The Vergecast - Shoutout to grandmas

Episode Date: July 17, 2015

There's lots of news this week, so there are lots of guests as well. Nilay and Dieter are joined by Sean O'Kane, Jake Kastrenakes, and Kaitlyn Tiffany to talk about the Pluto flyby, San Diego Comic-Con, Windows 10, Reddit, and further refinement of the hype scale. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

live here on the Vergecast. Hello. I don't know. Why is everybody talking like that? I don't know. I know this is only my second week, but... A common theme of the show is me blowing the open. Hey, everybody.

Welcome to The Vergecast, a show from your friends at the Verge. I like to think that we're your friends. I'm Neil A Patel. To my right is Deidrebone. Hello. To my left is Sean O'Kane. Hi. Sean was here last week.

I was not here last week, but Sean was here. No. Rookie cast. Yeah. Rookie cast. but Sean is going to be here for a minute and then another Vergecast rookie Jake Castranakis is going to

magically swap in for Sean Yeah, but then he's worked for us for like 20 years Yeah Jake is Jake is not a rookie Jake was the Verge's First Test tube baby Designed specifically to hit news Yeah, we created Jake in a lab Oh, he's in the room right here

It's really creepy We literally, Jake turn around So we can literally talk behind your back And then and then and then and then And then, and then in the hype seat. Big deal. Oh, yeah. Big deal.

Big day, big experience for us all. Caitlin Tiffany. Hi. Hi. Yeah. We're clap. I'll clap. So you.

So there's a meager response at that. Wow. Well, there's only three people in the room. Yeah. And there's microphones. So if we clap on the microphone, then John will get mad at us. So if you are a verge, um, experiencer. Is that a phrase?

Virg fluencer. If you've been activated by the verge brand, you know that we often use social media. That's a thing that we do. And the person that you might think in your mind uses social media for the verge is usually Sam Schaeffer. But what is true is that Sam has a compatriot, a partner, a younger, better, cooler, Sam. Oh, wow. And that is Caitlin, who just started with us.

It's true. You're like three months in now. Yep. And Caitlin, and I say this, I say this in all sincerity. Caitlin maintains one of the best Twitter feeds at The Verge. Yeah. Yeah. It is a dark journey into Caitlin's mind.

And that mind is constantly experiencing true detective and being pissed about it. Well, also pretty little liars, right? Yeah. It's like, it's like one part true detective, one part pretty little liars, eight parts Nile Horan from one direction. And like nothing else goes on. in my brain ever. Well, welcome, Caitlin.

I promise you that we will say her Twitter handle at the end of the show. Awesome. We'll save it. That's my hook for you, the listener, is I told you it was great, but I won't tell you where to find it until later. I have the least number of followers of anyone who works at this media organization. That's going to change. If there's one thing we'll accomplish this podcast today, it's getting you at least

one additional. I already have a new one. There you go. Tobias Breitweiser. Oh, that dude's super excited. Wow. It's all happening for you, Tobias. Hype churn.

No, don't. It's so rude. You're supposed to say super hype. Tobias, you're great. All right. So let's get into it. So we actually had a big week of news. There's a reason.

We had so much news. There's a reason that we need to have both Sean and then Jake on the show. But I think the biggest news in perhaps the history of our species. Definitely in the solar system. Is that we saw us in Pluto this week. Sean, you and. Lauren have been doing killer Pluto coverage for us this whole week. Thank you.

You took a trip to like watch it with NASA. Yeah. Tell us what happened. Yeah, it was pretty wild. The mission control for New Horizons is a spacecraft that made it to Pluto this week. And that spacecraft was run out of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. So NASA held a big event. They brought a whole bunch of NASA people there.

The whole New Horizons team was there. All of the media was there. Yeah. from big TV outlets to newspapers to websites and everything. And so I got there on Monday, and they basically, from Sunday until yesterday, have been holding media briefings, basically giving access to all the team scientists to talk about the geology of the planet, the atmosphere, the moons, everything that is going around Pluto, and then all sort of through the lens of us seeing this planet for the first time, basically.

And the funny thing is, I think the first thing that people think about with Pluto is how it was sort of a planet and now it's not really a planet. And it's all just sort of, it's like a sort of smoke and mirrors. It doesn't really matter. But everybody on the New Horizons team when they were asked, because they were inevitably asked about it over and over and over, we're just like, we call it a planet. It's a planet. Really? They did this whole thing where they called it the Pluto salute, where they have everybody hold up nine fingers for the nine. planets. That's amazing. So you see a lot of the press images from this week where they're like

doing that. So all that stuff is like kind of totally ancillary. The big news was, you know, in the last couple weeks, we've seen this thing come into view as the spacecraft got closer and closer. And that just accelerated exponentially as it got closer because we finally got our first real look of, you know, not just pixels, but our first real look at this thing in great detail. and not just the whole disk of it. By the time we found out that the spacecraft survived, we finally got high-res, I think it's 100 kilometers per pixel, or no, four kilometers per pixel.

High-res detail of the surface, we can actually see the mountains and everything. And no craters. Yeah, and in a week we went from it being still a pretty fuzzy little dot where you could resolve some detail to something where, I mean, somebody already made like a 3D map of it. Wow. Wow.

It's really pretty wild how quickly it changed over the last week. And there's a big blank spot that if you look at it just so it actually looks like Pluto the dog. Yeah. Well, yeah. Or a heart. Or a heart. Yeah. I always think it's really funny.

We did this a lot with Fila, the lander that landed on the comet last year, where we sort of as ascribe, of ascribe these personalities to these spacecraft or things in space because it's just easier to relate to them when we think of them as like people almost or we look for things and it's like looking at clouds in the sky and like trying to name a shape so as soon as Pluto really started to come into view we saw this heart shape which is basically a giant plane that they think is maybe made of ice maybe some snow and it looks just like a heart and so everybody kind of like went wild over that because it's like you see a shape you recognize and everybody's like oh bright and shiny

and uh but then people started seeing other things in it because like if you turn it one way it did kind of look like Pluto it if you turn it another way it looks like Pluto the dog yeah Pluto the dog yeah sorry and um so yeah so it's it's really kind of funny watching everybody like hone in on these like weird things while there's like all this other stuff going on and we also got the moon charon yeah so uh basically pronounce it however you want no one's really sure uh it was named after uh the so the manhound who found, uh,

originally found Sharon, uh, named it after his wife, Charlene. So he says that you pronounce it like char as you're going to say Charlene and then on. So Charon. Okay.

And that like slips, but I mean, I heard, that's not cool. I mean, it's cool for his, it's cool for his wife. But his wife is like,

don't call me Sharon. I think he's probably like what she's thinking. Yeah. Well, I mean, he couldn't just, I guess he couldn't just call it Charlene. I don't know.

Maybe he could have. Wait, let me ask you, what's cooler? Uh, moon, a distant moon called Charon, or a distant moon called Charlene. I'm actually super disappointed to hear the story, because I assumed it was named after the Greek ferryman, like Karen. No, that's what, that's what Neil de Gras Tyson was saying. He said that to Stephen Colbert.

Which is really cool because he's like, because like he, it's this guy's job to like take you into hell. And this is like one of the last things in our solar system. And so you like, you cross into the outer world. Do you Charlene? He's like, what do I think of when I think of my wife. I think of an ancient guy who took you to hell on a boat. I mean, marriage, right? Wow. That's terrible. So hang on. So Pluto and, I don't, I'm not going to say the word again. Charlene, just call it Charlene. They don't, they don't, they don't orbit. We should just call it Charlene. The moon doesn't actually orbit, they, like, orbit each other a little bit? Yeah, they do. So, so Sharon is close enough to Pluto and big enough relative to Pluto that, uh, that the center of gravity between the two

of them actually is slightly off of the surface of Pluto. So they orbit this space that kind of just exists in between the two of them. And they're tidily locked. So it means that one side of Charon and one side of Pluto are always... Marriage, man. Are always facing each other. And that's why they think there's that dark spot that we saw in greater detail throughout the week on top of Charlene. That as we got closer to it, looked redder and redder. And it's this really big spot. It doesn't quite look like an impact crater

because they're really small impact craters on that moon. And they think because the two bodies are tidily locked and always facing the same side to each other, that spot might actually be material from Pluto that's leaking over onto the moon. That's some crazy sci-fi stuff.

Yeah. And what's cool about it is like that's a thing that they kind of thought And then the data and the images that they saw this week started to back it up or they could, you know, make theories about it. And so this like team of really incredibly smart scientists who have been doing this for decades. And many of the New Horizons team have been trying to get to Pluto for decades, all sort of working together. They all, the core group of them are known as the Pluto underground. And they have been, I mean, they've literally been like putting together the plans that kept getting denied or failed since like the late. 80s, early 90s, and it's the same, like, kind of six or seven people. The Pluto underground. Yeah, yeah, right? It's like the greatest grunt record ever, yeah. Yeah, and so they, uh, they're, all these people are still like learning about this

in front of you, which was the coolest thing about being there this week. Um, but what made that even better was the whole drama of Tuesday was fly by day. And what was basically happening was the spacecraft finally got there. Yeah. It was going too fast to put it into orbit around Pluto. It doesn't have enough fuel to slow it down and kick it into orbit around Pluto. So you're just going to do a fly by past it, keep going, and do as much science as you can while you're flying by it. It's like less than an hour, right?

Yeah, it was gone pretty quick. It was going. Where is it now? So now it's, you know, a couple probably at least a million, probably more miles past Pluto. But just out there. Yeah, it's headed deeper into the Kuiper belt, which is the, Pluto is at sort of the front edge of the Kuiper belt, which is this thing in the outer, near the sort of outer solar system, kind of in the middle of it, where there's just all these

objects, all the stuff that's left over from our planets forming millions and millions of years ago are these like smaller moons and stuff that are just like hanging out out there in the darkness. Yeah. And so their New Horizons is like heading out there. And if they, they're spending the next 16 months getting the rest of the data off the spacecraft and looking all the images and stuff. So the spacecraft is getting farther and farther away, but still sending data?

Right. So does that rate slow down? I think so, but it's already pretty slow. Right. It's like really slow. It's like a really crazy- Everyone keeps saying slower than a 56K modem. Yeah, and that's like even, that's just like what people think to relate it to.

And they're like, we wish. Like it's so great. But yeah, it basically, once that 16 month period is up and we have all the data off the spacecraft about Pluto and its moons, we, the New Horizons team is kind of done unless they can get a mission extension which requires more funding a whole bunch of stuff but they want to take it to

there are a lot of other objects in that Hyperbilt that we do know about that are not as big as Pluto but like maybe as big as some of its moons well they're cool and they got cooler this week because we found out that when you look at the surface of Pluto in that high-res image you see all these crazy 11,000 foot tall

mountains and that shouldn't be happening and you should see like way more craters Yeah. Well, yeah. So there's two things. We should see way more craters and we shouldn't see as much as many surface features. And that's because there's no, so the Earth has all this tectonic movement because it's got this really hot radiated core in the middle. And that creates all these forces that move stuff around. And if you don't have that, then the only other way we thought that that could happen on a surface is if you were near like a giant body. So some of the moons in the solar system like Europa around Jupiter. has surface features because it has this giant body next to it with gravity that's like a lot of gravity that's like pulling on it all the time as it orbits. Jupiter or Pluto doesn't have any of that. So they didn't think that it was going to have like really fascinating surface features. So now they got to figure out why it has all that stuff. And then it also has a young surface because there's no impact creators. So they got to figure out why that's the case too. And they think that's also part, you know, tied together with why there's so many surface features because it's, uh, Pluto's more dynamic than we think. And so because of, because of, that, that means the Kuiper belt objects might actually be way more interesting than we thought. If this could happen at Pluto, this could happen at some of these even smaller places, not too far past.

Yeah, the quotes have been seeing are all like, throw out everything that we know, like start it all over. Which is kind of how these things are always treating. And then I will say, there's also a bunch of Neil deGrasse Tyson just being salty. Yeah, yeah, he's got really weird. Why is he so salty? Did you see his interview with Colbert where he was just like, screw Pluto. It's like, I'm wearing this tie. Yeah.

My tie has eight planets on it. Well, the best thing about that was, it's like, just how, like, like, Nealgrass Tyson is like, A, like everyone loves him. Yeah. B, he's obviously a killer scientist, right? Director of the Hayden Planetarium. Sure. C is like the world's biggest cheerleader for science and innovation, exploration.

And it's like, except for Pluto. Yeah. Except that he just, motherfucker. He even said in that, in that video that he'd rather, he'd rather demote all the rocky planets in the solar system to dwarf planet status than call Pluto a planet. But it's all semantics. It quite literally doesn't matter at all. Well, except for his tie. There's tie makers the world over.

Who are putting eight planets on a tie. Yeah. Well, for those guys, sorry, tie makers. They're all wrong. All right, we got to do it. Are ready, Caitlin? This is your first moment. You've seen the show before.

Yes. You're aware of Sam's general affect. Sure. I mean, Caitlin literally sits across from Sam every day, all day. I also watch all of his periscopes. Last night, I watched him eat pizza for like 10 minutes. Actually, do you know my best Sam Periscope story? I don't know if you guys saw this flood by on Twitter.

We have a, there's a developer at Voxia named Eden. Eden's great. She was in Canada. And last night she was periscoping her mom. She's going to tell me. Oh, yeah. But she was periscoping her mom. Her mom was like, well, her mom was cooking.

She's making, uh, she's like making muffins or something. Banana bread. No, it wasn't banana bread. It was something. But, uh, it doesn't matter. Her mom was cooking and her mom admitted on the Periscope, like, I've been drinking. And then... Step one.

Someone else had boxed me and the student, Mark, was like, you should introduce your mom to Sam. And Eden was like, on the Periscope was like, mom, one of my friends thinks

you should meet my other friend, Sam. Oh, right. And then Eden's mom was like, who's Sam? I don't need any more little pimps in my life. And then like Eden's Twitter like exploded. She's like,

my mom just called Sam a little pimp and I don't know. It was like, it was just like a perfect little Twitter, internet moment. Like, all of these worlds collided. Anyway, so Caitlin.

Yeah. Hype check Pluto. Hype check Pluto. Okay, we're using the pitchfork scale of hype. I've decided. Oh, God, this is going to be rough. Everyone has their own hype scale. I get it.

Yeah, so Pluto gets, Pluto's going to get an 8.7. Whoa, wow. That's good for pitchfork. Very. Best new track. Yeah. Best new, not a planet that we have seen close up. Yeah.

I like it. I can live with that. I was, you say pitchfork. I was expecting like 2.3. Oh, no. Like, like it's good, but it's not as good. I will say this. Verge, Verge readers.

often get mad at us about our 10.0 scale. Yeah. Pitchfork, their writers, and they pitch album reviews to pitchfork. Before it's written or approved or accepted or published or paid for, they pitch the score. Wow. This is true. So when, so you think we're crazy, at least we like use the thing. Pitchfork reviewers show up and they're like, we got this new record. It's a 6.5. I want to write a thousand words about it. And the editor is like, yeah, that sounds good. Or they argue it. It's efficient. It's something. I have a lot of feelings about bitchwork. All right, Sean, is there anything else we need to talk about with Pluto? Tell me what the scene was like at the place.

You were there. You were real. The coolest thing about it was the drama. I mean, all that other stuff was great, but like no one really knew. So like it was going to do that flyby and the delay between the spacecraft because it's so far out. It's three billion miles away. So the delay, even light speed, it takes four and a half hours to get a signal there and before and have to get back. So the flyby was supposed to happen that morning right around 8 o'clock in the morning.

And they had a big countdown and everybody celebrated. because you're just kind of like, hey, that thing that's out there should have just passed the point it was supposed to pass at this time. And then everybody spent the rest of the day kind of like thinking in the back of their head, we don't know until basically nine o'clock tonight whether or not it made it. And they programmed the spacecraft to go past Pluto, basically shut down its communications because the way the antenna was on the other side from the instruments. So it couldn't talk to the earth and study Pluto at the same time. So it was programmed to do as much science as could get past Pluto, do some more science, and then turn back to the Earth and say like, hey, I'm good. Yeah.

And like, we got it. And that was like a 13 hour wait because of the delay and because the amount of time it was passing Pluto. So it was like it was really, really exciting because everybody was just so happy from the morning. And all the scientists were really happy to talk to everybody about the image because they got to make all these new theories about like what might. might be on Pluto and all this stuff.

But like as the day went by, it started to get a little bit more tense and a little bit more tense and a little bit more tense. And you've got, you've got guests from the public, you know, like parents and kids, you've got media, you've got staffers at Johns Hopkins who have never seen an event like this happened on their campus before. And it's like sort of like pushing the limits of their center where they held everything. And it's just getting more and more tense. And then when everybody got seated in that auditorium for the final sort of. of like event where we were waiting to hear, waiting to watch, you know, on the screen, the mission operations room, which was like just sort of on the other side of campus. And waiting for them to get the signal, that was when everybody was kind of like,

and like, yeah, and it got really, it got really tense. And even you could see like the missions operations team that were around. We're like starting to think about it more. And you're watching this like live feed of the missions operations operation room. And they hear that it gets locked with spacecraft. which is good. It meant it was alive. But then you got to wait for them to call out.

It's like the reverse of a rocket launch where they call out like, is this system ready go, you know, like, et cetera, et cetera. They're basically like calling out all the instruments. Do we get all the data from this? Do we get all the data from that? They're going through each one. And as each one is announced that like, yeah, we got it. Everybody in the audience is like, yeah.

And then they're like immediately quieting that because they want to hear the next one. And they go through this thing. And so it took like two minutes to really know for sure, even though most of the scientists had like no doubt in their mind that this thing was still alive basically the only thing that really could have killed it other than like the thing just dying coincidentally at the same time was if it was making a close enough path pass it could have hit some debris like there's a lot of dust around Pluto so something could have taken that's what happens in the Michael Bay movie yeah well yeah and it was like a one and 10,000 chance but like it could

happen and at one point during the day someone the lead of the mission was actually like yeah, it's like a one or a two in 10,000 chance. And I was like, did the, did the chances go up? Can we just get closer to a disaster? So that whole, like, it was really fun and exciting to like watch these really smart people learn all this stuff, but like through that lens of everybody just like kind of worrying with a smile on their face was just like really, really crazy to see. And knowing that this is really the last thing like this that we have in any of our generations.

And this is what I'm saying. Like, Neil Grais, get it together. Yeah. Like, have a little joy. Maybe kick a little bit of that,

you know, TV coin towards NASA. I think it's a planet. I mean, basically, even if you look in, like, the media coverage,

everybody's just kind of like, I'm not going to go through, like, the sort of word acrobratics that I need to do to, like, call it something else. Like,

it's just the planet, the planet surface, you know, like all that. And I think everybody's just totally fine with it. Because, like,

I mean, most people look at it and are, like, yeah, I'd want to see a rover on that thing. Really? Yeah. Like, I mean, it just looks so awesome. Like, why wouldn't we want to explore that thing anymore?

It's kind of hard on it. All right. Sean, thank you so much. I'm going to read an ad. We're going to switch you out to Jake. And we're going to jump into some... We're going to go from Pluto to Comic-Con. Yeah.

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Sign up once again for a free 30-day trial. Today, Jake Castranakis, at zero.com slash podcast. I'm excited. We're out of the money zone. Explain to me how this is your first first first cast. How did the- Jake, how long have you worked here? It's a long time.

This is, I feel terrible. I feel, no, here's the thing. It's all going to come together. I want, because Jake was just at Comic-Con. but before we talk about Jake at Connicon, tell your origin story. Well, I mean, three years ago, you hired me as an... He's not a superhero. Yes, he is.

And, I mean, it was literally... Three years ago, Jake was an intern. It was like the quickest meeting ever, and you were just kind of sitting there and you're like, okay. And it was very rigorous. Yeah, and, you know, around six months later, I started doing newswriting, and I have not stopped. Yeah, nonstop ever since. Yeah, I think there were a few days off here and there. But now you're doing more cultural stuff.

We're sending you places going on. No, no, no, it's been fun. Yes, this ended up being my first Comic-com. If you, here's the thing, if you read The Verge, you have undoubtedly read Jake's work because he's produced most of the Verge himself for, like, the past three years. So anyway, so you're at Comic-Con. Yeah. I mean, it's...

Tell me in broad strokes about Comic-Con. It is literally the most insane thing. You can't walk. There is just so many people there and so many things going on. And, I mean, name something nerdy, it is there. Right. So basically, I think there are about three different things going on. There's the show floor, which I think is where, like, 99% of people spend 99% of their time.

And that is just... It's essentially a huge store, but it's a huge store filled with all of the coolest, nerdiest, geekiest stuff you can think of. And that's everything from, like, crazy and crazy expensive toys to, like, the Ant Man suit, which is maybe just on display to VR experiences that you can pick up to try out. And there's also all these independent artists and comics and just tons of stuff that you would never find anywhere else unless you were, like, really intensely browsing the internet for the stuff.

So I saw a lot of really awesome art that I would not have otherwise seen. The other big thing going on is the panels. Yeah. And that's, I think, what you hear the most about. Which is totally different because the other huge trade show we go to is CES. Yep. Which all we cover is the show floor. Yep.

And we never talk about the panels. Yeah. And at Comic Con, it's like the show floor is there. Everyone's doing stuff on the show floor. We barely report on it. Yeah. And the whole world cares what happens to these panels. Well, the panels are where all the star power is.

I mean, like, unnecessarily so. Really? Like, there was a trailer, or there was a panel for the new X-Men, and they brought out all of its stars. And, like, they didn't even have time to speak. There was just, like, way too many people on the stage. It was ridiculous. Each of them, like, eventually the moderator was like,

okay, you answer a question quickly, you go quickly, you go quickly. And it was just like, this is really not. But, you know, the crowd eats it up just because they're standing in a room with it. Yeah, so the crowd eats it up because they have. have like Stockholm syndrome and they're like they've been conditioned by the experience to love whatever is put in front of them no matter what. Yeah, they're quite likely delirious at that point. So let's, before we get into the, the emotion of Comic-Con really quickly, go through the big news from the show. The big news from the show. So the two huge things, there was Star Wars.

And, you know, they had a behind-the-scenes video. And they surprised everyone. And they took like about 6,500 people to a surprise concert. Yeah. That was just like around the corner. They like had people in Stormtrooper outfits like lead them out there. Hype check Star Wars. She's not even paying attention. I've never seen Star Wars.

Sorry. This is true. I found this out this morning. Would you see it? How have you never seen Star Wars? I, well, okay. Is this like, is this religious for you? Is it religious?

Yeah, like you're never going to see it. Like my wife refused to read Harry Potter for years and years and years and years. It's true. I guess it's like I got through that pivotal age where you're supposed to be like getting excited about stuff. And now it's too late and I feel like I've missed out. And if I did it, I'm just a follower. I definitely feel a thousand years old now. There's nothing left for me except death.

That's how you made me. I got to the age where I could feel emotions that were joy. This is right though. I don't think you will like it as much if you don't have that relationship with it from childhood. Interesting. Well, that means that there's going to be. be generations, at least two generations of children who hate Star Wars. Because the Star Wars that came out when they were kids were the garbage Star Wars.

Or they just love Jar Jar and we don't realize it yet. Who are those people? And how do we send them to another country? I mean, I've got like a five-year-old nephew who definitely loves Star Wars and like he cut his teeth on those newer movies. What? The newer movies are like, A, like they're not even exciting. Like they're about like congressional politics.

like at their core. Like the, what's the second one? The second one's the best one. It's Padmae battles. Revenge of the Sith. No, that's a third one. The second one is tremendously boring. Yeah, but it's got the most dopey ones.

You even remember the name. God damn it. All right, keep going. What else happening? So Star Wars. But this is like a big reboot for Star Wars, right? Yeah, and I mean, you know, obviously everyone's saying, I think one of the big things that they pushed is they know the crowd.

They know they want this throwback to old Star Wars. and they're like, look, it's practical effects and crazy outfits. It's everything that you've always loved. Yeah. You know, they brought out Harrison Ford, who, you know, had been in a plane crash recently. The whole gang was there. Everyone was excited. Of course, they're going to be excited.

But, you know, that's the narrative. This is going to be more like the original trilogy than the new trilogy. You know, I think I believe them for now. Yeah. I mean, but so, but they didn't show anything new, right? It was just like. Not really. They had a behind the scenes reel that was like mostly what was in the first trailer.

Yeah. But then they took everybody. Because from my perspective, everyone's like Star Wars blew away comic. Yeah. But they didn't actually. So they blew it away because, you know, most of these things, at the end of the day, they're showing you a trailer. Yeah. And that's okay.

But I can watch a trailer in New York. Yeah. But then they were like, hey, you and only you who took the time to sit in line and come out to this room and stay in this room. and stay in this room for like 10 hours or something are going to get to go to this crazy special performance. We're going to play music that you love that sends you back to your childhood. We're going to give you this free toy lightsaber

and then they shot off fireworks and stuff. It's just like making everyone's emotions like go wild and that's why it won because it made people, you know, think it's okay to love Star Wars again. Okay, so that's Star Wars. What else happened? There's just so much. I want to go. Yeah, we're going to circle back.

So DC went out, you know, Batman versus Superman. Yeah. New trailer. Batman is mad as Caitlin. Yeah. Super bad. Yeah. I've checked Batman versus Superman.

Okay. 10 because Ben Affleck is, I have this thing where I feel like I'm secretly the mother of many white male actors who are like struggling. So like that's like Ben Affleck and Jake Jllenhall and Matt Damon. And I'm like really invested in their success. What you feel is maternal, like you feel maternal? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You feel maternal for Ben Affleck. Like sometimes I'm disappointed in him, but I always love him. And I believe in his potential. Oh, God. So amazing. I don't know. Why is he so mad? Isn't he wildly successful most of the time?

I mean, everybody's so mean to him. Like, I don't know. All right. But only because you feel maternal for Ben Affleck is Batman v. Superman and 10. Well, also, I mean, I'm kind of over this Marvel thing where it's like, we're leaning into the goofiness of comics. I'm like, yeah, but you're making very bad movies. Yeah.

So, I mean, you know, maybe DC is like my chance to get into comic book movies without them being bad. I don't know if that's superman is where that starts for you. And I definitely don't know if Suicide Squad is where that starts for you. Yeah, but Margot Robbie is going to get famous. So this is exciting. She looked amazing in the trailer. Yeah. Yeah.

She looks, I mean, also crazy. Yes, which is perfect, though. I have to say one of the best moments that we've had in, like, a Verge Slack in a long time is when Emily noticed that in the Suicide Squad trailer, one of the characters says, so we're like a suicide squad? Oh, yeah. And she's like, maybe in every movie they should find a way to work in the title of the movie. Well, they do that on Game of Thrones.

Like half the time they'll be like in the first season mostly, the actors would like say the name of the episode, just everyone would be like, what? No, but that's like, don't you love it? though, when you hear the title of the show or the movie, or you're reading a book and you're like, there it is. I found it. Only when they look directly at the camera.

You're listening to the song. This song is called Celebration. Furchcast. I don't know. I went to celebration. Fine. Fine. All right.

Wait. So Batman v. Superman. What else? Yeah. How are they going to do? Those movies are coming out like back to back. Yeah.

I think they're coming out like six months apart because, you know, they want to make some money. They've got to catch up to Marvel. Marvel's like 10 movies ahead of them. And, you know, if they could put out like six movies next year, they'd probably do it. All right. Talk to me about, check Suicide Squad. Ben Affleck is also in Suicide Squad.

I just want to point out, by your own reasoning, the number should be very similar. Okay, this is hard. It's hard because I don't want to see another 5 billion people be the Joker for Halloween. Like, it's not something that needs to happen. That's actually that joker. Yeah, especially. Jugglero Joker. Yeah.

I'm going to give it a six. Whoa. But you don't feel like towards Will Smith. For the audio listener, I just, I want to try to describe the face that was made. Imagine an angry frown. Like a frown that indicates sadness but also anger. What was that con man movie he was just in? Focus with Marbleau.

Robbie. Yeah. That movie is awful. Yeah. It could have been great. It could have been great. Like the trailer for that movie was like a very entertaining trailer. You're like, I would like to just be in the world that this trailer describes.

And then the movie itself was like, so you made a shitbox oceans 11, right? That's what you did here? Okay. That's cool. Okay. Talk to me about Deadpool. Deadpool. So that was, you know, the audience flips out about everything because, you know, there's just so much

energy going on. Yeah. But Deadpool, perhaps more than anything, I thought there was like legitimate flipping out about. People like tearing their hair out was like a Beatles concert. So they aired the trailer and included in the trailer is that, you know, there was the leaked Deadpool footage. Yeah. So that's in the movie and they put that part in the trailer. Of course. They know that that's why it got made. So the trailer ends and then everybody gives it a standing ovation and starts demanding, they start shouting like one more time, one more time. And, you know, obviously they play the trailer again. Like that's how excited we were for Deadpool.

I didn't see that for anything else. And, you know, I think it mostly deserved it. It seemed pretty darn funny. Yeah. I mean, it's like Ryan Reynolds. Do you feel maternal towards Ryan Reynolds? I check Ryan Reynolds is it? No, too.

Bad. Bye. Yeah. No. Well, Deadpool is done. I saw him. He hosted Saturday Night Live when I was 15. And I drove to New York to see him. And it was the greatest disappointment.

Wow. my life, despite the fact that Lady Gaga, Madonna, and Scarlett Johansson were all there. But Ryan Mills was so bad. They were on that episode. You were 15. You went to New York to watch SNL and he ruined it for you? He was so bad. You should go find his monologue.

It like occurs in like a fake rainstorm. So bad. Wait, I guess the real question is, are there things that Ryan Reynolds has not ruined? That one movie, definitely maybe. Drive. With Elizabeth Banks. An Isle of Fish.

sure it's pretty good sure what's the movie where he's a waiter or he oh wait it's it's called waiting yeah oh well that's the name of the movie it's called and he says in the middle of it bizarrely in this restaurant he says so we're like some kind of suicide squad and there's dead silence the movie continues it's very strange uh well you know what i've noticed about this show so far is that you are the emotional opposite of Sam Sheffer. If I was like, hype check Deadpool, Sam, like, I love it. That's so great. I love jokes are the best.

And you're like, it will be bad. So that's, that's interesting. I think there's a reason you two work so well together. Yeah. No. It's like, nope. Well, when he introduced me on this show, he was like, we have the same haircut. We're the same person.

And now I'm like aggressively trying to deny that. So do you just like like squeeze your eyes and try to. and grow your hair faster? Yeah. Oh, my God. All right. So what else happened? Should we loop back through and talk about Batman?

I feel like we owe DC some of my conversation. So DC. Yeah. It's dark. It's so dark. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. You know, Marvel is, they're bright, they're fun, they're approachable. DC's like, oh, we have to be different.

Maybe we should do it dark. Yeah. And, you know, we're discussing this at Comic-Con and Brian Bishop up, I think the thing he said that surprised him most about Batman versus Superman is that it had a plot explaining why Batman was mad at Superman. Yeah. And I think that kind of says everything about where DC is at right now. What do you mean? I mean, they're just kind of, their entire universe is going to explode out of Batman's versus Superman, right? Like Marvel, they made a couple good movies first. They had Iron Man. I don't remember their other movies. But they slowly built

up their other movies. And then they made... Captain America. Yeah. Right. People loved those. And then they made the Avengers. And people love the Avengers because they're like, oh, my God, I love all these other

things. DC is like, we're really far behind. Let's just throw everyone into this thing, right? I mean, how many different... They have Aquaman. I don't know who wants to see Aquaman. They have Wonder Woman. I don't know who that is.

There you go. Well, no, Aquabin of the Woods is the best Aquaman movie. He's called Drug on his Aquaman. Oh, shit. I did know that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, everyone's... Poor Jason.

The third favorite rapists on Game of Thrones is that Aquaman. So throw us a number on that one. By the way, you know the actor isn't, it's not actually Caldrogo. Should I put that on the record so we don't get sued? No, he's going to sue us.

Reddit commenters are going to sue us. It's like, we're fine. Wait, number. What's your pitch for Aquaman? I can't assign him a number because I didn't remember he was a person. Here's a problem with D.C.'s.

So you know what you don't know is that that is actually a part of pitchforks ranking system. Don't acknowledge you. If you're not a person, you may, anyway, here's a problem with that man versus Superman. It might be fine on its own. Even if it's good,

best case scenario is still bad because DC's cinematic universe will be based in, like, being the cool, dark guy. And like, I'm telling you, like, dating Judd Nelson two weeks after the end of breakfast club,

it's like, oh, wait, it turns out that like you've got reason to be conflicted, but also you're just kind of boring. Like once you get the cool guy, like the cool guy doesn't last. It either like turns into, like you get bored of it and you go away or it turns into Fonzie.

Wait, wait. What? I'm just rewinding to the dating Judd Nelson two weeks after the breakfast. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, like, in the breakfast club, it's like amazing. But then two weeks later, you're like, well, this is, this is not fun anymore. Two weeks later, like two weeks later,

my ring, I was like, dude, like just stop burning your hand with cigarettes. Right, exactly. You can stop it now. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's the DC universe. It's my prediction for it. I don't know if that is accurate.

I, bizarrely, I feel very high about Batman v. Superman. Why is that? Because I want to see Batman punch Superman in the face. For being dumb. Like, that's why Batman should be bad at Superman.

Right? Like, yes, you're dumb. Like, you're dumb. Right. Please leave our planet.

Like, take everything about you and, like, leave the planet and just go. But he can be angsty at Superman. Superman all he wants. Superman is like an invulnerable alien. Yes. Please go.

And incredibly handsome. No conflict will ever find you. Every story involving you will be boring in some way. That's what Batman should say. In depression, he would use. Can you fly when your head is hung down in shame? Is that like a... Oh my God.

Everything about you is always the same. Like you lose your powers because you definitely have to lose your powers in order for there to be conflict in the story. Oh my God. I'm so surprised. Like, that's, that is true,

that's how Batman cuts Superman with a knife. No. With a bat knife. Also, the trailer is very confusing because at one point

Batman is like, running through the desert in like a bat jacket. Oh my God. It looks like, you know, and he's got goggles over his bad eyes.

Yeah. And then there's like, there's like, Superman army guys. I hope that this is actually like a five hour epic. And they just, yeah.

But how do they get all these? Like, like, like, like, like, like, what are just

just randomly just randomly appears. Like, If this is totally sprawling, I'll be into it. Right. It's like they have to be in Metropolis so that they can end. Which, by the way, is the Oakland to, or no, I'm sorry. Gotham is the Oakland to Metropolis.

They're like next to each other, turns out. Really? Yeah. That's weird. Why does we live in Oakland? All right, whatever. So it starts at the end of Superman. Yeah.

So it's already bad, but like, whatever. But it starts at the end there. And then it has to go to Gotham, presumably, to Wayne Manor, to a battle in the desert, under the sea, where Aquaman lives. That's right. Wonder Woman shows up.

What? Like, it has to be five hours long. Just to get literally under the sea. Like, it has to, how can you establish Aquaman? No, I have nothing else to say. It sounds like beautiful how absurd this is. I mean, I hope they go all out and just are like, well, we have to do all of this.

Let's just throw everything in there. It's really hard for me to say the words under the sea without doing the accent. That's for my... Anyway, and then Suicide Squad looks like a totally different. This is cool. It's dark. I will see for both of them. I feel like they're very comic booky in their action and, like, their events.

In a way that Marvel isn't. I mean, Marvel is, you know, comic bookie in the way that it's kind of goofy and lighthearted. but DC's definitely still taking to those kind of comic book roots, I think. It's also comic bookie in that the majority of it is like basically in black and white. The color palette is just a non-existent. Which is like not a thing that we really need to see again. Yeah. But I'm into it. Because it's true because we, the crystal and Batman movies are over.

Those are the only gritty ones. And the last one ended with like an absurd comic book thing that happened. Yeah. The Marvel movies like we're done. Like Iron Man was the cool. closest Marvel came to grittiness, the first Iron Man. That was the closest they came to grittiness, and now they've left that behind. I don't know.

There's a lot of dust in that first Thor movie because it was out in New Mexico. It's Thor. Like, who is the least gritty comic book person? It's Thor. Yeah, okay. And Superman. You just hate Superman so much? I really, really disliked.

Hype check Superman. I've never seen a Superman movie either, so I'm useless as a hype desk person. You know of the idea. He does seem really lame. And also like, Batman is like a self-made man. That's like the story of America. His parents were rich. I mean, he literally inherited a manor.

Okay, he's a self-made superhero though. Like he made himself into a superhero. That's America. It's capitalism. It's father issues. It's everything. We like don't need Superman. Batman is more America than Superman.

I will say that. So your man grew up on like a, farm and stuff, aside for Krypton, didn't he? We got to, I'm gonna read this. We're done.

It's like a journalist. We should, sure. A kinship. True. It's, I do. As a journalist,

I feel a kinship to Superman. I also grew up on a farm and, uh, no conflict can find. This is why you don't care about Superman. You've already. Because you identify his life. Yeah.

Uh, it's true. I am constantly flying through the air like Jesus. It's Jesus who flies. That's the, that's like the super. No. The core.

In that trailer, they're like, you're their only hope, and he's, like, flying in the air. It's like, it is very Christ-like, which is great if you're into that sort of thing. I mean, Jesus is an alien, too. What other symbolism can you use? All right. That's the, that's it. All right. We're going to read an ad, and then we're going to talk about the iPod, which I think is a great transition from Jesus.

Let's do it. I don't know that there, and if a long-term listeners of the show, know that it is not often that one topic leads seamlessly into another. But I don't know that three things have ever not gone together like Superman, the iPod, and what I'm about to read? You need me to read that? No, no, no, no, got it. All right.

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How great is that? So go ahead and grab your smartphone or your laptop or even your tablet. Cool tablet burn, Lisa.com. And go to Lisa.com slash Virgcast to get $75% off your purchase. That's L-E-E-E-S-A.com slash Vergecast to get $75 off your purchase. That's $75 off your mattress at L-E-E-E-SA.com slash Vergecast. That was not my best. Beautiful read.

That's good. But I didn't completely crack. And I would like to get some credit for that. You get plenty of crap. credit. All right. Let's talk about Apple. Apple did a bunch of stuff this week.

Yeah. So they started by, well, sometimes in the past week. Windows is like happening too. There's like, there's tech news in this world. Yeah, yeah. There's a ton of tech news in this world. So I mean, Windows is happening, but it's like, it's coming. But like they, like the final version seems to be out for insiders.

Yeah. They have a clever version number for it that has like an inside computer joke. I think everyone is really pumped about Windows. 10. Yeah. There's a lot of... The way that people have not been pumped about Windows in a while.

I think it might be good. I think it's good. Yeah. Even using the previews and stuff. Yeah. It's like... What do you like about it? What I like about it is...

This is going to sound crazy. Cortana. Because, like, it is a better... Just like, hit a button, type some stuff and search the stuff you want to search and get to the stuff that you want than anything else. And I'm also... Like, they got just...

They got rid of the... They kept the good ideas from Windows 8 and 8.1, and they got rid of all the bad ones, or most of the bad ones. And that's exciting. Yeah, that's coming. All right, but we, that, we just got like one step closer. Yeah. Wait, Caitlin.

Mm-hmm. Top check Windows 10. This is dangerous territory. Oh, yeah. Oh, no. Um, I can't. I can't. It's too controversial.

I'm going to. That's your job. Yeah. This, that's where you are. Whoa, wow. Or the title, her swagesty is not just handed upon you because you shy from controversy. Okay, well, I'm going to give it a solid 5.6. There I go.

Yeah. Why's that? I don't know. I haven't, I was handed this MacBook by Theverge.com, which I don't use exclusively. Were you using Windows before? So, no. I used Windows for my first three years of college. Okay.

So it was fine. Maybe Windows 10 will bring you back. It served its purpose. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's how people feel about Windows. Right? Yeah.

It's like, it's a thing. It's water. It's around, yeah. It's not like a, I know, it's a delicious thing. It's not like a great choice that you make.

It's just a thing that's there. Yeah, but Windows 10 is like the chance. Yeah. But anyway, so we're like a little bit tick closer and like Cortana is good. I will say I've never seen Verge Staffers excited about Windows the way they're excited about Windows 10.

Yeah. Which I think is fascinating. I mean, it was impossible to be excited about Windows 7 because it was like, you know, rolling back Vista, so whatever. And Windows 8 was like really intriguing and then you started using it. It's like really confusing. And then like, well, but 8.1 will fix it. And it's like, no. Yeah.

It's not confusing to me anymore, but it's just kind of dumb. It was like Microsoft went off and made like a little artsy film for a couple of years. Right. Right. It's totally alienated its audience. It was there, Joaquin Phoenix. I'm still here phase. Right.

Okay, so Apple, they put out betas for iOS 9 that are able to the public so you can go play with it. I don't know what to say, but we already talked about it. They've talked about it. It's there. Don't install it on your main phone or main iPad because it's still buggy. I installed it on my iPad Mini. It's the original iPad Mini. And there's literally no difference except everything is slower, which I probably should have seen coming.

That's my own fault. for instance, don't install on anything very old. Well, like with Cortana, I am most excited about the new search thing. It feels like you shouldn't, wait, we're talking on Windows. We're talking about it. I'm talking about on iOS, the new search screen that's now on the left. Like, I want that to be my primary interface to iOS. Oh, interesting.

I haven't really played with that much yet. Because I've heard you say like old things suck with it. And then Lauren Good wrote a thing for ReCode that was like, don't install anything that you depend on. So now I'm out of things. Like, I have no, there are no things. for me to put iOS 9 on. You could put it on the iPod.

You could put it on the new iPod. You could buy a new iPod and put it on that. They just, the Apple up and announced new iPod touches, and they basically put a good camera, eight megapixel camera, and the iPhone 6 is processor? No, I think it's, yeah. It's an AIA. Yeah, yeah.

So it might not have all the craziness, but it's got a motion thing. It's got the A8. Is the screen better? Because I feel like the old screen is like weird and yellowish. I've only, we went out and bought one today and Sean Okane did a hands-on, which is up on Theverge.com. But I haven't had more than like 45 seconds to be like, oh, this is a pretty gold color.

Yeah, the screen is usually a little bit. It's cheap. Like, it's not like expensive. And took away the loop lanyard thing, which was dumb in the first place. No, but it was like playful. I like, I like, I like, playful. You know what really gets me. And I know why, but the new nano and the new shuffle are not compatible with Apple

music, which is insanity. Yep. I mean, it's also weird that they're still selling the iPod Nano and shuffle. The shuffle I understand. Yeah, the shuffle that makes sense. It's so cheap. Yeah. But the Nano has always been super weird.

At least not, maybe not always, but the most recent version of the Nano, super strange. It has this interface totally unlike anything else that Apple does. Well, it looks, it's like iOS-esque. Right. Do you see that thing? It's iOS-esque. You're welcome. That's my new theme.

You're welcome. It's my new Windows theme. Um, no, do you see the thing in Daring Fybillies, like, Gruber is like, why don't they up to this to make it look like an L.S.Aid? And the answer is because literally no one works on the iPod team. There's no one left to do it. And it's, that is the most unapple, cynical, garbage move of all time. What's it's going to do with the iPods? Like, Apple's whole thing is like, we're going to cannibalize ourselves. We're going to sell the best products. Tim Cook is going to whisper in his sweet, dulcite, southern tones. But, you know, we just want to make the world's best products. Yeah, you can't say that the iPad Nano is one of the world's best products right now. Right. It's the iPod Nano is a piece of garbage. No, Apple likes to make the world's best products and then leave them around for a little.

You know what? They never do that. I feel like they've been doing that more and more. But they don't. When? For what? I mean, didn't they just stop selling the original iPad mini like a month ago? Yeah, but that was like, they sold that to schools until like the iPad. The iPod, and it's an iPad. It can like run all the stuff and the developers are like begrudgingly still supporting it. And like, it's an iPad. ad. It's a computer. The iPod Nano is like, my grandma hates me. And this is what I received for Christmas because she didn't read anything before she bought it. Like, I don't know. So I'm, shout out to grandmas. I don't know. That's, but that's like, it is, it is actually legitimately

insane that you can't sync offline Apple music to them. Like, I don't know. Like how, what, what percentage of consumers are going to use this as a vector to steal music? I mean, really. Here's the move. You sign up for the free trial. You download all the Taylor Swift, and then you cancel a free trial. And then you never sync your thing again, so I don't get lost. And you've got an iPod full of Taylor Swift. By the way, the simple solution that problem is, is prompting you to plug in your iPod every week, which you have to do anyway to sync it.

Force you to plug it in. But isn't that why everyone flipped out about the Xbox One? It was like, hey, you can do all this cool stuff while offline. You just have to make sure you connect to the Internet every once while. And then everyone flipped out. What if my power goes out? What if I'm, yeah, but that was hand-wringing garbage or the Xbox. Like, that was nonsense.

Like, forcing people to plug their thing in once week just to make sure that it keeps working is pretty garbage. Okay. Okay. Apple's going to float you three months at Taylor Swift. Right. Oh, so if you have Apple music on your sync to your iPod, then you have to plug it in once a month. That I get. I'd be fine with that.

Right? Like, that's a pretty simple demand. Yeah. But, like, they just didn't solve the- You know what that would require is doing it. development work whatsoever on the iPod NanoOS. Hype check iPods. I'm going to give them a seven.

Wow. No, that's good. Apple music is like not that thrilling to me anyway. Like you can't, you can't listen to the song that Taylor's Swift wrote about Jake Gyllenhaal not coming to her birthday party. Why do I need it? Who do you root for in that battle as a Jake John's all then?

Because you're maternal for Jake, but you're like you're a Swift, hype beast. No, I have a very complicated relationship with Taylor Swift. You went to a concert. I did go to a concert. It was amazing, but so upsetting on like a really deep depressing level. So like her motivation.

You have the most complex emotions of anybody at the verge. Why aren't you, this whole show should you just, you should be talking the whole time. All right. Wait, wait. That's what my Twitter is for. That's a great. Again, okay, so Taylor Swift and Jake Gillen Hall,

walk us through a birthday party experience. Okay. So Taylor Swift and Jake. Childenall dated for about three months at the end of 2010, I believe. Yeah. Um, and she went to Thanksgiving at Maggie Jillen Hall's house and wrote a song about it, which is called All Too Well. She'll listen to it. It's great. Um, but you can't on Apple music. You can listen to that one because it's on red. Um, sure. Okay. But then he broke up with her by just not showing up at her birthday party at all or like ever, he ghosted her pretty much. Yeah. And she wrote a song about it called The Moment I

knew, but it's really bad and embarrassing and, like, makes her sound like a total whiny idiot, which is too bad because, like, he really was a jerk. But anyway, you can't listen to that song on Apple Music. Where is that song located? You can listen to it on YouTube. So this is like a B-side. It's a rarity. Yeah.

Yeah. You can't listen to that and you can't listen to the 1989 bonus tracks. I got it. Do you know who ghosted me this week or last week? No. Alexis O'Hannian. Just hard ghosted me. I was like, hey, what's up with Reddit?

Just nothing. We're not browsing. Is that a transition? Is that a segue? It's a good segue. I'm going to write a song about it. Was he busy with something? You know, while we were on the Vergecast,

Reddit posted their new insane content policy. Yeah. So the plan is all the horrible evil, well, all the really terrible subreddits, all the vicious subredits get to stay. You just have to log in to see them. Is that the gist of it? Really?

I think that's the just of it. I feel like the person who has at, never mind sorry but this happened during the verge cast so we're learning live and you're listening to this on the podcast like five days from now and you're like guys come on you should know this by now and it's like well you know

um so right so here's here's a I'm going to quote from the new rules just because this is what you have to log and I see it another type of content that is difficult to define but you know it when you see it is the content that violates a common sense of decency this classification will require

a login and generate no revenue for Reddit. It's like, I don't know. Man, I have many feelings right, but the main one is that they are just constantly recapitulating like 200 years of American First Amendment history. Right. Like they can't, they're trying really hard to be like, we don't want bad stuff, but that's always changing. So we're not going to define bad stuff.

And that's their whole game. I mean, they're afraid of their community. Is that what's happening? No, I think this is them saying they're not afraid of their community. But they just gave the community what they wanted, didn't they? They're like, oh, yeah, the bad stuff. It can mostly stay. I mean, who isn't logged into Reddit if you're browsing Reddit?

Well, they're basically, like, they're making two classes of Reddit. There's like the mainstream Reddit, and then there's the subreddit. There's the 4chan Reddit. There's like the, they'll basically like, you know what? You're disgusting. We're not going to put ads on your pages and we're going to put you behind a login. So you have to create an account to see it. Right.

But they've like hard banned anything that harasses bullies or abuses an individual group of people. Right. Okay. Which is like, that's a big one. Yeah. That's important. I mean, I don't know. It's read.

I don't know. I think Reddit has through this process, they have, they've harmed themselves very deeply. So do you think it's over? Do you think this is it? We're done. Hooray. No, we're all finished. No, it has a short, short memory.

Yeah. Huffman says, this is what we'll try. and if the hateful users continue to spill out into the mainstream Reddit, we will try more aggressive approaches. Confedron expression is important to us, but it's more important to us that we at Reddit be true to our mission. I've checked Reddit. 3.8.

Okay. Yeah, the only thing you need Reddit for is looking for Game of Thrones news. That's all you need for. All right. What did you give a 10 to Batman v. Superman? Is I who gave a 10 to? Yeah. That was the 10 for the day.

like this is going to be one of the best comment threads. Like just listing the scores that you gave things. All right. Batman, but no seven. She never gave anything a seven. She did. Just gave the iPods of seven.

Oh, damn. Yeah, World of No Sevens. I've checked the iPods. Do you know this game? Do we have I played this game with you? No. This is a game I stole from Locke or our editorial director at Fox.

You can't, one to 10, but no seven because seven is the safest one. Oh, okay. Six, 6.6. We'll do that. All right. It's close.

All right. Is that a fun game usually or what? Yeah, because you can't pick a number that's close to seven, right? You usually have to pick an integer. So if you like, because otherwise you would just be like 6.9, right? And I'd be like, ha ha, that was hilarious, right? Because it's really close to seven. So you have to pick six or eight.

Gotcha. Which one is? That would be fun to play with people. No. Be so hurtful. Don't. Well, this episode of the. Vergecast.

Hang out. Brought to you by a mattress company. Oh, God. In some sort of accounting software, they're never coming back. I feel like there should be something to say about Reddit, but there's so much that I don't even know where to start. Oh, there's an endless amount to say about Reddit. We've been doing, like, we've, I mean, this, it's hard.

I think the reason I'm, like, stumbling to say what I'm thinking is, like, we just did this thing with our comments. But what happened with that was now our forums are great, and the commenters when we turn them on are much better behaved. Yeah. And I feel great about our community right now because the people that are choosing to participate with us are doing great stuff and it's fun and lively. And Reddit can't just turn it off that way.

They can't redirect their community in the way that we were able to redirect. Well, they kind of did. They turned off some sections. Yeah, I don't know. Just the dynamic of what Reddit is and how it's supposed to make money. There aren't enough people in charge of making Reddit stuff. right right they're utterly dependent on this community of people unpaid labor to make reddit every day but that's been working well hasn't it no not to monetize but yeah well what is working well right

like what does that mean to you um and i think that that dynamic is just really dangerous and bad that's like that's my big thought about reddit like they're founded on basically free labor and when they want to assert control over people volunteering it's really tough unless they believe in you Right. And you have to keep that belief and you cannot do anything that, you have to be really careful if you do anything that might harm it. Like, you know, not talk to your moderators and your most active users when you make big changes. Like, we don't have these questions about like, I don't know, Habitat for Humanity. Right. It's just like there's like what's an organization that like relies on people volunteering to make things every day. Right. And like people believe in that mission and like they have rules, but people like believe in the rules. Right. You can think of it like a church, literally any volunteer community-based group. Like there are rules and they're leaders and you understand them. Reddit's leaders are not, they do not have the same incentive structure as Reddit's people, right?

Like their job is to make money and have a business not to like build a society of the internet where all of our brains are in vats and we only communicate to each other with upboats and down votes. Reddit is the Matrix is what I'm saying. Right. Yeah. I think that's what like the broader Reddit community wants Reddit to be the Matrix. Yeah, I'm just, I'm just saying like, yep, yeah, because like I fundamentally agree with you, but I also fundamentally, there's so much shit. You fundamentally agreed to was me saying Reddit is the Matrix. No, there's like, there's like so much like to like to say anything about Reddit.

There's been like so many like unfurlings and Ellen Powell and they fired Victoria Taylor and then there were the hate groups and then there was the the celebrity stuff before that. there's like there's no way for me to explicate anything about Reddit that isn't immediately and obviously like like people just assume what I think about all those disparate things that happened before it and it's like it's like too big for me to just say oh Reddit sucks or oh right but like fundamentally I think fundamentally it's the matrix no I mean even now people are complaining about multiple different things is the moderation issue and then there's the free speech issue which you know I think to some extent are separate And I think, you know, some Reddit is the people are right to be angry about.

You know, I totally understand when Reddit changes how moderation works and Reddit changes how AMAs work, which is one of the top areas on the site. There's a reason to be upset about that. But the whole free speech thing, you know, I don't see why Reddit shouldn't just take a hard stance and crack down on that. I mean, it seems like very clear cut from a moral standpoint. Yeah. I mean, the free speech thing is really dumb. It's like just the dumbest thing. Yeah.

It is the dumbest critique that is leveled at Reddit. It's the dumbest critique that's leveled at us. These are companies, their platforms. Right. But if Reddit as a company wants to build it into their charter that they are dedicated to some sort of more radical free speech proposition and not just say,

no, you know, it's the internet, go talk elsewhere. We don't need you to have you here in our house or in our basement or whatever. put it in the charter. Don't like eventually work your way towards that by referencing stuff that was said in a little

Reddit comment, you know, and then like watch it evolve. We did that thing about what was Reddit always about free speech. We'd like track the evolution of what they said about that. The most interesting thing that I learned in that piece. It's wild. All right. All right. It's all over.

Yeah. All right. Do you know how to do Sam's list of engagements or should I do it? I do not know Sam's list of engagements. Pick three social networks. the Verges on and tell people to follow. Oh, cool. How to follow us.

Okay, so we're on Twitter at Verge and Snapchat, The Real Verge, and Tumblr, theverge.com. Caitlin runs our Tumblr, I don't know if that's obvious to everyone. Caitlin runs our Tumblr and talks about Channing Tatum. Do you feel eternal towards Channing Tatum? No. Okay. But I do like him a lot because he wants to show step up to his grandkids and be like, that's where I found them with your grandma.

So cute. The Verge is hiring is the next note on my thing, which is true. We're hiring all sorts of people. So we're hiring lots of video people in New York. Please let us know. Car reporters, Chris Sigler is hiring car reporters and maniac. We're hiring a junior reporter in Silicon Valley. And we're hiring a staff photographer, which makes me very excited.

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Yeah. In your. No, I don't, I don't mean hype check Caitlin. I mean, in the style of Caitlin. Offered a very precise number and then a bleak and depressing. This is not going to go well. We have two other shows that you should listen to Virg ESP, which with Emily and Liz, which is absolutely great. And What's Tech with Chris Plant, which is also absolutely great.

all at the iTunes.com slash The Verge. Caitlin, I promise people your Twitter handle. What's your Twitter handle? Oh, it's K underscore Tiffany 18. There you go. Nice. I'm telling you, one of my favorite Twitter experiences at The Verge. Dieter is back on.

I'm reckless. Jake. Jake underscore K. Yep. My man. Jake, it's shocking that you've never been on the show before. You should be back. Gladly, you know, I'm right upstairs.

Yeah. The two of you. We're just going to have a show with the two of you. It's great. Anyway, that was it. That was a Vergecast. Thank you to everybody for listening. Thank you for surviving this with us. Thank you for waiting in line at Comic Con with Jake. Thank you for going to Pluto. Thank you, Outer Space. Goodbye. Rock and roll. Bye.