The Last of Us recap, lessons learned from Silicon Valley, and Vergecast Hotline

Today on the flagship podcast of zombie kisses: 02:02 - The Verge’s managing editor Alex Cranz chats with film & TV reporter Charles Pulliam-Moore about HBO’s The Last of Us and how it handles the video game adaptation. [Spoilers for episode 1 + 2] 22:40 - Historian and author of the book The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America Margaret O'Mara talks about how the lack of non-compete clauses shaped Silicon Valley. 38:30 - We answer your questions left on our Vergecast Hotline! Thunderbolt docks, end-to-end encryption, and smart assistants. Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we'd love to hear from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Alex Cranz?

  Hello, and you're listening to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Zombie Kisses. I'm your friend Alex Cranz, and we've got a big show today. Obviously, we're going to be talking about The Last of Us with Charles Pulliam Moore. It's going to be really, really exciting, and we're going to be talking about the Zombie Kisses. So if you haven't seen the latest episode of The Last of Us, probably should go ahead and skip that part. Right now, though, I'm making cocktails. I'm making something called a jet pilot, which involves a lot of booze, a lot of juices, a little ice in a blender, and it wouldn't exist if non-competes had existed in the bartending world in the 30s, because it's based on something called the zombie. The bartenders took the idea for it, went to another hotel, made it. It's delicious. And it also makes sense, because I'm going to be talking about non-competes

• 0:47Alex Cranz?

  on the show today. I've got Margaret O'Meara coming on. She's a professor. She's written this incredible book called The Code, all about the creation of Silicon Valley. She makes a really smart case that the Silicon Valley we know today might not be the same if non-competes had been enforced in California in the 50s and 60s. It's going to be really, really fun. I'm super excited for you guys to hear it. We've also going to be doing the hotline today, so we've got a lot of your questions in, and we're going to go ahead and answer them. It's going to be a great time. But first, I'm going to get back to making this cocktail in a blender. See you on the other side.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:56Alex Cranz?

  And we're back. Okay, so as I already noted, we're talking The Last of Us with Charles Pulliam Moore today. So if you haven't watched and don't want to be spoiled, go ahead and skip this segment. No, really, I'm waiting. Okay, great. Welcome, everybody else. Look, The Last of Us is a bona fide hit, and it's also one of the most successful adaptations of a video game we've seen since, like, Angelina Jolie's Tomb Raider. So Charles and I are going to talk about the first two episodes, the state of video game adaptations, and the hurdles still facing The Last of Us. Hello, Charles. How are you doing today?

• 3:29Speaker 02

  I'm good, Crans. How are you?

• 3:31Alex Cranz?

  I'm good. I'm excited to talk with you about The Last of Us because we have some different opinions and some similar opinions on this. And I think what we first want to probably talk about is, this is kind of a big deal for HBO, right? Like, it's been super successful so far?

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, to listen to the way that HBO is talking about this show, it is the second coming. More specifically, it is their second highest rated show after House of the Dragon, sort of like since 2010, which is the, that's sort of like, that's sort of the starting point that we're using as the beginning of like, when streaming got serious. And it's like, HBO, you existed before then, and HBO was like, don't think about it. Just don't think about that.

• 4:12Alex Cranz?

  Don't think about it. Yeah, don't worry about it.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  But it is, you know, it is sort of impressive that aside from the follow up to one of HBO's most successful shows, which, you know, has eclipsed its predecessor in terms of its popularity, or rather, in terms of its premier's popularity, this new endeavor from the network has also shown the early signs of being what the kids like to call a hit.

• 4:34Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  You know, 4.7, you know, 4.7 million viewers for premier is nothing to sneeze at. And while HBO as an entity is not new to this game, right? HBO, this is what they do. They put out hits, right? What is sort of, you know, special and momentous about The Last of Us, as you know, if you're listening to this, you know, The Last of Us, based on a video game, video games have a reputation for not being, not lending themselves to the most interesting or compelling adaptations.

• 5:04Alex Cranz?

  I mean, I loved Super Mario Brothers, the movie. Was it a good movie? No.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  I mean, like, we are of an age, like, we are of that age where we have gone through enough waves of things, both from, like, the first-party creators. Like, we've just seen a number of different Marios that now, at our big ages, we can appreciate what the movie was trying to do, right? Whereas when you're, when you're young and impressionable, it's like, it's not the thing that I thought it was gonna be. It's terrible. Whereas now, it's sort of like, in this era of hermetically sealed and calculated-for-success adaptations, you look at something like that Mario movie and go, wow, like, the studios really would not try to be like, that bold. I was actually just having a conversation about The Last of Us and the upcoming Mario movie, and it's like, yo, like, looking back on that Mario,

• 5:52Speaker 02

  on the live-action Mario film, like, the idea of a New York City encased in, like, wet fungus that's colonized everything is very much what The Last of Us is trying to go for. Who's to say, who knows? Like, maybe if Bob Hoskins' IP was popping up as Mario now, we'd all be like, yo, that right there, that's something I really wanna dig into.

• 6:11Alex Cranz?

  I know. I, I feel like, nobody understood how video game adaptations should work then. And you look back on it, you're like, yeah, it would have been stupid to do a live-action, like, adaptation of the actual Mario game. That would have been dumb.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  It could have been dumb. It's one of those things where it's, it's, you know, in order for video game adaptations to be successful, there is no one, there is no one way to do it, right? You can go for accuracy and authenticity, quote unquote.

• 6:36Alex Cranz?

  Which is what The Last of Us is doing.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Which is a lot of what The Last of Us is doing. And that's what we're going to talk about. But there's also something to be said for taking risks and spending money on the production to make it look good and interesting and really selling people on the concept. I think that oftentimes, when the shorthand is sort of like, oh, this video game adaptation is bad, what people are really speaking to is the different ways in which the adaptations maybe didn't quite work hard enough to get people on board with their idea of what the adaptation was going to be. And it's kind of like, look, you know this thing and you recognize that this thing is going to be something different. How about you come on this journey with us? And oftentimes, when a film goes out of its way to sort of make that jump from one medium to another easy for you, you

• 7:20Speaker 02

  kind of find yourself having a good time. Like, that's kind of, that was, we're not even talking about The Last of Us yet, but like, that was, that's, that's often how I think about Detective Pikachu, which is a solid film that people don't recognize as being like, pretty close to a game. One, because a lot of people didn't play the game. But two, because the movie really does go out of its way to sell you on, hey, what if there was a city filled with 12 species of Pokemon, no more, no less?

• 7:47Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I, I think like, I think we're, we can talk about The Last of Us when we talk about this because Detective Pikachu told a really good story first, right? Like, like, the reason that people like that movie, the reason people still like that movie is because it was out to tell a good story. And if it hadn't been Pikachu, if it'd just been some other adorable, tiny, fluffy creature, and a whole bunch of other adorable, tiny fluffy creatures, probably wouldn't have done as well because you wouldn't have had that emotional resonance. But it still would have, like, worked as a film.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  It would have worked. And I was going to say, well, like, what about Detective Meowth? That wouldn't have worked. But then I was thinking to myself, like, I totally would have seen a live action Team Rocket movie. But the, the thing is, like, the, the magic of Detective Pikachu really was sort of like, let's create a world that feels rooted in the Pokemon world, which is to say, you know, you've got my champs guiding traffic, but we are- Going to make it read as realistic enough for you adult Pokemon fans, because we all know who these movies are for. To be able to and want to project yourself into this space so that you can still get that, you know, little nostalgia kick. And be able to appreciate the story being told about how Mewtwo is plotting to take over the world by swapping every. It's very, it's, it's.

• 8:56Alex Cranz?

  It's a lot. It's a lot. Everybody go watch Detective Pikachu. It's a fun movie. But I think that's interesting to talk about that when we talk about The Last of Us. Because The Last of Us didn't have as many hurdles to to jump over, right? Like Naughty Dog has historically done video games that are, everybody calls them movies. Everybody's like, oh, Uncharted is a movie. The Last of Us is a movie. So it kind of like, it already had a lot of the big beats that you seal. It felt like easy mode as adaptations go.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  It is the truth. It's been, it's one of those truths that when you say it out loud, fans get upset with you. And it's like, well, you know, let's just call it, like, let's just call the thing what it is. When you're playing through The Last of Us, while it is this really dramatic story about a man and his charge trying to survive through the apocalypse. That feels rather specific and unique in the moment when you're like ensconced in it. The moment that you take a step back from The Last of Us and, you know, you look to the left and the right and see things like The Walking Dead. You know, in all of its fullness, you recognize that it's just, it's, and I don't say this disparagingly. It's another one of these stories, right?

• 10:00Speaker 02

  This one is right down the middle. You've got a grizzled, middleish aged man who's got regrets and a lot of, you know, guilt. And he's, he wears it on his face and he carries it in his gait and he's really just living for this little girl who isn't his daughter, but she's just like his. And it's like, where have I heard this story before? And the answer is everywhere, right? That it, it is one of those, you know, quote unquote, universal stories whose universality comes from the fact that it is told over and over and over again.

• 10:28Alex Cranz?

  I mean, that's like Pedro Pascal's career the last couple of years has been telling this story.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  I don't know if anyone's seen The Mandalorian, but I mean, to say that like Ellie and Grogu are essentially the same figure. It's not like, they got a lot in common, right? I feel like, I feel like the two of them would get along very, very well. But with The Last of Us as a video game, what really sort of set it apart and what really solidified it in a lot of fans' minds is being, you know, quote unquote, best video game story ever, has a lot to do with the fact that the game brought together a lot of the components of, I'm gonna call them prestige, but you know, serious and well crafted apocalyptic stories. It brought all of those together and packaged them into a video game that played a lot like a cinematic story that gave you the ability, because it's a third person game, to just sort of shift around the scene as it was unfolding.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  There are action elements, there are stealth elements, but you are supposed to really develop a relationship. You are supposed to develop an affinity for Ellie and all of her foul mouthness and sort of the way that she balks at the way that Joel is. And you're supposed to sort of almost feel like the unseen third companion who's like following along with them. And for people for whom this was their first exposure to that kind of story, that kind of game, it's not hard to understand why this caught on for so many people, why this sort of became such a big, such a big hit. Because, and again, this is not to disparage, oftentimes, you know, video game stories, they're not always great, right?

• 11:58Speaker 02

  They're not always, sometimes it is like, hey, you are here to power these guns up and mow through these masses of undead people. And, and that's it. Don't worry about the story. And The Last of Us really did sort of prioritize you internalizing the story and your feelings about those characters. There were rumblings for a very long time that there was going to be a Last of Us film. It's also easy to understand why, because this does ape the shape and the movements of not just a zombie movie, but there are also traces of things like Children of Men in this. There are shades of the road in this for the Cormac McCarthy fans, right? It's, it's obvious, it's easy to see why the studios thought to themselves, oh, this has to be on the big screen.

• 12:40Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  But it's often the case with video game projects, you know, they get stuck in development hell.

• 12:46Alex Cranz?

  It was messy.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  And ultimately, you know, it finds its home, the project finds its home on HBO as a series, which, you know, the general understanding is that the adaptation curse is not specific to movies. It's like, no, no, no, once you try to turn a video game into anything that's not a video game, it just instantly becomes bad. But again, because The Last of Us at its core was always crafted with such a cinematic style of storytelling in mind, what we've seen, what you and I have seen, people who are listening, who've been to watch the show are seeing is, a lot of the show is like a pretty faithful recreate, you know, there are, I'd say maybe 60% faithful recreations, and there are other 40% are things that are different. But it's like, oh, this is just what I didn't see on camera, because I didn't, I wasn't facing in that direction while I was playing.

• 13:34Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I think that's, that's really, that's one of the things I've kind of liked about it, is because I played the game, and I hate zombies. They terrify me. And so like, playing the game was the worst experience in the world, because I gotta play it, everybody loves it, I gotta play it. My brother would come over and do his laundry, and I'd be like, can you beat this part, because I'm too scared? I'm like a grown ass woman asking my brother to do this. But that's why I liked the, the movie, is I was like, oh, I can just skip to the cutscenes. I don't have to worry about mowing down all these guys, or sneaking past all of these, these zombies. I can just get to the good parts. The reason that I played the game, and have historically played Naughty Dog games. But there were, there were definitely some, some changes here, and I want to talk about some of those. The first one we're going to talk about is the death of Tess. Presumably, everybody's listening

• 14:18Alex Cranz?

  to this. Very different from the game, because the game, her death happens off camera, and it's by humans. And in this, she fringes a zombie.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  It's a, it's a heroic, noble sacrifice, and she's like, Joel, they got me.

• 14:35Alex Cranz?

  They got me!

• 14:36Speaker 02

  They got me, Joel. And I'm glad we're talking about this, because in this first episode, Tess has sort of been won over on the idea of Ellie being potentially like the savior of humanity. And that's also something that, that is not unlike the show, or rather unlike the game, but the show puts a lot more emphasis on it subtly, right? It's not, it's not exactly the most like, they're not beating you over the head with it, but there are more People who are sort of aware of Ellie's specialness. And it sort of inspires them to rise to do heroic things in order to make sure that she and Joel are able to like make it away. And the first, one of the first big examples of this is us seeing Tess, you know, decide to, she blows the thing up. There's a bunch of cordyceps zombies coming in and they swarm her.

• 15:21Alex Cranz?

  And she's trying to light the, the lighter.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  Can I tell you, that's one of my least favorite tropes. I've never had a lighter just like stay lit also when I like let it go. So this whole like, I'm gonna throw it dramatically.

• 15:30Alex Cranz?

  Zippos will do it, but Zippos also light easy. And I was just like, I know you're dying. I know you're scared, but can you like, can you focus for half a second?

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Do it with some intentionality and then just set it down.

• 15:43Alex Cranz?

  When I saw that moment where it's a really violent, really, really kind of gross moment, her death in this versus the game. The game is like, happens off camera. And yes, you can technically go back and look at her body and be like, I'll miss you Tess. That was my Joel impression, by the way. You can technically do that, but in this, it's like, no, she's going to have a very graphic death and you are going to know she's dead. And it felt really kind of cruel to me. I was like, okay, I didn't need that. Like one, Anna Torv is doing a great job of getting us to care about this character. She's doing a great job of developing relationships with these other characters. So like, we feel her relationship and her commitment to Ellie in a way that didn't always necessarily translate in the game.

• 16:26Alex Cranz?

  We feel that relationship with her and Joel in a way that didn't translate in the game. And then to be like, no, now she's gonna like make out with a zombie.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  My reading, the zombie made out with her. The zombie was very much like, come on, come on. And she was like, look, where else am I gonna go? I know what you mean, as you alluded to earlier. I'm neutral on the show. I think it's fine, right? I think it is definitely, it's one of the better apocalyptic zombie shows out in the past 10 years, let's say. In that I just like that it moves. There are. Our other series like The Walking Dead that really do meander and spend too much time focusing on petty human things. And I understand that's I can understand that that's that's where the comics exist. That's where, you know, they are sort of most comfortable. But after a while, it's like, I don't care about cannibals doing doing silly things that, you know, hurt people.

• 17:18Alex Cranz?

  I'm focused on these two characters. Let's move along. Let's get them to Colorado.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  That being said, something that I I came to feel about this show as I watched all nine episodes is be so it is a very it is a really faithful adaptation of the game. But because it is a television show, there are some things that are structurally different about it. And in a way that like, when you play through a video game, as you're progressing through, we don't really think about games as levels anymore, but they're just sort of vignettes that you sort of play through. When I'm sitting down to play a video game, it's almost kind of like interactive theater for me. There is a certain degree to which I do not think or worry too much about the logistics of how people move around the world. And I don't think I'm unique in that. And there is some of that here in the game,

• 18:03Speaker 02

  or rather, here in the show. But one of the things that I came away feeling, because of the show's structure, it has a way of creating this kind of like, character of the week kind of scenario, where just as a character has had a chance to exist on screen and really sell you on them as a person and how they fit into this world, they end up dying. Which, again, is not unique, especially in an apocalyptic show. But they always end up dying in a way that, to me, felt as if it was meant to sort of make you go, oh, wow, damn, that's sad. And while I totally appreciate that being the intended response, there comes

• 18:43Speaker 02

  a point at which the, I don't want to say manufacturedness, but sort of the intentional working towards that feeling kind of started to feel hollow for me.

• 18:54Alex Cranz?

  I get that. I think you can you can see the structure of this show really clearly in a way that you don't always. And so, like, on The Last of Us, I don't think this is a spoiler, those odd number of episodes tend to be like flashbacks. We're gonna stop, and we're gonna sit with a character, and we're gonna really think about them. Even number of episodes are like, we're gonna move through the plot today. Let's get through it. You know what's coming. Let's go. And so, I started to like, brace myself, because especially because being aware of these characters and being aware of of their stories in the game, I was like, okay. I know what's coming next. I know next week is gonna be, we're gonna go deep dive with these two characters and I know what's gonna happen to them probably

• 19:34Alex Cranz?

  that episode or the episode right after. So I get like, you do feel that kind of manufactured way where you're like, do I actually like this? Is this actually good? Or am I just like, enjoying it because it's an adaptation of something I've enjoyed and I like seeing a new version of it?

• 19:50Speaker 02

  But also because the shape of everyone's arcs, the, the specific details when you zoom in are very different. But after a while, the pattern does become, here's a new character for you to develop an affinity for. Get ready for them to die and for us to return to Ellie and Joel. And that's all supposed to serve, rather to reinforce upon you, like, these are the situation. These are, these are the circumstances that Ellie and Joel exist in. And I can appreciate that without, you know, I don't, I don't always need to see, you know, the happy couple who finds love in the apocalypse suddenly die. Oh my God, aren't you sad? Cause that happens a couple, that happens a couple of times in this show. And it's like, all right, all right, I get it. I get it. I get it. But these are, I, I, it's,

• 20:33Speaker 02

  it's funny. I, like you, am a big old scaredy cat when it comes to zombies. Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead truly ruined me for a few years, right? Just really, I, we can talk about that at another time. But with The Last of Us, I, being the weirdo that I am, this being, both the game and the show, putting so much focus on the fungal aspect of the infection. I came into the show really excited to see not just the clickers. I want to see all of it, right? I want to see every stage of the infection. And I get that the show doesn't necessarily start off in a place where we're going to be seeing all of them out and about hunting. But one of the things that I, especially at this point where we

• 21:18Speaker 02

  are in this series now, personally, I want to see more, I want to see more than just, can we kiss and I give you my fungal infection? I want to see more, I want to see more fungal armor.

• 21:29Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. Well, the show, the show is continuing on. We don't want to spoil the rest of it for, for our audience. I assume a lot of you who are listening to this are watching the show. I love it if you're listening to this and you haven't been watching the show. Sorry for the spoilers. I'm sorry. You're gonna have to go Google like test make out zombie.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  Do that Halloween costume. Like that's, start thinking about that now.

• 21:50Alex Cranz?

  That's a good costume. I think we, you know, we might come back to this. This is, this is still gonna be a really big adaptation. Do you think this is gonna be a sea change for video adaptations? Do you think people are gonna stop hand wringing about it, especially as games themselves have often gotten more cinematic?

• 22:05Speaker 02

  I think the more interesting thing to pay attention to is if and how games really start posturing themselves to lend themselves to adaptations better. And I don't think that's necessarily going to mean everything is going to be third person. Every game is just going to give all of its NPCs like, you know, wiki entries that you can just click through and it's like, ooh, I know who's gonna play this person. It's not necessarily gonna be that, but I think it is going to be interesting to see if more developers try to start positioning their games for this kind of thing.

• 22:33Alex Cranz?

  Kind of like comics have been doing the last like 10, 15 years where they're like, this is actually just like our pitch for the movie you should make instead.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 22:43Alex Cranz?

  That's why Captain Marvel exists. Sorry. Love Captain Marvel. Great movie. But it exists because they wanted to make a movie. The comic does. Well, thank you, Charles. This has been a wonderful conversation.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 22:56Alex Cranz?

  You're gonna have to come on again. We'll do, let's do like a two hour episode on Super Mario Brothers, the movie and why it's arguably one of the most interesting film adaptations of a game.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  This is something that we can 100% agree on. So yes.

• 23:09Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, we're gonna do it. Get excited. We'll do that and we'll be like, oh yeah, and also there's this other Super Mario movie. It's great. But thank you so much, Charles.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  This is great.

• 23:20Alex Cranz?

  We're gonna take a break. And when we get back, we're gonna be talking with Margaret O'Mara all about non-competes.

• 23:35Speaker 03

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• 24:08Nilay Patel?

  Hi, I'm Neelai Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week is part of our special series on the future of business. I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of CloudFlare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web, and how CloudFlare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.

• 24:30Speaker 05

  We polled all of that data and looked at it and said that, you know, it would be the second half of 2027, automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when, just a few months later in May, a team came to me and said, "You won't believe it, but automated traffic is now past human traffic online." And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you extrapolate that out, five years from now, we think that automated traffic will be a thousand times human traffic online.

• 24:54Nilay Patel?

  This was a fascinating conversation, not just about the future of the web, but also about how one of the world's most important software companies is deciding which of its employees it can replace with AI. Listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts.

• 25:07Speaker 06

  This series is presented by EY.

• 25:12Alex Cranz?

  Welcome back. So a few weeks ago, and after months of investigation, the FTC announced its plan to get rid of the non-compete in the United States.

• 25:21Speaker 07

  The rule would make it illegal for a company to enter into a new non-compete agreement with a worker or maintain an existing non-compete. And companies would mostly not be allowed to tell workers they are subject to non-compete clauses.

• 25:33Alex Cranz?

  A lot of people have had feelings about that. And there's a lot of concern that without non-compete, innovation in companies is just going to like falter. But I personally don't think that's true. California has basically never permitted the enforcement of non-compete. And Silicon Valley, which is like hugely innovative, has thrived partially because of that. But you shouldn't just believe me. And that's why I'm talking to Margaret O'Mara. She's a historian at the University of Washington and author of several books, including The Code, which is all about the creation of Silicon Valley as we know it. So Margaret, thank you for joining us today.

• 26:10Speaker 08

  It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

• 26:13Alex Cranz?

  I was really excited to talk to you because obviously, there's been a lot of discussion about non-compete lately, a lot of hand wringing from certain parts of the world, a lot of like finally from other parts of the world. And what I thought was really interesting was reading your book, The Code, you kind of talk about this myth that we've known about about Silicon Valley for a long time, that the non-compete or the lack of non-compete built Silicon Valley. Would you say that's true?

• 26:40Speaker 08

  I think it's one factor. You know, it's it's one of these things that historians love. It's this totally serendipitous, accidental, it's an accident of history.

• 26:48Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 26:49Speaker 08

  There was, the reason that Silicon Valley has been advantaged in this particular way has to do with the California state constitution of, you know, formulated in the late 19th century, which was just trying to kind of, it was this hodgepodge of lots of different legal traditions, you know, Spanish, Anglo-American, and long story short, just ended up with this provision that you could not enforce a non-compete agreement. And the way that it worked in practice, particularly in early Silicon Valley, meaning in the 1960s, when the chip industry is starting, the silicon semiconductor makers that put the silicon in the valley. That people could easily hop from one company to another.

• 27:30Speaker 08

  And certainly employers kind of tried to prevent IP from traveling with them. But they really, they really couldn't. And so it was incredibly generative and allowed tacit knowledge and experience and technical knowledge to go from one place to another quite easily.

• 27:49Alex Cranz?

  Because there was only a couple of these chipmakers there. And then suddenly there was a ton. And you look and you're like, wait, you all seemed to start at like Fairchild.

• 27:58Speaker 08

  Hmm.

• 27:59Alex Cranz?

  And you all just kind of left. And then like Intel, Intel was started by two guys from Fairchild, right?

• 28:04Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 28:05Alex Cranz?

  Would Intel exist now? I mean, obviously it might exist now. But if non-competes had been enforceable in California, would Intel have grown as much as it did then?

• 28:15Speaker 08

  Gosh, I don't know. I mean, there's, I mean, I think just broadly, the incredibly generative nature of lots of small firms, kind of networked small firms, was really enabled by this kind of fluidity in the marketplace. And, you know, part of it was kind of a, we're making this up as we go along, element to it. I like to think about the early Valley as kind of like the Galapagos Islands, where you are removed from other inputs. You're kind of in this very isolated space. I mean, keep in mind, the only other thing going on there was growing apricots and fruit orchards. You know, there's just not, this wasn't an industrial area like, say, Boston or, you

• 28:59Speaker 08

  know, New York or other places that the electronics industry and the computer industry was growing at that time. And so, and these were young, younger people. The guys who ended up out there were there in part because they didn't have connections and money. And they didn't have a lot of managerial experience or a lot of, you know, being non-hierarchical and having kind of flat management structures was also something really highly valued in the early Valley.

• 29:27Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, you talk about in the book, that some of these initial companies, the managers were just bad. Like, you'd go and you'd work for a guy and he'd be a genius, but he'd be Terrible to work with. And so these guys go, wait a minute, I can take a lot of the ideas I have here and just go start my own company and not work for this jackass.

• 29:44Speaker 08

  Yeah, it turns out being a Nobel Prize winner does not necessarily mean you're going to be a great boss. The most notoriously bad boss that really kind of gets this flywheel going is William Shockley, the go inventor of the transistor. He's the person who brings out these super talented young engineers to work for him at his newly created Shockley Semiconductor, which is the very first semiconductor startup in the valley in the mid 50s. He's impossible to work for. He has a lot of other not very great character traits. And eight of them band together, find someone who's going to help them find financing

• 30:24Speaker 08

  and start their own company. And yeah, there was no, you know, the long arm of California law couldn't come in and say, no, you can't do that. And then in turn, when the Fairchild Semiconductor, which was that new company, when that got to be, you know, the people who had financed that were being a little bit obstinate about allowing the people who work there to do what they wanted to do.

• 30:47Alex Cranz?

  Shocking.

• 30:48Speaker 08

  Yeah, they left and went on to start their own companies or go to other companies and see these ideas. So yeah, there's this ability to just jump ship and go. That is, it's, you know, contributing to it. I mean, one of the really cool things about all of this is that, you know, we all want to kind of point to, here's this one thing that made everything happen. And actually, it's a lot of things working together. But the non-competes is this sort of wonderful oddball circumstance that underscores how, you know, sometimes you can't, things you don't expect will be really consequential. And also, these like distinctions of geography actually really do matter. The kind of state, what state law is like is consequential.

• 31:29Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I think a lot of times, my kind of go to on non-competes is Mark Papermaster. In the mid 2000s, he was at IBM. He was overseeing a lot of their chip business there. Tony Fadell leaves Apple. He was the creator of the iPod. He leaves and they say, okay, we're going to bring in Mark Papermaster. And they bring him in and IBM's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And because he'd signed his contract in New York and not in California, he went to court. And he ended up settling and couldn't work for six months, was unemployed by Apple for six months, worked there for a year and then left. Like just ruined kind of his career. And that wouldn't have happened in California necessarily if he'd signed all those contracts additionally.

• 32:09Speaker 08

  Yeah. And look, you know, you know, part of this story, this California non-compete story is also, you know, the early days, of course, these companies are incorporated in California. They're just in California.

• 32:19Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 32:19Speaker 08

  Now we have tech companies that have, you know, they may be headquartered in California, but they're all over the world. So, you know, the stories could become a little more murky too, right? We do have instances in which very valuable talent and ideas try to move and the, uh, the, the companies try to claw that back. So the big, look, the big Silicon Valley based companies are not immune from that either. But I think there's a real value in recognizing innovation rarely happens kind of vertically within the silo of one company. It usually happens with a lot of different places inputs. Uh, you know, and this is the real contrast drawn between the early Valley and Boston's

• 33:00Speaker 08

  Route 128, which was a lot of big companies where things were within and the East Coast more generally was a lot of big companies like, like AT&T and Bell Labs, which is where Shockley started. And, uh, the ability to kind of, you know, have these smaller firms, um, multiple smaller firms rather than one single one seems to have been, um, you know, you can track, there's just more ideas being generated and new things happening.

• 33:25Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, let's, let's talk a little bit more about the East Coast side of things because pre-Shockley, pre-Fairchild, it was the East Coast where most of the development was happening. That was where a lot of the universities were. That was where a lot of the, the big companies were. And then it slowly moved to Silicon Valley and part of that was, was because of the non-competes. Because Boston and, and New York, yeah, they didn't force them. They'd keep these guys from it, right?

• 33:49Speaker 08

  Yeah. And well, and it was that sort of enforcement, I think is one piece of kind of a broader story of, yeah, maybe let's call it more conservative business culture or, you know, this is the way we do things. Uh, you know, keep in mind that in the middle part of the 20th century, a lot of this advanced electronics, particularly miniature electronics was really state of the art, not, you know, it was risky business. Like, oh, there's not a, you know, what's the use case? The thing that was, you know, the flywheel that was really creating a market in large part was the Cold War and military spending and the US government was ordering up these esoteric, high-tech things.

• 34:27Speaker 08

  But more broadly in the commercial side, yeah, there was a commercial computer industry in the 50s and 60s, a huge one. It was almost entirely headquartered on the East Coast. And that's another thing that's kind of gets lost in this story.

• 34:38Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 34:39Speaker 08

  You have these really early, super important milestones of computing that are happening on the East Coast. I mean, a really important part of this whole history is the very first all-digital programmable computer is the ENIAC, which is developed at the University of Pennsylvania, Penn in Philly, comes out in 1946. The inventors of that try to commercialize it. Penn makes it super, super difficult for them to do so. And ultimately, they kind of leave their jobs at the university and they don't have kind of financing. They, you know, look, the university, other kind of financiers there were not that interested in investing. They commercialize this startup called Univac, which creates a commercial

• 35:23Speaker 08

  version of this. This is really the first, you know, in the very early days of computing, Univac kind of was synonymous with computer in the way that Kleenex is with facial tissue and Google is with search, right?

• 35:34Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 35:35Speaker 08

  Just for a brief period. But they had to kind of go on their own. And, you know, it's a really good example of this, well, we don't want to, you know, we don't want to invest in this new thing. Like, what are you going to do with that? How are you going to make money? And whereas on the West Coast, there was, you know, a different, you know, it was less, there were fewer established institutions that were ready to stay, no. And there was now this big stream of money coming in, particularly in places like California, that had to do with military spending. And so that's a wave that these small firms got to ride.

• 36:10Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, no, that's cool. That they kind of, they wrote it and then they created Silicon Valley. And like, now everything's there. Now it's, California's what, the fifth largest economy in the world or something incredible like that?

• 36:21Speaker 08

  Yeah, it's enormous. You know, it also points to, like, we can also look and see kind of what matters and what doesn't, right? So, you know, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and business leaders have, you know, forever been complaining about California taxes. And they are high, for sure. And certainly here in my state of Washington, there's, it's definitely been a regional advantage that there's no state income tax and other things that kind of tech firms have used to leverage, to recruit people and to grow. But look, if we really look at the sort of what is the thing, if high taxes were deterrent to a high-tech cluster growing and innovation happening, then California would have been, wouldn't have begun in the first place. You know, there are kind of other things.

• 37:06Speaker 08

  So this, this non-compete story is a great example of there are other things, a state, conditions that a state law can create our local business climate that are actually more important.

• 37:18Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 37:19Speaker 08

  Than whether it's a high tax or a low tax place. And of course, if you're a really low tax region, then, you know, I mean, taxes pay for public amenities. So one of the things that grew California, certainly in the middle part of the 20th century, was, yes, it was high taxes, but they were spending a lot on building roads and schools and infrastructure and all these things that were making it pretty easy and interesting, you know, people were drawn to migrate to California because of that.

• 37:45Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I know, and they did not go to Texas. Well, we had TI, we had TI at Tandy.

• 37:51Speaker 08

  Yeah, I mean, a lot, look, a lot of people went to Texas.

• 37:54Alex Cranz?

  That's great.

• 37:55Speaker 08

  Yeah, another reminder too is like, you know, people are like, oh, Texas is the new high-tech capital. And you're like, well, actually, they've been doing that stuff for a long time.

• 38:02Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 38:03Speaker 08

  Yeah, like this is, you know, nothing's as new as you think. That's the other thing, history professors always like to chime in, be like, this isn't new. We've been doing this for a while.

• 38:13Alex Cranz?

  It's true, though, yeah. I think a lot of people in California are like, oh, you're making non-compete's out, getting rid of non-compete's? That's not new. We've been doing that for decades. Since, since the beginning.

• 38:23Speaker 08

  Since 1870.

• 38:24Alex Cranz?

  Well, so, so it sounds like non-compete's are just kind of one part of this big puzzle for, for the development of Silicon Valley, but they really did enable a lot of these firms to be much more creative, to let people bounce around, to, to, to create that kind of ingenuity that we think of as like a hallmark of the region.

• 38:45Speaker 08

  Yeah, I think that's right. And I think, you know, what it underscores, I think, for wherever you are, is that the tech industry, it's not about necessarily the tech, it's about the people, right? The people who create the ideas. And that, you know, the moving back and forth and the willingness to, you know, I think what it also does is it's, not to say that Silicon Valley has not always been an extremely competitive place, these, all these little chipmakers in the 60s, you would not, I mean, the elbows were sharp.

• 39:18Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 39:19Speaker 08

  And they were, they were hustling hard to outrun one another. But you do create kind of this collaborative ecosystem of people, you know, just a lot of connective tissue across firms. And that, over time, is really generative. If you actually look at the, I love, Steve Jobs once, the metaphor that he used, which I really love, is he talks about passing the baton.

• 39:43Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 39:44Speaker 08

  Which is one generation kind of passes the baton to the next in tech. And so that's the other thing. There's kind of this lateral movement during a certain tech generation. And then it also turns over to, you know, the people making microchips are the mentors and the investors of the people making desktop computers. And then those people are the ones investing and mentoring the early dot com companies and on and on. And so that kind of collaboration across entities and across time is a real secret of Silicon Valley that sometimes gets lost in the shuffle because we think present tense and future

• 40:23Speaker 08

  tense is what matters. But actually, time and the time it has taken to create this very distinctive community that non-competes helped foster that.

• 40:35Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 40:35Speaker 08

  In the very beginning, that's really what makes it go.

• 40:39Alex Cranz?

  Well, thank you, Margaret. This was super, super informative. I appreciate it. You taking the time to come chat?

• 40:44Speaker 08

  Well, delighted to join you. Thanks.

• 40:48Alex Cranz?

  We're going to take another break. And when we're back, we're going to be doing the hotline. Stay tuned.

• 41:01Speaker 09

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• 42:18Alex Cranz?

  Okay, welcome back. It's time to hear what our listeners are thinking about in the tech world. Our Vergecast hotline is open 24/7, where you can leave us messages and ask all of your burning tech questions. We selected a few to run today, but keep calling. I swear, we listen, we want to hear from you. Our first question comes from Jay in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Let's go right to it.

• 42:37Speaker 06

  Hi, this is Jay from Ann Arbor, Michigan. And like many of the Vergecast hosts, I am excited about USB-C. And as more things use USB-C connectors, the problem I'm starting to face is that I don't have enough ports to plug everything in. And it doesn't seem like there are as many hubs available as there are for USB-A connectors. I've read that some of that has to do with the chips that are required to make that happen, but I was wondering what your take was. Thanks a lot.

• 43:14Alex Cranz?

  Jay, we're going to go ahead and talk to Sean Hollister, who I like to think is The Verge's USB-C expert. Sean, what's happening with USB-C?

• 43:24Speaker 10

  Hi Jay, you're absolutely right. It does have something to do with the chips. You see, there are a lot of companies who want to make USB-C hubs, who want to make USB-C docking stations, but all of them, or very, very many of them, rely on chips from a smaller number of suppliers. And so, these chip companies are like, "Well, what do people want out of a USB-C dock?" And most of them say they want a single cable that lets their laptop plug into legacy peripherals. And so, USB-A continues to be hugely popular, Ethernet doesn't have a replacement yet, cameras have not really switched from big SD cards to micro SD cards. And so, all of those things are competing for space and

• 44:07Speaker 10

  for capabilities in the chips and docks that are made. And so, like, if I want to get USB-C ports, right now, I'm kind of limited to Thunderbolt 4 docks. If you want to pay $300, $400, maybe $200 if you're lucky, for a Thunderbolt 4 docking station, they're out there. Cal-digit, pluggable, even Anker makes some of them. Each one of them's going to make you make some kind of trade-offs. Either you're going to pay a lot of money if you want something that's give you like three downstream USB-4 Thunderbolt 4 ports, or you're going to pay for a lot less capability. I saw one at Anker that'll give you like two additional USB-C ports out of your laptop, but even that costs $200. It's a lot of money.

• 44:52Alex Cranz?

  Two, only two extra ports? $100 a port?

• 44:56Speaker 10

  Yeah, because when you're talking about Thunderbolt 4, people assume, "Oh yeah, this person's going to plug in a bunch of high-speed, like, external GPUs and heavy-duty storage, it's going to be RAID arrays." But then, they're also going to have to go to Intel generally and get some fancy chips to do that. Each one of those chips generally gives you two ports on a docking station. So, there'll be one port, that'll be the one that goes into your laptop, and then you get one downstream port out of that. And then, your second chip will probably get you your other two downstream ports. So, you'll have your, maybe your monitor will come out of that, and you'll have your RAID array, and then you'll have maybe your, a second monitor, or some other fancy USB-C device on the other end. But you don't get a lot.

• 45:39Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, yeah, that sounds like nothing. So, if Jay or myself wants to add like four or five USB-C ports, we basically just need to go spend $300 on a Thunderbolt 4 dock and hope?

• 45:53Speaker 10

  I really wish it was different. That's kind of the case right now. If you go to Amazon, you search for a USB C hub, most of them are just going to have a single USB connector that plugs into your laptop. And then if there's a second USB C on it, it might not even be for data. It'll just be a power input. So they figure you're going to plug your laptop's USB C power adapter into the hub, and then you can get the pass-through to your laptop. That way, you get that glorious, "Oh yeah, I can plug this single cable on my laptop. I get my power. It's charging. It's going to plug my old flash drive in. I can plug my HDMI monitor in. I can plug my ethernet in for wired internet." They don't expect that you're going to have all this high-speed additional peripherals. And then if you do,

• 46:34Speaker 10

  you're going to be willing to spend an extra $100, $200, $300 for the Thunderbolt 4 up.

• 46:40Alex Cranz?

  Is there any hope? Like, is there something? Did something get announced at CES? Were there rumors? Are we going to get any relief?

• 46:47Speaker 10

  I wish. I think what it's going to take, I think what it's really going to take is when we have passed by some of these old legacy peripherals, when people have accepted, "You don't really need ethernet anymore. You're going to be fine with Wi-Fi." We're getting to the point where Wi-Fi is getting a little more reliable. You can get back-channel through your 6000-gigahertz band, so that you have that dedicated, high-speed, short-range connection to your router or to your VR headset or something. Maybe you don't need that port anymore in the future. Maybe micro SD becomes more reliable. You don't need that. But right now, if you are a cheap hub manufacturer in Shenzhen that's trying to put out a whole bunch of hubs for all of these Alphabet Soup brands, and even some

• 47:30Speaker 10

  of the brands you know about, you're probably going to be buying that chip from a supplier that wants to supply all of those legacy, those peripherals that people want to plug in that are a little bit more old-school.

• 47:44Alex Cranz?

  Okay, so people like Jay, myself, I am almost completely out of USB C ports on my Mac Studio at this point. We just need to, like, hope that these suppliers start to recognize there's more of us and where our market too.

• 47:57Speaker 10

  I think there's that. I also think laptops will, and desktops will probably just have more of these ports in the future. What frustrates me to no end is the USB-C state on desktop PCs where, yeah, you know, if you're getting a desktop, you want to plug a lot of things into it. But the last two motherboards I bought with USB-C ports on them, they would only have a single port on the back of the machine. And what frustrates the heck out of me is you know how there's like an I/O panel you need to stick into the back of your PC case to like hold all those ports and keep them from like just electrically touching the sides of your case? Those things are generally springy enough that when I stick a USB-C cable into the back, it just pushes it right back out again. It like bounces right out. It frustrates the heck out of me.

• 48:42Speaker 10

  If you really just do need more USB-C ports and you don't care about how fast they are, I have seen a bunch of one-port to four-port USB-C hubs on the internet. That it is one thing that the chips are being made for. Just know that they can be really slow. Some of them are just 5 gigabits per second. That's USB 3.0 speeds out of your USB-C ports.

• 49:03Alex Cranz?

  I hate that. Well, thank you, Sean. Jay, I wish the news was better. Sorry.

• 49:10Alex Cranz?

  Okay, we're gonna kick it to this next question, which I've got Dan Seifert here to answer.

• 49:14Speaker 11

  Hello?

• 49:15Alex Cranz?

  Roll the tape, Andrew.

• 49:17Speaker 12

  Hey, Vergecast hotline. My name is Frank from North Carolina. I have two laptops, one work and one personal, and they both use Thunderbolt 4. What is a good option to easily switch between the two of them seamlessly without paying for one of those ridiculously expensive KVMs that support Thunderbolt 4? Is there a quick and easy solution to this? All right, thanks. Bye.

• 49:41Alex Cranz?

  All right, Dan. Can you help Frank out?

• 49:43Speaker 11

  Frank, thank you for this question. I love this question. It is a problem that's near and dear to my heart, so I relate very well to it. I will say, I don't know exactly your setup here, so I'm not sure if you want to use the, both of these laptops with the same monitor, mouse and keyboard, or if you just want to be able to switch between inputs on them. So we're gonna explore multiple options for you, and hopefully you can find something that works for you. So, for starters, you mentioned a Thunderbolt 4 dock. If there's a Thunderbolt 4 dock that has a built-in KVM switch into it, I don't know of it. All of those expensive fancy docks that you see on the market with lots of ports and they cost about $300 or $400 or so, you can't actually switch between inputs on those. You can output to multiple displays, but you really can only connect one computer at a time to them.

• 50:28Speaker 11

  So that's not really the solution. There is a few hardware options for you. There's a basic KVM switch. KVM stands for Keyboard, Video and Mouse. They've been around for eons. The modern ones these days use HDMI inputs and USB ports. And so you would just kind of, if your laptops have just USB-C on them, you would have to do USB-C to HDMI and get a converter cable, which is not too hard to do. But basically you plug both laptops into those. You plug your one mouse and your one keyboard into it and you plug your one display into it. And then you have a little switch on the switch itself to switch between them. So you use one at a time and you just kind of switch between them. So that's a very simple hardware solution for you. There is one silly USB-C 4 switch.

• 51:13Speaker 11

  USB 4 switch that uses USB-C ports. It's a $1,000 dev board. It takes two USB-C inputs and it outputs to one USB-C plug. And then you can switch between them. That's an option. I'm just saying, I'm laying out all the options here. It's not maybe one I'd recommend, but it's an option. And then the last hardware solution for you is a lot of big monitors have the ability to accept multiple inputs, whether that's multiple display inputs from two different computers. Or also you can connect your keyboard and mouse directly to the monitor and they have built-in KVM switches on them. And so if your screen is big enough, you can split the screen. You usually see this with like the ultra wide screens.

• 51:56Speaker 11

  And so one side can be your one, your personal laptop. The other side can be your work laptop. And there's a KVM switch built into the monitor itself so that you can use the same mouse and keyboard to switch between them. So that's another hardware option for you. But if you already have... A display already, you don't want to buy a new one or anything like that. There are some software options.

• 52:16Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, software.

• 52:17Speaker 11

  Yes, software. The first one is universal control on a Mac. It only works between two Macs and they have to share an iCloud account. I'm going to guess that you don't have two Macs here. Just most people have a work laptop and a personal laptop don't have two Macs in the same scenario. Maybe you do, but if you don't, or if you, you do also have to have them both on the same iCloud account, which might be precluded by one of the B O work options. So, so universal control works really cool, but it's probably not a practical option here. Another software option is called Logitech Flow. If you happen to have a modern keyboard or mouse from Logitech, there's an app that you can download on both computers. It works across Windows and Mac that will let you do the universal control thing. Basically, you just move your cursor over to the edge of the screen and it passes it over to the next one.

• 53:01Speaker 11

  And then you click on it and your keyboard will work over on that computer and you can move your mouse back over to the other side. So if you have the right Logitech stuff, you can do that. There's a couple of apps I found that don't require specific hardware. They're called Share Mouse and Synergy and they both appear to do the same kind of thing.

• 53:18Alex Cranz?

  I've used Synergy.

• 53:19Speaker 11

  Yeah, it's, if you have your computer like open and on and plugged into separate displays, you can use the same mouse and keyboard and just move it between them with these apps installed. Share Mouse is about $81. It does have a free trial that you can try out to see if it works. Synergy is a little bit cheaper. It's about $30. I haven't personally used either of them. Alex has used Synergy, apparently.

• 53:42Alex Cranz?

  I've used Synergy. It was, it was years ago. It technically gets the job done. Is it the prettiest? No, but it, it works.

• 53:54Speaker 11

  Yeah, I mean, it'll work. If we're trying to do this on a shoestring budget, 30 bucks is not bad to spend.

• 53:59Alex Cranz?

  It just doesn't ever feel as natural as using like the monitor solution you, you offered or those hardware solutions.

• 54:07Speaker 11

  Yeah, hardware solutions are probably the way to go. I'm going to recommend the easiest setup and I'm going to assume that you've got some space on your desk. I think the easiest setup is to use an external display with your main laptop, which would be like probably your work laptop, right? The one that you're, you're Spending the most time on, you install one of the apps like Synergy onto both computers. So you can share your mouse and your keyboard. And then you just leave your personal laptop open on the side of your desk. And when you want to like move over to your personal laptop to send a Discord message or an iMessage or whatever it is that you're doing over there. You just move your cursor over, you do it, and then you move back to your work one. That's on your big display. I think that's probably the most practical, easiest setup. An alternate option for you, if you're not wanting to use your work laptop and your personal laptop at the same time.

• 54:52Speaker 11

  Like this is kind of like, you're like, I've got a work laptop that I do work on. But then I've got a gaming laptop that I only play games on. You're probably not like having those active at the same time. But what you do there is then you buy a, either a Thunderbolt or a USB C dock that's got a lot of ports on it. You plug your display and all your peripherals into it. You plug your mouse, your keyboard, Ethernet, whatever, your speakers, everything goes into that dock. And then to switch between the computers, you just unplug one cable out of the one and plug it into the other when it's time to play games or something like that. That's what I personally do. I don't usually use two laptops at the same time. When I'm working, I got my work one set up. If I do want to play games, I pull out the gaming laptop and I just switch the cable over from the dock. So those are my solutions. I don't think any of them are super elegant.

• 55:35Alex Cranz?

  I will say Synergy has gotten prettier than the last time I used it circa like 2013.

• 55:41Speaker 11

  It also looks prettier than ShareMouse. ShareMouse looks pretty basic.

• 55:46Alex Cranz?

  You can sometimes find, I think there might be an open source one as well out there. But most of them tend to be a little buggy and it usually requires you to like run a server essentially.

• 55:59Speaker 11

  Yeah, you do. The way those work is over, basically over ad hoc Wi-Fi. So you kind of have to have like a, there's, there is some kind of like internet-like communication.

• 56:10Alex Cranz?

  You have to install the software on that, that work computer, which depending on how tight you are with your IT department.

• 56:17Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 56:17Alex Cranz?

  Could be a problem.

• 56:19Speaker 11

  Exactly. Yeah, there, there's definitely lots of caveats here in terms of like what your specific setup is and like what you'll be allowed to do. I don't think your IT department can get in the way of you using a basic hardware KVM switch like that. Cause that's just a matter of plugging things in and it's got a hardware switch on it that you just click the button to switch between them. So that might be the most practical solution for you.

• 56:40Alex Cranz?

  All right. Well, Frank, please let us know how the KVM hunt goes. Dan, thank you so much.

• 56:45Speaker 11

  Good luck. And somebody, please make a Thunderbolt for KVM Doc switch. I will buy it. Somebody do it, please.

• 56:53Alex Cranz?

  Okay, so our next question is from Mark. Let's give it a listen.

• 56:57Speaker 13

  Hey, Verge fam, it's Mark. I am in Soho in New York City, and I see this ad going up by Meta. It says, "Set up a new era of personal privacy with automatic end-to-end encryption from WhatsApp." And I just want to know, what's the difference between that end-to-end encryption and all the other ones? Is it real? Am I going to get screwed? Is it good? Please help. Thanks.

• 57:19Alex Cranz?

  Okay, so to answer this question, we had to go to somebody who's been writing about a bunch. Mitchell Clark, is WhatsApp real?

• 57:25Speaker 14

  Yeah, so the TLDR is kind of interesting. End-to-end encryption is actually good, and it will almost certainly not screw you over. That's not the same thing as saying that it's immune to surveillance, if that's what you're worried about, because that's kind of like an entirely different thing. So to go a bit deeper into that, you asked how its encryption is different from the other apps, and the kind of interesting thing that I've found is that it is not. At least when it comes to Signal, which is kind of like the gold standard for private messaging apps, it uses the, literally the same protocol as Signal. So in terms of whether Meta or the government would be able to read your messages, you should be totally fine using WhatsApp.

• 58:09Speaker 14

  Now, the thing that the ad doesn't tell you is that in terms of privacy, there are 100% better options out there. That's because WhatsApp can and almost certainly does collect metadata on your conversations. So while it doesn't know what you're saying, it does have a record of who you were talking with, when you were talking with them, you know, if you all exchanged pictures or whatever. Like, that stuff, it can tell.

• 58:33Alex Cranz?

  That seems not great for people who want end-to-end encryption.

• 58:37Speaker 14

  I'm not saying that it's like lying by omission. It is technically private. It does have end-to-end encryption for your messages and those contents. But the metadata, it can see. And it also collects things like your location information, device information, stuff like that. And that data is super valuable. Governments can and have asked Meta to hand it over before. And so if you're the type of person who's concerned about data collection and overall privacy, then that's something you really want to consider, not just with WhatsApp, but with a bunch of different apps that say that they support end-to-end encryption, because they can, but there's more to that story. So iMessage and OCS, it's kind of the same deal with those.

• 59:20Speaker 14

  The one app that doesn't do that is Signal. So there's a feature in it that makes it so that even the company running the app can't tell who you're messaging, which is pretty solid. So like in terms of real word stuff, Meta can read what's on the outside of your envelope that you're mailing to someone, your thank you cards for Christmas presents, which you should be sending right now. Meta can read the address, your address, who you're sending it to. And so can a bunch of other people who make end-to-end encrypted messaging apps. Signal cannot.

• 59:52Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 59:52Speaker 14

  Neither of them can see what's in that envelope. But there's a difference between how much data they are collecting.

• 59:58Alex Cranz?

  So like WhatsApp, iMessage, that's going to make sense for people who are talking with their family and friends and maybe just don't want the world to know what all salacious things they get up to in their chats. And then Signal is like, no, I don't want you to know anything.

• 1:00:14Speaker 14

  Right. If you are...

• 1:00:17Speaker 14

  I was going to try to come up with an example. I don't want the FBI to burst into my house. I'm going to leave it very vague. But like, the one rub of this is that if you have friends and family using a messaging app, it's probably WhatsApp. Like, the network effect with these messaging apps is really, really strong. So you're not, even if you did want to convince your mom to use Signal, you're probably not going to have a whole lot of luck with that. It's usually a losing battle trying to get people to adopt new messaging apps. So if, if you are wondering, I have people wanting me to use WhatsApp. Does it have this bare minimum level of safety? The answer is yes. And it should be totally fine if you're not trying to blow the whistle

• 1:00:59Speaker 14

  on illegal government actions or corporate espionage. Like for that, maybe, maybe choose something different.

• 1:01:06Alex Cranz?

  I love that. All right. Thank you, Mitchell.

• 1:01:09Speaker 14

  Yeah.

• 1:01:11Alex Cranz?

  Okay, here's the final question for today.

• 1:01:14Speaker 15

  So number one, David Pierce, you're not my friend. You didn't invite me to your Christmas party. So let's get through that. Wait, am I supposed to say my name? All right, anyways. But number two, voice assistants, like what's going on with voice assistants? It seems like nobody's doing anything interesting with them anymore. Is it because they can't be monetized? Can they please fix Siri, please?

• 1:01:33Alex Cranz?

  All right, well, David is not here to invite you to his Christmas party or answer the question, but I've got Jen Tuohy here.

• 1:01:40Speaker 16

  Hi.

• 1:01:41Alex Cranz?

  Hi, Jen. Like, what's going on? Are things happening in voice assistant land?

• 1:01:47Speaker 16

  Well, it's an interesting question there, multi-part. Honestly, you know, I think voice assistants are really quite good right now. I think we've kind of come to expect a lot from them because our other personal devices are so, you know, intuitive and responsive to us. But voice assistants, especially in the smart home, kind of have a harder job than, say, like your smartphone or your computer, where, you know, we've become used to such easy interaction. Because voice assistants generally lack the context that, say, a smartphone does. And the attempts that companies have made to sort of personalize the various voice assistants, whose names I'll try not to say too many times, so not to activate everyone's devices. But those attempts to sort of personalize them have been, haven't worked that well,

• 1:02:31Speaker 16

  especially in multi-people households. So you may say something to your voice assistant, like, you know, play my playlist, and it doesn't know who you are. And so those things, that's been a bit tricky. Each company has tried to address that, but more often than not, it ends up just being frustrating for the user. And generally, I would say, of the three main voice assistants, each kind of has its pluses and minuses. You know, like, Amazon has a very wide range of capabilities. But that can get hard because it's not specific enough. You know, you might, I've had examples where I've asked the assistant to, you know, turn on a light switch, or do some smart home thing, and it'll end up sort of telling me the latest news headlines because it gets confused.

• 1:03:17Speaker 16

  So you know that and that's frustrating and because we're so used to things, you know, technology has become so advanced, we're used to things doing exactly what we expect. And voice assistants are like have lagged behind there. You know, like Google is really good for general knowledge, you know, things like directions, traffic, weather. And then Apple's assistant is so well integrated into the Apple ecosystem, you know, they've just launched some new capabilities like with the HomePod that we just wrote about this week, you know, you can ask your HomePod Mini to find your husband if he's gone missing. So you know, like find my on your iPhone now, instead of having to pull out the iPhone, you can just say, hey, S, where's my husband? And it will give you direct, you know, give

• 1:04:01Speaker 16

  you even directions to go find him. And you know, they are adding new features, but in general, the problem is no one voice assistant does all of these things. Well, you know, you kind of have to pick or choose. And, and this, the caller did say specifically, please fix Siri. And that's a leading question. You know, I'd love to know what specifically he, his problem is with Siri. Personally, as I've written about, I do find Siri to sort of actually be one of the better voice assistants for smart home control. But anything else, or largely anything else, and it does kind of spin its wheels a lot. And I think a lot of them have this problem where you're waiting on them to do what you've asked because they're often relying on a cloud connection. And that, you know, gets frustrating

• 1:04:46Speaker 16

  for you, sitting there, waiting for it to turn the lights on or off, or read you the news headlines. Because, you know, one of the issues is in the smart home is if you rely too much on the cloud, the voice assistant has to send the command and then the get the data and bring it back and then do its thing. And, you know, in my mind, I think voice control works best when it's local, when the connection. Everything it's working on is local. And that's also sometimes why you'll find using the voice assistant on a phone, the ones that work well on a phone, is quicker than using it with smart home speakers. And this is actually something, and you know, you can't have me on the Verdecas without me mentioning the word matter.

• 1:05:28Speaker 16

  This is something for the smart home, I think matter may actually help with because it will help bring all our control of smart home devices locally. Devices will be able to talk directly to each other, rather than having to go to the cloud and talk directly to voice assistants. So, you know, that may be an area we're going to see some improvement. It's going to take a while, though. I think voice assistants often get the blame because they're the control point. Like, you get mad at your smartphone when, you know, a website's not working, or an app's not working, when in fact, it's quite likely that it's like a device network issue, or some connectivity that's sort of broken in the background, and it's not actually their fault. But that's why you get, shoot the messenger.

• 1:06:13Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I use S, and S sometimes doesn't want to connect to the internet, and it's unclear why. And it just likes to return, I can't do that right now. And I'm like, but you can. I know you can.

• 1:06:24Speaker 16

  And you just did it like 20 minutes ago. Why can't you do it now?

• 1:06:28Alex Cranz?

  Do it now. And it's so frustrating. And I know intellectually, something's going on here. I need to troubleshoot the wifi. But no, I'm still mad at this little tiny speaker in my kitchen. I want to throw it out the window. Do you think we're gonna see more use of these conversational AIs that we've seen, like ChatGPT? Do you think those are going to become more involved in these voice assistants? Or are they going to continue to be this place where we ask very specific kind of robotic questions to them, and they give us those very ten answers?

• 1:07:00Speaker 16

  Yeah, and so that's another area I think people get frustrated is you have to use, for the most part, very specific nomenclature. And you know, if you just vary it, instead of saying like every day, you say every night and it doesn't know what you're talking about. It is tricky. It also makes it hard for people in your home who aren't used to using voice assistants to control things because they may say, you know, turn on the lamp instead of turn on the light and the voice assistant doesn't know the answer. And these kind of new innovations around AI is very interesting. And you know, we had a great piece on the on the site this week, sort of looking, I think someone created a really cool voice assistant using, yes. And that was that was amazing. And it looked,

• 1:07:45Speaker 16

  and it was like, yeah, this could be the sort of sort of nirvana for voice assistants. But I think people rightly pointed out, when you don't have a tightly controlled ecosystem for a voice assistant, it could get messy and scary very quickly.

• 1:07:59Speaker 16

  Especially like, you know, I I posted this question on on Twitter a little while ago, like, what is it that annoys you most about your voice assistant? And an old colleague of mine said, well, when it plays non toddler friendly versions of Old MacDonald. And it's like, you know, you don't, there are times when you want control, you just don't want the whole wide world of artificial intelligence streaming through your smart speaker and into the ears of your three year old toddler. So, you know, we kind of need this control mechanism. And, you know, we need these companies to sort of be able to provide the exact information we want and not go off on to weird tangents. But, you know, it's a hard problem to solve. I'm not an AI expert, but I'm sure our colleague James Vincent would be able to would agree with me that, you

• 1:08:42Speaker 16

  know, this type of natural language processing, this type of, you know, being able to adapt to the way we speak to a voice assistant, nailing that down and getting that right is incredibly hard. You know, the simplest things in life are a lot harder to do in technology than it than you would think. On the monetization front, which was the other part of his question, you know, there's one of the three that's sort of the prime target here. Amazon's assistant is constantly trying to sell us things. Yes. It's a tricky world. I don't, when you think about what we're getting from a voice assistant, it is kind of surprising that we're not having to pay for it. I mean, the functionality that you're getting, you know, it's like, you know, the old adage,

• 1:09:24Speaker 16

  I don't know if it's old, but in the tech world, you know, if you're not paying for it, then you're the product. So that's something with Siri and Google Assistant, you know, it's a feature of their hardware. So it's a feature of the smartphone or the smart speaker, and those companies are monetizing in different ways. But with Amazon's, you know, their main monetization strategy is buy products from us. So we are going to see more of that, I'm very sure, in the future with the voice assistant in your home. So just be aware when you're picking which one, which one you want to bring into your home, that that one is the one that's most likely to see more monetization in the future, which it already does. So. Start trying to sell your stuff. Yep.

• 1:10:07Alex Cranz?

  Well, that's one of the reasons I went with Siri, honestly, is, is, is I knew there was a little bit more mindfulness of privacy and unlikely for me to be monetized and my data to necessarily be monetized, or at least in ways that are very visible to me.

• 1:10:22Speaker 16

  And then on the flip side, though, Siri doesn't do as much as

• 1:10:25Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:25Speaker 16

  Amazon's or Google's does. And that's why.

• 1:10:28Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:28Speaker 16

  Because it doesn't know as much about you because you've chosen that for that reason. So, you know, as I said at the beginning, the three do things very differently and in different ways. And in a way, that's good because you can choose which one. And the ultimate, you know, in the ideal world, we'll all, there'll be one that can do it all. And, you know, it was interesting at CES this year, Amazon was showing off some integrations using its voice assistant in different places. So it's now you can actually get, or you will be able to have both Amazon Assistant and Apple's Assistant in vehicle infotainment system. So you can choose which one you talk to. And then they also partnered with Josh AI, which is a really interesting Entirely local-based home voice control system.

• 1:11:13Alex Cranz?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:11:14Speaker 16

  So that's kind of an interesting partnership because you're getting the local control. But then when you want to, you can, you know, reach out to the cloud and, you know, get the latest Buffalo Bills sports score or whatever it is that you want.

• 1:11:25Alex Cranz?

  But it runs like natively on your, your home hardware. You don't have to.

• 1:11:30Speaker 16

  That's what they were saying. Yeah. So Josh AI has its own little speakers that you can, can put around your home. And to be clear, Josh AI is, is a very high end, quite an expensive

• 1:11:40Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 1:11:40Speaker 16

  system that you would add to a high end.

• 1:11:42Alex Cranz?

  I got all excited.

• 1:11:45Speaker 16

  It may become a little more accessible at some point, but yeah, it, so they have these, I think they're called nano microphones and you can just kind of put them around your home. From my understanding was, and I, this isn't out yet, but this is, they were announcing the partnership. My understanding is that there will be integration. So you can ask the same device for either Josh AI or Amazon's assistant. And depending on what you want to, what kind of information you want, or what actions you want to take. So there's, there are developments and movements in voice assistants. And I think they'll continue to grow and get more useful, but probably also still be something you want to yell at every now and then.

• 1:12:24Speaker 16

  And I have been told by engineers at Amazon that they do pay attention when you swear at it.

• 1:12:30Alex Cranz?

  Oh, no, that's very bad for me.

• 1:12:32Speaker 16

  It's registered as a negative customer feedback.

• 1:12:37Alex Cranz?

  Oh, boy. Well, I'm gonna have to go apologize to all my voice assistants now.

• 1:12:44Alex Cranz?

  Thank you, Jen. I appreciate you coming on.

• 1:12:46Speaker 16

  You're welcome.

• 1:12:48Alex Cranz?

  And that's it for the Vergecast today. Thank you for listening. As always, there's a ton more coverage on everything we talked about at theverge.com. If you have thoughts, feedback, feelings, book recommendations, you can always email thevergecast@[email protected]. And of course, if you have questions, please call the hotline. It's 866-VERGE11. Again, that's 866-VERGE11. The show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. Nori Donovan is our executive producer and Brooke Menters is our editorial director of audio. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neel and I will be back on Friday to chat with more of the Verge crew about whatever is happening this week. So see you then.

• 1:13:35Nilay Patel?

  Hi, I'm Neelai Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week, as part of our special series on the future of business, I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of CloudFlare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web, and how CloudFlare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.

• 1:13:56Speaker 05

  We polled all of that data and looked at it and said that it would be the second half of 2027, automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when, just a few months later in May, a team came to me and said, "You won't believe it, but automated traffic is now past human traffic online." And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you extrapolate that out, five years from now, we think that automated traffic will be 1,000 times human traffic online.

• 1:14:20Nilay Patel?

  This was a fascinating conversation, not just about the future of the web, but also about how one of the world's most important software companies is deciding which of its employees it can replace with AI. Listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts. This series is presented by EY.

• 1:14:37Speaker 17

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