Samsung Galaxy S8, the politics of science, and the net neutrality debate reignited

Another Vergecast is up! We have a CES Twitter live show reunion, featuring Nilay, Dieter, Megan, and Paul discussing this week in news. As Nilay mentions throughout the show, the gang has senioritis as they prepare to move to new offices next week... just FYI. Also, Verge science editor Liz Lopatto returns to the show to discuss the new administration’s action toward the science world, and how the scientists are handling it. If you keep listening, you’ll come upon a talk about net neutrality — another debate sparked by the recent transfer of power. Look, we’re like 15 minutes over our regular time so theres plenty of other stuff in between that to look forward to. 03:02 - Amazon Echo’s new wake word 07:49 - Resident Evil 7 13:21 - Samsung Galaxy S8 rumors 21:24 - Trump’s phone 26:22 - LG G6 29:01 - Science, EPA, and Trump with Liz Lopatto 44:56 - Paul’s weekly segment “Dry your sweaty palms” 49:12 - Net neutrality debate 1:07:01 - CBS’s Hunted 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. I'm gonna admit something to our audience.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 0:11Nilay Patel?

  I have like terrible senioritis this week. Cause we're moving offices.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 0:17Nilay Patel?

  So this is, we're gonna do, we're doing The Vergecast in our current Vox Media office today. And then the new podcast rooms, the new office are not gonna be ready next week. So you got one more to do in this office. But then after that, it's like the lap of luxury.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  So next week is like when you think you're gone forever, but you have to bring back your library.

• 0:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, exactly. It's like, um, but this is the second to last Vergecast in our office here. I'm just like feeling wild.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 0:42Speaker 02

  Oh, senior prank then. What's your senior prank gonna be for the office?

• 0:45Nilay Patel?

  I can't, the principal's listening.

• 0:49Nilay Patel?

  Uh, my, hi, I'm Dieter Bone. Hi, Dieter's here, Megan's here.

• 0:52Speaker 03

  The principal.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 0:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Dieter's the principal. 100% the principal. Anyway, uh, yeah, this is Vergecast, Dieter's here. Hi, Megan.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  Hi, Neely.

• 1:02Nilay Patel?

  It's good to have you back.

• 1:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm so excited to be back.

• 1:03Nilay Patel?

  Paul Miller's here. Hello. A little bit later, we're gonna have Liz, uh, Liz Zapata come on and talk, talk some science with us. But it's four of us now. But yeah, senior prank. So my high school, classic, classic prank, you can also tell that I grew up like in Wisconsin. The, the legendary prank of my high school was they let loose three chickens.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:23Nilay Patel?

  And they numbered them one, two, and four.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. So we did a giant dick on the, uh, football field.

• 1:29Nilay Patel?

  A different kind of prank.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  Drew a big old dick on the football field. That was our.

• 1:34Speaker 03

  Labeling, labeling them one, two, and four is genius.

• 1:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's like a classic midwestern. I don't get it. You, you label the chickens. So that when you catch them, they're looking for three. Ah. The three doesn't exist. I get it. Yeah. Dieter, do you have any, any good pranks?

• 1:49Speaker 03

  Uh, I prefer not to speak of or remember my high school years. Uh, and I'm mad at you for bringing it up.

• 1:55Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Touchy.

• 1:57Nilay Patel?

  Rough.

• 1:58Speaker 03

  There it is.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  Ate a lot of lunch in the bathroom by myself.

• 2:03Nilay Patel?

  Wow, that got dark.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  God.

• 2:05Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying.

• 2:06Speaker 03

  Bathroom lunch?

• 2:07Speaker 02

  That's kinda gross, though. Did you wash your hands?

• 2:10Speaker 03

  Go outside and smoke like a normal lone tater.

• 2:14Nilay Patel?

  Paul?

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Yeah?

• 2:15Nilay Patel?

  Any pranks?

• 2:16Speaker 01

  I, my finest moment was I snuck out of a, of a window of a classroom while it was happening to play frisbee.

• 2:25Nilay Patel?

  It's like the most innocent Paul prank. And you're like, ah, the field has a huge dong on it! Ah, my dream service!

• 2:35Nilay Patel?

  Alright, let's start with some tech news. Also, this show is sponsored, but let's just be honest, a cut-rate vodka.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:42Nilay Patel?

  We don't spend a lot of time on, but the marketing is genius. It's called Scissor Vodka. We're gonna talk about a little film that inspired this vodka later on the show, but cut through the night, Paul.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Snip, snip.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  No!

• 2:56Nilay Patel?

  God damn it. I tell you, man, senior, this show is just gonna be pure senioritis the whole time. I wanna start with the most important news of the entire week. I, look, there's a new president, he's doing a bunch of stuff, world's changing, doesn't matter, this is by far the most important news of the week. You can now wake the Amazon Echo by saying the word "computer" to it.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  I love that. I'm so happy.

• 3:17Nilay Patel?

  It's literally all I want. Dieter, did you change it?

• 3:19Speaker 03

  No, not yet. I'm, uh, I'm, I'm currently debating whether I'm a Google Home home or an Alexa home, and, uh, I've got, uh, more Google Homes around than Alexas. I have both, which is just the weirdest thing.

• 3:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's not, um, yeah. Uh, yeah, I changed mine. Miriam Nielsen, one of our video editors, who's actually been on the show before, uh, told me she changed it so fast, and now she can't stop ordering, ordering it to do things just because she can yell the word "computer." This is one of my most, I know, Dieter, you had like, there's like a Star Trek thing in the world, right?

• 3:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:50Nilay Patel?

  Whatever.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  It, but, wait, wait, wait, you're whatever-ing, the Star Trek thing is the thing. It's the reason you say "computer" to it, is because of Star Trek. Like, where do you think it comes from?

• 4:01Nilay Patel?

  I disagree. Where it comes from, for me, is like a deep arrogance that all computers should answer to me whenever I wish.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  Which comes from Star Trek. It's like part of our zeitgeist. It's part of our genetic memory now. From now on, we all know that saying "computer" makes the room talk to you, and we all know that you should be able to walk up to a box and say, "T, Earl Grey, hot," and then T appears.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  This is my favorite thing, and I don't know if there's a term for it, but sci-fi depicts this future, and then we make the future, not because that future was inevitable, but because it was depicted in the sci-fi that we watched. Like, electronic cars will have like this whirring sound, because it turns out you need a sound for a car so that like blind people don't like walk out on the street and get hit by the car.

• 4:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  So, but they made it sound like a whirring sound, which was our theoretical...

• 4:57Nilay Patel?

  Like the Jetsons.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like a sound that some sound effects artists made, just so it would sound futuristic. And now our cars actually sound like that because of the sci-fi.

• 5:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, the other thing about the Star Trek thing here is, having a bunch of different voice assistants around me made me realize that the most unrealistic sci-fi part of Star Trek, it isn't trilithium crystals, it isn't warp drive, it isn't the transporter, it's literally the idea that everybody has a communicator badge on them, and then when they hit it, the right thing listens to them, and then the right area of the ship answers them.

• 5:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:33Speaker 03

  Because they never get it right.

• 5:34Nilay Patel?

  Do your Google Homes not get it right? Wasn't that a big Google promise?

• 5:38Speaker 03

  They don't. Like, it's supposed to, like, they all listen and wake up, and then only the right one responds. But I would say, I don't know, like, man, this is the worst. You can't make reminders on Google Home, but you can on everything else, like on the watch or on the phone. So, I'll like want to make a reminder, and then I'll say it to my watch, but the Google Home is also listening. And at the same time that the watch says, "I'm making your reminder," the Home says, "Sorry, I'm not allowed to make reminders."

• 6:08Nilay Patel?

  It's like you have two kids and one's dumber than the other. "Sorry, I'm not allowed to go inside."

• 6:15Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna have lunch in the bathroom. Um, sorry.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  Computer.

• 6:18Nilay Patel?

  Deep, deep.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  Buy me a.

• 6:21Nilay Patel?

  Wow. Uh, no, I had Alexa buy me a, this is such a yuppie story. Can everyone forgive me for how yuppie this story is?

• 6:29Speaker 02

  Preparing, mentally preparing.

• 6:31Nilay Patel?

  It's really bad.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 6:33Nilay Patel?

  So like we were, I don't even like saying it. You were shopping at Banana Republic. Yes, I was buying khakis. No, uh, my wife and I are drinking some wine. Uh huh, sure. And my wife remarked to me that we should have a decanter for our wine, because the wine needed timed like. It's totally legitimate.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  It doesn't help when you're like, and then she remarked to me, like, you gotta like, coach this.

• 6:54Nilay Patel?

  So, look, this fine piece that I'm with was like, bro, we gotta get a decanter.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Yo, we need a decanter. We gotta get a decanter.

• 7:04Nilay Patel?

  And I was like, sure, Alexa, buy us a decanter. And she was like, sure, the highest, greatest one that costs $12. Do you want it? I was like, yes. Becky's like horrified. She's like, no, no, no. She bought us garbage. And I looked, it's absolute the worst. It's like an old man's crystal vase for scotch. A, it's the wrong thing. B, it just implies that I have like, I have bad ideas about like form policy. You know? Sorry. Like an old Englishman who's like, hmm, these Italians shouldn't come to my country. Like, that's what it looked like. I don't know how you get that from a decanter, but.

• 7:43Speaker 03

  Your senioritis is awful. We've spent like 20 minutes on a single word.

• 7:47Nilay Patel?

  All right, all right, all right.

• 7:48Speaker 03

  It's fine.

• 7:49Nilay Patel?

  That's all right. Megan, uh, here, I have on the, on the sheet that I want you to talk about Resident Evil 7.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, do you know there's a new Resident Evil?

• 7:56Nilay Patel?

  Is it number seven?

• 7:57Speaker 02

  It is number seven. Surprise. Um, well, wait, have you ever played, this is an important question. Have you ever played a Resident Evil game?

• 8:05Nilay Patel?

  Yes, one. But I don't know if I played one. I think I played four.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Well, that's the only, that's not the only good one, but it is the good one.

• 8:12Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, there's new, uh, Resident Evil, and it sure is good. Yeah, basically, this one is kind of like a return to like horror form, because the last couple ones have been very action heavy, like even four, which I think is the best one in the series is very, it's like a really cheesy action film and like the main character has like a lot of like really good one liners that are bad. Like at one point, he does a lot of like, no thanks, bro. And like, it's just not great.

• 8:35Nilay Patel?

  Like when I was talking to my wife about decanters.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  Exactly. He's like, no decanter for me, Alexa.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  It's a weird game. Uh, no, this one is great though, just because like it's very, it's from a first person view, which is like a new big deal for the series. Um, it takes you back to an actual, uh, residence, which is chill for the title. Yeah.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  Does the whole thing take place inside the residence?

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Mostly, pretty much, primarily.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  Okay, fair.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  To put that very succinctly.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  Well, so like my favorite, my favorite game on the GameCube was Eternal Darkness, which also was like a horror game set in a city. Oh my God. Stop everything. Go play Eternal Darkness. It's great.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Well, okay. So the thing I like about it is that I like horror films or games or whatever that take like a setting like as intimate as like the home and they just scale everything down, right? So it's not like you have the entire world to be terrified. It's like, you know, what's in that bathroom? I don't know, but it's really creeping me out. And I really appreciate that.

• 9:31Speaker 03

  It's me eating lunch.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  He's like, I'm chopped.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  This is the most terrifying of the options.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  It's the one that indicates he has nothing left to lose.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Oh God, not chopped. You didn't try. Uh, but no, it's, it's good because like if, if you ever like played like PT, for example, which was that old, I guess it's not old, that old. Um, it was that Konami game that was supposed to be Silent Hills that they canned and it was a big deal with, I don't know how much you guys know about video games. I'm just like.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  I watched the play through.

• 10:04Speaker 03

  Is that the one where it's just that loop?

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Tell us about video games.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Where you like, you're in a hallway and then you get to the end and then you like finally figure out how to get through and then you're back in it.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  It just loops. Well, it's hard because you're both like looking at me like sweet, innocent, like yes, then tell us more. And it's like, I'm used to like nerds that are like, we know, we know. So, uh, I don't know.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  In about two minutes, we're going to go deep on the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  And then I'm gonna, that'll be my kind of eagerly look at you.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  If you've ever played PT.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  So yeah, it's, it's all like PT in that way where PT was a demo, right? It was only supposed to be a hint of what the game was, but it was such a small contained experience and Resident Evil 7 is a lot like that. It doesn't have the same level of like mystery to it because it's not really meant to be like dug into, but it has that same kind of intimate setting for you to settle and be creeped out by, which I really like.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Are these screenshots in your write-up accurate?

• 10:52Speaker 02

  So that's actually Andrew's write-up, not my write-up.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm so sorry.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  But I will take credit for his work.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Is this what the video game looks like though? Cause this is really good.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what it looks like.

• 11:02Nilay Patel?

  Like, I'm not saying.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Guys.

• 11:04Nilay Patel?

  I'm not saying I had like a great night of culture last night. I might have watched both Showgirls and Demolition Man.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Well, you're having a real time.

• 11:11Nilay Patel?

  I was just escaping. I was just like, I'm out. Like, I'm not watching any real TV anymore. But I'll give you the advice that Nomi Malone receives in Showgirls, which is when another dancer gets in your way, you step on him. Which is how.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  I respect that.

• 11:26Nilay Patel?

  Senior, senioritis all the way. By the way, I could talk about Demolition Man for like six hours right now.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  I've actually never seen it, I'm sorry.

• 11:31Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god. No, it's not, it's a Sylvester Stallone movie.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 11:34Nilay Patel?

  Sylvester Stallone, Sandra Bullock. It is crazy. You should watch it.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  Also, like, the, the most plot holes of any movie ever.

• 11:42Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah, it makes no sense. Also, there's a whole plot point in the movie where there were the franchise wars and all restaurants in the future are Taco Bell. This is a whole thing.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  What?

• 11:51Nilay Patel?

  But I was watching it very quietly, cause it was late at night and I had the captions on. Taco Bell and Pizza Hut are owned by the same company, right?

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 11:58Nilay Patel?

  That company has somehow paid the caption provider to change every instance of the word Taco Bell to Pizza Hut in the captions.

• 12:06Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 12:07Nilay Patel?

  Listening to it.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  No. Eli, you're wrong. Uh, I, the movies with Mikey, he did an episode on this. And it turns out that internationally, when they released it, they made another version of all of those scenes where they turned the Taco Bells into Pizza Huts.

• 12:22Nilay Patel?

  Well, so I'm watching the international.

• 12:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 12:24Nilay Patel?

  Like, even the, the thing is like, he's like, I could really go for a burrito right now, and the caption's like, slice of pizza. Yeah. Anyway, it's about a dystopian future where basically hippies take over the world and Sylvester Stallone, you know, is, he's on Frozen to capture what's in his life.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  Oh, of course, yeah.

• 12:40Nilay Patel?

  This is in the Vergecast, it's mostly about Demolition Man. Tal, do you want to talk about this phone?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  I thought I'd seen this movie.

• 12:45Nilay Patel?

  You gotta see this movie.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  I haven't seen this movie, this looks amazing.

• 12:48Nilay Patel?

  It's, in this current climate, it is such a weird thing to watch, because it posits a future that is at both once completely fantastic, but also like, the most real.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Where you can have a combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell?

• 13:04Nilay Patel?

  No, they're all just Taco Bells. Everybody go watch Demolition Man and then we're gonna have a special Vergecast only about Demolition Man. That's what we're gonna do for our last Vergecast in this office. I'm kind of not kidding.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Don't sound like you're kidding.

• 13:19Nilay Patel?

  Not at all. Paul, talk about the Galaxy S8.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Uh, well, there's been a bunch of rumors about it. The big headlinie rumor that really gets an Eli excited was that there was no headphone jack, but now The Guardian came out with a ton more rumors and they seem like they sourced it from a lot of people.

• 13:36Nilay Patel?

  That I wrote the thing, like Samsung getting rid of headphone jacks is stupid too. And then a bunch of little birdies whispered to me that it would have a headphone jack. So The Guardian actually got those people to say it on the record.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  The Guardian is saying, or, well, yeah, they're anonymously sourced, but yes, that the, we'll have it headphone jack. The more exciting weird thing is that it will have, I think it's called Dex?

• 13:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, D E X.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  The Dex dock, which will turn your phone into a desktop, which will never work, but I love it when people try to do it.

• 14:09Nilay Patel?

  Super Samsung.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Just buy an LCD and a keyboard and a mouse and then you can use Android apps in some sort of weird windowed environment.

• 14:17Nilay Patel?

  That's what you want? That's great.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  They're so close. You're only $200 and a whole desk of area away.

• 14:25Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I think we talked about this show last week. This is the dream. It's the next thing.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  No, I, it's, it's a compromise. It's so many compromises. Get a computer for your desk, have a phone in your pocket.

• 14:37Nilay Patel?

  So here's my theory. We need a word for this. It's a thing Samsung does every year, but hear that someone else is gonna do something and they rush out a crappy version of that first, right? So like, Dieter fully believes that Google's pushing forward this like Chrome OS, Android hybrid situation. I mean, they are doing that, but like Android, Chrome OS tablets are on Android apps, like a thing that Google's gonna do. Someone else is doing the phone, like Microsoft is doing the phone into a computer.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Well, Microsoft has been pitching that for a while.

• 15:09Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Hasn't done a lot with it.

• 15:11Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I think the answer's gotta be, it's, it's presunged, right? Presunged. They did it last year with the S, the S7 in some way. I don't remember what it was. And then the Note 7, they heard that Apple was gonna make their shit explode.

• 15:26Nilay Patel?

  Paul, I figured you'd be most excited that Samsung has gotten closer than anybody ever has of your dream of the perfect featureless monolith phone where the front is nothing but screen.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I am excited about it, but so there's been this photo that's going around that the Guardian actually says is relatively accurate of what this screen looks like. And for one, it just looks really big, but it's got these like little bezels on the top and bottom, and then there's nothing on the edges and the bezels are truly really small. And I know it's just totally unfair to judge a phone by its like faceplate without the phone there.

• 16:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  But it just looks terrible to me.

• 16:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  I should be more excited about it. I probably should have mentioned it in my write up. Oh, maybe I did. Yeah, the whole screen design.

• 16:10Nilay Patel?

  So what's funny is that these first leaks about the S8 are coming hot on the heels of Samsung doing like a press tour, an event about why the batteries exploded. And they put out like infographics, so like, here's why the batteries exploded. The infographics are hilarious. I encourage you to go look at them. It's like, it's a diagram of a battery and they're like, yeah, all these pins in the corner, they shouldn't have been touching each other. And then they're like, and the second battery had a different problem, which is all these pins at the bottom shouldn't have been bent up through the casing and touching each other. It's like, it's kind of the same problem. But they did a whole tour. Vlad thinks their apology is very humble. They're gonna keep the note branding.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  Their apology was great. I, I think it was fine. Like they, they presented something that felt really comprehensive in terms of their study. They like 200,000 devices, 700 employees. But then more importantly, they brought in two outside firms to independently, you know, verify their findings. And, um, you know, whether or not they can stop this from happening again with their eight point, there's an eight point plan to make sure nothing ever explodes ever again. At least they finally did the thing that we've all been waiting for, which is tell us exactly what happened and like show that it's accurate.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  I still have some questions about why, like, did it need to take that long? But like, if they really did have 700 people look at 200,000 devices.

• 17:32Nilay Patel?

  So I don't believe that, Matt. I just did the math. That's every one of those people looked at 285.7 devices. That's a lot of devices per person.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Well, that's one non-full person.

• 17:43Nilay Patel?

  Well, they they probably ran a bunch of them through like, you know, quick and like quick a physical inspection and like

• 17:48Speaker 03

  I thought you said

• 17:48Nilay Patel?

  overcharge.

• 17:50Speaker 03

  They were just like, did you pay your taxes?

• 17:52Speaker 01

  I haven't heard Megan's perspective on Samsung. I feel like we talked about it a lot in the prior months, but is that like a dead brand?

• 18:01Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I think the whole thing is like funnier than I should. Like, to me, it's still such a big joke. So I think that if they embrace that, if they if they really like lean into it, like I'd probably buy stuff from them again.

• 18:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, there's a real chance I buy an S8. I mean, I buy everything.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  I feel like it seems like they're going to be fine.

• 18:16Nilay Patel?

  I still can't buy

• 18:17Speaker 03

  You still have to buy a Pixel.

• 18:18Nilay Patel?

  Because I can't. We Chris Welch ran a whole story. There's leaks about the Pixel 2 today. You can't buy a first Pixel.

• 18:25Speaker 03

  I don't trust those leaks very much.

• 18:27Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, if you are in the part of your device lifecycle where people feel confident and fake like leaking fake news, like maybe you should be shipping your phone by now.

• 18:36Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 18:39Nilay Patel?

  It doesn't matter if the leaks are real or not. If you're

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Are they having

• 18:41Nilay Patel?

  part in the story.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Manufacturing problems? Are they just more demand than they were expecting?

• 18:46Nilay Patel?

  Do you know?

• 18:46Speaker 03

  I think it's more demand than they're expecting.

• 18:48Nilay Patel?

  Any demand.

• 18:49Speaker 03

  They won't. They won't cop to it. If you look at the number of installs for the Pixel launcher, which presumably everybody's updated, you know, once, but maybe not, it's less than a million, which is but there have been estimates that it's, you know, higher than that. But it's, you know, it's nothing like an iPhone, obviously, but or even a Samsung phone. But it's, it's kind of ridiculous that they haven't been able to ramp up production of these things. And the reason it's ridiculous is this is a company that claimed it was getting serious about hardware and getting serious about retail and getting serious about making sales. It never claimed it was going to like topple, you know, Samsung in terms of, you know, sales numbers. But they they weren't doing this in the way they did the Nexus like

• 19:33Speaker 03

  on a lark because they thought people might like it. They intended to sell a bunch of these phones. And they're advertising the shit out of these phones. They're on the commercials are on TV all the time. And they're not making enough. Like, yeah, this is a this is a Rick Osterloh fail.

• 19:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, they have

• 19:49Speaker 03

  There's a little

• 19:49Nilay Patel?

  a bunch of fancy new buildings in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. There's a big fancy hotel. The entire sides of it are covered in Pixel ads. It's not cheap real estate to market this phone on. TV ads are not cheap. And it's like, I'd love to get one of those. Someone asked me last night.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  That's the second yuppie thing you've said today, by the way.

• 20:07Nilay Patel?

  That there's a new hotel in my neighborhood?

• 20:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:10Nilay Patel?

  It's shaped like a decanter.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  The sides of the tall buildings in my neighborhood are very expensive.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  It's fine, though. I'm not judging you.

• 20:20Nilay Patel?

  Here's what that decanter was shaped like. I figured it out. I figured out what I was trying to say. Okay. It made me feel bad as an Indian person for almost have buying it because it was shaped, it looks like something that a British person who is really into colonialism. Like, he was like, we should keep them. Like, that's what it looked like. Right? Like, I don't know. Those railroads are quite nice. Like, that's, anyway, that's where I'm at. Again, senioritis is running rampant in my brain.

• 20:49Nilay Patel?

  Sometimes I look at crystalware and I have opinions.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  My roommate is of Irish descent and hates the British.

• 20:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, he wouldn't buy this thing.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Just forever.

• 21:01Nilay Patel?

  We'll show him this. Look, I got a picture of the decanter.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Send me the picture of the decanter. Hit me up on iMessage. Then say congrats so that I get all the confetti.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  I'll show it to my roommate. And then next week, we'll talk about demolition, man. And then probably pretty soon, Jim Bangkok, the CEO of Vox Media is gonna say, what's going on, guys?

• 21:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, how's your tech show going?

• 21:25Nilay Patel?

  So, speaking of Samsung, I'm gonna bring this up. We are, Liz is gonna come on. We're gonna talk about Trump. Paul and I are gonna argue about neutrality a bit. But this is, I think, my favorite Samsung story of the week, which is, was Android Central did this piece, Dieter?

• 21:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:37Nilay Patel?

  Trying to figure out, the New York Times reported that Trump is still tweeting from his unsecured Android phone. They described it as old.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  Which his staffers didn't want him to be using, but he's doing it.

• 21:47Nilay Patel?

  Right. I mean, I think everybody who's listening to this probably remembers the story about Obama going to the White House. He had, he wanted to be the first Blackberry president. They had to, like, get him a special one that was all locked down. Then he got an iPad. He still can't get a phone. He's complained about his phone being crappy. Trump, from all indications, is using a Galaxy S3.

• 22:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, so he was

• 22:05Nilay Patel?

  He was one. We don't know. No one's confirmed it. There's a bunch of photos.

• 22:09Speaker 03

  Well, so the most recent photo that I could find.

• 22:11Nilay Patel?

  Huh?

• 22:12Speaker 03

  The most recent photo that I could find is the one that Android Central found. Like, I was, they, I was looking at photos at the same time they were. I should have written the story, but I didn't. So, good job, Android Central. Um, but the most recent photo was, I want to say, from February, uh, 2016. Um, but, uh, if you look at the phone, you zap rooter it, it's definitely a Galaxy S3, which in the US, uh, I think got updated to like 4.4.3 or something.

• 22:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:38Speaker 03

  Um, but a few, a few thoughts on this. One, you're a billionaire! Buy a new phone!

• 22:48Nilay Patel?

  Get on Next. Right? There's many plans that will just automatically deliver you a new phone.

• 22:53Speaker 03

  Two, uh, Donald Trump is, is literally your grandpa sitting in front of Fox News tweeting out the things that he's angry about, which is hilarious.

• 23:04Nilay Patel?

  I just keep thinking about what the font size in this Galaxy S3 must be set. But it's gotta be huge, right? It's not small.

• 23:11Speaker 03

  Three, this is running, if it is, if he is in fact still using an S3, the question is why? You know, the answer is obviously, he's comfortable with it. He likes it for whatever reason. That's true. It was fine. You know, it was fine. Um, but maybe like, you know, Putin's spyware software doesn't work on Marshmallow?

• 23:29Nilay Patel?

  They're like, shit.

• 23:30Speaker 03

  Like,

• 23:31Nilay Patel?

  We require the latest play services.

• 23:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, it only goes up to Kit Kat, and so they just, he's just gotta stick with it for a while.

• 23:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:38Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 23:39Nilay Patel?

  No, it's a real thing. I'm just putting it out there. I think, as listeners of the Vergecast, maybe we should do a Kickstarter.

• 23:45Speaker 03

  Get your own new phone.

• 23:47Nilay Patel?

  Like, we need to raise like $700. Like, we could buy him a nice new phone. My iPhone 7. We could buy him like 10 extra dongles.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  I'm pretty sure that the, the phone that, the secure phone that, you know, the government gave him was like an S4 Active or an S, or an S5 Active, maybe even S6. I gotta, I gotta look it up.

• 24:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, there's a whole thing about how, uh, Samsung Knox is like the only, it's supported by the Department of Defense.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  Of course, if you try and search for "S Active" with Trump, all you get is "Trump is Active" on Twitter.

• 24:16Nilay Patel?

  Good jobs.

• 24:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a, yeah, supposedly it's a Galaxy S7 Active is the, the secure phone that they gave him.

• 24:23Nilay Patel?

  Where they like, where they're like, well, the president definitely needs a rugged phone. God only knows where the president will go.

• 24:28Speaker 03

  Well, I'm sure they won't let, they won't let him install Twitter on that phone, which is why he has the other phone.

• 24:33Nilay Patel?

  Right. Anyway, I think it's fascinating that he's still using this phone. It's just, that's where we are. Like, he's a living meme and he's like meme creating with his, with the Galaxy S3. That's where we are.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Kickstarter, the most powerful phone on the planet.

• 24:47Nilay Patel?

  I'm interested in what, if we were to kickstart Trump a new phone, what phone?

• 24:50Speaker 01

  No, the thing is you gotta kickstart him like a, like a high, a high school or college age child. Baron is 10 years old, too young to be the, the person who helps you to switch over to a new phone. And his other children are like grown up.

• 25:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  He needs, he, he doesn't have a child in that perfect sweet spot to help you, help a, a boomer make the transition.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Do you think Baron has a better cellphone though than his dad?

• 25:18Nilay Patel?

  He has a staff. Like, what are you talking about? Like hire like a, like a, like a mid twenties butler.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Talking about if Trump is this, the, the old guy with an old phone, watching Fox News and tweeting when he's mad, you know?

• 25:33Nilay Patel?

  He controls the United States. There's like a lot of people.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  You need a millennial child to help you make the transition when you're upgrading.

• 25:40Nilay Patel?

  For anyone who isn't a milli, like.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  I'm just saying I've done a lot of tech support.

• 25:44Nilay Patel?

  I know you have. Let me ask you a question.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  A baby boomers.

• 25:47Nilay Patel?

  Do any of those baby boomers have buildings with their name on them? Any of them own a golf course? Just checking. Any of them have their own plane that they were sad about giving up for Air Force One? Just some baseline questions. Like, I get what you're saying. Normal boomers, right?

• 26:04Speaker 01

  I was just running with the joke. I'm not really saying that there's any reason for Trump to have an S3.

• 26:09Nilay Patel?

  Phone and it's gonna be.

• 26:10Speaker 03

  Neil, you can't be the only person who's allowed to have senioritis right now. Okay? Like let Paul have his job.

• 26:16Nilay Patel?

  I'm getting, I'm getting Trump a next bit robin. No one can stop. It's gonna be so confusing. Lastly, before I go on the next thing, LG, film left out, the Samsung party. We got a little picture of the G6 leaking out of the world. It looks really cool. Yeah. I think it looks really cool. It's got like a curved screen, like the edges of the screen. It's not like curved in three dimensions, it's curved around. It's a round wrecked. I like it. A round wrecked. Yeah. Yeah.

• 26:44Speaker 03

  You know what's gonna happen to this phone?

• 26:45Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna run terrible software and we're not gonna buy it.

• 26:47Speaker 03

  It's gonna get roundly wrecked by the Samsung Galaxy X8.

• 26:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But this is LG's chance. This is their moment. I just wanna put this out there again. It's their opportunity. Far East Movement is a band. I don't think they're doing anything right now. It's just sitting there. This does look nice.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  You need to explain the full joke, because people don't know it anyway.

• 27:07Nilay Patel?

  Far East Movement is a band, they have a song called "Like a G6."

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Oh, no. Oh.

• 27:11Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 27:12Nilay Patel?

  The line in "Like a G6" is "sipping scissor up on my ride," which I've always heard is "sipping scissor on my ride," which is where that whole fucking joke comes from.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Really?

• 27:20Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  That was the start of it. Wow.

• 27:22Nilay Patel?

  It's really bad.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  I'm so happy to be here for this explanation.

• 27:25Nilay Patel?

  This explanation's happened on the show, I would say, four dozen times.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  Well, why you gotta take this away from me?

• 27:32Nilay Patel?

  It's every once in a while today.

• 27:36Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, look.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  They released an album in 2016 called "Identity."

• 27:39Nilay Patel?

  We don't usually do like integrations or branding, but if for this one, if you put me in a plane, in a G6 with Far East Movement, I will hold your phone. I won't do anything with it, I'll hold it, but I'll probably have a smile on my face. Will you bob your head a little bit? And then I'll get drunk in my own custom vodka. Okay, we're gonna take a break. When we come back, it's gonna get serious. Liz is gonna be here. There's a lot happening in the science community. She ran a piece, I know Paul has some thoughts about this, she ran a piece called "Yes, Science is Political. Trump has made a lot of moves around science." We wanted her to come on and explain it. So I'm gonna read this ad, when we come back, and talk to Liz.

• 28:13Nilay Patel?

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• 28:54Nilay Patel?

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• 29:02Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we're back, and Liz Lopatto has joined us. Hey, Liz.

• 29:04Speaker 04

  Hey, how's it going, guys?

• 29:06Nilay Patel?

  It's good. It's been a while since you've been on our show.

• 29:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's just been, you know, I think since I was last in New York.

• 29:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, wow. Well, you gotta come. See, we all have senioritis today because it's like one of our last shows in this studio. But then we have a new one. You gotta come. There's like windows, there's like a sound booth. Lap of luxury. I'm so excited. Anyway, Liz, we're gonna, let's get, let's get serious. Let's get deep.

• 29:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, that's, that's where I've been living. So I have not been experiencing the senioritis because there has been so much news coming out of the news, new administration about science specifically, that that's kind of where I've been living. I actually had a sandwich before I came in. It was the first time I've eaten today. So that's how it's been.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, Liz and I were talking just before the show, and the thing that's amazing to me is Trump has done a bunch of stuff right away. He's issued a bunch of executive orders, but it seems like the, the biggest storyline coming out of all those executive orders are like people not being happy from a science perspective. It's not, you know, that hit first, not immigration, not even healthcare, not the wall, it not, you know, the economy, your jobs. Like, the thing that like, everybody's like crafting a narrative around is all the stuff that's happening with science.

• 30:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. So there are, are pieces of science that are relatively controversial, right? Like, I know there are plenty of people out there who don't believe in evolution. I know there are plenty of people out there who don't accept global warming. But it turns out, most of the rest of science is pretty uncontroversial and actually fairly well-liked by the public at large. And so I think that's maybe one of the reasons why there is kind of this moment where people are really coalescing around science, especially I noticed that the national parks have been a focus of discussion and that's in part because I don't think there are very many people who don't love the national parks. They're pretty bipartisan. So I'm not totally

• 31:04Speaker 04

  surprised to find out that this is getting a huge pushback, right? Like over the last 50 or 60, 100 years, science has really changed the way that we have lived from everything from like penicillin and vaccines to things like automobiles and the internet. So, you know, I think the public at large is is pretty positive in science, especially, you know, space science. Elon Musk obviously is somebody our our audience cares about a lot and dude wants to go to Mars. So

• 31:35Speaker 03

  Also underground.

• 31:37Nilay Patel?

  He's all over the place. Yeah. Elon's got a lot to do and he's like DMing us, which is amazing.

• 31:44Speaker 04

  Bless that guy. But, you know, it's it's like been less than a week since the inauguration, as I am I'm saying this to you on a Thursday. And so the EPA has been a target for the Trump administration. And, you know, there's, there's been a bunch of stuff. Most alarmingly that studies and data are under a quote unquote temporary hold before they're released and they are going to be reviewed by political appointees before they can be released to the public, which is very unusual. Typically, the way that this went during like, for instance, the George W. Bush years, was that they would notify the political appointee that they were going to be publishing about something controversial. It wasn't like a review, right?

• 32:29Speaker 04

  It was like, here's our, here is our study. It's going to be coming out FYI, like, there could be a little bit of a firestorm. This is actually more, what is the word I want here? Sweeping than that. You know, like when you see people like William K. Riley, who was the EPA administrator for George H. W. Bush, saying this is, quote, "going down a very dark road."

• 32:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:52Speaker 04

  You start to get alarmed. But basically, we're hitting a point where the actual research integrity is potentially threatened. And I think that really upsets people. And I think it upsets people in part because we generally, I would say, trust scientists. I mean, stop me if I'm wrong, but like, you know, people like Carl Sagan, or more recently, Neil deGrasse Tyson, are sort of like homey figures that everyone knows, kind of trusts, wants to talk to, feels comfortable with, and likes them so much that they invite them into their homes via television set on a fairly routine basis.

• 33:30Nilay Patel?

  Right. To explain things, there's like an objectivity, right, that like creates comfort, right, with science?

• 33:37Speaker 04

  I mean, you know, the data doesn't care whether you like it or not. The data is the data, right? If you don't like the data, that that kind of sucks for you, but you, you know, you're still stuck with it. So I think that that is something that people have kind of latched on to. And I think it ties into something larger that I've noticed, I noticed during the Trump campaign, which is a sort of disregard for facts. Just a level of disinterest in what the facts are. And, and just, you know, on a personal level, it's a little different than, I think, being deliberately lied to. Because I feel like people who are deliberately lying to me often do know what the truth is and are keeping track of it in, in order to deceive me.

• 34:22Speaker 04

  And here, I sort of feel like the message is the truth is what we want the truth to be. And that, that, that, that's a direct confrontation with the methodology of science and the way that we understand how to, how to discover things about the world around us, and about our own bodies, and about space and everything. So those, those sort of ideologies are a little bit at odds, I think.

• 34:47Nilay Patel?

  Are you seeing this from, so scientists are obviously responding in a bunch of ways, right? There's the rogue Twitter accounts, and they're of unknown provenance, but... There was like, you know, a dozen or more rogue Twitter accounts, like alt-national park service started because Trump shut down the park service Twitter. There's a rogue NASA account, which is actually very funny, but like, we don't know if they're real, right?

• 35:09Speaker 04

  No, we don't.

• 35:10Nilay Patel?

  But the story behind them, again, of unknown provenances, like, these are rogue government scientists, like, starting their own ways of communicating. But are you seeing that kind of response from across the political spectrum, or is it just a bunch of, like, pissed-off liberal scientists?

• 35:24Speaker 04

  So, it's a bunch of, I wouldn't even say the scientists are pissed off, or at least the ones that I've spoken to are pissed off, so much as they are kind of terrified. Some of that has to do with the communication style. One person I spoke to said that he hadn't discovered his grant was frozen until he read about it in the news, and then he checked in with the lab, and sure enough, he couldn't send samples for analysis, because they didn't, they couldn't, they didn't have the money, they weren't allowed to use the money. And he compared that with previous administrations, where there have been freezes like this, but they were clearly communicated in advance with an end date in advance. And so, I think part of it is just a straight lack of communication internally with all

• 36:09Speaker 04

  of these, you know, government scientists, basically. I wouldn't say that the, at least the ones that I've spoken to, they don't seem angry so much as they seem scared and confused.

• 36:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:21Speaker 04

  And, you know, I have been mostly tracking scientists, so I don't really know what the public-at-large response is.

• 36:28Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:29Speaker 04

  But, you know, it's sort of the same refrain over and over, is we don't, we don't know what's going on, do you know what's going on, can you tell us what's going on, which is a weird thing to hear from your sources.

• 36:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So, what happens next?

• 36:43Speaker 04

  Well, I don't know if you, if you saw this today, but Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Committee of Oversight and Governmental Reform, and Frank Pallone, the ranking member on the House Committee of Energy and Commerce, just sent a letter to the White House saying that the gag orders may actually be violating federal law.

• 37:03Nilay Patel?

  Oh, wow.

• 37:04Speaker 04

  So...

• 37:05Nilay Patel?

  (laughing)

• 37:08Nilay Patel?

  That's a super weird thing to laugh at, Liz.

• 37:13Speaker 04

  I've been having a really weird week.

• 37:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:16Speaker 04

  Just a really weird week.

• 37:17Nilay Patel?

  No, I will say this to our audience, like, right, we run Verge Science. If you've been watching Verge Science, we often dip our toe into political issues. But mostly we cover like, space and health issues and like, the tech industry interfacing with science. And lately Liz has been saying to me over and over again, like, we can't stop covering the new administration. Like, it's dominating everything we do because it's creating so much news. It's kind of where you've been living.

• 37:42Speaker 04

  Yeah. Which is, if I seem a little spacey and confused, it's a little bit why.

• 37:50Speaker 04

  You know, what's going on right now is not normal. You know, often there are like bumps when administrations transition. That is normal. But the level and scale of confusion is unusual. The level of fear is unusual. And some of the stuff that we've been getting in terms of communication, particularly from the EPA, is really, really unusual. The idea that studies should be reviewed by political appointees itself is unusual.

• 38:23Speaker 04

  And, you know, scientists have, they're not a politically active bunch necessarily. I mean, like, they vote, but you don't see them necessarily turn up at protests, right? Well, they're organizing one now.

• 38:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:40Speaker 04

  They're planning to march on Washington, and so...

• 38:44Nilay Patel?

  That's gonna be the nerdiest protest of all time.

• 38:46Speaker 04

  I, yeah, it is.

• 38:47Nilay Patel?

  The great signs are coming out of that protest.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  Oh, my favorite sign from the women's march was, what do we want, real science? When do we want it? After peer review.

• 38:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. That's a great one. That's like an old standby.

• 38:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you know, I mean, this is, this is a super unusual situation where, where scientists are essentially feeling very threatened. And because their communication has been so unclear, it's not clear to them whether they are actually being threatened, or if there is just confusion, or if this is a, you know, transitional state, or what's going on. One thing I will say that I saw, I think it was Motherboard had reported that the hiring freeze for national parks meant that there might not be enough rangers during the peak, because they have to start hiring their seasonal workers now for the summers when people tend to go visit. So if you, like

• 39:41Speaker 04

  me, love spending time in national parks, I think you should probably call your representatives.

• 39:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:48Speaker 04

  And maybe check with rangers before you plan your vacation this year.

• 39:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's the thing. Okay, well, we're gonna keep covering this, basically the hell out of this, because it impacts almost everything that we normally cover, right? Like, the space industry is about to undergo some radical changes, because Trump has different, like, he's like, we should go to the moon instead of Mars, right? Like, that's a real thing that is being, like, it's happening. So it touches a lot of what we cover. I think we're gonna see a lot more of it. And I think, Liz, you're probably gonna make a bunch more appearances on the show to talk about it.

• 40:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think that's probably right. One thing that I do want people to keep in mind is that most science, including stuff that happens at universities, basic science, it can, it can be expensive, and the government typically pays for it. It's one of actually the best investments that we have in terms of job creation, in terms of creation of technology, and stuff that trickles out to the wider world, R and D. So, you know, this stuff, it's, it's...

• 40:52Speaker 04

  When I see people sort of attacking science, I wonder if they understand what exactly they are attacking because American prosperity is so closely tied to our scientific prowess and it's a major source of soft power for us. Our scientific education programs are among the best in the world. And right now, Brazil is undergoing massive science brain drain because they aren't funding their scientists. The great scientists they've built are going elsewhere. And I'm not saying that's happening here. It's too early to happen here yet, but that is a possibility. It is possible that if you tank science, you actually wind up hurting America very badly in the long run.

• 41:31Speaker 03

  So here's a question that I have. It seems like there's a, science is very careful and slow and deliberative. The scientific process and scientists in general are slow, careful and deliberative, which seems to be the opposite of what Donald Trump is being as president. And so there's an asymmetry between the speed with which he's like throwing out decrees and making executive orders and like applying new rules. Like he could, he's just doing that wicked crazy fast. It's like impossible to keep up with it, actually. Is there, is there like a fundamental, like, I mean, this applies to Congress too, but

• 42:15Speaker 03

  is there a fundamental problem where the science community isn't used to or isn't able to, because they're scientists and they want to be slow and deliberative, respond as quickly as like this, it's coming out?

• 42:29Speaker 04

  I don't, yeah, I mean, again, part of it is just the straight up confusions. And so because they tend to be very deliberate in response, when they're confused, they tend to say nothing.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  Right.

• 42:39Speaker 04

  But I think that there's definitely a mismatch there. I also think, I, what I have been wondering about, and this is just a personal wonder, is like, does Donald Trump understand scientific jobs is also being jobs and part of jobs creation?

• 42:57Speaker 04

  Because they are. I mean, like, and you know, you don't have to have a degree necessarily to do a lot of these things, particularly in ecology. They're always looking for folks who can check traps. You know, you don't necessarily have to have gone to college to be involved with, with research. And so there are jobs that you can create by bolstering this scientific establishment instead of attacking it. And I find this all bewildering in light of the jobs promises he's made.

• 43:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Like I said, we're just gonna keep tracking it. But sadly, now I have to read an ad. But Liz, like I said, I suspect you're gonna be back on the show a bunch of times over the next month's, year's duration of the empire.

• 43:41Speaker 04

  Well, thanks for having me.

• 43:42Nilay Patel?

  Thanks, Liz. We're gonna take a break. We're gonna come back and then Paul and I are gonna argue about net neutrality. It's gonna be great.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:49Nilay Patel?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Squarespace, a company that only exists because of fucking net neutrality. Whether you're planning to start a business, change careers, or launch creative projects in a year, talk your next move with Squarespace. Again, which you can do because your website won't be throttled.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, check out my new website, verge sucks.com.

• 44:06Nilay Patel?

  Widely used by all kinds of people and businesses, Squarespace gives you the ability to create an online platform with which you can make your latest goals into a reality. So whether you need a landing page, beautiful gallery, professional blog, verge sucks.com, or an online store, it's all included in your Squarespace website. Plus, Squarespace offers a unique domain experience that is fully transparent and simple setup. You can add and arrange your content and features with a click of a mouse. There's nothing to install, patch, or upgrade, ever. But if you do have questions, you can turn to Squarespace's award-winning, current and for some customers support for help, no matter how technical or trivial seeming your problem may be. So start your free trial today, squarespace.com, enter offer code VERGE, get 10% off your first purchase. That's VERGE, that's your offer code. 10% off your first purchase. Squarespace, make your next move. Make your next website.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Bam.

• 44:49Nilay Patel?

  They just like, there's gotta be a list. Like, spin the wheel. Like, what's the tagline today? I love it. All right, Paul. Every week, you do a segment.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:59Nilay Patel?

  What's it called?

• 45:00Speaker 01

  It's called Dry Your Sweaty Palms.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Can't believe you forgot.

• 45:06Nilay Patel?

  So memorable.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  I know. Yeah, there's these, um, oh, shoot, I lost a tap. Oh, this always happens.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 45:14Nilay Patel?

  Your palms are so sweaty.

• 45:16Speaker 01

  My palms are sweaty.

• 45:17Nilay Patel?

  Everywhere.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Performance gaming wear.

• 45:19Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  From Control.

• 45:24Nilay Patel?

  I wish this was a video podcast. Megan just put her hands over her mouth like she's got the vapors.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  I saw these earlier and just had to restrain myself.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Control Freak. Control Freak spells with a K, of course.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  Of course, yeah.

• 45:38Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  They're famous for like the little.

• 45:41Nilay Patel?

  Is it with a K at the top and a Q at the end?

• 45:43Speaker 01

  No.

• 45:44Nilay Patel?

  Ah, no Q at the end. You gotta go for it.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 45:47Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Sorry. It's freak though, F R E E K.

• 45:52Nilay Patel?

  I want to kill myself.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Control Freak is famous for these little like thumbstick extenders. You put like a little extender on your Xbox or PlayStation controller's thumbsticks to get like a little better control.

• 46:04Nilay Patel?

  They're all about airing out your hands.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  But now they have this performance gaming wear, which is a pair of basketball shorts.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  Which is, it's a real thing. It's in the Call of Duty community.

• 46:17Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  There's a lot of basketball shorts. You wear a hoodie and basketball shorts and it's just the thing. Any weather.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  Everybody's a slob.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:26Nilay Patel?

  But they're, but they're.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  Why a hoodie? Like, why not, why not wear warriors? As, as slobs. Yes.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Well, Dieter, I'm glad you asked. The hoodie.

• 46:34Nilay Patel?

  Does Call of Duty have clans? What's the team? What are your team names? I don't play Call of Duty.

• 46:39Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 46:40Nilay Patel?

  I'm a pacifist.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  I don't either.

• 46:41Nilay Patel?

  But if I started a Call of Duty tribe.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  Guild or something.

• 46:45Nilay Patel?

  Guilds.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Like a esports team?

• 46:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Mine would be warrior slobs.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Warrior slobs.

• 46:50Speaker 02

  Of course, yeah.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  So, so the, the basketball shorts have this like side panel on them of this absorbent material. So you can wipe your hands when they get all sweaty.

• 47:00Nilay Patel?

  They just added a little towel.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  And then the material's also on the hoodie.

• 47:03Nilay Patel?

  Wait, the material's also on the hoodie?

• 47:04Speaker 01

  And the hoodie has like, is like larger because like when you're doing esports, you have to wear like their like mandatory noise cancelling headphones. So you can't hear crowd noise.

• 47:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  And then they typically, you typically wear earbuds under.

• 47:17Nilay Patel?

  Wait, really?

• 47:18Speaker 01

  If you look closely at any like esports situation, you'll typically see little earbuds sneaking up into the so they can hear the game audio. But this is the hoodie is oversized so that it fits over this and then it gives you like an isolated, you know, it's just you.

• 47:34Nilay Patel?

  Does it, does it snap on to the edges of your 30 inch monitor?

• 47:37Speaker 01

  No.

• 47:38Speaker 03

  That's like the real key.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  Also.

• 47:40Nilay Patel?

  Built in snaps at the end?

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Pockets of the, the basketball shorts are oversized so you can put your controller in.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  Where can I buy them?

• 47:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm in. Let's do it. Why not?

• 47:51Speaker 01

  36 bucks.

• 47:52Nilay Patel?

  That's great.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Great basketball shorts.

• 47:55Nilay Patel?

  I like it. And you can wear a Scott E vest under it so that you can pull out even more devices.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 48:00Nilay Patel?

  I'm ready for it. Uh, you know, our friends at Polygon, Megan, you know all about Polygon.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  I know all about them. I've heard of them before.

• 48:05Nilay Patel?

  They're expanding some esports this year. They're going to have way more esports coverage. It's like a thing. It's a real thing.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  It's a real thing.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  Everybody's gonna have to wear those shorts, I'm sure, yeah?

• 48:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Polygon, I don't, I didn't want to break this news to you on the podcast. Everyone at Polygon required to wear basketball shorts now. Super weird. Most other media companies have like social media policies. Polygon just like wears these goddamn basketball shorts.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  Wipe your sweaty hands on them. Damn.

• 48:29Nilay Patel?

  Wait, I feel like, I don't want to get too deep in this. I feel like they've like, they've solved the hand sweat issue, but they're really, you got a warm head issue going on.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  You can get hot?

• 48:40Speaker 03

  Oh, they need fans.

• 48:41Nilay Patel?

  You got like headphones, earbuds and a hoodie.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Is there like good ventilation in the hood? Like, what's the technology in the hood?

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Through your legs.

• 48:53Speaker 03

  Why not wear fingerless gloves that like wick the moisture away directly at the source?

• 48:57Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, because.

• 48:59Nilay Patel?

  All right, all right.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  Dieter, have you heard of the claw grip?

• 49:03Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 49:04Nilay Patel?

  I have.

• 49:04Speaker 03

  It's Inspector Gadget's arch enemy.

• 49:06Nilay Patel?

  We're coming.

• 49:07Speaker 03

  When he grips you.

• 49:08Nilay Patel?

  I really want to talk about net neutrality and I really want to talk about the show Haunted, which I'm fucking obsessed with. So, okay, so Trump, I hate to just keep hammering on Trump, but the man's moving fast. Doing a lot of things. Um, one of the things he did, he appointed you chairman of the FCC. So, again, I think long time listeners know, uh, The Verge, I personally have been a champion of net neutrality for a long time. There was Obama's FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler was a big surprise because he used to work for the telecom companies. He was a cable industry guy. He was a telecom guy. He came in, did title two, made net neutrality happen. Alexis Ohanian flew a flag from the top of the Reddit headquarters and then ran away

• 49:50Nilay Patel?

  to marry Serena Williams because his last work was done. Wheeler's out, obviously, new administration. Trump has appointed a guy named Ajit Pai as the new chairman of the FCC.

• 49:58Speaker 03

  He's been on the FCC for a while.

• 50:00Nilay Patel?

  He was an Obama appointee. I will say this, of all of the, of all of Trump's appointees, Pai is probably the most, just like, well-liked, most-qualified guy. That's not saying a lot. Well, not, but he's like, he's the real deal, right? Like, he's very smart. I think Paul and I both, like, Paul and I disagree about this issue, but I agree with Paul, Pai is a very smart guy.

• 50:22Speaker 03

  He's also like, he's really like, hot fire on Twitter. Like, when he speaks, or when he, you know, writes, or, you know, whatever, any, any public venue he's in, he's like, cogent and like, listenable or readable.

• 50:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think he's-

• 50:38Speaker 03

  You never, you never get bored by him.

• 50:39Nilay Patel?

  Right. So, the way I'll put this is, I think any other Republican president would have done a great job by appointing Ajit Pai as the chairman of the FCC, right? He's the right pick for this kind, for the, for the, for the Republican Party. Great. He's like, basically, fuck it, it's all over. Like, we're burning it down. So, you're already seeing, and he's anti-net neutrality, he was from the beginning, he's written a bunch of dissenting opinions as those orders came through. We're gonna do a bunch of pieces, kind of analyzing what he's already written about it. I think Jay Castren, a great reporter, is already working on that. But you're seeing this immediate turn by the telecommunications

• 51:19Nilay Patel?

  industry in response to it. So, Verizon said it might buy Charter Cable, which just bought Time Warner Cable. So, there's already a push towards more consolidation. That's happening in the context of AT&T buying Time Warner. I think you're seeing T-Mobile, kind of, they're just basically being like, yo, Sprint, we're gonna buy you. You up? That's like their attitude towards Sprint right now. And then AT&T, Randall Stephenson, the CEO of AT&T, said we're, they're going, quote, "They're going hard on zero-rating." Here's the quote, "We were actually quite confident that zero-rating, as we were implementing it, was fine under a Pai chairmanship." So you're now seeing this bundleization of the internet happening. So AT&T is going to make DirecTV Now free to stream.

• 52:01Nilay Patel?

  Some other service like Sling TV might not be free to stream unless Sling pays AT&T. So there's a price differentiate.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  They did most of these things before the election.

• 52:10Nilay Patel?

  But they got, Wheeler was like, this shit's illegal. Right? Wheeler already issued an opinion saying Verizon zero rating and AT&T zero rating was not fine. And now they're saying, well, Pi is coming in. We think it's going to be fine. Pi is not going to do this. Pi might, you know, take down Title II. Or he might work with Congress. There's, Congress do this in 10 minutes. They could say, Congress decrees Title II does not apply to the internet. It literally could just do it and Trump would sign it and it'll be over.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Like, kind of like in the 90s when they said that FCC should be like low on regulation. Like that the internet was not supposed to be heavily regulated.

• 52:44Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. I, I really liked the Pi quote about the Title II reclassification. This order imposes intrusive government regulations that won't work to solve a problem that doesn't exist using legal authority the FCC doesn't have.

• 53:00Nilay Patel?

  So here's my argument to you.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  And I, and I think the result has only been more consolidation. A lot more zero ratings happened after this whole Title II thing. And, you know, the big companies can't afford to get a bunch of lawyers and fight the FCC forever.

• 53:16Nilay Patel?

  So do you think zero rating is good or bad on net?

• 53:19Speaker 01

  It's, it's, to me, that's, that's not what it's about. I think it's about the right of a company to be able to make decisions about how it wants to approach a market. Like, I have different, like, opinions about what I want my internet company to do. Uh, and how I want them to be treated by the government. And I think we, we as members of, of the press have basically the most protections of any industry to do, approach our market exactly how we want to do. And we have some restrictions on, you know, the things we need to do with how we treat our employees and non-discrimination and the basic, the baseline regulations.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  But our industry specifics are almost completely unregulated. About how we speak and the decisions we make and what we do. That is not the climate for, I would say, most American businesses.

• 54:13Nilay Patel?

  Well, I would just say focus on the ISPs, right? Because ISPs did live in this climate for a long time.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:18Nilay Patel?

  Right? And the Pi quote about net neutrality actually came... Before the zero rating stuff happened, before discriminatory pricing happened, right, like the things they're doing now are the things that Title II net neutrality were designed to prevent.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's weird how that worked where you create this regulation and then these big companies do what seems like the opposite of the intent of this regulation.

• 54:43Nilay Patel?

  Right. Well, they're pushing back on it. Yeah, they're pushing, they're trying to find loop. They're seeing, they're creating a business practice.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  Isn't that weird how that wasn't very effective at getting what people wanted?

• 54:51Nilay Patel?

  But it could be effective if you take them to court and you get them to, like, that's how it works.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  I just think, I think a law would be a much better, well, also, and these companies are out of the FTC's purview now. So if the FTC saw something anti-competitive, the FTC could step in before the Title II classification.

• 55:11Nilay Patel?

  Conversation.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  The Title II says, all these companies are monopolies, we can't do anything about that, so we just gotta, they gotta obey these rules.

• 55:18Nilay Patel?

  So that's actually, that's the thing I'll push back on you, right? They are monopolies, right? Particularly the wired broadband providers, you, most people only have a choice between one or two, right? Wireless providers, it's very hard to switch between. If you regulated them all to use the same standard and have interoperable phones and everybody bought a full-priced phone, then sure, right? Then let T-Mobile zero-rate a bunch of stuff and you hate zero-rating, you'll switch to Verizon, which doesn't have it, and you have a market. But that is, the amount of friction between these providers is very high, right? So like, the average consumer can't leave. So, once you, once you buy in, you're stuck for a period of time.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  A lot of people switch around all the time.

• 56:02Nilay Patel?

  I don't know about all the time. The fundamental thing that we're disagreeing on.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  Buy a car and then I have it for a few years and then I have to decide on a different car.

• 56:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I don't think it's like that, though. This is an ongoing, necessary service in your life.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  If you take Peter Thiel as Trump's lead technology advisor, in like, his is like Zero to One book, his like, concept of business is that you create monopolies and then you don't, and then those monopolies don't have perfect control of. Over the market because another monopoly comes and supplants them. And I think with like more freedom in this space, like something that Pi wants is a more unlicensed spectrum.

• 56:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  I would love there for to be unlicensed spectrum in kind of each part of the spectrum. So that they you can have a lot more innovative products, like something in the 700 megahertz.

• 56:55Nilay Patel?

  Right. And I'll tell you, unlicensed spectrum has been great.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Allow wireless to compete with wired, you know, you know, FiOS competes with this DSL cable and fiber in homes right now. Not every home has all of them, but that's a fairly vibrant competition. And then a lot of homes.

• 57:14Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait, wait, hold up. That is just absolutely not. No statistic says there's a vibrant competition in wired broadband, not a one. And even if there is, the speed differential between the cable monopoly and DSL monopoly in your area is so high that you functionally only have one choice for the highest speed provider. Like that is just, that's New York City. Like, we live in one of the most populated zones in America.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  You can only have one choice for the highest speed of something.

• 57:43Nilay Patel?

  But if you only have one choice, you have de facto a monopoly and you should probably not that not let that monopoly be abusive about its pricing. I don't think wireless is going to start to compete. I think that's like what it comes down to for me. It's not like, should we impose Title II, a specific admittedly old regulation to allow us to do these things, right? That was the legal method that was, even though it was very slow, the most efficient for the FCC to impose these controls. I don't think people trust their providers. Ultimately, I think that's what it comes down to. We don't trust Comcast disclosure Comcast investment company. I don't trust him as far as I could see him.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  I don't trust.

• 58:17Nilay Patel?

  I don't trust Verizon. I don't trust AT&T. I don't trust T-Mobile, whatever, what have you, right? And there's no competition keeping them honest for me, or certainly not enough.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  My problem is I don't trust five unelected people to decide the fate of the internet.

• 58:32Nilay Patel?

  But they're appointed by the government. Do you trust the Secretary of State?

• 58:36Speaker 01

  Well, I would much rather that Congress would step in and and create laws. I do think they've actually advised the FCC and I think the FCC has gone against Congress's directive to the FCC. But I think we elect.

• 58:49Nilay Patel?

  Well, the House did, not the Senate. Like, the Republican House advised one thing and the Democratic Senate at that time advised another thing.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  But we we elect. The lawmakers to make laws, but like a regulatory agency having this much power over the internet, which is so important to our economy and to our lives, is really scary to me. Five people get to like, sit around and decide, I don't think that innovation is fair, but I like this innovation, you know, like, it's just, it's just kind of gross to me. And, and there's very little recourse. If you go against, like, if you break a law, you get to have your day in court. If, if you, if you go against a regulation, you're not just going against the, the, that, that rule, but you have to fight the body that wrote the rule, executes the rule, and

• 59:38Nilay Patel?

  But that's true of every law.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  No. The laws are made by the legislature. They're executed by the executive branch, and then we have a judicial

• 59:46Nilay Patel?

  But they passed federal two and Verizon took them to federal court. They tried to

• 59:50Speaker 01

  Right, because the only way to

• 59:51Nilay Patel?

  They tried to do section 702.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:53Nilay Patel?

  This is like ancient history in my brain. Cause I felt, I really thought I'd won, man.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  I'm sorry.

• 59:58Nilay Patel?

  I really thought this was over.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  I'm sorry.

• 1:00:00Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna go on forever. It's fine. And I think these are reasonable policy debates. But Verizon took every step of this process to federal court, outside of it. The federal court ruled against the FCC three times and said, if you want to do this, this is the way you do it. The law, the regulation was written by Congress, and all the FCC was deciding was which part of the Communications Act would apply to the internet. Right? I don't

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  And that's your only recourse with an agency who's creating the rules and enforcing the rules and acting as all three branches of government in one, is to

• 1:00:34Speaker 03

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

• 1:00:35Nilay Patel?

  Wait, I know.

• 1:00:36Speaker 03

  That's, that's a completely unfair characterization.

• 1:00:39Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, that is a real thing that happens.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  If you're Verizon, you can afford

• 1:00:42Speaker 03

  No, Paul, Paul, Paul.

• 1:00:43Nilay Patel?

  But the only companies we're talking about are Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, right?

• 1:00:46Speaker 03

  Paul's trying to do like, government 101. So let's, this is what happened. Congress passed a law, the Communications Act. The FCC Was like, what does this apply to the internet? And Congress was like, I don't know, we're busy doing shutting down the government or whatever. And FCC is like, okay, well, that seems like a hassle, but maybe. And then they didn't do it, they didn't do it. And then they did some other stuff. Verizon took them to court, they took them to the judicial branch. And the judicial branch said, hey, it's our job to interpret the law that Congress passes. And the way we interpret it is the law that Congress passed gives you power to regulate the internet. So if you want to regulate the internet, you have to use the law that Congress passed. And the FCC said, okay. And then they did it.

• 1:01:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, they, this, this fight was real. It was like, we covered the hell out of it. So my, my question is just comes down to this. You let AT&T and Verizon do whatever they want to do, which is basically what happens if you let Netflix try to go away. Does the future of the internet look better or worse? Right? Do you, if you are a startup music service and you can't afford the fees Apple and Spotify pay to AT&T? If you're a startup video service and you can't afford the fees Netflix will now start paying to AT&T? How do you actually compete against Netflix? Right? It's, you've now allowed the giants to make more money because they can innovate however they wish. But you might have squashed the actually important innovation, which is the businesses that thrive on the internet.

• 1:02:15Nilay Patel?

  That to me is the scary, scary thing. Right? It's a trade off. It's a clear trade off. We're not going to allow the telecommunications companies to innovate at will. Because we think the innovation that happens on the internet is more important. That's, and that's just a, like, we can differ on that policy choice. And I think that's totally reasonable and fair. But I don't think that we're expressing it in that way very clearly.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  I just, I trust the, the market and the businesses that got us this far. To do a better job of continuing to innovate and giving us, you know, better options and better ideas. Than five people nominated by any president.

• 1:02:55Nilay Patel?

  Right. But, you know, the president nominates a lot of people, right?

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  But the FCC does these votes on five, there's five people.

• 1:03:06Nilay Patel?

  But, sure, and there's like lengthy-

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  The Title II was a partisan decision.

• 1:03:09Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, Congress is what, 465? But like, the Supreme Court is appointed by a bunch of presidents that it votes on party. Like, the FCC, most of its decisions are unanimous.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  This was not.

• 1:03:20Nilay Patel?

  Well, so, but this one wasn't.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  This is a pretty marginal decision that has a huge theoretical impact and kind of unknowable impact because they can kind of, they kind of give themselves a lot of wiggle room to continue to grow how much they're gonna necessarily govern and how much they're gonna apply.

• 1:03:38Nilay Patel?

  And I think that was probably the strongest and most reasonable criticism of Title II, right? Here's this law, you're saying most of it won't apply, but there's nothing from keeping the rest of it applying. That's fair, but I think as this administration and Pi go after net neutrality, I think the vast majority of people on the internet who were fired up about it are gonna provide more pushback, protest, resistance to changing it than they might be expecting. That's just my, that's what I think. I don't, I could be wrong. Everyone could be like, fuck it, I love zero rating, because it sounds free.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  I think a lot of people do like zero rating. I think a lot of people are afraid of this bogeyman that was, been, you know, passed around of you're gonna have to pay extra to be able to watch Netflix.

• 1:04:19Nilay Patel?

  You're gonna pay extra somehow.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:21Nilay Patel?

  Right? Either you're Netflix-

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  Were you pro-

• 1:04:23Nilay Patel?

  Someone's prices are going up. If AT&T starts charging for access and not passing that cost to the consumer, someone's gonna pay and the consumer will end up paying in some other way. So the cost of Netflix could go up. It's just hard to know. Were you pro SOPA and PIPA back in the day?

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Um, I wasn't super right up on them. They just seemed, the thing I noticed-

• 1:04:45Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's like, that's one of, that's the way the modern net neutrality fight, you know, kicked off five years ago is those two bills out of Congress, uh, you know, Reddit shut, blacked out its site, Wikipedia did, I think we did something to our site.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  We did.

• 1:04:59Nilay Patel?

  And it was a big fight, and that fight was over the, the rules that were in those laws to try and fight piracy.

• 1:05:05Speaker 03

  ended up closing a bunch of net neutrality doors. And it like it had, it had very clear implications for the powers of the telecommunications industry that we didn't feel comfortable giving to them. And, and so like the laws eventually got, you know, overturned because there was so much pushback against them. And so like, this is a similar fight. It's just a different venue, basically like for the time being, anyway, Congress doesn't seem especially interested in that issue. And they're doing, you know, which is what, you know, when Congress passes law, they ask the executive branch to execute on it. And the FCC is part of the executive branch, and so they're just executing on it as best they can.

• 1:05:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:48Speaker 03

  And the, the question is like, what is the method of execution that Pi's FCC is going to have? And it's going to be radically different, it looks like than Wheeler's execution. And so like what we're, what we're arguing about here is net neutrality, but we're also arguing about like the, the scope of like interpretation that the executive branch has when it's trying to enforce a law that Congress has handed them. And the law in this case is not very specific and not very clear and not very aware of what the modern internet looks like and acts like.

• 1:06:22Nilay Patel?

  Right. But I think this is going to keep going and honestly, I like talking to you about it. Cause we disagree, but I think like it's one of those things where it is a trade off. And if you see both sides of the trade off, you can have a reasonable discussion. And again, I think Ajit Pi is like, he's just such a well-respected guy. Like, I don't think he's going to blow it because he doesn't understand the issues, which is not like you know, Trump has appointed a lot of people and a lot of them are very controversial because people are like, what does Ben Carson know about, like, you can't make that argument about Pi. Like he's, he's on the money and I think it's going to be really interesting what he does. Okay. I want to get off the heavy stuff for one second. I want to talk about surveillance in reality television. Have you seen Hunted? You watched Hunted.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  I, I came back to my house while it was still running and a legal stream of the football game that I had been watching. I don't know.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  And I see these guys and they're in this war room. But it's like, this can't be real reality television. They can't be showing me an actual investigation because it has those bogus, like, glass whiteboards that nobody actually uses in real life.

• 1:07:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  And then there's like some guys taking money out of ATM and I was like, what is going on?

• 1:07:38Nilay Patel?

  So here, usually CBS, I will say, offers the most garbage television available.

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:07:44Nilay Patel?

  It's fact.

• 1:07:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:45Nilay Patel?

  Hunted is probably garbage television. But if you don't know what it is, it's like a remake of a British show where they like get a bunch of players, sort of like Amazing Race style, and they tell them, you can run around basically like Florida, Georgia, and part of Mississippi. It's like a hundred square, 100,000 square mile area. So it's some huge part of that state, those states. They can only pull out cash from ATM in a hundred dollar increments and they're followed by camera crews who then fake being the surveillance state and then they have like a group of cops who try to chase them down. And they have to like stay on the run. I'm obsessed with it. It makes no sense. Like, obviously the producers are like feeding the cops information, like when they take money out of the ATM.

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  Wait, they're not real cops.

• 1:08:24Nilay Patel?

  They are all ex cops.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  Okay, ex cops.

• 1:08:27Nilay Patel?

  But they're not, they're not real cops.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  They're not in their official.

• 1:08:29Nilay Patel?

  But they're basically faking like, what if our surveillance state was perfect? So like they take money out of the ATM and the producer like calls the cop headquarters and like, they took the money out of your hand and like send them a bit, because you can't really do that.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's like step one of how you disappear is you don't take money out of ATM.

• 1:08:45Nilay Patel?

  Right, so like they have to decide when to take money out of the ATM because they need, obviously need this money.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:08:49Nilay Patel?

  And they limit them to a hundred dollars, so they are forced to use ATMs, like the game. All I'm saying is the show is bonkers. I want the version to cover the hell of it because it's so nuts and I think if I was on it, I could win.

• 1:09:00Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah?

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  How would you do it?

• 1:09:02Nilay Patel?

  Okay, here's what happened on this last episode, the first episode. One of the players, like a six foot eight baseball player, and he's on the run with his girlfriend, who's a fucking like hot blonde model. And the cops are like, well, they'll be easy to find. Look for the tall guy with the model. So they bought kids' wigs and put them on their heads.

• 1:09:21Speaker 02

  Oh, honey.

• 1:09:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's fact. And then they went to the bus station and they're like, oh, we need money for the bus. Should we use the ATM? And they're like, yes. And they used it and they got on the bus. And the cops went to the bus station and they're like, did you see any tall people wearing wigs? And I'm like, yes.

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  Okay, what's?

• 1:09:36Nilay Patel?

  They're on the bus to Atlanta. They just went to the bus station in Atlanta and they got off the bus and they caught them.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  What's your strat?

• 1:09:45Nilay Patel?

  You just go underground, man.

• 1:09:47Speaker 02

  Just go to the woods, man.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  Like a barter economy?

• 1:09:50Nilay Patel?

  No, it's like, they don't know who you are. They don't know where you're going. You don't have, you could just stay in one place the whole time. They would never find you.

• 1:09:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, if that's your strat, I guarantee you within four hours, you'd be buying a child's wig.

• 1:10:04Speaker 03

  I thought this was so easy.

• 1:10:06Nilay Patel?

  I would shave my beard into a mustache.

• 1:10:08Speaker 02

  Oh, clever.

• 1:10:10Nilay Patel?

  No, I didn't see me with a mustache.

• 1:10:13Nilay Patel?

  There's one photo of me on Twitter, which continues to haunt me.

• 1:10:16Speaker 03

  By the way, mustache, sorry, mustache, however the hell you said it, is like your 10th yuppie thing.

• 1:10:20Nilay Patel?

  A mustache. There's one photo of me that was my Twitter avatar for a long time, which was a joke, which I believe is another argument why you should never use Twitter. I did the thing where I shaved and like made a goatee.

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  Did you have a soul patch?

• 1:10:32Nilay Patel?

  It was like, it was one of those like, hey honey, what if I had a goatee, like jokes? And I made it my Twitter avatar and now anytime anyone wants to troll me, it's like that.

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  Can someone please send this to me on Twitter?

• 1:10:43Nilay Patel?

  It's real bad. I don't know, what would your strat be, Megan? By the way, I think we should all be on the show.

• 1:10:47Speaker 02

  Hmm. Honestly, I think I'd get caught really quick. I think I'd be like, ah. And I'm supposed to be hiding and I should be in the woods, but like, I really want some Cheez-Its. I'd like go to the store and like, use my credit card. They'd be like, no, you, no, okay.

• 1:10:59Nilay Patel?

  I would definitely get caught when I was like selecting which Kyocera burner phone to buy.

• 1:11:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:04Nilay Patel?

  Like, it would be that. Like, I don't know, this one has a really bad Android build on it.

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  Be like tweeting and it's like giving my local.

• 1:11:11Nilay Patel?

  Paul, would you be my hunted partner?

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  Why don't you want me to be your partner?

• 1:11:15Speaker 03

  Do they have like things they have to do that takes them out in public?

• 1:11:18Nilay Patel?

  Did you just tell me you get caught by a Cheez-It?

• 1:11:21Speaker 02

  I was gonna let you carry the team, but I guess not.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  I just think the game is not fair if you have to use these ATMs.

• 1:11:29Nilay Patel?

  You have to use ATMs, but like the game is not fair because they're not actually surveilling you. The producers are following you, reality show style.

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:37Nilay Patel?

  And then choosing according to some black box of rules.

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  Wait, wait, wait, I have a question.

• 1:11:43Nilay Patel?

  To feed to the cops.

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  Does it have to be you that uses the ATM or could you like call your brother and be like, hey man, I'm in a bind, can you go to this ATM for me? And then you like arrange a trade off. Can you cheat?

• 1:11:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:51Speaker 02

  Is that cheating?

• 1:11:52Nilay Patel?

  Genetically, your brother's probably also 6'8", so you're just gonna.

• 1:11:55Speaker 02

  Well, I'm just saying, like, I feel like if you have a good network, there are ways around this.

• 1:11:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  You need like inside people.

• 1:12:04Speaker 02

  I'm valuable, let me be your team.

• 1:12:06Nilay Patel?

  Fine, Megan, you're my own department. All right, I'm obsessed with the show. I don't know, I just wanted to bring it up because I started watching it, same reason as Paul. I was watching football and it came on and I was like, I guess I'm watching this now. And it was so dumb and bad, I was like, I could definitely win the show. Yeah, that's also, also I feel about Two Broke Girls. I'd be like, I wouldn't be a broke girl.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  God, I've only been on this-

• 1:12:28Nilay Patel?

  What football game are you watching, Nilay? I'm not telling you. What game, what game was it? It was not, it was, I actually wasn't watching football, I was watching Two Broke Girls. You were watching a football game? Yeah, okay. What, I love Two Broke Girls.

• 1:12:38Speaker 02

  Okay, I just wanna say-

• 1:12:39Nilay Patel?

  The least racist show on television.

• 1:12:40Speaker 02

  I just wanna say, I've been on Vergecast, this version, twice, and you brought up this show both times.

• 1:12:45Nilay Patel?

  Gotta go. No! Only, only to burn CBS and to get away from Dieter.

• 1:12:54Nilay Patel?

  All right, I think that's it. Senior, senior week continues here at the Verge. All right, that's our show. We'll be back next week, once again, in the studio. It's gonna be wild again. Next week, there's like, not gonna be stuff here. Hmm.

• 1:13:06Speaker 02

  That's so sad.

• 1:13:06Nilay Patel?

  It's all gonna be in transit.

• 1:13:07Speaker 02

  It's just gonna be me crying.

• 1:13:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's gonna be-

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  You're gonna miss this office. Because my commute's gonna be like, an hour long now.

• 1:13:13Nilay Patel?

  Are you gonna watch Demolition Man?

• 1:13:15Speaker 02

  I might.

• 1:13:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, come back next week for the Vergecast Demolition Man special. It's gonna be great. I would seriously do that show. I'm just putting it out there, I would do that show. If enough listeners tweeted us about Demolition Man this week.

• 1:13:26Speaker 02

  Please don't tweet at me.

• 1:13:27Nilay Patel?

  Wait, do we each get to pick a movie? @MeganNicolet on Twitter.

• 1:13:30Speaker 02

  Damn it.

• 1:13:31Nilay Patel?

  She fucking loves Demolition Man. She loves it the most. Paul loves tweets about net neutrality and hunted. Mm-hmm.

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  I like tweets about sweaty basketball shorts.

• 1:13:41Nilay Patel?

  Megan, I think you just doomed yourself to a real shit week on Twitter. Oh, and thanks again to Crizal, no glare lenses, for sponsoring us today. If your glasses and your fingerprints, sponges, scratches, and glares can be a constant distraction to your vision, a huge distraction, that's why Crizal no glare lenses exist. They give you the clearest vision possible by offering resistance to glares, scratches, and sponges. That means no more blinding glares from headlights of oncoming traffic while driving, no more fingerprint sponges from taking your glasses on and off, no scratches from cleaning your lens and shirt. So look better, feel better, most importantly, be prepared for whatever comes your way with clear vision. Please go to crizal.com to learn more, that's C-R-I-Z-A-L dot com. Start living life in the clear with only a small surcharge from AT&T. There's other shows to listen to, many of which are much better organized than this one. For example, Lauren Good does Too Embarrassed to Ask. That's a great show.

• 1:14:26Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, were you on it this week or on it last week?

• 1:14:28Speaker 03

  That was a week or two ago on Chromebooks, yeah.

• 1:14:30Nilay Patel?

  That's a great show. You should listen to that. Walt and I do Control and Delete, where he, Dieter, you'll be happy to know, also repeatedly trolled me about football this week. Kara Swisher does Recode Decode, which is wonderful, and Peter Kafka does Recode Media, which is one of my favorite podcasts of all. All those are on iTunes. Go and rate them. Please just take a moment before you rate this particular episode of this show to consider the fact that we all had terrible senioritis, and then give us five stars. Just do it, because we're graduating. You're proud of us. We'll be back. Paul is at FuturePaul. Mm-hmm. Dieter is at Backlon. Megan, as I said, at Megan Nicolet.

• 1:15:02Speaker 02

  Don't forget the underscore. It's really important.

• 1:15:04Nilay Patel?

  Oh, there's an underscore.

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  Some other Megan Nicolet is getting all my good tweets.

• 1:15:07Nilay Patel?

  About basketball shorts.

• 1:15:08Speaker 02

  She's like, what is happening to my life this week? This is a sign I should get basketball shorts.

• 1:15:13Nilay Patel?

  I'm at Reckless. We'll be back next week. Rock and roll. Paul.

• 1:15:17Speaker 03

  Paul.

• 1:15:17Nilay Patel?

  Go Falcons. Cut through the night.

• 1:15:18Speaker 03

  Snip, snip.