 ["Motivational booming music"] uniquely polychromatic economy Hello. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. I'm Josh Topolsky, editor-in-chief of The Verge, and welcome to On the Verge. I hope you're ready to have a devilishly good time tonight. We've scared up some ghoulish...oh, screw this. I really wanted to do a Halloween show. We had one planned for the 30th, and we had to move it because of the hurricane. That's what the smoke was for. It kind of looked like...actually looked like something was on fire, not like a...I said I wanted it to look like a graveyard. That didn't really happen. Anyhow, yeah, we did have to move the show. As you know, a hurricane hit New York and Jersey and all over the place. A very bad hurricane named Sandy, and I just want to tell you guys, if you want to do something about it, you can go to redcross.org. You can donate some money. They're probably taking blood. I mean, I don't know how they do that over the Internet, but I understand it can be done. Anyhow, so we had to move the show, and we thought, let's pick a day where nothing's happening. Let's just find a day. There's nothing going on in the news. We can just have this all to ourselves. And we thought, November 6th is going to be great. It's going to be perfect for us, and I think you'll agree we chose correctly. Anyhow, there is an election happening right now, which is exciting. But we have a big show. We have an exciting show, and I'm really glad that you guys are here. Apparently, we're live streaming this, they've told me, which is terrifying. So if anything happens that seems like it was a mistake, that's part of the show. And we are very good at faking stuff. So we have a great show. The CEO of Foursquare is here, Dennis Crowley. We're going to talk about the, yeah. We're going to talk about Foursquaring, whatever that is, gamifying. I understand it's very exciting. Some of our friends from Polygon are here, Russ Frushtick and Chris Plant. We're going to be talking about, yeah, we'll talk about video games and emotions. It's going to be very heavy, very heavy stuff. And Paul and Neelay are here. Of course, Paul went to NASA. He went to Maker Faire. We've got some videos from that stuff, and they're very cool. I think you guys will enjoy it. And if you don't, that's tough. We did our best. So we should probably get underway. I want to say the show tonight is presented by Samsung. So give them a round of applause. They helped us put this on. And on an unrelated note, we're giving away three Galaxy Note 2s tonight. So some of you guys will leave with a device, and many of you will leave with nothing, as usual. So I think that's it. We should just get started. So let's do this. It's a big week, as you know. And we had a bunch of news this week. There's been a bunch of news this month. In fact, I don't even know why I'm telling you about all the news when I could just be talking about it with Paul Miller and Neelay Patel. So please welcome Paul Miller and Neelay Patel. Yes. Yes. How are you? Good to see you. Right there. Okay. Good. All right. I feel like we cuddle a little. That was weird. I don't know why you did that. That was normal, right? That's normal stuff. I don't know why you did that when we would have just done it on our own. Yeah. You don't have to force me to cuddle Neelay Patel. Do normal people touch like that? They do, right? Yes. I'll take that weird like the... You know when there's silence in a room, when it's actually the sound has been removed, it's not just like people aren't saying anything? That's what's happening right now. So as you know, first off, hi. Hey. How are you? Good. So I just mentioned that there's an election. There's the election going on right now in America, the presidential election. It's over. The candidates are... It's a heated, hotly contested race. Yeah. Barack Obama. There you go. The current president and his rival, Mitt Romney, the guy who wants to be president. Mitt Yark. Anyhow, so we realized that even though we're streaming this live now, we realized that many people would see this after the election and the president will have already been decided. Yes. And there are things we want to talk about as far as the president is concerned and technology. So we thought we'd just run through whoever wins, we do one for each. We talk about their views on technology and talk about them having won the election and what it means. Yeah. And then we'll just edit it. Right. And in retrospect, it will seem smart. It will seem like we had a great talking point about the winner of the election. So let's just do that now. So the election is over and the winner has been decided. Barack Obama is returning as president. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Do you want me to do it? We get some help. No! That was so weird. God, Obama is so amazing. Neal, do you want to switch seats with me? No, no, I do not. Have you ever seen confetti explode right towards your face? That was horrible. That was really horrible. Anyhow, Barack Obama has- I'm so excited. It's like I'm frightened. Has won a second term in office. And Neal, you wrote an editorial about how you were voting for Obama because he is for net neutrality. I did. What do you think the next- what's going to happen in the next four years? How do you think Obama's next four years, which he won in the election, how do you think those will affect- Which he conclusively won. Which he conclusively won in the election many days ago, how will that affect our lives? You know, this would be better if I had a small American flag to wave around. Oh, yeah, wait a second. Sorry. Here you are. And I have one too. I forgot all about that. You know, when I think about America and I think about the next four years with Barack, my buddy, you know, I think about the future of the internet and I think about the future of our company. Yes. And the other thing to me is that net neutrality is the only issue which I care about. Is it? You're a single- That's really sad. Yeah, but people are single issue voters. Yeah. You know what I mean? There are people in America without jobs right now. Yeah, they should get jobs on the internet. On the internet. Yes. If only we had net neutrality, we would have, everybody would have a job. Yeah. That's the serious point is that there's a secondary economy on the internet and the companies that provide access to the internet want to be the gatekeepers to that economy. And I don't think that they should be allowed to do that. Right. And if you guys haven't read this editorial that he wrote, it's quite good. And it basically, I mean, you know, you might agree or disagree on lots of different things when it comes to these guys. But I mean, I think a lot of people who work or at least spend a lot of their time on the internet, we think, and I'm sure you guys here think and everybody watching, net neutrality is important. It's important to find a way to have a free and open internet that everybody can compete on and that everybody can use. You know what I find, what I think is really interesting is that when I do other editorials and I criticize AT&T or Comcast or Verizon, nobody ever like disagrees with me. Nobody ever death threats you. Yeah. Nobody ever is like, you're dumb and you should be shot. Right. But when I say you should vote in a way that supports those editorials, then the death threats come. Then those people find you. Hard and fast. Yes. They want to murder you. Let me tell you where Neelai lives. It's, no, he lives in Brooklyn. Actually, I went there the other day and I slipped a death threat just right over your eye. I could have emailed him. I mean, Paul, I think this is even a place where obviously we have, you know, Paul and I, and perhaps Neelai and Paul have differing viewpoints on some political items, all of them. But you're a net neutrality believer. You believe in net neutrality. Or am I putting words in your mouth? You're putting words in my mouth. You hate net neutrality. Yeah. I am, I'm always scared of regulating companies, regulating, especially regulating somebody in the name of freedom because I think sometimes you end up picking winners. So I don't really know too well where either candidate was on net neutrality because I voted on other topics. Other non-net neutrality topics. Yeah. You had multiple other single issues. Yeah. So I'm a single issue voter and far other. In multiple categories. You know, it's very confusing up here. But I voted and net neutrality was not the reason I voted. But, you know, it's still important. It's important we figure it out. So how do you think the next four years are going to fare under Barack Obama? Well, now that Barack Obama has been elected president again, as we definitely know, as we just found out for four years. No, as we've known for a few days. I think the Internet is going to be kind of in a stasis. I think we're going to have this back and forth argument. I don't think we're going to, at least for the next couple of years, I don't really know what it's going to look like past that. But I think we're kind of in this holding pattern and we're going to argue. I think people still need to figure out what the words net neutrality mean because both sides use that term. They don't anymore. Oh, really? Well, we've got to move on because we've got a lot of stuff to talk about. Give me those flags. Okay, here we go. Let's clean this off. Let's get this. All right. Okay. I'm going to put these here like so. Okay. All right. Wait. Let me just move that there. Okay. That didn't work at all. You ready? Okay, good. You ready? Good. Okay. So it's been a big week in news, big month in news. And of course, we just had the election, the presidential election, and a bit of a shocking result. Mitt Romney has been elected. Yes. Mitt Romney has had... I'm sharing success on so many different levels. Mitt Romney has been elected the next president. 45th. 45th president of the United States. He's going to be gliding on into the White House. Yeah. With that slicked back hair. And anyhow, Neil I recently wrote an editorial about net neutrality and why he was voting for Barack Obama, and I believe did. Yeah, Neil, what do you think about... Yeah, how do you feel now that we've been beaten? Now that it's had time to sink in. Yeah. God, this would be so much easier if I had a small American flag. Oh, you know what? Let me actually just pass one of these down. Oh, thank you. All right. Here we are right there. You know, I waved this flag in sadness today. Really? Yeah. I believe that we should move forward, not backwards. And onto the internet. And not onto a highway. And not off the internet. Online. So you're saying that whoever is the president of the United States, which we've just found out is Mitt Romney, should use the internet. Yes. Should tweet. But you're honing in. You agree. But, Neil, your premise of your editorial was that Mitt Romney is against net neutrality that he would partner with, or he would not partner with, but he would stand for the rights of AT&T and Verizon and Comcast over the rights of American citizens to have access, free and open access, and competing businesses on the internet. And now we're living in a world where Mitt Romney is the president. Definitely the president. Was elected president of America. Of the United States of America. That's what happened. And so what do you think is going to happen in the next four years? You know, I don't think Mitt Romney thinks that we should side with AT&T and Comcast. I think he believes that there is a free market that exists that will achieve good things. Can't people flag wave him while you're doing this? I don't believe that market exists. I don't think that people have a real choice for their home broadband. I think people in New York who have Time Warner Cable would tell you that Time Warner Cable does not feel the pressure of competition. I think people who have AT&T and have to upgrade to a mobile share plan to get FaceTime. What's the opposite of pressure of competition? Because that's what Time Warner Cable feels. Glorious freedom to squeeze you for profit. Monopoly. Glorious monopoly. You know, I just don't, I don't think companies in their hearts want to compete. Right. I think you have to make them. And you think Mitt Romney will keep those policies in place that are letting them dominate in monopolies? Yeah, I mean, I think you already see it. And Paul, you're a Mitt Romney supporter. Your thoughts in the next four years? Well, I just think we're going to find out now that he's president. You don't have any other thoughts on that? We're going to find out. All right. Well, we've got to move on. It was an exciting election and I'm just a little sad to find out that. Are you going to use the flag to sweep? No, I don't think so. Give me that. I remember in the Boy Scouts. We've got a lot of other news to talk about. A lot of other news. A lot of other things. It's a really festive surface. Let's move along. Put these here like so. There's other big news. There's a lot going on. Lucasfilm. Do you guys know about this? Lucasfilm selling to Disney and making more Star Wars films. Seven, eight, nine. And I learned this today. They're following the story of Jar Jar Binks as he becomes a Sith Lord. Sith Binks. Sith Binks. It goes very dark, I'm told. Very dark. Can I ask this audience a question? What do you feel more trepidation about? Your candidate losing the presidency or Disney making more Star Wars films? Definitely the Star Wars films. It's definitely Star Wars. Everyone's more worried about that. Like destroying the United States. That'll have a big impact. But I haven't met Romney or Barack Obama. You're more worried about Disney making a Star Wars film than you're worried about George Lucas making another Star Wars film? Ooh. Ooh. But I think he knew not to do it. No, he did know not to do it. That's like GW running for a third term. He's like, no, nope. Not going to do that. All right. I'm not going to. I don't want to argue. But he made more. You think he would have stopped? Yes. He's probably like, you know what? I'll do this deal. But you have to promise to make more. And here he's like a thousand page thing. He pushed towards them. He's like, here's the way I see it going. Yeah. Big focus on Jar Jar. Sif banks. Anyhow. So other news. We celebrated our first birthday. We did. At The Verge. One year. Yes. Thank you. Why am I squinting? No, no, no. More tepid applause. Yeah. We celebrated our first. Where's the third one? That's the third one. Here we go. We have a real problem on this show getting this. Congratulations, Leland. Getting those confetti cans. You built good weather. You built good weather. You built good weather. You built good weather. You built good weather. You built good weather. You built good weather. You built good weather. You built good weather. You built good weather. You built good weather. You built good weather. You built good weather. You built good weather. Anyhow. So, show's up. A year. I didn't think we'd make it a month, to be honest with you. So I'm excited. Yeah. And I feel like at any moment it could be taken away from us. Much like the election was taken away from Barack or Mitt, depending on which edit we use. What are your favorite memories from last year? Do you have any favorite memories? I think it's Paul quitting the internet for six months. That's your favorite memory? That happened. No, I mean that's- I knew Paul and I wouldn't have to talk every day. You know, I think that's part of my favorite memories. We've had the opportunity to do what look and feel like crazy things. Yes, they are. They chase kind of big ideas and Paul leaving the internet is definitely one of them. That's a big one. I mean this, we do this, which is crazy. Has been crazy. We released the surface. We released the surface after a lot of R&D, a lot of development on this baby. I worked hard on this touch cover. We lied to people's faces about who is currently the president of the United States. Or did we? Or did we? But anyhow- Barack O'Romney. I have to say, I will say- A lot of disappointed laughs. I would just like to say about our first birthday that when we started, I really didn't know if what we were trying to do would work. I don't think we reinvented the wheel or anything. I think we were just trying to make something really good that we were proud of and that other people really liked. I have to say that to have done it for a year and to have had success and to have seen our numbers grow and our readership grow and people liking it and loving it. I was at the airport in LA a couple of weeks ago and somebody randomly came up to me and they were like, hey, you're the dude from the verge. I read the site every day. It was insane and incredible to me that people out in the world are reading what we do. I just want to thank whoever is watching live and you guys in the audience here and anybody else give yourselves a round of applause because you're- You really applauded for yourselves longer than anything else. Without the audience, which has grown and grown and is amazing, we would be nothing. It's all thanks to people who want to read this stuff. You know what's really, I think, whenever we try to do something that's very different and crazy, when we're like, let's let Trent take Adderall for a month. Well, we didn't tell him to take Adderall. He was just doing that. We didn't tell him. Yeah. I mean, and let's write about that or let's post that it's really about who I'm voting for and we take these risks. When we do things that are way outside the box, there's a lot of feedback. People like it. I will say the one thing that's been most exciting is that when we think to do something and it's like, this seems weird and maybe people won't be into it, our audience is always like, we love this. We're making a website that we would want to read and it's just so awesome that other people want to read it. But we have done a lot of straight up news coverage recently and we should talk about some of it. As you know, the Surface just came out. There's been a ton of gadgets released recently. Surface just came out. This is the Nexus 4. This is the Nexus 10. This is the new Google products. This thing here, which somebody spilled water on, was the iPad mini. Here's what used to be the Lumia 920, which somebody also spilled some kind of liquid on. I'm not naming names. There's something about this bright colors that make something look waterproof even if it's not. Yeah, right. Well, they're not. This is really soaked. Okay, it's fine. It's a big deal. I'm not going to interview you. It's more than this. With the release of Windows 8, this is a wacky form factor. We know tablets and we know phones. These are kind of familiar to us now. This is getting a little bit weird. We actually have a bunch of new Windows 8 devices that we brought with us that we kind of wanted to show how people are kind of pushing their boundaries on design a little bit. Let's walk over to... We have a gadget table. Let's walk over to it. Let's be honest with ourselves. Let's take a look. Yeah. I just clapped for our gadget table. These are all sleeping. They're all sleeping. They're all asleep. Tell us about these gadgets, Neilon. God, I love Windows 8. These are all Windows 8 devices. They're all Windows 8. Here's the thing. All the stuff we saw on the desk is they're tablets and phones. They've been tablets and phones for a while, four or five years. Some of them, now they come in colors. The crazy thing about them, but the crazy thing... That's very exciting to me. Maybe I'm crazy, but I feel like we went through this with the iMac where somebody was like, you could put a color on a computer. Did you know you could just put it if you want? Yeah. And then everybody's like, hey, colors. That's crazy. Yeah. And now we forgot all about it and everything was beige and gray. We definitely forgot about that with PCs. PCs have been beige and orange all the time. Apple kind of forgot about it for a while, too. They're back into colors. A little bit. No. Oh, they have new... Oh, the iPods, but whatever. They're iPods. All right. But the thing about PCs is that Windows 8, because they've actually grafted a touch screen on Windows 8 for real, they're allowed to do crazy things. So obviously you have the Surface. There it is. It's got a type cover. I think this is Microsoft saying, here's what we think PCs should look like. But the thing about Windows 8 is that the other companies get to do whatever they want, too. So here's Asus. That's true, right? They just sell the licenses. There are no rules anymore. So here's Asus, and they did Transformers with Android. So this is actually a... This is a Windows 8. Is this a... Windows 8. RT or regular Windows 8? That's right. RT. This is RT. And it has... You can just break it any way you want. You can do it, man. Look at how strong it is, is what I'm trying to show you. Anyhow, this... There's latches right here. Oh, there's a latch. Okay. I actually think this is the winning form factor for these things. It's a tablet. This is kind of like an iPad. Yeah. And then it's got this thing which you can throw in a bag, which is... It's okay. It's not as thin. The keyboard's a little small. But it's also a battery. Yeah. No, it's great. It's smaller. Oh, the keys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I need a little more room. But it's like... So the thing about this and the surface is that these are 69. Right. And I think this... Yeah, they're a little big. This is really silly for me, a tablet. Well, but... Could be a lot worse. Yes. Could be a lot worse, Neil. Allow me to show you. What size screen is this? This is like a 13.3 Toshiba. And this looks like a tablet. It's huge. But it turns into a laptop like that. And then it does that. Which is... I mean, this is crazy. I mean... And the amount of engineering they had to do... If you look at this hinge, it's got like tracks. It's got sprayer. I think this is the thing that's most exciting is that people are finally innovating on hinges. Yeah. And this is just great. Well, no, it's like a... You know, there was a moment in phones where they innovated crazy on hinges. And then... And then they're like, hinges are a bad idea. Now I'm reading a book, just comfortably read one-handed reading. And then I got an incoming call. After five years, that guy... Every time. You put anything huge up to your ear. Hello? It says, you're not connected in giant letters. That is true. That is true. But it's a touch screen. Yeah. You know, Sean reviewed this thing. It's interesting. I mean, this is like the explosion of ideas of how computers should look. I wish it did more folding. Well, the thing with... So the thing with all of these to me is like, you're supposed to touch them, but the hinges here. So it's like, that didn't work. That's not great. I think you're forcing that a little bit. The thing that scares me about... This reminds me of like the original tablet PC era. Like Windows tablet edition sort of computers. Like whenever... Yeah, you've got a stylus and they're just a little... It's a little... Well, I mean, like this thing is like, this is a really great movie prop. You know, it's like, oh, hello. I've got a call. Hello. A call is coming in. So she was... All right, but this is your favorite. This is my favorite. You love this. This love is a strong word. This is the yoga from Lenovo. The yoga. So it's a tablet, but it has maybe the smartest hinge where it just turns into a laptop. And then it is a laptop. It's better when you show this, just so you understand what's happening with this particular... You fold it all the way back. It's a 15 inch display. It's a touch screen? Yeah. It's a touch screen. And then it does... It's just the worst tablet in the world. And then it does this. And then it does that. Right. Right? Seems comfortable, right? Yeah. It's just weird because you're holding... What is... Come on, guys. Seriously, who here, show of hands, would use it like this? Literally two... One guy was like, just kidding. He was like the third guy. He was like, I don't think so. So here's what's cool. I think... Let me just do this. Can I? There we are. Let me just put this like so. These guys... I think what's really great is that people are innovating on hinges and form factors. But I just don't think... I don't know if any human beings really want to do that. And that's the problem. I think Microsoft has the best idea. I think I actually think the surface is... Well I think this kind of the Asus is getting there. It's close. Keyboard's a little small. But I think this is closer. This is what's strange is that an operating system is... That's why these manufacturers are like, we can try a wireless idea. And they send the designers into a room. They do acid. They're like, we'll fold it all the way back. Well you know, I mean, as we know, Microsoft, they primed the pump. Maybe they opened their minds to yoga. They primed the pump with the surface. Yeah, they did yoga. And now... And now I will call it video. All right, and that's our gadgets section of the show. We have a video. Paul went to NASA. And he became an astronaut. He went into outer space and he found aliens. And we have it on video. So take a look at this. We'll be right back with Dennis Crowley from Foursquare. Americans don't fly spaceships anymore. We catch a ride with Russia. Commercial space flight is awesome and it's doing really well. And it might get American humans and American vehicles up soon. But it might take NASA a decade to build its own capsule and get astronauts back in space. So what happens now at NASA? What is happening now? I'm here at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, opening the doors to shed light on the future of human space travel. So this is Robonaut 2. These are a collaboration between NASA, GM. There's a guy exactly, almost exactly like this up in space right now. This is in Houston and NASA tests out new routines, new behaviors. And they ship them over to another lab where they have an exact replica of Robonaut that's on the space station where they finalize the routine. Then they beam that up space and they do it for real. The whole idea behind Robonaut is to provide an assistant for crew. A Robonaut could work side by side with the crew like a nurse to a doctor. Or you could also take down all the tools and everything, all the infrastructure after a particular task is completed. I think it's important to keep in mind that Robonaut is a tool. Many people talk about science fiction robots and how they can go and do things on their own. Robonaut has been designed specifically to be a tool for people. It only does what we tell it to do. And it's been designed with the safety and the reliability to be a useful tool around people, not to go off and do anything on its own. I'm just going to show you a quick little scene from National Treasure 3. At the start of the movie, Nicolas Cage is sent to space using one of the Russian vehicles that currently takes astronauts to space because the space shuttle has been decommissioned. And he's looking for the lost U.S. Constitution. And unknown to the other astronauts, sends Robonaut outside the space station to retrieve the Constitution. And so Robonaut can fold back the thermal blanket that's hiding the U.S. Constitution. And Nicolas Cage, back inside the space station, because Nicolas Cage doesn't know how to spacewalk, is like, oh thanks, Robonaut. I will take the U.S. Constitution to the President of the United States and ask him, why did you hide this in the space station? Well, why don't you look in the envelope? Why don't you look in the envelope? It's not the Constitution, it's just the photo. So this is called the RoboGlove. An exoskeleton for your hand. It's basically designed to help you grab things and make you stronger. In the glove itself, here on the thumb, we have something called a force sensor resistor. We actually actuate the tendons and we pull them down and then release them when you let go of the FSR. And that's what gives you the extra power to lift an object, like a heavyweight or something. But I can lift heavyweights all day, I guess I want you guys to know. Very capable of lifting heavyweight. Sure. I'm here in front of the Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicle. And so this is a capsule with a dead body mounted to the outside. So explain, you're telling me this is like a modular system. So that's where Multi-Mission comes in. The chassis is effectively a robot. This robot has wheels and that moves around. The payload is the cabin. So can I drive it? Yeah, let's hop in. So what do I do? I'm the pilot now? You're the pilot. So pretty much push the stick in the direction you want to travel and the vehicle will do what it needs to do to get there. Here we go. So you'll notice we're not just tipping into it. So right now, if you were outside, you'd see it forcing this right wheel down into that hole. This is incredible. This is really incredible. It doesn't make any sense. It's just like I'm going in a weird random direction. I'm floating and I'm bobbing. The computer itself won't allow you to do things that are going to jeopardize the safety of the robot. As you're going over the hill, you're starting to pick up more speed because your vehicle weighs a lot. But the wheels notice that and say, well, I'm only getting a command of one meter per second and it slows you down. So you maintain that speed. Oh, man. I just feel like it's just giving me out of a pinch every time. That is the goal. I'm just being rescued basically by a robot. We can venture over to Mars if you want. Yeah, let's do it. I'm sick of the moon. Can we go through the water? Yeah. Yes. I think there's life down there. I saw a dragon fly. Not anymore. That's our C300. It's a $16,000 camera. I'm going to run over it. I'm going to close my eyes and you're going to tell me to go straight and you tell me when to stop. Okay. Ready? Yeah. Push your stick forward. My eyes are closed. Stick is forward. All right. We're doing it. It's looking good. Oh, my gosh. It's probably not quite centered, but I think we made it. $16,000. I don't see anybody in the cameras crying. It's okay. It's okay. We probably ought to back off. You should look at the rear view camera. This is the space vehicle mockup facility where they have space vehicle mockups within the facility. This is Orion. This is NASA's next generation space capsule. This is how we would get back from the moon or Mars or wherever we go next. This is how we land back on Earth. You could live in here for a while. Four people could be in here if they really liked each other. They could be in here for 21 days. Basically, this room is awesome, and I'm going to live here. NASA Johnson Space Center visitor Miller Paul Josiah expires Wednesday, October 17th. That's today. I would say space is the final frontier. A final frontier, that's a lot. It's like in Little House on the Prairie when they moved to the little cabin in the big woods, but that wasn't far enough. They moved further to the Little House on the Prairie. One day, we found an ocean. Who knew? An ocean. On the whole other side of the country, there's an ocean this whole time. I think space is like that. The scientists that I met today in Houston at NASA, they're working on human space flight. We are not there yet, but we're working on it. That's cool. I have to say, I am very jealous of Paul for getting to go on that trip. It's very cool stuff. Paul is really good at that. He's really good at going and doing things. I envy that. We shouldn't waste any more time. I want to bring out our first guest. Please welcome the CEO of Foursquare, Dennis Crowley. Thank you for coming. Be very careful. We try to make it difficult for people to get over. You got to step over that thing, you got to step up, and that arm is broken. Yeah, it's a little mini obstacle course for sure. We brought back the broken arm sofa just for you. Dennis, thank you for coming. Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. I'm excited to be here. It really is our pleasure to have you. You're here in New York. You're based in New York. Yeah, we have offices down in Soho. Would you say... Now, I want to talk a little bit about... I want to get into the roots of Foursquare. Yeah. First, I want to talk about the East Coast, West Coast startup battle. It's gotten very heated. Can you trash talk Silicon Valley at all for us right now and talk about how much better New York is for startups? I think I like the New York scene a lot because there's just a lot more people here. There's like eight million people here versus... I don't know how many people are in San Francisco. Fifteen. But considerably fewer though, right? Then on top of that, the thing I like about building a tech startup in New York is that tech is not the most important thing here. It's fifth down on the list. You've got fashion and finance and media and publishing and advertising and pretty much everything else except for tech. Tech is way down at the bottom. When you meet people out and you ask them to beta test the things that you're building or get excited about the stuff you're building, they're just regular people. They're not early adopters. I think it makes it much easier to build things in this environment. You're not like, hey, I'm doing Foursquare. You can check in place. You become mayor of a place. They're like, oh, I'm using a different thing that does exactly that. Yeah, I have my own startup that does that. Yeah, no. My startup is actually doing that. I can totally test it. Yeah, exactly. That is a thing though. I mean, it is. You don't have a million different startups all doing, trying to do similar things here. It's like there's a few. I feel like New York startups and maybe because we're a publishing, part of a publishing startup really, I am biased. I feel like there's something a little bit more like the startups here are much more real. They're real things. They involve real world, either real world activities or they're things that you actually need for your life versus stuff like, hey, what if we had Yelp for shoes? I don't know. I mean, that's Yelp, isn't it? I don't really know. Well, there's a smaller pool of them here. You look at the big ones. We're one of the biggest ones here. Then you've got your Tumblers and your Etsy's and your Kickstarters and your Meetups. It's just a smaller pool to compare yourself with. When you look at the big startups that are out west, it's not just the big tech companies. You've got your Googles and your Facebooks and your Twitters and your Apples. It's just a different breed of big tech company. Right. I mean, Facebook and Twitter, they've graduated to a different sphere of... They're not like a startup. Yeah, but when you think about it- You're in that sphere too. Yeah. I mean- You're not really even a startup. We're like 150 people. Right? 150 years old. Yeah, exactly. Right? Out west, I think that's still considered relatively small, but we're one of the bigger players in the New York tech scene. It's like a different distinction of scale, I guess. To recap, the west coast startup scene, lame. East coast startup scene, awesome. Is that what I'm hearing? Can we summarize that way? Can we quote you on that? Okay, good. See, I don't want to poo-poo the west coast because we have an office out there. Shut it down. We've got like 35 guys in the office. It's your wasting your time here. Yeah. I actually want to talk about the beginnings of Foursquare. Foursquare was not Foursquare originally. Foursquare was like... If you go way back in the day, it's me building software for my friends that got laid off for my very first dot com job. Which was what? Well, actually my second job. I worked at a company called Jupiter Research, in which I was the guy making PowerPoint slides. Then I worked at- That was your job? You were just like- I was pretty much- This awesome arrow. Yeah. Pretty much. Making slides for other people to give during presentations and things. Then I worked at a mobile product shop called Vindigo that was building city guides for Palm Pilots. Then I was at this company, Vindigo, I really got bit by the bug of, hey, you can make stuff during the day and you go out at night and you see people using the stuff that you were working on during the day. They're using it on their Palm Pilots. That was kind of a big deal. I know Palm Pilots is super old school. I was like, oh my God, you build stuff during the day and you see people using it at night. That's incredibly rewarding. This idea of just building stuff that my friends would use and building stuff that I want to use, I just got really kind of bit by that bug. Right. The first version of Dodgeball ended up coming out of that. We ended up- Can you explain Dodgeball a little bit for people who don't know what it is? Sure. Dodgeball is, I can't remember how we used to pitch it back in the day, but it was just like a basic friend finder for text messaging. This is before you had GPS and phones or color screens or apps in general. Anywhere that my friends in New York would go out, you would just send a text message to nyc at dodgeball.com and say, I'm at the magician, I'm at Tom and Jerry's, I'm at Central Park. Then that message would get rebroadcast to all of your friends. We had a poor man's little social network built into it. It didn't work. It was SMS based. It was SMS, yeah. It didn't work because no one really kind of knew what social networks were. This is back in 2001. People didn't know what social networks were. Text messaging barely worked. We kept trying to resurrect the idea. We did it after Friendster kind of hit pseudo mass market. It's like, oh, now we can explain it as it's like Friendster for cell phones. Then we tried to resurrect it again when we were at NYU and did it with, then we ended up bringing it to Google. I feel like now, a couple years later, some of those ideas are a little bit more in the right time, right place. The devices are more mature. Everyone here knows about apps in your phone. You all know that you have GPS. Everyone here has phones that can do these things. It's just a much larger audience. You've been trying to do, I mean, you've essentially been trying to do something like Foursquare or been trying to do Foursquare for a very long time. Foursquare, when was the year for Foursquare started? We started 2009. Way before that though, you were kind of trying to find a way to say, pay I'm out of place, tell people about it. Yeah, I'd say it goes back to 2001 or so. Which is insane. Yeah, but it barely worked. We had 15 people using it. You really, really want people to know where you are. Well, it just makes meeting up with people easier and more fun. Foursquare was, a few years ago, everybody talked about Foursquare as, it was like, we're gamify everything. We're going to gamify our lives. Foursquare is one of these things where it's like, I get achievements for doing stuff that I'm doing anyhow. I can become the mayor of somewhere. I can get badges for stuff. Obviously, that stuff is all still baked into Foursquare. But it seems like the last couple of years, certainly the last year, things have been moving towards, not just about, hey, I got an achievement or I'm the mayor of something, but Foursquare is going to be an engine for finding things. Yeah, for discovery. Yeah, for discovery and getting recommendations. Can you talk a little bit about the shift or if there is a shift and what that means to you? I don't really see it so much as a shift. What we're trying to do, the essence of Foursquare, is how do you use software to encourage people to go out and to have experiences that they haven't had before? A big part of that is the recommendation engine that we've got, a whole bunch of data scientists working, crunching the three billion check-ins to make these recommendations happen in real time. There's another part of that. We weren't able to do that in the early days. We just didn't have the team or the talent. We weren't sophisticated enough to do that. In the early days, we were using basic game mechanics, like the badges that probably most of the people in this room know about, where it's like, can we use software to encourage people to go to places that they haven't been to before? Initially, it was, I live in the East Village, and there's a bar that I always go to called 7B. It was like, this is just my default place. How do you make a piece of software that encourages me to go to some place I haven't been before, to bring my friends there, to go to another borough, to travel uptown, to get a group of people together and do something none of us have done before? Can you make a game out of that? If you design the game well enough, can it encourage people to do those types of things? We're finding that a lot of that stuff works. The game mechanics have worked pretty well in Foursquare. If you level up in coffee, it's like, hey, I'm a level six coffee person, because I've been to 30 different places in New York. People feel some sense of accomplishment over that. Like, hey, I unlocked the gym rat badge for going to the gym 10 times out of a 30-day period. It kind of works. Do you ever feel like, I'm going to get a little bit deep on you here. Do you ever feel like the idea of gamifying for adults, going to a bar is very adult activity, right? Yeah. Do you ever feel that the... I'm sure you have a wonderful response to this. Do you ever feel like in some way gamifying things that we normally do is a way of infantilizing us? I don't play... In my daily life, I don't think of the things I do as an achievement that I need to unlock or a game that I have to play. Is there something about taking tasks or things that we do recreationally and turning them into a game that in some way diminishes their value or their importance? I think there's a big difference between trying to turn everything into a game and try to make everything playful. I don't ever think of Foursquare as a game. There's game mechanics in there, but I think of it as there's been all these just utilities, things that will help you do stuff on the internet for a long time. We should make those things more fun. They should be fun to use and fun to interact with. That's where a lot of the game mechanics come from. I want to make everyday interactions of going to the same restaurant, commuting every day, traveling in between cities. I want to make that stuff feel playful and rewarding. It doesn't have to be a game, but I think it's important to note the distinction. Do you think as people, as humans, we need to be rewarded for doing... Is that something that you think is baked into our DNA that we want to be rewarded or we need to be rewarded? I don't think... Rewards come in different sizes and shapes. Every time that you get a like on Instagram, that's being rewarded. That's like the little bit of a dopamine hit. I feel like that's a multiplayer version of it, because you post something and then your friends interact with it, and that's two players interacting. The Foursquare stuff was designed to be more one player. You do something in the real world and Foursquare rewards you for doing that. A badge, a mayor unlock, you get a tip that tells you about something you should order at a restaurant. Those are all little dopamine hits in the same type of way that make people feel good. Like, hey, if I put data into the system, it's enhancing my experience of the real world. You feel like there's a physiological... Obviously, there is, you're right about the dopamine hit. Do you feel like that's actually fundamental to what you're doing, that you want people to feel this sense of, hey, this visceral sense of, hey, I've got something or I accomplished something? Yeah, it doesn't need to be down to the chemical level of it, but I always think of Foursquare as we should be able to make these little guides that live in your pocket, like a guide to the city that basically has all the knowledge that your friends have about all the places in the world. That wherever you end up bringing your phone, that guide can come to life and say, hey, these are the things that you need to pay attention to. It doesn't have to be one of those one-player rewards, like a badge or a mayor mechanic. Those might happen all the time. As long as I can be someplace I haven't been before, and Foursquare can surface a little bit of information for me that helps me understand that place or make my 15 or 20 minutes I spend in that place a little bit more interesting. No one's really done stuff like that before. We're showing that when you do it, it works. It works pretty well. You talked about putting data into it, incentivizing people to put data into Foursquare. We have a video, and I don't know if we can cue this up or not, but you guys posted this thing which is the map of check-ins during the hurricane. Do we have this up? This is it. You can see the dates going by there. You can see all this activity move, literally move out of the lower part of- Actually, I haven't even seen this yet. This is awesome. You haven't seen this? It's really crazy because you can see the migration. Play it again. Can we run that one more time? You can see there's a lot of activity downtown. And then- Oh, that's rad. It goes dark, the way the power does in a way, and the way people's ability to get down there. This data is obviously very valuable. You're using it for stuff that is like, hey, I love this bar or this restaurant. There was an article in the Believer, a little bit of a mean-spirited Foursquare article, where they said, they were making fun of the idea that people say, it's like saying things like, people talk about mac and cheese in Williamsburg, which is very surface information. Do you see that data is valuable? What we just showed is important. That's a life-threatening situation. You guys are collecting all this information. Are there other uses for that data? Are there other ways that you can utilize that data or that you can share that data? I think everything that you see going on in Foursquare now, like in our Explore recommendation engine, that's all the magic that we're trying to deliver to people. We have all these folks that give us a little bit of information about what they do every day, like the types of coffee places they go to, the different places they go to in Williamsburg, different places they go to all over the world. We take all those check-in data points, and we can really start making these recommendation engines that are personalized to people. For the history of local search on the internet, it's always been, like if everyone here goes to Google or Yelp right now and we search for sushi, we all get the same results. That's broken. That's so super broken because we all have different tastes. Our friends have all been to different places. We all had different experiences. It's very clear that that stuff is going to change. You want that to be for a person, not just a generalized statement about- The big thing that we're able to do, that no one's been able to do before, is be able to have personalized local search results for any person at any given point in time. Foursquare search results are different depending on the intersection you're standing on, the day of the week it is, the time of the day it is. We can potentially get into things where it's like, is it colder than it normally is? Is it warmer than it normally is? Where do people normally go around these times? You look at those check-in points there. Sometimes people look at Foursquare and be like, oh, it's cute. It's about points and badges and stuff. That's great that people get that part of it. That was four days of data up there. That just shows how Foursquare in New York is a living, breathing type of organism. There's all sorts of interesting data that's being teased out of that. It's our responsibility to take all those data points and use it to help everyone in this room and everyone in New York and everyone in the world use that to make better sense out of what's going on nearby. Interesting. We have to wrap up. Unfortunately, there's a lot more I want to... There's a bunch of questions I didn't get to. Tell me about... Do you see Foursquare as a company that IPOs? Are you a Facebook? Does this become a public company? Everyone asks us this all the time. When are you guys going to IPO? How soon is it going to be? I tell you, it's one of the last things that we think about. Our job is just to build the best products that we can right now. We've got just over 25 million users, almost three billion check-ins. In order to compete in the scale in which we're competing with, we're the smallest of the big companies right now. We've got to grow our audience. We've got to grow the business. We've got to figure out how to work better as teams and everything. If we figure out all that stuff, then those are the questions that we've got to start thinking about. For now, it's just how do you build stuff that's better than the stuff we're launching today? How do you build stuff that just people love using every single day? Thank you very much for coming. Dennis Crowley, everybody. You've got to come back. There's a lot more we need to get to. Stick around. You stick. Don't go anywhere. You guys don't go anywhere. We have a... Paul went to Maker Faire. Another wild trip with Paul. Take a look at this, and we'll be right back with the Paul Young guys. Thank you. Welcome back. Go ahead and give me a hug. I think it's going to be a long, long time. I'm here at Maker Faire, which is kind of like a renaissance fair for nerds. I guess renaissance fairs are for nerds. It's like a... It's a renaissance fair for makers. I'm going to see what I can see and maybe learn how to program in Python and build my own robot. I don't know. Whatever. It's cool. This is Thummy Wars. That's the official name that we came up with at the beginning of the 72-hour build off. So everything in here was built in 72 hours. We actually have two potentiometers. There's one in this thumb and one in this thumb. There's an Arduino program that's basically monitoring those two potentiometers and determining whether or not there's a pin based on the threshold and the amount of time that the thumbs are down. Did you do the one, two, three, four, I just put a thumb over, yeah. And then basically just... A thumbing war? Yeah. So nobody says that. Yeah. Are you really that bad? Yes. Dude, it's so cool. When I was coming in, this kid with his dad, I skated past them and he's like, whoa. And then I was like, wait for it, wait for it. He's got a skateboard. I felt like just like a superhero. I was like, this is probably enough to have a skateboard. Oh dude, we got a straight... Okay, can I go all the way? Go ahead. Break it. It'll do like four miles an hour right now. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Is this like the primary expression of what you do? Yeah, absolutely. Outside of blogs? There's nothing better in the world than taking something up here and then transforming it into reality and having everyone enjoy it. It's the best feeling in the world. Can you power slide in this? Get some blue sparks going. Well, you've transformed relaxation into reality. And then just kind of position yourself between the poles. Oh yeah. I don't have to go anywhere. I've gone to the relaxation town. I'll just yell stop if somebody's going to be about to be impaled. How do you turn? You'll figure it out. Oh yeah. We're out of Portsmouth, Virginia. Yeah, total East Coasters. We're right on the ocean. You rode this all the way up? No. You can't handle top speed. We took an electric wheelchair, basically cut it up, welded a bunch of stuff onto the chassis, modified it a little bit, and now it has a hammock that's suspended in. This is so awesome. You said it can get up to 5 Gs. Each person has a dead man's switch. Whoever lets go of the dead man's switch first loses, obviously, but then it winds down. Has anyone died yet? No. Do you have a barf bag ready? Chad, it was nice knowing you. Thanks Chad. And thank you. Thanks. Oh my gosh. Totally fine the whole time. And then as soon as it stopped, my eyes were like spinning. My eyes kept going. And now I'm like shaking, and I'm like woozy. I actually want a hot dog now. I want to do it again. I'm not really into the spinning. That's how Goose died. I'm having a lot of fun here, but I don't know. Maybe I'm having too much fun. You know, America used to build things. They used to go places. I feel like I should make something myself. Green LEDs. Everything needs soldering irons these days. I don't know how to solder. I don't own a soldering gun. I have so much to learn. This is the Raspberry Pi starter kit, which I've been told to get. And I don't know what this is. I don't know what this is. I don't know what this does. But it looks really cool, so I'm going to try to build something with it. And we'll see what happens. It's going to be an adventure, and I could fall on my face. But that's what this is all about. It's discovery. Yeah, the sad truth is that Paul discovered that you need to go online to use the Raspberry Pi kit and can't make anything with it. All right, I want to bring out our next guests. They are editors from polygon.com, our new sister site that covers video games, I'm told. So please welcome Chris Plant and Russ Frushtick. Yes, yes, how are you? Out of order. Out of order. Have a seat. Be careful. Be very careful. Oh, my God. I'm telling you to be careful, then I trip. Can you imagine that happening? It just happened. Chris and Russ. Can I call you Rush? You can. Can I just tell you I hate your name? Really? You hate the whole thing? Russ Frushtick is the hardest name to say. But you're doing such a good job at it. I know, but I just feel like I got to try. Did you know Frushtick is German for breakfast? That's how I remember it. Is that right? The first time I landed in Germany, every woman was like Frushtick. I am hungry just thinking about your name. Rightfully so. Anyhow, so if you guys don't know, has everybody here gone to Polygon? Have you gone to Polygon? Well, everyone here is not clapping. I see them too. People over here are not clapping. Do yourself a favor, okay? You're abusing yourself by not going to Polygon and reading their news. Features and things. We've got a few things. They cover video games. And actually, so you guys have been doing this thing called press reset or press reset. You know what? I don't want to judge how people pronounce it. I go with press reset. Anyhow, they've been doing this multi-part kind of documentary about building the site, launching the site. And it was really cool. It was very cool. And we actually have a clip from the launch. This is like the launch video. Take a look at this so you get a taste of what they're doing, which is very interesting. The best thing about working with these guys is I love competing with them and they're my best friends. The best part performing with these two guys is they keep me in line and it's a lot of fun. Describe our acting when we're in over hot. Yes. Thank you. That was, I'm going to say, weeks of preparation. You had some great moves. We really were. Great moves. Months of preparation. And we will look at some press reset. But you guys had this big launch. You've been working on it for how long? How long had you been working? Since January is pretty much when we brought the team together and brought everyone in and talked about what we wanted to do. Did anyone cry when you launched? Yeah. I mean, Chris Grant, he's a man of lots of emotions. Chris Grant, is he here? Is he here somewhere? I think he's right there. There's a bald man in the still shot. Are you crying right now? A little bit. Let's talk, it's okay. You cover video games. Yes. Right? Yeah. Let's talk about video games. Okay. Have you heard about this new Halo? Halo 4. Oh, yeah. Have you seen it? Yeah, yeah. What do you think? I think it looks great. It's fun. But we were talking backstage. I played it. And you took issue with the fact that much of Halo 4- Have you guys seen these Halo games? I mean, within five minutes, you're shooting aliens. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What do you look at? You looking for diplomacy? I don't know. It seems like something a little bit more. Trade negotiation perhaps? My crazy bit, are the Halo aliens a little outdated now? They're pretty cartoonish. Because they like- Those little guys with their shells and they sound like cartoon characters- What would be more appropriate for our modern time, for you? I think if you had to do some diplomacy with the aliens. Yeah, yeah. Probably if you immediately sat down at the table and it was just a lengthy conversation about how to work out your problems. What if instead of a gun you had like a really advanced smartphone? A bill. You can find some bills. Yeah, a bill. You carried around a scroll in one hand and a quill in the other. The red team only wanted to get 40. All right, okay. Fine. Halo. Don't buy it. That's my opinion. Wow. No, no. Microsoft made a pretty okay game. Did you review it yet? We did review it. What did you give it? What did we? A 9.5. It was a very positive review. I gave it a, you know, an 8. Yeah. An 8? Wow. No, a.8. Oh,.8. New Assassin's Creed. Buy it or don't buy it. That's a bit of an issue there. Why? What do you mean? Well, apparently you need about 10 hours before you actually kill anyone in the New Assassin's Creed. That sounds great. That sounds great to me. Oh, so you love that. There's lots of talking. Well, I mean, I just think that can't we get somewhere in games? I know this is not your fault. It is actually my fault. You may be somewhat responsible. Don't you think we can get somewhere in games where the thing in your hand is not always a gun? There have been games where like the thing in your hand is a flower, perhaps. Or like... Wait, what game is that? Flower. Yeah. But to be fair, you play as the wind, so... Yeah. Okay. There you go. Yeah, this is true. How about a game where there's... Peaceful. Okay, fine. Civilization, you can be diplomatic. Oh, don't give me the strategy game stuff. I'm just saying. What about... What about... What is your favorite game right now? What is your favorite game right now? Right now, big fan of Dishonored. Oh, Dishonored I've been playing. Good game, right? There's parts of that game where you don't have to kill people. But there's a lot of parts... You don't even have to kill people. That's true. You can make it... Why can't they all be like Dishonored? I'm like an old grumpy Andy Rooney guy. I'm like, what is all these games? What are kids doing? Why do you have to kill? I don't know what that voice is. So what is your favorite game right now? I think probably Dishonored. XCOM is also very good, but that's a strategy game and you don't like strategy games. I do hate strategy games. There's no diplomacy. I like Need for Speed Most Wanted. Really? Yeah. We're going back to genres. You're like, I'm sorry, strategy, out the door, racing, maybe not. What is the genre? My favorite game probably of the last, I don't know, 10 years is Fallout 3. Oh, excellent game. Yeah, you don't kill anyone. No, no, you kill people. Don't get me wrong, I love killing people. And I like to do it in real nasty ways. I mean, just the other day in Dishonored, I was throwing people into the fireplace after I killed them. You didn't even have to. I just piloted the bomb. You can beat people. I'm piloting it okay, by the way. I recommend if you're anywhere where there's a fireplace, just throw the bodies right in there. That's awful. But you know what? But I like games where you have to do a little bit of talking before you kill people. Sure. Is that, you know? Yeah. Get to know them. Get to know them a little bit. Understand who you're doing and then murder them. And then give them a little something right there. A nice meal. All right, we have to wrap up, unfortunately, a very short amount of time, but we do have a real clip of Press Reset that I want to show you guys. I want to thank you for coming. I'm sorry that we have such limited time. I promise in the future that I will talk to you again. Not on the show, but I think maybe in person. Maybe on Twitter. At the office, perhaps. Okay, water. But take a, give a round of applause for Russ and Chris. I have no idea what happened there. That was just me bitching. And take a look. This is a clip from Press Reset. You guys can go check out Polygon and watch all this stuff because it's awesome. Today is day one of TGS. Only gaming convention where Wi-Fi is banned. I don't really understand how that's possible. Being in Japan, TGS is definitely a different beast entirely. There are many cultural and language barriers that Western members of the press have to get over. Can we move this up? It's good here. Good. Bad. Good. Bad. There's something that I love and I dread about video game shows. For the moment you get there, you're exhausted and you're stressed out. This is like a lot of process to just get me here. And then the moment it's over, you're like, man, I really miss that. Hit the phone. Okay. Yeah. Can we adjust this though? Because, sorry. I had never been to Japan before. I think before I went, I was envisioning a very alien experience. It was more grounded than I was expecting it to be. Why does it taste like that? Is it supposed to sound like that? Yeah. In all seriousness, I was very abusive to our guests. Oh, look, Paul and Neil are back by the way. I was very abusive to Russ and Chris and I'm sure they'll never come back, but they're wonderful men and the site is really awesome and you should go check it out. We've come almost to the end of the show. Let's point out that I brought a flag, an American flag and a Lumia 920. These things that go great together. And I believe that I am now immune to any sort of criticism. I mean, while you're holding this. As soon as you put them down. These things are tokens of immunity. When I think of the Lumia, I think of America. Huge, thick America. So we're- A weighty, weighty America. We're- America that buys huge foreign companies without actually buying. I'm from Wisconsin. I just mean a weighty, weighty America. It's fine, guys. I'll wait. Just carry on. It's not like we have a show to wrap up. Yeah. I'm just trying to make jokes for the middle of America. They want to know what President Romney's slash President Obama's policies are going to be since they've- Obama? Since he has already been elected. Yeah. Okay. Final, final move of the night, everyone. Giveaways. Phone giveaways. We're giving away, we're giving away, we're giving away three Samsung Galaxy Note 2s. We have one here in the box. I'm going to unbox it right now. Here we go. You ready? You ready for this? Nasty, Cessna style. Here we go. Hello? You know, this isn't that big, actually. I mean, everybody talks about how huge they are. It doesn't- Gigantic. I have big hands. But look, I mean, it basically fits in the palm of my hand. The massive palm of your hand. It covers the entire palm of my hand. Anyhow, so we're giving three of these away. And what we're going to do is we've got some tickets here with numbers on them. We're going to call your number. I have not been told how to do this, and we usually screw it up. Hold on a second. You don't have to come down. If we call your number, hang out up there, raise your hand or scream or do a combination, combo of those things is fine. And we'll find you, and then we'll give you a phone after the show is over. So we're just going to get started. And then you'll like the phone very much. And just remember, if you don't win a phone- And you can draw cool pictures with the stylus that is included inside of the phone, and I love that. If you don't win a phone tonight, why did you think you were going to win a phone? Why do you think you're different than everybody or special? You don't deserve it any more than anybody else in this audience. Just don't forget that, okay? Here we go. Who's going to be our first special person? All right. Oh boy. The number is 477895. 477895. Right there. All right. Don't do anything. Stay where you are. 477895? You don't have to just stay where you're in your seat. Think about using a stylus on your phone. Think about sty- Stay where you are. Think about it. Think about how cool it's going to be. Here, go ahead. Go, Neelay, you're next. S-calendar. S-calendar. S-calendar. Snot. Snot. They got S-memo. S-memo. Snot. Actually, I will say, I've been playing around with the GS3, which has S-memo on it. S-memo. It's pretty cool. Yeah. I got to admit. I'm admitting it. They've got some good ideas. You got me. All right. Not just because the show's presented by Samsung. No. But mostly. Okay. Where's this one? All right. Don't do that. You pulled out two tickets. These tickets were stuck together. Well, are you picking one? You got to choose one. You have to choose one? This is like- This is just like the election where you have to choose things that you have to choose. Here. You- Oh, you want me to flip it? You want me to flip one? No. Here. I haven't seen them. So one of these- Here, wait. I'm going to split them up. Give me one. That- You only want me to give you one? Yeah. Just- There you go. Give me one. Are you looking at them? I feel like you're picking. I'm using my x-ray vision. It's the one that ends in zero. I was wrong. 47791. Oh. What? Why is this section winning all the phones? There's a conspiracy. This is definitely a conspiracy. Recount. Someone's stealing these phones. Give me this. I'm going to- The way the election was stolen, presumably. Watch how quickly I'll pick something. Oh, look. I picked a ticket already. 852. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Boy, do we dodge a bullet. If that guy- If a guy over here hadn't won a phone, we'd never hear the end of it. All right. That is our show. I want to thank you guys for coming. First off, thank you so much. I want to thank Dennis Crowley, Chris Plant, Russ Frushtick. I said it. Obviously, Samsung for helping us put this on. And America. And America, and Paul and Neelai. Go home. Spend time with your families. Watch the election results, which we already know all about. We'll see you November 20th. We're back. November 20th, we have another show. Come back. Thanks a lot, guys.
 ["Motivational booming music"]
 uniquely
 polychromatic
 economy
 Hello. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. I'm Josh Topolsky, editor-in-chief
 of The Verge, and welcome to On the Verge. I hope you're ready to have a devilishly good
 time tonight. We've scared up some ghoulish...oh, screw this. I really wanted to do a Halloween
 show. We had one planned for the 30th, and we had to move it because of the hurricane.
 That's what the smoke was for. It kind of looked like...actually looked like something
 was on fire, not like a...I said I wanted it to look like a graveyard. That didn't really
 happen. Anyhow, yeah, we did have to move the show. As you know, a hurricane hit New
 York and Jersey and all over the place. A very bad hurricane named Sandy, and I just
 want to tell you guys, if you want to do something about it, you can go to redcross.org. You
 can donate some money. They're probably taking blood. I mean, I don't know how they do that
 over the Internet, but I understand it can be done. Anyhow, so we had to move the show,
 and we thought, let's pick a day where nothing's happening. Let's just find a day. There's
 nothing going on in the news. We can just have this all to ourselves. And we thought,
 November 6th is going to be great. It's going to be perfect for us, and I think you'll agree
 we chose correctly. Anyhow, there is an election happening right now, which is exciting. But
 we have a big show. We have an exciting show, and I'm really glad that you guys are here.
 Apparently, we're live streaming this, they've told me, which is terrifying. So if anything
 happens that seems like it was a mistake, that's part of the show. And we are very good
 at faking stuff. So we have a great show. The CEO of Foursquare is here, Dennis Crowley.
 We're going to talk about the, yeah. We're going to talk about Foursquaring, whatever
 that is, gamifying. I understand it's very exciting. Some of our friends from Polygon
 are here, Russ Frushtick and Chris Plant. We're going to be talking about, yeah, we'll
 talk about video games and emotions. It's going to be very heavy, very heavy stuff.
 And Paul and Neelay are here. Of course, Paul went to NASA. He went to Maker Faire. We've
 got some videos from that stuff, and they're very cool. I think you guys will enjoy it.
 And if you don't, that's tough. We did our best. So we should probably get underway.
 I want to say the show tonight is presented by Samsung. So give them a round of applause.
 They helped us put this on. And on an unrelated note, we're giving away three Galaxy Note
 2s tonight. So some of you guys will leave with a device, and many of you will leave
 with nothing, as usual. So I think that's it. We should just get started. So let's do
 this.
 It's a big week, as you know. And we had a bunch of news this week. There's been a bunch
 of news this month. In fact, I don't even know why I'm telling you about all the news
 when I could just be talking about it with Paul Miller and Neelay Patel. So please welcome
 Paul Miller and Neelay Patel.
 Yes. Yes. How are you? Good to see you. Right there. Okay. Good. All right. I feel like
 we cuddle a little.
 That was weird. I don't know why you did that.
 That was normal, right? That's normal stuff.
 I don't know why you did that when we would have just done it on our own.
 Yeah. You don't have to force me to cuddle Neelay Patel.
 Do normal people touch like that? They do, right?
 Yes.
 I'll take that weird like the... You know when there's silence in a room, when it's
 actually the sound has been removed, it's not just like people aren't saying anything?
 That's what's happening right now. So as you know, first off, hi.
 Hey.
 How are you?
 Good.
 So I just mentioned that there's an election. There's the election going on right now in
 America, the presidential election.
 It's over.
 The candidates are... It's a heated, hotly contested race.
 Yeah.
 Barack Obama.
 There you go.
 The current president and his rival, Mitt Romney, the guy who wants to be president.
 Mitt Yark.
 Anyhow, so we realized that even though we're streaming this live now, we realized that
 many people would see this after the election and the president will have already been decided.
 Yes.
 And there are things we want to talk about as far as the president is concerned and technology.
 So we thought we'd just run through whoever wins, we do one for each. We talk about their
 views on technology and talk about them having won the election and what it means.
 Yeah.
 And then we'll just edit it.
 Right.
 And in retrospect, it will seem smart.
 It will seem like we had a great talking point about the winner of the election.
 So let's just do that now. So the election is over and the winner has been decided. Barack
 Obama is returning as president.
 Barack Obama.
 Barack Obama.
 Barack Obama.
 Barack Obama.
 Do you want me to do it?
 We get some help.
 No!
 That was so weird.
 God, Obama is so amazing.
 Neal, do you want to switch seats with me?
 No, no, I do not.
 Have you ever seen confetti explode right towards your face? That was horrible.
 That was really horrible.
 Anyhow, Barack Obama has-
 I'm so excited. It's like I'm frightened.
 Has won a second term in office.
 And Neal, you wrote an editorial about how you were voting for Obama because he is for net neutrality.
 I did.
 What do you think the next- what's going to happen in the next four years?
 How do you think Obama's next four years, which he won in the election, how do you think those will affect-
 Which he conclusively won.
 Which he conclusively won in the election many days ago, how will that affect our lives?
 You know, this would be better if I had a small American flag to wave around.
 Oh, yeah, wait a second. Sorry. Here you are.
 And I have one too.
 I forgot all about that.
 You know, when I think about America and I think about the next four years with Barack, my buddy,
 you know, I think about the future of the internet and I think about the future of our company.
 Yes.
 And the other thing to me is that net neutrality is the only issue which I care about.
 Is it? You're a single-
 That's really sad.
 Yeah, but people are single issue voters.
 Yeah.
 You know what I mean? There are people in America without jobs right now.
 Yeah, they should get jobs on the internet.
 On the internet. Yes.
 If only we had net neutrality, we would have, everybody would have a job.
 Yeah. That's the serious point is that there's a secondary economy on the internet
 and the companies that provide access to the internet want to be the gatekeepers to that economy.
 And I don't think that they should be allowed to do that.
 Right. And if you guys haven't read this editorial that he wrote, it's quite good.
 And it basically, I mean, you know, you might agree or disagree on lots of different things when it comes to these guys.
 But I mean, I think a lot of people who work or at least spend a lot of their time on the internet,
 we think, and I'm sure you guys here think and everybody watching, net neutrality is important.
 It's important to find a way to have a free and open internet that everybody can compete on and that everybody can use.
 You know what I find, what I think is really interesting is that when I do other editorials
 and I criticize AT&T or Comcast or Verizon, nobody ever like disagrees with me.
 Nobody ever death threats you.
 Yeah. Nobody ever is like, you're dumb and you should be shot.
 Right.
 But when I say you should vote in a way that supports those editorials, then the death threats come.
 Then those people find you.
 Hard and fast.
 Yes. They want to murder you.
 Let me tell you where Neelai lives.
 It's, no, he lives in Brooklyn.
 Actually, I went there the other day and I slipped a death threat just right over your eye.
 I could have emailed him.
 I mean, Paul, I think this is even a place where obviously we have, you know, Paul and I,
 and perhaps Neelai and Paul have differing viewpoints on some political items, all of them.
 But you're a net neutrality believer.
 You believe in net neutrality.
 Or am I putting words in your mouth?
 You're putting words in my mouth.
 You hate net neutrality.
 Yeah. I am, I'm always scared of regulating companies, regulating, especially regulating somebody in the name of freedom
 because I think sometimes you end up picking winners.
 So I don't really know too well where either candidate was on net neutrality because I voted on other topics.
 Other non-net neutrality topics.
 Yeah.
 You had multiple other single issues.
 Yeah.
 So I'm a single issue voter and far other.
 In multiple categories.
 You know, it's very confusing up here.
 But I voted and net neutrality was not the reason I voted.
 But, you know, it's still important.
 It's important we figure it out.
 So how do you think the next four years are going to fare under Barack Obama?
 Well, now that Barack Obama has been elected president again, as we definitely know, as we just found out for four years.
 No, as we've known for a few days.
 I think the Internet is going to be kind of in a stasis.
 I think we're going to have this back and forth argument.
 I don't think we're going to, at least for the next couple of years, I don't really know what it's going to look like past that.
 But I think we're kind of in this holding pattern and we're going to argue.
 I think people still need to figure out what the words net neutrality mean because both sides use that term.
 They don't anymore.
 Oh, really?
 Well, we've got to move on because we've got a lot of stuff to talk about.
 Give me those flags.
 Okay, here we go.
 Let's clean this off.
 Let's get this.
 All right.
 Okay.
 I'm going to put these here like so.
 Okay.
 All right.
 Wait.
 Let me just move that there.
 Okay.
 That didn't work at all.
 You ready?
 Okay, good.
 You ready?
 Good.
 Okay.
 So it's been a big week in news, big month in news.
 And of course, we just had the election, the presidential election, and a bit of a shocking result.
 Mitt Romney has been elected.
 Yes.
 Mitt Romney has had...
 I'm sharing success on so many different levels.
 Mitt Romney has been elected the next president.
 45th.
 45th president of the United States.
 He's going to be gliding on into the White House.
 Yeah.
 With that slicked back hair.
 And anyhow, Neil I recently wrote an editorial about net neutrality and why he was voting
 for Barack Obama, and I believe did.
 Yeah, Neil, what do you think about...
 Yeah, how do you feel now that we've been beaten?
 Now that it's had time to sink in.
 Yeah.
 God, this would be so much easier if I had a small American flag.
 Oh, you know what?
 Let me actually just pass one of these down.
 Oh, thank you.
 All right.
 Here we are right there.
 You know, I waved this flag in sadness today.
 Really?
 Yeah.
 I believe that we should move forward, not backwards.
 And onto the internet.
 And not onto a highway.
 And not off the internet.
 Online.
 So you're saying that whoever is the president of the United States, which we've just found
 out is Mitt Romney, should use the internet.
 Yes.
 Should tweet.
 But you're honing in.
 You agree.
 But, Neil, your premise of your editorial was that Mitt Romney is against net neutrality
 that he would partner with, or he would not partner with, but he would stand for the rights
 of AT&T and Verizon and Comcast over the rights of American citizens to have access, free
 and open access, and competing businesses on the internet.
 And now we're living in a world where Mitt Romney is the president.
 Definitely the president.
 Was elected president of America.
 Of the United States of America.
 That's what happened.
 And so what do you think is going to happen in the next four years?
 You know, I don't think Mitt Romney thinks that we should side with AT&T and Comcast.
 I think he believes that there is a free market that exists that will achieve good things.
 Can't people flag wave him while you're doing this?
 I don't believe that market exists.
 I don't think that people have a real choice for their home broadband.
 I think people in New York who have Time Warner Cable would tell you that Time Warner Cable
 does not feel the pressure of competition.
 I think people who have AT&T and have to upgrade to a mobile share plan to get FaceTime.
 What's the opposite of pressure of competition?
 Because that's what Time Warner Cable feels.
 Glorious freedom to squeeze you for profit.
 Monopoly. Glorious monopoly.
 You know, I just don't, I don't think companies in their hearts want to compete.
 Right.
 I think you have to make them.
 And you think Mitt Romney will keep those policies in place that are letting them dominate
 in monopolies?
 Yeah, I mean, I think you already see it.
 And Paul, you're a Mitt Romney supporter.
 Your thoughts in the next four years?
 Well, I just think we're going to find out now that he's president.
 You don't have any other thoughts on that?
 We're going to find out.
 All right. Well, we've got to move on.
 It was an exciting election and I'm just a little sad to find out that.
 Are you going to use the flag to sweep?
 No, I don't think so.
 Give me that.
 I remember in the Boy Scouts.
 We've got a lot of other news to talk about.
 A lot of other news.
 A lot of other things.
 It's a really festive surface.
 Let's move along.
 Put these here like so.
 There's other big news.
 There's a lot going on.
 Lucasfilm.
 Do you guys know about this?
 Lucasfilm selling to Disney and making more Star Wars films.
 Seven, eight, nine.
 And I learned this today.
 They're following the story of Jar Jar Binks as he becomes a Sith Lord.
 Sith Binks.
 Sith Binks.
 It goes very dark, I'm told.
 Very dark.
 Can I ask this audience a question?
 What do you feel more trepidation about?
 Your candidate losing the presidency or Disney making more Star Wars films?
 Definitely the Star Wars films.
 It's definitely Star Wars.
 Everyone's more worried about that.
 Like destroying the United States.
 That'll have a big impact.
 But I haven't met Romney or Barack Obama.
 You're more worried about Disney making a Star Wars film than you're worried about George
 Lucas making another Star Wars film?
 Ooh.
 Ooh.
 But I think he knew not to do it.
 No, he did know not to do it.
 That's like GW running for a third term.
 He's like, no, nope.
 Not going to do that.
 All right.
 I'm not going to.
 I don't want to argue.
 But he made more.
 You think he would have stopped?
 Yes.
 He's probably like, you know what?
 I'll do this deal.
 But you have to promise to make more.
 And here he's like a thousand page thing.
 He pushed towards them.
 He's like, here's the way I see it going.
 Yeah.
 Big focus on Jar Jar.
 Sif banks.
 Anyhow.
 So other news.
 We celebrated our first birthday.
 We did.
 At The Verge.
 One year.
 Yes.
 Thank you.
 Why am I squinting?
 No, no, no.
 More tepid applause.
 Yeah.
 We celebrated our first.
 Where's the third one?
 That's the third one.
 Here we go.
 We have a real problem on this show getting this.
 Congratulations, Leland.
 Getting those confetti cans.
 You built good weather.
 You built good weather.
 You built good weather.
 You built good weather.
 You built good weather.
 You built good weather.
 You built good weather.
 You built good weather.
 You built good weather.
 You built good weather.
 You built good weather.
 You built good weather.
 You built good weather.
 You built good weather.
 Anyhow.
 So, show's up.
 A year.
 I didn't think we'd make it a month, to be honest with you.
 So I'm excited.
 Yeah.
 And I feel like at any moment it could be taken away from us.
 Much like the election was taken away from Barack or Mitt, depending on which edit we
 use.
 What are your favorite memories from last year?
 Do you have any favorite memories?
 I think it's Paul quitting the internet for six months.
 That's your favorite memory?
 That happened.
 No, I mean that's-
 I knew Paul and I wouldn't have to talk every day.
 You know, I think that's part of my favorite memories.
 We've had the opportunity to do what look and feel like crazy things.
 Yes, they are.
 They chase kind of big ideas and Paul leaving the internet is definitely one of them.
 That's a big one.
 I mean this, we do this, which is crazy.
 Has been crazy.
 We released the surface.
 We released the surface after a lot of R&D, a lot of development on this baby.
 I worked hard on this touch cover.
 We lied to people's faces about who is currently the president of the United States.
 Or did we?
 Or did we?
 But anyhow-
 Barack O'Romney.
 I have to say, I will say-
 A lot of disappointed laughs.
 I would just like to say about our first birthday that when we started, I really didn't know
 if what we were trying to do would work.
 I don't think we reinvented the wheel or anything.
 I think we were just trying to make something really good that we were proud of and that
 other people really liked.
 I have to say that to have done it for a year and to have had success and to have seen our
 numbers grow and our readership grow and people liking it and loving it.
 I was at the airport in LA a couple of weeks ago and somebody randomly came up to me and
 they were like, hey, you're the dude from the verge.
 I read the site every day.
 It was insane and incredible to me that people out in the world are reading what we do.
 I just want to thank whoever is watching live and you guys in the audience here and anybody
 else give yourselves a round of applause because you're-
 You really applauded for yourselves longer than anything else.
 Without the audience, which has grown and grown and is amazing, we would be nothing.
 It's all thanks to people who want to read this stuff.
 You know what's really, I think, whenever we try to do something that's very different
 and crazy, when we're like, let's let Trent take Adderall for a month.
 Well, we didn't tell him to take Adderall.
 He was just doing that.
 We didn't tell him.
 Yeah.
 I mean, and let's write about that or let's post that it's really about who I'm voting
 for and we take these risks.
 When we do things that are way outside the box, there's a lot of feedback.
 People like it.
 I will say the one thing that's been most exciting is that when we think to do something
 and it's like, this seems weird and maybe people won't be into it, our audience is always
 like, we love this.
 We're making a website that we would want to read and it's just so awesome that other
 people want to read it.
 But we have done a lot of straight up news coverage recently and we should talk about
 some of it.
 As you know, the Surface just came out.
 There's been a ton of gadgets released recently.
 Surface just came out.
 This is the Nexus 4.
 This is the Nexus 10.
 This is the new Google products.
 This thing here, which somebody spilled water on, was the iPad mini.
 Here's what used to be the Lumia 920, which somebody also spilled some kind of liquid
 on.
 I'm not naming names.
 There's something about this bright colors that make something look waterproof even if
 it's not.
 Yeah, right.
 Well, they're not.
 This is really soaked.
 Okay, it's fine.
 It's a big deal.
 I'm not going to interview you.
 It's more than this.
 With the release of Windows 8, this is a wacky form factor.
 We know tablets and we know phones.
 These are kind of familiar to us now.
 This is getting a little bit weird.
 We actually have a bunch of new Windows 8 devices that we brought with us that we kind
 of wanted to show how people are kind of pushing their boundaries on design a little bit.
 Let's walk over to...
 We have a gadget table.
 Let's walk over to it.
 Let's be honest with ourselves.
 Let's take a look.
 Yeah.
 I just clapped for our gadget table.
 These are all sleeping.
 They're all sleeping.
 They're all asleep.
 Tell us about these gadgets, Neilon.
 God, I love Windows 8.
 These are all Windows 8 devices.
 They're all Windows 8.
 Here's the thing.
 All the stuff we saw on the desk is they're tablets and phones.
 They've been tablets and phones for a while, four or five years.
 Some of them, now they come in colors.
 The crazy thing about them, but the crazy thing...
 That's very exciting to me.
 Maybe I'm crazy, but I feel like we went through this with the iMac where somebody was like,
 you could put a color on a computer.
 Did you know you could just put it if you want?
 Yeah.
 And then everybody's like, hey, colors.
 That's crazy.
 Yeah.
 And now we forgot all about it and everything was beige and gray.
 We definitely forgot about that with PCs.
 PCs have been beige and orange all the time.
 Apple kind of forgot about it for a while, too.
 They're back into colors.
 A little bit.
 No.
 Oh, they have new...
 Oh, the iPods, but whatever.
 They're iPods.
 All right.
 But the thing about PCs is that Windows 8, because they've actually grafted a touch screen
 on Windows 8 for real, they're allowed to do crazy things.
 So obviously you have the Surface.
 There it is.
 It's got a type cover.
 I think this is Microsoft saying, here's what we think PCs should look like.
 But the thing about Windows 8 is that the other companies get to do whatever they want,
 too.
 So here's Asus.
 That's true, right?
 They just sell the licenses.
 There are no rules anymore.
 So here's Asus, and they did Transformers with Android.
 So this is actually a...
 This is a Windows 8.
 Is this a...
 Windows 8.
 RT or regular Windows 8?
 That's right.
 RT.
 This is RT.
 And it has...
 You can just break it any way you want.
 You can do it, man.
 Look at how strong it is, is what I'm trying to show you.
 Anyhow, this...
 There's latches right here.
 Oh, there's a latch.
 Okay.
 I actually think this is the winning form factor for these things.
 It's a tablet.
 This is kind of like an iPad.
 Yeah.
 And then it's got this thing which you can throw in a bag, which is...
 It's okay.
 It's not as thin.
 The keyboard's a little small.
 But it's also a battery.
 Yeah.
 No, it's great.
 It's smaller.
 Oh, the keys.
 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
 I need a little more room.
 But it's like...
 So the thing about this and the surface is that these are 69.
 Right.
 And I think this...
 Yeah, they're a little big.
 This is really silly for me, a tablet.
 Well, but...
 Could be a lot worse.
 Yes.
 Could be a lot worse, Neil.
 Allow me to show you.
 What size screen is this?
 This is like a 13.3 Toshiba.
 And this looks like a tablet.
 It's huge.
 But it turns into a laptop like that.
 And then it does that.
 Which is...
 I mean, this is crazy.
 I mean...
 And the amount of engineering they had to do...
 If you look at this hinge, it's got like tracks.
 It's got sprayer.
 I think this is the thing that's most exciting is that people are finally innovating on hinges.
 Yeah.
 And this is just great.
 Well, no, it's like a...
 You know, there was a moment in phones where they innovated crazy on hinges.
 And then...
 And then they're like, hinges are a bad idea.
 Now I'm reading a book, just comfortably read one-handed reading.
 And then I got an incoming call.
 After five years, that guy...
 Every time.
 You put anything huge up to your ear.
 Hello?
 It says, you're not connected in giant letters.
 That is true.
 That is true.
 But it's a touch screen.
 Yeah.
 You know, Sean reviewed this thing.
 It's interesting.
 I mean, this is like the explosion of ideas of how computers should look.
 I wish it did more folding.
 Well, the thing with...
 So the thing with all of these to me is like, you're supposed to touch them, but the hinges
 here.
 So it's like, that didn't work.
 That's not great.
 I think you're forcing that a little bit.
 The thing that scares me about...
 This reminds me of like the original tablet PC era.
 Like Windows tablet edition sort of computers.
 Like whenever...
 Yeah, you've got a stylus and they're just a little...
 It's a little...
 Well, I mean, like this thing is like, this is a really great movie prop.
 You know, it's like, oh, hello.
 I've got a call.
 Hello.
 A call is coming in.
 So she was...
 All right, but this is your favorite.
 This is my favorite.
 You love this.
 This love is a strong word.
 This is the yoga from Lenovo.
 The yoga.
 So it's a tablet, but it has maybe the smartest hinge where it just turns into a laptop.
 And then it is a laptop.
 It's better when you show this, just so you understand what's happening with this particular...
 You fold it all the way back.
 It's a 15 inch display.
 It's a touch screen?
 Yeah.
 It's a touch screen.
 And then it does...
 It's just the worst tablet in the world.
 And then it does this.
 And then it does that.
 Right.
 Right?
 Seems comfortable, right?
 Yeah.
 It's just weird because you're holding...
 What is...
 Come on, guys.
 Seriously, who here, show of hands, would use it like this?
 Literally two...
 One guy was like, just kidding.
 He was like the third guy.
 He was like, I don't think so.
 So here's what's cool.
 I think...
 Let me just do this.
 Can I?
 There we are.
 Let me just put this like so.
 These guys...
 I think what's really great is that people are innovating on hinges and form factors.
 But I just don't think...
 I don't know if any human beings really want to do that.
 And that's the problem.
 I think Microsoft has the best idea.
 I think I actually think the surface is...
 Well I think this kind of the Asus is getting there.
 It's close.
 Keyboard's a little small.
 But I think this is closer.
 This is what's strange is that an operating system is...
 That's why these manufacturers are like, we can try a wireless idea.
 And they send the designers into a room.
 They do acid.
 They're like, we'll fold it all the way back.
 Well you know, I mean, as we know, Microsoft, they primed the pump.
 Maybe they opened their minds to yoga.
 They primed the pump with the surface.
 Yeah, they did yoga.
 And now...
 And now I will call it video.
 All right, and that's our gadgets section of the show.
 We have a video.
 Paul went to NASA.
 And he became an astronaut.
 He went into outer space and he found aliens.
 And we have it on video.
 So take a look at this.
 We'll be right back with Dennis Crowley from Foursquare.
 Americans don't fly spaceships anymore.
 We catch a ride with Russia.
 Commercial space flight is awesome and it's doing really well.
 And it might get American humans and American vehicles up soon.
 But it might take NASA a decade to build its own capsule and get astronauts back in space.
 So what happens now at NASA?
 What is happening now?
 I'm here at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, opening the doors to shed light on
 the future of human space travel.
 So this is Robonaut 2.
 These are a collaboration between NASA, GM.
 There's a guy exactly, almost exactly like this up in space right now.
 This is in Houston and NASA tests out new routines, new behaviors.
 And they ship them over to another lab where they have an exact replica of Robonaut that's
 on the space station where they finalize the routine.
 Then they beam that up space and they do it for real.
 The whole idea behind Robonaut is to provide an assistant for crew.
 A Robonaut could work side by side with the crew like a nurse to a doctor.
 Or you could also take down all the tools and everything, all the infrastructure after
 a particular task is completed.
 I think it's important to keep in mind that Robonaut is a tool.
 Many people talk about science fiction robots and how they can go and do things on their
 own.
 Robonaut has been designed specifically to be a tool for people.
 It only does what we tell it to do.
 And it's been designed with the safety and the reliability to be a useful tool around
 people, not to go off and do anything on its own.
 I'm just going to show you a quick little scene from National Treasure 3.
 At the start of the movie, Nicolas Cage is sent to space using one of the Russian vehicles
 that currently takes astronauts to space because the space shuttle has been decommissioned.
 And he's looking for the lost U.S. Constitution.
 And unknown to the other astronauts, sends Robonaut outside the space station to retrieve
 the Constitution.
 And so Robonaut can fold back the thermal blanket that's hiding the U.S. Constitution.
 And Nicolas Cage, back inside the space station, because Nicolas Cage doesn't know how to spacewalk,
 is like, oh thanks, Robonaut.
 I will take the U.S. Constitution to the President of the United States and ask him, why did
 you hide this in the space station?
 Well, why don't you look in the envelope?
 Why don't you look in the envelope?
 It's not the Constitution, it's just the photo.
 So this is called the RoboGlove.
 An exoskeleton for your hand.
 It's basically designed to help you grab things and make you stronger.
 In the glove itself, here on the thumb, we have something called a force sensor resistor.
 We actually actuate the tendons and we pull them down and then release them when you let
 go of the FSR.
 And that's what gives you the extra power to lift an object, like a heavyweight or something.
 But I can lift heavyweights all day, I guess I want you guys to know.
 Very capable of lifting heavyweight.
 Sure.
 I'm here in front of the Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicle.
 And so this is a capsule with a dead body mounted to the outside.
 So explain, you're telling me this is like a modular system.
 So that's where Multi-Mission comes in.
 The chassis is effectively a robot.
 This robot has wheels and that moves around.
 The payload is the cabin.
 So can I drive it?
 Yeah, let's hop in.
 So what do I do?
 I'm the pilot now?
 You're the pilot.
 So pretty much push the stick in the direction you want to travel and the vehicle will do
 what it needs to do to get there.
 Here we go.
 So you'll notice we're not just tipping into it.
 So right now, if you were outside, you'd see it forcing this right wheel down into that
 hole.
 This is incredible.
 This is really incredible.
 It doesn't make any sense.
 It's just like I'm going in a weird random direction.
 I'm floating and I'm bobbing.
 The computer itself won't allow you to do things that are going to jeopardize the safety
 of the robot.
 As you're going over the hill, you're starting to pick up more speed because your vehicle
 weighs a lot.
 But the wheels notice that and say, well, I'm only getting a command of one meter per
 second and it slows you down.
 So you maintain that speed.
 Oh, man.
 I just feel like it's just giving me out of a pinch every time.
 That is the goal.
 I'm just being rescued basically by a robot.
 We can venture over to Mars if you want.
 Yeah, let's do it.
 I'm sick of the moon.
 Can we go through the water?
 Yeah.
 Yes.
 I think there's life down there.
 I saw a dragon fly.
 Not anymore.
 That's our C300.
 It's a $16,000 camera.
 I'm going to run over it.
 I'm going to close my eyes and you're going to tell me to go straight and you tell me
 when to stop.
 Okay.
 Ready?
 Yeah.
 Push your stick forward.
 My eyes are closed.
 Stick is forward.
 All right.
 We're doing it.
 It's looking good.
 Oh, my gosh.
 It's probably not quite centered, but I think we made it.
 $16,000.
 I don't see anybody in the cameras crying.
 It's okay.
 It's okay.
 We probably ought to back off.
 You should look at the rear view camera.
 This is the space vehicle mockup facility where they have space vehicle mockups within
 the facility.
 This is Orion.
 This is NASA's next generation space capsule.
 This is how we would get back from the moon or Mars or wherever we go next.
 This is how we land back on Earth.
 You could live in here for a while.
 Four people could be in here if they really liked each other.
 They could be in here for 21 days.
 Basically, this room is awesome, and I'm going to live here.
 NASA Johnson Space Center visitor Miller Paul Josiah expires Wednesday, October 17th.
 That's today.
 I would say space is the final frontier.
 A final frontier, that's a lot.
 It's like in Little House on the Prairie when they moved to the little cabin in the big
 woods, but that wasn't far enough.
 They moved further to the Little House on the Prairie.
 One day, we found an ocean.
 Who knew?
 An ocean.
 On the whole other side of the country, there's an ocean this whole time.
 I think space is like that.
 The scientists that I met today in Houston at NASA, they're working on human space flight.
 We are not there yet, but we're working on it.
 That's cool.
 I have to say, I am very jealous of Paul for getting to go on that trip.
 It's very cool stuff.
 Paul is really good at that.
 He's really good at going and doing things.
 I envy that.
 We shouldn't waste any more time.
 I want to bring out our first guest.
 Please welcome the CEO of Foursquare, Dennis Crowley.
 Thank you for coming.
 Be very careful.
 We try to make it difficult for people to get over.
 You got to step over that thing, you got to step up, and that arm is broken.
 Yeah, it's a little mini obstacle course for sure.
 We brought back the broken arm sofa just for you.
 Dennis, thank you for coming.
 Yeah, thanks for having me on the show.
 I'm excited to be here.
 It really is our pleasure to have you.
 You're here in New York.
 You're based in New York.
 Yeah, we have offices down in Soho.
 Would you say... Now, I want to talk a little bit about... I want to get into the roots
 of Foursquare.
 Yeah.
 First, I want to talk about the East Coast, West Coast startup battle.
 It's gotten very heated.
 Can you trash talk Silicon Valley at all for us right now and talk about how much better
 New York is for startups?
 I think I like the New York scene a lot because there's just a lot more people here.
 There's like eight million people here versus... I don't know how many people are in San
 Francisco.
 Fifteen.
 But considerably fewer though, right?
 Then on top of that, the thing I like about building a tech startup in New York is that
 tech is not the most important thing here.
 It's fifth down on the list.
 You've got fashion and finance and media and publishing and advertising and pretty much
 everything else except for tech.
 Tech is way down at the bottom.
 When you meet people out and you ask them to beta test the things that you're building
 or get excited about the stuff you're building, they're just regular people.
 They're not early adopters.
 I think it makes it much easier to build things in this environment.
 You're not like, hey, I'm doing Foursquare.
 You can check in place.
 You become mayor of a place.
 They're like, oh, I'm using a different thing that does exactly that.
 Yeah, I have my own startup that does that.
 Yeah, no.
 My startup is actually doing that.
 I can totally test it.
 Yeah, exactly.
 That is a thing though.
 I mean, it is.
 You don't have a million different startups all doing, trying to do similar things here.
 It's like there's a few.
 I feel like New York startups and maybe because we're a publishing, part of a publishing startup
 really, I am biased.
 I feel like there's something a little bit more like the startups here are much more
 real.
 They're real things.
 They involve real world, either real world activities or they're things that you actually
 need for your life versus stuff like, hey, what if we had Yelp for shoes?
 I don't know.
 I mean, that's Yelp, isn't it?
 I don't really know.
 Well, there's a smaller pool of them here.
 You look at the big ones.
 We're one of the biggest ones here.
 Then you've got your Tumblers and your Etsy's and your Kickstarters and your Meetups.
 It's just a smaller pool to compare yourself with.
 When you look at the big startups that are out west, it's not just the big tech companies.
 You've got your Googles and your Facebooks and your Twitters and your Apples.
 It's just a different breed of big tech company.
 Right.
 I mean, Facebook and Twitter, they've graduated to a different sphere of... They're not like
 a startup.
 Yeah, but when you think about it- You're in that sphere too.
 Yeah.
 I mean- You're not really even a startup.
 We're like 150 people.
 Right?
 150 years old.
 Yeah, exactly.
 Right?
 Out west, I think that's still considered relatively small, but we're one of the bigger
 players in the New York tech scene.
 It's like a different distinction of scale, I guess.
 To recap, the west coast startup scene, lame.
 East coast startup scene, awesome.
 Is that what I'm hearing?
 Can we summarize that way?
 Can we quote you on that?
 Okay, good.
 See, I don't want to poo-poo the west coast because we have an office out there.
 Shut it down.
 We've got like 35 guys in the office.
 It's your wasting your time here.
 Yeah.
 I actually want to talk about the beginnings of Foursquare.
 Foursquare was not Foursquare originally.
 Foursquare was like... If you go way back in the day, it's me building software for
 my friends that got laid off for my very first dot com job.
 Which was what?
 Well, actually my second job.
 I worked at a company called Jupiter Research, in which I was the guy making PowerPoint slides.
 Then I worked at-
 That was your job?
 You were just like-
 I was pretty much-
 This awesome arrow.
 Yeah.
 Pretty much.
 Making slides for other people to give during presentations and things.
 Then I worked at a mobile product shop called Vindigo that was building city guides for
 Palm Pilots.
 Then I was at this company, Vindigo, I really got bit by the bug of, hey, you can make stuff
 during the day and you go out at night and you see people using the stuff that you were
 working on during the day.
 They're using it on their Palm Pilots.
 That was kind of a big deal.
 I know Palm Pilots is super old school.
 I was like, oh my God, you build stuff during the day and you see people using it at night.
 That's incredibly rewarding.
 This idea of just building stuff that my friends would use and building stuff that I want to
 use, I just got really kind of bit by that bug.
 Right.
 The first version of Dodgeball ended up coming out of that.
 We ended up-
 Can you explain Dodgeball a little bit for people who don't know what it is?
 Sure.
 Dodgeball is, I can't remember how we used to pitch it back in the day, but it was just
 like a basic friend finder for text messaging.
 This is before you had GPS and phones or color screens or apps in general.
 Anywhere that my friends in New York would go out, you would just send a text message
 to nyc at dodgeball.com and say, I'm at the magician, I'm at Tom and Jerry's, I'm at Central
 Park.
 Then that message would get rebroadcast to all of your friends.
 We had a poor man's little social network built into it.
 It didn't work.
 It was SMS based.
 It was SMS, yeah.
 It didn't work because no one really kind of knew what social networks were.
 This is back in 2001.
 People didn't know what social networks were.
 Text messaging barely worked.
 We kept trying to resurrect the idea.
 We did it after Friendster kind of hit pseudo mass market.
 It's like, oh, now we can explain it as it's like Friendster for cell phones.
 Then we tried to resurrect it again when we were at NYU and did it with, then we ended
 up bringing it to Google.
 I feel like now, a couple years later, some of those ideas are a little bit more in the
 right time, right place.
 The devices are more mature.
 Everyone here knows about apps in your phone.
 You all know that you have GPS.
 Everyone here has phones that can do these things.
 It's just a much larger audience.
 You've been trying to do, I mean, you've essentially been trying to do something like Foursquare
 or been trying to do Foursquare for a very long time.
 Foursquare, when was the year for Foursquare started?
 We started 2009.
 Way before that though, you were kind of trying to find a way to say, pay I'm out of place,
 tell people about it.
 Yeah, I'd say it goes back to 2001 or so.
 Which is insane.
 Yeah, but it barely worked.
 We had 15 people using it.
 You really, really want people to know where you are.
 Well, it just makes meeting up with people easier and more fun.
 Foursquare was, a few years ago, everybody talked about Foursquare as, it was like, we're
 gamify everything.
 We're going to gamify our lives.
 Foursquare is one of these things where it's like, I get achievements for doing stuff that
 I'm doing anyhow.
 I can become the mayor of somewhere.
 I can get badges for stuff.
 Obviously, that stuff is all still baked into Foursquare.
 But it seems like the last couple of years, certainly the last year, things have been
 moving towards, not just about, hey, I got an achievement or I'm the mayor of something,
 but Foursquare is going to be an engine for finding things.
 Yeah, for discovery.
 Yeah, for discovery and getting recommendations.
 Can you talk a little bit about the shift or if there is a shift and what that means
 to you?
 I don't really see it so much as a shift.
 What we're trying to do, the essence of Foursquare, is how do you use software to encourage people
 to go out and to have experiences that they haven't had before?
 A big part of that is the recommendation engine that we've got, a whole bunch of data scientists
 working, crunching the three billion check-ins to make these recommendations happen in real
 time.
 There's another part of that.
 We weren't able to do that in the early days.
 We just didn't have the team or the talent.
 We weren't sophisticated enough to do that.
 In the early days, we were using basic game mechanics, like the badges that probably most
 of the people in this room know about, where it's like, can we use software to encourage
 people to go to places that they haven't been to before?
 Initially, it was, I live in the East Village, and there's a bar that I always go to called
 7B.
 It was like, this is just my default place.
 How do you make a piece of software that encourages me to go to some place I haven't been before,
 to bring my friends there, to go to another borough, to travel uptown, to get a group
 of people together and do something none of us have done before?
 Can you make a game out of that?
 If you design the game well enough, can it encourage people to do those types of things?
 We're finding that a lot of that stuff works.
 The game mechanics have worked pretty well in Foursquare.
 If you level up in coffee, it's like, hey, I'm a level six coffee person, because I've
 been to 30 different places in New York.
 People feel some sense of accomplishment over that.
 Like, hey, I unlocked the gym rat badge for going to the gym 10 times out of a 30-day
 period.
 It kind of works.
 Do you ever feel like, I'm going to get a little bit deep on you here.
 Do you ever feel like the idea of gamifying for adults, going to a bar is very adult activity,
 right?
 Yeah.
 Do you ever feel that the... I'm sure you have a wonderful response to this.
 Do you ever feel like in some way gamifying things that we normally do is a way of infantilizing
 us?
 I don't play... In my daily life, I don't think of the things I do as an achievement
 that I need to unlock or a game that I have to play.
 Is there something about taking tasks or things that we do recreationally and turning them
 into a game that in some way diminishes their value or their importance?
 I think there's a big difference between trying to turn everything into a game and try to
 make everything playful.
 I don't ever think of Foursquare as a game.
 There's game mechanics in there, but I think of it as there's been all these just utilities,
 things that will help you do stuff on the internet for a long time.
 We should make those things more fun.
 They should be fun to use and fun to interact with.
 That's where a lot of the game mechanics come from.
 I want to make everyday interactions of going to the same restaurant, commuting every day,
 traveling in between cities.
 I want to make that stuff feel playful and rewarding.
 It doesn't have to be a game, but I think it's important to note the distinction.
 Do you think as people, as humans, we need to be rewarded for doing... Is that something
 that you think is baked into our DNA that we want to be rewarded or we need to be rewarded?
 I don't think... Rewards come in different sizes and shapes.
 Every time that you get a like on Instagram, that's being rewarded.
 That's like the little bit of a dopamine hit.
 I feel like that's a multiplayer version of it, because you post something and then your
 friends interact with it, and that's two players interacting.
 The Foursquare stuff was designed to be more one player.
 You do something in the real world and Foursquare rewards you for doing that.
 A badge, a mayor unlock, you get a tip that tells you about something you should order
 at a restaurant.
 Those are all little dopamine hits in the same type of way that make people feel good.
 Like, hey, if I put data into the system, it's enhancing my experience of the real world.
 You feel like there's a physiological... Obviously, there is, you're right about the dopamine
 hit.
 Do you feel like that's actually fundamental to what you're doing, that you want people
 to feel this sense of, hey, this visceral sense of, hey, I've got something or I accomplished
 something?
 Yeah, it doesn't need to be down to the chemical level of it, but I always think of Foursquare
 as we should be able to make these little guides that live in your pocket, like a guide
 to the city that basically has all the knowledge that your friends have about all the places
 in the world.
 That wherever you end up bringing your phone, that guide can come to life and say, hey,
 these are the things that you need to pay attention to.
 It doesn't have to be one of those one-player rewards, like a badge or a mayor mechanic.
 Those might happen all the time.
 As long as I can be someplace I haven't been before, and Foursquare can surface a little
 bit of information for me that helps me understand that place or make my 15 or 20 minutes I spend
 in that place a little bit more interesting.
 No one's really done stuff like that before.
 We're showing that when you do it, it works.
 It works pretty well.
 You talked about putting data into it, incentivizing people to put data into Foursquare.
 We have a video, and I don't know if we can cue this up or not, but you guys posted this
 thing which is the map of check-ins during the hurricane.
 Do we have this up?
 This is it.
 You can see the dates going by there.
 You can see all this activity move, literally move out of the lower part of-
 Actually, I haven't even seen this yet.
 This is awesome.
 You haven't seen this?
 It's really crazy because you can see the migration.
 Play it again.
 Can we run that one more time?
 You can see there's a lot of activity downtown.
 And then- Oh, that's rad.
 It goes dark, the way the power does in a way, and the way people's ability to get down
 there.
 This data is obviously very valuable.
 You're using it for stuff that is like, hey, I love this bar or this restaurant.
 There was an article in the Believer, a little bit of a mean-spirited Foursquare article,
 where they said, they were making fun of the idea that people say, it's like saying things
 like, people talk about mac and cheese in Williamsburg, which is very surface information.
 Do you see that data is valuable?
 What we just showed is important.
 That's a life-threatening situation.
 You guys are collecting all this information.
 Are there other uses for that data?
 Are there other ways that you can utilize that data or that you can share that data?
 I think everything that you see going on in Foursquare now, like in our Explore recommendation
 engine, that's all the magic that we're trying to deliver to people.
 We have all these folks that give us a little bit of information about what they do every
 day, like the types of coffee places they go to, the different places they go to in
 Williamsburg, different places they go to all over the world.
 We take all those check-in data points, and we can really start making these recommendation
 engines that are personalized to people.
 For the history of local search on the internet, it's always been, like if everyone here goes
 to Google or Yelp right now and we search for sushi, we all get the same results.
 That's broken.
 That's so super broken because we all have different tastes.
 Our friends have all been to different places.
 We all had different experiences.
 It's very clear that that stuff is going to change.
 You want that to be for a person, not just a generalized statement about-
 The big thing that we're able to do, that no one's been able to do before, is be able
 to have personalized local search results for any person at any given point in time.
 Foursquare search results are different depending on the intersection you're standing on, the
 day of the week it is, the time of the day it is.
 We can potentially get into things where it's like, is it colder than it normally is?
 Is it warmer than it normally is?
 Where do people normally go around these times?
 You look at those check-in points there.
 Sometimes people look at Foursquare and be like, oh, it's cute.
 It's about points and badges and stuff.
 That's great that people get that part of it.
 That was four days of data up there.
 That just shows how Foursquare in New York is a living, breathing type of organism.
 There's all sorts of interesting data that's being teased out of that.
 It's our responsibility to take all those data points and use it to help everyone in
 this room and everyone in New York and everyone in the world use that to make better sense
 out of what's going on nearby.
 Interesting.
 We have to wrap up.
 Unfortunately, there's a lot more I want to... There's a bunch of questions I didn't
 get to.
 Tell me about... Do you see Foursquare as a company that IPOs?
 Are you a Facebook?
 Does this become a public company?
 Everyone asks us this all the time.
 When are you guys going to IPO?
 How soon is it going to be?
 I tell you, it's one of the last things that we think about.
 Our job is just to build the best products that we can right now.
 We've got just over 25 million users, almost three billion check-ins.
 In order to compete in the scale in which we're competing with, we're the smallest of
 the big companies right now.
 We've got to grow our audience.
 We've got to grow the business.
 We've got to figure out how to work better as teams and everything.
 If we figure out all that stuff, then those are the questions that we've got to start
 thinking about.
 For now, it's just how do you build stuff that's better than the stuff we're launching
 today?
 How do you build stuff that just people love using every single day?
 Thank you very much for coming.
 Dennis Crowley, everybody.
 You've got to come back.
 There's a lot more we need to get to.
 Stick around.
 You stick.
 Don't go anywhere.
 You guys don't go anywhere.
 We have a... Paul went to Maker Faire.
 Another wild trip with Paul.
 Take a look at this, and we'll be right back with the Paul Young guys.
 Thank you.
 Welcome back.
 Go ahead and give me a hug.
 I think it's going to be a long, long time.
 I'm here at Maker Faire, which is kind of like a renaissance fair for nerds.
 I guess renaissance fairs are for nerds.
 It's like a... It's a renaissance fair for makers.
 I'm going to see what I can see and maybe learn how to program in Python and build my
 own robot.
 I don't know.
 Whatever.
 It's cool.
 This is Thummy Wars.
 That's the official name that we came up with at the beginning of the 72-hour build off.
 So everything in here was built in 72 hours.
 We actually have two potentiometers.
 There's one in this thumb and one in this thumb.
 There's an Arduino program that's basically monitoring those two potentiometers and determining
 whether or not there's a pin based on the threshold and the amount of time that the
 thumbs are down.
 Did you do the one, two, three, four, I just put a thumb over, yeah.
 And then basically just... A thumbing war?
 Yeah.
 So nobody says that.
 Yeah.
 Are you really that bad?
 Yes.
 Dude, it's so cool.
 When I was coming in, this kid with his dad, I skated past them and he's like, whoa.
 And then I was like, wait for it, wait for it.
 He's got a skateboard.
 I felt like just like a superhero.
 I was like, this is probably enough to have a skateboard.
 Oh dude, we got a straight... Okay, can I go all the way?
 Go ahead.
 Break it.
 It'll do like four miles an hour right now.
 Yeah.
 Oh my gosh.
 Is this like the primary expression of what you do?
 Yeah, absolutely.
 Outside of blogs?
 There's nothing better in the world than taking something up here and then transforming it
 into reality and having everyone enjoy it.
 It's the best feeling in the world.
 Can you power slide in this?
 Get some blue sparks going.
 Well, you've transformed relaxation into reality.
 And then just kind of position yourself between the poles.
 Oh yeah.
 I don't have to go anywhere.
 I've gone to the relaxation town.
 I'll just yell stop if somebody's going to be about to be impaled.
 How do you turn?
 You'll figure it out.
 Oh yeah.
 We're out of Portsmouth, Virginia.
 Yeah, total East Coasters.
 We're right on the ocean.
 You rode this all the way up?
 No.
 You can't handle top speed.
 We took an electric wheelchair, basically cut it up, welded a bunch of stuff onto the
 chassis, modified it a little bit, and now it has a hammock that's suspended in.
 This is so awesome.
 You said it can get up to 5 Gs.
 Each person has a dead man's switch.
 Whoever lets go of the dead man's switch first loses, obviously, but then it winds down.
 Has anyone died yet?
 No.
 Do you have a barf bag ready?
 Chad, it was nice knowing you.
 Thanks Chad.
 And thank you.
 Thanks.
 Oh my gosh.
 Totally fine the whole time.
 And then as soon as it stopped, my eyes were like spinning.
 My eyes kept going.
 And now I'm like shaking, and I'm like woozy.
 I actually want a hot dog now.
 I want to do it again.
 I'm not really into the spinning.
 That's how Goose died.
 I'm having a lot of fun here, but I don't know.
 Maybe I'm having too much fun.
 You know, America used to build things.
 They used to go places.
 I feel like I should make something myself.
 Green LEDs.
 Everything needs soldering irons these days.
 I don't know how to solder.
 I don't own a soldering gun.
 I have so much to learn.
 This is the Raspberry Pi starter kit, which I've been told to get.
 And I don't know what this is.
 I don't know what this is.
 I don't know what this does.
 But it looks really cool, so I'm going to try to build something with it.
 And we'll see what happens.
 It's going to be an adventure, and I could fall on my face.
 But that's what this is all about.
 It's discovery.
 Yeah, the sad truth is that Paul discovered that you need to go online to use the Raspberry Pi kit and can't make anything with it.
 All right, I want to bring out our next guests.
 They are editors from polygon.com, our new sister site that covers video games, I'm told.
 So please welcome Chris Plant and Russ Frushtick.
 Yes, yes, how are you?
 Out of order.
 Out of order.
 Have a seat.
 Be careful.
 Be very careful.
 Oh, my God.
 I'm telling you to be careful, then I trip.
 Can you imagine that happening?
 It just happened.
 Chris and Russ.
 Can I call you Rush?
 You can.
 Can I just tell you I hate your name?
 Really?
 You hate the whole thing?
 Russ Frushtick is the hardest name to say.
 But you're doing such a good job at it.
 I know, but I just feel like I got to try.
 Did you know Frushtick is German for breakfast?
 That's how I remember it.
 Is that right?
 The first time I landed in Germany, every woman was like Frushtick.
 I am hungry just thinking about your name.
 Rightfully so.
 Anyhow, so if you guys don't know, has everybody here gone to Polygon?
 Have you gone to Polygon?
 Well, everyone here is not clapping.
 I see them too.
 People over here are not clapping.
 Do yourself a favor, okay?
 You're abusing yourself by not going to Polygon and reading their news.
 Features and things.
 We've got a few things.
 They cover video games.
 And actually, so you guys have been doing this thing called press reset or press reset.
 You know what?
 I don't want to judge how people pronounce it.
 I go with press reset.
 Anyhow, they've been doing this multi-part kind of documentary about building the site,
 launching the site.
 And it was really cool.
 It was very cool.
 And we actually have a clip from the launch.
 This is like the launch video.
 Take a look at this so you get a taste of what they're doing, which is very interesting.
 The best thing about working with these guys is I love competing with them and they're
 my best friends.
 The best part performing with these two guys is they keep me in line and it's a lot of
 fun.
 Describe our acting when we're in over hot.
 Yes.
 Thank you.
 That was, I'm going to say, weeks of preparation.
 You had some great moves.
 We really were.
 Great moves.
 Months of preparation.
 And we will look at some press reset.
 But you guys had this big launch.
 You've been working on it for how long?
 How long had you been working?
 Since January is pretty much when we brought the team together and brought everyone in
 and talked about what we wanted to do.
 Did anyone cry when you launched?
 Yeah.
 I mean, Chris Grant, he's a man of lots of emotions.
 Chris Grant, is he here?
 Is he here somewhere?
 I think he's right there.
 There's a bald man in the still shot.
 Are you crying right now?
 A little bit.
 Let's talk, it's okay.
 You cover video games.
 Yes.
 Right?
 Yeah.
 Let's talk about video games.
 Okay.
 Have you heard about this new Halo?
 Halo 4.
 Oh, yeah.
 Have you seen it?
 Yeah, yeah.
 What do you think?
 I think it looks great.
 It's fun.
 But we were talking backstage.
 I played it.
 And you took issue with the fact that much of Halo 4-
 Have you guys seen these Halo games?
 I mean, within five minutes, you're shooting aliens.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 What do you look at?
 You looking for diplomacy?
 I don't know.
 It seems like something a little bit more.
 Trade negotiation perhaps?
 My crazy bit, are the Halo aliens a little outdated now?
 They're pretty cartoonish.
 Because they like-
 Those little guys with their shells and they sound like cartoon characters-
 What would be more appropriate for our modern time, for you?
 I think if you had to do some diplomacy with the aliens.
 Yeah, yeah.
 Probably if you immediately sat down at the table and it was just a lengthy conversation
 about how to work out your problems.
 What if instead of a gun you had like a really advanced smartphone?
 A bill.
 You can find some bills.
 Yeah, a bill.
 You carried around a scroll in one hand and a quill in the other.
 The red team only wanted to get 40.
 All right, okay.
 Fine.
 Halo.
 Don't buy it.
 That's my opinion.
 Wow.
 No, no.
 Microsoft made a pretty okay game.
 Did you review it yet?
 We did review it.
 What did you give it?
 What did we?
 A 9.5.
 It was a very positive review.
 I gave it a, you know, an 8.
 Yeah.
 An 8?
 Wow.
 No, a.8.
 Oh,.8.
 New Assassin's Creed.
 Buy it or don't buy it.
 That's a bit of an issue there.
 Why?
 What do you mean?
 Well, apparently you need about 10 hours before you actually kill anyone in the New Assassin's
 Creed.
 That sounds great.
 That sounds great to me.
 Oh, so you love that.
 There's lots of talking.
 Well, I mean, I just think that can't we get somewhere in games?
 I know this is not your fault.
 It is actually my fault.
 You may be somewhat responsible.
 Don't you think we can get somewhere in games where the thing in your hand is not always
 a gun?
 There have been games where like the thing in your hand is a flower, perhaps.
 Or like...
 Wait, what game is that?
 Flower.
 Yeah.
 But to be fair, you play as the wind, so...
 Yeah.
 Okay.
 There you go.
 Yeah, this is true.
 How about a game where there's...
 Peaceful.
 Okay, fine.
 Civilization, you can be diplomatic.
 Oh, don't give me the strategy game stuff.
 I'm just saying.
 What about...
 What about...
 What is your favorite game right now?
 What is your favorite game right now?
 Right now, big fan of Dishonored.
 Oh, Dishonored I've been playing.
 Good game, right?
 There's parts of that game where you don't have to kill people.
 But there's a lot of parts...
 You don't even have to kill people.
 That's true.
 You can make it...
 Why can't they all be like Dishonored?
 I'm like an old grumpy Andy Rooney guy.
 I'm like, what is all these games?
 What are kids doing?
 Why do you have to kill?
 I don't know what that voice is.
 So what is your favorite game right now?
 I think probably Dishonored.
 XCOM is also very good, but that's a strategy game and you don't like strategy games.
 I do hate strategy games.
 There's no diplomacy.
 I like Need for Speed Most Wanted.
 Really?
 Yeah.
 We're going back to genres.
 You're like, I'm sorry, strategy, out the door, racing, maybe not.
 What is the genre?
 My favorite game probably of the last, I don't know, 10 years is Fallout 3.
 Oh, excellent game.
 Yeah, you don't kill anyone.
 No, no, you kill people.
 Don't get me wrong, I love killing people.
 And I like to do it in real nasty ways.
 I mean, just the other day in Dishonored, I was throwing people into the fireplace after
 I killed them.
 You didn't even have to.
 I just piloted the bomb.
 You can beat people.
 I'm piloting it okay, by the way.
 I recommend if you're anywhere where there's a fireplace, just throw the bodies right in
 there.
 That's awful.
 But you know what?
 But I like games where you have to do a little bit of talking before you kill people.
 Sure.
 Is that, you know?
 Yeah.
 Get to know them.
 Get to know them a little bit.
 Understand who you're doing and then murder them.
 And then give them a little something right there.
 A nice meal.
 All right, we have to wrap up, unfortunately, a very short amount of time, but we do have
 a real clip of Press Reset that I want to show you guys.
 I want to thank you for coming.
 I'm sorry that we have such limited time.
 I promise in the future that I will talk to you again.
 Not on the show, but I think maybe in person.
 Maybe on Twitter.
 At the office, perhaps.
 Okay, water.
 But take a, give a round of applause for Russ and Chris.
 I have no idea what happened there.
 That was just me bitching.
 And take a look.
 This is a clip from Press Reset.
 You guys can go check out Polygon and watch all this stuff because it's awesome.
 Today is day one of TGS.
 Only gaming convention where Wi-Fi is banned.
 I don't really understand how that's possible.
 Being in Japan, TGS is definitely a different beast entirely.
 There are many cultural and language barriers that Western members of the press have to
 get over.
 Can we move this up?
 It's good here.
 Good.
 Bad.
 Good.
 Bad.
 There's something that I love and I dread about video game shows.
 For the moment you get there, you're exhausted and you're stressed out.
 This is like a lot of process to just get me here.
 And then the moment it's over, you're like, man, I really miss that.
 Hit the phone.
 Okay.
 Yeah.
 Can we adjust this though?
 Because, sorry.
 I had never been to Japan before.
 I think before I went, I was envisioning a very alien experience.
 It was more grounded than I was expecting it to be.
 Why does it taste like that?
 Is it supposed to sound like that?
 Yeah.
 In all seriousness, I was very abusive to our guests.
 Oh, look, Paul and Neil are back by the way.
 I was very abusive to Russ and Chris and I'm sure they'll never come back, but they're
 wonderful men and the site is really awesome and you should go check it out.
 We've come almost to the end of the show.
 Let's point out that I brought a flag, an American flag and a Lumia 920.
 These things that go great together.
 And I believe that I am now immune to any sort of criticism.
 I mean, while you're holding this.
 As soon as you put them down.
 These things are tokens of immunity.
 When I think of the Lumia, I think of America.
 Huge, thick America.
 So we're-
 A weighty, weighty America.
 We're-
 America that buys huge foreign companies without actually buying.
 I'm from Wisconsin.
 I just mean a weighty, weighty America.
 It's fine, guys.
 I'll wait.
 Just carry on.
 It's not like we have a show to wrap up.
 Yeah.
 I'm just trying to make jokes for the middle of America.
 They want to know what President Romney's slash President Obama's policies are going
 to be since they've-
 Obama?
 Since he has already been elected.
 Yeah.
 Okay.
 Final, final move of the night, everyone.
 Giveaways.
 Phone giveaways.
 We're giving away, we're giving away, we're giving away three Samsung Galaxy Note 2s.
 We have one here in the box.
 I'm going to unbox it right now.
 Here we go.
 You ready?
 You ready for this?
 Nasty, Cessna style.
 Here we go.
 Hello?
 You know, this isn't that big, actually.
 I mean, everybody talks about how huge they are.
 It doesn't-
 Gigantic.
 I have big hands.
 But look, I mean, it basically fits in the palm of my hand.
 The massive palm of your hand.
 It covers the entire palm of my hand.
 Anyhow, so we're giving three of these away.
 And what we're going to do is we've got some tickets here with numbers on them.
 We're going to call your number.
 I have not been told how to do this, and we usually screw it up.
 Hold on a second.
 You don't have to come down.
 If we call your number, hang out up there, raise your hand or scream or do a combination,
 combo of those things is fine.
 And we'll find you, and then we'll give you a phone after the show is over.
 So we're just going to get started.
 And then you'll like the phone very much.
 And just remember, if you don't win a phone-
 And you can draw cool pictures with the stylus that is included inside of the phone, and
 I love that.
 If you don't win a phone tonight, why did you think you were going to win a phone?
 Why do you think you're different than everybody or special?
 You don't deserve it any more than anybody else in this audience.
 Just don't forget that, okay?
 Here we go.
 Who's going to be our first special person?
 All right.
 Oh boy.
 The number is 477895.
 477895.
 Right there.
 All right.
 Don't do anything.
 Stay where you are.
 477895?
 You don't have to just stay where you're in your seat.
 Think about using a stylus on your phone.
 Think about sty- Stay where you are.
 Think about it.
 Think about how cool it's going to be.
 Here, go ahead.
 Go, Neelay, you're next.
 S-calendar.
 S-calendar.
 S-calendar.
 Snot.
 Snot.
 They got S-memo.
 S-memo.
 Snot.
 Actually, I will say, I've been playing around with the GS3, which has S-memo on it.
 S-memo.
 It's pretty cool.
 Yeah.
 I got to admit.
 I'm admitting it.
 They've got some good ideas.
 You got me.
 All right.
 Not just because the show's presented by Samsung.
 No.
 But mostly.
 Okay.
 Where's this one?
 All right.
 Don't do that.
 You pulled out two tickets.
 These tickets were stuck together.
 Well, are you picking one?
 You got to choose one.
 You have to choose one?
 This is like- This is just like the election where you have to choose things that you
 have to choose.
 Here.
 You- Oh, you want me to flip it?
 You want me to flip one?
 No.
 Here.
 I haven't seen them.
 So one of these- Here, wait.
 I'm going to split them up.
 Give me one.
 That- You only want me to give you one?
 Yeah.
 Just- There you go.
 Give me one.
 Are you looking at them?
 I feel like you're picking.
 I'm using my x-ray vision.
 It's the one that ends in zero.
 I was wrong.
 47791.
 Oh.
 What?
 Why is this section winning all the phones?
 There's a conspiracy.
 This is definitely a conspiracy.
 Recount.
 Someone's stealing these phones.
 Give me this.
 I'm going to- The way the election was stolen, presumably.
 Watch how quickly I'll pick something.
 Oh, look.
 I picked a ticket already.
 852.
 Yeah.
 Oh, yeah.
 Boy, do we dodge a bullet.
 If that guy- If a guy over here hadn't won a phone, we'd never hear the end of it.
 All right.
 That is our show.
 I want to thank you guys for coming.
 First off, thank you so much.
 I want to thank Dennis Crowley, Chris Plant, Russ Frushtick.
 I said it.
 Obviously, Samsung for helping us put this on.
 And America.
 And America, and Paul and Neelai.
 Go home.
 Spend time with your families.
 Watch the election results, which we already know all about.
 We'll see you November 20th.
 We're back.
 November 20th, we have another show.
 Come back.
 Thanks a lot, guys.