Comcast and TWC, the Lumia Icon, and NSA protest

The Vergecast is a discussion of all things relevant and irreverent in the worlds of art, culture, science, and technology. On this episode, Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Adi Robertson discuss Comcast and Time Warner Cable's recently announced merger, Verizon's Lumia Icon, and how we didn't fight back on The Day We Fight Back. Audio: Download MP3 (28.1 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: 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.

• 0:21Nilay Patel?

  Hello, welcome to the Vergecast for the week of February 10th. I'm Neelai Patel, your host today. You might notice Josh isn't here. Josh is... He's like, "Look, it's cold outside, he's just never coming back." And actually, there's a big snowstorm in New York today, so it was pretty hard to get people here to the office. So, we called in some help from SB Nation, some co-hosts. From SB Nation's Olympic coverage, I have Chip Matthews and Boris here with me today. Hey, guys!

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Hey, Neelai!

• 0:56Nilay Patel?

  How's it going?

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Oh, it's good. Well, Dave's Chip Matthews, that's Chip with a C Matthews. This is my Ruski partner Boris.

• 1:04Nilay Patel?

  Hey!

• 1:05Speaker 01

  He's okay by me.

• 1:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because you guys have been in Sochi, you're covering the Olympics for real.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, it's awful.

• 1:13Nilay Patel?

  Why is it awful?

• 1:14Speaker 01

  Oh, you got stray dogs running wild. You should see them drink. They can drink down vodka like none other.

• 1:21Nilay Patel?

  The dogs?

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, the dogs. Boris actually out-drank a whole pack of dogs on the way to the drone ride over here.

• 1:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, you guys are there, you've been covering... I mean, I'm hearing Sochi's just like a crazy hell world. What's your hotel like?

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Well, it's like an industrial orgy.

• 1:37Nilay Patel?

  I don't know what that means!

• 1:39Speaker 01

  Oh, man, you would know when you saw it. There's beams everywhere, there's three toilets to a stall.

• 1:44Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, no, I've seen the pictures of that, that sounds incredible. I mean, I wouldn't say incredible, I would come incredulous.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Oh, well, it's surprisingly beautiful to see three grown men team up in a way that you would never expect in a bathroom.

• 1:59Nilay Patel?

  Why would... If they have three separate toilets, why do they have to team up?

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Well, you know, all for one, one for all.

• 2:04Nilay Patel?

  Okay, yeah, it's Russia, I understand.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Witted robe.

• 2:09Nilay Patel?

  What would you say the biggest story? I mean, you guys are covering the Olympics every day. You're doing the medal count. What's the biggest story of these Olympics?

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I've been in broadcast for quite some time. I absolutely hate it. Terrifies me. But I, they've been chucking in this snow. I have not seen this much powder since the 70s.

• 2:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  You know?

• 2:28Nilay Patel?

  So it's been a good time there. I hear ya. It's been a, it's been a good time?

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33Nilay Patel?

  The horse seems to have fallen asleep.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  He had one too many nips on the drone ride over here.

• 2:38Nilay Patel?

  Uh, so the big news overnight, we should talk about some tech news. Comcast is buying Time Warner Cable.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Haven't heard either of those things.

• 2:44Nilay Patel?

  How, you are a broadcaster. How do you not know about Comcast?

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Well, that's, the term broadcaster, that's pretty debatable.

• 2:50Nilay Patel?

  I mean, you got a headset.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is just leftover from my Radio Shack days.

• 2:55Nilay Patel?

  No, I mean, you're into technology though. What kind of cellphone do you have?

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Well, I've had the same burner for about 18 years now.

• 3:00Nilay Patel?

  You know, the point of a burner is to throw away.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  It really just depends who you ask there, Eli.

• 3:06Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Well, look, actually John has reminded me that we missed the biggest story of the Olympics here, uh, which I believe truly in my heart is the biggest story. Uh, Brian Floyd from SB Nation, uh, discovered that, uh, Pony by Genuine, uh, is the best song for figure skating. I mean, you're a, you're a big Genuine fan.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. I, uh, toured with him in the late 90s.

• 3:27Nilay Patel?

  Sure, sure you did. Uh, so let's just take a look at this. Uh, it's Evgeny Plushenko, just, just showing us what Pony is all about.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Well, Plushenko really proved himself here. Yes, he can do a quad toe, triple toe, double loop, but he's starting to learn how to work an audience too. Watch this.

• 4:17Nilay Patel?

  Uh, we're back. Uh, hi, everybody. Uh, I'd like to thank, uh, Chip and Boris, uh, from SB Nation. Uh, they do, uh, they're doing the Olympics coverage. Every day, the SB Nation Olympic Medal Count is, uh, for better or worse, hosted by Chip Matthews, uh, Boris. Uh, there's another one, too. Duke Kensington.

• 4:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:39Nilay Patel?

  I think that's his name. Oh, my God. Look, it's Dieter and Addy.

• 4:42Speaker 03

  Not puppets.

• 4:44Speaker 03

  Or are we?

• 4:45Nilay Patel?

  I mean.

• 4:45Speaker 03

  Or are we?

• 4:47Nilay Patel?

  Oh, really, really debatable. Um, well, you know, I'd like to thank the SB Nation guys for doing that with us. That's fun. Um.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  Should have kept it going.

• 4:55Nilay Patel?

  I really should have kept it going. I think we, there's a lot to say about Comcast, I think, if you're, if you're a puppet.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:01Nilay Patel?

  Hey, guys.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  How does that work?

• 5:02Nilay Patel?

  All right. So this is the Verchast, where we discuss technology, technology, culture. We're gonna bring up Genuine again. I'd like to end the show with Genuine. Uh, that's, that's really where my heart lies. But actually, there's a lot going on this week. A huge, it's like, there was nothing going on, and then last night, everything in the world happened all at once. Um, and so we should just start with it. Just start.

• 5:24Speaker 03

  Comcast. Comcast. Comcast, uh, wants to buy Time Warner Cable for $45 billion. They swooped in. Charter had been picking around the edges. Charter's been trying to buy Time Warner Cable forever.

• 5:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  And apparently Comcast decided, nope, we want to do it.

• 5:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, so Charter has been like, they wanted to replace the Board of Directors of Time Warner. So here's, Time Warner and Time Warner Cable, they, you see one company, they split off, and they didn't change the name. So Time Warner Cable's an independent from big Time Warner, which is further about to split.

• 5:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:57Nilay Patel?

  Right. There's a family tree here. It's like, it was AWOL Time Warner, then they split AWOL and Time Warner, and then Time and Time Warner Cable split, and then Time Inc. is now splitting from Time Warner, leaving only the. The media company in the middle while Time Inc. is gonna like make magazines. It's like this conglomerate is just like falling apart. And Charter was really interested in basically competing with Comcast by owning Time Warner Cable, becoming a much bigger player in the entire industry. And Comcast is like, nope, we're number one, we're gonna buy number two. And in the process, I think telling a number of delightful lies. Addie, you've been, I mean, at this point, nothing a Comcast executive is saying is true.

• 6:36Speaker 04

  Well, that's the thing, though, I don't know if, so their entire call, I was just on a call, is basically about justifying how this isn't a fault, like this is not a threat for antitrust regulators, because they suck.

• 6:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's what you're saying. They're basically like, we're, I mean, our service is already so bad. It can't possibly get worse.

• 6:53Speaker 04

  They start with saying, okay, look, consumers don't have a choice anyways, because there is no overlap between these two companies. These are the, they're like the two biggest cable companies that there are, and they do not share, they, there is no point at which you can choose between them, because you basically don't have any choice if you're.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that's why I think that this is gonna end up going through. Because there's not gonna be enough like consumer outrage, because they, they already like, well, I have to pick this one company, because it's all that's available, there's a monopoly in my area, and I don't really care if the name changes.

• 7:24Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's kinda like, I mean, if you have Time Warner Cable, particularly in New York City, you're probably like, man, it can't get worse than this.

• 7:32Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:32Nilay Patel?

  Maybe Comcast will come in and actually know how to run a cable company.

• 7:35Speaker 04

  Or you're just waiting still and you haven't gotten it installed and.

• 7:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Chris Ziegler is moving to New York, moving to New York.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  Believe it or not.

• 7:44Nilay Patel?

  And he can't, I guess the previous tenant of his apartment had not canceled his Time Warner service, so he can't get new Time Warner service. He's like trapped in like some hell world catch 22.

• 7:55Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 7:56Nilay Patel?

  And so in retaliation, he's brought Comcast with him from Chicago to just destroy the city.

• 8:02Speaker 04

  And well, the other thing that they're doing is comparing it. They're saying, okay, look, this market is super vibrant because there's Verizon Wireless.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  Well, there's Verizon Wireless. And the other thing that they cited was Google Fiber.

• 8:12Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 8:12Speaker 03

  Which is ridiculous. It's a crazy experiment. They're in.

• 8:16Speaker 04

  They're in two, well, I mean, they make it up and say we were in a bunch of markets. They're in two cities.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:20Nilay Patel?

  Right. That's, this is insane. When I say that Comcast executives are lying, the idea that Google Fiber presents any meaningful competition to Comcast is so, is such a bald faced lie.

• 8:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:33Nilay Patel?

  No, that's not true. Google Fiber barely presents a meaningful competition to itself. Like, it doesn't exist. It's so nebulous. It's like.

• 8:41Speaker 04

  I'm pretty sure Time Warner Cable has also basically said there's no demand for the thing they're selling.

• 8:45Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:45Nilay Patel?

  No, the Time Warner Cable, they've been running up and down. I mean, like, you know, we could provide gigabit ethernet. Nobody wants it. And it's like, yeah, that's because you price it at $400 a month.

• 8:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, someone asked that question on the call and they said, yeah, no, we offer 50 gigabit internet. It's just, you know, for business customers. They're the ones who want it.

• 9:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. By the way, we tried, and this is a true story. The Verge launched in New York City. We had our first office here in Flatiron. We desperately wanted to get Time Warner Internet. Fact, like, we wanted a fiber line. We wanted fast internet and we couldn't get it. It was so bad. The service that Time Warner could provide us was like DSL service, which was awful for our whole office. We literally had to point a WiMAX antenna at the roof of the Empire State Building and have internet beam to us from roof to roof because Time Warner Cable couldn't figure out how to give us fiber in our building.

• 9:30Speaker 04

  Also, it went out whenever there was a.

• 9:31Nilay Patel?

  It's just like, this is, yeah, well, the, yeah, I mean, it was a WiMAX antenna. It was not the best technological decision. It was the only one we could make. But that's where we were at, like, middle of Manhattan, Time Warner Cable was unable to provide adequate service to us. They still call me from time to time and let me know that fiber is now available in that building. It's a little, it's a little late.

• 9:50Speaker 03

  Thanks for that.

• 9:51Nilay Patel?

  It's nice. I mean, whoever is there now is getting really fast internet, I'm sure. I, look, I think this is a disaster for a wide variety of reasons, but there is one tiny, little, weird silver lining, which is that there has never existed a national broadband provider.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  Or a national cable provider.

• 10:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  Well, I mean.

• 10:09Nilay Patel?

  I mean. There's a lot to unpack there, the cable and broadband bundle.

• 10:13Speaker 03

  Right.

• 10:13Nilay Patel?

  Because they're pitching this as a merger of cable TV companies. But what it, and that's, they keep on telling this lie, another lie, will have under 30% of the total cable TV market. But what they will have is over, it's like 34, 35% of the broadband market.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  Right.

• 10:29Nilay Patel?

  Which, in my estimation, is far more important than the cable TV market.

• 10:32Speaker 04

  Is that how they actually talk, they're also saying, you know, numbers of customers are dropping. Is that how they're justifying that, is cable TV customers?

• 10:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:40Nilay Patel?

  So they're losing TV customers. But they're, I mean, I don't know anybody, like, if you live in America and you want to be a part of our current modern economy, you need the internet in your house.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, and you need it fast, and the DSL isn't going to cut it.

• 10:54Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 10:54Speaker 03

  Ninety for ninety.

• 10:55Nilay Patel?

  The phone companies aren't competing with you, so you need to get it from your cable company, right? And your cable company, in 19 of the 20 major cities in America, is going to be Comcast.

• 11:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:05Nilay Patel?

  That is a huge problem. Like, I can't even, that should just scare you straight out. Be like, you don't have a choice. Your choice is capped wireless broadband from AT&T, or Verizon, or T-Mobile, but probably not T-Mobile if you live in a number of cities that are smaller. Or capped wired broadband from Comcast. Like, that's it, those are your choices.

• 11:24Speaker 03

  So, the reason that it's scary is, you need to know what incentives there are for Comcast to do the things that we want it to do. And the bigger they are, and the more markets they're in, the fewer incentives there are for them to increase speeds, lower prices, and not someday, you know, ruin the internet by giving up on open internet rules and neutrality.

• 11:45Speaker 04

  Such as by, you know, offering to waive data caps on a major console.

• 11:50Nilay Patel?

  Right, right, so Comcast's a long time.

• 11:52Speaker 04

  For their own services.

• 11:53Nilay Patel?

  Got in trouble by saying we can, we'll put our live TV app on the Xbox 360, and by the way, if you use it, you won't count towards your data cap. And everyone's like crying foul, and Comcast, their lie.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:03Nilay Patel?

  Beautiful lie. This doesn't use the internet, this uses a proprietary channel on our network. And it's like, why is it, really? How many of those do you have? Because I'd love to know more information about your proprietary Xbox video. And they just never came out. I will say Comcast has been progressive in like they've they've waived most of their data caps. They're not doing that anymore for most of their subscribers. They are thinking of themselves more as a technology company. They are trying to do things like their X one platform and they're like X one in the cloud and all the the stuff that big modern cable companies should do.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  But well, and they also, you know, you can't give them 100% credit for this because they agreed to them as part of buying NBC.

• 12:42Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. The other terrifying part of this.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, right. But they they also have seven years of following these open internet rules, which is basically like the most of the core of the foundation of what we think of as net neutrality. So they're going to do that through 2018, which isn't long enough, but hopefully by then we'll actually have like real laws and regulations to protect that.

• 13:00Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 13:01Speaker 03

  But yeah, so they'll have 30% of the cable TV market, some larger percent of the broadband market. And they make up they're one of like the big six companies that make all of the media that 90% of people.

• 13:11Nilay Patel?

  They own NBC Universal. So they make movies, TV shows, they make the news.

• 13:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:15Nilay Patel?

  You know, it's gonna be really interesting watching how NBC News covers this deal. Like it just flat out that that's weird. That's a weird phenomenon in this world that two major corporations are gonna spend $45 billion trying to buy each other and they happen to also own like a major media corporation.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:31Nilay Patel?

  All that to me is just flat out terrifying. Here's a disclosure, by the way, I should probably let you know this Comcast Ventures, where their venture capital arm is an investor in Vox Media, which owns.

• 13:39Speaker 03

  Oh, that's right.

• 13:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's cool. I mean, thanks. Thanks for that, guys. It was really nice of you. Thank you for believing in me. Please don't buy Time Warner Cable. I don't I don't know what else to say to you. Um, I look, I the the level of the only way this works is if the government gets seriously involved in what they do. And they say the way that the government got seriously involved with AT&T when AT&T was building a national network. And they say like, sure, you can have a monopoly on broadband in America.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:05Nilay Patel?

  But here are all of the rules you have to follow and they turn them into AT&T.

• 14:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:09Nilay Patel?

  Which I think is not great. I don't think that's a great answer.

• 14:12Speaker 03

  It's not the early aughts of the 20th century. You know, it's not like 1920.

• 14:16Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 14:16Speaker 03

  Whenever, whenever like the rules.

• 14:18Nilay Patel?

  This isn't Rockefeller in a in a in a Washington DC restaurant with like Taft, like hammering it out, right?

• 14:24Speaker 03

  Like when AT&T's like monopoly got blessed, we had just built the railroads. We knew we knew how to like regulate a national infrastructure network. We knew what was we, you know, we're putting electricity everywhere. And we we understood and like the political forces were such that like you could do that. Um, we are not in that place anymore. And I, I think it's, it's very unlikely that if this goes through, that we're gonna like see the government do the kind of work that it did before to, you know, create a national, help AT&T

• 14:58Nilay Patel?

  Harding.

• 14:59Speaker 03

  run the national phone network and open access laws and

• 15:03Speaker 04

  Well, and the thing it did after that was split them up.

• 15:05Speaker 03

  Well, then, yeah, we split them up. Yeah, which is fun.

• 15:08Nilay Patel?

  And then they reconstitute each other like fucking T1000.

• 15:11Speaker 04

  Yes, that.

• 15:12Nilay Patel?

  Um, no, I mean, like I, it's like, I'm so angry. I'm not acting angry because it

• 15:17Speaker 03

  No, this is why it's gonna happen because we're, it's just like, you're just gonna be resigned to it. It's just gonna, you know what? This is terrible, but it's not, it's not

• 15:26Nilay Patel?

  But it's not much more terrible than the status quo, right? Like, most people, if you have, like I'm saying, if you have Time Warner Cable, you're probably like happy that someone's gonna ride in on a billion dollar horse and maybe like make your service better because clearly the people running Time Warner, the CEO of Time Warner Cable, he's Gerald something. He was the guy who didn't know what airplay was. Do you remember this? It was a while ago.

• 15:47Speaker 03

  That's right, that's right.

• 15:48Nilay Patel?

  And it was like, dude, really? Like, you should maybe know what the hell airplay is because it's, it is actually how I'm watching most of the Olympics right now, right? Does NBC is doing a terrible job of showing me anything other than figure skating in primetime. I hear there are other Olympic sports.

• 16:02Speaker 03

  What if they showed you figure skating in primetime, but only like just dub pony over it instead of

• 16:07Nilay Patel?

  I would watch that show nonstop. I could probably make that happen in my house. Um, no, I mean, like, it's, you know, the Olympics, I think are a prime example. Like I, there's a huge appetite to watch them. And you can watch most of them using the awful NBC Live Extra app, but you can't actually airplay that to a TV like properly. You have to mirror.

• 16:23Speaker 03

  You have to mirror, which is terrible.

• 16:24Nilay Patel?

  So it's garbage. And it's like, you're making me sign into my cable provider anyway. Like, why? What business decision have you made here that makes sense to keep me away from this? Why didn't you make an Apple TV app? Why didn't you make an Xbox app? Comcast? Like, you own NBC. Like, surely you know how to make the, anyway. Comcast is the worst. I'm like, it's just

• 16:42Speaker 03

  All of, all of the dangers here are super abstract and at least like two years away from like, oh my god.

• 16:47Nilay Patel?

  At all. I think it is, it comes down to imagine if your only choice for cell service in America was Verizon. That's where we are. That's what this is.

• 16:54Speaker 04

  Except that that's already been, like, that was, my only service choice was AT&T for a long time, because it was the only place that did service at my house.

• 17:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it depends. I mean, if you live in a rural area, your only choice is Verizon. I mean, realistically, unless you've.

• 17:07Nilay Patel?

  But I don't think those people, like Verizon, look, Verizon is adding, this is like the T-Mobile argument. We should, one day, we're gonna, where I'm, I'm gonna write this all down and put it on the internet. It's gonna happen.

• 17:17Speaker 03

  Are you?

• 17:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Now, look, see, I, here I have the thing that I've been asking for my entire life, right?

• 17:23Speaker 03

  Beautiful, beautiful.

• 17:24Nilay Patel?

  A beautiful vermilion. I bought this on, I bought this on the show last week, and now I have it, and I love it. And it's funny how much a color ma- makes me like a phone better. No, this phone is $350. It is competitive with the iPhone, right? In a variety of ways. It is high spec, it's fast. I think it is designed, actually, in this color, designed quite well. It has a great screen, LT, all this stuff. $350, unlocked. And I bought a T-Mobile SIM card and put it in it, and I don't have a contract. And like, that's the dream. And then the reality is that I was coming to work today in a car in New York City, and I could not get service.

• 17:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:56Nilay Patel?

  For most of the time.

• 17:57Speaker 04

  Although, I've actually been, I've been using unlocked MVNO for a year and a half now.

• 18:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 18:02Speaker 04

  A year, a bit more. Through Walmart's service, actually, which is ethically horrible, probably.

• 18:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, probably.

• 18:07Speaker 04

  But, um, and an AT&T SIM.

• 18:09Nilay Patel?

  There's a poor child somewhere, like, frantically spinning a generator to give you cell service.

• 18:14Speaker 04

  Um, then anyways, it's actually worked surprisingly well.

• 18:16Nilay Patel?

  But you have AT&T.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  Is it AT&T MVNO?

• 18:19Speaker 04

  It's an AT&T MVNO.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay.

• 18:20Nilay Patel?

  Right, but all, the network underlying is AT&T. I'm saying I have the dream from, like, the national carrier, and even in New York, it's like, not great.

• 18:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:27Nilay Patel?

  Um, and that's like, I get that, but at least there's that level of competition, where I can pay less money and get worse service, but I at least have the choice to do that. For wired broadband, which is the backbone of the infrastructure of our economy, like, the verge doesn't work unless most people have wired broadband. Just does, it's not gonna happen, right? Like, the next five years of our growth, it's, we can't make videos and count on everybody to stream them to their phones. We can't make our features. If you can't look at them on a desktop computer, like, we'll get to the tablet stuff, and we'll change it, but.

• 18:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:56Nilay Patel?

  Our, the biggest and best stuff we make requires you to be at a computer with a wired connection.

• 19:01Speaker 04

  That's actually the other funny thing about how they're comparing mobile to wired, is essentially what they're saying is, you do not need to use our service.

• 19:07Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 19:08Speaker 04

  Your two gigabytes is totally sufficient.

• 19:10Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:12Nilay Patel?

  And it's funny because the, you know, the wireless carriers, they, they, they don't like that comparison at all. So if you go and talk to Verizon or AT&T, they're like, you need wires in the ground. AT&T loves to talk about its backhaul, which is if you're a reporter and someone's trying to pitch you a story about backhaul, you're like, please, please stop talking to me. Like, this is never going to be interesting. And they do it. They'll call you up and they'll be like, we've got a great story. We've increased our backhaul capacity throughout Vermont. And it's like, this is not a good story. Like, I don't know why you issued a press release. But they do it all the time.

• 19:39Speaker 03

  Do we have Comcast Internet Service in this? Okay, now it's working. They just shut me down.

• 19:44Nilay Patel?

  We pay for something very expensive. It works.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  Did you see that there's this reported Wi-Fi alliance? Google and Microsoft are going to try and spread out more Wi-Fi.

• 19:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they've been trying this forever, right? And they, they keep on trying to widen spaces.

• 19:59Speaker 03

  Wi-Fi Forward. But apparently, like, AT&T and Verizon are not participating.

• 20:03Nilay Patel?

  Well, why would they?

• 20:05Speaker 03

  Well, AT&T for a while was like, building the Wi-Fi network, but now they don't need it because they want to put people back on LTE.

• 20:11Nilay Patel?

  No, I think they still want that as like the, as a backup. But they want to run their own. I don't think they want to any, I don't think AT&T wants anybody who's not their Wi-Fi.

• 20:19Speaker 03

  Right.

• 20:19Nilay Patel?

  I just, you know, whatever.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  Also, don't, don't call it Wi-Fi Forward, guys. Just don't.

• 20:23Nilay Patel?

  Wi Forward.

• 20:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, isn't it Wi Forward?

• 20:25Speaker 03

  No, there's the Wi-Fi Forward. There's a "Fi" in there. Yeah.

• 20:27Nilay Patel?

  It's awful.

• 20:28Speaker 03

  Wi Forward.

• 20:29Nilay Patel?

  No, I mean, Google and Verizon, every major tech company that isn't a networking company has been pushing for more and different kinds of Wi-Fi because they can't, they want to break around the logjam of the wireless carriers. And what's amazing to me is we've done a really good job, I think, as journalists covering all of the problems of the wireless broadband industry. And it's, the only reason that's true is because there's conflict there and choice. Right?

• 20:51Speaker 03

  Right.

• 20:52Nilay Patel?

  In whatever limited tiny amount, and there should be more and...

• 20:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. But no, it gets tiring to be like, yep, you know, you can't do anything about it immediately. You can't switch right away, you know, tomorrow to fix the problem. But it sucks. Just constantly saying that day after day, after three days.

• 21:05Nilay Patel?

  There's no point in covering the wired broadband industry because there's no conflict. There's no choice. So Addie, you actually were on all these calls, so you've been doing mostly reporting today.

• 21:15Speaker 04

  I've been on, yeah, I've been on all of them. There were three. No, I was on one, I think.

• 21:19Nilay Patel?

  The mid, the middle one, right? The one I wanted to be on, then I was doing.

• 21:21Speaker 04

  The 1pm one. Is there one after this?

• 21:22Nilay Patel?

  I was hanging out with puppets during that time. True, true story. What, what's your take? Like, where are you landing on this?

• 21:30Speaker 04

  I mean, I just, yeah, it feels hopeless. Like, this is going to go through.

• 21:35Speaker 04

  Like, it's, it all feels sort of moot.

• 21:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 21:38Speaker 04

  That it's hard to tell, like, that there are threats, but it's kind of hard to even conceptualize them.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  Okay, so, like, beautiful dream, hope of the future. Like, Google is not gonna roll into every city and spread fiber. Susan Crawford had this editorial in Bloomberg, I think it was, and I've heard her say this before, that the trick is mayors.

• 22:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:02Speaker 03

  City by city. The city, don't wait for the government to do it, don't wait for big companies to save you. You're mayor, you're an executive in a city, you have the power to just go in and put fiber into your city, and that will eventually solve the problem.

• 22:14Speaker 04

  Well, that's the funny thing, though, is that they were trying to do this with municipal wifi, maybe four years ago, and then they just, the companies sued all of them.

• 22:22Nilay Patel?

  Well, so, look, here's the, let me make the point as clear as, like, I was talking about T-Mobile earlier, and I forgot to actually say why. If you look at what T-Mobile has done, right? They, you can criticize their service offering a lot. I have it, I think you can criticize it a lot. But, they have taken some customers from AT&T. They've spooked AT&T at least into lowering prices and jiggering their plans.

• 22:47Speaker 03

  They may have even spooked Verizon today.

• 22:48Nilay Patel?

  They spooked Verizon today into changing their prices and lowering their plans. Like, that is the effect of competition, right? Something good is happening for consumers, because if you get more people to pay you, you make more money. Right? And that's, so they're all fighting for that market share, for that recognition for consumer support and loyalty, for dollars. If you are Comcast, and you're in 19 of 20 major markets, and there's zero competition, you have no incentive to improve your offering.

• 23:13Speaker 03

  Right.

• 23:13Nilay Patel?

  Zero. Outside of the mayor of your city, or the governor of your state, or the president of your country saying, "Buck up and do what I want."

• 23:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:20Nilay Patel?

  And that's where we are at, and that's kind of like Crawford's whole point. And her, I actually, I did an interview, hopefully we'll be able to pull it up. I interviewed her a while back, and she talked about the mayor's thing, and she's like, "I've given up on the federal government."

• 23:32Speaker 03

  Right.

• 23:32Nilay Patel?

  "I've given up trying to get this policy." Well, I think what you're seeing now, right now, happening on the, sort of, the flip side of this, with the net neutrality ruling, with, let's have the FCC kind of like twiddle its thumb, and like... Sing a little song and dance about how they're gonna do something, but we don't know what yet, uh, to maybe reclassify, um, ISPs as common carriers, like all this stuff, like all this endless lawsuits, wrangling, policy debate is gonna play out in Washington. And her whole point is, or you can go to the mayor of a town and be like, we're gonna spend some money on fiber, or we're gonna invite Google to our town to put in fiber and scare the other companies. And that's happening. And she, her whole point is, you can do this,

• 24:11Nilay Patel?

  you can do this at a, at a big level, you can do it at a state infrastructure level. It's Republican mayors are doing it, Democratic mayors are doing it, because they know that ultimately, this is how you build businesses in your town.

• 24:21Speaker 03

  Right.

• 24:22Speaker 04

  Is Seattle the, the city that is sort of in the middle of this, building a municipal, like super professor connection?

• 24:28Speaker 03

  I can remember Seattle's one.

• 24:29Speaker 04

  It's the last one I remember.

• 24:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, it's little cities, actually, much little cities throughout the South.

• 24:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:36Nilay Patel?

  And this is, I, I think this is like a moment where you see-

• 24:40Speaker 03

  Seattle's plans are on pause.

• 24:42Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 24:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, every big, every big city, Philly had a big wifi thing a few years ago, they like, just got destroyed because Comcast is in Philly.

• 24:50Speaker 04

  I think Verizon has a deal here that they're supposed to eventually one day put wireless-

• 24:53Speaker 03

  Los Angeles is planning something.

• 24:55Nilay Patel?

  So, but here, okay, so here's the big counterpoint. Um, more T-Mobile stuff. AT&T tried to buy T-Mobile.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:01Nilay Patel?

  He, hue and cry, uh, I actually, I made the, the counter narrative that I thought would be interesting was you could say yes to this deal, government, but you have to regulate the shit out of them.

• 25:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:12Nilay Patel?

  And the government was like, no, we are not reducing competition in this already choked, constrained market. I don't, there's a chance the government will say the same exact, and they, you know, the FCC and the FTC have been making noises about the Sprint T-Mobile. It's, you know, it's vaguely in the air, which I believe is John Leger's, like, ultimate plan is to sell the Sprint. It's true. I'm gonna, I'm gonna write this down on the internet, I swear to God. Uh, and they've been, they've been saying like, no, you can't do that, we're not gonna approve that. Why would they approve Comcast and Time Warner?

• 25:39Speaker 04

  Well, no, that's their entire argument, though, is that it's not a horizontal merger.

• 25:42Nilay Patel?

  That's bullshit.

• 25:43Speaker 04

  That's, I think, a thing that actually is a-

• 25:45Nilay Patel?

  Absolute bullshit.

• 25:46Speaker 04

  No, it's not, it is an actual thing that exists for antitrust. So, like, that's why it's gonna go through. It doesn't make it, you know, morally, or even good-

• 25:56Speaker 03

  The government is the goddamn- The FCC can only stop it if they can say, this is the harm. And- I don't think that they're willing to do that.

• 26:04Nilay Patel?

  Sure, but there's a level of harm that's beyond consumers there. If you're Disney and you want to sell ESPN to Comcast, or you want Comcast to pay you for ESPN, you can't, you can't now say, well, Time Warner is paying us that much.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 26:17Nilay Patel?

  Well, fine, turn it off.

• 26:18Speaker 03

  No, I'm not saying that the, the threats aren't real. What I'm saying is.

• 26:22Nilay Patel?

  But that's a real, I mean, you don't think all of these programming companies are gonna show up and say no?

• 26:26Speaker 03

  And the Department of Justice are gonna be like, yeah, no.

• 26:29Nilay Patel?

  Yes, I mean, they're doing it to Sprint and T-Mobile right now, right?

• 26:33Speaker 04

  But Sprint and T-Mobile, you can make a really clear case that they're gonna, you know, they're choosing one or the other.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:37Speaker 04

  That consumers can choose one or the other.

• 26:39Nilay Patel?

  But it's not just, that's what I'm saying. It's not just consumers. It's programmers. It's other internet companies now who, without open internet regulations, like actively politic, like what you have right now is Comcast promising to not do bad things as opposed to being legally forced to, to obey the law, right?

• 26:55Speaker 03

  So my best case scenario is that it goes through and the government's like, if you're gonna do this, these are the regulations. This is how it's going to work. This is how much fiber you have to build.

• 27:06Nilay Patel?

  And so this is the tiny silver lining.

• 27:08Speaker 03

  Well.

• 27:09Nilay Patel?

  But you need an activist, regulatory, interventionist government to do that. I do not.

• 27:14Speaker 03

  Not gonna happen.

• 27:15Nilay Patel?

  You know, Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the FCC, you know his job was before all this?

• 27:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:18Nilay Patel?

  Cable industry lobbyist?

• 27:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:21Nilay Patel?

  Like, that's terrifying. Yeah, that guy's gonna regulate Comcast. He's gonna regulate the biggest company in the game. No, he's gonna go to dinner with, uh, what's his name? Phillips? What's the, Brian Roberts, the CEO of Comcast. He's gonna go to dinner with Brian Roberts and hit the links with like every other lobbyist in Washington and they're like, all gonna shake hands, drink scotch and like count their money. And then he's gonna leave the FCC and go back to work for the cable industry. You might be a nice guy, Tom Wheeler. I just don't trust you that you're gonna be the, the, what Susan Crawford calls a cop on the beat.

• 27:49Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 27:50Nilay Patel?

  Right? These are, you, bad things are happening in this neighborhood. Like, go fix it. And we are terrible at just identifying that the bad things are real because they constantly, nonstop lying to us where the bad things aren't happening or the bad things aren't as bad as I think they are.

• 28:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:04Nilay Patel?

  And all you gotta do is open your eyes and see, like, they have an extraordinary amount of market power. The reason that your cable box sucks is Comcast. That's why. They can roll out X1, they can do all this other stuff, but the X1 still kind of blows. There's no real competition. It's still kind of huge. They're not delivering television over IP. Apple hasn't made a TV because they can't get deals with all these companies.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  So that's, that's the possible silver lining.

• 28:25Nilay Patel?

  Microsoft can't deliver a real TV solution.

• 28:27Speaker 03

  If Comcast has a national network, then Apple and Microsoft and Intel will have like, they can, they can hash out a deal with one player. And then everybody else is, is able to fall in line instead of having Comcast and Time Warner and Charter and all these other people play off each other and blow up every TV deal they try to make. Could the silver lining be that like, yes, we have a horrible national monopoly that throttles our speeds and, you know, limits our access to free internet.

• 28:53Nilay Patel?

  But we'll have an Apple TV to go with it, right? I mean, look, I could see that Comcast sitting in front of Congress and being like, yeah, we'll make some promises. Here's, we're going to open up our TV delivery system to Apple and Microsoft. We've had productive conversations and we look forward to working with partners in the future.

• 29:10Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 29:10Nilay Patel?

  This is exactly what Microsoft said when they launched X1.

• 29:12Speaker 03

  And John McCain will say, well, my apps update automatically? And they'll say, yes.

• 29:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they'll laugh. Stamp. Proved. Yeah. And like, sure. You can promise me everything in the world. You know, you can, I'm sure that that is going to come up, like 100% sure. That, you know, when they go and sit down in front of Congress and they ask, why should we let you do this? My service is pretty like, you know, Mr. Roberts, I live here in New York City and, you know, my, my Time Warner cable service is pretty awful. And you'd be like, well, we look forward to improving your service. And I, I just want Apple to sell me a TV. You know, can you work with a company like that, you know, something really innovative? Well, we look forward to working with all our partners in the future. And now that we have this expanded scope, you know, we, we really look forward to a new wave of innovation built on our innovative X1 platform.

• 29:53Nilay Patel?

  And it's like, like, just kill me. Like, I'm already dead. All right. Like, my body's just walking around looking sad every, every day of my fucking life. So, yeah.

• 30:02Speaker 03

  We should move on.

• 30:07Nilay Patel?

  Let's talk about, there's two more depressing things to talk about. Yeah, I was gonna say, this is not getting any better. It's really not getting better. So, one of the things with net neutrality and with the NSA stuff, and now with this, there is a lot of conversation about like, how do we protest this? How do we stop it? How do we get involved? I think that question is really, really unanswered. Addy, there was just an NSA protest.

• 30:28Speaker 04

  It is still unanswered.

• 30:30Nilay Patel?

  It's still unanswered, but this is like, it's hard to do. So, let's, let's talk about this. This is the internet trying to stop, trying to stop spying.

• 30:36Speaker 04

  So, very, very short background is that there have been a lot of protests already. One of them was called Stop Watching Us, and they recorded like Maggie Gyllenhaal and a bunch of whistleblowers and tons of people saying, "Stop watching us, NSA," and had a big general protest last year.

• 30:49Nilay Patel?

  Maggie Gyllenhaal?

• 30:50Speaker 04

  Believe so. So, anyways, this year, they, some of them split off and they said, "Okay, look, we have this bill in the senate now, and the house, and we should actually try to get people to pass it." So, they decided to model this after the SOPA protests of 2012, thinking, "Okay, well, this is us stopping a bill. Can't be that hard for us to stop one bill, which is Dianne Feinstein's, and then pass another one." This didn't actually work.

• 31:13Nilay Patel?

  Well, it wasn't as extreme as the SOPA stuff, right? I mean, SOPA stuff was the first time sites actually shut down, actually put up black banners. In this case, like Reddit had a little thing in the corner.

• 31:24Speaker 04

  It was also just a scope thing. Like, I was looking it up today. It's kind of hard because I don't think people collected definitive numbers on SOPA. But SOPA was some like 75,000 to 100,000 sites. At the beginning of this, they had 6,000. There were maybe like in the millions of calls placed through like Wikipedia, there were, you know, 50, no, it was like 70,000 calls placed. It's just, it was tiny in scope.

• 31:48Nilay Patel?

  I think getting people to say no to something is easier than getting people to affirmatively try to do something.

• 31:53Speaker 04

  Well, it's also that SOPA was one thing. SOPA wasn't like, "Oh, by the way, the internet is also, you know, copyright, they're going to take your car and say that it's piracy and do a bunch of other things." It's like, they're just gonna do one thing.

• 32:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, one thing, and then like, once you do that...

• 32:07Speaker 04

  And you can stop it just by stopping this bill.

• 32:08Nilay Patel?

  You'll win, and then they'll do something later, whatever. But this is, but this is... One part of a huge mass of things and those other things are even worse. And if you do this thing plus this other thing, then you've got a pretty good chance of stopping this one tiny thing, but you're still not going to feel good about the rest of it.

• 32:25Speaker 04

  Yes, there's no good, like if you get this payoff, like you're still gonna think the rest of it is terrible if you're the kind of person who's going to join an NSA protest.

• 32:34Nilay Patel?

  Right, and I, what, it, to me, it's, the question is, every time I talk to anybody in government about SOPA, they get like this weird, like thousand yard stare.

• 32:44Speaker 04

  They called it the Arab Spring afterwards.

• 32:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like, seriously, like.

• 32:47Speaker 04

  Chris Dodd, in, I was reading an old interview and he says, no, this was, you know, it's like the Arab Spring, I'd never seen anything on this scale before.

• 32:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and they, they're terrified of like.

• 32:56Speaker 03

  They have no perspective.

• 32:57Speaker 04

  Well, because they could also, I mean, they could really do a giant scorched earth campaign though, because they made SOPA, like, it was a bad bill, they made it a bill that was going to literally shut down the internet and everyone, like, believed that and their name was like mud, like, everyone hated them, more, even more than when they.

• 33:15Nilay Patel?

  And it was barely even out of committee, right, like, never even, like, the SOPA protest to me was always, I mean, I wrote a thing at the time, I was like, you can only do this once, you only get to shut down the internet over something one time.

• 33:24Speaker 04

  Well, the funny thing though is that the EFF actually made a good point, which is that this was a giant battle, because this was built on, was it COICA? Which was another similar bill that got rewritten into PIPA, the Senate version of SOPA.

• 33:36Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 33:36Speaker 04

  So this was actually a long thing, it was just that COICA, like, that all these things sort of got nipped in the bud.

• 33:42Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 33:42Speaker 04

  And that they were one thing.

• 33:44Nilay Patel?

  And that, but, so, but they're all.

• 33:45Speaker 04

  And that they hadn't happened yet.

• 33:46Nilay Patel?

  A, it's like, those things are all coming back in bite-sized pieces now, they've learned how to do it, they've learned how to avoid this, but, what they never, what the lesson they should have learned from SOPA and PIPA was, there's an enormous constituency of people in the United States who have very deep feelings and thoughts about how the internet should be regulated, not regulated, distributed, built, serviced, consumed, that is, as far as you can tell, a pretty unified block, and you, if you can bring them together in a SOPA-like movement, it's a lot of people, and that's overwhelming to our government. Like, our government responded to the overwhelming number of people who are. Like, don't break the internet. That same group of people, you can't, you can get them all to say no to something. Call up and say, I don't want you to do this. How is your name on this bill that's going to kill the internet?

• 34:31Nilay Patel?

  It's harder to get them to call and say, I want you to support this bill that will stop the NSA. And I don't really know about the national security implications. And I'm sure you can tell me.

• 34:39Speaker 04

  That's actually the funny thing is that, so the New York Times, I haven't been able to, I haven't confirmed this, but they were basically saying most of the calls went to Dianne Feinstein. Dianne Feinstein was the bill that they were trying to stop.

• 34:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right.

• 34:51Speaker 04

  So everybody did that.

• 34:52Nilay Patel?

  Cause she's way out in front, right?

• 34:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, cause it passed committee, the other one hasn't yet. But yeah, so they were trying to stop the bill by calling the person who's not actually going to ever back down. And like, I mean, I'm not sure whether people have changed, directly changed positions. It was really clear after.

• 35:10Nilay Patel?

  We just need to, I mean, literally, it's a question is, how do we, how do the people who use the internet, who live their lives online, us, most of the people watching and listening to this, how do we talk to our government more effectively? And the answer is, we did it one time with SOPA.

• 35:27Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 35:27Nilay Patel?

  Ultra effective. The government remembers that.

• 35:30Speaker 03

  So the way that we do it.

• 35:31Nilay Patel?

  But like, if I moved home, you know, like, I don't believe that like my congresspeople in my, my home state are like aware of the internet or care about it in a way that like is meaningful, like.

• 35:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that's the way that people need to talk to the government is forget about the internet. Like, you gotta, you've gotta pick up a phone, you gotta write a letter.

• 35:51Speaker 04

  Which was what actually SOPA did really well. And what I think this did well too, is that we've basically found out that you can automate this stuff. That's why, that is the big lesson of SOPA, is that you could go to Wikipedia and hit a button and they will call your congressman, basically.

• 36:04Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 36:04Speaker 04

  Or they will like make sure that your senator gets this message, like, that's a thing that you learned.

• 36:12Nilay Patel?

  Good. Social engineering will change the government.

• 36:15Nilay Patel?

  So you don't think the day we fought back worked? It seemed like nobody participated.

• 36:18Speaker 04

  It, I mean, people participated and I'm sure it worked to some extent. It's just, I don't think that it probably was fair. It basically just had bad PR and that PR was kind of all that it was. And that hopefully, you know, this got gets the USA Freedom Act some more votes in Congress. Like, that would be great.

• 36:35Nilay Patel?

  Do you think it's gonna work?

• 36:37Speaker 04

  I mean, the USA Freedom Act seems like it has a decent chance. I

• 36:41Nilay Patel?

  It's like, you know what we need to do? Like, I'm giving myself more homework that I'm not gonna do. I'm such a bad at this. But we need to come up with like a position paper. Be like, here are all the things that need to change. Like, stop Comcast from buying Time Warner. Like, amend these two things, let us see this stuff.

• 36:56Speaker 03

  The Vergecast Manifesto?

• 36:57Nilay Patel?

  The Vergecast Manifesto.

• 36:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:59Nilay Patel?

  The Patel Plan for a Better Internet. I'm not kidding, I should probably do this. I should probably actually make TC do it. And put my name on it.

• 37:05Speaker 04

  Oh, god, TC would totally do it.

• 37:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:07Speaker 03

  Hanging over America.

• 37:09Speaker 04

  And then he would enact it in days.

• 37:10Speaker 03

  That Spectre is the Vergecast.

• 37:12Nilay Patel?

  Look, the Patel Plan for Better Internet. I'm gonna, I'll, I'm gonna think about it and feel guilty for not doing it. That's

• 37:19Speaker 03

  We're gonna use the language from the Communist Manifesto. We're just gonna change like every other word.

• 37:23Nilay Patel?

  All right. Speaking of communism, let's talk about that Lumia.

• 37:27Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, it was sitting there for me. Speaking of things that look steam-powered and kinda shitty.

• 37:33Speaker 03

  Things that look like they were designed by Soviet engineers.

• 37:35Speaker 04

  This is why I like it, though.

• 37:37Nilay Patel?

  So you like it? So this is the Nokia Lumia. It's on Verizon, just came out. We haven't reviewed it yet, but we have it here, so we thought we'd talk about it. I think that it has a very nice camera, but it's otherwise a complete piece of garbage.

• 37:46Speaker 04

  This is the first retro-futuristic phone.

• 37:49Nilay Patel?

  How is that true? It's like a prototype.

• 37:51Speaker 04

  No.

• 37:51Nilay Patel?

  It's because of like the weird alien stripes on the top.

• 37:54Speaker 04

  It's because if you watched like a Tarkovsky movie or something, and they would be like, here, I will pull out my internet telephone

• 38:01Speaker 04

  phone. Like, you would just, it's giant and thick and silver and half like this weird white collar and it has these weird stripes at the top.

• 38:09Nilay Patel?

  It's bulgy.

• 38:10Speaker 04

  And the top of it has this weird like laminate, like it was lacquered.

• 38:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it does feel like it's somebody like poured epoxy onto it. Here's, it has a great camera, I will say. I was playing on the camera yesterday. It has an absolutely terrific, it's like 20 megapixel rearview camera. I just wanna show this to people. What do you think that is, at the top of the phone there? See that? Right, right where my finger is?

• 38:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:32Nilay Patel?

  The first time I saw it, I assumed it was a mute switch.

• 38:34Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 38:35Nilay Patel?

  Then I thought maybe it's a hold, or the mute, or the sleep-wake.

• 38:39Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 38:39Nilay Patel?

  That's the SIM card slot.

• 38:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:41Nilay Patel?

  This phone has seriously the most easily-

• 38:43Speaker 03

  Show you how you pull it out.

• 38:44Nilay Patel?

  You just get in there, just take it out. Why not? Hey, I'm using my phone. Maybe I should just take out the SIM card for no apparent reason. Because that should be easier with a phone.

• 38:51Speaker 03

  You know what, you know what the iPhone has?

• 38:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:53Speaker 03

  A little pinhole. You know what the Nexus has?

• 38:55Nilay Patel?

  A little pinhole.

• 38:56Speaker 03

  A little pinhole, you know what?

• 38:57Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that too is just the most mystifying. Who needs to do that with a Verizon, particularly Verizon phone?

• 39:04Speaker 04

  No, that's what's great about it though.

• 39:05Nilay Patel?

  And Evan, actually I was complaining about it earlier, and Evan, you know, the ambient nerd that he is, just appeared out of the whispers and was like, "Actually, you can use other SIM cards in Verizon phones." That's great, but most people who have Verizon are totally locked to that network.

• 39:16Speaker 04

  That's why it works with the Soviet aesthetic, though, because you're gonna buy a black market SIM card, and you switch it, and then you swap it so the government can't hear you on this line, and you talk to Julia, and then Big Brother catches you, and it's great.

• 39:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, and I will say this, you know, whatever. We're gonna review the phone, I'm sure David has, I can't even stop it. Stop it, Windows Phone. See this? This is the new Windows Phone? This home screen is not simple. Nothing about this interface is simple.

• 39:42Speaker 03

  It doesn't come that way, you have to make it crazy yourself.

• 39:45Nilay Patel?

  I'm pretty sure this one came this way.

• 39:46Speaker 03

  Oh, did it really?

• 39:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:47Speaker 03

  Well, then that's stupid.

• 39:49Nilay Patel?

  Like, you cannot give this to a normal person, like, "Okay, use this phone."

• 39:52Speaker 04

  Because if it eaves into Windows Phone, that actually works.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  If you, if you like, start with something simple and then slowly make it your own personal brand of crazy, then Windows Phone is great.

• 40:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And that's really what you want from a gigantic Soviet SIM-powered phone. Anyway, David will have a review soon. Please address your complaints and death threats to pure David.

• 40:09Speaker 03

  It's heavy.

• 40:10Nilay Patel?

  It's not, I mean, I don't even know what they're doing.

• 40:12Speaker 04

  It's hefty, it feels good in the hand.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  Addy, you've convinced me.

• 40:14Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I get it, I understand. It looks like a phone that a stormtrooper would have.

• 40:18Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 40:18Nilay Patel?

  That's exactly, that's what it looks like. But you know what I don't want? Most things that stormtroopers have, except for the guns. And maybe the helmet.

• 40:25Speaker 03

  And also the armor.

• 40:26Speaker 04

  That's every important thing.

• 40:28Nilay Patel?

  Fine.

• 40:30Nilay Patel?

  Fine. Also, they're cunning and dashing with looks.

• 40:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:34Nilay Patel?

  Okay. But so we should, this leads me right into more Microsoft stuff. So-

• 40:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:40Nilay Patel?

  Anarchy, anarchy in Microsoft land. So, Tom is reporting, Tom Warren is reporting, and I have every reason to believe him, that Microsoft is seriously thinking about letting Android apps run on Windows and Windows Phone. And then today, Google announced they're, they're gonna be allowing Windows apps to run on Chromebooks through an emulator.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah, so the, the Chromebook thing- Whatever. It's through an emulator. It's a cloud service. It'll be cool and fun, but like, you know what? Citrix has been around. That is not a huge deal.

• 41:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but that's how they go into the enterprise, right? You say, "Build Salesforce.com." Like, that's what most people use on these Chromebooks. Give everybody a Chromebook or a tablet. And then for the one weird back-office stock management supply chain thing that you have that only runs on Windows XP, which is being sunsetted, run it in VMware here while you move it to a modern system.

• 41:29Speaker 03

  Right.

• 41:29Nilay Patel?

  That's the answer, right? I just think, like, it's basically chaos for Microsoft's platforms. Like, Android and Windows found if they're seriously considering that, they are basically giving up. They will 100% lose whatever power they have to make that platform differentiated and good. And it's because they're desperate because it's a failure.

• 41:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. You know what, running Android apps, what platform worked really well? Running Android apps?

• 41:53Nilay Patel?

  You're gonna say BlackBerry.

• 41:54Speaker 03

  No. Even if you do it well, and presumably, they're not gonna try and do it themselves, so like, have some other company become an enabler, fine. BlueStacks has worked pretty well. AMD had this dual OS thing. Oh, Intel had dual OS. It's not going to be as good as a native app.

• 42:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:17Speaker 03

  It's not even gonna be as good as a web app on Windows Phone.

• 42:20Nilay Patel?

  No. Windows Phone apps, to me, they still, I mean, some of them are nice.

• 42:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:24Nilay Patel?

  By the way, there's a guy in our forums who made a Verge Windows app, and we had to, because we needed to maintain our branding, we had to ask him to change the name.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  Right.

• 42:32Nilay Patel?

  I initially voted for The Urge. That was funny. But then somebody in the forum suggested that he name it Poison. And if he's listening right now, I'm saying 100%, please release the unofficial Verge app named Poison.

• 42:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:46Nilay Patel?

  Because that is the best name for the Verge app on a Windows platform. Like, absolutely want, like, there's no other choice. Like, now that you know that, it has to be Poison. In honor of Josh Walzky, our dearly departed leader. No, he's fine. I'm sure he's fine. He's at home. He's fine. Don't worry about him. He's totally fine. Nothing bad is happening to everyone.

• 43:06Speaker 03

  Nothing ever bad will ever happen to him.

• 43:07Nilay Patel?

  No, no, he's perfectly safe. So, I will say, like, this Microsoft in chaos. At MWC, which is coming up real soon, they're rumored, no, he'll be releasing an Android phone.

• 43:17Speaker 03

  Okay, it is absolute chaos.

• 43:20Nilay Patel?

  It's chaos.

• 43:20Speaker 03

  Over there.

• 43:21Nilay Patel?

  I don't, I don't know.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  So, the thing, the one thing about the Android phone, Normandy, Normandy X, whatever it's gonna be called. One, it's just Nokia's like engineers, like, you know what? We're doing it. Screw it. Because we're not, right before we get bought, we're showing off the work that what we've been working on and we don't care.

• 43:39Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 43:40Speaker 03

  And but he also is like, yeah, I didn't get the CEO job, so go ahead. I don't care. Do what you want.

• 43:44Nilay Patel?

  He's just rage releasing a phone. Like, his table flip is like killing Series 40 for Android. All right, I buy it.

• 43:52Speaker 03

  Uh, but it's not gonna have any impact on anything because it's, it's just like subbing in for the Asha stuff in the low end anyway. So

• 44:00Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 44:00Speaker 03

  It'll be interesting. It'll be fun and we'll want to see how it works.

• 44:03Nilay Patel?

  That's the stuff they're selling. I mean, if you look at what Nokia is actually selling, they're selling low end phones and that there's one mid range, like the 520 sells well for them, right? And you can just see how there's some middle manager at Nokia who's gonna see the sales numbers for their Android platform go up because they're gonna sell a lot of them and be like, we should make a slightly better phone to convert all the people who love Asha, or whatever this new Normandy platform is gonna be called, into high end customers.

• 44:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 44:27Nilay Patel?

  You know, because

• 44:28Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah, they, they got money spent. Maybe they did got a bad job. I would believe you if they continue that plan in six months or a year after Microsoft bought them. If that plan is still in effect and they're still selling Android phones under Microsoft's ownership, then we can talk. But until that happens, that beautiful, we're gonna sell low end Android phones and high end Windows phones and there's gonna be a nice angled path up to ownership. I don't buy it because it, people are gonna be like, oh, well, this phone's okay, but I like the apps and the apps run better on those phones.

• 45:01Nilay Patel?

  Well, so, out of your gamer, right? You play video games. You have a gigantic Asus gaming PC.

• 45:05Speaker 04

  I do.

• 45:06Nilay Patel?

  Do you have Windows anywhere else in your life, other than that one PC?

• 45:10Speaker 04

  Um, I dual boot Windows on that, uh, Hanspree that Dan gave me, but I installed Linux on it. So yeah, that's it.

• 45:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Do you, and you have, but you also have a lot of gamer friends. Do they, do you use Windows for anything other than gaming and like the Xbox?

• 45:23Speaker 04

  The only

• 45:23Nilay Patel?

  Xbox One they might have.

• 45:24Speaker 04

  I feel like the only times that I've had that I have needed to use Windows are very specific apps, which is when other people use them and yeah, gaming. Like, that's the only reason I want it. Otherwise, I would just install Linux. Like, if SteamOS actually works, then I don't actually have to install SteamOS because I can just install Steam on Linux and I will just do that.

• 45:43Nilay Patel?

  Right. And I think that this is their ca- this is the chaos. Like, they don't have compelling reasons for people to want their stuff outside of Office and a bunch of weird proprietary enterprise apps, which is why Google's doing VMware on Chrome OS. Yeah. Um, they need, this is, I think, Nadella is the new CEO. This is why he's like, "Cloud first, mobile first," because he's got to get Office in other places because he can't keep it tied to Windows because people don't want Windows. Look, here's my number one theory about Microsoft right now. They should have paid the grocery store. I keep, I'm saying it every Vergecast from here until the end of time.

• 46:17Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 46:19Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's like if Metro was supposed to be the future of Windows and the future of the company and it's everywhere. If you don't have enough, if you're not making a big enough bet to give it the name that it deserves or any name whatsoever, because it has no name right now.

• 46:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:35Nilay Patel?

  It's just Windows stuff. It's the other, it's the bad Windows.

• 46:39Speaker 03

  Modern, modern.

• 46:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but it's, modern UI is like maybe, it's Windows Store apps is like the official.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  Windows Store apps UI, yeah, yeah.

• 46:45Nilay Patel?

  Is awful, right? Uh, awful. And I get it. Like, Metro AG is not actually a grocery store, although they do sell groceries and I maintain that I can call them the grocery store for the end of time. Uh, they're this huge retailer, but they wanted like $800 million. Like, that's the number they wanted, which for a company of Microsoft size that has $16 billion revenue businesses, is not an absurd number when you're talking.

• 47:09Speaker 03

  Of your company.

• 47:09Nilay Patel?

  The future of the company.

• 47:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:11Nilay Patel?

  And I, it's not that I think naming it Metro would have solved their problems, but it would have created a s- a third new brand. People love new things. And they would have created a new brand for them and created a new thing that they could have shown people. What is, what is Windows Phone Run? It runs Metro. Like, what are Windows Phones Run? It runs Metro.

• 47:30Speaker 04

  Well, you also wouldn't be comparing it to. Like Windows. You'd be, oh, this is a new thing. It's not, why isn't Windows working?

• 47:36Nilay Patel?

  When I was at the DE conference last year, there were a bunch of Microsoft people there. And I remember they were mad. They were like, everyone on stage here is talking about iOS and Android and no one's talking about Windows. And I was like, well, it's because it's Windows. Like, it's inherently confusing to talk about Windows as a mobile platform and as a PC platform. And that's the bet that they made on most of their devices.

• 47:55Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 47:56Nilay Patel?

  Right? The phone is whatever. It's still not the same in iOS. And they didn't do it. They didn't, they didn't, literally, they didn't bite the bullet, pay the grocery store and give it the name that it did. Or any name.

• 48:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:07Nilay Patel?

  Any name whatsoever and say, this is our future, not Windows. That Metro, that's the grocery store. Uh, and this company stopped Microsoft from giving itself clarity and definition and focus.

• 48:18Speaker 03

  Microsoft didn't have, hang on. Microsoft didn't have that clear, like, before that lawsuit, they, they, they picked Windows Phone with Windows.

• 48:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was Windows Phone 7 Series, remember?

• 48:28Speaker 03

  But then it was 7 Series. But the reason they called it 7 Series is they picked the Windows Phone name to try and give a fresh sheen to Windows Phone 6.5.

• 48:36Nilay Patel?

  Or Windows Mobile 6.5.

• 48:38Speaker 03

  Windows Mobile 6.5, yeah, it was, it was a mess.

• 48:40Nilay Patel?

  Windows Phone 7 Series.

• 48:42Speaker 03

  Right.

• 48:42Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I'm just saying, they, when these phones first came out, when they showed Windows Phone.

• 48:48Speaker 03

  When they showed Metro.

• 48:49Nilay Patel?

  Metro, people freaked out.

• 48:51Speaker 03

  It was great.

• 48:51Nilay Patel?

  It's a good idea.

• 48:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:52Nilay Patel?

  And people loved that name and they talked about it. If they had made that their new wave OS, like a branded, they didn't try to glom it onto Windows 8. They didn't do, make all these mistakes and compromises along the way. They would have avoided the chaos that they're in now. And I'm telling, Frank Shaw, who's the head of, who's CorpCom at, at, at Microsoft, tells, reminds me over and over again, Windows still like, I say people hate Windows, he reminds me over and over again, the, the brand loyalty to Windows is like off the charts, the brand loyalty to Microsoft. I don't, I don't know who they're paying for that study, they should pay somebody else.

• 49:23Speaker 03

  My mom and my brother, in the past three months, terrified, afraid, went and bought MacBooks. Have no idea how to use Macs. They've used Windows all their lives.

• 49:34Nilay Patel?

  They don't want Windows 8.

• 49:35Speaker 03

  They just don't want Windows 8.

• 49:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:36Speaker 03

  They're, they're calling me like, how do I do this? I'm like, it's gonna be okay, go take the classes at the genius store, the Apple store.

• 49:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:43Speaker 03

  You'll be all right. But like, they, like, you know, before Windows 8, they just, every couple of years, they would all bought new Windows computers, like clockwork.

• 49:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:50Speaker 03

  And this, this time around, they're like, Existentially vexed. And they went out and bought MacBooks.

• 49:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I don't know. I mean, this Chromebook thing, I think, is if they, if Google makes any kind of real play into the enterprise, I don't know, chaos.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  He's got a lot of work, but like. He's got a lot of work, too.

• 50:08Nilay Patel?

  I think he can pull something off. So there is something very exciting happening in Microsoft world, just Titanfall, which is like.

• 50:14Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 50:15Nilay Patel?

  So, Addie, are you in the beta?

• 50:17Speaker 04

  Um, I signed up earlier today because that's the thing is that earlier, everybody was talking about Titanfall. I was like, okay, it looks decent. All right. And then for some reason I read, you know, our piece, I guess, yesterday.

• 50:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:28Speaker 04

  And I was like, oh, my God, this actually sounds awesome.

• 50:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:31Speaker 03

  I am.

• 50:32Nilay Patel?

  It does. I mean, it looks amazing.

• 50:33Speaker 03

  I'm incredibly angry about Titanfall.

• 50:35Nilay Patel?

  Why?

• 50:36Speaker 03

  Because I had like decided I'm gonna get a PS4 and that's easy and I'm done.

• 50:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:40Speaker 03

  And now.

• 50:41Speaker 04

  I mean, I signed up for the PC beta.

• 50:42Speaker 03

  God damn it.

• 50:43Nilay Patel?

  I am, I am, but yes, you've got a game.

• 50:45Speaker 03

  Then I gotta get a gaming PC.

• 50:47Speaker 04

  But I just say.

• 50:48Nilay Patel?

  It was gonna be so easy for Dieter.

• 50:49Speaker 03

  Uh, my life was set.

• 50:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:51Speaker 03

  And now.

• 50:52Speaker 04

  I mean, the reason that I wanted is that because it doesn't look like, is because I feel like it's not exactly like other first person shooters. So I feel like I'm not going to be so behind because I don't really play multiplayer shooters. I don't really play Call of Duty or any of that. And so it's been years and years. Everybody knows exactly what you're supposed to do. Every, most new shooters are, you know, similar enough.

• 51:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:13Speaker 04

  But like, I have a giant robot.

• 51:15Nilay Patel?

  That looks so awesome. Yeah, the robot thing. I will say, look, mechs are back. It's like.

• 51:18Speaker 04

  They came back with Hawken. Yeah.

• 51:21Speaker 03

  Don't even start with me and MechWarrior.

• 51:22Nilay Patel?

  No, no.

• 51:23Speaker 03

  Because I will, I will outnumber you so hard right now.

• 51:26Nilay Patel?

  Oh, God, it's gonna be bad.

• 51:26Speaker 03

  Because you played the computer game, right?

• 51:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:28Speaker 03

  Which was like a flight sim. No, no, no, no, no. Let's, let's talk about the tabletop BattleTech game, originally called BattleTroid, and the MechWarrior RPG.

• 51:36Speaker 04

  Well, you'll be able to bring that into.

• 51:37Speaker 03

  This is the dream. All of those MechWarrior PC games from the, the early in the day were modeled after flight sims.

• 51:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:43Speaker 03

  And so it played like, you know, like the old Microsoft thing where you were landing, you could never land, but it was all line art or whatever. And that, that legacy lived on in it. So it didn't have this visceral, awesome, action, giant robot feel of like.

• 51:56Nilay Patel?

  Playing a card game?

• 51:58Speaker 03

  No, uh, the, the video game. Okay, I see what you're saying. The, the card game, and that wasn't a card game, first of all. It was, there was a hexagonal map and then you had miniatures on them and character sheets with bubbles. I just want Ice T to be saying everything that you're saying.

• 52:12Speaker 03

  No, that was, that was, that was BattleTech. But MechWarrior did not have the map. That was, that was, it was all in your head, though. So you imagined this dynamic action, which Titanfall actually achieves in a way that the MechWarrior video games never did.

• 52:24Speaker 04

  I also just like that free running is now totally normal in shooters.

• 52:27Speaker 03

  That's what we do.

• 52:28Speaker 04

  Like, it's wonderful.

• 52:29Nilay Patel?

  In the future, everyone is constantly ready for combat. And they, they've done parkour. They've done extensive parkour training in school. That's replaced gym class in the future.

• 52:38Speaker 03

  All right, the solution is.

• 52:39Speaker 04

  Have everybody made the attack on Titanfall?

• 52:41Speaker 03

  You're getting an Xbox.

• 52:41Speaker 04

  Because I would play that game.

• 52:42Speaker 03

  I'm getting a gaming PC because then my girlfriend can play the goat simulator.

• 52:47Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:48Speaker 03

  Have you seen the goat simulator?

• 52:49Nilay Patel?

  I have not seen, I don't even know what you're talking about.

• 52:50Speaker 03

  Oh, I would, I hope we can get it on screen. It's, it's a, it's a game where you play a goat.

• 52:55Nilay Patel?

  You're just, you're just a goat?

• 52:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:58Speaker 04

  I feel like the Oculus Rift has opened up a bunch of simulators because suddenly you can make, I mean, I don't remember if this is on or not, but suddenly you can make simulators and actually make a good case for them. It's not like the Eurosim genre. Like Eurosim, it's, you know, you're doing a relaxing thing that's a real thing, like driving a bus. But like, you know, dragon simulator, chicken simulator, now you're like, no, you're actually a chicken.

• 53:18Nilay Patel?

  Finally, the Oculus Rift has unlocked the next wave of gaming experiences. Being a chicken.

• 53:23Speaker 04

  Funny is that Sean was talking to, I forget who, and you saying that, no, this is actually like a thing that I can do now is that it gives you, it makes you feel what it's like to be in another body.

• 53:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, though, that's happening. Wow, we're just watching a video of a goat not being very good at being a goat.

• 53:41Nilay Patel?

  Is there a score? Who cares?

• 53:44Speaker 04

  What is space then?

• 53:44Nilay Patel?

  What? Huh? Oh, there is a score in the top left. That's what I'm being told. Um, I don't, I don't know. Uh, here's, but my point with Titanfall is that, like, mechs are back. Like, between Pacific Rim, I don't think that it's Hawken. I think it was Pacific Rim and now Titanfall are going to reintroduce, like, Mecha as a genre in an enormous way. And that's exciting because I did play a lot of MechWarrior, the video game, which was fun and you can't take it away from me. I mean, it was awesome. It was an awesome video game. Like, I bought a computer, like, specifically because I wanted a faster computer to play the next MechWarrior at one time.

• 54:21Speaker 04

  Well, the thing is that the first mech thing I really got into was Eva, and that basically associated them with despair.

• 54:26Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 54:27Speaker 04

  And this is fun.

• 54:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, Titanfall looks amazing. Titanfall, to me, is the reason to buy an Xbox One. It's, I think the people who are buying PS4s, because it was the gaming one, this is like the first reason I've seen to buy an XGen console. I haven't played any other XGen games that have been like, this is why I have this. I've actually been playing my 360 more, because whenever video games happen to me, I just like to start playing my 360 more.

• 54:48Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 54:49Nilay Patel?

  It's very strange. I will say it's strange that Microsoft is tweaking the Xbox One controller to make it better for Titanfall. I mean, this is the level that Microsoft is all in on this game.

• 54:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:58Nilay Patel?

  I think it's gonna be exciting. I'm not set up for the beta, I really shouldn't.

• 55:00Speaker 04

  It's funny that the thing I remember being really hyped at E3 was Quantum Break, which we have heard nothing about.

• 55:06Nilay Patel?

  Right. Oh, that game looked incredible.

• 55:07Speaker 04

  It seemed pretty cool. I mean, it didn't seem like it was actually a game at E3. It was basically videos.

• 55:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:13Speaker 04

  But it was promising.

• 55:15Nilay Patel?

  Nothing in E3 seems like a game.

• 55:16Speaker 04

  Well, in that it literally does have a video component, and that was what people were getting shown.

• 55:20Nilay Patel?

  That's fair. Okay, and then the last thing we should talk about, which I think, you know, in, in, related to all this Comcast stuff, House of Cards starts tonight.

• 55:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:30Nilay Patel?

  Are you gonna stay up until 3 a.m. to watch it?

• 55:32Speaker 03

  No.

• 55:32Nilay Patel?

  Valentine's Day is gonna be real rough for a lot of nerds.

• 55:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:35Speaker 04

  You know, it's a horrible, horrible confession. I never finished the first season.

• 55:38Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 55:39Speaker 04

  I watched the British first series.

• 55:40Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 55:41Speaker 04

  And then I just never, yeah.

• 55:43Speaker 03

  Oh, so you don't know what happens in the, ooh, man.

• 55:46Speaker 04

  Is it anything like what happens in the first British case?

• 55:48Speaker 03

  The dog from the first episode comes back to life and is a zombie.

• 55:50Speaker 04

  Well, a giant thing happens at the end of that one, so. I don't think it's the same thing, though, because a certain character is coming back.

• 55:56Speaker 03

  This is really hard to talk about.

• 55:58Nilay Patel?

  The dog from the first episode comes back. He's a zombie dog.

• 56:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 56:01Nilay Patel?

  And then he takes over the government.

• 56:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:03Speaker 04

  Is it like when the reporter comes back in American Horror Story and she's a ghost? And now she's probably a ghost in season two?

• 56:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. American Horror Story, to me, is, I don't understand how every, like, I understand that it's like a miniseries and they have different ones.

• 56:16Speaker 04

  No, it's not a mini-series. It's a, well, it's a season-length mini-series. It's an anthology series and every season is a new-

• 56:21Nilay Patel?

  They're self-contained.

• 56:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, self-contained theme and the character, like, the actors come back, but they're all playing different characters.

• 56:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:28Speaker 04

  It's amazing.

• 56:29Nilay Patel?

  It seems amazing. I just can't, it's like I only drop in when Becky's watching it and so then I have no idea what's going on because I see all the same actors, like, now they're in Insane and Silent. Now they're in prison.

• 56:38Speaker 04

  Okay, the Insane and Silent bit was, I mean, that was actually crazy because there were about fifty different horror tropes. So, yeah, it was Nazi zombie horror-

• 56:46Nilay Patel?

  Yes. It was very strange.

• 56:47Speaker 04

  Women's prisons.

• 56:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was, it was just very strange. Like, I dropped into two episodes of that and I was like, I have no idea what's going on, but I'm terrified. So, mission accomplished, I guess. Um, I don't, I think I'm gonna end up spending, assuming that tomorrow is also a snow day. I, I can see a lot of people taking a snow day tomorrow.

• 57:04Speaker 03

  By the way, good on us for-

• 57:05Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, Indicat East is, uh, is in New York this weekend, so-

• 57:08Nilay Patel?

  The what?

• 57:08Speaker 04

  Indicat East.

• 57:09Nilay Patel?

  Ah.

• 57:09Speaker 04

  So, I'm doing that.

• 57:10Nilay Patel?

  Is that your Valentine's Day?

• 57:12Speaker 04

  Actually, it is.

• 57:13Nilay Patel?

  That's, I would expect nothing less, actually. Um, no, I, I think, wait, what were you saying? Good on us-

• 57:18Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, good on us for not complaining about New York being soft about the snow.

• 57:21Nilay Patel?

  New York is super soft about the snow. Everyone in New York is a, Dieter and I are both from Midwest. Addie is from Washington State, went to Will Cornell. None of us are, like, phased by snow, the way that this city-

• 57:32Speaker 04

  I actually have a friend coming down, I had a friend come down from Cornell yesterday.

• 57:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:35Speaker 04

  And she's, like, she's like, oh, yeah, it's five below every day.

• 57:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I will say that the snow today is particularly hailish. Like, I walked outside and I was like, this isn't snow, this is, like, tiny bits of hail. Like, that sucks. But it, the fact that there's a state of emergency for eight inches of snow is just ridiculous to me. And I understand other parts of the company, or other parts of the company, other parts of the country are not as prepared for snow, but New York is like an east coast city.

• 57:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:59Nilay Patel?

  The schools are, the schools are open, is that what you said, John?

• 58:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:02Nilay Patel?

  Good. State of emergency, send your children out into the streets. Um, okay, I think that's it. Is that the Vergecast? Is there anything else? What else happened this week?

• 58:09Speaker 03

  A cor- bunch of Corvettes fell in a sinkhole.

• 58:11Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, the sinkhole.

• 58:11Speaker 03

  But I don't know what to say about that, other than that happened.

• 58:14Nilay Patel?

  I really want to hear that.

• 58:15Speaker 04

  Um, Facebook changed its gender options.

• 58:16Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, the Facebook gender thing. That's been, like, years in the making, right?

• 58:20Speaker 04

  Probably.

• 58:20Nilay Patel?

  Like, I think since Facebook rolled out, people have been like, why do I, why is this a binary choice?

• 58:24Speaker 04

  It's, I mean, it's just a internet-wide thing that encompasses Facebook.

• 58:27Nilay Patel?

  We were talking about all these internet quizzes. The Facebook gender choice should be a gender identity quiz, where they rank you on the sexuality spectrum.

• 58:34Speaker 04

  Oh, God.

• 58:35Speaker 03

  But no, but you can't, you can't say no. Like, in order to see your answer, it has to post.

• 58:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 58:39Speaker 04

  Wow, yeah.

• 58:40Nilay Patel?

  All right, Facebook, get weird.

• 58:42Speaker 03

  Do it.

• 58:43Nilay Patel?

  Um, yeah, I'm just saying, just rank, just rank you in the sexualities spectrum.

• 58:46Speaker 04

  I'm actually gonna go do a bunch of Quizilla quizzes after this, but the ones that are like stories.

• 58:50Nilay Patel?

  Oh, no, I mean, I, look, I was, every once in college, like the, those, like, the quizzes that circulated in email in college to me, they're back.

• 58:59Speaker 04

  It's just that, no, they're not bigger. The BuzzFeed ones are terrible.

• 59:02Nilay Patel?

  They are bad. But like, but I mean, in terms of, when I say bigger than ever, I mean, bigger in like.

• 59:06Speaker 04

  They're more popular, but they're so bland.

• 59:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:08Speaker 04

  Like, I was going back and reading them, and they're cheesy and they're high school stuff, but they're actually interesting. They have like, they have like a feel.

• 59:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:16Speaker 04

  Like, they're actually sort of a narrative thread, and this is not. This is just like, pick a bunch of random things and it'll tell you what city you should live in.

• 59:22Nilay Patel?

  BuzzFeed should exclusively hire college freshmen and like, kind of liquor them up in like wine coolers and have them write the quizzes. Cause that's where that feel came from.

• 59:29Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, I was gonna say.

• 59:29Speaker 04

  I was gonna say fifteen year olds, probably still on wine coolers.

• 59:32Nilay Patel?

  Precocious college freshman.

• 59:34Speaker 03

  I'm shutting down my Twitter account and I'm only posting a live journal. Everything that goes on Twitter is just gonna be a link to my live journal.

• 59:41Nilay Patel?

  Have you used Secret? When was the last time you used Secret?

• 59:43Speaker 03

  Uh, three hours ago.

• 59:44Nilay Patel?

  Really? Did you put, I have, I've stopped using it.

• 59:47Speaker 04

  I'm not, I'm not using Secret.

• 59:48Speaker 03

  I have never posted, but I, I've read a lot.

• 59:51Nilay Patel?

  Um.

• 59:51Speaker 03

  We talked about Secret.

• 59:52Nilay Patel?

  We did. I'm just saying, I think it's dead and I think it's already over.

• 59:55Speaker 03

  Really?

• 59:55Nilay Patel?

  It's my theory.

• 59:56Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 59:56Nilay Patel?

  The last time I looked at it was all people from Silicon Valley. Okay. I think that was indeed the Vergecast.

• 1:00:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:01Nilay Patel?

  Uh, thank you again to the puppets. Can we quickly cut to the puppets? Do we have more puppet footage? No, we don't. Okay, John, John literally made, you know that scene in Princess Bride? When like they turn on the death machine and like there's the whale, "I've just taken one year of your life away." Like, that's what just happened in my ear with our, with our producer in the other back, okay?

• 1:00:25Nilay Patel?

  No more puppets. Addie and I can just like make puppet faces.

• 1:00:31Nilay Patel?

  That was the Vergecast. There are a number of ways. Uh, thank you for enduring this, this episode on this fine snow day. Um, hey, hey Boris.

• 1:00:40Speaker 03

  What's up, buddy?

• 1:00:41Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:00:44Nilay Patel?

  What's the Vergecast? This is my Russian friend. You can tweet at me, I'm recklessbacklon.

• 1:00:50Speaker 04

  The dextrarchy.

• 1:00:51Nilay Patel?

  The dextrarchy. You can leave a comment in the post. You should watch The Puppets every day at 4:00 PM on SB Nation, the Olympic Medal Count. They're great, they're super funny. It was fun to have them on. And that was it. Thanks so much for watching. You know, Josh is fine.