Live from Code Conference

This week on a late night, sleep-deprived Vergecast, Nilay and Dieter reunite in Los Angeles to attend Recode's Code Conference and meet up with Lauren Goode and Casey Newton to give their take on the interviews and throw in a few anecdotes from the night. Things get silly. Also, Paul Miller updates us on new PC backpacks on this week's Gadget of the Week/Gadget Corner (we're still working on the name). 04:26 - Jeff Bezos 34:56 - Paul’s Gadget of the Week 37:32 - Casey reads an ad for Squarespace 39:35 - Twitter talk 48:07 - Facebook talk 55:01 - Sundar Pichai 1:10:55 - Elon Musk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to this The Vergecast. It's weird without the music, I just realized. I don't have the, will you sing the little song?

• 0:09Speaker 01

  That just sounds like you sang your name over and over again.

• 0:17Nilay Patel?

  Alright. Hello and welcome to this The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Verge.com. I'm Nadia Patel, I'm the editor-in-chief of The Verge. And I gotta say, we're at the Code Conference. It's very late. I'm joined here by Dieter Bohn.

• 0:29Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 0:29Nilay Patel?

  Lauren Good.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 0:31Nilay Patel?

  Casey Newton.

• 0:31Speaker 03

  What's up?

• 0:32Nilay Patel?

  All-star Verge West panel. We, I'm just gonna be honest with the audience. It's 11:38 PM.

• 0:40Speaker 03

  It's unfathomably late.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Which is actually not that late, but we've been up since really early.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  I've been, I've been working since six.

• 0:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  And on only a few hours of sleep, like, and we have spent the past hour and a half listening to news and information about cyborgs and AI and like, I'm so slap happy.

• 1:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02Speaker 02

  I can't even.

• 1:03Speaker 03

  Literally anything could happen on this podcast.

• 1:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, mostly what's gonna happen is you're gonna hear the tinkle of ice cubes.

• 1:09Speaker 03

  Hello, bourbon.

• 1:10Nilay Patel?

  Or is it bourbon? Or is it, I gotta, so I didn't do a fake Scissor Vodka ad last week.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was real mad.

• 1:16Nilay Patel?

  Angry mail about it. So this episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by Scissor Vodka. A fake vodka that I made up that I'm gonna keep plugging until somebody pays me for it.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Raise your-

• 1:25Nilay Patel?

  Presumably somebody here. There's billionaires everywhere.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, right?

• 1:28Nilay Patel?

  I gotta go to some Elon money.

• 1:30Speaker 02

  Raise your glass, your ice cold blast to our producer, audio producer Andrew Marino, who's gonna deal with the garbage that I'm gonna send him at the end of this.

• 1:37Nilay Patel?

  Oh god, it's such, it's not good. Andrew, you're, you're, you know what? You're just a good guy. You're, you're a, you're a good, trusting, caring man who sent us to LA, to Rancho Palos Verdes with a bunch of microphones and a dream, and here we are, making The Vergecast.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  So we should describe what the Code Conference is for people that don't know.

• 1:57Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it's, you know.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  Some say it is the premier tech conference.

• 2:04Nilay Patel?

  I agree.

• 2:04Speaker 03

  In America.

• 2:05Nilay Patel?

  Um, yeah.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  And it used to be the all things, it was the D conference for a long time.

• 2:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Prior to this, when Recode was all things D.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  Then they retired the D.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  It started and they retired the.

• 2:18Nilay Patel?

  It's really late. You can't do that.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  They retired the D. D conference actually started before the website all things D started. This was years ago, over a decade ago.

• 2:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And so, but the past few years. There will be a quiz on this at the end of the podcast.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  But yeah, we've had speakers in recent years like Elon Musk, uh, you know, Bill Gates, um, Sheryl Sandberg, Jack Dorsey, uh, Jenny Rometty. I mean, the list goes on and on. And then back in the day when it was the D conference, um, people like Steve Jobs would actually come and speak on stage, which was, um, pretty remarkable because he did not do many non-Apple event appearances.

• 2:53Nilay Patel?

  Right. I mean, the Co-conference is amazing and to be here is amazing and to watch Walt and Kara pull together their incredible network of like everyone powerful in tech to basically like prove themselves on stage is amazing. Um, but today was a very long day.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:12Nilay Patel?

  Um, we just came from Elon Musk, which we will talk about in depth later on in the show. But I think it's safe to say that all of us had to take a 20 minute break after Elon being like, we all live in a simulation. I'm going to inject neural lace into your jugular veins and my company is not entirely dependent on something called earth-based revenue, uh, which his Lauren has just been giggling about that quietly for like literally an hour.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  As opposed to that old Martian money.

• 3:43Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it was just wild. Uh, so we'll do that in depth a little bit. Um, but it actually started, Code started yesterday.

• 3:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:51Nilay Patel?

  Uh, with a barn burner. I mean, there's tons of speakers, I'm only going to focus on a few, but barn burner opening. Lauren's still laughing at earth-based revenue. Like she's melting in front of my eyes right now.

• 4:03Nilay Patel?

  One, two, three, serious. Uh, no, we don't have, it's, look, they, the, this audience knows what we're doing. Right? Like, take the normal Vergecast, push it into much more tired and a little more drunk. And here we are at Code.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  I'm not drunk at all. It's a huge problem.

• 4:18Nilay Patel?

  Get to work, dear. That scissor vodka won't cut through the night by itself. Anyhow, so we're at Code. It's been amazing. There's, uh, one more session tomorrow, which the highlight, I think, is gonna be Nick Dent of Gawker. But the main, the big tech players are all over and done. And like I said, it started yesterday with, I think, one of the best opening sessions I've seen at Code. Uh, Jeff Bezos spoke and he kinda started a little bit slow.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 4:46Nilay Patel?

  And then Walt asked him about space and then like his mind expanded and he said incredible things about what he wants Blue Origin to accomplish. And then he got really expansive about Amazon. So let's, let's go through that a little bit. What, I mean, what did you think of Bezos? Lauren, I'm looking at you. Lauren is like, she literally just fried out. Like, I watched the light blink out from behind her eyes.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Well, we talked a lot about AI. Artificial intelligence has been a recurring theme throughout the conference. And Walt and Kara are making a point to ask pretty much every single guest on stage what their thoughts are on AI. Um, and one of the things that Bezos said is that, that I found notable is that he thinks you can't possibly overstate how much impact artificial intelligence is going to have on society over the next 20 years, which you can either interpret as like, wow, that's great. Like, robots are gonna make our lives better. But it could also sound somewhat ominous, I guess, if you decide to look at it that way. So I found that to be, uh, pretty, pretty interesting. Um, I also, uh, thought,

• 5:46Speaker 01

  well, I know that Amazon has apparently been doing this education program for people in its, uh, distribution centers for a while now. But he really made a point to talk about that, which I kind of see as, uh, um, I don't know, maybe in some ways a counter to the reports that have been coming out in recent months about Amazon's treatment of workers. And then he offered me a job in this really indirect way, which was really bizarre.

• 6:11Nilay Patel?

  It wasn't indirect. It was very direct.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  By indirect, you mean by like shady, like?

• 6:16Nilay Patel?

  No, he basically, Lauren asked a question about wearables, which is great.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Yes, I said three questions about wearables.

• 6:22Nilay Patel?

  And then, and then she, she used all of the pieces of that buffalo and wrote like a report about it. Jeff Bezos dodged the question about wearables, uh, which you should read. It's amazing. Um, but Lauren asked a question about wearables and pushed him, asked to follow up. And then what was his line? He's like, it sounds like you want a job in product. Come see me after the show.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Come see me, come talk to me.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. Did you?

• 6:41Nilay Patel?

  And both Walt and I kissed to Jeff Bezos for coming after our time.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  I mean, come on, I'm still, I'm, I'm all in. I'm doubling down on journalism, guys.

• 6:51Nilay Patel?

  That's where the money is.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  That is where the money is. Snapchat. Okay. Sorry, Jeff. I'm busy making content.

• 7:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Sorry, we've been making, Lauren has been forced to make an endless series of Facebook Live videos all day long. So the 10 minute death marches for the rest of your life.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  But I want to hear what you guys thought about the Bezos session.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  His thing was like, he like had the reality distortion field in the room. Everybody, everybody was like, whoa, like I am in love with you right now, even though you were saying things that when you just look at them out of context are like patently dumb. So he got asked the, you know, Peter Thiel versus Gawker question. And he led with like quoting Confucius or the apocryphal Confucius that, um, you know, like, uh, oh, if you seek revenge and you shall dig two graves, one for yourself. And like, I don't know. He had a bunch of like one liners that were really like, huh. But in the room, they totally played.

• 7:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  And

• 7:53Nilay Patel?

  He had great presence, like commanding presence.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  And so like, everybody at this conference was like, oh, look at this, the, the Steve Jobs mantle. He might, he might be, he might be going to Bezos. And I have feelings about that.

• 8:07Nilay Patel?

  Well, so that's a thing at Code.

• 8:11Nilay Patel?

  I talked about this with a couple of people today. Um, the history of the D conference was, I mean, it's astounding history, right? Like the highlight performance of the D conference, I think, was D10. When Jobs and Gates were on stage together.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 8:26Nilay Patel?

  This was famously the only conference Jobs would do and he would say amazing things and be off the cuff. He was really, he was Steve Jobs. Um, and I think the, the history of the stage and like being on stage with Walt for this opening session is very much. Can you perform at this level? And I think three years ago Elon Musk's like had that kind of moment.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  He absolutely did.

• 8:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, everyone left the room that year with an Elon Musk man crush.

• 8:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was, it was, I mean, it was just incredible. And this year Bezos had that moment.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:54Nilay Patel?

  Owned the room and I think we were saying, he had these like, he was prepared, right? He had things he wanted to talk about in a, in a way he wanted to talk about them. He, he, I disagree that the things were patently dumb. I think is what I'm saying like.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Well, they weren't patently dumb, that's fair.

• 9:08Nilay Patel?

  His answer, like he gave this, you know, Bezos is a wild person. He owned, he runs Amazon, he runs Blue Origin, a space company, and he owns the Washington Post.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:18Nilay Patel?

  You could spend an hour talking about any one of those things.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Or AWS.

• 9:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, or yeah, you could, you could just drill into some Amazon thing. Like, let's talk about delivery logistics.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:27Nilay Patel?

  Clearly capable of doing that or AWS, right? Let's talk about your server business. Um, but his answer, I think about Peter Thiel.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  Was actually like, I called it savvy because he didn't get into, does he agree with Thiel and he hates Gawker? He didn't get into, he got a little bit into like First Amendment stuff and like, you know, uh, beautiful speech is easy to defend. You have to be able to defend the hateful, the hard speech or the ugly speech. Um, but the, the, his basic answer to that question was like, yo, you're a billionaire. Don't waste your time on this.

• 10:04Nilay Patel?

  Suck it up.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Get, suck it up, get a thick skin.

• 10:07Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Which is like, yeah.

• 10:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:09Nilay Patel?

  I thought that was great and I thought his line, you know, he got asked about Donald Trump, who's attacked Amazon and several times. Obviously has a contentious relationship with every newspaper, but particularly the Washington Post. Um, and what'd he say? He's like, my predecessor, K Graham was like, during the Watergate hearings was threatened. I think it was, I'll put your ass through the wringer, but Bezos wouldn't say ass on stage.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  I don't think it was ass.

• 10:33Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 10:34Speaker 02

  It's not the thing that could, that gets put in a wringer.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Hmm. Googles what?

• 10:41Nilay Patel?

  If only there was an AI in this room that could tell me what body. Anyway, uh, while Lauren looks up that quote, uh, Bezos is like, I own the post. I believe in journalism and I'm willing to have whatever one of my body parts put to the wringer.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  It's tit, by the way.

• 10:57Nilay Patel?

  Was it?

• 10:57Speaker 02

  And so he doesn't have that.

• 10:59Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  And so that's why the, his body part line played so well because

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  he had something else.

• 11:04Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:05Nilay Patel?

  Got it.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  The man tit.

• 11:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:09Nilay Patel?

  I don't think that's what it's called.

• 11:12Speaker 03

  Well, I hate to drag us away from this particular point, but it's notable to me that we've avoided

• 11:17Nilay Patel?

  Late Night Vergecast.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  What I thought was the best part of the Bezos presentation, which was everything that he had to say about space, including that he thought that the earth in the future would likely be quote zoned residential.

• 11:30Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:31Nilay Patel?

  Light industrial and residential.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, light industrial and that we would move all of our heavy industry off world. And, and there was sort of this moment where you were like, Jeff Bezos is literally talking about how this planet will be zoned like

• 11:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  300 years from now and, and is probably not wrong.

• 11:46Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  And this, this is where Earth base drive, no, Earth base drive, it was Musk.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  That was Musk. Oh, yeah.

• 11:51Nilay Patel?

  Well, if you really, if you really look at, we should really talk about Bezos in space because it, there, there's a lot of things to unpack with him talking about that. But it's funny, the two themes, the big themes here, one is AI, which is eventually all human consciousness.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:06Nilay Patel?

  We augmented by machines. And the other one is we have to leave the planet.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:10Nilay Patel?

  And it's just like, right before, uh, Musk, Nathan Mervold spoke and his whole thing was basically like, I have done the intensive research to prove that asteroids will destroy us all.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  And isn't it so hilarious?

• 12:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It was like, ha, ha, we're all gonna die.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  But in the meantime.

• 12:29Nilay Patel?

  He's like, here's a video of an asteroid. Yeah.

• 12:33Nilay Patel?

  In the meantime, I've cut a grill in half and taken beautiful photos of a, of a burger. It's so confusing.

• 12:39Speaker 03

  But in terms of the unexpected themes, yes, like

• 12:41Nilay Patel?

  That's a deep cookbook reference. And if you didn't get it, I'm saying you need to do some work. Like, go study the cookbook reference. It's really good. Have you seen the photography?

• 12:50Speaker 01

  It's pretty amazing.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  His cookbook weighs like 50 pounds, right?

• 12:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  That, that

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, we have about 40 pounds. It's a 2,500 page book. Yeah.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:00Nilay Patel?

  Isn't it called the modernist cuisine?

• 13:01Speaker 01

  The modernist cuisine.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  It's not often called a good book, but it is very long.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Science and food book.

• 13:06Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, at one point, he was a, we talked about Mervold on that too. At one point, Nathan Mervold was explaining Kirchfield. He was explaining some like-

• 13:15Speaker 03

  Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation.

• 13:17Nilay Patel?

  Right, and he was explaining why-

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Wow, Casey Newton.

• 13:20Nilay Patel?

  Look at this guy.

• 13:21Speaker 03

  My, my master's thesis was about it, so it was just a crazy coincidence.

• 13:25Nilay Patel?

  He's like, this is why toast burns. I'm writing a 2,500-page book on bread. And just like threw that out there and he was like, here's a video of an asteroid exploding. It broke a million windows. It's hilarious. Very, just a very strange. I'm beginning to realize all of goat conferences about humanity is doomed.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:40Nilay Patel?

  And also this CEO of Tinder is speaking tomorrow. So it's like a real, just a lot of themes coming. Anyhow, so Bezos, he's got Blue Origin.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 13:50Nilay Patel?

  I think there is an extreme temptation to talk about Blue Origin as though it is in the same category as SpaceX. And I think Bezos took full advantage of that yesterday. So Blue Origin is, I watched Lauren Grush react to this video in real time in Slack today because I sent her the Bezos video and I was like, there's a story here somewhere for you. Lauren's a wonderful space reporter. And she got back to me and she was like, he sounds like a complete tool, like-

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Because they're doing different types of exploration, right? Some are orbital versus suborbital, is that the-

• 14:23Nilay Patel?

  Well, and also like-

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Oversimplifying it probably, but-

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Bezos is doing space tourism and plus some other stuff that I'll get to. And Musk is like putting a rocket into space every two weeks.

• 14:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  So it's like a huge difference.

• 14:35Nilay Patel?

  And he's delivering cargo to the International Space Station. He's got a rocket, the Falcon Heavy, which presumably can get him to Mars. Bezos can get to suborbital space. The rocket that looks hilarious in my mind. Again, it's very late. And then it comes down.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Is it like a giant fire TV stick?

• 14:54Nilay Patel?

  Yes. The fire TV stick, I have to say, an extraordinarily sexual TV stream.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Why, why isn't it just, why don't we, why don't we just call it the fire dongle if we're-

• 15:03Nilay Patel?

  No, we can't make, no, that's not allowed. That, the word has been excommunicated by the technology community.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  Cruising right into the midnight hour.

• 15:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, anyway, here we are. Uh, no, Blue Origin does something far less complicated and their rocket engines are refurbished sixty year old Russian rocket engines. But because he's got a rocket company, shoot him into space and landed him. It's easy for him to start doing the expansive view of space, right? The, we're gonna move all heavy manufacturing off the earth. We're gonna, his line was Elon Musk and I are very like minded. Uh, but I don't believe in Elon's like Plan B. We have to be a multi planetary species. The best planet is earth and we can go other places and do other things there.

• 15:52Nilay Patel?

  But earth is like Plan A is, or Plan B is, let's make sure Plan A works.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  I don't want, I don't want a Plan B for earth. Like this is the best planet in the solar system, I guarantee it, or something to that effect.

• 16:04Nilay Patel?

  Um, and I, that to me was another theme that I saw throughout the conference, which is if you dip your toe in the water of something, you get to start making expansive statements about the future, which is to me, the real theme of all of the AI conversation. So Sheryl Sandberg and Mike Shrupp.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Shrep.

• 16:21Nilay Patel?

  Shrepfer, Mike Shrepfer. Shrepfer? Shrepfer.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Shrep for short, let's just call him Shrep, like we're friends. But we're not, we don't really know you.

• 16:30Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Shrepfer, the CTO of Facebook, were onstage talking about their AI products. And Shrepfer was like, soon we'll put auto braking in every car and that will solve seventy thousand car crashes in the United States. And it's like, that's great. You run Facebook, which is like literally monkeys with typewriters, uh, like answering text based queries. And I have no idea how you're gonna put AI brakes on my car. And like the connection between I've got a toe in the water here and this grand future here is like, it's pretty shaky. And I, I thought that was the thing about the space conversation with Bezos, it was really shaky to me. It was, yeah, you're launching a rocket, you're in private space flight, you're another billionaire in space.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  But I also think like the conference is designed to get people to think expansively, right? It would be boring if they're like, well, here are all of our capabilities today. As for tomorrow, who can say? Like that would be a very dull code.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Only time will tell.

• 17:23Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 17:24Nilay Patel?

  That's my conference, the only time will tell.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  I know we're, we're trying not to get into Musk, but like the, all the crazy shit that he said. What about space and like going to Mars and what should the government on Mars be? And like all the stuff you're like, oh man, you're just a nutbag. But then, well, then again, somebody should be thinking about this. If technology, like the difference between what our lives are like now because of tech compared to 20 years ago. Like if you just extrapolate that progression, like in 80 or 100 years, things are gonna be nuts. And somebody should be preparing. And so when I see these like billionaire titans of industry, like expounding on like crazy ideas, like,

• 18:10Speaker 02

  you know, becoming a cyborg by sticking an implant in your jugular, which by the way is safer than like cracking your skull open.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  I'm like, oh my God, you're just a crazy person. This is hilarious. But then I step back and I go, huh.

• 18:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  Actually.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Well, at some point, everybody's ideas were crazy.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  I mean, anyone who really advanced anything.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  And by the way, like I've spent the past five years, like reading this constant criticism in the tech press. It's like, oh, Silicon Valley, like all they do is make photo sharing apps, right? It's just all like likes and hearts and favors and retweets. And when's somebody gonna tackle something ambitious? So I don't think you can say that on the one hand and then come back and be like, but you want to go to Mars? Well, that's just crazy.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  You want to say Planet Earth?

• 18:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  What's wrong with you?

• 18:51Nilay Patel?

  No, I just heard. Bezos took, my only point is Bezos took advantage of his moment and his ability to own the crowd, to say really broad expansive things that lied the truth in certain ways, right? So the space one, he can go up only so high and come straight back down and he can't actually deliver any cargo, right? So his, his thing was I built Amazon on top of all this existing infrastructure, like credit cards and the internet. And now it's my responsibility to build the next generation of infrastructure. And he actually has a direct infrastructure. He has two, he's three, right? He's got the United Launch Alliance and he actually has NASA exists and SpaceX exists.

• 19:35Nilay Patel?

  And there's a lot of them and they're equally trying to build the infrastructure. But because he's in the zone, he gets to say those things.

• 19:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, but. Also has this amazing track record like, like, why, why bet against Jeff Bezos? Like, this man is incredibly patient, he's incredibly smart, he has some of the most amazing teams, and he just relentlessly iterates.

• 19:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so that, that actually gets me to the next one.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  Oh, I, I, we can't leave Bezos.

• 19:58Nilay Patel?

  Oh, no, I was gonna talk about work-life harmony and the Apple TV. Those are the two things I want to talk about. So, that, well, that gets me to the next one, which was, he got asked a hard question by Walt, I think, that was, um, well, of course, it was by Walt. Amazon gets criticized for its culture a lot and being really hard, and he gave all these, again, expansive answers. He's like, "We are bringing training centers into our warehouses, so that if you want to be a nurse, we're gonna train you to be a nurse, and it's a glass wall, so people, other people who work in the warehouse know these opportunities are available to them."

• 20:32Nilay Patel?

  He said this amazing thing, actually, one of my favorite phrases of code so far, which is, "He knows how to give up an idea when the last high judgment champion gives up on it."

• 20:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:42Nilay Patel?

  Uh,

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Or until he begins to question his own high judgment.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:46Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and by the way, if anyone ever makes a movie, like a, like a, like a martial arts movie about me, I want it to be called "The Last High Judgment Champion."

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Oh, I thought you were gonna say, "If anyone ever makes a movie about Jeff Bezos, it'll be all Sorkan-esque with people talking really quickly about high judgment."

• 20:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, exactly, otherwise you might kill them.

• 21:02Nilay Patel?

  But it's also true that he, Amazon's like, still a very cruel place to work, and they still have, it was just that moment, right? It's like, the reality distortion field was in full effect, where it seemed like, in that room, what you really wanted to do was work at Amazon, because it was led by a charismatic, visionary leader, and he was, he was just able to say, like, "Here's my vision, here's how I make decisions, here's how I think about everything."

• 21:27Speaker 01

  He talked about work-life harmony instead of work-life balance.

• 21:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  But he did also say that, listen, if your, if your work is not your passion, like, you probably shouldn't work here, right? I'm paraphrasing, but he, he doesn't want, he doesn't want employees that are looking at the clock and thinking, "Can I go home at 5 o'clock today?"

• 21:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  It's just, it's not their culture, and a lot of companies are like that, and maybe some, some other executives wouldn't be so blunt about that.

• 21:52Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  Super curious about people who like maybe as they're getting ready to graduate from college are just obsessed with the idea of working for Amazon because I'm sure they're out there, but they're also in Seattle. So I have like zero exposure to these people. And I think, I mean, there are people who've been tremendously successful at Amazon and obviously Amazon does a lot of great stuff. But you know, I also believe that their culture is like, kind of like militaristic and brutal in the same way that Apple's is. But that you could very much contrast with say Googles or Facebook's, which are much more cuddly by contrast. And where most of what you hear is about like the perks as opposed to I cry it every day at my desk.

• 22:31Nilay Patel?

  Right. Or to get into it, to start a meeting, we all had to write six page M O's and sit there quietly reading them before we were allowed to speak. Which is my favorite Amazon story.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Just how we started this podcast.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  I actually, that's literally true.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go cry at my desk now.

• 22:46Nilay Patel?

  It's actually my dream is to make everybody start. Anyway, here's what I'm saying. I'm gonna start driving the verge ever harder because I watched Jeff Bezos speak. And then the last thing we talked about, I asked him a question about the Apple TV. Cause he said, he said this amazing thing while I asked him about Prime Video. And he's like, we monetize Prime Video in another way, which is if we win an Emmy award, that actually helps us sell more shoes. Because it gets people to sign up for Prime, uh, cause they want to watch the, they want to watch these Emmy award winning shows. And then once you have Prime, you're, we know, we have the data that says you're more likely to buy more things.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Than non-Prime members.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  But so the, the thing is, uh, they don't have Amazon Prime Video on the Apple TV.

• 23:31Nilay Patel?

  And they don't, so they don't, they don't even sell the Apple TV in their store.

• 23:34Speaker 02

  They don't sell the Apple TV in their store and they don't sell the Chromecast and getting Amazon Prime Video on a Chromecast. Like it works on Android, but not elsewhere. Like it's like a thing. And his quote was, well, there are two quotes that are really important. He kept on talking about acceptable business terms.

• 23:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  We will sell the stuff if we can reach acceptable business terms. And then he also kept on saying over and over again that like private business discussions should remain private.

• 24:04Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  And I'm going to leave it at that.

• 24:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  And like, it's just blindingly obvious, to steal Neil I's phrase. Blindingly obvious.

• 24:13Nilay Patel?

  Blindingly obvious.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  That he doesn't want to pay Apple's cut of 30% on, you know, software signups. And so because Apple won't budge on that, he's like, screw this.

• 24:24Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  We're not on the platform.

• 24:26Speaker 03

  And I have to say, like, like, man, would it be fun to be a fly on the wall of those negotiations, right? Because you have like, like by reputation, you have two of the most like brutal negotiators of all time in Apple and Amazon. And so I'm just super curious, like, what is the tenor of those discussions?

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:44Speaker 03

  Does it, does it end with slammed doors?

• 24:46Speaker 01

  They're cutthroat.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  But no, like.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  They're absolutely cutthroat.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  Literally today in Bill Gates' session, he recommended a book. And I was like, oh, I'm going to read that book. It was about AI because that's what everybody's talking about. And I went, I did what you do and you want to buy something. You open the Amazon app and I'm like, oh, it's the Amazon app, parade. Oh, there's a Kindle edition. Great. I want to read it on a Kindle. Where's the buy button?

• 25:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  I can add it to a wishlist, but I can't, what the? Uh, uh, oh.

• 25:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Right. And then I opened up the webpage because that's what you do because the web apps are way better, obviously.

• 25:16Nilay Patel?

  Prime is what, $90 a year?

• 25:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's like, it's been 79, it's 99, I don't know what it is now.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Maybe your grandfather did? I actually don't know. I should check. I should be more careful what I'm getting charged for.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  This is not a useful, whatever.

• 25:32Speaker 03

  We're all just Googling. If you know how much Amazon Prime costs, please tweet it at Neil I, that's at reckless on twitter.com.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Days from now, I will learn how much Amazon Prime costs. Also, also if you think that Google Play Music is superior to Spotify, please tweet at reckless.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Amazon, when you send your Prime membership renewal notices, you don't include the price in that email. So you really should probably start doing that.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  But like, here's a question about about.

• 26:01Nilay Patel?

  Wait, let me finish the prime thing.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 26:04Nilay Patel?

  Presumably what they Spotify costs 10 bucks a month.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 26:10Nilay Patel?

  If you buy it on the web.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 26:11Nilay Patel?

  And it costs 1299 if you sign up through the Apple.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:16Nilay Patel?

  Presumably, Apple could just pass along the tax. So if if Prime is $99 a year, let's say, they could just charge. You could open the Prime app on the Apple TV and it would say, sign up for Prime. We'll bill you 129 a year.

• 26:30Speaker 02

  Right. Well, I think it's Amazon that has to choose to like increase the price on.

• 26:34Nilay Patel?

  No, that's what I'm saying. Amazon could do it that way.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:36Nilay Patel?

  And they would just pass on the tax.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Pass the tax on to Apple's 30%.

• 26:40Nilay Patel?

  And I just don't think they want to do that.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  No, I don't think they want to do that.

• 26:42Nilay Patel?

  And I think Apple's just firm, like this is the price.

• 26:44Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 26:45Nilay Patel?

  That we charge people.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's an annual. Oh, I see what you're saying. And then for each in-app purchase.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  But they're not so firm with everybody.

• 26:51Nilay Patel?

  No, but there wouldn't be any. There are no more in-app purchases. Well, I guess you can say like cable stuff, right?

• 26:56Speaker 01

  No, Prime, you can actually buy, you know, à la carte episodes for like 199 an episode in Prime Video. Not all of it is free streaming. I mean, you check out some of the content and you still have to buy it from within the application.

• 27:08Nilay Patel?

  Right. So the 33% tax would be there for all that stuff. And you can buy like CISO or whatever the hell it is through Prime.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  I swear to God.

• 27:16Nilay Patel?

  NBC's failed comedy service.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  Peter Kafka had some story.

• 27:20Nilay Patel?

  The Go90 of comedy streaming services.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  Didn't like HBO or didn't somebody manage to convince Apple to like, like trim down or not be so rigorous on the 30%? And it was like HBO or somebody like, I swear to God, Peter Kafka had a story about this.

• 27:34Nilay Patel?

  Can I can I relay a piece of wonderful code conference gossip that I heard today?

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 27:38Nilay Patel?

  The Go90?

• 27:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Oh, God, Go90.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Share it.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Oh, Go90.

• 27:42Nilay Patel?

  I don't know if this is true. This is complete code conference gossip.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 27:47Nilay Patel?

  Just pure code conference gossip. I don't know if it's. I do not know if this is true. I desperately want it to be true. Verizon is considering rebranding all of its video offerings, including the TV shit, is Go90, which is hilarious because Go90 is all about turning your phone 90 degrees. And your TV is already fucking 90 degrees.

• 28:05Speaker 03

  What greater way to capitalize on the amazing success of Go90? I mean, already an entire generation is growing up, turning their phones a different way and watching these Verizon exclusives. And it's shaping their childhoods.

• 28:20Nilay Patel?

  And now they will turn their television 90 degrees.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  They can turn their TV sideways.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  I, I mean, this is brilliant.

• 28:27Nilay Patel?

  I'm a hundred percent. I don't know if it's true.

• 28:30Speaker 03

  Let me ask this question.

• 28:31Nilay Patel?

  I just.

• 28:32Speaker 03

  What are Verizon's other TV services?

• 28:34Nilay Patel?

  FiOS.

• 28:35Speaker 03

  Oh, FiOS, okay.

• 28:36Nilay Patel?

  I don't know if it's true. I'm just saying, don't you want it to be true?

• 28:41Speaker 03

  Oh, very much so. I mean, let's face it, FiOS, not a great brand.

• 28:47Nilay Patel?

  No, it's, uh, fiber optics outside itself.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like VoIP.

• 28:53Nilay Patel?

  Fiber in outside.

• 28:57Speaker 03

  If you know what FiOS stands for, tweet at Reckless on twitter.com.

• 29:03Nilay Patel?

  I think it's like, I think it actually just stands for fiber optic service. Like, they didn't get very far.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  Maybe it's operating system, fiber optic operating system.

• 29:13Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Like Comcast has got its.

• 29:14Nilay Patel?

  No, because then it's like fiber in operating system.

• 29:18Speaker 03

  It definitely seems like.

• 29:18Nilay Patel?

  This is the worst conversation we've ever had.

• 29:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:22Nilay Patel?

  Uh, anyway, but the Apple TV, he was very clear.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 29:27Nilay Patel?

  But the answer about Apple TV is right. That makes sense. I don't want to pay their tax, so we're staying out.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:33Nilay Patel?

  And many, many, many people have, have made that decision.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  So they're staying out of putting their app in the Apple TV, fine.

• 29:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  But to not sell it on Amazon, like, Amazon is such a, like, universal thing. It's becoming like a, this thing you'd use to buy stuff on the internet.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  True, but they're, I was just gonna say, but they're.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  Google is where you use to find stuff. And Google has, has been pressured into maintaining at least a patina of like neutrality towards the services that it links to. And do we need to get to a place where Amazon needs to have that same sense of neutrality with the stuff that they offer?

• 30:10Speaker 01

  It's not, it's not actually enforced. I mean, you can look at it one of two days, ways. You can look at it and say, yeah, they're, you know, they're not being very nice, first of all.

• 30:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  And second of all, it's, you know, it feels, and there's something about it that feels anti-competitive, but at the same time, like, we talk about this a lot with Apple, when Apple phases products out of its store that may be in some way competitive to a core Apple product.

• 30:31Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Um, you know, and sometimes we write about it and I'll say, hey, Apple just got rid of all these fitness trackers in its store because they're about, about to introduce the Apple Watch. They own their retail stores and they can put whatever in there, they can sell whatever they want in their retail stores.

• 30:45Nilay Patel?

  I do, I don't.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Amazon's doing the same. They're selling.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree. I, I don't think Amazon is the universal retailer the way that Google's universal.

• 30:53Nilay Patel?

  Resource looker.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  I buy a lot of crap on Amazon.

• 30:57Speaker 03

  At the end of the day, you type apple.com in a browser, you buy your Apple TV.

• 31:01Nilay Patel?

  No one laughed at my URL joke and I'm very disappointed by it.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  I tried to buy a TV from Amazon and it wasn't available on Amazon and I like literally didn't know what to do.

• 31:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, do you buy it from like Toms or whatever?

• 31:11Speaker 02

  I tried to go to Vizio and they refused to sell it to me because they couldn't figure out how my credit card worked.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  Dude, it has Diners Club.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  No, I just changed addresses because I moved to California.

• 31:24Nilay Patel?

  So anyway, but that's the.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  We just talk about my TV for the rest of the podcast.

• 31:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, let's get into the specs.

• 31:31Nilay Patel?

  Have you gone vertical video with your television?

• 31:35Speaker 03

  It's a second screen for Snapchat.

• 31:36Speaker 02

  It's gonna be great.

• 31:38Nilay Patel?

  No, so but it makes sense with the Apple thing, right? We don't pay the tax. Everybody has the argument with tax. Spotify is like going to Congress to talk about how the tax is unfair versus like, well, that's the issue.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:48Nilay Patel?

  Why would you not support Chromecast, which is charging you no tax?

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 31:53Nilay Patel?

  Which is just, here's the, we're still in your app on a phone.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  So.

• 31:58Nilay Patel?

  And you're gonna push the button and send it to a TV in the simplest possible way.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  Answer to that, I don't have it for him, but he, he like, we want the app to run with the right experience on your thing. But like, that's insane because you just put it in your app on the tablet.

• 32:11Nilay Patel?

  My.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  It works on their Android stuff.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  And by the way, the Amazon Prime Video app is not that amazing of an experience.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Anyway, so you know, ensuring that it's, go ahead.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  They're super rigorous about, um, I think you can only store like 12 episodes of a show. Maybe, somebody's gonna correct me and it'll be great.

• 32:32Nilay Patel?

  Tweet it at Backline.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, but no, I like, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna like be away from internet for like a while. So I'm gonna just store all the stuff offline because Amazon Prime lets you do that and that's amazing. And then like, I wanted to store a whole season of a TV show and I couldn't store the last two episodes of a season. So I had, they like, oh, so I'm just gonna be left hanging.

• 32:54Speaker 03

  This is the least sad thing I've ever.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  It's the worst thing that's ever happened to me in my entire life.

• 32:59Speaker 03

  Is that Amazon is pissed about Google Play services.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:03Nilay Patel?

  How not functional Fire OS is because they can't, right? And they are.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  Oh, because Google's putting more and more into Google Play services instead of into core Android.

• 33:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:14Nilay Patel?

  So that they are, they're shackled by their reliance on Android for Fire OS, which is a fork. And they are punishing Google by not supporting the rest of the Google ecosystem. Because if you make the Chromecast stronger, you strengthen the Google ecosystem.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  I think that's right. And yet also like these seem like essentially MP gestures. Like, do we really think that they're like, that they're costing Apple or Google a material amount of revenue with these things?

• 33:40Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 33:41Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 33:42Nilay Patel?

  Yes, actually I do. I think it's really interesting to me that the Amazon video apps support AirPlay. Because they know that the Apple TV is the most popular of these devices.

• 33:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:52Nilay Patel?

  They support the Roku because it's one of the most popular of these devices.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  No, they support the Roku because Roku will do anything with anybody in any time.

• 33:59Nilay Patel?

  Look, here's.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, Roku also shares, they share ad revenue based on ads that are running against the different apps and their pop, and their, uh.

• 34:07Speaker 03

  To me, it's interesting primarily insofar as Amazon never stops patting itself on the back for how much it loves its customers and how it will do anything for its customers. And they start from the customers' needs and they work backwards. But then you see stuff like this and you're like, eh, but when we have any sort of minor competitive skirmish, we will absolutely ruin the customer's experience.

• 34:28Nilay Patel?

  Right. Yeah. Okay. We've gone very long.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  We gotta go way long, yeah.

• 34:31Nilay Patel?

  Uh, here's, here's what's happening next. Paul is gonna tell us about a gadget.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 34:37Nilay Patel?

  Then I'm going to read some advertising. Then we're gonna come back. Casey's gonna say two or three extremely cutting, precise sentences about Twitter and Facebook. Uh, cause Jack Dorsey spoke, Sheryl Sandberg spoke. Then we gotta get into Sundar.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:54Nilay Patel?

  We gotta get into Elon.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:55Nilay Patel?

  All right. Paul, take it away.

• 34:59Speaker 04

  So my gadget of the week is HP made a backpack, or they're making a backpack. It's a VR backpack and I'm very excited. So we already knew that there was gonna be a VR backpack by Zotac, which is one of these like many companies that like makes like gaming PC kind of components and like motherboards and graphics cards and stuff. We knew they were gonna make a VR backpack. Then this week, we found out that MSI, another one of those companies, is gonna make a gaming backpack. But now HP is gonna make a gaming backpack, a VR backpack. And I don't know why, I guess maybe I do know why. I know exactly why I love this.

• 35:42Speaker 04

  And sure, it's partly because I want VR untethered. If you've played with Oculus or Vive, no matter how great the experience is, you're always gonna like, you're a little worried about this cable that is plugged into a very expensive PC and you don't want to get all tangled in it. So you know, getting rid of that worry would be great. But that's not what I'm stoked about the most. I'm stoked about a truly wearable hardcore PC. I think there's so many crazy, awesome things that you could do with this. And I know people have put laptops in backpacks and attached them to themselves and done this. But now this is gonna be like a product you can buy in a store.

• 36:25Speaker 04

  And I think there's gonna be a lot of awesome stuff done with this. Like basically, like you could think of these components as the same sort of components that are in self-driving cars. You have GPU and a ton of processing power and all these sensors and stuff. So if you just plugged a bunch of awesome sensors into this, then you could like, you could basically create the wearable computer of the future, of my dreams, where it's recognizing faces and prompting you on some sort of, I don't know, some sort of heads-up display that you have also magically gotten from somewhere. I don't know. Look, it's not, it's not all come together yet. Right now, these are just like renders, basically. We haven't even seen one in action.

• 37:07Speaker 04

  But it's just this fun new arms race of VR backpacks. And I am gonna be there every step of the way, telling you how cool backpacks are. That's what, that's the circuit breaker promise. So thanks for listening to Gadget Corner.

• 37:27Nilay Patel?

  With your friend, Paul Miller.

• 37:34Speaker 03

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• 38:29Nilay Patel?

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• 38:45Nilay Patel?

  Why was that so threatening?

• 38:49Speaker 03

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• 38:51Nilay Patel?

  Number five.

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• 39:35Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so let's very quickly talk about Twitter and Facebook. Dorsey was here, he brought to Deray McKesson, who is, I think, most prominent for doing Black Lives Matter. He brought him onstage. I talked to Deray for five minutes. You did a Facebook Live with him, right?

• 39:49Speaker 01

  I did, yeah.

• 39:50Nilay Patel?

  My five minutes with Deray was incredible. Like, he's a shining star, and he is just like... I think Ezra said it to me, his clarity of thought is astounding. What was your experience with him like?

• 40:03Speaker 01

  He's incredibly charismatic. And he's one of these people that is really active in a lot of different roles. It's funny, because he doesn't work for Twitter. And I asked him whether he was going to, and he was sort of not. And whether Jack has ever offered him a job, he was sort of not committal. But his ideas for Twitter are really interesting in terms of how to improve things around harassment tools. He even said something like, "I really wish, I said this onstage too, I really wish they would bring back the star instead of the heart." And that's a small thing, but he just has these great ideas for what Twitter is as a product and as a platform. And that's just Twitter. I mean, that's not even sort of...

• 40:44Nilay Patel?

  He's like running for the mayor of Baltimore.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  He was running for the mayor of Baltimore. His campaign has now ended. And, but, you know, he's still a very prominent activist in the Black Lives Matter movement, and is a very outspoken person when it comes to things like police brutality. And he's just, yeah, he's just a really, really interesting person. And he's not a super hardcore techie like the people here. And this is a really tough crowd. And I feel like he, you know, he was as charismatic, if not more so, than a lot of the people that we heard speak today.

• 41:20Nilay Patel?

  So, this is like an interesting... And I know Casey has a thought about this, even though he's literally falling asleep in his microphone. It's, again, very late here. But his knowledge of what Twitter is and could be is informed by the fact that he created a massive social movement using a platform.

• 41:39Speaker 03

  Using a hashtag on a platform.

• 41:41Nilay Patel?

  Using a hashtag on a platform.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:42Nilay Patel?

  And he... Completely like gets the power of that platform to create this movement and right technology and culture. He changed the culture using a piece of technology and he gets the product and his, what he said to me was, Jack understands the product and I have product conversations with him and then I talked to other people at Twitter and they don't, the leadership at Twitter doesn't use Twitter. And then he, very self-effacing, was like, I know I'm a super user. And it's like, yeah, but you're the person that makes Twitter vital. And like, that's their problem as far as I can tell, is Twitter is very unclear about what makes it vital.

• 42:19Speaker 03

  True.

• 42:20Nilay Patel?

  By the way, this is an audio podcast, but just if you heard that intake of breath, know that it came with a set of dramatic eye rolls and hand motions unparalleled in human society.

• 42:33Speaker 03

  I mean, I've worked at the first three years and we've spent the entire time like asking ourselves like, like what, like what, what should we do with Twitter? And today was, was more of the same. Like, why expect anything different? You know, what I thought was unusual about this particular appearance on stage by Jack Dorsey, who brought Deray McKesson onstage with him, was that it seemed like the reason Dorsey wanted to bring Deray onstage with him was to sort of show off the way that Twitter has launched social movements in a way that other social platforms, primarily Facebook, have not, right? Like, they have led to these, you know, incredible communities organizing themselves, whether it's the

• 43:17Speaker 03

  Arab Spring or Black Lives Matter. I didn't feel, though, that Dorsey really sold Twitter as a unique enabler of that. Like, I don't doubt that Twitter has done that uniquely, but it was sort of a weird, like, venue to try to make that case. And what made it awkward, at least for me, was that Deray spent much of the time kind of second guessing Dorsey's product decisions. Like, you know, he said, they never should have changed favorites to likes. They've got to do something about the abuse that everyone, you know, feels on this platform. I happen to agree with Deray on both of those points, but if I'm

• 44:00Speaker 03

  the CEO of Twitter, I don't want to use my moment at the Code Conference to be second guessed about my major product decisions. So it was just sort of a very odd discussion.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Can I offer just like this, I don't even want to call it perspective here, but I mean, it must have been 2009 when I was at the All Things D conference and Biz and Ev were speaking for Twitter that year because Jack was not a part of the company then. And everyone kept saying to, this is Evan Williams and Biz Stone, kept saying, how are you guys going to make money? What's the future? How is Twitter going to survive? What's the future of Twitter? And then I think it was about three years ago now that Jack was at Code Conference and Cara interviewed him on stage and it was the same because Jack was back at Twitter at this point and it was, what's going on with Twitter? How are you going to save Twitter? How is Twitter going to make money? Right? And so like fast forward to now, right?

• 44:52Speaker 01

  And everyone is still saying, what the hell is going on with Twitter? Is Twitter going to survive? What's going to happen to Twitter? And they now, I mean, they've gone, they're a public company. They have 310 million monthly active users and claim like a billion monthly unique visits, right? So they're, they've ballooned to a pretty, pretty large social network.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  If you, if you, pretty large if you define them on the terms they want to be defined on, but like not large at all if you compare them to Facebook.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  No, of course.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  Twitter absolutely doesn't want to have happened to them.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  No, and we don't know how many of those monthly active users quote unquote are actually that active, right? And how many of them are bots and all of that, but it's, it's like Twitter just keeps on keeping on. And it's, I don't know. I mean, I love Twitter. So as a user, so I feel like I'm, I'm kind of partial to it and I'm not, I'm not closely examining their advertising revenue the way that maybe some media reporters are. But I, I mean, I just, I just admire that Twitter is still here after people have been doubting it for so many years.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  The thing that's different to me this year is in the previous years, like it's been all the same questions the whole time, but the questions are always like, so someday you're going to need to figure this out. And if Twitter's ever in trouble or like, some people say that Twitter is like, needs to fix this thing. And if so, what do you think? But now it's just like, How are you going to save Twitter? Just flat out onstage, no, no like couching it in like something to soften the question. Just Peter Koff is saying, so you're good, you have to save Twitter. Twitter needs saving. And Jack Dorsey is like, yep.

• 46:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  Like that, that is just way starker than it's ever been for them.

• 46:30Nilay Patel?

  I think it's, and they've done all but no product innovation. I mean, Casey's written this story a thousand times, but we gotta, hold on, I'm gonna say a thing. I'm gonna try to transition us.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  All right.

• 46:41Nilay Patel?

  Do you know the only company that didn't talk about AI onstage was Twitter?

• 46:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:45Nilay Patel?

  They didn't talk about any of it.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  And they got bots, different kinds of bots.

• 46:50Nilay Patel?

  There are racist bots on Twitter and we all, they follow all of us.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  I'm gonna blow up your transition just because we have to say one thing on this podcast before we move on to Facebook, which is, don't know that the Jack Dorsey should have wore a Stay Woke t-shirt.

• 47:04Nilay Patel?

  He absolutely should not have worn it.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 47:05Nilay Patel?

  Well, but they gave one, I was really hoping all of the billionaires in the audience would wear a Stay Woke t-shirt.

• 47:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, like.

• 47:12Nilay Patel?

  But he had Deray with him. That's why.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  He had, yeah, that's why. But when they asked, when the question was asked to Jack Dorsey directly, what does Stay Woke mean to you? He gave like, just a completely like timid answer. Like, it means pay attention.

• 47:28Speaker 03

  I think what Dorsey would say is that shirt was made by Blackbirds, which is Twitter's group of black employees. And I think Dorsey probably viewed wearing that shirt as a sign that he is an ally, both of his employees in that movement.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree, except that he didn't just say that. He, he was too timid to just say that.

• 47:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  I wish that he had. I would have, I would have cheered.

• 47:50Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think it would have been amazing if Dorsey had said something like, black Twitter is a real force in our society.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:56Nilay Patel?

  And I marched in Ferguson because the power of black Twitter like taught me something.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  He said all those things by implication.

• 48:03Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 48:04Speaker 02

  But he didn't just, just say that explicitly.

• 48:07Nilay Patel?

  It was really interesting, right? Because he's wearing this, he's wearing the Stay Woke shirt. He's got Deray with him. He's all about the power of social change. And then that was bookended by Facebook. And that conversation was, how much power do you have? And is it too much power? And it's all about the algorithm. It's about the fact that they have a board member that's trying to sue Gawker into oblivion. That and that's that's a weird set of challenges. If on the one hand, your issue is Facebook as a platform is run by liberals. It's the algorithm suppresses conservative news. And on the other side, you've got a powerful billionaire board member who is a Trump delegate.

• 48:49Nilay Patel?

  And he is trying to sue a liberal news outlet into oblivion. But you've just messed up across the board. And it would, I don't know.

• 48:57Speaker 03

  Or or are you just proving that you truly are a platform for all ideas?

• 49:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, everyone hates us. We can't possibly be biased.

• 49:05Speaker 03

  That's usually.

• 49:06Nilay Patel?

  Shreppfer?

• 49:07Speaker 03

  Shreppfer, the CTO.

• 49:09Nilay Patel?

  Shreppfer.

• 49:10Speaker 03

  Shrepp.

• 49:10Nilay Patel?

  He had, I think, maybe the worst answer to our algorithms biased I've ever heard.

• 49:17Speaker 03

  Because the only correct answer is, well, the question was, can algorithms be biased? The only correct answer is yes. And his answer was.

• 49:24Nilay Patel?

  And Sheryl Sandberg was like, the best way to improve the news feed is for you to give us more information.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  Share more.

• 49:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  I know.

• 49:31Nilay Patel?

  No, she actually said, she didn't say share more. She said, give us more information. Which I, you know, and she clarified the next sentence was, you know, your likes and your shares and your recommendations all help us understand. But more information of Facebook. It's like the only way to save the village is to burn it completely to the ground.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:50Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. What did you think of Facebook today?

• 49:51Speaker 01

  So I have to be honest. I was doing a bunch of different things during the conference today. So I missed the part about trending topics and how and Shrepp's answers for how for how that actually works. I did hear Sheryl say that, you know, you should share more and that's great. I heard some type of analogy like, well, just like you sign onto Facebook and you see a different news feed from the person next to you. It might make sense that the trending topics you see are also different because of the various things that are informing those. But I want to go back and listen to that again. But I thought was was more interesting was was Sheryl Sandberg's just sort of relinquishing of any kind of responsibility on the part of Facebook.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  For, you know, having Peter Thiel as a board member and sort of refusing to really. participate in that conversation about it. It was, she just kept saying, you know, he acted on his own. He's an, he's his own person. He's an independent person, independent of Facebook. And, and he made these decisions on his own and, and it's, you know, we are not treating Gawker any differently in terms of our relationship with public publishers and distributing content. And, and that was sort of it. Like that was it. And then, and then actually Joshua Toposki stood up and asked a question and said, so just to confirm.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  And then again after that.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  And so is he still on the board? Is he still on the board? And we finally get the answer, yes, Peter Thiel is going to remain on the board. So we got that answer. But that was sort of, I don't know, maybe it just all felt a little too neat and tidy.

• 51:18Nilay Patel?

  But that's the right answer, right? I mean, he didn't do anything illegal. He, but he did something that maybe you disagree with and you think is classless.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  Casey has a good thought on this. And this is the part where I disclose that my wife works for Facebook, but I'm not.

• 51:30Nilay Patel?

  Your wife works for Facebook?

• 51:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. She works for Oculus, which is a division of Facebook.

• 51:34Nilay Patel?

  Your wife. When did that happen?

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:36Nilay Patel?

  I'm just talking with you. It's late. It's very late.

• 51:39Speaker 03

  Um.

• 51:40Nilay Patel?

  When are you moving back to New York? I miss you.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  We're in the same room.

• 51:44Speaker 03

  So the, I think the issue for Facebook is it creates this optics problem where, trust me, there is going to be another case where Facebook's news judgment comes into question for one reason or another, whether it's trending topics or something else. And as long as Thiel is on the board, there are those who will turn and look and say, well, look, Peter Thiel's meddling with the news. And it won't be literally true and it won't matter. It's going to eat away at Facebook's credibility with the public. So I think if Thiel is, was planning on stepping down from the Facebook board within the next couple of years anyway, this would be a good time for him to transition off the board just to save Facebook the headache.

• 52:26Speaker 03

  Um, and if he doesn't, you can just expect us to keep having this conversation indefinitely.

• 52:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  But doesn't that give too much credit to board members? I mean, do you think? It gets so credit to board members, but on the other hand, like you forget how powerful the board is like, like, um, Nick Bilton put up a Twitter story on Vanity Fair, just ahead of Jack Dorsey appearing on stage. And it, he like, gave us another turn of the screw of the machinations that have happened inside Twitter. And it's all about the board, like, and Williams like tried to convince them to buy Medium for, you know, an insane amount of money. Um, so the board like, doesn't matter until it matters. And then it really matters.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, it's hard to imagine, it, it really is like Peter Thiel coming in and saying, you know, to, to news editors on Facebook's news staff, like, I really don't think you should promote this Gawker live video today because I've got a problem with Gawker, right?

• 53:25Speaker 02

  You should promote this Verge live video.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, Verge instead, please. All Vox Media property.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  No, just the Verge.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  But, uh, but, uh, but, but I think somebody did ask the question, I'm not quite sure who it was that asked the question, maybe it was DePulsky, maybe it was someone else, but someone did ask the question like, well, so how does this impact other publishers? What if, what if another sort of, I don't know, fracas arises between one of your board members and another publisher? I mean, you just, I, I don't know. Anyway, I'm probably not articulating this properly because it's very late and I'm not even the one drink, I'm not even the one drinking, guys. I have like, I have Dasani water here. Um,

• 54:04Speaker 02

  Dasani water is super alcoholic. It's like 10%.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really strong. I'm gonna have to take a car home. So I'm gonna have to take an Uber home.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  Sponsored by Dasani booze water.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:16Speaker 02

  Cut through, cut through the knives.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  In either case, Sheryl Sandberg is cool as a cucumber. Everything she answers is on point, is on message. And she, she's unruffled and she was that today.

• 54:27Speaker 02

  She knows how to like end a sentence more than anybody else I've ever seen. She like, she says what she's gonna say and she just stops and you're like, oh, you're done. Oh, oh, that was good.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  Every time. All right, we're doing our thing. And then I promise you, we're gonna talk about Sundar Nielan for the four minutes remaining in this hour.

• 54:46Nilay Patel?

  Let me introduce you to our sponsor, Centrify Corporation. The Centrify identity platform is the next generation of identity management solution that protects organizations against cyber threats. Check out their white paper or sign up for a 338 trial at centrify.com/identity. All right, we're running a little long, we're gonna do it.

• 55:02Speaker 02

  We're gonna go long, there's no way around it.

• 55:05Nilay Patel?

  I want you to talk about Sundar.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:08Nilay Patel?

  And I want you to talk about Google. So, I gotta say, he was on stage.

• 55:11Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 55:12Nilay Patel?

  And just kinda...

• 55:13Speaker 02

  Sundar is not...

• 55:14Nilay Patel?

  Just kinda floated through it all.

• 55:15Speaker 02

  He is not designed for this kind of thing. Like, Bezos came up and owned the room. Sundar is like, you know, he's like famously like the nice guy and like the relatively quiet and laid back guy, but like obviously very powerful. He's the CEO of the company and he got there through like doing really good work. But, uh, he, his charisma is very quiet and not, uh, not the kind of thing that like commands the attention of like thousands, like unless it's on the stage of Google I/O. So, um, I think Walt did a really good job interviewing him, actually like got him to be expressive in a way that unless, if you, if you understand Sundar's like base personality, you would like, he like was like up and in it, but if you didn't, you like, oh, this

• 56:00Speaker 02

  is like a really sleepy, straightforward sort of whatever. Um, but, you know, he really wants to talk about machine intelligence. He really wants to get the message out there that Google has been doing machine learning and AI for a long time, which is like a pretty standard message from Google at this point. Um, and I don't know, like there wasn't, uh, up until like it came to like Q and A time, there wasn't like a whole lot of like straight product news. It was like, this is Google's idea of what AI should be. And it's like, not that different for everybody else's, except that it's Google saying it and like, we believe that Google can pull it off because they've done search really well and like they've actually done a pretty good job of building their, you know, Google named AI.

• 56:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  Um, but the, the big news was Walt pressed him really hard on like, yo, what's going on with phone hardware?

• 56:54Nilay Patel?

  Like, yeah.

• 56:55Speaker 02

  You don't make phones, except the R phone, which is like a different experimental thing. You don't, like, you're still partnered with Nexus phones. What's, why, when are you gonna start making your own? And the thing he said was, we're gonna start being more opinionated about Nexus phones, which means opinionated in terms of hardware and in terms of software. And it's really interesting for Android nerds, which I can get into, but I don't want to just hold the court for like a half an hour.

• 57:22Nilay Patel?

  Not, that's why the people are here. They're not here for the first time in Peter Thiel talking to that. So the way I read that was, we're just gonna start telling HTC exactly what to do. Like, where HTC is gonna go back to being the OEM they were for Verizon.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:40Nilay Patel?

  And Google's gonna design the phone and HTC's gonna build it and they're gonna sell that phone. And then he said, he said something else that was really interesting, which was, right now Nexus phones ship with stock Android, but we think that we should start layering in other software experiences to further differentiate them. Which is wild.

• 57:58Speaker 02

  It's wild, but it's also like, it's been happening for a while. Nexus phones haven't been, like, when you think, like, so I tweeted this, like, when you think stock Android, which you should really think is like the shit that's on GitHub, right? You should, you should be thinking about, like, the bare bones, no Google services, like, no, like, not what you think of Android. When people think of stock Android, they think of what Nexus phones are. It's got the Google Launcher, it's got Google Now, it doesn't have extra carrier crap on it, it doesn't have extra OEM crap on it. But it does have a bunch of extra Google stuff on it. It so happens that most of that Google stuff gets to get put on all of the other, you know, ruined, you know, carrier phones, right?

• 58:38Speaker 02

  But, but a Nexus phone is like the Google version of Android. It's not just stock Android. And what he said by saying, we're gonna be more opinionated about these phones, is that that distinction is going to get even more clear, so that when you get a Nexus phone, you are getting the Google version of Android, which is gonna be, like, it's gonna have, not just their Google Play service that everybody gets, it's gonna have their vision of the launcher, it's gonna have their vision of what VR is supposed to look like, and who knows what else. In addition to, they're just gonna be pushing around, you know, HTC, because HTC loves to be pushed around.

• 59:13Nilay Patel?

  I think HTC would love to be pushed around.

• 59:15Speaker 02

  Right?

• 59:15Nilay Patel?

  Or LG, or whoever, right? They're, they're gonna turn.

• 59:19Speaker 02

  Well, no, but everybody knows that HTC is making the Nexus phones.

• 59:21Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  So.

• 59:23Nilay Patel?

  Everybody knows.

• 59:24Speaker 02

  Right, because it's just, we decided together.

• 59:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:28Speaker 02

  All of us on the internet.

• 59:29Nilay Patel?

  Android blogs decided together.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:32Speaker 03

  Any idea how many Nexus phones sell in a year? Is it a material business?

• 59:35Speaker 02

  I didn't get to ask my question, but like, my question was gonna be like, oh, by the way, you do make hardware now, because you've got a whole new hardware division under former Motorola guy, Rick Ostrello, and like, you're making RFONES, are you actually gonna push them? And like, if Google's gonna be more opinionated about Nexus phones, the question is, are you gonna make that opinion matter and start selling the frickin' things? Or not? Because they're, they're like, you can buy them at the Google Store. They're not really trying in carrier channels anymore. And so, the Nexus phones have always been like, fan favorites that like, don't get huge sales. And like, everybody's just sort of waiting. Like, this question of, why doesn't Google just go ahead and make its own hardware? Like, I'm with Walt that I'd like them to try it and see what happens.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  But, to me, the more important question is, when is Google going to say, yo, we're like, we're not sorry Samsung, we're not sorry LGCC.

• 1:00:29Nilay Patel?

  That was the other thing that Sundar said.

• 1:00:29Speaker 02

  We're just gonna go for it.

• 1:00:30Nilay Patel?

  Google Android needs a strong Samsung. He said it very clearly, because Walt pushed him really hard.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  Well, he, he tried to say, ah, no, like, the dream of Android, like, what we want is like, a really big carrier, or really big ecosystem of lots of different manufacturers, not all of them are huge. So like, when Walt pushed him on Samsung, he like, immediately pivoted to like, rando tiny Android manufacturers in India.

• 1:00:53Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:00:54Speaker 02

  But, like, that doesn't, hasn't worked. And I don't know that it's going to work.

• 1:00:59Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's worked in the sense that India is dominated by Android.

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's dominated by Android, but like, Android 1 has been basically an abject failure. Like, it hasn't become like, the standard, like, base version of Android that everybody thought of, like, that Google definitely thought it would be.

• 1:01:16Nilay Patel?

  But that's like, oh man, we're, if you are ready to get deep in the weeds on Android. That's because it's, Android 1 is the same mistake. Right? As Nokia saying, we're gonna put Series 40 in the developing world and then transition them to MIMO. Like, what people wanted was actually fucking Android.

• 1:01:32Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:01:32Nilay Patel?

  And then, a bunch of cheap phone makers delivered actual Android in those countries.

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  What's interesting is, the discussion we're having right now, the discussion we're about to have about messaging apps, is like, core to Google's big problem. Which is, they wanna talk about- Google as like Google search and the Google Assistant and Google machine learning. And telling that story, like, it's like, yeah, it's like IBM, right? Like IBM and they, they got her, their CEO went on stage. She talked about Watson and everybody was like, yeah, great Watson. Okay, whatever. But like, that's where Google is going with like their core product of like becoming basically like a, like underlying service of the internet. And the thing that we all actually want to talk about are products.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  And, and like, until that underlying service of their machine learning hits a product like Google Home, we're all like, yeah, sure, great. Uh, and I don't think they've figured out how to like get around that.

• 1:02:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, so Lauren, you hung out with Sundar today. You did, and yet another of your many, many, many, many Facebook Lives.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  We hung out.

• 1:02:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Lauren's dying. Here's, here's, look, here's the thing about Facebook Live. They're all stunts. They all need to last 10 minutes. And I would encourage you to listen to this podcast for the next 10 minutes to see if Lauren literally dissolves into a puddle.

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  Lauren and Sundar, Lauren wrapped rubber bands around Sundar's head.

• 1:03:01Nilay Patel?

  That's what explains. No, but you hung out with Sundar today and what, what did you think?

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I've spoken with Sundar before and he does have, uh, he does have a reputation for being a very nice guy, which is something I asked about, whether or not that's something that bothers him.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  What'd he say?

• 1:03:15Speaker 03

  He punched her right in the mouth. He said, you watch your tongue, missy.

• 1:03:20Nilay Patel?

  Wow, Casey.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then he, and then he tore shit up in the green room.

• 1:03:24Nilay Patel?

  Sundar crashed the green room.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  Totally. It was like seeing some nineties rock band like in the hotel room after the fact. It was just a mess.

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  No, actually, for some reason, I was like just thinking of like the Eagles, but that's not any.

• 1:03:41Nilay Patel?

  Lauren, again, floating through space and time right now.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  I was like Joe Walsh.

• 1:03:49Nilay Patel?

  Don Henley was with Sundar today, just fucking ripping shit up at a code conference.

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. I absolutely don't even know what's happening right now.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  So I asked Sundar the really, really hard hitting question that Walt didn't get to ask onstage, which is what is morning routine? So first I asked him how he felt about having this reputation as a Silicon Valley nice guy. And he like worked as Jedi mind tricks and was like, I was, you know, I didn't need a kiss. And he said, uh, he basically, he takes a long-term view. And that I think that was a very-

• 1:04:21Nilay Patel?

  To his morning routine?

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  Uh, no, to his, uh, why?

• 1:04:25Speaker 02

  Eventually he'll be the afternoon.

• 1:04:30Nilay Patel?

  I begin by eating dinner.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  So Google has this thing where they always say it's early days. So he wakes up in the morning, it's, oh, it's early days. Literally, that's where that comes from.

• 1:04:42Speaker 03

  We're in the first inning of this morning.

• 1:04:45Speaker 03

  This morning is only 1% penetrated. I think there's a lot of opportunity.

• 1:04:50Nilay Patel?

  We can't wait for the ecosystem to develop today.

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, so he takes a long-term view on his omelets. Um, he really, uh, you know what? I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what. You guys go to our, uh, our verge, our ver-

• 1:05:06Nilay Patel?

  You can do it.

• 1:05:07Speaker 03

  Go to our verge.

• 1:05:09Speaker 03

  Whatever you do, it's very important. There, there's a message waiting for you at our verge.

• 1:05:13Nilay Patel?

  I just want to point out that we still have to talk about you.

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  I would also, I would also like to point out-

• 1:05:18Nilay Patel?

  I'm like a torture, like I'm a medieval torture. I'm like, you have to stay awake until we can talk about the man-

• 1:05:24Speaker 03

  See how Greyjoy didn't have it this bad?

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  I would just like to state for the record that I am not drunk and not drinking. This is just my very, very tired state. Um, I'm gonna check, go to the verge.

• 1:05:35Nilay Patel?

  Just go there. Everything I think about Sundar's in that place.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  We put the video on the site of my brief little interview with Sundar Pichai about Google Home, why it doesn't keep prototypes in the home. Um, he tests things at work, his morning routine and Mr. Nice Guy and all that stuff. It's, it's a fun conversation and, um, and check it out. But, but Dieter really, I think, offered more, um, more value.

• 1:05:57Nilay Patel?

  Lauren's like, my album is coming out on May 31st.

• 1:06:02Nilay Patel?

  I believe it was yesterday.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  It dropped yesterday.

• 1:06:06Nilay Patel?

  It's funny, she's doing a two handed piece sign right now. She's like, check out my new record.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  It's exclusive to Ardeo.

• 1:06:12Nilay Patel?

  On theverge.com.

• 1:06:15Speaker 02

  Wait, we're on chart table.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  Which is no longer running.

• 1:06:19Nilay Patel?

  You know, the Vergecast is getting really bad when we're just doing Ardeo burns. All right.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  I don't know. I like Ardeo. Okay.

• 1:06:26Nilay Patel?

  It's gone.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  Also, as we said, things about messaging, there were, uh,

• 1:06:29Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  They were, no, no, we're not going to get into it because just read the article.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  Read Dieter's piece.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  Basically, they don't have an answer.

• 1:06:35Nilay Patel?

  The Verge has also getting real bad when we're just like, you know, some stuff happened, but what you should do is turn off this podcast and begin reading our articles in your car.

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  Okay, so I'll just do it really quick. Uh, Stephen Levy from Back Channel said, hey, what's the deal with Allo? Like, are you gonna like take on iMessage? What's going on? And Sundar was like, well, you know, and so they, he, he said more clearly than he ever has before that Android is going to support rich communication services, which is the next generation SMS.

• 1:07:03Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  Which is going to be a dumpster fire, except that if Google builds it in Android, all the carriers are gonna have to fall in line. So that's a little ray, tiny ray of hope. Uh, there's also Allo, which is a little tiny ray of hope. Um, because like it's a mobile first thing. It's a good app, but who knows if anybody's gonna actually use it, but it's better than Hangouts. Which, by the way, like this empty bottle of bourbon is also better than Hangouts. Um.

• 1:07:28Nilay Patel?

  They're both so sad.

• 1:07:30Speaker 02

  Right? And then the third, uh, thing is he like had this like really like plaintive thing like, it would be so nice if everybody interoperated.

• 1:07:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:39Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:07:40Nilay Patel?

  It's not gonna happen.

• 1:07:40Speaker 02

  It's not gonna happen, but like, that's always like, I hate to say it, but it's totally true. The losers always say, wouldn't it be great if there were an open standard we could all participate in?

• 1:07:52Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  Webcast did it. Microsoft did it when it was losing in mobile and now Google's doing it with messaging and like, it's not gonna happen, but Google can't not at least try to play in the messaging space, even though they just got completely pantsed by WhatsApp and Messenger and, uh,

• 1:08:11Nilay Patel?

  iMessage.

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  And I'm, well, iMessage is like a weird one. Um.

• 1:08:16Nilay Patel?

  I don't think iMessage is a weird one.

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  Well, they got pantsed in the US on iMessage. Not so much in the rest of the world, but it, uh, in terms of like mind share for people, for people in the US, they, they got pantsed.

• 1:08:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but WhatsApp got pantsed by iMessage in the US, right?

• 1:08:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:30Nilay Patel?

  It it it's just it's the dominant one here.

• 1:08:33Speaker 02

  Right, but like, I don't know where Google's gonna be dominant regionally speaking. The bottom line is that Google doesn't have like the answer because the answer is to just take the iMessage model and apply it to Android, but they can't do that. Uh, for a bunch of reasons, the main one is if they start Googleifying Android, then it won't play in China because they're not, they can't Googleify Android in China yet. And I didn't like get the China thing into my, my story. Uh, so this is like bonus thing that you're, cause you're a Vergecast listener. You're welcome.

• 1:09:07Nilay Patel?

  You don't just have to read the article in your car. You can hear Dieter talk about the mistakes he made with the article.

• 1:09:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, but like, they can't go full Google into Android. They have to keep Android relatively pure and Google free, which means they can, and also like there's hardware fragmentation, so they can't just follow the iMessage model. So their hands are really tied in terms of like directly taking on all these other messaging apps, but they can't just bow out and say, no, you know, we don't care about messaging because that's like the next thing. And so what they've done is they basically like, it's a horse race and they've bet on like three horses that are like way behind and they're like, eh, maybe one of them will catch up, who knows?

• 1:09:46Nilay Patel?

  Well, they gotta be there somewhere.

• 1:09:47Speaker 03

  Where I totally disagree with you is their hands were not tied. Three years ago, they introduced Hangouts. It was gonna be the one messenger to rule them all. You sign in with your Google account and you could message your other friends on Hangouts. It was a smart approach. They totally under invested in it and it went nowhere. And now they've decided to try to, to make people use four different messaging services at once. Hangouts for business, Allo for messaging plus AI, Duo for FaceTime and then Messenger. They actually have Google Messenger just for SMS.

• 1:10:13Speaker 02

  But their hands are tied now. The fact that their hands are tied by themselves from failing to execute on Hangouts for three straight years is like, I, I can't stop that.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  But they're not gonna give up on messaging. I mean, they have to do something, right?

• 1:10:26Speaker 02

  Well, what they're doing is, hello.

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  They're throwing a lot of mud at the walls.

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  And RCS and like, please, please, you know, operate.

• 1:10:35Nilay Patel?

  We, we have to get on to the last one.

• 1:10:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:37Nilay Patel?

  Casey, I'm not even looking at you.

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  He's looking at me.

• 1:10:40Nilay Patel?

  It's an audio show.

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  He's looking at me.

• 1:10:42Nilay Patel?

  Look away.

• 1:10:42Speaker 02

  I've been laughing so much, I'm like, my eyes are running, my nose is running.

• 1:10:44Nilay Patel?

  I have never seen so many tired people in my life. That's not true.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Not even at CES?

• 1:10:49Nilay Patel?

  That's true. I did, I did ruin everybody at CES too with Sleepy Ass, but.

• 1:10:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:10:54Nilay Patel?

  We gotta do it.

• 1:10:55Speaker 02

  Here we go.

• 1:10:55Nilay Patel?

  Casey.

• 1:10:56Speaker 02

  Casey.

• 1:10:57Nilay Patel?

  Tell me about Elon Musk.

• 1:10:58Speaker 03

  Elon Musk gave the most insane and delightful presentation at the Code Conference.

• 1:11:05Nilay Patel?

  But he did it in this tone of voice, "Well, you know, the thing is, you could just stick the implant in your jugular."

• 1:11:12Speaker 03

  He's a very soft spoken man and he said, first of all, he began the presentation with a 10 minute lecture about nuclear physics that, that scientists are still trying to parse through. Maybe by the time you hear this, the code will have been cracked. We're not going to get into the physics.

• 1:11:27Nilay Patel?

  They weren't nuclear physics. It was, it was orbital space.

• 1:11:30Speaker 03

  It was orbital spacecraft.

• 1:11:31Speaker 02

  It was rocket science.

• 1:11:32Nilay Patel?

  Literally rocket science.

• 1:11:33Speaker 03

  But you know what? It wasn't brain surgery, folks. So maybe you can figure it out.

• 1:11:36Speaker 01

  It was all about horizontal velocity.

• 1:11:38Nilay Patel?

  He got to brain surgery later.

• 1:11:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, that sort of came in later. There, there were sort of, I guess, two major takeaways for the Elon Musk is a crazy fun person crowd who just sort of enjoys a, a mad scientist introducing crazy concepts into the mainstream. And the first of those was how we would all become true cyborgs through jugular implants of neural lace, which is a machine to brain interface in which a superhuman intelligence augments your abilities. That's coming soon to a surgery center near you.

• 1:12:20Speaker 02

  I have so much to say about that, but we'll see what we get there.

• 1:12:23Speaker 03

  Well, and.

• 1:12:24Nilay Patel?

  Well, don't worry. Lauren's not dead yet, so we're just gonna keep going until she dies.

• 1:12:28Speaker 03

  And in the second, the second crazy idea that he introduced, as we referenced at the start of the show, um, is the, the intense likelihood that you and I and every.

• 1:12:39Nilay Patel?

  Everyone at this table and everyone listening to the Vergecast at home is living in a simulation. And we talked about that at the GoToConference at great length. So those were kind of the two big crazy ideas that Elon shared with us today.

• 1:12:52Speaker 02

  That was on top of government on Mars. It was on top of eh, if nobody else builds a Hyperloop brain, I'll just do it. On top of, no, really, I swear to you, I'm actually going to make enough electric cars for the entire planet. On top of, we're gonna launch a rocket into space every two weeks and that's way, it's a way higher rate than anybody's been doing for the past 30 years.

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  Tesla 3 design gonna be done in six weeks.

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  Like, yeah. On top of like hinting that they're like the Tesla 3 would be fully autonomous. On top of teasing a huge Tesla announcement later on this year. Like, all like the normal stuff, he like, normal. All like, he had like a whole slew of like crazy hints and teases about actual things that he's doing. But that was, layer on top of that was like cyborg theory and like insane AI simulation shit.

• 1:13:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, somebody offer you a vignette. So I asked him a question that was basically Chris and Lauren Grush asked me, Chris Siggler and Lauren Grush asked me hard questions. They suggested hard questions and the one theme they both hit on was Elon's great. Offers aggressive schedules for his things that he never hits. Never hits them. So I said, are you gonna be able to build a Model 3 and the numbers that you're probably, because people are paying him. They're paying him a lot of fucking money, right? Dieter Bohn.

• 1:14:19Speaker 02

  Not me, my, my wife.

• 1:14:23Nilay Patel?

  But you guys are, it's like you're married now. It's a whole thing.

• 1:14:27Speaker 02

  Are we gonna talk about my finances right now? Because I just spent $2,000 on a TV and I don't want to get into it because I'm getting huge.

• 1:14:33Nilay Patel?

  Dieter sent his TV to Elon Musk. It's a pre-order. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Dieter's family is a unit, pre-ordered a Model 3.

• 1:14:42Nilay Patel?

  So he's just got his money. It's like an interest free loan.

• 1:14:45Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:14:46Nilay Patel?

  Against the production of this car and he has a lot of people's money because it's a big consumer product. A super aggressive timeline for delivering it, right? The car is not designed yet.

• 1:14:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:56Nilay Patel?

  It's a month and a half away from being designed.

• 1:14:59Speaker 02

  Elon's phrase was literally, we're gonna go pencils down.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  Pencils down. If that's not a euphemism, I don't know what is.

• 1:15:06Nilay Patel?

  Well, his landing, by the way, Elon Musk was late to the code conference today because his private jet, the landing, I'm making quotes with my fingers, the landing gear was stuck in the.

• 1:15:18Nilay Patel?

  I don't know if that's requires quotes. It might be true, but it's way more fun to think about with quotes.

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  Landing gear gets stuck down, down position.

• 1:15:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, it was just the plane had to fly super slow because I mean, like, what a great, if you're a billionaire, that is the excuse that you should use for all things.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:34Nilay Patel?

  Like my landing gear was stuck.

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  A little wonky today.

• 1:15:38Nilay Patel?

  I'm late. Anyway, but he's got a lot of people's money now.

• 1:15:42Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:15:42Nilay Patel?

  He has a really aggressive delivery schedule and a really aggressive ramp up schedule and he's got to make a lot of cars. And he said, we're gonna pencils down six weeks, we think we're gonna hit it.

• 1:15:50Speaker 02

  Neelai, hang on. Neelai, for the entire conference, has been the guy to go up to the microphone and ask the hard question.

• 1:15:59Nilay Patel?

  Not a hard question.

• 1:16:01Speaker 02

  Like the straightforward question, but like everybody sees it as hard because not, like, not like,

• 1:16:08Speaker 02

  there's like the thing where people don't expect the micro, people expect cranks at the microphone. And then all of a sudden a journalist comes to the microphone and asks a real journalism question. They're like, oh, oh, this is happening. So the thing I want to point out is that I'm in the same room with Neelai and I moved to California and I miss him.

• 1:16:25Nilay Patel?

  It's so sad.

• 1:16:27Speaker 02

  But what's weird is that I'm looking at him and his skin is white and his eyes are like ice, ice blue because he was murdered by Elon Musk's death glare at him when he asked him, are you gonna be late on the Model 3? So no, I mean, literally death stare. No, the, the, the question that he wanted to murder me for, I asked him.

• 1:16:52Nilay Patel?

  You gave me late on Model 3 and he delivered this insane answer.

• 1:16:55Speaker 02

  I was fine.

• 1:16:56Nilay Patel?

  No, it was.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  Which is that he doesn't, he doesn't just make up deadlines and that when he makes them, he truly believes he's going to hit them.

• 1:17:06Speaker 02

  And my big car is so hard. His fine answer was that when he made the, the Model S and the Model X, he built them on top of a Lotus platform. And it was like, well, we gotta use this thing. What the hell?

• 1:17:16Nilay Patel?

  No, no, the Roadster is, he's like, we built the Roadster on the Lotus platform.

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:17:21Nilay Patel?

  The Model S, we had to invent from scratch. It was really hard. The Model X, we tried too hard because we built these Falcon doors, blah, blah, blah. It was too much stuff at once. The Model 3, it's like, we understand to make a car now, but we're at the mercy of our suppliers and here's a laundry list.

• 1:17:33Speaker 02

  Give them credit for saying with the Model 3, every time we make a thing on the Model 3, we are making it with manufacturability. Which by the way, manufacturability, hard fricking thing to write in a live blog.

• 1:17:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  Uh, in mind and, uh, also, oh, but by the way, uh, like the weakest link, like.

• 1:17:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's our supplies. But no big car company blames their supplier. Like, I mean, it was like a laundry. He's like, one of them was hit by a tornado. There's been a hurricane. There's been a flood. We had to shoot out the Mexican border and I just wanted my trunk carpet. These are excuses that Ford can't give.

• 1:18:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:08Nilay Patel?

  Right? If he wants to play like, anyway.

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  Can you imagine when he's late for dinner?

• 1:18:12Nilay Patel?

  My landing gear was stuck in the down position and there was a shootout in the sky. It was nonsense, right?

• 1:18:17Speaker 02

  Must have had a lot of excuses today.

• 1:18:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So then, and he said the thing about pencils down and earlier in that, in the session, Walton Kara pushed him really hard on whether the Model 3 would have autonomous driving.

• 1:18:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:28Nilay Patel?

  And he said, we're gonna do the obvious thing.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. He said that they're gonna have an event later this year.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  To say what it was tonight. And, and he said, we're gonna do the obvious thing, which is obviously they're going to offer some type of.

• 1:18:40Speaker 02

  Best line. Kara's line is, oh, so cup holders.

• 1:18:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:18:44Nilay Patel?

  So my follow up question after, are you gonna be in time with Model 3? He said, we're pencils down in six weeks and then we're ready to go. And there will be no features added after six weeks. My follow up question was, once six weeks, you're gonna hold an event where you announce autonomous driving for Model 3. And he killed me.

• 1:18:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:59Nilay Patel?

  He killed, he just, he looked at me.

• 1:19:01Speaker 02

  Spoilers. Do you know the scene from a couple of weeks ago on Game of Thrones with the guy who was tied to the tree? And the children of the forest? That was, his, his stare was dragging glass.

• 1:19:14Nilay Patel?

  He just looked at me, dead silence. He blinked one time and then continued looking at me. And then I could see the wheels turning.

• 1:19:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:23Nilay Patel?

  And he said, we do not have an event planned for six weeks from now. And he growled at me.

• 1:19:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:28Nilay Patel?

  Strange.

• 1:19:28Speaker 02

  It was amazing.

• 1:19:29Nilay Patel?

  Um, I don't know. It was, it was, that was like a whole section of the thing. But again, he's just like, I would say he has the most expansive view. And he got away with it, right?

• 1:19:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:40Nilay Patel?

  He doesn't like, it, it was the same as Bezos to me in a lot of the same ways, right? There's the reality of what their companies are doing. Then there's this expansive view of what the tech industry should provide. And his view is that we should colonize, he, he said, we should be an interplanetary species.

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  Well, so he said a lot of things. So he, what's this, uh, what's this consortium that he's trying to form to like?

• 1:20:03Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:20:03Speaker 02

  Create a benign AI.

• 1:20:05Nilay Patel?

  Open AI.

• 1:20:05Speaker 02

  Open AI. So he like, when you're sitting there listening to him, you like, you're struggling to keep up with the technical stuff. And he's really good at laying out a lot of technical stuff on you. But if you keep up with that, you like, your brain is so busy trying to think through his cyborg theory. They're like, oh, okay. Well, I get what's, what he's saying. Oh, then I must be on board with his opinions. And his opinions are like, interesting and weird. But like, I don't know if I'm on board, but like, he talked about like defending ourselves from being, becoming pets. And his method for keeping us from becoming cats for a supercomputer is,

• 1:20:45Speaker 02

  we need to become one with the supercomputer and have it be the third level. So there's the digital level, then there's our cognitive level, and then there's like the limbic system. And as limbic system is to your frontal lobe, your frontal lobe will be to the digital AI that you're going to become a symbiote with.

• 1:21:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:06Speaker 02

  And.

• 1:21:07Nilay Patel?

  We're all cyborgs now.

• 1:21:08Speaker 02

  Well, we're all cyborgs already. And so he said, we're already cyborgs. And I like, got pretty excited because I fundamentally believe that we're all cyborgs. Because the definition of a cyborg is a person that augments their humanity with technology. And. I believe that our humanity is defined by the creation of technology to augment our humanity. That's what humanity is.

• 1:21:29Nilay Patel?

  You want to do the technology is an instrument thing right now?

• 1:21:32Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 1:21:32Nilay Patel?

  Technology is an instrument?

• 1:21:34Speaker 02

  Technology is an instrument, right?

• 1:21:36Nilay Patel?

  And if you want to go for another half hour, this is why.

• 1:21:38Speaker 02

  I could keep going.

• 1:21:39Nilay Patel?

  Do you want to talk about web versus apps?

• 1:21:41Speaker 02

  Bottom line, when Elon Musk said, we are all cyborgs already. I was like, well, I mean, I'm just gonna buy another like three Model Threes right now. Cause you are just the best human.

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  Doesn't this sometimes kind of feel like we're in these last stages of actually having some type of semblance of control over these gadgets?

• 1:21:58Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  Like not, I listened to the creator of the Headspace app talk today, give a 10 minute talk.

• 1:22:04Speaker 02

  Why does the Headspace app cost like $15 a month? By the way.

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  Because, I don't know, I guess that's what you have to pay for.

• 1:22:10Speaker 02

  He's like, he's up there saying, I'm gonna, I've created an app that will help you meditate. I'm providing the service humanity. I went to Tibet, wherever he went, India, and like became a monk. And now I've come back and I'm gonna turn it into an app for everybody. I was like, oh, that's great. Why am I paying you 15 bucks a month for this?

• 1:22:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you can meditate for free.

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  You can meditate for free. You can find videos on YouTube and other apps that will help guide you through it.

• 1:22:35Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  I don't know, it just becomes the thing, but he made a really great point about our relationships with our relationship with our devices. And I'm totally paraphrasing at this point, but my interpretation of this is like your device, like your phone is just like a piece of metal and glass. It's not anything greater than that. Your phone expects nothing of you. We have these relationships with our devices right now where we're like, oh, I have to check my phone. Like I have to check my computer, but that's actually coming from us, from within us. It is not our devices that are demanding that we check them. And the relationship that you have with your computing device is ultimately the type of content that you put on it and the type of content you decide to interact with. And so we still have that control. Like I can still look at my phone right now and I still have some element of control.

• 1:23:21Speaker 01

  Like I have to use Slack for work and I have to, you know, but like I, but.

• 1:23:25Nilay Patel?

  And if you're listening to this, you have to respond to Facebook Live notifications and then watch the Facebook Live.

• 1:23:29Speaker 02

  You also have to give us five stars on iTunes, which is the only rating. System for podcasts.

• 1:23:34Speaker 01

  But if I wanted to delete like all of the apps except for Apple's and crappy native apps right now, I could, I could do that and I could never check those and then I could just use the device when, how I want to use it, when I want to use it. But it feels like based on everything everybody said from Bill Gates to Bezos to Ginny Rometty to, to Elon Musk, like AI is like super intelligent AI is actually imminent and imminent within the next 10 to 20 years. And like, I am wondering about that control shift.

• 1:24:00Speaker 02

  So Ginny Rometty, she said, she's CEO of IBM.

• 1:24:04Nilay Patel?

  She said, within five years, we will not make decisions without the benefit of AI, which is incredible to think about. Also, an incredibly privileged thing to say because you have to have access to all this stuff. But that's great. What Lauren's saying is you, right now, we have the choice to like throw the phone in the ocean, like walk away and like live some semblance of a normal life. If everyone around you is augmented, you can't participate unless you also choose to be augmented. And so that was the open AI thing, which Musk talked about at length and then threw just insane shade at Google.

• 1:24:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:42Nilay Patel?

  Um, so Musk's point was AI is great. I think it's cool because he thinks everything is cool, basically. But we have to democratize it. So everybody has their own AI and they're all augmented equally and they like, we're all making equivalent kinds of decisions. So one person can't have control. And Walt said, do you think anyone's scary? And Musk said, there's one company.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  He stared dramatically into this, into space and said, just one.

• 1:25:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And then Walt asked a question. He asked a follow up, which was, are they making a car that will compete with you, which is very much is at Google.

• 1:25:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:15Nilay Patel?

  And Musk was like, wink.

• 1:25:17Speaker 02

  There's just one.

• 1:25:18Nilay Patel?

  He actually said the word wink out loud, which I thought was weird. That's what I'm going to start doing. I'm going to start pronouncing emojis. He's like smirk, smirk, smirk.

• 1:25:25Speaker 02

  He pulled a sword out from behind the red chair and cut off Kara's head and said, there could be only one.

• 1:25:32Nilay Patel?

  We've got to.

• 1:25:32Speaker 02

  And then he was immortal forever.

• 1:25:34Nilay Patel?

  We've got to wrap this up. Here's, here are some things I know.

• 1:25:39Nilay Patel?

  It's very, very late. Casey is melting next to me. Lauren has just been staring at me with the hate eyes for like 20 minutes.

• 1:25:48Speaker 02

  All I want to do is talk about web apps now.

• 1:25:50Nilay Patel?

  I know. I'm aware. Dieter and I are gonna do a special post Vergecast web versus app two hour.

• 1:25:58Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be great. If you want to hear two people get drunk and make increasingly less sense about the death of the open web, stay tuned for Verge extras.

• 1:26:09Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, I'd, please, God, let's all just thank Centrify. Centrify is the best. Whatever it is they do.

• 1:26:20Nilay Patel?

  Make a fucking, just make a website with whatever, but just use Centrify.

• 1:26:30Nilay Patel?

  While the Verge on like 90 social platforms, but I'm just, I'm just, this is a plea to the listener from the bottom of my heart. Lauren Good gave her soul to Facebook Live today. I've never seen anyone have to turn it on for at least 10 minutes at a time. Except for Lauren and Ryan is your cameraman?

• 1:26:52Speaker 01

  Uh, yes, he's great. And Allison's the producer and they're wondering, they're running around with this like massive backpack that has all the tech in it that they need to get, because Facebook is obviously not running natively on a camera. And so they're, oh, it's just, it's, but it's been really fun. And also,

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  I mean, and also be sure to check out the Facebook Live where I shaved my head.

• 1:27:14Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 1:27:15Speaker 02

  Well, no, so I don't think. You can find all this at facebook.com/ricoh.net. Spell.

• 1:27:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Lauren, Lauren, uh, moonlighting, is that the right phrase?

• 1:27:26Speaker 01

  Now I am.

• 1:27:27Nilay Patel?

  Moonlighting, moonlighting for Rico this week. But Lauren, it was, it's been really fun to work with the Rico team this week. That's like actually a thing that I have completely enjoyed is like. Our little Verge team and the big Rico team all coming together to cover this conference. So Lauren's Facebook lives are all on the Rico page. You'll see other videos. There's coverage. Literally every sentence Elon Musk said has now been turned into a story on the Verge.com. Yeah. So if this preceding conversation made no sense, please, God, get out of your car. Stop driving the car or let the robot drive the car. Let God, like Jesus, take the wheel. Start reading. We're on every social platform, but the only one that matters is wherever Lauren is on Facebook Live.

• 1:28:09Nilay Patel?

  Go there to those things. Go to iTunes. Do whatever the fuck it is you do with iTunes. Listen to What's Tech with Chris Plant. Lauren's got a great podcast called Too Embarrassed to Ask. Casey just stands on street corners in San Francisco and yells at people. Looking for faves. Find his. Control Alt Lead is off this week, as you may have noticed, but Walt's back next week. He wants to talk about code. We're going to get into it. And Emily and Liz do Verge ESP, which is wonderful as well. I think that's it. Let's do another 30. Let's just do a quick 30.

• 1:28:39Speaker 01

  Let's just do it, guys. Let's just power through. What are we going to talk about?

• 1:28:42Nilay Patel?

  And if you were worried the Vergecast would become pre-taped and not be as insane, I trust that you believe that we, the spirit continues. And we're out of bourbon, so I'm just going to wander the streets looking for booze now. Rock. Roll. Yeah. Paul.