Fake news, Touchbar, and the Surface Studio

The tech review season continues this week with reviews of the Macbook Pro with Touch Bar, Microsoft’s Surface Studio, and even an actual book that Apple released. This week on Vergecast, Nilay, Paul, and Dieter give an overview of these products along with the topic of the week (or the month, or maybe the year): the problem of social media dealing with fake news articles that go viral. Paul sits down with Casey Newton, Silicon Valley editor at The Verge to discuss it all. 00:48 - Fake news on social networks 05:44 - Interview with Casey Newton 33:57 - Macbook Pro with Touchbar review 39:56 - Apple’s book Designed by Apple in California 44:25 - Apple TV 50:20 - Microsoft’s Surface Studio review 57:54 - PS4 Pro 1:02:52 - NES Classic 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?

  Let's start this party.

• 0:08Nilay Patel?

  Hello, and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Verge.com. The show is doing great lately, I want you to know this. You, the listeners, have multiplied a number quite significantly. Take a minute before we begin the show. And ask yourself why. Why do you keep us?

• 0:22Speaker 01

  A whole minute, though.

• 0:23Nilay Patel?

  Take a whole minute. We're just gonna count one, two. No, anyway, whatever. It's The Vergecast. I'm Neil Appel. Paul Miller's here. Hello. Dieter Bohn is here. Howdy. Uh, we're gonna talk about technology. We're gonna talk about culture. I gotta say, last week, we very explicitly avoided politics and policy. But it's been a whole week of President-elect Donald J. Trump, and it's gonna be a little bit unavoidable. Jumping in the deep end. Just going for it. Uh, there's a lot to talk about, though. But I think we should start at the start. I think it's been the biggest news of the week since the election. We're gonna come at it a couple of different ways, but we should start with it. It's Facebook and fake news is one of the dominant tech stories to come out of the election. And if you haven't been looking for it, because it's, it's not a story that has, like, great appeal to a wide number of readers,

• 1:08Nilay Patel?

  but I think it's a story that's tremendously important. So, obviously, as you know, Facebook is the biggest media distribution system on the internet. You might not think of it that way, but it's true. Most media companies rely on Facebook to distribute their content, to get page views. There are entire brands that their entire strategy is based on Facebook.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Facebook actually pays money to some media brands?

• 1:31Nilay Patel?

  Facebook?

• 1:31Speaker 01

  They pay for Facebook Live videos?

• 1:33Nilay Patel?

  So if you watch Facebook Live, our parent company Vox Media has a deal by which Facebook pays Vox Media to produce some amount of Facebook Lives every month. Uh, we obviously run Circuit Breaker. Paul runs Circuit Breaker with Ashley and Micah. When we developed it, it has a Facebook distribution-first strategy. We obviously get traffic from all kinds of other places. So Facebook-

• 1:51Speaker 01

  A lot of Facebook.

• 1:52Nilay Patel?

  A lot of Facebook. Facebook is a enormously important tech and media company. Facebook thinks of itself as a tech company without the obligations and responsibilities of a media company. So Mark Zuckerberg is out there in the world saying, "We're not a media company, we're a tech company." And one thing that's true, it's happening right now- Is that a lot of fake news that was related to the election that is directly referential to the election? And we have no way of knowing, but it feels like may have influenced many voters is being distributed on Facebook. So what the most famous example is there's a fake story about the Pope endorsing Donald Trump, which has like a million shares on it and that got spread on Facebook and Facebook has no great tools to take it down or block it. It is complicated.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Or do they have the tools?

• 2:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, Facebook has the tools to literally create virtual realities, right? They have, they have the tools to, to wrap your brain in a simulation of another world.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  And here we are, disclosure, I disclosed the, the Vox Media thing. I also got to disclose that my wife works for Oculus, which is a division of Facebook.

• 2:58Nilay Patel?

  Sure.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  There it is.

• 3:00Nilay Patel?

  So it's a big story and it is one of, I think, the most important stories in tech right now. Uh, and it's not just related to Facebook. It's related to Twitter, it's related to basically all of the platforms that now really truly control how media is distributed. And there was a time when fake news got distributed in email forwards. In fact, I got one from my parents last night.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 3:22Nilay Patel?

  About the 28th amendment. It's like a famous email hoax. It's been around like since 1992. The 28th amendment, uh, it's about passing, uh, it's, it's so close to passing, guys. And if you just forward this to 10 people.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Oh, then Bill Gates will give you a dollar.

• 3:38Nilay Patel?

  And Bill Gates will give you a dollar and Congress will pass a law, uh, stating that, uh, all, no, Congress can make no law that doesn't apply to themselves as congresspeople, which will keep them from doing all kinds of.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Snopes, Snopes is a mixture of truths from 2009.

• 3:52Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, but no, but the, the earliest version. Yeah, I read the Snopes, it's great. By the way, Snopes, time of their lives. This is what they were made for, like basically she just buys Snopes.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  I need a Gmail plugin that anytime I get an email from somebody, namely my parents, it automatically does a Snopes search and then gives me

• 4:15Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  A button to click to reply to just send back the Snopes article. Just like, you got this, you got this story. Click this button to send the Snopes article back. That would be great.

• 4:24Nilay Patel?

  Actually built into every email client. The Snopes button. It's a big theme. And if you look at how money in the media has shifted, newspapers are, unless you're the Wall Street Journal, or actually not the Wall Street Journal, the Wall Street Journal just laid a bunch of people off. If you're the New York Times, your subscriptions are going up. If you're the Washington Post, you just got bought by Jeff Bezos. Doesn't matter.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  So you're fine.

• 4:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Jeff is going to keep you in business. Every other print newspaper and bunch of print magazines and print companies are losing money because the audiences are online and the audiences online are coming at you through Google and Facebook. And all the profit from the media industry has, the print media industry has moved from the print companies to Google and Facebook. Like, it's a huge shift in money.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  So it's the incoming traffic from Google and Facebook.

• 5:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And they, Google runs the world's biggest ad network and DFP. Facebook obviously has its own big ad server. They have better ad targeting, right? They obviously have better ad technology than Conde Nast, whatever, or your local paper. So if they've taken all the money, do they, do they have to take some of their responsibility to police the news? Paul, you, you actually sat down, Casey Newton, who's one of our great senior reporters, has been on the Facebook feed forever, and you sat down with him to talk about fake news a little bit.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Yes, we had an excellent conversation. I would like to play it for you right now.

• 5:40Nilay Patel?

  Snopes.

• 5:44Nilay Patel?

  Paul.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Casey.

• 5:45Speaker 03

  How are you?

• 5:46Speaker 02

  Hey, I just came across a story on my Facebook feed that says, "You're not a technology reporter, you're actually a bear living in the woods."

• 5:54Speaker 03

  And it has over 80,000 shares.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I just shared it with all my friends. But I thought, after sharing it with everybody, that I'd try to get to the bottom of it and see if it's really true.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  You are not unlike many Americans, Paul.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Okay, so yeah, it's all over, well, it's all over my Facebook feed is all these stories about fake news and what Facebook is doing about it or not doing about it, what Google is doing about it. So yeah, can you, how did this even become an issue?

• 6:24Speaker 03

  Sure. So in the aftermath of our recent presidential election here in the United States, an election that had a result that left a lot of people stunned, people started to ask the question, well, you know, why did the population seem to react so much differently than the polls suggested that they were going to? And one explanation that at least some have turned to is that in the run-up to the election, a huge number of totally made-up stories about the candidates started to flourish on two platforms in particular, one being Facebook, the other being Google. Facebook is a place where, at least according to the Pew Center, 44% of Americans get at least some of their news. And according to an analysis

• 7:09Speaker 03

  that BuzzFeed did, the most shared stories from the 20 biggest sort of fake news and so-called satire websites got way more engagement, or significantly more engagement, I should say, than stories shared by reputable outlets that were reporting the facts. So for example, a story that falsely said that Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump went crazy viral while stories, you know, suggesting that Trump is a racist nightmare maybe performed less well. And so now there's a lot of soul-searching going on in the media about kind of how this

• 7:49Speaker 03

  happened and whether and what Facebook and also Google, which of course has a news platform of its own, should do about it.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  So yeah, so there's this rumor that Facebook maybe had a tool that would like identify fake news, but they didn't want to deploy it. Now, and there's also a rumor that there's like internal rogue team that is working on something. Like, do you think, what do you think about this stuff? I have no idea.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  Because it's all speculative. Again, what is truth?

• 8:20Speaker 03

  Well, it's a great question, hard to answer, it turns out. You know, the outlets who have reported those pieces of information are pretty reputable, and I do not disbelieve them. I should also say, I have not been able to independently confirm the things that they reported. I've spent the past week talking to current and former employees at Facebook, and the people I have talked to there say that the company sort of does take this seriously, but it's more complicated than a lot of people seem to believe that it is, but that in any case, they have not made changes to the algorithm or rejected changes to the algorithm based on how those might affect one political party.

• 9:05Speaker 03

  Now, at the same time, it is the case that, again, according to a different BuzzFeed analysis, conservative-leaning sites published more totally false news than left-leaning, made-up news sites. And so, were Facebook to take some kind of significant action to eliminate fake news from Facebook altogether, or prevent it from spreading in some way, that likely would have an outsized effect on those conservative-leaning sites. And then there would be the second-order effect, where if you are a conservative and you use Facebook, and you started to feel like Facebook was not showing you the kind

• 9:46Speaker 03

  of news and information and entertainment that you wanted to see, it could break Facebook, because you would just abandon the platform, and maybe you would go start a kind of fair and balanced social network of your own. So, if you're Facebook, your number-one goal in all of this is to just maintain the perception of absolute neutrality on your platform. And so I think whatever Facebook does, that is going to be kind of the prime directive.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  It's interesting. Facebook recently had this big announcement, I want to say like six months ago or so.

• 10:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  About changing their algorithm to disfavor clickbait headlines.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  Right.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  Does that kind of intersect with this?

• 10:25Speaker 03

  Yes, and it gets pretty technical, but basically they tried two approaches to reducing clickbait earlier this summer. One of those was to rely on reports from users of Facebook. So if you saw a story that was clickbait, you could report it as clickbait, and then Facebook would reduce the spread of that information over time, the more reports like that it got. And then the other approach they took was just a purely software-driven machine learning approach where they looked for common keywords and phrases, like "you'll never believe what happened next," and they would sort of automatically prevent those from spreading. Facebook wound up going with the machine learning route, and they wound

• 11:07Speaker 03

  up jettisoning the kind of self-reporting mechanism. And what Facebook says is, that Gizmodo's report that they built this tool and rejected it, they're actually talking about that that kind of one method that Facebook had attempted to reduce clickbait. So again, it gets really kind of complicated and technical and nitty-gritty, but Gizmodo says, "Look, like the fact that they didn't wind up implementing that particular approach to reducing clickbait, like, has nothing to do with what we reported, which is they didn't use it because it hurt conservative-leaning sites."

• 11:41Speaker 02

  I guess my big thing, it's interesting, this is so interesting to me because it's like, it's instantly philosophical.

• 11:48Speaker 03

  Right.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  And, and what is the difference between promoting and spreading misinformation, which is obviously the wrong thing to do.

• 11:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  And being an arbiter of truth and a censor.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  And where is that line? What is the difference?

• 12:08Speaker 03

  Well, it is, on one hand, just an incredibly frustrating subject. Look, I think about this a lot as a journalist, right? If you are a reporter, you're constantly confronted by these questions of ontology, right? How do you know what you think you know? And for me, it often comes down to, well, somebody told me, and I trust them. And I try to only talk to people who I trust. And when they lead me astray, I post a correction. But hopefully, over time, my track record speaks to the fact that I work as hard as I can to ensure the accuracy of everything I report. There are other sites out there, though, that just don't take that as their mission. And so the question then becomes, well, should they be allowed to post on Facebook at all?

• 12:48Speaker 03

  And as you note, if Facebook says no, then that does become maybe a question of censorship. It gets them into some pretty ugly terrain philosophically. Now, there's a flip side of that, though, which is, what if rampantly spreading misinformation winds up undermining our democracy, right? Like, then will Facebook still turn around and say, well, look, we're just a neutral platform, you need to blame these bad actors, not us? I suspect a great number of people are going to be turned off by that and may, in fact, abandon Facebook, right? So as much as there's a risk to Facebook kind of on the right of this perception that it is no longer a neutral platform, I think there's also kind of a risk on the left if

• 13:31Speaker 03

  people come to feel like Facebook is not trustworthy and Facebook does not take seriously its power as a major distributor of news.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know what to do. Normally, I feel like I have, like, oh, I know what they should do. It'll be fine if they just did my thing. I have no idea.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  Well, look, I mean...

• 13:53Speaker 02

  What's Google doing? How are they doing fake news?

• 13:57Speaker 03

  So, Google was sort of first out of the gate to announce something really important, which is that it was going to classify some of these fake news sites. And if it did classify them as a site that was sort of trying to pass off lies as the truth, then that site was not going to be... Be able to use their ad network, which is, you know, one of the main reasons that these sites exist. They're profitable, right?

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Google has like a, like a database of, of true things, right?

• 14:25Speaker 03

  Well, in order to be featured on Google News, right, like news.google.com, there's a sort of rigorous application process, right? And so a site like the Denver Guardian, which if you were to visit its website, looks every bit like a real news site.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  And it's That's a big, big problem with all of these fake. I used to totally be able to spot one instantly. And now like, I basically have to assume if I haven't seen this site before, reporting something that was reputable. I have to assume it's fake.

• 14:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Until I, I know otherwise.

• 14:57Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Okay, what is it? What's it called? The Denver?

• 14:59Speaker 03

  The Denver Guardian. I mean, you can go there.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Hate to give them.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  And, um, you know, it's very savvy of them to use kind of a city name because it makes you think, oh, well, this is just some local news site. I haven't heard of before. Uh, they published this viral claim that an FBI agent who had been linked to the leaking of Hillary Clinton's emails had been found dead in a murder suicide. This was one of the most shared stories in the run up to the election. And some people say again, that it, it wound up increasing turnout for Donald Trump or a diminished turnout for Hillary Clinton. Right? And it looks like a, a real news website. And so what Google has said is sites like that, we're not going to allow them to use our ad network to profit. And Facebook came in pretty quickly thereafter and said, you know what? We're, we're going to do the same thing. So, I mean, one thing that these, uh, you know, giant platforms can do is to just kind of make it harder for these sites to make money,

• 15:47Speaker 03

  which then gives them fewer incentives to do this kind of, um, uh, lying that they've been doing for the, you know, past many years.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm still amazed that those ad networks pop up that story about, look at this child actor who died. You'll never believe it. Like, yeah, there's some of this stuff that's been persistent for a long time. But yeah, maybe, maybe that'll help. Maybe economics.

• 16:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, but you raise a good point, Paul, which is that this problem is not new, nor is it limited to Google and Facebook. There are these ad networks, Tabula and Outbrain, which post the, you know, get rid of belly fat with this one weird trick style headlines. And many websites, including perhaps some that we work for, use them because they generate a lot of money. And these sites will tell you all day long that they do their best to only put the very best content in their network. And yet you visit any single site on the web, and what is in that box, and it's absolute garbage. Right? So this issue does go beyond Google and Facebook. And unfortunately, the monetary incentives will

• 16:55Speaker 03

  always be to just post the most salacious misleading headline.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I'm gonna keep monitoring the situation. And I feel like I feel like I'm not like a big sharer, except for stories about you being a bear in the woods. Like, I typically don't feel like I share and retweet, or I guess I retweet like funny things.

• 17:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Words that people say.

• 17:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  But yeah, I do think being a reporter a little bit, I'm not much of a journalist, but like, it's definitely made me just so skeptical about the truth. Especially because like, even if you did a profile, and it's not even hearsay, it's just literally reporting on someone's life directly.

• 17:37Speaker 03

  Right.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Well, you leave out 95% of the facts that you gathered during that time. So like, are you sharing the whole truth?

• 17:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  I'm not trying to say that all of these things are equivalent, and that Pope supports Donald Trump is the same thing as a slightly slanted story, but it's tough.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  But I think you're raising a really great issue, though, which is that one thing that every American can do, whatever every citizen of the world can do in the aftermath of this election, no matter who you supported, is try to become a more literate consumer of news. If there is an issue out there that is important to you, you need to read more than one story about it. And you need to read more than one story from more than one outlet, right? Not even talking about making sure you're reading articles from every side of the political spectrum. You can read the same article from three sites that align with your political worldview, but at least expose yourself to the chance that somebody got it wrong. If you want to gain a fuller understanding of what is going on in this world, you need to read more, you

• 18:40Speaker 03

  need to watch more, you need to ask more questions, and you need to think like a journalist and be skeptical of what you're seeing. And before you go to share it, ask yourself that question. Is it possible that I am being scammed here? And if I am, I'm not going to put this thing onto the internet.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  You may have to click on the headline before you share it. Just put it out there.

• 18:59Speaker 03

  It's a best practice.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  On that awesome, rising note, I'd like to thank Casey Newton, Bear in the Woods, for joining me.

• 19:08Speaker 03

  Paul, it's always a pleasure. I'm gonna go hibernate now for the next four years.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Well, have a great, great nap.

• 19:14Speaker 03

  Okay, bye.

• 19:16Nilay Patel?

  Paul told me earlier that the interview ended on a rousing note to be an informed consumer.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  That's the word I was looking for, rousing.

• 19:22Nilay Patel?

  Rousing.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  Not an a rousing note.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  No, I said rising.

• 19:27Nilay Patel?

  I think it's true. Actually, that fundamental issue, just be smarter, could have stopped a lot of things in this election cycle.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  One of the things I've been talking to some people on our staff about is like, I graduated high school in 96. The internet, the web in particular, was a thing, was beginning to be a thing. And like, we would like have English classes where we would go online and research, and they would tell us, don't trust what you read on the internet, and give us like, basic tools for like, can you trust the thing that you're reading? And what's so surreal to me about the fake news on Facebook thing is, literally, 5th graders are taught how to avoid this problem, and yet, we have this giant institution that is used by billions

• 20:20Speaker 01

  of people around the world, and we're not applying 5th grade level analysis and like, awareness about like, whether or not a thing is true to these stories before we click the share button.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  I was thinking about that, that like, maybe it's Wikipedia's fault. It got too good.

• 20:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  It used to be a joke, can't cite Wikipedia, and then they're like, well...

• 20:41Nilay Patel?

  You still shouldn't cite Wikipedia.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  Turns out...

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Bring back Incarta. That's what I say.

• 20:45Nilay Patel?

  Well, so, actually, that's hilarious, first of all.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Bring back Encarta.

• 20:51Nilay Patel?

  I'm getting a CD-ROM.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  The whole thing. We should definitely do that with great, big, clickable interfaces and like slidey transitions.

• 20:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Bring back Encarta.

• 20:59Nilay Patel?

  Bring back Encarta.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  But Dieter, you always talk about like the deals, like the gatekeepers and deals, right? Like, we're gonna talk about Apple TV in a little bit.

• 21:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  The whole TV industry is made up of gatekeepers and deals. You always talk about virtual assistants. So to integrate with Alexa or Siri or Cortana or whatever, you gotta make a deal with Apple or Microsoft to get access to the thing. It feels like this is the point at which Facebook being just like a wide open playground for every media organization, scrupulous or not scrupulous, is actually a net negative. And if Facebook made some deals and aggressively whitelisted things, it might be good. That is not what I usually think at all.

• 21:44Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Ever. I never think that.

• 21:46Nilay Patel?

  Switching to T-Mobile, I hear.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  But do you trust the deal or do you trust the algorithm? Right? Like, if you, if you trust the algorithm, you know, there was a thing this week where the first result on Google search for who won the popular vote was a fake news article. It was a lie. And theoretically, if you had asked Google Home that question, it would have gone out to the web, run its little algorithm, and given you the one answer that you get out of a voice assistant, because it can't give you a bunch of links. And that one answer would have been a lie.

• 22:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  And, and so like, yeah, I don't know. Do you, do you trust the deals? Do you, do you trust the algorithm? Or do you just have to like, go to the website that you trust and like, form that kind of bubble? Like, are, we have somehow regressed in our ability to like, think critically about the media that we consume, because like, we are flummoxed by the opacity of these algorithms and the opacity of these deals. And it's like, Addy wrote a great piece about like, the inner mixture of news with your friends seems like one of the fundamentally problematic things here. Like, you wanna go to Facebook? You're supposed to see stuff from your friends. It's also showing you stuff from news.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  And then mashing those things together has you applying like the part of your brain that thinks about your social circle circle to the part of your brain that thinks about news. And you just get short circuited and you end up using the internet like a third grader instead of a fifth grader, which is like, we should be reading the internet at least at a fifth grade level, I like to think.

• 23:22Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I can, I can also make the death of the web argument here. I mean, this, this is maybe one of the darkest first segments of the Vergecast in history. There was a time we all browsed in desktop PCs or laptops. And we started either at RSS readers that we had picked ourselves from sources that we trusted. Or at portals of some kind. And Gadget, when we ran in Gadget was very much a first destination for people that sent them out to all kinds of other blogs that we had aggregated news from. And you could trust us. At least we hoped that you trusted us. Now, your first stop, or AOL.com was a huge portal. Yahoo.com was a huge portal.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  It was mine go to. Remember the directory?

• 24:03Nilay Patel?

  The directory. But that was a different time. But those portals were, Drudge Report still exists, a huge portal. And those, you knew there was an editorial organization behind them. Right? Both, I mean that in both senses of the word. There was a, like a group of people as an organization. And then there was like a thematic organization to the, to your experience on the web as you traveled through the portal. Now, people start at Facebook. People start at Twitter. There is no editorial organization behind either of those things. There are only these opaque algorithms. And there, and I mean, there's no, again, I mean it in both senses of the word. There's no group of people operating as a unit with one mission to like, show you good things or like, present true things.

• 24:48Nilay Patel?

  And there's no operating principle by which the things, like Facebook's incentive is to get you to stay inside of Facebook. That's why they built instant articles. That's why they built a video player. And they just want you to share more and more things, be more and more engaged. And it turns out, fake news, which is designed to provoke outrage or like confirmation bias, isn't really good at keeping you engaged.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  You know, one thing I really like in the current media landscape is Reddit.

• 25:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  Because Reddit, wrong and misleading headlines get upvoted all the time. You don't click on the headline to go to the source. You click through to the comments and look at the most upvoted comment.

• 25:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  And it's typically saying, this is actually false.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  And it's really helpful for like for science stories for like future, you know, like, oh, new battery technology, it's gonna fix everything. And then it's like a well, actually, kind of a person shows up.

• 25:41Nilay Patel?

  Reddit is an automatic well actually.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  And even even unlike the more conservative parts of Reddit, you know, like the Donald has a lot of people, you know, show up and say, ah, this is misleading. Like, I feel like that works better on Reddit for whatever reason. I don't know if it's the crowd, if it's the mood, or it's the interface. But, but yeah, Facebook doesn't, doesn't promote that.

• 26:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, this is going to be, I think, the biggest story of the year for these companies. Right? What is their true responsibility? And it's, it is an incredibly difficult situation.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  I will say, oh, go ahead.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  No, I was just gonna say, the thing to unpack to, like, if you want to get Casey Newton, who gave that interview with Paul, real mad, tell him you want to argue about whether or not Facebook is a media company. Because that's what everybody, everybody just wants Facebook to admit it's a media company. And that's true and fair. It has repercussions if they do that. But it's like, it's almost too simple and binary of a question. Are they a media company or not? You actually have to unpack it and look at like editorial choices. And are they responsible for the stuff that people post on Facebook? And is an algorithm in effect, an editorial choice? And like, claiming that it's not is actually like shirking your responsibility. Right? There's like,

• 26:59Nilay Patel?

  I can make that argument in a way that probably would drive Casey even crazier. Because media companies come in all shapes and sizes, right? So I think the question of, are you a media company, is not one to one. Are you the New York Times? Or are you ABC News? Or whatever? Comcast is a media company. Comcast, another disclosure here on the Vergecast today. Comcast is an investor in Vox Media, right? Comcast, what do we know of Comcast? They are, they started as a cable company. They distribute media. They are in the media distribution business. If Comcast is your interface to television for most people, or it was for most people, you sign up for a Comcast account, they gave you a piece of technology, a piece of hardware that mediated Your relationship to television, right? It could record shows, it showed you a guide, it did all these things.

• 27:44Nilay Patel?

  That's how you got television. There's no way that if, you know, it was the election in 1992 or whatever, and it came out that 1% of the television on Comcast was just blatant lies about political parties. We wouldn't be having this Comcast wouldn't be out there saying, oh, we're just a technology company. They bear some responsibility for the things on their distribution network. Facebook is a media distribution company. They distribute media, whether that media is made by their users and it's pictures of your family, whether that media is made by news organizations, whether that media is made by whatever. Zuckerberg's comment, 99% of things on Facebook are true. Well, 1% of them are false.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  But this, I mean, this is

• 28:20Nilay Patel?

  That's a crazy for any company.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  This is a classic internet thing where platforms do not want to be responsible for the content posted by their users.

• 28:28Nilay Patel?

  And if they take some responsibility, they get into really legally murky territory.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  And it's a lot of work.

• 28:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:34Speaker 02

  I mean, it's a classic internet stance and, and way of being that it's not our fault for what people put on

• 28:43Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  The internet.

• 28:44Nilay Patel?

  But then they take it, they take credit when, you know, Twitter leads to a revolution or Twitter leads an activist movement. They're surprised, they're proud, they're proud of the good outcomes and they say the bad outcomes don't matter.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  Well, um, yeah, I don't know. I just, I really, I really, I really.

• 29:02Nilay Patel?

  You're not, I don't think you're supposed to know.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Two, two small things. One, this might be the story of the year for, I don't know if people have seen, but there's, I think it's a Forbes feature. I forget who did this. Two side by side streams.

• 29:16Nilay Patel?

  Wall Street Journal.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Is that Wall Street Journal?

• 29:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Two side by side streams. One is left leaning, one is right leaning or whatever, and they're so polar opposite. It's incredible. I would say the left leaning stream is getting that stream of stories about how this election is Facebook and Google's fault. I would say the right leaning stream is getting stories about how CNN colluded with the Hillary campaign and fed her the questions from the debates. Like the, the, the right leaning stream is not up in arms about Facebook's algorithm. Maybe they should be, or lack of filter for fake news. They're up in arms about media elites, as they're called, or the gatekeepers, this, you know, this great.

• 30:00Nilay Patel?

  Us. They're mad about us.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  They're mad about us, and they're mad about the Times, being selective with what they cover. Even if they're not outright lying, hiding negative stories and promoting other stories. It's, I think that's what the right is focused on right now. The conservatives are focused on that part of this media story. I don't think this fake news story is making a dent in that right feed. Everybody needs to look at this left or right feed.

• 30:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it is amazing.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Really crystallizes this whole thing for you.

• 30:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I get what you're saying, like, a bunch of the population doesn't know, or doesn't care, or they're focused on another part of the media equation that they don't think is right. But overall, I think it's a net negative if the biggest distributor of media that exists on the internet is openly admitting that 1% of the things that it distributes are fake. Because that 1% is gonna make you think someone is lying to you, or the establishment liberal elite media is hiding stories because you don't see them, you don't see the lie. Like, if you're unable to differentiate between lies and the truth, and you see a bunch of weird crazy lies, like Hillary murdered an FBI agent, you're like, why isn't the New York Times covering this? Why isn't this everywhere?

• 31:14Speaker 02

  I just think there's a larger danger.

• 31:16Nilay Patel?

  You just end up in this zone.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  There's a larger danger of having a company like Facebook being in charge of what's true and what's false, than there is a danger of people lying to each other on an open platform.

• 31:26Nilay Patel?

  I think it's just all about mediating that danger. Like, I don't necessarily want Facebook to read every post I write. You know, the thing that we do is cover Facebook. What if Facebook decides that every post we write about Facebook is a lie? It's maniacal.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:41Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be tough. That's why I think it's the biggest story for these companies, right? Not the biggest story for their relationship with consumers, or their products, or their rise and fall in the industry. It's existential. It's what is their responsibility? They got it. They did it. They're not hackers who dropped out of Harvard anymore. They are the most powerful media executives in the world. Even if they don't want to admit they're a media company. What do they owe their society?

• 32:08Speaker 02

  Yes, it's a good summary.

• 32:09Nilay Patel?

  All right. Do you want to talk about Lenovo Cloud's storage solutions?

• 32:12Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 32:13Nilay Patel?

  Let's read this ad.

• 32:15Nilay Patel?

  Look, let me tell you something, Paul. Yeah. The cloud sounds magical. It does. But it's still just data stored on servers. Yeah. It's estimated the cloud, which is just servers, mind you, holds 4X bytes of data equal to the storage capacity of 6 million average laptops. By 2020, if we last that long, experts expect the cloud to hold 40 zettabytes of data, or the storage equivalent of 80 billion average laptops. Most of that data is stored on nearly 5.5 million servers operated by just 16 companies. But the cloud, again, not magic, just servers, isn't just a place to store stuff. In fact, business increasingly relies on cloud for expandable computing power. Imagine, if you will, that you have guests coming over, but you only have one bedroom. Not actually that difficult to imagine. What if you could order an extra bedroom for your guests that you could just remove after they leave?

• 32:59Nilay Patel?

  This metaphor is very difficult, but just go with it. I got, no, absolutely have it. That idea is behind Lenovo's next-generation data centers built for cloud computing. They just bring you a bedroom and then take it away. See, the cloud is all about giving your company the ability to expand and contract server capacity on demand without actually adding more hardware. Lenovo understands that on-demand access can give your company a tremendous competitive advantage. The faster you can scale up, the faster your development team can test your applications. And that means you can get new product features under the market faster. But that kind of flexibility is worthless if your servers are down. Lenovo servers number one in reliability and performance, because you don't have time for downtime. I added that little click that's not in the script. Right? You don't have time for downtime. Oh, but the line. It's a good line. Anyway, are you feeling handcuffed by proprietary hardware software relationships? Lenovo Systems allows you to partner with leading software providers to ensure your cloud solution is best in class.

• 33:43Nilay Patel?

  Lenovo Systems can even integrate with legacy software platforms to help you get your cloud solution up and running quickly. So, learn more about how Lenovo is transforming the data center at www.lenovo.com/datacenter.

• 33:55Nilay Patel?

  Let's talk about some stuff. A bunch of Apple stuff happened this week. You want to talk about the Touch Bar review, Dieter? We did the MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar. And we did, there's a crazy coffee table book they did.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Oh my god, that coffee table book. So Jake and Walt both reviewed the Touch Bar version of the MacBook Pro. And the takeaway seems to be not change in the future of computing.

• 34:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Just, it's basically like if you closed your eyes and imagined a Touch Bar review where the Touch Bar was like, "Meh, fine." That's what these reviews were. Like dongle life is a hassle. The touch bar is sometimes confusing when it tries to do too much. When it tries to act like a just a simple function, you know, button bar. It does fine. There are a few moments of like, oh, hey, this is really cool. But you know, the hardware is beautiful. The screen is gorgeous. The speakers are really loud. Yeah. So like the touch bar is useful when it acts like a regular set of function buttons. But when it tries to do too much or get too cute, it gets really confusing really quickly. The thing that you might not expect is Apple didn't do the thing that Apple usually does with laptops.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  So the things that Apple usually does laptops is make beautiful screen, decent keyboards, incredibly good build quality. It's light. It's thin. They did all that. But battery life is a little hit and miss. Yeah, it's like, which not great.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  I thought we were making all these sacrifices so that they could give us another winner on battery.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's, it's, it's all over the map. So like Jake tested it across two different lap, two different 13 inch laptops and a 15 inch.

• 35:26Nilay Patel?

  They, Apple was so concerned about his first test. They sent him a second one.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Right. Uh, now the battery life on the non-touch bar version, the boring one is like, fine. It's exactly what you'd expect. And it turns out the internals are like radically different between those two devices, uh, which is interesting. Also speaking of the internals, the speaker grill on the touch bar is like mostly for show. Most of the sound comes out the air vents on the sides.

• 35:50Nilay Patel?

  What are we doing, kids?

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like, it's just, it's super inconsistent. You are not going to know, uh, what your battery life is going to be. And you can't trust it, uh, in our testing at least to hit Apple's claimed 10 hours. Even if you're not doing crazy stuff. And that's not even getting into all the fetching about the, uh, you know, sixth generation processor and the, the hard cap of 16 gigs of RAM, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Which you could get into. I'm like, I'm of two minds on that debate. But mostly I sort of land on, it would have made it five to 10% faster if they had managed to get in there at the cost of like further delays or it's like untested processors and the processors aren't even available yet.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  So I kind of am willing to give Apple the benefit of the doubt that they made the right choices on. The processors, although I do think it's aggravating that it caps out at 16 gigs of RAM. But overall, the general sentiment, I've just been, I'm just owning this whole conversation. Overall, the general sentiment out there is like, eh.

• 36:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  It's like, it's fine, it's fine.

• 36:56Nilay Patel?

  I haven't ordered one yet, but desperately need a new computer. I mostly need a computer because I got new Verge stickers and new Rack stickers and you put on something.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 37:05Nilay Patel?

  Yep. What am I gonna do?

• 37:06Speaker 02

  What a hard, hard life.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Did you talk about the, did you talk about the last sentence in Walt's review?

• 37:11Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  The last sentence in Walt's review is, if you need a new laptop and you love Macs, this is what Apple is offering. Take it or leave it.

• 37:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  That's true. Not, not, not, not thumbs up, not thumbs down, not review score. Walt's take on this thing is, take it or leave it. And like, that's, that's exactly right.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  It's like sitting down for dinner when your mom cooks.

• 37:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  You're like, you don't get to make decisions.

• 37:35Nilay Patel?

  Here's the big question, here's the only question I have. How, Paul, do you know when Kaby Lake quad cores are coming? Is there any?

• 37:41Speaker 02

  No idea.

• 37:42Nilay Patel?

  No idea.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  I think they should be.

• 37:44Nilay Patel?

  If they rev them instantly, this is the thing.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, people will be so mad.

• 37:48Nilay Patel?

  How fast are they gonna rev them to that next gen of processors?

• 37:50Speaker 02

  It's gotta be a six month minimum wait.

• 37:53Nilay Patel?

  So can I, can I hold out another six months? Will I, can I get more stickers in six months?

• 37:58Speaker 01

  It's gonna be a year. There's no way they're gonna rev them right away. Like, I, unless they're, unless Apple is like legitimately freaking out over people's reaction to this thing, they're not gonna rev them instantly.

• 38:09Nilay Patel?

  Well, they are insistent that they're selling tons of them.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, they do say that. Well, that's the thing, like, they are, I believe them, like, I believe they're selling tons of them because it's a really, really, really good MacBook Air.

• 38:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  The MacBook Pro is a incredibly good MacBook Air. It doesn't seem like it's clear that it's a good MacBook Pro.

• 38:29Nilay Patel?

  Alright, I'm gonna get one.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  I mean, but are you gonna get the touch bar?

• 38:34Speaker 02

  It looks like these processors are out.

• 38:37Nilay Patel?

  The quad core Kaby Lake?

• 38:38Speaker 02

  They're just not being used.

• 38:39Nilay Patel?

  No, if they were out, they would put them in the machine, right?

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Uh, the Spectre, the Spectre uses them.

• 38:44Nilay Patel?

  Hmm.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  It says there'll be over 100 different slim computers with Kaby Lake chips by the end of the year.

• 38:49Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, man.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  Spectre, XPS 13, the Swift, Acer Swift 7.

• 38:53Nilay Patel?

  Quad core or dual core? Their reasoning was they couldn't do it. Quad-core? Those are all quad-core? I don't know. You're saying that they- They said they couldn't do it. Apple couldn't put Kaby Lake in the MacBook Pro because there was no quad-core chip for the top configuration. So I bet there's a bunch of dual-core Kaby Lakes out there. It's unclear why they didn't just... I mean, I get it, right? You don't want to have two different architectures floating around. It's unclear why they didn't put dual-core Kaby Lakes in all the mid-spec ones and then wait on the quad-core one. I mean, that's a thing they could have done. They could have released a bunch of dual-core mid-level ones and said, "The Pro one, the top-of-the-line Kaby Lake quad-core coming in X months." Shipping, right? They could have just done that. That would've been nice. Right? It's the chip isn't ready yet, but we're gonna sell this computer.

• 39:38Nilay Patel?

  That would be a kindness.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  But that would, that would mean trusting Intel not to screw up its latest and greatest processor.

• 39:45Nilay Patel?

  And they've had some problems. Yeah, but then at least Apple, but all these people are freaking out are gonna be pointing at Intel, not at Apple, right?

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:52Nilay Patel?

  They just, their messaging around all this stuff is confused. So actually, that weirdly enough transitions me into this coffee table book.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  What's it called?

• 40:02Nilay Patel?

  It's called Designed by Apple and Cupertino. So Apple put out a $300-

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Or in California.

• 40:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, in California. Designed by Apple and Cupertino. We have it. We have the little one. It's two sizes, of course.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 40:14Nilay Patel?

  There's hubris and hubris Excel.

• 40:21Nilay Patel?

  So it's, it's a beautiful book. We have it. We have the $300, we have the small one, which is enormous. I promise you, you do not need to buy the bigger one. It's still huge. It's very heavy. It's printed on the nicest paper I've ever seen. Apple, of course, made their own paper. There's an interview with Johnny Ive in Wallpaper Magazine. He's like, "You know that we made our own paper. We developed our own printing thing. It's an eight-

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Actually, Tyler Pina on our video team made a joke about, of cour- I bet you Apple uses their own paper and I had to like walk over to him and like tell him that his joke was correct, that they had in fact made their own paper.

• 40:56Nilay Patel?

  It uses, you know, most printing is like four color. This uses eight color CMYK. I mean, it is beautiful. Like the pictures of the neon colored Apple products in here, like the super bright iPods. There's a picture of the iPod socks. It's all just, it's so vibrant. The blacks are the blackest blacks I've ever seen. There are virtually no words in this book, except for an intro by Johnny Ive. I forgot about the iPod socks.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Is there a picture of the Magic Mouse charging?

• 41:23Nilay Patel?

  Uh, there's not a picture of the Magic Mouse charging. There's all these cool photos. With the pencil? It ain't, the last page is the pencil, which is just a picture of a stylus. Is it plugged in? It's not plugged in. Uh, there's all these cool pictures of like the tools they use to like carve the chamfer on the iPhone and like carve out the ins. It's neat, but I just, Apple, the fact that Apple themselves made it and like not, it's just the most. Oh my, 30 years, whatever. That's fine. They could do it. It's not 30 years. It starts with the iMac. There's nothing before the, the first thing in it is the, the five color iMacs. Not even the Bondi blue iMac.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is nuts. Like, how do you not talk about Apple design? How do you talk about Apple design and not talk about the original Mac?

• 42:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I don't know. It's very confusing. Maybe that's just been covered some, it just starts with the iMac. It's all Johnny Ive stuff, right? The original iMac. It starts after the original iMac. It starts with the five colors. Oh, not the Bondi? Not the Bondi. I, so I, here's my theory. It is completely unverified. I have no idea if it's true. I think Johnny Ive was like, you know what? Done all I can do. Here's a pencil. I'm, I'm fading out and I want to put out a book of my stuff. I have no idea if that's true. Zero idea if that's true. Well, this is like when you put out a greatest hits, it means you're. Yeah. So James Barham, our great creative director, wrote a post about it and he, his note was, A, he's a photography nerd. And he's like, these are beautiful photos. He loves the printing. You should read it. It's great.

• 42:48Nilay Patel?

  And he pointed out that the excitement he felt looking through those, like the first three quarters of the book. The lamp iMac? The lamp iMac. There's a great picture of the lamp iMac with the wires, like how the hinge works. Like it's neat. He's like, "The excitement I felt in that section of the book started to fade as I came into new Apple products."

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Because everything's designed now.

• 43:09Nilay Patel?

  Everything's super designed now.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  Back in the day, I loved his post after you pointed it out. Yeah, when Apple started out, they were raging against the beige box. And there's no beige box to rage against.

• 43:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, even gaming PCs are crazy designed. I mean, they look like dragons that will kill you.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  They're crazy. Let's not say designed.

• 43:32Nilay Patel?

  This is the most user-friendly dragon ever created.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  I literally, I bought a case for my own PC that I built. And among a shelf that probably had 50 to maybe 100 different desktop cases, I found one minimal one. I bought the minimal one.

• 43:51Nilay Patel?

  Nice.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  Everything else was crazy.

• 43:52Nilay Patel?

  It's just a weird moment for Apple. I just, I really, this book on top of the MacBook Pro, on top of just a bunch of things they've put out in the world that haven't come to fruition. It just makes it, it's a great book. I get why you put it out now. It's the holidays, if you have an Apple nerd in your life, you feel like spending $300 on the finest custom paper, they'll be happy with you. I get it. But it's just weird that the $300 you should spend at the Apple Store for the biggest Apple nerd in your life is not a technology product. It's a book of old technology products. It's not the, like, so Apple TV.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Apple TV.

• 44:27Nilay Patel?

  They put out, here's another transition. They put out the Apple TV. They can't get any of the cable companies to sign on to their guide service.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  They can't even make their guide service the Apple TV app, the home of the Apple TV.

• 44:40Nilay Patel?

  Right, because no one's signing up for it.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:42Nilay Patel?

  They can't get Netflix to be in it yet. It sounds like they're going to figure out Netflix sooner or later. It's just a product that they released that it hasn't yet come to fruition. And I wouldn't say it's the best-designed or best-working television product, because almost every television product is flawed in some ways. But Apple's product is flawed in the fundamental way of not having that much television. Like, they can't get through it.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  Well, they've got PlayStation View now.

• 45:07Nilay Patel?

  So that's, they have Sling. So you can watch TV on the Apple TV, but not from one of Apple's TV services.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:13Nilay Patel?

  Right? You can go to someone else's TV service, which is crazy town.

• 45:17Speaker 02

  Can I make a confession here?

• 45:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  And maybe the police will just come knocking on my door.

• 45:22Nilay Patel?

  I hope they do.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  I stole live television the other day.

• 45:26Nilay Patel?

  How?

• 45:26Speaker 02

  Cause I wanted to watch a football game.

• 45:28Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Seahawks Patriots. I'm a Seahawks fan. I am a Game Pass subscriber. So after the games, I get to watch them, but I don't have an antenna. I don't have cable or anything like that. And I found this thing that it's like, it's great technology. It uses like some torrent style peer to peer technology to live stream something from like Sky Sports rebroadcasting NBC or whatever. Perfect 1080p, great frame rate, like very few glitches. It just worked and it was beautiful. And it's like, oh, that's right. I forgot that the best media experience is always stealing.

• 46:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's really.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  Cause then I like, watched all the other games that I cared about this week on Game Pass. And Game Pass is like some weird low resolution. It's like better if you Chromecast it from your phone. Sometimes it doesn't work, but they're like, their browser player is like garbage and blocky and.

• 46:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  It was just, oh, it was just so sad. I was like, man, that time when I was stealing.

• 46:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, stealing's great.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  So nice.

• 46:28Nilay Patel?

  This is a Virgass motto. Stealing's great. No, Dieter and I, Dieter, we're at the end of this, we're gonna have a PS4 Pro because I think Dieter just wants to admonish everyone to buy one, but Dieter and I both have Sunday Ticket subscriptions. The Sunday Ticket is, their app is wildly inconsistent on every platform. I use it. Yeah. I use it over Chromecast because I find that that works best. The Apple TV one, it literally makes it impossible to figure out how to get into full screen. Yeah. Do you know how you get in full screen on the Apple TV Sunday Ticket app?

• 46:58Speaker 02

  Whisper.

• 46:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you just yell at it. Siri, please. You just beg it. Come on.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  Come on, Siri.

• 47:04Nilay Patel?

  No, you press the pause button on the remote.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:07Nilay Patel?

  Why? Why, why, why? Don't do that. Uh, but then I get a text from Dieter this week. He's like, another reason to buy a PS4 Pro. Sunday Ticket app is the best on the PS4. It's crazy town. Stealing. Let's all go back to stealing.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Let's go back to stealing.

• 47:22Nilay Patel?

  Is it? I mean, I'm the lawyer, but I'm just asking, is it legal if I pay for Sunday Ticket and just steal it?

• 47:27Speaker 02

  I know that's, that's always the vibe. That's the vibe I have. I pay for Game Pass. I deserve it.

• 47:34Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna read this ad and then we're gonna talk about the Surface Studio, which Tom reviewed, and we should talk about that PS4 Pro stuff.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  And I've got a weekly segment.

• 47:41Nilay Patel?

  Oh, you got a weekly segment. So I'll do this, that, and then the other thing.

• 47:46Nilay Patel?

  This advertisement, right here. Mm-hmm. A little company called Eero. The single router model just doesn't work for our increasingly high bandwidth world. It's simple physics, like light waves, Wi-Fi waves don't just go through walls well. Imagine asking a light bulb in your living room to light your master bedroom. Just imagine it, Paul. A lot of crazy metaphors in the ads this week. What you need is a distributed system. That's what offices have had for years at considerable work and expense. But with Eero, you can install enterprise-grade Wi-Fi system in your home in just a few minutes. Just download the Eero app on your iOS or Android device. It'll walk you through each step of the process. It's quick, easy, and painless. Current Wi-Fi routers are really tough to manage and optimize. The Eero app lets you manage your network from the palm of your hand, so you know how many devices are connected at any given point, as well as the internet speed that you're getting from your service router. You can also easily create and share a guest network. Eero comes with more memory and power than currently needed to zap Wi-Fi to every corner

• 48:30Nilay Patel?

  of your home, which makes it possible for the company to add features and improve performance over time just by pushing an update from the cloud. These updates come overnight when you're not using your system. Actually, Eero in news, put out Eero 2.0, which is now has true mesh, that's what they're calling it. They've updated their Wi-Fi. Claimed it's twice as fast. Twice as fast, their topology of the thing. There's a new app that lets you manage devices better. It's all, it's all happening. Eero is protected with standard WPA2 encryption, and because it controls hardware and software for your entire network, ensures you're always secure. Traditional routers don't push software updates to their customers, so they're left vulnerable to cyber attacks. Eero updates automatically, so you not only have the latest features, but the latest security at all times. And they've got really great customer support. They've really invested in it. You can get a hold of Wi-Fi experts within 30 seconds. If you have any worries about your other connected devices during setups, one of those

• 49:15Nilay Patel?

  experts can walk you through everything. They can also help you if you're not sure how many Eeros are right for your home. Just call. The answer, I'm sure, is one additional Eero. Sounds right. So I'll just be super transparent. I have Eero at my house. I think it's great. That sounds like you're saying Euro. Euro. I, we, also, my house is in Europe, and we pay for everything in Euros. No, I have three Eros. They're great. I love them. I'd like, it's neat to like, look at the network on my phone. This has been me talking about the Eros that I have. It's weird, we don't usually do this or that, but I own this product and I like it. There you go. You can get free overnight shipping if you visit ero.com and checkout. You select overnight shipping and then enter the code VERGCAST to make that shipping free. That's pretty great. Go to ero.com, buy some Eros, select overnight shipping, enter the code VERGCAST.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Tried to update the firmware of my router the other day and you like download a zip file. And then you upload it to your router and then you just pray it doesn't break it.

• 50:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  I mean, that's some like Android ROM shit right there.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was like, it felt like hacking. I didn't, I didn't go through with it.

• 50:19Nilay Patel?

  All right. So let's wrap up on a couple of things.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:20Nilay Patel?

  Tom reviewed the Surface Studio and he made an all your base belong to us joke in the headline.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  Really?

• 50:26Nilay Patel?

  Which really slipped by us there, Tom.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  Sneaky, sneaky Tom.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  I don't know if he made it. Okay, fine.

• 50:34Nilay Patel?

  A beautiful invader of Apple's base? Come on.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  That's not an all your base belong to us.

• 50:39Nilay Patel?

  Hmm.

• 50:40Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 50:41Nilay Patel?

  Hmm.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  He likes it. It's really good. It's wildly expensive, but it, it seems like it's bar none, the best monitor you can get. Uh, it just happens to be attached to a computer that like the MacBook Pro is kind of so so.

• 50:54Nilay Patel?

  Is this just the state of the, the world right now?

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:58Nilay Patel?

  Like all the innovation is in mobile processors that we never use for their full potential. And then everyone is stuck with like middling desktop processors.

• 51:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, well.

• 51:06Nilay Patel?

  What are you gonna do with that?

• 51:07Speaker 02

  I've been telling everybody the frigging Moore's law is dead. And people are in denial and they pretend like it's not dead and this thing and this thing and this thing. But yeah, you can make a ton more cores. But software doesn't necessarily use, not all things are parallel or paralle- parallelizable.

• 51:27Nilay Patel?

  That's the Paul Miller story. Not all things are parallel.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Parallelable.

• 51:31Nilay Patel?

  Parallelable. It's a great book.

• 51:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:33Nilay Patel?

  That's Paul's progrog.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  It's a real, it's a real problem. They just can't, I don't know. It's frustrating. I just feel like everybody's in denial.

• 51:41Nilay Patel?

  But he likes it.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:43Nilay Patel?

  The dial is a cool thing.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  Would you?

• 51:45Speaker 01

  He brought in, he brought in a graphic artist to like try it out with him. And there's like beautiful pictures of Tom that he drew. We've got a great video, an amazing video that you should definitely look at.

• 51:54Nilay Patel?

  Like video team's been on point with these review videos lately.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  It seems like it's legit fun to use.

• 51:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. Like phones became rectangles, right? The, remember this show used to be about phone design.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 52:06Nilay Patel?

  Every week we'd be like. Look at this, this phone has flames on the hood, like, it was crazy. And now they're all kind of the same black rectangle.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  The keyboards were.

• 52:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but PC innovation's like having a little.

• 52:16Speaker 02

  Would you, this dial, I can't tell if it would really bother me, like, I feel like, like, I don't even like touchscreens. I feel like it bothers me to put anything on my screen. Obviously, if you're drawing on your screen, you're already kind of interacting with your screen. But would you want to put a dial on your screen?

• 52:32Nilay Patel?

  I don't think it's about putting it on the screen so much as when you put it down, it's your entire work surface.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  So it's.

• 52:39Nilay Patel?

  So it's just another control on your work surface. And but because it's your work surface is the computer.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  Like, like.

• 52:45Nilay Patel?

  Can show you contextual information.

• 52:46Speaker 02

  Think about like that little iTunes modal that'll float over all other things. I guess that's not really a problem anymore. There used to be like.

• 52:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  Music player apps that would float over everything.

• 52:57Nilay Patel?

  And you would just have like crazy visualizers in the corner of your screen and all that.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:00Nilay Patel?

  I, I think the idea is that when you put it down, your whole world becomes that surface.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  Alright.

• 53:06Nilay Patel?

  So it's not like there's a screen and then you've got all these controls. It's, you're down. And so now you've got like a knob to like really turn up the saturation. But like, at Paul, Tom points out, like, there's not a lot of apps that support it yet.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:19Nilay Patel?

  And to get that support, it's the same thing as the touchbar or 3D touch or whatever. It's like they've got a little chicken and egg problem. Not everybody has this thing. So why would you make your app support it? And if you are supporting it.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  Would you rather have touchbar or surface dial?

• 53:36Nilay Patel?

  Dial, hands down the dial.

• 53:37Speaker 02

  Dieter?

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Well, hmm, I mean, I think probably the touchbar because I would just use it more.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  This is a tough one.

• 53:45Nilay Patel?

  We just broke Dieter. He just went into like Westworld mode.

• 53:48Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  No, I got, I've gotten literally six phone calls during this podcast. I'm really popular. I'm gonna have to put my phone on airplane mode in a minute. I would, I want to say the dial is cooler and I'd want the dial, but I also use laptops. And so I like, like, build a dial into a laptop? I don't know. That would be weird.

• 54:04Nilay Patel?

  Can I tell a story about Dieter and I attending a briefing together?

• 54:08Speaker 02

  Please.

• 54:09Nilay Patel?

  So we go to the MacBook event. We're sitting down with, you know, the Apple executives are showing us the thing after the event. And they're, Dieter's like trying to have a very serious conversation. And I just kept DJing like a maniac with a touchbar.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  It was infuriating.

• 54:25Nilay Patel?

  I was like, I'm beat matching.

• 54:28Nilay Patel?

  Like, this is great. And the Apple executives, they're like, trying to not be annoyed. Dieter is just openly annoyed. And they keep seeing things like, see how useful it is? And how great it is? And I was like, I'm playing four Justin Bieber songs at the same time.

• 54:44Nilay Patel?

  Like, that's enough. And they're like, the touch bar is super useful.

• 54:49Nilay Patel?

  It's a real moment for us. But so far, that's the only thing I've enjoyed doing on a touch bar. Style, it's style for sure. Who doesn't want a big old knob to like turn?

• 55:00Speaker 02

  Always wanted a jog wheel on my desk.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  What are you gonna do with it?

• 55:03Nilay Patel?

  Remember when every Sony product had a jog wheel? That was, that was their only idea.

• 55:08Speaker 02

  I've got a scrub, Dieter. I've got a scrub.

• 55:11Nilay Patel?

  They're like, a cellphone? What if we put a wheel on that cellphone? I just, I would love to be at the meeting, the Sony meeting, where they're like, every product will have a jog wheel from now on. Fine, it doesn't matter. Whatever it does is fine.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  I was at a meeting that I, with a tech company that shall not be named, and the executive was making a point. He's like, remember, remember, you know, the, the history of smartphones? You kind of start with the razor. And I literally like stood up. I was like, no, you don't.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  We need to talk about the Scion. Really matters.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  A razor's not even a smartphone.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  I know.

• 55:52Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 55:53Nilay Patel?

  Paul, you want to do your segment? Every, Paul does a segment.

• 55:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's called Rally Around the Family.

• 56:00Nilay Patel?

  Tell me that you're about to talk about a pocket full of shelves.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  No, this is, uh, this bread basket will charge your phone while you overload on carbs.

• 56:09Nilay Patel?

  That's good.

• 56:09Speaker 02

  It's a, it's a bread basket.

• 56:11Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  It's literally a basket designed for holding bread.

• 56:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  And then below, at the base of the bread basket is a charger. It's like, like USB plugs for charging, charging USB devices. And then my favorite thing about this is that the PR kind of implies that when you plug your phone into the bread basket, it's charging.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  By the way, this is like a prototype made by

• 56:39Nilay Patel?

  Of course.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  Sister Schubert.

• 56:41Nilay Patel?

  Why not?

• 56:41Speaker 02

  Probably not for mass distribution. It kind of implies that when you plug your phone into the breadbasket, that your phone's energy is what's keeping the bread warm. Because the basket also warms the bread.

• 56:57Nilay Patel?

  That's not right. That's not how the energy should flow. Wait, do you put your phone in the basket?

• 57:02Speaker 02

  It's called the Basket of Warmth. Uses the very electronic devices that create distractions at dinnertime to keep freshly baked

• 57:10Nilay Patel?

  So there's the USB.

• 57:11Speaker 02

  Sister Schubert's dinner rolls warm.

• 57:12Nilay Patel?

  So there's like a USB shelf and then there's a shelf for the phones to go on?

• 57:16Speaker 02

  No, the phones just stay on the table.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  Maybe plugging the phone in turns on the heater. Or maybe it's got, uh, maybe, maybe, maybe the breadbasket is built with discarded Galaxy Note 7 batteries.

• 57:30Nilay Patel?

  See, that's right.

• 57:31Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 57:31Nilay Patel?

  That's, that was going there.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 57:33Nilay Patel?

  By the way, on a plane, uh, this week coming back from, uh, wedding, flight people came on. All Galaxy Note devices are banned from flight. Straight up, all of them, old ones, new ones, future ones, we're done. Yeah, it's over. They're never putting out another Note.

• 57:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:49Nilay Patel?

  All, all Galaxy Note devices.

• 57:51Speaker 02

  What about the S Note?

• 57:54Nilay Patel?

  Do you want to talk about PS4 Pro and then?

• 57:56Speaker 01

  We were running so far over. I will just say, I can't believe I didn't buy a PlayStation before now. Uh, but it turns out that 4K and HDR is buggy and it doesn't work with a bunch of TVs and we need to wait for, for more update. But, oh my God, why did I stick around with the Xbox for as long as I did? I was a complete idiot. Remote play is amazing. It even works on my dinky 12 inch MacBook. Keep an eye for those for more issues. If you have a 4K HDR TV for it to get cleaned up and as soon as it does, spend all of your money on a PlayStation 4, because I love it.

• 58:29Speaker 02

  I'm in.

• 58:31Nilay Patel?

  I'm ready for a full upgrade.

• 58:33Speaker 02

  That was a weird one, when a score in that review. I don't do a lot of reviews, I'm really insecure about reviewing things. Scoring that review is like, I think it's really great.

• 58:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  But it's weird to give things like big numbers.

• 58:46Nilay Patel?

  Seven.

• 58:47Speaker 02

  It's like a Sony PlayStation product, it's a regular thing, you could buy it at GameStop, you can't give it like.

• 58:52Nilay Patel?

  Why not?

• 58:53Speaker 01

  So my Xbox One S can sit in my cabinet with the cabinet door closed and not overheat. PlayStation four, absolutely not. I had to set it behind my TV because it just got way, like, it was going to burn my apartment down. So there's that.

• 59:07Nilay Patel?

  I'm ready. Yeah, there's a story today, Best Buy stock is rallying because all kinds of people are buying home theater stuff again.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 59:14Nilay Patel?

  I'm ready. I'm ready to throw it all out and start again.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  Didn't you just buy a TV?

• 59:18Speaker 02

  Like a big?

• 59:18Nilay Patel?

  Like two years ago. I mean, that for me, that's like.

• 59:21Speaker 02

  You tweeted like last month that you bought a TV. It was like.

• 59:25Nilay Patel?

  No, no, I bought a garbage TV for like our weekend place.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  He bought us outside TV.

• 59:31Nilay Patel?

  I bought a TV for outside.

• 59:33Speaker 02

  You didn't buy a TV, you bought another TV for another home.

• 59:38Nilay Patel?

  Yes. I bought it, I bought.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  I'm sorry.

• 59:41Nilay Patel?

  No, no, no. That's like, that's like on the side. That's like, I didn't eat dinner, I had a snack. I had a little TV snack.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  But did you eat yet?

• 59:51Nilay Patel?

  No, I haven't eaten yet. Alright, I had some nuts and some cheese. But I'm about to have, go eat the steakhouse.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know you think you want a TV, but I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna remind you that there's no more plasma TVs and the world is better off for it. And you're gonna be so angry and depressed that I just said that phrase that you're gonna, it'll put you off the whole idea of buying a TV.

• 1:00:11Nilay Patel?

  No, I want an OLED, man. I'm all in. I got a friend with an OLED, I keep on looking at it. I keep on trying to walk out of his house with it, but it's really big.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  OLED is the first like TV demo at Best Buy in years that's been like, whoa.

• 1:00:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  It's like, oh, there's those TVs? And there's those TVs.

• 1:00:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but what about my garbage curved Samsung, huh? That thing's great. See, that's a little snack TV. What if I like, what if, do I want to try? It's like an amuse-bouche.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  How much is, I don't know.

• 1:00:39Nilay Patel?

  I spent $475.

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  I don't care. It doesn't matter.

• 1:00:42Nilay Patel?

  It's, I, it's literally for watching football.

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  I agree. I agree. You did a good job.

• 1:00:46Nilay Patel?

  You should come visit.

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  I would love to.

• 1:00:47Nilay Patel?

  It has an operating system for some reason, because that's what you want. Every now and again, just prompts you to update it. Unclear what features I'm receiving or why.

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  You know, I, I looked.

• 1:00:58Nilay Patel?

  It has a built-in virus scanner. I'm not shitting you.

• 1:01:01Speaker 02

  Most of these TVs run Linux of some, some form. Some of them run WebOS. There are hardly any TVs that are jailbroken or, you know, like.

• 1:01:11Nilay Patel?

  Right. Cause they all have different, slightly different builds. There's no one TV to target.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  Right. You can't just put an operating system on them.

• 1:01:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But why? Why? It'd just be a screen, man.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  They're all computers, especially the 4K ones. They've got enough power to upscale 1080P to 4K. Like they're, they're computers.

• 1:01:26Nilay Patel?

  Actually slightly more powerful than MacBook Pro. It's a better GPU than MacBook. Anyway, that's a hard MacBook Pro burn. Anyway, I'm gonna read one more ad. We're gonna get out of here.

• 1:01:37Nilay Patel?

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• 1:02:22Nilay Patel?

  Squarespace Commerce allows you to understand every aspect of your business. There's also great customer support. They offer 24/7 customer support. Every member of the customer care team is an experienced Squarespace user working in a Squarespace office. No matter how technical your problem or trivial seeming your question, one of their team is always online to assist you. So, start your free trial today at Squarespace.com and enter offer code VERGE to get 10% off your first purchase. Squarespace, set your website apart.

• 1:02:46Nilay Patel?

  That's our show. Does there anything else to talk about? There's so much more, but we're gonna, we're gonna go away. We're gonna go away. Yeah. Oh, we didn't talk about the NES Classic. Paul, do, give me two thoughts about the NES Classic. You can't have one.

• 1:02:58Nilay Patel?

  They did a great job.

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  Thought number two that I feel like everybody's forgetting is that NES games are hard and you'll be sad if you try to play them.

• 1:03:08Nilay Patel?

  When I was a kid, I had one of those like 50 in one pirate NES cartridges. Did you ever know about these?

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:03:14Nilay Patel?

  These are great. There's a, there's a street in Chicago. Called Devon. It's where all the Indian shops are, were, and there was a pirate electronics store on Devon Street. So my parents would make me go there to buy like Indian groceries and textiles, whatever parents do. I don't know. I was like eight. And I would go to the pirate electronics store where you could buy the PAL to NTSC converter, VCR and all this crazy stuff. And it was like this thing that I always wanted. It cost like $80. It was like way out of my league. And it was 50 NES games pirated onto a single cartridge.

• 1:03:47Speaker 02

  I knew there was a lot of like unauthorized cartridges back in the day, but.

• 1:03:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And so I, after sufficient years of begging, my parents like got me this cartridge.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  You got it?

• 1:03:57Nilay Patel?

  Got it.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  How was it?

• 1:03:58Nilay Patel?

  And I had all the NES games and they were all so hard. I was like, this is garbage. Yeah.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  That's all I could think about when I think of this thing.

• 1:04:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  Man.

• 1:04:09Nilay Patel?

  But it was, it was like the prize.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  I got so mad at Ninja Gaiden, uh, Ninja Gaiden 2, actually. I like broke our entertainment center. I like chucked a Nintendo controller and literally like dented shit all the time. I was a controller chucker. The other Nintendo thing I just have to point out is, um, there's a company making Legend of Zelda Escape the Room, which is basically you and six other people go in a place and then you solve Zelda puzzles in real life.

• 1:04:35Nilay Patel?

  Do you actually like push boulders around?

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  Participants work in teams of six to solve a mystery in a huge area all within a time set limit, set time limit.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  Huge area means definitely boulders.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  There's gonna be Gorons, Zoras and Kokiris. This is going to be amazing.

• 1:04:49Nilay Patel?

  Does anyone get to fire a bow and arrow?

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  I hope so.

• 1:04:51Nilay Patel?

  Do you have to be good at the flute?

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Dude, I'm getting a hookshot. I'm getting a hookshot and I'm gonna just go flying around that room. Cannot wait.

• 1:04:59Nilay Patel?

  Well, that sounds like a video that we should make.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:01Nilay Patel?

  Noted. Brush up on your flute skills.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:06Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow, that's our show. Thank you for sticking with us. I know it's a crazy one. Follow us. Paul is at FuturePaul on Twitter. I'm at Reckless. Dieter's at Backlon. You can follow The Verge on Twitter, on Snapchat, Instagram. Instagram, blown up for The Verge. Biggest tech brand on Instagram. Do you know that?

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  We are?

• 1:05:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, biggest one.

• 1:05:20Speaker 02

  Good for us.

• 1:05:21Nilay Patel?

  So keep doing that.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  Casey Newton's at Casey Newton.

• 1:05:24Nilay Patel?

  Casey Newton's at Casey Newton. We're gonna have, I'm just buckle up. We're gonna have a lot more about Facebook and policy and all this stuff as this administration comes in. That's where we live. That's who we are. We are, in fact, The Verge. Anyway, also go to iTunes, check out our other podcasts. Ashley Carmen actually hosted What's Tech this week, talking about Snapchat spectacles. It's a fun episode. Brian Bishop was on it. He actually has them. He tried them on. That's also a great video. Brian's really good in that video. I host Control Alt Delete with Walt. We also talked about the MacBook. If you want to get into that this week, it was a pretty fun episode. Lauren Good, who many of you know, hosts Too Embarrassed to Ask on the Recode side. Kara Swisher hosts Recode Decode. And Peter Kafka hosts Recode Media, which is a really fun one this week. It's this music blogger, old-school music blogger named Bob Leftsetz. And our minute 23.

• 1:06:05Nilay Patel?

  Just burns Farhad Manji to the ground, which is a choice. Anyway, that's it. That's our show. Rock and roll. Paul.

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  Parallelable.