The Vergecast 096 - Snapchat Stories, Silk Road ceases, and Ballmer's farewell

**The Verge Cast: A Deep Dive into Technology, Government Shutdowns, and Silk Road**

In this episode of *The Verge Cast*, the hosts delve into a wide range of topics, from the shutdown of the Silk Road to the ongoing government shutdown and the challenges faced by Microsoft in its acquisition of Nokia. The discussion is laced with humor, insights, and a deep dive into the complexities of technology, privacy, and law enforcement.

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### **The Shutdown of Silk Road**

One of the most significant stories discussed was the shutdown of Silk Road, the notorious dark web marketplace for illegal drugs. The FBI successfully seized the site, replacing it with a notice declaring it had been shut down. Ross Ulbricht, also known as "Dread Pirate Roberts," was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, drug trafficking, and computer hacking. The story highlights the complexities of online anonymity and the challenges law enforcement faces in tracking down criminals in the digital age.

The hosts discuss how Silk Road was a hub for high-quality drugs, which led to fewer deaths from impurities compared to street-level drugs. However, the platform's downfall underscores the idea that no matter how sophisticated one might think they are, operational security (OpSec) mistakes can bring even the most elusive criminals down. Ulbricht's use of his real email address and other sloppy habits were key factors in his capture.

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### **The Government Shutdown and Its Impact**

The conversation also turns to the U.S. government shutdown, which occurred as a result of political gridlock over funding for Obamacare. The hosts joke about the absurdity of the situation, noting that even NASA's Voyager Twitter account was suspended due to the shutdown. They also discuss how the shutdown has affected various sectors, including space exploration and public health.

One particularly humorous moment involves Ross mentioning that he encountered a man dressed as Daffy Duck on the subway while trying to avoid discussing the shutdown with passengers. The hosts laugh about the absurdity of the situation and reflect on how politics has become so polarized that it's affecting even the most mundane aspects of life.

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### **Microsoft’s Acquisition Challenges**

The hosts also touch on Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia, which was announced earlier in the week. They joke about the lack of clarity surrounding the deal and speculate about whether the acquisition will lead to significant changes in the mobile industry. The discussion highlights the challenges companies face when merging cultures and strategies, especially when one company is being absorbed by another.

One host quips that Microsoft should fire half of Nokia’s employees to avoid duplication, but they acknowledge that this is likely easier said than done. The conversation reflects the uncertainty surrounding the deal and the potential for both success and failure in such a high-stakes merger.

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### **The Dark Side of the Internet**

Adrian, known for his expertise in cybersecurity and privacy, shares insights about the dark web and its implications. He explains how platforms like Silk Road operate in the shadows of the internet, using tools like Tor to maintain anonymity. The hosts discuss the dual nature of such technologies, which can be used both for legitimate purposes (like protecting journalists) and for illegal activities.

Adrian also touches on the challenges of privacy in a world where governments and corporations are increasingly monitoring online activity. He highlights the importance of secure communication tools and the risks associated with using platforms that claim to offer absolute anonymity.

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### **The Lighthearted Side of the Conversation**

Throughout the episode, the hosts inject humor into their discussion of serious topics. They joke about Ross’s inability to avoid mentioning the shutdown even when trying to change the subject, and they laugh about the absurdity of political gridlock affecting everything from space exploration to healthcare.

One particularly funny moment involves Ross describing his encounter with a man drinking beer on the subway tracks while wearing a backpack that looked like it belonged to Crocodile Dundee. The hosts’ reactions are a mix of amusement and disbelief, highlighting the strange and unpredictable nature of life.

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### **Conclusion**

*The Verge Cast* provides a fascinating look into the intersection of technology, politics, and culture. This episode, in particular, offers a comprehensive analysis of topics ranging from the shutdown of Silk Road to the complexities of government shutdowns and corporate acquisitions. The hosts’ ability to blend humor with insightful commentary makes for an engaging and thought-provoking listen.

Whether you’re interested in cybersecurity, politics, or just want a good laugh, this episode of *The Verge Cast* is sure to entertain and inform.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello welcome to the Verge cast I'm Nei Patel I'm Ross Miller and I'm Ellice hamburger Alice hamburger man yep he's here hamburger hamburger unfortunately uh Josh has been fured so uh yeah Josh has been shut down uh he's very expensive to run and we just don't have was defunded right yeah no we actually had four weeks of petty cash to continue running we do have non-essential tulsky uh oh God you should definitely name his child that so we have a whole list of snarky comments to make but he can't personally no Josh is look he's a he's he's a busy man now yeah um so Ellis is here which is very exciting talk about apps the whole time but then uh later on the show we're going to have Adrian on as well which all things shut down uh so this is the vergecast as you may know we where we talk about our site which covers technology culture culture culture two more art art science we actually change the design business us and world uh forums we cover our forums it's delightful it's a very pretty place um and it's actually uh we should go right into it there's some breaking news this just happened Apple uh Tech crunch is reporting that uh Apple has acquired Q which is a app that's kind of like Google Now yeah uh for uh over $40 million they're saying and the interesting thing about Q they used to be greppin which lets you search all your stuff online from within one app and it was like a early iPhone app that was pretty successful but they pivoted and it became a calendar that said hey you're on the way to the airport you open the app and we give you a push notification for your boarding pass or your hotel reservations all that stuff if you take one look at the screenshots it's very obvious this was like trying to be the Google Now right and this is really where the iOS 7 today screen like needs to go right like there's I mean I don't know I've been using iOS 7 since it came out I'm sure you guys have as well right I actually just got the iPhone I've been using Moto X that was my summer flame you have a gold one uh no it's silver but silver case doesn't really matter but yeah I know like this today it should be way more information like the weather kind of shows up sometimes it's not that can I tell you my my big pet peeve with a today's screen yes so you open it up it doesn't swipe like yeah it just moves like it's like a button right like the gesture is a button it's not like a one toone swipe like everything else in the iPhone I'm I'm utterly convinced it's really like once you start noticing these parts of IO 7 that aren't finished or like don't quite work the way the iPhone used to work well they decided that it was going to be Android like column view where you can't swipe on cells you just swipe the whole page and that's one of the only Parts the operating system where you do that no it's really there's all these like things and I get it like there's new stuff and like they rushed it out the door but but once you start noticing the things that aren't finished they just start popping out all over the place the other thing about today is that as good as it is compared to what we had before which was nothing right it maybe makes the situation worse by making you realize all the things that it could be doing oh yeah this was in David's review yeah he went over it and over it this would be the perfect place for like third party widgets of some sort yeah and it makes you realize how uh how iOS could be better if it was integrated and they could make an API that said okay here are remind apps that can put their reminders in today but nope just reminders just reminders which is the best Reminders app nobody there's an entire Market of iOS adbs like desperately trying to make better to-do list apps and better reminders apps you know the system one is so good that there's no reason for it when I judge apps uh I get 100 pitches per day and one of the first things I look at is the design if you didn't pay attention to the design you probably didn't pay attention to the functionality either and if that reminder zycon had hit my inbox I wouldn't have just archived it I would have deleted it you just sent it away so can we talk about one that got up we did you write the sunrise update today or is that somebody else so Sunrise which is the Calendar app that I use which is great M because of its entire concept which is screw the local calendar on the phone we'll just talk to the cloud all the time right so it talks to Google and we use Google Calendar here so talks to Google it just updated so it's going to start talking to iCloud talks to Facebook um they did an iOS 7 redesign and I swear to God this proves my theory that app developers have no idea what to do and it's going to get worse before get gets better because it's like it's so sparse now it's impossible to read uh it's like a field of white with light gray very thin bubbles all over it and it's like I just want to know what's going on so I have really good eyesight and I love the new Sunrise I think this might have something to do with the fact that there are a lot of people complaining this week about iOS 7 accessibility and just the straight up design of iOS 7 is not legible it's contrasty but it's not legible unless you have really good it's really it's insane like uh control center is another really good one so the old iOS 6 iow 5 you would double click and you'd swipe over I could just stop my music like and I could almost do it without looking at it yeah right and now I can't like I'm like what of these tiny buttons which one should I hit to I turn off my music I'm still doing it I'm still going to multitasking trying to pause whatever I'm listening to there the circular buttons and the square buttons and the the sliders I get it like if you look at this like here's control center I'm listening to Drake everyone so you know uh real smooth it's just like that button which is get it's right in the middle I should be able to just get it I can never get it no I don't know uh real quick update this just happened too uh Twitter said to plan uh to make S1 IPO filing public today so any minute now we should have the uh the good we've been waiting lots of news Ben popper has been he's like he's been on the edge of his seat all week waiting for this S1 to happen right so Twitter so the it's a big deal by the way Twitter's going public people are going to freak out about it um because it it just like Facebook it elevates Twitter into sort of the pantheon of companies Apple Microsoft Google Amazon Facebook not Facebook um that are leading the charge of sort of the new economy like they figured out how to make their silly product and take it from like a silly product that launched at southp to a real company to a real company that makes money to a real company that is now like you know foundationally part of the American economy because it's a public company anybody can like buy into it and right reap the rewards of being invested no it's funny think about even just I think maybe just a year back the still the argument was like how is Twitter going to be profitable is it just a big service that will get bought by I think that people don't know I I like I think a large part of Twitter's Evolution now is to figure that out right to figure out how to be sustainably profitable Beyond just like guys we got more news selling promoted tweets seven minutes ago on the Instagram blog in the next couple months you may begin seeing an occasional ad in your Instagram feed speaking moneti the United States yeah wow okay well I mean comedy who didn't see that com um no and I think Instagram actually has probably um the best ad story to tell to its customers than any company because Twitter's like man I really don't want to see another promoted tweet for an app I don't use Facebook is particularly bad God the number of crappy apps that I see in my Facebook feed because they're buying impressions that I'm never going to use or never going to want is terrible but Instagram like if companies are just showing cool pictures in Instagram I think people will actually like get into it um and so like I look at I'm I follow Beyonce on Instagram her her feed is an ad for Beyonce a Non-Stop highly curated ad for Beyonce and it's fun to look at like I'm like oh now Beyonce's on a beach like she's probably not on that beach that probably happened like four years ago U but it's like cool you know it's like it's it's it's fun to look at right and I think fun to look at is what why Instagram exists and if they can do that with their advertisers in like a reasonable way I think people will actually be into it so you want to hear my theory yeah is that in the future um there will be an app or a website it's all going to be one thing I think really an app is is nothing it's just a packaged experience and soon it's going to be the same backend to Hamburg Theory everything so my theory I was thinking about this earlier today uh we're going to touch on Snapchat stories a little bit later but uh my theory is that every celebrity or person that you're going to want to follow that's really famous is going to have their own experience their own app and maybe you could even subscribe to it to get inside access and no matter what you're doing it's going to be a feed of inside stuff from them it's going to be photos and videos and clips and audio members aren't there there's like a half dozen companies like who say is like that's that for Twitter right already like oh yeah I mean that's one company though I'm saying these people are going to they're going to they're going to make their own apps yeah I mean people are already trying to tell their stories on all these different in all these different mediums and they're able to do it but for the people who are really die hards they're going to want to be like directly subscribing to that content but at least for now you're right that's how everyone's using these platforms and uh we're going to get to Snapchat stories later but people want to connect with their audiences in like authentic ways is the key word right but this also speaks even outside of celebrities it speaks to like the news Publications with their own dedicated apps versus RSS and feeds like owning the entire experience owning the whole experience exactly yeah but I never want when I the only news app I use is our own because I feel like I have to dog food our our app um but um when I go to like CNN.com and it's like open the CNN app I'm like no I really don't want to do that like that is the last thing I want to do because I know that app sucks compared to the mobile website I'm with you on that but like outside of mobile like on a computer I do not use RSS anymore I go straight to the websites and I was talking to a couple people about this I think Chris Grant from Joy U polygon excuse me is big on that too like wow dude just flashbacks flashbacks right now uh no um like you're going to the experience' designed Thebes we've designed our website painstaking detail and like we want to give in a certain way we want to design these Pages a certain way and I think there a big compelling case for like seeing all news outlets kind of go that way I don't think RSS is going to be Joshua what Josh did you just show up to troll us is that the wizard of us wow that's terrible all right hi Josh do you follow Beyonce on Twitter or uh Instagram can you not hear me I mean the question is does beyon follow me on Twitter the answer is no she doesn't that's the Holy Grail right she really doesn't I mean you've gotten uh you got Snoop Dog cover that uh you got Snoop Dogg that's your number one celebrity Twitter follow Snoop and I Snoop and I go way back uh to when he started following me two weeks ago and it's it's uh it's an amazing experience to be have you DM Snoop with with the lion with Snoop with Snoop Li the question is have you sent Snoop a DM I dm'd him my my my digits uh my my measurements did you see by the way that uh uh West Craven retweeted Verge science yesterday yeah that was awesome let me tell you something about West Craven not only is the man a genius he has impeccable taste in websites because he checks out the Verge yeah uh and I'm excited about that he how look so I I'm at home right now I'm in the midst of a heavy uh kit renovation but you're doing it yourself I saw you guys I saw you guys ver no I'm not I'm just here for for support moral support but I saw you guys Verge casting and and I and I said to myself self that seems like something you could really make a mess of and so I thought in what way could I most could I be most disruptive and I thought well I'll dial in uh and I don't know if how do you even know the dial number you don't whenever you're on the air you do not know the number I had a little help I'm not going to lie to you and because because I certainly don't remember it all the times I've said it so what are we talking about here the HDX not yet we're gonna we're gonna do that later right now we're talking uh the topic we were just on uh we're some mange of Twitter Instagram ads Apple just acquired Q basically like like Ellis showed up and all kinds of weird app news happened so Twitter Twitter is hot have you heard about this thing everybody's doing Twitter now everybody's on Twitter uh they're all using it they're doing tweets yeah uh and it's very exciting no Twitter's about to IPO Alice you must be excited because you're as we all know you're our resident app guy that's what we call you around the office app get the app guy I like app product I don't care as much about app money per se yeah so uh this is still pretty you're nuts and bolts guy you like to get you're like Phil Schiller yeah no Phil loves talk about the of The Verge I'm like big Bob Manfield I think B uh no you look a little bit like a young Phil Schiller actually know what I think of it that's great they used to tell me I looked like David schwimer that's an upgrade yeah wait you got David when I was young and handsome um he's still any so yeah what do we make of this Q acquisition are we excited go ahead Alis Atman I think it's Apple saying I think it's Apple saying says Atman by the way I'm an Atman okay everyone was thinking it and then you went there I had to it's it's my it's my duty so this is this is Apple saying this is Apple saying we need Google Now in our today feed and we need it to look like I think it's bigger than that so I think that this is Apple saying man we are getting hammered at iCloud being bad right mg seagler yesterday was tweeting we should we let's just all admit that iCloud sucks and when you like when you lose that guy for Apple it's like well he works for Google now though that's true he works for Google now he works for Google Now I mean you can't you can't trust him that's true he could be just he could just be a mouthpiece for Google Industries I don't know he wrote he also wrote a gushing review of the iPhone 5c that was like the color coming around to the front of the screen is so classically apple and I just I mean agree when I look at the when I look at the edge of the 5c the color just the color of the of the of the bezel and then the and then the bright the bright blast of plastic I think uh you know I'm going to have sex with this phone do it with this piece of Hardware I think with Q I think Apple's been on the sort of the string of quiet Acquisitions of these service companies that are like they're finding ways to build these services in small ways and I think what they're saying is we're not quite as good we need to hire we need to acquire uh people who are talented at this and that when I talk to other people in the industry they've been wondering what actually took Apple so long to start making these moves because they need this talent in there to figure out how to build Services into their into their operating system and their products just what remember that one of their biggest one of their biggest Halo featur Siri is is an acquisition oh right yeah so um it's it's important to remember that that I mean often Apple just buys these companies for talent uh but there are the cases where they where they actually want it want the product as well I mean and I think that this could be one there is a lot of pressure in this area uh and I think this could be the kind of acquisition where you see the end result as an actual product could be a refreshing change of pace for for apple apple has always really been about solving specific consumer problems and building the taglines of their products around them like 1,000 songs in your pocket and with Siri they're trying to answer these very specific questions that a normal person has every day with today they're trying to say oh what do you want to know in the morning you want to say what are what's my next appointment what's the weather and with this they're saying okay what's my boarding pass's myb like I don't get it passbook is like such a silo like every other app like it doesn't do anything else the integration is limited to like we're going to send you a link and the link might I use it once a week to uh get your Starbucks my Dwayne Reed card it's there it's in but it also like I live too close to Dwayne Reed so it's it's it's also po oh dude you got to turn off the location services on B Q anymore huh does it mean I can't download Q anymore uh I tried it a couple minutes ago I couldn't get through the App Store I think they may have pulled it I mean q said it was shutting down earlier today um I right so well they didn't waste any time on that right who can get me a who can get me a bootleg version of Q on my iPhone 5S oh I've used it it's basically it was trying to be Google now on iOS I mean they have your events they have your concerts your boarding passes who you got to call things from your email like your conference call number uh it's like Tempo calendar or something like that the only the only thing was it wasn't really a calendar you couldn't add anything to it that's weird so it's more overtly like Google Now I mean I'm sure to have deep integration I mean once they get it actually in the mix boy it really is a blatant ripoff of Google Now isn't it yeah um I mean once once once it's deeply integrated with with uh Apple Services you know that will not be a hurdle um so you know I mean this is great this is definitely a a Google Now ripoff like a Shameless Google Now ripoff uh at a glance I've never used it but just by looking at it I would say Google should take legal action on them Josh uh Josh I like your question about if this is going to be integrated or if if they're going to or maybe it was NE if they're going to keep it as a product or if they're going to integrated Apple's been going on a on a a spree of acquiring startups especially two Transportation startups and it feels like those are going to be integrated those teams uh but I think yeah I don't know right I don't know if you'll see this as a standalone it seems like this is right for the back to be the backbone of something like that today's screen um which is which is look will be very welcome because iPhone users should get to experience the joys of of Google Now I would say that Google Now for me Google Now is getting push notifications on iOS next month we heard yeah really but Google Now for me an Android has become like the novel TV it has definitely worn off yeah how do you use it I mean I it's it's on my home screen so I it's on my phone all the time wig the thing about Google the thing about Google now is that it's it's it it seems most interesting and most useful to me when I least expect it I think that's what's actually one of the fascinating aspects of it it's like I was taking I went to Seattle uh last week and and when I was getting ready for my flight it was like hey your flight is on time and you know check in and then and I looked at the at the Google Now screen I like here's the weather in Seattle and like I didn't think to ask it this is like the the first time that I had this kind of weird Epiphany about it when I was getting off a plane it's really good for travel I was getting off a plane it's like it's this many minutes to get home from the from the airport and that was the same experience where I was like well I didn't ask it for the Seattle weather but it's really super awesome it's telling me because right hey I didn't pack a sweater um right something like that's when it go on well I was just say just sneaks up on you that's the thing where it becomes really useful is that not not when you're like staring at it it's when it's kind of like it suddenly does something that Google Now is supposed to do and you're like oh yeah that's that's happening right but I don't trust it so whenever Google Now is like man your flight's on time I'm like well I'm still definitely going to check the Airlines app going to check the Delta app or whatever which is fine because it reminds me to check but but there's some level of abstraction with all these apps that aren't that touch like another API where like you didn't check it recently enough I don't know how to make you check it again that's more I feel like that's more to blame that's more like the airlin fault I mean their information the Jet Blue I had the JetBlue app giving me updates and I our flight was delayed and it just was like so far behind yeah that had I it was in no way useful right so I don't know where they're pulling all of their data from but um I it's useful when the data is good when the data is not it's not useful for things like you know like oh you should leave now to make it to your next meeting like that is like that was a wonderful thing to have but it was just kind of like it was passive and it was a push notification else like you're saying for iOS it's the same thing for me like the UI is nice to have as a widget it's nice to have like be able to pull up but just having the information kind of you in some way what I think is fascinating about Apple um and this the you know this acquisition and Ellis you were talking about it I heard a little bit before I dialed in is um this opportunity this huge opportunity to engage their developers uh with some of these some of these new pieces of the operating system where it's like the today screen for instance like yes you would want to have a limitation to what you can push in there or what you can do with it but there's so much huge opportunity and as a company that has such strict guidelines and by the way as you see has the force to get developers to actually change the way their apps look and feel and function based on an OS update um I think it's a really a phenomenal I think it's really notable uh that they haven't taken the opportunity to engage developers in things like Widgets or the today's screen or some of these deeper level Integrations yeah I don't know why and I really don't know why they they didn't um pull in at least preferred partners and be like you know on stage you know when they when they announced the iPhones they blew through iOS 7 in like two seconds MH uh and I I by the way I just put iOS 7 on my iPad 3 that is not ready like it is not finished it doesn't work like it's amazing to me that Apple never demonstrated iOS 7 on an iPad before they launched it like never period you see a couple screenshots and then these obvious things where they could have had third parties integrate into really obvious places which more than I think massive visual redesign people were clamoring for we see we see a little bit you see like it's not like you can put Vimeo logins flicker like it's but it's so rudimentary picking small like few platforms here and there yeah they've always been very comfortable that was one of the original uh pieces of of the App Store that it was one of their philosophies behind it is we're going to let developers make all these little squares people can tap on and each one is a different tool and each one is going to live inside its own box and I don't think they've completely left that frame of mind quite yet well you know I saw a really interesting um piece about like the true nature of how the iPhone disrup disrupted mobile which is they took like before the iPhone came out uh the Nokia feature phones are like the best selling phones in the world is like pure phones and the Blackberry is the best smelling smartphone because it was a messaging device and like I think it's on uh Ben Thompson's site uh strer but it's literally there's an arrow which is a terrible Name by the way he should really be ashamed of himself but it's a great site uh uh but it was it's like they reduced the the Nokia feature phone to the phone app and the Blackberry to the mail app and the the the Instant Message app and those things went away and that was they pitched it too right they're like we're going to turn these other device it's a it's an internet device it's an iPod right and and you know and they're doing with the camera right they've turned the point- and shoot camera into another icon but the P like the reason people want to use Instagram over the camera app on the iPhone and why you know it's great that it has filters now but like the reason people want to use Instagram is because it's an integrated experience it also like has distribution in it so like you shoot you edit you share and you see other people's photos like all in one place and that makes it more than just a camera right and that's why it's popular and that's why Facebook is popular for the things it does and so Apple needs to get Beyond like we're turning tools and apps and then they need to start figuring out how to build these connected experiences which is I think why they're on this tear of Acquisitions because they don't have the inh like they didn't see it so they're like we need to like find people who see it and like pull them in yeah I think that I think there is a b there's kind of a border here where um you know apple is obviously very good at Hardware uh they are you know excellent at software I think you know look you know I have some reservations about a number of things in ios7 but you can't deny that it's a you know it's a it's a fairly well executed um uh well functioned you know highly functioning uh uh mobile operating system right but it does you do see those those those kind of like heavy lines around certain areas that just feels where there's this disconnect and it it is relates to a lot of the services right a lot of the web services a lot of the con a lot of the points where like apps connect to other things into each other and a lot of the points where apps connect to the web going say the connects to the web because when when they're not connecting to the web I mean it is so easy for Google to pop up and roll out a change to its to its services to Google Now they can roll they can roll out some new cards in a week and they even like they even did this like to like to their Preparatory like app like Gmail now gets upd outside of Android whereas Siri got new features maybe once in the last year or once iOS 5 oh I'm saying like they added like baseball scores or something like that but they added that with iOS 6 oh it's always with the major releas that was that was well that's that's and that's you know and that does speak to like I do think some of the differences in those in the companies you know Google is so much a web it's so much a a new business by comparison right it's so much of a of a web business where iteration happens much faster I mean I think we know this being a web business the the rate of innovation and iteration is incredibly high and it isn't things don't happen yes sometimes they happen in big big moves but often it's like this slow kind of tweaking and refining of of components and apple does that but you see it happen like it you don't see it move for a long time and then it has this big it has this big uh I mean they didn't do it for a long time like with the visual or fun visually or functionally with the iOS but they did do it with a lot of their apps where they refined the icon they refine some of the graphics and they refine some of the ways you do things but it but it does tend to happen in these OS releases so you don't see the iteration the way you do with it where where Google is just rolling the stuff out like every couple of weeks like there's some new Gmail update where it changes the functionality of Gmail and that has pluses and minuses like with apple like they don't you always know what you're going to get and here's what Apple's going to do they're going to make whatever comes out of this que they're going to make it sound like a software feature they're going to say uh Siri checks your email for your reservations and Pops them up when you need them right and they're going to make it sound like like a software feature instead of this this service that is powered by a server that checks your email parses all your information decides what your reservation is and Pops it up for you for something like Google that's simple right well I mean but but Google has an identity as Google right I mean it it even when you buy an Android phone if you buy the vast majority of Android phones it's like you buy this Galaxy S4 and then like Google lives in literally in a cloud all around you at all times and so like when Google does things it I think consumers feel more that it's happening away from them with apple it's like you buy the Apple thing they don't have an identity as a cloud provider right I mean right my dad blames iCloud for everything even things that I know that I know he like personally did wrong like he's like ever since I got iCloud all my photos are gone I don't I can't beat Candy Crush it's iCloud no it's it's amazing because it iCloud just has like a bad wrap yeah um for better or worse I mean like I you know you get a new phone you like a new iPhone you like hit the backup button iCloud like just does it is great the funniest thing is that the funniest thing to me is that when everybody's trying to upgrade to iOS 7 everybody's telling me that coincidentally it was around the same time that they're getting an email about running out of iCloud space they're like I don't have space on my phone to install iOS seven iCloud is telling me I don't have any space either I don't know what to do yeah this is the thing that's so like insane to me about the whole I was actually you know when I was setting up the 5S I was thinking about my photos and I was like I it opened I plugged it in and it opened eye photo and it's like do you want to turn on Photo Stream and I was like oh yeah Photo Stream doesn't isn't even really holding on to my photos like I have to dump them down I mean I've talked about this before but this idea that I have to dump them down to my computer where it's like a more reliable safer place to put them or something he seems so alien to me now like like don't make me I don't want to have to interface with the computer to like deal with my stuff yeah you know but I want my photos on my computer I that doesn't bother me at all like I want them there it's fine to get them on your computer but I do think there's like this concept of a this duplicated effort I mean it seems weird to me right it's like you've got them in a folder you've got them in I photo you've got them in photo stream you've got them on your phone it's like so I have four places where I can find these things seems a little bit like Overkill to me you know like I would here's what I think I mean Google Google Plus does this the auto upload which I think is incredibly good and convenient and I never worry about like not having my photo save but uh it would be great if it then said hey do you want to save these in in your Google Drive like you've got x amount of space on google server do you want these to be saved down like to your Google Drive and they just downloaded in the background like everything else on Google Drive yeah but I I think you are a particularly strange case we all are I mean like a little bit a you have like 15 laptops and 18 phones right I mean for most people with like a variety of Apple stuff they have a phone they take a bunch of pictures they go to photo stream they open their laptop it downloads their laptop and they're done and the the big broken piece is that photo stream kind of inherently sucks right now right it's like it's good it's good at that transport function but it's not good at the be my camera a device to device also but also there's no safety there like you if it gets let's put it this way you take a th pictures you put them on your computer your computer catches on fire and it's like started at 30-day deletion of photos like hey your pictures are gone right that's the thing sense it's funny how stingy apple is with storage like even this iCloud thing it's like why not just give everybody 50 gigs of storage like most people never use it do you know how cheap storage is and do you know how much money you have apple like just Farm yeah it's yeah they keep on like we bought all of North Carolina we did you still have to pay for this we own it now but we'll give you five gigs dude it's so cheap like I don't know like nobody's like I'm never going to use 50 gigs of storage I'm not I've been trying to do it I can't even fill out my 64 gig iPhone like I've been trying to do it I bought it I'm like man I should use this space somehow I don't think most people there's that this is one of those things where I just don't understand like I Apple has this mentality that you know because you know if you if you don't pay for things it's not clean like apple wants you like feel that you're there's a transaction but there's really no reason for them to like that is such a marginal incremental cost for them right it's like there's no hitting cost we charge you for everything it's pretty simple yeah like the phone like make the phone $3 more expensive like you'll be fine you have like a trillion dollars in the bank right how soon in just consider it an investment like they do with so many other things right and just consider it an investment so your users aren't talking to each other about how they all got a push notification what does this mean I don't understand we should definitely stop we've been talking about we should talk about your wrist wear your we should talk about your big story that you broke last night about Snapchat yeah tell me about Snapchat stories Snapchat stories come on App Guy this is there's some bullying going on but I'll continue on uh Snapchat is turning into a social network basically what they're doing is they're giving every user profile so you can go to your friend's profile and see what they've been up to only over the last 24 hours perfect so the only difference from a user's point of view is that when you take a snap right before you share it to your friends you can also tap my story and so for things that are you know less private or you want to update your friends on without buzzing their phone you hit my story and then boom it's in your story and anybody can see it on your friends list the next 24 hours this this video is like I've never once sent or received a Snapchat that looks anywhere near this good I've never every Snapchat video I Reed is like a pixelated mess they're almost all from Rond our studio here boat or in a car or on a plane even who is it like it's perfect privacy you can't see a face Nei you're telling me that you don't most of your snaps don't come from beautiful women standing in the back of a Jeep like throwing colored powder throwing like colored po powder into the wind no that's I would say that's like one in 20 Snapchats for me yeah most of them are Rond singing Metallica to his cat yeah oh and the cat singing back yeah which is amazing so let me ask you guys let me ask you guys good what do you guys uh what what is Snapchat's utility to you and then I'm going to tell you about what it wants to be in the future so what does it mean to you guys right now for your daily for your daily life it's basically an art show for video team to like send this really czy yeah I mean it's jokes I use it for jokes and and for jokes that like are going to disappear right like I would say I would say unlimited sexting for me but but but you Josh I encourage you to find the the center of the V diagram where sexting and jokes Collide yeah is wonderful pretty big area though I don't use can I just say I don't use Snapchat like personally like I don't use it people send me snaps but I don't have anything look I don't have anything to share that's a samal okay everything that I share is got to be meaningful and Timeless wow so I mean I was I was going to say that's the most pretentious thing you've ever said but then I started wondering if that was true I me I'm joking I'm joking obviously but seriously like my problem is my problem is I just don't maybe it's I'm very boring but I feel like what I would share is like me sitting at a table like working or a book or like the TV or a phone all we're asking for is Penny Josh that's all yeah I mean I will say this I I definitely went for like really great I went for three weeks where I sent snapchats of uh Friday no uh Varsity Blues being on TV like that was it like I spent my Sundays with the beak and like that's what I Snapchat did you snap I don't want you laugh no whatever it was always on television so I always watch like five minutes of it and I was but it's that's what it is it's jokes like and I think that's the the value of it to people so you know what's super interesting to me kind is when I talk to uh can I oh go ahead something sorry our delay and I'm going to I think after this comment I'm about to make I'm going to hang up because I have to get back to home renovations and it's also but this delay is so perfectly timed that it almost guarantees that you're going to talk over somebody the delay from the phone to our studio yeah um so it's extremely frustrating but I just want to say that uh here's the thing you said something about taking pictures of Penny and to me and maybe this is a maybe this is my age or just how born I am or something but when I take a picture of penny my dog uh I think like I want to find the best picture that I took of her and then I want that to be out there like I want it to live forever somewhere because she's so great um and and so I don't get I feel like if I were young and out drinking and getting into what you know out in in the back of the Jeep you know throwing colors in the into the wind um I feel like yes that I would want to Snapchat that you know because I'm young and and time seems like it's endless and I've got all the time in the world and who cares if the picture sticks around or not yeah now that I know that my days are numbered that that that that the Horizon my life's Horizon is quickly approaching um you know I just think I don't want to I don't have time to Snapchat I need to make a count I mean I I will say that every single person outside of like The Verge staff that have been like man you should get on Snapchat they've been like why I don't need to send pictures of my penis to people right and I've been like no but it's but there's so much more and they've got to like overcome that like at such a high level uh I think we have to agree that the sexting thing is is and maybe again a Bor I have a boring life I'm married you know I've got a dog but maybe there is sexing going on my impression is that the whole sex thing isn't really like people are actually just still using SMS for sex thing like if you want to do sex you're still going to go you're still going to go to your messaging app and do it I suppose Snapchat is useful in some way for that there probably Pockets where there's some real hot Snapchat stuff going on yeah um I don't know anybody who I don't know anybody who's ever been like yeah I got a sex snap so here's what the CEO of Snapchat told me he said I got a sex Snapchat he said I mean I think that Snapchat isn't about sexting I think people may as they as they do on any messaging app um but here's what he told me he said that the reason that the ephemerality of Snapchat is so valuable isn't necessarily because we're sending embarrassing things it's because we're sending things that we don't want to be attached to us forever right that's what he said and he said that's why people in part are so attracted to this it's not necessarily because you're embarrassed of this snap now but because anything you post to Facebook is going to be there for all time went from one ex to the other it's like you can only see it once and then I'm gonna say this then I'm really going to get off the phone there's no question that we have been we have like fallen into a trap of like permanent everything with what we share I mean we were like sold this awesome idea like connect with people share with your friends like know what your family members are up to and then it's like oh wait a second like all this is there forever I have like no control over it it gets into like the stream the slipstream of existence and it's off down the river of information and it's like you kind of by the way slipstream of existence River of information two separate bodies that merge at some point uh but it's like I think the thing that's refreshing yeah it's the Horizon I think it's refreshing about Snapchat is and and things like it is you're right that it is it doesn't stick is that it goes away and it is something that is there needs to be something else though I feel like there's a longer there's something else where it's like but once you put it on the Internet it's forget it like people can copy it they're going to make they're going to take a screenshot it doesn't matter it's hard to take I mean you can screenshot Snapchat but you know when people are doing it it's kind of hard to do didn't they get like kind of broken iOS 7 no I thought it I still screenshot people but but I think but I think that kind of refreshing to have something that doesn't just like follow us around everywhere we go for the rest of our lives right and that's that's a big hook for a lot of people that's the hook wait hold on Josh are we losing you or you gonna stick around I'm going I'm getting off the phone now all right was good to talk to you man see you guys and you're you're doing a great job and I wish I was there and I'll be back on the on the next one oh you are here you're just aead floating in the air your picture has been trolling us this whole time don't worry about it all right we'll talk to you later man great a great time bye so that's the hook which is really interesting to me I mean you you look at Snapchat and you're like okay all the kids are using it I kind of get it okay I'm using it now I get it right but you thought maybe they stumbled upon this maybe they They Came Upon a good idea but the good idea wasn't the exploding messages the good idea was the ephemerality the non the non- lasting forever as a principal right so that was kind of what I was thinking today was stories is just the next piece of it it's the profile piece what else is down the line what else do we share that we don't necessarily want to last forever maybe article edits right something like that you're just booping away over there I'm trying to use this Note 10.1 to look at stuff I'll talk about it that's a weird transition let's just take the boops and just go from there I can hear droplets I want to talk about I'm just trying to want to talk about Snapchat there is no way to use this tablet without it making tinle no things in front of you during the show huh oh move the fire hold on stop they can't hear you I just want to show the people I'm us you the faucet on and it kind of makes you want to pee that's like what I'm getting right now no look here just listen to this when you you need to go where's the speaker on this thing look in the least logical place that's where it'll be that's right here okay so when you unlock it just it's just booping away when you unlock it like why does it make that noise and then when you lock it it makes a tinkling sound wait is that over here I think really have to pee now oh you have to unlock it oh God Samsung all right listen why why does it make that not jarring all right let me can I just say my thing about Snapchat yeah so here's the thing about stories that uh uh I find really interesting and maybe not good I like getting Snapchats I like receiving them right it's like an active I like sending them to people like I want to show you this and then it like shows up and you can like look at them stories is like completely inverts that Dynamic like I don't want to check it I don't like checking things I like being shown things I think they didn't want to do send all like that's a part of your story right and that like great you solved this problem you want to show a bunch of people a bunch of things but now I've got to like subscribe to a story now I've got to like look at like it's the same with in like it's like oh man I'm walking the train I got to check these five apps for stuff right taking away the messaging component of it like this passive you got to check it piece I think that's like that's going to ruin some of Snapchat for people I think they they spent the last year working on this and they went through many many iterations uh one of which iterations that I'm allowed to mention is uh the stories the pieces of the stories wouldn't last for 24 hours and uh so they went through a lot of to make that this didn't disrupt the primary use case which is people messaging so I don't know if you've been using it yet but really all it is is just a circle next to a friend's name on your friends list screen which before you really wouldn't ever look at your friends list and so now what they have is they have a little badge at the bottom of your screen that says if any of your friends have updated their stories and then you can tap it or you can ignore it and so that's a question that I have is are people going to actively do this because it's not completely guaranteed that anyone's going to look at it right not to also like even like the part of making this like so it expires every 24 hours so if you're not making at least one probably more than one snap every 24 hours it's a waste of time like people's like these storage are just going to die who's going to use it so you say primary use case of course messaging is going to be primary use case because otherwise you need like to vote right because the feature I want is like I want to make a list it's called Verge and just like push the button and send to a bunch of verge people and they I get they solved a different problem and they now doing this more social networking thing but that primary like there's like eight people that I Snapchat all the time right I just don't want I don't want to sit there clicking because that UI is really bad and the the circle where you select the name is right next to like the alphabet yes like all of that is bad and like they like it's funny they chose not to clean that up uh instead of focus on this other and I think that's like they're they're obviously making the bet I think if they gave people both features people maybe wouldn't use stories and they're kind of like they to push people towards stories but it's like Ross said I don't want to check more stuff and I don't want to have to Snapchat every 24 hours to guarantee that people see see things so in terms of utility in terms of utility the utility of the Facebook news feed is at its basist elements to keep up with what your friends have been up to right so I think the core utility of stories is the exact same thing you want to keep up with what your friends are up to without having wait for them to buzz your phone because maybe they don't want to maybe they don't want to buzz you with the bowl of cereal that they're eating that's really yeah okay now we're into a philosophical question about why should we be buzzed about a bow of cereal in the first place right yeah so what I'm saying is I think that there are a lot of people uh especially younger people who don't really use the Facebook news feed because they don't want their stuff to be on there forever and they're also friends with parents and teachers on there and so what they can do is do some snaps throughout the day and go to their it's not a feed but it shows which ones have been updated most recently and uh you tap on your friends and you see what they've been up to yeah yes you're right it's not it's not like you're just scrolling through it it's like you have to actively seek it out which I agree is a is a barrier in a way but the utility is the same so I think that that there are some people who are going to really like it we'll see mhm I still just lists man that's all I want right the be a to send to a group yeah just give me a list all right they know people want that they how can they not it's the only thing people want it's like the one feature request people have about Snapchat like I've stopped sending things to people whose last name's like ended an r or S like I just can't make it that far down anymore I'm sorry all right let's talk about these devices is that what we have next yes we have this and then we're going to tell Ellis goodbye okay so this is the Note 10.1 and I don't know if you people have noticed these two have noticed I'm wearing a Galaxy sorry this is happening is the resta Galaxy Gear this is the charger I don't want to talk about that I want to talk about fine so here's a Note 10.1 I will say the a it still makes the dumbest sounds in the world and whoever at Samsung is responsible for these sounds after I wrote my scathing review of the first Note 10.1 uh where I discovered it you have to listen to them you have to get through at least like five boops just to turn off the bloops which is just like that's like a a Kafkaesque nightmare of like it's like a dungeon uh I mean you can't do anything on this tablet without it blooping at you second of all it's really fast right it has like the newest Snapdragon processor it has actually I would say a really gorgeous screen uh and they've they've cleaned up this industrial Design This stupid Fake Plastic leather on the back is shockingly okay I there's fake stitches there um it's so I think it looks terrible on the Note in Black uh bizarrely in White on this tablet it looks okay one of the first 169 I mean it still looks dumb in portrait but this is one of the first ever 169 tablets I've had where it doesn't feel stupid in my hands so congratulations Samsung after that everything is still a disaster like they've they've improved what was one of the worst industrial designs ever uh and made it a slightly better industrial design and then it's like this thing is slow it still boops at you um if you it's it's money can solve the boops just turn it off just somebody at the factory like go to the computer that like preloads the software and turn it off down turn the volume down just turn it off uh it's still kind of slow like this is stuttery this menu is stuttery and then this feature this like fake Flipboard that shows up if you swipe if you do any sort of motion down here where you like do this a little bit it like brings you up the whole screen the whole screen goes away and brings up a fake Flipboard which is like why I don't want that either like why should that be a primary Gest control center with that too oh control center is insane you're swiping up and and something takes over your screen um yeah just so close guys and it just just but that's what Flipboard is for I can't even turn off that yeah cool cool task so there's not much I'll say about that one Let's uh let's talk about your wrist Weare so here's the gear let me take this off yeah uh so here's the gear man um and let me just show that I don't know if we highlighted this enough in our review uh so here's the charging open which I don't there we go so here's how you charge the gear you got this big plastic thing which by the way also fake leather uh which is amazing kidding let me see this it's fake leather uh and then you put this in here and you close it to make a bigger watch and you plug that charge and then there's a there's a mini USB here and I get it like you know you I could pict itan that's how you charge it you got you got guys on the couch they're like I'm sitting for a couple minutes may as well charge up it's the IV drip for yourist yeah they got their arm incredbly stupid on your wrist I mean you're not supposed to wear with the charging cradle uh it's just a hilarious trick so wait why is there faux leather if you're not supposed to actually wear I have no idea why why Samsung decided that I mean we gave them so much crap about their previous plastic that they've gone with like this textured faux leather plastic uh to a piece this is a mystery to appease the vegans I guess uh I don't know I it's better than what they had before uh I'll tell you that that's good it sort of works on this tablet I think it looks terrible on the note so does Samsung think that this is an attractive device no no you take a cover off I know well even still I'm saying even still uh so I you know people have we've had a lot of conversations about how this is ugly I won't say it's beautiful but it's certainly not terrible right I mean there's like you can go to a department store and buy any number of fossil watches that look like this it's true people people are buying watches that look like this it's not I wear big watches so it's not that huge it doesn't look that huge on my wrist um to me because every watch I wear is huge but the particular thing I always worry about is like if you want to like take an ugly watch and make it pretty you can usually get a new band of some sort and this has the camera integrated so like you're stuck with whatever you've got and you're stuck with picture yeah this is useful uh so vladw call um the camera's the best feature right the camera Vlad hands down to the camera's the best feature uh which is true although the number of like it doesn't like I'm trying to use it right now and it's like the number the amount of work I have to do to like use it is still a little bit too high it's still really obvious like they should have put a button right here where you just like it also way makes more work for you because it doesn't tell you what the notification is it just buzzes you right right so the notification stuff is like bad it doesn't like show you the information it just opens it on your phone uh the Bluetooth connection dies constantly which is a huge problem I think that's more of an Android problem than a Samsung problem because the the bluetooth smart stuff just hit Android and 4.3 and so it's not even out to all the Fone so it's like it's a brand new on these phones so I'm sure that there's a refinement that needs to be done and then this UI is just it's it's laggy and weird it's it's funny because the camera gesture is a down swipe here right um but anywhere else it's a back gesture like it it's just inconsistent um it's like this could have been good if this if they had figured out the software on this in a better way right uh and didn't tie it so deeply to a Note 3 like and I know that they'll get there but if they just made it more like opened it up so I think that it's just crazy that a Kickstarter project by understanding what people want in a smartwatch yeah made a better product I mean correct me if I'm wrong people want a couple things maybe they want a camera maybe they want to do a voice memo quickly but I feel like the most people most people I talk to who are interested the idea of a smartwatch are interested in glanceable notifications exactly it's not just that I have a message it's that I can read the message the one thing you want to do right right no it's absolutely the one thing that you have to do right right it's you get an email or a text and it shows up here and you can take some action on it and then it's done maybe archive maybe dictator response or like or even like I think Pebble has canned responses now right so like that's great like there's stuff you want to do being able to take a phone call like this this is not high on my list it just isn't like I I don't wait wait is like this or this cuz you have to hear it too don't you wait you yeah there's a microphone like hello like it's whatever like is want to feel like a 1950 it's cool and I think Samsung is if Samsung is good in anything it's like executing on on insane ideas and maybe that execution is like completely bad but at least someone at Samsung's like what if it was also a phone and they're like let's build it and they're good at building that um but I don't know if there if Samsung will ever figure out what the product is for it's the same with the note right I mean this has a pen and the Galaxy Note 3 has a pen um and it's great and I never I see tons of notes and never see anybody using those pens and there's no real reason for this tablet to have a pen it's just there I think people are after the bigger screen right yeah I think that's why people buy notes right they after the bigger screen and you know if you talk to um people in marketing at the carriers talk to people at Samsung they'll tell you like the reason we made the Galaxy Mega is because people love the bigger screen they don't want to pay the flagship price for the note so he just made a cheaper one with a big screen right and that the Mega screen sucks like it's a bad screen but it's huge so people buy it because there's a product at that price point and that screen size with the note it's like yes I understand people are going to yell at me about people in Asian countries who use the pen to do language input but we don't do that here the note's still popular in America and I guarantee you it's because the screen is big and they haven't solved that problem with the pen on the Note 10.1 it's just like here's some apps that use it and all of them are insanely bad and with the gear it's like we made a watch we put all these features in the watch but we didn't figure out the one that made you want to buy it and we didn't like build the product around it so for those who don't know how does how do the notifications work on so it's just like you have a Gmail and then you push the button it opens Gmail on your phone it so it doesn't tell you what you get you see the Gmail logo yeah no you're like oh cool I got I have a Gmail yeah it's just telling you I have it I got a Gmail you're pocket vibr that's why it vibrated I guess and the apps on here are bad like the you know they've announced like 70 apps or something and they like some of them don't work uh like you can see the B now they're showing the Gmail experience which is that's it there there it is it's like you got a Gmail and a lot of the apps don't work and H if you watch the commercial like the same thing happens but they make it seem like really cool like like her wrist like go like the person's wearing it her wrist goes bloop and she goes oh I should pull out my phone it's like that's not what I want ultimately they didn't do of the three things they had to do they didn't build a smartwatch yeah oh unapologetically uh no that was flat that wasn't Johnny I they're very close you're wearing it backwards by the way yeah thank you um no look I think having a camera in your watch is cool it's a cool idea Vlad said it's the best feature of the thing and I agree with him um but it's 299 a childhood from a spy shop and I do not know why you'd want to dial your phone like come on like that is no oh God no no don't whatever just use S Voice broke it it's just as good as any other so uh kind of like what we were talking about earlier how uh Apple likes to have very specific use cases in mind with their with their with their gadgets with their products what do you think they would choose for the for the maybe three things I think one is definitely Fitness yeah we know that what like what else what else is I mean so actually I think I don't think it's Fitness I think Fitness like I have a Fitbit I know people you think they're in love with too much no no I think that they I think that's a great like fourth feature I think Apple's like first three features are going to be like a notific like they have to do notifications they have to figure that out perfectly right where it's like when you get you know and they'll do some crazy thing like you've got that VIP list in your mail they'll integrate it with your messages so like they'll know who's important enough to bother you with um I mean I think they're going to make it more of an extension of the phone so I think first one is just nailing notifications I think the second one is like telling you where you are and using some of that M7 stuff that they're doing like Q right like just I mean just that like looking at your phone or looking at your watch and like knowing where you are like physically in the world would actually be cool and that's something the pebble doesn't do that's something that doesn't do so being able to use some of that stuff as an extension is cool um I don't know and the third one like I think Fitness is just not there enough like I I think it appeals to such a small number of people like a really active number un unless thing is like really clever like oh we can fill your pulse because it's against your wrist maybe something like that but I think also like Siri is going to be a big factor in that too because it's like we don't you don't have to pull your phone you can just talk to your wrist I think that's a good point like but thank you ha well no and you know some of this Q stuff where they're like you look at it it tells you what you need to be doing right I think that like all of that stuff having it be like an intelligent notification like you know we we give them all kinds of crap for not doing glanceable information on the h screen if they could like do it here that'd be awesome uh and they just they they just looking at the gear and looking at the pebble I think the pebble appeals to huge nerds because you can do crazy awesome nerd stuff with it I think the gear is a mess um it's a b it's basically a mess it's like it's it's it is the ultimate in like first generation Samsung products right it's like it doesn't make any sense they haven't figur out what it's for like they farted it out in the world and like it's going to get better somehow right cuz they're going to take like everyone says about this thing and then they're going to build second generation that will be probably decent all right so let's move on speaking of generations yes this is the Kindle Fire I'm holding Kindle Fire HDX this is a 7in one this is the third generation Kindle Fire and they've actually it's gotten really good but only in like a really specific way so David's review is it boils down to you have to pick whether you want to live in Google's ecosystem and then like the wider sort of space around it or if you want to live in like an ultra optimized Amazon content consumption ecosystem so I will say this as a man who is really really picky about screens um every device we have on the desk with us today has like a tremendous display so the Note 10.1 has a really great screen the gear has a great screen uh but this one is the best this is the HDX screen uh it just looks really good it you know it's like M they like display elimination has gotten really good this so I think this looks better than like the iPhone 5 screen he says if the icons are floating above it's like you're touching a piece of paper uh but this operating system man I don't know I don't know about this have you played with this I haven't played with it yet it's not like a hey first of all it's called mojito like don't call your operating system fire OS 3.0 mojito like everything about that sounds like a like a nightclub in Bermuda yes which maybe is good um I'm I'm still playing with this like the case can we can we talk about this for a second it's just a case you could buy that case for the iPad for like oh I know but like this is the official case origami case yeah I mean like what remember when they get that for the cas it's it's a it's I will say the the industrial design with the buttons in the back is like not good but the thing is cheap um right it can buy you stuff from Amazon really well it can down download movies from Prime okay we got to try they can buy you stuff bu really well like if you want if you want to push the button and like uh have it buy stuff from Amazon there's no better experience and I'll tell you that like I try to use the Kindle app on my iPad I'm like I want to buy a new book and it's super annoying um and that's Apple's problem and not Amazon's problem is uh can I see that we got we got to try Mayday sure yeah all right so here's the big killer feature what are we going to make Mayday do for us um does this have the Verge app did we put the Verge app in the Amazon store uh I just did our own God I have no idea what I'm doing okay I'm just it how do you how you so here you ready yeah so you just push this button it says Mayday okay and you say do I need to oh your device must have at least 20% battery power reconnected to a power adapter to use Amazon assist oh but we wanted to call Mayday because our battery's running out we don't know where the charger cable is oh that's terrible well if somebody Evan can uh get us a mini USB we can try Mayday in here so look I think this is great like if you want Amazon things I just bought a new paper white um because I my old I went through three of the pr generation paper whites I just kept leaving them in hotel rooms uh so I just bought the newest one and that is a fantastic product right except for the fact they changed Amazon's doing this thing where they got this big glossy Amazon logo on the back you see this there it is catch the Light what is happening there is people want that soft touch they want the soft touch this is bad see this I don't like that um that's I mean that's the big change in the paper white otherwise it's like the screen is better it's higher contrast uh we'll play with Mayday when this thing comes back Ross what's our next uh we want talk that bomber the Microsoft noia story that you wrote Oh my God it's good poor Balmer if nothing else I do want to like watch that video a little bit because it's awesome we should um I can tell the story that a little bit so um bomber hopefully we get a power after we can play with Mayday but we will kle here's what I here's what I don't understand and and David brought this in his review uh of the fire which was when the T-Mobile G1 came out Amazon was the media partner the Amazon MP3 store is there and that would have been fantastic right if Google had just said like Google Play MP3 store powered by Amazon in the back end like we don't need to build this competing product like we're going to partner with these guys you would have I think we would have seen like an amazing set of products if Google and Amazon could just figure out how to do Play Store on Amazon or have the Google Play apps um instead of having to build these weird competitive like the mail app here is like f g mail I don't need that in my life do you think of it as a competitive thing I look at like the way it functions to me it's like it's a souped up kindle it's not like a Nexus 7 competitor it is an Nexus 7 competitor the reason we gave the Nexus 7 high score oh we should talk about the ecosystem store the reason we gave the Nexus 7 high score is because it's like cheap it's 229 and it's great at like consuming media it's not great at like working and nobody in the world is out there buying as much as Samsung wants you to do it nobody is out there buying Android tablets to work on they're buying iPads to be productive on and like there's a whole segment of the tablets are chasing that right and again the Note 10.1 is like out there to be a competitor to the iPad in terms of productivity but these smaller ones are all about content consumption and so that's this has to compete with an exus 7 for that because that's what it's good at and that's what 229 buys you with an X7 okay fair and it this doesn't it's never going to do that for you no um and while we're doing just real quick uh Twitter just said just announced R S1 will be filed publicly with the secc momentarily this tweet does not constitute an offer of any Securities for course oh let's all buy some but this isn't charging I don't know what this is then I don't we'll figure it out it's all over yeah it says all right we'll just let this sit here in charge okay um so we talk about ecosystem score so we gave HDX we gave it an eight for ecosystem people obviously freak out because we can't give anything in ecosystem score without people freaking out and the reason is it's true like it doesn't matter what the number is people freak out uh and the reason it's higher than like Windows RT is because this has Amazon's e like it is a window in to Amazon and so if you want a window in Amazon it's great and it's great at that it's awesome at that and for a lot of people that's enough right right I mean Prime subscribers the whole the whole shebang is in there right videos books and it's offline video too like that's the perfect companion for like if you're a Prime member and you want to take something on on airplane like download it to go that is your device that's the point right is that you already know how to use Amazon they're marketing this like crazy on amazon.com right there these people I mean they probably haven't even heard of an exus 7 some of these people this is this is the perfect Amazon consumption device and and I Amazon's ecosystem like you know this the the state of Amazon's Marketplace and I think this is really interesting and you should probably dig into this hint uh just just start but Amazon runs around saying that they sell like 20% of the tablets in the tablet Market that they're you know it's it's apple and then Amazon and then like this C of of of Android stuff but they're not getting any apps right like people don't update their apps to the Amazon Marketplace we don't see a lot of like there's no exclusives for the Amazon Marketplace M the things that you would expect from the second place player in the tablet Market aren't happening for Amazon's app store and I don't I it's like it it undoes their claim of having such a big chunk of the market right because you don't see this this huge rush of activity and I think that there's probably an explanation in that a Android tablet apps are basically gigantic Android phone apps M so you want to go after the Android phone market which is bigger by Leaps and Bounds but at the same time it's like why why isn't it happening here in the way that it should because here are the tablets like you want to go after a tablet Market that is in the iPad like right if you believe Amazon like here it is I think you're looking at a lot of productivity experiences yeah that are catered For let's say the iPad that offer distinct advantages to being on the iPad productivity experiences and and there there isn't as much of that that feels as premium that feels like like I want to spend my my money and work on my business stuff on this thing right and the opportunity I don't think is there yet and that and that's always the concern cuz like the rumors which have been especially uh loud in the last couple days is the Amazon phone um and at no point do I look at this and what do you done and think Amazon knows how to make a device that does everything my phone needs to be a ubiquitous device tablet can be fun but it's going to track your head with with lasers and yeah we want to talk about the is it the patent the fan is that where they got that from yeah I mean there's I think a tech horun story too based on a Hacker News Post I mean in terms of sourcing this is not it's wonderful uh uh yeah four cameras in the front of a phone that track your head and like show you like 3D effects like iOS 7 which oh God can can I can I just can I make one more iOS 7 uh can I just point out one more iOS 7 yeah do so there's layers right so I 7 has let me unlock my phone um not on camera that was the wrong code everyone thumb print oh you don't I don't I don't have it I'm waiting I don't know what I'm waiting for but I'm waiting so there's like layers and like so everything moves and then oh I can tell you about layers and then if you like and you bring up the volume so this volume overlay like is also moving everything's moving and then as soon as you're bring control center like this doesn't move right like this layer on top of everything it doesn't move it it's just it's like a piece of paper that is like glued on the top of your four front facing cameras oh good I turned off Bluetooth by accident trying to get rid of control CER that never happens to anyone sorry so mad bro I'm I just I I haven't updated my iPad Mini yet and I was using iOS 6 last night I was like H uh you know that four-finger swipe to bring up the application switch yeah I got good at that well you get good at it but it makes sense because you bring up it's a layer right so you bring it up and you see the icons at the bottom and you like swipe it down it's very one to one and now you do it on the iPad and it's like all this crazy happens it's like now you see all these like live previews of things it's like this gesture just became totally abstracted it felt very physical before like you were pushing up the screen and in a lot of ways that's what iOS 7 is supposed to be about right is physical functional skorm trying to make it that this feels like you're opening and closing a drawer it feels like you're bouncing this on the ground right and uh that that's the funniest thing to me is like people haven't gone Bonkers about about the the functional skorm yet but that's the next stage of iOS 7 I think I not they're just not finished with yet it's it's just very clear to me that they pushed it out really fast to to meet their especially on iPad especially on iPad I mean it's not ready in the iPad there's just my iPad and I don't get it like the iPad 3 is it's older it's capable it's still pretty fast like that when they put out the iPad 4 like they really just changed the chipset to like support lightning but it's like very much the same uh it's just faster and it's just why is it so crappy on this iPad 3 like it is so bad on the iPad I'm I'm going to buy a new iPad this what the problems huh it's just everything is stuttery like you like and there's I don't think there's enough RAM yeah right you know like it's F it's it's fine it's not great it's fine I just regret having upgraded my my tablet and I've never felt that way with I turned off motion on my new 5S which is plenty capable of of doing motion yeah I turned M7 Co processor what the M7 bro processor oh yeah I thought you said bro processor process I just said bro processor and that's from now on that's what I will call it it's a bro processor um okay let's talk about Microsoft let's talk about this so I firmly believe that Microsoft is the most fascinating story in Tech right now um because it's amazing how much change is happening at the top of that company uh balmer's out it very much appears now that it was not his timing might have been like to the decision to leave may have been his choice the timing was definitely not his choice right there are the stories now with with Microsoft every leak about what's happening at the top with CEO search with um with maybe pushing Bill Gates out of the picture now that is the wild all of that is with Alan malali who's a CEO of Ford uh malali uh who's a CO of Ford maybe being the top candidate for the CEO of Microsoft they're all coming from investors right and the line over and over again it's three of the top 20 investors which makes no sense which and they all have different rumors too so it's like I don't know I me if you just unpack if if you just unpack what three of the top 20 means right it means like 17 18 and 19 right like it doesn't mean the top three cuz then you would say three of the top five right it doesn't it doesn't mean one six and 10 cuz then you would say three of the top 10 it's three of the top 20 right so it's like some it's like maybe it's one in 20 right like it's it's it's just a huge range of people with a different could two people are like we should have Bill Gates go and everyone's like no but that's the guy who went to the press and just said we want this story out there maybe but the with the with the the Alan malali stuff it's very much they went from investors are pushing for this to Microsoft sport is seriously considering it and then his story went from categorically denying that's the the phrase Caris Wisher used I emailed Alam and L and she wrote a story about it like four or five days ago I emailed him he categorically denied it and said I'm wearing my red Ford vest right now I'm not going anymore we could make a JJ Abrams comparison here can't we you can make any number of like college football coaches comparisons too I mean this is the cycle and then through you know yesterday Royers and Bloomberg are reporting that the board is considering it and he's warmed the idea because he's friends with Balmer right and this big Microsoft reorganization he was a like an adviser to Balmer on how to do it uh which is great and you know I bet he would be a good CEO but what's interesting about it is all of this pressure to change Microsoft is not coming from the top of Microsoft as you would otherwise devices and uh devices and services devices and services and I think that might be bomber's like bomber like clearly executed that big reorganization and make it a functional organization he clearly decided to buy Nokia smartphone division um these are his decisions with his board right nobody else can make those decisions but the decisions to radically change the leadership of the company in the middle of this transition not even the middle the beginning of this transition right uh that is not coming from Steve hmer and the board of directors of Microsoft that's obviously coming from somewhere else because that's where all of the stories about it are coming and the stories are coming true and I just don't I don't know what kind of company Microsoft wants to be um and if you look at this good buy video so we should run it so right the bomber one the bomber goodby so uh Tom wrote a great story you know um Tom's obviously very plugged in so Microsoft has an annual meeting every year they have an all hands which is crazy because I'm think Stadium I'm thinking about our All Hands where we had the 70 people who run the Verge show up in New York and we had like some pizza and it was it was just like an incredible crazy thing to try to coordinate right like it took uh it took our people it took Michael and Leah who do that sort of stuff for us it took them weeks and weeks to coordinate that for us uh and it cost a lot of money and Microsoft is like all right all 100,000 people come to this stadium and like tune into these live streams and like we're going to have a rock concert where we talk about our products uh and so that's incredible with like a platform in the middle platform in the middle and bomber's going to play music uh and so uh Tom reported on it and like we heard about it we're like man we got to get this video so we scram sced and scrambled and scrambled and uh we got a video and just of the end which we should just run it uh this is Steve Balmer his last all hands meeting right with his company because he run again they have it every year he didn't throw himself like a goodbye party um this is him saying goodbye to all of his employees at the mic really all hands Balmer way and there's no there's no right just let's run the video I'm just going to enjoy I just want to enjoy this for a minute soak it in all of you soak it in you work the greatest company in the world soak it in and I want to say thank you I want to say thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you this isn't about any one person person it's about the company it's about a company that's important that's forward thinking that's Innovative that's ethical that hires great people and leads lets them lead great lives that helps people around the world realize their full potential this my whole professional world Microsoft's like a fourth child to me children do leave the house in this case I guess I'm leaving the house my last song is one I've always wanted to use but it was always deemed inappropriate it's a great song not that kind of inappropriate and I wanted to pick a song that was exactly perfect a song that let me say thank you a song that looked back retrospectively and a song that celebrated the future it's from one of my favorite movies it's one of my favorite songs and I think it has all that in it it's a song that comes at the very end of a movie where one of the actors gets up on stage and talks about kind of how he likes to do things well I want to end with this song respectful a song that talks about what you've meant to me and what you've done for for me you've made this the time of my my life all right uh I just want to go through my emotions while watching that video first of all is Adrian by the way Adrian's here yeah welcome Adrian hi thank you Ellis Ellis has been thrown away we've discarded Ellis and Adrian has taken his place uh first of all the idea of Steve Almer watching Dirty Dancing if I could pay money to watch Dirty Dancing with Steve Balmer I would do it that is in without any hesitation and confession I saw dirty dance for the first time like two months ago what at a bar what is wrong with you I don't know it was watch Steve balber there no it'sot Guinness though but he might have been I was drunk he might have been uh so anyway back change it back so just there's no one like Steve Walmer let me just put that out there I've never we've been you know we've been covering the industry for a long time there's I've never encountered any human being like Steve armmer doing what he does for this company and it's crazy to me that he was just like what seems like he was just pushed away like pushed the side and he's leaving like this is very final to me this is like the first I've watched it now so many times that I'm just cold and jaded and like I'm noticing things about it that like like I'm like look at that guy he's wearing like a white shirt um but the first time I watched it I was like choked up I was like this is crazy like the real the real tear is like he's trying to hold back like it's yeah no he's not holding back Steve bmer doesn't hold back he he put He he holds forward fair enough this is the most energetic human being I think alive yeah I mean he really I mean look at how tough he is and like yeah and then and then he just walks down this hallway I mean this is poignant like it's crazy like he's just alone it's sweet I love that video uh so I you know we make fun of a lot of things it's hard to make fun of that except for Steve bomber watching dirty dance except for Steve bomber watching movie which is a great movie I now know that uh I I mean I just think I cannot imagine what is happening in Microsoft right now I mean like that was goodbye like did he come back to work the next day I mean like I thought he had some time he has he has 12 months year I guess 11 now well he said I'll leave within 12 months so the second they find a new CEO he's gone so that to me is I don't is he in charge of the noia acquisition is he like on the phone with Stephen elop being like what should we do with these manufacturing employees like and that these are the so I wrote a piece yesterday that was all about the massive unanswered questions that Microsoft still faces and like I talked to a bunch of people about it nobody denied that the questions are there they're just like yeah you know we need a new CEO cuz that's who's going to answer these questions and it's I just don't like if you look at what Google did with Motorola right Google bought Motorola a smartphone manufacturer brought it into Google they fired everybody basically they installed entirely new leadership from within Google right and then they started firing people because that's what you do like you don't need like two accounting departments you need one big accounting department with some of the people who know how to run Nokia uh you don't need like two massive it departments you have Microsoft HR it accounting that's stff like right so you know Google fire they fired 30% of the people who work for for Motorola they fired 5200 people like that uh and I just I don't know how Microsoft doesn't start to make those decisions or doesn't at least start to plan to make those decisions in order to close this acquisition and like begin they've only got you know they're going to close it within the next five months I mean we don't know they're not making those decisions they're just not publicly talking about them yeah but if you're but in the midst of all this turmoil like they need to start telling somebody what the plan is for what they're going to do no these these rumors are crazy I even speak like the the it's been a month I mean like this stuff should start leaking out it started leaking out with Motorola right away right instead we're getting leaks of someone wants to kick out Bill Gates from Microsoft yeah and good luck on that one yeah I mean I I don't know I I I think that Microsoft is such a it has potential to be great again if you look at the I think the products are good they're getting better I think the surface to like all that stuff still messy well it's good Hardware it's it's messy I think you know Xbox one I think is good but like they're not they they don't have like a they don't seem settled they don't seem like they can like really execute cleanly because the question in every meeting I take with Microsoft is like who's your boss do you know his name or her name is it somebody is it the guy from Ford right is it Steve Almer because I don't know and I think until they start answering those questions they they got they got problems but that was very touching right and I'm gonna definitely make sure can we end this podcast with time my life is that possible legally I don't care about laws whatever all right adri you have been writing about underground drug trafficking yes the other big shutdown of the week right yeah so we're skipping the first shutdown oh the government shutdown talk about well there was a government shutdown anyway meanwhile on the internet um so yeah there was this was kind of a story that we all expected would come at some time there was this website that was operating for three years doing apparently over a billion dollars worth of sales mostly illegal drugs and uh kind of like uh just blatantly saying like you can't touch us like we are too smart with technology like we have this magic website with this magic technology on it government can't do anything by we we mean the dread pirate Roberts The Dread pirate Roberts was the owner operator of Silk Road at the time that it was brought down uh apparently it was started by somebody else who handed it over in the great tradition of dread pirate Rober of dread pirate Rob God it's a really there's a really great part in the FBI criminal complaint where they like explain where the reference comes from and they're like from the movie Pride oh that's always the best yeah that's always the best when like lawyers have to explain really obvious things yeah like the time they had to explain what a Rick Roll was in court I think it was Chris P moot the founder of forchain had to say like um it's when yeah you should look it up it's really funny um so yeah uh they shut down Silk Road they replaced it with a big FBI seizure notice did everybody else just hear I don't know the people out there also hear the Windows boot up is St that was the shut down is that the shutdown what is happening all right whatever continue go on a Windows PC somewhere has exited this world twice twice continue Adrian uh right so Silk Road is shut down now the FBI put up a big seizure notice that said this SE this hidden site has been seized and um everybody's freaking out about what's happening to their Bitcoins which are were in their accounts on Silk Road and they they U arrested this guy um this 29-year-old guy who lives in San Francisco Ross yeah Ross rri and uh and he looks like a huge douche I'm just gonna every picture I've seen of him he looks like an enormous douche alleged allegedly huge dou allegedly no he's not alleged his douchiness is not a legend I've made the Judgment his Google Plus post and hisas yeah um and his desire to hire hit then who all ended up working you haven't even seen his Deviant Art page I bet no I have not um so anyway come on man it's alleged it's not proven yet we still might find out that dread pirate Roberts was actually a criminal Mass reminded to set up this poor 29-year-old taring it could be Car San Francisco it could I mean it could be anybody so but anyway the uh this guy has been charged with counts of conspiracy for to commit money laundering drug trafficking and uh one other conspiracy computer hacking right but then he also he tried to in New York that was in New York and then today a second indictment comes out in Maryland for uh more drug charges and also apparently he took out a hit on some guy for $880,000 like a a former employee or something a former employee of the sil I was under the impression there were two yeah he tried to order a hit twice and neither time worked first time the hit was actually supposedly carried out by a undercover police officer yeah so uh that didn't work and the employee was uh cooperating with the with the feds at that point it seems likely so um so he pretended to have been that guy's not dead oh I've been killed no they actually took pictures of him like supposedly being tortured and sent them to the dread pirate Roberts who was then like a little bit faint heart about it but he was like I know I've done the right thing like I just wish people would have more Integrity so man I feel so badad for for the real dread pirate Roberts who who Lesley true did at any point did he say as you wish did that happen I actually don't know if he ever pulled pull that out maybe maybe that's he says as he wish he really means I'm pleading not guilty I got to go all right that's terrible so he takes out these I mean I will say that do we have any b-roll from The Princess Bride did anybody think of that we maybe we should have yeah where she pushes him down the mountain oh wow that that was that was the hit very beautiful yeah right so that was the first hit that didn't work the second hit that didn't work uh it sounds like he just got scammed by somebody by some Silk Road user basically this guy contacted him was like Hey I I hacked the Silk Road I have all these people's identities I'm going to reveal them unless you pay me half aill ion and instead of paying him half a million dollars The Dread pirate Roberts turns to this other user and says like can you take him out for me and it now appears that that maybe that well anyway all right so maybe that happen they negotiate no that probably didn't happen they negotiate at first the guy's like I want 150,000 for like a messy hit and like if you want it clean whatever that means I think these people were just making this stuff anyway wasn't the second one a cop two no that no there were no cops involved this time but it might have been that the same person who tried to extort dread pirate Roberts and then the person who said he would take care of it with a hit for $150,000 that might have been the same person makes sense basically the police tried to follow up on it and they tried to find the guy who was associated with this handle who was supposedly dead in some city in Canada right and they couldn't find him so they decided it wasn't worth pursing get Char that one undercover cop hold on undercover cop okay yeah all just punch the table uncover cop catches a guy doing a hit like wants to have a hit um does not arrest him just like let's just see if he does it again no I think they're building their case actually the hit that came first was the hit from that was the cop right the fake hit that was the first one and then dread pirate robers did it again and when he's negotiating with the second guy who was not a cop he's like you know I just had this done for $80,000 like you want to charge me $150 I know what this is supposed to cost yeah that's great that's amazing um so let's talk about how he got caught because I think that is deeply deeply hilarious right so um Everybody assumed that this guy was just a technical Mastermind total hacker like zero cool because when you're the best hacker in the world you pick the nickname d right so everybody assumed he was really Savvy and it's like looking back on it it's not really clear why like there were some things he did like he he structured Silk Roads so so that uh every it was like a Bitcoin tumbler so everybody's bitcoin's virtual currency that approximates cash on the internet as it always right in my stories this is like the Wikipedia entry live so um anyway he added a Bitcoin tumbler where like everybody's Bitcoins like all get messed together so that you can't trace any one individual Bitcoin from a buyer to a seller so he did like little stuff like that and everybody was like oh it's so safe he's so smart he's going to take care of us and uh as it turned out he made a lot of mistakes if this is the guy again it's definitely the guy nobody's gone to jail yet so we don't know but um Bas from what the um complaints that the FBI has released which they say is not even all the details of their investigation based on that stuff uh he made a lot of really stupid mistakes like he used his gmail which is his first name and last name at gmail.com to uh register for an account on the Bitcoin talk Forum where he then later asked for developers to work on the Silk Road yeah um and uh he also connected to the Silk Road servers from a coffee shop in San Francisco okay using a VPN which I guess he thought was safe but Comcast just said okay yeah here's everything here go came here's how we here's how we do it he also ordered a bunch of fake IDs that had his real picture on them which makes sense but um yeah I get that the uh Department of Homeland Security intercepted them at customs and showed up at his house and he explained to them like oh but anybody can do this on the Silk Road um he's promoting have you heard of my website I have business cards please possibly uh this was a couple weeks ago but um he was basically getting increasingly arrogant he was getting increasingly bold and a lot of the law enforcement I talked to in reporting the story said like oh this is super common like either they get greedy or they want the fame so he had given an interview to Forbes uh Andy gber this great reporter at Forbes got this like full access interview I mean it was Anonymous but it was dread pyro Roberts speaking him about his philosopy he put up this right like and he was advertising Silk Road more and more like he put up this this page that uh explain on the regular internet not accessible only through tour like Silk Road is explaining like what Silk Road was and in it he says like the drug war has been won and it was won by dread pirate Roberts so he's just getting like insane yeah and then iane powder Yes actually it was more than two weeks ago sorry I think it was more than a month ago I think it was in August that's ridiculous right um so here's what I think is crazy about this story because I don't know that you can really make an argument that the Silk Road was like a good thing right it was like this very interesting thing well one argument that people make I'm not saying anything about this either way one argument that people make is and the FBI backs this up is that when you sell drugs on Silk Road the drugs are of higher quality and you have fewer people dying from like impurities yeah right and the FBI bought over a hundred purchases on Silk Road and they tested the stuff and they found that it was very high purity of the drug being advertised that's great I mean it's cool now I'm the best drug like cool Heisenberg like that's great for you uh I'm just saying like it's it's the shit's illegal and what's weird about um like selling cocaine is illegal it's just is like you can argue about whether or not it should be but at this current time it is and what's crazy to me about this story and a lot of the reporting I've seen like Chris seoan from like uh the acle is out there being like you know it wasn't technology that brought him down the technology is fine it was sloppy operational security and it's like yeah but he's a drug dealer like he operates a drug exchange like what also brought him down was that the the government of the United States was highly motivated to arrest him like that's what actually did him in was like the coordinate efforts of the authorities like it's not that he could he maybe he could have stayed hidden forever but people are people and they like screw up and they tend to always screw up and so like this idea that technology would have saved him but for his arrogance or but for like his mistakes yeah maybe that's true right but I think I think there's the fears of the so-called dark web it's like we want this this internet to exist outside of the public domain and we want to be able to use it with some degree of anonymity arrogance not withstanding right and what does it say about how private is it how secure is it right I mean we and we've talked about on on this show endlessly like the internet is not a separate part of like reality it's just like integrated into our lives like you know the government shut down in the Obama like ACA like went into effect on the same day and it's crazy to me that like we have built like these Healthcare exchanges that only exist online as far as I can tell there's not like an office you can go to and like fill out paperwork and get health insurance you can go to where somebody else uses the internet for you but all of this is like online like this whole system happens like on the free public internet not free but you understand what I'm saying like the freely accessible public internet um and at the same time there's like the Silk Road in this other corner of the internet and you wrote a story saying they haven't shut down like tour why does Windows keep shutting down in my ear oh every time we say shut down I hate you I hate I hate these people uh but so they haven't closed room they haven't put to sleep I'm trying to think of other obscure Windows noises they haven't restarted Windows uh they hav the dark web still exists and I think it it's still going to be looked at by the authorities and I think yeah well but the power of it was that I think they thought that nobody could see what they were doing right like a guy at the FBI wasn't like let me sign in a tour like everybody else can do right and like begin these the series of transactions right so um yeah I mean now that Silk Road has been shut down there are all these other sites just like it that are now getting all of their users there's one called Black Market reloaded okay there's one called Marketplace there's one called Deep Bay is there one that's called like just by drugs is there one called like I had an original thought.com like not upon marketplace.org i't found that one yet disappointing that sounds like a business opportunity so are people like flocking to these people are the Silk Road forums are still up okay and most of what people are talking about is where am I going to buy drugs now yeah right and so some vendors have set up their own sites just for themselves or they're just advertis just advertising their email M and other people are saying let's all go let's all vote and say which one will be the because it'll be better for everybody if set to avoid the government I'll be the leader of this government of the Shadow government um that's amazing I mean it's look right there's an obvious Marketplace for this stuff and like if they are selling this stuff at a higher Purity and they're policing like you can make the drugs shouldn't be regulated an legal argument right but you I I just that has to be separate from the so we should let these illegal people like or this illegal Marketplace Thrive until we figure out how to legitimize it CU even if you do legitimize like the regular drug trade like I don't think the Silk Road is like come on in fizer sell some drugs here like I I just don't that's not the the kind of community is and if it's kind of community where people are where the The Dread pirate Roberts feels comfortable ordering hits on people like they have a a bigger existential problem than like whether or not drug laws the United States exist I mean that's also like different sh D priate Robert from Silk Road douche with a good idea I mean so yeah he's the dark he's the Dark Side of Zuckerberg yes the dark Zuck dark Zuck nope I'm stopping no um is there anything else we should know about this Adrian I feel like you're you're deep in the game and you don't want to say anything a long time like there's everything says fading the fifth right here yeah Adrian like definitely does not want like a TAA wearing hippie to like take a hit out on her which I promise you won't happen no I can't tell you how I can make that promise but on the dark side of the internet anything is possible no that won't happen I mean this is an incredibly big story what's what's shocking to me is how much interest we've seen in it how many people are like you know it's like I have I've entered the world of tour and then been like well this is boring does it have Netflix and then I leave uh it's the Dark Side of Netflix the you do not want to see I just you know it's and maybe this is this speaks like the broader sort of like this is why privacy is an issue that can't be solved right now because I I I'm still using all these Services I know the NSA is spying on right I'm just using them because they're better and more convenient and to not use them and to enter this other world is like annoying and like slow tour is particularly slow it's very slow um and like the I think like the lava bit case is happening at the same time this like secure email provider where it actually did work pretty well and was pretty fast but like they had to shut it down because the government was like give us all your encryption keys and the guys's like No And like they're having this fight over it and that story where he he turned over his encryption Keys we printed them out on like four sheets in 11o type and they're like this isn't useful and he was like I know uh like that's incredible to me and you see all the stuff happening it's like people wanting to carve out these private spaces on the internet because they don't want people to look at what they're doing and it's like well are we going to let them do that because people when you let them carve out private spaces tend to deal drugs in them right and that's like not been traditionally like a great policy goal for the United States government that's true but actually in the FBI documents they give a shout out to both the Silk Road and or Not Silk Road sorry they give a shout out to both tour and Bitcoin yeah and say uh you know tour which has legitimate uses which include protect they didn't say this part but uh which include protecting journalists which include protecting activists um one guy I talked to who uh is a security researcher now and used to work for Scotland Yard was like I know people whose lives have been saved by this technology right right so I think that the and the government uses it themselves in law enforcement MH and so I think that uh that tour like most people recognize that there's a legitimate use for tour except for people who are just entering the story now right and like like I think a lot of the interest is like people who just completely miss the boat on Silk Road and are like wait there's a place where you can buy drugs and wait it's gone yeah so um yeah I think T is going to T is going to stick around and I don't think that this story is damaging T mhm well no I mean it's the same with it's funny because we were talking about Snapchat with Alice it's the same thing with Snapchat right it's like you know why Snapchat's popular because it's a place where teenagers can't like talk where they're teachers can't find them right where like the authorities in like a teenager's life can't like go interact with them and like check on their status right it's it's essentially like a private space for them to send each other pictures of genitals which is great for them and then he grow and you're like man I need to use tour because people stopped sending me pictures of their genitals because I'm older now and that is no longer part of my life I should buy drugs to like break myself fill the void of ephemeral genitals it's very poetic drugs make up for the lack of genital excuse me I have to go I really have to go and buy some drugs now because my life is over uh no I I just think it's funny that as the internet in general has become less about like I think the early internet was all about like finding Niche community right like I'm a furry like I'm going to go on like furry talk.com and that's a forum and it's safe and now it's about linking this identity that you have and like ad tracking following you everywhere and the response has been for people to burrow into more private places and whether it's something is like seemingly silly as Snapchat or something as seemingly dark as the Silk Road like you're seeing these communities find more and more private spots in the internet just as you would if in real life if you're like man I love heroin I can't deal heroin like out in the open no it's it's a it's a level of oh my God there's actually a furry talk for him how did you guys find that so fast yeah John just had it queued up he's like bookmarks let's let's go by the way that came up because as I was as I was headed to the birge cast I definitely rode the train with a man in a full Daffy do costume and I was like why didn't you Snapchat it cuz cuz I could Snapchat keep that forever yeah I couldn't like it's now how do you how do you not react to that like he's wearing costume I'm sure he's used to it I mean it was just you think he's going to two Snapchats I didn't get on the train one was like just being stunned by being near like a Daffy Duck just like just hanging what the is going on and the second was an Australian man like a like a Backpacker like crocodile dund he took a swig of beer on the on the track the nqr he's wearing the Caesar backpack and he looked around and just booted all over the tracks like endlessly booting on the tracks oh my God and then he dumped out the beer I was like oh that beer must have sucked oh God adventurous and I didn't Snapchat either of the these things I didn't really know cuz I didn't want to be like this guy like and then like drawing like what WTF I mean look if the guy in D costume I hope yeah and there's no group sending and I didn't update so I couldn't put in my story don't snap that save it you want to know that you definitely do not want to picture a movie of an Australian backpack or repeatedly booting and then just casually dumping out the beer that was the best part like he was like oh this sounds like it might have been too long for Snapchat might have been Instagram be good story yeah Snapchat story um is there anything else you need to talk about I'm sorry that I derailed your very serious conversation about do we want to talk about the other shut down at this point I do not because I know what will happen to my ear constantly you need a code for that no code yeah giraffe let's talk about the other giraffe about the Govern giraffe well there's nothing to say I mean um I think the big it's annoying I can I keep calling press people and getting voicemails saying they're not working uh we wanted to do a story on curiosity and like cuz the initial report was that they were going to draft curiosity um and yeah yeah Will how do you feel about that uh no the initial report was that curiosity would go into this like low power mode and we wanted that's really interesting right like yeah it's strange that politics Will like shut a machine calm down s just back away uh it's crazy that politics Will like affect a science project on mors right that's crazy so we wanted to write about it and like is it gonna are you going to be able to boot it back up and we called NASA like people were on it and they wouldn't answer the phone because they're not at work does turn out great uh that that report the curiosity is like still active that they didn't do any of these things um it's not tweeting though it's not tweeting uh by the way NASA tweets clearly the best part of the shut suspended now too the Voyager account is suspended oh really gone I don't know I was looking for it today cuz I going like the Voyager 2 the Voyager 2 had the best shutdown tweet of all which was sorted out yourselves sorted out yourselves humans yes by humans uh which was amazing um I I just think that that stuff like you can argue about whether the the crazy faction of the Republican party that actually is behind the shutdown is right or wrong you can argue about whether the policy of obam cares was like right or wrong that's ARG about we shouldn't argue like there's no Reon like what's ins pain is that like our government is actually shut down and then there are these like spiderweb effects into all these other things that we would ordinarily cover um like space like health health like Homeland Security like yeah CDC too right um so it's we're covering it I think you it's this is one of those like Verge things where like I don't know maybe three months ago we would have had a lot of like Angry commenters like why is this on the verge and now we've done it so consistently that everyone's like I'm really glad this is here mhm so so that I hope is a lesson for you because it's been a lesson for me and a lesson for Adrian right I didn't learn anything Ross Ross is very difficult to teach things too it's true um no but I don't know apart from being annoyed by press people I mean have you seen any effect effects of the shutdown not really I have a bunch of friends in Washington who are just drunk uh yeah I think Netflix had a had a stock price uh um go up because of this because more stream that be amazing um no I mean I have friends who work at like defense contractors who are like we're going to work but we are not allowed to do anything right our counterparts aren't here um I have friends who just aren't literally who are just done and they're like counting the days until they can't pay their rent um but all that's like whatever I actually think the um the other side of it which is the ACA going to effect I think it's funny that that a that website like we have a government policy effectively exists only on the internet which I think is crazy uh and B for I think a lot of our readers who happen to be like freelance designers and like freelance developers and like that stuff and like for our community of like freelance journalists in New York that is going to actually I think change the market a little bit right because there won't be this push to like go find a job at a big company I think like some of this Aqua hire stuff like that's actually going to have an effect on whether these small companies can expand because they won't right they won't feel the pressure to like be acquired obviously the money will be there in order to get health insurance for their employees yeah right um but that's like remains to be seen yeah the um and the the roll out of healthcare.gov was so glitchy and buggy and there were some reports that said it was related to the furing of many government employees but it actually wasn't really no was just like server overlo so they were promising it server overload and yeah just design problems yeah and it's funny that the Republicans like managed to blow what would have been a great story for them which is like this doesn't work with the shutdown because now people can just be like well the government shutdown of course doesn't work and like whether or not that's true it doesn't matter um you know what else didn't work that day was Grand that BTO online and I was very disappointed I couldn't get any well so here's what's crazy and I think this again this speaks to just where we've come is like the night of the shutdown the Democrats were on TV being like yeah it's going to come online but it's going to be a lot like iOS 7 you know it's not going to work right away that was Obama said it they all said it and it's like that is crazy like that's your line like that's what you're going with like iOS 7 like that sucks for Apple first of all like that that's your like look the text may be a little illegible at first don't rotate the screen and it's crazy that like that's how you're speaking to like right the grandmas of America I know I'm on Android yeah it's going to be like uh it's like an Android well but yeah if they were like it's going to be like Android 4.3 like oh then I'm never going to get it never going to get this update until Samsung ruins it in some way mad sound effects Healthcare touch whz oh God yeah Samsung's okay I think that's it we've been on for two hours by the way by the way people have asked us for a two hour podcast for so long so I think we just need no they they never ask want us to keep going they all want us to keep going um so Adrian if you want to tell a joke this is your moment yeah I got nothing disappointing all right so that was first cast that's how I'm ending it disappointed that Adrian didn't tell joke uh here so I've been trying to do Mayday this whole time and it's not going to happen is it charged no no it's a tablet so it needs more oh power so it's not charging you're not good enough next time next time we'll do mday next time uh Man David David just bought some weird books on this thing man give David some privacy here um okay so that was The Verge cast uh there are many many ways to get a hold of us uh you can tweet at us which I think is the most direct and efficient way I'm reckless Ross is Ono Rosco Adrian is a Dr jeffre uh no one's been tweeting at me this time it's disappointing really seen they're all in the silk they're all buying drugs they're trying to figure out your Snapchat name uh and Ellis is hamburger Josh is Josh walsky he was here earlier uh it was weird um you can also leave a comment you may remember him as the disembodied voice occasionally accompanied by the disembodied head very zoomed in head at times yeah a lot of a lot of weirdness on the on the on the vergecast today um you can leave a comment in our post um many of you have figured out my email address which is a terrible shame you can continue all us it's I have a story about that but I W tell it now um and that's it I hope that you enjoyed this experience right Adrian how was it cool it was great Adrian we'll be back sometime it looks a lot better in here than the last time I was on the verge cast yeah mhm yeah were you in here the last time I was in here yeah but it was just like it was like a weird table we over no I hate this table this table you hate this table I what am I doing it's it's better than the last table I mean it just it's like I'm I don't know whatever next year we can afford t all right that was it uh I hope that you have a good day um and that you continue driving your car I'm assuming you're driving your car don't watch this in your car right if you're going to do drugs buy them on one of the many alternatively named uh drug fors before they shut down before they shut down okay that was it rock and roll nhello welcome to the Verge cast I'm Nei Patel I'm Ross Miller and I'm Ellice hamburger Alice hamburger man yep he's here hamburger hamburger unfortunately uh Josh has been fured so uh yeah Josh has been shut down uh he's very expensive to run and we just don't have was defunded right yeah no we actually had four weeks of petty cash to continue running we do have non-essential tulsky uh oh God you should definitely name his child that so we have a whole list of snarky comments to make but he can't personally no Josh is look he's a he's he's a busy man now yeah um so Ellis is here which is very exciting talk about apps the whole time but then uh later on the show we're going to have Adrian on as well which all things shut down uh so this is the vergecast as you may know we where we talk about our site which covers technology culture culture culture two more art art science we actually change the design business us and world uh forums we cover our forums it's delightful it's a very pretty place um and it's actually uh we should go right into it there's some breaking news this just happened Apple uh Tech crunch is reporting that uh Apple has acquired Q which is a app that's kind of like Google Now yeah uh for uh over $40 million they're saying and the interesting thing about Q they used to be greppin which lets you search all your stuff online from within one app and it was like a early iPhone app that was pretty successful but they pivoted and it became a calendar that said hey you're on the way to the airport you open the app and we give you a push notification for your boarding pass or your hotel reservations all that stuff if you take one look at the screenshots it's very obvious this was like trying to be the Google Now right and this is really where the iOS 7 today screen like needs to go right like there's I mean I don't know I've been using iOS 7 since it came out I'm sure you guys have as well right I actually just got the iPhone I've been using Moto X that was my summer flame you have a gold one uh no it's silver but silver case doesn't really matter but yeah I know like this today it should be way more information like the weather kind of shows up sometimes it's not that can I tell you my my big pet peeve with a today's screen yes so you open it up it doesn't swipe like yeah it just moves like it's like a button right like the gesture is a button it's not like a one toone swipe like everything else in the iPhone I'm I'm utterly convinced it's really like once you start noticing these parts of IO 7 that aren't finished or like don't quite work the way the iPhone used to work well they decided that it was going to be Android like column view where you can't swipe on cells you just swipe the whole page and that's one of the only Parts the operating system where you do that no it's really there's all these like things and I get it like there's new stuff and like they rushed it out the door but but once you start noticing the things that aren't finished they just start popping out all over the place the other thing about today is that as good as it is compared to what we had before which was nothing right it maybe makes the situation worse by making you realize all the things that it could be doing oh yeah this was in David's review yeah he went over it and over it this would be the perfect place for like third party widgets of some sort yeah and it makes you realize how uh how iOS could be better if it was integrated and they could make an API that said okay here are remind apps that can put their reminders in today but nope just reminders just reminders which is the best Reminders app nobody there's an entire Market of iOS adbs like desperately trying to make better to-do list apps and better reminders apps you know the system one is so good that there's no reason for it when I judge apps uh I get 100 pitches per day and one of the first things I look at is the design if you didn't pay attention to the design you probably didn't pay attention to the functionality either and if that reminder zycon had hit my inbox I wouldn't have just archived it I would have deleted it you just sent it away so can we talk about one that got up we did you write the sunrise update today or is that somebody else so Sunrise which is the Calendar app that I use which is great M because of its entire concept which is screw the local calendar on the phone we'll just talk to the cloud all the time right so it talks to Google and we use Google Calendar here so talks to Google it just updated so it's going to start talking to iCloud talks to Facebook um they did an iOS 7 redesign and I swear to God this proves my theory that app developers have no idea what to do and it's going to get worse before get gets better because it's like it's so sparse now it's impossible to read uh it's like a field of white with light gray very thin bubbles all over it and it's like I just want to know what's going on so I have really good eyesight and I love the new Sunrise I think this might have something to do with the fact that there are a lot of people complaining this week about iOS 7 accessibility and just the straight up design of iOS 7 is not legible it's contrasty but it's not legible unless you have really good it's really it's insane like uh control center is another really good one so the old iOS 6 iow 5 you would double click and you'd swipe over I could just stop my music like and I could almost do it without looking at it yeah right and now I can't like I'm like what of these tiny buttons which one should I hit to I turn off my music I'm still doing it I'm still going to multitasking trying to pause whatever I'm listening to there the circular buttons and the square buttons and the the sliders I get it like if you look at this like here's control center I'm listening to Drake everyone so you know uh real smooth it's just like that button which is get it's right in the middle I should be able to just get it I can never get it no I don't know uh real quick update this just happened too uh Twitter said to plan uh to make S1 IPO filing public today so any minute now we should have the uh the good we've been waiting lots of news Ben popper has been he's like he's been on the edge of his seat all week waiting for this S1 to happen right so Twitter so the it's a big deal by the way Twitter's going public people are going to freak out about it um because it it just like Facebook it elevates Twitter into sort of the pantheon of companies Apple Microsoft Google Amazon Facebook not Facebook um that are leading the charge of sort of the new economy like they figured out how to make their silly product and take it from like a silly product that launched at southp to a real company to a real company that makes money to a real company that is now like you know foundationally part of the American economy because it's a public company anybody can like buy into it and right reap the rewards of being invested no it's funny think about even just I think maybe just a year back the still the argument was like how is Twitter going to be profitable is it just a big service that will get bought by I think that people don't know I I like I think a large part of Twitter's Evolution now is to figure that out right to figure out how to be sustainably profitable Beyond just like guys we got more news selling promoted tweets seven minutes ago on the Instagram blog in the next couple months you may begin seeing an occasional ad in your Instagram feed speaking moneti the United States yeah wow okay well I mean comedy who didn't see that com um no and I think Instagram actually has probably um the best ad story to tell to its customers than any company because Twitter's like man I really don't want to see another promoted tweet for an app I don't use Facebook is particularly bad God the number of crappy apps that I see in my Facebook feed because they're buying impressions that I'm never going to use or never going to want is terrible but Instagram like if companies are just showing cool pictures in Instagram I think people will actually like get into it um and so like I look at I'm I follow Beyonce on Instagram her her feed is an ad for Beyonce a Non-Stop highly curated ad for Beyonce and it's fun to look at like I'm like oh now Beyonce's on a beach like she's probably not on that beach that probably happened like four years ago U but it's like cool you know it's like it's it's it's fun to look at right and I think fun to look at is what why Instagram exists and if they can do that with their advertisers in like a reasonable way I think people will actually be into it so you want to hear my theory yeah is that in the future um there will be an app or a website it's all going to be one thing I think really an app is is nothing it's just a packaged experience and soon it's going to be the same backend to Hamburg Theory everything so my theory I was thinking about this earlier today uh we're going to touch on Snapchat stories a little bit later but uh my theory is that every celebrity or person that you're going to want to follow that's really famous is going to have their own experience their own app and maybe you could even subscribe to it to get inside access and no matter what you're doing it's going to be a feed of inside stuff from them it's going to be photos and videos and clips and audio members aren't there there's like a half dozen companies like who say is like that's that for Twitter right already like oh yeah I mean that's one company though I'm saying these people are going to they're going to they're going to make their own apps yeah I mean people are already trying to tell their stories on all these different in all these different mediums and they're able to do it but for the people who are really die hards they're going to want to be like directly subscribing to that content but at least for now you're right that's how everyone's using these platforms and uh we're going to get to Snapchat stories later but people want to connect with their audiences in like authentic ways is the key word right but this also speaks even outside of celebrities it speaks to like the news Publications with their own dedicated apps versus RSS and feeds like owning the entire experience owning the whole experience exactly yeah but I never want when I the only news app I use is our own because I feel like I have to dog food our our app um but um when I go to like CNN.com and it's like open the CNN app I'm like no I really don't want to do that like that is the last thing I want to do because I know that app sucks compared to the mobile website I'm with you on that but like outside of mobile like on a computer I do not use RSS anymore I go straight to the websites and I was talking to a couple people about this I think Chris Grant from Joy U polygon excuse me is big on that too like wow dude just flashbacks flashbacks right now uh no um like you're going to the experience' designed Thebes we've designed our website painstaking detail and like we want to give in a certain way we want to design these Pages a certain way and I think there a big compelling case for like seeing all news outlets kind of go that way I don't think RSS is going to be Joshua what Josh did you just show up to troll us is that the wizard of us wow that's terrible all right hi Josh do you follow Beyonce on Twitter or uh Instagram can you not hear me I mean the question is does beyon follow me on Twitter the answer is no she doesn't that's the Holy Grail right she really doesn't I mean you've gotten uh you got Snoop Dog cover that uh you got Snoop Dogg that's your number one celebrity Twitter follow Snoop and I Snoop and I go way back uh to when he started following me two weeks ago and it's it's uh it's an amazing experience to be have you DM Snoop with with the lion with Snoop with Snoop Li the question is have you sent Snoop a DM I dm'd him my my my digits uh my my measurements did you see by the way that uh uh West Craven retweeted Verge science yesterday yeah that was awesome let me tell you something about West Craven not only is the man a genius he has impeccable taste in websites because he checks out the Verge yeah uh and I'm excited about that he how look so I I'm at home right now I'm in the midst of a heavy uh kit renovation but you're doing it yourself I saw you guys I saw you guys ver no I'm not I'm just here for for support moral support but I saw you guys Verge casting and and I and I said to myself self that seems like something you could really make a mess of and so I thought in what way could I most could I be most disruptive and I thought well I'll dial in uh and I don't know if how do you even know the dial number you don't whenever you're on the air you do not know the number I had a little help I'm not going to lie to you and because because I certainly don't remember it all the times I've said it so what are we talking about here the HDX not yet we're gonna we're gonna do that later right now we're talking uh the topic we were just on uh we're some mange of Twitter Instagram ads Apple just acquired Q basically like like Ellis showed up and all kinds of weird app news happened so Twitter Twitter is hot have you heard about this thing everybody's doing Twitter now everybody's on Twitter uh they're all using it they're doing tweets yeah uh and it's very exciting no Twitter's about to IPO Alice you must be excited because you're as we all know you're our resident app guy that's what we call you around the office app get the app guy I like app product I don't care as much about app money per se yeah so uh this is still pretty you're nuts and bolts guy you like to get you're like Phil Schiller yeah no Phil loves talk about the of The Verge I'm like big Bob Manfield I think B uh no you look a little bit like a young Phil Schiller actually know what I think of it that's great they used to tell me I looked like David schwimer that's an upgrade yeah wait you got David when I was young and handsome um he's still any so yeah what do we make of this Q acquisition are we excited go ahead Alis Atman I think it's Apple saying I think it's Apple saying says Atman by the way I'm an Atman okay everyone was thinking it and then you went there I had to it's it's my it's my duty so this is this is Apple saying this is Apple saying we need Google Now in our today feed and we need it to look like I think it's bigger than that so I think that this is Apple saying man we are getting hammered at iCloud being bad right mg seagler yesterday was tweeting we should we let's just all admit that iCloud sucks and when you like when you lose that guy for Apple it's like well he works for Google now though that's true he works for Google now he works for Google Now I mean you can't you can't trust him that's true he could be just he could just be a mouthpiece for Google Industries I don't know he wrote he also wrote a gushing review of the iPhone 5c that was like the color coming around to the front of the screen is so classically apple and I just I mean agree when I look at the when I look at the edge of the 5c the color just the color of the of the of the bezel and then the and then the bright the bright blast of plastic I think uh you know I'm going to have sex with this phone do it with this piece of Hardware I think with Q I think Apple's been on the sort of the string of quiet Acquisitions of these service companies that are like they're finding ways to build these services in small ways and I think what they're saying is we're not quite as good we need to hire we need to acquire uh people who are talented at this and that when I talk to other people in the industry they've been wondering what actually took Apple so long to start making these moves because they need this talent in there to figure out how to build Services into their into their operating system and their products just what remember that one of their biggest one of their biggest Halo featur Siri is is an acquisition oh right yeah so um it's it's important to remember that that I mean often Apple just buys these companies for talent uh but there are the cases where they where they actually want it want the product as well I mean and I think that this could be one there is a lot of pressure in this area uh and I think this could be the kind of acquisition where you see the end result as an actual product could be a refreshing change of pace for for apple apple has always really been about solving specific consumer problems and building the taglines of their products around them like 1,000 songs in your pocket and with Siri they're trying to answer these very specific questions that a normal person has every day with today they're trying to say oh what do you want to know in the morning you want to say what are what's my next appointment what's the weather and with this they're saying okay what's my boarding pass's myb like I don't get it passbook is like such a silo like every other app like it doesn't do anything else the integration is limited to like we're going to send you a link and the link might I use it once a week to uh get your Starbucks my Dwayne Reed card it's there it's in but it also like I live too close to Dwayne Reed so it's it's it's also po oh dude you got to turn off the location services on B Q anymore huh does it mean I can't download Q anymore uh I tried it a couple minutes ago I couldn't get through the App Store I think they may have pulled it I mean q said it was shutting down earlier today um I right so well they didn't waste any time on that right who can get me a who can get me a bootleg version of Q on my iPhone 5S oh I've used it it's basically it was trying to be Google now on iOS I mean they have your events they have your concerts your boarding passes who you got to call things from your email like your conference call number uh it's like Tempo calendar or something like that the only the only thing was it wasn't really a calendar you couldn't add anything to it that's weird so it's more overtly like Google Now I mean I'm sure to have deep integration I mean once they get it actually in the mix boy it really is a blatant ripoff of Google Now isn't it yeah um I mean once once once it's deeply integrated with with uh Apple Services you know that will not be a hurdle um so you know I mean this is great this is definitely a a Google Now ripoff like a Shameless Google Now ripoff uh at a glance I've never used it but just by looking at it I would say Google should take legal action on them Josh uh Josh I like your question about if this is going to be integrated or if if they're going to or maybe it was NE if they're going to keep it as a product or if they're going to integrated Apple's been going on a on a a spree of acquiring startups especially two Transportation startups and it feels like those are going to be integrated those teams uh but I think yeah I don't know right I don't know if you'll see this as a standalone it seems like this is right for the back to be the backbone of something like that today's screen um which is which is look will be very welcome because iPhone users should get to experience the joys of of Google Now I would say that Google Now for me Google Now is getting push notifications on iOS next month we heard yeah really but Google Now for me an Android has become like the novel TV it has definitely worn off yeah how do you use it I mean I it's it's on my home screen so I it's on my phone all the time wig the thing about Google the thing about Google now is that it's it's it it seems most interesting and most useful to me when I least expect it I think that's what's actually one of the fascinating aspects of it it's like I was taking I went to Seattle uh last week and and when I was getting ready for my flight it was like hey your flight is on time and you know check in and then and I looked at the at the Google Now screen I like here's the weather in Seattle and like I didn't think to ask it this is like the the first time that I had this kind of weird Epiphany about it when I was getting off a plane it's really good for travel I was getting off a plane it's like it's this many minutes to get home from the from the airport and that was the same experience where I was like well I didn't ask it for the Seattle weather but it's really super awesome it's telling me because right hey I didn't pack a sweater um right something like that's when it go on well I was just say just sneaks up on you that's the thing where it becomes really useful is that not not when you're like staring at it it's when it's kind of like it suddenly does something that Google Now is supposed to do and you're like oh yeah that's that's happening right but I don't trust it so whenever Google Now is like man your flight's on time I'm like well I'm still definitely going to check the Airlines app going to check the Delta app or whatever which is fine because it reminds me to check but but there's some level of abstraction with all these apps that aren't that touch like another API where like you didn't check it recently enough I don't know how to make you check it again that's more I feel like that's more to blame that's more like the airlin fault I mean their information the Jet Blue I had the JetBlue app giving me updates and I our flight was delayed and it just was like so far behind yeah that had I it was in no way useful right so I don't know where they're pulling all of their data from but um I it's useful when the data is good when the data is not it's not useful for things like you know like oh you should leave now to make it to your next meeting like that is like that was a wonderful thing to have but it was just kind of like it was passive and it was a push notification else like you're saying for iOS it's the same thing for me like the UI is nice to have as a widget it's nice to have like be able to pull up but just having the information kind of you in some way what I think is fascinating about Apple um and this the you know this acquisition and Ellis you were talking about it I heard a little bit before I dialed in is um this opportunity this huge opportunity to engage their developers uh with some of these some of these new pieces of the operating system where it's like the today screen for instance like yes you would want to have a limitation to what you can push in there or what you can do with it but there's so much huge opportunity and as a company that has such strict guidelines and by the way as you see has the force to get developers to actually change the way their apps look and feel and function based on an OS update um I think it's a really a phenomenal I think it's really notable uh that they haven't taken the opportunity to engage developers in things like Widgets or the today's screen or some of these deeper level Integrations yeah I don't know why and I really don't know why they they didn't um pull in at least preferred partners and be like you know on stage you know when they when they announced the iPhones they blew through iOS 7 in like two seconds MH uh and I I by the way I just put iOS 7 on my iPad 3 that is not ready like it is not finished it doesn't work like it's amazing to me that Apple never demonstrated iOS 7 on an iPad before they launched it like never period you see a couple screenshots and then these obvious things where they could have had third parties integrate into really obvious places which more than I think massive visual redesign people were clamoring for we see we see a little bit you see like it's not like you can put Vimeo logins flicker like it's but it's so rudimentary picking small like few platforms here and there yeah they've always been very comfortable that was one of the original uh pieces of of the App Store that it was one of their philosophies behind it is we're going to let developers make all these little squares people can tap on and each one is a different tool and each one is going to live inside its own box and I don't think they've completely left that frame of mind quite yet well you know I saw a really interesting um piece about like the true nature of how the iPhone disrup disrupted mobile which is they took like before the iPhone came out uh the Nokia feature phones are like the best selling phones in the world is like pure phones and the Blackberry is the best smelling smartphone because it was a messaging device and like I think it's on uh Ben Thompson's site uh strer but it's literally there's an arrow which is a terrible Name by the way he should really be ashamed of himself but it's a great site uh uh but it was it's like they reduced the the Nokia feature phone to the phone app and the Blackberry to the mail app and the the the Instant Message app and those things went away and that was they pitched it too right they're like we're going to turn these other device it's a it's an internet device it's an iPod right and and you know and they're doing with the camera right they've turned the point- and shoot camera into another icon but the P like the reason people want to use Instagram over the camera app on the iPhone and why you know it's great that it has filters now but like the reason people want to use Instagram is because it's an integrated experience it also like has distribution in it so like you shoot you edit you share and you see other people's photos like all in one place and that makes it more than just a camera right and that's why it's popular and that's why Facebook is popular for the things it does and so Apple needs to get Beyond like we're turning tools and apps and then they need to start figuring out how to build these connected experiences which is I think why they're on this tear of Acquisitions because they don't have the inh like they didn't see it so they're like we need to like find people who see it and like pull them in yeah I think that I think there is a b there's kind of a border here where um you know apple is obviously very good at Hardware uh they are you know excellent at software I think you know look you know I have some reservations about a number of things in ios7 but you can't deny that it's a you know it's a it's a fairly well executed um uh well functioned you know highly functioning uh uh mobile operating system right but it does you do see those those those kind of like heavy lines around certain areas that just feels where there's this disconnect and it it is relates to a lot of the services right a lot of the web services a lot of the con a lot of the points where like apps connect to other things into each other and a lot of the points where apps connect to the web going say the connects to the web because when when they're not connecting to the web I mean it is so easy for Google to pop up and roll out a change to its to its services to Google Now they can roll they can roll out some new cards in a week and they even like they even did this like to like to their Preparatory like app like Gmail now gets upd outside of Android whereas Siri got new features maybe once in the last year or once iOS 5 oh I'm saying like they added like baseball scores or something like that but they added that with iOS 6 oh it's always with the major releas that was that was well that's that's and that's you know and that does speak to like I do think some of the differences in those in the companies you know Google is so much a web it's so much a a new business by comparison right it's so much of a of a web business where iteration happens much faster I mean I think we know this being a web business the the rate of innovation and iteration is incredibly high and it isn't things don't happen yes sometimes they happen in big big moves but often it's like this slow kind of tweaking and refining of of components and apple does that but you see it happen like it you don't see it move for a long time and then it has this big it has this big uh I mean they didn't do it for a long time like with the visual or fun visually or functionally with the iOS but they did do it with a lot of their apps where they refined the icon they refine some of the graphics and they refine some of the ways you do things but it but it does tend to happen in these OS releases so you don't see the iteration the way you do with it where where Google is just rolling the stuff out like every couple of weeks like there's some new Gmail update where it changes the functionality of Gmail and that has pluses and minuses like with apple like they don't you always know what you're going to get and here's what Apple's going to do they're going to make whatever comes out of this que they're going to make it sound like a software feature they're going to say uh Siri checks your email for your reservations and Pops them up when you need them right and they're going to make it sound like like a software feature instead of this this service that is powered by a server that checks your email parses all your information decides what your reservation is and Pops it up for you for something like Google that's simple right well I mean but but Google has an identity as Google right I mean it it even when you buy an Android phone if you buy the vast majority of Android phones it's like you buy this Galaxy S4 and then like Google lives in literally in a cloud all around you at all times and so like when Google does things it I think consumers feel more that it's happening away from them with apple it's like you buy the Apple thing they don't have an identity as a cloud provider right I mean right my dad blames iCloud for everything even things that I know that I know he like personally did wrong like he's like ever since I got iCloud all my photos are gone I don't I can't beat Candy Crush it's iCloud no it's it's amazing because it iCloud just has like a bad wrap yeah um for better or worse I mean like I you know you get a new phone you like a new iPhone you like hit the backup button iCloud like just does it is great the funniest thing is that the funniest thing to me is that when everybody's trying to upgrade to iOS 7 everybody's telling me that coincidentally it was around the same time that they're getting an email about running out of iCloud space they're like I don't have space on my phone to install iOS seven iCloud is telling me I don't have any space either I don't know what to do yeah this is the thing that's so like insane to me about the whole I was actually you know when I was setting up the 5S I was thinking about my photos and I was like I it opened I plugged it in and it opened eye photo and it's like do you want to turn on Photo Stream and I was like oh yeah Photo Stream doesn't isn't even really holding on to my photos like I have to dump them down I mean I've talked about this before but this idea that I have to dump them down to my computer where it's like a more reliable safer place to put them or something he seems so alien to me now like like don't make me I don't want to have to interface with the computer to like deal with my stuff yeah you know but I want my photos on my computer I that doesn't bother me at all like I want them there it's fine to get them on your computer but I do think there's like this concept of a this duplicated effort I mean it seems weird to me right it's like you've got them in a folder you've got them in I photo you've got them in photo stream you've got them on your phone it's like so I have four places where I can find these things seems a little bit like Overkill to me you know like I would here's what I think I mean Google Google Plus does this the auto upload which I think is incredibly good and convenient and I never worry about like not having my photo save but uh it would be great if it then said hey do you want to save these in in your Google Drive like you've got x amount of space on google server do you want these to be saved down like to your Google Drive and they just downloaded in the background like everything else on Google Drive yeah but I I think you are a particularly strange case we all are I mean like a little bit a you have like 15 laptops and 18 phones right I mean for most people with like a variety of Apple stuff they have a phone they take a bunch of pictures they go to photo stream they open their laptop it downloads their laptop and they're done and the the big broken piece is that photo stream kind of inherently sucks right now right it's like it's good it's good at that transport function but it's not good at the be my camera a device to device also but also there's no safety there like you if it gets let's put it this way you take a th pictures you put them on your computer your computer catches on fire and it's like started at 30-day deletion of photos like hey your pictures are gone right that's the thing sense it's funny how stingy apple is with storage like even this iCloud thing it's like why not just give everybody 50 gigs of storage like most people never use it do you know how cheap storage is and do you know how much money you have apple like just Farm yeah it's yeah they keep on like we bought all of North Carolina we did you still have to pay for this we own it now but we'll give you five gigs dude it's so cheap like I don't know like nobody's like I'm never going to use 50 gigs of storage I'm not I've been trying to do it I can't even fill out my 64 gig iPhone like I've been trying to do it I bought it I'm like man I should use this space somehow I don't think most people there's that this is one of those things where I just don't understand like I Apple has this mentality that you know because you know if you if you don't pay for things it's not clean like apple wants you like feel that you're there's a transaction but there's really no reason for them to like that is such a marginal incremental cost for them right it's like there's no hitting cost we charge you for everything it's pretty simple yeah like the phone like make the phone $3 more expensive like you'll be fine you have like a trillion dollars in the bank right how soon in just consider it an investment like they do with so many other things right and just consider it an investment so your users aren't talking to each other about how they all got a push notification what does this mean I don't understand we should definitely stop we've been talking about we should talk about your wrist wear your we should talk about your big story that you broke last night about Snapchat yeah tell me about Snapchat stories Snapchat stories come on App Guy this is there's some bullying going on but I'll continue on uh Snapchat is turning into a social network basically what they're doing is they're giving every user profile so you can go to your friend's profile and see what they've been up to only over the last 24 hours perfect so the only difference from a user's point of view is that when you take a snap right before you share it to your friends you can also tap my story and so for things that are you know less private or you want to update your friends on without buzzing their phone you hit my story and then boom it's in your story and anybody can see it on your friends list the next 24 hours this this video is like I've never once sent or received a Snapchat that looks anywhere near this good I've never every Snapchat video I Reed is like a pixelated mess they're almost all from Rond our studio here boat or in a car or on a plane even who is it like it's perfect privacy you can't see a face Nei you're telling me that you don't most of your snaps don't come from beautiful women standing in the back of a Jeep like throwing colored powder throwing like colored po powder into the wind no that's I would say that's like one in 20 Snapchats for me yeah most of them are Rond singing Metallica to his cat yeah oh and the cat singing back yeah which is amazing so let me ask you guys let me ask you guys good what do you guys uh what what is Snapchat's utility to you and then I'm going to tell you about what it wants to be in the future so what does it mean to you guys right now for your daily for your daily life it's basically an art show for video team to like send this really czy yeah I mean it's jokes I use it for jokes and and for jokes that like are going to disappear right like I would say I would say unlimited sexting for me but but but you Josh I encourage you to find the the center of the V diagram where sexting and jokes Collide yeah is wonderful pretty big area though I don't use can I just say I don't use Snapchat like personally like I don't use it people send me snaps but I don't have anything look I don't have anything to share that's a samal okay everything that I share is got to be meaningful and Timeless wow so I mean I was I was going to say that's the most pretentious thing you've ever said but then I started wondering if that was true I me I'm joking I'm joking obviously but seriously like my problem is my problem is I just don't maybe it's I'm very boring but I feel like what I would share is like me sitting at a table like working or a book or like the TV or a phone all we're asking for is Penny Josh that's all yeah I mean I will say this I I definitely went for like really great I went for three weeks where I sent snapchats of uh Friday no uh Varsity Blues being on TV like that was it like I spent my Sundays with the beak and like that's what I Snapchat did you snap I don't want you laugh no whatever it was always on television so I always watch like five minutes of it and I was but it's that's what it is it's jokes like and I think that's the the value of it to people so you know what's super interesting to me kind is when I talk to uh can I oh go ahead something sorry our delay and I'm going to I think after this comment I'm about to make I'm going to hang up because I have to get back to home renovations and it's also but this delay is so perfectly timed that it almost guarantees that you're going to talk over somebody the delay from the phone to our studio yeah um so it's extremely frustrating but I just want to say that uh here's the thing you said something about taking pictures of Penny and to me and maybe this is a maybe this is my age or just how born I am or something but when I take a picture of penny my dog uh I think like I want to find the best picture that I took of her and then I want that to be out there like I want it to live forever somewhere because she's so great um and and so I don't get I feel like if I were young and out drinking and getting into what you know out in in the back of the Jeep you know throwing colors in the into the wind um I feel like yes that I would want to Snapchat that you know because I'm young and and time seems like it's endless and I've got all the time in the world and who cares if the picture sticks around or not yeah now that I know that my days are numbered that that that that the Horizon my life's Horizon is quickly approaching um you know I just think I don't want to I don't have time to Snapchat I need to make a count I mean I I will say that every single person outside of like The Verge staff that have been like man you should get on Snapchat they've been like why I don't need to send pictures of my penis to people right and I've been like no but it's but there's so much more and they've got to like overcome that like at such a high level uh I think we have to agree that the sexting thing is is and maybe again a Bor I have a boring life I'm married you know I've got a dog but maybe there is sexing going on my impression is that the whole sex thing isn't really like people are actually just still using SMS for sex thing like if you want to do sex you're still going to go you're still going to go to your messaging app and do it I suppose Snapchat is useful in some way for that there probably Pockets where there's some real hot Snapchat stuff going on yeah um I don't know anybody who I don't know anybody who's ever been like yeah I got a sex snap so here's what the CEO of Snapchat told me he said I got a sex Snapchat he said I mean I think that Snapchat isn't about sexting I think people may as they as they do on any messaging app um but here's what he told me he said that the reason that the ephemerality of Snapchat is so valuable isn't necessarily because we're sending embarrassing things it's because we're sending things that we don't want to be attached to us forever right that's what he said and he said that's why people in part are so attracted to this it's not necessarily because you're embarrassed of this snap now but because anything you post to Facebook is going to be there for all time went from one ex to the other it's like you can only see it once and then I'm gonna say this then I'm really going to get off the phone there's no question that we have been we have like fallen into a trap of like permanent everything with what we share I mean we were like sold this awesome idea like connect with people share with your friends like know what your family members are up to and then it's like oh wait a second like all this is there forever I have like no control over it it gets into like the stream the slipstream of existence and it's off down the river of information and it's like you kind of by the way slipstream of existence River of information two separate bodies that merge at some point uh but it's like I think the thing that's refreshing yeah it's the Horizon I think it's refreshing about Snapchat is and and things like it is you're right that it is it doesn't stick is that it goes away and it is something that is there needs to be something else though I feel like there's a longer there's something else where it's like but once you put it on the Internet it's forget it like people can copy it they're going to make they're going to take a screenshot it doesn't matter it's hard to take I mean you can screenshot Snapchat but you know when people are doing it it's kind of hard to do didn't they get like kind of broken iOS 7 no I thought it I still screenshot people but but I think but I think that kind of refreshing to have something that doesn't just like follow us around everywhere we go for the rest of our lives right and that's that's a big hook for a lot of people that's the hook wait hold on Josh are we losing you or you gonna stick around I'm going I'm getting off the phone now all right was good to talk to you man see you guys and you're you're doing a great job and I wish I was there and I'll be back on the on the next one oh you are here you're just aead floating in the air your picture has been trolling us this whole time don't worry about it all right we'll talk to you later man great a great time bye so that's the hook which is really interesting to me I mean you you look at Snapchat and you're like okay all the kids are using it I kind of get it okay I'm using it now I get it right but you thought maybe they stumbled upon this maybe they They Came Upon a good idea but the good idea wasn't the exploding messages the good idea was the ephemerality the non the non- lasting forever as a principal right so that was kind of what I was thinking today was stories is just the next piece of it it's the profile piece what else is down the line what else do we share that we don't necessarily want to last forever maybe article edits right something like that you're just booping away over there I'm trying to use this Note 10.1 to look at stuff I'll talk about it that's a weird transition let's just take the boops and just go from there I can hear droplets I want to talk about I'm just trying to want to talk about Snapchat there is no way to use this tablet without it making tinle no things in front of you during the show huh oh move the fire hold on stop they can't hear you I just want to show the people I'm us you the faucet on and it kind of makes you want to pee that's like what I'm getting right now no look here just listen to this when you you need to go where's the speaker on this thing look in the least logical place that's where it'll be that's right here okay so when you unlock it just it's just booping away when you unlock it like why does it make that noise and then when you lock it it makes a tinkling sound wait is that over here I think really have to pee now oh you have to unlock it oh God Samsung all right listen why why does it make that not jarring all right let me can I just say my thing about Snapchat yeah so here's the thing about stories that uh uh I find really interesting and maybe not good I like getting Snapchats I like receiving them right it's like an active I like sending them to people like I want to show you this and then it like shows up and you can like look at them stories is like completely inverts that Dynamic like I don't want to check it I don't like checking things I like being shown things I think they didn't want to do send all like that's a part of your story right and that like great you solved this problem you want to show a bunch of people a bunch of things but now I've got to like subscribe to a story now I've got to like look at like it's the same with in like it's like oh man I'm walking the train I got to check these five apps for stuff right taking away the messaging component of it like this passive you got to check it piece I think that's like that's going to ruin some of Snapchat for people I think they they spent the last year working on this and they went through many many iterations uh one of which iterations that I'm allowed to mention is uh the stories the pieces of the stories wouldn't last for 24 hours and uh so they went through a lot of to make that this didn't disrupt the primary use case which is people messaging so I don't know if you've been using it yet but really all it is is just a circle next to a friend's name on your friends list screen which before you really wouldn't ever look at your friends list and so now what they have is they have a little badge at the bottom of your screen that says if any of your friends have updated their stories and then you can tap it or you can ignore it and so that's a question that I have is are people going to actively do this because it's not completely guaranteed that anyone's going to look at it right not to also like even like the part of making this like so it expires every 24 hours so if you're not making at least one probably more than one snap every 24 hours it's a waste of time like people's like these storage are just going to die who's going to use it so you say primary use case of course messaging is going to be primary use case because otherwise you need like to vote right because the feature I want is like I want to make a list it's called Verge and just like push the button and send to a bunch of verge people and they I get they solved a different problem and they now doing this more social networking thing but that primary like there's like eight people that I Snapchat all the time right I just don't want I don't want to sit there clicking because that UI is really bad and the the circle where you select the name is right next to like the alphabet yes like all of that is bad and like they like it's funny they chose not to clean that up uh instead of focus on this other and I think that's like they're they're obviously making the bet I think if they gave people both features people maybe wouldn't use stories and they're kind of like they to push people towards stories but it's like Ross said I don't want to check more stuff and I don't want to have to Snapchat every 24 hours to guarantee that people see see things so in terms of utility in terms of utility the utility of the Facebook news feed is at its basist elements to keep up with what your friends have been up to right so I think the core utility of stories is the exact same thing you want to keep up with what your friends are up to without having wait for them to buzz your phone because maybe they don't want to maybe they don't want to buzz you with the bowl of cereal that they're eating that's really yeah okay now we're into a philosophical question about why should we be buzzed about a bow of cereal in the first place right yeah so what I'm saying is I think that there are a lot of people uh especially younger people who don't really use the Facebook news feed because they don't want their stuff to be on there forever and they're also friends with parents and teachers on there and so what they can do is do some snaps throughout the day and go to their it's not a feed but it shows which ones have been updated most recently and uh you tap on your friends and you see what they've been up to yeah yes you're right it's not it's not like you're just scrolling through it it's like you have to actively seek it out which I agree is a is a barrier in a way but the utility is the same so I think that that there are some people who are going to really like it we'll see mhm I still just lists man that's all I want right the be a to send to a group yeah just give me a list all right they know people want that they how can they not it's the only thing people want it's like the one feature request people have about Snapchat like I've stopped sending things to people whose last name's like ended an r or S like I just can't make it that far down anymore I'm sorry all right let's talk about these devices is that what we have next yes we have this and then we're going to tell Ellis goodbye okay so this is the Note 10.1 and I don't know if you people have noticed these two have noticed I'm wearing a Galaxy sorry this is happening is the resta Galaxy Gear this is the charger I don't want to talk about that I want to talk about fine so here's a Note 10.1 I will say the a it still makes the dumbest sounds in the world and whoever at Samsung is responsible for these sounds after I wrote my scathing review of the first Note 10.1 uh where I discovered it you have to listen to them you have to get through at least like five boops just to turn off the bloops which is just like that's like a a Kafkaesque nightmare of like it's like a dungeon uh I mean you can't do anything on this tablet without it blooping at you second of all it's really fast right it has like the newest Snapdragon processor it has actually I would say a really gorgeous screen uh and they've they've cleaned up this industrial Design This stupid Fake Plastic leather on the back is shockingly okay I there's fake stitches there um it's so I think it looks terrible on the Note in Black uh bizarrely in White on this tablet it looks okay one of the first 169 I mean it still looks dumb in portrait but this is one of the first ever 169 tablets I've had where it doesn't feel stupid in my hands so congratulations Samsung after that everything is still a disaster like they've they've improved what was one of the worst industrial designs ever uh and made it a slightly better industrial design and then it's like this thing is slow it still boops at you um if you it's it's money can solve the boops just turn it off just somebody at the factory like go to the computer that like preloads the software and turn it off down turn the volume down just turn it off uh it's still kind of slow like this is stuttery this menu is stuttery and then this feature this like fake Flipboard that shows up if you swipe if you do any sort of motion down here where you like do this a little bit it like brings you up the whole screen the whole screen goes away and brings up a fake Flipboard which is like why I don't want that either like why should that be a primary Gest control center with that too oh control center is insane you're swiping up and and something takes over your screen um yeah just so close guys and it just just but that's what Flipboard is for I can't even turn off that yeah cool cool task so there's not much I'll say about that one Let's uh let's talk about your wrist Weare so here's the gear let me take this off yeah uh so here's the gear man um and let me just show that I don't know if we highlighted this enough in our review uh so here's the charging open which I don't there we go so here's how you charge the gear you got this big plastic thing which by the way also fake leather uh which is amazing kidding let me see this it's fake leather uh and then you put this in here and you close it to make a bigger watch and you plug that charge and then there's a there's a mini USB here and I get it like you know you I could pict itan that's how you charge it you got you got guys on the couch they're like I'm sitting for a couple minutes may as well charge up it's the IV drip for yourist yeah they got their arm incredbly stupid on your wrist I mean you're not supposed to wear with the charging cradle uh it's just a hilarious trick so wait why is there faux leather if you're not supposed to actually wear I have no idea why why Samsung decided that I mean we gave them so much crap about their previous plastic that they've gone with like this textured faux leather plastic uh to a piece this is a mystery to appease the vegans I guess uh I don't know I it's better than what they had before uh I'll tell you that that's good it sort of works on this tablet I think it looks terrible on the note so does Samsung think that this is an attractive device no no you take a cover off I know well even still I'm saying even still uh so I you know people have we've had a lot of conversations about how this is ugly I won't say it's beautiful but it's certainly not terrible right I mean there's like you can go to a department store and buy any number of fossil watches that look like this it's true people people are buying watches that look like this it's not I wear big watches so it's not that huge it doesn't look that huge on my wrist um to me because every watch I wear is huge but the particular thing I always worry about is like if you want to like take an ugly watch and make it pretty you can usually get a new band of some sort and this has the camera integrated so like you're stuck with whatever you've got and you're stuck with picture yeah this is useful uh so vladw call um the camera's the best feature right the camera Vlad hands down to the camera's the best feature uh which is true although the number of like it doesn't like I'm trying to use it right now and it's like the number the amount of work I have to do to like use it is still a little bit too high it's still really obvious like they should have put a button right here where you just like it also way makes more work for you because it doesn't tell you what the notification is it just buzzes you right right so the notification stuff is like bad it doesn't like show you the information it just opens it on your phone uh the Bluetooth connection dies constantly which is a huge problem I think that's more of an Android problem than a Samsung problem because the the bluetooth smart stuff just hit Android and 4.3 and so it's not even out to all the Fone so it's like it's a brand new on these phones so I'm sure that there's a refinement that needs to be done and then this UI is just it's it's laggy and weird it's it's funny because the camera gesture is a down swipe here right um but anywhere else it's a back gesture like it it's just inconsistent um it's like this could have been good if this if they had figured out the software on this in a better way right uh and didn't tie it so deeply to a Note 3 like and I know that they'll get there but if they just made it more like opened it up so I think that it's just crazy that a Kickstarter project by understanding what people want in a smartwatch yeah made a better product I mean correct me if I'm wrong people want a couple things maybe they want a camera maybe they want to do a voice memo quickly but I feel like the most people most people I talk to who are interested the idea of a smartwatch are interested in glanceable notifications exactly it's not just that I have a message it's that I can read the message the one thing you want to do right right no it's absolutely the one thing that you have to do right right it's you get an email or a text and it shows up here and you can take some action on it and then it's done maybe archive maybe dictator response or like or even like I think Pebble has canned responses now right so like that's great like there's stuff you want to do being able to take a phone call like this this is not high on my list it just isn't like I I don't wait wait is like this or this cuz you have to hear it too don't you wait you yeah there's a microphone like hello like it's whatever like is want to feel like a 1950 it's cool and I think Samsung is if Samsung is good in anything it's like executing on on insane ideas and maybe that execution is like completely bad but at least someone at Samsung's like what if it was also a phone and they're like let's build it and they're good at building that um but I don't know if there if Samsung will ever figure out what the product is for it's the same with the note right I mean this has a pen and the Galaxy Note 3 has a pen um and it's great and I never I see tons of notes and never see anybody using those pens and there's no real reason for this tablet to have a pen it's just there I think people are after the bigger screen right yeah I think that's why people buy notes right they after the bigger screen and you know if you talk to um people in marketing at the carriers talk to people at Samsung they'll tell you like the reason we made the Galaxy Mega is because people love the bigger screen they don't want to pay the flagship price for the note so he just made a cheaper one with a big screen right and that the Mega screen sucks like it's a bad screen but it's huge so people buy it because there's a product at that price point and that screen size with the note it's like yes I understand people are going to yell at me about people in Asian countries who use the pen to do language input but we don't do that here the note's still popular in America and I guarantee you it's because the screen is big and they haven't solved that problem with the pen on the Note 10.1 it's just like here's some apps that use it and all of them are insanely bad and with the gear it's like we made a watch we put all these features in the watch but we didn't figure out the one that made you want to buy it and we didn't like build the product around it so for those who don't know how does how do the notifications work on so it's just like you have a Gmail and then you push the button it opens Gmail on your phone it so it doesn't tell you what you get you see the Gmail logo yeah no you're like oh cool I got I have a Gmail yeah it's just telling you I have it I got a Gmail you're pocket vibr that's why it vibrated I guess and the apps on here are bad like the you know they've announced like 70 apps or something and they like some of them don't work uh like you can see the B now they're showing the Gmail experience which is that's it there there it is it's like you got a Gmail and a lot of the apps don't work and H if you watch the commercial like the same thing happens but they make it seem like really cool like like her wrist like go like the person's wearing it her wrist goes bloop and she goes oh I should pull out my phone it's like that's not what I want ultimately they didn't do of the three things they had to do they didn't build a smartwatch yeah oh unapologetically uh no that was flat that wasn't Johnny I they're very close you're wearing it backwards by the way yeah thank you um no look I think having a camera in your watch is cool it's a cool idea Vlad said it's the best feature of the thing and I agree with him um but it's 299 a childhood from a spy shop and I do not know why you'd want to dial your phone like come on like that is no oh God no no don't whatever just use S Voice broke it it's just as good as any other so uh kind of like what we were talking about earlier how uh Apple likes to have very specific use cases in mind with their with their with their gadgets with their products what do you think they would choose for the for the maybe three things I think one is definitely Fitness yeah we know that what like what else what else is I mean so actually I think I don't think it's Fitness I think Fitness like I have a Fitbit I know people you think they're in love with too much no no I think that they I think that's a great like fourth feature I think Apple's like first three features are going to be like a notific like they have to do notifications they have to figure that out perfectly right where it's like when you get you know and they'll do some crazy thing like you've got that VIP list in your mail they'll integrate it with your messages so like they'll know who's important enough to bother you with um I mean I think they're going to make it more of an extension of the phone so I think first one is just nailing notifications I think the second one is like telling you where you are and using some of that M7 stuff that they're doing like Q right like just I mean just that like looking at your phone or looking at your watch and like knowing where you are like physically in the world would actually be cool and that's something the pebble doesn't do that's something that doesn't do so being able to use some of that stuff as an extension is cool um I don't know and the third one like I think Fitness is just not there enough like I I think it appeals to such a small number of people like a really active number un unless thing is like really clever like oh we can fill your pulse because it's against your wrist maybe something like that but I think also like Siri is going to be a big factor in that too because it's like we don't you don't have to pull your phone you can just talk to your wrist I think that's a good point like but thank you ha well no and you know some of this Q stuff where they're like you look at it it tells you what you need to be doing right I think that like all of that stuff having it be like an intelligent notification like you know we we give them all kinds of crap for not doing glanceable information on the h screen if they could like do it here that'd be awesome uh and they just they they just looking at the gear and looking at the pebble I think the pebble appeals to huge nerds because you can do crazy awesome nerd stuff with it I think the gear is a mess um it's a b it's basically a mess it's like it's it's it is the ultimate in like first generation Samsung products right it's like it doesn't make any sense they haven't figur out what it's for like they farted it out in the world and like it's going to get better somehow right cuz they're going to take like everyone says about this thing and then they're going to build second generation that will be probably decent all right so let's move on speaking of generations yes this is the Kindle Fire I'm holding Kindle Fire HDX this is a 7in one this is the third generation Kindle Fire and they've actually it's gotten really good but only in like a really specific way so David's review is it boils down to you have to pick whether you want to live in Google's ecosystem and then like the wider sort of space around it or if you want to live in like an ultra optimized Amazon content consumption ecosystem so I will say this as a man who is really really picky about screens um every device we have on the desk with us today has like a tremendous display so the Note 10.1 has a really great screen the gear has a great screen uh but this one is the best this is the HDX screen uh it just looks really good it you know it's like M they like display elimination has gotten really good this so I think this looks better than like the iPhone 5 screen he says if the icons are floating above it's like you're touching a piece of paper uh but this operating system man I don't know I don't know about this have you played with this I haven't played with it yet it's not like a hey first of all it's called mojito like don't call your operating system fire OS 3.0 mojito like everything about that sounds like a like a nightclub in Bermuda yes which maybe is good um I'm I'm still playing with this like the case can we can we talk about this for a second it's just a case you could buy that case for the iPad for like oh I know but like this is the official case origami case yeah I mean like what remember when they get that for the cas it's it's a it's I will say the the industrial design with the buttons in the back is like not good but the thing is cheap um right it can buy you stuff from Amazon really well it can down download movies from Prime okay we got to try they can buy you stuff bu really well like if you want if you want to push the button and like uh have it buy stuff from Amazon there's no better experience and I'll tell you that like I try to use the Kindle app on my iPad I'm like I want to buy a new book and it's super annoying um and that's Apple's problem and not Amazon's problem is uh can I see that we got we got to try Mayday sure yeah all right so here's the big killer feature what are we going to make Mayday do for us um does this have the Verge app did we put the Verge app in the Amazon store uh I just did our own God I have no idea what I'm doing okay I'm just it how do you how you so here you ready yeah so you just push this button it says Mayday okay and you say do I need to oh your device must have at least 20% battery power reconnected to a power adapter to use Amazon assist oh but we wanted to call Mayday because our battery's running out we don't know where the charger cable is oh that's terrible well if somebody Evan can uh get us a mini USB we can try Mayday in here so look I think this is great like if you want Amazon things I just bought a new paper white um because I my old I went through three of the pr generation paper whites I just kept leaving them in hotel rooms uh so I just bought the newest one and that is a fantastic product right except for the fact they changed Amazon's doing this thing where they got this big glossy Amazon logo on the back you see this there it is catch the Light what is happening there is people want that soft touch they want the soft touch this is bad see this I don't like that um that's I mean that's the big change in the paper white otherwise it's like the screen is better it's higher contrast uh we'll play with Mayday when this thing comes back Ross what's our next uh we want talk that bomber the Microsoft noia story that you wrote Oh my God it's good poor Balmer if nothing else I do want to like watch that video a little bit because it's awesome we should um I can tell the story that a little bit so um bomber hopefully we get a power after we can play with Mayday but we will kle here's what I here's what I don't understand and and David brought this in his review uh of the fire which was when the T-Mobile G1 came out Amazon was the media partner the Amazon MP3 store is there and that would have been fantastic right if Google had just said like Google Play MP3 store powered by Amazon in the back end like we don't need to build this competing product like we're going to partner with these guys you would have I think we would have seen like an amazing set of products if Google and Amazon could just figure out how to do Play Store on Amazon or have the Google Play apps um instead of having to build these weird competitive like the mail app here is like f g mail I don't need that in my life do you think of it as a competitive thing I look at like the way it functions to me it's like it's a souped up kindle it's not like a Nexus 7 competitor it is an Nexus 7 competitor the reason we gave the Nexus 7 high score oh we should talk about the ecosystem store the reason we gave the Nexus 7 high score is because it's like cheap it's 229 and it's great at like consuming media it's not great at like working and nobody in the world is out there buying as much as Samsung wants you to do it nobody is out there buying Android tablets to work on they're buying iPads to be productive on and like there's a whole segment of the tablets are chasing that right and again the Note 10.1 is like out there to be a competitor to the iPad in terms of productivity but these smaller ones are all about content consumption and so that's this has to compete with an exus 7 for that because that's what it's good at and that's what 229 buys you with an X7 okay fair and it this doesn't it's never going to do that for you no um and while we're doing just real quick uh Twitter just said just announced R S1 will be filed publicly with the secc momentarily this tweet does not constitute an offer of any Securities for course oh let's all buy some but this isn't charging I don't know what this is then I don't we'll figure it out it's all over yeah it says all right we'll just let this sit here in charge okay um so we talk about ecosystem score so we gave HDX we gave it an eight for ecosystem people obviously freak out because we can't give anything in ecosystem score without people freaking out and the reason is it's true like it doesn't matter what the number is people freak out uh and the reason it's higher than like Windows RT is because this has Amazon's e like it is a window in to Amazon and so if you want a window in Amazon it's great and it's great at that it's awesome at that and for a lot of people that's enough right right I mean Prime subscribers the whole the whole shebang is in there right videos books and it's offline video too like that's the perfect companion for like if you're a Prime member and you want to take something on on airplane like download it to go that is your device that's the point right is that you already know how to use Amazon they're marketing this like crazy on amazon.com right there these people I mean they probably haven't even heard of an exus 7 some of these people this is this is the perfect Amazon consumption device and and I Amazon's ecosystem like you know this the the state of Amazon's Marketplace and I think this is really interesting and you should probably dig into this hint uh just just start but Amazon runs around saying that they sell like 20% of the tablets in the tablet Market that they're you know it's it's apple and then Amazon and then like this C of of of Android stuff but they're not getting any apps right like people don't update their apps to the Amazon Marketplace we don't see a lot of like there's no exclusives for the Amazon Marketplace M the things that you would expect from the second place player in the tablet Market aren't happening for Amazon's app store and I don't I it's like it it undoes their claim of having such a big chunk of the market right because you don't see this this huge rush of activity and I think that there's probably an explanation in that a Android tablet apps are basically gigantic Android phone apps M so you want to go after the Android phone market which is bigger by Leaps and Bounds but at the same time it's like why why isn't it happening here in the way that it should because here are the tablets like you want to go after a tablet Market that is in the iPad like right if you believe Amazon like here it is I think you're looking at a lot of productivity experiences yeah that are catered For let's say the iPad that offer distinct advantages to being on the iPad productivity experiences and and there there isn't as much of that that feels as premium that feels like like I want to spend my my money and work on my business stuff on this thing right and the opportunity I don't think is there yet and that and that's always the concern cuz like the rumors which have been especially uh loud in the last couple days is the Amazon phone um and at no point do I look at this and what do you done and think Amazon knows how to make a device that does everything my phone needs to be a ubiquitous device tablet can be fun but it's going to track your head with with lasers and yeah we want to talk about the is it the patent the fan is that where they got that from yeah I mean there's I think a tech horun story too based on a Hacker News Post I mean in terms of sourcing this is not it's wonderful uh uh yeah four cameras in the front of a phone that track your head and like show you like 3D effects like iOS 7 which oh God can can I can I just can I make one more iOS 7 uh can I just point out one more iOS 7 yeah do so there's layers right so I 7 has let me unlock my phone um not on camera that was the wrong code everyone thumb print oh you don't I don't I don't have it I'm waiting I don't know what I'm waiting for but I'm waiting so there's like layers and like so everything moves and then oh I can tell you about layers and then if you like and you bring up the volume so this volume overlay like is also moving everything's moving and then as soon as you're bring control center like this doesn't move right like this layer on top of everything it doesn't move it it's just it's like a piece of paper that is like glued on the top of your four front facing cameras oh good I turned off Bluetooth by accident trying to get rid of control CER that never happens to anyone sorry so mad bro I'm I just I I haven't updated my iPad Mini yet and I was using iOS 6 last night I was like H uh you know that four-finger swipe to bring up the application switch yeah I got good at that well you get good at it but it makes sense because you bring up it's a layer right so you bring it up and you see the icons at the bottom and you like swipe it down it's very one to one and now you do it on the iPad and it's like all this crazy happens it's like now you see all these like live previews of things it's like this gesture just became totally abstracted it felt very physical before like you were pushing up the screen and in a lot of ways that's what iOS 7 is supposed to be about right is physical functional skorm trying to make it that this feels like you're opening and closing a drawer it feels like you're bouncing this on the ground right and uh that that's the funniest thing to me is like people haven't gone Bonkers about about the the functional skorm yet but that's the next stage of iOS 7 I think I not they're just not finished with yet it's it's just very clear to me that they pushed it out really fast to to meet their especially on iPad especially on iPad I mean it's not ready in the iPad there's just my iPad and I don't get it like the iPad 3 is it's older it's capable it's still pretty fast like that when they put out the iPad 4 like they really just changed the chipset to like support lightning but it's like very much the same uh it's just faster and it's just why is it so crappy on this iPad 3 like it is so bad on the iPad I'm I'm going to buy a new iPad this what the problems huh it's just everything is stuttery like you like and there's I don't think there's enough RAM yeah right you know like it's F it's it's fine it's not great it's fine I just regret having upgraded my my tablet and I've never felt that way with I turned off motion on my new 5S which is plenty capable of of doing motion yeah I turned M7 Co processor what the M7 bro processor oh yeah I thought you said bro processor process I just said bro processor and that's from now on that's what I will call it it's a bro processor um okay let's talk about Microsoft let's talk about this so I firmly believe that Microsoft is the most fascinating story in Tech right now um because it's amazing how much change is happening at the top of that company uh balmer's out it very much appears now that it was not his timing might have been like to the decision to leave may have been his choice the timing was definitely not his choice right there are the stories now with with Microsoft every leak about what's happening at the top with CEO search with um with maybe pushing Bill Gates out of the picture now that is the wild all of that is with Alan malali who's a CEO of Ford uh malali uh who's a CO of Ford maybe being the top candidate for the CEO of Microsoft they're all coming from investors right and the line over and over again it's three of the top 20 investors which makes no sense which and they all have different rumors too so it's like I don't know I me if you just unpack if if you just unpack what three of the top 20 means right it means like 17 18 and 19 right like it doesn't mean the top three cuz then you would say three of the top five right it doesn't it doesn't mean one six and 10 cuz then you would say three of the top 10 it's three of the top 20 right so it's like some it's like maybe it's one in 20 right like it's it's it's just a huge range of people with a different could two people are like we should have Bill Gates go and everyone's like no but that's the guy who went to the press and just said we want this story out there maybe but the with the with the the Alan malali stuff it's very much they went from investors are pushing for this to Microsoft sport is seriously considering it and then his story went from categorically denying that's the the phrase Caris Wisher used I emailed Alam and L and she wrote a story about it like four or five days ago I emailed him he categorically denied it and said I'm wearing my red Ford vest right now I'm not going anymore we could make a JJ Abrams comparison here can't we you can make any number of like college football coaches comparisons too I mean this is the cycle and then through you know yesterday Royers and Bloomberg are reporting that the board is considering it and he's warmed the idea because he's friends with Balmer right and this big Microsoft reorganization he was a like an adviser to Balmer on how to do it uh which is great and you know I bet he would be a good CEO but what's interesting about it is all of this pressure to change Microsoft is not coming from the top of Microsoft as you would otherwise devices and uh devices and services devices and services and I think that might be bomber's like bomber like clearly executed that big reorganization and make it a functional organization he clearly decided to buy Nokia smartphone division um these are his decisions with his board right nobody else can make those decisions but the decisions to radically change the leadership of the company in the middle of this transition not even the middle the beginning of this transition right uh that is not coming from Steve hmer and the board of directors of Microsoft that's obviously coming from somewhere else because that's where all of the stories about it are coming and the stories are coming true and I just don't I don't know what kind of company Microsoft wants to be um and if you look at this good buy video so we should run it so right the bomber one the bomber goodby so uh Tom wrote a great story you know um Tom's obviously very plugged in so Microsoft has an annual meeting every year they have an all hands which is crazy because I'm think Stadium I'm thinking about our All Hands where we had the 70 people who run the Verge show up in New York and we had like some pizza and it was it was just like an incredible crazy thing to try to coordinate right like it took uh it took our people it took Michael and Leah who do that sort of stuff for us it took them weeks and weeks to coordinate that for us uh and it cost a lot of money and Microsoft is like all right all 100,000 people come to this stadium and like tune into these live streams and like we're going to have a rock concert where we talk about our products uh and so that's incredible with like a platform in the middle platform in the middle and bomber's going to play music uh and so uh Tom reported on it and like we heard about it we're like man we got to get this video so we scram sced and scrambled and scrambled and uh we got a video and just of the end which we should just run it uh this is Steve Balmer his last all hands meeting right with his company because he run again they have it every year he didn't throw himself like a goodbye party um this is him saying goodbye to all of his employees at the mic really all hands Balmer way and there's no there's no right just let's run the video I'm just going to enjoy I just want to enjoy this for a minute soak it in all of you soak it in you work the greatest company in the world soak it in and I want to say thank you I want to say thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you this isn't about any one person person it's about the company it's about a company that's important that's forward thinking that's Innovative that's ethical that hires great people and leads lets them lead great lives that helps people around the world realize their full potential this my whole professional world Microsoft's like a fourth child to me children do leave the house in this case I guess I'm leaving the house my last song is one I've always wanted to use but it was always deemed inappropriate it's a great song not that kind of inappropriate and I wanted to pick a song that was exactly perfect a song that let me say thank you a song that looked back retrospectively and a song that celebrated the future it's from one of my favorite movies it's one of my favorite songs and I think it has all that in it it's a song that comes at the very end of a movie where one of the actors gets up on stage and talks about kind of how he likes to do things well I want to end with this song respectful a song that talks about what you've meant to me and what you've done for for me you've made this the time of my my life all right uh I just want to go through my emotions while watching that video first of all is Adrian by the way Adrian's here yeah welcome Adrian hi thank you Ellis Ellis has been thrown away we've discarded Ellis and Adrian has taken his place uh first of all the idea of Steve Almer watching Dirty Dancing if I could pay money to watch Dirty Dancing with Steve Balmer I would do it that is in without any hesitation and confession I saw dirty dance for the first time like two months ago what at a bar what is wrong with you I don't know it was watch Steve balber there no it'sot Guinness though but he might have been I was drunk he might have been uh so anyway back change it back so just there's no one like Steve Walmer let me just put that out there I've never we've been you know we've been covering the industry for a long time there's I've never encountered any human being like Steve armmer doing what he does for this company and it's crazy to me that he was just like what seems like he was just pushed away like pushed the side and he's leaving like this is very final to me this is like the first I've watched it now so many times that I'm just cold and jaded and like I'm noticing things about it that like like I'm like look at that guy he's wearing like a white shirt um but the first time I watched it I was like choked up I was like this is crazy like the real the real tear is like he's trying to hold back like it's yeah no he's not holding back Steve bmer doesn't hold back he he put He he holds forward fair enough this is the most energetic human being I think alive yeah I mean he really I mean look at how tough he is and like yeah and then and then he just walks down this hallway I mean this is poignant like it's crazy like he's just alone it's sweet I love that video uh so I you know we make fun of a lot of things it's hard to make fun of that except for Steve bomber watching dirty dance except for Steve bomber watching movie which is a great movie I now know that uh I I mean I just think I cannot imagine what is happening in Microsoft right now I mean like that was goodbye like did he come back to work the next day I mean like I thought he had some time he has he has 12 months year I guess 11 now well he said I'll leave within 12 months so the second they find a new CEO he's gone so that to me is I don't is he in charge of the noia acquisition is he like on the phone with Stephen elop being like what should we do with these manufacturing employees like and that these are the so I wrote a piece yesterday that was all about the massive unanswered questions that Microsoft still faces and like I talked to a bunch of people about it nobody denied that the questions are there they're just like yeah you know we need a new CEO cuz that's who's going to answer these questions and it's I just don't like if you look at what Google did with Motorola right Google bought Motorola a smartphone manufacturer brought it into Google they fired everybody basically they installed entirely new leadership from within Google right and then they started firing people because that's what you do like you don't need like two accounting departments you need one big accounting department with some of the people who know how to run Nokia uh you don't need like two massive it departments you have Microsoft HR it accounting that's stff like right so you know Google fire they fired 30% of the people who work for for Motorola they fired 5200 people like that uh and I just I don't know how Microsoft doesn't start to make those decisions or doesn't at least start to plan to make those decisions in order to close this acquisition and like begin they've only got you know they're going to close it within the next five months I mean we don't know they're not making those decisions they're just not publicly talking about them yeah but if you're but in the midst of all this turmoil like they need to start telling somebody what the plan is for what they're going to do no these these rumors are crazy I even speak like the the it's been a month I mean like this stuff should start leaking out it started leaking out with Motorola right away right instead we're getting leaks of someone wants to kick out Bill Gates from Microsoft yeah and good luck on that one yeah I mean I I don't know I I I think that Microsoft is such a it has potential to be great again if you look at the I think the products are good they're getting better I think the surface to like all that stuff still messy well it's good Hardware it's it's messy I think you know Xbox one I think is good but like they're not they they don't have like a they don't seem settled they don't seem like they can like really execute cleanly because the question in every meeting I take with Microsoft is like who's your boss do you know his name or her name is it somebody is it the guy from Ford right is it Steve Almer because I don't know and I think until they start answering those questions they they got they got problems but that was very touching right and I'm gonna definitely make sure can we end this podcast with time my life is that possible legally I don't care about laws whatever all right adri you have been writing about underground drug trafficking yes the other big shutdown of the week right yeah so we're skipping the first shutdown oh the government shutdown talk about well there was a government shutdown anyway meanwhile on the internet um so yeah there was this was kind of a story that we all expected would come at some time there was this website that was operating for three years doing apparently over a billion dollars worth of sales mostly illegal drugs and uh kind of like uh just blatantly saying like you can't touch us like we are too smart with technology like we have this magic website with this magic technology on it government can't do anything by we we mean the dread pirate Roberts The Dread pirate Roberts was the owner operator of Silk Road at the time that it was brought down uh apparently it was started by somebody else who handed it over in the great tradition of dread pirate Rober of dread pirate Rob God it's a really there's a really great part in the FBI criminal complaint where they like explain where the reference comes from and they're like from the movie Pride oh that's always the best yeah that's always the best when like lawyers have to explain really obvious things yeah like the time they had to explain what a Rick Roll was in court I think it was Chris P moot the founder of forchain had to say like um it's when yeah you should look it up it's really funny um so yeah uh they shut down Silk Road they replaced it with a big FBI seizure notice did everybody else just hear I don't know the people out there also hear the Windows boot up is St that was the shut down is that the shutdown what is happening all right whatever continue go on a Windows PC somewhere has exited this world twice twice continue Adrian uh right so Silk Road is shut down now the FBI put up a big seizure notice that said this SE this hidden site has been seized and um everybody's freaking out about what's happening to their Bitcoins which are were in their accounts on Silk Road and they they U arrested this guy um this 29-year-old guy who lives in San Francisco Ross yeah Ross rri and uh and he looks like a huge douche I'm just gonna every picture I've seen of him he looks like an enormous douche alleged allegedly huge dou allegedly no he's not alleged his douchiness is not a legend I've made the Judgment his Google Plus post and hisas yeah um and his desire to hire hit then who all ended up working you haven't even seen his Deviant Art page I bet no I have not um so anyway come on man it's alleged it's not proven yet we still might find out that dread pirate Roberts was actually a criminal Mass reminded to set up this poor 29-year-old taring it could be Car San Francisco it could I mean it could be anybody so but anyway the uh this guy has been charged with counts of conspiracy for to commit money laundering drug trafficking and uh one other conspiracy computer hacking right but then he also he tried to in New York that was in New York and then today a second indictment comes out in Maryland for uh more drug charges and also apparently he took out a hit on some guy for $880,000 like a a former employee or something a former employee of the sil I was under the impression there were two yeah he tried to order a hit twice and neither time worked first time the hit was actually supposedly carried out by a undercover police officer yeah so uh that didn't work and the employee was uh cooperating with the with the feds at that point it seems likely so um so he pretended to have been that guy's not dead oh I've been killed no they actually took pictures of him like supposedly being tortured and sent them to the dread pirate Roberts who was then like a little bit faint heart about it but he was like I know I've done the right thing like I just wish people would have more Integrity so man I feel so badad for for the real dread pirate Roberts who who Lesley true did at any point did he say as you wish did that happen I actually don't know if he ever pulled pull that out maybe maybe that's he says as he wish he really means I'm pleading not guilty I got to go all right that's terrible so he takes out these I mean I will say that do we have any b-roll from The Princess Bride did anybody think of that we maybe we should have yeah where she pushes him down the mountain oh wow that that was that was the hit very beautiful yeah right so that was the first hit that didn't work the second hit that didn't work uh it sounds like he just got scammed by somebody by some Silk Road user basically this guy contacted him was like Hey I I hacked the Silk Road I have all these people's identities I'm going to reveal them unless you pay me half aill ion and instead of paying him half a million dollars The Dread pirate Roberts turns to this other user and says like can you take him out for me and it now appears that that maybe that well anyway all right so maybe that happen they negotiate no that probably didn't happen they negotiate at first the guy's like I want 150,000 for like a messy hit and like if you want it clean whatever that means I think these people were just making this stuff anyway wasn't the second one a cop two no that no there were no cops involved this time but it might have been that the same person who tried to extort dread pirate Roberts and then the person who said he would take care of it with a hit for $150,000 that might have been the same person makes sense basically the police tried to follow up on it and they tried to find the guy who was associated with this handle who was supposedly dead in some city in Canada right and they couldn't find him so they decided it wasn't worth pursing get Char that one undercover cop hold on undercover cop okay yeah all just punch the table uncover cop catches a guy doing a hit like wants to have a hit um does not arrest him just like let's just see if he does it again no I think they're building their case actually the hit that came first was the hit from that was the cop right the fake hit that was the first one and then dread pirate robers did it again and when he's negotiating with the second guy who was not a cop he's like you know I just had this done for $80,000 like you want to charge me $150 I know what this is supposed to cost yeah that's great that's amazing um so let's talk about how he got caught because I think that is deeply deeply hilarious right so um Everybody assumed that this guy was just a technical Mastermind total hacker like zero cool because when you're the best hacker in the world you pick the nickname d right so everybody assumed he was really Savvy and it's like looking back on it it's not really clear why like there were some things he did like he he structured Silk Roads so so that uh every it was like a Bitcoin tumbler so everybody's bitcoin's virtual currency that approximates cash on the internet as it always right in my stories this is like the Wikipedia entry live so um anyway he added a Bitcoin tumbler where like everybody's Bitcoins like all get messed together so that you can't trace any one individual Bitcoin from a buyer to a seller so he did like little stuff like that and everybody was like oh it's so safe he's so smart he's going to take care of us and uh as it turned out he made a lot of mistakes if this is the guy again it's definitely the guy nobody's gone to jail yet so we don't know but um Bas from what the um complaints that the FBI has released which they say is not even all the details of their investigation based on that stuff uh he made a lot of really stupid mistakes like he used his gmail which is his first name and last name at gmail.com to uh register for an account on the Bitcoin talk Forum where he then later asked for developers to work on the Silk Road yeah um and uh he also connected to the Silk Road servers from a coffee shop in San Francisco okay using a VPN which I guess he thought was safe but Comcast just said okay yeah here's everything here go came here's how we here's how we do it he also ordered a bunch of fake IDs that had his real picture on them which makes sense but um yeah I get that the uh Department of Homeland Security intercepted them at customs and showed up at his house and he explained to them like oh but anybody can do this on the Silk Road um he's promoting have you heard of my website I have business cards please possibly uh this was a couple weeks ago but um he was basically getting increasingly arrogant he was getting increasingly bold and a lot of the law enforcement I talked to in reporting the story said like oh this is super common like either they get greedy or they want the fame so he had given an interview to Forbes uh Andy gber this great reporter at Forbes got this like full access interview I mean it was Anonymous but it was dread pyro Roberts speaking him about his philosopy he put up this right like and he was advertising Silk Road more and more like he put up this this page that uh explain on the regular internet not accessible only through tour like Silk Road is explaining like what Silk Road was and in it he says like the drug war has been won and it was won by dread pirate Roberts so he's just getting like insane yeah and then iane powder Yes actually it was more than two weeks ago sorry I think it was more than a month ago I think it was in August that's ridiculous right um so here's what I think is crazy about this story because I don't know that you can really make an argument that the Silk Road was like a good thing right it was like this very interesting thing well one argument that people make I'm not saying anything about this either way one argument that people make is and the FBI backs this up is that when you sell drugs on Silk Road the drugs are of higher quality and you have fewer people dying from like impurities yeah right and the FBI bought over a hundred purchases on Silk Road and they tested the stuff and they found that it was very high purity of the drug being advertised that's great I mean it's cool now I'm the best drug like cool Heisenberg like that's great for you uh I'm just saying like it's it's the shit's illegal and what's weird about um like selling cocaine is illegal it's just is like you can argue about whether or not it should be but at this current time it is and what's crazy to me about this story and a lot of the reporting I've seen like Chris seoan from like uh the acle is out there being like you know it wasn't technology that brought him down the technology is fine it was sloppy operational security and it's like yeah but he's a drug dealer like he operates a drug exchange like what also brought him down was that the the government of the United States was highly motivated to arrest him like that's what actually did him in was like the coordinate efforts of the authorities like it's not that he could he maybe he could have stayed hidden forever but people are people and they like screw up and they tend to always screw up and so like this idea that technology would have saved him but for his arrogance or but for like his mistakes yeah maybe that's true right but I think I think there's the fears of the so-called dark web it's like we want this this internet to exist outside of the public domain and we want to be able to use it with some degree of anonymity arrogance not withstanding right and what does it say about how private is it how secure is it right I mean we and we've talked about on on this show endlessly like the internet is not a separate part of like reality it's just like integrated into our lives like you know the government shut down in the Obama like ACA like went into effect on the same day and it's crazy to me that like we have built like these Healthcare exchanges that only exist online as far as I can tell there's not like an office you can go to and like fill out paperwork and get health insurance you can go to where somebody else uses the internet for you but all of this is like online like this whole system happens like on the free public internet not free but you understand what I'm saying like the freely accessible public internet um and at the same time there's like the Silk Road in this other corner of the internet and you wrote a story saying they haven't shut down like tour why does Windows keep shutting down in my ear oh every time we say shut down I hate you I hate I hate these people uh but so they haven't closed room they haven't put to sleep I'm trying to think of other obscure Windows noises they haven't restarted Windows uh they hav the dark web still exists and I think it it's still going to be looked at by the authorities and I think yeah well but the power of it was that I think they thought that nobody could see what they were doing right like a guy at the FBI wasn't like let me sign in a tour like everybody else can do right and like begin these the series of transactions right so um yeah I mean now that Silk Road has been shut down there are all these other sites just like it that are now getting all of their users there's one called Black Market reloaded okay there's one called Marketplace there's one called Deep Bay is there one that's called like just by drugs is there one called like I had an original thought.com like not upon marketplace.org i't found that one yet disappointing that sounds like a business opportunity so are people like flocking to these people are the Silk Road forums are still up okay and most of what people are talking about is where am I going to buy drugs now yeah right and so some vendors have set up their own sites just for themselves or they're just advertis just advertising their email M and other people are saying let's all go let's all vote and say which one will be the because it'll be better for everybody if set to avoid the government I'll be the leader of this government of the Shadow government um that's amazing I mean it's look right there's an obvious Marketplace for this stuff and like if they are selling this stuff at a higher Purity and they're policing like you can make the drugs shouldn't be regulated an legal argument right but you I I just that has to be separate from the so we should let these illegal people like or this illegal Marketplace Thrive until we figure out how to legitimize it CU even if you do legitimize like the regular drug trade like I don't think the Silk Road is like come on in fizer sell some drugs here like I I just don't that's not the the kind of community is and if it's kind of community where people are where the The Dread pirate Roberts feels comfortable ordering hits on people like they have a a bigger existential problem than like whether or not drug laws the United States exist I mean that's also like different sh D priate Robert from Silk Road douche with a good idea I mean so yeah he's the dark he's the Dark Side of Zuckerberg yes the dark Zuck dark Zuck nope I'm stopping no um is there anything else we should know about this Adrian I feel like you're you're deep in the game and you don't want to say anything a long time like there's everything says fading the fifth right here yeah Adrian like definitely does not want like a TAA wearing hippie to like take a hit out on her which I promise you won't happen no I can't tell you how I can make that promise but on the dark side of the internet anything is possible no that won't happen I mean this is an incredibly big story what's what's shocking to me is how much interest we've seen in it how many people are like you know it's like I have I've entered the world of tour and then been like well this is boring does it have Netflix and then I leave uh it's the Dark Side of Netflix the you do not want to see I just you know it's and maybe this is this speaks like the broader sort of like this is why privacy is an issue that can't be solved right now because I I I'm still using all these Services I know the NSA is spying on right I'm just using them because they're better and more convenient and to not use them and to enter this other world is like annoying and like slow tour is particularly slow it's very slow um and like the I think like the lava bit case is happening at the same time this like secure email provider where it actually did work pretty well and was pretty fast but like they had to shut it down because the government was like give us all your encryption keys and the guys's like No And like they're having this fight over it and that story where he he turned over his encryption Keys we printed them out on like four sheets in 11o type and they're like this isn't useful and he was like I know uh like that's incredible to me and you see all the stuff happening it's like people wanting to carve out these private spaces on the internet because they don't want people to look at what they're doing and it's like well are we going to let them do that because people when you let them carve out private spaces tend to deal drugs in them right and that's like not been traditionally like a great policy goal for the United States government that's true but actually in the FBI documents they give a shout out to both the Silk Road and or Not Silk Road sorry they give a shout out to both tour and Bitcoin yeah and say uh you know tour which has legitimate uses which include protect they didn't say this part but uh which include protecting journalists which include protecting activists um one guy I talked to who uh is a security researcher now and used to work for Scotland Yard was like I know people whose lives have been saved by this technology right right so I think that the and the government uses it themselves in law enforcement MH and so I think that uh that tour like most people recognize that there's a legitimate use for tour except for people who are just entering the story now right and like like I think a lot of the interest is like people who just completely miss the boat on Silk Road and are like wait there's a place where you can buy drugs and wait it's gone yeah so um yeah I think T is going to T is going to stick around and I don't think that this story is damaging T mhm well no I mean it's the same with it's funny because we were talking about Snapchat with Alice it's the same thing with Snapchat right it's like you know why Snapchat's popular because it's a place where teenagers can't like talk where they're teachers can't find them right where like the authorities in like a teenager's life can't like go interact with them and like check on their status right it's it's essentially like a private space for them to send each other pictures of genitals which is great for them and then he grow and you're like man I need to use tour because people stopped sending me pictures of their genitals because I'm older now and that is no longer part of my life I should buy drugs to like break myself fill the void of ephemeral genitals it's very poetic drugs make up for the lack of genital excuse me I have to go I really have to go and buy some drugs now because my life is over uh no I I just think it's funny that as the internet in general has become less about like I think the early internet was all about like finding Niche community right like I'm a furry like I'm going to go on like furry talk.com and that's a forum and it's safe and now it's about linking this identity that you have and like ad tracking following you everywhere and the response has been for people to burrow into more private places and whether it's something is like seemingly silly as Snapchat or something as seemingly dark as the Silk Road like you're seeing these communities find more and more private spots in the internet just as you would if in real life if you're like man I love heroin I can't deal heroin like out in the open no it's it's a it's a level of oh my God there's actually a furry talk for him how did you guys find that so fast yeah John just had it queued up he's like bookmarks let's let's go by the way that came up because as I was as I was headed to the birge cast I definitely rode the train with a man in a full Daffy do costume and I was like why didn't you Snapchat it cuz cuz I could Snapchat keep that forever yeah I couldn't like it's now how do you how do you not react to that like he's wearing costume I'm sure he's used to it I mean it was just you think he's going to two Snapchats I didn't get on the train one was like just being stunned by being near like a Daffy Duck just like just hanging what the is going on and the second was an Australian man like a like a Backpacker like crocodile dund he took a swig of beer on the on the track the nqr he's wearing the Caesar backpack and he looked around and just booted all over the tracks like endlessly booting on the tracks oh my God and then he dumped out the beer I was like oh that beer must have sucked oh God adventurous and I didn't Snapchat either of the these things I didn't really know cuz I didn't want to be like this guy like and then like drawing like what WTF I mean look if the guy in D costume I hope yeah and there's no group sending and I didn't update so I couldn't put in my story don't snap that save it you want to know that you definitely do not want to picture a movie of an Australian backpack or repeatedly booting and then just casually dumping out the beer that was the best part like he was like oh this sounds like it might have been too long for Snapchat might have been Instagram be good story yeah Snapchat story um is there anything else you need to talk about I'm sorry that I derailed your very serious conversation about do we want to talk about the other shut down at this point I do not because I know what will happen to my ear constantly you need a code for that no code yeah giraffe let's talk about the other giraffe about the Govern giraffe well there's nothing to say I mean um I think the big it's annoying I can I keep calling press people and getting voicemails saying they're not working uh we wanted to do a story on curiosity and like cuz the initial report was that they were going to draft curiosity um and yeah yeah Will how do you feel about that uh no the initial report was that curiosity would go into this like low power mode and we wanted that's really interesting right like yeah it's strange that politics Will like shut a machine calm down s just back away uh it's crazy that politics Will like affect a science project on mors right that's crazy so we wanted to write about it and like is it gonna are you going to be able to boot it back up and we called NASA like people were on it and they wouldn't answer the phone because they're not at work does turn out great uh that that report the curiosity is like still active that they didn't do any of these things um it's not tweeting though it's not tweeting uh by the way NASA tweets clearly the best part of the shut suspended now too the Voyager account is suspended oh really gone I don't know I was looking for it today cuz I going like the Voyager 2 the Voyager 2 had the best shutdown tweet of all which was sorted out yourselves sorted out yourselves humans yes by humans uh which was amazing um I I just think that that stuff like you can argue about whether the the crazy faction of the Republican party that actually is behind the shutdown is right or wrong you can argue about whether the policy of obam cares was like right or wrong that's ARG about we shouldn't argue like there's no Reon like what's ins pain is that like our government is actually shut down and then there are these like spiderweb effects into all these other things that we would ordinarily cover um like space like health health like Homeland Security like yeah CDC too right um so it's we're covering it I think you it's this is one of those like Verge things where like I don't know maybe three months ago we would have had a lot of like Angry commenters like why is this on the verge and now we've done it so consistently that everyone's like I'm really glad this is here mhm so so that I hope is a lesson for you because it's been a lesson for me and a lesson for Adrian right I didn't learn anything Ross Ross is very difficult to teach things too it's true um no but I don't know apart from being annoyed by press people I mean have you seen any effect effects of the shutdown not really I have a bunch of friends in Washington who are just drunk uh yeah I think Netflix had a had a stock price uh um go up because of this because more stream that be amazing um no I mean I have friends who work at like defense contractors who are like we're going to work but we are not allowed to do anything right our counterparts aren't here um I have friends who just aren't literally who are just done and they're like counting the days until they can't pay their rent um but all that's like whatever I actually think the um the other side of it which is the ACA going to effect I think it's funny that that a that website like we have a government policy effectively exists only on the internet which I think is crazy uh and B for I think a lot of our readers who happen to be like freelance designers and like freelance developers and like that stuff and like for our community of like freelance journalists in New York that is going to actually I think change the market a little bit right because there won't be this push to like go find a job at a big company I think like some of this Aqua hire stuff like that's actually going to have an effect on whether these small companies can expand because they won't right they won't feel the pressure to like be acquired obviously the money will be there in order to get health insurance for their employees yeah right um but that's like remains to be seen yeah the um and the the roll out of healthcare.gov was so glitchy and buggy and there were some reports that said it was related to the furing of many government employees but it actually wasn't really no was just like server overlo so they were promising it server overload and yeah just design problems yeah and it's funny that the Republicans like managed to blow what would have been a great story for them which is like this doesn't work with the shutdown because now people can just be like well the government shutdown of course doesn't work and like whether or not that's true it doesn't matter um you know what else didn't work that day was Grand that BTO online and I was very disappointed I couldn't get any well so here's what's crazy and I think this again this speaks to just where we've come is like the night of the shutdown the Democrats were on TV being like yeah it's going to come online but it's going to be a lot like iOS 7 you know it's not going to work right away that was Obama said it they all said it and it's like that is crazy like that's your line like that's what you're going with like iOS 7 like that sucks for Apple first of all like that that's your like look the text may be a little illegible at first don't rotate the screen and it's crazy that like that's how you're speaking to like right the grandmas of America I know I'm on Android yeah it's going to be like uh it's like an Android well but yeah if they were like it's going to be like Android 4.3 like oh then I'm never going to get it never going to get this update until Samsung ruins it in some way mad sound effects Healthcare touch whz oh God yeah Samsung's okay I think that's it we've been on for two hours by the way by the way people have asked us for a two hour podcast for so long so I think we just need no they they never ask want us to keep going they all want us to keep going um so Adrian if you want to tell a joke this is your moment yeah I got nothing disappointing all right so that was first cast that's how I'm ending it disappointed that Adrian didn't tell joke uh here so I've been trying to do Mayday this whole time and it's not going to happen is it charged no no it's a tablet so it needs more oh power so it's not charging you're not good enough next time next time we'll do mday next time uh Man David David just bought some weird books on this thing man give David some privacy here um okay so that was The Verge cast uh there are many many ways to get a hold of us uh you can tweet at us which I think is the most direct and efficient way I'm reckless Ross is Ono Rosco Adrian is a Dr jeffre uh no one's been tweeting at me this time it's disappointing really seen they're all in the silk they're all buying drugs they're trying to figure out your Snapchat name uh and Ellis is hamburger Josh is Josh walsky he was here earlier uh it was weird um you can also leave a comment you may remember him as the disembodied voice occasionally accompanied by the disembodied head very zoomed in head at times yeah a lot of a lot of weirdness on the on the on the vergecast today um you can leave a comment in our post um many of you have figured out my email address which is a terrible shame you can continue all us it's I have a story about that but I W tell it now um and that's it I hope that you enjoyed this experience right Adrian how was it cool it was great Adrian we'll be back sometime it looks a lot better in here than the last time I was on the verge cast yeah mhm yeah were you in here the last time I was in here yeah but it was just like it was like a weird table we over no I hate this table this table you hate this table I what am I doing it's it's better than the last table I mean it just it's like I'm I don't know whatever next year we can afford t all right that was it uh I hope that you have a good day um and that you continue driving your car I'm assuming you're driving your car don't watch this in your car right if you're going to do drugs buy them on one of the many alternatively named uh drug fors before they shut down before they shut down okay that was it rock and roll n\n"