 and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of December 16th, 2013. I'm Josh Dupolsky. I'm Dieter Bohn. I'm Ross Miller. And we are a Motley Crue. A little bit. We are a Motley Crue. We are listening to Motley Crue as well. Yeah. One of my favorite bands. These things are amazing. I was listening to Megadeth yesterday. Were you? True story. Countdown to extinction? Sweating bullets. Okay. Yeah. How was it? Are you a Megadeth fan? I was. Really? Yeah. Are you getting back into it? It was in my head and I listened to it and that's that. How did Megadeth end up in your head? I don't know. Sweating bullets was in my head and I watched the video and the video is terrible. Yeah. What year is that from? Is that his name? Yeah. Yeah. He just, he looks like such a little tiny man and the anger that I visualize in my head listening to it as a 13 year old compared to what he actually looks like. Yeah. Doesn't fit at all. You should read his book. Really? Yeah. He's got a guy called Tell All. I can't think of the name of it now. Laura read it and apparently it's hilarious. Is this like the usual 80s rock star Tell All? Kind of, yeah. And he talks about, he talks about like wearing like the sneakers that he wore and how like ahead of the curve, like in fashion he was. And anyhow, it's, it's a, you're going to think you're going to come up with, you're going to get the title. Is it Mustaine, a heavy metal memoir? I believe so. Who else would, who else would produce that document? Anyhow, this is the Vergecast where we discuss the week in Megadeth news and Dave Mustaine happenings. And it's actually like a really slow week in Vergecast style news. Yeah, because everybody is, is beginning to retire for the holidays. We're about to, we're about to retire to a holiday party. A Vox media, not going to tell you where or when it's happening, but I can tell you it is happening this evening. Except you just said after this. So I just told you after this. And so anyhow, everybody's like looking really dapper. Except I, I don't know, I forgot that there was a party and, and there was like in suits. I'm like, why is everybody wearing suits? And then I realized. We had a long discussion, but whether or not we should all wear ties to this. I said no. I see you guys said no to the tie discussion. I'm debating. I could get a tie going here. That would be enough, I think. As long as nobody looked at me from below the waist. Cause you're not wearing pants. No, I have pants on. Okay. But anyhow, so, so what are the, what are the stories of the week? I mean, obviously, should we talk about the elephant in the room? This elephant? Well, I don't know. I don't know. We got to talk about this. Yeah. Yeah. So this is the Mac, the Mac, this is the Mac Pro. Yes. Have you seen this thing? Have you heard about it? It's the Mac Pro. Can you give it to me? This is where we drop the Mac. It's 11 pounds by the way. This is where we drop the Mac Pro. You don't really have the reach for it, do you? Yeah. Yeah. Let's just bring it over here. Oh really? No, no. Don't, don't slide it onto this ad. Okay. You can hold it like a GameCube. Oh, it's warm. Oh, it's probably just on. Yeah. Right. It is actually surprisingly heavy. And you know, it's a beautiful looking, I mean it does look kind of like a humidifier. You know what I mean? It does look like something. Everybody's going about with trash can. Trash can or vacuum or a humidifier. And can you see, here's the back panel here. You got some, some, some connectors, some ports there, some connections. It's you know, it's beautiful. It's wonderful. We should open it up. It's the nicest looking, I don't know how, how do you open it? So there's just one button right there. Set it down. Uh huh. Like that. There's a switch. This one here? Yeah. Okay. Slide that to unlock and then it makes a shoo noise. Just lift up the top. I wouldn't say it made that shoo noise. Here it is. Here's some, the, where the RAM, wait, actually these are, what are these? Is this RAM? RAMs must be, I sound like an idiot. What? Move my glass? Sure. Of course I will. So the RAM's over here. Wait, what is this? Are these the SSDs? Yes, the RAM. Oh, okay. That's what those are I think. So those are, no, that's RAM. It's on both sides. Yeah. Okay. Or did I just go, did I go 360 degrees? The worst part is we don't know if you're referencing the thing that points, that you're pointing at the camera or us or what. No, it doesn't matter. There's pieces arranged in a triangle. We're stopping here. Anyhow, let's just say it's not very upgradable. No. This is it. But the idea for this is that it's upgradable externally. The way Apple's thinking about this is that they've created these amazing, super fast connectors, like Thunderbolt. Is this Thunderbolt 2? Do I just push this down? Is it aligned? Yes. I mean, maybe. The ports? Yeah, I mean, sort of. Okay. This is where I break the Mac Pro on live internet. That would be great. I mean, it's not, should I? What could possibly go wrong? It is Thunderbolt 2. Is it on? Maybe it's just on now. It's not plugged in. No, it's, I mean, is it, it's on. I didn't realize it. I was like trying to figure out what was going on. I was like trying to push it down further. I definitely want to be doing this as much as possible. That's Giffable. Anyhow, it's a beautiful, beautiful piece of machinery. And a fingerprint magnet. Well, yeah, but you don't touch your desktop. Yeah, but like you still get dust all over. You don't see it. Don't tell me what to do. Hey, you don't touch your desktop. No, you know, you're not going to be. That's how you go blind. You're not going to be laying hands on it. You know, you put it down, you plug it in and then you go. Yeah. You, you, you attack new vistas of entertainment and, and creativity and whatever else this lets you attack. That's all I have to say. So anyhow, we're going to have a review of this soon. And there's already a hands on some first impressions. We have, yeah, we have some first impressions of it up and some hands on photos and you can be sure I'm, I was actually talking about this with our team, but you know, I can't think of a better group of people to be road testing this than everybody here in the studio. And so, so our editors and our everybody on the video team at Fox and verge are going to put this through its paces. We were, I've already seen a bunch of the verge video people just kind of come up and put their projects on it and see how fast like they'll export and like, yeah, it's so far, it's really impressive. Is it really? Yeah. Oh boy. Oh boy. I don't have any need for, I don't have any need for this at all, but like as, as usual with a new product, I want it for no reason. And I don't think I'm going to buy one because the desktop computer just seems like completely insane to me. Well, here's the thing that kills me about this is that there is no Apple first party four case display to really show off like how pretty the output is. Like they gave us what they're selling on the online stores, a sharp. Well, they probably didn't want to an Apple store. Oh, and the online store. Yeah. Well, they probably didn't want, they probably didn't want to, you know, they didn't want to, they needed time to focus on their TV. They probably didn't want to put out a display that's separate from the Apple television, which is obviously coming very, very, I mean, it's probably like, we'd probably at this point they're probably just like, let's just do it. So the gene monster will stop talking about it. Right? They're like, like, you know what, at this point it just get it out there. Who cares if people buy it or not? We're Apple, we mint money. So anyhow, so, so this is exciting ish. I don't get that excited about desktop computers. I will openly admit, I will say this is very pretty. I do appreciate how slick this design is and how small it is for all it that it actually does. Yeah. It is small. It is small. Nowhere to put a DVD. That's for a blu-ray. It'd be cool if this was a slot. It feels like this could have been an actual, like if you look at it, if you look at this, I mean, it really does seem like they could have put a, there, hold on, let me get a little bit of the glare. Oh, nice. That would have been cool. They should have like exposed. You see the disc smidgen? Yeah. I definitely almost just dropped this. It's really heavy. I mean, not surprisingly, but it's very heavy. So this thing, this laptop, yes, the MacBook Air, right? Everybody, everybody was copying it. Changed everything. Do you think that other people are going to be copying this? I think HP is definitely going to copy it immediately. Yeah. I think people are going to copy it because that's what people do. You know, they copy, they copy everything. I would be very surprised if somebody, somebody didn't copy it. To be fair, like for desktops, this is a novel, but obviously we've, when we, this first came out, everyone said this is the Braun KF-20 coffee machine. This is not a unique industrial design. Well, this is clearly a homage to the Braun, the Dieter Rams designed Braun coffee machine. I would be very surprised. And I don't remember if there is a story that Steve Jobs and Johnny Ive bonded over this coffee machine. I don't know if it's the KF-20 or a different model. Can you, can somebody do a quick search and tell me that, that what, what it is I'm thinking of? Maybe they don't even, maybe the model number was not even mentioned. I want to say it was the KF-20. Does anybody know? I'm looking for something that isn't sourced out. If you know, if you're out there in cyberspace. Johnny Ive's secret coffee ritual. And you know, really? Really? And you know what I'm talking about. Feel free to tweet, feel free to tweet, just tweet towards us at, at Verge. Yeah. I'll keep an eye out for that. Or Josh Witzepolsky is fine as well. Remember when we- Or you can do Backlawn or Onorosco. I'm not going to name the site, but do you remember in the early two thousands when we defeated pop-up ads? Remember when that happened? Uh, when like pop-up ads were a thing and then we figured out, like we got it to stop. What do you mean pop-up ads? Like we open up like a new browser window and pop up and you'd have an ad in it. Every site does that. They do it now again. Yeah. They're not, but they just do it inside the site. Right. There was a time, there was a brief period from like, I don't know, 2008 to 2010 where like pop-up ads were gone and we regressed. There's a golden era. This site, which I will not name. I know what site you're looking at right now. Yes. I could name them. I'm not going to. Okay. So anyhow, MacPro, that's a story. There's nothing to really say about it right now because we're obviously in testing mode. We're not testing it right this second, but we will be in testing mode for the foreseeable future to deliver a review to you, the reader and or viewer. What else is in the news? God, I'm tired. What else is in the news? You want to just go ahead and talk about the Google robot stuff? Yeah. I have a question on that. Go ahead. No, you go ahead. No, you lead it. So Google bought Boston Dynamics, which makes the scariest freaking robots that you have ever seen. Yeah. We actually have a bunch of that footage too. Oh God, oh God, make it stop. Yeah. I mean, this is like, can you imagine anything more terrifying running towards you or even away from you? Like what is this thing supposed to be? I mean, is this designed to give people heart attacks? Is that the point of this robot? It's just awful. And also wonderful. Do we have any other Boston Dynamics? We have a couple. By the way, 17 miles, 18 miles an hour. Do you know how fast that is? It actually goes up to 28. Oh my God. So 25.7 inches is Usain Bolt's record. So this thing will outrun. Really? Yeah, but it has to be stabilized with that arm. True. Right. Oh my God. So if we can show a wild cat. I actually want to hear the audio for this because it's the scariest buzzing sound ever. Can we see the wild cat? Hold on. Oh my God. Poor guy. I'm going to show you a little bit of this thing right here. Oh God. Here it comes. Oh God. Oh God. When it stabilizes itself and then, oh, now I'm ready. Oh yeah. So now it just goes. Oh God. Oh my God, it looks happy. It has a personality that's definitely killer. Wait, I think he's going in the wrong direction. Is that the direction he is? Maybe he's backing up. But here's the thing, it looks like an actual animal there. Yeah. Uncanny. That is so uncanny. We've added some robots to our menagerie. Yeah. Oh my God. This reminds me of that robot at the end of Fahrenheit 451 that's chasing down everybody. Hey, spoiler alert. This makes me really sad. Can I just say this makes me sad? Like I feel like it's an animal, like a kind of an injured animal because it's moving so weirdly. Like, I don't know. I feel like I'm going to start crying. I feel bad for that robot. Why is that? Until it starts pointing like needles at me. I think. Yeah. Wait, so I think this is the part where like it just, it falls and puts itself back up. Oh no. Oh no. Don't fall. You can do it little camp. Don't fall buddy. Nope, nope. We're just getting slow motion. Okay, great. What else do we have? The last. So, well, no, but hang on. So Andy Rubin, he left Android. He's going to make actual robots now. Yes. They bought Boston Dynamics. They bought a bunch of other companies. Oh. What are they building? Like Adrian wrote a great report for us and talked to a bunch of people and like nobody's really sure. Right. The one thing I will say is there's a, there's a really interesting parallel. Make it stop. Metal Gear. Oh my God. Make it stop please. This is the worst. So rude. Ah, why'd he kick the guy? Cause he's showing how he stabilizes himself. Wait, wait. Which is insane and looks like a real animal. Don't kick that. It will kick back. Wow. Yeah. So, so, but there's a parallel between what Google did with driverless cars and what's happening here. Google starts funding a whole bunch of stuff, whole bunch of companies do DARPA challenges and making, you know, war machines or whatever. And then it becomes privatized at Google. They did it with driverless cars and now they're doing it again with robots. You think Google is just trying to stop the government from developing crazy technology? I don't know. I don't think that's the case. I don't think so. I don't know if I trust Google with it. I think, I think my guess would be they don't know what they're making yet. I mean, they must have some ideas. Okay. Let's think of things that Google could make with robots. Well, I mean, what type of things that they could use? Sorry. How would they commercialize it? I'm sorry. The things they would use robots for is what I mean. What is something that Google might do with a robot? Google Maps Street View. Like where can a human not go? Okay. Yeah. Robots walking around getting street view. Okay. That seems like they deploy some robots for that. How about somebody at the California Polytech said social robots that can help you inside your house. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's great. Haley Joel Osmond. I think we're thinking, or we're thinking maybe robots for the elderly or just people who are disabled in some way. That's a good, might be a good use of the robots. You know, I assume in factories and assembly lines there might be some reason to have more, more autonomous robot. Why is Google in that game? Maybe Google wants to make things in a factory. Yeah. Like phones. There you go. Like more, more robots. Maybe they want to make more robots. Robots that make robots. Yeah, exactly. What are some other things Google might do with a robot? What kind of businesses is Google in? Advertising. Sex bots. No, they're not in that business. Well, we don't know what any room is doing. He's been pulled up for a long time. Oh geez. Oh boy. Oh no. Here we go again. Oh, this is one too? Oh my God. Like, hey, we made a huge cockroach. How do you feel about this? So Google is going to space. This is like a baby, it's like a baby robot crawling. Now mark my words, this is the kind of thing that will street view map the moon after Google like buys a rocket company. Well that's, okay, there you go. Maybe they're going to, maybe they want to have a space explorer robots. Maybe they want to send robots into space. But why? What does Google get out of it? Is that a business for them? What is Google? I mean, what about robots that walk around with ads on them? Robots that have those boards that stand outside of businesses with the boards like two for one and hand out flyers. Yeah. I mean, it's an advertising. The guy that holds the subway sign is going to lose his job. It's an ad robot. Okay. All of Google's weird crap that they do, loon and I don't know. Everything makes sense to me is like, oh, well yeah, you care about internet except driverless cars. I'm not really clear on why other than maybe it's a huge investment opportunity and this. Yeah. I mean, maybe the, maybe the next smartphone is a helper robot. I think, I think there's some element of just blind hope because I think everyone's going to say like robots at some point, robotics are going to be the next big technological stuff. Even if you don't know how to commercialize it exactly. This stuff is now, right? I mean, imagine in five or 10 years if they really accelerate this stuff. I mean, I think that, that, and maybe by the way that is like, you know, Siri, the next evolution of Siri and your smartphone is a, is an assistant that walks around with you, like an actual physical thing that walks around with you. And it's like, you know, does things physically for you. This could definitely set up like a sequel to her, a new Spike Jonze film. Like first we have just the artificial intelligence and now we have the, the walking. Well he went in the, the direction that he went in was, was that we're, you know, instead of having these like physical, virtual, these physical presences, we're going to have virtual presences that we sort of imagine. Well now we can have a super sex bot that can climb. I don't know. I don't think they're going to make a sex bot. No. I mean, here's the problem. They have a long way to go to making like human shaped bots, right? That are actually able to get around. That's the, they're not making human size and human shaped bots. They are making disgusting, weird, horrendous, horrific animal bots. So sex bots. And we're back. Oh God. No. Okay. Seriously, do you, do you have any guesses? I don't. No. I don't. I really like genuinely don't know. I, I don't know. My imagination isn't big enough. The only guess that I have is that they are, they have a specific plan. Like this isn't just a lark. Like no way. No way. Is it going to make it all the way up there? Yeah. This is amazing. Oh my God. Yeah. So that's Amazon delivery right there. There you go. No, it's like when I think of the first thing I think of this is like, you know, helping like fight fires or like rescue situations. But that's not Google's business. Well, not yet. That's a public utility. Not yet. I mean, they start selling this stuff to the government. That's true. So yeah. And it's, it's going to be just fine. Totally fine. What's the, what's the, what is this thing? This is like a sentry bot. It's I think the, what do they call it? Sand flea is what they call this. What's he going to do here? You know what he's going to do. Just don't want to believe. What's he going to do? No way. No way. Oh, there we go. I could watch these all day. I have to say it is unbelievable. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, you know, here's the thing. I think Google does invest in a lot of things that are just, they're just experimenting and they don't, they maybe don't have the answer. You know, I don't think it's clear. Do you think Andy Rubin is just like doing this for a hell of a bit? I feel like he has like a goal. I mean, what do you think it is? I don't know. That's why I'm thinking about it. What do we know about Andy Rubin? That his personal goal was just to play with robots. That was his hobby. That was his dream. Right. But did he have a step two? I mean, what is the step two monetization or like actualization of some other concept? I think they're going to, they're, they're pursuing a specific robotic goal to do something new. Now is this, is this standing on its own? I think, at least that's the goal. Yeah. God. If that's true, that's insane. Hey buddy. I mean, I guess we're starting to see, Hey, it's sober too. Look at that. Oh, so that's finally, that's something that no human can, they're really into abusing robots. That's the thing we know about. Yeah. I'm just waiting for them to realize what we're doing. I mean, maybe RoboCop is not as far off as we think, you know, maybe Google will deploy Sentry bots and protector bots and cop bots. Well that's actually, that's like the idea of prosthetics. So like imagine like this technology, you wouldn't do someone's prosthetic leg. It could actually like, you could control it in a much better way. You probably put like a gun on it too. You could also put a gun machine gun carry. Exactly. Those pops out and it's controlled with Google glass. Yeah, exactly. Um, all right. What else is in the news? What else is happening? We have no answers on the, I just like to say that we officially have zero answers at this point. Oh yeah. This one's great. This is exactly like the most horrific thing that I've ever thought of. Like, like, no, no, no, no. Put the suit back on him. Cause what I want to do is I want to picture that thing. Yeah. I want to picture that guy with the faithful face mask. Oh, don't do that. Quarantine war zone right here. Yeah. Like, well, Hey, why does the bot need a gas mask? Yeah. I'm sorry. You did. You, what did you engineer? The, you know, the robot actually dies if it breathes in dangerous gases. I, you don't like, what is the gas mask for? Just to scare me, I think is the answer. This seriously is upsetting. But I mean, and part of it is also how many big tech companies are looking at wearables and robotics right now? I think pretty much all of them in some extent. This is just, I mean, this is a little beyond, this is a beyond. This is a little beyond. Okay. That's fair. So this is now Andy Rubin is going to get to do whatever he wants with this thing. Is that correct? Yeah. Yes. Right. Cool. That's really encouraging. Bigger than a moonshot. All right. What else? What else? So Tim Cook, Marissa Meyer, Reed Hastings, Eric Schmidt, and Zingacy. What about, what about, what about? One of these things is not like the other. Went to meet with Obama to talk. He wanted, he wanted them, him to. He get Zuckerberg? Advice on, I think, yeah. No. They wanted advice on healthcare.gov and they showed up and they were like, yeah, we'd like to talk about the NSA. I think it was awkward. You think it was awkward? I'm pretty sure it was very awkward. No, but you think it was awkward with Zuckerberg and Pinkus in the room? No, that's what I'm saying. Oh yeah. Yeah. And so Pinkus apparently asked Obama or suggested to Obama that he pardon Edward Snowden. Because we're going to pardon Snowden based on Mark Pinkus's recommendation. You never know, man. Obama said he couldn't do that. Yeah. Yeah. And then, and then, and then had him removed. It's like nobody asked him before. Can't he? He is president. I think he meant, I think what he meant, let me explain, Dieter. I think he meant that there were reasons that he would not do it. Not that he physically or like technically. I was having flashbacks to my childhood when I asked, can I, can I? And they, no, you mean may I? Well, at any rate. Yeah. Which is probably exactly how that conversation went. I think, I think, um, wait, that's Sheryl Sandberg. Yeah. Oh, maybe it was her instead of Zuckerberg. What is Pinkus, what is Pinkus doing at this table? It's a little odd. It's really odd. I don't see Zuck. There's no Zuck there. Yeah, it's Sheryl. It must be Sheryl, yeah. Yeah. This looks like a very uncomfortable conversation. To me, this looks like a horrifically uncomfortable conversation. Dramatically zooming in. Is this the moment right here where Pinkus says, why don't you pardon? He's like, Hey, I was down here at the end of the table drinking and I just thought, why not pardon? Anyhow, you know, here's the question. I mean, increasingly speaking of Snowden, increasingly it looks like people are saying, Hey, what Snowden did is not in the wrong. Yeah. So what's the, the, the Obama's, uh, uh, panel recommended that they, they, NSA doesn't keep phone records. Well, there's that. There was a, a judge, federal judge found that, uh, what was the term that he used? And we have a story on this. If only, if only we had a poll. Well, he's looking up. I mean, one thing is interesting as you get into that, um, TC just pointed out, um, that was right next to Obama at his left side was Randall Stevenson of AT&T, which is perfect. Earily appropriate. His left side or his right side? It was his left side. Biden on the right. Biden on the right. One is clearly more powerful than the other. One is sneakier. One is sneakier than the other. Um, but yeah, anyhow, the, the, the Snowden stuff, I mean, you know, I think everybody's a little fatigued at this point. Like the level of stuff that we're hearing, the level of privacy violations, but also just the story, Edward Snowden's story. It's like, you know, you can kind of only, um, here you go. Uh, that their phone record collection is unconstitutional. Yeah. I'm looking for like the, the judge was super harsh on them. I'm looking for like a, a quotable quote, but uh, Kander, yeah. I mean, let's just be clear, you know, that's not, that's not small potatoes. You know, we now have federal judges saying this, this, this, what the NSA has been doing is unconstitutional. Right. The line that the NSA likes to give is that collection is different from spying because we're, we're, we're taking it, we're collecting it, but we're not doing anything with it. So it's okay. Yeah. And I don't think a single person outside of that giant creepy black cube of a building where the NSA is believes that. Yeah. I think it's hard to, I was actually, I woke up the other day and I, and I thought, uh, I'm like, man, what if it just went away? What if it just, the NSA was like, you know, we're not going to do this anymore and we could just go back to living a normal life where we didn't have to think about this. They can say it. They can say it. I mean, I'm saying, what if they actually did it? You know, it's, it's almost impossible now to imagine a reality where you're not basically being spied on 24 seven. Right. And I don't know if that's, I don't know if that's because, I mean, look, you could get off of the internet, right? You can stop using the internet essentially. I don't know what your life would be like. We had someone try that. No, well, and they, and he succeeded. It's a very security. So still, he survived, he survived. It affected him. But he wasn't, but he wasn't sending emails, he wasn't making, you know, he wasn't talking to people on, on. But when he was, when he was asking questions and he was getting answers, he was getting answers from people who were connected. Like there at no point. Yeah, but I'm saying that's, that's the way to do it. Yeah. You got to go off the grid, man. Get Paul Miller style, you know, just get information from people around you. This is the judge who was appointed by Bush, by the way. I cannot imagine a more indiscriminate and arbitrary invasion. Those are both quotes from the law, then this systemic and high tech collection and retention of personal data. Of course, the public has no interest in saving the government from the burden of complying with the constitution. Like yeah, yeah. Just just rips into it. Eviscerated, I would say that. I mean, it is, and it is, you know, just like, look, Obama's talking to tech people, tech people are writing letters, federal judges are saying this is unconstitutional. Does do, is there any indication that any of this is actually going to stop? I don't know. No, I mean, the NSA could literally be like, yeah, we're going to stop and then just keep doing it. But right. I mean, it has to come at this point, it's going to have to come out of Congress. And I mean, that nothing's happened there for a while. What do we think about the BIOS plot? Oh, my other 60 minutes, 60 minutes. This is great 60 minutes report on, uh, on it felt like a South Park episode. Like it was a very weird, like, oh, there's a tech, it destroys your BIOS, your BIOS is alive, so your computer's alive. Right. But I didn't, the BIOS plot. Let's just throw an acronym that scares people. Here's the thing that I, here's the thing that I don't fully get. Uh, uh, the, the 60 minutes there, they suggested that the, the people, the, the nation state behind the attack was China. Yeah. Like I don't get China disabling everybody's computer in America unless it's like to launch world war three. Right. Because we are China's biggest consumer. They need us for their economy. Yeah. Right. And there's really no disconnecting these things at this point. Like China needs America to keep buying Chinese things and like they need to continue to take on American debt. And so, and they need to continue to buy up things that exist in America. And so the idea that they would want to bring down America by destroying everybody's computer seems, you know, pretty funny. Also there are plenty of computers that don't have, I mean, I don't know if they meant like not all computers are the same basically. I mean, I don't know if there was a specific type of computer they're talking about or they may have, it was like just a blanket, like all bios everywhere was affected. The idea that there can be a virus that can blow up your bios and like the thing that makes your computer boot is not new or fresh. So like, yeah, if it's theoretically possible that China has developed a thing to like blow up a whole lot of bios and a whole lot of computers, one, they wouldn't do that too. Why is the NSA trotting this thing out that like we kind of already know about and isn't that a threat? FUD. FUD. Exactly. And the NSA gets, derives their power from the fear of the American citizenry feeling like they need to do, the NSA needs to do whatever the NSA wants to do to protect us from some kind of phantom attack. And like last year it was terrorism and this, and now it's like the Chinese want to like destroy our computers and there's always going to be a new enemy for America. That seems pretty clear, you know, it's like, it's just a matter of, of this like lulls in between where we, where we toy with several enemies. It's just so surprising to me that as sophisticated as the system is supposed to be, they did not invest anywhere near as much money into like figuring out how to defend this should it ever come out in public. Right. Like they're completely surprised and kind of caught off guard. You've seen the PowerPoints. These aren't, I mean, I don't, I don't. Smiley faces on them for God's sake. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't think that there's a lot of deep thought going into what they're doing. I mean, I actually don't, I don't think they're like, my God, we're taking all of these private phone records. Like this is a major constitutional violation. I think they're just like, Hey, we can do this. Let's just do it. Yeah. And not think about what the consequences are and not think about what the ramifications are because they just are on a mission. You know, their mission is to collect information. No, they, they, they think about the consequences, ramifications. They think about it very carefully. They think about where is the line and how can we push it and how can we use the language of the current law, most of which is very much outdated in order to push it. Right. But I don't feel like they've gone to great lengths to be, to be, they've been sneaking the sense that people don't have access to their internal documents, but it doesn't seem like they've gone to great lengths to cover this up or defend it. I mean, you know what I mean? Like it's, it's not, they don't have great answers, you know, their answers are vague. You know, they, they lied to Congress. I'd call that going to great lengths to defend it. I mean, I'd call it sloppy. Yeah. I'd call it sloppy. They, if they actually went to great lengths, they'd say, listen, here's the structure of the law. We've abided by it every, at every step of the way. Like this is what the law allows and this is what we're doing. And there are, there would be no necessity to lie because you could demonstrate that your methods were sound. They do that, but they, they do it in such a fuzzy way. And they they're, there's so little evidence of benefit to us as citizens that they, they trot out, Oh, we've defended you against, you know, so many attacks. And then you look at that number and then it's actually a smaller number when you really dig into it. And then you go on top of that when you dig in more. So I just, something needs, there's a lot of people, there's a lot of companies and a lot of countries and a lot of Americans that like want this to turn around right now. Yeah. And it hasn't yet. And I got straight up, like the next thing, way to fix this is to vote different people into Congress so that they will do it for us. Right. Well, that's where we're at. That may or may not solve it. I mean, and the thing is like, that's one of like three steps that must happen in an exact order. Well, if, if we've got, it's possible more federal judges will start overturning stuff and change things, but I don't have a lot of confidence there either. Right. So then what, what are we going to do? Just always be spied on? Pull up Paul Miller, go offline. I mean, is there, is there any alternatives to the, to like, I mean, there is no real protection like there is no real way to protect. And let's not forget like, you know, we, we may be the most sophisticated country doing this. We may not be. We got caught doing it. That's the thing that's great. Yeah. I mean, maybe we just need to accept that, you know, it's all just going to be out there and people are going to be reading your stuff and, you know, just try not to break the law basically. I mean, there are people trying to. That's a lot of faith. I'm not making that argument by the way. I think that's insane. I think it's an insane way to live. But you know that, I think that's like how the government would kind of like, I think that's what the NSA would ultimately prefer. If everybody just said, you know what, I'll just, I won't break the law and then I don't care if you read my stuff. You know, you're just some anonymous person. It's not like you're just checking out your ex-girlfriend's information using the systems that you have at hand. Oh wait, they were actually doing that. So it is like at the end of the day, it's on a computer. Like I'm more comfortable with Google with being screwed gold. Okay. It's like an algorithm showing me ads because they saw words in my, in my, they said words that are just basically chunks of data versus, you know, the government, a completely, you know, a government that has zero oversight and horrible track record in terms of what it will tell its citizens and being truthful with its citizens. I'd much rather have Google's robots, not actual, not zero robots, but it's, I'd rather have its spiders crawl my shit than have the NSA do it. I mean, in both cases, this is an example of like laws and bureaucracy being outpaced by technology. At no point, at no point do we think there's a law that was needed at a time when this would have been crucial. For other Google, like regulating robots and drones or like regulating the privacy and connections like our laws are wholly outdated for things like that. Yeah. Well we don't, there's no conception of things like, like drones and you know, autonomous robots and. And I think was it Clay Shurie had a good example, like just because the law wasn't ready for technology doesn't mean we should be afraid of the technology or afraid of the laws. It's just, that's always how it's going to be happening. We can't prepare for these things. The other thing I want to promote is a TC's big report. He did this great editorial about Obama's legacy and these two polar, not polar opposite, like seemingly polar opposite issues of like too much red tape, not enough red tape with the healthcare issue and with the NSA. Yeah. And I think his premise is really interesting. We should take the red tape from healthcare.gov and move it over to the NSA. Yeah. I wake up dreaming that Keith Alexander took over healthcare and Kathleen Sebelius took over the NSA. Yeah. We should put those contractors. Just swap the chairs. Yeah. There you go. Everyone has everybody's problems. I think there's, I think there's a. They already know your preexisting conditions. I think there's a fair amount of buffoonery on both sides really. I mean when you look at it. Oh yeah. But it is an interesting question. You know, he. Speaking of buffoonery. I mean Bush's legacy is pretty obvious at this point. You know, you think about like war and war on terror basically. And the absence of evidence is the evidence of absence of whatever. Of course, of course. You know, what happens to mass destruction that were never found that we were lied to about. What will, you know, you start to think like this does seem to be kind of defining factors. I mean obviously Obamacare, but what overshadows Obamacare is the failure of the, of its, of its launch. You know, like. And then, and then the NSA stuff is clearly, you know, the funny thing is though I just don't know how much real people care about the NSA spying. Like my impression is they don't. My impression is they either don't know about it. And if they do know about it and when they find out about it, they're like, well, I don't really have anything to hide. And I think you would be, I think if you went out on the street right now and talked to most people, that's what they would tell you. And the other thing I say is like, they would say, you know, I think it's a big deal, but I'm so tired of hearing about it. It's like the flood of information is both necessary and also somewhat like, you know, well, even if you could explain it all very clearly in one simple way, it's still what can you, you can't do anything with the information. You can get angry, but you can't take your anger anywhere. Even if every citizen in America signed a petition saying, I won't stand for this, that doesn't mean it will affect any change. You know, it needs, there need to be lobbying groups. There need to be politicians. There need to be judges and lawyers who are invested in this, who are going to go make the changes. And there are, those things do exist. But you know, our government is extremely bureaucratic and slow moving. And so the idea that this will be changed anytime in the near future seems impossible. And also, you know, it does kind of feel like Obama who came in on this like wave of hope and excitement and like, we're going to have a totally different, more transparent government and we're going to, you know, a guy we really like is in the White House. It turns out it's, you know, a very similar government to the one that we've always had or at least had for the last 40 years. All the news this week, this depressing. It's very, it's a downer. It's a downer. There is one thing that was not depressing. Hold up. It may not be exactly verge related. What is it? On Friday the 13th, Beyonce. Oh Beyonce. Have we not thought it up? Beyonce. 1313. Yeah. Yes. So Beyonce released a series of, of incredible songs, videos. 14 audio, 17 videos. Never leaked. Which is amazing. We heard, okay. Yes and no. This is me knowing way too much. So she has performed one of the songs before live. A few things leaked because a lot of these were filmed in public. A lot of them in New York and East Village too. But no one had any idea this was happening. In fact, the last rumor was that she had completely scrapped the album altogether. But planted, planted obviously. Very. But from the music business standpoint, this dropped with no promotion. Full album. You cannot buy it by a track. Audio and video, everything comes together and the physical release isn't even coming out until the 20th. Yeah. And it's, and it's like crazy, sold like crazy. Yeah. Five million? Well maybe by now, 800,000 the first three days. Which is the fastest selling iTunes album ever. Yeah, which is crazy. It topped Katy Perry and Lady Gaga sales combined. Yeah. Wow. What's interesting about it is, what's interesting about it is like it goes against all of the, here's the deal. When you've got enough star power, you can fly in the face of like all of the, all of the modern notions about how we should sell and listen to music. Like if you're a mid-level or low-level artist who has, you know, if you're not Beyonce, let's put it that way, you probably can't get away with doing this. Like you can release your record, your hardcore fans will buy it. Yeah. There will be zero hype about it. Nobody will tweet about it. No one will know about it. Like a small group of people. And then like your album will be done. You know, you can't get away with it. If you're Beyonce, you can definitely pull this, which is, which is you're the biggest celebrity in the world and you have a surprise record. And so everybody's going to freak out and be curious and there's going to be an enormous amount of hype. I mean the whole day following that, that evening into the next day through the, through the next evening, it was just like bedlam about, it was beyond, it's like two days straight, maybe three days straight of like, I felt like everywhere I turned, the only conversation anybody was having was Beyonce. And this is also like, this is a weird time because this is after the Grammy nominations have been announced for the year. Like this is post award season for the music industry. But it is pre, it is pre-holiday shopping season. I mean this is, this is the time when, when big albums drop. Like in the music industry, they'll say like, if you're going to release a record, you basically, you are big enough that you release it around Christmas. Or you avoid releasing a record on Christmas because that's when all of the gigantic artists release their album. And the physical albums come out four days before Christmas, but not at Target. Not at Target. Target is very mad about this. Target boycotted Beyonce because she sold exclusively in iTunes. That's the story, right? Yeah. That's insane, you know? Which it was also the opposite of what happened in her last album. Her album four was, they had Target exclusive video and packaging and rapping. Like there was a close relationship and this just obviously pissed them off to no end. Clearly that relationship is soured. Yeah. I mean, I think what's most impressive is that just the level, I mean the level of general secrecy about this. Like you didn't see the music press really writing about it. You didn't hear, oh, this album is going to leak or there's rumors there's going to be. And it didn't leak. That's the other thing. No. That's what amazes me is I like that doesn't happen much anymore. No. Well, I mean Beyonce is very powerful. Yeah. She's also married to Jay Z. And by the way, that couple has had, Jay Z also had a very interesting experiment with music industry. Oh yeah. Samsung. His Samsung album. Just. It was a- What is it? Magna Carta Holy Grail? Magna Carta Holy Grail. You forget, you know, you forget that record happened, but I don't know. I'm not a big Jay Z fan. Jay Z himself like ranked it like seventh or eighth on his like discography. I agree with him. Yeah. I'm going to have to agree with Jay on that one. But this Beyonce record. Now I frankly have not listened to the whole thing, so I don't want to speak out of turn, but everybody says I've heard a few songs and they're good. Everybody says it's incredible. It's very raunchy. She's very, she's into making love. Oh yeah. No, no, it's not. She's a baby. Proof that she's into making love. She's like, look, I've had everything else and no one's going to care. So let's just do a song about oral sex. Well Trent did. Trent did a review sort of review and look into her record and he does talk a lot about the, sorry I was just checking the time. He looked at his watch and I looked at my watch. It's smart watch now. It's the, my pants are like vibrating. Whoa, hang on. Speaking of sex, speaking of sexy stuff, Ross's pants are vibrating. Unrelated, unrelated to the new Beyonce record. Completely unrelated. This is disgusting and upsetting. This is so wrong. What were we talking about? Oh yeah. Well, so anyhow, but Trent made a point that Rihanna and other popular, you know, Miley Cyrus, other popular pop stars have become increasingly sexy. You know, I mean, Lady Gaga, what's her new song? It's a do what you want to my body. With R. Kelly. With R. Kelly. And you know, R. Kelly is going to do something to her body that it will be like, you'll find a way to do something illegal and inappropriate. Yes. But, you know, I think like, you know, you look at the record, I mean, sex sells. Beyonce is clearly aware that sex sells and you know, she's extremely beautiful and like, you know, why not? Why not? I'll tell you why not. Have some respect for yourself. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Jeez. Okay. This is, do we don't have to shut up? Yeah, we're just going very, very. No, but now we're, I love the footage. Keep writing the B roll. You want to hear me talking about how sexy Beyonce is while we see footage of a scantily clad Beyonce being sexy. This would be the Drunk in Love video. Wow. Wow. This is, this is intense. This is, I have not seen all the videos. This is what $17 gets you. This is the future of the urge cast actually. Yeah, it's just Beyonce. Beyonce and we talk about it while she dances. But anyhow, have you, did you buy the album? Not yet. Lisa did not buy it? No. You? Of course I did. Yeah. I mean, I will. I mean, it's iTunes. We need our own accounts and it's got to work on our phones. Sure. Can you, can you, now can you share this? This is, you have like, you can, you can. I don't think we have a family account. I don't know how that works actually. I guess you can't unless you're streaming off of a single computer or something. Right. Yeah. I have not bought it. Really? No, but I've heard several and seen several videos from it. I just, to be honest with you, I need to set aside time to experience all of Beyonce. Right. See, I knew that if I did not buy day one and know it by the end of day one, I would not have a relationship anymore. So that was my, that was my impetus for doing this. Is that, is that really what happened? It just, you know, it's a threat thereof. Is that the kind of situation you've got? You need to be. Just to be safe. Completely aware of the Beyonce catalog at all times. Absolutely. Can we talk about the, can we talk about a couple of things? Yes. Yes, absolutely. So first off, we should, can we talk about this ad? Yeah, we've had this the whole time. So Motorola ran this ad. This will save print. This is a print ad that's running in Wired. It's running in here. Do you want me to? Yeah, I think Billy's running in to help us out with this. So hold on. I don't know if you guys have seen this. Did we write about this? Did we not write about this? We did. Oh yeah, we did. We did. So check it out. This is a print ad that is running. Let me find the best angle. Hold on. Nope. That's not the best angle. Nope. That's not the best angle. I'm trying to get the glare off. And also Billy, oh boy. Okay. Anyhow, this is good enough. So this is an ad that's running in Wired and a bunch of other magazines. It is insane. Okay. Hold on. Let me check some, do some other colors here. So how do they pull this off? So obviously there's lights in here. Yeah. And you can actually, if you look in the back, you can see the strip of lights right there shining upwards. Oh yeah. But it's, I mean, but look at some of these, the colors they get out of this is, it's kind of insane. And I got to say it's easily one of the, is this the right color? Hold on. It's a, I think we might've broken it a little bit from using it so much. Really like pink. But this is, yeah, this is one of the craziest ads. Look at these in particular. Hold on. I mean, that's pretty good. It's really weird. Yeah. Like it's incredible that they did this. And I got to say they might've spent all of the remaining money they had on the budget to advertise this phone on this ad, but it was worth it. Well, do you remember about five years back the Esquire e-ink magazine cover that had done some really crazy things too? Yeah. That never went anywhere else. But also, and also there was the one with the phone in it. Remember, remember there was an ad. It was in, oh yeah. Who did the ad? It was had a phone embedded in the ad and it could get like text messages. Entertainment Weekly had it. There really is a smartphone inside Entertainment Weekly magazine. Yeah. I know Mashable wrote about it. I think we might've done something. Actually, I think, I don't remember if that was during, was that during this is my next days? October, 2012? No, we should have been up and running. No, we were in existence. Yeah. We existed. We launched November, 2011. That's right. Oh, this is right before. Okay. No, I mean it's. It's a year after our launch. Oh, right, right. I don't remember time anymore. I'm sure we covered it. We wrote about it. Anyhow, this is, I got to say, there's really nothing to say about this except that it is awesome. As far as ads go, print ads, it's like next level. Yeah. And the bamboo one is available now for a hundred bucks. Oh yeah, the bamboo back is available. It makes me so sad. The Moto X sales figures that came out, I want this to do so well. Yeah. It's a good phone. It's not doing that well at all. It's a good phone. It isn't making the kind of splash that I think they hoped it would make. So I also want to talk about another phone. I bought an Xperia Z1 from an Unlocked. In case you're wondering, if you're on AT&T, the model number you want to get LTE. Oh, you've got a, okay. Yeah. Is C6906. There's a bunch of variations of the Z1. Anyhow, I bought the Z1 and I'm pretty impressed. Really? Wait, this is not the Google Play Edition Z. No, no. This is the Z1 Ultra, which is like this big. This is the Xperia Z1 and it has some annoying Sony tweaks, but they're relatively minimal. And some of them are actually improvements on Google, frankly. So it shows you, it has built in battery percentage in the status bar. It has built in, so the way Google does its quick settings is that there's a secondary dropdown, that you have to access with two finger swipes or a swipe on the right side on tablets. This actually has quick toggles sort of built into the top row of the, oh, you can see it here. Those top row quick toggles. Did you see my password? Did everybody just see my password? Yeah. Those top row quick toggles are either amazing or terrible. Yeah. So, wait, hold on. Let me clear these. There's no telling what's in there, but you can see that there's at the top of the, see there's that nice little control. And they're actually way more useful than what Google provides. Just cut to the chase, how's the camera? The camera's amazing. Really? The camera's really good. And it actually, with a little bit of, it has a little bit of a learning curve because it does function more like a real camera. I actually think it's really good. And I'll say that I feel that the photos I'm taking are not only really good, but I think they're better than iPhone. So when you say they're better than iPhone, you're saying- Yeah. I think they're less saturated. Okay. I think that there's a quality to them that's different, but they feel more like camera photos to me. Is it like a Lumia 1020 situation where you kind of need to know what you're doing in order to get that? I mean, not as much as the 1020. The 1020 is weirdly overly complicated and kind of slow, and it doesn't really work. It's not enough like a phone camera. This is the kind of the right mixture. And I have an, the software's not updated. This is on 4.2. And Evan, who also has one, who- And is taking pictures of us right now. He's taking pictures of us. For the control room. Yeah. He has four, three. It's been updated and I guess it's rolling out now. Okay. But I got to say, I'm really impressed with the camera. I've been looking for an Android phone that actually has a great camera. And I think that this is maybe the first one where it's like really competitive, if not a bit better than the iPhone. In some instances, in my experience, I've only had it for a few days, so I'm still testing. Here's some other nice things about this that I was impressed to discover, surprised to discover or that I would care about. It's waterproof, which I don't care about at all, except for the fact that I was walking around in the snow the other day with this and I took it out and started using it. And I wasn't like, oh my God, I'm going to get water on my phone, which was kind of nice. That's something that most companies don't worry about. I don't have to think about it anymore. You didn't have to worry about it when it was in the snow or it rains. Right. That's a care I don't want to have. It's actually the kind of thing that is, I think I mentioned this when I was like, here's things they could do for the iPhone that would be really cool. The other thing is the battery life is kind of outrageous. In my third day of using it, I had, when I was, I had to use it for like 15 hours straight and I had some like long phone calls. I was like really using the phone and it said that my battery percentage was like 25 or 26% remaining. So like more than a day basically, like more than a workday. That is really important. Why can't Sony get it right selling these things in the US? Like they, we reported back in October. They need enormous. It was too much work to market here. They need an enormous marketing budget. They need enormous marketing budget and they need buy in from all of the carriers in a big way. Samsung has, here's Samsung's thing. They have enormous marketing budgets, like out of control. I mean, look at how much they're advertising. Yeah. You know, it's like, it's almost like brute force. They're basically like forcing you to understand that Samsung devices exist and they have done a lot of, I mean, I think carriers see it as an easy win. People now know the Samsung brand. They come in the store, they're like, I want the Galaxy. The only thing stopping, I mean, Motorola is trying to do with the Moto X. I don't think they have nearly the budget to do it. No. Also, I don't think they have the phone. I mean. They're being creative, but like they're not brute forcing it like Samsung does. Right. And also Motorola's like they have one device, flagship device. Samsung has the flagship S4 and then 40 other phones, different various sizes and markets. Right. So I think that, I think that it just requires, I mean, actually. I'm sorry. I have to break this train of thought. Is the software skin really good? Cause Sony used to be terrible. So I've disabled everything that's like pretty much everything that Sony is specific. You can do this. The user customizer, they're not hacking anything. I'm not hacking anything. I, well, I did install, Evan had the KitKat launcher, which was like the stock launcher. You can get versions of it in that play store, but I wanted the like pure one and he has the actual like pure APK, which you can just install. You can just get it, sideload it and install it. It's not a hack at all. So after going to the KitKat launcher, most of the stuff that's annoying is gone. There's a couple of things like, you know, they've reskinned the contacts app and the dialer. Yeah. Very minor, very minor. Like it's completely inoffensive, like not an issue. They have this thing on the multitasking menu, which I'm surprised to say I actually think is kind of cool. They have these like mini apps that float over top of things. They've got like a calculator, a timer, a voice recorder and a couple of other little things and I've used them. I will tell you, like I've opened it up to like open the calculator and I'm like, oh, there's a calculator right here. I'll just open it up and do the quick calculation and close the thing. So not terribly offensive. They've, you know, reskin menu, like the, the, the settings menus are different. They've added some personalization options. Like, you know, they made it a little bit harder to, you know, for some reason changing your lock screen image, you don't change your background and lock screen image together. You do them as separate things, which seems weird to me, but I'm largely, I mean at four two, what's really surprising to me, and I was just saying to this to Neelai the other day, what's really surprising is that at 4.2 and I think beyond the differences are negligible because once you kind of disable the stuff you don't like, like I'm not going to use the Walkman app for music because I listened to RDO and Spotify and I use Google play music. Uh, the, the, once you disable that stuff, the fact that Google is just has basically separated all of its apps out as standalones, you know, Gmail and Google drive. Now they have this photos app which ties into Google plus I, I auto upload all my photos. I don't, I don't love it. I don't love it. But what it, what's nice about it is that it feels integrated with the rest of the Google ecosystem. So they have a, they have a, uh, an album here that you can't disable. It's like they've replaced the gallery app with their own gallery app. I suppose I could download the stock gallery app. I mean they have them on the store, but um, it, it, it's fine, but you can plug into photos using the Google plus stuff and switch. I do anyhow. So like honestly the feeling is not, I've been using a Nexus five. I went to this, I'm still in the next five. I'm going to, I'm about to switch to the iPhone after my crazy Twitter rant. Like I just, I can't, there's no dramatic. What's your issue with the camera? The camera? No, Twitter rant. No, I'm like, oh, but the app. Yeah. That's where I'm at. I'm like, what's the fix is how bad the Twitter update is. We did this last week. Basically what I'm saying is, uh, it is surprisingly the same for the most part. Yeah. I mean the vast majority of things I'm doing, I mean I think Google hit a point where the people who are skinning, I mean this is not Samsung level skin. Everything does not look different. It's got some stuff that looks different. They made some weird changes. I don't really understand. For instance, they have a different icon for the sound off, like a different, well the stock sound off icon is so ugly. No, it's just, it's completely innocuous. I mean, it's horrible. Totally. It's totally innocuous. First thing I would change. Really? Yeah. Are you joking? Yes. I'm totally joking. I couldn't tell if you were kidding or not because I just thought it was weird. Like you're going to, like they changed the home. They changed the home back and multitask button. I just don't know why they're, they're so innocuous and meaningless. Overall, you know, and like the stuff they added doesn't fit in any better in my opinion. I love this is all, I love this part of the verge cast when Billy has to turn on this TV again because they'd go into sleep. Very nice job, Billy. Excellent work. And then, you know, actually on that note, like I think we have to wrap up because I, unfortunately we started late and we're ending early because I have to go to a meeting. There's one thing we need to note though. Next week is Christmas, obviously. Next week is Xmas. And the studio is shut down. Right. And the week after we're flying out to CES. CES. Oh yeah. That's probably the last one. Is this the last verge cast of the year? For the studio at least? Uh, yes. Is it really? I mean, studio is shut down next week. What? Really? And then we fly out for CES. Well, you're saying we don't have a verge cast between now and CES? We might. That doesn't sound right to me. We won't have it here though. We won't have it here. Where will it be? You can have one on the second for sure. Where would we be on the second? I don't know. That seems like a long time. Okay. You know what? Let's not get hung up on this. Don't worry about it. We're going to be here for you. We're not going anywhere. We're going to have an enormous amount of coverage, we have all kinds of crazy stuff planned. We're going to have a bigger, better, nastier studio there, which we're very excited about. And of course we're going to be doing a bunch of video shows, but the verge cast will be one of them. And we'll be doing essentially a week of verge casts. Every day. Every night, drunkenly verge casting for your pleasure. We promise the drunk part. Definitely. And it's going to be very exciting. So yeah, so this is our, you know, actually we should have done something. Garland or mistletoe so we could kiss each other or, you know, lower mistletoe. We could hold the Mac Pro. Lower mistletoe. The Mac Pro? Does anybody know what lower mistletoe is? No. It's mistletoe for other stuff. You know what I mean? Oh. Somebody in the control room. Who was that speaking? That would probably be our sound guy, Will. That's right. On your junk. They can't hear you, but junk was mentioned. Anyhow, the point is we were not very festive in here and that's kind of disappointing. Okay. So that, I guess that's where you're wrapping up then. Yeah. But yeah, we see us is coming and more verge cast, a lot more verge cast is coming. Unfortunately for you unlucky people out there in cyberspace, but bringing cyberspace back. More better and happy news. More better. More better. And happy news. And coherent speaking. More news. You're saying more happy news. More happy news. We make words good future. Yeah. Anyhow, that's the verge cast for this week. And you know what a verge cast it was. It was, it was, it had its moments. It was definitely a verge cast. It was a, it was, it was a verge cast. Yes it was. I don't think any of us feel that. I don't think any of us feel like we did gave a hundred percent here today. Do we? I feel like I was at like 75 maybe. It's like four or five days till Christmas. Yeah. I'm, I'm ready to, I'm ready to just jam on some eggnog. Okay. Get a candy cane out. Some lower mistletoe. I am going to murder a gingerbread house. Jam on some eggnog. Get some Bing, some Bing Crosby. I'm getting flattered everywhere. Get Bing up, get Bing up on my Xbox one. Get some Bing Crosby on the, on the, uh, Bing, Bing Crosby. Bing on a Bing, Bing Crosby. And then get him going on the stereo system and uh, get my Santa, get my Santa suit on. Xbox jingle my bells. I think Will just said that. That's the lower mistletoe. Hockey mask, hockey mask. Yeah, yeah. Santa suit. Right. No bottoms. No eggnog. Lower mistletoe. That's been me for the next week. There you go. Flutter shop challenge. Yeah. And that's the Vergecast for this week. Uh, as always, you can get in touch with us by, uh, uh, sending us an email at Vergecast at the verge.com. You can leave a comment in the post when it goes up. You can start a thread on the forums, forum on our, in our forums. You know what I'm saying? You know what this week needs to end. Um, you can, you can also find us on, on Twitter. Uh, now publicly traded Twitter. Verge is at verge. I'm Joshua Topolsky, uh, uh, uh, I was going to say Neely. That's how out of it I am. You're not Neely. Uh, uh, Deter is back lawn. Ross is Oh no, Ross go no E on the end. And uh, and uh, did I say I'm Joshua Topolsky? You did. You did. That's, there's something wrong and I'm not drinking. You guys are drinking. Rock and roll. And that's, and that's it. And, and as we go into, hold on a second. And as we go into the holidays, as we go into a time for reflecting on what you've done this year and who you've done it to and your family and your family's wellbeing, I think we can all agree. You've got a lot to worry about.
 and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of December 16th, 2013.
 I'm Josh Dupolsky.
 I'm Dieter Bohn.
 I'm Ross Miller.
 And we are a Motley Crue.
 A little bit.
 We are a Motley Crue.
 We are listening to Motley Crue as well.
 Yeah.
 One of my favorite bands.
 These things are amazing.
 I was listening to Megadeth yesterday.
 Were you?
 True story.
 Countdown to extinction?
 Sweating bullets.
 Okay.
 Yeah.
 How was it?
 Are you a Megadeth fan?
 I was.
 Really?
 Yeah.
 Are you getting back into it?
 It was in my head and I listened to it and that's that.
 How did Megadeth end up in your head?
 I don't know.
 Sweating bullets was in my head and I watched the video and the video is terrible.
 Yeah.
 What year is that from?
 Is that his name?
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 He just, he looks like such a little tiny man and the anger that I visualize in my
 head listening to it as a 13 year old compared to what he actually looks like.
 Yeah.
 Doesn't fit at all.
 You should read his book.
 Really?
 Yeah.
 He's got a guy called Tell All.
 I can't think of the name of it now.
 Laura read it and apparently it's hilarious.
 Is this like the usual 80s rock star Tell All?
 Kind of, yeah.
 And he talks about, he talks about like wearing like the sneakers that he wore and how like
 ahead of the curve, like in fashion he was.
 And anyhow, it's, it's a, you're going to think you're going to come up with, you're
 going to get the title.
 Is it Mustaine, a heavy metal memoir?
 I believe so.
 Who else would, who else would produce that document?
 Anyhow, this is the Vergecast where we discuss the week in Megadeth news and Dave Mustaine
 happenings.
 And it's actually like a really slow week in Vergecast style news.
 Yeah, because everybody is, is beginning to retire for the holidays.
 We're about to, we're about to retire to a holiday party.
 A Vox media, not going to tell you where or when it's happening, but I can tell you it
 is happening this evening.
 Except you just said after this.
 So I just told you after this.
 And so anyhow, everybody's like looking really dapper.
 Except I, I don't know, I forgot that there was a party and, and there was like in suits.
 I'm like, why is everybody wearing suits?
 And then I realized.
 We had a long discussion, but whether or not we should all wear ties to this.
 I said no.
 I see you guys said no to the tie discussion.
 I'm debating.
 I could get a tie going here.
 That would be enough, I think.
 As long as nobody looked at me from below the waist.
 Cause you're not wearing pants.
 No, I have pants on.
 Okay.
 But anyhow, so, so what are the, what are the stories of the week?
 I mean, obviously, should we talk about the elephant in the room?
 This elephant?
 Well, I don't know.
 I don't know.
 We got to talk about this.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 So this is the Mac, the Mac, this is the Mac Pro.
 Yes.
 Have you seen this thing?
 Have you heard about it?
 It's the Mac Pro.
 Can you give it to me?
 This is where we drop the Mac.
 It's 11 pounds by the way.
 This is where we drop the Mac Pro.
 You don't really have the reach for it, do you?
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Let's just bring it over here.
 Oh really?
 No, no.
 Don't, don't slide it onto this ad.
 Okay.
 You can hold it like a GameCube.
 Oh, it's warm.
 Oh, it's probably just on.
 Yeah.
 Right.
 It is actually surprisingly heavy.
 And you know, it's a beautiful looking, I mean it does look kind of like a humidifier.
 You know what I mean?
 It does look like something.
 Everybody's going about with trash can.
 Trash can or vacuum or a humidifier.
 And can you see, here's the back panel here.
 You got some, some, some connectors, some ports there, some connections.
 It's you know, it's beautiful.
 It's wonderful.
 We should open it up.
 It's the nicest looking, I don't know how, how do you open it?
 So there's just one button right there.
 Set it down.
 Uh huh.
 Like that.
 There's a switch.
 This one here?
 Yeah.
 Okay.
 Slide that to unlock and then it makes a shoo noise.
 Just lift up the top.
 I wouldn't say it made that shoo noise.
 Here it is.
 Here's some, the, where the RAM, wait, actually these are, what are these?
 Is this RAM?
 RAMs must be, I sound like an idiot.
 What?
 Move my glass?
 Sure.
 Of course I will.
 So the RAM's over here.
 Wait, what is this?
 Are these the SSDs?
 Yes, the RAM.
 Oh, okay.
 That's what those are I think.
 So those are, no, that's RAM.
 It's on both sides.
 Yeah.
 Okay.
 Or did I just go, did I go 360 degrees?
 The worst part is we don't know if you're referencing the thing that points, that you're
 pointing at the camera or us or what.
 No, it doesn't matter.
 There's pieces arranged in a triangle.
 We're stopping here.
 Anyhow, let's just say it's not very upgradable.
 No.
 This is it.
 But the idea for this is that it's upgradable externally.
 The way Apple's thinking about this is that they've created these amazing, super fast
 connectors, like Thunderbolt.
 Is this Thunderbolt 2?
 Do I just push this down?
 Is it aligned?
 Yes.
 I mean, maybe.
 The ports?
 Yeah, I mean, sort of.
 Okay.
 This is where I break the Mac Pro on live internet.
 That would be great.
 I mean, it's not, should I?
 What could possibly go wrong?
 It is Thunderbolt 2.
 Is it on?
 Maybe it's just on now.
 It's not plugged in.
 No, it's, I mean, is it, it's on.
 I didn't realize it.
 I was like trying to figure out what was going on.
 I was like trying to push it down further.
 I definitely want to be doing this as much as possible.
 That's Giffable.
 Anyhow, it's a beautiful, beautiful piece of machinery.
 And a fingerprint magnet.
 Well, yeah, but you don't touch your desktop.
 Yeah, but like you still get dust all over.
 You don't see it.
 Don't tell me what to do.
 Hey, you don't touch your desktop.
 No, you know, you're not going to be.
 That's how you go blind.
 You're not going to be laying hands on it.
 You know, you put it down, you plug it in and then you go.
 Yeah.
 You, you, you attack new vistas of entertainment and, and creativity and whatever else this
 lets you attack.
 That's all I have to say.
 So anyhow, we're going to have a review of this soon.
 And there's already a hands on some first impressions.
 We have, yeah, we have some first impressions of it up and some hands on photos and you
 can be sure I'm, I was actually talking about this with our team, but you know, I can't
 think of a better group of people to be road testing this than everybody here in the studio.
 And so, so our editors and our everybody on the video team at Fox and verge are going
 to put this through its paces.
 We were, I've already seen a bunch of the verge video people just kind of come up and
 put their projects on it and see how fast like they'll export and like, yeah, it's
 so far, it's really impressive.
 Is it really?
 Yeah.
 Oh boy.
 Oh boy.
 I don't have any need for, I don't have any need for this at all, but like as, as usual
 with a new product, I want it for no reason.
 And I don't think I'm going to buy one because the desktop computer just seems like completely
 insane to me.
 Well, here's the thing that kills me about this is that there is no Apple first party
 four case display to really show off like how pretty the output is.
 Like they gave us what they're selling on the online stores, a sharp.
 Well, they probably didn't want to an Apple store.
 Oh, and the online store.
 Yeah.
 Well, they probably didn't want, they probably didn't want to, you know, they didn't want
 to, they needed time to focus on their TV.
 They probably didn't want to put out a display that's separate from the Apple television,
 which is obviously coming very, very, I mean, it's probably like, we'd probably at this
 point they're probably just like, let's just do it.
 So the gene monster will stop talking about it.
 Right?
 They're like, like, you know what, at this point it just get it out there.
 Who cares if people buy it or not?
 We're Apple, we mint money.
 So anyhow, so, so this is exciting ish.
 I don't get that excited about desktop computers.
 I will openly admit, I will say this is very pretty.
 I do appreciate how slick this design is and how small it is for all it that it actually
 does.
 Yeah.
 It is small.
 It is small.
 Nowhere to put a DVD.
 That's for a blu-ray.
 It'd be cool if this was a slot.
 It feels like this could have been an actual, like if you look at it, if you look at this,
 I mean, it really does seem like they could have put a, there, hold on, let me get a little
 bit of the glare.
 Oh, nice.
 That would have been cool.
 They should have like exposed.
 You see the disc smidgen?
 Yeah.
 I definitely almost just dropped this.
 It's really heavy.
 I mean, not surprisingly, but it's very heavy.
 So this thing, this laptop, yes, the MacBook Air, right?
 Everybody, everybody was copying it.
 Changed everything.
 Do you think that other people are going to be copying this?
 I think HP is definitely going to copy it immediately.
 Yeah.
 I think people are going to copy it because that's what people do.
 You know, they copy, they copy everything.
 I would be very surprised if somebody, somebody didn't copy it.
 To be fair, like for desktops, this is a novel, but obviously we've, when we, this first came
 out, everyone said this is the Braun KF-20 coffee machine.
 This is not a unique industrial design.
 Well, this is clearly a homage to the Braun, the Dieter Rams designed Braun coffee machine.
 I would be very surprised.
 And I don't remember if there is a story that Steve Jobs and Johnny Ive bonded over this
 coffee machine.
 I don't know if it's the KF-20 or a different model.
 Can you, can somebody do a quick search and tell me that, that what, what it is I'm thinking
 of?
 Maybe they don't even, maybe the model number was not even mentioned.
 I want to say it was the KF-20.
 Does anybody know?
 I'm looking for something that isn't sourced out.
 If you know, if you're out there in cyberspace.
 Johnny Ive's secret coffee ritual.
 And you know, really?
 Really?
 And you know what I'm talking about.
 Feel free to tweet, feel free to tweet, just tweet towards us at, at Verge.
 Yeah.
 I'll keep an eye out for that.
 Or Josh Witzepolsky is fine as well.
 Remember when we-
 Or you can do Backlawn or Onorosco.
 I'm not going to name the site, but do you remember in the early two thousands when we
 defeated pop-up ads?
 Remember when that happened?
 Uh, when like pop-up ads were a thing and then we figured out, like we got it to stop.
 What do you mean pop-up ads?
 Like we open up like a new browser window and pop up and you'd have an ad in it.
 Every site does that.
 They do it now again.
 Yeah.
 They're not, but they just do it inside the site.
 Right.
 There was a time, there was a brief period from like, I don't know, 2008 to 2010 where
 like pop-up ads were gone and we regressed.
 There's a golden era.
 This site, which I will not name.
 I know what site you're looking at right now.
 Yes.
 I could name them.
 I'm not going to.
 Okay.
 So anyhow, MacPro, that's a story.
 There's nothing to really say about it right now because we're obviously in testing mode.
 We're not testing it right this second, but we will be in testing mode for the foreseeable
 future to deliver a review to you, the reader and or viewer.
 What else is in the news?
 God, I'm tired.
 What else is in the news?
 You want to just go ahead and talk about the Google robot stuff?
 Yeah.
 I have a question on that.
 Go ahead.
 No, you go ahead.
 No, you lead it.
 So Google bought Boston Dynamics, which makes the scariest freaking robots that you have
 ever seen.
 Yeah.
 We actually have a bunch of that footage too.
 Oh God, oh God, make it stop.
 Yeah.
 I mean, this is like, can you imagine anything more terrifying running towards you or even
 away from you?
 Like what is this thing supposed to be?
 I mean, is this designed to give people heart attacks?
 Is that the point of this robot?
 It's just awful.
 And also wonderful.
 Do we have any other Boston Dynamics?
 We have a couple.
 By the way, 17 miles, 18 miles an hour.
 Do you know how fast that is?
 It actually goes up to 28.
 Oh my God.
 So 25.7 inches is Usain Bolt's record.
 So this thing will outrun.
 Really?
 Yeah, but it has to be stabilized with that arm.
 True.
 Right.
 Oh my God.
 So if we can show a wild cat.
 I actually want to hear the audio for this because it's the scariest buzzing sound ever.
 Can we see the wild cat?
 Hold on.
 Oh my God.
 Poor guy.
 I'm going to show you a little bit of this thing right here.
 Oh God.
 Here it comes.
 Oh God.
 Oh God.
 When it stabilizes itself and then, oh, now I'm ready.
 Oh yeah.
 So now it just goes.
 Oh God.
 Oh my God, it looks happy.
 It has a personality that's definitely killer.
 Wait, I think he's going in the wrong direction.
 Is that the direction he is?
 Maybe he's backing up.
 But here's the thing, it looks like an actual animal there.
 Yeah.
 Uncanny.
 That is so uncanny.
 We've added some robots to our menagerie.
 Yeah.
 Oh my God.
 This reminds me of that robot at the end of Fahrenheit 451 that's chasing down everybody.
 Hey, spoiler alert.
 This makes me really sad.
 Can I just say this makes me sad?
 Like I feel like it's an animal, like a kind of an injured animal because it's moving so
 weirdly.
 Like, I don't know.
 I feel like I'm going to start crying.
 I feel bad for that robot.
 Why is that?
 Until it starts pointing like needles at me.
 I think.
 Yeah.
 Wait, so I think this is the part where like it just, it falls and puts itself back up.
 Oh no.
 Oh no.
 Don't fall.
 You can do it little camp.
 Don't fall buddy.
 Nope, nope.
 We're just getting slow motion.
 Okay, great.
 What else do we have?
 The last.
 So, well, no, but hang on.
 So Andy Rubin, he left Android.
 He's going to make actual robots now.
 Yes.
 They bought Boston Dynamics.
 They bought a bunch of other companies.
 Oh.
 What are they building?
 Like Adrian wrote a great report for us and talked to a bunch of people and like nobody's
 really sure.
 Right.
 The one thing I will say is there's a, there's a really interesting parallel.
 Make it stop.
 Metal Gear.
 Oh my God.
 Make it stop please.
 This is the worst.
 So rude.
 Ah, why'd he kick the guy?
 Cause he's showing how he stabilizes himself.
 Wait, wait.
 Which is insane and looks like a real animal.
 Don't kick that.
 It will kick back.
 Wow.
 Yeah.
 So, so, but there's a parallel between what Google did with driverless cars and what's
 happening here.
 Google starts funding a whole bunch of stuff, whole bunch of companies do DARPA challenges
 and making, you know, war machines or whatever.
 And then it becomes privatized at Google.
 They did it with driverless cars and now they're doing it again with robots.
 You think Google is just trying to stop the government from developing crazy technology?
 I don't know.
 I don't think that's the case.
 I don't think so.
 I don't know if I trust Google with it.
 I think, I think my guess would be they don't know what they're making yet.
 I mean, they must have some ideas.
 Okay.
 Let's think of things that Google could make with robots.
 Well, I mean, what type of things that they could use?
 Sorry.
 How would they commercialize it?
 I'm sorry.
 The things they would use robots for is what I mean.
 What is something that Google might do with a robot?
 Google Maps Street View.
 Like where can a human not go?
 Okay.
 Yeah.
 Robots walking around getting street view.
 Okay.
 That seems like they deploy some robots for that.
 How about somebody at the California Polytech said social robots that can help you inside
 your house.
 Yeah.
 Okay.
 Yeah.
 That's great.
 Haley Joel Osmond.
 I think we're thinking, or we're thinking maybe robots for the elderly or just people
 who are disabled in some way.
 That's a good, might be a good use of the robots.
 You know, I assume in factories and assembly lines there might be some reason to have more,
 more autonomous robot.
 Why is Google in that game?
 Maybe Google wants to make things in a factory.
 Yeah.
 Like phones.
 There you go.
 Like more, more robots.
 Maybe they want to make more robots.
 Robots that make robots.
 Yeah, exactly.
 What are some other things Google might do with a robot?
 What kind of businesses is Google in?
 Advertising.
 Sex bots.
 No, they're not in that business.
 Well, we don't know what any room is doing.
 He's been pulled up for a long time.
 Oh geez.
 Oh boy.
 Oh no.
 Here we go again.
 Oh, this is one too?
 Oh my God.
 Like, hey, we made a huge cockroach.
 How do you feel about this?
 So Google is going to space.
 This is like a baby, it's like a baby robot crawling.
 Now mark my words, this is the kind of thing that will street view map the moon after Google
 like buys a rocket company.
 Well that's, okay, there you go.
 Maybe they're going to, maybe they want to have a space explorer robots.
 Maybe they want to send robots into space.
 But why?
 What does Google get out of it?
 Is that a business for them?
 What is Google?
 I mean, what about robots that walk around with ads on them?
 Robots that have those boards that stand outside of businesses with the boards like two for
 one and hand out flyers.
 Yeah.
 I mean, it's an advertising.
 The guy that holds the subway sign is going to lose his job.
 It's an ad robot.
 Okay.
 All of Google's weird crap that they do, loon and I don't know.
 Everything makes sense to me is like, oh, well yeah, you care about internet except
 driverless cars.
 I'm not really clear on why other than maybe it's a huge investment opportunity and this.
 Yeah.
 I mean, maybe the, maybe the next smartphone is a helper robot.
 I think, I think there's some element of just blind hope because I think everyone's going
 to say like robots at some point, robotics are going to be the next big technological
 stuff.
 Even if you don't know how to commercialize it exactly.
 This stuff is now, right?
 I mean, imagine in five or 10 years if they really accelerate this stuff.
 I mean, I think that, that, and maybe by the way that is like, you know, Siri, the next
 evolution of Siri and your smartphone is a, is an assistant that walks around with you,
 like an actual physical thing that walks around with you.
 And it's like, you know, does things physically for you.
 This could definitely set up like a sequel to her, a new Spike Jonze film.
 Like first we have just the artificial intelligence and now we have the, the walking.
 Well he went in the, the direction that he went in was, was that we're, you know, instead
 of having these like physical, virtual, these physical presences, we're going to have virtual
 presences that we sort of imagine.
 Well now we can have a super sex bot that can climb.
 I don't know.
 I don't think they're going to make a sex bot.
 No.
 I mean, here's the problem.
 They have a long way to go to making like human shaped bots, right?
 That are actually able to get around.
 That's the, they're not making human size and human shaped bots.
 They are making disgusting, weird, horrendous, horrific animal bots.
 So sex bots.
 And we're back.
 Oh God.
 No.
 Okay.
 Seriously, do you, do you have any guesses?
 I don't.
 No.
 I don't.
 I really like genuinely don't know.
 I, I don't know.
 My imagination isn't big enough.
 The only guess that I have is that they are, they have a specific plan.
 Like this isn't just a lark.
 Like no way.
 No way.
 Is it going to make it all the way up there?
 Yeah.
 This is amazing.
 Oh my God.
 Yeah.
 So that's Amazon delivery right there.
 There you go.
 No, it's like when I think of the first thing I think of this is like, you know, helping
 like fight fires or like rescue situations.
 But that's not Google's business.
 Well, not yet.
 That's a public utility.
 Not yet.
 I mean, they start selling this stuff to the government.
 That's true.
 So yeah.
 And it's, it's going to be just fine.
 Totally fine.
 What's the, what's the, what is this thing?
 This is like a sentry bot.
 It's I think the, what do they call it?
 Sand flea is what they call this.
 What's he going to do here?
 You know what he's going to do.
 Just don't want to believe.
 What's he going to do?
 No way.
 No way.
 Oh, there we go.
 I could watch these all day.
 I have to say it is unbelievable.
 Yeah.
 I don't know.
 I mean, you know, here's the thing.
 I think Google does invest in a lot of things that are just, they're just experimenting and
 they don't, they maybe don't have the answer.
 You know, I don't think it's clear.
 Do you think Andy Rubin is just like doing this for a hell of a bit?
 I feel like he has like a goal.
 I mean, what do you think it is?
 I don't know.
 That's why I'm thinking about it.
 What do we know about Andy Rubin?
 That his personal goal was just to play with robots.
 That was his hobby.
 That was his dream.
 Right.
 But did he have a step two?
 I mean, what is the step two monetization or like actualization of some other concept?
 I think they're going to, they're, they're pursuing a specific robotic goal to do something
 new.
 Now is this, is this standing on its own?
 I think, at least that's the goal.
 Yeah.
 God.
 If that's true, that's insane.
 Hey buddy.
 I mean, I guess we're starting to see, Hey, it's sober too.
 Look at that.
 Oh, so that's finally, that's something that no human can, they're really into abusing
 robots.
 That's the thing we know about.
 Yeah.
 I'm just waiting for them to realize what we're doing.
 I mean, maybe RoboCop is not as far off as we think, you know, maybe Google will deploy
 Sentry bots and protector bots and cop bots.
 Well that's actually, that's like the idea of prosthetics.
 So like imagine like this technology, you wouldn't do someone's prosthetic leg.
 It could actually like, you could control it in a much better way.
 You probably put like a gun on it too.
 You could also put a gun machine gun carry.
 Exactly.
 Those pops out and it's controlled with Google glass.
 Yeah, exactly.
 Um, all right.
 What else is in the news?
 What else is happening?
 We have no answers on the, I just like to say that we officially have zero answers at this
 point.
 Oh yeah.
 This one's great.
 This is exactly like the most horrific thing that I've ever thought of.
 Like, like, no, no, no, no.
 Put the suit back on him.
 Cause what I want to do is I want to picture that thing.
 Yeah.
 I want to picture that guy with the faithful face mask.
 Oh, don't do that.
 Quarantine war zone right here.
 Yeah.
 Like, well, Hey, why does the bot need a gas mask?
 Yeah.
 I'm sorry.
 You did.
 You, what did you engineer?
 The, you know, the robot actually dies if it breathes in dangerous gases.
 I, you don't like, what is the gas mask for?
 Just to scare me, I think is the answer.
 This seriously is upsetting.
 But I mean, and part of it is also how many big tech companies are looking at wearables
 and robotics right now?
 I think pretty much all of them in some extent.
 This is just, I mean, this is a little beyond, this is a beyond.
 This is a little beyond.
 Okay.
 That's fair.
 So this is now Andy Rubin is going to get to do whatever he wants with this thing.
 Is that correct?
 Yeah.
 Yes.
 Right.
 Cool.
 That's really encouraging.
 Bigger than a moonshot.
 All right.
 What else?
 What else?
 So Tim Cook, Marissa Meyer, Reed Hastings, Eric Schmidt, and Zingacy.
 What about, what about, what about?
 One of these things is not like the other.
 Went to meet with Obama to talk.
 He wanted, he wanted them, him to.
 He get Zuckerberg?
 Advice on, I think, yeah.
 No.
 They wanted advice on healthcare.gov and they showed up and they were like, yeah, we'd like
 to talk about the NSA.
 I think it was awkward.
 You think it was awkward?
 I'm pretty sure it was very awkward.
 No, but you think it was awkward with Zuckerberg and Pinkus in the room?
 No, that's what I'm saying.
 Oh yeah.
 Yeah.
 And so Pinkus apparently asked Obama or suggested to Obama that he pardon Edward Snowden.
 Because we're going to pardon Snowden based on Mark Pinkus's recommendation.
 You never know, man.
 Obama said he couldn't do that.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 And then, and then, and then had him removed.
 It's like nobody asked him before.
 Can't he?
 He is president.
 I think he meant, I think what he meant, let me explain, Dieter.
 I think he meant that there were reasons that he would not do it.
 Not that he physically or like technically.
 I was having flashbacks to my childhood when I asked, can I, can I?
 And they, no, you mean may I?
 Well, at any rate.
 Yeah.
 Which is probably exactly how that conversation went.
 I think, I think, um, wait, that's Sheryl Sandberg.
 Yeah.
 Oh, maybe it was her instead of Zuckerberg.
 What is Pinkus, what is Pinkus doing at this table?
 It's a little odd.
 It's really odd.
 I don't see Zuck.
 There's no Zuck there.
 Yeah, it's Sheryl.
 It must be Sheryl, yeah.
 Yeah.
 This looks like a very uncomfortable conversation.
 To me, this looks like a horrifically uncomfortable conversation.
 Dramatically zooming in.
 Is this the moment right here where Pinkus says, why don't you pardon?
 He's like, Hey, I was down here at the end of the table drinking and I just thought,
 why not pardon?
 Anyhow, you know, here's the question.
 I mean, increasingly speaking of Snowden, increasingly it looks like people are saying,
 Hey, what Snowden did is not in the wrong.
 Yeah.
 So what's the, the, the Obama's, uh, uh, panel recommended that they, they, NSA doesn't keep
 phone records.
 Well, there's that.
 There was a, a judge, federal judge found that, uh, what was the term that he used?
 And we have a story on this.
 If only, if only we had a poll.
 Well, he's looking up.
 I mean, one thing is interesting as you get into that, um, TC just pointed out, um, that
 was right next to Obama at his left side was Randall Stevenson of AT&T, which is perfect.
 Earily appropriate.
 His left side or his right side?
 It was his left side.
 Biden on the right.
 Biden on the right.
 One is clearly more powerful than the other.
 One is sneakier.
 One is sneakier than the other.
 Um, but yeah, anyhow, the, the, the Snowden stuff, I mean, you know, I think everybody's
 a little fatigued at this point.
 Like the level of stuff that we're hearing, the level of privacy violations, but also
 just the story, Edward Snowden's story.
 It's like, you know, you can kind of only, um, here you go.
 Uh, that their phone record collection is unconstitutional.
 Yeah.
 I'm looking for like the, the judge was super harsh on them.
 I'm looking for like a, a quotable quote, but uh, Kander, yeah.
 I mean, let's just be clear, you know, that's not, that's not small potatoes.
 You know, we now have federal judges saying this, this, this, what the NSA has been doing
 is unconstitutional.
 Right.
 The line that the NSA likes to give is that collection is different from spying because
 we're, we're, we're taking it, we're collecting it, but we're not doing anything with it.
 So it's okay.
 Yeah.
 And I don't think a single person outside of that giant creepy black cube of a building
 where the NSA is believes that.
 Yeah.
 I think it's hard to, I was actually, I woke up the other day and I, and I thought, uh,
 I'm like, man, what if it just went away?
 What if it just, the NSA was like, you know, we're not going to do this anymore and we
 could just go back to living a normal life where we didn't have to think about this.
 They can say it.
 They can say it.
 I mean, I'm saying, what if they actually did it?
 You know, it's, it's almost impossible now to imagine a reality where you're not basically
 being spied on 24 seven.
 Right.
 And I don't know if that's, I don't know if that's because, I mean, look, you could get
 off of the internet, right?
 You can stop using the internet essentially.
 I don't know what your life would be like.
 We had someone try that.
 No, well, and they, and he succeeded.
 It's a very security.
 So still, he survived, he survived.
 It affected him.
 But he wasn't, but he wasn't sending emails, he wasn't making, you know, he wasn't talking
 to people on, on.
 But when he was, when he was asking questions and he was getting answers, he was getting
 answers from people who were connected.
 Like there at no point.
 Yeah, but I'm saying that's, that's the way to do it.
 Yeah.
 You got to go off the grid, man.
 Get Paul Miller style, you know, just get information from people around you.
 This is the judge who was appointed by Bush, by the way.
 I cannot imagine a more indiscriminate and arbitrary invasion.
 Those are both quotes from the law, then this systemic and high tech collection and retention
 of personal data.
 Of course, the public has no interest in saving the government from the burden of complying
 with the constitution.
 Like yeah, yeah.
 Just just rips into it.
 Eviscerated, I would say that.
 I mean, it is, and it is, you know, just like, look, Obama's talking to tech people, tech
 people are writing letters, federal judges are saying this is unconstitutional.
 Does do, is there any indication that any of this is actually going to stop?
 I don't know.
 No, I mean, the NSA could literally be like, yeah, we're going to stop and then just keep
 doing it.
 But right.
 I mean, it has to come at this point, it's going to have to come out of Congress.
 And I mean, that nothing's happened there for a while.
 What do we think about the BIOS plot?
 Oh, my other 60 minutes, 60 minutes.
 This is great 60 minutes report on, uh, on it felt like a South Park episode.
 Like it was a very weird, like, oh, there's a tech, it destroys your BIOS, your BIOS is
 alive, so your computer's alive.
 Right.
 But I didn't, the BIOS plot.
 Let's just throw an acronym that scares people.
 Here's the thing that I, here's the thing that I don't fully get.
 Uh, uh, the, the 60 minutes there, they suggested that the, the people, the, the nation state
 behind the attack was China.
 Yeah.
 Like I don't get China disabling everybody's computer in America unless it's like to launch
 world war three.
 Right.
 Because we are China's biggest consumer.
 They need us for their economy.
 Yeah.
 Right.
 And there's really no disconnecting these things at this point.
 Like China needs America to keep buying Chinese things and like they need to continue to take
 on American debt.
 And so, and they need to continue to buy up things that exist in America.
 And so the idea that they would want to bring down America by destroying everybody's computer
 seems, you know, pretty funny.
 Also there are plenty of computers that don't have, I mean, I don't know if they meant like
 not all computers are the same basically.
 I mean, I don't know if there was a specific type of computer they're talking about or
 they may have, it was like just a blanket, like all bios everywhere was affected.
 The idea that there can be a virus that can blow up your bios and like the thing that
 makes your computer boot is not new or fresh.
 So like, yeah, if it's theoretically possible that China has developed a thing to like blow
 up a whole lot of bios and a whole lot of computers, one, they wouldn't do that too.
 Why is the NSA trotting this thing out that like we kind of already know about and isn't
 that a threat?
 FUD.
 FUD.
 Exactly.
 And the NSA gets, derives their power from the fear of the American citizenry feeling
 like they need to do, the NSA needs to do whatever the NSA wants to do to protect us
 from some kind of phantom attack.
 And like last year it was terrorism and this, and now it's like the Chinese want to like
 destroy our computers and there's always going to be a new enemy for America.
 That seems pretty clear, you know, it's like, it's just a matter of, of this like lulls
 in between where we, where we toy with several enemies.
 It's just so surprising to me that as sophisticated as the system is supposed to be, they did
 not invest anywhere near as much money into like figuring out how to defend this should
 it ever come out in public.
 Right.
 Like they're completely surprised and kind of caught off guard.
 You've seen the PowerPoints.
 These aren't, I mean, I don't, I don't.
 Smiley faces on them for God's sake.
 Yeah.
 I mean, I don't, I don't think that there's a lot of deep thought going into what they're
 doing.
 I mean, I actually don't, I don't think they're like, my God, we're taking all of these private
 phone records.
 Like this is a major constitutional violation.
 I think they're just like, Hey, we can do this.
 Let's just do it.
 Yeah.
 And not think about what the consequences are and not think about what the ramifications
 are because they just are on a mission.
 You know, their mission is to collect information.
 No, they, they, they think about the consequences, ramifications.
 They think about it very carefully.
 They think about where is the line and how can we push it and how can we use the language
 of the current law, most of which is very much outdated in order to push it.
 Right.
 But I don't feel like they've gone to great lengths to be, to be, they've been sneaking
 the sense that people don't have access to their internal documents, but it doesn't seem
 like they've gone to great lengths to cover this up or defend it.
 I mean, you know what I mean?
 Like it's, it's not, they don't have great answers, you know, their answers are vague.
 You know, they, they lied to Congress.
 I'd call that going to great lengths to defend it.
 I mean, I'd call it sloppy.
 Yeah.
 I'd call it sloppy.
 They, if they actually went to great lengths, they'd say, listen, here's the structure of
 the law.
 We've abided by it every, at every step of the way.
 Like this is what the law allows and this is what we're doing.
 And there are, there would be no necessity to lie because you could demonstrate that
 your methods were sound.
 They do that, but they, they do it in such a fuzzy way.
 And they they're, there's so little evidence of benefit to us as citizens that they, they
 trot out, Oh, we've defended you against, you know, so many attacks.
 And then you look at that number and then it's actually a smaller number when you really
 dig into it.
 And then you go on top of that when you dig in more.
 So I just, something needs, there's a lot of people, there's a lot of companies and
 a lot of countries and a lot of Americans that like want this to turn around right now.
 Yeah.
 And it hasn't yet.
 And I got straight up, like the next thing, way to fix this is to vote different people
 into Congress so that they will do it for us.
 Right.
 Well, that's where we're at.
 That may or may not solve it.
 I mean, and the thing is like, that's one of like three steps that must happen in an
 exact order.
 Well, if, if we've got, it's possible more federal judges will start overturning stuff
 and change things, but I don't have a lot of confidence there either.
 Right.
 So then what, what are we going to do?
 Just always be spied on?
 Pull up Paul Miller, go offline.
 I mean, is there, is there any alternatives to the, to like, I mean, there is no real
 protection like there is no real way to protect.
 And let's not forget like, you know, we, we may be the most sophisticated country doing
 this.
 We may not be.
 We got caught doing it.
 That's the thing that's great.
 Yeah.
 I mean, maybe we just need to accept that, you know, it's all just going to be out there
 and people are going to be reading your stuff and, you know, just try not to break the law
 basically.
 I mean, there are people trying to.
 That's a lot of faith.
 I'm not making that argument by the way.
 I think that's insane.
 I think it's an insane way to live.
 But you know that, I think that's like how the government would kind of like, I think
 that's what the NSA would ultimately prefer.
 If everybody just said, you know what, I'll just, I won't break the law and then I don't
 care if you read my stuff.
 You know, you're just some anonymous person.
 It's not like you're just checking out your ex-girlfriend's information using the systems
 that you have at hand.
 Oh wait, they were actually doing that.
 So it is like at the end of the day, it's on a computer.
 Like I'm more comfortable with Google with being screwed gold.
 Okay.
 It's like an algorithm showing me ads because they saw words in my, in my, they said words
 that are just basically chunks of data versus, you know, the government, a completely, you
 know, a government that has zero oversight and horrible track record in terms of what
 it will tell its citizens and being truthful with its citizens.
 I'd much rather have Google's robots, not actual, not zero robots, but it's, I'd rather
 have its spiders crawl my shit than have the NSA do it.
 I mean, in both cases, this is an example of like laws and bureaucracy being outpaced
 by technology.
 At no point, at no point do we think there's a law that was needed at a time when this
 would have been crucial.
 For other Google, like regulating robots and drones or like regulating the privacy and
 connections like our laws are wholly outdated for things like that.
 Yeah.
 Well we don't, there's no conception of things like, like drones and you know, autonomous
 robots and.
 And I think was it Clay Shurie had a good example, like just because the law wasn't
 ready for technology doesn't mean we should be afraid of the technology or afraid of the
 laws.
 It's just, that's always how it's going to be happening.
 We can't prepare for these things.
 The other thing I want to promote is a TC's big report.
 He did this great editorial about Obama's legacy and these two polar, not polar opposite,
 like seemingly polar opposite issues of like too much red tape, not enough red tape with
 the healthcare issue and with the NSA.
 Yeah.
 And I think his premise is really interesting.
 We should take the red tape from healthcare.gov and move it over to the NSA.
 Yeah.
 I wake up dreaming that Keith Alexander took over healthcare and Kathleen Sebelius took
 over the NSA.
 Yeah.
 We should put those contractors.
 Just swap the chairs.
 Yeah.
 There you go.
 Everyone has everybody's problems.
 I think there's, I think there's a.
 They already know your preexisting conditions.
 I think there's a fair amount of buffoonery on both sides really.
 I mean when you look at it.
 Oh yeah.
 But it is an interesting question.
 You know, he.
 Speaking of buffoonery.
 I mean Bush's legacy is pretty obvious at this point.
 You know, you think about like war and war on terror basically.
 And the absence of evidence is the evidence of absence of whatever.
 Of course, of course.
 You know, what happens to mass destruction that were never found that we were lied to
 about.
 What will, you know, you start to think like this does seem to be kind of defining factors.
 I mean obviously Obamacare, but what overshadows Obamacare is the failure of the, of its, of
 its launch.
 You know, like.
 And then, and then the NSA stuff is clearly, you know, the funny thing is though I just
 don't know how much real people care about the NSA spying.
 Like my impression is they don't.
 My impression is they either don't know about it.
 And if they do know about it and when they find out about it, they're like, well, I don't
 really have anything to hide.
 And I think you would be, I think if you went out on the street right now and talked to
 most people, that's what they would tell you.
 And the other thing I say is like, they would say, you know, I think it's a big deal, but
 I'm so tired of hearing about it.
 It's like the flood of information is both necessary and also somewhat like, you know,
 well, even if you could explain it all very clearly in one simple way, it's still what
 can you, you can't do anything with the information.
 You can get angry, but you can't take your anger anywhere.
 Even if every citizen in America signed a petition saying, I won't stand for this, that
 doesn't mean it will affect any change.
 You know, it needs, there need to be lobbying groups.
 There need to be politicians.
 There need to be judges and lawyers who are invested in this, who are going to go make
 the changes.
 And there are, those things do exist.
 But you know, our government is extremely bureaucratic and slow moving.
 And so the idea that this will be changed anytime in the near future seems impossible.
 And also, you know, it does kind of feel like Obama who came in on this like wave of hope
 and excitement and like, we're going to have a totally different, more transparent government
 and we're going to, you know, a guy we really like is in the White House.
 It turns out it's, you know, a very similar government to the one that we've always had
 or at least had for the last 40 years.
 All the news this week, this depressing.
 It's very, it's a downer.
 It's a downer.
 There is one thing that was not depressing.
 Hold up.
 It may not be exactly verge related.
 What is it?
 On Friday the 13th, Beyonce.
 Oh Beyonce.
 Have we not thought it up?
 Beyonce.
 1313.
 Yeah.
 Yes.
 So Beyonce released a series of, of incredible songs, videos.
 14 audio, 17 videos.
 Never leaked.
 Which is amazing.
 We heard, okay.
 Yes and no.
 This is me knowing way too much.
 So she has performed one of the songs before live.
 A few things leaked because a lot of these were filmed in public.
 A lot of them in New York and East Village too.
 But no one had any idea this was happening.
 In fact, the last rumor was that she had completely scrapped the album altogether.
 But planted, planted obviously.
 Very.
 But from the music business standpoint, this dropped with no promotion.
 Full album.
 You cannot buy it by a track.
 Audio and video, everything comes together and the physical release isn't even coming
 out until the 20th.
 Yeah.
 And it's, and it's like crazy, sold like crazy.
 Yeah.
 Five million?
 Well maybe by now, 800,000 the first three days.
 Which is the fastest selling iTunes album ever.
 Yeah, which is crazy.
 It topped Katy Perry and Lady Gaga sales combined.
 Yeah.
 Wow.
 What's interesting about it is, what's interesting about it is like it goes against all of the,
 here's the deal.
 When you've got enough star power, you can fly in the face of like all of the, all of
 the modern notions about how we should sell and listen to music.
 Like if you're a mid-level or low-level artist who has, you know, if you're not Beyonce,
 let's put it that way, you probably can't get away with doing this.
 Like you can release your record, your hardcore fans will buy it.
 Yeah.
 There will be zero hype about it.
 Nobody will tweet about it.
 No one will know about it.
 Like a small group of people.
 And then like your album will be done.
 You know, you can't get away with it.
 If you're Beyonce, you can definitely pull this, which is, which is you're the biggest
 celebrity in the world and you have a surprise record.
 And so everybody's going to freak out and be curious and there's going to be an enormous
 amount of hype.
 I mean the whole day following that, that evening into the next day through the, through
 the next evening, it was just like bedlam about, it was beyond, it's like two days straight,
 maybe three days straight of like, I felt like everywhere I turned, the only conversation
 anybody was having was Beyonce.
 And this is also like, this is a weird time because this is after the Grammy nominations
 have been announced for the year.
 Like this is post award season for the music industry.
 But it is pre, it is pre-holiday shopping season.
 I mean this is, this is the time when, when big albums drop.
 Like in the music industry, they'll say like, if you're going to release a record, you basically,
 you are big enough that you release it around Christmas.
 Or you avoid releasing a record on Christmas because that's when all of the gigantic artists
 release their album.
 And the physical albums come out four days before Christmas, but not at Target.
 Not at Target.
 Target is very mad about this.
 Target boycotted Beyonce because she sold exclusively in iTunes.
 That's the story, right?
 Yeah.
 That's insane, you know?
 Which it was also the opposite of what happened in her last album.
 Her album four was, they had Target exclusive video and packaging and rapping.
 Like there was a close relationship and this just obviously pissed them off to no end.
 Clearly that relationship is soured.
 Yeah.
 I mean, I think what's most impressive is that just the level, I mean the level of general
 secrecy about this.
 Like you didn't see the music press really writing about it.
 You didn't hear, oh, this album is going to leak or there's rumors there's going to be.
 And it didn't leak.
 That's the other thing.
 No.
 That's what amazes me is I like that doesn't happen much anymore.
 No.
 Well, I mean Beyonce is very powerful.
 Yeah.
 She's also married to Jay Z.
 And by the way, that couple has had, Jay Z also had a very interesting experiment with
 music industry.
 Oh yeah.
 Samsung.
 His Samsung album.
 Just.
 It was a- What is it?
 Magna Carta Holy Grail?
 Magna Carta Holy Grail.
 You forget, you know, you forget that record happened, but I don't know.
 I'm not a big Jay Z fan.
 Jay Z himself like ranked it like seventh or eighth on his like discography.
 I agree with him.
 Yeah.
 I'm going to have to agree with Jay on that one.
 But this Beyonce record.
 Now I frankly have not listened to the whole thing, so I don't want to speak out of turn,
 but everybody says I've heard a few songs and they're good.
 Everybody says it's incredible.
 It's very raunchy.
 She's very, she's into making love.
 Oh yeah.
 No, no, it's not.
 She's a baby.
 Proof that she's into making love.
 She's like, look, I've had everything else and no one's going to care.
 So let's just do a song about oral sex.
 Well Trent did.
 Trent did a review sort of review and look into her record and he does talk a lot about
 the, sorry I was just checking the time.
 He looked at his watch and I looked at my watch.
 It's smart watch now.
 It's the, my pants are like vibrating.
 Whoa, hang on.
 Speaking of sex, speaking of sexy stuff, Ross's pants are vibrating.
 Unrelated, unrelated to the new Beyonce record.
 Completely unrelated.
 This is disgusting and upsetting.
 This is so wrong.
 What were we talking about?
 Oh yeah.
 Well, so anyhow, but Trent made a point that Rihanna and other popular, you know, Miley
 Cyrus, other popular pop stars have become increasingly sexy.
 You know, I mean, Lady Gaga, what's her new song?
 It's a do what you want to my body.
 With R. Kelly.
 With R. Kelly.
 And you know, R. Kelly is going to do something to her body that it will be like, you'll find
 a way to do something illegal and inappropriate.
 Yes.
 But, you know, I think like, you know, you look at the record, I mean, sex sells.
 Beyonce is clearly aware that sex sells and you know, she's extremely beautiful and like,
 you know, why not?
 Why not?
 I'll tell you why not.
 Have some respect for yourself.
 No, I'm just kidding.
 I'm just kidding.
 Jeez.
 Okay.
 This is, do we don't have to shut up?
 Yeah, we're just going very, very.
 No, but now we're, I love the footage.
 Keep writing the B roll.
 You want to hear me talking about how sexy Beyonce is while we see footage of a scantily
 clad Beyonce being sexy.
 This would be the Drunk in Love video.
 Wow.
 Wow.
 This is, this is intense.
 This is, I have not seen all the videos.
 This is what $17 gets you.
 This is the future of the urge cast actually.
 Yeah, it's just Beyonce.
 Beyonce and we talk about it while she dances.
 But anyhow, have you, did you buy the album?
 Not yet.
 Lisa did not buy it?
 No.
 You?
 Of course I did.
 Yeah.
 I mean, I will.
 I mean, it's iTunes.
 We need our own accounts and it's got to work on our phones.
 Sure.
 Can you, can you, now can you share this?
 This is, you have like, you can, you can.
 I don't think we have a family account.
 I don't know how that works actually.
 I guess you can't unless you're streaming off of a single computer or something.
 Right.
 Yeah.
 I have not bought it.
 Really?
 No, but I've heard several and seen several videos from it.
 I just, to be honest with you, I need to set aside time to experience all of Beyonce.
 Right.
 See, I knew that if I did not buy day one and know it by the end of day one, I would
 not have a relationship anymore.
 So that was my, that was my impetus for doing this.
 Is that, is that really what happened?
 It just, you know, it's a threat thereof.
 Is that the kind of situation you've got?
 You need to be.
 Just to be safe.
 Completely aware of the Beyonce catalog at all times.
 Absolutely.
 Can we talk about the, can we talk about a couple of things?
 Yes.
 Yes, absolutely.
 So first off, we should, can we talk about this ad?
 Yeah, we've had this the whole time.
 So Motorola ran this ad.
 This will save print.
 This is a print ad that's running in Wired.
 It's running in here.
 Do you want me to?
 Yeah, I think Billy's running in to help us out with this.
 So hold on.
 I don't know if you guys have seen this.
 Did we write about this?
 Did we not write about this?
 We did.
 Oh yeah, we did.
 We did.
 So check it out.
 This is a print ad that is running.
 Let me find the best angle.
 Hold on.
 Nope.
 That's not the best angle.
 Nope.
 That's not the best angle.
 I'm trying to get the glare off.
 And also Billy, oh boy.
 Okay.
 Anyhow, this is good enough.
 So this is an ad that's running in Wired and a bunch of other magazines.
 It is insane.
 Okay.
 Hold on.
 Let me check some, do some other colors here.
 So how do they pull this off?
 So obviously there's lights in here.
 Yeah.
 And you can actually, if you look in the back, you can see the strip of lights right there
 shining upwards.
 Oh yeah.
 But it's, I mean, but look at some of these, the colors they get out of this is, it's kind
 of insane.
 And I got to say it's easily one of the, is this the right color?
 Hold on.
 It's a, I think we might've broken it a little bit from using it so much.
 Really like pink.
 But this is, yeah, this is one of the craziest ads.
 Look at these in particular.
 Hold on.
 I mean, that's pretty good.
 It's really weird.
 Yeah.
 Like it's incredible that they did this.
 And I got to say they might've spent all of the remaining money they had on the budget
 to advertise this phone on this ad, but it was worth it.
 Well, do you remember about five years back the Esquire e-ink magazine cover that had
 done some really crazy things too?
 Yeah.
 That never went anywhere else.
 But also, and also there was the one with the phone in it.
 Remember, remember there was an ad.
 It was in, oh yeah.
 Who did the ad?
 It was had a phone embedded in the ad and it could get like text messages.
 Entertainment Weekly had it.
 There really is a smartphone inside Entertainment Weekly magazine.
 Yeah.
 I know Mashable wrote about it.
 I think we might've done something.
 Actually, I think, I don't remember if that was during, was that during this is my next
 days?
 October, 2012?
 No, we should have been up and running.
 No, we were in existence.
 Yeah.
 We existed.
 We launched November, 2011.
 That's right.
 Oh, this is right before.
 Okay.
 No, I mean it's.
 It's a year after our launch.
 Oh, right, right.
 I don't remember time anymore.
 I'm sure we covered it.
 We wrote about it.
 Anyhow, this is, I got to say, there's really nothing to say about this except that it is
 awesome.
 As far as ads go, print ads, it's like next level.
 Yeah.
 And the bamboo one is available now for a hundred bucks.
 Oh yeah, the bamboo back is available.
 It makes me so sad.
 The Moto X sales figures that came out, I want this to do so well.
 Yeah.
 It's a good phone.
 It's not doing that well at all.
 It's a good phone.
 It isn't making the kind of splash that I think they hoped it would make.
 So I also want to talk about another phone.
 I bought an Xperia Z1 from an Unlocked.
 In case you're wondering, if you're on AT&T, the model number you want to get LTE.
 Oh, you've got a, okay.
 Yeah.
 Is C6906.
 There's a bunch of variations of the Z1.
 Anyhow, I bought the Z1 and I'm pretty impressed.
 Really?
 Wait, this is not the Google Play Edition Z.
 No, no.
 This is the Z1 Ultra, which is like this big.
 This is the Xperia Z1 and it has some annoying Sony tweaks, but they're relatively minimal.
 And some of them are actually improvements on Google, frankly.
 So it shows you, it has built in battery percentage in the status bar.
 It has built in, so the way Google does its quick settings is that there's a secondary
 dropdown, that you have to access with two finger swipes or a swipe on the right side
 on tablets.
 This actually has quick toggles sort of built into the top row of the, oh, you can see it
 here.
 Those top row quick toggles.
 Did you see my password?
 Did everybody just see my password?
 Yeah.
 Those top row quick toggles are either amazing or terrible.
 Yeah.
 So, wait, hold on.
 Let me clear these.
 There's no telling what's in there, but you can see that there's at the top of the, see
 there's that nice little control.
 And they're actually way more useful than what Google provides.
 Just cut to the chase, how's the camera?
 The camera's amazing.
 Really?
 The camera's really good.
 And it actually, with a little bit of, it has a little bit of a learning curve because
 it does function more like a real camera.
 I actually think it's really good.
 And I'll say that I feel that the photos I'm taking are not only really good, but I think
 they're better than iPhone.
 So when you say they're better than iPhone, you're saying-
 Yeah.
 I think they're less saturated.
 Okay.
 I think that there's a quality to them that's different, but they feel more like camera
 photos to me.
 Is it like a Lumia 1020 situation where you kind of need to know what you're doing in
 order to get that?
 I mean, not as much as the 1020.
 The 1020 is weirdly overly complicated and kind of slow, and it doesn't really work.
 It's not enough like a phone camera.
 This is the kind of the right mixture.
 And I have an, the software's not updated.
 This is on 4.2.
 And Evan, who also has one, who-
 And is taking pictures of us right now.
 He's taking pictures of us.
 For the control room.
 Yeah.
 He has four, three.
 It's been updated and I guess it's rolling out now.
 Okay.
 But I got to say, I'm really impressed with the camera.
 I've been looking for an Android phone that actually has a great camera.
 And I think that this is maybe the first one where it's like really competitive, if not
 a bit better than the iPhone.
 In some instances, in my experience, I've only had it for a few days, so I'm still testing.
 Here's some other nice things about this that I was impressed to discover, surprised to
 discover or that I would care about.
 It's waterproof, which I don't care about at all, except for the fact that I was walking
 around in the snow the other day with this and I took it out and started using it.
 And I wasn't like, oh my God, I'm going to get water on my phone, which was kind of nice.
 That's something that most companies don't worry about.
 I don't have to think about it anymore.
 You didn't have to worry about it when it was in the snow or it rains.
 Right.
 That's a care I don't want to have.
 It's actually the kind of thing that is, I think I mentioned this when I was like, here's
 things they could do for the iPhone that would be really cool.
 The other thing is the battery life is kind of outrageous.
 In my third day of using it, I had, when I was, I had to use it for like 15 hours straight
 and I had some like long phone calls.
 I was like really using the phone and it said that my battery percentage was like 25 or
 26% remaining.
 So like more than a day basically, like more than a workday.
 That is really important.
 Why can't Sony get it right selling these things in the US?
 Like they, we reported back in October.
 They need enormous.
 It was too much work to market here.
 They need an enormous marketing budget.
 They need enormous marketing budget and they need buy in from all of the carriers in a
 big way.
 Samsung has, here's Samsung's thing.
 They have enormous marketing budgets, like out of control.
 I mean, look at how much they're advertising.
 Yeah.
 You know, it's like, it's almost like brute force.
 They're basically like forcing you to understand that Samsung devices exist and they have done
 a lot of, I mean, I think carriers see it as an easy win.
 People now know the Samsung brand.
 They come in the store, they're like, I want the Galaxy.
 The only thing stopping, I mean, Motorola is trying to do with the Moto X.
 I don't think they have nearly the budget to do it.
 No.
 Also, I don't think they have the phone.
 I mean.
 They're being creative, but like they're not brute forcing it like Samsung does.
 Right.
 And also Motorola's like they have one device, flagship device.
 Samsung has the flagship S4 and then 40 other phones, different various sizes and markets.
 Right.
 So I think that, I think that it just requires, I mean, actually.
 I'm sorry.
 I have to break this train of thought.
 Is the software skin really good?
 Cause Sony used to be terrible.
 So I've disabled everything that's like pretty much everything that Sony is specific.
 You can do this.
 The user customizer, they're not hacking anything.
 I'm not hacking anything.
 I, well, I did install, Evan had the KitKat launcher, which was like the stock launcher.
 You can get versions of it in that play store, but I wanted the like pure one and he has
 the actual like pure APK, which you can just install.
 You can just get it, sideload it and install it.
 It's not a hack at all.
 So after going to the KitKat launcher, most of the stuff that's annoying is gone.
 There's a couple of things like, you know, they've reskinned the contacts app and the
 dialer.
 Yeah.
 Very minor, very minor.
 Like it's completely inoffensive, like not an issue.
 They have this thing on the multitasking menu, which I'm surprised to say I actually think
 is kind of cool.
 They have these like mini apps that float over top of things.
 They've got like a calculator, a timer, a voice recorder and a couple of other little
 things and I've used them.
 I will tell you, like I've opened it up to like open the calculator and I'm like, oh,
 there's a calculator right here.
 I'll just open it up and do the quick calculation and close the thing.
 So not terribly offensive.
 They've, you know, reskin menu, like the, the, the settings menus are different.
 They've added some personalization options.
 Like, you know, they made it a little bit harder to, you know, for some reason changing
 your lock screen image, you don't change your background and lock screen image together.
 You do them as separate things, which seems weird to me, but I'm largely, I mean at four
 two, what's really surprising to me, and I was just saying to this to Neelai the other
 day, what's really surprising is that at 4.2 and I think beyond the differences are negligible
 because once you kind of disable the stuff you don't like, like I'm not going to use
 the Walkman app for music because I listened to RDO and Spotify and I use Google play music.
 Uh, the, the, once you disable that stuff, the fact that Google is just has basically
 separated all of its apps out as standalones, you know, Gmail and Google drive.
 Now they have this photos app which ties into Google plus I, I auto upload all my photos.
 I don't, I don't love it.
 I don't love it.
 But what it, what's nice about it is that it feels integrated with the rest of the Google
 ecosystem.
 So they have a, they have a, uh, an album here that you can't disable.
 It's like they've replaced the gallery app with their own gallery app.
 I suppose I could download the stock gallery app.
 I mean they have them on the store, but um, it, it, it's fine, but you can plug into photos
 using the Google plus stuff and switch.
 I do anyhow.
 So like honestly the feeling is not, I've been using a Nexus five.
 I went to this, I'm still in the next five.
 I'm going to, I'm about to switch to the iPhone after my crazy Twitter rant.
 Like I just, I can't, there's no dramatic.
 What's your issue with the camera?
 The camera?
 No, Twitter rant.
 No, I'm like, oh, but the app.
 Yeah.
 That's where I'm at.
 I'm like, what's the fix is how bad the Twitter update is.
 We did this last week.
 Basically what I'm saying is, uh, it is surprisingly the same for the most part.
 Yeah.
 I mean the vast majority of things I'm doing, I mean I think Google hit a point where the
 people who are skinning, I mean this is not Samsung level skin.
 Everything does not look different.
 It's got some stuff that looks different.
 They made some weird changes.
 I don't really understand.
 For instance, they have a different icon for the sound off, like a different, well the
 stock sound off icon is so ugly.
 No, it's just, it's completely innocuous.
 I mean, it's horrible.
 Totally.
 It's totally innocuous.
 First thing I would change.
 Really?
 Yeah.
 Are you joking?
 Yes.
 I'm totally joking.
 I couldn't tell if you were kidding or not because I just thought it was weird.
 Like you're going to, like they changed the home.
 They changed the home back and multitask button.
 I just don't know why they're, they're so innocuous and meaningless.
 Overall, you know, and like the stuff they added doesn't fit in any better in my opinion.
 I love this is all, I love this part of the verge cast when Billy has to turn on this TV
 again because they'd go into sleep.
 Very nice job, Billy.
 Excellent work.
 And then, you know, actually on that note, like I think we have to wrap up because I,
 unfortunately we started late and we're ending early because I have to go to a meeting.
 There's one thing we need to note though.
 Next week is Christmas, obviously.
 Next week is Xmas.
 And the studio is shut down.
 Right.
 And the week after we're flying out to CES.
 CES.
 Oh yeah.
 That's probably the last one.
 Is this the last verge cast of the year?
 For the studio at least?
 Uh, yes.
 Is it really?
 I mean, studio is shut down next week.
 What?
 Really?
 And then we fly out for CES.
 Well, you're saying we don't have a verge cast between now and CES?
 We might.
 That doesn't sound right to me.
 We won't have it here though.
 We won't have it here.
 Where will it be?
 You can have one on the second for sure.
 Where would we be on the second?
 I don't know.
 That seems like a long time.
 Okay.
 You know what?
 Let's not get hung up on this.
 Don't worry about it.
 We're going to be here for you.
 We're not going anywhere.
 We're going to have an enormous amount of coverage, we have all kinds of crazy stuff
 planned.
 We're going to have a bigger, better, nastier studio there, which we're very excited about.
 And of course we're going to be doing a bunch of video shows, but the verge cast will be
 one of them.
 And we'll be doing essentially a week of verge casts.
 Every day.
 Every night, drunkenly verge casting for your pleasure.
 We promise the drunk part.
 Definitely.
 And it's going to be very exciting.
 So yeah, so this is our, you know, actually we should have done something.
 Garland or mistletoe so we could kiss each other or, you know, lower mistletoe.
 We could hold the Mac Pro.
 Lower mistletoe.
 The Mac Pro?
 Does anybody know what lower mistletoe is?
 No.
 It's mistletoe for other stuff.
 You know what I mean?
 Oh.
 Somebody in the control room.
 Who was that speaking?
 That would probably be our sound guy, Will.
 That's right.
 On your junk.
 They can't hear you, but junk was mentioned.
 Anyhow, the point is we were not very festive in here and that's kind of disappointing.
 Okay.
 So that, I guess that's where you're wrapping up then.
 Yeah.
 But yeah, we see us is coming and more verge cast, a lot more verge cast is coming.
 Unfortunately for you unlucky people out there in cyberspace, but bringing cyberspace back.
 More better and happy news.
 More better.
 More better.
 And happy news.
 And coherent speaking.
 More news.
 You're saying more happy news.
 More happy news.
 We make words good future.
 Yeah.
 Anyhow, that's the verge cast for this week.
 And you know what a verge cast it was.
 It was, it was, it had its moments.
 It was definitely a verge cast.
 It was a, it was, it was a verge cast.
 Yes it was.
 I don't think any of us feel that.
 I don't think any of us feel like we did gave a hundred percent here today.
 Do we?
 I feel like I was at like 75 maybe.
 It's like four or five days till Christmas.
 Yeah.
 I'm, I'm ready to, I'm ready to just jam on some eggnog.
 Okay.
 Get a candy cane out.
 Some lower mistletoe.
 I am going to murder a gingerbread house.
 Jam on some eggnog.
 Get some Bing, some Bing Crosby.
 I'm getting flattered everywhere.
 Get Bing up, get Bing up on my Xbox one.
 Get some Bing Crosby on the, on the, uh, Bing, Bing Crosby.
 Bing on a Bing, Bing Crosby.
 And then get him going on the stereo system and uh, get my Santa, get my Santa suit on.
 Xbox jingle my bells.
 I think Will just said that.
 That's the lower mistletoe.
 Hockey mask, hockey mask.
 Yeah, yeah.
 Santa suit.
 Right.
 No bottoms.
 No eggnog.
 Lower mistletoe.
 That's been me for the next week.
 There you go.
 Flutter shop challenge.
 Yeah.
 And that's the Vergecast for this week.
 Uh, as always, you can get in touch with us by, uh, uh, sending us an email at Vergecast
 at the verge.com.
 You can leave a comment in the post when it goes up.
 You can start a thread on the forums, forum on our, in our forums.
 You know what I'm saying?
 You know what this week needs to end.
 Um, you can, you can also find us on, on Twitter.
 Uh, now publicly traded Twitter.
 Verge is at verge.
 I'm Joshua Topolsky, uh, uh, uh, I was going to say Neely.
 That's how out of it I am.
 You're not Neely.
 Uh, uh, Deter is back lawn.
 Ross is Oh no, Ross go no E on the end.
 And uh, and uh, did I say I'm Joshua Topolsky?
 You did.
 You did.
 That's, there's something wrong and I'm not drinking.
 You guys are drinking.
 Rock and roll.
 And that's, and that's it.
 And, and as we go into, hold on a second.
 And as we go into the holidays, as we go into a time for reflecting on what you've done
 this year and who you've done it to and your family and your family's wellbeing, I think
 we can all agree.
 You've got a lot to worry about.