The Vergecast - The real price of a free TV

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

This week, everything is a HomePod. And has ads. The Verge’s Jen Pattison-Tuohy joins the show to talk about all of Amazon’s new hardware, the current state of Alexa Plus, and whether the new Kindle Scribe is the one we’ve been waiting for. Then, The Verge’s Emma Roth tells Jen and David about her experience with Telly, the TV that ships to your house for free in exchange for showing you ads all the time. Telly may not be for everyone. Finally, in the lightning round, the gang talks about a handy new Spotify feature, Emma’s first Waymo ride, and the glory that is Chunk. Further reading: Amazon’s 2025 hardware event: the 8 biggest announcements Here’s where to preorder all of Amazon’s new Alexa devices and when they arrive Amazon finally did the damn hardware right Amazon’s new Echo Dot Max smart speaker bumps up the bass Alexa Plus is smarter — but it’s not yet smart enough Alexa Plus on the TV is made to save you from your phone  Alexa Plus is smarter — but it’s not yet smart enough Alexa Plus on the TV is made to save you from your phone  Amazon sticks two cameras together for the 180-degree Blink Arc The new Google Home Speaker is built for Gemini Hey Google, meet Gemini: the new voice of your smart home | The Verge I spent three months with Telly, the free TV that’s always showing ads OpenAI made a TikTok for deepfakes, and it’s getting hard to tell what’s real Spotify now lets you exclude specific songs from your algorithm All hail the new Fat Bear Champion Ring launches upgraded cameras with ‘Retinal Vision’ 4K recording Microsoft is giving Copilot AI faces you can chat with Waymo adds YouTube Music Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Do you ever wonder what's in your lotion? If you look at the back of the bottle, it could contain more than a dozen ingredients.

And they may not all be regulated. The threshold is so high that only 11 cosmetic ingredients have been restricted by the FDA since 1938. This week on Explain It to Me, the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Virchcast, the flagship podcast of the HomePod Mini, because apparently it's 2025 and everything is the whole pod mini. Jen Tooey's here. Hi, Jen.

Hi, David. Yes, it's all about round fabric wrapped balls. This is just what we do now. We have one video app. We have one idea about phones. We have one idea about AI and we have one idea about speakers. And then this is what we do. So you are in our New York studio right now because you've been in New York doing just a truly wild like 48 hours. of smart home and speaker news. Yes. How are you holding up? I'm doing good. Yeah, I'm still on the high.

I'm still on the smart speaker high. That's good. I'm glad for you. So there's like a ton of news this week. So we have a big Amazon event, which we're going to spend a lot of time talking about. We have a bunch of Google stuff that also happened this week. Weird timing from Google on that front. We're going to talk about tele, the TV that I care more about than most reasonable things in my life.

We have some Microsoft news. We're going to talk about Sora. We're going to talk about all kinds of different stuff. There's just a lot to get to. We're going to get to all of it. But let's start with Amazon, because I think this was like the sort of gadget news of the week. You were there. You went to this event.

This is kind of an Amazon event we've been waiting for for a while. So Panos Penae, who ran devices and Windows at Microsoft for a long time, left to go to Amazon and basically, like, started making giant promises about the future of AI hardware. I think you and I have both talked to him in the intervening time. And you get a pretty clear sense that the idea was we are going to come out with a big swing about new ideas about what Alexa in particular is going to be. So you went to this event on Tuesday. I should say, we're recording this on Wednesday morning because again, scheduling is insane. We will be back to our normal time very soon and I'm very excited about it.

But tell me about the event. What were the vibes like in the room at this launch event? Yeah, yeah. So it was actually the same venue as the event they had in February when they announced the sort of revamped Alexa Plus. So it had very sort of similar vibes, looked very similar. Panos had his same sort of very strong personality. He really fills the room. And he came on stage.

There was nothing there. There was no set decoration or anything. It's very clean. and they had some little plinths on the side that were empty, so that we were like, okay, so at some point, hopefully something is going to appear. And sort of magically during the event, when they talked about each new piece of hardware, little devices popped up on the plinths.

So it was very nicely done. The vibes were actually a little low-key in a weird way to start with. But once we got going, it was more exciting because I think, we've all been waiting for some really interesting hardware, especially because So Panos started at Amazon almost two years ago now. So this, we were expecting a lot of this to have, really have his stamp on it. And talking to people at the event, it sounds like he'd brought in a number of people from Microsoft to help design these new devices, the new head of design and that the VP of Alexa and devices are both Microsoft alum who have moved to Amazon.

So, you know, I was, and Tom Warren asked me to ask him when he was going to put a floating hinge on an echo. So I was expecting, I was expecting a lot. And ultimately, I don't know, I'm not sure that what we got was necessarily like a whole new vision, but it was definitely a big jump up from where Amazon's hardware has been to date. talking with Panos afterwards, he said the key, and he didn't say difference because that would be mean to his predecessor, but I filled in the blank. The key difference is rather than starting from a price point, they started from, he said, what the customer needs. So a product that's going to fulfill what you need it to do, not just what Amazon was looking to provide, if that makes sense. So the Echo Show, device. in the past have been very interesting products. They filled an interesting space, often difficult to figure out exactly what they were meant to do. But they were interesting, but they were always very underpowered.

And like touching a touchscreen is something we're used to doing all the time and it should respond very quickly. And that is sort of, for me, the key takeaway from this is that touchscreen now on the Echo shows, so much better. I mean, it's like a tablet, not like a smart display. Yeah. Well, so let's actually start with those. So the four new devices, just for anybody who didn't follow the event, starting from the cheapest, I think I can do this off the top of my head. There's the Echo Dot Max, which is $100 and is now the sort of basic smart speaker. It is if you close your eyes and imagine a HomePod Mini, you're 95% of the way there. Especially if you put it up the other way. Just tilt it a little. Yes. And I think that's not to denigrant. I actually think the Echo. Max is the single most interesting of these devices. and we can come back to that.

Yeah. But then there's the Echo Show 8, which is $180. Uh-huh. And then the Echo Show, is it 10 or 11, the other one? Echo Show 11. 11, so it's the upgrade to what was the 10. Okay, so the 11 is the size of the screen. So the 8 is the 8 inch or 8 in a bit.

And yeah, so it's the Echo Show 11. Okay. And then. And then there's the Echo Studio. Yes. Which is 220 bucks, the same price as the Echo Show 11. Yes. And it's basically, it is designed to be the, like, great sounding speaker.

I think those really high-end smart speakers exist only for executives that work at that company, and no one buys them. That's just a theory that I've had for a long time. But I do think, I think you and I agree on something, which is that the best version of a smart speaker in 2025 probably has a screen. And so I think for that reason, the shows are the most interesting ones. So let's just start with those. Tell me about the, like, if you're starting from not just we have to make this thing as inexpensive and accessible to as many people as possible, but we want to make it good.

Yeah. What does that actually look like in the new shows? Yeah. So the screen is the key. And when these devices launched, the Echo Show was the first smart display. And then we had the Nest Hub. They were low cost, low component price. You know, they were trying to sort of be an easy to add to your home device.

I remember Google Home was giving away Nest Hub. Willie-nilly. And I think at a certain time, that made a lot of sense. It did. What you needed was to give people a reason to try this stuff. And I think for the first generation of smart speaker and smart device to just basically be like, throw it in with any box that is leaving your warehouse, which is like what both Google and Amazon did for a long time. Made a lot of sense. But I do think we have to be past that now.

So I think it is good that we seem to be pushing past that. Because and what they did just when they first came out, smart displays were just like a visual. cue for what you were talking to your assistant about. Now they're turning into more devices that you interface with to control things in your home for the smart home, but also, you know, you can watch TV on some of them. You can, you know, scroll through photos. You can interact with the voice assistant and like look up things and click and go to different aspects of the assistant. Like if you want to book tickets, those types of things. These are all things that Alexa Plus can do. So they really needed the hardware to be able to work, to have more power and

you to be able to do more because it was so frustrating you would ask it something and there would be something on the screen and you would sort of go to tap it or do something and it's like, you can't do that. You have to go to your phone. What are you thinking? So now this feels, I mean, it's not a laptop. It's not a tablet, but it feels much closer to that kind of an experience when you're interacting with it. Again, I literally spent five months. minutes tapping around. So this is all with a big caveat once I've actually got to test it. But from what I've seen so far, this is a big upgrade. It was faster. There's a new AZ3 pro processor that they're using. And also a huge upgrade here that none of the previous smart displays bar one

have managed to do is the thing can actually hear you. Because if you look at it, because if you look at smart display's design, they are a giant screen blocking a speaker. All of them. And when you try and talk to it, it can't hear you. I have to mute every other echo speaker in my home when I try and talk to a smart display echo because they just won't hear you. Interesting. The others will hear you first.

So what they've done here is they've lifted the screen up. It's now floating, which also makes the design look a little more modern than the older ones, top of this speaker. So in theory, your voice should be able to go to the speaker underneath and over the top and round the sides a little bit better. And there's this big oblong squashed HomePod mini-style speaker on the back. And the sound quality, I didn't get to hear this one, but I was told, is in between the Macs and the studio. So this is slightly better sound quality than the max, but not as good as the studio. So yeah, this new design with the kind of floating display, bigger speaker at the back, but that's more, that has a bit more shape, isn't just a big

bulbous bottom like most of them are. I mean, the Nest Hub had that a little bit. It's raised slightly, so there's a little bit of speaker below it, but there's a lot more room here. So, again, haven't tested this, but it looks like the design should be much better for voice control. Yeah. And there's some interesting ideas in all of that that I think you see across the whole line here. One is the processor, right? Like, they made a lot of noise about this AZ3 chip and the things it will enable and the speed at which it'll work and the way is that it will be able to, like, make this whole process more seamless, which is a huge deal, right? I think, like, you hear about the reason people churn out of these devices and one of the ones is that it sucks. And one of

the ones is that it's annoying, right? Like, the thing where it doesn't hear you is, is both like a physical microphone placement problem and a processing problem. And so, like, the work that they're doing to solve both of those things to just sort of solve one small annoyance at a time, I actually think is really exciting. And it's the same with the touchscreen. It's like you, I sort of expected this thing to have some like wild new like articulating robot arm and like the stuff we've been hearing about like what Apple might be doing this like, what if it spun 360 degrees to follow you around the room? And so it was actually just like it was a little bit surprising to see it just be like a speaker. But then you go through the list and it's like, oh, this is actually just

trying to poke at everything you actually do with this device all day and make it work a little bit better. And I feel like that is the precise, correct approach for this because it is like the smart home system, at least in my life, has been totally like death by a thousand cuts, right? And the way to solve it is not with some brand new idea about everything. It's just fix the damn problems. Make it work. Yes, definitely. And I think like that's, there's a lot of that in all of these, including things like mic placement. Like, I think we're right to be excited about mic placement because Like, when it can hear me, I will use it more. Exactly.

It matters. And there's also some other nice touches here. Like, Amazon has never been really great about the details with their hardware. And, like, these have fabric wrapped. That's a kind way of saying it. Yeah. These have fabric wrapped cables that, like, lay fat and they match the color of the speaker. So no more white cable with a black speaker.

That is nice. You know, those just sort of small little things. Like, there's a purple one. the Purple Nest Max Hub show. I'm going to be doing this all day. Sorry, too many, too many. The purple show, the purple dot max is very purple and has a purple cable. And that's just fun. It's like it's a small thing, but it really, you know, it just elevates the feel of the device.

And that's what these, these just feel more premium, better quality. They have the same kind of, I've learned a lot about 3D knit fabric in the last couple of But apparently, this is what is the best thing for speakers, and it's not something that any echoes had before. And they've brought it to this. This is also what gives it the HomePod mini feel. And the Google Home Speaker also has the same. So they all do really feel and look quite similar. But yeah, just more premium. The only thing I would say that people are going to potentially really not like about the new design is there is no physical camera shutter anymore. Oh, interesting.

And that was because, they said that was because, so it has much thinner bezels, which again, good, but that sacrificed the camera shutter, they say. But you still, when you press the mute button, it does turn off the camera. You just do not have that physical feeling that it's shuttered. And I know that some people do prefer that. That's such an interesting tradeoff because on the one hand, that's like, if the goal is just to sell more devices, I think that's pretty clearly the right tradeoff. like make it look nicer and sacrifice a thing that is like makes you feel good but doesn't necessarily have a huge impact on actual functionality of the device. Probably the right tradeoff.

But I am one of those people who has really, really appreciated the thing where I can switch a button and know that it is like, it is mechanically disconnected. And I think that is like important and valuable. Yeah. It does give you that peace of mind for sure. Yeah. And there's just something about these now. And I think like one of the other changes that they've made with a lot of these devices is

they're making the light rings easier to see from everywhere? Which I think is a big upgrade. Oh, I totally agree. Love that. And you don't have to sort of lean over the speaker to see if it's... You can actually reach the buttons rather than just like be slapping at it and figure out what's going to happen. Yeah. And so I think that kind of sort of the thing is more transparent about what it's doing all the time.

I think it's a good tack. But I will miss the shutter button. I'm a little bummed about that. Well, and the light ring thing is a big upgrade for me because it's a good. I have one of the Alexa speakers in my kitchen, and I can see my kitchen from my bedroom. And if someone leaves the door open and the Alexa is muted, there's this big red glow in my kitchen. And it's so annoying. So I've unplugged it because of that.

Whereas now, when you mute it, instead of this huge red glow, it just glows red on the little mute button. So there's just little quality of life upgrades that make the whole thing feel better. But I do have to address the elephant in the room because you brought. brought it up with the displays. The big problem with Amazon displays to date have been the ads. People, and understandably dislike how many ads you do get the current shows. I get these full-screen ads on. It's awful. Not the new ones. With Alexa Plus, I've not yet had any, but I realize this is in early access. So that's probably going to change. And I think there's a, There are a lot of Echo Show owners who were baited and switched by this the first time who are, I think, in a real, like, fool me once, shame on you kind of situation here.

Yes. I mean, and talking to the Amazon execs, ads are not going anywhere. They are talking about how they want to, you know, it's more about discovery. And there's a lot of promoting Amazon products and Amazon services, but they're still ads. I mean, you get these in the home app now for, you know, on Apple hardware, there'll be ads. for Apple Music. You know, it's everywhere. I'm sure we're going to start seeing more ads with Alexa Plus.

They're not there yet. But I'm not, I wouldn't be surprised that they do come. They do change the experience on the display devices. I have not seen, I haven't heard the by the way on Alexa Plus yet. If anyone's not familiar with that, this is where on the speakers, because obviously no screen, no ads, they will suggest things to you by saying, oh, by the way, would you like to buy more toilet paper? So that's not arrived yet, but who knows, it's probably coming. I think I just want to say, because I know there's a lot of conversation about this in our comment section.

Oh, yeah. So people, people, people, people, you have to pick your poison. This is in the smart home with these devices, there are trade-offs. It sucks. I wish the perfect experience existed. You've got a few options. You go with Amazon, which has a lot of. lot of hardware, supports its hardware, comes out with new hardware, but is probably going to put

ads in your face. Not too expensive, though, quite innovative. You've got Google, not a lot of hardware. Are they going to support their hardware? Well, yes, but are they going to give you new features and new hardware? And also, Google. If you're worried about ads, if you're worried about privacy, Google. So Apple, they may come out with the smart speaker. Everyone's waiting. You're going to spend a lot of money. Also, it doesn't exist yet. Doesn't exist yet. Which is part of the problem. Yeah. Bigger part of the problem. Yeah. You're going to, and then the fourth option, obviously, roll your own, go home assistant, use private voice assistants, great, local, really hard to manage, buggy as hell. So, you know, you've got to pick at the moment, sadly. I would

love for something to come along that ticks all the boxes. But right now, you know, there's, there just isn't the perfect solution. So yeah. It's a tricky one because I think to me the, the by the way thing on a speaker is like a horrible dystopian nightmare that I am just utterly unwilling to put up with. Like truly, that is, that to me is like an instant non-starter for me. I think the on-screen ads bother me less than they bother some people. And I think, truthfully, a lot of what I've seen in our comments and elsewhere is the sense of will, you didn't have this and then I put it in my house and then you put it there. And so to me it's like, just say you're going to do ads, Amazon.

Like stop playing this game with people where you're like, who knows, probably fine. And then once you have a giant install base, you start rolling ads on people who can't do anything about it. And this, by the way, is Amazon's whole M.O. with everything. They get you signed up for things with the promise of nothing and all good things. And then the minute you get attached, Amazon starts finding ways to make more money off of you. I know. That's just what it is. Yeah.

I wish they would do a version of the Kindle for Alexa. Like, you pay extra for your Echo Show and you don't get ads, just like you can pay extra for a Kindle with no ads. But the Kindle is a funny example because I always tell people to just get the Kindle with ads because it's not. Yeah. The light's not on. It's not super annoying. The ads never appear when you're looking at the thing. It's just there when they're off.

So to me, that's like, save the 15 bucks or whatever it is and just you'll never even really notice the ads in any. a meaningful way. I think the Echo Show stuff is a little messier because it is like a bright screen blaring ads at you all the time. But that, that I'm fine. It's, it's the bait and switch that bothers me. It's not actually the existence of the ads that drives me the most crazy. It's the fact that people put this in their house with no ads and then they did ads. That's the thing that feels gross. But I think like you describe all the tradeoffs, I would handily pick Amazon's version of this, even if it includes, even if it includes ads. Right now, it is definitely the strongest has the most

legs, most innovation, and Amazon's not, I don't think Amazon's backing away from it. We know that they struggled financially in this division for a long time, but they've obviously

still investing a lot. Google will get to. We'll see what's going to happen there. Google's once in a decade remembered it has home, smart home stuff, yeah. And then Apple, obviously, is the dark horse.

Everyone is waiting to see what they're going to do in this space. So, yeah. So real quick, before we get off the Echo stuff, are you as excited about the dot Mac? as I am. I think the idea of like a $100 pretty good, relatively good looking, they fixed a bunch of usability stuff. Like this to me looks like it has a chance to be the like default smart speaker

that I tell people to get in their house. Yeah, I think it's a really nice piece of equipment. It's well designed. It had really good sound. I did get to do a sound demo and, you know, they were boasting that it's like way better than the HomePod Mini. Definitely more improved. It's basically what it is is it's the echo. If everyone remembers the echo speaker, like the flagship echo speaker, that's essentially what this is. It's that same price point, too. Yeah.

And I just thought the tennis ball can sounded pretty good. It was fine. It was all right. It's like a serviceable, decent speaker. But then there was the echo fourth gen, which was the big ball. Right. Yeah. That is what this is, really, just smaller.

So you've still got the dot. The dot's not going away. The original, the current dot, which is the fifth gen. Then there's the dot max, which is basically what the echo, it's almost the upgrade of the echo fourth gen. Dotmax is such a stupid name. I don't like the name. It's the big small one. Yeah.

It's nothing. I don't know why they didn't just put with echo. What are we doing? Yeah. Naming in this space has never been smooth. Agreed. And then the studio, which is the big boy. So I think, yeah, the dot max fills, the echo fourth gen was always my number one.

pick for a smart speaker if you were going to get one, and I feel like this just fills that spot. The nice thing, although this is technically a dot, is it's the first dot to have all the smart home radios. So it's a thread border router, it's a matter controller, and it has Zigby. So they're really going all in on the smart home side for all of the smart speakers. So yeah, dot.comx, if you're interested in adding a new smart speaker to your home that uses Alexa, I would definitely say, based on what we've seen so far, that's the winner. Yeah, I think that is like a kitchen speaker is going to be a pretty big win for a lot of people. Yeah, and you can do two and get stereo sound.

And yeah, it's got – and then you can also put five together and do a home theater. But we could talk about that later. We should talk about that later. So the sort of underpinning of all of this is Alexa Plus, which is still, if I'm understanding correctly, in early access, this is Amazon's like – LLM-powered futuristic Alexa that you and I were at the launch of 65 years ago now under an entirely different regime. The world was like just insane. But anyway, it's still technically in early access, but it's shipping by default on these new devices. So it both is and is not fully launched. It's confusing. Yeah. So it's shipping by default on these new devices in the

US and Canada. These new devices are shipping to lots of countries, but if you're not in the US and Canada, you don't get Alexa Plus. When it comes out of the box, you'll just get the option when you're setting it up. I've been told to just say, yes, I want Alexa Plus. So if you don't do that, you'll have regular, regular old Alexa. You can click yes, you get Alexa Plus. You don't have to sign up, but it is Alexa Plus in early access. And that moniker is basically, it's still in better. And there are bugs. and it may not work exactly as intended, and some features don't work at all. So, yes, and then in terms of for everyone else that has devices, if they want Alexa Plus,

you do still have to sign up for early access and wait for an invitation. But I am told that the waiting period is going to go away really soon, but it'll still be an early access. In terms of Alexa Plus is now here and for everyone that's on the horizon. still. I think they feel like there's still a lot that they need to work on because many of the features they announced in February still aren't live. They demoed some of them again this week, but again said, coming soon. So yeah, a lot is still sort of hinged on rolling out what they've promised. Interestingly, they have announced that they are bringing, they announced this week

that it is coming to third party speakers. So that's a question I'd been asked. a lot because, you know, Alexa is on like Sonos and Bose and other speakers, and that is something that is coming, but again, coming soon. So there's just, yeah, it's going to take a while until we see this everywhere. You've been using Alexa Plus for a long time. Is it, is it at or even nearing the point where it's like worth leaping for new hardware to get it? Yes, depending on your use case. It is, we should mention, $20 a month once it's out of early access, although right now it's free. And then if you get Prime, you'll also get it for free, which is kind of weird because that's what, $15 a month. So we'll see how that pans out.

Amazon would very much like you to get Prime. But also, if you don't have a Prime account, but you have an Alexa speaker, I have a bunch of questions about like your, your sort of subscription decisions. Yeah. So I think we can fairly safely assume that most people who have these things are going to have a Prime account and thus will eventually get Alexa Plus for free. And so I think this is kind of the thing, right? To me, these are slightly better versions of the existing things,

which is like great, right? As a way to, if you just assume most people's smart speaker experience is basic smart home stuff, music and timers, which is what it is. That is statistically speaking

how most people do smart speakers. These things are going to be slightly better hardware, but not like huge new ideas. The huge new idea is Alexa Plus. And it is better. much better than the old Alexa. Yeah, even now?

Oh, yes, yes. So, yeah, you can talk to it naturally. Natural language is just a game changer for smart speakers. The problem is, and I think the reason why a lot of people complain about, that I've seen complaining about Alexa Plus, is we've trained ourselves how to talk to these devices. Oh, totally. And the new versions don't really understand that language.

Oh, interesting. You need to talk to them like you would just talk to a person. They're not designed to be deterministic. They're not designed to follow a pattern. So when you say, you know, A, turn on the light in the living room to 50%. It'll be like, I mean, it might do it, but it's less, if you say, hey, A, make it brighter in here. Oh, a bit more. Okay, bring it down a little.

It'll do all of that. That's so much easier than the previous way. It's just we're so used to saying the first way. And so some of those issues, I think when people have just been using these devices for a long time and they train themselves how to do it. So you do have to rethink the way you communicate with them. But once you do that, it is a big change. And I've actually found that, you know, my family uses it more now because they never trained themselves. They just relied on me to do it.

But because you can literally just say what you want it to do and it mostly will do it, it makes a huge difference. It's also easier, it knows a lot more. the old Alexa used to always, you know, say, I'm not sure about that or sorry, I can't help with that if you asked more intricate questions or more specifics. But like the other day, my husband was very jealous. I was coming to New York. And he was like, oh, I heard about this great play. It stars the girl from Dexter that we really liked. You should go see it. And I was like, what play is it? And he's like, I can't remember. And I said, well, let's, why don't we ask Alexa? And so he said, hey, what? And he tried to explain. He said, what exactly what he said to me. and it came back and came up with the name of the play. I think it's like the great Americans or something I've forgotten. But came up with the name of the play, said where it's playing, when it's playing. The old Alexa would never have been able to do that.

So that kind of stuff is great. A lot of the more agented capabilities, which I tested a while back. I haven't tested again recently. Those are a little hit or miss. I also don't find much use for them. I could just as easily get my phone out. The recipe stuff is so good. Like using a smart display in the kitchen is like for me the number one use case.

And you can now like snap a picture of a recipe, send it to Alexa, and it will break it out into a format for you with the ingredients, the steps. It will talk you through it. You can say, hey, what was the temperature I needed to set it for for the oven and just go back and forth while you're walking around your kitchen? That experience so much better. That's the stuff, right? Like that to me is where you go. All the agenic stuff is like fine and interesting. and I think like a long way off

from actually being relevant to anybody. But like if I can just do all of the things that it seems natural that my Alexa device should do, that's the stuff. And I think especially with the smart home stuff, like you and I've been talking about this forever. Like I just,

no one will ever convince me that having to remember the names of my lamps is a thing that I need to do. Something you need to do. Yeah. And so like what I have, and remembering to say brightness, 60% is like insane.

No, I will not do that. But this change you're describing where it's like just like a little. little brighter but not too bright and it actually knows what to do. Yeah. That, that matters. Like, that's a real switch in what it means to actually use this stuff inside your house. And you can set up a routine for something like that by just saying, oh, you know, Alexa, I, can you please, actually, I feel like it's going to be really cold tomorrow. Can you make sure to set the temperature, change the temperature in the afternoon after the kids get home? Like, you can go back and forth about things you want to happen in your home that you would maybe just think in your head about and then think, oh, I should sit down and program it in.

to my app, but instead of doing that, you just spew it all out. And she sets up a routine, it sets up, sorry, I've been hanging out with Amazon people too long, it sets up a routine for you. You can go and change it in the app or you can talk to it and change it. So actually, no, I don't want it to happen at four. Can you make it happen at five? And it adapts and changes. So that kind of stuff really is game changing for the smart home. But the thing about the smart home and Alexa that I should just mention before we wrap up is it's not always reliable. which is a bit of a problem, especially in the smart home. And this is down to the technology.

And this is something that I'm assuming is going to be a problem for all of these systems. And I've been doing a bit of digging into this. And basically what it is, as we know, LLMs are not deterministic, right? They are designed to be creative. Like designed to be, you ask CHAPT a question and then ask the same question again and you get a different response. In the smart home, if you ask your smart assistant to turn on the lights, you want it to do that every time.

And sometimes, depending on how you phrase it, it may misinterpret what you're asking, may not realize you're talking about the smart home, might think you're talking about traffic lights. I don't know. It could come up with some other perspective and then forget or not send the command to the APIs or the smart home devices that it's trying to communicate with.

And where that breakdown happens, that's where things, and I think a lot of people who have been using the smart home with Alexa for a long time and now use Alexa Plus are like, it's ruined my smart home. These things aren't working anymore. And I have had to rebuild a few routines because they don't work anymore because the new Alexa doesn't understand them. So yeah, there's a friction there that I'm talking to the to Panas Penae this week about it. He said, you know, that is the problem that we are working on now. That is one of the reason. why Alexa Plus is in early access because we need more and more people to be experiencing these sort of breakdowns in handoff between the LLMs and the more deterministic models so that we can figure out how to fix that. But he was very sort of saying, well, we're the only ones that are doing this at all right now, which is fair enough. We'll see what Google's experience is like now that that's launching. But yeah, that is the problem.

And this is probably why Apple is still not in the game because, you know, Siri, for all she, he, it isn't great does still turn the lights on every time you ask it to. So that kind of stuff is still being worked out. And whether they're going to be able to find a good solution or not, we're just going to have to wait and see. Yeah, that trade between it does a lot of things kind of well and it does a tiny number of things really reliably is the big challenge with all of this stuff. now because the ceiling for all of this LLM-based stuff is so much higher. There's new things it can do. It works new ways. The floor is so much lower because it will make dumb mistakes all the time that, like,

you can just program Siri with an if-then statement that will work most of the time, right? And it's like, you can't do anything else. Siri sucks at everything that is not a very basic if-then statement. Yeah. But it does the if-then statements. And it does them, right. It does. And that's something.

But it doesn't think you're talking about something else. Yeah, except for now, like, anyway. I'm very mad at Apple reminders right now because Syria is so bad. But that's a whole different story. I want to switch gears to talk about Google here a little bit, but the last Amazon device we should talk about. There's lots more stuff. There's ring stuff. There's a million new cameras.

Go read all of Jen's stories about them. There's thousands of them. I do want to talk about the new Kindlescribe just for a minute because I think... Oh, so pretty. So pretty. Okay, so I got a virtual briefing of this. Todd Hazelson and our team went and actually saw the thing before it long. You saw the thing at the event.

I think this might be very exciting. It's expensive, particularly the new Kindlescribe ColorSoft, which is $630. But you can get a Kindle Scribe for $430. It doesn't have a front light. The real one they want you to buy is, I think, $4.99. But the basic new thing is it's thinner, it's lighter. It works better in all of the ways you would hope the second generation work better, lower latency faster.

it integrates with OneDrive and Google Drive, so it'll do some productivity stuff a lot better. This seems like a paper notebook competitor in a real useful, interesting way. You've actually held and touched and seen the thing. Does it look great? Is it great? Yeah, I mean, I have a Kindle from maybe a decade ago. So I've not been like really the front of technology when it comes to changing my candle. And I think a lot of people don't because, you know, it is such a great device. Yeah.

And you read your book. Like, how much more do you need to do? You just described the best and worst thing about the Kindle line is they can't figure out how to make any money because everybody bought a really good Kindle 10 years ago and has no need to. But this feels like a sort of step forward for the device in terms of actually becoming a paper replacement, a notepad replacement. And I think when I was, I mean, I was live blogging the event. And I said, actually, I've always been a pen and paper girl. I use a physical notepad, but I really like the idea of this. I could really, like the fact that it just and Pan Ospanet was showing it on stage and he was saying it's like milliseconds of latency, you know, you really won't notice.

It's really easy to write because that's been one of my other problems is I tried to use an iPad with a pen and it just wasn't intuitive. He was kind of cradling this thing. I mean, he was, I think this was the thing he was most excited about. Panos is like famously a long-term believer in handwriting on device. Like all the way back to like killed Microsoft devices. Like that, that man loves a digital writing experience. Oh, yeah. He seemed like this sort of seemed really, really exciting for him.

I think he was more excited about these than the shows, honestly. But yeah, it was, I mean, I, my daughter is an artist and I've been desperately trying to find a good sort of tablet for her that's not an iPad. because iPads are kind of heavy. I mean, they really are for writing. We're used to doing it on a nice notepad with a pencil, and they're distracting. And what's nice about this, I think, you know, if you can create this experience that's just your notes and just your books

and just your sketches, but that you can get material in and out of, I mean, I remember, I'm sure it's better now, but sort of trying to send articles to my Kindle through Instapaper way back when. Oh, yes. But this seems like a... It's not better, by the way. Oh, okay. Not better.

That's sad to hear. So, I mean, as a reading and drawing and somewhat content creation device that isn't a bright screen, that isn't distracting. I know there are other e-ank tablets out there that are kind of trying to do this as well, but obviously, Kindle has that lock-in with your books. And, yeah, I'm very, I was very impressed with this and very tempted. Maybe not for, well, maybe for me, but definitely for my daughter. It's easier to spend $600 on her than on me. This is one of those things that I think the price to me is the only thing that kills me. Yeah, that's a lot.

It's a lot of money for this specific thing. And I think it is inching closer to being what I want it to be. Like I think color's a big deal and I think there are a lot of people who will see this as the big color Kindle and will want it for that reason alone. Right? Like if you're reading comic books, when the first Color Soft came out, the main feedback I saw was from people being like, this looks great. I want a bigger one. Yeah. Well, the first feedback was, why is the screen yellow? But then they fixed that. And then the feedback was, why isn't this bigger? And I think this is going to be exciting to a lot of those people. It's just $630. And so I think the next phase of this is like, okay, let's take this stuff and bring it down towards regular Kindle prices and we'll be really on to something. Yeah. Well, and this goes along with the shows and the dots. because, you know, everything has got more expensive, but it also has got better.

So there's that trade-off again. Like, we want the more premium experience. Yeah, right now it's maybe more or too expensive in some cases. But as we've seen, the trend normally will be in two or three years. Hopefully some of this technology will get cheaper and we'll get, you know, the first gen of these devices are always going to be a little. I mean, the original color, like Kindle Oasis, wasn't that? like one of the first big redesigns, that was quite expensive. And that's now much more affordable.

Yeah, it's, it's, Amazon does have a pretty good track record of sort of pulling this stuff down the lineup over time. Yeah. And I will probably be waiting for that one. Real quick, before we take a break, we're going to talk a lot about Google's smart home strategy for next Tuesday show. But there was some news this week. Google, as it does every once in a while, completely changed its mind about everything, how it's smart home strategy works. Just give me a small. Just give me a sort of the top line news. All I know is I saw a picture of a red speaker that I immediately was like, that is the best looking smart speaker I have ever seen in my entire life. It's very pretty. But inside that speaker, Google seems to have like kind of changed its whole

smart home strategy. What is happening here? Yes. So the sort of top line is Google is relaunching its Google Home under, well, it's still called Google Home, but Gemini for Home is sort of the overarching theory now. It's similar to what. Alexa Plus is doing for Amazon, but it's Gemini for Home is infusing Gemini AI throughout the smart home lineup and to partner products as well. So products developed by other manufacturers for Google Home. So what this is is that the Google Assistant on the smart speakers and smart displays is going to be replaced by Gemini. That's already sort of happened or you can you can get access to Gemini features, but this is now a complete whole source.

shift, that's actually going to be available in an early access program, another one of those, for anyone starting on October 1st, which was Wednesday, which is actually today, but if you're listening to this on Friday. Time travel. So you can sign up for this in your Google Home app. You don't have to be in the public preview program or anything. And you can use Gemini instead of Google Assistant on all of Google Home hardware, going all the way back to the original flower pot-looking one in 2016.

I still had that thing around here somewhere. Oh, you should get it out. I thought it was great looking. Yeah, see if, see what, how it runs on there. It's still, I think, that original Google Home speaker, I think, was the least speakery-looking smart speaker anyone has made. And I loved it for that. It just looked like a little like chotch-ky on your table in a way that, like, I wish

more of these smart speakers. And Google's been very good. Google has definitely led the way on the design front for these smart devices. The Nest Mini was nice as well. It was small and easy to sort of tuck away, and they made it so you could like mount it on the wall, which was always, which was kind of neat. And the new one, so the Google Home Speaker, they're getting rid of the Nest name. That's now just for cameras. I hate this.

We don't need to dwell on this for too long, but I think Nest is, A, a terrific brand, and B, a brand that allows. of people know and have known for like the nest thermostat is so like iconic a thing in the like annals of smart home history yeah that it just seems weird especially to turn it into this branding mush where nest still exists but now google home exists and jemini at home exists just it was nests just call it nest what are we doing yeah i know well so yeah it's nest is still on the cameras and obviously on the thermostat but as i wrote about a couple weeks ago nest google is very much got got an out of the nest hardware game. So the speakers were originally Google.

So Google Home speaker was the first speaker. Then they made them nest. And now they're going back to Google. They're going to be Fitbit in six months. Like this is just what Google does. Yeah. And then the camera's a nest, the thermostat's Nest. But the app, there was also a Nest app.

You can still use the Nest app. But now everything's gone. Now everything is in the Google Home app. You can even set pass codes for your nest X lock, which I know is something that many of our readers are very keen to be able to do. So this one's for you. You can now do that in the Google Home app. But the other, the nest as a whole is now very much just sort of a subset because they got rid of the nest protect.

They got rid of the nest secure. Any other, the Nest XL Yale lock, all that nest branding has gone. Those products have gone because Google is basically saying we're only making the flagship products that make sense for our Gemini. smart home. Speakers, cameras, they haven't mentioned the thermostat, but they did just update that quite recently. Yeah.

And then they're moving towards partners. They just announced this week, Walmart, on brand has new cameras that work with Google Home. There was a post this week from the developer blog saying, you know, we're opening up all this Gemini intelligence to anyone that wants to partner with Google Home to develop products for the platform. So they're out of the hardware game, except for where it works for Gemini. And where it works for Gemini, and this is what's the big news this week, is that the cameras, the new cameras that they've announced, which is a new outdoor camera, a new indoor camera, and a new video doorbell, all wired, all now have 2K sensors because the more data and the more

fidelity they can pull in, the better they can feed into Gemini for home. and Anish Katakkaran, who is the head of Google Home, was sort of saying these are the eyes for Gemini. This is like the multimodal AI that we need. Google Home has facial recognition feature. So, you know, now your home, if you have these cameras, can recognize, like, who's at home and maybe adjust different routines or, you know, make your home fit how you want it based on who's in the home

because it can use the information and the data from these cameras, also tell you who's at the front door, who's in the backyard. Having this extra data to pull into the Gemini ecosystem to be able to then inform other things in your smart home. This is also what Amazon's doing with Ring and Alexa Plus. It's all bringing, the AI is bringing together all the sources and the data sources of your home, sensors, cameras, temperature, anything that could play into what you want your home to do for you so that your home can

potentially become more proactive. So you won't necessarily have to program it. Google is not at that stage yet. They seem a little behind, but you can see the path that they're going on. What's interesting about the new cameras, and actually this is also coming to all the current cameras and even the discontinued ones going all the way back to 2015. So that's nice. I mean, I know we rag on Google for discontinuing products all the time,

but that they are still supporting this in the cameras that people may still have is a good thing. So now you do have to pay a subscription for this, but with Gemini for Home, you can type into their new app, so they have a new home app, you can sort of say,

when was the last time you saw my cat? And it can pull up any videos of cats or was there a skunk in my? driveway or what time did my daughter get home or, you know, you could type that into the new home app and it will pull up footage for you. You can also use the home app to create automations. So you can just type in and say, you know, I want you to make me feel more secure and it might come up with a suggestion. We'll lock your doors every day at 6pm. We'll turn the lights on when, you know, when it gets dark, it'll come up with automations for you. So all of this sort of intelligence is

using the data from your home and sort of being able to manage things for you. And as like I said, it's still kind of early days. So what I'd really like to see is like an automation based on the triggers that cameras can now do. So like, okay, I saw your cat outside and it was after dark. So I'm going to send you an alert or I'm going to flash a light or, you know, you know, to be proactive rather than me having to set up. But that's where you can see all of this going.

Actually, that's what Amazon demoed, where it demoed an example of using Alexa Plus. Alexa actually said, oh, I noticed no one has fed the dog today. Would you like me to set a reminder to feed the dog every day at a certain time? And they were able to set up an automation. So whenever the dog, whenever Alexa notices the dog hasn't been fed, it would send an alert to the person who was supposed to feed the dog. Obviously, you know, you could also get a smart pet feeder. But the idea here is your home being proactive.

And both companies, Amazon and Google, sort of moving towards that. And this new hardware and this new Gemini for home platform is sort of laying the foundations for all of this. I know that was a lot. No, and I think it's telling that A, these companies have are all sort of converging on this same idea of like what we need is lots and lots and lots of input in order to do this kind of stuff. I also think, by the way, it's very funny that a huge part of the marketing for all of these platforms is you have a pet and you are a terrible pet owner. Yes. And like, Ring is like we have a way to use ring cameras to search for your lost dog because you're a terrible person who can't stop losing your dog. It's just all very funny.

It's because no one can complain about pets. Like, you know. Right. It's a soft subject. It's like kids, right? Like I will spend an unlimited amount of money if you can convince me that it will be good for my kids. Do you know what I? Like, it's, this is how they get you.

The other thing I didn't mention that about the new Google Home hardware. So the Google Home speaker has Gemini in it now, not Google Assistant, but it also has Gemini Live. And this is, so this is, most of the listeners, I'm sure, are familiar with Gemini Live, like on your smartphone or you can, like, converse back and forth. And it's, you don't have to keep saying the wake word. Right. It's Gemini's version of, like, voice mode that you see in chat GPT or a clod. Exactly. And so you can now do this with, it'll be on the new Google Home Speaker, which is not launching until next spring.

But it's also on the Nest Hub Max and the Nest Audio and the Nest Hub second gen. So you'll be able to use this starting today or this week if you're in early access. And you actually wake, you do a different wake word. You say, hey, gee, let's chat. And you get this little ding ding, and you get this new Gemini Assistant Gemini Live. and you can do that back and forth conversation. But annoyingly, Gemini Live has no way of taking any actions. So, like, it can't do anything in your smart home.

It can't, like, send you recipes to your phone or to the Nest Hub. Right now, it's just a more chatty chatbot. And that's actually something I should mention about all of these. They do talk way too much. They always kind of have. That is a bit of a problem. And they're also proud of themselves that they can talk in sentences now, and they're just like, yeah, give us 11 paragraphs of information.

It's like, I just shut up. And then all this kind of like, I hope that helped. Don't forget to have a nice day. Like, no, no, no, no, no. This is the stupidest thing. But whenever I'm in my car, in CarPlay, Spotify has a thing. You tap the thing to search with audio while you're in the Spotify app on CarPlay. And it pops up and the lights go around, signaling that it's listening.

But then you have to wait a full beat before Siri then goes, what would you like to play? And then you have to wait again. and it dings again and then it's listening. And it's like, what are we, it's impossible to do. It just drives me insane. We're going to talk more about Google on Tuesday's show because I think the strategy there is really interesting.

And I continue to think Google is the company that has the most pieces already in the right place to do all of the things it is trying to do. I just have no faith in that company's ability to, A, execute on them or be, stay interested in them long enough to do them. So we are going to get deep into that on next week's show. So we'll come back to that. Great. For now, we're going to switch gears and talk about the strangest and most interesting television I have seen in a very long time.

But first, we're going to take a break. Talking of ads. Yeah, seriously. Yeah, everything is ads. It's 2025. We're going to take a break. We'll be right back. We're going to talk telly.

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Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. All right. We're back. Emma Rath is here. Hi, Emma. Hello. So you, over the last few months, have been using this device called Tele, which is basically

a free television that they ship to your house and put in your house, and in exchange for it being a free television, there's a big bar of ads that runs below your television at all times. Is that a fair description of what you've been going through? Yes, that's very accurate. Okay. So this has been a fascination, both of mine and of the whole verge and verge. audience for a long time. And actually, let me just play a voicemail we got on the Vergecast hotline

from a listener a couple of weeks ago. And then we're going to get into it. Hey, Vergecast. This is Eric Gio calling from Los Angeles. I just listened to your last pod and it really got me wondering, what's going on with Tully? That company that gave everyone free TVs for unlimited advertisements on their TV are the second screen. I haven't heard from them in a while. I was wondering if we can check in with people and see what's going on with them. Is it going good? Isn't it a good model? I'm really curious. Thanks. We had the CEO of Tele on the show a while ago, and ever since, actually the Virgin has been covering Telly for a long time, and you got a telly. But you didn't get one as like a reviewer.

You got a Telly. Yeah. I just kind of put my name in the hat. I mean, I didn't like contact them or anything and tell them, oh, I'm going to review this. They just kind of, picked me out, I guess, and sent one to me. And, yeah. So tell me, I'm like, I just want to start this experience at the very beginning because I think literally everything about telly is weird and fascinating. Mm-hmm. Like, what happens when telly arrives at your house?

Yeah, well, I think it actually begins before it even gets to your house because when you reserve a telly, you have to agree to so many different things. like it is, I mean, I do kind of give them credit for being very upfront about what they are doing here, and that's to collect your data to use for its ads. And like a lot of the questions you'll have to answer is like how many people are living in your house? Like, are you a parent? Like, do you like to go to the movie theater? Like, stuff like that. And I filled all of this, like, giant questionnaire out. And as I noted my report, the first time, time the telly arrived, it was broken. And... Like broken, like broken, how? The whole screen was cracked. And of course, I didn't realize that until I got it out of

the box and set it up and turned it on and it was just broken. So I have to... At least it was free. Exactly. It would have been more disappointing, I think, if it was like a Samsung or something. So I think, I mean, part of what I'm... I think is so interesting is like this, that's such a perfect company who has never shipped a television trying to figure out how to ship a television thing. Because I think, like, we,

I just looked this up and I interviewed Ilyopos and the CEO of Telly almost exactly two years ago on the show. And this was after they had started taking reservations and the thing existed. And Telly's whole thing was like, we're just going to say the quiet part loud, right? Like the Vizios of the world out there are selling you. TV is essentially at cost and they're making all of their money with advertising. And Roku is selling stuff really cheap and making all of its money on advertising. And like, this is the business of television now is sneaky advertising. And he's just like, well, what if I just took that all the way to its logical conclusion and I will ship you a television

for free. And it's going to be a big, beautiful television that is going to have another screen underneath it that just always shows you ads. And the ads are going to be how we make money. By putting a billboard inside of your house, that's how we're going to make money. And then you can just sort of see them in the intervening two and a half years be like, oh, my God, we have to build and ship a television. And I just think that to me is like the perfect microcosm of this whole thing. And we've heard from so many people who are furious about the amount of time it has taken for their own telly to show up. And it's just like the things that they're doing where they're like, well, it's really easy to make a TV. We'll just ship it to you for free and everything will be fine.

And like, nope, it's not nearly as simple as you make it down. But you did eventually get a working television to your house. Yeah, I have to say they were, like, pretty responsive with that. Like, they, they sent a new TV, like, pretty quickly after that. And it came through FedEx. And once, like, we finally got it set up. It's just funny because it, like, it shows you, like, a whole introduction, like, how telly's the future of TV and, like, all this stuff.

And then you just see the secondary display light up, and it's just, it's pretty wild to see. Is it very distracting? It is. Can you watch a show and, like, does it go away when you watch a show? No. I mean, it's on all the time. You cannot turn it off and you can't cover it up because telly has it in their terms of service. You cannot cover the second screen.

So wait, okay, like just describe what this thing looks like in your living room. Like, you get the whole thing set up. And I'm just imagining like a TV on top and like a, I don't know, an iPad on the bottom. Like what does this actually look like when you put the thing in place? Yeah. So the TV itself, it's a 55-inch screen. And beneath it, it's a 10-inch display that runs the entire length of the screen. Okay.

So it's just like an elongated, kind of like a bar. But it's 10 inches tall? That's a pretty tall screen. You have to warm-mount it then? No, I just, I put it on a little. a stand, I'm not sure, you probably could well mount it, but this thing is heavy. Like, it is very heavy. It is very tall. And it's very, like, awkward to put on your stand. And does it kind of to the bottom bit, like, is it fully connected or is it kind of like on a hinge? It's fully

connected. And it's just like part of the entire screen. So what's the total size? That's, I actually am not sure about how tall it is, but I know there's a sound bar. like connecting the top screen to the bottom, and there's like a little webcam in there, too. So it's like watching you? It has a privacy shutter. Okay. And it only opens when you... I mean, this is like Amazon's dream, right?

Let's all be honest with each other. It's watching you. And again, this is like... The thing I love about this so much is it is so straightforward about what it is doing. It's like, yeah, we're watching you. People will do it. Like, yeah, for free. We will throw you in jail if you cover up the advertising screen.

But yeah, I'm just looking at this picture that you took of it, Emma. And the only way I can think to describe it is like, imagine if you took like a, like a, just a row of laptop screens and, and sort of put them on your table and then mounted your TV above it. It's like the size wise, the only way that this is starting to make sense to me. Because it's this, it's a big bottom thing. And then it has a soundbar in the middle and then the 55 inch screen and then the little camera. It just looks like it's going to tip over at all times. This whole thing is like top-heavy in a way that I'm finding really kind of unnerving to look at. Yeah, I think it's a little bit more stable than it looks, but it is just very unwieldy.

The design was not thought through, it sounds like. It's not interior design ready. It's not a frame. Yeah, no. I mean, it's just, it's very tall. Like, that's what I have to say. I've never seen a tall TV like this before. So the viewing experience, I would think best case scenario is it would kind of feel like watching every show through the like cable news, Kyron, where like you're watching what you're watching, but there's like something sort of happening on the bottom.

Yeah. And we're all like a little bit used to that. It's a little annoying, but we're a little bit used to it. Over time, you used the thing for months. Did you eventually train yourself to stop looking at the bottom screen? Can you successfully ignore it? Like, that would be the goal, right? It's like you kind of stop noticing it's there and you just watch the TV and everybody wins.

Did you ever get to that point? Not really. Oh, no. It's just, it's. it's like very distracting because there's moving elements in the bottom screen. So your eyes are just always drawn to like there's a news ticker. There's some of the ads that it shows are video ads. And they don't have sound, but they have subtitles that you can barely read. And they have like rotating news stories. Like you can customize like what the widgets the bottom bar shows, but you can't, you can't like fully

get rid of that screen or like I tried lowering the brightness even and it just it didn't even do anything I feel like yeah so it looks like basically the left two thirds is like widgets

and I think you had it set up that it's like baseball scores and weather and other news information so you can customize it a little bit there yeah you can you can like kind of choose what you want in there or like and stuff like that but and that I think was telly's

big operating system plan. If I'm remembering this correctly, they had ideas about like, we're going to have a whole app store, you're going to be able to do all kinds of stuff down there. It's going to be super cool and exciting. And like, you can, you can sort of, if you squint at it, see why that might be something. Yeah. But how much would you pay for a TV like this? Like, how much you really saving to give up your experience watching TV? I mean, yeah, that's like the main question because it's, I mean, the TV itself, it's a, the display is nice and, I mean, it's decent. the soundbar is nice. It's just, is it worth your privacy and your sanity, basically? Yeah. I mean, in TVs, you can buy a TV for, a nice TV for not very much money these days.

I just did one single Google search, so take this for whatever it's worth. But I can, I can very quickly find a 55-inch, like, very well-reviewed TCL TV for 280 bucks. Yeah, I just, we just bought for our porch a 65-inch. inch TCL, Google TV. I think it was 350 and we got it from Costco. So it's like that, I mean, how much better is something like this? How big is this? How big is the, it's a 55 inch display. Okay.

So, yeah. But if I were to tell you that you can either have a TV for $300 or you can have a TV for $0, and they're going to make the same amount of money on you either way. Yeah. people love free. But wait, Emma, can I say the single most devious thing that I think Telly is doing here? And the thing that I kept laughing at reading your story

is that not only is it against the terms of service to cover up the advertising stuff, they've actually moved so much of the interface down to the bottom screen that you have to look at it all the time just to use the television, which to me seems it's somewhere between like really deeply gross and totally genius.

Yeah. They're like, they know that you can't cover the TV and they have made damn sure that you can't cover that bottom screen. All of that effort, I mean, yeah, everything, the effort they've put in to making sure you see those ads. It is, it's like, it's like evil genius levels here. It truly is. Like, you can't, you have to go to that screen to, like, switch in between, like, your inputs and to navigate between other apps as well. And you really can't cover it up.

And I, they definitely did think about that. It's really smart. So as other than watching TV, like, you know, you mentioned you tried it as a way to make Zoom calls. Because I think, again, like, the thing I found fascinating about Tully's whole idea, other than the, like, we're just doing the quiet part, loud piece of it is like, Jen, a thing you and I have talked about before and agree on is that there is huge potential for the TV as like the central computer in your house. And there's lots of interesting smart home stuff you can do. I think I spent a long time during the pandemic. like doing Zoom calls from a Facebook portal camera that I put on top of my TV. And it was awesome. And so there's like, I think Telly has a bunch of those ideas.

Did you get to test any of that stuff? Does any of that stuff even exist? Like what was good and what was bad outside of just the TV watching experience? Yeah, I tried doing Zoom. And I mean, it worked for a little bit. But for some reason, the microphone on the telly was not. picking up my voice. Like at first it was, it was worked for like two seconds and then it just like cut off and I tried it again and like like another day and just like totally didn't work. And I'm not sure what happened there, but I have to say like navigating. Hardware is hard, Kelly. Did you find this out? But I mean, if you could get it working,

it would be kind of cool and you can have like little watch parties like like, like, you could have your friends like on the bottom display. Like you could see them while you like watch a show together. I mean, they don't. That's fun. Yeah. Like they don't have to have a telly either. Like they could just go on Zoom. Like if I could actually get like the mic working like that would be kind of cool. Yeah. This is the thing. Telly. Keep saying things that you're like, oh, that seems like a good idea. And then they're like, but the device is free and you're like, oh, I bet it's going to be bad. You also tried an app that I believe is called Gofa. Oh yeah. Yeah, the fitness app. Tell me about Gofa.

So basically it's almost like the Xbox Connect. Like it walks you through various like workouts and it uses like the camera to I guess look at what you're doing and like judge if you're doing it right. But I mean, I didn't, I thought it was kind of cool because I used to like use the Connect so much when I was like a long time ago when that was a thing. And I yeah, it was just it's just interesting. Like I thought that was kind of a cool idea that they had. Yeah, there's a lot of this happening in TVs, like the Samsung TVs and also the new fire TVs. They have millimeter wave sensors to kind of see, like, check your form and stuff. But or you can stick a little camera there as well.

They don't have them built in for obvious reasons. But, yeah, I mean, the TV, the giant screen in your living room is kind of like the obvious place for so much of what we're seeing with like the smart home and like home wellness, fitness. There's so much you can do there. I mean, Apple TV Fitness, obviously. I mean, I use the fitness program. with my Apple TV all the time, you know, watch the guys rowing in the studio and row along with them. All that kind of interactive stuff is great. And it seems like if Telly could start to add a bit more value like that, those types of features, you could kind of see perhaps

the point of this, but I'm still far behind. Even though I don't mind Amazon's ads on my echo show device. This is too much. This is the big thing I've been thinking about this whole time. is a question I asked, Ilya, two years ago, is you have all these big ideas about what a TV could be. You have all these interesting features you want to add. You have all the stuff you could do. What if instead of selling me a free TV, you sold me a really expensive TV? That did everything. Right. And you made this stuff really good. And it all worked. And you actually tried to sort of proactively make the case that this thing should be the center of your home in this, like, meaningful technological way. And his answer to me was essentially, I could do that and it would be great. And absolutely nobody would buy it because the price race of televisions has gone all the way down. down to the bottom, such that if I tried to sell you the best TV you've ever seen in your entire life and it did everything perfectly, no one would buy it anyway. But I'm curious, you've now used the thing and lived with it for a while. Like, is there a version of this idea that is compelling to you? I think it would be kind of, it is an interesting concept, and I think like in the future, I know like even streaming services are free now. I just, I think, I feel like

they're relying on being free so much that it's almost like taking away from the TV like you were like you were just saying. I mean, I do wonder how it would be if they did sell it like for a price tag. I mean, it's just, I don't know. Like, I just don't know if like, I don't know about the ads. Like I think if they got rid of the ads and maybe made it like a really innovative TV, like kept the secondary display, but maybe, like, did have cool apps on the air, like, allowed you to do watch parties and stuff like that. Maybe that would be viable. I think we just all have to come to terms with that this is probably the future and that we are all going to have mini billboards all over our homes. It's going to be our fridges. It's going to be on our smart displays. It's going to be

hanging under our TVs. It is, like, the home has been the sacred space for advertising, right? It's not been in our homes. It's everywhere else you go. It's in your email. It's on your phone. It's wherever you walk around the world, there are ads. But they've not been in our homes. But it does seem inevitable. It's like they're coming. And obviously in this instance, Tully, you're inviting them in. In Amazon's instances with the shows, they added them after the fact. And same thing's happening with the Samsung Fridge. I know you guys talked about that on the show a while back. I haven't seen them on mine yet. I'm keeping an eye out. But yeah, it's like that encroaching on the sacred space is just happening more and more and more.

And it needs to stop. And we, yeah, we need one safe space. And I think like there's already so much advertising on your TV, right? Like I'm on record as saying I have absolutely no problem with the pause ads that everybody has on streaming services now. I actually think that is like a terrifically good idea and I hope they all make so much money on it that they never have to do anything else. Like if I'm pausing my show, I don't care what's on the screen. Right. It's the same way I feel about the Kindle ads.

Like we were just talking about, like, I'm not doing anything here. Sure, show me that. But I think, like, Emma, it seems like the real bummer of your experience so much was that not only are the ads there, they are perpetually fighting the thing that you're actually trying to do on your TV. So it's not even interruptive. It's actively making the experience worse. Yeah, exactly. And that's hard to get over.

Yeah, I think so. Are you sending it back? I am going too soon. I think. Yeah, because this is not, this is actually a really, an unusually good question to ask in this context, because, like, mostly we're, like, product reviewers who use these things and then send the back to companies. Anyway, yes. For ethical reasons, we don't, we don't keep any of the stuff that we review. A, I don't know if that applies here because the TV is free in the first place, but B, you just got one.

So if you just wanted this to be your TV, it could be your TV. Yeah. Is this going to be your TV? No. No. Like, I, I have. I have my LG I'm very happy with. What was the breaking point for you that you were like, I just, this is not an experience I can do anymore?

It was almost like not even the ads. It was just the interface itself because it kind of takes a long time to boot up. Oh, God, it just gets worse. You're subject to like an AI news segment when you turn on a TV. Wait, what? Hold on. Hold on. So there's an ad before you get to actually see the TV. Oh, my good.

Okay, this is not a thing I even thought I needed to ask. Okay, I have a new question for you. You walk into the room, you sit down, you pick up the remote. What happens? Okay. So it'll display telly on the TV while it like boots up. And then once that happens, the telly today segment comes on. and that uses an AI likeness of an actress who then details all these new stories.

Like, I did not know if she was AI at first. I was like, because then when I started using the TV, I was like, why is she wearing the same outfit every day? And with the same hair, I was like, this is not. I don't know. I really pick up on that. Like, she's so busy. How is she doing this every day? I was just like, this isn't right.

Okay. How long is this news broadcast? Um, it's not like, I like listen to the whole thing on like the whole thing through because then it just like loops. I'm not sure how long it is, but it's not that long. Like it'll end. And the worst part is though is that when you turn off the TV and turn it back on, it just like resets. So you can't like pick off, pick up where you left off on the new segment. It just like starts at the beginning again. Yeah, no, I'm immediately out. Like literally just that. I'm like back in the box. You didn't get this to school. Yeah, okay. Come on. What's the score? What's the review score? I mean, if I had to pick a number, I mean, like, maybe like a four. I'm not a reviewer. I'm like, I don't know. Based on this, I'm thinking a solid two. Okay, yeah. But it's free. Exactly. But AI and ads. Yeah, and then in between the new segment, you also get more ads.

Oh, my God. On your main display. Okay, so wait. I'm now so hung up on the startup experience here. I'm really sorry. So you turn it on. The news thing starts playing. The AI woman tells you what, I guess,

whatever news stories telly thinks are interesting that day. Yeah. What is it? It's mainly like celebrity, like news or like viral videos. I'm just imagining like a team at tele trying to like program the daily every day to like make for, but anyway, okay, so you go through that. Can you just immediately like home button out of that and then go to your apps? Yeah, you can like, you can just click your input because it operates like you can't even,

it doesn't even have built-in streaming apps. Like you, it comes with a Google dongle. Oh, right. That's a Chrome cost? Yeah, I think so. And TV thing? Yeah, it's like the little Google TV dongle. I forgot that it was that.

They haven't even. And I think the plan was not to be like that. ever, but to like offload. Again, this is an advertising company, right? Yeah. It's important to keep remembering that this is an advertising company. Okay, but so, but you're going to get like a jump scare, essentially, every time you turn on your TV. Because there's just going to be an AI woman yelling news at you every time you turn on, which is kind of alarming when you first turn on the TV.

It's a little unsettling because she's always like, hello, hello, friends. Like, we're going to, and then like, she goes into the thing and it's, I don't know. And there's another AI person that shows up, I noticed, too, in there. And it's just a bizarre experience. It's a dystopian nightmare. Yes. That is tough. But you brought into your home for free, though, so there's the bonus.

You didn't spend any money on this. I do think this is a fascinating test. And I know we should switch gears and get to the landing round. But I do know there are a lot of VERSG readers and Vorgecast listeners who signed up to get one of these things and have them in your house. And I think this is maybe the most straightforward test we've ever had of what people are willing to put up with for free stuff. And I mean that like everybody's price tolerance is different. There is a whole spectrum of stuff we are willing to put up with for free. Right. Like my Gmail got more and more ads all the time and I keep using Gmail.

Like everybody has been testing this theory for years and years and years and years. And I think this is the most extreme version of it we've ever encountered. Like what if all of this was blaring in your face at all times, but you got to save $300 on your TV. And I think, I want to hear from everyone who has one of these in your house. Call the hotline. It's 66, Vervege 1.

Send us an email, Vergecats to theVurge.com. I genuinely, no judgment on any direction, but I want to know if you kept your telly, and I want to know whether it has proven to be worth it for you or not. Because I think there's a lot of this stuff that Emma sounds like just sort of first-gen problems, that it's like, I suspect the next webcam would be better.

I suspect some of the apps would get better if this thing becomes popular, people will start to like, if there is a there there with this, I actually think V2 might be really fascinating. I also think it's possible that enough people are going to have the experience you did of just like this becomes untenable, because the longer I sit here and watch it, the more I hate it, that the whole thesis behind this device is just not going to work.

Well, and this has to be in your main viewing area, right? I think I read that in your piece. You can't, like, put this in the guest room or something, is your extra TV. Yeah. You're not supposed to. Yeah, I was going to say, how do they know that? Yeah.

Well, that's another thing. Like, you're supposed to keep it connected to the internet, plugged in at all times. But at one point... Has anyone from Telly, like shown up at your house to make sure? I'm imagining this, like, a random inspection kind of situation. I was actually kind of scared because, like, I left to unplugged for like three weeks. I was, like, on vacation. And nothing happened.

So I was a little bit nervous about that, though. You come home. You're like, I've been robbed, but only for. one specific thing. All right. I want to hear from everybody. Emma, are you, will you stick around and do some lightning round with us? Yeah.

All right, good. All right. We are going to come back and do a lightning round. Emma's going to ship her telly back, and we'll be right back. Support for the show comes from MongoDB. If you're tired of database limitations and architectures that break when you scale, it's time to think outside of rows and columns. Because let's be honest.

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Terms and conditions apply. Buzzwords like progressive and affordability are thrown around all the time in politics. But what do they actually mean? For me, being a progressive means at least two things. One, being willing to unite lots and lots of people, all of the folks that are getting screwed over against the powers that be that are making your life worse. And then second, being progressive is essentially a hopeful enterprise.

That you think, I think, that the world can be much better, that we don't have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo. And is there a difference between what it means? to the elected officials, and what it means to the people. So money is essentially the root of everything. I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you have all that. That's like secondary, third.

Like, that doesn't, that's not a priority. That's this week on America Actually. Let's begin. All right, we're back. Let's get to the lightning round. Unsponsored for flavor, whatever that means. Eli's going to be back soon. He'll explain what that means.

I'm excited about it. I miss the thunder. The thunder is gone. You'll notice Jake is gone. I killed Jake. No, Jake is out doing Jake things. He'll be back, but he is still very sad about the Thunder Round, and he continues to post at me from Burner accounts about the Thunder Round.

To all of you, I hear you, and you're wrong, and I don't care, and it's the Lightning Round. Shocking amount of news to get through this week. So let's blow through some of it. Emma, why don't you go first? What's your first Lightning Round story? So I had a story about how Microsoft is giving its skills. co-pilot AI face. And this was about as unsettling as the telly is.

You said a couple of weeks here. I just looked at this. And I guess they have like, there's a bunch of faces you can choose from. And they're all like not human. I mean, they're not like realistic human faces. They're like kind of cartoony. And it's just bizarre to see, like you click on them and they're like, hello. So, Emma, how may I help you today?

And they're like, whole mouth moves. And it's just kind of creepy, to be honest. And I think I'd rather have the little co-pilot bean thing that they used to have or that they were trying before. Like, I'd rather have that talk at me, I think. Jen's out on the bean. No. The idea of giving AI a face is definitely something we've seen all the tech companies

try and sort of tackle with now. I mean, the rumor, wasn't there the rumor here that the new. Apple smart display is going to have like a clipy like, not clippy, but what's the finder like face? So like, because I think one of the keys here is some expression does help with the communication, but does it need to be human or can it just be, you know, some kind of like smile, like on the echoes devices are talking about it's like little smile now pops up to sort of show some interaction. So you kind of need some feedback, but does it need to be?

And yeah, you're right. these are not, these are kind of creepy-looking characters. Can you stylize them at all? Do you know? Or does it, you just choose one of them? Like, can you customize your co-pilot creature? I think you can, you have to just choose one of them. Okay. I can see them in the future, like, making, letting you customize them. But for now, it's just kind of like, here you go. Like, just where does it come? Like, I have not used a Windows computer in a very long time. So does it like just, middle of the screen or is it in the corner or where do they appear? I just put it like on a, it's on like the browser. Like I just tried on the browser and it just is like in the middle

of your browser like a big face that's just like talking to you and you and you talk back aloud to it and it's just like it's just kind of bizarre. Like I can see that what they're trying to get at but like I'm not sure if AI really needs a human face. It is one of those things that I think you're totally right, Emma, that you can absolutely 100% imagine the series of decisions that led to the launch of, I think it's called portraits. And every single one

of those decisions was the wrong one. And it's just like, it's, because it's like, I think that most people's experiences, you load up something like the chat GPT voice mode and it has this sort of pulsing thing that gives you this idea that it's listening. And you want something that seems

active, right? So it doesn't just feel like you're shouting at a static screen, feels bad. And so figuring out what those animations should be and how they should work and what kind of character it should be, I actually think it's a really interesting exploration. And I know all these companies are doing that in terms of like, what is the tone of voice that these things should have and what is the character of them and how should they talk and should they use words like suss? Like all these different things I think are super interesting and valuable. And I think if you land on like polar express level animated people, you have gone wrong.

I agree that we should, A, in principle, we should not be training people to think of these things as humans. I understand why the companies want you to do that, and I think it is bad and they should stop. I also think, like, the idea that maybe it should seem like some cool, weird alien being creature is, like, maybe closer. And there's all kinds of interesting examples in science fiction of these, like, weird objects. Like I was just watching LEO, the Pixar movie that just came out that nobody saw. Delightful movie, by the way. Highly recommend it. And there's this really cute little, like, blobby alien that just, like, follows him around through most of the movie.

And I was like, that's what I want my a ad to be. Like, forget the rest of this. Just give me a little jellyfish-looking alien that talks to me in every language known to man. And I'm in. The floating around part would be great, too. Oh, yeah. I wanted to sort of just, like, kick it up here next to me. Just hangs out.

Yeah. That's the dream. Yeah, but copilot portraits. is not it. That's all I know for sure. While we're on the subject of slightly creepy AI, my first lightning round thing is this new SORA app that Open AI put out this week. Slightly creepy? Fair. We're going to talk more about SORA over time because it's still, it's in an invite-only app that most people have not had access to. But I think the idea is essentially it's TikTok,

but everything is AI generated, is what it's. going to be. This is like the vibes app that Meta put out, which is essentially the same thing. It's just like what if Facebook was all AI, which AI would point out is just what Facebook is now. But also, this question of like, will you as a person want to spend your days scrolling through a bunch of AI generated content is the big question that these companies are trying to answer right now? But the thing that happened this week, two things that I think are really interesting. One is SORA, two, the model that powers all of it, appears to be so good it's going to be terrifying. Like, in some really big and important ways. And I think we've been burned by how good the demo videos are before.

So I am withholding a lot of judgment until we actually see what this stuff looks like in real life. But, like, the videos that we've seen are nuts. Like, truly, I think, I don't know how you guys feel, but I'm a relatively sophisticated viewer of, of both real and artificial stuff. And I had a really hard time distinguishing what was not AI from these things. And like people talking and recognizable people in these videos, which goes to the other thing I think is really interesting,

which is this idea that is inside of the SORA's app called cameos, which is basically the idea is that you as a person upload a video that you take on your phone or whatever, you upload a video to the app with your face in it. And what that then does is give everyone else on the app permission to use your face in generated videos. And there's a really interesting like permission structure in that, which is like, it can't do anything until I add myself to the corpus of data. But once I do, I become fair game in the model with which to, you know, do any kind of deep fake you want. I just think that's a really

interesting way to think about this kind of permission that is messy and problematic in a whole bunch ways, but is apparently what they're headed for. But it does feel like I have been reluctant to say and feel like we are heading towards some, like, truth is unknowable and everything is a disaster. But, like, looking at these Sora videos, it was unnerving. I don't know. Did either of you experience that looking at this stuff? Yeah, I did see, I don't know, I think, I don't know if it was Sam Altman or somebody

else. They posted, like, a video of, like, an AI-generated gymnastics routine or, like, a clip from that and like AI has notoriously like had trouble generating this because it shows like gym this was like three arms or something yeah they'll do like one normal flip and then they like do like a weird fly off of the map but it seems like sore like I didn't it looked like a real clip like this one looked legit and it was kind of unsettling and just um not great I think one of the, I mean, it's terrifying that all of this is getting so real. But one of the kind of the flip side that makes it even more terrifying to me is that when the fake stuff gets so real, it means that no one believes the real stuff either.

It's like the fake news dichotomy that we've ended up in. It's like, you know, you've got to trust your sources, which is always something, you know, reliable sources. But with this, it's like, if you don't believe, you can't believe anything anymore. And that just puts you in like an existential crisis. Like my daughter is 14 and she spends a fair amount of time on TikTok. And she can tell right away when something's AI. It's like it's now like a new skill that our youth are learning, which is a good skill. But this is what I've said to her.

It's like, is there going to be a point where you can't tell the difference? And when you get to that point, nothing is real. That was this, the SORA 2 videos. And again, these are just demo videos. Like, God only knows how accurate this is to what most people's actual experience will be. That would, these are the first time that I have looked at them. And like, I've had to watch them several times before you could clock anything that looked like AI. And like, maybe the youths will be better at this than we are.

Like, hopefully they will be. But I would have said we were a long way away from it being really impossible for anyone to tell. And now suddenly it feels like it's closer than I realized, which is pretty scary. Yeah. All right. That's my deep existential crisis for the week. Jen, what's your first lightning round? It's fat bear week. I don't know why I'm surprised this is what you've done.

It's so exciting. I missed the entire week, thanks to Google and Amazon, but I did get to see or hear thanks to Justine's wonderful reporting. Most important stories she's reported on ever. Sorry. That there was a champion crowned. And now for those of you who sadly are not familiar with that their week, it's one of my favorite weeks on the internet. It is when a group in Alaska, live streams all of the brown bears coming to the Catmine National Park where they converge on, I forget the name of the river, but one of the big rivers where all the salmon are jumping up and the bears just stand there and let the salmon jump in their mouths. It's amazing. And they're doing this to get fat for the winter. Sam, honestly. Yeah. That's right. So this group is a conservancy, a nonprofit, it's called Exhibit. explore.org, they have webcam set up and they track the bears when they arrive because they arrive relatively, you know, normal, healthy bear looking. And then over the time, they get

fatter and fatter and fatter because they're just eating salmon, eating salmon. And you get to vote on the champion fat bear. And this winner this year was chunk, which is a great name, bear 32. And it's just the most delightful thing on the internet. Like I spent most of my summer watching the eagles in the nest in California that was live streamed. There were these three and then two baby eagles that were hatched and you got to watch them get raised and then fly the nest and oh, it was so amazing. And then this watching brown bears coming to the rivers and eating and fighting and like there's a lot of, you know, it's like real housewives type stuff going on. And I literally most years, I will just, I have two monitors and one monitor will be live feeds at brown bears in Alaska eating salmon.

And it's just so soothing and great and fun. And I was so excited. I was excited. But Chunk weighing in at 1,200 pounds and impressive. He got one of the reasons he won, I think he got the sympathy vote because he had sadly had a broken jaw. Oh, Chant. And, you know, any kind of injury like that could be technically could definitely be definitely be. fatal for an animal if it's not able to feed and then the winter comes. Because what bears do,

obviously they go and hibernate for the winter and they need all the extra blubber from the salmon to keep them through the winter. And if they don't eat enough, they could die. So it's, you know, it's real survival of the fish just out there, but also great YouTube viewing. Very good. We all root for chunk. My favorite thing about this story was there was a comment on Justine's story, which is very good, and we'll put in the show notes. There was basically, I don't know why this is on the verge.com, but I like it. And somebody else just responded to that comment and was like, webcams are tech.

Yes. Hell yeah. I'm in. Yeah, that was why I was like, I asked Richard the newsagel's like, can I post about the eagle less? And he's like, but it's a webcam. He's just a webcam and cute baby eagles. Neely in the past has approved stories because there's a phone there.

And that's good enough. Sometimes it's good enough. This is what tech brings. This is the good stuff tech brings to you. 100%. I love it. I cannot recommend Chunk enough to everyone. Emma, what's your next one? Yeah. So my next one was that Waymo now supports YouTube music. And I chose this because I got to go to Waymo for the first time recently.

You're just living in the future over here. Yeah. Were there ads in the car? Oh, now I don't even remember that because I was too busy like staring at like this steering. about New York cabs, the ads. I can never turn them off. Oh, yeah. They don't have ads in Waymo's there.

I don't remember. I'm sure they're coming if they don't yet. Exactly. How was your Waymo experience? Was it everything you dreamed of? It was actually like really cool. And I was just like, they integrated like Spotify earlier. Now it's YouTube music.

But I just wanted to like say that the music that you hear when you first like get into the Waymo, it's very. like soothing. And it's like, I can't imagine like rocking out in there because I feel like you need the relaxing music. So like elevator music. Kind of. It's like lo-fi music. Like you just need that so you don't like freak out that nobody's driving the car. And like I feel like it's very, it's very relaxing. Because sometimes at one point like the Waymo was making a right turn and I was just like, holy crap. I don't know what's going to happen to me after this. Yeah, I feel like everybody I know who takes a Waymo describes their first experience as like,

oh my God, I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die. And then by about the third one, you kind of just get used to it. Yeah, yeah, it's true. But, yeah, I mean, I just think I could totally like see like how people do jam out in the Waymo because nobody's in the car and you can just like kind of party in there and go crazy. But I just, I do like the relaxing music that they play by default. Yeah, I tend to agree. that like, uh, it should probably not try to distract me with my favorite songs. But I also feel

like, listen, Waymo and YouTube owned by the same company. And, and these people need to have a meeting with each other that so that it knows when I get in the car and it plays the music that I like the second I step into the via. This is the most obvious thing in the world and Google will never do it. And I will just be angry about it forever. Yeah, I was abused at one of the comments on, um, the quick post for this because somebody was like, of course, it's like the most Google thing ever to integrate their own service, like after doing Spotify and IHeart Radio. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, oh, God. Every, every, once a year, everyone who works for Google should be required to all meet each other. Like, just. Yes. In a Google home. Yes. Exactly. All right.

My next one is, I mean this sincerely, maybe the single most exciting product. announcement for me personally that has happened this year, which is that Spotify will now let you exclude a single song from your algorithm and taste profile on Spotify. So recently, I have a, I have a two-and-a-half-year-old who only wants to watch Toy Story 100% of the time. This morning, I'm pretty sure he faked sick for, I think, the first time ever so that he, because he wanted to stay home and watch TV. And I saw through him and he's not here. But anyway, Uh, his favorite song on Earth is the third song from the Toy Story soundtrack, which is called I Will Go Sailing No More. And it is, it's the one where Buzz finds out he's a toy and then tries to, tries to fly out the window and falls down.

And Arthur, my son likes to stay in there with his buzz and act out this whole thing as we play the song 700 times in a row. So all of this is to say, I will go sailing no more is going to be the number one song on my Spotify rapped this year. It's going to be the song, all of my other recommendations are based on. I get Discover Weekly recommendations every week now by bands called like fart poo-poo-pipi. And like it's just, this is my life now. And so the idea that I'm going to be able to go in and say exclude this from my profile, this is not representative of my actual taste is so exciting. And every other service needs to have this.

Like if I watch a YouTube video that I don't want to influence the rest of my YouTube videos, I want to be able to be like, I didn't like that one pretend. you never saw that I saw it. Like, I want that on every service. And it makes me so happy that it exists on Spotify. Oh, completely agree. I need it on Netflix because every, for some reason, even though my kids have their own profiles, my daughter loves to watch all her sort of anime, K-pop type movies and shows on my, literally everything I have is Asian influenced for all of my watch list now. And it's like, some of it's great, but it's, you know, I also, you know, give me a good CSI. Come on. But yeah, I agree. I had the same.

same issue with Spotify. I ended up having to get the separate accounts with the kids and spend the extra money. That's in your future, David. I just want the button. I want one button that says this is not the person I aspire to be. Take this out of my profile. And then I want another button that is like, I would like to be more like the person who watches and listens to this. Please show me more of this. More of these. Yeah. Like when I, when I come across like a like a gardening video on TikTok, I want a button that is like, hell yeah. More of these. Like, yeah, I want to the person who watches this video. So show me more of this video. No, I agree. The opt-out button should be everywhere. Yeah. I didn't watch this because I liked it.

Please leave me alone with it. But it needs to exist everywhere. And I'm thrilled that it exists on Spotify. Jen, you're up last. What's your last thing? Yeah, just to bring it back full circle, I guess, to all the Amazon announcements. We didn't dive into this because there was a big surprise, actually. This was quite a big surprise for the. Ring, the Amazon-owned video doorbell camera company. Jamie Siminoff, who has recently returned, came out on stage at the event and introduced a boatload of new cameras, nine in total, all 2K and 4K, which they've never done before. So 4K is a huge jump.

So, you know, they're just leapfrogging the nest there who just went to TK. 2K, now they've gone to 4K. And there's a new ring battery, sorry, a ring doorbell. there's two versions of that, 2K and 4K. These are wired. They're all wired cameras. Again, the higher resolution, you need a bit more power. This is all feeding into the Alexa plus AI as well.

So you've got two new doorbell cameras, new design, nice, quite sleek, little slimmer, still not a good design, I'm afraid. But it looks like a doorbell. That's what Jamie Sevenov said to me afterwards when I commented on this. I'm like, this was a chance for a big redesign. He's like, it looks like a doorbell. That's what it needs to do. Your doorbell isn't something you use, which is a good point.

That is a good point. But yeah, so these come in. You've also got new floodlight camera, new outdoor camera, new indoor camera that are all 4K. There are 2K options for some of these as well, plus POE options, which are more for professional installs, but I know some of our listeners are handy with the sort of the more permanent installs. POE is a great solution if you can do it. So these are all announced, along with something called retinal vision, which sounds like the worst. I'm sorry, it's the worst markings.

That's just vision. That's all, that's what vision is. I thought it was like an eye scanner at first. I'm like, yeah, I know. I was like, that would be cool. Like, so your, it does what? It's like, do I need to go to the eye doctor? What's going on? Basically, it's a fancy way of describing AI enhancing the video feed. So you will supposedly get much better video quality, which again is feeding into the Alexa

Plus and the AI. So you can get new. There's text descriptions now on the ring video doorbells and the cameras. So you'll get a description of what's happened as opposed to suggest, hey, there's, you know, right now you might get person detected or motion detected and you will. Also, because they introduced facial recognition for the first time to ring cameras, so you now could get an alert that says, hey, David's at your front door. If you're going to come visit sometime, David, that would be great.

Emma, telly has arrived at your front door. Your telly has arrived at your front door. Yes, they've come to make sure you're watching your telly. So this was all these big upgrades for ring that are things that people have been wanting for a while, especially the new increased resolution. The facial recognition feature, you know, some people love it. Some people don't. Obviously, you don't have to turn this on.

It is all cloud processed, but whereas some, I think, Nest does most of its, Apple does most of its local. I think some of Nests is local, Google Nests. So that was all interesting, but the star of the show was, I would, was the dog. As we mentioned, they do, you know, the tech companies do love to use pets and pets and kids to to keep us interested. But there's a new feature called Search Party. And what this does is when you lose, if you lose your dog or just dogs now, cats coming soon,

you can send out an alert in the Ring Neighbors app, which is a separate app. It's kind of like next door. Like next door, but only for crime. Yes. Any ring cameras in your neighborhood will. will get so that they can, the image can be recognized, the image of your dog can be recognized by any local cameras. And then if the AI, this is all AI based, sees your dog on someone else's camera, that ring owner will then get an alert saying, we've spotted this lost dog on your

camera. Would you like to, you know, get in touch with the owner, take the dog home? You know, they can then decide what they're going to do. So the idea is this. A-I, neighborhood AI, is working to help find your lost dog. So it's a neat idea. I was very excited when they first showed the dog on the screen thinking, we're finally getting the fetch pet tracker from 2019. But no, this is far more technically advanced than just a little neat pet tracker, which was very cool because it was one of the first devices they announced for sidewalk.

What happened to sidewalk? Every time, yeah, like you say, you know, all the rings will talk to each other. And I'm like, oh, didn't Amazon make a big splash about how it was going to connect all of its devices and build a whole new internet out of all of your connect? Is this that? No, this has got nothing to do with Sidewalk. Jan, don't do that to me. That's not nice. I know.

I think Sidewalk is a really interesting idea. And that's why I was excited about this. PetTracker from six years ago. I was excited six years ago, making that clear. Because I've used a lot of pet trackers and they use GPS or cellular, which, where I live, both of which are very unreliable and also expensive. Whereas the idea of the sidewalk is it's a free, low power, local network that uses already existing infrastructure, all those many, many millions of echo devices out there. But no one has really, nothing has really come of developing products for sidewalks. There are a few that came out, but you don't really hear much about them.

Ring never did. It's Pet Tracker. I asked Jamie about the Pet Tracker, and he said, you know, I always, it was something they wanted to do, but he said, this is easier in many ways because it's very hard to get 100% penetration on pets of pet trackers, whereas, you know, we have a lot of ring doorbells already out there. And this only works on outdoor cameras, obviously. So, but, I don't know, I mean, you also have to have ring cameras. So whereas that's probably likely.

It's got one of the larger market penetrations that your neighborhood would have them. But it's kind of locking it into one ecosystem. Whereas, yeah, Sidewalk does work today. Like, I have it using it in my home and it helps keep devices sending notifications when the internet goes down. So when the internet goes down, I still get alerts from my ring cameras because it's using Sidewalk. It's a great system. It's a great network. It helps extend connectivity outside of your home without using Wi-Fi.

Sure. But yeah, nothing. They don't seem to have done much with it recently. I'm hoping to get an update one day. Fine. Whatever. Panos, if you're listening, give me sidewalk. Everything will be fine.

I will say the search party thing is like in this context, they're very smart to talk about this with pets, because if they're like, we will track your children around the neighborhood. All of a sudden, you have, we can follow you from house to house. It's really creepy. But in the like, we're just going to use it to find your lost dog way. It's like, oh, this is just a good thing. This is like, welcome to the double-sided coin of all of rings, everything.

It's like, if you look at it one way, it's nice and helpful and good. And if you look at it another way, it is just a horrible, like, dystopia for snitching on each other about everything. Especially now that you've added the facial recognition. Yeah. Ring, this is what we do. I will say, though, ring is, at least in my neighborhood, every thing. We spent the summer house hunting, and it's like just the – I started just clocking the percentage of places that we would go that would have a ring. And it's like – I mean, most places now seem to have some kind of smart doorbell. Like more often than not, I feel like the places we go have smart doorbells. And most of those are rings. Like ring is just the default player in this category, which is nuts. Yeah, which is why I wish they would come up with some nicer designs. Because you go to these gorgeous houses, I'm sure.

I mean, you live in D.C. I'm sure there's some lovely old houses there, and then they'll have this bright, stainless steel looking thing with a big blue ring. I know you can get faceplates, and there's the elite that can kind of be installed properly, but most people don't do that. They just stick the big battery-powered one on the front door, and it's glaring there at you, which is part of the point, I suppose, if you see it, you know you're being watched. It's something. Yeah. Emma, are you a smart home person? I have a smart doorbell. it's not a ring. It's a Ufi.

But, yeah, there's a lot of rings around my neighborhood. I could definitely vouch for that. Yeah, the neighbor's app is just forever like a weird, sketchy dystopian place that I do not enjoy. All right. It's time for us to get out of here. We have been talking about ads for too long. We've gone way over. Thank you both for doing this. This is very fun. I know it's been a truly nuts week and month, frankly,

for both of you. And it appears it's not over. Like, tech timber is a real thing, but I think Techtober is coming fast. So it's going to be busy. We'll have to do this more. Thank you both for doing this. This is a lot of fun.

We'll be back on Tuesday. Jen, you and I are going to have some more smart home stuff to talk about. It all just keeps happening. And I think actually, you and I are going to be doing a lot of fun smart home stuff this fall. So stay tuned for all of that. I'm moving at some point. So I'm just going to, like, ask you for help on smart home things

that I can try and convince my wife to install in our house to absolutely no success. It's going to be great. But until then, a couple of things before we go. By the way, one, call the Vergecast hotline 866, Vorge11. Email Vergecast at the verge.com. I genuinely want to know all of your feelings about Tully. If you've gotten a Tully, tell us what you think about Amazon stuff,

all of your feelings. Also, version history, our new podcast, is launching this Sunday, October 5th. If you are subscribed to the Vurgcast on any podcast platform or to the version on YouTube, you'll get it automatically. but also subscribe to the version history feed. That's like one huge way that we make this thing work is by building its own feed itself. Go find that.

We'll link in the show notes. Thank you for listening. And I'm genuinely curious what you think about that show after you hear it this weekend. So get at me. All of your thoughts. I want to hear them all. All right.

The Vergecast is the Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer and Travis Lorchuk. We will be back on Tuesday and Friday. We got so much more. The news just never stops. We got weird AI apps to test.

We got all kinds of stuff to do. Until then, that's the Vergecast. Rock and roll.