Super Mario Run, Uber's self-driving cars, and Apple's new TV app

Everyone was in New York this week, so we had a jam-packed studio with Nilay, Dieter, and Paul, along with culture reporter Megan Farokhmanesh and transportation reporter Andrew Hawkins. Megan joins us on Vergecast for the first time to talk about what dominates the site this week: Nintendo’s new mobile game Super Mario Run, and the new Star Wars film Rogue One (no spoilers). Meanwhile, Andrew enlightens us on what is going on in the world of self-driving cars: Uber’s autonomous cars in San Francisco, and Google’s new car company Waymo. There’s a lot more along with that so hit play and drive. 02:21 - Super Mario Run 14:41 - Rogue One 23:16 - Uber / Google self-driving car news with Andrew Hawkins 45:39 - Lightning round (kinda) starts here 45: 48 - Apple TV app 54:48 - AirPods 58:17 - Paul’s weekly segment “Speaking of Things You Can’t Buy” 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?

  Hey everybody, we're gonna start the Vergecast for real in just a second, but I want to tell you something really exciting. The Vergecast is gonna be back on video, live at CES on Twitter. January 4th, 5th, and 6th. We live for 90 minutes every day from CES. Big video production on Twitter. It'll be at the top of the stream, just like NFL games. It's gonna be crazy. And we're gonna do a 90-minute live show with all the latest gadgets from CES, all the executives you can convince to come on the show and get yelled at for not doing good enough gadgets, but we'll convince them anyway. And a bunch of friends from the Verge team, like Paul and Ashley and everybody else, Lauren Good, Casey Newton. It's gonna be really fun. Vergecast live video on Twitter, January 4th, 5th, and 6th. It's gonna be super exciting. Stay tuned.

• 0:46Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Verge.com. This episode of the Vergecast is brought to you by a vodka company that I invented. It's called Scissor Vodka. It lets you cut through the night. I don't know why I always find it funny. It just keeps going and going. It's not funny at all anymore. I was at a party last night. I was actually at Josh Foskey's outline launch party last night. It was a good party. And somebody came up and just had a five-minute conversation with me about scissor vodka. And I was like, "It's not real." And they're like, "What do you need to make it real?" And I was like, "Well, I need cash and a letter from Francis Ford Coppola." Both of which are much harder to acquire than I thought. It's certain quantities of vodka. That's actually the simplest problem. I can go buy vodka right now. Anywhere in America, you can just go acquire vodka. Anyway, Paul Miller's here. Hi, Paul.

• 1:31Nilay Patel?

  Hello. Dieter Bohn is here in person. Hello, yes. Which is very fun. And Megan Frickmanish is joining us.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Yes, hey, you said my name right.

• 1:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I try to do that for people.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  Good, perfect.

• 1:40Nilay Patel?

  Because everyone pronounces my name wrong. Also, Paul can't pronounce his own name. That's true. So that's... It happened this week at coffee. Paul?

• 1:50Nilay Patel?

  Like, yes, from Hall of Notes. Anyway, Megan's here. If you don't know, Megan recently joined the Verge team. How long has it been?

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Almost two months.

• 1:58Nilay Patel?

  Almost two months, so we haven't driven her away screaming yet, but she joined us from Polygon team. So you were at Polygon for a long time.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, about four years.

• 2:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you're the deputy managing editor of Polygon.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Uh huh. Yeah, I came on as a junior reporter on weekends and clawed my way to the top, so.

• 2:12Nilay Patel?

  Good. So look forward to more corporate intrigue of the Verge team for Megan.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  At the Verge team.

• 2:18Nilay Patel?

  But anyway, Megan's on our culture side, so we're gonna talk about a bunch of culture stuff. That'd be really fun if we started with actually the biggest news of the day, if not the week. It's been kind of a slow week of news, but Super Mario Run is out for the iPhone. First time Nintendo's been on a mobile platform. Game, I played it for two minutes. I have to say Nintendo's UI design, just, they're so committed to it being garbage. And then you play the game and it's fine, but like those opening screens, it's like, you don't know what you're doing.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  It's, yeah, it's hard to get used to and it's like you're trying to move and it won't let you do anything. Like, mine was kind of like slow and not buggy, but it just, it, the way I've been describing it to people is like, the experience is like capital F, fine.

• 2:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we'll get into it. Talk about it, because there's a bunch, it requires always on internet connection. There's a bunch of stuff. Talk about it a little bit.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so basically, the way I've also been describing it, it's kind of like a simplified, broken down version of like the old school like Mario games, like it's a side schooler, but it's an auto runner. So Mario just kind of goes and your goal is to make him jump and collect coins. That's kind of it. There are three different modes, so that's like world tour mode where you're just trying to collect coins. You can replay levels and do different stuff. There's a competitive mode, but it's more like you're racing against friends' times and that's it. And then there's like a mode where you're building out a kingdom and that's the whole experience.

• 3:31Nilay Patel?

  When you build out the kingdom, is it like, is that a endless runner too? And you get to decorate a little house with stuff? Or is it that you build levels or what's the?

• 3:38Speaker 01

  So think of like, well, okay, did you ever play old Mario games? Like, okay, so imagine like, you know the Super Mario World map? I'm drawing you a visual, a beautiful visual picture.

• 3:47Nilay Patel?

  It's a radio show.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  It's a radio.

• 3:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  I'm gesturing wildly.

• 3:50Nilay Patel?

  Oh, the, yeah, the Super Mario map. Megan just mined a square, basically is what.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm creating a square with my fingers. So essentially, you just place down little pieces like it's you can like buy like a mushroom house and it's where Luigi lives and that's how you unlock Luigi.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  So it's.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  Luigi live in a mushroom house? Is that canon?

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Everybody actually lives in a mushroom house, I think, except for the princess who lives in an actual castle.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:13Nilay Patel?

  It would be really weird to live in a world in which many of the inhabitants are the same thing as many of the structures.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  It's really confusing.

• 4:21Nilay Patel?

  So if, right, like there are mushroom people running around.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  Goomba's mushrooms?

• 4:26Speaker 01

  I don't think we know what they are.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  No.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  Evil mushroom?

• 4:28Speaker 01

  They're like, like inbred mushrooms or something.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  So wow.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  I made that up, please don't.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Is Luigi's haunted mansion in the Mushroom Kingdom or outside of it? Because if all the houses are mushrooms, what's the haunted mansion? Because that's like a proper mansion.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Well, I didn't play that game because it was garbage.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Home run out of the gate from Megan on the first cast.

• 4:48Speaker 03

  Several speedrunners would disagree.

• 4:51Nilay Patel?

  Is that the one where he had like a backpack that shot water?

• 4:54Speaker 02

  No.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  It's like a vacuum.

• 4:55Nilay Patel?

  It's a vacuum.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  It's like a low rent Ghostbuster for a short time. Like, I was like, what can we do with our, what do we do with Luigi? I know Ghostbusters and that was.

• 5:04Nilay Patel?

  There's one where he shoots water out of.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  No, that's.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  That's Super Mario Sunshine.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Which underrated game, really good. And you can't play as Luigi.

• 5:11Nilay Patel?

  I've not played all the Mario games.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 5:13Nilay Patel?

  I'm just pointing out there. I beat Super Mario 3.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  I tapped out around Wii U. This is like, there's like, would have been a couple and like I played a little bit and I'm like, you know.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  This is a good question. Would you think of Super Mario Run as part of the canonical list of Mario platforms?

• 5:30Nilay Patel?

  It was like Mario Tennis, just some shit he does on the side.

• 5:33Speaker 03

  Is it Mario Tennis?

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Mario Tennis is great. I wish it were Mario Tennis.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:37Speaker 03

  It's a great hobby.

• 5:38Nilay Patel?

  But it's a shitty does on the side. It's not like a Mario game.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Eh, it's, it's a Mario game for a casual audience, right? So it's, it's confusing because like, like Neil said earlier, it's like you can't play the game without an internet connection, which means you can't play it on the subway. You can't play it on an airplane. And so it's like, who is this game for? Like it's for people who are going to sit down on their couch and play a Mario game. And that's weird, right? Because like you already have a handheld device, but if you're a casual player who maybe doesn't own $150 3DS or whatever, this is for you. This is for you to like dip into the franchise. They're very clearly trying to reach out to an audience they don't already have.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Can I play this game whilst watching reality TV?

• 6:12Nilay Patel?

  No, because you have to look at it.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  You don't just like-

• 6:14Nilay Patel?

  You don't have to think about it.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  But I could, I could play it while I was watching like Chopped, where you don't really need to watch. It's just sort of on.

• 6:19Nilay Patel?

  I think, I think what you're doing, and I know you will, I think you're, you're saying, can this replace 3?

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's all that matters to me.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  So then-

• 6:27Nilay Patel?

  I know what you're doing.

• 6:28Speaker 03

  Great strength of 3s and why it is one of the, probably the best mobile game ever, is that the game is always paused.

• 6:35Nilay Patel?

  Right, right.

• 6:36Speaker 03

  Until you take an action. So if there's any interruption, you can look up.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  This game, in my experience, I die a lot. So I'm often dead, so then I can watch TV.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  Are there, is it, are there long reload times when you die, or is it pretty fast?

• 6:52Speaker 01

  No, it's, it's pretty fast. Basically, you die and you become like a little bubble and you float away. And to get Mario back, you have to tap on the bubble. Um, throughout the levels, though, there are these red blocks that are essentially like pause buttons. So whenever Mario hits semi, stops. Really, you're supposed to use them to figure out like, do I want to go to this path? Or this path, or do I want to kill this enemy? The way I've been pausing is by like literally turning off my phone, like clicking the button to shut the screen down. And then I just like put it down to type something and go back to it.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  Right. Do the levels have like, there's like 24 levels in the, in the world tour, is my understanding.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  That sounds about right.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  That sounds right. I haven't actually beaten it yet.

• 7:22Nilay Patel?

  Really, the facts of this game are like non-important, right?

• 7:26Speaker 03

  Okay, fine. They're super replayable.

• 7:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  They're super replayable.

• 7:29Nilay Patel?

  It's like, it's a casual game that's Mario. It's the first time Nintendo's been on this platform. My question is, is it a good game? Like, do you think it's a good game?

• 7:36Speaker 01

  I don't think I'm far enough in to, to give like a definitive answer. Um, I think it's meant, you know, it's not a super long game. Like Andrew Webster said, he beat like World Tour in like, what, two hours?

• 7:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  So you're meant to replay it. I can't say there being a ton of replay value, to be honest. It's not, it's honestly not a game that I'm going to spend a lot of time with.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  The, the internet connection, so far as I understand, does nothing but says like, pulls down like the ghosts when you're playing that mode? And tells Nintendo that you are not a pirate.

• 8:02Speaker 03

  It's D R.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, so the-

• 8:05Nilay Patel?

  But it's D R M for an already D R M'd App Store that's already locked down. Who are they worried about?

• 8:11Speaker 03

  There's a lot of App Store piracy. Obviously, it's a terrible idea.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  It's not as bad on iOS as it is on Android. On Android, it's like bonkers.

• 8:18Speaker 03

  Right. So I think there's a lot of, for one, I don't think I'm going to beat this game in two hours. Cause I played it for about 45 minutes today, and I was not progressing very well.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Did you read the tips?

• 8:28Speaker 03

  I read your tips article.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  That's on you then, not on us. Firth.com served you well.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  Well-served and just bad.

• 8:37Nilay Patel?

  Score another for Megan on her first Firthcast appearance. It's all just happening.

• 8:40Speaker 03

  But then, after you beat a level, you still kinda wanna go back to it to try to get all five purple coins. And then you might do some of the, I don't know if I'm gonna ever be good enough to really wanna go do a lot of toad rallies. But I'm earning all these tickets to go on the toad rallies. I really liked it because I felt, I felt it was like the right amount of challenge. It had a lot of concepts.

• 8:59Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I think, and Apple's pushing the hell out of it. It's gonna be a success.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:03Nilay Patel?

  Because it's, for Nintendo's first game, it's Mario. And Apple is just, I mean, you can't, like, you open notes and Apple's like, have you heard, we've made a note for you. It's called Buy Supermarket.

• 9:14Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they're just promoting the hell out of it. I'm sure there'll be media blitz. Miyamoto is like an out of the world.

• 9:19Speaker 03

  Miyamoto's been everywhere.

• 9:20Nilay Patel?

  He's on Fallon, like, he's, he looked amazing on Fallon. He's happy in the audience, playing the guitar. It was great. Love that guy. Yeah, he did an interview with Andrew Webster, which you should go read on the site. Great photos. Anyway, my question is kinda like bigger. Like, this is the year the console market changed in a really substantial way, right? Sony and Microsoft, instead of doing new consoles, they did like upgraded consoles or kinda taking that PC vibe, right? The graphics are better, but they're backward compatible. Nintendo's doing the Switch, which is really weird and interesting, and we still don't know if it runs an operating system. Just random open questions about that in this world. And then there's this game, and it's, you know, it's the first time Nintendo's IP has been on a platform like this. Does Nintendo get it? Are they doing the right things?

• 9:59Nilay Patel?

  Or are they just sort of like off in the world pretending? Because their biggest knock on them was, why are you making bad, underpowered consoles when all these things exist? Like, you could just be on phones and make real games for phones. And their answer is, but what if we put controllers on what appears to be a medium-performing Android tablet and let you walk around with it? And also here's this like free-to-play game.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  I mean, I think Nintendo's been doing a, let's throw everything at the wall and see what sticks method for a long time. That's the most, I don't know, succinct way that I sum up Nintendo's strategy at any time. Just like, ah, we'll see if this works. Okay, try this now. Because like, nothing, it's always just weird. Like, they don't do anything like the other console makers.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  GameCube had tiny discs.

• 10:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  The Wii had motion controls.

• 10:38Nilay Patel?

  GameCube also had a handle.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's important.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  I kinda like that handle, though.

• 10:40Speaker 03

  The Wii had motion controls. The 3DS makes you dizzy. And the Wii U had this wireless tablet.

• 10:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:49Speaker 03

  That turned out, that was a thing that they threw against the wall and it did not stick.

• 10:54Nilay Patel?

  Ooh.

• 10:54Speaker 03

  That was a bad, bad one.

• 10:55Nilay Patel?

  And now they're like, what if we take that concept and put the whole console in it?

• 10:58Speaker 03

  Well, did you see this thing that the, the Switch was the most searched for console? Like it was, people are very interested. I don't know if that means sales or success, but people are very intrigued by the Switch, I think.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Because I don't think people know what it is.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  That's also.

• 11:14Nilay Patel?

  It is very confusing.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  There's a patent for sticking the tablet part of the Switch into a VR headset.

• 11:20Speaker 03

  Because it's a 6.2 inch screen, but it's 720p.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Don't do that.

• 11:27Nilay Patel?

  And then Chris Grant at Polygon today wrote a great thing. It's like the NES Classic Edition, they can't ship enough of them. And that is not high technology, right? That's like, they basically built an emulator the way the pirates build an emulator and blessed it with some wrongs.

• 11:42Speaker 03

  They're selling a raspberry pi.

• 11:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And it's like, you can, I can get a raspberry pi right now. How many raspberry pi's do you need? I can, do you need 10 million of them? Like they're available to you. And they're like holding, so you, you think they're just sort of like unintentionally blowing it all the time?

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Uh, I wouldn't say that. I guess I'm just interested to see what the staying power of this is because like they did an app earlier. Was it last year? I guess like they did the Metomo app, right? And that, everybody was super interested. Like my Twitter is blowing up with people talking about that. And then a month later, nobody was talking about it. Nobody uses it anymore. Nobody plays it. They're still updating it, but, but it's like, you look at something like Pokemon Go where like, that's still pretty popular. It's not as crazy as it was, but like Nintendo needs to figure out a way to like capture what Pokemon Go did. I just don't know if they have it with this Mario app because I just can't imagine this being fun past like a month unless they continue to update it.

• 12:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, with your always on internet connection.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 12:31Nilay Patel?

  It asked me if it could send me notifications, which is just the rudest thing any app can do.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  I did that so hard, I actually hurt my finger.

• 12:39Nilay Patel?

  Third point for makeup.

• 12:40Speaker 03

  If they, if they come out with another, yeah, cause there's four, there's four levels per world or whatever, and then there's six worlds. I don't know if those are the right words, but that

• 12:50Speaker 01

  I'm falling, I'm falling.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  If they did another pack of six and tried to charge $10 again, would people, that seems to look really greedy.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  It seems like a lot for like what the game offers, like $10 for a one-time fee and no in-app purchases. Like, okay, I can deal with that, but to continue to add at that price seems like a lot.

• 13:06Nilay Patel?

  It's just gonna be everywhere. We're gonna hear so much. Like, that's the, you can just tell when something is gonna be around.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:12Nilay Patel?

  But it's also funny because Nintendo put out a thing that you can't reasonably give as a gift. You can't, the people tried, like, are you gonna hand somebody an Apple Store gift card with Mario on it?

• 13:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, just go to 7-Eleven and then get a Sharpie.

• 13:24Nilay Patel?

  Like, you know Apple's putting out the Apple Store gift cards with Mario. Like, those are gonna be.

• 13:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I bet you can, I bet you a dollar, I bet you $9.99, you can buy Super Mario Run in Starbucks this.

• 13:37Nilay Patel?

  Well, you can buy a card.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:39Nilay Patel?

  And you have to give someone the card, and you have to say.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  You're putting.

• 13:42Nilay Patel?

  Use this QR code.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  That's too much. Like, you just like steal somebody's phone while they're sleeping, use like their thumbprint, and then.

• 13:46Nilay Patel?

  You are a weird gift giver.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  I think that's actually really sweet. Like, hey, while you're asleep, I got you this game.

• 13:52Nilay Patel?

  Use your thumb while you were sleeping.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  I don't want to talk about it.

• 13:54Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh. That's, whoa.

• 13:57Nilay Patel?

  There's your first flaw in Touch ID. You can use other people's thumb while they're sleeping. I knocked you out and used your thumb, but it was for a good reason, because I love you.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. What if Apple comes out with the next version of Touch ID that like makes sure that the thumb isn't like dead?

• 14:11Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's already a thing. We've, we've done whole videos. Russell Brandon did a whole video where you can hack Touch ID with a fake thumb.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I'm saying, what if Apple ups its game, starts fighting this fight? Still not gonna beat the sleep.

• 14:23Nilay Patel?

  Weirdest part of the iPhone presentation ever. So Touch ID is great.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  But if someone walks up to you, cuts off your hand, they've got everything.

• 14:33Nilay Patel?

  That's terrible. Speaking of dead people, let's move on.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 14:38Nilay Patel?

  Well, I'm gonna, it's gonna work.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 14:39Nilay Patel?

  I think.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 14:40Nilay Patel?

  Probably not.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 14:41Nilay Patel?

  Rogue One, by the time people listen to this, Rogue One will be out. That's a big deal.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Was there a spoiler in that transition?

• 14:48Nilay Patel?

  Well, a lot of people die in Rogue One.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Uh, this is the part of the segment where I crawl under the table and just like start.

• 14:53Nilay Patel?

  Spoiler free.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  I haven't seen it.

• 14:54Nilay Patel?

  No one's seen it.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  I haven't seen it.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  I do know some things.

• 14:58Nilay Patel?

  You know some things.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Do that to yourself.

• 15:00Nilay Patel?

  Well, I've read, I've read our spoiler free review.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:03Nilay Patel?

  Which is basically Brian Bishop writing a, like a rumination on death.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  It was crazy. His review was like, I'm not gonna tell you anything about it. And then he held to that. I still felt like I read something about Star Wars.

• 15:14Nilay Patel?

  That's what you want. Uh, I mean, you're on our culture team. There's a lot of Rogue One stuff happening on the culture side of this house. What are, what are your big thoughts before you've seen it? Is, is, are they gonna be able to turn Star Wars into this expanded?

• 15:26Speaker 02

  Do you want the Marvel Universe but for Star Wars? Is that what you want?

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Okay, I have a confession to make.

• 15:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Star Wars.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  I don't hate, I don't hate Star Wars.

• 15:34Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  I like the original Star Wars.

• 15:36Nilay Patel?

  The original three or the, just the one?

• 15:38Speaker 01

  I mean, the, the original three. They're pretty solid. Uh, you know, obviously we don't talk about the prequels. I think the new one is good. I liked it for what it was, but I'm not like jumping out of my skin to go see the new one.

• 15:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  See it at some point. Probably should have mentioned this before you hired me.

• 15:53Nilay Patel?

  No, I don't have the Star Wars love that other people have. I also don't have the Star Trek love that other people have on the Verge team, and that shit will get me fired. Like, they will find a way to fire me, which is terrible.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  See, I don't really do Star Trek either. Um, I'm weirdly into like all the Marvel superhero movies, but like not so much.

• 16:06Nilay Patel?

  So you're the one?

• 16:07Speaker 01

  I am the one person.

• 16:08Nilay Patel?

  Cause the rest of the culture squad is like, Marvel, we gotta stop it.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  No, I'm just like, give me more.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  I was really afraid that you were gonna say Stargate and then.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Hold up. The original Stargate movie is actually very good.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Yes, it's so good.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  James Spader, man.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then the, you know, they had that weird TV show that was okay, and then it kept going.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  And then we just don't talk about it anymore.

• 16:29Nilay Patel?

  Things you want to talk about, prequels, anything after the first Star Wars movie.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Keeping a giant list, just for future use for everybody.

• 16:35Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, what do you think? I mean, you're, you're gonna go see it.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I haven't pre-ordered tickets, so I'll, I'll be able to see it in, in like April, probably. By the time it's available. Uh, no, I'm, I don't have a hankering for Rogue One or a Marvel-style super-universe of Star Wars stuff, but like, it's okay to like, have a Star Wars movie every now and then. And some of them are gonna be kinda okay, but there's enough there, because they, what they did is they took the whole extended Star Wars universe that had been built up, and they threw it out. None of that's canon anymore, but they've got like 30 years of lots of people writing lots of crazy Star Wars stories.

• 17:13Nilay Patel?

  To pull from.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  And they could just pull from that whenever they want.

• 17:16Nilay Patel?

  Which is 100% what Marvel does with the comic books.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  Right, but Marvel is like, you know, putting it together in like a really tightly interconnected way. What I'm hoping never happens is like, the sort of ultra-insane, like, you need to keep track of like 500 different characters to like, follow the movie, right? Like, I hope that never happens.

• 17:36Nilay Patel?

  Where there's just random scenes in the Avengers movie where Thor's like, I'm gonna hold this ice cube for five seconds, but you don't know why.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, right, like that, they can't do that, and they also, I also hope that they will have different visual aesthetics for the movies, because like, except for Guardians of the Galaxy, every single Marvel movie basically looks and feels the same. Did you see the Every Frame a Painting YouTube video about like, the Marvel soundtrack, and how like, you can't name a Marvel song, because they're all like, meh?

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  That's a little bit what I'm afraid of, is like, by grinding them out, they're gonna create basically an engine to just jam out Star Wars movies every year, and when you do that, that, that gets ground into a fine paste, and like, there's not like a uniqueness to any of the movies. It's like the Harry Potter movies, there's only, there's only one great Harry Potter movie.

• 18:21Nilay Patel?

  The third one.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Which one?

• 18:22Speaker 02

  The third one.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the only great Harry Potter movie. The rest of them are fine.

• 18:28Nilay Patel?

  Who was the director?

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Alfonso Cuarón.

• 18:30Nilay Patel?

  That's what I was thinking about that. He had this like crazy visual style too.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. And like, that's what Star Wars needs is they need to like, bring in new directors, they need to bring in women directors, they need to like, just keep on doing, it needs to be a platform for people to try new visual styles and like, make new kinds of visual effects. I've heard that the visual effects in this movie are like incredibly smart and interesting.

• 18:51Nilay Patel?

  There you go.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Good.

• 18:51Nilay Patel?

  So here's, here's the real question.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  Computer way.

• 18:53Nilay Patel?

  So you got the three that are canon, that Lucas has already screwed with once. How long until they remake those?

• 19:00Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 19:01Nilay Patel?

  Right? Cause you can't keep going and going and going and still have these three movies at the core of your universe that were made in the seventies.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Okay, I think respectfully, all those actors need to die first.

• 19:10Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  I just, how can you?

• 19:12Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait, wait. I think.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 19:13Nilay Patel?

  You said respectfully, but I heard like, what I'm about to say is disrespectful. Which is how most people use the word respectfully. You mean out of respect for those actors.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  I mean, how can you, how can you?

• 19:24Speaker 03

  Maybe she didn't mean that.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  How can you like redo that story if you have like, Mark Hamill is still alive and is also still in the new, that's weird, right? Like, I know they're doing like prequels and we're gonna get like a young Han Solo and a young Lino Calrissian, but it's not the same as like completely rebooting that, that franchise.

• 19:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But it's gonna happen.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  It's, oh, it's for sure gonna happen.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  It's gonna happen, but it'll happen after like, they've run its course, they've grown it to a fine powder, and it's like, they've stopped making for five years. And then they'll be like, well, we gotta start it again. We don't have other ideas.

• 19:54Speaker 03

  No.

• 19:55Nilay Patel?

  See, it's just.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  No.

• 19:56Nilay Patel?

  I believe that you fall firmly in one of these two camps.

• 19:58Speaker 03

  I think you can do that when they're based on books, because I think you have a book, like, I think we could have another Lord of the Rings telling. I'm fine with that. I want a BBC series that goes one episode per chapter through the Harry Potter books.

• 20:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. By the way, you just gave Netflix like, a complete wonderful idea.

• 20:15Speaker 03

  Oh, I, I literally spoke to Sony about this when Sony had the rights.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  You like sent them an email?

• 20:21Speaker 03

  Uh, it was at a conference I talked, yeah.

• 20:23Nilay Patel?

  This is like, this is.

• 20:24Speaker 03

  Very serious about this, but, but Star Wars, those are the, those movies are the movies.

• 20:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  How do you reboot a movie?

• 20:32Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna be here in 10 years. We're gonna be talking about the reboot of Star Wars, Episode IV.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  Everybody loved the reboot of Psycho.

• 20:38Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I'll say. These threads are connected in my mind. We're talking about two core pieces of storytelling that are both decades old.

• 20:48Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 20:48Nilay Patel?

  Where's the, is there ever gonna be new stuff again? Or are we just sort of like, it's too hard to find things? We're too saturated with too much Netflix and...

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Everything is a remix, Neelai. What's gonna happen is that Mario is going to land on Tatooine.

• 21:00Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  He's gonna go jump in over the Sarlacc pit.

• 21:03Nilay Patel?

  That is some like real 80's crossover stuff.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  I would play that, yeah.

• 21:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:07Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's like a special edition of Super Mario.

• 21:09Speaker 02

  I mean, they did make Angry Birds Star Wars.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  There's hope then.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:12Nilay Patel?

  A new hope. And when I kill myself.

• 21:17Nilay Patel?

  Alright, I'm gonna read an ad, then we're gonna have Andy come in, and then we're gonna talk about self-driving cars.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  He's got a great idea. Movie with pay to unlock special skins for the characters. So you can watch the movie the regular way, but then if you want like the special...

• 21:31Nilay Patel?

  Like you want the machinima Mario retelling of Star Wars. You push the button.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Movie, but you uses the Kinect or the Playstation camera to map your face and then put your face into the movie and you are one of the characters.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  That's really special.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  Just like the NBA's TPK game, right?

• 21:48Nilay Patel?

  Future story.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  I got a children's book once that had my picture in it, because it had my name.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  Did you treasure it?

• 21:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:53Nilay Patel?

  Do you still have it?

• 21:54Speaker 03

  See?

• 21:54Speaker 02

  No.

• 21:55Speaker 03

  There's so much money in that.

• 21:58Nilay Patel?

  This episode of The Vergecast brought to you by MasterClass. Aaron Sorkin is teaching a masterclass on screenwriting. Aaron Sorkin's masterclass contains 35 lessons over six hours of video and interactive assignments. The course helps students learn about the craft of screenwriting and write their own screenplays. Aaron covers his rules of storytelling, dialogue, character development, and what makes a script actually sell. Aaron analyzes scenes from The West Wing. Can't wait till that's rebooted. He also leads a group of students in rewriting the opening of Episode 501 of The West Wing, which is a true classic. Anyway, when you purchase a masterclass, you own it. You get lifetime access to all the course content plus access to community events and student groups where you can collaborate and share your ideas with classmates. Classes are on demand, so you take them whenever you want at your own pace, and you can re-watch as many times as you like on

• 22:38Nilay Patel?

  any device for life. So, for an exclusive clip of Aaron discussing how he writes dialogue, go to masterclass.com/theverge. That's masterclass.com/theverge.

• 22:50Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so we're back. Now it's like a lot of people in the room on the Vergecast.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is nuts.

• 22:56Nilay Patel?

  I like having Dieter here in person, that's good.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:58Nilay Patel?

  Paul is still here, Megan's still here, May and...

• 23:01Speaker 02

  You didn't say that it was good that we are here.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're just here.

• 23:03Nilay Patel?

  But you, I see you guys in New York all the time.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  You just take us for granted.

• 23:06Nilay Patel?

  I take you for granted, Paul. That's a real thing. But, another person I take for granted because he's in New York. That's terrible. That's awful. Worst introduction ever. Andy Hawkins is here, senior transportation reporter. Ton of self-driving news over the past week or two.

• 23:19Speaker 04

  So much.

• 23:20Nilay Patel?

  Like Uber put out a self-driving car and immediately started running red lights.

• 23:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:24Nilay Patel?

  Uh, the state of California told them to shut it. I mean, just...

• 23:26Speaker 04

  So Uber.

• 23:27Nilay Patel?

  Just go, go through all the headlines and like, let's get into what's, what's going on with self-driving.

• 23:30Speaker 04

  So, what happened was, God, I'm mixing, I'll probably mix up my days here a little bit, but I think it was on Tuesday, Google announced that it was spinning off its self-driving car unit out of the X moonshot division into its own company called Waymo.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  Let's just stop right there.

• 23:45Nilay Patel?

  It's a really bad name.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  Waymo?

• 23:47Speaker 04

  Waymo.

• 23:48Nilay Patel?

  That's a punishment. That's like Astro Teller.

• 23:50Speaker 04

  Waymo Problems.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  Right?

• 23:52Nilay Patel?

  Well, and that was Andy on the Vergecast, everybody.

• 23:55Speaker 04

  Just grabbed him right at the door.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  No, it's designed for that. It's like...

• 23:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, that's Astro Teller, like punishing his children for like leaving home.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:03Nilay Patel?

  It's like, we're gonna let you graduate, but you have to change your name to Waymo. Right? It's awful.

• 24:07Speaker 04

  But it's not like Google was the most like...

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:10Speaker 04

  Gravitas.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Waymo is like...

• 24:12Speaker 04

  Inducing name.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  A made-for-TV like kids' toy, right? It's like, Waymo, it bounces on the ground. You can stick your hand in it. Throw it at your sister.

• 24:22Nilay Patel?

  Worst toy.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  It's a bouncing glove.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  It's the Waymo. Anyway, so Waymo spins out. So...

• 24:31Speaker 04

  So Waymo spins out.

• 24:32Nilay Patel?

  They're under the Alphabet umbrella.

• 24:34Speaker 04

  They're under the Alphabet umbrella, but they're their own separate company.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  But they're still, they're still within Alphabet.

• 24:39Speaker 04

  They're still within Alphabet.

• 24:39Nilay Patel?

  So now Alphabet owns Google, Nest, Waymo, and Otherbets, right?

• 24:45Speaker 02

  Well, it's called X.

• 24:46Nilay Patel?

  X.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  And there's...

• 24:48Nilay Patel?

  No, Otherbet, and...

• 24:49Speaker 02

  There's also whatever fiber is called now.

• 24:51Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  And I wanna say that there's a life company, but they like, they, when they announce, oh yeah, the, there's like the life sciences company. Like, what's it called? Oh, you know, the life sciences company. Yes, okay. Starts with a C.

• 25:04Speaker 04

  Calico?

• 25:05Nilay Patel?

  Calico.

• 25:05Speaker 04

  I don't know if that's the name of the company, that's one of their projects.

• 25:08Nilay Patel?

  Anyway.

• 25:08Speaker 04

  It's a better name.

• 25:09Nilay Patel?

  So Waymo is out in the world.

• 25:10Speaker 04

  Waymo's out in the world.

• 25:11Nilay Patel?

  And a big change with Waymo.

• 25:12Speaker 04

  Big change is that it seems like as if, and they didn't say, they didn't come right out and say this, but based on some of the reporting that that's been done, it's, it's been suggested that they're not going to be focused on making their own cars anymore. So that doesn't, that means no, we're not going to see hundreds or thousands of these tiny little bubble shaped Google prototype cars out on the roads. They're, they're going to focus, shift the focus more into software, self-driving software that can be plugged into third-party vehicles essentially and make them drive themselves.

• 25:38Nilay Patel?

  And this, by the way, Google's doing this for real, but the big rumors aren't Apple, or that Apple's ambition to build a car also hit a wall of some kind, and they're also going to make software for other people's cars.

• 25:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, correct.

• 25:49Nilay Patel?

  So the tech companies trying to make vehicles seems to have hit a fairly serious red line.

• 25:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, and, and Tamara Warren wrote a really smart piece about this that was essentially the, the message was that your self-driving car is not going to be built by Google or Apple. It may be powered by Google or Apple, but it won't be built by them because that's still a very complex money, you know, sucking kind of process that really the car companies have become experts in over decades of experience.

• 26:16Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 26:16Speaker 04

  And the tech and tech companies still just really don't seem to have a grasp on.

• 26:20Nilay Patel?

  And even a company like Tesla, which is doing well compared to nothing.

• 26:27Speaker 04

  If we're, if we're looking at a range between.

• 26:29Nilay Patel?

  Nothing and shipping some cars, they're doing great.

• 26:32Speaker 04

  They are.

• 26:32Nilay Patel?

  But at scale, they're having.

• 26:34Speaker 04

  A lot of problems, a lot of shipping delays, production problems, a lot of questions surrounding the Model 3 and whether it's going to be able to come out in time.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  What's so interesting to me about both Google and Apple, like, I mean, we could say that they've failed, even though they never actually like officially were out there.

• 26:49Nilay Patel?

  Well, Google showed off a car.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they never, they always said it was a prototype. They never implied that that car was going to be the thing that they were going to ship.

• 26:55Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they took, they took all kinds of people for rides.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  What's fascinating is we've seen these two companies try and fail at a thing before, which we could maybe talk about later. They, it was called television and they got stymied by institutional powers in the industry. In this case, they've tried and failed. Just because like making a car turns out to be really freaking hard.

• 27:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  I guess it's really, it's funny that they both like, there's these two things that Silicon Valley can't just like snap its fingers and do.

• 27:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  And it's cars and TV, like the two most American things there are.

• 27:27Nilay Patel?

  And the future of them is like a rolling living room that shows you TV.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:32Nilay Patel?

  Why, why is it not in it?

• 27:33Speaker 03

  Why is it hard to make a car?

• 27:35Speaker 04

  There's, you know, there's sort of all the things that go into it. There's the supply chain. There's just the manufacturing capabilities. You know, there's the relationship with dealers. There's just sort of this pyramid that exists already when it comes to making a car that these companies just don't have any experience in. Or maybe they just lack the motivation to get into. They saw it for what it was and maybe dabbled in it a little bit and then decided this is not something that we want to invest our time and effort into. And so we're going to focus on software instead because that's maybe something that's going to be more profitable for them. So it, you know, it's, it's, there's a reason that, you know, the, the auto industry also needed to be bailed out a few years ago.

• 28:13Speaker 04

  It's, it's, it's sort of an industry that fluctuates with, with the economy and it's not as much of a guarantee in terms of profits.

• 28:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. You also can't break a car with a software update and then make everybody buy a new car. Which I like to call the iPhone story. Just a fact of my iPhone right now.

• 28:32Nilay Patel?

  They're going to make me get an iPhone seven.

• 28:33Speaker 04

  That said, the car industry is, is definitely leaning really heavily on the tech industry. It seems like moving forward. I mean, everything that we, we talk about these days, whether it's self-driving cars or in-car entertainment or connected cars, having cars that send signals out to other cars or to infrastructure. I mean, this is something that the car companies are really going to rely a lot on the tech industry for, and they, they're gobbling up all these little tiny startups too. I mean, GM is buying companies, Ford is buying all these little tiny self-driving car companies. It's, it seems like there's a lot of pieces being moved around the, the, the chessboard. And I think we're going to get a clear picture of that, especially going into the new year with like CES and the Detroit Auto Show. It should be interesting.

• 29:15Nilay Patel?

  So wait, let's keep going down the headlines. So that's the Google news.

• 29:18Speaker 04

  That's the Google news. And then, and part of me wonders whether that they caught wind of what. Uber was gonna do, and that's why they did this, but who knows how all these companies sort of play off of each other. But the next day, Uber announced that they were unveiling their self-driving, their second phase of their self-driving car, limited self-driving car service in San Francisco where they were originated many years, seven years ago. This is an expansion of the project that they started in Pittsburgh back in September. I got to go out there last week, take a ride in one of the cars and see sort of like, it's also different from Pittsburgh because they have these really nice luxury Volvo SUVs that are pretty swank.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  They've got like the thing, the crap on the top of the roof, but it's like,

• 29:59Speaker 04

  It's more compact.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  More compact, it's a bit more integrated into the car. There's like, there's like a camera in like the grille.

• 30:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it's because Uber has this partnership with Volvo, so these cars were made specifically for this purpose.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:10Speaker 04

  Whereas with the few, they had Ford Fusions in Pittsburgh and those were just cars they bought off the lot and then slapped all their self-driving stuff onto.

• 30:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, same favorite thing about the, their XC90s, right?

• 30:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:21Nilay Patel?

  Volvo's headlight design for the XC90, and I believe all their cars, codenamed Hammer of Thor.

• 30:27Speaker 04

  What? I didn't know that.

• 30:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the headlight.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Is it literally called Hammer of Thor or is it called Gial, or whatever the?

• 30:33Nilay Patel?

  No, it's Hammer of Thor. Like Cadillac's design language is called like art and science.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Mew, mew, mew. Oh god.

• 30:39Nilay Patel?

  This is terrible radio. Keep going.

• 30:40Speaker 04

  Anyway, so just as soon as they did that, you know, there's obviously all the headlines blaring. Oh, Uber, self-driving cars in San Francisco, woo-hoo. And then a few hours later, video surfaces showing one of them blowing through a red light. Not narrowly missing.

• 30:56Nilay Patel?

  Shot by a Lyft driver, if I'm not mistaken.

• 30:58Speaker 04

  It was like a cab company.

• 31:00Nilay Patel?

  Okay, cab company. Cause there was a second video that was a Lyft driver.

• 31:02Speaker 04

  Not a totally like unaffiliated source of information or an unbiased source for this dash cam footage. But still, the image was still unmistakably,

• 31:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:13Speaker 04

  A self-driving Uber Volvo SUV.

• 31:16Nilay Patel?

  Banging through it.

• 31:17Speaker 04

  Banging through the red light and like, not narrowly missing, but coming pretty close to a pedestrian in the crosswalk. So that came out and then some other, there were some other tweets about, you know, some erratic behavior from some of these cars. Uber said they were looking into it and then pretty quickly came around and said, oh, there was a human driver in one of these cars. And so we've already seen some, and that person was, I think, dismissed or.

• 31:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:41Speaker 04

  Put on leave. And so we're already seeing people losing their jobs.

• 31:43Nilay Patel?

  I gotta say, if Uber drivers can get dismissed for not obeying traffic signals, there should be no Uber.

• 31:49Speaker 04

  There would be no Uber drivers left in the world.

• 31:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 31:52Speaker 04

  But that's the point, right? That well, and that's the ironic thing about all of this is that the whole reason that we're supposed to be getting self-driving cars is to prevent all of the deaths and accidents that happen on the roads today. I mean, that's, you know, what Travis Kalanick, the CEO of Uber said in his like little gauzy interview that he did on Good Morning America this week. And it's what the Google, you know, Google says that why they're working on self-driving cars, we're supposed to, you know, there's these thousands of deaths that happen and we're dying at exponential rates because people are such crappy drivers.

• 32:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:23Speaker 04

  So let's replace them with robots and we'll all live much longer and happier lives. So.

• 32:28Nilay Patel?

  That's what Tesla says, too.

• 32:29Speaker 04

  That's what Musk is very, very big on this concept as well. So anyway, then, as a cherry on top of all of it, California DMV came out and said, oh, Uber, hello, remember us? You forgot to get your automated driving permit from the California. Because California, unlike a lot of states, has a very like well-articulated set of guidelines.

• 32:51Nilay Patel?

  Because they're all there.

• 32:51Speaker 04

  Because they're all there. And all the companies have gotten this permit that they're supposed to get from the DMV, which costs like 140 bucks.

• 32:59Nilay Patel?

  They just didn't pay for their tags?

• 33:01Speaker 04

  They didn't want to pay for their tags, I guess. So they were like, please stop.

• 33:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 33:05Speaker 04

  Doing self-driving cars. And Uber said nothing. They're just radio silence. And I'm still waiting to hear back from them in terms of how this is going to work out.

• 33:12Nilay Patel?

  Not like, oh, sorry, here's, here's, here's 140 bucks. But just like, no, I don't believe in regulation.

• 33:17Speaker 04

  But this is.

• 33:18Nilay Patel?

  That's not Uber style.

• 33:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 33:19Nilay Patel?

  Style. Like their whole thing is like, fuck the government.

• 33:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. Middle fingers, tall haters, like, we don't need that.

• 33:26Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's just where they call them company Uber for God's sake.

• 33:32Nilay Patel?

  It's because Mjolnir was taken.

• 33:35Nilay Patel?

  The hammer of Thor.

• 33:38Speaker 04

  So we're still waiting to see how that plays out. They're supposed to be, I guess the company and the DMV are going to have a summit today and sit down.

• 33:46Nilay Patel?

  It's like the DMV rolls up in like a real car and Travis rolls up like out the sunroof as the car drives itself to the meeting.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Just standing there, arms wide.

• 33:56Speaker 04

  Programs it to blow through all the red lights on purpose.

• 34:00Nilay Patel?

  It just hits the DMV's car.

• 34:03Speaker 04

  Whoops, sorry. So we'll see how that turns out. And then the next, then GM just sort of, you know, to close out.

• 34:11Nilay Patel?

  They weren't in the news.

• 34:11Speaker 04

  GM was sad that they were left out of the news. And so they announced today that they're going to immediately begin testing their self-driving Chevy Bolt electric cars in Michigan immediately, they said. And so that's happening. So that's the week of self-driving car news.

• 34:26Nilay Patel?

  So add that all up. So I think the Bolt looks silly. Jordan Golson, also on our transport team, thinks the Bolt is like the most important car that GM is going to release.

• 34:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:35Nilay Patel?

  At all, because it's their mass market EV. It's going to beat Tesla to the punch with the Model 3. It's, it's an important car. So that's interesting that GM's pushing forward with self-driving and that, and that car in particular. I don't think of GM as being the most high-tech company compared to all of its competitors. But add up all this news. Are we closer to self-driving or is this just the machinations of fools?

• 34:56Speaker 04

  I don't think so. I think it's, I think it's really, it's Uber is the only one that's saying, hey, come get in our self-driving cars. We want to show it to you. All the other companies are saying, no, we're going to test and we're going to iterate and we're going to.

• 35:08Nilay Patel?

  Except for Tesla. I mean, they're, they're shipping autopilot.

• 35:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, but they're not turning it on for a while, it seems like. I mean, autopilot isn't self-driving. I guess if you want to get into like.

• 35:17Nilay Patel?

  This is like the stages, right?

• 35:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. It's supposed to be, it's a driver assist system as opposed to like a full self-driving. Now, the future Teslas will have full self-driving included in them, but they won't be, Musk was unclear as to when he's like going to flip the master switch and turn them all on. So all the cars start following his command.

• 35:36Nilay Patel?

  California had a thing where they, they also wanted to redefine, right? That, one of the things I saw with the California regulation was consumers are confused because everyone is using different language to mean different.

• 35:47Speaker 04

  Things.

• 35:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:48Speaker 04

  And one of the ways Uber is getting around their $140 requirement is by saying our cars don't meet this definition.

• 35:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's true.

• 35:56Speaker 04

  And it's.

• 35:57Nilay Patel?

  Is it just like a detector that like the car won't drive itself if it unless there's like a button in the driver's seat?

• 36:03Speaker 04

  No, so that's what Tesla does, right? You the car won't drive itself unless it senses you repeatedly.

• 36:08Nilay Patel?

  Mm hmm.

• 36:09Speaker 04

  So the way it does that is you have to touch the steering wheel.

• 36:11Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 36:11Speaker 04

  And it beeps at you and if you don't touch it, you'll like fall asleep.

• 36:14Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 36:14Speaker 04

  It'll just pull over and stop.

• 36:15Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 36:15Speaker 04

  Which is different from the the Google car, which part of their announcement that they were spinning off Waymo was that they were also. They announced that this is kind of a weird thing, but that in 2015, they had one of their cars with no steering wheel and no pedals. Driving around on public roads in Austin. And the only passenger was a man named John, or I'm sorry, Steve, who was blind.

• 36:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:38Speaker 04

  So that was part of their announcement that they were spinning off their company, but then they wanted to add this sort of human element. Aspect to their announcement by saying that we did this and this is how, you know, it could affect people's lives who have disabilities. And so that was kind of interesting, also kind of interesting that it happened almost two years ago and nobody seemed to notice or care. How they kept that under wraps, you know, nobody saw like a car driving around with no with no steering wheel in it and didn't seem to think to tell anybody about it. But yeah, that's that's the distinction here is that who, you know, what's self driving, how it's going to sort of fit into like. Our lives and our society, is it going to be a taxi service like Uber, is it going to be? Personal cars that are purchased by people off of out of dealerships, you know, what is what is going to be this technology and how are we going to use it?

• 37:21Speaker 04

  And I think a lot of people are still really unsure about that. That's why they're maybe acting more cautiously, but Uber is Uber and so.

• 37:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:27Speaker 04

  They need to be the ones that are out there first, shoving it in people's faces.

• 37:30Nilay Patel?

  I mean, because there if every if the model is all the car companies own a fleet of self driving cars and you push a button and. A bolt shows up and then drives you wherever it goes, like Uber is disrupted.

• 37:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  So they need to beat everybody to that.

• 37:43Speaker 04

  But they don't have Uber's network. That's Uber's advantage here is that they have this network already that they've spent seven years building of drivers who will not have jobs soon enough. But mostly of people who use the service and how much it's become part of like our culture and how much it's become, you know, sort of a verb, you know, I'm going to Uber over there. That was, that's the achievement that they've had, that they've been able to show off and how, in the foundation that they'll build this on top of. The car companies don't have that. They, they're about having a car, two cars in your garage, the American dream. But if that goes away, how do they, how do they build up this network? How do they sort of adopt whatever it is that Uber has?

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Well, this is, this is Ford's whole shtick right now is Ford's like, we're not a car company. We're a mobility company.

• 38:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Like, we're going to get you around.

• 38:31Speaker 04

  That word so much.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so they're like, they're like, like, like, don't they like, didn't they do like a bike share program in one city randomly?

• 38:38Speaker 04

  They did. Kansas City.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. So they, they are at least talking the talk of seeing past a world of car ownership.

• 38:45Speaker 04

  Right.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  But everybody's been saying 2020, right? And so at some, if that's true, or even remotely true, at some point between now and then, there had to have been a moment when like people like, eh, fuck it, put the cars in the road. And it felt like Uber just wanted to do it first.

• 38:59Speaker 04

  Yeah. And they also had this, you know, this reputation and of doing what they want, when they want, and not really caring so much about the rules or the repercussions, which could be a problem.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  If, if you could pull up an app right now and push a button and a car would come to your door and you'd get in the car and that car with no driver would take you somewhere, would you do it? Is there, in which company would you want, whose car would you want to show up in front of you? To be feel like, oh, this will work.

• 39:23Speaker 04

  I, I've done it with, I've been in a few self-driving cars. I haven't been in one without a driver in it. So it's hard to answer. Cause I, I guess there, all the companies have like, you know, occurrences of accidents happening in fender benders. There was the one Tesla, the guy was not paying attention and got decapitated, which you don't want to have happen to you.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:43Speaker 04

  So, yeah, I think it's more or less about like which technology you'd be most comfortable with, or which car you feel like would be the safest and more about how. Other people on the road are going to act because those are the, that's sort of the problem. The car is programmed to drive like a, like a little old lady, really. It's like, it only, it can only go so fast. You know, obeys the speed limits to, you know, obeys the traffic signs and all the laws to a fault. Kind of, it's supposed to be like this super cautious type of experience, whereas it's everybody else that's a maniac and full of rage.

• 40:15Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 40:15Speaker 04

  Every time they get behind the wheel.

• 40:17Nilay Patel?

  That's why I drive.

• 40:20Nilay Patel?

  I'm never getting a self-driving car. It's either that or smoking. I can't tell which one's more deadly.

• 40:24Speaker 04

  Well, where is people supposed to listen to the Vergecast if not in their cars, right?

• 40:27Nilay Patel?

  They're doing it right now.

• 40:28Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 40:29Nilay Patel?

  But as soon as you have self-driving cars, I will make this a 360 video experience. Interact the entire interior of your car.

• 40:36Speaker 04

  Right.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 40:37Nilay Patel?

  Think about it.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  And then that, those stupid little dials on all the dashboards that like, every car, it's like, everyone who has the dial on the dashboard that controls their shit, says it's the best thing ever. I never can understand how to use them. Like BMW's not, he's like the dial that like, does stuff.

• 40:52Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah, you have to train your brain.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:54Nilay Patel?

  The, the command is Mercedes, it's iDrive for BMW.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I never understand how to use it, but like, when we do the 360 video, you'll be able to lean back and control the Vergecast.

• 41:04Nilay Patel?

  One hand on that dial.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  And you can just decide who you want to look at.

• 41:07Nilay Patel?

  And then I can end every segment by saying, don't touch that dial.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:11Nilay Patel?

  Bring it all back.

• 41:12Speaker 04

  Well, what you just said though, is, is, is part of the problem. We need to retrain our brain. We need to like, all go back to like, driver's ed essentially.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 41:19Speaker 04

  And relearn how to use these new cars with their new technology and their new user interfaces and their.

• 41:25Nilay Patel?

  Well, what's terrifying to me is the idea that half of the car companies will pick Apple as their self-driving platform vendor and half of them will pick Google. And then we'll have a.

• 41:35Speaker 04

  Those cars will hate each other.

• 41:36Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 41:37Speaker 04

  It'll be death race 2000.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:39Speaker 03

  Didn't the Department of Transportation just announce like this new thing where they want like a wireless standard where cars will talk to each other?

• 41:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's part of, so the, the DOT under Obama has been pretty like forward thinking about this stuff. They came out with the automated vehicle guidelines a few months ago saying, we want there to be a standard for the entire country so that it's not just piecemeal state by state so that if you're testing your cars in California, you can also go to Nevada, you can also go to Texas. And then also, yeah, they came out with a, a new rule saying all cars in the future should have this technology so that they can communicate with one another. So that we have safer cars and, you know, sort of a more uniform system. So.

• 42:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're definitely sort of trying to set, lay the groundwork from, from a rulemaking point of view, but it's really up to the carmakers.

• 42:24Speaker 04

  Yeah. So we're not closer. It's just a bunch of stuff is happening.

• 42:27Nilay Patel?

  I, I, I mean, like, I'm optimistic just because, but you know, I, I, again, I'm steeped in it. So it's hard to tell. But I feel like I talk to normal, normal people, normies, as I call them, my parents.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  You really call them that? Really?

• 42:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, Mr. And Mrs. Normie.

• 42:40Nilay Patel?

  Mrs. And Mrs. Normie. People who aren't like, don't, aren't like, you know, day-to-day verge readers, which I don't even know why I'm friends with these people. But when I talk to them and I'm like, oh yeah, I cover self-driving cars. They're like, oh, I, I could never, I could never get in one of those. How could you? Or like when I go on like MSNBC and talk about that, the, the anchors are always aghast by self-driving. They can't believe it. So there's still is like, I think, a huge hill to climb.

• 43:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:05Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and, and they're doing it in San Francisco.

• 43:07Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 43:08Nilay Patel?

  Hey.

• 43:09Speaker 04

  Sorry.

• 43:09Nilay Patel?

  I can't wait.

• 43:10Speaker 04

  Dieter.

• 43:10Nilay Patel?

  All I, all I want in this world is, uh, my parents have a self-driving car. I think about it all the time. Cause my mom talks on the phone and I tell her, you can't use the phone while you're driving, but she doesn't want to figure out her Bluetooth. So she puts her phone on speaker and holds it over here, screams at the phone.

• 43:25Nilay Patel?

  Bluetooth.

• 43:26Speaker 04

  One of my favorite pieces.

• 43:27Nilay Patel?

  The cause of every problem I have in the world.

• 43:29Speaker 04

  One of my favorite pieces was written by Ben Popper, which is like, I don't want my kids to get a driver's license. Story that he wrote a few months ago, which I think is like, that kind of sort of puts it in perspective.

• 43:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, we had the, the current Secretary of Transportation, Anthony Fox.

• 43:42Speaker 04

  He said the same thing.

• 43:43Nilay Patel?

  He said the same thing.

• 43:44Speaker 04

  He read Ben's piece and he was like, that's a great idea. I'm gonna steal that.

• 43:47Nilay Patel?

  His kids are so mad. Anyway, wait, I'm gonna read an ad and then we got a little bit of a lightning round. You should stick around, Andy.

• 43:52Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 43:55Nilay Patel?

  Have you heard of Sock Club?

• 43:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:57Nilay Patel?

  Sock Club, absolutely the best gift solution. You can, you can purchase a sock of the month subscription for everyone on your list. They will receive a pair of quality American-made socks straight to their, every month. Sock Club offers printable membership certificates that are available for last-minute holiday shoppers. You can write a customized gift message to your lover and remembers you every month. When they receive their socks, you can write whatever you want. These socks, premium quality, American-made socks, use cotton sourced from the southeastern United States where the best cotton is. They're designed in Austin, they're knit in North Carolina. You can tell the difference. Nothing like a North Carolina sock. Every month it brings you a brand new, never before seen sock design, specifically created for that month. They even come with a little background story on the sock's name and design. Proving that our society is too twee to live. This is a little gift with a huge impact. It's way more exciting than a one-time gift because your loved one will receive a new

• 44:42Nilay Patel?

  package of socks every month in their mailbox, again with a little background story on their name and design.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  So it's not just a sock of the month club, it's like a book of the month.

• 44:50Nilay Patel?

  It's a story of the month.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 44:52Nilay Patel?

  About sock design.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 44:53Nilay Patel?

  You're gonna love it. Anyway, Sock Club offers gift subscription for men, women, and children. You can give Sock Club to anyone you want. It says here to list some people, so I'm gonna list Dieter Bohn, Andy Hawkins, Paul Miller, Megan Frome, and Nash. They're all available to receive your socks if you wish.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  I actually really like getting socks.

• 45:10Nilay Patel?

  Everyone loves socks.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  I'm really hoping this is what you get me for Christmas.

• 45:13Nilay Patel?

  Every Christmas, my wife gives me a full sock reboot. It's a thing. It's great. You should buy those. No pun intended. Don't listen to my sarcasm. Listen to Paul's heart. Paul thinks you should buy socks. Anyway, make yourself look like an expert gift giver. Check off all of those hard to shop for people. Go to sockclub.com, get 15% off using promo code VERGE at checkout. It's a delightful gift experience. It's comfy feet for the people. Give Sock Club this holiday season. Sockclub.com/verge. All right, it's a little bit of a lightning round because we're going over, but Dieter and I got ourselves all worked up about the Apple TV app. iOS 10.2 is out. Apple TV update with the TV app is out. It's kind of a mess, Dieter.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, the headline that I think ended up like on our site for it was the thing I tweeted, which is, "This is clearly, obviously Plan C, maybe D or E for Apple in TV, and you can tell."

• 46:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So the main thing is it doesn't have Netflix, so it's supposed to recommend things. We've talked about this on the show. The TV app is obviously supposed to be the home screen of the Apple TV, but it doesn't have all the things it needs. It doesn't have a TV service behind it, so it's an app. You're supposed to open the app, and it's supposed to show you things to watch, but it cannot show you Netflix things to watch because Netflix doesn't want to share its data. It also, Apple TV historically doesn't have Amazon on it because Amazon doesn't want to pay the fee to Apple, so it can't show you Amazon shows to watch. Amazon has.

• 46:31Speaker 02

  It also can't show you most cable networks.

• 46:33Nilay Patel?

  Right, and it doesn't have, it doesn't have single sign-on if you have basically any of the cable networks. If you have DirecTV or Dish or Sling, I think it has some single signs. But nobody has those things.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, something there is wrong, but just email [email protected] to correct it. So far, you've listed three strikes.

• 46:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's just like, it's kind of broken, and I don't know what Apple's big solution here is. Lauren Good wrote a review of the best streaming sticks. I recommended the Fire TV stick.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:58Nilay Patel?

  Because it's better than everything else.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  Let me lightning round you.

• 47:00Nilay Patel?

  It's also super cheap. Yeah.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  You live in a world where you can have an Apple TV with a working single sign-on and a good Apple TV app. But in order to live in that world, you have to have an IR blaster on your coffee table. What do you do? Why?

• 47:18Speaker 03

  This is a theoretical.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:20Nilay Patel?

  What does the IR blaster control?

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Nothing.

• 47:22Nilay Patel?

  It's just there emitting infrared?

• 47:24Speaker 03

  You have to send a message through the IR blaster for some purpose.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:31Speaker 03

  Twice a session.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  That's what allows a single sign-on to work. Is because a single sign-on is dependent on the remote control code built into the Comcast remote.

• 47:40Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  That's the rule. That means you have to have an IR blaster.

• 47:43Nilay Patel?

  It's all nonsense.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  Do you do it?

• 47:45Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 47:47Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I don't know. So here, this is actually my lightning round question.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 47:50Nilay Patel?

  Dieter's laid out the problems. It's clearly Plan C. How do you watch TV right now, Megan?

• 47:53Speaker 01

  I actually don't watch TV. I watch Netflix. That's it.

• 47:56Nilay Patel?

  That's a fact.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 47:58Speaker 03

  Netflix has offline now on the mobile. I don't know when they added that. This changed my life.

• 48:02Nilay Patel?

  By the way, Google Home added Netflix support today, I think. So you can just say, "Show me Luke Cage on Netflix," and it'll light up your Chromecast and start showing it to you, which is kind of the dream.

• 48:12Speaker 03

  Also, Terrace House? Does everybody watch Terrace House?

• 48:16Nilay Patel?

  Are you saying Terrace House or Terrorist House?

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Okay, no, I got confused about this, too. It's Terrace, not Terras. If you look for Terrace House, you're gonna find it.

• 48:23Speaker 03

  Terrace, the architectural feature of houses.

• 48:26Nilay Patel?

  So it's a show about houses with terraces?

• 48:28Speaker 03

  Like Terrace is the adjective, yes. No, no, no. It's a reality show. It's Japanese.

• 48:33Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 48:34Speaker 03

  A lot of times when you say questions to me, I think I should be saying yes. I want to say, "Hi." And bow a little bit.

• 48:40Nilay Patel?

  Because of Terrace.

• 48:41Speaker 03

  I've been watching a lot of this show. It's great.

• 48:44Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  It's changed everything.

• 48:46Nilay Patel?

  Okay, Google, show me Terrace House on Netflix. And the three people who have managed to set all of that up are now watching Terrace House on Netflix. Because it's a lot. You gotta get a Chromecast. You gotta... Anyway, how do you watch TV? Your situation like a disaster.

• 48:59Speaker 04

  Apple TV, Playstation 4, Chromecast, sometimes an Xbox One.

• 49:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's a mess.

• 49:04Speaker 04

  Sling TV and VU. I haven't canceled either one of them yet.

• 49:07Nilay Patel?

  Yours is gonna be interesting because you have a kid, so it's a whole different thing.

• 49:10Speaker 04

  But she doesn't care about television.

• 49:12Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 49:12Speaker 04

  Because she's still too young.

• 49:13Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 49:14Speaker 04

  So I've tried to get her into TV, but we use Chromecast and I have like a smart LG TV that has like Netflix and Amazon and Hulu built into like the user interface.

• 49:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:25Speaker 04

  So we use that for the streaming services and Chromecast for the other stuff. And I steal my parents' cable password.

• 49:30Nilay Patel?

  Wait, what's the other stuff?

• 49:31Speaker 04

  Like HBO.

• 49:32Nilay Patel?

  Is that a streaming service?

• 49:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, but it's not built into the TV.

• 49:35Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I see.

• 49:36Speaker 04

  It's not, yeah. So I use Chromecast for that and FX and stuff like that.

• 49:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I'm now almost exclusively Chromecast and it's super messy and I think about my cable subscription and using my TiVo all the time.

• 49:47Speaker 04

  You know, my favorite part about the Chromecast is when you turn on the TV and you get that nice like picture.

• 49:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's nice.

• 49:53Speaker 04

  Like a photograph of a river.

• 49:55Speaker 03

  Seriously?

• 49:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:56Speaker 04

  Or a bird.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  You're not kidding?

• 49:57Speaker 04

  I like that.

• 49:58Nilay Patel?

  You can also plug in your Google Photos account into it and it'll just show you your favorite pictures from Google Photos.

• 50:02Speaker 03

  I need to do that because like those pictures...

• 50:04Speaker 04

  You don't like those nature pictures?

• 50:05Speaker 03

  No, they like offend me.

• 50:07Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 50:07Nilay Patel?

  Wait.

• 50:08Speaker 03

  They like...

• 50:08Nilay Patel?

  The show just got really interesting and the whole rest of the show is nonsense compared to what's about to happen.

• 50:16Speaker 03

  You know, in the movie Brazil?

• 50:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:19Speaker 03

  Where it's a hellhole?

• 50:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:20Speaker 03

  And you're driving around in this hellhole, but there's these billboards about Brazil, this promised paradise that's a lie.

• 50:29Nilay Patel?

  Paul, clean your apartment.

• 50:33Speaker 03

  But I have so much TV to watch.

• 50:36Nilay Patel?

  There's 18 more seasons of Terrace House.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  Seriously, this show is like 38 half hour episodes is one season, something like that.

• 50:46Nilay Patel?

  Wait, are we back on Terrace House? Or are we still offended by the pictures of paradise?

• 50:52Speaker 04

  That rainforest.

• 50:53Nilay Patel?

  Well, you're mad at the, you're mad at the default screensaver on a $35 TV streamer because you think it's subverting you to the capitalist machinery of the world.

• 51:04Speaker 03

  It's showing him a false picture.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  That's, that's completely accurate.

• 51:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I didn't pay $35 to came with my TV. Also, because I turned off the energy saving things on my Vizio.

• 51:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:15Speaker 03

  My roommate can Rick roll me.

• 51:17Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:18Nilay Patel?

  It's a real thing.

• 51:19Speaker 03

  It's happened a lot lately.

• 51:20Nilay Patel?

  That's a real thing. And the, the Google Cast thing is not designed for anyone with friends who are even slightly mean. Right? If you have friends who are, even have that one twitch of evil.

• 51:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:31Nilay Patel?

  Cast will ruin your life. That's fair.

• 51:34Speaker 03

  I heard hamster dance the other day.

• 51:38Nilay Patel?

  Dieter's right. This point he was making, the tech companies haven't figured it out. And it means TV is harder now. There's more better TV than ever before, and it is harder now than ever to watch it in any consistent, logical way. And Apple is just not getting it done. This is their thing to solve. It's amazing how many TV streaming services are on the Apple TV. There's DirecTV now, there's Sling.

• 52:02Speaker 03

  There's View.

• 52:02Nilay Patel?

  There's View. There's nothing from Apple.

• 52:04Speaker 03

  Okay, but this feels, it feels weird that we can't just walk up to somebody, hand them $100 a month and see everything.

• 52:12Nilay Patel?

  You can. Of course you can. You can walk up to any cable company in America and hand them $100 a month.

• 52:18Speaker 03

  You know, you want to see the Netflix's? You want to see Amazon? You want to see the Hulu originals?

• 52:24Nilay Patel?

  Netflix is now, I cannot believe I'm about to praise Comcast on this show. Netflix is on Comcast X1 box, which again, they believe their iPad app is a platform and not an app. So very confused at a technical level about what it is.

• 52:35Speaker 03

  Comcast doesn't pay Netflix for you. You still have to have your Netflix.

• 52:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, okay. So you're right there.

• 52:39Speaker 03

  Right. So.

• 52:40Nilay Patel?

  By the way, disclosure, some, some part of Comcast owns a whole bunch of Vox Media, which owns us. There it is.

• 52:47Speaker 03

  So, so we're, we're living in this time when it does seem like it's more work to find all the different televisions.

• 52:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:56Speaker 03

  But there are so many shows. There's so much original stuff.

• 53:00Nilay Patel?

  That's why we have a whole culture section. Just do what Megan says.

• 53:02Speaker 03

  Yes, thank you, Megan, for helping me. Actually, Dom, you wrote about Terrace House for The Verge. So no thanks to Megan.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 53:10Speaker 03

  But man, what a gem.

• 53:11Nilay Patel?

  I gotta say, Megan started out in a whole run of burns. Nothing.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  It's been sinking slower and slower than I see it. It's all right.

• 53:18Nilay Patel?

  I just think it's it's a mess.

• 53:20Speaker 03

  I think we're in a golden age.

• 53:22Nilay Patel?

  That's like a whole thing.

• 53:23Speaker 04

  Golden age of content, but none of the actual.

• 53:25Speaker 03

  Well, I just think there's the fact that so many different companies are getting a piece of the pie. And and and the way that they compete is by not merging with each other and by charging you $10 a month separately.

• 53:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so none of these like streaming services have CBS and even CBS, which supports TV everywhere, which is if you pay for a regular cable bundle like I do, you can like log into the stuff. That's all the single sign on stuff. Can't log into CBS. They want you to pay for CBS now or whatever it is they call it. And that's like another.

• 53:54Speaker 04

  Doesn't CBS have like the most viewed television shows?

• 53:57Nilay Patel?

  Yes, the most viewed garbage in America.

• 53:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, and CIS and all that.

• 54:01Nilay Patel?

  The Big Bang Theory.

• 54:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:03Nilay Patel?

  Two Broke Girls, the worst show in America. If you believe that we're in a golden age of television, I challenge you to go watch the episode of Two Broke Girls where they go to a games convention. Wait, why have you seen this? Cause I was on a fucking airplane and there was nothing else to watch. It was terrible. I was trapped.

• 54:18Speaker 03

  Netflix.

• 54:19Nilay Patel?

  I was trapped in a tiny tin tube.

• 54:22Speaker 04

  Not available on my computer.

• 54:22Nilay Patel?

  Far above the earth and I was out. I've I've seen all of the movies that I wanted to watch and I was like, I have 30 minutes left. This one is where they go to a games convention and it was the worst thing I've ever seen.

• 54:33Speaker 04

  Was it as racist as some of the other episodes you have been?

• 54:36Nilay Patel?

  It was every ist. It was just all combined into one offensive package. Anyway, so I'm happy that CBS isn't part of my bundle. Screw you CBS. This has been a terrible lightning round. AirPods, that's my next lightning.

• 54:50Speaker 03

  Fall out of my ears.

• 54:51Nilay Patel?

  I have them here because they're shipping now.

• 54:52Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 54:53Nilay Patel?

  After a long delay. Fall out of ears. Are you interested in AirPods?

• 54:56Speaker 04

  I I I borrowed them from Sean very briefly and and played around with them. They seem pretty cool, but they still, I I would prefer not having that cylinder sticking out like a weird blue, like a sort of a truncated Bluetooth headset. That still seems like it's gonna, and and the fact that it's white too, is going to magnify the effect.

• 55:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:16Speaker 04

  So you still will look kind of.

• 55:17Nilay Patel?

  It's like classic Johnny Ive, like you're the best designer in the world.

• 55:20Speaker 04

  And yet.

• 55:21Nilay Patel?

  What were we doing here? Kind of situation. You, we've done a lot of wireless earbuds stuff lately on the circuit breaker side of the house.

• 55:28Speaker 03

  There's a lot of them.

• 55:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:30Speaker 03

  I don't think there's a winner yet.

• 55:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:32Speaker 03

  I'm waiting for Bluetooth 5. I'm not going to buy Bluetooth headset. Actually, the Beats X, which got delayed, is my ideal four factor, I think, because it's got the cord. So you can pull them out and they hang around your neck.

• 55:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but it's weird because Apple delayed those.

• 55:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 55:46Nilay Patel?

  Yep. And you got to think, maybe they just didn't have enough W1 chips floating around.

• 55:50Speaker 04

  And now they're charging you 70 bucks to, if you lose one.

• 55:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:53Speaker 04

  You have to pay up.

• 55:55Nilay Patel?

  One of our, Tom Connors, our lead video director, like he was playing with mine and he flipped them open and his phone was like, do you want to connect? And he's like, oh, that's really nice. That's really cool. And hit the button and it just failed. I don't know, Megan, are you going to buy it?

• 56:06Speaker 01

  Uh, no. So I actually like having a wire because it's a clear indicator for people to leave me alone. So like, sometimes I'm just walking around with headphones and not actually listening to anything. It's just like, don't talk to me. Like, do you see this? There you go.

• 56:18Speaker 04

  Plus you have those cool ones with the.

• 56:19Nilay Patel?

  She came back strong.

• 56:22Speaker 03

  Sadly, this is an audio show, so nobody saw your middle finger.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  But they felt it. I believe they felt it.

• 56:28Nilay Patel?

  Megan just waved her headphone cable at us, signaling that it's time to wrap up. No, go ahead.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Uh, no, basically it's just like, I, I do that because like sometimes I just, I don't want to listen to people if I'm walking around. Like I don't want people to stop me. I don't want people to mess with me at all. So I like having it there. Also, I have really weird ears and things fall out of them a lot. So.

• 56:45Nilay Patel?

  I'm very interested to see how AirPods do.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  I also, I also have like inner ear piercings and so I have a hard time getting earbuds to fit if they're not a specific kind.

• 56:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, the shipping, you can get them in stores. I, I think Apple rushed them out as fast as they could for the holiday season.

• 56:59Speaker 03

  I think they're, they're, they're delayed past January now.

• 57:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:02Speaker 03

  Into January.

• 57:03Nilay Patel?

  But you can still get them in stores. I think people are going to line up and get them in stores. And then we'll have more gadget resellers just hawking spectacles and AirPods for a Christmas that makes you look completely insane.

• 57:13Speaker 04

  Prescription spectacles.

• 57:14Nilay Patel?

  Prescription. Uh, there's, they're floating around outside here at the office. Some guy waved a spectacles tube at me and just held $200 over and over again.

• 57:22Speaker 03

  They've got three vending machines now.

• 57:24Nilay Patel?

  Ooh.

• 57:24Speaker 04

  In New York?

• 57:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, not just the one in that store.

• 57:26Nilay Patel?

  Someone, I can't remember, I think it was Sean, okay, and our staff was telling me that the spectacle situation in New York is such that the entire line is resellers. And they literally are buying two, because that's how many you can buy. And they walk outside and just stand there. And then other rich people show up and buy them in a markup so they don't have to sell online.

• 57:42Speaker 04

  It's like every Ticketmaster situation.

• 57:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:44Speaker 04

  For every show that happens. All the tickets get bought by the reseller, by the scalpers, and then you have to buy them at a markup price.

• 57:50Speaker 02

  I wanted to buy it this week when I was in New York and I didn't get around to it.

• 57:52Nilay Patel?

  At this party last night, I was like standing there and Sam Sheffer, you might remember Vergecast listener Sam Sheffer, before he died.

• 58:00Speaker 04

  R.I.P.

• 58:01Nilay Patel?

  Sam Sheffer rolled up to me and he wasn't wearing the spectacles, but he pulled them out of his pocket and took a picture of me with them.

• 58:10Nilay Patel?

  Most ridiculous thing that ever.

• 58:12Speaker 03

  We've come so far.

• 58:14Nilay Patel?

  I was like, what are you doing, Sam? Anyhow, I think that's our show. Any other lightning round topics?

• 58:20Speaker 03

  No, it's not a show.

• 58:21Nilay Patel?

  Megan, you wanna, it's not. Oh, you got a, we got a Paul segment.

• 58:23Speaker 03

  Every week.

• 58:24Nilay Patel?

  I forgot, man.

• 58:24Speaker 03

  I do this every week.

• 58:25Nilay Patel?

  Every week.

• 58:26Speaker 03

  It's called, speaking of things that you can't buy.

• 58:31Speaker 03

  Cos came out with PortaPro Colorways.

• 58:35Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 58:35Speaker 03

  And they're sold out.

• 58:36Nilay Patel?

  Already?

• 58:37Speaker 03

  And they're sick.

• 58:38Nilay Patel?

  They've been making those headphones.

• 58:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:40Nilay Patel?

  Since 1901.

• 58:41Speaker 03

  Some, like the eighties, Cos perfected the over the ear headphone in the $35 range.

• 58:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:48Speaker 03

  I wear them all the time. They've got little temple pads that relieve the pressure on your ears. They're not pushing down. It's, they sound great for the price. And you don't feel bad about breaking them or losing them because they're so cheap, but they, they're actually pretty reliable and resilient.

• 59:04Nilay Patel?

  But don't they kind of project the, the sound out a little bit?

• 59:07Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, they're not like closed can, so people can hear a little bit of what you're, what you, yeah.

• 59:12Nilay Patel?

  That's always been, I, I've wanted to get some of that. I've, I've seen you with them and I've.

• 59:16Speaker 03

  I sat next to you while wearing them. Did it bother you?

• 59:19Nilay Patel?

  No, no, not at all.

• 59:20Speaker 03

  All right.

• 59:21Nilay Patel?

  But that was always the sort of.

• 59:22Speaker 03

  It, I'm a little self-conscious about it sometimes, but they've always been this exact same color, this blue, silver, and black. And now they came out with this great beige one and then a really flashy gold and black one.

• 59:34Nilay Patel?

  And you can't get them.

• 59:35Speaker 03

  No.

• 59:36Nilay Patel?

  But that's our, that's our thing you can't buy of the week.

• 59:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:38Nilay Patel?

  From Paul Miller.

• 59:39Speaker 03

  So if you were thinking about getting AirPods, but you couldn't.

• 59:42Nilay Patel?

  I mean, all the cool, all the cool gadgets are, are, you can't buy them right now.

• 59:46Speaker 03

  Nintendo?

• 59:46Nilay Patel?

  You can't buy the Nintendo.

• 59:47Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:48Nilay Patel?

  Spectacles, you gotta dance with a reseller on Fifth Avenue. It's fact.

• 59:53Speaker 03

  It's true.

• 59:53Nilay Patel?

  AirPods, not easy to get. Like every cool new thing that you might otherwise want, you can't get.

• 59:58Speaker 03

  Megan, what's your favorite thing that you can't buy?

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  That's a deep dark question.

• 1:00:03Speaker 03

  Is because it's like a hit on somebody?

• 1:00:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So a scalding burn for Megan.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  No, honestly, like I, I have all the things I want at this exact moment in time. So

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  That is wonderful.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  I'm very fulfilled. Yes, thank you.

• 1:00:17Speaker 03

  That's great.

• 1:00:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:18Speaker 03

  That's all of my, Circle Breaker is all about gadgets, but it's not about consumers.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  You know what, though? Actually, I wrote about that breadbasket. I can't get that. That's not a thing. I actually kind of want it, though. It's just like

• 1:00:28Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, we did it as a

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  Phone, yeah.

• 1:00:31Speaker 03

  Part of the weekly segment.

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  As a throwback. It's the stupidest thing in the world and I love it so much.

• 1:00:36Nilay Patel?

  The breadbasket with the chargers?

• 1:00:38Speaker 03

  With the phone charger?

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  It's not as dumb as that bed for your phone, but I also kind of love that, but I wouldn't buy that.

• 1:00:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but that's not a thing you, you can't get.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  You can get it.

• 1:00:47Nilay Patel?

  It's a thing that you shouldn't get.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:48Nilay Patel?

  I've been really thinking about whether to buy a carry-on suitcase with a built-in battery. I think about this like way more than I should.

• 1:00:54Speaker 03

  Like away?

• 1:00:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the away, there's, uh, the Raiden is another one.

• 1:00:58Speaker 03

  It goes above your head.

• 1:00:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:00Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:01:01Nilay Patel?

  I know.

• 1:01:02Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:01:02Nilay Patel?

  Well, we're at the airport and you're waiting. Uh huh. Yeah, some of them have, uh, they're like trying to figure out reasons for them to have little computers in them. So some of them have like Bluetooth scales in the handle. A lot of them have like location tracking.

• 1:01:15Speaker 03

  Some of them follow you around.

• 1:01:16Nilay Patel?

  Hmm.

• 1:01:17Speaker 03

  They have motors.

• 1:01:17Nilay Patel?

  I'm not ready to go there.

• 1:01:18Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:01:19Nilay Patel?

  Until the cars can drive themselves and not letting my suitcase drive itself. Let's solve, let's solve the, the big one and then we can trickle it down. Anyway, should I buy a battery suitcase?

• 1:01:29Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:01:29Nilay Patel?

  That's been, should I buy this?

• 1:01:33Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna advertise on the Vergecast. All right, let me read one more of these things and we can wrap this thing up.

• 1:01:38Nilay Patel?

  This episode of Vergecast is also brought to you by MailChimp. Remember MailChimp? You might, if you love cereal.

• 1:01:43Speaker 03

  Mail?

• 1:01:44Nilay Patel?

  Chimp? That's the one. But anyway, 14 million people use MailChimp every day to connect with their customers, market their products and grow their e-commerce businesses. You can send better email, you can send more stuff. They've been around since 2011. The company started as a side project funded by various web development jobs. Now they're the world's leading email marketing platform and they send more than a billion emails a day. They democratize technology for small businesses, creating an innovative product that empowers their customers to grow. MailChimp, send better email and sell more stuff.

• 1:02:10Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, that has been our episode of The Vergecast. A fun one. We're gonna do one next week, but then we're off.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  No, we're gonna do one next week, and then after that, we're off. Until, drumroll, big news. The Vergecast is going to be live again on video again at CES, beginning, I want to say Wednesday, January 4th, at 4:30 Pacific. Also Thursday, also Friday. You can watch us. We're gonna have a beautiful set. We're gonna have guests. We're gonna have live demos.

• 1:02:35Nilay Patel?

  Paul's gonna be there.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  Paul's gonna be there.

• 1:02:37Nilay Patel?

  Ash is gonna be there.

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  And it's gonna be on Twitter.

• 1:02:40Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be on Twitter Live.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  Twitter Live.

• 1:02:42Nilay Patel?

  Right at the top of the stream.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  Right, just like the NFL and...

• 1:02:44Nilay Patel?

  Just, that's what it is. It's like, it's like a Thursday night Chiefs game and us.

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:49Nilay Patel?

  It's all the stuff you want from Twitter. No, it's gonna be really fun. Vergecast Live at CES has always been a little bit crazy.

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's gonna be crazy.

• 1:02:56Nilay Patel?

  This is gonna be nuts. It's gonna be, I've been, you've been going for more than 10 years, I think.

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  I've been going for over a decade. I think this is my 12th year.

• 1:03:02Nilay Patel?

  I think this is your 10 for me. Paul, I think it, you're at 10?

• 1:03:05Speaker 03

  I skipped a couple.

• 1:03:06Nilay Patel?

  You skipped a couple.

• 1:03:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. Started in like 2006 was my first one.

• 1:03:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So, it's fun, it's, I'm excited to go and do something else.

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  It's your first day, Andy?

• 1:03:16Speaker 03

  First one.

• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 1:03:18Speaker 03

  You're virgin. You're gonna have fun.

• 1:03:19Nilay Patel?

  It's unlike anything else. But, Vergecast Live, every day at CES, 4:30 PM Pacific, 7:30 Eastern. We're gonna promote the hell out of it. Watch it. It's gonna be fun.

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:27Nilay Patel?

  So, we're on next week. We're off the week after.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  It's gonna be a blast.

• 1:03:30Nilay Patel?

  And then it's Vergecast time.

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:32Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, that's our show for the week. You can follow us on Twitter. We're at Verge. On Snapchat, we're at Verge. On Instagram. Instagram, I'm doing great lately.

• 1:03:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:38Nilay Patel?

  Really fun. At Verge. Uh, we got another show. I hosted with Walt Mossberg. You might have heard of it. It's called Control+Delete. That's also on iTunes, as is Lauren Good's Show, Too Embarrassed to Ask, Kara Swisher Show, Recode Decode, Peter Kafka Show, Recode Media. They're all great. All of them are on iTunes. Go find them. Leave a review. Give us all the stars. Buy some socks. And you can find us on Twitter. I'm at Reckless. Paul's at FuturePaul. Theaters at Backlon. Andy, what's your Twitter?

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  AndyJayhawk.

• 1:04:01Nilay Patel?

  With a J and a Y.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  J-A-Y.

• 1:04:03Nilay Patel?

  Megan?

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  Okay, so mine is annoying. It's Megan underscore Nicolette with two Ts. I know.

• 1:04:08Nilay Patel?

  I know.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:04:10Speaker 02

  I'm not annoyed. It's just, it's very in-character for you.

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  It's better than using my last name.

• 1:04:14Nilay Patel?

  It's a Twitter handle that screams, "Leave me alone. I'm wearing headphones."

• 1:04:21Nilay Patel?

  That's it. Bye. Rock and roll. Rock and roll, Paul. Paul.