Bixby launches, Alexa on Android, and a new hyperloop

Summer editions of The Vergecast continue as Nilay and Dieter welcome Ashley Carman and Jake Kastrenakes back to the show to discuss the news that hit the site this week. Elon Musk said he got “verbal” approval from The White House to build a hyperloop on the East Coast, Comcast is back at it again with statements on net neutrality, and we’ve got a few updates in the AI department. Also, Lauren Goode updates us on the newest episode of her series Next Level once again! This week, she visited Dolby Labs to explore their experiments to track people’s emotional responses as they watch movies and TV. There’s a lot more in between that, so listen to it all and you’ll get it all. 02:52 - Pacific Rim: Uprising’s teaser 05:24 - Elon Musk says he has a green light to build a NY-Philly-Baltimore-DC hyperloop 11:47 - Bixby feels more like a return of the old Samsung than a path to the future 20:27 - Next Level episode 2 with Lauren Goode 37:21 - You’ll be able to talk to Alexa on Android phones starting this week 40:25 - Why is Comcast using self-driving cars to justify abolishing net neutrality? 44:09 - Microsoft wants to close the rural broadband gap with TV white spaces 51:58 - Ashley’s weekly segment “Let’s talk about translucent gadgets” 54:26 - Google Glass is back from the dead 58:04 - Snap’s Spectacles are now available directly from Amazon 1:00:18 - How Instagram is reshaping restaurant design 1:04:25 - Apple joined by Foxconn and others in its fight with Qualcomm 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.

• 0:03Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of theverge.biz.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  No, don't.

• 0:11Nilay Patel?

  It's a new thing.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Mm-mm.

• 0:13Nilay Patel?

  Can I tell you a story? Oh, I can't tell this story because I'll dox the person. But a long time ago-

• 0:20Speaker 02

  You can change the name.

• 0:21Nilay Patel?

  I can't because it's a story about a domain name, so I'd have to change- I'll try to change the domain name. A long time ago, when I was a lawyer, I was up against, it's like, in a case, and the other attorney, her email address was at attorney.biz, something attorney.biz, and I was like, "I'm gonna win." Like, the second I got the first email, I was like, "I got this." It was just like a very clear-

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Did you win?

• 0:46Nilay Patel?

  It was super- I won. I mean, we settled. Technically, I had a winner and a settlement. Everyone watched it.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  By the way, theverge.biz is registered. It goes to a landing site. Please don't go to theverge.biz, go to theverge.com, or, if you'd like, bone.zone.

• 1:00Nilay Patel?

  Excellent. Anyway, I'm Eli Patel. I'm here. You are listening to me. You've been listening to Dieter, there he is. You've also heard Ashley Carmen's voice.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 1:13Nilay Patel?

  And you've heard Jake Kachnakas's voice.

• 1:15Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 1:16Nilay Patel?

  There he is.

• 1:17Speaker 03

  I actually don't know if I've spoken yet. I think I laughed, chuckled at one point.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  True Verge fans will be able to identify your laugh.

• 1:22Speaker 03

  I was enthralled by the story.

• 1:24Nilay Patel?

  You've heard Jake chuckle, but he's here. Paul Miller sadly is sick. Also, I believe it's his birthday, so he's not here. We do not-

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Is Paul's birthday today?

• 1:32Nilay Patel?

  There was like a rumor floating around that it's his birthday. I have not verified this rumor. What?

• 1:36Speaker 01

  He's sick on his birthday, that's really sad.

• 1:38Nilay Patel?

  It's really sad. I just want to make it clear that we do not run this sort of workplace where you have to fake being sick to take a day off on your birthday. But I'm thinking about changing our policy such that that is the case. Anyway, we're here. Happy birthday, Paul, if it is indeed your birthday. Who knows? Again, I haven't checked. I'm a bad friend.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  I'm looking.

• 1:56Nilay Patel?

  No, Paul is sick. Are you looking?

• 1:59Speaker 02

  I Googled Paul Miller B-Day.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  Can we have Paul call in just to answer this?

• 2:02Nilay Patel?

  He's sick.

• 2:03Speaker 03

  He's not that sick.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I actually did see Paul.

• 2:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was literally walking around.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  He was here, but he said, "I'm not here." And I was like, "You're here."

• 2:11Nilay Patel?

  All right. Again, this is all dead air, Andrew. I think we should cut this part of it.

• 2:15Nilay Patel?

  Back to the show.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  I can tell you, I know that it is Paul's birthday because it is impossible to remove birthday calendars from every single calendar app on the planet, and it is the bane of my existence. And according to the birthday calendar that I am unable to disable, it is in fact, Paul Miller's birthday.

• 2:32Nilay Patel?

  Happy birthday, Paul. Everyone tweeted Paul. He's at FuturePaul. He's available on Twitter. Just tweet him some wishes, and hopefully that will help him heal his sick body. Is that a phrase? It's not a phrase. Look, there was not a lot of news this week. You may have noticed by the extended vamping that we don't have a lot to talk about, but there is some stuff. First, I just want to point this out. The trailer for the next Pacific Rim movie came out. It's called Pacific Rim: Uprising. It is the most important thing in my life at this moment, because it invites you to join some sort of Jaeger army, and that is my dream. I'm just putting it out there. Were you not a BattleMech person?

• 3:10Speaker 03

  I did not see the original Pacific Rim.

• 3:12Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God. Get out of here. Tell me you're sick. Take a day off.

• 3:16Speaker 03

  Why should I be excited about the Pacific Rim two?

• 3:19Nilay Patel?

  The first...

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Battle Uprising.

• 3:22Nilay Patel?

  There's so many reasons. The first movie is perfect.

• 3:25Speaker 03

  It's like Robots Fighting in the Ocean or something, right?

• 3:27Nilay Patel?

  One, the answer is yes. And two, the answer is a emphatic yes. Yes, it's giant robots fighting monsters in the ocean.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  That actually sounds all right.

• 3:37Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, I'm assuming you were like a BattleMech person, because I was a deep BattleMech person.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  So there's two schools of BattleMechs. There is the school from when Pacific Rim comes, which is the classic Japanese BattleMech.

• 3:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  You know, Robotech, like that, that line. And that's like Power Rangers are sort of in that zone, and Voltron also honestly belongs in that zone. So that's like the very classic line that we really think of. I am not of that lineage. I am a BattleTech guy, which is a very American style of BattleMechs.

• 4:11Nilay Patel?

  I had these video games. I know it's up.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  It involves, well, the video games came second. OG BattleTech people had hexagon maps, and little tiny miniatures, and turn-based things, and sheets that laid out all the specs and stats and powers and guns and armor of their BattleMechs. With tiny, little, I kid you not, in order to like fill in your armor, there were little tiny bubble sheets that you had to fill in with pencils as though it were an SAT test.

• 4:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I just played the video games.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  And it was a turn-based strategy game.

• 4:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  And then there was also MechWarrior, which was the role-playing game in which you could be the character that piloted the battle mechs.

• 4:49Nilay Patel?

  MechWarrior 2 is the game I had for my Mac, and it was awesome.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:55Nilay Patel?

  It's a canonical.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  MechWarrior RPG.

• 4:57Nilay Patel?

  I think it's... Dieter is cooler than I am. I think we've made this extremely clear. MechWarrior 2, one of the best video games.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  I think actually, it's the opposite, just to be clear.

• 5:07Nilay Patel?

  Ashley, were you a Pacific Rim person?

• 5:09Speaker 02

  I literally have no idea what you're talking about.

• 5:12Nilay Patel?

  Both of you need to leave this place and go watch that first movie. It is great.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  I vaguely remember an ocean when I saw, when I heard about the first Pacific Rim.

• 5:20Nilay Patel?

  We're done. We're done with this whole thing because it's making me sad. Okay, there's real news to talk about. Actually, this blew up our day today. This is a real thing that happened. Elon Musk just randomly tweeted, based on nothing specific that we can find, "I just got verbal approval to build a tunnel for a hyperloop between New York, Baltimore, and DC. New York to DC in 29 minutes."

• 5:45Nilay Patel?

  A lot going on here.

• 5:46Speaker 03

  Okay, can I just say?

• 5:48Speaker 03

  Love the hyperloop. Super excited. I've noticed it continues to get longer and longer, and yet there is still zero hyperloop.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  Like, he went from nothing to, "What if I go across multiple states?"

• 6:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, this is what would be the world's longest tunnel.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  This is... And so he just like chatted with somebody in the White House, and they were like, "Yeah, Elon, that sounds good."

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. JJ, we call him.

• 6:18Speaker 03

  So it seems like he just went to the White House, had a chat with Jared Kushner, and Jared Kushner was like, "Yeah, sure, that sounds sweet." And now, apparently, this... Like, that's not how...

• 6:25Nilay Patel?

  The White House, I kind of confirmed it today, too.

• 6:27Speaker 03

  But like, does the White House have the power to like authorize a like massive interstate tunnel system? I'm not... I mean, I guess they do stuff with the highways.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  They made an authen...

• 6:38Speaker 03

  Can they do underground?

• 6:41Nilay Patel?

  I think there's a lot.

• 6:44Nilay Patel?

  First of all, this is my favorite take on this. It's Matt Iglesias at Vox. And he goes, I think, because a tunnel would have to go through New Jersey, but would never stop in New Jersey. Right? Because he would just go to the few cities. He's like, I don't think New Jersey is going to be super pumped about everyone just skipping New Jersey. Like, dig up most of New Jersey so you can just get by it as fast as any human has ever traveled across New Jersey. So that's like a first problem. I don't know if the federal government-

• 7:12Speaker 03

  It's another Chris Christie snub.

• 7:16Nilay Patel?

  They verbally proved the Hyperloop just as screw Chris Christie.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  I'm sure Elon had a stop there and they're like, it's not, not happening.

• 7:24Nilay Patel?

  Then there's the city. So Ashley, you pointed out, like, you're gonna have to dig up New York City.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't understand how they're gonna dig up New York City.

• 7:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Like, maybe Baltimore, fine.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Well, no, they're gonna do it, and this actually relates to the Yager conversation. They're gonna do it by digging very, very deep, and that's when the monsters come out, like, Elon Musk is gonna discover a Balrog.

• 7:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, so he's been digging up the parking lot at SpaceX. This is a true fact with his new company, The Boring Company.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  He's like an eight-year-old boy. He's just like, I'm digging a tunnel, yay!

• 7:58Nilay Patel?

  I will say to you, there have been many reports, I'm not even, this is not a joke, I'm not exaggerating, this is not a story. There have been many reports that parking is already quite bad at SpaceX. I've heard it from people. I think it's funny that Elon Musk was like, whatever, like, I'm gonna dig up the parking lot just to prove I have this tunnel company called The Boring Company. He also doesn't really own a Hyperloop company.

• 8:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, wait, so is The Boring Company supposed to be creating this tunnel slash Hyperloop?

• 8:29Nilay Patel?

  Yes. No, no, so there, so he said, he, remember, he released the Hyperloop as like an open source set of, like, plans.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  And yet it does not actually exist.

• 8:40Nilay Patel?

  There are some test Hyperloops, like, Hyperloop 1 is like-

• 8:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 8:45Nilay Patel?

  Running sleds in a tube in the desert. They're not-

• 8:50Speaker 01

  No vacuums yet.

• 8:51Nilay Patel?

  No vacuums yet. They're just like proving that- That trains and tubes. They could build a train. Is fine.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 8:58Nilay Patel?

  They've gotten that far.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  Elon has a hypothetical, like, transportation system, a hypothetical tunnel building company, and like hypothetical approval right now.

• 9:07Nilay Patel?

  I feel like tunnel building is not hypo- like, tunnels exist. His claim is that he can dig a tunnel faster than anybody else.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  He's dug a tunnel in a parking lot. That's all he's done.

• 9:16Nilay Patel?

  I'm sorry. When was the last time you dug a tunnel in a parking lot?

• 9:20Speaker 03

  We don't have a parking lot.

• 9:21Nilay Patel?

  The man's flying rockets that they're landing, the cars are driving themselves, he's just moving on.

• 9:26Speaker 03

  That's completely different technology. Alright.

• 9:28Nilay Patel?

  It is, okay. Fair, it's a different technology. But, you know, you gotta give him the benefit of the doubt.

• 9:33Speaker 03

  I do wonder, okay, it's like, does he actually just have unlimited money? Like, who can waste money on digging tunnels in a parking lot for like a hobby? Like, he's not, is he planning on turning these things into businesses?

• 9:45Nilay Patel?

  It can't be like that much money. It's your own parking lot.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 9:48Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. I'm just out there with a shovel all the time. Just like, I'm doing this. But it's a good idea.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  It's a great idea. Infrastructure. Trains. Excellent. Love it.

• 9:59Nilay Patel?

  But he did have, he did tweet, "I got verbal approval," which is just not how it works, for better or worse. Like, getting the thumbs up from like, a Trump family member is not how you embark on a giant infrastructure project.

• 10:12Speaker 03

  They're very good at sticking to promises.

• 10:15Nilay Patel?

  Uh, and then he like slowly walked it back. There was another tweet where he said, "They're excited about it. Still many approvals to go. Get excited." And it feel, he said, I think he said, "Get excited." And it feels like what he was doing was now everybody's all amped up about this project. Because the northeast corridor is like Amtrak's most important line. He's got everybody all amped up about it. Now people are gonna want it. So he can like, go, for example, to the state of New Jersey and say, "No one wants to come here anyway." Just let me through because I got the tweets. Look at all these retweets, Chris, which I believe is how politics in the jersey works.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Probably, yeah.

• 10:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But I think it's exciting. It's like the most exciting thing I think that happened this week.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  I mean, the idea of traveling 30 minutes to DC from New York is exciting. Yeah.

• 11:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  It's good news.

• 11:06Nilay Patel?

  I'd do that. And it's gonna stop right at the Observer Building and Jared Kushner's gonna get on it all by himself. That's why he wants it. He just wants to get, it's gonna go directly from the White House to Trump Tower.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:15Speaker 03

  I didn't even think about that. If he just like pitches it as like, keep it exclusive to the Trump family for a year, you know.

• 11:23Nilay Patel?

  They have a plane. They have the best plane. They have Air Force One.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. Do you think that can do it in half an hour?

• 11:30Nilay Patel?

  I mean, Air Force One's capabilities are technically classified. I bet they, I bet they can't. I bet it's not actually a secret.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Probably they have air to land and go through security. I'm sure they have to do some sort of stuff.

• 11:42Nilay Patel?

  That's true. All right. We should talk about much more mundane things. There's voice assistant news in this world, Dieter. That's your favorite.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Uh, so Bixby basically launched. Is that the, the long and the short of it?

• 11:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  The voice assistant is a thing that you can have. Uh, it's rolling out in the US. Samsung, Samsunged all over the launch of this thing by delaying it and then by they, they added like hashtags to the description of the two, the, the male and female voices that you can get from Bixby. Completely unnecessary, by the way. I don't know if you need a hashtag to describe a voice to you when you're picking one.

• 12:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  But for the, the male voice, they said it was assertive. Um, and for the female voice, I believe they said it was, uh, chipper.

• 12:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Which, that's super not a good look, Samsung.

• 12:35Nilay Patel?

  That's such an unforced error. There's

• 12:37Speaker 01

  It's a totally unforced error.

• 12:38Nilay Patel?

  There's no reason.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  You didn't need the hashtags.

• 12:41Nilay Patel?

  Right. And then, and then the thing itself is like kind of broken.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. So Dan wrote a really good piece, uh, that it really reminds him of old Samsung. We're talking like S5 Samsung where it makes blips and bloops and is just, it's like software for software's sake. Uh, the fact that it's not Only is it tied to that button and you can't remap that button, but Samsung is actively and aggressively shutting down any attempts to circumvent the hard pairing of the Bixby button to Bixby. And so that's annoying and it just, you know, it doesn't work. It, the, the whole point of Bixby is you can talk to your phone interface rather than tap on your phone interface. But it can't quite get there.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  And I feel like it's, to get a voice assistant to work, you don't have to get a hundred percent there because nobody's there yet, but you gotta get to like 60. And they're not at 60. And so it's the, the same thing that happened in the early days of Siri where people are like, oh, well, this doesn't work. But it's way less acceptable now because you could just go use something else like Google Assistant or, you know,

• 13:51Nilay Patel?

  Alexa.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Apparently Alexa.

• 13:55Nilay Patel?

  I mean, yeah. If you could remap the button on the side to open the Amazon app and then talk to Alexa, that would be more useful.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:03Nilay Patel?

  But you, you can't. I don't, Dan had a great line that's like Samsung's software bloat has now manifested in hardware bloat, which is

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:11Nilay Patel?

  brutal, but I love it.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  I just, I, I don't, I, I don't want to just say Samsung sucks. Samsung software sucks. I do actually, because then, you know, he went to China and like wrote the big feature about like the scope of their ambition here. And so I want to give Samsung, even now, even when this thing is launched and is like not really that good yet. I want to give Samsung the benefit of the doubt and the space to try and innovate and create its own ecosystem. And try and innovate on the idea of a human software interface through voice. Like those are all genuinely good ideas. The challenge for Samsung is how do you get those genuinely good ideas out in the world when you know the first iteration is going to be not that great? And how do you manage around that?

• 14:56Speaker 01

  And I feel like they've just done a pretty terrible job of setting expectations, explaining to users what it can and can't do and putting it in a context that like actually makes people feel delighted about it and not disappointed by it. If, if Bixby were like a An optional thing on the button and you could turn it on if you want, you could turn it off if you want. And like you could say, hey Bixby, whenever. And it were, but it were not so core to the identity of the phone. Then there, they would end up building a small group of people who really were into it. It wouldn't grow as fast, it wouldn't be as splashy, but then they could work out some bugs for a while.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  They kind of did this with the early access program, but I don't know that, that they could have spent longer doing that. I think is sort of my take. They should have launched this thing without hard mapping it to the button. They would have had a bunch of people like refused to use it and they would have sucked for them. But on the other hand, people would have put it in a context where they were happy with what they got and so disappointed with what they got.

• 15:57Nilay Patel?

  That's true. I think Bixby is one of those Samsung things where two years from now, it will be in a settings menu that you can turn on. But other than that, it'll be on. And that's like the worst, like they gotta stop doing that to people. Were you gonna say something?

• 16:11Speaker 02

  No.

• 16:12Nilay Patel?

  No, you're saying that?

• 16:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm chilling.

• 16:14Nilay Patel?

  Cut that out.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  I'm thinking about Bixby in washing machines.

• 16:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's terrifying.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Their smart fridge, because they are already doing that in Korea.

• 16:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  And I'm like, wow, your assistant sucks and you're forcing it upon people with their refrigerators.

• 16:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the number of things Samsung wants to put Bixby in is like terrifying considering that Dan, Dan's experience with it is, he wrote in his piece is, it mostly gets it wrong. Well, he gets it wrong so often that I don't want it controlling anything with the heating element in my home. Like that seems terrifying.

• 16:48Nilay Patel?

  Sears, but I don't know if you saw, this is like totally adjacent news, but Sears is basically, they have a line of appliances, a Kenmore line, they've only sold them in Sears stores, selling them through Amazon now. So the idea of buying a washing machine on Amazon, insane. That just seems like something you should buy in a store and not just like push a button online, but so it goes. But they're all going to be Alexa enabled, like all of the Kenmore appliances on Amazon. So this is happening, whether or not we want it to happen.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  There is also the thermostat this week with Cortana.

• 17:18Nilay Patel?

  That thermostat looks like a piece of garbage.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  It's see-through. I like it. I think it looks awesome.

• 17:23Nilay Patel?

  It looks like it's made by Johnson Controls, a partnership with Microsoft. Just go look at it. It looks like it, it, I don't know how to say this. I think first cast listeners might understand what I mean when I say this. It looks like the software is slow. You know that thing where you like touch it and nothing happens? It just every I looked at it. I was like, it's cool. It's clear. The screen's trying to. And I was like, I bet when you touch it, it's slow. That is immediately what I thought when I saw it. I don't know why, but I encourage you to look at it. But there's the thing like, once you've

• 17:57Speaker 01

  All I know is

• 17:58Nilay Patel?

  seen enough displays.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  A very reputable technology journalism brand in their headline about this thermostat called it, quote unquote, beautiful. And I agree with The Verge when its headline says that this is a beautiful thermostat. I think it looks great.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  I'm feeling that when you put that in your house.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  I agree it will look slow, but like.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  I feel like it's trying to look like kind of futuristic and everything is going to look really tacky in a home.

• 18:27Nilay Patel?

  And be slow. I'm just going to point out again that the worst part of that is it's slow.

• 18:30Speaker 03

  I don't know how you're judging the slowness right now. I mean.

• 18:33Nilay Patel?

  It just looks like it will be, first of all, it runs Windows and I don't mean to like, right? Like three years from now, the thing is buggy.

• 18:41Speaker 03

  Windows for thermostats.

• 18:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Windows 10 T. It's like literally called like Windows 10 T. I'm just telling you, three years from now, you're like thermostat is like has ransomware on it. It's a little loaded down. Not to, Windows is great. Everyone loves Windows.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  So is your washing machine going to be Bixby? Your thermostat going to be Cortana?

• 19:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  And your Echo is your Alexa.

• 19:06Nilay Patel?

  This is the endless problem. And I, this is why I think Amazon will slowly win because they'll have $35 dots sitting in everyone's house and people would prefer to buy the one that works the thing they have. Also, I think the question about where the microphones go.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Andy Rubin's big bet is that he's going to solve this problem with Essential. That's the whole point of Essential and him making a home speaker home, whatever the heck the thing is.

• 19:26Nilay Patel?

  I bet I can ship an Android phone faster than Andy Rubin. He shipped an Android phone right now. We should, that's, we should race Andy Rubin. Let's send Dan back to China.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  You can put a phone together like a day there.

• 19:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:39Nilay Patel?

  And we'll just ship.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  We got it.

• 19:40Nilay Patel?

  We'll ship 5,000 Android phones tomorrow. Go to store.theverge.com. You can preorder now. You can back our Kickstarter. As you know, nothing is guaranteed. Just please give us some money. We've already been talking to tier one manufacturers. That's how every Kickstarter video ends. We've got all our designs done. We're talking to tier one manufacturers. We just need your help.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  We just need your help.

• 20:03Nilay Patel?

  To beat Andy Rubin to market with an Android phone. All right, so here's what we're gonna do. As you know, Next Level, Lauren Good's show is going on. I talked to her about this episode, which was interesting. It's about what Dolby's doing to measure your emotions while you watch movies and TV shows. It's wild. So I'll tell Lauren about that. That's gonna happen for 10 minutes. I'm gonna read an ad, we're gonna come back, we'll talk about some other things. Here is Lauren. Hey Lauren, how are you?

• 20:29Speaker 04

  Hey Neelai, I'm good, how are you?

• 20:31Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I'm great. I'm talking to you about your show again. So everybody, this is Lauren Good, the host of Next Level with Lauren Good. I like saying your name at the beginning and end of that phrase. It makes me happy. But, uh, you just did your second episode.

• 20:43Speaker 04

  Yes, it just published earlier this week on theverge.com, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and as I said before, directly into your brain. And, uh, we're really excited because this one was a little different from last week. Last week's was all about planes. It was about modular planes and it got this wild response. And this week, we talked about Hollywood.

• 21:03Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, so the conceit of your show is that there's what we see, and then there's iterative development of what we see. So like every year phones get a little bit better, and we're all used to the world of iterative development, but there's stuff happening in research labs that's like next level technology. And so you're, you're looking at the next level of Hollywood stuff, right?

• 21:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right. Uh, we were looking to highlight some of the concepts, innovations, crazy bizarre prototypes, things that are in beta, things that are happening that maybe you haven't heard about yet, or really seen or experienced. Um, because like you said, like other stuff that we cover is wonderful and we love gadgets, but sometimes can be a little bit iterative. So, in this case, um, it's kind of a funny story. I was at Dolby months ago now, Dolby Labs in San Francisco, because they were having this kind of press tour day, and it was pegged to the launch of Iron Fist. I don't know how many of you have watched the Netflix series, Iron Fist. There was some controversy around it. I don't think it did very well, but there was this big, like, two-day

• 22:07Nilay Patel?

  I suffered through all of Iron Fist.

• 22:09Speaker 04

  You watched all of it? I feel like you should get a medal.

• 22:12Nilay Patel?

  It's in like HDR, it's available, it was real pretty on my TV, and I suffered through all of it.

• 22:19Speaker 04

  Well, that's exactly it, HDR. So it was Dolby. That mastered Iron Fist After the Fact. And so we were being taken on this press tour through Dolby Labs a few months back. And we walked by this room and there was a woman sitting on a couch in this lab and she was wearing an EEG cap. I don't know if you know what an EEG cap is, but it's an electroencephalogram cap that has all these little nodes on it. And those nodes are measuring your brain activity essentially. So this woman's sitting on a couch wearing this crazy looking cap that looks like something straight out of The Matrix. She's got all kinds of sensors on golf, and it's skin response sensors, heart rate sensors. There's a flirt camera pointed at her. And we were like, what is happening in here? And Dolby said, this is this project that we've been working on.

• 23:03Speaker 04

  So for Next Level, we went back by we, I mean, me and Verge Video Directors, and we shot an episode inside this crazy biophysical lab at Dolby.

• 23:14Nilay Patel?

  So what do they do? Like, do they, you watch, do you watch videos and like you measure your response? Like, how does it work?

• 23:21Speaker 04

  Yes. So the whole idea is that as the subjects are sitting in this lab, they're watching movies and TV shows, presumably ones that Dolby has mixed and mastered, but maybe not. And they are, the scientists at Dolby are measuring the emotional responses that people are having to this content. And the whole lab is run by this really, really smart woman named Poppy Crumb. She's a neuroscientist, but, excuse me, she's actually, I think, a neurophysiologist. But like, if it was, if she wasn't so great and smart, like, I feel like Poppy Crumb would definitely be like a good villain name.

• 23:56Nilay Patel?

  Like a children's book character.

• 23:58Speaker 04

  Or like a children's book character, yeah. But she's running the lab and they're just, they have all these subjects that are coming through and they're, they're trying to figure out what, at what point do people, do their heart rates, you know, increase? At what point do people start sweating? At what point do people? Feel aroused or excited and they're taking all of that data and they're able to then tell their Hollywood partners. They do the mixing and mastering for, we know that people will have this type of biophysical response to these types of scenes, color palettes, sounds, HDR. It's kind of crazy and it's, I mean, it's not altogether surprising because the more I started digging, the more I realized that a lot of entertainment companies are starting to do this.

• 24:42Speaker 04

  And they want to better understand people's emotional responses to content. But it was kind of cool to just get into the lab myself and try it out.

• 24:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, one of the first times I ever saw Dolby Vision, which is their HDR format demoed, like two or three years ago now is CES and the person demoing it to me literally said, "We know that we're going to play an explosion for you and your body, it's so bright, your body will perceive it as heat." And he's like, "Just watch." And they played the explosion. I was like, "Wow, I feel warm." He's like, "Yeah, you're not actually warm." Like, "It's just so bright that we can make you feel heat." And it seems like they've taken that idea all the way out.

• 25:23Speaker 04

  Yes, they know now that your body is conditioned to feel warm when it sees that level of heat. And there, I mean, there are just a few different things sort of going into, sort of going into play there. The first is that they have the sensors or the types of cameras now to track that, right? So in this case, they might be using the FLIR thermal imaging camera to see that your face or your cheeks, whatever, might actually be flushing. The second is that we have screens now, we're looking at things on screens that are bright enough to get even closer to reality. So I think that the metric Dolby used to describe it is 20,000 candellas per square meter in terms of how bright the screen is.

• 26:05Speaker 04

  And some, you know, technologists will say nits, others will say candellas. They're like some, you know, variation of the same, of the same metric. But they're basically saying the screens we have now are so bright that it can make you feel like this is, this is reality. So you've got this hyper-realistic content, you've got these super bright screens. And you have the biometric, you know, cameras or sensors now to measure that this is actually happening, which is pretty, it's this kind of confluence of of things, right? Like, and at the verge, I feel like we're talking about sensors all the time. We're talking about wearables. We're talking about fingerprint sensors. We're talking about facial recognition. Like, we're talking about all these things that are built into like all of the products that we now have. But when you think about that confluence of things that like these sensors are now really

• 26:50Speaker 04

  accessible, they're actually pretty cheap. The more interesting thing is actually what are people trying to do with all this data that we can gather from them?

• 26:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So one of the, I don't want to give it away, but everyone should go watch the video, but Pixar scientists are like using this to design their movies.

• 27:05Speaker 04

  Yes. One of the anecdotes that a lot of people really liked in the videos is when Poppy Crumb says how she was working with the Pixar lead image scientist. And when they were doing the color for the movie Inside Out, there's a scene where a baby is born and the baby is born and there's this, we use Poppy's words, a diffuse white screen that sort of takes over, you know, fills fills the screen, fills the frame. And that that was a very conscious choice because the image scientists said, we want people to feel physiological pain. That's what happens when a baby's born, you feel physiological pain. And so what sort of color pattern or color scheme can we use here that will make people feel that in some way, whether they are conscious

• 27:48Speaker 04

  of it or not? It's kind of crazy to think about. Yeah, I mean, you know, on some level, that's what, when you're going to the movies or you're watching a show, or even if you're doing something like going to some crazy VR installation on a roller coaster, I don't know, I think about like all those people sitting in that giant Samsung installation at CES, who are just like being yanked around while they're wearing VR headsets and probably getting very nauseous. But like, when you participate in anything like that, you are going for entertainment, you're going for an intensive human experience. And maybe on some level, you're kind of expecting to be manipulated. You know, you're expecting like to escape in some way. But this is like, this is like next level, we can use these imaging and sound tools to manipulate the

• 28:33Speaker 04

  Way you feel. And it's just, everything is, you know, can now be sort of engineered to do it. Before, like, the color, you know, film directors have used certain color palettes for decades now. That's like, very well known. And in film, film school, they'll teach this stuff. And effective computing is something that's been studied for decades. But like, now these companies are getting so good at it at such a granular level that things can actually be engineered to trigger a reaction.

• 28:56Nilay Patel?

  So you got to try it, right? You wore the cap and it measured you. What was that like?

• 29:01Speaker 04

  That was a little bit anticlimactic, to be honest.

• 29:04Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 29:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm like, I'm like, go watch the video. But it was anticlimactic, that part. Because, because what's happening is they're showing you your data on these giant screens that are in the Dolby lab. And so I could sit there and I could see my own thermal image. I found out that my armpits were very sweaty, by the way, because it will, I mean, it will show things like armpit sweat and like chest sweat. It's, you know, it can be a little mortifying. And then, and then I could see, you know, my heart rate spiking and things like that. But that's all the raw, unprocessed data. I mean, Dolby is going to take all of that data that they're getting from all of the subjects that are sitting there. And they're going to process it and they're going to analyze it. And so I didn't really have the chance to do that. All I could see was, okay, there's my, there's my heart rate, right? There are the spikes and the dips and like, sort of the same stuff

• 29:49Speaker 04

  that you would see if you were just like, looking at your heart rate from a wristwatch reading or something like that. So that part was like, a little bit anticlimactic. But I would love to, I mean, and what we were watching too, were these kind of preformed clips, these, you know, clips of fire and things that Dolby had like, determined were good for a demo. But like, I would love to sit and watch an entire two-hour movie, especially if it was in some type of giant movie theater where there's a lot of sound, you know, great sound, surround sound, 3D sound. And maybe you're like, your seat is shaking and like, or whatever it might be. And like, actually have, actually understand at what points I was like, I don't know, I guess reacting, for lack, for lack of a better term, having an emotional response.

• 30:31Nilay Patel?

  It feels as though part of the, the idea here is to figure out how the experience of being in a theater where all the Dolby stuff is happening, right? Dolby makes the sound systems, they make the surround sound, they make the, you know, the, the, the screen technologies versus being at your house with, you know, Dolby Vision in your soundbar or whatever. It, it feels like part of the Part of the sell here, to call it a sell, is that they can create more of those experiences in the theater and they're going to amplify those in a way that you can't get at home. Because that's like a big part of the industry. You see Christopher Nolan this week was like, "I'm not going to do Netflix because I believe in the theater window and I want to put my movies in the theaters." There's like a piece of this where the technology they need to actually affect your emotions

• 31:16Nilay Patel?

  in that way, like you're talking about, like in the theater with big screen, tons of speakers, versus what they can do at home is it's going to start splitting ever more, right? And I think that's fascinating. If you want to get the most intense experience, you have to go to this place that can always do something that is very hard to do at home.

• 31:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 31:36Nilay Patel?

  And I say this as a man with Adobe Vision TV and like 500 speakers.

• 31:38Speaker 04

  Right, because you're a speaker hound. Yeah, we've talked about your speaker addiction before. I'm going to watch movies at your house next time. Yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense that any company at this point that is using biosensors to gather data that proves something, that they would want to prove something that benefits their core competency. So for Dolby, that is, you're exactly right. It's getting people into theaters or convincing them that that intensified human experience can only happen with Dolby tools, in a Dolby theater, with Dolby surround sound, right? Like that, it makes perfect sense. I mean, one of the things that we mentioned in the piece too is when you look at companies like Netflix and Hulu, they're also using biosensors in some capacity.

• 32:20Speaker 04

  But they're using them, they're using eye trackers specifically when they're doing testing for their app redesigns. So they're saying, "Okay, well, we see as people are looking at our app, their eyes are going over here instead of over there." Or they keep having to move their eyes back and forth as they look through a menu option or look at a thumbnail. And so they're using it to inform how are people engaging with their app, because at the end of the day, getting people into their app and to use their app and to stream stuff from their app is the most important thing. Whereas Dolby is using it because they're like... Hey, you should really be using Dolby technology to amplify your movie or TV show experience. So, all these biosensors are being used in different ways. But ultimately, it comes down to this thing where it's a little bit creepy because they

• 33:05Speaker 04

  are being used to affect us in ways that we might not be fully aware of.

• 33:09Nilay Patel?

  You know, we talked about this a little bit before, like when you were editing the episode. I've been thinking about you saying that for a while, and it just, what strikes me is like, the point of art is to manipulate you, right? Like, if you're the artist, you're aiming to have some people feel some way when they view your work. And I don't know how I feel about being able to quantify that. So, it's less about your instincts and your expression as an artist, and it's more about, I want people to feel sad, and I can dial in these settings on the screen for maximum sadness. I think there's something really interesting there. I don't know if we have enough time to fall down that total rabbit

• 33:50Nilay Patel?

  hole, but it's a really fascinating thing to puzzle over after, of course, you have gone and watched Next Level.

• 33:57Speaker 04

  Yes, you should go watch it. After we've talked about it for the past 15 minutes or so, you just go watch it.

• 34:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you've heard us describe the images, and now go look at the images. So, before we go, real quick, you've got another episode coming out. Give the people a tease on that one.

• 34:12Speaker 04

  Oh, I love giving the people a tease. So, next week of our videos. Next week, on Tuesday, that's going to be July 25th, we are publishing an episode that's about prescription video games. We're fascinated by this. Video games have, of course, gone a little bit of a bad rap over the past few decades, since they've been mainstream. People have been concerned about their impact on, potential impact on aggressive or violent behavior, how they impact child development, if someone's young and they're formative years and they're sitting there playing video games all day, all of that. There's a group of scientists here in San Francisco, and actually in an offshoot company in Boston,

• 34:54Speaker 04

  that are focused entirely on developing, running trials on, and possibly pushing through for FDA approval, prescription video games that would boost your cognitive abilities in some way. And so, we went to their labs, we played some of the games, we interviewed a lot of people for this video, and we're really, we're really interested, we're really excited to show it to you.

• 35:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think this episode in particular is one of the most interesting and challenging of all of the things that you've looked at. And one thing that you've said repeatedly about the show is next level tech is a little bit dangerous. It's a little bit challenging. And I think, you know, in a way that iterative, you know, tablet software improvements just aren't. But like, this is like, really meaningfully challenging and potentially a little bit dangerous as well.

• 35:43Speaker 04

  Yes, absolutely. Especially when you see me trying to walk on one of those Omni VirtuX platforms while wearing a VR headset, you understand the danger, the actual physical danger of me possibly falling off this crazy little treadmill with a VR headset on. It was one of the few times I have felt I had to take the, I had to take the headset off because I was feeling pretty nauseous. So.

• 36:07Nilay Patel?

  Wow. Okay, well, let's not give it all away. That's next week. It's coming out on Tuesday. Everywhere your mind can wander on the internet, just look for it and you'll find it and watch it and share it, of course. And Lauren, it was great to have you back on the show. We'll have you next week. We'll talk about prescription video games.

• 36:22Speaker 04

  It was great to be on the Vergecast. Thanks, everyone.

• 36:24Nilay Patel?

  See ya. This episode of Vergecast brought to you by Squarespace. Whatever your next big idea might be, count on Squarespace to help you create an eye-catching online platform that brings it to life. Whether you need a portfolio to showcase your work, a store to sell your products and services, or a blog to share your ideas, Squarespace gives you everything you need to look an expert right from the start. You can even get a unique domain name, which strengthens your brand and makes it easier for visitors to find you. Plus, with Squarespace's award-winning templates, creating a beautiful website is a simple and intuitive process. You can add and arrange your content with the click of a mouse, and there's nothing to install, patch, or upgrade ever. But if you have a question, there's award-winning 24/7 customer support that can help you with any problem, no matter how technical or trivial. It's like your very own IT department. So, make your next move. Start your free

• 37:08Nilay Patel?

  trial at Squarespace.com today. And the offer code is, I'm sure you know, is VERGE, V-E-R-G-E. Get 10% off your first purchase. That is Squarespace.com. The offer code is VERGE. We're back.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Welcome. Can we talk about Alexa on Android phones? Real quick, we wrap that up. I know we should have kept it in the voice assistant section. So the news you can see it.

• 37:30Nilay Patel?

  The very well-defined voice assistant section of our show today.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Alexa's coming to every Android phone in the form of like an option inside the Amazon shopping app, which is surreal to me. Like, why isn't it a separate app? Google made Google Assistant a separate app. Maybe it makes it more likely that people use it. Maybe they just threw it in there. But it shows to me that like the Amazon shopping app is basically the like you can buy stuff equivalent of Facebook's, what do they call it, their big blue app? What's their, they've got some nickname for it?

• 38:05Nilay Patel?

  The big blue app.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, they just throw stuff in there, which is funny because Android has an accommodation where you can like actually choose your voice assistant on, you know, most phones that don't hide that from you. They could have done that. Cortana has done that on a few few different phones. So yeah, I don't know, like, am I going to open up the Amazon shopping app to use Alexa? No. Do I hang out in the Amazon shopping app enough that I'm like, oh, hey, Alexa's here, I can use that since I'm already here?

• 38:33Speaker 03

  I mean, would you if, say you have like a whole bunch of home automation stuff set up and now you're on the go and you need to, I don't know, turn your lights on or some, for some reason. I can't really foresee why you would need to do that. But right, if you need to control something at home in your way, I know that's your gay way to do it. I'm not, I don't actually think a lot of people are going to open up the Amazon app and use this, but.

• 38:55Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's how it works in the iPhone. It's in the Amazon app in the iPhone.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Why is it in the Amazon app?

• 39:00Speaker 03

  I don't think anybody opens apps to use voice assistants, right?

• 39:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I think that's correct. Nobody, the Google Assistant has terrible rankings in the iPhone App Store. Yeah, this is a true thing. It's just more likely you're going to have the Amazon app. Of course you're going to put it in there. It's Amazon's biggest facing consumer brand is Alexa.

• 39:20Speaker 03

  Wait, they also have an Alexa app, don't they? There's like a separate Alexa app and it doesn't have Alexa in it. It's just like for messaging or something, right?

• 39:27Nilay Patel?

  No, no, it's for controlling your Alexa stuff.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  Right. You can't actually talk to Alexa.

• 39:32Nilay Patel?

  That's where you enable the skills and you line up and you name the devices and you put them on the Wi-Fi network.

• 39:36Speaker 03

  So Alexa's in the Amazon app. Alexa's settings are in the Alexa app.

• 39:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, just like on the iPhone, insanely, settings are in the Settings app, even though you are currently in another app with which you would like to adjust the settings. That makes sense.

• 39:50Nilay Patel?

  It does. Just go. All of this makes sense, Jake.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  I'm with Jake.

• 39:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. None of it actually makes sense. Everything should be in the same place, and that place is the Amazon app.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  What? The Amazon app? What about the Alexa app?

• 40:02Speaker 01

  The Alexa app. It should be in the Alexa app.

• 40:04Nilay Patel?

  The Alexa app should be in the Amazon app.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Okay, sure.

• 40:08Nilay Patel?

  And you're like done setting your Alexa, you're like, I need some more light bulbs. Push the button.

• 40:12Speaker 03

  We need to unbundle all of this. There should be a lightbulb app, washing machine app, all.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  That sounds like it. You just described HomeKit.

• 40:22Nilay Patel?

  Brutal. Okay. Uh, Jake, I got you here.

• 40:26Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 40:26Nilay Patel?

  Whenever you're here, I make you talk.

• 40:28Speaker 03

  Oh, we're talking about, yeah.

• 40:29Nilay Patel?

  So Comcast, Comcast is a thing. Just try to walk people through the thing.

• 40:33Speaker 03

  Yes. Okay, so, um, this was, this week, the first round of net neutrality comments were due, and a bunch of companies filed their comments, including Comcast, the one that everyone was so excited to hear from.

• 40:47Nilay Patel?

  Comcast, by the way, an investor in Vox Media, which owns The Verge, that's your disclosure.

• 40:52Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:52Nilay Patel?

  They're just an investor. They're just out there.

• 40:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:57Nilay Patel?

  We took their money.

• 40:58Speaker 03

  And I like to think that occasionally they read our site and regret it.

• 41:00Nilay Patel?

  It's more than occasionally.

• 41:04Speaker 03

  But, yeah.

• 41:04Nilay Patel?

  They always do regret it.

• 41:07Speaker 03

  So, yeah, Comcast filed its comment, and we were looking through it. You know, it's, it's almost entirely exactly what you'd expect from Comcast. They're like, wow, net neutrality sure is horrible. It's just ruining our business. Things were great, and now they're terrible, and the internet's gonna be ruined. And then at the same time, they're going, you know, but we would be so cool with these rules if only X, Y, and Z.

• 41:32Speaker 03

  So at some point in their filing, we noticed that they're saying, you know, we actually like this no paid prioritization thing, except for like a couple things here and there. And they're like, one reason that you might want to allow paid prioritization is autonomous cars, because it might be really helpful for autonomous cars to have, you know, a prioritized internet connection, because they need to get stuff really, really fast. And we thought that was like, pretty interesting and weird. We'd never heard that claim before.

• 42:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, usually it's like health devices.

• 42:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, usually it's health devices. And you know what? That, that like... Certainly makes more sense because like if it's a pacemaker or something, you know, probably it should, you know, be instant. But autonomous cars we never heard before. And then our transportation reporter, Andy Hawkins, decided to look into it and he found out that it turns out autonomous cars don't talk to the internet at all. So Comcast just threw this argument in there and there's absolutely nothing behind it.

• 42:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:39Speaker 03

  Like either they're, they just said that like hoping that one day the internet will be part of cars and this way they can make money off of it, or they just like didn't pay any attention and put that in there because they thought it sounded nice.

• 42:49Nilay Patel?

  Well, the two points anyway that I thought were interesting were autonomous cars need to talk to each other, they need to talk to the infrastructure, but the FCC has set aside the entire 5.9 gigahertz band for that purpose. So there is like a whole separate radio, set of radio spectrum that is available just for the cars. So that's what you mean by they don't talk to the internet at all. They're happening on their own network somewhere

• 43:12Speaker 03

  else. Yeah, they have their own network.

• 43:14Nilay Patel?

  But, and this I think was really interesting, mobile carriers want that spectrum back because mobile carriers love having spectrum and they want to make it all the internet and then have the carmakers and cities pay to prioritize that information on the internet, which is, you, like just use the thing that you have. And I think it's interesting because the FCC is so deep into, like Ajit Pai, to his credit, is very high in more unlicensed radio usage. So things like wifi and bluetooth. And they've got a whole band for unlicensed radio usage where you'd expect all this innovation and standards to happen, but the carriers are like, what if we don't do that?

• 43:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've been hearing for years, you know, telecom companies being like, well, you know, what if we can like share this spectrum somehow? And I don't entirely know how that would work out. But it definitely sounds like Comcast is hoping that one day they'll be able to get in on that.

• 44:08Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think this was last week, Microsoft announced for like the 500th time in the past decade that they're moving forward with their white space internet project. So it's this crazy idea where they will use computers to identify gaps in the, like the TV spectrum and then send like super wifi over the gaps.

• 44:31Nilay Patel?

  And they've been in fights, I'm not even kidding, they've been at it for a decade. Like, I wrote about white spaces at Engadget a decade ago. And every year on the dot, Microsoft is like, "We figured it out, super Wi-Fi is here." And it never shows up, but it's a lot of plans along those lines.

• 44:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, wait, why is Microsoft doing that? Is it just because they just want to get more people connected?

• 44:54Nilay Patel?

  I think, you know, it's like, they got a guy on staff, so everyone's friend, he brings a beer around on Fridays, and he's working on the white spaces, and I'm like, "Yeah, just keep going."

• 45:03Speaker 03

  I mean, it's cool, it sounds like a good plan.

• 45:04Nilay Patel?

  Just keep truckin', Tom, like, just doing it. I don't know, it's literally been a decade of Microsoft saying, "We can somehow programmatically find the gaps."

• 45:16Speaker 03

  There was something about a billion dollars, and it sounds like maybe they just made up that number, or maybe they're gonna put some money towards it.

• 45:21Nilay Patel?

  That was like their news release, they're like, investing in it, they're gonna...

• 45:24Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 45:25Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, it's been a decade. So, next year, I'm sure we'll talk about white spaces on the show again. And then for the rest of my life, I will get the white spaces press release. But that is the whole, like, spectrum-sharing game.

• 45:38Speaker 03

  I see, you're looking for gaps and then going in where you can.

• 45:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:43Speaker 03

  Right. Yeah, so, I mean, the whole Comcast thing, it was just like, this is the thing that keeps happening, where we look at these arguments they're making, and on their face, they sound fairly reasonable, right? Autonomous cars, yeah, they probably should be fast. And then you look into them and you go, "Well, the grounding here does not make a ton of sense." And we've been doing a ton of that stuff, where like, if you look at the claims about investment into internet infrastructure, if you look at the harms on small internet providers, this stuff just isn't quite holding up the way that they're...

• 46:19Nilay Patel?

  You just talked to a bunch of, like, literally mom-and-pop ISPs, right?

• 46:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is a big thing. I mean, in complete honesty, I kept... So Ajit Pai kept talking about mom-and-pop ISPs, and I'm like, "That's not possible. What's a mom-and-pop ISP that's made up?" But they're totally mom-and-pop ISPs. And like, one company I spoke with is literally just this guy and his daughter in Colorado, and they have like a thousand customers, just like, they set up these wireless things, and like, their greatest struggle in life is trees, which get in the way of their signal.

• 46:51Speaker 03

  And so, yeah, I ended up speaking with a bunch of these companies to find out whether net neutrality had been hurting them or not. And it was super interesting because half the ones I spoke with were like, "No, what are you talking about? There's like, literally been no harm." And the other ones were saying, basically, a lot of hypotheticals. They were worried about what could happen. And, you know, it's like, a little over two years on, and like, so far, these harms haven't really come. There's one company that said they had spent like, $40,000 to like, come into compliance because they had to like, write some open internet statement. Just like, they spent this on like, legal counsel.

• 47:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:31Speaker 03

  But there wasn't anyone that had actually said they had really changed their plans or not made an investment. The one big one, Ajit Pai had actually cited this one woman's testimony. She is in charge of the ISP Aristotle. And she said that they were gonna triple their subscriber base, but didn't because of the net neutrality rules. And it is true that they delayed their plans because they wanted to spend some money coming into compliance with net neutrality. But they're now moving forward with those plans again. And they started that before the election, before they knew it was gonna be overturned, which

• 48:16Speaker 03

  I think sort of goes to show that net neutrality is not just flat-out killing this stuff, even for people who, right out the gate, were saying, "This is gonna be a problem. It's gonna stop investment."

• 48:25Nilay Patel?

  So what happens next? Right? He just got reconfirmed?

• 48:28Speaker 03

  He just had his hearing. He's not exactly reconfirmed yet, I don't think. But I think we've got another month about for the net neutrality comment period. Now's the reply comment period. So now's when the more heated arguments start, I guess.

• 48:45Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. The lawyers go crazy.

• 48:46Speaker 03

  That's gonna be fun. It's not gonna be fun.

• 48:52Speaker 03

  And, uh, yeah, and then it's sort of a waiting game where, uh, I mean, I think the FCC probably has a pretty good idea of what they want to put out for their final net neutrality proposal, but technically they're supposed to take all of these comments into consideration. So it'll probably be at least a couple of months as they look through these comments. There are like over 8 million comments.

• 49:19Nilay Patel?

  That's way more than last time, right?

• 49:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, last time, I think it was like 3.4 million comments, something like that, in total. And right now, this is, we're at the halfway point.

• 49:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 49:29Speaker 03

  And there are already more than twice as many comments.

• 49:32Nilay Patel?

  That's crazy. Is it all bots? Because FCC is going to answer bots and stuff.

• 49:35Speaker 03

  That's a really good question. Um, yeah. Uh, I don't know, but, um, yeah, so they're gonna have to somehow look through all of those. I don't know how you look through 8 million comments. They probably normally get like 10 comments.

• 49:47Nilay Patel?

  I read an insane Reddit conspiracy theory today.

• 49:50Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, I read this today.

• 49:51Nilay Patel?

  I'm just letting you know it's a Reddit conspiracy theory. Uh, the bot attack on the FCC came from inside the house. Because the FCC has not yet released an analysis. I think Gizmodo FOIA'd them, um, to like, ask what this hack that they claim had happened. And they said they don't have any information on the hack. So then the Redditors like went nuts.

• 50:12Speaker 03

  Why would they have hacked themselves?

• 50:15Nilay Patel?

  So they can toss out all the comments. I mean, look, it's a Reddit conspiracy theory, and as much as we give pie crap on this show, I don't think that he set up like a rogue internal hacking operation at the FCC.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can just ignore the comments.

• 50:30Nilay Patel?

  But if he did, that would be cool, and I think Jason Bourne should punch him in the face. Because that is the plot of a Bourne movie.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  Is it? Comment on FCC pages?

• 50:42Nilay Patel?

  No, it's, it's inside the house. He's hacking the government from the inside. It doesn't matter what they're actually doing. What does the bad guy want in any Bourne movie?

• 50:50Speaker 02

  I like the idea of a movie about a botnet for comments. And Jason Bourne being like, we gotta do something about this.

• 50:56Nilay Patel?

  I, the only plot, the only thing the villain wants in a Jason Bourne movie is to create a government inside the government. It's just layers of internal shadow government. The goals of that government are never made clear. There's just a secret government and Bourne's gotta punch it in the face.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, to create more super agents.

• 51:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:16Nilay Patel?

  But that it's never made clear what the purpose of those super agents are, except to wake up and realize they should stop it.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  All right, you got your book idea. Go for it.

• 51:25Nilay Patel?

  Jason Bourne, The Truth. All right, I'm gonna read another one.

• 51:31Nilay Patel?

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

• 51:58Nilay Patel?

  Okay, Ashley.

• 51:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 52:00Nilay Patel?

  You are the designated representative circuit breaker on the show today.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:04Nilay Patel?

  Every week, you're here.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  I'm always here, every week, same seat.

• 52:08Nilay Patel?

  Same place, same time, has the same name.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 52:12Nilay Patel?

  Let us know.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  So, my segment, "Let's Talk About Translucent Gadgets", is here once again.

• 52:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  Of this time. You know, I gotta be honest, it was kind of a slow gadget week.

• 52:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  But Tivoli Audio, hold on, I'm saying that right? Released a limited edition summer Bluetooth radio.

• 52:35Nilay Patel?

  It's clear.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  And it's translucent.

• 52:37Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  It's cool looking, and it lights up inside, you can adjust the LED light. I don't know, I'm pretty into it.

• 52:44Speaker 03

  Is it like the old Game Boys?

• 52:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, it looks just like that, except it's a white, it's not purple tinted, I had the purple one.

• 52:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, purple one.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:51Nilay Patel?

  But there's LEDs inside, the Game Boy didn't have LEDs inside.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  Right, this one lights up.

• 52:56Nilay Patel?

  Do you adjust them with an app? I'm assuming there's an app.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:58Nilay Patel?

  That's what you want in your life.

• 52:59Speaker 02

  Um, so, it's $200, which seems very expensive for a radio, because who, and who even listens to the radio anymore? I don't know.

• 53:07Nilay Patel?

  It's like an internet radio, isn't it like a Bluetooth speaker, or is it actual FM radio?

• 53:10Speaker 02

  You can pair with it over Bluetooth, but it's an FM radio. So like, you can play your Spotify or whatever.

• 53:15Nilay Patel?

  But this is just a clear version of this product that's been out.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  It's called the Pale BT Glow.

• 53:22Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  The original is called the Pale BT.

• 53:25Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Pale spelled like pale?

• 53:28Speaker 02

  Like, like P A L.

• 53:29Nilay Patel?

  Oh, not like a pale.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Pal.

• 53:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  Pal. So there you have it. I'm pretty excited about translating.

• 53:34Nilay Patel?

  I feel like this is like, uh, for a summer, this is my segue into the Instagram stuff I want to talk about. But for like, the summer party gram.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 53:42Nilay Patel?

  Like, holding the radio.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  I said in the piece, I was like, this is for your outdoor deck.

• 53:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:48Speaker 02

  So if you, please, Vergecast readers, if you, uh, or listeners, I should say.

• 53:53Nilay Patel?

  Someone's reading this transcript and they're like, what the fuck is going on?

• 53:57Speaker 02

  Um, if you buy this radio, let me know and send me a picture of it on your outdoor deck, because I want a deck.

• 54:04Nilay Patel?

  No, you need the super stylish gram.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  Send me the gram on the deck.

• 54:08Nilay Patel?

  Like, walking down the street.

• 54:09Speaker 02

  I want a deck.

• 54:09Nilay Patel?

  It's, it's free.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  I just got back from Midwest. I saw backyards. I miss that.

• 54:14Nilay Patel?

  I'm thinking rain-slicked New York City streets. You got all the lights in the background. You're holding the radio up.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  It has a huge antenna, too.

• 54:24Nilay Patel?

  Alright.

• 54:25Speaker 02

  There you have it.

• 54:26Nilay Patel?

  Alright. Here's another gadget that is back. Dieter, I know you're excited about this. Google Glass. So, goo- this story is two years old. I don't really know how this went down.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  So, what we know now is that the enterprise edition of Glass is in fact newer hardware with a slightly better camera and slightly longer battery life and an actual red LED light in the front to show you that it's recording. And it is getting custom sold, uh, with custom software in most cases to basically factories so that people can use it while they're, you know, assembling parts together. And Stephen Levy over at Back Channel or Wired, wherever he is, uh, the relationship between those two is still confusing, uh, has a really big, long feature. He went to a factory in Minnesota. Um, and sure, it looks great. It seems like a very good use case for the thing that they made.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  But it has no effect on me or my life. Uh, the, the, there's no, they, they maybe someday can take the stuff they put here and use it for actual AR stuff, but it seems like the make smart eyeglasses that show you things stuff, like the, the problems that Glass solves. Are easy problems, right? It's have an operating system, display some stuff, connect to Wi-Fi if you need to. Have a battery, have a screen. Like, it doesn't solve the hard problem, which is make it look normal and make it feel socially appropriate,

• 55:56Speaker 01

  which is a problem that, you know, the Snap Spectacle solved in a much, you know, better way than Google did with its Explorer program. So, good on you for not completely destroying and spring cleaning the entire project away. But I guess I don't see this thing being, I don't know, I don't see this thing being anything outside of like particular things like doctors or factories. Am I crazy? Am I too much of a hater?

• 56:26Nilay Patel?

  No, I think you're right. It's, it's not an AR device. It's like they missed the window of this being useful, right? It's a screen that floats in front of your eye and you can ask it for things, but it's not looking at stuff and showing you more information about the stuff. And it feels like Google had, they had that window and they blew it, basically, because the product was not great. And now they're, they're basically like saying, you don't have to look at a laptop, the screen's in front of your eye. But the thing that's crazy to me about it is they were doing this two years ago. There's an NPR story for like two years ago. It's basically the same story and the news this time is now more people, more companies can buy it, which I think is, I think is Google trying to drive a press cycle around like,

• 57:09Nilay Patel?

  we've already got funky future helmets happening in this world.

• 57:12Speaker 03

  It's weird because this is supposed to be like a, almost like a happy ending or something for Glass. Like, look, we were able to make something out of it. But on some level, I feel like just any news about Google Glass is bad news. Like, I saw it and I was just like, ah, that's, yeah, did not work out, like. I don't know. Are they making money off of this? Why are they doing this? Like, is there a big enterprise business? I guess there were, like, I remember at CES a couple of years ago, there were a handful of companies doing stuff like this. And I feel like, maybe like Lenovo or something had one? And these other ones might have been targeted, like, enterprise applications. I don't know, maybe there is a market there or something? It's just not that.

• 57:50Nilay Patel?

  But there's like a few of these, right? That's what you're saying? And that market is people who assemble things.

• 57:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:56Nilay Patel?

  Like, the number one use case is, do you make wiring harnesses? And the answer is, some people do actually make those. Okay, there's a few more things I want to talk about. Speaking of weird glasses, you can now buy Snap Spectacles directly from Amazon. Snapchat added a bunch of new features. I'm just looking at you. You're like my Snapchat guru. Are people still into spectacles? I haven't seen a spectacles video in a thousand years.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  No, I don't think so. I think it's seriously one of those things, like, if you bought it, it's like, alright, cool, I'll take it on vacation with me. If I remember to charge it.

• 58:28Nilay Patel?

  But are you gonna use it? Like, I just, I don't see anybody using it.

• 58:31Speaker 03

  Pretty sure I saw a pair when I was at the Vatican recently.

• 58:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think on vacations.

• 58:35Nilay Patel?

  What? Okay.

• 58:36Speaker 02

  I saw some at Pitchfork Music Festival.

• 58:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  That's one pair, that's it.

• 58:41Nilay Patel?

  But seeing people with the hardware versus seeing the videos it's supposed to generate.

• 58:45Speaker 02

  That's what bothers you about this, is you see them wearing it. Like, you always bring up Sheffer, how he wears his, but never posts it.

• 58:51Nilay Patel?

  Never, I never see any spectacles video from Sam.

• 58:54Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's more like home videos. Like, my friend took hers to Mexico with us, and she recorded a lot of footage. She just has the footage for herself. So, in three years, we can look back and be like, hey, like, remember this funny moment? Or whatever.

• 59:07Nilay Patel?

  Where is it stored?

• 59:09Speaker 02

  Well, she keeps it on her phone, I guess.

• 59:10Nilay Patel?

  So she's just gonna watch Circle videos on her phone in three years?

• 59:13Speaker 02

  I guess so.

• 59:14Nilay Patel?

  That's so weird.

• 59:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, well.

• 59:16Nilay Patel?

  Right, because the whole thing is.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  That's where we are, yeah, it's a circle.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Okay, I don't own spectacles. I need to buy a pair, just so I can say I own a pair. Should I get coral, or should I get black?

• 59:25Nilay Patel?

  Coral.

• 59:27Speaker 02

  Uh oh.

• 59:28Nilay Patel?

  Everyone has black.

• 59:29Speaker 02

  It's because it's fashionable.

• 59:30Nilay Patel?

  Alright. Um, new features, right? There's all kinds of new editing in there. Uh, there's a multi-snap recording, which is a hilarious way to describe being able to push the button more than once.

• 59:39Speaker 02

  Snapchat keeps adding such cool features and like, their filters still even, just the AR stuff, is better than Instagram. Like, it's so obvious that Facebook's technology is just worse, like it is.

• 59:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  Um, just from using it. But, I don't know, I feel like Snapchat keeps creating these features and it's actually really hard to use them. Like, there are really specific use cases and you have to know the app so well, which I guess is always what Snapchat's thing has been, is like, you're a power user, you know how to actually use the app.

• 1:00:09Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  But like, I don't know, it feels like they're just kind of stunting it at this point.

• 1:00:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  Like, hey, look what we can do, Facebook, eh, no one's actually gonna use this, though.

• 1:00:17Nilay Patel?

  I mean, so we have these other two stories here about Instagram this week, and they're way deeper stories. So, Casey did a big feature on how restaurants are now being designed to be Instagrammable, which, if you, you should read the story, but if you scroll through it, there's like this depressing moment when there's like 45 pictures of the same tile floor in a restaurant on Instagram.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  That made me so sad.

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  I read it on my phone, and I was just like, it, it, you, if you see it on your desktop, you're like, oh, okay, there's, there's a bunch here. But when you see it on your phone, you just have to scroll through them, and it really just, by the time you get to the bottom, you're just like, well, everything is terrible in the world.

• 1:00:51Nilay Patel?

  No originality is left in this universe.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:54Nilay Patel?

  Um, and then, uh, Megan, uh, took a trip to LA and went to, uh, like, a social media star summer camp, where they teach teens to be good at social media, like, to be influencers. It was a great story.

• 1:01:06Speaker 03

  Learn how to say like, make sure to like and subscribe at the end of this. What is?

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  And share.

• 1:01:11Nilay Patel?

  What's up, you guys? Alright, try again, more feeling. Um, yeah, they like, did things about her, it was a summer camp for social media stars.

• 1:01:18Speaker 03

  Speaking of which, make sure to share this if you have enjoyed the...

• 1:01:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, smash that like button, fam.

• 1:01:24Speaker 03

  I don't know what.

• 1:01:25Nilay Patel?

  I'm really good at this. I don't know.

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:01:28Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 1:01:28Speaker 02

  That was good, that was good.

• 1:01:30Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, uh, there was a lot in that story. You should read that story, it's really good. Um, there's a lot in that story where all the teens are like, my favorite platform is Instagram. Or like, they were going around their room. Those two things where Instagram is affecting like, design choices in the real world. And, you know, all the kids are saying Instagram's the best platform. That's the competition with Snapchat, right? And I think we've just hit a point where Instagram is so much more vital than almost any other social network that I'm on. And I can't really pinpoint why, except it's happy.

• 1:02:03Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah, it's just pure positivity. There's like, literally no other way to, I mean, you have to like, really try pretty hard to express something that's other than neutral or positive.

• 1:02:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:16Speaker 03

  And like, it just doesn't fit in if you're putting, I mean, I think that's it though, right? Like, I go to Instagram and I enjoy myself. And that is like, something I can only say about Instagram.

• 1:02:24Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:02:25Speaker 03

  Even like, you know, even my favorite websites, like, there's going to be some depressing like, news and not just like, cool stuff.

• 1:02:33Speaker 02

  Well, also, maybe the thing too is like, I was going to say it's because, for us, we had Facebook, we like friended our high school friends. This is, you know, we're in high school. And now my Facebook is just tainted. I'm like, ugh. I don't care enough to delete all of you. Also, I just don't care what you're up to anyway, so I don't use Facebook. But the nice part about Instagram is like, if someone follows me, I don't have to follow them back necessarily.

• 1:02:55Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  So it's like, I'm only following the people I care about. Plus, it's the positivity. So you're able to actually curate, whereas Facebook, it's like, this is a mutual friendship and we must follow each other, right?

• 1:03:06Nilay Patel?

  No, it's terrible. Give me your thoughts real quick on Instagram, Snapchat, because that's the real fight, I think.

• 1:03:12Speaker 02

  Well, it's just, I think they're very different. Like, Instagram, like you said, with the design choices, it's like... Instagram is permanent and beautiful and I love Instagram.

• 1:03:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  Snapchat's just fun. Like I use Snapchat to interact with my best friends and make silly faces.

• 1:03:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. That's not, it's like a hard business for Snapchat to own, like all.

• 1:03:34Speaker 02

  It is, but they're doing such cool stuff and it's like, I don't know how to make them better.

• 1:03:37Nilay Patel?

  Are you gonna watch the two-minute NBC News news show that they're gonna stick in Snapchat?

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  I actually like the Discovery Channel.

• 1:03:43Nilay Patel?

  So you use it?

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I like the Discovery Channel.

• 1:03:46Nilay Patel?

  So it's like a whole other thing.

• 1:03:47Speaker 02

  What do you watch? I watch like Cosmo's stuff. It's like really stupid, but I'm like, hey, this is enjoyable for me because I like stupid shit sometimes. So.

• 1:03:56Nilay Patel?

  It's fine. I'm just saying it's, it's.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  Also, I think Snap Map is cool. I know there's all this privacy stuff, but that's impressive to me. I don't know. Instagram's not doing that stuff.

• 1:04:06Nilay Patel?

  I have my Snapchat, my Snap Map, and it's like, all of my friends are at home with their kids. Well, that's what's happening here.

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:15Nilay Patel?

  It, it, I think there's a peak. Like they're not having adventures.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  Cool looking though, like with emoji.

• 1:04:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 1:04:22Nilay Patel?

  Emoji's like a real thing.

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:23Nilay Patel?

  That was a good purchase, but then, okay. I want to talk about Apple patent stuff, but we're out of time and it's quite frankly, very boring and confusing.

• 1:04:31Nilay Patel?

  We need to know is Foxconn is now suing Qualcomm too. Huh?

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, you have to give us two sentences on it.

• 1:04:37Nilay Patel?

  I think it is so counterintuitive that Apple buys phones from Foxconn. It is just not how you expect that business to work. Apple buys the iPhones from Foxconn. So now Foxconn is suing Qualcomm too. And there's something crazy happening in there and I hope Sarah Jeong, our new reporter can help me figure it out. Cause I have yet to understand it completely. But Foxconn is now suing Qualcomm too. At the end of this, there might not be a Qualcomm is basically my final thing, but we'll figure it out. Okay, that's it. That's the show.

• 1:05:08Speaker 02

  Wow, ways to leave it on that note.

• 1:05:10Nilay Patel?

  We'll see. Who knows? Who knows what's gonna happen? Or there might still be a Qualcomm. You never know.

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  Everyone's favorite.

• 1:05:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, everyone's favorite. Uh, it's funny because I read a Qualcomm ad on this show just now. But those are different things. Those are different people. That was another, that was an AI. Um, disclosure, I read a Qualcomm ad on this show.

• 1:05:29Nilay Patel?

  Okay, that's the show. Please go watch Next Level with Lauren Good. Lauren also hosts a great show called Too Embarrassed to Ask, which you can listen to on basically anywhere podcasts are. You can listen to other Recode podcasts. Kara Swisher hosts Recode Decode. Peter Kafka hosts Recode Media, which is my favorite. I'm some media nerd. All of that is available on iTunes. Find it, rate it, review it. We're doing fun stuff on Anchor. Go to anchor.fm/verge and you'll listen to little experiments that our people are doing. We ran one last week that Ashley had done.

• 1:05:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I saw that. I was like, oh, how nice.

• 1:06:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's good. And you can tweet at us. I am at Reckless, Teeter's at Backlon, Jake. Jake underscore K. Ashley.

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  Ashley R. Carmen.

• 1:06:08Nilay Patel?

  And we'll be back next week with more Vergecast, this show. Thanks for everybody. Rock and roll. Paul, I'm just saying all the things myself.

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  Orbis.

• 1:06:17Nilay Patel?

  God.