iPod nano discontinued, Microsoft Paint's fate, and Foxconn's new factory

The Vergecast summer 2017 continues! This week, The Verge launched Verge Guidebook, a new guide to show you what to buy, what you shouldn't, and how to use it all. Nilay, Dieter, and Paul start off the show discussing the new review system and how-tos coming to the site. Then, there’s another set of obituaries this week: Apple nano, Adobe Flash, and Microsoft Paint. The crew pays their respects to the weird moments these products gave us. Returning for episode 3 of her series Next Level, Lauren Goode stops by to give us behind-the-scenes info on the latest episode and what’s in store for episode 4. There’s a whole lot of stuff in between, so listen to it all and you’ll get it all. 03:22 - Welcome to Verge Guidebook 16:51 - Apple confirms iPod nano and iPod shuffle have been discontinued 22:20 - Adobe will finally kill Flash in 2020 29:35 - Microsoft Paint isn’t dead yet, will live in the Windows Store for free 39:02 - Next Level episode 3 with Lauren Goode 56:12 - A Wisconsin company will let employees use microchip implants to buy snacks and open doors 1:00:20 - Pixel 2 headphone jack 1:01:21 - Apple supplier Foxconn unveils plan to build a $10 billion LCD factory in Wisconsin 1:17:18 - Paul’s weekly segment “Meizu? Me, too” 1:22:22 - Twitter stalls, fails to add new users this quarter 1:23:43 - YouTube’s head of music confirms YouTube Red and Google Play Music will merge to create a new service 1:33:23 - Elon Musk dismisses Mark Zuckerberg’s understanding of AI threat as “limited” 1:37:37 - An eight-year-old reviews the Nintendo Switch 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.

• 0:04Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Verge on YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and your podcast app, because that's also where we are. But here we are, everywhere that you are. Anyway, I'm Neelai Patel. I'm here. Paul Miller is here.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:24Nilay Patel?

  Dieter Bohn is here.

• 0:25Speaker 02

  Hey, how's it going? We are all in totally different places today. It's very strange for me.

• 0:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the title of this episode will be Skype Delay, I think, is where we're

• 0:39Nilay Patel?

  We are, I think it's amazing that podcasting relies to this day on Skype in a way that very few other media industries rely on a single application. Like, you know, if you're like a video editor, there's like a big argument between Final Cut and Premiere. If you, I don't know, if you are an audio engineer, you can use Audition or Logic or what, like there's all this stuff, Pro Tools. But if you make podcasts, there's just Skype. There's, I've literally, nobody ever asked me to be in a podcast using another app than Skype. I wonder if the people at Skype know this. I wonder if it's just like a business for them.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  I think it is. I feel like Skype doesn't actually offer anything over any other chat app that you can run on a computer or on your phone, really, except that you can kind of trust that everybody has it and knows how to use it.

• 1:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, everybody installed Skype in 2009, and now we all have it. And that's the end of it.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  So you don't have to have the conversation of like, are we going to use FaceTime? Are we going to use this thing? Are we going to use Hangouts or the other things? Just no, just, just, just use Skype. That's all it is. It's just the default.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  I did a podcast over FaceTime, but, but it was just me and a buddy, and it was only ever us, and we never had any guests, so we didn't need that flexibility that Skype provides.

• 1:58Nilay Patel?

  Does Skype provide, like Skype doesn't have recording features? They don't even have like, high-end audio support, really? There's like a pro version of Skype?

• 2:06Speaker 01

  I don't think Skype even likes me.

• 2:10Nilay Patel?

  Every time I open Skype, I'm just like, who has hacked this account today? That's like basically what I think. Like, how is my credit card gonna get stolen out of this app today?

• 2:19Speaker 02

  And then there was a drama about their redesigned iOS app, which just like they decided to go crazy town. Everyone's like, uh, you're a utility guys. Don't try and make us do stories in Skype. Stop it right now.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  My old Skype account that I'd had since I first learned about Skype and then I recorded like all the Engadget podcasts on basically, got hacked and, uh, and they won't give it back to me. I like emailed them like, no, I couldn't prove, I couldn't remember some weird detail about my past. And so like, they're like, nope, we're just not giving you this back.

• 2:51Nilay Patel?

  That's all right. Anyway, here's the story of the week. Uh, there's a bunch of stuff to talk about, but lots of little things, not a huge week in news. So I, you know, in our rundown, I've got a bunch of little news, all this sort of stuff. We're going to talk to Lauren Good about the next episode of Next Level, which is awesome. Actually, you should watch it and talk to her in a bit about that. And then I actually tweeted out and had people just suggest things for us to talk about. So I might randomly spice those in, but we should start, actually, and we rarely ever do this. We should start with some Verge news because we launched a big new thing this week. It's Dieter's big project along with Dan Seifert and a bunch of other people, uh, guidebook, which is our expanded reviews program. Dieter, you want to get into it?

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. So we are very excited about it. Uh, we're going with this idea of guidebook because it's sort of like a city guide for tech. And what that means to us is we're going to continue to do the like high end Verge reviews that we've always done. We're going to have really great video, really like good, well-written reviews that explain what's good and like how it works. And, you know, why it matters to you in your real life. Uh, we're still going to give them a score, the whole nine. But in addition to doing that, we wanted to do a bunch of other stuff. So we know that, for example, this is my next, uh, should be updated on a regular basis. So we're going to do that.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  We're bringing back what's in your bag. So, you know, that seems to be what everybody's most excited about, which I think is hilarious, but that's coming back.

• 4:23Nilay Patel?

  I'm dreading being asked to do what's in your bag.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Why?

• 4:26Nilay Patel?

  There's nothing in my bag. It's a, it's like old phones. It's like an iPad that I haven't charged in 10 years.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  You don't have like a, a, a go, a go kit? Like a, I'm going to a tech event. I need to be ready setup?

• 4:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but that, that's not my bag. That's like a, it's like I'm faking it. My, my, my bag is actually very boring. But I'll, I'll come up with something. Anyway, keep going.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  My bag is very interesting. Um, the big thing that we're doing, I'm just saying, it's a water field. It's got a, it's a pocket for a tablet sometimes is in there. I've got a particular kind of battery that I like. I've got so many dongles.

• 5:03Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  I got to your bag is interesting.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Dude, can I?

• 5:06Nilay Patel?

  Cause you're involved.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  This very important update about guidebook to tell you about guide, uh, dongle life. I thought I lost my Bluetooth headphones for like two weeks. Guess where they were? In my bag.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  In your bag.

• 5:22Nilay Patel?

  That's not an update on anything, Paul.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Just letting you know, I mean, part of dongle life is losing Bluetooth headphones.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  Paul, Paul, have you found your hat?

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. It was in my roommate's room.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  It's on your head.

• 5:37Nilay Patel?

  Oh my God.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Um, the big thing with guidebook is that we are integrating a, a how, a really rigorous how to program into it. I have broken Paul.

• 5:49Nilay Patel?

  I love guidebook though. Guide, guidebook is just Dieter, like being a gentle parent, like a gently disapproving parent for all of you in your lives.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  How tos.

• 5:59Nilay Patel?

  Anyway.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Lots of how tos.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  We've got a big how to series. We're going to have a regular series where we actually explain how to use all this tech. We're open to very many suggestions, you know, shoot us an email. We are going to be launching how to stories alongside reviews so that, um, when you, when we have a big review, we'll have the big review. We'll also have a bunch of stuff explaining how to use the thing. And we've also got a, a bunch of like how to video series ideas that we're really excited about. Uh, if you saw the one that, uh, Jake did along with James Vincent's, you should use a password manager article. There's a lot more in that vein, but like cooler, bigger ideas coming very soon. And basically the Verge's reviews have always sort of been backed by the sense that.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  We're experts, right? We know this stuff. We live this stuff day in, day out. We're paying attention to all of the trends and everything that's coming. And so we can put it in that tech context. But The Verge is also about culture and how it affects culture. And so we can take that tech context and humanize it and then present that to you in a review format that is just about, just as much about the gadget as a cultural object, like a movie, as it is about a tech object that has, you know, a processor and RAM and whatever. But taking that sense of the thing that we're very good at and marrying it to, "We actually are going to tell you how to use it," feels like it's genuinely interesting to me.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  And that's, that's why I started by saying it's sort of like a city guide. It's from somebody you trust. They tell you what you need to know, but they're not going to overload you with insanely granular details that you don't care about.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  And I would, I would-

• 7:39Speaker 02

  That's guidebook.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Tell me if I'm speaking out of turn, but I would say most of the how-tos, in a sense, like, I would say most Verge cast listeners are already kind of citizens of that city. And like, I think of a lot of the how-tos that we've done are things that, like, I kind of already knew how to do, or I knew for sure I could figure out how to do it. But if a friend or family member asks me how to do it, I wouldn't know definitively the best way. And also, I'd be kind of annoyed trying to like, help them out.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Right. It's a sort of thing where, like, if someone asks you how to do it, you're just like, "Just give me your phone. I'll do it for you." Because it's easier than trying to like, walk them through it. So we'll actually try and walk you through it.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  So, so just so you know, like, when you see on The Verge a how-to is like, "Well, I already know how to do it." Yeah, but maybe somebody in your life didn't know how, and that's, we're trying to help them too.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Plus, I think these phones in particular, but everything-

• 8:35Nilay Patel?

  There's so much stuff I want to do with it and I I often just need to be reminded that I can.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 8:42Nilay Patel?

  Right? And that's like, that's part of it, too. Like, oh, I can just like, spend a little time and get more out of the things I have.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:48Nilay Patel?

  But I think more importantly, and just in context, like, we're expanding our reviews program. Great. We're expanding this is my next, which tells you what to buy. We're expanding this how to program and tells you more how to how to get more out of what you bought. But I think another important piece of this whole puzzle to me is that I love the wire cutter. Like, I think it's wonderful. I'm very happy to read it and use it and share. I told somebody to buy a laptop off the wire cutter today. Uh, but I think that service is for people who don't love technology, right? They just, they need a service. They need utility. I think our site is for people who love this stuff.

• 9:27Nilay Patel?

  And they want to engage with it more and better. And I think there's a huge opportunity there in this space to build something that is obviously competitive with wire cutter. We're competitors. We love them, but so it goes, but also is different, right? And like meaningfully different and provides a different kind of service. Uh, and that space to me doesn't feel completely, uh, like owned or saturated. And I think there's just a big opportunity for us there. So I'm super excited about it.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I mean, in a very similar vein, like, we also love, you know, ours technica, right? We, we love how like in-depth they get with benchmarks. Uh, but that also like, and yes, they're also competitive with us, uh, but we love them, but that's also not precisely the thing that we're, we're trying to do. We're, we're trying to do something that's particularly for a verge audience and we have a pretty expansive view of what that means. But it's, it's definitely sort of assumes a basic interest in tech and what it means in your life. Not necessarily like knowing exactly what a, you know, Xeon processor is. I should really come up with a better, more, uh, recent nerdy processor example.

• 10:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, especially because I don't. They're around. I mean, like, look, if you are building a server farm or workstation.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:43Nilay Patel?

  Uh, rest assured that we will soon have a how to article for you.

• 10:49Nilay Patel?

  Where Paul builds a server farm.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 10:52Nilay Patel?

  You're taking a trip soon to a location in North Carolina. We've bought a lot of land.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  We're not just building out like one rack. We're doing the whole building. So we gotta work in like cooling.

• 11:04Nilay Patel?

  Solar power.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, hopefully we do some of our own energy gathering as well, for sure.

• 11:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, how to optimize your server farm to run its own air conditioning system, I think, is one of those Verge stories that we have to do.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  We should do a whole series where we start with nothing but sticks and wood and branches and build our way up through all of the history of technology up to phones.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  Just every how to will be like, how to make a fire? How to, you know, smelt metal?

• 11:31Nilay Patel?

  How to smelt? I'm ready for it.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  It's like a skill tree.

• 11:35Nilay Patel?

  I would, I would 100% read slash watch how to smelt. Anyway, so that's guidebook. It's, it's the big Verge news of the week. I wanted to put it out there right in front. I know particularly for the Vergecast audience, it's something I hope you're interested in. It's something we're taking feedback on. You know, we, we just launched the thing. We made a bunch of decisions based on what I think are good bets and like solid data about what's been popular in the past, but we're always looking for the next thing. So give us feedback. We, we love it. You can tweet Reddit, he's at Backlon. Just let him know everything you love and hate about guidebook and your wishes will be instantly granted.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  If you've got ideas for how to articles, Chris Welch is the, the person to tweet. I think he's just at Chris Welch. There's other stuff that I haven't even mentioned, like we decided to create a new category called Editor's Choice, where we talk about our very favorite things. There's a bunch of stuff and we could, we could get into a long discussion about all the different discussions about scores on reviews, because I know that the Vergecast audience might love that.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  We'll set that aside for now, but they're staying or just simplifying the system a little bit.

• 12:38Nilay Patel?

  Give them a TLDR. How are you simplifying it?

• 12:39Speaker 02

  Instead of like zero to 10 and you could have like a 7.7 and a 7.8, we're just going from like, we're having even numbers and then also point fives. Because I don't know if you've heard Neil, I give this spiel before, but we, there's like this thing, it says world of no sevens. Seven is like. Good, but not great. It's like the default score for a lot of stuff. And we found that we were like, it's, well, it's fun to argue about like a point three versus a point four thing. It, to us, that, that's actually an editorial thing. It's not like a strict, like, you know, perfectly evenly scaled benchmark of like, it's pure quality,

• 13:19Speaker 02

  because our scores are contextual to the category of the thing, the time it was released, you know, the context in which it arrived. And so it's, to us, it really is more like a score on a movie review, right? Like, it is this good in this context, in this world. And that, having those tiny little pip updates, gives the impression that it is some sort of scientific measurement, when really what it is, is an editorial, like, I don't know, judgment. And, and so, since that's what it is, I feel like zero, point zero and point five scores do a better job of conveying that to more readers. I will point out that

• 14:00Speaker 02

  I spent a very long time playing devil's advocate to keep the, the score system as complicated and have as many points as possible. Dan Seifert and Lauren Good and Vlad Savov argued for the, the simpler system. We also had some crazy ideas. We, we considered a system where the default score was zero, and a bad device would have a negative score, and a good device would have a positive score, which is like, really fascinating. But I also know that like, the amount of drama that would ca- come from me saying that like, a random Android phone that was pretty good got a score of zero, would not be worth switching to that system.

• 14:37Nilay Patel?

  Oh, it's totally worth it.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  You couldn't take the heat? Yeah, basically, I'm a chicken.

• 14:43Nilay Patel?

  A stock mid-range Android phone is zero, right? Like, you, you buy whatever the best Qualcomm chipset is at that minute, you put a reasonably high-resolution display on it, you have a case that isn't, that doesn't like, hurt you.

• 15:00Nilay Patel?

  That's, I don't know.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Like sanded the edges.

• 15:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah, it's like not spiky or hot in some way.

• 15:09Nilay Patel?

  And like some mediocre cameras, that's a zero.

• 15:14Nilay Patel?

  Think about it. Oh, man. I know we just launched Guidebook, but what if we unlaunch it and then relaunch it? This bonkers score system.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  This is, this is Jake Kastner, his score system. And when he presented it to the team, we literally were just like agape with how, what a genius it was. We just sat there like, we could do this. Pause right there. I dialed the pack.

• 15:37Nilay Patel?

  I, some value to scores is that people understand what they mean.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:43Nilay Patel?

  A score of negative 3.5 is not translatable out in the world. But I will tell you this, this is my promise to the reader. Every time we score something, if you type in the right passphrase on the verge.com, I won't reveal what it is. It will translate it into a bonkers negative score. And if you ever figure out what that passphrase is, you're the winner.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  What?

• 16:02Nilay Patel?

  This is the longest, this is, I'm just saying, it's true. It's absolutely true. I'm not, I'm definitely not making that up. Anyway. Do you want to talk about news?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  No, I gotta go figure out this password.

• 16:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, just keep typing into the website. Just boost those on-page times as long as you can.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  It works better if you open it up in multiple tabs and then type a different word into each tab.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  No, I'm gonna look at the source code.

• 16:27Nilay Patel?

  If you watch every single video we publish a thousand times, the passcode is revealed. Just another idea I have. Let's talk about news. So I actually asked people what we should talk about this week. It was a quiet week. And a bunch of people actually suggested this to me.

• 16:45Nilay Patel?

  It's kinda, it's kinda big news. I guess we're starting on a down, but a bunch of old products are going away.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:51Nilay Patel?

  So Apple today confirmed the iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle are gone, which is end of an era. The iPod Touch remains. It starts at 329. I don't think the Touch has been updated in a million years. Are people out there still buying iPod Touches?

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Well, they just updated it with new storage for this switch over.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  They're not trying very hard.

• 17:11Nilay Patel?

  It's interesting because that Spotify.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  Shuffle clone just came out, right? The Mighty?

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  It's like 85 bucks and it's basically an iPod Shuffle that runs Spotify.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  So Jake wrote like a great like timeline of the like the history of the Nano. And I was working with him on it today and I realized that the iPhone didn't just kill the BlackBerry keyboard, it killed the iPod click wheel.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Like the right when the iPhone took off is it's like click wheel is dead. And like I realized like all the Nanos after the click wheel, I have no nostalgia for. Like it's like, well, I never had that like physical experience with this device. And yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It's sad.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  I mean, the last Nano ran that weird iOS clone with like circle icon. It was, I mean, it literally looked like they, they hired a Chinese contract manufacturer to make an iPhone clone that ran iTunes.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  It looked like a knockoff.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  I mean, I am, I am super not sorry to see the Nano go. I am still bummed about the iPod Classic. I will say that I am pretty bummed about the Shuffle. I feel like in Apple's mind, it's been replaced with the Apple Watch and Bluetooth headphones. But there's something really great, even though you had to connect it to iTunes. There's something really great about this is just a hundred dollar thing that I can clip around that I just know has music on it. I can plug a pair of headphones into it and go out with it. There it's, it's, I mean, it's very gadgety now for us to think of it that way. But there's value. I mean, that's why the Mighty had garnered so much interest because there was like a gap in the market.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  I'm sure that like nostalgia is not the same thing as like making sales. And so Apple can't just keep it around for nostalgia's sake. And they probably have got numbers that tell them there's no way they're going to turn this thing around. But it's still a bummer. It's still sad because there is a thing about having just like a simple, tiny, no frills, no nonsense, single use gadget.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. If Apple made a Mighty, like an iPod Shuffle that connects wirelessly to your phone, you make your playlists and Apple Music and they're just synced there automatically. And then just the light turns green and you know, you're ready to go running. Now you've got a little.

• 19:39Nilay Patel?

  That's the Apple Watch.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  That's the Apple Watch.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, but the Apple Watch is a lot of, a lot of money.

• 19:45Nilay Patel?

  Right. Well, you can get an old Apple Watch. That's what you should do. It's funny if like the mighty, if the mighty's biggest competitors like used Apple Watches, that's pretty sad. I think there's also an argument here about scale and there's been a lot of conversation about Apple's scale lately. Cause there's all these rumors about iPhone pricing and how they might do a crazy expensive like $1,500 iPhone eight. Just because they can't make all of the high end parts they would want to put into it. Um, so they price it higher. So less people want to buy it, obviously. You know, this mighty company is a Kickstarter. If they sell a hundred thousand of these, I bet it's a huge success for that company.

• 20:23Nilay Patel?

  Um, and that's great. And that's the scale at which they live and that's their business and then hopefully they grow that business and everyone's successful and on and on and on. But Apple selling a hundred thousand iPod shuffles is not worth it to them at all. And I think that is.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  It's not worth it to them, even if they could make, even if they could make a profit on it, it's not worth it to them because people keep asking him, how many have you sold? It gets tracked by Wall Street and it would literally, they would lose like billions of dollars in like market cap value from people being, what's going on at the shuffle? Why does this exist? How much does it do it? They would lose more money and like the, the perception of the company and how it affects their stock that they would make off of the shuffle if it had poor sales.

• 21:03Nilay Patel?

  Right. And they, and they have to, and they have to support it and they have to build it into iTunes and they. They should blow up iTunes. Like if killing the shuffle is the thing that allows them to kill iTunes, like do it, right? Like that's worth, that's worthwhile. Like I'm so sorry. Put it in the boat, light the boat on fire, send it into sea and then turn around and then kill iTunes. That's great. Um, I think you shoot a flaming arrow at the boat. If anybody has a bunch of old shuffles and they want to film a video of them launching it to sea and then lighting it on fire with an arrow, I am open to funding that project. Um, just let me know because I'm there for it.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  We should, we should burn them in effigy. Otherwise you're, it's, that's bad for the environment to throw a bunch of molten shuffles into the sea.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would think like, take screenshots of iTunes and then print them out.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  And then burn those. Also more flammable.

• 21:54Nilay Patel?

  True. I mean, we have, we did.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  I'm not mad at the shuffle. The shuffle did a good job.

• 21:58Nilay Patel?

  I'm saying I'm willing to sacrifice the shuffle if it serves the death of iTunes.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Also iTunes is getting better. You heard it here first.

• 22:04Nilay Patel?

  No, it's, that is not true.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  It's true. The launch is faster. It's more responsive. It's not good.

• 22:10Nilay Patel?

  You just got a new computer.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  No, I didn't.

• 22:12Nilay Patel?

  Are you sure?

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:13Nilay Patel?

  Cause that is the only plausible explanation for iTunes getting better.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no.

• 22:16Nilay Patel?

  Like you just threw more processor at it.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Nope. It's improving.

• 22:20Nilay Patel?

  So something out, by the way, speaking of things that overloaded your processor and set things on fire, Adobe has announced that Flash is going away, wait for it, in 2020.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 22:29Nilay Patel?

  Three more years. Paul, can you explain to me why it's gonna take that long? Do you know?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Because that's when the next presidential election is.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  If Flash is gonna run for president.

• 22:44Nilay Patel?

  Uh, that, I mean, it seems like a time of change and rebirth in America will arrive in 2020, but.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  I have no idea. I'm guessing they have to, I really don't know. The, I mean, Flash is in a sense, kind of like an operating system. Like it, it really, like it takes code and interprets it and then it like displays the results of that code running, you know? So it makes sense that for all the companies out there that, you know, like, think of like, like, uh, you know, you get HR training and it's like a weird flash app or something like that, you know, like, obviously that's like very old now, but there's, I'm sure companies still relying on it. So Adobe has to

• 23:30Speaker 01

  provide some sort of like, we will continue to support this thing that we sold you products to build in, you know, for a time, but know that it will be dead then. And like, like how Microsoft deprecates something like Windows XP or whatever.

• 23:44Nilay Patel?

  So can I actually give a small little like appreciation to Flash? Cause it did do some nice things that we are genuinely maybe gonna miss a little bit. I know it's easy to hate on it. I know that it's bad. I know that it sucks on your processor.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Homebrew is actually not a bad example. Here is the thing that Flash did that we do not have a very good one-to-one replacement for. It made it possible to go on the Internet without installing any software, because you probably already had it installed, and play a game or watch, you know, a little fun animation without having to like, hope the HTML5 would work, without having to install anything, without having to set up a Steam account. You just go and do a thing. And somebody DM'd me, he's like, "Oh, it's like, it's another nail in the coffin of the open web." And I'm like, "Well, I don't really consider Flash part of the open web, because it was all tied up with Adobe."

• 24:40Speaker 02

  But it did have this nice sort of cross-platform, nothing-to-install kind of thing, where you could go and have an experience, usually often a game, without actually having to go through the rigmarole of installing software, setting up an account, or doing whatever. And I know that the conventional wisdom now is cross-platform, stuff like Flash and, I don't know, even Java is inherently bad, because it's not, doesn't feel native to the thing you're using it on. But there is a benefit to knowing that you can make a thing and not having to overthink, you know, the platforms that it's going to show up on. It's a little bit agnostic to the client, or at least it's better than some of the

• 25:24Speaker 02

  other stuff that's out there. And so, Flash, yes, it deserves to die. It was not built for mobile, they could never make it work for mobile. John Gruber made this point, that it died as soon as they said they were killing the Android version. All that is totally fair and true, but as we light this boat on fire, it is worth shedding a small tear for the thing that we're, that we're losing.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  A little bit, and I don't see a good replacement for it on the horizon. There's not like, what's the, what's a great, like, in-your-browser or like, out-on-the-Internet game replacement for Flash?

• 25:59Speaker 01

  What?

• 25:59Speaker 02

  There's kind of not there. It got killed by the App Store and, you know, on your phone.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Web, WebGL.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Exists and they're working on a GL or not GL like an equivalent to like Vulcan.

• 26:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Project for the web. There's WebAssembly for like basically you can write native programs. So like there's basically, you know, like open and then like the actual things that Flash do did that can be done by like Canvas. Or like SVG, but like a lot of like the.

• 26:36Nilay Patel?

  We've heard these promises that the like stuff built into the HTML web platform is gonna be able to replace Flash for many years.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Think about.

• 26:45Nilay Patel?

  And I feel like we it's always like two years away.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  I I played, you know, those games where you're like a circle and then you go roam around and try to eat other circles. They're like massively multiplayer. They're like HTML5 games. There's all there's some pretty popular HTML5 games. And then like the equivalent of HomeStar Runner all like happens just on YouTube now. Like if it's just animation entertainment.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I do see what you're saying though. I mean, there is like, there's no like real like Newgrounds equivalent right now. But but there. I mean, like Unity, you can make a game in Unity and like compile it to WebGL, like it just runs in browsers.

• 27:27Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think what Dieter is getting at, what actually I think both of you are getting at is, let's use HomeStar Runner as an example. That was a website that I went to consistently every day. And I had a bunch of other experiences on that website and they could sell me merch and do books and all this other stuff. And they built a business around Flash animations in their home, right, on their platform.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:50Nilay Patel?

  Whereas now, if you wanted to build a business around that, you would do it on YouTube.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:54Nilay Patel?

  And you wouldn't be able to do any of the ancillary stuff of the way that that they were able to do at that time.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  We live.

• 28:00Nilay Patel?

  Newgrounds was a whole business. It was a massive business built on the web because of Flash. And you now you can't build that same kind of business in the App Store, not really at all.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  We live in the Lincoln bio era.

• 28:13Nilay Patel?

  The Lincoln bio. I thought you were talking about biography of Abraham Lincoln. So confused. I was like, what obscure

• 28:22Speaker 01

  I'll workshop that.

• 28:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's a good line. Yeah, link in bio is great, right? Like, everyone is trying to get you to leave the weird proprietary platform and go to some other proprietary platform. No one is really trying to build a single place on the web where they live. And I was actually talking about this with Caitlin Tiffany, one of our culture reporters today, that it's hard to imagine the like, kind of blogs that we had and we started from that led to massive careers like happening again right now. And what you would do right now is you build that off like a newsletter. You wouldn't build it off. I started a blog about some niche interest. And it's just like, flash enabled that moment in it. Like, one of my favorite websites, actually, in the early aughts, was called flash enabled.com.

• 29:09Nilay Patel?

  Do you remember this? It was just, it was a totally weird niche website. It was like, right when flash was like, the hottest thing. And like, flash enabled hardware was coming out. You could, you could code hardware with flash. And it was just, it was basically just a gadget blog for cool flash things. It was just neat. It's gone. It's not relevant anymore. But it was just a moment in time that I thought was really cool. I think that's actually how I got into gadget blogs like way back when. Speaking of other old tech that is having weird moments, Microsoft announced it was gonna kill Paint and then like, un-killed it in a weird way. So they announced that Paint was over.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  They called it deprecated.

• 29:49Nilay Patel?

  Deprecated.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  And then they were gonna put some of the features into Paint 3D.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  Deprecated is the name of the boat that you laid on fire, by the way. The HMS deprecated.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  All hard.

• 30:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so they announced they were deprecating it. And then there was like, an outcry, like, an actual outcry. Like, people were sad about Paint going away. And then they sort of reversed tack and said, we're putting it into the Windows Store for free. But what we really want you to use is Paint 3D. So that's like a

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Microsoft has bad ideas about what its customers have deep affinity and love for. Oh, man, people, people just love them, some live tiles. They love Windows so much. Like, no, they use Windows. They don't, they don't love it. But people loved Paint. They have like nostalgic, fond memories of it. And the idea that Microsoft could miss that and like space on that, they don't have that many products that people have a deep, abiding love for. They should have, you know, it was, it was a miss. It was a mistake. And it's good that they turned it around.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  The, and the three, the Paint 3D is the real signal to me that they're, they're, they're missing it. Like, like, do you remember that time in the Renaissance when they discovered sculpture? And everybody stopped painting in 2D?

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Like, what are you thinking?

• 31:10Speaker 02

  That was a great year.

• 31:11Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I'm not that old.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 31:13Nilay Patel?

  Okay. And then a few more, a few more randoms. And then I got to read an ad, talk to Lauren. This one, I think this is strange. So there's, Google had results this week. We'll talk about that later. But they also released basically the final version of Android O. And inside of it is kind of an Easter egg of an octopus. And our headline, which I thought was great, was, does Google think octopus is a dessert? Which is such an open question. Like, it really adds, really demands of the reader, a semantic discussion of what dessert is. But Dieter, have you heard anything?

• 31:45Speaker 02

  You can, I have not. You can literally candy anything, though.

• 31:50Nilay Patel?

  I mean,

• 31:50Speaker 02

  It's true. You just can. You dip anything in enough sugar, and it could become dessert. I was, I've been using this, this final release candidate, and it's pretty good. I've had a couple of like resets on my Pixel. But, you know, there's a bunch of little surprising features that I really love. So they, I did this, I showed the thing on Twitter where you can, you know, you can drag shortcuts out of the pop-up menu on Long Press. That's fine. You can dismiss notifications when you see the little dot. That's cool. The thing I discovered or forgot about, but I love that's around today. Is if you highlight some text, they're better at like selecting the thing you're trying to highlight. It uses a little bit of machine learning to do that. And then the options that

• 32:35Speaker 02

  pop up are actually smarter. So I highlighted a Google Doc link that hadn't been turned into a URL for some reason because the app was dumb, Slack. But the Android's copy and paste pop up saw that it was at docs.google.com and just gave me a button to open it. So I wouldn't have to like copy and paste a link and figure it out, which is really smart.

• 32:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Anyway, I am pretty excited for Android O. It has like, it has like those two features and that's it. But I'm still like, it's nice.

• 33:06Nilay Patel?

  Well, Google, didn't Google promise like 11 new Daydream VR phones this year? Like it's, it's, it's soon to be August. That's not a lot of time to announce 11 phones and ship them.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  Well, they're, they're probably counting the S8 and the S8 Plus as two different phones, right?

• 33:22Nilay Patel?

  They're going down to nine. It's nine phones.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Pixel, Pixel XL, seven. We've already got like, I don't know, the Zen phone or some random thing, six. I don't know, maybe, maybe they'll count different storage options.

• 33:37Nilay Patel?

  That's where they're gonna be.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  I mean,

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Moto Z.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  Here's, here's Google's real problem with Daydream. It's not VR. It's, I mean, it's VR. Like they, like, nobody cares about Daydream and the scale that they do. Disclosure, my wife works for Oculus. The real problem, though, is AR. They went down this long road for Tango of like, we're gonna put 15 sensors on your phone and it will understand the space around you. But if you didn't watch that Aha video that somebody made with the AR kit, it is crazy. And the idea that anybody wants to buy a whole new phone with like 10 extra sensors that make the thing cost an extra 50 or 100 bucks to get something like that is like, it's not gonna happen for them. And they, they, they got, they got lapped or pantsed by Apple pretty hard with the AR kit, I think.

• 34:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the AR kit demos that are coming out, that Aha video is like fun, right? They're just doing that effect. Like, it's cool. And I just don't know where, where that goes, right? Like, the only compelling thing that AR kit has shown me is like furniture companies will be able to sell me furniture more effectively.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  It's so hot for furniture.

• 34:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but like, so the Aha video is great and cool, but it's a lot of those demos and they need to turn into something else. I think there's still room to compete if you can figure out a compelling vision for what you want to do with it.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  You could pull a Roomba.

• 35:01Nilay Patel?

  Apple's way ahead.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Pull a Roomba and just sell people maps of of the insides of their homes.

• 35:09Nilay Patel?

  No, that is maybe the worst handled announcement in history. So if you don't know what's going on, iRobot, which makes Roomba, and also, I believe, Guided Weapon Systems, they announced their their newest Roomba is what they they do, uh, location mapping inside your house is the driver in your house to build a map of your house. And Roomba just quietly announced, oh, we're gonna start selling that data. We're gonna start selling maps of the inside of your house, which makes no sense, because I don't even know why that

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:35Nilay Patel?

  information is useful to anyone, but also just handled extraordinarily poorly in terms of announcement. But, look, if Roomba, if Roomba can do a rev share with me where they sell the map of my house and I get some money, maybe I'd take it. I wouldn't take it. I have to say, by the way, I have, I'm in the middle of this, like, what phone should I use? Because my iPhone died. And hilariously, one of the phones I want to use is my Nexus 6P that has the latest version of Android O on it. And the fact that that version of Android is meaningfully different than the version that's on the Pixel is like, driving me crazy. Like, stock Android and Pixel Android are not the same. And like, it, it, I just don't understand it. But I guess that's

• 36:17Nilay Patel?

  the way it goes with Android. But it's, but I kind of like stock better is what I'm saying.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Really?

• 36:23Nilay Patel?

  Also, that that phone is huge. So

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:25Nilay Patel?

  It's not the one I should use. But it's, I don't know, there's something about it, but it's just, it's so big and so like, unapologetic about being massive, that I'm kind of into it. I don't know what phone I'm gonna use. I'm just gonna keep my SIM card in this broken iPhone. Here, let's see if it does this. Hold on.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  What is broken about your iPhone? You should just get a tablet and then like, a MiFi, and just walk around like that for a little while.

• 36:48Nilay Patel?

  The thing that is now

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Skype everybody.

• 36:50Nilay Patel?

  Can you guys hear that?

• 36:53Nilay Patel?

  That, that buzzing sound, that like clicky sound?

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Yes, what is going on?

• 36:56Nilay Patel?

  There it is.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:57Nilay Patel?

  Uh, that, it went away, it's gonna come back. That is the optical stabilizer on my iPhone camera desperately trying to stabilize.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, I saw this video on, on Twitter. It was terrifying.

• 37:11Nilay Patel?

  So for a while, I could fix it by hitting the phone?

• 37:16Nilay Patel?

  And like knocking it back into alignment. So every time I took a picture, I would open the camera app and then like smack the phone against the wall. I think over time I just made it worse. Uh, so now you can't have a phone without a camera that works. So I gotta put it in something and I'm, I'm literally sitting here with four phones in front of me debating. It's just gonna be the iPhone seven. But I kinda wanna, anyway, let's move on. If you have thoughts, I'm eager to hear them, but we can move on. Should it be the Pixar? It's the worst. And like the new ones are coming out, but then the, the hot one's gonna be delayed. Do you under, do you know, this is the worst time for your phone to break. The, the worst moment for it. You're in the wrong window. I have so many feelings about this.

• 38:00Nilay Patel?

  Look, this episode of the Vergecast is brought to us by Parachute. Brought to you by Parachute. Brought to everyone by Parachute. Parachute makes the softest, comfiest sheets you'll ever own. They're made from the best fabrics and materials in Europe's world renowned factories. They got a modern design with clean, minimalist styles and neutral colors. They're responsibly made. They're all natural. There's no harmful chemicals or synthetic softeners. They will last and last and actually only get softer with time. And they give back. So they're partnered with the United Nations Foundation to donate malaria prevention bed nets. They've actually donated over 16,000 so far. And all the returns are donated to Habitat for Humanity. So visit parachutehome.com/verge. You get free shipping and returns.

• 38:41Nilay Patel?

  That's parachutehome.com/verge. They offer a 60 night trial. So if you don't love it, just send it back and there's no questions asked. That is parachutehome.com/verge. So like I said, we, uh, we got next level going right now. That's Lauren Good's new series. Everywhere while that's going, we're gonna talk to her. So listen to this. We'll be right back with more of the Vergecast. Lauren, how you doing? You're back.

• 39:04Speaker 03

  Mila, hello. How's the Vergecast going?

• 39:07Nilay Patel?

  The Vergecast so far, I have to tell you, is like a wild ride. It's, I've been describing it as like a live Twitch stream, basically. But it's like a slow week in news, but that gives us more time to talk about your show, which is, you just did your third episode, which is wild stuff. But you talk about prescription video games, which sounds wild to me. Tell me about that.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  So next level, for those of you who perhaps have not seen this show yet, although I'd like to thank our loyal Vergecast audience is aware of it, is a show, a video show, that is exploring next level concepts, prototypes, innovations, things going on behind the scenes at tech companies. Not the commercially available gadgets that you'd normally buy, but just really interesting stuff that you haven't seen yet. And we've been publishing these videos to Facebook, YouTube, and everywhere else you can usually get our videos. So for this week's episode, we went behind the scenes into the labs of UCSF Mission Bay, a lab called Neuroscape, where a group of neuroscientists have been incubating and

• 40:08Speaker 03

  testing video games that they think could be used to improve cognitive function. And that whole area of brain training games are a little bit controversial, so I'm sure we're going to get to that. But the interesting thing is that one of the scientists here in this lab at UCSF has also founded a company, co-founded a company called Achilles. And Achilles is basically taking all of this research, and they're actually trying to push it through as a commercialized, FDA-approved video game that would be prescribed to people as medicine.

• 40:41Nilay Patel?

  That's incredible, right? And we should talk about the brain training stuff, but just start with Achilles. What kind of medicine are they trying to do?

• 40:49Speaker 03

  So it's really interesting, because Achilles is, it kind of has these two faces, based on what I know about the company. It is a Boston-based company, and that's where their headquarters are. And I haven't been there physically, but from the way it was described to me, that is sort of, it's the corporate headquarters. It's a little bit more buttoned up. It's where people are working on things like the FDA approval process. And then in Marin, which is north of San Francisco, they have another office, and this is a little- A little bit of a smaller office, but it's where the creatives are. So you get the sense when you're in the office in Marin, which we visited. You know, this is where people are drawing things and there are cartoon drawings on the wall. And it's got that very sort of loose Northern California vibe to it.

• 41:34Speaker 03

  And the chief creative officer who is based in that office actually came from LucasArts. Excuse me, I want to be clear, I actually, I'm going to double check if he's from LucasArts or LucasFilms. But he was a director there and so he has this really interesting background in, in, you know, the graphic arts world.

• 41:53Speaker 03

  So you, when you're thinking about these games, you might be thinking of things like, you know, first-person shooter games and how is that going to be medicine and stuff like that. What they're actually building at Akili is an iPad game. It's a very kind of friendly looking iPad game. And what it does is it's challenging your cognitive abilities at the same time it's challenging your motor skills. So you're kind of using the iPad and like turning it in ways to navigate through this world in this game, which is called Project Evo right now. But at the same time, you're making cognitive decisions as you're, as you're playing it. But that's only one type of game that we saw. I mean, that is the Project Evo game that Akili is currently trying to make a prescription game.

• 42:36Speaker 03

  It's interesting because when we went into the Neuroscape lab, which again is sort of like the foundation of all of this, these games. The games are actually like pretty physical in a way.

• 42:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you're like running around, this is the second episode in which you've been in a headset, I think.

• 42:50Speaker 03

  I think so. I think there's going to be a third.

• 42:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but you're like, you're like running around. There's like motion tracking and all kinds of things happening. You were in that Vuzix thing that makes like run in place. Describe, describe the games.

• 43:04Speaker 03

  So the Neuroscape games, which again are not the ones that are necessarily going to be FDA approved, but are just at a very sort of fundamental research level right now. These are ones that are physical and they've been designed that way. Like one of them is called Body Brain Trainer or BBT for short, which I just kind of made me laugh because it makes me think of all of those like workout fads. They're like P9X. P ninety D or whatever, like BBT, like can't you just picture like your friends getting really into like BBG, BBT is my latest workout fad. Um, but it is called BBT and there's a Microsoft Connect that is, you know, kind of capturing your motion capture and you connect a Bluetooth heart rate strapped to your chest.

• 43:47Speaker 03

  So the game can read your heart rate and you're looking at a bunch of items on the, on this giant screen. And you have to run around the room to kind of like physically select corresponding items. So if the, if the game flashes like a green pepper at you. And then on the four corners of the screen, there are four different kinds of vegetables. And one of them happens to be a green pepper. You have to run, physically run in the direction of that green pepper. So as you're doing it, your heart rate is actually, it's, it's elevated. It's getting, it's getting higher because you're getting physically taxed. And what they're studying there is, and I realize, you know, as I'm saying this, I'm realizing like, I'm not talking about the cognitive disorders. They're trying to address and I'm sorry about that. I need to get to that.

• 44:28Speaker 03

  But like, as you're doing all this, they're trying to see if because you're so physically engaged and you're so immersed in a game, that that makes your brain function differently. And the kind of thing that they're all trying to address are, are conditions such as, uh, tension deficit disorders, potentially depression, uh, potentially Alzheimer's disease. Really anything, uh, that could impact your cognitive function or your cognitive abilities in some way. So it's like really interesting stuff. Another game I played did involve one of those crazy Omni VirtuX platforms, um, in a VR headset. And then I found it to be, um, I mean, I could go on about that game forever because it was really,

• 45:08Speaker 03

  uh, let me just say this, that night after I played that game, I had a very vivid dream about being lost in a city. And that's what that game is about. That game puts you in a VR headset and puts you in one of those weird little treadmill machines. Where you are wandering around a city and your brain is supposed to be, you know, sort of map, you're mapping it in your brain. Okay, there's the Chase Bank. Okay, there's the Starbucks. And then as each level progresses, they purposely mix up the city, in a sense. So you're sort of feeling disoriented, but you're supposed to sort of be training yourselves and engaging yourselves in a way that helps you remember things, remember patterns. And I was like, wow, I mean, I found the game very challenging.

• 45:50Speaker 03

  And that night, I really did have like, like an alarming dream, like I'm lost in a city. Which is just like crazy to think about. But those are the examples of the kinds of games they're incubating, they're incubating at Neuroscape.

• 46:02Nilay Patel?

  So, and those are supposed to obviously treat ADHD, depression, Alzheimer's. So that, what's the path from, we've invented this game, we're doing these tests to see how well they work, to actually prescribing video games?

• 46:15Speaker 03

  Very, very rigorous clinical trials and gathering more evidence and getting the FDA's approval. So it is a long road. I mean, Neuroscape has been in existence for 12 years and Achilles has been working on this now for at least a few years. So it's a, it's a long path and it's an expensive path. But yeah, I mean, this is one of the things that Achilles hopes will set it apart from other brain training games, because the whole topic of brain training is incredibly controversial. It's something that a lot of scientists have come out and spoken against openly, that, you know, saying that there's very little evidence that any of these brain training games, such as Lumosity, or BrainHQ,

• 47:00Speaker 03

  or Cognifit, or Focus Education, I think even our education secretary, Betsy DeVos' family, has a brain training company. You know, like, people have come out and said there's very little evidence that this type of cognitive training can help with other cognitive issues. It comes down to something that's known as the transfer effect. Scientists say that they're not really sure that training your brain very, you know, in a focused way in one area will help it with other tasks. It's almost like, hmm, you know, if I go to the gym and I like lift arms, is that really going to help? Me run faster, right? And so, or legs, like it's, you're kind of, you're focusing on one task when you're training these brain games, when you're using these brain games.

• 47:42Speaker 03

  And so there's like, the jury is still out on whether that actually helps you in other areas of your cognitive abilities. But then there are other scientists who really believe that this can help your cognitive abilities. And especially as you get people sort of in a more immersive environment. And that's the kind of thing that Neuroscape is trying to prove in its labs. And it's the kind of thing that Achilles hopes to prove through clinical trials. And it's currently in phase three clinical trials.

• 48:07Nilay Patel?

  So Achilles has actual products, right? They have games that are going through these trials. They're not just concepts. Did you get to play with those games?

• 48:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. And that was the Project Evo game. That's the one that they are using right now. And they only let us, interestingly, they only let us play it for short periods of time. And they only let us show it on camera for very brief periods of time, you know, five seconds or less, because it's in trials right now. And so that means that there are people out there, participants who are using a placebo, and participants who are using the actual game they're trying to test. And they're very concerned that with extended media, you know, being out there that shows the games, that the participants could possibly see our coverage and then say, oh, wow, I'm in the placebo group. Or, you know what I mean?

• 48:52Nilay Patel?

  Oh, wow.

• 48:53Speaker 03

  Or figure out that they're in the actual, the test group. So they are, so they're very cagey about showing this game. But I did have the opportunity to play the game on the iPad. And like I said earlier, it just kind of feels like a fun, sort of navigation Mario Kart like game where you're on this road and you're kind of, you're swerving around. But it's engaging your brain at the same time that you're kind of moving the iPad around in your hands.

• 49:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's funny because there's, I think there's a racing game for Xbox called Evo.

• 49:25Nilay Patel?

  Well, in the early part of this project, when you're talking about it, I was like, they made a racing game? I was so confused.

• 49:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, isn't this basically Mario? Doesn't everything come back to Mario Kart?

• 49:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, basically.

• 49:36Speaker 03

  Have you ever used any of those brain training games, by the way? Like, have you ever tried Lumosity or anything like that you play on your computer or a mobile app?

• 49:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I've tried a couple. You know, I am, I have like a really bad memory. This is just a thing. And I've always thought if I could just get better at faces and names, I would be like a superhero. Like, I would be unstoppable. If I could just remember people's names, right? Like, I would, I would be the best journalist in the world, right? And so I've tried a couple, like, you know, they're out there to like, help you get better at it. And they've never really done anything for me. But I think that's just, I might just be broken. Like, maybe it's just not effective. But I mean, I've played with them. They, they just seem like games. And I think that's kind of what you're getting at with this, like, transfer effect issue, is I can get really good at a game, but that doesn't, right? Like, I'm pretty good at Grand Theft Auto V, but that doesn't mean I can actually rob a bank or fly a helicopter.

• 50:30Speaker 03

  Right, right. Or, you know, like, to bring it sort of even more into the analog world, you could be great at crossword puzzles. And you could practice crossword puzzles and think, well, this is great because I'm enhancing my vocabulary and my attention span and all that stuff. But that doesn't mean that you're going to be able to go, I don't know, like, write a dissertation or solve a complicated math problem. Like, training your brain in one area doesn't always necessarily translate to another area.

• 50:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So what's, as you came, I don't want to give away the whole episode, but as you, you came to the end of the episode, what's, what's your big takeaway?

• 51:04Speaker 03

  I think that the idea of digital medicine or software as medicine is a really interesting concept. Because, you know, in recent years, there's been a new category of FDA-approved medical apps, which I think are literally just called like, approved medical, you know, mobile medical apps. That fall within a certain category and, you know, are being used in a variety of different ways. But other than that, there isn't really software that's been prescribed in this. Way, at least according to Neuroscape and Achilles scientists. So, so, um, you know, I think that if they're able to push this through, it's interesting, not just because of the games themselves, but because it would possibly establish or create an entirely new category

• 51:48Speaker 03

  of digital medicine. Um, and obviously healthcare and medicine is a really big topic right now in our country. And so I think the implications are possibly very big and possibly very interesting. But I do think that there are a lot of skeptics around this, you know, this topic. They do still have a lot of evidence to gather and a lot to prove. And, you know, we don't actually know at this point if their games will become prescription based. But it's, it's a really, it's an, for lack of a better word, and I've probably overused it, but it's a pretty interesting, it's a pretty interesting idea. And at the very least, these games are also the kind of thing that can be used as biomarkers in other trials, even if the games are not prescribed as medicine themselves.

• 52:33Speaker 03

  Um, they, you know, could sort of create things that could be used in trials for other things. Um, so yeah, uh, it's a space we're certainly going to be keeping an eye on. Of course, Liz Lopato, our science editor, has also written about this before, as has Rachel Becker. So, once Achilles does have results from, from their phase three clinical trials to share, I'm sure we'll be all over it, all over the story. And, um, and yeah.

• 52:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think the other part of it to me that's interesting is there's so much bad fake sham medicine out there. Like, if this works, then the, you know, it's really easy to clone software. You know, you need like a patent license to manufacture prescription drugs. Often, you need approval, you need regulatory approval, you need permission. Are we going to get to a place where you need permission from the government to manufacture software or develop software that works? Like, prescription software is like a fascinating problem. And then it's like, is there going to be like, the shitty goop version of this, which is just built on lies? Re-centering your energy by playing a video game. Like, there's, there's so much good and bad that comes from this if it works.

• 53:39Nilay Patel?

  And like, the, the way it's going to stretch out, I think is just absolutely fascinating.

• 53:44Speaker 03

  On the upside, there could be medicine with no, you know, side effects. Software is medicine, very little side effects. On the downside, there will be the goops of the world. So there's that.

• 53:55Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so you've got one episode left in this season of Next Level. Tell us about it. Give us, give us a little hint.

• 54:02Speaker 03

  Ooh, okay. I kind of want to keep the company a secret for now. If that's okay. So you're all just gonna have to wait.

• 54:07Nilay Patel?

  Keep the company a secret.

• 54:08Speaker 03

  Until next Tuesday. Yeah. But we are diving into light field display technology. And we're talking to a company that believes the future of our interaction with, you know, digital media could potentially be smartphone free, which is a very big conversation that's happening right now among top technologists. I think Mark Zuckerberg, just earlier this week on Facebook's earnings call, was talking about AR, but said he believes that, anyways, he doesn't seem super bullish on glasses. And he says he believes people are going to be looking at their mobile phones for a long time to come. At least I'm paraphrasing a little bit. But, you know, he's, he's like pro smartphone right now. And then there are other technologists who we speak to who say, yeah, what's, what's the post-mobile world?

• 54:52Speaker 03

  Maybe we won't be looking at these glass rectangles in a few years. Maybe we'll all be looking at things through headsets and glasses. And so this next episode is focused on a company that has been working on some really interesting optical technology, light field display technology. And they're working this stuff into headsets in a way that they think is, is going to change the way we interact with our, you know, the way we compute, essentially.

• 55:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, well, I know what you're talking about.

• 55:18Speaker 03

  We've tried a lot of headsets here at The Verge. Yeah, I was gonna say, we, like, all of us, between you and me and Dieter and Adi Robertson and like, every, Nick's staff, everybody on our staff, I feel like we've probably tried every headset out there.

• 55:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But I think, like I said, I, the listeners don't know, but I know, because I got to read the script. It's a super exciting episode and a super exciting concept. I think the big question for me is these headsets gotta get smaller, right? And like, that's the game, but you gotta check it out. Well, the show comes out on Tuesdays.

• 55:46Speaker 03

  Tuesday, so this is gonna be August 1st, Tuesday, August 1st. Very early in the morning.

• 55:51Nilay Patel?

  August 1st.

• 55:51Speaker 03

  Set your alarms.

• 55:52Nilay Patel?

  Final episode of this season of Next Level. And then we'll have you back on the Vergecast next week to talk about your, your secret headset episode. But the season's been going great so far. I've loved every episode. I've loved having you on the Vergecast. Thank you so much for joining us again.

• 56:07Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me on.

• 56:08Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so here's another story. We're back, by the way. Thank you, Lauren. Here's another story that was suggested that we talk about from Twitter. I don't know if you guys saw this. There's a company in Wisconsin that is offering to implant NFC chips into their employees' hands instead of key cards. And obviously it was announced, no, they haven't done it yet. They're gonna have a chipping party where they serve chips and salsa and put chips in the employees. Like, lots of employees have signed up for it. But obviously it got announced and there was like a huge uproar over it because it is terrifying. But like, really? It's just like key cards. Does this bother you? Like, I might.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  It's not mandatory, right?

• 56:49Nilay Patel?

  It's not mandatory. The employees are voluntarily signing up for it because losing your key card kinda sucks.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  So you can have a key card or you can have the chip. What could possibly be? I don't know. Sounds great.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  It's, it's a digital, it's like a digital equivalent of branding you as like owned by the company is the thing that's creepy about it.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  See, but that's the thing. I feel like that in my soul every time I show up to work, like, oh, these guys, they got me. So now.

• 57:15Nilay Patel?

  I will say that's because I say that to Paul.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, Neelai says that to me a lot.

• 57:20Nilay Patel?

  I point to myself.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  I own you.

• 57:21Nilay Patel?

  I say, this guy, he's got you.

• 57:24Speaker 02

  So instead of good morning, how you doing, Neelai, just a sucker.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  So it's like, like post irony to get yourself branded. You know what I mean? I don't know.

• 57:38Nilay Patel?

  It's not like this makes you an Instagram influencer. It just gets you into the office and like makes the vending machine go faster. Uh, I mean, I was like, Addie wrote the post for us. She actually has, uh, an NFC chip in her hand. She, and she has a magnet in her finger. Ben Papa has a magnet in his finger. I think we have some other people too.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  Ben removed the magnet because he had to get an MRI.

• 57:57Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah. So Addie wrote a story about how her magnet is failing and she's thinking of getting it removed. And the whole biohacking movement, uh, and you know, five years ago, when we launched the verge, biohacking was like a rage. Like we had a bunch of stories about it. They all did extraordinarily well. Um, that movement seems to have subsided because, you know, the magnets are dying and like literally Addie, she doesn't feel anything with the magnet in her finger anymore. And she, in the post about this key card, she said, I have an NFC chip in my hand. I have tried for years to get it to be my office key card and I can't get it to work. I think that's actually the problem, right? The stuff goes obsolete. It stops working. The op like, you know, you're, you, you move office buildings and you get a new like door system and your key card isn't compatible with it. There was ever an argument for open standards. I think it's putting a chip in your hand.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:43Nilay Patel?

  But I would, I would do this. Uh, there's nothing about this that to me suggests I shouldn't or wouldn't do it.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  Well, I saw some research, like I feel, maybe it was almost a year ago or maybe six months ago. Um, I'll try to dig it up, but somebody like made a chip that is, um, basically uses wireless power to allow you to like rewrite it. So it's one. On the fly. Yeah. Oh, wow. So, so the idea is that you would have it implant. I mean, it wasn't just for stuff that was implant, implant and stuff that is like, had to be like built into buildings or something like that. Um, but it could be updated. So like, like I would love it if I could like, you know, put my credit card in my hand, but you know, like. I get hacked, I need a new car and now my hand doesn't work.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  But if, you know, like, and as, as different systems come online, like, you know, some subway systems work with like those contact, you know, the tapper things and our, our office building works like that. Like if, if I could like buy a snack, swipe into work, swipe out of work and like swipe into the subway without ever pulling out my wallet, that'd be pretty cool.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it could all, you know, just be attached to one single government ID and then they can, they can track everything that you do and it'll be fine.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  Right. And there's like a prefix, six, six, six.

• 1:00:01Speaker 02

  Actually, you know what'll convince me to do this is when someone takes this reprogrammable on the fly NFC chip embedded in your hand and makes it work with amiibo so I can just like spam and hack amiibo just with it just all the time.

• 1:00:15Nilay Patel?

  That'd be incredible. You just wave your hand over your switch and you're just like good to go. Ken, someone just tweeted a thing that we should talk about is that the new pixels that leaked don't have a headphone jack.

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  Is that true?

• 1:00:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  Or that they just didn't show that angle?

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  It didn't show that angle. They said the headphone jack wasn't confirmed.

• 1:00:38Nilay Patel?

  I'm looking, I'm looking at some renders here.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  There's renders.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  That's all we got.

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  It's possible there's one on the top.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  This is the Android police article, right?

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, they said.

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's renders.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  As to the headphone jack, we're really not sure what the status of that is.

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:58Nilay Patel?

  So now I gotta put it in the pixel. So I have one last minute with a phone with that. I guess the S8 has one. This is a real Twitch stream of a podcast.

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  The pixel has a, a real big, not real big. It's got a camera bump that I'm not super fond of.

• 1:01:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Like I said, this is a real Twitch stream of a podcast. It's just me reacting in real time to Twitter. It's a great video game I'm playing called People Tweet at Me. So here's, there's a bunch of Apple stuff to talk about. And then we, we definitely have to talk about Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg getting into a fight this week. So the Apple stuff that is like important on the policy side, this is, I don't even know how to begin this story. Trump like tweeted.

• 1:01:39Nilay Patel?

  Tim Cook said, promised me he's gonna build three huge plants. Apple refused to confirm that happened. They just like with no commented on it. So that's like a weird Trump moment, but then Foxconn announced that they're gonna build a $10 billion LCD factory in Wisconsin, which everyone assumes is somehow related to this Apple thing, but

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  But it turns out it's probably making, yeah.

• 1:02:04Nilay Patel?

  It's making TVs for Sharp.

• 1:02:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:02:06Nilay Patel?

  And if the rumors are true, the iPhones are gonna have OLED screens. So there's a huge disconnect there. So that's something.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  Small aside, it looks like they're getting $3 billion in tax breaks if everything works out as they're saying it will. But nobody knows if Foxconn's really gonna do it to the level that would give them all those tax breaks. But if they do get all those tax breaks, that works out to the possibly the equivalent of like a million dollars in tax breaks per job created because they're saying 3,000, but maybe 13,000, who knows? It's all very, very fuzzy.

• 1:02:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's, it's like a very confusing confluence of Trump tweeting and that has, that has just become a phenomenon that is unlike anything else in the world, right? Then Apple just like ice, like just ghosting basically in the story. And then Foxconn saying something that feels like it's related, but might not be related. And then the incentives to lure Foxconn to Wisconsin are out of control. So it's great that a manufacturing thing is in Wisconsin. I'm from Wisconsin. Um, that's great. Build more factories and employ more people there. But it definitely seems like the way our government and the state government are, is luring jobs back from China is by just straight up paying upfront money

• 1:03:25Nilay Patel?

  or like allowing these tax breaks to happen. So I think Bloomberg calculated that you could give everybody in Wisconsin an iPhone. You could just buy them an iPhone for the cost it will take to, to, for these tax breaks to go into effect.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  Well, so I would think, I, I just read this sea steadying book. Guys up on sea steadying?

• 1:03:47Nilay Patel?

  I mean, as a man who only wants to hunt a boat.

• 1:03:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. Say what?

• 1:03:51Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I'm saying my goal in life is 100% to live upon the sea in a nation of my own making.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  Great. Well, so you're already on board. So the base, something that the

• 1:04:00Nilay Patel?

  So to speak.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  So does seasteading, like, one of the big things that a lot of the seasteading advocates talk about is the the success of the special economic zones like Shenzhen, where Foxconn has obviously been super successful. And what I wish somebody in the US government would talk about is like, well, what if we just made, tried to like, imitate China and make a Hong Kong or a Shenzhen, like, no rules, just right, kind of neighborhood where people can come and, and, you know, build big, because we've got a lot of land, we've got a lot of places where not a lot's going on. Like, you wouldn't want to do to it, do it to, like, an existing vibrant, successful city. But, you know, the, the, the companies that are

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  involved in a special economic zone take on, like, extra responsibility for the infrastructure and the building out of the city. In exchange, they get way better, like, tax treatment. Because that's the thing, like, a lot of these tax breaks are just, they won't pay as much, but, you know, they're also going to show up in, at all. Like, they're not going to show up at all unless they get these tax breaks. But, you know, you, you don't want to get it to, like, so buddy-buddy, crony, backroom deals. It'd be nice if, like, if you're going to make a huge factory that's going to make big stuff, you get this deal. Like, make it something that's open to all. So anyways, read, read this book about seasteading. It's really exciting.

• 1:05:27Nilay Patel?

  I don't, how are you getting from, let's build a, by the way, one of the main pieces of Hong Kong is that it is remarkably more free than mainland China, right?

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  That's the whole point.

• 1:05:38Nilay Patel?

  But I don't know, how, how are you getting from?

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  Well, the lack of taxation is a freedom. Like, like, like a reduction in the amount of your profits. Like, you have to, like, look at, when you're building a factory, will this be profitable? And like, well, if they take this much of our profits, it won't be profitable. But if they take this much, then we can pull it off.

• 1:05:59Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm with you. I just think the difference between... Hong Kong and mainland China and places, the United States with lower taxes and other places is vastly different. And I'm also confused at how you're getting from that to, we should build nation states on derelict oil tankers in the ocean.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  Well, the idea is that a country like the US won't do special economic zones. So we just gotta go to the sea where we can be free.

• 1:06:26Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 1:06:26Speaker 02

  Well, isn't that officially a stateless zone?

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. So here's the thing. I've always wanted to go to space because I feel like it's the only like frontier remaining to me. But I realized with the sea studying stuff that there's a whole ocean that we could settle and that I should get in part of that movement first. And, you know, put my money where my mouth is as far as I do want to be a pioneer.

• 1:06:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And you want to run.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  But I think, I think it would not hurt the US to have a special economic zone where companies could come in and build up some infrastructure, build their factories and not get taxed to death. So that's impossible.

• 1:07:02Nilay Patel?

  But that's what states are doing, right? I mean, that, that, that's been around for a long time. Like, the reason they make BMWs in South Carolina is because the, the state lured BMW there. The reason, you know, like, this, this is true of the car industry forever. So now if it's going to be true of the tech industry, that's great. I just think, one, I'm still very confused how we're getting from like, let's build Shenzen in Montana to Paul lives in a nation state on the ocean. That is not clear to me. Second, and if you can bridge that gap for me, I'm all ears. Second, I just think that the thing, the, the negative impacts of, of those special economic zones are real. But some of the things that they're allowed to do there are things that we already take for granted

• 1:07:46Nilay Patel?

  in this country. Also, it's just not clear that this is an apple plant in Wisconsin.

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  It's, my takeaway is, my takeaway is the person whose job it is to confirm or deny things that Tim Cook has said, uh, must be the worst because Donald Trump just like tweeted a thing and it's like, uh, we're not going to say anything about that, which is kind of just step. I know we've been living with like weird tweets from Donald Trump for a while, but just. Pause, just take a moment. The President of the United States, the most powerful man in the free world, just said, "Apple's gonna build a bunch of factories." And Apple didn't confirm, didn't deny, just had no comment. Which is just insane.

• 1:08:34Nilay Patel?

  And it's, yeah, the, the, and the last factory they had in the United States to build the, the Mac Pro, which is still around. Uh, yeah, promised to be updated, but hasn't been updated yet. Uh, Apple won't say if the new Mac Pro is gonna get built in the States, but that factory isn't owned by Apple either. It's owned by a company called Flex. So, right, it's, Apple is in this contract manufacturing zone. So it's, it's not necessarily even for them to say they should do it or not, right? I don't know, it's a weird, a deeply, deeply weird story. Uh, and we'll just see what happens. I think it'd be cool, if you've been listening to this show, the Engager Podcast, for a long time, we have talked a lot about Apple's responsibility to manufacture things.

• 1:09:17Nilay Patel?

  And where they're manufactured and the working conditions in those factories and the lack of transparency in those working conditions. It would be cool, but it's just, we are definitely in a zone where the President tweeted the ad of conversation with Tim Cook, that Tim Cook refuses to confirm or deny.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  Okay, wait, just to be clarified, though. If three Apple partners, or three, or Foxconn announces two more big plants, or something like that, does that count as like a only kind of misstatement by Trump? Cause like, Apple's not going, Apple's not gonna-

• 1:09:51Speaker 02

  Well, but Paul, don't, don't they have to make things for Apple for it to kind of count?

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  It would make me feel better if those three things were making things for Apple, as far as Trump's statement. But like, nobody's gonna like, say, Trump was a liar if, if, unless Apple actually is making their own manufacturing plans, right?

• 1:10:12Nilay Patel?

  No, no, no, if, if, if Fox, if final assembly for the iPhone happens in Idaho, right? And there's three factories there, that's great.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:10:20Nilay Patel?

  And if those factories are owned by Foxconn or whatever, that's fine.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:10:24Nilay Patel?

  If Foxconn is making Sharp TVs in Wisconsin-

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  I agree, that is not what Trump said.

• 1:10:30Nilay Patel?

  Right. So there's just this incredible disconnect in the story that Apple is not talking about because they're just not talking. And that's like Apple's way.

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. Can I ask you a question that's going to make you possibly sputter?

• 1:10:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, love to sputter.

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  How much of Apple's decision about where to put these factories, do you think has actually secretly been about patent deals and Qualcomm?

• 1:10:53Nilay Patel?

  Um, very little.

• 1:10:55Speaker 02

  Zero?

• 1:10:56Nilay Patel?

  Very, okay. Yeah, I just, you know, I'm, I'm still, I'm trying to write this big thing about the Qualcomm case because it is so crazy. People have actually tweeted that we should talk about it, too. And it's, it's just, it's starting to amp up, right? Like Intel has sued Qualcomm now. It, there's like a weird tangential relationship here between the state of Wisconsin and Intel and Qualcomm and Apple, right? Like, Apple just had to pay a huge fine to the University of Wisconsin system because A series processors violate a patent that was developed at the University of Wisconsin. That, I went to that school, that they have an arm of the university

• 1:11:36Nilay Patel?

  system called WARP, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. Their job is to patent inventions that happen in the engineering facilities and then go license those patents out and sue people. When I was in law school there, they were in a huge lawsuit with Intel and they, that like, that spurred a lot of conversation about whether or not universities could be patent trolls. So there's a lot there, right? Whether any of it's actually connected or it's just a bunch of hazy stuff is completely unclear to me, right? Like, yes, there is a lot of processor patents that come out of the University of Wisconsin. What, like, you cannot, there's no evidence at all for the idea that Apple picked Wisconsin because they want to like, do something here, you know, like, and they didn't even do it. It's Foxconn

• 1:12:21Nilay Patel?

  and they're making Sharp TVs. So there's just a bot, like, there's dots. Like, those dots are probably not connected, but there they are. And I, it's, this, the Qualcomm case, I am sputtering now. Good job.

• 1:12:35Nilay Patel?

  The Qualcomm case to me is just, it's so deep, right? It's, there's something in that relationship that is so important, the relationship between Apple, Qualcomm, standards, who gets to invent the standards, who gets to monetize the standards. There's something so deeply important in there that if these two companies don't figure it out and they actually break that relationship between how standards get made and people make money from investing in making the standards, that something terrible could happen, right? And like, that's what I'm like researching and trying to figure out right now is what are the, what are the contours of the terrible thing that could happen?

• 1:13:20Nilay Patel?

  Cause I, the case is so complicated that I'm struggling, I'm personally like just struggling to understand it. And I think my suspicion is that the way Qualcomm has built its business around inventing these standards is opaque to most people. That's not the business you think about Qualcomm being in. In seconds, Qualcomm has an ad on this show for its chips and like gigabit LTE chips. And that is in Snapdragon and that's like the business you think Qualcomm is in, right? They sell chips in the phones, you buy the phones, the phone makers presumably buy the chips, everyone's happy. But so much of their business is inventing standards and racing ahead so that they can patent the standards ahead of time.

• 1:14:04Nilay Patel?

  And then there's a whole other part of that business. It's like, who pays them for the patented technology? And none of it, it works the way that you would think a business works. Just literally none of it. And none of how Apple pays to make iPhones works the way that you think a business works. It just doesn't. Like, I have said this on the show before, but Apple literally buys the phones from Foxconn. That's just not how I have ever thought about Apple's. Work, right? I assumed Apple paid Foxconn to make the phones, right? So they buy a bunch of parts, they pay Foxconn the work to like assemble the parts, they help them buy tooling and stuff. And then the phones are theirs, right? At the end of the day, like the same way that, I don't know, you would hire a contractor, like come to your house, like build a fence.

• 1:14:50Nilay Patel?

  You don't buy the fence, you buy the work, right? But they buy the phones. And so that just like completely changes the nature of that entire, that entire relationship. And I, it's wild. And so like, what I'm saying is, I kind of understand that. I've been working on figuring it out. That's how I spent a lot of time this week and probably spent a lot of time next week. We just hired Sarah Jong, who's an absolutely brilliant tech policy reporter. I'm hoping she can help me figure it out because she's a lot smarter than I am. But if they get it wrong, if they push it, I think they could break something really important. And I think it's, it's actually worth us talking about that in some meaningfully important way.

• 1:15:27Nilay Patel?

  And I think Qualcomm's in a position where they could, their business could get crushed in a way that affects how standards operate across the industry. I don't know. I could just be making it up. I, we could get to the end of this process. We've done all the research and I write the piece. I'm like, this is fine. Apple should win or like, this is fine. Qualcomm should win. Like, that could want to be one of the outcomes too. But I just, the more I dig into it, the more I suspect that everyone's playing with fire.

• 1:15:51Speaker 01

  This is why on my seas dead.

• 1:15:52Nilay Patel?

  On a boat.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  We'll have no patent law.

• 1:15:58Speaker 01

  I'm considering copyright law. I think we keep copyright, but no patents.

• 1:16:03Nilay Patel?

  That is 100%.

• 1:16:07Nilay Patel?

  No laws, man.

• 1:16:08Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 1:16:09Nilay Patel?

  What did you say earlier, Paul? No rules, just the right neighborhood? That sounds like the ad for a condo building.

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  No rules, just right is Chili's slogan, I believe, or Outback.

• 1:16:19Nilay Patel?

  Outback, Outback Steakhouse.

• 1:16:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:22Nilay Patel?

  Sad that I know that. Paul's gonna live in an Outback Steakhouse on the ocean.

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  All right, all right. You kind of made, you'd want to come to that.

• 1:16:31Nilay Patel?

  Paul, copyright law and a blooming onion. It's gonna be, I think.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  Made out of algae.

• 1:16:38Nilay Patel?

  Okay. I am going to read disclosure. Do I have to disclose the ad that I'm about to read? I don't approve these ads. They just give me the copy. So we just talked about Qualcomm, but I'm going to read this ad because the copy was given to me. That's your disclosure for the day.

• 1:16:53Nilay Patel?

  This episode of the Vergecast brought to you by Qualcomm Snapdragon Gigabit LTE. With download speeds up to seven times faster than typical home wifi, Snapdragon Gigabit LTE can turbocharge all your connected apps. You can stream 360 videos at 4K resolution with minimal buffering. You can access files in the cloud nearly as fast as you would if they were stored on your phone. And you can download hours of movies or music in a matter of seconds. To learn more, visit snapdragon.com/gigabit today. Okay, Paul.

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:21Nilay Patel?

  Every week.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:17:22Nilay Patel?

  You do a second.

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  Without fail.

• 1:17:23Nilay Patel?

  Uh huh.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:17:24Nilay Patel?

  Tell me about it.

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  Meizu? Me too.

• 1:17:31Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  Um, how do you guys say it? Meizu or Meizu? Meizu?

• 1:17:37Nilay Patel?

  Meizu.

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  Meizu.

• 1:17:38Nilay Patel?

  I haven't, yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  So Meizu's got new phones out, the Pro 7 and the Pro 7 Plus. Front of the phone looks so old. Side of the phone looks very old and thick and just not the most... Because Meizu's like, pretty good at like staying like pretty cutting edge. I've just always loved this company and always been sad that they never bring anything to the US. But they put a screen on the back and instead of it just being like an e-ink thing, like we've seen like phones that display some small amount of information. But this is like a whole AMOLED display. It's like, um, I don't know, a couple, a couple inches. And it can show you the weather, it shows you the time, shows you alarms and stuff like that.

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  Shows weird abstract graphics. But the thing I love about it is you can, you can use it for rear camera selfies. It just seems really smart. And so like, I just think to any phone manufacturer, you know, if you've got the space, got the time, got the battery life, just put a screen on it.

• 1:18:43Nilay Patel?

  Do you remember when point and shoot cameras just kept on adding screens to like the front? Or like swivel screens and like Harvard got insane for a minute?

• 1:18:50Speaker 01

  What was that camera with a little screen on the front?

• 1:18:52Nilay Patel?

  I feel like it was a Kodak.

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  What was it?

• 1:18:55Nilay Patel?

  There were so many. I thought it was an Olympus.

• 1:18:57Speaker 02

  Didn't Sharp make a dual screen like clamshell?

• 1:19:01Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god, Sharp dual dual screen clamshell point and shoot camera. Sign me up. Someone get on eBay right now. There was a time when we used to cover every point and shoot camera that came out as though it was breaking news.

• 1:19:11Speaker 02

  The time has passed.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:13Nilay Patel?

  I like this idea of the phone with a screen on the back just for the camera.

• 1:19:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just think it's, I mean, it makes the phone obviously thicker, probably shorter battery life, but it's just like, it's like a nice option. I'm just glad it exists for people only in China.

• 1:19:27Speaker 02

  I got a, I got a, a DJI Osmo and I was playing around with it and I realized like I really would prefer to use the, the rear camera, but there's no way to actually see, you know, what I'm shooting. I have to use the front camera, which isn't as good. So I would love to have a little screen on the back.

• 1:19:42Nilay Patel?

  This is the mo- this is the module for the Essential Phone that I want. Additional screen for selfies.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  Oh, that's smart. That's really good as a module. Wait, I found a Samsung camera from 2009. And I remember this because of the, like, they're like, they've got a front facing LCD, like, what are we gonna put on there? Like, not everybody looks the same. We can't just put a photo of a human. Because, well, I'm not that person. I don't, maybe it's just a sticker. So they put the picture of a clown in the press shop.

• 1:20:16Speaker 02

  What if? What if you don't want to pay for a screen and you don't necessarily want that, you know, thing, you don't want to see what's the back camera seeing all the time? So you make a part of the phone slide up and it reveals a mirror.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 1:20:34Speaker 02

  And then on the front, when it slides up, there's a physical keyboard.

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  I bet any company that did that would be very successful and continue to produce products.

• 1:20:42Nilay Patel?

  That phone 100% runs Android 2.3. Like, that, that hardware can only be married to an early, early version of Android.

• 1:20:50Speaker 01

  No, the Palm Pre had a mirror when you slid it up. That's what you were talking about, right?

• 1:20:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was the Pre. Don't you remember, uh, that investor, uh, made like a terrible misogynistic statements? What was his name? With the crazy.

• 1:21:05Nilay Patel?

  Oh, oh, with the crazy hair, he looked like the scientist from, uh, from Independence Day.

• 1:21:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  He was like in like LCD Sounds System or some, some band.

• 1:21:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, he went on Good Morning America and just hissed, "Release me."

• 1:21:17Speaker 01

  That was not true, by the way. I did not say.

• 1:21:20Speaker 02

  Roger McNamie.

• 1:21:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  Good old Roger McNamie.

• 1:21:26Nilay Patel?

  Uh, yeah, he was like, "This is for ladies."

• 1:21:27Speaker 02

  It would be a Birch cast if I didn't make a vague weird Palm reference. So it's done and we can now end the show.

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:21:33Nilay Patel?

  I would also buy a Palm Pre that run Android 2.3. That's the thing I would do.

• 1:21:38Speaker 02

  Uh, dude, it existed. It was the, the Sony, uh, thing that looked like a bar of soap. The Sony Android phone, it was a, it was a horizontal slider. Uh, it was amazing.

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  Man, so much history.

• 1:21:52Speaker 02

  I had one. It was great. We reviewed it. We wrote about it.

• 1:21:56Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we gotta, go ahead.

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  Samsung TL 220 and TL 225, you wanna see a picture of a clown? Just saying.

• 1:22:04Speaker 02

  I'm talking about the Xperia Mini Pro.

• 1:22:07Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 1:22:08Speaker 02

  That's off. I've reviewed it in 2011.

• 1:22:09Nilay Patel?

  The Xperia Mini Pro is great. Somebody reminded me of the HTC First yesterday, the Facebook phone. Uh, and I admitted to them that I actually really liked using that phone, although I turned off all of the Facebook features. It was just a nice piece of hardware. Uh, we, I, you know, I put a bunch of earning news on the end here. We're kind of going over time. Is there anything? Google made a bunch of money. Facebook made a bunch of money. Twitter, uh, did not add any users in America this last quarter. Uh, it is actually like losing some users. Is that, how do we think about that?

• 1:22:41Speaker 02

  I'll be sad when Twitter is gone, uh, but I'll have the same feelings about it, uh, in three years that I have about Flash today.

• 1:22:49Speaker 01

  You know what? Twitter shouldn't have killed Vine. I think it's karma.

• 1:22:52Nilay Patel?

  Ooh.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  Like Twitter, Twitter should embrace rando apps that let you create interesting, different Twitter content and not buy things and kill them.

• 1:23:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I just, I, Twitter to me right now is such a painful thing that I, I've, I've literally started using Twitter only to say like positive funny jokes to the, like our audience because they're great, uh, and to promote our stuff. And I have not tried to have a conversation on Twitter in forever because it just descends into madness instantly. And it, that's, I've, I've never been happier with my Twitter experience. It's like. Jokes and questions, like, you know, a bunch of people tweeted us about what we should talk about today. That was fun. And like, here's great links from our staff. That's great. But any real conversation, that that time for me has passed on Twitter. And I think that's, that's a huge problem for them. Last one that we should bring up, and I actually

• 1:23:45Nilay Patel?

  think this is really cool. Micah went to a music conference this week, saw the new head of YouTube Music, Ler Cohen, who's a big deal in the music industry, like, right up there with Ivy, and I think, in terms of stature, not in terms of like, I produce Tom Petty, but in terms of stature. Anyway, Cohen said, there, by the way, you should watch, if you have not watched The Defiant Ones on HBO, about Jimmy and Dre, you should go watch it. It's, the last episode kind of turns into an Apple commercial, it's fine. It's what you would expect. But the early episodes are, the footage that they unearthed of those two doing stuff is just worth watching. Like, the first time Dre DJ'd at a club

• 1:24:29Nilay Patel?

  in Compton, like, you can watch it. It's incredible. So like, just go watch it. It's like, it's just worth it for the archive footage and the people telling story, like, oh, that's great. And at the end, they're like, and then they reinvented music again with Apple Music. And you're like, well, I'm not going to watch the last 20 minutes of this. But like, but of course, you have to forgive them for it, because of course, that's how it ends. But it's totally worth watching. Anyway, Ler Cohen, who runs YouTube Music, said that YouTube Red and Google Play Music are going to merge to create a new service, which I think confused a lot of people. Dieter, it seems like you have a handle on this. Can you go through it?

• 1:25:03Speaker 02

  So, Google Play Music has had a few different names for the subscription part of it, that, you know, not the free version, but the actual, like, you know, music service that you pay for. It was All Access, and then Unlimited, and then I think it's just Google Play Music, you pay for it now, even though there's still a free version. And then they launched YouTube Red, which is, don't get commercials in YouTube, and also you can download them for offline viewing. They also launched another app called YouTube Music, which was just for watching music videos and using YouTube as a, like, a music player. The confusing bit is-

• 1:25:42Speaker 02

  Everything I just said, basically. Because if you subscribe to one of those two for-pay services, you get the other one included. And nobody knew it, and nobody knows it. So like, there's people who bought YouTube Red and had no idea they have a free music streaming service in Google Play Music. Vice versa, there's, you know, five or 10 or a dozen people who are still, sorry, that's cheap. Cheap shot at Virguscasters, love Google Play Music. All the Google Play Music listeners didn't necessarily know they had YouTube Red. So, basically, the teams merged, the YouTube Music and the Google Play Music teams, I believe it was. And so, everyone saw the writing on the wall that eventually these services were gonna

• 1:26:24Speaker 02

  merge, at least in terms of branding and just like, the idea of the offering. So, he finally admitted it onstage at this music panel, Micah was there. Micah wrote it up, we published it, and then immediately had to like, update the article, because it was so clear to us that we were talking about subscription services, but everybody on the internet who saw it in that minute last night, assumed we were talking about the apps, because everybody just thinks in terms of apps now. So we had to clarify that we were talking about the branding and like, the idea of these subscription services. So that's what's happening. It'll probably happen next year. Google won't, by the way, Google, just like Apple wouldn't comment on Trump, Google wouldn't comment on their own executive statement about this thing beyond them saying, "We're looking into it, we're thinking about it."

• 1:27:09Speaker 02

  What should they call it? They should call it YouTube Music. Google Prime? They absolutely should. No, they should, they should call it Google Prime, or something they're about. They need, it needs to be a subscription service that gets you a whole bunch of Google crap. It needs to get you YouTube Red, it needs to get you Google Play Music Call Access. It needs to get you cloud storage on Google Drive. It should give you a discount on YouTube TV, if not a YouTube TV subscription. It should get you, like, free rentals and Google Play movies. They should, they should put together a package of stuff, just like Amazon has with Prime, that you get when you subscribe to Google. That's what they should definitely do. I don't think they're anywhere near having

• 1:27:52Speaker 02

  a coherent set of offerings for a consumer to make that possible. This is one of the reasons that Amazon is so compelling and interesting is they have with people noticing, but not really paying that much attention, slowly over time, built up a whole cadre of services anchored to, you know, free shipping on Amazon that people just feel like you need to have a subscription to. Google could do the same thing. They just have, they don't have as firm of a foundation as Amazon did, but it's very clearly what they should do to like make it understandable that you can, you can just use Google stuff for free, or if you pay them a little money, you get like way better versions of those.

• 1:28:33Speaker 01

  In like a really weird parallel that I just noticed right now, like Google on YouTube has had this adpocalypse basically since like the PewDiePie stuff happened.

• 1:28:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:45Speaker 01

  Around the very similar timeline, Amazon gave every single Prime subscriber one free Twitch subscription. So you can go to your favorite streamer for your, and you just take your parents' Prime account and give, you know, that streamer a subscription for a month, which is the most valuable thing to Twitch subscribers. And apparently it's like huge, like as far as like it's a huge chunk of revenue for these Twitch creators, which Amazon just like out of the kindness of its heart, one day decided to just give to everybody who was already subscribing.

• 1:29:24Speaker 02

  No, that's not kindness. Actually, Ben Popper had a very smart tweet about Twitter and how they had no user growth. That one of Twitter's core problems is they don't offer a way for anybody who like contributes to the platform, any creators on the platform, to make money off of it. YouTube is as bad as they are at like rev shared as like little money is or actually is unless you get really huge, brought people on the platform because it gave them a way to make money. And so Amazon making it slightly easier. To make money on Twitch, making it like a basically free thing for the user to like

• 1:30:01Speaker 02

  kick money to somebody is a genius move because it draws creators to the platform and encourages them to make stuff on the platform. So I don't see it as kindness out of Amazon's heart at all. I see it as a very, very savvy Machiavellian move.

• 1:30:17Speaker 01

  I definitely agree with you.

• 1:30:18Nilay Patel?

  By the way, I completely disagree about Google Prime. I think they

• 1:30:22Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:30:23Nilay Patel?

  I think, well, yeah, just, I mean, it's a good idea. Like, sure, that'd be great, but the value of YouTube Red is so high that if you just told people for this amount of money, you don't have to watch ads on YouTube and you get a music service, like they haven't even accomplished that so far, right? Like, Google Prime is a great idea, but like the baby step of saying, "Hey, you already watch a, like, an incredible amount of music on YouTube," which people do. Like, just by the numbers, it's one of the biggest streaming services, YouTube as a video player, saying, "You already watch a lot of music on YouTube. You don't have to watch ads anymore and you get a whole, like, streaming service over here."

• 1:31:08Nilay Patel?

  That is just a compelling thing to say to people, right? Like, you don't have to do the whole thing.

• 1:31:14Speaker 02

  What if when you pay for Google Prime, they will send you a hacked old iPhone 4 that they bought? And it will allow you to use iMessage on Android because it'll forward all your messages.

• 1:31:28Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God, and that's all I need.

• 1:31:30Speaker 01

  You really thought this through.

• 1:31:35Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna spend the entire weekend looking at these phones and not making decisions. What were you saying, Paul?

• 1:31:40Speaker 01

  Can Google really advertise like that? Can Google's like, "You know, you know what you hate? Watching ads on YouTube. Well, we solved that for you."

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  Like, is that like blackmail or ransom or something like that? Like, like, is that like a bad look for them? Is that why they haven't pushed Red as much as they could have? I mean, Red is literally, like, of all the things, I would cancel Netflix before I'd cancel YouTube Red. Like, of all the things I pay 10-ish dollars a month for, YouTube Red is absolutely, absolutely my favorite. I would cancel Amazon Prime before I cancel YouTube Red.

• 1:32:19Nilay Patel?

  Wow, I don't know about that one's tough.

• 1:32:20Speaker 01

  I watched so many YouTube videos for work and for pleasure and not seeing ads before them is just such a great gift.

• 1:32:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think they can't. I mean, it's the product, right? I mean, there's YouTube Red originals, but I couldn't name one of those for you right now, like.

• 1:32:37Speaker 01

  The thinning.

• 1:32:38Nilay Patel?

  That's the, sure, everyone's favorite show.

• 1:32:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a movie.

• 1:32:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, everyone's favorite movie. That's what I said, obviously, because I'm so familiar with the original content on YouTube Red. I don't know, like, that's the product. Like, just, it's your product, be proud of it. Like, they, they say it's doing well. I think if they just said, this is also a music service that we're gonna push as hard as we, you know, like Spotify pushes its music service, that starts to become like a real, like, that's why you would stop paying for Spotify.

• 1:33:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:06Nilay Patel?

  Right? But because you're already, so many people already watch music on YouTube and have Spotify. So you can just bridge that gap together. Anyway, we are ridiculously over time. Uh, that was like, it was like a chill wander through our feelings kind of Vergecast.

• 1:33:23Speaker 01

  We didn't, we didn't talk about Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, and I wanted to weigh in just to say that if Elon Musk says that Zuckerberg's knowledge on AI is limited, well, what's the opposite of limited? Unlimited? Is he saying that he has unlimited knowledge about artificial intelligence? Like, everybody's knowledge.

• 1:33:42Nilay Patel?

  Less limited?

• 1:33:44Speaker 01

  I guess so. I don't know. I just, I just think Musk is wrong. Zuckerberg's kind of right, but James Vincent, who wrote up our piece for The Verge, is super right that there are dangers about AI, but there's not Skynet.

• 1:33:56Nilay Patel?

  Here's what, I, I read, James' piece is great, you should read it. I read, like, other coverage, like, CNN coverage, like, like mainstream press coverage. Um, and so many people brought up the video that Zuckerberg made about his, like, in-house smart house with Morgan Freeman's voice is like, he built this thing powered by Morgan Freeman. And it, it just drove me insane because that video is so fucking fake. Like, it's so, so fake and bad. That is not evidence that he knows anything about AI. It's evidence that he has a great video director and the money to pay Morgan Freeman. It's Morgan Freeman, right? Am I crazy?

• 1:34:36Speaker 01

  No, it, it. It's evidence that he knows how friggin hard it is to build AI. Like, people think that we're just gonna drop the jigsaw puzzle pieces of code into a hard drive one day and accidentally create some super intelligent being because the exponential curve of processor speeds hasn't slowed down and will never slow down for the next 50 years. I just think, I think, I think their knowledge is limited.

• 1:35:07Nilay Patel?

  I just, I don't know. I, yeah, I, there's so many ways to read into this and we don't, we just don't have time to do them all, but I think I am happy for them to be competitive on how to build AI, right?

• 1:35:18Speaker 01

  Oh, they definitely should beef.

• 1:35:20Nilay Patel?

  They should, yeah, they should be beefing all the time and building stuff. But I will tell you that that video Zuckerberg made with his Morgan Freeman house is nonsense. Like, they did not, Facebook did the Facebook thing where they, they faked it and pretended it was real and everyone bought it because Zuckerberg's like this, this character. But the reality of his house is probably like fairly close to a restaurant system with an Alexa because that is what you are able to build at this time. And it's not Morgan Freeman whispering to your child as she goes to sleep. Like, this is not how it works. And like.

• 1:35:55Speaker 02

  Meanwhile, Andy Rubin's house can, you know, scan your retina and read your license plate as you drive in, so there's that.

• 1:36:01Nilay Patel?

  But that, like, so that was David Pierce's piece in Wired about the Essential Phone. Like, Rubin's point there is great. So like, as you drive into Andy Rubin's house, a camera reads your license plate and like announces you because he has a database of license plates, which is crazy. But that is like a bunch of things you can do, add it up in a different way, right? He basically has like, super if this than that in his smart house. Great. Maybe that's all Essential is, is super if this than that. Zuckerberg's video, just go watch this video. That's all I'm saying. It's like, you know, Apple made the commercial with The Rock in Syria this week. And everyone was joking, I think Joanna Stern joked and I joked and like, on Twitter like.

• 1:36:44Nilay Patel?

  Siri, all these answers from Siri are gonna be like, "I searched the web for you." But Apple is really smart, and they only had The Rock saying things to Siri that Siri could deliver on if you live entirely within Apple's ecosystem, but whatever, fair. Right? It was just like The Rock doing fun things on a Rock Day, but like, asking Siri to read his calendar to him and like, read a list to him, which Siri can do. Zuckerberg's video is like, it's just a science fiction movie. And I think there's like, just a real difference in how these two characters are perceived. And what Elon Musk is saying is, his knowledge of this is limited, but I'm actually building the thing. Right? Because that's like, the Elon Musk way of doing things. Of course, Elon Musk also tweeted he got verbal approval to build Hyperloop, so God only knows what's happening at this point in time.

• 1:37:28Nilay Patel?

  I didn't sputter that time, but I'm still worked up about this, this Morgan Freeman video. Anyway, that is the show. I want to call it one thing that you should definitely read on The Verge at the very end. Tamara Warren's son reviewed the Nintendo Switch. He's eight. He is a delight. I met him when I, the first time I met him, he told me he really wanted to work at The Verge, and now he's got a piece on The Verge. That's great. It is like, the most adorable thing we've ever published. I cannot encourage you to read it more than I am right now. Anyhow, you can follow us all over the social medias. I'm at Reckless on Twitter, Paul is FuturePaul, Dieter is at Backlon. You can also follow Verge on Twitter, we're on Instagram at Verge. What is happening on Instagram stories lately is really great, and I encourage you to look at it.

• 1:38:12Nilay Patel?

  We've just been playing with that a lot. You can also listen to more podcasts. Lauren Good, who's on the show, hosts Too Embarrassed to Ask. Kara Swisher hosts Recode Decode. Peter Kafka hosts Recode Media, which is wonderful. We're also getting ready, we're like, we've had some conversations, we're about to pilot some new shows, you're gonna be hearing those segments on this show at first, as we test them out, so get ready for that, it's gonna be cool. I really would love more ideas, like, we're in pilot season, basically, so let me know if there's shows or formats you want to hear, I'm super into it. And you can rate and review us on iTunes, which you should do, because that is ultimately how people find podcasts. Or tell your friends, just tell all your friends. And I think that's it. That's the show, thanks for listening, rock and roll. Paul. Paul. Snip, snip.