Hey everybody, we're going to start the show in a minute, but as you know, we're down to one podcast and we're trialing, we're piloting all these other new podcasts on the platform called Anchor, which we should listen to. So before we start the virtual chat this week, we have Ashley Carman, our great reporter. She's doing a segment, it was on Anchor earlier this week. It's just a couple minutes long.
I want you to listen to it. Let us know what you think. Take away, Ashley. A man boards a subway frantic.
He's definitely drunk. I can tell because he's kind of stumbling around and his eyes are missing a sober light behind them. I assume he came from work happy hour, as evidenced by his cross-body black leather bag and business-appropriate loafers. He reaches into his bag and pulls out a box of unwrapped, unopened, IV-wired earbuds.
He hoists the box up in the air and stares at it for a second, clearly thinking of the fastest way to get the buds inside. He bites the box. Nothing happens. His teeth can't get the job done.
The box is too tightly sealed in plastic. He sets it back into his bag and reaches into his pocket. This time, he's got keys. He grabs them and cuts into the box.
I've never seen someone more ravenous for earbuds. He tears the box open with a vicious energy and in less than five seconds he's already pulling the earbuds out and untangling them, even ripping off their zip ties. Without missing a beat, he plugs them into his phone and stuffs them into his ears. He puts music on and closes his eyes.
He's at peace. He's at peace. There's a lot of phone news this week. Remember when this show was all phone news?
We've got phone news for you. I didn't believe it. No, it's good phone news, too. It's real good.
I'll have to ask Alexa or Bixby or Google Home if that's true. Well, don't worry. There's Alexa news. Can I tell you a story about Alexa?
Because I went on CNBC this week on Prime Day, which we're not going to talk about except for this story, because Prime Day is a made-up idea that is bad. But they had me on CNBC. He's like, come on, Amazon's cutting the price of Alexa stuff, and Google's cutting the price of the home. The home plus the Chromecast was down to $99, and the Echo Dot was down to $35.
So come on, I talked about the war of assistance. And I will tell you, listener, I went on CNBC, and I started answering a question, and I looked at the camera, and I said, Alexa, play the Vergecast. And I hope finance bros around this country started listening to the show. And then I forgot what I was going to say after that, stuttered in the portos, and asked another question.
Anyway. Classic financial analysis from Eli Patel. I did it. All right, let's start with the biggest news, the most important news, the best news, which is the government of Pakistan bringing you a halt because of the font.
Paul, I know you're in this story. No, I literally have. I was like, I don't care about this font story. There's no gadgets in it.
I saw someone editing a video of you with that font. I had to say, I pirated a font for somebody on our video team today. What? From my computer.
I didn't download it. They put me in the font story? I don't know what they're doing. I just know that, oh, it's Jake.
Jake's in the font story. I do look a lot like Jake. I get that all the time. I think they're using a template.
Anyway, can I tell you this story? By the way, in case you're listening to Microsoft, I did send a font to someone today. But the font was already in my computer for my legal copy of Office. So you file shared?
Yeah, it was P2P. We used Kazaa. I sent it right over there. Can I tell you this story?
This story is great. It's my favorite story in the longest time. So in 2016, there was a big leak of papers called Panama Papers. The prime minister of Pakistan's children were implicated in an investment scheme, like an offshore investment thing.
It's not the important part. A big piece of it was they had not filed the necessary disclosures on time. So they're like, no, we did. And they sent documents to the investigators.
And the investigators noticed the documents were in Calibri, which is the default font for office products. And they said Calibri wasn't available in 2007. The documents were dated in 2006, but Calibri wasn't available until later. It didn't become a default until later.
Like early January 2017. Yeah. So obviously 2007. So Calibri became available in 2007.
But they had sent documents that were supposed to be dated in 2006. So now literally the government is implicated in this corruption scandal because they forgot to change the defaults on their fake documents. And now their argument is that it technically existed before, but they switched it because it was available even though it was the default. Is that what their claim is?
Something insane like that? But ultimately their claim was it was in a beta of Windows or it was available and you could buy it. All of that means that they had to want to use Calibri, which is not acceptable. I wouldn't be accepted.
They want to stand by that story that they love Calibri enough. But I'm with them ever so. This is my favorite font. The second I saw it, I knew it was mine.
I went out and got it for its custom font house before Microsoft. I was in Calibri school. When was the last time you bought a font? Man, some of those fonts, it's like $50 per weight.
When we were redesigning the Verge, we literally thought we would have to hold the launch of a new site because there were such strenuous negotiations about font licensing. Should have used Calibri. Should have just gone with Calibri. If anyone wants to make custom CSS for the Verge that sets the whole site in Calibri, I'm happy to be a customer.
No, just like a Calibri button. There's Blake Space on the left and right side of the app. And just put your own fonts. Calibri Engage.
Calibri Engage. The worst grease monkey plug-in of all time. All right. It's literally my favorite story in the first week.
I'm glad you told me about it now that I've read it. Good, Paul. What does this Verge ask for except for me telling Paul what's on the site? All right.
Should we talk about it, Charlie? We should do it a little bit. A little bit. I was on Tinder the other day and I'm just swiping along and it's like the internet.
It was like a weird custom dating profile. You swiped right and left on the internet. Swiped left. I don't know what that means.
That means no. It was weird. You kind of super like. Yeah.
They disabled some of the features of a typical... What is a super like? Super like makes it more likely that the person will see... It's one of the ways Tinder monetizes.
You pay for a quantity of super likes. But the problem is that it also happens if you swipe up, it's a super like. But also sometimes you swipe up because you want to change the volume or brightness on your phone. And so like half of all Tinder profiles have like a disclaimer, like super likes are accidents.
Because some of the super likes are like, oh my gosh. Oh no, they were just trying to change the volume. Anyway, so you saw the internet. Because Tinder, so just to set the context here.
Yesterday was a big net neutrality, day of action, where all the internet companies decided to protest in some public way against the FCC and GPI rolling back Title II protections. So Tinder was one of them presumably is where the story is going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, here's Tinder.
This is a great podcast. Now I'm looking at a screenshot I took of the internet. It's like, we love the internet. Don't want it to die.
So I like it. Oh, this is one of those like today's a day of action. Do something with your phone. So Tinder did that, obviously.
Netflix had a banner up. Reddit had a thing that would like take over the site and like type slowly at you. Amazon had a tiny, tiny little thing in like a random corner of their website for you to buy net neutrality somehow. You could buy net neutrality?
There's like a list of things you could buy, like suggested products, and then one of them was net neutrality. Oh, that's good. There was a bunch of other places that had things. Okay, Cupid.
Wired Magazine had a big spinner. We obviously had my big piece. What were you saying here? Okay, Cupid, CollegeHumor, GoDaddy, Pornhub, of course, because Pornhub loves to jump on bandwagons.
There's a great piece about the early days of net neutrality when it was like move on in a Christian coalition. It's like one of the few things they agreed on because a lot of like smaller groups, they think that neutrality is really important because it's kind of ultimately a free speech issue. So there's a lot of that going on. And then I wrote a big piece where I kind of, I wanted to take a different tack.
I saw a lot of other places wrote pieces which are good and you should read them, doing the very standard what is net neutrality, why is it important, why you got to write this letter. And I didn't want to do that this time because we've done so much of it. If you listen to the show, we've done it at length. I'm really interested in the FCC's arguments this time and how they line up with reality.
And the thing that just stands out to me the most is the lack of competition. So the FCC's own data says 51% of Americans have only one internet provider that provides broadband. Broadband is defined as 25 megabits down and up. So 51% of Americans only have access to one true broadband provider.
So basically not DSL. Not DSL, yeah. And then 38% of Americans have access to two or more. And it's one, it's at least one and at least two.
So the people with at least one, some of the people have zero. But if you add it up, it's 89% of Americans at most have access to two internet providers. That to me is, it's such a foundational fact that it's hard to, it's hard to move on to any of the other topics without just constantly thinking about it. That if you don't have a choice and your provider has something wrong, there's no way for you to react.
You're just stuck. You need the internet in your life. You can't not have it. Why do these companies advertise them?
I mean, they advertise because they want people to use their services. A lot of people, like I said, does that at least one provider? A lot of people don't have it. They still don't have it.
Even the smaller ones. That's a choice people can make. Yeah, you can't talk about that and then also be like, the digital divide or rural broadband is important because those things are important. Children getting access to educational information on the internet is important.
It's just a thing. The Wall Street Journal did a really great story about a month ago now where even Republican senators are saying things like, Broadband is a bigger issue in my little district than roads and bridges. This is a more important infrastructure issue to us. So to me, it's because you don't have choices, the broadband providers probably need to have some rules based on what they do.
Because if you had a lot of choices, the market would actually make a decision. But in the absence of a market, it's important to preserve the playing field. And I've just thought about that a lot. It's the thing that's been on my mind.
It's the thing that is the most important. Because every other issue, the argument boils down to, are they spending much money to build infrastructure? Or do big companies like Netflix need to care about neutrality anymore because they can pay for deals? But there's never the, do consumers have a real choice?
And if you don't have that choice, then why is it protecting you? What if there was a requirement that the Brightline rules, every provider has to at least offer one plan that follows the neutrality Brightline rules, but they're also allowed to offer different options, like a version with better YouTube or a version with no Netflix or something like that, if they wanted to experiment with some other stuff with different prices on those different kinds of plans, as long as they still had an option for a plan that followed the rules. So we've entered into what our feature director Michael Zanko is calling a season of neutrality coverage, because we want to talk about it at length while this process is ongoing. So one of Ajit Pi's big things is net neutrality rules hurt investment, and it particularly hurt investment for small internet providers.
So Jay Kastranakis, who's been doing amazing work for us covering net neutrality in the internet for a while now, actually called a bunch of smaller internet providers and said, is this hurting you? And as you would expect, many said no, and some said yes. But the most important line from the piece, and I encourage everybody to read it because it's great, is one of the small internet providers said, look, it's not costly to follow the rules. This is the default state of the internet.
So I buy the equipment, I set it up, I turn it on, I start it up. The default is it doesn't block the throttle. But some companies have to prove to the FCC that they are... Right, so the cost is compliance.
Small internet providers, if you have less than 250,000 customers, you don't have to pay the money to prove the compliance. For now. For now. I mean, but it's a temporary exemption.
I assume the FCC is wondering, are we going to get a million complaints? Do we need to impose this cost? I'm assuming if they don't, they'll just keep renewing the exemption. But for now, they're not paying the cost.
I think the interesting thing about an idea like yours is that does impose a cost. If you want to create a new product, you have to provide another product. You have to build a billing system that can handle two kinds of products. You have to do the engineering work to have multiple levels of cost.
Well, you don't have to add the multiple. You could do, if the default out of the gate, if you unbox the equipment, this is how the internet works. Yeah. That's just the default.
If you want to add another product to it, you can. Yeah, and the question with that sort of solution is like, how much more expensive would we allow it to be? Which, it sort of presupposes a level of regulation that's not even in the debate right now. The idea that the FCC could tell NISP what to do at all is where the level of debate is right now.
Which, to me, comes back to this idea of competition that 89% of American consumers don't have more than two options. It takes this discussion about whether or not the internet is a utility and therefore should be regulated as such out of the realm of philosophical and into the realm of strictly practical. The internet is, in fact, a utility. Whether or not you believe that philosophically it should be treated like one, the same way that we regulate and treat electricity and water, the practical fact of the matter is that that's the only way that American consumers can get it.
And if it's already a practical matter of utility, you either need to fix that by increasing competition in such a way that it's not. And I don't have much belief that that's going to happen on its own due to the mystical free will of the market. I think it's much more likely that it has to be enforced through government regulation in the same way that they make sure that water is relatively safe, hopefully, and so on. We're not great at that, sir.
Yeah. So there's that. But that's the main thing. This isn't really a philosophy debate anymore.
It's a straight-up practical debate of how do we get to the goals that everybody claims to want to share and what's the most effective way to do that. And I'm seeing, here's one effective way to do it, Title II, and I'm seeing a whole bunch of like, or, you know, other stuff. And the other stuff is incredibly poorly defined, and it's so poorly defined you have to like basically assume that there's another thing that they're trying to achieve rather than the thing they say they're trying to achieve. So here, so first of all, I agree with Dieter.
There's just a practical reality on the ground. And I think ignoring that is just dangerous, right? If you say we don't get the rules, we can increase competition, and increase competition will all be the rules, which I believe, by the way. Like there are four wireless carriers, and because of competition with just four choices, we've arrived at a bunch of them in the data plans, right?
I mean, like it's working in its minimal slow way. If there's more competition, you probably get even better consumer outcomes. But because there's so little competition, you either have to make big investments in ensuring there's more competition, which I don't think this government is particularly eager to do, right? They want the private marketplace to do stuff.
Or you have to protect people from monopoly behavior. But I don't see how removing the rules will increase competition, and that mechanism is really unclear. And I think until Pi and the rest of the Republican FCC coalition come around and explain that mechanism, then the burden of proof lies on them. But the other thing I want to say, and I want to respond to all of it, the other thing I want to say is, if you look at how the debate is now being co-opted, it actually reinforces what you're saying about there's some other nefarious thing happening.
Yeah, we've got to get into the co-option thing really deep. Yeah, I just wanted to respond to what you were saying. I think that makes it really clear where this political divide is. It's basically the idea that all monopolies are always going to harm consumers.
therefore should be regulated in some way um and that government regulation can promote competition successfully and like in a monopoly situation without just destroying the company yeah i think that's like probably like the big like political ideological divide like aside from like the specifics of the situation if you are in something where there's a kind of a natural monopoly or natural duopoly obviously it's a huge capital expenditure to create a whole another set of coax cables through every home yeah so it seems very unlikely for someone to come along and try that and in a lot of cases they have a lot of trouble with the local governments anyways is it is it just obvious that because you have a situation like that that it must be regulated or consumers will be harmed by that company what so that part about like the local i mean there's just layers and layers here but the local governments all gave monopoly access to these yeah i'm not happy with the local governments let me tell you that was the arguments back then were also like private enterprise arguments it was the government shouldn't lay the fiber the private company should lay the fiber well the government shouldn't grant monopoly access to somebody i mean that's how we got in the trouble in the first place with with the government granting up you can't just let everybody dig up the road they can pay for it yeah so the comparison there i do want to talk about this co-option piece it's a more interesting important part at this moment i think but the comparison people have been tweeting me lately are a lot of people who live in europe or around the world are saying how is it so bad in america i pay $20 not to get 300 down and the answer like pretty simply is governments in europe in particular installed tons and tons of dark fiber to everyone's house and they let companies lease that fiber back and sell whatever products they want so there's like true consumer competition so if you live in london you probably have 10 choices of internet provider but bt is actually a truck provider and bt is one of the providers you can choose from but many other companies are able to lease that fiber from bt and sell their own services that is like a way more interesting approach to this problem than anything that i've seen proposed in it but we're not we're not even close to that right i think until we get to a place where we're talking about that kind of thing it's we're stuck with are we gonna have monopoly like regulated monopoly or are we gonna have like chaos because we're not finding ways to increase competition someone is inevitably going to tweet me about 5g and i'm just telling you right now that's a long way away i just don't think broadband is that much superior in europe in fact i think in most cases it's slower and i think you are only thinking of our experience is trying to get on the internet in barcelona literally every time i leave that situation is not as good maybe i'm just going to all the wrong places you're going to all the wrong places like in london in the netherlands and all kinds of places in south korea the internet's fastest in the world it's also among the cheapest like well i know there's like a series of asian companies or countries that have better internet access than us but yeah i don't think it's common i will tell you i agree with all the internet in barcelona sucks it is routinely stymied us every time we've ever gone which is why i don't go to nwc anymore uh let's talk about the question you want to get into it so at&t decided to quote unquote join the day of action um and it wasn't really clear what at&t's participation in the day of action was going to be other than using a line that everybody uses which is you know we support an open internet but like that precise language is very dangerous because it's not clear what that means and like all the other isps at&t wants to have this solved by congress rather than by the fcc or fcc deciding on the fcc and from one perspective that makes sense because it doesn't change with every administration it just gets set uh but it also makes sense in a much more defarious way because uh giant internet companies have more leverage over congress through lobbying than they do over the fcc anyway in particular one of our nation's biggest lobbyists yeah true fact so at&t owns direct tv uh your feelings on whether or not it's um appropriate to have a tv network you know whatever leave that aside i think it's probably fine who knows uh put a message up on direct tv boxes saying hey check out this thing we support an open internet and then you go to the website they recommend to you and then the website cycles through a bunch of different like suggested things you could email to congress or to the fcc that um you know in some cases are like completely dissembling and in some cases are like bald-faced in what they're purporting to get you to support uh all of which is kind of antithetical to what literally every other company participating in the day of action wants yeah so for example paul we were talking about tinder earlier tinder puts up the screen they say we support the internet do a thing swipe right on the internet and then what they're trying to do is send a letter to your congressperson at the fcc saying we support title two net neutrality what 18t did was they blew up a message on every direct tv box and you got through it and they got you to send a letter and the text of the letter was like we agree with the fcc that these dumb rules are stupid it's like that is the opposite of the open internet and it's it's this weird thing that keeps happening oh it's opposite of your definition of the open internet to be clear all right so that this is what i'm going to do there's this thing that is happening in politics now in particular that i think is infuriating and counterproductive where every each side keeps on trying to steal the other side language yeah i if i hear the word the double word nothing burger yeah one more time it's like stop that but this is a classic problem you guys you guys have fun too cool too cool to the sun too cool that's not a phrase i'm gonna steal from you you better not go up there no when a band gets really popular and super cool all of a sudden not very cool people start to get into it and then now you feel that's not that's not this also a good name for a band is too cool to the sun it's like early bad modest enough spin-off band um like paul saying that's my definition of the open internet and what everyone sort of agrees that that means are like the bright line rules of net neutrality no blocking no locking no paid prioritization no throttling the the net neutrality stuff and now because so in 2014 18t and concast and verizon all said no no we want that stuff we want the ability to have paid prioritization we want what they call the double-sided marketplace where they're selling some services consumers they're selling some services companies like netflix and they're monetizing the pipe at both ends now they know it's bad it's not a popular idea like that they cannot they cannot say we want fast lanes no one wants them to have fast lanes but you might i want fast lanes i wrote a piece i'm gonna put it out there i have literally written words on paper that i complete paper yeah no flying too cool to sign my friend i i i i i wrote a piece we'll see if it ever gets published because maybe it's bad but i wrote a piece basically like what what could possibly happen if internet companies violated all the right levels sure my point that's interesting evan rogers told me that he actually loves zero-rating because when he was like living in tennessee he's able to consume a lot of things for free because it's zero-rating to mobile many arguments he had my point is right now fast lanes extremely unpopular right politically unpopular the american public does not want them um so now at&t and concast verizon all saying no no we want these rules love the rules rules great idea the fcc shouldn't impose the rules we get congress to impose the rules and the phrase they're using for that is open internet right which is just a weird it's means nothing the co-option of language there what would you want because they had what they wanted this is an important point they had what they wanted they had those rules written under title one authority for the fcc not the title two with all the regulation and the 1934 statute like they had it that was tom miller's original proposal and they fought it and they fought it and said this doesn't give you the authority to use the rules and now the fcc responded by saying okay you made us do it so here are the rules under the authority that you don't like what's a relatively neutral term that you can let me go up neutrality no no no no that's what i'm saying for the internet the verizon at&t and comcast want oh what's the term that we should let you use what's a term that you could use that kind of sounds positive but we know it's negative i don't know is it open internet open internet is it sounds free internet internet freedom like all these terms tim woo it should be it should be laissez internet oh that's tough it's too french for america freedom internet no tim woo who invented the term is well on the record saying i picked the wrong name it doesn't sound great what if it's called internet choice yeah it's gonna be stuff like that internet choice is actually great right we're the part i choose fastly you're crazy um i'm excited to read this piece but you eviscerate your reputation but the co-option is real yes it is an element of our politics that is currently driving me crazy yeah and it is an element of this where i mean frankly i feel like agency is lying to people they're deceiving them well they're sending letters about a thing they don't believe what actually what gets me is i don't this isn't a fully formed thought but the thing that people are afraid of is the isp using its power as an isp to change what you experience on the internet and the way that at&t participated in this thing is an isp using its power as an isp to send you a message of like dubious truthfulness like they literally use the infrastructure of their network to try and change like spread the opinions that people have change the opinions that people have which is a little bit close to what the thing that we're actually genuinely afraid of here that's some people are talking about this as a free speech issue from the other side yeah that why are these specific companies in the specific role of serving last mile home broadband the only people like not allowed to you know make deals make decisions speak you know like i feel like i really hated that reddit message i feel like reddit is is lying to me reddit is an incredible like position of power has incredible influence a very you know adoring audience and it tells that audience you love what you've got well it's gonna go away unless you write this form letter you know to and so i don't like when at&t does it i don't like when reddit does it either like like if you're gonna write your congressperson write them something that you think right so some of the differences if i don't like when reddit does it i'll go use i don't know dig or something right but what i don't like when at&t does it i don't have another choice that's the difference right do you personally not have another choice from at&t or direct tv uh it is very difficult for me to switch because i live in a big apartment building so i basically don't yeah but you can switch uh honestly i have to look i don't know well remember most people only have like it's very difficult to switch from reddit the whole community's there and despite like numerous times of like a public outcry against reddit for this or that there's been no successful alternative yeah i think that the specific thing you're saying is is these companies who provide this kind of service are restricted in this way that is appropriate lots of companies who provide specific kinds of services are restricted in a variety of ways so like conceptually that doesn't seem wrong but i think saying every other company depends on that last mile connection being neutral that does impose some responsibility on you and i think it's fair to codify that responsibility and say you can't mess with this because this is you are the connection between the consumer and the marketplace and if you're collecting taxes on both sides of that like it's real real nicey paul i don't agree about this i but i do think that's a really clear way of saying what you what you think thanks paul i got a letter i wrote my piece yesterday i got a really nice email from somebody who said your piece was clear and provided adequate information it was like one of the best compliments i've ever gotten in my entire life i'm gonna sound like a like if this and that fuck you know it was great i was like yes i did provide adequate information clearly it was great it was seriously one of the best compliments i've ever gotten uh okay i'm gonna read an ad uh we're gonna talk to lauren real quick about her uh show next level which is amazing you should watch it i got some phone news get out of this policy stuff talk about what you came here for just cell phones that's right this episode of the broadcast brought to you by zip recruiter are you hiring do you know post your job to find the best candidates it's pretty hard to find candidates you know you use a bunch of stuff anyway zip recruiter you can post your job to 100 plus job sites with just one click then their powerful technology efficiently matches the right people to your job better than anyone else that's why zip recruiter is different unlike other job sites zip recruiter doesn't depend on candidates from you it finds them in fact over 80 percent of jobs posted on zip recruiter get a qualified candidate in just 24 hours if they're juggling emails or calls your office you can screen rate and manage all those candidates in one place with zip recruiter's easy to use dashboard so find out today where zip recruiter's been used by businesses of all sizes to find the most qualified job candidates with immediate results right now you can post jobs on zip recruiter for free that's right free go to ziprecruiter.com slash verge shocking surprise there but it's supercruiter.com slash verge you can post jobs for free one more time supercruiter.com slash verge hey lauren hey nilai how's it going it's going well we're starting your segment so uh lauren is here lauren good our wonderful senior writer you have a new series on verge called next level let's go on there that's right we just launched a new video series it's on facebook youtube the verge.com twitter and as i like to say streaming directly into your brain because we have a future anywhere there's moving right exactly uh shot in 4k and it's called next level and it's funny because the name came from a brainstorm session that nilai you were a part of we were we were talking about new video series that we were all working on and i think what happened is i came up with like a few disparate different ideas for videos that i thought would be interesting and we all kept using the phrase in a meeting we kept saying like this is let's not talk about wearables let's talk about next level wearables or like oh have you seen that thing that's that's next level vr and we were just sort of using it like unironically and at some point you said like why don't you just call your series that i want to say next level and i said that's a great idea but the whole idea behind it is to not look at stuff that's already commercially available this isn't necessarily about gadgets as much as we do love gadgets at the verge it's really about the stuff that's in development going on behind the scenes stuff that honestly may never come to fruition but really interesting concepts or prototypes or just innovations that we think have the potential to like have a big impact on what we do with tech in the future yeah what i love about it is so much of what we cover today is incredibly iterative even though it's often marketed and packaged like it's not it usually is it's the screen got a little bit bigger or the battery got a little bit longer but your show is about stuff that is absolutely not iterative that's actually like a little bit crazy a little bit wild a little bit impractical but lots and lots of big ideas so your first episode which i have to congratulate you on your first episode uh well i'm gradually getting done because it was a real race to finish there but in 24 hours uh had a million views so off to a great start so congratulations there but your first episode was about airbus and what airbus is doing with a project called transpose yes so this is not um something that we hadn't heard about before to be clear we first covered this back in december as well as a few other outlets um airbus has been working on this for a while but late last year they kind of revealed to the public like hey we're working on this crazy concept in our silicon valley labs which they happen to call a cubed um and and so people have written about it but no one had really seen it they did this kind of pop-up in san jose airport where you could go into this tiny little you know mod of a cabin and like ride a peloton bike and so some people like walking through san jose airport had tweeted pictures of it and things like that we we got the first kind of really in-depth you know hands-on like hands-on with a plane and we got in their labs and we talked to multiple executives and we just kind of really you know asked them what the heck they're doing with this thing and um and the idea is not entirely new in the sense that they're borrowing a lot of the inspiration or getting a lot of the inspiration from cargo planes which are constantly loading things on and off the plane in between trips um but their their idea was like hey if you can do that with a cargo plane why can't we do it with consumer experiences and try to improve flying for everybody but also of course give the airlines opportunities to make more money yeah so i'm gonna be the avatar i mean you should um if you're listening to this you should go watch the episode because it's great but i'm gonna be the avatar of some of the commenters because they i think they raised some questions after watching it so airbus said to you no i mean i wasn't prepared for it but next week when we do this segment i will do different voices i'll assign different voices to different commentary that would be great but a lot of people in the comments asked how on earth is this going to be affordable and i thought that's a really interesting question i know they said airbus said to you we want to price this economy comfort economy premium but that seems really hard so they can be And we found how to make it affordable? Yeah, there's so many things to consider here, which we get into in a piece, but then again, we only had about seven, eight minutes for the episode. There's so many questions to consider here. Of course, there are safety questions.
There are regulatory questions. We did reach out to the FAA as we were working on this episode. But the biggest question people had was about pricing, of course, because that's what, you know, has consumers the hardest. And Airbus does say they believe it could be priced at the premium economy price scale, but that all depends on seating density.
I mean, right now, seating density is such an important factor of commercial aircraft because it's literally how many people you can cram on and how many people you can get to pay a certain price for a certain section of the plane. And once you start moving these modular cabins in and out of the plane, and maybe there's a restaurant, or maybe there's a spa or the spin studio, like I mentioned earlier, one of the mods they showed us was kind of like this daycare type place where families could bring their kids and play with games and stuff like that. The seating definitely did not look like the seating on a standard Airbus A330. So the big question is, how do you maintain the same seating density so you can charge people the price that Airbus thinks you will?
And it seems a little far-fetched. Yeah, I actually love that scene in the episode because he's like, and this is where you play with trucks. And the idea of a place in the airline. Yeah, there's a mobile hanging from the ceiling of the plane like that would normally be above a child's crib.
And it's like, oh, that's great. Or are they a little bit more buttoned up? There are some ways they're trying to engineer around that. And the ones I saw were actually fairly clever.
So, for example, in the bar area, there are kind of these tall stand-up cocktail, table's not the right word, but like a, I don't know, the standing thing where you might stand around with someone and have a cocktail or a glass of wine or whatever it might be. And then, oh, look, actually, if there's turbulence, that cocktail stand turns into a seat. You know, so they thought about little things like that in the family play area of the plane that we saw. Those seats kind of fold down so that they're touching the ground and they open up this walk, this pathway for people to walk through a plane.
But then if you needed to, you would just take the bottom of the seat and pop it up and then actually sit in it. But that doesn't mean that, I mean, I think there's a whole human element of this that can't be engineered because you may put all the right things in place and the oxygen masks may be figured out and the lack of windows may be accommodated for somehow. But when it comes to people just kind of roaming freely around a plane and then telling them to suddenly get in their seats in the event of turbulence or some other event, at this point you still have kind of no idea how people are going to react to that sort of thing. Yeah, I mean, we laugh all the time about, you know, the airline safety briefing at the beginning of flight is a rote, but there's a value to that repetition, which is everybody kind of knows what to do.
And if you don't, presumably someone around you does because they've been flying a long time. I had two thoughts. And, you know, obviously if you're listening to this, what you should know is I've watched like 90 cuts this video because, you know, we were working on it. So the very first time I watched it, I had two thoughts about the specific thing, which was, one, if they do this the way they're saying they're going to do it, it will be really expensive and it'll be for, like, rock bands that have custom 747s, right?
Like, it'll be for that class. Like, you know, like Larry Page and Sergey Brin, like, Google owns a jet for them, right? So, like, the next one I'll buy with the Airbus and they can customize it and a couple years later they'll get sick of it and they'll be like, I want a rock climbing wall is what if you could board your plane in the middle of the city and that gets, like, put on the back of a truck and we drive to the airport and, like, load the back of the truck on the plane and you take off the flight. And that seems really cool, but given the way that airlines work now, also, like, a very dark future where you're going to end up in this, like, windowless shipping container and you're going to load it onto a plane.
Right, and actually, yeah, you're in a pod and you never really lose the sense that you're just in this pod. Yeah, Airbus is, what they're promoting is, like, the middle ground, which is we're going to make economy comfort so much cooler. But I actually saw the other two sides, but what were you saying? Oh, just that some of the commenters made really good points and I was not at all surprised by these remarks, which is, it would be great if we could just get a little more legroom first.
Or one of the comments I made to Jason Chua, one of the project executives, who, just a fun factoid, used to work on Motorola's modular phone project and now she is running a modular airplane project. One of the things I said to him was it's kind of crazy to think we could get these pods or these modular experiences in flight before we get consistent working Wi-Fi because I'm sure what a lot of people would like, like, they don't mind, you know, necessarily, or at this point they're used to being crammed in their seat for several hours, but they might want working Wi-Fi. And we don't really have that yet. It's not very consistent anyway.
So, yeah, like, I think that this is, it was perfect for next level because we do want to look at the innovations and the crazy ideas that people have and the stuff they're working on in labs to say, like, this could be. But I think, like, some people were, I don't know, maybe they saw it were a little more entrenched in reality after they saw it. Like, I can think of half a dozen other ways I would improve air travel first. Yeah, but I think that goes back to the thing I was thinking about.
Most of what we want and what we get is so iterative, right? Better Wi-Fi on a plane is an iterative improvement and I think it's a really important iterative improvement and one that I really want. But it's not a big idea, right? Or a little bit more legroom or don't treat us like prisoners and literally beat us.
Exactly, that would be nice. Like, all iterative improvements to the current air flight experience. Like, not being viciously beaten by the staff, I think, is an improvement that we're looking for. But this is a big idea.
And I think big ideas, as Virgcast has reached out, as Virg audience people know, like, big ideas come with a lot of doubt and hearing that doubt, I think, is important, right? It's the thing that makes the idea get better and refined if it ever actually comes out. So, what's next? What's the next level of next level?
Like, what's the next episode? Oh, am I allowed to talk about this? Yeah, I mean... I'm going to ask you if I'm allowed to talk about this.
Cheez it out. You're the executive officer as well. You're now in the bubble, you're in the family. Don't tell anyone.
Yeah, keep it yourselves, all right? But share the video when it comes out next Tuesday morning, first thing in the morning. We are talking to a company that has been around since 1965 and works with, I mean, I said it's in the case, works with virtually every major Hollywood studio. You've seen their stuff, you've seen their label, and you probably are, like, vaguely aware of what they do in some capacity, but we went into their labs, and it's Dolby.
So, you know, inevitably seen on movie theater screens or television programs that something has been remastered, either the color or the sound, with Dolby's technology. They've been working on this project in their labs in San Francisco, where they are hooking people up with all kinds of biophysical sensors, EEG caps, heart rate sensors, galvanic skin response, things like that, and they're monitoring them as they're watching movies, and they're trying to figure out what people's emotional responses are to different, it's not even the content specifically, it's more like if Dolby were to use HDR or Dolby were to use surround sound, or there's a sort of amplification of the content you're watching, how does that make you react differently? And it's utterly fascinating stuff. I mean, I think on some level we already kind of know that a lot of the movies and the TV shows we watch are sort of engineered to evoke the strongest emotional response possible from us, but this is, like, in the lab proof that this is what companies are working on.
Yeah, I think the line I've always heard about HDR in particular, and Dolby's version, Dolby Vision, is that when you see an explosion, you can make sure you feel heat, and you feel warm. And I think the fact that I'm measuring it is really interesting. I'm not going to give it away, I'm not going to ask you any questions about it, because people should go watch the episode next week. But I'm really excited about this series, I'm really excited that it's your series, because I think Lauren's adventures out in the world of insane high-tech are something that I have been able to hear about just working with you for so long, and now that we get to make a video series and show the adventures you've had, it's so cool.
And I'm really excited that we're going to do a bunch of more of these episodes. So, Tuesdays, Tuesdays, Tuesdays, for the month of July, and possibly after that, and we're publishing first thing on all the platforms I mentioned earlier. And yeah, it's just really exciting, and one of the things I like about it too, and I hope you do too, is that gadgets in some way, the commercially available products that we all know and love and use every day, they're kind of safe in some ways. I mean, that doesn't mean they're not listening to us and tracking us in weird ways too, but occasionally lighting on fire.
But you buy them, you kind of know what you're getting in exchange, to some extent, you know what you're buying, you know what you're using. But some of these innovations that we're looking at, they're a little unsafe, they're a little scary in the ways that they're raising really big questions, whether it's about VR or AI or transportation, autonomous transportation and things like that. And so we want to raise those questions. That's what we're looking to do.
Yeah, I have seen a bunch of these. I won't give too much away, but they're really cool. So Tuesdays, check out Next Level on the Verge on every platform that exists. And eventually, if one gets your way, beamed directly into your brain.
Directly into your brain. Awesome, thanks so much, Lynn. Thanks, Eli. This episode of Verge Cast, also brought to you by Parachute, which I'm going to tell you right now, is sheets for your bed.
They're really nice sheets, I'm told. They're the softest, comfiest sheets. They're made of really great fabrics and materials in Europe's world-renowned factories. They're clean, minimalist style, and neutral colors.
They're all natural. There's no harmful chemicals or synthetic softwares used. The bedding will only get softer with time. What?
That's a fact. And when you buy Parachute sheets, they'll partner with the United Nations Foundation to donate malaria prevention bed nets. They've already donated 16,000. Oh, sheet, that's great.
Oh, man. And when you return, if you buy them and you return and you don't like them, they'll donate them to Habitat for Humanity, which is great. Thanks, Parachute. Anyway, visit Parachute Home, I thought one word, ParachuteHome.com slash Verge, for free shipping.
Home.com slash Verge. Parachute. Oh, sheet. All right, I'm excited for this.
Phone news. Yeah. A lot of phone news. Yeah, kind of a lot.
So here's my favorite piece of phone news. The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 fan edition has been torn apart by iFixit, and they have confirmed it is just a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 with a different smaller battery. What did you expect? What did you expect?
They could have added like a reinforcing bar to make it less likely that it would bend, but they didn't. Just they're like, let's put in a different, less floaty battery. I'm not offended by this at all. I love it.
I love it. They're giving people what they want. Small batteries. Giant phone, small battery.
For the fans. I'm going to buy one of these phones. It is inevitable that I buy one of these phones. A couple of phones kind of, do you want to start with births or deaths?
Births. Deaths. I was going to say deaths. Let's alternate.
Let's start with births. It's the wheel of time. It's the wheel of reincarnation. Okay.
Let's go for it. Let's start with births. The BlackBerry, it's not a great birth. The BlackBerry Key 1 launches on Sprint July 14th.
This will definitely go well. You know, you can just go get one now, right? Yeah, they're already being unlocked. Yeah.
But now Sprint. It's great credibility. They did the track record. Is this the red line?
They did the Evo. Yeah, this was, I was just joking around in the chat. I was like, BlackBerry Key 1 launches on Sprint, the eternal harbor of innovation. And now that's like literally on the verge of my heart.
Be careful, Paul. Anything you say, I could be coming out. I know, I gotta be careful. Can anyone name a Sprint phone that is like torn up the world?
Evo. The Evo. I was going to say Evo. That's it.
All right, now with death. The Sprint Razor was good. The Sprint iPhone. But they got it third.
Windows Phone 8.1 is dead. Yeah, and I wasn't aware of all these details. On their phone, which is just a great way to get malware in the year 2017. Yeah.
So, yeah, that sucks. It's over. I'm writing a whole story about it, but I'm not going to make you tell it on the verge cast. But I guarantee that you will.
This happens every week if you listen to the show. I make Dieter say what he's threatening to write, and then because I've made him say it, he has to write it. Right. But if I don't make him say it, will he write it?
I don't know. I guess this week we're going to find out. Here's a pop quiz. What killed Windows Phone?
Lack of apps? Who murdered Windows Phone? How about that? Oh, in these final moments.
Well, over the course of his life. Was it the iPhone or was it Android? I thought, like, what person was it? I'm going hard with Android.
I'm going super hard with Android. I've been spending all morning reading the court transcripts from the Google v. Oracle court case from, like, five years ago where both Ruben and Schmidt talk about the foundation of Android and why they created it. So, that's where my head's at.
Wait, wait, wait. But what if Windows Phone was really, really good, though? No, so I don't want to preempt you. Here's my guess.
This is what your story is. We'll do the other way around. I'm going to try to guess what your story is. I'm just going to write whatever you say here, and I'll just talk about it.
Well, you've been reading this stuff. I haven't read that stuff in forever. But here's my guess. Andy Ruben and Eric Schmidt knew that they saw the iPhone and they knew the next frontier was mobile.
And they decided that Android would be free to undercut Microsoft before it started licensing software for phones. So, the fact that Android was first and free in the touch paradigm is the thing that prevented Microsoft from ever entering the market because they were charging per-hand-set license fees to software makers, whereas Google was not. Yeah, you're 100% right except the iPhone has nothing to do with it other than they were working on it and then they saw the iPhone and they went, oh, shit. And then they switched it to be a touch-first interface because it was the sooner and the dream and they switched from the sooner being the launch device to the dream which became the HTC G1 and getting it to market ahead of Microsoft as a Premiere Touch OS helped them kill off Windows Phone but the key thing is their core strat was to take on Microsoft.
That's the thing they were primarily worried about and that's why they made it free and they basically took away the strategy that Microsoft had for making mobile in the first place which was licensed to everybody and that is what enabled them to basically beat Microsoft to market basically already start making Android phones instead of Windows phones and that is ultimately what it did with Windows Phone. It wasn't so much versus the iPhone. It was, yeah. Well, so my argument there for versus the iPhone is probably narrow and probably not important but Microsoft failed to react to the free pricing and it also failed to react to being touch-first for a long time.
Yeah, Windows Phone 7 has come up for quite a while. Yeah, like the 6.5 with that weird honeycomb and it's a piece of garbage and when we read about it we read about it again like this is garbage and we got mad at us and I'm like no, it's garbage and now a decade later told you so. Do you remember how angry we got at me when I pointed out when we had the source that said that Windows Phone 7 devices were going to get updated to Windows Phone 8 and just people just lost it at us? We were right.
The thing I'm sad about is I think that the thing that Windows Phone did differently that is still not really happened is this idea of you have a few different kind of modes that you're using stuff and then apps kind of feed data into that. I think that's really hard to do. I think it runs against the grain of what app makers want where they want to have their own very insular branded I mean Snapchat would not thrive in that. Snapchat is all about having a completely foreign weird UI but there's lots of times when I'm just like man, why am I writing this email in this stupid email program in Calibri when I would rather be writing it in my chosen plain text editor that has Vim keystroke commands for moving around that kind of stuff just like allowing one interface that you get to really know and apps feed into that and Windows Phone never pulled it off anyways.
They tried. It was nice. Okay. By the way, I definitely trolled Peter into saying what his story is and now he definitely has to read it.
It's like a quarter of it. All right. Let's talk about birth. I mean, it's not really a birth, I guess.
But there are pictures of Pixel XL, the new Pixel XL that went into the world. I don't want to say it looks exciting but it looks very nice. It looks like a rebranded... like LG G6 that they just like cleaned up a little bit and as long as I put a new processor in there totally fine with that like super pumped for that actually by the way to give credit to the source and one of the rumors they leaked was that you can squeeze the size on the HTC phone which is really kind of a harsh burn because HTC just released it HTC made the last pixel now they're not making the new pixel but they ripped off their one feature which is incredible so how do you guys feel about squeezables don't get it you know what's what's predictable and works when you want it to it doesn't work when you don't want it to is a button yeah interesting I'm sure that the squeezing will you know everything else that I've tried to use on a real basis has ended up being kind of garbage I have zero hope that squeezing your phone is going to be a thing I think it's interesting because as the bezels disappear which is something I'm 100% into and for you're starting to run out of safe spaces on the phone and now you have oh oops sorry I hung up on you I accidentally squeezed my phone I was trying to grip it and I squeezed it I think someone as an art project should just make a phone that is capacitive all around every time you touch it anywhere it just launches it for that we just need to create some emblem of going too far where there's no safe place to touch your phone and then we know we've got to walk it back from there and watch it on Sprint and watch it on Sprint okay Def the bejeweled crown prince of the phone kingdom we just had 15 different owners in the past two years that was not that long ago but the businessman says he's going to resurrect the company or bankrupt this is one of those things there's all the rumors about Apple moving the phone pricing high end you know they're giving $1,500 they can do premium parts and manage demand it's a rumor no one knows if it's true I think that's interesting in this context because Virtue was all about making your phone out of crazier stuff and pricing really high and it just wasn't a good idea I was continually surprised that they were in business that's the surprise to me that they existed for a long time when people bought their bad phones with crocodile skin on them but also an older version of Android older processors if they just made if all they did was take apart like Galaxy N7s put in smaller batteries and like wrap them in nice materials like colorways is that what the company's called color shapes color wear thank you they're like Apple makes nice products we'll paint them for you color wear with alligator skin alligator wear alright is there another birth no this is sort of like it's not yet born actually I'm curious what your thoughts here the essential phone is a code they told us it would launch in a month you remain one of the few people in the world who've handled this phone they've missed their ship date and they will not say a word you've asked them I mean Nick Sat asked them on our team if you go to Twitter and you look at their tweets and replies they have been replying to people on Twitter saying that we'll have information soon that is as close to a statement as we've gotten that they're promising more information soon do you think they're just waiting for their product to not be vaporware like they're just hoping the mist resolves itself because they've got the other stuff too right maybe they don't do it all at once I mean they have to ship it with that 360 camera right if they don't it breaks the fundamental promise of this thing and actually especially after seeing the red phone I've been thinking about like modularity on phones again a little bit and I'm frustrated that they're all different and when I look out upon the sea of different ways to connect modules to phones in theory the one that I'm most excited about is Essentials because it is USB wireless you just have to charge it and people can pick their own Pogo pins if they want to but it's also going to mean that different phones are going to be able to choose different places to stick their modules but if it's just straightforward USB that anybody can implement and it's wireless so it's like local that seems to be the most universal solution so I don't know I know that listening to me talk about modular things on portable devices is tiresome but of everything in theory I'm most excited about Essentials implementation I suspect that it is also pretty complicated dude we just did 45 minutes of neutrality I don't think modularity is what I think they take for boring you know like one like modularity would have like actually served as purpose so I'm at a bar the other night someone asked me to take a picture of them and of course their phone isn't as great as my phone and if I had a modular phone they had a modular phone and I happen to have my fancy $400 camera attachment with me just pull out that attachment slap it onto their phone take a picture for them that looks way better than what they can normally get and take off the module put it back in my pocket and their phone back that'd be a pretty cool world otherwise I think they're stupid isn't it like the real question like all these companies are trying it and stumbling over it it feels like one of those things where eventually Apple's going to do it and get it right I think the mind virus it's a mind virus yeah what is it called is that a meme is that the one with the cats yeah yeah it's like the cats people hang around with their nerd buddies and they're like I wish phones were modular and then they do it it's always bad well as you just heard from Lauren Good the guy who's building Airbus's modular plane his last project was Google's modular phone his job is to just make things modular at any scale that you desire that's great I want to talk about Alexa but you've got a segment every week it's called Magmi Later oh god why do we keep letting you call it that I don't know I don't know that's what the legal team was like MagSafe there's all these MagSafe knockoffs coming to Kickstarter and stuff and I'm confused because Apple was pretty serious about having patents on MagSafe is it actual MagSafe or is it just magnetic power connectors they are magnetic power adapters the typical model is that you have a really slim little piece that has USB-C on it and the magnet on the other side and you just stick it down into your MacBook and it's just there forever it basically occupies that port and now you can use their MagSafe style connector but yeah they're all proprietary different versions but they're basically magnetic breakaway power connectors yeah I think the deal is Apple might not be able to enforce any patents on the idea of a magnetic laptop connector so the Surface has got a magnetic connector right but it's the specific like plug and shape of a MagSafe that you can't just up and copy right like fried machines for kitchen set magnetic power adapters Apple wasn't going after those yeah what's your favorite or are they just a trend that's going to fizzle well I don't know Haim said that one of these companies is doing like the L-shaped connector remember original MagSafe had the L-connector so USB-C goes into this little thingy that then connects magnetically to the little inserted magnetic yeah plug dongle if you will it's not a dongle because it doesn't hang out is that the definition of a dongle must a tunkle tangle I think a dongle has a tangle if a dongle don't dangle then it's a plug that's the first cast ever that was our last episode ever that's called MagSafe so they're obviously really running away from the comparisons oh man can I say that that L-shaped MacBook plug from back in the day I hung on to that for years because I hated the new flat connector because you couldn't sit with your legs crossed and put your laptop in your lap without it disgusting just pops off stupid another thing I thought of about neutrality this is Paul's writing hour you don't read that story that Jake did with all those rural rural Paul maybe it's just that you have the internet is trees like we have great we have great internet in my hometown in Washington State and then those damn trees came along no no no that's the thing my hometown's like a desert we didn't have a lot of trees just stage brush so you could just beam internet wirelessly all over the landscape but all these rural people with their trees yeah and we're using less paper now so trees are out of control it's a real self-fulfilling prophecy that's all I'm saying pave the earth it's just a thought I don't know where that came from it's a free idea alright last thing I just want to talk about real quick so I think it's important we talked about well I told the joke about Alexa at the beginning but there's a bunch of Alexa news oh yeah this week that I think all adds up to something really interesting so I'm just going to read it all so Westinghouse put out it's Amazon Fire TV powered TVs so they just run Fire OS as the OS they respond to Alexa Sony announced that it's Android TVs it's actual Android TVs are now compatible with Alexa so you can tell Alexa how to light up its TVs all other Fire devices like Fire OS TV devices Amazon is now enabled Alexa to control them so if you have Fire Stick or whatever you can say Alexa that's the most important thing so that's like three TV announcements in a row you can talk to your Echo and the show shows up on your TV that's the key thing and then Logitech today announced an update to its like Harmony integration so you no longer have to say tell Harmony to turn on the lights you can say turn on the lights and whatever Harmony controls can do it so the Macros are getting more integrated I think all of that adds up to like the next phase of Alexa being a far superior product to Google Home or the HomePod because if you can just tell it to control screens so that's the dream of the Home and Chromecast but the lack of the UI in the Chromecast I think is still very off-putting to people so if you have a regular thing you just like I turn on my TV you say words and it lights up but they're still UI that's pretty smart the thing that's interesting to me about this is the reason that you had to on Alexa and a little bit on Google Home say like tell so-and-so to do such and such is that first part talk to so-and-so activates the keyword to turn on that skill and they're now getting rid of that and the question is how are they doing that and what is the like the rules for setting up those keywords how do I tell Alexa that my non-keyword list turned on my TV is through Logitech or to maybe Sony or whatever so Amazon's getting more sophisticated about how keywords work on the Alexa platform and I understand at a pretty deep level how Google thinks about this stuff like they're like they're choosing the keywords they're trying to treat them in the same way that the web treats domain names you know down the line they're always going to pick the best one for you but with Alexa when you have these things that short-circuit the skill keyword is that a deal are they going to set up like a customization app how is all that going to work long-term is potentially very fascinating because if this does become the primary interface to the crap in your home you really want to know what enables those things to talk to each other and you know I don't know I personally want to know if there's deals in the background but in general the rules for whether or not you have to say a keyword to activate a skill and what that keyword could be but also insane and bad well you can set up macros I think of both where you can say when I say this do these like five things so it might just be that you customize it by when you like turn on Logitech it like jump starts that customization section so but if you do that then everybody's home operates differently right and we get into this insane long settings discussion I love settings discussion pairs nicely with neutrality and functionality I just think that where Amazon is getting they're getting to a place where they're going to sell you a cheap TV that is integrated with its service and they're selling you a $35 dot and they're saying this is the beginning of your smart home they already have bundles they're doing them I think on Prime Day well they'll sell you a dot and like four power plugs that connect to Alexa or a dot and a bunch of light bulbs their ability as a retailer to sell you the kit is just very powerful and their ability to get there first right now because this is their only product whereas Apple is still trying to make Siri work on the phone and on the HomePod and on the Apple TV and Google is Google and they have 50 different ways of doing things and they're still trying to figure out what it's going to be Amazon is just plowing ahead and they're making Alexa simpler and smarter at the same time and I think that's a big deal yeah I think they're winning yeah I think they're winning there was a stat I think Virtuo Analytics one of these many analytics companies the raw numbers are like not impressive but Siri usage is down 17% year over year to still like tens of millions like 40 million unique users Alexa usage is up 345% year over year to 2 million oh yeah but it's up that's all I'm saying it's up Cortana was up too anyway look I think that's the show we're not kind of out of time here we're going over there's a bunch of housekeeping here at the end one Game of Thrones if you're listening to the show and you don't know Game of Thrones it starts on Sunday it seems like a weird demographic mismatch but Game of Thrones starts on Sunday which means Caitlin Tiffany's Game of Game of Thrones starts you haven't done your league you can go to our site you can go to Fantasizer play Game of Thrones that's very exciting to be clear that's like a fantasy football league but with Game of Thrones yes no one's born obviously Lauren's show next level please watch it it comes out on Tuesdays watch it share it it's great Lauren also has a great podcast called Timberus Ask you can listen to that Kara Swisher has Recode Decode Peter Koff has Recode Media all that's available on iTunes except for Lauren's show next level which is not available on iTunes but available everywhere else just find the stuff listen to it share it rank it review it tell your friends give us that thumbs up on next level we're doing a bunch of cool experiments on a platform called Anchor with Podcast we're going to roll out new Verge Podcast soon so go to anchor.fm slash verge check it out tell us what you like what you don't like we're still piloting a bunch of ideas so listen to that that's really fun and you can find us on Twitter I'm at Rockless Paul is at Future Paul we love your feedback on the show our audience is getting bigger and bigger so if you're new let us know what you want more of what you want less of we are occasionally responsive to your needs I think over the years we've done the show we've proven that to be true but we're really excited about all our new listeners so thank you so much for listening and we'll be back next week Rock and Roll Paul