The Vergecast - The red Nexus 5, Satya Nadella, and the odd success of Flappy Bird

Episode Date: February 7, 2014

The Vergecast is a discussion of all things relevant and irreverent in the worlds of art, culture, science, and technology. On this week's episode, Nilay Patel, David Pierce, and Ross Miller discussed the red Nexus 5, Microsoft's new CEO Satya Nadella, and the strange success of Flappy Bird. Audio: Download MP3 (35.4 MB) Subscribe to the podcast (iTunes audio) Subscribe to the podcast (iTunes video) Subscribe to the podcast (RSS) Subscribe to the podcast (Video RSS) Video: Also available on YouTube. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Beef That Sweat, the Sam Shephyr's story. Today on the Vergecast. Hello and welcome to The Vergecast. We'll be talking about beef in your sweat with Sam Schaeffer, the Sam Shephyr story. Hi, everybody, it's the Vergecast. Josh is not here today. He's, you know. Josh is an enigma.

Look, what's he going to do? Sometimes he's here. Sometimes he's not here. Anyway, I'm Nilai Patel. Roll it in a pizza. I'm David Pearson. I'm Ross Miller. Yeah.

And this is Vergecast where we talk about, pretty much talk about where you talk about where Josh is, what he could be doing, whether he's thinking about me and whether he asked about me yesterday. I mean, Valentine's Day is coming up, so I assume he's out planning your special day. Right. I hope so. Yeah. He's going to take me to the park. Yep.

There's a park. No, Josh is, you know, he's doing, Hollywood Topolski's out, you know? Hollywood to Colesky. He's doing, he's making deals. Anyway, this is a virtual cast we talk about the week in technology news, culture news, news, news, news of the weird, news of the world. I'm on a buzzfeed post. Whether Ross is thinking about me right now. But it's called how to see her the perfect.

for your Valentine's. We can talk about that if we want to. It turns out I have a lot of information on the subject. That seems really easy. Step one is choose your cut. Yeah. So I've been in a hangar steak. We had a hanger steak. We did.

It was delicious. That's where I've been. Yeah. Yeah. That's a mistake. You know, I've been suviting things in a crock pot. Dude, the crock pot is most amazing day. I bought a thing called the geek, the geek food like DSV.

I'm not even kidding. It has an amazing name. It's basically the world's most complicated on and off switch. So it's a power. That's not perfect. It's really nothing more than a power strip with a thermometer. And you plug the crock pot into it, and it measures the temperature of the water in the crock pot. And then it turns it off and gets that temperature and then turns it back on again when it falls below it.

So it holds it at a temperature. The crock pot itself doesn't do this. You have to buy a separate device. Croc pots are not complicated devices. No. They literally, it's funny because when you do recipes, you know, it's like run your crock pot at high for five hours. And like that means nothing. It's like...

The crockpot is just like a lid. Yeah. It's a lid. Like literally it's like, should that get hotter or colder? There's no temperature setting. Anyway, but so I bought this thing, so I sub-eat the stakes in it, which is amazing. And everybody should get one, because that's the best way to make sense. Fair enough.

Look at this. Look, this piece. Yeah. Beef sweat. Thank you, man. Beefy sweat. See you later. Swaggy chefs.

So this. So you love this thing. This is red necks is five. That's what David Pierce is holding right now. This just showed up yesterday. I would say that this is some of the biggest news this week, but that really is an insult to the rest of the news this way. It says a lot less about this and more about the kind of week. So I will say this.

I am on record over. and over and over again, saying that the white Nexus 5 is a piece of junk, which I will maintain. And it's because it's the sides. It's the sides. It's like these gross, glossy edges that just don't look good. Yeah. And I think the black Nexus 5 is fine.

It's soft touch. Sure. Whatever, it's kind of generic. That one, which they are calling red. It's not red. You know, Josh and I have an endless argument over what is red and what is orange. And we actually, we... One of you color, it's like a fairly cut in broad.

Well, no, because there's all kinds of orange stuff in our office, right? I'm like, that's red. He's like, it's orange. And, like, we just do this. Wait, you mean, like, the couch is upstairs? This are definitely orange. No, the couch are orange, but the weird desk, that's CB2 desk, we roll around the TV sitting on right now. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Josh will swear up and down that. That's red. Josh is wrong. Right. But, so we, but, like, after, it's funny that over the course of the past few years, he, for a while thought that he was colorblind. But now he's doing a pretty good job with me that I am colorblind. You end up the rest of the world. So, wait, what color is this?

Orange. 100% that's orange. I'm telling you, Josh will tell you that's red. And Google, forever in the same reason, thinks that's red. thinks this is red. Yeah. That's just Google's I'm paying attention. They're like,

they like moved on. That's fair. Like whatever we sold border all we're never making phones again. I'm way back and forth on this thing. I want it. Give it to me. You know it's kind of red.

This is I like, I'm buying this phone. This is my next. Right here. Like I'm not even kidding. Like it's awesome. You just, the thing I like about is you like you can't look directly at it for too long.

It's like too bright. It's the best. It throws me off. No, it's cool. It's like who, you know, Nokia tried to do it, but they never went all the way like this. with like searing orange. HGC try to do it for a minute

and then they're HDC. You've played with this, right, right? I mean, it's just a Nexus 5. I like the black buttons too. Like the black buttons are a little thing. I mean, it still has a screen that, like, I think looks kind of washed out. What about the camera?

It has a Nexus 5 camera. You know what you can't ever take a picture of this with a Nexus 5? Like, you try to take a picture of this with another Nexus 5 and the camera explodes. Too many colors, too vibrant. Too much details. I will say just looking at it.

On camera right now, it looks really good. It looks awesome. This is the best. Look, here's my iPhone, right? This is whatever. It's boring. It's functional. It has a bunch of apps, nice camera, whatever.

This is red. And victory. Right? I mean, this is the best. I want this. The screen, I will say, maybe it's because it's red. The screen looks better on this one. Maybe they're getting better.

Yeah. It's crazy to me that it took, like, A, that it took Google as long to have colors because Google is like the company of colors. Yeah. So their tagline is, actually. The company of colors. And number two, that they picked this one. Like, if I kind of love them for it, because they're like, we're going to make colors.

We're just going all the way for it. But it's just, it's just reddish-orange. Massive color. I think it's $3.49. Yeah. I'm buying one of these immediately. There you go. Wow.

All right. You want to buy you one right now? We can do this live. Let's buy you. Nothing happens. Wait, let's buy it. You're buying. No.

This is the, okay, I want to talk about Flappy Bird. We were talking about Flappy Bird. All right. Well, that means I get to take it out and the thing is I. 349. Look at that. There you go. Wait, so is Flappy Bird new this week, or was the news that we found out that the developer is making all of the money that has ever existed in the world?

Yeah, I think he's been around for a month. It's not like the top of the charts. More than a month, maybe. Okay, so it's been out a while. I have too many Google ads. Him and like two other of his apps are also like in the top app store sales. Yeah, whoever this guy is like, he's good at this game. How do you make money? I hate it's a free game.

All I want to say is that I hate Flappy Bird. Wait, wait, wait, one. It's just two. Guys, it's my high score. Oh, man. Four. Holy fuck. I got this.

Yeah, I just bought a phone. By the way, Google, I want to tell you this. Because of your terrible account management, I almost bought a phone with a totally wild, old Google account. Yeah, sure. Like, why don't you know? They should know better than this. Some other state that you used to...

You remember the days when the VergeCath was all one cohesive conversation? No. No. That's literally... But I definitely just bought a Red Nexus 5 because it's the best. And I'd never going to... I mean, I guess I'll move my SIM card for my 1 into this. Yeah.

One. Right. You have a T-Willow the SIM card, right? Yeah. It totally works. The service is amazing. I have absolutely no, I need that can't tell if serious gift right now. There are moments in New York City when having T-Mobile. So everything about buying T-Mobile service is best, right?

So I bought it at Walmart. I bought, like, the card. It's like a secret plan that you can buy at Walmart, or you can find if you, like, skirt around the website online, where I pay $30 a month for unlimited data in like 100 minutes of voice. That's the whole plan. Wait, that's awesome. Can you tether?

Yeah, you can do whatever you want. It's an animated. Wow. That's, live your life. That's amazing. Well, that's like the plan they have

for like the iPad and stuff, right? But except no. Well, there's a hundred minutes of course. So you can definitely buy this one at Walmart, like in a package and it says Walmart exclusive. And I said it, like,

went to Walmart to buy this thing. And then everyone tweeted me that you can like find it somewhere online. You just have to like wink at the right guy in the T-Mobile store and then everything's going. Yeah. You have to. You have to Snapchat the right T-Mobile personally. I'm looking for the right Walmart special. The answer is just John.

Anyway, so I bought it. I, like, I love the idea that I have this card and I can put it on all the phones and whatever. It's great. And then the service New York City is like totally hit and miss. Yeah, really. It's like on one minute I'm getting like 40 down and then like I take two steps to the left and my phone lights on fire and explodes.

Yeah, I mean, it is occasionally like outrageously fast. Like it's faster than my home internet sometimes. And then every once in a while. And then it's the same thing. I like walk into my bathroom and it's like no service ever again. Paul Miller, you totally, when he first got back on the internet, Paul was like, I had team. I just had T-Mobile. I've just been watching Netflix on my phone over and over again.

connected to a projector. And he's like, there's no data caps. Like he's like, I'm like, what do you know to, buddy? He's like, hey, you know, watching Netflix on my phone connected to a projector. I was like, well, you came all the way back to the internet. Like, you live, that's like two years ahead of time on the internet curve. T-Mobile needs to buy like a little pico projector company and start making those and just sell them. I mean, Samsung did that phone though.

They did the projector phone. Yeah, yeah. Was it the beam? The galaxy beam? That phone was ridiculous. That was bad. Yeah. But I, if I would, that's a really good idea.

Maybe I should just do that. Yeah. I literally don't see a single downside to this idea. But having a projector, just sticking your phone in and playing movies. Yeah, playing movies for it? Yeah, the downside is that you have to purchase a projector. Would you like to shop for a projector now? No, oh, God.

So everybody tweeted, David, what projector he should buy? No, and don't do it. What audio system? Soundbar, full 5.1? That's true. You don't want to, that's just rolling down. Flip his rabbit is going far down anyway. Like, what sound bar should I buy is all over.

Okay. Let's talk about what actually happened this week. Okay. I think there's actually, there are two pieces of, I think, huge news that are both connected. Okay. Okay. So one, and we talked about something like, The Virgin Live a little bit earlier this week. Mike Schottes appointed Satya Nadella as CEO.

Yep. Replacing Bomber, we ran a touching tribute. Say his name again? I don't know. I've been saying it different every time. Yeah. So the way I've heard them say it is like Sotia. It's Satchia Nadella.

It's Sotia. That's how my mother would pronounce it. Because, you know, like, I have a thing. Like, my name, my parents pronounce my name far differently than everybody else. Really? How do your parents pronounce your name? Nele. Really?

Yeah, that's my name. Wait, Neely? You can't do it. I'm sorry. This is like a... There's a cultural barrier that prevents you from ever pronounce my name. I could just study this for years.

And that is how Indian people pronounce Slaughter Nile. Okay. That's it. As far as I can tell. So my name is Neely. And it's hard to say. I didn't even hear you just now. So I grew up in Wisconsin.

I don't know what that was. And it just turned into Nile. Okay. And then you just went for it. Just went for it. Like, my sister made a... She made a conscious decision when she went to college

to undo Wisconsin pronunciation of her name. Really? So she grew up in Wisconsin, I remember and called her Terrell, like Terrell Owens, which is hilarious. That's amazing.

It's not real. Tio. Also not a man's name. Or not a lady's name. And she went to college. She was like, my name's her name. And, uh, right.

And she like, trained like Illinois to like pronounce her name correctly. And then she comes back to Wisconsin and her was like, hi, Teryl and she's like, who? She's like, what?

So yeah. So, yeah, so, you know, I didn't, I didn't, did she hang out with Terl Owens a lot? No, She does. You know, I think one time she met Jamie Fox.

Is that a thing? Sure. Yeah. He probably knows Trello. Anyway, anyway, so Satya, I think is right. I think like, I'll buy it. O.G., that's the pronunciation. But they've been saying Satya.

Yeah. They're all over the place a little bit. They are all over the place. I think they're going to, but Satya Nadella is the CEO of Microsoft. He is, I will say this. I've gotten a lot of tweets from very excited people in India and my parents are very pleased. Right. Like, nationalistically, like people are very very.

very excited about this. Yeah. But I think that's, I think that's like a weird thing, because his number one qualification is not that he's from India. It's that he's been at Microsoft for 22 years and it's done like an excellent job running various parts of their business. Have you heard his name before? Yeah. Okay, I hadn't. I was sort of surprised by that. So here's what I think is really interesting. Tom's like a small piece like saying like he might possibly. He's like a low on the list. No. So that, here's why I think that's interesting. So right when they said bomber's

leaving, we did a story and we did some reporting. We talked to a bunch of people and And his name came up a lot. Really? A lot, a lot. It was like Tony Bates, Alan Malalley, Stephen Elop, and you remember this size such? And it just kept on coming out. I'm like, who? Right.

Like, he's been there. He's been running big enterprise divisions. He ran Bing. Like, not necessarily a natural choice. Right. But he was in that conversation at a high level from the get-go. And I want to say that, you know, there were other big candidates involved. But because he was in that conversation at a high level from the get-go, I, the rumor is,

that Bill Gates, he was Bill Gates candidate. Oh, interesting. Well, because Gates is now coming back to oversee this personally in a lot of ways. He's like he's an advisor. Right. So Bill Gates is stepping down as chairman of the board of Microsoft and then taking a bigger role on products as a technical advisor. And so that's like, there's a lot to unpack there with what's going with Microsoft.

And one of the things that we had always heard about with the, you know, the flashy external candidates is that they didn't want to be under Gates and Ball and around the board. And Gates was the chairman, effectively. running the show, but big, big strategic decisions was a problem

for these external candidates. Alan Malawi, chief among them, right? Yeah, if I'm Alan and I, I'm like, screw you, I ran Ford, shut up. Yeah. But, you know, the thing about Malawi

is he said from the beginning, you know, I'm very happy at Ford. Yeah. And he probably is very happy at Ford. I feel like he has a lot of reasons to be very happy at Ford. He's like, I'm re-up for a year,

and everyone was like, so what are you doing after that year? Yeah. You're leaving, right? He's definitely leaving a year. No. Yeah. You're out of there.

So, yeah, you know, I think that there's an aspect to this where this was always kind of Gates's candidate. Yeah. And Gates got out of the way because he got, he got his guy. And like, if you're Bill Gates candidate at Microsoft, you don't, I feel like, how could you lose? I think there's a lot of this. Who's going to be like, hey, Bill Gates, you're dumb. Yeah. Remember how you're Bill Gates?

I disagree with your decisions, though. Like, no, that doesn't work for people. But they got also more like, oh, we're shedding the image of old Microsoft. We need to figure out what to do in the future. Yeah, but Bill Gates then just, like, smothers you with his money and you're dead and he wins. Right. I feel like that's how this goes. Just the stockpile malaria that he keeps.

Right. The stockpile of malaria. He's like, these are the ones the lasers didn't kill. He's like release his mosquitoes. Yeah. He like hands you a laser pointer. He's like, let's see. He's like, like a TED talk.

He like released mosquitoes into the... Yeah, yeah. He just does that at board meetings. And he's like, I don't know. Maybe you'll die. Maybe you won't. I have this thing right here. Yeah, he hands you a laser pointer.

So Sats you Nadella, right? And then they're like, yes. And then he gives everybody to the antidote and everything's fine. Yeah. What's scary is how... That's a solid board meeting type. I'm just assuming that that's correct. Look, Mike, he is an evil genius.

No, look, so there's that. There's that whole story. It's a huge story, right? There's a big shift in their language from where devices and services to work cloud and mobile, which sounds like nonsense. But it was repeatedly said out loud and, you know, sort of out in the world as we did more reporting on it. It was repeatedly said that this marks an actual change.

Right. They're going to go, devices and services with Balmer's line, and cloud and mobile is Nadella's line, and those are different in some way. But are those like, I mean, those are pretty easy synonyms for each other. It's like devices and mobile are kind of becoming insane. Yeah, but I asked a, you know, when I was talking to the person I was talking to, I said, is that like a conflict difference or is that just shades of gray? And I was told, you should really read into what you want. Okay. And I think that's really meaningful. Like, I, I think. I think that it is a difference. I think that devices and services means we're going to make devices and put our services on them. And that was our strategy, right? I think that's why Office isn't on the iPad. I think cloud and mobile, cloud first, mobile first, that's Nadella's line,

means we're going to make, we're going to literally move Microsoft software into the cloud and then put it down onto mobile devices. And I think that opens them up to the iPad. I think that opens them up to Android. I think that opens them up to an entire suite of other devices and platforms. that they have been trying to leverage into getting people onto Windows. So here's the thing that's interesting, though, about that timing then, which is they just bought a hardware company.

They just bought a consumer devices company. Yeah. And, well, they haven't yet. This happened right before the Nokia purchase got finished. Right. So what does that mean then? Well, that's mobile, right? Like, I don't, I think they're, I can't imagine they're going to get rid of Windows phone

or try and get rid of it. Yeah. But, like, I think the smart thing, like, this was, John Gruber wrote a great piece about this this week. And I thought the thing that was most interesting that he said was he quoted the numbers where it was like the the raw number of devices that run Windows products is still enormously high. Yeah. But the number, it used to be, like I can just find the number here, but it used to be like, you know, there were 90 million devices and Windows ran on 95% of them. And it used, and now it's like 240 million devices and Microsoft or in Windows stuff runs on 30%

of them. And like, raw numbers there are the same. same and they're big ass numbers, but like there's this huge world that they're not touching now. And this is like, and the place he landed in this piece, which I thought was really smart, is instead of saying, you know, we want to be, he just wrote, Saty Nadella needs to find Microsoft's new, a computer on every desk and in every home running Microsoft software. Here's my stab at Microsoft services sending data to and from every network device in the world. The next ubiquity isn't running on every device. It's talking to every device. And I think that's exactly right. And that's what Google has accomplished, right? And I think Microsoft, there's, there's, there's been. been a lot of conversation about how companies are trying to do the Apple model where they sell you a device, they sell you the software, they sell you a suite of services at running out.

And Microsoft, or Apple has 70% margins or whatever, insane, 40% margins. That's not Google's model, right? Google's model is they make a bunch of software. And they have, I think, very aggressively used those services in their software to push Windows into third place in terms of market share and services, right? And I think that has been worked out really well for Google. I think Microsoft needs to come back and say, you know what, Google Docs isn't as good a cloud service as office. It just isn't, right?

And if you want to run a real business, you need Excel. And we're going to put Excel in the cloud for real. And we're going to put it everywhere. And we're going to put it everywhere. And that will enable them to start a conversation with a class of customers that they have traditionally always had, but have started poking around because they have iPads now. And that's like a big deal. And I think saying you have to make the investment all the way to buy a surface to get Excel is a huge ask now in this market.

Well, yeah, I mean, I think what this is sort of an admission of to some extent is like doing what Apple has done is impossible because Apple already did it. Yeah. Right? Like they've built this locked in thing and their market share is big enough, especially in particular places like phones and tablets where nobody else is going to get enough market share to like pull it off. And Apple's fine with not being 90% market share. And the one vendor who has done it in terms of. hardware has, Samsung has no software chops that I've ever seen, especially not in the kinds of software that Microsoft. Well, and they're not even really trying. Like, they're not trying to lock

you in in the same way that Apple is. Like, Apple straight up doesn't work if you don't use its products. Like, it's... That's true. I just plug this phone and it's useless to me next to the iPad. Like, this is a new computer and I never plug a phone in a new computer anymore. I literally plugged it in and like all kinds of Apple stuff started up. Oh, God. Yeah. It's like, would you like to use iPhone? It's like, no. Like, literally the first time I've ever opened I photo on this particular machine is when I plugged this thing. But then it's like try to put a word document onto your iPhone and everything just catches on fire. It just won't work. But then, but so that by basically saying like we're not

going to try and do that anymore and we're going to go back to this model of, and it's way more true to like what Microsoft actually is to say we just want to be on every device. Like we want all of the things that people use to be running our software is what Microsoft originally did. And they just happened to like Microsoft originally said a new, like it was a computer on every desk and every home. That's why I have a Mac. We already did that. Now it's about getting Microsoft software onto it.

And they got away from that. And the way back into that is to do cloud stuff. And to open it back up to a lot of people. I think, but that's short term. I think the other piece is like, you know, the real answer is computers everywhere. Right. Because everything is... Well, computers are everywhere.

Like, we're there. Right. But software, like, is running... Like, putting a computer everywhere doesn't mean anything that should have awesome software behind it, right? Right. Like, I have that... In my office upstairs, I have a really crappy camera that runs... Skype. Like, like, really crappy. It's impossible to overestimate how crappy camera is. But it does. But it's

functionality trumps how crappy it is, right? It literally is a camera, a webcam, yeah. With a TeGRA 2 processor running Android and running an insanely bad custom Skype UI on it. Yeah. Right? And it just makes Skype calls. It's like somebody took WebOS cards and was like, how can I make this in four minutes? And then just shipped it. And look. But so, but it does its job, which is I don't want a computer next to it. I don't need all the complexity of a computer. I don't need all the complexity of a computer. I literally, I literally, literally just need a thing on top of my TV that can make Skype calls. And I have it. Right. But the software is miserable.

When most people have it, it's a Xbox. But an Xbox cost $400. Yeah. This thing costs $120. And I'm saying, $120. It's $120. Seriously? That seems really expensive to me.

Don't you have that TV at home that just has the web can that pops up? You just got to get another one of those. So that's another great example, though. So I have a Panasonic plasma television. It's brand new. It's one of the best pictures you can buy. And the software that runs on it is. fucking miserable.

Just the worst. Like, if you work at Panasonic right now and you're a software engineer, you should quit because you're bad at your job. You should go get a different kind of job. You should go be a... They won't get somewhere else. They should keep their job forever.

I'm just saying, to have some dignity. Like, are you the guy who designed the... Make a video call UI and the Panasonic VT... What do I have? VT. 90? VT. 80? Sure. All of members, you bought it, and you Instagramed it and you said America because you bought it on Cyber Monday and we're very proud of yourself.

Whatever. If you designed that UI, on that TV, you should never do any more software design in your life. You should feel ashamed. I'm sorry. That's just the way it is. But that's the opportunity for a company like Microsoft, is to start making the software for that. I mean, and they tried to do it before, but it's to start saying, like, there are all these other places for us to go.

There are all these other kinds of devices that are going to talk to the internet, and we can be the company that brings it all together. Yeah. Well, and I hope that what they realize and what Satya Nadella does is say the answer to that is not always Windows. Right, but making, they have to make Microsoft bigger than Windows because it's not going to work everywhere. So, this is the second piece of news. So, you know, we don't know. There's a lot to unpack with Nadella.

There's a lot to unpack about why Microsoft decided to introduce him by launching a web page with a series of fake interviews. How long do you think he's giving him before we get to like actually start evaluating what he's doing? What does it take? Like a year? 90 days? Really? 100 days? You evaluate the president for 100 days.

All right. So, whatever, three and a half months. And he doesn't even have any wars to fight. Yeah, he's gonna be fine. He's got two major wars to do. He's probably also right now just sitting there playing Fluffy Bird. Would be amazing. Was that on Windows phone?

I bet he's not on Windows phone. He sits down at like Balmer's old desk. It's like totally clean and barren. He's like, what do I do now? And he slowly pulls an iPhone out of his pocket and starts playing Flappy Bird. He's on secret. I bet he's as bad at it as I am. He's probably taken.

We never would say about it. I'm not good. So there's that. So here's the second piece, sort of the flip side of this. which is Sony today decided they're not going to make Vio PCs anymore. They sold off the Vio business, which is incredible. Yeah. That's an incredible admission of this isn't a viable business for Sony anymore.

And Sony has all kinds of... Damn it, John. For those at home, playing at home, our director just gave us. The worst pun, not to be repeated. Viable? I feel bad now. John, please leave. Please talk for your job.

Is you a John Lago-Marcino, and you're responsible for the Viable. I think you should leave right. Have some dignity. Have some dignity. By the way, iTunes Match has been running on this computer nonstop since the day I bought it. What are you doing? That's a normal thing. It just launched itself to tell me it's still running.

I hate iTunes. We don't even need to go there. But so, wait, so wait, so what's making money? I'm just all kidding aside. That's an ugly road for me to go down. So, David, I had a question I asked here. I don't know if you know this still, but does Sony make money on bio at all? So I did some research when you asked you.

Okay. And the answer is no. Okay. Like, they still sell a lot of them. Right. Which is something. But they, it's, it's not, it's not a money-making business for Sony. Right.

Just like TVs. Right. Sony's been in two businesses for a long time that should be their biggest growth businesses, but have been anchors on their company for a while. Right. And it's computers and it's TVs. And it's funny because the reason they got on computers is because they, in, you know, the late 90s, everyone was like, convergence.

TVs and PCs will be the same thing. Right. Right. And Sony's just been chasing after that and not getting there for 20 years. That's the whole story here. Yeah. Well, but it's, it's really interesting to me. Like, Sony's been talking about this one Sony thing for forever, right? And I guess their plan was to make all different products with all the stuff they're really good at making. Right. And they're just kind of bailing at all the things that they aren't doing. I mean, the things too. Yeah. No, but it's a platform decision. Relentlessly ditching businesses. I mean, well, they've only, which other ones are they ditched? E-books today?

Did it's e-books today? Yeah. Was that just today? That was just today, yeah. That's weird. Because they had a, well, I guess, so they had a lead in Europe, right? They never cracked the American market, but Kindle isn't in Europe or across the world. Yeah, Sony did really well in Europe.

And they, like, every time I've met with them, they go, you know, to great lengths to remind me that it's super successful everywhere but the U.S. Yeah. And I just, I don't know. It's just U.S. and Canada. Right. Well, they're not, where they're losing here. Right. Why would you keep throwing money into, like, the void of Amazon?

Sure. You can't beat them in the U.S. I think there... But I think Sony killing the PC business to me is not an admission of we can't win in this business. I think it's an admission of, as a platform, Windows isn't important to the future of Sony. And that, to me, is that is the killer.

That should be really scary for Microsoft. That's super scary to Microsoft. Because you're one Sony, and basically what you make is now, what you make is computers of different shapes and sizes. Yeah, right. Whether it's like their weird bad smartwatch or whether it's a TV or whether it's a PS4,

they're all computers. Sure. And they're saying... It's like that and Justin Bieber albums are like the two things that Sony makes. That's true. And he's a computer. He does her on Windows apparently.

But what they're saying is they don't need the expertise of how to bring up the Windows platform and ship PCs because they're going to use other kinds of platforms everywhere. And the big bet that they made, and I actually always asked them this, because they've made a big bet on Sony mobile. Their phones are good.

Mobile and cameras are the two things that they're really swinging out. And it's like they make tablets. You know, they make Sony, Android tablets. They make that weird fablet. The Experia, well, there's the, what is it? There's a one that they always drop, they're pouring water on. Yeah.

And it's like its main thing that they can do with it. Dear Lord, why can I remember, I remember what it's called? It's like the Z1 mega or something. But then there's the tablet. Oh, right. It's the Experia tablet. And that's what it's called. And every time I see it, they've just got like a fountain, like,

just hosing down the screen. I'm like, cool. That's the best part of Arias Sony show now is like, we have devices. We're just going to put underwater. You just walk up. I mean, I liked it because I got to lead a review with a story about my showering habits. So that was good.

I mean, thank you, thank you for that. What you don't know about David is that he will take any opportunity to discuss himself in the shower. That's true.

I think actually people know that about me. People have probably figured that out about me now. Top shelf got real weird. I'm so sorry, John. The lost episode. I'm so sorry. That will never be really. Stuff in the shower.

That's actually. Stuff in the shower. It's not a bad. Top shelf shower stuff. If you listen to like a Bluetooth speaker or you play on a tablet. Yeah. Actually, the only problem is that you'd have to be in a shower the whole time.

I don't see why that's a problem. This is a really bad waters of time filled. Yeah. But this is happening to the PC. I mean, Dell had to take itself private because it's consumer businesses and PC just like weren't working out. What's the other one? IBM left years ago. HP.

HP is doing whatever it's doing. Lenovo's still big. Lenovo's growing like, I mean, what it sounds like is happening to me. And the thing, the big analyst discussion around all this stuff is that Sony, it's not that the PC market isn't big and that there's not opportunity there. but what it's becoming again is like price commoditized. Right. And these Chinese companies like Lenovo are able to make these make and sell at such huge scale and so cheap that nobody else can compete. And it's like the real money in laptops is in like $350 laptops.

Right. And that's like if you can make those with any kind of margins, you can make money. And if you can't, you can't make money in laptops. It's like that seems to be the prevailing wisdom here. And Sony, they're this. Well, they were always targeting the super high end. Right. This is the thing.

Do we have that photo essay we did of Sony machines? I mean, this made some of the most beautiful PCs ever. Oh, my God. It's funny that as I've been seeing a lot of stuff about how Apple was willing to let Sony build Mac OS10 machines because Steve Jobs loves Sony. Yeah.

And it's true, Sony had some of the wildest hardware design of all time. Well, and they tried so many things like the Viop, which is such a ridiculous thing and didn't work. It is still my all-time favorite. What I have that orange keyboard deck? Yeah. The second generation one did. The first one was real weird. I remember very distinctly, very distinctly,

the first time I saw of IOP, which was at CES, the first time we ever got our hands on one. And it came with a Vista. Wow. And we got literally, we got the bits to the Windows 7 beta on a, we had it on SD card. We got it the same days of IOP, and Paul was like, I am not running Vista.

And like immediately put the Windows 7-BID on it. Like off an SD card. He's like, this is ridiculous. We're not using this. But now, Sonny made beautiful PCs. They sold them at a huge premium. They're always overpriced. And they sold them at massive premium.

And that market is gone. Right. Every PC, it's seriously like Apple has 90% market share of PCs over $1,000. Wow. That's the number. Like, you can't win that game against Apple. And once you get under that, like, you're totally in the commodity zone, which is what Google is targeting with Chromebooks, right?

So there's like this weird dead middle of the PC market where you've got Google on the bottom saying, we're going to come at you with $279 Chromebooks. which are all you might need, and you have maybe a tablet or whatever, and a PC at work that runs Excel, and that's what you actually might need over there. And at the top, you have everybody buying a MacBook. And somewhere in the middle,

there's a business for Lenovo, and maybe not Sony, and maybe not Dell, and maybe not HP. Like, Lenovo sells a lot of $400 laptops. Like, what nobody seems to be able to make or sell is, like, the $700 laptop or the $800 laptop. Like, there just doesn't seem to be a market for that. And what's really interesting is, like, hearing,

watching a lot of companies go into Chromebooks. The two reasons are really obvious. Like Google, it sounds like from companies I've talked to, Google has gone to all of these companies and said, here's how much you're charging for this laptop. The end. There's a ceiling. And that comes from Google,

where they're saying, if you're going to make a Chromebook, you have to charge this much. And only Google is allowed to. That's what I've heard. I don't know this for sure, but more than one company has told me this. That they're saying, like, this is what your Chromebooks cost.

With the exception of Google's own. The Chromeo Pixel, and they're just like yellow. Well, there's a weird Google, the thing that they released today, the weird teleconferencing. Right. Well, that's a totally separate. That's inappropriate. They're calling it a Chrome box. I know, but they're liars.

It runs Chrome. It's basically designed to sit there and run hangouts, right? Yeah. Yes. And the whole package costs a thousand dollars. Yeah, it's actually enterprise. It's a weird collection of other people's hardware. Yeah.

So it's like a, what's an Assus or an ACER PC. I think it's a Seuss, but I can, let me look. Well, that one says HP on it. Oh, maybe it is. If you scroll down, there's definitely, there's an Asse logo I saw. Yeah, there is an Asus logo. Well, so Asus just released a $179 Chromebox. Yeah.

Right. So there's these like commodity, weird, small form factor PCs that have like I-7 ships in them, which is bonkers because it's running hangats. Yeah. Google, if you need an I-7 ship to run hangats. You did it wrong. Yeah, it didn't do a good job. You should feel a shame. You should go find the Panasonic guy and John, and you guys should all go to an island

and feel shame together. John, I'm sorry, but you have to go to an island now. John, they make one good observation here, which is the controller. No, no, so that's what I'm saying. It's a weird, it's a weird combo of this. So just to recap the news, Google today announced, they had an event and said, this is an interesting announcement for business.

That's how they invited us. Sean Hollister went, and it's a $1,000 video conferencing kit for businesses that basically is built on the back of hangouts. So it's this small form factor Chromebox. It is a remote. That remote is exactly the boxy box remote. I think it has a different number of buttons.

It has one extra button on the front. Chris and I had a weird argument about this. It's the same remote. They just retooled it and added a button. It's a parrot makes that speakerphone. It's a Bluetooth speaker phone and a Logitech camera. Oh, it's a Jabra speakerphone. A Jabra speaker phone.

Yeah, and a Logite. So it's just this weird collection of other people's hardware that, like, anybody can put together, but it all comes in one box. You plug it together, and you like video conference over Hangouts for $250 to year in support costs. And it's called ChromeBox for Meetings, which is like my favorite. Wow. all on the nose name ever. I don't really.

It's just, like what is that? It seems like Google is, here's, I think there's a class with startups and small businesses that are getting one step bigger. Sure.

And they, our businesses among them. And they need a new breed of like conferencing applications that maybe 10 years ago, Microsoft just owned that entire market. And Blackberry owned a huge chunk of that market. And Google realized that it got a piece of it

with hangouts. And they're like trying to like bet on it and edge their way back into Microsoft's territory. Yeah. I think there's a place for this. Like, it's really easy in companies that, you know, live on Gmail, which is more and more of these little startups that are growing. Like, this just makes a ton of sense. It's really easy.

Like, there's the fastest way for us to do conference calls because we're all on Gmail all the time is just hangouts. Right. But I don't know why I want. I have weird hangouts, problem. I could just use my computer. It's like, the hangouts you, like, I want there to be a control panel somewhere where it just tells me what the hell is going on with hangouts. And how to put pirate hats and mustaches on yourself? That is always there.

We use it. I use it all the time, and there's just a weirdness to it. It's like Hangouts is, you push the button and then like a Hangout happens, and I'm never quite sure, like, who can see what or why or what I'm sharing. It's like it's happening in this browser, but there's no, there's no interface, there's no settings. I don't know. Right. It's just weird to me.

It's like, now a Hangout is happening. Also, I have like 50, like I said, I have 50 Google accounts, and managing that is impossible. Oh, it's a disaster. Yeah. And so Hangouts make. Makes no sense to me. It could be worse. It could be 50 hotmail accounts.

Right. So. All I really want is for Google to make a native Mac hangats app. Instead of the weird Chrome extension that takes a real whole screen for no reason. Why is this happening? Yeah, I don't know. We'll never understand that.

Just do the right thing, Google. Yeah. Just stop blowing it. Well, it's like they have a Hangouts app on the phone. It's great. True. Wait, but hold on. Let me finish this bio point.

Yeah. So Google goes to these companies and says you can make a Chromebook or a Chromebook or a crowbox and it's going to cost this much. Yeah. And then what they can also do is, they don't charge for the license. And it's like, you know how you spike your margins is don't pay for a Windows license. Right.

And it's like, that's done. And they can charge $250 for it and people like it and it has good battery life. And that's going to be a hard. I think the next generation of Chromebooks is the one that will be killer. I agree. I mean, this generation is like very enticing. Nobody's made a great one yet. Yeah.

And I've like, I think this is going to be a year. But then they kept on lighting on fire. Yeah. So she was when they announced the CES seems pretty nice. Is that one just out? Or Lenovo just came out with one? One of them just started shipping. Can it run YouTube?

We should, you know, reviews at her should do a review. Oh. Who is that? I'll find that person. Who runs for reviews? Is it? Ross? I think it's Ross.

I think it's Ross. I do. It's super annoying dude that everybody hates. He sounds like a real asshole. I never liked him. All right. So that's bio. I mean, look, it's sad.

I think Sony needs to refocus. I think they're a TV business. Well, so the only side of... You say refocus when it's TVs and tablets. smartphones and music and movies and PlayStation. But those are all the same thing. Yes. Right.

What Sony is ultimately is an entertainment company. That ad that they started running a couple weeks ago and they ran at the Super Bowl where like, we just want you to experience feelings, which is basically every ad now. You should feel feelings. Every ad of the Super Bowl is like, you feel feeling so deep. State Farm. And it was like, what the, what just happened? I got State Farm like 12 times.

But Sony fundamentally is an entertainment company. Yes. And this whole diversion in the PCs was always weird for them because PCs are like commodity enterprise products. I don't know that I agree with that. I mean, the other side of Sony is they, like, they're a huge manufacturer that has tons of partners all across the world.

And like, it makes sense that they would take all this stuff that they make already and just stick it together, put a logo on it and ship it. Like they make this stuff for other companies. But Sony doesn't make motherboards and intel chips and graphics cards and, I mean, I guess it makes more sense for them to make things like cameras because that all that stuff. stuff they do make.

And maybe that's what we're seeing here. But they're, like, I don't know that they're just an entertainment company. But that's like, well, think about, when you say, when you say cameras, right, like, they make the whole stack. Like, they, here's Justin Bieber dancing. Here's a Sony image sensor and a lens, like, looking at Justin Bieber dancing. Right? I was like, I figured out where Justin Bieber fit into that.

Yeah, but like, he's here. Like, Sony owns this. This is Justin Bieber. This represents Bieber. This represents a camera, right? Like, here's Sony broadcast technology. doing stuff. Then here's like a PS4 receiving it

plugged into a Sony TV that's showing it to you. So when you watch Taylor Swift, that's why they're not. And here you are sitting on your couch holding a Sony phone like doing a second screen thing. Like that's the Sony store.

That's why even though Sony isn't making money off TVs either, that's why I don't think Sony's ever going to get rid of TV. They will never get rid of that. Because it's that same, they have that whole stack. And PCs I guess were just sort of

this thing over here that they also did that didn't have anything I think it's why why Vizio tried to make a PC. You know, they still make, they still make two of them. Right. But they wanted to play that game of everything's a screen that shows your entertainment.

Right, right. And here are all these screen sizes. We should make them all. And I think Sony made them all, and they realized that the PC business for them was a screen size that demanded the most investment, was the most competitive and cutthroat and the lowest margins. Yeah. And I don't think he, in that place, I don't think he want to compete against Samsung and Acer. Well, I think tablets are the other one that describes, and Sony is not even trying that hard to compete in tablets either. Yeah, but that's the platform that.

this is what I'm saying about Windows, right? Sony, they made half a Windows convertible. I was going to say half a tablet, but it's, you know, like, sure, right. They made Windows tablets, and that hasn't worked. Nobody's, that platform doesn't not taken off on tablets. Like, there's a few very happy, like, corporate executives who have Surface pros. That's it.

And then there's everybody else. Right. And I think Android tablets, they're the ones that still have the chance. Yeah. And so I think Sony has to stay right there. If you're going to make Android phones, you might as well make Android tablets. And their phones are good, and people like them. And in Europe in particular, they're selling well.

Right. So I think Sony, like, this is like the Sony story is, when I say refocus, it's decide what platforms as computers are important to you. Right. And what your story is of like how you get, how you get this guy. Justin Beard. How you get the bebes to people is effectively responsible. You taught him how to dance, didn't you? Hey, do a thing with Rihanna.

It'll be cool. What? It's just going to. Justin B. Wait, so what happens to Vio now? They're selling it to some Japanese company. Are they going to, like, are there going to be Vios? They're going to make them for Japan, I think, is the thing.

That just seems weird. Like, this business is, they're clearly getting rid of it. Yeah, but if you're not Sony, if you're running Vio as its own business, you can do all kinds of stuff too. You can make decisions that Sony would never make. Right. And you can make the business smaller, you can stop selling around the world. Yeah.

I don't know, you can do stuff. Yeah, you can probably make money. But it's kind of sad. Like, Sony made good computers. Yeah. For a long time. I mean, they can still make good hardware. It's just, yeah, I just have a keyboard and a hinge.

There's a lot of secrets happening to me right now. A lot of secrets. Do you want to talk about secrets? I mean, I will say that I just, this is one of the worst. Oh, God. Friend number 35 joined. I wonder who is. Okay, so here's this app secret.

Do you guys know about this? We're not going to write about it yet because I don't know what the story is unless you're a gigantic tech insider nerd. There's an app called secret. You suck at Flappy Bird and everybody knows it. They're talking about it right now. We're going to talk about Flappy Bird in a second. That was you, wasn't it? It was not me.

Okay. My secrets are awful because I have no secrets. Like, literally this app in like two cups of bourbon are going to be a disaster for me. Because everyone will know who I am. Look, I mean, I'm an open book. What do you want to know? The only two, so I haven't used secrets, but there are two about me and they're both just you taking pictures of me and then saying weird thing. Like, I don't think you're doing this right.

I'm not. So there's an app called secret. You download it. It does some weird. sketchy privacy stuff where it takes your entire contact list, all the email addresses, all the phone numbers you have, creates a network that you cannot access. Can I just say, by the way, how are we okay with that? We're not.

Like, we yell at every company that does it and then we're like, oh, you want to use it for secrets? Okay, that's totally fine. Have all my information. I did it, though. I know. Everybody's doing it. The thing that seems to be is like the whole tech industry is using secret. So we have their nice little video about how.

Share a thought. Share a thought is there. And it's like sometimes I'm sad or like today I'm happy or like I kissed my mother and it was the best feeling that I've ever had. Not like that. You sick bastard. I'm about to tell you jokes from the internet. It's super weird. That's not super weird.

Like I hugged my mom and it felt cool. Like that's great, you know? Nope. Still not getting better. This is no. I mean, I guess like put that in a secret. Nobody knows it's you and it will be fine. I hugged my mother.

I don't want to do it. I cannot wait to like this so privately. That's just, no. I mean, I guess it's worse when you put it in a secret because now it sounds like a secret. There, done, I'm supposed to a secret. Wait, wait, refresh. All right, so it's happening,

and you type in thoughts, you do this stuff, and all that's happening right now is that the first wave of adopters are in this app. So it's all people in the valley and tech journalists, and it is the catiest place on earth. And it's super entertaining right now. I always say this app has sort of a terrible UI, It's not wonderful.

And it is so annoying with push notifications. I just got one now. It told me my 40th friend had signed up. Thank you. That's not a fact that needs to know. Certainly not a fact that you interrupt. I don't care if I know that information. No, it's not useful.

Like, there's no reason I need to know. Like, it doesn't matter. Just shut up. It's actually way better if I don't know that only 40 of my friends are on it because I could like, yes, switch 40 and then narrow it way down to who's saying, these terrible things about how they hug their mother and it felt really cool. Look, here's, I hug my mom and it felt cool. That's a secret. Secret is teaching me that everyone else hates the same people and things as me.

Yes. Which seems to be like Sam Biddle. That's like, that's how I know who uses this is everybody either loves or hates Sam Biddle. And maybe you should check your privilege instead of an app. So look, this is a thing that's going to, I hate dudes who never do their legs, chicken legs. Oh, I just got that. Clear we have the same friends. Sometimes late at night.

I'm just assuming that was directed at Neil. I get an inexplicable craving for CESP. so. Yeah. I hate that person. So this is a wave. There's going to be like weird, bad, mainstream, like CNN. Like, yep, all of Silicon Valley is secreting about. Right. Like, that's like going to be a headline. Whispers, it's going to be the big thing. So, but they're secret and there's whisperer. And so the interesting. Aren't they the same thing, essentially? I don't know. I don't know. Oh, wait, I thought it was the same thing. I don't, look, I don't have any. If I did know, I wouldn't tell you.

As best I can tell. Well, so I guess Whisper is, by the way, telling people you're posting a secret, I think is probably not the probably not the smartest. Yeah, that's fair. So I think Whisper's thing is it's public, but it's anonymous. Whisper is like post secret. You remember Post Secret?

Yeah. Where it was like you would send in this postcard and nobody knew who it was from but it was like everybody could see it. And Whisper's kind of the same way. Whereas I guess Secret is more like designed to be around your friends, which is something.

But like, man, these whispers are super weird. This color is called Cash. I'm using it. All right. Grandma gave me Taco Bell hot sauce with my fish sticks. I was like WTF until I tried it. Incredible. Bitch knows her shit.

Whisperser. Okay. So here's the thing. People are starting to post like weird rumors on secret. And like the Wall Street Journal covered one today. Did it really? Yeah, it was about the Everton. They debunked that one.

Oh, okay. And which is the saddest moment. The saddest even. Let's back up. So there was a secret secret that came out that was like, Evernaut is about to get acquired. and enough people thought it was real that the Wall Street Journal had to acknowledge

the secret. He was like, I work could ever know and we're about to be acquired was like the text of the thing. And yeah, and everybody like, and I guess enough people freaked out.

Not only the people believe it. Yeah, yeah. Secret freaked out. But Wall Street was like, had to be shocked out. And that was it. It's just, there's,

Valia I wrote a story about it today. Like there's this return of, you know, the internet is the Wild West. Yeah. With like Snapchat and secret and whisper and all these apps that make you anonymous

and untraceable, although I did just, give my entire contact list to these people. And we have been complaining about the NSA and metadata and how you can definitely figure out who's who very fast. I mean, Secret knows who I am. Yeah. Someone's going to hack secret.

It also keeps track of which ones you posted. What comments you did. It's going to docks everybody at some point. Yeah, I mean, and like it's just, it's out there. And this is like probably way easier to pin to you than something like Snapchat. Because Snapchat, at least theoretically disappears. So you have to like dig harder to find the data. Secret is all out there.

It's just a matter of like, here's this and here's this. And like, let's shove them together. Thank God no one posts anything of value on this thing. Yeah. I think it's interesting. I think that this like rush to go play with an app called secret is fun. Yeah. But I was more conceptually, the value of secrets is eventually telling them to someone

and like the danger of maybe somebody finding out. And this has none of that. Right. I mean, but I think there's certainly something to the idea of like, but there's something the idea of like having to get something off your chest, but not telling anybody who's dangerous. So you're going to tell your friends list an app called Secret? Yeah, so that's perfect.

So you have passive-aggressive issues with your friends, so you're going to post it anonymously on Secret, hoping that they may or may not see it. Okay. Sounds great. Perfect. Profitable. Also, like, if you spent enough time...

The control room hates the Vergecast that just went up on secret. You could definitely figure out, like, three-quarters of beats. I think I just got docks. There's Billy Disney. buddy. I wonder who that was. Yeah, you see, you don't know. It's anonymous. I mean, I have a number of ideas. A number of ideas. I mean, it's a small...

They had taken a picture of themselves. There's so many, so many people back there. Oh, this could be a reader just trolling us. All right. Now I'm playing Flappy Bird. Just moving on to other apps that I'm now obsessed with. You know what I'm obsessed with is threes. Have you played this game? I have not played this game. It's crazy. It's like... I tried looking for it in the app store.

There's a lot of... I will say our commenters are very confused by it. why we covered threes. Really? Yeah, they're like, why is this on here? You must be getting, this must be an ad. Well, anytime we like anything, it's an ad. Right.

That's just true. Even we hate it, we're fan boys for the other thing. Right. When we hate it, it's an ad for somebody else. Whether we say it or not. Well, when I hate things, I do my best work. That's true, actually. That's a fact.

God, this game sucks. All right, I'm buying this. This is. I've played like four rounds of Flappy Bird. I got zero, zero, zero, and one, and then felt so good about getting one that I quit, and I have no desire to ever play again. I just got my high score during this show. Four?

Nice. I got a four. I'm all done. I'm very proud of it. I can't do it again. It's very exciting. No, this, I genuinely don't understand why a game like this is so popular. Floppy Bird or Threes?

Flappy Bird. Three's is like, I think threes is popular for the same reason that, like, Letterpress is popular. There are people who like these sort of slightly intelligent requiring games. Right. But like, this is basically just a worse, annoyingly difficult version of Jetpack Joyride. You think? So? Like, what if Jetpack Joyride were way...

It's funny because we did a story on this, and he's making $50,000 a day on this game. I know, he's making crazy amounts of money. Oh, I got two. Oh, shit. Oh, man. Excuse me. All right, I'm doing this. I'm doing this.

It's very exciting. I'm doing this. Here's why this game is popular. Because most people go through the day and they have accomplished nothing. They wake up and they don't do anything hard. At least I don't. There's no challenge in their lives. Just float through life.

Two. Hoping. Hoping to feel the thrill of victory. Four. And then they don't. ever again. And this game makes you work for it for two seconds, and then you feel it.

And you're like, I got one. It's just unfair. You're like, I got one, everybody. I'm out of here. I'm leaving this dead end job. I got one. Like, spike the phone. Screw this.

Sure. I buy it. I'm done using Excel today. I wouldn't break my phone playing this game. What else? No, I think my theory, so this is like, my roommate played, was unemployed for a while, and played Dark Souls for, for, like 300 hours. That is the hardest game.

See, this is the thing. I think this is a thing with people. I asked him why he liked this game and he was like, I have no idea how to play it. It's so hard. All I do is die. And I was like that. You didn't answer my question yet. Well, this is Day Z, right? So I was just going to say, it's the same kind of thing. We're like, I think there's this weird, we all have this weird, like, masochistic

streak where we like to die 10,000 times and then the one time we don't die. Even we're not successful. Like, it's not a victory. It's like a don't die. We feel victory. This is a good. I achieve victory. This is a new strength. I achieve victory. over death every single day.

Wake up. I don't know what you're talking about. This is great. Yeah. This is a tripping game for air. Like, Super Meat Boy was another one. Like you die 3,000 times each other. I did play that game a lot.

And they show you every death in the replay once you accomplish it. Goals and goblins back in the day. Like, people just love super hard games. I just never understand that. I just don't get it. What games do you play? I play games you win right away? Yeah.

If it takes more than five minutes to win. Yeah. But you cut the rope all day. Just all day. Oh, God. All right. No, but like, so, Daisy, anyone else actually played this game?

No, I watched, I watched the live stream yesterday. That was remarkable. I mean, I will say that I'm, I have a theory. Okay. The theory is that there are two people inside of T.C. Sonic. Okay. One of them runs our news day to day. That's cool.

All right. We know him. One of them is a murderer who uses Twitter. Question? Why are these different? I'm just confident that they're different. I don't think they are. I really think that's the same aggressive murders drive to hit news.

That's true. But I watched the stream. I mean, they found Sean. Sean was being attacked. Did you catch the last 15 minutes? I did not catch the last 15 months? I did not catch last 15 months. It was described.

This is everything you can do in the game, and I'm sorry, this is real. So they spent an hour and 15 minutes looking for Sean Hollister at E&TC. They found him. They had a friend who was a plant. He was supposed to kill Sean at first sight, but that didn't work out because they lost him. But they found him. They had Sean go on a roof and said there were people coming. please be careful and keep a lookout.

T.C. gets behind Sean handcuffs him, force feeds him poison, puts a burlap sack over his head, at which point Sean falls off a ledge. Wow. But somehow... He survives, and gets worse. He survives. His handcuffs

come off, so T.C. Addy is running down because they can't just jump off with him. And then Sean is nowhere to be found. And all of a sudden, someone starts shooting at them, but missed. So T.C. got behind him and heck, heck. him up with an axe.

At which point, Addy goes, well, we're almost done anyway, and shoots T.C. with a shotgun. T.C. is fairly live. Shoes Addie in the head, and they both bleed to death. It's the end of our stream yesterday. God, that's dark. That's dark. I mean, I always knew there was something between those two.

That doesn't. No, no. Dishish is co-murder. That's how every great love story ends. I don't know. That was my wedding vows. One day, we'll both shoot each other. It's like a Romeo, Julia.

It's the most sadistic game, though. One day we'll both hunt down, Sean Hollister. And then kill each other. Oh. We're holding hands. You're the best. Follicking in a field. With a knife behind each.

T.C. is kind of scary. Yes. Yes. So, but okay, we didn't explain DZ, but essentially it's a $40 game that is broken, that is not finished. You pay to just suffer through this game where you wake up with no food, you're hungry, you have no items, you have no clothes, and you somehow have to survive. If you die, you lose everything, you just do it again. There is no point. This is the most sadistic or masochistic game you can imagine.

I mean, it seems really, but the thing is that it's also a really bad game, right? Well, yeah, it's alpha. It's not even finished. It's half an idea. And people are paying $30 just to be part of this broken idea as they build it in real time. And it's made a lot of money doing it. Yeah. It's kind of a great idea.

Is it just because you can do anything? Kind of? I mean, it's like, it's the promise that you can do anything as soon as they finish building it. In a weird way, is the appeal the same as like Minecraft, where it's like the game doesn't exist yet. and you just sort of make it as you go and figure out. And like the part of Minecraft where it was broken and this broken was free. And then once it got to a certain level, like, okay, now it's bait or whatever. Well, you can pay.

Fair. This was like, we have an idea. We're kind of building it. This is real-time Kickstarter. They're like, give us all your money. Yes. And this game's going to be awful, but maybe it'll be good. And you'll love it even while it's awesome.

And everyone loves the faults and like it gets fixed every now and then. Kind of does it. Things break more. Still, it's a success. No game like this has existed. They do now. Yeah. Minecraft, Rust is kind of like between Daisy and Minecraft.

Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. They both have a... You both die. They're both die. There's zombie hordes in both, yes? Yeah. I mean, that's what makes the game successful.

A real open world. Yeah. A sense of adventure and freedom. And also murderers. I will say I've played Dead Rising a lot for exactly those reasons. I'm really bad at video games this weekend. I'm really bad at playing video games. I buy them all.

Really? Really? Just nonstop buy them all. And then they sit. They're just stacked. up on a shelf. Most of them still in my plastic. I have a lot of games and I find myself just playing a mix of FIFA and Grand Theft Auto.

I'm replaying Grand Theft Auto for like the 47th time right now. Wait, which one? I'm in control five. Yeah. I can't stop playing that game. It's outrageous. It's great. It's great.

Own a lot of stuff. If you like my move, I beat it enough times now that like the actual game isn't that fun. So I just go and I try to get five stars and then kill as many cops as possible until I die. Which is the whole point of Grand The Auto. Yeah. There needs to be a mode in Graventhft Auto where you're playing it, but while you're playing it, you're doing things that, like, are productive? You're, like, mining Bitcoin. Yeah.

No, but, like, things are, like, married people have to do. Because that's like, it's like, man, if I was playing Grand Theft Auto, but also, like, shopping in the room and board catalog, that would really solve a lot of problems for me. So, like, you take a rock lodge, I want that. That's like. And then it just ships. That's what they're doing. It just adds it to your overstock.com account. Yeah, exactly.

It's like, man, we really need new chairs for a dining table. Let me go into Grand The Redoubt. That would be the best. You can, like, rob a crate and barrel, and they're like, oh, you must want all this. No, straight up. Like, you know, the other day is, like, making, like, storage units for a closet, like, doing, like, you know, husband-y stuff. Yeah. It'd be great if I was doing that in Grand Theft Auto.

And they just, like, automatically make you a Pinterest board of all the things that you decide. Here's my thought. And we just put it out there. Grand Theft Auto container store. I would play that game. I would absolutely play that game. You just go and you're, like, wandering around. You're like, man, these shells look really great.

And then, like, a hooker shows up and you kill her. Like, let's add a little interest to it. Clearly, like, killing. hookers. Do you want to play Daisy as well? I'm sorry. I'm sorry, everyone, most especially my wife and the creators of Brand Theft who I hope never ever got the root of us. I was going to say they should be. They'd be friends. I don't think that'd be cool. Is there anything? What else happened to me? Can we talk about Facebook paper? Kind of. I guess. Yeah. We should talk about Souchi because whatever is

happening in Sochi is crazy. But we should, let's talk about paper. Sure. Go ahead. You go. You talk about it. I'm just going to sit here. I mean, I'm curious what you guys. like, I've been using it a lot. Right? So I, like, I download. I use, I don't use Facebook what it is. So Facebook paper is a new app, just came out this week, and it's ostensibly a news reading app.

So it's, like, really beautiful. It's the best design I've ever seen from Facebook. And it's about, it's all for news. So the first stream you have is your Facebook feed. And then you can pick, like, headlines. And they have a bunch of goofy names for, like, all the different sections. But you basically, like, build your own little newspaper. and a bunch of cool animations

and a bunch of different ways of thinking about how you move in and out of an app that I really like. But it's just, it's a news app. Fundamentally, it's a news reading app. And one of the things that you can read is your Facebook. Not entirely real time either.

Like, it's like, it doesn't have the breaking news. It's like, oh, well, I don't know a lot about like Home and Garden, but I can read this. What's grabbing from Facebook feeds. So it's like, it's relying on, it picked, I think they picked 40 publishers. Is that right? I forget.

But they have 40 publishers in there, like, here are, their Facebook feeds, essentially. And, like, that's slow by nature, A. It's getting, I guess it's incomplete. But it's also, like, I guess their ideas that, like, they want people to break news on Facebook, I guess. I mean, I think they want to have, like,

Twitter for that. Right, right. I mean, so I used, I mean, I will say some of these animations are great. Yeah, I mean, it's a gorgeous app. Like, it's a thing. It does this thing, like, here's a verge story, and when you can, like, flip it open, and it's like a brochure.

Yeah, that's really nice. That's cool. I will say like I used cover feed. On my Android phones, I always have Facebook home, which is insane. I think I'm the only person who likes it. But I only have it, not for the launcher, but for the home screen. Because I love just looking at my phone. It's a good looking lock screen.

Standing there and just blasting through photos. Did you unfriend like 80 people after installing it? Because that was my first impulse. I kept seeing people as like, I don't care. Unfired. Smart. In the list. But so, yeah, it's just people.

That way you don't have to deal with the confrontation of the unfriend. Yeah. I understand. It's rough. They'll come after you. I mean, it's weird when you discover... Old high school girlfriends. Which I'm just assuming is all of your Facebook friends.

Why would you want to unfriend that? Don't you want to know what they're up to? I know what they're up to. They're raising adorable children. That's cool. Yeah. It's great. Sure.

It's great for your children. I mean, I'm happy that we spend our time together. That's cool. Please don't be on my lock screen anymore. This is the thing. I think paper's a gorgeous app. I just can't use Facebook because, like, I don't know what to do with it. I don't really use Facebook anymore.

I use Facebook for planning events. Yes. Accepting event invites. That's it. People who have birthday parties always seem to plan them on Facebook. Yeah, because that's where the people are. Right. That's where you... And I use Facebook Messenger a lot.

I think you're a birthday party every year for me and my birthday party is an opportunity to talk to my high school girlfriends. And invite them to my birthday party. Bring your children. So it's just you and 100 ex-girlfriends in a room together. I like it. Yeah. Hey, how's good?

Speaking of reasons to apologize to your life. Another year older. Hey. Didn't work out. Want to see my secrets? I'm going to sit here and use this app. You guys can watch it. No, I think a lot of people use Facebook, and I think paper, I think Facebook, the Facebook app on a phone is so, it's weird because this app is complicated in a wildly different way. It's complicated in like a UI way, but much more simplified in the sense that you're just like blasting through Facebook one screen at a time.

Right. And I think that's really cool. I think that's really interesting. Yeah. The regular Facebook app is so, it's simpler in like idea. open it up and like Facebook is there and you just scroll. Well, and it's so ingrained at this point. Like people know how to use Facebook that way. People have been using Facebook that way for a long time now.

And this is like a totally different way of thinking about Facebook. But the thing that I'm, the thing that I have to keep reminding myself of and I keep asking people. And people seem to really like this app is that I think it like for people like us, it makes no sense. Like right, I spend all of my time reading the news. And by the time I get to paper, it's like, oh, I've seen every story in here. But most people, it's like, it's just a, it's a great like, there's no way to,

there's no better looking way I've ever seen to, like, get a bunch of news in three minutes, like, waiting in line somewhere. Right. And that's what most people want. That's what Facebook mostly is for, I think, is these sort of just check-ins. And it used to be with people, and now it's with news. And I think that's, like, Facebook sees itself that way, I think. Where it's like your friend group is now your access to all this other stuff.

So I have this theory about Facebook. Okay. Maybe it's right and maybe it's wrong. But here's my theory about Facebook. When Facebook started off is about people. Yeah. when it was a bunch of like 20-something people partying all the time. And that was really exciting.

Right? And so Facebook could just be about people and that would power growth forever. Sure. Right? Because it's a bunch of young people. I mean, it worked. Right. They got a billion people that way.

Right. Spring break on Facebook was a phenomenon that I experienced for like four years. It was the best. With your high school girlfriend. With all of them at once. Right. It was really weird. We did a lot of keg stands.

And then posted about them. Facebook. Now Facebook's audience is much, much older, and the things they are doing are no longer as inherently exciting or naked. And that's real. And I think now Facebook has to find other things to show people because the story, like, old people complaining is not exciting. Like, Grand Theft Auto Container Store is like a real phenomenon of my life, and I don't

want to talk about it on Facebook. So you go from like, naked keg stands to like, ow, my feet hurt and I'm at the track store. I'm like, that's not nearly as interesting. Yeah, I'm friends with a bunch of like people, like my parents' friends on Facebook. They want to be friends with me, and they're like, these kids today, I'm like, why am I looking at Facebook? And Facebook has to shift what it's showing people from just what was inherently exciting and, like, titillating to other stuff. Well, so is this, I mean, this is sort of the other side of that same problem that Facebook is everybody says about Facebook, which is that young people don't use Facebook anymore.

They're gone. So that content, that constant flow of like wild bad ideas, which is exciting and like keeps things exciting is gone. So you're saying instead of Facebook, like, trying to get teens back there, just owning that teens don't use Facebook anymore. I hate teens. I hate saying that for not not teens. Teens, you're cool. I like you.

The, you know, young repos. I love teens. They're cool. But the. I can believe another picture of you and putting it on secrets. Thank you. But what they're saying is like that they're just not.

I'm inventing secret dockses. Is that a thing? Like secret R. or T's. People might have already done that by now. This is cool. This is just, this is great. Teens.

Yeah, it's like how do you? No, I think if Facebook is smart or this, I don't know if it's smart or not, but this seems like an admission to me from Facebook being like, hey, turns out. By the way, my fellow just auto-corrected teens to trends with Z. That's perfect. I'm doing so wrong. We have a, we have a co-worker who somehow his girlfriend changed ha-haha-ha-to-autocrect you. I like to poop.

So every now and then I'll get a text I like to poop It's like that's nice This is the worst I should probably end this first I should be I mean look I think paper is really interesting

I think Facebook trying to re-decide what it is make new decisions about how it exists And they're turning into the new AOL Right they're turning into The new part Default in destination for a million people On the internet

I've always said I think Facebook For a lot of people Is the internet Yeah right Like Facebook and Google You can make a decision decision, like which one of these things is the internet to people? I think Google, the whole Google Plus thing was the fear that Facebook would become the internet for people.

I think there's for, that's like where our parents are going to live on the internet. Well, but isn't the, like, I think for a whole new generation of people, it's, it is things like Snapchat and Whisper and all these other social networks that come and go in a heartbeat. Because you don't want to preserve this stuff. Right. Like, the lesson of Facebook has been learned. But also, like, is there a desire for like that single unified, like, average? Atari. You control your identity somewhere. That's what I think Facebook did that nobody gets that Facebook did is I think what Facebook did is build this friend group. Like Facebook's been around

for 10 years. They just celebrated their 10th anniversary with a bunch of weird stuff. But the thing they've done in those 10 years, more than build facebook.com is they've like, all of my friends are on Facebook. All of them. Every single one. And except for Sam Thonis, who is not on Facebook because he's the worst. There's a bunch of people here on Facebook. I hate all of them. None of them are my friends. But no, but what they've done is now, Facebook now has this crazy leverage with that group to build that into anything. And if they're like, they did Messenger and they were like, hey, we have, we built an IAM app and you know what it already includes is all of your friends.

Like that's a huge victory. And they're real names and their pictures so you don't know who they are. And they can do that in. And I mean, I think that's a huge part of Instagram. It's like building that back into Facebook where it's now, they're now connected that way is huge. Because I don't, I don't use Facebook blogging on, but I will use it for authenticators because like great, fine, easier than putting a password.

Really? Yeah. No. I don't want to connect to Google. Google. I have real shit on Google. Facebook I have nothing. What's your real? What's your real? I mean, it's like they're not going to get to get my Gmail, right? No, but like if I don't do something. The last thing I want any app to do is post for me on my behalf on Facebook. And they all want to do it. No, you see, I don't, I think they, I have yet to have an app do that in a long time.

Actually, that's not true. I had one. I can't remember what it was. I had one do it. And I just instantly was like, this is a terrible app and never use it again. So good job that app. Interesting. But I think, like, I agree. And like, I agree. And like, I use. was RDio and signing into REO with Facebook, it instantly found all of my friends and was recommending them based on people who are on Facebook. And that's, nobody else has that and can compete with Facebook along that line.

So as long as Facebook has that and nobody else does, they have this huge ingrained advantage anywhere they want to go. And they can go a million different places and they seem committed to doing that. And with design, like what they had in paper, if they apply that to other things, I think it's super interesting. Here's a problem. Paper is only in iOS.

They left 50% of the markets, not theirs. Right. And they have to figure that. I mean, like, you know, they'll get there. But at least they've proven, like, the chops are there, and they're willing to think about it in different ways. The people who built it are, like, all X Apple employees, right? Yeah.

So that's, I mean, a lot of interesting ideas, but I think Facebook has to prove to a next generation of people. Why they should use Facebook. Why they should use Facebook. And why having that network behind them is interesting and useful. I think they're doing a fine job of it, but I think that piece of Facebook where they were going to become the default communication network for everybody

is gone for them. Yeah, I agree. Because I just don't use Facebook to communicate with people. And people do you want to use Facebook with me? I'm like, you're going to say something weird. That's like literally what I think. Someone's going to ask me for something or say something weird or ask me for something weird. Fair enough.

I use Facebook Messenger all the time. I love it. It's so good. The app on iOS is fantastic. It's everywhere. And it's like hangouts on iOS is just a disastrous piece of a disaster. It's awful. Right.

And I hate it. And Facebook Messenger is great. Really? Yeah. It's real weird. It's great. It's super fast. It has the stickers. Those are fun. No. No. Stickers are awful. But it's basically it's like a fun, easy app that all my friends already use. It's like if all my friends use WhatsApp, I'd rather use that, but they don't. And they all use Facebook.

So you're saying friends with the olds. Mm-hmm. Friends with olds. It's all your ex-girlfriends and your parents friends. That's all of my Facebook friends. I just scraped your Facebook one day and friend it all of them. You can have them. That's fun. Just the ex-girlfriends. talk about Soshi. Wow. I mean, there's some weird stuff. There's a media story here.

That's really what this is for me right now. So as far, the Winter Olympics are happening in Sochi, Russia. Starting, like, tomorrow or something. Something like that. Soon? Yeah. I think it's soon.

And, you know, all the usual Olympic stories are there. NBC is going to tape delay it, which is, like, weird, but they're committed to doing it. But then there's this weird second class of, like, strange stories about Russia. So the first one, which I thought was interesting, is that Sochi is actually, like, a beach town for most of the year. Somebody pointed out to me that it's the same distance from the equator as Toronto, but I don't think of

Toronto is a beach town. So she is definitely a beach town. Is that supposed to prove that it's a beach town? I have no idea. No, they're like, but it's Toronto's cold and I was like, yeah, but it's like 45 degrees. It's like a year in ocean. Like, yeah, whatever. Whatever. It's like a lake over there or something. Lake Canada, you know, it's good.

Lake Canada. Yeah, the Canadian lake system. I've been there. It's nice. Very clean. I don't know, it's just super polite. Lakes. Canada. They're all starting a band together. No, so anyway, so there are mountains about an hour away.

That's where they're actually holding most of the Winter Olympics stuff. But all sorts of other crazy stuff is happening. Like somebody's things say Sean White pulled out of the slope style snowboard event because the snow isn't ready, the tracks aren't ready. And then journalists are getting the social right now. He heard himself practicing because they hadn't finished setting it up and it wasn't ready. So he busted his knee. or something, getting ready.

So there's that, and then there's, like, all these journalists are descending there, and they're tweeting pictures of, like, disaster infrastructure. The double toilet, man. The double toilets. The greatest. There's, like, a rubble in hotel lobbies. That is insane. And so the interesting piece here is that NBC will presumably not report on this,

because their interest is in presenting the Olympics as, like, this happy. Right, they're supposed to be a spectacle. But, wait, at the same time, though, NBC is the one that did this hacking story. We'll get to that in a second. but like I don't think they're I don't think they're censoring themselves for that reason. So we'll see but it's it just seems like every Olympics is like a nightmare of corruption and stuff. Oh, absolutely. And then this one in part is like in particular it's being exposed because of social media.

Right. That's what's happening. That also the exorbitant like exorbitant of this like $51 billion is the estimate quote for all this and the fact it's not ready. Well, but it's also like the conditions seem uniquely awful for the wrong people. Like, right there are, there's always corruption, there's always issues, but those are always sort of behind the scenes. But when you walk in and see a sign that says don't drink the water or don't put the water on your face, it'll kill you. Yes. Like that's a lot more straight, like in your face literally than it normally is.

And so I think it's like, what was it? Was South Africa the last one? Where's the last Olympics? I confused the Olympics in the world a couple of times. Where's the last summer Olympics? Everywhere. It was two years ago. It was London.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. So there's, like, I'm sure there was all kinds of stuff going on in London. But, like, ultimately, you're in London, which is, like, a nice city with nice amenities. And so nobody really notices unless they look for it. Oh, we cover the hell of that one, because we have all kinds of people in London. Right. And so I just think, in this case, like, it's...

I think Aaron was running some sort of Airbnb scam the whole time. It's entirely possible. Oh, yeah. He's like, well, look, I can make, like, millions of this thing, so whatever. Yeah. I mean, they keep... Like, I remember seeing today that, like, links for everything from, like, South by Southwest in Austin to, to, like, Sochi.

It's like if you live in a place where lots of people go occasionally, you just, oops, you're rich. Right. Like, here's my house for $50,000 a night. Yeah. Somebody's, some, like, weird. And that's why I've been buying houses and weird places. Just hoping, waiting.

Topeka Kansas, you're like pitching the Olympic committee to try and. Please. You're like, do you want to come to Des Moines for the Olympics? We're seeing Wisconsin. It's going to be great, guys. My parents have a nice pat. That'll be great. No, so I think we're actually like, I think we're going to pay attention.

to the Olympics for any number of reasons. We always do. But this story in particular where there's the main narrative of the Olympics. Yeah. And then there's a sub-narrative of people using back channels to tell you what's really happening. And then on top of it, there's, like, crazy Russian surveillance. So the director of the Sochi Olympics day, straight up was like, the hotel rooms are fine. People are just trashing them.

Our surveillance cameras have been watching the showers. And they're just pointing the shower heads at the wall. And the follow-up question was like, excuse me, the surveillance cameras are. in the bathrooms. He was like, I'll get back to you on that. I'll walk away. And now he's denying that such a thing was ever said to the Wall Street Journal. Wow.

That'll go well. Yeah. So there's just a deep level of weirdness there. And I think the danger is treating it like Russia is some weird, I mean, it's obviously a different country, but some weird other place. Sure, right. That's always the danger. But the reality is there's the official story and there's like the real story.

Yeah. And I think this one in. particular, we're going to see a very different real story emerge from what the main narrative of the Olympics. I mean, I think that one of the stories that never really gets told, but it's true no matter where you have the Olympics, but especially when it's in a place like this that just doesn't seem to have been ready at all for a winter Olympics, is the just the sheer level of infrastructure and overhaul you have to do to make an Olympics happen. Like the New York Times ran this piece the other day. I was showing you this where they were, they sort of superimposed

some of the events on New York City. So it's like, what if the bobsled run were in Times square and it was like 40 blocks long and the downhill ski slope was twice the size of Central Park. It's wild. But I think what nobody really talks about is, what was the number you said? Like, $51 billion? $51 billion. Like to get the Olympics is an unbelievable undertaking and there are people are tweeting pictures of buildings that aren't finished.

Like they kicked people out of their houses and then half finished a building that was supposed to be used for the Olympics. Yeah. And I think it's actually going to be really important to tell that story. And I think you're right that it's really easy. to sort of treat it as like this other third world place. But I think it's real and it's told in bits and pieces at every Olympics. And these pictures that are out are, you know,

Eskination's been collecting a lot of them. The pictures that are out are nuts. Yeah. Like just nuts. Yeah. And there's a story today that like there's a wild dog problem. So the government's just killing dogs ahead of the Olympics. The dog murder squad.

It's third party. It's not government. They just hired a company that does this. Which also base the question, why do you already exist? Yeah. I mean, if you live in a sound. No, just get an opportunity. just waiting.

Yeah. Just, you're like, you know what? This is my three year. Let's get those Olympics guys. I'm going to clean up and then rent out my house. Yeah.

And that was a verge cast. Damn. I don't know what else to do. Come back to Flappy Bird. Screw this. I mean, I'm going to go upstairs and play Flappy Bird. What are you going to do?

We don't think so. Can we, here's what I end? It's true. And this is important. I think we should end on this. I thought you're about to put in your back. I was like, I'm just going to leave here.

I would like to end on ice tea. talking about. So I'm going to, here's one of you. You just set this up a little bit. No. No? I refuse. Okay.

So that was the Vergecast for whatever week this was. It's the week of February. The week of February 3rd. February the 3rd. The Vergecast, it happened to you at this time. And you should tell a professional. That was our Vergecast. Thank you.

Thank you for being with us. You can leave a comment on the post. You can yell at us on Twitter. I'm reckless. I'm Pierce David. O'Donar Rosco. Just a bad collection of Twitter handle. I'm sorry.

There's probably a phone number you can call. You can just talk to your parents or your local counselor. Just whatever you want to do. Or you can rent Nelai's house on Airbnb. Yeah. In Wisconsin. In Wisconsin. Please, you can hold the Olympics at my parents' house.

They'll teach you how to pronounce my name and any other collection of any names that you want. And that was it. And now, Ice Tea, we'll talk about Dungeons and Dragons. I'm not. No. I read an audio book. On audible? Yeah.

Yeah. On our sponsor. On the audio. Yeah, that's hot.com. And I went to their offices and they said, ICE, we want you to read this book. Okay, they didn't tell me that this was a motherfucking Dungeons and Dragons book, okay?

Dungeons and Dragons is some of the most crazy, deep, deep, deep nerd shit ever invented. So every word you're saying is pretty much made up. Motherf's talk like Yoda. You know, outside I go into the sun thereof, out what the fuck how do you read this shit you know to actually verbally say these words it's weird son son it took me three and a half hours to read 25 pages three and a half hours i have i'm only reading the short story it's like 45 pages i have to do it

in two days i walked in there like oh yeah 40 pages man we got this man i got three hours huh I needed breaks. I needed water. The guy was in the other room coaching me. Don't worry, Ice. You can make it. You're doing really good. You're doing really good.

He was saying, yo, people have broken down tried to read that stuff. When this thing comes out, I'll tell you all when it comes out. And it'll be a treat just to watch me with my South Central educated ass

trying to read some dungeon and dragon shit. It's still going to be good. Talking about, I mean, Oh, my God. Talking about, what were we talking about? Pegasism, Pegasai, and that's horses with wings. Banking to the left. This motherfucker got a sword that talks to him and shit.

It's a story based on the Dungeons and Dragons type thing. The series, yeah, the series. Yeah, Motherfuckers live in places that don't exist, and it comes with a map. My God. I told my manager, I said, don't ever have me trying to do. This shit is crazy. You know, let me read some porno or something, a sex. It's easier.

I know about that