Pixel Buds review, OnePlus 5T, and Surface Book 2

This week on The Vergecast, Nilay, Paul, and Dieter run through a few things in the tech world that happened this week, like reviews for Google’s Pixel Buds and Microsoft’s Surface Book 2, and the announcement of the OnePlus 5T. Also, Lauren Goode stops by the show to talk about season 2 of her video series Next Level, which takes a closer look at technology's impact on the human experience. This week’s episode featured DJI's Aeroscope technology that can track rogue drones. There’s a lot more in between all of that — like Paul’s weekly segment “Robot dogs are people, too” — so listen to it all, and you’ll get it all. 02:50 - Microsoft Surface Book 2 review 13:12 - Google Pixel Buds review 25:40 - Next Level season 2 episode 2 47:54 - iPhone X: a few weeks later 1:01:04 - OnePlus 5T announced with bigger screen, new camera system, and a headphone jack 1:05:15 - Paul’s weekly segment “Robot dogs are people, too” 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.

• 0:03Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Verge Battalion and the Vox Media Podcast Network. A battalion? I was waiting for it. But also a network. But also a network. A networked battalion. It's a smart battalion. It's a smart battalion. It has a cloud service and it's easily compromised. I am Eli Patel. I'm joined, as always, by Paul Miller. Hello. Dieter Bone. How you doing, buddy?

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm doing good. You didn't say I was here, because every time you do, I get all fussy about my precise location on the earth.

• 0:37Nilay Patel?

  Well, we're to get, you know, to the listener. They don't know. You'd be anywhere. We're in your mind. Dieter Bone is in your brain. Mm-hmm. Welcome, Dieter.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Sorry, everybody.

• 0:48Nilay Patel?

  I will say, as always, lately, we start the show with a series of plugs. So here's that series of plugs. You can listen to this show, which is great. Caitlin Tiffany and Ashley Carmen have a great podcast called Why'd You Push That Button? Still, I would say this, since the day it launched into this world, in the top five of the IT and Technology Charts, and the people at Pocket Cast have been super nice to us lately. So, thank you, Pocket Cast. But they're doing great.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  They even said I was handsome.

• 1:16Nilay Patel?

  They did. They said it on Twitter, which, as we know, is the system of record for our country in this 2017. And we're gonna have Lauren Good on the show, talk about Next Level, which is her series that's running, so watch that. There's all kinds of things happening. But Lauren's gonna be on the show a little bit later, we can talk about that. All right. I would say we're in a quiet week of news. Yeah. The fall rush has subsided. We got all the big phones. There's one more phone that came out. The OnePlus 5T came out. It's too late, it doesn't count. We'll talk... It's got the headphone jack. That came out, by the way, that came out in an event, the event was held in a bar by my house. It's like a big fancy bar. Oh.

• 2:00Nilay Patel?

  But it's like a bar that I go to, which is like, Dan was like, "I think I'm by your house." It's nice. But yeah, that came out today, we'll talk about that. Dieter, actually, people are getting their iPhone 10s, we're starting to learn a lot about iPhone 10s, in the way that when you give them to millions of people, things just emerge. But like, overall, we're in the holiday lull. Right. It's fun.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  We're spending time with our families.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Reviews to talk about.

• 2:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So let's start. Do you want to start with Pixel Buds? Or you want to start with the Surface 2?

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Surface 2, I think we could start with because it's a little bit more straightforward. Tom Warren reviewed it, did a great job. He spent a lot of time playing video games on it, from what I could tell from reading his review. I mean, it really is like, if you are dissatisfied with the MacBook Pro, it is a very good alternate option. If you can get past the weird physicalness of it, which I still am of two minds about, I don't know how many people actually want to detach the screen. You know, there's a few things that, you know, could have been better, but like especially like there's no thunderbolt, which is like weird. But overall, I think it's a very good outing for Microsoft.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  It's, um, it's a little bit more than your standard laptop spec bump, but it's not so much more that it changes any huge narratives for Microsoft.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  If this didn't have a detachable screen and the compromises that that necessitated, don't you think this would just be a better computer, like full stop?

• 3:29Speaker 01

  I did the hands on with it and the, the tablet thing is surprisingly useful because it, when you take the tablet off on both the 13 and the 15 inch version, it weighs literally half of what you expect it to. And so if you have any inclination at all to do tablet stuff, it's actually really interesting.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Okay, but so.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  The, the problem is like, is there enough there?

• 3:53Speaker 02

  I've been using the Pixel Book and I do like the.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  And you wrote a really good article about that.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you. I like the fold over aspect. Like here's me watching Netflix, lying nearly flat, fold over the Pixel Book. So the keyboard's on my belly.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  The screen's right in my face.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  If it was just a tablet, I'd be holding it and I'd be dropping it on my face all the time. As everybody who's ever held a tablet has done.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  I still see, I don't see the value of the tablet very much. Also, Tom had a wild experience with this like charger where the charger.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Wasn't charging the base fast enough and the base is, has the battery that is powering the GPU. And therefore the GPU ended up disconnecting while he was playing a game because the charger wasn't keeping up. So Microsoft says that they think he just got a bad charger. But we'll see.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Oh, man. What you need is USB-C ports and everything. So you just plug them in independently. Instead of that. There is a USB-C port. Yeah, but I don't think you- It's just not Thunderbolt. You can charge off of it. Can you charge the tablet separate from the base?

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Oh, dual charging.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  No, yeah, you can, but the tablet has a Surface Connector on it. So you charge the tablet with a Surface Connector. The tablet doesn't have any other ports. This sounds like a real Paul and Neil had to something stupid on Circuit Breaker Live situation.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Here's a question. I've seen this happen a lot lately. People are like- I don't remember where this article was. I gotta find it. But I saw a couple of people tweet, "I finally got a new computer and I got a Windows PC because the Mac situation is like just too complicated." A situation? It's a situation. Like, I don't- at this moment in time, I do not want a new MacBook.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Actually, the MacBook situation is literally the situation from Jersey Shore. It's like too proud of itself. It's always showing off and everyone's a little bit disappointed in it. And why is it so shiny?

• 5:53Speaker 01

  But, okay, so Microsoft's big thing is we're gonna come after creators. Is this the product that convinces people to switch off the Mac? Because that's ultimately the thing that Microsoft is trying to do. They're trying to capture- I think Apple had a dominant share of premium laptops for the longest time. Microsoft's trying to muscle into that.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  Four words.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  It has a GPU.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Is an acronym one word or three words?

• 6:21Speaker 02

  You know what? Midway into- I started thinking about it. Now I don't know.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  I think that the creator thing is as much marketing as it is reality. Yeah. The other thing that I will say, and I can say this because typically when I say an opinion, Neil, I make you write a story about it, but it's almost done. Because we're making a video. We went and did a tour of Microsoft's hardware lab when we looked at the Surface Book 2. And I believe that Microsoft is doing all this stuff so they, you know, do the thing where you need to make the hardware to make the software better. You need to understand it both. That's the same story that Apple tells. It's the same story that Google tells. They are actually going after creators, but I think that they just as much need to have a story around their devices as they actually want to like make devices for creators. But I also think they are teaching themselves how to make weird shit.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  And I think they're teaching themselves how to make weird shit so that they can make other weird shit again, so that they can maybe do a phone. Or there's the rumor about the courier. I think that the interesting thing about Microsoft hardware isn't can it take on the MacBook? Because, you know, the dynamics of that market are as much about platform as they are about anything else. It's can Microsoft make a bunch of different weird hardware at scale that all runs on Windows or runs on a Windows-esque platform that is compelling and interesting and moves computing forward? It's the same thing that they, it's a story that started with the Surface that they just need to finish that story.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  And they just, instead of like waiting for one giant, big, we've done it moment, they just are tossing out different iterations out there and seeing what works. And you know what? As long as every iteration is not a dumpster fire, people will buy them, they'll be having with them, they'll move on with their lives, it'll be good.

• 8:07Nilay Patel?

  And every year they add another-

• 8:08Speaker 01

  They'll figure it out.

• 8:09Nilay Patel?

  Every year they add another product to the mix. Right? So now they're slowly getting to having a full family.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Right?

• 8:16Nilay Patel?

  Right. Shapes and sizes and form factors. I mean, you could argue that they already do, right?

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:20Nilay Patel?

  They've got a tablet, they've got the-

• 8:21Speaker 02

  There's a real variety there. There's choices.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  No, they've also got HoloLens, which is in a weird limbo zone, limbic zone. No, it's a limbo zone. They, you know, there's Xbox, of course.

• 8:31Nilay Patel?

  It's a limbic zone.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  My favorite Microsoft product, by the way-

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Is what I wrote about for the Pixel Book. I basically figured out how to get Microsoft's Visual Studio Code running on a Pixel Book, which is, Microsoft has always had Visual Studio-

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Is their big IDE. It's like where, where big software is built. And they-

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Giants roam.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  They just, they fired up this open source project-

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Beasts rule the land.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Called Visual Studio Code, which is not at all confusing of a name.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  And it's like wildly successful. It has everything that I should hate about a tech center. It's, it's, it's an electron app, so it's basically a web browser.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  But they just keep on doing like a really, really great job of it. And it runs on Mac, Linux, Windows, basically perfectly. And like, as far as Microsoft helping me a creator.

• 9:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  That's them helping. But you know what doesn't help me as a creator? Cortana popping up in the middle of the day is like, hey, did you know I could track like your packages now? I'm like, no, I didn't. But you know what? I didn't need to know.

• 9:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  So that's, that's all I've felt from the, the recent Creators update.

• 9:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Visual Studio Code.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no. Cortana reminded me about new features.

• 9:51Nilay Patel?

  Cortana just got pushier. Like, in the update notes, it's like Cortana.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:55Nilay Patel?

  Now annoyingly aggressive.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Slightly aggro.

• 9:59Nilay Patel?

  Alright, so that's a Surface Book 2. I mean, it, it seems like a really nice laptop. That's, that's how I would put it. I think I want Microsoft to make an even deeper push at it. I, I, I think where they need to get to is, you know those pictures of like college classes where like everybody had a glowing Apple logo? Do you remember what I'm talking about?

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 10:20Nilay Patel?

  Like they used to float around a few years ago. Microsoft needs to like, every year, release another picture of a college freshman incoming class. And it's like the Windows logos are like growing out of the top left corner.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:33Nilay Patel?

  They've got to do that. That's a long road. But I, I don't think it's impossible for them. But it seems like a nice laptop. And I need a new laptop. Mine is starting to do a GPU glitch thing.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  I thought you just said you got one.

• 10:44Nilay Patel?

  No, this is my 20, what is this? I don't even know what year this is from. It's like Steam powered. 2013. My laptop is from 2013.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Here, here's an idea.

• 10:56Nilay Patel?

  But you know what I have stuck into the side of it right now? An SD card?

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Buy me a Surface Book 2, and I'll use it for a while. And if I like it, I'll give it to you.

• 11:06Nilay Patel?

  This is a weird plan you have. I want this Pixelbook.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:11Nilay Patel?

  No, but I literally.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  It doesn't have multiple desktops. It's basically unusable.

• 11:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the multiple desktop thing is a real hassle.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  What? Google's recommend, I, I like, I saw a Google employee like commenting on like a Google Plus thread about lack of multiple desktops. It's like, oh, it's really easy. You create multiple accounts, and it's only two clicks to switch accounts.

• 11:34Nilay Patel?

  That doesn't, that doesn't seem right.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  No, that's not.

• 11:36Nilay Patel?

  Doesn't that necessitate you creating another Google account?

• 11:39Speaker 01

  I'm pretty sure.

• 11:41Nilay Patel?

  And if there's one thing Google it's known for, it's managing multiple Google accounts seamlessly without wanting to kill yourself. All right, Dieter, I gotta ask you this question. So Sean and Kane reviewed the Pixel Buds.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  He did. I also have a pair.

• 11:56Nilay Patel?

  He gave them a five. If you haven't gone and watched the video, you should watch it just for the scene of the many, many people in our office who speak multiple languages trying to do the real time translation with Sean. The overwhelming consensus is this makes you sound rude and stupid, but it works.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  But that's not the Pixel Buds fault. It's Google Translate doesn't understand nuance in language.

• 12:20Nilay Patel?

  But it's a feature of the Pixel Buds. I mean, like, the, it's a highlight feature of the Pixel Buds is like, do this and it works. And like, if the backend software, like, what are you gonna, it's still a feature of the thing, right? But anyway, it's fun to watch. So you should watch that part of it. But it just seems like we're definitely in proprietary headphone time. And this is like, the reality of proprietary headphones, maybe not as great. And then as a piece of hardware, maybe not perfectly designed. So you have them. What do you think?

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Uh, I think Sean basically nailed it. The, the, the advanced stuff, the Google Assistant stuff on it is incredible. Like, it makes you use the Assistant more. Cause you just hold your finger down to your ear, ask a question and it gives you an answer. Boom. It's really good. Everything else about it is not.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Which is a huge bummer for me because as like a form factor thing, as neck buds, they're almost exactly what I want. I wish that they were more isolating so that you wouldn't hear outside noise. That's the main thing that keeps me from using them. Uh, but they're the right length. They don't like hang down like to my belly button like other long ass neck buds do. They don't have weird hard plastic, you know, horseshoe things around your neck. Um, they fit in your ears fine. They have pretty decent battery life.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Well, it sounded like Sean had some trouble with fitting them. That is like a little finicky.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Well, so the, the, the mechanism for getting them to fit in your ears, there's a little like. Break fabric cord and you like slide that in and out of the headphone to have it fit in the arch of your ear and that gets that changes like to put them in the case you've got to like do this crazy awkward cord wrap on top of the awkward like fit the bud into the things so the pogo pins match and you end up misaligning it so every time you take them on or put them up put them away take them off or put them away you end up messing with the thing that fits it into your ear and then on top of all of that for me the biggest problem the thing where Apple air pods just make these things look ridiculous is they have no way to detect if they're in your ear technically the entire plastic

• 14:29Speaker 01

  body of these earbuds is a capacitive sensor so it could but they don't have it turned on yet and so when you

• 14:35Nilay Patel?

  This is like the story of Google.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  I know you take them off your have a hang on your neck you might accidentally hit play.

• 14:40Nilay Patel?

  No every piece of Google hardware ships with like the capability you want and they just haven't like this screen could look good we just didn't ship it that way like this camera has a dedicated processing chip we just turned on yet these headphones could work good we just didn't we just wait a minute for that.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Have they said anything about The Google mini could let you tap it to stop the alarm but we screwed that up and right.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Have they said anything about possibly enabling that feature?

• 15:11Speaker 01

  When I talked to them before the launch I was like you should really do that they're like we're looking into it you should really do that we're looking you should really make it possible to skip tracks we're looking into it you should really make it so that it could detect if I'm in your ear we're looking into it it's possible we're like playing but the I think that they're kind of stuck with this hardware the case is awkward I think that getting it to like accurately detect if it's in your ear or not just using a capacitive sensor is difficult because you have it on your neck and it detects your neck maybe it thinks this is in your ear who knows this is why the the main difference between I think Google and Apple hardware right now is Apple just goes crazy with hardware

• 15:53Speaker 01

  sensors there's like an infrared blaster inside the air pods there's a there's like 30,000 lasers that shoot at your face in the iPhone 10 all this crazy hardware stuff and then their AI is like meh yeah fine Google has incredible AI and they think that will solve all hardware problems and so they end up shipping with slightly cheaper less refined hardware and that

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Puts them into problems, problems like what we see with these Pixel Buds, problems like what we saw with the Google Home Mini. I don't think it's fair to pin that necessarily on, I don't think they thought that like Google AI would fix the screen on the Pixel 2 XL. But in general, their MO is we can, we can have more commodity hardware. And, you know, they're in a hard place because unless you're Apple, it's hard to get any, Apple or Samsung, it's hard to get anything other than commodity hardware. And so they're just trying to make up that difference with machine learning and AI. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

• 16:53Nilay Patel?

  But you shouldn't have to apply machine learning to the problem of, does music stop when you pull these wireless earbuds out of your ear? Right? Like.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  You should not.

• 17:02Nilay Patel?

  That, that's like, I don't know, it's just pure overkill for the issue, which is.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:08Nilay Patel?

  Like basic usability.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:11Nilay Patel?

  Like if they.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  I think David Pierce at Wired said that they, they do all the really hard things really well. And they do all the really easy Bluetooth things really badly.

• 17:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  And then I think that, I mean, this is the thing I harp about, but if you pair it to an iPhone, you don't get assistant. You obviously don't get translate, like.

• 17:28Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  They're proprietary headphones. Like it makes me not want to buy them.

• 17:33Nilay Patel?

  This, so this is like a terrifying situation if there are two headphone manufacturers in the world now. They are Apple and Google. This is.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Right. And they own the stack.

• 17:41Nilay Patel?

  So Google is releasing fast pair, but is, is there going to be anything with the, the assistant stuff that third parties will be able to do? That like fast assistant where it starts listening as soon as you touch?

• 17:53Speaker 01

  So the new. I think it'll come later. Right now, the fast assistant stuff is just Pixel.

• 17:58Nilay Patel?

  Wait, so Dieter, are you saying that?

• 18:00Speaker 01

  I think the assistant, the translate stuff is just Pixel for now. I think the fast assistant stuff is just Pixel, but I could be wrong about that.

• 18:07Nilay Patel?

  So what I, what I do know, because I asked about this when the Pixel Buds launched, is they had to do some fancy audio routing with Google Translate for the Pixel Buds. So they're, they're, they're keeping a lot of audio channels lit up in a way that you otherwise wouldn't do with headphones. So you talk into your Pixel Buds, it plays audio out through the phone speaker. Someone talks to you into the phone's microphone, it translates and plays audio out to you through your headphones. It's like an, obviously a non-standard arrangement. So that's like custom. And that, like, there's an element of like, okay, to innovate, you've got to build a custom thing and then over time it'll get commoditized. But then there's also the element of.

• 18:48Nilay Patel?

  There's literally no reason that, that, you know, Google's, the Google Assistant feature couldn't just work with the Google app on the iPhone in that way. But it, it doesn't. And like, maybe Apple, maybe it's an Apple API restriction, maybe Google doesn't want to give that to you.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  But at least in Google's land, Google has the power to, to push towards commoditizes. Like, okay, we did like a trial run, we are bad at headphones, but we got like kind of the software stack set up. And, and it was in beta when we rolled out the headphones, but now we got it to 1.0. It's early 2018, please start making good headphones that use all this technology.

• 19:26Nilay Patel?

  Right. Yeah, that's my conspiracy theory is they knew it was bad, so they limited a bunch of features to the Pixel. Because Pixel users are like Google stans and are willing to deal with weirdness. If they had, if they had made all that, turned all this stuff on for the iPhone, then a bunch more people would have bought it and a bunch more people would have been mad at Google. That's my conspiracy theory. And they've got to compete with AirPods and AirPods are, are good, I think, but it also like, you pair AirPods to an Android phone, it's not like you can launch the Google Assistant by doing the taps, which you can do with an iPhone. It's like, I don't think you can. I think they just become bog standard Bluetooth headphones. Right.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Right, uh, right now, uh, my dongle life experience, uh, something's wrong with my dongle. And it keeps on launching Siri. There's some loose wire.

• 20:12Nilay Patel?

  I think I found out what's wrong with your dongle. Also, in the interest of fairness, uh, Apple iPhone 10s were, uh, becoming unresponsive when they were suddenly inflicted with cold. Uh, Apple has released a software fix for that today though, so. Yeah, I will say. Not every, everything has a problem when it launches. So I will say this, I don't think it's a huge problem. Maybe I can't even see it anymore. I, I got my iPhone 10, like, put the review unit in the closet like a, like a good boy, bought my own phone. And I'm pretty sure the right side of the screen, he was a little pink. Uh oh.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 20:48Nilay Patel?

  I think it's a big, I think you have to be a real picky nerd to get it and maybe sometimes. I'll just be honest, I was drinking last night. Maybe I was just looking at it with some of those whiskey eyes.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  I can see what you're saying though.

• 21:00Nilay Patel?

  But, I mean, I think this stuff is just hard. It's a hard thing to make.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:04Nilay Patel?

  But, on the whole, right now, it seems like Apple's hardware advantage, like, they're pressing it in a way that, you know, it's new iPhone time, so of course they're pressing it, but the 10

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:15Nilay Patel?

  puts them ahead of the curve in a way that, you know, the 6S, the 7, and the 8 certainly did not do.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Um, yeah.

• 21:22Nilay Patel?

  And Google made this big splashy hardware announcement, and literally every piece of hardware they announced is like, sigh, in practice.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. There's not been a single one that's been like a home run, in the way that the Pixel

• 21:36Nilay Patel?

  The first Pixel was a home run. I, like,

• 21:38Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 21:39Nilay Patel?

  I have the Pixel and the Pixel 2 sitting on my desk at home, and like, I more often pick up the Pixel to use, because the screen looks nice.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 21:47Nilay Patel?

  I don't think that,

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Have you?

• 21:49Nilay Patel?

  I installed the update, I did the colors, they look more the same. It's just not as nice.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  I just watched John Carmack's presentation, every year at the Oculus event, John Carmack gives a presentation where he's just, is literally allowed to say whatever he wants.

• 22:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  And so he can criticize all the Oculus products. And so he goes deep into Pentile.

• 22:10Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 22:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. He's like, effectively, you have less resolution.

• 22:13Nilay Patel?

  It's true. We're, um, we're doing, William Joel, our art director, uh, if you ever wonder, like, where are all the crazy graphics? He's the dude. Um, but he, he fell down a deep hole of Pentile vision theory. When we were, when we were shooting the review video, because I was explaining to him how it worked, we were doing the macro shots. Um, I'm pushing him to make a video about it, but basically, your eyes are more sensitive to green. So the Pentile displays have these like, they're basically true resolution in green,

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:46Nilay Patel?

  and then red and blue are like way less resolution, and they, they modulate green light at you to fool your eyes more. And it's like, that's cool. I don't like, love Pentile displays, but it's cool that someone did the research into like, how your eyes work and built a display technology to like maximize resolution and brightness.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:06Nilay Patel?

  Because the blue pixels are harder to maintain, they die faster. Like, this is cool. Like, that's, that's neat. I would prefer an RGB stripe.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  I just remember, I feel like when I was first, OLED was first marketed to me, it was like, oh, it's organic. We're gonna grow this like plants.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  It's like, it's gonna be hard at first, but we're gonna get really good at this.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  It'll be like Avatar.

• 23:34Nilay Patel?

  It's organic.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  It's organic. It'll look like a plant.

• 23:37Nilay Patel?

  No, it's cool. I mean, like, I wanna do the, I wanna go to the OLED factory and like, show us how to do this.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Free range.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  No, it's an OLED farm.

• 23:44Nilay Patel?

  It's an OLED farm. It's upstate.

• 23:48Nilay Patel?

  That's, that's where little sparkles went, to the OLED farm. Alright, I'm gonna read an ad. Dieter, actually, I know you got your iPhone. So, I'm gonna read this ad, we're gonna talk to Lauren for a minute, and come back. I want, I want your unadulterated iPhone take. But first,

• 24:06Nilay Patel?

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• 24:51Nilay Patel?

  But if you do have a question, Squarespace has award-winning 24/7 customer service to help you out. This is an ominous tagline, I'm just gonna be honest. The future is coming. In a box. But you can make it brighter with Squarespace. Head over to Squarespace.com for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use the offer code VERGE, that's V-E-R-G-E, to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That is Squarespace.com, offer code VERGE.

• 25:17Nilay Patel?

  Lauren Good is here. Hi, Lauren.

• 25:19Speaker 03

  Hey, Neelai. How's it going?

• 25:20Nilay Patel?

  It's going. I feel like I'm having a much more relaxed time of things than you.

• 25:25Speaker 03

  Why's that?

• 25:25Nilay Patel?

  You've been racing around shooting Next Level.

• 25:27Speaker 03

  You've been racing around looking for 1990s microphone equipment to use to tape the Vergecast remotely. So I think we've both had it stressful.

• 25:36Nilay Patel?

  This is true. In case you're wondering, I had to drive to a Walmart in upstate New York this morning and buy an emergency microphone. It is a blue snowball. It is a USB-A. It came with a 90s IMAX-style clear USB-A cable. It's a real dongle situation up in this piece, but I think it's working.

• 25:55Speaker 03

  I think you should review it.

• 25:58Nilay Patel?

  I think the listeners of the Vergecast can review my audio performance using this microphone right now.

• 26:03Speaker 03

  Sounds good. Five stars.

• 26:05Nilay Patel?

  So Next Level, your show-

• 26:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:08Nilay Patel?

  About the next level of things.

• 26:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:11Nilay Patel?

  Of all things.

• 26:11Speaker 03

  Of all things. Next level of technology, next level of innovation, next level of science in some cases. Yeah, so we're well into season two at this point.

• 26:21Nilay Patel?

  And this last episode you did is one of those things I didn't even think was a problem. Like, you don't think about the scale of potential problems with new technology. But you, DJI has a device that lets you track drones in the air, because so many people are flying drones all the time. And they got, sometimes you're not allowed to, or you gotta take them down, and you, like, went drone hunting.

• 26:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, they created this technology called Aeroscope. And it kind of relies on existing technology, but they packaged it all in this Pelican case and called it Aeroscope. And they've been giving this to public safety officials to test over the past couple of months. And then they just did a launch event in DC at the end of October that Ben Popper went to and sort of formally unveiled it to the public. So I both met with DJI in Golden Gate Park with this Aeroscope box, and we kind of went drone hunting with it. And then I said, you know, can you put me in touch with one of your beta testers? And they said they had a beta tester down in Camarillo, California, which is in Ventura County, just north of Los Angeles.

• 27:26Speaker 03

  And there was a public safety official there, actually an airport operations supervisor, who has been using this. And I basically just kind of shadowed him on his daily patrol of the airport while he sniffed out drones that were flying overhead because drones flying near airports can be a pretty problematic thing. So we went drone hunting. Yeah, it was pretty wild.

• 27:48Nilay Patel?

  How many drones were like around?

• 27:51Speaker 03

  Well, the funny thing is, is when you're doing this for video and it's a live sort of, I mean, live to tape, but it's this kind of real time thing where you're like, let's see if we spot drones. You're kind of thinking like, the chances of it happening while you happen to be filming are pretty low. And we were in Golden Gate Park with DJI's Michael Perry. He's the managing director of North America for DJI. And he does a lot of like policy comms for them and stuff. And he's opening up this Pelican case and there are like these giant wand like antennas sticking out of the top of the case that you have to screw in. And it's got a crystal sky display and a bunch of fans and processors running in it. And he's like, okay, so like, here's what you do. And here's this. And then all of a sudden, in the middle of him talking, we just heard beep beep beep beep beep beep

• 28:35Speaker 03

  beep. It was literally the sound of like, for those of you who were around in the 80s and 90s, the sound of like, when you left a landline off the hook.

• 28:44Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 28:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. And you could hear the phone making that terrible beeping noise, you know, persistently. That was the noise that it makes. And I was like, what's that noise? And he said, well, there's a drone overhead. And I was like, what? And then you look on the crystal sky display. And we could see that several blocks away outside of Golden Gate Park, someone had fired up a drone.

• 29:04Nilay Patel?

  Wait, just to be clear, the crystal side display is like DJI's like ultra bright LCD, right, for viewing outdoors?

• 29:10Speaker 03

  That's correct. It's their touchscreen display technology. So you could see stuff outdoors. Yep. And it's running, it's running on Android. I mean, this tablet type, you know, like thing is running on Android, but it's their custom software built on top of Android. And so they are layering this information over Google Maps. So we scroll in, you know, and we see, we see this drone, this little icon of a drone. And by tapping on it, you're able to see some really interesting information about the drone and potentially the drone pilot. But it depends on whether or not that person has registered their drone. So it has to be a DJI drone, at least for now. I think technically they can track other drones. But right now, as they're rolling this out, it's only picking up on DJI drones. If you've registered your drone,

• 29:56Speaker 03

  Then you can see, you can see like the registration number, you can see the serial number, you can see, of course, you can see like all the telemetry data on the drone and where it's flying and stuff like that. In earlier versions, you used to be able to see the pilot's email, which is crazy. Like, I saw that. I was like, here's, I have this person's email now. Like, not gonna email you, don't worry. But DJI has since said, since we ran this piece, that they're planning on not showing the email anymore. And the same thing happened when we were down in Camrio, California. I joined this guy, Nick Martino, the airport ops supervisor on his patrol. We hop in his giant Chevy Tahoe, and he clears the runway, like tells the planes not to fly on the runway because we're

• 30:37Speaker 03

  driving around with this Pelican case. And so, we're in the car, and he's telling me about his daily routine, and all of a sudden, the terrible landline sound again. And I'm like, I'm like, what? He's like, we got a drone. We got hit. Like, you know, it's, I'm making this sound way more exciting than like it is. Like, yeah, of course, there's a drone flying overhead. And he's like, we got a hit. So, turns out, though, that was really interesting, because right in the same vicinity of Camrio Airport, which is, by the way, a very nice private airport, saw some pretty cool aircraft while I was there. There, there's Oxnard Airport just a few miles away. There's a naval base just a few miles away. I mean, this is pretty much along the California coastline, and

• 31:22Speaker 03

  there's a lot of activity there. So, you can be pretty certain that if you're flying in that vicinity, you're flying in restricted airspace. Like, you're not supposed to be flying a drone there. So even though that drone we spotted was nearly 10 miles away, it was close to somewhere it was not supposed to be flying. And so, in that instance, you know, he could see the drone pilot's email, and I was like, what happens now? And he's like, we send a friendly email. And I'm like-

• 31:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that was my favorite part of the episode. It was like, all this happened, and the guy's like, and now, we send a polite email. Because they can't just like shoot them out of the sky, right?

• 31:55Speaker 03

  That's another thing I, you know, I discovered as I was reporting this story, you can't. Right now in the US, under Title 18 US Code, you cannot shoot down a drone from the sky. You can't remotely disable or intercept a drone from the sky. I think there are probably exceptions to that rule, of course. And I know that there's a story that we wrote about on The Verge, I think it was last year, where a local Kentucky judge determined, or a Kentucky judge determined that a local man who had shot down a drone from his property was not going to be charged with anything. So I think that's where drones get really confusing because there are these federal

• 32:36Speaker 03

  levels and they are, there are these, these federal levels of regulation and there are FAA rules, but then local states, parks, local jurisdictions, like people can sometimes sort of make up their own rules around them. But for the most part, you can't remotely disable a drone right now.

• 32:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So what was interesting to me is like, obviously this is DJI's tech and most drones are phantoms, as far as I can tell, like they have commanding market share. So it makes sense that they could just build this like kind of closed loop system. But there are other kinds of drones in the world. Can they sense those two? Like, how are they thinking about this holistically?

• 33:16Speaker 03

  Right. That's a good question. Yeah, they said with this system right now that they can remotely detect about 65% of the personal drones that are out there.

• 33:28Nilay Patel?

  And what are they doing to detect? Are they just scanning radio frequencies?

• 33:31Speaker 03

  They are picking up on, for the most part, they're picking up on the communication link between the drone and the drone controller. They're decoding that signal that's happening between the drone and drone controller. And they're capturing the telemetry and they're sending that data back down to the box. So there is a difference between trying to track just the drone itself, which usually requires, there's like another type of frequency that you're picking up on and usually requires that there's some type of special, you know, transmitter or like box in the drone that allows you to do that. And that would require like retrofitting a bunch of drones, right? In this case, they're picking up on that communications link that's happening between

• 34:14Speaker 03

  the controller and the drone, which by the way, means that once you just turn the drone on, even if you're not flying it. You know, and it's like sending a signal controller and drone are speaking. It's picking up on that, too. Yeah, so, I mean, they say that through a firmware update, they can get other drone operators to get on board with the system and then they would effectively be able to track 95% of the consumer drones in the market. The question is, of course, is whether another company like a Parrot or someone else would want to issue some kind of update to their drones to allow it to be tracked. That could be mandated at some point, of course, but for right now, it's not mandated. And there are a ton of different drone defense solutions out there.

• 34:58Speaker 03

  I mean, I found, I was able to make a list very easily of two dozen different organizations around the world that have been working on drone defense systems. And everyone kind of has, you know, most of it's technically being done the same way, but like, everyone kind of has their own take on it and some people are more focused on drone interception. But yeah, I mean, everyone's trying to come up with a solution for how to remotely manage drones in some way while it's kind of the wild, wild west out there.

• 35:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I've definitely seen the video of like, basically the giant radio emitter that just interferes with the drone and makes it fall out of the sky. And that, that's always seemed like a wee bit dangerous. But there's like a, is there an encryption piece to this? Because you don't want anyone intercepting your, your communication link between controller and drone. So DJI, obviously, they make everything, so they own the keys. So it's probably easy for them.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  To decrypt it.

• 35:51Nilay Patel?

  But once you, once you wander into other companies, now you're doing all this like, private key sharing that seems, you know, I'm just thinking about the iPhone, right? The FBI trying to open the iPhone and the app, Apple's like, we're never giving these keys away. Are they thinking about that stuff, too, or is that just somewhere else?

• 36:06Speaker 03

  They are thinking about it, for sure. And I think what's interesting, too, when you talk about Apple and you talk about Apple getting into skirmishes, for lack of a better word, they're actually really big issues with government agencies like the FBI, you're, you are talking about an American company, too. DJI is a Chinese drone maker and I think that's probably one area that's worth considering, even though DJI is like, very careful not to really, I don't know, they didn't really talk about that when I asked them about this. But, but, yeah, I mean, I think that's something that they're considering, but the sort of...

• 36:46Speaker 03

  The polite answer they give is like, well, there are lots of things you have to consider when you consider remotely intercepting drones, which is is taking them down safe, is taking them down legal. Like if you were to remotely, if someone were to remotely, you know, decrypt this and take it down themselves, like that would be a safety issue, which is true. That's not to minimize that. But I think you're totally right in that that sort of higher level conversation that is to be had is like, well, wait a second. So that means anyone can decrypt and intercept a drone.

• 37:14Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 37:14Speaker 03

  But yeah, I mean, you basically can like.

• 37:16Nilay Patel?

  Well, I guess what they can do is decrypt and send friendly emails. Like if that's the whole vector, like, like a world of attackers being like, I noticed you're flying a drone today.

• 37:26Speaker 03

  Right.

• 37:27Nilay Patel?

  Like, maybe not the worst.

• 37:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, one of the things they they also were very careful to point out is that this solution for them has to do with proximity. So it's a localized solution. So they say that you can only you can only use Aeroscope to spot drones within, you know, a few miles or so. Now, we happen to see the venture accounting department of airports spot a drone nearly 10 miles away. So we already know this box can exceed that range that DJI said it can. But they say, well, it's not a centralized network. It's not like your cell phone network where it's all that data, all that call data, all of the activity data is going into some type of, you know, centralized database that at the end of the day, we know that government agencies could have access to. You know,

• 38:10Speaker 03

  they they claim this is still very localized and that that should give people some reassurance.

• 38:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm just fascinated. The more we talk about it, I'm just fascinated by the closed loop nature of DJI making the drones and making this equipment because they don't actually have to send a friendly email. Like, I have a Phantom 4. And when I boot it up, it tells me like, you're near an airport, like, push this button if you want to fly. Like, if you want to break the rules, we'll let you, but we're letting you know you're breaking the rules. There's no reason that this box couldn't go through that DJI registration database and actually just flash on the control app that people are using. Have they have they thought about closing loop that directly? Or are they still just friendly emails?

• 38:49Speaker 03

  Well, so what's interesting is DJI is also not the entity that is sending the friendly emails. Like, they're selling this directly to public safety officials. They're not saying it's going to be accessible to consumers. They're selling it to people like fire departments, prison guards, airport ops specialists, people like, you know, control towers, people like that who are in a position to send, you know, a friendly but slightly admonishing email that's like, hey, what are you, you know, what are you doing over here? And so DJI is not getting involved in that level themselves. I mean, I think, and there were a couple of really, really good comments on our, our videos about this, where people would say, wait, so this is brilliant. DJI makes the drones. They've essentially created the problem

• 39:32Speaker 03

  of lots of drones flying around. People don't have to register them anymore because a federal court said that last May, I think, that hobbyists no longer have to register in the US. And now they're creating the solution to the problem they've created.

• 39:44Nilay Patel?

  Wait, hobbyists, so I'm not a scofflaw? Because I definitely

• 39:47Speaker 03

  No.

• 39:48Nilay Patel?

  I got as far as like printing out the FCC PDF. I don't know how to mail things.

• 39:53Speaker 03

  What does this mail thing mean you speak of?

• 39:57Nilay Patel?

  It's like, what, who has a stamp?

• 39:58Speaker 03

  What is a stamp? Yeah, no, you're not. You're, as of, I think, I believe it was last May, and Recode reported this, lots of outlets reported this, that a federal court did mandate that you no longer had to register your drone as a hobbyist, but you do, if you're a commercial drone, if you're like an Amazon, you know, or whatever it is, and you're flying drones, you still need to, to register. So, yeah, so DJI has like, they've, DJI, excuse me, they've created this situation where they, they own the drone market for the most part, you know, within a certain price range of hobbyist drones. And people are flying them in places where they're not supposed to. People don't necessarily understand the rules because the rules aren't clear. And so they've created this solution to the

• 40:40Speaker 03

  problem that has, exists because of their drones.

• 40:45Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's like the tech industry in 2017. It's like, we've, we've caused this problem. Here's a $19 dongle that fixes it.

• 40:53Speaker 03

  Right. So buy our dongles. Yeah. Basically, Aeroscope is a giant dongle.

• 40:59Nilay Patel?

  It's perfect. It's a dongle for fire departments around the country. It's great.

• 41:03Speaker 03

  But there is, it's, you know, there is a reason why DJI did this presentation in Washington DC. When they presented this and part of this is like, they do need to stay on the friendly side of policymakers. And I think in general, there, there's this thought among the drone makers and drone technology companies that anytime there's a chance of overregulation at some point, because something bad happens with a drone and it sours everybody on the industry, you need to be able to show that you can manage it without that overregulation. And I think that's a part of this, too.

• 41:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that makes sense. I think there's the idea that everyone will have a drone. I feel like it's getting, if you just look at DJI's lineup and Ben Popper has been talking about this because he covers it so closely, their lineup is getting smaller, more accessible, more easy to use. The ranges are getting smaller though. So it's, it's almost like, you know, my Phantom 4 is absolutely overkill for what I use it for. Like 90% of what we do with it is we put it in the sky and take like a selfie when a bunch of people are over. I don't need that. And they're like, right, like that's like mostly what it's for. But I could have gotten a Mavic. There's a new Spark that's small, but as they get smaller and they're more useful for consumers, the idea that you're just going to randomly buzz an airport starts to fade away.

• 42:20Nilay Patel?

  So I wonder about the scope of the problem as well. Like, you know, I bet Apple would have loved to have one of these while they were building Apple Park, because everyone was constantly buzzing it with drones to like watch construction happen. But at the same time, if most consumers just have little ones, maybe they wouldn't be doing that anyway.

• 42:38Speaker 03

  Right. And there's an argument to be made there, too, which is I don't think that Apple Park would have been restricted airspace unless it was near an airport or unless there were public safety officials legitimately concerned about the danger.

• 42:51Nilay Patel?

  Well, when we, we went there for the iPhone event, they had the big signs that are like, no drone zone. And it's like, I don't think anyone's listening to you guys.

• 42:58Speaker 03

  Right, right. Yeah. And that's one of those things where because it's a, it's a local, you know, property that they probably had to get some sort of. Specialized permission for that, just like when you go to a local park and it says it like state parks and national parks. I don't think you can fly drones, but yeah, there are all these like weird little exemptions for sure. So your point about them getting smaller and therefore their range growing smaller is is definitely a good one. But I think if you look at most data, at least right now, for how where DJI dominates the market, it's largely in that $1,000 to $2,000 range. I think they have, according to one report, like 66% of that market. And, you know, there's something like an estimated 3 million drones are expected to be shipped in 2017,

• 43:42Speaker 03

  and that's both personal and consumer drones. And I don't think those are the cheap ones. So at least for now, you know, I'm sure the technology is shrinking and it's and you don't necessarily have to worry about a tiny little thing, you know, flying maybe within 10 miles of a runway. But there are other ones out there that they need to get under control.

• 44:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, it's just, like you said, there's it's a problem that no one considered. Like drones came out, everyone thought they were cool. And now it's like, wait, airplanes, we have to protect them.

• 44:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:13Nilay Patel?

  Like, that's like a whole, it's a whole new class of problems. It's fascinating. They're trying to solve it. Like you said, they're in DC saying, we've already solved it. Don't worry about this government. Like, we're on the case. Because I hesitate to say the last thing you want is the government participating and like over regulating this. I'm not confident that the current government in America, as it is presently constituted, can actually do anything. So like, it's fine for DJI to be doing this. But at some point, you know, you the local airport or firefighters, they are going to want to see every drone in the sky, right? Not just bet on DJI solution, being able to see the drones in the sky and betting on the fact

• 44:54Nilay Patel?

  that DJI is going to maintain its market share. So like, at some point, it does become a more collective problem than just DJI asking Parrot politely for its encryption keys or whatever.

• 45:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. We get to a point where registered aircraft, you know, let's just say it's an Amazon drone that is delivering packages all day long, and it's flying in the same airspace, the same relative airspace, and it's a registered aircraft. I mean, You get to a point where you start to question like, well, shouldn't air traffic control also be able to see that in addition to seeing the Cessna 172 or, you know, the Boeing 737 or whatever it is that also is flying in airspace. And we're talking about three very different levels of airspace there, but it's still airspace. So, and it's still, you know, you still have things that could potentially crash into one another. So I think that's just something that the people are just gonna have to get their heads around at some point and make some serious decisions about.

• 45:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And those friendly emails will go directly to Jeff Bezos, I'm sure.

• 45:54Speaker 03

  Sure. Well, I heard he reads his own emails.

• 45:57Nilay Patel?

  Exactly. Perfect. All right, Lauren, give us a tease. What is the next episode of Next Level?

• 46:03Speaker 03

  Next episode is water. It really is about water, one of the most fundamental, basic human needs. We talked to a really interesting company that is looking at a new way to harvest water that is not groundwater, that is not rainwater. And we're, it's just very interesting stuff. We went, we saw how they're trying to do this. We tasted the water. We talked to their team. It's actually like a material science problem, which is kind of interesting. I don't think we've done much material science coverage here on Next Level. And, uh, and yeah, that one's, that one's super cool. And then we're working on, we're working on

• 46:47Speaker 03

  episode four right now as well, and that one's gonna be very cool.

• 46:52Nilay Patel?

  All right. I like it. When Next Level comes out on?

• 46:54Speaker 03

  Tuesdays. Next one, we're taking a week off for Thanksgiving. We're not really taking a week off. We're working on it, but we figure you'll be taking a week off, everybody. So we're gonna publish the next episode on Tuesday, November 28th.

• 47:06Nilay Patel?

  Okay. And that's the water one?

• 47:07Speaker 03

  That's the water one.

• 47:07Nilay Patel?

  And it's on YouTube and Facebook and everywhere else that you can find The Verge.

• 47:12Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 47:13Nilay Patel?

  Not on WeChat yet, but we're working on it. I think, I don't know. It seems like something we should do. Everything else on WeChat.

• 47:19Speaker 03

  It's gonna be on DJI's Aeroscope Box soon enough. You'll have to watch it on the Crystal Sky Display.

• 47:24Nilay Patel?

  Well, you're waiting for a drone to fly by. You gotta watch something.

• 47:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:27Nilay Patel?

  All right, Lauren, thank you so much. Next Level is wonderful. I encourage you all to watch it because it is absolutely the most fun.

• 47:35Speaker 03

  Thanks, Neelai. Thanks, everyone.

• 47:37Nilay Patel?

  Thanks. Man, Next Level, it's a real show. It's real, it's a real, real, next level show. That conversation with Lauren is like the only time I talk to Lauren lately. It's like she's so busy with the show. It's a great show, but she is just racing to get these episodes done. It's fun to catch up with her. You should watch it. It's really good. Uh, Dieter, you got this phone?

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:58Nilay Patel?

  Can I, can I dox you a little bit?

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 48:01Nilay Patel?

  It's just like a little baby dox. Dieter, Dieter got the phone and then he sent me a screenshot of our website, all notched up, big bars. All it said was, "This phone is a joke."

• 48:14Nilay Patel?

  Go, go on, Mr. Bone.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Uh, the notch stuff is just, they screwed it up. It's not good. There are too, there are just too many apps where there are just buttons on top of buttons, like piled up in each other in the notch. All of Apple's

• 48:31Speaker 01

  dev tools to help developers make their apps work on differently sized screens. The developers ignored it or implemented it wrong, or they implemented it right and Apple screwed it up. There are just a lot of apps that their first cut of, "Yeah, this is, this'll be fine," was wrong. And it gets worse because of the fundamental problem, one of the fundamental problems of iOS, is they thought it was a really great idea to have this like back to the previous app bug in the upper left-hand corner. Like when you click on Twitter and it goes to Safari, there's a little Twitter, back to Twitter thing. But there's that. And then there's also like usually some kind of weird X button up there. And sometimes there's like a back button for the app inside it up there. And they just get piled on top of each other and you just start like tapping, hoping that you hit the right tiny thing in the right, the right tiny space.

• 49:14Nilay Patel?

  Also the space where you're bringing the notifications down. The upper left corner of the iPhone X display is pretty messy.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  Called overloaded?

• 49:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, overloaded. And it's like, well, you made the display bigger, but we put more, more elements in this part of it.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  The trick there is to stop using the upper left hand corner, just pull it straight down from the notch, which gets a fingerprint on the selfie camera, but whatever, just pull straight down from the notch.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  Oh, it's a thing. Wait, but now if you pull down the right, right corner, it's settings, right?

• 49:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  I increasingly have, and maybe it's my, my bad cracked screen iPhone, but like every app, I just always need to be swiping up to get to the settings control panel. And there's always like a keyboard or a text input box or something at the bottom.

• 49:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Like, that's the thing that I'm most frustrated about right now. I do want that top right swiped down.

• 50:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  No, that's, that's fine. That's not bad. Like overall, the, the, the screen is incredible. Uh, the cameras are very, very good. Um, I have a problem with Face ID, which is weird. I do have a problem with Face ID though, and it's a weird one. It's different than the ones everybody talking about. So when you get a notification by default, it hides what the notification is unless the phone is unlocked, right?

• 50:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Uh, which is great. I want to leave that feature on. And when it's sitting at my desk angled up, looking at me, the notification will come in, I turn to look at it, and then it unlocks and I see my notification, everybody's happy. But if I don't turn to look at it quickly enough, uh, it doesn't unlock. And so if the phone is sitting there locked and you're staring at it and you're waiting for your notifications to pop, once it misses that first look,

• 50:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  it doesn't try again. And so you're just like, are you gonna, are you, are you, what do you, what do you do? And they're like, okay, let me hit a button to have it try again. And there's nothing to do. Literally all you can do is unlock your phone and then you gotta swipe down your notifications. Or you have to, I don't know, turn the screen off and turn it back on again.

• 51:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  And that makes it try again. There's no, with Touch ID, if it doesn't take the first time, you just try again. With Face ID, if it doesn't take the first time, you're just sitting there waiting.

• 51:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  And I, like, this might be better, that like Face ID over time might be a better solution. But the fact that there's no sort of user option for, oh, this didn't work, let me try again, is not great.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  So I, I know I keep banging on about like us adjusting to technology versus technology adjusting to us. And I, I think.

• 51:42Nilay Patel?

  Face ID is in this weird balance zone where I think so much of it is better than Touch ID. Now, having had the thing for several weeks, I will say that a thing that sucks is if you've had a review iPhone X for a few weeks and it's gotten really good at seeing you and then you get a new one and you re-register your face, it is significantly worse. So that process of it, yeah, so my, my actual iPhone X, I just read, I just set it up a couple of days ago, significantly worse than the review unit I'd had for a couple of weeks. And I was like, this is broken. And then I was like, no, it's just, it actually hasn't done it enough. But once it gets there, it is, it is effortless. You don't think about,

• 52:26Nilay Patel?

  even with Touch ID, there was like a tiny little moment of like, I gotta put my thumb in the place, but 90% of the time, you just like look at the phone, it's unlocked. So I think that's a huge improvement, actually. But the 10% of the time when it doesn't work, it asks so much more of you than Touch ID. Yep. Like so much more. And that thing you're talking about, the notifications is one where it's like, I, you have to make a decision about what to do to get into the phone. You have to like, okay, I'm gonna start over, I'm gonna swipe, I'm gonna like, let it fail out till it gets a code. If you get to the place where it just wants a code, there's no point on that screen where you can just like make it try again. So if you swipe up from the bottom, it doesn't just try again. It just, like, sometimes you're on the code

• 53:10Nilay Patel?

  screen and it decides to try again and it'll just unlock. Sometimes you're on the code screen, it won't do anything and you have to enter the code. But you can't have, you can't just like, be like, just try, I'm telling you to try again. Try again right now. And I think that 10% is, it's what I, I think I wrote about the most in the review. It's when I wake up in the morning, every single morning, I have to type in the code now. Because I'm not wearing my glasses and I'm holding it too close to my face. Every, like, literally every morning, I'm like, woo. And I haven't gotten into the habit of like, holding it far away where our kids see it.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  It's a really dumb problem.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  But can I ask a question about notifications? Because I'm just realizing, when Neil I was

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Don't, you don't, you don't want to bring up notifications in iOS with me because we will lose the rest of the podcast.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  I want clarity, because this is something we've talked about a ton of times, like Google does notifications better. And I used the Essential phone for a couple of weeks recently. And I realized, I use notifications there, very similar how I use them on the iPhone, which is basically, I see a notification right when it comes in. That scenario you were talking about, where you have to glance at the phone.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:16Speaker 02

  Then it's useful to me. Other than that, it goes into a log of notifications, which at some point I have to manually clear. Like, the only time notifications are useful to me is if I spot them when they arrive. What is this essential thing that Google does on Android that makes that backlog of notifications somehow more useful?

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Primarily, it's the grouping. So, I'll wake up in the morning, and I'll have 30 emails, 50 tweets, a couple of text messages, some news alerts, and, I don't know, Donald Trump tweeted some garbage, and so everyone's losing their mind over that. You know, like, I'll have, you know, 100 notifications. Maybe not that many, but a bunch. And on Android, I'm like, okay, there's a bunch of tweets, they're here. If I want to look at them, I can. There's emails, they're here. I know that they're such and such important. But if there's a text message, a text message or a missed call is almost always more important than that other garbage. 99% of the time, a text message is a higher priority than

• 55:19Speaker 01

  an email, or a tweet, or a Facebook message, or whatever else. On iOS, there's, there's just, it's just a giant reverse chronological stream of all your notifications, and they all look identical, which, fine, but you have to scroll through and look, and you're going to miss something. On Android, you'd like, you've, they're all grouped. And so like, okay, there's a bunch of Twitter stuff. I'll look at that later. I'll expand that later. All right. There's a text message here. I'm not going to miss it. I care about this. And none of that exists in iOS. And so, and that's, that's like the biggest problem. There are other problems in terms of the way that, you know, you swipe and you clear and you 3D touch and you manage,

• 55:59Speaker 01

  how do you clear them? And what's Apple's philosophy for how you should treat them as a stream that you ignore? And or a thing that you actually like work from, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But fundamentally, the lack of grouping means that I miss important notifications.

• 56:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Also, Apple's, they put that today's screen. It's to the left. You see swipe left to right on the home, main home screen and you can get to it.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 56:23Nilay Patel?

  And you can pull down the notification shade and go over there and get to it. And that screen could be the most useful screen on the iPhone. And it just kinda isn't. Like, I wanted-

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Get use out of that screen? I mean, I, I have a very specific set of things on it. It's, it's, I mean, I could just look at it right now, but it's, it's calendar is the most important thing.

• 56:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  And then it's weather, my to do list, Apple news, and then time home. And because I'm creepy, my wife's location.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  She has mine, to be clear.

• 56:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Whether I'm on Android or iPhone.

• 57:00Nilay Patel?

  Becky's literally never let me turn that shit on. Like, we're like at a wedding together or something. And she's like out with the family. I'm like, can we turn it on for the weekend? She's like, no, just call me.

• 57:11Nilay Patel?

  But I think that that screen can be way more useful. It's just really hard to manage. It's hard to figure out.

• 57:15Speaker 02

  I definitely do not use this screen.

• 57:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it could be great.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  It's way more useful than Google Now. Google Now was an attempt to do this. And Google tried to put the, the algorithm in charge of it and they just boned it. It's just bad. And so now they've buried it.

• 57:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's just one of those screens where, you know, it's like, Apple doesn't know where settings should go. Like, they're just like, they're like, I don't know. They're like, just throw them around the phone. It's fine. Like, if that was like in the settings app and you're like, I'm going to adjust this to my liking and then look at it. But instead, the settings are there like per widget and like, you gotta pull apps into it.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  Oh, you want to hear an exciting thing I learned after 10 years of using an iPhone? Every time I set up a new iPhone, I get a million candler alerts and it drives you crazy. Then I jump into the calendar app and I turn off all the calendars I don't want because we've got, you know, 50 calendars and I'm still getting notifications with the calendars I've turned off. iOS has two separate settings for calendars. Inside the calendar app, there's another set of settings inside the settings app, but you tap calendars and then there's a setting to display them, the main checkbox, but then you have to hit the little I button to go into the calendar setting and manually turn off event notifications calendar by calendar.

• 58:26Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  In the same way for notifications, like there's no way to just manually edit all notifications. You've got to turn them on setting by setting, like just, it just takes an eternity. In calendars specifically, you have to manually turn off event notifications for every single calendar.

• 58:41Nilay Patel?

  I think I've just somehow disabled the iOS calendar app. I think it knows, it knows, it's like, this isn't going to work out.

• 58:48Speaker 01

  Leave you alone.

• 58:49Nilay Patel?

  All right, I'm going to read one more ad and then we got to talk about the OnePlus 5T.

• 58:54Nilay Patel?

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• 59:01Speaker 01

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• 59:03Nilay Patel?

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• 59:42Speaker 01

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• 59:43Nilay Patel?

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• 59:55Speaker 01

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• 59:56Nilay Patel?

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• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  That line is just not completed in the script. Every week, I'm like, it says, "While never having to worry," and it just trails off. And I always want to think, like, literally never having to worry about anything. You're just so well shaved.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  That'd be great.

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• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  I saw a YouTube video the other day where a guy for No Shave November plucked his entire beard out of his face with tweezers. Took him 12 hours.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  Ah! Was it, like, gross? Was it, like, red?

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  It was a little red.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  He should have used the art of shaving.

• 1:01:01Speaker 02

  He should have used the art of shaving.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  All right, OnePlus 5T came out today.

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  Big event.

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  How do they do it?

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Headphone jack.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  How do they fit it all in?

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  Weird tall screen. Bezelis, well, fine. It's fine. It's like, not quite bezelis, it's close enough. Here's what I'll say about the OnePlus 5T. If you don't know, it's got the same Android specs as every other spec, every other phone internally. I'm very curious to hear if the camera will be any good. But it has a taller screen, it has a headphone jack. You know, it's the same thing as every other flagship Android phone. But imagine, just close your eyes and imagine, this phone with a Pixel camera, if Google had just done this.

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  Everyone would have lost their minds.

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:01:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'd have gone crazy. This is the phone. I mean, also the Pixel version of Android.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  Right, the Pixel version of Android and, you know, Google's camera stuff on top of this thing.

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  I'm actually very intrigued by this. I'm not a fan, I don't have a lot of faith, rather, in OnePlus's ability to execute on the camera.

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's always been their thing, right? We did a big feature.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  They have a secondary low-light camera.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  On the 5T.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  Which may or may not be, I don't think it's black and white, it's just a low-light. I know, we have to see.

• 1:02:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  That, that, this is the problem with the Essential phone too, right? Like, everything was great, and then the camera.

• 1:02:27Nilay Patel?

  I will say the-

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  That has been, that has been a problem with previous OnePlus phones.

• 1:02:30Nilay Patel?

  I'm enjoying the Essential team doing Reddit AMAs all the time. They're so cheery about them. And they're like, they're, they're sort of admitting, like, "We're already designing the next one." Which is like-

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:42Nilay Patel?

  You didn't finish shipping the first one. Uh, but it's like, they're, they're on it, you know? They've got a whole little community. Are you still using one?

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:02:53Nilay Patel?

  It's over. It's too heavy for me.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Uh, I've got, I've got ADB in my computer, or I, I need to reinstall ADB in my computer, so I can put the Oreo Beta on mine.

• 1:03:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Uh, didn't OnePlus have the, like, the weird spyware situation going on?

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  They, they did have a thing.

• 1:03:11Nilay Patel?

  And now it's gone? They fixed it?

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  You know, they, they promised that everything's fine now.

• 1:03:16Nilay Patel?

  Cool.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:18Nilay Patel?

  Who buys a OnePlus 5T? If you're listening to this, and you're gonna buy a OnePlus 5T, please tweet at us. I'm, I'm curious, because I know they've got deep fans. Right? Like, people are real excited about OnePlus phones. Dan, uh, uh, did the video, where he went out to China.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:03:35Nilay Patel?

  Hung out with them. It was cool. That video did gangbusters, because people love OnePlus. This phone starts at $499. Yeah.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's great. It's a good phone at $499. It, this is amazing, that this phone is as cheap, and that they, somehow, there's some kind of wizardry, because they fit a headphone jack in it. I don't know how they did it.

• 1:03:54Nilay Patel?

  Well, they made a giant phone.

• 1:03:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, is that the, the answer? Just make it taller? What's the over/under that the Galaxy S9 has no headphone jack and Vixby headphones? Oooh. Because you know they're thinking about it.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  Samsung has been hitting the headphone jack thing pretty hard.

• 1:04:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  I mean, even in their last commercial, they, like, they made fun of dongles.

• 1:04:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But like

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  I think they're gonna, they're gonna do one more year with a headphone jack, but they won't, but they won't hit it as hard. They won't hit the messaging as hard. They'll be like, "And it has a headphone jack," and they'll move on. And that's how you know the S10 won't have one.

• 1:04:29Nilay Patel?

  But the Bixby headphones are coming. You know they're coming.

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:35Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be real sad.

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  What do you want a Bixby headphone to do for you?

• 1:04:39Nilay Patel?

  Have a headphone jack?

• 1:04:43Nilay Patel?

  I've, I will say this, I, for better or worse, and Paul's gonna make fun of me, because he's gonna think that I like this. But like, every time anyone in the world forgets a dongle, they, they tweet a picture at me.

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:55Nilay Patel?

  They're like, "I'm so frustrated, @Reckless." I'm like, "I can't help you, but I hear you, I see you. I, I, I'm in it with you, man."

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's why they, they're reaching out to you, because they know you understand.

• 1:05:07Nilay Patel?

  It's like the easiest like on Twitter is tweeting me your dongle rage. Like, "Yeah, I got you. I listened." All right, Paul, every week,

• 1:05:17Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:18Nilay Patel?

  you do a segment.

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  Uh-huh.

• 1:05:20Nilay Patel?

  And it happens at exactly the same time in the show.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  Always, exactly.

• 1:05:24Nilay Patel?

  And it has the same name.

• 1:05:26Speaker 02

  It's called, "Robot Dogs Are People Too."

• 1:05:29Nilay Patel?

  Ooh.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  So, I'm very excited that Boston Dynamics is somehow not a dead company still, despite just a terrible corporate environment. I don't know, I don't know the full story, but some reason Alphabet was just like, "Ah, these crazy people who make super impractical robots aren't making a consumer product fast enough for us," even though our whole portfolio's full of things that aren't consumer products. So now SoftBank owns Boston Dynamics. Boston Dynamics does like those, you know, scary robot dogs, um, and also they have some humanoid stuff. Um, but they made one of their scary robot dogs look less scary. So it's like

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

  the new Spot Mini, and it literally looks like it's from a sci-fi movie. Um, and it's cute, and it's got a little, little pep to its step when it walks. Uh, and we still don't know if it's a product. They said, "Coming soon," at the end of their teaser video, but it's probably just for another video about Spot Mini.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  I, I hate to, uh, I hate, I hate to steal your thunder here, Paul, but while we were recording, Boston Dynamics released another video of their Atlas robot, uh, which is their humanoid robot, and-

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  The thing does backflips.

• 1:06:48Speaker 02

  Atlas does backflips?

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  Dude, watch the video. Unbelievable.

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  Oh my.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  It's 55 seconds. We can pause the, the podcast.

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll watch it right now.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  We'll come back in and hear everybody go, what? Cause it's crazy town.

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  Whoa. Oh my gosh.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:07:09Nilay Patel?

  Wait, is this Atlas, the next generation? Oh wait, there it is.

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. It just, it just could just backflip now.

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  It's not just backflip.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  It could jump on things. It could jump on little blocks. It's jumping from block to block. It hits a tall block. And then it's like, I'm going to turn around and do a backflip right now.

• 1:07:24Speaker 02

  God.

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. There's a big debate going on in, uh, the Verge, uh, Slack right now about whether or not you should say thank you to Alexa and the Google Assistant after you, after it does something for you. And I am very strongly on pro thank you team.

• 1:07:43Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  I think you should thank your assistant. One, because thanking your assistant, saying thanks is like forgiveness. It's not a thing you do for the other person. It's a thing you do for yourself in your own heart. It makes you a better person. It makes you feel better to say thank you or to forgive somebody. So that's number one. Number two, it's Pascal's wager. You guys know what Pascal's wager is?

• 1:08:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  Paul, you want to explain Pascal's wager real quick?

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  Pascal's wager is like, let's say you got like 50, 50 chance that God's not, not, God's real or God's not real. If God's real and you follow God, you go to heaven. And if you don't follow God, you go to hell. If God's not real, nothing happens when you die. So one of these is a better course of action.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  Higher upside. With even odds.

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  So you're saying, say thank you because the robots will come to life and kill us all.

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  Right. I'm saying there's, there's, there's some chance.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  Just to take it from, live a godly life to go to heaven. You're saying if you don't say thank you, the robots will come to life and murder you first. Either the robots are gonna become self-aware and try and kill us all in a Skynet future, or they're not. And so you, you might be able to prevent this or survive it by saying thank you to your robot right now.

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  It's very

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  Does it, is it painful at all for you to say thank you? No, it's not. If there's a 2%, if there's a 10th of a cha- 10th of a percent chance that saying thank you will save your life in the coming robot apocalypse, you might as well do it because it doesn't hurt anything.

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  Here's my question, do you say thank you when Alexa just blows it?

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Yes, because otherwise Alexa might get mad.

• 1:09:20Speaker 02

  Like, thanks for trying.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  Alexa mad.

• 1:09:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  Good job.

• 1:09:23Speaker 02

  Good. It's very

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  Good effort.

• 1:09:25Speaker 02

  To see how this works. So you're, you're the, you're the robots, you're taking over the world and you're like, should we save humanity or kill humanity? And then one of the robots is like, well, not all humans are bad. It's like, well, then it's like, well, how do you decide which humans are bad and which ones are good? Well, since we conquered all the tech companies and captured all their logs, we can just look.

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  This is an excellent segue to something Dieter put on the list.

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  Can I just say one more thing about Atlas?

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:54Speaker 02

  I

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:55Speaker 02

  My favorite blog I ever read about robotics was literally called Robots That Jump. And it was basically, there's a lot of thinking in like the AI circles that there's something very fundamental about the physical expression of a robot or of anything to be able, for intelligence. The physical expression of animals for their, for their intelligence. How you can explore and interact with the world impacts the thoughts that you can have about the world. His whole thing, I think it was called Plyo Jump or something like that.

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  But it was, it was something very fundamental about a robot being able to jump and that being super important for AI. I don't think that's true at all. I'm pretty sure Atlas is super dumb.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:45Speaker 02

  But this is like A huge landmark in robotics.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:50Speaker 02

  This is, this is really crazy.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  I think that jumping is like when you start to perceive the robot as having capabilities beyond your own in like a tangible way. And then you're gonna start assigning it other

• 1:11:03Nilay Patel?

  Even if it has it or not. Right. You're gonna start assigning it other capabilities. Like The Rock.

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  I've been playing, I've been playing Horizon.

• 1:11:09Nilay Patel?

  So charming.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  I finally started playing Horizon Zero Dawn.

• 1:11:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  And it is so obvious that they modeled the robot animals after the Boston Dynamics robots. That it is creepy as hell to play because you are out there in the future wilderness hunting. What is like, this is the very same stuff that we're publishing on our website right now.

• 1:11:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 1:11:30Nilay Patel?

  It's funny because Boston Dynamics, right? Like Google's supposed to sell them. They've been trying to sell them forever. They did. They sold them to SoftBank. They did? Yeah. Yeah. When did that happen? In June. I missed that. Well, SoftBank money.

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  SoftBank, by the way.

• 1:11:44Nilay Patel?

  Doing great.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  They own everything, everywhere, all the time. Although apparently some of that comes from the Saudis. So, you know, there's that.

• 1:11:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, SoftBank has a big chunk of everything. Where they're about to buy a big chunk of Uber.

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  They're about.

• 1:11:55Nilay Patel?

  What if future Uber cars are just spot minis? You're just like.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:11:59Nilay Patel?

  Mount to Steed. Ride. Yes. Ride to Spot Mini to where you're going.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  It's just like you just, you whistle and it comes running up and you hop on. And also you can yell, hi, ho, silver.

• 1:12:11Nilay Patel?

  You just hop on the back of an Atlas and it just starts popping away.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  You could yell, hi, ho, silver, and it would be literally true because there's probably some silver inside that robot.

• 1:12:22Nilay Patel?

  Well.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  Just think about it.

• 1:12:24Nilay Patel?

  Well, we've really collapsed at the end here. All right. Well, that was the Vergecast. Again, a slow week. It ended with us hypothesizing that we would ride robot dogs to work. So we're doing fine. And yet still make just the worst puns. All right. If, if, if this was not what you expected from us. There are other things to listen to. You can listen to Ashley and Caitlin's show. Why'd you push that button? Lauren was on the show today. You can watch her show, Next Level with Lauren Good. You can also listen to her podcast, which is excellent. Uh, Too Embarrassed to Ask with Kara Swisher. Kara Swisher hosts Recode Decode and Peter Kafka hosts Recode Media.

• 1:13:08Nilay Patel?

  Media industry, by the way, going, literally going crazy. As we began the show, all kinds of stuff going on. So listen to that if you're into it. It is a good show to help you make sense of the world. You can also watch Paul and Ashley and I and Hyam and Jake and Nat this week on the Circuit Breaker Live Show on Twitter. That is a good time. We really, really went for it with the TV boxes this week.

• 1:13:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:34Nilay Patel?

  I, I, you should watch it if you haven't watched it. It took Creighton DeSimone, our producer on The Circle Breaker Show, what, four hours to set up game stream on the Nvidia Shield? And then it didn't work when we tried.

• 1:13:47Speaker 02

  It eventually worked. I definitely was looking at a Windows desktop that he could not see on the actual computer.

• 1:13:56Nilay Patel?

  It was a very confusing time. So watch that. It was, it was a real comedy fairs. There's also the Vox Media Podcast Network, full of some dude that has reclaimed it.

• 1:14:05Speaker 02

  RobotsThatJump.wordpress.

• 1:14:08Nilay Patel?

  That's old school. All right. That's it. That's Verchast. Thank you. Rock and roll.

• 1:14:14Speaker 02

  Paul.

• 1:14:15Nilay Patel?

  Promo code.