:12 - Net neutrality debate 1:07:01 - CBS’s Hunted Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Theverge.com. I'm going to admit something to our audience. I have terrible senioritis this week because we're moving offices. So this is, we're going to do, we're doing the Vergecast in our current Vox Media office today. And then the new podcast rooms, the new office are not going to be ready next week. So we're going to be ready next week. So then after that, it's like the lap of luxury. So next week is like when you think you're gone forever, but you have to bring back your library.

Yeah, exactly. It's like, but this is the second and the last Vodcast in our office here. I'm just like feeling wild. Oh, senior prank then. What's your senior prank could be for the office? I can't, dude, the principal's listening. Hi, I'm Dieter Bone. Hi, Dieter's here.

Megan's here. The principal. Hi. Yeah, Dieter's the principal. 100% the principal. Anyway, yeah, this is a Vorgecast. Dieter's here. Hi, Megan.

Hi, hi, Nealai. It's good to have you back. Yeah, I'm so excited to be back. Paul Miller's here. Hello. A little bit later, we're going to have Liz La Pada come on and talk some science with us. But it's for us now. But yeah, senior prank.

So my high school, classic prank, you can also tell that I grew up in Wisconsin. The legendary prank of my high school was they let loose three chickens. And they numbered them one, two, and four. Oh, yeah. So we did a giant dick on the football field. A different kind of prank. Drew a big old dick on the football field. are. Labeling of one, two, and four

is genius. Yeah, it's like a classic Midwestern. I don't get it. You label the chickens. So when you catch them, they're looking for three. The three doesn't exist. I get it. Yeah. Deere, do you have any good pranks? I prefer not to

speak of or remember my high school years and I'm mad at you for bringing it up. Wow. Wow. Touchy. Rough. There it is. A lot of lunch in the bathroom by myself. Wow, that got dark. God.

I'm just saying. Bathroom lunch? That's kind of gross, though. Did you wash your hands? Go outside and smoke like a normal loaner teeter. Paul? Yeah. Any pranks?

My finest moment was I snuck out of a window of a classroom while it was happening to play Frisbee. It's like the most innocent Paul prank. And you're like, oh, the field has a huge dog on it. Ah, my dreams are there. Sorry. All right, let's start with some tech news. Also, this show is sponsored, but let's just be honest, a cut rate vodka. We don't spend a lot of time on.

But the marketing is genius. It's called Cesar Vodka. We're going to talk about a little phone that inspired this vodka later on the show. But cut through the night, Paul. Snip, snip, snip. No. God damn it. I'm telling you, man, the show is just going to be pure senioritis the whole time.

I want to start with the most important news of the entire. week. Look, there's a new president. He's doing a bunch of stuff. World's changing. Doesn't matter. This is by far the most important news of the week. You can now wake the Amazon Echo by saying the word computer to it. I love that. I'm so happy. It's literally all I want. Dieter, did you change it? No, not yet. I'm currently debating whether I'm a Google Home Home or an Alexa home, and I've got more Google homes around than Alexis. I have both, which is just the weirdest thing. Yeah, that's not a Yeah, I changed mine. Miriam Nielsen, one of our video editors.

She's actually been on the show before. Told me she changed it so fast, and now she can't stop ordering it to do things just because she can yell the word computer. This is one of my most... I know, Deeter, you had like... There's like a Star Trek thing in the world, right? Yeah.

Wait, wait, whoa, you're whatever. The Star Trek thing is the thing. It's the reason you say computer to it is because of Star Trek. Like, where do you think it comes from? I disagree. Where it comes from, for me, is like, a deep arrogance that all computers should answer to me whenever I wish. Which comes from Star Trek Fair. It's like part of our, like, zeitgeist. It's part of our genetic memory now. From now on, we all know that saying computer makes the room talk to you. And we all know that you should be able to walk up to a box and say T. Earl Greyhot and then T. appears. This is my favorite thing. And I don't know if there's a term for it. But,

sci-fi depicts this future and then we make the future not because that future was inevitable but because it was depicted in the sci-fi that we watched like electronic cars will have like this whirring sound yeah because it turns out you need a sound for a car so that like blind people don't like walk out on the street and get hit by the car yeah so but they made it sound like a whirring sound which was our theoretical like the Jetsons yeah it's like a sound that some sound effects are artist made just so it would sound futuristic. And now our cars actually sound like that because of the sci-fi. Yeah. So the other thing about the Star Trek thing here is having a bunch of different voice assistants around me made me realize that the most unrealistic sci-fi part of Star Trek,

it isn't trilithium crystals, it isn't warp drive, it isn't the transporter. It's literally the idea that everybody has a communicator badge on them. And then when they hit it, the right thing listens to them and then the right area of the ship answers them. Yeah. Because they never get it right. To your Google Home's not getting it right? Wasn't that a big Google promise? They don't. Like, it's supposed to, like, they all listen and wake up and then only the right one responds. But I would say, I don't know, like, man, this is the worst. You can't make reminders on Google Home, but you can on everything else, like on the watch or on the phone. So I'll, like, want to make a reminder and then I'll say it to my watch. But the Google Home,

was also listening and at the same time that the watch says I'm making your reminder the home says sorry I'm not allowed to make reminders. Aw. It's like you have two kids and one's dumber than the other. Sorry I'm not I'm not allowed to go outside. I'm going to have lunch in the bathroom. Um, sorry. Computer. Deep deep deep.

Buy me a. Wow. No, I had Alexa. It's a meta-it-bu. This is such a yuppie story. Can everyone forgive me for how yuppie this story is? preparing, mentally preparing. It's really bad.

Okay. So like we were, I don't even like saying it. You were shopping at the Panana Republic. Yes, I was buying khakis. No, no, no, my wife and I are drinking some wine. Uh-huh. Sure. And my wife remarked to me that we should have a decanter for our wine because the wine needed

time to like, it's totally legitimate. It doesn't help when you're like, and then she remarked to me. Like, you got to like coach this stuff. So, look, this fine piece that I'm with was like, bro, we got to get. get a decanter. Yeah, we need a decanter. We gotta get it to get it. And I was like, sure, Alexa, buy us a decanter.

And she was like, sure, the highest rate is one that cost $12. Do you want it? I was like, yes. Becky's like horrified. She's like, no, no, no. She bought a scarbage. And I looked at it's absolute the worst. It's like an old man's crystal vase for scotch.

Like, A, it's the wrong thing. B, it just implies that I have like, I have, bad ideas about, like, foreign policy. You know? Sorry. Like an old Englishman who's like, hmm, these Italians shouldn't come to my country. Like, that's what it looked like.

I don't know how you get that from a decanter, but... Your senioritis is awful. We've spent like 20 minutes on a single word. All right, all right, all right. It's fine. That's right. Megan, here I have on the sheet that I want you to talk about Resident Evil 7. Yeah, as you know, there's a new Resident Evil.

Is it number seven? Surprise. Well, wait, have you ever played? This is an important question. Have you ever played a Resident Evil game? Yes, one. I don't know if I played one. I think I played four?

Well, that's the only good one, but it is the good one. Yeah, there's new Resident Evil, and it sure is good. Yeah, basically, this one is kind of like a return to, like, horror form because the last couple ones have been very action-heavy, like, even for which I think is the best one in the series is very, it's like a really cheesy action film, and like, the main character has a lot of like really good one-liners that are bad. Like at one point, he does a lot of like, no, thanks, bro. And like, it's just not great.

Like when I was talking to my wife about decanters. Exactly. He's like, no, decanter for me. Alexa. It's a weird game. No, this one is great, though, just because, like, it's very, it's from a first-person view, which is, like, a new big deal for the series. It takes you back to an actual residence, which is chill for the title.

Yeah. Does the whole thing take place inside the residence? Mostly, pretty much, primarily. Okay, fair. To put that very succinctly. Well, so, like, my favorite game on the GameCube was Eternal Darkness, which also was, like, a horror game set in a thing. Oh, my God.

Stop, everything. Go play Eternal Darkness. It's great. Well, okay, so the thing I like about it is that I like horror films or games or whatever that take, like, a setting, like, as intimate as, like, the home, and they just scale everything down, right? So it's not like you have the entire world to be terrified. it's like, you know, what's in that bathroom?

I don't know, but it's really creeping me out. And I really appreciate that. It's me eating lunch. He's like, I'm chopped. It's the most terrifying of all options. It's the one that indicates he has nothing left to lose. Oh, God, not chopped. You didn't try.

But no, it's good because, like, if you ever played, like, PT, for example, which was that old, I guess it's not old, that old. It was that Konami game that was supposed to be Silent Hills that they can't. It was a big deal with... I don't know how much you guys know about video games. I watch to play through... That's the one where it's just that loop. Where you're in a hallway and then you get to the end

and then you finally figure out how to get through and then you're back in the... It just loops. Well, it's hard because you're both looking at me like sweet innocent. Like, yes, then tell us more. And it's like I'm used to like nerds that are like, we know, we know. So... In about two minutes, we're going to go deep on the Samsung Galaxy Note 8. And then I'm going to, that'll be my time to eagerly look at you.

If you've ever played PT. So, yeah, it's not like PT in that way. Pt was a demo, right? It was only supposed to be a hint of what the game was, but it was such a small contained experience, and Resident Evil 7 is not like that. It doesn't have the same level of, like, mystery to it because it's not really meant to be, like, dug into.

But it has that same kind of intimate setting for you to settle and be creeped out by, which I really like. Are these screenshots in your write-up accurate? So that's actually Andrew's right-up, not my write-up. Oh, I'm so. But I will take credit for his work. Straight up. Is this what the video game looks like, though?

Because this looks really good. Yeah, that's what it looks like. Like, I'm not saying. I'm not saying I had a great night of culture last night. I might have watched both showgirls and Demolition Man. Well, you're having a real time. I was just escaping. I was just like, I'm out.

Like, I'm not watching any real TV anymore. But I'll give you the advice that Nomi Malone receives in showgirls, which is when another dancer gets in your way, you step on him. Which is how. I respect that. Senior, senioritis all the way. By the way, I could talk about Demolition Man for like six hours right now. I've actually never seen it.

Oh, my God. No, it's a Sylvester Stallone movie. Sylvester Stallone, Sandra Bullock. It is crazy. You should watch it. Also, like, the most plot holes of any movie ever. Oh, yeah, it makes no sense. Also, there's a whole plot point in the movie where there were the franchise wars and all

restaurants in the future are Taco Bell. This is a whole thing. What? But I was watching it very quietly because it was late at night and I had the captions on. Taco Bell and Pizza Hut are owned by the same company, right? Uh-huh. That company has somehow paid the caption provider to change every instance of the word Taco Bell to Pizza Hut in the captions. No, no, no, no.

So, like, you're listening to it. Eli, you're wrong. The movies with Mikey, he did an episode on this. And it turns out that internationally when they released it, they made another version of all of those scenes where they turned the Taco Bells into Pizza Hutts. So those close captions, yes. Like, even the thing is like, he's like, I could really go for a burrito right now, and the captions are like, slice of pizza. Yeah. Anyway, it's about a dystopian future where basically hippies to take over the world and Sylvester Sloan, you know, he's on frozen to capture Washington Slips.

This is in the Vergecast. It's mostly about Demolition Man. Paul, do you want to talk about this phone? I thought I had seen this movie. You got to see this movie. I haven't seen this movie. This looks amazing. It's in this current climate, it is such a weird thing to watch.

because it posits a future that is at both ones completely fantastic but also like the most real. Where you can have a combination, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell? No, they're all just Taco Bells. Everybody go watch Demolition Man, and then we're going to have a special Vergecast only about Demolition Man. That's what we're going to do for our last Verge cast in this office.

I'm kind of not kidding. Don't sound like you're kidding. Not at all. Paul, talk about the Galaxy essay. Well, there's been a bunch of rumors about it. The big headlining rumor that really gets Neli excited was that there was no headphone jack. But now the Guardian came out with a ton more rumors. And they seem like they sourced it from a lot of people.

That I wrote the thing like Samsung getting rid of the headphone jack, stupid too. And then a bunch of little birdies whispered to me that it would have a headphone jack. So the Guardian actually got those people. The Guardian is saying, well, yeah, they're anonymously sourced. But yes, that the will have it headphone jack. The more exciting, weird thing is that it will have, I think it's called Dex. Yes, the Dex dock, which will turn your phone into a desktop, which will never work. But I love it when people try to do it.

So it's a super Samsung. Just buy an LCD and a keyboard and a mouse and then you can use Android apps in some sort of weird windowed environment. That's what you want. That's great. They're so close. You're only $200 at a whole desk. of area away. I think we talked about this show last week.

This is the dream. It's the next thing. Oh, it's a compromise. It's so many compromises. Get a computer for your desk. Have a phone in your pocket. So here's my theory. We need a word for this.

It's a thing Samsung does every year. The hear that someone else is going to do something and they rush out a crappy version of that first. Right? So, like, Dieter fully believes that Google is pushing forward this like ChromeOS Android hybrid situation. I mean they are doing that but like Android ChromeOS tablets are on Android apps like a thing that Google's going to do. Someone else is doing the phone into Microsoft is doing the phone into a computer. Well Microsoft has been pitching that

for a while. Right. Hasn't done a lot with it. I mean I think the answer's got to be it's pre-sunged, right? Pre-sunged. They did it last year at the S-7 in some way. I don't remember what it was. And then the note seven they heard that Apple is going to make their shit explet. but Paul, I figured you'd be most excited that Samsung has gotten closer

than anybody ever has of your dream of the perfect featureless monolith phone where the front is nothing but screen. Yeah, I am excited about it,

but so there's been this photo that's going around that the garden actually says is relatively accurate of what this screen looks like and for one, it just looks really big, but it's got these

like little bezels on the top and bottom and then there's nothing on the, And the bezels are truly really small. And I know it's just totally unfair to judge a phone by its face plate without the phone there. Yeah. But it just looks terrible to me.

Yeah. I should be more excited about it. I probably should have mentioned it in my right. Oh, maybe I did. Yeah, the whole screen design. So what's funny is that these first leaks about the S8 are coming hot on the heels of Samsung doing like a press tour, an event about why the batteries exploded. And they put out like infographics. like, here's why the battery's exploded.

The infographics are hilarious. I encourage you go, look at them. It's a diagram of a battery. And they're like, yeah, all these pins in the corner, they shouldn't have been touching each other. And then they're like, and the second battery had a different problem, which is all these pins at the bottom shouldn't have been bent up through the casing and touching each other.

It's like, it's kind of the same problem. But they did a whole tour. Vlad thinks their apology is very humble. They're going to keep the note branding. Their apology was great. I, it was fine. They presented something. It felt really comprehensive in terms of their study.

They, like 200,000 devices, 700 employees. But then more importantly, they brought in two outside firms to independently, you know, verify their findings. And, you know, whether or not they can stop this from happening again with their eight point, that is an eight point plan that makes sure nothing ever explodes ever again. At least they finally did the thing that we've all been waiting for, which is tell us exactly what happened and like show that it. it's accurate. I still have some questions about why, like, did it need to take that long? But, like, if they really did have 700 people look at 200,000 devices, I don't believe

that math, I just do the math, that's every one of those people looked at 285.7 devices. That's a lot of devices per person. Well, that's one non-full person. Well, they probably ran a bunch of them through, like, you know, quick and, like, quick, a physical inspection and, like, overcharge. They were just like, did you pay your taxes? I haven't heard Megan's perspective on Samson. I feel we talked about it a lot in the prior months.

But is that like a dead brand? No, I mean, I think the whole thing is like funnier than I should. Like to me, it's still such a big joke. So I think that if they embrace that, if they really like lean into it, like I'd probably buy stuff from them again. Yeah. There's a real chance I buy an essay. I mean, I buy everything.

I feel like it seems like they're going to be fine. I still can't buy it. You still have a lot of pixel. Because I can't. Chris Welchran a whole story. There's leaks about the pixel two today. You can't buy a first pixel. I don't trust those leaks very much.

I'm just saying if you are in a part of your device life cycle where people feel confident and leaking fake news, maybe you should be shipping your phone by now. Yes. It doesn't matter if the leaks are real or not. Are they hearing that part in the story? Manufacturing problems? Are they just more demand than they were expecting?

I think it's more demand than they're expecting. Any demand. They won't cop to it. If you look at the number of installs for the pixel launcher, which presumably everybody's updated, you know, once, but maybe not. It's less than a million. Which is, but there have been estimates that it's, you know, higher than that. But it's, you know, it's nothing like an iPhone, obviously, but or even a Samsung phone. But it's, it's kind of ridiculous that they haven't been able to ramp up production of these things.

And the reason it's ridiculous is this is a company that claimed it was getting serious about hardware. and getting serious about retail and getting serious about making sales. It never claimed it was going to like topple, you know, Samsung in terms of, you know, sales numbers. But they, they weren't doing this in the way they did the Nexus, like, on a lark because they thought people might like it. They intended to sell a bunch of these phones. And they're advertising the shit out of these phones.

They're on, the commercials are on TV all the time. And they're not making enough. Like, this is a, this is a Rick Austerlo fail. Yeah. I mean, they have, there's like a bunch of fancy new buildings. in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. There's a big fancy new hotel. The entire sides of it

are covered in pixel ads. It's not cheap real estate to market this phone on. TV ads are not cheap, and it's like, I'd love to get one of those. Someone asked me last night. That's the second yuppie thing you've said today, by the way.

There's a new hotel in my neighborhood? Yeah. It's shaped like a decanter. The sides of the tall buildings in my neighborhood are very expensive. It's fine, though. I'm not judging you. with that decanter was shaped like. I figured it out. I figured out what I was trying to say.

Okay. It made me feel bad as an Indian person for almost having it because it was shape. It looks like something that a British person who was really into colonialism. Like he was like, we should keep them. Like that's what it looked like. Right? Like, I don't know. Those railroads are quite nice. Like that's, anyway, that's from that. Again, senioritis is running rampant in my brain. Sometimes I look at crystalware and I have opinions. My roommate is of Irish descent and hates the British. Yeah. You wouldn't buy this thing. Just forever.

We'll show them this. Look, I got a picture. Send me a picture of the Decanter. Hit me on eye message. Then say congrats so that I get all the confetti. I'll show it to my roommate. And then next week we'll talk about demolition man. And then probably pretty soon, Jim Banka.

CEO of box media is going to say, what's going on, guys? Yeah, how's your tech show coming? So speaking of Samsung, I'll bring this up. We are, Liz is going to come on, we're going to talk about Trump. Paul and I are going to argue at an neutrality bit. But this is, I think, my favorite Samsung story of the week, which is, was Android Central to this piece, Deeder? Yeah.

Trying to figure out, the New York Times reported that Trump is still tweeting from his unsecured Android phone. They described it as old. Which his staffers didn't want him to be using, but he's doing it. Right. I mean, I think everybody who's listening to this probably remembers the story about Obama going to the White House. He wanted to be the first BlackBerry president. They had to get him a special one that was all locked down. Then he got an iPad. He still can get a phone. He's complained about his phone being crappy. Trump, from all indications, is using a Galaxy S3.

Yeah. So he could have a newer one. We don't know. No one's confirmed it. There's a bunch of photos. Well, so the most recent photo that I could find. Huh? The most recent photo that I could find is the one that Android Central found. Like, I was looking at photos at the same. same time they were. I should have written the story, but I didn't. So good job Android Central. But the most recent photo was, I want to say from February, 2016. But if you look at the phone, you zap Ruder it, it's definitely a Galaxy S3, which in the U.S.

I think got updated to like 4.4.3 or something. Yeah. But a few thoughts on this. One, you're a billionaire. Buy a new phone. Get on Next. Right? There's many plans

that will just automatically deliver you with your phone. Two, Donald Trump is literally your grandpa sitting in front of Fox News tweeting out

the things that he's angry about, which is hilarious. I just keep thinking about what the font size in this galaxy S3 must be said. But it's got to be huge, right? It's not small.

Three, this is running, if he is in fact still using an S3, the question is why, you know, The answer is obviously he's comfortable with it. He likes it for whatever reason. That's true,

he was fine. You know, it was fine. But maybe like, you know, Putin's spyware software doesn't work on marshmallow. They're like, shit.

We require the latest play services. Yeah, it only goes up to Kit Kat. And so he's just got to stick with it for a while. Yeah. I don't know. No, it's a real thing.

I'm just putting it out there. I think is listeners of the Vergecast, maybe we should do a Kickstarter. Ketchov and Dukeville. Like, we need to raise, like, $700. Like, we could buy him an ICD phone. My iPhone 7. We could buy him, like, 10 extra dongles.

I'm pretty sure that the phone that, the secure phone that, you know, the government gave him was, like, an S4 active or an S5 active, maybe even an S6. I got to look it up. Yeah, there's a whole thing about how Samsung Knox is, like, the only, it's supported by the Department of Defense. Oh, of course, if you try and search for S-active with Trump, all you get is Trump is active on Twitter. Good job.

Yeah, supposedly it's a Galaxy S7 active is the secure phone that they gave him. Were they like, well, the president definitely needs a rugged phone. God only knows what the president will go. Well, I'm sure they won't let him install Twitter on that phone, which is why he has the other phone. Right. Anyway, I think it's fascinating that he's still using this phone. It's just, that's where we are. Like, he's a living meme.

He's like meme creating with the Galaxy S3. That's where we are. Kickstarter. The most powerful phone on the plane. I'm interested in what, if we were to kickstart Trump a new phone. No, the thing is you've got to kickstart him like a high school or college age child. Barron is 10 years old, too young to be the person who helps you switch over to a new phone. And his other children are like grown up.

Yeah. He needs, he doesn't have a child in that perfect sweet spot to help you help a boomer make the transition. Do you think Barron has a better cell phone though than it? dad. He has a staff. What are you talking about? Like hire like a like a mid-20s talking about if Trump is this the old guy with an old phone watching Fox News and tweeting when he's mad, you know. He controls the United States. There's like a lot of people. You need a millennial child to help you make the transition when you're upgrading. For anyone who is in a million, like I'm just saying I've done a lot of tech support. I know you have.

Let me ask you a question. A lot of baby boomers. Do any of those baby boomers have buildings with their name on them? Any of them own a golf course? Just checking. No golf courses. Any of them have their own plane that they were sad about giving up for Air Force One. Just some baseline questions.

I get what you're saying. Normal boomers. I was just running with a joke. I'm not really saying that there's any reason for Trump to have an S3. Look, I'm kick-starting in a phone and it's going to be... Neil, you can't be the only person who's allowed to have senior edis right now, okay? Let Paul have his job. I'm getting Trump and next bit Robin.

No one can stop. It's going to be so confusing. Lastly, we go on the next thing. LG, film left out at the Samsung Party. We got a little picture of the G6 leaking out of the world. It looks really cool. I think it looks really cool. It's got like a curved screen, like the edges of the screen.

It's not like curved in three dimensions. It's curved around. It's a round wrecked. I like it. A round wrecked. Yeah. You know what's going to happen to this phone? It's going to run terrible software and we're not going to buy it.

It's going to get roundly wrecked by the Samsung Galaxy X8. Yeah. But this is LG's chance. This is their moment. I just want to put this out there again. This is their opportunity. Far East Movement is a band. I don't think they're doing anything right now.

It's just sitting there. This does look nice. You need to explain the full joke because people don't know it anyway. Far East Movement is a band. They have a song called Like a G6. Oh, no. Oh, yeah. Okay.

The line in Like a G6 is sipping Cesar up on my memory. ride, which I've always heard is sipping scissors on my ride, which is where that whole fucking joke comes from. Really? That was the start of it. Wow. It's really bad. I'm so happy to be here for this explanation.

This explanation has happened on the show. I would say four dozen times. Well, why are you got to take this away for me? That's everyone's wild today. Anyway, they released an album in 2016 called identity. We don't usually do like integrations or brand. But if for this one, if you put me in a plane, in a G6 with Far East Movement, I will hold your phone.

I won't do anything with it. I'll hold it, but I'll probably have a smile. Only Bobby had a little bit. And then I'll get drunk in my own custom vodka. Okay, we're going to take a break. I'm going to come back. It's going to get serious. Liz is going to be here.

There's a lot happening in the science community. She ran a piece. I know Paul has some thoughts about this. She ran a piece called Yes, Science is Political. Trump has made a lot of moves around science. We wanted her to come on and explain it. So I'm going to read this ad. I'm going to come back.

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not just your glasses. Look better, feel better, and most importantly, be prepared for whatever comes your way with Clearvision. Go to CriZAL.com, that's C-R-I-Z-L.com, and start living life in the clear. Okay, we're back, and Liz Lapato has joined us. Hey, Liz.

Hey, how's it going, guys? It's been a while since you've been on our show. Yeah, it's just been, you know, I think since I was last in New York. Yeah, wow. See, we all have senioritis today because it's like one of our last shows in this studio. But then we have the new one, you've got to come.

There's like windows, there's like a sound booth. Lap of luxury. I'm so excited. Anyway, Liz, let's get serious. Let's go deep. Yeah, I mean, that's where I've been living. So I have not been experiencing the senioritis because there has been so much news coming out of the news,

new administration about science specifically that that's kind of where I've been living. I actually had a sandwich before I came in. It was the first time I've eaten today. So that's how it's been. Yeah, Liz and I were talking just for the show. And the thing that's amazing to me is Trump has done a bunch of stuff right away. He's issued a bunch of executive orders. But it seems like the biggest storyline coming out of all those executive orders are like people not being happy from a science perspective.

It's not, you know, that hit first, not immigration, not even health care, not the wall. it not, you know, the economy or jobs. But like the thing that like everybody's like crafting a narrative around is all the stuff that's happening with science. Yeah. I mean, I think that's right. So there are pieces of science that are relatively controversial, right? Like I know there are plenty of people out there who don't believe in evolution.

I know there are plenty of people out there who don't accept global warming. But it turns out most of the rest of science is pretty uncontroversial and actually fairly well liked by the public at large. And so I think that's maybe one of the reasons why there is kind of this moment where people are really coalescing around science, especially. I noticed that the national parks have been a focus of discussion, and that's in part because I don't think there are very many people who don't love the national parks. They're pretty bipartisan. So I'm not totally surprised to find out that this is getting a huge pushback, right? like over the last 50 or 60, 100 years,

science has really changed the way that we have lived from everything from like penicillin and vaccines to things like automobiles and the internet. So, you know, I think the public at large is pretty positive in science, especially, you know, space science. Elon Musk obviously is somebody, our audience cares about a lot and dude wants to go to Mars.

So I- Also underground. Yeah. He's all over the place. Elon's got a lot to do and he's like DMing us, which is amazing. I bless that guy. But, you know, it's like been less than a week since the inauguration, as I'm saying this to you on a Thursday.

And so the EPA has been a target for the Trump administration. And, you know, there's been a bunch of stuff. Most alarmingly that studies and data are under a quote unquote, temporary hold before they're released and they are going to be reviewed by political appointees before they can be released to the public, which is very unusual. Typically, the way that this went during, like, for instance, the George W. Bush years was that they would notify the political appointee that they were going to be publishing about something controversial.

It wasn't like a review, right? It was like, here is our study. It's going to be coming out. FYI, like there could be a little bit of a firestorm. this is actually more, what is the word I want here? Sweeping than that. You know, like when you see people like William K. Riley, who was the EPA administrator for George H.W. Bush, saying this is, quote, going down a very dark road, you start to get alarmed. But basically, we're hitting a point where the actual research integrity is potentially threatened.

And I think that really upsets people. And I think it upsets people in part because we generally, I would say, trust scientists. I mean, stop me if I'm wrong. But like, you know, people like Carl Sagan or more recently Neil deGrasse Tyson are sort of like homey figures that everyone knows, kind of trusts, wants to talk to, feels comfortable with, and likes them so much that they invite them into their homes via television set on a fairly routine basis. Right. To explain things, there's like an objectivity, right, that, like, creates comfort, right, with signs. I mean, you know, the data doesn't care whether you like it or not. The data is the data, right? If you don't like the data, that kind of sucks for you, but you know, you're still stuck with it. So I think that that is something that people have kind of latched onto. And I think it ties into something larger that I've noticed, I noticed during the Trump campaign, which is a sort of disregard for facts.

just a level of disinterest in what the facts are. And just, you know, on a personal level, it's a little different than, I think, being deliberately lied to because I feel like people who are deliberately lying to me often do know what the truth is and are keeping track of it in order to deceive me. And here, I sort of feel like the message is the truth is what we want the truth to be. and that's a direct confrontation with the methodology of science and the way that we understand how to how to discover things about the world around us and about our own bodies and about space and everything. So those sort of ideologies are a little bit at odds, I think. Are you seeing this from, so scientists are obviously responding in a bunch of ways, right?

There's the rogue Twitter accounts and they're of unknown provenance, but there was like, you know, a dozen or more rogue Twitter accounts. Like, Alt National Park Service started because Trump shut down the Park Service Twitter. There's a rogue NASA account, which is actually very funny. But, like, we don't know if they're real, right? No, we don't. The story behind them, again, of unknown provenance is, like, these are rogue government scientists, like, starting their own ways of communicating.

But are you seeing that kind of response from across the political spectrum? Or is it just a bunch of, like, pissed off liberal scientists? So it's a bunch of, I wouldn't even. say the scientists are pissed off, or at least the ones that I've spoken to are pissed off, so much as they are kind of terrified. Some of that has to do with the communication style. One person I spoke to said that he hadn't discovered his grant was frozen until he read about it in the news, and then he checked in with the lab, and sure enough, he couldn't send samples for analysis because they didn't, they didn't have the money. They weren't allowed to use the money.

and he compared that with previous administrations where there have been freezes like this but they were clearly communicated in advance with an end date in advance. And so I think part of it is just a straight lack of communication internally with all of these government scientists basically. I wouldn't say that the science, at least the ones that I've spoken to, they don't seem angry so much as they seem scared and confused. Yeah.

And, you know, I have been mostly tracking scientists, so I don't really know what the public at large response is. But, you know, it's sort of the same refrain over and over as we don't know what's going on. Do you know what's going on? Can you tell us what's going on? Which is a weird thing to hear from your sources. Yeah. So what happens next? Well, I don't know if you saw this today. But Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Committee of Oversight. and governmental reform and Frank Pallone, the ranking member on the House Committee of Energy and Commerce, just sent a letter to the White House saying that the gag orders may actually be violating federal law. Oh, wow.

That's a super weird thing to laugh at Liz. I've been having a really weird week. Just a really weird week. No, I'll send us to our audience. Like, right, we were on Verge Science. If you've been watching Virgin Science, we often dip our toe into political issues, but mostly we cover, like, space and health issues and, like, the tech industry interfacing with science. And lately, Liz has been saying to me over and over again, we can't stop covering the new administration. Like, it's dominating everything we do because it's creating so much news.

It's kind of where you've been living. Yeah, which is if I seem a little spacey and confused, is a little bit why. you know, what's going on right now is not normal. You know, often there are like bumps when administrations transition. That is normal. But the level and scale of confusion is unusual. The level of fear is unusual. And some of the stuff that we've been getting in terms of communication, particularly from the EPA, is really, really unusual.

The idea that studies should be reviewed by political appointees itself is unusual. And, you know, scientists have, they're not a politically active bunch necessarily. I mean, like, they vote, but you don't see them necessarily turn up at protests, right? Well, they're organizing one now. Yeah. They're planning to march on Washington. So. That's going to be the nerdyest protest.

of all time. The great signs are coming out of that protest. Oh, my favorite sign from the Women's March was, what do we want real science, when do we want it after peer review? Yeah, that's a great one. That's like an old standby. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, this is a super unusual situation where

scientists are essentially feeling very threatened. And because their communication has been so unclear, it's not clear to them, whether they are actually being. threatened or if there is just confusion or if this is a, you know, transitional state or what's going on. One thing I will say that I saw, I think it was motherboard had reported that the hiring freeze for national parks meant that there might not be enough rangers during the peak because they have to start hiring their seasonal workers now for the summers when people tend to go visit. So if you like me love spending time in national parks, I think you should probably

call your representatives. Yeah. And maybe check with Rangers before you plan your vacation this year. Yeah, that's the thing. Okay. But we're going to keep covering this basically a hell out of this because it impacts

almost everything that we normally cover. Right? Like, the space industry is about to undergo some radical changes because Trump has different. He's like, we should go to the moon instead of Mars, right? Like, that's a real thing that is being, like, it's happening.

So it touches a lot of what we cover. I think we're going to see a lot more of it. And I think, Liz, you're probably going to make a bunch more appearances on the show to talk about it. Yeah, I think that's probably right. One thing that I do want people to keep in mind is that most science, including stuff that happens at universities, basic science, it can be expensive. And the government typically pays for it. It's one of actually the best investments that we have in terms of job creation and terms of creation and terms of creation of technology and stuff that trickles out to the wider world, R&D. So, you know, this stuff, it's, it's, when I see people sort of attacking science, I wonder if they understand what exactly they are attacking, because American prosperity is so closely tied to our scientific prowess and it's a major source of soft power for us. Our scientific education programs are among the best in the world. And right now, Brazil is undergoing massive science brain drain because they aren't funding their scientists. The great scientists they've built are.

going elsewhere. And I'm not saying that's happening here. It's too early to happen here yet, but that is a possibility. It is possible that if you tank science, you actually wind up hurting America very badly in the long run. So here's a question that I have. It seems like there's a, science is very careful and slow and deliberative. The scientific process and scientists in general are slow, careful, and deliberative, which seems to be the, opposite of what Donald Trump is being as president. And so there's an asymmetry between the speed with which he's like throwing out decrees and making executive orders and like applying new rules.

Like he could, he just, he's just doing that wicked crazy fast. It's like impossible to keep up with it actually. Is there is there like a fundamental like, I mean, this applies to Congress too, but is there a fundamental problem where the science community isn't used to or isn't able to because they're scientists and they want to be slow and deliberative respond as quickly as like this it's coming out? I don't, yeah. I mean, again, part of it is just the straight up confusions. And so because they tend to be very deliberate in response, when they're confused, they tend to say nothing. Right.

Right. But I think that there's definitely a mismatch there. I also think what I have been wondering about and this is just a personal wonder is like does Donald Trump understand scientific jobs as also being

jobs and part of jobs creation? Because they are I mean like and you know you don't have to have a degree necessarily to do a lot of these things particularly in ecology they're always looking for folks who can check traps you know you don't necessarily

have to have gone to college to be involved with research. And so there are jobs that you can create by bolstering the scientific establishment instead of attacking it. And I find this all bewildering in light of the jobs promises he's made. Yeah. Like I said, we're just going to keep tracking it. But sadly, now I have to read an ad. But Liz, like I said, I suspect you're going to be back on the show a bunch of times of the next month's duration of the empire. Well, thanks for having me. Liz, we're going to bring him back, and then Paul and I are going to argue at net neutrality. It's going to be great.

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Like, what's the tagline today? I love it. Right, Paul, every week you do a segment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's it called? It's called Dry Your Sweaty Palms. Can't believe you forgot. So memorable.

I know. Yeah, there's these, um, oh, shoot, I lost a tap. Oh, this always happens. Okay. Your palms are so sweaty. My palms are so sweaty. Performance gaming wear.

Oh, my God. From Control. I wish this was a video podcast. Megan just put her hands over her mouth. She's got the vapors. I saw these earlier and just had to restrain myself. It says from Control Freak. Control Freak, spelled with a K, of course.

Well, of course, yeah. They're famous. for like the little... Wait, is it with a K at the top and a cue at the end? No. No Q at the end. You gotta go for it.

Sorry. All right. Sorry. It's Freak, though, F-R-E-E-K. I want to kill myself. Control Freak is famous for these little like thumbstick

extenders. You put like a little extender on your Xbox or PlayStation controller's thumbsticks to get like a little better control. They're all about airing out your hands. But now they have this performance gamingware,

which is a pair of basketball shorts, which is, it's a real thing. It's in the Call of Duty community, there's a lot of basketball shorts. You wear a hoodie and basketball shorts, and it's just the thing. Any weather. Everybody's a slob. Yeah. But they're, but they're, why not wear warriors?

As, as slabs, yes. Well, Deeter, I'm glad you asked. The hoodie. Did College Duty have clans? What are your team names? I don't play Call of Duty. I'm a pacifist. I don't either.

But if I started a Call of Duty tribe. Guild or something. Like an e-sports team? Yeah. Mine would be warrior slubs. Warrior slubs. Of course. So the basketball shorts have this like side panel on them of this absorbent material.

So you can wipe your hands when they get all sweaty. They just added a little. And then the material is also on the hoodie. Wait, the material is also on the hoodie. And the hoodie is like larger because like when you're doing e-sports, you have to wear like their like mandatory noise-canceling headphones so you can't hear crowd noise. And then you typically wear earbuds under.

Wait, really? If you look closely at any like e-sports situation, you'll typically see little earbuds sneaking up into the, so they can hear the game audio. But this is, the hoodie is oversized so that it fits over this and then it gives you like an isolated

you know, it's just you. Does it snap on the edges of your 30-inch monitor? No. That's like the real key. Also, built in snaps at the end. Pockets of the basketball shorts are oversized so you can put your controller in. Where can I buy them? Yeah, I'm in. Let's do it.

Why not? 36 bucks. That's great. Great basketball shorts. I like it. And you can wear a Scott E-vest under it so that you can pull out even more devices. Absolutely. I'm ready for it.

You know our friends of Polygon. Megan, you know all about Polygon. I know all about them. I've heard of them before. They're expanding in some e-sports this year. They're going to be way more e-sports coverage. It's like a thing. It's a real thing.

It's a real thing. Everybody's going to have to wear those shorts, I'm sure, yeah. Yeah, Polygon, I didn't want to break this news to you on the podcast. Everyone in a Polygon, required to wear basketball shorts, man. Super weird. Most other media companies have, like, social media policies. Polygon just, like, wear these goddamn basketball shorts. Wipe your sweaty hands on them.

Damn. Wait, I feel like, I don't want to get too deep in it. I feel like they've solved the hand sweat issue. But they're really, you got a warm head issue going on. You can get hot? Oh, they need fans. You got like headphones, earbuds and a hoodie. So you're like good ventilation in the hood?

Like it's like the technology in the hood. It was on seeing all your heat through your legs. Why not wear fingerless gloves that like wick the moisture away directly at the source? No, no, no, no, no, because. All right, all right. Dieter, have you heard of the claw grip? Oh, my God. I have.

It's Inspector Gadgett's arch enemy when he grips you. I really want to talk about anything. neutrality and I really want to talk about the show hunted, which I'm fucking obsessed. So, okay, so Trump, I hate to just keep hammering on Trump, but the man's moving fast. Very fast. He's doing a lot of things. One of the things he did, he appointed new chairman of the FCC. So, again, I think longtime listeners know, the verge, I personally have been a champion of net neutrality for a long time.

There was Obama's FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, was a big surprise because he used to work for the telecom companies. He was a cable industry guy. He was a telco guy. He came in, did title to made net neutrality happen. Alexis O'Hanian flew a flag from the top of the Reddit headquarters, and then ran away to marry Serena Williams because his last work was done. Wheeler's out, obviously, new administration. Trump is appointed a guy named Agit Pye as a new chairman of the FCC.

He's been on the FCC for a while. He was an Obama appointee. I will say this. Of all of Trump's appointees, Pi is probably the most just like, well-liked, most qualified guy. It's not saying a lot. Well, not, but he's like, he's the real deal, right? Like, he's very smart.

I think Paul and I both, like, Paul and I disagree about this issue, but I agree with Paul. That pie is a very smart guy. He's also, like, he's really, like, hot fire on Twitter. Like, when he speaks or when he, you know, writes or, you know, whatever, any, any public venue he's in, he's, like, cogent and, like, listenable or readable. Yeah, I think he's, you never, you never get, bored by him. Right. So the way I'll put this is, I think any other Republican president would have done a great job by appointing Adjapai as the chairman of the FCC. Right. He's the right pick for the Republican Party. Great. He's like, basically like, fuck it. It's all over. Like we're burning it down. So you're already seeing, and he's anti-net neutrality. He was from the beginning. He's written a bunch of dissenting opinions as those orders came through. We're going to do a bunch of pieces. kind of analyzing what he's already written about it.

I think J. Kastrancos are great reporters, already working on that. But you're seeing this immediate turn by the telecommunications industry in response to it. Verizon said it might buy charter cable, which just bought Time Warner cable. So there's already a push towards more consolidation.

That's happening in the context of AT&T buying Time Warner. I think you're seeing T-Mobile, they're just basically being like, Yeah, Sprint, we're going to buy you. That's like their attitude towards Sprint right now. And then AT&T, Randall Stevenson, the CEO of AT&T, said they're going, quote, they're going hard on zero rating. Here's the quote. We were actually quite confident that zero rating as we were implementing it was fine under a Pi chairmanship.

So you're now seeing this bundleization of the internet happening. So AT&T is going to make DirecTV now, free to stream, some other service like Sling TV might not be free to stream unless Sling pays AT&T. So there's a price differentiate. They did most of these things. before the election. But they got, Wheeler was like, this shit's illegal,

right? Wheeler already issued an opinion saying Verizon zero rating and AT&T zero rating was not fine. And now they're saying, well, Pi's coming in, we think it's going to be fine.

Pi's not going to do this. Pye might, you know, take down Title II. Or you might work with Congress. There's Congress to do this in 10 minutes. They could say, Congress decrees Title II

does not apply to the internet. It literally could just do it and Trump would sign it and it'll be over. Like, kind of like in the 90s when they said that FCC should be like low on regulation, like that the internet was not supposed to be heavily regulated.

Right. Yeah, I don't know. I really like the pie quote about the Title II reclassification. This order imposes intrusive government regulations that won't work to solve a problem that doesn't exist using legal authority the FCC doesn't have. So here's my argument to you. And I think the result has only been more consolidation, a lot more zero ratings happened after this whole Title II thing.

And the big companies can afford to get a bunch of lawyers and fight the FCC forever. So do you think your rating's good or bad on that? To me, that's not what it's about. I think it's about the rights of a company to be able to make decisions about how it wants to approach a market. Like I have different opinions about what I want my Internet company to do and how I want them to be treated by the government. And I think we, we as members of the press, have basically the most protections of any industry to approach our market exactly how we want to do. And we have

some restrictions on, you know, the things we need to do with how we treat our employees and non-discrimination and the basic, the baseline regulations. But our industry specifics are almost completely unregulated by how we speak. and the decisions we make and what we do. That is not the climate for, I would say, most American businesses. Well, I would just say focus in the ISPs, right? Because the ISPs did live in this climate for a long time. Right.

Right. And the pie quote about net neutrality actually came before the zero rating stuff happened, before discriminatory pricing happened, right? Like the things they're doing now are the things that Title II net neutrality were designed to prevent. Yeah, it's weird how that worked where, that you create this regulation and then these big companies do what seems like the opposite of the intent of this regulation.

Right. Well, they're pushing back on it. Yeah, they're pushing their trying to find loop. They're creating a business practice. Isn't that weird how that wasn't very effective at getting what people wanted? But it could be effective if you take them to court and you get them the, like that's how it works.

I just think a law would be a much better. Well, also in these companies are out of the FTC's purview now. So if the FTC saw something anti-competitive, the FTC could step in before the Title II classification. The Title II says, all these conversations are monopolies. We can't do anything about that. So we just got to, they got to obey these rules. So that's actually, that's the thing I'll push back on you, right? They are monopolies, right?

Particularly the wired broadband providers, most people only have a choice between one or two, right? wireless providers, it's very hard to switch between. If you regulated them all to use the same standard and have interoperable phones and everybody bought a full-price phone, then sure, right? Then let T-Mobile zero-rate a bunch of stuff and you hate zero-rating. You'll switch to Verizon, which doesn't have it, and you have a market. But that is, the amount of friction between these providers is very high, right? So, like, the average consumer can't leave.

So once you buy in, you're stuck for a period of time. A lot of people switch around all the time. I don't know about all the time. The fundamental thing that we're disagreeing on. Buy a car and then I have it for a few years and then I have to decide on a different car. Yeah, I don't think it's like that, though. This is an ongoing necessary service in your life. If you take Peter Thiel as Trump's lead technology advisor in his like zero to one book,

his like concept of business is that you create monopolies and then you don't. And then those monopolies don't have perfect control over the market because another monopoly comes and supplants them. And I think with more freedom in this space, like something that Pi wants is a more unlicensed spectrum. Yeah. I would love there for to be unlicensed spectrum in kind of each part of the spectrum so that you can have a lot more innovative products like something in the 700 megahertz. Right. And unlike, I'll tell you, a licensed spectrum. Waterless to compete with Wired.

You know, Fios competes with, there's DSL cable and fiber in homes right now. Not every home has all of them. Most homes don't. Fairly vibrant competition. And then a lot of homes...

Wait, hold on. That is just absolutely not. No statistics says there's a vibrant competition in wired broadband. Not a one. And even if there is the speed differential between the cable monopoly in the DSL

sell monopoly in your area is so high that you functionally only have one choice for the highest speed provider. Like that is just, that's New York City. Like, we live in one of those populated zones in America. One choice for the highest speed of something. But if you only have one choice, you have de facto a monopoly, and you should probably not let that monopoly be abusive about its pricing. I don't think wireless is going to start to compete. I think that's like what it comes down to for me. It's not like, should we impose Title II a specific, admittedly,

old regulation to allow us to do these things, right? That was the legal method that was, even though it was very slow, the most efficient for the FCC to impose these controls. I don't think people trust their providers. Ultimately, I think that's what it comes down to. We don't trust Comcast, Disclosure, Comcast Invest in this company. I don't trust him as far as I could see them. I don't trust.

I don't trust Verizon. I don't trust AT&T. I don't trust T-Mobile, whatever, what have you, right? And there's no competition keeping them honest for me. Or certainly not enough. My problem is I don't trust five unelected people to decide the fate of the government. Do you trust the Secretary of State? Well, I would much rather that Congress would step in and create laws.

I do think they've actually advised the FCC. And I think the FCC has gone against Congress's directive to the FCC. But I think we elect. The House did, not the Senate. The Republican House advised one thing. And the Democratic Senate at that time advised another thing. But we elect the lawmakers to make laws. But like a regulatory agency having this much power over the Internet, which is so important to our economy and to our lives, is really scary to me.

Five people get to like sit around and decide, I don't think that innovation is fair. But I like this innovation. You know, it's just kind of gross to me. And there's very little recourse. If you go against, like if you break a law, you get to have your day in court. if you go against a regulation, you're not just going against that rule, but you have to fight the body that wrote the rule, executes the rule, and here's the appeals on the rule.

No, the laws are made by the legislature. They're executed by the executive branch, and then we have a judicial branch. But they passed Title II and Verizon took them to federal court. They tried to do Section 702. Right. This is like ancient history in my brain because I really thought I'd won, man. I thought this was over-sari. I'm sorry, but it's still okay. It's going to go on forever. It's fine. And I think these are reasonable policy debates. But Verizon took every step of this process to federal court outside of it. The federal court ruled against the FCC three times and said if you want to do this, this is the way you do it.

The law, the regulation was written by Congress and all the FCC was deciding was which part of the Communications Act would apply to the internet. Right. Right. I don't, like that. And that's your only recourse with an agency who's creating the rules and enforcing the rules and acting as all three branches of government one is to appeal. Whoa. Whoa. That's that's a completely unfair characterization. Right. Like that is a real thing that happens. If you're Verizon, you can afford. Paul, Paul. Paul. But the only companies we're talking about are Comcast Verizon, AT&T, right? Paul's trying to do like government 101. So let's, this is what happened. Congress passed a law, the Communications Act. The FCC was like, does this apply to the Internet?

And Congress was like, I don't know, we're busy doing shutting down the government or whatever. And FCC is like, okay, well, that seems like a hassle, but maybe. And then they didn't do it. They didn't do it. And then they did some other stuff. Verizon took them to court. They took them to the judicial branch. And the judicial branch said, hey, it's our job to interpret the law that Congress passes.

And the way we interpreted it is the law that Congress. pass gives you power to regulate the internet. So if you want to regulate the internet, you have to use a law of the Congress pass. And the FCC said, okay. And then they did it. Yeah. I mean, this, this fight was real. It was like we covered the hell out of it. So my question is just comes down to this. You let AT&T and Verizon do whatever they want to do, which is basically what happens if you let Net and trial to go away. Does the future of the internet look better or worse, right? Do you, if you are a startup music service and you can't afford the fees, Apple and Spotify pay to AT&T, if you're a startup video service and you can't afford the fees,

Netflix will now start paying to AT&T, how do you actually compete against Netflix? Right? It's, you've now allowed the giants to make more money because they can innovate however they wish, but you might have squashed the actually important innovation, which is the businesses that thrive on the internet. That, to me, is the scary, scary. thing, right? It's a trade-off. It's a clear trade-off. We're not going to allow the telecommunications companies to innovate at will

because we think the innovation that happens on the internet is more important. And that's just a policy. Like, we can differ on that policy choice, and I think that's totally reasonable and fair, but I don't think that we're expressing it in that way very clearly. I just, I trust

the market and the businesses that got us this far to do a better job of continuing to innovate and giving us, you know, better options and better ideas than five people nominated by any president. Right. But, you know, the president nominates a lot of people, right? Like, that's part of the reason that you vote for a particular president.

On five, it's five people. But sure. And there's like, the lengthy. Well, I mean, Congress is, what, 465? But, like, the Supreme Court is appointed by a bunch of presidents that it votes on party. Like the FCC, most of its decisions are unanimous. But this was not. So, but this one wasn't.

So this is a pretty marginal decision that has a huge theoretical impact and kind of unknowable impact because they kind of gave themselves a lot of wiggle room to continue to grow how much they're going to necessarily govern and how much they're going to apply. And I think that was probably the strongest and most reasonable criticism in Title II, right? Here's this law. You're saying most of it won't apply, but there's nothing from keeping you the right. of it applying. That's fair. But I think as this administration and Pye go after net neutrality, I think the vast majority of people on the internet who were fired up about it are going to

provide more pushback protest resistance to changing it than they might be expecting. That's just my that's what I think. I could be wrong. Everyone could be like, fuck it. I love zero rating because it sounds free. I think a lot of people do like zero rating. I think a lot of people are afraid of this bogey man that was been, you know, passed around. of you're going to have to pay extra to be able to watch Netflix. You're going to pay extra somehow. Yeah. Either your Netflix.

Someone's prices are going up. If AT&T starts charging for access and not passing that cost of the consumer, someone's going to pay and the consumer will end up paying in some other way. So the cost of Netflix could go up. It's just hard to know. Were you pro SOPA and PIPA back in the day? I wasn't super right up on them. They just seemed, the thing I know.

I mean, that's like, that's the way the modern net neutrality fight, you know, kicked off five years ago is those two bills out of Congress, you know, Reddit shut, blacked out its site. Wikipedia did. I think we did something to our site. We did. And it was a big fight. And that fight was over the, the rules that were in those laws to try and fight piracy ended up closing a bunch of net neutrality doors. And it like, it had, it had very clear implications for the. of the telecommunications industry that we didn't feel comfortable giving to them.

And so like the laws eventually got, you know, overturned because there was so much pushback against them. And so like this is a similar fight. It's just a different venue. Basically, like, for the time being anyway, Congress doesn't seem especially interested in that issue. And they're doing, you know, which is what, you know, when Congress passes law, they ask the executive branch to execute on it. And the FCC is part of the executive branch. And so they're just executing on it as best they can. Yeah. And the, the question is, like, what is the method of execution that PY's FCC is going to have? And it's going to be radically different, it looks like, than Wheeler's execution. And so, like, what we're arguing about here is net neutrality,

but we're also arguing about, like, the scope of, like, interpretation that the executive branch has when it's trying to enforce a law that Congress has handed them. And the law in this case, is not very specific and not very clear and not very aware of what the modern internet looks like and acts like. Right. Like, I think this is going to keep going. And honestly, I like talking to you about it because we disagree. But I think, like, it's one of those things where it is a trade-off.

And if you see both sides of a trade-off, you can have a reasonable discussion. And, again, I think Agit Pye is, like, he's just such a well-respected guy. Like, I don't think he's going to blow it because he doesn't understand the issues, which is not like Trump has appointed a lot of people and a lot of them are very controversial because people are like what does Ben Carson know about?

Like you can't make that argument about Pye like he's on the money and I think it's going to be really interesting what he does. Okay, I want to get off the heavy stuff for one second. I want to talk about surveillance and reality television. Have you seen Hunted?

You watched Hunted. I came back to my house while it was still running an illegal stream of the football game that I had been watching. I don't know who was playing. And I see these guys and they're in this war room, but it's like this can't be real reality television.

They can't be showing me an actual investigation because it has those bogus like glass whiteboards that nobody actually uses in real life. Yeah, yeah. And then there's like some guys taking money out of ATM and I was like, what is going on? So usually CBS, I will say, offers the most garbage television available. It's fact. Hunted is probably garbage television. But if you don't know what it is, it's like a remake of a British show where they get a bunch of players, like amazing race style, and they tell them you can run

around basically like Florida, Georgia, and part of Mississippi. It's like 100,000 square mile area. So it's some huge part of that state, those states. They can only pull out cash from ATM in $100 increments and they're followed by camera crews who then fake being the surveillance state. And then they have like a group of cops who try to chase them down. and I have to like stay on the run. I'm obsessed with it.

It makes no sense. Like obviously the producers like feeding the cops information like when they take money out of the ATM. Wait, they're not real cops. They are all ex-cops. Okay, ex-cops. But they're not real cops.

They're not in their official. But they're basically faking like, what if our surveillance state was perfect? So like they take money out of the ATM and the producer like calls the cop headquarters and like they took the money on the ATM and like send them a movie. Because you can't really do that.

Yeah, that's like step one of how you disappear. is you don't take money out of ATMs. Right. So, like, they have to decide to want to take money at the ATM because they need, obviously, needs money.

And they limit them to $100, so they force to use ATMs, like the game. All I'm saying is the show is bonkers. I want the version to cover the hell of it because it's so nuts, and I think if I was on it, I could win. Oh, yeah?

What's your plan? How did you do it? I'm like, here's what happened on this last episode, the first episode. One of the players, like a 6'8 baseball player, and he's on the run with his girlfriend who's a fucking, like, hot blonde model.

And the cops are like, well, they'll be easy to find. Look for the tall guy with the model. So they bought kids' wigs and put them on their heads. Oh, honey. Yeah, that's just a fact. And then they went to the bus station and they're like, oh, we need money for the bus. Can we use the ATM?

And they're like, yes. And they used it and they got on the bus. And they got them to the bus station. And they were like, did you see any tall people wearing wigs? And they're on the bus to Atlanta. They just went to the bus station in Atlanta and they got up the bus. They caught them. What's your strut?

Can you just go underground, man? Just go to the woods, man. Or like a barter economy? No, it's just like, they don't know who you are. They don't know where you're going. You don't have, you could just stay in one place the whole time. They would never find you. You know, if that's your strat, I guarantee you within four hours you'd be buying a child's wig.

Because you're like, oh, man. I thought of this is so easy. I would shave my beard into a mustache. Oh, clever. No, they never see me with a mustache. Mm-hmm. There's one photo of me in Twitter, which continues to haunt me. By the way, mustache.

Sorry, mustache. How old you said it is like your tenth yuppie thing? A mustache. There's one photo on me that was my Twitter avatar for a long time, which was a joke, which I believe is another argument, why you should never use Twitter? I did the thing where I shaved and, like, made a goatee. Did you have a soul patch? It was like, it was one of those like, hey, honey, what if I had a goatee, like jokes?

And I made it my Twitter avatar. And now anytime anyone's to troll me, it's like that. Can someone please send this to me on Twitter? I don't know. What would your strap be, Megan? By the way, I think we should all be on the show. Hmm. Honestly, I think I'd get caught really quick. I think I'd be like, ah, and I'm supposed to be hiding and I should be in the woods, but like, I really want some cheese it. I'd, like, go to the store and, like, use my credit card. They'd be like, no, you, no, okay. No. I would definitely get caught when I was, like, selecting which Kiosera burner phone to buy. Yeah. Like, it would be that. But I don't know. This one has a really bad Android build on. I'd be, like, tweeting, and it's, like, giving my location. Paul, would you be my hunted partner?

Absolutely. Why don't you want me to be your partner? Do they have, like, things they have to do that take them out in public? Did you just tell me you get caught by Jesus? I was going to let you carry the team, but I guess not. I just think the game is not fair if you have to use these ATMs. You have to use the ATMs. But, like, the game is not fair because they're not actually surveilling you.

The producers are following you, reality show style. Right. And then choosing according to some. black box of rules. Wait, wait. I have a question. What's a feed to the cops? Does it have to be you that uses the ATM or could you call your brother and be like,

hey man, I'm in a bind. Can you go to this ATM for me? And then you like, arranged a tradeoff. Can you cheat? Is that cheating? Genetically, your brother is probably also 6.8. So you're just going to cut.

Well, I'm just saying, like, I feel like if you have a good network, there are ways around this. Yeah. You need like inside people. I'm valuable. Let me be put your team. Fine, Megan. You're my own department.

All right. I'm obsessed with the show. I just wanted to bring it up because I started watching it. Same reason as Paul. I was watching football and it came on. I was like, I guess I'm watching this now.

And it was so dumb and bad. I was like, I could definitely win the show. Yeah. That's how also I feel about two broke girls. I'd be like, I wouldn't be a broke girl. God, I've only been on this. What football game are you watching, Eli?

I'm not telling you. What game was it? It was not, it was, I actually wasn't watching football. I was watching two broke girls. You were watching a football game? No, okay. What, I love two broke girls. Okay. The least raise a show on television.

I'll say, I've been on Vergecast this version twice, and you brought up the show both times. Got to go. No! Only to burn CBS and to get away from Dieter. All right. I think that's it. Senior week continues here at the Birch. All right, that's our show.

We'll be back next week, once again in this studio. It's going to be wild again. Next week, there's not going to be stuff here. That's so sad. It's all going to be in transit. It's just going to be me crying. Yeah. It's going to be.

He's going to miss this office. Because Mike Pete's going to be like an hour long now. Are you going to watch Demolition Man? I might. Yeah. Come back next week for the Vergecats Demolition Man special. It's going to be great. I would seriously do that show.

I'm just putting it out there. I would do that show. If enough listeners tweeted us about Demolition Man this week. Please don't tweet at me. Wait, do we each get to pick a movie? At Megan Nicolette on Twitter. Damn it. You fucking loves Demolition Man.

She loves it the most. Paul loves tweets about Net Neutrality and hunted. Mm-hmm. I like tweets. about sweaty basketball shorts. Megan, I think you just doomed yourself to a real shit week on Twitter. Oh, and thanks again to Krizal,

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Clear Vision. Please go to Krizal.com to learn more. That's C-R-I-Z-A-L.com. Start Living Life in the Clear with only small surcharge from AT&T. There's other shows to listen to, many of which are much better organized than this one. For example, Lauren Good. It is too embarrassed to ask. That's a great show.

Dieter, were you on it this week? You're on it last week. That was a week or two ago on Chromebooks, yeah. That's a great show. You should listen to. Walt and I, do you control it's elite, where he, Dieter, you'd be happening out, also repeatedly trolled me about football this week. Karr Swisher, does RICO,

which is wonderful, and Peter Kafka does recode media, which is one of my favorite podcasts of all. All those are on iTunes, go and rate them. Please just take a moment before you rate this particular episode of this show to consider the fact that we all had terrible senioritis, and then give us five stars. Just do it, because we're graduating. You're proud of us.

We'll be back. Paul is at Future Paul. Dieter is at Backlon. Megan, as I said, at Megan Nicolet. Don't forget the underscore. It's really important. Oh, there's an underscore. Some other Megan Nicolet is getting all my good tweets.

About basketball's. She's like, what is? happening to my life this week. This is a sign. I should get basketball shorts. I'm at Reckless. We'll back next week. Rock and roll. Paul. Go Falcons. Go to the night. Snip, snip, snip.

Go Falcons?