Apple's Intel acquisition, the Galaxy Fold starts its comeback, and a $5 billion fine for Facebook

Stories discussed this week: Apple buys Intel’s smartphone modem businessSamsung says it has fixed the Galaxy Fold and will release it in SeptemberT-Mobile won’t sell the Galaxy Fold when it is rereleasedSony’s latest RX100 camera finally gets a mic jackThe first speakers from Ikea and Sonos are inexpensive and sound greatFTC hits Facebook with $5 billion fine and new privacy checksFacebook will have to monitor its own privacy rules — and that’s likely not enoughFTC sues Cambridge Analytica and restricts former CEO’s business activityFacebook confirms new FTC antitrust investigation after posting strong earningsWhy wasn't the FTC harder on Facebook? Facebook design flaw let thousands of kids join chats with unauthorized usersJustice Department announces broad antitrust review of Big TechAmazon ‘destroyed the retail industry across the US’ says Treasury Secretary MnuchinTrump keeps losing tech policy fightsDish reportedly reaches deal with T-Mobile and Sprint to become the new fourth major US carrierOrigin PC’s Big O gaming PC has a built-in PS4 Pro, Xbox One X, and Nintendo SwitchAnker CEO Steven Yang is all in on USB-CApple iPhone 11 rumors: Lightning port, new Taptic Engine, upgraded …This year's iPhone should be the last with LightningYou can subscribe to Land of the Giants: The Rise of Amazon here 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 Vergecast, we talk about Apple buying Intel's modem business, the Galaxy Fold returns, there's a new RX 100, and then we get deep into the weeds of what is going on with the FTC and Facebook with Russell Brand and McKenna Kelly. That's the Vergecast coming up now.

• 0:13Speaker 01

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• 0:40Speaker 02

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• 1:14Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of billion-dollar hardware acquisitions.

• 1:23Nilay Patel?

  Feeling good about that? Mm-hmm. I'm your friend Eli. Dieter Bohn is here.

• 1:27Speaker 03

  Hey.

• 1:28Nilay Patel?

  Paul Miller is in the dark. It's a very dark rain. Where are you?

• 1:33Speaker 03

  Well, it's the summer and light bulbs create heat and I'm trying to mitigate heat so that my fan of my laptop doesn't turn on and pollute my recording.

• 1:45Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty good. So I want to, there's a lot going on.

• 1:47Speaker 03

  Also, I'm goth.

• 1:50Nilay Patel?

  I look great in eyeliner. I'm just putting it out there. That's just a fact about me that everyone should know. I want to start just real quick. There's a lot going on in the show, literally breaking news as we speak. I just want to apologize to listeners. I know I've sounded like a straight-up potato the past two weeks. It's because I've just been on the road. But I'm in New York. This episode's going to sound good. And I'm never-

• 2:09Speaker 03

  What does potato sound like?

• 2:10Nilay Patel?

  It's, just listen to the last two episodes. Like a potato. But I'm in New York and I'm never, never leaving New York again. That's my plan. You just can't drag me out of the, I'm actually, I live in the studio now. Please tell Max I love her. Okay.

• 2:26Speaker 04

  I would always describe your voice as starchy.

• 2:31Nilay Patel?

  Is that good or bad? I don't know if I should be extremely complimented or deeply insulted, and I don't want to find out. All right, we're gonna have Russell Brandom and McKenna Kelly join us around the midway point, talk about a bunch of policy stuff that's happening. There's a bunch of antitrust stuff. The FTC settlement with Facebook came out, we gotta dive into that. Just a lot going on there, we're gonna have them come on. But I want to start with gadgets. We've been like all policy all the time lately. There's, there's a lot of gadgets this week. I love gadgets. I want to make sure the audience remembers that we love gadgets. And straight up, right as we started taping, breaking gadget news, which is that Apple, which is long, but Apple is agreed to buy Intel's modem business for a billion dollars.

• 3:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, one Instagram, although that, that metric doesn't really count anymore, does it? Cause that was so long ago, they bought Instagram.

• 3:20Nilay Patel?

  If you had a billion dollars, would you rather have Instagram or Intel's modem business? I'm gonna go with Instagram. It's way more fun. They're bringing on 2,200 Intel engineers. It's a lot, a lot of people, they're, you know, obviously getting the, the boatload of IP or whatever. It's gonna be under Johnny Shruji, who's Apple's chip person. He's very excited. There's a press release. This is kind of a big deal.

• 3:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:43Nilay Patel?

  Here's my, my major question. So if you just think about the chronology here. Apple, Apple invented the iPhone. Let's start at the beginning.

• 3:54Nilay Patel?

  First, there were cell phones. Apple obviously has the iPhone. The iPhone for years had Qualcomm modems in them. Apple and Qualcomm got into a very serious dispute about the licensing terms for those modems. The heart of that dispute was Qualcomm's payment structure.

• 4:13Nilay Patel?

  For modem chips. So if you want to use Qualcomm's modems, you don't just buy the modems. You have to buy this underlying license for its patents. Apple said that was double dipping. Lawsuit. Big nasty lawsuit. In the midst of this, Apple says, we're going to start using Intel modems because they want a second supplier. They want to get away from Qualcomm.

• 4:31Speaker 04

  Those Intel modems, they did it on some models. People pretty much universally said these really aren't as good as the Qualcomm modems. And it didn't actually hurt Apple all that much, but they were like, they were worse.

• 4:43Nilay Patel?

  They were worse.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  And they went back to it.

• 4:44Nilay Patel?

  To the point where in the models where they were still using Qualcomm modems, they throttled the Qualcomm modem so they would equal the slower performance of the Intel modems. Everyone was very unhappy about this. Okay. Apple and Qualcomm settle the case largely because Intel did a bad job. Right? I mean, like that thing about the modems being worse is real. Intel also didn't have a great 5G roadmap. Apple rumors that the next, not this next iPhone, but the iPhone after that will have a 5G chip. Apple needs to get on that train because it's a race. They settle the case. Apple's going to use Qualcomm chips.

• 5:19Speaker 04

  I mean, Apple basically caved in the settlement too, because they didn't have any choice because they had no leverage because Intel failed.

• 5:27Nilay Patel?

  Because Intel was bad. Literally the day they settle the case, Intel announces, we're done with the modem business.

• 5:35Speaker 03

  We can't be manufacturing modems if we're going to compete with Qualcomm.

• 5:40Nilay Patel?

  Like, we're out. Okay. So that's where we were until, I don't know, two hours ago. There's immediate rumors they're going to buy this business. And then today, just literally minutes ago, they announced they did. 2,200 engineers, the boatload of IP, the business, billion dollars.

• 5:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:54Nilay Patel?

  Why? Like, just like, very basically, this is 2,200 people that were not previously able to compete with Qualcomm.

• 6:02Speaker 04

  Right. And why are they going to be able to do so under Apple?

• 6:05Nilay Patel?

  And they lost Apple as a customer and Intel said, well, we don't want you around anymore.

• 6:12Nilay Patel?

  And so now Apple's like, we're just gonna, you're gonna, have you thought about working in a circle? Will that make you better at this? Like, I think that's a big question here. Like, is Apple just that much better at chip engineering than Intel? There's a very obvious answer to that question, by the way, which is yes.

• 6:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:31Nilay Patel?

  But like, these are the same, it's the same folks.

• 6:33Speaker 04

  Well, and the same IP and presumably, like, they didn't just buy talent, they bought like a bunch of plans to make the modems, which Intel itself was unable to execute on. So what was keeping them from being able to execute on it? And were they good plans in the first place? And then on top of all of that, will Apple, making its own modems, presumably, you know, for 5G, this isn't going to happen for the next iPhone, or maybe even the iPhone after that. But will Apple making its own modems, one, make the iPhone better? And two, actually be cheaper for Apple than paying Qualcomm? Because presumably, they're still going to end up having to pay Qualcomm some kind of royalty or licensing for the IP that Qualcomm developed, even if, you know, it's Fran or whatever.

• 7:17Speaker 04

  But I don't know that it's like a sure bet that Apple's going to make a better, cheaper modem for its phones because it bought Intel. There's a lot of X-factors there. And maybe they don't care. Maybe they just want to stick it to Qualcomm, or maybe they just want to feel like, if Qualcomm, like, disappears tomorrow, they have a backup plan. But there's nothing about this deal at first blush that's like, oh yeah, obviously, things are going to be way better for Apple. It's like, there's like, three or four things that could get better if they execute really, really well.

• 7:46Nilay Patel?

  Apple does have a pretty good track record with making components for its own stuff. Like, if it decides to invest in something, and Apple was already like, well, something like, there were rumors that Apple was like, three years away from having its own modem anyways. So maybe there's just like, some spare pieces.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  That they can get from from in this Intel acquisition that can complement the work that they were already doing.

• 8:12Speaker 04

  Right.

• 8:12Nilay Patel?

  So one thing that is true, by the way, is Johnny Strujie, who runs Apple's processor division, is ex-Intel. So it might just be true that working in a circle makes you a more effective chip engineer. I mean, he was there, they weren't cranking out A-series level processors for mobile when at any point.

• 8:31Speaker 04

  I'm pretty sure the circle is full already. Like, they haven't got rid of the old campus. I think that there might not be space for 2,200 Intel engineers in the circle.

• 8:39Nilay Patel?

  I'm fairly confident the Intel engineers are going to continue working wherever they are.

• 8:43Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 8:45Nilay Patel?

  Oh, we'll see. I mean, Apple's a big company. They can acquire more of California as necessary. There's another, this is a much more cynical read. I don't think Apple buys companies to not do anything. I think they expect results when they spend this much money. But a way more cynical read is that everyone knew Intel's modem business was not great. Right? It was just a fact in like the people we know who float around the industry who pay attention, they had been saying for a long time, hey, like, these trade shows are kind of boring. Like, Intel isn't here. They're not showing off their modem capabilities on like giant breadboards or prototypes the way that Qualcomm brought, like, the rest of the industry is like showing us the stuff that is the leading indicator of where they are. They've all but disappeared.

• 9:30Nilay Patel?

  And so they're not competitive. Well, if you bring, because they needed to be competitive in those spaces to sell the modems to other customers. They need to be a little bit more public because they're trying to sell it to filmmakers. Apple doesn't have that problem. Right? So you bring this business in-house, and then you can just count on your Death Star-like reputation for chip excellence to scare Qualcomm into the appropriate pricing structure.

• 9:54Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 9:55Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, that's a move. Like, you can just say, like, okay, we're slow now, but ahead of the curve five, 10 years from now, we're definitely going to get better. We have all this IP to build on, we have all these folks, we're going to, we're going to get good at this, the way that we got good at A-series processors. Either play ball, or we will find a way to move on. And there's no, there's not a lot of transparency in how well it's going until Apple has to give up and like just use the Qualcomm chips, which is what happened just like two months ago. So yeah, I mean, that's like, I think that's a very cynical read. I think you could also characterize it as just like a very smart investment for Apple. Like they spent a billion dollars, they acquired this business that was failing, but they get to use it as this hedge against Qualcomm, which owns so much of the market.

• 10:39Nilay Patel?

  They own a lot of 5G patents, just a lot, a lot. There are not a lot of competitors to Qualcomm in the world. A constant theme of the Vergecast, by the way, is competition. I don't know if anyone has noticed that. But anyways, that's like the biggest news. Apple spent a billion dollars in this modem business. And I think it kind of puts everybody else in a bind.

• 10:56Speaker 04

  Oh yeah. If you're an Android manufacturer that wants to sell outside of China, you're like, it's Qualcomm or bust. I mean, there's, there is some modem technology, there is some Huawei stuff and you know, there's, there's a bunch of other chips and Samsung makes Exynos and you know, you can just go down the line, but none of it performs nearly as well as Qualcomm, especially on the bands that are popular in the US.

• 11:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, for a minute there, well, processors and modems, right?

• 11:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 11:25Nilay Patel?

  For a minute, there was a pretty big variety of smartphone processors that lasted two years?

• 11:30Speaker 04

  No, I mean, on the low end, there's still MediaTek. It's hanging out. It's doing all right.

• 11:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but on the high end, there was once Nvidia had Tegra.

• 11:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:39Nilay Patel?

  Didn't Motorola have its own wacky chip for like two seconds?

• 11:42Speaker 04

  They might've. I can't remember. But yeah, Tegra was like the one.

• 11:45Nilay Patel?

  Tegra failed. Intel tried to put Intel chips. That was just not a great idea. There used to be a lot of sort of like mid, mid to high end competition and now it's all Snapdragon down the line.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 11:58Nilay Patel?

  And what does a Snapdragon work well with? A Qualcomm modem. Does Qualcomm have some extremely complicated pricing scheme that makes it all but impossible to buy a Snapdragon unless you buy their modem? I would bet that they do.

• 12:10Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 12:11Nilay Patel?

  So the sort of differentiation for Android makers is gone because Intel never figured it out.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  Do you guys have a vibe of how expensive is this part? Obviously you can't sell a phone without a modem, so you need one anyways, but...

• 12:23Nilay Patel?

  No, this is the heart of the Apple lawsuit. There isn't an expense for the part. There's not a line item expense for the part. So what Apple was particularly mad about was that they would buy the part and then they had to buy a patent license from Qualcomm for the whole phone. And that license was a calculated in a percentage of the cost of the finished product. So the modem for the 32 gigabyte iPhone costs less than the modem for the 64 gigabyte iPhone. And Apple's like, that makes no sense. Like, why do you get a piece of our intense storage margin? Right? Like, that, it literally makes no sense.

• 13:00Speaker 03

  Well, and it's, it's interesting. If you look at the prices of, like, you can go to Best Buy right now and buy a phone for a hundred dollars.

• 13:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  And it is not a good phone, but is, is a thousand dollar flagship with all Qualcomm internals definitively 10 times better? It's not 10 times faster.

• 13:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:20Speaker 03

  You know, it's higher quality, but I don't know. You know what I mean? Like, the cheap, the cheap stuff is way cheaper.

• 13:27Nilay Patel?

  The cheap stuff is way cheaper.

• 13:28Speaker 04

  Way better than it used to be.

• 13:29Nilay Patel?

  And way better. But I, you know, like, the, the sort of, like, channel bonding, carrier aggregation stuff is all happening at the high end. So it is faster. You can't get a 5G E logo, you know, on your hundred dollar phone.

• 13:43Nilay Patel?

  Which is probably an argument for buying a hundred dollar phone. Uh, anyway, that's the breaking news. There's some other breaking news in this world, huh?

• 13:51Speaker 04

  Ah, I already made that joke.

• 13:53Nilay Patel?

  I know.

• 13:54Speaker 04

  Oh, sorry.

• 13:55Nilay Patel?

  Dieter.

• 13:55Speaker 03

  I get it.

• 13:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:56Speaker 03

  I get it.

• 13:57Nilay Patel?

  The Galaxy Fold is back. To haunt you. Once again.

• 14:01Speaker 04

  Oh, God. So if you don't know, the Galaxy Fold was announced to huge fanfare. Took over the entire keynote that Samsung did, uh, way back. Just a big, big deal. And then everybody's review unit broke for various reasons. Mine broke mysteriously. Um, to be clear, Samsung to this day has not told me what it thinks broke my unit. I've been asking and I still don't know. Anyway, they canceled the thing like three days after I reviewed the device, which was just great. Just, thanks, guys. Um, and said, we're gonna fix it. And then everyone was like, sure you will. This thing is canceled. And turns out, nope, it's not. They were in fact, working on fixing it and they have in fact. Done some stuff to it to make it ready to sell.

• 14:46Speaker 04

  I would say that one of my favorite Verge moments lately was looking in Slack yesterday and seeing you and Chris Welch zaprootering renders of the Galaxy Fold. Like pixel by pixel, trying to figure out what they did. And it came down to, these are renders and we don't know. But also, this part is rounder. Like, yeah, it's so hard to know. So like, the back of it looks a little bit rounder. The bezels maybe, yeah, inside the fold, the back looks a little bit rounder. The bezels maybe a little bit thicker. One thing you can absolutely see is the protective film, uh, which is the thing that everyone, except for me and a few others, like, tried to tear off because they thought it was like a, one of those like, in the box screen protectors, is now like, goes underneath the bezel,

• 15:29Speaker 04

  or underneath, you know, the plastic rim bezel thing around it. So you're less likely to try and tear it off. And then they've added caps on either end of it. Because before, in the hinge, you know, when you opened and closed it, you could actually like, see the actual bend of the screen. And there was a gap there that stuff could got in. And they put like a cap over that. They may have done some other stuff, who knows? But yeah, it's getting released at some date in September. Uh, so I'm like, cool. And we wrote the story up and that was great. And then, uh, we're like, hey, you know, T-Mobile and AT&T said they were gonna sell this. Let's ask if they still plan on doing that. And T-Mobile got back to us and they said, nope. Yeah. And AT&T said, eh, we're, we're, we're talking to Samsung, which is not a yes.

• 16:11Speaker 04

  Are, you think they're scared of the, the customer support nightmare? Uh, I would be scared of the customer support nightmare. I would be scared that, uh, this phone is getting released, uh, in, you know, a little over a month, possibly two, if they push it to the end of the month. And I'm a carrier that needs to, you know, do my own testing on phones. And maybe I haven't had a chance to do that yet. I would be unhappy that whatever my, like, precisely finely tuned, like a Switch, Swiss Watch media plan for September when the iPhone gets launched, thing is, is now getting disrupted by the Fold just landing in the middle of it.

• 16:48Nilay Patel?

  There are many reasons why AT&T is probably like meh about it.

• 16:52Speaker 03

  Also, one, these carriers do not provide very good support in my experience.

• 16:57Nilay Patel?

  No, we just had the CEO of Asurion on the Vergecast like two weeks ago. And he's like, I have 19,000 employees in a growing business because we are the tech support providers for the carriers. I would say you're incredible.

• 17:10Speaker 03

  One of my most foolish purchasing decisions ever was I got upsold at a carrier store on a Android tablet. And I like broke it the day of and nobody, nobody in the planet wanted to take responsibility for that.

• 17:24Nilay Patel?

  No, once you buy an Android tablet, you are alone. Like that's, you are just no one. You have no friends, you have no family.

• 17:32Speaker 03

  I can't stop thinking about these close up. Hopefully Vergecast listeners have seen these photos on theverge.com or on Twitter. There's these close up detail shots of the Galaxy Fold of what we've changed. Is there a precedent for this? Like a company announces a product, it fails in reviewers' hands prior to launch. And they're like, don't worry, we'll fix it. They go back and they make some very small but detectable changes. And then they show you, here's how it's different. Has this ever happened before?

• 18:04Nilay Patel?

  Actually explaining how it's different. They're like, here's what's different. It's like this drawing is slightly different. They're not, as far as I can tell, these are not photos of the new Galaxy Fold. They're renders, right?

• 18:15Speaker 04

  Right. Well, yeah, they, they appear to be renders, but like, Apple like took people through its testing facilities for IntennaGate.

• 18:23Nilay Patel?

  But famously, they changed nothing. Yeah. Steve Jobs had us all out there and we, everyone went like on a walk, right? Like through their antenna testing lab. And they held up another, like they showed slides of like old BlackBerry phones. They're like, this phone sucks too. And then the only thing they changed during IntennaGate was they're like, the bars don't go down as fast because all of you are dumb. All of you are confused by these bars.

• 18:49Speaker 04

  Apple also took people on a tour of where the place where they torture tested the iPhone 6 over Bend Gate. And also didn't change anything until the 6 Plus, when they like reinforced it on the inside a little bit. But they like stuck to it.

• 19:02Nilay Patel?

  Apple also famously did not fix the butterfly keyboard.

• 19:07Speaker 03

  Yes, like, maybe, maybe Samsung should be applauded for, for trying to make relatively clear what they've done here.

• 19:14Speaker 04

  Samsung took people on tours of its battery testing facilities after the Note 7. Yeah.

• 19:19Nilay Patel?

  But technically, they did not change the Note 7. They just, they just stopped selling it. They're like, this is impossible to fix.

• 19:27Speaker 04

  So I can't be too mad at Samsung for not, like, completely blowing out its, like, apology tour for the fold, because the truth is, they, the only people that suffered was, like, me and Joanna Stern. A very, very small, select group of people, just like, some tech journalists. We suffered, but, that's like, that's, that's what we deserve, that's our lot in life, so it's fine.

• 19:52Nilay Patel?

  That's what we deserve. That is the most Minnesota Protestant thing you've ever said in your entire life. One thing they did not change is the price, $1,980.

• 20:03Speaker 04

  That is correct.

• 20:04Nilay Patel?

  And they, they dropped this news, that it's, it's back, and the drawings are different, at 9:00 PM on a Monday.

• 20:12Speaker 04

  9:00 PM Eastern on a Monday, which, to be fair, is like, prime time in Korea.

• 20:17Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 20:18Speaker 04

  But, nevertheless, I will tell you that, like, you know, many more things, many other things were more popular on our website than the Galaxy Fold news, over the past 24 hours since both Samsung's news and T-Mobile's news hit. I just, just to be, I want to read T-Mobile's "We're not selling this" statement, like, verbatim, because it is-

• 20:38Speaker 03

  High quality.

• 20:39Speaker 04

  It is, it is the meanest thing you will ever hear from what, what, what, from one company saying a thing about its partner. "T-Mobile will not carry the Galaxy Fold, because we already offer customers a wide range of the latest smartphones. Please reach out to Samsung for any further inquiries."

• 20:58Nilay Patel?

  But you know what that range of phones doesn't include? One that folds.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's true. It's like, we will not carry turkeys this Thanksgiving. We already offer our customers a wide range of meats.

• 21:12Nilay Patel?

  I like that. I would.

• 21:13Speaker 03

  Calling it a turkey is also like real.

• 21:15Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty good.

• 21:16Speaker 03

  I think the hype's gonna come back in September though, guys.

• 21:19Nilay Patel?

  They're gonna run. It's true. They're gonna run right into the iPhone.

• 21:22Speaker 03

  They're gonna run into the iPhone, for sure.

• 21:24Nilay Patel?

  And the only question anybody has about this thing now is will Dieter break it?

• 21:29Nilay Patel?

  And like, for my vantage point, the way that we should do this review is we should just have a live stream of Dieter using the phone for like a day. Like a Big Brother type house situation, and you're just in the house of the Galaxy Fold.

• 21:43Speaker 03

  What if I have to go to the bathroom?

• 21:45Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. How does Big Brother? I've never actually seen Big Brother.

• 21:48Speaker 03

  If you're talking.

• 21:49Nilay Patel?

  Do they have cameras in the bathroom?

• 21:50Speaker 03

  Yes, they always do. That's an important aspect of reality television.

• 21:54Nilay Patel?

  All right, well, we'll tweak that slightly. But this is my, look, if you want us to review the Galaxy Fold by setting up some sort of Big Brother house that Dieter lives in for two or three days, just to see if the Galaxy Fold breaks, just tweet at me and Dieter, actually just tweet at Dieter. Just tweet Big Brother Galaxy Fold House.

• 22:13Speaker 03

  Can people like pay to shoot small particulate dust at Dieter throughout the day?

• 22:19Nilay Patel?

  There's one room and someone's just like operating a power stand or the entire time, like, oh my god, Dieter's walking through the woodworking zone again.

• 22:30Nilay Patel?

  Just think about it. We could make this happen. Why do we have these resources?

• 22:34Speaker 03

  Put me, instead of a dunk tank, it's like a sand dunk tank. And then, you know, if you throw a ball, I fall into the giant pile of tossed.

• 22:42Nilay Patel?

  This is horrible. But we're gonna do it. Okay. More gadget news. This one's my favorite. I'm very excited about this.

• 22:51Nilay Patel?

  I have been saying for years that the way that like the Verge's thesis is that technology and culture are in a deep and somewhat terrifying relationship. And the Sony RX 100 has been like the focal point of that relationship in my brain for the longest time. Cause it came out as a still camera, a great still camera. It's the one I use.

• 23:13Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 23:14Nilay Patel?

  Sony updates this thing every single year.

• 23:16Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:17Nilay Patel?

  It with the RX 100 Mark IV, two years ago, three years ago, they added 4K video recording.

• 23:24Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 23:25Nilay Patel?

  And it became like the go-to YouTuber camera.

• 23:27Speaker 04

  Yeah. If you like the portable go-to YouTuber camera, as long as you don't need to record more than like 15 minutes, cause it like would overheat and like the batteries are ridiculously small.

• 23:36Nilay Patel?

  But like we've had Sarah Dichi on the show, I've been on her show, she's like one of my faves. She's got like 45 RX 100s. Like she's like, I don't even know how many I have at this point. And you see them all over the place. One thing it didn't have, a mic jack.

• 23:49Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 23:49Nilay Patel?

  Sony updates this camera every year, every year, the YouTuber's like, where's the mic jack? Every year, our video team is like, where's the mic jack?

• 23:55Speaker 04

  Not only did it not have a mic jack, there was no way to like dongle up a mic jack. Cause there are a lot of like, you know, semi-pro cameras where there was at least like a shoe and you could like buy a road and like attach it to the shoe, right? So it wasn't a full-on mic jack, but there was like, there was always some way that you could like chain together some weird crap and get a microphone attached to it. And the RX 100 is just, nope, absolutely not.

• 24:19Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, two weeks ago, Canon announced the G73 mic jack. Sony off-cycles like, hey, here's our RX 100 with a mic jack. It's great. It's like nothing has ever made me happier than this weird arms race between Sony and Canon to capture the hearts of creators.

• 24:35Speaker 04

  Are you suggesting that competition makes products better?

• 24:38Nilay Patel?

  I'm not saying anything, Dieter. I'm saying capitalism is great. That's all I'm saying.

• 24:43Speaker 04

  Oh, you, you pulled off the Kindle from the show notes that the new Kindle Oasis is not as good as it should be because there's no competition. Anyway, continue about the RX 100.

• 24:50Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow, I have this claim, I'm gonna make it. I want you guys to, to agree or disagree with me, your choice. If you have a reasonably new phone. And you're thinking, I'm gonna get a new flagship phone because I want to take better photos. I think you should not spend that money. And you should spend anywhere between a used RX 100 Mark IV is on eBay for like 500 bucks. Anywhere between $500 to $1,200 for the new Mark VII. You should spend that money on an RX 100 because it will take vastly better photos than your phone. And I think that is, if your decision point for a new phone is, I want to take better photos. I think you are way better off spending that money on a camera in the classified, an RX 100.

• 25:31Speaker 04

  Getting the photos from an RX 100 to a smartphone, um, it's not quite as good as like Nikon's, you know, magic, whatever the heck it is. But if you have an Android phone, you just tap the NFC, shoots that photo over. You have an iPhone, it like pops up a QR code and you can like do the QR code.

• 25:48Nilay Patel?

  The NFC on an iPhone kind of works.

• 25:52Speaker 04

  Really?

• 25:53Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it is, it is so deeply in the realm of kind of.

• 25:58Nilay Patel?

  So they, they opened up, Apple opened up NFC on the iPhone.

• 26:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:02Nilay Patel?

  Kind of. It's like a lot of kind of's that all add up to kind of.

• 26:06Speaker 04

  You have to open the app first.

• 26:08Nilay Patel?

  So you open the app first and then you can like say, pair to my camera. And then, and then you can tap and that it right around 50% success rate of the tapping. And then that has, I would say like a 35% hit rate on doing something. Right. And the thing it's supposed to do is like automatically connect you to the phone's little wifi direct, or the, the thing it's supposed to is automatically connect you to the camera's wifi direct network.

• 26:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:37Nilay Patel?

  But sometimes it doesn't do that and your phone opens that weird like accept this wifi profile thing. You're like, I did this like 500 times.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  Really selling people on the, uh, don't upgrade your phone by this camera thing.

• 26:49Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm just saying, I'm just saying it, this, like, this is the definition of a bunch of technology that's supposed to make life simpler. But really you should just open settings and connect to the network. Like you're so much better off not trying it the easy way and doing it the quote unquote hard way.

• 27:05Speaker 04

  You know what I wish it had? The old flip camera, you know the flip cameras that you hit a button like a USB?

• 27:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:11Speaker 04

  Popped out of it?

• 27:11Nilay Patel?

  That's incredible.

• 27:12Speaker 04

  Imagine if a USB thing, USBC thing could pop out of it, you could just plug it into your phone. That'd be great.

• 27:16Nilay Patel?

  And if your phone had a USBC port.

• 27:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, imagine that.

• 27:20Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow, but I, so I have an Nikon camera that has SnapBridge, which is like a Bluetooth LE. So as you take photos, just populates your phone's camera all those photos. Here's the real problem with that. Uh, when you're holding a DSLR, you take thousands of photos. Right? I'm like click, click, click, click, click. And then all of a sudden like my camera roll has 400 photos of this sunset in it. Which I don't need at this time.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 27:44Nilay Patel?

  It's great. I just prefer to do the manual. Anyway, my point is the main thing to know is they added this mic jack. It also has much faster burst recording. It's just all, it's a better camera, right? It's the, it's a yearly increment, but they put it out a little bit earlier because Canon just added a mic jack to its big competitor. And I love that. Nothing makes me happier than that competition.

• 28:05Speaker 04

  Uh, so Google finally disconnected Google Drive from Google Photos. Um, cause like there's a whole thing there. Um, but it, something it was doing to try and make sure that no photos got lost has meant that like hundreds of ancient weird ass photos that I thought I had deleted or that I put on Drive but explicitly didn't put in Google Photos are just appearing in my Google Photos. Like if you want to see pictures of me, uh, from like 2009, I got you right now. It's infuriating. Anyway.

• 28:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I don't, I don't understand what Google is doing with Drive and Photos. Google Photos is great. I think everybody should use it. It's fine. It's like, it's, it's very good at the thing that it is. It's better than most other things. But the sort of, this is actually just a folder with all my images. They have not yet. Right. That was what Drive was supposed to make it become and that was just a miserable failure.

• 29:01Speaker 04

  I've been experimenting with dropping Dropbox and switching to some other service. And somewhere in my experimentation, I think I turned on like Google Drive sync to my desktop on one of my computers. And so now every photo I put on my desktop is appearing in Google Photos against my will. And I haven't figured out why. It's driving me crazy.

• 29:20Nilay Patel?

  That is like the ultimate in accidental self-surveillance.

• 29:25Nilay Patel?

  It's like all of a sudden, Google knows everything that happens on your desktop because you were trying to sync one photo.

• 29:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, pretty much.

• 29:31Nilay Patel?

  Last little bit of gadget news. New Sonos speakers out today, but they're not new Sonos speakers, right? IKEA speakers. It's a Vonisk. Uh, I am very excited about these. The little one is a hundred bucks. It sounds, I would say, uh, not as good as a, a Sonos speaker. I wouldn't go so far as to say potato. It's like a, more like a pineapple.

• 29:51Speaker 04

  What, if you're in your car, pull over and, and listen to a potato. Imagine what the sound of a potato is. And then, once you've got it, just record a voice memo and tweet it at Reckless.

• 30:03Nilay Patel?

  No, but then that will sound like a potato.

• 30:07Nilay Patel?

  That's what that sounds like.

• 30:08Speaker 04

  Potato inception.

• 30:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, potato, potato inception. Anyway, it sounds fine, right? But it's $99. You can pair two of them as surrounds for a big Sonos speaker system. I think this thing is great. I would, I would recommend this thing just based on, um, it's like ease of use over almost any Bluetooth speaker unless the thing you want to do is like pick it up, take it outside with a battery.

• 30:31Speaker 04

  Right.

• 30:31Nilay Patel?

  I'm, I'm super into these. The lamp is a lot sillier. So there's a, a, what's what, a buck 79? It's, it's a Sonos speaker inside of a lamp.

• 30:44Speaker 04

  That looks like a mushroom.

• 30:46Nilay Patel?

  Looks like a mushroom. It just takes a regular light bulb, but you can buy like smart light bulbs. But you can also pair them as the surrounds. So you could have your living room with like your, your Sonos beam. And then no one will know that you have surround because it's in the lamps.

• 31:02Speaker 04

  I think that's great. Little nightstands to the left or right of your couch or something?

• 31:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, ideally you want them like slightly behind your couch. So you want one of those like bookcases behind you. I mean, it doesn't matter. I mean, you're, you're putting surrounds and lamps. You're not like overthinking placement.

• 31:18Nilay Patel?

  Mount the lamps from the ceiling to get the full atmosphere. You're not doing that.

• 31:20Speaker 04

  Back off.

• 31:22Nilay Patel?

  I love it. I think it's great. Chris Welch reviewed them. You should read that review. He says the lamps sound more or less like a Play One, which sounds pretty good.

• 31:30Speaker 04

  That's, that's very good.

• 31:32Nilay Patel?

  So we've obviously talked to Patrick Spence, the CEO of Sonos on the show a bunch of times. It's very interesting how Sonos is sort of, they've got their middle of the market. Like the middle of their market spectrum is where they live, right? So that's everything from the Play One and the Sonos one, the speaker to the Beam, the Play Five, all the new architectural stuff they're doing, like the in-wall speakers and the amp. Like that's their zone. Like if you want to spend a medium amount of money to a fairly large amount of money, like Sonos has you. And then they're partnering on the low end and the high end. So the low end, they partner with IKEA. There's going to be a bunch of Sonos tech there. IKEA can handle it.

• 32:14Nilay Patel?

  You can see how they're partnering on the high end, like their in-wall speakers and stuff are made in partnership with other companies. I suspect, I hope, I dream, I've asked Patrick about this a number of times, that they will eventually do a receiver with Sonos stuff built into it, right? Like Pioneer receivers and Onkyo receivers, you can like very easily pair a Sonos Connect to them and have the Sonos Connect turn on your receiver. It's like just a hop, skip and a jump to not having to have the breakout box there. So I think their, their product strategy is really, really smart. Like for most of the mainstream stuff, the, the middle of the spectrum that most people are going to buy, they're making it, they're engineering it, it sounds really good, it works really well.

• 32:57Nilay Patel?

  For the very low end, $99, partnering with IKEA. And then you can see on the, on the high end weirdo stuff that I, that I love, I must be honest. They're partnering with other companies. I think that is one of the more interesting sort of platform plays I've seen in a long time. It's like if Apple licensed iOS to those $100 phone makers because they didn't want to play in that market. And they knew like this isn't going to eat the real iPhone and then there was something even more high end than an iPhone. The Galaxy Fold. Right, but, but, but like no one's competing in the middle. I think it's like, we, we've seen a lot of ways for platform makers to license their stuff. This is a pretty unique riff on it. Yeah, we're going to give away the very high end and the very low end, but we're going to, we're going to take the mainstream.

• 33:40Speaker 04

  My take on what Sonos is sort of doing right in the past few years is slightly different. Uh, my take is the thing that the biggest change that Sonos, biggest improvement, biggest change Sonos has made the past few years is they started, um, making stuff and selling it.

• 33:53Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that was his promise, when Spence took over, that was his promise. He was like, we have to increase the metabolism of the company, bias to action, all that stuff. They still have not shipped a replacement for the play bar.

• 34:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, there's the beam.

• 34:06Nilay Patel?

  No, the beam's like way lower. Like, the play bar, there was a survey like months and months ago, it might've been CES, the survey came out where they're asking people about surround systems and atmos, you know how I feel about this stuff.

• 34:16Speaker 04

  Yeah. I will tell you that I am using Sonos Ones as my surrounds to a play bar right now and their, hey, Google, sorry, everybody, detection is atrocious.

• 34:28Nilay Patel?

  It's pronounced potato.

• 34:29Speaker 04

  I would say, yeah, it's, it's potato. I would say one out of three times I ask it to do something, it hears me and then it says, sorry, I can't do that here. It's like, yes, you can. I'll just, I'll just ask you again and you'll figure it out. It's really bad.

• 34:44Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, gadget news, bunch of stuffs. We're all, we're all buying Intel modems, we're all buying Sonos speakers, we're all buying RX 100. This has been very expensive first half hour of the show. I'm super into it.

• 34:55Speaker 04

  I really don't want to buy that RX 100, but I'm really gonna.

• 34:59Nilay Patel?

  You bought, haven't you accidentally bought like three RX 100s?

• 35:02Speaker 04

  Yes, yes, I have.

• 35:04Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're going to take a break. We're bringing Russell McKenna. We got to talk about the FTC and Facebook. It was legitimately some of the biggest news that happened this week, so we're going to take a break, be back with our policy team.

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• 36:20Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're back. Russell Brandim's here. Hi. McKenna Kelly's here.

• 36:23Speaker 07

  I'm here.

• 36:24Nilay Patel?

  You two have had a very busy week.

• 36:26Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 36:27Nilay Patel?

  McKenna just lives on the Vergecast now.

• 36:28Speaker 07

  Yeah, this is my new job. Happy to be the new co-host.

• 36:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's great, because the government keeps doing stuff. All right, so we, we knew that the FTC and Facebook were going to settle.

• 36:40Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:41Nilay Patel?

  We knew that it would be for $5 billion.

• 36:42Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:43Nilay Patel?

  But it actually happened.

• 36:45Speaker 07

  Yesterday.

• 36:46Nilay Patel?

  Yesterday.

• 36:47Speaker 07

  At 8:30 in the morning, right as Mueller sat down to testify about Trump and Russia and all of that. It was great.

• 36:54Nilay Patel?

  So everyone was focused on Facebook and not Mueller.

• 36:57Speaker 08

  I mean, this is kind of, because actually, for a couple Fridays, we were like, oh, they're going to drop it on this Friday to totally bury it. And then it dropped on like, the one day you knew something else was going to be on CNN.

• 37:11Nilay Patel?

  The whole time.

• 37:12Speaker 08

  It is a little bit.

• 37:13Nilay Patel?

  There's also Facebook's earnings day.

• 37:15Speaker 07

  Right.

• 37:16Speaker 08

  Well, so they had to, like, they were going to have to say it in the earnings.

• 37:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but Facebook also posted like, really good earnings. So Facebook drove, like, drove its own news cycle here, it seems like. What is the, well, actually, I have the complaint here on all 50 pages. I want to read some bits of it, but give me the high-level summary.

• 37:33Speaker 07

  High-level summary?

• 37:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 07

  $5 billion fine? Yay, cool, that's over with, right? They pay for it, they don't care. There's also a new board, right? I mean, a new committee on the board that oversees privacy. So Mark Zuckerberg's power is a little diffused now on privacy. There's other people who have to check.

• 37:51Nilay Patel?

  But they're made of members of the Facebook board of directors.

• 37:53Speaker 07

  There is a third-party assessor.

• 37:55Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I see.

• 37:56Speaker 07

  That is the language.

• 37:57Speaker 08

  And the privacy committee is like independent. They can't be fired, in theory, and they can sort of, there are like various ways they can escalate. It's really, I mean, I think people are broadly skeptical as to whether this committee is gonna do anything, because generally committees like that don't do anything.

• 38:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Who appoints the committee? Facebook's board of directors. But like with the FTC's help?

• 38:22Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:23Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 38:23Nilay Patel?

  And there's a third-party assessor.

• 38:25Speaker 07

  Yes. That's the language. I love this, okay. The sentiment language is great. So other things, Facebook can't lie about privacy stuff, cool. They also have to do really great.

• 38:35Nilay Patel?

  That's never stopped before.

• 38:37Speaker 07

  I know, right? Wow, remember 2012? But, so, great. So there's a ton of other stuff. There's some facial recognition stuff that I thought was pretty interesting. Basically, the FTC had found that some folks had their facial recognition stuff on by default. So, you know, photo tagging and all of that stuff. So the FTC was like, hey, opt-in consent, you need to know. There needs to be like explicit opt-in stuff on that. I thought that was interesting. I wasn't expecting to see that. I mean, there was just like a ton of stuff that I think, what would? I think Joe Simons called it a belt and suspender system. Multiple times.

• 39:13Nilay Patel?

  Joe Simons, by the way, is the FCC chairman.

• 39:15Speaker 07

  Right, yeah. He called it a belt and suspender system like several times. And he's like, we have five different areas of privacy that overlap. So if like someone fails something, then somebody else picks it up. And it's like a confusing system.

• 39:27Nilay Patel?

  If your belt doesn't work, your suspenders holds your pants up.

• 39:29Speaker 07

  Right. It was like, I was like, okay, cool. This, this sounds great. We're really happy.

• 39:33Nilay Patel?

  It just doesn't, a belt and suspenders does not imply like, oh, this company is afraid of consequences.

• 39:40Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:41Nilay Patel?

  Because belts and suspenders are not terrifying.

• 39:45Nilay Patel?

  Sorry, like, anyway.

• 39:47Speaker 08

  You want like vault imagery?

• 39:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:50Speaker 08

  Not just like a dweeby dude who's wearing like both a belt and suspenders.

• 39:54Speaker 07

  I mean, that's the power the FTC has though, right? Belt and suspenders power?

• 39:59Nilay Patel?

  So, just to set some context, you mentioned 2012.

• 40:04Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:04Nilay Patel?

  The FTC, oh, the complaint here is really based on the fact that in 2012, the FTC did this already. They said, "Facebook, you've done a bunch of stuff that impacts people's privacy. It's bad. We're gonna charge you a fine. We're gonna employ a third-party privacy assessor, and you have to tell us that you're in compliance with it all the time." That was 2012. It is now 2019. Facebook, and just all over this complaint, here's a line. This is paragraph nine. "Facebook knew or should have known that its conduct violated the 2012 order because it was engaging in the very same conduct that the commission alleged was deceptive in count one of the original complaint that led to the 2012 order."

• 40:48Nilay Patel?

  So FTC is like, "You should have known you were doing the wrong thing because you never stopped doing it." Then, there's this lengthy section of just dark patterns in the Facebook interface. So you're talking about facial recognition. If you opt into tagging, then you got one dialog box, but if you didn't, you got a different dialog box. And then Facebook changed the interface, and all the people who opted into one thing got to say yes again. But everyone else got auto-opted in. There's a whole section about how your app, I mean, literally, it's just screenshots of Facebook, and like, the FTC's like, "This is bad."

• 41:23Speaker 08

  Well, and they used, this is as the security guy, the one that gets to me. They used the number that you gave them for two-factor in order, like, as an ad targeting data thing. Which is just like, come on, guys.

• 41:37Nilay Patel?

  So they're very unhappy about that. They're very unhappy about, um, application. I mean, this is like, the Cambridge Analytica thing, was you are a Facebook user. You sign up for an app, Cambridge Analytica. That app doesn't just get your data, it gets all of your friends' data. And like, several times, Facebook said it was gonna fix it and didn't. Right, like that's the heart of this. And then the two factor thing is like the next section and the facial recognition thing is the next section. So you just said third party assessor, which I just want to come back to it.

• 42:08Speaker 07

  Well, last week I referred to this guy as the Yikes guy, remember?

• 42:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the Yikes guy.

• 42:12Speaker 07

  It's the Yikes committee, right? Um, see, we have to see how this plays out, right? Once the board's appointed, we see who's all on there. What it is is a Yikes guy who's like, oh, guys, maybe we shouldn't have this certain privacy violation in this new product or new service that we're developing. And then it's determined and they, something happens and something's figured out, basically.

• 42:33Nilay Patel?

  So here's the complaint again. Part five of the 2012 order states that Facebook shall obtain initial and biennial assessments and reports from a qualified, objective, independent, third-party professional who uses procedures and standards generally accepted in the profession. That did, that did not work, right? And then there's this whole part where the assessments actually covered up the wrongdoing. So Facebook was supposed to like stop giving applications data, but they, if you were paying Facebook, like more than a quarter million dollars a year for advertising, you got the data anyway. And they just didn't tell their assessor person? That, I mean, this is like, they just got around it over and over again. What, what in this, and that's, that's the whole complaint, that's 50 pages.

• 43:16Nilay Patel?

  What about this new agreement prevents them from getting around it? Is it just the belt and suspenders?

• 43:22Speaker 07

  Right, okay, so if you listen to the press yesterday with all the folks at the FTC, including the guy who's the director of enforcement, what they were saying is like, okay, last time we dialed up some harsher limits, right, for Facebook on privacy. This time we're doing it even more. And so now there's a certification process for Zuckerberg. Um, he has to actually like sign off on products and stuff on privacy now. So there's like a paper trail, right? There's documentation that he's seen this. So it makes room for him to be held personally liable. Later, right? So what's happening is that last time it was bad, this time it's worse. And then next time it's really bad and maybe Mark Zuckerberg will no longer be the CEO of Facebook or something like that.

• 44:04Nilay Patel?

  Is that a potential outcome?

• 44:06Speaker 07

  Well, I mean, they're trying to hold him more accountable, right? So I mean, what happens next is what happens next, but they're trying to slowly, I guess, make Mark Zuckerberg or whoever the CEO is in the future more liable for what happens on privacy.

• 44:20Speaker 08

  Right. So this is kind of, I mean, I do like, the details are important, but it is kind of weird, right? Just keep coming back to the idea of like, you mess up, people talk about like, man, Facebook's behaving really irresponsibly. Like, there is never going to be more of a consensus on that than there is right now. Like, we've been driving that home for like, the last two years. And what are the consequences? Like, how, how much did it hurt because they did that? And like, it feels like the consequences are not escalating quickly enough, right? Like, everything was on the side of the government doing something really significantly damaging to this enterprise because they just had

• 45:04Speaker 08

  nothing going for them. It's also like, it's Facebook. It's not like these people are sort of like, growing food that people need to eat. It's not vital infrastructure, like, it's fine. So I don't know. I guess, it's just like, if they did, if they screwed up this badly, and this is what happened, there's just no spin where it doesn't look weak.

• 45:27Nilay Patel?

  And they, they broke the law, right? And they were, they had a consent agreement with the government.

• 45:33Speaker 08

  Well, yeah, but lots of people break the law. I mean, come on.

• 45:35Nilay Patel?

  But it's like weird, like.

• 45:36Speaker 07

  But what happens, right? The FTC, if you talk to Joe Simons, the chairman of the FTC, or anybody in the majority over there, they would say, but we're so weak.

• 45:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:45Speaker 07

  We can't do much more. What they were forced into and what Joe Simon said repeatedly on CNBC, on every chance that he had a second to talk yesterday was like, we are so weak. We need Congress to pass a privacy law. We need new authority to go after these folks. So, I mean, it seems like they're making a really solid case for Congress to do something next, right? It's like...

• 46:06Speaker 03

  And if I understand correctly, if they had said, we want $10 billion and Zuckerberg's head on a stick, there was some bridge too far where Facebook would want to go to court. This is a settlement. And if FTC had asked for more, Facebook would have said, okay, well, we'll see you in court, right? That was the decision point?

• 46:27Speaker 07

  Right. So, that's the thing. There are a lot of... So, they could have asked for a lot more money. They could have asked for, what you said, Mark Zuckerberg's head on a stick. But whatever. So, everybody's like trying to come to a settlement, right? I mean, we heard from Brian Fung yesterday at CNN, Facebook walked into negotiations with the FTC saying, we'll pay zero. So, like, there wasn't a lot of wiggle room for them, right? $5 billion according to zero, maybe a lot. But here's the thing. If the FTC wanted to get rid of Mark Zuckerberg, or touch him at all, his power or anything, Facebook would have wanted to go to court.

• 47:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:00Speaker 07

  And Joe Simon's would tell you, that's a lot of years in litigation. It means that we don't really know what the outcome will be. In this case, we get it after a year, following Cambridge Analytica, and we also get $5 billion in consumer protections. That's what Joe Simon's would tell you, right?

• 47:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 47:16Speaker 07

  So, he thinks that he won, in this case.

• 47:19Speaker 08

  That is the most damning part of this whole thing, is he thinks he won.

• 47:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 47:24Speaker 07

  What did he say yesterday? He said at the presser, he said, this settlement is awesome.

• 47:29Speaker 03

  Wow. I don't know that anybody outside of Facebook thinks it's awesome. Like, up and down, pundits on both sides, we know a lot of folks, no one thinks this is enough.

• 47:40Speaker 08

  Well, and, I mean, imagine the credibility of the FTC as an institution. The concern is you go to court and you lose, and then no one takes the FTC like seriously ever again. But if you're so scared of going to court, that you just... Get stomped on over and over again, then no one's going to take you seriously either. I mean, this is still a high-profile failure for, you know, of enforcement. And I do think, you know, the antitrust sort of, the young guns of antitrust who are out there, they're always saying, you know, the institutional culture at the FTC is such that they hate going to court because it's like a pain for them. It's like this thing that they never do and they sort of want to avoid it because it's a lot of work.

• 48:25Speaker 08

  And the result is everyone knows that they can push their luck because the FTC doesn't want to go to court, so it will give up whatever we're willing to give up. And this is just like a really high-profile example of that.

• 48:38Nilay Patel?

  So if you are any other company and you're looking at $5 billion, here's just a series of headlines from CNBC. November 1, 2018, Apple now has $237.1 billion in cash on hand. January 29, 2019, Apple discloses cash pile. The company reports $245 billion in cash on hand. April 30, 2019, Apple has $225.4 billion in cash on hand. They're just going to peel off the $5 billion. They just set it aside.

• 49:06Speaker 08

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:07Nilay Patel?

  Tim Cook's like, hey, can we make a room next to my office labeled FTC and put $5 billion in cash in that room? Right? And now they're like protected against any, the largest fine in FTC history. These are not poor companies.

• 49:19Speaker 03

  This is not how banks work. Banks just have a slush fund for paying fines, for money trafficking and various other laws that they break.

• 49:27Nilay Patel?

  Right. I mean, that's not great either. Like, but Apple's legal fund, like, the budget for Apple's legal department is a billion dollars a year. Right? Just straight out. Apple's old general counsel just gave a speech and he was like, my budget was a billion dollars a year. And there's a new general counsel, he probably asked for more money, right? Like, it just seemed, there was a line, I think Tony Rom had it in the Post, like FTC has a total of 1,100 employees, they have a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and at some point they were just out-resourced. That to me is the argument, right? They just couldn't outmuscle Facebook. And so you're talking about, should we go to court and lose? The stakes of that might be very high, but your confidence that you can devote all of your

• 50:11Nilay Patel?

  attention and money, and every big law firm in the world is gonna be looking for the Facebook check.

• 50:16Speaker 08

  Yeah, that's fine.

• 50:17Nilay Patel?

  But that's like year, but like.

• 50:19Speaker 08

  Yeah, but like, what if, I mean, the other point is.

• 50:22Nilay Patel?

  Do you employ the best lawyers in the world and you're the FTC, you're like, well, we have a bunch of government lawyers?

• 50:26Speaker 08

  Look, hey, we can raise the FTC's budget in the middle of this thing, right? If you actually want to make the case, then go to war. But, but I mean, at this point, maybe a hundred million dollars is too much budget if this is what they're gonna do with it.

• 50:42Speaker 07

  And that's what Matt Stoller would say, right? And folks like that, they're like FTC, dissolve it.

• 50:46Speaker 08

  Like, why?

• 50:47Speaker 07

  Like, we're done with this thing.

• 50:48Speaker 08

  Why have a budget if there's no point in doing any of this? And also, by the way, the idea that like, the government's lawyers are outclassed by the private sector's lawyers is true in every sort of area, like that's true in criminal justice a lot of the time. It's true, I mean, not in most cases, but like, OJ or something. It's true, obviously, in like, banking, SEC. It's, it's like this classic problem, and.

• 51:15Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's the plot of the show Billions.

• 51:17Speaker 08

  Right.

• 51:18Nilay Patel?

  This is, it's a good show, you should watch it. The plot of that show.

• 51:25Speaker 03

  I have two questions kind of related to this, the money thing. One, who gets the $5 billion?

• 51:32Speaker 07

  The Treasury.

• 51:32Nilay Patel?

  It just, it gets dumped into the treasury.

• 51:34Speaker 03

  Cause the FTC could hire some lawyers. Two, why don't I get $125, like, when Equifax gets fined by the FTC? What, what makes this different? Cause this is a consumer protection situation, right?

• 51:48Speaker 08

  Yeah, but you weren't personally damaged, right? So the Equifax thing was, it's like punitive versus compensatory, like.

• 51:56Speaker 03

  Wasn't I damaged if Cambridge Analytica sneaked away my, my data and convinced me to, to vote for the wrong person? Wasn't I harmed?

• 52:06Speaker 08

  Yeah, but if you can, so this is like the class action, the sort of classical thing is, okay, you have to define the class. So the class for Experian would be everyone whose data was in this specific breach with Experian. Well, okay, so you could say everyone whose data was breached in the like, this is my digital life kind of thing, but like, that's actually not that many people and most of them were kind of active participants in it, like they installed the app. And so it's like, are we just gonna do their friends? What does that have to do with like the facial recognition stuff? And also like, how do we quantify how much, how do we quantify the harm that was done to you as a Facebook

• 52:47Speaker 08

  user as a result of that? It's really more like these ambient privacy things. The model that people are increasingly talking about, I don't know how much like, actually this exists in jurisprudence, but they talk about it as sort of, privacy harms as pollution. It's just like out there. And so then, you know, if you're winning like a pollution case, you're just like, all right, we're gonna spend this money on, on, you know, environmental remediation or something.

• 53:09Nilay Patel?

  The other thing that Facebook got out of this was all their executives got indemnified against all the past bad stuff, right?

• 53:16Speaker 07

  Right.

• 53:16Nilay Patel?

  So if there's, if they find out more stuff that happened in this time period, they can't get punished.

• 53:21Speaker 08

  Yeah, like not even just the stuff that was in the like case that they were getting sued over, they were like, literally anything, which is kind of unheard of.

• 53:31Speaker 03

  Are they just identified from FTC stuff or from anybody? Can I not sue Facebook for anything that's happened before 2019 now?

• 53:39Speaker 08

  Oh, no, you can still sue them. I think it's just the government, yeah, like the FTC can't sue them.

• 53:43Nilay Patel?

  Which is who would sue them. So then the other piece, right, at the scale that we're talking about, this is almost certainly government stuff. So then the other piece is they announced their earnings yesterday and the FTC announced another investigation?

• 53:55Speaker 07

  An antitrust investigation, right? So of course the FTC didn't announce it. Joe Simons would never announce anything.

• 54:04Speaker 07

  He would never. But so in their earnings, they confirmed that the FTC had contacted them last month and said that they're under antitrust investigation, and that's all we know.

• 54:13Nilay Patel?

  So what I want to get at here is, we heard earlier that the FTC and the DOJ had like, split up big tech, and the DOJ was going to take Amazon.

• 54:25Speaker 07

  DOJ has Google and Apple.

• 54:27Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 54:27Speaker 07

  And the FTC has Facebook, who they are very familiar with now.

• 54:32Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 54:32Speaker 07

  And Amazon, right? Because after the Whole Foods acquisition, they're very cozy. Cozy isn't the right word, but they have worked with these folks before.

• 54:40Speaker 08

  But also, like, the DOJ, since that article, we now know the DOJ is kind of looking at everyone, like they're doing a big review of just like, antitrust issues in tech?

• 54:52Nilay Patel?

  Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, was on CNBC yesterday, he said, "Amazon has destroyed the retail industry across the US," which is like, a pretty harsh thing for the Treasury Secretary to say.

• 55:03Speaker 07

  I mean, we've heard a lot of-

• 55:04Nilay Patel?

  It's demonstrably false. Yeah, I mean-

• 55:08Speaker 07

  I mean, this administration hates Amazon, right? We hear it time and time again. It's all over the President's Twitter account.

• 55:13Nilay Patel?

  So what I want to get at here is, the FTC bodied up against Facebook.

• 55:18Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:18Nilay Patel?

  Facebook was already under an agreement to not do bad things. They'd already paid a fine, they already had this like, third-party assessor. What the FTC was able to accomplish was a fine, a different kind of third-party assessor, and Mark Zuckerberg signing a piece of paper every quarter saying, "I didn't screw up."

• 55:36Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:36Nilay Patel?

  So like, not a lot. Like, they didn't get more than they'd gotten before, even though they'd broken the, virtually the same kind of agreement.

• 55:43Speaker 08

  I would even say, like, one of the things dissenting Commissioner Burhich Chopra said in his dissent was, "It's not even that we singled out specific types of data and said, 'You can't collect and share this data because you collected it and shared it improperly in the past,'" which would be like, a reasonable thing to put in a settlement. It's just that you need a paper trail of like, deciding like, "Hey, here's why we need the data," and then you just do it.

• 56:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And Facebook is famously pivoting to privacy anyway. Right, they're like bringing their three messaging platforms together, they're saying-

• 56:18Speaker 08

  We're all, we're all very convinced by the pivot to price.

• 56:20Nilay Patel?

  Sure, but they're doing it anyway and they have, and this is also true. Facebook is a huge company in digital advertising. What they use the data for is targeting ads. They can just say like, we don't need to give anyone the data. We're just gonna use it all internally. We have this paper trail and our ad business is gonna be fine. So like, the accomplishment here is quite low, like overall. So it just seems to me like the antitrust piece of it, you can solve it in two ways. You can do what Joe Simons wants. You can make the government bigger and more powerful. Or you can do this other thing, which is potentially make the company smaller.

• 56:53Speaker 07

  Right, I wouldn't say that Joe Simons wants the government bigger. Now, he's a Republican commissioner, right?

• 56:57Nilay Patel?

  But he's asking for more power.

• 56:58Speaker 07

  Right, yes. A little bit more power to do what everybody is yelling at them to do.

• 57:03Nilay Patel?

  But, but those are like kind of your two choices. And it's like Elizabeth Warren is like, this is a sign these companies are too big to regulate.

• 57:10Speaker 08

  Yeah, but I mean, these are sort of the same choice, right? Like, the power of the government to say, this company is too big. It should in fact be three separate companies, is like, a lot more. Like, that's a much stronger government intervention than just being like, hey, instead of $5 billion, you made $50 billion last year. Maybe let's make it 25. Or, and like also in the context of this specific settlement, you're not allowed to collect this kind of data anymore. Like, that's actually a much more limited government intervention. But, like, because we no longer trust institutions to like respond to events specifically,

• 57:55Speaker 08

  we're gonna have to just be like, oh no, this, like, when we say a company's too big to regulate, that you want like functional regulators, right? Like, maybe a functioning FTC could have regulated a company's Facebook size. We'll never know. Right? So now it's like, actually, the bar for when a company is too big to regulate is getting lower because the regulating, sort of, the regulators are getting so ineffective, and so the only option is to break them up.

• 58:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, or you have just much bigger regulators.

• 58:28Speaker 08

  Yeah, I would love that, but that seems way harder. Like, at this point, it seems less starry-eyed to say, "Let's spend the next 20 years in, like, unending legal war to split up Facebook and, like, write a new telecom act specifically targeted at social platforms and things like that." That seems, like, more reasonable than, "Let's have an FTC that, like, is continually working to keep Facebook in check."

• 58:53Nilay Patel?

  And this is right before we started recording. You were laughing at the idea that we would appoint some, like, data czar with a new agency.

• 59:01Speaker 08

  Right, yeah. Well, so the New York Times had this thing of, you know, "Facebook is this new kind of threat," or, "It's this new kind of power, and what we're seeing is that our institutions aren't able," like, it's beyond the reach of the FTC, which is functionally true. I mean, that's what we found out, but it's not like we don't know what to do. We've done this sort of thing in the past. It's like passing a law. We used to be able to do that.

• 59:26Nilay Patel?

  The chances of that are so very low. I mean, this is like McKenna was laughing at the end of her privacy law. Everyone wants this thing. Everyone kind of understands what it should look like.

• 59:33Speaker 07

  I will come on here every week, explain the necessity of a national privacy framework, and I will toss around my fist and scream, but, God, I don't know if it's ever gonna happen. I mean, we heard for months it was gonna happen in March. It was gonna happen this summer. And I just keep dreaming of getting that, like, that, like, bill, and I get to look at it and write about it, and then, oh, maybe one day the president will sign it, but, God dang, I don't think it's ever gonna happen. And I live for this.

• 1:00:04Speaker 08

  Hope in the dark.

• 1:00:05Nilay Patel?

  McKenna's a young policy reporter on the make. Throw her a bone.

• 1:00:11Speaker 08

  It is true that it hinges on there being actual policy. We haven't really thought that far ahead.

• 1:00:17Speaker 07

  I mean, we're getting really close with robocalls.

• 1:00:19Speaker 08

  Are we?

• 1:00:20Speaker 07

  We're getting really close.

• 1:00:21Nilay Patel?

  We're just like, I understand that this is a therapy session for everyone, but we gotta focus. So the idea that we're gonna appoint, we're gonna create a new agency. And it's gonna, it's gonna regulate all these companies and it's gonna understand their power. I would just say first, it implies that anyone understands their power, which I don't know. It also implies that we're, we're gonna give up and we're gonna, we're gonna say these companies are so big, they're so permanent that we have to, we have to carve out a piece of the government that like permanently looks at them. I do not know that these companies are permanent.

• 1:00:55Speaker 08

  Yeah, I mean, they haven't been around that long.

• 1:00:57Nilay Patel?

  They haven't been around that long. I think Paul would tell you that the companies tend to just destroy themselves all on their own.

• 1:01:02Speaker 03

  Yes, that is my, my third way in this situation is let Facebook be horrible to its customers so that its customers can, can wise up and leave.

• 1:01:10Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so I think here's, here's the core of it. Here's the core of the failure that I see. That could be true, that could be an outcome. Nothing about this decision actually affects how they run their advertising business, which is what their customers are. And so if you look at their results, all this stuff happened, but people are still using Instagram, people are still using Facebook, and if you are some direct to consumer brand, the fastest way for you to sell, I don't know, razors or a mattress or whatever it is, is going on Facebook and targeting those people.

• 1:01:40Speaker 08

  Did I miss the ad read? Do we not know what it is this week?

• 1:01:43Nilay Patel?

  I don't know.

• 1:01:45Speaker 08

  It's something.

• 1:01:46Speaker 03

  I'm just saying, it's a, it's a false hope to hope that the government will protect you from predatory companies who are trying to Hoover up your data. Cause it, you know, lots of other companies are trying to do what, what Facebook did. You know, Facebook was clever and took your phone number when you signed up for 2FA. And that was horrible and wrong and terrible of them, but a lot of other companies are trying to get your phone number as well. And so you, you, you're not ultimately going to be fully safe on the internet. Even if we're the FTC able to perfectly regulate Facebook, you are not now safe on the internet. So the only solution to actually make you safe on the internet will be actually strengthening

• 1:02:31Speaker 03

  your capabilities as a person on the internet. In the long run.

• 1:02:36Nilay Patel?

  So, this is, the reason I pointed out, you know, we have the complaint, I'm looking at it. It's full of screenshots of Facebook's interface. It's full of dark patterns. And they're saying these interface tricks actually tricked people. Facebook said, "You can turn off this setting that lets applications have your data." You push the button, it didn't actually do that. You had to go into this other screen labeled "Application Happiness", and like, you push that button, right? You have a screen, it says "Turn off Facebook platform", it only lists negative consequences. "Turn off the Facebook platform and you will never talk to your mother again", "You will also have to move to a different country", and no, and like, Facebook itself won't work. Like, "Why would you push this button?" And the button is labeled like, "No, don't turn off the platform", or "Yes, punch me in the face",

• 1:03:21Nilay Patel?

  right, like, it's just dark patterns up and down. And I think that is the thing we haven't reckoned with. Like, there are no, there's no one looking at how these interfaces are confusing, how most privacy policies when you... I'll call one out today. Comcast is an investor in Vox Media. They announced their results today. I went, I opened the Comcast page to read the press release for their results. The whole bottom half of my phone was, "Hey, this site uses cookies", and there's a button at the bottom that just said "Accept", but I could still navigate the site, right? So it seems like I haven't accepted these cookies. But the next sentence is, "By continuing to use the site, you accept our use of cookies." So this "Accept" button means literally nothing.

• 1:04:07Nilay Patel?

  Like, that's just a dark pattern all over the internet that I don't think any regular consumer will ever be smart enough to figure out, right? Like, there's no way, you can't, as a human, a single human being, be in an arms race with every dark pattern designer at Facebook, or whatever website. And I, that's the privacy law. That's like, as a collective, we need to say some of these patterns are wrong.

• 1:04:32Speaker 07

  Right. There is a bill in Congress right now with Senator Mark Warner, who we interviewed on the site, go read it, he's great. But there is one that would outlaw dark patterns.

• 1:04:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:43Speaker 07

  And he's running some things in Congress, trying, I mean, he's kind of making himself to be the Senate guy who knows about tech, right? So he's been trying to teach people in Congress about dark patterns, but you're right.

• 1:04:53Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god. Can I go to one of these sessions?

• 1:04:55Speaker 07

  I mean, yeah, sure. I think he'd love to. But, so, I mean, people are thinking about it, but you're right. At the average consumer level, people aren't, you know what I mean? When you see a big green button and a little gray one, you're gonna hit the big green button, because you're not looking, you just want to use the site or the app or whatever.

• 1:05:11Speaker 08

  And I mean, I think on the question of like, how does the government, like, how does some institution stop this, right? You kind of have two options. There are things, you can proactively say, okay, this isn't allowed. Or you can set some kind of boundary and say, okay, well, these are deceptive practices. And then we go to, you know, civil courts or some regulatory agency to decide, okay, what's, what's the line for what deceptive practices are, right? And I think that's part of what's so scary about, and really, you need both of those, right? Like, you need, you need some proactive measures that set up the, the sort of post hoc enforcement. What's, part of what's scary about the FTC thing is, if there just is never, if the post hoc enforcement never shows up, especially

• 1:05:55Speaker 08

  be, like, then the entire system falls apart. Especially because up until now, the government approach to tech, I mean, up until like, the past few years, has been, all right, this is very innovative, it's very good for the American economy, let's let a thousand flowers bloom and sort of people experiment with things. And then if anyone screws up really badly, we'll come in and punish them, so that'll be an incentive for people to behave. And that's what was supposed to have just happened. So it's kind of

• 1:06:24Nilay Patel?

  What's funny is that it had already happened. Like, that's the one that kills me.

• 1:06:28Speaker 08

  Well, yeah, but you maybe you get

• 1:06:29Nilay Patel?

  They had done it in 2012, and then Facebook, I mean, literally, the quote is, "They should have known the behavior is wrong because they already agreed not to do it." And they just kept doing it. And it, and every, there is not, I don't think, anyone on either side of the aisle who really is in love with this FTC settlement. I'm kind of shaking your head at me. I can't think of anyone.

• 1:06:46Speaker 07

  I'm thinking, but, I mean, a lot of what I saw

• 1:06:48Nilay Patel?

  Except for Joe Simons, who's like, "Fuck, yeah, Beltless Swangers."

• 1:06:51Speaker 07

  This is awesome. This is awesome. Um, no, but, uh, I'm trying to think of all the statements I got yesterday, but most people are like, "It's time for a privacy law." "It is time to set the line on what is deceptive and what is wrong."

• 1:07:03Speaker 08

  I mean, that, again, that's cool, but like, at a certain point, what you're asked, like, that's just more buck passing. That's like, "All right, let Congress deal with, like, taking the hard step."

• 1:07:14Nilay Patel?

  Well, this is people in Congress who are like, "It's time for me to put my name on a privacy law." Joe Simons is happy because he got to put his name on, quote, "The biggest one," right? Like, that's, that's his obituary.

• 1:07:24Speaker 08

  Yeah, I mean, that's

• 1:07:25Nilay Patel?

  He nailed it.

• 1:07:25Speaker 08

  Well, like, then it's good that Congress is saying that. I don't know. I guess I, not to, again, get, like, too, like, bread tube about this, but it does feel like at a certain point the government loses the capability to, like, meaningfully punish corporations that do bad things.

• 1:07:42Nilay Patel?

  If you pass a privacy law?

• 1:07:43Speaker 08

  No, no, I'm saying this FTC thing, like, it makes you feel as if fundamentally the will to do that is not there because we're ruled by lizard people, like

• 1:07:54Nilay Patel?

  I don't know what's happening to Russell right now.

• 1:07:56Speaker 04

  I've been very quiet through this entire discussion because, uh, my wife works for Oculus, which is a division of Facebook, and I always have to disclose it, and I don't want to have to disclose every 20 seconds here, but I just want to jump in to say, I don't think that lizard people are where we want to go with this. Uh, disclosure, my wife works for Oculus, part of Facebook, which may be run by lizard people, however

• 1:08:19Nilay Patel?

  Exactly.

• 1:08:21Nilay Patel?

  I think, like, I'm honestly a little worried about Russell, like, we've overworked him a little bit.

• 1:08:25Speaker 08

  I'm just gonna point out, have you noticed that as soon as I, as I brought up lizard people?

• 1:08:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, he jumps right in.

• 1:08:31Speaker 08

  There was a lot of tension, and people higher in the company were like, "Oh, no, this makes me very nervous. We gotta shut this down."

• 1:08:39Nilay Patel?

  Jim Mangoff is like, "Cut it on the lizard people."

• 1:08:41Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:08:42Speaker 04

  All right.

• 1:08:44Nilay Patel?

  Something's gonna happen. I promise you. Too many people are unhappy with the settlement for there not to be more forward momentum. There's a California privacy bill.

• 1:08:54Speaker 07

  Going into effect soon.

• 1:08:55Nilay Patel?

  Feels like a model. There's a GDPR out there. If Europe continues to exist. Open question. Uh, there are some models for this thing out there. And I think the recognition that dark patterns will regularly overwhelm an individual's capacity to make good decisions on their own behalf is starting to get better. It's easy. It's easy for interfaces to trick you into making a bad decision. We just reviewed, uh, Bose headphones. Bose headphones are great. The new ones seem really good. To open the app and adjust the EQ of those headphones, you have to agree to a privacy policy that basically allows Bose to track you. That is

• 1:09:37Nilay Patel?

  bad. Like, that should not be the case. It just seems wrong. My Sony headphones are the same thing. To install Sony headphones connect, you have to agree to a privacy policy. And it is like, we will just share your data.

• 1:09:48Speaker 08

  In my day, they were just dials, like they were physical things.

• 1:09:51Nilay Patel?

  That's what I want. I want like a 12 band graphic EQ on the side of my headphones. I just see, like, that's, no one is gonna read that privacy policy. No one is gonna choose Bose headphones over Sony headphones because they're slightly more comfortable with Bose's privacy policy. Like, there's no market for that. There should be. I don't, we can, we can do our best. Like, our review mentions that privacy policy now because we're thinking about it. But we, the Verge, are not gonna affect, like, just alone, like, an individual consumer's decision. And by the way, they're all little Bluetooth computers and they're all gonna track you. Like, that seems like, the market isn't gonna fix it. And like, a privacy law potentially could get you there. And I think more people are seeing that. Drussel is like, lizard people freaking out. Alright, I'm changing the subject

• 1:10:36Nilay Patel?

  before it happens again. There's one more thing I wanted to talk to both of you about. Uh, it seems like T-Mobile and Sprint's gonna happen.

• 1:10:44Speaker 07

  Not today.

• 1:10:45Nilay Patel?

  We're like, we're kind of waiting with bated breath every night. What's going on with this?

• 1:10:49Speaker 07

  Okay, so T-Mobile Sprint, it's been over a year now since they said they were gonna merge for $26 billion. Woo! Um, so we've been waiting and waiting and waiting. The FCC finally said, awesome. This looks great.

• 1:11:03Nilay Patel?

  I mean, G-Pie has never seen market consolidation, he doesn't like.

• 1:11:05Speaker 07

  Right. He was like, love this. Um, so now we're just waiting on the Justice Department, right? So the Justice Department is... Trying to help them out, I guess, which is the weirdest thing, the weirdest merger thing. It's like, okay, yeah, right now, bad. This is not very competitive. It's going to make the market less competitive.

• 1:11:23Nilay Patel?

  We're going to go from four to three.

• 1:11:25Speaker 07

  Four to three, right. So they're like, you know what you could do? You could sell off some of your spectrum and some of your assets to Dish?

• 1:11:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:33Speaker 07

  And they could be the next viable competitor. So we're waiting for all of that to just be formally announced.

• 1:11:40Nilay Patel?

  Go ahead, Dieter.

• 1:11:40Speaker 04

  One, why are they so eager to help T-Mobile out? Like, it really seems like they're just trying as hard as they can to find a way to make this thing possible, when they could just say nah.

• 1:11:56Speaker 07

  Their staff, the antitrust DOJ staff was like, hey, not a good idea. That was like a couple of months ago. So I mean, if you want to take like the worst look at this, you could say that the Trump-

• 1:12:07Speaker 04

  Lizard people.

• 1:12:08Speaker 07

  Yeah, right. The lizard people, Trump administration, want T-Mobile to merge with Sprint. I mean, John Ledger's been hanging out at the Trump Hotel, right?

• 1:12:16Nilay Patel?

  By the way, the, it looked bad. And then ours technically, a bunch of people have reported T-Mobile just spending a shitload of money at the Trump Hotel.

• 1:12:25Speaker 07

  Right. And just like hanging out at the FCC, like all the time.

• 1:12:28Nilay Patel?

  Who doesn't hang out at the FCC? Great service.

• 1:12:30Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:12:30Nilay Patel?

  Fastest YO service in DC is in the lobby of the FCC.

• 1:12:34Speaker 08

  I would, I think there's like a similar dynamic going on that we saw in the Facebook case where like, the DOJ could challenge it as a violation of antitrust law, but they would have to go to court and they might lose. Like, they actually don't have a great track record of winning antitrust cases lately.

• 1:12:54Nilay Patel?

  And they just got smacked.

• 1:12:56Speaker 08

  Yeah. So they-

• 1:12:58Nilay Patel?

  AT&T, Time Warner is what I'm-

• 1:12:59Speaker 08

  I mean, I think part of, this is sort of the settlement process where they say, you know, okay, we want, we don't want this to be a problem. We think it would be easier if we tweaked it around the edges a little bit. Let's come up with something that works for everyone so we don't have to go to court.

• 1:13:16Speaker 04

  The thing they came up with is, this is theoretically a Republican government, the thing they come up with is like Soviet level industrial policy.

• 1:13:26Speaker 08

  That's coming back, though.

• 1:13:28Speaker 04

  But it's-

• 1:13:29Speaker 08

  Trump is tweeting about like our brave patriot farmers.

• 1:13:33Nilay Patel?

  It's true. Okay, fine. But like to say that it's a real fact.

• 1:13:37Speaker 08

  That's a direct quote. And it's in the context of like giving them billions of dollars. And he's like, I'm giving them this money because they're our brave patriot farmers and we must support them.

• 1:13:46Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:13:46Speaker 08

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:13:47Nilay Patel?

  So Russell is still Russell, just putting that out there. But I just, just to lay it out for the listener, they're gonna combine T-Mobile and Sprint and then they've like rummaged around the tech industry. They've located Dish Network, which is already hoarding tons of spectrum and they have not built a cell carrier. And they're gonna ask very politely for Dish Network to buy some spectrum from the combination T-Mobile and Sprint to take over Boost.

• 1:14:18Speaker 07

  For one and a half billion dollars.

• 1:14:19Nilay Patel?

  Boost is already like laying off its entire marketing department.

• 1:14:22Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:14:23Nilay Patel?

  Which doesn't seem great. So they're gonna take over some spectrum. They're gonna take over Boost. They're gonna get like a license to use T-Mobile's network so they can do something in the meantime while they like figure out what to do with all this spectrum. And then they're not allowed to sell anything for some period of years. And that, that last condition.

• 1:14:41Speaker 08

  Yes. They're not allowed to sell anything to like big companies like Google or Apple or whomever. And that's like specifically to keep them from like having a partner or selling things to somebody that actually could compete.

• 1:14:54Nilay Patel?

  Right. And so like this is the sticking point is we want to give everything to Dish, but we're gonna require that Dish start a cell carrier and not just package all this up and sell it to Google. Because T-Mobile and Sprint don't want to compete with a company that knows what they're doing. That is a crazy amount of like government, right? Like, why don't you just let Sprint die? That's like a choice you could make.

• 1:15:21Speaker 04

  They could, Dish has been sitting on the bench trying to launch a wireless network since 2011. When AT&T was gonna buy T-Mobile and then that thing ultimately got denied during that entire attempt at a merger and a purchase of AT&T buying T-Mobile. Charlie Ergen, CEO of Dish, was just like sitting in the corner going, you know, guys, this doesn't work out because you don't trust AT&T. Well, we'll buy T-Mobile. We'll do it.

• 1:15:46Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I just, if you, if you are like a free market consumer, like, just die. It's like, just let it die. Why are you looking for 5G?

• 1:15:56Speaker 07

  Are we not talking about 5G?

• 1:15:57Nilay Patel?

  Oh, McKenna. We have to win the race.

• 1:15:59Speaker 04

  Welcome to the Thunderdome, McKenna.

• 1:16:02Speaker 07

  We need this merger to happen so we can get 5G and world broadband.

• 1:16:06Speaker 03

  Why is it, why is it a good result to, to have the spectrum split among four or more carriers?

• 1:16:15Nilay Patel?

  The good, the good result, it's a pricing result.

• 1:16:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay, but imagine if they were all good people. Two carriers, one carrier, like, like, I, I, I want these carriers to have more spectrum so that they could theoretically give me a better product. I know it's not a guarantee that they will give me a better product, but I really want these carriers to have more spectrum so that they could, were they to choose to.

• 1:16:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so you, you're correct. And this is the argument for Dish has a bunch of spectrum. Why won't you just turn it into a network? Our answer to this problem is we will give you more spectrum and boost network and force you to make a network. That's one way to do it.

• 1:16:55Speaker 03

  I want to sell off, I want Dish to be allowed to sell its spectrum off for parts to the three, the, the, our three glorious new phone carriers.

• 1:17:05Nilay Patel?

  The Soviet language is really in full effect here. So, one answer to this, and this is true, for a while, the, the Trump administration was batting around the idea of having a single nationalized 5G network. Because if you are like...

• 1:17:23Nilay Patel?

  The best way to use the spectrum most efficiently is to not have any competition. Right? Like, that is the single most effective use of the scarce resource.

• 1:17:31Speaker 08

  Well, I don't even think they got as far as thinking like, who is going to provide service to cellular phones? They were just like, we're going to build the towers only using US equipment, because it was an anti Huawei thing. And then, and then it was like, oh, this became like nationalized 5G.

• 1:17:52Speaker 08

  I don't know. I guess, I guess, but my reaction to Paul's thing of like, okay, would AT&T and/or, like, would one of the big three having this spectrum meaningfully translate to better service for me? Or is there kind of a point where like more spectrum hits diminishing returns? And the problem is not really the spectrum?

• 1:18:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Paul, I think the disconnect in your question is, are they motivated by providing great service or motivated by money? And the answer is like, they have a lot of spectrum, they're not using it all. And they're spending their money on buying friends for their streaming service. Right? Like, that's where their cash is going. They're not spending it, even the money they have, on building more towers or racing out 5G, if you believe it's a race. They're spending it on, how can we get more money? How can we bundle streaming service and zero rate it on our network? And that's universally what they're doing. You might remember such notable successes as Go90, Verizon streaming service, that's totally succeeded.

• 1:18:56Speaker 03

  So they're spending more money in a place that's less regulated?

• 1:19:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but like, we got rid of all the regulations on them. Remember that was Title II? Jeep Pie, Big Mug, got rid of it, said CapEx would go up because there's no more regulations. It turns out, they just, they spent the money on content anyway. So, the argument for we should have four carriers is just an economic argument. Four carriers means there's more competition, means prices stay at this place. We consolidate the carriers, we create more of a monopoly effect. They are more likely... T-Mobile is more likely, if it achieves, if it, if you combine T-Mobile and Sprint, it becomes the same size as AT&T and Verizon. AT&T and Verizon basically match their prices. Right? They're, they're both national networks. They both provide on par coverage, sort of on

• 1:19:45Nilay Patel?

  average. Their prices are basically in lockstep. They're a duopoly at that size of the market. You add a third competitor, maybe T-Mobile is a challenger and it's able to do it, but it is more likely that it will just provide the same class of service. And at some point, you add enough competitors to the market, the challengers are actually challengers and they provide some other, they provide some pricing pressure, which is what T-Mobile was doing. So that's like the argument, which is less about spectrum and more about how many choices do you have?

• 1:20:13Speaker 03

  At some point in the other direction, if, if you were spreading this spectrum across 20 different carriers, that wouldn't work.

• 1:20:20Nilay Patel?

  Right. So the argument here is not, we need 60 carriers. The argument is, we need four. Right? And that's where we've been. And so we're gonna, we're just gonna Frankenstein Dish Network into a fourth carrier. Dish Network, again, I just would remind everyone, is not a cell carrier. It's a satellite TV company and they're gonna force them to become a cell carrier.

• 1:20:39Speaker 03

  I want to be clear. I'm not promoting this solution. I'm promoting, just let them merge together and be the Borg that they want to be.

• 1:20:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And then they'll probably screw up and fall apart. I mean, that's like, that's the thing that you always say. I, I buy it. Like, if there's one thing we've, firmly proven, it's that many of these companies are not well-run. Sprint, for example, an actual cell carrier runs so poorly that it's gonna be chopped in two, one half given to T-Mobile and the other half given to Dish Network. Apparently, there's not a lot of executives who know how to run a cell carrier out there. I just don't, it's crazy to me that we're doing this level of like intricate monkeying with private company deals instead of just saying no.

• 1:21:19Speaker 08

  Do you know what my, so this is my bold proposal, and if Andrew Yang is listening, just think about this as telecom policy. Let Sprint die. Take the spectrum back like into the FCC pool. Don't sell it to anyone used to make Wi-Fi better. Unlicensed white space. Think about it.

• 1:21:39Speaker 03

  I'm into it. I, I'd say, take all the spectrum and make it Wi-Fi.

• 1:21:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but, but.

• 1:21:48Speaker 03

  I'm with you, Russell.

• 1:21:49Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 1:21:50Speaker 08

  Thank you.

• 1:21:50Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:21:51Nilay Patel?

  I don't, between the lizard people and just like raw anarchy now, we're just all over the place, so I'm calling it to an end. McKenna, you did a great job. Very worried about you. Like, that laugh is not normal or healthy.

• 1:22:03Speaker 08

  I just want to make it clear, lizard people wasn't a partisan thing. I'm not like saying Republican to lizard people.

• 1:22:08Nilay Patel?

  No, I know what you were saying.

• 1:22:09Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 1:22:09Nilay Patel?

  Everyone knows what you were saying, and I think you should take a vacation. All right, I'm getting a note from Bankoff, says Russell's got to get off the air. All right, thank you both very much. We're gonna take a break, we'll be back.

• 1:22:23Speaker 06

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• 1:22:56Speaker 09

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• 1:23:25Nilay Patel?

  We're back. Paul Miller.

• 1:23:26Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:27Nilay Patel?

  Every week.

• 1:23:28Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:23:28Nilay Patel?

  The consistency, off the charts. We won a Webby Award for podcast consistency. What's it called?

• 1:23:34Speaker 03

  It's called, what do you want? A medal?

• 1:23:37Nilay Patel?

  Yes. I do.

• 1:23:40Speaker 03

  Okay, well, here you go. Origin PC, which just got bought by Corsair, by the way. Origin PC has made a Frankenstein monster called the Big O Gaming PC. It has, inside of it, it is a PC, it is an Xbox One X, and it's a PlayStation 4 Pro, and it's a Switch dock, all in one chassis. And like, it's got colors and lights, and I don't know why, but it really... Grinds my gears and I can't, I can't.

• 1:24:19Nilay Patel?

  It grinds your gears.

• 1:24:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know. See, it feels out of character for me. I feel like I should love this. Oh, look at this marvelous Frankenstein invention that Origin PC put together. And instead I'm just like, I'm achieved. Is that a word?

• 1:24:34Nilay Patel?

  Wait, why?

• 1:24:35Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 1:24:36Nilay Patel?

  Is it because Origin PC did it instead of some basement hacker?

• 1:24:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe. Who's that guy that used to do all those?

• 1:24:43Nilay Patel?

  Ben Heck.

• 1:24:44Speaker 03

  Ben Heck, yeah. This should have been a Ben Heck project, I guess, but I don't know. It's just, I think part of it is, is I just want the PC. You know, I feel like I'm carrying dead weight, TBH.

• 1:24:57Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:24:58Speaker 03

  I don't know. I'm bringing it to you guys because I'm confused about my own emotions.

• 1:25:02Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's what we're here for. I just, it's just funny. Usually your segment is so celebratory. And now you're like, do you want a medal? It's a PC. Paul, you love those.

• 1:25:13Speaker 03

  Also, as far as I know, this isn't a product. This is like a 10th anniversary.

• 1:25:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:16Speaker 03

  It's like, congratulations to us. We're 10 years old and we got bought by Corsair.

• 1:25:20Nilay Patel?

  So we made this Frankenstein monster. Uh, here's, I'm gonna just go through it with you. Let's try to go through these emotions very quickly. Are you, are you, you're mad that a hobbyist into it, a big company did it?

• 1:25:31Speaker 03

  Maybe a little bit.

• 1:25:32Nilay Patel?

  What if this was like a Skunk Works project inside the big company and it was a bunch of hobbyists? Who like got together and did it? Would that make you happy?

• 1:25:39Speaker 03

  Like if they did it on the, okay, yes. If they did it on the company dime secretly.

• 1:25:45Nilay Patel?

  And then the company was like, this is great. Right. It's like a renegade innovation and they got blessed.

• 1:25:51Speaker 03

  Absolutely. That'd be great.

• 1:25:52Nilay Patel?

  I think that's what it is.

• 1:25:56Nilay Patel?

  Cause like, where else does this come from? Like this didn't happen in like the board meeting. The CEO wasn't like.

• 1:26:02Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 1:26:02Nilay Patel?

  Our future is this weird thing.

• 1:26:05Speaker 03

  Like a top down direction.

• 1:26:07Speaker 04

  Although if there was any CEO that would, that would be that person, it would be the CEO of this company.

• 1:26:13Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's maybe it's, I don't think it's a huge company.

• 1:26:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:26:18Nilay Patel?

  All right. I think, I think we've worked through it.

• 1:26:20Speaker 03

  Okay. Thank you.

• 1:26:21Nilay Patel?

  I think we're gonna get you one. It's gonna torment you in the dark room that you're in. Various lights. Alright, we've gone way over, but we can't not talk about iPhone rumors. Dieter, you wrote a scathing polemic about Lightning. That's not true.

• 1:26:36Speaker 04

  It was not a scathing.

• 1:26:38Nilay Patel?

  I'm trying to sell it for you. But iPhone rumor season is in full effect.

• 1:26:43Speaker 04

  Yes. Girm Rambo over at 95 Mac has a bunch of information about the next iPhones. Presumably it's the iPhone 11. The regular iPhones are still gonna have OLED screens, same resolution. Whatever succeeds the iPhone XR is gonna have a Liquid Retina screen. The interesting bits about it is there's this thing called Leap Haptics, which is some kind of advanced Taptic Engine, and presumably that's going to replace the Force Touch on the screen, which is good, fine, great. I don't know. Apple needs to figure out how it feels with Force Touch, and I think how it feels is it wants it to go away. Also, the camera tech, the wide-angle thing, is apparently gonna have this clever Smart Frame feature where it's gonna use

• 1:27:28Speaker 04

  the wide-angle lens data to like, sit around a regular picture so it can better frame photos for you, basically, like, sort of like a crop, maybe? I don't know. We're gonna see. But like, that's the most interesting thing I've seen so far about their, you know, extra camera that they're adding. And then, it's gonna use Lightning to charge. And I don't know about you guys, but my Twitter feed was like, oh, God, about the Lightning. And, you know, why would Apple switch this year, is my feeling? Like, they, these are iterative updates on the iPhone XS, which were iterative updates on the iPhone XR, and all of those, those other ones have the Lightning port.

• 1:28:10Speaker 04

  So like, it would be expensive and weird for them to switch to USB-C this year. I do think that next year, which is, and people are like, people always say it should be next year, but for real, next year, Apple will hopefully come with a pretty new radical design of the iPhone with less of a notch, and that's the moment, I think, that it should switch to USB-C, when it has a new design to peg it to, so it can build a narrative around technology. Because it's going to look out of touch if it sticks with Lightning.

• 1:28:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, I love this reasoning that you should have a fundamental design shift if you're going to make a major usability shift like Lightning to USB C. But why isn't the fundamental design shift this year? Like this is, Apple does a 10 and then does a 10S. This is their iPhone 8 of 10s.

• 1:28:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but that's what they did. They did the iPhone 6, that was the design change. Then a 6S, then a 7, and then an 8. Right, like, there was no 7S in the mix. They did that extra jump. The 7 was, the 7 was effectively a 6S without a headphone jack.

• 1:29:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:29:17Nilay Patel?

  Right, like, that was just them priming the pump to ruin our lives.

• 1:29:21Speaker 03

  So because we never got a 7S, we have to get an extra S?

• 1:29:24Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm just saying, that cycle, the S cycle is just clearly over.

• 1:29:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, Apple doesn't, Apple doesn't give you a radical new, radical, a significant new iPhone design every two years anymore. It's, it's a much longer cycle. They stopped doing that a long time ago.

• 1:29:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and I, I agree with Dieter. I also think, besides, charging will be moderately easier, which is important. Why do you need a USB C port on iPhone? What do you, what do you, what do you do in except charging it with that port?

• 1:29:52Speaker 03

  So you can plug your Sony camera into it and get all the pictures off.

• 1:29:57Speaker 04

  Everything that you can do with the USB C port on iPad Pro basically works on an iPhone if you use a Lightning adapter. So like, in theory, you could plug other stuff into it.

• 1:30:09Speaker 03

  Like a mouse.

• 1:30:10Speaker 04

  For me, it is, the story is actually about charging. Because if you switch to USB C, they could sell a version of the iPhone that doesn't have an AC adapter in the box.

• 1:30:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:21Speaker 04

  Because you've, you've already got four because your whole, the rest of your life is USB C. So it's a win for the environment. It's a win for Apple because Apple traditionally cheeps out on the AC adapter that it puts inside the iPhone box. It's not a true fast charging thing. And so all of a sudden, like, that, like, that becomes less of a complaint now because everyone's already got a fast charger. Apple, yeah, plug your iPad or Mac charger, it'll be fine.

• 1:30:43Nilay Patel?

  So they don't, right, I mean? If they switch to USB C and they don't put a USB C charger and cable in the box.

• 1:30:51Speaker 04

  They would have to. I'm saying that there could be an option to not get one if you didn't want it.

• 1:30:56Nilay Patel?

  That's all I'm saying. I've noticed there's a lot of anchor stuff in Apple stores lately. I think they're, they're starting to realize like, hey, other companies are better at this than we are.

• 1:31:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:04Nilay Patel?

  And that's sort of like five port USB C brick with a fast charging PD port. Like, we don't need to make this. Anchor will just sell it in our stores for us.

• 1:31:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, Apple always refused to make that. In the early days of USB C, when like I had my laptop fried and like, everything was unreliable and there's still places where like you shouldn't go on Amazon and just buy a random thing. You should do a little bit of research. It's still not as good as it should be, but it's much better now. But in those early days, every time I had a meeting with Apple, I'd be like, why don't you make a better dongle that like has multiple ports on it? Like, why do you only make this one that costs $90 and gives you one USB C port? What are you doing? And they'd be like, oh, the ecosystem will fix it. I was like, no, they won't. They suck at it. The ecosystem is finally fixing it. It just took them four years.

• 1:31:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I, you know, I don't know. I have, I have a lot of lightning cables in my house. Like, this doesn't bother me. Like, what? They already took away the port I want on the phone.

• 1:31:54Nilay Patel?

  They can't hurt me anymore. All right?

• 1:31:56Speaker 04

  I mean, it bothers me, uh, because everything else that I plug in, with the exception of my Kindle Oasis, is USB C. It's great.

• 1:32:05Nilay Patel?

  That is true.

• 1:32:06Speaker 04

  I have literally one power cable that I carry with me in my bag. And whatever thing I've got in my bag, I trust that, oh, if I need to plug it in, I can. Yeah. Except for my iPhone.

• 1:32:19Nilay Patel?

  I just think that the power delivery stuff is so confusing. If your laptop and your phone and your headphones all take the same power brick, the chances that you will accidentally bring along your phone charger to power your laptop go way up.

• 1:32:33Speaker 04

  Sure. I mean,

• 1:32:34Nilay Patel?

  I think that's true.

• 1:32:34Speaker 04

  Okay, Panos. Like, that's, that's the reason Microsoft didn't want to switch USB C on the surface. Like, people will get confused. And like, I don't know, man. People aren't that dumb. They know, they, you can look at it and like, the big one charges more. It's like, basically.

• 1:32:48Nilay Patel?

  All right. Well, I still haven't seen a great multi USB CPD brick. That's the thing I really want, right? Like the brick that has three 30 watt USB ports.

• 1:33:03Speaker 03

  Oh, that'd be pretty big. To get three 30 watts, that's a, that's a 90 watt brick.

• 1:33:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, give me that.

• 1:33:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. All right.

• 1:33:10Nilay Patel?

  I mean, you can get, you know, one with like 10 USB ports, it's 90 watts.

• 1:33:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. Okay.

• 1:33:16Nilay Patel?

  The CEO of Anchor, who was on the show, told me that GAN would let it happen. So I'm, I'm, that's the term that I need, right? Like, I have a 10 USB, USB A brick. It's awesome. They're like, that's the thing that sits on like the main table and you just plug everything to that and it charges. You can't get it for USB C and I'm kind of like, all right, I'm gonna wait. Haven't upgraded the Sony headphones yet, uh, from the M2 CM3s, because I prefer micro USB charging on the M2s.

• 1:33:44Speaker 03

  Whoa, what?

• 1:33:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:46Speaker 03

  Why?

• 1:33:47Nilay Patel?

  Absolutely. Cause I can't plug in my Switch and my headphones and my laptop all into one thing yet. Like that, that, literally that brick, I have like three micro USBs.

• 1:33:58Speaker 03

  The, that the, the new Sony's come with a USB A to USB C cable, so you can continue to, you know, use your.

• 1:34:05Nilay Patel?

  I'm, I'm, I'm waiting for it to be perfect.

• 1:34:07Speaker 03

  Okay. You do that.

• 1:34:10Nilay Patel?

  Perfect.

• 1:34:11Speaker 03

  You know, the nice thing though, is that you actually have GAN to look forward to. Like, this is one of those cases where we really have a true technological breakthrough that is going to make our lives better in the near term.

• 1:34:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:23Speaker 03

  What a, what a great time to be alive.

• 1:34:25Nilay Patel?

  I mean, if you haven't listened to the interview with the CEO of Anchor, literally 45 minutes of that dude being psyched about GAN. Which is, it was one of my favorite conversation. We'll link it in the show notes, but it's in the feed somewhere. Literally one of the most fun conversations I've had, because he was just stoked about GAN. Okay. Can I say this, by the way? I, all the camera stuff they're doing on the back.

• 1:34:48Nilay Patel?

  They're focused on the wrong side of the phone.

• 1:34:50Speaker 04

  You think so? The selfie camera is the one that matters?

• 1:34:53Nilay Patel?

  20 megapixel selfie camera with a wide angle. That you want to, you want to, there, you know, there, I think we saw some rumors say they're forecasting basically flat sales again. You want to kick up those sales? Fix that selfie camera because the iPhone selfie camera right now is just horrible. Give me one of those like swiveling cameras.

• 1:35:12Speaker 04

  Nine to five says it's going to be upgraded and it will support a slow mo recording at 120 frames per second.

• 1:35:18Nilay Patel?

  So they're going to go from eight to 12. I'm saying full on like three lenses, 20 megapixels on the front. Right? Like make those Snapchat filters sing.

• 1:35:28Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 1:35:29Nilay Patel?

  They're not going to do it, but that's, I'm telling you, everyone would upgrade their iPhone camera if Apple was like, this is the best self camera in the world. It takes DSLR quality pictures. I'm not, I don't have any data to back this up. I just know it's in my heart, but I feel connected to the world. That's my job. All right. That's the rich cast. I hope your heart is also connected to the world. Please tell us if you would upgrade for a better selfie camera. You can tweet at future Paul. You can also tweet at Backlon and Sider. You can tweet at me, I'm at reckless. We love hearing from you. You can also listen to other shows, check out why'd you push that button? They put out a new episode yesterday about why people still use Snapchat speaking filters. That episode features the one and only Casey Newton. That's pretty fun. Ashton and Caitlin are doing a great job with that show this season. You go listen to it.

• 1:36:11Nilay Patel?

  Also, new podcast from the Vox Media Podcast Network of which we are the flagship. Going on the weeds and just yelling flagship at Matt Iglesias. One of my top five moments, but new podcast, Land of the Giants. It's from Recode. It's a show about the major tech companies that have reshaped our world. Each season focuses on one of the giants and explores the ways they've changed our lives, better and worse. First season out now. It's called The Rise of Amazon, hosted by Recode's Jason Del Rey, who's covered Amazon for the better part of a decade. He's a great Amazon reporter. It's a great show. Episode one is out now. Go check that out. And that's it. Also, I'm going to say this last thing at the end. Tuesday interview show. Mark Cuban.

• 1:36:48Speaker 04

  Whoa, promo code.

• 1:36:50Nilay Patel?

  It's happening. Rock and roll.

• 1:37:11Speaker 06

  New and exclusive holiday decor just launched online at The Home Depot. Check out the viral Grand Duchess Collection with smart holiday lights you can control from your phone. Easily customize the twinkle across trees, wreaths, and garlands to match your holiday vibe. Create stunning light effects, then switch it up with the tap of your fingers. Even the man in red will be impressed. Shop the holiday decor you want, online only, at homedepot.com.

• 1:37:41Speaker 10

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