RIP Windows phone, net neutrality day of action, and Next Level

Welcome back to another week of The Vergecast. Nilay, Paul, and Dieter sit down in the studio to bring you the news that hit our site this week. First off, the net neutrality day of action was on Wednesday, as was Nilay’s piece on the matter. The gang debate the issue in this net neutrality “season” of news. Halfway through the show, senior tech editor Lauren Goode stops by to talk a little bit about her new video series Next Level, which shows the technology that’s being worked on at some of the world’s most innovative companies and research institutions. You can check out the first episode here. Last, but not least, we have what you’ve been waiting for — phone news! We have a mini Verge mobile show to discuss the deaths and births of the mobile world recently. There’s a whole lot in between that, so listen to it all and you’ll get it all. 03:45 - A Microsoft font may have exposed corruption in Pakistan 07:39 - Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T want Congress to make a net neutrality law because they will write it 23:39 - The FCC says net neutrality destroys small ISPs. So has it? 35:47 - Next Level with Lauren Goode 52:13 - iFixit teardown confirms Note 7 Fan Edition is just a Note 7 with a new, smaller battery 53:30 - BlackBerry KeyOne launches on Sprint, the eternal harbor of innovation 54:25 - Death of Windows Phone 59:47 - The new Pixel XL 1:01:54 - Luxury phone maker Vertu is shutting down its UK manufacturing operation 1:03:27 - Andy Rubin’s Essential is staying quiet on the Essential Phone delay 1:06:51 - Paul’s weekly segment “Mag me later” 1:10:31 - Alexa news 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?

  Hey everybody, we're gonna start the show in a minute, but as you know, we're down to one podcast and we're trialing, we're piloting all these other new podcasts on a platform called Anchor, which you should listen to. So before we start the Vergecast this week, we have Ashley Carmen, our great reporter. She's doing a segment that was on Anchor earlier this week. It's just a couple of minutes long. Why don't you listen to it? Let us know what you think. Take it away, Ashley.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  A man boards a subway frantic. He's definitely drunk. I can tell because he's kind of stumbling around and his eyes are missing a sober light behind them. I assume he came from a work happy hour, as evidenced by his cross-body, black leather bag and business-appropriate loafers. He reaches into his bag and pulls out a box of unwrapped, unopened, I-beat, wired earbuds. He hoists the box up in the air and stares at it for a second, clearly thinking of the fastest way to get to the buds inside. He bites the box. Nothing happens. His teeth can't get the job done, the box is too tightly sealed and plastic.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  He sets it back into his bag and reaches into his pocket. This time, he's got keys. He grabs them and cuts into the box. I've never seen someone more ravenous for earbuds. He tears the box open with a vicious energy and in less than five seconds is already pulling the earbuds out and untangling them, even ripping off their zip ties. Without missing a beat, he plugs them into his phone and stuffs them into his ears. He puts music on and closes his eyes. He's at peace.

• 1:54Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Theverge.com. A lot of things happened this week. Yeah. But first, let me tell you who I am. I am Neelai Patel. I'm joined by two of my very best friends. Paul Miller is here.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 2:06Nilay Patel?

  Dieter Bohn is here.

• 2:07Speaker 03

  I'm there. I'm in San Francisco.

• 2:10Nilay Patel?

  Well, you're always with me.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 2:12Nilay Patel?

  I want you to know that.

• 2:12Speaker 03

  And you're right.

• 2:13Nilay Patel?

  No, a huge week on The Verge. Lauren Good launched her new series, Next Level.

• 2:17Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:17Nilay Patel?

  Which is amazing. I actually just recorded a little segment with her that we'll run in the middle of the show. So that was big. There was a bunch of net neutrality news. There was a day of action, which I am still not like a sincere enough person to say without slightly rolling my eyes. The internet like did a thing and we covered the hell out of it. We're gonna talk about that a bunch. There's just phone news. There's a lot of phone news this week. Remember when this show was all phone news? We got phone news for you.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  I don't even believe it.

• 2:44Speaker 03

  Oh, it's good phone news, too. It's real good.

• 2:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  I'll have to ask Alexa or Bixby or Google Home if that's true.

• 2:51Nilay Patel?

  Well, don't worry. There's Alexa news. Can I tell you a story about Alexa? So I went on CNBC this week on Prime Day, which we are not going to talk about except for this story. Because Prime Day is a made up idea that is bad. But they had me, CNBC is like, come on, you know, Amazon's cutting the price of its Alexa stuff and Google's cutting the price of the Home. The Home plus a Chromecast was down to $99.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 3:13Nilay Patel?

  And the Echo Dot was down to 35. So come on and talk about the war of assistants. And I will tell you, listener, I went on CNBC and I started answering the question and I looked at the camera and I said, Alexa, play The Vergecast. And I hope finance bros around this country started listening to this show. And then I forgot what I was gonna say after that, stuttered, and the poor host had to ask another question. Anyway.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  Classic financial analysis from Neelai Patel.

• 3:45Nilay Patel?

  I did it. All right, let's start with the biggest news, the most important news, the best news, which is the government of Pakistan grinding to a halt because of a font.

• 4:00Nilay Patel?

  Paul, I know you're in the story.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  No, I literally have. I was like, I don't care about this font story. There's no gadgets in it.

• 4:06Nilay Patel?

  I saw someone editing a video of you with that font. I had to say, I pirated a font for somebody on our video team today.

• 4:13Speaker 03

  What?

• 4:13Nilay Patel?

  From my computer. I didn't like download it.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  They put me in the font story?

• 4:17Nilay Patel?

  I don't know what they're doing. I just know that, oh, it was Jake. Jake's in the font.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  I do look a lot like Jake. I get that all the time.

• 4:23Nilay Patel?

  I think they were using a template. Anyway, can I tell you the story?

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 4:26Nilay Patel?

  By the way, in case you're listening, Microsoft, I did send a font to someone today. But the font was already in my computer from my legal copy of Office.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  So you file shared?

• 4:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it did a P2P.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:40Nilay Patel?

  We used Kazaa. I sent it right over there.

• 4:44Nilay Patel?

  Can I tell you the story? The story is great. It's my favorite story in the longest time.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:48Nilay Patel?

  So in 2016, there was a big leak of papers called the Panama Papers. The Prime Minister of Pakistan's children were implicated in like an investment scheme, like an offshore investment thing. This is not the important part. A big piece of it was they had not filed the necessary disclosures on time. So they're like, no, we did. And they sent documents to the investigators. And the investigators noticed the documents were in Calibri, which is the default font for Office products. And they said, Calibri wasn't available in 2007. Oh, the documents were dated in 2006. But Calibri wasn't available until later. It didn't become the default until later.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Like, uh, early January 2017?

• 5:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So obviously, 2007. So Calibri became available in 2007. But they had sent documents that were supposed to be dated in 2006, sent in Calibri. So now, literally, the government is implicated in this corruption scandal because they forgot to change the defaults on their fake documents.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 5:55Nilay Patel?

  And now their argument is that they were just using-

• 5:57Speaker 03

  Their claim is that they, they, it technically existed before, but they switched it because it was available even though it was the default. Is that what their claim is? Something insane like that?

• 6:07Nilay Patel?

  But ultimately, that claim, their claim was it was in a beta of Windows or like it was available and you could buy it. All of that means that they had to want to use Calibri, which is not acceptable.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  I wanted to accept that. If they want to stand by that story that they love Calibri enough. I'm with them.

• 6:30Nilay Patel?

  This is my favorite font. The second I saw it, I knew it was mine. I went out and got it from its custom font house before Microsoft. I was in Calibri before it was cool.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  When was the last time you like bought a font? Man, like some of those fonts, it's like $50 like per weight.

• 6:46Nilay Patel?

  So can I, when we were redesigning The Verge, we literally thought we would have to hold the launch of the new site because there were such strenuous negotiations about font licensing.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  Should've used Calibri.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  Should've just gone with Calibri.

• 7:02Nilay Patel?

  If anyone wants to make custom CSS for The Verge that sets the whole site in Calibri, I'm happy to tweet that screenshot.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  No, just like a Calibri button. Like there's like, there's blank space on the like left and right side of our banner.

• 7:14Nilay Patel?

  Pick your own fonts.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  Calibri engage.

• 7:18Nilay Patel?

  Calibri engage. The worst grease monkey plugin of all time.

• 7:25Nilay Patel?

  All right. That's my, it's literally my favorite story on The Verge this week.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  That's great. I'm glad you told me about it now that I've read it.

• 7:34Nilay Patel?

  Good, Paul. What, what is this Verge guys for except for me telling Paul what's on the site? All right. Should we talk about net neutrality? We should do, we should do a little of it.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  A little bit.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  I was on Tinder the other day and I'm just swiping along and it's like the internet. And it like, to say, it was like a weird custom, like dating profile.

• 7:54Speaker 03

  Did you swipe right or left on the internet?

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Swiped left.

• 7:58Nilay Patel?

  I don't know what that means.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  That means no.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  But they, it was weird, like you couldn't, you couldn't super like.

• 8:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  They had like disabled some of the features of like a ti- typical Tinder profile.

• 8:11Nilay Patel?

  What is a super like?

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Super like makes it more likely that the person will see, it's one of the ways Tinder monetizes. You pay for a quantity of super likes, but the problem is, is that it also happens if you swipe up, it's a super like. But also sometimes you swipe up because you want to change the volume or brightness on your phone. And so like half of all Tinder profiles have like a disclaimer, like super likes are accidents.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  Because it's almost super like, oh, my gosh, this, oh, no, they were just trying to change the volume.

• 8:49Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so you saw the internet, because Tinder, so just to set the context here. Yesterday was big net neutrality day of action, where all the internet companies decided to protest in some public way against the FCC and Ajit Pai, rolling back Title II protections. So Tinder was one of them, presumably is where the story is going.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, here's Tinder's, this is great podcasting.

• 9:12Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Now, now, now, Mila is looking at a screenshot I took of the internet. It's like, we love the internet and don't want it to die, so.

• 9:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Like it.

• 9:24Nilay Patel?

  Oh, this is one of those, like, today's the day of action, do something with your phone.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:28Nilay Patel?

  So Tinder did that, obviously. Netflix had a banner up.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Reddit had a thing that would like take over the site and like type slowly at you.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, Amazon had a tiny, tiny little thing in like a random corner of their website for you to buy some net neutrality somehow.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  You could buy net neutrality?

• 9:46Speaker 03

  It was like, there was like a list of things you could buy, like suggested products, and then one of them was net neutrality.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  Oh, that's pretty good.

• 9:53Nilay Patel?

  There was a bunch of other places had things.

• 9:56Speaker 03

  OkCupid.

• 9:56Nilay Patel?

  Wired magazine had a big spinner. We obviously had my big piece. What were you saying, Dieter?

• 10:01Speaker 03

  OkCupid, CollegeHumor, GoDaddy, Pornhub, of course, because Pornhub loves to jump on bad wagons.

• 10:08Nilay Patel?

  There's a great piece about the early days of net neutrality when it was like, move on in the Christian coalition. It's like one of the few things they agreed on, because a lot of like smaller groups are, they think net neutrality is really important because it's kind of ultimately a free speech issue.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:24Nilay Patel?

  So there's a lot of that going on.

• 10:28Nilay Patel?

  And then I wrote a big piece where I kind of, I wanted to take a different tack. I saw a lot of other places wrote pieces which are good and you should read them, doing the very standard, what is net neutrality? Why is it important? Why you got to write this letter? And I didn't want to do that this time because we've done so much of it. If you listen to the show, we've done it at length. I'm really interested in the FCC's arguments this time, and how they line up with reality. And the thing that just stands out to me the most is the lack of competition. So the FCC's own data says 51% of Americans.

• 11:03Nilay Patel?

  Have only one internet provider that provides broadband. Broadband is defined as 25 megabits down and up. So 51% of America only have access to one true broadband provider. So basically not DSL. Not DSL. Yeah. And then 38% of Americans have access to two or more. Hmm. And it's one, it's at least one and at least two. So the people with at least one, some of those people have zero. But if you add it up, it's 89% of Americans at most have access to two internet providers. That to me is, it's such a foundational fact that it's hard to, it's hard to move on to any of the other topics without just constantly thinking about it.

• 11:46Nilay Patel?

  That if you don't have a choice and your provider does something wrong, there's no way for you to react. Like you're just stuck. You need the internet in your life. You can't not have it. Why do these companies advertise then? I mean, they advertise because they want people to use their services. A lot of people, like I said, those, that at least one provider, a lot of people like don't have it. They still don't have it. A lot of, even the smaller ones. So that's a choice people can make. Yeah, I just, you can't talk about that and then also be like, the digital divide or like rural broadband is important because those things are important. Hmm. Right? Like, children getting access to educational information on the internet is important. Right? Like, it's just a thing.

• 12:29Nilay Patel?

  The Wall Street Journal did a really great story about a month ago now, where even Republican senators were saying things like, broadband is a bigger issue in my little district than roads and bridges. This is a more important infrastructure issue to us. Hmm. So to me, it's, you just don't, because you don't have choices, the broadband providers probably need to have some rules placed on them based on what they do. Because if you had a lot of choices, you would, the market would actually make a decision. But in the absence of a market...

• 13:03Nilay Patel?

  It's important to preserve the playing field. And I've just thought about that a lot. It's the thing that's been on my mind. It's the thing that is the most important. Because every other issue, the argument boils down to, are they spending a bunch of money to build infrastructure? Or are they, do big companies like Netflix need to care about net neutrality anymore? Because they can pay for deals. But there's never the, do consumers have a real choice? And if you don't have that choice, then what is protecting you?

• 13:30Speaker 02

  What if, what if there was a requirement that the Brightline rules, that every, every provider has to at least offer one plan that, that follows the net neutrality Brightline rules. But they're also allowed to offer different options, like a, like a version with like better YouTube, or a version with no Netflix, or something like that. If they wanted to experiment with some other stuff, with, you know, different prices on those different kinds of plans. As long as they still had an option for a plan that followed the rules.

• 14:05Nilay Patel?

  So we've entered into what our features editor, Michael Zlenko, is calling a season of net neutrality coverage. Because we want to talk about it at length while this process is ongoing. So one of Ajit Pai's big things is net neutrality rules hurt investment, and it particularly hurt investment for small internet providers. So Jake Kastenakis, who's been doing amazing work for us covering net neutrality and the internet for, for a while now, actually called a bunch of smaller internet providers and said, is this hurting you? And as you would expect, many said, no, and some said, yes. But the most important line from the piece, and I encourage everybody to go read it because it's great, is one of the internet, small internet providers said, look, it's not costly to follow the rules.

• 14:50Nilay Patel?

  This is the default state of the internet. So like I buy the equipment, I set it up, I turn it on, I start it up. The default is it doesn't block or throttle.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  But some companies have to prove to the FCC that they are.

• 15:02Nilay Patel?

  Right, so the cost is compliance. Small internet providers, if you have less than 250,000 customers, you don't have to pay the money to prove your compliance.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  For now.

• 15:11Nilay Patel?

  For now, I mean, but you could, it's a temporary exemption. I assume the FCC is wondering, are we going to get a million complaints? Do we need to impose this cost? I'm assuming if they don't, they'll just keep renewing the exemption. But for now, they're not paying the cost. I think the interesting thing about an idea like yours is that does impose a cost. If you want to create a new product, you have to provide another product. You have to like build a billing system that can handle two kinds of products. You have to do the engineering work to provide, have multiple levels.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  Well, you don't have to add the multiple, you could do, if the default out of the gate, if you unbox the equipment, this is what the internet, how the internet works.

• 15:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  That's just the default. If you want to add another product to it, you can.

• 15:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, but like the question with that, that sort of solution is like, how much more expensive would we allow it to be? Which it sort of presupposes a level of regulation that's not even in the debate right now. The idea that the FCC could tell NISP what to do at all is where the level of debate is right now. Which to me like comes back to this, this idea of competition that 89% of American consumers don't have more than two options. It takes this discussion about whether or not the internet is a utility and therefore should be regulated as such, out of the realm of philosophical and into the realm of like strictly practical. The internet is in fact a utility.

• 16:41Speaker 03

  Whether or not you believe that philosophically it should be treated like one, the same way that we regulate and like treat electricity and water. The practical fact of the matter is that that's the only way that American consumers can get it. And if that's, if it's already as a practical matter, a utility, you either need to fix that by increasing competition in such a way that it's not. And I don't have much belief that that's going to happen on its own due to, you know, the, you know, mystical free will of the market. I think it's much more likely that like it has to be enforced through government regulation in the same way that.

• 17:23Speaker 03

  You know, that they make sure that water is relatively safe, hopefully, and so on.

• 17:29Nilay Patel?

  We're not great at that either.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:34Speaker 03

  So there's that. But yeah, that's the main thing is it's this isn't really like a philosophy debate anymore. It's it's a straight up practical debate of how do we get the how do we get to the goals that everybody claims to want to share? And what's the most effective way to do that? And I'm seeing here's one effective way to do it, Title II. And I'm seeing a whole bunch of like, or, you know, other stuff. And like, the other stuff is incredibly poorly defined. And it's so poorly defined, you have to like, basically assume that there's another thing that they're trying to achieve, rather than the thing they say they're trying to achieve.

• 18:16Nilay Patel?

  So here, well, so first of all, I agree with Dieter on there's just the practical reality on the ground. And I think ignoring that is just dangerous. Right? If you're saying, we don't need the rules, we can increase competition. And increased competition will obviate the rules, which I believe, by the way. Like, there are four wireless carriers. And because of competition with just four choices, we've arrived at a bunch of unlimited data plans. Right? I mean, like, it's working in its minimal, slow way. If there's more competition, you'd probably get even better consumer outcomes. But because there's so little competition, you either have to make big investments in ensuring

• 18:57Nilay Patel?

  there's more competition, which I don't think this government is like particularly eager to do. Right? They want the private marketplace to to do stuff. Or you have to protect people from monopoly behavior. But I don't see how removing the rules will increase competition. And that mechanism is really unclear. And I think until Pi and the rest of the sort of Republican FCC coalition come around and explain that mechanism, then the burden of proof lies in them. But the other thing I want to say, and I want to respond, Paul, but the other thing I want to say is, if you look at how the debate is now being co-opted, it actually reinforces what Dieter's saying about there's some other nefarious thing happening.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  Yeah. So net neutrality is- We gotta get into the co-option thing really deep, but like, that's gonna take a minute. We should let Paul talk.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just wanted to respond to what you were saying. Like, I think that makes it really clear, like, where this political, like, divide is. Like, it's basically the idea that all monopolies are always going to harm consumers and that therefore should be regulated in some way, and that government regulation can promote competition successfully and, like, end a monopoly situation without just destroying the company, basically. I think that's, like, probably, like, the big, like, political ideological divide. Like, aside from, like, the specifics of the situation, if you are in something where

• 20:26Speaker 02

  there's a kind of a natural monopoly or natural duopoly, obviously, it's a huge capital expenditure to create a whole nother set of coax cables through every home.

• 20:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  So it seems very unlikely for someone to come along and try that. And in a lot of cases, they'd have a lot of trouble with the local governments anyways. Is it, is it just obvious that because you have a situation like that, that it must be regulated or consumers will be harmed by that company?

• 20:54Nilay Patel?

  What, so that part about, like, the local gov- I mean, there's, there's just layers and layers here, but the local governments all gave monopoly access to these fiber providers ages ago.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not happy with those local governments, let me tell you.

• 21:06Nilay Patel?

  But that was, the arguments back then were also, like, private enterprise arguments. It was, the government shouldn't lay the fiber, the private company should lay the fiber.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Well, the government shouldn't grant monopoly access to somebody.

• 21:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  I mean, that's how we got in the, the trouble in the first place with, with the government granting a telecom monopoly to Ma Bell.

• 21:26Nilay Patel?

  You can't just let everybody dig up the road.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  They can pay for it.

• 21:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I so the comparison there, and I do want to talk about this co-option piece because it's it's the more interesting and important part at this moment, I think. But the comparisons that people have been tweeting at me lately are a lot of people who live in Europe or around the world are saying, how is it so bad in America? I pay $20 a month to get 300 down. And the answer, like, pretty simply is governments in Europe in particular installed tons and tons of dark fiber to everyone's house, and they let companies lease that fiber back and sell whatever products they want. So there's like true consumer competition. So if you live in London, you probably have 10 choices of internet provider, but BT is actually the trunk provider. And BT is one of the providers you can choose from, but

• 22:14Nilay Patel?

  many other companies are able to lease that fiber from BT and sell their own services. That is like a way more interesting approach to this problem than anything that I've seen proposed in the United States. But we're not we're not even close to that. Right? And I think until we get to a place where we're talking about that kind of thing, it's we're stuck with, are we going to have monopoly, like regulated monopoly, or are we going to have like chaos? Because we're not finding ways to increase competition. Someone is inevitably going to tweet at me about 5G. And I'm just telling you right now, that is a long way away.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  I just don't think broadband is that much superior in Europe. In fact, I think in most cases, it's slower and worse.

• 22:55Nilay Patel?

  I think you are only thinking of our experiences trying to get on the internet in Barcelona.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  Literally, every time I leave the country, my internet situation is not as good. Maybe I'm just going to all the wrong places.

• 23:06Nilay Patel?

  You're going all the wrong places, like in London, in the Netherlands, and all kinds of places. In Seoul, South Korea, the internet's fastest in the world. It's also among the cheapest, like.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Well, I know there's like a series of Asian company or countries that have

• 23:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  better internet access than us. But

• 23:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  I don't think it's common in Europe to have better performance than us.

• 23:26Nilay Patel?

  I will tell you, I agree, Paul. The internet in Barcelona sucks. It has routinely stymied us every time we've ever gone, which is why I don't go to MWC anymore. Dieter, let's talk about the co-option thing. You want to get into it?

• 23:38Speaker 03

  So AT&T decided to quote unquote, "join the day of action." And it wasn't really clear what AT&T's participation in the day of action was going to be, other than using the line that everybody uses, which is, you know, "we support an open internet." But like, that precise language is very dangerous, because it's not clear what that means. And like all the other ISPs, AT&T wants to have this solved by Congress, rather than by the FCC, or FCC deciding to go to the FTC. And from one perspective, that makes sense, because it doesn't change with every administration, it just gets set. But it also makes sense in a much more nefarious way, because giant internet companies have

• 24:21Speaker 03

  more leverage over Congress through lobbying than they do over the FCC.

• 24:26Nilay Patel?

  AT&T in particular, one of our nation's biggest lobbyists.

• 24:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:30Nilay Patel?

  True fact.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  So AT&T owns DirecTV. Your feelings on whether or not it's appropriate to have a TV network, you know, blah, blah, whatever. Leave that aside, I think it's probably fine, who knows. Put a message up on DirecTV boxes, saying, "Hey, check out, check out this thing, we support an open internet." And then you go to the website that they recommend to you, and then the website cycles through a bunch of different, like, suggested things you could email to Congress, or to the FCC, that, you know, in some cases are like, completely dissembling, and in some cases are like, bald-faced in what they're purporting to get you to support.

• 25:15Speaker 03

  All of which is kind of antithetical to what literally every other company participating in the day of action wants.

• 25:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So, for example, Paul, we were talking about Tinder earlier. Tinder puts up the screen, they say, "We support the internet, do a thing, swipe right on the internet." And then what they're trying to get you to do is send a letter to your congressperson at the FCC, saying, "We support Title II net neutrality." What AT&T did was, they literally put up a message on every DirecTV box, and then you got through it, and they got you to send a letter, and the text of the letter was like, "We agree with the FCC that these dumb rules are stupid." It's like, that is the opposite of the open internet. And it's, it's this weird thing that keeps happening.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  That's the opposite of your definition of the open internet, to be clear.

• 26:03Nilay Patel?

  So that, this is what I'm gonna get into. There's this thing that is happening in politics now in particular that I think is infuriating and counterproductive. Where every, each side keeps on trying to steal the other's side language.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, if I hear the word, the, the, the double word, nothing burger.

• 26:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  One more time.

• 26:24Nilay Patel?

  It's like, stop that.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Flip out. But this, this is a classic problem. You guys, you guys have flown too cool, too cool to the sun.

• 26:32Nilay Patel?

  Too cool to the sun?

• 26:33Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 26:33Nilay Patel?

  That is not a phrase I'm gonna steal from you.

• 26:38Speaker 02

  You better not co-op that. No, when a band gets really popular and super cool, all of a sudden, not very cool people start to get into it. And then now you feel weird.

• 26:49Nilay Patel?

  That's not, that's not this. Also, a good name for a band is Too Cool To The Sun.

• 26:55Nilay Patel?

  A really bad, modest mouth spinoff band. Like Paul's saying, that's my definition of the open internet. And what everyone sort of agrees that that means are like the bright line rules of net neutrality. No blocking, no locking, no paid prioritization, no throttling. The, the net neutrality stuff. And now, because, so in 2014, AT&T and Comcast and Verizon all said, no, no, we want that stuff. We want the ability to have paid prioritization. We want what they call the double-sided marketplace, where they were selling some services to consumers. They were selling some services to companies like Netflix, and they were monetizing the pipe at both ends. Now they know it's, that is not a popular idea. Like the, they cannot, they cannot say, we want fast lanes.

• 27:40Nilay Patel?

  No one wants them to have fast lanes.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  I.

• 27:42Nilay Patel?

  But you might.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  I want, I want fast lanes. I'm, I wrote a piece, I'm gonna put it out there. I have literally written words on paper that I completed.

• 27:50Nilay Patel?

  On paper?

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, no.

• 27:54Nilay Patel?

  Flying too cool to the sun, my friend.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  I wrote a piece, we'll see if it ever gets published because maybe it's bad, but I wrote a piece. Basically, like, what could possibly happen if internet companies violated all the bright line rules?

• 28:12Nilay Patel?

  Sure. My point, and that's interesting and

• 28:15Speaker 02

  Because I want fast lanes.

• 28:16Nilay Patel?

  It's worth fighting over.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  I'm ready.

• 28:18Nilay Patel?

  Evan Rogers, our friend Evan Rogers now at Engadget, told me that he actually loves zero rating because when he was like living in Tennessee, he was able to consume a lot of things for free because he had zero rating on T-Mobile. Many arguments to be had. My point is, right now, fast lanes, extremely unpopular.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  True.

• 28:33Nilay Patel?

  Right? Politically unpopular, the American public does not want them. So now, AT&T and Comcast, Verizon, all saying, "No, no, we want these rules. Love the rules. Rules, great idea. The FCC shouldn't impose the rules. We'll get Congress to impose the rules." And the phrase they're using for that is "open internet."

• 28:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:53Nilay Patel?

  Which is just a weird, it's

• 28:55Speaker 02

  Means nothing.

• 28:56Nilay Patel?

  The co-option of language there.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  What would you want them to call it?

• 28:59Nilay Patel?

  Because they had what they wanted. This is the important point. They had what they wanted. They had those rules written under Title I authority for the FCC, not the Title II with all the rate regulation and the 1934 statute and blah, blah, blah. Like, they had it. That was Tom Wheeler's original proposal.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  And they fought it?

• 29:21Nilay Patel?

  And they fought it and said, "This doesn't give you the authority to use the rules." And now, the FCC responded by saying, "Okay, you made us do it. So here are the rules under the authority that you don't like."

• 29:34Speaker 02

  What's a relatively neutral term that can later be co-opted?

• 29:38Nilay Patel?

  Net neutrality.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no, that's what I'm saying. For the internet, the Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast want.

• 29:45Nilay Patel?

  Oh, what's a term that we should let them use?

• 29:47Speaker 02

  What's a term that you could use that kinda sounds positive, but we know it's negative? I don't know.

• 29:52Nilay Patel?

  Is it open internet?

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Open internet is, it sounds really, free internet?

• 29:59Speaker 02

  Internet freedom?

• 30:00Nilay Patel?

  Internet, like, all of these terms, Tim Wu, who invented the phrase-

• 30:04Speaker 03

  I think it should be laissez internet.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Ooh. That's tough.

• 30:10Nilay Patel?

  It's too French for America.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  It's pretty French.

• 30:12Nilay Patel?

  Freedom internet. No, but Tim Wu, who invented the term net neutrality, is like, well on the record, saying, "I picked the wrong name, it doesn't sound great."

• 30:20Speaker 02

  What if it's called internet choice?

• 30:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's gonna be stuff like that. Internet choice is actually great, right? We're the, we're the, we're the party of-

• 30:28Speaker 02

  I choose fast lane.

• 30:30Nilay Patel?

  You're crazy. Um, I'm excited to read this piece, in which you eviscerate your reputation.

• 30:39Nilay Patel?

  Uh, but the co-option is real, like, that's, it is a, it is an element of our politics that is currently driving me crazy.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:46Nilay Patel?

  And it is an element of this where, I mean frankly, I feel like AT&T is lying to people, they're deceiving them.

• 30:52Speaker 03

  Well-

• 30:52Nilay Patel?

  And sending letters about a thing they don't believe.

• 30:54Speaker 03

  What actually-

• 30:55Nilay Patel?

  Because no one's reading that text.

• 30:56Speaker 03

  What gets me is, I don't, this isn't a fully formed thought, but the thing that people are afraid of is the ISP using its power as an ISP to change what you experience on the internet. And the way that AT&T participated in this thing is an ISP using its power as an ISP to send you a message of, like, dubious truthfulness. Like, they literally use the infrastructure of their network to try and change, like, spread the opinions that people have, change the opinions that people have, which-

• 31:33Speaker 02

  That is why-

• 31:34Speaker 03

  Is a little bit close to what the thing that we're actually genuinely afraid of here.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  That's, well, some people are talking about this as a free speech issue from the other side.

• 31:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  That, that, why are these specific companies in this specific role of serving last mile home broadband?

• 31:52Speaker 02

  The only people like not allowed to, you know, make deals, make decisions, speak, you know, like, I feel like I really hated that Reddit message. I feel like Reddit is lying to me. Reddit is in an incredible sense, like, position of power, has incredible influence, a very, you know, adoring audience, and it tells that audience, you love what you've got, well, it's gonna go away unless you write this form letter, you know, to, and so I don't like it when AT&T does it, but I don't like it when Reddit does it either. Like, if you're gonna write your congressperson, write them something that you think.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  Right, so to me, the difference is, if I don't like when Reddit does it, I'll go use, I don't know, Dig or something, right? But when I don't like when AT&T does it, I don't have another choice. That's the difference.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Right. Do you personally not have another choice from AT&T or DirecTV?

• 32:50Speaker 03

  Uh, it is very difficult for me to switch because I live in a big apartment building, so I basically don't.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you can switch.

• 32:58Speaker 03

  Uh, honestly, I have to look. I don't know if top.

• 33:00Nilay Patel?

  Well, remember, most people only have, like, doo-wo-.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  I mean, it's very, it's very difficult to switch from Reddit. The whole community is there, and despite, like, numerous times of like a public outcry against Reddit for this or that, there's been no successful alternative.

• 33:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And I think that the specific thing that you're saying is, it's these companies who provide this kind of service are restricted in this way. That is appropriate. Lots of companies who provide specific kinds of services are restricted in a variety of ways. So, like, conceptually, that doesn't seem wrong. But I think saying every other company depends on that last mile connection being neutral, that does impose some responsibility on you. And I think it's fair to codify that responsibility and say, you can't mess with this because this is, you are the connection between the consumer and the marketplace. And if you're collecting taxes on both sides of that, that gets real, real dicey.

• 33:56Nilay Patel?

  Paul and I don't agree about this.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  I, but I do think that's a really clear way of saying what you, what you think.

• 34:00Nilay Patel?

  Thanks, Paul. I got a letter. I wrote my piece yesterday and I got a really nice email from somebody who said, "Your piece was clear and provided adequate information." It was like, one of the best compliments I've ever gotten in my entire life.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  I'm gonna set up like a, like a "if this then that" spot, just to email back to you every time you write something.

• 34:19Nilay Patel?

  It was great. I was like, "Yes, I did provide adequate information."

• 34:24Speaker 02

  And clearly.

• 34:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, clearly. It was great. It was seriously one of the best compliments I've ever gotten. Uh, okay, I'm gonna read an ad. Uh, we're gonna talk to Lauren real quick about her, uh, show Next Level, which is amazing and you should watch it. And I'll come back and talk about some other stuff. We've got some phone news. Get out of this policy stuff. Talk about what you came here for, which is cell phones.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 34:45Nilay Patel?

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• 35:26Nilay Patel?

  candidates with immediate results. Right now, you can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free. That's right, free. Go to ziprecruiter.com/verge. Shocking surprise there, but it's ziprecruiter.com/verge. You can post jobs for free. One more time, that's ziprecruiter.com/verge.

• 35:47Nilay Patel?

  Hey Lauren.

• 35:48Speaker 04

  Hey Neela, how's it going?

• 35:50Nilay Patel?

  It's going well. We're starting your segment. So Lauren is here, Lauren Good, our wonderful senior editor. You have a new series on The Verge called Next Level. What's going on there?

• 36:00Speaker 04

  That's right. We just launched a new video series. It's on Facebook, YouTube, theverge.com, Twitter. And as I like to say, streaming directly into your brain because we are the future.

• 36:10Nilay Patel?

  Anywhere there's moving images.

• 36:12Speaker 04

  Right, exactly. Shot in 4K. And it's called Next Level. And it's funny because the name came from a brainstorm session that Neela, you were a part of. We were talking about new video series that we were all working on. And I think what happened is I came up with like a few disparate, different ideas for videos that I thought would be interesting. And we all kept using the phrase in the meeting. We kept saying like, this is, let's not talk about wearables. Let's talk about next level wearables. Or like, oh, have you seen that thing? That's, that's next level VR. And we were sort of using it like unironically. And then at some point you said like, why don't you just call your series that? Like, why doesn't it just be next level? And I said, that's a great idea. But the whole, the whole idea behind it is to not look at stuff that's already commercially available.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  This isn't necessarily about gadgets as much as we do love gadgets at The Verge. It's really about the stuff that's in development, going on behind the scenes, stuff that honestly may never come to fruition, but the really interesting concepts or prototypes or just innovations that we think have the potential to like have a big impact on what we do with tech in the future.

• 37:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, what I love about it is so much of what we cover day to day is incredibly iterative, even though it's often marketed and packaged like it's not. It usually is. It's the screen got a little bit bigger or the battery got a little bit longer. But your show is about stuff that is absolutely not iterative. That's actually like a little bit crazy, a little bit wild, a little bit impractical, but lots and lots of big ideas. So your first episode, which I have to say, I have to congratulate you on.

• 37:44Speaker 04

  Oh, thank you.

• 37:45Nilay Patel?

  Your first episode, well, I'm congratulating and getting it done because it was a real race to the finish there. But in 24 hours, it had a million views. So off to a great start. So congratulations there. But your first episode was about Airbus and what Airbus is doing with a project called Transpose.

• 38:00Speaker 04

  Yes, so this is not something that we hadn't heard about before. To be clear, we first covered this back in December as well as a few other outlets. Airbus has been working on this for a while, but late last year, they kind of revealed to the public like, hey, we're working on this crazy concept in our Silicon Valley labs, which they happen to call A cubed. And so people had written about it, but no one had really seen it. They did this kind of pop up in San Jose Airport, where you could go into this tiny little, you know, mod of a cabin and like ride a Peloton bike. And so some people that like walking through San Jose Airport had tweeted pictures of it and things like that. We, we got the first kind of really in-depth, you know, hands-on, as much as I do, it was like hands-on with a plane.

• 38:44Speaker 04

  Like, we got in their labs and we talked to multiple executives and we just kind of really, you know, asked them what the heck they're doing with this thing. And, and the idea is not entirely new in the sense that they're borrowing a lot of the inspiration and they're getting a lot of the inspiration from cargo planes, which are constantly loading things on and off the plane in between trips. But their, their idea was like, hey, if you can do that with a cargo plane, why can't we do it with consumer experiences and try to improve flying for everybody, but also of course, give the airlines opportunities to make more money?

• 39:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So I'm going to be the avatar. I mean, you should, if you're listening to this, you should go watch the episode because it's great. But I'm going to be the avatar of some of the commenters because they, I think they raised some questions after watching it. So Airbus said to you-

• 39:31Speaker 04

  Are you going to do different voices?

• 39:32Nilay Patel?

  No, I mean, I wasn't prepared for it, but next week, when we do this segment, I will do different voices. I'll assign different voices to the different commenters. That would be a great bridge.

• 39:42Speaker 04

  Celebrities to read the comments. Yeah.

• 39:43Nilay Patel?

  That would be amazing. But so a lot of people in the comments asked, how on earth is this going to be affordable? And I thought, that's like a really interesting question. I know they said, Airbus said to you, we want to price this at economy, comfort economy, premium. But that seems really hard. So did they give you any more info on how, how to make it affordable?

• 40:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's, there's so many things to consider here, which we get into in the piece, but then again, you know, we only had about seven or eight minutes for the episode. There are so many questions to consider here. Of course, there are safety questions, there are regulatory questions. We did reach out to the FAA as we were working on this episode, but the biggest question people had was about pricing, of course, because that's what, you know, hits consumers the hardest. And Airbus does say they believe it could be priced at the premium economy. Price scale, but that all depends on seating density. I mean, right now seating density is such an important factor of commercial aircraft because it's literally how many people you can cram on and how many people you can get to pay a certain

• 40:42Speaker 04

  price for a certain section of the plane. And once you start moving these modular cabins in and out of the plane, and maybe there's a restaurant, or maybe there's a spa, or the spin studio, like I mentioned earlier, one of the, one of the mods they showed us was kind of like this daycare type place where families could bring their kids and play with games and stuff like that. The seating definitely did not look like the seating on a standard Airbus A330. So, the big question is, how do you maintain the same seating density, so you can charge people the price that Airbus thinks you will? And it seems a little farfetched.

• 41:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the, I actually loved that scene in the episode, because he's like, "And this is where you would play with trucks." And the idea of a place in airline?

• 41:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's like a mobile.

• 41:25Nilay Patel?

  Dedicated to playing with trucks.

• 41:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's like a little mobile hanging from the ceiling of the plane, like that would normally be above, above a child's crib. And it's like, "Oh, that's great. I'm not in a metal tube. There's a mobile." Yeah.

• 41:35Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, all of that seems great, but if there's turbulence and everybody has to rush back to their seats, then you kind of run into all these problems. And it seems like they're trying to figure that stuff out, too, and they're not quite there? Or are they a little bit more buttoned up?

• 41:48Speaker 04

  There's, there are some ways they're trying to engineer around that. And the ones I saw were actually fairly clever. So, for example, in the bar area, there are kind of these tall, stand-up cocktail, table's not the right word, but like a, I don't know, this standing thing, where you might stand around with someone and have a cocktail, or a glass of wine, or whatever it might be. And then, "Oh, look, actually, if there's turbulence, that cocktail stand turns into a seat." You know, so they've thought about little things like that. In the family play area of the plane that we saw, the seats kind of fold down, so that they're touching the ground, and they open up this walk, this pathway for people to walk through or play in. But then if you needed to, you would just take the bottom of the seat and pop it up, and then actually sit in it. But that

• 42:30Speaker 04

  doesn't mean that, I mean, I think there's a, there's a whole human element of this that can't be engineered, because you may put all of the right things in place, and the oxygen masks may be figured out, and, you know, the lack of windows may be accommodated for somehow. But when it comes to people just kind of roaming freely around a plane, and then telling them to suddenly get in their seats in the event of turbulence or some other event, like you have, at this point, you still have kind of no idea how people are going to react to that sort of thing.

• 42:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and there's, I mean, we laugh all the time about, you know, the airline safety briefing at the beginning of flight is a rote. But there's a value to that repetition, which is everybody kind of knows what to do. And if you don't, presumably someone around you does, because they've been flying a long time. This is just like, you're gonna get on a plane, and depending on how it's configured, it could be a totally different experience from flight to flight. And it seems like that's like a very complicated thing to manage a whole bunch of people through.

• 43:22Speaker 04

  Have you, when you saw this video, were you thinking like you would try this? Would you be into this?

• 43:28Nilay Patel?

  Um, I had two thoughts. And, you know, obviously, if you're listening to this, what you should know is I've watched like 90 cuts of this video. Because, you know, we were working on it, it's the first episode, so we spent a lot, so the very first time I watched it, I had two thoughts about the, the specific thing. Which was, one, if they do this the way they're saying they're gonna do it, it will be really expensive. And it'll be for, like, rock bands that have custom 747s, right? Like, it'll, it'll be for that class, like, you know, like Larry Page and Sergey Brin, like, Google owns a jet for them. Right? So like, the next one they'll buy will be the Airbus, and they can customize it. And a couple of years later, they'll get sick of it, and Larry will be like, "I want a rock climbing wall." And they'll like roll rock climbing wall into it.

• 44:13Nilay Patel?

  This is how I think billionaires talk.

• 44:14Speaker 04

  That's a great idea, by the way. You should send it to Airbus. What about the rock climbing wall?

• 44:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Uh, and then the other one, which is a lot darker, I think, is one of the dreams of air travel for so long has been to make the airport experience better. And one of the ways airlines have always talked about it is, what if you could board your plane in the middle of the city? And then that gets like put on the back of a truck, and we drive it to the airport, and we like load the back of the truck onto the plane, and you take off and fly. And that seems really cool, but given the way that airlines work now, also like a very dark future. Where you're gonna end up in this like windowless shipping container and

• 44:51Speaker 04

  Right.

• 44:51Nilay Patel?

  Get loaded onto a plane.

• 44:52Speaker 04

  And that, but yeah, you're in, and you're in a pod and you never really lose the sense that you're just in this pod.

• 44:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Airbus is, what they're promoting is like the middle ground, which is we're gonna make economy comfort so much cooler. But I actually saw the other two sides, but what were you saying?

• 45:06Speaker 04

  Oh, just that some of the commenters made really good points and I was not at all surprised by, by these remarks, which is, it would be great if we could just get a little more legroom first. Or one of the comments I made to Jason Chua, one of the project executives, who just fun factoid, used to work on Motorola's modular phone project. And now he is running a modular airplane project. One of the things I said to him was, it's kind of crazy to think we could get, we could get these pods or these modular experiences in flight before we get consistent working wifi. Because I'm sure what a lot of people would like, like they don't mind, you know, necessarily, or at this point, they're used to being crammed in their seat for several hours, but they might want working wifi. And we don't really have that yet. It's not very consistent anyway.

• 45:49Speaker 04

  So, um, so yeah, like I think that this, this is, it was perfect for next level, because we do want to look at the innovations and the crazy ideas that people have and the stuff they're working on in labs to say like, this could be. But I think like some people were, I don't know, maybe they saw it and were a little more entrenched in reality after they saw it. Like I can think of half a dozen other ways I would improve air travel first.

• 46:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but I think that, that goes back to the, the thing I was saying about most of what we want and what we get is so iterative, right? Better wifi on a plane is an iterative improvement and I think it's a really important iterative improvement and one that I really want. But it's not a big idea, right? Or a little bit more legroom, or don't treat us like prisoners and literally beat us.

• 46:36Speaker 04

  Drag us off planes, yeah.

• 46:38Nilay Patel?

  Exactly. That would be nice.

• 46:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, how about I take two of your leggings?

• 46:41Nilay Patel?

  All iterative improvements to the current air flight experience. Like not being viciously beaten by the staff, I think is an improvement that we're looking for. But this is a big idea and I think big ideas, as Vergecast listeners know, as Verge audience people know, like big ideas come with a lot of doubt and hearing that doubt, I think is important, right? It's, it's the thing that makes the idea get better and refined if it ever actually comes out. So. What's next? What's the next level of next level? Like, what's the next episode?

• 47:10Speaker 04

  Oh, am I allowed to talk about this?

• 47:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean-

• 47:12Speaker 04

  I'm gonna ask you if I'm allowed to talk about this.

• 47:14Nilay Patel?

  Tease it out.

• 47:15Speaker 04

  Because you're the executive producer as well. Alright, let's tease it out.

• 47:18Nilay Patel?

  I just did it to get in the union and get the Oscars.

• 47:24Nilay Patel?

  No, tease it out.

• 47:26Speaker 04

  So, should I say the company name?

• 47:29Nilay Patel?

  Say the company.

• 47:30Speaker 04

  Alright.

• 47:30Nilay Patel?

  The Vergecast is, look, if you're listening to this, you're now in the bubble, you're in the family. Don't tell anyone.

• 47:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, keep it to yourselves, alright? But share the video when it comes out next Tuesday morning, first thing in the morning. We are talking to a company that has been around since 1965 and works with, I mean, I said this in the piece, but works with virtually every major Hollywood studio. You've seen their stuff, you've seen their label, and you probably are vaguely aware of what they do in some capacity, but we went into their labs and it's Dolby. So, you've inevitably seen on movie theater screens or television programs that something has been remastered, either the color or the sound with Dolby's technology. They've been working on this project in their labs in San Francisco where they are hooking people up

• 48:17Speaker 04

  with all kinds of biophysical sensors, EEG caps, heart rate sensors, galvanic skin response, things like that. And they're monitoring them as they're watching movies. And they're trying to figure out what people's emotional responses are to different... It's not even the content specifically, it's more like if Dolby were to use HDR or Dolby were to use surround sound, or there's a sort of amplification of the content you're watching, how does that make you react differently? And it's utterly fascinating stuff. I mean, I think on some level, we already kind of know that a lot of the movies and the TV shows we watch are sort of engineered to evoke the strongest emotional response possible from us. But this is like in-the-lab proof that this is what companies are working on.

• 49:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think the line I've always heard about HDR in particular and Dolby's version, Dolby Vision, is that when you see an explosion, we can make sure you feel heat and you feel warm. And I think the fact that they're measuring it is really interesting. I'm not gonna give it all away, I'm not gonna ask you any questions about it, because people should go watch the episode next week. But I'm really excited about this series. I'm really excited that it's your series, because I think Lauren's adventures out in the world of insane high-tech are something that I have been able to hear about, just working with you for so long, and now that we get to make a video series and- Show, show the adventures you've had. It's so cool. And I'm really excited that we're going to do a bunch more of these episodes.

• 49:39Speaker 04

  It's really fun.

• 49:40Nilay Patel?

  Tuesdays, Tuesdays. It comes out Tuesdays.

• 49:42Speaker 04

  Tuesdays for the month of July and possibly after that. And we're publishing first thing. It's on all the platforms I mentioned earlier. And yeah, it's just, it's really, it's really exciting. And one of the things I like about it too, and I hope you do too, is that, you know, gadgets in some way, the commercially available products that we all know and love and use every day, they're, they're kind of safe in some ways. I mean, that doesn't mean they're not like listening to us and tracking us in weird ways too, but you know,

• 50:08Nilay Patel?

  exploding from time to time.

• 50:10Speaker 04

  Occasionally lighting on fire. But you buy them, you kind of know what you're getting in exchange, you know, to some extent, you know what you're buying and you know what you're using. But some of these innovations that we're looking at, they're, they're a little scared, they're, they're a little unsafe. They're a little scary in the, in the ways that they're raising really big questions, whether it's about VR or AI or transportation, you know, autonomous transportation and things like that. And so we want to, we want to raise those questions. That's, that's what we're looking to do.

• 50:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And it's, I have seen a bunch of these. I won't give it too much away, but they're really cool. So Tuesdays, check it out, Next Level, On The Verge, on every platform that exists. And eventually, if Lauren gets her way, beamed directly into your brain.

• 50:50Speaker 04

  Directly into your brain.

• 50:52Nilay Patel?

  Awesome. Thanks so much, Lauren.

• 50:53Speaker 04

  Thanks, Neelai.

• 50:56Nilay Patel?

  This episode of Vergecast also brought to you by Parachute, which I'm going to tell you right now, is sheets for your bed. They're really nice sheets, I'm told. They're the softest, comfiest sheets. They're made of really great fabrics and materials in Europe's world-renowned factories. They're clean, minimalist style and neutral colors. They're all natural. There's no harmful chemicals or synthetic softeners used. The bedding will only get softer with time.

• 51:22Speaker 03

  What?

• 51:22Nilay Patel?

  It's fact. And when you buy Parachute Sheets, they'll partner with the United Nations Foundation to donate malaria prevention bed nets. They've already donated 16,000.

• 51:34Speaker 03

  Oh, sheets. That's great.

• 51:39Nilay Patel?

  Oh, man. And when you return, if you don't, if you buy them and you return them, you don't like them, they'll donate them to Habitat for Humanity, which is great. Thanks, parachute. Uh, anyway, visit parachutehome, that's all one word, parachutehome.com/verge for free shipping. Parachute offers a 60-night trial, two months, 60 nights. So if you don't like it, you send it back, no questions asked. Habitat for Humanity. It's parachutehome.com/verge. Parachute. Oh, sheet. All right. I'm excited for this. Phone news. Yeah. A lot of phone news. Yeah. Kind of a lot. So here's my favorite piece of phone news.

• 52:23Nilay Patel?

  The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Fan Edition has been torn apart by iFixit, and they have confirmed it is just a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 with a different, smaller battery. What did you expect? What did you, what did you lie?

• 52:37Speaker 03

  They could have added like a reinforcing bar to make it less likely that it would bend, but they didn't.

• 52:42Nilay Patel?

  Just they're like, let's put in a different, less sploody battery.

• 52:46Speaker 03

  Less sploody.

• 52:47Nilay Patel?

  It's great. I'm not offended by this at all. I love it. I love that Samsung is like- They're giving people what they want. That's what they want. Small batteries. Giant phones, small battery, for the fans. I'm gonna buy one of these phones. It is inevitable that I buy one of these phones. Couple of phones, kind of, do you want to start with births or deaths?

• 53:09Speaker 03

  Births.

• 53:10Nilay Patel?

  Oh, well.

• 53:11Speaker 03

  Deaths.

• 53:12Nilay Patel?

  I was gonna say deaths. You wanna, let's alternate. Let's start with a birth.

• 53:17Speaker 03

  It's, it's the Wheel of Time. It's the Wheel of reincarnation.

• 53:21Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Y'all know how this is gonna end. Let's just go for it. Let's start with a birth. Uh, the black bear, it's not a great birth.

• 53:31Nilay Patel?

  The BlackBerry Q1 launches on Sprint July 14th.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  This will definitely go well.

• 53:37Speaker 03

  You know, you could, you could just go get one now, right?

• 53:40Speaker 02

  But yeah, they're, they're already available unlocked.

• 53:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:43Speaker 02

  But now Sprint has led its great credibility.

• 53:48Nilay Patel?

  Track record.

• 53:49Speaker 03

  I mean, is this your headline? They did the Evo.

• 53:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, this was, I, I was just joking around in the chat. I was like BlackBerry Q1 launches on Sprint, the eternal harbor of innovation. And now that's like literally on the verge of calm.

• 54:03Speaker 03

  Be careful, Paul. Anything you say is like, could become a headline at any time.

• 54:07Nilay Patel?

  Can anyone name a Sprint phone that is like torn up the world?

• 54:11Speaker 03

  Evo.

• 54:11Nilay Patel?

  The Evo.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was gonna say Evo.

• 54:14Nilay Patel?

  That's it. All right. Now a death.

• 54:16Speaker 02

  The Sprint Razr was good.

• 54:20Nilay Patel?

  The Sprint iPhone.

• 54:21Speaker 02

  When they got it third.

• 54:25Nilay Patel?

  Windows Phone 8.1 is dead.

• 54:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you should definitely read Tom Ward's, because I wasn't aware of all these details, like, Microsoft is not updating Windows Phone 10.

• 54:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:37Speaker 02

  So, and like 70 or 80% of the Windows Phone phones out there were running 8.1.

• 54:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:43Speaker 02

  They're, they're no longer supported. So now they're basically running Windows XP on their phone, which is just a great way to get malware in the year 2017.

• 54:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  So, yeah, that sucks.

• 54:56Nilay Patel?

  It's over.

• 54:57Speaker 03

  I'm writing a whole story about it, but I'm not gonna, not gonna make you tell it on the verge cast. Typically, you tell it on the verge cast, but by the time you listen to this.

• 55:04Nilay Patel?

  That you will.

• 55:05Speaker 03

  It will be up.

• 55:05Nilay Patel?

  This happens every week. If you listen to the show, I make Dieter say what he's threatening to write. And then because I've made it him say it, he has to write it.

• 55:14Speaker 03

  Right.

• 55:15Nilay Patel?

  But if I don't make him say it, will he write it?

• 55:17Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 55:17Nilay Patel?

  I guess this week we're gonna find out.

• 55:19Speaker 03

  What do you think? Here, here's, here's a pop quiz. What killed Windows Phone?

• 55:24Nilay Patel?

  Lack of apps?

• 55:26Speaker 03

  No, was it, who, who murdered Windows Phone? How about that? Oh, it's, you mean in these, it's final moments? Well, over the course of his life. Was it the iPhone or was it Android?

• 55:36Speaker 02

  Oh, I thought like who, what person was to blame?

• 55:38Nilay Patel?

  I would go hard with Android.

• 55:39Speaker 03

  I'm going super hard. It's Android.

• 55:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:41Speaker 03

  I've been, I've been spending all morning reading the court transcripts from the Google v Oracle court case from like five years ago. Where both Ruben and Schmidt talk about the foundation of Android and why they created it. So that's, that's where my head's at.

• 55:58Speaker 02

  Wait, wait, wait, but are you, what if Windows Phone was really, really good, though?

• 56:04Nilay Patel?

  No, so I don't want to preempt you. Here's my guess as to what your story is. We'll do it the other way around. Okay, here's my, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to guess what your story is.

• 56:11Speaker 03

  I'm just gonna write whatever you say here and then I'll just publish it.

• 56:15Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, you've been reading this stuff. I haven't read that stuff in forever, but here's, here's my guess. Andy Rubin and Eric Schmidt knew that the, they saw the iPhone and they knew the next frontier was mobile. And they decided that Android would be free to undercut Microsoft before it started licensing software for phones. So the fact that Android was first and free in the touch paradigm is the thing that prevented Microsoft from ever entering the market. Because they were charging per handset license fees to, to software makers, whereas Google was not.

• 56:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're, you're, you're a hundred percent right, except the iPhone has nothing to do with it other than they were working on it. And then they saw the iPhone and they went, oh shit. And then they, they switched it to be a touch first interface. Because there was the Sooner and the Dream. And they switched from the Sooner being the launch device to the Dream, which became the HTC G1. And getting to market ahead of Microsoft as a premier touch OS helped them kill off Windows Phone. But the, the key thing is their core strat was to take on Microsoft. That's the thing they were primarily worried about.

• 57:25Speaker 03

  And that's why they made it free. And they basically took away the, the strategy that Microsoft had for making mobile in the first place, which was license it to everybody. And that is what enabled them to like basically beat Microsoft to market. Basically everybody start making Android phones instead of Windows phones. And that is ultimately what doomed Windows Phone. It wasn't so much like versus the iPhone. It was, yeah.

• 57:51Nilay Patel?

  Well, so my argument there for versus the iPhone is pretty narrow and probably not important, but Microsoft failed to react to the free pricing. And they also failed to react to being touch first for a long time.

• 58:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, Windows 1.7 didn't come out for quite a while.

• 58:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like the, when it was 6.5 with that weird honeycomb.

• 58:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:10Nilay Patel?

  Oh, this piece of garbage. And when we wrote about it, remember we wrote about it and you're like, this is garbage. And everyone got mad at us. I'm like, no, it's, it's garbage. And now, a decade later. Told you so.

• 58:19Speaker 03

  Do you remember how angry everybody got at me when I pointed out when we had the the source that said that um Windows Phone 7 devices were going to get updated to Windows Phone 8? And just people just lost it at us. We were right.

• 58:31Nilay Patel?

  We're definitely right.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  I the thing I'm sad about is I think that the thing that Windows Phone did differently that is still not really happened is this idea of you have a few different kind of modes that you're you're using stuff and then apps kind of feed data into that. And I think that's really hard to do. I think it runs against the grain of what app makers want where they want to have their own very like insular branded, you know, I mean Snapchat would not thrive in that like Snapchat is all about having a completely foreign weird UI. But I there's lots of times when I just like, man, why why am I writing this email in this

• 59:12Speaker 02

  stupid email program in Calibri when I would rather be writing it like in my chosen plain text editor, you know, that has like Vim keystroke commands for moving around, you know, like that kind of stuff, just like allowing like one interface to that you get to really know and apps feed into that. And Windows Phone never really pulled it off anyways, but.

• 59:34Nilay Patel?

  They tried.

• 59:34Speaker 02

  I like that idea.

• 59:35Nilay Patel?

  It was nice. Okay. By the way, I definitely trolled Dieter into saying what his story is and now he definitely has to write it.

• 59:41Speaker 03

  It's like a quarter written.

• 59:42Nilay Patel?

  All right. But let's talk of a birth. That's not I mean, it's not really a birth, I guess. But there are pictures of the Pixel XL, the new Pixel XL have entered into the world. Kind of like I I don't want to say it looks exciting. Yeah, I believe it's completely real. I don't want to say it looks exciting, but it looks very nice.

• 59:57Speaker 03

  It looks like a rebranded uh like LGG6 that they just like cleaned up a little bit. And as long as they put a new processor in there, totally fine with that. Like super pumped for that, actually.

• 1:00:08Nilay Patel?

  Uh, the rumor, by the way, to give credit to the source, uh, Android Police leaked it. And one of the rumors they leaked was that you can squeeze the sides on your HTC phone, which is really kind of a harsh burn because HTC just released it. HTC made the last Pixel. Now they're not making the new Pixel, but they ripped off their one feature, which is incredible.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  So how do you guys feel about squeezables?

• 1:00:28Speaker 03

  I just don't get it.

• 1:00:29Nilay Patel?

  Squeezeable.

• 1:00:30Speaker 03

  Don't. You know what? You know what's what's predictable and works and whether you want when you want it to and doesn't work when you don't want it to is a button. Yeah.

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:00:42Nilay Patel?

  I'm sure that the squeezing will, you know, do the things it's meant to do. I'm sure it'll be perfectly good and fine and accurate, but I have in my 15 years of writing about smartphones, used basically every non-button gimmick. And the only non-button gimmick that has worked is a capacitive touchscreen. Everything else that I've tried to use on a regular basis has ended up being kind of garbage. I'm just, I have zero hope that squeezing your phone is going to be a thing.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  I think it's interesting because as these phones, as the bezels disappear, which is something I'm 100% into and for, you're starting to run out of like safe spaces on the phone.

• 1:01:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  Like places, and now, and now you have like, oh, oops, I act, I'm sorry, I hung up on you, accidentally squeezed my phone. I was trying to grip it and squeeze it. Like, I, I think someone has like an art project should just make a phone that is capacitive all around. Every time you touch it anywhere, it just launches a different app. It's just like, it's just like, we just need to create some emblem of going too far.

• 1:01:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  Where there's no, no safe place to touch your phone. And then we can like, we know we gotta walk it back from there.

• 1:01:50Nilay Patel?

  And watch it on Sprint.

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  And watch it on Sprint.

• 1:01:53Nilay Patel?

  People, okay, death, Virtu, the bejeweled crown prince of the phone kingdom.

• 1:01:59Speaker 03

  Which has had 15 different owners in the past two years.

• 1:02:03Nilay Patel?

  That's right, a year ago, he went and visited.

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  That was not that long ago.

• 1:02:08Nilay Patel?

  But the businessman who says it, he says he's going to resurrect the company, they were bankrupt. This is one of those things. There's, you know, there, there's all the rumors about Apple moving the phone pricing, high-end, you know, they're going to be $1,500 so they can do premium parts and manage demand. It's a rumor. No one knows if it's true.

• 1:02:27Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:02:28Nilay Patel?

  I think that's interesting in this context because Virtu was all about making your phone out of crazier stuff and pricing it really high. And it just wasn't a good idea.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  That's, I was continually surprised that they were in business.

• 1:02:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  That's, that's the, the surprise to me that they existed for a long time.

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  And people bought their bad phones with crocodile skin on them.

• 1:02:53Nilay Patel?

  Um, but also an older version of Android.

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:56Nilay Patel?

  Older processors. If they just made, if they, of all they did was take apart like Galaxy Note 7s, put in smaller batteries and like wrap them in nice materials.

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  Like Colorways.

• 1:03:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  Is that what the company's called? Color, Color Shapes, Color?

• 1:03:11Nilay Patel?

  No, what's it called?

• 1:03:12Speaker 03

  Colorware.

• 1:03:13Nilay Patel?

  Colorware.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  Colorware. Thank you.

• 1:03:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. They're like, Apple makes nice products. We'll paint them for you.

• 1:03:18Nilay Patel?

  Colorware with alligator skin.

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Nilay Patel?

  Alligator ware. All right. Is there another birth? No, this is sort of like a, a, it's not yet born.

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:03:27Nilay Patel?

  Actually, dude, I'm, I'm curious for your thoughts here. The Essential phone is midst, they, at code, they told us it would launch in a month.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:03:36Nilay Patel?

  You remain one of the few people in the world to have handled this phone.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  I do.

• 1:03:40Nilay Patel?

  They've missed their ship date.

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:03:42Nilay Patel?

  And they won't, they will not say a word. You've asked them, I think Nick Stat asked them on our team.

• 1:03:46Speaker 03

  If you...

• 1:03:47Nilay Patel?

  No, they're just, no, they haven't talked to any other publications?

• 1:03:50Speaker 03

  Nope. If you go to Twitter and you look at their tweets and replies, um, they have been replying to people on Twitter saying that we'll have information soon. That is as close to a statement as we've gotten, that they are promising more information soon.

• 1:04:07Nilay Patel?

  Do you think they're just waiting for their product to not be vaporware?

• 1:04:11Nilay Patel?

  Like they're just hoping the mist resolves itself?

• 1:04:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 1:04:14Nilay Patel?

  Cause they've got the other stuff too, right? I mean, maybe they're trying to like do it all at once.

• 1:04:19Speaker 03

  I mean, they have to ship it with that 360 camera, right? If they don't, it like breaks the fundamental promise of this thing. And actually, after, especially after seeing the Red phone, I've been thinking about like modularity on phones again a little bit. Um, and I'm frustrated that they're all different. And when I look out upon the sea of different ways to connect modules to phones, in theory, the one that I'm most excited about is Essentials because it is USB, wireless, you just have to charge it. And people can pick their own pogo pins if they want to, but it's also going to mean that different... Phones are gonna be able to choose different places to stick their modules. But if it's just straightforward USB that anybody can implement and it's wireless,

• 1:05:02Speaker 03

  so it's like local, that seems to be the most universal solution. So I don't know. I know that listening to me talk about modular things on portable devices is tiresome, but of everything, in theory, I'm most excited about Essentials implementation. I suspect that it is also pretty complicated.

• 1:05:20Nilay Patel?

  Dude, we just did 45 minutes of net neutrality. I don't think modularity smartphone takes the cake for boring on this episode.

• 1:05:26Speaker 02

  You know, you know, like one, like, like modularity would have like actually served this purpose. So I'm at a bar the other night, someone asked me to take a picture of them, right? And of course, their phone isn't as great as my phone. And if, if, if, if I had a modular phone, they had a modular phone, and I happened to have my fancy $400 camera attachment with me, right? Just pull out that attachment, slap it onto their phone, take a picture for them that looks way better than what they can normally get, then take off the module, put it back in my pocket, and hand them their phone back. That'd be a pretty cool world.

• 1:06:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  Otherwise, I think they're stupid.

• 1:06:05Nilay Patel?

  Isn't like the real question, like, all these companies are trying it and stumbling over it. It's, it feels like one of those things where eventually Apple's gonna do it and get it right.

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

  I think it's a mind virus.

• 1:06:15Nilay Patel?

  It's a mind virus?

• 1:06:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a, what is it called?

• 1:06:17Nilay Patel?

  Is that a meme?

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  It's like toxoplasmosis.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  Is that the one with the cats?

• 1:06:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's like the cat, like, people like hang around with like nerd, their nerd buddies and they're like, I wish phones were modular. And then they like do it. It's always bad.

• 1:06:35Nilay Patel?

  Well, as you just heard from Lauren Good, the guy who's building Airbus's modular plane.

• 1:06:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:42Nilay Patel?

  His last project was Google's modular phone. His job is to just make things modular at any scale that you desire.

• 1:06:50Speaker 03

  That's great. I want to talk about Alexa, but you've got a segment.

• 1:06:53Speaker 02

  Every week. Every week. It's called Mag Me Later.

• 1:06:57Speaker 03

  Oh, God.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 1:06:59Speaker 03

  Why do we keep letting you call it that?

• 1:07:01Speaker 02

  I don't know. I don't know. That's what the legal team was like, you know, um, MagSafe.

• 1:07:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:08Speaker 02

  There's all these like MagSafe knockoffs coming to Kickstarter and stuff.

• 1:07:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:12Speaker 02

  And I am confused because I really, Apple was pretty serious about having patents on MagSafe.

• 1:07:18Speaker 03

  Is it actual MagSafe or is it just magnetic power connectors?

• 1:07:21Speaker 02

  They are magnetic power adapters. The typical model is that you have like a little, really slim little piece that has USB C on it. And the magnet on the other side. And you just stick it down into your MacBook and it's just there forever. It like basically occupies that port. Um, and now you can use their MagSafe. Style connector. But yeah, they're all proprietary, different versions, but they're basically magnetic breakaway power connectors.

• 1:07:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think, uh, the, the deal is Apple might not be able to enforce any patents on the idea of a magnetic laptop connector. So the Surface has got a magnetic connector, right? Uh, but that it's the specific like plug and shape of a MagSafe that you can't just up and copy.

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:08:08Speaker 03

  Like, like fry machines for kitchens have magnetic powered adapters. Apple wasn't going after those.

• 1:08:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Speaker 03

  Anyway, what's your, what's your favorite of these Kickstarter? Or are they just a trend that's going to fizzle?

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know. Heim said that, that, so that one of these companies is doing like the L-shaped connector. You remember original MagSafe had the L connector? So USB C goes into this little thingy that then connects magnetically to the, the little inserted magnetic.

• 1:08:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  Plug.

• 1:08:37Speaker 03

  Dongle, if you will.

• 1:08:38Speaker 02

  It's not a dongle because it doesn't, it doesn't hang out, but.

• 1:08:41Speaker 03

  Is that the definition of a dongle? Must a tonkledangle?

• 1:08:45Speaker 02

  I think a dongle dangle.

• 1:08:50Speaker 02

  If a dog will not dangle, then it's a plug.

• 1:08:54Nilay Patel?

  That's the first cast, everyone. So that was our last episode ever.

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  It's called Mag Seed. So they're obviously really running away from the comparisons of Apple.

• 1:09:05Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 1:09:05Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 1:09:06Speaker 03

  Can I say that that L shaped MacBook plug from back in the day, I hung on to that for years because I hated the new flat connector because you couldn't sit with your legs crossed and put your laptop in your lap without it disconnecting.

• 1:09:18Speaker 02

  Just pops off. Stupid.

• 1:09:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:21Speaker 02

  Another thing that I thought of about net neutrality.

• 1:09:25Nilay Patel?

  This is Paul's variety now, right?

• 1:09:27Speaker 02

  That story about that Jake did with all those rural, rural, rural, rural.

• 1:09:34Nilay Patel?

  Paul, Paul.

• 1:09:38Speaker 03

  Maybe it's just that you sound.

• 1:09:39Speaker 02

  The enemy of the internet is trees.

• 1:09:43Speaker 02

  Like, we, we had great, we had great internet in my hometown in Washington State.

• 1:09:51Speaker 03

  And then those damn trees came along.

• 1:09:53Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no. That's the thing. My, my hometown is like a desert. We didn't have a lot of trees, just sagebrush. So you could just beam internet wirelessly all over the landscape. But all these rural people with their trees.

• 1:10:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And we're losing, you're using less paper now. So the trees are just out of control. Trilled, self fulfilling prophecy.

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  Trees are the, is all I'm saying.

• 1:10:14Nilay Patel?

  Pave the earth.

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  It's just, just a thought.

• 1:10:17Nilay Patel?

  Solve net neutrality by paving the earth. That'd be great. I don't, I don't know where that came from.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  It's a free idea.

• 1:10:23Nilay Patel?

  All right. Last thing I just want to talk about real quick. So I think it's important. We talked about, uh, well, we, I told a joke about Alexa at the beginning, but there's a bunch of Alexa news.

• 1:10:33Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:34Nilay Patel?

  This week that I think all adds up to something really interesting. So I'm just going to read it all. So Westinghouse put out its Amazon Fire TV powered TVs. So they just run Fire OS as the OS. They respond to Alexa. Sony announced that its Android TVs, its actual Android TVs are now compatible with Alexa. So you can tell Alexa how to light up its TVs. All other Fire devices like.

• 1:10:59Nilay Patel?

  Fire OS TV devices, Amazon has now enabled Alexa to control them. So if you have a fire stick or whatever, you can say Alexa, turn on the show.

• 1:11:05Speaker 02

  That's the most important thing.

• 1:11:06Nilay Patel?

  So that's like three TV announcements in a row.

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  You could talk to your Echo and a show shows up on your TV.

• 1:11:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:12Speaker 02

  That's the key.

• 1:11:13Nilay Patel?

  That's the key thing. And then Logitech today announced an update to its like Harmony integration. So you no longer have to say tell Harmony to turn on the lights. You can just say turn on the lights and your harmony, whatever harmony controls can do it. So the macros are getting more integrated. I think all of that adds up to like the next phase of Alexa being a far superior product to Google Home or the HomePod. Because if you can just tell it to control screens, because that's the dream of the home and Chromecast. But the, the lack of the UI in the Chromecast, I think is still very off putting to people. So if you have a regular thing, you just like, I turned on my TV. You say the words and like it lights up, but there's still a UI there. That's pretty smart.

• 1:11:51Speaker 03

  The thing that's interesting to me about this is the reason that you had to on Alexa and a little bit on Google Home, say like, tell so and so to do such and such is that first part, talk to so and so activates the keyword to turn on that skill. And they're now getting rid of that. And the question is, how are they doing that? And what is the, like the rules for setting up those keywords? How do I tell Alexa that my non-keyword list, turn on my TV, is through Logitech or to maybe Sony or whatever? So Amazon's getting more sophisticated about how keywords work on the Alexa platform. And I understand at a pretty deep level how Google thinks about this stuff. Like they're, they're like,

• 1:12:36Speaker 03

  they're choosing the keywords. They're trying to treat them in the same way that the web treats domain names, you know, down the line, they're, our them picks the best one for you. But with Alexa, when you have these things that short circuit the skill keyword, is that a deal? Are they going to set up like a customization app? How is all that going to work long-term? Is potentially very fascinating because if this does become the primary interface to the crap in your home, you really want to know what enables those things to talk to each other. And, you know, I don't know, I personally want to know if there's deals in the background, but in general, like the, the rules for whether or not you have to say a keyword to activate a skill

• 1:13:20Speaker 03

  and what that keyword could be and like how it goes away when you want it to, are going to be potentially very confusing. But definitely interesting.

• 1:13:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the idea of the customization app is like deeply appealing to me.

• 1:13:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:35Nilay Patel?

  But also insane and bad.

• 1:13:37Speaker 03

  Well, you can set up macros, I think on both, where you can, you could say, when I say this, do these like five things. So the customer, it might just be that you customize it by when you like turn on Logitech, it like jumpstarts that customization section. So, but if you do that, then everybody's home operates differently, right? And we get into this insane, long settings discussion.

• 1:14:02Nilay Patel?

  I love a settings discussion. Pairs nicely with net neutrality and modularity. I just think that where Amazon is getting, they're getting to a place where they're going to sell you a cheap TV that is integrated with its service, and they're selling you a $35 dot, and they're saying this, this is the beginning of your smart home. They also, they already have bundles. They were doing them, I think, on Prime Day. Well, they'll sell you a dot in like four power plugs that like connect to Alexa, or a dot and like a bunch of light bulbs. Their like ability as a retailer to sell you the kit is just very powerful. And they're gonna, I just, their ability to get there first right now, because this is their only product, whereas, you know, Apple's still trying to make Siri

• 1:14:47Nilay Patel?

  work on the phone and on the HomePod and on the Apple TV. And Google is Google, and they have, you know, 50 different ways of doing things, and they're still trying to figure out what it's gonna be. Amazon just plowing ahead, and they're making Alexa simpler and smarter at the same time. And I think that's, it's a big deal.

• 1:15:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I think they're winning. Yeah, I think they're winning. There was a stat, I think, Verto Analytics, one of these many analytics companies, the raw numbers are like not impressive, but Siri usage is down 17% year over year to still like 10s of millions, like 40 million unique users. Alexa usage is up 345% year over year. Damn. To 2 million. Oh.

• 1:15:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But it's up. That's all I'm saying. It's up. Cortano is up too. Anyway, look, I think that's the show. We're kind of out of time here. We've gone over. There's a bunch of stuff, like housekeeping here at the end. One, Game of Thrones. If you don't, if you're listening to the show and you don't know Game of Thrones starts on Sunday, it seems like a weird demographic mismatch. But Game of Thrones starts on Sunday, which means Caitlin Tiffany's Game of Game of Thrones starts. You haven't done your league and all that stuff. You can go to our site. You can go to Fantasizer, play Game of Game of Thrones. That's very exciting.

• 1:16:05Speaker 02

  To be clear, that's like a fantasy football league, but with Game of Thrones characters.

• 1:16:09Nilay Patel?

  Yes. No one, no one's born. Just people just die.

• 1:16:14Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:16:16Nilay Patel?

  Obviously, Lauren's show, Next Level. Please watch it. It comes out on Tuesdays. Watch it, share it. It's great. Lauren also has a great podcast called Too Embarrassed to Ask. You can listen to that. Kara Swisher has Recode Decode. Peter Kafka has Recode Media. All that's available on iTunes, except for Lauren's show, Next Level, which is not available on iTunes, but available everywhere else. Just find this stuff. Listen to it, share it, rank it, review it. Tell your friends.

• 1:16:40Speaker 03

  Give us that thumbs up on Next Level.

• 1:16:42Nilay Patel?

  Give us a thumbs up on YouTube on Next Level. We're doing a bunch of cool experiments on a platform called Anchor with podcasts. We're going to roll out new Verge podcasts soon. So go to anchor.fm/verge. Check it out. Tell us what you like, what you don't like. We're still piloting a bunch of ideas. So listen to that. That's really fun. And you can find us on Twitter. I'm at Reckless. Paul is at FuturePaul. Dieter's at Backlon. We love your feedback on the show. Our audience is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. So if you're new, let us know what you want more of, what you want less of. We are occasionally responsive to your needs. I think over the years we've done this show, we've proven that to be true. But we're really excited about all of our new listeners. So thank you so much for listening and we'll be back next week. Rock and roll.

• 1:17:23Speaker 03

  Paul.

• 1:17:23Nilay Patel?

  Paul.

• 1:17:24Speaker 03

  Rock and roll.

• 1:17:25Nilay Patel?

  Paul.