 Beef that sweat, the Sam Sheffer story today on the Vergecast. Hello and welcome to the Vergecast. Where we'll be talking about beef in your sweat with Sam Sheffer. We're off to a great start. Hi everybody, it's the Vergecast. Josh is not here today. He's, he's, it's, you know. Josh is an enigma. Look, what's he gonna do? Enigma wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in a box. Anyway, I'm Nilay Patel. Roll it in a pizza. I'm David Pierce. I'm Ross Miller. Yeah, and this is the Vergecast where we talk about, pretty much talk about where Josh is, where, what he could be doing, whether he's thinking about me, and whether he asked about me yesterday. I mean, Valentine's Day is coming up, so I assume he's out planning your special day. Right. I hope so. Yeah. He's gonna take me to the park. Hollywood Topolski's out, you know. He's doing, he's making deals. Anyway, this is Vergecast where we talk about the week in technology news, culture news, news, news of the weird, news of the world. I'm on a BuzzFeed post. Whether Ross is thinking about me right now. But it's called, how does, you're the perfect steak for your Valentine's. We can talk about that if we want to. Really? Turns out I have a lot of information on the subject. Really? That seems really easy. Step one is choose your cut. Yeah. So I've been in a hanger steak. We had a hanger steak. We did. It was delicious. Yeah, it was good. That's where I've been. Yeah. Yeah. That's a mistake. You know, I've been sous-viding things in a crock pot. Dude, the crock pot is the most amazing thing I've ever had. I bought a thing called the Geek Food DSV. I'm not even kidding. It has an amazing name. It's basically the world's most complicated on and off switch. So it's a power, it's really nothing more than a power strip with a thermometer. Okay. And you plug the crock pot into it and it measures the temperature of the water in the crock pot and then it turns it off and gets that temperature and then turns it back on again when it falls below it. That's amazing. So it holds it at a temperature. The crock pot itself doesn't do this? You have to buy a separate device? Crock pots are not complicated devices. No. They literally, it's funny because when you do recipes, you know, it's like run your crock pot at high for five hours and like that means nothing. It's like... A crock pot is just like a lid. Yeah, it's a lid and it's like literally, it's like should that get hotter or colder? There's no temperature setting. Anyway, but so I bought this thing. So I sous-vide the steaks in it, which is amazing. And everybody should get one because that's the best way to make steak. Fair enough. Look at this. Look at this piece. Yeah. Beef sweat. Thank you, man. Beef sweat. See you later. Swaggy chefs. So this. So you love this thing? This is a red Nexus 5. This is the red Nexus 5. That's what David Pearce is holding right now. This just showed up yesterday. I would say that this is some of the biggest news this week, but that really is an insult to the rest of the news this week. That says a lot less about this and more about the kind of week. So I will say this. I am on record over and over and over again saying that the white Nexus 5 is a piece of junk, which I will maintain. And it's because it's the sides. It's the sides. It's like these gross, glossy edges that just don't look good. Yeah. I think the black Nexus 5 is fine. It's a soft touch. Sure. Whatever. It's kind of generic. That one, which they are calling red. It's not red. You know, Josh and I have an endless argument over what is red and what is orange. And we actually. One of you color it. It's like a fairly cut and dry. Well, no. Because there's all kinds of orange stuff in our office, right? I'm like, that's right. It's orange. And like, we just do. Wait, wait, wait. Like the couch is upstairs? It's definitely orange. No, the couch is orange. But the weird desk, that CB2 desk we roll around the TV sitting on right now. Oh, yeah, yeah. Josh will swear up and down that that's red. Josh is wrong. Right. But so we. After it's funny that over the course of the past few years, he for a while thought that he was colorblind. But now he's doing a pretty good job convincing me that I am colorblind. You and the rest of the world. So wait, what color is this? Orange. 100% that's orange. Yes, of course. I'm telling you, Josh will tell you that's red. And Google, for whatever insane reason thinks this is red. Yeah. That's just Google's not paying attention. They like, they like moved on. That's fair. Like whatever we sold, we're all we're never making phones again. I'm way back and forth on this thing. I want it. Give it to me. You know, it's kind of red. This is I like, I'm buying this phone. This is my next right here. Like, I'm not even kidding. Like, it's awesome. You just the thing I like about is you like, you can't look directly at it for too long. It's like, too bright. It's the best. It throws me off. No, it's cool. It's like, who? You know, Nokia tried to do it, but they never went all the way like this with like searing orange. HTC tried to do it for a minute. You know, HTC. And then they're HTC. You've played with this, right? I mean, it's just a Nexus 5. I like the black buttons too. I think that's a nice touch. The black buttons are the little thing. I mean, it's just Nexus 5. It still has a screen that like, I think looks kind of washed out. What about the camera? It has a Nexus 5 camera. You know what you can't ever take a picture of this with? A Nexus 5. Like, you try to take a picture of this with another Nexus 5 and the camera explodes. It's like, too many colors, too vibrant, too much details. I will say just looking at it on camera right now, it looks really good. It looks awesome. This is the best. Look, here's my iPhone, right? This is whatever. It's boring. It's functional. It has a bunch of apps, a nice camera, whatever. This is red. And victory. Well, right? I mean, this is the best. I want this. The screen, I will say, maybe it's because it's red. The screen looks better on this one. Maybe they're getting better. Yeah. It's crazy to me that it took Google, like A, that it took Google this long to have colors because Google is like the company of colors. Yeah. So they're tagliners, actually. The company of colors. And number two, that they picked this one. Like, I kind of love them for it because they're like, we're going to make colors. We're just going all the way for it. But it's just reddish orange. Massive color. I think it's $349. $349. I'm buying one of these immediately. There you go. Wow. All right. You want me to buy you one right now? We can do this live. Let's buy. It's doing nothing happens. This is the worst I've ever heard buying. No. This is the... Okay. I want to talk about Flappy Bird. We were talking about Flappy Bird. All right, well, that means I get to pick it up and play Flappy Bird. The thing is, I have played... $349. Look at that. There you go. Wait, so is Flappy Bird new this week or was the news that we found out that the developer is making all of the money that has ever existed in the world? Yeah, I think it's been around for a month. It's now like the top of the charts. More than a month, maybe. Okay. So it's been out a while. It's been out a while. I have too many Google apps. Him and like two other of his apps are also like in the top app store sales. Yeah, whoever this guy is, like, he's good at this game. How do you make money? It's a free game, right? It's a free game. All I want to say is that I hate Flappy Bird. Wait, wait, wait. One, two... It's just... Two, guys, it's my high score. Three, four... Holy fuck, I got this. Yeah, I just bought a phone. I just doubled my high score. By the way, Google, I want to tell you this. Because of your terrible account management, I almost bought a phone with a totally wild old Google account. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I just like, why don't you know? You should know better than this. Like some other state that you... Do you remember the days when the Vergecast was all one cohesive conversation? No. Not much. That literally... That never happened. But I definitely just bought a red Nexus 5 because it's the best. And I'm never going to... I mean, I guess I'll move my SIM card from my one into this. One. Right. You have a T-Mobile SIM card, right? Yeah. It's the best. It totally works. The service is amazing. Four. I have absolutely no... I need that can't tell if serious GIF right now. There are moments in New York City when having T-Mobile... So everything about buying T-Mobile service is the best, right? So I bought it at Walmart. I bought the card. It's like a secret plan that you can buy at Walmart or you can find if you skirt around the website online. Okay. Where I pay $30 a month for unlimited data in like 100 minutes of voice. Can you... That's the whole plan. Wait, that's all? Huh? Can you tether? Yeah, you can do whatever you want. It's a mandatory phone. Wow. That's... Live your life. That's amazing. You know what I mean? That's like the plan they have for the iPad and stuff, right? But except no voice. Well, there's 100 minutes of voice. So you can definitely buy this one at Walmart in a package and it says Walmart exclusive. And I said I went to Walmart to buy this thing and then everyone tweeted me that you can find it somewhere online. You just have to wink at the right guy in the T-Mobile store and then everything's fine. Yeah. You have to open... You get a lot of things... You have to Snapchat the right T-Mobile person. I'm looking for the right Walmart special. The answer is just John. Anyway, so I bought it. I love the idea that I have this card and I can put it on all the phones and all... Whatever. It's great. And then the service in New York City is totally hitting this. Yeah. Really? It's like on one minute I'm getting 40 down and then I take two steps to the left and my phone lights on fire and explodes. Yeah. I mean, it is occasionally outrageously fast. It's faster than my home internet sometimes. And then every once in a while... And then it's the same thing. I walk into my bathroom and it's like no service ever again. Paul Miller, when he first got back on the internet, Paul was like, I just have T-Mobile, I've just been watching Netflix on my phone over and over again, connected to a projector. And he's like, there's no data caps. He's like, what have you been up to, buddy? He's like, I'm watching Netflix on my phone connected to a projector. I was like, well, you came all the way back to the internet. You live... That's like two years ahead of time on the internet. T-Mobile needs to buy a little Pico projector company and start making those and just sell them. I mean, Samsung did that. Screw your TV. Samsung did that phone though. They did the projector phone. Hell yeah. What was it, the beam? The Galaxy beam? That phone was ridiculous. That was bad. But I think if... I would... That's a really good idea. Maybe I should just do that. Yeah. I literally don't see a single downside to this idea. What? Having a projector, just sticking your phone in and playing... Just going for it. Yeah, playing movies. Yeah, I mean, the downside is that you have to purchase a projector. Would you like to shop for a projector now? No. Oh, God. So everybody tweeted David what projector he should buy. No. And don't do it. What audio system? Soundbar, full 5.1. Cleave. That's true. That's very important. That's just rolling down 12 pounds. So this rabbit is going far down anyway. What soundbar should I buy? It's all over. Okay. Let's talk about what actually happened this week. Okay. I think there's actually... There are two pieces of, I think, huge news that are both connected. Okay. So one, and we talked about this on the Verge Live a little bit earlier this week, Microsoft appointed Satya Nadella as CEO. Yep. Replacing Balmer. We ran a touching tribute. Say his name again? I don't know. I've been saying it different every time. Yeah. So the way I've heard them say it is like Satya. Satya. It's Satya Nadella. It's Satya Nadella. Okay. Yeah. No, it's not that. That's how my mother would pronounce it. Because I have a thing. My parents pronounce my name far differently than everybody else. Really? How do your parents pronounce your name? Neelay. Really? Yeah. That's my name. Wait, Neelay? You can't do it. I'm sorry. This is like a... There's a cultural barrier that prevents you from ever pronouncing my name. I could just study the culture for years and never do it. And that is how many people pronounce the letter A. Okay. That's it. As far as I can tell. So my name is Neelay, and it's hard to say. I didn't even hear you just now. So I grew up in Wisconsin and it just turned into Neelay. Okay. And then you just went for it? Just went for it. Like, hi, I'm Neelay. My sister made a... She made a conscious decision when she went to college to undo Wisconsin pronunciation of her name. Really? So she grew up in Wisconsin. Everybody called her Terrell, like Terrell Owens, which is hilarious. That's amazing. It's not real. T-O. Also not a man's name. I'm gonna call your sister T-O from now on. She went to college. She's like, my name is Thorol. That's her name. And... Right. And she trained Illinois to pronounce her name correctly. And then she comes back to Wisconsin. And she's like, hi, Terrell. And she's like, who? She's like, what is that? So yeah. So, you know, I didn't... Does she hang out with Terrell Owens a lot? No, she doesn't. You know, I think one time she met Jamie Foxx. Is that a thing? Sure. Yeah. Nice. He probably knows Terrell Owens. Anyway, so Satya, I think is right. I think like... I'll buy it. OG, that's the pronunciation. But they've been saying Satya. Yeah. They're all over the place a little bit. They are all over the place. I think they're gonna... But Satya Nadella is the CEO of Microsoft. He is... I will say this. I've gotten a lot of tweets from very excited people in India. And my parents are very pleased. Like nationalistically, like people are very excited about this. Yeah. But I think that's like a weird thing. Because his number one qualification is not that he's from India. It's that he's been at Microsoft for 22 years. And he's done an excellent job running various parts of the business. Have you heard his name before? Yeah. Okay. I hadn't. I was sort of surprised by that. I think... Here's what I think is really interesting. Tom's like a small piece, like saying like he might possibly... He's like a low on the list. No. So that... Here's why I think that's interesting. So right when they said Bomber's leaving, we did a story and we did some reporting. We talked to a bunch of people and his name came up a lot. Really? A lot, a lot. It was like Tony Bates, Alan Mulally, Stephen Elop, and you remember this guy, Satya Nadella? And it just kept on coming up like, who? Like he's been there, he's been running big enterprise divisions. He ran Bing. Like not necessarily a natural choice. But he was in that conversation at a high level from the get go. And I want to say that there were other big candidates involved, but because he was in that conversation at a high level from the get go, the rumor is that Bill Gates, he was Bill Gates candidate. Oh, interesting. Well, because Gates is now coming back to oversee this personally in a lot of ways. He's like he's an advisor. Right. So Bill Gates is stepping down as chairman of the board of Microsoft and then taking a bigger role on products as a technical advisor. And so that's like there's a lot to unpack there with what's going on with Microsoft. And one of the things that we had always heard about with the flashy external candidates is that they didn't want to be under Gates and Bollinger on the board. And Gates is the chairman, effectively running the show, but big strategic decisions was a problem for these external candidates. Alan Mulally, chief among them. Right. Yeah, if I'm Alan Mulally, I'm like, screw you, I ran Ford. Shut up. Yeah. But the thing about Mulally is he said from the beginning, very happy at Ford. Yeah. And he probably is very happy at Ford. He probably is very happy at Ford. I feel like he has a lot of reasons to be very happy at Ford. I'm happy at Ford and I re-upped for a year and everyone was like, so what are you doing after that year? Yeah. You're leaving, right? He's definitely leaving in a year. No. He's leaving. You're out of there. So yeah, I think that there is an aspect to this where this was always kind of Gates' candidate and Gates got out of the way because he got his guy. And if you're Bill Gates candidate at Microsoft, I feel like how could you lose? I think there's a lot of ways. Who's going to be like, hey, Bill Gates, you're dumb. Yeah. Remember how you're Bill Gates? I disagree with your decisions though. Like, no, that doesn't work for people. They are often like, oh, we're shedding the image of old Microsoft. We need to figure out what to do in the future. Yeah, but Bill Gates then just smothers you with his money and you're dead and he wins. Right. I feel like that's how this goes. Just the stockpile of malaria that he keeps. Right. Yeah. The stockpile of malaria. Yeah. He isn't conquered. He just captures it. He's like, these are the ones the lasers didn't kill. Yeah. And he releases mosquitoes. Yeah. Hands you a laser pointer. He's like, let's see if you're- He's like, a TED talk, he like, release mosquitoes into the- Yeah, yeah. He just does that at board meetings and he's like, I don't know, maybe you'll die, maybe you won't. I have this thing right here. Yeah, he hands you a laser pointer. So, Satya Nadella, right? And they're like, yes. And then he gives everybody the antidote and everything's fine. Yeah. What's scary is how- It's a solid board meeting. I can totally see that. I'm just assuming that that's correct. Look, he's an evil genius. Look, so there's that. There's that whole story. It's a huge story, right? Right. There's a big shift in their language from we're devices and services to we're cloud and mobile, which sounds like nonsense, but it was repeatedly said out loud and sort of out in the world as we did more reporting on it. It was repeatedly said that this marks an actual change. Right. Well, yeah. They're going to go devices and services with Ballmer's line and cloud and mobile is Nadella's line and those are different in some way. But aren't those like- Yeah. I mean, those are pretty easy synonyms for each other. It's like devices and mobile are kind of becoming the same thing. Yeah, but I asked a- Sorry, go on. When I was talking to the person I was talking to, I said, is that like a conflict difference or is that just shades of gray? And I was told, you should really read into it what you want. Okay. And I think that's really meaningful. Fair. I think that it is a difference. I think that devices and services means we're going to make devices and put our services on them. And that was their strategy, right? I think that's why Office isn't on the iPad. I think cloud and mobile, cloud first, mobile first, that's Nadella's line, means we're going to make, we're going to literally move Microsoft software into the cloud and then put it down onto mobile devices. Right. And I think that opens them up to the iPad. I think that opens them up to Android. I think that opens them up to an entire suite of other devices and platforms that they have been trying to leverage into getting people onto Windows. Well, that was the thing that- So here's what's interesting though about that timing then, which is they just bought a hardware company. They just bought a consumer devices company. Yeah. And well, they haven't yet. This happened right before the Nokia purchase finished. Right. So what does that mean then? Well, that's mobile, right? That's mobile. I think they're, I can't imagine they're going to get rid of Windows phone or try and get rid of it. But I think the smart thing, this was, John Gruber wrote a great piece about this this week. And I thought the thing that was most interesting that he said was he quoted the numbers where it was like the raw number of devices that run Windows products is still enormously high. Yeah. But the number, it used to be, like I can just find the number here, but it used to be like there were 90 million devices and Windows ran on 95% of them. And now it's like 240 million devices and Windows stuff runs on 30% of them. And like raw numbers, they're the same and they're big ass numbers. But like there's this huge world that they're not touching now. And this is like, and the place he landed in this piece, which I thought was really smart is instead of saying, you know, we want to be, he just wrote Satya Nadella needs to find Microsoft's new, a computer on every desk and in every home running Microsoft software. Here's my stab at it. Microsoft services sending data to and from every network device in the world. The next ubiquity isn't running on every device. It's talking to every device. And I think that's exactly right. And that's what Google has accomplished, right? Yeah. And I think Microsoft, there's been a lot of conversation about how companies are trying to do the Apple model where they sell you a device, they sell you the software, they sell you a suite of services that run on that. And Microsoft or Apple has 70% margins or whatever insane 40% margins. That's not Google's model, right? Google's model is they make a bunch of software and they have, I think very aggressively use those services in their software to push Windows into third place in terms of market share. And services, right? And I think that has been worked out really well for Google. I think Microsoft needs to come back and say, you know what? Google Docs isn't as good a cloud services office. It just isn't, right? And if you want to run a real business, you need Excel and we're going to put Excel on the cloud for real. And we're going to put it everywhere. And we're going to put it everywhere. Yeah. And that will enable them to start a conversation with a class of customers that they have traditionally always had, but have started poking around because they have iPads now. Yeah. And that's like a big deal. And I think saying you have to make the investment all the way to buy a surface to get Excel is a huge ask now in this market. Well, yeah. I mean, I think what this is sort of an admission of to some extent is like doing what Apple has done is impossible because Apple already did it. Yeah. Right? Like they've built this locked in thing and their market share is big enough, especially in particular places like phones and tablets where nobody else is going to get enough market share to like pull it off. And Apple is fine with not being 90% margin. And the one vendor who has done it in terms of hardware has Samsung has no software chops that I've ever seen. Right. Especially not in the kinds of software that Microsoft sells. Well, and they're not even really trying. Like they're not trying to lock you in the same way that Apple is. Well, they're doing- Like Apple straight up doesn't work if you don't use its products. Like it's- That's true. I just plugged this phone into this computer. Like this is a new computer and I never plug a phone into a computer anymore. I literally plugged it in and charge it and like all kinds of Apple stuff started up. Oh, God. Yeah, yeah. Would you like to use iPhone? It's like, no. Like literally the first time I've ever opened iPhoto on this particular machine is when I plugged this phone. But then they try to put a word document onto your iPhone and everything just catches on fire. Like it just won't work. But then, but so by basically saying like, we're not going to try and do that anymore and we're going to go back to this model of, and it's way more true to like what Microsoft actually is to say, we just want to be on every device. Like we want all of the things that people use to be running our software is what Microsoft originally did. And they just happened to, like Microsoft originally said a new, like it was a computer on every desk and every home. That's why they have a Mac. We already did that. Now it's about getting Microsoft software onto it. And like they got away from that. And the way back into that is to do cloud stuff and to open it back up to a lot of people. I think, and then that, but that's short term. I think the other piece is like, you know, the real answer is computers everywhere, right? Because everything is everywhere. That's where they're right. But software like is running, like putting a computer everywhere doesn't mean anything. It's just awesome software behind it. Right? Right. Like I have that, there's in my office upstairs, I have a really crappy camera that runs Skype. Like really crappy. It's impossible to overestimate how crappy the camera is. But it does, but its functionality trumps how crappy it is, right? It literally is a camera, a webcam with a Tegra 2 processor running Android and running an insanely bad custom Skype UI on it. Yeah. Right? And it just makes Skype calls. It's like somebody took web OS cards and was like, how can I make this in four minutes? And then just shipped it. But it does its job, which is I don't want a computer next to it. I don't need all the complexity of a computer. I literally just need a thing on top of my TV that can make Skype calls. And I have it. Right? But most people have it. But the software is miserable. When most people have it, it's an Xbox. But an Xbox costs $400. This thing costs $120. You paid $120 for that? It's 120 bucks. Seriously? That does the job. That seems really expensive to me. Don't you have that TV at home that just has the webcam that pops up? You just got to get another one of those. So that's another great example, though. So I have a Panasonic plasma television. It's brand new. It's one of the best pictures you can buy. And the software that runs on it is fucking miserable. Just awful. Just the worst. If you work at Panasonic right now and you're a software engineer, you should quit because you're bad at your job. You should go get a different kind of job. You should go be a grumpier. They won't get somewhere else. They should keep their job forever. I'm just saying, have some dignity. Are you the guy who designed the make a video call UI on the Panasonic VT? What do I have? VT-90? VT-80? Sure. All I remember is you bought it and you Instagrammed it, and you said America because you bought it on Cyber Monday and you were very proud of yourself. Whatever. If you designed that UI and that TV, you should never do any more software design in your life. You should feel ashamed. I'm sorry. That's just the way it is. But that's the opportunity for a company like Microsoft, is to start making the software for that. And they tried to do it before. But it's to start saying, there are all these other places for us to go. There are all these other kinds of devices that are going to talk to the internet. And we can be the company that brings it all together. Yeah. Well, and I hope that what they realize and what Satya Nadella does is say, the answer to that is not always Windows. But they have to make Microsoft bigger than Windows because it's not going to work everywhere. So this is the second piece of news. There's a lot to unpack with Nadella. There's a lot to unpack about why Microsoft decided to introduce him by launching a web page with a series of fake interviews. How long do you think it takes them before we get to actually start evaluating what he's doing? What does it take? Like a year? 90 days. 90? Really? Half that? 100 days. You evaluate the president after 100 days. That's like the first 100 days. All right. I mean, yeah. I buy it. So, what? Three and a half months. That's like a cool physical course. And he doesn't even have any wars to fight. Yeah. He's going to be fine. He's got two major wars to fight. He's probably also right now just sitting there playing Flappy Bird. Would it be amazing? Is it on Windows Phone? This person in the office, he sits down at Ballmer's old desk. It's like totally clean and barren. He's like, what do I do now? And slowly pulls an iPad out of his pocket and starts playing Flappy Bird. He's on Secret. I bet he's as bad at it as I am. He's a threat. We never heard sorry about it. I'm not good at Flappy Bird. So, here's the second piece, sort of the flip side of this news, which is Sony today decided they're not going to make Viya PCs anymore. They sold off the Viya business, which is incredible. Yeah. That's an incredible admission of this isn't a viable business for Sony anymore. And Sony has all kinds of... Damn it, John. For those at home playing at home, our director just gave us the worst part. Not to be repeated. I just feel bad. John, please leave. Please stop correcting yourself. You're John Lager Marciano and you're responsible for the Viya joke. I think you should leave right now. Have some dignity. Have some dignity. By the way, iTunes Match has been running on this computer nonstop since the day I bought it. What are you doing? That's a normal thing. It just launched itself to tell me it's still running. I hate iTunes. We don't even need to go there. But so... So wait, so... So, what's... All kidding aside, I hate you iTunes. That's an ugly road for me to go down. So, David, I have a question I asked you earlier. I don't know if you know this still, but does Sony make money on Viya at all? So, I did some research when you asked me. Okay. And the answer is no. Okay. Like they still sell a lot of them. Right. Which is something. But it's not a money making business for Sony. Right. Right. Just like TVs. Right. Sony's been in two businesses for a long time that should be their biggest growth businesses, but have been anchors on their company for a while. Right. And it's computers and it's TVs. And it's funny because the reason they got on computers because they... In the late 90s, everyone was like, convergence. TVs and PCs will be the same thing. Right. And Sony's just been chasing after that and not getting there for 20 years. That's the whole story here. Yeah. Well, but it's really interesting to me. Like Sony's been talking about this one Sony thing for forever, right? And I guess their plan was to make all different products with all the stuff they're really good at making. Right. And they're just kind of bailing at all the things that they aren't doing well. I mean, the things too. Yeah. But it's a platform decision. Well, they've only... Which other ones have they ditched? Ebooks today. They ditched ebooks today? Yeah. Was that just today? That was just today, yeah. That's weird. So they had a lead in Europe, right? They never cracked the American market, but Kindle isn't in Europe or across the world. Sony did really well in Europe. And every time I've met with them, they go to great lengths to remind me that it's super successful everywhere but the US. Yeah. And I just... I don't know. I guess I get it from... It's just US and Canada. Right. Where they're losing here. Right. Why would you keep throwing money into the void of Amazon? Sure. You can't beat them in the US. But I think Sony killing the PC business to me is not in admission of we can't win in this business. I think it's an admission of as a platform, Windows isn't important to the future of Sony. And that to me is... That is the killer. That is... That should be really scary for Microsoft. That's super scary for Microsoft. Because they are one Sony and basically what you make is... Now what you make is computers of different shapes and sizes. Yeah. Whether it's like their weird bad smartwatch or whether it's a TV or whether it's a PS4. They're all computers. Sure. And they're saying... It's like that and Justin Bieber albums are like the two things that Sony makes. That's true. And he's a computer. He is. He does it on Windows apparently. But what they're saying is they don't need the expertise of how to bring up the Windows platform and ship PCs because they're gonna use other kinds of platforms everywhere. And the big bet that they made, and I actually always ask them this, because they've made a big bet on Sony Mobile. Their phones are good. Mobile and cameras are the two things that they... And they're great at it. They're really swinging. And it's like they make tablets. They make Sony Android tablets. They make that weird phablet. The Xperia... Well, there's the... What is it? The... There's the one that they're always drop... They're like pouring water on. Yeah. It's like its main thing that they can do with it. Dear Lord, why can I remember? Wait, the phone? The Z1? It's like the Z1 Mega or something. But then there's the tablet. Oh, right. It's the Xperia tablet. And that's what it's called. And every time I see it, they've just got like a fountain just posing down the screen. I'm like, cool. That's the best part of every Sony show now is like, we have devices. We're just gonna put underwater. You just walk right by. I mean, I liked it because I got to lead a review with a story about my showering habits. So that was good. I mean... Thank you for that. What you don't know about David is that he will take any opportunity to discuss himself in the shower. That's true. I think actually people know that about me. People have probably figured that out about me now. Top Shelf got real weird at the end. I'm so sorry, John. The lost episode. I'm so sorry. That will never be released. Stuff in the shower. That's actually... Stuff in the shower. It's not a bad... Top Shelf shower. When you listen to like a Bluetooth speaker or you play on a tablet. Yeah. Actually, the only problem is that you would have to be in a shower the whole time. I don't see why that's a problem. This is a really bad modern Seinfeld. Yeah. But this is happening to the PC. I mean, Dell had to take itself private because its consumer businesses and PC just like weren't working out. But what's the other one? IBM left years ago. HP. HP is doing whatever it's doing. Yeah. Lenovo is still big. Yeah, Lenovo is growing. I mean, what it sounds like is happening to me and the thing, the big analyst discussion around all this stuff is that Sony... It's not that the PC market isn't big and that there's not opportunity there, but what it's becoming again is like price commoditized. And these Chinese companies like Lenovo are able to make and sell at such huge scale and so cheap that nobody else can compete. And it's like the real money in laptops is in like $350 laptops. And that's like if you can make those with any kind of margins, you can make money. And if you can't, you can't make money in laptops. It's like that seems to be the prevailing wisdom here. And Sony, they're... Well, they were always targeting the super high end. Right. This is the thing. Do we have that photo essay we did of Sony machines? I mean, they're so... This made me so gore-sounded. Sony made some of the most beautiful PCs ever. Oh my God. It's funny that as I've been seeing a lot of stuff about how Apple was willing to let Sony build Mac OS X machines because Steve Jobs loves Sony. Yeah. And it's true. Sony had some of the wildest hardware design of all time. Well, and they tried so many things like the Vi-OP, which is such a ridiculous thing and didn't work. It is still my all time favorite. What happened to the orange keyboard deck? Yeah. It was the second generation one. The first one was real weird. I remember very distinctly, very distinctly the first time I saw Vi-OP, which was at CES. First time we ever got our hands on one. Right. And it came with a Vista. Wow. Vista on it. And we got literally, we got the bits to the Windows 7 beta on an SD card. We got it the same day as the Vi-OP and Paul was like, I am not running Vista. Like immediately put the Windows 7 beta off an SD card. He's like, this is ridiculous. We're not using this. But no, Sony made beautiful PCs. Yeah. They sold them at a huge premium. They're always overpriced. Right. And they sold them at a massive premium and that market is gone. Right. Every PC, seriously, Apple has 90% market share of PCs over $1,000. Wow. That's the number. You can't win that game against Apple. And once you get under that, you're totally in the commodity zone, which is what Google is targeting with Chromebooks, right? Right. So there's like this weird dead middle of the PC market where you've got Google on the bottom saying we're going to come at you with $270,000 Chromebooks, which are all you might need. And you have maybe a tablet or whatever and a PC at work that runs Excel. Yeah. That's what you actually might need over there. And at the top, you have everybody buying a MacBook. Yeah. And somewhere in the middle, there's a business for Lenovo and maybe not Sony and maybe not Dell. Maybe though. Maybe not HP. Like Lenovo sells a lot of $400 laptops. Yeah. What nobody seems to be able to make or sell is like the $700 laptop or the $800 laptop. Like there just doesn't seem to be a market for that. And what's really interesting is like hearing, like watching a lot of companies go into Chromebooks, the two reasons are really obvious. Like Google, it sounds like from companies I've talked to, Google has gone to all of these companies and said, here's how much you're charging for this laptop. The end. Right. There's a ceiling. And that's like that comes from Google where they're saying, if you're going to make a Chromebook, you have to charge this much. And like only Google is allowed to. Really? That's what I've heard. I don't know this for sure. Interesting. But more than one company has told me this. Right. That they're saying like this is what your Chromebooks cost. With the exception of Google's own. The Chromebook Pixel. Yeah. Where they're just like, you know. Well, there's Pixel and then there's the weird Google, the thing that they released today, the weird teleconferencing. Right. Well, that's a totally separate kind of Chromebook. That's an enterprise Chromebook. They're calling it a Chromebox. I know. But they're liars. It runs Chrome. It does. It's basically designed to sit there and run Hangouts, right? Yeah. Yes. And a whole package costs $1,000. Yeah. It's actually enterprise. It's a weird collection of other people's hardware. Yeah. So it's like a, what's it, an Asus or an Acer PC? I think it's Asus. But I can't remember. Let me look. Well, that one says HP on it. Oh. Maybe it is. If you scroll down, there's definitely, there's an Asus logo. I saw some. Yeah, there is an Asus logo. Well, so Asus just released a $179 Chromebox. Yeah. And it's the, yeah. Right. So there's these like commodity weird small form factor PCs that have like i7 chips in them. Which is bonkers. Because it's running Hangouts. Yeah. Google, if you need an i7 chip to run Hangouts. You did it wrong. Yeah, you screwed up. And didn't do a good job. You should feel shame. You should go find the Panasonic guy and John. And you guys should all go to an island and feel shame together. Right. John, I'm sorry. But you have to go to an island now. But John did make one good observation here, which is the controller. No, no. So that's what I'm saying. It's a weird, it's a weird con of this. So just to recap the news. Google today announced, they had an event and said, this is an interesting announcement for business. That's how they invited us. Sean Hollister went, and it's a $1,000 video conferencing kit for businesses that basically is built on the back of Hangouts. So it's this small form factor Chromebox. It is a remote. That remote is exactly the Boxee Box remote. Yes. I think it has a different number of buttons. It has one extra button on the front. Chris and I had a weird argument about this. It's the same remote. They just like retooled it and added a button. It's a Parrot makes that speaker phone. It's a Bluetooth speaker phone and a Logitech camera. Oh, it's a Jabra speaker phone. Oh, Jabra speaker phone. Yeah, and a Logitech. So it's just this weird collection of other people's hardware that anybody could put together. But it all comes in one box. You plug it together, and you need video conference over Hangouts for $250 a year in support costs. And it's called Chromebox for Meetings, which is my favorite Wild Troll on the nose name ever. I don't really. It's just like, what is that? It's a Chromebox for Meetings. I think there's a class of startups and small businesses that are getting one step bigger. And our business is among them, and they need a new breed of conferencing applications that maybe 10 years ago, Microsoft just owned that entire market, and Blackberry owned a huge chunk of that market. And Google realized that it got a piece of it with Hangouts, and they're trying to bet on it and edge their way back into Microsoft's territory. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a place for this. It's really easy in companies that live on Gmail, which is more and more of these little startups that are growing. This just makes a ton of sense. It's really easy. There's the fastest way for us to do conference calls because we're all on Gmail all the time is just Hangouts. Right. But I don't know why I want. I have weird Hangouts problems. I could just use my computer. The Hangouts UI, I want there to be a control panel somewhere where it just tells me what the hell is going on with Hangouts. And how to put pirate hats and mustaches on yourself. That is always there. I use it all the time, and there's just a weirdness to it. Hangouts is you push the button and then a Hangout has to come up. You push the button and then a Hangout happens, and I'm never quite sure who can see what or why or what I'm sharing. It's happening in this browser, but there's no interface. There's no settings. I don't know. It's just weird to me. It's like now a Hangout is happening. Also, I have like 50 Google accounts, and managing that is impossible. Oh, it's a disaster. Yeah. And so Hangouts makes no sense to me. It could be worse. It could be 50 Hotmail accounts. Right. All I really want is for Google to make a native Mac Hangouts app. Instead of the weird Chrome extension that takes over the whole screen for no reason. Why is this happening? Yeah, I don't know. We'll never understand. Just do the right thing, Google. Yeah. Just stop blowing it. Well, it's like they have a Hangouts app on the phone. It's great. True. It works well. Hold on. Let me finish this bio point. Google goes to these companies and says, you can make a Chromebook or a Chromebox, and it's going to cost this much. And then what they can also do is they don't charge for the license. And it's like, you know how you spike your margins is don't pay for a Windows license. Right. And it's like, that's done. And they can charge $250 for it, and people like it, and it has good battery life. And that's going to be a hard- I think the next generation of Chromebooks is the one that will be killer. I agree. I mean, I still- This generation is very enticing. Nobody's made a great one yet. Yeah. And I've like- I think HP, Edge Close, but then they kept on lighting on fire. Yeah. So that's- This Toshiba one they announced, the CES, seems pretty nice. Is that one just out, or Lenovo just came out with one? Lenovo just- One of them just started shipping. Yeah, they're all, yeah. Can it run YouTube? It's all- We should, you know, reviews editor should do a review. Oh, who is that? I don't know. I'll find that person. Who runs most reviews? Is it Ross? Is it- I think it's Ross. I do. Ross, get on that. I doubt it. Super annoying dude that everybody hates. He sounds like a real asshole. I never liked him. All right. So that's the bio. I mean, look, it's sad. I think Sony needs to refocus. I think they're a TV business. Well, so- The only side- You say refocus when it's TVs and tablets and smartphones and music and movies and PlayStation. But those are all the same thing. Yes. Right? What Sony is ultimately is an entertainment company. That ad that they started running a couple weeks ago and they ran at Super Bowl, where like, we just want you to experience feelings, which is basically every ad now. You should feel feelings. Every ad at the Super Bowl is like, you feel feelings so deep, State Farm. And it's like, what the- What just happened? I got State Farm like 12 times. But Sony fundamentally is an entertainment company. Yes. And this whole diversion into PCs was always weird for them because PCs are like commodity enterprise products. I don't know that I agree with that. I mean, the other side of Sony is they're a huge manufacturer that has tons of partners all across the world. And it makes sense that they would take all this stuff that they make already and just stick it together, put a logo on it and ship it. Like they make this stuff for other companies. But Sony doesn't make motherboards and Intel chips and graphics cards. I mean, I guess it makes more sense for them to make things like cameras because all that stuff they do make. And maybe that's what we're seeing here. I don't know that they're just an entertainment company. But that's like... But think about it. When you say cameras, they make the whole stack. Here's Justin Bieber dancing. Here's a Sony image sensor and a lens looking at Justin Bieber dancing. I was like, I should have figured out where Justin Bieber fit into this. Yeah, but he's here. Sony owns this. This represents Bieber. This represents a camera. Here's Sony broadcast technology doing stuff. Then here's a PS4 receiving it plugged into a Sony TV that's showing it to you. So when you watch Taylor Swift... That's why they're not... Here you are sitting on your couch holding a Sony phone, doing a second screen thing. That's the Sony story. That's why even though Sony isn't making money off TVs either, that's why I don't think Sony is ever gonna get rid of TV. They will never get rid of that. Because it's that same... They have that whole stack. And PCs, I guess, were just sort of this thing over here that they also did that didn't have anything to do with the rest of the business. I think it's why Vizio tried to make a PC. You know, they still make two of them. But they wanted to play that game of... Everything's a screen that shows you entertainment. Right. Right? And here are all these screen sizes. We should make them all. And I think Sony made them all and they realized that the PC business for them was a screen size that demanded the most investment, was the most competitive and cutthroat, and had the lowest margins. And I don't think he... In that place, I don't think he wanted to compete against Samsung and Acer. Well, I think tablets are the other one that that describes. And Sony is not even trying that hard to compete in tablets either. Yeah, but that's the platform that... This is what I'm saying about Windows, right? Sony, they made half a Windows convertible. I was gonna say half a tablet, but it's... They made Windows tablets and that hasn't worked. That platform does not take it off on tablets. Like there's a few very happy corporate executives who have Surface Pros. That's it. And then there's everybody else. And I think Android tablets, they're the ones that still have the chance. And so I think Sony has to stay right there. If you're gonna make Android phones, you might as well make Android tablets. And their phones are good and people like them. And in Europe in particular, they're selling well. Right. So I think Sony... This is like the Sony story is when I say refocus, it's decide what platforms as computers are important to you and what your story is of how you get this guy. Justin Bieber. How you get the Biebs to people is effectively... You taught him how to dance, didn't you? I did. Hey, do a thing with Rihanna, it'll be cool. What? It's the Justin Bieber story. So what happens to VAIO now? They're selling to some Japanese company. Are they gonna... Are there gonna be VAIOs? They're gonna make them for Japan, I think, is the thing. That just seems weird. Like this business is... They're clearly getting rid of it. Yeah, but if you're not Sony, if you're running VAIO as its own business, you can do all kinds of stuff too. I mean, you can make decisions that Sony would never make. You can make the business smaller, you can start something around the world. You can... I don't know, you can do stuff. Yeah, you can probably make money, but that's kind of sad. Like Sony made good computers for a long time. I mean, they can still make good hardware. It's just... Yeah, they have a keyboard and a hinge. There's a lot of secrets happening to me right now. A lot of secrets. You wanna talk about secrets? Let's talk about secrets. I mean, I will say that this is one of the worst. Oh, God. Friend number 35 joined. I wonder who it is. So here's this app secret. Do you guys know about this? We're not gonna write about it yet, because I don't know what the story is, unless you're a gigantic tech insider nerd. There's an app called Secret. You suck at Flappy Bird and everybody knows it and they're talking about it right now. We're gonna talk about Flappy Bird in a second. That was you, wasn't it? It was not me. Okay. Well, my secrets are awful because I have no secrets. Like literally this app and like two cups of bourbon are gonna be a disaster for me, because everyone will know who I am. I'm an open book. The only... What do you wanna know? The only two... So I haven't used secrets, but there are two about me and they're both just you taking pictures of me and then saying weird things. I don't think you're doing this right. I'm not. So there's an app called Secret. You download it. It does some weird sketchy privacy stuff where it takes your entire contact list, all the email addresses, all the phone numbers you have, creates a network that you cannot access. Can I just say, by the way, how are we okay with that? We're not. Like we yell at every company that does it and then we're like, oh, you wanna use it for secrets? Okay, that's totally fine. Have all my information. I did it though. I know. Everybody's doing it. Anyway, and then... The thing that seems to be is like the whole tech industry is using secrets. So we're... And the people who care about it... Here's what we have on Secret. We have their nice little video about how... Share a thought. Share a thought is there. And it's like, sometimes I'm sad or like, today I'm happy or like, I kissed my mother and it was the best feeling that I've ever had. Like not like that. You sick bastard. I'm about to tell jokes on the internet. A super weird... That's not super weird. Like I hugged my mom and it felt cool. Like that's great, you know? Nope. It's still not getting better. This is no... I mean, I guess like put that into Secret, nobody knows you and you'll be fine. All right, let's do it right now. I hugged my mother and it felt cool. I cannot wait to like this so privately. That's just no... But like, I mean, I guess it's worse when you put it in a secret because that sounds like a secret. There, done. I posted a secret. Wait, wait, refresh. All right, so it's app and you type in thoughts, you do this stuff. And all that's happening right now is that the first wave of adopters are in this app. So it's all people in the valley and tech journalists. And it is the cattiest place on earth. And it's super entertaining right now. I will say this app has sort of a terrible UI. It's not wonderful. And it is so annoying with push notifications. I just got one out. It told me my 40th friend had signed up. Thank you. That's not a fact I need to know. Certainly not a fact that should interrupt. I don't care if I know that information. It's not useful. There's no reason I need to know. It doesn't matter. Just shut up. It's actually way better if I don't know that only 40 of my friends are on it because I could guess which 40 and then narrow it way down to who's saying these terrible things about how they hate their mother and it felt really cool. I hugged my mom and it felt cool. That's a secret. A secret is teaching me that everyone else hates the same people and things as me. Which seems to be like Sam Biddle. That's how I know who uses this is everybody either loves or hates Sam Biddle. Maybe you should check your privilege instead of an app. So look, this is the thing that's gonna... I hate dudes who never do their legs chicken legs. Oh, I just got that. Clearly we have the same friends. I'm just assuming that was directed at Neil. I get an inexplicable craving for CES pizza. Yeah. I hate that person. This is a wave. There's gonna be like weird, bad, mainstream, like CNN, like the app all of Silicon Valley is secreting about. Right. That's gonna be a headline. Whispers is gonna be the big thing. But there's Secret and there's Whisper. Aren't they the same thing essentially? I don't know. I don't know. Wait, I thought it was the same thing. Look, I don't have any... If I did know, I wouldn't tell you. As best I can tell. Well, so I guess Whisper is... By the way, telling people you're posting a secret I think is probably not the smartest move. Yeah, that's fair. So I think Whisper's thing is it's... Whisper's thing is it's public but it's anonymous. Whisper is like Post Secret. You remember Post Secret? Yeah. Where it was like you would send in this postcard and nobody knew who it was from, but it was like everybody could see it. And Whisper is kind of the same way. Whereas I guess Secret is more like designed to be around your friends, which is something. But like, man, these whispers are super weird. This color is called cash. I'm using it. No, but this is... Grandma gave me Taco Bell hot sauce with my fish sticks. I was like WTF until I tried it. Incredible. Bitch knows her shit. Whisper.com. Okay, so here's the thing. People are starting to post like weird rumors on Secret and like the Wall Street Journal covered one today. Did it really? Yeah, it was about the Evernote one. They debunked that one. Oh, okay. Which is the saddest moment. The saddest debunk ever. Let's back up. So there was a secret that came out that was like Evernote is about to get acquired. And enough people thought it was real that the Wall Street Journal had to acknowledge the Secret. Well, the guy said he was like, I work at Evernote and we're about to be acquired was like the text of the thing. And yeah, and everybody like, and I guess enough people freaked out. The eight people on Secret freaked out. But Wall Street Journal's like had to acknowledge this. And that was it. It's just, there's... Valleybag wrote a story about it today. There's this return of, you know, the internet is the Wild West with like Snapchat and Secret and Whisper and all these apps that make you anonymous and untraceable. Although I did just give my entire contact list to these people. And we have been complaining about the NSA and metadata and how you can like definitely figure out who's who very fast. I mean, Secret knows who I am. Someone's going to break... Someone's going to hack Secret. It also, it keeps track of which ones you posted, what comments you did. Like it's going to dox everybody at some point. Yeah, I mean, and like, it's just, it's out there. And this is like probably way easier to pin to you than something like Snapchat. Because Snapchat at least theoretically disappears. So you have to like dig harder to find the data. Secret is all out there. It's just a matter of like, here's this and here's this and like, let's shove them together. And then thank God no one posts anything of value on this thing. Yeah, I think it's interesting. I think that this like rush to go play with an app called Secret is fun. But I was more conceptually, the value of secrets is eventually telling them to someone and like the danger of maybe somebody finding out. And this has none of that. Right. I mean, but I think there's, there's certainly something to the idea of like, there's something to the idea of like having to get something off your chest, but not having to not telling anybody who's dangerous. So you're going to tell your friends list an app called Secret. Yeah, that's perfect. So you have, you have passive aggressive issues with your friends. So you're going to post it anonymously on Secret hoping that they may or may not see it. Okay. Sounds great. I'll see the promise profitable. Also, like if you spend enough time, the control room hates the verge cast. You could definitely figure out like three quarters of these. Yeah. Just got doxxed. It was Billy Disney, everybody. I wonder who that was. Yeah. You see, you don't know. It's anonymous. I mean, I have a number of ideas. I mean, it's, it's a small, there's so many, so many people back there. Oh, this could be a reader just trolling us. Right. All right. Now I'm playing Flappy Bird. Just moving on to other apps that I'm now obsessed with, which is, no, you know what I'm obsessed with is threes. Have you played this game? I have not played this. It's crazy. It's like, I tried looking for in the app store. There's a lot of, I will say our commenters were very confused about why we covered threes. Really? Yeah. They're like, why, why is this on here? You must be getting, this must be an ad. Well, anytime we like anything, it's an ad. Right. That's just true. Everybody should know. Even when we hate it, we're fanboys for the other thing. Right. When we hate it, it's an ad for somebody else. Oh, I found it. Threes. Whether we say it or not. Well, when I hate things, I do my best work. That's true, actually. That's a fact. Oh, God, this game sucks. All right. I'm buying this. This is, I've played like four rounds of Flappy Bird. I got zero, zero, zero, and one, and then felt so good about getting one that I quit, and I have no desire to ever play again. I just got my high score during the show. Four. Nice. I got a four. Well done. I know. I'm very proud of you. I can't do it again. It's very exciting. No, this, I genuinely don't understand why a game like this is so popular. Flappy Bird or threes? Flappy Bird. Threes is like, I think threes is popular for the same reason that letterpress is popular. There are people who like these sort of slightly intelligent requiring games. Right. But like, this is basically just a worse, annoyingly difficult version of Jetpack Joyride. You think so? Like, what if Jetpack Joyride were way... It's funny because we did a story on this, and he's making $50,000 a day on this game. I know. He's making crazy amounts of money. Oh, I got two. Oh, shit. Oh, man. Excuse me. All right. I'm doing this. I'm doing this. It's very exciting. I've got my threes, but now I've got to play Flappy Bird. Here's why this game is popular, because most people go through the day and they accomplish nothing. They wake up and they don't do anything hard. At least I don't. Right. There's no challenge in their lives. Just float through life hoping to feel the thrill of victory. And then they don't ever again. This game makes you work for it for two seconds, and then you feel it. You're like, I got one. It's just unfair. You're like, I got one, everybody. I'm out of here. So I'm leaving this dead-end job. I got one. Like, spike the phone. Screw this. Sure. I'll buy it. I'm done using Excel today. I'm going to break my phone playing this game. What else do you have? No, I think my theory, so this is like, my roommate played, was unemployed for a while and played Dark Souls for like 300 hours. That is the hardest game. See, this is the thing. I think this is the thing with people. He, I asked him why he liked this game and he was like, I have no idea how to play it. It's so hard. All I do is die. And I was like, that, you didn't answer my question yet. This is DayZ, right? Yeah. So I was just going to say, it's the same kind of thing. We're like, I think there's this weird, we all have this weird, like, masochistic streak where we like to die 10,000 times and then the one time we don't die, even when we're not successful, like it's not a victory. It's like, it's a don't die. Yeah. We feel victory. This is not a new trend. I achieve victory over death every single day of my life. Wake up and not dead. This is great. Yeah. But this is interesting game for everyone. Like, Super Meat Boy was another one. Like, you die 3,000 times each level. I did play that game a lot. And they show you every death, the replay, once you accomplish it. Goals and Goblins back in the day. Like, people just love super hard games. That's just never going to go away. I will never understand that. I just don't get it. What games do you play? I play mostly... You play games you win right away? Yeah. Yeah. You play draw... It takes more than five minutes to win. Draw a line in the game. But you cut the rope all day. Just all day. Oh, gosh. It's the opposite of draw a line. All right. But like, so, Daisy, anyone else actually played this game? No, I watched the live stream yesterday. That was remarkable. I mean, I will say that I'm... I have a theory. Okay. The theory is that there are two people inside of TC Sonic. Okay. One of them runs our news day to day. That's cool. All right. The other one of them is a murderer who uses Twitter. Question. Why are these different? I'm just confident that they're different. I don't think they are. I really think that's the same aggressive murderous drive to hit news. I'm very worried about it. That's true. But I watched the stream. I mean, they found Sean. Sean was being attacked. Did you catch the last 15 minutes? I did not catch the last 15 minutes. See, here's what happened. It was described to me. This is everything you can do in the game, and I'm sorry. This is really, really bad. I'm sorry. This is real. So they spent an hour and 15 minutes looking for Sean Hollister, Addy and TC. They found him. They had a friend who was a plant. He was supposed to kill Sean at first sight, but that didn't work out because they lost him. But they found him. They had Sean go on our roof and said there were people coming. Please be careful and keep a lookout. TC gets behind Sean, handcuffs him, force feeds him poison, puts a burlap sack over his head, at which point Sean falls off a ledge. Wow. But somehow... Survives. Survives and it gets worse. He survives, handcuffs come off. So TC and Addy are running down because they can't just jump off with him. And then Sean is nowhere to be found. And all of a sudden someone starts shooting at them, but missed. So TC got behind him and hacked him up with an axe. At which point Addy goes, well, we're almost done anyway, and shoots TC with a shotgun. TC is fairly alive, shoots Addy in the head, and they both bleed to death. This is the end of our stream yesterday. God, that's dark. It's dark. I mean, I always knew there was something between those two. That doesn't... No, no. That real... Stitious co-murder. That's how every great love story ends, I don't know. That was my wedding vows. One day we'll both shoot each other. It's like a Romeo and Juliet suggestion. Daisy is the most sadistic game though. One day we'll both hunt down Sean Hollister and shoot each other. Aww. We're holding hands. You're the best. Follocking in a field as it is. With a knife behind each... TC's kind of scary. Yes. Yes, yes, okay, we didn't explain it easy, but essentially it's a $40 game that is broken, that is not finished. You pay to just suffer through this game where you wake up with no food, you're hungry, you have no items, you have no clothes, and you somehow have to survive. If you die, you lose everything, you just do it again. There is no point. This is the most sadistic or masochistic game you can imagine. I mean, it seems... But the thing is that it's also a really bad game, right? And people have paid a lot of money for this. It sounds like it. It's alpha. It's not even finished. It's half an idea. And people are paying $30 just to be part of this broken idea as they build it in real time. And it's made a lot of money doing it. Yeah. It's kind of a great idea. Yeah, it's wonderful. Is it just because you can do anything? Kind of. I mean, it's like... What's the promise that you can do anything as soon as they finish building it? In a weird way, is the appeal the same as like Minecraft, where it's like the game doesn't exist yet and you just sort of make it as you go and figure it out? Minecraft was a more complete idea. And like the part of Minecraft where it was broken and this broken was free. And then once it got to a certain level, like, okay, now it's beta or whatever, well, you can pay. This was like, we have an idea. We're kind of building it. This is real time Kickstarter. Like, give us all your money. Yes. And this game's going to be awful, but maybe it'll be good. And you'll love it even while it's awesome. And everyone loves the faults. And like it gets fixed every now and then. Kind of does it. Things break more. Still, it's a success. No game like this has existed. They do now. Minecraft Rust is kind of like between Daisy and Minecraft. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. They both have zombie. You both die. There's zombie hordes in both. Yes. Yeah. I mean, that's what makes the game successful. Real open world. Yeah. The sense of adventure and freedom. And also murderers. I will say I've played Dead Rising a lot for exactly those reasons. I'm really bad at video games. I'm really bad at playing video games. I buy them all. Really? Just nonstop buy them all. And then they sit. They're just stacked up on a shelf. Most of them still in plastic. I have a lot of games and I find myself just playing a mix of FIFA and Grand Theft Auto. I'm replaying Grand Theft Auto for the 47th time right now. Wait, which one? Out of control 5. Yeah. I still have it. I can't stop playing that. It's outrageous. I own that one. I sit in my house. It's great. Own a lot of stuff. If you like my move, I beat it enough times now that the actual game isn't that fun. So I just go and I try to get five stars and then kill as many cops as possible until I die. Which is the whole point of Grand Theft Auto. It's the go to move. Yeah. There needs to be a mode in Grand Theft Auto where you're playing it, but while you're playing it, you're doing things that are productive. You're mining bitcoins. Yeah. Things that married people have to do. Because that's like, man, if I was playing Grand Theft Auto, but also shopping in the room and board catalog, that would really solve a lot of problems for me. So you take a rock, I want that. That's like, and then it just ships. That's what there is to it. It just adds it to your overstock.com account. Yeah, exactly. It's like, man, we really need new chairs for our dining table. Let me go into Grand Theft Auto. That would be the best. You can rob a crate and barrel and they're like, oh, you must want all this. Straight up. Like, the other day I was making storage units for our closet, doing husbandry stuff. It'd be great if I was doing that in Grand Theft Auto. And they just automatically make you a Pinterest board of all the things that you decide you want. Here's my thought. Let me just put it out there. Grand Theft Auto container store. I would play that game. Just make it happen. I would absolutely play that game. You just go and you're wandering around, and you're like, man, these shells look really great. And then a hooker shows up and you kill her. Let's just add a little interest to it. Clearly, killing hookers. Do you want to play DayZ as well? I'm sorry. I'm sorry, everyone. Most especially my wife and the creators of Grand Theft Auto, who I hope never, ever get to review. I was going to say they should be. They'd be friends. I don't think that'd be cool. Is there anything else? What else is there? Can we talk about Facebook Paper? Kinda. I guess. Yeah. We should talk about paper. We should talk about Sochi, because whatever is happening in Sochi is crazy. But let's talk about paper. Sure. Go ahead. You go. You talk about it. I'm just going to sit here. I mean, I'm curious what you guys think. I've been using it a lot. I download. Tell the people what it is. I don't use Facebook very much. So Facebook Paper is a new app. It just came out this week. And it's ostensibly a news reading app. So it's really beautiful. It's the best design I've ever seen from Facebook. And it's all for news. So the first stream you have is your Facebook feed. And then you can pick headlines. And they have a bunch of goofy names for all the different sections. But you basically build your own little newspaper. And they have a bunch of cool animations and a bunch of different ways of thinking about how you move in and out of an app that I really like. But it's a news app. Fundamentally, it's a news reading app. And one of the things that you can read is your Facebook. Not entirely real time either. It doesn't have the breaking news. It's like, oh, well, I don't know a lot about Home and Garden, but I can read this. It's grabbing from Facebook feeds. So it's relying on, I think they picked 40 publishers. Is that right? I forget. But they have 40 publishers, and they're like, here are their Facebook feeds, essentially. And that's slow by nature, A. It's getting there. It's incomplete. But it's also, I guess their idea is that they want people to break news on Facebook, I guess. But that doesn't happen. I feel like they should have some Facebook app. Right. I mean, so I used, I mean, I will say some of these animations are great. Yeah, I mean, it's a gorgeous app. It does this thing, like here's a virgin story. And when you can flip it open, it's like a brochure. Yeah, it's really nice. That's cool. I will say, I used Cover Feed. On my Android phones, I always have Facebook Home, which is insane. I think I'm the only person who likes it. But I only have it not for the launcher, but for the home screen. Because I love just looking at my phone. It's a good looking lock screen. Standing there and just blasting through photos. Did you unfriend like 80 people after installing it? Because that was my first impulse. Oh, I said 80 people. I muted them from the list. But so yeah, it's just that way. You don't have to deal with the confrontation of the unfriend. Yeah, I understand. It's rough. They'll come after you. It's weird when you discover old high school girlfriends. Which I'm just assuming is all of your Facebook friends. Why would you unfriend that? Don't you want to know what they're up to? I know what they're up to. They're raising adorable children. That's cool. That's great. Sure. It's great for your children. I mean, I'm happy that we spend our time together. Right. That's cool. Please don't be on my lock screen anymore. This is the thing. I think paper is a gorgeous app. I just can't use Facebook because I don't know what to do with it. I don't care about the feeds. Yeah, I don't really use Facebook anymore. I use Facebook for planning events. Yes. Accepting event invites. That's it. People who have birthday parties always seem to plan them on Facebook. Yeah, because that's where the people are. Right. That's where you use Facebook Messenger a lot. I think of my birthday party every year for me. My birthday party is an opportunity to talk to my high school girlfriends and invite them to my birthday party. Bring your children, I said. So it's just you and 100 ex-girlfriends in a room together. That's the best. I like it. Yeah. Hey, how's it going? Speaking of reasons to apologize to your wife. Another year older. Yeah. Hey, didn't work out. Want to see my secrets? I'm going to sit here and use this app. You guys can watch. No, I think a lot of people use Facebook. And I think paper, I think Facebook, the Facebook app on a phone is so, it's weird because this app is complicated in a wildly different way. Yeah. It's complicated in like a UI way, but much more simplified in the sense that you're just like blasting through Facebook one screen at a time. Right. And I think that's really cool. I think that's really interesting. Yeah. The regular Facebook app is so, it's simpler in like idea. You open it up and like Facebook is there and you scroll. Well, and it's so ingrained at this point. Like people know how to use Facebook that way. People have been using Facebook that way for a long time now. And this is like a totally different way of thinking about Facebook. But the thing that I'm, the thing that I have to keep reminding myself of, and I keep asking people and people seem to really like this app, is that I think it like for people like us, it makes no sense. Like I spend all of my time reading the news and by the time I get to paper, it's like, oh, I've seen every story in here. At least for techies. But most people, it's like, it's just a great, like there's no way, there's no better looking way I've ever seen to like get a bunch of news in three minutes, like waiting in line somewhere. Right. And that's what most people want. That's what Facebook mostly is for, I think, is these sort of just check-ins. And it used to be with people and now it's with news. And I think that's like, Facebook sees itself that way, I think. Where it's like your friend group is now your access to all this other stuff. So I have this theory about Facebook. Okay. And maybe it's right and maybe it's wrong, but here's my theory about Facebook. When Facebook started off as about people, when it was a bunch of like 20 something people partying all the time, and that was really exciting. Right. So Facebook could just be about people and that would power growth forever. Sure. Right. Because it's a bunch of young people. I mean, it worked. Right. They got a billion people that way. Right. Spring break on Facebook was a phenomenon that I experienced for like four years. It was the best. With your high school girlfriend. With all of them. All 100 of them at once. Right. It was really weird. We did a lot of keg stands and then posted about them on Facebook. Right. Now Facebook's audience is much, much older and the things they are doing are no longer as inherently exciting or naked. And that's real. And I think now Facebook has to find other things to show people because the story, like old people complaining is not exciting. Like Grand Theft Auto Container Store is like a real phenomenon in my life. And I don't want to talk about it on Facebook. So you go from like naked keg stands to like, ow my feet hurt and I'm at the container store. Yeah, exactly. That's not nearly as interesting. Yeah. I'm friends with a bunch of like people, like my parents' friends on Facebook. They want to be friends with me and like, they're like, these kids today. I'm like, why am I looking at Facebook? And I think Facebook has to shift what it's showing people from just what was inherently exciting and like titillating to other stuff. Well, so is this, I mean, this is sort of the other side of that same problem that Facebook is. Everybody says about Facebook, which is that young people don't use Facebook. They're not using it. They're gone. So that content, that constant flow of like wild bad ideas, which is exciting and like keeps things exciting is gone. So you're saying instead of Facebook, like trying to get teens back, they're just owning that teens don't use Facebook anymore. I hate teens. I hate saying that for, not teens, teens, you're cool. I like you. The, you know, I'll put that on secret. I love teens. They're cool. But the... I completely lost my train of thought here. But what they're saying is like, that they're just not, they just don't care anymore. I'm inventing secret doxes. Another thing? Like secret RLRTs. I think people might have already done that by now. This is cool. Dude, this is just, this is great. Yeah. Teens. Yeah, it's like how do you... No, but I think if Facebook is smart or this, I don't know if it's smart or not, but this seems like an admission to me from Facebook being like, hey, turns out... By the way, my phone just auto corrected teens to trends with a Z. That's perfect. I'm doing something wrong. We have a coworker who somehow his girlfriend changed, ha ha ha, to auto correct to, I like to poop. So every now and then I'll get a text, I like to poop. It's like, that's nice. This is the worst. We should probably end this first cast. Yes. I mean, look, I think paper is really interesting. I think Facebook trying to re-decide what it is, make new decisions about how it exists become... And they're turning into the new AOL, right? They're turning into the new... God, that's a scary thought. Default destination for a million people on the internet. I've always said, I think Facebook for a lot of people is the internet. Yeah, right. Facebook and Google, you can make a decision, like which one of these things is the internet for people. I think Google and the whole Google Plus thing was the fear that Facebook would become the internet for people. I think that's where our parents are gonna live in the internet. Well, but isn't the... I think for a whole new generation of people, it is things like Snapchat and Whisperer and all these other social networks that come and go in a heartbeat because you don't want to preserve this stuff. Right. The lesson of Facebook has been learned. But also, is there a desire for that single unified avatar? You control your identity somewhere. That's what I think Facebook did that nobody gets that Facebook did. I think what Facebook did is build this friend group. Facebook's been around for 10 years. They just celebrated their 10th anniversary with a bunch of weird stuff. But the thing they've done in those 10 years more than build Facebook.com is they've... All of my friends are on Facebook. All of them. Every single one. And except for Sam Thonis, who is not on Facebook because he's the worst. No, there's a bunch of people here who are on Facebook. I hate all of them. None of them are my friends. But no, but what they've done is now... Facebook now has this crazy leverage with that group to build that into anything. And if they're like... They did Messenger and they were like, hey, we built an IM app. And you know what it already includes? Is all of your friends. That's a huge victory. And their real names and their pictures so you don't... Right. And they can do that in... And I think that's a huge part of Instagram is building that back into Facebook where they're now connected that way is huge. Because I don't use Facebook for blogging, but I will use it for authenticators because... Yeah, absolutely....great, fun, easier than putting a password in. Really? Yeah. No. I don't want to connect to Google. I have real shit on Google. Facebook, I have nothing. What's your real... I mean, it's like they're not going to get my Gmail, right? No. But like if I... The last thing I want any app to do is post for me on my behalf on Facebook and they all want to do it. No, you see... No, see, I don't... You said privacy to only you. That's like a... And then they don't do it. Yeah, I don't think they... I have yet to have an app do that in a long time. Same. Everyone... Actually, that's not true. I had one, I can't remember what it was. I had one do it and I just instantly was like, this is a terrible app and never use it again. So good job that app. Interesting. But I think... I agree. And I use... What was it? Rdio. And signing into Rdio with Facebook, it like instantly found all of my friends and was recommending them based on people that are on Facebook. And that's... Nobody else has that and compete with Facebook along that line. So as long as Facebook has that and nobody else does, they have this huge ingrained advantage anywhere they want to go. Right. And they can go a million different places and they seem committed to doing that. And like with design, like what they had in paper, if they apply that to other things, I think it's super interesting. Here's the problem. Paper is only in iOS. They left 50% of the markets, not theirs. Right. And they have to figure that. I mean, like, you know, they'll get there. But at least they've proven like there's the chops are there and they're willing to think about it in different ways. Right. And the people who built it are like all ex Apple employees, right? Yeah. So that's, I mean, a bunch... So a lot of interesting ideas, but I think Facebook has to prove to a next generation of people... Why they should use Facebook. Why they should use Facebook. Yeah. And why having that network behind them is interesting and useful. Right. And I think they're doing a fine job of it, but I think that piece of Facebook where they were going to become the default communication network for everybody is gone. Yeah. Oh, I agree. Because I just don't use Facebook to communicate with people. I mean, people do want to use Facebook with me. I'm like, you're going to say something weird. That's like literally what I think. It's like someone's going to ask me for something or say something weird or ask me for something weird. Fair enough. I use Facebook Messenger all the time. I love it. What? It's so good. The app on iOS is fantastic. It's everywhere. And it's like Hangouts on iOS is just a disastrous piece of a disaster. It's awful. Right. And I hate it. Why is Messenger... And Facebook Messenger is great. Really? Yeah. It's real weird. It's great. It's super fast. It has the stickers. Those are fun. No, no. It's great. No, stickers are awful. But it's basically it's like a fun, easy app that all my friends already use. It's like if all my friends use WhatsApp, I'd rather use that, but they don't. And they all use Facebook. So you're saying you're friends with olds. Mm-hmm. Friends with olds. It's all your ex-girlfriends and your parents' friends. That's... Those are my Facebook friends. Yeah. I just scraped your Facebook one day and friended all of them. You can have them. Have fun. Your ex-girlfriends. So should we talk about Sochi? Wow. I mean, there's some weird stuff. Briefly. There's a media story here. That's really what this is for me right now. So as far... So Winter Olympics are happening in Sochi, Russia. Starting like tomorrow or something. Something like that. Is it soon? Yeah. I think it's soon. And all the usual Olympic stories are there. NBC is going to tape delay it, which is weird. But they're committed to doing it. But then there's this weird second class of strange stories about Russia. So the first one, which I thought was interesting, is that Sochi is actually a beach town. Yeah. For most of the year. Somebody pointed out to me that it's the same distance from the equator as Toronto. But I don't think of Toronto as a beach town. Sochi is definitely a beach town. Yeah, wait. Was that supposed to prove that it's a beach town? I have no idea. No, they were like, but it's... Toronto's cold. And I was like, yeah, but it's like 45 degrees. Toronto's not near an ocean. Yeah, whatever. Whatever. There's like a lake over there or something. Darn it. Lake Canada. You know? It's good. Lake Canada. Yeah, the Canadian lake system. I've been there. It's great. It's nice. Very clean. I don't know. It's just super polite lakes. Canada. They're all starting a band together. Yeah, so anyway, so there are mountains about an hour away. That's where they're actually holding most of the Winter Olympic stuff. But all sorts of other crazy stuff is happening. Like somebody saying, say, Sean White pulled out of the slope style snowboard event because the snow isn't ready. The tracks aren't ready. And then journalists are getting the social right now. Well, he hurt himself practicing because they hadn't finished setting it up and it wasn't ready. So he busted his knee or something. Getting ready. So there's that. And then there's all these journalists are descending there. And they're tweeting pictures of disaster infrastructure. The double toilet, man. The double toilet. The double toilet is the greatest cultural thing. There's rubble in hotel lobbies. That is insane. And so the interesting piece here is that NBC will presumably not report on this because their interest is in presenting the Olympics as this happy. Right, they're supposed to be a spectacle. But wait, at the same time though, NBC is the one that did this hacking story. We'll get to that in a second. But I don't think they're censoring themselves for that reason. So we'll see. But it just seems like every Olympics is a nightmare of corruption and stuff. Oh, absolutely. Yes. And then this one is in particular it's being exposed because of social media. That's what's happening. That and also the exorbitant stuff. It's like $51 billion is the estimated quote for all this. And the fact it's not ready. Well, but it's also the conditions seem uniquely awful for the wrong people. It's always corruption. There's always issues. But those are always behind the scenes. But when you walk in and see a sign that says don't drink the water or don't put the water on your face, it'll kill you. Yes. It's like that's a lot more straight in your face literally than it normally is. And so I think it's like was it South Africa the last one? Where's the last Olympics? I confuse the Olympics and the World Cup. Wait, the last Olympics. Where's the last Summer Olympics? Everywhere. It was two years ago. It was London. Yeah. So there's like I'm sure there was all kinds of stuff going on in London. But like ultimately you're in London, which is like a nice city with nice amenities. And so nobody really notices unless they look for it. We covered the hell out of that one because we have all kinds of people in London. Right. And so I just think in this case, like it's- I think Aaron was running some sort of Airbnb scam the whole time. It's entirely possible. Yeah. He's like, well, look, I can make like millions in this thing. So whatever. Yeah. I mean, they keep like I remember seeing today that like links for everything from like South by Southwest in Austin to like Sochi. And it's like if you live in a place where lots of people go occasionally, you just oops, you're rich. Right. Like here's my house for 50,000 dollars a night. Yeah. Well, and that's somebody some like- And that's why I've been buying houses in weird places. Just hoping. Waiting. Topeka, Kansas. And now you're pitching the Olympic Committee to try and- Please. Like, do you want to come to Des Moines for the Olympics? Yeah. We're seeing Wisconsin. Yeah. It's going to be great, guys. My parents have a nice pad. That'll be great. No. So I think we're actually like I think we're we're going to pay attention to the Olympics for any number of reasons. We always do. But this story in particular, where there's the main narrative of the Olympics. Yeah. And then there's a sub narrative of people using back channels to tell you what's really happening and then on top of it, there's like crazy Russian surveillance. So the director of the Sochi Olympics, they straight up was like, the hotel rooms are fine. People are just trashing them. Our surveillance cameras have been watching the showers and they're just pointing the shower heads at the wall. And the follow up question was like, excuse me, the surveillance cameras in the bathrooms? He was like, I'll get back to you. And I walked away. Now he's denying that such a thing was ever said to the Wall Street Journal. Wow. That'll go well. Yeah. So there's just there's just a deep level of weirdness there. And I think the danger is treating it like like Russia is some weird. I mean, it's obviously different country, but some weird other place. Sure. That's always the danger. But the reality is there is the official story and there's like the real story. Yeah. And I think this one in particular, we're going to see a very different real story emerge from what the main narrative of the Olympics. I mean, I think one of the stories that never really gets told, but it's true no matter where you have the Olympics, but especially when it's in a place like this that just doesn't seem to have been ready at all for a winter Olympics is the just the sheer level of like infrastructure and overhaul you have to do to make an Olympics happen. Like the New York Times ran this piece the other day. I was showing you this where they were they sort of superimposed some of the events on New York City. Oh, yeah. So what if the bobsled run were in Times Square and it was like 40 blocks long and the downhill ski slope was twice the size of Central Park. It was wild. But I think what nobody really talks about is what was the number you said like $51 billion. $51 billion. Like to get the Olympics is an unbelievable undertaking and there are people are tweeting pictures of buildings that aren't finished. They kicked people out of their houses and then half finished a building that was supposed to be used for the Olympics. Yeah. And I think it's actually going to be really important to tell that story. And I think you're right that it's really easy to sort of treat it as like this other third world place. But I think it's real and it's told in bits and pieces in every Olympics. And these pictures that are out are crazy. You know, S-Cnation has been collecting a lot of them. The pictures that are out are nuts. Yeah. Just nuts. Yeah. And there's a story that like there's a wild dog problem. So the government's just killing dogs ahead of the Olympics. The dog murder squad. It's third party. It's not government. They just hired a company that does this. The dog murder squad. Which also begs the question, why do you already exist? Yeah. Well, if you live in a town. Again, opportunity just waiting. Yeah. Just you're like, you know what? It's a small business. Let's get those Olympics guys. I'm going to clean up and then rent out my house. Yeah. And that was the rich cast. Yeah. I don't know what else to do. Come back to Flappy Bird. Screw this. I mean, I'm going to go upstairs and play Flappy Bird. What are you going to do? Why would I miss anything? I don't think so. Can we? Here's where I want to end. It's true. And this is important. I think we should end on this. I thought you were about to button your jacket. I was like, it's about to get serious here. I'm just going to leave here. I would like to end on iced tea talking about the government. So I'm going to say goodbye. You have to set this up a little bit. No. No? I refuse. OK. So that was the Vergecast for whatever week this was. It's the week of February. The week of February 3. February the 3. The Vergecast. It happened to you at this time. And you should tell a professional. That was our Vergecast. Seed help. Thank you. Thank you for being with us. You can leave a comment on the post. You can yell at us on Twitter. I'm Reckless. I'm Pierce David. I'm Pierce David. I'm Oner Roscoe. Just a bad collection of Twitter handles. Yeah, we're so sorry. There's probably a phone number you can call. You can just talk to your parents. Or your local counselor. Just whatever you want to do. Or you can rent Nealai's house on Airbnb. Yeah. Find him out in Wisconsin. In Wisconsin. Please, you can hold the Olympics at my parents' house. They'll teach you how to pronounce my name and any other collection of Indian names that you want. And that was it. And now, Ice-T, we'll talk about Dungeons and Dragons. I'm not. No. There are going to be some other ones. I read an audio book. On Audible? Yeah. Yeah, on our sponsor. On Audible. Yeah, that's hot. Audible.com. That's hot. And I went to their offices and they said, Ice, we want you to read this book. OK, they didn't tell me that this was a motherfucking Dungeons and Dragons book, OK? Dungeons and Dragons is some of the most crazy, deep, deep, deep nerd shit ever invented. So every word you're saying is pretty much made up. Motherfuckers talk like Yoda. You know, outside I go into the sun thereof and out. What the fuck? How do you read this shit? To actually verbally say these words is weird. Son, son, it took me 3 and 1 half hours to read 25 pages. 3 and 1 half hours. I'm only reading the short story. It's like 45 pages. I have to do it in two days. I walked in there like, oh, yeah, 40 pages, man. We got this, man. I got three hours. Huh. Huh. Two days. I needed breaks. I needed water. The guy was in the other room coaching me. Don't worry, Ice. You can make it. You're doing really good. You're doing really good. He was saying, yo, people have broken down tried to read that stuff. When this thing comes out, I'll tell y'all when it comes out. And it'll be a treat just to watch me with my South Central educated ass trying to read some Dungeons and Dragons shit. It's talking about good talking about. I mean, oh, my God. Talking about what we talking about Pegasus and Pegasi and that's horses with wings banking to the left. This mother fucker got a sword that talks to him and shit. It's a story based on the Dungeons and Dragons type thing. The series. Yeah, the series. Yeah, mother fuckers live in places that don't exist. And it comes with a map. My God. I told my manager, I said, don't ever have me trying to. Book you for no shit like that no more. This shit is crazy. You know, let me read some porno or something, a sex book. It's easier. Yeah, I know about that.
 Beef that sweat, the Sam Sheffer story today on the Vergecast.
 Hello and welcome to the Vergecast.
 Where we'll be talking about beef in your sweat with Sam Sheffer.
 We're off to a great start.
 Hi everybody, it's the Vergecast.
 Josh is not here today.
 He's, he's, it's, you know.
 Josh is an enigma.
 Look, what's he gonna do?
 Enigma wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in a box.
 Anyway, I'm Nilay Patel.
 Roll it in a pizza.
 I'm David Pierce.
 I'm Ross Miller.
 Yeah, and this is the Vergecast where we talk about, pretty much talk about where Josh is,
 where, what he could be doing, whether he's thinking about me,
 and whether he asked about me yesterday.
 I mean, Valentine's Day is coming up, so I assume he's out planning your special day.
 Right.
 I hope so.
 Yeah.
 He's gonna take me to the park.
 Hollywood Topolski's out, you know.
 He's doing, he's making deals.
 Anyway, this is Vergecast where we talk about the week in technology news, culture news, news,
 news of the weird, news of the world.
 I'm on a BuzzFeed post.
 Whether Ross is thinking about me right now.
 But it's called, how does, you're the perfect steak for your Valentine's.
 We can talk about that if we want to.
 Really?
 Turns out I have a lot of information on the subject.
 Really?
 That seems really easy.
 Step one is choose your cut.
 Yeah.
 So I've been in a hanger steak.
 We had a hanger steak.
 We did.
 It was delicious.
 Yeah, it was good.
 That's where I've been.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 That's a mistake.
 You know, I've been sous-viding things in a crock pot.
 Dude, the crock pot is the most amazing thing I've ever had.
 I bought a thing called the Geek Food DSV.
 I'm not even kidding.
 It has an amazing name.
 It's basically the world's most complicated on and off switch.
 So it's a power, it's really nothing more than a power strip with a thermometer.
 Okay.
 And you plug the crock pot into it and it measures the temperature of the water in the
 crock pot and then it turns it off and gets that temperature and then turns it back on
 again when it falls below it.
 That's amazing.
 So it holds it at a temperature.
 The crock pot itself doesn't do this?
 You have to buy a separate device?
 Crock pots are not complicated devices.
 No.
 They literally, it's funny because when you do recipes, you know, it's like run your crock
 pot at high for five hours and like that means nothing.
 It's like...
 A crock pot is just like a lid.
 Yeah, it's a lid and it's like literally, it's like should that get hotter or colder?
 There's no temperature setting.
 Anyway, but so I bought this thing.
 So I sous-vide the steaks in it, which is amazing.
 And everybody should get one because that's the best way to make steak.
 Fair enough.
 Look at this.
 Look at this piece.
 Yeah.
 Beef sweat.
 Thank you, man.
 Beef sweat.
 See you later.
 Swaggy chefs.
 So this.
 So you love this thing?
 This is a red Nexus 5.
 This is the red Nexus 5.
 That's what David Pearce is holding right now.
 This just showed up yesterday.
 I would say that this is some of the biggest news this week, but that really is an insult
 to the rest of the news this week.
 That says a lot less about this and more about the kind of week.
 So I will say this.
 I am on record over and over and over again saying that the white Nexus 5 is a piece of
 junk, which I will maintain.
 And it's because it's the sides.
 It's the sides.
 It's like these gross, glossy edges that just don't look good.
 Yeah.
 I think the black Nexus 5 is fine.
 It's a soft touch.
 Sure.
 Whatever.
 It's kind of generic.
 That one, which they are calling red.
 It's not red.
 You know, Josh and I have an endless argument over what is red and what is orange.
 And we actually.
 One of you color it.
 It's like a fairly cut and dry.
 Well, no.
 Because there's all kinds of orange stuff in our office, right?
 I'm like, that's right.
 It's orange.
 And like, we just do.
 Wait, wait, wait.
 Like the couch is upstairs?
 It's definitely orange.
 No, the couch is orange.
 But the weird desk, that CB2 desk we roll around the TV sitting on right now.
 Oh, yeah, yeah.
 Josh will swear up and down that that's red.
 Josh is wrong.
 Right.
 But so we.
 After it's funny that over the course of the past few years, he for a while thought that
 he was colorblind.
 But now he's doing a pretty good job convincing me that I am colorblind.
 You and the rest of the world.
 So wait, what color is this?
 Orange.
 100% that's orange.
 Yes, of course.
 I'm telling you, Josh will tell you that's red.
 And Google, for whatever insane reason thinks this is red.
 Yeah.
 That's just Google's not paying attention.
 They like, they like moved on.
 That's fair.
 Like whatever we sold, we're all we're never making phones again.
 I'm way back and forth on this thing.
 I want it.
 Give it to me.
 You know, it's kind of red.
 This is I like, I'm buying this phone.
 This is my next right here.
 Like, I'm not even kidding.
 Like, it's awesome.
 You just the thing I like about is you like, you can't look directly at it for too long.
 It's like, too bright.
 It's the best.
 It throws me off.
 No, it's cool.
 It's like, who?
 You know, Nokia tried to do it, but they never went all the way like this with like searing orange.
 HTC tried to do it for a minute.
 You know, HTC.
 And then they're HTC.
 You've played with this, right?
 I mean, it's just a Nexus 5.
 I like the black buttons too.
 I think that's a nice touch.
 The black buttons are the little thing.
 I mean, it's just Nexus 5.
 It still has a screen that like, I think looks kind of washed out.
 What about the camera?
 It has a Nexus 5 camera.
 You know what you can't ever take a picture of this with?
 A Nexus 5.
 Like, you try to take a picture of this with another Nexus 5 and the camera explodes.
 It's like, too many colors, too vibrant, too much details.
 I will say just looking at it on camera right now, it looks really good.
 It looks awesome.
 This is the best.
 Look, here's my iPhone, right?
 This is whatever.
 It's boring.
 It's functional.
 It has a bunch of apps, a nice camera, whatever.
 This is red.
 And victory.
 Well, right?
 I mean, this is the best.
 I want this.
 The screen, I will say, maybe it's because it's red.
 The screen looks better on this one.
 Maybe they're getting better.
 Yeah.
 It's crazy to me that it took Google, like A, that it took Google this long to have colors
 because Google is like the company of colors.
 Yeah.
 So they're tagliners, actually.
 The company of colors.
 And number two, that they picked this one.
 Like, I kind of love them for it because they're like, we're going to make colors.
 We're just going all the way for it.
 But it's just reddish orange.
 Massive color.
 I think it's $349.
 $349.
 I'm buying one of these immediately.
 There you go.
 Wow.
 All right.
 You want me to buy you one right now?
 We can do this live.
 Let's buy.
 It's doing nothing happens.
 This is the worst I've ever heard buying.
 No.
 This is the...
 Okay.
 I want to talk about Flappy Bird.
 We were talking about Flappy Bird.
 All right, well, that means I get to pick it up and play Flappy Bird.
 The thing is, I have played...
 $349.
 Look at that.
 There you go.
 Wait, so is Flappy Bird new this week or was the news that we found out that the developer
 is making all of the money that has ever existed in the world?
 Yeah, I think it's been around for a month.
 It's now like the top of the charts.
 More than a month, maybe.
 Okay.
 So it's been out a while.
 It's been out a while.
 I have too many Google apps.
 Him and like two other of his apps are also like in the top app store sales.
 Yeah, whoever this guy is, like, he's good at this game.
 How do you make money?
 It's a free game, right?
 It's a free game.
 All I want to say is that I hate Flappy Bird.
 Wait, wait, wait.
 One, two...
 It's just...
 Two, guys, it's my high score.
 Three, four...
 Holy fuck, I got this.
 Yeah, I just bought a phone.
 I just doubled my high score.
 By the way, Google, I want to tell you this.
 Because of your terrible account management, I almost bought a phone with a totally wild
 old Google account.
 Yeah, sure.
 Yeah.
 I just like, why don't you know?
 You should know better than this.
 Like some other state that you...
 Do you remember the days when the Vergecast was all one cohesive conversation?
 No.
 Not much.
 That literally...
 That never happened.
 But I definitely just bought a red Nexus 5 because it's the best.
 And I'm never going to...
 I mean, I guess I'll move my SIM card from my one into this.
 One.
 Right.
 You have a T-Mobile SIM card, right?
 Yeah.
 It's the best.
 It totally works.
 The service is amazing.
 Four.
 I have absolutely no...
 I need that can't tell if serious GIF right now.
 There are moments in New York City when having T-Mobile...
 So everything about buying T-Mobile service is the best, right?
 So I bought it at Walmart.
 I bought the card.
 It's like a secret plan that you can buy at Walmart or you can find if you skirt around
 the website online.
 Okay. Where I pay $30 a month for unlimited data in like 100 minutes of voice.
 Can you...
 That's the whole plan.
 Wait, that's all?
 Huh?
 Can you tether?
 Yeah, you can do whatever you want.
 It's a mandatory phone.
 Wow.
 That's...
 Live your life.
 That's amazing.
 You know what I mean?
 That's like the plan they have for the iPad and stuff, right?
 But except no voice.
 Well, there's 100 minutes of voice.
 So you can definitely buy this one at Walmart in a package and it says Walmart exclusive.
 And I said I went to Walmart to buy this thing and then everyone tweeted me that you can
 find it somewhere online.
 You just have to wink at the right guy in the T-Mobile store and then everything's
 fine.
 Yeah.
 You have to open...
 You get a lot of things...
 You have to Snapchat the right T-Mobile person.
 I'm looking for the right Walmart special.
 The answer is just John.
 Anyway, so I bought it.
 I love the idea that I have this card and I can put it on all the phones and all...
 Whatever.
 It's great.
 And then the service in New York City is totally hitting this.
 Yeah.
 Really?
 It's like on one minute I'm getting 40 down and then I take two steps to the left and
 my phone lights on fire and explodes.
 Yeah.
 I mean, it is occasionally outrageously fast.
 It's faster than my home internet sometimes.
 And then every once in a while...
 And then it's the same thing.
 I walk into my bathroom and it's like no service ever again.
 Paul Miller, when he first got back on the internet, Paul was like, I just have T-Mobile,
 I've just been watching Netflix on my phone over and over again, connected to a projector.
 And he's like, there's no data caps.
 He's like, what have you been up to, buddy?
 He's like, I'm watching Netflix on my phone connected to a projector.
 I was like, well, you came all the way back to the internet.
 You live...
 That's like two years ahead of time on the internet.
 T-Mobile needs to buy a little Pico projector company and start making those and just sell
 them.
 I mean, Samsung did that.
 Screw your TV.
 Samsung did that phone though.
 They did the projector phone.
 Hell yeah.
 What was it, the beam?
 The Galaxy beam?
 That phone was ridiculous.
 That was bad.
 But I think if...
 I would...
 That's a really good idea.
 Maybe I should just do that.
 Yeah.
 I literally don't see a single downside to this idea.
 What?
 Having a projector, just sticking your phone in and playing...
 Just going for it.
 Yeah, playing movies.
 Yeah, I mean, the downside is that you have to purchase a projector.
 Would you like to shop for a projector now?
 No.
 Oh, God.
 So everybody tweeted David what projector he should buy.
 No.
 And don't do it.
 What audio system?
 Soundbar, full 5.1.
 Cleave.
 That's true.
 That's very important.
 That's just rolling down 12 pounds.
 So this rabbit is going far down anyway.
 What soundbar should I buy?
 It's all over.
 Okay.
 Let's talk about what actually happened this week.
 Okay.
 I think there's actually...
 There are two pieces of, I think, huge news that are both connected.
 Okay.
 So one, and we talked about this on the Verge Live a little bit earlier this week,
 Microsoft appointed Satya Nadella as CEO.
 Yep.
 Replacing Balmer.
 We ran a touching tribute.
 Say his name again?
 I don't know.
 I've been saying it different every time.
 Yeah.
 So the way I've heard them say it is like Satya.
 Satya.
 It's Satya Nadella.
 It's Satya Nadella.
 Okay.
 Yeah.
 No, it's not that.
 That's how my mother would pronounce it.
 Because I have a thing.
 My parents pronounce my name far differently than everybody else.
 Really?
 How do your parents pronounce your name?
 Neelay.
 Really?
 Yeah.
 That's my name.
 Wait, Neelay?
 You can't do it.
 I'm sorry.
 This is like a...
 There's a cultural barrier that prevents you from ever pronouncing my name.
 I could just study the culture for years and never do it.
 And that is how many people pronounce the letter A.
 Okay.
 That's it.
 As far as I can tell.
 So my name is Neelay, and it's hard to say.
 I didn't even hear you just now.
 So I grew up in Wisconsin and it just turned into Neelay.
 Okay.
 And then you just went for it?
 Just went for it.
 Like, hi, I'm Neelay.
 My sister made a...
 She made a conscious decision when she went to college to undo Wisconsin pronunciation of her
 name.
 Really?
 So she grew up in Wisconsin.
 Everybody called her Terrell, like Terrell Owens, which is hilarious.
 That's amazing.
 It's not real.
 T-O.
 Also not a man's name.
 I'm gonna call your sister T-O from now on.
 She went to college.
 She's like, my name is Thorol.
 That's her name.
 And...
 Right.
 And she trained Illinois to pronounce her name correctly.
 And then she comes back to Wisconsin.
 And she's like, hi, Terrell.
 And she's like, who?
 She's like, what is that?
 So yeah.
 So, you know, I didn't...
 Does she hang out with Terrell Owens a lot?
 No, she doesn't.
 You know, I think one time she met Jamie Foxx.
 Is that a thing?
 Sure.
 Yeah.
 Nice.
 He probably knows Terrell Owens.
 Anyway, so Satya, I think is right.
 I think like...
 I'll buy it.
 OG, that's the pronunciation.
 But they've been saying Satya.
 Yeah.
 They're all over the place a little bit.
 They are all over the place.
 I think they're gonna...
 But Satya Nadella is the CEO of Microsoft.
 He is...
 I will say this.
 I've gotten a lot of tweets from very excited people in India.
 And my parents are very pleased.
 Like nationalistically, like people are very excited about this.
 Yeah.
 But I think that's like a weird thing.
 Because his number one qualification is not that he's from India.
 It's that he's been at Microsoft for 22 years.
 And he's done an excellent job running various parts of the business.
 Have you heard his name before?
 Yeah.
 Okay.
 I hadn't.
 I was sort of surprised by that.
 I think...
 Here's what I think is really interesting.
 Tom's like a small piece, like saying like he might possibly...
 He's like a low on the list.
 No.
 So that... Here's why I think that's interesting.
 So right when they said Bomber's leaving, we did a story and we did some reporting.
 We talked to a bunch of people and his name came up a lot.
 Really?
 A lot, a lot.
 It was like Tony Bates, Alan Mulally, Stephen Elop, and you remember this guy, Satya Nadella?
 And it just kept on coming up like, who?
 Like he's been there, he's been running big enterprise divisions.
 He ran Bing.
 Like not necessarily a natural choice.
 But he was in that conversation at a high level from the get go.
 And I want to say that there were other big candidates involved, but because he was in
 that conversation at a high level from the get go, the rumor is that Bill Gates, he was
 Bill Gates candidate.
 Oh, interesting.
 Well, because Gates is now coming back to oversee this personally in a lot of ways.
 He's like he's an advisor.
 Right.
 So Bill Gates is stepping down as chairman of the board of Microsoft and then taking
 a bigger role on products as a technical advisor.
 And so that's like there's a lot to unpack there with what's going on with Microsoft.
 And one of the things that we had always heard about with the flashy external candidates
 is that they didn't want to be under Gates and Bollinger on the board.
 And Gates is the chairman, effectively running the show, but big strategic decisions was
 a problem for these external candidates.
 Alan Mulally, chief among them.
 Right.
 Yeah, if I'm Alan Mulally, I'm like, screw you, I ran Ford.
 Shut up.
 Yeah.
 But the thing about Mulally is he said from the beginning, very happy at Ford.
 Yeah.
 And he probably is very happy at Ford.
 He probably is very happy at Ford.
 I feel like he has a lot of reasons to be very happy at Ford.
 I'm happy at Ford and I re-upped for a year and everyone was like,
 so what are you doing after that year?
 Yeah.
 You're leaving, right?
 He's definitely leaving in a year.
 No.
 He's leaving.
 You're out of there.
 So yeah, I think that there is an aspect to this where this was always kind of Gates'
 candidate and Gates got out of the way because he got his guy.
 And if you're Bill Gates candidate at Microsoft, I feel like how could you lose?
 I think there's a lot of ways.
 Who's going to be like, hey, Bill Gates, you're dumb.
 Yeah.
 Remember how you're Bill Gates?
 I disagree with your decisions though.
 Like, no, that doesn't work for people.
 They are often like, oh, we're shedding the image of old Microsoft.
 We need to figure out what to do in the future.
 Yeah, but Bill Gates then just smothers you with his money and you're dead and he wins.
 Right.
 I feel like that's how this goes.
 Just the stockpile of malaria that he keeps.
 Right.
 Yeah.
 The stockpile of malaria.
 Yeah.
 He isn't conquered.
 He just captures it.
 He's like, these are the ones the lasers didn't kill.
 Yeah.
 And he releases mosquitoes.
 Yeah.
 Hands you a laser pointer.
 He's like, let's see if you're- He's like, a TED talk, he like,
 release mosquitoes into the- Yeah, yeah.
 He just does that at board meetings and he's like, I don't know, maybe you'll die,
 maybe you won't.
 I have this thing right here.
 Yeah, he hands you a laser pointer.
 So, Satya Nadella, right?
 And they're like, yes.
 And then he gives everybody the antidote and everything's fine.
 Yeah.
 What's scary is how- It's a solid board meeting.
 I can totally see that.
 I'm just assuming that that's correct.
 Look, he's an evil genius.
 Look, so there's that.
 There's that whole story.
 It's a huge story, right?
 Right.
 There's a big shift in their language from we're devices and services to we're cloud and mobile,
 which sounds like nonsense, but it was repeatedly said out loud and sort of out in the world as we
 did more reporting on it.
 It was repeatedly said that this marks an actual change.
 Right.
 Well, yeah.
 They're going to go devices and services with Ballmer's line and cloud and mobile is Nadella's
 line and those are different in some way.
 But aren't those like- Yeah.
 I mean, those are pretty easy synonyms for each other.
 It's like devices and mobile are kind of becoming the same thing.
 Yeah, but I asked a- Sorry, go on.
 When I was talking to the person I was talking to, I said, is that like a conflict difference
 or is that just shades of gray?
 And I was told, you should really read into it what you want.
 Okay.
 And I think that's really meaningful.
 Fair.
 I think that it is a difference.
 I think that devices and services means we're going to make devices and put our services
 on them.
 And that was their strategy, right?
 I think that's why Office isn't on the iPad.
 I think cloud and mobile, cloud first, mobile first, that's Nadella's line, means we're
 going to make, we're going to literally move Microsoft software into the cloud and then
 put it down onto mobile devices.
 Right.
 And I think that opens them up to the iPad.
 I think that opens them up to Android.
 I think that opens them up to an entire suite of other devices and platforms that they have
 been trying to leverage into getting people onto Windows.
 Well, that was the thing that- So here's what's interesting though about
 that timing then, which is they just bought a hardware company.
 They just bought a consumer devices company.
 Yeah.
 And well, they haven't yet.
 This happened right before the Nokia purchase finished.
 Right.
 So what does that mean then?
 Well, that's mobile, right?
 That's mobile.
 I think they're, I can't imagine they're going to get rid of Windows phone or try and get
 rid of it.
 But I think the smart thing, this was, John Gruber wrote a great piece about this this
 week.
 And I thought the thing that was most interesting that he said was he quoted the numbers where
 it was like the raw number of devices that run Windows products is still enormously high.
 Yeah.
 But the number, it used to be, like I can just find the number here, but it used to
 be like there were 90 million devices and Windows ran on 95% of them.
 And now it's like 240 million devices and Windows stuff runs on 30% of them.
 And like raw numbers, they're the same and they're big ass numbers.
 But like there's this huge world that they're not touching now.
 And this is like, and the place he landed in this piece, which I thought was really
 smart is instead of saying, you know, we want to be, he just wrote Satya Nadella needs to
 find Microsoft's new, a computer on every desk and in every home running Microsoft software.
 Here's my stab at it.
 Microsoft services sending data to and from every network device in the world.
 The next ubiquity isn't running on every device.
 It's talking to every device.
 And I think that's exactly right.
 And that's what Google has accomplished, right?
 Yeah.
 And I think Microsoft, there's been a lot of conversation about how companies are trying
 to do the Apple model where they sell you a device, they sell you the software, they
 sell you a suite of services that run on that.
 And Microsoft or Apple has 70% margins or whatever insane 40% margins.
 That's not Google's model, right?
 Google's model is they make a bunch of software and they have, I think very aggressively use
 those services in their software to push Windows into third place in terms of market share.
 And services, right?
 And I think that has been worked out really well for Google.
 I think Microsoft needs to come back and say, you know what?
 Google Docs isn't as good a cloud services office.
 It just isn't, right?
 And if you want to run a real business, you need Excel and we're going to put Excel on
 the cloud for real.
 And we're going to put it everywhere.
 And we're going to put it everywhere.
 Yeah.
 And that will enable them to start a conversation with a class of customers that they have
 traditionally always had, but have started poking around because they have iPads now.
 Yeah.
 And that's like a big deal.
 And I think saying you have to make the investment all the way to buy a surface to get Excel
 is a huge ask now in this market.
 Well, yeah.
 I mean, I think what this is sort of an admission of to some extent is like doing what Apple
 has done is impossible because Apple already did it.
 Yeah.
 Right?
 Like they've built this locked in thing and their market share is big enough, especially
 in particular places like phones and tablets where nobody else is going to get enough market
 share to like pull it off.
 And Apple is fine with not being 90% margin.
 And the one vendor who has done it in terms of hardware has Samsung has no software chops
 that I've ever seen.
 Right.
 Especially not in the kinds of software that Microsoft sells.
 Well, and they're not even really trying.
 Like they're not trying to lock you in the same way that Apple is.
 Well, they're doing-
 Like Apple straight up doesn't work if you don't use its products.
 Like it's-
 That's true.
 I just plugged this phone into this computer.
 Like this is a new computer and I never plug a phone into a computer anymore.
 I literally plugged it in and charge it and like all kinds of Apple stuff started up.
 Oh, God.
 Yeah, yeah.
 Would you like to use iPhone?
 It's like, no.
 Like literally the first time I've ever opened iPhoto on this particular machine is when I plugged this phone.
 But then they try to put a word document onto your iPhone and everything just catches on fire.
 Like it just won't work.
 But then, but so by basically saying like, we're not going to try and do that anymore
 and we're going to go back to this model of, and it's way more true to like what Microsoft
 actually is to say, we just want to be on every device.
 Like we want all of the things that people use to be running our software is what Microsoft
 originally did.
 And they just happened to, like Microsoft originally said a new, like it was a computer
 on every desk and every home.
 That's why they have a Mac.
 We already did that.
 Now it's about getting Microsoft software onto it.
 And like they got away from that.
 And the way back into that is to do cloud stuff and to open it back up to a lot of people.
 I think, and then that, but that's short term.
 I think the other piece is like, you know, the real answer is computers everywhere, right?
 Because everything is everywhere.
 That's where they're right.
 But software like is running, like putting a computer everywhere doesn't mean anything.
 It's just awesome software behind it.
 Right?
 Right.
 Like I have that, there's in my office upstairs, I have a really crappy camera that runs Skype.
 Like really crappy.
 It's impossible to overestimate how crappy the camera is.
 But it does, but its functionality trumps how crappy it is, right?
 It literally is a camera, a webcam with a Tegra 2 processor running Android and running
 an insanely bad custom Skype UI on it.
 Yeah.
 Right?
 And it just makes Skype calls.
 It's like somebody took web OS cards and was like, how can I make this in four minutes?
 And then just shipped it.
 But it does its job, which is I don't want a computer next to it.
 I don't need all the complexity of a computer.
 I literally just need a thing on top of my TV that can make Skype calls.
 And I have it.
 Right?
 But most people have it.
 But the software is miserable.
 When most people have it, it's an Xbox.
 But an Xbox costs $400.
 This thing costs $120.
 You paid $120 for that?
 It's 120 bucks.
 Seriously?
 That does the job.
 That seems really expensive to me.
 Don't you have that TV at home that just has the webcam that pops up?
 You just got to get another one of those.
 So that's another great example, though.
 So I have a Panasonic plasma television.
 It's brand new.
 It's one of the best pictures you can buy.
 And the software that runs on it is fucking miserable.
 Just awful.
 Just the worst.
 If you work at Panasonic right now and you're a software engineer,
 you should quit because you're bad at your job.
 You should go get a different kind of job.
 You should go be a grumpier.
 They won't get somewhere else.
 They should keep their job forever.
 I'm just saying, have some dignity.
 Are you the guy who designed the make a video call UI on the Panasonic VT?
 What do I have?
 VT-90?
 VT-80?
 Sure.
 All I remember is you bought it and you Instagrammed it,
 and you said America because you bought it on Cyber Monday
 and you were very proud of yourself.
 Whatever.
 If you designed that UI and that TV, you should never do any more software
 design in your life.
 You should feel ashamed.
 I'm sorry.
 That's just the way it is.
 But that's the opportunity for a company like Microsoft,
 is to start making the software for that.
 And they tried to do it before.
 But it's to start saying, there are all these other places for us to go.
 There are all these other kinds of devices that are going to talk to the internet.
 And we can be the company that brings it all together.
 Yeah.
 Well, and I hope that what they realize and what Satya Nadella does is say,
 the answer to that is not always Windows.
 But they have to make Microsoft bigger than Windows
 because it's not going to work everywhere.
 So this is the second piece of news.
 There's a lot to unpack with Nadella.
 There's a lot to unpack about why Microsoft decided to introduce him
 by launching a web page with a series of fake interviews.
 How long do you think it takes them before we get to actually start evaluating what he's doing?
 What does it take?
 Like a year?
 90 days.
 90? Really?
 Half that?
 100 days.
 You evaluate the president after 100 days.
 That's like the first 100 days.
 All right.
 I mean, yeah.
 I buy it.
 So, what?
 Three and a half months.
 That's like a cool physical course.
 And he doesn't even have any wars to fight.
 Yeah.
 He's going to be fine.
 He's got two major wars to fight.
 He's probably also right now just sitting there playing Flappy Bird.
 Would it be amazing?
 Is it on Windows Phone?
 This person in the office, he sits down at Ballmer's old desk.
 It's like totally clean and barren.
 He's like, what do I do now?
 And slowly pulls an iPad out of his pocket and starts playing Flappy Bird.
 He's on Secret.
 I bet he's as bad at it as I am.
 He's a threat.
 We never heard sorry about it.
 I'm not good at Flappy Bird.
 So, here's the second piece, sort of the flip side of this news, which is Sony today
 decided they're not going to make Viya PCs anymore.
 They sold off the Viya business, which is incredible.
 Yeah.
 That's an incredible admission of this isn't a viable business for Sony anymore.
 And Sony has all kinds of...
 Damn it, John.
 For those at home playing at home, our director just gave us the worst part.
 Not to be repeated.
 I just feel bad.
 John, please leave.
 Please stop correcting yourself.
 You're John Lager Marciano and you're responsible for the Viya joke.
 I think you should leave right now.
 Have some dignity.
 Have some dignity.
 By the way, iTunes Match has been running on this computer nonstop since the day I bought it.
 What are you doing?
 That's a normal thing.
 It just launched itself to tell me it's still running.
 I hate iTunes.
 We don't even need to go there.
 But so...
 So wait, so...
 So, what's...
 All kidding aside, I hate you iTunes.
 That's an ugly road for me to go down.
 So, David, I have a question I asked you earlier.
 I don't know if you know this still, but does Sony make money on Viya at all?
 So, I did some research when you asked me.
 Okay.
 And the answer is no.
 Okay.
 Like they still sell a lot of them.
 Right.
 Which is something.
 But it's not a money making business for Sony.
 Right.
 Right.
 Just like TVs.
 Right.
 Sony's been in two businesses for a long time that should be their biggest growth businesses,
 but have been anchors on their company for a while.
 Right.
 And it's computers and it's TVs.
 And it's funny because the reason they got on computers because they...
 In the late 90s, everyone was like, convergence.
 TVs and PCs will be the same thing.
 Right.
 And Sony's just been chasing after that and not getting there for 20 years.
 That's the whole story here.
 Yeah.
 Well, but it's really interesting to me.
 Like Sony's been talking about this one Sony thing for forever, right?
 And I guess their plan was to make all different products with all the stuff they're really
 good at making.
 Right.
 And they're just kind of bailing at all the things that they aren't doing well.
 I mean, the things too.
 Yeah.
 But it's a platform decision.
 Well, they've only...
 Which other ones have they ditched?
 Ebooks today.
 They ditched ebooks today?
 Yeah.
 Was that just today?
 That was just today, yeah.
 That's weird.
 So they had a lead in Europe, right?
 They never cracked the American market, but Kindle isn't in Europe or across the world.
 Sony did really well in Europe.
 And every time I've met with them, they go to great lengths to remind me that it's super
 successful everywhere but the US.
 Yeah.
 And I just...
 I don't know.
 I guess I get it from...
 It's just US and Canada.
 Right.
 Where they're losing here.
 Right.
 Why would you keep throwing money into the void of Amazon?
 Sure.
 You can't beat them in the US.
 But I think Sony killing the PC business to me is not in admission of we can't win in
 this business.
 I think it's an admission of as a platform, Windows isn't important to the future of Sony.
 And that to me is...
 That is the killer.
 That is...
 That should be really scary for Microsoft.
 That's super scary for Microsoft.
 Because they are one Sony and basically what you make is...
 Now what you make is computers of different shapes and sizes.
 Yeah.
 Whether it's like their weird bad smartwatch or whether it's a TV or whether it's a PS4.
 They're all computers.
 Sure.
 And they're saying...
 It's like that and Justin Bieber albums are like the two things that Sony makes.
 That's true.
 And he's a computer.
 He is.
 He does it on Windows apparently.
 But what they're saying is they don't need the expertise of how to bring up the Windows
 platform and ship PCs because they're gonna use other kinds of platforms everywhere.
 And the big bet that they made, and I actually always ask them this, because they've made
 a big bet on Sony Mobile.
 Their phones are good.
 Mobile and cameras are the two things that they...
 And they're great at it.
 They're really swinging.
 And it's like they make tablets.
 They make Sony Android tablets.
 They make that weird phablet.
 The Xperia...
 Well, there's the...
 What is it?
 The...
 There's the one that they're always drop... They're like pouring water on.
 Yeah.
 It's like its main thing that they can do with it.
 Dear Lord, why can I remember?
 Wait, the phone?
 The Z1?
 It's like the Z1 Mega or something.
 But then there's the tablet.
 Oh, right.
 It's the Xperia tablet.
 And that's what it's called.
 And every time I see it, they've just got like a fountain just posing down the screen.
 I'm like, cool.
 That's the best part of every Sony show now is like, we have devices.
 We're just gonna put underwater.
 You just walk right by.
 I mean, I liked it because I got to lead a review with a story about my showering habits.
 So that was good.
 I mean...
 Thank you for that.
 What you don't know about David is that he will take any opportunity to discuss himself in the shower.
 That's true.
 I think actually people know that about me.
 People have probably figured that out about me now.
 Top Shelf got real weird at the end.
 I'm so sorry, John.
 The lost episode.
 I'm so sorry.
 That will never be released.
 Stuff in the shower.
 That's actually...
 Stuff in the shower.
 It's not a bad...
 Top Shelf shower.
 When you listen to like a Bluetooth speaker or you play on a tablet.
 Yeah.
 Actually, the only problem is that you would have to be in a shower the whole time.
 I don't see why that's a problem.
 This is a really bad modern Seinfeld.
 Yeah.
 But this is happening to the PC.
 I mean, Dell had to take itself private because its consumer businesses and PC just like weren't working out.
 But what's the other one?
 IBM left years ago.
 HP.
 HP is doing whatever it's doing.
 Yeah.
 Lenovo is still big.
 Yeah, Lenovo is growing.
 I mean, what it sounds like is happening to me and the thing, the big analyst discussion around all this stuff is that Sony...
 It's not that the PC market isn't big and that there's not opportunity there,
 but what it's becoming again is like price commoditized.
 And these Chinese companies like Lenovo are able to make and sell at such huge scale and so cheap that nobody else can compete.
 And it's like the real money in laptops is in like $350 laptops.
 And that's like if you can make those with any kind of margins, you can make money.
 And if you can't, you can't make money in laptops.
 It's like that seems to be the prevailing wisdom here.
 And Sony, they're...
 Well, they were always targeting the super high end.
 Right.
 This is the thing.
 Do we have that photo essay we did of Sony machines?
 I mean, they're so...
 This made me so gore-sounded.
 Sony made some of the most beautiful PCs ever.
 Oh my God.
 It's funny that as I've been seeing a lot of stuff about how Apple was willing to let Sony build Mac OS X machines because Steve Jobs loves Sony.
 Yeah.
 And it's true.
 Sony had some of the wildest hardware design of all time.
 Well, and they tried so many things like the Vi-OP, which is such a ridiculous thing and didn't work.
 It is still my all time favorite.
 What happened to the orange keyboard deck?
 Yeah.
 It was the second generation one.
 The first one was real weird.
 I remember very distinctly, very distinctly the first time I saw Vi-OP, which was at CES.
 First time we ever got our hands on one.
 Right.
 And it came with a Vista.
 Wow.
 Vista on it.
 And we got literally, we got the bits to the Windows 7 beta on an SD card.
 We got it the same day as the Vi-OP and Paul was like, I am not running Vista.
 Like immediately put the Windows 7 beta off an SD card.
 He's like, this is ridiculous.
 We're not using this.
 But no, Sony made beautiful PCs.
 Yeah.
 They sold them at a huge premium.
 They're always overpriced.
 Right.
 And they sold them at a massive premium and that market is gone.
 Right.
 Every PC, seriously, Apple has 90% market share of PCs over $1,000.
 Wow.
 That's the number.
 You can't win that game against Apple.
 And once you get under that, you're totally in the commodity zone, which is what Google is
 targeting with Chromebooks, right?
 Right.
 So there's like this weird dead middle of the PC market where you've got Google on the bottom
 saying we're going to come at you with $270,000 Chromebooks, which are all you might need.
 And you have maybe a tablet or whatever and a PC at work that runs Excel.
 Yeah.
 That's what you actually might need over there.
 And at the top, you have everybody buying a MacBook.
 Yeah.
 And somewhere in the middle, there's a business for Lenovo and maybe not Sony and maybe not Dell.
 Maybe though.
 Maybe not HP.
 Like Lenovo sells a lot of $400 laptops.
 Yeah.
 What nobody seems to be able to make or sell is like the $700 laptop or the $800 laptop.
 Like there just doesn't seem to be a market for that.
 And what's really interesting is like hearing, like watching a lot of companies go into Chromebooks,
 the two reasons are really obvious.
 Like Google, it sounds like from companies I've talked to, Google has gone to all of these companies
 and said, here's how much you're charging for this laptop.
 The end.
 Right.
 There's a ceiling.
 And that's like that comes from Google where they're saying, if you're going to make a Chromebook,
 you have to charge this much.
 And like only Google is allowed to.
 Really?
 That's what I've heard.
 I don't know this for sure.
 Interesting.
 But more than one company has told me this.
 Right.
 That they're saying like this is what your Chromebooks cost.
 With the exception of Google's own.
 The Chromebook Pixel.
 Yeah.
 Where they're just like, you know.
 Well, there's Pixel and then there's the weird Google, the thing that they released today,
 the weird teleconferencing.
 Right.
 Well, that's a totally separate kind of Chromebook.
 That's an enterprise Chromebook.
 They're calling it a Chromebox.
 I know.
 But they're liars.
 It runs Chrome.
 It does.
 It's basically designed to sit there and run Hangouts, right?
 Yeah.
 Yes.
 And a whole package costs $1,000.
 Yeah.
 It's actually enterprise.
 It's a weird collection of other people's hardware.
 Yeah.
 So it's like a, what's it, an Asus or an Acer PC?
 I think it's Asus.
 But I can't remember.
 Let me look.
 Well, that one says HP on it.
 Oh.
 Maybe it is.
 If you scroll down, there's definitely, there's an Asus logo.
 I saw some.
 Yeah, there is an Asus logo.
 Well, so Asus just released a $179 Chromebox.
 Yeah.
 And it's the, yeah.
 Right.
 So there's these like commodity weird small form factor PCs that have like i7 chips in
 them.
 Which is bonkers.
 Because it's running Hangouts.
 Yeah.
 Google, if you need an i7 chip to run Hangouts.
 You did it wrong.
 Yeah, you screwed up.
 And didn't do a good job.
 You should feel shame.
 You should go find the Panasonic guy and John.
 And you guys should all go to an island and feel shame together.
 Right.
 John, I'm sorry.
 But you have to go to an island now.
 But John did make one good observation here, which is the controller.
 No, no.
 So that's what I'm saying.
 It's a weird, it's a weird con of this.
 So just to recap the news.
 Google today announced, they had an event and said, this is an interesting announcement
 for business.
 That's how they invited us.
 Sean Hollister went, and it's a $1,000 video conferencing kit for businesses that basically
 is built on the back of Hangouts.
 So it's this small form factor Chromebox.
 It is a remote.
 That remote is exactly the Boxee Box remote.
 Yes.
 I think it has a different number of buttons.
 It has one extra button on the front.
 Chris and I had a weird argument about this.
 It's the same remote.
 They just like retooled it and added a button.
 It's a Parrot makes that speaker phone.
 It's a Bluetooth speaker phone and a Logitech camera.
 Oh, it's a Jabra speaker phone.
 Oh, Jabra speaker phone.
 Yeah, and a Logitech.
 So it's just this weird collection of other people's hardware that anybody could put together.
 But it all comes in one box.
 You plug it together, and you need video conference over Hangouts for $250 a year in support costs.
 And it's called Chromebox for Meetings, which is my favorite Wild Troll on the nose name ever.
 I don't really.
 It's just like, what is that?
 It's a Chromebox for Meetings.
 I think there's a class of startups and small businesses that are getting one step bigger.
 And our business is among them, and they need a new breed of conferencing applications that
 maybe 10 years ago, Microsoft just owned that entire market, and Blackberry owned a huge chunk
 of that market.
 And Google realized that it got a piece of it with Hangouts, and they're trying to bet on it and
 edge their way back into Microsoft's territory.
 Yeah, I mean, I think there's a place for this.
 It's really easy in companies that live on Gmail, which is more and more of these little startups
 that are growing.
 This just makes a ton of sense.
 It's really easy.
 There's the fastest way for us to do conference calls because we're all on Gmail all the time
 is just Hangouts.
 Right.
 But I don't know why I want.
 I have weird Hangouts problems.
 I could just use my computer.
 The Hangouts UI, I want there to be a control panel somewhere where it just tells me what
 the hell is going on with Hangouts.
 And how to put pirate hats and mustaches on yourself.
 That is always there.
 I use it all the time, and there's just a weirdness to it.
 Hangouts is you push the button and then a Hangout has to come up.
 You push the button and then a Hangout happens, and I'm never quite sure who can see what
 or why or what I'm sharing.
 It's happening in this browser, but there's no interface.
 There's no settings.
 I don't know.
 It's just weird to me.
 It's like now a Hangout is happening.
 Also, I have like 50 Google accounts, and managing that is impossible.
 Oh, it's a disaster.
 Yeah.
 And so Hangouts makes no sense to me.
 It could be worse.
 It could be 50 Hotmail accounts.
 Right.
 All I really want is for Google to make a native Mac Hangouts app.
 Instead of the weird Chrome extension that takes over the whole screen for no reason.
 Why is this happening?
 Yeah, I don't know.
 We'll never understand.
 Just do the right thing, Google.
 Yeah.
 Just stop blowing it.
 Well, it's like they have a Hangouts app on the phone.
 It's great.
 True.
 It works well.
 Hold on.
 Let me finish this bio point.
 Google goes to these companies and says, you can make a Chromebook or a Chromebox, and
 it's going to cost this much.
 And then what they can also do is they don't charge for the license.
 And it's like, you know how you spike your margins is don't pay for a Windows license.
 Right.
 And it's like, that's done.
 And they can charge $250 for it, and people like it, and it has good battery life.
 And that's going to be a hard-
 I think the next generation of Chromebooks is the one that will be killer.
 I agree.
 I mean, I still-
 This generation is very enticing.
 Nobody's made a great one yet.
 Yeah.
 And I've like-
 I think HP, Edge Close, but then they kept on lighting on fire.
 Yeah.
 So that's-
 This Toshiba one they announced, the CES, seems pretty nice.
 Is that one just out, or Lenovo just came out with one?
 Lenovo just-
 One of them just started shipping.
 Yeah, they're all, yeah.
 Can it run YouTube?
 It's all-
 We should, you know, reviews editor should do a review.
 Oh, who is that?
 I don't know.
 I'll find that person.
 Who runs most reviews?
 Is it Ross?
 Is it-
 I think it's Ross.
 I do.
 Ross, get on that.
 I doubt it.
 Super annoying dude that everybody hates.
 He sounds like a real asshole.
 I never liked him.
 All right.
 So that's the bio.
 I mean, look, it's sad.
 I think Sony needs to refocus.
 I think they're a TV business.
 Well, so-
 The only side-
 You say refocus when it's TVs and tablets and smartphones and music and movies and PlayStation.
 But those are all the same thing.
 Yes.
 Right?
 What Sony is ultimately is an entertainment company.
 That ad that they started running a couple weeks ago and they ran at Super Bowl, where like,
 we just want you to experience feelings, which is basically every ad now.
 You should feel feelings.
 Every ad at the Super Bowl is like, you feel feelings so deep, State Farm.
 And it's like, what the-
 What just happened?
 I got State Farm like 12 times.
 But Sony fundamentally is an entertainment company.
 Yes.
 And this whole diversion into PCs was always weird for them
 because PCs are like commodity enterprise products.
 I don't know that I agree with that.
 I mean, the other side of Sony is they're a huge manufacturer that has tons of partners
 all across the world.
 And it makes sense that they would take all this stuff that they make already
 and just stick it together, put a logo on it and ship it.
 Like they make this stuff for other companies.
 But Sony doesn't make motherboards and Intel chips and graphics cards.
 I mean, I guess it makes more sense for them to make things like cameras
 because all that stuff they do make.
 And maybe that's what we're seeing here.
 I don't know that they're just an entertainment company.
 But that's like...
 But think about it.
 When you say cameras, they make the whole stack.
 Here's Justin Bieber dancing.
 Here's a Sony image sensor and a lens looking at Justin Bieber dancing.
 I was like, I should have figured out where Justin Bieber fit into this.
 Yeah, but he's here. Sony owns this.
 This represents Bieber.
 This represents a camera.
 Here's Sony broadcast technology doing stuff.
 Then here's a PS4 receiving it plugged into a Sony TV that's showing it to you.
 So when you watch Taylor Swift...
 That's why they're not...
 Here you are sitting on your couch holding a Sony phone, doing a second screen thing.
 That's the Sony story.
 That's why even though Sony isn't making money off TVs either,
 that's why I don't think Sony is ever gonna get rid of TV.
 They will never get rid of that.
 Because it's that same...
 They have that whole stack.
 And PCs, I guess, were just sort of this thing over here that they also did
 that didn't have anything to do with the rest of the business.
 I think it's why Vizio tried to make a PC.
 You know, they still make two of them.
 But they wanted to play that game of...
 Everything's a screen that shows you entertainment.
 Right.
 Right? And here are all these screen sizes.
 We should make them all.
 And I think Sony made them all and they realized that the PC business for them
 was a screen size that demanded the most investment,
 was the most competitive and cutthroat, and had the lowest margins.
 And I don't think he...
 In that place, I don't think he wanted to compete against Samsung and Acer.
 Well, I think tablets are the other one that that describes.
 And Sony is not even trying that hard to compete in tablets either.
 Yeah, but that's the platform that...
 This is what I'm saying about Windows, right?
 Sony, they made half a Windows convertible.
 I was gonna say half a tablet, but it's...
 They made Windows tablets and that hasn't worked.
 That platform does not take it off on tablets.
 Like there's a few very happy corporate executives who have Surface Pros.
 That's it.
 And then there's everybody else.
 And I think Android tablets, they're the ones that still have the chance.
 And so I think Sony has to stay right there.
 If you're gonna make Android phones, you might as well make Android tablets.
 And their phones are good and people like them.
 And in Europe in particular, they're selling well.
 Right.
 So I think Sony...
 This is like the Sony story is when I say refocus,
 it's decide what platforms as computers are important to you
 and what your story is of how you get this guy.
 Justin Bieber.
 How you get the Biebs to people is effectively...
 You taught him how to dance, didn't you?
 I did.
 Hey, do a thing with Rihanna, it'll be cool.
 What?
 It's the Justin Bieber story.
 So what happens to VAIO now?
 They're selling to some Japanese company.
 Are they gonna...
 Are there gonna be VAIOs?
 They're gonna make them for Japan, I think, is the thing.
 That just seems weird.
 Like this business is... They're clearly getting rid of it.
 Yeah, but if you're not Sony, if you're running VAIO as its own business,
 you can do all kinds of stuff too.
 I mean, you can make decisions that Sony would never make.
 You can make the business smaller, you can start something around the world.
 You can... I don't know, you can do stuff.
 Yeah, you can probably make money, but that's kind of sad.
 Like Sony made good computers for a long time.
 I mean, they can still make good hardware.
 It's just...
 Yeah, they have a keyboard and a hinge.
 There's a lot of secrets happening to me right now.
 A lot of secrets.
 You wanna talk about secrets?
 Let's talk about secrets.
 I mean, I will say that this is one of the worst.
 Oh, God. Friend number 35 joined. I wonder who it is.
 So here's this app secret. Do you guys know about this?
 We're not gonna write about it yet,
 because I don't know what the story is, unless you're a gigantic tech insider nerd.
 There's an app called Secret.
 You suck at Flappy Bird and everybody knows it and they're talking about it right now.
 We're gonna talk about Flappy Bird in a second.
 That was you, wasn't it?
 It was not me.
 Okay.
 Well, my secrets are awful because I have no secrets.
 Like literally this app and like two cups of bourbon are gonna be a disaster for me,
 because everyone will know who I am.
 I'm an open book.
 The only...
 What do you wanna know?
 The only two...
 So I haven't used secrets, but there are two about me and they're both just you taking pictures of me
 and then saying weird things.
 I don't think you're doing this right.
 I'm not.
 So there's an app called Secret.
 You download it.
 It does some weird sketchy privacy stuff where it takes your entire contact list,
 all the email addresses, all the phone numbers you have,
 creates a network that you cannot access.
 Can I just say, by the way, how are we okay with that?
 We're not.
 Like we yell at every company that does it and then we're like,
 oh, you wanna use it for secrets?
 Okay, that's totally fine.
 Have all my information.
 I did it though.
 I know.
 Everybody's doing it.
 Anyway, and then...
 The thing that seems to be is like the whole tech industry is using secrets.
 So we're...
 And the people who care about it...
 Here's what we have on Secret.
 We have their nice little video about how...
 Share a thought.
 Share a thought is there.
 And it's like, sometimes I'm sad or like, today I'm happy or like,
 I kissed my mother and it was the best feeling that I've ever had.
 Like not like that.
 You sick bastard.
 I'm about to tell jokes on the internet.
 A super weird...
 That's not super weird.
 Like I hugged my mom and it felt cool.
 Like that's great, you know?
 Nope.
 It's still not getting better.
 This is no...
 I mean, I guess like put that into Secret, nobody knows you and you'll be fine.
 All right, let's do it right now.
 I hugged my mother and it felt cool.
 I cannot wait to like this so privately.
 That's just no...
 But like, I mean, I guess it's worse when you put it in a secret
 because that sounds like a secret.
 There, done.
 I posted a secret.
 Wait, wait, refresh.
 All right, so it's app and you type in thoughts, you do this stuff.
 And all that's happening right now is that the first wave of adopters are in this app.
 So it's all people in the valley and tech journalists.
 And it is the cattiest place on earth.
 And it's super entertaining right now.
 I will say this app has sort of a terrible UI.
 It's not wonderful.
 And it is so annoying with push notifications.
 I just got one out.
 It told me my 40th friend had signed up.
 Thank you.
 That's not a fact I need to know.
 Certainly not a fact that should interrupt.
 I don't care if I know that information.
 It's not useful.
 There's no reason I need to know.
 It doesn't matter.
 Just shut up.
 It's actually way better if I don't know that only 40 of my friends are on it
 because I could guess which 40 and then narrow it way down to who's saying these terrible things
 about how they hate their mother and it felt really cool.
 I hugged my mom and it felt cool.
 That's a secret.
 A secret is teaching me that everyone else hates the same people and things as me.
 Which seems to be like Sam Biddle.
 That's how I know who uses this is everybody either loves or hates Sam Biddle.
 Maybe you should check your privilege instead of an app.
 So look, this is the thing that's gonna...
 I hate dudes who never do their legs chicken legs.
 Oh, I just got that.
 Clearly we have the same friends.
 I'm just assuming that was directed at Neil.
 I get an inexplicable craving for CES pizza.
 Yeah.
 I hate that person.
 This is a wave.
 There's gonna be like weird, bad, mainstream,
 like CNN, like the app all of Silicon Valley is secreting about.
 Right.
 That's gonna be a headline.
 Whispers is gonna be the big thing.
 But there's Secret and there's Whisper.
 Aren't they the same thing essentially?
 I don't know.
 I don't know.
 Wait, I thought it was the same thing.
 Look, I don't have any...
 If I did know, I wouldn't tell you.
 As best I can tell.
 Well, so I guess Whisper is...
 By the way, telling people you're posting a secret I think is probably not the smartest move.
 Yeah, that's fair.
 So I think Whisper's thing is it's...
 Whisper's thing is it's public but it's anonymous.
 Whisper is like Post Secret.
 You remember Post Secret?
 Yeah.
 Where it was like you would send in this postcard and nobody knew who it was from,
 but it was like everybody could see it.
 And Whisper is kind of the same way.
 Whereas I guess Secret is more like designed to be around your friends, which is something.
 But like, man, these whispers are super weird.
 This color is called cash.
 I'm using it.
 No, but this is...
 Grandma gave me Taco Bell hot sauce with my fish sticks.
 I was like WTF until I tried it.
 Incredible.
 Bitch knows her shit.
 Whisper.com.
 Okay, so here's the thing.
 People are starting to post like weird rumors on Secret and like the Wall Street Journal covered one today.
 Did it really?
 Yeah, it was about the Evernote one.
 They debunked that one.
 Oh, okay.
 Which is the saddest moment.
 The saddest debunk ever.
 Let's back up.
 So there was a secret that came out that was like Evernote is about to get acquired.
 And enough people thought it was real that the Wall Street Journal had to acknowledge the Secret.
 Well, the guy said he was like, I work at Evernote and we're about to be acquired was like the text of the thing.
 And yeah, and everybody like, and I guess enough people freaked out.
 The eight people on Secret freaked out.
 But Wall Street Journal's like had to acknowledge this.
 And that was it.
 It's just, there's...
 Valleybag wrote a story about it today.
 There's this return of, you know, the internet is the Wild West with like Snapchat and Secret and Whisper
 and all these apps that make you anonymous and untraceable.
 Although I did just give my entire contact list to these people.
 And we have been complaining about the NSA and metadata and how you can like definitely figure out who's who very fast.
 I mean, Secret knows who I am.
 Someone's going to break...
 Someone's going to hack Secret.
 It also, it keeps track of which ones you posted, what comments you did.
 Like it's going to dox everybody at some point.
 Yeah, I mean, and like, it's just, it's out there.
 And this is like probably way easier to pin to you than something like Snapchat.
 Because Snapchat at least theoretically disappears.
 So you have to like dig harder to find the data.
 Secret is all out there.
 It's just a matter of like, here's this and here's this and like, let's shove them together.
 And then thank God no one posts anything of value on this thing.
 Yeah, I think it's interesting.
 I think that this like rush to go play with an app called Secret is fun.
 But I was more conceptually, the value of secrets is eventually telling them to someone and like
 the danger of maybe somebody finding out.
 And this has none of that.
 Right.
 I mean, but I think there's, there's certainly something to the idea of like,
 there's something to the idea of like having to get something off your chest,
 but not having to not telling anybody who's dangerous.
 So you're going to tell your friends list an app called Secret.
 Yeah, that's perfect.
 So you have, you have passive aggressive issues with your friends.
 So you're going to post it anonymously on Secret hoping that they may or may not see it.
 Okay.
 Sounds great.
 I'll see the promise profitable.
 Also, like if you spend enough time, the control room hates the verge cast.
 You could definitely figure out like three quarters of these.
 Yeah.
 Just got doxxed.
 It was Billy Disney, everybody.
 I wonder who that was.
 Yeah.
 You see, you don't know.
 It's anonymous.
 I mean, I have a number of ideas.
 I mean, it's, it's a small, there's so many, so many people back there.
 Oh, this could be a reader just trolling us.
 Right.
 All right.
 Now I'm playing Flappy Bird.
 Just moving on to other apps that I'm now obsessed with, which is,
 no, you know what I'm obsessed with is threes.
 Have you played this game?
 I have not played this.
 It's crazy.
 It's like, I tried looking for in the app store.
 There's a lot of, I will say our commenters
 were very confused about why we covered threes.
 Really?
 Yeah.
 They're like, why, why is this on here?
 You must be getting, this must be an ad.
 Well, anytime we like anything, it's an ad.
 Right.
 That's just true.
 Everybody should know.
 Even when we hate it, we're fanboys for the other thing.
 Right.
 When we hate it, it's an ad for somebody else.
 Oh, I found it.
 Threes.
 Whether we say it or not.
 Well, when I hate things, I do my best work.
 That's true, actually.
 That's a fact.
 Oh, God, this game sucks.
 All right.
 I'm buying this.
 This is, I've played like four rounds of Flappy Bird.
 I got zero, zero, zero, and one, and then felt so good about getting one that I quit,
 and I have no desire to ever play again.
 I just got my high score during the show.
 Four.
 Nice.
 I got a four.
 Well done.
 I know.
 I'm very proud of you.
 I can't do it again.
 It's very exciting.
 No, this, I genuinely don't understand why a game like this is so popular.
 Flappy Bird or threes?
 Flappy Bird.
 Threes is like, I think threes is popular for the same reason that letterpress is popular.
 There are people who like these sort of slightly intelligent requiring games.
 Right.
 But like, this is basically just a worse, annoyingly difficult version of Jetpack Joyride.
 You think so?
 Like, what if Jetpack Joyride were way...
 It's funny because we did a story on this, and he's making $50,000 a day on this game.
 I know.
 He's making crazy amounts of money.
 Oh, I got two.
 Oh, shit.
 Oh, man.
 Excuse me.
 All right.
 I'm doing this.
 I'm doing this.
 It's very exciting.
 I've got my threes, but now I've got to play Flappy Bird.
 Here's why this game is popular, because most people go through the day and they accomplish
 nothing.
 They wake up and they don't do anything hard.
 At least I don't.
 Right.
 There's no challenge in their lives.
 Just float through life hoping to feel the thrill of victory.
 And then they don't ever again.
 This game makes you work for it for two seconds, and then you feel it.
 You're like, I got one.
 It's just unfair.
 You're like, I got one, everybody.
 I'm out of here.
 So I'm leaving this dead-end job.
 I got one.
 Like, spike the phone.
 Screw this.
 Sure.
 I'll buy it.
 I'm done using Excel today.
 I'm going to break my phone playing this game.
 What else do you have?
 No, I think my theory, so this is like, my roommate played, was unemployed for a while
 and played Dark Souls for like 300 hours.
 That is the hardest game.
 See, this is the thing.
 I think this is the thing with people.
 He, I asked him why he liked this game and he was like, I have no idea how to play it.
 It's so hard.
 All I do is die.
 And I was like, that, you didn't answer my question yet.
 This is DayZ, right?
 Yeah.
 So I was just going to say, it's the same kind of thing.
 We're like, I think there's this weird, we all have this weird, like, masochistic streak
 where we like to die 10,000 times and then the one time we don't die, even when we're
 not successful, like it's not a victory.
 It's like, it's a don't die.
 Yeah.
 We feel victory.
 This is not a new trend.
 I achieve victory over death every single day of my life.
 Wake up and not dead.
 This is great.
 Yeah.
 But this is interesting game for everyone.
 Like, Super Meat Boy was another one.
 Like, you die 3,000 times each level.
 I did play that game a lot.
 And they show you every death, the replay, once you accomplish it.
 Goals and Goblins back in the day.
 Like, people just love super hard games.
 That's just never going to go away.
 I will never understand that.
 I just don't get it.
 What games do you play?
 I play mostly...
 You play games you win right away?
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 You play draw...
 It takes more than five minutes to win.
 Draw a line in the game.
 But you cut the rope all day.
 Just all day.
 Oh, gosh.
 It's the opposite of draw a line.
 All right.
 But like, so, Daisy, anyone else actually played this game?
 No, I watched the live stream yesterday.
 That was remarkable.
 I mean, I will say that I'm...
 I have a theory.
 Okay.
 The theory is that there are two people inside of TC Sonic.
 Okay.
 One of them runs our news day to day.
 That's cool.
 All right.
 The other one of them is a murderer who uses Twitter.
 Question.
 Why are these different?
 I'm just confident that they're different.
 I don't think they are.
 I really think that's the same aggressive murderous drive to hit news.
 I'm very worried about it.
 That's true.
 But I watched the stream.
 I mean, they found Sean.
 Sean was being attacked.
 Did you catch the last 15 minutes?
 I did not catch the last 15 minutes.
 See, here's what happened.
 It was described to me.
 This is everything you can do in the game, and I'm sorry.
 This is really, really bad.
 I'm sorry.
 This is real.
 So they spent an hour and 15 minutes looking for Sean Hollister, Addy and TC.
 They found him.
 They had a friend who was a plant.
 He was supposed to kill Sean at first sight, but that didn't work out because they lost him.
 But they found him.
 They had Sean go on our roof and said there were people coming.
 Please be careful and keep a lookout.
 TC gets behind Sean, handcuffs him, force feeds him poison, puts a burlap sack over his head,
 at which point Sean falls off a ledge.
 Wow.
 But somehow...
 Survives.
 Survives and it gets worse.
 He survives, handcuffs come off.
 So TC and Addy are running down because they can't just jump off with him.
 And then Sean is nowhere to be found.
 And all of a sudden someone starts shooting at them, but missed.
 So TC got behind him and hacked him up with an axe.
 At which point Addy goes, well, we're almost done anyway, and shoots TC with a shotgun.
 TC is fairly alive, shoots Addy in the head, and they both bleed to death.
 This is the end of our stream yesterday.
 God, that's dark.
 It's dark.
 I mean, I always knew there was something between those two.
 That doesn't...
 No, no.
 That real...
 Stitious co-murder.
 That's how every great love story ends, I don't know.
 That was my wedding vows.
 One day we'll both shoot each other.
 It's like a Romeo and Juliet suggestion.
 Daisy is the most sadistic game though.
 One day we'll both hunt down Sean Hollister and shoot each other.
 Aww.
 We're holding hands.
 You're the best.
 Follocking in a field as it is.
 With a knife behind each...
 TC's kind of scary.
 Yes.
 Yes, yes, okay, we didn't explain it easy, but essentially it's a $40 game that is broken,
 that is not finished.
 You pay to just suffer through this game where you wake up with no food, you're hungry,
 you have no items, you have no clothes, and you somehow have to survive.
 If you die, you lose everything, you just do it again.
 There is no point.
 This is the most sadistic or masochistic game you can imagine.
 I mean, it seems...
 But the thing is that it's also a really bad game, right?
 And people have paid a lot of money for this.
 It sounds like it.
 It's alpha.
 It's not even finished.
 It's half an idea.
 And people are paying $30 just to be part of this broken idea as they build it in real time.
 And it's made a lot of money doing it.
 Yeah.
 It's kind of a great idea.
 Yeah, it's wonderful.
 Is it just because you can do anything?
 Kind of.
 I mean, it's like...
 What's the promise that you can do anything as soon as they finish building it?
 In a weird way, is the appeal the same as like Minecraft, where it's like the game doesn't
 exist yet and you just sort of make it as you go and figure it out?
 Minecraft was a more complete idea.
 And like the part of Minecraft where it was broken and this broken was free.
 And then once it got to a certain level, like, okay, now it's beta or whatever, well, you can pay.
 This was like, we have an idea.
 We're kind of building it.
 This is real time Kickstarter.
 Like, give us all your money.
 Yes.
 And this game's going to be awful, but maybe it'll be good.
 And you'll love it even while it's awesome.
 And everyone loves the faults.
 And like it gets fixed every now and then.
 Kind of does it.
 Things break more.
 Still, it's a success.
 No game like this has existed.
 They do now.
 Minecraft Rust is kind of like between Daisy and Minecraft.
 Yeah.
 Fair enough.
 Yeah.
 They both have zombie.
 You both die.
 There's zombie hordes in both.
 Yes.
 Yeah.
 I mean, that's what makes the game successful.
 Real open world.
 Yeah.
 The sense of adventure and freedom.
 And also murderers.
 I will say I've played Dead Rising a lot for exactly those reasons.
 I'm really bad at video games.
 I'm really bad at playing video games.
 I buy them all.
 Really?
 Just nonstop buy them all.
 And then they sit.
 They're just stacked up on a shelf.
 Most of them still in plastic.
 I have a lot of games and I find myself just playing a mix of FIFA and Grand Theft Auto.
 I'm replaying Grand Theft Auto for the 47th time right now.
 Wait, which one?
 Out of control 5.
 Yeah.
 I still have it.
 I can't stop playing that.
 It's outrageous.
 I own that one.
 I sit in my house.
 It's great.
 Own a lot of stuff.
 If you like my move, I beat it enough times now that the actual game isn't that fun.
 So I just go and I try to get five stars and then kill as many cops as possible until I die.
 Which is the whole point of Grand Theft Auto.
 It's the go to move.
 Yeah.
 There needs to be a mode in Grand Theft Auto where you're playing it,
 but while you're playing it, you're doing things that are productive.
 You're mining bitcoins.
 Yeah.
 Things that married people have to do.
 Because that's like, man, if I was playing Grand Theft Auto,
 but also shopping in the room and board catalog, that would really solve a lot of problems for me.
 So you take a rock, I want that.
 That's like, and then it just ships.
 That's what there is to it.
 It just adds it to your overstock.com account.
 Yeah, exactly.
 It's like, man, we really need new chairs for our dining table.
 Let me go into Grand Theft Auto.
 That would be the best.
 You can rob a crate and barrel and they're like, oh, you must want all this.
 Straight up.
 Like, the other day I was making storage units for our closet, doing husbandry stuff.
 It'd be great if I was doing that in Grand Theft Auto.
 And they just automatically make you a Pinterest board of all the things that you decide you want.
 Here's my thought.
 Let me just put it out there.
 Grand Theft Auto container store.
 I would play that game.
 Just make it happen.
 I would absolutely play that game.
 You just go and you're wandering around, and you're like, man, these shells look really great.
 And then a hooker shows up and you kill her.
 Let's just add a little interest to it.
 Clearly, killing hookers.
 Do you want to play DayZ as well?
 I'm sorry.
 I'm sorry, everyone.
 Most especially my wife and the creators of Grand Theft Auto, who I hope never, ever get to review.
 I was going to say they should be.
 They'd be friends.
 I don't think that'd be cool.
 Is there anything else?
 What else is there?
 Can we talk about Facebook Paper?
 Kinda.
 I guess.
 Yeah.
 We should talk about paper.
 We should talk about Sochi, because whatever is happening in Sochi is crazy.
 But let's talk about paper.
 Sure.
 Go ahead.
 You go.
 You talk about it.
 I'm just going to sit here.
 I mean, I'm curious what you guys think.
 I've been using it a lot.
 I download.
 Tell the people what it is.
 I don't use Facebook very much.
 So Facebook Paper is a new app.
 It just came out this week.
 And it's ostensibly a news reading app.
 So it's really beautiful.
 It's the best design I've ever seen from Facebook.
 And it's all for news.
 So the first stream you have is your Facebook feed.
 And then you can pick headlines.
 And they have a bunch of goofy names for all the different sections.
 But you basically build your own little newspaper.
 And they have a bunch of cool animations and a bunch of different ways of thinking about how
 you move in and out of an app that I really like.
 But it's a news app.
 Fundamentally, it's a news reading app.
 And one of the things that you can read is your Facebook.
 Not entirely real time either.
 It doesn't have the breaking news.
 It's like, oh, well, I don't know a lot about Home and Garden, but I can read this.
 It's grabbing from Facebook feeds.
 So it's relying on, I think they picked 40 publishers.
 Is that right?
 I forget.
 But they have 40 publishers, and they're like, here are their Facebook feeds, essentially.
 And that's slow by nature, A.
 It's getting there.
 It's incomplete.
 But it's also, I guess their idea is that they want people to break news on Facebook, I guess.
 But that doesn't happen.
 I feel like they should have some Facebook app.
 Right.
 I mean, so I used, I mean, I will say some of these animations are great.
 Yeah, I mean, it's a gorgeous app.
 It does this thing, like here's a virgin story.
 And when you can flip it open, it's like a brochure.
 Yeah, it's really nice.
 That's cool.
 I will say, I used Cover Feed.
 On my Android phones, I always have Facebook Home, which is insane.
 I think I'm the only person who likes it.
 But I only have it not for the launcher, but for the home screen.
 Because I love just looking at my phone.
 It's a good looking lock screen.
 Standing there and just blasting through photos.
 Did you unfriend like 80 people after installing it?
 Because that was my first impulse.
 Oh, I said 80 people.
 I muted them from the list.
 But so yeah, it's just that way.
 You don't have to deal with the confrontation of the unfriend.
 Yeah, I understand.
 It's rough.
 They'll come after you.
 It's weird when you discover old high school girlfriends.
 Which I'm just assuming is all of your Facebook friends.
 Why would you unfriend that?
 Don't you want to know what they're up to?
 I know what they're up to.
 They're raising adorable children.
 That's cool.
 That's great.
 Sure.
 It's great for your children.
 I mean, I'm happy that we spend our time together.
 Right.
 That's cool.
 Please don't be on my lock screen anymore.
 This is the thing.
 I think paper is a gorgeous app.
 I just can't use Facebook because I don't know what to do with it.
 I don't care about the feeds.
 Yeah, I don't really use Facebook anymore.
 I use Facebook for planning events.
 Yes.
 Accepting event invites.
 That's it.
 People who have birthday parties always seem to plan them on Facebook.
 Yeah, because that's where the people are.
 Right.
 That's where you use Facebook Messenger a lot.
 I think of my birthday party every year for me.
 My birthday party is an opportunity to talk to my high school girlfriends
 and invite them to my birthday party.
 Bring your children, I said.
 So it's just you and 100 ex-girlfriends in a room together.
 That's the best.
 I like it.
 Yeah.
 Hey, how's it going?
 Speaking of reasons to apologize to your wife.
 Another year older.
 Yeah.
 Hey, didn't work out.
 Want to see my secrets?
 I'm going to sit here and use this app.
 You guys can watch.
 No, I think a lot of people use Facebook.
 And I think paper, I think Facebook, the Facebook app on a phone is so,
 it's weird because this app is complicated in a wildly different way.
 Yeah.
 It's complicated in like a UI way, but much more simplified in the sense that
 you're just like blasting through Facebook one screen at a time.
 Right.
 And I think that's really cool.
 I think that's really interesting.
 Yeah.
 The regular Facebook app is so, it's simpler in like idea.
 You open it up and like Facebook is there and you scroll.
 Well, and it's so ingrained at this point.
 Like people know how to use Facebook that way.
 People have been using Facebook that way for a long time now.
 And this is like a totally different way of thinking about Facebook.
 But the thing that I'm, the thing that I have to keep reminding myself of,
 and I keep asking people and people seem to really like this app,
 is that I think it like for people like us, it makes no sense.
 Like I spend all of my time reading the news and by the time I get to paper,
 it's like, oh, I've seen every story in here.
 At least for techies.
 But most people, it's like, it's just a great, like there's no way,
 there's no better looking way I've ever seen to like get a bunch of news in
 three minutes, like waiting in line somewhere.
 Right.
 And that's what most people want.
 That's what Facebook mostly is for, I think, is these sort of just check-ins.
 And it used to be with people and now it's with news.
 And I think that's like, Facebook sees itself that way, I think.
 Where it's like your friend group is now your access to all this other stuff.
 So I have this theory about Facebook.
 Okay.
 And maybe it's right and maybe it's wrong, but here's my theory about Facebook.
 When Facebook started off as about people,
 when it was a bunch of like 20 something people partying all the time,
 and that was really exciting.
 Right.
 So Facebook could just be about people and that would power growth forever.
 Sure.
 Right.
 Because it's a bunch of young people.
 I mean, it worked.
 Right.
 They got a billion people that way.
 Right.
 Spring break on Facebook was a phenomenon that I experienced for like four years.
 It was the best.
 With your high school girlfriend.
 With all of them.
 All 100 of them at once.
 Right.
 It was really weird.
 We did a lot of keg stands and then posted about them on Facebook.
 Right.
 Now Facebook's audience is much, much older and the things they are doing are no longer
 as inherently exciting or naked.
 And that's real.
 And I think now Facebook has to find other things to show people because the story,
 like old people complaining is not exciting.
 Like Grand Theft Auto Container Store is like a real phenomenon in my life.
 And I don't want to talk about it on Facebook.
 So you go from like naked keg stands to like,
 ow my feet hurt and I'm at the container store.
 Yeah, exactly.
 That's not nearly as interesting.
 Yeah.
 I'm friends with a bunch of like people, like my parents' friends on Facebook.
 They want to be friends with me and like, they're like, these kids today.
 I'm like, why am I looking at Facebook?
 And I think Facebook has to shift what it's showing people from just what was inherently
 exciting and like titillating to other stuff.
 Well, so is this, I mean, this is sort of the other side of that same problem that
 Facebook is.
 Everybody says about Facebook, which is that young people don't use Facebook.
 They're not using it.
 They're gone.
 So that content, that constant flow of like wild bad ideas, which is exciting and like
 keeps things exciting is gone.
 So you're saying instead of Facebook, like trying to get teens back, they're just owning
 that teens don't use Facebook anymore.
 I hate teens.
 I hate saying that for, not teens, teens, you're cool.
 I like you.
 The, you know, I'll put that on secret.
 I love teens.
 They're cool.
 But the...
 I completely lost my train of thought here.
 But what they're saying is like, that they're just not, they just don't care anymore.
 I'm inventing secret doxes.
 Another thing?
 Like secret RLRTs.
 I think people might have already done that by now.
 This is cool.
 Dude, this is just, this is great.
 Yeah.
 Teens.
 Yeah, it's like how do you...
 No, but I think if Facebook is smart or this, I don't know if it's smart or not, but this
 seems like an admission to me from Facebook being like, hey, turns out...
 By the way, my phone just auto corrected teens to trends with a Z.
 That's perfect.
 I'm doing something wrong.
 We have a coworker who somehow his girlfriend changed,
 ha ha ha, to auto correct to, I like to poop.
 So every now and then I'll get a text, I like to poop.
 It's like, that's nice.
 This is the worst.
 We should probably end this first cast.
 Yes.
 I mean, look, I think paper is really interesting.
 I think Facebook trying to re-decide what it is, make new decisions about how it exists
 become...
 And they're turning into the new AOL, right?
 They're turning into the new...
 God, that's a scary thought.
 Default destination for a million people on the internet.
 I've always said, I think Facebook for a lot of people is the internet.
 Yeah, right.
 Facebook and Google, you can make a decision, like which one of these things is the internet
 for people.
 I think Google and the whole Google Plus thing was the fear that Facebook would become the
 internet for people.
 I think that's where our parents are gonna live in the internet.
 Well, but isn't the...
 I think for a whole new generation of people, it is things like Snapchat and Whisperer and
 all these other social networks that come and go in a heartbeat because you don't want
 to preserve this stuff.
 Right.
 The lesson of Facebook has been learned.
 But also, is there a desire for that single unified avatar?
 You control your identity somewhere.
 That's what I think Facebook did that nobody gets that Facebook did.
 I think what Facebook did is build this friend group.
 Facebook's been around for 10 years.
 They just celebrated their 10th anniversary with a bunch of weird stuff.
 But the thing they've done in those 10 years more than build Facebook.com is they've...
 All of my friends are on Facebook.
 All of them.
 Every single one.
 And except for Sam Thonis, who is not on Facebook because he's the worst.
 No, there's a bunch of people here who are on Facebook.
 I hate all of them.
 None of them are my friends.
 But no, but what they've done is now...
 Facebook now has this crazy leverage with that group to build that into anything.
 And if they're like... They did Messenger and they were like, hey, we built an IM app.
 And you know what it already includes?
 Is all of your friends.
 That's a huge victory.
 And their real names and their pictures so you don't...
 Right.
 And they can do that in...
 And I think that's a huge part of Instagram is building that back into Facebook where
 they're now connected that way is huge.
 Because I don't use Facebook for blogging, but I will use it for authenticators because...
 Yeah, absolutely.
...great, fun, easier than putting a password in.
 Really?
 Yeah.
 No.
 I don't want to connect to Google.
 I have real shit on Google.
 Facebook, I have nothing.
 What's your real...
 I mean, it's like they're not going to get my Gmail, right?
 No.
 But like if I...
 The last thing I want any app to do is post for me on my behalf on Facebook and they all
 want to do it.
 No, you see...
 No, see, I don't...
 You said privacy to only you.
 That's like a...
 And then they don't do it.
 Yeah, I don't think they... I have yet to have an app do that in a long time.
 Same.
 Everyone... Actually, that's not true.
 I had one, I can't remember what it was.
 I had one do it and I just instantly was like, this is a terrible app and never use it again.
 So good job that app.
 Interesting.
 But I think... I agree.
 And I use... What was it?
 Rdio.
 And signing into Rdio with Facebook, it like instantly found all of my friends and was
 recommending them based on people that are on Facebook.
 And that's... Nobody else has that and compete with Facebook along that line.
 So as long as Facebook has that and nobody else does, they have this huge ingrained advantage
 anywhere they want to go.
 Right.
 And they can go a million different places and they seem committed to doing that.
 And like with design, like what they had in paper, if they apply that to other things,
 I think it's super interesting.
 Here's the problem.
 Paper is only in iOS.
 They left 50% of the markets, not theirs.
 Right.
 And they have to figure that.
 I mean, like, you know, they'll get there.
 But at least they've proven like there's the chops are there and they're willing to think
 about it in different ways.
 Right.
 And the people who built it are like all ex Apple employees, right?
 Yeah.
 So that's, I mean, a bunch... So a lot of interesting ideas, but I think Facebook has to prove to
 a next generation of people...
 Why they should use Facebook.
 Why they should use Facebook.
 Yeah.
 And why having that network behind them is interesting and useful.
 Right.
 And I think they're doing a fine job of it, but I think that piece of Facebook where
 they were going to become the default communication network for everybody is gone.
 Yeah. Oh, I agree.
 Because I just don't use Facebook to communicate with people.
 I mean, people do want to use Facebook with me.
 I'm like, you're going to say something weird.
 That's like literally what I think.
 It's like someone's going to ask me for something or say something weird or ask me for something
 weird.
 Fair enough.
 I use Facebook Messenger all the time.
 I love it.
 What?
 It's so good.
 The app on iOS is fantastic.
 It's everywhere.
 And it's like Hangouts on iOS is just a disastrous piece of a disaster.
 It's awful.
 Right.
 And I hate it.
 Why is Messenger...
 And Facebook Messenger is great.
 Really?
 Yeah.
 It's real weird.
 It's great.
 It's super fast.
 It has the stickers.
 Those are fun.
 No, no.
 It's great.
 No, stickers are awful.
 But it's basically it's like a fun, easy app that all my friends already use.
 It's like if all my friends use WhatsApp, I'd rather use that, but they don't.
 And they all use Facebook.
 So you're saying you're friends with olds.
 Mm-hmm.
 Friends with olds.
 It's all your ex-girlfriends and your parents' friends.
 That's...
 Those are my Facebook friends.
 Yeah.
 I just scraped your Facebook one day and friended all of them.
 You can have them.
 Have fun.
 Your ex-girlfriends.
 So should we talk about Sochi?
 Wow.
 I mean, there's some weird stuff.
 Briefly.
 There's a media story here.
 That's really what this is for me right now.
 So as far...
 So Winter Olympics are happening in Sochi, Russia.
 Starting like tomorrow or something.
 Something like that.
 Is it soon?
 Yeah.
 I think it's soon.
 And all the usual Olympic stories are there.
 NBC is going to tape delay it, which is weird.
 But they're committed to doing it.
 But then there's this weird second class of strange stories about Russia.
 So the first one, which I thought was interesting, is that Sochi is actually a beach town.
 Yeah.
 For most of the year.
 Somebody pointed out to me that it's the same distance from the equator as Toronto.
 But I don't think of Toronto as a beach town.
 Sochi is definitely a beach town.
 Yeah, wait.
 Was that supposed to prove that it's a beach town?
 I have no idea.
 No, they were like, but it's...
 Toronto's cold.
 And I was like, yeah, but it's like 45 degrees.
 Toronto's not near an ocean.
 Yeah, whatever.
 Whatever.
 There's like a lake over there or something.
 Darn it.
 Lake Canada.
 You know?
 It's good.
 Lake Canada.
 Yeah, the Canadian lake system.
 I've been there.
 It's great.
 It's nice.
 Very clean.
 I don't know.
 It's just super polite lakes.
 Canada.
 They're all starting a band together.
 Yeah, so anyway, so there are mountains about an hour away.
 That's where they're actually holding most of the Winter Olympic stuff.
 But all sorts of other crazy stuff is happening.
 Like somebody saying, say, Sean White pulled out of the slope style snowboard event because
 the snow isn't ready.
 The tracks aren't ready.
 And then journalists are getting the social right now.
 Well, he hurt himself practicing because they hadn't finished setting it up and it wasn't
 ready.
 So he busted his knee or something.
 Getting ready.
 So there's that.
 And then there's all these journalists are descending there.
 And they're tweeting pictures of disaster infrastructure.
 The double toilet, man.
 The double toilet.
 The double toilet is the greatest cultural thing.
 There's rubble in hotel lobbies.
 That is insane.
 And so the interesting piece here is that NBC will presumably not report on this because
 their interest is in presenting the Olympics as this happy.
 Right, they're supposed to be a spectacle.
 But wait, at the same time though, NBC is the one that did this hacking story.
 We'll get to that in a second.
 But I don't think they're censoring themselves for that reason.
 So we'll see.
 But it just seems like every Olympics is a nightmare of corruption and stuff.
 Oh, absolutely.
 Yes.
 And then this one is in particular it's being exposed because of social media.
 That's what's happening.
 That and also the exorbitant stuff.
 It's like $51 billion is the estimated quote for all this.
 And the fact it's not ready.
 Well, but it's also the conditions seem uniquely awful for the wrong people.
 It's always corruption.
 There's always issues.
 But those are always behind the scenes.
 But when you walk in and see a sign that says don't drink the water or don't put the water
 on your face, it'll kill you.
 Yes.
 It's like that's a lot more straight in your face literally than it normally is.
 And so I think it's like was it South Africa the last one?
 Where's the last Olympics?
 I confuse the Olympics and the World Cup.
 Wait, the last Olympics.
 Where's the last Summer Olympics?
 Everywhere.
 It was two years ago.
 It was London.
 Yeah.
 So there's like I'm sure there was all kinds of stuff going on in London.
 But like ultimately you're in London, which is like a nice city with nice amenities.
 And so nobody really notices unless they look for it.
 We covered the hell out of that one because we have all kinds of people in London.
 Right.
 And so I just think in this case, like it's-
 I think Aaron was running some sort of Airbnb scam the whole time.
 It's entirely possible.
 Yeah.
 He's like, well, look, I can make like millions in this thing.
 So whatever.
 Yeah.
 I mean, they keep like I remember seeing today that like links for everything from like
 South by Southwest in Austin to like Sochi.
 And it's like if you live in a place where lots of people go occasionally, you just oops,
 you're rich.
 Right.
 Like here's my house for 50,000 dollars a night.
 Yeah.
 Well, and that's somebody some like-
 And that's why I've been buying houses in weird places.
 Just hoping.
 Waiting.
 Topeka, Kansas.
 And now you're pitching the Olympic Committee to try and-
 Please.
 Like, do you want to come to Des Moines for the Olympics?
 Yeah.
 We're seeing Wisconsin.
 Yeah.
 It's going to be great, guys.
 My parents have a nice pad.
 That'll be great.
 No.
 So I think we're actually like I think we're we're going to pay attention to the Olympics
 for any number of reasons.
 We always do.
 But this story in particular, where there's the main narrative of the Olympics.
 Yeah.
 And then there's a sub narrative of people using back channels to tell you what's really
 happening and then on top of it, there's like crazy Russian surveillance.
 So the director of the Sochi Olympics, they straight up was like, the hotel rooms are
 fine.
 People are just trashing them.
 Our surveillance cameras have been watching the showers and they're just pointing the
 shower heads at the wall.
 And the follow up question was like, excuse me, the surveillance cameras in the bathrooms?
 He was like, I'll get back to you.
 And I walked away.
 Now he's denying that such a thing was ever said to the Wall Street Journal.
 Wow.
 That'll go well.
 Yeah.
 So there's just there's just a deep level of weirdness there.
 And I think the danger is treating it like like Russia is some weird.
 I mean, it's obviously different country, but some weird other place.
 Sure.
 That's always the danger.
 But the reality is there is the official story and there's like the real story.
 Yeah.
 And I think this one in particular, we're going to see a very different real story emerge
 from what the main narrative of the Olympics.
 I mean, I think one of the stories that never really gets told, but it's true no matter
 where you have the Olympics, but especially when it's in a place like this that just doesn't
 seem to have been ready at all for a winter Olympics is the just the sheer level of like
 infrastructure and overhaul you have to do to make an Olympics happen.
 Like the New York Times ran this piece the other day.
 I was showing you this where they were they sort of superimposed some of the events on
 New York City.
 Oh, yeah.
 So what if the bobsled run were in Times Square and it was like 40 blocks long and the downhill
 ski slope was twice the size of Central Park.
 It was wild.
 But I think what nobody really talks about is what was the number you said like $51 billion.
 $51 billion.
 Like to get the Olympics is an unbelievable undertaking and there are people are tweeting
 pictures of buildings that aren't finished.
 They kicked people out of their houses and then half finished a building that was supposed
 to be used for the Olympics.
 Yeah.
 And I think it's actually going to be really important to tell that story.
 And I think you're right that it's really easy to sort of treat it as like this other
 third world place.
 But I think it's real and it's told in bits and pieces in every Olympics.
 And these pictures that are out are crazy.
 You know, S-Cnation has been collecting a lot of them.
 The pictures that are out are nuts.
 Yeah.
 Just nuts.
 Yeah.
 And there's a story that like there's a wild dog problem.
 So the government's just killing dogs ahead of the Olympics.
 The dog murder squad.
 It's third party.
 It's not government.
 They just hired a company that does this.
 The dog murder squad.
 Which also begs the question, why do you already exist?
 Yeah.
 Well, if you live in a town.
 Again, opportunity just waiting.
 Yeah.
 Just you're like, you know what?
 It's a small business.
 Let's get those Olympics guys.
 I'm going to clean up and then rent out my house.
 Yeah.
 And that was the rich cast.
 Yeah.
 I don't know what else to do.
 Come back to Flappy Bird.
 Screw this.
 I mean, I'm going to go upstairs and play Flappy Bird.
 What are you going to do?
 Why would I miss anything?
 I don't think so.
 Can we?
 Here's where I want to end.
 It's true.
 And this is important.
 I think we should end on this.
 I thought you were about to button your jacket.
 I was like, it's about to get serious here.
 I'm just going to leave here.
 I would like to end on iced tea talking about the government.
 So I'm going to say goodbye.
 You have to set this up a little bit.
 No.
 No?
 I refuse.
 OK.
 So that was the Vergecast for whatever week this was.
 It's the week of February.
 The week of February 3.
 February the 3.
 The Vergecast.
 It happened to you at this time.
 And you should tell a professional.
 That was our Vergecast.
 Seed help.
 Thank you.
 Thank you for being with us.
 You can leave a comment on the post.
 You can yell at us on Twitter.
 I'm Reckless.
 I'm Pierce David.
 I'm Pierce David.
 I'm Oner Roscoe.
 Just a bad collection of Twitter handles.
 Yeah, we're so sorry.
 There's probably a phone number you can call.
 You can just talk to your parents.
 Or your local counselor.
 Just whatever you want to do.
 Or you can rent Nealai's house on Airbnb.
 Yeah.
 Find him out in Wisconsin.
 In Wisconsin.
 Please, you can hold the Olympics at my parents' house.
 They'll teach you how to pronounce my name
 and any other collection of Indian names that you want.
 And that was it.
 And now, Ice-T, we'll talk about Dungeons and Dragons.
 I'm not.
 No.
 There are going to be some other ones.
 I read an audio book.
 On Audible?
 Yeah.
 Yeah, on our sponsor.
 On Audible.
 Yeah, that's hot.
 Audible.com.
 That's hot.
 And I went to their offices and they said,
 Ice, we want you to read this book.
 OK, they didn't tell me that this was a motherfucking Dungeons
 and Dragons book, OK?
 Dungeons and Dragons is some of the most crazy, deep, deep, deep
 nerd shit ever invented.
 So every word you're saying is pretty much made up.
 Motherfuckers talk like Yoda.
 You know, outside I go into the sun thereof and out.
 What the fuck?
 How do you read this shit?
 To actually verbally say these words is weird.
 Son, son, it took me 3 and 1 half hours to read 25 pages.
 3 and 1 half hours.
 I'm only reading the short story.
 It's like 45 pages.
 I have to do it in two days.
 I walked in there like, oh, yeah, 40 pages, man.
 We got this, man.
 I got three hours.
 Huh.
 Huh.
 Two days.
 I needed breaks.
 I needed water.
 The guy was in the other room coaching me.
 Don't worry, Ice.
 You can make it.
 You're doing really good.
 You're doing really good.
 He was saying, yo, people have broken down
 tried to read that stuff.
 When this thing comes out, I'll tell y'all when it comes out.
 And it'll be a treat just to watch me with my South Central
 educated ass trying to read some Dungeons and Dragons shit.
 It's talking about good talking about.
 I mean, oh, my God.
 Talking about what we talking about Pegasus and Pegasi
 and that's horses with wings banking to the left.
 This mother fucker got a sword that talks to him and shit.
 It's a story based on the Dungeons and Dragons type thing.
 The series.
 Yeah, the series.
 Yeah, mother fuckers live in places that don't exist.
 And it comes with a map.
 My God.
 I told my manager, I said, don't ever have me trying to.
 Book you for no shit like that no more.
 This shit is crazy.
 You know, let me read some porno or something, a sex book.
 It's easier.
 Yeah, I know about that.