NFTs explained / Sonos' new bluetooth speaker / Asus ROG phone 5 review

Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn talk to Verge deputy editor Elizabeth Lopatto about the NFT craze from the past few weeks and explains how the transactions work. Verge deputy editor Dan Seifert joins the show for a gadget roundup — from the Asus ROG phone 5 review to the new Sonos Roam bluetooth speaker. Further reading: COVID-19 took disease tests out of the lab — and may keep them there People who are vaccinated can socialize together without masks, CDC says COVID-19 vaccine supplies are on the rise in the US Single-shot COVID-19 vaccine is popular at vaccination sites Artifacts from the first COVID-19 vaccination in the US are headed to the Smithsonian Meet Dr. B, the startup connecting people to leftover vaccines Beeple sold an NFT for $69 million NFTs, explained Of course John Legere bought an $888,888.88 NFT from Steve Aoki Jack Dorsey’s first tweet may fetch $2.5 million, and he’ll donate the NFTy proceeds to charity Sonos Roam officially announced for $169, preorders start now Sonos partners with Audi to bring its audio tech to cars Asus ROG phone 5 review Leaked OnePlus 9 Pro and OnePlus 9 renders leave little to the imagination OnePlus’ next phones will come out on March 23rd Samsung will host another Unpacked event on March 17th Apple reportedly overestimated iPhone 12 mini demand, by a lot Insta360’s Go 2 is a $299 action camera with a surprisingly powerful case The most powerful Wear OS watches are held back by Wear OS Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 review: AMD and Nvidia at their best Razer Blade 15 Base review: losing its edge Best gaming laptops in 2021 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  Coming up on The Vergecast, Liz Lopato joins us to talk all about NFTs. It's NFT mania this week. Dan Seifer joins us to talk about new Android phones, new laptops, and a new Sona speaker. That's The Vergecast coming up now.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:48Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast blockchain technology.

• 1:56Nilay Patel?

  I don't know that you wanna say that. I do and I don't. Anyway, I'm your friend, Neil. I Dieter Bonus here. I am your 18th gig of RAM. That's good. That's the one that right over the top. Liz Lopato is here.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  I'm here to bring a little bit of chaos to the Vergecast, as I think longtime listeners know.

• 2:12Nilay Patel?

  As always, we're gonna make Liz talk about NFTs. It's gonna be great. A little bit later, Dan Seifert is going to join us. We got some gadgets to talk about. Before we get into NFTs with Liz, I want to start, as always, with our COVID update. Kind of like a big week in like vaccine news and like just feeling good as we're recording. A few hours ago, President Biden signed the Recovery Act. There's just good news in the rate of vaccines. But before we talk about the vaccine news, Nicole Wetsmann wrote a great piece this week about at-home testing, which is something that has been somewhat sorely lacking. There are now these new PCR kits. The PCR is the good kind of testing. There's a company called Lucera. There's another company. This was Liz, from what I understand,

• 2:56Nilay Patel?

  like kind of like a dead end of research until COVID, and now there's like an explosion of innovation here. I have Lucera tests at my house because there's no testing around where I am, and my sister is a doctor, and she's sent me one. They're so cool. So now at least we have some access to testing. It's really neat.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, so there are a couple of things that are pretty well-known about what happens when you go to a doctor's office, right? Like, you're not necessarily at your best. Your blood pressure's a little bit higher than it normally is. Other stuff, like in terms of, you know, testing, requires laboratories. And so you maybe can get that at your doctor's office, but if you are like me, sometimes your doctor just sends you to another lab, and that sucks.

• 3:36Nilay Patel?

  And that lab is closed, and they don't tell you, and then you have to go the next day, and then you find another lab that's nearby, and then the people there are super mad because everybody who went there is mad at them because the other lab was closed, but it's not their fault, and you're worried they're gonna kill you because they're so pissed. They're like jabbing you with needles to get the blood out. Wow, Dieter, what's living in Oakland like?

• 3:53Speaker 02

  I mean, look, I didn't have that experience the last time I went to a lab, but the experience I did have was waiting in line for two hours, which sucked.

• 4:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  Especially indoors. Like, we were all masked, but it was the most people I had been around in weeks. And it's a pandemic, so that was not great.

• 4:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, these things are cool. I mean, you know, I took bio in college. I remember doing a PCR experiment. It was complicated and hard. I think I got it wrong. I don't think I got a good grade in that class. But this was like a little plastic box with two double A's. You put the vial in. You run it for 30 minutes. It has a result that you can be called, like, very cool. So read that story. It's just a great innovate. It's a great story about innovation that wasn't happening. And it was spurred on by the pandemic, and now it's happening at a high rate. Very cool. On the vaccine front, good news. The CDC says if people are vaccinated, they can socialize together without masks, which is like the biggest glimmer of hope that has ever glimmered in the past year. That's very cool. Supplies of the of COVID-19 vaccines are up in the United States.

• 4:54Nilay Patel?

  Biden administration buying more of the single shot Johnson and Johnson vaccine, which I think a lot of people were concerned that there'd be some hesitancy around that one because of the numbers are reported compared to the other vaccines. Turns out, not a lot of fear there. The single shot vaccine is indeed popular at various vaccination sites. We have a story about that. I actually, this is just a fun story. Artifacts from the first vaccination in the United States are now going to be in the Smithsonian. I feel like they should keep that in storage for a while. Like, I don't need, I don't need to think about that. I don't need to go to a museum to think about COVID for a good, long time.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Well, Neelai, how is Max gonna learn about it?

• 5:30Nilay Patel?

  We're just not gonna talk about it. That should just be like a mystery. Like, what happened in that year of my parents' lives? Like, she'll just find out about it. Someone can make a documentary. If you're a teenager, start thinking about that documentary now. Vaccine distribution around the world, very cool. We have a story about drones that are helping to speed up deliveries of vaccines in Ghana. And then lastly, I'm assuming a lot of people listening to this, hopefully you are high on lists. You can get a vaccine. A lot of people are not. There are now websites. There's one called Dr. B, which is a startup that is basically like connected, putting people on lists around the country. So at the end of the day, when providers have leftover vaccines, you get a text. You have two hours to get over there. You need to be vaccinated. That's very cool. It's a good use of technology. There's like, you should read that story. It's great. It's like a classic tech company story.

• 6:15Nilay Patel?

  Like, a guy started it, and how did they grow? They bought another one. It's like every story is the same story.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Also, the holdup is not actually on the user side because like half a million people have signed up, I think. The problem is that they're trying to verify vaccine sites so that they can like guide people to the right ones. And that's taking a lot longer than like all of the people, like in all honesty, me, who are dying to get vaccinated and are just like, "Sign me up, coach. Put me in."

• 6:43Speaker 03

  Anywhere you want. I wonder if like, Google could make a website to solve that problem. Don't kill me. We should announce that.

• 6:49Nilay Patel?

  It's amazing. It's like, it's like, we're gonna cruise into a year since that announcement soon.

• 6:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:54Nilay Patel?

  And it is now easier for me to plug two AA batteries into a box and just do the test at my house than to go to a website run by Google that tells me where I can get a test. Oh boy. Anyway, glimmers of hope. It's all positivity on the Vergecast today. And now we're gonna talk about NFTs. So if you don't know, NFTs stand for non-fungible token. Liz, I would say the past two weeks have taken NFTs from being a somewhat obscure idea to literally today, an artist named Beeple sold an NFT of a digital painting at Christie's, the fine art auction house, for $69 million.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  Nice.

• 7:31Nilay Patel?

  And that's just a, just a rocket ride of awareness, I would say. And there's the history and people didn't know about it, but like, the past two weeks in particular, that is, that is quite a journey we've been on. So Liz, you've been writing about it. We've got some other coverage from Justine and others across the site. Jake has been writing about it a lot. But Liz, let's start. What's an NFT?

• 7:51Speaker 02

  Great question. So NFT stands for non-fungible token, which probably, for some of you, is not going to help. So basically, imagine a Bitcoin, right? It's fungible. Every Bitcoin is basically the same. You can like, do whatever you want with them. You can split them into parts, all of that. So this is more like a trading card, right? It's, if you trade it for, like, if you trade, I don't know, I'm trying to think, because I wasn't a trading card person. But if you trade like a rookie card of, I don't know, Babe Ruth, for another card, you no longer have the Babe Ruth card. The, the identity matters. And so part of what the NFT does is it makes it really clear what the chain

• 8:35Speaker 02

  of ownership was for this specific object.

• 8:39Nilay Patel?

  Okay, let me stop you there. Does it?

• 8:43Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 8:44Nilay Patel?

  There's just a very complicated idea that I want to peel apart here before we talk about the explosion of NFTs.

• 8:50Speaker 03

  For all listeners, I want you all to know that in the back of Neelai's mind is a deep fear that we are about to talk about what makes a thing a thing and whether it's possible to own the thing and whether or not words have meaning. And he's just staring at me through the zoom window, asking me with his eyes to shut up and not interrupt him.

• 9:06Nilay Patel?

  We're not, we're gonna get there so quickly and I, I'm just trying to slow it down, but let's start and see how long it takes us.

• 9:14Nilay Patel?

  So things have value. No, so you've got the, the physical trading card, right? And like TOPPS, which makes trading cards, prints a couple of thousands of them a year or tens of thousands of them a year. They sell them, they don't print them again. They end up on a market, you can buy and sell them, you can keep them in your grandmother's attic for the rest of your life. An NFT is just linked to a thing that exists digitally elsewhere. So like Top Shots is like the NBA's NFT trading card platform. We can buy and sell video clips of basketball highlights, but like I can just watch those basketball highlights whenever I want and I don't have to pay anybody and, and I don't,

• 9:55Nilay Patel?

  you don't own them, like you don't own that highlight, you just own like a copy of the highlight. You see where I'm like, there's actually not a connection between buying and selling the NFT and like creating scarcity around the thing.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 10:10Nilay Patel?

  Does this make any sense?

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it does. And it's, it's interesting. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna phrase this another way because our, our, our John Legere, John Legary?

• 10:22Nilay Patel?

  Ledger.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  I don't know. I only read his name.

• 10:26Nilay Patel?

  Who, by the way, and I'm, I'm just saying this, former T-Mobile CEO, John Ledger, I'm just gonna say this, is like the number one Decoder super fan. So he's on my good, he's tweeted like every episode of Decoder. So I'm like, I'm on team Ledger right now.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  All right. Well, Ledger bought a 888,888 dollars and 88 cents NFT from Steve Aoki. And if you're curious about what it is, you can go on YouTube and see it. Uh, it's a 30 second long video with music and an animation of what I would describe as a person with fur and sunglasses.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  Oh, this is fucking horrifying.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  The fur is pink and blue, for anybody who cares. But so you can, you can see it, right? But in some sense, I think what you're purchasing is a sense of ownership. So I've been talking to people on the Top Shots platform, and yeah, there's a story coming, guys, get excited. They, they talk about over and over again, you know, well, yeah, you can watch this clip on YouTube, but you don't own it. You don't have a sense of ownership. There's no like, it, it doesn't accrue to you, right? Like, it's like, you're not part of it. And so for them, because a lot of them are like very, very serious NBA fans, it's almost, it feels at times like this is like the next iteration of a fan club, where like you join

• 11:54Speaker 02

  the club and you get to talk to some of the, the stars of the NBA, because they hang out in the Discord. And like, sometimes they'll trade you like their jersey for a particularly good moment, which, you know, yeah, they're like, there, there are a number of very funny transactions. So, you know, it seems like there's like some mix of like a sense of ownership and a sense of community that are really powering Top Shot.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  So I want to talk about this without going, I don't know, too far down the epistemology rabbit hole here, but I'm gonna like, here's a narrative. We used to know what a thing was and like, and what it meant to have it, and that was a, it was a physical thing. And then things went online. And so like, instead of having a VHS tape or whatever, there was copies and things became infinitely copyable. And it sort of messed with our idea of what it was to like, have something. And Liz, you called this a sense of ownership, and I think that's, that's kind of the core of it, because typically, our sense of ownership means some kind of control. It means some kind of like, you are in charge of the thing. And with digital stuff, that sense of ownership just becomes a copyright and you, you know,

• 13:01Speaker 03

  you try and tell people not to pirate your stuff. With an NFT, you don't, like, that, that sense of ownership gets another step removed. What you own is the token. You own the cryptographic thing in the blockchain that says that you are the person currently in possession of that cryptographic key in the blockchain, that may or may not, but in most cases is not, like, one to one the same thing as the thing it's representing. Is that right?

• 13:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I apologize for being a philosophy major.

• 13:34Nilay Patel?

  We got there so fast. It's been like, it's been like eight minutes.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  But the thing that I keep thinking about is art in the age of mechanical reproduction, where Ben Hamin talks about how physical objects have an aura. And this is like born out by psychology. So like, one thing that we know about people is that if we take a sweater and we say this sweater used to belong to Albert Einstein, people really like the sweater and they want to own it. If you take the same sweater and you tell people it belonged to Hitler, people want nothing to do with the sweater. It's the same sweater, you know, like the sweater didn't change. You just changed the story about the sweater. And that aura is like part of what physical objects have. And it's been a minute since I've read this book, but I should probably read it again.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  But one of the things that Ben Hamin talks about is that when you can endlessly reproduce things, you lose this aura. And in some ways, I have been looking at this as like a way of reintroducing the aura to a reproducible digital object.

• 14:34Nilay Patel?

  An infinitely reproducible object.

• 14:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:36Nilay Patel?

  First, I will note that The Verge very famously made a video where Dieter narrates art in the age of mechanical reproduction to just scenes of CES.

• 14:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's good. You should watch it. It's really good.

• 14:46Nilay Patel?

  Easily one of the best videos we've ever made. We were completely hung over and out of our minds on the lack of sleep when this video was conceived and produced, but one of the best ones we ever made. Here's my question though, but wait, that's the thesis, right? You can, you can make many, many more objects that are the same thing. You lose the aura. Yes and no, that's true, right? Like, we do live in an age of mechanical reproduction. There are like lots of copies of cars, right? And if I tell you this was, I think Elton John's like Lamborghini just sold for like $30 million and serious car collectors, like that car's a piece of shit. Like other Lamborghinis of exactly the same vintage do not fetch that price. Like this makes no sense,

• 15:27Nilay Patel?

  but it's Elton John's. And there is like a market for this thing because of that aura. Digital goods don't have any of that.

• 15:35Speaker 03

  Why not?

• 15:36Nilay Patel?

  I would say like, underlying like my college level economics courses was markets are based on scarcity and there's supply and demand and there's only a certain number of commodities in the world. And if there's a lot of demand and no supply, the price goes up. Like, this is like the basics of economics. The internet represents the end of scarcity. So like, streaming services charge you for access to an infinite catalog of music and movies, because they cannot charge you for the movies or music, because you might as well just go pirate them. So actually, the cost is convenience, right? Like DRM systems generally have failed because they are less convenient than just piracy.

• 16:18Nilay Patel?

  So if you just charge for extreme convenience, in the case of Spotify or whatever, people might pay you the money.

• 16:25Speaker 03

  But, so, to put these two ideas together, what Liz is talking about, you're talking about. The thing that made Elton John's Lamborghini valuable was the story that it belonged to Elton John and potentially the historical fact that it did. The thing that makes an NFT valuable, what an NFT is then, is it's basically a computerization using tons and tons of carbon to produce electricity to make the blockchain of that story. It takes that story and makes it a verifiable thing on a network. And that's like, kind of it.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Some of them don't actually take tons and tons of carbon. I want to be super clear about this. It sort of depends on the blockchain. I'm very sorry for what I'm about to do here, but I'm gonna do it anyway.

• 17:03Speaker 03

  Do it.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  So Bitcoin is probably the most carbon hog of the bunch. Ethereum is a little bit better, but one of the problems that CryptoKitties very famously had, CryptoKitties being one of the original NFTs in like, what, 2017? Was that they, it was so popular, it like, clogged the network really badly. So Ethereum is not as bad as like the Bitcoin blockchain, but it's like not ideal. And if you look at other blockchains, they're doing things differently. So both Bitcoin and Ethereum are proof of work blockchains and they require consensus in order to get to a result. And both of those things mean that you're using more energy, basically, to produce something.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  The thing that's really interesting to me about the top shot blockchain, which is called Flow, is that it's a relatively centralized blockchain. And it's also using proof of stake, which means that there's a lot less of a carbon impact involved. So in addition to like not having to do the decentralized stuff and, you know, not necessarily using the same methods to arrive at like the block, they've managed to make it a little bit better. Now Ethereum has famously been about to move to proof of stake for a very long time. I will believe it when I see it because getting to consensus on that is going to be difficult. But there are alternatives that are less environmentally unfriendly.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  That said, like Ethereum is the most popular thing for NFTs right now.

• 18:34Nilay Patel?

  I rescind my cheap shot.

• 18:37Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, it comes up every time we read a story, every time we tweet about it. Like, people are like, this is going to destroy the environment. And the answer is, if it continues the way it's going, it absolutely will. If these alternative marketplaces come up, or if this big Ethereum shift comes up, maybe it won't. It's like a good argument to have. To me, it kind of feels like being asked to judge Windows Phone an update that might come out in six months. Like, I don't know that's gonna happen. I've got it right now. Like, Rob Gronkowski selling his Super Bowl highlights, he's not waiting for Ethereum 2.0 to come out. He's just gonna sell them on the Ethereum blockchain right now. And that's the end of that, and he's gonna make his money. He's gonna continue to be Rob Gronkowski. And we're just gonna have to deal with whatever fallout of that.

• 19:22Nilay Patel?

  Like, there's a gold rush right now in the inefficient power system. The real question is whether this is gonna lead to a functional new kind of creator economy that is maybe on a more efficient, less environmentally fraught blockchain. And that's gonna allow creators to buy and sell things in a way that 20 years ago, they would buy and sell t-shirts and records and movie clips. I do not know the answer to this question. Like, if all this is really, if fundamentally, all this is, is Patreon, but you get to say you own something, fine. But like, it, like Liz, you don't own the video clip when you buy it from Top Shots, right? This is a question I asked you the other day. Like, you're just getting a license to a video clip.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Well, I'm glad you asked, because I happen to have the Terms of Service right in front of me.

• 20:11Nilay Patel?

  Amazing.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Would you like me to read them to you live?

• 20:13Nilay Patel?

  This is the most riveting radio I can think of. Please.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  So this is section four, Ownership, License, and Ownership Restrictions. And this is bold and in all caps. "Your ownership of moments will only be recognized by us if you have purchased or otherwise rightfully acquired such moments from a legitimate source

• 20:30Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  and not through any of the Category B prohibited activities as defined below."

• 20:35Nilay Patel?

  What are the Category B prohibited activities?

• 20:38Speaker 02

  Well, it's below. I'm gonna give you a couple of... I wanna zoom in, because they're about to define art, own, and purchase moments. And I think that that's going to interest you.

• 20:48Nilay Patel?

  Perfect.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Okay. So, art means any art, designs, and drawings in the form of media, including without limitation, video or photographs that may be associated with the moment you own.

• 20:59Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Own means with respect to a moment, a moment that you have purchased or otherwise rightfully acquired from a legitimate source and not through any of the Category B prohibited activities as defined below, where proof of such purchase is recorded on the Flow Network.

• 21:13Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  And a purchased moment means a moment that you own. So I'm gonna scroll down to the category B activities. So we're going, we're gonna go below.

• 21:24Nilay Patel?

  Right. Just before you do that, Dieter, when you warned me that we would be talking about what the nature of a thing.

• 21:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:29Nilay Patel?

  Did you think that conversation would resolve to the National Basketball Association defining the word own?

• 21:35Speaker 03

  Nope, I did not. But I actually am super here for it. It's actually really great. Because what we're learning here is that the NFT, like the thing that creates the ownership are the terms of service. It's the, the whole, the whole idea of ownership is a story we tell each other. And NFTs are a thing that's layered on top of that. And like, the fact that the thing that actually creates the ownership is the terms of service that Liz is reading, like, just, it's, it's all just stories all the way down.

• 22:04Nilay Patel?

  I would like to know what the category B prohibited activities are.

• 22:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:08Nilay Patel?

  Now that we're below.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  I'm scrolling.

• 22:10Nilay Patel?

  We're thoroughly below now.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  Okay. Oh, wow. This is involved. All right. So this is conditions of use and prohibited activities. You agree you're responsible for your own conduct while using the app, sure, and consequences thereof. You use the app only for purposes that are legal and proper and accordance with these terms and any applicable laws and regulations.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  What if there's like a moderation thing? You get kicked off the platform?

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, they could, they actually have a code of conduct.

• 22:35Nilay Patel?

  Of course they do.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  One of the things I've been really enjoying about their Discord community is that I'm coming from Wall Street Bets, from having recorded on Wall Street Bets. And I have come to this Discord community and everybody's like, very polite. And like, you get warned if you use a bad word. It's actually very well moderated. I'm kind of impressed.

• 22:54Nilay Patel?

  That's great.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  So basically, you will not send, upload, distribute, or disseminate any unlawful, defamatory, harassing, abusive, fraudulent, obscene, or otherwise objectionable content, involve the distribution of any viruses, worms, defects, Trojan horses, corrupted files, hoaxes, or any other items of a destructive or deceptive nature. Involve the upload, uploading, posting, transmitting, and otherwise making available through the app of any content that infringes on the intellectual property rights of any party. Involve using the app to violate the legal rights, such as privacy and publicity of others. Involve in engaging, promoting, or encouraging illegal activity without, including, without limitation, any money laundering.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  Involve interfering with other users' enjoyment of the app. Involve exploiting the app.

• 23:42Nilay Patel?

  So this is just like the Twitter moderation rules. Like, that's, this is what they all look like. Yeah.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  They also ban bots.

• 23:48Nilay Patel?

  Of course.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  You can't have a bot.

• 23:50Nilay Patel?

  Well, good luck. But more social platforms should have, don't interfere with other people's enjoyment of the app. That's a great catch-all. Yeah, I love that. But here's what I'll say, when you buy most things, you buy a roll of toilet paper, the Charmin bear doesn't pop up on your screen and tell you all the things you can and cannot do, right? Like-

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Well, not yet.

• 24:09Nilay Patel?

  Agree to continue. But like, you buy a Top Shot NFT, the thing you own comes with a lengthy list of restrictions, one of which is like, there are illegal ways to sell it. You can't sell it for drugs, for example, based on what I just heard. You can't launder money through it. There are also illegal ways to acquire it, right? So if you get it in some transaction that the NBA or Top Shots or whatever doesn't authorize, you don't own it.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Right. You don't own it if you used a stolen credit card to buy it, or a payment mechanism that you do not have the right to use, or if you try to charge it back.

• 24:48Nilay Patel?

  Well, sure, but like, if you, if you sell it outside of the Top Shot app, right? Like, then you might not own it either, because the NBA wants a cut of the transaction. So it's like a closed ecosystem.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is a closed ecosystem, and they very, very clearly warn you that they can't be responsible if you sell the moment outside the app, because that does potentially provide the opportunity for some of the stuff they're talking about, like viruses.

• 25:14Nilay Patel?

  So can they, can they rescind your ownership?

• 25:16Speaker 02

  Great question. I imagine. Yeah. I, like, look, one thing that I know about term of service agreements, just as like a person, not like as a lawyer, is that typically they give the company the rights to do an awful lot of things, most of which the company will not feel especially forced to do, but if it has to, like, for instance, halt trading because they are having trouble securing the funds to give to their depositors in order to deal with the GameStop volatility. They can do that. That's in the terms of service.

• 25:52Nilay Patel?

  So let me, let's switch to a different example. So Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet as an NFT. So his tweet still exists. He still owns the tweet. It's still on Twitter. You can look at it whenever you want. But the the NFT that he minted of his tweet is up for auction. It might go for as much as $2.5 million. He says he's going to donate the proceeds to charity. What say you spend $2.5 million on that? What do you get? Like, if I want, if I buy that NFT of Jack Dorsey's first tweet, can I delete his tweet? Can I make sure no one ever sees it again?

• 26:26Speaker 02

  Boy, I'm gonna have to go look at the terms of service. No, I think that, one, you get that sense of ownership, right? So maybe you get bragging rights. Like, yeah, I own Jack Dorsey's first tweet.

• 26:37Nilay Patel?

  But but he could just like mint another NFT of it, right?

• 26:40Speaker 03

  He could.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  What you, what you get is the NFT. What you own is the NFT. You own the thing that Jack Dorsey said is an NFT of his tweet. That's what you get.

• 26:51Nilay Patel?

  I gotta tell you, all this sounds like people, like, we're all been stuck inside for too long, and like, rich people have too much money. Like, that's what this feels like to me. That, like, we just needed something else to buy. Like, we've all bought all the things from Amazon that we can think of. Like, I bought a pair of slippers on Instagram the other day. Like, why? I haven't been to a restaurant. I would pay $10,000 to go to a bar right now. I'm just telling you. All of this feels like this is an overheated market that isn't rationally connected to, at the end of it, you're gonna sell that tweet for $3 million, right? Like, the market doesn't feel like it exists.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  So, this is a thing that I think is actually pretty interesting, because we've seen, for instance, CryptoKitties, which is still a going concern, by the way, it's just not as many people and they're not trading for as much. Like, there was a period where, like, the most expensive CryptoKitty, like, sold for, like, 600 Ethereum, and now it's all, like, a tenth, a hundredth. So, you know, there's that. But the other thing that, that happens with stuff that's out in the wild on Ethereum is money laundering. And, like, there's no way of getting around that with cryptocurrency. It is, it's, it's part of it. It's part of the reason why, like, regulators are looking pretty closely at how to regulate cryptocurrency right now.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  It's not the only thing that's going on in cryptocurrency, but I think we would all be kidding ourselves if we said it wasn't happening. And, like, if there is a digital object, for instance, a Jack Dorsey tweet, that you can say has some kind of, like, intangible value, then it becomes less obvious that you're engaging in money laundering. Do you know what I mean?

• 28:34Nilay Patel?

  I wish I had the criminal instincts to know what you meant.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  Okay. This is a story about when I used to live in New York.

• 28:42Nilay Patel?

  And Liz's previous life as a criminal.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  No, I've only ever been at, no. But there was this liquor store that was next to one of my friend's houses, and all of the bottles of wine were just, like, mispriced. They were just, like, wrongly priced. Like, this was, I went there a lot because they had bottles of wine that should have been expensive that were cheap. And there was also a very big space in the back that I sometimes saw people going in and out of. And if you've lived in New York, you know that there is an organized crime presence. It's around. And my, my, my guess was that this, this store was a front, and that was, it was a money laundering front. It didn't matter how they priced the wine that I was buying, because that was not the point of the store.

• 29:25Nilay Patel?

  So you're saying, you're a criminal, you've robbed a bank? You've got some money. I just watched Logan Lucky, it's a great movie. So you've got a bunch of money, you need to launder it. You're, you're gonna, like, buy Jack Dorsey tweets and then resell them at a later date?

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:39Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Well, now I think NFTs are super cool.

• 29:43Nilay Patel?

  I hope the entire market is buying and selling Jack Dorsey tweets. Let me take the positive version of this for the last little bit here. We have seen across the entire internet for maybe the past two or three years. The creator economy is like pushed into doing things for the YouTube algorithm because that's the best place to make money as a creator. You basically like have a bad job, right? Like you're constantly grinding. You're trying to make videos that go viral. There's some bad incentives there. Like we've talked to a lot of YouTubers. We know and love a lot of YouTubers. This is what they tell us, like incentive structure creates a lot of pressure. You can be on Instagram. You've got to like make a bunch of brand deals.

• 30:27Nilay Patel?

  Very rarely are you monetizing the thing you make itself. This is all, and I think it's true for musicians at the highest level, right? How do they make money? They're on tour every day and they put out singles air court in the hotel room because the value of the music itself has gone down and the value of the scarce product, which is a concert, has gone up. Okay, that, and that's good or bad, however you see it. Do NFTs represent an ability to rebalance that by valuing the art itself? Because that would be the good outcome.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Maybe. I think the thing that's most significant here is a sense of community, right? So like if we're taking, if we're taking, for instance, YouTubers, you have a community around you and a significant part of your job is actually community maintenance, right? Like you need to talk to folks and like all of this. You have a very personal relationship with your fans. And so I think that that's a way of monetizing that relationship, you know? Like the fan wants to support the creator. They know that the creator isn't making money from the videos that they love. But if the creator puts out an NFT for one of those videos, the fan might buy it in the hopes of supporting the creator.

• 31:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think I'm just coming around to like bands used to go away for years at a time and like Jimmy Page would be like, I'm gonna hang amplifiers in a church and then record the church from a mile away. And that's gonna take me six months to get a guitar tone. And then the album would come out and the album would be the thing that made them money. Right? And that that cycle worked or didn't work, but it was it was like the known cycle for music. Anyway, that cycle is like all but destroyed.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:06Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like now the the impetus is to be on tour all the time to monetize the relationship with the fan that have a Patreon like on and on and on. And you're getting paid pennies on the song per listen from Spotify for the actual music. Is there a way here where you're like, I'm selling an album, it's all NFTs, you can buy it or not. And that relationship is strong enough to create the new economy? Because that's, I think that's a thing a lot of creators are, they're talking about it that way, even if the mechanics of how the copyright work or the mechanics of what you're actually buying aren't quite there. That is, that is what the conversation sounds like to me.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. And like, the truth is, as somebody who owns a lot of band t-shirts, she mostly doesn't wear.

• 32:47Nilay Patel?

  I use Led Zeppelin for a reason here.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like, you know, I do go see people live and I do buy their merch because I know they're not making money when I stream them on Spotify. And like, I don't have a problem with supporting them. And that's why I think that that sort of like fan relationship is really important for making this work. Right? Like, you know, I'm not gonna buy an NFT of Jack Dorsey's tweets, not least because we have a policy that doesn't let me own any cryptocurrency. But I also don't have a relationship with Jack Dorsey. I don't think he needs more of my money. Like, I don't think I don't care. Like, if I want to donate to a charity, I'll do it myself. Whereas if I'm like, thinking about like, somebody who hosts hosts a podcast that I like, and I know that they're having trouble getting ads, but I want the podcast to continue and they sell an NFT of something from the

• 33:33Speaker 02

  podcast, I might buy it because I want them to continue doing the thing I like.

• 33:37Nilay Patel?

  What's more, this is a question without an answer. What's more carbon intensive, buying the t-shirt from the podcast or buying the NFT?

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Well, that sounds like a story you should assign, Mr. Editor.

• 33:47Nilay Patel?

  Dieter? No.

• 33:52Nilay Patel?

  It's actually, if anyone has a thought, like, please tweet at us, otherwise we'll go research it. Like, I think those are the kinds of questions that are, it's the second wave of NFT stories, it's gonna look like that. Because if all you're doing is like, super Patreon and you get something, okay. But if, if you wanna like, have a transaction, I think people are, especially post pandemic, when we're like, away from screens, being like, I own a GIF, is not gonna be cool. I promise you.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  Well.

• 34:20Nilay Patel?

  Like, the challenge I have to everybody listening to this is like, go find the normiest normie you can think of, and try to explain Jack Dorsey selling this tweet for $2.5 million. It is impossible. Like, people's eyes will glaze over, they're like, they bought a tweet? Like, why? And then you're like, they didn't actually buy a tweet. And then it's all over for you.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  So, here is something that people, I think, do understand. And there's a component of it in NFTs, though that's not the only thing that NFTs are doing. But people definitely understand gambling. And more specifically, they understand, they understand that gambling is really fun.

• 34:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  Like, there's like, a whole city in the US that's devoted to that, too, if you count Atlantic City. So, you know, like, if you explain some of this stuff as like, a way for people to gamble and have a good time, and sort of leave out the question of what does ownership mean, I think that that's, that's something that's relatively easy for people to grasp.

• 35:12Nilay Patel?

  Long-term blockchain tweet gambling. That's where I'm leaving it. I just want, I just want that idea in everybody's head. Liz has stories coming out next week, we're gonna have more stories. I'm gonna have to figure out how to assign that t-shirt story now. That's my own fault. I'm sorry to the staff of The Verge. No, that's the thing, I, I think this rebalancing the creator economy is like, there's something deeply important there. I just don't know if buying and selling numbers is like, the, is the thing. But we're gonna keep chasing it, because everyone seems to love it. All right, Liz, thank you so much. That was great.

• 35:43Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you for having me.

• 35:45Nilay Patel?

  All right, we'll take a break, we'll be back with Dan Seifert.

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• 36:56Nilay Patel?

  We're back. Dan Seifert's here. Hey, Dan.

• 36:58Speaker 05

  Hello.

• 36:58Nilay Patel?

  Lot of gadget news this week. Let's start with Sonos. It was Sonos event-ish. They announced a portable Bluetooth speaker called the Rome. It's $169. It's pretty cool.

• 37:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a UE Boom with a Sonos logo on it.

• 37:14Nilay Patel?

  Well, I'm very proud of Chris Welch because he like scooped the whole thing. So like the element of surprise is like, we had it.

• 37:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's a competitor of the UE Boom. It's got Sonos tech in it. You can also just like seamlessly move audio. If you're Bluetooth thing it to that speaker, you can move it to the rest of your Sonos speakers, which is cool.

• 37:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:32Nilay Patel?

  It seems like Sonos is about to dramatically expand this product line.

• 37:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, it's funny. Like this is the first really portable Sonos product. Like they had the Move, was it 2019 or something like that? But that was portable from like your kitchen to your porch. Like nobody really is bringing that thing around because it weighs like 11 pounds. But this is a UE Boom sized thing. So we're very familiar with that form factor. You throw it in a bag, take it to the park, you take it to the beach, take it to a friend's house for whenever we can do that again. And like it's, it's you just, it's a Bluetooth speaker. And then when you're home, it's a Wi-Fi speaker and integrates with your Wi-Fi Sonos system, which is really rad. So I think it's pretty cool. I think a lot of Sonos customers have been wanting this for a long time.

• 38:18Speaker 05

  I don't know how many people outside of the Sonos world will be interested in it, but...

• 38:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, that's my big question is, is this going to be an entree into...

• 38:26Speaker 03

  Living the Sonos life or not. I love that they basically threw every feature that I would ask for. Right. I'm like, oh, what do I want in a Bluetooth speaker with everything? Okay, I want Google Assistant. I want Alexa. I want Wi-Fi to connect to Sonos. I want Bluetooth. I want wireless charging off a standard keypad. I want it to charge via USB-C. And I don't want it to be too big and I want it to, you know, have good sound like you like that. They just down the list. Like if I had to complain about the spec, I would say that the the handoff feature uses like super, super high frequency tones that nobody can hear instead of just using, I don't know, ultra wideband or something. But like, okay, who cares? That's fine. And really, what's do you maybe about a different kind of frequency anyway?

• 39:11Speaker 03

  I mean, really, for for good.

• 39:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah, it's true.

• 39:13Speaker 03

  So I like this thing. Is it worth 170? Like, it will be for me, I think, because I will like have it integrated into my Sonos system.

• 39:21Nilay Patel?

  I will say this in a question that only The Verge would ask. We confirm that you cannot use them as surrounds.

• 39:26Speaker 03

  What?

• 39:27Nilay Patel?

  For a Sonos Sennbar.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  That's garbage. I take it all back.

• 39:29Nilay Patel?

  Literally, we are the only people who asked. We're the only people who care. But I personally love the idea of like putting my surrounds away and then bringing my surround.

• 39:40Nilay Patel?

  That's so funny. Battery operated surrounds. I don't think anybody else cares about that, but yes.

• 39:45Speaker 03

  It's true. They packed every feature into it. It's very competitive. I think that the idea that like most day, like most days, you don't get any value out of your Bluetooth speaker, right? Like it's just like at home, you like put it in a closet. You take it out when you want to travel or you're like outside your house. Because it's part of Sonos, you might get a lot of value out of it. You might like keep it in your bedroom and use it there most days. And then when you want to leave, you pick it up and go, especially by the the charging dock. But like Patrick Spence, CEO of Sonos, good friend of our show, gave a great interview to Yanko Protocol. He's like, we're expanding, we're going to put this thing in stores you might not expect. Like particularly outdoor stores or like hinting towards like camping stores. Like they're moving to expand the product line out of its normal zone.

• 40:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  There's the rumors of headphones forever.

• 40:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right.

• 40:34Speaker 03

  Like you can, they announced a partnership with Audi. You know, there's.

• 40:39Nilay Patel?

  Co-branded car audio is like very funny, like it'll be a Sonos logo on the Audi stereo system.

• 40:44Speaker 05

  I have no idea what Sonos could bring to the car. Like, like, I just do not understand what, I mean, like, maybe it does true play in your car and like tunes the audio depending on where you're sitting.

• 40:55Nilay Patel?

  First of all, they, they, you know, their, their stuff sounds good, but like co-branded car audio is like always very funny. Like, maybe the feature will be there where you can like, you're playing the music in your living room, your kitchen and, and your car for some reason. Like, that would be very funny. I would appreciate that. Like, just, I'm, I'm the guy who wants battery powered surrounds. Like, not useful, but would be hilarious and then delight. But it's probably more like you drive home, you're listening to something, you get out of the car, you push a button and it starts playing on your Sonos. Like, that would be cool.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  Or it could just be that, like, somebody paid somebody, Audi paid Sonos to put the Sonos logo on the speakers that are in the car, right? Where, you know, the OnePlus 9, 9 Pro are coming and, you know, all the leaks and there's a Hasselblad logo on it. We've seen camera companies put logos on phones before. How meaningful is it? We don't know. So there might be some feature stuff on this Audi, but it might just be that Sonos is getting paid for its logo and like, there's some, like, there's a patina of, we helped tune the sound or whatever.

• 41:55Nilay Patel?

  Right. So I, I have a Mustang Mach-E review unit now. It's very fun. I highly recommend driving one. It's the good time.

• 42:03Speaker 03

  I saw one in the wild for real, not a review, just like a person that owned the car. It was amazing.

• 42:07Nilay Patel?

  But it has a BNO sound system, Ford has a deal with BNO, which is, it's like a nice logo on the, on the sound system. But like, Bang & Olufsen is like, they're the crazy design company. Like, they're the 80s CD tower, foldy speaker, like TVs that like unfoldy, like, yeah, they're that company. They were like the ultimate high-end stereo mall store.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:30Nilay Patel?

  And like, there's this logo all over this Ford and it's like, Is something gonna like unfold? Are you gonna inject like eight CDs at once? Like, what's goes? Is the remote gonna be a triangle for some reason? I'm very excited and it's just a logo.

• 42:42Speaker 05

  The question for me with the Sonos Audi partnership is, is it gonna be as cool as the Macintosh integration into the Jeep?

• 42:50Nilay Patel?

  The Macintosh audio, not the like old school.

• 42:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, not, yeah, Matt, yeah, I'm sorry. I forgot my audience here. Yeah, the Macintosh audio, who is like best known for making these like tube powered custom amplifiers that have the needles that show you the value, the levels of things. And they partnered with Jeep to put that on a screen in your.

• 43:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm gonna buy that Jeep.

• 43:13Nilay Patel?

  If I can get VU meters on my car in some way.

• 43:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm gonna buy it.

• 43:17Speaker 03

  Are we at the point where we're worried that Sonos is? We complained for years that Sonos didn't move fast enough. They didn't make enough stuff and they were just too slow. Bah, are we gonna have the opposite problem? Are we like, we got what we asked for and now they're just making so much stuff where we're either diluting the brand?

• 43:34Speaker 05

  Well, they have to do that first, right?

• 43:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, they have to make all the stuff. I think like there's a handful of headphone companies that just have announced over the past few months, like we would sell ourselves if you'd like.

• 43:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:46Nilay Patel?

  Like, I think cost and that's that like.

• 43:48Speaker 05

  Sennheiser.

• 43:49Nilay Patel?

  Sennheiser is just like true that being a dead ahead headphones company right now is like not a great business to be in because headphone jack. Proprietary or if I'm Bluetooth and AirPods reading the world like that's just a real thing that is happening. I told you so. Sorry, like.

• 44:11Nilay Patel?

  It's like, I should have titled that post, this will kill Sennheiser.

• 44:17Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow, it's not a great time to be in that market, but it's still a big market. So I think Sonos just has the opportunity to be like, we have all the stuff in your house. We make this soundbar you like for your TV. We work with all these services where the neutral system and in your car, in your portable and okay, now here's a set of headphones that have value beyond just being a competitor to the AirPods Max or whatever. Is that a hard road? I think there's a reason I haven't done it, but they haven't, I don't think they've made enough stuff. Like, there's not a finite amount of places people want to listen to music.

• 44:49Speaker 03

  Right.

• 44:50Nilay Patel?

  Right, like, and there's like all kinds of products. Anyway, I'm excited for it. I'm, I desperately, I was just thinking about this, if they put it in the Audi and they let you stream into the car, you could use two cars as surrounds. Just an idea, Pat, if you're listening, just like make that like a secret feature for me. Like, you know, like, a lot of people right now are doing projectors in the backyard.

• 45:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, just open up your car.

• 45:13Nilay Patel?

  Think about it. Like, you set up the big projector, you got the speaker, and then you drive up your two Audis behind you.

• 45:19Speaker 05

  It's only two, it only will cost you two Audi all roads. No big deal. Very cost effective.

• 45:26Nilay Patel?

  Look, if I learned anything from the Maxell commercial, that ad, the guy, like, cost is no object. I'm here searching for audio fidelity.

• 45:35Speaker 05

  All right. What else is going on, Gadget?

• 45:37Speaker 03

  Uh, so Cameron just reviewed the Asus ROG Ultimate Five Ultimate, whatever words, Android phone. It's another gamer phone. I once again ask you, the Vergecast listener, to tweet me the name of a professional phone gamer, someone that does this work and makes money gaming just on their phone. Please, I want to meet this person because this person must exist because Asus made this phone for that person. If you want a phone that is just unapologetically sick, this is that phone.

• 46:12Speaker 05

  Sick is the word to describe it, yes.

• 46:14Speaker 03

  It has a mini display in the back that you can put your own custom logo on, that you can customize the look of it. It has their Armory software, Asus Armory software, to customize the processor speed and GPU and blah, blah, blah, blah. It has two USB-C ports, if you want to have one on the bottom when you're holding it. It has phantom buttons on the back and on the top. It's got, you know, specs. It's got those 18 gigs of RAM that I joked about. It has a thing that I think Samsung may have done this first, where you can, when you're charging it, you can set it to do pass-through charging, so it doesn't actually charge your battery. It just keeps the phone running, so the battery doesn't overheat. But if you're worried about overheating, there's a fan attachment, so that's cool. And, um, what am I forgetting? There's something else.

• 46:58Speaker 05

  144 Hz screen.

• 47:00Speaker 03

  144 Hz screen. That's great. Oh, the battery is, I think, 6,000 milliamps, and they did the thing where they split it in two, so they can charge each one separately, because then it charges faster. The camera's terrible. Whatever.

• 47:13Nilay Patel?

  Pro gamers aren't taking photos.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  Everyone knows I'm a huge proponent that there should be more diversity in phones. There should be phones for smaller niche markets. This is why I like foldables. This is why I like all sorts of different phones. This is why I like the iPhone 12 mini, even though apparently Apple made too many of them. So I love that this phone exists, but I want to meet the person who needs this phone for their job. Tell me why you need the 18 gig of RAM.

• 47:34Speaker 05

  I don't know if you'll meet someone who needs it. I think you'll meet a lot of people who want it. And like, this is the fourth one in this lineup, right?

• 47:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:41Speaker 05

  Like they skipped number four. They went from three to four. So like, clearly Asus has like found a market for this where people are buying it. And not only like, we reviewed, I think the ultimate edition, which has all the bells and whistles, but they're also releasing like two other configurations. So it's like, they are taking their gaming laptop lineup model where you could buy the top of the line one with the RTX 3080 in it and the best AMD processor and the fastest screen. Or you can like spec down to like the 1660 GPU and like a lower res screen and less RAM and stuff like that. And they are like just applying that to the phone here. So there's like three different or four different tiers of this, depending on which features you want. They're at different prices. The one we reviewed equates to like 1,500 plus dollars.

• 48:26Speaker 05

  It is, it is a pricey phone. It is a big phone. You have to know you want this phone. But if you know about this phone and you know you want it, you probably want the phone, right? Like, like there's like, it's like a very specific market for this, but clearly the market exists enough for them to keep making them, right?

• 48:43Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, you didn't say the fan attachment has triggers.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, sorry.

• 48:45Nilay Patel?

  Game triggers. I mean, that's like, I applaud, I applaud this phone.

• 48:50Speaker 05

  And it has gesture controls. There's something like 18 different ways to interact with this phone.

• 48:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Can you use it as surrounds for a sound system?

• 48:59Speaker 03

  It does have good dual front-facing speakers, so.

• 49:01Speaker 05

  Yeah. And Neelai, it has a headphone jack.

• 49:04Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 49:04Nilay Patel?

  See? Sennheiser is saved.

• 49:06Speaker 03

  Not only does it have a headphone jack, the last version had the headphone jack on the fan attachment and they took it out and put it into the phone directly. So they added it back.

• 49:15Nilay Patel?

  Yes. Um, this is my next.

• 49:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:17Nilay Patel?

  It's calling it out. I'm buying this phone. I'm the guy. I'm a pro gamer now.

• 49:21Speaker 05

  I want to know, I want to see your armory crate overclocking settings when you get it.

• 49:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, please.

• 49:27Nilay Patel?

  I'm the guy who has a PS5 and hasn't played it in like a week and a half. Like, I'm just not the market for this phone, but a headphone jack, you got me.

• 49:34Speaker 05

  I think, well, so the thing that funny that you mentioned the PS5, because like in Cameron's review, it seems like the whole future of gaming on a phone is moving to cloud streaming gaming, which, you know, Xcloud and Stadia, if Google ever figures that out and so on, lots, lots of different things happening in this space.

• 49:50Nilay Patel?

  They're not gonna figure it out.

• 49:51Speaker 05

  Google's problems aside, you don't, you can do all of that with like a three-year-old iPhone and like, or like a Pixel 4A. It's the same experience when you're streaming everything to the device. So like, the question for this is like, it's a gaming marketed phone, it's got a lot of gaming centric features, but all of those affect like the local games you would play on the device. And like, is that the future of gaming on mobile? And it doesn't look like it. So, I don't know. Maybe it is. Maybe, maybe there's someone who's playing a lot of games on their phone and loves this stuff.

• 50:22Nilay Patel?

  And if you're out there, please tweet at Dieter.

• 50:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. If you're buying this phone because you need it, not just because it's sick. I mean, if you're buying it because it's sick, I want to hear about it too. But if you're buying this phone because like, yep, I need to do this thing because I'm a professional gamer, I desperately want to talk to you.

• 50:35Nilay Patel?

  All right. Well, there's a bunch of OnePlus stuff going on. Speaking, speaking of phones that have an audience that knows about them.

• 50:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, uh, we know that they're gonna have an announcement on March 23rd. We know it's the OnePlus 9 Pro and the OnePlus 9. There have been plenty of leaks and renders. Uh, and we know that there's a Hasselblad, uh, tie-in with the cameras in some way. Um, and we know that, uh, the sensor is gonna be the Sony IMX 789 on the main camera, newish sensor, and, uh, that will be, uh, fascinating. It's, uh, it turns out that, um, putting new, uh, sensor hardware on a phone is really interesting. Sometimes it can go really well, uh, and sometimes it can go the way it did on the S20 Ultra. I'm just pointing out that, uh, OnePlus is willing to experiment with brand new sensors. Google.

• 51:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, and they're also willing to put a Hasselblad name on it because Hasselblad accepted the check. Like, I mean, like, they had this announcement come out that they say they're going to announce their phones on March 23rd, and they went into this whole thing about their partnership with Hasselblad. And really, what it boils down to now is they are tweaking the color, which is like, really what you should expect from one of these partnerships.

• 51:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, maybe they'll do more in the future, maybe, maybe, but, right?

• 51:49Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the last Hasselblad partnership on a phone was the Motorola Moto Z Zoom attachment. And, right, that was really bad.

• 51:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:58Speaker 05

  Expectations are low. Now, I'm sure the phone will probably be fine. OnePlus generally makes good phones at this point. You don't really have to worry about that. I would temper your expectations that the camera is going to be a miracle camera, just because it has a Hasselblad name on it.

• 52:12Speaker 03

  But, but here's the thing. I don't think miracle camera needs to be the standard. I think it's keep up with iPhone 12, Galaxy S21 Ultra preferably, iPhone 12 Pro Max preferably. We haven't seen miracle cameras in the last few years, but we have seen like Samsung fell behind a little bit with the S20. They're like catching up again. There's like, that race is very, very close, and it's not moving as fast as it used to. So I would love to say that this is going to be the thing that like breaks through and is a big innovation. But I would be happy, given OnePlus's history, with them just keeping up with the times. If they could do that, like, that's great.

• 52:53Nilay Patel?

  Speaking of Hasselblad, I want to call it, Becca has a great review of a new Hasselblad camera up on the YouTube channel right now.

• 52:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:59Nilay Patel?

  We don't often review gigantic medium format cameras.

• 53:03Speaker 05

  This is a little medium format camera.

• 53:05Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, but when we do, we go all out. So it's like, it's like the spectrum of Hasselblad, like the actual Hasselblad camera. And like, yeah, you can pay us some money for the name.

• 53:16Speaker 05

  You could pay us like, a whole mortgage of money, or you could pay a car loan of money. And so this one is like, the car loan level. It's only $6,400 for the camera. It's a very cool camera, though. If you haven't seen it, go check out Becca's video. She does, has a lot of fun with it and takes some really fun photos with it. Has some really cool insights into what it's like to shoot with this camera that was essentially designed. To mimic what a camera was like in the 1950s, but it has, you know, a medium format digital sensor in it. So it's pretty neat.

• 53:46Nilay Patel?

  It's fun. Uh, Samsung unpacked March. We're coming up on like event season again.

• 53:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:53Nilay Patel?

  Like there's rumors of an Apple event coming and now there's an unpacked.

• 53:56Speaker 05

  I feel like it's sneaking up on us. That's what it feels like to me.

• 53:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. Rumors of an Apple event, which are kind of all over the place. Like it was firm and then I got canceled and maybe it's later and who knows? And then Samsung is holding an unpacked event as near as we can tell, it's going to be for the Galaxy A52. And I think the A72, it's like, how much daylight is there going to be between the A72, like their high end mid range and the S21, which is their low end, basically mid range flagship. Unclear, but the A series sells better than the S series. So I guess they decided it deserves its own event.

• 54:27Nilay Patel?

  I just want another commercial from them. You know that commercial?

• 54:30Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 54:31Nilay Patel?

  It was just like banging away on good battery life and great camera. Like, come on.

• 54:34Speaker 03

  They took it off their main channel. They like Samsung has a thing where they delete their YouTube videos now. And so you've got to find it on like an alternative channel. If you want to, want to watch their old stuff.

• 54:41Speaker 05

  Is that because they make fun of other companies for not including like a charger in the box or having a not having a headphone jack? And then they have to, to roll back that.

• 54:50Speaker 03

  It's fine. OnePlus nine pro coming with a AC adapter charger, although that makes sense because they do their custom warp charge stuff.

• 54:56Speaker 05

  The only way to get their, their fastest charges through their own thing. Yeah.

• 54:59Nilay Patel?

  Peter, you mentioned this iPhone mini 12, 12 mini situation.

• 55:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, uh, the, the rumor is they've like cut back on their, um, like component requests and that they, they don't need to make as many as they originally forecast. I had a tweet go like semi kind of viral where I was like, uh, step one, everyone says Apple needs to make a small phone. Step two, Apple only makes it. Wait, step one, Apple only ever makes bigger phones. Step two, everyone wants Apple to make a small phone. Step three, Apple gives up. It's like, fine. We'll make a small phone. Step four, nobody ever buys, not enough people buy the phone. Step five. It wasn't worded perfectly because I'm like, the demand was an illusion. Like the demand is not an illusion. There are plenty of people who want to buy this phone, millions and millions of them. I am one of them. I bought one. I love it.

• 55:42Speaker 03

  But, uh, I think it's like true that like the trend that people say they want a small phone, but they actually end up buying the big phone. Is I think like a real thing.

• 55:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, I, I agree with that. Um, though I will say that a underperforming iPhone sales is like.

• 56:00Speaker 05

  Probably way more than like LG sells of its entire market.

• 56:05Speaker 03

  Do you think that the Asus ROG Phone 5 Ultimate is going to outsell the iPhone 12 Mini?

• 56:11Speaker 05

  No, of course not. Like the iPhone 12 Mini is like going to be orders of magnitude more than that. But when you're playing on Apple's scale, it's like, oh, we didn't move, you know, 50 million of them. So.

• 56:20Speaker 03

  They sold a lot of iPhone SEs, right? I mean, like.

• 56:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, but the iPhone SE, the reason that sold was because it's $399. That's the number one driver on that. Not because it's a small size. That might be a benefit to some.

• 56:33Speaker 03

  Not the headphone jack?

• 56:34Speaker 05

  No, they took it on the.

• 56:36Speaker 03

  First one. Anyway, yeah.

• 56:37Speaker 05

  But on the first one. But, but like, the reason that people want those is because I can get a brand new iPhone for under $500. And it's the only way to do it. The Mini, the 12 Mini is, what, $640 or $700? I can't even remember at this.

• 56:50Speaker 03

  I think it's 700.

• 56:50Speaker 05

  But it's, it's, it's not in that bracket. And so like, it doesn't, it's cost less than the regular iPhone 12. But when you're, you know, looking at that price point and you could be like, oh, I can get the bigger screen. We know it has much better battery on the iPhone 12. And it's only 100 bucks more or $5 more per month. If you're, you know, splitting it up, then I think a lot of people are just going to go for the bigger.

• 57:11Speaker 03

  I kind of wonder if the iPhone 12 Mini for Apple Galaxy brain is just like their, their future platform for the SE and they know it, that they, they don't think they'll be able to bring the costs down on like the regular size iPhone 12 to an SE level. So they just, they made a small one because they know sometime in the future, they can reuse that, that factory line to make another SE.

• 57:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's the, the thing here is not no one, to Dan's point, it's not no one bought it, or it's a failure. It's they overestimated the demand. And Apple's usually really good at estimating demand.

• 57:39Speaker 03

  Right.

• 57:40Nilay Patel?

  So like, maybe they'll just calibrate it to where the market is. At the same time, like, what do people want? They like, across every screen in existence, they want the cheapest, biggest one. There's a reason there are like $250, 75 inch TVs that basically are gray, like, display no colors and no black levels.

• 58:01Speaker 03

  Except for the ads. They did a lot of really colorful ads on those TVs.

• 58:06Nilay Patel?

  But there's a really like people just want the biggest cheapest screen and that is like held true in TVs and laptops in phones for more than a decade now. And I think the mini is kind of like fallen into that.

• 58:19Speaker 05

  The only thing I would say is that a lot of, I think a lot of industry watchers enthusiasts and stuff were watching the iPhone 12 mini very closely because they were wanting to see if it would be enough of a success to push other companies to copy that formula and come out with smaller phones. And it seems like seeing news like this, that it might temper those things. Like, one of my biggest complaints or criticisms against OnePlus for the longest time is that the only way to buy a OnePlus phone is to deal with a giant phone. And I would love to have like a smaller OnePlus phone that is more manageable to use. But if Apple isn't moving, you know, lot loads of mini sized phones, is OnePlus going to

• 58:59Speaker 05

  be able to? Or is Samsung going to be able to? Or, you know, whatever other company actually sells phones these point, at this point, are they going to really be able to play in that space? And like, it seems like maybe not. I don't know. We'll have to see.

• 59:13Nilay Patel?

  My question is, how much of this is a pandemic story? Like, if you're buying, and Apple did sell a lot of iPhones this year, which surprised me, right? Like, people are at home. I figured no one would upgrade their phone. We didn't see laptop sales like explode, TV sales exploded. People just also bought phones too.

• 59:29Speaker 05

  Well, they got tired of staring at the same old phone all the time at home.

• 59:33Nilay Patel?

  This is like, there's nothing left to buy. This is what I mean. They bought a new phone, a new laptop, a new TV, and now they're like, but people, it's like, whatever, I got money.

• 59:40Speaker 05

  Whatever, I got $69 million sitting around.

• 59:45Nilay Patel?

  What's left to buy? But I wonder if post pandemic, we're all out and about, like, pockets become a relevant consideration in your life again.

• 59:55Speaker 05

  Then the battery life becomes a real relevant consideration too, right?

• 59:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but I feel like we, I feel like this was like an imperfect year for the experiment, because like portability stopped being the concern, right? Like, even like one handed use stopped being like, you're just like on a couch. Like, we'll see, we'll see how it goes. It's just reports. We don't, Apple certainly isn't confirming any of this.

• 1:00:20Speaker 04

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• 1:01:04Speaker 06

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• 1:01:35Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, I want you to talk about Wear OS.

• 1:01:38Speaker 03

  Do you?

• 1:01:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:39Speaker 03

  I'd rather talk about the Insta 360 Go 2 because it's such a cute little gadgety gadget, action cam.

• 1:01:44Nilay Patel?

  Well, I wanted to start with Wear OS so we could, we could go low and then end high.

• 1:01:48Speaker 03

  Oh, okay. So these aren't new, but I reviewed the Tickwatch 3 Pro, Pro 3, 3 Pro, and the Fossil Gen 5 LTE. The Tickwatch Pro is notable because it has the latest Qualcomm processor for smartwatches, but it also has a bunch of stuff built on top of Wear OS to make it, what's the word? Usable.

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  It's got a separate screen and it's got an unbelievable raft of Mobboy fitness apps. And the experience of using this watch is you want to open up the fitness, you know, the step tracker and it presents you with the terms of service on the watch. And every time you want to turn on a sensor, you get the terms of service. And it's so aggressive, you're like more likely to read it and more likely to wonder like, is the data, is my health data actually going to this company, Mobboy, which I don't know, do you trust Mobboy? And maybe yes, maybe no, kind of actually a little bit yes. And then it makes you less likely to want to use the things you bought the watch for. So that that experience is weird. But if you want a good Wear OS watch,

• 1:02:59Speaker 03

  this is, this is the one, even though it's big and whatever. The Fossil is a standard, bog standard, Snap 3100 Wear OS watch with LTE. The LTE actually works just fine, like it's basically seamless. So kudos to that. But it still has this thing that Fossil has to do, which is like four different battery modes, each of which are like granularly customizable, again, on the watch, which nobody wants that. It has been going on three-ish years now where I've been saying, if you use Android, there are no really truly great smartwatch options for you. The Versa is like chugging along, who knows what's going to happen with that now that Google owns them. There's Wear OS. Samsung's is probably the best.

• 1:03:44Speaker 03

  I still just chafe at using a Samsung smartwatch unless you're using a Samsung phone because you have to install like four different Samsung apps to like make the thing go. I don't know. It's wild to me. Like, people say that, you know, I'm a capitalist and I believe in competition and that's true. But also capitalism hasn't produced a decent smartwatch for Android users. 85% of the market.

• 1:04:07Nilay Patel?

  You know, I heard, I heard Bernie give that in a floor speech the other day.

• 1:04:11Speaker 05

  I'm once again asking you to come out with a good smartwatch for Android.

• 1:04:18Speaker 05

  Sorry. The question for me with this piece, we are once again in 2021 writing about terrible Wear OS watches.

• 1:04:26Speaker 03

  Well, they're not terrible. They're just like, they're fine.

• 1:04:29Speaker 05

  They're not good.

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:30Speaker 05

  Right? Like, you wouldn't recommend any, either, anybody buy either of these. They're 300 or 350 dollars. And they're not great experiences. My question, as usual, is how much of this is on Google for making Wear OS work better? And how much of is it, is it on the hardware for not progressing faster? Like, it seems like, you know, every time Qualcomm comes out with a new Snapdragon Wear model, which is like every 18 months or so, everyone hopes that it's going to like fix the problem of Wear OS watches. And it maybe lags a little less. It doesn't really make much of a difference between the battery life. It seems like the things that Mob Boy did with the like second screen and all the other hacks really affect the battery life much more.

• 1:05:14Speaker 05

  But then the Wear OS experience is still kind of crummy and like things break all the time. We just saw a news article today that Google, okay, Google finally works again after like not working for months on Wear OS watches.

• 1:05:25Speaker 03

  Nobody noticed because everyone turns it off because it was a battery hog.

• 1:05:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, or it was so slow. It's so laggy because it's a terrible experience. And I just woke up my smartest way.

• 1:05:37Speaker 05

  Or like, you know, you're scrolling with the little, the rotating crown and it just kind of like lags and hangs and crashes.

• 1:05:43Speaker 03

  And like, I would say about a third of Wear OS doesn't work with a rotating crown, just randomly like, nope.

• 1:05:48Speaker 05

  So like, whose fault is it? Is it Google? I would say that it is Google's job to make this better. And like, yes, the, the processor's never probably going to keep up with what Apple can produce in its, the Apple Watch at this point. But you could probably keep up with Samsung. I don't, I don't know why, why you're not doing that there.

• 1:06:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:07Speaker 05

  They just don't seem to be committed to making Wear OS a better thing. And like, now they own Fitbit, maybe that'll change things, but I don't know.

• 1:06:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, unclear.

• 1:06:16Nilay Patel?

  Google hardware acquisitions always go great. I routinely use my entire ecosystem of Nest products.

• 1:06:24Nilay Patel?

  It's great. It's the best. All right. Let's end on a high note.

• 1:06:27Speaker 03

  Okay, so the Insta 360 Go 2, Becca reviewed it. It is an action cam, but it's itty bitty. And it's, you know, just front facing. It's not a 360 camera. It's even though from Insta 360 anyway. It comes with a cool little charging case that also is the like, display for the phone. And also can act as a tripod and also can act as a remote control. It sticks to a bunch of different stuff with magnets. You can buy a GoPro mount for it if you want to. There's no real interface on the tiny little camera itself. There's just a button and then a white light turns on if it's recording. Why it's white and not red is a mystery for the ages. But I love that there's just like a million little giga's and gadgets you can get with it. And it works well in this little ecosystem. They just created Exenilio.

• 1:07:12Speaker 03

  It seems like it's cool and fun. It's $2.99 and if you're going to spend $2.99 on an action camera and you're looking for a big ecosystem, I gotta say, I don't know that this is it quite yet. The GoPro still exists and makes good stuff and older ones are still around and they're also very good. So like, as fun as it is and as much as I really like it, I'm not sure that I would recommend it over a GoPro. But I love it. I love that it's small. Here's my question though. Dan, will tiny little camera accessory that is a satellite to your phone ever be a thing? We had this. What was Google's thing called? Uh, the Pixel Clips, the Google Clips. There was the HTC Re. Remember the? Yes.

• 1:07:57Speaker 03

  The Periscope thing? It seems like a company goes for it with this every two to three years. I like the Insta 360 Goes 2, Go 2's take on it because they're like, no, no, we're just going to make it an action cam. We're not going to try and make it, you know, or whatever. But this is, this never, never seems to work. Like the Moto Mods, we, there was the, um,

• 1:08:20Speaker 03

  what was the thing that you could stick into your lightning port or USB port, the camera? Oh, the DXO. The DXO mark thing.

• 1:08:25Nilay Patel?

  Oh, man. I bought one of those. That was a real mistake.

• 1:08:28Speaker 03

  It should, it should make, you should be able to attach a good lens to your camera or have it near your, to your phone. And then have it be, or have it be near your phone. Sony used to have that thing that bolted onto the back of the phone. This is like a good idea that always fails. So maybe it's a bad idea.

• 1:08:41Speaker 05

  I think that the Insta 360 go to is a little different approach than like the clips and the re which tried to like do the photography for you. I think this acknowledges that it's a camera. It's someone who's going to buy this is going to be wanting to control it and wanting to to manage it. The point that Becca made in her review is that it creates a far more, I'm using her words because I'm reading them right now, but it creates an image that's far more unique than what you get from your phone. And so like, if you want to capture something that looks different, it's got that really wide field of view. It's got a little bit higher resolution video. It's got a little bit higher frames per second for the capture. It just looks different than what you get from sticking a phone out in front of your face.

• 1:09:25Speaker 05

  And so it has that purpose. If you are an active person, I love all the gadgety gauze on that you can attach to this. I love, like you mentioned, the case is like all magnetic and everything. That's really fun. But these also feel like the kind of thing that's a little disposable and a little like you're going to buy it, use it once in a while if much, and it's going to live in a drawer most of the time. Like, I don't see it being like a thing that you use all the time, unless you are the type of person that mountain bikes all the time and wants to record every single clip.

• 1:09:52Nilay Patel?

  This is great because I have space in my drawer next to my Mavic Mini and my gimbal and my other action camera and that weird little, what was it called? The thing they plugged in with the RX 100 sensor you just mentioned.

• 1:10:07Speaker 05

  I think it was a DXO thing, right?

• 1:10:08Nilay Patel?

  The DXO, I've got that. That thing was just a real lark of a bad idea. That drawer is, it's, there's a little space in there.

• 1:10:16Speaker 05

  That was the idea that it's got a bigger sensor in it, so it's got to be better, right? And then it's like, oh no.

• 1:10:20Nilay Patel?

  It was so slow. Also, it didn't, it didn't pull power from the phone, so you have to charge it separately anyway. Yeah. I love little cameras and as soon as this is discounted, even $1, I will almost.

• 1:10:32Speaker 03

  I would tell you to be sure to buy a micro SD card to supplement the 32 gigs of onboard storage, but it's too small to take that. It just has the 32 gigs. And if you turn on motion stabilization, you're out of that space pretty quick. So maybe wait till it's discounted $2.

• 1:10:46Speaker 05

  All right. Last thing. Monica's been on a tear of laptop reviews. Dan, what's going on here? Well, we had two gaming laptop reviews in the last week, and they are two very different outcomes. Cameron reviewed the Razer Blade 15, which is fine, but like really starting to get long in the tooth and then probably wouldn't recommend you buy it. Monica reviewed the Asus Rog Zephyrus G15, and if you are buying a gaming laptop this year and you're not buying this one, you must have some really specific reason because it does basically everything you want from a gaming laptop really well.

• 1:11:18Nilay Patel?

  Well, I spent my gaming budget on the Rog phone.

• 1:11:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, see, the problem is if you bought the Rog phone and now you don't have 1,800 bucks to buy an actual gaming laptop, that that might be a consideration, but but like the the screen is great. They upgraded the resolution of the screen. The one thing that's different than last year is last year was a 14 inch model. This year they have 14 and 15 inch models. So we looked at the 15 inch so far. So it's got a bigger screen, a little bit bigger chassis. It's a little bit more common in the gaming laptop world to have the size of computer. But the screen is a higher resolution. It's 4040p. It's got a higher refresh rate. It's got AMD's like great, awesome processor that everyone loves and it performs really well here. It's got Nvidia's latest GPU options. You can get the 3070 and have really great performance.

• 1:12:01Speaker 05

  And it's like 1,800 bucks, which is a lot, but when you compare it to the Razer Blade that we reviewed at 2,300 or 2,400, I can't remember the exact thing. It's like this is actually packing a lot of value into the chassis.

• 1:12:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And the best thing is it doesn't, there's no, it doesn't have a crappy webcam on it.

• 1:12:17Speaker 05

  It doesn't have a webcam. That's like the one like consideration you have to make, which is the really weirdest thing about this is like they went and put this triple microphone array to capture really great audio when you're on your calls and then they didn't put a webcam with it.

• 1:12:30Nilay Patel?

  It's because they know all the Twitch streamers are just hooking up GoPros.

• 1:12:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, like you could hook up a camera. Sure. If you're a Twitch streamer, but like if you're not a Twitch streamer, like, you know,

• 1:12:40Nilay Patel?

  You're not working, you're playing, man. That's what this is for.

• 1:12:43Speaker 05

  But that's the thing with this.

• 1:12:44Nilay Patel?

  Republican gamers, not Republican nerds, Dan.

• 1:12:50Nilay Patel?

  Not Republic of Excel out here.

• 1:12:51Speaker 05

  I will say, if you are a Republic of Nerd, if you, if you're a Ron, this is a great laptop for working on or going to school with. You're going to get eight to 10 hours of battery life. The keyboard's great, the trackpad's great. Like, you can actually use this as your daily laptop and then go home and Twitch stream, you know, your, your Hades runs or whatever. So it's, it's great laptop. It's like the best laptop we've reviewed so far this year. It's probably going to be the best gaming laptop of the year without much competition.

• 1:13:18Nilay Patel?

  All right. There's like a lot of gadget news and this like feeling that new product season is upon us.

• 1:13:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:13:26Nilay Patel?

  Just creeping up on us. I'm excited.

• 1:13:28Speaker 05

  Sneaking up on us.

• 1:13:29Nilay Patel?

  Glimmers of hope. That's what the Vergecast is all about. Wear OS is going to be great this year.

• 1:13:33Speaker 05

  Damn it.

• 1:13:34Nilay Patel?

  We're, we're over. We gotta wrap this up. Thank you to Liz for joining us. I'm confident Liz is going to be back to talk about NFTs like almost every week for the rest of the year. You can tweet at us. I'm at Reckless, Dieter's at Backlon, Liz is MS Lapato, Dan is DC Seifert. I'm going to plug Decoder. This last week, we had Caveon Bakpor, who's head of product at Twitter. That was a fun conversation. A couple of weeks ago, remember we were talking about Facebook and Google versus Australia? I realized we hadn't talked to very many Australians. This is a real thing. We talked about Google and Facebook in Australia. So I had Scott Farquhar, who is the co-founder and co-CEO of Atlassian.

• 1:14:12Speaker 05

  Ooh.

• 1:14:12Nilay Patel?

  Australia's biggest tech company. They make Trello in addition to Jira, which is a huge product. So he was on Decoder to explain to me why Australia is the testbed of all tech regulation in the world. It's like a great conversation. Also, it was tomorrow for him. I was talking about on Wednesday and it was Thursday, which was just a mind. So that's coming on Tuesday. That's a real fun episode of Decoder.

• 1:14:34Speaker 05

  Wednesday for him.

• 1:14:36Nilay Patel?

  That's true.

• 1:14:38Nilay Patel?

  Next week with more Vergecast. It's, I'm telling you, glimmers of hope. It's going to be great. Rock and roll.

• 1:14:42Speaker 05

  Wear a mask.

• 1:15:01Speaker 07

  Support for this show comes from Harvey AI. The future of law is agentic, not just tools that assist, but AI agents that navigate complex matters. That's why Harvey created agents that can do the work from end to end. They build a plan, pull from secure data sources, run subagents in parallel, and draft the work product ready for your review. So you delegate the work and on the judgment. Trusted by more than 60% of the Am Law 100 and leading Fortune 500 legal teams, Harvey is the AI operating system designed specifically for legal work. Harvey, AI tailored for law. Learn more at harvey.ai.

• 1:15:43Speaker 08

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