The T-Mobile and Sprint merger, Apple tweaks the Macbook keyboards, and Huawei vs. Trump

The Verge's Russel Brandom joins the show to decipher the Huawei ban as well as its larger implications. Second half of the show, Dieter Bohn explains how Apple is tweaking its troubled keyboard design on its current and future Macbooks. Nilay Patel ends the show with updates on the T-Mobile and Sprint merger. Playdate is an adorable handheld with games from the creators of Qwop, Katamari, and moreOuya will be shut down for good on June 25thHuawei vs. Trump: all the news about the Chinese phone maker's …Intel, Qualcomm, and other chipmakers reportedly join Google in Huawei banGoogle pulls Huawei’s Android license, forcing it to use open source versionLawmakers applaud Google for revoking Huawei’s Android licenseHuawei can keep sending software updates to phones for three months, US saysMicrosoft removes Huawei laptop from store, remains silent on potential Windows banApple tweaks its troubled MacBook keyboard design, expands repair …Apple will repair 2016 MacBook Pros with 'flexgate' display issues for …Apple updates top-end MacBook Pros with tweaked keyboard and ... Sprint will sell off Boost Mobile if merger with T-Mobile is approved …T-Mobile's merger promises are meaningless Justice Department recommends blocking T-Mobile-Sprint ... The future of AT&T is an ad-tracking nightmare hellworld Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This week on The Verge Cast, we talk about the Playdate, the new little handheld thing. We get deep into Huawei with Russell Brandim. We talk about the new MacBook and the new MacBook keyboards, and a lot about the TMO and Sprint merger. That's The Verge Cast coming up now.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Growing teams need a corporate card built for more, something that doesn't sacrifice speed for control. Introducing the American Express Corporate Cash Back Card. Get 1.5% cash back on eligible business purchases, advanced spending controls, and real-time visibility, plus intelligent expense management. Get started at go.amex slash amexcorporate. Terms and cap apply.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing in wearable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com slash apple watch series 12.

• 1:09Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Verge Cast, the flagship podcast with The Verge Radio Network. I wish we had some like laser beam. Pew pew. Babbidi bow. I feel like we could make that happen. I've been trying to turn this show into a Zoo Crew show for so long. Anyway, hi, I'm Neelai. I'm your friend. Paul Miller is here. Hello. Dieter Bohn is here.

• 1:30Speaker 03

  I tried to commit to like playing off your I'm a friend joke by coming up with all sorts of synonyms for enemy, and I'm just done with that. I'm here.

• 1:38Nilay Patel?

  You're neutral. Russell Brandim is joining us today.

• 1:42Speaker 04

  Hi.

• 1:43Nilay Patel?

  So Russell, we're going to talk a lot about Huawei.

• 1:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, Huawei. I was in the video, I was very careful to say Huawei and really hit the H.

• 1:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:51Speaker 04

  And people really appreciated it. We had comments that were specifically like, thank you for hitting the H.

• 1:55Nilay Patel?

  For getting it right.

• 1:56Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:58Speaker 04

  Huawei.

• 1:59Nilay Patel?

  Huawei. Huawei. So that's, it's the news of the week. We got to talk about the TMO merger, we got to talk about these MacBooks. I just want to start with something fun.

• 2:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:07Nilay Patel?

  I want to start with the Playdate. Do you know what the Playdate is?

• 2:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, it looks really cool.

• 2:10Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, do you want to, do you want to go through it? I know you have, you have a lot of emotions about the Playdate. Do you want to, do you want to walk the people through what it is?

• 2:16Speaker 03

  So there's There's this old school, been around forever, software company called Panic. And a while ago, they're like, well, you know, making Mac apps is fine, but we want to do other weird stuff. And so they became a video game publisher. They published Firewatch and an upcoming game, which I have tried, called Untitled Goose Game. And it is amazing. You basically like walk a goose around and troll people and like break stuff with the goose. It's the best thing.

• 2:44Nilay Patel?

  That sounds correct.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  Yes, but now they're, they're, they decided they're making hardware. And so it's this cute little yellow thing with a, I guess, apparently a high resolution black and white screen. You know, a couple of buttons, it's meant to play video games. It's got a crank on the side, like a literal crank. And the crank is like another controller. So instead of like having, you know, like, uh, you know, shoulder buttons or like a joystick, instead of just the D-pad. They have a crank and you play games with the crank.

• 3:10Nilay Patel?

  So the crank isn't like a, like a battery power situation. You're not like winding it up to play it.

• 3:16Speaker 03

  It's powered by USB-C.

• 3:17Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 3:17Speaker 04

  It's like those Bopit machines, except you're cranking it.

• 3:22Speaker 03

  So they announced it this week and I gotta say, the, the feelings that Neel I referenced is this thing made a gigantic splash. Because there's like a, there's a corner of the internet of like, you know, like the really cool kids. And all the really cool kids were connected to the software company in some way because they've been making Mac apps forever. And they're genuinely like good, interesting people that are, run an indie company. And so I'm very excited for the Playdate. I think it's amazing hardware. I think it looks cool.

• 3:51Nilay Patel?

  Wait, well, I just, before we get into that, I just want to, two more facts about the Playdate. One, it's being made by Teenage Engineering.

• 3:57Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:58Nilay Patel?

  Which is rad and everything that company makes is great.

• 4:00Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 4:01Nilay Patel?

  It's a hundred and forty-nine dollars when it comes out later. So that's all cool. Second, the business model for the games is super neat. Where one comes out, you get 12, when you buy it, you get 12 games that they unlock on Mondays every week.

• 4:14Speaker 03

  It had like an outsized launch, like it was like, it was the only thing I saw on like my version of the internet for like an entire day. So good job, but also like, man, maybe, maybe this isn't going to change the planet. I don't know.

• 4:29Nilay Patel?

  Let me just read to you a sentence.

• 4:31Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 4:31Nilay Patel?

  "This story is about Playdate, the most amazing and exciting product announcement for me since the original iPhone." That is our friend John Gruber, who is not prone to hyperbole.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, we've both been on his podcast.

• 4:44Nilay Patel?

  He's not prone to comparing products to the iPhone, the single most successful product of all time that has literally restructured society. It's fact.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. This is a Game Boy with a black and white screen and a crank.

• 5:00Speaker 04

  I feel like Gruber is maybe thirsty for leadership.

• 5:04Nilay Patel?

  I like John. It's just an incredible sentence.

• 5:06Speaker 04

  I feel like there's, yeah, but it's like, you know, he's like been started hitting Apple really hard. He's clearly like

• 5:13Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I see.

• 5:14Speaker 04

  Lost the faith.

• 5:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:15Speaker 04

  And he's become like one of those guys who like gets out of the army and becomes like the cults are all like, hey, join our cult. Maybe this is what's

• 5:24Nilay Patel?

  I see what you're saying.

• 5:25Speaker 04

  Maybe this is

• 5:25Nilay Patel?

  Like, he's not gonna like become like an Android fanboy.

• 5:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. So he needs some new thing.

• 5:30Nilay Patel?

  He's not buying a Windows PC.

• 5:31Speaker 03

  Here's how I feel about the Playdate. You know, when you discover a band, uh, maybe like you like thought you went really deep on Spotify or something, or you in back of the day, you went to a record store, um, and you're like, oh my God, this band is amazing. I have to tell everybody about it. I've discovered this amazing indie band. And then everyone's like, oh yeah, they've, they've been around for like three years. What are you talking about? We know that. That's how I feel about the Playdate. When I first saw it, I was like, this is amazing. And I look at the internet and everyone's like, this is amazing. And I was like, aww.

• 5:58Speaker 05

  This is the broken social scene of handheld gaming.

• 6:01Nilay Patel?

  Oh, no, that's, that's too harsh of a burden, Paul.

• 6:06Speaker 05

  I will say that there is something, I think, something about the innate appeal to, to, to people like myself is this, this appeals to like, we went to the moon, but now all we got is 140 characters. You know, like the, the same innovation and whimsy that you can bring to app development, you can apparently bring to hardware development if you take three years to development in conjunction with teenage engineering.

• 6:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:30Speaker 05

  But you can get there.

• 6:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:31Speaker 05

  You can get there.

• 6:32Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Here is why I'm excited about it. One, it is in fact a new, it's, it seems like a complete product, right?

• 6:40Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 6:40Nilay Patel?

  It's finished. So few things are complete at all anymore. For example, would you say that Android is finished?

• 6:50Speaker 05

  No.

• 6:51Nilay Patel?

  Android is a decade old. It's like wholly incomplete. You can buy Android phones and they're like, yep, this isn't finished yet. Google shipped the Pixel 3 with a whole chip in it. They didn't do anything for a while. Like, nothing is finished. This thing appears to be finished. Like, they built a custom OS. It's not like a weird Linux kernel or whatever, but custom OS, their own little screen, this own interface idea with the crank. They have a novel business model where you're gonna play these little games for a week at a time. Then you get a new one on Monday. And also that novel business model in the games industry isn't like a loot box scam. It's just a new business model, which is nice. Yeah. And then on top of all of that, it's focused. Like, it doesn't have like a Twitter client on it.

• 7:34Nilay Patel?

  Like, there's no potential for this thing to destroy democracy.

• 7:38Speaker 04

  Well. It does, it does run video games, which I have some questions about.

• 7:46Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying. Many of the things that we discuss on the show are like, that's great. I love it. It's an awesome new way to watch TV. Thirty percent chance it will destroy democracy along the way. I'm super into this. I want one immediately, is what I'm saying. I get the love. Remember the Peak from 2008? Yes. The Twitter, the Twitter Peak. It was a bespoke, single-purpose gadget. It had a keyboard and a black and white screen, and that was it. It was great. It was like a, it was like a two-way pager for Twitter. But it wasn't just for Twitter. The Twitter, like, got added. No, but the second version was actually called the Twitter Peak. It was, it was right before phones.

• 8:21Speaker 04

  I almost bought one in a fit of Peak.

• 8:24Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God. Russell, it's been great having you on the show. A series of mistakes have been made.

• 8:30Speaker 05

  I forgot about this, but I love it so much. If only it had a crank.

• 8:36Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's correct. There needs to be more weird hardware in the world. I'm excited about this. I just think this is the most exciting product announcement since the original iPhone is an incredible, incredible sentence. All right. So that was the fun. We've had all the fun we're gonna have today.

• 8:51Nilay Patel?

  I wanted to start with fun. Now, let's move on to the current geopolitical situation. Russell, just go ahead and in 30 seconds or so, tell us what's going on with Huawei.

• 9:03Speaker 04

  Okay, so there's like, much like the MCU, I think it's useful to divide it into phases. So I would say Phase 1 of the Huawei stuff, which has been going on for a while.

• 9:15Nilay Patel?

  Wait, before you start, the news that we're...

• 9:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's Phase 2.

• 9:19Nilay Patel?

  Okay, but there was some news, which is Huawei's been in a lot of trouble this week. It's been the biggest set of headlines on our site.

• 9:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's disastrous.

• 9:28Nilay Patel?

  Google has pulled their Android license.

• 9:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, last week, there was sort of this weird series of things that the government did. There was an executive order that said the Commerce List, that the Department of Commerce could like, place restrictions on various, you know, companies that sound like Huawei. And then we weren't really sure how they were going to do that. And then at the end of the week, the Department of Commerce sort of added Huawei to the entities list. And people were sort of like, okay, we don't know how, exactly how companies are going to interpret this. And then over the weekend, Sunday, Google was like, okay, we had our lawyers look at this. This means we can't do business with Huawei, so we're gonna not do business with Huawei anymore, which means we're not going to license Android to them, and we're just sort of cutting ties. And then we've seen, you know, at first, it was

• 10:14Speaker 04

  like, is Google just being weird and aggressive? And it was like, no, absolutely every American company that Huawei works with, like, their lawyers all agree, like, this means you have to cut ties. Maybe, like, the Department of Commerce will back down at some point, or maybe you will be granted a license at some point in the future. But as of now, like, do not answer their phone calls. And so that's basically what's happened. And like, it's genuinely unclear. One of the, one of the things we ran on the site that Cameron did a great job on was, literally, can they keep making phones if they don't have US parts? Which I think the answer to is yes, but again, it's a phone is not the review headline you want. Like, it's harder to make a good phone, certainly. But like, just the question of

• 10:59Speaker 04

  whether they can keep doing the things that they've been doing. Like, okay, so they don't, they've been developing this Plan B operating system, which is the sort of alternative to Google-supported Android.

• 11:12Nilay Patel?

  Wait, before, we're gonna go all, we're gonna spend a lot of time on this.

• 11:16Speaker 03

  Why did the Commerce Department put them on the Entity List?

• 11:19Nilay Patel?

  Also, why is it called the Entity List? Entity just means a thing that exists.

• 11:23Speaker 03

  I love that it is called the Entity List.

• 11:25Speaker 04

  You're like a forbidden entity. You're like an entity that we've got our eye on.

• 11:29Nilay Patel?

  No, it's how, it literally sounds like they're Ghostbusters.

• 11:32Speaker 04

  Well, because the thing is, some of them are people and some of them are companies.

• 11:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:36Speaker 04

  And some of them are like weird, and so it's just like-

• 11:37Nilay Patel?

  And some of them are spooky ghosts.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  Let's not get too specific about what belongs on this list.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  Entity is literally the most like generic word for thing that exists that they could come up with.

• 11:47Speaker 04

  Yep, it always makes me think of like, you know, you, you detect, the, the ship's sensors are picking something up. It's like an entity out there. Um, yeah, okay, so why did this happen?

• 11:58Nilay Patel?

  The Loch Ness Monster.

• 11:59Speaker 04

  Um, why does anything happen? How can we attribute causality to events?

• 12:04Speaker 03

  Russell, that's my shtick in this show. What are you doing?

• 12:06Speaker 04

  Well, okay, separately from this.

• 12:08Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 12:09Speaker 04

  People have a lot of problems with Huawei. Right? There are a lot of concerns about Huawei. And it is tempting to draw a line between those concerns and what has recently happened. Right? So the concerns basically are, they make network equipment, like the companies that make network equipment are basically Nokia, which is based in Finland, Ericsson, which is based in Sweden, and Huawei's that's based in China. In general, it's a free country. Like, if you're Verizon and you're building out 5G infrastructure, you can buy from whoever makes the best deal, and sometimes that's Huawei. And, but, I mean, I think folks like at the NSA and at various intelligence agencies are like, maybe don't buy the Chinese one. Like, just as a favor to me.

• 12:50Speaker 04

  And then they sort of, this became a broader and broader thing and there were more restrictions and-

• 12:55Nilay Patel?

  But this is building for a while.

• 12:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's been true, that's been true even under Obama.

• 12:59Speaker 03

  And it was also like, it was like, maybe don't buy the Chinese one to like, I'd prefer it if you didn't to like, you really shouldn't to like, oh my God, don't. Without any like clear like, here's the thing that we know that is gonna scare the hell out of you.

• 13:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, it's never like, we found this thing in the Huawei hardware and that's why you shouldn't do it. Like, it never got to that level. It's just that like- This thing is possible and there's nothing you can do that will make it, will make it worth it to accept this level of risk. And so just structurally, this is a bad idea, which is kind of a drag and I don't love, but I do think like fundamentally, you know, the Snowden leaks show the NSA doing a lot of stuff like this internally, not like on US hardware that's used externally, but like it is targeting the network infrastructure is like a classic surveillance espionage thing to do.

• 13:56Speaker 04

  So it does make sense. Yeah. Okay. So there's that. And then as things have escalated, and this is more under Trump, there's a lot of specific stuff against Huawei that like doesn't make as much sense. So like Chinese companies tend to, there's been a lot of trade secrets cases of like someone goes to work for like Monsanto and then suddenly they like get on a plane to China with the hot new corn seeds and then like suddenly, you know, those corn seeds are just being used in China, but it's a different IP regime and so we can't really stop it. And like, there's a lot of stories like that. A couple of stories like that have been leveled against Huawei. I don't find the indictment super convincing. Like the specific trade secret case that has been publicly, they've been publicly

• 14:41Speaker 04

  charged with is that they stole Tappy, which is a phone testing robot made by T-Mobile that's literally just like a hand that taps on the phone. And then you see how long it taps till the phone breaks. Yeah. I'm going to go ahead and say that that doesn't, that's not like an advantage of, as a T-Mobile customer, I don't think I have received the benefit of that and I'm not worried about that technology falling into Chinese hands.

• 15:04Speaker 05

  If that was the cause, if there was a cause that they could actually say out loud of why Huawei is on the entity list, a public court case would be something they could say, right? When a judge says you can't ship iPhones anymore because you're in a beef with Qualcomm or something like, there's a cause that you can point to of why you're not allowed to ship iPhones anymore.

• 15:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, and also like executive actions while they tend to be like it's a lower burden of proof, you're not like proving stuff, usually when presidents do this sort of thing, they like want people to know why they did it so that people don't just think they're going nuts and like and so there often is this kind of pageantry of like, well, here the here's the evidence like we first contacted, you know, Huawei at this time and their answers were not satisfactory and then we ultimately decided that this thing was and we just haven't gotten that like and that's I think to a large extent, probably just a bureaucratic failure that they got used to kind of, you know, Trump does a lot of things this way where I'll just like sort of do something and he knows it'll make people mad and he

• 16:11Speaker 04

  doesn't care or just like that there was someone internally and they just couldn't get it together to make the case, but like the result is if you're gonna try to connect the problems with Huawei to like why this is necessary to do this, it's weird because it's like you're doing their work that they should have done already and like they probably know stuff that's not public because it's all national security concerns. I very much believe that there are concerns about Huawei that aren't public, but like it's a little weird. You gotta say something.

• 16:40Speaker 03

  Well, so the other piece of this is so Russell just explained, you know, what's going, what do we actually know about Huawei and security concerns, but the other thing that's going on with China overall is a gigantic trade war. And so it just so happens that at the exact moment that Donald Trump is trying to put the screws to China, he his administration puts Huawei on this entity list. And so the question of why did Huawei get put on the list and no company gets to talk to them anymore, like, was it truly just security or was it part of this trade war?

• 17:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, and also so so we're leading up like there's the these new tariffs are taking effect in June. In theory, there are going to be more trade talks. They're trying to cut a trade deal. It looks bad if you say like, hey, this piece of technology is a national security risk, like throw it out and burn it, we can't have it in US borders anymore. And then you go and cut a trade deal and then you come back and you're like, JK, now everything's fine. Like, that is, well, and like generally you shouldn't, like, you can say, hey, they're bad, like, we're not gonna let you import them for tariff reasons, but like, you don't wanna cry wolf on like, state espionage things, again, because you have this whole Iraq war

• 17:56Speaker 04

  problem of like, there is this evidence that plausibly cannot be made public, and you need people to just trust you, and they, it may be really important at some point that they trust you, and so it, it's a bad idea to erode that.

• 18:13Nilay Patel?

  Wait, I wanna, you were saying it's there, it's like the MCU with four phases.

• 18:17Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, walk me through the four phases.

• 18:19Speaker 04

  I mean, well, no, no, I only had two phases.

• 18:21Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I see.

• 18:22Speaker 04

  I'm not actually that up on the MCU. This is like early, we're only to Ultron. But like, the first phase was Huawei has network hardware problems, and it's like, alright, maybe I want a little bit more evidence, like, I understand there's not a smoking gun, but like, I think the standard for, let's not put this cell equipment in our country, like, in what is fundamentally a very, like, a perennial target for espionage, let's just like, be a little more, sort of tightly controlled about that, I am like, fundamentally willing to cut them the benefit of the doubt on that. It's a very plausible case that they're making.

• 19:00Nilay Patel?

  And we had Jeffrey Starks in the Rich Cast this week, who is a Democrat, worked for Obama.

• 19:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:07Nilay Patel?

  And he was saying, we might need these rural carriers to rip out all their equipment and replace it.

• 19:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, and like, he's an FCC commissioner, so he's thinking about like, the integrity of American networks, and like, the FCC has a lot of leeway over that, for this exact reason, right? So, that's a totally legitimate thing for an FCC commissioner to think about, and like, again, it's, you don't really need, the standard of evidence, it's not a judicial thing, because...

• 19:30Nilay Patel?

  It's risk tolerant.

• 19:31Speaker 04

  Yeah. But what's happening now is, and this is the wildest part of it to me. So, Google was, Huawei phones aren't like a thing in America. So when we're talking about can Huawei make and sell the phones? We're not saying can they make and sell them in America. We're saying can they make and sell them in Europe and India and China? So like, what is the benefit of stopping Micron from selling flash memory to this phone that will be? Like even if they are just tools of the Chinese state? What is the national security benefit of us keeping that flash memory?

• 20:13Speaker 04

  Out of this phone like that is then going to be sold within China? So that, and that I genuinely don't know. The concern is also, okay, so let's say it's not a national security thing. It's just that Huawei is bad and they've done bad things to us and we're going to do bad things to them? Which, I mean, I'm saying it in like a silly way, but that is sometimes how it works. Like nation states interacting, sometimes it gets dumb, like, okay.

• 20:42Speaker 04

  But that case isn't specific to Huawei. Like there are other companies that have also been implicated in trade secret stuff. There are other companies that are also like uncomfortably close with Chinese intelligence. So we've seen people making moves around DJI. It's like, okay, are they just going to decide? They did this to ZTE already? Well, I mean, ZTE, it's like, all right, like you sort of have the same network thing. But like? But they cut ZTE a deal? Yeah. At the end of it all? That was the thing. So Commerce, I mean, they can have, and this is more akin to like what happens when you interact with the Department of Justice? Where it's just like, all right, like we want to let you back in. You're out for seven years. We're going to do these tests.

• 21:22Speaker 04

  You have to pay this fine, but there's like this path towards you being allowed back into the game again? That has not happened. It would be cool if when they did this, they said, we're doing this preemptively, but we want to cut a deal? Because again, then we would know why all this was happening and what they were talking about? Yeah. We don't, and I'm worried that if it's kind of a screwy thing they did, they might do it to another company. Maybe they're doing all of this to psych China out, which doesn't seem like a great plan.

• 21:54Nilay Patel?

  So I just don't think Huawei is that scared of this moment, right? Here, and Russell has heard me say this many times, like, to me, this is like step one along like a four-step path to the dissolution of the entire like current world economic order.

• 22:10Speaker 04

  This is where we get into the MCU, because now we have four stages.

• 22:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, just like, go with me on this. Like, I'm not even kidding. The reason Google went first is because Android doesn't make them any money, right? That was the reason they were like first out the gate.

• 22:24Speaker 04

  Well, wait.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  Well, it's possibly went first because they were the first one the government put the screws to, because they figured that was like the fastest way to make an impact on Huawei, because they're already very close to being the number one, undisputed number one phone company in the world. They're trading places with Samsung all the time.

• 22:40Speaker 04

  But also, like, I mean, Google's making money when you do a Google search off the Huawei phone.

• 22:44Nilay Patel?

  But you don't do Google searches in China.

• 22:47Speaker 04

  Ah, okay, so there we go.

• 22:48Speaker 03

  In Europe, and...

• 22:49Nilay Patel?

  Well, sure, sure, but Google, like, doesn't transact for Android. So they can, they can announce to shareholders, they can just make an announcement, they can put out a press release, "We've withdrawn the Android license for Play services from Huawei." They don't get to use it anymore. And there's no, there's no corresponding like loss of revenue booked, right? Like, it's not material impact on Google's bottom line, because phones will still be in the world doing Google searches and they'll still be, like, that's the revenue.

• 23:17Speaker 04

  Whereas if you're Micron.

• 23:19Nilay Patel?

  Well, if you're Micron, you're saying, "We're cutting off one of our biggest customers." Like, you've got to like do all the work. If you're Qualcomm, "We're cutting off one of our biggest customers." Intel, "We're cutting off one of our biggest customers." Like, you've impacted your bottom line. You're like not making those sales anymore. A really bizarre company that has not said anything yet is Microsoft.

• 23:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:40Nilay Patel?

  Which sells Windows to Huawei. Huawei makes great Windows laptops. They've pulled the Huawei laptops off the store. But they have just like for a week, no commented us on whether they're gonna yank of the Windows license from Huawei, which is.

• 23:55Speaker 03

  So you're saying they have to like line up their disclosures to their shareholders so they don't get sued by the SEC?

• 24:01Nilay Patel?

  Right, they have to, if they're gonna, they have, if they're gonna disclose material information about their financial performance, like this is the thing. So then there's, Russell was mentioning, Huawei's had this like Plan B, which is we're gonna make our own app, we're gonna make our own competitor Android, we're gonna make our own competitor to Windows. There's rumors they've been stockpiling parts for three months, or for a year, they've built up a three month stockpile of parts, which could have also changed the financial results of all these companies because they're buying more parts than they need. Like, this is a disaster in the making for a huge number of companies. Google licenses play and they get in trouble and like, you know, Europe sues them and you have Chrome and Search and the Play Store. That's a license on top of the Android open source license, right?

• 24:45Nilay Patel?

  And so Android is open source and we all know that like Chinese companies take the open source Android, they build their own little version of it, they sell in China, the Chinese market's very different than here, because there's no Play Store or whatever, because Google's not allowed to operate there. But like, open source is still a contract. Like, the whole way open source works is that you take the code from me and you agree to my contractual license terms, that you will contribute your code back, that you won't like go and make it proprietary. So if I take Android and make my own version of it and say now it's proprietary, Google can sue me for breaching the contract. That's the, that's like the mechanism by which open source stays open.

• 25:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they can't just take AOSP and make their own version of it?

• 25:32Nilay Patel?

  It is super unclear, like this breaks a fundamental part of open source. Like, no one has ever really thought about what happens if the code you're giving away. And the license under which that code stays open is preempted by like federal national security concerns.

• 25:50Speaker 03

  So you're leading to a place where Huawei might do something about that. Let me throw one more log on that fire of intellectual property problems that they're running into. ARM, which is a British company, has decided, well, there's enough American technology in the way that, you know, we distribute our processor designs that we also cannot do business with Huawei. And so there are two kinds of processors that Android runs on, Intel, a few of them, and ARM chips. And now ARM is saying, we can't talk to Huawei, which is like the thing that everything that's not a like Windows laptop basically runs on ARM.

• 26:26Nilay Patel?

  Right. So, okay, so now you've got ARM saying, okay, we have to, we can't do business with you anymore. Withdraw your license to our designs. What does that mean? Right? Like, they already have the designs, they make the chips. Who's gonna stop them at all? Are the Chinese state authorities gonna show up at the Huawei office and be like, hey, you had this contract with a British company and because of an American trade action, that contract was withdrawn, so now we're arresting you for IP infringement? Like, that's definitely not happening. These are all just pieces of paper. And so you end up at this place where like, the fundamental contractual nature of AOSP and open source, like, behind every contract is like a gun, right?

• 27:11Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 27:12Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, that's the...

• 27:14Speaker 03

  Go on.

• 27:15Nilay Patel?

  It's true. If I make you a promise and I breach it, you can sue me and like, the government makes me like, perform. Like, that's how that works.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:28Nilay Patel?

  So if you take all that away...

• 27:29Speaker 03

  It's like a legal fiction, you might say.

• 27:31Nilay Patel?

  It's not a legal fiction, it's just the reality of how we enforce promises. Because, right, these are collective action problems. So if you take away the ability to enforce the Android open source license, you take away the ability to enforce the ARM license, and Huawei just makes the stuff anyway and uses the code anyway, then at some point, China's like, why are we in the World Trade Organization? Which is, like, we're in it because we agreed to have these IP laws. Or we have these IP laws because we're in this organization, but now we're not respecting them anyway.

• 28:02Speaker 04

  I mean, this wouldn't be the first time China had like, sort of, uh, played to the limit on like, WTO stuff.

• 28:09Nilay Patel?

  They are, are playing to the limit already. So now we're just like, push them way over and like, screw it, we're out. Right? And they're just gonna, and they make so much of this stuff anyway, that like, revoking the piece of paper that says it's okay, is like, almost meaningless, in this situation. Like, if you're Huawei's engineers, you're still just working on the ARM chips. Like, taking away the piece of paper doesn't, like, cut your key code access to the building. So like, this, it's, I don't know, man, it's super dangerous, because you're removing the authority that makes the contracts effective.

• 28:41Speaker 04

  So Tom Warren had this great piece this morning about, you know, okay, so, so, there, you get alternate components, you get this alternate, you know, the ARM chips, it means they're going to like, fork from the new stuff that ARM is developing. So, okay, they're headed off in this other track. And his point was just laying out, alright, you're making phones without Android, you're making laptops without Windows. This is a hard road. Like, you can do it, but it's much harder to succeed as the Huawei-sized brand that you were before this week, if that is the path.

• 29:24Nilay Patel?

  Right. Yeah, I absolutely agree. I just think, I think Ben Thompson, who was a Microsoft employee before, he was like, by usage, China was like, one of the top Microsoft markets in the world, but by legal usage, it was like, the size of Argentina. Like, there's rampant and massive piracy in this country. In, in, well, in this country too.

• 29:45Speaker 04

  That country.

• 29:46Nilay Patel?

  We just sweep them.

• 29:47Speaker 04

  No, but ours is good, and theirs is bad.

• 29:50Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, if you, if you make these moves, and you start withdrawing these pieces of paper, like, suddenly the pieces of paper don't mean anything anymore.

• 29:58Speaker 05

  I did want to make a point of clarification. There are two, like, primary open source licenses. Linux is a, sort of, a viral license. If you use Linux, you have to keep it open source. Apple, which brought- The Unix, which is under a different license, I think it's the BSD license, did not open source its modified Unix kernel for a long time. So there is that slight differentiation, but again, Android is based on Linux, so therefore it has that more viral.

• 30:30Nilay Patel?

  Android is mostly licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. There's just a thing. There's lots of licenses.

• 30:36Speaker 05

  But it's built on Linux, which is GPL.

• 30:39Nilay Patel?

  Sure, but at the end of the day, the reason open source works, the mechanism of that virality is that you sign up to a contract that makes it viral. I mean, open source is a hack. It is a hack that relies on the existence of extremely strong copyright protection. Right? So because I wrote the code and I invested with like total copyright protection by the government, I can write a contract that makes you have to do stuff when you use it. So like if you don't have really strong copyright law, if you don't have really strong contract law, open source fails. So then you'd go to a place like China, which does not have tremendously strong copyright law.

• 31:17Speaker 05

  The viral licenses fail, like, you know, public domain open source or MIT, like just, hey, don't sue me if this breaks, otherwise do whatever you want.

• 31:27Nilay Patel?

  But it's still a contract, right? The mechanism, this is the thing, we don't think about it, we take it for granted because we assume the government exists, right? And that we have some recourse if something bad happens. But all of this stuff, like it's on public servers and it says like license under GPL or like you look at Wikipedia and it's like the Wikimedia license and like all of that is predicated and like there's a functional government that will enforce these contract rights.

• 31:52Speaker 04

  This is also, and I'm going to get angry tweets from the EFF folks about this, but this is also why you would want to bind unaligned countries in the region into some sort of trans-Pacific partnership.

• 32:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, you would want to gain some leverage over the...

• 32:06Speaker 04

  But wait, so the point of it being TPP was like at the time, when we didn't like copyright hypothetically, this was when TPP was like this massive, one of these weird trade deals where everyone's just in a room in Brazil somewhere and no one has any idea what's happening. And it's like... The gloss on it at the time, which I very much was convinced by was this is the US exporting its bad copyright provisions to the rest of the world so they can't, you know, have a Mickey Mouse cartoon in Brazil because the entire world would collapse. But like now you look at it, and so Trump, one of the first things he did was back out of it as like an anti-globalism measure, which was like one of the few cookies that I think the left got from the Trump election.

• 32:49Speaker 04

  But then like now you look at it and you're like, okay, if we're looking at a fracturing of the global copyright system, which is kind of what we're talking about here.

• 32:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:00Speaker 04

  Then that's the kind of thing you'd want to have around, just to make sure there's more people on our side who can't buy the weird off-brand Huawei phone that's pirating Android.

• 33:11Speaker 05

  And it seems like a very sensitive moment because if, if, if, let's say there was a negotiation that we just haven't heard about and, and Trump or whoever was like, "Well, if, if you're not going to play ball, Huawei, we're going to take away all of your chips and all of your partners, everybody we have any influence on, we're going to tell them they can't work with you." And if Huawei dies, you know, then apparently that's, that was an effective stick. If Huawei manages to make replacements for every single US partner, that is no longer an effective negotiating tactic with anybody in China.

• 33:47Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, that, especially because Huawei is the biggest and they love, and they also operate in a managed economy, like they will be able to like make enough replacements.

• 33:55Speaker 05

  And I heard they have friends in the Chinese government.

• 33:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. Uh, anyhow, I would basically put this at maximum complexity. Like, thinking about whether or not the entire underlying foundation of open source is broken by what might be a somewhat unrelated national security concern around cellphone towers is a wild place to be, right? But that's kind of the level we're at. They can just take Android and make it proprietary because Google's not allowed to do business with them. And ultimately, AOSP requires you to be in some sort of contractual relationship with Google. But they give all the code away. I, I, it's just like...

• 34:35Nilay Patel?

  The lawyers on Twitter, like their brains are broken by this.

• 34:38Speaker 04

  Okay, are you ready? Because I have an excellent quote about the future of Huawei from the CEO of Huawei. This was sent to me by a Huawei representative. It's an interview he did with Chinese state media. And they seize on the metaphor of, the interviewer says, "Another media person took out a photo of a bullet-ridden aircraft. I was also given the same photo. I heard that you like this photo very much." And he said, "Yes, I had this feeling that the aircraft was quite like our company." So our, it goes on, "So our current situation is that we are repairing our, quote, 'aircraft' during its flight, so that it can make its way back home."

• 35:16Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 35:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:19Nilay Patel?

  So it's just some bullets?

• 35:20Speaker 04

  It's just some bullets. And like, you could get shot up in a plane with just regular bullets, and like, plausibly make it back, but it's not like a great situation. Also, if you came to The Verge and you were like, "The Verge's situation right now is that we're like a bullet-ridden aircraft." I'd be like, "Man, Neil, isn't that bad?"

• 35:43Nilay Patel?

  Strong leadership. Alright, so Russ, I want to ask, we've been going at this for a while. I want to ask one question very, very directly. It's the one I see in the comments on our site. I saw it in the comments on your YouTube video, which everyone should watch, it's excellent. Has the government made any case at all? Like, I read these comments, like, "The government, this is all fake. We do worse stuff. There's backdoors in HP, network equipment. Verizon's got a building in New York that spies on everyone."

• 36:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:10Nilay Patel?

  It's just a fact. You can just like, go to that building in New York. It's very ominous.

• 36:13Speaker 04

  It's possible for the US government to also be bad.

• 36:16Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 36:17Speaker 04

  Like, I've been talking about the Chinese government being bad. I didn't want to imply that the US government isn't bad, and that we should not all just rise up and tear down our oppressors.

• 36:25Nilay Patel?

  Now you're speaking false language.

• 36:26Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 36:27Nilay Patel?

  Crypto, baby.

• 36:28Speaker 04

  Okay, here is, here is the thing. So like, what you will get...

• 36:34Speaker 04

  I'm gonna assume you meant cryptography and we're just gonna move on.

• 36:41Speaker 04

  So, the thing is, what you get is like officials on background saying they have concerns and leaking things to reporters, you get retired army officials, you get like military adjacent people saying this is a huge concern. And so I did this piece with Colin where we were just like, "Tell us what the problem is." And they're like, "Well, I don't know what the exact problem is, but I can tell you this situation of having a Huawei, you know, equipment in our 5G networks is unacceptable." What you really want is someone who works for the government to get in front of a podium and say, "Here are the problems with Huawei. This is what we were looking at. This is why we did this."

• 37:24Speaker 05

  Here are the incontrovertible proof that there are weapons of mass destruction.

• 37:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, yellowcake uranium.

• 37:31Speaker 05

  Someone you can really trust telling you something trustworthy.

• 37:35Speaker 04

  But like, look, I get that we're not gonna get proof. You never know who to trust in this world. I just want someone to make the case that like this, there are reasons for why we did this, even if you don't agree. And that really has not happened, which I think is part of why the response to this has been so chaotic, is like, I can impute motives to them and assume what they were looking at might have been something like this, but I would like them to say something about it.

• 38:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, on this show, we like do our best to not give like Google the benefit of the doubt. I feel like we cannot give the government the benefit of the doubt.

• 38:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, it's really like, yeah.

• 38:18Speaker 03

  The strongest case I've heard specifically about the 5G thing is like, look, even if the hardware is like pristine and perfect, there's no way to build 5G infrastructure without requiring the company that made it to be able to issue software patches.

• 38:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  And so if Huawei can issue a software patch to the infrastructure, then they could potentially be influenced by the Chinese government to issue a software patch that is somehow detrimental.

• 38:42Speaker 04

  Or the Chinese government could just hack it. And you know, if there's a pipeline to deploy software, the Chinese government can just sort of break in and not tell Huawei and Huawei will be like, I mean, we heard this a lot with Prism stuff where Google was like, I had no idea the NSA was in there and like, they really did have no idea the NSA was in there. It's just sort of, it's hard to really defend against that. And I think that's a legitimate thing, but that doesn't explain why we can't have an American flash memory chip in a European phone that was built by Huawei. So I don't know. Maybe there's a reason, maybe we're worried about them stealing the flash memory technology. That's cool. Just say that.

• 39:26Speaker 05

  For both sides of this, it feel very cypherpunk where one cypherpunk ideal is the from the US government's perspective, you want to be able to audit your hardware. Ideally, I could make my own phone and I could source it from basically random manufacturers just to make sure that anybody who's trying to attack me directly has to do a lot more work to intercept all the different, you know, random packages to install whatever spy stuff. So that's like pretty cypherpunk, the idea that you could potentially audit your supply chain and therefore be more provably safe. The other thing, you should probably have end to end encryption no matter what.

• 40:07Speaker 05

  Because it's, you know, the fact that someone could spy on you. Now it'd be bad if China could just turn off our infrastructure and that's something that end to end encryption does not solve, but then being able to read your messages is something that end to end encryption could theoretically solve.

• 40:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, but if everyone turns on end to end encryption, AT&T can insert ads.

• 40:29Speaker 05

  That's a price I'm willing to pay.

• 40:33Speaker 04

  We will come to AT&T. We have gone on way too long. I promise you, I promise you listeners and friends. We will rant about AT&T's bullshit later in the show. We're gonna have an ad. When I come back, we're gonna talk about some MacBook keyboards.

• 40:51Speaker 06

  As a pioneer in the organic and natural food industry, the Whole Foods Market philosophy is rooted in a shared connection to people and to the planet. From farmland to stores, its products have always been a symphony of colors, textures, and flavors. In addition to its national brands, Whole Foods Market's team of local foragers continually scours the country to bring over 60,000 emerging and local products to its shelves each year. And they work with credentialed experts and top-of-the-line makers to offer customers the best possible variety. Shop Whole Foods Market in-store or online.

• 41:32Speaker 07

  Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow, none of them talk to each other. That's where Odoo comes in, an all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all-in-one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs, and best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at Odoo.com/vox. That's O-D-O-O dot com slash vox.

• 42:10Nilay Patel?

  Dieter.

• 42:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:11Nilay Patel?

  Tell me about the secret new material the MacBooks are made of now.

• 42:14Speaker 03

  Oh my God. Okay, so Apple did something.

• 42:20Nilay Patel?

  "Apple did something" is like the, the heart of our show.

• 42:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. Apple did something which our friend John Gruber pointed out was really heartening for Mac fans, and that is, they put out a spec bump for the MacBook Pro. Apple just randomly spec bumping one of their Macs is a thing that they like, didn't used to do. They like stopped doing that for years, and now they're just back in it, doing it. So that's a very good sign. But they couldn't possibly... Spec bump the MacBook Pro without addressing the keyboard issue. And so they did. They they got on calls with a, you know, a bunch of reporters, one by one by one. And I've got to be one of those reporters. And they said, we're doing three things. Number one, the butterfly keyboard four year replacement program thing applies to all butterfly keyboards,

• 43:06Speaker 03

  even the thing we're releasing today. So that's great. Number two, we fixed our like Mac stores or Apple stores so that repairs are way faster. I don't know how, because that repair is ridiculously intensive. You got to take the whole damn thing apart to get to the keyboard, but sure. And then number three, this new MacBook Pro has still a third generation butterfly keyboard. However, it is built with, quote, new materials that make it less likely to have double key presses or missed key presses. And if you have a computer with the third generation butterfly keyboard, this is a generation with the silicone, whatchamacallit in it.

• 43:46Speaker 03

  And you get it repaired, then you will also get the keyboard with this, quote unquote, new material. I don't know what the new material is. And I and everybody else who got this call asked, and Apple is just straight up not saying.

• 44:00Nilay Patel?

  So here's my number one thing. It's a new material singular? Like, they made it out of a new material?

• 44:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:09Nilay Patel?

  That that's like, for some reason, I just find that so funny. It's like, I just keep thinking about the the the scene at the end of the middle of Iron Man 2. By the way, spoilers for Iron Man 2.

• 44:22Speaker 03

  Vibranium.

• 44:22Nilay Patel?

  Where like Tony Stark has to invent a new element, but they like, didn't know what elements were. They're writing it, so it's just a triangle. Like, did they do that? We're like in the basement and they're like, we gotta this, the map of the world's fair. It's a new element like.

• 44:36Speaker 05

  It's like, let's jumbo size a speck of dust to, you know, let's say there's a brick on the ground, right? And the brick is impeding my ability to put my shoe all the way on the ground because the brick's in the way.

• 44:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 44:50Speaker 05

  So if I make my shoe out of a new material.

• 44:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 44:54Speaker 05

  Can I now step through the brick?

• 44:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's just a very, it's just an amazing thing to say about keyboard reliability.

• 45:01Speaker 03

  Here's what we know right now. We know that there is a very long Reddit thread and Reddit post that has got relatively compelling evidence that maybe the problem isn't just the dust or the dust at all. It's actually some sort of metal fatigue. And it's possible that what they've done is like, put better metal in it that is that less, is more reliable in some way. We also know that iFixit has like ridiculous micron scales and that means that they are trying to measure the density of whatever this new material is. And so they're actively working as we record this to tell us what the new material is. If you are a fan of the upcoming HBO show and the previous books, His Dark Materials,

• 45:43Speaker 03

  this is very amazing because the like dust actually plays a significant role in those books. And they're called His Dark. So, anyway.

• 45:51Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, Apple is a company that when it suits them, will tell you that the back of the watch is made of sapphire, that the casing is made of 7,000 series aluminum. Oh, this year it's 8,000 series aluminum. That the, the, the front crystal of the camera is made it like, they are happy to tell you what materials they are when it suits their marketing purposes and they can get the quote in the story. When they're like, our keyboards have been broken for three generations of this product. This is our fix. So like, it's a new material. And they just like, won't tell, there's no information here.

• 46:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, they, they like, they held a press conference for Entenagate, right?

• 46:36Nilay Patel?

  That was a different guy.

• 46:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was a different guy. But there's like, the obstinate, like, I don't even know, man. Just like, just say there's something wrong. And they, they finally apologized. It took them three years to even say sorry.

• 46:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Joanna had to dress up as a butterfly to get an apology out of it.

• 46:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. Casey Johnson has been doing nothing but writing about this for two years and she can't get Apple to admit she exists.

• 46:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Apple should definitely talk to Casey Johnson. I'm just saying.

• 47:02Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 47:03Nilay Patel?

  She's an excellent reporter and she's been on this story. They should definitely talk to her. Do you think they fixed it?

• 47:11Speaker 03

  That's my answer.

• 47:12Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 47:12Nilay Patel?

  It was. Basically the answer to this question. So the spec bumps are good though, right?

• 47:18Speaker 03

  The spec bumps are fine, like they, there's more turbo, uh, you know, faster, you know, base speed, although the thing is they didn't significantly change the way that this thing handles thermals. And, um, you know, a bunch of people, especially, you know, YouTube creators, uh, were already disappointed in this generation of Macs because their thermal envelope meant that they couldn't, you couldn't crank up the, um, you know, the processor speed when you need to render as quickly as, as much as you would want.

• 47:45Nilay Patel?

  I just feel like this design didn't work for them. Like fundamentally, we've been, we've been, they've been cracking away at it for however long and it just, call it, right?

• 47:58Speaker 05

  I mean, it's, it's one thing if you're comparing like the iPhone to, um, to a Huawei phone, for instance, but we're living a world where Lenovo has some, some spirit captured of the ThinkPad keyboard in, you know, like real laptops exist that are a pleasure to type on. That's all I was trying to say. I'm sorry. I took a roundabout way there.

• 48:21Nilay Patel?

  No, no, Lenovo has captured the spirit of the ThinkPad keyboard.

• 48:27Nilay Patel?

  Its name is Steve.

• 48:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:29Nilay Patel?

  It's spooky. It's on the entity list.

• 48:32Speaker 05

  It's great.

• 48:33Nilay Patel?

  But you're right. Like Lenovo is known for great keyboards. That's just a thing. Apple used to be known for fantastic keyboards.

• 48:41Speaker 05

  An okay keyboard.

• 48:43Nilay Patel?

  And I kind of just don't know what they're playing at with these. Like, why are they so committed to it?

• 48:49Speaker 03

  The rumor is there's a 16 inch MacBook, uh, that will have a new keyboard design at some point in the, in the future.

• 48:55Nilay Patel?

  Well, WWDC invites one out, we got them.

• 48:58Speaker 03

  Yep. I mean, they had to address this before WWDC. Like they're, they're going to stick to the, if, if they know internally, like this design is fundamentally flawed, uh, the only question is how long are they going to run out the clock before they like release a new design? And like how, what's the cadence of the new design going to look like? Uh, because as soon as there's a new laptop that has a different kind of keyboard, everyone is going to say, well, don't buy the. Any Macs right now, wait for the new one to come out that has a new design. Like, that is what's going to happen. And so, Apple needs to contend with that very real fact. And so, they're gonna have to like, try and release them all at once? They're gonna have to just like, hope that this fixed it and that it won't be a problem anymore? I don't know what they're gonna do.

• 49:37Nilay Patel?

  I think that's already a true statement.

• 49:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm just very hesitant by any MacBook Pro. You might have heard the fan on my 2015 MacBook Pro with discrete GPU. Several times during this episode. They also announced another fix, which is a problem that a lot of people have had. Vlad had this, which is the Flexgate problem. So, this is, to me, just more extremely strange Apple messaging. They called Dieter, a bunch of reporters, say, "Here's some new Macs. Our new 2019 MacBook Pro, we've made a super-secret material fix the keyboard. By the way, repair extension already, already in place for this brand-new product."

• 50:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:16Nilay Patel?

  Great. They did all that. Here's the announcement. Same time, no announcement, no pre-reviews, no nothing. They announced a repair extension for the display issues that people are having on these machines, which has been called Flexgate. I don't love gate names, so, but whatever. Vlad had this problem. It's the one where you get little pillars of light at the bottom of your display. And people believe it's because there's a cable that's too short and it gets cramped. So, the fix is literally make the cable longer. They announced that, too. So, this is like, two very common problems with these machines.

• 50:48Speaker 03

  But they announced it quietly. It just sort of like, later on in the day, after everyone got their keyboard feelings out, they're like, "Oh, by the way, this, too."

• 50:55Nilay Patel?

  And I just suspect they couldn't announce a display problem and a keyboard. Like, what is a laptop?

• 51:04Nilay Patel?

  They couldn't be like, "Both halves of this are broken, and we're taking measures to fix it."

• 51:11Nilay Patel?

  Let's be clear, they have class-leading touchpads. It's a fact. And then, they have a little crappier touchpad at the top of the keyboard.

• 51:22Nilay Patel?

  In case you want to do some sliding around. I honestly think it's great. Like, they're, they're thinking about Macs. They're, they're updating them. Good. At some point, they're already have to be looking at slowing sales because it, they're just a little too scary to buy. Right? And I wonder, like, is the, do people who buy a MacBook Air know that they're taking a risk on these keyboards? Did the MacBook Air get updated with this new material?

• 51:45Speaker 03

  No, nothing is being updated with the new material. Like, even computers that currently have the third generation, I specifically asked, so like, once you're like, you've sold out of whatever your inventory is, well, like, the, the next MacBook Air that comes off the line be using this new material? We have no announcements about future products.

• 52:03Nilay Patel?

  I see. I'm just saying, Tony Stark did not start using the circle chess thing after he invented the triangle one. He's stuck with the, all right.

• 52:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:10Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna take another break. We'll be right back. It's, it's just heavy. All, it's all heavy on the bridge class.

• 52:19Speaker 08

  There are sales teams out there who never seem to stop moving. Always a step ahead, always working with a level of precision that doesn't seem normal. It's no secret they're on Attio, the Agentic CRM. Attio runs the work behind every win. It's built for humans and agents, with the guardrails of human software and the scale of Agentic infrastructure. This is the frontier of go-to-market. Teams like Parallel, TurboPuffer, and Wordsmith are already using Attio to set the pace. Now it's your turn. Try Attio for free by going to attio.com/fox. That's A-T-T-I-O dot com slash fox.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com slash Apple Watch Series 12.

• 53:36Speaker 04

  All right, we're back. Paul, lighten the mood, my friend. Your segment, which is always called...

• 53:42Speaker 05

  I'm sorry to tell you, it's about, um, well, you know what it's about. It's called the JSON of emotions.

• 53:50Speaker 05

  If you're not aware of JSON, J-

• 53:52Speaker 04

  Literally the slowest emotion.

• 53:56Speaker 05

  JSON is, okay, when you have information in a computer, right? We think of it, you know, ones and zeros, right? But then it gets, you know, when you look at it in a different way, it's like a string or a number, you know, or it's an object or something like that. But when you want to send that data over the wire, for instance, let's say you're Amazon and you decide to make a wearable that monitors people's emotions, right? If you want to send that data over the wire, it's a 50/50 chance. I mean, maybe you're gonna use something new and fancy like GRPC, but you're probably gonna use the old trusty sidekick serialization format, JSON. And so I just, um, Bloomberg has a story that Amazon's working on some wearable.

• 54:38Speaker 05

  I've been interested in this concept of effective computing for a long time. Like, it's really cool to imagine computers that are paying attention to your emotion and can interact with that emotion. Like, for instance, like, let's say you are starting to get angry. A computer could warn you before you act out in anger, something like that. Really cool ideas, you know, these were explored years ago. And it's cool that some company is thinking of doing it. The fact that it's Amazon, which sits, kicks back in their Seattle offices and listens to your private home Alexa conversations, is not exciting to me at all. But it got me thinking of what serialization format, and like, think, just trying to think of that, that data structure of an emotion.

• 55:23Speaker 05

  Like, is it sad? And then, like, the value 10, and 10 is the most sad? Or do they use decimal numbers, you know? It just, it just got me thinking.

• 55:32Speaker 04

  I'm gonna suggest that we already have an answer to this question, and it comes from an open source consortium called Unicode. Sometimes you're feeling smiley. Sometimes you're feeling grimace. Sometimes you're feeling dancing woman.

• 55:53Speaker 05

  Sometimes you're feeling poop.

• 55:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. Not literally, because that'd be gross. If that's true, make sure you wash your hands.

• 56:00Nilay Patel?

  Oh, wait. Did you guys see the Caitlin story? Caitlin Tiffany, who hosts Why'd You Push That Button, used to be a Verge reporter, is now with The Goods at Vox. She had a story this week. Online ads can now be targeted based on your emotions. The New York Times will now allow advertisers to... They can programmatically read their articles and predict what emotions you will feel, and then you can target the ads. This is the list. Caitlin says, "These are the emotions ranked in descending order by how much I would want to be targeted based on them." This is really the list. It's a long list. I'm just gonna read it all. Bored, amused, indulgent, optimistic, interested, adventurous, self-confident, inspired, informed,

• 56:44Nilay Patel?

  competitive, happy, nostalgic, and then at a turn, fearful, hateful, hopeful, sad, in the mood to spend, and feeling love.

• 56:55Speaker 04

  Wow. You gotta feel for the reporters whose articles get tagged as making readers bored.

• 57:03Speaker 04

  Let's really advertise for the bored demographic against Russell's new tariff piece. I think, for whatever reason, I think readers, while they're on this page, will be feeling bored.

• 57:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I'm gonna go with, I want everyone to just feel competitive when they read my pieces. I don't know why. That's what I'm hoping to inspire. Anyway, that piece is on Vox. Caitlin wrote it. It's hilarious, as always. All right. That was enough fun. That's how I'm doing this today. Enough fun, children. There was yet more policy news. I'm glad Russell is here with us. T-Mobile has been desperately trying to buy Sprint.

• 57:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:45Nilay Patel?

  For a while now. I just want to point out, to preface this conversation, that one of T-Mobile's lobbying strategies in their quest to buy Sprint is to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars at Trump's hotel in DC.

• 57:58Speaker 04

  That is true.

• 57:58Nilay Patel?

  Which just makes me sad.

• 58:00Speaker 04

  Maybe they're just going there because it's the finest hotel in the area. And it's just at another level of service. This is what I hear from the White House communications team.

• 58:11Nilay Patel?

  They really like, you know, wedge salads. Yeah. Also, all the government officials are there, so just easy bribing. Anyhow, they have been, I would say, rebuffed for a while in their quest to buy Sprint. But the FCC, actually not the FCC, Ajit Pai, chairman of the FCC, announced this week he would be willing to support their merger because they had agreed to some conditions. The conditions importantly are not public and there's no order before like the whole FCC. The FCC hasn't voted. Pai has just been like, they're gonna make some promises and I like them, so I'm willing to support it.

• 58:49Speaker 04

  Well, we sort of know a little bit. So they're gonna deploy a 5G network covering 97% of the US population within three years and 99% of Americans within six years. This time span notably coincides with the rollout of 5G.

• 59:11Nilay Patel?

  T-Mobile will not stop the march of time. Merger approved.

• 59:14Speaker 04

  Like, my laptop's about to break.

• 59:18Speaker 04

  If you give me what I want, I will buy a new laptop.

• 59:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:22Speaker 04

  And also, we have the piece on the site by Carl Bode, who's amazing, that's just like, in general, the FCC in particular, but also the government in general, is not great about like, coverage maps.

• 59:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:35Speaker 04

  We're not like, good at it. So, actually checking on this is gonna be bad if there were any mechanism for checking on any promises that people make before mergers anyway, which...

• 59:46Nilay Patel?

  Iffy.

• 59:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, they like, tend to not be great.

• 59:50Nilay Patel?

  So, I just wanna point this out. So the, the deal that Ajit Pai said was good is T-Mobile and Sprint promised to build a 5G network, which by the way, is the reason that they want to merge, right? T-Mobile is like a better company than Sprint. Sprint owns better spectrum than T-Mobile. So the rationale for this merger is we'll just buy Sprint. These wackos can just like, hang out. We'll use their spectrum and build a great 5G network.

• 1:00:18Speaker 04

  But they'll also increase jobs. They'll employ more people because of the promises made to Ajit Pai.

• 1:00:23Nilay Patel?

  Sure.

• 1:00:25Nilay Patel?

  Also several thousand people will be laid off because that's what happens in mergers. Doesn't matter. That's the case. The case is they have better spectrum, we're better at executing. We'll take their spectrum, build a 5G network. So Pi is now saying, okay, they've promised to build a 5G network and they promised to cover this many people. And if they don't do that, there'd be escalating series of fines that will be devastating to the business. Right? This is like the bargain in the deal. So then you're like, okay, well how will you, how will you make sure they're keeping their promises? So Russell's pointing out in this piece by Carl Bode, like there are no national, like universally recognized coverage maps. We don't have, there's not like one coverage map that everyone agrees

• 1:01:06Nilay Patel?

  on. Like the carriers just sort of like submit their own. And then in the deal itself, as far as I can read, the mechanism of enforcement is T-Mobile will submit report cards to the government saying how well it's done. And then, and then they had a call and McKenna was on the call and I think they asked like, what else will you do to make sure? And they said, oh, well, T-Mobile will, will pay a third party to check too.

• 1:01:33Speaker 05

  If, if you put all of this, uh, making promises to the government and all this enforcement, all that aside, do you think three years from now, like T-Mobile and Sprint as solo companies, like subscribers to them would have better service than, than in this theoretical future where they're a combined company?

• 1:01:54Nilay Patel?

  If the, if you really believe the problem with Sprint is it has great spectrum and bad management, like there's one really easy way to fix that problem. Right? You just change the management of the company. Or, or T-Mobile buys their spectrum. Or T-Mobile buys their spectrum and you don't destroy it, right? You don't like reduce the number of competitors in the market. If you are, um, disclosure, Comcast is an investor in Vox Media, which owns The Verge, your Comcast even like casting about trying to get a mobile business off the ground, like. Maybe just buy Sprint. Comcast is reasonably good at executing.

• 1:02:27Speaker 04

  I'm also, by the way, so people have put this forward as like a less nightmarish alternative because you're not reducing the number of players. I find it more nightmarish because I don't think, like, this is like vertical integration, right? Like, oh, wouldn't it be great if Comcast owned a mobile company?

• 1:02:44Nilay Patel?

  It's just another option.

• 1:02:45Speaker 04

  Like, no! We're just gonna get more Go90 shenanigans if that happens.

• 1:02:48Nilay Patel?

  Oh, we live in a world of Go90 shenanigans.

• 1:02:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:02:51Nilay Patel?

  That's a given. No, but I'm saying, like, if you're Disney and you're looking at AT&T, right? Baby Bob, like, this is like my favorite of the crazy nightmare scenarios. There's just many other scenarios by which you maintain the number of competitors vying for consumer dollars as opposed to reducing that number, which has known bad outcomes.

• 1:03:13Speaker 05

  It just seems like it'd be nice to have a carrier with more spectrum.

• 1:03:17Nilay Patel?

  Well, sure. There are two of them. They're a duopoly. Like, we know what that's like.

• 1:03:22Speaker 05

  So the fact that T-Mobile and Sprint can't merge seems to push me into the arms of AT&T and Verizon if I want quality service.

• 1:03:30Nilay Patel?

  Or you do something with Sprint's spectrum that isn't taking it out of the equation. T-Mobile's a successful company. People like T-Mobile. They like the service they're getting from it. They like that it is a disruptor.

• 1:03:42Speaker 04

  They like the un-carrier attitude.

• 1:03:44Nilay Patel?

  And that, all of that exists because AT&T was prevented from buying it, right? So what if you just do it again? Like, that is an outcome that is known. And it's not like capital won't flow to these markets because competition is scarce, right? There is churn in the system. There's a proven way to be a disruptor. It just seems like Sprint failed and now they just, like, want to quit. Like, that's a crappy way to run a business. I just think that the promises being made in this agreement are, A, great, but there are the promises that were already made. It is the thing they said they were already gonna do. So that's ridiculous to call them promises. Second, the mechanism of enforcement is like literally T-Mobile grading its own test.

• 1:04:28Nilay Patel?

  Which is ridiculous. And like, by the time the bill comes due, I sincerely doubt many members of this current FCC will even be there anymore. Right? Like, that's just the nature of the game. So like, who cares? But, next to all this is the Department of Justice.

• 1:04:46Speaker 04

  So, this is the really funny thing.

• 1:04:48Nilay Patel?

  Which seems like they are not sold by any of this.

• 1:04:51Speaker 04

  Well, so, historically, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but I remember hearing that like, okay, anytime there's one of these mergers, there's these two tests, and the FCC test was always the harder one to clear, because the FCC test was just, is this of benefit to consumers? Whereas, the Department of Justice had to be like, is this creating a monopoly? Such that like, the resulting company is going to be so scary that we have to intervene with the force of law and break it up? And so, you know, it's easy to be like, oh, this is mostly fine, but it does seem like slightly three is fewer than four, so maybe no. And now it's been flipped because we have a very business-friendly, is I think the polite

• 1:05:32Speaker 04

  term for it, FCC chairman, and the antitrust sort of division of the DOJ has been getting a little salty. Like, it's getting, it's getting spicy over there. Spicy and salty.

• 1:05:47Nilay Patel?

  It's like the Doritos of justice.

• 1:05:48Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 1:05:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, when I think of, I think of a spicy nacho Dorito.

• 1:05:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. The, what remains, the nutritional value remains to be seen. But, so, it's a little weird, because we know that there was a recommendation within the DOJ, written, sort of, to stop the merger, and then some reporters got hold of that. But also, the DOJ has not officially made its decision, and so it seems like it's in like, this political limbo of, everyone's waiting for the, but, but definitely, you know, folks are hyped for the DOJ to make a move.

• 1:06:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it just it it doesn't seem like they are that they know what they want, right? Like, the the reports out of DC are like, the agency has said, we don't recommend it, but they haven't convinced the commission, like, the DOJ is in a in a fight.

• 1:06:44Speaker 05

  It's almost like they don't have skin in the game because these are not their businesses, and it's not theirs to decide.

• 1:06:51Nilay Patel?

  I don't know what that means. Like, I honestly don't know what that means. It is theirs to decide. It's their.

• 1:06:56Speaker 05

  It's not, they're not their businesses to buy and sell.

• 1:06:59Nilay Patel?

  But they're the ones who approve such buying and selling.

• 1:07:01Speaker 05

  But why?

• 1:07:03Nilay Patel?

  What do you mean? Because collective action problems exist in society, and wireless spectrum in particular is a scarce resource?

• 1:07:09Speaker 04

  And property is only of value in the context of the state. No, Russell, that's that's not correct. No, no, no, no, no.

• 1:07:20Nilay Patel?

  I mean, we did earlier say that behind every contract is a gun, and so. But that's like legitimately true. Where we live this year, this week. Like, that's the argument against, like, everything, right? Is that, I mean, just give you like a really dumb example, right?

• 1:07:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Nilay Patel?

  Paul, you and I are neighbors.

• 1:07:38Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:07:39Nilay Patel?

  Okay, and we like share a we share a property line.

• 1:07:42Speaker 04

  This is not actually, this is not actually true.

• 1:07:44Nilay Patel?

  This is not actually, we live very far apart. But like, you know, spiritually, like, we're neighbors. But like, hypothetically, you and I are neighbors. And I just decide to walk over and build a shed in your yard.

• 1:07:54Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:07:55Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, we've agreed in some way that, like, that property is yours and this property is mine. How do you get the shed off of your yard?

• 1:08:03Speaker 05

  I don't get it. Why? How did you get into my yard?

• 1:08:06Nilay Patel?

  Just walked over. I just like walked over and put it there.

• 1:08:08Speaker 05

  Seems like you're invading my my my.

• 1:08:10Nilay Patel?

  Okay, yes, I, yes, that is true. I have, like, violated your property.

• 1:08:15Speaker 05

  Are you a stealer?

• 1:08:16Nilay Patel?

  Well, sure. Yes.

• 1:08:17Speaker 05

  Okay, all right.

• 1:08:18Nilay Patel?

  How do you get, how do you get, how do you stop this problem?

• 1:08:22Speaker 05

  I attack you.

• 1:08:23Nilay Patel?

  Right. So like a thing that we have done in society is like, we've generally removed the ability for people to just straight up attack each other. And we've given that ability to the state, right?

• 1:08:36Speaker 05

  Here we have two willing participants like, I've got some property. Other person's like, I want your property and I'll give you some money. And so they're like, okay. But there's, there's this saying like, there's no power in yes, that when you're a government regulating, there's no power in just saying, okay, that's okay. That's fine with me. So these government agencies sit around and like, I don't know. I can't think of a concrete consumer harmed any of this, but I just don't like saying yes, because then I have no power over these companies that I didn't build and don't, I don't own.

• 1:09:08Nilay Patel?

  But they are thinking of concrete consumer harms, right? That, that's the whole game, right? The Department of Justice took AT&T and Time Warner to court. They listed literally every consumer harm they could think of, except the one that was important, because the Republican Party doesn't believe in that neutrality, whatever. And they lost. Right? So like, there is like this function where you get, you, you get some recourse. But that's their job is to identify consumer harms. And their job is to say like, in particular for the FCC, for them to say wireless spectrum is a fixed amount of territory. And we have to like partition it up. So it's used in the way that best serves the public. And so

• 1:09:49Nilay Patel?

  here, I just like, I, I think it is wild that the Trump FCC and the Trump DOJ are just like at odds with each other. It is particularly funny, because Pi's entire like mode is to weaken the FCC, right? He's like handed off a bunch of enforcement authority to the FTC. He's handed off a bunch of enforcement authority to other agencies. And now the DOJ is like, it's cool that you agree to this deal, where exactly what they said would happen is enough for you. But we are just not going to pay attention to you. It's like pretty funny to me. I don't know. But like, that example though of like, all contracts are backed up with a gun. Like, if I agree to sell you a bunch of stuff and I take your money, and

• 1:10:34Nilay Patel?

  I don't deliver the goods, what is your recourse except to have the state show up? It's you would just have to shoot me. Right? You, you would, you would have to do the violence. And like, we've just like, set that aside. And like, In all of these circumstances, it's like a very thorny question of like, how much do you want the government to start doing stuff?

• 1:10:52Speaker 04

  What if we built a gymnasium across both your yards? And we trained proud Olympic athletes there? And it just wasn't either, didn't belong to either of you anymore? No, Russell.

• 1:11:11Speaker 04

  All right.

• 1:11:12Speaker 05

  Sold.

• 1:11:13Nilay Patel?

  Can I?

• 1:11:13Speaker 05

  To the reddest bidder.

• 1:11:14Speaker 04

  Wait, wait, wait. I have one last tariff thing. This happened while we were talking.

• 1:11:18Nilay Patel?

  While we were talking.

• 1:11:18Speaker 04

  Trump had one of his press conferences, and he was sort of rambling, and he said, quote, Huawei is very dangerous, but, and this is a paraphrase, he could imagine it being included in some sort of trade deal.

• 1:11:31Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:11:32Speaker 04

  Those are the sort of two things that are in tension. And friend of the show, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenwirsel, said, these comments are going to require some more explanation. That's like.

• 1:11:48Nilay Patel?

  Yes. I feel like all news out of the Trump White House should just be like prefaced. It should be bracketed by those words.

• 1:11:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, lot of drinking in Washington DC tonight. I guess it's the punchline there.

• 1:12:01Nilay Patel?

  It's a very confusing thing. We forgot, by the way, to dunk on AT&T at all on the show, and I just, I'm gonna plug my own piece, which is that AT&T's plan, it's starting to like come into focus now that they own Warner Media. I described it as a nightmare hell world.

• 1:12:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:17Nilay Patel?

  It's terrifying what they're planning to do. That's why you should break them up, Paul.

• 1:12:21Speaker 05

  This is why you should become a cypherpunk, so it doesn't matter.

• 1:12:24Speaker 04

  Every subscriber will be forced to watch the Justice League movie.

• 1:12:31Speaker 04

  To activate their phone.

• 1:12:32Nilay Patel?

  We gotta go.

• 1:12:33Speaker 05

  This is, this is my new mood. Whenever one of these big companies does something horrible, like I just, I miss this story. Google just tracks everything you ever buy. I view it as this wonderful opportunity to sever my relationship from a horrible company. That is like, it's hard to get the enough inertia to cancel everything all the time, every day, because every company is being horrible to you constantly. But when they do it really hard, and really bad, and really mean, that's when you have the energy to leave. And I'm very excited to start quitting Google.

• 1:13:07Nilay Patel?

  In order to leave, you gotta have someplace to go. Requires some competition, my friend.

• 1:13:14Speaker 05

  I will build my own operating system. You can't use it.

• 1:13:17Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, I'm all for the market dynamic. It just requires marketplace participants. Or, here's my other option. It's sort of the opposite of Russell's gymnasium idea. One, single, gigantic corporate overlord that I am in charge of. Think about it.

• 1:13:35Speaker 04

  I thought you were gonna transition from this into like, a Casper mattresses ad?

• 1:13:41Nilay Patel?

  We gotta go, that's the Vergecast. I love you all. I'm sorry it was heavy this week, but it was important. Russell, I'm glad you were here.

• 1:13:48Speaker 04

  Happy to be here.

• 1:13:49Nilay Patel?

  You can listen to a much more fun podcast, to be honest. Why'd you push that button? Ashley and Caitlin are going after it. It is a, this season is amazing. Check it out, it's where our podcasts are served. I think they're, you should just listen to it. They're about to have an entire series on like, death online. I mean, just go for it. They're just going for it. It's fun. You can subscribe to Vergecast free on your favorite podcast app. Just hit the link in the show notes. You can also rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, which is a ratings monopoly. So that's where we want you to go. You can tweet at us. I'm at Reckless, Dieter's at Backlon, Paul's at FuturePaul. Russell, where are you?

• 1:14:24Speaker 04

  At Russell Brandon.

• 1:14:26Nilay Patel?

  Very nice. Rock and roll.

• 1:14:29Speaker 05

  I was kidding, I'll definitely let you use my operating system, Paul.

• 1:14:34Nilay Patel?

  Snip, snip, I'm bringing that back.

• 1:15:17Speaker 09

  Like Claude, Purser, and GitHub Copilot. Assign them work directly, or connect your agents through MCP. Spend less time hunting for context, less time asking, "Wait, what did we decide?" And more time actually shipping with Jira. Learn more at jira.com. That's J-I-R-A dot com.

• 1:15:43Speaker 07

  Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One at accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow, none of them talk to each other. That's where Odoo comes in. An all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting, to inventory and marketing, all in one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs, and best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at Odoo dot com slash vox. That's O-D-O-O dot com slash vox.