Apple will make repair manuals and parts available to public / Russia blows up a satellite / Biden signs infrastructure package

Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn chat with policy reporter Makena Kelly about Pres. Biden's $1 trillion infrastructure package and what it will do to improve broadband access in the US. Senior science reporter Loren Grush joins the show to talk about Russia destroying one of its own satellites with a ground-based missile. Managing editor Alex Cranz stops by to chat about Apple opening up iPhones and Macs to DIY repairs. Stories referenced: Biden signs $1 trillion infrastructure package into law Biden’s FCC is still deadlocked, and net neutrality hangs in the balance Biden’s pick for FDA chief works at Google Russia blows up a satellite, creating a dangerous debris cloud in space NASA delays ambitious human lunar landing to 2025 NASA’s Moon landing will likely be delayed ‘several years’ beyond 2024, auditors say Blue Origin loses lawsuit against federal government over NASA’s human lunar lander contracts SpaceX’s Starlink reveals new smaller, rectangular user dish to connect to satellites Apple will sell you iPhone parts to fix your own phone at home The shareholder fight that forced Apple’s hand on repair rights Apple reportedly wants to launch a self-driving EV in 2025 with a custom chip The Balmuda Phone is a compact Android phone from a high-end toaster company Meta’s sci-fi haptic glove prototype lets you feel VR objects using air pockets Sonos finally adds DTS audio support to its home theater lineup Hyundai’s restomod Grandeur is the perfect EV for a supervillain Google explains the tradeoffs that led to Pixel 6’s slow charging complaints A look under the hood of the most successful streaming service on the planet Meta goes into lockdown 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.

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This week on The Vergecast, McKenna Kelly joins the show. We talk about the new $1 trillion infrastructure package, what it means for broadband, EVs, all kinds of other things. Lauren Grush joins the show. We talk about Russia blowing up a satellite in space, what's going on with SpaceX. And Alex Trans joins the show. We talk about Apple's new repair system and lots of other things that's coming up on The Vergecast now.

• 0:20Speaker 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.

• 1:05Speaker 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.

• 1:53Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to Vergecast, the flagship program of infrastructure. Roads, bridges, ports, we've been talking about them for 10 years on this podcast and today we're going to do it again. I'm your friend, Neelai. Dieter Bohn is here. I am a week because it's infrastructure week. Oh, there you go. Well done. McKenna Kelly is here. Hi, McKenna.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  Hey.

• 2:14Nilay Patel?

  McKenna is not amused by my infrastructure joke.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Sorry, I'm just laughing. No, it's great. It's finally infrastructure week.

• 2:20Nilay Patel?

  It did. I mean, you're a policy reporter. I feel like you've been living in the moment of it's infrastructure week for five years. So I'm happy that you you got this win. There's a lot going on this week. McKenna is going to talk to us about the infrastructure package, what it means for broadband, electric vehicle charges. There's another bill coming with tax credits for e-bites. There's FCC drama. A little later in the show, Lauren Grush is going to join us. There's drama in space as well. Satellite explosions for real. It's like a real thing. And then Alex Cranz is going to join us at the end of the show. Got some Apple stuff and some lighting around. But let's start with the infrastructure package. It is a long time coming. President Trump famously promised an infrastructure package, hijacked for many reasons, never came to pass. Biden obviously came into office

• 3:03Nilay Patel?

  promising a huge program called Build Back Better, which was then broken up into two bills. The first chunk passed. There's a second, potentially more controversial bill coming that's coming to a vote as well. What passed now? It's a trillion dollar package. What's in there for for people who are interested in tech?

• 3:20Speaker 02

  So Monday, Biden actually signed the bill. Congress and the House and the Senate approved it finally a couple of weeks ago. And they held this like gigantic signing ceremony at the White House. There was like a whole band. It was like, kind of cool to actually see an accomplishment like that under like some administration where there's actually like a speech in a White House and like all this kind of stuff in the background of a signing. So that was cool. But essentially, it's a $1 trillion deal that includes a lot of money to fix bridges and roads and the things that we drive and walk over every day. But then also, there's a lot of stuff in there that touches on tech and a lot of things that the Verge covers, primarily broadband expansion. Of course, a lot of people in the country do not have access to high speed broadband. This is an issue we have been trying

• 4:04Speaker 02

  to solve for how many decades now?

• 4:06Nilay Patel?

  All of them.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Exactly. All of the decades.

• 4:09Nilay Patel?

  George Washington was like, here's my platform.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  He was like, why can't I download apps fast enough? But anyway, so the bill got approved and that means that there's $65 billion now headed to states to get infrastructure built so people can have those in-home connections. And what the administration is saying is that this money is going to make sure every household in America is connected to high-speed broadband by the end of the decade, which, you know, we don't know, we can't really predict the future, but that's a really cool goal if they're able to meet that.

• 4:39Nilay Patel?

  So I would put that in the context of like, you know, historic programs to electrify every home or to get every house on the phone network. $65 billion does not seem like a lot of money, right? In the context of a trillion dollar package, even in the context of that number, it's not a big number. I guess my two questions are, is it enough? And it's going to the states. Like, how is it going to be administered? Like, how does it work? Do like, do I just get a check? Are you just going to write me a check and I can go find a broadband provider? Like, how's it, how's it gonna happen?

• 5:08Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, that's not really the case. That would be kind of sick if it was, but basically the $65 billion is a smaller number. At first, the Biden administration this year promised $100 billion, but the 65 is kind of what was reconciled between Republicans and Democrats. Many Republicans who were like, broadband is not infrastructure, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And then we came to an agreement, well, broadband is infrastructure enough for 65 billion, I guess, was the logic. I don't know. But basically, it comes down to subsidizing, right? And giving, the whole problem with like broadband expansion is that you look at Verizon, you look at AT&T, you look at all these ISPs, right? And they just don't have the incentive to connect one family living in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  I can say that because I'm from Nebraska. But, right, so they just don't get the right return on investment. So these costs need to be subsidized in order for the infrastructure to be built. Now, the interesting thing that we need to talk about here especially is like, this isn't going to be fiber to every home. And that's something that was a little sad for Democrats and more progressives. This is, this is going to be a process that has to do with some fiber, with some other cables, you know, coax, and then also like wireless 5G services.

• 6:22Nilay Patel?

  That's happening, oh boy.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  So it's going to be a mix of all of these things in order to get people connected.

• 6:28Nilay Patel?

  So are the states in charge? Is the FCC in charge?

• 6:32Speaker 02

  So notably, the FCC was left out of the infrastructure package pretty broadly, which I think we can kind of get into when we talk about the FCC later. But the FCC has been unable to really do anything this year. They have had like a 2-2 stalemate with net neutrality being rolled back. There's a lot of questions about the extent to which the FCC has any authority over broadband. So the money is being sent to the Commerce Department essentially to offer, you know, kind of like grant programs to states who basically say, hey, we have this really cool plan, we need this much money, can you give it to us? And that's kind of how it's going to be solved so far.

• 7:08Nilay Patel?

  We're talking broadband. You mentioned it could be 5G, it could be coax. Are we still working with the definition of broadband that we've been working with here in the US, which is like somewhat 25 down, 3 up, something insane like that?

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Yep, it's 25 3s still. Now, this year, there were some senators who saw, you know, an opportunity in the infrastructure bill to be like, hey, we need 100 over 100, or at least, you know, 100 over something that, you know, is still much faster than 3 megabytes upload. And there were some letters, there were some discussions, right? But that did not end up making it in the final infrastructure package. And then, so I guess this leads into the FCC kind of having to make this decision later. And maybe with a Democratic majority, fingers crossed, I guess, if that's what you want, they can change that definition later, once they're able to do anything.

• 7:57Nilay Patel?

  Anything. Yeah, we'll get to that. That is a whole swirl of drama, which is kind of interesting. But just on broadband, just to lay it out. So the Commerce Department gets $65 billion, and then the states come to the Commerce Department and say, we've got a cool plan to pay AT&T to wire every house in Wisconsin, which I can say, except for Wisconsin. And then the Commerce Department's like, okay, here's the money. Who makes sure that they don't just waste it? That AT&T doesn't blow it? Because the immediate reaction from a lot of people, like in my mentions, and I was like, I'm excited about this, was, I've heard these lies from Verizon before. Right, right, because it's true, like, I think the state of New Jersey has paid Verizon, like, $10 billion to give one house Fios. And they just said, like, there's lawsuits and it's deeply corrupt.

• 8:41Nilay Patel?

  And I think there's a lot of skepticism here. There's also, I think, in, I know this, you get the same replies I do sometimes. There's a lot of people are like, just give the money to Starlink, right? Because they'll do it. And, you know, there's like, there's a lot to unpack there. But I think people are rightfully skeptical of the big broadband providers who have not done the work they should have done, even with some subsidies already. And so like, what makes this money, what, what mechanism makes this money more effective this time, do you think?

• 9:09Speaker 02

  It's unfortunate, because I really, I don't know. That's, we always want to be able to make these promises, right? The FCC Democrats want to be able to say, well, this money is going to do what you want it to do. But the only effective enforcement that we've had over the past, I don't even know if we can call it effective, but the only, like, working enforcement that we've really had has been, you know, very thorough FCC investigations that take a lot of time, but then also like state attorney general lawsuits. So what I can imagine is there might be something in some contract a state or a locality makes with a broadband provider to maybe essentially later, if they don't fulfill it, to have like the state AG go after them or something. But it is hard, you know, with net neutrality the way it is, and with so much skepticism

• 9:53Speaker 02

  over title to an authority, it's hard to say, you know, what enforcement will look like in the future.

• 9:58Nilay Patel?

  I just want to unwind that, because you've said it a couple of times. What you mean by net neutrality is not actual net neutrality. It's when net neutrality was rolled back, the FCC actually gave up its authority to regulate broadband at all. Like, they weren't just like, we're not doing net neutrality. They're like, we now have prohibited ourselves from doing anything, right? So their ability to even like, look at this and enforce this is constrained.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Well, it depends on the interpretation, right? Because the FCC is just a house full of lawyers.

• 10:27Nilay Patel?

  The funnest building in DC.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  It's so fun. Floor eight, we love it. But it's essentially like a, it's just like a house full of lawyers who have like different interpretations of what they can do. So like the FCC could do something and then, oh my God, you know, some lawyer somewhere might sue them and say it's illegal. So it was essentially like they did give up like that sure. I think a lot of people on the left and like Democrats and progressives will say, well, when they did give up Title II with the net neutrality rollback, they did get rid of this authority, but it hasn't really been challenged in like too many ways to really sort that out judiciously. So it is kind of this weird, like haunting apparition above the FCC. But you know, we're going to talk about this and then the podcast is going to go up and then you're going to have a ton of telecom lawyers and I mentioned being

• 11:13Speaker 02

  like, well, that's not actually what it is and blah, blah, blah. But that's the world we live in.

• 11:18Nilay Patel?

  It's making your mentions are like telecom lawyers and Starlink fanboys. It's great when they get together.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  I wish the audience could have seen my visceral reaction when you mentioned Starlink because honestly, I just wanted to scream. I could feel it in my throat, all the mentions I get.

• 11:33Nilay Patel?

  And just to be clear for everyone, SpaceX and Starlink have received billions of dollars in subsidies already, Starlink specifically. And pretty controversially, Starlink applied for subsidies to provide service in like the parking lot of Walmart stores and like other heavily populated areas, which is maybe the, maybe at the end of the day, Starlink is just another ISP and they act like other ISP. Like, I appreciate that people love them. I'm just saying, if you're a broadband company, my instinct is not to trust you. Like, that's, that's the way that goes.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Speaking of Elon too, specifically, another interesting thing in the infrastructure bill is that there's a couple of billion dollars in it to build out a nationwide EV charging system.

• 12:19Nilay Patel?

  That was a great segue.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  But yeah, so there's a nationwide EV charging plan in there to basically, over the next couple of years, make sure that you can, just like you would like go get your big gulp or whatever, when you like go fill up with like gas, you can basically do that with your EV card too, which is kind of cool to see that coming into play.

• 12:35Nilay Patel?

  So I have the same question here. $7.5 billion is maybe not enough billion dollars, but it's some, it's meaningful. I've talked to a lot of car company CEOs on Decoder. They're like, we're waiting for the government to help us with charging. How does this, are they going to pay Electrify America? Are they going to pay the states? How does this money get allocated?

• 12:54Speaker 02

  That's a really interesting thing. It's something that I think Andy would be better well suited to talk about, but I have a feeling it's probably the same kind of grant program. There's a problem with like handing out money to states and like this argument over federalism and very wonky things with Republicans that they like trying to do grant programs and things. But that's, the goal is, you know, to do it over the next couple of years. And I think what we can actually say for real is like, with the government backing this, I think having a plan to do this over so many years will actually incentivize other, you know, car companies or infrastructure companies to follow suit, right? And invest more money on their own, seeing that this is already starting.

• 13:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think the EV charging thing, every time we bring up another EV on the show, when Andy or Sean are on the show, Sean was on last week, the feedback is that car looks great, but it doesn't have a supercharger network. Right. Right. And so like, I should buy Tesla instead of whatever new EV. If this even goes a little bit of the way to making that market more competitive, I think that's a good thing. I just, I'm kind of at the, a lot of these companies are going to try to get this money and actually holding them accountable to using it for what it's for. I'm very skeptical with broad end companies historically, maybe less so with the EV companies. Cause I think at the end of the day, like GM and Ford will know when their customers can't charge their cars and they can't, that's not an acceptable outcome.

• 14:16Nilay Patel?

  Like thousands of dead electric F-150s on the highways of America is not an acceptable outcome for Ford. Like I think they're motivated to solve the problem, but I'm very curious. Before we get to the FCC, what else is in this bill that's worth thinking about?

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Right. Well, I mean, that's kind of where we are with tech on that bill mostly. The interesting thing now is like, we have to wait and see what happens with the other half of the Build Back Better Plan, which is more trillions of dollars for more tech related things. So it's at this point now where we really don't know when votes will happen in Congress. But what's in the BBB package right now is some really fun stuff that I think, you know, our audience specifically will be interested in specifically, there's e-bike tax credits in there. So you get like 30% tax credit through the IRS when you buy like a, an e-bike worth like $1,500 or something, which incentivizes more people to buy those.

• 15:06Nilay Patel?

  It is shocking to me that it has hung on to the bill for this long. I was expecting it would be one of the, you know, first things to get cut when they started, started slicing things down, but it's, it's still there.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah, no, I was surprised too, because I, I DM'd somebody in a senator's office and I was like, this was y'all's thing. Like, is it still in there? And they're like, we're really scared, but we'll see.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  So everyone, everyone was like, oh my God, this is so cool. And then also, something that I think is really important to talk about is this free laptop program that's in the BBB program as well. The infrastructure bill, like we just talked about, 65 billion to make sure families have in-home access to high-speed broadband. But what does that mean for families who don't have devices at all? Right? So this program essentially gives states and housing authorities, public libraries, all these kinds of organizations, the ability to ask for grant funding from the Commerce Department in order to make either laptops, desktops, or tablets free for people of lower income. They could also partner with Microsoft, maybe, or some other company in order to do like a refurbished,

• 16:10Speaker 02

  lower-cost device program. So that's really, really cool. And really, it comes down to, you can put all the money out there for broadband access, but if people still don't have the devices to even connect, you're really not helping people all that much. So that'll be cool to see if it gets passed.

• 16:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And at the beginning of the pandemic, McKenna, you, you've actually done a bunch of stories about this, pre-pandemic, during the pandemic, right? There's like the homework gap for a lot of kids where they don't have access and then they, all they have is their school's devices, which may or may not be useful. So you connect broadband and you give people devices. That's, that's good. What's the, the status of that second bill is kind of up in the air, right?

• 16:48Speaker 02

  It is. So this is an interesting thing that happened before the House left a couple of weeks ago. They, there's this fight between progressives who had long been promised, we're going to get these social services programs in the BBB, in the, in Biden's infrastructure plan. We've been promised this. We want the Medicare. We want things like that. And then the bill got severed in two. So progressives were like, well, we can vote on BIF, but we, bipartisan infrastructure bill, sorry. I shouldn't use like weird Twitter jargon. We should, we, when we vote on On the infrastructure bill, we need to vote on the BBB as well, the social spending program. And I think it was close to 20 House Democrats refused to vote, they voted no on the infrastructure package. And so that infrastructure package was narrowly, very narrowly approved.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  So that BBB bill needs to be brought up in both the House and the Senate for a new vote in order for it to pass. So the politics in the House, of course, are a little shaky, but the politics in the Senate on that is also a little shaky with Joe Manchin, of course, who held up the infrastructure package for a while. And then Kirsten Sinema, noted Democrat net neutrality hater, the only Democrat who really opposes net neutrality. And so their votes are really, with such a razor thin majority in the Senate, they need those votes in order to approve the BBB. And they're hoping to do this before Thanksgiving, before December, before something. The timeline's not entirely sure just yet.

• 18:11Nilay Patel?

  I don't think I want to get too deep into the intra Democrat politics of it all. There are many podcasts available for you to listen to if you want to really get deep into the weeds on Democratic Party politics. But fundamentally, how do they decide, okay, broadband goes in this bill, but laptops to let kids use that broadband goes in this bill? Was there any rhyme or reason to that?

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Well, the second half of the bill is being done through a process in the Senate called reconciliation. So that has kind of changed a little bit of the language, especially because they have to do it through reconciliation, because they only need a small majority rather than a super majority to pass it, which requires those two Democratic senators, right, in order for it to get approved. With BIF, BIF is called BIF because it's bipartisan, right? They had that super majority. It was passed with a lot of Republican support. And for a long time, a lot of Republican senators, not just Democrats, have been calling for a universal broadband access, right? So that was easy to secure in there. Maybe it wasn't as much money as Democrats had hoped, but they were able to get it in there and secure a bipartisan win for the Biden administration.

• 19:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And we've long noted that giving people faster internet access is like, across the aisle, everyone wants it. Sometimes it comes down to how will you deliver it is the disagreement. But I think every member of Congress wants to go back to their district and be like, your internet's faster and I did that. And it's a pretty easy win to deliver to people. Okay, let's talk about the FCC because it has come up in the context of broadband so many times. The FCC is in a moment of extended drama in like many different dimensions. So let's start with the simplest one. They did have a vote. They might have a new chairperson soon, who we know well. It's Jessica Rosenworth. I've talked to her. You've talked to her. She's been on the show. But then there's Gigi Stone, who we've also talked to a lot at The Verge,

• 20:02Nilay Patel?

  who seems much more controversial. Break down what's going on there.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  Right. So since the beginning of the Biden administration, Ajit Pai, the former chair, stepped away. And right now, we're sitting at a 2-2 stalemate with two Republicans and two Democrats. So they can't really do anything too controversial. They can't really do anything that Democrats really want to do, whether that's passing net neutrality or putting more broadband regulations in place, because they just don't have the votes to do it. So that's the way it's been for 11 months now, where they've just been kind of doing essentially like administrative work, spectrum work, basically just kind of like cleaning the floors of like things that are easy to do cooperatively, like things that just need to get done. So they've been able to do that. And for so long, even over the summer, we're hearing rumors about who

• 20:49Speaker 02

  the next FCC chair is going to be, who's the next person who's going to be appointed. And eventually, it ended up being Jessica Rosenworth, who is serving as chair now. And now we have Gigi Stone, who noted progressive, supports net neutrality, supports like broader regulations for broadband at the FCC. Used to work for Tom Wheeler as a general counsel during like the net neutrality fight. Of course, like Obama's chairperson who pushed that through in the end. Everyone seems a little excited about Jessica Rosenworth. Her vote will be pretty easy to get through. But with Gigi, there's been this weird fight that's crept up from Murdoch-owned businesses, kind of. But I don't want to, you know, you can't really say anything specifically. But Lindsey Graham, The Wall Street Journal,

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Fox News, they're all saying that Gigi will work as a censor against Republican speech on the airwaves. Sorry, I've been saying Republican speech online for years now, and this is my credit over to. The airwaves now, uh, so which is essentially, uh, Gigi has like had some comments about like fairness over the airwaves for a while, but over the last couple of years, she said, there's no way that anything like that could happen again. So there's this weird kind of fight and i- i- I think that's also like explained through the fact that like Newsmax and OAN noted pro-Trump, uh, news organizations support her nomination. So it's kind of in this weird, um, moment where we basically know that we're still gonna have two, two, but it's, there is no hearing for Gigi.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  We have no idea what's really happening there and it's questioning whether or not Democrats can get anything done really in Biden's first year, first two years in office.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  Can you explain why Newsmax and OAN would be supporting Gigi Zone? Because if there's any group that I would assume would say that, you know, censor, Republicans are being censored and we must stop it, it would be those outlets. Uh, so I'm confused.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  Right. So I think it's interesting to note that like Gigi has been doing this for like 30 years. Uh, she is a well beloved person in the telecom community amongst Republicans and Democrats. Every source I ha- I talked to is like, Gigi rules. She will listen to you and she has, uh, when she talks about free speech, she really means it and all this kind of stuff. And the people who worked at Newsmax and OAN who offered these op-eds, you know, last week, have worked with Gigi and know what she, you know, what she stands for. Um, so they, they know that Gigi will support them, maybe not support, right? But give them the opportunity, right? To continue to work the way that they do. It's the interesting thing where it's coming from more, it was a Wall Street Journal op-ed page that, uh, that had the first thing about

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Gigi, then of course Fox News, and then more conservative Republicans who are raising the question about this censorship thing, which feels kind of like a made up argument because it's not something anyone has really raised, um, against Gigi in the past at all.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. This is my favorite, like mini drama going on right now. Because Fox News versus Newsmax, if you abstract away the fact that they're both conservative cable networks, what you have is a gigantic monopoly position and an upstart competitor.

• 23:57Nilay Patel?

  And Gigi is aligned with the competitors and then the gigantic monopolies really dislike that. And then the other thing you have, which is like more broadly, you have the cable networks, which have to like run OAN and Newsmax and all those other channels. So they have worked with Gigi on the business side to get access to Comcast and Spectrum and whoever else, disclosure, Comcast is an investor in Fox, I assure you, this is not influencer coverage at all. So ages ago, Gigi organized a coalition of like independent cable networks to demand access to cable companies and Fox opposed that. She organized the conservative outlets to oppose when Tribune was trying to buy Sinclair,

• 24:38Nilay Patel?

  which is the huge conservative broadcast network. She organized the like small conservative outlets to oppose that merger. So just like broadly, she's on the side of big things shouldn't get bigger. And so all these small networks have worked with her to oppose big things that ain't bigger. So I agree. I think there's that. And then there's also like AT&T and Comcast and they spent a ton of lobbying money for a lot, just across the board. Like pick a senator, there's money flowing in from the telcos and Gigi wants to regulate them harder. So like across the board, I think there's just a lot of opposition here. But if you look at the breakdown, Fox News versus OAN comes down to OAN's business is threatened by monopolies, both in broadcasting

• 25:22Nilay Patel?

  and cable and then eventually for access. And anytime you try to regulate those monopolies, people say it's censorship. And I think this is just hilarious, right? Like you live by AT&T's lobbying money, you kind of like you die by AT&T's lobbying money. Like OAN runs on DirecTV, there's all those stories about how AT&T is like funds OAN. AT&T's lobbying money is preventing the person that OAN wants from getting on the FCC. I think it's just like utterly fascinating to see that split in inside of conservative media play out in the face of it is a progressive FCC And I don't know, I just find this, like, I could talk about this all day. Like, it's very, it's a very small Beltway politics, but it's, I think it's symptoms of something much bigger.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 26:05Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. Do you think she's gonna get through McKenna?

• 26:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do. I think there's always horse trading done. That's kind of what everyone says on the Hill when it comes to nominations. They get voted on the same time that they do another bill, or, you know, senators make some deal to get one nomination in for getting like something else. So I think something will break eventually. It just depends on when.

• 26:27Nilay Patel?

  But there's like a, there's like a deadline here, right? If they don't get Rosenworcel in his chair, they don't get Sona in time, this 2-2 deadlock persists for quite a while, right?

• 26:36Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. Yeah. And Rosenworcel would have to pick up her office and leave if they don't vote on to reconfirm her by the end of the year, which would be a 1-2 with Republicans in the majority of the FCC. So that's what wasting all of this time has brought us to. It's kind of intense over there at the House of Lawyers.

• 26:57Nilay Patel?

  It's like just a bunch of gray suits yelling.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 26:59Nilay Patel?

  No, that's always what the FCC has been. Like, I feel like the Trump administration was notable in that, right? Maybe they never got infrastructure done, but they confirmed a lot of appointments. They confirmed a lot of judges. They moved really fast on this stuff. Why has the Biden administration been so slow?

• 27:15Speaker 02

  I mean, it's a good question. I think it has a lot to do with how the Senate will confirm them, right? When you have more controversial people like this, the fun thing to note is like, there's like three really progressive people in Biden's cabinet right now. There is Leena Khan, who we've talked about a lot, and she had bipartisan support because we've seen this like bipartisan outcry over like tech regulation and like enforcement over monopoly power at the FTC. And then the same thing with Jonathan Cantor. Jonathan Cantor was approved earlier this week to lead the antitrust division at the DOJ. And so there's those two progressives, right? But when it comes to telecom and Gigi, it's funny that that's like the one progressive who's having like that much of an issue. And I think it really does come down to, right? This like huge history of telecom money and things like that.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  And of course, like at the Senate, Kirsten Sinema is one of the deciding votes when she gets brought to a House floor, right? To see if she even gets confirmed. So they either need like more Republicans on board or to ensure that these two Democrats, Manchin and Sinema, will vote to approve her.

• 28:17Nilay Patel?

  All right, I'll do it. Put me in, Coach.

• 28:20Nilay Patel?

  I'll do it. I'll just put me in. I'll run the FCC. That would be, I don't think I'd get voted for, but I'll do it. Joe, if you're listening, you got my number? He doesn't, he doesn't have my number. He could probably get it. Uh, last one, Biden's picked somebody to run the FDA.

• 28:34Speaker 02

  And they work at Google.

• 28:36Nilay Patel?

  This is very, it's very funny for a million reasons, but first tell us who this person is.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  So yeah, this is, um, Robert Califf, I'm assuming, and he's going to run, you know, the FDA that was announced like earlier this week. Right now he's like a senior advisor for Verily Health Sciences, but Sciences, sorry. And then like Google Health, um, which is kind of interesting. Uh, but of course, like it's good to note that like the Obama administration that Joe Biden was a part of had a lot of like tech people and a lot of people who left the Obama administration to go work in tech. There is this like big atmosphere of like tech people in the Obama's circle. So we've seen a lot of tech people kind of move into the, um, you know, the Biden office as well. And so it's kind of interesting to see, there's been a lot of pushback on having like tech people in the cabinet. So it's interesting that this one kind of like cracked through.

• 29:24Nilay Patel?

  I just have to say this, Google never made the website. Don't hire the person from Google. They were supposed to make a website that was supposed to test. They just never did it. All right. I put, it was only on here, so I can make the website check. Uh, McKenna, what should we be looking forward next? We're cruising into Thanksgiving and then holidays. When do you, when should people be on the lookout for this next set of votes around Rosenworth and around Build Back Better?

• 29:47Speaker 02

  Man, so Build Back Better, who knows? Um, we've gotten to this point where it could be tomorrow. It could be a month from now. Honestly, it just depends when this gets decided. Uh, when it comes to Rosenworth, the Senate never does anything like one at a time. They always have like one day where they decide to take a vote on like literally everything. So I'm sure like she'll get voted around the same time that they end up like funding the government, which is still a thing that they have not done yet. And the government could shut down next month again. Uh, everyone, we are in shambles. I don't know how the system continues to work. But yeah, so I mean, I'm hoping by the end of the year more broadly, and then look at it when other big projects like the defense authorization and other big

• 30:31Speaker 02

  like funding bills get pushed through through the end of the year.

• 30:34Nilay Patel?

  All right, McKenna, it's always a pleasure to have you on. We'll have you back when all this stuff gets passed to figure out where all this money is going, who's going to spend it. Great to talk to you.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  Later, guys.

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• 32:07Nilay Patel?

  Lauren Grousch, welcome to the Vergecast.

• 32:09Speaker 05

  I'm so excited to be back.

• 32:11Nilay Patel?

  If you don't know, Lauren was off on book leave. We're excited to read Lauren's book when it comes out.

• 32:15Speaker 05

  Me too.

• 32:15Nilay Patel?

  We can't plug it yet because it's not out, so we gotta wait. But it's been months since we've talked to Lauren and months since she's been on the show. So, welcome back.

• 32:21Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 32:22Nilay Patel?

  And it's a good day to come back because the space wars have begun.

• 32:27Speaker 05

  They haven't begun, but they are getting closer and they are having, we're getting some issues, yes.

• 32:35Nilay Patel?

  All right. So, I'm just reading this headline, "Russia Blows Up A Satellite, Comma, Creating Dangerous Debris Cloud In Space." Is this a James Bond movie? I just want to take both parts of that headline in turn.

• 32:46Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 32:47Nilay Patel?

  Let's start with Russia blows up a satellite. Why did Russia blow up a satellite?

• 32:50Speaker 05

  Right. So, what Russia did is known as an anti-satellite test, or an ASAT test. And what these are, are basic political shows of strength to say that, hey,

• 33:04Speaker 05

  I have this capability of blowing up a satellite that's in orbit around Earth. And it's actually a pretty hard thing to do. Remember that satellites that are in Earth orbit are moving at roughly 17,500 miles per hour. And so being able to pinpoint exactly where it's going to be and then send a missile to that satellite is a pretty complicated technical capability. And so Russia was basically showing off, saying, hey, look, we took out one of our satellites. We could potentially do that with one of yours if you, you know, down the line. They didn't say that outright, but that is what they are implying by doing this.

• 33:45Nilay Patel?

  So they fired a missile from Earth and hit one of their own satellites in space, which is very complicated. And obviously, right, the signal is we could potentially do it to yours. Aren't there like rules that say we're not supposed to do that?

• 33:58Speaker 05

  So that has been a big point of discussion after this test happened. We do have a treaty. It's called the Outer Space Treaty. It's my favorite treaty. Basically loose guidelines of how we're supposed to explore space. And, you know, it's, we want to explore space peacefully. Don't put nukes in orbit. Kind of basic things like that. It's essentially, it's written vague on purpose so that we have options when it comes to exploring space. They didn't want it to be very restrictive and telling countries exactly what they could do in orbit. Also, there hasn't been a desire to outright ban ASAT tests because, you know, the US did

• 34:41Speaker 05

  an ASAT test itself back in 2008. So I'm sure that discussion will be revived. And I mean, it's already being revived right now that the Russians did this. But yeah, it's, it's not outright banned. We do have guidelines for how we're supposed to behave in space. They're all very much open to interpretation, but it's, yeah, there is no, there is no treaty that says, do not perform anti-satellite tests in orbit.

• 35:11Nilay Patel?

  That seems like an oversight. But there's a reason you'd want to do it, right? I mean, a large chunk of our communications infrastructure runs through space. Like if you were to go to a war, you would probably want to do this?

• 35:25Speaker 05

  There, I mean, there are plenty of discussions about what a war in space would look like. And Not necessarily destroying a satellite with a kinetic missile because of the impact it has, but you know, jamming satellites, you know, taking out a satellite either physically or with software is definitely what I think a future space battle would entail. Because I think a lot of people don't realize just how reliant we are on our satellite infrastructure. You know, we are a space nation in a way. We, our phones rely on GPS. You know, we take a lot of Earth imagery with our satellites. A lot of surveillance

• 36:05Speaker 05

  satellites are very much necessary for our military apparatus. So yeah, I think taking out satellites in some form would definitely be a way that you would do battle in space.

• 36:18Nilay Patel?

  And then the other thing before we get to the debris cloud, which seems like its own complicated problem. I don't know, just for like a while there, it seemed like the United States and Russia, for all their other problems, were pretty agreeable with space.

• 36:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:31Nilay Patel?

  Right. The International Space Station exists. We needed their rockets to go there. That appears to have changed. Is that me just overreading the fact they blew up a satellite?

• 36:40Speaker 05

  It's a very interesting position that we are in because what seems to be happening is a delineation between the Russian military and Roscosmos, the space agency or space corporation and what it is, is we have a good relationship with Roscosmos. Sometimes it can be a little iffy, but overall, we have a great foundation to work with them. They are our biggest partners on the International Space Station, and so NASA is working with them frequently. The NASA administrator seems to, he indicated that it's possible

• 37:19Speaker 05

  Roscosmos did not know about this test, so that the military did it not knowing that it would potentially jeopardize their cosmonauts onboard the International Space Station, which we can get into shortly. We haven't had a lot of details and the Russian military put out a very spicy statement after it happened that was like, oh, the US knows very well that this was not a danger. That this was not a problem, which is just a wild statement to make, but that is part of the Russia playbook. So it's not necessarily unsurprising.

• 37:55Nilay Patel?

  Okay. And I have to ask you this question. I'm just going to tell the audience, I'm going to ask this question and then you need to imagine Lauren just rolling her eyes as hard as she can. We have a space force?

• 38:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:08Nilay Patel?

  There's patches, there's uniforms. We, they got, they've got uniforms are called guardians. It's a whole situation. Is this what our space force is designed to do?

• 38:18Speaker 05

  No.

• 38:19Nilay Patel?

  Okay, just checking.

• 38:21Speaker 05

  I mean, okay, there is, we have something called the US Space Command and that is responsible for overseeing the tracking of debris and objects in space. And so it was actually the responsibility of US Space Command to track the objects that were created from this ASAT test, which they said it was about 1,500 trackable objects and then thousands of small objects that we cannot track. And that's the scary part, right? Because we have great tracking capability, but we just can't see everything, especially if it's small. So that's what's so scary about it. The Space Force is mostly tasked with operating

• 39:05Speaker 05

  and deploying those satellites that we talked about. They oversee our space assets in orbit. There has been discussion about, you know, sending people into space for Space Force, but for now.

• 39:19Nilay Patel?

  Could you hear the eye roll? Because I saw the eye roll.

• 39:23Speaker 05

  What you have to understand is the US military has had a large stake in space and satellites and the satellite infrastructure for a very long time. And what Space Force has done is essentially put all those people that operate those assets into their own branch or, uh, yeah. And so it's really a bureaucratic and boring change, but it did get a lot of attention because, you know, it was Trump's pet project and it has a very provocative name, if you will.

• 39:56Nilay Patel?

  Outer Space Treaty Space Force. It's a good name. Okay, let's talk about the debris cloud. So they blew up the satellite. You said there's stuff we could track 1500 of things we can track, stuff we can't track. It seems like, right, the astronauts on the ISS didn't know this was gonna happen. How did this all play out?

• 40:11Speaker 05

  Let me walk you through my Monday because, well, for us, it was very crazy. So we started the day with reports that there had been this ASAT test from Russia. Wasn't confirmed. The State Department hadn't confirmed it yet. No one from the US was confirming it yet. And then at the same time, we had these other reports that the astronauts on board the International Space Station had to shelter in place that morning because of a cloud of debris that kept passing by the space station every 90 minutes, which is how long it takes the space station to orbit the Earth. And so, obviously, we try, we put two and two together. Okay, it seems like this ASAT test probably created this cloud

• 40:56Speaker 05

  of debris that caused the astronauts to go into the safety mode, but we didn't know that for sure.

• 41:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, my question is like, you don't, you don't know it for sure, but like, do you, you know, you just don't want to say it? Or is it like, actually, there's like clouds of debris often enough where like, this could be just a wacky coinkydink?

• 41:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, when it comes to space journalism, I never want to assume, never want to assume.

• 41:22Nilay Patel?

  Lauren's like, I'm an author now, Dieter. Yeah, the standards are higher. She didn't, she doesn't want to Space Force the issue.

• 41:27Speaker 05

  You just don't ever want to assume. And obviously, in our minds, it did make sense. And then what helped was we have, I have this great source, a satellite tracker named Jonathan McDowell. He's like the go to guy when it comes to tracking debris or satellites of any kind in orbit. And so he came online and then he did all of these calculations and he basically showed that the suspected satellite that we thought Russia had blown up tracked with the ISS. It was coming, like it crossed paths with the ISS about the same time every, like that mission control kept telling. The astronauts of debris cloud was passing. So at that point, it was like, okay,

• 42:11Speaker 05

  this is absolutely happening because of the ASAT test. But we still needed, you know, the US to confirm that. We needed NASA to confirm that. And getting those statements was actually pretty difficult throughout the day. And I get it. It's a matter of national security. It has a big geopolitical ramifications. So I understood why it took them a while, but it was kind of frustrating because we knew that this was a direct correlation, but we couldn't say for sure.

• 42:36Nilay Patel?

  So when you say passing by, was it close? Was it dangerously close? Was it NASA being over cautious?

• 42:42Speaker 05

  As I understand it, the satellite that they shot down was about roughly 100 kilometers, I want to say, above the International Space Station. But what happens when you do these ASAT tests is, like I said, it creates these thousands of pieces of debris and they don't just stay in one spot, right? It's an explosive event. So they go to higher altitudes, they go to lower altitudes. They span like miles along the orbital track of where the original satellite was. So the way I described it to somebody I thought was a pretty good analogy was imagine if you crashed into a car and created all these car pieces, but those pieces continued to drive down the highway.

• 43:28Speaker 05

  You know, like, and you couldn't move them. They were just speeding along and you couldn't stop them or maneuver and you just have to maneuver around them forever because they're going to be, they're going to stay on the highway for years.

• 43:42Nilay Patel?

  So they're not going to decay and fall into orbit and burn up. It's going to be a long time.

• 43:45Speaker 05

  Well, they will, but it takes years for that to happen for our, our atmosphere and gravity to pull them down. So what you have this situation where they're going to be kind of raining down, crossing paths with the International Space Station for years to come. So it's, it's a significant problem that I'm pretty sure NASA is going to have to be monitoring for a very long time.

• 44:08Nilay Patel?

  Now, you mentioned Space Command and that they could track the larger objects, but the smaller objects were the scarier ones. So if we've got smaller objects that can't be tracked.

• 44:17Speaker 03

  Around for a long time. I mean, you know, I think everyone knows like the nightmare scenario is like, there's so much space junk up there, anything that goes into orbit just could smash to bits by random space junk. Like, is this like, the first step towards that path of like, well, I guess we don't get to put stuff in orbit anymore. Like, how nerve wracked are do people seem about the fact that there's a bunch of, you know, new space junk they can't track?

• 44:41Speaker 05

  Oh, everyone, everyone in the space community is outraged over it. They've all condemned it, you know, and there's some debate over whether or not that exact scenario you painted will happen. It may not be this thing where if you, if you launch into orbit, something's going to immediately like smack you in your face, you know, it's, it's more of, there is so much congestion up there that you don't necessarily have a clear path, or you don't necessarily know where all this stuff is. That's, that's another big point of concern is we have all these tracking devices to determine where space junk is, but we have differences of opinion over where those things are. And those differences of opinion can

• 45:24Speaker 05

  be a few miles in, you know, not knowing where they are. So you could have one satellite and the US military will say, oh, it's here. And then you have LEO Labs, which is a private space company tracker, and they say, actually, we see it, you know, two miles this way. And so when you have that uncertainty factor, combined with the fact that it's getting more congested, then you don't necessarily know if you launching your satellite is going to be safe if, if you don't know exactly where everything is, and everything's kind of all, you know, crowding that environment, just becomes harder to actually put things into orbit. So it's, it's less of a scenario where you have like gravity, where things are just constantly like.

• 46:09Speaker 05

  Destroying all of your, your infrastructure. It's more of just, is it safe to put my satellite in orbit? That question becomes more and more of a concern.

• 46:18Nilay Patel?

  What about Russia? I mean, doesn't Russia also operates the International Space Station? They've got cosmonauts there. Like, don't, shouldn't this bother them?

• 46:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was the whole, that's the whole irony of the situation. I mean, when we found out that they had done this and that they had potentially jeopardized the safety, they have, there's two cosmonauts on the International Space Station right now. So it was definitely very strange, but if you look at the history of the Russian space program, you know, they, they were never that concerned about putting their cosmonauts in harm's way. So I guess it's not completely surprising, but it does feel a bit counterintuitive.

• 47:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:03Speaker 05

  But then you have Roscosmos that comes out and they say, you know, safety is our number one priority. So like I said, it is possible that there was a miscommunication between the space program and the military side of things, but it does seem very strange that they would potentially put their own cosmonauts at risk.

• 47:23Nilay Patel?

  All right, let's talk about some other space stuff. NASA announced a bunch of changes to the lunar program, a delay. Blue Origin is mad as usual. It seems to be their permanent state of being. What, what's going on with the moon? Is it still there? Is it, are the tides still being driven by it? I still like having you on the show. I just get to toss out these questions.

• 47:46Speaker 05

  Moon's still there.

• 47:47Nilay Patel?

  There's like a blood moon soon, right? Is moon cool? What's up with the moon?

• 47:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's a lunar eclipse coming up. Uh, oh wait, when does this air? Might be.

• 47:55Nilay Patel?

  Tomorrow.

• 47:56Speaker 05

  Okay, so it'll happen by the time this airs. So hopefully you went out last night and looked at it. Yeah. So what I think Neelai is referring to is the fact that NASA wants to send people back to the moon with its Artemis program. And they recently announced that their ambitious target date, which was 2024, is not going to happen as we all suspected. And they moved the target date to 2025 instead, which doesn't seem nearly, it doesn't seem any more realistic than the 2024 date. But, you know, what can you do? It's good to have a bold deadline, right?

• 48:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:36Speaker 05

  You have your aspirational deadline and then you have your real deadline and so.

• 48:40Nilay Patel?

  What do you think the real deadline is?

• 48:41Speaker 05

  Oh gosh, we've all placed our bets on this, but I will not reveal my cards on this because I have my own internal date.

• 48:47Speaker 03

  I bet you it's the same year that they put a touchscreen on the Mac.

• 48:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Oh no, I hate it. And then Blue Origin is suing the government because they didn't get the contract to build the slander, right?

• 48:57Speaker 05

  Well, actually that lawsuit has now come to an end. The judge overseeing the case ruled against them. And so now their litigation has ended and actually the judge just released his opinion, which was very spicy. Uh, and very in the weeds and we can definitely get into it if you want.

• 49:19Speaker 05

  Essentially Jeff Bezos came out and said that they were going to accept the ruling. And so it sounds like they won't be protesting or appealing the results anymore. And so now SpaceX is the sole provider for NASA's human lunar lander. And they have a long road ahead of them, but I am very eager to see how it goes.

• 49:42Nilay Patel?

  And then Elon has just been like wilding on Twitter in all kinds of ways lately. And, and he got, but he got to dunk on Bezos, which is like all he cares about in the world.

• 49:50Speaker 05

  Yes. Um, but you could have me on every Verge cast and we could always have somebody.

• 49:54Speaker 03

  Didn't he just do a live stream where he, he said some, some strange things?

• 49:59Speaker 05

  Oh yeah. He gave an update on Starship, which is the uh, next generation vehicle that they're building is the same one that they are building for NASA to take humans to the surface of the moon. And he just gave an overview of, you know, its capabilities, what they hope to use it for. And uh, he made a new prediction that it will fly to orbit for the first time in January, maybe February. He doesn't know if it'll work the first time, which to be fair, that's a, that's a good prediction. Well, look, it's a, it's a, it's a very ambitious vehicle and there's always going to be some, you know, explosions when you do something for the first time. And that's, that's SpaceX's

• 50:41Speaker 05

  strategy. They kind of, they explode, rebuild and do it again, you know? So it's, it's definitely, it's been working out for them in terms of actually getting to reliable flight hardware.

• 50:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Other SpaceX news, right? They, they launched four astronauts to the space station and brought them back, which is now becoming a little bit of like a regular occurrence, which is like a big deal.

• 51:05Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, it was just last year that we were all kind of like, you know, watching in eager anticipation as they launched their first two astronauts. And now since then, they've had five human spaceflight missions, four for NASA and one that sent, you know, four private crew members into orbit for three days. And I think it's, I was actually just thinking this before I came on. I think it's good when these things come routine, become routine. It's, you know, a lot of companies get upset after a while because they'll stop covering their launches. And I'm thinking it's good when I'm not covering your launch. If I am covering it, that means that something bad happened, you know? So it's good when the stuff becomes boring

• 51:49Speaker 05

  because it means that we're doing it, you know, safely and routinely.

• 51:52Nilay Patel?

  That's great. And then lastly, McKenna was just on, we were talking a little bit about Starlink. Starlink has a new dish.

• 51:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:00Nilay Patel?

  It's like, it's like a little rectangle guy.

• 52:02Speaker 05

  I want you to get it. I think it looks cool.

• 52:04Nilay Patel?

  I, so I, I'm the person with the Starlink dish. I, I pay for the service. I have the old one. It's like 22 inches. This one's like little. They said it's cheaper to make. They did not lower the price.

• 52:15Speaker 05

  No.

• 52:17Nilay Patel?

  Like a graded, like when I say Starlink is a broadband company, only broadband companies are like, we made the thing cheaper to make, but we're going to keep charging you the same money. That is a very broadband company attitude that has. The only real difference besides the smaller size, cheaper to make, they up the wifi specs. They still haven't opened the coverage areas. It still seems delayed. Starlink, SpaceX does not have a PR department. We can't even ask, it's like hard to even ask questions about what's going on.

• 52:48Speaker 05

  Well, they have a PR department. They just don't respond to me.

• 52:52Speaker 05

  And I'm curious if anyone has actually received this yet because as I understand it, they're very backlogged when it comes to new orders because of the chip shortage. And then also, I guess we did, we did a story that if you change your address at all in the map tool, it sends you to the back of the line. So.

• 53:10Speaker 03

  This is, this is the most amazing thing. So they have a tool where you can like say what your service area is. And people were going to go play with the map. I think there was like an email that you're supposed to go like, look at it or something. And so people, the quote is, I moved my location from my barn to my house, which is 13 feet. And now my order has been moved back to late 2022, which is like, don't mess around with maps. You never know what will happen.

• 53:35Nilay Patel?

  They've launched a lot more satellites since I did the review. So I'm gonna try it again. Like I said, I have the dish, I've been paying for it. But the key problem with Starlink is even one utility pole in the, in your line of sight, and that whole arc will interrupt your service. And they, it's just, they keep kind of just like quietly not mentioning that.

• 53:57Speaker 05

  I'm curious, I'm sure you got a lot of, you did the review well.

• 54:01Nilay Patel?

  To this day.

• 54:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm sure you get a lot of feedback on it. Can I ask why you didn't put it on the roof?

• 54:08Nilay Patel?

  Oh, on my house? If you put it on the roof of my house, I'd have to go 100 feet in the air to clear the trees.

• 54:12Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 54:12Nilay Patel?

  So when I, so I did drive down, like, you know, the cells are pretty big. The honeycomb cells of service are pretty big. So like, just a little ways down the road, there's a big overlook where it's totally clear. And I spent about a day with it out there. And the results were the same. The point I was trying to make in the review was like, even this much, and even this little bit, the sky is totally clear, but you've got like, eight trees in the way. You're basically looking at degraded service. And so to get in my house, to get up over those trees, I'd have to put up a 100 foot pole.

• 54:43Speaker 05

  Yeah. I guess it would be good for like, somebody in the desert, or, you know, and out in, out in a very non-wooded area.

• 54:52Nilay Patel?

  Honestly, one of the most wholesome places on the entire, and this entire subreddit is mad at me. But that's fine. But one of the most wholesome places in the entire internet is the Starlink subreddit, where they're all just talking about how excited they are and like comparing their test results and sharing their absolutely bonkers installs.

• 55:12Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like just bonkers. Like somebody's like, I didn't want to wait for this pole to come in. So I, I built a, a tower out of two by fours. It's 60 feet in the air. Do you guys think this is good? And everyone's like, you did such a good job. And it's like, this is all crazy. Like, there's a lot of people being like, just cut down the trees. Like, there's like, there's like, characters in the subreddit, you know, like, there's the, the people who are like, just pay the money. Like, it's worth it to spend $40,000 on a utility pole at your house. And then there's the guys who are like, just get a chainsaw, dude. It's worth it. And it's like, all of this, it is legitimately, just go to the Starlink subreddit and scroll it for a while. Like, there's hardcore nerds doing satellite tracking. Like, every time Starlink launches new satellites,

• 55:57Nilay Patel?

  they track when they come online, they measure the speeds and the latency. And then there's like the chainsaw guys. And like, I don't, it's just like, I read it consistently on Reddit because it is just like the happiest little community of nerds. Because Starlink doesn't help them.

• 56:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's gotta be really rough.

• 56:13Nilay Patel?

  So they've just built their own little community of support. Um, I know they're all mad at me, but I'm just, I'm expressing to them, I am meeting your hatred with nothing but love, because I love you.

• 56:24Speaker 05

  Have you put in your order for the new?

• 56:26Nilay Patel?

  I can't. Oh, there's no, there's no option to upgrade your dish.

• 56:29Speaker 05

  That, oh, because you already bought yours?

• 56:32Nilay Patel?

  Cause I already have one.

• 56:33Speaker 05

  Oh, interesting. Okay. Well, I would, I would have loved to see like the, the review part two where.

• 56:41Nilay Patel?

  I kept the new dish. If someone wants to come to my house and put up a hundred foot pole, uh, doors open. Uh, I just, um, also that, you know, the cable, uh, the other big improvement on the new dish is that the cable detaches from the dish. So the one I have, the cable is permanently attached to it.

• 56:58Speaker 05

  I see.

• 56:59Nilay Patel?

  So even if I did put up the hundred foot pole. I'd have to take the, a bunch of cable with me and route that, route that from the dish to the house instead of the way that you'd normally do it. So they did make that big improvement.

• 57:11Speaker 03

  So I'm, I'm looking at one of the installs of the new dish, which apparently is called squishy square pants.

• 57:17Nilay Patel?

  Oh, good.

• 57:18Speaker 05

  Oh, my God.

• 57:18Speaker 03

  Which is amazing.

• 57:20Nilay Patel?

  Are you on the Starlink subreddit?

• 57:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, it's down to like putting calipers on every single part of the cable that you can now unplug, like to show you exactly like down to the millimeter, how wide the different pieces of it are, like the, the plug itself.

• 57:34Nilay Patel?

  So you can route it through your house?

• 57:36Speaker 03

  You can route it through your house and you can like figure out, you know, if you would need to make any kind of jig or whatever to make sure it, you know, stays where you plug it in or something.

• 57:43Nilay Patel?

  I'm telling you, it's the most wholesome place.

• 57:44Speaker 03

  This is great.

• 57:45Nilay Patel?

  It's, I just, I promise you, like, it is just bros helping bros all day long in every which way that you can think about it. It's great. All right, Lauren. Well, it's good to have you back. We've missed you.

• 57:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:57Nilay Patel?

  There's always an endless flood of space in you, so we'll have you back soon. Thanks for coming on.

• 58:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was gonna say every day something's popping off, so I'm sure I'll be back pretty soon.

• 58:10Speaker 06

  Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing in wearable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com slash apple watch series 12.

• 58:40Speaker 01

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• 59:18Speaker 03

  Alex Cranz.

• 59:20Alex Cranz?

  Hello.

• 59:21Speaker 03

  You've returned to us. How's it going?

• 59:22Alex Cranz?

  I'm awake. I'm here. I'm ready to record.

• 59:25Speaker 03

  So, big story this week. This was, you know, it's like the week before Thanksgiving. There's not like a flood of news, like Black Friday is coming, like the new stuff is like kinda over, right? Like it's all holiday, like ship the stuff out mode for all the companies. But Apple starts the week with a bang and they announce, like kinda out of the blue, we're gonna start letting people repair their own iPhones, are gonna sell parts, and soon we're gonna let you repair your M1 Max. It's interesting that they're only doing the M1.

• 59:54Alex Cranz?

  Only the M1s.

• 59:55Speaker 03

  It's like a weird line. Alex, tell us what's going on there. What was this announcement?

• 59:59Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, so they, they announced that they're gonna sell you little kits that we don't know how much those kits will cost or what will be in the kits that you can take and then repair your devices. And they're gonna make all of the instruction manuals available online. So it's like, really good ostensibly, unless you're iFixit, in which case it might not be great for your business model.

• 1:00:20Speaker 03

  iFixit, they, they did a reaction video, which I watched, and yeah, they're, they're gung ho. Kyle's like, yep, bring it on. I love competition. Yeah, this is like all they've ever won. Yeah. They're like, welcome, welcome IBM, or whatever. But they actually made a really good point, which is, you said, Alex, you know what it'll cost? I'm sure it'll be a lot. But the fact that there's gonna be the parts plus the manuals.

• 1:00:42Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:43Speaker 03

  So instead of trying to reverse engineer all of the procedures, the fact that Apple is publishing repair manuals means that iFixit will be able to like, get a jumpstart on like creating proper procedures for their open source version of repair manuals. Instead of just like intuiting what they think is the right way to do it and like guessing based on their teardowns, they'll actually see what like the official procedure is and then they can base their version of that procedure if they, you know, get different parts or whatever.

• 1:01:12Nilay Patel?

  Off of that. And then the third key part is the software, like the configuration software, so that you don't have to replace like ridiculous tiny micro soldered chips. If you, you know, want Face ID or True Tone or whatever to continue to work.

• 1:01:24Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I think there's like something to be optimistic about, but for me, it's hard to be super excited until we know what it is. Like, are they going to be sending you the screwdrivers with the very, the proprietary screw bits? Or are you going to have to go still buy those somewhere else? Are they going to sell you a heat gun so you can crack open your iPhone 13, which currently requires heat to like break this, the waterproof seals? Like, there's just a lot of stuff we don't know. So it's like, this seems really, really cool. And I think that, I think you're bang on. Like, it's the instruction manuals here. That's really the successful part of this. And there's really the exciting part of it. It's like the actual kits. I think there's just too many things up in the air for us to be like, anything but optimistic about them.

• 1:02:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I will say this. The, the steps here are, first, you have to review the online repair manual. Like, I just love the idea that Apple's gonna be like, are you sure? Like, look at how hard it is.

• 1:02:15Alex Cranz?

  You gonna do this?

• 1:02:16Nilay Patel?

  And you click through that, and then you place an order. Apple says they will offer more than 200 individual parts and tools. So whether or not the Johnny Ive heat gun is coming, you never know.

• 1:02:28Alex Cranz?

  Fingers crossed.

• 1:02:29Nilay Patel?

  But it does seem like a pentalobe screwdriver is coming.

• 1:02:32Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:32Nilay Patel?

  Like, the word tools, like, it's, you know, they're gonna make a hammer and a wrench and a screwdriver. So we'll see what that means. But 200 individual parts and tools. So the iPhone 12 and 13 currently, which are not like repairable phones.

• 1:02:47Alex Cranz?

  No.

• 1:02:47Nilay Patel?

  Not really. They are held together with glue and weird screws in lots of ways. So it's interesting that they walked this back. I would say this was met with like, uniform excitement.

• 1:02:57Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:58Nilay Patel?

  Right? Because even if all you're doing is you click through the thing, you order the parts, and then you go to a service provider who's good at this, massive win.

• 1:03:07Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, I, I think this is like, right now, if you go to get your iPhone screen repaired, you have no idea if you're getting an OEM screen. You have no idea if Face ID is going to work anymore. Like, there are lots of people who are good at taking the screens off of iPhones.

• 1:03:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:22Nilay Patel?

  They've not had access to parts or been able to do this in a particularly official way, or been able to preserve your warranty.

• 1:03:27Speaker 03

  And in fact, this is a better win, even if you live in a world where like you think, well, go to one of the official independent repair shops that are like blessed by Apple, because the forms and the NDAs and the agreements you have to sign to become one of those shops are actually relatively onerous. And so even if all Apple has done here is like, change the, change that program for repair shops and just like, made the website available to the public. Getting rid of those agreements and forms so that, like you said, Eli, you could like, go and buy the part and take it to somebody else is a big win.

• 1:03:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And I don't think Apple can NDA you out of, like, when you order the thing, they might be able to make you click a box and say you have to do it yourself. But like, we're not in the Panopticon metaverse yet, Tim Cook.

• 1:04:09Nilay Patel?

  Someone else can use that screwdriver and you will never know.

• 1:04:12Speaker 03

  I don't know. Have you read the iTunes Terms of Service lately?

• 1:04:15Nilay Patel?

  So that's all good. And I think universal praise. And then kind of the conversation immediately turned to, well, why would Apple do this? And the first cut was to satisfy regulators, and this will mean nothing, which all deference to our friend John Gruber is kind of his take. You can go read it on Daring Fireball. I would just argue, like, there is already a massive market for iPhone repair. Like, you're not inventing a market. You're just legitimizing an already huge market. So I think this is going to get take up, because you can already, we don't have to invent a demand. We don't have to invent a consumer who might want this.

• 1:04:50Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 1:04:50Nilay Patel?

  They already exist. They're already being served. Now they just have better parts. Cool. But then there's like something else going on here, like a shareholder lawsuit that might have actually pushed Apple.

• 1:05:01Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. The shareholder, it was an activist shareholders from the mutual fund Green Century who had...

• 1:05:09Nilay Patel?

  Love a mutual fund.

• 1:05:10Alex Cranz?

  Love a mutual fund. And they had back in September... Filed with the SEC saying, hey, Apple needs to serious. We're shareholders and we as shareholders demand that Apple think long and hard about its right to repair stance and change things. And apparently this past Wednesday was supposed to be the deadline for Apple to like, do something. And so Apple did this and those shareholders were like, well, okay, I guess we're withdrawing this because they did something and they still have to like, look at it. They said it's not like off the table, but, but yeah, it seemed that they are very much taking credit for this move.

• 1:05:50Nilay Patel?

  So what's interesting is they aren't taking credit. And we have a story, Matty Stone, our science editor, wrote it. So Apple told us on the record, background policy coming through. Apple says the program has been in development for well over a year, describing it as the next step in increasing access to Apple Genuine Parts Tools and Manuels. They would not say whether the announcement is influenced by the shareholder lawsuit.

• 1:06:13Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, they pointedly would not say that.

• 1:06:16Nilay Patel?

  Would not say.

• 1:06:17Alex Cranz?

  Very clearly.

• 1:06:17Nilay Patel?

  And then the activist shareholders are like, the timing is no coincidence.

• 1:06:20Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:20Nilay Patel?

  So it's not like a settlement.

• 1:06:22Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 1:06:22Nilay Patel?

  Right, where the shareholders sued and Apple said, we'll do this and the shareholders agreed to back off.

• 1:06:27Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:28Nilay Patel?

  It's like, it's maybe it was, and they're all just like, agreed to not talk about it, right? It's like the end of Back to the Future where they're trying, you're trying to connect the two things and like, they're so close, they're not quite connected yet.

• 1:06:39Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, like, I think what was interesting with this was initially, Apple was like, no, leave us alone. You're, you're trying to change our business and that's outside the realm of shareholders. But then the SEC had issued new guidance between the filing and now that said, actually, we're going to carve it out and shareholders can protest if it's something to do that raise, if it, shareholders can protest if it raises significant social policy issues, which theoretically the right to repair. Factors it too.

• 1:07:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, so Apple had asked the SEC, hey, we got a shareholder thing. Can we just like, don't do anything about this? We gotta like, study it and we gotta blah, blah, blah. And it seems like the way that usually goes is the SEC is like, okay, well, like, go have fun. We'll, we'll talk later.

• 1:07:25Nilay Patel?

  Go have fun.

• 1:07:26Speaker 03

  But, but as Alex was saying, they issued new guidance saying that like, if it's like, got like societal impact, we're not gonna like, we're not gonna just let you go have fun. Like, we're actually are, are going to look into it when investors come to us. And so Apple, like, two days before the deadline, when, like, this investor group, the mutual fund was gonna like, it was gonna happen. They're like, just kidding. You can repair stuff now.

• 1:07:49Nilay Patel?

  I will say, and you know, maybe it has been in development for every year. For something that's been in development for every year, uh, not a lot of information on how it will work.

• 1:07:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:58Alex Cranz?

  None.

• 1:08:00Nilay Patel?

  Like, at the end of the day, what we have from Apple is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 paragraphs.

• 1:08:08Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 1:08:08Nilay Patel?

  And a couple of cartoons.

• 1:08:10Speaker 03

  Well, all of their copywriters are busy right now, writing the new policy for in-app payment links or links to things, because that deadline is coming very fast and that they, that appeal is still like, up in the air. So like, they can't, they can't do both at the same time, obviously. To me, what this is, is like, regulatory pressure can work, even if there's not a law passed or an action taken.

• 1:08:33Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:34Speaker 03

  Like, the, the overall environment of legislatures and like regulatory bodies looking at tech companies will spur them to action, sometimes in order to like, fend off future action, but it does stuff.

• 1:08:47Nilay Patel?

  This is the program that Apple designed.

• 1:08:49Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 1:08:49Nilay Patel?

  Right? That's a, a win for Apple. This is their program. They have decided that it's the iPhone 12 and 13. They're picking the heat guns and screwdrivers they're gonna sell, or whatever it is. They're deciding it's only M1 Max.

• 1:09:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:03Nilay Patel?

  Right? They've, they've chosen, and by the way, the iPhone 12 and 13, the newest iPhones. So if you think about, yep, your battery is slowing down your phone. It's getting old. Your phone's starting to throttle itself. Well, that's not the iPhone 12 and 13 yet. And by the way, Apple, Tim Cook himself, on investor calls, has said, when they rolled out the battery replacement program, their upgrades went down. Because people realized they could change their batteries over and their phones would perform fast again. And I mean, remember, this was a scandal.

• 1:09:34Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:35Nilay Patel?

  People believed and Apple denied for years that iPhones automatically started slowing down after two years to force you to upgrade. Apple maintained, nope, that's just your battery getting older. And in order to prevent your phone from shutting off because it can't provide the voltage, we're throttling the processor to make your phone keep running. This is all very innocent. We just didn't tell you about it. Got caught.

• 1:09:58Alex Cranz?

  Oops.

• 1:09:59Nilay Patel?

  They announced the battery replacement program. Now you can just replace your battery. And they had to admit to their investors, yep, our upgrades took a hit.

• 1:10:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:08Nilay Patel?

  Because people could just replace the batteries. Well, iPhone 12 and 13, they're not the phones that need their batteries replaced right now.

• 1:10:14Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:14Nilay Patel?

  So like, this is, I would just say, like, you're right. It's the threat of regulation, lawsuits, all this stuff, this cloud that's hanging over tech companies right now. But the win for Apple is they're doing it on their terms and then backing off the pressure. Why M1 Max, not Intel Max, which they still sell?

• 1:10:31Alex Cranz?

  Well, the M1s, they don't, the batteries in. So you can actually replace the battery now.

• 1:10:37Speaker 03

  I mean, it may be that they, they knew that they were doing this. And so they like, they made them slightly easier to repair, question mark?

• 1:10:43Alex Cranz?

  Not the phones.

• 1:10:44Speaker 03

  Not the phones.

• 1:10:45Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they designed the iPhone 13 three years ago.

• 1:10:48Speaker 03

  Here's my big question. What does an Apple-designed heat gun look like? And if they, if they commissioned Johnny Ive to help make it from Love From, like, do you plug it? Is it, is it charged? Does it charge with a lightning cable? Does the lightning cable plug in like, in the center of like, where the heat gun actually has the exhaust? So it's like the Apple mouse? Like, you can't have it plugged in and use it at the same time?

• 1:11:06Alex Cranz?

  It's gonna be great. You're gonna have-

• 1:11:08Nilay Patel?

  Did you say Ifix doesn't use a gun?

• 1:11:09Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, they use, they have like, what essentially looks like a hot plate. And they place it-

• 1:11:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, they have a giant heatie pad. And it's because they can, they can precisely control the temperature that way.

• 1:11:18Alex Cranz?

  I feel like that's expensive. I feel like most people are gonna get-

• 1:11:21Nilay Patel?

  So all the old air power mats that didn't get sold that were overheating have been repurposed-

• 1:11:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:26Nilay Patel?

  To the, to the repair program.

• 1:11:28Speaker 03

  Well, so, speaking of rigs, though, this is like, the last thing, which is, Apple might publish these documents, and it might be, the instructions for taking apart an iPhone 13 requires a $14,000 rig. And we won't tell you how to do it without the rig. Like, that's a real possibility.

• 1:11:44Nilay Patel?

  This is what I mean. If you're telling me that this has been in the works for over a year, and you're, you're announcing it today, time to a shareholder lawsuit expiration date, and you're not ready to roll it out until next year. I don't know, man, like, maybe even talking about it for a year and like, someone just pulled the ripcord. Yeah.

• 1:12:02Alex Cranz?

  That timing.

• 1:12:02Nilay Patel?

  But Apple, Apple historically famously announces things when they're ready to go. Very rarely pre-announces products that are not ready to ship like their 200 parts. So we'll see, but I am looking forward to an Apple, a beautiful aluminum heat gun.

• 1:12:19Alex Cranz?

  It's gonna be gorgeous.

• 1:12:20Nilay Patel?

  Oh, man, it'd be like that, that you know that they're gonna do it because aluminum conducts so much heat, they won't realize that humans have to hold it. And then Belkin will make a holder for it. Here's my question, if the aluminum, if the heat gun has a battery, will you be able to replace the battery? All right, that's enough of this. Uh, other little Apple news, um, they delayed Zoe Schiffer, uh, now NBC News broke the story. Uh, they're delaying return to work until February, changing the policies continues to be a drama for Apple and we'll see how that goes. And then Mark German at Bloomberg, I can't get enough Apple car story. It's my favorite. Uh, so Apple now wants to launch a self-driving EV in 2025 with its own chip. Yeah. I have to say in the, and I always talk to German, he gets great scoops.

• 1:13:05Nilay Patel?

  It's just funny that Apple thinks making a custom chip, which is the thing it's good at. Yeah. Will be the thing that allows them to ship a car, which is the thing that it's bad at. Yep, I love it. Like, of course they're gonna make a custom, like, obviously, what, that's the only thing they know how to do at this point in terms of the car. Right. Do they know how to make wheels? Like unclear. They made it for the Mac Pro.

• 1:13:28Alex Cranz?

  Little tiny wheels.

• 1:13:29Nilay Patel?

  So the, the story here is, uh, Kevin Lynch, who ran the watch, by the way, resuscitated his career after Adobe and Apple, amazing run with the watch and all the stuff, is now in charge of the car project. They were, who knows what they've been doing in the past, they're now going to focus on self-driving. Right. The point of this car is that it can drive itself. And will have no steering wheel. And they're gonna launch it in four years.

• 1:13:50Alex Cranz?

  Okay, I, I wanna have that confidence in life. I wanna walk through the world with a confidence of the car design team at Apple.

• 1:13:58Nilay Patel?

  Well, that just means they're gonna get fired.

• 1:14:01Alex Cranz?

  Never mind, never mind, I don't want that confidence.

• 1:14:05Nilay Patel?

  I just said, like, the, I talked to an awful lot of car executives on Decoder, right? At kind of every layer of the industry, from CEOs to project man, like, we've just talked to an awful lot of car folks. I've talked to the CEOs of lidar companies and self-driving companies. None of them are saying, we're gonna have a product in four years. Not a one, right? Like, your data collection problem is insane, your sensor problem is insane, your regulatory problem is insane. Like, I just, it's amazing that, you know, this is the target, and maybe it's just a bold target, but like, Waymo, which is the industry leader,

• 1:14:46Nilay Patel?

  will not commit to four, like, and they've already got Chrysler Pacificas wandering the streets of San Francisco and Phoenix without drivers behind the wheel. Like, they're operating a taxi service, and they're not like, we're ready to go. Here's a huge problem for, like, Waymo's cars. Takeda Mawakana was on Decoder. We talked to Kode, and she was on Decoder. You can go listen to it. I was like, can you put a car in Denver? And she was like, no.

• 1:15:14Nilay Patel?

  It was just the end of that, right? Like, they're like, snow's a problem for us. That's like, a pretty big problem. And like, she was like, very sincere. Like, she's like, that's the next challenge. I just don't see how Apple, they're operating so far behind that curve, they've never put a person in a car.

• 1:15:32Speaker 03

  Well, here's my concern. You know, Apple's not saying anything about the car. They're certainly not saying, they're certainly not giving deadline, but someone inside Apple must have given this deadline to someone. And so the concern with the car is the same as the concern with, like, that health stuff, right? Is Apple being honest with itself about its capabilities and about what it's gonna be able to ship? Like, are they giving themselves, like, true deadlines, and do they actually know what they are capable of and not capable of internally? Or is there, like, is there a culture of, we can do anything in there that is gonna end up burning them?

• 1:16:05Nilay Patel?

  I think it's both, right? I mean, either you have a car that can drive itself, or you don't.

• 1:16:11Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no, there's a middle ground. It's called, it's called full self-driving on a Model 3.

• 1:16:18Nilay Patel?

  Right, but like even full self-driving, like give Tesla credit, like they, they keep putting that software out in the world. They keep selling the, the sensor kits to people when they buy the cars. They're not like this is ready, right? Like Elon's like, next week, self-drive, full self-driving will be ready and he will set the huge prediction. And now every Tesla customer, no matter how much you love Elon or not, you know in your heart, he's going to miss the deadline. And Tesla, to its credit, is not over claiming. The name is bad and they should change the name because I think it confuses everyone, but including the people driving the cars. But like Tesla's not saying it's ready. And they have, you know, as much data about actual human beings behind the wheel of self-driving

• 1:16:59Nilay Patel?

  cars as anyone. I just, I see this stuff from Apple and it's like, at the end of the day, and we talked about this last week with Sean, at the end of the day, they have so much money that they need to attack markets where spending that money is worth it. Where they have a huge advantage because of their pile of cash.

• 1:17:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:17Nilay Patel?

  And the car industry is like, one of those markets.

• 1:17:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. What are some of the other markets? Like there's, there's the, there's a microfiber cloth industry.

• 1:17:25Nilay Patel?

  There's the cloth, the cloth industry. Yeah. Textiles, Apple's gonna be big into textiles. I mean, they could go Samsung with it. They could start making nuclear reactors.

• 1:17:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:32Nilay Patel?

  Submarines.

• 1:17:34Speaker 03

  Boats.

• 1:17:34Nilay Patel?

  But like, if you just look at the, like, consumer products, making a TV is like, almost not worth the money and attention for Apple. They could buy an OLED factory tomorrow in China and like, it wouldn't, it wouldn't hit the bank account. Like, a couple of zeros would go down or whatever. Like, it's, there's just a piece of the puzzle where they're like, yep, this is a place where we have a moat and the moat is cash. The moat might not be technology or focus or an idea of what a car should do. And I think that's how you get to, we're gonna launch it in four years. Ahead of every other player in the industry that has been relentlessly focused and instead of like, hiring teams and firing teams. So we'll see. I just want to know what you think the Apple car will look like, because we keep seeing new EVs and they all look nuts.

• 1:18:20Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like they either look like robot fish, which is my favorite design trend of all time. Or like, like Toyota lately is deep in the robot fish zone. Like, go look at the new Tundra. It's gigantic robot fish. Or they, they, they're, they're all doing the, the light bars across the face.

• 1:18:38Alex Cranz?

  What if?

• 1:18:38Nilay Patel?

  And they look like that emoji with the line for the face, which I, which Dieter, I have to admit, I think it was the Dieter emoji.

• 1:18:45Speaker 03

  Wait, what? Oh, my God.

• 1:18:46Nilay Patel?

  You know, the emoji of smile of the face, but it's just a line.

• 1:18:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's me. Yeah.

• 1:18:49Nilay Patel?

  That's, yeah. Cause you send it to me a lot.

• 1:18:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, it's so, it, it, it says so much. Like, it's, it's the most expressive emoji, honestly. What if Apple goes like, like, screw it. And they just copy Hyundai's grandeur? Have you seen the, the, this retro EV concept car of theirs?

• 1:19:08Nilay Patel?

  It's very good.

• 1:19:09Speaker 03

  It's very good.

• 1:19:10Nilay Patel?

  Do you ever seen the movie In Time? People made, people made this reference to this movie. So there's old movie. It's, it's a Justin Timberlake movie, I want to say.

• 1:19:19Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:20Nilay Patel?

  And he's like, he's like a kid and like, instead of currency, the world uses time and you can run out of time. You get lots of time. And so all throughout this movie, in this like weird future, they all drive crazy retro cars. Like he drives like a Challenger, but they're all EVs. And this concept reminds me of that movie. It's so good. It looks like a 1980s Chrysler.

• 1:19:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:41Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:41Nilay Patel?

  Hyundai actually did have a car that looked like this called the Grandeur, which is a copy of a 1980s Chrysler, which is great. But yeah, I, I'm confident this car has a 0.0 crash rating.

• 1:19:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:51Nilay Patel?

  But I would buy it in one heartbeat if it was for sale.

• 1:19:54Speaker 03

  If you put this thing in a wind tunnel, it would just flip over.

• 1:19:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Car design right now is just, uh, it's a lot of weird ideas, I would say. Like, the fact that you don't need a grill anymore, I think is just confusing a lot of car designers. So they're like, like BMW is like, but what if the grills were the whole car?

• 1:20:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:11Nilay Patel?

  And so I just, I'm dying to know, like, is Apple gonna make a midsize crossover?

• 1:20:16Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:16Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:20:17Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:17Nilay Patel?

  Are they gonna, are they gonna make a $60,000 midsize crossover? Like, isn't that just like a boring product for Apple? Like?

• 1:20:25Alex Cranz?

  It's gonna be like $80,000.

• 1:20:26Speaker 03

  You got, it's gonna be $200,000.

• 1:20:28Alex Cranz?

  The cloth is gonna be impeccable on those seats.

• 1:20:33Alex Cranz?

  Just incredible.

• 1:20:34Nilay Patel?

  There's just like, there's, yep, there's the in and out of the car market. There's the, it's a tech problem. It's an AI problem. There's reasons. And you think about the actual product they have to deliver to people. Like, are they gonna have proprietary tires? Will there be a right to repair, repair manual for it? Can you get it fixed at like? Yeah, can you go to the Midas and, and, and have the fluids changed? Yeah, can I get the oil changed at Jiffy Lube?

• 1:20:58Alex Cranz?

  It will use premium fuel. Oh, no, no, it's EV, isn't it?

• 1:21:02Nilay Patel?

  That's like, I don't think, I don't think they're making a gas car. That would be the best.

• 1:21:07Alex Cranz?

  I hope so.

• 1:21:07Nilay Patel?

  If Tim Cook was like, and we've uncovered a revolutionary power source. It's been right under our noses the entire time. Yeah. It's called diesel.

• 1:21:21Nilay Patel?

  Uh, all right, some, some lightning round things here. This Balmuda phone, I don't, I don't even know. Dieter, can you explain this toaster phone to me?

• 1:21:28Speaker 03

  There's a, a high-end toaster company in Japan called Balmuda. They make, they make lots of cool stuff and they have made an Android phone. I just wanted to talk about it to encourage you to go to the website, pull over in your car. Pull over your car first.

• 1:21:40Nilay Patel?

  It does look cool.

• 1:21:41Speaker 03

  Go to the website. It's like a half circle, like a wedge. It's like wider and it's aspect ratio than most phones. It's relatively small. I'm sure it's terrible, but it looks so good. And it's like, yeah, you know what it reminds me of? Even though it's got perfectly flat screen. I was like, when, for the hot minute, when we had like concave screens, like the Galaxy Nexus and you know what that Samsung was? I miss those. It reminds me of that a little bit. Anyway, bring back weird phone shapes. That's the only thing I wanted to say about this thing. It looks sick.

• 1:22:12Nilay Patel?

  I want to buy this toaster. The toaster is $300.

• 1:22:15Alex Cranz?

  It's gotta be a good toaster.

• 1:22:17Nilay Patel?

  I want to buy the toaster. Okay. And then here's, this is like such a funny Facebook story. They demoed a haptic glove. They're very proud of it for the metaverse. It's uses like microfluids and pneumatics like feel pressure. So it feels like you're like, it can resist your fingers. Cool. And then immediate, like the next day, a company called Haptex was like, dude, you just copied our glove. Like, that's our glove. Like, it's the same technology. It looks just like ours. So we don't know what's going on there. Here's my only question. Face Meta, sorry, Meta. Meta is buying everything in VR. They just bought Supernatural, Peter Kafka at Recode Reporter. That was a $500 million deal. I have no idea if Supernatural is worth $500 million. I think Zach just wrote the check.

• 1:23:00Nilay Patel?

  Why didn't they just buy this company? Like, it's such an unforced dumb error. Like, who else are they gonna sell the haptic gloves to?

• 1:23:10Alex Cranz?

  It's like, one exec was like, "No, we can do this ourselves." Like, he got slighted at a Bennigan's or something. It was like, no.

• 1:23:16Nilay Patel?

  I've actually been working up a microfluid glove concept of my own. Very good. Sonos added DTS support to its home theater stuff. I'm only calling this out because you, the Vergecast listener, this is our community that cares about DTS support.

• 1:23:33Alex Cranz?

  On a Sonos.

• 1:23:33Nilay Patel?

  People are very excited about it. Even the Playbar's getting it.

• 1:23:37Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:23:38Nilay Patel?

  They're going all the way back.

• 1:23:40Speaker 03

  That's nuts. I've got a Playbar. I'm very excited.

• 1:23:44Alex Cranz?

  Very excited for my Playbase.

• 1:23:45Nilay Patel?

  Get out your Blu-rays and listen to some DTS stuff. I almost said BTS. Are you gonna listen to some BTS Blu-rays?

• 1:23:53Nilay Patel?

  Where do you want to go, Dieter?

• 1:23:54Speaker 03

  I think the last thing is, so, the Pixel 6, Google never said what kind of wattage it could take. They would only give you numbers. It'll charge from 0 to 80% in half an hour or something. They would give you like charge times. They wouldn't tell you how many watts it could take to fast charge. They also told you they will sell you a wireless charger eventually that will charge as fast as plugging it in. That's like, pretty much it. And then alongside the Pixel 6, they sold a 30-watt charger. If you want to buy a charger, because it doesn't come in the box, you can buy a 30-watt charger. And I was like, "Cool. Guess it charges at 30 watts." Nope.

• 1:24:31Speaker 03

  It turns out it charges like, somewhere like it averages like way lower. It can do up to 20, 23, or something to that, in that zone. But like, it bounces around depending on heat and like how, you know, full it is and so on, which is what you want. But it never hits the peak that people assumed was 30 watts, because that's the charger that they sell. It peaks at 23 watts. So, Android Authority like, did the testing to verify this. And then Google had to like, come out and say...

• 1:25:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, by the way, this is like, these are the wattages. This is how it works. This is why. And they like, they just kind of, they kind of tried to get away with something there. And they almost did, but good on Android Authority for doing the testing. They also put out a software update for the Pixels that they said improved the reliability and perhaps the speed of the fingerprint sensor. A bunch of us have installed it. And I'm fully in the confirmation bias zone. I'm like, yeah, sure, it's faster. Yeah, sure, it's failing less. Yeah. No, me, yeah. But like, bottom line is it's still not as good as like an S20. It's still not as good as other, other optical sensors.

• 1:25:35Nilay Patel?

  What's your read on Pixel 6 at this moment, right? This is their back in it. This is our real flagship. Couple of weeks later, how do you think it's gone?

• 1:25:43Speaker 03

  I mean, I wish I could say, you know, like, it doesn't feel like it's picking up any more momentum than any other Pixel to me in this moment. I think

• 1:25:55Speaker 03

  every single year, we're like, well, let's see what the, how, how hard the carriers push it. And like, we're coming into Black Friday. Let's see how hard the carriers are pushing the Pixel 6 instead of the iPhone.

• 1:26:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:04Speaker 03

  Or Samsung.

• 1:26:05Nilay Patel?

  And, and through the holidays, right? If we see that big marketing push, we'll know. I want to call out two stories here. Katie Keck, our new streaming reporter, had an amazing inside look at Netflix Open Connect, which is their CDN where they like put their own servers at your ISP. That's why Netflix doesn't go down. I'm, I'm torn on this. Like, I wish the internet was better. It'd be cool if it was. They did it because the internet, like, between ISPs in this country is not that reliable. So just a deep look at like Netflix just solved its problems, built their own infrastructure. Great piece by Katie. And then Alex Heath, we were talking about Meta. After all these leaks, the Facebook Papers, the consortium that we were in, all this stuff, Meta has gone into lockdown.

• 1:26:49Nilay Patel?

  And they've started, the culture of that company is changing. You have to ask for access to things in a way that people didn't have to ask for access before. And I think the changing culture of Meta, Facebook, Instagram, it will have ripple effects. Great piece by Alex. Lots of inside info on how that company is working in the face of all this pressure and leaks. Okay, we have gone over. It's real. So we're gonna get out of here. On Tuesday, Dieter did a whole Vergecast on RCS.

• 1:27:20Speaker 03

  I did.

• 1:27:20Nilay Patel?

  Which is pretty amazing.

• 1:27:21Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:27:21Nilay Patel?

  Very good.

• 1:27:22Speaker 03

  This coming Tuesday, we're doing another, another episode, which will feature Nei. We're gonna, we're gonna air the interview we did with Eero CEO Nick Weaver.

• 1:27:30Nilay Patel?

  Oh, at the event?

• 1:27:31Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:27:31Nilay Patel?

  The Spectaculars continue. Also, go watch Springboard, Dieter's documentary about hand spring. It's available on our new app, on TV streaming devices, on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, and Apple TV. It's got our videos, it's got our podcasts. You know, put us on the big screen. That's where we belong. Looks great. In your living room.

• 1:27:50Speaker 03

  That's great.

• 1:27:50Nilay Patel?

  You can tweet at us. I'm at Reckless Dieters, at Backlon. Alex is Alex H. Krantz. Lauren is Lauren Grush. McKenna is Kelly McKenna. It's her name, but backwards. We'll see you next week.

• 1:28:00Speaker 03

  Rock and roll. Get a shot.

• 1:28:22Speaker 08

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