Season 3

Vergecast is back! But something is different…Dieter moved to San Francisco and Nilay is still in New York City. How can they make it work? This is the future and we can chat in cyberspace, that's how. Using ~technology~ we also patch in Paul Miller and Lauren Goode for a special State of Tech discussion. Wait! There's more! Nilay interviews Kara Swisher, executive editor of Recode, to talk about what's to come with this year's mammoth guest lineup at the Code Conference. We want your feedback! Tell us what you want to see on the show, who you want on the show, or even where you want the show! New episodes every week. 25:55 - Paul’s gadget of the week 31.12 - Nilay and Dieter’s car trouble 41:31 - interview with Kara Swisher 52:23 - lightning round 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.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  Hello, this is Dieter.

• 0:10Nilay Patel?

  Hey, man, it's Eli.

• 0:11Speaker 00

  Oh, hey, how you doing?

• 0:12Nilay Patel?

  You know, you're not here. I guess I'm a little sad. How's San Francisco?

• 0:16Speaker 00

  It's cold. I don't know. It's fine. My apartment, all I can see in my neighborhood is a giant glowing red Ask.com logo.

• 0:25Nilay Patel?

  Oh, good. The glowing logo of failure just above you at all times.

• 0:32Nilay Patel?

  You're literally in the bubble. Well, it's beautiful in New York, so just think about coming back sometime.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 0:39Nilay Patel?

  While you're out there, we gotta figure out the Vergecast, man. How are we gonna do this?

• 0:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't think it's gonna go well at all.

• 0:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, you know, I look to you for optimism all the time, but we gotta try something. So here, why don't we do this? Why don't we patch in Paul and Lauren and then just try to have a show?

• 0:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think that'll be grand. It won't fail. Everything will be good.

• 1:02Nilay Patel?

  It won't fail.

• 1:05Nilay Patel?

  All right, and let's play, I don't know, some sort of sound effect that indicates that we've patched in the guests.

• 1:19Nilay Patel?

  All right, listeners, hello. That was the gimmick that opens this, the revised and refreshed Vergecast, the flagship podcast of theverge.com. I'm Eli Patel. I'm joined by Dieter. Dieter moved to San Francisco, breaking my heart, but opening the hearts of millions in the process, I think. That's a phrase, and that is the sort of math that we like to do here. But you might notice that the show isn't live anymore. We're gonna do it pre-recorded. We're gonna add some segments, some polish, some this and that. There's surprises coming. But I'm joined now here. Paul Miller's here.

• 1:51Speaker 00

  Hello.

• 1:51Nilay Patel?

  Lauren Good is here.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  Hey, guys.

• 1:53Nilay Patel?

  And we, actually, we do this from time to time on the show. And I think it's, if we're rebooting a little bit, it's a great time to do it again, especially given sort of where we are in the news cycle. From time to time, we do just state of the union. What's going on in the tech industry? Let's talk about all the big companies. We're in a tiny little bit of a lull. We had the big Google conference. We had the big Facebook conference. We had Microsoft Build, actually, a little bit ago. We're in the lull in a couple of weeks is W W C, which is Apple's big conference. Let's just talk about how things are going. So Lauren, I want to start with you. Tell me how Facebook's doing.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Well, all of the tech companies have suddenly discovered the power of speakers, apparently. So they're very hip to speaker hardware now. Like 1997 is back again. However, the big difference this time around is that a lot of these companies are working on artificial intelligence, whether that's in the form of bots, or some type of personified AI, or it's some kind of underlying, you know, smart layer that is powering all of these things. So it's really interesting because, you know, for the past several years, we've kind of all looked at our smartphones as this thing that's unlocking this incredible world around us. And now, I think people are figuring out, well, it can't necessarily

• 3:08Speaker 02

  be something that you're actively interacting with. Maybe the future is actually this passive sort of like shouting into the world and making things happen for you. And so, this has been really interesting to see, like, Google announced Google Home at I O last week. Obviously, there's Amazon Alexa. And then there were rumors earlier this week that Apple is working on some type of Siri-like device for the home. So I think that's what, I don't know, that's what's most interesting to me right now, and what I've sort of been focusing on.

• 3:35Nilay Patel?

  But they all have like, little tiny riffs on it that are different, right? I mean, you look at Google and their riff on it is, we're the smartest, basically. Microsoft's riff is, we're going to build the servers and development environments that enable everybody to make these things. Facebook's riff is like, we're watching you at all times. You know, and it's sort of unclear what Apple's version of that will be. Amazon's is basically like, we're shipping it already. Like, we're here, we're done. You can shop right now if you want to. Paul, we launched Circuit Breaker, and you came back to do Circuit Breaker because we saw this shift happening, like, really obviously. And now, like, put a chip in it, make it smart, is dominant.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  Right. Both you and I kind of talked about, for different reasons, why the phone can't be everything forever. And I just have this visual of of this like collapse. I think this is how stars work. Collapse of all technology. Your, your, your PMP, your camera.

• 4:38Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 4:38Speaker 03

  Your photo viewer and all things collapsed into the phone. And now it's like, well, let's explode it.

• 4:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:47Speaker 03

  And I, I, one thing.

• 4:48Nilay Patel?

  So you're saying the phone is a black hole. It's like a supernova.

• 4:50Speaker 03

  Right. And, and.

• 4:52Nilay Patel?

  Like a black hole sun.

• 4:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. Because then, yeah, doesn't it?

• 4:56Nilay Patel?

  Are you, do you think that you are a?

• 4:57Speaker 02

  We are back in 1997.

• 5:02Speaker 03

  I hope not.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Maybe 1994.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  One, one, one thing along these lines, like I, I, um, I hate this new Google project aura.

• 5:11Nilay Patel?

  You hate it.

• 5:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, as far as a phone. And then I read Dieter's piece, great piece of technology journalism done by our own Dieter.

• 5:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Um, and it mentioned like, oh, you could use these modules for other things in the home too. And I think that's also part of this exploding, like, we don't have to always talk to Siri in our phone, but maybe if Siri was part of your coffee table, maybe you'd talk to your coffee table and like that. And cause I don't know. And this is all falling apart, but you know, explode from the phone is my thing.

• 5:46Nilay Patel?

  So what happens when you, when a supernova happens, Siri goes everywhere?

• 5:51Speaker 03

  I'll pull up the Wikipedia article about, about how stars.

• 5:57Speaker 03

  And we'll get this metaphor really.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  Well, then you just, then you just have to ask your coffee table five times to do something.

• 6:02Nilay Patel?

  If only Lauren, if only Lauren Gush is here. So Dieter, I'm going to get somebody to talk about one of these companies specifically. It might as well be you.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:08Nilay Patel?

  Cause you just came from I O. Uh, you covered the hell out of I O. You did the, our big R piece, which was really interesting. And then Google sort of, they did kind of like on the sly, they were like, we're making our own consumer phone. It's coming out next year.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. It was like a, it was like a, it was, it was on the last day of their developer conference. And the last day of any developer conference is usually a big snooze, right? Uh, but. Instead, they chose to announce that Google, for the first time ever, is making its own phone, which is Ara. And I actually see the stuff that Google announced, like, in this spectrum that Lauren was talking about, about AI. CEO Google, Sundar Pichai, was talking about machine learning and basically Google saying, yo, we are smarter than everybody. Here's how we do it. And they're also preparing for this future that is coming after the phone. So this is why they're talking about their natural language comprehension chops.

• 7:05Speaker 00

  This is why they are eventually going to launch this Google Home speaker that is, you're going to be able to talk to their assistant. This is why their crazy future division, ATAP, is making a jacket with Levi's.

• 7:18Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna buy that jacket.

• 7:19Speaker 00

  Get.

• 7:20Nilay Patel?

  Oh, God, I'm 100% buying that jacket.

• 7:22Speaker 00

  I'm gonna buy a bike so that I can wear that jacket and not feel like.

• 7:25Nilay Patel?

  Truly live in San Francisco now, you traitor.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  Welcome to the dark side, Dieter.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  But the jacket is like, you put a little Bluetooth dongle in the cuff, and then you can use it to control your phone. But when you talk to them about it, they don't care about the phone. The phone is just the closest internet-connected computer that they have. What they want it to do is just talk to everything, everywhere, all the time. And Ara is actually on that spectrum. They want your phone to stop being the monolithic central black hole that sucks up all of your technology life, and they want it to just be a piece of it. So they want to do to phones what phones did to PCs. You know, Steve Jobs had the digital hub theory for the Mac, and then the phone became the new digital hub. And now Google, they lost.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  I mean, they lost in the US. Like, the iPhone is much more popular here. Android is more popular worldwide. But their ecosystem and the amount of people that get genuinely excited about Android apps isn't quite where the iPhone gets up to. And so they're laying all of the groundwork that they feel is necessary for the next wave of computing that's coming after the phone.

• 8:39Nilay Patel?

  Right. But didn't, I mean, Jobs put out that slide that was like, iCloud is the new hub, and the Mac is just a client. I mean, Dieter's on Skype, but I can see, I can still see his disdain for this concept.

• 8:52Speaker 00

  Right, I mean, it's iCloud. I mean, what do you want me to say about iCloud other than like shrug and kinda sigh and laugh?

• 8:59Speaker 03

  If bots are our future, if you now, you don't have, it's not one cloud service, it's not one device, but this general intelligence that kinda permeates your life that you access from a bunch of different points, like your coffee table and your phone and your jacket. Apple is not going to do well. Because like, look at Siri, the company that they bought for Siri had a way more functionality than Siri has even now. The founders of that company just recently announced a new AI that has a lot of those functionalities.

• 9:40Speaker 03

  So like, Apple has kind of seemingly an inability to do software right. And a lot of that, I think, is part of the culture where they don't quite attract the researcher type, the open sourcer type.

• 9:53Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 9:54Speaker 03

  Like, Apple famously has a lot of developers, like, they consumed a ton of developers to make OS 10. Like, open source, like, the free BSD Unix-type people that are underneath what they've created. Those people eventually leave because they don't like how controlled Apple is. Meanwhile, Google has open sourced its like, primary machine learning libraries, underlying libraries, and they're always talking about it in the open. Facebook is really attractive to developers for its open source stuff. And I think that's one reason why Apple might be really falling behind in software. And I don't see how they're gonna catch up with this wave.

• 10:34Nilay Patel?

  Well, Apple has Darwin and they open source Swift, right?

• 10:37Speaker 00

  Like, we're in a complete reversal of that like, common narrative. So, one of the things that happened at Google I/O is Google kept on saying over and over again, "Google can do this, we can do this, we've got some cool partners." But they did not say, "Hey, developers, come play with our assistant, come make chatbots for Google." Didn't say that at all. They said, we'll figure that out later. Meanwhile, the rumor with Apple and Siri and its speaker is they might open it up. So we might, a year from now, or six months from now, be in this bizarre world where Apple's intelligent assistant Siri is more open to developers and to chatbots than Google's.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  I completely agree with Paul, and I think that's a real problem that's happening on the back end in terms of attracting developers and attracting these new skills that these AIs can do. And that's a pretty critical part of sort of the vitality of these artificial, you know, assistants or personal virtual assistants, whatever you want to call them. But on the front end, like on the consumer side, I actually think there's even more of a problem because it's kind of an identity crisis. If you look at Amazon Alexa, everyone knows what Amazon Alexa can do. Everyone sort of knows where she lives right now and that you can buy things through it, right? Which, you know, that's clearly Amazon's end goal, at least for now. Google is just saying, hey, we're so smart and we're so good at search. We have so much information on you that we're just going to make this happen. We don't really know what it's called yet.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  We don't really know what format is, but don't worry, we're smarter than everybody else. And then Microsoft's sort of like, yeah, Cortana is great, like as a utility, like it helps you get things done. You have a notebook. You can't find Clippy on your Mac, on your, uh, your Windows machine. So you ask Cortana, like, or whatever, you know, you're not the Clippy, but the Snippy tool, right? Whatever, whatever it is that you can't find on Windows 10, basically Cortana will help you find because you're supposed to be super productive. But now you look at Siri right now and you're thinking, what am I really using Siri for? I mean, I use Siri to make phone calls when I'm in the car and I'm like, oh, call mom or call Neelai or call Dieter, whoever. Paul, I'll call you sometime too. But, but other than that, I'm thinking right now, what am I using, what am I using Siri for? So I have to think that Apple must have this grand plan where like 10 years

• 12:42Speaker 02

  from now Siri, I have to hope, like 10 years from now Siri is just going to work completely seamlessly in our cars and our homes, but it doesn't feel that way right now.

• 12:51Speaker 00

  The thing about Google, the Google version of this is the bet is Google's so smart, it'll just start doing it as the next version of Google. I mean, that, I think Google wants its assistant to be called Google, not Alexa or Steve.

• 13:05Nilay Patel?

  One of these days, somebody's gonna call me all called Steve. If Google names assistants just Steve, it'd be perfect. I think they just want it to be called Google. I think the, and we should actually talk about Microsoft because there's so much Microsoft news this week. I mean, Microsoft gave up on phones this week.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  No, they're streamlined.

• 13:20Nilay Patel?

  They've been slowly streamlining that phone division.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  It's so fast.

• 13:26Nilay Patel?

  It cuts through the water with the greatest of ease. That's really sad, a bunch of people.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  Yes, I'm sorry for those people.

• 13:33Nilay Patel?

  But the streamlined joke was good. Anyway, but they've been cutting that. They basically just admitted it's over for them in mobile. They might put out a Surface phone because they need to have a phone. Right? Windows as an operating system is now supposed to run everywhere. And they've actually accomplished that goal in a pretty meaningful way. It's on the Xbox now. That means anything to you, Paul? You're at Windows apps or Xbox?

• 13:56Speaker 03

  No. I didn't even know you could do that.

• 14:00Nilay Patel?

  You can.

• 14:02Speaker 03

  They've been saying they'd do that for

• 14:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they finally did it.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  Seven years.

• 14:05Nilay Patel?

  No, like, we should commend them. They did it. They're just a generation late, you know?

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Here's what I'll say about Microsoft. Yeah, they should have cut and run on phones a while ago. I mean, it's too late to relitigate buying Nokia. But, you know, when Satya's like, yo, we care a lot about making apps for iOS and Android. They shouldn't have put out the last round of Lumia phones. The big question for them is, you know, can they get their apps to be successful on those other platforms? And then monetize it? They're actually doing a pretty good job of that with Office and Office 365. But now they've got to do it with the other core apps. And then the even bigger question is, when we talk about them in the context of these intelligent assistants and bots, they can make a great bot ecosystem that works super well on Windows 10.

• 14:53Speaker 00

  But we're talking about the thing that comes after the phone. But when you look and use a bot on a phone or an intelligent assistant on a phone, that is a pretty big platform lock-in. And I don't know how likely it is that Microsoft is going to be able to convince people to switch away from the default option on Android or iOS to, you know, Cortana.

• 15:13Nilay Patel?

  No, but that's the system level, right? I mean, isn't Microsoft's whole play that they'll be in Skype and in WhatsApp and in Facebook Messenger? So, I mean, they showed off Domino's, the thirstiest pizza company of all time, right? Like, Was it Facebook?

• 15:29Speaker 03

  No, Facebook was Burger King, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you're right, it was probably Domino's.

• 15:32Nilay Patel?

  I mean, if Domino's can get in early on a faster way to order a pizza, they're in early. And Microsoft was the first, so like, but they-

• 15:38Speaker 03

  Is there any uptake on these chat, like the chat bots that are in? Cause I have like apps that have a chat style UI-

• 15:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:45Speaker 03

  That are like a fake bot, kind of. But these chat style bots in your Messenger app, is this what? Like, this was what Facebook and Microsoft specifically are really into.

• 15:56Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 15:57Speaker 03

  Is this what people want?

• 15:58Nilay Patel?

  Well, just the layer, I mean, the way I've been thinking about it lately is, the first war was like, who's gonna ship you the piece of glass?

• 16:06Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 16:07Nilay Patel?

  Right? And Apple and Google kind of, Samsung sort of like won this war. Like, they're the ones who ship you the piece of glass. The next layer down was, um, who's gonna get icons on your home screen? Right? And like, Facebook won that, sort of like, running away.

• 16:22Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 16:23Nilay Patel?

  They've got all these huge icons on your home screen. And now, Microsoft is like, putting icons on all the platforms and getting on the home screen. And then, now the war is, once you're, once you click on one of those icons, who can power services up through those experiences? So you click on WhatsApp, but Microsoft has partnered with Domino's, or Domino's is using Microsoft's backend, so it can talk to you in WhatsApp, and Microsoft obviously gets a piece of that. Or, you click on the Facebook thing, and Facebook has partners, and they're gonna, you know, Facebook app is gonna send you a monkey, or whatever the hell it does.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:51Nilay Patel?

  I don't know if Facebook-

• 16:51Speaker 02

  But they're entirely transactional. One of the things that came up after Microsoft built, when they were talking about the bots, was, um, I had a question around, well, what's the difference between an AI and a bot then?

• 17:01Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Because last year, it was all, everyone was talking about their AI, and this year, it's, it's bot, bots is the hot word. Um, and a person from Skype gave me this analogy, which I found really helpful, which is that bots are transactional.

• 17:15Nilay Patel?

  Hmm.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  They're more like, you go into a store, and you swipe your credit card once, but it's just that one-time transaction, and you don't anticipate, or you hope, that, you know, it's not going to be a repeat transaction, or that that person behind the register knows really anything about you, based on that one interaction that you had. But that the AI is sort of the equivalent of like, well, once you walk into the store, that AI knows what you want. I mean, it's, it's a personal relationship, it's there all the time, it's kind of this underlying layer-

• 17:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  It gets to know you. Um, but I, to Paul's point, I kind of have a hard time believing that- The bots are really that useful. I mean, on the one hand, in order for an AI to work properly, you have to give up so much of your personal data and that's really freaky to some people. And there are a lot of like privacy implications around that. But on the other hand, Casey Newton tried to interact with the bot. I forget which one it was. Was it Facebook Messenger? He did a video on it and it was just like this horrible, horribly inefficient interaction.

• 18:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's like having a really dumb friend.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  And I think this is my mantra is that I think what is exciting about bots is that they're like a text-based interface and I think that is great.

• 18:24Nilay Patel?

  Dude, I remember when Siri came out, you were so mad that you couldn't type to Siri.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  Right.

• 18:29Nilay Patel?

  I think you wrote an article about it and Engadget.

• 18:32Speaker 03

  Right.

• 18:32Nilay Patel?

  Forever ago.

• 18:33Speaker 03

  I wanna, I want to be able to issue discreet, clear, but expansive commands to my computer through text. And I think all these companies feel like, well, the future is phones and it's hard to type on phones. So we probably gotta do all, you know, and it's like, and so now we have to like trick people into basically using a command line. I mean, that's what I think a lot of these chatbots are, are a bad version of a command line. That's where, that's where I'm at.

• 19:01Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. I mean.

• 19:01Speaker 03

  Why can't I order Domino's from the terminal?

• 19:04Nilay Patel?

  What commands would you use?

• 19:07Speaker 03

  Domino's.

• 19:09Nilay Patel?

  But it's like basically what you're doing, right? You like, instead of typing Domino's, you open.

• 19:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. So why did I have to have a whole like chat? Why did I have to friend some weird bot thing? And have this weird back and forth and stuff like that.

• 19:21Nilay Patel?

  Technology is better when it's like a needy friend.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  I want to make imperative commands, not have a fake conversation.

• 19:28Nilay Patel?

  I think whatever the audience is learning, what it's like to be friends with Paul. Nonstop.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  It's a lot of that. But there's also good times too.

• 19:39Nilay Patel?

  There's love. It's just, it's not me just walking up to you.

• 19:42Speaker 03

  Mutual respect. I just want the pizza.

• 19:47Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, you were saying something.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  I'm just annoyed that all of the chatbot demos and intelligent assistant demos are about pizza.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  If this is the beautiful future, we are all gonna die of, you know, heart disease.

• 20:00Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's all about finding a restaurant or booking a hotel. They can't do anything else for you.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  There was one example during Microsoft build where the bot, this was in Skype, I think, and the bot knew when you were, you know, your geolocation. And so when you arrive somewhere where you had like a friend that lived nearby, they would message that friend and try to make plans for you. Which was one slight variation on the Domino's Ultra Crispy, you know, double cheese thin pizza.

• 20:26Nilay Patel?

  But nobody has the sort of like anxiety of I need to go to a place and not talk to anyone and just leave this place as quickly as possible. Am I the only person who's like, I hope I don't run into anybody I know here because I just don't want this transaction to be over?

• 20:38Speaker 02

  I just want to eat alone.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  I never not feel that.

• 20:41Nilay Patel?

  Dieter feels that right now. He's like, I can't wait for this to be over.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  Do you guys ever feel like, I just really want to eat my lunch in peace and not during the Virg cast?

• 20:51Nilay Patel?

  Lauren, I'm sending you a chatbot request right now. We have to hang out during lunchtime. No, it's, it's like all these, I mean, this is gonna sound really cruel. It's, it's like the people in Silicon Valley are so bad at the formalities of regular social interaction. They're hoping to outsource it to machines so that you can, like, no matter where you are, it's like, here's some social interactions you may have.

• 21:13Speaker 03

  That's the aspect.

• 21:14Nilay Patel?

  If you issue the following commands.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  That's the aspect I like.

• 21:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah?

• 21:20Speaker 03

  I just wanna, I want to ultimately program my own robot that's based on my own data that is controlled by me somehow that then will deal with my friends for me. But I don't want Microsoft to deal with my friends for me.

• 21:34Nilay Patel?

  Right. Did you write the thing about how you don't want robots to talk for you?

• 21:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, yes, I think so.

• 21:39Nilay Patel?

  Maybe. A lot of people wrote it too.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  Huh? But maybe you secretly do want robots to speak for you.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I want, I want my robot to speak for me. I want, I want some like sense of, of agency.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, I did write that.

• 21:53Speaker 00

  I know, I know that you did.

• 21:55Speaker 03

  So Google, we've already talked about this on like Facebook Live or something like that, but like the ALO thing where Google is gonna prompt you. Of things to say when you receive a picture of a dog from somebody. Maybe some people find beneficial and really useful, but to me, that's like demoting, allowing me to kind of demoting my involvement in a conversation.

• 22:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 22:21Speaker 03

  And it's just like, if you really don't have the time to tell somebody what you think about their dog, maybe you shouldn't be friends with them.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  Or just ignore it like I do.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a cute picture of your kid, but I don't have time to reply.

• 22:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, if I don't have a multiple choice option right now. You know, this is, this is, this is a pro tip. If you ever have to work with really busy people who don't have time for you, you're supposed to email them a yes or no question or like discreet options.

• 22:51Speaker 00

  Once again, I'd like to point out, this is a window into what it's like being friends with Paul. It's just binary choices.

• 22:57Speaker 03

  I'm saying like, that's not how I naturally think, but if you want to get an answer out of somebody that's real important and doesn't have time for you, that's how you formulate the email. And so Google giving you those options is like, hey, you, we know you don't really have time for your friends. So here's, that was just the one part of my life I didn't want them to optimize.

• 23:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think those quick replies should be marked, right? So if someone's, if someone tapped a button to reply to your dog photo or to say yes to the restaurant, whatever, just like iMessage gives you a blue bubble if they're on an iPhone, an auto reply should like be marked with a little tick that shows you that this person didn't type this thing, they just hit the button.

• 23:36Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. The.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  Are you saying why, for ethical reasons?

• 23:38Nilay Patel?

  No, it's like insincerity green.

• 23:40Speaker 00

  You know who to be mad at, who your true friends are. Your true friends type out the emoji, your fake friends hit the emoji button.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  It's like the equivalent of asking for an autograph when you're a kid and someone sends like, you get one sent back to you and you're like, pretty sure this was just, you know, printed out.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, like Autopen.

• 23:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 23:56Nilay Patel?

  No, but you're right. Dieter, the bubble should be another color that's like just close enough. It's like the regular iMessage is blue, but then there's insincerity blue. It's just like a little bit lighter, a little bit deeper and you'll know, the people who know will know and everyone else will just like slide on by. I'm gonna buy my next car. People you know will know. Did you see our, the people, the people who know that you hate them, they'll see the difference. Everyone else will get by.

• 24:23Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. So I want, let's go back to hardware for one second, because we've been deep in the weeds of this AI bot stuff. Is, Paul, you cover a shit ton of hardware on Circuit Breaker. I mean, it's like basically all Kickstarter's where the idea was, what if this mundane object had an app?

• 24:39Speaker 03

  Right.

• 24:40Nilay Patel?

  And a Wi-Fi chip?

• 24:40Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 24:42Nilay Patel?

  Is that just where hardware innovation is right now? Or is it in other places? What's the state of the state? Is it just iPhones with apps and Wi-Fi juicers?

• 24:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a lot of, it's a lot of, it's a lot of pairing things over Bluetooth or thing. This is what, like, we have like a 5 gigahertz Wi-Fi network at work. We have a secret Wi-Fi network that's 2.4 gigahertz.

• 25:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:07Speaker 03

  And you don't want to tell anybody about.

• 25:09Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  All these like fancy new connected devices that we get are all 2.4 gigahertz. It's always like, I don't know, I feel like there's, they're, almost all of these things that we're covering, a lot of these Kickstarter's that are like supposed to automate your life. They're almost all completely useless and make your life harder.

• 25:27Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 25:28Speaker 03

  But it's just, it's just fun. I think, I think what we're mostly limited by is battery life, chip speeds, wireless things available. And so we're just at this, right now, we're at this point where basically you can for free put like the brains of an iPhone one into anything.

• 25:48Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 25:49Speaker 03

  So what do you want to put it in? And they'll just try everything and we'll see if any of these work out. I don't know.

• 25:54Nilay Patel?

  What's the best one? Wait, this is a new segment.

• 25:56Speaker 03

  New segment?

• 25:57Nilay Patel?

  Andrew, play the sound.

• 26:00Nilay Patel?

  All right, Paul, what's the craziest Circuit Breaker gadget of the week?

• 26:04Speaker 03

  Gululu turns drinking water into a Tamagotchi like game for kids. Sorry, I should, I should, I gotta say that again. Gululu turns drinking water into a Tamagotchi like game for kids. It does not transform the actual water.

• 26:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  But the verb, the activity of drinking water can now be a game for children.

• 26:27Nilay Patel?

  Is this the second water related thing that we covered this week? Wasn't there another one?

• 26:32Speaker 03

  We did like a

• 26:33Nilay Patel?

  It's the third, actually.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  Water purifier that like texts you, like reminders to drink water.

• 26:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, with the Brita, right? No, the purifier was that one.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  The Brita's new, yeah, there's also a purifier. Yeah, so there's a lot of water going on.

• 26:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, that's

• 26:48Speaker 03

  Truly, we live in the end times. The theme of all of these is that you're not very good at living life. So let's help you live your life better. You don't know how to teach your child how to drink water. So what if we put a game, literally like a screen on the side of a water bottle? And your child has to care for this virtual pet by drinking water.

• 27:16Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 27:17Speaker 03

  Which I think is hilarious.

• 27:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:19Speaker 03

  And maybe sad, maybe great. I don't know.

• 27:21Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think the idea that you're terrible at living life. I mean, Lauren, you cover the hell out of fitness trackers and wearables. And they're, they're all predicated on the idea that you're lazy, right? And that if you attach some sort of very basic Pavlovian response system to steps, that you will stop being quite as lazy. Do you think that works? I mean, I don't know, you, you, you've tried more fitness trackers than anybody I know, I think. What, like, is that, do they, are they, are they sticky? Do people hold on to them? Do you hold on to them?

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're, they're pretty much all Tamagotchi like positive reinforcement bands and end up in drawers within three months.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  No, so that's a very sort of dystopian view of them. So I think like recently I've been thinking a lot about this because I was injured for a while. I was recovering from a surgery. So I actually couldn't work out or exercise that much. And I was still wearing them. And I was thinking, well, I'm really not getting anything out of them now. But, but I think that there are two categories where they can be, they actually can be helpful. One is just when people are really sedentary. I mean, they're, they're stuck at a desk all day, or they're in their car all the time, and they just kind of do nothing. And somebody puts a wristband on them, it didn't cost that much money. And is they basically say, go, try to do 8,000 steps a day. Just try, just try it for like, three months and see how it works out. I think for some people, that can be incredibly motivating. And you

• 28:38Speaker 02

  know, Dieter made a joke before about like, heart, all of us dying of heart disease. But it, it's true that it's like a problem. And so we like, for some people, this is, this is a really good thing. But then I think on the sort of total other end of the spectrum, there are people that are really into these things for performance purposes, or maybe more serious clinical reasons, you know, like they want a wifi connected blood pressure sensor, or they want a $600 Garmin, that's going to help them do the crazy things on mountains that they like to do. Those are like your friends with like ruddy cheeks that are always like, want to go for a 23 mile run this weekend? And you're like, no, thank you. Although, you know, this is not kind of fun, right? But, but, but so I think like, in those instances, they can be really great. But those are not, neither of those things are new ideas.

• 29:19Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Right? Neither of those is like, like, pedometers have been around for a long time. And so have performance fitness devices. I mean, Garmins were around before, long before something like the Apple Watch ever came out. So I just keep waiting for like that next something that's going to hit the middle market where people are going to be like, yes, this is actually valuable.

• 29:37Nilay Patel?

  But isn't that just the Fitbit? I see so many Fitbit. The president wears a Fitbit Surge, right? And like,

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:44Nilay Patel?

  He, every picture of him, you can see it. Like poking out of a really expensive suit, being really ugly, because there it is. I see Charge HRs everywhere. Like, they're like, they seem like the biggest player in the game, because it's

• 30:00Speaker 02

  They definitely are.

• 30:02Nilay Patel?

  But it's funny, because last year, you know, it's crazy to think that we've, we're now past a year of the Apple Watch existing, and it seems to have just not made a sound, right? Like, people have them, and I see them, and I always ask, "What do you like?" And they're like, "I like notifications." And then half of the people are like, "I like, I like fitness tracking."

• 30:22Speaker 02

  Hmm. And no one says, "I like running the third-party New York Times app, Cooking app on it, on my wrist."

• 30:29Nilay Patel?

  I bought a car. Oh, Dieter, we gotta talk about car stuff.

• 30:31Speaker 03

  Oh, God, yes.

• 30:32Nilay Patel?

  I, after five years living in New York, I bought a car. And like, I was signing up for car insurance, and I went to download the Geico app after I bought the car insurance. And just under it, it said, "Apple Watch app available." And I was like, "Why the fuck do I want Geico on my wrist? Like, in what universe does my car insurance company need to be here, touching my body at all times?"

• 30:55Speaker 03

  Just like, one in three times, you look at your wrist, you get a Geico app.

• 31:00Nilay Patel?

  It's like a little lizard, it's like dancing, it's a Tamagotchi, that's what it is.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  Honestly, if the little lizard popped up from time to time on my wrist and said something in an Australian accent, I would like it.

• 31:09Nilay Patel?

  It was just like, why did you put your effort there? Anyway, I bought a car, I updated the software, and the car is broken, and is at the dealer now. Dieter bought-

• 31:16Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 31:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  It's broken?

• 31:18Nilay Patel?

  Absolutely happened. I bought a Jeep Grand Cherokee, and it has Chrysler's Uconnect system, which is just some of the hottest garbage in the world. It has Nokia Here Maps. The maps have not been updated. Seriously, it's like a new-ish car, but even the new ones, the 2016s, the map data is like a year and a half old on these cars, and just, it gets updated once every 18 months. And you update the software by, I shit you not, you have to go to your computer, you have to go to their website, you put in your VIN number, it downloads Akamai Net Session, which is a distributed download client that has to, that needs like, like, system-level

• 32:02Nilay Patel?

  off to go on your computer. It, like, 99% of the support messages on every, like, forum is like figuring out Net Session, and there's like a black market for these update files. Anyway, so then you get this update file, which is an ISO. It's an ISO of a CD-ROM image, but Chrysler insists that you use at least a 4GB flash drive for the 600MB CD-ROM image. None of that makes sense. Then you stick the USB stick into your dashboard. Everything reboots into like the worst thing. And then what happens is it updates 10 of 11 modules, gets to the Sierra Wireless 3G card, which is in the Jeep

• 32:44Nilay Patel?

  for some reason, in case you want your Jeep to be a Wi-Fi hotspot. The Sierra module crashes because whatever, it's garbage.

• 32:53Speaker 03

  You bricked your car.

• 32:54Nilay Patel?

  And you bricked your car.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  So is your car, like, what doesn't work in your car now?

• 32:59Nilay Patel?

  I'm absolutely writing about it. So the car like runs, which is a victory. The screen, the 8.4" resistive touchscreen, they're not going to capacitive until 2018, I believe, which is incredible. It's like a beautiful car. Like, I love the car. This whole piece is garbage. The touchscreen just flashes white and says in Courier, "Insert USB to continue." You just try again and it crashes again. So the car is at the dealer, and the dealer had to order, this thing failed so badly trying to update its firmware, that they have to order a new head unit.

• 33:37Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 33:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's perfect. It's exactly what you want from a piece of technology that is literally supposed to keep you safe if somebody hits you at 60mph.

• 33:47Speaker 03

  Right.

• 33:48Nilay Patel?

  So Dieter, you bricked your car. Dieter bought a new car and bricked it too.

• 33:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, so mine wasn't totally bricked. So I bought a Honda Civic, mostly because the unit supports both CarPlay and Android Auto. I have deep feelings about both of these pieces of software.

• 34:04Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  And they involve the word "garbage."

• 34:09Speaker 00

  But on-

• 34:10Nilay Patel?

  Do you know, every time I tell Chris I just want to put an iPad in my car, he calls me an Uber driver? But it's seriously the best choice, right? Is to put a fucking iPad in your car.

• 34:19Speaker 00

  Uh, except that the interface there is not-

• 34:21Nilay Patel?

  It doesn't matter, you know it is.

• 34:23Speaker 00

  Anyway, so Honda runs on Android. The Android system runs the like, the infotainment system and the climate system. But all the other stuff, like the brakes, the cruise control, I'm assuming like the radar, like stop stuff is not part of that. I hope to God.

• 34:41Speaker 00

  Anyway, I would say once every, I don't know, once in every like four hours of driving, depending if you're using Android Auto or CarPlay, uh, the thing will just crash. Uh, and with Android Auto, it crashed so hard, I couldn't adjust the volume, I couldn't change the temperature, and I couldn't like, turn it, like, change anything with the audio. It was just frozen, playing, uh, incredibly bad, uh, San Francisco radio, The Bone. And I had to like-

• 35:11Nilay Patel?

  Wait, when you moved to San Francisco, did you start exclusively listening to The Bone? As your number one radio station?

• 35:16Speaker 00

  I mean, I had to find a radio station. Uh, it's, I forget the, the, what number it is on the dial, it's like a hundred and something.

• 35:23Nilay Patel?

  I think Vergecast listeners are about to experience me losing a friend over time.

• 35:26Speaker 00

  Turn it back on.

• 35:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 35:27Speaker 00

  And then you end up in this world of like, you know, fan forums, you know? The, the world that I grew up in, that's how I got my start in technology, is going to like, Vizor Central and Palm Info Center and, uh, Howard forums and going to the forums to like, learn all the weird hacky things you need to do to fix your shit. And there's a bunch of Honda people in there with all the weird hacky things to fix their shit. And they're also like, trading stories about how to talk, how to sweet talk the dealer into installing the iterative update that's in beta that might fix it.

• 36:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:01Speaker 00

  And so like, we're all sitting around, knowing there's a software update out there. It probably makes things better, and we're waiting for like Honda to give the word. But they won't let me install it, I've gotta like, drive my car to the dealer and have them do it because they don't trust me not to brick my car like Neel I did.

• 36:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:17Speaker 00

  Also, the whole thing runs on Android 4.2.2, which is great.

• 36:21Nilay Patel?

  No, I, uh, I, there's Jeep forums. I mean, there's forums for every car model. And what's amazing is, um, every Chrysler car uses the same Uconnect system. So like, the Jeep forums has like, random visitors who own Chrysler 200s, and they're like, "I'm so sorry for being here." But it appears that you might know how to use this garbage computer than I do. And it's, I don't know.

• 36:43Speaker 03

  That's just such a crazy parallel that Dieter's bringing up. Like, when you were an early adopter of technology, you had to be enthusiastic to get through the door.

• 36:55Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 36:55Speaker 03

  And you had to go to forums to figure out anything useful or interesting about your technology. And now you have to do that for your car?

• 37:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, no, it's because they're computers, but they don't treat them like computers. Like, my iPad Air 2 is obviously 10,000 times faster, smarter, more capable. This car has a 3G radio in it. My iPad has an LTE radio in it. And it was probably cheaper than replacing this garbage head unit. But they don't want it to be modular. And I think, Dieter, your feelings about Android Auto and CarPlay, I'm like really curious about it. Because when we, when our audience thinks about buying a car, you know, when I was tweeting, I'm gonna buy a car. They're like, well, you gotta have CarPlay. And then I went and used it and I was like, this is not much better than me sticking an iPad in the glove box or whatever. And just using Google Maps.

• 37:43Speaker 00

  In fact, it's, it's worse because not every app has a, a CarPlay app. And so you need to like, you still need to fiddle with your phone if you want to listen to like podcasts. If you don't like Apple's podcast app, because of course you don't.

• 37:57Nilay Patel?

  Except for you Vergecast listeners, please use the podcast app and go to the Vergecast and give us five stars right now. Just do it. Do it in your car if your radio works.

• 38:08Nilay Patel?

  Please, God, we need it.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  I've basically hacked my car to make, I have a 2007 car. And so it didn't come with Bluetooth. And then for Christmas, when you're, my boyfriend bought like a third-party Kenwood thing that doesn't work very well. But like, that's the way to a girl's heart, right? Like, I got you Bluetooth for Christmas in your car.

• 38:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, but so think about how much you had to spend on that thing.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Thing, you know, this eyeball that I stick my phone on. And between those two things, I mean, there are definitely things about it I would change. But I don't feel an overwhelming need to have my dashboard running one of the native operating systems. Right now, right now.

• 38:47Nilay Patel?

  My favorite tech product, I should put this on the website, but it's so old. My favorite category of tech product right now, because I've been trying to figure out how to solve this car problem is they make, there's a whole range of ways to mount phones and tablets in your car, but my favorite of them are the ones that mount inside an old CD player. So the actual mount is like a fake CD that you insert into a CD player and then there's like a little piece that braces it on the bottom and then you just like, you just cover up your dashboard and it's like, it's the market economy at work. It's like, what's the best way to solve this problem? Let a thousand flowers bloom and we're just going to stick it in the old CD player directly.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  It should come with like fake CD covers.

• 39:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:39Speaker 03

  I just feel bad for all of you car people.

• 39:41Speaker 02

  Sound garden CD, but actually.

• 39:45Nilay Patel?

  Paul, would you, again, would you say that you're a spoon man?

• 39:47Speaker 03

  I don't know what that means. I really seriously don't.

• 39:54Nilay Patel?

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• 41:14Nilay Patel?

  Next week is the Code Conference and I talked to Kara Swisher, who's the Executive Editor of Recode and host of the Code Conference along with our Executive Editor, Walt Mossberg. We talked about what's happening in Code, who's going to be there, what they're going to talk about, what the big themes are, and then she talked a little shit about Peter Thiel, which I thought was great. Here we go. So I'm very lucky right now to be joined by Kara Swisher, who's the Executive Editor of Recode, one of our sister sites, and our favorite of the sister sites, don't tell anybody else. And it's a big week because Code Conference is next week and the lineup is unbelievable. So, hey Kara, thanks for joining us.

• 41:47Speaker 04

  Hey, how you doing? How's it going?

• 41:49Nilay Patel?

  It's going well. It's good to have you on the show. I don't think you've ever been on the Bridgecast before.

• 41:53Speaker 04

  No, I have not. I've been waiting for my invitation and finally it's arrived.

• 41:56Nilay Patel?

  Finally, finally it's arrived. Well, it's only, it's been a year since...

• 42:00Speaker 04

  I know. I've been waiting by the phone.

• 42:04Nilay Patel?

  I'm sure you have. So Code Conference is next week. You have this all-star glittery lineup. Walk us through it.

• 42:10Speaker 04

  Glittery. They're not glittery. I'm not sure if any tech people are actually glittery, but it's a pretty good lineup. We're opening with Jeff Bezos, you might have heard of him. He runs a little retail company called Amazon. We also have Elon Musk, who is two, who runs two companies, SpaceX and Tesla. He's the favorite of our conference door because they love, they have man crushes on him.

• 42:35Nilay Patel?

  Count me in, I'm one of those.

• 42:36Speaker 04

  I know, everybody does. It's funny, not me, but he's going to be a great interview. Obviously, there's a lot to talk about, a ton of vehicles, space, there's so much, you know, artificial intelligence. And we also have Jack Dorsey, who's running Twitter and also Square. We have Bill and Melinda Gates, which I think will be fantastic, and we'll be talking about philanthropy and a lot of other stuff. We have Sheryl Sandberg and Mike Shreve from Facebook, talking about that platform, which has been enormously powerful over the last year and really has moved ahead of all competitors. We have Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who just got that job recently in the redo of Google to Alphabet, whatever that

• 43:17Speaker 04

  means, and many, many more. We've got a panel on food tech with the CEO of... Impossible Foods, who's making the bloody vegan burger, which I tasted yesterday and it was delicious, along with a very well-known chef who's going to, named Dominique Cran, he's a Michelin two-star chef, he's going to talk about the changing nature of food delivery and food preparation and just food in general. And more and more, we've got tons of people more than that.

• 43:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, it's just an insane lineup. I gotta say, I was, Elon was there two years ago? And it was, was it three? And I just remember it was like a blowaway moment because you asked him, what do you focus on? He's like trying to get off the earth, basically.

• 44:01Nilay Patel?

  And it was just one of those moments. So every year you guys kind of have a theme at Code. I think last year it was a really big, important one. He asked everybody about diversity. Is there something that you're focusing on this year?

• 44:10Speaker 04

  Well, you know, I think there's a lot of topics. I mean, it's kind of a crazy year with the election. And there's this kind of a mood in the country. There's a little bit of a tech downturn, it feels like. Not exactly the popping of a bubble, but there's a lot of rethinking going on across the country around income inequality, around sort of the tone and tenor of this campaign that sort of has a lot to do with online. So we'll probably be talking about those issues. I mean, Donald Trump has taken over Twitter in a really troll-like manner. You know, and now Elizabeth Warren is going after him. There's all kinds of things to talk about of where tech is evolving to. You know, everybody, there's a lot of topics around publishing, you know, Amazon, Google, Twitter, all the others. Facebook all have become important publishing platforms and content creation platforms.

• 44:53Speaker 04

  So that's going to be interesting. We also invited Harvey Levin, who's the head of TMZ, who's going to be somewhat of a controversial figure. He's, you know, done very well with, for sort of the original online gossip site. That's done really well. And we want to talk about the controversies around that. We're also not ignoring enterprise. We have Ginny Rometty, who's the CEO of IBM, and Chuck Robbins, who's the new CEO of Cisco, talking about sort of the big, massive changes overall of enterprise, which I think anyone who's in that space knows that it's just been disrupted extremely this year. So we're talking about that. And I don't want to leave anyone out, but we just have a lot, we have a lot of different topics. But I think just the sort of the maturing of tech is probably one of the ones that we'll

• 45:38Speaker 04

  be talking about and where it goes next and and what happens to you know what happens to the sort of startup ecosystem and the funding.

• 45:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, the the moment when you could just be super idealistic and believe that you could disrupt everything seems to have passed and.

• 45:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:54Nilay Patel?

  I mean, just in the news in the past day, you know, there's Facebook has been in the news for conservative news and the news feed and in trending topics and then Peter Thiel was.

• 46:05Speaker 04

  Right.

• 46:05Nilay Patel?

  Trying to shut down Gawker.

• 46:06Speaker 04

  At Jackass, I'm sorry, what a what a terror. I mean, that would have to obviously ask, well, he's always been a pleasant fellow. But, you know, that's a really disturbing thing that a person's on the board of Facebook is paying secretly, you know, instead of being like a person of substance and actually taking a foe head on, he's secretly funding like the craziest lawsuit in America in order to take down a website that outed him many, many, many years ago. What a story that is.

• 46:35Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it's it's there's so many ways to to cut at it, especially because of the facts of the Hogan case themselves are so terrible.

• 46:43Speaker 04

  You know, whatever, I get it, but you still have to defend like publishing is publishing and if someone's secretly funding things, it's just like it's creepy and scary and not like, I think, that's my opinion. I think he's a creepy, scary man who's using his billions of dollars that he gained through Facebook and other things to close down media companies and it's his prerogative to do so, but he should man up and do it in the light of day, I think.

• 47:07Nilay Patel?

  No, I completely agree with you. It's just that that whole story and then you combine it with the Facebook moment. So you were saying all these companies are sort of moving into media and publishing. That has been something that you in particular have covered very deeply with your coverage of particularly Yahoo. And yeah, but you your coverage of AOL and Yahoo through the years, being tech company and media companies, and then obviously Peter, probably the best media reporter in the game. Do you do you think that has changed in the years even doing first the conference and the co-conference? Is it waxed and waned?

• 47:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, I mean, you know, you're an expert at it, like figuring out distribution on Facebook and whether. You should be doing deals with Twitter and whether you what you should be doing video and how you know what does it mean that you know that watermelon got so many watches or the sock lady did or like? How do you decide where your is your content on your website? No, not anymore. You've got to put it on Snapchat. You've got to figure this and oh wait Snapchat doesn't work and you know what I mean? So I think it's a really disturbing time for media and interesting at the same time because it's changed the way people consume media. Which they're doing it rates unprecedented because of smartphones and everything else. It's not like they're not consuming media. It's just the nature of media is changing and then also how to make money from that media is changing, you know, rather drastically.

• 48:23Nilay Patel?

  So do you think this generation of sort of tech media players is any better suited than AOL Yahoo? I mean, obviously Yahoo just continues to be Yahoo, but are they better suited? Do they do they get it better? Do they understand it better?

• 48:38Speaker 04

  Well, Yahoo feels like the 90s. I feel like, you know, Boy George is going to pop out at any moment. Suddenly there's Madonna. What is she doing here? Um, I just, I think that, yeah, I do. I think that's a really, I mean, everyone's going holy Google, mogo over that deal, but it really, it's a lot of old media players moving pieces around. And, you know, Yahoo hasn't been at the forefront of media publishing for, it's sort of brute force publishing, right? Like we have 700 million people who are going to shove it down their throat. I think media has changed really drastically and you know, there's, you know, including box media, there's all kinds of, you know, bites and whatever you think of them and Mashable and obviously most things, Buzzfeed, you know, figuring out how to do it. Again, even those players are sort of, something works one year and they're scrambling to the next, you know, the next thing before it floods.

• 49:23Speaker 04

  So it's a really interesting time. I don't think it's a bad time. I just think it's really a challenging time for all media companies.

• 49:29Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think that the combination of media and technology is something that. It's dominating the discourse right now. Like you're saying, because of this particular election year, this cycle, because of the way Trump is using social media, because of the way Bernie Sanders is using social media, it's very interesting to think about how responsible this cast of characters that you've assembled at the conference is for how those narratives are shaped.

• 49:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think Jack Dorsey, that'll be an interesting question. Did you ever think you would help elect Donald Trump president? Hello. You know, I'm guessing no. I'm guessing the answer is a flat no, but, you know, we're putting him on with the Black Lives Matter, Deray McKesson, to talk about that, because that movement has had some fascinating twists and turns online. And of course, hashtag Black Lives Matters has been one of the many examples of using social media to move things, to move things. You know, on one side you have Black Lives Matter, on the other you have Trump, and then you have hashtag Never Trump. And so it's really interesting. And at the same time, Twitter is struggling, you know, as a business to figure things out. And it's never been more powerful in the social media space.

• 50:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So I got to ask you, we're kind of at the end of our time here. Anything that people should be on the lookout for, any surprises, any hints?

• 50:40Speaker 04

  Well, I'm hoping. I'm trying to add one or two more. I would like to get a big politician, so we're working on that. But I think, you know, one of the things we're doing different this year is we're doing spotlights. And I can't talk really about them, but you're going to see some people giving little speeches that I think will be fun. They're sort of like quick, tend to, you know, we pioneered it with Mary Meeker, who's coming back again this year, who did, who does 500 slides in 15 minutes of all the top internet trends, which is manic and fantastic. And we're taking that and trying to do it with a bunch of other topics. And there's some that are, hopefully, hopefully they'll work, but we're going to try to show a little bit of moments of insight for our audience that isn't just an interview to give them a little different thing. And then we're going to, with the Possible Foods Guy, obviously, they're making this

• 51:25Speaker 04

  burger, we're going to, it's not come out yet, but everyone's going to get to eat this bloody vegan burger, which should be interesting. It's delicious. I had one yesterday.

• 51:33Nilay Patel?

  Talking about a Facebook Live opportunity. There you go.

• 51:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. Of course. See, you're already on it, Neil. You're always on it before me. I didn't even think of that. I'm like sitting here like, oh, we should be the guy. As usual, you're on, you, I know you'll grab it and it'll be like four million views and I'll be like, oh, once again, I provided content for Neelai to manage. But go right ahead.

• 51:52Nilay Patel?

  I'm there, I'm there for it. Look, it's all one family.

• 51:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, thanks.

• 51:55Nilay Patel?

  Um, well, anyway, I'm really looking forward to coming out there. We've got the Verge crew will be out there. Dieter, Casey, Lauren, Good and I will all be there.

• 52:02Speaker 04

  Fantastic.

• 52:03Nilay Patel?

  We'll be trying to steal as much of Walt's time as he'll let us steal to

• 52:05Speaker 04

  Please do, yeah.

• 52:06Nilay Patel?

  To do Facebook Live stunts.

• 52:07Speaker 04

  Walt's doing some big interviews. He's interviewing Jeff Bezos, um, and he'll be interviewing Sundar and, uh, also, uh, the Gateses. So he has some big interviews to do, so that'll be fantastic.

• 52:18Nilay Patel?

  All right. Well, thank you so much for, uh, coming on the show and we'll, uh, see you next week.

• 52:22Speaker 04

  All right. Thanks, Neelai. Bye.

• 52:23Nilay Patel?

  All right. So we're back. Let's do a little bit of a lightning round. I'm going to say a word, a company name. You give me the one sentence summary of where you think they are. Ready? And we're going to go around. So Microsoft, Paul.

• 52:36Speaker 03

  Please love us again. Oh, wait, you never loved us. Well, maybe download an app.

• 52:42Nilay Patel?

  That was an incredible sentence for a professional writer.

• 52:44Speaker 03

  Is that what you're looking for? I don't know.

• 52:46Nilay Patel?

  It's something. Dieter.

• 52:48Speaker 00

  You can't have both mobile and cloud be first. I don't know how we're going to figure this out.

• 52:53Nilay Patel?

  Lauren.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  We're the general electric of the tech world and we're going to be cool again, damn it.

• 53:01Nilay Patel?

  Wow. I feel like GE's really trying though. Like they have got those ads with the, the

• 53:06Speaker 03

  So is Microsoft.

• 53:07Nilay Patel?

  The engineers.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:08Nilay Patel?

  But the GE ads with the engineers are like, don't you want to be this unloved nerd that nobody understands?

• 53:13Speaker 00

  They're general, general electric.

• 53:14Speaker 03

  They're kind of insulting to you.

• 53:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:16Speaker 03

  To some demographic. I'm not sure which, but somebody.

• 53:18Nilay Patel?

  It's like really hard to know. It's like insulting to dads. Cause the dad is like, I don't know what you do, son. Like in every, in every one of those commercials, he's like, dad, I'm an engineer. He's like, do you drive a train? And it's like, your dad, your dad paid for your school probably. Probably helped you out a lot.

• 53:32Speaker 03

  Maybe.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  Dads are actually getting a bad rap now because for a while people were just saying moms didn't understand tech and then there was this backlash to that. Like, no, you can't say, so now dads are just getting all the heat. Everyone's like, well, what if we did a mom, a dad commercial where dad doesn't understand the tech?

• 53:49Nilay Patel?

  That's the worst. Poor dad. Dad just thinks all engineers drive trains. Okay, Google, Paul.

• 53:55Speaker 03

  I just had this mental image of a search bar. And you can, that's pretty much-

• 54:01Nilay Patel?

  They're trying to break out. It's Sundar just banging against the walls of that search bar.

• 54:06Speaker 03

  Two trillion searches.

• 54:08Nilay Patel?

  Dieter.

• 54:09Speaker 00

  Apple envy.

• 54:10Nilay Patel?

  Ooh.

• 54:10Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 54:11Nilay Patel?

  The most powerful of all sentences. Lauren?

• 54:14Speaker 02

  The smartest kid in the class who still seems to have a shirt untucked all the time.

• 54:19Nilay Patel?

  Ooh. Hmm, I feel like I need to tuck in my shirt.

• 54:22Speaker 03

  You do a sentence.

• 54:23Nilay Patel?

  For Google.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  I mean, in Silicon Valley, you don't really have to tuck in your shirt. You don't have to wear a shirt at all.

• 54:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Wait.

• 54:29Speaker 00

  That's true. I can confirm.

• 54:30Nilay Patel?

  I feel like weird things happen to Paul. Dieter. What, see, we're pre-taped. Well, you don't know. Dieter's been shirtless this whole time. Um.

• 54:38Speaker 00

  It's true.

• 54:38Nilay Patel?

  Uh, what's my sentence on Google? I wish they were better.

• 54:43Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 54:43Nilay Patel?

  That's what it is. I'm, I'm, I think the listeners of the show know, I'm perpetually about to switch to Android.

• 54:49Speaker 03

  Right.

• 54:50Nilay Patel?

  And then I get out my 6P, which is a beautiful phone. I actually like, love it so much. I just updated it to N. N is, N, I think the visual refreshes of N are gorgeous in many ways. And I'm like, it's almost, it's always just almost. I can't tell you what's keeping me on the iPhone, but there's just one little tick of Paulish.

• 55:10Speaker 00

  iMessage.

• 55:11Nilay Patel?

  It's not just iMessage, though.

• 55:12Speaker 00

  It's iMessage.

• 55:13Nilay Patel?

  It's one little tick of Paul. It's like, everything on Android's like, too big. It treats you like you're a little bit dumber than you are. There's, you don't get that?

• 55:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:21Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's just not refined enough.

• 55:22Speaker 00

  Also, it's iMessage.

• 55:23Nilay Patel?

  And it's not prior iMessage. Okay, that's it. I'm ready. I'm actually ready to, once, once Android apps on the, the, on Chrome OS come out, I'm actually gonna try to get rid of my MacBook and do a Pixel full-time and be on Android and like, live that life. And it will last a week, and the first two days of that week will be incredible, and the final three days of that week will be hell, and then everyone will hear about it, and I'll switch back to my Mac. Okay, that was my, that was a very long sentence. I wish they were better.

• 55:50Speaker 03

  Why are you pointing at me?

• 55:51Nilay Patel?

  I'm trying to think of the next company. Amazon. And then Dieter, as soon as Paul's finished with his sentence, you gotta start your sentence. We're, we're just going for it now.

• 55:57Speaker 03

  Better be nice to us, because we got all your data, because we have the best cloud.

• 56:02Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, this is your moment, man. No.

• 56:06Speaker 00

  I can't, I can't.

• 56:07Speaker 03

  Paul, don't you think the joke is kind of like a pity play?

• 56:11Nilay Patel?

  A pity play?

• 56:12Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 56:13Nilay Patel?

  What's a pi- define pity play?

• 56:16Speaker 03

  It's just.

• 56:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you just, that just sounded really good.

• 56:19Speaker 00

  I got it.

• 56:19Speaker 03

  They power like half of the apps.

• 56:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:22Speaker 00

  Please don't forget about the Echo next year.

• 56:24Nilay Patel?

  Ooh, rough. Okay, Lauren.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  I don't know. Sometimes I just picture Amazon sort of encapsulated in the form of like a Jeff Bezos maniacal laugh. Like. But I guess maybe, you know, I would say they're still utilitarian, super utilitarian and still strangely proud of it.

• 56:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, again, you know, the new Kindle, the Oasis, it's a beautiful product. It's pretty fancy. And then you close the lid and that Amazon logo is like Disneyland. Like, you know, it's too goofy. Like they, again, it's like, I just wish they were one tick better at design. Okay. What's the last one?

• 57:03Speaker 00

  I wish mine worked.

• 57:04Nilay Patel?

  Apple.

• 57:04Speaker 03

  Oh, did we do Facebook?

• 57:06Nilay Patel?

  No, okay. Apple and then Facebook.

• 57:07Speaker 03

  Okay. I kind of already said it, but we are, I don't know why I'm personifying these companies.

• 57:13Nilay Patel?

  Yes, you are.

• 57:14Speaker 03

  We are bad at software.

• 57:17Nilay Patel?

  Whoa. Software in general?

• 57:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:22Nilay Patel?

  Why do you think they're bad at software in general? That's a new one.

• 57:24Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 57:25Nilay Patel?

  They were the software company that was so cared about software so much, maybe they were hardware.

• 57:28Speaker 03

  It's a problem.

• 57:29Nilay Patel?

  Give me, give me, beyond just we're bad at cloud services. What are they bad at?

• 57:33Speaker 03

  It's iTunes. It's just the macOS, which is what I spend most of the time on. They're just, they don't feel like they're moving very fast. They, you know, they're trying all this stuff with Swift being open source, but it's like, like they still haven't gotten all their apps over to Swift and it's like a moving target right now. It shouldn't be a 1.0 really, but they're, they're coming out with 3.0 of Swift. They're just doing a lot of weird things that are making software kind of unstable and it's not settling down and it's getting worse. And I keep hoping for it to settle down and get better, but it's, it's not.

• 58:12Nilay Patel?

  All right. Dieter.

• 58:13Speaker 00

  Apple is not ready for the next stage of computing.

• 58:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Walt, I mean, the Walt podcast, he talked about that for 45 minutes with me. He's very down on them as well. I mean, I think, but that next stage, what he was pointing out was it's about privacy. And you have to give up some of your data to enable these big cloud services, particularly AI. And Apple just culturally isn't ready to do that. Lauren?

• 58:38Speaker 02

  I think Apple needs to figure out what the next step is beyond simplicity. Because for years now, people have gravitated towards their products because they're just, they were super simple to use. And partly to Paul's point, they're, they're getting more complicated. I mean, everything is getting more complicated. Everything is getting sort of more crowded and everyone has to be everywhere. And so, I mean, I think maybe Apple Music is kind of the epitome of that. But they need to, I don't know. I don't know if, I don't know if streamlining is the answer. But they just need to figure out a way to, I guess, continue to use intuitive interfaces as one of their best marketing ploys, aside from privacy.

• 59:18Nilay Patel?

  Right, like you already know how to use this, which would be voice. I mean, that should line right up with their skill, right? Like you can just talk to this thing. Do you think that they were unprepared for Google and Facebook and Amazon to be as good of competitors as they are?

• 59:32Speaker 02

  I think that companies in general, for a while, they were segmented, tech companies. You know, people would, you know, companies did data networking and then they did store, you know, some did storage and some did software and some did hardware and some did social networking and some did shopping. And now they're all starting to do everything. And so I don't think anyone sort of could have foreseen that in some cases, some of these competitors would have popped up in a particular area the way that they, they have.

• 59:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, there's that. I mean, the everyone, I mean, the rumors there, Apple wants to buy Time Warner and own HBO, which is insanity, right? But then you're like, what's a big?

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I think, I think if you had actually told me a few years ago, these companies want to own media, you know, that Jeff Bezos would buy the Washington Post or that Apple would want to, I don't know, somehow create its own TV content and become the next TV platform, I would not be shocked by that at all. But I think there are other things, like the automobile industry. I don't think anyone's Saw, uh, I mean, maybe some people did. Maybe if they did, I wouldn't believe that they said they did. Wouldn't believe them. But, uh, yeah, I mean,

• 1:00:37Speaker 00

  Here's what I'll say about Apple. They, deep, deep down, all the way down in their bones, have always defined themselves as, "We are a company that makes products." Really good, discreet, atomized, "Go buy this thing, install this piece of software." "We make really good, singular products." But that vision is the thing that we've been talking about moving away from. Like, the iPhone is no longer the singular product. And, you know, Apple talks a little bit about like building the ecosystem and all these things, these things talk together, but like, pretty soon, the difference between talking to your watch and your phone and your coffee table and your car and whatever else,

• 1:01:19Speaker 00

  it's all gonna be on a continuum. And that's not a discreet, singular product. That's like, something else. And Apple needs to stop defining itself as, "We just make products." So, if, like, I'm actually not 100% freaked out by the idea of them buying Time Warner, owning HBO, because it will force a cultural shift in the company that we do more than just make singular products.

• 1:01:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but you still want good products. Like, you know, like, at the end of the day, you gotta, you gotta hold a phone, you gotta look at a coffee table, you gotta, these things are expressed in hardware. And I don't, I couldn't tell you, another company, I'm struggling, I mean, there's a few. Another company that, that makes hardware-software-integrated products at the scale and complexity of Apple, that the stuff is as good. Like, the PS4 is the thing that is coming to my mind right now.

• 1:02:16Speaker 03

  Runs free BSD?

• 1:02:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But no, like, you know, it's like, they sell a ton of them. It's a beautiful piece of hardware, it's well-engineered, the software's pretty good.

• 1:02:27Speaker 03

  It's actually a really good example.

• 1:02:28Nilay Patel?

  Right, um, I would, but it's like, you know, the echo is like another example, but like the echo is not a complicated thing.

• 1:02:35Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:02:36Nilay Patel?

  Right, it, it, it's not nearly at the complexity of the.

• 1:02:40Speaker 03

  I think, I think that's where it, it falls apart. It's relatively much easier, or maybe it's just a different skillset to design one beautiful, great thing. Then trying to design someone's entire lifestyle, which is what these companies want to be involved in.

• 1:02:57Nilay Patel?

  Right, and we've been talking about this forever, right? You get ecosystem lock-in, but now it's like, it's shadier.

• 1:03:03Speaker 03

  Even ecosystem design, let's take ecosystem lock-in for granted, that that's their technique. Designing an ecosystem so that it's pleasant and consistent and useful and magnifies the impact and power of the individual instead of just giving them more hoops to jump through. That's a skill that I, I don't know which company I'd point to as being great at that. Who, which company's best at just making your life consistently better in all facets?

• 1:03:34Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I would, the only company, GE.

• 1:03:37Speaker 03

  GE.

• 1:03:38Nilay Patel?

  This podcast has been brought to you by GE. If you're in the market for a turbine engine or a nuclear missile.

• 1:03:45Speaker 03

  Isn't that what these companies should be trying to do? If they want to touch my body constantly, if they want like to have my eyeballs constantly, if they want all my clicks and all my swipes. Shouldn't they be trying to make my life better?

• 1:03:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  I feel like there's a big opening here for furniture companies.

• 1:04:01Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  Like in the same way that like cars are gonna be, become smart and like, yes, we're all gonna be using connected IKEA at some point.

• 1:04:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but like, those are not even wor- like, the refresh cycle on TVs, TVs are basically furniture, is like too long for the TV to be good. The, our car, I'm like furious about the car thing. I need to write about my car and like emotionally relieve, relieve this pain. But like, the car companies, I mean Jeep is like, we're putting Android Auto in the next one, so trade in your Jeep, which is insanity. Like, it's insanity.

• 1:04:35Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:04:36Nilay Patel?

  It's just a piece of the car. It's like, let me swap it out. Who cares?

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  I'm definitely not trading in my old Jeep for Android Auto.

• 1:04:42Nilay Patel?

  Well, yeah, I'm not gonna trade in my Jeep for Android Auto, but I'm saying like, that's their answer. It's not, we can take out this thing that is a screen with an arm chip behind it, and put in another screen with a different arm chip behind it. It's, this is an integrated piece of the car, which is baloney. Like, it's just like nonsense. Um, I'm getting really fired up about this car.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  You have to write about this.

• 1:05:04Nilay Patel?

  I am absolutely gonna write about it. I like, I mean, I definitely have already started talking to like Jeep, like the Uconnect people, who seem terrible. I mean, like, they're not a tech company. They're a car company.

• 1:05:14Speaker 03

  Just to be clear, because I don't really understand cars very well. This is not a thing that you can take out and put a different thing in.

• 1:05:20Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 1:05:20Speaker 03

  This will always be part of the car.

• 1:05:22Nilay Patel?

  No, I mean, it's, it's obviously a piece of hardware. Like, you can peel, open the dashboard and pull the thing out. But it's not like you can go to Best Buy and buy a new one and stick it in there.

• 1:05:30Speaker 03

  It's not like a head unit.

• 1:05:32Nilay Patel?

  To turn on the heated seats in my car, you have to use the touchscreen. Which is so stupid.

• 1:05:37Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:05:38Nilay Patel?

  But, there it is.

• 1:05:39Speaker 00

  Let's just, let's have a two-hour podcast where we bitch about the fact that, that, uh, head units aren't, uh, removable. Because, and, and on top of that, that, uh, the idea that, the only difference between a Nexus tablet and the thing in your car, is that the thing in your car has an amplifier in it so that it can power the speakers. And otherwise, that's it. And that, that little difference and the monopoly they have on like, how they design their dash, or whether or not you can put one in, amounts to a price premium of somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000 over the cost of a Android tablet that does the same thing. It's infuriating.

• 1:06:14Nilay Patel?

  But, like, they're like, if you have an older car, like, this is a good argument to buy a car like Lauren's, which doesn't have all this, like, integration, because there are people out there who will build you beautiful custom dashboards that are like, an iPad Pro.

• 1:06:25Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:06:26Nilay Patel?

  I've been deep in car forums this week. Anyway.

• 1:06:28Speaker 03

  Oh, we didn't do one sentence about Facebook, did we?

• 1:06:30Nilay Patel?

  Oh, one sentence about Facebook.

• 1:06:32Speaker 02

  Facebook. Poke.

• 1:06:34Speaker 03

  I was gonna do poke.

• 1:06:35Nilay Patel?

  My god.

• 1:06:36Speaker 00

  Dieter?

• 1:06:36Speaker 02

  No, I'm just kidding. Um, Facebook, um, I don't know, Facebook showed, is starting to show me egg freezing ads below pictures of my friends' babies. So, um, as I wrote today, I kind of deplore you, Facebook, but I also must admire your tenacity when it comes to procreation.

• 1:06:54Nilay Patel?

  Facebook really just grabs the one piece of your life you don't want to think about and just like shows it to you many times.

• 1:06:59Speaker 02

  And on that note, I have to go.

• 1:07:01Nilay Patel?

  Goodbye, Lauren.

• 1:07:01Speaker 02

  Make a phone call. Bye, guys.

• 1:07:03Nilay Patel?

  Bye, Lauren. Dieter, what's your one sentence about Facebook?

• 1:07:05Speaker 00

  I disclose that my wife works for Oculus, which is a division of Facebook, but having said that, I really wish that one of their board members wasn't trying to sue my competitor Gawker into oblivion.

• 1:07:15Nilay Patel?

  I hope he wins. That's my one sentence about Facebook. It means nothing to me. I just really dislike Gawker. Anyway, Paul.

• 1:07:23Speaker 03

  I'm all into their React stuff.

• 1:07:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:26Speaker 03

  They've got a lot of good, open source stuff for web development and app development. It's kind of interesting.

• 1:07:31Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 1:07:33Speaker 03

  But I don't like using their platform.

• 1:07:35Nilay Patel?

  My one sentence about Facebook is I don't think anyone will ever trust Facebook, and that is a huge problem for them.

• 1:07:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, if they need trust, they're not getting it.

• 1:07:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Okay. That, Dieter, I think, was our Vergecast. So Lauren is gone, Paul wandered off. It was okay for Vergecast.

• 1:07:53Speaker 00

  Just you and me.

• 1:07:54Nilay Patel?

  Just us now.

• 1:07:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, we'll figure it out.

• 1:07:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:56Speaker 00

  You had a nice little segment there with Kara.

• 1:07:58Nilay Patel?

  It was good, yeah. And, you know, my ad read was choice, as always. We're getting better. We're getting better at this non-continuous podcasting. Look, listeners, we're going to figure this out, I promise you. We're back, we're Vergecasting every week. Next week, actually, Dieter and Lauren and I will be together at the Code Conference, so we're going to put something together there, so that'll be fun. But we're back. Dieter is going to remain in San Francisco, unfortunately, for my personal sanity, but it'll be great for, you know, everybody else. But this is the new format of the show. We are eager to hear your thoughts on guests you want us to bring in, interviews you want us to do, segments you want us to have. The sky is the goddamn limit here, and potentially not even the limit.

• 1:08:43Nilay Patel?

  We could go beyond the sky, beyond the sea.

• 1:08:45Speaker 00

  We're going to go into space. We're going to do the next Vergecast from space.

• 1:08:49Nilay Patel?

  You know, they interviewed Scott Kelly today. We could get some tips.

• 1:08:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I heard.

• 1:08:52Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Scott Kelly will be on the website. Um, so anyway, that was Vergecast. Uh, go to, you know, iTunes, give us the stars, tweet at us. I'm at Reckless Theaters, at Backlon Pauls, Paul, future Paul. Lauren is at Lauren Good. Just talk to us.

• 1:09:07Speaker 00

  With an E.

• 1:09:07Nilay Patel?

  With an E at the end. Just talk to us all the time. We're at Verge on like virtually every social platform, so go there. I think Kirsten was in here snapping, doing some Snapchats of this podcast. You can check that out on Snapchat. Uh, and then, man, so many other podcasts. Walt's Podcast Control at Delete is great. Recode Decode is great. Recode Media is great. What's Tech is great. Verge SP is great. Lauren has a great podcast called Too Embarrassed to Ask. I mean, just listen to everything all the time. And we'll be back next week.

• 1:09:34Speaker 00

  Hey, Neely.

• 1:09:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:36Speaker 00

  I miss you.

• 1:09:36Nilay Patel?

  I miss you too, buddy. Ryan Roll.