ARM, EFF, and SDCC

With a classic cast of Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Paul Miller, and Lauren Goode, we have a very nerdy episode of Vergecast this week. For starters, there’s the news about SoftBank buying chip maker ARM, then the Electric Frontier Foundation filing a lawsuit that takes on anti-circumvention rules. The gang also goes deep into nostalgia with classic consumer electronics. But we couldn’t leave it at that. Paul interviews our own senior reporter Bryan Bishop, who calls in live from San Diego Comic-Con to tell us what he’s seen so far at the convention. To top it all off, we go into the nerdiest part of the celebrity feud between Kayne West and Taylor Swift, which leads to the cast going through their own note-taking apps. 08:20 – Softbank buys ARM 24:45 – Paul’s "Gadget shhecrets" 29:20 – EFF copyright lawsuit 37:40 – Nostalgia note 44:24 – SDCC interview with Bryan Bishop 56:26 – Taylor Swift / Kanye West / Kim Kardashian feud 1:02:57 – Note app game 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?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast. Our chief weapon is fear. Fear and surprise.

• 0:09Nilay Patel?

  Alright. Hello, welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Theverge.com. It's the largest fleet in our armada.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Alright, it's a ship or it's a fleet?

• 0:19Nilay Patel?

  It's the largest ship in the fleet.

• 0:21Speaker 02

  The flagship isn't necessarily the largest, it's just the one in charge.

• 0:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, this is the one in charge. But I like to think of it as the one... I don't know. If there's any naval historians out there, please let me know what the flagship is and how that metaphor works for our podcast.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  I'm pretty sure it's the one with the flag.

• 0:37Nilay Patel?

  Well, this is a podcast with a flag. Uh, this podcast continues, well, I guess I don't want to give away for free. But anyway, look, there's a vodka, I like it, it cuts to the night. It's called Scissor. All due respect to the Coppola Wine Company that owns the actual trademark in Spanish. Anyway, uh, I'm Neil Fattal, I'm the editor chief of The Verge. I'm joined by Paul Miller.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 1:00Nilay Patel?

  Lauren Good is on the line.

• 1:02Speaker 03

  Hi!

• 1:03Nilay Patel?

  Hello Lauren. And Dieter Bohn is here.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  Hello, hello.

• 1:07Nilay Patel?

  So, this, I will say to our listener, I think the Vergecast listener really loves the nitty gritty on the show. The inner mechanics of how we do things. And I'm just gonna say this, this was one of the craziest, most stressful, most insane weeks in Verge history. Because of the things we're doing. So, I'll just run through some of them. We published a massive Mark Zuckerberg feature and interview today. Casey Newton did it, you should go read it, it's about the next 10 years of Facebook. It's really cool.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  And about Mark Zuckerberg's toaster.

• 1:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, he's got internet drone plane, he's got toasters, uh, he's talking about VR, AR. That stuff just published today, I encourage you to read it. Maybe next week we'll... Casey's on vacation in Italy right now, which is a very decadent way to publish a feature. But, maybe next week we'll talk to Casey a little bit with that. So that happened. We premiered the Mr. Robot Digital Actor Show, hosted by The Verge, a wonderful, not at all unwieldy title.

• 2:06Nilay Patel?

  But that premiered live last night after Mr. Robot, episode three premiered at 11:26 PM, which means I went to bed at 2:30 AM last night.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:16Nilay Patel?

  Um, that show, we're gonna do every week after Mr. Robot. Uh, Mr. Robot's a cool show that I encourage you to watch. Um, and just like a little backstory on that one. Obviously NBC Universal invested a bunch of money into Vox Media, our parent company, about a year ago, over a year ago.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  A lot of money.

• 2:34Nilay Patel?

  A lot of money.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  It was about a year ago.

• 2:36Nilay Patel?

  About a year ago. So there's this like tight relationship between the two companies, whatever. But the people who run Mr. Robot, turns out almost all their writers and producers read The Verge, because they're big nerds. Uh, and they asked us if we could do anything about it. And the first thing they asked us was, why don't you just do special episodes of The Vergecast? Just do The Vergecast about Mr. Robot for half an hour, once a week. Uh, and we're like, why don't we do a real show?

• 2:59Speaker 01

  You're like, The Vergecast is our flagship podcast.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  And they're like, what's a flagship?

• 3:04Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, because it was in that moment when we were deciding whether we were gonna have this just be an audio show or a video show.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:10Nilay Patel?

  So we're like, look, we're taking The Vergecast to be an audio podcast, because most people listen in their cars.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:16Nilay Patel?

  A fact I firmly believe without any evidence. Uh, but we'll make a new video show for you.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Because Mr. Robot people are proven TV watchers.

• 3:23Nilay Patel?

  Clearly, we know they're watching video. Although I, if you're out there and you just download the audio of Mr. Robot, week to week, and listen to it as a radio play, please let me know. Um, so USA, crazy enough. They're like, yeah, just do, just do a video show, however you want. So, really neat, very trusting. I don't know, I don't know how you watch The Vergecast and you think to yourself, we will continue to let these people do whatever they want with our brand. But, uh, that was first episode. It's cool, we're trying it out. Let us know what you think. Please, if you're a Mr. Robot fan, please watch that show and talk to us about it.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  It's you, Emily and Russell.

• 3:56Nilay Patel?

  It's me, Emily and Russell. Uh, there's an IRC channel. There's an IRC channel, Vcorp on FreeNode. Uh, hit it up. The IRC channel last night, rockin'. Just rockin'. Yeah, oh man. Do you want to hear some IRC dramas?

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:11Nilay Patel?

  So, uh, we have a great producer, showrunner of the show, this guy named Bankton Anderson. Uh, his brother, huge nerd, volunteered to run our IRC for us. His brother, Micah. So Micah lights up the IRC last night, we're tweeting about it, get in there. Someone came into FreeNode and kicked him from the channel.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:28Nilay Patel?

  And took super op status.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:30Nilay Patel?

  And Micah had to like, go in there and battle his way back to being a super op.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  It's just like IRC.

• 4:36Nilay Patel?

  So like, deep, deep IRC drama, blowing up. Uh, but it was fun. I was, if you're like an old school Engadget podcast, or early, early Vergecast listener, you remember that we had IRC channels lit up during those shows? It was like, kind of a throwback, only with a major cable networks intellectual property, what we were talking about while I was like, reading crazy IRC messages. That was really fun. Then on top of that, I don't even know, that's a whole, I don't know, that's like the two big ones. And on top of that, this weekend is the Panorama Music Festival in New York that we are presenting.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  And you've been just hydrating like crazy.

• 5:13Nilay Patel?

  I'm ready to rock. Uh, we're gonna roll and roll and roll. No, I'm too old for that. But, um, it's Arcade Fire, Kendra Kamar, LCD Sound System, other headliners, a bunch of other acts. We want to see, my, my wife and I are old, we're just gonna calmly rock out to the national. We're just gonna, in the middle of the afternoon, just hold hands, eat pretzels.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  I hate to tell you this, Neil, but you can, you can calmly rock out to Arcade Fire too. They're, they're a band for olds now.

• 5:40Nilay Patel?

  No, no. It's really sad. And so is LCD Sound System, but I think they're gonna put on a question. Um, yeah. Anyhow, uh, what's cool about that, and I hope you've been watching our YouTube channel, um, or the site itself, we have this massive installation at Panorama. It's the biggest one. Actually, it, Panorama's on Rosewood Island in New York, same place as GovBall, actually. And if you're driving down the FDR, you can see the Verge's lab. It's called The Lab. You can see it from the highway. It's so huge. And it's like, lit up, there's a big Verge sign. And inside of that, we ran around with a company called Meta, which is like a, I didn't know how activations were made, and now I know.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Brand activations?

• 6:21Nilay Patel?

  I know how brand activations are.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:24Nilay Patel?

  Uh, you hire a really cool company called meta.is, which is awesome. A student named Justin Baldino, um, who ran around New York, found all the coolest digital artists in New York, uh, and had them all install a bunch of stuff in this massive 70-foot geodesic dome that plays like VR 360 video all around you while you watch like robot arms dance and stuff.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  I have a question.

• 6:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  About Panorama.

• 6:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  How do you go to Panorama?

• 6:48Nilay Patel?

  You can take, it's on an island.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:50Nilay Patel?

  So you can, you can take.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  And I'm not a strong swimmer.

• 6:53Nilay Patel?

  Paul, you're screwed. If you, if you don't swim, you can't see.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  I can tread water just fine, but as far as like covering distance.

• 7:02Nilay Patel?

  There's a ferry, there's a bus, and there's the cable car thing.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  And you just buy tickets?

• 7:08Speaker 03

  The tram.

• 7:09Nilay Patel?

  Tram.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Like, tickets aren't sold out or something like that?

• 7:12Nilay Patel?

  Tickets, I do not believe the main, I think the, like, special VIP tickets are out, but the G, GA, general admission tickets, you can still get them, which, because most people are listening to this on Friday.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:24Nilay Patel?

  Get them right now. Yeah, just go. It'd be cool. And a bunch of Verge people are there. We're talking to a bunch of artists backstage. We're gonna do a bunch of videos where we set up a huge VR rig backstage. We're gonna put artists in VR and see how they react. Um, so we'll be periscoping, Facebook livings, not periscoping, probably just Facebook livings.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 7:42Nilay Patel?

  Uh, making videos, taking photos.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Snapchat, maybe.

• 7:44Nilay Patel?

  Snapchat. Um, so you'll see us all weekend at the Panera Festival, which is very exciting and has been, Dieter, I would say this has also been a year-long project in the making. Right? We started, we started talking about this easily last year, if not more.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:59Nilay Patel?

  Um, so it's our first go at presenting something at a music festival. It's our first go at doing something like the Mr. Robot Show. It has been just a bonkers week of running around. Um, but on top of all of that, there was tech news this week.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Sometimes.

• 8:15Nilay Patel?

  Who knew such a thing would happen while we're so busy doing Verge stuff? So we gotta get, get right into it. Biggest tech news of the week, actually like flew under the radar, unless you're a big nerd.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 8:27Nilay Patel?

  But SoftBank bought ARM, and that means very little to some people and everything to some other people.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  I think my first reaction was like, oh, you could buy ARM.

• 8:41Speaker 03

  You can buy a giant chip company.

• 8:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  That doesn't manufacture chips but designs them.

• 8:49Nilay Patel?

  They don't even really design, it's, well, Paul and I are talking about it, Paul, walk us through.

• 8:52Speaker 03

  Has an architecture that is popular.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, so I've been reading the, the Wikipedia article on.

• 9:00Nilay Patel?

  Paul threatened to just read the Wikipedia article.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  On the ARM, without footnotes, it's eighty-five hundred words. This is about the ARM architecture specifically.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  But yeah, the biggest, the way ARM touches most of our lives is through chips that are manufactured and mostly designed by Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung. And those companies basically license the instruction set of ARM, but hardly any, anything else.

• 9:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  And I guess that's why ARM is a company that can be bought.

• 9:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And they are not bought for, I mean, it's a huge sum of money to normal people, but

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:42Nilay Patel?

  At the scale that we're talking about, they're $31 billion.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Right. For a company whose name is synonymous with the thing that powers everything that's not a laptop or a desktop.

• 9:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  That seems pretty small.

• 9:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  I mean, it was, it was only $31 shave clubs.

• 10:02Nilay Patel?

  So it's, there's, so SoftBank bought it. SoftBank is fundamentally a Japanese carrier. They also own Sprint. But ARM has been the sort of Switzerland of the mobile industry. They make this instruction set. They do have, as Lauren was saying, they do have chip designs that some people use. But the big players that we think about, Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung, they license just the instruction set and make their own processors around it, obviously with some connection to the main ARM design.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:33Nilay Patel?

  So Apple has its A series, Samsung has Exynos, Qualcomm has Snapdragon. Those are all ARM chips, but special in their own significant way.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Right. And yeah, the, the most important thing is that instruction set and you can, but there, there's weirdnesses across ARM. I don't know. I've been tracking, I feel like, I don't know, I'd love to hear what Dieter and Lauren have to think about this before I just say random stuff about compilers.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  I really, I can't like even begin to pawn this off as my own thought, but Vlad Savov did a really good article about this the morning after and quoted, I think it was Tom Goodwin, who had said, had pointed out that in a lot of the major tech companies today, it's not actually about owning hardware or owning vehicles or owning, I guess that's the best way to describe it, right? Like owning hardware. It's actually about owning information and owning sort of the infrastructure. Here's the quote, actually. So Uber owns no vehicles. Facebook creates no content. Alibaba has no inventory, right? But it's one of the world's most valuable retailers.

• 11:45Speaker 03

  Airbnb has no homes. So this is like, if you want to sort of slide this in there with that, ARM doesn't have chips, but it has the information and the infrastructure that enables that to happen. And that's a really big deal.

• 12:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  So, I mean, we all have this, Neil, I called ARM like the Switzerland of, you know, chips. And that's like, I think that's true. There's not a lot of people that have historically distrusted ARM. So, Apple and Samsung can be comfortable using fundamentally the, you know, same instruction set or architecture for their chips because they just, you know, ARM, the ARM stuff is good and they could just, they figure they could just use that and not have to worry about competition down the line. The big question is, now that they're owned by SoftBank, which is in part a big carrier, who has some skin in the game in, you know, what happens in mobile, they own Sprint. Is that going to change?

• 12:44Speaker 02

  I kind of think not, but mostly because I think that SoftBank has shown itself to be really smart and, I mean, other than buying Sprint, really just savvy. So like,

• 13:01Speaker 02

  In addition to buying Sprint, Sam Byford wrote this story, they also bought, or they bought a huge stake in this company called Supercell who makes Clash of Clans. They sold that for a bunch of money to Tencent. They also were an early investor in Alibaba and they also made a bunch of money on that. So like, they've sort of managed to make really smart purchases and do stuff with them. And, I mean, they would have to be incredibly stupid to hurt ARM's status as like a impartial creator of instruction sets and have them start favoring, you know, one phone over another.

• 13:40Speaker 03

  Well, in the short term, it doesn't really benefit them to create any kind of conflict of interest, I think is what you're trying to say.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, yeah, long term is, I don't know, maybe a different story.

• 13:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so the reason they bought it, their stated reason is, obviously, everyone's stated reason for everything that isn't mobile but related to mobile, which is, we're gonna make Internet of Things. We're gonna, we're gonna put the stuff everywhere. We're gonna put a chip in it. And that's great. I mean, you know, on the most optimistic timeline, the Internet of Things is a good idea and it'll work and our homes don't get hacked. But if they do create a conflict, what I was thinking about the most is, Apple has a totally vertically integrated stack. There's no reason that the A series of processors can't slide away from ARM in some way, because Apple controls the operating system to make the hardware.

• 14:32Nilay Patel?

  No Apple consumer gives a shit about whether the A series processor is truly an ARM processor or some weird Apple variant.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:40Nilay Patel?

  But then the flip side of that is, we've been hearing just rumors, it's like idle speculation, and it comes up a lot, that Apple's eventually gonna walk away from Intel in the MacBook.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 14:51Nilay Patel?

  Which we've, I mean, the current MacBook, Dieter, you have one. I have your old one, actually. Your old one is very slow. Your new one, only slightly faster. It's like, there's no reason that they couldn't put a really fast ARM chip in that.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Certain ARM Chromebooks, certain ARM Chromebooks, there's the emphasis.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Certain ARM Chromebooks.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Certain ARM Chromebooks.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, are well-known to be very fast.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  So it's definitely, for that size of computer, ARM does seem to be pretty great.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  I would rather take an Intel Chromebook over an ARM Chromebook, basically, any day of the week.

• 15:30Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I want to spend a large portion of the show talking about my dream of owning a Chromebook Pixel running Android, running Android apps, because they just released support for it, and it's out.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Well, it's out of the dev channel, and by the way, Neela, I have one on my desk.

• 15:44Nilay Patel?

  I hate you. Like, I mean, I really like you.

• 15:47Speaker 03

  Everyone in the comments now is going to be like, "Video! Bring that video!" So we can see the thing on Dieter's desk.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  It's kind of buggy. It's more like there are apps that just aren't friendly to it yet, so there's a bunch of games that don't work. They haven't quite, in the build that I'm using, figured out like screen resizing for Android apps, so you either have to choose tablet mode or portrait mode. It's like, okay, and it's the sort of thing that I would use in the same way that I use a Chromebook, but just have a few apps that are more convenient to have in Android instead of Chrome. But you can see it. You can see the future. I was just talking to somebody else about this earlier today, like, using it, you're like, "Man, just a little bit more polish,

• 16:34Speaker 02

  another rev of the software, and the only reason I need a traditional, proper laptop is Photoshop and video editing."

• 16:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But then you'd get, you'd get like a hot iMac. Think about it.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  No.

• 16:49Nilay Patel?

  No?

• 16:50Speaker 03

  No?

• 16:50Speaker 02

  I'd get a...

• 16:51Speaker 03

  Why not?

• 16:53Nilay Patel?

  Lauren.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  Well, because you would basically do that stuff at home.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  If I'm gonna, if I'm gonna get a big-ass desktop computer, I'm gonna get something that can run on HTC Vive.

• 17:02Nilay Patel?

  That's true. That's actually kind of a moment, right? I mean, there's a huge split going on here between what's happening with desktop PCs. Desktop PC, I think Cantor Research released, it was like last week, desktop PC sales are ticking up, and depending on whether you measure Chromebooks in it, it's either like 1% up if you don't measure Chromebooks, and it's 5% up if you measure Chromebooks.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  I mean, that's where I'm at. It's like, I gotta put my money away to get a VR rig.

• 17:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. The hot graphics card, like physically hot.

• 17:32Speaker 03

  Get some Alienware.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, my apartment is not warm enough, and I want it to be warmer.

• 17:39Nilay Patel?

  Lauren, why would you get a desktop? I mean, would that work for you? That's kind of my big question.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  I don't feel the need to get a high-powered PC yet for the sake of VR. I honestly don't because just in the untethered experiences I've had at home, I use it for like a half hour and then I'm like, alright, I'm good with this for now.

• 17:59Nilay Patel?

  That's kind of the way it goes. Actually, the Mr. O people tried to do a VR simulcast today and it just glitched out. Like, it was really exciting and cool, but the stuff isn't ready yet. Like, it can't drive demand until it works.

• 18:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, and also, I mean, I feel like at this point, if I was going to get a high-powered desktop at home, or just got an iMac, I mean, it would be for like a sense of focus on stuff at home? Like, I would just need something really, really... You're totally right in that this is being segmented out. The PC market is sort of being segmented out in this way. And I don't even know if we'd call it PCs anymore because we're really talking about mobile. But like, just need something really light that you can take with you on the go and cover events and do all the crap you have to do on the fly. But then like, you'd have a desktop for editing your photos and maybe storing some stuff locally and editing in Premiere or doing like whatever it is that you feel like you just can't do from a 12-inch MacBook.

• 18:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I desperately need a new MacBook Pro. My MacBook Pro is good... This is why I have Dieter's old MacBook. Because it's like, maybe I can just hold over. But it's too slow and I definitely... The keyboard is just not right to me. I want to love that keyboard so much. I want to feel like it can make me so fast, but it's just one tick too small. Dieter, do you have that problem at all? Did you get used to it?

• 19:18Speaker 02

  I totally got used to it. My problem is, apparently, there's a known issue with the spacebar where it doesn't... It gets a little sticky on the right-hand side and I'm experiencing that. But I want to finish the thought that you started, that you implied there's a future coming. And the future is SoftBank screws up ARM, Apple's like, eh, and they moved some other instruction set. And then they could use the same processor architecture on a Mac and on their phone and, you know, on the iPad. And then, and then, wait for it. You could just take your iPhone and instead of having a Mac, you could just slot your iPhone into a keyboard and monitor.

• 20:00Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God. That will never happen.

• 20:02Speaker 03

  Oh, I can't. These solutions so far have just been so janky. Yeah.

• 20:07Nilay Patel?

  I mean, look, Dieter, I know. I know that Folio dream was real for you.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really was.

• 20:12Nilay Patel?

  Dieter got really mad because we talked about Folio last week.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, we did talk about.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you were wrong.

• 20:17Nilay Patel?

  I was super right.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  Super wrong.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Are you guys ready to talk about compilers?

• 20:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  All right.

• 20:23Nilay Patel?

  It's fine. Time for this show to go off the rails.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Crazy thing that Apple did, and a lot of developers are kind of freaked out about, but this is something that happened with Swift. Is when you deliver your, there's actually this really good chart that I will try to explain out loud to you, but when you deliver your apps to Apple's App Store, and I don't know if this is already in effect or it's something that they're implementing. You don't deliver them stuff compiled specifically to a platform anymore. You deliver what is called bit code. And they compile it to target different architectures. And one of the reasons Apple's doing this is like there's, you know, there's a difference between ARM and ARM64, right?

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  So instead of having you make the ultimate binary that lands on a person's device, but has support for multiple architectures, they can just take your bit code and then compile it themselves and give a slimmer binary to each person.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  How are developers feeling about that? It sounds like they lose a little bit of control in the process.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Pretty freaked out about it, especially because there are other things that you would do that would be compiled and very architecture specific. That would probably be a little difficult with this.

• 21:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  So is bit code, what's the difference between bit code and source code? Is Apple able to look at a developer's source code if they want to?

• 21:44Speaker 01

  No, bit, well, bit code would be pretty far down the chain. Source code is what you type with your hands. And then bit code is a bunch of compiler steps later, which Apple, Apple makes LLVM, which is kind of one of the most popular compilers now and is, it makes it all possible.

• 22:02Nilay Patel?

  Scale is something that's some getaway with almost anything, right? I mean.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, it's the scale, but also they do really, like you said, they have the whole tool chain. And right now they have a programming language that you could write. Swift and basically put it into an Apple black box and then Apple could make it run on anything.

• 22:24Nilay Patel?

  Hmm.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. If they want to.

• 22:27Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's just the rumors about what Apple's doing with its processors next are all over the map, right? None of this stuff is confirmed or real, but there is the notion that Intel will win the modem for the next iPhone and instead of Qualcomm, which currently has it, but then Intel will win the processing contract or the manufacturing contract for the next processor because currently Samsung has it. Intel gets back in the game that way. Then there's the idea that they're going to move away from Intel on their other product lines and put ARM chips and MacBooks.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  I just want a power PC back.

• 22:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  We never saw the G6.

• 22:59Nilay Patel?

  Man, that's where that Scissor Vodka joke came from. That song, I'm just letting you know.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Really? Like a G6?

• 23:06Nilay Patel?

  That song.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Man, let me tell you.

• 23:08Nilay Patel?

  Slipping scissor in my ride.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Years of confusion. It's like, what a, rappers are such dummies. Don't they know there was never a G6 processor?

• 23:17Nilay Patel?

  It's about it. Never mind. It's plain, Paul.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's plain.

• 23:22Nilay Patel?

  And a mythical processor.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  That we never, that we never got.

• 23:26Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that, so, all I'm saying is Apple's really good at these processor architecture transitions and if they are thinking about, if they were up until now considering moving everything to ARM, which they have the, at least the history of being able to do in a smooth way, the fact that ARM is now owned by a carrier and potentially a competitor because SoftBank gets in all these businesses and wants to do all this Internet of Things stuff, that actually is a bump in the road. It's, it's, it's a bigger story than just, they spent $31 billion on a bunch of engineers who filed patents on instruction sets.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm just writing my editorial that says, um, App, Apple moving to ARM is, uh, user hostile and stupid.

• 24:07Nilay Patel?

  God damn it. I'm done with this. It's time to, it's time for an advertisement.

• 24:13Nilay Patel?

  The Vergecast, as you know, is supported by Citi Cards with Android Pay. How cool is it that we live in a world where you can use the same device to listen to the Vergecast and buy your morning coffee, groceries, and more? Did I mention that it's a super fast way to pay? Just use your Citi card with Android Pay at the register. Get in, get it, and get going. Download the Android Pay app on Google Play or visit citi.com/androidpay to get started. Android Pay is available for eligible Citi Consumer Credit and Debit Cards. We're back from that wonderful ad, which I definitely did not record ahead of time.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:45Nilay Patel?

  Paul, you've got a thing you want to talk about.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Oh, is it my time?

• 24:48Nilay Patel?

  It's your time. So for your usual segment.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  My usual segment that I do every week called Gadget Secrets, which is my brother, my brother-in-me reference because Justin McElroy does Edward Snowden character where he talks like that about secrets.

• 25:11Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Um, this is different than Gadget Secrets.

• 25:15Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  It's this thing, it's this really cool Edward Snowden and Bunny, who is a famous hacker and has been working on building like a completely from scratch, open source computer built of all open source components, not just operating system.

• 25:33Nilay Patel?

  That's what you want.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  That is exactly what I want. Andrew Hwang or...

• 25:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  But I know him as Bunny. Edward Snowden and Bunny.

• 25:43Nilay Patel?

  Bunny in the news twice today, actually.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  There's more Bunny news?

• 25:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but do this one first.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Okay, they're making an iPhone case, kind of, that it goes on the back of the phone and it also plugs into the phone, which it would require like basically custom modding of the phone. You couldn't just get this off the shelf. Goes in through the SIM card slot of the iPhone. And the idea is that it could detect if the iPhone is is using any radios when it's not supposed to. And so like journalists, if they're going into some like, like country that might be trying to track them, can know if their phone, even in airplane mode, is maybe like sending out signals or something like that,

• 26:32Speaker 01

  if they've been compromised. And it can also somehow shut shut it off. It's like, it's like the most technologically advanced and interesting tinfoil hat.

• 26:44Nilay Patel?

  It's literally a tinfoil hat for your phone. With like an e-ink display on the back.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 26:51Nilay Patel?

  It says like, "Bat OK."

• 26:52Speaker 01

  A weird D-pad, like, it's got like up and down.

• 26:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  I guess it's like, it's like how arrow keys are laid out on a keyboard as a little triangle, where you typically don't do that for D-pads.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  I wish it would have done a little jogstick.

• 27:08Nilay Patel?

  I wish this was a Sony Clio in the back of my phone.

• 27:12Speaker 03

  It's like those Pong cases, except instead of blocking you from,

• 27:20Speaker 03

  sorry, guys, I'm so like brain dead right now because I'm really hungry.

• 27:25Speaker 03

  Instead of blocking the waves, it's telling you that they're there. Let's oversimplify this.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Right. That's, yeah, which seems just weird. I mean, I guess I'm not, I'm not, am I not paranoid enough?

• 27:38Nilay Patel?

  You're definitely not paranoid.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  I feel like if I put my phone in airplane mode, it's fine.

• 27:42Nilay Patel?

  Well, don't you just have to test the one phone? Like, do you need to sell a device?

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Well, I guess this would somehow like fend off future hacks that other people come up with. But yeah, you'd think you could just, or just buy a factory fresh phone. I don't know, dude.

• 28:01Speaker 03

  So wait, I'm reading this now. It alerts users to any unauthorized output when the radios are meant to be off. So that means when you manually turn off your radios, if they are still for some reason,

• 28:15Speaker 03

  Being used, it just shuts it off.

• 28:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so the CIA is hacking the phone.

• 28:19Speaker 03

  It's not like at the app level. It's not like app permissions. Like, there's some app that's pulling data from somewhere. It's like purely in the hardware. It's in the radio connectivity.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  If somebody like hacked your phone to somehow like pretend to turn off when you turned it off, but actually still work, or, or yeah, keep broadcasting. So it would be a very, it would be an operating system level hack. It would be a pretty deep hack to be able to, to do anything. But apparently it was Edward Snowden when he met with like reporters, like originally had them turn off their phones and put them in a refrigerator.

• 28:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, like, it's, but it's even further. It's like hardware level. Because it, you take out your SIM card, you put the SIM card into the, this extra case.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  And this has wires that go into your phone and know what's up somehow.

• 29:11Nilay Patel?

  I love this gadget.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  It's pretty exciting.

• 29:14Nilay Patel?

  I mean, this is, this is a sort of wild stuff we need to see more of in the gadget world.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:18Nilay Patel?

  I'm into it. Okay. We should do the other bunny news. It's bunny news twice today. This is a story that I'm super into and no one else will be into.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  I have no idea what you're talking about, so I'm gonna learn.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  Where are you going with this?

• 29:30Nilay Patel?

  Uh, bunny.

• 29:31Speaker 03

  Set top boxes.

• 29:32Nilay Patel?

  No, it's not set top boxes. It's copyright law, guys. It's my favorite thing. So Bunny, Andrew Wang, has a company called Alphamax. That company develops software to basically rip video streams and re-edit them on the fly. He, that company, and the EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, filed a lawsuit today to, God, this is so nerdy, but I'm so excited, to invalidate Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which if you are a huge nerd, you know, is one of the most troublesome laws as it relates to how we use computers, particularly the internet. So 1201.

• 30:13Nilay Patel?

  People have gone to jail because of 1201.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  What's 1201 saying?

• 30:16Nilay Patel?

  1201 is the anti-circumvention component.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Oh, so this is like DVD John?

• 30:22Nilay Patel?

  Yep, DVD John.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, you print out the DVD thing, yeah, yeah.

• 30:25Nilay Patel?

  What was it? It was you print out the code to decrypt a DVD and like just writing it down. It's not that long can like send you to jail.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  What if I think about it?

• 30:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, um, and this is like a big, I would say 2004-ish. It was so, it was so in the news that like people were getting the DVD encryption code tattooed on themselves. I mean, like, fuck you, arrest me for this.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Isn't there something also going on with this and, um, tractors?

• 30:51Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Farmers want to be able to modify their John Deere tractors.

• 30:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so there's a lawsuit about that. So basically, the way it works now is that if something is copy-protected digitally.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:05Nilay Patel?

  And you break it, that's illegal.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:07Nilay Patel?

  And that applies just down the line to even the weakest protection.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  And there are also, there's similar laws about locks, right? Like physical locks? I went to a hacker conference and locks are also sort of have this weird protected status, right?

• 31:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, there's like, there's a whole bunch of, basically, this is an argument about metaphors. And you like pick the metaphor you want and you pick the legal regime around that metaphor. And then you try to apply it to the internet and it always breaks down.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:39Nilay Patel?

  Because all this stuff is just encrypted with numbers. And if you guess the number or you route around the number, you go to jail. Like, that's the answer. But there's a bunch of, because it's not a lock, right? So a lock on your shed, I know how to break your lock, I go into lock, I take the tools out of your shed. I've actually stolen them.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Broken and entered.

• 31:59Nilay Patel?

  I have them and you don't have them.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:02Nilay Patel?

  And there's no argument I have for like, I'm making fair use of your lawnmower because I just fucking took it from you.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  So before, uh, before I was a journalist, I was a grad student and I was like the tech guy who helped, uh, use tech in the classroom. And I worked for the cultural studies department and like there are professors that wanted to use. Really like 30 second clips of, you know, old ass movies as examples in their classroom. And they didn't want to have to like mess around with the DVD. And I had to go through this whole rigmarole with the legal department. And they told me no, and we just, we ended up doing it anyway. But I just wanted to rip like 30 second clips that they could use in the classroom. And I had to do it on the sly. And there's like, not much of a clear use of fair use than like

• 32:49Speaker 02

  a graduate school professor showing a 30 second clip from a movie from like 1932, right?

• 32:55Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  That's how, that's like, it was, it was a crazy time. And like, what's bonkers to me is that this rule is still just sort of hanging around and people aren't up in arms about it anymore, cause.

• 33:08Nilay Patel?

  Well, so what's happened, so what's happened is really bad, right? So there's an exception to the rule, which is every few years, groups of concerned citizens can petition the Library of Congress to make certain uses acceptable. So like every three years, we report on this. And those rules, it's like, it's backwards. Instead of saying permission, everybody has permission. And if you do something illegal, we'll get you. It's everything is illegal unless you mount a lobbying campaign to get permission. So things like unlocking tablets has been granted an exemption, but that exemption will expire in three years and then it'll be illegal again. The DVD stuff for academic research has been granted,

• 33:52Nilay Patel?

  but it'll expire and you gotta go beg for it again, over and over and over and over again. This is all DMCA, Digital Money and Copyright, was passed in 2000. You just think about the state of the internet and technology in 2000 versus now.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  And Neelai's hair.

• 34:07Nilay Patel?

  In my hair, which I believe at that time I had blonde streaks in my hair. This is a fact.

• 34:12Speaker 03

  Think of how much more knowledge you have now.

• 34:15Nilay Patel?

  I mean, this was the stuff when I was in college, just like riled me up. I was like a boing boing reader. Every day, just like ranting about the copyright law. It sent me to law school on the force of rage and conviction. And then law school beat that rage and conviction out of me. And I became a lawyer.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  Now you've got a website and a flagship podcast. And you're putting your line, the line in the sand. You're planting the flag from the flagship.

• 34:40Nilay Patel?

  Let me tell you.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  In the sand.

• 34:42Nilay Patel?

  How many DVDs I've been cracking.

• 34:46Nilay Patel?

  No, this is one of those moments where, again, seems like a small thing, but in the history of technology, this is one of those things where the copyright system of the United States is so far behind reality, that if you actually, if you get rid of something like 1201, you say, "You can make use of the media that surrounds you."

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 35:07Nilay Patel?

  Here's a good example. Adobe tried to send somebody to jail ages ago for daring to crack the encryption on PDF, from like, telling people how to interoperate with PDFs. That's ridiculous. And it's finally come to the point where, the way I look at this right now, it's, we're just at a place where all of the media has moved online, all of the media is now protected or DRM'd in some way. Like, if you think about Spotify, everything on Spotify is DRM'd. So if you are that teacher Dieter was talking about, and you want to like, grab a song clip, you're effectively bypassing the protection measure of Spotify. Spotify could put you in jail. That's like, if you live in a world where everything is

• 35:50Nilay Patel?

  streaming at you all the time and DRM'd all the time, then you live in a world where any fair use activity becomes illegal. So this lawsuit is being positioned as a First Amendment lawsuit, because the copyright law is making, making actual First Amendment use of media completely illegal. Unless you go and beg the Library of Congress for permission.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  And is Bunny's case somehow an ideal case to...

• 36:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because, and this is like, super weedy. So, it's super weedy. So, the way that you get around it is, I'm trying to, I'm gonna say a bunch of legal words in the wrong order, and then people are gonna email me.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 36:28Nilay Patel?

  He's got, he's not, he's not Napster, right? He's not trying to say, "Well, most people are doing something illegal with my thing, but there are substantial, non-infringing uses, so it should be made legal." Right? Like, that's how Napster lost. The court looked at it and said, "Well, yeah, but most people are just stealing shit." He's got a service where he's trying to like, develop software, tell people, mix and remix video streams, and that, if you just look at it on the face of it, probably should be legal. Right? Like, you, you put in four YouTube streams, and you like, make some fair use thing out of it, without having to jump through a lot of hoops. You can't really do that right now. So it's ideal in the sense that he's, there's a real product here that is a good idea that

• 37:12Nilay Patel?

  has expressive uses that aren't just straight up stealing shit.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:17Nilay Patel?

  I think that puts it in a good spot.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 37:19Nilay Patel?

  But this is just one of those things where, obviously, I'm very excited about it. Can you tell? I'm like lit up.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  Wait, so they just, they just shipped off the lawsuit, they just emailed?

• 37:29Nilay Patel?

  I mean, EFF literally two hours ago put out this press release.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 37:33Nilay Patel?

  Bunny in the news twice today.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Bunny?

• 37:34Nilay Patel?

  Protecting your phone.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Buy Bunny's laptop. I don't know if it's still available.

• 37:39Nilay Patel?

  Alright, so that was my big one. And then I wanted to talk just next to it, just a little piece of nostalgia note.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:44Nilay Patel?

  Uh, VCRs.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:47Nilay Patel?

  Out of production now.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  No.

• 37:49Nilay Patel?

  They're going away.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Well, last in Japan. Do you think that's the last ever?

• 37:53Nilay Patel?

  I haven't, I own, how many VHS tapes do you still own? I own a ton.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  My little brother-

• 37:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're all sitting on a bookshelf in Chicago.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  Has a huge library of VHS. And he has one, like a VCR slash DVD player, but then he also has a dedicated VHS player, and then he also has a dedicated DVD player. He's, he's pretty into the format of VHS, I would say.

• 38:19Nilay Patel?

  It's funny because that VHS look, uh, is kinda everywhere again.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:23Nilay Patel?

  Or have you been watching Stranger Things on Netflix?

• 38:26Speaker 01

  No, I want to. That's like the ET ripoff, right?

• 38:29Nilay Patel?

  Goddamn. No, it's, I would say it's, it's, it's inspired. Dieter, have you been watching it? Lauren?

• 38:35Speaker 02

  I'm waiting for a unicorn chaser show for it. Like, it's, it's like dark, right?

• 38:40Nilay Patel?

  No, Stranger Things, Lauren, have you been watching it?

• 38:43Speaker 03

  No.

• 38:43Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god. Okay, everyone's screwing up.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 38:46Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it's, it's, it's just, it's like eight hours long.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  It's like an eight hour-

• 38:50Nilay Patel?

  It's like an eight hour movie. It's like an amazing mashup of Stephen King and Steven Spielberg. So there's like that ET vibe, and, but like John Carpenter. Like, it's crazy. It's so good.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  I do wanna watch it. I'm very busy.

• 39:06Nilay Patel?

  It's a show set in the eighties and the entire aesthetic of it is super eighties, but it's not about the eighties.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I feel like I've been seeing like, like music videos randomly pop up that just have a VHS filter on them the whole time.

• 39:19Nilay Patel?

  It's just, that whole look is coming back right now. That whole, I mean, it's because people my age have disposable income.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  Wait, wait until you see what, what Deli's hair is gonna turn into. It's gonna be great.

• 39:29Nilay Patel?

  Oh man, I'm getting it dyed tonight.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  I'm gonna get a perm.

• 39:33Nilay Patel?

  Lauren, did you ever have a perm?

• 39:35Speaker 03

  I did. Oh my God, I'm so embarrassed. I did.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 39:39Speaker 03

  In like the third or fourth grade, I cannot believe my mother let me do it, but um, but I did. But I read an article the other day that in Japan, like late seventies LA is coming back in style. And personally, I love all of this retro stuff. I think it's super cool. I think we should all be living in like a John Carpenter movie, but like minus getting killed.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  What is, what was everybody's favorite VHS?

• 40:03Nilay Patel?

  Oh, uh, Jurassic Park. Short Circuit. Even though now I know.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Toy Story for me.

• 40:10Nilay Patel?

  Do you have Toy Story?

• 40:11Speaker 03

  I really liked Major League.

• 40:13Nilay Patel?

  Ooh. That's a good one.

• 40:15Speaker 03

  Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

• 40:16Nilay Patel?

  That's a good one. It was Jurassic Park for me because it was the first one that we got that was in surround sound. We bought like the special newer stereo VCR and the first Dolby surround tape that we got was Jurassic Park.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  What?

• 40:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  I didn't know that was a thing.

• 40:31Nilay Patel?

  All the way, like the last generation of VHS players was like very fancy.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  This is great.

• 40:37Nilay Patel?

  And they were like stereo.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  I have you beat. We had, my brother and I used to make a lot of movies, like horror movies. And we were obsessed with, so you bring up John Carpenter, we were obsessed with like a Halloween series and Nightmare on Elm Street and like basically everything we could possibly watch. So we like scripted Halloween six, thinking, this is one summer, thinking like Halloween six was never going to come out because I think at this point we were on Halloween two. And now of course there are like 10 or 11 or something absurd. I think that the series is no longer exist. And so we actually like rounded up all of these people and shot a 45 minute Halloween six on like a Panasonic VHS camcorder. And then we had two VCRs. So we edited the movie by basically split, you know, splitting them together.

• 41:21Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 41:21Speaker 03

  And like cutting that way. This is like so, this is, you know,

• 41:24Speaker 01

  There was no copy protection.

• 41:26Speaker 03

  Pre, pre, pre Final Cut Pro.

• 41:27Nilay Patel?

  There's no copy protection.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 41:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, we were shooting this.

• 41:32Nilay Patel?

  Psycho shot for shot when I was like eight.

• 41:35Speaker 03

  You redid Psycho?

• 41:36Nilay Patel?

  We we we remade Psycho shot for shot like we full on sweeted Psycho when I was like eight or nine years old.

• 41:43Speaker 03

  It's amazing.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  One.

• 41:44Speaker 03

  What camcorder did you use? I actually found a Panasonic camcorder at an antique shop like not long ago and I was so tempted to buy it. I think I'm gonna go back and get it.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Is it one of those full sized ones?

• 41:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it was pretty big, you know, and it had like the top handle and, um, you know, the physical button that you would pop in the side, you'd press on the side in order to pop the the like, you know, envelope style slot out to put the V H. It was just, it was so cool. And then in order, if you wanted to like, apply effects to the video, you would toggle like a physical button back and forth.

• 42:16Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 42:16Speaker 03

  In order to apply, you know, the high contrast or the negative style like it was so cool.

• 42:21Nilay Patel?

  Do you know camcorder I always wanted, like just the most was the red one they used in Back to the Future? There's a red, the red JVC that Marty had. This podcast is just completely old people talking about things they wanted in the eighties right now. But I wanted the hell out of that camcorder. And if anybody can talk to me about where I can acquire the red JVC camcorder from Back to the Future.

• 42:44Speaker 03

  Right now.

• 42:45Nilay Patel?

  Cause that is the thing.

• 42:46Speaker 03

  I can on eBay.

• 42:48Nilay Patel?

  Back to the, that's the one that Paul's got a picture right there. I mean, just look at that thing. Ah, now we just have these stupid phones. They all look the same.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Well, didn't Kodak come out with like a true actual film camera recently?

• 43:01Nilay Patel?

  A bunch of people have it. Uh, and then the, and the Instax is like huge. Every party I go to is like people taking Polaroids. What?

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Why are we not at Comic Con right now? The folks at Comic Con got to see the NES Classic Edition. It is so tiny. It is the tiniest little thing.

• 43:19Speaker 03

  I know. I want it.

• 43:21Nilay Patel?

  Welcome to the retro of our chest.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  I'm so mad right now that I am not.

• 43:25Nilay Patel?

  Fall into our youth.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  In person with this thing. It's so little.

• 43:28Nilay Patel?

  Is it on the website right now?

• 43:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's on the website.

• 43:30Nilay Patel?

  We gotta look at it.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  There's like a million pictures and it's not enough to make you happy.

• 43:37Speaker 03

  I once spent like two hours wandering around this neighborhood in Osaka where I didn't understand anyone or could read street signs or anything, just trying to find a bar that someone on TripAdvisor said had an NES. And I was like, I will find this bar, just so I can play NES for like an hour.

• 43:58Nilay Patel?

  The wine store by my house has an NES in it, and I have never seen a more effective marketing gimmick in my life. Like, you walk in there and you're like, yeah, I'm just gonna play the first level of Mario. And then they're like, would you like to try this wine? And you're like, oh, that's delicious. Do you want to buy a bottle? And you're like, eh, why the hell not?

• 44:16Speaker 03

  I'll take six.

• 44:17Nilay Patel?

  I came in here to buy water. I don't understand why. I just bought four bottles of wine. It's great. So, speaking of Comic Con, actually, Paul spent some time on the phone with one Brian Bishop, who's at Comic Con, gonna give us a little report right now.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  All right. I'm here with Brian Bishop. Well, I'm not even literally here. I'm over the phone call with Brian Bishop, who is at San Diego Comic Con. Is that correct, Brian?

• 44:46Speaker 04

  I mean, it's not technically a phone call. It's Skype, but I am in San Diego at Comic Con, and we are speaking, yes.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Let's not nitpick. This will take forever, Brian. Okay, so upfront, I've never been to a Comic Con. I think I've been to San Diego. I'm not sure. I am kind of scared of Comic Con's in general.

• 45:07Speaker 04

  That's a totally reasonable reaction to have.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Should I be afraid?

• 45:12Speaker 04

  Uh, yes. And if you're gonna pick one to be afraid of, this is the one that you should be most fearful about.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  This is the scariest.

• 45:18Speaker 04

  This is the scariest one. It is big. It is large. It is all-consuming. It is brand-tastic all over the place. There are people everywhere, dressed in weird things. And it's just like, the humanity is overwhelming, to be totally frank. But what is really kind of cool and beautiful about it, and I, every year we come, and I think, boy, this is overwhelming. It's such a crazy show. There's so much going on. But by the end of it, I come back to the same point. is like most of these people that are here are here because they love a story or a character or a series or you know whatever it is they love it so much that they just want to come be part of it and express that with other people whether it's dressing up or just geeking out and buying stuff

• 46:01Speaker 04

  and outside all of the cynicism that is rightly earned that part is kind of amazing and beautiful but it's also really hot this year so maybe that changes it

• 46:09Speaker 01

  how much of it is like I just love this whole culture versus I love this one thing I gotta be at Comic Con because of this one thing

• 46:19Speaker 04

  right I think there's a I think there's definitely like a certain type of person that is wired to enjoy this scene you know what I mean I think because people cosplay they'll cosplay as you know multiple characters a different character every year they're always building a new costume but there are people that are very clearly all about one you know series there are like hardcore Star Trek people there are hardcore Star Wars people um there are things like that um but I think there's a general like you know type of person that is into this kind of thing um but everybody seems to have a particular focus or favorite even if it's not what they're dressing up as in that particular day I think you really see that in these crazy lines for the Hall H panels which where it's just like sixty five hundred people in a room

• 46:59Speaker 04

  getting hyped about some small piece of news that's happening and this being super nerds about Captain America um in a good way you know um and I think that's where you kind of see that delineate because people have to put enormous amounts of time into picking what panel they're gonna like line up for and spend half a day for so if you really if you love Doctor Who and not to like spend the night in line overnight to see that Doctor Who then you must really be a hard or Hovian excuse me I did it wrong

• 47:26Speaker 01

  what's the what what what's the proper nomenclature

• 47:29Speaker 04

  I believe it's Hovian

• 47:30Speaker 01

  a Hovian alright we'll fact check that so yeah what's the most hype thing that's been announced or unveiled or or revealed so far

• 47:38Speaker 04

  uh what's really funny is that my whole thing that I've been talking about with the you know with this down here um is that this actually feels like a quieter Comic Con than last year last year was like this Supernatural event where it was like Star Wars is coming back and all these things were happening and this feels like an off year. I think the, you know, Saturday is going to be the biggest day of the convention because that's when Marvel and DC are having their panels. And obviously people are really hyped for Suicide Squad which is coming out next month. And, um, and Doctor Strange is coming out this year and supposedly there's going to be some footage of the new Spider-Man shown during the Marvel panel. So I think amongst like the traditional Comic-Con people, Saturday is looking like the big day with those two panels.

• 48:19Speaker 04

  But what's odd is that it's just those two panels. Normally they would be spread out over three days or so with multiple studios showing things. And right like this year, it's just Warner Brothers with their DC stuff, um, and Marvel and that's kind of it. Paramount's not here, Sony's not here. A lot of the big studios just start sitting it out this year, which is kind of interesting.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Just because they don't have, they don't have anything to share or they're not into fans?

• 48:42Speaker 04

  Well, that's, that's the thing. They do have stuff to share, particularly Fox who, who basically dropped out this year. And there's kind of this ongoing conversation, um, in terms of how much buzz do you really get out of Comic-Con, right? You know, in the 2000s, people started, you know, studios started coming here and it was a great way to sell their movies and it kind of took over the entire convention. But now you have this thing where it's, the last five years or so, it's kind of been diminishing returns and they're not really sure if it does all that much. Um, you know, Disney spent a bunch of money on Tron Legacy, which, you know, didn't do that great. Um, uh, Scott Pilgrim, like he got huge crazy buzz back in the day at Comic-Con, did not open at all. And so you see like the studios kind of strategically sitting it out year by year.

• 49:23Speaker 04

  Um, but this year's just so interesting because Fox has, you know, a new Wolverine movie coming out. They've got Assassin's Creed. They've got movies that they should be selling here and they're not, you know, and they're saying it's because of privacy because these exclusive clips got leaked online. Um, that doesn't really make sense because that only helped Deadpool last year. So there's basically, it's, you know, studios seem to be slowly inching away from Comic-Con as an investment.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  So is there like cool like niche stuff that's filling that void on on non Saturdays?

• 49:51Speaker 04

  It's a ton of TV. There's a lot more TV stuff I've seen, uh, you know, just in general than like I think there's ever been in a year. That's been a trend that's been happening, uh, but it seems to be really accelerated this year. Um, but I'm also excited to see what that's going to mean for, you know, just the the texture of the show in terms of this being artists get a little bit more attention. Does this mean, you know, properties aren't, uh, smaller properties aren't going to be drowned out by, you know, whatever huge sequel is being pushed. It's a, you know, that's always the weird thing about Comic Con is the balance this way it's so heavily towards movies. Um, and these big like temple things that when it goes away, there's opportunity for, you know, smaller things and just surprises. I mean, it's it's really weird. Today there's a panel for the Snowden movie today. Uh, I'm going to a screening of it right now, which is not the kind of movie that you'd expect to be at Comic Con.

• 50:37Speaker 04

  Um, but it's, um, but it's it's happening. So there's there is room there.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Well, it it and TV focuses a little bit more on the, I I I won't call minor char- maybe minor characters. Characters that couldn't carry a movie all by themselves, or at least used to not be able to carry a movie by themselves, right? So is that is that kind of exciting that it's bringing more people into deeper into these worlds?

• 51:00Speaker 04

  Uh, I mean, I think it's certainly for all these fans in particular. Luke Cage is going to be a big thing. Uh, that we haven't talked about. People are really excited. That series I think launches in September. Um, but these are like, you know, ancillary characters. If you love that world, you love that they're getting time to shine because they wouldn't carry a movie. Um, and so that's like they're getting to go and, you know, build out the texture and the richness of these universes in ways that movies can only go so far. Because at the end of the day, every Marvel movie has to ultimately serve the next Avengers movie or, you know, what have you as it moves forward.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Right. Okay. So what's what's the the the number one costume? What's the look? What what like I feel like typically, uh, uh, after I look at the photos from very far away from any Comic Con. Um, on Flickr or wherever.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Uh, there's, there's like, okay, th- this thing happened this year and then it totally swept the, the, uh, I'm, I'm, what I'm thinking is Overwatch. Is everybody dressed as Overwatch or is it something larger in the world that I don't know about?

• 51:57Speaker 04

  What's really weird is we were expecting a lot of Pokemon. We thought that was gonna be the thing. We were expecting Pokemon and Ghostbusters. Um, I've seen no Pokemon and I've seen one person dressed up as Kate McKinnon's character. What we've seen a lot of actually is Rey from The Force Awakens. Like everywhere you look, there is Rey's everywhere. I saw a mom dressed as Rey pushing her kids in a stroller earlier today. And that's just kind of cool because that character in that series, that's, you know, except for, you know, the Leia character, there was never a lot of strong women in that series to have that character be adopted so readily. Um, by, uh, by young women and fans is kind of remarkable.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  But no Overwatch. I mean, I'm happy, I'm happy for Rey.

• 52:38Speaker 04

  Are, are you, wait, are you, are you interested in Overwatch? What?

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, is Overwatch, uh, is Overwatch a thing there?

• 52:43Speaker 04

  Not that I've seen. I mean, this is the first day. There's like three more days to go.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  I wouldn't be accepted at a Comic Con.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Alright, well just keep an eye out, okay, for me.

• 52:54Speaker 04

  There's, there's still time. There's still time.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Okay. Anything else you're looking forward to specifically?

• 52:59Speaker 04

  Uh, you know, one thing that's also been interesting this year is, you know, we cover a lot of VR obviously on the site. But this year there's been a ton of virtual reality experiences. Pretty much every, like, themed activation or brand tie-in. Um, but that's a, that's a pedicab driving by if you could hear that. Um, it's very exciting. Um, but all these things are incorporating VR, which traditionally, you know, uh, these promotional tie-ins have been pretty weak. Um, but some of the ones that I've seen have actually been really, really fun. Um, most notably the Mr. Robot one, uh, we saw yesterday. Um, Sam Smail directed, that was really, really well done. And it wasn't just a gimmick. It wasn't just kind of like a, a brand tie-in thing. It was actual storytelling. Um, which seemed like a big step forward. And so that's something that I'd like coming, keeping an eye on. I'm gonna be seeing more of in the coming days.

• 53:43Speaker 04

  Um, hoping that we see some more examples of, of work like that because I think that's something when you have an opportunity. And by the way, the Ecto One is just driving in front of me, by the way, Paul. That just happened. Um, I'm sorry I'm not, uh, on, on video cameras. But now, whenever you have like, all these people like shoving money into this stuff to promote their thing. But creative people get to cha- get a chance to work in new mediums, cool things can happen. So I'm hoping we see more of that.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  Is that stuff just for showing off on a, on a show floor? Or is that stuff that people are gonna have on their home headset soon?

• 54:13Speaker 04

  Most of it is usually just like promotional stuff where they toured around. I think the Mr. Robot thing will get released. There was a simultaneous Yes, sir, I get it! Showing, quote-unquote, of it today where they, uh, they filled people up in Petco Park near the convention center here. And they could watch it at 10:00 PM or 10:30 PM. And then everybody that had the Within app downloaded could also watch it at that same time. And so, everybody could watch it around the world. But now it's gone and they're being very coy about when it's gonna come or not come out again. It sounds like eventually that will be released. Uh, and I think we're getting to the point now with all these experiences that the reach is just not big enough if you're taking it to like South by Southwest or Comic-Con and that's it. You know, um, you know, ILM, X-Lab, they released that Trial of Catchy Ween thing they've been showing around finally to the public.

• 54:58Speaker 04

  That's just the way, if they're gonna do these promotional tie-ins, they just need more eyes on them. So, I think we're gonna see more of that coming out, you know, in the months and years ahead.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe, maybe I can attend a virtual Comic-Con and I'd feel safe.

• 55:11Speaker 04

  I mean, I can just like hit my phone and livestream to you from the show floor. But I'm worried it might give you like, you know, uh, an anxiety attack because it's a little upsetting there when you're in the middle of it all.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, alright, well, I, I, I hope you stay safe. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Thank you for, for taking some time from your, your busy panel covering Pokemon searching adventures.

• 55:34Speaker 04

  Thank you, Paul. You can call at any time. Um, what character, if I was gonna dress up as a character before I left, who should I pick?

• 55:40Speaker 01

  Um, you mean an Overwatch character?

• 55:43Speaker 04

  Okay, nevermind.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  You can be Dad76. I'm like Dad76. So that's the thing, Overwatch fandom has like gone so quickly, so fast. There's like derivatives of the characters where like there's Dad and then like Dad is, or Soldier76 is Dad. And then, uh, Diva is like this nerd who like eats Cheetos. And so like, you'll see people out of their, see, I think maybe you don't have good enough eye to know if you are seeing Overwatch characters.

• 56:13Speaker 04

  That might be, that may be true. That may be true. I think I'm just gonna start taking pictures and sending it to you and we can play like Where's Overwatch?

• 56:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I'll do that.

• 56:20Speaker 04

  Okay, sounds good.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Thanks, bud.

• 56:23Speaker 04

  Thanks, Paul. Talk to you soon.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  I gotta tell you, I had a great time talking to Brian.

• 56:27Nilay Patel?

  Brian is so great.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Just got married?

• 56:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, just living his best life. And all the news from Comic Con. Man, did I love hearing about that.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Lot of surprises.

• 56:36Nilay Patel?

  So we gotta end on this. I have a lot of thoughts about this too. This was some of the biggest news of the week, actually.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:43Nilay Patel?

  Paul brought it up to me while we were doing the rundown. I didn't even think about it.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  Been trying to write an essay on it.

• 56:47Nilay Patel?

  We actually have to talk about Taylor Swift and Kanye West. Uh, there's a million reasons why we should talk about it. It's funny in the context of all this copyright stuff that we're talking about. Uh, I mean, there's this whole feud. It's actually fascinating that like Taylor Swift runs this like perfectly controlled media empire. And you get to crack past the facade of it. But what's crazy to me is that Kim Kardashian used Snapchat when she actually has a television show. A massively popular, huge television show with which to reveal, to do nothing but reveal deception. I mean, the point of a reality show is to create deception and then reveal the depths of deception.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  Could you even put it on a reality show? I feel like I want to get past the lawyers of the actual network.

• 57:34Nilay Patel?

  So this is what I'm saying.

• 57:35Speaker 02

  But the other thing is like, her doing it enhances the power of her personal brand. Because it feels like it comes directly from her and not from a TV producer.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  Whether or not there was a producer involved in her Snapchat, she would tell you no. I guarantee you that lots of other celebrities like carefully hone and have people manage what they put on Snapchat. But putting this on Snapchat made it a different kind of celebrity feud than you would typically get uh, from, you know, a reality TV show or like a magazine quote or something.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  It was a powerful moment.

• 58:10Nilay Patel?

  So, yeah, I mean, like it ate the internet for basically a day.

• 58:14Speaker 03

  I just had to confess something to you guys. I've been using a professional TV producer to run my Snapchat. So when you see, when you see me Snapchatting that I actually wore two completely different sneakers to the gym this morning, because I was so goddamn tired when I got up, that was my producer doing that for me.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd like to confess something to you guys as well. I've been recording all of my phone calls with you. And if you cross me.

• 58:41Nilay Patel?

  It's all over. Wait, so let's just, I know, so the story is fascinating. It's fascinating a thousand levels, right? It's fascinating on just the pure plot points, right? Kanye West calls Taylor Swift, says, I'm writing a song. I'm gonna say that we might still have had sex. Taylor Swift is like, that's cool. Then he releases a song and she's like, that's not cool. And then.

• 59:00Speaker 02

  Well, but he releases a song with like one more lyric that he may or may not have told her.

• 59:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:05Speaker 03

  Right, and apparently she was made aware as soon as the phone call ended that it was being recorded. And then her people jumped into action and said, no, no, no, no, you can't do that. So this, but before the song came out.

• 59:16Nilay Patel?

  Wait, all of that's crazy, just that. And that's like every, we ran through that story and how it worked. And every other site in the world ran through that story and how it worked. And if you missed it, I don't want you doing, go read the internet. It's there for you. But let's just pull apart the various platforms and tools that these two massively powerful celebrities chose to communicate with. Kim is running QuickTime Movies on a MacBook, recording it in Snapchat on her iPhone with the rotation all fucked up.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:49Nilay Patel?

  So the Snap, so the Snapchat's sideways with the MacBook, it's a, and you can't change it.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  And I saw, I didn't see it on Snapchat. I saw somebody's Twitter.

• 59:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  Tweet of the video ripped from the Snapchat.

• 1:00:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and it's on YouTube, it's all over YouTube. And then.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  And Taylor Swift, like pulls up her notes app, searches for an essay that she definitely wrote. Sometime before Tim's and

• 1:00:15Nilay Patel?

  Screenshots it.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  Screenshots and posts it, but the craziest thing, have you seen this?

• 1:00:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  If, if you, you can barely make it out in the full color version, but if you desaturate it and play with the levels and stuff.

• 1:00:28Nilay Patel?

  While Zap rooting the Notes app.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  It's clear. I didn't, I didn't do this. I saw someone else had done this. The, the line, you know, when you scroll something, it kind of fades away at the top of an iOS app or on Mac and stuff like that. It says because it's something like.

• 1:00:43Nilay Patel?

  It's the previous draft.

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  Because it doesn't exist.

• 1:00:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  She's, she wrote an essay claiming that a recording doesn't exist. At least that's what it appears that she.

• 1:00:52Nilay Patel?

  No, that line is in there.

• 1:00:54Speaker 03

  Wait, I'm looking at it right now, guys.

• 1:00:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  Look, really.

• 1:00:57Speaker 03

  This is the notes.

• 1:00:59Nilay Patel?

  In notes and then right under, I mean, this is like, you have to be such a nerd and know how translucency operates in iOS. And the Notes app works and the fact that all these celebrities are screenshotting the Notes app to put on Instagram or to put a longer essay on Twitter. The, just the sheer amount of media capture, recapture, retransmit all that's happening in this feud.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27Nilay Patel?

  That would ordinarily have happened on the pages of like People Magazine is fucking wild.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  Right. The, so the text is, that is scroll, it's like almost completely off the screen. It's just a little bit there. It says, because it doesn't exist.

• 1:01:42Nilay Patel?

  But that line is.

• 1:01:42Speaker 03

  And that's above the where is the video or that's below?

• 1:01:46Nilay Patel?

  It's in the search bar. So there's the essay that she actually wrote.

• 1:01:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  So you think those were just notes that she was prepping?

• 1:01:52Nilay Patel?

  So she had like a previous draft and scrolled up in a previous draft, the last line of it is like peeking out through the menu bar transparency in the iOS Notes app.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  It's amazing.

• 1:02:03Nilay Patel?

  Because that line is.

• 1:02:04Speaker 03

  I, I actually like, can't see this in the image. It just ends at search and I can't.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:09Nilay Patel?

  It's there. You gotta.

• 1:02:10Speaker 03

  Oh, I see. I see. I see.

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:02:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's a whole thing. I just want to talk about that for five minutes. Just the fact that two, literally two of the richest and most powerful people in the world have chosen to argue.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  Why have we?

• 1:02:24Nilay Patel?

  By Snapchatting MacBook screens.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Are we old? Because we, have we posted an essay that's just written in a Notes app?

• 1:02:32Nilay Patel?

  We should.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  Like, that's clearly a medium of the future.

• 1:02:36Nilay Patel?

  Phil Schiller, of all, Phil Schiller was like tweeting links to like New York Mag stories that are like, "All these celebrities are using Notes app." And Schiller's like, "Notes? Everyone loves it."

• 1:02:51Nilay Patel?

  It's great. I, that is one of those things. It's like this emergent behavior.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Do any celebrities use?

• 1:02:56Speaker 03

  Do you ever write a note, do you ever write a note when you're kind of drunk and then you read it like a couple of days later and you're like, "What?"

• 1:03:03Nilay Patel?

  Well, Lauren, I think we just figured out what the next segment of The Verge Cast is.

• 1:03:09Speaker 03

  All right. One of these days, we're gonna go through, we're just gonna tap on a random note in our notes list and we have to read it. We have to read whatever it is.

• 1:03:17Nilay Patel?

  I'm ready. I mean, I'm ready to do it right now, but.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  I'm ready right now.

• 1:03:19Nilay Patel?

  Let's do it.

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  I use SimpleNote.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  I don't actually use as well.

• 1:03:23Nilay Patel?

  Because I.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  All right, all right. Here we go. I'm scrolling. You guys can see this, right?

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  Getting some good momentum out.

• 1:03:31Nilay Patel?

  I'm going, I'm going deep.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  The Google keyboard's just bugging out. All right.

• 1:03:35Nilay Patel?

  By the way, what app are you guys scrolling in?

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  Well, this is.

• 1:03:38Nilay Patel?

  I've got SimpleNote.

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  Wait, something happened.

• 1:03:40Nilay Patel?

  No, I just found, I just found something really old and crazy.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  Uh, this is something I wrote for the startup I used to work for. I'm gonna, I'm gonna.

• 1:03:51Nilay Patel?

  Is anybody ready?

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  I came to one, but I can't do it because it's too boring.

• 1:03:54Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Paul?

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:56Nilay Patel?

  Go ahead.

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers. So when I, when I take notes at church, I copy and paste from my Bible app into my Notes app. So this is Acts 15.

• 1:04:10Nilay Patel?

  You're just gonna read us a Bible verse now?

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  I won't, I don't have to read the whole thing.

• 1:04:14Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Mine is equivalently insane. Ages, I don't know, I don't, SimpleNote doesn't give you dates, but this is clearly a note from when I was the acting managing editor of Vox.com. So from two years ago at least. The first line is just, "Is there a typo in the Declaration of Independence?"

• 1:04:36Nilay Patel?

  It's clearly me working on this story. Uh, and it's just a list of proposed headlines about this. "Are we worse citizens?" Because the Declaration of Independence has an extra period. "We misplaced one of Jefferson's commas and now we're all jerks."

• 1:04:51Nilay Patel?

  That's what I got, Dieter.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  That's a moral that, you know, it doesn't have to be late at night for you to be drunk, Lauren.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  Okay, alright, alright. You ready? Are you ready?

• 1:05:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  I went way back.

• 1:05:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:06Speaker 02

  Title of this note is Nexus Q Review.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Is the first line, "What is this?"

• 1:05:15Nilay Patel?

  What is this odd circle that does nothing?

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  NY Video David, Brian Review, Dieter on Android Feelings.

• 1:05:24Nilay Patel?

  Oh. I feel like Dieter on Android Feelings is a component of literally every Android device review that we have.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  That's literally what it's doing with this Chromebook right now, right?

• 1:05:32Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's, you know, this is about to be five.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  Next to widget resizing, which has nothing to do with it, but just, there you go.

• 1:05:41Nilay Patel?

  Uh, that's the one feature that device did have, is widget resizing. Alright, Lauren.

• 1:05:46Speaker 03

  Okay, mine, I, you can tell that I, I thought I was being really deep when I wrote this. I was thinking very deep thoughts. And it's not from that long ago, it's from, uh, December of last year. "It can sometimes be difficult to say with tech products whether something falls short because what's new is actually no longer new, or because what's new is just not very good."

• 1:06:12Nilay Patel?

  I feel like Lauren is just clearly smarter than all of us.

• 1:06:15Speaker 02

  That's pretty good.

• 1:06:17Speaker 03

  And then I tried to use that in a column and it didn't fit, so I had to kill my darling, but that's okay.

• 1:06:22Nilay Patel?

  Lauren, I think you could put that line at the beginning of literally every product review.

• 1:06:26Speaker 03

  It's true.

• 1:06:27Nilay Patel?

  It could be the tagline for Circle Breaking.

• 1:06:29Speaker 03

  And, uh, that was our old holiday, was it on our old holiday gift guide from 2014? Oh, we were talking about like categories. I did open one before that was like, I took me a moment to figure out what it was. It was like, no jewelry, don't eat, take out contacts. And I was like, what?

• 1:06:45Nilay Patel?

  Lauren, I think I'm about to assassinate someone.

• 1:06:47Speaker 03

  And then...

• 1:06:49Nilay Patel?

  Bring rifle.

• 1:06:51Speaker 03

  Wear rings, bring Vaseline. No, and actually then it then. What?

• 1:06:58Nilay Patel?

  Wear knife around thigh.

• 1:07:01Speaker 03

  Then below that it said, it said Fremont Surgery Center. So I realized like, someone must have called the night before.

• 1:07:07Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:07:08Speaker 03

  Just a reminder, like, don't wear jewelry and don't eat and like all this stuff.

• 1:07:11Nilay Patel?

  That makes losses.

• 1:07:12Speaker 03

  That was kind of a funny one until I figured that out. I have something about smart mirrors. I don't even know.

• 1:07:17Nilay Patel?

  So you're a Notes app person?

• 1:07:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:19Nilay Patel?

  I haven't, everyone tells me it's great, including Phil Schiller on Twitter.

• 1:07:23Speaker 03

  No, let me, let me, let me put it this way. Let me put it this way. I'm a G Docs person and then Notes is like my side piece.

• 1:07:29Nilay Patel?

  I see.

• 1:07:30Speaker 03

  So like, if, yeah, if I need to like, open it, sorry, Phil, but if I need to like, you know, open something really quickly and I don't have internet connectivity or it's just late at night and I'm on my phone and it's just, I want to jot a bunch of thoughts down before bed, I'm going to Notes. And I like Notes a lot, but if I need to actually take notes for like posterity and going back and writing an article off of and stuff like that, I'm going to G Docs.

• 1:07:54Nilay Patel?

  So I just, I'm like a simple note person through and through, and it's not for any reason other than an ancient app called Just Notes on my Mac. But they changed it so that I have the old version, I refuse to upgrade. It like had, it has an icon in the menu bar where I can just click it and it opens a field and I can start typing. And that turns into a simple note. But that's all I need in this world. But Notes app on the Mac.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  Notational velocity.

• 1:08:21Nilay Patel?

  Ah, there you go. Um, okay. I feel like we really didn't talk about the fact that celebrities use weird mediums, but my point is.

• 1:08:28Speaker 03

  Does anyone remember, sorry to interrupt.

• 1:08:30Nilay Patel?

  Go ahead.

• 1:08:31Speaker 03

  But does anyone remember, since we were talking about stuff from, um, I guess we were talking about the seventies and eighties, but like the nineties, that a bunch of rappers like used to take, I don't, I feel like maybe it wasn't a bunch, but there were rappers that used to really antagonize pop stars. And it was like a thing. Like I remember like. Eminem used to

• 1:08:51Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:52Speaker 03

  Talk junk about a bunch of pop stars and Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.

• 1:08:56Nilay Patel?

  Right, because they were fake music and the rappers made the real music. I remember this.

• 1:09:00Speaker 03

  Right, right. And like, and there was a lot of drama around all of that then. I mean, there's drama around a lot of other lyrics as well, which were incredibly controversial and in a lot of ways, like horribly sexist and violent. But like, I feel like history is just repeating itself.

• 1:09:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:19Speaker 03

  But now it's amplified because of all of this social media.

• 1:09:22Nilay Patel?

  Definitely. Like, without, without question. But it's also, all music is pop music in that way now? Like, all music is just deeply, deeply produced and packaged and marketed now? That, that old piece where it's like, "I'm a, I'm a real musician and you're, you're being manufactured by Swedish producers." It's like, everyone is manufactured by Swedish producers now. We live in a world of Swedish production.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  All the biggest rap hits have like a pop star hook or something like that.

• 1:09:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, the genres are, are blending.

• 1:09:53Nilay Patel?

  I just want to know where the protest music is.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel, this is, yeah.

• 1:09:57Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, look, sadly,

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  This is wild.

• 1:09:59Nilay Patel?

  Unfortunately, I have to wrap this up because I have to go to Fancy Fancy Panorama Party, where I'm, I am not, I'm not speaking, but I'm introducing Dan Fromer of Rico, who is speaking.

• 1:10:11Speaker 03

  Fun.

• 1:10:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, which is cool. So I'm excited to go see Dan. But if you're in New York, come to Panorama, we'll be around, come say hi to us. If you're not in New York, watch Mr. Robot.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:10:21Nilay Patel?

  Uh, listen to Lauren's podcast. Lauren, on your podcast next week, aren't we?

• 1:10:25Speaker 03

  Yay, you are, I'm so excited.

• 1:10:26Nilay Patel?

  Listen to Too Embarrassed to Ask, I'll be on Lauren's podcast next week. We have a bunch of other shows, Control at Delete. This week, Walt and I just complained about smartphone apps for an hour. It was one of the funniest hours of my life. Um, that's out. Uh, Chris Plant hosts What's Tech, which is wonderful. Emily and Liz do Verge SP Entertainment Insights podcast. And Paul runs a little thing called Circuit Breaker that you should check out constantly.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 1:10:49Nilay Patel?

  And Dieter runs a thing called The Verge.

• 1:10:52Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty cool as well. You can follow us everywhere. We're at Verge, we're on Snapchat, Instagram, the whole thing. I don't know. I feel like YouTube doesn't get enough love. Go to YouTube. Watch some of our stuff. That'd be great. And I want to thank-

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a, we didn't talk about it a lot today, but the review of the Moto Z.

• 1:11:09Nilay Patel?

  Yep. Great video, Welch.

• 1:11:11Speaker 02

  Incredibly good video review.

• 1:11:12Nilay Patel?

  Uh, really quick, want to thank Centrify Corporation. Let me introduce you to Centrify Corporation. Centrify Identity Platform is a next-generation identity management solution that protects organizations against cyber threats. Check out their white paper. Know you want to do that. Or sign up for a free 30-day trial at centrify.com/identity. That's it. That's the Verge Cast. We'll see you next week.

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  Cyber is the future.

• 1:11:33Nilay Patel?

  Cyber is the future. Paul.

• 1:11:35Speaker 03

  Bye.