 Hey you. What is this plan behind me? It's like a matching background. What is going on with this? Oh man, extreme. Hey, and welcome to the verge cast for the week of week. Is it? It's the second week of December 2013. I'm Josh to Polsky. I'm Paul Miller. I'm new like the tell. And we have going to be a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit yourself and we have droneder ben popper droneder drone editor dronedexpert drone the second generation. This is the Virch cast. We're doing the self It's self-fulfilling. Virgcast. Virgcast. It's a self-affiliate. I don't know man, I feel like buttoned up is the way to go here. Don't do it. Don't do it. You're doing the thing, it's like, you know when you like hug a baby and you want it to shut up, you just squeeze it a little bit tighter? How about this right there? No, now you look like a sexual predator. Oh really? I don't look like Batman? I mean you look like Batman in a certain type of movie. Sexy Batman. Sex Batman. Alright, enough of this nonsense. Let's get into it. We don't have a lot of time because we've got to catch a train. We do. Catch a train. Because it's the future. Because it's the time to get on a steam engine in the future. Alright. A super laser engine. Can we just talk about the only thing that happened in the news? There's exactly one thing that happened in the news. O'Neill, tell us what happened in the news this week. 60 Minutes aired a 14 minute Amazon commercial. That's not the only thing that happened. And I have many many thoughts, but the main piece of it was at the end, Jeff Bezos opened a door and Charlie Rose walked into a room and went, oh my god! Oh my gosh! And there were drones. Amazon Prime. Look at him! What? He's like, I'm being taken for a ride and I know it, I love it. That was the first time Charlie Rose has felt sober in several years. Charlie Rose lived outside of the black room. If you just walk behind those curtains into another black room with a bed in it. I mean every single piece of what we're seeing right now is a lie, first of all. No, no, no, no. Shut up. Can we talk about the news? So Jeff Bezos announced on 60 Minutes. I mean come on! Look at this video! This guy's like, alrighty. This guy's like, thanks for this yellow box. I'm just going to take it to my house and open robots. You can't put a lot in there. How does the yellow box get back? Okay, hold on. Let's not worry about details. Jeff Bezos announced on 60 Minutes that in 2015 they were going to begin a drone and air delivery system using unmanned aerial vehicles, otherwise known as drones. They'll be dropping products within 30 minutes to certain people in certain places. Five pounds or less. Five pounds or less. So if you need this thing for your skateboard. In response to this announcement, noted journalist Charlie Rose asked no follow up questions. He was like, that's cool. He's like, oh my god, the future. It really is Santa's workshop, everybody. Right? This is like a brilliant Black Friday promotion for Amazon because all everybody could talk about Monday was Amazon. I would say it's not vaporware and that drones could do this. It's vaporware and that this is totally illegal. And the technology to do this safely. They obviously can. They can't do it safely, right? If you said like if you dropped a pin on your Apple thing, you know, on your phone being like, I'm here, this is my GPS coordinate. It could fly into the air, fly to your house and fly down. It could do that right now. It could do it. But it couldn't get out of the way if the pigeon was there or know if you had a kid in the driveway or, you know, like do like it. As far as it or even necessarily make it there from far away. I love the kid in the driveway scenario. You're saying the drone would drop the thing onto the child and kill it or. Right. It would only know I'm at point A and I need to go to point B. But Jeff Bezos says that by 2015 he'll have cleared all the all the. I mean, just look at this video. It feels right to me. It feels totally right to me. And then the guy comes out. He's like, yes, my drone is here. Stay in the home until the drone is gone. Can I say something? Oh my God, the drone is gone. I can finally play again. I just want to say something. I know it's gonna be tough with this crew, but you know, look, we have cars driving down the road right now. Kids playing ball. There's all sorts of obstacles. There's things, danger they have to watch for. You know, we have let's just add another danger. I'm just saying that, you know, at some point in time, people were like cars or you're going to kill people immediately. As soon as you get behind the wheel, things are going to blow up and you're going to run people over. That'll be the end of it. And you know what? Like you learn humans couldn't go faster than 25 miles per hour. They learn flying in a plane. They said it couldn't be done. It's dangerous. You'll never make it. I mean, we all the time we do things that seem impossible and weird and like they'll never happen. But no one's questioning whether or not drones are existing or whether they will happen or whether they'll even necessarily be used in this way. We're not questioning. I'm not questioning that either. What I'm questioning is that 60 Minutes completely uncritically went to Amazon's like facility. Well, our job is not to repart with some media. I don't want to do media. I don't want to do. But this Amazon one in particular is like it's so far away from reality. It's apparently only two years away from. Yeah, I don't think it's so far away. I mean, I think it's interesting that there's like kind of this arms race now where it's like we're going to do driverless cars in 10 years. So it's like, OK, we'll do drones in one year. And it's like you announce things and tell people right off the bat, like we can't make this happen yet. But get excited now. You know, it's like you want people to think about your company and innovation and like you may not be able to actually do what you say. But it gets people thinking about Amazon in a different way. Right. Is it vaporware? No. Is it? Why isn't it, Ben? Well, it's not vaporware in that I think a drone, like I said, could do this. It just couldn't do it safely or. All products and the things they're not selling, the drug they're not selling. He's not selling drone technology. He's selling the specific thing that will allow Amazon to send a drone to your house with a package, drop it off and then return to the warehouse. So it is vaporware at this moment in that sense and that that he can't do that, even if he had all of the technology in place and it worked flawlessly. I mean, the way Amazon is built right now, I couldn't do it right. The warehouses are far away. I mean, there's no actual way to execute on that today, not just because of the laws and the safety. No, that technically they could do it because like we played I play with drones at South by Southwest that can fly. Well, he said 10 miles. OK, let's say you could send a drone several miles from one site to another. Given two GPS coordinates, it could take off, land, drop something and come back. Right. But obviously, right. There are lots of things that couldn't do like sense and avoid is the big one. It can't get out of the way of a power line or another airplane. The same technology that driverless cars are using to avoid obstacles. Right. Could be this stuff will definitely be coming online soon. I think the question is, was it a publicity stunt? This is the only question we actually have to answer. Was it a publicity stunt? I know this is very itchy or unrelated to this. That's what I believe. Was it a publicity stunt or is Jeff Bezos serious about this? And will he do everything he can to make it a reality in 2015 or beyond? So I guess I've been when I was calling around different people in the drone world to ask about what's your thoughts on Amazon? Then somebody else said, oh, well, you know, actually, GPS has been testing this. And like the president of FedEx has made clear multiple times. He said, you know, we want to do this as soon as it's legal. So, like, I think that everybody thinks this will happen. I think if you were to say, depending on your definition of vaporware, it can't happen now. So it's vapor. But it's coming. It's realistic. It's plausible. It's illegal right now. But that video that they made, I don't think is realistic or plausible. It will never be that the drone like, do you want to be the guy? Do you want to be the guy who sat here on the Hellcats and says, this will never happen. But we've written Ben wrote one. We've written the story who said the iPhone's going to fail. That's right. You're Steve Ballmer. You are Steve Ballmer. No, I just I don't think drones leaving packages and flying away again is realistic for any number of reasons, not least of which is that they will just be leaving packages in your driveway and flying away. Well, they'll be now you'll get a notification. Be at home because this thing's coming. Yeah, that's totally reasonable. People who aren't home. I need it in half an hour. You're probably not going to get it in New York. Like you're not going to get a drone delivered in New York. You're going to have to live in some sort of cherry suburb. All the infrastructure about how this but not in New York because people live in this 13th floor of an apartment building. Like how are they going to come down onto the crowded street with every apartment building? We have like a rooftop delivery where the drone drops. What I'm saying is the video I don't think is realistic because I think the reality video. It's a concept of a drone delivering packages. To me, I'm pissed about this because I didn't I didn't read about the Australian textbooks company. I think this is awesome because a lot of how we tried to visualize the future for a long time was these flying cars and flying cars just don't seem to work. There is something that we do a lot of things to reduce congestion in cities. And now you've had these delivery companies like eBay is doing it. Amazon is doing it where they are having random people drive packages from Walmart to your house. Yes, it's very upsetting. And so like there's just more and more and we're kind of overloading this infrastructure that is the road. And if you have this new I think unmanned drones are perfect for using a fairly unused portion of our sky, which is below helicopters and airplanes and higher than I can jump. We use up all the ground. Everything between the height of how high you can jump and below. There's an available bandwidth there. That should just be full of drones. You are on the same wavelength. This guy from Facebook posted about this yesterday, the sharing economy. This is like the ultimate utopian Silicon Valley. He was like, once John do this, we'll have the sharing economy. You will own nothing. You'll be like, oh, I need this pot tonight and this knife and a drone will bring it to you and you'll use it. That's stupid. That person is insane and stupid. That'll never happen. This is like because if you take that, here's one thing I can tell you. Here's what you're not going to take away from the American people owning things. You're not going to take that away. Our whole existence is built on the consumption and ownership of things. People, products, houses. I just like owning things. I have a very small apartment and I really don't want to have more things. I think as we've learned time and time again, Paul Miller is no gauge for humanity. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to make you uncomfortable with my embrace of the future and my willingness to explore and my total freaking excitement. I'm just so happy that Jem C's own... I thought you were pissed. No, he's pissed that he didn't learn about it sooner. Yeah, I didn't read about the textbook because it's a different way to look at a city and think about how the things get from point A to point B. And there's something that seems kind of fundamentally untenable about... Look, sheeple, if we all rode bikes, we wouldn't have to worry about these trucks ingesting our roads. I just bought a frigging HDMI cable from Amazon. Oh my God. And I live down the street from Best Buy and there's GameStop and there's KMR and all of those would charge me $5 million for a six foot HDMI cable. What? What's happening? Why don't you just go to the store? Why don't you just order one from Amazon? Just get one shipped to you. In a rational... I don't know if a rational economy, but it would be cool if I could walk down the street and buy an HDMI cable for a reasonable price. You know what you're talking about? Your problem is not that you can't go get the HDMI cable for a reasonable price. Your problem is you're like ridiculously impatient. Like human beings are horrible now and we think we should get it drop shipped to us by a drone in 30 minutes because we need a cheaper HDMI cable right this second instead of having to spend money on the more expensive one that is nearby. But we're not talking... Your request is irrational. It's not irrational. Yes, it is. Okay, okay. What you're asking for is like you're saying like I would not only do I want to buy the cheapest HDMI cable available, but I want it either within walking distance or delivered to me by a drone. That's your that's your reasoning for loving a drone idea. But what ultimately happened, what ultimately happened is that I bought a cheap HDMI cable on Amazon. Yeah. And that had to take up bandwidth on the streets and I probably almost got hit by the HDMI. Your HDMI cable wasn't the only thing they were shipping. That's why they might as well. That's why they make big trucks to hold lots of things so they could ship multiple items. They don't have to. Every time they're like, hey, Paul Miller wants HDMI cable and a guy gets in a car and there's in the back of the truck. There's an HDMI cable driving towards New York. And you really want to robot to take that guy's drop away. What has so far been proposed for how to make this quicker is a dude in a car or a lady. No, it's a it's a it's a it's a person in a car full of other things they have to deliver. It makes a lot of sense. It's like it's like, you know, you've got a bunch of things. They're all being delivered to the same area. You can put a lot of them in a van and then you can just go door to door handing everybody their product. I know. And it's it actually is a pretty good system. The problem is people like you want their cheap HDMI cable to be delivered within 30 minutes or less. That's the problem. Or like you're like, I won't spend the money on this best buy HDMI cable. But I want the cable right now. I didn't grow up buying things online. I still don't like buying things online. And it makes sense if you have things close to people. Get those things that are already close to people. Why doesn't Amazon just open store? Maybe they should just open retail stores. Maybe they should with big warehouse. Why don't they just open their warehouses as retail stores in major metropolitan areas? Like put a retail level on top. You can take an escalator up. They'll just get the stuff out of the warehouse. Because what you really want Amazon to do is build urban Ikea's everywhere. Yes, that's what I want. I want the Amazon warehouse. I'm sorry. It's called Amazon Live. You guys know about this? The Amazon store? Anyway, Amazon is very near and dear to my heart. And if you let anything about Ikea and the experience of Ikea infect the beauty and purity of the Amazon experience. Ikea is an incredible business that has brought beautiful Scandinavian design to millions of people. And horse meat. Were they doing horse meat in America? I think so. They've got problems in Europe. They don't even have meat laws there. Mad cow. Where'd that come from? Europe? I mean you can't trust the Europeans when it comes to meat. That's true. I love Europeans. But the meat stuff, you've got to be careful. Careful of their meat. Here's all I know. If you're in a relationship and you want to know whether or not it's going to last, go to Ikea with that person. Obviously we know Ikea is a hell world death trap. So don't get it near Amazon, man. But what I'm saying is, if you'll let me finish, Neli, what I'm saying is what Paul wants, what Paul wants is instant gratification. Paul wants what he wants when he wants it. You know what I want? I want a local economy. Well then you do not want a cheap HDMI cable. You want the most expensive HDMI cable you've ever purchased. Because in a local economy, they could only make a few HDMI cables. They had to make them very slowly. They had to get high price materials from other local companies. How much would it cost to make an HDMI cable in like... Midtown. No, midtown would be easy. Midtown, I'm like in the middle of Cincinnati, Ohio. Handcrafted, artisanal, full HDMI cable on an Etsy. I'm misspelled. Can you get HDMI cables on Etsy? Can you get HDMI cable? I challenge you. Is there a single HDMI cable manufactured in America? Does one exist? Wait, okay, first of all, yes. For some reason you can buy HDMI cables. Etsy is overrun with spam now. 99 cents. By the way, overview, handmade item. 99 cents for HDMI cables. Shit, this is Brooklyn, New York. No it doesn't. Okay, this is a troll. You better flag that. Hold on, it's just fundamentally weird to me that I have to order from this big impersonal Amazon.com for them to like tell some other thing that they send this thing in the mail and it comes to me and there's so many steps and then I like get it like two days later. When there are thousands of HDMI cables within like a two block radius. So go buy those. That are just completely unaffordable. You know what you're paying for? Convenience. That's why they're twice as much money or three times as much money because you can get it at that moment. Do you know how many times I bought a Blu-ray player at a local electronics store because I wanted to watch a Blu-ray and did not have the player. Do you know how expensive it was compared to the ones I could buy on Amazon? Hey Josh, hey Josh. So why are you so down on the share economy where the drone brings you the Blu-ray player for a night and then you get it back after you watched your Blu-ray? Do you ever order Fresh Direct, Josh? All the time. I know. I love it. Do you get Seltzer delivered to your door? Yes, every two weeks. What's your, and I pay for it. It's expensive. It's great. Fresh Direct is a rip off and my Seltzer guy is killing me. Do you remember? I don't expect it. I'm going to get. You're not going to recover. Fresh Direct is cheaper than going to Whole Foods. I'm just saying. Fresh Direct keeps its prices down. Yes, Fresh Direct is cheaper than going to Whole Foods. And they cover their delivery costs. You know what Fresh Direct has? A warehouse in New York. Exactly. So Amazon needs to build a warehouse in New York. Exactly. And deliver drones then. Because then I don't want to have 20,000. Why can't a guy just bring it over on a bike? You love bikes. Okay, if you want to create jobs, bikes would be fine. Create human jobs. You're sitting in front of an American flag right now. Put them on a city bike. Send them over with your HDMI cable. Hey, drones need jobs too. Problem solved. No, they don't. Yeah, I mean like the thing you're talking about, the sharing for me. We got to wrap up this conversation. Let's transition. So you're worried about human jobs. We're talking about Amazon and drones. We talked about Google and driverless cars. And then the news today, right, was that Andy Rubin has left Android to build real Android to build robots, right? Building Android. So it's interesting to me, I think, like the big thing, right, is like all these big companies that started as software companies or web companies, Amazon, they're getting into robotics. Like this stuff is becoming cheap enough to prototype and deal with and maybe accessible to consumers in a way that like Google is like, let's throw some money at it. Let's build a sex bot already. I mean, this drone delivery and you know, whatever else they're doing, a guy cleans your floor or something. Just build the sex bot. That's what everybody wants anyhow. When you have a huge use in the market for robots and drones would be one huge use, it promotes the advance of that industry. Or it makes people hate robots and start some kind of weird cult against robots. And then it leads us into some sort of civil war. I hope you're happy. That's always what happens. Have you seen iRobot? It would be thrilling. I've seen iRobot. It is terrible. It is on all the time. Have you used red iRobot? Because that is full of fun philosophical quandary. Well that's a great, great, great, that's great. That's great. Blow anything up from a great brain. Literally, if you took the thesis overall of the movie with Will Smith and the thesis overall of the book iRobot, they would, they would battle each other to the death. What do you think the thesis of the movie is? Robots be bad. Robots are crazy. Like catchphrase, explosion, robots. Scary, scary robots do bad things. But people are ultimately what's broken. Sex bot on the Oculus. Oh my God. Sorry. Okay, okay, hold on, hold on, hold on. This is a, this is an Oculus sex bot, but I'm sorry. What? No one wants to do. Why does this happen? No one wants to put their wang, wang. What is that? Have you not seen this? No. It gives you a, it gives you a hand job. No, I gathered what it was doing, Josh. You don't have to show me that and explain that it's a hand job to me. I like Paul scandalized, like just all the people to be scandalized. Paul, I don't, I don't want the robots involved in that, but if you want to preserve your already good thing to have all these sex robots, I think, I think they'll think so. Actually that's a, that's a real philosophical quandary. I don't think it really is. I think, I think at the end of the day, if you're banging a robot, it's almost like having sex with an animal. No, it's not. Come on. It's not animals are, are animals have souls and go to heaven. It's degrading to the animal because the robot isn't an animal, but it's degrading to the person. It's perfect. No one's going to argue that the person, you know, you say that now, but when the, when the robots are really sexy, you're not going to feel it's as degraded. So it was just a, if it's just a thing pumping like a machine, I think it's especially degrading. But I think if it's like a beautiful man or woman, then suddenly it seems less degraded. Right. It's more like a beautiful man or woman robot. And with good enough virtual reality, it can be very, that's like paying more for sex. Can I actually say something? A sex bot and what we just saw are two very different things. That was like a simulator, a hand job simulator with a virtual reality component. Two thousand. What I'm talking about. Really draw the parameters as tightly as possible. When I say sex bot. That was more of a virtual H.J. situation. You're talking about a humanoid. I mean a humanoid robot that does sex to you or that you do sex to, depending on the situation that might arise. Anyhow, moving on. Andy Rubin is by the way focused on manufacturing. He's not banging. What is Andy, tell us what Andy Rubin is building. No, so he, uh, sex bots. It's actually kind of weird, the story. Cause it just came out in the New York Times. He granted some access to the Times. He said this is not part of Google X. This is his own thing. It could be spun out as his own company. But it is focused on moonshots. Moonshots. Hashtag moonshots. Yeah. Um, they've bought seven companies to staff this thing up and the, it's weird because they talked to Rubin and then according to several people with specific knowledge of the project, uh, it could be used for electronics assembly and manufacturing and aid and sort of making things in the United States. Nothing. Well, none of you can't have sex with any of that. That sounds good and also bad. It's like, Hey, we're bringing jobs back to America for robots. Robot, robot, you know, but somebody's got to put the robots together. Right. You know? Right. Right. There's a lot of the, there's the coworking robots. Like that's, you have a person who is working alongside a robot and you combine a human intelligence and adaptability and flexibility for situations with a robot's really good at doing repetitive things that could eventually strain a human's wrist. So here's the bigger theme. I'm just going to leave that there. But Google is writing big checks, right? I mean like this is, they bought seven companies. This is not even in their like crazy projects lab. This is another thing. Right. And the same with Calico, that life extension company, like they're giving them all this money, but it's not an like they're, they're allowing people within the company to just go off on some really crazy, crazy moonshot. Google Island is going to be really messed up. That's all I know. It's going to be weird. It actually happens. People living forever. It is going to be a serious, seriously. Banging robots that are manufacturing cell phones. That are manufacturing themselves. Well, seriously, it's weird. It's funny. We've had this conversation out for over a day. This is just of a piece of like random rich people saying they're going to do things that are years and years away. And you have a problem with that. No, I don't have a problem with it. It's just, it's weird. Thematically. You hate dreams. It's Elon Musk in the hyperloop. It's in the hyperloop. And just like people, this is how people were murdered in Clue. Elon Musk in the hyperloop. And you're with a robot. And you're with a robot. With a sex bot. With a sex bot. Who else, who else is there? Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos with a drone. Do you think it's like a sign of like a bubble or something? No, it's just, it's just a weird moment where I think we don't like real change only comes from like corporate entities right now. And so. Well, we've regulated the government into, into stitches. This is like a rich dude doing stuff. Maybe like Google. The government's regulated it itself. Because they were the first ones to be like, it's beta, it's busted, it doesn't really exist, driverless cars or glass, but it's coming. And people got so excited. Well, you have to dream. It's NASA. It's the space program. If you look at this. That's what a moonshot is. Like, like. Literally. Go ahead. All this drone stuff is very much from like university research, hackers, do it yourself stuff. And all the robotic stuff has survived as university research and hobbyists because it hasn't been a legitimate. R O S right. Isn't that the robot operating system? Yeah, there's Ross. Ross started in a school. Right. Um, and now, and that's in this Baxter coworking robot. So like now some of this stuff has matured far enough in these hobbyists and university settings that now these businesses are able to possibly actually make products out of. Here's what I think. There's driverless cars, a lot of that technology came from university research and the DARPA. I think if we fast forward 25 years, this conversation will seem so Queen and ridiculous. Like I think we're going to have drone delivery systems. I think we're going to have sex bots. I think we're going to have coworking or just working robots. I mean, I think in the span of like the next 25 years, this pod, this podcast will be, you know, three or four robots sitting here talking to each other. It'd be replacements. I mean, you were having the same conversation already. Oh God, I wish we could do it an effect where we all ripped our faces off. We were like sparking robots. Can we pause this podcast? Would that be shocking to the viewer or thrilling? Yeah. I mean, wouldn't it be shocking if, if somehow during this, uh, broadcast I were to, to start to reach under my, you know, you were like, what is that? Are you, you have an itch there or something. And I just, and I just ripped off my skin and you were like, oh my God, he's ripping his skin off. He's, he's killing him. Somebody call an ambulance. And then there was no blood and there was just a horrendous, horrific terminator face. And then I removed the terminator face and there was a regular Josh face under there. Would that freak you out? We can probably pull that off right now. Would that freak you out? Yeah. Give us a couple of minutes. Just try it. Just try it real quick. Yeah, we should move on. Oh, by the way, I would like to point out that Ben was supposed to stealthily leave and he did that during the moment. It was so stealth. Ben had to step away. But then he walked behind you and his head was standing right there. I'm so out of here. Next topic, Eli. Good one, Ben. Good job. Great job, Ben. Great job. What's happening? Why are you whispering? We can hear every word you're saying. Just kidding. We can't. Well, there's one that I think is really weird. Please share with us. Also, I have a little Xbox rant. Go ahead. Do the Xbox rant. Is this a good time? I brought a prop. You brought a prop? Uh-oh. This is going to be like, this is my Kinect. No, this is the- You literally brought your Kinect. I know it's a Kinect. I know. I did not know that was what was going to happen. This is the Office Kinect. Oh, hey. Wait a second. We need that. Why do you have it? And this right here, I'd like- A non-standard USB 3 plug? This is bullshit. Whoa. What's underneath it? The plug. It's a USB 3 plug. You know what it's called? It's called Screw You Hackers, We Win. Make it just hack together an adapter for it. I'm sure. It's a USB 3 plug. Here's what you do. You get your soldering iron. Someone's going to figure that out. You get your soldering iron out. And then you get a little history reminder. People started- History, I think these are called history lessons. History reminder. Well, I don't want to teach. I want to remind. History reminder. Refresher. A refresher. People started hacking the Kinect right when it came out. Microsoft sent cease and desist. No, it didn't. Microsoft- It did at first. They were horrible and hateful and mean and scary to these people. But they're going to keep on hacking it. So they kept on hacking it. And then Microsoft does this about phase. Like, oh, look at all this cool research and they're pretending like they're into these people and helping them out and making these incentives for them to do stuff. None of that really cool stuff really ever ended up on the Xbox. There's still a lot of these open source libraries and frameworks and hack together things. And people just hack and mess around with- And amazing stuff has been done with it. Really cool stuff. Then Microsoft came out with Kinect for Windows and some of their own software for Windows. But if you're a hacker, none of that hacker stuff and really none of that Kinect stuff for Windows can be used with Kinects that people buy for their Xbox. They're not for commercial use. So there's no actual use case on the Xbox because the Xbox is a very closed platform. There's no actual use case on Windows because unless someone actually buys a Kinect for Windows, they can't really use this as a commercial thing. So I was looking into this because I was really stoked about the Kinect. I was looking into like, well, how do you learn how to program for the Kinect and maybe I can make a tech demo and that'd be fun. And then I buy an Xbox One on impulse and sadness and I pull it out and I'm setting it on sadness. Why don't you just sign up for the Kinect for Windows SDK and just buy it? It's $400. Because nobody has Kinect for Windows. If you develop something with Kinect for Windows, you're only allowed to actually officially commercially distribute it. I'm sorry, what are you asking for? I'm confused. I'm saying that Microsoft- You want to be able to hack on the One. Still hates these hackers and is still so pissed at them and now they've created this bogus plug and it just really bugs me the way that they act. You're really mad. I'm really mad. I'm really mad. I'm just a little confused. Are you mad that they made the Kinect difficult to hook up to a standard PC or whatever? Are you mad that they're not providing tools that interface with the Xbox One to allow you to do some hacky stuff? I guess probably the former. The thing is that Microsoft hugely benefited from, and science and interesting cool things, hugely benefited from the fact- What are some of its benefits? A lot of machine vision and a lot of machine learning, a lot of robotics was really advanced by the Kinect sensor. It became almost like the de facto robotic sensor. It was huge for robotics. And also- Maybe that's what Microsoft doesn't like. When they opened it up, you mean? No. Microsoft never helped really very much. What was the benefit that they gained? People were buying them? Microsoft fell into a cool moment and tried to capitalize and rebrand it as their cool moment and tried to be a part of it. And then they come up with this bogus adapter to just stop that ever happening again. Don't you think- But they're going to sell it. They're going to sell one for Windows. Don't you think they'll sell a- They use a standard USB 3. Connect 2 for Windows. Nobody buys that thing. Nobody buys the actual Kinect for Windows. But don't you think there's also, for Microsoft, there's a bit of a conflict because it's like they spent money. Well, they don't own the company that made the Kinect technology. Is the new one all of that? It's in-house. Yeah. Microsoft loves to tell me about their Kinect back. So here's the thing. So, okay. So don't you think that they want that kind of revolutionary experimentation to basically just come from Microsoft? I mean, we went to their R&D labs and they're doing all kinds of crazy experiments with the Kinect. Isn't the whole point like they'd rather not have some other company capitalize on all of their patented cool technology and make something with it? They don't want- Because it's a closed system. It's not meant to be. They clearly never meant it to be something that's like a peripheral. No, no. I mean, like the thing with Kinect, well, they're selling one for Windows. They're selling it. You can buy it. How much is it? Kinect for Windows. I mean, it's for developers, right? For the new one? For the new one. Kinect for Windows. Wait. Kinect 2 for Windows. Well, I don't know if it's Kinect 2, but it's called Kinect for Windows. But they're not selling it. But he's saying, are they selling the new generation of Kinect? Yeah. And it's going to cost $400. But that's the Kinect 2. Is that what it's called? $400. I don't know if it's called Kinect 2. $400. It's for fun purposes. Paul, if I were to make the full argument here, I would tell you that the only people who need to buy Kinect for Windows are developers, because the only people in the world who have Kinect are the ones with Xbox Ones. And now, when you develop a thing on Windows, at some point, you're going to be able to port those apps to the Xbox. But he's saying he wants them to not be ported to the i. He's saying they should be open and usable. It would be nice once you could just port stuff to the Xbox. You're going to equip your robot with a Kinect head. You can't do that. You can't port stuff to the Xbox yet. I still haven't seen Microsoft. I just think they're a sinister, hateful company. And also, they don't understand that people have coffee tables. And I have Kinect on my Xbox. You're very frustrated with the Xbox. I'm really frustrated. I will say this. The Kinect, it doesn't work very well. The need to place- Have you ever gotten the Xbox On to work? Always on the third time. I can't get it to work. Yeah, once or twice. You have to do it twice at least. Okay, hold on. The Kinect, the biggest problem for me, okay, number one, the Xbox One is huge. It does not fit into the cabinet where I put all of my other components. It's so big that it's too deep to fit in there. It's just deep. And yes, it's huge. And the Kinect is also huge. And the way the cable on it is situated, you can't even move the cable to a position you need to get to. It's a really heavy angled plastic piece coming off the back. So I had to put the Kinect and the Xbox down in a corner of my living room. And so now the Kinect basically isn't functional unless I want the Kinect to be front and center in my living room, which I don't because it's huge and ugly. I rearranged my living room around the Kinect and got it all set up and stuff like that. And basically the setup dialogue, the way it does, it's like, okay, where's the floor? Where are you? And stuff like that. And like, okay, now tilt it like this. All right. And then you go into the app and it says, your room seems to be cluttered. We can't see you. So I go back to the setup. Is your room cluttered? I actually had to like, I had to like, I had to tilt it where they told me not to tilt it. Like I had to be smarter than Kinect to get this set up. And it's like, I can't believe. That should be really easy for me. I mean, the Kinect can't do a lot. So I just love motion gaming. I love these. There's so much possibility and opportunity here. And I think Sony gave up and I'm a little mad at them for that. I wrote about that at E3. And Microsoft was my last hope. And I think- I mean, Apple just bought PrimeSense. Oh, well, that's exciting to me. I think the Kinect doesn't work very well. And I think Microsoft is sinister in the way that it has treated developers. And I hate that plug. A sinister Microsoft plot. I hate that plug. Wait, well, that's just a plug though. I mean like- Wow. It needs a lot. It needs a lot. It needs a lot. It needs a lot. It needs a lot. But just think of how much happened. But you can buy it with the regular plug. All right, listen. Can we- What 12-year-old kid is going to get their parents to pay $400? This is like a problem. This is such a- It's such a weird problem. Such a beyond 1% problem. Like I- No, no, no, no, no, no. If you buy an iPhone, you can get Xcode for free and you can make iPhone apps. If you bought an Xbox Kinect, you can plug that in a computer and you can make for free apps, all the libraries are open source because cool people made them. You could have a 12-year-old make a Kinect app. So what you're saying is you're mad because Microsoft isn't more like Apple. No. Really? I mean, well, I mean, that's the argument. I'm mad because Microsoft is squelching innovation. I really think that- Well, I think they're interested in their own innovation. I think that's the difference. And they never deliver their innovation. There's one Kinect app right now and it sucks. I don't disagree that, well- It's in pre-season. I'll say this. I think the Xbox One- You're talking about Kinect Sports? Yeah. I think the Xbox One has some pretty ambitious goals. It just hasn't realized them at its launch. Let me just say that. And you know what? If you look at the numbers, right? The PS4 is like every couple of days somebody's like, we sold a million, we sold two million. And Microsoft's response is like, over one billion zombies have been killed. That doesn't make any sense at all. On that note, I will say that in Dead Rising 3 where the zombies are being killed, I do actually use a function of the Kinect, which I never thought, which is like trying to attract zombies by screaming over here. But it's weird to actually- That's great. It's weird to interact with it in that way. It's actually pretty fascinating. And despite it being really buggy, the smart glass app component does some really interesting stuff. It does. And I have to say, I mean, it's very buggy and they need to work it out because it doesn't connect properly. Connect properly. No, it doesn't. But they're very ambitious. I feel like the PS4 is far less ambitious. Yes, absolutely. And it kind of bugs me. I think it's very capable and very impressive. They played it super safe. But it's just so... I mean, I think Microsoft probably bit off more than they could chew, but it's like Sony didn't bite off enough. Microsoft is just deluded in thinking that innovation comes from inside of Microsoft. All right, we have to, again, we have to catch a train. What's our next topic? Sorry, Paul. Applebot Topsy. Which I know you're super hot at. I appreciate you guys letting me vent. We love that. I unboxed my Xbox One- To a degree. And I was pissed. To a degree. Well, no, it's... Applebot, Applebot, Applebot Topsy. Well, no, you can... I mean, I just... You were into it. No, I'm not that into it. There's another... I just think... I mean, it's not that into it. My only comment on this is nobody really knows why. Apple does acquire companies all the time. Topsy was a Twitter search and analytics firm. People are like, this is the TV. They're gonna integrate Twitter stuff with TV. And it's like... It's the TV. Yeah, I don't really know. Every time something happens... Don't you think it's more like improved Siri search? I honestly feel like this is maybe part of Apple's play to, at some point, launch a search engine of its own. Because at the end of the day, when you look at their biggest competitors, Google has a search engine, which people use a ton. Bing, it may not be the most popular search engine, but it has given Google some competition. And it is now the thing that you get on a Windows phone and on a Windows laptop and on a... Microsoft is responsible for a lot of searches. If you think about how many searches happen through the iOS browser, through Safari and through Siri, they're making a lot of searches and they should probably own a little more of that process. Well, I think that Apple, as evidenced by the maps thing and clearly their desire to control end to end the experience for users, to me, it could be the first step or part... Not the first step, but part of that process of creating some kind of search engine. And maybe in our new world, you start to prioritize things like Twitter search much higher than you would have a few years ago. Why? Well, because Twitter is increasingly an important part of how people get information. No, I agree with that. But I mean, I just think... You're like, why? And then I'm like, one minor point, you're like, well, that is true. No, but Twitter is a vector. It's never the... It's like 99% of the time I search for something and I land in Wikipedia. Yeah, Google... Apple would be better off buying Wikipedia than Twitter. Well, yeah. You know, like... But if you could really make that information useful somehow, potentially... A lot of the information you are looking for, like when you're talking to Siri on your phone, is not like big facts like how are giraffes made? It's like... How are giraffes made? Wait, excuse me. Hang on one second. Hang on also. How are giraffes made? How are giraffes made? No, how are giraffes mate is what I got. I got it. Made right here. Boom. What does it say? Well, I have the giraffe... By the way, I got what must be the weirdest eHow article of all time. Is it how are giraffes made? How are giraffes made? Here's how to make a balloon giraffe. Oh, what's this, guys? Can you get it? How are giraffes made? Can you open that up? This is terrible. Oh, it's Wikipedia. We've done a lot. Do you know how giraffes are made, though, Paul? I'm curious because I'm worried that if you don't know how they're made, we have real problems. When a daddy giraffe loves a mommy giraffe. That's correct. Yeah, they adopt. Yeah, they adopt. Wow, this is really graphic. This is really graphic. But a lot of what you're asking... Really? We got to see a bro. I mean, look, can I just say the following sentence, which is scientific? When the female releases urine, the male tastes the urine to see if she's ready to mate. Wow. Giraffes, everybody. Got to say, giraffes and I have a lot in common. That's why I don't ask my phone that kind of thing. But I do... That's why you don't want to know that information. This is like... The kind of level of learning that is happening on this Verge cast is encyclopedic in scale. I'm not going to look at giraffes the same. Yeah, no, I'm sure you're not. They're all in the golden showers. Which way were you looking at them already? All giraffes are into pee stuff. They're into urine play. Disgusting. It's time to get on this. Like 50 Shades of... What's their family? I'm going to say that there's a lot of information on Twitter that is more relevant to me in the moment that I'm talking to Siri about stuff. Yes, exactly. Of course. That's what Apple knows too and that's why they bought it. Topsy-daisy. I'm just trying to find the family. I wonder what family giraffes are in. Does anybody know? I should know this. Mammal? Giraffidae. There's got to be some kind of special... Is that a smaller one? Yeah, there's got to be some sort of... Isn't that the kingdom? So we're all just doing giraffe stuff on the internet right now? Oh, it's a... Well, the phylum is Cordata. This is the worst. Or Chordata. Chordata? Could be Cordata. It's Cordata. Well, I don't know. You don't know how that C-H is pronounced, do you? The family is Giraffidae. Are you a scientist? I play one occasionally. Ooh, they're even toad ungulates. Fifty Shades of Giraffidae is what I want. All right, we're stopping this. Fifty Shades of Giraffidae was the joke that I wanted to make and I've made it. And it rhymes with gray, so that's perfect. Moving on. Giraffidae? There's one more story. Gray? Which we should talk about. Kind of almost sounds like an expanded gray when you think about it. Which is healthcare. Which is the website. Healthcare. The healthcare. Which is the website? The website is going to be. Healthcare.gov. Healthcare.gov. Which we have a big story on, which is why we should talk about it. Healthcare.gov is back. Let me ask you something. It's not back. It's sort of back. It's sort of back. 80% of users. Let me ask you a question. Does anybody think that there was a global conspiracy to destroy the website of healthcare.gov? Or did the global conspiracy come completely from within our US government? Yeah. And the conspiracy was they're really bad at making things. Yeah, it's a global conspiracy of incompetent people. I mean, it is kind of insane. When you look at the data, by the way, if you haven't read this, Adrian Jeffries wrote this incredible, and we have a video too, this incredible report about the failings of healthcare.gov and sort of what we learned from it. It's incredible how exactly like the US government, the process of building healthcare.gov seems like. It's like 32 contractors. No, 55. Wait, oh, 55 contractors each working on some little part in some sort of insane Kafka-like bureaucratic hell world where nobody can talk to anybody and nobody knows what the other person is doing. And it's like, yeah, this is how you make something really horrible that breaks. Like have 55 different people from 55 different companies working on it. At the end, everybody knew it was going to break and they launched it anyway. I mean, so the piece is great. And what's interesting about it is the argument is insane if you just look at how people are arguing about it. And it highlights the fact that our government- You mean that we have to repeal Obamacare because the website broke? Yeah. No, that's an insane argument, of course. Oh boy, oh boy, we're going down. No, no, no. No, no, fine. But that argument is they are using the dysfunction of our government as a whole to make an argument that has nothing to do with it. Right, but they're saying- Or wait, or does it? But the argument is very simply that- That argument actually makes sense. Well, it's weird. Maybe we should repeal Obamacare. Probably. I'm going to think about it. If this is what they do with a website, what are they going to do with my healthcare? That's exactly the argument. That's exactly the argument. That's true. No, but Obamacare and healthcare.gov are very interesting because it's like this huge, massive government policy. And for the first time ever, the only way that it exists for people is the internet. Yeah, on the web. It is an IT policy. On the worldwide web. I think- And the government doesn't know what to do about that. It doesn't know how to build that sort of thing. Right, and also- It knows how to ask to build ships and missiles and- But not only that, but it doesn't know how to build them and that's evidenced by- You wouldn't have launched it. What you would have done if you knew how to build them is you would have, first off, you would have never started the project the way they started it, but then you would have tested, tested, tested and made sure like anybody does when they make something that it's going to be the product you think it's going to be. So clearly they didn't do that. But what's also interesting is that we don't know how to, as a people and as a government, process the failure of a part of the government like this. And the reaction is like, oh my God, like everything is messed up. Why would we want these people to be responsible for healthcare? But it's like, I don't know, we've had it. I want to get, I give it the benefit of the doubt. I would at least like to see if the website were functioning 100% correctly, what would it be like? I'd just like to know. But then I also think- But it's not even that. Like I think it's Oregon contracted with Oracle to build their state exchange and that like just didn't work. Like there's, there's elements of this where- You're saying that it's a failed policy. No, maybe not the policy. I'm saying that we, the government is good at being like, you contractor make a thing and the contractor maybe can make it or not. It's usually a rocket though. But usually- Like nine times out of 10 when they say make a thing, it's a rocket. How many times, like how many military projects are like way over budget or never hit the deadline or like we canceled at the end after spending all this money and you can't- Probably most. If the government wants to be more responsive or effective, it can't treat this that same way. It has to actually be- In some weird way, I almost feel like what we needed to do was contract this out to a private, but not done in the way that the government did it, but like find like the ideal person to build it. The single company that could make something of that size and have them go build it. Isn't that what they should have done? Just had people bid on the one, on the project of you're going to make the website that does all this stuff. I mean, that's kind of sort of what they did. Right? But they did it- But they end up with 55 different contractors. They end up with 55 different, and they did it that, you should watch Adrian's video because it's amazing, but they did it five years before the ACA was like passed. Right. So they have these indefinite, they're called IDIQ contracts. Yeah, the IDIQ is totally amazing. I know the second one was indefinite quantity. I don't know what the D stands for right now, but- And I think it's indefinite delivery, deliverable indefinite quantity. Yeah, it's something insane. Which is like, we don't know we're making it. We don't know how long it's going to take and how much we're going to make. But you got the contract, right? But we are, we won. So these guys have it and they don't, they're not incentivized. Like everything you could complain about the government doing this, they did those things. Mark Zuckerberg can fix this. Like structurally, the things people complain about big government making mistakes were all here in play. Oh, you know, it's like move slow and break things. And then don't know how they're broken. Yeah. It's crazy. It's only going to get worse. But Adrian's point is like, the government has to build more websites. Yeah. Well, this is how people interact with each other. Have you ever tried to like use their websites for taxes and stuff like that? No, no, no. It's a classic. I mean, even like, you know, look at like the DMV, the New York, New York City DMV site. I mean, it's a classic, this is a classic joke, right? That all of the, you know, the government or, you know, city, federal, whatever, state, federal, they're like, they're like, yeah. This is terrible. This is insane, right? You know, at least the healthcare site has a great, great web design. No, but this is the thing. You can find stuff on here, but it's crazy to do it. This is incredible. We're looking at the New York DMV site. You can look at, if you want to look at the New York DMV site, can you just get it up on the, because I've visited a lot recently. This is really one of the better ones. There, no, but like, scroll down a little bit, just get into the mix here. It's like, there's just so much going on here. And I know there has to be a lot, but we have better ways of making websites for lots of stuff now. Yeah. But the point is that it's always been this running joke, but now it's like, it's not just about, I need to renew my license, which is kind of, you can go and do it if you have to, and you're going to do it anyhow. And you sort of expect the DMV to be a horrible experience because it's government run. And but you know, you, you, oh, Illinois, Illinois has branded their DMV cyber drive, Illinois. That makes me want to click log on, log on. Okay, anyhow, but, but, but now the problem is that, that it's not, the problem is that we now actually need these things to work like increasingly like with healthcare. I mean, there could be other programs where there are of course now, but in the future where we need the government to be ready for technology. It's the essential joke of all of this is that the government legally required people to purchase something and then made it impossible for them to purchase it. They had no good way to get it to them. Have you heard about the, the prison glitch? This is my favorite blog on all of healthcare.gov. It asks you how, how long you've been in prison and then you can't go any further. Because it just assumes that you've been in prison. If you have zero amount of prison, which makes you think about those first five people that did get through it all, they probably need a prison or they lied. They were like, just put me through the system. I will say, so like before all of this went live, I was like, I quit my job at the verge and so I needed some healthcare. So I like looked around and all like all healthcare things are all just scary and terrifying and weird. Then I like accidentally like put my phone number in somewhere and then somebody called me and they turned out to be like a healthcare broker. So I guess they make commission on sales. Oh, that sounds, she's just talking me through some plans. All sounded pretty sketchy, but I just bought a plan. I didn't know you did you really through a healthcare broker. So what the lesson here is that you can just call Paul. Paul will heal if you're nice enough, nice enough on the phone, buy anything that you're selling him, including including health insurance, which he needs. He needs to stay alive. It probably needs to be replaced. Now. I don't know if it's legal, but that doesn't sound right to me. I think it's still legal. People can keep selling. Nobody's telling these guys to not sell health insurance. Yeah. It's just that there's now other options. Nobody has to like hit a certain minimal. I don't know if I have the minimum required coverage, but who knows? You're probably gonna send, get sent right to a death panel in this situation. Yeah, probably. I, I, I will say this, you know, it is all I know is we've not tried the socialized healthcare plan. Like it hasn't been tried in America. And I just feel like let's just roll the dice and see how it goes. Let's give it a shot. Let's go. Why not? I don't want to gamble with my whatever. And it's like, why not? There's a bunch of people who don't have insurance and like, let's see what happens. You know, it's really fun for me is going home for Thanksgiving. Yeah. Your father is a hardcore right wing and my family full of doctors. Yeah. Talking about this. They don't like Obamacare. You might. So my sister is all, she's cool with it. You know, she's like, she's got to remain hope. Yeah. Cool, cool. Yeah. My dad, man, he's not into it, not into it. There's gotta be some, but it's like my attempts to escape that conversation, like by the end, it was like diving off of couches. My guess is that at some point though, just the way the medical industry has exploited. You got, you got Lego frames like the real one. Oh dude, no, no. Like the real tracks. Lego trains right now are awesome. Wait, what are Lego trains? So when I was a kid, I had the Lego monorail. Do you remember the space monorail? You had the monorail? I had the monorail. It was awesome. He had it all. He had it all. He was racing privilege. We were scrapping, scraping and scrapping for something. Stealing bread off of windowsill. Dude, just give me my birthday and my Christmas if you just give me this one little thing. For a man who was born on December 16th, I will tell you that I pulled that scam many, many times. Yeah, that's a good scam. And you got the Lego train. That's a good scam. He got the Lego. Anyway, but if you remember the Lego monorail, it was like. Of course we do. It was a hack, right? I drooled on that in the catalog. So the engine had like a physical switch on it and it was a drive along the track. Like you could adjust Legos to hit the switches and that's how it stopped and started. Sadness. I don't know, but it sounds great. The new ones are straight up remote controlled. Like they're like my niece is running around. No, there's like a remote control. That's a battle for the running. I mean, I straight up like fought an eight year old girl to play with the Lego train. It doesn't surprise me. Yeah, I would not put that past you at all. She won. She did win. But not also that also doesn't surprise me. So the moral of the story is that the children are our future. Children are too wily, wily. Those children are going to be riding a hyper loop and they're going to be like, this is nothing new to us. They may or may not have health care. Yeah, well they may or may not, but they probably will. I think they'll be okay. I just, I'm just saying like, let's just see what happens. Give it a couple of years. It's been like six months. Can't get worse. I mean, here's the thing, you know, like, you know, I feel like medical professionals are probably bummed because like all the kinds of weird loopholes that used to exist are getting like weirdly changed or closed up. But come on, they're not getting paid. There'll be a bunch of new loopholes and ways to make more money and ways to do less, fewer surgeries on fewer people, you know, whatever. I don't know what doctors want yet because the robotic surgeons have been so, so good thus far. So we're getting close to having to wrap up. I know this is a short one. Unfortunately, we do have to catch a train. Like literally that's not even a pun. That's not a joke. I have Michael Shane staring at me, like nodding his head, looking very worried. You look very, he's actually not pointing to his watch. Now he's making some sort of breast grabbing a breast motion. I don't understand that. Don't do that to me. Don't do that to anyone. Not in front of the flag. You're not in front of America. America's, you know, you can't see that. No one can see this. There's a huge flag. There's a big flag. Could we just shoot the flag for a second? Yeah. You think we're kidding. Michael, go do the thing. Oh, you can't really see it cause it's in the dark. There's Michael. Yeah. That's a huge flag and there's Michael. And that's the verchester. Are you? Yeah. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Are there any other topics we need to cover? Not really. I feel like something else happened. I can't remember. You know what I hate about Aaron Sorkin speaking of the West Wing? Oh, this is going to, this is going to end quickly. Well, we have, it was pretty, it was, I had, we had. Hey Josh, let's walk and talk. It's not the walk and talk. It's the, it's the, and this happens a lot in the West Wing. It's a, um, Mr. President, we need you to sign this document and then do you know in 1876 what they called screws? And it's like, you know what, dude? Just sign the, just sign. Yeah, no, it's like, it's like a Mr. President, here's your new shoes. He's like, you, have you read the Ulysses? Because let me tell you, and it's like, you know what people just want you to do. You're the president. Please. He spends like four hours a day telling stories about history. He's like a grandpa. You know, he needs to sign the papers and put his shoes on and get to the meeting. Like stop answering, stop answering questions with questions about history. It's not, if our actual president is anything like the pool, it's not cool. Our actual president is like the president of the West Wing. No wonder we're having all these problems. People are like, oh, Obama, what do you think? We got to get this healthcare thing happening. He's like, have I ever told you about the time I was in Guatemala? And it's like, no, no one wants to hear it. We got to do healthcare here. No, they're parables, man. They're not parables. He's just saying things. You know what I'm talking about. You've heard all the stories. Anyhow, this guy over here. By the way, this is totally unrelated, but I read that, that the death dealer story. Yes. The epic long form work by the verge, just pretty incredible. And I was really sad. It's very sad. So if you, well, not even if you have a chance, read this or I'll be very upset with you. Matt Stroud wrote a piece called the death dealer. It's a long form piece that we put up today. It is about a guy named James Arthur Ray who is, I would say a very bad person, like just a very flawed, very flawed, damaged person who is damaging other people. And it's a fascinating story. It's actually kind of, I think is in some way related to our scam world story that we did a couple of years ago in that he's sort of one of these guys who has risen to, he had risen to a place. I mean, he's like Oprah. Oprah's like into this guy. He wrote the secret. No, he was interviewed for it. He was part of the secret cabal, but he's not like the secret author. But he was on Oprah. But he was on Oprah and talking about how to empower yourself and do all this stuff. And it's snake oil, but it's like in this case, it's snake oil that got people killed. And I think- And he's not sorry. That's just pissing me off. Yeah. Spoilers. And I think in our age of information overload and the kind of your reality, whatever the way you want your reality to be, you can get it on the internet. I do think these guys are kind of a, are like a red flag in the belief in information without really doing your homework. So don't believe James Arthur Ray, but do read the story about him. It's called the death dealer on the verge.com, a website on the internet coming soon. As soon as we work out the bugs with our 55 contractors. Dot gov. No, but actually, but you know, that's the thing. Like we're so used to, I just think about- Websites are really hard to build. The verge is hard to build, but we have like an incredible, we've got to go. We have an incredible product team who build it and like did it efficiently and continues- Why don't you just cut your own throat and then hang yourself? I just want to say this, but we're used to in our world, people executing on things they say they're going to and making them and they're like, whoa, the thing exists now. That's why, that's why it's so weird to see something fail so completely. Like you go to websites that don't work. Maybe you have a problem for a day, a couple of hours. Oh, they get their servers are being overloaded and then they like get more servers and it's fixed or whatever. Well, it took Twitter like three years. Okay. Twitter had its, but Twitter, you know, major service and did get their stuff together. It did take them several years, but it wasn't like every day you went, Twitter was completely destroyed. Anyhow, so government, get it together. Talk to, talk to the Vox product team. You want to get some tips on how to build great websites. Many of them are in DC, short walk, short walk to paradise. It's true. And that is our verge cast for this week. Thank you guys for watching. If you want to get in touch with us, you can email us at vergecast at the verge.com. You can leave, write something in our forums. You can leave a comment on this post when it goes up. You can find us on Twitter. The verge is at verge. I'm Josh Patopulsky, and Eli is reckless. Paul is future Paul. Ben Popper is Ben Popper. And you know, this is, it's early in the week for us, but this will be it for the week. And you know, for what's, you know, the, you know, the situation that's happening right now with you and your family, I think we all feel, you know, we're going to wait, we're going to watch, we're going to see what happens. We don't know what'll happen. We don't feel good about it, but maybe you'll pull through.
 Hey you.
 What is this plan behind me?
 It's like a matching background.
 What is going on with this?
 Oh man, extreme.
 Hey, and welcome to the verge cast for the week of week.
 Is it?
 It's the second week of December 2013.
 I'm Josh to Polsky.
 I'm Paul Miller.
 I'm new like the tell.
 And we have going to be a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit
 yourself and we have droneder ben popper droneder drone editor dronedexpert
 drone the second generation.
 This is the Virch cast.
 We're
 doing the self
 It's self-fulfilling.
 Virgcast. Virgcast. It's a self-affiliate. I don't know man, I feel like buttoned up is the way to go here.
 Don't do it. Don't do it. You're doing the thing, it's like, you know when you like hug a baby and you want it to shut up, you just squeeze it a little bit tighter?
 How about this right there? No, now you look like a sexual predator. Oh really? I don't look like Batman?
 I mean you look like Batman in a certain type of movie. Sexy Batman. Sex Batman.
 Alright, enough of this nonsense. Let's get into it. We don't have a lot of time because we've got to catch a train. We do.
 Catch a train. Because it's the future. Because it's the time to get on a steam engine in the future.
 Alright. A super laser engine. Can we just talk about the only thing that happened in the news? There's exactly one thing that happened in the news.
 O'Neill, tell us what happened in the news this week. 60 Minutes aired a 14 minute Amazon commercial. That's not the only thing that happened.
 And I have many many thoughts, but the main piece of it was at the end, Jeff Bezos opened a door and Charlie Rose walked into a room and went, oh my god!
 Oh my gosh! And there were drones. Amazon Prime. Look at him! What? He's like, I'm being taken for a ride and I know it, I love it.
 That was the first time Charlie Rose has felt sober in several years.
 Charlie Rose lived outside of the black room.
 If you just walk behind those curtains into another black room with a bed in it.
 I mean every single piece of what we're seeing right now is a lie, first of all.
 No, no, no, no. Shut up. Can we talk about the news? So Jeff Bezos announced on 60 Minutes.
 I mean come on! Look at this video! This guy's like, alrighty. This guy's like, thanks for this yellow box. I'm just going to take it to my house and open robots.
 You can't put a lot in there. How does the yellow box get back?
 Okay, hold on. Let's not worry about details. Jeff Bezos announced on 60 Minutes that in 2015 they were going to begin a drone and air delivery system using unmanned aerial vehicles, otherwise known as drones.
 They'll be dropping products within 30 minutes to certain people in certain places.
 Five pounds or less.
 Five pounds or less. So if you need this thing for your skateboard.
 In response to this announcement, noted journalist Charlie Rose asked no follow up questions.
 He was like, that's cool.
 He's like, oh my god, the future. It really is Santa's workshop, everybody.
 Right? This is like a brilliant Black Friday promotion for Amazon because all everybody could talk about Monday was Amazon.
 I would say it's not vaporware and that drones could do this. It's vaporware and that this is totally illegal.
 And the technology to do this safely. They obviously can.
 They can't do it safely, right? If you said like if you dropped a pin on your Apple thing, you know, on your phone being like, I'm here, this is my GPS coordinate.
 It could fly into the air, fly to your house and fly down. It could do that right now.
 It could do it.
 But it couldn't get out of the way if the pigeon was there or know if you had a kid in the driveway or, you know, like do like it.
 As far as it or even necessarily make it there from far away.
 I love the kid in the driveway scenario. You're saying the drone would drop the thing onto the child and kill it or.
 Right. It would only know I'm at point A and I need to go to point B.
 But Jeff Bezos says that by 2015 he'll have cleared all the all the.
 I mean, just look at this video. It feels right to me. It feels totally right to me.
 And then the guy comes out. He's like, yes, my drone is here.
 Stay in the home until the drone is gone.
 Can I say something?
 Oh my God, the drone is gone. I can finally play again.
 I just want to say something. I know it's gonna be tough with this crew, but you know, look, we have cars driving down the road right now.
 Kids playing ball. There's all sorts of obstacles. There's things, danger they have to watch for.
 You know, we have let's just add another danger. I'm just saying that, you know, at some point in time, people were like cars or you're going to kill people immediately.
 As soon as you get behind the wheel, things are going to blow up and you're going to run people over.
 That'll be the end of it. And you know what? Like you learn humans couldn't go faster than 25 miles per hour.
 They learn flying in a plane. They said it couldn't be done. It's dangerous. You'll never make it.
 I mean, we all the time we do things that seem impossible and weird and like they'll never happen.
 But no one's questioning whether or not drones are existing or whether they will happen or whether they'll even necessarily be used in this way.
 We're not questioning. I'm not questioning that either.
 What I'm questioning is that 60 Minutes completely uncritically went to Amazon's like facility.
 Well, our job is not to repart with some media. I don't want to do media.
 I don't want to do. But this Amazon one in particular is like it's so far away from reality.
 It's apparently only two years away from. Yeah, I don't think it's so far away.
 I mean, I think it's interesting that there's like kind of this arms race now where it's like we're going to do driverless cars in 10 years.
 So it's like, OK, we'll do drones in one year. And it's like you announce things and tell people right off the bat, like we can't make this happen yet.
 But get excited now. You know, it's like you want people to think about your company and innovation and like you may not be able to actually do what you say.
 But it gets people thinking about Amazon in a different way. Right. Is it vaporware? No. Is it? Why isn't it, Ben?
 Well, it's not vaporware in that I think a drone, like I said, could do this. It just couldn't do it safely or.
 All products and the things they're not selling, the drug they're not selling. He's not selling drone technology.
 He's selling the specific thing that will allow Amazon to send a drone to your house with a package, drop it off and then return to the warehouse.
 So it is vaporware at this moment in that sense and that that he can't do that, even if he had all of the technology in place and it worked flawlessly.
 I mean, the way Amazon is built right now, I couldn't do it right. The warehouses are far away.
 I mean, there's no actual way to execute on that today, not just because of the laws and the safety.
 No, that technically they could do it because like we played I play with drones at South by Southwest that can fly. Well, he said 10 miles.
 OK, let's say you could send a drone several miles from one site to another. Given two GPS coordinates, it could take off, land, drop something and come back.
 Right. But obviously, right. There are lots of things that couldn't do like sense and avoid is the big one.
 It can't get out of the way of a power line or another airplane.
 The same technology that driverless cars are using to avoid obstacles.
 Right. Could be this stuff will definitely be coming online soon.
 I think the question is, was it a publicity stunt? This is the only question we actually have to answer.
 Was it a publicity stunt? I know this is very itchy or unrelated to this.
 That's what I believe. Was it a publicity stunt or is Jeff Bezos serious about this?
 And will he do everything he can to make it a reality in 2015 or beyond?
 So I guess I've been when I was calling around different people in the drone world to ask about what's your thoughts on Amazon?
 Then somebody else said, oh, well, you know, actually, GPS has been testing this.
 And like the president of FedEx has made clear multiple times. He said, you know, we want to do this as soon as it's legal.
 So, like, I think that everybody thinks this will happen.
 I think if you were to say, depending on your definition of vaporware, it can't happen now.
 So it's vapor. But it's coming. It's realistic. It's plausible. It's illegal right now.
 But that video that they made, I don't think is realistic or plausible.
 It will never be that the drone like, do you want to be the guy?
 Do you want to be the guy who sat here on the Hellcats and says, this will never happen.
 But we've written Ben wrote one. We've written the story who said the iPhone's going to fail.
 That's right. You're Steve Ballmer. You are Steve Ballmer.
 No, I just I don't think drones leaving packages and flying away again is realistic for any number of reasons,
 not least of which is that they will just be leaving packages in your driveway and flying away.
 Well, they'll be now you'll get a notification. Be at home because this thing's coming.
 Yeah, that's totally reasonable. People who aren't home.
 I need it in half an hour. You're probably not going to get it in New York.
 Like you're not going to get a drone delivered in New York.
 You're going to have to live in some sort of cherry suburb.
 All the infrastructure about how this but not in New York because people live in this 13th floor of an apartment building.
 Like how are they going to come down onto the crowded street with every apartment building?
 We have like a rooftop delivery where the drone drops.
 What I'm saying is the video I don't think is realistic because I think the reality video.
 It's a concept of a drone delivering packages.
 To me, I'm pissed about this because I didn't I didn't read about the Australian textbooks company.
 I think this is awesome because a lot of how we tried to visualize the future for a long time was these flying cars and flying cars just don't seem to work.
 There is something that we do a lot of things to reduce congestion in cities.
 And now you've had these delivery companies like eBay is doing it.
 Amazon is doing it where they are having random people drive packages from Walmart to your house.
 Yes, it's very upsetting.
 And so like there's just more and more and we're kind of overloading this infrastructure that is the road.
 And if you have this new I think unmanned drones are perfect for using a fairly unused portion of our sky, which is below helicopters and airplanes and higher than I can jump.
 We use up all the ground.
 Everything between the height of how high you can jump and below.
 There's an available bandwidth there.
 That should just be full of drones.
 You are on the same wavelength.
 This guy from Facebook posted about this yesterday, the sharing economy.
 This is like the ultimate utopian Silicon Valley.
 He was like, once John do this, we'll have the sharing economy.
 You will own nothing.
 You'll be like, oh, I need this pot tonight and this knife and a drone will bring it to you and you'll use it.
 That's stupid.
 That person is insane and stupid.
 That'll never happen.
 This is like because if you take that, here's one thing I can tell you.
 Here's what you're not going to take away from the American people owning things.
 You're not going to take that away.
 Our whole existence is built on the consumption and ownership of things.
 People, products, houses.
 I just like owning things.
 I have a very small apartment and I really don't want to have more things.
 I think as we've learned time and time again, Paul Miller is no gauge for humanity.
 I'm sorry.
 I'm sorry to make you uncomfortable with my embrace of the future and my willingness to explore and my total freaking excitement.
 I'm just so happy that Jem C's own...
 I thought you were pissed.
 No, he's pissed that he didn't learn about it sooner.
 Yeah, I didn't read about the textbook because it's a different way to look at a city and think about how the things get from point A to point B.
 And there's something that seems kind of fundamentally untenable about...
 Look, sheeple, if we all rode bikes, we wouldn't have to worry about these trucks ingesting our roads.
 I just bought a frigging HDMI cable from Amazon.
 Oh my God.
 And I live down the street from Best Buy and there's GameStop and there's KMR and all of those would charge me $5 million for a six foot HDMI cable.
 What?
 What's happening?
 Why don't you just go to the store?
 Why don't you just order one from Amazon?
 Just get one shipped to you.
 In a rational...
 I don't know if a rational economy, but it would be cool if I could walk down the street and buy an HDMI cable for a reasonable price.
 You know what you're talking about? Your problem is not that you can't go get the HDMI cable for a reasonable price.
 Your problem is you're like ridiculously impatient.
 Like human beings are horrible now and we think we should get it drop shipped to us by a drone in 30 minutes because we need a cheaper HDMI cable right this second instead of having to spend money on the more expensive one that is nearby.
 But we're not talking...
 Your request is irrational.
 It's not irrational.
 Yes, it is.
 Okay, okay.
 What you're asking for is like you're saying like I would not only do I want to buy the cheapest HDMI cable available, but I want it either within walking distance or delivered to me by a drone.
 That's your that's your reasoning for loving a drone idea.
 But what ultimately happened, what ultimately happened is that I bought a cheap HDMI cable on Amazon.
 Yeah.
 And that had to take up bandwidth on the streets and I probably almost got hit by the HDMI.
 Your HDMI cable wasn't the only thing they were shipping.
 That's why they might as well.
 That's why they make big trucks to hold lots of things so they could ship multiple items.
 They don't have to. Every time they're like, hey, Paul Miller wants HDMI cable and a guy gets in a car and there's in the back of the truck.
 There's an HDMI cable driving towards New York.
 And you really want to robot to take that guy's drop away.
 What has so far been proposed for how to make this quicker is a dude in a car or a lady.
 No, it's a it's a it's a it's a person in a car full of other things they have to deliver.
 It makes a lot of sense. It's like it's like, you know, you've got a bunch of things.
 They're all being delivered to the same area.
 You can put a lot of them in a van and then you can just go door to door handing everybody their product.
 I know. And it's it actually is a pretty good system.
 The problem is people like you want their cheap HDMI cable to be delivered within 30 minutes or less.
 That's the problem. Or like you're like, I won't spend the money on this best buy HDMI cable.
 But I want the cable right now. I didn't grow up buying things online.
 I still don't like buying things online. And it makes sense if you have things close to people.
 Get those things that are already close to people.
 Why doesn't Amazon just open store? Maybe they should just open retail stores.
 Maybe they should with big warehouse.
 Why don't they just open their warehouses as retail stores in major metropolitan areas?
 Like put a retail level on top. You can take an escalator up.
 They'll just get the stuff out of the warehouse.
 Because what you really want Amazon to do is build urban Ikea's everywhere.
 Yes, that's what I want. I want the Amazon warehouse.
 I'm sorry. It's called Amazon Live. You guys know about this? The Amazon store?
 Anyway, Amazon is very near and dear to my heart. And if you let anything about Ikea and the experience of Ikea
 infect the beauty and purity of the Amazon experience.
 Ikea is an incredible business that has brought beautiful Scandinavian design to millions of people.
 And horse meat.
 Were they doing horse meat in America?
 I think so.
 They've got problems in Europe.
 They don't even have meat laws there.
 Mad cow. Where'd that come from? Europe?
 I mean you can't trust the Europeans when it comes to meat.
 That's true.
 I love Europeans. But the meat stuff, you've got to be careful.
 Careful of their meat.
 Here's all I know. If you're in a relationship and you want to know whether or not it's going to last, go to Ikea with that person.
 Obviously we know Ikea is a hell world death trap.
 So don't get it near Amazon, man.
 But what I'm saying is, if you'll let me finish, Neli, what I'm saying is what Paul wants, what Paul wants is instant gratification.
 Paul wants what he wants when he wants it.
 You know what I want? I want a local economy.
 Well then you do not want a cheap HDMI cable. You want the most expensive HDMI cable you've ever purchased.
 Because in a local economy, they could only make a few HDMI cables. They had to make them very slowly.
 They had to get high price materials from other local companies.
 How much would it cost to make an HDMI cable in like...
 Midtown.
 No, midtown would be easy.
 Midtown, I'm like in the middle of Cincinnati, Ohio.
 Handcrafted, artisanal, full HDMI cable on an Etsy.
 I'm misspelled.
 Can you get HDMI cables on Etsy?
 Can you get HDMI cable? I challenge you.
 Is there a single HDMI cable manufactured in America? Does one exist?
 Wait, okay, first of all, yes. For some reason you can buy HDMI cables.
 Etsy is overrun with spam now.
 99 cents.
 By the way, overview, handmade item.
 99 cents for HDMI cables.
 Shit, this is Brooklyn, New York.
 No it doesn't.
 Okay, this is a troll.
 You better flag that.
 Hold on, it's just fundamentally weird to me that I have to order from this big impersonal Amazon.com
 for them to like tell some other thing that they send this thing in the mail and it comes to me and there's so many steps and then I like get it like two days later.
 When there are thousands of HDMI cables within like a two block radius.
 So go buy those.
 That are just completely unaffordable.
 You know what you're paying for? Convenience.
 That's why they're twice as much money or three times as much money because you can get it at that moment.
 Do you know how many times I bought a Blu-ray player at a local electronics store because I wanted to watch a Blu-ray and did not have the player.
 Do you know how expensive it was compared to the ones I could buy on Amazon?
 Hey Josh, hey Josh.
 So why are you so down on the share economy where the drone brings you the Blu-ray player for a night and then you get it back after you watched your Blu-ray?
 Do you ever order Fresh Direct, Josh?
 All the time.
 I know.
 I love it.
 Do you get Seltzer delivered to your door?
 Yes, every two weeks.
 What's your, and I pay for it.
 It's expensive.
 It's great.
 Fresh Direct is a rip off and my Seltzer guy is killing me.
 Do you remember?
 I don't expect it.
 I'm going to get.
 You're not going to recover.
 Fresh Direct is cheaper than going to Whole Foods.
 I'm just saying.
 Fresh Direct keeps its prices down.
 Yes, Fresh Direct is cheaper than going to Whole Foods.
 And they cover their delivery costs.
 You know what Fresh Direct has?
 A warehouse in New York.
 Exactly.
 So Amazon needs to build a warehouse in New York.
 Exactly.
 And deliver drones then.
 Because then I don't want to have 20,000.
 Why can't a guy just bring it over on a bike?
 You love bikes.
 Okay, if you want to create jobs, bikes would be fine.
 Create human jobs.
 You're sitting in front of an American flag right now.
 Put them on a city bike.
 Send them over with your HDMI cable.
 Hey, drones need jobs too.
 Problem solved.
 No, they don't.
 Yeah, I mean like the thing you're talking about, the sharing for me.
 We got to wrap up this conversation.
 Let's transition.
 So you're worried about human jobs.
 We're talking about Amazon and drones.
 We talked about Google and driverless cars.
 And then the news today, right, was that Andy Rubin has left Android to build real Android
 to build robots, right?
 Building Android.
 So it's interesting to me, I think, like the big thing, right, is like all these big companies
 that started as software companies or web companies, Amazon, they're getting into robotics.
 Like this stuff is becoming cheap enough to prototype and deal with and maybe accessible
 to consumers in a way that like Google is like, let's throw some money at it.
 Let's build a sex bot already.
 I mean, this drone delivery and you know, whatever else they're doing, a guy cleans
 your floor or something.
 Just build the sex bot.
 That's what everybody wants anyhow.
 When you have a huge use in the market for robots and drones would be one huge use, it
 promotes the advance of that industry.
 Or it makes people hate robots and start some kind of weird cult against robots.
 And then it leads us into some sort of civil war.
 I hope you're happy.
 That's always what happens.
 Have you seen iRobot?
 It would be thrilling.
 I've seen iRobot.
 It is terrible.
 It is on all the time.
 Have you used red iRobot?
 Because that is full of fun philosophical quandary.
 Well that's a great, great, great, that's great.
 That's great.
 Blow anything up from a great brain.
 Literally, if you took the thesis overall of the movie with Will Smith and the thesis
 overall of the book iRobot, they would, they would battle each other to the death.
 What do you think the thesis of the movie is?
 Robots be bad.
 Robots are crazy.
 Like catchphrase, explosion, robots.
 Scary, scary robots do bad things.
 But people are ultimately what's broken.
 Sex bot on the Oculus.
 Oh my God.
 Sorry.
 Okay, okay, hold on, hold on, hold on.
 This is a, this is an Oculus sex bot, but I'm sorry.
 What?
 No one wants to do.
 Why does this happen?
 No one wants to put their wang, wang.
 What is that?
 Have you not seen this?
 No.
 It gives you a, it gives you a hand job.
 No, I gathered what it was doing, Josh.
 You don't have to show me that and explain that it's a hand job to me.
 I like Paul scandalized, like just all the people to be scandalized.
 Paul, I don't, I don't want the robots involved in that, but if you want to preserve your
 already good thing to have all these sex robots, I think, I think they'll think so.
 Actually that's a, that's a real philosophical quandary.
 I don't think it really is.
 I think, I think at the end of the day, if you're banging a robot, it's almost like having
 sex with an animal.
 No, it's not.
 Come on.
 It's not animals are, are animals have souls and go to heaven.
 It's degrading to the animal because the robot isn't an animal, but it's degrading to the
 person.
 It's perfect.
 No one's going to argue that the person, you know, you say that now, but when the, when
 the robots are really sexy, you're not going to feel it's as degraded.
 So it was just a, if it's just a thing pumping like a machine, I think it's especially degrading.
 But I think if it's like a beautiful man or woman, then suddenly it seems less degraded.
 Right.
 It's more like a beautiful man or woman robot.
 And with good enough virtual reality, it can be very, that's like paying more for sex.
 Can I actually say something?
 A sex bot and what we just saw are two very different things.
 That was like a simulator, a hand job simulator with a virtual reality component.
 Two thousand.
 What I'm talking about.
 Really draw the parameters as tightly as possible.
 When I say sex bot.
 That was more of a virtual H.J. situation.
 You're talking about a humanoid.
 I mean a humanoid robot that does sex to you or that you do sex to, depending on the situation
 that might arise.
 Anyhow, moving on.
 Andy Rubin is by the way focused on manufacturing.
 He's not banging.
 What is Andy, tell us what Andy Rubin is building.
 No, so he, uh, sex bots.
 It's actually kind of weird, the story.
 Cause it just came out in the New York Times.
 He granted some access to the Times.
 He said this is not part of Google X.
 This is his own thing.
 It could be spun out as his own company.
 But it is focused on moonshots.
 Moonshots.
 Hashtag moonshots.
 Yeah.
 Um, they've bought seven companies to staff this thing up and the, it's weird because
 they talked to Rubin and then according to several people with specific knowledge of
 the project, uh, it could be used for electronics assembly and manufacturing and aid and sort
 of making things in the United States.
 Nothing.
 Well, none of you can't have sex with any of that.
 That sounds good and also bad.
 It's like, Hey, we're bringing jobs back to America for robots.
 Robot, robot, you know, but somebody's got to put the robots together.
 Right.
 You know?
 Right.
 Right.
 There's a lot of the, there's the coworking robots.
 Like that's, you have a person who is working alongside a robot and you combine a human
 intelligence and adaptability and flexibility for situations with a robot's really good
 at doing repetitive things that could eventually strain a human's wrist.
 So here's the bigger theme.
 I'm just going to leave that there.
 But Google is writing big checks, right?
 I mean like this is, they bought seven companies.
 This is not even in their like crazy projects lab.
 This is another thing.
 Right.
 And the same with Calico, that life extension company, like they're giving them all this
 money, but it's not an like they're, they're allowing people within the company to just
 go off on some really crazy, crazy moonshot.
 Google Island is going to be really messed up.
 That's all I know.
 It's going to be weird.
 It actually happens.
 People living forever.
 It is going to be a serious, seriously.
 Banging robots that are manufacturing cell phones.
 That are manufacturing themselves.
 Well, seriously, it's weird.
 It's funny.
 We've had this conversation out for over a day.
 This is just of a piece of like random rich people saying they're going to do things that
 are years and years away.
 And you have a problem with that.
 No, I don't have a problem with it.
 It's just, it's weird.
 Thematically.
 You hate dreams.
 It's Elon Musk in the hyperloop.
 It's in the hyperloop.
 And just like people, this is how people were murdered in Clue.
 Elon Musk in the hyperloop.
 And you're with a robot.
 And you're with a robot.
 With a sex bot.
 With a sex bot.
 Who else, who else is there?
 Jeff Bezos.
 Jeff Bezos with a drone.
 Do you think it's like a sign of like a bubble or something?
 No, it's just, it's just a weird moment where I think we don't like real change only comes
 from like corporate entities right now.
 And so.
 Well, we've regulated the government into, into stitches.
 This is like a rich dude doing stuff.
 Maybe like Google.
 The government's regulated it itself.
 Because they were the first ones to be like, it's beta, it's busted, it doesn't really
 exist, driverless cars or glass, but it's coming.
 And people got so excited.
 Well, you have to dream.
 It's NASA.
 It's the space program.
 If you look at this.
 That's what a moonshot is.
 Like, like.
 Literally.
 Go ahead.
 All this drone stuff is very much from like university research, hackers, do it yourself
 stuff.
 And all the robotic stuff has survived as university research and hobbyists because
 it hasn't been a legitimate.
 R O S right.
 Isn't that the robot operating system?
 Yeah, there's Ross.
 Ross started in a school.
 Right.
 Um, and now, and that's in this Baxter coworking robot.
 So like now some of this stuff has matured far enough in these hobbyists and university
 settings that now these businesses are able to possibly actually make products out of.
 Here's what I think.
 There's driverless cars, a lot of that technology came from university research and the DARPA.
 I think if we fast forward 25 years, this conversation will seem so Queen and ridiculous.
 Like I think we're going to have drone delivery systems.
 I think we're going to have sex bots.
 I think we're going to have coworking or just working robots.
 I mean, I think in the span of like the next 25 years, this pod, this podcast will be,
 you know, three or four robots sitting here talking to each other.
 It'd be replacements.
 I mean, you were having the same conversation already.
 Oh God, I wish we could do it an effect where we all ripped our faces off.
 We were like sparking robots.
 Can we pause this podcast?
 Would that be shocking to the viewer or thrilling?
 Yeah.
 I mean, wouldn't it be shocking if, if somehow during this, uh, broadcast I were to, to start
 to reach under my, you know, you were like, what is that?
 Are you, you have an itch there or something.
 And I just, and I just ripped off my skin and you were like, oh my God, he's ripping
 his skin off.
 He's, he's killing him.
 Somebody call an ambulance.
 And then there was no blood and there was just a horrendous, horrific terminator face.
 And then I removed the terminator face and there was a regular Josh face under there.
 Would that freak you out?
 We can probably pull that off right now.
 Would that freak you out?
 Yeah.
 Give us a couple of minutes.
 Just try it.
 Just try it real quick.
 Yeah, we should move on.
 Oh, by the way, I would like to point out that Ben was supposed to stealthily leave
 and he did that during the moment.
 It was so stealth.
 Ben had to step away.
 But then he walked behind you and his head was standing right there.
 I'm so out of here.
 Next topic, Eli.
 Good one, Ben.
 Good job.
 Great job, Ben.
 Great job.
 What's happening?
 Why are you whispering?
 We can hear every word you're saying.
 Just kidding.
 We can't.
 Well, there's one that I think is really weird.
 Please share with us.
 Also, I have a little Xbox rant.
 Go ahead.
 Do the Xbox rant.
 Is this a good time?
 I brought a prop.
 You brought a prop?
 Uh-oh.
 This is going to be like, this is my Kinect.
 No, this is the-
 You literally brought your Kinect.
 I know it's a Kinect.
 I know.
 I did not know that was what was going to happen.
 This is the Office Kinect.
 Oh, hey.
 Wait a second.
 We need that.
 Why do you have it?
 And this right here, I'd like-
 A non-standard USB 3 plug?
 This is bullshit.
 Whoa.
 What's underneath it?
 The plug.
 It's a USB 3 plug.
 You know what it's called?
 It's called Screw You Hackers, We Win.
 Make it just hack together an adapter for it.
 I'm sure.
 It's a USB 3 plug.
 Here's what you do.
 You get your soldering iron.
 Someone's going to figure that out.
 You get your soldering iron out.
 And then you get a little history reminder.
 People started-
 History, I think these are called history lessons.
 History reminder.
 Well, I don't want to teach.
 I want to remind.
 History reminder.
 Refresher.
 A refresher.
 People started hacking the Kinect right when it came out.
 Microsoft sent cease and desist.
 No, it didn't.
 Microsoft-
 It did at first.
 They were horrible and hateful and mean and scary to these people.
 But they're going to keep on hacking it.
 So they kept on hacking it.
 And then Microsoft does this about phase.
 Like, oh, look at all this cool research and they're pretending like they're into these
 people and helping them out and making these incentives for them to do stuff.
 None of that really cool stuff really ever ended up on the Xbox.
 There's still a lot of these open source libraries and frameworks and hack together things.
 And people just hack and mess around with-
 And amazing stuff has been done with it.
 Really cool stuff.
 Then Microsoft came out with Kinect for Windows and some of their own software for Windows.
 But if you're a hacker, none of that hacker stuff and really none of that Kinect stuff
 for Windows can be used with Kinects that people buy for their Xbox.
 They're not for commercial use.
 So there's no actual use case on the Xbox because the Xbox is a very closed platform.
 There's no actual use case on Windows because unless someone actually buys a Kinect for
 Windows, they can't really use this as a commercial thing.
 So I was looking into this because I was really stoked about the Kinect.
 I was looking into like, well, how do you learn how to program for the Kinect and maybe
 I can make a tech demo and that'd be fun.
 And then I buy an Xbox One on impulse and sadness and I pull it out and I'm setting
 it on sadness.
 Why don't you just sign up for the Kinect for Windows SDK and just buy it?
 It's $400.
 Because nobody has Kinect for Windows.
 If you develop something with Kinect for Windows, you're only allowed to actually officially
 commercially distribute it.
 I'm sorry, what are you asking for?
 I'm confused.
 I'm saying that Microsoft-
 You want to be able to hack on the One.
 Still hates these hackers and is still so pissed at them and now they've created this
 bogus plug and it just really bugs me the way that they act.
 You're really mad.
 I'm really mad.
 I'm really mad.
 I'm just a little confused.
 Are you mad that they made the Kinect difficult to hook up to a standard PC or whatever?
 Are you mad that they're not providing tools that interface with the Xbox One to allow
 you to do some hacky stuff?
 I guess probably the former.
 The thing is that Microsoft hugely benefited from, and science and interesting cool things,
 hugely benefited from the fact-
 What are some of its benefits?
 A lot of machine vision and a lot of machine learning, a lot of robotics was really advanced
 by the Kinect sensor.
 It became almost like the de facto robotic sensor.
 It was huge for robotics.
 And also-
 Maybe that's what Microsoft doesn't like.
 When they opened it up, you mean?
 No.
 Microsoft never helped really very much.
 What was the benefit that they gained?
 People were buying them?
 Microsoft fell into a cool moment and tried to capitalize and rebrand it as their cool
 moment and tried to be a part of it.
 And then they come up with this bogus adapter to just stop that ever happening again.
 Don't you think-
 But they're going to sell it.
 They're going to sell one for Windows.
 Don't you think they'll sell a-
 They use a standard USB 3.
 Connect 2 for Windows.
 Nobody buys that thing.
 Nobody buys the actual Kinect for Windows.
 But don't you think there's also, for Microsoft, there's a bit of a conflict because it's like
 they spent money.
 Well, they don't own the company that made the Kinect technology.
 Is the new one all of that?
 It's in-house.
 Yeah.
 Microsoft loves to tell me about their Kinect back.
 So here's the thing.
 So, okay.
 So don't you think that they want that kind of revolutionary experimentation to basically
 just come from Microsoft?
 I mean, we went to their R&D labs and they're doing all kinds of crazy experiments with
 the Kinect.
 Isn't the whole point like they'd rather not have some other company capitalize on all
 of their patented cool technology and make something with it?
 They don't want-
 Because it's a closed system.
 It's not meant to be.
 They clearly never meant it to be something that's like a peripheral.
 No, no.
 I mean, like the thing with Kinect, well, they're selling one for Windows.
 They're selling it.
 You can buy it.
 How much is it?
 Kinect for Windows.
 I mean, it's for developers, right?
 For the new one?
 For the new one.
 Kinect for Windows.
 Wait.
 Kinect 2 for Windows.
 Well, I don't know if it's Kinect 2, but it's called Kinect for Windows.
 But they're not selling it.
 But he's saying, are they selling the new generation of Kinect?
 Yeah.
 And it's going to cost $400.
 But that's the Kinect 2.
 Is that what it's called?
 $400.
 I don't know if it's called Kinect 2.
 $400.
 It's for fun purposes.
 Paul, if I were to make the full argument here, I would tell you that the only people
 who need to buy Kinect for Windows are developers, because the only people in the world who have
 Kinect are the ones with Xbox Ones.
 And now, when you develop a thing on Windows, at some point, you're going to be able to
 port those apps to the Xbox.
 But he's saying he wants them to not be ported to the i.
 He's saying they should be open and usable.
 It would be nice once you could just port stuff to the Xbox.
 You're going to equip your robot with a Kinect head.
 You can't do that.
 You can't port stuff to the Xbox yet.
 I still haven't seen Microsoft.
 I just think they're a sinister, hateful company.
 And also, they don't understand that people have coffee tables.
 And I have Kinect on my Xbox.
 You're very frustrated with the Xbox.
 I'm really frustrated.
 I will say this.
 The Kinect, it doesn't work very well.
 The need to place- Have you ever gotten the Xbox On to work?
 Always on the third time.
 I can't get it to work.
 Yeah, once or twice.
 You have to do it twice at least.
 Okay, hold on.
 The Kinect, the biggest problem for me, okay, number one, the Xbox One is huge.
 It does not fit into the cabinet where I put all of my other components.
 It's so big that it's too deep to fit in there.
 It's just deep.
 And yes, it's huge.
 And the Kinect is also huge.
 And the way the cable on it is situated, you can't even move the cable to a position you
 need to get to.
 It's a really heavy angled plastic piece coming off the back.
 So I had to put the Kinect and the Xbox down in a corner of my living room.
 And so now the Kinect basically isn't functional unless I want the Kinect to be front and center
 in my living room, which I don't because it's huge and ugly.
 I rearranged my living room around the Kinect and got it all set up and stuff like that.
 And basically the setup dialogue, the way it does, it's like, okay, where's the floor?
 Where are you?
 And stuff like that.
 And like, okay, now tilt it like this.
 All right.
 And then you go into the app and it says, your room seems to be cluttered.
 We can't see you.
 So I go back to the setup.
 Is your room cluttered?
 I actually had to like, I had to like, I had to tilt it where they told me not to tilt
 it.
 Like I had to be smarter than Kinect to get this set up.
 And it's like, I can't believe.
 That should be really easy for me.
 I mean, the Kinect can't do a lot.
 So I just love motion gaming.
 I love these.
 There's so much possibility and opportunity here.
 And I think Sony gave up and I'm a little mad at them for that.
 I wrote about that at E3.
 And Microsoft was my last hope.
 And I think-
 I mean, Apple just bought PrimeSense.
 Oh, well, that's exciting to me.
 I think the Kinect doesn't work very well.
 And I think Microsoft is sinister in the way that it has treated developers.
 And I hate that plug.
 A sinister Microsoft plot.
 I hate that plug.
 Wait, well, that's just a plug though.
 I mean like-
 Wow.
 It needs a lot.
 It needs a lot.
 It needs a lot.
 It needs a lot.
 It needs a lot.
 But just think of how much happened.
 But you can buy it with the regular plug.
 All right, listen.
 Can we-
 What 12-year-old kid is going to get their parents to pay $400?
 This is like a problem.
 This is such a-
 It's such a weird problem.
 Such a beyond 1% problem.
 Like I-
 No, no, no, no, no, no.
 If you buy an iPhone, you can get Xcode for free and you can make iPhone apps.
 If you bought an Xbox Kinect, you can plug that in a computer and you can make for free
 apps, all the libraries are open source because cool people made them.
 You could have a 12-year-old make a Kinect app.
 So what you're saying is you're mad because Microsoft isn't more like Apple.
 No.
 Really?
 I mean, well, I mean, that's the argument.
 I'm mad because Microsoft is squelching innovation.
 I really think that-
 Well, I think they're interested in their own innovation.
 I think that's the difference.
 And they never deliver their innovation.
 There's one Kinect app right now and it sucks.
 I don't disagree that, well-
 It's in pre-season.
 I'll say this.
 I think the Xbox One-
 You're talking about Kinect Sports?
 Yeah.
 I think the Xbox One has some pretty ambitious goals.
 It just hasn't realized them at its launch.
 Let me just say that.
 And you know what?
 If you look at the numbers, right?
 The PS4 is like every couple of days somebody's like, we sold a million, we sold two million.
 And Microsoft's response is like, over one billion zombies have been killed.
 That doesn't make any sense at all.
 On that note, I will say that in Dead Rising 3 where the zombies are being killed, I do
 actually use a function of the Kinect, which I never thought, which is like trying to attract
 zombies by screaming over here.
 But it's weird to actually-
 That's great.
 It's weird to interact with it in that way.
 It's actually pretty fascinating.
 And despite it being really buggy, the smart glass app component does some really interesting
 stuff.
 It does.
 And I have to say, I mean, it's very buggy and they need to work it out because it doesn't
 connect properly.
 Connect properly.
 No, it doesn't.
 But they're very ambitious.
 I feel like the PS4 is far less ambitious.
 Yes, absolutely.
 And it kind of bugs me.
 I think it's very capable and very impressive.
 They played it super safe.
 But it's just so...
 I mean, I think Microsoft probably bit off more than they could chew, but it's like Sony
 didn't bite off enough.
 Microsoft is just deluded in thinking that innovation comes from inside of Microsoft.
 All right, we have to, again, we have to catch a train.
 What's our next topic?
 Sorry, Paul.
 Applebot Topsy.
 Which I know you're super hot at.
 I appreciate you guys letting me vent.
 We love that.
 I unboxed my Xbox One-
 To a degree.
 And I was pissed.
 To a degree.
 Well, no, it's...
 Applebot, Applebot, Applebot Topsy.
 Well, no, you can...
 I mean, I just...
 You were into it.
 No, I'm not that into it.
 There's another...
 I just think...
 I mean, it's not that into it.
 My only comment on this is nobody really knows why.
 Apple does acquire companies all the time.
 Topsy was a Twitter search and analytics firm.
 People are like, this is the TV.
 They're gonna integrate Twitter stuff with TV.
 And it's like...
 It's the TV.
 Yeah, I don't really know.
 Every time something happens...
 Don't you think it's more like improved Siri search?
 I honestly feel like this is maybe part of Apple's play to, at some point, launch a search
 engine of its own.
 Because at the end of the day, when you look at their biggest competitors, Google has a
 search engine, which people use a ton.
 Bing, it may not be the most popular search engine, but it has given Google some competition.
 And it is now the thing that you get on a Windows phone and on a Windows laptop and
 on a...
 Microsoft is responsible for a lot of searches.
 If you think about how many searches happen through the iOS browser, through Safari and
 through Siri, they're making a lot of searches and they should probably own a little more
 of that process.
 Well, I think that Apple, as evidenced by the maps thing and clearly their desire to
 control end to end the experience for users, to me, it could be the first step or part...
 Not the first step, but part of that process of creating some kind of search engine.
 And maybe in our new world, you start to prioritize things like Twitter search much higher than
 you would have a few years ago.
 Why?
 Well, because Twitter is increasingly an important part of how people get information.
 No, I agree with that.
 But I mean, I just think...
 You're like, why?
 And then I'm like, one minor point, you're like, well, that is true.
 No, but Twitter is a vector.
 It's never the...
 It's like 99% of the time I search for something and I land in Wikipedia.
 Yeah, Google...
 Apple would be better off buying Wikipedia than Twitter.
 Well, yeah.
 You know, like...
 But if you could really make that information useful somehow, potentially...
 A lot of the information you are looking for, like when you're talking to Siri on your phone,
 is not like big facts like how are giraffes made?
 It's like...
 How are giraffes made?
 Wait, excuse me.
 Hang on one second.
 Hang on also.
 How are giraffes made?
 How are giraffes made?
 No, how are giraffes mate is what I got.
 I got it.
 Made right here.
 Boom.
 What does it say?
 Well, I have the giraffe...
 By the way, I got what must be the weirdest eHow article of all time.
 Is it how are giraffes made?
 How are giraffes made?
 Here's how to make a balloon giraffe.
 Oh, what's this, guys?
 Can you get it?
 How are giraffes made?
 Can you open that up?
 This is terrible.
 Oh, it's Wikipedia.
 We've done a lot.
 Do you know how giraffes are made, though, Paul?
 I'm curious because I'm worried that if you don't know how they're made, we have real
 problems.
 When a daddy giraffe loves a mommy giraffe.
 That's correct.
 Yeah, they adopt.
 Yeah, they adopt.
 Wow, this is really graphic.
 This is really graphic.
 But a lot of what you're asking...
 Really?
 We got to see a bro.
 I mean, look, can I just say the following sentence, which is scientific?
 When the female releases urine, the male tastes the urine to see if she's ready to mate.
 Wow.
 Giraffes, everybody.
 Got to say, giraffes and I have a lot in common.
 That's why I don't ask my phone that kind of thing.
 But I do...
 That's why you don't want to know that information.
 This is like...
 The kind of level of learning that is happening on this Verge cast is encyclopedic in scale.
 I'm not going to look at giraffes the same.
 Yeah, no, I'm sure you're not.
 They're all in the golden showers.
 Which way were you looking at them already?
 All giraffes are into pee stuff.
 They're into urine play.
 Disgusting.
 It's time to get on this.
 Like 50 Shades of...
 What's their family?
 I'm going to say that there's a lot of information on Twitter that is more relevant to me in
 the moment that I'm talking to Siri about stuff.
 Yes, exactly.
 Of course.
 That's what Apple knows too and that's why they bought it.
 Topsy-daisy.
 I'm just trying to find the family.
 I wonder what family giraffes are in.
 Does anybody know?
 I should know this.
 Mammal?
 Giraffidae.
 There's got to be some kind of special...
 Is that a smaller one?
 Yeah, there's got to be some sort of...
 Isn't that the kingdom?
 So we're all just doing giraffe stuff on the internet right now?
 Oh, it's a...
 Well, the phylum is Cordata.
 This is the worst.
 Or Chordata.
 Chordata?
 Could be Cordata.
 It's Cordata.
 Well, I don't know.
 You don't know how that C-H is pronounced, do you?
 The family is Giraffidae.
 Are you a scientist?
 I play one occasionally.
 Ooh, they're even toad ungulates.
 Fifty Shades of Giraffidae is what I want.
 All right, we're stopping this.
 Fifty Shades of Giraffidae was the joke that I wanted to make and I've made it.
 And it rhymes with gray, so that's perfect.
 Moving on.
 Giraffidae?
 There's one more story.
 Gray?
 Which we should talk about.
 Kind of almost sounds like an expanded gray when you think about it.
 Which is healthcare.
 Which is the website.
 Healthcare.
 The healthcare.
 Which is the website?
 The website is going to be.
 Healthcare.gov.
 Healthcare.gov.
 Which we have a big story on, which is why we should talk about it.
 Healthcare.gov is back.
 Let me ask you something.
 It's not back.
 It's sort of back.
 It's sort of back.
 80% of users.
 Let me ask you a question.
 Does anybody think that there was a global conspiracy to destroy the website of healthcare.gov?
 Or did the global conspiracy come completely from within our US government?
 Yeah.
 And the conspiracy was they're really bad at making things.
 Yeah, it's a global conspiracy of incompetent people.
 I mean, it is kind of insane.
 When you look at the data, by the way, if you haven't read this, Adrian Jeffries wrote
 this incredible, and we have a video too, this incredible report about the failings
 of healthcare.gov and sort of what we learned from it.
 It's incredible how exactly like the US government, the process of building healthcare.gov seems
 like.
 It's like 32 contractors.
 No, 55.
 Wait, oh, 55 contractors each working on some little part in some sort of insane Kafka-like
 bureaucratic hell world where nobody can talk to anybody and nobody knows what the other
 person is doing.
 And it's like, yeah, this is how you make something really horrible that breaks.
 Like have 55 different people from 55 different companies working on it.
 At the end, everybody knew it was going to break and they launched it anyway.
 I mean, so the piece is great.
 And what's interesting about it is the argument is insane if you just look at how people are
 arguing about it.
 And it highlights the fact that our government-
 You mean that we have to repeal Obamacare because the website broke?
 Yeah.
 No, that's an insane argument, of course.
 Oh boy, oh boy, we're going down.
 No, no, no.
 No, no, fine.
 But that argument is they are using the dysfunction of our government as a whole to make an argument
 that has nothing to do with it.
 Right, but they're saying-
 Or wait, or does it?
 But the argument is very simply that-
 That argument actually makes sense.
 Well, it's weird.
 Maybe we should repeal Obamacare.
 Probably.
 I'm going to think about it.
 If this is what they do with a website, what are they going to do with my healthcare?
 That's exactly the argument.
 That's exactly the argument.
 That's true.
 No, but Obamacare and healthcare.gov are very interesting because it's like this huge, massive
 government policy.
 And for the first time ever, the only way that it exists for people is the internet.
 Yeah, on the web.
 It is an IT policy.
 On the worldwide web.
 I think-
 And the government doesn't know what to do about that.
 It doesn't know how to build that sort of thing.
 Right, and also-
 It knows how to ask to build ships and missiles and-
 But not only that, but it doesn't know how to build them and that's evidenced by-
 You wouldn't have launched it.
 What you would have done if you knew how to build them is you would have, first off, you
 would have never started the project the way they started it, but then you would have tested,
 tested, tested and made sure like anybody does when they make something that it's going
 to be the product you think it's going to be.
 So clearly they didn't do that.
 But what's also interesting is that we don't know how to, as a people and as a government,
 process the failure of a part of the government like this.
 And the reaction is like, oh my God, like everything is messed up.
 Why would we want these people to be responsible for healthcare?
 But it's like, I don't know, we've had it.
 I want to get, I give it the benefit of the doubt.
 I would at least like to see if the website were functioning 100% correctly, what would
 it be like?
 I'd just like to know.
 But then I also think-
 But it's not even that.
 Like I think it's Oregon contracted with Oracle to build their state exchange and that like
 just didn't work.
 Like there's, there's elements of this where-
 You're saying that it's a failed policy.
 No, maybe not the policy.
 I'm saying that we, the government is good at being like, you contractor make a thing
 and the contractor maybe can make it or not.
 It's usually a rocket though.
 But usually-
 Like nine times out of 10 when they say make a thing, it's a rocket.
 How many times, like how many military projects are like way over budget or never hit the
 deadline or like we canceled at the end after spending all this money and you can't-
 Probably most.
 If the government wants to be more responsive or effective, it can't treat this that same
 way.
 It has to actually be-
 In some weird way, I almost feel like what we needed to do was contract this out to a
 private, but not done in the way that the government did it, but like find like the
 ideal person to build it.
 The single company that could make something of that size and have them go build it.
 Isn't that what they should have done?
 Just had people bid on the one, on the project of you're going to make the website that does
 all this stuff.
 I mean, that's kind of sort of what they did.
 Right?
 But they did it-
 But they end up with 55 different contractors.
 They end up with 55 different, and they did it that, you should watch Adrian's video because
 it's amazing, but they did it five years before the ACA was like passed.
 Right.
 So they have these indefinite, they're called IDIQ contracts.
 Yeah, the IDIQ is totally amazing.
 I know the second one was indefinite quantity.
 I don't know what the D stands for right now, but-
 And I think it's indefinite delivery, deliverable indefinite quantity.
 Yeah, it's something insane.
 Which is like, we don't know we're making it.
 We don't know how long it's going to take and how much we're going to make.
 But you got the contract, right?
 But we are, we won.
 So these guys have it and they don't, they're not incentivized.
 Like everything you could complain about the government doing this, they did those things.
 Mark Zuckerberg can fix this.
 Like structurally, the things people complain about big government making mistakes were
 all here in play.
 Oh, you know, it's like move slow and break things.
 And then don't know how they're broken.
 Yeah.
 It's crazy.
 It's only going to get worse.
 But Adrian's point is like, the government has to build more websites.
 Yeah.
 Well, this is how people interact with each other.
 Have you ever tried to like use their websites for taxes and stuff like that?
 No, no, no.
 It's a classic.
 I mean, even like, you know, look at like the DMV, the New York, New York City DMV site.
 I mean, it's a classic, this is a classic joke, right?
 That all of the, you know, the government or, you know, city, federal, whatever, state,
 federal, they're like, they're like, yeah.
 This is terrible.
 This is insane, right?
 You know, at least the healthcare site has a great, great web design.
 No, but this is the thing.
 You can find stuff on here, but it's crazy to do it.
 This is incredible.
 We're looking at the New York DMV site.
 You can look at, if you want to look at the New York DMV site, can you just get it up
 on the, because I've visited a lot recently.
 This is really one of the better ones.
 There, no, but like, scroll down a little bit, just get into the mix here.
 It's like, there's just so much going on here.
 And I know there has to be a lot, but we have better ways of making websites for lots of
 stuff now.
 Yeah.
 But the point is that it's always been this running joke, but now it's like, it's not
 just about, I need to renew my license, which is kind of, you can go and do it if you have
 to, and you're going to do it anyhow.
 And you sort of expect the DMV to be a horrible experience because it's government run.
 And but you know, you, you, oh, Illinois, Illinois has branded their DMV cyber drive,
 Illinois.
 That makes me want to click log on, log on.
 Okay, anyhow, but, but, but now the problem is that, that it's not, the problem is that
 we now actually need these things to work like increasingly like with healthcare.
 I mean, there could be other programs where there are of course now, but in the future
 where we need the government to be ready for technology.
 It's the essential joke of all of this is that the government legally required people
 to purchase something and then made it impossible for them to purchase it.
 They had no good way to get it to them.
 Have you heard about the, the prison glitch?
 This is my favorite blog on all of healthcare.gov.
 It asks you how, how long you've been in prison and then you can't go any further.
 Because it just assumes that you've been in prison.
 If you have zero amount of prison, which makes you think about those first five people that
 did get through it all, they probably need a prison or they lied.
 They were like, just put me through the system.
 I will say, so like before all of this went live, I was like, I quit my job at the verge
 and so I needed some healthcare.
 So I like looked around and all like all healthcare things are all just scary and terrifying and
 weird.
 Then I like accidentally like put my phone number in somewhere and then somebody called
 me and they turned out to be like a healthcare broker.
 So I guess they make commission on sales.
 Oh, that sounds, she's just talking me through some plans.
 All sounded pretty sketchy, but I just bought a plan.
 I didn't know you did you really through a healthcare broker.
 So what the lesson here is that you can just call Paul.
 Paul will heal if you're nice enough, nice enough on the phone, buy anything that you're
 selling him, including including health insurance, which he needs.
 He needs to stay alive.
 It probably needs to be replaced.
 Now.
 I don't know if it's legal, but that doesn't sound right to me.
 I think it's still legal.
 People can keep selling.
 Nobody's telling these guys to not sell health insurance.
 Yeah.
 It's just that there's now other options.
 Nobody has to like hit a certain minimal.
 I don't know if I have the minimum required coverage, but who knows?
 You're probably gonna send, get sent right to a death panel in this situation.
 Yeah, probably.
 I, I, I will say this, you know, it is all I know is we've not tried the socialized healthcare
 plan.
 Like it hasn't been tried in America.
 And I just feel like let's just roll the dice and see how it goes.
 Let's give it a shot.
 Let's go.
 Why not?
 I don't want to gamble with my whatever.
 And it's like, why not?
 There's a bunch of people who don't have insurance and like, let's see what happens.
 You know, it's really fun for me is going home for Thanksgiving.
 Yeah.
 Your father is a hardcore right wing and my family full of doctors.
 Yeah.
 Talking about this.
 They don't like Obamacare.
 You might.
 So my sister is all, she's cool with it.
 You know, she's like, she's got to remain hope.
 Yeah.
 Cool, cool.
 Yeah.
 My dad, man, he's not into it, not into it.
 There's gotta be some, but it's like my attempts to escape that conversation, like by the end,
 it was like diving off of couches.
 My guess is that at some point though, just the way the medical industry has exploited.
 You got, you got Lego frames like the real one.
 Oh dude, no, no.
 Like the real tracks.
 Lego trains right now are awesome.
 Wait, what are Lego trains?
 So when I was a kid, I had the Lego monorail.
 Do you remember the space monorail?
 You had the monorail?
 I had the monorail.
 It was awesome.
 He had it all.
 He had it all.
 He was racing privilege.
 We were scrapping, scraping and scrapping for something.
 Stealing bread off of windowsill.
 Dude, just give me my birthday and my Christmas if you just give me this one little thing.
 For a man who was born on December 16th, I will tell you that I pulled that scam many,
 many times.
 Yeah, that's a good scam.
 And you got the Lego train.
 That's a good scam.
 He got the Lego.
 Anyway, but if you remember the Lego monorail, it was like.
 Of course we do.
 It was a hack, right?
 I drooled on that in the catalog.
 So the engine had like a physical switch on it and it was a drive along the track.
 Like you could adjust Legos to hit the switches and that's how it stopped and started.
 Sadness.
 I don't know, but it sounds great.
 The new ones are straight up remote controlled.
 Like they're like my niece is running around.
 No, there's like a remote control.
 That's a battle for the running.
 I mean, I straight up like fought an eight year old girl to play with the Lego train.
 It doesn't surprise me.
 Yeah, I would not put that past you at all.
 She won.
 She did win.
 But not also that also doesn't surprise me.
 So the moral of the story is that the children are our future.
 Children are too wily, wily.
 Those children are going to be riding a hyper loop and they're going to be like, this is
 nothing new to us.
 They may or may not have health care.
 Yeah, well they may or may not, but they probably will.
 I think they'll be okay.
 I just, I'm just saying like, let's just see what happens.
 Give it a couple of years.
 It's been like six months.
 Can't get worse.
 I mean, here's the thing, you know, like, you know, I feel like medical professionals
 are probably bummed because like all the kinds of weird loopholes that used to exist are
 getting like weirdly changed or closed up.
 But come on, they're not getting paid.
 There'll be a bunch of new loopholes and ways to make more money and ways to do less, fewer
 surgeries on fewer people, you know, whatever.
 I don't know what doctors want yet because the robotic surgeons have been so, so good
 thus far.
 So we're getting close to having to wrap up.
 I know this is a short one.
 Unfortunately, we do have to catch a train.
 Like literally that's not even a pun.
 That's not a joke.
 I have Michael Shane staring at me, like nodding his head, looking very worried.
 You look very, he's actually not pointing to his watch.
 Now he's making some sort of breast grabbing a breast motion.
 I don't understand that.
 Don't do that to me.
 Don't do that to anyone.
 Not in front of the flag.
 You're not in front of America.
 America's, you know, you can't see that.
 No one can see this.
 There's a huge flag.
 There's a big flag.
 Could we just shoot the flag for a second?
 Yeah.
 You think we're kidding.
 Michael, go do the thing.
 Oh, you can't really see it cause it's in the dark.
 There's Michael.
 Yeah.
 That's a huge flag and there's Michael.
 And that's the verchester.
 Are you?
 Yeah.
 I'm not sure.
 I'm not sure.
 Are there any other topics we need to cover?
 Not really.
 I feel like something else happened.
 I can't remember.
 You know what I hate about Aaron Sorkin speaking of the West Wing?
 Oh, this is going to, this is going to end quickly.
 Well, we have, it was pretty, it was, I had, we had.
 Hey Josh, let's walk and talk.
 It's not the walk and talk.
 It's the, it's the, and this happens a lot in the West Wing.
 It's a, um, Mr. President, we need you to sign this document and then do you know in
 1876 what they called screws?
 And it's like, you know what, dude?
 Just sign the, just sign.
 Yeah, no, it's like, it's like a Mr. President, here's your new shoes.
 He's like, you, have you read the Ulysses?
 Because let me tell you, and it's like, you know what people just want you to do.
 You're the president.
 Please.
 He spends like four hours a day telling stories about history.
 He's like a grandpa.
 You know, he needs to sign the papers and put his shoes on and get to the meeting.
 Like stop answering, stop answering questions with questions about history.
 It's not, if our actual president is anything like the pool, it's not cool.
 Our actual president is like the president of the West Wing.
 No wonder we're having all these problems.
 People are like, oh, Obama, what do you think?
 We got to get this healthcare thing happening.
 He's like, have I ever told you about the time I was in Guatemala?
 And it's like, no, no one wants to hear it.
 We got to do healthcare here.
 No, they're parables, man.
 They're not parables.
 He's just saying things.
 You know what I'm talking about.
 You've heard all the stories.
 Anyhow, this guy over here.
 By the way, this is totally unrelated, but I read that, that the death dealer story.
 Yes.
 The epic long form work by the verge, just pretty incredible.
 And I was really sad.
 It's very sad.
 So if you, well, not even if you have a chance, read this or I'll be very upset with you.
 Matt Stroud wrote a piece called the death dealer.
 It's a long form piece that we put up today.
 It is about a guy named James Arthur Ray who is, I would say a very bad person, like just
 a very flawed, very flawed, damaged person who is damaging other people.
 And it's a fascinating story.
 It's actually kind of, I think is in some way related to our scam world story that we
 did a couple of years ago in that he's sort of one of these guys who has risen to, he
 had risen to a place.
 I mean, he's like Oprah.
 Oprah's like into this guy.
 He wrote the secret.
 No, he was interviewed for it.
 He was part of the secret cabal, but he's not like the secret author.
 But he was on Oprah.
 But he was on Oprah and talking about how to empower yourself and do all this stuff.
 And it's snake oil, but it's like in this case, it's snake oil that got people killed.
 And I think-
 And he's not sorry.
 That's just pissing me off.
 Yeah.
 Spoilers.
 And I think in our age of information overload and the kind of your reality, whatever the
 way you want your reality to be, you can get it on the internet.
 I do think these guys are kind of a, are like a red flag in the belief in information without
 really doing your homework.
 So don't believe James Arthur Ray, but do read the story about him.
 It's called the death dealer on the verge.com, a website on the internet coming soon.
 As soon as we work out the bugs with our 55 contractors.
 Dot gov.
 No, but actually, but you know, that's the thing.
 Like we're so used to, I just think about-
 Websites are really hard to build.
 The verge is hard to build, but we have like an incredible, we've got to go.
 We have an incredible product team who build it and like did it efficiently and continues-
 Why don't you just cut your own throat and then hang yourself?
 I just want to say this, but we're used to in our world, people executing on things they
 say they're going to and making them and they're like, whoa, the thing exists now.
 That's why, that's why it's so weird to see something fail so completely.
 Like you go to websites that don't work.
 Maybe you have a problem for a day, a couple of hours.
 Oh, they get their servers are being overloaded and then they like get more servers and it's
 fixed or whatever.
 Well, it took Twitter like three years.
 Okay.
 Twitter had its, but Twitter, you know, major service and did get their stuff together.
 It did take them several years, but it wasn't like every day you went, Twitter was completely
 destroyed.
 Anyhow, so government, get it together.
 Talk to, talk to the Vox product team.
 You want to get some tips on how to build great websites.
 Many of them are in DC, short walk, short walk to paradise.
 It's true.
 And that is our verge cast for this week.
 Thank you guys for watching.
 If you want to get in touch with us, you can email us at vergecast at the verge.com.
 You can leave, write something in our forums.
 You can leave a comment on this post when it goes up.
 You can find us on Twitter.
 The verge is at verge.
 I'm Josh Patopulsky, and Eli is reckless.
 Paul is future Paul.
 Ben Popper is Ben Popper.
 And you know, this is, it's early in the week for us, but this will be it for the week.
 And you know, for what's, you know, the, you know, the situation that's happening right
 now with you and your family, I think we all feel, you know, we're going to wait, we're
 going to watch, we're going to see what happens.
 We don't know what'll happen.
 We don't feel good about it, but maybe you'll pull through.