The Vergecast - Secrets

Episode Date: July 1, 2016

This week on Vergecast, Nilay, Dieter, and Paul bring in resident cybersecurity expert Russell Brandom to explain the cryptocurrency Ethereum and how there was a recent attack on the Decentralized Autonomous Organization which stole $53 million. Then, later on in the show a surprise guest pops in to give us breaking news on the Android. And after you listen to the podcast, head over to theverge.com and cast your vote in the poll for this week's Gadget Face-off featured on this week's podcast! 03:52 - Ethereum theverge.com/2016/6/17/11965192/ethereum-theft-dao-cryptocurrency-million-stolen-bitcoin 17:02 - Breaking News 22:04 - Squarespace ad 24:42 - BLU phones 35:33 - Paul’s Gadget Secrets/Gadget Face-off 39:44 - Coors ad 40:50 - Mr. Robot discussion 48:45 - Handshakes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Theverge.com. This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by a vodka company. I have a story about the vodka company, actually. The reason I interrupted you, Paul, Paul was in the middle of saying something really interesting before I just started talking over him. It was great. It was going to be great. I want you to say whatever you were going to say. But hold on.

First, I have a story about the vodka company. By the way, hi, I'm Nealai Patel. I'm joined here by Paul Miller. Hello. Russell Brandum. Hi. Joining us from the West Coast, live, Deeter Bone. Greetings mobile accomplishers.

It's never going to get old. The studio door, by the way, just wide open. Anyone else could welcome to join in. Yeah, because you started this podcast like you're like John Wayne. Yeah, just Cowboying in. Here's what I'm saying. If you're in the Bryant Park, New York area, just come on down to our studio and join the Vergecast. Anyway, that's the four of us.

I tried, this is a true story. I tried to register the Cizzer Vodka trademark. And I was shut down by our lawyers because there is another vodka brand. No, not Vodka brand. There's another trademark for all alcohol except beer. Tijeres. Which T-I-J-E-R-S. T-Haris, something.

It's not clear to me if it's supposed to be in Spanish. I think it's Spanish. means scissors. And I learned all this. I used to be a fucking trademark attorney and it all came flooding back. The doctrine of foreign equivalence is an absolute bar

to registering a word that translates to an existing so this is brought to you by Teheras vodka. What if you trademarked whatever is Spanish for safety scissors? If you want to, by the way, the trademark is owned by

Francis Coppola wineries. So, Frank, if you're out there. Wow. Yeah. Ford, can I call you Ford? Give me a call. I have a great idea for a vodka brand. My recollection is that Emily Yoshida is close personal friends with Sophia Coppola

and could probably hook us up. You should ask her. I feel like that's not going to go well. But Emily, if you're out there, I need Sophia's digits. So I can talk to her dad. about his scissors, about his vodka trademark. Anyway, Cizabaca, cut through that. I'm going to make this happen.

Can you say Cortara Traves de la Noche? I cannot. That's Spanish. Cut through the night. Oh, is it? Yeah, Cortar la Traves de la Noce. Here's another story. By the way, we have so little on our rundown for this episode.

It's just going to be chaos. Here's another story about my youth. To graduate from the University of Chicago, you have to demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language. I chose French because I had basically failed French in high school and wished to continue failing it in college. I, like, bumbled my way through the written examination, got my C, had to take the oral test, failed my first oral French examination. She, like, the instructor looked at me and said, there's a real middle school joke there that I'm just going to let go. Yep, let it go. She said, you didn't prepare for this at all, and I said, no.

That's all right. Went home. She said, okay, well, you're graduating. You got to pass this to graduate. Went home, memorized the entire end of Eddie Izzer Dress to Kill, which is in French. Recited the end of Eddie Izzer Dressed to Kill in response to every question she gave me. And she said, you're graduating, aren't you? And then she stamped the form and let me go.

Gosh. Scandal. Yeah. Anyway, if the University of Chicago is listening, I will be making a donation this year. All right, Paul, before we started talking, was talking about something called a theory. Whether it's real. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So this is why I'm so excited to be sitting in close proximity. I mean, I'm happy to see you too, Neelai. Love you. But I'm in very close proximity to Russell. High five. Up top. And Russell knows what the hell Ethereum is. We got to start pretty early on this one, don't we?

And Dow. So I, because there's a crazy thing happening to a weird cryptocurrency pseudo company where there's a heist. and there's bylaws. So much is crazy happening, but if you don't know what Ethereum is and what the Dow is, you just have no idea what's going on.

It's one of those bits where, like, there's the part in the article where you explain what everything is, and then you explain what happened, and the part where you explain what it is was just getting longer and longer. And so we keep saying, like, this new thing happened, but then we're like, okay, so cryptocurrency,

like, what is, yeah, what is code? I always get back to that. I mean, you got to start way at the beginning here. Ethereum, the Dow, are we getting into Eastern philosophy? What's going on? So, okay, Ethereum is like Bitcoin. Bitcoin is like you can transact money with math. And so I give you my number and I put it on this piece of paper and do this thing.

Let's pretend everybody knows exactly what Bitcoin is and how it works. Okay, so. I wrote an explainer once. Yeah. Ethereum is like slightly more complicated than Bitcoin. So it basically works the same way Bitcoin works. There's a blockchain and everything. But you can do these contracts. And so you can make these sort of more complicated structures that no one owns but like

work in an easily predictable mathematical way. So like if I'm, if I just say the Buffalo Bills win the Super Bowl, I owe, Paul Miller a hundred bucks. We can just make that Ethereum contract. You kind of like write it in code. Yeah, you can just code it in and it'll do this thing. So people get very excited about this because you can make all sorts of really complex things with that.

And so one of the things they made and probably the most popular usage of this is the Dow, which is basically a, it's sort of a like decentralized VC thing. You invest money and then you get stock. You invest real US dollars or real, you invest kind of real money, right? You invest Ethereum, which are exchangeable for real. So you exchange real money to get Ethereum or you guess you could mine Ethereum? Yeah, yeah, it's like Bitcoin. Like it is, it's sort of money, but it's sort of not.

But you could eventually turn it into actual money that you could buy this with. You get Ethereum and then you invest it into this fund. They know it's called Ethereum. Right? Exactly. Well, so it stands for decentralized autonomous organization, which also is like no one's like in charge of it or owns it or whatever. But you would put in money and you'd be like, this is my vote for what we do with it based on the money that I have. Anyway, people got very excited about it.

It's sort of like a investment thing. There are all sorts of ways where if it became really successful, you would be able to like manipulate it. And the way that people try to manipulate corporations, like Carl Icon or whatever. Yeah. Anyway. Has it invested in an investment? anything? Can it do anything? These are questions that would be important if it succeeded, but what actually happened is it turned out there was like a bug in the way that they programmed it.

The contract, right? So they wrote this really complex contract for how it was going to work. And the idea is, okay, we have the contract. We don't need anyone to be in charge of the thing. We just have this contract. But it turned out they hadn't thought of absolutely everything we might do with the contract. And so there was this way to just get money out of it. And so this guy got $53 million out of it, which seems like a lot. That's what crazy. How did this mystical experience end up with $53 million to steal? It is the best Kickstarter.

And also, like, you have one of the first pieces we wrote on it, I was asking this guy, like, what's the thing? And, you know, Bitcoin happened. And he said there's just a lot of teenagers with millions of dollars. And there's just kind of more money than sense is like the classic term for this. I've been trying to start a fucking vodka company on this show for like six months. Does anybody know where these teenagers are? They're out, I mean, they're living in Hong Kong and Iceland and all the free countries out there. Let's go to Iceland.

No, it's beautiful there. Let's watch some rich Iceland teens. But yeah, so there's just like a ton of money kicking around. And so that wasn't even all. They had like, it was maybe, it was less than half of the money that was in the Dow. And so, okay. So, but it's still a significant amount of the Ethereum that, like, exists at all. It's actually funny.

When I was talking about this, I was like, we were coming up with headlines. And Dami, who does social, was like, can we call it the biggest cryptocurrency theft ever? That's like, not even close. But, I mean, there's just been so much. It's rough out there. But so, okay. So then the thing, the interesting thing that happened is if they had just been like, all right, well, fair play, you got the money, whatever. Because some people are arguing that this heist was done according to the rules because the rules are encoded into the code.

Yeah. So the code is the contract. So what he did was not against the terms of this agreement. The thing to note about- Classic shareholder dispersion. The thing to note about the people making that money or that argument is that it's not their money. This is the argument you make when it's not your money. Sure.

Is you're like, oh, well, you know, of course, obviously, if the door's, the door was a jar, I just came in. It was to remove $53 million. But so it's just a big hit for them. They don't particularly want to take it. And so what happened is, okay. But who's they? Well, it's a decentralized currency. so that's an interesting question also.

But there are various, like, developer groups. It's like Bitcoin. Like who runs Bitcoin. It's not like just Satoshi pulling a string. It's like an open source project. Yeah, well, I mean, and also like with any open source project, there's like a bunch of dudes where you're like, well, okay, it's mostly them. And then this guy had this idea and he was willing to stay up all night making it work.

So we just let him. Figurehead that I read a great profile on in, I forget what publication did that. Yeah. Well, so it's like nine out of ten that it's motherboard. It might have been mother porn. It's probably motherboard. But so the thing, so they have a very strict timeline. So the nature of the Dow is they can take money out.

And then it's like frozen for 27 days because I guess they knew that people might try to steal things. So they have 27 days and they're like, we're going to patch the currency to make these coins unspendable so that when the timeline's up, the guy just can't run off with this. but then the patch okay so that keeps happening and there are a bunch of like troll things happening and people being like this is a sham like you're viling the spirit of cryptocurrency but then what happened this week is the patch that they were going to deploy and we're like two weeks in now so we're about the halfway point of the time that they have this Icelandic teen is like he's just on jet skis I mean really I'm very interested in who it is because like I want to you know if he were if he were one percent happy with me I would be embarrassed.

like it's cram. But so the, that's not really how rich people work. Well, no, it's also not like. I'm 5% happy with you. I can. Here's exactly that sum of my net worth. People don't just give you small percentages of their net worth, sadly. Unless you have a great idea.

Unless you're a vodka company. Or, or my restaurant idea, trough. I'll tell you about it at some point. Or a bizarre new cryptocurrency. Or a bizarre new cryptocurrency. But anyway, so the thing that they were going to, the, that they were going to make to the currency, turned out to have this major bug

which could, like, I don't want to say just destroy the currency, but it would be really bad. Probably worse than just having $53 million go missing, although we're comparing different values at this point, but it meant they had to kind of scrap everything and start over, and so now they're doing this new thing. They were doing a soft fork,

and now they're doing a hard fork. The Reddit threads on this are really complex, but, like, basically they now have exactly two weeks. They started with 28 days or 27 days and now they have only two weeks to like code this and deploy it. And you never know, like maybe there's another bug in the new one. Like, wait, it's getting dicey. Would it undo the $53 million? Well, it'll make it impossible to spend. It's like marked bills. So it's like a die pack goes off and then you're like, if anyone tries to spend this, we just won't honor the transaction. And are they making this change to Ethereum or

to the Dow? To Ethereum. That's the thing is it's also like a little weird because people are like, what if I make a transaction that people don't like in the future, and everyone decides it's bad, even though it's not that bad? And then they decide to change the currency so that my transaction for like whatever weird, you know, kind of I'm buying like a strange stringed instrument that people think is lame. And so they're just going to destroy my money. And as far as I understand, you go to stringed instrument. I usually when I was doing the what's tech for cryptocurrency and I was like, what can I say that it's like bad? but not illegally bad or not like,

I'm never talking to you again. And what I came up with was jazz guitars. Where I'm like, I just want to buy a ton of jazz guitars. And they're like, and like you could imagine people being like, that's kind of a gross thing for you to do. It's like you're going to grow a ponytail.

It's weird. We don't like you. Also, it's, but it's not illegal. We don't want to change. Brazilian, Brazilian Rosewood. Yeah,

exactly. Brazilian Rosewood. You can't like, you can't, if you have a Brazilian rosewood guitar, you can't take it out of the country you could get confiscated. Oh, because it's illegal wood.

I never thought that this show would lead us to be getting angry email from jazz guitar fanboys. Yeah. But here we are. I like jazz guitar, but not everyone does. That's just my own

idiosyncrasy. At Russell Brandon, I forgot. Tweet him your favorite jazz guitars and jazz guitar music. I just love this story. This is the most cyberpunk thing that's going on in the world. I mean, the funny thing to me

is like some guy potentially. And this is also like, so we're saying it's not the largest cryptocurrency heist, right? So for the teens who are getting rich because they bought Bitcoin early, there's also a bunch of possible teens, probably teens. I don't know if this, well, anyway, I have thoughts about whether it was a teen, but like, who just sort of figured out how to steal things and then are like, they're like, okay, well, so that's all the money I need. I'm going to go do this other thing.

And you never find out, like, exactly how, who it was or what it was. Because it could be one of the leaders of this project, right? Because whoever it is is completely anonymous. Yeah. It's just, yeah, nonsense. So let me ask you this. Here's a dumb cryptocurrency question. I keep reading the dominant positive outlook on cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin,

is that these are the Wild West days. It's crazy. But eventually it'll settle down and it will be the new, HTP. It'll be the new maybe even more fundamental. It'll be the new IP, right? Like, yeah. This sounds insane what you're describing, right? Like,

we live in a world where Russell has carved out a beat just reporting on heists. That's basically it. Like, yeah, it's a good life. Teenagers, teenagers heisting large sums of virtual currencies. I assume that anytime someone's done something terrible. Teams are optimized to find ways to steal. Yeah.

Cigarettes, otherwise. Yeah. CDs, cigarettes, $53 million in Ethereum. Distributed autonomous organization. Yeah. But how do you get from the crazy time? So this is what's weird is that I think something, you know, people did bad things to each other's websites, I assume, in the early days of HTTP, right?

I suppose it was all like college professors, but I'm sure they were like leaving, they were like finding some weird way to screw with someone's website, but it didn't matter because it was just a website. Yeah, the original internet had like absolutely no security built into it whatsoever. Yeah. And so the first virus was super successful because it was just a much university computers like on a local land basically. Right. But like, okay, so, so I guess the interesting thing, the problem is all of these tools are sort of things we already knew how to do. Like we already... Hey, guys.

Hey, hey, it's Lauren. What? Hi. Sorry to interrupt. I just, I had really big breaking news that I wanted to share that is way more important than all of the HTTP stuff that Russell is talking about right now. I'm not 100%. And that's Dieter laughing evil-ish, evilly.

Evil, evil, I don't know. Evilly in the background. Huge, huge breaking news. So Google. has decided to name its newest mobile operating system, Android Nuget, which is big news in my world, in my life, and that's why this is important, because obviously the Vergecast is all about me right now at this moment, because I have a cat named Nuget, and when Google first said that they were accepting submissions for ideas for operating system N, whatever N would be, and it's

always a suite, I immediately started to troll them online and tweet that people should. should vote for Nuget because that's my cat's name and my cat is the best cat in the universe. And something seemed to work. I'm not taking credit for it. I think you should. I'm sure that there were lots of discussions in the offices of Google. I did hear from one unnamed Google person that there were a surprising number of submissions for the name Nuget.

And I asked what the other top contenders were. I haven't heard back. But I would just like to say that my cat is very excited. and he is now way more internet famous than I will ever be, and that is okay. I think you should take credit for this. You think? Straight up. Who's going to stop you?

Right? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe that's what I'll go down in history for. What if it's, I want to be very delicate with how I say this, but what if it's, what if it's a bad name? Well, it's a good question because people already confused as to how they're supposed to pronounce it. I mean, no one's like, how do I pronounce Kit Kat? Nuga. Wait, what are the other ways to pronounce Nugat?

Well, some people say Nugat, and some people say Nuget. And some people, yeah, I did see somebody, Russell, you're right. Somebody wrote Nugat, like, as though you don't say the T, which I've never heard before. And some people just look at it and they go Nuggett. Yeah, Nugget is the one. That's, I'm surprised it took this long for us to get to Nugget. So I was telling Paul before, though, someone gave me a bar of Nuggett. for complicated reasons.

And I wasn't sure. Like plain Nuget? Yeah, well, like the kind with the nuts in it and like the white, it's like a white gooey bar. And there was this paper on it. And I wasn't sure if you were supposed to peel off the paper. And I tried peeling off the paper. And it was really gooey and messy.

And it turned out you weren't supposed to peel off the paper. But then like, I ate it and it didn't taste great. And I felt sick. And I had a really negative Nugut experience. And if that's what Android Nugut's going to be, then I don't know that I'm excited to upgrade. I just feel like Nuggett. On the flip side.

though, it could also be a warm, cuddly cat experience, Russell. That's true. Your cat should be the face of nougat rather than the edible nougat. Yeah, instead of the Android logo robot standing on nougat, which is on the ground, which is disgusting for any food to be literally on the ground being stood on by a robot, it could be like holding your cat. Yeah. He really is the biggest, he's such a lover, this cat.

He loves people. Everybody that comes over, I'm sorry to those of you of my friends who are allergic, because he just meets people and he's like, I want to be your friend and I want to sit on your head and rub my fur. You look cold. I should rub my fur all over your sweater. And he just, you know, he talks. And he's like he's, I mean, he doesn't like really talk. I'm a cat lady. Okay. I'm as official. I'm not helping my case at all. Here's what I'd like to have happen in this world of ours. I'd like all breaking news updates to sort of devolve into a guilty. the admission of being a cat lady. Breaking news, I'm just kind of a cat lady. Yeah. Look, Lauren. On the too embarrassed to ask podcast, we get a,

someone wrote in our ratings on iTunes that they love the show, but they would prefer less cat banter between me and Kara Swisher. So I'm, I guess I now just go on radio podcast and talk about cats and technology. Dieter is laughing. I'm not sure which comes first.

But thank you for allowing me to interrupt your programming for this announcement. It really has made my week. This has been the most organized part of the Verge cast thus far, so I'm there for it. And I do think that what Russell was talking about beforehand is more important, so I'm going to let you guys get back to that. Lauren, good, everybody. Breaking news, deep emotional admissions about cats. You should just take credit for it. Look, they named, they didn't name it after the candy.

They named it after one of the finest cats in America. Yeah, they took a page from Apple, and they decided to name operating systems after giant cats. But thank you for letting me interrupt you. And I miss you guys. I miss you too. We'll talk to you soon, Lauren. Okay, bye.

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Squarespace.com, the offer code, of course, Verge, best offer code than business. You get 10% off your first purchase. And I'm going to read this tagline. Squarespace. Set your website apart. Ooh, is that a new tagline? I feel like they're really AB testing the taglines.

I really was into a square space. You should. Yeah. And then Bill the Beautiful was there. That was what I do. If you heard one of the previous taglines that entered Offer Code Verge, let's muggy with those AB tests a little bit. Get back on the website.

Offer Code Verge again. Comment. The new tagline really helped me push me over the edge. This would be a good Twitter poll. Yeah, what's your favorite? Favorite Squarespace headline. Here's the thing. While we're still in the money zone.

I'll do the Twitter poll Squarespace. It's a cost. All right, that's Squarespace. Offer Code Verge, 10% off your first purchase. Set your website apart by building it beautiful. Just do it. You should. Speaking of Lauren Good and, I don't know, Android.

We actually should bring her back. Amazon is going to start selling certain Android phones with special offers. So you can get like 50 bucks off of a phone and then you get ads on your box screen. Paul. All the time. Paul just loves the capitalism doing things.

Like the idea that they're like, how do we squeeze more money out of this? I went to Amazon.com and I wasn't logged in to Amazon and I was kind of in a new browser tab. Amazon wasn't ready for me. Yeah. Huge image

phone for $50. Was it one of those blue phones? Yeah, the blue phone. There's $50 with that. What's the other phone? There's the blue. There's the blue and then you can get a MotoG. Right.

The new one though. The blue has one gigabyte of RAM, eight gigabytes of storage, which, oh man. Which basically, if you have a relatively modern version of Android and eight gigabytes of storage, you end up with like almost nothing. But to update all the apps. and then they have to store all the special offers. Do you ever read that great John Harmon piece in the all shit phone? Ode to shit phone? I think so.

It was he used, I think he had a blue phone. He just, like, used it for a year, and it just slowly disintegrated over time. Aren't they just screwing people? Like,

if you have $50, you can get a better phone. Right? Yes. Everyone just, like, looked at me like I was insane, but you can definitely get a, a better phone for $50 than a blue phone with Amazon ads on it.

Well, it's not just Amazon ads. It's like every single piece of random Android software that Amazon makes. Like, it's, I don't know. I mean, that's fine, whatever. What was the weird one that came out with a fire phone where you like look at, it like turns the world into an Amazon store? It was like Firefly or something? Yeah.

It's still on the Amazon app. Firefly is great. Is it going to be on the blue or is that too heavy? Okay. What phone unlocked is $50 and then better than this phone right now? Are you talking about like some old phone? Like a used, a seriously used old old? Yeah, wouldn't you rather get like a refurbished like Galaxy S6 for 50 bucks?

I don't think even that's going to be $50. A Galaxy S3. Like I would rather get an unlocked, pristine like Verizon Illuminate. What the hell is the fascinate? Like a certified refurb. refurbished Galaxy S3 is $130. Save the money. Really?

Yeah, $130 certified refurbished. Would you rather have... Well, that's a collector's item, though. I guess so. At a certain point, the price starts to rise. And it has 16 gigabytes of storage instead of me. I just... I don't think you're going to have a great time with a $50 blue phone,

but I also don't think you're going to find a lot of phones for $50 unlocked that are... Yeah. I mean, I think... almost like Walmart, Walmart phones. Yeah, you're probably right. But it has Amazon ads. I just don't like ads. I don't want my phone to have.

I hate ads too. The bigger piece in use to me today was that the S7 is being sold in the US unlocked. Free of all garbage. That's great for the rich people. So it's nice. Here's the thing. I hate ads. And so I like places where I can like choose to have ads or not.

Do you want to contribute and see no ads? like Hulu. Do you want to pay money and not have ads? Or do you not want to pay the money and have ads? Don't you still, but even if you do Hulu Plus, I think there's like a plus plus now or something like that. That's how they get you. I'd like to point out that Amazon Firefly did not recognize my Red Bull can, did not recognize Paul Miller, instantly tried to sell me the Mac when I pointed out. Nice. Yeah. Like with phones, it has a more iconic design. You can already choose phones that don't have ads. Those are already available. Now there's another option. for people who want a cheaper phone with that. I just think Amazon's trying to get its software out in the world and to build that base so they have some leverage in all these places.

Probably. Well, they should just eat the cost, right? This is the thing they didn't do with the fire phone. Right. Just like sell it at a loss. Well, the real thing they didn't do with the fire phone was use Google Play services. Right. Also, it was a bad phone.

It was like, it was, it fundamentally felt worse. I'm going to do it. I'm going to say this. And you're all going to get real mad at me, but I don't care. It fundamentally felt worse than the prototype never released garbage webOS phone that Palm was like, eh, maybe we shouldn't release this. It was like glass on both sides. It just, it felt junky.

And it was like kind of slow. And it had the super gimmicky 3D thing. They just had lots and lots of like shruggy ideas. And they decided to throw them all out of phone and then release it. I love the gimmicky 3 thing. Like, let's put four cameras in the front of your phone, track your face, and make everything a giant, weird virtual world. Come on.

You can't say no to that. That's what you want. That seems like something that they do for like a tablet and install it at Disney World. Yeah. And it's like cool. But like we don't need that in mass production. That should be your new column. Well, no, like there's something.

Things we don't need in mass production. It's like, what was the, um, 60 frames per second where like for ages it was just something that existed in theme park rides and then they're like we'll do the hobbit this way and then they sort of stopped was that 240 48 48 or 48 yeah yeah but just like more than 24 right and so they had done like if you did the the terminator two virtual reality ride in universal studios it was in 60 frames per second and looked super weird and that was part of what you were getting right uh but then you just have like a huge Gandalf face and it looks like different. Yeah. And it's not really, it's not really effective. Too much change, you might say. Can I do my fourth podcast about the headphone jack by it's transitioning this conversation?

No. No. Because I've done a lot of them recently. No. Um, you can get, uh, the straight talk LG sunset 4G LTE LTE Android prepaid smartphone at Walmart for 50 bucks. That sounds good. Does it have Walmart ads on it?

They also sell a $20 Android. phone, but it's 3G. Wait, that's a column. You should do that. It runs Kit Kat. You should get that phone. You should review that phone. Okay.

I mean, so... I mean, great. I definitely bought a $35 track phone that ran Android, and I was going to review it, and I just couldn't, I couldn't bring myself. I couldn't do it. Listeners of the Vergecast, tweet at me or Paul or Dieter or Russell. He loves tweets. Yeah.

Tweet at one of us, all of us. What's the cheapest phone you've ever used? I'm dying to know. And what's the cheapest? For a while? Does it have to be a smartphone? The cheapest smartphone you've ever used? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Because everybody had like a $19. Nochi at one point. Yeah. It's just a thing. For selling trucks. I'm not saying why. We all have burters.

I'm just saying it was a thing. Paul, tell me, look, you run a GatchBlog. Mm-hmm. I feel like there's a right answer to this question, by the way. I'm curious to know if you're going to get it right. The question is talk about a game. gadget and there's only one right answer this week. Oh, that wasn't it. That wasn't my question, but we can do that next.

Are you, is the question whether or not I run a gadget blog? Because the answer is yes is the correct answer. No, tell me, tell me about phones right now. I feel like phones are boring. They're over. Well, the snap, we've got, we've got six gigabytes of RAM is a thing now. Yeah. Which apparently the one plus three did not like make full use of. so they're going to push out like a software update to make better use of to make people who are mad that they weren't getting their money's worth with the ramp.

So I think that right now, and we're basically capped at the Snapdragon 820 and then there's been some little bits of maybe the Snapdragon 821 and who knows what that will do. But I have no idea about what is the next generation. What's the next true leap other than like all this dual camera, no headphone jack kind of stuff? That's, those are kind of... It's all the Android stuff that's going to work with the daydream, dream light. Daydream, Dreamlight. Oh, yeah, I guess so, but I would assume, like, a Snapdragon 820, Dieter's right. Dieter's better gadgets than me.

Let's be clear. Let's be clear. But, so, yeah, I guess you could see a wave of phones supporting VR, and then just hold off for that. Yeah, I just like, it's funny how much... But, like, hardware specs-wise, like, like, hardware specs-wise, like, I feel like a Snapdragon 820 phone right now I'm guessing

would be able to qualify for it and yes the phones are mostly the same I just feel like we went through this huge period where system level and feature level things on phones were like everyone got so stoked about them all the time you're like the droid four is coming I love this keyboard layout

or like this phone will have a tegrit chip in it that will blow you away I mean it could be antenna right like 5G is coming we'll just get better at There's just a Tom Wheeler is out there running his mouth. Not all Tom Wheeler. Oh, wheelsie.

Just that went away about a 5G spectrum. No, he's going to open an option. 5G spectrum. One thing I'm interested in, and I haven't heard anything about this specifically, but there are some new things in 4G for like a, you know how Bluetooth has a low energy? There's kind of like a 4G, like an LTE low energy. that's kind of... Oh, yeah, it's for Internet of Things stuff.

I figure what it's called. It's for Internet of Things, but it would be nice if your phone could go into that mode as part of your low power mode. It's like... Batteries are so terrible. We've moved to a place

where like horrible battery life is just the standard. Right. I mean, we're running... I'm sorry I should get rid of the headphone check. Most of us have phones in our pocket that have more pixels on the screen than our televisions do.

Yeah. It's ridiculous. I feel like there was a time, particularly the beginning of the verge, when I would walk in a room and, like, say that, and people like, oh, that's the future. And now I say that and be like, yeah, duh, not enough pixels, actually. This is fucking stupid. More pixels, please. Like, this is a bad headset experience. Yeah, I just, that's the thing, like that we've just leveled off. It's really, all right, this is a segue. It's a down segue. Okay. Tell me about

the gadget of the week. Okay. Don't get it wrong. This segment, now there's a lot of pressure. Don't get it wrong. This segment, as you know, is called gadget secret. And this week, my pick is the Furby Connect. Oh, wrong. Wow. I'm into it.

Dieter, what's your situation? I think we should definitely talk about the Furby Connect because it's definitely my number two. but the number one gadget of the past week by a mile, by a country mile, by a thousand miles is the ANCY-Cy Cosmo. The ANCy Cosmo robot. Oh, yeah, things amazing. Okay, okay.

Here's what we're going to do. I'm changing the name from Gadget Secret. Okay. I thought it was Gadget Bonanza. Gadget Faceoff. Here's what going to happen. Paul, you get 45 seconds to make your case. Deeter, you get 45 seconds to make your case.

Uh-huh. After the Verchcast goes up tomorrow, a Twitter poll will be held. Okay. A plaza meter. Yeah, an plaza meter. Okay. Gadget face off. Okay, Paul.

I don't have a timer, so we're just going to just going to loose it out, 45 seconds. I still like kind of like talking hushed tones because it's really actually, it's called gadget secret. Don't tell anybody about what you're about to listen to. Wait, how much time do I have? I don't know. 45 seconds. Okay. Okay.

Russell's running a time. Be careful. Teens are there to hack your time. Furbies are real. We all know about Furbies. We all grew up with Furbies. We always wondered what Furbies are all about. And now Hasbrose like Furbies should be part of the internet of things.

They should connect over Bluetooth to an app. And so your child will have to like watch entertainment side by side with the Furby. Like the Furby is like a little coach to teach your child how to be a passive receptor. to mass media. 15 seconds. He doesn't even need it. This is mic dropped. The Cosmo's actually really cool,

but it's like less real. You know Furbys are coming for you. You know Furbys are going to be in Toys or Us looking at you with their little LCD eyes. Okay, that's it. That's it. Time. I really came back that second way.

It's like, that knife's in there. What if I twist it? All right. But wait, wait. What is it like? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, convincing first round from Paul Miller. Dieter, are you prepared?

Timekeeper? Yeah, I'm ready. Okay, go. The Cosmo looks like an adorable little dog truck crossed with the wallie and it's got a little face on it and it has a camera so it can recognize you and it has an emotion engine so it can like smile and like express emotion and when it like wakes up from sleep it gives itself a little shake like it's a little tiny dog and then it can move around on the table and then it can pick up stuff because it's got this little tiny bitty, yeah, a little dumb, I'm trying. truck thing and then kids can use it and they can learn stuff about programming because that's a thing that apparently everything has to do but whatever it doesn't matter

because it can pick up these little blocks and move around because it's a cute cute tiny little robot and it's only $160 to start and and you should get one. Tough. Time. Really tough that one. Yeah. Because on the

one hand you have the vision of a massive corporation teaching our youth to be passive consumers. Wait which one of those is that. Yeah. All right. You've heard it. The great secret,

gadget, secret. Gadget secret. Debate secret. I do this segment every week. Tomorrow. Find us. When you're listening to this

in your car and a plane, just remember. Definitely. If you're driving in your car, pull over, open up Twitter, and look for the poll. Yeah.

Or just, You know, tweet and drive. Don't do that. A town in Colorado called Golden. Founded during the gold rush. It was home to miners. He spent 12 hours a day in the frozen ground digging for gold. That land was rich in another resource.

Coors light. No, wait, Rocky Mountain Water. I see. So the land there was rich in other resource. Rocky Mountain Water that runs cold and clear. One man knew the value of that water. Mr. Coors, who I found out last week, real guy. Adolf Coors, real dude.

1873, Dolph, as I like to call him, settled in Golden to brew the finest beer that town had ever tasted. Again, they were miners who were outside 12 hours a day. All beer was good, but this was the best. Miners are grateful as miners are wont to be. Because when they sat down for a well-deserved banquet, Mr. Coors, Dolph, again, to his friends, brought a beer worthy of the occasion. That beer came to be known as the banquet beer. Cours, the banquet beer.

Did you drink some? I like it. Coors Brewing Company, Golden Carado, with great beer, with great responsibility. I want to talk about Mr. Robo a little bit. And I want to talk about cybersecurity. I don't want to talk about hacks. Hacking.

As you may know, USA Network has a show called Mr. Robot. Pretty cool show. Pretty excited about it. We're doing a bunch of stuff around and with Mr. Robot, the show, not the... I don't want to like reveal spoilers. Are we like a friend of Mr. Robot? Yeah, he's a buddy.

He's more of a dystopian robot than a cuddly emotion engine. It's like, yeah, we're like child robots. Yeah. There's Mr. and Mrs. Robot and we're child robots. So we're saying we're a biological offspring of Mr. Robot. No, like not biological because they're robots.

Right. We're a distributed autonomous robot organization. No, so Mr. Season two is coming. If you haven't seen season one, find it. All the file names are like Torrent movie file names, so you'll feel cool no matter how you acquire it.

Yeah. But, you know, do it the cool way. Feel the beautiful. Anyway, season one was great. It was largely, like, the cool thing about Mr. Robot is they actually, like, try to make it real in tech, which is neat.

So we were interested in last season. This season, USA actually asked us to participate in a bunch of Mr. Robot. about stuff, which is cool. So, Russell hosted a panel with one of the writers, Corridana. That was yesterday, the day before. That was Monday.

Yeah, yeah. On Monday, there's a pop-up shop. Was that where your panel was? Yeah, yeah, a 10th Ave and 19th Street. Right next to Google, which is sort of, like, good placement for them. Yeah, G-Corp. That's great.

So there's, if you're in New York, running for next week or so, I think so. That's a month. I think it might be the month. Yeah, it's the full, I don't know when the month started. But it's pretty, I think it was pretty recent.

Anyway, if you're in New York City sometime around this podcast, go to, it's called story is the store. Every month they change the story inside the store this month. It's Mr. Robot with a bunch of gadgets and cool shit curated by the Verge. And there's a circuit breaker like it'll, or actually then they have books and you pick up the book and it shows you the Verge review of the book. Yeah. A bunch of cool things. I actually picked out about three quarters of those books myself. There you go.

There you go. But let's talk about a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, so one of the cool things, so the panel, part of what was fun about it was we had this writer. I mean, he's the cybersecurity guy on the show. He has a background in that and sort of worked with a lot of things before he got into Hollywood. And, you know, was one of the writers on the show and also the cybersecurity guy. And we had him on stage with a bunch of sort of actual cybersecurity people.

We had Adrian, formerly at the verge, and Molly Souter, who wrote this book about Didos activism. and Matt Mitchell, who does the crypto party in Harlem, and is generally like a freelance security guy. And so he's sort of working, like, most directly with these things. And he is a super fan. Like, he was super into it and was also, like, pumping core for spoilers. Oh, man, that's great. He was like, yeah, like, the post-credit sequence at the end was really, like, cryptic

and we're not sure what it means. Like, are we going to find out what it means? Can you tell us what it means right now? CORE was, like, pretty close to cracking. I could tell that there were things that he knew that he was close to saying. But we couldn't keep the pressure on long enough. So he kept it inside. He was probably worried about the robots himself.

I mean, he's not a liberty to discuss these things. Well, it's impossible to, like, really talk about the season two without totally swearing season one. Are we going to do it? You're not going to spoil season one. As someone has never seen an episode of Mr. Robot. Yeah, so we can't. Could I just, I just would love to hear. I don't mind if you spoil, whatever.

I can't. But pitch me on the show not being condescending about technology. Because I avoid most nerd related things. So you would love this show because it is absolutely not. Yeah, you really would. It's like dense with real nerd stuff to the point where it's funny. I'm controlled. I'm like, there's Mr. Robot ads that I'm reading.

And I'm like, these ads aren't even like doing it justice to like how nerdy it is. Like just a major plot point of the first season is. is them using a Raspberry Pi to like hack something and the way they introduce it is he starts talking about it and other character is like yeah we all know what a Raspberry Pi is

and they just move the fuck on like it's that there's a what Deider what were you going to say I was going to say never in the show does anybody like pull up a picture and somebody says enhance that's own yeah that's great I mean like it's really

I don't know I like it cool and I also think it gets to sort of the there's like a weird vibe to a lot of these spaces where people, like, I guess, hacker spaces. Like, there's, when people are versed in these tools in this culture, there's, like, kind of a vibe that comes with it. And it's sort of a very good exploration of that vibe.

So one of the interesting things of course said on the panel was he described it as a sense of defiance that, like, part of what these tools are, whether it's like, you know, just something as simple as someone's like, no, I am still using Linux. Like I am to, or just sort of any of these things, there's a sense of, uh, like not accepting what you're supposed to do and sort of standing apart from these things and like, okay, how do we unpack that? And like, the people who feel that the strongest, like the strongest of anyone, like how do those people behave?

And, and so I don't know. It was like an interesting lens into like both the show and also like the actual people who are living this life, right? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's so hard to talk about this, so that's funny. You should watch. You should go away. But the central, here's what I'll say, with trying very hard not to spoil it. If you're in your car and you're listening to this and you don't want, you, no risk.

Just turn off your radio for 30 seconds. Turn off your radio and count to 30 and come back. The thing that happens in season one is so momentous that the big, question about season two is like how on earth will they continue right and like it's kind of that but what you realize is the grounding in real real technology is so deep that they actually have like many ways to go and maybe ignore that problem i don't think they're going to ignore that problem but i don't know i'm trying very hard on the toilet it's very hard yeah but it's like great it's like a story. It's like a story of a guy. He's a really good hacker. He's friends of the bunch of other hackers. It's not about technology. It's about people. That's what I was worried about. But like everything they do is like deeply grounded. I did a panel with Coridana who's one of the writers on the show at CES and it was me and his two security consultants. And it was a room full of IT security consultants. And like the audience was wrapped because they were like, here's how we do the process. Like I tell them about real, real high

Yeah, real high. There's got to be a Bitcoin ice in this season. Do we think anyone owns Bitcoin in this? You would need a character who was like into Bitcoin. I'm sure at some point.

They got a lot of new people. That takes two seconds to introduce somebody. No, no, but it's like Yeah, I'm into, yeah. Yeah, probably, I mean, we'll hear Bitcoin wallet, one assumes, right?

It's just really hard not to splish. I'm like thinking about it over and over again. Like, I want to talk about it because it's so cool and we're doing much stuff and like, there's a big thing

that we're doing. There's a big. I'm like, I can't say, what it is. Man, so many big things. So many big things. So many big things. So this segment of the Veritas is really just empty hype. Right. Yeah. I get it. I get it. I'm into it. You're in the pocket of big robot. Yeah. All right. I think that's the show. A short one, again, not a terribly newsy week. We haven't talked about the headphone jack. I've literally have done four podcasts with this fucking headphone jacks. I think they're not allowed to talk about headphone jacks. I think they're

going to switch to quarter inch. It'd be amazing. That's my prediction. What if like, just so rich your sound through quarter. I'm just going to put this out there and I know that it got put out there. We're going to talk about headphone jacks. Sorry. I'm going to put this out there. Keep this streak a lot. I just listened to Control Walt Delete and it was floated there. I am very angry about

taking away the headphone jack. But if Apple switches away from lightning to USBC at the same time for the iPhone, yes. I will accept it. Zero possibility of this happening. I would, of course. That's like a handshake deal right there. Who are you handshaking with? Like Apple.

Tim Cook. Tim, if you're listening. You got a deal, buddy. I bet he's got a great handshake. Oh, man. I feel like you don't become a CEO of a company without having a pretty good handshake. Yeah. It's like one of the important skills.

How cool that we have like a CEO retired and wrote like a 300 page book on how to shake hands. Wait, hold on. I'm Googling. Yeah, I would read that. I feel like Tim's more of a hugger. How does Shake Hand. Wow. This is the best WikiHOW in history.

How to Shake Hand. How to Shake Hand. Cohns six steps parentheses with pictures. Yeah, finally. Do you guys know how I learned to shake hands from a movie called My Life? With Nicole Kidman and what's his name? Batman. The one true Batman.

Is it the one where he dies? Can I just point this out of stuff? The one where he dies and he like leaves advice, he like videotapes himself a bunch to leave advice for his unborn child because he knows he's going to die. And in that thing, he explains how to shake a hand. How do you do it? Can I wait, can I just say something? Okay, Neil, do your thing. But then Adita is going to tell us how to shake hands.

How to shake hands six steps with picture. Picture is so successful for WikiHow that they hit it again. And the second Google result is how to have an effective handshake seven steps. We got to get in on this. We got to do. We got to do more handshake coverage. All right, Deeter, what are you saying? How do you shake hands?

You got to suss out the room, first of all. And if it looks like a really aggressive boisterous person, you got to establish dominance early. And sometimes that means you start the handshake from as much as like five feet away. Just like put your hand out like, I'm coming in. And then shake, firm grip, make sure that you attack, watch the elbow,

attack with the web of your thumb so that you're getting in there and you don't end up just having somebody grab your fingers. That's the most important thing is you got to get in there so that somebody can't trick you and grab just your fingers and then they control you. Oh, yeah. I hate it when that finger control happens.

I do the double hand. It's bad. Because this is a different movie being there where the guy just does double handshakes and people assume that he's important, even though he's sort of a Forrest Gump figure. Is this the handshake where you take the second hand and apply it to the forearm? No, no, it's not the forearm. It's just the back of the hand because he sees the president doing it. and then they're like, it's like a very like, like warm sort of reassuring thing. And then is it, is it two pumps?

I just want to hear two pumps. Two pumps. Step six here is shake up and down no more than two or three times and avoid excessive pumping. Yeah. But I just want to point out. Words to live by. That's just good life advice. Step five of this wiki how and I don't know how this podcast got here, but step five, keep your hand perpendicular to the ground.

do not roll the handshake sideways. Oh. Here's another question. That's known as on the flip side. If you're pulling them in, if you're pulling them in to punch them, if you're like doing some like modal combat shit, right? You just, you know, you have to twist it.

What if you have sweaty hands, right? I have sweaty hands. Is it better? If you have sweaty hands and don't shake hands. Is it better to shake hands? Is it better to shake hands? So you're saying just don't. shake hands. Because I'm saying, do you shake hands with sweaty hands? Do they see you wipe them on your

jeans? Or do you just leave the roof? Do you remember Tech Crunch's anti-handshake? This was like in the Arrington years. Arrington was like, I don't shake hands. I don't, I think handsshaking is a barbaric practice. And then it became like, you know, I think in like OG blogging, like the tactic was to have a couple idiosyncrasies that you could like inflict on your audience so that you were like unique. and that was one of his and it's like he was like yeah like germs, disease

this is a medieval custom I don't need to show you that I'm not armed and like it became and then people still shake hands he wasn't big enough to end hands yeah you know how I'll say it's shaking hands

Donald Trump really well there you go so just putting that out there yeah that's the group of people I feel like I've learned something in 1873 Golden Colorado I was home to miner searching for gold.

And when the minor sat down for a well-deserved banquet, Mr. Coors brought a beer worthy of the occasion. That beer came to be known is Coors, the banquet beer. Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado with a great beer. It was great responsibility. That's our show, everybody. It was a weird one.

It was emotional. If you're listening to this is in the only way that you can be listening to this, pre-recorded, there's a weird edit that we made in terms in there, where we deleted a huge reveal. and I encourage you to continue listening to the show and other shows. Did reading the website for what that reveal is. I feel like the federal agents for maybe a little much, but I want to say it's like the sort of thing that you should be like scrubbing through your podcast

to see if you can find the edit. No, it's not there. It's not worth that. Andrew is quite frankly too talented for you to figure that anyway. Yeah. But we should try anyway. Paul is the same person at the end of the podcast that he began. It's not a different Paul.

Are you sure? Don't try to figure out where Paul became Paul Prime. Why is Paul Irish now? Look, I think next week is going to be pretty quiet too, right? What's happening next week? It's Fourth of July, no news. Here's what we need from you. Just tweeted us.

My God, tweeted us. Tell us what we need to talk about. The poll. Take the poll. Vote for your favorite robot. Tell us. Official word is that the poll is going to be on the post on the verge.com that goes along with this podcast. So look for it there.

Done and done. Tell us what we'll talk about next week. I'm at Reckless, Dieter's at Backlon. Paul's at Future Paul. Russell's at Russell Brandem. Lauren Good. Usurper is at Lauren Good. Master of Nugget.

Master of Nuget. Yeah, we're just looking, we just need some, we need some Thursday stuff. Paul needs gadget secrets. Mm-hmm. It's time. You can also follow the verge on Twitter at Verge, Snapchat, we're Verge, Instagram at Verge. Pattern here, follow it, and then follow us. And then go to iTunes, your favorite app, and give us five stars.

I think those are instructions we can all follow. Also, there's a whole bunch of other stuff to listen to what's tech with Chris Plant, control, delete with me and Walt Mossberg, VirGSP with Emily and Liz, which is wonderful. And on the recode side, Lauren has too embarrassed to ask. Kara Swisher has Recode decode. Peter Cofka, what the best podcast around, in my opinion, Recode Media. Listen to all of those too.

Then come back and listen to this show again and then listen to those again and then tweet at us. And then follow us on Instagram. That's your life now. Get a Furby Connect. Set it up in front of the speakers and watch him. We've got to look into a Furby. Furby integration. Furby distribution.

That's the hot new platform. Yeah. Those are valuable. You don't know that Furby. You don't matter. iTunes.com slash The Verge. Build a beautiful. Drink it good.

Be responsible. Rock and roll. Words to live by. Paul. That was a real chill episode. Andrew, we should cut out that whole thing.