A Meter of Sweat

Chris Plante joins Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn on this week's Vergecast to read his unstructured, free verse poetry about the HTC Re Camera. Or maybe it's Re Poetry. Either way, let's just be thankful that there's not a macron diacritical mark above the "e" in Re, that way lies madness. We also discuss Apple before taking a hard turn into talking about what's happening in Gamergate. 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.

• 0:07Nilay Patel?

  Hello, welcome to The Vergecast. This is a show where Chris Plant is just super confused, just the whole time. Hello and welcome to The Vergecast. This is a show about technology and culture and fun things and sad things and actually not so many sad things, but occasionally sad things. I am Neelai Patel.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  I am Dieter Bone.

• 0:29Speaker 02

  I am Chris Plant.

• 0:31Nilay Patel?

  Chris Plant is here. Welcome, buddy.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  This is your first Vergecast?

• 0:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, wait, wait. Well, technically, I was on one of those late night shows a long time ago, but I kind of got like listed for the bottom and then like I walked out and they're like, "Hey, okay, bye, that was the show."

• 0:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's how we do it. So if you are a fan of The Verge and Vox Media, you might know Chris Plant, who until recently was an editor at Polygon and previously was just a man about town. But Chris has left Polygon to come to The Verge to escape video games. And then we immediately started covering video games, super hard, just to torture him. That's basically what we did.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  That sounds about right.

• 1:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, that's, that's, that is accurate. But no, Chris, along with Ross Miller, is the, the senior editor. He is the owner of our TLDR section and all around, you know, genie old dude.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, is that a good compliment?

• 1:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess. It was definitely like not the nicest compliment I've ever received, but it wasn't me.

• 1:30Nilay Patel?

  You're like a...

• 1:32Speaker 01

  Gallivant.

• 1:32Nilay Patel?

  You know, Becky and I say our favorite insult to each other. It's really bad. It's actually really bad. It's not, once you like really unpack it, you realize how horrible it is. She's like, "Hey, how was this food I made?" I'm like, "It's like a six." And like, that's just like...

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's like a six.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  Nobody likes mediocre. Mediocre is like, "Oh, you're mediocre."

• 1:52Nilay Patel?

  No, but the thing about five is like, whatever. It's like, it's like a five. Like, it's good. Five.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Five isn't good.

• 1:59Nilay Patel?

  No, I think six is like a harsher burn than five.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  If we were to score a Windows phone five...

• 2:05Nilay Patel?

  Then everybody knows what it is, right? Like, everybody knows.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, that you're biased. Everybody knows.

• 2:10Nilay Patel?

  Right? Then, then obviously, Apple is paying you. No, if you score something a five, you're like, man, it's like, it is right on the line of like, you did something. Like, you've hit the first threshold, which is the thing that you exist. Right? Like, that's it. Like, that's all you've accomplished and you've not, you've, there's no failure in a five. Right?

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 2:31Nilay Patel?

  That's what I mean. Right? You just hit the first, like, how is this cookie I made? You're like, it's a five. You're like, yeah, cuz I made a cookie.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  And I've never made cookies before.

• 2:39Nilay Patel?

  It's a five. Like, you do, a six is like, you tried and been burnt, like, flamed out. Like, you didn't even get there.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  So six is worse than five?

• 2:45Nilay Patel?

  Six is worse than five.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  What's funny, though, is, and I don't know if this applies to tech, which we're gonna talk about today.

• 2:51Nilay Patel?

  We are.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Tech cast.

• 2:53Nilay Patel?

  Super excited.

• 2:53Speaker 02

  Oh, boy. I can't wait to talk about it. Hitka?

• 2:57Nilay Patel?

  I just wanna point out.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  My favorite mobile phone company, Hitka.

• 3:00Nilay Patel?

  Chris, you can maybe, you can see it on last, but for the, the audio listeners, Chris has walked in here with printed out, he's printed out the Wikipedia page.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Shake the paper.

• 3:09Nilay Patel?

  For HTC.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  I, I did research. I know what this company is.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Tell us, what does HTC stand for?

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Um.

• 3:17Nilay Patel?

  He's kinda like shuffle his notes.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  Half Training Corporation. They've trained halfway and they could maybe rival the sidekick if they had enough money and sources.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  HTC is like KFC where it used to stand for something, but now they don't, they just want it to be HTC?

• 3:32Nilay Patel?

  Uh, no, it's, it was High Tech Computer. Right.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Oh, great. So it was the most boring name possible. Great.

• 3:39Nilay Patel?

  That was a six.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  Congratulations. Our, our computers are high tech.

• 3:42Nilay Patel?

  I'm, I'm telling you, a six is worse than five. Like, if we give out a five as a score, everyone's like, ooh, burn. But like, man, that product must be crap. We give out a six? I bet you six is the score we give out the least.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Hmm. Just put that out there. So you're saying, basically, six is like, yeah, you, you shouldn't try.

• 3:58Nilay Patel?

  Six is like, you have ambition, but you suck.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:01Nilay Patel?

  Right? Seven is like?

• 4:02Speaker 02

  Seven's my favorite.

• 4:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, seven's like a normal.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  In, in video game, or I guess like any creative, like, thing, seven's what I want. Seven is?

• 4:09Speaker 01

  You don't want an eight or a nine? That's too good for me. I don't deserve that.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  Eight or nine is like, you, you go and you get it and it's like Avengers and you're like, damn it. Like, wow, you really fell into the hype cycle. Seven is like, we didn't have money for advertising, but the movie was really good and the critic actually liked it, but doesn't know how to process. And it's like, oh, great. Earth Defense Force is a game I like and it's like, doesn't work and it's repetitive as all hell, but you shoot. Buildings and they fall down, no matter how tall they are, you shoot them with a machine gun. That's what I want in a video game. That's why I I signed up for video games.

• 4:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  That's a seven and I will, that's all I want to play. I don't want like a nine or a 10.

• 4:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. No, but like nine, you nines and 10, like in the grand scheme of all of these ratings, nines and 10s, like those are like, something about them like made you happy, right? Like you did a good job. An eight is like, a seven and eight is like, that is, you, uh, that's like, you tried hard and you succeeded. Like you mostly succeeded and there's some like, depending on the level of flaws. Six is you tried hard and you like fell on your face. Like you like stood up and tried to walk out the door and you just coat like, you just like face planted. You're like, I didn't even get there.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Let me, let me ask you a question. What, what would you give a six plus?

• 5:25Nilay Patel?

  Come on, man. All right, let's talk.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Right there. Literally the phone is sitting right here.

• 5:30Nilay Patel?

  So, do you want to, do you want to, Chris, I'll let you hear, hear, I'm going to just name some things we can talk about.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 5:36Nilay Patel?

  I'm let you, here's a list.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 5:38Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and they all have wonderful names. Uh, Droid Turbo, Desire I, HTC Re.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Wait, I think I know what the last one is. Droid Turbo is like a movie starring a snail.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  It's like the robot version.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  We heard you like that smirky little snail, so now he's a robot.

• 5:57Nilay Patel?

  The only reason I put all, well, tell me what you think the other ones are.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Wait, Droid Turbo is Motorola's re-ranking of Detroit. Sure. Um, after that is.

• 6:08Nilay Patel?

  Desire I.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Desire I.

• 6:10Nilay Patel?

  E Y E.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  E Y E. But is there like weird end caps in there?

• 6:14Nilay Patel?

  No, no. Two, two words also.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  I don't know, like webcam?

• 6:19Nilay Patel?

  That's not a webcam.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Do people still use webcams?

• 6:23Nilay Patel?

  They do.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  All the time. Yeah.

• 6:24Nilay Patel?

  We're using one right now.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Sure. Oh, that's, that's called a camera. Damn it. They're not, just because it's a camera.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  This is my next on security cameras, actually.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 6:33Nilay Patel?

  Webcams are back, everybody.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Great.

• 6:36Nilay Patel?

  Go ahead.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Remember the I say.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  I know what the HTC is. The HTC is the, the, uh, inhaler.

• 6:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  That also doubles as a phone camera.

• 6:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  That is not actually on your phone, nor does it have a screen.

• 6:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. I've definitely read about that in my notes.

• 6:54Nilay Patel?

  No, so the desire, I will tell you this.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Can you dramatically read exactly what you wrote in your notes?

• 6:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, let's just talk about this.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  I'll read about HTC.

• 7:00Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  HTC, a GoPro for people living normal lives. It looks like a breathalyzer for nerds. $200? And then I'm, oh, wait, wait, no, I have more, I have more. Are you ready for the rest of it?

• 7:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  Submerged under a meter of water for up to 30 minutes. So like, if it can fall in a fish tank? Who, I'm, I'm reading this with the mistakes I made. Who is a meter underwater for 30 minutes?

• 7:31Speaker 02

  And then I go on. I, I don't know what I was gonna do. Normal people love wading pools. Normal people love bikes, just not fast ones. Give me a damn power button.

• 7:45Nilay Patel?

  There you go. So you got it. That's HTC right there.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  That is, are you sure you don't want me doing reviews?

• 7:51Nilay Patel?

  You should just do the whole thing. The meter underwater thing, I guarantee you the standard tech press was just gonna let that slide.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  What is that?

• 7:57Nilay Patel?

  So let's just tell people what the camera is. Dieter, do you wanna, I think you know most about this.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  It is a camera that looks like an inhaler or a periscope. Inhaler if you hold it upside down. A little toy periscope if you hold it right side up. A crack pipe if you hold it sideways.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  You can use pipes for other things besides your crack addiction.

• 8:16Nilay Patel?

  Like being a jaunty Englishman.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Wow. I'm actually moving to a place I'm gonna have a balcony and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna take up tobacco pipes.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  Oh, okay, that's healthy.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Pretty exciting.

• 8:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, yeah. It doesn't have a power button. If you hold it, it's got like a capacitive thing, so it turns on automatically. It's got a big ass button on the back. It has no viewfinder. It's got a 16 megapixel, super wide angle lens. And the idea is, you're like, I'm, like, I'm engaged with you while I take your picture instead of staring at my phone. And it's $200.

• 8:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and we're assuming it's not a very good camera. Just based on HTC's ability to build a camera.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:52Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's a GoPro, it's like.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  But it's not, but it doesn't compete with GoPro.

• 8:57Nilay Patel?

  It's like a handle.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Why don't you just pull out your cylinder?

• 9:00Speaker 01

  It's like the old military flashlight, you know, like, like the surplus flashlights you'd get that had the thing and you'd hold it this way.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, they still sell them at like Cub Scouts have them.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Like a little bronze doohickey that lets you hit it on your belt buckle.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  That was like my favorite thing as a child.

• 9:15Nilay Patel?

  So this is HTC is, they are trying to diversify, by the way, the Desire I is also an HTC product.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  I'm sure it is.

• 9:21Nilay Patel?

  It's a phone that takes really good selfies.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it has the same camera on the front as it does on the back. It's like the mullet, the anti-mullet of smartphones.

• 9:28Nilay Patel?

  But I just wanted to point out Droid Turbo and Desire I because I'm happy that stupid smartphone names are still a thing.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  At least they're shorter now.

• 9:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Well, we don't need to get into that, but, okay, so HTC, the Re, that's their, that's their branding for their whole line of consumer electronics products that aren't phones. So the first one is the Re camera.

• 9:47Nilay Patel?

  Ah. This is terrible branding, by the way.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:50Nilay Patel?

  I mean, terrible branding from the high-tech computer company.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's not good.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  That isn't like Re, I don't know Latin, but like, isn't the implication of like, you're trying something again?

• 10:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Like, so it's like, so it didn't work.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  It's also in reference to or regarding.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the camera didn't work. We're Re camera.

• 10:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, trying it again.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Try it again.

• 10:12Nilay Patel?

  They're gonna put out a VCR, like a VHS, uh, uh, uh, storage system called the Rewind.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  And do you know what I think, like?

• 10:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and then they'll put out a secondary screen called the Re.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  I made all these puns on Twitter yesterday, bro.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  Is the point that you can drop it?

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Some revision is what you want.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  You can drop it in the toilet? Is that the idea? Like, what, I'm genuinely curious what this meter of water is, where people are like.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Well, I think they just have to.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  I'm gonna drop it in something and then use it? Like, is that the point?

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:44Nilay Patel?

  I mean, the point is basically like you can get it sweaty, right? I don't think you're actually so sweaty.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Okay, got it.

• 10:50Nilay Patel?

  A meter of sweat.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  A meter of sweat.

• 10:53Nilay Patel?

  But here's the thing.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  It's for the normal person, you know, the bum who's sitting on his couch sweating a meter of sweat. The Re camera, it's for you. You sick monster.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  What? It's, who doesn't occasionally measure their sweat?

• 11:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, his meters. Um, excuse me, um, I only measure my sweat in metrics.

• 11:15Nilay Patel?

  What, ban linear? By the way, if Sam Sheffer ever started a ban, it should definitely be called Sam Sheffer in a linear sweat. Putting it out there. So the bigger picture here is that HTC is, Vlad wrote it today, HTC is basically doomed. What was in your?

• 11:33Speaker 01

  My tweet was, how do you know, how do you know if a company is drowning if it builds a periscope?

• 11:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Because their phones are great, but no one's buying them. Even Samsung, which is the market leader, is like, it's losing money hand over fist.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  Well, it's making a profit.

• 11:48Nilay Patel?

  It's making a profit.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  It's just making half the profit it made three months ago.

• 11:51Nilay Patel?

  60% less.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  60%.

• 11:52Nilay Patel?

  So 60% drop in profits with no clear strategy on how it's going to go back up. Although Vlad argues that Samsung will do better than HTC. Because Samsung is Samsung and they have like a chip business and all this other stuff.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Well, and Samsung, I think also like has the resources to bounce back. Samsung is the kind of company that will go, holy shit, this isn't good. We should do something else and then just do it.

• 12:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  I mean, the classic story about them was their, whatever the Galaxy Tab 2, whatever the reaction to the super thin iPad.

• 12:26Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  They like, they re-factored their entire tablet business in the space of a month and a half.

• 12:31Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  To make it thinner than the iPad Air or iPad.

• 12:34Nilay Patel?

  And so they're just going to wait for whatever Apple does next week.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  And they'll do it.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  I mean, I kinda, I kinda admire the rebreathalyzer or whatever it is. Because, I mean, at least they're looking for something that you need in your life that you don't have, right?

• 12:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, okay.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  They're trying, I'm not, I'm not saying it's good at all. I'm not even close.

• 12:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  But.

• 12:53Nilay Patel?

  Convince me that I need it.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  Sure, but it's still like more promising than like, from the point of view of somebody who's new to this world, the Samsung model of, well, we have 200 versions and they're all bigger and smaller.

• 13:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Your choice. Do you want 3.2 millimeters or 3.5?

• 13:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  And this is like, oh, well, that is a good point. I do feel kind of like a creep, taking my phone out constantly to take pictures. I'm still going to feel like a creep with this.

• 13:19Nilay Patel?

  So this is like the ultimate creep shot.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  This is even creepier because it, well, you carry it like a gun, right?

• 13:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  So you're like aiming it and people are like, ah, oh, I want to watch you. Like that's, who's going to do that in front of someone?

• 13:31Nilay Patel?

  Worst commercial ever. HTC re creep shots.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Creep shots.

• 13:39Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  It's coming together.

• 13:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I just think they're trying to make anything. This is, this to me is like, you know, Apple used to change the iPod every year, right? So like the iPod Nano was like big and then it was fat and then it was small.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  But you know, you know what you want? An iPod. And you know what happened when the smartphone came along? They decided.

• 13:58Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying like this is something for HTC to put into stores and sell at a 60% profit margin.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:04Nilay Patel?

  It's literally like here's a stocking stuffer, right? It's.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Confused moms will love it. That $200 stocking stuffer. I shouldn't even say that. This seems like the thing that my dad would buy for me.

• 14:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  He would definitely be like.

• 14:16Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna list to 200.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  You like technology.

• 14:17Nilay Patel?

  By the holidays, it'll sell for like 135.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, it's gotta, it's gotta hit 130 because that's what the cheap GoPro is now.

• 14:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Not that this competes to the GoPro.

• 14:27Nilay Patel?

  No, they said it does. I don't know. I do like, I do like the idea of a camera or a phone with a camera that's as good on the front as on the back. I don't know, there's something about it.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Great.

• 14:36Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Hey, man.

• 14:38Nilay Patel?

  It's good. It's good.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Selfies are cool. It's okay. You don't have to, you don't have to hold your nose up at selfies.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  I'm, I, I take, I take group selfies. I'm a master of the eight person selfie. That to put yourself in the corner and then stretch and then get people lined up on the side.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  The re-camera would be good at, good at that.

• 14:53Speaker 02

  You know what? Normal cameras are fine at it. Like we live in a modern blissful age where all of our cell phone photos look pretty great. Like I, I think I'm okay.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Fair.

• 15:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Kind of not fair that everything's wonderful and that we have great phones.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  I had to struggle with the, the, the phone plugin for the visor back in the day.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I feel bad for you.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  I know.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  I've always had it great. I had that Nokia phone that broke in half that James Bond used.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  I had the Sidekick and now I have, I have an iPhone, which works fine when I don't break it, drop it on my face or do something stupid with it.

• 15:31Nilay Patel?

  Did you sell the big one?

• 15:32Speaker 02

  No.

• 15:32Nilay Patel?

  You gave it back?

• 15:33Speaker 02

  No, I traded it because they wouldn't let me give it back. Yeah.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  You traded it wrong.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm wrong.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Oh, here we go.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  No. Great.

• 15:40Nilay Patel?

  No, we're all very happy about your large chance.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Your phone isn't wide enough. BlackBerry passport is where it's at.

• 15:47Nilay Patel?

  Let's talk about this for like just a minute.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  Every time you pull that out, I think you're about to smoke.

• 15:51Nilay Patel?

  So Dieter has looked sad.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  It looks like one of those like metal cigarette holders and you're like, oh, well, I think you're wrong. But first I have to have a nice Marlboro.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  So guys, I managed to get Instagram.

• 16:01Nilay Patel?

  So Vergecast listeners know, last week I bet Dieter that the Packers would beat the Vikings. And the loser of the bet had to use the passport and for two weeks because we couldn't. Dieter, I will say, has been cheating like a maniac.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  What?

• 16:14Nilay Patel?

  I've seen you with that iPhone.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Well, I was last night.

• 16:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you're committing it, but he has been diligently using the passport as much as possible. He's finally side, tell us about it. Because it looks, I mean, it literally, I'll put it to you this way. Today we met a new person on our sales team. She came by, she wanted to hear about the Verge, she's new, she's going to sell the site. And she's like, hey, you're from Minnesota, I'm from Minneapolis. And I just started laughing and told her about the bet. And I was like, look at this phone he has to use. And she just looked at it, just a salesperson, business person, BlackBerry person, just looks at it and goes, oh, that's so sad.

• 16:49Nilay Patel?

  If there's an immediate reaction to this phone.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  The folks at the Crackberry forums, hey, guys, long time, no talk, real mad that we were declaring this phone as a punishment.

• 16:59Nilay Patel?

  I got like a total of three angry tweets telling me they were humiliating the audience.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Was that the audience? Not all three?

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Let me, I actually have.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  More emails about Batman.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  I have a lot of thoughts about this phone, but the most important one is it makes me sad.

• 17:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Like, it makes me genuinely sad that I can't get a weird ass crazy phone like this. That like, you know, I want to live in a world where, yeah, I want a phone the size of a passport with a super wide keyboard and a crazy square screen. And that's what my life is going to be. I mean, I can do that, but then there's just all the suffering that you have to go through because, you know, they don't have the app ecosystem and they've gotten way better thanks to bringing out Amazon. But it's just like, you know, the fact that they're, they've.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  BlackBerry, in theory, has figured out that the purpose of a phone is to communicate. Which is, so they built this thing called Hub where like, everything is in a single big list and you can like, filter through stuff. Great idea. I want all my messages to go in there. I want all my Twitter replies. I want all my BPMs. All my text messages, everything to go. That's a great idea. It's really smart, but it's implemented kind of badly. And it's never going to be a perfect all-around solution because they're never going to get buy-in from all the different messaging apps into this one.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  I have a million dollar solution for, for that device.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  To make that device like, start pushing units. You license out classic video games. You create the world's best emulator of a CRTV. Creating like CRTV, actual flicker effects, standlines and everything. You have the square screen.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Square screen.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  You put retro games on it.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Not bad.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  And because those people who love retro games love like, the authenticity of it. I think, I think that's your trick.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm just saying, it didn't have to be this way. We, we could have built up all of these app ecosystems in such a way that it could be cross-platform and there could be somebody to make a new smartphone operating system that could run stuff. Uh, and it would be okay, but instead like Gmail's kinda eh on this.

• 19:07Nilay Patel?

  Did I tell you my theory about, uh, this, this platform and like the hire law that it speaks to?

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 19:12Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, the, the end result of any communications platform is basically like an email client, right? It's like, that's where you're going, right? So if you find yourself making a phone and you end up building an email client, you were, you're done. You're screwed. Right? Like, the Fire Phone sucks because it, Amazon built its own OS. And in order to complete its OS, they had to build an email client.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 19:34Nilay Patel?

  And they completely lack any knowledge of how to build a great email client. They can't do it. Right? They just can't. They're Amazon. They don't know what, what is happening. Okay, I just got, I got trolled by TC in the background. I don't want to describe it.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  For, for the listeners, there's a, there's, there's a picture of what's his name?

• 19:52Speaker 02

  James Franco?

• 19:53Nilay Patel?

  James Franco, but it's not signed by James Franco.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  It's signed by somebody else. I was trying to think of what James Franco's little brother's name is.

• 19:58Nilay Patel?

  It's signed by like Dan Skylak? It's very confusing. I don't know why it's there. It's just, thanks TC. You're, you're great. No, but here's my theory. So BlackBerry forked, they forked, they forked Android in that weird way that's running in the background, but it's not real Android, and they built this new OS.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  It's not the order it happened in, by the way.

• 20:18Nilay Patel?

  Well, I understand, but like, that's, that's how they got their app tonnage.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:21Nilay Patel?

  I, I know the order, but like, instead of just using Android, which comes with an email client that people like and is good, they built all their own stuff and they used Android to like get apps, right?

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:32Nilay Patel?

  And the second you build your own email client, your platform is doomed. That's my theory. I'm sticking by it.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  That's insane.

• 20:37Nilay Patel?

  Nope, it's absolutely true.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  What are you talking about?

• 20:40Nilay Patel?

  Absolutely true. If you find, if you are making a phone.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Name, name a platform.

• 20:43Nilay Patel?

  Uh, iOS.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  It has its own email client. Is it doomed? No.

• 20:48Nilay Patel?

  No, no, I'm saying now.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Name another platform. This is a good game. Name another platform.

• 20:51Nilay Patel?

  At this moment in time, if you build a new platform, like, that's what I mean.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  Post, post Apple.

• 20:55Nilay Patel?

  Windows phone.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Wait, okay, yeah, but like, it's like, just because it has an email client, doesn't mean it's.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  So wait, no, no, no, what you're saying is.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  That's insane.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  There are two key platforms.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  The email client is not what dooms Windows phone.

• 21:08Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm saying it's, it's this, it's like the canary in the coal mine.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  No, that is, that is.

• 21:13Nilay Patel?

  Yes, it is absolutely right. Once you start doing that, you're screwed.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Just if you talk louder, doesn't make you writer.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  It's the one thing that is.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Damn it, that's how I was gonna win this argument.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  It's the thing that's on all platforms. That's the logic. Like, well, all people wear t-shirts.

• 21:27Nilay Patel?

  This is what I'm saying. If you are making a phone.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  I don't think it's t-shirts that cause all of us to.

• 21:30Nilay Patel?

  If you are making a phone, if you are making a phone, or if you are producing a new product, right? And that product starts veering into you making an email client, which on a phone necessarily means you're making an operating system, you're, you're, you're screwed.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  You are wrong, but I will accept your incorrect argument briefly to bring it back to my argument about being sad. We should live in a world where it's okay to build an email client and have it be okay. We should live in a world where this stuff works together better.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Wouldn't that be nice?

• 22:02Speaker 02

  I mean, sure, a lot of things would be great. I wish it rained donuts, but like.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  We could have built that world. We chose not to. We could have built the world where like things intercommunicate with each other. We did it. We did it once. We did it. It's called the web. There it is.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  There it is.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  There it is.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  If only all the colleges had built all of our, everything else that we use in our daily life.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Well.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  We'd be perfectly okay.

• 22:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, I'll look. Here's what I'm saying, and I'm gonna keep saying it louder and more insistently.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  The way we communicate with each other. Why do we have to depend on corporations to talk to each other?

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Capitalism, I would say is probably the main one.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Email, email, it does not depend on corporations.

• 22:39Nilay Patel?

  Yes, it does.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  No, it doesn't. You can, you can roll your own email server tomorrow.

• 22:43Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  And then you can talk to anybody with it. Can you do that with WhatsApp?

• 22:48Nilay Patel?

  Underneath it.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Can you do that with Facebook Messenger? Can you do that with iMessage? No, you cannot.

• 22:54Nilay Patel?

  Maybe.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  No, you can't.

• 22:55Nilay Patel?

  Shut up, Dieter.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, we chose to build the world this way. We chose to build the world where.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  Here's my question. If you built your own, your own messaging system, right? How long would it be before you decided to monetize it?

• 23:08Speaker 01

  It depends on who I am.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  If you had you, let's say you. You being you.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Well, I'm obviously a communist, so.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Wait, hold on, hold on. So you never monetize.

• 23:18Nilay Patel?

  No, but here's the thing. If you rolled your own email server.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:20Nilay Patel?

  You would be inundated with garbage, right? Like, the only reason email has survived is because most people have moved to like gigantic corporate email systems that are heavily filtered, heavily protected against spam, heavily protected against phishing. Right? Like, we depend on Google's artificial intelligence to protect our email accounts. This is true. So the underlying communications framework is still there, but all the innovation has happened.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  That's an ancillary thing, like.

• 23:47Nilay Patel?

  No, but like the innovation in email has happened on like the AI side of like, of like the client. So Gmail, like Google made a mail client that's really smart because it has like the cloud. Microsoft basically did the same thing, right? Yahoo, like all the big mail providers do that thing, and then like. On the backend, they use like the email

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:07Nilay Patel?

  calls, right? Then they use SMTP.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  But I mean, the logic, the, the end result of the course you're taking here.

• 24:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Is if, if you take it away from email and I am, whatever the communication thing is, and just apply it to our own website.

• 24:22Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Like, uh,

• 24:25Speaker 01

  like, why, isn't it nice that we have a startup that like we were able to publish our own thing and like?

• 24:30Nilay Patel?

  No, I get it. This is like a neutrality openness argument.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  But should people be able to publish on our platform?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Sure. Maybe. I don't know. We, we get to decide that if they want to publish on their own platform, they can.

• 24:39Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  I mean, we're, we're way off in the weeds. But what I'm saying is fundamentally-

• 24:43Nilay Patel?

  The BlackBerry makes you sad.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Fundamentally, the BlackBerry makes me sad because like, I would, it would be nice to live in a world where a, a little company can make a crazy ass phone and be successful. And we don't live in that world.

• 24:54Nilay Patel?

  Right. Because they have to work on the mail client. No, they have to solve like table stakes. They have to put all of their energy into solving table stakes that are already well solved.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  I do, I do agree with you partly because now a phone, wow, that is-

• 25:07Nilay Patel?

  Is that your BlackBerry? Your BlackBerry is just mad at you?

• 25:09Speaker 02

  Your passport is vibrating.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's, uh, anyway.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  Yes. In layman's terms, it has to be a computer too. And it can't just be like it was when I was a wee boy and there were all these strange things and it wasn't a huge deal if I had a different phone than you did. And people made all sorts of oddities.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  I mean, whenever I go to Japan and I rent my phone and they hand, like, they literally will like, show you a box full of crazy, like, awesome weird phones.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  And I can take any of them. And it's like, that works because those phones aren't smartphones, essentially.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  Um, I mean, there's still a lot, plenty of creation in smartphone territory. It just doesn't, maybe just doesn't feel quite like it.

• 25:51Nilay Patel?

  There, yeah, they put a camera on the front that's the same as a camera on the back.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  Sure. It's a little larger. It's a little smaller.

• 25:56Nilay Patel?

  Um, you know, I will tell you that I'm actually disappointed that the new iPhone is not waterproof. That's like a one, that's the one major innovation across the other-

• 26:02Speaker 01

  It should be good for like a meter of sweat.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  Just, just one meter.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  And eight inches of Cheeto cheese.

• 26:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  God.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  Just the idea of it just sitting on your skin and growing outwards.

• 26:15Nilay Patel?

  Cheeto beard.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  What are you doing?

• 26:17Speaker 02

  I've been sitting here for so long.

• 26:18Nilay Patel?

  Uh, we should probably talk about this, uh, Apple event. Speaking of Apple.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 26:22Nilay Patel?

  So, uh, it's coming up.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:25Nilay Patel?

  It's happening. Chris, you're gonna cover it for us.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  Great.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  You are.

• 26:28Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna live blog Apple.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Speaking of things that are a little bit bigger and a little bit smaller.

• 26:33Nilay Patel?

  So we put out the invitation yesterday. It's happening a week from today on the 16th.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Been too long, is that the?

• 26:38Nilay Patel?

  It's been way too long.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  Way too long. Oh, what does that way mean?

• 26:42Nilay Patel?

  I don't know.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 26:44Nilay Patel?

  Chris Ziegler has trolled everybody on Twitter yesterday by suggesting that they meant the iPad was too long and that now there'd be a square iPad. And people were like, nah, man. And he's like, I can't, really?

• 26:55Speaker 01

  You know, I would be into a square iPad. I love this.

• 26:58Nilay Patel?

  It already is a square. It's 43. It's as square as it can, like, there's only one more.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  I could watch, I could watch two videos in Letterboxd, one on top of the other.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  I really wanted you to straight phrase troll everyone and be like, I hate, I hate this BlackBerry. Ah, square iPad. Now that's what I can really get behind.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  If they could put a little thin physical keyboard on the bottom.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that'd be really great.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  That's what I'd actually want.

• 27:23Nilay Patel?

  So they were gonna make a Black, they announced they buy BlackBerry. They're just like, here it is, guys. Here's the new iPad. It's the BlackBerry Passport. So everyone, obviously, is expecting an iPad.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  And it'll have a Touch ID.

• 27:35Nilay Patel?

  And there's been already leaks. What I thought was really interesting is when the announcement post went up yesterday, we have some leaked photos, which are presumably accurate.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Even if they're not accurate, they're so close to what it's gonna be that it doesn't matter.

• 27:48Nilay Patel?

  I mean, like, there's only one way for it to go.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:51Nilay Patel?

  But are the, the leaked photos were half as popular as the picture of the invitation yesterday.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:57Nilay Patel?

  Like, for whatever reason.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  I don't care about leaked photos of these anymore.

• 28:02Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 28:03Speaker 02

  I mean, for, to me, right, I don't know what it does. So it's like a shell of metal with some glass on it. So what do I have to see?

• 28:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I, I, I think I'm like, probably on the side of the like.

• 28:16Nilay Patel?

  Do you have an iPad?

• 28:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have an iPad Mini. It's probably my favorite device. Like, it is like everything. I, I, um, I used to be like a collector person. And then a few years ago, I got rid of everything I like owned that was like software and boxes, because I didn't like the mess and I live in a small apartment. But the iPad Mini gives me that feeling of like, oh, everything I own is in this. Like, every book, every episode of Adventure Time. Time, because I'm a child and Simpsons. Um, and I like get the largest possible storage size.

• 28:48Nilay Patel?

  Oh, wow.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  And I fill it up and I have all like all my magazines go there and it's like, great. When I want my entertainment, I pull that out and it's there. And when I don't want the entertainment, I put it away. Uh, and it's like my one basic device. And then I have, I guess, a Vita when I want to play spelunky, but.

• 29:05Nilay Patel?

  Right. You say you are the one person with a Vita?

• 29:08Speaker 02

  No, I'm the one who has taste. The Vita is one of the best pieces of hardware ever created.

• 29:14Nilay Patel?

  I have.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  You would be.

• 29:17Nilay Patel?

  Very confused.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  It's very true.

• 29:18Nilay Patel?

  I, but I don't, actually, I don't disagree with you.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  Is a masterpiece.

• 29:21Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I don't disagree that Sony made great hardware. I actually, so I will agree with you, the Vita is a piece of hardware.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  You know, everything about it is great, except for it.

• 29:30Nilay Patel?

  The software and games.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  But you can't even say that. It has great games and like it is chock full of great games. Plus there's PS Plus, so you get free games each month.

• 29:39Nilay Patel?

  I'm definitely going to end this conversation by buying a used Vita.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  It is, you want to get one of the old ones because the original ones are OLED screens. And they look sick. Um, they're like gross. Some OLED or LCD or whatever.

• 29:51Nilay Patel?

  Sick in a good way or sick in a bad way?

• 29:52Speaker 02

  Sick, like that's sick.

• 29:54Nilay Patel?

  You're not helping me.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  That's really good.

• 29:55Nilay Patel?

  Oh man, 169 refurbished?

• 29:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, you should do it.

• 29:59Nilay Patel?

  How do you know? How do you know if it's one of the old ones?

• 30:02Speaker 02

  Uh, it looks big and chunky. It's not colorful.

• 30:05Nilay Patel?

  Is it a PCH 1001?

• 30:07Speaker 02

  That's probably it. I'm getting into dirty talk. The point is it's great and I recommend everybody get it, especially on PS Plus.

• 30:16Nilay Patel?

  Why don't you get a, why don't you get one of the new Sony phones that you can just do it?

• 30:18Speaker 02

  I could do that, but I won't because I have what I need. I have a Vita and it lets me play my games and I have a phone. I'm, I'm essentially a spoiled grown child who has a diversity of choices.

• 30:33Nilay Patel?

  This is just one of those things where it's gonna show up my house and pull it out of the Amazon box and I'm gonna look at it and Becky's gonna look at it and I'm gonna look at her and she's gonna look at me and then she's just gonna say, "I want a dog."

• 30:43Speaker 02

  Do you have a Playstation? That's also, that is my wife with everything we have.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Do you have a Playstation?

• 30:47Nilay Patel?

  Last night, literally last night I looked at her and I was like, you know, very tenderly, I was like, "I love you" and she just looked at me and she went, "I want a dog." That's it. Like, that's where our conversation is.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  You know, it's time you got that dog.

• 30:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Wait, wait, do you have a-

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Becky, does she listen to Just Dog's, your wife?

• 31:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, she doesn't.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Uh, does she listen to the show?

• 31:04Nilay Patel?

  No, she doesn't.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  No? Cause I wanna, I wanna speak to her directly about the dog.

• 31:09Nilay Patel?

  No, she doesn't.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  I think it's a good idea, it's a great idea.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  I think it's a great idea too. I think it's time that you finally made it that dog.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Neelai needs to learn to love and the only way-

• 31:19Speaker 02

  I have a huge heart.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Is if he has something that loves him unconditionally. And the only thing that could possibly love Neelai unconditionally-

• 31:27Nilay Patel?

  Is his dog.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Is a cute little dog.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  I don't know, I saw that Seve, what is it, 60 Minutes special?

• 31:31Nilay Patel?

  Right to baby, like you just made-

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Oh no, baby's gonna hate you.

• 31:36Nilay Patel?

  That's probably true, I'm gonna be a terrible father, let's be, let's be clear.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  My cat hates me. My cat abhors me.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  Just cats.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  No, this is kind of particular.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  I'm gonna circle back on this though, Levita, do you have a Playstation 4?

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Why are we talking about the iPad?

• 31:49Nilay Patel?

  I don't know.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  This is the thing.

• 31:50Nilay Patel?

  Here's the thing, here's what's gonna happen, the Apple event next week, they're gonna put out maybe a bigger iPad.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:55Nilay Patel?

  They're gonna put out the same, they're gonna update the existing iPads-

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 31:58Nilay Patel?

  With new processors and Touch ID made a little bit thinner.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  I have a wild heart.

• 32:02Nilay Patel?

  They have to solve a lot of software problems in iOS 8, but we don't know how they can possibly do them.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  They're not ready to put out the new MacBooks.

• 32:10Nilay Patel?

  Right, no, I think there'll be new MacBooks.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  No.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  No.

• 32:13Nilay Patel?

  You don't think so?

• 32:13Speaker 01

  No. I mean, there might be spec updates, but like the MacBook, the one true computer-

• 32:18Nilay Patel?

  The retina MacBook Air.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Oh my god, I want this thing so badly.

• 32:22Nilay Patel?

  I don't know.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  It's not ready, they're waiting for the processors.

• 32:24Nilay Patel?

  We'll see. I think, I think in true Apple style, they will put out the hardware ahead of the processor and the first generation will be slow.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Here's, here's what I think is gonna happen-

• 32:32Nilay Patel?

  That's the Apple move.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  A week from today. A week from today, I think that PayPal and Square go out of business because the NFC on the iPad is gonna be able to accept payments and they're gonna put out a system for merchants to just use that as their cash register. And NCR and Square and PayPal are gonna like-

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Shit their pants.

• 32:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, Square just got a lot of money from like

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Singapore.

• 32:54Nilay Patel?

  The bank of Singapore or whatever, yeah.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  This was all like, people predicted this in a very stupid, much smaller way, but with video games. And that's the only thing I know how to talk about because I'm a child, like I said earlier. But there was a thing, I believe it was called Crystal or something, but it wanted to be Game Center. NG Moko was, which was like, uh, the original video game company on the iPhone, wanted to create Game Center. They wanted to have achievements and cross save and all that stuff. And them and, and there was another thing called plus plus or something.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  It was like, great, we're gonna make this. These are gonna be these solutions for all these problems and they worked spectacularly. And then Apple came around and was like, well, we've got Game Center. It doesn't do any of those things.

• 33:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's terrible.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  But it's pretty much mandatory, so screw off.

• 33:44Nilay Patel?

  Do you know that Apple like forced my mother to sign up for Game Center?

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Really?

• 33:48Nilay Patel?

  Cause she, my, my mom is addicted to threes. Both of my parents.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 33:51Nilay Patel?

  Totally addicted to threes.

• 33:52Speaker 02

  Not 2048, that's good.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Have you, have you told them what my high score is?

• 33:55Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Don't, cause then they'll.

• 33:57Nilay Patel?

  Cause then they'll beat it. Like they're crazy addicted to this game.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Really? My high score's like 85K, bro.

• 34:03Nilay Patel?

  Hmm, we'll see.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Small fries.

• 34:04Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna call my mom right now and we'll get her on the show and we'll talk about it. Um, uh.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Wait, you're saying my score is too low?

• 34:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  What do you got, what are you talking about?

• 34:11Speaker 02

  I'll show you afterward. I don't want to depress you in the middle of the show.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Let's hear it. Did you break 100, 150?

• 34:16Speaker 02

  We can't talk about it. I haven't even looked at it. I'm, I'm past the game. Go on, go on. I'm past that game.

• 34:22Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so they, you know, my mom, by the way, my mom had the most viscerally unhappy reaction to the iPhone 6 of anyone I know. So I.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  6 or 6 plus?

• 34:32Nilay Patel?

  The 6. She's like, I, I was back home in Chicago. I was like, you know, going to a wedding, I'd see my parents the day before. And I was like, hey, here's my new phone. Do you, do you want one? She always wants a new one. And she was like, no, it is pathetic. This is pathetic. And she like put, took the case off my phone. My mom was like a very sweet, kind-hearted, like, small woman.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  She dipped it in a meter of water and exploded. She's like, you sold this phone?

• 34:55Nilay Patel?

  Look at these lines on the back. This is pathetic. They miss Steve Jobs so much. And then she started getting. Teary, like legit teary, and then she pulled out her iPhone 5S and she's like, this is so beautiful, I love it. And they just, they just miss him. I miss him. And I was like, you didn't know him. I don't know what you're talking about.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 35:11Nilay Patel?

  Uh, but anyway, then she updated her phone to iOS 8. She was waiting for me to be there in case something bad happened. And then she opened 3's and 3's just, it literally, the OS demanded that she sign up for Game Center.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 35:22Nilay Patel?

  We couldn't like, I couldn't cancel out of it. So my mom is somewhere like on Game Center. Now trolls gonna like message my mom whenever they want. It's the worst. Tell me your score.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  I want to tell you my, my theory about, I, I think the iPhone 6 is a little, it's a little, it's a little ugly. It's like 3 billion.

• 35:38Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  I, I, I literally wrote the tutorial on how to not be so bad at 3's.

• 35:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and I read it and I was already like.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, controversial tutorial.

• 35:46Nilay Patel?

  A controversial tutorial.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 35:48Nilay Patel?

  No, your tutorial was super basic, bro.

• 35:51Speaker 02

  Wow, basic. I've been drinking Starbucks, I was wearing my Uggs, beating 3's.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  Wait, wait, I want to, I want to tell you my outsider, uh, the iPhone 6 is a ugh. It's, I, I don't think it looks very pretty. I like that it's thin and it's nice.

• 36:08Nilay Patel?

  No, it's ugly.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  But I think it kind of looks a little ugly. And where I realized, look at it is, skeumorphism is a word, right? For nerds. Skeumorphism was like when.

• 36:16Nilay Patel?

  Nerd word alert.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Where it's like, oh, we took paper and we made it look like there was paper in your thing. Like, that's it, right? And they're like, no, we can't have that. And there was some like nerd war. And then like skeumorphism lost. And then.

• 36:28Nilay Patel?

  Scott Forsthal's thrown out of a window.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Sure, that person.

• 36:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  And, and now you have like shiny stuff is like, that, that's what technology is now. And it's actually gone so far in reverse that the iPhone 6 actually looks like an app logo. Like it ha, it has those, the silly ass round edges and it shines and it looks like an app icon that I have to poke, to poke another app icon.

• 36:51Nilay Patel?

  Yes, I agree with you. That's what it is. It's an app icon. They, I mean, you know, there's an element of this where I have it in a case. And I, at home, I have other devices in cases and they're hard to tell apart. And that's like the worst thing for Apple.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:07Nilay Patel?

  So anyway, the iPads are coming. There's gonna be new Macs. I'm assuming Retina, Retina iMac is coming. I'm excited about that. That'll be good.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  That's in 5K?

• 37:16Nilay Patel?

  Huh?

• 37:16Speaker 02

  That's in 5K?

• 37:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's 5K.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  And that's, that's better than 4K?

• 37:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I'm getting a lot of tweets right now.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  Are people mad about?

• 37:24Nilay Patel?

  A lot of dog related tweets are coming.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  I'm tweeting at Reckless right now about whether or not she gets a dog.

• 37:29Nilay Patel?

  Tell Chris to move to New York. That's the game.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  He's here.

• 37:32Nilay Patel?

  Damn it. Tell Chris to move back to Chicago.

• 37:37Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it's the worst. We should just move Chris around the country by Twitter rage.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Am I crazy to not care at all about the new iPads? Like, the iPad era was like, holy crap, this is thin and light, I didn't know.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  And the iPad mini with like high rise is beautiful.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  If they can, if they can cut the weight down on that, I might be, I don't know.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  How much do you lift, bro?

• 37:58Speaker 01

  I'm just saying.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  You don't lift nothing. I've got great threes boys, but I can't lift nothing.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Pretty soon. You're gonna tell me your three score?

• 38:06Nilay Patel?

  Okay, here's the game. You guys are gonna pick up iPad minis with retina displays. Hold them above your head.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  And play threes for as long as you.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Back into the corner, back into the corner. That's how you play threes.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  That's how you play threes.

• 38:18Speaker 02

  Oh, do you do the circle technique? Mmm, big shot.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  I see, I see, I don't subscribe to any single technique.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. Okay, the loser's technique.

• 38:30Nilay Patel?

  All right. We have, we have to try to talk about something serious.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  Okay, oh, can we talk about the Motorola hint? Because, wait, sorry. We don't wanna talk about.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  It's just jokes.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  I don't even know. I don't even know what it is.

• 38:42Nilay Patel?

  I mean.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  The Motorola.

• 38:44Nilay Patel?

  What do you think the Motorola hint is?

• 38:46Speaker 02

  No, I looked it up. The Motorola hint, I have no idea.

• 38:48Nilay Patel?

  Let's read your notes.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh, I'm gonna get in a lot of trouble for this.

• 38:52Nilay Patel?

  Go, go nuts.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Do it.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  Motorola hint. Motorola makes awesome ideas for Apple to steal. If I'm Motorola or Nokia, I never stop thinking about the gold swimming pool I should be swimming in, but I am not.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  A hundred and fifty dollars? Seriously?

• 39:18Nilay Patel?

  So you think, you, you, you think Apple's gonna make a Bluetooth headset?

• 39:23Speaker 01

  They did already.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  I, I don't.

• 39:25Nilay Patel?

  Oh, they did, that little black one, yeah.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  It's called the Apple Bluetooth headset.

• 39:28Speaker 02

  I would not have thought that before, but now that they're like ripping everything out of Inspector Gadget, of course they will. They're like, you want that dumb watch? Yeah, sure. You want a big phone, you big dummy? Sure. You wanna put something in your ear? You got it. We've got, we've got Beats Spider-Man. We'll, we'll cover your whole body in dumb shit. Like, that doesn't surprise me in the least.

• 39:49Nilay Patel?

  I'm having a moment. Welcome, welcome to the tech site.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm already at that point I was at with video games, five years in.

• 40:01Nilay Patel?

  You wanna talk about video games? Do you wanna have a serious video game conversation?

• 40:04Speaker 02

  Not really, ever.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  This is a sharp turn you're about to take.

• 40:06Nilay Patel?

  It's a sharp turn, but we've only got a few minutes left.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Are we gonna, are we gonna talk about Microsoft CEO being a horrible human being?

• 40:13Nilay Patel?

  No, it's all part of the same thing.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  Wait, what? How much Microsoft CEO?

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Microsoft CEO just suggested to a room full of women at a women in tech conference that the best way for them to get a raise is to not ask for one and trust the system.

• 40:24Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  They'll get good karma. He did apologize, however.

• 40:28Nilay Patel?

  He kind of apologized on Twitter.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  I haven't seen his apology. I'm gonna, I'm gonna read his apology right now.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 40:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's not the right thing for him to say.

• 40:38Nilay Patel?

  Uh, by the way, that was a really sharp turn.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  He said, "I was inarticulate re, how, re, how women should ask for a raise. Our industry must close gender pay gap, so a raise is not needed because of a bias."

• 40:50Nilay Patel?

  Right. That makes no sense, by the way.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  That still doesn't say.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  He's only got 140 characters.

• 40:55Nilay Patel?

  It doesn't make any sense.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  No, but here's, here's the response. "I'm sorry, that was dumb. You know the best way to get a raise? Demand it." Like, that's what people have been doing forever.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  Like, you want a raise, you go and you demand a raise.

• 41:10Nilay Patel?

  Well, you have to keep, you are right. That's right.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  Especially in this economy. That's insane. Like, that's just what people are gonna do after the recession when they, literally companies said, "Hey, the economy's bad, so we're gonna actually lower your pay."

• 41:23Nilay Patel?

  Right. And Microsoft is like firing people.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and you should just keep waiting.

• 41:27Nilay Patel?

  I will say this, in, it is not in defense of Nadella, because it's a stupid thing to say, but... What's interesting about it is he is of Microsoft. He's worked at Microsoft forever.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 41:37Nilay Patel?

  And Microsoft is based, like, the whole performance review culture there is like stack ranking and like, they literally...

• 41:44Speaker 01

  They're trying to get away from stack ranking.

• 41:45Nilay Patel?

  Right, but that is the culture, right?

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Do you know what stack ranking is?

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Explain.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  It's a thing, basically, you've got, it's grading on a curve, basically.

• 41:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  Oh, great.

• 41:55Nilay Patel?

  So, so everyone gets ranked, and then the bottom two people go.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 41:59Nilay Patel?

  They're constantly in every group.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  That's almost as smart as having your own internal companies compete against each other.

• 42:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's what, the Microsoft way.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:07Nilay Patel?

  Say what?

• 42:11Speaker 02

  We're gonna read what he said.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  We're being...

• 42:14Nilay Patel?

  It should be on the site, by the way. This literally happened live, like, minutes ago, as we sat down. This was, by the way, a hard turn for everyone who was enjoying the jokes.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, sorry about that.

• 42:24Nilay Patel?

  Spot's taking an even harder turn.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Reportedly, he said, "It's not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise. It's good karma, it will come back."

• 42:34Nilay Patel?

  Right. And what I'm saying is, if you believe that Microsoft's, like, internal process...

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Something that didn't sound that horrible.

• 42:42Nilay Patel?

  No, that, that's terrible. But if you believe that Microsoft is a meritocracy, TC and Ben and I were talking about this right before we started the show.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:49Nilay Patel?

  If you, if you believe that there, like, meritocracy exists, and there's no systematic discrimination...

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:56Nilay Patel?

  Then, like, that's a great idea, because the process will, like, give you a raise.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:00Nilay Patel?

  If you, but on the other hand, if you know that some people will step outside of the process and demand raises, that's terrible advice. And that's actually what's gonna happen.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:09Nilay Patel?

  And that's, I think, the disconnect. But this is all related, like, this is of a moment with all the other things that are going on or in the show now. Right, like...

• 43:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's happening everywhere. And what, what's really weirded me out is I've seen, and I don't wanna, like, just, like, point at movie blogging, because it's such a weird thing. But in a lot of film criticism that I've read in the past week or two, and I think it's kind of tied to Gone Girl, when they talk about it, they're like, "In Gone Girl, which has, uh, comes out at an odd time, when almost every piece is touched by feminist issues." And it's like, what does that mean? Like, did you think that maybe the moment is just making up for everything? It's, it's a weird thing to, like, kind of be like... It's a weird time because right now we care and it's like, I don't know what that means.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  And that feels like a lot of these people, I mean, like when we see a Microsoft CEO going up and saying these things, they know better as a business person, but they like, in their heart and soul, I don't think have had that moment yet. Where they've learned, or that they're, I don't feel like they're engaging with people who are challenging them and forcing to like actually evaluate the ideas or the beliefs that they claim to hold, but they don't really know their meaning of.

• 44:28Nilay Patel?

  But you know, the more important context of this story is that he said this in front of a conference about how to advance women in technology. Like, he's doing the right things, right? He's taking the right explicit actions in terms of like speaking to women, promoting women. He said, he had another comment where he was like, there are many strong women at Microsoft. I expect one of them to be sitting in this chair someday. Right? Implying that the next CEO of Microsoft, like that, all of that is great. And he doesn't believe that he is representative of any systemic issues in the industry. Okay, but the problem is that he is, right? Like, there's no, all of us.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's, statistically, that's obviously wrong. Like, he of all people who works at tech companies should be able to look at numbers and say, yeah, we still have a lot of crazy work to get done.

• 45:17Nilay Patel?

  Right. And so all the tech company, and this is happening in our industry too. So all the tech companies, the media industry, all the tech companies are releasing transparency reports. Shocker, all of them are like predominantly white and Asian and predominantly male. Uh, the media companies, BuzzFeed just did one. It's predominantly white and male. They're doing, they did just BuzzFeed transparently, just did six months of incredible diversity hiring, like excellent initiative that literally our company will probably embark on in some way too. Um, because it's great that these, all of these companies across these various industries are now competing to have a diverse set of voices. What's, you can connect that to directly, if you're me, is we covered Gamergate.

• 45:56Nilay Patel?

  And like, the reaction to that is so insane because, uh, here's how, let me just, here's my structural take on Gamergate.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 46:06Nilay Patel?

  Here's what's happening.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  We don't need to explain Gamergate.

• 46:08Nilay Patel?

  I don't need to explain it.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 46:10Nilay Patel?

  But.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  If you don't know what it is, then.

• 46:12Nilay Patel?

  There are many great pieces on the Verge.com.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  I am so jealous.

• 46:15Nilay Patel?

  The Gamergate is stupid. And here's why it's stupid. We like, the idea that video games is a medium, and I'm sure Chris has a lot to say in this, should be restricted to one audience or one self-professed identity is wrong. Like, it's just flatly wrong. And if you believe that video games should be considered to be an art form, then that art form has to be inclusive of everyone. And that is just, that's, that's, that's the deal, right? If you want Roger Ebert to be wrong about video games not being art, which I, I do, and many other people do, then you have to accept that many people can take the medium and use it as they wish. Sure. And video game journalists are gonna talk about it and talk to those people who make that stuff,

• 46:59Nilay Patel?

  because that's interesting, that's pushing the boundaries. Now, you cannot attack people and harass them in service of narrowing your, you, like narrowing your audience, narrowing your worldview, narrowing your medium, because you will always, always be wrong. Absolutely, you are, you are on the wrong side of history every time you do that. And so, what's happening with Gamergate is people are saying, "This is stupid. This identity needs to go, because it is restrictive, it is restrictive to the art form. It is making companies that are predominantly not diverse stay that way, because they'd have to speak to an audience,

• 47:39Nilay Patel?

  and it's creating an art form that is outside of, like, what we want our social norms to look like." And on the internet, the way we talk about it, and if we're gonna be a tech and culture site, we have to talk about it, because this is the reality of technology culture right now. On the internet, what's happening is we've built a new society that does not need to inherit the structural dynamics of our old society, and now people are in that space and they're saying, they're realizing that, they're all here, everyone's here now on the internet, and they're saying, "You don't know what I look like, you don't know who I am, we should be able to treat each other more freely." And we're regressing to the old society and the old norms. And we are literally just experiencing a fight between the people who want to keep it the way it was and the people who know how it should be.

• 48:24Nilay Patel?

  And that is it. That's the whole story behind Gamergate. It is tied to men's rights. It is tied to like weird old conservatism. It's tied to like people trying to ban rock music because rock music was about changing the world. It's tied to the people who hate hip hop. Like it is the same moment. And it's just because it's happening on video games, it feels new. But outside of that context, it's the same thing.

• 48:47Speaker 02

  I will, I will open it up a little bit, but before I do that.

• 48:49Nilay Patel?

  Sorry, that's my angry rant.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  I do want to talk about one thing though, because I wrote a piece that got me some of the scariest threats I've ever received. My accounts across the board got locked down because there was so much pressure on them from outside sources. And what was crazy to me about that is the piece that I wrote that got that was about, it was like called, it was a bad weekend video games or it was an awful weekend video game or something.

• 49:17Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that's the piece?

• 49:18Speaker 02

  And what's, what's, what's mind blowing about is the piece is actually about the threat of life, like literally people threatening the safety of other people using bomb threats, using swatting threats, using like literally threats of death, rape threats, using that as a weapon. And the piece basically concludes with the idea of games and game culture isn't going away, but you have to take control of it. Like there, there is a group of harmful people who are using things in harmful ways. And we can still have diversity of all kinds, but we can't have this. We can't have the violence. We can't have people feeling it like they're in danger, in perpetual danger for being here. And that's all it was. It didn't say games are gone.

• 50:03Speaker 02

  It, it was quite the opposite, actually.

• 50:05Nilay Patel?

  That was very like level headed, just like here's a list of things that, that happened that were terrible.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  And that's what's.

• 50:11Nilay Patel?

  Let's try to be nice to each other.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  That's what's troubling about it is seeing that be what's on this list is one means people aren't reading it. But two, that people are saying we are those people. Like if you, if you, if that's. Said to you, you're saying, okay, I'm that person. The gamers exist and I'm that person. I'm the person who sends death threats. I'm the person who sends rape threats and you can't tell me not to do that. And that's weird. But to open this up though, because I do think there is a glob on, onto Gamergate that has come later on, that is about the idea of like journalism and, you know, transparency, all these things. And I think it is 100% fair to call journalism into question.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  I think it's especially fair because if you look 10 years ago in video game journalism, it's, I mean, it's a playpen. It's people going to, you know, Nevada and driving around in dune buggies while shooting paintball and then like going to a strip club. I mean, it is, it's bad. The recession hit and took all money out of publishers and the people who did those jobs all went into PR or marketing and any journalist who remained is making no money. And the publishers aren't doing those events. You only stay around if you want to actually do it. And weirdly enough, the recession was the best thing that happened to like the games enthusiast press because the people who remain are the people who want to write. And on top of that, there was great writing movements that happened. There is new games journalism.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  There are things that like made the writing itself better, that made it more attractive, which attracted lots of young writers, like myself in some way. And I think what's, the problem is people think games journalism is still 10 years ago, one. And two, they don't know what like editorial groups actually do. I have students at NYU and when I, when Gamergate happened, I pulled them and I was like, okay, I work at Polygon. What do you think we do, you know, with, with publishers? And like, well, publishers send you everything and they send you gifts with everything and you take lots of trips each year and you, you go on these trips and you have like special dinners with all these people. It's like, no, none of it. Like, we don't, Polygon didn't accept any trips.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  Like that, to a point where it was a problem, where we couldn't review things. We had to do it on our own budget. But there's a, the perception is what matters. And you kind of can't blame the readers on the perception. It's your, it's your function and your role to make that clear to people. As annoying as it is, because... You don't want to have to have that be a responsibility. So I, I, I understand that portion. I understand why people have an anxiety about games journalism because

• 52:48Nilay Patel?

  No, games journalism is born of PR.

• 52:50Speaker 02

  They had a reason to, but the problem is

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Is that there, there's like this one thing that has a sliver of legitimacy to it.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  And they've tacked it on to.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  And it's got tacked on to all this other shit. And so they're, they're co-opting people that might actually care about that one thing. But really that one thing isn't nearly as bad.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  And that's the irony is they're using that not my, not your shield thing.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Oh God.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  And it's like, they're using that argument, which is a real argument in discussion that should be had. And using that as like, oh, that's really all we're about. But we also don't like, they, a new update.

• 53:19Nilay Patel?

  I read, I read a long rebuttal of one of our pieces yesterday. By the way, and here's what you should know. Uh, I'm paying attention to you. I watched, I watched the Vox Populate livestream. I read your crazy ass document.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  There was a livestream? I missed the livestream.

• 53:31Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah. Uh, you people are nuts. I mean, I'm just flatly, you're fucking crazy. And you're stupid and you're gonna lose. And if you think our traffic is going down, you're wrong. The Verge has had its record month ever. Polygon just had a record month. Kotaku just had a record month. There's more interest in this stuff from a bigger audience than ever before. And if I lose you, please go. Like, please go to your unwatched live streams. That makes me very happy. Because you people are terrible. And if you want to talk to us about ethics and journalism, I'm happy to do it. We run at Vox Media, the most transparent, like, entities in publishing. Like, we are in our comments, we pay attention to our metaform. We like, listen to our readers. I think our audience is the most valuable thing that we have.

• 54:12Nilay Patel?

  When I talk to our sales team about what they should sell, I say, well, we have a dynamic and engaged audience. They're our best asset. It's literally the thing we talk about. I'm not risking that over free trips. I'm not risking that over junkets. I'm not risking that over dinners. Like, we're fine. What I will risk, what I will gladly lose, is the people who think they can abuse our staff. And it has gotten to the point across our company, and I'm just telling this transparently, where next meeting, like, or next week, I have to have meetings about providing emotional support to our employees who are being harassed. And that's crazy. Like, you have not accomplished a goal. You have actually just pissed off people who like, there is a, what, there's a phrase, who buy pixels by the barrel full.

• 54:54Nilay Patel?

  Right, like, we're gonna win because more people care about technology and culture and video games and art than ever before, and those people want it to be inclusive, because necessarily, it needs to be to include them. Sorry, I'm very mad about that.

• 55:08Speaker 02

  The sad part about it for me as a writer, and this is just a personal vent, basically, but especially at my time at Polygon, and I was very fortunate to have Vox Media support on this, I did more investigative reporting than you normally get to do in the video games industry. It's very difficult to write about developers and publishers. Another writer famously said that it was harder to cover video games than it was to cover war, because they are so protective, and PR has controlled the scene for so long, and NDAs are so intense that no one talks to you, and it all has to be anonymous. So, I wrote, I mean, I wrote about Square Enix, I wrote about Trouble on Thief, I wrote about Irrational, and how

• 55:53Speaker 02

  it closed weeks after it came out, or after the actual closure. You know, there are pieces that I, I mean, I really put the blood on the paper, you know, and, and I lost a lot of contacts because of that. You know, I, PR is, in some areas, more distant from me than they had been when I started. So, to like, to be labeled a person that is, you know, not being ethical, because I conned a question just the sanctity of the actual medium, it's really depressing. Because, one, it's, it's not true, but, two, it's like, well, it's just not, I'm doing this to try to help the medium, and it's not getting

• 56:37Speaker 02

  read. You know, like, you, you say that you want that stuff, it's out there. And these people who say that no one in journalism is writing it, there are plenty of other writers who are doing even better, way better work than I'm doing, in, in putting that stuff out there, and, you know, sacrificing the option to get free games when they come out for review. You know, I haven't gotten a game in my mail for like, ever. But I'm more proud of the stories I write. Like, I don't know, that's, that's just me.

• 57:04Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I think... There is a moment here, and I think what's, the thing to tie together is, and you can believe me or not, but Gamergate and like men's rights activists on the internet and like iCloud hacks and like the way those are distributed and Satya Nadella saying, uh, women should trust the system and get a raise, like, that is all of a moment where we believe that what we've created is a pure meritocracy, where what we've created is a system where we believe everybody's equal, because that's what we want, but the reality is they're not, and that some people are afforded systematic advantages, and we just have to deal with it. And like, dealing with it is uncomfortable, because it means some people will lose their

• 57:44Nilay Patel?

  systematic advantages, and that is, that's why people are afraid, that's why they're lashing out, that's why they're attacking others, and that's like, I mean, I had a conversation yesterday that was like heartbreaking, and the question was, when is this ever gonna be over? Is it ever gonna be done? Is there, how do we win? And the answer is, we don't. Like, we just keep fighting forever, and that's gonna be the way it goes. And that's fine, because it does change, right? It like, it will like, be different eventually, we'll just, it's gonna go so slow, we won't see it. But this is like, rough, like, I don't, like, I wanna just be very blunt and honest, like, it is rough on the people who make journalism right now, because everyone is being fucking attacked. Like, here's what

• 58:29Nilay Patel?

  I like to do when I wake up in the morning, I like to talk to my wife about, like, the cases she's gonna deal with as a lawyer today, and like, what I'm gonna do at work, and like, when are we gonna buy a fucking dog, right? Tomorrow. This is true. Today, what we talked about was password security. I, we talked about setting up two factor, and like, all the stuff we need to do, because I'm worried my wife is gonna be attacked, because my publication has the audacity to cover the treatment of women who are talking about video games right now. And that is ridiculous. And I know that this Vergecast took a hard turn from jokes, but it's actually the only thing I wanted to talk about, because it is, it is the thing that The Verge is gonna do, it is the, it is the mission of our site, to talk about the culture of the future. And if we don't talk about it, and we don't shape it, and our audience doesn't help us talk about it

• 59:12Nilay Patel?

  in a better way, we will actually accomplish nothing. And my life will be a failure, and Dieter will keep using a passport.

• 59:20Nilay Patel?

  That's not true. It's not that deep.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  Brought it back to the joke there.

• 59:23Nilay Patel?

  I tried. Yeah. I tried. I tried to bring it back to a joke. So that's, that is, do you want to tell, do you want to read more script?

• 59:28Speaker 02

  I mean, no, that's it. But I can tell you good news.

• 59:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:32Speaker 02

  Kansas City Royals.

• 59:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:34Speaker 02

  My hometown team.

• 59:34Nilay Patel?

  You should read Chris's piece in SB Nation today.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 59:37Nilay Patel?

  Do you want to talk about it just for a minute?

• 59:39Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 59:39Nilay Patel?

  Bring us back up, to bring us hope?

• 59:41Speaker 02

  I mean, it's basically about pain and misery for the last 29 years, but the Kansas City Royals, uh, they were two games down, uh, in the World Series in 1985. And then I was born and then they went four and one, which was a great sign. And then it was all downhill for the last 29 years. Which is what my mom, that was my mom's favorite joke. She'd always be like, you and the Royals downhill ever since. But she can't make that joke now because tomorrow, and I will be there, the Royals will be playing, uh, the Orioles in the ALCS game, which is the series before the World Series, which is crazy. It's mind blowing. I understand it. It's just like sports, uh, weirdness, which normally I wouldn't care about, but I don't know, man.

• 1:00:23Nilay Patel?

  You should read Chris's piece in the thing.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's a weird thing. Like I.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. When Neill says you should read, he's not reading, taking this to you, the listener.

• 1:00:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you, the listener, the person out there. You should go to SB. What's a, what's a headline of your piece?

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  Um, I think it's like Born in Royal Blue or something.

• 1:00:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  I mean, Chris Plant, SB Nation Royals.

• 1:00:42Nilay Patel?

  It's the one thing.

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  That's Google. I'm sure we'll.

• 1:00:44Nilay Patel?

  One of the coolest things about working at our company, and by the way, people think that because Vox Media exists, the Polygon and, and The Verge are like in cahoots, which is hilarious.

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  Crazy town.

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  Like cahoots?

• 1:00:53Nilay Patel?

  Cahoots. Like we literally, like we physically moved Chris away from Polygon and into The Verge. Like, uh, it's funny. We, we talk, we're all friends. We're all like in a chat system together, uh, but we don't coordinate coverage at all. Uh, but one of the cool things about it, it's true. We don't.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  Guys, we don't coordinate coverage at all.

• 1:01:13Nilay Patel?

  It's funny that I have to say this.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  BlackBerry passport on everything.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  There's, there's just if, if you want to watch the live stream, if you're listening to this.

• 1:01:20Nilay Patel?

  Is that.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  There's a wonderful Easter egg in the background.

• 1:01:23Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 1:01:26Nilay Patel?

  Rondo, come on, man. I see you, buddy. I know what you're doing. Uh, anyway, the cool thing is that we all get to go.

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wrote, I wrote for a rack.

• 1:01:35Nilay Patel?

  You get to go slop on everybody else's sites, which is great.

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  My goal is to hit all, I want to do the cycle. That's my, that's my dream.

• 1:01:40Nilay Patel?

  You gotta come up, I mean, we could do it.

• 1:01:42Speaker 02

  I'm in, I'm in Austin for two weeks. I can definitely find something from Eater there.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  And then, then all that's left is curb and box.com. That's big fish.

• 1:01:50Nilay Patel?

  No, I, I'm telling you, man, you know, I, I have some insight into box.com. You can literally explain anything, just anything you want over there.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  You should box explain that.

• 1:01:59Nilay Patel?

  How does Ikea work?

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  Why have people made video games not fun for me anymore?

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  When does the new Ikea furniture with the fancy new connection system come out?

• 1:02:09Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. That's a big deal.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:11Nilay Patel?

  We should do a time lapse of somebody. It is.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:14Nilay Patel?

  It's a big thing for this audience.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  I don't trust it. I don't think it's gonna work.

• 1:02:19Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I don't know, man. Here's what I want to know. Like, will this set off an arms race with CB2?

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  CB2.

• 1:02:25Nilay Patel?

  CB2 is like.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  CB2 is too expensive.

• 1:02:27Nilay Patel?

  CB2 is expensive Ikea. I, literally, here's what I think. I think the people who design Ikea furniture, they're like, they get rejected by Ikea and they go to CB2 and CB2 is like, yes. And they market up 20%, make you feel better about yourself. It's the whole, it's a strategy. Nope. What, what does that face?

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  I would say like West Elm is like the nice stuff. Like West Elm room and board, those are nice.

• 1:02:48Nilay Patel?

  Those are nice, yeah.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  CB2 is just like Ikea 2.

• 1:02:50Nilay Patel?

  That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. It's marked up Ikea. It's marked up rejected Ikea.

• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:54Nilay Patel?

  And it's a brilliant strategy. Also, everything is orange for some reason.

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, orange or like a charcoal plus a color charcoal red.

• 1:03:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  Charcoal blue.

• 1:03:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, they got it. They, they understand what they're doing.

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  They can.

• 1:03:05Nilay Patel?

  They're leveled up Ikea. That's, they've been grinding.

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  Now that it's in video game terms, I finally get it.

• 1:03:10Nilay Patel?

  They've been grinding for a few years.

• 1:03:12Speaker 02

  They eat the mushroom and now you get it, you dumbo.

• 1:03:15Nilay Patel?

  We are so done here. That was our show. It started on a lighthearted note. It got really weird and deep and then we burned CB2 for a while. And I think that if you are a regular Vergecast listener, that is exactly what you expect. So I'm glad you were here. Chris? I don't know if you're gonna be back.

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:03:32Nilay Patel?

  If you have notes next time, maybe we'll let you read them. It was good having you here. Dieter, as always.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 1:03:37Nilay Patel?

  Uh, one more week with the passport.

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:03:39Nilay Patel?

  And that's it. Uh, you can leave a comment in the post. Uh, you can talk to us on Twitter politely. Uh, and, you know, there's, look, it's the internet. Just figure it out. We'll talk to you later. Goodbye.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  Get a dog.