Secrets

This week on Vergecast, Nilay, Dieter, and Paul bring in resident cybersecurity expert Russell Brandom to explain the cryptocurrency Ethereum and how there was a recent attack on the Decentralized Autonomous Organization which stole $53 million. Then, later on in the show a surprise guest pops in to give us breaking news on the Android. And after you listen to the podcast, head over to theverge.com and cast your vote in the poll for this week's Gadget Face-off featured on this week's podcast! 03:52 - Ethereum theverge.com/2016/6/17/11965192/ethereum-theft-dao-cryptocurrency-million-stolen-bitcoin 17:02 - Breaking News 22:04 - Squarespace ad 24:42 - BLU phones 35:33 - Paul’s Gadget Secrets/Gadget Face-off 39:44 - Coors ad 40:50 - Mr. Robot discussion 48:45 - Handshakes 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. This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by vodka company. I have a story about the vodka company, actually. The reason I interrupted you, Paul. Paul was in the middle of saying something really interesting before I just started talking over him.

• 0:22Speaker 01

  It was great.

• 0:23Nilay Patel?

  It was gonna be great. I want you to say whatever you were gonna say. But, hold on, first, I have a story about the vodka company. By the way, hi, I'm Neil Apetel. I'm joined here by Paul Miller. Hello. Russell Brandam. Hi. Joining us from the West Coast, live, Dieter Bohn.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  Greetings, mobile accomplishers.

• 0:39Nilay Patel?

  The studio door, by the way, just wide open. Anyone else can welcome to join in.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you started this podcast like you're like John Wayne.

• 0:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Here's what I'm saying, if you're in the Bryant Park, New York area, just come on down to our studio and join The Vergecast. Anyway, that's the four of us. I tried, this is a true story, I tried to register the scissor vodka trademark.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:03Nilay Patel?

  And I was shut down by our lawyers because there is another vodka brand, or no, not vodka brand, there's another trademark for all alcohol except beer, tijeris, which T-I-J-E-R-S. Tijeris? Something. It's not clear to me if it's supposed to be in Spanish.

• 1:28Speaker 03

  Like what language it is.

• 1:29Nilay Patel?

  I think it's Spanish.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:31Nilay Patel?

  Means scissors.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:33Nilay Patel?

  And though this, I learned all this, I used to be a fucking trademark attorney and it all came flooding back. The doctrine of foreign equivalence is an absolute bar.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:43Nilay Patel?

  To registering a word that translates to an existing. So this is brought to you by Tijeris vodka.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  What if you trademarked whatever is Spanish for safety scissors?

• 1:55Nilay Patel?

  If you wanna, by the way, the trademark is owned by Francis Coppola Wineries. So Frank, if you're out there. Wow. Yeah. Ford, can I call you Ford? Give me a call. I have a great idea for a vodka brand.

• 2:10Speaker 03

  My recollection is that Emily Yoshida is close, personal friends with Sofia Coppola and could probably hook us up. You should ask her.

• 2:18Nilay Patel?

  I feel like that's not gonna go well. But Emily, if you're out there, I need Sofia's digits so I can talk to her dad.

• 2:28Speaker 03

  About his scissor, about his vodka trademark.

• 2:31Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, scissor vodka, cut through that.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Can you say, "Cortar a través de la noche"?

• 2:36Nilay Patel?

  I cannot.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Oh, that's Spanish.

• 2:40Nilay Patel?

  Oh, is it?

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cortar a través de la noche.

• 2:43Nilay Patel?

  Here's the, here's another story. By the way, we have so little on our rundown for this episode, it's just gonna be chaos. Here's another story about my youth. To graduate from the University of Chicago, you have to demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language. I chose French because I basically failed French in high school and wished to continue failing it in college. I like bumbled my way through the written examination, got my C, had to take the oral test, failed my first oral French examination, just like blew it. She, like the instructor looked at me and said-

• 3:16Speaker 04

  There's a real middle school joke there that I'm just gonna let go.

• 3:19Nilay Patel?

  Yep, let it go. She said, "You didn't prepare for this at all," and I said, "No." Went home, she said, "Okay, well, you're graduating, you gotta pass this to graduate." Went home, memorized the entire end of Eddie Izzard Dressed to Kill, which is in French, recited the end of Eddie Izzard Dressed to Kill in response to every question she gave me, and she said, "You're graduating, aren't you?" And then she stamped the form and let me go.

• 3:45Speaker 03

  Gosh, scandal.

• 3:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Anyway, if the University of Chicago's listening, I will be making a donation this year. All right, Paul, before we started talking, was talking about something called Ethereum.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:58Nilay Patel?

  Whether it's real, whether the Dow is real.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  So this is why I'm so excited to be sitting in close proximity, I mean, I'm happy to see you too, Neelai.

• 4:03Nilay Patel?

  Love you.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  But I'm in very close proximity to Russell.

• 4:06Nilay Patel?

  Yes, up top.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  And Russell knows what the hell Ethereum is, and-

• 4:14Speaker 03

  We gotta start pretty early on this one, don't we?

• 4:15Speaker 01

  And Dow, so I, because-

• 4:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  There's a crazy thing happening to a weird cryptocurrency pseudo-company where there's a heist and there's bylaws.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  So much is crazy is happening, but if you don't know what Ethereum is and what the Dow is, you just have no idea what's going on.

• 4:34Speaker 03

  It's one of those bits where like, there's the part in the article where you explain what everything is, and then you explain what happened, and the part where you explain what it is was just getting longer and longer. And so we keep saying like, this new thing happened, but then we're like, okay, so cryptocurrency, like, what is, yeah, what is code?

• 4:55Speaker 03

  No, let's get back to that.

• 4:56Speaker 04

  I mean, you gotta, you gotta start way at the beginning here. Ethereum, the DAO, are we getting into like eastern philosophy? What's going on?

• 5:02Speaker 03

  So, so, okay. Ethereum is like Bitcoin. In Bitcoin is like you can transact money with math. And so I give you my number and I put it on this piece of paper and do this thing and then it sends money to you.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Let's pretend everybody knows exactly what Bitcoin is and how it works.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  I wrote an explainer once.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. Ethereum is like slightly more complicated than Bitcoin. So it basically works the same way Bitcoin works. There's a blockchain and everything. But you can do these contracts and so you can make these sort of more complicated structures that no one owns, but like work in an easily predictable mathematical way. So like if I'm, if I just say, uh, the Buffalo Bills win the Super Bowl, I owe Paul Miller 100 bucks. We can just make that Ethereum contract.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  You kind of like write it in code.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can just code it in and it'll do this thing. So, so people get very excited about this because you can make all sorts of really complex things with that. And so one of the things they made, and probably the most popular usage of this, is the DAO, which is basically a, uh, it's sort of a, like decentralized VC thing. You like invest money and then you get stock.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  You invest, you invest real US dollars or real, you invest kind of real money, right?

• 6:30Speaker 03

  You invest Ethereum, which are exchangeable for real.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  So you exchange real money to get Ethereum? Or you guess you could mine Ethereum?

• 6:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, it's like Bitcoin. Like it is, it's sort of money, but it's sort of not. But you could eventually turn it into actual money that you could buy.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  You get Ethereum and then you invest it into this fund.

• 6:48Speaker 04

  They know it's called Ethereum.

• 6:50Speaker 03

  You know, exactly. Well, so it stands for decentralized autonomous organization, which also is like, no one's like in charge of it or owns it or whatever. But you would put in money and you'd be like, this is my vote for what we do with it, based on the money that I have. Anyway, people got very excited about it. It's sort of like a investment thing. There are all sorts of ways where if it became really successful, you would be able to like manipulate it in the way that people try to manipulate corporations, like Carl Icahn or whatever. Like, anyway.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Has it invested in anything?

• 7:20Nilay Patel?

  Can it do anything?

• 7:22Speaker 03

  These are questions that would be important if it succeeded. But what actually happened is it turned out there was like a bug in the way that they programmed it, the contract, right? So they wrote this really complex contract for how it was going to work. And the idea is, okay, we have the contract. We don't need anyone to be in charge of the thing. We just have this contract. But it turned out they hadn't thought of absolutely everything we might do with the contract. And so there's this way to just get money out of it. And so this guy got $53 million out of it, which seems like a lot.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  That's the crazy, how did this mystical experience end up with $53 million to steal?

• 8:04Nilay Patel?

  It is the best Kickstarter.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  Well, no, and also like you have, one of the first pieces we wrote on it, I was asking this guy, like, what's the thing? And, you know, Bitcoin happened. And he said, there's just a lot of teenagers with millions of dollars.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  That's what I thought.

• 8:19Speaker 03

  And there's just kind of more money than cents is like the classic term for this.

• 8:24Nilay Patel?

  I've been trying to start a fucking vodka company on this show for like six months. Does anybody know where these teenagers are?

• 8:32Speaker 03

  They're out, I mean, they're living in Hong Kong and Iceland and all the free countries out there.

• 8:37Nilay Patel?

  Let's go to Iceland.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  No, it's beautiful there.

• 8:40Nilay Patel?

  Some rich Iceland teens.

• 8:42Speaker 03

  But yeah, so there's just like a ton of money kicking around. And so that wasn't even all, they had like, it was maybe, it was less than half of the money that was in the DAO. And so, okay, so, but it's still a significant amount of the Ethereum that like exists at all. It's actually funny, when I was talking about this, I was like, we were coming up with headlines. And Tommy, who does social was like, can we call it the biggest cryptocurrency theft ever? It's like, not even close.

• 9:11Speaker 03

  But I mean, there's just been so much. It's it's rough out there. But so, okay. So then the thing, the interesting thing that happened is if they had just been like, all right, well, fair play. You got the money, whatever.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Because some people are arguing that this heist was done according to the rules because the rules are encoded into the code.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  So the code is the contract. So what he did was not against the terms of this agreement.

• 9:41Nilay Patel?

  The thing to note about

• 9:43Speaker 03

  Classic shareholder dispersion. The thing to note about the people making that money or that argument is that it's not their money. This is the argument you make when it's not your money.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  Is you're like, oh, well, you know, of course, obviously, the doors, the door was ajar. I just came in. It was

• 10:00Nilay Patel?

  To remove 53 billion dollars.

• 10:04Speaker 03

  But so it's just a big hit for them. They don't particularly want to take it. And so what happened is, okay.

• 10:10Nilay Patel?

  But who's it they?

• 10:12Speaker 03

  Well, it's a decentralized currency. So that's an interesting question also. But there are various like developer groups. It's like Bitcoin, like who runs Bitcoin? It's not like just Satoshi pulling the strings.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  It's like it's like an open source project.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I mean, and also like with any open source project, there's like a bunch of dudes where you're like, well, okay, it's mostly them. And then this guy had this idea and he was willing to stay up all night making it work. So we just let him.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Charismatic figurehead that I read a great profile on in, I forget what publication did that.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, so

• 10:40Nilay Patel?

  It's like nine out of 10 that it's motherboard.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Might have been motherboard.

• 10:44Nilay Patel?

  It's probably motherboard.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  But so the thing, so they have a very strict timeline. So the nature of the Dow is they can take money out. And then it's like frozen for 27 days because I guess they knew that people might try to steal things. So they have 27 days and they're like, we're going to patch the currency to make these coins unspendable so that when the timeline's up, the guy just can't run off with this. But then the patch, okay, so that keeps happening. And there are a bunch of like troll things happening and people being like, This is a sham, like you're violating the spirit of cryptocurrency. But then what happened this week is the patch that they were going to deploy. And we're like two weeks in now, so we're about at the halfway point of the time that they have.

• 11:29Nilay Patel?

  This Icelandic teen is like, he's just on jet skis.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  I mean, really, I'm very interested in who it is because like, I wanna, you know, if he were, if he were 1% happy with me, I would be like, it's great. But so the, that's not really how rich people work.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  Well, no, it's also not like.

• 11:48Nilay Patel?

  5% happy with you.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  I compare.

• 11:50Nilay Patel?

  Here's exactly that sum of money.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  Here's 5% of my net worth. People don't just give you small percentages of their net worth, sadly.

• 11:57Nilay Patel?

  Unless you have a great idea.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  Unless.

• 11:59Nilay Patel?

  You're a vodka company.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  Or, or my restaurant idea, Trough. I'll tell you about it at some point.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Or a bizarre new cryptocurrency.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  Or a bizarre, but anyway, so the, the thing that they were gonna, the change that they were gonna make to the currency turned out to have this major bug, which could like, I don't want to say just destroy the currency, but it would be really bad. Probably worse than just having $53 million go missing, although we're talking, we're comparing different values at this point. But it meant they had to kind of scrap everything and start over. And so now they're doing this new thing. They were doing a soft fork and now they're doing a hard fork. The Reddit threads on this are really complex, but like, basically they now have exactly two weeks. They started with 28 days and now, or 27 days, and now they have only two weeks to like, code this and deploy it. And you never know, like, maybe there's another bug in the new one, like.

• 12:50Nilay Patel?

  Wait, will it actually undo the $53 million?

• 12:53Speaker 03

  Well, it'll make it impossible to spend. It's like marked bills. So it's like a die pack goes off and then you're like, if anyone tries to spend this, we just won't honor the transaction.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  And are they making this change to Ethereum or to the Dow?

• 13:03Speaker 03

  To Ethereum. That's the thing is it's, it's also like a little weird because people are like, what if I make a transaction that people don't like in the future? And everyone decides it's bad, even though it's not that bad. And then they decide to change the currency so that my transaction for like, whatever weird, you know, kind of, I'm buying like a strange stringed instrument that people think is lame. And so they're just gonna destroy my money.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  And as far as I understand.

• 13:27Nilay Patel?

  Why do you go to stringed instrument?

• 13:29Speaker 03

  I usually, when I was doing the what's tech for cryptocurrency and I was like, what can I say that's like bad, but not illegally bad or not like I'm never talking to you again? And what I came up with was jazz guitars.

• 13:42Nilay Patel?

  Ooh.

• 13:42Speaker 03

  Where I'm like, I just want to buy a ton of jazz guitars. And they're like, and like, you could imagine people being like, that's kind of a gross thing for you to do. It's like you're going to grow a ponytail. It's weird. We don't like you.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Also, it's.

• 13:55Speaker 03

  But it's not illegal. We don't want to.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Brazilian, Brazilian rosewood.

• 14:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  It's illegal. You can't like, you can't, if you have a Brazilian rosewood guitar, you can't like take it out of the country. You could get confiscated.

• 14:09Speaker 03

  Oh, because it's illegal wood.

• 14:11Nilay Patel?

  I never thought that this show would lead us to be getting angry email from jazz guitar fanboys.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:17Nilay Patel?

  But here we are.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  I like jazz guitar, but not everyone does.

• 14:22Speaker 03

  That's just my own idiosyncrasy.

• 14:25Nilay Patel?

  At Russell Brandom, everybody.

• 14:27Speaker 03

  Tweet him your favorite jazz guitars.

• 14:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's great.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  I'm just, I'm, I'm, I just love this story. This is the most cyberpunk thing that's going on in the world.

• 14:35Speaker 03

  The funny thing to me is like, some guy, potentially, and this is also like, so we were saying is not the largest cryptocurrency heist, right? So for the teens who are getting rich because they bought Bitcoin early, there's also a bunch of possible teens, probably teens. I don't know if this, well, anyway, I have thoughts about whether it was a teen, but like, who just sort of figured out how to steal things? And then are like, they're like, okay, well, so that's all the money I need. I'm going to go do this other thing. And you never find out like exactly how, who it was or what it was.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Because it could be one of the leaders of this project, right? Because this, whoever it is is completely anonymous.

• 15:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's just, yeah, nonsense.

• 15:16Nilay Patel?

  So let me ask you this. Here's a dumb cryptocurrency.

• 15:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:19Nilay Patel?

  Question. I keep reading the dominant positive outlook on cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin, is that these are the wild west days. It's crazy, but eventually it'll settle down and it'll be the new HTTP. It'll be the new, even maybe even more fundamental. It'll be the new IP, right? Like.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:41Nilay Patel?

  This, I, it sounds insane what you're describing, right? Like, we live in a world where Russell has carved out a beat, just reporting on heists.

• 15:52Nilay Patel?

  That's basically it.

• 15:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a good life.

• 15:54Nilay Patel?

  Like teenagers, teenagers heisting large sums of virtual currencies.

• 15:58Speaker 03

  I assume that anytime someone's done something terrible.

• 16:02Nilay Patel?

  Teams are optimized to find ways to steal.

• 16:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:05Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  Cigarettes, otherwise, they're just.

• 16:08Nilay Patel?

  CDs, cigarettes, $53 million in Ethereum. Distributed autonomous organization.

• 16:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:14Nilay Patel?

  But how do you, how do you get from the crazy time?

• 16:19Speaker 03

  So this is what's weird is that I think something, you know, people did bad things to each other's websites. I assume in the early days of HTTP, right? I suppose it was all like college professors, but I'm sure they were like leaving. They were like finding some weird way to screw with someone's website, but it didn't matter because it was just a website.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, the original internet had like absolutely no security built into it whatsoever. And so the first virus was super successful. Because it was just a bunch of university computers like on a local land, basically.

• 16:52Speaker 03

  Right. But like, okay, so, so I guess the interesting thing, the problem is all of these tools are sort of things we already knew how to do. Like we already.

• 17:02Speaker 05

  Hey, guys. Hey, hey, it's Lauren.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  What?

• 17:07Speaker 05

  Hi.

• 17:09Speaker 05

  Sorry to interrupt. I just, I had really big breaking news that I wanted to share that is way more important than all of the HTTP stuff that Russell is talking about right now.

• 17:21Speaker 03

  I'm not a hundred percent.

• 17:22Speaker 05

  And that's Dieter laughing evilish, evilly, evil, evil, I don't know, evilly in the background. Huge, huge breaking news. So Google has decided to name its newest mobile operating system.

• 17:35Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 17:35Speaker 05

  Android Nugget. Which is big news in my world, in my life. And that's why this is important because obviously the Vergecast is all about me right now at this moment. Because I have a cat named Nuga. And when Google first said that they were accepting submissions for ideas for operating system N, whatever N would be, and it's always a suite, I immediately started to troll them online and tweet that people should vote for Nuga because that's my cat's name and my cat is the best cat in the universe. And something seemed to work. I'm not taking credit for it.

• 18:10Nilay Patel?

  I think you should.

• 18:11Speaker 05

  I'm sure that there were lots of discussions in the offices of Google. I did hear from one unnamed Google person that there were a surprising number of submissions for the name Nuga. And I asked what the other top contenders were. I haven't heard back. But I would just like to say that my cat is very excited and he is now way more internet famous than I will ever be. And that is okay.

• 18:36Nilay Patel?

  I think you should take credit for this.

• 18:38Speaker 05

  You think?

• 18:39Nilay Patel?

  Straight up. Who's gonna stop you? Right?

• 18:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe that's what I'll go down in history for.

• 18:45Speaker 03

  What if it's... I want to be very delicate with how I say this, but what if it's a bad name?

• 18:51Speaker 05

  Nuga? Well, it's a good question because people already confuse as to how they're supposed to pronounce it. I mean, no one's like, how do I pronounce Kit Kat?

• 19:00Nilay Patel?

  Nuga.

• 19:01Speaker 05

  Right?

• 19:02Nilay Patel?

  Wait, who... What are the other ways to pronounce Nuga?

• 19:04Speaker 05

  Well, some people say Nugaht and some people say Nugaht. And some people... Yeah, I did see somebody, Russell, you're right. Somebody wrote Nugaht, like as though you don't say the T, which I've never heard before. And some people just look at it and they go Nugget.

• 19:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Nugget is the one. I'm surprised it took this long for us to get to Nugget.

• 19:24Speaker 03

  So I was telling Paul before, though, someone gave me a bar of Nugaht for complicated reasons. And I wasn't sure... Like plain Nugaht? Yeah, well, like the kind with the nuts in it and like the white... It's like a white gooey bar. And there was this paper on it and I wasn't sure if you were supposed to peel off the paper. And I tried peeling off the paper and it was really gooey and messy and it turned out you weren't supposed to peel off the paper. But then like I ate it and it didn't taste great and I felt sick.

• 19:49Nilay Patel?

  And I had a really negative nougat experience. And if that's what Android nougat's gonna be, then I don't know that I'm excited to upgrade.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  I just feel like nougat-

• 19:57Speaker 05

  On the flip side, though, you, it could also be a warm, cuddly cat experience, Russell.

• 20:03Nilay Patel?

  That's true. Your cat should be the face of nougat, rather than the edible nougat.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, instead of, instead of the Android logo robot standing on nougat, which is on the ground, which is disgusting for any food, to be literally on the ground being stood on by a robot, it could be like, holding your cat.

• 20:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:22Speaker 05

  He really is the biggest, he's such a lover, this cat. He loves people. Everybody that comes over, I'm sorry to those of you, of my friends who are allergic, because he, he, he just meets people and he's like, "I want to be your friend, and I want to sit on your head and rub my fur. You look cold. I should rub my fur all over your sweater." And, and he just, you know, he talks and he's like, he's, I mean, he doesn't like, really talk. I'm sorry, I'm a cat lady, okay? I'm his official, uh, I'm not helping my case at all.

• 20:50Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I'd like to have happen in this world of ours. I'd like all breaking news updates to sort of devolve into a guilty admission of being a cat lady. Breaking news, I'm, I'm just kind of a cat lady.

• 21:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:02Nilay Patel?

  Look, Lauren-

• 21:03Speaker 05

  Well, on the Too Embarrassed to Ask podcast, we, we get a, someone wrote in our ratings on iTunes that they love the show, but they would prefer less cat banter between me and Kara Swisher. So, um, I'm, I guess I now just go on radio podcasts and talk about cats, uh, and technology. Dieter is laughing. I'm not sure which comes first. But thank you for allowing me to interrupt your programming for this announcement. It really has made my week.

• 21:28Nilay Patel?

  This has been the most organized part of the Vergecast thus far, so I'm, I'm there for it.

• 21:34Speaker 05

  And I do think that what Russell was talking about beforehand is more important, so I'm gonna let you guys get back to that.

• 21:40Nilay Patel?

  Lauren, good, everybody. Breaking news, deep emotional admissions about cats.

• 21:46Nilay Patel?

  You should just take credit for it. Look, they named, they didn't name it after the candy. They named it after one of the finest cats in America.

• 21:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, they took a page from Apple and they decided to name operating systems after giant cats. So-

• 21:58Nilay Patel?

  Lauren, I saw a picture of your cat.

• 21:59Speaker 05

  But thank you for letting me interrupt you, and I miss you guys.

• 22:02Nilay Patel?

  I miss you too. Well, talk to you soon, Lauren.

• 22:03Speaker 05

  Okay, okay, bye.

• 22:06Nilay Patel?

  This episode of The Vergecast, brought to you by Squarespace. Where they need a landing page, beautiful gallery, professional blog, online store, home for your teenage exploits with cryptocurrencies, it's all included with your Squarespace website, except for the last one. Look, Squarespace is easy. Creating a website with Squarespace, simple intuitive process. You can add and arrange your content and features with just the click of the mouse, Paul. Click it.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  I've clicked it.

• 22:32Nilay Patel?

  Presumably also a tap of the screen. Anyway, you get a free custom domain. Squarespace makes adding a domain to your site simple. You sign up for a year, you get a free custom domain for free, for a year. There's beautiful templates, best-in-class online store, Squarespace award-winning templates, customizable settings, and more. Not even a plugin in sight. Get those plugins out of your mind. You just use the store. And there's commerce tools, because why else do you have a website? Nationally recognized brands, favorite local shops, Squarespace is trusted by hundreds of thousands of savvy shop owners around the world. I'm making a "around the world" motion with my finger now. Just imagine that in your car. All the tools you need to track inventory, process orders, and send custom emails are all there in one intuitive interface. Squarespace Commerce allows you to understand every aspect of your business.

• 23:15Nilay Patel?

  There's also 24/7 customer support. Every member of the customer care team is an experienced Squarespace user working in a Squarespace office. It doesn't matter how technical your problem is, or how trivial it is, one of their team is always online to assist you. Just contact them, lay it back to you. So, I think it's clear, listeners, that right now, whatever you're doing, you should stop it. Start your free Squarespace trial today. Squarespace.com, the offer code, of course, VERGE, best offer code in the business. You get 10% off your first purchase. And, I'm gonna read this tagline. "Squarespace: Set Your Website Apart."

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Ooh, is that a new tagline?

• 23:54Nilay Patel?

  I feel like they're really A/B testing the taglines.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  I really was into Squarespace. "You Should."

• 24:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And then Bill the Beautiful was there. Here's what I want you to do. If you have, if you heard that one of the previous taglines that entered "Offer Code VERGE", let's monkey with those A/B tests a little bit. Get back on the website, "Offer Code VERGE" again, comment, "The new tagline really helped me push me over the edge." This would be a good Twitter poll. Yeah, what's your favorite? Favorite Squarespace headline? Here's the thing, while we're still in the money zone, I'll do a Twitter poll Squarespace.

• 24:31Nilay Patel?

  All right, that's Squarespace. Offer code VERGE, 10% off your first purchase. Set your website apart by building it beautiful. Just do it.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  You should.

• 24:42Speaker 04

  Speaking of Lauren Good and, uh, I don't know, Android, we actually should bring her back. Uh, Amazon is going to start selling certain Android phones with, um, special offers. So you can get like 50 bucks off of a phone and then you get ads.

• 24:57Nilay Patel?

  Why do you look so pleased, Paul?

• 25:00Speaker 04

  All the time.

• 25:01Nilay Patel?

  Paul just loves the capitalism doing things. Like the idea that they're like, how do we squeeze more money out of this?

• 25:07Speaker 01

  I, I, I went to amazon.com and I wasn't logged into Amazon and I was kind of in a new browser tab. Amazon wasn't ready for me.

• 25:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Huge image phone for $50.

• 25:23Nilay Patel?

  Was it one of those blue phones?

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, the blue phone.

• 25:26Nilay Patel?

  There's only two crappy phones. What's the other phone? There's the blue. There's the blue and then you can get Moto G.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:33Nilay Patel?

  The new one, though.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  The blue has one gigabyte of RAM, eight gigabytes of storage, which, um,

• 25:40Nilay Patel?

  Oh, man.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Which basically what if you have a relatively modern version of Android and eight gigabytes of storage, you end up with like almost nothing.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  But you're like, update all the apps.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  And then they have to store all the special offers. So.

• 25:55Nilay Patel?

  Did you ever read that great John Harmon piece in the all shit phone? Ode to shit phone?

• 26:00Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 26:00Nilay Patel?

  It was, he used, I think he had a blue phone. He just like used it for a year and it just slowly disintegrated over time. Aren't they just screwing people? Like if you have $50, you can get a better phone.

• 26:15Nilay Patel?

  Can, right?

• 26:16Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 26:18Nilay Patel?

  Everyone just like looked at me like I was insane, but you can definitely get a better phone for $50 than a blue phone with Amazon ads on it.

• 26:25Speaker 04

  Well, it's not just Amazon ads. It's like every single piece of random, uh, Android software that Amazon makes. Like it's, I don't know. I mean, that's fine. Whatever.

• 26:35Speaker 03

  What was the weird one that came out with the Fire Phone where you like, look at, it like turns the world into an Amazon store? It was like Firefly or something?

• 26:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:44Speaker 04

  It's still in the Amazon app. Firefly is great.

• 26:46Speaker 03

  Is it going to be on the blue or is that too heavy?

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Okay. What, what phone unlocked is $50 and then better than this phone right now?

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Are you talking about like some old phone, like a used, a seriously

• 27:01Nilay Patel?

  Wouldn't you rather get like a refurbished like Galaxy S6 for 50 bucks?

• 27:06Speaker 01

  I don't think even that's gonna be 50 dollars.

• 27:08Nilay Patel?

  Galaxy S3. Like, I would rather get an unlocked, pristine, like Verizon illuminate. What the hell is the fascinate?

• 27:18Speaker 01

  Like a certified refurbished Galaxy S3 is 130 dollars.

• 27:24Nilay Patel?

  Save the money.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Really? Yeah, 130 dollars certified refurbished.

• 27:27Nilay Patel?

  Would you rather have?

• 27:29Speaker 03

  Well, that's a collector's item, though.

• 27:31Nilay Patel?

  At a certain point, the price starts to rise.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  And it has 16 gigabytes of storage, just to be. I just, I, I, I don't think you're gonna have a great time with a 50 dollar blue phone, but I also don't think you're gonna find a lot of phones for 50 dollars unlocked that are.

• 27:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  I mean, this is better than most like Walmart, Walmart phones.

• 27:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you're probably right, but it has Amazon ads. I just don't like ads. I don't want my phone to have.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  I hate ads too.

• 27:56Nilay Patel?

  The bigger piece of news to me today was that the S7 is being sold in the US unlocked. Free of, free of all garbage.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  That's great for the rich people, but so it's nice. Here's the thing. I hate ads. And so I like places where I can like choose to have ads or not. Like, do you want to contribute and see no ads? Like Hulu? Do you want to pay money and not have ads? Or do you not want to pay the money and have ads?

• 28:22Nilay Patel?

  Don't you still, but even if you do Hulu Plus?

• 28:25Speaker 01

  I think there's like a plus plus now or something like that.

• 28:27Speaker 03

  That's how they get you.

• 28:28Nilay Patel?

  I'd like to point out that Amazon Firefly did not recognize my Red Bull can, did not recognize Paul Miller. Instantly tried to sell me the MacBook when I pointed at the Mac.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, like with phones.

• 28:39Speaker 03

  Well, it has a more iconic design.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  You can already choose phones that don't have ads. Those are already available. Now there's another option for people who want a cheaper phone with that.

• 28:50Nilay Patel?

  I just think Amazon's trying to get its software out in the world and like build that base so they have some leverage in all these places and.

• 28:58Speaker 03

  Well, they should just eat the cost, right? This is the thing they didn't do with the Fire Phone.

• 29:01Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 29:02Speaker 03

  Just like sell it at a loss.

• 29:06Nilay Patel?

  Well, the real thing they didn't do with the Fire Phone was use Google Play Services.

• 29:11Speaker 04

  Also, it was a bad phone. It was like, it was, it fundamentally felt worse. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna say this, and you're all gonna get real mad at me, but I don't care. It fundamentally felt worse than the prototype never released garbage WebOS phone that was like, eh, we maybe shouldn't release this. It was like glass on both sides. It just, it felt junky and it was like kinda slow and it had the super gimmicky 3D thing. They just had lots and lots of like shruggy ideas and they decided to throw them all at a phone and then release it.

• 29:47Nilay Patel?

  I love the gimmicky 3D thing. Like, let's put four cameras in the front of your phone, track your face and make everything a giant weird virtual world. Come on. You can't, you can't say no to that.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  That seems like something that they do it for like a tablet and install it at Disney World. And it's like, cool, but like, we don't need that in mass production.

• 30:11Nilay Patel?

  That should be your new column.

• 30:12Speaker 03

  Well, no, like there's some-

• 30:13Nilay Patel?

  Things we don't need in mass production.

• 30:15Speaker 03

  What was the 60 frames per second where like for ages, it was just something that existed in theme park rides and then they're like, we'll do the Hobbit this way. And then it sort of stopped.

• 30:26Nilay Patel?

  Was that 240?

• 30:27Speaker 01

  48.

• 30:28Nilay Patel?

  48.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Or 48, yeah, yeah.

• 30:29Nilay Patel?

  Some number.

• 30:29Speaker 03

  But just like more than 24, right? And so they had done, like if you did the Terminator 2 virtual reality ride in Universal Studios, it was in 60 frames per second and looked super weird and that was part of what you were getting. But then you just have like a huge Gandalf face and it looks like different.

• 30:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:52Speaker 03

  And it's not really, it's not really effective.

• 30:54Nilay Patel?

  Too much change, you might say. Can I do my fourth podcast about the headphone jack? By transitioning this conversation?

• 31:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 31:01Nilay Patel?

  No, cuz I've done a lot of them recently.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  No. You can get the Straight Talk LG Sunset 4G LTE Android prepaid smartphone at Walmart for 50 bucks.

• 31:14Nilay Patel?

  That sounds good. Does it have-

• 31:15Speaker 01

  They also sell a $20 Android phone, but it's 3G.

• 31:20Nilay Patel?

  Wait, that's a column. You should do that.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  It runs Kit Kat.

• 31:25Nilay Patel?

  You should get that phone. You should review that phone.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 31:27Nilay Patel?

  I mean, so I mean it. I mean, great.

• 31:29Speaker 04

  I definitely bought a $35 um track phone that ran Android and I was gonna review it and I just couldn't, I couldn't bring myself. I couldn't do it.

• 31:37Nilay Patel?

  Listeners of the Vergecast, tweet at me or Paul or Dieter or Russell. He loves tweets.

• 31:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:42Nilay Patel?

  Tweet at one of us, all of us. What's the cheapest phone you've ever used? I'm dying to know. I was Droid 4 for a while.

• 31:50Speaker 04

  Does it have to be a smartphone? The cheapest smartphone you've ever used?

• 31:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:54Nilay Patel?

  Cause everybody had like a $19 Nokia at one point.

• 31:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:57Nilay Patel?

  It's just a thing.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  For selling trucks.

• 32:01Nilay Patel?

  I'm not saying why.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  We all have birders.

• 32:05Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying it was a thing. Paul, tell me, tell me, look, you run a gadget blog.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 32:11Nilay Patel?

  I feel like.

• 32:12Speaker 04

  There's a right answer to this question, by the way.

• 32:14Nilay Patel?

  Oh.

• 32:14Speaker 04

  I'm curious to know if you're gonna get it right. The question is talk about a gadget and there's only one right answer this week.

• 32:19Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that wasn't it. That wasn't my question, but we can do that next.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Are you, is the question whether or not I run a gadget blog? Cause the answer is yes, is the correct answer.

• 32:27Nilay Patel?

  No, tell me, tell me about phones right now. I feel like phones are boring. They're over.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Um, well, the Snapdragon, the, we've got, we've got six gigabytes of RAM. Is a thing now.

• 32:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Which apparently the OnePlus 3 did not like make full use of, so they're gonna push out like a software update to make better use of, to make people who are mad that they weren't getting their money's worth with the RAM. So I think that right now, and we're, we're basically capped at the Snapdragon 820 and then there's been some little bits of maybe the Snapdragon 821 and who knows what, what that will do. But I have no idea about what is the next generation? What's the next true leap? Other than like all this dual camera, no headphone jack kinda stuff. That's, those are kinda the.

• 33:17Nilay Patel?

  It's, it's all the Android stuff that's gonna work with uh, uh, Daydream, Dreamlight.

• 33:22Speaker 04

  Daydream?

• 33:23Nilay Patel?

  Dreamlight.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I guess so. But I, I would assume like a Snapdragon 820, Dieter's right. Dieter's better gadgets than me. Let's be clear. Let's be clear. But um, so yeah, I guess you could see a wave of phones supporting VR and then just hold off for that.

• 33:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I just like, I, it's funny how much.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  But like hardware specs wise, like I feel like a Snapdragon 820 phone right now, I'm guessing.

• 33:49Nilay Patel?

  They're all kinda the same.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  Would, would, would be able to qualify for it. And yes, the phones are mostly the same.

• 33:54Nilay Patel?

  I just feel like we went through this huge period where system level and feature level things on phones were like, everyone got so stoked about them all the time. You're like, the Druid 4 is coming. I love this keyboard layout. Or like, this phone will have a Tegra chip in it that will blow you away.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  I mean, it could be antenna, right? Like 5G is coming. We'll just get better at...

• 34:14Nilay Patel?

  There was just a, uh, Tom Wheeler is out there running his mouth.

• 34:21Speaker 03

  That old Tom Wheeler.

• 34:23Nilay Patel?

  Ah, old Wheelsy. Just dawdling away about 5G spectrum. No, he's gonna open an option. 5G spectrum.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  One thing I'm interested in, and I haven't heard anything about this in specifically, but there are some new things in 4G, um, for like, like, you know how Bluetooth has a low energy? There's kind of like a 4G, like an LTE low energy. That's kind of...

• 34:45Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. It's, it's for Internet of Things stuff. I forget what it's called.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  For Internet of Things. But it would be nice if your phone could go into that mode as part of your low-power mode. It's like...

• 34:55Speaker 03

  Batteries are so terrible. We've moved to a place where like horrible battery life is just the standard.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, we're running, we're, we, most of us...

• 35:03Nilay Patel?

  That's why you should get rid of the headphone jack.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Most of us have phones in our pocket that have more pixels on the screen than our televisions do.

• 35:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  It's ridiculous.

• 35:12Nilay Patel?

  I feel like there was a time, particularly the beginning of The Verge, when I would walk into rooms and like say that, and people are like, "Oh, this is the future." And now I say that and they're like, "Yeah, duh. Not enough pixels, actually. This is fucking stupid. More pixels, please. Like, this is a bad headset experience." Yeah, I just, that's the thing, like that we've just leveled off. It's really, all right, this is a segue. It's a down segue.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 35:37Nilay Patel?

  Tell me about the gadget of the week.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Okay, um, well...

• 35:40Nilay Patel?

  Don't get it wrong.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  This, um, this segment, now there's a lot of pressure.

• 35:45Nilay Patel?

  Don't get it wrong.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  This segment, as you know, is called gadget secret.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  And this week, my pick is the Furby Connect. Ooh. Ain't wrong.

• 36:01Nilay Patel?

  Wow. I'm into it. Dieter, what's your situation?

• 36:05Speaker 04

  I think we should definitely talk about the Furby Connect because it's definitely my number two. But the number one gadget of the past week by a mile, by a country mile, by a thousand miles is the Anki Cosmo. The Anki Cosmo robot.

• 36:20Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. Things amazing. Okay. Okay. Here's what we're gonna do. I'm changing the name from Gadget Secret.

• 36:26Speaker 04

  I thought it was Gadget Bonanza.

• 36:28Nilay Patel?

  Gadget Face Off. Here's what's gonna happen. Paul, you get 45 seconds to make your case. Dieter, you get 45 seconds to make your case. After the Vergecast goes up tomorrow, a Twitter poll will be held. Hmm. A plazimeter. Yeah, a plazimeter. Gadget Face Off. Okay, Paul. I don't have a timer, so we're just gonna just gonna lose it out. 45 seconds.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  I still like, kinda like, talk in hushed tones because it's really actually, it's called Gadget Secret.

• 37:00Speaker 04

  Don't tell anybody about what you're about to listen to.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Wait, how much time do I have?

• 37:06Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. 45 seconds.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Okay, Russell's running out of time.

• 37:10Nilay Patel?

  Be careful. Teens are there to hack your timer.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Furby's are real. We all know about Furby's. We all grew up with Furby's. We all wondered what Furby's are all about. And now Hasbro's like, Furby's should be part of the internet of things. They should connect over Bluetooth to an app. And so your child will have to like, watch entertainment side by side with the Furby. Like, the Furby is like, like a little coach to teach your child how to be a passive receptor to mass media.

• 37:40Nilay Patel?

  15 seconds. That doesn't even need it. Here's my traps.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  The Cosmo's actually really cool, but it's like, it's like, it's like, less real. You know Furby's are coming for you. You know Furby's are gonna be in Toys R Us looking at you with their little LCD eyes.

• 37:54Nilay Patel?

  Okay, that's it. That's it. Time. Time. I really came back that second wave.

• 38:01Nilay Patel?

  So I've got knives in there. What if I twist it? But wait, what is it like? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, I just have- A convincing first round from Paul Miller. Dieter, are you prepared? Timekeeper?

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm ready.

• 38:13Nilay Patel?

  Okay, go.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  The Cosmo looks like an adorable little dump truck crossed with a wallie and it's got a little face on it. And it has a camera so it can recognize you and it has an emotion engine. So it like can like smile and like express emotion. And when it like wakes up from sleep, it gives itself a little shake like it's a little tiny dog. And then it can move around on the table and then it can pick up stuff because it's got this little tiny baby little dump truck thing. And then kids can use it and they can learn stuff about programming because that's a thing that apparently everything has to do. But whatever, it doesn't matter because it can pick up these little blocks and move around. Because it's a cute, cute, tiny little robot and it's only $160 to start. Uh, and, and, and, and you should get one.

• 38:58Nilay Patel?

  Tough time. Really tough, that one.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:03Nilay Patel?

  Because on the one hand, you have the vision of a massive corporation teaching our youth to be passive consumers. Wait, which one of those is that? Yeah.

• 39:15Nilay Patel?

  All right, you've heard it. The great secret gadget secret debate.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Gadget secret.

• 39:20Nilay Patel?

  Debate secret.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  I do this segment every week.

• 39:26Nilay Patel?

  Tomorrow, find us. When, when you're listening to this in your car or on a plane, just remember-

• 39:32Speaker 02

  Definitely if you're driving in your car, pull over, open up Twitter and look for the, the poll.

• 39:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Or just, you know, tweet and drive.

• 39:43Nilay Patel?

  Don't, don't do that.

• 39:45Nilay Patel?

  A town in Colorado called Golden. Founded during the gold rush, it was home to miners who spent 12 hours a day in the frozen ground digging for gold. That land was rich in another resource. Coors Light. No, wait, Rocky Mountain water. I see. So that land there was rich in another resource. Uh, Rocky Mountain water that runs cold and clear. One man knew the value of that water. Mr. Coors, who I found out last week. Real guy.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 40:13Nilay Patel?

  Adolf Coors, real dude. 1873. Dolph, as I like to call him, settled in Golden to brew the finest beer that town had ever tasted. And again, they were miners who were outside 12 hours a day. They, all beer was good, but this was the best. Miners are grateful, as miners are wont to be. Cause when they sat down for a well deserved banquet, Mr. Coors, Dolph, again to his friends, brought a beer worthy of the occasion. That beer came to be known as the banquet beer. Coors, the banquet beer. Did you drink some? I like it. Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado. With great beer comes great responsibility. I want to talk about Mr. Robot a little bit. And I want to talk about cybersecurity. I want to talk about hacks.

• 40:56Speaker 03

  Hacking.

• 40:57Nilay Patel?

  As you may know, uh, USA Network has a show called Mr. Robot. Pretty cool show, pretty excited about it. Um, we're doing a bunch of stuff around and with Mr. Robot. The show, not the person. I don't want to like reveal spoilers.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Are we like a friend of Mr. Robot?

• 41:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, he's a buddy. He's more of a dystopian robot than a cuddly emotion engine.

• 41:17Speaker 03

  It's like, yeah, we're like child robots.

• 41:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:21Speaker 03

  There's Mr. And Mrs. Robot, and we're child robots.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  So you're saying we're a biological offspring of Mr. Robot?

• 41:27Speaker 03

  No, like not biological, because they're robots.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:30Nilay Patel?

  We're a distributed autonomous robot organization. Um, no, so Mr. Robot, season two is coming. If you haven't seen season one, find it. All the file names are like torrent movie file names. So you'll feel cool no matter how you acquire it.

• 41:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:47Nilay Patel?

  But you know, do it the cool way. Build it beautiful. Anyway, season one was great. It was largely like the cool thing about Mr. Robot is they actually like try to make it real in tech, which is neat. So we were interested in last season. This season, USA actually asked us to participate in a bunch of Mr. Robot stuff, which is cool.

• 42:09Nilay Patel?

  So Russell hosted a panel with one of the writers, Cora Donna. That was yesterday, the day before.

• 42:14Speaker 03

  That was Monday. Yeah, yeah.

• 42:15Nilay Patel?

  On Monday, there's a pop up shop. Was that where your panel was?

• 42:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. 10th Ave and 19th Street, right next to Google, which is sort of like good placement for them. Yeah, G corp.

• 42:26Nilay Patel?

  G corp. That's great. So there's, if you're in New York, running for next week or so.

• 42:33Speaker 03

  I think so. Yeah.

• 42:33Nilay Patel?

  It's a month. I think it might be the month.

• 42:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's the full. I don't know when the month started, but.

• 42:37Nilay Patel?

  Who does?

• 42:38Speaker 03

  It's pretty, I think it was pretty recent.

• 42:39Nilay Patel?

  If you're in New York City sometime around this podcast, go to, it's called Story is the Store. Every month they change the story. Instead of Story, this month it's Mr. Robot with a bunch of gadgets and cool shit curated by The Verge.

• 42:52Speaker 03

  And there's a circuit breaker, like, right, like it'll, or actually, and they have books and you pick up the book and it shows you the Verge review of the book.

• 43:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:00Speaker 03

  A bunch of cool things.

• 43:01Speaker 04

  I actually picked out about three quarters of those books myself.

• 43:04Nilay Patel?

  There you go.

• 43:05Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 43:06Nilay Patel?

  Let's talk about Mr. Robot a little bit.

• 43:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. So one of the cool things, so the panel, part of what was fun about it was we had this writer, I mean, he's the cybersecurity guy on the show. He has a background in that and sort of worked with a lot of things before he got into Hollywood and, you know, has, was one of the writers on the show and also the cybersecurity guy. And we had him on stage with a bunch of sort of actual cybersecurity people. We had Adrian, formerly The Verge, and Molly Souter, who wrote this book about DDoS activism and Matt Mitchell, who does the crypto party in Harlem, and is generally like a freelance security guy. And so he's sort of working like most directly with these things. And he is a super fan, like he was super into it and was also like.

• 43:53Speaker 03

  Pumping core for spoilers and like, he was like, yeah, like the post-credit sequence at the end was really like cryptic and we're not sure what it means. Like, are we gonna find out what it means? Can you tell us what it means right now? Core was like, pretty close to cracking. I could tell that there were things that he knew that he was close to saying.

• 44:12Speaker 04

  Ooh.

• 44:13Speaker 03

  But we couldn't keep the pressure on long enough. So he kept it inside. He was probably worried about the robots himself. I mean, he's, he's not at liberty to discuss these things.

• 44:21Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's impossible to really talk about the season two without totally spoiling season one.

• 44:25Speaker 03

  Are we gonna do it?

• 44:26Speaker 01

  As someone who's never seen an episode of Mr. Robot.

• 44:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, so we can't.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Could I just, I just would love to hear, I don't mind if you spoil, whatever.

• 44:34Speaker 03

  I can't.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  But, but pitch me on the show not being condescending about technology. Cause like, I avoid most nerd related things.

• 44:46Nilay Patel?

  So you would love the show because it is absolutely not.

• 44:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, you really would.

• 44:48Nilay Patel?

  It's like dense with real nerd stuff. To the point where, I, it's funny, I'm controlled to eat, I'm like, there's Mr. Robot ads that I'm reading. And I'm like, these ads aren't even like doing it justice to like how nerdy it is. Like, a major plot point of the first season is them using a Raspberry Pi to like hack something. And the way they introduce it is he starts talking about it and another character is like, yeah, we all know what a Raspberry Pi is. And they just move the fuck on. Like, it's that. There's a, what, Dieter, what were you gonna say?

• 45:19Speaker 04

  I was gonna say, never in the show does anybody like pull up a picture and somebody says, enhance.

• 45:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. That's great. I mean, like, it's really, I don't know. I like it.

• 45:29Speaker 03

  Well, and I also think it gets to sort of the, there's like a weird vibe to a lot of these spaces where people, like, I guess hacker spaces, like there's, when people are versed in this, these tools in this culture, there's like kind of a vibe that comes with it. And it's sort of a very good exploration of that vibe. So one of the interesting things of Core said on the panel was he described it as a sense of defiance. That like, part of what these tools are, whether it's like,

• 46:02Speaker 03

  You know, just something as simple as someone's like, no, I am still using Linux. Like I am, or just sort of any of these things, there's a sense of, of like, not accepting what you're supposed to do and sort of standing apart from these things and like, okay, how do we unpack that? And like, the people who feel that the strongest, like, the strongest of anyone, like, how do those people behave? And, and so, I don't know, it was like an interesting lens into, like, both the show and also like, the actual people who are living this life, right?

• 46:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's so hard to talk about this, that's why. You should, you should go watch it. But the central, here's what I'll say, without trying very hard not to spoil it. If you're in your car and you're listening to this and you don't, no risk, just turn off your radio for 30 seconds. Turn off your radio and count to 30 and come back. The thing that happens in season one is so momentous, that the big question about season two is like, how on earth will they continue? Right? And like, it's kind of that, but what you realize is, the grounding in real, real technology is so deep, that they actually

• 47:20Nilay Patel?

  have like, many ways to go, and maybe ignore that problem. I don't think they're gonna ignore that problem, but, I don't know, I'm trying very hard not to spoil it. It's very hard.

• 47:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:31Nilay Patel?

  But it's like, great, it's like a story, it's like a story of a guy. He's, he's a really good hacker.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  It's not about, it's not about technology, it's about people. That's what I was worried about.

• 47:43Nilay Patel?

  But like, everything they do is like, deeply grounded. I did a panel with Cora Donna, who's one of the writers on the show, at CES, and it was me and his two security consultants, and it was a room full of IT security consultants. And like, the audience was rapt, because they were like, here's how we do the process. Like, I tell them about real, real heists.

• 48:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, real heists.

• 48:04Nilay Patel?

  There's gotta be a Bitcoin heist in this season.

• 48:06Speaker 03

  I, do we think anyone? Owns Bitcoin in this. You would need a character who was like in into Bitcoin. I'm sure at some point they got a lot of new people.

• 48:16Speaker 04

  That takes two seconds to introduce somebody.

• 48:18Speaker 03

  No, no, but it's like, yeah, I had, yeah, probably. I mean, we'll hear Bitcoin while one assumes, right?

• 48:24Nilay Patel?

  It's just really hard not to. I'm like, thinking about it over and over again. Like, I want to talk about it because it's so cool and we're doing a bunch of stuff and there's a big thing that we're doing.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  There's a big.

• 48:32Nilay Patel?

  I'm like, I can't say what it is.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Man, so many big things.

• 48:35Nilay Patel?

  So many big things. So this segment of the Verchass is really just empty hype.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  Right?

• 48:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:40Nilay Patel?

  For Mr.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  I get it. I get it.

• 48:41Nilay Patel?

  I'm into.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  You're in the pocket of big robot.

• 48:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. All right. I think that's the show. A short one. Again, not a terribly newsy week. We haven't talked about the headphone jack. I've literally have done four podcasts about this fucking headphone jack now.

• 48:53Speaker 03

  I think, I think they're gonna switch to.

• 48:55Speaker 04

  Headphone jacks.

• 48:55Speaker 03

  I think they're gonna switch to quarter inch.

• 48:57Nilay Patel?

  It'd be amazing.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  That's my prediction.

• 49:00Speaker 04

  What if like, just a richer sound through quarter inch? I'm just gonna, I'm gonna put this out there and I know that it got put out there. We're gonna talk about headphone jacks. Sorry. I'm gonna put this out there.

• 49:10Speaker 03

  Keep the streak alive.

• 49:11Speaker 04

  I just listened to Control Alt Delete and it was floated there. I am very angry about taking away the headphone jack, but if Apple switches away from Lightning to USB C at the same time for the iPhone.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 49:24Speaker 04

  I will accept it.

• 49:25Nilay Patel?

  Zero possibility of this happening.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  I would.

• 49:27Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  That's like a handshake deal right there.

• 49:29Nilay Patel?

  What? Who are you handshaking with?

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Like your Apple. Tim Cook.

• 49:33Nilay Patel?

  Tim, if you're listening.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  You got a deal, buddy.

• 49:37Speaker 04

  I bet he's got a great handshake.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 49:39Speaker 03

  I feel like you don't become a CEO of a company without having a pretty good handshake.

• 49:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:43Speaker 03

  It's like one of the important skills.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  How cool would that be if like a CEO retired and wrote all like a 300 page book on how to shake hands?

• 49:51Speaker 04

  Wait, hold on, I'm Googling.

• 49:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would read that.

• 49:54Speaker 04

  I feel like Tim's more of a hugger.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  How to shake?

• 49:57Speaker 04

  Wow, this is the best WikiHow in history.

• 50:01Speaker 03

  How to shake?

• 50:01Speaker 04

  How to shake hands, colon, six steps, parentheses with pictures.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, finally.

• 50:07Speaker 04

  You guys know how I learned to shake hands from a movie called My Life? With Nicole Kidman and what's his name? Batman? The one true Batman?

• 50:16Speaker 03

  Is that the one where he dies?

• 50:17Nilay Patel?

  Can I just point this out?

• 50:18Speaker 04

  The one where he dies and he like leaves advice. He like videotapes himself a bunch to leave advice for his unborn child. Cause he knows he's gonna die and in that, in that thing, he explains how to shake a hand.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  But how do you do it?

• 50:31Nilay Patel?

  Can I wait? Can I just say something? Okay, Neil, do your thing. But then Adidas is gonna tell us how to shake hands. How to shake hands, six steps with picture. Picture is so successful for WikiHow that they hit it again. And the second Google result is how to have an effective handshake, seven steps.

• 50:49Speaker 03

  We gotta get in on this. We gotta do, we gotta do more handshake coverage.

• 50:53Nilay Patel?

  All right, Dieter, what were you saying? How do you shake hands?

• 50:56Speaker 04

  You, you gotta suss out the room, first of all. And if, if it looks like a really aggressive, boisterous person, you gotta establish dominance early. And sometimes that means you start the handshake from as much as like five feet away. Just like, put your hand out like, "I'm coming in." And then shake, firm grip. Make sure that you attack, watch the elbow, attack with the, the, the web of your thumb, so that you're getting in there and you don't end up just having somebody grab your fingers. That's the most important thing, is you gotta get in there so that somebody can't trick you and grab just your fingers and then they control you.

• 51:31Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. I hate it when that finger control happens.

• 51:35Speaker 03

  I do the, I do the double hand.

• 51:36Nilay Patel?

  It's bad.

• 51:37Speaker 03

  Cause I, this is a different movie being there where the guy just does double handshakes and people assume that he's important, even though he's sort of a Forrest Gump figure.

• 51:44Nilay Patel?

  Is this the handshake where you, you take the second hand and apply it to the forearm?

• 51:48Speaker 03

  No, no, it's not the forearm, it's just the, the back of the hand. And because he sees the president doing it, and then they're like, it's like a very like, like, like warm sort of reassuring thing.

• 51:59Nilay Patel?

  And then is it, is it two pumps?

• 52:01Speaker 04

  I just wanna hear.

• 52:02Nilay Patel?

  Two pumps, two pumps, three max.

• 52:04Speaker 04

  Step six here is shake up and down no more than two or three times and avoid excessive pumping.

• 52:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:11Speaker 04

  Uh, but I just wanna point out.

• 52:12Speaker 03

  Words to live by.

• 52:13Nilay Patel?

  That's just good life advice.

• 52:14Speaker 04

  Step five of this WikiHow, and I don't know how this podcast got here, but step five, keep your hand perpendicular to the ground, do not roll the handshake sideways.

• 52:25Nilay Patel?

  Oh. Here's another question, here's another question.

• 52:28Speaker 03

  That's known as on the flip side.

• 52:30Nilay Patel?

  Unless you're, no, if you're pulling them in, if you're pulling them in to punch them, if you're like, if you're like doing some like Mortal Kombat shit, right? It's the, yah!

• 52:40Speaker 04

  No, you can, you have to twist it.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  What if you, if you have sweaty hands, right?

• 52:46Speaker 03

  I have sweaty hands.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Is it better?

• 52:47Nilay Patel?

  If you have sweaty hands, then don't shake hands.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Is it better? Is it better to shake hands? So you're saying just don't shake hands? Cause I'm seeing, do you shake hands with sweaty hands? Do they see you wipe them on your jeans? Or do you just?

• 52:59Nilay Patel?

  Just leave the room.

• 53:00Speaker 03

  Do you remember, do you remember Tech Crunch's anti handshake? This was like in the Arrington years. Arrington was like, I don't shake hands. I don't, I think handshaking is a barbaric practice. And then it became like, you know, I think in the, in like OG blogging, like the, the tactic was to have a couple idiosyncrasies that you could like inflict on your audience so that you were like unique. And that was one of his and it's like, he was like, yeah, like germs, disease. This is a medieval custom. I don't need to show you that I'm not armed. And like it became, and then people still shake hands. He wasn't big enough to end handshaking.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:38Nilay Patel?

  You know who else hates shaking hands? Donald Trump.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Really?

• 53:42Nilay Patel?

  Man, so just putting that out there.

• 53:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:45Nilay Patel?

  That's the group of people.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  I feel like I've learned something.

• 53:49Nilay Patel?

  In 1873, Golden, Colorado was home to miners searching for gold. And when the miners sat down for a well deserved banquet, Mr. Coors brought a beer worthy of the occasion. That beer came to be known as Coors banquet beer. Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado, create beer with great responsibility. That's our show, everybody. It was a weird one. It was emotional. If you're listening to this, uh, is in the only way that you can be listening to this pre-recorded. There's a weird edit that we made and turns in there where we deleted a huge reveal. And I encourage you to continue listening to the show and other shows.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  Did reading the website for what that reveal is.

• 54:26Speaker 03

  I feel like the federal agents for maybe a little much, but.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  But I want to say it's like the sort of thing that you should be like scrubbing through your podcast to see if you can find the edit.

• 54:37Nilay Patel?

  No, it's not there.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  It's not worth that.

• 54:38Nilay Patel?

  Andrew is quite frankly, too talented for you to figure that out anyway.

• 54:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:42Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, you should try anyway.

• 54:43Speaker 03

  Paul is the same person at the end of the podcast that he began. It's not a different Paul.

• 54:50Nilay Patel?

  You sure?

• 54:50Speaker 03

  Don't try to figure out where Paul became Paul Prime.

• 54:54Nilay Patel?

  Why is Paul Irish now?

• 54:59Nilay Patel?

  Look, I think next week is gonna be pretty quiet too, right? What's happening next week? It's 4th of July, no news. Here's what we need from you. Just tweet at us, my god, tweet at us. Tell us what we need to talk about. The poll, take the poll. Take the poll. Vote for your favorite robot. Tell us.

• 55:13Speaker 04

  Official word is that the poll is going to be on the post on theverge.com that goes along with this podcast. So look for it there.

• 55:19Nilay Patel?

  Done and done.

• 55:22Nilay Patel?

  Tell us what to talk about next week. I'm at Reckless, Dieter's at Backlon, Paul's at FuturePaul, Russell's at RussellBrandon. Lauren Good, usurper, is at Lauren Good. Master of nougat. Master of nougat. Yeah, we're just looking, we just need some, we need some Thursday stuff. Paul needs gadget secrets. It's time. You can also follow The Verge on Twitter, at Verge, Snapchat, we're Verge, Instagram, at Verge. Pattern here, follow it, and then follow us. And then go to iTunes, your favorite app, and give us five stars. I think those are instructions we can all follow. Also, there's a whole bunch of other stuff to listen to. What's Tech with Chris Plant, Control+Delete with me and Walt Mossberg, Verge SP with Emily and Liz, which is wonderful.

• 56:04Nilay Patel?

  And on the Recode side, Lauren has Too Embarrassed to Ask, Kara Swisher has Recode Decode, Peter Kafka, one of the best podcasts around, in my opinion, Recode Media. Listen to all of those too. Then come back and listen to this show again, and then listen to those again, and then tweet at us. And then follow us on Instagram.

• 56:20Speaker 04

  That's your life now.

• 56:21Nilay Patel?

  Get a Furby Connect. Set it up in front of the speakers and watch him lead you through our content.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  We gotta look into Furby.

• 56:30Nilay Patel?

  Furby integration.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  Furby distribution.

• 56:32Nilay Patel?

  That's the hot new platform. Mm-hmm.

• 56:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  Those are valuable.

• 56:36Speaker 04

  If you're not Furby, you don't matter.

• 56:37Nilay Patel?

  iTunes.com/TheVerge. Build it beautiful. Drink it good. Be responsible. Yeah, that's words to live by. Paul.

• 56:45Speaker 04

  Paul.

• 57:02Nilay Patel?

  That was a real chill episode. Andrew, we should cut out that whole thing.