S9 leaks, Google Reply, and Twitter's war on bots

This week on The Vergecast, Dieter is on vacation, so Silicon Valley editor and host of an upcoming Verge podcast, Casey Newton, joins us. Nilay, Paul, and Casey run through the news of the week, including Samsung Galaxy S9 leaks, Twitter bots, and third-party keyboards. Also, as a preview of Casey’s upcoming podcast Converge with Casey Newton, Casey takes over as the host of The Vergecast for a segment to beta test a new game for his podcast with Nilay and Paul as contestants. We’ve got a whole lot more in between that — like Paul’s segment he does every week “Warm robot hugs” — so listen to it all, and you’ll get it all. 02:26 - Everything we think we know about the Samsung Galaxy S9 09:26 - Intel’s 5G laptops vs Qualcomm’s all day LTE laptops 16:22 - Does Google Reply count as another messaging app? 20:28 - Swype keyboard has been discontinued 22:00 - Twitter bans bulk tweeting and duplicate accounts in bot crackdown 31:32 - Here’s some Twitter options for Mac users now that the official app is going away 37:05 - Converge with Casey Newton beta 56:36 - Paul’s weekly segment “Warm robot hugs” 58:26- Apple employees can’t stop walking into the beautiful glass doors at new Apple Park campus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This episode of Vergecast is brought to you by Cyber Systems, which makes a password manager called RoboForm that you should use so you don't end up using the same password on all the websites. Because if you do that, then one of the websites gets hacked and then you're doomed. The password I use? What's that? Every time, every website. Is it every time, every website? It's "I love my boss." Jesus, Paul. Anyway, look, just go to roboform.com and download it today. Stop using that same password everywhere. And check out the app in the App Store for iOS or Android. For a limited time, you get $10 off RoboForm everywhere when you use a promo code VERGE. Simplify and secure your online journey today with the RoboForm Password Manager.

• 0:44Nilay Patel?

  Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast. For this, the week of whatever week it is, the Vergecast, as you know, is the flagship podcast of the internet. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's what it is. Wow. Going for it today. I'm Neil Appertal, Paul Miller is here. Hello. Dieter Bohn is on vacation. Super not here. So we're doing something crazy. Casey Newton is here.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 1:09Nilay Patel?

  Hey, Casey, how you doing, man?

• 1:10Speaker 01

  I'm doing fantastic. I'm glad I can fill in for Dieter in his lazy absence.

• 1:14Nilay Patel?

  Yes. He's such a, he's a dilettante, that Bohn. When I think of Dieter, I think of a rich playboy sailing the seven seas. But if you've been listening to Vergecast for the past several weeks, months, years, you know that we've been teasing the idea that Casey will have his own podcast, which is true, it's gonna happen someday. I'm skeptical. So what we're gonna do on the first half of the Vergecast today, we're gonna talk about news like we always do, jokes for days, inside jokes that no one understands. Sizzavodka, everybody, it's great. Then, for the second half of the show, Casey is gonna do like a pilot of his show. He's gonna take it over, and then he's gonna do the Casey Show, and we're all gonna see how that works.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a sneak preview, sort of give you an idea of what we're gonna do on Converge.

• 2:00Nilay Patel?

  It's a sneak preview, I think it's a beta test, or the harsh glare of the spotlight, pushing you off over a ledge, whatever metaphor you want. So that's the show this week, first half news. Second half, Casey, you wanna tell them what your show's called?

• 2:15Speaker 01

  My show's called Converge with Casey Newton, and my name is in it because the lawyers told us that that was necessary.

• 2:21Nilay Patel?

  I think it's very true. All right, let's just get into it. There's a lot going on this week. But I think the biggest news, in a way... You can't stop it. It's like, S9 leaks are happening.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, MWC.

• 2:35Nilay Patel?

  MWC.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  So, the S9 is supposed to be basically announced this weekend.

• 2:38Nilay Patel?

  Wait, so if you don't know, MWC is Mobile World Congress.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  In Barcelona.

• 2:42Nilay Patel?

  In Barcelona. Uh, we've got a team going out there. Jake will be there, Vlad will be there, a whole bunch of folks will be out there. Tom will be there.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  It's like the CES of phones.

• 2:50Nilay Patel?

  It's the CES of phones. It's also, if you've ever wanted to know in your heart what mobile executives, like European mobile executives are like, MWC is where it comes to life.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:01Nilay Patel?

  And it's a lot of suits and a lot of panel discussions with names like 5G e-commerce solutions for a connected era. And you're like, what, what, how, who was excited about it?

• 3:10Speaker 02

  I would download that PowerPoint slide deck in a heartbeat.

• 3:14Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow, so, we always assume that, you know, the big phone companies are gonna put out new phones. Samsung, they have drished in notes there, but it seems like the S9 is gonna happen this year because the thing is just leaking all over the place.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:26Nilay Patel?

  Casey, are you pumped about the Galaxy S9?

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Man, I can't even tell you. Ever since the Galaxy S8, I've been like, are they gonna make another one of these? And dad gum, they're doing it.

• 3:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, here's what I thought would happen.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  What about the Snapdragon 845 processor? That's gonna be a substantial upgrade for your life, I believe, Casey.

• 3:43Nilay Patel?

  Well, here's what I don't understand.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:46Nilay Patel?

  At CES, we saw the new Synaptics fingerprint sensor thing. It was in a Vivo phone. They're like, major filmmakers are gonna use this.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 3:54Nilay Patel?

  It's not, all the leaks, fingerprints, they've moved it on the back to the right spot in the center.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  The correct spot.

• 4:00Nilay Patel?

  The correct spot. But it doesn't seem like it has this fingerprint scanner.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  That's not a, I'm looking at this thing in virtual reality. That's not a little fingerprint scanner underneath the camera?

• 4:09Nilay Patel?

  No, that's where it is. So, before it was off to the side of the camera, which was disaster, because you just, everyone put their finger on the camera.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  But Neel is saying at CES, we learned that we have the technology now as a human species to place fingerprint sensors under displays.

• 4:23Nilay Patel?

  I like that.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  They can become completely invisible.

• 4:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And if Samsung was first to market with that thing, I'm all in. I'm like, Bixby, show up.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  But they're in a rush.

• 4:33Nilay Patel?

  They're in a rush, putting this thing out. It seems like the big point here is the camera. Okay, so Casey, you're rarely on the show. I know you're an iPhone person. What is it? What is the one thing Samsung would have to do to get you to buy a Samsung phone?

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Well, I think that if the S9 were filled with rich creamy nougat, or like gold doubloons, like it's gotta go beyond the phone that I'm used to and give me something radically different. You know, I want to say I had like an S6 just kind of laying around the office, and it was a fine phone. Like, I had no objection to it whatsoever. My bigger problems have always been with Android and the fact that the apps that I want have not been on it. And, you know, my friends and family generally have not been on it, which means I have problems with iMessage and that sort of thing. So, there's actually not a ton that Samsung can really do. It's more about the ecosystem for me.

• 5:22Nilay Patel?

  Well, let me throw this at you, Case. Hi, I'm answering a thing, and post like we do, everything we know. I'm just reading through it. And, you know, I've got the iMessage problem too. I think everyone listening to this knows that I'm locked into a beautiful prison of Apple's design. But Samsung is reportedly working on a new location-based local social network called Usup, which will launch in the S9. That's spelled U-H-S-S-U-P, Usup. Is that, Casey, do you think that is enough? That common abbreviation of what's up. Yeah, Usup. This is true. This is a real thing. Is that, do you think that would be enough to take you out of the iMessage ecosystem?

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Well, I will say that, like, nothing makes me happier than dumb social networks. That's like basically my favorite thing to write about and always has been. So, I will definitely be taking a hard look at Usup and see if I can get all my friends and family to use it. You know, maybe they've got some idea. I mean, to me, the best thing about Usup is just thinking that Samsung probably paid a, like, US marketing agency $48 million to come up with that name. Like, that makes me very excited.

• 6:28Nilay Patel?

  There's definitely a deck somewhere. I mean, Samsung is like, I mean, they spend a ton of money on, like, marketing and branding. Like, every agency in town has a Samsung account of some kind, because they have so many products. Like, there are the people right now that landed the Usup deal, and they're like, "This is gonna make us." They're probably the same people who landed, like, the Milk Music deal, and they're just like goldfish, and they just forget what happened to them before.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  So there's also a rumor that Samsung could do an Animoji type thing. Here's what I want. Samsung obviously feels threatened by Google, right?

• 7:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Apple feels threatened by Android. Samsung and Apple are typically enemies. But the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And they create a special bridge for Apple Animoji users to talk with Samsung's Bixby emoji users. And they can communicate, but Google Pixel users are left out in the cold.

• 7:28Nilay Patel?

  This is horrible. I mean, so you don't need to do that because Animojis are just movie files.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Well, no, because ideally you'll communicate with Animoji in lieu of FaceTime.

• 7:41Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I see. So they'll build a special app.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:43Nilay Patel?

  It's like an Animoji FaceTime app.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:45Nilay Patel?

  All right, I'm with you.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  It'll bridge the divide.

• 7:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Samsung will be like, hey, Apple, you want some more OLED screens? Build us a custom Animoji API.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  It'd be a shame if something had to do with all these OLED screens.

• 7:59Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, man. You know, it's interesting, the Galaxy S series, it comes out, the Note series comes out, there's tons of interest. They're the most popular phones. I'm gonna be honest with you. I, there's nothing about them at this point that makes me more interested than what Google's gonna do with its next Pixel.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:17Nilay Patel?

  Right? And like, I think it's partial, like Samsung has gotten much better with the bloatware. But it's all of these like, they're like, are sats. They're like, Samsung looks at what Apple or Google does and they like build a clone.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:30Nilay Patel?

  And I don't think they understand that it's not the thing that's important. It's like the strategy.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:36Nilay Patel?

  It's reality, it's like providing the value to the.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  It's not checking a box, it's how well you do it and how it ties into a larger.

• 8:44Nilay Patel?

  Right. It's just they've gotten to the point where they think software features are specs. And like voices, oh yeah, to dog with shoes.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:51Nilay Patel?

  Right? And like.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Well, supposedly the Bixby one's still here.

• 8:55Nilay Patel?

  Casey, have you ever used Bixby?

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Never, not even as a joke, which is sad, because I would like to. It's like, it's like the perfect joke word and everything we've ever written about it is that it doesn't work. So like, I should be spending a lot of time with it just for my own entertainment.

• 9:09Nilay Patel?

  So, yeah, I, you know, I often assign stories on the Vergecast, mostly to Dieter and because you're in the Dieter chair this week. I think my week with Bixby is like a great Casey Newton story.

• 9:22Nilay Patel?

  Alright.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm sold, I'll do it.

• 9:25Nilay Patel?

  Alright, moving on. Also MWC, lots of wireless standard news in the world, 5G. This sort of relentless march towards it being real. There's a little bit of standards news, like Verizon was trying to do their own custom riff on 5G standards. It appears they're swinging back and they're gonna be doing more standardized thing, which I obviously love. So hopefully we'll hear some of that at MWC. Also, a bunch of carriers are starting to announce their first test cities for 5G, which is cool. But really, the news that we've got here is Intel is doing 5G laptops. They're setting up their partnerships to put 5G chips in laptops. And then that's like versus Qualcomm being like, hey, we're gonna make laptops with LTE chips and sell them in wireless carrier stores?

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, like I think all four big carriers are into it.

• 10:12Nilay Patel?

  Why would you want to buy a laptop from Sprint?

• 10:14Speaker 02

  They're like, do you remember tablets and how well it worked out? How good they were?

• 10:21Nilay Patel?

  I just don't understand. I cannot think of-

• 10:23Speaker 02

  Can I tell a story?

• 10:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  I bought a tablet. I got upsold. I was at T-Mobile just upgrading my phone, like a regular person. And they were like, hey, for just a couple more dollars a month, you could get this fully featured Android tablet.

• 10:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  And so I did. And then like it ended up being like a lot more complicated. Like it was basically I had to activate a whole new line, right? Without a phone number on it. And no, it did even-

• 10:52Nilay Patel?

  It has a fake phone number.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  It had a fake phone number. And so I had an Android tablet. I was like, you know what? I want to read more books. I'll like use it as a Kindle and I don't know. So I bring it home and I'm watching football.

• 11:05Nilay Patel?

  On your tablet?

• 11:06Speaker 02

  No, on my big projector.

• 11:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  And I had my tablet out. I was setting it up while I was watching football. This is day one with the tablet. I celebrated a touchdown. And I slammed something onto the tablet and I cracked the screen.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  Who, who will help me replace that screen?

• 11:26Nilay Patel?

  Zero people.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Does that, does T-Mobile want to help? No. Does Asus care? Hell no.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  So I learned a valuable lesson.

• 11:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  About buying computers from mobile carriers.

• 11:40Nilay Patel?

  I don't, I just don't, I can't tell if this is all these carriers are gonna support the LTE chips. So you buy a laptop with an LTE chip. Or if it's like literally gonna walk into a Sprint store and they're like, have you heard of Dell, our newest partner? They make phones that are huge. They're actually laptops.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  I, I do think it'd be nice, I think lap, the idea of an ARM Windows laptop is a little scary to me. And there's gonna be a lot of software. We just learned that OpenGL stuff won't work.

• 12:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  Which, like, it's not just games that use OpenGL. A lot of things use OpenGL to accelerate whatever they're trying to accomplish. A lot of apps use OpenGL.

• 12:14Nilay Patel?

  Last week, I was super excited about my new MacBook Pro with a GPU.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:17Nilay Patel?

  And this week, I discovered that Slack just triggers GPU and destroys the battery whenever it wants.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So, so as long as apps aren't rewritten for ARM, they're, they're not gonna work great on these laptops. But if you can get enough done with them, and you get all day battery life, and you're connected to the internet everywhere, and you don't have to go through captive portals every time you're at a coffee shop or something, like, it kinda, it sounds cool, like, maybe, like, we, I feel like there was a big push to get LTE into laptops like five years ago or something. Didn't really work out. Maybe, if maybe now's the time, I wouldn't be mad if my laptop lasted all day and had an LTE connection in it. It's just like the surrounding details that might make that difficult. But if it works out, it'd be great.

• 13:06Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's funny, cause as we are recording this podcast, a true fact is that the internet connection to our office has been down.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:13Nilay Patel?

  And right before we started the show, I'm, we were both trying to tether to our phones.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:17Nilay Patel?

  And failing.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  I, we, we did succeed at tethering to the phone. Can we load websites very fast? No.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Does it seem like it's fragile and almost broken? Yes.

• 13:29Nilay Patel?

  But, you know.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  But if we had all day LTE laptops right now.

• 13:33Nilay Patel?

  Or. What would you rather have?

• 13:35Speaker 02

  Intel's forthcoming 5G laptops for the end of 2019.

• 13:38Nilay Patel?

  Which you can only use, AT&T announces, you can only use those laptops in Dallas, Atlanta, and Waco, Texas.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  Well, those are just the, those are 2018 pilot cities.

• 13:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's great.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  If these laptops don't come out until 2019, we'll probably also have like Austin and St. Louis.

• 13:55Nilay Patel?

  Casey, do you have a tablet with an LTE connection in it?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  I do, actually. So I have an iPad. I have, I pay 20 bucks a month to Verizon and it gives me a gigabyte worth of data and I find that I wind up using it a lot at the coffee shop I go to, which doesn't have Wi-Fi or, you know, if you're ever like waiting in a doctor's office or something, like every once in a while, you just want to have a little bit of, of data. So I'm actually really sympathetic to the idea of laptops with LTE and think it makes a lot of sense for the carriers to want to diversify their product lineup in those giant expensive retail stores they have beyond a handful of phones and tablets.

• 14:30Nilay Patel?

  I just don't see people walking into a T-Mobile store and walking out with a laptop.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  You'll get upsold. The laptop is only $400, right? Here's the thing. Your kid has been begging you for a computer to play Minecraft on.

• 14:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  And you, it's like, what, I'm gonna buy you a whole laptop? Laptops aren't like $1,000. And then you're like, you're upgrading your phone or you're getting your screen fixed at a carrier or something like that. And, and they're like, hey.

• 14:56Nilay Patel?

  Do you want a laptop?

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're gonna upsell you to like a $400 laptop.

• 15:01Nilay Patel?

  That's like, that's the Sales Associate Commission, like Gold Star of the Year. They're like.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  Hey, it worked on me.

• 15:08Nilay Patel?

  Angela did it. She sold the laptop. Like all of Sprint shuts down, all of the point of sale terminals have her face on it.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  T-Mobile employees are in a back room, watching a VHS training tape on how to upsell people on laptops.

• 15:22Nilay Patel?

  This is actually true. I don't want to, I don't want to blow up her spot because she's been working on this story for a while, but you know, Ashley Carmen does found case of the week. So she's been talking. To wireless carriers, because they sell so many of them. And one of the wireless carriers said the attach rate for phone cases is such that they make like a hundred dollars in accessory revenue with every phone they sell.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  What is an attach rate?

• 15:41Nilay Patel?

  So like you buy a phone and you buy all this other stuff. The rate at which you convert the other stuff.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  That's amazing. That actually goes a long way to explaining why there are so many carrier stores in every American city. And there are always people in them. Like you walk by the Sprint store in like small town America and there's 17 people inside trying to do something at any hour of the day.

• 16:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Most of them are trying to activate a sale.

• 16:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're just desperately, desperately being like, what? Can you just turn this on?

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Apparently the rest of them are being upsold on expensive phone cases.

• 16:14Nilay Patel?

  I don't want to get too deep in it because she's been working on it for a long time. I'm very excited about that story, but that was just a stat that she told me that I thought was crazy. Okay, Casey, I want to ask you about two things.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:23Nilay Patel?

  There's this new Google app called Reply. And the question we've written here is, does this count as another messaging app from Google?

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Well, you know me, I'm always very quick to declare new Google products messaging apps. But to me, Google Reply is actually an acknowledgement of the failure of messaging apps, right? Like, think about the humility Google had to have here. They know that no one is using Google Allo, right? They know that Assistant on iOS is going nowhere, right? Inbox is going nowhere. So if they want to get anyone to use this technology that they've invested so much money into, they have to release it as infrastructure for other people's apps. Like, to me, it was almost like kind of a sad declaration of failure.

• 17:13Nilay Patel?

  Huh. I mean, the idea that it's like infrastructure for other apps is... Well, shouldn't they just put out, like, G-Board is infrastructure for other apps?

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, can you explain? It's not a keyboard replacement. What exactly is it?

• 17:24Speaker 01

  It's a way of putting Google Assistant things into apps like Slack. You know, so Gmail has this feature and Smart Reply will, for example, let you turn on a vacation responder or... Sound and like suggests ways to respond to those messages. Or like, you know, it can use your phone's accelerometer to tell if you're in a vehicle or biking and can like auto respond for you. So it's trying to take that technology and put it into other apps that Google doesn't own. So I mean, like Slack is one that I think that has been tossed around.

• 18:00Nilay Patel?

  So I think what we're missing here is that this is a system level app for Android.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:05Nilay Patel?

  So you get you get a text. No, because it sits on the end, you give it permissions. So it sits at the the system layer and you get a text. The example they have here or that we have in our photo is the text says, when you can, can you be home? And it will read that text and suggest a reply for you.

• 18:24Nilay Patel?

  Which is clever.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  I can read the article, but I can't see if the any of the images.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Because I don't have an LTE laptop. But I will say, I've been using Facebook Messenger and and M is really big, making a big appearance. M is like into into it. But I'm starting to feel like, OK, so you have your keyboard. Above your keyboard, you have suggested words while you're typing. And then above that is like the this A or no, above that is the actual text box. And to the left of the text box is where you like go into more features.

• 18:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and above that is an ad.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  And above that is M.

• 19:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  And there's like a tiny, like a few pixels dedicated to the actual conversation.

• 19:07Nilay Patel?

  We've invented the Yahoo tool bar for our keyboards.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Right, well, something else to consider is that, you know, Facebook M, like smart assistant. These are consumer services in a way, but they're mainly a way of training the AI inside of Facebook and Google. Right? So so Google and Facebook are actually asking you to do some work for them, give them data, help them train their machine learning data sets. And and yet it comes at this consumer cost of like, you know, you you've given up half your screen for these extra features. So I think that's just kind of funny.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  Well, we're helping them, train them, and then what are they going to use it for?

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Oh, you don't want to know.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Not not better reply recommendations?

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Uh, well, yeah, presumably better reply recommendations and, you know, probably other products. You know, in in Facebook's case, they're super interested in training M to be able to do low level customer service stuff. So I mean, new new services are going to come out of it. But right now, these companies are kind of in the feed me stage when it comes to data.

• 20:05Nilay Patel?

  Right. Which is also why they're ahead in many ways, right? They're building these products that get them this data collection. Whereas like, Apple is like, whatever. We invented something called differential privacy. Series, great, try it.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  Now, let's say I do use these products a lot and I train them so good. Will they be able to tell whether or not I am a Russian bot?

• 20:28Nilay Patel?

  Wait, I don't want to do that. First, I want to point out that swipe is dead.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Oh, swipe is dead.

• 20:32Nilay Patel?

  Swipe is dead.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Swipe is dead.

• 20:34Nilay Patel?

  So like, it feels like the era of keyboard replacements has just come to a close. If you still use a keyboard replacement...

• 20:41Speaker 02

  And to be clear, the interaction model of swipe being to type is not dead.

• 20:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  But the standalone swipe keyboard from Nuance.

• 20:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  Is dead.

• 20:51Nilay Patel?

  It's gone. And I think all that means is people did not install it on iOS.

• 20:56Nilay Patel?

  Right? Because that's where the iOS keyboard doesn't have it. Google's keyboard has it. What are you gonna do? Anyway, Casey, have you ever installed any of these keyboards?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I use Gboard. I actually really like Gboard. Does a couple of cool things. If you are ever like, need to tell a friend like what restaurant you're meeting at, you can just kind of search for it right inside the keyboard and send that with a couple taps. And then I feel like the swipe recognition of words is pretty handy. So I'm actually a real fan of Gboard.

• 21:22Nilay Patel?

  Okay. All right. I've tried Gboard several times.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  It was really slow when I tried it. Is it better now?

• 21:28Speaker 01

  I think it's, I think it's better. I think it's better than the native iOS keyboard.

• 21:31Nilay Patel?

  The native iOS keyboard, by the way, is still just randomly capitalizing words whenever it feels like. It's just whatever. They're like, proper nouns. We don't use enough of those. Like, dinner. It capitalized the word dinner yesterday. It literally made it seem like I was courting my wife in like, the 1800s. Like, "My lady, when will you arrive at dinner?" It was ridiculous. All right, Casey, before we do this ad and you take over, there's a bunch of Twitter and Facebook news about bots. I'm actually very entertained by the idea that Twitter just shut down Twitter for Mac. You write an entire newsletter every day about social networks and democracy.

• 22:12Nilay Patel?

  Can you just sort of like, help me understand what these two networks are doing in the context of Russia? And then can we tell a bunch of jokes about Twitter for Mac?

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that would be great. There is so much going on, which is why I do, I have been writing a newsletter every day just kind of rounding up what has been going on. You know, in the particular case of Twitter, they have been under increasing pressure to do something about their bot problems. So, you know, for example, in the aftermath of the Florida shooting, you may have seen stories about how these Twitter accounts that had been dormant all of a sudden kind of came to life and started tweeting about the shooting. And some were very pro-gun control and some were very anti-gun control. And all of them seem to be linked back to Russia, right? Which fits this Russian playbook of trying to sow division and inflame tensions in America

• 23:04Speaker 01

  wherever it can find them, which is like sort of their geopolitical art project about how democracy is bad, right? It's just to like get Americans to yell at each other all the time about everything. So, you know, Twitter is under increasing pressure to act. And so this week, they announced some new limits on how users and apps can automate their tweets to try to combat some of this automated propaganda. So if you're using TweetDeck, which is kind of the pro version of Twitter that lets you sort of run multiple Twitter accounts at once and tweet from multiple accounts simultaneously, it's getting rid of a lot of those options and it's hoping that that is going to be a step towards reducing the spread of some of this propaganda.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  Were people automating TweetDeck?

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  Or is a person switching between a bunch of accounts a quote unquote bot because they don't mean it?

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Sure. And you know, you sort of raise a good point, which what is a bot? There are many definitions and it is important to kind of define our terms here. But something that you could do in TweetDeck was set up like, let's say 50 accounts and then send the same tweet from all of them simultaneously. So while logged into just one TweetDeck account, you could sort of send the same tweet from a lot of different accounts. And of course, one of the things that that enables you to do is to make something trend. And as dumb of a thing as it seems like, like the trending algorithm has been so easy to game across all social networks, frankly, that Russian actors are happy to just put

• 24:40Speaker 01

  whatever divisive trend into that trending box that they can find. And so this is the kind of step that's going to make that slightly harder to do.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  It seems weird that they have that much influence. I mean, I'm kind of going off the Mueller indictment of these like 13 Russian trolls. And is there a feeling that that's just like a tip of the iceberg? Because like in the indictment, they like, there's like, it mentions hundreds of Twitter accounts. And like, you know, that's a lot. You could do a lot with 100 Twitter accounts, but you're not going to change US trending.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  Right. And so this is sort of always the question is, is how big a deal is all of this? You know, in the narrow case of tweets, probably not that big of a deal. But when you look at everything else that Russians did with the context of the election, I do suspect that it had some sort of effect. Our best knowledge at this time is that it wasn't this brilliantly coordinated campaign. It was sort of lots and lots of experiments that were happening simultaneously in the hopes that they would have some kind of destabilizing effect. And that's exceeded, you know, beyond Russia's wildest dreams.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Now, while these were experiments, I do want to say that some of them were quite sophisticated. Russia did send people to America, right? Like a classic espionage using fake identities, you know, buying Facebook ads with stolen PayPal accounts. So they did some really sophisticated things. But I think that even the Russians at the time weren't exactly sure of what the effect of that was going to be. And they didn't have to be because they were just kind of messing around.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  I really like your description of it as a geopolitical art project.

• 26:27Nilay Patel?

  I want to get to the point where we describe every Russian teen as a bot and they self identify as bots. And there's like a Douglas Copeland book called Bots and it's about Russian teens.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  People on 4chan self identify as Russian bots.

• 26:38Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm not like that.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  It's a hot thing.

• 26:40Nilay Patel?

  No, I literally mean like, it just becomes like lingo. We're like, those are the goths, right? Those are the bots. Those are the jocks. Those are the bots.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  I had another question about this whole thing. So I feel like Facebook and Twitter are getting a lot of shit for not identifying bots. And it does seem like there are some automated ways they could. But when we talk about, oh, this person was fooled by a bot and went to a event that was like concocted by the Russians, like.

• 27:13Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think that's where you're getting weirdly conflat- like, the bots didn't set up events. Like, the actual human Russian troll farms set up the pages and events.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  Right. Okay, so take away the word bots, right? The Russians set up events and people went to the events. And I feel like Facebook and Twitter are getting shit for not identifying those were fake. But ostensibly, yeah, how should they identify that's fake if someone reads it and thinks it's real and goes to it?

• 27:45Nilay Patel?

  Casey?

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there's no good- yeah, there's no good answer to that question. And it's one of the reasons that Facebook is in such trouble, right? Like, there was this crazy story in the New York Times about one of these rallies that was set up by Russian actors that, you know, brought a lot of people out waving Confederate flags. And there was like a banner that said "White Lives Matter." And it was organized by this Facebook group called "Heart of Texas," which had 250,000 likes on Facebook. So the rally happens, everyone's mad, everyone's yelling. And then afterwards, people who went were posting on Facebook like, "Hey, it was weird that no one from the heart of Texas was there." Like, no one who set up this entire rally even showed up at it, right?

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Like, it's insane. And it doesn't seem like there's any great way for Facebook to crack down on that specifically. But one of the things I've been arguing lately is that Facebook says that groups are the future. It's gonna kind of move away from these broadcast posts and the news feed. And it's gonna get us all into these very meaningful groups where we're only with our closest friends or people that share some kind of affinity with us. And we've seen what happens when you do that. Like, we saw it in the 2016 election. And it's that you create these very polarized groups that are then easily manipulated. So this kind of stuff really scares me because there is no easy answer.

• 29:07Nilay Patel?

  Hmm. Yeah, I mean, again, my argument continues to be that we should shut Facebook down and that Twitter should be restricted only to Donald Trump. And then once a day, we can have our 10 minutes hate. We all just look at Twitter, and we just like walk away. It's great.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  I will say that I feel like half of every podcast I listen to, and Casey, I really hope your new podcast will have this, has a very active Facebook group. There's like, is something about podcasts attract like a

• 29:38Nilay Patel?

  No, they just need community platforms. Casey, I think you should start like a V Bulletin for your new podcast.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:45Nilay Patel?

  Like it's a good community platform.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  A live journal, yeah.

• 29:48Nilay Patel?

  No, like

• 29:48Speaker 02

  V Bulletin is the one you can have your signature be like a little fake banner ad that you made yourself

• 29:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  about how cool you are.

• 29:54Nilay Patel?

  And most of the ones I frequent that are still V Bulletin's are like, you know, like vintage steer equipment and people just put lists of everything they own as their signatures. It's like a credibility list. Now, I was talking to Mandy Brown, who's the head of Chorus, the platform that we work on. She like runs the whole thing. And one of her previous jobs, she worked for a book publisher and there was an author and the book publisher was like, what are you gonna do about this V Bulletin that we've been running for this author's books? And the people, it was like 250 people or something, she was telling me, and they found out who she was and they started contacting her, being like, hey, we've heard there are some changes to like this platform, like leave ours alone. And eventually the decision was to just leave it be. Like, we're not gonna

• 30:39Nilay Patel?

  upgrade the software.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  That's beautiful.

• 30:40Nilay Patel?

  There's just these people, there's just these people and they're gonna run an ancient V Bulletin for the rest of their lives and they're just happy and we're leaving it alone.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  Well, and a V Bulletin, you're under pseudonyms.

• 30:51Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  And you have avatars.

• 30:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  And so like maybe where we went wrong was trying to pretend that anybody could ever have a true, a real person identity.

• 31:00Nilay Patel?

  On the internet?

• 31:01Speaker 02

  On the internet.

• 31:01Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's, we can't do that right now. Let's tell jokes about Twitter for MacDuck.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:06Nilay Patel?

  I can't go to, I can't, I wanna get to the next part of the podcast, okay, so Casey can do his thing. Uh, I don't wanna fall down the identity and the internet hole. That's just another, that's another sequence of podcasts.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Is anyone real?

• 31:16Nilay Patel?

  God damn it. I'm so ready, stop it. I'll do it, damn it. So Twitter announcer killing Twitter for Mac. I think this is, to me, this is the end of my using Twitter.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 31:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so I tweeted this before they announced it. Twitter for Mac has gotten increasingly terrible. They didn't upgrade it to support 280.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  It doesn't play GIFs.

• 31:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like when you click on a link in it, now it just like opens the tweet again inside of it. It's just broken.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:42Nilay Patel?

  And it had previously been slightly less broken, but still broken. And I preferred that experience because it regulated my Twitter use. I would like look at Twitter, I'm like, okay, I kind of know what's going on the stream. I like reply to some folks and like, this is horrible, why do I do this? And I would stop.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:58Nilay Patel?

  And it got so broken that I was like, okay, now I'm just using the website. So it make no surprise to me that they're killing this product. But their answer is that you should use the web on your Mac, which I think is a disaster for them. Because the whole, the vibrancy of Twitter comes from the feeling that it's like this real time thing that's happening. And if you just like hide it in a tab, that goes away in like a very meaningful way. So I've got Tweetbot open, but I don't, I don't like it.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  The, I mean, the value of Twitter is in the stream, right? Like so for me and you know, a lot of my colleagues, like we just sort of have Twitter open in our app of choice. I use Tweetbot, you know, and, and that way we can just kind of see the tweets streaming down our screen all day. So you can kind of dip in and out of it. When you're using it on the web, you just got, you got this static display of tweets. You like scroll down a bunch and then you have to scroll all the way back up and then load some new tweets and it's a really kind of chaotic and inferior experience. So I just cannot believe that they're promoting that as the ideal way to use the service.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  I took twitter.app the other day and I threw it in my virtual trash can. Because I'm not gonna let them leave me. I'm gonna leave them.

• 33:12Nilay Patel?

  It's good.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Also, also, I'm, I hate, this is a terrible thing to say, but I'm getting a little more popular on Twitter. And I was having a hard time dealing with all the notifications. So I tried to turn off the notifications. I just meant like, so it doesn't pop up on my-

• 33:30Nilay Patel?

  I have all my Twitter notifications turned off.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  It doesn't pop up on my lock screen.

• 33:33Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  But also I'm verified on Twitter right now, which is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. Because now, if I go look at my mentions, I only see mentions from other verified people.

• 33:43Nilay Patel?

  You can turn that off.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Well, I haven't succeeded. So on Twitter, on the Twitter for Mac, Twitter for Mac's like, we don't know what any of this is. And they just showed me everything. So I would still use Twitter for Mac to actually catch up on what people are like saying to me. But now if I use the, the, the mobile app or the web app, trying to like, I wanted to filter down the noise.

• 34:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  And now I just see, I basically only see Neelai's tweet. So Neelai quits Twitter.

• 34:11Nilay Patel?

  What up? I figured it out. Audience of one, baby. Liberal propaganda for days, Paul. It's coming right at you. Also my bot form.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  I'm switching to gab.ai.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Can I tell a quick funny story about Twitter for Mac?

• 34:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  Here's the funniest thing you need to know about Twitter for Mac, which maybe you knew already, but it was not made by Twitter. So in like 2014 ish, Twitter decides, uh, we've got to like, you know, remake our Mac app, which we've neglected for a long time. And so they contract with this third party app developer called Black Pixel and have them secretly make the Twitter app. And then it comes out and has all these bugs and everyone's yelling and screaming about it. And, uh, you know, Black Pixel wouldn't talk to me about it. I assume because they were under some sort of NDA. Uh, I'm not saying that everything that went wrong there was their fault, but it's just so crazy to me that Twitter decided, let's redo our Mac app. But also like, well, we're actually not going to do it. Like we're just, we're going to pay someone to go make an app for us.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  And, uh, then we're going to neglect it. I was actually, I was messaging with a former Twitter person this week and they were just like, honestly, I was there at the time and I have no idea why we decided to do that. Like even at the time, no one knew why they were making Twitter for Mac with a third party developer.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  The idea that you could just build an app and then it's done.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's a one time. It's like building a coffee table.

• 35:31Nilay Patel?

  I improve my coffee table every week. I don't tell anyone I'm doing. I just say various bug fixes and improvements.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  It's a beta.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Really you're sanding off the bottom of the legs. And four years from now, we'll realize that the coffee table's all the way on the ground.

• 35:48Nilay Patel?

  The worst troll in history. All right. I'm going to read this ad.

• 35:54Nilay Patel?

  Just, everyone should stop using social networks. We have a great commenting system. Feeble. We have our own ancient forum system. Get in there. It's gonna be a good time.

• 36:04Nilay Patel?

  All right, this episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by Mattress Firm. They sell mattresses. They have one question for you. Are you struggling to get some shut eye? If you answered yes, you're in luck, because they have a great tip for making your zonk up more easily, which is, as you might suspect, to buy a new mattress from a mattress firm. America's Neighborhood Mattress Store, which lets your budget stretch further when you're looking for ways to improve your sleep. They're more than mattress experts. They've got a whole package that helps you transform your mattress into a bed, from industrial bases and sheets to headboards and bedroom decor. They have you covered, literally and figuratively. Go to mattressfirm.com/podcast to see what deals are happening right now, this very second. They even offer you a 120-night sleep trial to guarantee perfection and 120-night low-price guarantee, so you know you paid the perfect price. Again, go to mattressfirm.com/podcast to learn how your sleeping could be monumentally improved. And if you're still awake, we're gonna restart the show right now.

• 36:51Nilay Patel?

  I know that implies that during it, you will have just, like, passed out.

• 36:56Nilay Patel?

  How will you get a deal on the mattress? You don't make it through the whole ad. All right, Casey.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:03Nilay Patel?

  My friend. This is now your show. I'm, Paul and I are guests. You just start. Go for it.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Wonderful. Well, gentlemen, I would like to welcome you to Converge. Converge is the game show that's easy to win, but not impossible to lose. Each week, we bring on some of Silicon Valley's coolest entrepreneurs, and they compete to see how high they can go on the all-time Converge leaderboard. So, when we watch this, yeah, I know. It's a big deal. So, you know, on the show, each episode is gonna have three rounds. But today, in the interest of time, we're gonna skip right to the third round, which I'm calling Luck of the Draw. The first two rounds of Converge are always the same and are gonna feature interviews with guests about their lives, their work, their big ideas. But the third round is gonna be different week to week,

• 37:50Speaker 01

  and we've developed a variety of quizzes, challenges, and mathematical proofs that guests have to solve. So today, for The Vergecast, I've reached into the old Convergetron 5000, and the game it selected for us was Retro Pitch. Have you guys ever played Retro Pitch?

• 38:08Nilay Patel?

  I have not played Retro Pitch.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 38:10Nilay Patel?

  I'm still stuck on the idea that you're gonna get Jack Dorsey on the show, and you're gonna make him, like, solve a proof.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Oh, that's gonna be, when I get Jack Dorsey solving Fermat's Last Theorem, like move over cereal, it's gonna be a sensation.

• 38:23Nilay Patel?

  All right, what is Retro Pitch?

• 38:25Speaker 01

  Retro Pitch is a game in which the guest has to pitch me a good idea that only seems obvious in retrospect. So I have a deck of cards and I will draw from that deck and that deck will have the name of some service or product that we're all familiar with and that we all use, or at least have heard of, but maybe was not obvious at the time. And then you will then have about two minutes to pitch me why our company should build it.

• 38:52Nilay Patel?

  You're a VC firm or like shared company?

• 38:56Speaker 01

  I would have you think of me as a CEO and you are an internal employee trying to get me to build this thing.

• 39:02Nilay Patel?

  Okay, okay.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  You should know that I'm a very stern, unforgiving taskmaster.

• 39:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  And so to persuade me, you will need to win across four dimensions.

• 39:11Nilay Patel?

  Are you currently cosplaying as Steve Jobs?

• 39:13Speaker 02

  Four dimensions.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, yes, I'm in a black turtleneck. It's, I'm in a Miyaki turtleneck and I, today I have eaten only one raw carrot. That is all I intend to eat today. And I'm currently parked in a handicap space.

• 39:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no license plate in the car. I got it. Okay.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  That's correct. So here's, so here's how I'm gonna be evaluating you. There's, there's sort of originality. So if you have an original, I don't know, these are honestly the same categories I use for all of our Converge games. So I'm not exactly sure what originality means in the context of a product that actually exists, but I encourage you to figure it out.

• 39:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Number two, presentation. So, you know, you gotta come at me with some fire and some pizzazz. Number three, profit potential. You gotta sell this to me as a business. You know, we're not here to make friends. And then finally, you have to ask, answer whether I would personally be a customer. So persuade me to use this. So that was kind of the rubric. You know, Converge is designed for a single player, but for this sneak preview, we're gonna have both you, Neelai, and you, Paul, play a round of Retro Pitch with me. And while all Converge interviews are gonna be conducted in person, today, we are living that Skype life. And so I'm gonna be selecting your cards. Any questions before we begin?

• 40:24Speaker 02

  Originality, presentation, profit potential, would I personally be a customer? I'm ready to go, Casey.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  That is correct.

• 40:29Nilay Patel?

  Nailed it.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  Okay, fantastic. So, Neelai, we're gonna start with you.

• 40:33Nilay Patel?

  Oh, boy.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  I'm gonna select your card.

• 40:35Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  And your card. Is Gmail, Google Mail.

• 40:39Nilay Patel?

  Gmail?

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:41Nilay Patel?

  Wait, okay, so do I have to, am I existing now? Gmail came out, what, 2000, April 1? I know it's April Fool's Day, like 2004, right?

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Neil, I'm so glad you asked because I have the Wikipedia page pulled up right now. The idea for Gmail was developed by Paul Buckhite several years before it was announced to the public. It was known by the codename Caribou. It was kept secret from Google's own engineers, but in 2004, almost everybody was using it internally. And then, yes, it was released in 2004. So let's say it's 2003 and Neil, you're in a very important meeting with me, Larry Page. Paul, if you'd like, you can play Sergey Brin. And Neil, you've had this idea for Gmail and now you've got to convince me that we're going to do it.

• 41:23Nilay Patel?

  And do I have to be historically accurate to the pitch? Or am I just going, am I just?

• 41:27Speaker 01

  That, I'll say this, it is not part of the rubric. So if you, if you like refer to your iPhone, even though it's in 2004, I will not count that against you, but you may get some tweets from, from the audience.

• 41:37Nilay Patel?

  Okay, okay. Dr. Page, if I may.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 41:40Nilay Patel?

  I am stalling. Let me shuffle these papers around. I can't, I can't get this VGA connection to work. It's 2004. Here's what I think is happening, Larry.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:53Nilay Patel?

  You know, we're, there are no such things as phones at this time. Wait, that's horrible. I'm trying to get myself in this space.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  I have a phone. Damn it, Patel, what are you talking about?

• 42:03Nilay Patel?

  All right, Gmail, start over. It's a lot of pressure. Can I do it? No, you're going to get your own. Look, we all use Gmail. We all use Gmail. I'm just falling apart here, man. The thing is, I go to meetings like this in my regular life and pitch our things. Okay, I got it.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:21Nilay Patel?

  We all use email. And I think, as you know, the restrictions on email are holding it back. I think we could build a better email product that more people want to use using our vast data facilities. And what we're really going to do is give people one gigabyte of email storage. And that's going to blow their mind. We're also going to move it out of bad apps that run on desktop computers. And we're going to, you know, these local apps are so heavy and clunky, they don't give you access everywhere. We're going to move it onto the web, which is our native platform. And about 15 years from now, that hold on the web will let us crush the entire web into a new thing I'm calling AMP. But I'm just getting ahead of myself.

• 43:04Nilay Patel?

  I think what we need to do is fundamentally reinvent the email experience for the consumer so they get unlimited storage. And then we can eventually start to use our own algorithms and thinking to better sort that email, to prevent spam, to collect their data ruthlessly, show them ads, and make even more money, Larry.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  Here's my question as Sergey. How will this help us with our messaging app strategy?

• 43:28Nilay Patel?

  Sergey, first, let me say-

• 43:29Speaker 02

  Aim is eating our lunch.

• 43:31Nilay Patel?

  Let me say this to you first, Sergey. Great shoes. This was, I believe, during your finger shoe phase.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  Oh, no, I'm wearing rollerblades.

• 43:41Nilay Patel?

  This is horrible. You know what we're going to do? So we're going to launch Gmail. People are going to love it. They're going to flip out. And they're going to think it's a joke. And then we're going to launch a chat client inside of it that will come to dominate international cultural conversation. We're going to call it Gchat. It's going to be great.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 44:01Nilay Patel?

  And then, right when mobile hits, we're going to kill that product.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  I like to keep them guessing.

• 44:09Nilay Patel?

  And then, we're just going to fart around a little bit. People are going to, they're going to fall in love over Gchat. They're going to get married. They're going to have wedding invitations that are themed on Gchat because it's going to be so important to them. And then, we're going to say, have you tried another product that is inferior and doesn't run everywhere? But that's the future of Gmail. All right.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  All right, Neil. I felt like you had a good pitch, and then you sort of walked it off the cliff. You know, I mean, I've got to say, you know, I've got a private Hotmail account over here. I've got 10 megabytes of storage. Like, what are you, a gigabyte of storage? What am I possibly going to put in my email account here in 2004 that's more than, I don't know, 85 kilobytes?

• 44:53Nilay Patel?

  And the answer is everything. The answer is, first of all, Hotmail is a Microsoft product. And as you all know, any pitch that we have that threatens Microsoft is an instant green light. So I don't even know why we're still talking there.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Well, that's true.

• 45:04Nilay Patel?

  Second, the answer is everything. We're going to take away email management from people. We're going to build archives of all communication. Because as we all know, all communication forever will be conducted in email. And then Google will have access to all human correspondence. And that will help us do something that we do because we're Google. And I believe that is advertising, but I'm just an email engineer and this is my idea.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Now, are you at all worried that Microsoft will learn of what we're doing? And to launch a campaign suggesting that we're somehow trying to scruggle people?

• 45:42Nilay Patel?

  I think that would be the best possible outcome.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Okay, that would be a good outcome.

• 45:46Nilay Patel?

  If Microsoft begins marketing our products for us with funny words and T-shirts that people want, I think we're coming out ahead. I don't think Bomber knows what hit him.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  All right, I only have one final question.

• 45:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Which is, is Larry at gmail.com still available?

• 46:02Nilay Patel?

  Sadly, it has been taken by Russian bots.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  That's going to cut heavily into your score. All right, we're going to put a pin in it there. Neil, I have to say, you really did cover most of the ideas why Gmail was a good idea. And I felt like you even had some original ideas about basically owning all human data. So I've got to give you a solid nine there.

• 46:28Nilay Patel?

  Whoa.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that was very good.

• 46:31Nilay Patel?

  Nailed it.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Presentation, I liked your passion, but then you talked about how we were going to build a whole chat system just to fail at it, which I didn't like that very much. So I'm going to go with five points for that.

• 46:44Nilay Patel?

  Sabotage. Damn it, Paul.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  Self-sabotage.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  The profit potential seemed pretty high, so I think I've got to award that an 8. And then whether I would personally be a customer, like if Larry at Gmail had been available, I think that that definitely would have been a 10. But you know, now that I'm going to have to be like Larry underscore page, I think I can only give you a 7. So 14, 22, 29, that is 29 points for Neelai.

• 47:16Nilay Patel?

  I'm beginning to understand how figure skaters feel when the shit's rigged.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:20Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we also always throw out the low score. No, that's, that's not true. All right, Paul, now we turn to you, and I'm going to pull your card. And your card is the Microsoft Surface. All right, now, if you need a little jogging of your memory, Microsoft first announced the Surface on June 18th, 2012. It was presented by former CEO and my personal hero Steve Ballmer in Milk Studios in Los Angeles, and it was the first major initiative by Microsoft to integrate the Windows operating system with its own hardware, and was the first PC designed and distributed solely by Microsoft. So that is what you're going to pitch me. It's 2010, let's say.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  I'm Steve Ballmer, and Neelai, you're Bill Gates, and you've just come by the office for lunch.

• 48:08Nilay Patel?

  Just roll in.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  And, yeah.

• 48:10Nilay Patel?

  Bill Gates is here, everybody. Make it rain.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, Paul, again, you will be judged on originality, presentation, profit potential, and whether I would personally be a customer. You may now go.

• 48:25Nilay Patel?

  Bill doesn't wait around.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, Bill is already bored.

• 48:27Nilay Patel?

  Excuse me, I've got malaria to cure.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Paul, take your time.

• 48:30Speaker 02

  So, so I was at All Things D. Thank you for, uh, Microsoft for sending me there to sit in the audience and learn from the greats of our industry.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Are you sucking up to Bankoff right now?

• 48:44Speaker 02

  And I heard, no, I'm a Microsoft employee.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  I'm thanking my boss, Steve Ballmer, for the great amenities he provides at this company that is a lot of money. But you know, the thing is...

• 49:00Speaker 02

  Microsoft has been all about software. And you could say we won on the desktop. But the desktop is fading in relevance. The future is phones. And I'm not going to point fingers here, but you fucked it up.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  What?

• 49:18Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 49:19Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it's true. Uh, I, Bill Gates, agree with Paul. Steve.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Steve. Y'all are savage.

• 49:26Nilay Patel?

  You fucked it up.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Gee, I think, guys, this is so, it's a, it's a Thursday morning and this is not what I was expecting. I, I thought you had a new, I'm not here to, to hear about how I messed up. All right. I, I want to hear new ideas. Make me some money, Paul.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  We have one chance left and it's tablets.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  One chance, wow.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  It's tablets.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Dire.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  We won at desktops. We lost at phones. Tablets are still fair game. And I think, here's the thing. We can both make the future of tablets and the future of laptops at the same time. It, by vertically integrating, we will give people the best software. Everybody knows that Microsoft has the best operating system. But we will.

• 50:13Nilay Patel?

  I know, I invented it.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  We will develop the best hardware team. And we will make the best tablet that is also the world's best laptop. It will give.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  All right.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  It will be good.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  I'm going to stop you there. I gotta stop you there, Miller, because you, you're seriously threatening our potential profits. Now, as you know, we have a lot of OEMs out there that are our best customers. And you're telling me I gotta go out to them and tell them that all of a sudden we're competing with them? Are you out of your mind?

• 50:42Speaker 02

  Where are they gonna go, Steve? What are they gonna put Linux on their computers?

• 50:49Speaker 02

  Steve, what is it that you said about Linux? That it was bad or something?

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Oh, you'll have to remind me what I said about Linux.

• 50:56Nilay Patel?

  I remember it was, Linux is bad. Steve Ballmer.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  Yes, of course. My classic quote.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  They're not gonna switch to Linux. They're gonna eat their cheer. What is the, when you have to eat the bad things?

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, they gotta eat their bad.

• 51:10Nilay Patel?

  Vegetables are good things.

• 51:11Speaker 02

  Eat their vegetables.

• 51:12Nilay Patel?

  I got charities out there giving vegetables to kids.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  Here's the thing. We're not going to compete with all the OEMs because the Surface will be a premium product. It's, it's for people who want the literal best.

• 51:23Nilay Patel?

  Do you, so what you're saying is you want to kill Apple? With a tablet that's a laptop.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  Well.

• 51:30Nilay Patel?

  I, Bill Gates, am very into this idea.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  Apple ate our lunch in phones. I think this is our chance.

• 51:36Nilay Patel?

  Well, Steve just bought Nokia.

• 51:37Speaker 02

  To own computers. Why I brought up all things D is because Steve Jobs thought that that there was cars and there was trucks. And you know what cars were? And most people have cars, by the way. Cars are tablets. The Surface is a car. The Surface is the future of productive computing.

• 52:00Nilay Patel?

  Wait, the Surface is a car or is it a truck? Or is it an El Camino?

• 52:04Speaker 02

  The Surface is a car.

• 52:05Nilay Patel?

  Is it an, but with truck-like features? Desktops. What are laptops? As you know, I love to classify things.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  Desktops are, sorry, laptops are truck-like. The magic of the Surface is that it can be both. It has a detachable keyboard. You attach it, it's a laptop and you are as productive as any truck owner. But as soon as you rip off that magnetic keyboard, you're carrying it around. Imagine yourself, Steve, you're walking from meeting to meeting here in Seattle.

• 52:35Nilay Patel?

  Sure.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  With a tablet full of Excel spreadsheets.

• 52:40Nilay Patel?

  Will I be able to circle things with a pen?

• 52:42Speaker 02

  Absolutely, you can circle things with a pen. I'm glad you asked, it reminded me about the pen function.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  I think I'm done.

• 52:52Nilay Patel?

  Alright.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  I think I'm done, that's all I have.

• 52:54Nilay Patel?

  He's trying, man.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  That was, uh, okay, thank you, thank you, Paul. I heard everything. I do have a final question. A final question, with just to clarify, will this Microsoft Surface, will it run Excel?

• 53:07Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 53:08Nilay Patel?

  No, the first one won't.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 53:10Nilay Patel?

  The RT. Oh, it did, it did, it did. The RT did. They recoded Office for it. Remember, you had to switch to desktop mode.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, it's gonna take a lot of software work on our part. A lot of feeling around in the darkness for what Windows should actually be. As a minimal set of features.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Well, then that may be a question for another day, but thank you for your pitch. It is now time to score your pitch.

• 53:33Nilay Patel?

  That's how Steve Var ends every meeting. Just ruthlessly scores.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Yes, a lot of people get fired right after their pitches at Microsoft is what I've heard. All right, so originality, you know, I think you you really did cover the waterfront, had a lot of good ideas. I'm going to go ahead and give you an eight.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Presentation, you know, I feel like this one got away from you a little bit.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  The trucks and the cars.

• 54:00Nilay Patel?

  Don't hold back.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  A little hard to follow at times, so I'm going to go ahead and give you a five. You know, profit potential, I like your idea that all of our beloved partners have nowhere else to go, and that's the only reason they'll continue to work with us. But this does sound like a fairly capital intensive product. It might might take a while to play out, so I'm going to give you a seven there.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  And then on the question of whether I personally would be a customer, you know, as somebody who lives in Excel spreadsheets, I've got to give you a nine. So that that was, I think, your the best work that you did there. So let me add it up, that's eight, thirteen, seven, oh, my good, we've got a tie. We've got a literal tie. We've got a tie at 29 points. We got a 20 and there and there is no tiebreaker that has yet been designed for this part of.

• 54:51Nilay Patel?

  This is why you do it. This is why you dry run it.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 54:54Nilay Patel?

  In front of a massive first guest audience, so that when you see, this is the whole point. We're iterating.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  Exactly, we're going to iterate, but right now, I'm going to go ahead and put you two on the all time converge leaderboard tied for first and last place at 29 points.

• 55:12Nilay Patel?

  All right, I like it. This is great.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  And that's how we play converge and there'll be different games every week and we're still learning and growing. And if you have more ideas, send them my way. What was fun, what was insufferable? And hopefully we'll have, it's fun. I think of it as an interview game show. We're going to, we're going to learn about the person and then we're going to have some fun. And hopefully it will be unlike any tech podcast you've ever heard.

• 55:35Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so when you're planning after South by, we're going to launch it sometime, right?

• 55:39Speaker 01

  That's right. So March is is when we are planning the launch.

• 55:43Nilay Patel?

  It's very exciting. Speaking of South by. I'm gonna just remind people, we're gonna be there. I'm very excited for Casey's gonna be there with us, he's gonna be on the Vergecast Live at South By. Ashley and Caitlin are gonna be there, doing their show, Why'd You Push That Button with some special guests. That little promo went up. Season two of Why'd You Push That Button coming out the week before South By. All very exciting. Podcasts, the future of stuff.

• 56:06Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:07Nilay Patel?

  But we're the best one.

• 56:09Speaker 02

  So, flagship of podcasts that are on the internet.

• 56:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  So maybe some, there's some CD-ROM distributed podcasts that may, maybe have a speed.

• 56:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I feel like podcasting as a thing would not take off if they hadn't invented the word podcast. If people are like, "I'm gonna go home and I love listening to internet radio," maybe this just wouldn't, this wouldn't happen for anyone. It's a good word. Okay, Paul.

• 56:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:32Nilay Patel?

  We gotta wrap the show here.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 56:33Nilay Patel?

  Casey, I'm officially taking the show back over from you, host of Converge.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  Take it over.

• 56:37Nilay Patel?

  Okay, Paul, every week.

• 56:38Speaker 02

  Uh-huh.

• 56:39Nilay Patel?

  You do a segment.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  Always.

• 56:41Nilay Patel?

  It's got the same name.

• 56:42Speaker 02

  It's called Warm Robot Hugs.

• 56:45Nilay Patel?

  Okay. I loved last week's edition of Warm Robot Hugs.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  This week's, uh, segment of Warm Robot Hugs is about the Mercury Intelligent Heated Jacket. So, you might have heard of jackets that have, well, first off, jackets are-

• 57:03Nilay Patel?

  You might have heard of jackets.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  Jackets are meant to keep you warm.

• 57:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  But what if they don't do a good enough job? Well, you could put electricity inside of the jacket and have it make you artificially warm. But, what if that's not good enough?

• 57:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:17Speaker 02

  What if there was artificial intelligence in the jacket to help decide when you should be warm?

• 57:23Nilay Patel?

  No. First of all, I just wanna say, this basic concept, literally like power tool companies put out jackets for construction workers that accept power tool batteries and heat them up.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, but do they have artificial intelligence?

• 57:36Nilay Patel?

  As far as I know, they do not.

• 57:38Speaker 02

  Do they have an Alexa skill?

• 57:46Speaker 02

  Well, I think I've said enough.

• 57:47Nilay Patel?

  Is it connected?

• 57:48Speaker 02

  Head on over to.

• 57:49Nilay Patel?

  Does it have like a 3G connection? Or do you have to be in the range of wifi to yell at your jacket?

• 57:56Speaker 02

  I don't think it has a 3G connection.

• 57:58Nilay Patel?

  So how do you, never mind.

• 58:00Speaker 02

  But it has, it must have wifi. I can't load Kickstarter to get all the details.

• 58:06Nilay Patel?

  Because we don't have wifi.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  Because we don't have wifi. But just go to Kickstarter and you'll find it. It's called, it's called the Mercury Intelligent Heated Jacket from Ministry of Supply.

• 58:18Nilay Patel?

  Ministry of Supply?

• 58:19Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:21Nilay Patel?

  Russian trolls everywhere. That is a Russian bot farm. All right. Lastly, I just want to bring this up. Paul has it listed here in our rundown as story of the week.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. That segment we do every week called Story of the Week.

• 58:37Nilay Patel?

  Go ahead. I'm ready to laugh at this story.

• 58:40Speaker 02

  Oh, I lost the tab. Here we go, here we go. Apple employees can't stop walking into the beautiful glass doors at new Apple Park campus.

• 58:49Nilay Patel?

  That's it. That's all we need.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  That's basically the story.

• 58:52Nilay Patel?

  Bloomberg, it's a Bloomberg story and they said they were putting stickers and stuff on the, on the glass walls. And they, Johnny, I'm going to take them now because it ruined the design. Which is great. We have a glass window at our house that birds run into and I put up a sticker of a fake bird to deter birds.

• 59:07Speaker 02

  Apple employees are very much like.

• 59:09Nilay Patel?

  I just, I think it'd be great if like they put a big sticker of birds on all the thing. All right. Just some things to plug here at the end. Like I said, we are going to be at South by to give you details. It's at the Belmont, which is 10 minute walk from the Austin Convention Center. Friday, March 9th is a live Vergecast. You go to voxmedia.com/southbysouthwest, S X S W dash 2018. Just go to the verge.com, we'll have stuff. That is part of a big thing at Vox Media called the Deep End. We're taking over the entire Belmont for three days from March 9th to March 11th. There's other live podcasts happening. Rico Decode, Karr social will be doing that live. Like I said, Ashlyn, Caitlin are going to be doing Why Did You Push That Button? Ezra's going to be doing something. Join me, we can.

• 59:55Nilay Patel?

  Heckle our rival together. Hmm. We're not gonna heckle him. It's gonna be great. Uh, he's got, I think he's got a really cool guest that I can't disclose, but I think people will be into it. Also, Paul and I are doing the Circuit Breaker Show live on YouTube every week at Tuesday. Ashley, Jake, Hyam, Nat, the whole crew here in New York is joining us. We're doing demos of products. We're having a great time. Paul keeps making insane videos. Watch that on YouTube. We've done the first two episodes. Every Tuesday at 4:00 PM Eastern, it's live. Uh, Lauren Good's Versus is back, uh, and they are just great. So, check that out on YouTube as well. And Lauren Good also hosts a great podcast called Too Embarrassed to Ask. Karys Fisher hosts a great podcast called Recode Decode. And Peter Kafka hosts a great podcast called Recode Media. So, listen to all of that stuff.

• 1:00:36Nilay Patel?

  Just a flood of content in our armada of things, of which we, as always with this show, the most polished, professional, well-produced, actually Andrew does a great job producing it, but from our perspective. The flagship. Organized flagship. Flagship of organization. That's, that's the whole show. Thank Casey, thank you for being here. Thanks, Casey.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  It was great.

• 1:00:57Nilay Patel?

  I am super excited, uh, about your show. Where can the people tweet at you, Casey?

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  People can tweet at me at Casey Newton.

• 1:01:04Nilay Patel?

  You can tweet at Paul, at FuturePaul. You can tweet at me at Reckless. That's it for Virtus ASK. We'll be back next week. Rock and roll. Paul. Promo code.