The Vergecast - SpaceX, colonizing Mars, and Snapchat spectacles

Episode Date: October 2, 2016

This week on Vergecast, science editor Liz Lopatto is in town and stops by the Vergecast to talk about the news out of the International Astronautical Congress; Elon Musk's plan to colonize Mars. Paul also interviews Loren Grush live in Mexico at the event and breaks down Mr. Musk's presentation. The cast also talks about the death of BlackBerry-made phones, the ever-changing use of smartwatches, and Snapchat's Spectacles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, welcome to Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Vurge.com, a website about your life. Yeah? Yeah. It's more than a website. It's a brand. It's a multi-channel media experience. Yeah. That touches every point of you.

Ew. It's an emotion. I know. It's a wetsuit. It's a wetsuit. It's every part of you. What if the verge was a wetsuit? Anyway, this is the Verge cast.

I'm you know of a wetsuit. Paul Miller's here. Hey, Paul. Hey. Dieter Bohn is here. In New York. Live, in person, in New York. But Liz Lepato is here in New York as well.

Yeah, I'm also live and in person in New York. It's incredible. I've never been so happy. Except when I describe the verge as an emotion and a wetsuit in one sentence at the same time. Anyway, so Liz is here, Dieter's here. I'm very excited. The biggest news in the world, not the biggest news in the world, But the biggest news in our world is that Elon Musk went to Mexico, got on stage, and told everybody he's going to Mars.

Yeah, you really say it's the biggest news in the solar system. Oh, my God. It's the biggest news in a wetsuit. You know, it's like, before I said it, I was like ashamed. I was like pretty shamed. But then I said it. And I was like really happy about it. Anyway, I want to get into it in depth with Liz.

Liz, of course, our science center. But we sent Lauren Grush, Miram Nielsen, and Phil Esposito down to the event. They made a great video. If you haven't seen that yet, you should go watch that video. We have a ton of coverage on the site. But they're down there. And Paul, you actually talk to Lauren a little bit about everything that went. I learned a lot.

So why don't we run that? She's Paul and Lauren talking about what's happening at SpaceX. This segment, by the way, sponsored by Cesar vodka. Oh, yeah. Cut Through the Night. There is. Oh, thanks, Deeder. All right.

We have a very, very special guest. Lauren Grush is talking to me live from Mexico. It's true. What's Mexico like? It's amazing. We really lucked out and we're staying at this beautiful Airbnb that is essentially like a Mexican palace. It's really quite amazing. Why are you in a Mexican palace right now?

Because it turned out to be a better option because we sent three people down here. And so we all got to stay in it together. and it just seemed like a better option than getting three separate hotel rooms. But why in general are you in Mexico? I'm very happy for you. I'm very pleased that you're having a great time. But why are you in Mexico? Right.

So I am in Mexico because on Tuesday, Elon Musk laid out his Mars colonization plans that he has been working on for many years. And why did he do that in Mexico? what's the hook there? The International Astronautical Congress is going on this week in Mexico. It's an annual conference and it's a big kind of space industry nerd get together. And so he thought this would make a good venue for revealing his colonization plan. I was not aware of this larger conference. Have you been into like any other talks or there?

Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of other stuff going on. Like they had a plenary talk of all. all the heads of the different space agencies that we attended. They've got like real technical stuff, like how we can use space to learn more about climate, you know, orbital debris. Bill Nye gave a talk about the Planetary Society and Lightsale. A bunch of the private space companies are here with booths.

So it's kind of like a mini CES is what we called it because it's very tiny. It's like one floor of the convention center where there's booths and stuff, but it does kind of have that CES conference vibe. CES for space? Yes, basically. And so what's a standout talk that you just really enjoyed that maybe didn't get quite as much news coverage as the Elon Musk announcement?

Well, I really liked the heads of state talk because it was interesting to see, or the heads of the state space agencies. So you had Charles Bolden from NASA, you had the head of risk cosmos, the head of the ESA, the European Space Agency. So it was nice to see all of these different people running these really big agencies together on stage.

And afterwards we had like a press conference and some things about, you know, some tensions between the country were addressed. Like they talked about actually the Crimea crisis. And so it's interesting to see them kind of like put away their differences for a little bit as they talked about space, which is kind of, you know, brings people again. other. That's kind of been like a space narrative for forever since the Cold War, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. Okay, so Elon Musk, very, very popular, famous, billionaire, cool guy, love space, has a very highly visible space company, probably not the biggest.

It's space, where would you put SpaceX in the continuum of companies? that do space stuff? In the continuum? I mean, I would say that they're perhaps most visible private company, private spaceflight company right now. And they are a big contender among launch providers. You've got the United Launch Alliance. You've got SpaceX. You've got Orbital ATK.

I mean, we don't have a lot that are actually going into orbit right now. But SpaceX is definitely one of the top contenders for sure. And I think what, at least for me, what always captures me about SpaceX is it seems like they've got a bigger plan. They're not just content to just do some satellite stuff. They want to go further. They want to go to infinity and beyond, you might say. And so Elon Musk said, we're going to Mars, kind of? Yeah, I mean, Elon hasn't been subtle about his.

plans to go to Mars. In fact, he basically has hinted that he started SpaceX with the ultimate goal of creating a Mars colony. So everything that they do at SpaceX is kind of in pursuit of that ultimate goal. So then pursuing reusability, you know, reusability was a big part of this Mars concept, lowering the cost of going to space. Another big part, like, He's all about making it affordable, right? So a lot of the themes of SpaceX were echoed in his Mars colonization top. So I had a traumatic tooth injury the day of this event and was literally at the dentist

while those, so I was following your live blog. So I want to see how well I got it, all right? Okay. They're going to make a big rocket way bigger than, or, a lot bigger than we've ever had. It's going to have a ton of boosters and a new kind of booster that they've already been testing. And that rocket will go up to space with a bunch of people in it. They will come back down, land on the same pad it launched from, be refueled, and go back up with, I guess, fuel to actually go to Mars.

and then they'll fly to Mars and they will land there and then it will be a barren planet and everybody will die when they get there. How could, how, oh, but, but because they're using a special kind of fuel, if they managed to survive somehow, they could get that kind of fuel on Mars, refill their spaceship, and fly back here. Good. I give that like an 80% right recap. Nice. Nice. Please correct my misconceptions.

Well, I think the main thing you said it would be using a new kind of booster. The rocket itself is considered a booster. The terminology is kind of tough to follow sometimes. But the rocket would carry a spaceship, right? And it uses a new type of rocket engine called the Raptor, which they just did their first test of it, I think, like, over the weekend, and he tweeted about it before he came to the conference. but the booster, the rocket itself, the huge rocket, it would use 42 of these engines.

And that, I mean, if you know anything about rockets, it's a lot, there's a lot of engines. Yeah, I saw this diagram where like a ton of them are all laid out in a circle and then there's seven them in the middle and only the seven have a gimbal. Those are the ones that move. Yeah, basically. So is this crazy? I mean, it's kind of crazy.

I was expecting most of the architecture I was expecting something like that because he had hinted about it before But I think there are a lot of different types of There's a couple of different camps of how people want to get to Mars and For Elon his his fall is a bit of a Let's send up most of what we need and then go but a lot of people have this idea of let's send up parts of things that we want to assemble in space and then like create the the spaceship we need that way and then go so that that would save you from launching like a huge huge rocket we could do that kind of with smaller rockets that we have now

but his is very much like put it all up there approach so even the two steps he wants is actually aggressive as far as size. Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, it's very much scaled up. But I mean, it's definitely impressive. And I don't think that it's impossible or anything. It's just, it's, I don't know if his timeline is in any way feasible. Right.

He said he wanted to start doing, what's the term when Earth and Mars are closest? I mean it's like the window there's like an Earth Mars rendezvous basically so it opens up to every 26 months and he kind of wants to start launching these every 26 months yeah so so what the plan is now is that SpaceX wants to send its first vehicle to Mars in 2018 that's when the next Earth Mars window opens up and but that one's going to be small smaller it's going to be their red dragon, which is going to test out supersonic retro propulsion. It's this way of using the engines on the vehicle to lower itself down to the surface. So when you're falling, you basically turn on your engines and it slows down your fall

because it's pushing up while you're falling. Does that make sense? Yeah, the last, and that's how we landed on the moon, right? Yeah, I mean, kind of, yes. with with with the booster on the bottom or sorry yeah yeah a booster uh engine on the bottom yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean honestly you could use booster or booster engines i mean these these terms are very uh flexible i want to get them right i want to get them right yeah okay so um so that seemed aggressive so so but you were you were in the room as this is happening and it sounded from reading this live blog like it was pure mayhem, which is probably, I'm projecting, but probably most of the other panels you went to weren't quite as insane.

Yes. I don't think that the organizers of this conference really understood what they had taken on when they agreed to let Elon promote this. you know, this, this conference is not, you know, I mean, it's very industry, it's like space industry experts go every year, but it's, this felt more like a rock concert and it was in one of the biggest rooms ever. Um, but the problem was they, they didn't let us in until, oh my gosh, I think like five minutes before it was scheduled to happen. Um, and they were, and they let in the press first, but the press was all gathered around this one tiny area. And then they were like, oh, but we only can let in press with cameras first. And so I snaked one of Merriam's cameras, one of my, you know, who was with me. And I pretended to go in and I got a nice seat when I did

that. And then they let in the general audience. And that, it felt like a stampede of people. Like the room shook and people screamed as they ran and rushed in and tried to get a good seat. It was insane. Wow. Yeah. And then after, were there gasps and of astonishment? Were people cheering when he was announcing this plan? Definitely cheering. Lots of cheering

whenever he would make like a good point. And definitely like I could feel there are at least gasps around me like when he would make some crazy statements like he, I think he said he wanted a thousand ships in orbit at a time and then they would all go to Mars. and then he also made the claim that he could,

that the ship could go to Mars in 80 days, which is just insane. Because right now, right now most, like the lowest trip to, or the speediest trip to Mars is about six months, I think. And then, you know, a lot of the times when NASA sends over a robotic mission, it's like nine months. So 80 days would be a significant cut in that time. So I'm not sure how you would do that.

But, yeah, definitely some surprises from the talk for sure. So are you coming away from this more optimistic about us going to Mars in the next decade or just as worried and confused? I'm not worried and confused. I really think he did put a lot of thought into it because he's definitely like a tech nerd. He was talking about like chamber pressure and the specs for the different vehicles. So he's definitely thought a lot about what the vehicles will be like and the different like components. He even talked about the materials that they would be made of, like the carbon fiber. Most of it would be made out of carbon fiber.

He talked about, you know, the components of methane and how you can, you know, make methane conceivably on Mars. So he's definitely put a lot of thought into it. The only thing, and you can read my follow up on the verge, is that you know, he talked very little bit about human safety. And I think that's such a crucial part of a human colony because, you know, that's the whole point of sending them over there in the first place is to, you know, to have a backup plan for Earth. That's what he calls it, you know.

So it seemed strange for him to not focus on that. But he was all about like, oh, you know, SpaceX is the railroad. road. Other people will be responsible for creating the habitats and, you know, creating, you know, the safety that they'll need on Mars, which I understand. I understand that point, but he talked very little bit about it like when he talked about the spaceship, right? When you're in microgravity, you know, you have to work out like a lot every single day so that your muscles don't atrophy and that you don't lose a lot of bone loss because we've evolved to have gravity here on Earth

so our bodies aren't used to living in zero G and he didn't really touch on that at all which I understand I mean I get where he's coming from but I think people just underestimate just how much how much goes into setting up a Mars settlement there's so many different disciplines involved there's biology there's engineers

you have to come up with the life support systems. You have to shield people from radiation. You have to think about where their fluids are going to go, how they're going to eat, how they're going to drink water, how do you recycle that water? There's a lot of stuff that goes into this. And obviously it was a one-hour presentation, so you can't get into everything.

But there were some things I think he should have focused on in that hour instead of, other things that he could have left out, in my opinion. But it's his talk. He can do what he wants. Right. I mean, I feel somehow closer to Mars. I feel like, and I see people on Twitter kind of like, whoa, man, we're going to go to Mars. It's exciting. And I hope that excitement turns into people solving these other problems. Of course. I totally agree. And I, and I'm, there's nothing wrong with excitement. Um, but that's kind of like what Mars One did. And that's the other, this nonprofit that promises to send people to Mars where they're going to die,

you know, like they're going to live out the remainder of their days on Mars. But I feel like it's kind of a slap in the face, at least Mars 1, to the people that are actually really trying to work hard on this and the people that could make it happen when you're creating excitement for something that's just not realistic. And I'm not saying that SpaceX, what he said, was not realistic.

But I think in order to really woo people, there's still a lot of questions that need to be answered before we're like, oh, okay, I think, I think we're going to Mars now. Did the larger conference kind of help you with that sort of context and getting to see the, I got to visit NASA once and just putting a face on people who are trying to get us into space was really helpful to me to not be frustrated at them because like, man, it does seem like they really want to go to space. They're really into this.

Oh, yeah, for sure. And I mean, I talk with engineers all the time. You know, I'm constantly interacting with people who are trying to get us to go to space. And so I very much want them to succeed. But, you know, it's worth taking a critical eye at the approaches. Cool. Well, thank you so much. Enjoy your Mexico palace.

Thanks. When do you head back to the States? We leave tomorrow. I know. I wish I could live here. This place is so beautiful. But it was a fun adventure. And it was,

it was interesting to watch this talk in another country for sure. Because it was, you see how Elon's influence crosses borders. You know, it was a very international affair. He's widely loved. Yes. Super villain or superhero.

Still don't know. still on the fence cool thank you Lauren thank you Paul so was Lauren and Paul Paul it seems like this event was like

mind blowing for Lauren it's kind of the sense I got it was it was crazy and to be honest I'm just really happy that she's still alive yeah they cranked

I mean if you haven't seen all the coverage on the site you should go check all of it out I think I said this we're at 21 stories now 21 stories about We're not done by there I mean it's huge news

A little inside baseball We actually For the first time ever We shut down the verge Newsroom and ran event coverage For SpaceX the way that we Run event coverage for an Apple event or a Samsung event or something

And so we took that skill set from big tech event And applied it to this Which is like pretty nerdy and cool for me Because it's like we had this race card And I only ever ran on one track And I could try to put it on different track Turns out our race car Still really fast.

Yeah. Yeah. Still a great race car. So super fun for us to, it's like cover, super fun, I think, to watch kind of our machine go. But, you know, I think Lauren is pointing out, and Liz, you wrote a great piece. There are still so many questions with what Elon is doing and how he hopes to actually succeed. Oh, man. So I got home after that event, and I realized I felt disappointed, which is insane, right?

because there was like, we're going to Mars. But it reminded me a lot of the like pre-apollo, like, space propaganda that a lot of rocket scientists were doing to popularize. The biggest one, of course, was Werner von Braun, who I, he was an incredible force in rocketry. And I also feel compelled to mention every single time I mention his name that he was a noted Nazi. I was going to say, yeah. Like that those things are inextricably linked. But what he did in the 1950s before all of America realized he was a Nazi was he ran all of these incredible visions of the future and visions of the future on the moon and visions of the future on Mars and the colonies and all of these things. And he got people really excited about space, like really, really excited.

So excited that like, you know, we put people on the moon. And this felt like that to me. And he ran them in magazines. Yeah, in colliers. And like he did films with Walt Disney, educational films. It was like this whole push, really. It was like a propaganda push. The futures in space.

And I think the title of the series was Man Will Conquer Space Soon, exclamation mark. I think we watched this in my like. like second grade class. In the 1950s? No, in the 80s. But it was like Wisconsin. It was like we only had so many film strips. Was it like on a reel-to-reel?

I watched real-to-reel film strips. Were you watching this in the context of here is historical propaganda or was it like? No, it was in the context of like, well, we've watched all of the film strips that we have. Mrs. Ullandberg found another one in the basement. You can watch this one. You know what makes me sad about kids today? and their experience in school. My favorite day in school

was when they'd trundle in on a giant metal cart, the television, the huge CRT television that weighed like 300 pounds and like the giant industrial VCR that was supposed to last forever, but it was actually garbage and never really worked. And it was going to be like a movie day in class.

And you could like, you'd see the thing in the hallway before class, like, oh my God, oh my God. Now these kids have their iPads. Yeah. And now they're just like, turn on your eyes. iPads and open your app or like there's like there's a screen in the room but like the experience of having the giant thing or the film strip you know when you sell a projector in the room you're like oh my god this is going to be great but yeah i mean it was it was it was very much that to me and it was

not like because i was like right you're talking about Elon right now Elon yeah yeah i was like ready for Elon to be like all right here's the habitat module and here's how we've thought about like life support on the space uh the you know the spaceship and and you know here's how we've thought about like the possibility of terraforming and like, here's how I'm going to fund it. And I was like ready for that. I was like, all right, we're going to go to Mars. And what I got instead was, it would be really cool to have a future in space. Well, so why do you think he shows that instead of like, you know, the world of tomorrow, like,

wonderland of like, here's all the different things we could do? Like my sense was that he was basically like, it was half a, half a show for you for like, let's get excited about space. Here's some possibilities. and half a show for people that are like stop wasting my investment dollars Elon on this Mars thing and it was like him proving that like it would be economically viable

I'm going to do some of these small things but I'm not going to do the whole thing. Yeah, I mean I still don't think it's going to be economically viable. It's the realist of real talk right here. Yeah, it's going to cost $43. Whatever insane number you dropped. That seems the biggest blank space

because, yeah, how is it funded? Yeah, well, that's... He made it... He was like he made the South Park joke. He made it cheaper than... It was like, we're going to steal underpants. Question mark, question mark, question mark, profit. That was like literally the slide.

Yeah. Oh, wow. Kickstarter was also on that slide. This is somewhere between here's a brand new car that will be available next year and here's this crazy hyperloop idea. Like this is like somewhere on that continuum, but all the way to the car. I mean, like the rocket specs, like I think that stuff, the stuff that he was talking about,

with fuel was really, really interesting. Basically, he presented a fuel plan that might allow you to refuel on Mars so you don't have to have enough with you to make the trip back. That's cool. And that's something that potentially could apply to other places with similar natural resources. And like, as I wrote in my piece, like, it may very well be that we don't get Mars colonies, but what we get instead is some modified version of the rockets.

Like, he has, he's fired the engines that he's planning on using. So, like, this is not totally, like, you know, a big spread in Life magazine with, like, you know, artists' renderings. Right, right. Well, that thing you're talking about with the sort of propaganda piece, that kicked off an incredible wave of futurist thinking. Yep. Right?

When we now joke that, like, we were promised flying cars and all we got was photo sharing apps. The people making the promises were there. one's like drawing the diagrams in Life magazine about how we would like, you know, Rosie the Butler would like serve us space broccoli. Well, that we're getting. Yeah, that's not happening. But do you think that he's going to kick off another wave of futurist thinking now?

I don't know. I mean, it's hard to know what a reaction is going to be ahead of time, right? Like this is the sort of thing that you're going to see coming in waves over the next couple of years. And either there are going to be a bunch of people who are like, yes, let's do some like crazy interstellar mining. Let's go for it. We're going to do a moon base. Awesome. Like, great.

But you might also get a bunch of people who are like, finally, Elon has gone too far. I mean, he's got... He's got a lot going on. People are rooting for that fall? No, he's got fanways, like, no other.

There are not... There were a lot of people who were very upset with me about the mildly critical things I wrote. It was critical, but I would say on the scale of the verge being critical of you, mildly critical. Like, hey, you're pretty busy. Also, you have to get this paid for. Also, you're not very good at deadlines. So why are you telling me this is going to happen in 10 years?

I mean, so that's like a real thing. Well, the other thing you said during the show, we were in the room. We were watching it. I was making bad jokes on Twitter because that's my whole job when it comes to science coverage. and he gave his first deadline and you said dude hasn't shipped his Corolla competitor what makes he think he could ship a rocket ship a model three is like a big deal it's the fate of Tesla

and he's supposed to have like 4,000 internet satellites up by 2020 right so like SpaceX has to not have rockets explode that's helpful it's helpful to not have your rockets explode I like it when they haven't quite figured out right It's like something to do with the helium system and the last rocket is what made it explode. So it's not clear that that's SpaceX's fault.

Right. That investigation is not done. Right. So all I'm saying is they don't know. They don't know why their rocket, their last rocket explosion. They're grounded until they figured out. You should probably figure that out.

Yeah. And then he's got Tesla. Tesla has been late on every car. He's got tons of pre-orders for the Model 3. And like he's got to hit that deadline. Yeah. And if he doesn't, there will be dire consequences for Tesla,

even though his fans love it. Like, they'll wait a little bit, but they're not going to wait forever. Yeah. And then he's got Solar City, which didn't do so well, and he's selling to himself at Tesla. And, like, I think that plan is actually fine,

like, conceptually, like... Whatever, yeah. Yeah, like, Tesla should sell batteries for your home that charge your car that charge from solar panels. Fine. Yeah. That's a great idea. But, like, the business mechanics of that deal,

as far as I understand them, are, they're worth criticizing. So that's just a, that's a lot of things. It's a lot of things and you're leaving out all of the deadline dysfunction at SpaceX.

Okay. So I'm going to, I'm going to quickly run you through some of this. I actually got a reader email after my piece published. I had missed one of his, his blown deadlines. So in 2007,

he said he was going to put people in space by 2011. In 2011, he said he'd put people in space in three years. not a single person has flown aboard a space six rocket and is the year of our lord 2016

right so like I so how do you square the fact I mean the reason that everybody gets mad when we criticize the commercial crew is happening soon right I mean like it is I mean like that's now happening it's happening it's probably happening in late 2018 which is a pushback from the original

so 10 years after his like right so the thing that he does that is so incredible is like takes these things that you think of as like crazy dreams and then actually like lays out what seems like a logical feasible plan. Sometimes he skips over some of the important details, but like lays out a plan and at the end of the plan you're like, oh wow, like this amazing thing would be great if we just like got together and did it and that's really inspiring. But then you have to square that with, you know, the fact that he like misses deadlines. Well, it's like doing it. Like you have to square it with doing it.

And so like part of me is like, man, I just I just wish that like the reason that we went to the moon. One of the reason went to the moon is like, we like got together as a nation and like gave the government a shit ton of money, right? And they had to do it by 1970 and they just barely made their deadline. Right. But Elon is just doing it on his own as a private citizen. So I can't tell if like he's trying to inspire us to like... With a bunch of government money. Well, yeah. But like a lot of government money. Right. I mean like SpaceX is funded by NASA. Kind of. I mean, they contract for NASA. They contract for, I want to say the Department of Defense. And then they have a couple of Facebook satellite. Yeah. And then they have a couple of

Facebook is technically a government. Private, private satellite companies as well. But I would say probably they're, like I don't know because it's not a public company. I can't actually look at their books, although I would love to, Elon if you're listening. Elon's like, mail is a book. But like, you know, I would guess that their biggest client is NASA and their biggest source of funding is the government. So other than the, because. Because I feel like the biggest question is, can someone just fund this?

And that wasn't answered. So we don't know when this can actually happen because the money isn't actually there. Right. But are there any other technical concerns that, like, haven't been solved that would have to be solved for us? I'm mostly thinking of being fried by radiation on my way to Mars. That's a big one. So Lauren, by the way, at the event, we made a video of this too. Eon got asked, had a public Q&A after the event, asked the most insane question.

Like some dudes like I got a burning man and it sucks to poop there. We actually have a story on our website, Theverge.com, about how to poop like an astronaut that we ran like early this year. And like it turns out that pooping in space is complicated. So this is not totally a stupid question. Anyway, so you got to ask all these insane questions. And then Lauren, only one who stands up and like tries to do journalism there. Ask a really hard question.

Like what are you going to do to keep people alive? And Elon's answer was basically, you know, people talk about radiation, but it's not a big deal. And he just, like, moved right along. And Liz, you wrote, like, the messy biology part of this is definitely not solved. No, that, I mean, listen, I think that's probably, that's probably the trickiest part of all of this, right? Like, we haven't put very many people in space. It's, like, 530 people, like, the whole world has put 530 people in space, which is more than most other species.

but like, you know. We're doing okay. Snow crabs, though. They're catching up. Yeah. There's like five dolphins in space. But like, that's still not very many people. And so we don't have a really good read on what, you know, the long-term effects of space are.

Because most people haven't been there for long consecutive periods. Like you would have to be for Mars. And like, we know certain things about radiation and what it does to the human body. And like radiation shielding is one of the biggest. things to think about in terms of making sure your passengers don't arrive with cancer or dead. And that's before we even get to the idea of building a self-sustaining biome on another planet. Yeah. No, I mean, like, that's literally just like, to take him at his word talking about like wanting to be the space railroad, that is just like your train problem.

That is just a problem for your train. I'm going to build a train. I don't know how people are going to stay alive on the train, but if they get to where they're going, they'll definitely get there. and then we can send the train back. Yeah, but they'll die on the surface of Mars. Well, so the thing to me is that, like, I don't, like... Once you get to Mars, you can make, like, hobbit holes. Right.

Yeah. And fill them with oxygen and food. No, I mean, like, the thing to me that is potentially exciting about this is the actual, like, rocket, like, less the spaceship because I'm worried about what he's doing in radiation design on the spaceship. But the rocket itself potentially, like, there have been these spaceship. base mining initiatives that have started. And like we've legally, if you mine something from an asteroid in space and bring it back in the U.S., you get to keep it.

It's yours. So, like, if it turns out- Solving the big problems. That's right. So if it turns out that, like, you know, this rocket winds up being used for like some asteroid mining thing for rare earth elements, like, fine. That is a fine outcome. That is not a thing that upsets me.

Because to go back to Von Braun, one of the things about this guy is that he actually launched the first U.S. satellite. And satellites are the reason we all have cell phones and internet on our phones. And that was a big part of the future that he just didn't think about because he thought satellites were going to have to have people in them because he didn't know about computers or how important they were going to be. He like envisioned it as like a person inside the satellite, like watching over the earth to like detect enemy movements and then like radioing into the DOD.

Like a cool telescope. Yeah, man. I'm just like a guy in a ball. Yeah, literally, like, there are illustrations. It's incredible. That's awesome. So, you know, like his legacy may actually be something else other than Mars colonies. We may not even get to Mars, but the inspiration and, like, all of this work might not be for nothing.

Okay, so satellites aren't exactly why we have internet and cell phones. Like, we get those from towers and tunnels underground. True. But satellites could make internet and cell phones amazing. And I haven't heard any updates on Elon Musk's space internet plan. Yeah, what's that? Wow. I don't know.

But that, one of the most amazing things about that is that you take messages that would typically take like 40 or 60 milliseconds going all like through slow earth pipes because speed of light goes slower in glass and fiber optics. It goes up to space, maybe hops to one other satellite, then back down. And so you could like have low latency communication and video games with like Australia finally. There's big parts of the world that deal with absurd latency all the time. And that could, a beautiful network of space satellites would actually be economically, probably better in the long run. If we really are going to get everybody online than digging millions of more tunnels. Yeah. I mean, yeah.

I don't know what's up with that. I couldn't tell you. I'm really excited about space internet. He's got a lot going on. I have hard time keeping track of all his projects. I don't know how he does it. So I think this is the reason that he has as many fans, like ardent fans as he does,

whether or not he does all the stuff. I think he is one of the few people who operates at his scale, who has ideas bigger than a new photo app or like a better way to share things, who delivers on a subset of those ideas. at some reasonable volume, and then tries to, like, one-up himself. Like, Zuckerberg doesn't do that. Zuckerberg's like, I got to put balloons everywhere because you need more access to Facebook

free basics or whatever. Right. Right. Like, Sergey Brin is like, my best idea is toe shoes. And also, I'm going to put this camera on your face. That didn't work. Right? Like, there are these thinkers in the world, but most of them, I think Bill Gates is one of them now,

his ambitions are are still constrained in a way. boring stuff like education and hilarious really lame right but it's they're not like

what I'm saying they're constrained Bill Gates to such a nerd is like not even an insult and it's like you'd be like yes and then he would just like walk out of the room he might jump over a chair on the plan in the covers of popular science and popular mechanics of our child

Yeah. Right. And I, you know, I think Bill Gates doing, like, there's no mosquito lasers on the cover of mosquitoes is, like, very interesting. And I think that captures a lot of imagination. But he never actually ships the mosquito laser, whereas Elon stands on stage. And, you know, when he was talking about using methane to fuel the rockets, it was basically an Apple event, right? Yeah.

He put up the same kind of charts that tech companies put up to make their decisions seem sensible. And here's a here's some fun inside baseball on the verge is I was running the site and I saw Nilai tweeting this is basically an Apple event and I called him in I called him in was like you're putting it on the site go yell that she's received an order it's like it's like a little bit afraid actually I could get yelled at again I'd love that pose like the spec sheets yeah there's spec sheets for planets and I that to me is I don't think there are very many characters in the industry who consistently make those kinds of promises and then on whatever timeline deliver against those promises in some way.

Like Elon said, I'm going to land the rocket. He blew up a lot of rockets. Yeah, he did. And he started landing the rocket. I mean, like, this is the thing is like, it's one of the reasons why, like, I found that event slightly disappointing is that he landed the rocket, right? Yeah. Okay, that sounded nuts and then he did it.

So, ideally, I'm not. I was thinking, oh, well, this sounds nuts. But he did land a rocket. So maybe I should be paying attention because he might have a good idea. And then he was like, space. Yeah, he had some ideas. He did have some ideas. He did say the restaurant would be fun on the spaceship.

Yeah. And like the zero G, the gravity stuff. I was like, oh, man. The thing that I liked is like, whatever anybody talks about going to Mars, it's like, you know, it's a South Park joke. I'm like, we should go to Mars. We'll have a bunch of innovation. And then we'll be on Mars and it'll be great. And, like, he at least takes a stab at filling in that middle human innovation step.

Yeah. He didn't fill in the money step. He didn't fill in, like, keep humans alive step. Like, there's a bunch of other stuff he didn't fill in. But it's very rare to see somebody say, this is an insane thing. Here are some actual, like, achievable steps to get there. Usually it's like, you know, it's like when George Bush said we were going to space or going to Mars. They were like, yeah, we should go.

go to Mars and then like moved on in the state of the union. Well, how do we, how? Well, so that was, that was interesting. Like that, the reason that that got killed was because somebody did a budget estimate. And it was like $500 billion. And they were like, nope, next. And, but like, you know, to me, I think, again, guy had some thoughts about fuel and rockets, which, again, so did Von Brown.

I mean, like, he literally made the Saturn 5 that got us to the moon. Like that was his invention. So like, you know, no slouch this guy. But, you know. There's a lot of middle stuff. There's a lot of middle stuff. And like it's scary, difficult to solve. And particularly watching him wave off, Lauren's like radiation question just kind of made me feel bad.

Yeah. Well, it's not that big of a deal. It's just radiation. It's just, it's just biology. That's easy to solve. Right. And then we should, we got to move on. But like my favorite of all of the handwaves was like not even a hand wave.

It was like a video handwave. It's like he made the teaser video. And there's all the steps. It's like first booster ignites, booster returns, fuel ship, ship goes, ship lands on Mars. And then like the picture of Mars just starts spinning. Yeah. And as it spins, it like gains greenery on the surface of the planet. And an atmosphere develops.

And it's like, you know, you can't just spin it fast. Well, no, he's assuming that when we get to Mars, we'll find the technology of an ancient alien civilization, and then Arnold Schwarzenegger will hit the button, and then the atmosphere will form. It's very easy. And I'm going to give you all. By the way, spoiler alert. Some spoilers. You haven't seen total recall. I'm going to give you spoilers from Red Mars.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. What a good book. Underrated. Kim Stanley Robinson. Yeah. I mean, that's why I always think about the radiation. When they're flying to Mars, there's like a solar event, and they're like, okay, everybody get in the lead line box.

And then like, I think somebody doesn't. Yeah. And then something bad happens to the people. And then they have to live underground for a while until they get more technology. But I think in that series, they like take a thing in space. What are they called? Are we talking about? A comet, asteroids, meteors.

Just name anything. A thing with a lot of ice that is not Mars, but around. mere Mars. A moon? And they slam it into Mars. Okay. And that's one of the ways they jumpstart the terraform because they get a lot of atmosphere in there.

Yeah. I mean, I've heard, is this true that the rumors are his, his plan is to detonate fusion bombs at the poles of Mars to unlock the eyes? I mean, I think that's what he told Stephen Colbert. I mean,

it's just like, that was my favorite part of this whole event. It was like watching that video and at the very end, like, like the CGI effect of like Mars getting atmosphere happened. And I was like, you're really glossing over some work. You know, that's also like,

we have planetary protection laws. And like, again, I am an optimistic dork, and I don't think it's impossible that there are like, there are bacteria on Mars somewhere, maybe frozen in the ice, maybe it's part of Mars's history, I don't know. I don't think it's impossible

that there was once, and maybe still is life on Mars. Like, not necessarily, like, big multicellular life, but, like, bacteria still count. And if we terraform Mars, we run the risk of just completely destroying all of that before we can study it. And also, you know, beyond that, like, Kim Stanley Robinson, again, like his most recent book, oh, I'm blanking on the name. Aurora? Yeah.

Yeah. So good. It's possible that those things, like, if we terraform and we're walking around out there, just breathe in the air, like, we die because those things, it turns out maybe are harmful. to us. And on that note, I'm going to read an advertising. Can I say one more thing? Yeah. I didn't know it was called the South Park joke.

The Prophet joke? Yeah. It comes from South Park. It's the Underpants Dome joke. Question mark. Profit. Yeah. South Park.

Yeah. I think South Park might have like, took it from the... I'm going to look up the history of the Underpants Dome. And on that note, I'm going to read this ad. Casper is a sleep brand that created one perfect mattress sold directly. to consumers, eliminating commission-driven inflated prices. Its award-winning sleep service was developed in-house, has a sleep design, and is delivered in small, how do they do that-size box? In addition to the mattress, Casper also offers an adaptive pillow and soft, breathable sheets.

An in-house team of engineers spent thousands of hours developing the Casper. It combined spring latex and supportive memory phones for a sleep service that's got just the right sink and just the right bounce. Plus, its breathable design sleeps cool to help you regulate your temperature through the night. Mattresses can often cost well over $1,500, but can, Casper mattresses cost just $500 for a twin-size mattress, $600 for a twin XL, $750 for a full, $8.50 for a queen, and $9.50 for a king. And buying a Casper mattress is completely risk-free. Casper offers free delivery and free returns with a hundred-night home trial. If you don't love it, they'll just pick it up and refund you everything.

Casper understands the importance of truly sleeping on a mattress days before you commit, especially considering you're going to spend a third of your life on it. Time magazine named Casper one of the best invention in 2015. There's free shipping and returns to the U.S. and Canada, and it's made in America. So you can get $50 towards any mattress purchase by visiting www. caspere.com slash verge and using the offer code, Verge. Terms and conditions apply. So while Neal I was reading that ad, I just quickly looked up the Wikipedia page for the Mars trilogy. I think they slammed phobos.

I was on the Wikipedia page for Gnomes, parentheses, South Park. Phobos? Because there's like two moons of Mars? Yeah, there's like a, there's a moon and a military complex. And so, like, they cut the space elevator, there's bombardment, and that, like, I think that's what, yeah, that's the beginning of terraforming. They had, like, a bunch of, like, they, early in the book, they put a bunch of, like, automated, like, robots who make these, like, machines all over the planet just pumping out greenhouse gases. I was surprised Elon's plan wasn't first to fly hundreds, if not thousands of robots to Mars to accomplish. something. I need to get the people there.

I need to get robot like minions. Like I need to have robot minions that I can fly to the moon and assemble a moon base. That's what I need. That's what I was expecting something like that. Please give me like trillions of dollars to accomplish this. Are you a moon first proponent? Yeah, I think it's a better way to test the technology we would need for survival. So like it's also a really cool place to refuel because there's a lot less gravity there.

So, I mean, Lauren is actually the person who convinced me of this. She wrote this great big op-ed that was like, it's time to go back to the moon. And I was like, not sure I believed it. And then I read the op-ed. And I was like, the lady makes a good case. I love the moon. I would go to the moon. I would not go to Mars.

Would you go to Mars? Would you be one of these first people to go to Mars? I wouldn't be one of the first people to go to Mars. But, yeah, I mean, given the opportunity. Like, dude, what do I do with my vacations? What do you do with your vacation? I guess, like, that's a choice. No, but I mean, like, I'm the person who's like, all right, guys, I'm going to go hype

up the side of a volcano for a long three-day weekend. I'll see you later. Right. I'm going to go to the rainforest for a bit. I'll be back eventually. It's true. Liz does say I'll be back eventually. It's very disturbing. Would you go to Mars? What would I do? I have no Mars relevant skills. It's like just to go. Do y'all need a website on Mars? I'm your man. I would not, I don't think I have been prepared to accept the risk of just like, straight up dying from cancer and avoid away from my family.

I'd be down for straight up dying of cancer and avoid away from my family. That's fine. I just want nothing to offer. You just want to be useful? Yeah. We're getting... This is such a window into Dieter's like essential Protestantism.

Like, Minnesota man hates self for not being useful on Mars. Okay. Would you go to Mars? Yes. I have planned my life around I'm trying to get really good at programming, and then I'll be making robots, and then I'll

have a really cool robotics company around the time. We're ready to go to Mars, and you'll need robotics experts. See, there you go. Paul's thinking ahead. I'm ready for this. But I do want to be useful, but I'd go even if I was. Okay. I'm saying if we lived in the world where it was like, now Mars tourism is a thing, I would still, like,

definitely hesitate. I feel like that would be, like, a stunt journalism piece that I would definitely pitch to the verge. I'm going to Mars. It's only going to cost you guys to $100,000. Yeah. And some other more money. But that's the cost of the ticket. Some other more money.

All right. There's some other tech news happening in this world. We can run through it. Paul, you actually made a Facebook video today about this. Blackberry announced that it's done making phones. It's just going to rebrand other people's boring phones. Yeah. It's going to do sad things.

although apparently CEO said that they will do another keyboard they will they're gonna get somebody in the next in the coming year who said who said this

the CEO of Blackberry they're gonna be another Blackberry with a keyboard right so now they just make Android phones right but they're like spruce stuff security the pretext a keyboard but that's their design

it's their design but like Foxconn made the thing like Yeah, but like the, what is it? The D-Tech 50 is just like, it's straight up rebrand of another phone. Yeah. But like all these companies make phones that, like, they try some prototypes out that don't get released. So, like, I mean, how deeply nerdy can I get? A hundred percent.

You know what company I'm going to mention right now? Is it palm? It is. Yeah, okay. Go ahead. I knew it before you started. Android, the original, if you remember the prototypes for Android way back in the day, they looked like BlackBerry's. Yeah.

They did not have big full touchscreens. They had little keyboards on them. And HTC made one of those prototypes. And it was going to be the first Android phone until the iPhone came out. And then everybody went, oh, shit. That's not going to work. And so HCC is like, yeah, good point. And they threw it in the bin.

And then later, Palm didn't know how to make anything themselves at the moment because they were trying to build the pre the next generation thing, although at the time they were probably still spinning their wheels on cobalt. Anyway, he knows that all. They went over to HTC and they're like, hey, you know, we got to release another Windows phone. This trio 700W is not cut the mustard. It's like 15 feet thick. And HTC said, well, here's the stuff we've got in the garbage bin.

And one of the things they had in the garbage bin was that prototype they had to be the first Android phone. And Palm said, actually, yeah. Give us that. And then they did some palmy things to it. They adjusted the keyboard to that gel keyboard that works so well in the Centro and, you know, changed a few other things and stuck a Wi-Fi button on the side because what you really wanted is a physical button to toggle your Wi-Fi. And it became the Trio Pro, which was, honestly, a lovely, lovely little phone. I loved the Trio Pro.

It was really good. It was such a confusing phone, but I loved it. What was confusing? I mean, other than the Wi-Fi button, it was great. It's just its whole design was confusing. Because it was like, you know, a thing. Anyway. Yeah.

So anyway, so. So you're saying BlackBair and I'll rate the garbage bin? Keyboard phone. Like, they probably will and they may push the design for it. But like the spectrum of like company makes phone runs all the way from like they own the whole stack. They own the factories themselves to they design it. They tell a factory exactly what to do to they have an idea. They go to a fact, a company that can make stuff and they work together.

have figured out to they grab something with the garbage bin and tweak it to they just rebrand a thing. What they're doing right now is just rebranding thing. Right. So what I'm saying is on that spectrum of phone creation and like we made a phone, like I, if rebranding an Alcatel phone is a 10 and

owning the factories is a 1, BlackBerry used to be at 1, now they're at 10. I'd be shocked if they went below like a 7. Yeah. Okay, but like what if they just did the blackberry bold and updated everything inside yeah they tried that it's called the black great classic and nobody bought it yeah it turns out people want big screens and no keyboards there's like a small group of people who want a keyboard and the blackberry pro it ran android right right the black pro priv was the first the privs ran android they haven't they haven't made an android phone with a keyboard that's just a solid i mean there's the there's the the there's the the the You're thinking of the passport. I'm thinking of the passport. Yeah. Right.

I just think the operating system of the pro, like, it just doesn't hold up. Yeah. Right? Like, it's a BB10 phone. Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking of the passport. Man, they just blew it with these operating systems.

I mean, this is the company that decided that apps were so unimportant that they would, they just needed tonnage. Right? Do you remember this quote? Tonnage? Tonnage. They built an Android compatibility layer into BB10 so that you could run Android apps on it because we need app tonnage. That was the word they used. I don't know that word. That's great.

It's a great word. I'm just trying to keep all their devices straight right now. I'm looking at the Trio Pro, and I had no idea that it was a reworked version of this HDC because it does not look like the HTC. Yeah. No, I know. It looks way different. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. So there's that. Some more sad gadget. news in this world. Androidware had some stumbles today. They haven't been having stumbles for a while now. Yeah. So the stumbles today, and I know Dieter has some deep thoughts about this.

Google announced Android Wear 2.0 is delayed until next year. And Androidware phones not doing so great with the iPhone 7. Android watches. Android, right. What's wrong with me today? Can I ask a very stupid question? Yeah. What is Androidware?

It's Android smart watch. Oh, okay. Thank you. Yeah, there it is. It's supposed to work with iPhones. It's supposed, and it did, and it still works with the iPhone 6. Everyone thought there's like an iOS 10 bug, but apparently still works fine on successes. Specifically, the iPhone 7 does not work great with Android watches.

Yeah. And they're delaying their platform for next year. So, and you are full of deep emotions here. So I feel like for a hot minute, especially when the first version of the Apple Watch came out, that Android watches had a lead. They had a moment, where they like, they had a smarter system. it was more focused. It couldn't, it would still slow on apps just like the Apple Watch, but it wasn't

as dependent on those apps. It was like watch faces, notifications, just a little side of health. And let's make it work on lots and lots of different watches that look different. And they like, they could have built on that lead. And instead what happened was everybody bailed.

Samsung bailed and made, you know, the Gear S2 and whatever. Nobody else is good at making the watches. and they got like fossil involved in a few other companies. The Nixon one looks like cool. Yeah. But then things have started to like really, really, really stall. And they kept on getting bigger instead of smaller.

And then, you know, they announced Ware 2.0 and like there's a lot of interesting things in Ware 2.0. But it's still not as fitness focus as the Apple Watch. But that's fine because they added a bunch of complications. And it would be able to work with apps with the iPhone. because it could directly connect to the internet over Wi-Fi and a bunch of, like, a bunch of, like, promising ideas. And then we knew that there was this new chip coming, which is now here, which would make it run faster and last longer, also promising. And instead, the platform is delayed a whole bunch of their core Android manufacturers said, yeah, now we're taking a pass for the rest of the year, so there won't be new watches for holiday except for, like, the Nixon and the fossil. And, like, the whole platform is, like, a big shruggy.

and in the meanwhile Apple completely revamped their software platform and made it really good. So I'm wearing a series two this thing is delightful. Yeah. They like it's fun in like a gadgety fun way. Like the draw letters on the thing to send a text message

super useless but incredibly fun. Google did that with emoji first and then like they were at they added like a keyboard and whatever to the 2.0 platform like they had some good ideas. They had didn't have the fitness stuff, and they're just, like, not doing it, and they're getting

lapped by Apple. I mean, like, this thing, I think I figured it out. The first version of this watch, it, like, it was so confusing that it made me frustrated and angry to wear it, and, like, I think that kept people from wearing it. And this one is such a gadget, like, in such a deeply nerdy gadget way, that I just enjoy fucking with it, which is all it needs to do. Right. Like, now I'm like, what else can I do with it?

because I just like, I just like poking at it. And that's like such a victory for this platform compared to before when you would like push the button and be like, do you want to send your heartbeat to someone? And I'm like, no, I definitely don't want to do that again. But now I'm like, yeah, I definitely want my fantasy football garbage on here. Like, it's dumb. Yeah. It's definitely dumb. But it's dumb in such a like encouraging way.

Right. That like the best gadgets are. Like I want to find more reasons to use it as opposed to thinking there's no reason. to use as a point you know what it you know you're gonna hate me for saying this yeah it reminds me the chumby in that fun dumb way like the chubby was slow and bad but like if you don't remember the chubby it was a

nightstand that ran flash but it had a screen on it it was an alarm clock that's what it was sat on your nightstand and you could like put widgets on it to like do cute fun little internet things in like an alarm clock and like a little like you can put the radio on it and like do all kinds of like fun stupid things Sony made it chummy. It was a whole platform.

And it was cute. And, like, yeah, it was like a fun thing to play with. Yeah. And, like, you, like, you enjoyed figuring out how to do weird things on it. Yeah. But so then on top of that, on top of the fact that the platform is now fun, Apple's, like, things are happening with the watch that are really interesting. So, Eater ran a story today. Shake Shack, not Shake Shack. Take Shack. Cut this. Yeah. Eater ran a story today that's Union Square House Pellier, which is a big fancy restaurant group. and Shake Shack.

So Danny Meyer. Was it ShakeShack or in and out? It's Shake Shack. Okay. So Danny Myers, two big restaurants groups, Shake Shack, Union Square Hospitality. A bunch of their managers and Somaliers and people are going to start wearing Apple Watches. So if you show up at like a fancy Danny Meyer restaurant in New York and you're like, wait too long to get a drink, the hostess will get a beep on her wrist. Or the Somalié will know that like he hasn't been by to talk about the wine and like their wrist will beep.

It's shake shack if you show up with a big party, like they all get alerted. the big parties. It's like they're doing, like the way that Google Glass found its home in enterprise for like assembly line workers wearing Google Glass and seeing a thing, the Apple Watch is starting to find that home in like service industries,

which is when I talk to people out where they were wearing Apple Watches before, it was always people who were on their feet all day who are like, I can't use my phone. Like I need to run around. It's super useful to have this information on my wrist. And now corporations are trying to roll it out. I know Liz has a lot of thoughts on this.

Let me say the other story. because we talked about it earlier. And then Aetna, the insurance company, is now going to give people like discounts, basically. They're going to pay people to wear the Apple Watch and, like, be healthy. Which is terrifying in one way

and also like exactly the future that was predicted in another way. And then I'm just going to say Snapchat Spectacles in that list of them. I just, I don't want to wear a computer on my body. And it's like all of this stuff, oh man, I'm probably going to get in trouble for saying this. It makes me feel.

really sympathetic to Ted Kaczynski, which is not a position I want to be in. Wow. Nazis and Ted Kaczynski. That's where we are. How's it going? How you doing? You haven't fun on the VERSCast yet? No, but I mean, like, you know, he talked about how, like, technology can be really alienating.

And aside from, like, bombing people, like, if you read the manifesto, like, some of the stuff he has to say is a pretty perceptive critique of technology. Like, the ways in which it can be used as a force of social control. a way to manipulate people. And like, Etna is a perfect example, right? Like, you can see that going down a, like, a route where it's like, either you agree to be constantly monitored by your health insurance company in an increasingly complex way that, like, you know, like blood pressure,

any of a variety of other things that, like, maybe as these sensors get better, you can do. Or you pay extremely high premiums, and those are your options. Like, you're either constantly surveilled by your insurance company, which doesn't seem that cool to me, or you have to pay to have some privacy, and those are your options. And, like, the Snapchat spectacles, my God, I hate them.

I hate them. Hey, guys. Either you got to pay money to buy the gadget to get the discount, or you got to pay more. They'll give you the gadget for free. Maybe. All I'm saying is, like,

one more reason that if you use Android instead of the iPhone and you're a second class, That's what I'm saying. So Google can watch you at all times? Along those lines, I wrote a seminal piece about Google Glass in, like, 2012. Oh, my. And everybody should read it because it keeps on coming true. Well, basically, I don't remember what's called.

It was called Paul Seminole piece on Google Glass. I had a feeling about Google Glass once. Definitely super not Googling that. Google Glass Seminole. It's not going to go well for you, buddy. Project Glass and the epic history of wearable computers. So... Wait, did you get a result?

I did a site search. But I did include similar in it. When they were developing wearables, there was already like this pushback against this like corporate design for them. And like if you think about what this restaurant idea is, is that, oh, we have all these loosey-goosey. humans who like to do stupid things with their time. I wish our humans were more like robots or software so I could tweak variables and...

It's Taylorism. Push... What's Taylorism? Oh, God. Having Dieter and Liz on this podcast is on time is just like... Taylorism in the 1930s was like the original time when like they met... People thought that they could measure literally everything you did during the day. And so they would optimize the workplace and like move this thing three inches that way.

and like make sure that every single movement of every single worker was precisely and perfectly out of time. It's a guy in cheaper by the dozen. Oh man. I love that book. Yeah. I was like, I love this idea. Okay, so here's the thing.

I hate that coming from the coming, especially in this sense that like our, we can turn our human workers into robots. But I love having a computer on me if it could make me smarter. If I was an employee and a computer was augmenting my intelligence and awareness so that I could do a better, better at my job. I'm really intrigued by that. But yeah, this idea that it's coming down from on high. And, you know, my other complaint with Google Glass is all about taking your real life

and being better at uploading it to the internet and better at referencing the internet to do your real life. It was such a Google concept of the future. And that's my, I think the Snap, Snap, someone says, it's snapticles. They should have been called snapticles. The Snap, Snap Incorporated spectacles. Yeah. Are fine and really fun

because it's just another way to take pictures. It's a real gift to the upskirt community, I think. Oh. Yeah, but they're gross. They're on your face, though. Yeah, on your face and their lights are going to be on. You have to work pretty hard to be unnoticed while you take creep shots.

I mean, right now, I saw somebody taking creep shots on the subway the other day. And, like, you just, you pulled up your phone like you're looking at something really closely. Oh, yeah. You're taking a picture. You can be taking a picture while you do that. But you, I've seen it. You can see when people are, like, on their phone and they're like, I'm on my phone. Totally just texting right now.

It's right up and then I'm back down. Right. So the thing with the watch, which I think, so there's two threads here, and we should talk about. We're going to get it all. We should talk about spectacles, and then we've got to do another quick segment. And we got to end this thing. The thing with the watch is that Google stalled. And it feels like Apple's on an upswing.

Because the thing is fun to use again. Again, for the first time, fun to use. And other people are starting to find uses for it. And as an app platform, it is now viable. You can put an app on here and it will work. Right. Right. And so the whole Union Square Hospitality, ShakeShack thing,

is there's a company called Rezi, which is, it started as like pay-to-reserve restaurant, and now they have the ResiOS, which is like the operating system for restaurant. Come on. This is where we live. This is our time, 2016.

Okay. And so, like, they run the Rezzi app on the watch, and so the Rezi app does all the stuff for it. But you couldn't do that on the first one. You still couldn't do it an Androidware. Right. So now as a platform for smartwatches, Apple's in the lead,

and they're, like, accelerating away. Yeah. And whether or not the stuff is good or bad or constantly surveilling you. Like, insurance companies, plug a computer into your car and watch how you drive to lower your rates. Like that's already a world that we live in. It is.

Now it's just like your heart rate. Like I would wear this. If I would let my doctor look at stuff and be like, yo buddy, heart attack coming. Like there's a world in which I would actually allow that to happen. I suspect there more people would make that choice than not. But we, if you force the incentives of that choice to be bad, then you're in a bad place. But like you shouldn't assume that. You shouldn't assume that the incentives are going to be good, right?

No, absolutely not. You shouldn't assume that people are going to maintain control of the computers on their bodies. No. You shouldn't assume a lot of things. I don't assume that my parents will maintain control of the computers and they're living there. Let's be clear. Like, yes, I am very aware that computers can get away from. I love self-driving cars as a technological problem.

I think they're fascinating. But I am increasingly becoming concerned that these are like a new, vector to just basically you know like we decided when we decided to do martial law today we decided to turn off all your cars

yeah yep you know and like it's just it's just like people who are excited about not just self-driving cars but also eradicating human drivers seems scary to me I don't know if they want to literally eradicate the human drive

they do they don't they don't literally want to eradicate the humans if you make a steering wheel shaped with your hands in a self-driving car, it eliminates you. It's like threat. System threat detected. So we should, I just, Spectacles.

Yeah. And I just want to touch on it. So Snapchat last week, last Friday, announced spectacles. They changed the name of the company, Snap Inc. They're a camera company now. They're these glasses. They're round. They look crazy.

They look like fun, but they're crazy. They're round. They take circular video. They upload it to a phone. So you can watch it on your circular screen. What's the Motorola phone with the circular screen? Oh, the aura. Oh, yeah.

There it is. The most. Yeah, I know. Urban outfitters looking. Yeah, they come in like rape colors. All the pictures, all the models and all the photos. Everybody's naked. That's the rule.

You can't wear them with your clothes on. It's like Snapchat, just lean into it, guys. Just get in there. Sex with glasses on. That's what we're doing here at Snapdank. Anyway. I guess you all just. It was just like girl skateboarders.

What are you guys looking at? The stills. The stills are all nude people. It's all like, it's shots like from, I was going to say from here up, but I realize this is audio only. So from the shoulders up and the shoulders are bare. Yeah. So it gives you the appearance of everybody shows.

It's a bunch of well-toned men wearing tube tops. You just can't see the tubes. Anyway. I did pick up on the horrible video quality of the skate video. But so Liz and I were like Liz, you're, you're, you hate this idea. I hate all of it. Explain why. Yeah. Well, there are a couple of things. I hate the idea and it's becoming increasingly a thing that we have decided as a society that we want to do

that I have to be prepared to be viewed every single time I leave the house, right? Like, I'm a slob. Like, that's just, that's a well-known fact, right? Like, I'm not well-dressed. I don't really wear makeup. And I sometimes just leave the house in like, you know, the clothes I slept in. And like, I don't think about my appearance that hard. And all of these things have to have to do with like your, your appearance and how you look and potentially you are being like the background into somebody's

story or like there are all of these moments where like somebody uploads a photo of someone is like, can you believe this person? Yeah. And it's like, I don't, I'm like, I don't want to be on view all the time or like be ready to be on call for being on view all the time and like I just don't want to be surrounded, you know, by by cameras constantly. And you know, I know there are going to be people who are like, too bad. That's the world you live in now. Or how is this difference from surveillance cameras? And like surveillance cameras have an obvious use and like they're also not very good. And like that makes sense to me. They're not for social sharing. Right. Like this is not one of those things where like I have to think about like, okay, like I know I'm going to be going into the office and

Peter's going to be wearing his stupid Snapchat glasses. He's going to be like snapping me to God knows who, like especially if I make a weird face. So like I need to just have my, it's like a world. It's a very self-conscious world. Yeah. So it was, Liz, I'm just recapping this conversation earlier. What got to me about that comment was if you, if you come at this problem from a totally other perspective, which is we're going to enhance your brain so that you have a better memory. You have a photographic memory, which is basically what Snapchat's trying to do, only the Snapchat stuff disappears.

Like, the combination of elements here make this, to me, a very confusing, like, cultural artifact. Like, it's a camera for making things that go away, right? It's not a camera for, like, Google's purpose, which is constantly record the world around you and start them in the cloud for easy reference later. Put it on Google Plus. Yeah, the best social network of them all. And that, to me, kind of changes the calculus. when it's, I want to share with some people, some limited set of people,

what I'm seeing for just a fleeting moment. But you do keep it on your phone forever now. Oh, you do? Yeah. Oh, screw that. This thing is garbage. So it's fleeting for your audience on. But if it's stored, then it's not fleeting.

If everything you see, if you could turn on spectacles and it would share Snapchat style, you can watch it for 60 seconds and it's gone, that changes to me the calculus of either can. on my face. Liz, what about this? A computer you wear on your body at all times broadcasts a beacon that says,

I'm opting out of Facebook and Google Plus posts. You're allowed to put this on Snapchat. And if somebody takes a picture of you with a camera and they attempt to put it up to Facebook or Google Plus, you're like just a silhouette. And then on Snapchat, you show up. What about instead of a computer that broadcasts a beacon? you can have like a brown lanyard, a black lanyard, a black, you know, patch.

Yeah, interesting. All cameras by law have to have optical recognition. And then when they see that black patch, they do not take your photo. That would be great. What would be even better is if some technologically inclined person listening to this podcast who felt like a little sympathetic to me were to build something that would just, like, fritz out all cameras around me. You just want an EMP? Yeah.

That is what I want. Someone's some lizard EMP. Like a blister pack of the MPs like TicTex. Extremely limited like, you know. Range EMPs. It's just a tiny nuclear bomb. Just a little guy. They're like, gum, like Triton. You're just like pop one out of the pack.

But yeah. Okay. I think what happens with spectacles is, I don't know. I mean, they're cheap. They're 120 bucks. People love Snapchat. They will, they will do better than Google Glass. And I actually understand why Snapchat just couldn't build a camera

because you have a great camera that their app runs on in your phone all the time. So they had to come up with another form factor and make that splash. But are people going to accept cameras on faces? I think still an open question. Right? Like I think it will be a novelty.

People will like give them away for Christmas. Will they actually wear them? Will they charge them at night? I think it's inherently hostile to wear a camera on your face. Yeah, I think a lot of people are going to ask that question. Anyway, let me read this ad. and then Paul, there's a thing you usually do. Anyway.

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All right. It's time for our recurring segment. Paul. Do it this week. What? Oh, you son. This is a thing I do every week where I do the thing I was supposed to do. No, I got all excited about, like, talking to Lauren and then, like, setting that up,

and then we talked, and then. Well, I got one. What's a segment called that Paul does every week? Every week it's Paul who does it, and every week it's called. Gadgetopia. Gadgetopia. Gotcha, buddy. Got you back.

But I have a gadget, too. Yeah. No, that's part of it. There's a name of the segment that it is every week, and then there's also a gadget I talk about. Where is the guy? Hold on. I got to get the name. I was ready.

No, we didn't put the name in the headline, so hold on. It's the fuse case for the iPhone 7. Oh, is that the one that gives you It gives you a headphone jack It's a battery case with a headphone jack I'll say this battery case It's also an Indigo Go Go Go project It's an Indigo project

I mean it is the worst video of all time Rock Out with your ox out is their tagline The band takes off most of his shirt during the video Because it's like a rock star It's the hell of it's bad What would happen with tech devices and shirt? What would happen if everybody I've ever talked to in my entire life? I bought a Blu-ray player.

I wasn't wearing a shirt within 20 minutes. What happened if everybody in my entire life happened to be in a frat and then I decided to make an Indiegogo project? That video is what would happen. It's not a good video. There's a lot of Indiegogo. I feel like that's a big Indiegogo fuel. Yeah. But anyway, it's the thing that you need.

Yep. It's a thing that you need. It's a battery case. It's got a battery case. It's got a 2,400 million-amp hour battery for a 7 and a 36-0-a-m-amp hour battery for the 7-plus. It charges via lightning, which seems like Apple will shut it down. It's basically a Mofi with headphone jack. And I'm sure Mofi will release one of these soon in this company.

Do you guys have 7? So you have 7 or 7 plus? I don't have one yet. I have a 6-S, bro. Oh, yeah. Staking with it? Dude, I'm, yeah, I'm a man of principle. All right.

I am. I'm 6-S. Yeah. That is 5? That is definitely a 5. Yeah. That's five. I am loving.

How's your battery life? That's what I want to know. The dongle life. Stop with the don't. Do you still just have the thing hanging on there? Always. We're not going to talk with dongles. I just want to know how your battery life is.

It's great. Okay. It's all I need. And I've never been in a scenario yet where I was like, man, I wish I could use headphones. Because the dongle is permanently plugged into your phone. No, no, no. What I mean? I haven't, because the other thing about these cases and these adapters.

Do you make phone calls with that thing hanging off the end? I don't make phone calls. All right, fine. No, I love that, so the dongle. Stop talking about the don't. Sticks up out of my pocket. See, it's like a little lanyard so you can grab it? Yeah.

Oh my God. So you can like plug in your headphones without taking your phone out. This is 100% Stockholm syndrome. What you were describing a stock. He's like, yes, I'm confined to a cage, but they feed me macaroni and cheese. Like, that's what you're saying right now. Remember how phones used to have that little hook on them? then you could like put like a little keychain or a landiered or whatever.

I don't remember this. It was a whole thing. Flip phones had a little loop. Fuzzy dice. Yeah. There's all sorts of things. And you could buy a higher chains of things. I just don't remember it.

Sometimes it wasn't big in this country. It's more of a Japanese thing. Yeah. Yeah. But then Palm had them. Everybody had them. But that's what this is to me. It's like, it's just like a little, hey, this is where we're going.

Someday there will be, had, wireless headphones, that'll be great. For now, you. you can plug in your headphones that you love into this. It's everything's fine. I haven't lost it. Everything's fine. I haven't lost it because you leave it plugged into your phone. That's ridiculous.

Yes. And then at night, I unplug it from my phone, but I plug it into my headphones, and then I charge my phone. And I have plenty. Right now, this is a two-day phone. Wow. I haven't had for a while, and I'm really appreciating that. Okay. Okay.

It's just everyone take an emotional beat. I know that was rough for everyone. Data, I want you to do a one minute next week, October 4th, huge Google event. Yeah. Lots of stuff going on. Give me your preview. So there's been just a gazillion rumors. We are expecting new phones.

We're expecting to be called the Pixel, not the Nexus. Yeah. We are expecting we'll finally get release dates for a bunch of the stuff that Google talked about in May. I.O., including the Google Home Speaker Assistant thing of a jig. Yeah. And Daydream VR. Ooh, that's a big one. Yep.

And there's a bunch of other rumors for a bunch of other little things. Yeah. I saw one. I saw mockups of Chromecast. I'm really hot on the Chromecast. It looks like it's like ChromeCast. But no Chrome logo. It's a Google logo.

Oh, okay. It seems like they're going to try to be a hardware. Yeah, well, the teaser is made by Google. So, like, it's going to be Google hardware. And it's just like the big Rick Austerlo. Yeah. He's the head of hardware Google.

Yeah. Also the man who murdered our Yeah. And also the man who who stares at the good ship nest with nothing but fire in his eyes. Right? They're going to do a made by Google event and they have a whole hardware company over there and they're like, you know what? You stay outside. Yeah. But we did a whole riff on

my thought about their little teaser video where the search box turns into a phone. Yeah. We did that already. Okay. There you go. The search box turns into a phone. Yeah. If you want to know what I think of it and you didn't hear that riff, just watch that video and ponder. Think on the search box transforming into a phone.

But I will say it was Hiroshi, Lachamer? Yes. He tweeted, like 10 years ago Android came out and this will be eight years ago. He tweeted eight years ago Android came out. This will be a day that is marked the same. And it's like, yeah, man. People talk about this in eight years. I was at the Android launch event.

And I remember now that Larry Page and Sergei Bryn came out on rollerblades. Yeah. Oh my God. That was like, that was like peak, Sergei. Yeah. Right.

He was like, you know what? Regular shoes are done. Like the planet. Every other time you see me, I'll be wearing a different kind of crazy shoe. This one has wheels in a lot of. Like that was like his whole thing. He's like, shoes are dumb. Yeah.

But no, Google's raising expectations. It's crazy. There's a lot of coverage tweet. There's like statues in Brooklyn. There's projections on the wall. There's commercials during Monday Night Football. So, yeah. They're going big.

I've also been researching the history of the Google phone. Yeah. Which was like the Nexus 1 was kind of called the Google phone because it was Google's first phone. They did such a bad job. What? The Nexus 1? I love the Nexus 1. It's a beautiful device.

Yeah. But they stopped selling it after about six months online. Yeah. They shut down their support for them, made it like read only and then like folded it into. to something else. Like, they had no support for it. There's, like, class action lawsuits about, like, the reception. It's just...

Had a trackball, though. Great trackball. It did have a trackball. It glowed different colors. Yeah, it did. Bring back the track ball and roller blades. No. Dude, it's a little tiny.

It's a little chubby, though. No, it's so... It just... It feels so wee. It feels so little. It's amazing. All the funds from that era, if he feels super tiny. Yeah.

Like, the original droid, you're like, I remember thinking that thing was a tank. and they held one again recently and I was like, aw. Yeah. All of our expectations of change. Original droid had bunches of magnets on the back. See, that's what we need. Magnets?

Crazy hardware innovation. Magnets, roller balls and rollerblades. Permanently attached. Tonsles. You want something memorable. Make me remember it. Yeah. When with that, we end the show.

I want to call out a big feature on the site this week that we'd have a chance to talk about. Ben Popper, Tom Conner. and was it Tyler? Tyler Pina went to China, went to DJI's big robot competition called Robo Wars. It is an amazing feature. It's Chinese college students competing in basically a battlebots tournament. And the prize is a job at DJI, which is like incredible. So read that, watch that video, it's really great.

Ben also got a scoop and then DJI, MAVIC Pro. They're super tiny. Foldable drone. Foldable drone, which is really cool. So check that out. I want to call that out. It was a big trip. There's a bunch of actually other reporting they did in China,

so you'll see a bunch of stories in that trip come out over the site, come out on the site over the next couple weeks, but Robo Wars was a big feature, so go check that out. Dieter, you can look at, you can look at his tweets. At Backlon.

Liz is at MS. Lepato. Yeah, Ms. Lepado. Ms. Lepado, if you will. Paul is at Future Paul or Futuri Paul? Future Paul. By the way, it's Rise of the Robo Masters. Rise of the Robo Masters. It's the name of the future.

You got to read it. Also, I see it. search for Paul Miller Google Glass Seminal, and it said, did you mean Paul Miller Google Glass seminar? Yeah. And it's actually, Paul did record a two-hour college seminar about Google Glass

in his 201 level of course. I was real afraid of where that was going to go, but it turned out okay. I was also terrified. I'm at Reckless on Twitter. You can follow at Verge in Twitter. You can hit us on Snapchat, Verge, Instagram Verge. Verge Science on Twitter, at Verge Science. Tons of stuff there. I'm supposed to thank Andrew Marino, our producer

who is not here producing the show. Mark. So don't know why you put that note in Paul. But Mark's doing a great job in dealing with a bunch of edits. Also, there are tons of other stuff to listen to you. What's Tech hits every Tuesday with Chris Plant. Control, Delete. It was actually one year anniversary of Control Walt Delete this week.

Wow. Me and Walt. That is out. You can go check it out. On the recode side, Lauren Good has too embarrassed to ask. Karras Swisher has Recode decode. And Peter Kafka has Recode Media, which is one of my very favorites. All that stuff is iTunes.com slash The Verge.

That's it for our show. Rock and roll. Thank you.