Essential phone review, Charlottesville online, and Space Craft

On The Verge’s flagship / only podcast, Nilay, Dieter, and Paul go through the weekly rundown of news that hit the site this week. The show begins by addressing the accumulation of online hate as a result of the Charlottesville attack, and how it’s affecting the topics we cover. Also, the Essential Phone is out today, and Dieter had the chance to review it. Nilay, Paul, and Dieter discuss where phones like Essential are headed with this release and the other upcoming releases this fall. We’ve got a new segment for you as well! Loren Grush, science reporter and friend of the show, steps into the studio to talk about her new video series Space Craft, where she finds out what it takes to be an astronaut in modern-day space programs. There’s a whole lot in between, so listen to it all and you’ll get it all. Here’s a list of stories we talked about on the show: 05:46 - Charlottesville attack puts a spotlight on online hate 23:09 - Essential Phone review 43:25 - Headphone jack still missing 49:43 - Space Craft episode 1 with Loren Grush 1:09:30 - Paul’s weekly segment “You say surveillance, I say sousveillance” 1:11:52 - Eclipse toolkit 1:14:07 - Samsung’s new fitness smartband leak reveals offline Spotify support, 5 ATM water resistance 1:14:48 - Apple is reportedly investing $1 billion in original video content 1:15:42 - Walmart’s Vudu video streaming service is coming to Apple TV on August 22nd 1:19:03 - Intel announces its next-generation Ice Lake chips unexpectedly early 1:22:02 - iOS 11 has a “cop button” to temporarily disable Touch ID 1:23:32 - Meet the streamers using Twitch to pay for college 1:23:42 - The Docx games: three days at the Microsoft Office World Championship 1:24:03 - Science doesn’t explain tech’s diversity problem — history does 1:25:12 - Paul’s podcast “Why watch people play video games?” If you enjoyed this podcast and want to hear more, let us know what you want to hear! We’re starting some new podcasts soon and want your feedback. In the meantime, you might want to check out Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher, and Too Embarrassed to Ask hosted by The Verge’s Lauren Goode! You can find them all in iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, and anywhere you get your podcasts. 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.

• 0:04Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Theverge.com. It's a show about technology and culture and stuff. Here's what I'm gonna tell you. By the way, I'm here, I'm Neil Ipatel, Paul is here.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:18Nilay Patel?

  Dieter's here. Paul has been-

• 0:20Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 0:20Nilay Patel?

  Hi, Dieter. Paul has been, sorry, I want to get into this.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:23Nilay Patel?

  The most important news of the week.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  Sure, I bet.

• 0:25Nilay Patel?

  Paul, I'm gonna ruin your pitch, which is a thing I do on the show constantly to everyone. It's my psychological manipulation as the editor in chief. People come on the show, I say, "You've been working on a thing." And then I make you talk about it, and then you have to do it.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Theoretically.

• 0:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it hasn't always worked. But I like the thing is, anyway, Paul has been pitching me on a video idea. Go ahead.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  It's called specs.

• 0:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  And there's a drum solo.

• 0:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  It's like dum, dum, dum, dum, dum. And then like fills, like a whiplash drum solo.

• 1:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  And each hit of the kick drum, you see a different spec. 256 gigabytes, or 11.6 inches, or 1366 by 768 inches. Just different specs, just specs. And that's the whole video.

• 1:17Nilay Patel?

  And it builds to-

• 1:19Speaker 01

  The end of the drum solo after one minute.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  It obviously builds to a light switch rave party.

• 1:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, obviously, you take this into your heart and it fuels your life.

• 1:32Nilay Patel?

  Well, your point was every, like, every spec, if you're a true nerd-

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37Nilay Patel?

  -really means something to you.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  It has a meaning to you, like, "Oh, man, I remember 1024 by 768."

• 1:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that was the iBook resolution.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47Nilay Patel?

  That's what I think of. 1366 was every netbook.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  But at the end of every single one, it's just gonna be just a killer, just like, single chord, like guitar riff, just "ring," and it'll just say "Adreno." It'll just end on "Adreno" every time.

• 2:02Nilay Patel?

  The last one is just "Adreno." All right, well, Paul now has to make this video.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08Nilay Patel?

  If you, he's been soliciting drummers in the hallways.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so what I need now is just a bunch of specs. So, @me your specs.

• 2:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, what's your favorite spec? @futurepaul. Just hit him with specs.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  My spec right now is M.2 NVMe SSD.

• 2:27Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 2:28Speaker 01

  That's an SSD that communicates with the computer over the PCIe bus instead of SATA.

• 2:34Nilay Patel?

  Ooh. Alright, that's like a, it's a high-end spec.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  It's pretty high-end.

• 2:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I'm, I'm more interested in like the specs of the people.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Classic specs.

• 2:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like 8GB.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:45Nilay Patel?

  That was like a really important spec for a long time.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  What was the RPM of the original Zune's hard drive?

• 2:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, 3.5 inch. That's like a good spec. It's like a spec that really meant a lot for a long time. Is 51400 a spec?

• 3:00Speaker 02

  You know what's funny to me is like, the spec that, the spec that nobody seems to talk about anymore that is near and dear to Paul's heart is, is pixel density. Paul is a well-known pixel density enthusiast.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:12Nilay Patel?

  It's a fact.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  But, a lot of people still have MacBook Airs and, and need to know about pixel density and that they're, they're missing out. But everywhere else it's just sort of, you know, fine now.

• 3:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we, we went to 4X.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:26Nilay Patel?

  And then it kind of dropped off.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  They talk about pixel density in, mostly now in VR. And there's a new metric that they're coming out with that's like pixels per like degree. Like you can break

• 3:39Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  vision into like degrees, which is a little more math than I was hoping for, but.

• 3:47Nilay Patel?

  Well, the iPhone 4 was 326, right? PPI. That was the floor. And now everything is way above it and no one, because all the screen sizes are crazy.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:55Nilay Patel?

  Look, here's what I'm saying. You have to make this video.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 3:58Nilay Patel?

  But it has to lead, it has to, oh, it has to land on the most important spec of all. Whatever that is.

• 4:06Speaker 02

  Adreno.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Did you mean Arduino?

• 4:10Speaker 02

  No, I'd, never mind.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  What's Adreno? I, I recognize that name, but I forget what it is.

• 4:15Nilay Patel?

  Isn't that the Qualcomm?

• 4:17Speaker 02

  It's the GPU Qualcomm. Yeah, yeah. So it's not a spec, it's a, it's a brand. So I guess

• 4:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you should make another one that's just like marketing hogwash.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:27Nilay Patel?

  Right, no. Adreno. Centrino. Just like words that were marketed with no specific meaning.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  That will be set to a flute solo.

• 4:37Nilay Patel?

  Well, if you have specs, you can send them to Paul. If you have concepts of technology-related phrases and the instruments to which they correspond, also send those to Paul.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:50Nilay Patel?

  This is his new video series. This is our pivot to video.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Apparently.

• 4:54Nilay Patel?

  What's your big video strategy? Sounds and words.

• 4:59Nilay Patel?

  Alright, so after that, we're in Pivot, right? To Nazis on the Internet.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:03Nilay Patel?

  You ready?

• 5:04Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 5:04Nilay Patel?

  This is a brief interlude, because we have a lot to talk about. In fact, I'll say this right now. Today, on this show, on this podcast, Dieter's gonna talk about his review of the Essential Phone.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  I am.

• 5:17Nilay Patel?

  It's a big deal. It's coming.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 5:20Nilay Patel?

  Dieter has it. It's a square.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Well, by the time you're hearing this, you will have already read it and watched the video, hopefully.

• 5:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Because this is coming out after the review goes up.

• 5:29Nilay Patel?

  If you're in your car...

• 5:30Speaker 02

  This is a sneak preview, that's the thing that you've already seen. We're recording it before the review goes up, so there you go.

• 5:37Nilay Patel?

  If you're in your car, pull over, watch the video, and then get back on the road. That's what we're suggesting to you. Anyway, that's coming, but I don't really want to talk about Nazis on the Internet. Dieter and I discussed it before the show began. We're not enthusiastic about it, but it is, again, the biggest story in tech is super heavy this week. Last week, it was the Google memo. This week, a thing that is happening that we should just acknowledge is that there was an extremely hateful rally in Charlottesville. There were Nazis. They had Nazi flags. They were just Nazis.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  I saw the Nazi flag.

• 6:15Nilay Patel?

  They were there. Our president's doing whatever he does. He's out there. Vox.com actually ran a really interesting piece today called "Corporations on the Unconscious of America, Not Churches," which I think is fascinating. You should go read it. But, so, many, many corporations are speaking out against Nazis, which is not something you would have expected to have to happen in 2017, not what I predicted in my end-of-the-year rundown last year. But it's happening. And a lot of those corporations are tech companies who run major platforms in the internet. And they are now kicking the Nazis off their platforms. So Spotify kicked a bunch of racist hate groups off of Spotify so you can't listen to their music. Twitter and Facebook are shutting things down. YouTube is shutting things down.

• 7:00Nilay Patel?

  And then there's another class of providers that is really much more interesting. I know Dieter has a lot of thoughts here. So GoDaddy kicked the Daily Stormer, which is like the Nazi publication, off of GoDaddy's servers. Cloudflare, which is, how would you describe Cloudflare?

• 7:17Speaker 01

  It's a CDN.

• 7:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. They're a content distribution network.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 7:22Nilay Patel?

  I'm on it. But like, how would you describe that to the average person?

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Typically, a CDN is, is you, you basically, you have the basic like host. And then to spread that information geographically so that it's cached closer to the end users. It goes through a CDN. Like, the classical one was Akamai.

• 7:44Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. It did quickly.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  The other thing a CDN can do is protect you against a distributed denial of service attacks. So if a bunch of people try and flood your website with traffic, since the CDN spreads it out a bunch, a bunch of different areas, it's one of the ways, there's other ways. It can make sure that your website stays on the internet when people are trying to take it down by flooding it with traffic.

• 8:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So that is an important one in the case of Cloudflare. Because Cloudflare basically fired the Daily Stormer as a customer. So their host said, "We can't have you anymore." GoDaddy said, "You're off our servers." Cloudflare said, "We're not going to put you on our CDN, which is a thing that protects you against attacks." So I think Cloudflare's CEO actually put out a letter that said, "Our first requests", like saying, "These people are violating your terms of service", actually explicitly said, "Kick them off Cloudflare so we can DDoS them", which is a fascinating... Problem in this world, but they did it anyway. And CloudFlare, you should go read it. They were actually very explicit, like, we're kind of in control of the internet.

• 8:51Nilay Patel?

  Like, if we don't protect you, or other companies like us don't protect you, you're not on the internet, which means we have control of speech. But here, we think the case is clear cut, we're okay with it. But Dieter, you were saying that leads to a number of very interesting problems as the internet gets more and more platformized.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, just, there's a lot here, and I don't think we have time to get into it. My thinking on it is, I don't know, we'll call it nascent. But you know how, when there's trolls in the comments section, and they get booted, and they yell, "But free speech." And then, we, or whoever they get booted from, are like, "Yeah, sure, free speech, but that's in the Bill of Rights for America, it's not in the Terms of Service for my website."

• 9:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Right? That's basically what CloudFlare said, is, "Look, I can do whatever I want, I'm the CEO of a private company, or, you know, a public company, I'm the CEO of a company, and so I, you know, I can choose which customers I want to have, and I don't want to have these guys as customers, so goodbye." But then he immediately, in that letter, turned around and said, "What I just did is very morally suspect, because that makes us not content neutral." And, you know, I don't know how I feel about that. I think we can all pretty much agree that not having Nazis as customers is a good thing. But, right now, we're watching companies like Google, Apple, PayPal, CloudFlare, GoDaddy,

• 10:16Speaker 02

  whomever, you know, do the thing that we want them to do. But it's because, you know, their Terms of Service aren't laws, they're just, you know, things that the company decided it would do and would want to act.

• 10:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, wait, just to be clear about that.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  And so, yeah, yeah.

• 10:33Nilay Patel?

  Companies can change their Terms of Service at will, right? Like, we cover that all the time. Like, if their Terms of Service didn't let them do that, they could just change their Terms of Service and then do it. It wouldn't even be hard. So it's

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:46Nilay Patel?

  It's a weird little corner case.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so to me, the big question is, does the Bill of Rights, do these ideas of like human rights mean anything on the internet at all when everything on the internet gets run through companies that have at-will terms of service? And it's a complicated thing because I don't want to sound like the people that are claiming free speech, free speech for, you know, white nationalism, because I think they're being disingenuous when they, when they claim, you know, yell free speech. However, right now, we're like in a place where like through the largesse of people who I think are fundamentally good people like Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella

• 11:29Speaker 02

  and, you know, other CEOs, they're doing the right thing because of public pressure and so on, and also because they're good people. But if one of those big, massive, powerful, control-the-internet kinds of companies decided to actually be evil, I don't know what we'd do about that. I don't know if, you know, how we want to hold them to account. So it gets into this very, very, very like cyberpunk, messy discussion about, you know, our lives moving away from the state into like corporations and like you can spin it out in a million different crazy ways. But I think for me, where I'm at right now is, everything here in this past week has

• 12:10Speaker 02

  moved so quickly that we're going to, in the next months and years, like look back and be like, wow, we made a lot of decisions without really thinking about what they mean. And so far, I'm pretty happy with all the decisions that most people are making with regard to dealing with this issue from the corporate perspective. But how much of this is like, do the thing you think you think is right and then justify it later? And how much of it is acting from first principles? And how much... Leverage do we as citizens have on the first principles of those companies?

• 12:43Nilay Patel?

  Well, I'll say two things. One, they are reacting to their customers in the form of consumers

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:51Nilay Patel?

  protesting them, right? So GoDaddy has like a business issue in that people who might sign up for GoDaddy are tweeting at the company and the CEO saying, "I'm not going to do business with you if you keep these Nazis on your platform." So there's, I don't know, I wouldn't call it like a market reaction, but there's like a PR.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  I think like a market reaction is, I think, a fair way to put it. Like if I decide that I think Google is evil, I'll go use, I don't know, Bing or something, right? But like that works in theory, but in practice, as we've seen with the net neutrality issue, your ability to choose a different company because you disagree with its social decisions gets pretty constrained pretty quickly when it comes to the internet.

• 13:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, especially at the infrastructure. So what I was saying was GoDaddy is kind of, they're marketing to consumers and they actually sell something so you can withhold your dollars.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:47Nilay Patel?

  Google doesn't really sell you anything. It's very hard to withhold your dollars from Google's ad network. It's just coming at you whether you want to or not. And then a company like CloudFlare, I would just wager that most people have no idea it exists, right? So the decision makers for spending money on CloudFlare, you have to A, know it exists, B, know that, you know, your favorite company is protected by CloudFlare CDN, and then rally enough people to tell that company to get off CloudFlare. Like, that's a lot. That's.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. And like in the face of Nazism, this thing that I'm worried about is so like abstract and nuanced that it's sort of like, it's easy to just twist it and say, "Oh, well, you're defending Nazis," which clearly I don't want to do. And so it's the sort of thing where even talking about it in a public way is very difficult. And that's why, you know, a lot of people read that cloud, that letter from CloudFlare from the CEO. And it was like, I don't know, I read it like three times now. And I think it's a very, very open and smart and honest about like how complicated this gets and how quickly it gets complicated.

• 14:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I think it's a lot simpler. And maybe, I don't know, if you listened to the show last week, well, I do, but there are reasons and I'll get into it. But if you listen to the show last week, We had what I think was a pretty careful conversation about sexism in the tech industry. We have a lot of thoughts. We wanted to make sure we got it right. Dieter and I were talking afterwards. We both felt like we'd been hesitant on the show because we have very strong opinions, but we wanted to make sure people could listen and felt engaged. And I think for the large part it went well, like, you know, it was a complicated, heavy conversation. We had it. We did it very carefully. I am way less careful about Nazis. Like, those motherfuckers want me dead. Like, it's just like very simple. Like, I'm not

• 15:39Nilay Patel?

  white, so I don't have any reservations at all about being like, no, no, make them go away. Like, it's just very, to me, it's, there's no moral pondering here when, like, I see that. Like, it just doesn't, like, it's literally a threat to my person. So, like, that is just so clear for me. I've been having this weird set of interactions on Twitter where I'm like, I hate Nazis. And then someone's like, but you should listen to them. And I'm like, but what they're saying is I should not. What are you doing? And like, I don't, I think what you're saying, Dieter, is correct. Like, you can, there's

• 16:18Nilay Patel?

  only one side there. I think as you start to pull it back into other realms of speech, then I think you do have to be content neutral. But I don't know that you have to be fully tolerant. And I'm just very comfortable being like, yeah, I'm probably, there's probably a great argument against what I'm saying, but just get rid of the Nazi. Like, that's very clear to me. I don't, I don't see any, I don't see months from now us being like, ah, man, we made that Nazi decision. We didn't think it through. Like, it's, it's pretty obvious.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  One of the arguments against this kind of, obviously voluntary, not government censorship, but this sort of corporate censorship, is that any, any kind of censorship can, can, like, send dissent, like, underground?

• 17:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  And that it festers underground. So, I'm curious what you guys think about that.

• 17:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I don't, I'm with you, right? I'm mostly-

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Does that create sort of a solidarity and a persecution complex for this set of people?

• 17:18Nilay Patel?

  Right. And, and you can make the argument that it is better to have the Daily Stormer out on the open web so that the people who need to report on it can just go look at it, right? And there's the long argument that sunlight is the best disinfectant, all these things. And the cure for bad speech is more speech. This is what they teach you in law school about the First Amendment. Like, that is generally the thrust of First Amendment principles.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  It's interesting, like, the thing, the last straw for CloudFlare was a post on the Daily Stormer saying CloudFlare is one of us. And PewDiePie just came out with a video where he's like, you know, pretty disappointed in like his past of Nazi jokes, which I do, I personally do not think were that offensive. But the thing that he's really disappointed about is that it's like, man, these Daily Stormer Nazi people think I'm one of them. And I don't want that no matter what. And so there is this aspect of like realizing, oh, now that I know what they're saying,

• 18:24Speaker 01

  and they are saying I'm good, maybe I'm doing something wrong.

• 18:29Nilay Patel?

  I think that's fair. Like, these are all very difficult questions. Like, I don't, this is what I mean. We were very careful last week. I am just not, I don't, I personally do not feel any need to be careful in the face of people literally saying that the color of my skin should make me leave America. It just doesn't seem like I need to engage with that argument in a serious way. And I think that's, it just really, like, I haven't been doing it because it's not a good use of my time. But that's what I want to reply to everyone at Twitter who's like, but you gotta, you gotta protect. I'm like, no, I don't. Like, I personally have to do nothing. Like, I, I am allowed to say, like, you should punch a Nazi in the face. Like, it's fine. It's like firmly where I live.

• 19:12Nilay Patel?

  But I think these platforms are gonna, once they open the door, I do think they're gonna be asked to make these decisions again, and they're gonna need to have some rational thinking behind what, what content neutrality actually means for them in a way that you don't need to when it's Nazis. You just don't. Like, I, I just firmly believe that you don't need to protect Nazis on your content neutral, neutral platform. Like, I think that ultimately threatens the neutrality of the platform you're trying to build. Because it means you won't have people engaging.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, if, if the US federal government ran CloudFlare, we could have that discussion because they're enjoying to buy the Bill of Rights. But they don't, and so we don't.

• 19:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, like, I don't know, if you're Google, and you know, you're trying to serve the world, and you're Apple or Microsoft, and your customer base is the world, it actually starts to threaten you in a very specific way. Anyway, this was supposed to be a small digression about Nazis, but I just wanted to bring it up, I want to make sure we talked about it, because it is, I read the site twice through over the past week, as we're prepping for the show, and it is by far the biggest story happening in tech right now, right? Like, if we talk about the web on this show constantly, whether it's living, whether it's dying, probably dying. It's just a fact. And this is the thing, this

• 20:39Nilay Patel?

  is the moment when the power of the platforms is incredibly apparent, is a moment like this, when you have a group of people, and it's not just, I set up a web server, and now I'm giving my content to this open network, it's, I rely on massive privately-owned platforms for everything I do in this space. Well, you should probably consider that in some way.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  And I think that issue is being engaged with on a lot of different levels of, you know, alternatives to Twitter, and, you know, alternatives to HTTP, and like, the Bitcoinification of things, like, there is a lot of work at decentralizing the internet.

• 21:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  So it's not like, this is all there is. But right now, this is all there is.

• 21:32Nilay Patel?

  Well, hopefully Nazi coin fails. Anyway, you want to talk about gadgets?

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 21:38Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 21:39Nilay Patel?

  Should we?

• 21:39Speaker 01

  I'm sad.

• 21:41Nilay Patel?

  Here, I'll read an ad.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Maybe, we need a palate cleanser, an ad palate cleanser.

• 21:45Nilay Patel?

  Advertising is the greatest palate cleanser capitalism has ever devised. I think we're all in agreement about that. So I'm gonna read an ad, we're gonna take a break.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  This ad is gonna be the pickled ginger of commerce.

• 21:59Nilay Patel?

  That's good. It's gonna be the glass of milk after the spicy chicken wing.

• 22:05Nilay Patel?

  Is that a thing? That's a thing.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  I don't know. I'll have to try that next time at Popeyes.

• 22:11Nilay Patel?

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• 22:55Nilay Patel?

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• 23:09Nilay Patel?

  All right, Dieter. We have other phone news here. But let me just set this up. Do you care about any of it? Not really. I want to talk about Essential. But let me do some context and then you get into it, because I know you have lots and lots of thoughts. We are in the middle of, like, the lull. Right? So, we know the iPhone is likely coming in September. We know there's a Pixel 2. We know there's probably some sort of new Samsung device off in this world. Dieter's holding up the Essential phone to the camera. What a braggart. What a troll. But the Essential phone is out now. Essential, hilariously, has sold nothing. It's sort of out. Has made nothing, is now valued at over $1 billion. So, that's crazy. They're going to be out on Sprint.

• 23:53Nilay Patel?

  You can, what, Amazon, Best Buy? This company is in the middle of the lull before all the big stuff comes out. They're trying to make the splash. And you have the phone. Tell us about the phone.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  I do.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  I'm hot and cold on the phone. Super hot on it. And then... And then I use the camera and I'm not so hot. Yeah. Or cold. That's not good. Right. So, I mean, here's, here's the first thing I'll say. I adore the hardware. I think that I've got this in the video and it's in the review. We have for 20, not 20, at least 10 years now, made jokes about like phones are just going to turn into the monolith from 2001. Just like featureless black slab. Mm hmm. And this is a featureless black slab. Yeah. There's just no other way to describe it. Really, really close. Okay. It's got, it's got some rounded corners.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, the corners are slightly rounded. It's like the edges on the thing are just rounded enough so they don't like cut you. Yeah. But like, it's literally made out of stone. It's ceramic on the back.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  And so for me, I think that this is, this is my favorite phone hardware that I've touched in like a year. And I've been talking to, you know, Dan and Vlad about it. They're like, you are being, you're, you like this too much. And I'm like, isn't it like, is it really better than say, the Galaxy S8? And it is for me, just like my personal aesthetics, I described it to Vlad this way. I'm like, look, look at a Jaguar. It's all curvy and it's like really proud of itself for being curvy. They're talking about the car or the animal. The car. Or the video game console.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. The Atari Jaguar.

• 25:36Nilay Patel?

  Although I will say the animals are often quite high in my.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  But if you look at say like a Volvo, it's boxy and it's proud of it, right? It's like, it's okay to be boxy. And this thing, it's not a knockoff of an iPhone. And that is like the highest praise that you can give a phone right now. Cause the Pixel looks like a knockoff of the iPhone, right? Yeah. It's got just pure, clean Android. And I think that like, half of that is because Andy Rubin, who made Android, wanted a pure, clean Android. And half of it is because they are just rushing this thing out the door. I know it's delayed and late. But like, the camera software isn't quite done. I think if they had more time, they might've done more stuff. He talked a little bit about like wanting to have more AI built into the UI. So like smart replies in Gmail, he wants that kind of like

• 26:24Speaker 02

  automatic suggestion stuff to be in more places. Anyway.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  The camera's just not ready. Uh, it's a dual sensor camera, so it has a color and a black and white sensor, both 13 megapixels. And, uh, the idea is like the, the black and white can get a bunch of light data and the color can get a bunch of color data and then you can put it together and, uh, there's not a whole lot of noise and everything is great, uh, but in practice, it's just like it, the photos look like, I don't know, man, they, they look like iPhone 5S photos or like iPhone 6 photos.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  That's not good.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like, they're fine and they're great in daylight. I think they're too yellow. Uh, I actually went, I went and, you know, told them what I think. And so they sat me down with, um, one of their engineers who, uh, worked on the iPhone, like toning, tuning the iPhone camera for five years, um, worked on the iPhone 7 camera. Um, and she's like, look, like we liked our photos to be a little bit more naturalistic and Google is really punchy with their HDR. Um, and you know, we're making ours punchier over time, but I, I really like the, the iPhone aesthetic. I mean, I made the iPhone aesthetic. Uh, and so I respect, I respect that. Uh, but at the end of the day, like it just doesn't pull off what it's claiming to pull off, especially in low light. Um, which on something like a OnePlus phone,

• 27:40Speaker 02

  you know, you'll take it. Uh, but this phone is 700 bucks and, you know, I, it's still cheaper than I think its heads up competitors, the Pixel XL and the iPhone 7 Plus. Uh, but I think that at that price point, like you need to be up in that top tier of camera quality and this just isn't, and I haven't even talked about the modules yet. Um, but that's like, as a phone, that's where I feel it's at.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  But in your opinion, what is the percentage of blame on the physical sensor and the software, which the software could theoretically get better?

• 28:13Speaker 02

  So...

• 28:15Speaker 01

  I know that's hard to judge.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  They say that, yeah, they say the software is going to get better. Uh, there is an HDR mode in development and we did see a portrait, you know, okay, background thing, uh, when we went to, to visit Playground, which is essentially like it's, that's all complicated. I'm not going to get into that corporate weirdness. Um, so, and I also will admit, uh, that, uh, the Google camera like leaked basically and like somebody hacked it so that you could install it on any phone that has a Qualcomm 835 and an Adreno or whatever the, the GPU is.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  And so I did install that camera and I was actually pretty happy. I don't know if it was like taking full advantage of the two sensors setup and all of that stuff.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  So I would say that I think it's 65% software fixable and 35% the sensors probably aren't very good, like especially in low light, they don't have like the, you know, giant pixels that you get on a Google Pixel.

• 29:11Nilay Patel?

  Do you know what sensor it is?

• 29:13Speaker 02

  I don't, but even though I'm saying it's 65% software, that doesn't mean that I believe that like they can make it 65% better by fixing the software because even though I trust that they're gonna release updates for this thing, how many times have we over the years complained about a camera on an Android phone and had the manufacturer say, "Oh yeah, no, we know, but like it's just the first rev, we're gonna fix it, it'll get way better soon." And then it never does.

• 29:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and what's weird is their Android camera competition right now is insanely good, right? The U11, the HTC U11 has a great camera, the S8 has a terrific camera, the Pixel has a terrific camera. Vlad is pretty aggressive in saying all of those cameras are way better than the iPhone 7 Plus camera. And, you know, I have one of those and I have a Pixel XL and they're pretty close. I think that the step change from the 6S camera to the 7 camera is very small to my eye. I know the Plus has a portrait mode and all that stuff, but the raw, just taking a picture, the step change is very small. If they can't beat a 6S, they're, they're in a bad place.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  So I know you wanted to... I mean, there's, there's a whole bunch of sample photos up on the website and so you can go, go look at them yourself. I took two different versions of the camera firmware, actually. They updated it while I was reviewing it, so I had to go outside and retake all of my photos. And you can just, you can just see it, like it blows out highlights, it, it doesn't handle situations where HDR is really helpful, it doesn't handle low light as well as it ought, and in ideal situations, it's just kinda too yellow.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  So I know you want to talk about modules, but to me, the standout thing is this bezel is the top with that little little cutout.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  What, how do you feel about it compared to like the S8?

• 30:58Speaker 02

  No, it's super great. You don't see it unless you like look directly at it. It just, it disappears into the phone. It doesn't interfere with the operation of the phone at all. Uh, it just, I don't know. I think it, the, having the screen go up there feels better. Um, it'll be interesting. It will be interesting to see how people feel about this method of doing it. Like they're doing it, Sharp's doing it versus what Apple is doing with the, the iPhone 8, uh, where it's like more like bunny ears rather than like most of the screen. Um, interestingly, I said, why did you go with LCD instead of OLED? And like, well, we, you know, we started this thing 18 months ago and, um, 18 months ago, we needed to get going faster and it was easier to get a cutout out of LCD than it was out of OLED. Um, but the rumor is Apple's going with OLED. So I'm wondering if maybe they like, just couldn't get the supplier because Apple had

• 31:43Speaker 02

  it all locked up. Uh, but it being LCD means that they do have to have a little bit of a chin on the bottom because you need to somewhere to put the light to like drive the screen. Um, but it's a pretty small chin, so I don't mind it too badly.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  What about like in when you're hold, how do you hold it in landscape? And you're watching, watching your favorite Netflix series, Love, season two.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  I don't know. You just hold it.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  You just hold it.

• 32:06Nilay Patel?

  Love is a bad copy.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  Uh, when you go, when you go into landscape, it does letterbox the video so that the, you know, selfie camera doesn't include the video, doesn't like cut off the video. There are a couple of times where like it's something that'll go fullscreen and it will like hide something, but like whatever, it's like 95% of the time it's, you don't even see it. It's completely invisible.

• 32:28Nilay Patel?

  It really sounds like they're rushing this thing out if that, if that is a real problem.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think they are rushing it out, but I also think, uh, I mean, I talked to, I talked to Andy Rubin for like 45 minutes yesterday over the phone and I, I basically asked him that and he, he basically said, look, um, I feel like there's a duopoly out there. I feel that nobody is trying to take Apple's business model and succeed with it. And I think that it's totally possible to make money off of selling phones, so I'm gonna do it. And I also feel like it's okay to be an open company. And so, you know, why was it delayed? He says that it was delayed because when they sent it out for carrier certification, the carriers found a bunch of bugs and they had to fix more than they expected, right? Isn't there just the one carrier?

• 33:15Speaker 02

  No, they gotta get it certified on everybody, because this is gonna be a worldwide phone. It's going on Telus. Expect more carriers in the future. There's like 50,000 radio bands in this thing. Sure. Okay. Because if it's just Sprint, like, if just Sprint is fucking up your universe, like, they're like, this is really bad, like, you're in a bad spot. But if it's everybody, I understand. I think they're rushing it out the door, but I think that the perception that they're rushing it out the door is because we know kind of more than we usually do about our phone's development, because they've been working so hard to hype it up and like, talk about it, right? Like, they took a whole bunch of reporters into the Playground Headquarters and showed us all of the stuff. And like, lots of companies do that, but not a lot of companies do that before, like, they make their big splash to, and they don't, they

• 33:59Speaker 02

  usually do it to like, one person, not to a whole, you know, gaggle of reporters. Do you think that they're rushing to beat the iPhone? I mean, that would be the, if I had to take the most pessimistic view, is they have to own this cycle and the lull before the iPhone. And this is the deep lull. Well, I mean, they don't have much time, right? Like, they've got like, a month. I actually think that the big competitor to this thing, sure, it's the iPhone, but really, it's the Pixel. Like, the only reason to get this instead of a Pixel is because you want a phone without the glass shade or with no logo, right? If you really believe in the module system, maybe. But we don't know enough about whether or not that's gonna succeed yet. And history has taught us that modules don't do super well. Yeah, talk about the modules.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  Okay, so my bias is that I have a soft spot for modules. Yeah. Dating back to the Handspring Visor. I think, just, there it is. The only module I've been able to try is the 360 camera, which is itself a hair buggy. I think the quality on it, I'm not a pro at like judging 360 cameras with the qualities like medium.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  Hilarious, hilarious story. The camera has a fan in it and when you're not recording, the fan inside the tiny little camera blows some hot air. If I had it here with me, I'd let you listen to it. Yeah, Dieter sent me a video yesterday.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  No, it's just like a Yeah, it's a little fan. It's a little fan sound.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  That's adorable.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  That's what you want from your phone. A fan. When you record, it turns off, it's fine. But the tech behind it is simple, like there's the pogo pins for charging and then the rest of it is just straight up wireless USB. And like he is planning on putting out the reference so anybody can stick it in their devices and anybody can make modules for it. And that is interesting to have a system of gadget, like wireless USB and just a couple of pogo pins for charging. I like that. It's different what Motorola is doing, like, so Motorola, like, it's like shaped to the phone, which is great for putting in your pocket, but otherwise, if, you know, you want to get a different phone or change it, you're screwed. So this magnet system, it's not great for putting stuff in your pocket.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  You can't like leave it on there as easily, but it means that if three years from now they want to, you know, stick the, you know, magnets in the wireless USB on the other side of the phone, or you want to stick it on his like home speaker, or you want to stick it on, you know, some other gadget because LG decided to jump on the hype train for, you know, wireless modules, you could do that. So technically and philosophically, I think it's very interesting. Like practically and, you know.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  I don't know pragmatically, are they going to be able to like make and sell enough of these to like make it an interesting market? Nah. Nah.

• 36:46Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they got, they gotta sell a lot of phones like it just seems real hard.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  The, the number they keep saying is, look, we're a tiny startup. If we sell a million phones a year and we've got like a good margin, like imagine we're making a hundred dollar margin. That's a hundred million dollars a year in profit for a company that's two years old. That's actually really good for a startup. So that's what they're saying. I don't know if they're going to hit a million phones a year, first of all. And even if they do, Andy Rubin himself admits like, that is not an interesting market for consumer like electronics companies to make modules. So what he really needs is to make more products that these modules can fit on. And he needs to convince other manufacturers to adopt this wireless USB module standard.

• 37:30Nilay Patel?

  That's a lot. I'm just gonna say that's a lot. Like to build your business model around, I'm going to make accessories and the accessories are going to drive interest is bonkers.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no. All of, all of the stuff we have been talking about, everything we've just been talking about boils down to glorified marketing and a little bit of cash flow for his actual dream of unifying all of the disparate systems in your smart home under the ambient OS, which is an AI and a system that allows you to seamlessly communicate via Siri, Alexa, Cortana, smart things, Brillo.

• 38:09Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  You know.

• 38:10Nilay Patel?

  Fred, don't forget Fred.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Fred, right?

• 38:13Nilay Patel?

  So you saw that thing too, right?

• 38:15Speaker 02

  Well, so what they have is they have a 3D printed dummy of it, right? And then they have the 4.5 inch circular screen on like a breadboard, you know, just a exposed electronic board. And it's cycling through a bunch of different screens that are like, imagine if it did this. And so like, okay, what does it run? Well, I'm not going to tell you. Okay. Well, can developers make apps for it? Yeah. Okay. So what language? Well, we're not going to tell you. Okay. Well, so, you know, so like, there's a lot they're not willing to say about it yet. But if you look at the images, like you see logos for Spotify and Alexa.

• 38:48Nilay Patel?

  And Sonos and Cortana, all of which run on Android. So it's probably all built on Android. But it's, you know, it's a big 4.5 inch circular circular display and you, it's a mix of voice and touch. And that's about as much as I can say, really, not because I know more, but because that's like, you can only speculate so much based on like four or five screenshots.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was trying to, what's a good parallel to that kind of company? It's like, okay, there's a bunch of stuff happening in this market, but it's a bunch of different companies. It's all confusing and it's too hard and it's annoying. We will step in and deal with it for you.

• 39:32Nilay Patel?

  That's Apple. That's what you're describing.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Is it? Apple makes its own.

• 39:37Nilay Patel?

  Well, are you talking about like being the?

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Well, so the difference is Apple's, Apple's a closed ecosystem. Right, but. And he's trying to build an open ecosystem. He's trying to like.

• 39:46Nilay Patel?

  Are you describing like what is the ultimate consumer middleware company? That just like glues everything together for you?

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:53Nilay Patel?

  I don't think consumer middleware, like the Logitech Harmony is the most successful consumer middleware that has ever existed.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  That's a good one. That's a good one.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  And then what? What's number two? Like Sonos?

• 40:03Speaker 01

  Sonos?

• 40:03Nilay Patel?

  Sonos isn't though, because Sonos just.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they, they act as a, they, they let you plug in a bunch of different music apps into a unified system.

• 40:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I just don't.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:15Nilay Patel?

  It, it's just, it's just so not the same. It's like they make speakers and then the music, like the music app companies mostly don't make speakers.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  So I'm not crazy in thinking there are a ton of examples when this works.

• 40:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the Logitech Harmony, that's the, that's your best case scenario. A bunch of IR blasted middleware commands. That's what you want in the world. Uh, so Dieter, should people buy this phone?

• 40:41Speaker 02

  No.

• 40:42Nilay Patel?

  Yikes.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  Look, no, look, I put my SIM card back in it. I turned off iMessage.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  I, like I said, this is like, in terms of basic hardware and like a basic Android experience, it's my favorite phone. Like, I like this better than the GS8. Uh, but the camera's not good enough and spending the money on this phone, um, you know, a month before the iPhone and two months before the next Pixel, uh, just seems like a big silly mistake. You should, you should wait until the Pixel 2, Pixel XL2 comes out, um, and you should, you know, maybe wait for the iPhone and see if they can make some upgrades to the camera on the Essential phone.

• 41:20Nilay Patel?

  I will say the Pixel-

• 41:20Speaker 02

  And then you can make a pretty informed decision.

• 41:22Nilay Patel?

  The Pixel has a huge problem coming its way, which is it's gonna be the only phone with bezels, right?

• 41:28Speaker 02

  No, there's two Pixels.

• 41:30Nilay Patel?

  There's two Pixels.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  There's two. There's, there's, there's the Pixel, which is the phone with bezels, with dual speakers and squeezy technology and it's made by HTC. But Android Police had renders of the Pixel XL2, which looks much closer to something like, you know, an LG V whatever, the new V30 that's coming.

• 41:51Nilay Patel?

  The V30 looks hot.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  Or the LG G6 or the, um, you know, the Galaxy S8. My hunch is that the LG V30 is like the foundation of the Pixel XL2. If I had to, that's my crazy idea. That's my crazy hunch. I know it's not like the same thing, but, cause it's not a Nexus, but I don't know.

• 42:09Nilay Patel?

  That's been the move they've been making.

• 42:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:11Nilay Patel?

  Like, I mean, that's like, Google has a long history of being like, "Cool flagship mid-tier manufacturer. We will now take it from you."

• 42:19Speaker 01

  I, uh, I almost dropped my phone today and I grabbed it all of a suddenly and then I was like, "Oh shoot, I just squeezed it." And then I remembered that I dropped a phone that was squeezing, just, so somehow it seeped into my mind.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Oh, you found your dongle.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  My sister-in-law.

• 42:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Bethany Miller, the kindest human on the earth.

• 42:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Sent me my headphones and dongle that I left at her house.

• 42:43Nilay Patel?

  Very nice.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  On our family reunion.

• 42:45Nilay Patel?

  And so now you're using that one because of love instead of the fancy one that you bought.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  The fancy one I bought was bad and had noise on the line.

• 42:52Nilay Patel?

  Look, there's not a lot I'm gonna say here, except that I was 100% right about the problems of the dongles.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:56Nilay Patel?

  Also, Dieter, no.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  I, uh, I left my dongle, no headphone jack. It comes with a USB-C dongle. It's very nice. The cord is like fabric.

• 43:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  Wound, got fabric on it.

• 43:06Nilay Patel?

  Super excited about that.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Definitely, definitely left the USB-C dongle and my Bluetooth headphones at the office, um, a couple of days ago. And had nothing to listen to on the way home and had nothing to listen to on the way back in the next day.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Oh, this was the other day, because you have AirPods in right now.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  Well, that's, I'm talking to you on Skype from my computer, that's why.

• 43:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But Pixel not supposed to have headphone jack, Essential Phone doesn't have a headphone jack, iPhone probably not gonna. I get a lot of tweets right now, all the, every new Pixel leak where it shows no headphone jack, people are gonna complain about that too. And I say to you, I am.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  How do we?

• 43:37Nilay Patel?

  It is still bullshit.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  This is my line from the review. I say, I'm, I'm going to continue to be a curmudgeon about this. I don't care.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  How do we make it your guys' fault?

• 43:46Nilay Patel?

  That there's no headphone?

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Yes, the complainers.

• 43:49Nilay Patel?

  I was just, I, people come up to me, random strangers approach me now. And they say things like, I love this phone, but I hate that it doesn't have a headphone jack. Well, Dieter, uh, uh, no, you weren't there. Uh, Helen and TC came to my place upstate and we went over the ridge of the mountain to like take a photo. And there was another group there and they asked us to take their photo. And I like took the dude's iPhone and I asked the question I ask everybody, whoever hands me a phone. What do you think of this phone? Just me doing some reporting, trying to understand it. Five minute conversation about headphone jacks.

• 44:32Nilay Patel?

  I was like, I don't want to be this person. TC is just laughing at me. I didn't, I just said what everyone was thinking. I'm not like the, the bannerman for this particular issue.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:43Nilay Patel?

  But if you want me to complain about it.

• 44:45Speaker 02

  You kinda are. No, no, no, no, no. Let's be, let's be very clear. You're the dude at the front of the army, holding the banner about to get trampled by the horses.

• 44:55Nilay Patel?

  You know what I'm saying? It's like rushing into rooms to tell me they don't like this thing.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  Here's what I'm worried about. I'm worried about curmudgeonly capture. Your personal brand and your website benefits from the fact that you complain about lack of headphone jacks, which could lead you to actually push manufacturers to removing headphone jacks more often so that you make more bread.

• 45:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So we get more clicks and we have more pages and they can put the ads on the pages and more people see their ads.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Think about that.

• 45:22Nilay Patel?

  It's a real conspiracy.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  That's how the internet works.

• 45:26Nilay Patel?

  Look, it's dumb. And I think it's particularly dumb. It is particularly dumb for Android manufacturers who do not have a Bluetooth headphone product nearly as good as AirPods to sell.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  But it does make more sense with USB-C. Because, because Apple has clearly done some sort of magic that makes it impossible to, to make a good one of these headphone jacks. One of these dongles, one of these adapters.

• 45:56Nilay Patel?

  Like the third-party dongles are not good.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, they don't exist and they're hard to find. And the one I found had four and a half stars on Amazon. Literally had noise on the line.

• 46:07Nilay Patel?

  It feels like I know this dude who has a gadget blog. Talks about gadgets every day.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:17Nilay Patel?

  Okay, just checking. I've now assigned Paul two stories on this podcast.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  I'm gonna write about it.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  It just, you know.

• 46:26Nilay Patel?

  I mean, uh, Hyung just did a video for us at Circuit Breaker about how USB-C is still a total mess.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:31Nilay Patel?

  Like, I-

• 46:32Speaker 02

  Well, I haven't tried out the dongle and like this versus the HTC's implementation of the dongle. And I haven't had the will to get into whether or not the USB-C dongle on this thing is like standards-based or not.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  That's a whole other thing.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  That's a follow-up.

• 46:49Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, you're assigned the, "Did you make the same idiotic mistake as HTC Andy Rubin?"

• 46:56Nilay Patel?

  Ah, it's a mess.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  We're generating so much content theoretically.

• 47:01Nilay Patel?

  Theoretically. That's why you come to the Vergecast. Promises of things we might not do. Anyway, look, maybe I'll write the thing about, I just think Apple got away with it because they're Apple. You're gonna get a new iPhone. It's a thing that happens. It happened to a lot of people. They ship the headphones in the box. It's great. Whatever. But there's a reason that people like leap across train tracks to tell me about their, their lack of affinity for the headphone jack removal. Because it's annoying.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Well, there's people, there's a reason why people like Android because they can actually have a choice about these things.

• 47:35Nilay Patel?

  So, yeah, I mean, I think that's like a, the danger for the Android manufacturers who are doing this is that Samsung is still the biggest one. They figured out how to make their phone real small, have no bezels, look beautiful, have this thing that people want. And if you're in the store and you're looking at the two phones that are pretty similar, that run the same operating system, and one has more features,

• 47:59Nilay Patel?

  what are you gonna do? Especially if there's not the great Bluetooth headphone story like AirPods sitting next to it. Anyway, that has been This Week in Headphone Jack Rants with the Vergecast. I'm gonna read an ad. Here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna read one more ad. You might have noticed Lauren Grush has a new show on The Verge called Spacecraft. It is very cool. It's very fun. It's up on YouTube now. You should go watch the first episode. As we did with Lauren Good's show, Next Level, I talked to Lauren Grush about Spacecraft. We're gonna run that and we're gonna come back, then some other things are gonna happen. So let me read this ad. We're gonna listen to Lauren. We're gonna come back.

• 48:38Nilay Patel?

  This episode of Vergecast is also brought to you by Parachute, which makes incredibly beautiful sheets, bed sheets. Parachute products are all designed at a headquarters in Venice Beach. Their sheets have a modern, clean design that works with any style of home. The natural colors and minimalist styles are gender neutral. They incorporate thoughtful design details, like a back envelope closure on their pillowcases and soft rubber buttons on the bottoms of their duvet covers. It is incredibly easy to mix and match between all of their colors and fabrics. So, visit parachutehome.com/verge for free shipping and returns on your own set of Parachute Sheets. Plus, Parachute offers a 60-night trial, so if you don't love it, just send it back, no questions asked. That's parachutehome.com/verge for free shipping and returns.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Can I say I wish I had the back envelope design on my pillowcases?

• 49:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Because I got really long pillows accidentally and relatively short pillowcases, and those pillowcases just poop those pillows right out.

• 49:40Nilay Patel?

  Well, I know an offer code for you, my friend.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:44Nilay Patel?

  Hey, Lauren.

• 49:45Speaker 03

  Hey, Neelai.

• 49:46Nilay Patel?

  It's really funny, because everyone has heard me on the show saying, "Hey, Lauren," to another Lauren for four weeks.

• 49:50Speaker 03

  I know.

• 49:51Nilay Patel?

  But you are Lauren Grush.

• 49:52Speaker 03

  But I'm also another LG. We have two Lauren's, both with a G last name.

• 49:59Nilay Patel?

  This is true. I think Lauren Good refers to you as LG1.

• 50:01Speaker 03

  Which is not right. We're equal LGs.

• 50:05Nilay Patel?

  LG1 and LG1A.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  She just gives me that, because I was here before her. But I was here before her, like, a week or something.

• 50:11Nilay Patel?

  I just like LG1 because it makes you sound like a rocket.

• 50:16Speaker 03

  I didn't even think about that. Yeah, I like that.

• 50:18Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so if you have been listening to Vergecast, you know, we had Lauren Good's show Next Level. Lauren came on-

• 50:24Speaker 03

  Which was awesome.

• 50:25Nilay Patel?

  Which was really great, and she was on the Vergecast every week to talk about her episodes. That show, that first season, has ended, and now the first season of your show, Spacecraft, has kicked off.

• 50:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:35Nilay Patel?

  So, we're gonna do the same thing. Tell us about Spacecraft.

• 50:37Speaker 03

  So, Spacecraft, well, at least the first season of Spacecraft is all about, you know, what it takes to go to space as a person, you know, being an astronaut. So, we go through space suits, we go through the different types of VR and simulation training. Health. Health is a big thing I think a lot of people don't think about when it goes to space. The microgravity environment isn't hospitable to people.

• 51:05Speaker 03

  You know, having lived on Earth with the gravity, taking that gravity away is bad for you.

• 51:10Nilay Patel?

  That's like my dream. Take it away.

• 51:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe for a little bit, but living in space, you know, is, uh, it takes its toll on the body. And there are other aspects of space too, but we'll get in, you'll have to watch the show.

• 51:22Nilay Patel?

  Sorry, we're plugging. Do the interview first, then we plug.

• 51:26Speaker 03

  Right, right, right. Sorry, sorry. Uh, and then of, of course, it all culminates with actually experiencing zero G. What does that mean? You also have to watch to find out.

• 51:37Nilay Patel?

  Is everything you say gonna end with watch to find out?

• 51:39Speaker 03

  Look, I've just learned how to, to really plug this show so well. So here we are.

• 51:44Nilay Patel?

  Um, so what was the, what was like the genesis of you wanting to do this kind of show versus? I mean, you've been making space videos for us for a long time. Why, why this specific kind of show?

• 51:53Speaker 03

  I just really wanted to be much more immersive in the process. I mean, it's always fun to go out and see a rocket launch, but you're so far away and you know, the human experience is tactile. It's, you know, you, you want to be there and experiencing and seeing these things up close. So I really wanted to kind of take people into that experience through my own eyes and experience that way. So yeah, I was really just more about putting myself into these weird situations and then just letting the chaos ensue.

• 52:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but you have like history, right? You, at the beginning of your show, you often say,

• 52:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:31Nilay Patel?

  your parents are rocket scientists.

• 52:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, growing up, I, my, both my parents were engineers at NASA's Johnson Space Center. And so I always had a bit of a taste of the space life, if you will, if that's a thing.

• 52:44Nilay Patel?

  That's the next show.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, yeah, exactly. Space life. Yeah, but even then it was kind of, you know, I was observing on the outside. And so this was really just an attempt, a selfish attempt on my part to get to, to go and play with all these fun toys that, that astronauts get to play with.

• 53:00Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's like the best part, when you get to have your work line up with the thing you want to do.

• 53:04Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 53:05Nilay Patel?

  That's good. So tell us about this first episode.

• 53:07Speaker 03

  So the first episode, uh, is all about space suits, but specifically we're focusing on the next generation of space suits. Uh, right now, you know, when you wear a space suit, or if you're an astronaut, you're out, uh, going outside of the International Space Station and your space suit is kind of attuned to. Doing spacewalks in lower Earth orbit. But if we go to other places, let's say the moon or Mars, you're going to need a completely different type of suit because you have to consider the gravity of the location you're going to. You have to consider the atmospheric composition. You know, not all of space is the same temperature. You go through different extremes. And also dust, dust is a big thing. You know, you don't have to worry about that so much in lower Earth orbit. But if you go to the moon, dust can get in your clothes.

• 53:51Speaker 03

  And if you don't properly prepare for it, you know, then it can kind of muck up systems. And so you want to make sure that you properly take care of that. So in the first episode, we try on different lunar and Mars prototype suits. And you'll see that it's not the most comfortable experience. And I'll admit that it has to do with the fact that I'm trying them here on Earth. But it just goes to show that it's not as easy as just zipping up a suit. Like, it's a very complicated process. Takes a while to get in the suit. And it takes, it's not, I think the guy that I talked to made a good point.

• 54:32Speaker 03

  It's, it's very hard to contain a human in a bag of oxygen, basically.

• 54:39Nilay Patel?

  And there's that scene where the suit's being pressurized and you're just like,

• 54:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:42Nilay Patel?

  Completely uncomfortable.

• 54:43Speaker 03

  And as once it, once it pressurized, so yeah, it's another thing about your suits. There, you have to be pressurized because you basically are kind of containing, you're trying to recreate a small part of Earth's atmosphere in the suit. It's not totally Earth's atmosphere, but you still need that pressurization. That's a big deal. And once they did that, I, it felt like I was in a big human balloon. And trying to move my arms, it was, I was getting just a workout from trying to maneuver my hands, you know?

• 55:09Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 55:10Speaker 03

  Because they're, because the suit is kind of like actively pushing against you, you know? So, I mean, it might, it might be different on Mars, for instance. Mars has one-third the gravity of Earth. So the weight of the suit too probably wouldn't be, it wouldn't feel as restrictive. So that's one thing to consider. But I definitely think that people who want to live on Mars might want to reconsider that idea.

• 55:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because going outside is impossible.

• 55:40Speaker 03

  I'm just saying, it's not gonna, you'll never go for a stroll again. And if that's the only way to walk around on Mars is in this suit, it's not for me.

• 55:50Nilay Patel?

  So when you were trying on the suit, this is like the number one question we got after your first episode aired. You're trying on the Big Mars suit. It looks crazy, by the way.

• 56:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:00Nilay Patel?

  It's like striped. It looked like an old time football uniform.

• 56:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:04Nilay Patel?

  It's like, it's a wild looking thing.

• 56:06Speaker 03

  I think my favorite part was the torso. It looked like I had a really long body because there was kind of, the way it connected was o- o- over the chest. And so it just kind of looks like I have this really long stomach. Anyway, continue.

• 56:18Nilay Patel?

  Um, but there's a part you can film. And we actually, we put up a slide. It's like we weren't allowed to film this.

• 56:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 56:24Nilay Patel?

  And everyone wants to know exactly why.

• 56:26Speaker 03

  So it's very murky. And I talked to a guy who's, does space law.

• 56:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:33Speaker 03

  At the university. And it's because of these things called ITAR restrictions. And it might not just be ITAR. There's also another similar type of restriction, EAR. I have to look up that acronym. But basically, it's rules for how you can transport technologies, and not just transport them physically, but the knowledge of technologies. So since they were building this suit for NASA for their government purposes, I believe there were some restrictions in terms of exporting via video, the knowledge of how the suits can be put together. Does that make sense?

• 57:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:12Speaker 03

  So there are not as many restrictions, though, on, or it looks like there may not be as, as tight restrictions for suits for commercial purposes. So maybe the suits that are being used, well, see, then again, I was gonna say the commercial cruise suits like SpaceX and Boeing are making, they might not have as many restrictions. However, they will be used by NASA astronauts. So it's, it's a very complicated process. And, and it not, we, we later learned that we might have been able to film it. It might not have been that big of a deal, but just to be on the safe side, we...

• 57:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. You don't want to show the button that says weapons, system, and...

• 57:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, yeah.

• 57:52Nilay Patel?

  I mean, those restrictions are insane. We, um, in the early 2000s, I think Apple wasn't allowed to export Power Mac G4s because they were technically supercomputers.

• 58:02Speaker 03

  Is that part of ITAR?

• 58:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like, they were technically supercomputers, and there were export restrictions on supercomputers.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  Oh, that's crazy.

• 58:09Nilay Patel?

  Because they could be used to, like, make weapons. And it was obviously ridiculous, and they're just like, computers.

• 58:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I believe what happened is they reclassified space suits from ITAR to the EAR, which is kind of similar. But it was technically classified, space suits were classified as, like, military-type materials, so kind of in the same class as weapons.

• 58:30Nilay Patel?

  That's crazy.

• 58:31Speaker 03

  Anyway, it was funny, because when I talked to the space lawyer, he was like, "I try to put ITAR out of my mind, because it gives me such a headache." Because there's so many different rules and regulations that you have to adhere to when it comes to stuff.

• 58:41Nilay Patel?

  I love that there's, one, a space lawyer, and, B, the space lawyer has, like, specific irritations.

• 58:45Speaker 03

  We should just do a whole season on space law, because I find it fascinating.

• 58:48Nilay Patel?

  That is the worst ABC primetime show. Space law.

• 58:52Speaker 03

  Says you. I think it's great.

• 58:55Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm into that. So, you tried on the Mars suit. It was heavy.

• 59:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:01Nilay Patel?

  Really pressurized. It does look insane.

• 59:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 59:03Nilay Patel?

  But then you also tried on a moon suit.

• 59:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, so that one was lighter, just because it was a training suit. They, I believe we weren't, maybe they had, like, taken apart the actual prototype, so we couldn't put it on. But I don't think you can actually, I'm not sure if you could have taken the prototype outside, so this was, like, allowed us to go and pretend to be on the moon, except we were in a field in North Dakota, right next to the highway, so...

• 59:28Nilay Patel?

  Which is very moon-like.

• 59:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. I, I wonder if, because you could kind of see the highway from where we were, so I wonder if people were driving by, and we're like, but that thing, that thing sits out there all the time, so maybe if you're just driving by...

• 59:40Nilay Patel?

  Local voters, like, "We gotta cut that university funding. What is happening over there?"

• 59:44Speaker 03

  No, actually, the thing that they have out there is really cool. It's a Mars Lunar Habitat.

• 59:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:48Speaker 03

  And it's, it's, they're trying to make a whole self-containing habitat, and it's not fully done yet, so I don't know if we showed some parts, but they're actually making an entire module for growing plants. And... Uh, they do a lot of te- uh, testing out there, isolation testing, or, or like, training as if they were on a thirty day mission or something on the moon. They can't leave, the only way to leave is to go out that rover and into the spacesuit.

• 1:00:13Nilay Patel?

  So they actually live in that hab for thirty days at a time?

• 1:00:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:16Nilay Patel?

  Cause you, in the show, you're like, here's a bed and here's a kitchen. I was like, what is this for?

• 1:00:19Speaker 03

  No, they're actually living there, and eventually it'll be bigger, but I believe there are only a few modules that they could have moved to, so. Um, but in the future, if someone, you know, gets angry with somebody else, they can go to another module. But, just imagine, that's another thing you have to think about is, if you're getting upset with somebody, hopefully you don't, but you're stuck with them in this little space for a little while.

• 1:00:39Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 1:00:39Speaker 03

  You can go for a walk in the suit if you want.

• 1:00:41Nilay Patel?

  So you, you had to like, go through the hab into the rover, making air quotes, the rover module, and then you jumped into the suit?

• 1:00:49Speaker 03

  Yes, so basically they had a handlebar, this is another part we didn't film, just for safety's sake, but, um, they had a handlebar above the suit, like, if you saw, it was kind of the back of it was connected to the rover. So they unzip that part, you put your feet in first, you hold yourself kind of, um, uh, with the bar and put your feet in. They helped me get my feet situated, and then I put my hands in, and then they zipped me up in the back, and then if you look, I, I clasped, clasped a, a lever of some kind, which unhooked me from the suit, or from the rover, and it let me go free.

• 1:01:29Nilay Patel?

  And then you ran around the field.

• 1:01:31Speaker 03

  I think I did a little more than they, um, wanted me to, cause they, they said, people get tired really quick, which I did get tired, but after, they were like, we, we try to stay close to them in case, you know, something goes wrong.

• 1:01:43Nilay Patel?

  So what were the big differences between, obviously one's a testing suit, it wasn't pressurized?

• 1:01:47Speaker 03

  It wasn't fully pressurized, I didn't have any kind of life support system on the back, so if you saw, there is a big, um, like, backpack, I don't think it was filled with any kind of technology to, so, so that was, it was lighter that way, that was nice. It was still pretty hot, there's a big, you know, there's insulation running through the suit, um, and, and we also noted that normally when you're wearing these suits, you have like a liquid cooling pressure, or not pressure, undergarment that you use, and it has tubing that goes through and, and, uh, douses you with, uh, what, like, cold water. Um, so that's usually used to regulate your temperature, we didn't put that on, so I got sweaty really fast.

• 1:02:30Nilay Patel?

  So what's like the purpose of training in that suit? What are you trying to learn how to do if you were somebody actually training?

• 1:02:36Speaker 03

  I mean, the idea is just to get a feel for what it's gonna be like to work in that suit. A big part of the suits are the gloves because if you're gonna be working with tools, your gloves really have to be both, you know, pressurized and dexterous, which is very tough because it did feel like I had big sausages for fingers. And the gloves didn't quite, I mean, I think I was a little too small for the suit, so my hands didn't fit all the way. So when I was picking things up, it felt a little bit clumsy. But yeah, that was really, it's hard to show without you being in the suit, but those tasks that I had where I just had to pick up a ball or had to, I think there was one time it was like I had what looked like a dust sweeper and I had to pick up the ball with that.

• 1:03:21Speaker 03

  And that, I think the one we showed was maybe like my fifth attempt or something because I had to, just kind of moving it didn't work. I had to swing it as hard as I can to get that momentum so that it, the ball went in.

• 1:03:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:33Speaker 03

  And so that was just doing that, it's the easiest stuff here. So it really was eye-opening how, just how much the suit limits your abilities when you're out there.

• 1:03:45Nilay Patel?

  This all just reminds me of the video you made at CES where you got in the huge mech suit.

• 1:03:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:49Nilay Patel?

  It made you feel like you were an old person.

• 1:03:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, they're not all that dissimilar. Now, I do want to say, I don't want to feel like I'm bad-mouthing these suits. They're amazing, amazing feat of engineering. The fact that these things can keep you alive on another planet is insane, but it just goes to show all the things that need to happen in order to keep you alive don't necessarily equate to a comfortable experience.

• 1:04:13Nilay Patel?

  Right. So in terms of what you saw, obviously this is a university that's working in partnership with NASA.

• 1:04:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:20Nilay Patel?

  Compared to... So compare that to what's happening with commercial crew, what the private companies are building, what NASA already has. What are the, what are the main differences?

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  I think it's just different. I think everybody's kind of using the same technology. I wouldn't say one way is more ahead than the other. I think it's just a different, different ways of doing business. So these newer companies are kind of all vertically integrated, so they're all doing stuff in-house. Whereas with NASA, I mean, this was the University of North Dakota's research program. They got NASA funding to make this suit for NASA. It's just, it's just, it's just a different way of, I guess, contracting materials and whatnot. I wouldn't say the tech, like, one company is more advanced in technology than the other. Maybe in little places, but yeah.

• 1:05:07Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, really, the question is like, is Elon Musk in his basement building a suit that's going to blow everyone away? And it, it sounds like maybe the challenges are so steep that the answers are all the same.

• 1:05:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would say there's no one way to make a space suit, but they're, all have to do very similar things, right? They have to, you know, be a very flexible, yet strong material. They have to keep, you know, oxygen flowing. And, you know, they have to do all those things I talked about earlier, where, you know, protecting from dust, or, you know, the weight has to be a certain way. I think there are some kind of, there are images of SpaceX's suits floating around online. I cannot confirm if they are real or not. But, and they look pretty good. I'm sure SpaceX's suits will, you know, use similar technology. I think the ones that they're making though, so there are different types of suits. They

• 1:05:59Speaker 03

  probably are making the kinds that you use when you launch to space. So those are suits that will keep you pressurized in case of a depressurization event. So they're not going to be full exploration suits like the ones I tried on. They're just, you're just wearing them during launch just in case you have a bad day and you're exposed to vacuum all of a sudden. So you're not really supposed to be in them for a very long time. These are probably, the ones that I tried on are probably meant for longer duration walks, you know, exploration on other planets type thing.

• 1:06:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Man, that all sounds incredibly complicated.

• 1:06:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:36Nilay Patel?

  I am going to stay on Earth. So, what's your next episode? When's it come out?

• 1:06:40Speaker 03

  Next episode comes out on Tuesday. And this one is all about simulations and training for the job. You know? If you recall, astronauts do have job descriptions. So, they... Spacewalk... And spacewalking is one of them. So, we're gonna be learning how to do spacewalking through VR training. And we'll do some other things with VR as well.

• 1:07:04Nilay Patel?

  Look at you, just keeping the tease alive.

• 1:07:06Speaker 03

  I don't wanna give it away.

• 1:07:07Nilay Patel?

  Well, I've seen it, so I think it's great. I won't tell anyone about it. I'm gonna say it. I'm just gonna say this out loud. Lauren drives a rover. It's a fact. It's a real thing that happens. It is the coolest VR thing I've ever seen.

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:20Nilay Patel?

  It's like a fake rover with like projected screens. That's it. This is an audio show. If your imagination took you to a place, that's great. But you can actually see it on the video on Tuesday. I will say, we're doing something different with this show, The Next Level. So, Next Level, it was the show was everywhere, kind of in the same form. This show, Spacecraft, is on YouTube as a show. And then on Facebook and other places, we're kind of cutting it up to make it a little bit more focused. Just because you kind of had these like discreet experiences in every episode.

• 1:07:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would say there are chapters within each episode. Like, there was the Mars suit, and then there was the lunar suit. And then the next episode, we have driving a Mars rover. And then we have VR spacewalking.

• 1:08:01Nilay Patel?

  And then something else that we won't tell anyone about.

• 1:08:06Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's awesome. So, you've got four episodes of this coming.

• 1:08:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I will say, our finale is amazing. I just... I'm gonna say that. You should follow through to the end.

• 1:08:14Nilay Patel?

  And who knows what that will be?

• 1:08:15Speaker 03

  Who knows?

• 1:08:16Nilay Patel?

  Lauren actually gets on a rocket and goes to space.

• 1:08:19Speaker 03

  Don't oversell this.

• 1:08:20Nilay Patel?

  The working title of the show is Lauren Goes to Space. And I love that title, but it was just a promise we were not able to keep. At no point has Lauren actually gone to space. But soon, we'll get there.

• 1:08:32Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:08:33Nilay Patel?

  In our lifetime.

• 1:08:34Speaker 03

  Uh, sure. If you wanna pay my ticket, that'd be great. How much does the Verge budget have for that?

• 1:08:40Nilay Patel?

  Please go to patreon.com/laurenattheverge.

• 1:08:43Speaker 03

  Send Lauren to space, please, thanks.

• 1:08:46Nilay Patel?

  That's how Patreon works. Anyway, thank you for being on the show today. You'll be back next week. Everybody, go to YouTube. Just go to the Verge page on YouTube, Spacecraft, right at the top. Watch the first episode, let us know what you think. You can get ahold of Lauren. What's your Twitter?

• 1:08:57Speaker 03

  @laurengrush.

• 1:08:58Nilay Patel?

  @laurengrush on Twitter.

• 1:08:59Speaker 03

  L-O-R-E-N.

• 1:09:01Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah, L-O-R-E-N, not like that other Lauren.

• 1:09:03Speaker 03

  Not that A-U nonsense.

• 1:09:05Nilay Patel?

  Finally, finally some Lauren on Lauren Shade on the Vergecast. No, everyone's great. They're all my favorites.

• 1:09:13Speaker 03

  I love Lauren.

• 1:09:13Nilay Patel?

  Lauren Grush on Twitter. Send her your feedback on the show. Watch the show, look out for it on Tuesdays, and we'll talk to you again next week.

• 1:09:19Speaker 03

  Awesome.

• 1:09:20Nilay Patel?

  Thanks. Well, Lauren is great, as always. You should really watch Spacecraft. It is, I think, one of the most fun shows we've done, because she loves space and it just like absolutely comes through. Anyway, Paul.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:32Nilay Patel?

  Every week.

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:33Nilay Patel?

  You do a thing. What's that thing called?

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  It's called, "You say surveillance, I say sous-valance."

• 1:09:43Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  So this is, this is kind of sadly topical. It's this body cam. It's like a wearable body camera called shonen on Kickstarter. But they're really embracing the idea of, I mean, they don't use the word as far as I know, but it's this idea by a wearable computing pioneer that's like a personal hero of mine, Steve Mann, who came up with this term sous-valance, which is the idea that you have a camera and when you walk into a space that has like security cameras where you're being surveilled by the man, you, for the safety of all, you know, because they always put that sign, "For your personal safety, we're recording," or something like that. You know, "For your personal safety and for your

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  protection of other people, you record things yourself by wearing a camera on you."

• 1:10:34Nilay Patel?

  I've seen a bunch of these.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so a lot of them are used though for like, like memory, like, like just recording your life. But this, the idea behind this is actually to, because this one also like live streams. So you can like livestream to like Facebook or YouTube. Yeah, it's called shonen. It's on Kickstarter.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  So it's a camera that you wear.

• 1:10:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we've done, but that's like, we've done a couple of those stories recently. Like, this is like a weird trend of these products now.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  Wearable cameras?

• 1:11:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  But are they Suesvalence friendly?

• 1:11:08Nilay Patel?

  Hmm, and I think.

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  I feel like that was the, the, the, the edge on this one.

• 1:11:12Nilay Patel?

  If you are wearable.

• 1:11:14Speaker 01

  Front row is for capturing experiences.

• 1:11:17Nilay Patel?

  I see, but this is for like, crowd-based security.

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  This is, yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:22Nilay Patel?

  It's for that protester life.

• 1:11:24Speaker 01

  This is for the protester life.

• 1:11:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the people are like, scheduling their Sundays around Marches.

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:29Nilay Patel?

  I like that. I like that that's a market opportunity in these United States. It means that people are coming together.

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  The iPhone has a mode where you can hit the power button, like, on, on iOS 11, like, five times, and it will jump into, like, do you want to call 911? Or do you want to turn off, uh, you know, Touch ID?

• 1:11:45Nilay Patel?

  Well, Dieter, happily, that link is in our next round, our lightning round of Gadget News. But in honor of the eclipse, I'm re-titling it "The Eclipse Round", which does not suggest speed the way that Lightning Round does, but it's a thing that happens in the sky, so I think it works.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  And at different times and for different durations and different degrees, depending on where you are geographically.

• 1:12:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  What's the sound of an eclipse?

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  We got this.

• 1:12:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we're there. Uh, I was at Adorama, the big camera store, uh, here in New York. You may have heard of Adorama.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:12:26Nilay Patel?

  If you ever purchased a camera of any kind, because then the ads will show up.

• 1:12:31Nilay Patel?

  And they were, all of them, were overwhelmed with the number of, like, eclipse hunters who were coming into the stores trying to buy filters. They were totally sold out of filters. They were totally sold out of the eclipse film, like, the actual film that you need to shoot the eclipse. They were sold out of, like, raw sheets of filter material, like, huge rolls of filter material that people were cutting their own filters out of for their cameras. Completely sold out of that. They looked exhausted. They were like, people are always coming in here. We're opening boxes of the, the eclipse glasses. We sell out of them in seconds.

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:07Nilay Patel?

  And one of them says to the other, "We were just not prepared for this." It just looked like they'd gone to war.

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  I'm scared I'm not gonna be ready for the eclipse because we're putting out great content on our website about how to be ready for the eclipse and I'm reading it.

• 1:13:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  I'm like, oh, I'm not doing any of those things.

• 1:13:26Nilay Patel?

  Get some glasses.

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  I should just get some glasses.

• 1:13:28Nilay Patel?

  We're all gonna go outside, it'll be great.

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  Apparently you're supposed to go buy a Volvo in order to watch the eclipse.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 1:13:33Speaker 02

  According to Volvo's marketing department, yeah. Cause they have a giant sunroof.

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  It's a real road trip moment.

• 1:13:38Nilay Patel?

  The saddest eclipse-related marketing thing that has happened to us is that Chiquita Bananas sent all of our science reporters a poster where the eclipse, the sun part of the eclipse, was a banana and it's a poster that says the banana moon is coming and...

• 1:13:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, those ads are on our website right now.

• 1:13:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm embarrassed to even be saying it because it was obviously a stunt, but it kinda worked because I was like, oh, banana moon's funny. Eclipse fever's here and that's why we're having an eclipse rant. Okay, you ready? Samsung's new fitness smart band leak reveals offline Spotify support. I think little Spotify gadgets are gonna be a huge trend because the shuffle's done.

• 1:14:20Nilay Patel?

  A lot of people use Spotify. The Mighty was on Kickstarter, it was a big thing, just came out. I think Spotify in the go, that's my take.

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  I went for a run the other day, carried my iPhone, horrible experience.

• 1:14:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  Kinda got some neck pain for like holding it out there.

• 1:14:34Nilay Patel?

  You're holding it in front of you?

• 1:14:36Speaker 01

  No, I just like, I was running, one arm was moving differently than the other arm.

• 1:14:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you gotta get one of those armbands.

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that looks stupid.

• 1:14:44Nilay Patel?

  Does it look worse than you holding your phone in front of you?

• 1:14:47Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 1:14:48Nilay Patel?

  All right. Apple reportedly investing a billion dollars in original video content.

• 1:14:52Speaker 02

  This is gonna be terrible.

• 1:14:54Speaker 01

  Sounds like a billion dollars that they will misspend. It's like a stimulus, it's like an economic stimulus.

• 1:15:01Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god, Paul. That worked, first of all.

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  Now it did it.

• 1:15:05Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 1:15:08Nilay Patel?

  Can I?

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  Never mind.

• 1:15:12Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, what they've made so far is not good.

• 1:15:14Speaker 02

  I want to tell you what I think of it, but we have to cut it from the podcast.

• 1:15:17Nilay Patel?

  Alright. I hope, I hope it's good. You always want more good things, but they are not, they've not proven a great track record here. I, I can't even watch plenty of the apps, man. I open up my Apple TV, it's the first thing it suggests to me every time, because it's the last thing I watched inside the TV app.

• 1:15:35Nilay Patel?

  So it's always there, and I'm just like, I'm not, this, this screenshot of Will.i.am is just staring at me and he's judging me, but I'm not doing it. Anyway, next one, and I think that, okay, you're gonna have to come with me in a flight of fancy here. You ready? Vudu, which is a streaming service that only like 4K nerds use, announces bringing an Apple TV app out soon. Here's my conspiracy theory. The only rea, they, they've not been on the Apple TV yet because you can't buy things without paying Apple the tax in an app. Right? So Vudu's a rental service, there's no reason to put your app on their platform because you gotta pay Apple the money. So why would you put thing there? This is the reason Amazon wasn't on there forever. There's rumors of a 4K Apple TV.

• 1:16:20Nilay Patel?

  Vudu's huge advantage right now, the reason I use them, they're the only place you can really buy a huge, or rent a huge collection of 4K HDR movies. So now that you've bought all that stuff, you want to buy a 4K Apple TV, you need to be able to access it, otherwise you're mad at Vudu. I think this points to that 4K Apple TV actually happening in this next event.

• 1:16:40Speaker 02

  It seems so long overdue. I don't see why they want it.

• 1:16:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's time. I'm very, I'm very eager to buy a Vudu.

• 1:16:48Speaker 02

  It was in the HomePod League, right?

• 1:16:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. 4K, HDR, HDR10, Dolby Vision, the whole deal. It's the thing that I want. I'm gonna buy that thing instantly, and then I'm gonna throw the remote out the door. Out the door, not the window. That's how little I disrespect it.

• 1:17:05Speaker 02

  Speaking of, uh, uh, speaking of smart TV stuff, my, I've got last year's Vizio P65. So I did get the new update with the like apps built into the TV that are like web apps and... Man, it's so bad. It's super duper bad.

• 1:17:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  Like, this TV was not built to run an interface.

• 1:17:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:23Speaker 02

  Super wasn't, especially one that was built off of like streaming HTML apps off the cloud.

• 1:17:31Speaker 02

  Just, just terrible.

• 1:17:32Nilay Patel?

  Is it slow or bad?

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  It's slow.

• 1:17:34Nilay Patel?

  They're different, right?

• 1:17:35Speaker 02

  Also bad.

• 1:17:36Nilay Patel?

  Ah, that's a killer. That's the worst combination when bad things happen slowly.

• 1:17:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:41Nilay Patel?

  Like, it was just bad, but it was quick. You're like, oh, this is terrible, but at least it's over. Now I'm just watching a video, right? Like, I think TV devices that are like, because at the end, you're just watching a stream. You're done.

• 1:17:51Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:17:51Nilay Patel?

  There's like, you, everything, everything bad about TVs gets a pass because like, at the end, you just like, watch a thing. Navigating bad slowly is killer. Are the, but there, it's like, really not architected for it because it's not even doing it natively, right? It's streaming HTML5 and then calling a Chromecast stream and then.

• 1:18:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, there is some native stuff, like the menus for like, adjusting the TV settings is now native. Uh, but I feel like everything else is streamed. In order to do it, they had to ship me a brand new remote because it didn't, the original one didn't have a D-pad, a five-way. And of course, the new remote has six buttons for random services because they're now taking that, that sweet, sweet crackle money. So my, my, my TV remote has a crackle button on it.

• 1:18:36Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I know. If you, in your life.

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  I dream that I, I hit that crackle button and it doesn't launch the crackle app. It just fucks with the sound on the TV and just makes all, everybody sound like crackling. That's what I want.

• 1:18:46Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I can tell you. If you are in a position in your life to ever just take the crackle money, just take it. What are they gonna do? They're gonna be mad at you? You're like, you took the money, you never did anything. You're like, yeah, sorry, crackle. That's my theory. Please buy my new TV, which has a useless crackle.

• 1:19:04Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Paul?

• 1:19:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:05Nilay Patel?

  Intel announced the next generation Ice Lake chips unexpectedly early. What's going on here?

• 1:19:10Speaker 01

  I don't understand it.

• 1:19:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah?

• 1:19:13Speaker 01

  I mean, Intel's basically, you know, Intel's kind of backed off of the, like, the TikTok thing. So you can't expect them, like, every new generation to, like, jump down in, like, process size. Um, the bigger problem I'm having, and I know I am a professional technology writer, and I should have figured this out by now, but I had a real hard time with KB Lake and Skylake.

• 1:19:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  There's two things that end in lake.

• 1:19:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  And I just get them confused. And one is newer than the other. And I'm 90% sure KB Lake is newer than Skylake. Now, we're gonna have Coffee Lake, which is possibly the eighth gen. Um, there's Cannon Lake, which hasn't been announced yet. Um, there's just everything, and then there's Ice Lake.

• 1:20:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  Which is like 10 nanometer. So everything's a lake, and I'm never gonna keep it.

• 1:20:08Nilay Patel?

  Is there a relationship with this, or are they just bad at names?

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  I don't know. I don't know. I, to be honest, I haven't dug far enough into this to actually understand it, and so I don't want to mislead anybody. But I will say where I'm at with it right now is I'm confused about the lakes and that, you know, Intel is coming out with its eighth gen processor. We've been on KB Lake.

• 1:20:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:29Speaker 01

  We're gonna have a new theoretically considerable bump, but it's also a little confusing, and you can't assume it will have as big of a jump in power as you typically expect with the new Intel generation, because Intel seems to be scrambling a little bit now that it actually has a competitor.

• 1:20:44Nilay Patel?

  They're just not gonna update the MacBook Pros fast enough. That's like, right? They skipped a whole generation, and they were late to this. All I want is, I'm, my computer's so old, and I, anyway. It's just hard to buy a computer right now. That's where I'm at with it. Dieter?

• 1:20:58Speaker 02

  I don't know why Intel calls all their processors, uses lake for everything.

• 1:21:03Nilay Patel?

  It implies a relationship, but I don't think there is one. Anyway, Dieter?

• 1:21:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:21:07Nilay Patel?

  Android O is probably not named Orangina. What if it is?

• 1:21:11Speaker 02

  That's correct. It's, look, it's Oreo. Stop being coy, putting a little octopi in the betas, Google. We all know it's Oreo. There's nothing else that you could possibly call it. It's not Orangina. It's cute, but come on, just let it go.

• 1:21:29Nilay Patel?

  Why are they teasing all of this?

• 1:21:32Speaker 02

  Uh, you know, it's getting to be late August, and they've had the release candidate for Android O out for a little while, and they want to get the thing out the door, you know, at or before they release the new Pixels. So, like, they're, they're just building up. There's nothing else to do right now.

• 1:21:51Nilay Patel?

  I think it's gonna be Orangina.

• 1:21:54Nilay Patel?

  I just do.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  How is Orangina a dessert?

• 1:21:57Nilay Patel?

  It's not, I mean, it's full of sugar.

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 1:21:59Nilay Patel?

  There you go. Dessert sodas, that's my new thing.

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:02Nilay Patel?

  All right, uh, we haven't talked about the cop button. I think that's it. You miss anything?

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  Just to be clear, the cop button is not to, you push this button a lot of times and then like, "Hey cops, everything is available for your perusal."

• 1:22:15Nilay Patel?

  No, it's the opposite. So right now, a big problem with Touch ID and forthcoming the face unlock

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:22:24Nilay Patel?

  is that cops can just like grab your finger and put it on there and unlock your phone and search phone. They probably shouldn't do that. Probably illegal. Face unlock, they just point at you.

• 1:22:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:22:33Nilay Patel?

  Definitely not illegal. Like now they're not even making you do anything except have a face.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:22:38Nilay Patel?

  Which I believe is legal.

• 1:22:42Nilay Patel?

  So iOS 11, you click the, the side button five times. It'll lock the phone, give you the slider to call SOS, and then require you enter your passcode.

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:22:55Nilay Patel?

  So like you're in a, you're in a sketchy situation, you're just like click, click, click, click, click. Is that five? Assume it was five. Now you're protected against your face being used to unlock your phone. Which I think is extraordinarily clever, to be clear. Like that's neat. That's a neat idea. Okay, that was the show. Start with the Nazis, end with the cops. The Vergecast, everybody. That's what it's always like. Healthy dose of Android skepticism in the middle. What more could you want from this show about technology and culture?

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  Basically nailed it all.

• 1:23:23Nilay Patel?

  Um, I want to call out two stories, uh, well, three actually, that we did on the site this week that are just really great, that you should go read. Uh, one, Megan Frohke-Menes, who's been on the show a bunch, wrote a story about college students who are paying for their tuition by streaming Twitch, which is awesome. Uh, just go read that. Uh, we did a story that is just, I, is so adorable, like made my heart explode about high school kids who compete at Microsoft Word in Office. And there's like an Excel 2016 champion from America.

• 1:23:58Nilay Patel?

  That's right. So go read that. It's called The Doc X Games, which is a perfect name. And then Sarah Jeong and Rachel Becker, we actually talked about this piece that they were working on, on the show last week, wrote a voluminous, extraordinarily well researched, extraordinarily well-written piece about the Google memo and the history of women in tech, particularly in computer science. Just read it. It's one of those things, I keep saying, it's, it is one of the most important ongoing stories we're going to cover forever, in my mind. But read it. It's, it's just very smart. They're both extraordinarily smart. Sarah is an incredible reporter with a lot of depth in the history and the culture of the Valley. Rachel is one of our science reporters, engaged with the science very

• 1:24:39Nilay Patel?

  deeply. Just read it. Take it in. It's, it's, it's, I mean, I helped them work on it. I think they just did a trying to stop, and it's fascinating. But those three stories, I just want to call them out, because we talk a lot about gadgets, but there's a lot of stuff that happens at The Verge. I want to start calling out some stories at the end of the show. Okay, that's it. There are other podcasts to listen to. Lauren Good, host Too Embarrassed to Ask on the Recode side, that's great, you should listen to that. Peter Kafka, host Recode Media, which is wonderful. Kara Swisher, host Recode Decode, very deep, decodes things. All of that's available on iTunes, go look for it. I put an episode on Verge extras this week. Yeah, it's you and Dan, right? Talking about Twitch. Why would anybody watch people play video games?

• 1:25:21Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty cool. And I will tell you, Ashley Carmen, who's been on the show a bunch, and Caitlin Tiffany, who's actually been on the show before, too, they are working on a pilot for their new series, which I won't give away too much, but is going to be awesome. That'll be out in a few weeks. So, lots of stuff to listen to right now. You can listen to Paul on Extras, you can listen to the Recode Podcast on the Recode side, all of it's on iTunes. We have more new podcasts coming, I'm very excited about all of them. You can find us on Twitter, Dieter's at Backlon, Paul's at FuturePaul, I'm at Reckless. Love hearing from you. Tweet at us, talk to us, and we'll see you next week. Rock and roll. Paul. Snip.