Nintendo Labo, Detroit Auto Show, and Facebook's transforming news feed

Nilay, Dieter, and Paul have returned from CES 2018 and are all together in the New York City office for this week’s Vergecast. As I was typing out the timestamps on here, I realized there’s a lot of news this week. So check it out! We’ve got highlights from the Detroit Auto Show, the changing algorithm of your Facebook News Feed, and the most gadgety gadget we’ve seen in a while, Nintendo Labo. There’s a whole lot more discussed in between all of that — like Paul’s weekly segment “Win or Lose 2: the secret to winning” — so listen to it all, and you’ll get it all. 02:31 - YouTube is taking down Tide Pod Challenge videos and oh my god don’t eat laundry pods 03:40 - YouTube tightens rules around what channels can be monetized 12:00 - Nintendo is making a bunch of weird DIY cardboard toys for the Switch and they’re awesome 17:30 - The best, worst, and weirdest cars from the 2018 Detroit Auto Show 19:40 - Apple’s CarPlay is finally coming to Toyota and Lexus vehicles 23:13 - Is BMW going to make you pay for Apple CarPlay every year? 24:43 - Tim Cook says the next iOS update will allow users to disable intentional battery slowdowns 32:55 - Facebook’s startling new ambition is to shrink 44:54 - Paul’s weekly segment “Win or Lose 2: the secret to winning” 47:59 - Project Fi creates its own version of an unlimited plan 51:12 - Half of US Senate supports reversing FCC’s net neutrality ruling, but it still won’t be overturned 52:23 - Verizon’s streaming TV service might have standalone app ‘channels’ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This episode of The Vergecast is sponsored by Caviar. Where's your next meal coming from? Try Caviar. Caviar delivers the best restaurants. You can order on the Caviar app or online. You can just go to caviar.com and check it out. Get the food you crave delivered. There's pizza, Chinese, and much more. Indian, sushi, barbecue, all from local restaurants. So order today and pay no delivery fee on your first order. Plus, you can take $10 off that first order of $30 or more with code VERGECAST. Offer is valid until February 28th. Hello and welcome to The Vergecast. The flagship podcast of the Fox Media, wait, no, The Verge.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  The Verge, which is the flagship Verge of the Fox Media Network. There's no better Verge than The Verge.

• 0:46Nilay Patel?

  Yes, that is true.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 0:47Nilay Patel?

  I am Neelai Patel. That person's Dieter Bohn. Dieter is in the studio with us today.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  I am. The jokes are gonna be 10% more dad.

• 0:55Nilay Patel?

  The in-person Dieter experience is very intense. Paul Miller is here.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 0:59Nilay Patel?

  So what I'm gonna tell you, the listener, is that this is the week after CES. It does not feel like enough time has passed.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:08Nilay Patel?

  It's like, I got really sick after CES. Dieter, you were sick before CES.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  I was sick before CES. I was home for a grand total of 30 hours before I came to New York.

• 1:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. We're still very tired from that show. By the way, claps to our producer Andrew Marino for putting together a great CES edition of that show. Yeah, we can get some sound effects.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  I loved it. I listened to the whole thing.

• 1:28Nilay Patel?

  This is, this is a horse coming to you.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:30Nilay Patel?

  We're doing, Dieter's in studio. We're doing Foley today. It's gonna be great. But we're back and I'm just letting you know, just upfront, I'm still very tired. And I'm a little bit sick and my voice gets a little weird.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42Nilay Patel?

  It's because I'm literally falling asleep. Like, it's been a week. I'm still dying.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  You just, great job hyping the show today.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  I feel confident in, in promising 80% quality today.

• 1:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. These are often our best episodes. The ones that are sleepy.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Tell the, tell the, tell the people the truth. You're sick because you were, you were gnashing on those Tide Pods.

• 2:04Nilay Patel?

  Let's get right into the biggest news in the world today, which is teenagers are eating laundry detergent. Because they are stupid.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Intrepid Verge reporter Danny Deal has made Tide Pod cookies. They look exactly like Tide Pods, so much so that it's like a little bit scary.

• 2:21Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. I mean, Danny's great. That was a mistake. Don't make things that look like poison.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Also, don't eat poison.

• 2:28Nilay Patel?

  She made Verge look like cookies. Excellent cookies. This is actually a story. Our team is like digging into it. But YouTube today had to like put up videos like they're blocking Tide Pod challenge videos because people are dumb.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  I don't get it.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Censorship.

• 2:46Nilay Patel?

  The biggest free speech issue in the world today. I mean, look, if you listen to Vergecast, you know, free speech and platforms. It's a whole thing. And Tide Pods, I think, is the breaking point.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Fathers didn't want us to eat Tide Pods.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  YouTube has reacted more quickly to Tide, people eating Tide Pods than they have to Nazis. Which maybe, I mean, eating Tide Pods could kill you, I suppose. So it is appropriate to react quickly. I'm just pointing out

• 3:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  that there is a weird disconnect.

• 3:14Nilay Patel?

  So YouTube's changing a bunch of rules about what channels can be monetized, what like, there's a whole YouTube kerfuffle happening, but you are right. The Tide Pods issue garnered a swifter reaction.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:26Nilay Patel?

  Which is funny because you would, you know, you could, you could roll out the string of, well, of course, there's no controversy there. It's like easy to just be like, don't do it. But fundamentally, the issue is that people want to do it.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:39Nilay Patel?

  I don't get it. Anyway.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  The new monetization rules are, it used to be you needed 10,000 public views and then you could start monetizing video. Now it's you have to have at least 1,000 subscribers and you must have tallied at least 4,000 hours of overall watch time across all of your videos. And I can't tell if that's a super high bar or a medium bar or low bar. Um, I imagine if you're trying to make a living at YouTube, you've probably crossed that bar. But there's probably a bunch of hobbyists who hadn't, who are sad about this, but also don't know how much money they were making in the first place. So I'm like, I'm pretty dumb about all of this. The thing that I'm.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Well, it's harder to game, first of all.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  So that's like an important, I think YouTube understands their platform is not easy to game, but gamable.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  This is a little bit harder to game.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you can't make a million channels and like, there's a, there's a certain kind of abuse that I think this is targeted at. In terms of making a bunch of channels, a bunch of bad content. And then, you know, some of them cross the line and once you get those views and, you know, you can start racking stuff up. So this makes that harder, but the, the big problem with YouTube lately has been, you know, Logan Paul, right? And there's actually been a bunch of other creators who've had their videos demonetized and they're not really sure why.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Uh, and so I don't, like, this seems like, I don't know, like tangential to the actual, like, main show, what's going on with YouTube drama right now. And so it's like, is this just a thing they're planning on doing anyway? And they're rolling it out and it helps with these other problems? Or do they actually think this is a direct address to some of the problems on YouTube?

• 5:13Speaker 02

  My, my most favorable interpretation of this is that this frees up YouTube resources to focus on the, the higher echelon of monetized videos. So there's fewer channels that they have to go through.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  But they really desperately need very, very clear rules of what is monetizable or not. Because people are just freaking out.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  So you're right in the sense that now everybody in like preferred platform is human beings are going to watch their videos. So Dieter, I think you were right though, in that the, the first wave of YouTube problems was like weird algorithmically generated horror videos that were targeted at children.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Right? So like you can like wipe those out because these are bars that are hard to, harder to cross.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  So you've removed the monetary incentive.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Which ones are you talking about? You're talking about Elsa Gate?

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's that.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Those, those had millions of views. Those were definitely over the bar.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  But you can't just like start that. Like they can go kill the ones that exist, but you can't like.

• 6:14Nilay Patel?

  It's harder to start a network of garbage, which is a thing that they were doing. You've got to rack up this total amount of watches, you've got to hit people, a thousand people up to subscribe, like, right, there's like a little bit harder of a bar to than just like total number of hours. It's not, I'm not saying it's great.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  If you put a video out that has Elsa in it, you're over the bar.

• 6:37Nilay Patel?

  And maybe, I, I just think this is targeted that one set of problem and then the, the premium content YouTuber problem, we're gonna start watching all the videos. That's this set of resources. More broadly, I think the way I would put it is YouTube is, this is the year that YouTube is at a breaking point. Like the way it's worked forever is not the way it's gonna work in the future. So many people are focused on YouTube now in like a massive way. Their stars, celebrity creators are getting themselves into different kinds of trouble. Google has to realize like they run, now run a very prominent content platform, editorial platform for people. Advertisers are staying away from YouTube. It's like a real thing. Uh, like major advertiser.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:21Nilay Patel?

  So I think Google has to figure out how they can navigate themselves back into the money without irritating all of the people and that's gonna be tough. And I, I would say there's no bigger story in this sort of like platform space than this one this year.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  And I would say that the current status seems to be that the YouTubers have already given up on YouTube. Like.

• 7:43Nilay Patel?

  We hear that story every year.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  And not, not that they don't put their videos, but that they've given up on YouTube providing their living.

• 7:49Nilay Patel?

  Oh, sure. Like I, I think that there's like a, there's like a subsistence level for a lot of people there and like, and some people are making way more money, but everyone's looking to diversify how they make money beyond just, you know, YouTube money. They're like, they're selling merch and they're like certain Patreons and they're, they're doing a bunch of other stuff.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  PewDiePie, who gets plenty of views, advertises phones and a chair.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  A lot of like the League of Legends gamers I watch, like will have their own, um, they'll have like. The video will start with a little bit of gameplay and then they'll cut to like an advertisement for some like a mobile game.

• 8:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  And then, yeah, Patreon is huge. Like, they, they do not trust-

• 8:30Nilay Patel?

  Dieter complains about all the tech YouTubers and their de-brand deals all the time.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  I do.

• 8:35Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's a little, there's like some ickiness there. Like, there's another way to monetize this stuff and there are a lot of tech YouTubers I love, but like, it's this pervasive layer of brand deals that isn't always transparent.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Right. The lack of transparency is like, that's what really hurts me. Well, and YouTube needs to figure out a way, not, not just to monetize PG videos with, with no controversial ideas in them. Because there's things like HBO exists, you know? Things like Netflix exist, like-

• 9:04Nilay Patel?

  Hey, people pay directly for those things.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:07Nilay Patel?

  So, you could move it all to YouTube Red.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  I pay directly for YouTube Red.

• 9:11Nilay Patel?

  Great. So, I mean, like, that's another strategy.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  YouTube, YouTube needs to do a better job keeping 12-year-olds safe while also realizing that its platform is not just for 12-year-olds.

• 9:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. A problem, by the way, that HBO, for example, has not solved. Like, it's, this is a hard problem.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  But YouTube's not for, or HBO's not for 12-year-olds. And they've been pretty upfront about that.

• 9:34Nilay Patel?

  Right, that's what I'm saying. They just ignore that.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  I watched, I watched be a lot of, a lot of pirate HBO when I was 12. I went over to a friend's house.

• 9:40Nilay Patel?

  Right. Dieter's like crawling over the neighbor's house with a cable splitter.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  His dad had the, the big giant satellite dish, right? And like, you know, like, the, the channels come in and they're fuzzy and then you like, you like-

• 9:51Nilay Patel?

  You buy it illegally.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Dad buys a box and just scrambles it.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Ultimately, that's not-

• 9:55Nilay Patel?

  My, my friend's name was Jeff Weimer. He had the, he had just like a ham radio store in his basement.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  You just doxed some poor kid in Wisconsin.

• 10:02Nilay Patel?

  Hopefully he remembers me. Hey Jeff, your house is cool.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  I mean, but also, that's not 100% HBO's fault. I disobeyed my parents as a child. I went to a friend's house and I watched Titanic.

• 10:17Nilay Patel?

  Whoa.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Right?

• 10:21Nilay Patel?

  The most boring rebellion that has ever taken place.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  And I will say, credit to my 12-year-old self. I averted my eyes.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  That's the most Paul Miller thing.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Because I, while disobeying my parents, still honored them a little bit.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  I understand. I thought you said you averted your eyes the entire time.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  No.

• 10:42Nilay Patel?

  You were just like in the room with Titanic.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  I'm king of the world. Wait, what world is he the king of? I must know. Can I look? Dare I look?

• 10:49Speaker 01

  All of this heavy digression into Paul's eye aversion strategies was a joke about Tide Pods. Cause Dieter wanted to start with something fun.

• 10:58Nilay Patel?

  That was, I mean, I did want to start with something fun and then we got diverted to Tide Pods.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Here's the thing.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  I just killed your transition. I'm sorry.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  Have you tried a Tide Pod though?

• 11:06Speaker 01

  No. Don't eat Tide Pods. I don't even know why we're having this conversation.

• 11:12Nilay Patel?

  It's a really funny joke. That's why.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  I think kids are actually doing it.

• 11:15Nilay Patel?

  I know.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  That's makes, takes it out of that zone.

• 11:19Nilay Patel?

  But kinda, kinda doesn't.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  When I was, so my mom always fell for like the local news. Kids are doing dumb things.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Those are the local news in Wisconsin. It was like, kids were drinking so much water, they were dying. Which is a thing you can do.

• 11:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you could, yeah. It's like, it's happened on like one or two like radio morning shows or something. Anyway.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. And she was just like, don't drink too much water.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 11:48Nilay Patel?

  If somebody offers you a jug of water, just say no. Tell a parent, tell an adult.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Speaking of twelve year olds.

• 11:58Nilay Patel?

  There you go.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  There's a good transition. Nintendo had a surprise quote unquote interactive announcement. Our man Andrew Webster got, was one of three publications to get to try this thing out before the announcement. It's called Nintendo Labo. Labo? Labo?

• 12:15Nilay Patel?

  Labo.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Labo. Nintendo Labo.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  And it's impossible to describe what this thing is without sounding like, like you're crazy.

• 12:24Nilay Patel?

  Go for it. That's what I'm here for. That's why the listeners show up.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  It's a piece of cardboard with little cutouts on it. And then you take your switch and you follow the instructions to fold it up into stuff. And then you take your switch apart into this little controller. And whatnot and stick it into the cardboard thing you built and then you play games.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that doesn't sound crazy. That sounds awesome.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  It does sound awesome. So there's a piano. There's a little car that like moves around with because the the Joy-Con vibrates. There's a house. There's a dope. It's actually really expensive. It's like it's first of all, it's launching on 420 for $69.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Just Nintendo, man. There we go. You build a backpack with strings on it that go down to your feet and hands. And those strings operate levers, which then operate the controllers. And then you put on the Switch and a giant cardboard VR headset. And then you get to stomp around as a giant robot breaking things.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  That's that's one of the projects.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  One of the projects. There's also a piano. There's a there's other stuff. And there's a fishing rod thing and like you go fishing on the screen of the Switch.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  I think it's genius.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  And of course, how it works is that there's a Bluetooth chip in it and you put an app on your phone, right, Dieter?

• 13:38Speaker 01

  No.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  No. Isn't it amazing?

• 13:41Speaker 01

  It's so great.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Somebody made a gadget that doesn't involve putting an app on your phone and connecting to it over Bluetooth.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  No, you have to just disassemble your Switch.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  Yo, it's not. The Joy-Con has like a camera. Like the way the piano works is the Joy-Con's piano sensor or no.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  That's a lot of over engineering.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Camera sensor is seeing the keys on the piano move.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Where's the camera on the Joy-Con?

• 14:06Speaker 02

  It's the same one that it's on the end of the the right Joy-Con.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  The little thing for the, yeah.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  I always thought it was a lie.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  Our guys just have so many sensors in them like like they could do like data transfer over like audio. Yeah. Sometimes airdrop even works.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Uh, John Boyce, John Boyce, John Boyce over at SB Nation had a good tweet about the Switch earlier. How many buttons are there on a Nintendo Switch? Physical buttons are there on a Nintendo Switch?

• 14:34Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:35Nilay Patel?

  Our button.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Oh god, we're gonna start there.

• 14:37Nilay Patel?

  Well, you gotta start, that's the fir-, it's the only one, two volumes.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Which one did you say?

• 14:41Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so you have three. Powered volumes, that's three.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:43Nilay Patel?

  On the main unit.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:45Nilay Patel?

  That's all that there is.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 14:46Nilay Patel?

  Unless you count the kickstand as a button, because you're always pushing it back in.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 14:51Nilay Patel?

  So, three in the main unit.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 14:53Nilay Patel?

  Uh, four, seven, if you count those there, eight, the four on the left joy-con, the button underneath.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  The left and the right joy-con have an equal number of buttons, so you only need to count one of the joy-cons.

• 15:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but I got to an odd number with seven, so now I can't do math.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  Just clicking the joystick sound as, count as a, a button.

• 15:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so there's five there, so that's eight, nine, ten, fifteen.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Twenty-five.

• 15:19Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Twenty-five. Eleven on each joy-con and, uh, three on the main body.

• 15:23Nilay Patel?

  Oh, 'cause they're the Z and, oh man, I forgot all those.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Twenty-five buttons on this thing. It is such a gadget.

• 15:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  This switch is the gadgetiest gadget, and then now you can take it apart and make other gadgets with it. And, the thing that I, I just can't get over is just how playful this is.

• 15:41Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Just how it's custom-designed for a kid to craft their own world, right? And like, they gotta follow the instructions or whatever, but they're gonna like, they get to make their own thing, and then they get to take this video game system, which already feels more personal to them than a PS4 ever will, because they get to carry around with them, and when you hold it, it's like right up in your face, and it's your games on the thing, and like, the world-building sense of this, like, the extension from the physical to the video game to the thing that already feels personal to you, it's just like, poof! It's cosmic brain to me, how well Nintendo understands play, and understands the mind of like a ten-year-old.

• 16:21Nilay Patel?

  I'm only at twenty-three.

• 16:24Nilay Patel?

  I'm just sitting here counting buttons.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Okay, joy-con. Two triggers, one, two, uh, three, four, five, six with the four buttons.

• 16:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Um, I, wait, I could, I did this the other day.

• 16:34Nilay Patel?

  Plus and minus.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Uh, the, two more.

• 16:36Nilay Patel?

  Oh, plus and minus, those are the ones I missed.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Plus and minus.

• 16:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Two more on the, on the left and the right.

• 16:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  And then the home or the select button, or the screenshot button.

• 16:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  So like, add all that stuff up and you get to eleven.

• 16:47Nilay Patel?

  I missed plus and minus. There's eleven on each joy-con.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Eleven on each joy-con, that's twenty-two, and then there's three in the top.

• 16:50Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:51Nilay Patel?

  I missed plus and minus. Man, the Switch is great. Mm-hmm. I'm thoroughly enjoying one. I'm, I'm very excited for Nintendo Labo. And again, it's just like, just looks like fun. Yeah. I love that Nintendo just hates the idea of a control, like a generic controller. Every, everything Nintendo is like, what if we totally screw up these controllers? Yeah. What, what if the way that you control these like virtual worlds on screen is like, just a little bit more insane than last time? That's great. Uh, we also have a note here that 3DS is doing great. Yeah, I didn't expect that, but it's doing fine. I think Metroid probably helped with that a little bit. I think people are like, I can't find a Switch, I guess I'll just buy this other thing. Uh, other big news going on right now, Auto Show is happening. I would like to start with Nissan.

• 17:34Nilay Patel?

  Not a company that we mention often on this. They make the Rogue? They, yeah, they make, they make a number of cars. Mm-hmm. Uh, Nissan has a new SUV. It's a concept, the X-Motion. It has like 900 screens in it. It has its own custom assistant. It takes the, it takes the form of a koi fish. That leaps about the car helping you. And it leaps about? It leaps about the car. It goes from screen to screen and like. It's so it's clippy, but a koi fish? A koi fish clippy. No! Uh, I, there's, there's not a, a universe in which I think a car maker is gonna make a good animated assistant. Uh, but I'm willing, I'm willing to take the shot. Yeah. On the koi fish.

• 18:20Nilay Patel?

  Uh, that's really the story. It was a story at CES. It's a story at the Auto Show. All the car makers are trying to, they're, that self-driving moment when like you're in a world of screens inside the car. Yeah. They are relentlessly focused on how they can own that platform. Yep. Also making big trucks and Ford Rangers coming back. Uh, that's, that's something. Just saying. Uh, lot of pickup trucks. Yeah. The new Ram truck, I think it's cool. Uh, the Tesla moment has hit the industry. Every car slowly going to giant vertical screens in the dash. Yep. So the new Ram truck, 12-inch portrait display in the dashboard.

• 18:56Nilay Patel?

  And then the top half like runs CarPlay and the bottom half runs FCAs you connect thing.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  I feel like I overheard you complaining at CES that you can't, what's that standard slot that cars?

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Den, double den. There's a den and then there's a double den.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  And that's like going away?

• 19:10Speaker 01

  And well, yeah, a 12 inch screen is like a quintupled in.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  So if, when a new technology comes out, you can't?

• 19:19Speaker 01

  No, like the, I have a.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  What if I want to listen to MP3 CDs?

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're on your own there, friend.

• 19:26Nilay Patel?

  My last car had a, had a six gig hard drive in it, so you could rip CDs to it. It also had an MMC slot. Like a, like a PC, it's PCM, CIA slot. Like it was crazy. It was just a crazy car, like the last of its kind. Speaking of CarPlay, CarPlay always big news at auto shows. Toyota broke, which I think is really interesting. Toyota was like the last major holdout. No CarPlay in their cars, a bunch of people, actually, I was tweeting about this. People were telling me that they had chosen against Toyota.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Same.

• 19:56Nilay Patel?

  I would, I didn't even consider a Toyota because I knew I wanted both CarPlay and Android Auto.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:01Nilay Patel?

  And I think they just finally had to give in. I think they were like in that Apple moment. You know how like sometimes Apple doesn't do something because they just assume people buy iPhones?

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:09Nilay Patel?

  Like, sure, we don't need wireless charging.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:11Nilay Patel?

  It's an iPhone, you're just gonna keep buying it. Oh, now I have it, whatever, great.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  So the, have you heard the audio of the CEO saying we've, we've added CarPlay?

• 20:18Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  It's amazing. I wish I had it. He's like.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, whatever, whatever. We know, we know, we got it. Hey, look, it took some while, folks.

• 20:26Nilay Patel?

  Whatever, we got it.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Whatever, we got it.

• 20:28Nilay Patel?

  So then here's the other news.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Official CEO keynote statement on CarPlay and Toyotas.

• 20:32Nilay Patel?

  Perfect. But no, so to finish the Apple comparison, Toyota makes Camrys. People are gonna buy Camrys. The Toyota will sell Camrys forever. And I think they thought they could put out some other system in the meantime.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:46Nilay Patel?

  But I think actually buyers wanting CarPlay, it became obvious that people were choosing against the Toyota Camry, which is wild.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  All right. So help me out here, someone who doesn't like cars. You're saying that-

• 20:58Nilay Patel?

  Someone who doesn't like cars to help you?

• 21:01Speaker 02

  The, no, me, I'm the person that doesn't like cars. The default, the coming default is that most cars will support CarPlay and Android Auto.

• 21:10Nilay Patel?

  CarPlay, mostly CarPlay.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  Mostly CarPlay.

• 21:13Nilay Patel?

  Toyota's supporting CarPlay. Yeah, they have not said a word about it.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  How many are supporting both?

• 21:18Nilay Patel?

  Like, the majority support both.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Okay, so that is the majority.

• 21:22Nilay Patel?

  When they pick one, they tend to pick CarPlay.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:25Nilay Patel?

  So Toyota has like only said CarPlay, BMW pushes CarPlay because BMW understand iPhones, apparently.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Because I want devices that can do both. Like, I wrote up that smoke alarm thing in, at CES, and they're coming out with three different versions. One was Alexa, one was Google Assistant, and one was AirPlay capable.

• 21:51Nilay Patel?

  An airplane? No.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so like, but why, why, I want devices that can just like, I know, I know.

• 21:58Nilay Patel?

  So the way these things work, so-

• 22:01Speaker 02

  I want to be able to Chromecast to it, AirPlay to it, Miracast.

• 22:05Nilay Patel?

  Miracast. The way that the Assistant stuff works is different. Like, Alexa and Google Assistant have slightly different SDKs, there's slightly different hardware requirements, like you end up making different things. CarPlay and Android Auto are not that. They are just apps that run on the existing head unit that the carmaker generally builds and then certifies with Google and Apple. Those apps don't do anything. They just mirror your phone.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Well, like Chromecast and AirPlay. Why, why, why is my Vizio only Chromecast? Why is it-

• 22:34Nilay Patel?

  Because Apple won't give them AirPlay. They would do it if they could. Audio manufacturers get AirPlay. What I'm saying is, it, the decision to support CarPlay and Android Auto comes down to like who you think your customer is. Not, not quite as much, how, how does it work? Like, the technical requirement? Because all it's doing is mirroring your phone. Right? Your phone does all of the work, the processing. Which is why, so on some cars, if you use your phone while CarPlay is active, you can see like CarPlay doing stuff. Or if you use CarPlay and hold your phone, you can see your phone doing stuff because you're just mirroring the screen.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:08Nilay Patel?

  But, what's interesting is, okay, so it's driving a lot of purchases. BMW, BMW is a horrifying move. They are now going to charge eighty dollars a year to keep CarPlay active.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Aww.

• 23:20Nilay Patel?

  It's horrifying. That is horrifying. That is insane. Right, they don't have to do anything. It's not like they're shipping you GPS updates or keeping your radio subscription alive. It's literally, they're just allowing you to connect your phone to the screen. They were already charging you 300 bucks to do it before, but now it's, they'll charge you and it'll become a subscription. For, I'm horrified. It's, yeah. The app is there. So the argument that has been made. Uh huh. Is that most BMWs are leased. Uh huh. So over the course of your like two or three year lease, you actually end up paying less. And then you sell the car back and then they can charge the next person because it's. Yep, that's right. It's terrible.

• 24:05Nilay Patel?

  God, it's like. Also, the cars don't get leased again. So like only the, right, like you give the car back and lease, that car just gets sold. And now that person is stuck paying $80 a year. Horrible. Unacceptable. Trend. Yep. Everyone, I don't know, buy something. Don't buy a BMW. They're not, but BMW is also the only one that has wireless charging and wireless car play. So when we did the iPhone 10 review, we got a really nice BMW 5 series. Yeah. And then like, it was awesome. Like you got in the car, you like put it on the pad, start charging next to the thing. It was like the dream. $80. That was $80, Eli. Pay up. Well, speaking of Apple. Yeah. This one's I think important, actually really important. Tim Cook told ABC News, I, you know, there's iOS battery. Kerfuffle? Yep. Is that what you call it? Kerfuffle.

• 24:50Nilay Patel?

  Uh, next version. I think someone would say scandal. Curse scandal. No, just straight scandal. Scanduffle. Scandal. Yeah. It's a scandal. Um, although again, I, I think their technical solution is actually still cool. Yeah, absolutely. They just blew the messaging. Um, next iOS update will give you more transparency and a healthier battery and allow you to disable the slowdown. But they don't want you to. Yeah. Because again, for one life of your battery and probably prevents your phone from shutting down. The fact that they are, they weren't, they didn't say that right away. Like is, they kinda said it, like, we'll give some more battery management. But this is the thing they should have always told people and always let people do.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  I feel like Apple really messed up by like they're like, hey, we're sorry, kind of.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Uh, no, even even this even this appearance, Cook said, quote, uh, maybe we should have been clearer as well. So that's that's fair. That's good. And then he did the, we deeply apologize for anybody that thinks we had some other kind of motivation, which is not saying, I'm sorry you're mad.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  I'm sorry about your feelings.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  But it's close. But we apologize for like, it's fine. Like I, he didn't, they didn't, their very first line was, we're sorry you're mad.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  I'm sorry you're so dumb that you think we're bad people. But so they had this opportunity though, to to give a lot of people $30 batteries. That's what it sounded like. Apple's going to make this right by giving a lot of people $30 batteries. And then you show up and like, eh, that's not bad enough.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Really? No, they they they walked back from that.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  Oh, they fixed that now?

• 26:27Speaker 01

  They cleaned that up. I think their biggest problem right now is the backlog is just massive.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have an iPhone 7 and the battery is terrible after a year because I use it every day because it's a smartphone.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  And, yeah, I don't know.

• 26:42Nilay Patel?

  So we had Kyle from iFixit on the Cigar Break Show at CES. Um, he he basically was flat out like, Apple cannot keep up with this demand. He did some crazy math, like, they're like 45,000 store employees or something.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, you add up all the store employees and all the hours it would take to replace every single one of those batteries and they'd be working from now until the heat death of the universe.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  Oh, what if we zoom back on this a little bit, right? You you can't, a typical person cannot send their phone in for an upgrade or repair, right?

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Because you're completely dependent on your phone. And I noticed this when a software update comes through. I'm constantly procrastinating because if I'm looking at my phone, I'm using my phone.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  Like, what what would a world look like where you'd have like a reasonable? Backup where it's easy to like go to your second tier phone for a little bit so while you get your other phone repaired. So you could send your phone away for a week, get a new battery in it.

• 27:39Nilay Patel?

  A second tier phone, that's not a reasonable choice for most people, right? Like now you own two phones. Most people lease their phones to begin with, right?

• 27:47Speaker 02

  A lot of people, you know, a lot of, a lot of homes have two cars, right? So if one of the cars needs repairs.

• 27:53Nilay Patel?

  That's not why you have two cars.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  You carpool together, like, like it's a husband and wife.

• 27:57Nilay Patel?

  But you have two cars because two people need to go separate places.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Right, but you can make it work with one. But because you only have one phone, you can't make it work with none.

• 28:07Nilay Patel?

  I see what you're saying.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 28:09Nilay Patel?

  But I don't think it reveals anything.

• 28:14Nilay Patel?

  I'm with you. Some people have two cars because they need the utility of two cars.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:18Nilay Patel?

  No one has two phones.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Here's what I want.

• 28:21Nilay Patel?

  No one except us has two phones.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  I'm gonna confess something.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  The reason we don't have two phones is because, um, because SIM cards are stupid.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. I used to be a huge SIM card fan. Don't let the, don't, don't do eSIM. It's just going to give more control to the manufacturers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I think the even more radical solution is your phone number should be as portable as your email address and you should be able to access it from whatever device you damn well want to.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Preach it.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Preach it. So.

• 28:46Nilay Patel?

  I'm with you.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  So. Ah.

• 28:49Nilay Patel?

  Hmm. Is your SIM card still broken?

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Not only is my SIM card still broken on my iPhone 10, later on, there's this whole movement, Farhad Manjri and Nellie Bowles over the New York Times, like, oh, people, people want their phones to be dumb. They're, they're too addictive and they gotta make them less addictive. Sure. I think most of this is a notification suck on iPhone problem, but whatever. There's other things. So like, make it black and white because then you want your lizard brain won't be, not lizard, because lizard seems like, your monkey brain won't be enamored of all the colors. And if you make it black and white, you won't start it all the time, blah, blah, blah, blah. The other solution to this is like, have a dumb phone that's cheap, that like you use most of the time, but you don't, you, you do need a smartphone. You can't live without a smartphone. So you'd like leave your smartphone in your bag, but nobody does that because.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  You don't have the same phone number on it. You could charge extra to like, put a SIM card in a damn Apple Watch. So you can't have the same phone number on multiple devices. But if you could, if they were, if it was freely available for you to use on whatever device you feel like, as your email address is, or your Twitter handle, or any other authentication thing you have on the internet. You know, the thing that is, this is my online identity. Then you could have a dumb phone and a smartphone, and you could go to the Apple Store, and you could say, yo, fix my phone, and they'd be like, okay, here's a loner. Or you'd like, oh, well, I've got this dumb phone. I'm good for a couple of weeks, or whatever. This is a, this is a, this is a carrier lock-in problem.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. So you, you get an app called Liferaft. Liferaft gets your, your most important things together. You get your most important contacts.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Is this a real app?

• 30:27Speaker 02

  No, I'm making it up. An app called Liferaft. You, on your smartphone, you assemble your core functionality that you have to have, your, your required phone numbers and stuff. And then you're like, okay, we're jumping off Titanic.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  Into the Liferaft, and you push that button, and now your, your dumb phone comes alive. It's like, we're gonna get you through this.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Your dumb phone comes alive!

• 30:52Speaker 02

  You're gonna get through this together, right? Right? Your dumb phone is, is the door.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Can it be an auto-inflating thing? Like, can it actually, like, you hit a button and?

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:01Nilay Patel?

  I cannot wait until your Liferaft is hacked.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  You know what's gonna happen? Google's gonna buy that company. They're gonna call it Google Liferaft. And then they're gonna forget about it for a while, and the UI's gonna get really, really bad. And then it will either die or get like, integrated into some other weird, random chat app. AKA, the story of Google Voice.

• 31:20Nilay Patel?

  The, the solution to your problem, by the way, is the Apple Watch LTE. Cause it has your phone number.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  No!

• 31:25Nilay Patel?

  Yes. It's a little tiny dumb phone.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Neil is, Neil is acting like this wasn't my idea.

• 31:29Nilay Patel?

  It was your idea. I was taking it from you. I had a great idea.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Watchers aren't phones.

• 31:34Nilay Patel?

  I invented the Apple.

• 31:38Nilay Patel?

  I don't know if you guys knew that. I was like, Timmy.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  Timmy. There's somebody stuck in the well. Also, Apple Watch.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  Have you ever seen Dick Tracy? Let me tell you about this great, classic character.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Cookie. We should, we should read an ad.

• 31:54Nilay Patel?

  Cookie.

• 31:58Nilay Patel?

  All right, this episode of The Vergecast is sponsored by Mattress Firm. Mattress Firm has one question for all the "I'm gonna listen to a podcast to help me fall asleep" people. Are you struggling to get some shut eye? Because if you answered yes, you're in luck. Mattress Firm has a great tip for how you can zonk out more easily. Mattress Firm is America's neighborhood mattress store. It lets your budget stretch further when you're looking for ways to improve your sleep. They are more than mattress experts. They have the whole package that helps transform your mattress into a bed, from adjustable bases and sheets to headboards and bedroom decor. They have you covered, literally and figuratively, which is a little bit threatening, I can be honest with you. Go to mattressfirm.com/podcast to see what deals are happening right now as I read this sentence to you. Mattress Firm even offers you a 120-night sleep trial to ensure perfection

• 32:41Nilay Patel?

  and 120-night low-price guarantee so you know that you paid the perfect price. Again, go to mattressfirm.com/podcast to learn how your sleeping could be monumentally improved. And if you're still awake, we're gonna start the podcast now, assuming that's cool with you. All right, what else is going on, Dieter?

• 32:56Speaker 01

  Uh, I don't know, there's a bunch of stuff. Facebook decided to try and ruin the news again. I don't know that it'll be successful, but they're turning down the number of posts that you're gonna see in your newsfeed from publishers like The Verge. And they're gonna presumably turn back up your friends and family and like, I don't know, racist cousins or whatever.

• 33:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  And disclosure, my wife works for Microsoft Division of Facebook, et cetera. But at the same time that Facebook is like, they're promising, Zuckerberg's New Year's goal is to like be the CEO of Facebook and they're trying to turn down, you know, video and posts from publishers and turn up your friends and family. And they're, everyone's really worried about Facebook and what they're doing to the newsfeed. Instagram is just taking, dropping acid and just throwing stuff at the product.

• 33:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  You can, you can use the Giphy Jif keyboard, throw it into your stories. There's a test of a text-only option, which is making people very angry. And you can also see when users were last active in the app.

• 34:02Nilay Patel?

  So what is... So we've often said Instagram is like the last happy place on the internet.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they're just.

• 34:08Nilay Patel?

  Turn it into Facebook.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  They're messing with it, some fierce right now.

• 34:12Nilay Patel?

  I don't know why. It's not like people aren't using Instagram enough.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's strange. Like, what do they, what do they, what do they need? What is it, does it, or, I don't know, it's very odd.

• 34:22Nilay Patel?

  It might just be that they want to kill Snapchat once and for all.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  That could be.

• 34:25Nilay Patel?

  That's very much how they feel about it.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:27Nilay Patel?

  And Snapchat is certainly in a somewhat vulnerable position.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:31Nilay Patel?

  The excellent reporter Taylor Lawrence of the Daily Beast, was it last week? It was CES week.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  During CES, yeah.

• 34:38Nilay Patel?

  Published like an internal document showing all of Snapchat's user numbers across every feature they have. Turns out people mostly just send each other Snapchats.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 34:46Nilay Patel?

  Do a lot of other stuff in there. The places with the money aren't really, the screens with the money on them aren't really open a lot in Snapchat.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think Snapchat is even like kind of shying away from its like, or trying to disassociate its stories from the newsy story, the brand stories.

• 35:03Nilay Patel?

  They're redoing their whole interface. So anyway, Snapchat's trying to reboot itself, basically. They're literally going to change the entire interface. So Instagram, why not go for the kill? But I don't, Instagram to me has gotten, it's just the algorithmic timeline, the changes to the feed, all these crazy features, like they're fun to play with.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:23Nilay Patel?

  So I don't, I don't look at Instagram as much as I used to because it's just annoying.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  So what's interesting is I don't look at Instagram as much as other people and I actually feel weirdly guilty about it. Because I, I look at Twitter when I should be looking at Instagram. Instagram theoretically would be more relaxing and less stressful to me. Also, there's fewer opportunities to make dad jokes on Instagram and so everybody else would like me more. But since I don't use it more than once every couple of days lately, when I go there, the algorithm is great at showing me stuff that like I will want to have seen, like, I don't know, someone, you had some adventure and you were talking about it and people like, oh yeah, I saw it on the Instagram. And I was like, I want to see it on the Instagram. And I opened it up like when we got done talking, it was right there at the top.

• 36:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because it's listening to you all the time.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  That's right. Oh my gosh, the ads on Instagram.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Such a good Shaggy Dog setup and you nailed the punchline. Thank you.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  Look, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but the ads on Facebook and Instagram make me disbelieve the mood landing.

• 36:28Nilay Patel?

  It's not listening to you. Don't eat Tide Pods. Please, everyone, stop it.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  Oh, well, you know what I realized recently? Maybe I've already talked about this. My Tinder account's associated with my Facebook account.

• 36:40Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  So, could you use it like Tinder won't put your job description? You can't just write your own job description. It has to pull from Facebook.

• 36:49Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Can you enter any job description into Facebook?

• 36:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  But Tinder's trying to create some quantity of safety by associating with what is most likely to be your realist online identity, which is Facebook.

• 37:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Well, guess who knows that I am swiping right now? Facebook.

• 37:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  So they're all over me on Instagram and Facebook with all these ads for like new dating apps.

• 37:16Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  And it's, it's just like.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  I'm looking for a therapist right now, right? That's like a pretty personal thing. Now I just shared on the first day, so whatever.

• 37:30Nilay Patel?

  It's just us friends here.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  But I don't want Facebook advertising therapists to me right now. Like, that's not the mood I'm in for looking for a therapist. You know?

• 37:40Nilay Patel?

  Are you sometimes in that mood?

• 37:42Speaker 02

  No. My favorite thing, you know, the best thing I've done?

• 37:47Speaker 02

  Ad, ad related in the past month is I saw the ugliest shirt of all time on a banner ad and I clicked it.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  And they started following me around.

• 37:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  So I clicked it again. Now I get these ugly shirts everywhere. It doesn't feel like a personal attack.

• 38:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  It's like this ugly shirt company thinks they're gonna get me.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  Oh, man, that's a really good idea.

• 38:10Nilay Patel?

  There's like, there's somebody in the back room being like, I got two clicks on this dude.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  I just. We should, we should all, as a, as a form of protest, click on stuff that like we think looks kind of funny. Looks nice, but we would never buy. Always click on stuff that you think looks nice, that you'd want to see it as an ad, but you would never buy it.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  I.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Why don't you do that?

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 38:31Nilay Patel?

  Before we command our listeners to do that. And then report back to us in a week.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:36Nilay Patel?

  And then we'll just see, we'll just before, before the.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  I'll say, I tried it once and it's working great.

• 38:43Nilay Patel?

  Well, I, I.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  See, that's all the time that you need. I'm very excited.

• 38:47Nilay Patel?

  Science.

• 38:47Speaker 02

  I'm very excited about this Facebook thing.

• 38:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  What I, I, I really wish, and I hope that they are thinking seriously about is trusting their users enough to eventually give them the sliders to the algorithm. Like, like, I think in Facebook's minds, like, you're, if we gave you the sliders to the algorithm, you'd just crank up friends and family and you'd never see the news or the funny viral videos or like this magician who lies, this liar magician that goes viral on Facebook all the time.

• 39:21Nilay Patel?

  Wait, what?

• 39:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's these magicians.

• 39:24Nilay Patel?

  Don't you believe deep in your heart that all magicians are inherently liars?

• 39:27Speaker 02

  No, they're illusions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 39:29Nilay Patel?

  Aren't illusions just a lie?

• 39:31Speaker 02

  There's clever tricks. There's like an Ocean's Eleven heist and then there's just like a blunt force armed robbery. You know what I mean? One of them's pretty cool.

• 39:40Nilay Patel?

  It's the armed robbery.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  One of them is only violence.

• 39:45Nilay Patel?

  Wow. Alright.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  So anyways.

• 39:48Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna go with you on this.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Just look up bullshit Facebook magicians. You'll definitely find this, but it, but, but Facebook believes that it's.

• 39:56Nilay Patel?

  You're so off the rails right there.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  No, no, no, I'm getting to the, I love this Facebook algorithm change, right?

• 40:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  But I think the ultimate thing is that people should be able to control their own sliders for their own algorithms. I, I still miss, like, remember when Netflix launched and it like, it's like, okay, we need to like, create like a profile for you for what you want.

• 40:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and it would like ask you a bunch of shit.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. What it recommended after that was not perfect, but I felt like I had some agency in that. I felt like, oh, you know, these are, these aren't the perfect recommendations, but if I want better ones, I know what to do. I'll go rate a bunch of things that I've seen and. It made me feel involved in what was being shown to me. Twitter's algorithm really pisses me off. Instagram, to me, is completely confusing and a mess. And I don't log in every day on Instagram. Facebook is a meaningless mess. Just give me some sliders so I feel like I'm involved in the decision-making process. And maybe I'll do it bad. And then that can be an ongoing conversation between me and Facebook. Maybe Facebook could pop up once a month and like, "How's this algorithm feeling to you?

• 40:59Speaker 02

  Like, do you want to see more of something? You want to see less of something? Let's work on this." But just Facebook in the sky, like God, deciding how you should feel today.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  I want there to be a button on Facebook News posts where, when they get me and I pause and look at the auto-playing video for three seconds, I want a button that's like, "No, I didn't mean that. Stop, stop it." I just want a like, "No, I'm sorry" button. "I didn't mean to eat the cookie" button. Obviously, I did because my hand went in the jar. But, yeah. I want a "take back" button. A "take back." "Don't learn this." "Please don't learn this from Barry."

• 41:37Speaker 02

  I'm a...

• 41:38Speaker 01

  "Do as I say, not as I do."

• 41:41Speaker 02

  I'm a lurker on the internet, so I mostly just scroll through things and read them. But news articles on Facebook, you need to click through to see the whole thing. So the only thing I'm engaging with on Facebook is news articles.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  Because I'm not liking my friends' posts. So I'm not doing extra work to convince Facebook that I actually prefer the posts for my friends. Because the only action they see me take is clicking on news articles.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Anyway, the lesson here is you should go to facebook.com/deeterbone and like and subscribe to my page. Yeah. That's a good lesson. Yeah. I mean, the most important lesson, I think, that Virch has to deliver. Yeah. Ultimately, I think Facebook knows it's like really broken, and they don't want this responsibility. I think that's a huge Yeah. change for that company, right? Like, they thought they were gonna...

• 42:27Nilay Patel?

  Change the world, right? Like, they thought they were gonna connect all the people in the world and it would be great, and they're like, "Wait, wait, we weren't prepared for this responsibility. We don't want it, so we're just gonna go back to showing you funny things your friends share." Which is funny, cuz they also own Instagram, which is where that is already happening. So, the question of what does Facebook become is really interesting. Like, our reporters today, I was talking to a couple of them, Caitlin and Lauren, and they were saying Facebook for them is overrun by like, multi-level marketing schemes.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 42:56Nilay Patel?

  Which is like, terrible. But like, it's perfect for the multi-level marketing, cuz it's like a social network of people who are connected in a group.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Facebook for me is overrun by Minneapolis miracle, Stefan Diggs touchdown celebration videos.

• 43:11Nilay Patel?

  Aww.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  And it's the best.

• 43:13Nilay Patel?

  Aww.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  I hate you. You know what I don't see, though, is anything about the Packers, weirdly.

• 43:19Nilay Patel?

  This is an ad for HelloFresh, which is a meal delivery service that has graciously sponsored The Verge this week. HelloFresh is a meal kit delivery service that shops, plans, delivers your favorite step-by-step recipes and pre-measured ingredients, so you can just cook, eat, and enjoy. They offer convenience, you can choose your delivery day for when it works best for your busy schedule, you can pause the account for weeks of time when you're out of town. All the ingredients come pre-measured in handy labeled meal kits, so you know where the ingredients go, to which recipe, and it's delivered right to your door in recyclable insulated packaging. There's also selection and flexibility. HelloFresh offers a wide variety of chef-curated recipes that change weekly. There are three plans to choose from. Classic, veggie, and family. Classic is a variety of meat, fish, and seasonal produce. Veggie is obviously vegetarian recipes, plant-based proteins, grains, and seasonal produce.

• 44:04Nilay Patel?

  Family is quick and easy meals with all of the yum-worthy flavor your whole family will love. There's a bunch of notable recipes, we were just talking Minnesota, there's a juicy Lucy tomato onion jam and arugula salad. How do you feel about that, Dieter?

• 44:16Speaker 01

  I wonder if it's as good as a juicy Lucy you could get at Matt's Bar. You would have to try HelloFresh to find out.

• 44:21Nilay Patel?

  Wow, you really brought that one back.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:22Nilay Patel?

  There's a premium selection for dinnertime, there's lobster ravioli and shrimp tomatoes, tarragon cream sauce, there's kid-tested recipes made specifically for families in mind, like easy ravioli gratin with spinach, thyme, and Parmesan bread crumbs.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Sounds delicious.

• 44:37Nilay Patel?

  So, for $30 off your first week of HelloFresh, you will visit hellofresh.com and enter the promo code VERGE30. That's V-E-R-G-E, 3-0. So, that's $30 off your first week of HelloFresh. Just go to hellofresh.com and enter the promo code VERGE30.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Okay, Paul.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Every week, buddy.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  You do a thing. What's it called?

• 45:00Speaker 02

  It's called Win or Lose 2: The Sequel to Winning.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  Alright, it's okay. I'm ready for it.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  This week, we're talking about the GPD Win 2, which is basically a Windows laptop that is the size of a 3DS. It's got little joysticks on it, it's got little video game buttons, also has a very, very tiny keyboard. But it's-

• 45:26Speaker 01

  God, this thing is crazy.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  It's 650 bucks, it runs Grand Theft Auto V. It runs Overwatch, it runs Skyrim. It all, there's very specific frame rates. They've got 38 frames per second. It's got a 720p screen, by the way, so that helps. But it's got 38 frames per second on Grand Theft Auto, 50 to 70 on Overwatch, 53 on Skyrim. So I guess you can decide if that's, if that's good enough for you. I mean, none of those games are, I guess Grand Theft Auto's great with joysticks.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Oh, it's got a M3, 7Y30 chip. That's actually not the worst thing ever. It's like, like MacBook class, almost.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  And it's got two 4900mAh batteries, so you, maybe you can do this for more than 30 minutes.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. I should just make this my work laptop.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  Please do.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  I would love to see this. Yeah, I just, I just love weird form factors and there's like really obsessive communities about this specific form factor and, and here they are, more, more winning.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  Indie go-go. We saw a lot of weird form factors at CES, actually.

• 46:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  My favorite, there was the, was it Dell made the keyboard with a Maglev? With like magnets holding the keys up? It's amazing. Yeah. It was magnets provided the force feedback on it. Right?

• 46:44Speaker 02

  I knew magnets were gonna come through.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  What you want is a keyboard full of magnets. It just like doesn't seem like, I was raised to keep magnets away from computers.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  That was just because of hard drives.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  Hard drives really-

• 46:57Speaker 01

  Well, they were magnetic. But it's still like, it's still built into me.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Like, I'm still like, I don't, I don't know, magnets in computers, not a thing. But Maglev keyboard.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, why not?

• 47:07Speaker 01

  And then there was the little Android-

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Oh, the Sciana-like?

• 47:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:12Nilay Patel?

  I love that thing.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  That's cute.

• 47:13Nilay Patel?

  That's my new phone. Laptop. Phone laptop hybrid.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  Flap, flap top.

• 47:17Nilay Patel?

  And Project Linda. Everything was great at T S.

• 47:21Nilay Patel?

  I'm clearly just exhausted now. It's like PTSD is sitting in.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  I, I'm still looking for a laptop that's the size of a full-size keyboard, but doesn't have the track pad part. You know what I mean? So, full-size, my, my hands can really spread out and get some real typing.

• 47:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. But, like Sony had one of those. What was that called?

• 47:40Nilay Patel?

  The V I P.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  V I P.

• 47:41Nilay Patel?

  We have one sitting in our little library over there.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. A little bit more of that.

• 47:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And get an iPad Pro, 12-inch iPad Pro, with a keyboard.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  Or that.

• 47:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. That's what you want.

• 47:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:52Nilay Patel?

  That's what everybody wants. That's what Cookie wants.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  All right, two, two, two tiny pieces of news we can kick. I wanted to have a whole rant about Project Fi and how they used to be morally good and true and you could trust them, but now you can't trust them at all because they introduced an unlimited plan, but they didn't even have the decency to call it unlimited. Instead, they called it bill protection. And all carriers are evil and screw those guys, but it's not true. It's just actually a pretty good plan. Uh, you can't spend more than 60 bucks worth of data per month. So basically between 6 and 15 gigs per line, it's, it's like, that's like free data for you. It still costs 10 bucks per gig. And then above 6, it's, it's free. And then once you hit 15, they throttle you to 256K. But you can pay them 10 bucks to unthrottle you again. And like,

• 48:41Nilay Patel?

  I'd take that.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  Just keep rolling.

• 48:42Nilay Patel?

  For how long?

• 48:42Speaker 01

  I, I don't know. Like, they didn't, they don't provide quite as much fine print as I would like, which is a thing that feels very weird to say, but is true.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Anyway, it seems like a pretty good deal. Uh, I just wish that, um, I was actually talking to a, a guy who works at Fi yesterday. I just wish that it was easier to take Fi and put it in any phone to start the plan, not, like, once you have a Nexus phone, you put the Fi SIM in, you can like stick it in other phones and everything. Basically a wonderland of T-Mobile experience for your data signal. But if I want to just get Project Fi, you can't really start it without Nexus or Moto X4, which is a bummer.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  I would like this plan if they also had a like a T-Mobile style experience where you can like toggle, like I want unlimited Twitch streaming. But when I'm using my mobile data, I don't need 1080p Twitch, right?

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they're not throttling video resolution at all.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Which I appreciate. Like, the thing I like about Fi is it's just, this is what it costs. The end. It's 10 bucks per gig, it's 20 bucks per phone line, the end. I hate many things about Fi. It's tied to Nexus phones, or I'm sorry, Pixel phones or whatever. Each phone number has to be tied to a unique Gmail address, which is annoying. Blah, blah, blah, but the like radical simplicity of it's 20 bucks for phone and it's 10 bucks per gig. And it doesn't cost more. You can go, you can, you can, you can order 50 data sims from them and have every single device that you own have a Project Fi sim in it. And it costs you $0 unless they have a phone number. Yep.

• 50:19Nilay Patel?

  Maybe I should switch to Fi.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Do you like, do you have good T-Mobile service in your area? You should not switch to Fi.

• 50:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:26Nilay Patel?

  I wonder how T-Mobile feels about Fi.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  I'm sure they don't even notice them.

• 50:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't like, I don't know how committed Google is to Fi.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  That is always a concern with Google. I would love, yeah, I would love to switch to Fi, but I really just feel like I would watch too much Twitch and I'd blow through that.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  And then everything would be throttled.

• 50:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, then you pay the 100 bucks.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  No, no. I like pay, I like, I like to pretend like I budget and therefore I would like to pay one amount per month for my phone.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  This explains your entire neutrality thing. It wasn't about, you weren't standing on principle. You just wanted free Twitch.

• 51:06Nilay Patel?

  I think Paul said that out loud.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 51:09Speaker 02

  No, I think I said it several times.

• 51:12Nilay Patel?

  But there's a bunch of that neutrality stuff coming out, not, not terribly momentous, right? So, a bunch of senators, they have 50 senators now.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:21Nilay Patel?

  They need one more. They're gonna try to force a vote against. There's a Congressional Review Act that can force a vote to make people vote up or down.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:30Nilay Patel?

  On whether you want to overturn the FCC's decision. I think that's obviously a political move because even if they win, D. Trump probably not going to approve that act of Congress.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 51:40Nilay Patel?

  But I think that's a very clever mechanic to make.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Put people on the record.

• 51:45Nilay Patel?

  Put people on the record as voting against net neutrality because people are always very politically active about it, as you may have guessed from our show.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  And then 22 state attorneys general, I love saying attorney, I love pluralizing it. Are suing the FCC to, that they, you know, did the rules wrong, basically.

• 52:03Nilay Patel?

  Right, because the whole thing, we talked about this length in the show before, but the whole thing was that they needed substantial evidence of market conditions changing. That is the thing that the lawsuits are all going to be about. So there's net neutrality stuff, it's just, that's news. There's not a lot of analysis you can do underneath it.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:22Nilay Patel?

  But it's still out there. It's still happening.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  Speaking, speaking of things that are probably going to violate net neutrality, Verizon apparently wants to start its own new standalone streaming TV service. And I have a philosophical question for you. What is the difference between an app and a channel?

• 52:40Nilay Patel?

  This was Apple's whole thing. It's funny that they're like putting this out, like the rumors, like it's new, it's app-based channels or whatever. Apple's like, the future of TV channels is apps. And really all that means is, instead of one interface, there'll be 5,000 new services.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  The way I think of it, because I'm old enough to remember TV Guide.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  TV Guide listed what was happening in all the channels.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. So TV Guide was an app for the channels.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  A paper app.

• 53:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  It's like, it's like Nintendo's Project Labo, but the future is paper apps.

• 53:13Speaker 02

  With apps, with apps, each, you could maybe find a channel inside of an app.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  But the, each TV Guide would be inside of that app as well.

• 53:25Nilay Patel?

  Now, that's currently the case.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:27Nilay Patel?

  Right? So like Netflix has a different user interface than Hulu.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:31Nilay Patel?

  And it's just like, whoa, wow, this is hell.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  There used to be, there used to be one grid and now there's a grid of grids.

• 53:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  And each grid has another grid inside of it.

• 53:40Nilay Patel?

  The grids are vertically fractal.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  The grids are vertically fractal.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  App channels are a grid of grids, is what we're saying.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:45Nilay Patel?

  All right, I think, as I promised at the top of the show, we are very tired, not particularly sensible. App channels are a grid of grids, I believe, is where we're gonna end this episode of The Vergecast. Thank you for listening to this. As always, our sleepy ones are, in my mind, the most fun.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  I had a great time, Neil.

• 54:03Nilay Patel?

  You did great, Paul.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  Thanks, thanks.

• 54:05Nilay Patel?

  Like, a really good job.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 54:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:07Speaker 02

  And it's, I love having Dieter here, too.

• 54:09Nilay Patel?

  We just end every show thanking each other. Like, really sincerely thanking each other. There's a Stars album that begins with every member of the band, Star, saying, "My name is..." Well, the lead singer's name is Tork, so they're like, "My name is Tork and this is my heart." And that's how the thing begins.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 54:24Nilay Patel?

  It's very cute. It's a great album, you should listen to it. Anyway, that was The Vergecast. It ended with me just describing the beginning of an album from my 2000s. So, that's where we are today as a family. We'll be back next week. We got all kinds of things going on. Circuit Breaker Show is coming back. We're thinking about ways to improve it. Send us your ideas. If you watched that at CS or you've been watching on Twitter before, we're gonna move it to YouTube.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  Shoo.

• 54:47Nilay Patel?

  It's just happening. But send us your ideas about Circuit Breaker Show.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  What if we get demonetized?

• 54:53Nilay Patel?

  YouTube. Um, anyhow, uh, send us your ideas on that. Watch that if you haven't. Uh, why'd you push that button? It's gonna come back for a second season. I think Andrew and Caitlin and Ashley are hard at work on questions to ask about various buttons. But, whole first season, 10 episodes, it's out there. Just binge-listen to it. Go crazy. Ask yourself, why did I push all of these buttons? 10 hours later, you'll have some answers. Um, so listen to that. You can also listen to, uh, Lauren Good on Too Embarrassed to Ask, that's on the Recode Network. She hosts that with Kara Swisher. Kara Swisher hosts Recode Decode, and Peter Kafka hosts Recode Media, which is wonderful. You can also listen to our rivals on the Weeds.

• 55:37Nilay Patel?

  But let them know that you're there.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  We are, we are tech, I mean, they're, they're vox.com. We're part of Vox Media also. So would you say we're on the same team? That our podcast together constitutes a team of rivals?

• 55:50Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  It's.

• 55:51Nilay Patel?

  Did you just make a straight up Obama Lincoln joke on this podcast?

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Thanks for listening, everybody.

• 55:56Nilay Patel?

  We are done.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  The promo code is promo code rock and roll.

• 56:00Nilay Patel?

  The first cast. We're at Abraham Lincoln jokes. Good night, everybody. Rock and roll.