 Hey, and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of November 5th, 2012, also known as our birthday Vergecast. I'm Josh Dapolsky. I'm Paul Miller. I'm Neil Epital. Are you watching this on your laptop? I have no idea what it is. It seems like you are. We're about to get a cool echo. Sounds like it. You can see in the year we've been doing the Vergecast, we've really gotten pro. Oh, I see. So I just want to say we're celebrating the one year birthday of the Verge and also the death of my hairstyle. Yes. Am I right? What's going on up here? That's my favorite conga. We got these birthday, what are these called? They're called blowers. We got these blowers, but we found that they don't make noise, but we've been trying to get them to go as slowly as possible. Let's do it a little bit for everybody at home. I had a pretty good one going. I got technique. We're done with this. Oh, I also got a little bit of a conga. I got a little bit of a conga. I got a little bit of a conga. I got a little bit of a conga. I got a little bit of a conga. I got a little bit of a conga. I got a little bit of a conga. I also discovered you can do this with them. I'm hoping to attack a child with this later. Oh, cards. What is this? Paul got us cards. Paul got us cards for our birthday. Oh, by the way, this is the Verge cast where we discuss the week in technology culture. This is the Verge cast where we give each other cards. It's supposed to celebrate our birthdays. What's going on with this hair? I should have put product in it. That's not bad. Somebody get me a hairspray. Give me the soundtrack of the hairspray. Oh, nice. You read it out loud, man. Dear Neil, I thanks for what you said about me leaving the internet being your favorite thing about your one. You know, you can read that two ways. I know. But I just can't read it positive. Can I just point out that Paul was too cheap to get us different cards? I mean, what am I supposed to do? Show him your card. You think he would get us personalized cards? Please keep the rock and roll dream alive for all of us. I will do that. Let me read you mine. Dear Josh, wow, this handwriting. He didn't write that. I know it's pretty bad. Okay. Dear Josh, thanks for bringing me along to start the verge and putting up with all the shit I gave you about the page layout. It's true. Paul actually hated our page layout. I mean, still, now you don't see it. I'll take a nightmare hell ride with you anytime or we could do dinner. You choose love. I think this is signed Palm. Does it say Palm? Love Palm. That's from Palm. This is from John Ruben stuff. This is very nice, Paul. Thank you very much. And I choose a nightmare hell ride and dinner. Oh wow. Nightmare hell ride during dinner. So like dinner to go. Dinner to go to hell. Anyhow, this is very nice. Very sweet. I mean, I'm still disappointed that we couldn't have different cards, but you know, I'll take take what I can get from you. Yeah. That's very nice, Paul. I didn't get you a card. I got you a card because I went to party city with Ross to get all this other stuff. Having party city in such close proximity to our workplace. Party city is the best. And then what? I ended up with a 20 pack of these cards. Oh, you know what we should do is get the fog machine going in here. Yeah. Where's the fog machine, guys? Happy birthday. Is it the office? Oh gosh. Because that's where we need it. That's true. It was foggy the whole time. Yeah. Also, there was a glow in the dark hound. Where is this? That was haunting all of us at the office the whole time. All day. Oh, yeah. Um, so anyhow, this is our, uh, year one remembrance show. Remembrances of remembrance of years. So what happened was our birthday was actually November 1st. November 1st was our birthday. Uh, but we were hurricane doubt, uh, which is very disturbing. We tried to do like a makeshift, uh, verge cast, but it was, uh, terrible. It was very bad. Yeah. Yeah. Remember when you stood at all the time? Yes. Yeah. We used to, we used to do, uh, I mean, when we did the end gadget podcast, we did it remotely. Yeah. We did, we did. This is my next podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Remotely podcast. I was always embarrassing cause like my, my computer was like, there's a ladder behind my computer. I looked like I lived in like a closet. It also, you also have, remember you used to have sounds at your apartment that were like clanging. We had clanging sounds. Yeah. It was, it was like your, your a steam heater. I still live there. You also chose to use it. You guys don't have to see it. You also chose to use a first gen Mac book air to try to podcast. Right. Like, I will actually, that's a good, that's a good start to our, our remembrance because I, you know, very early on when we started planning the verge, which, you know, at that time, well, actually it, I wanted to call it the verge from like day one and we kept trying to find a different name. Yeah. And we ended up coming back to the verge. But, but I remember one of our early planning sessions was in your apartment. Yeah. Yeah. That was exciting. No, we had, we had an entire, I remember this very, very early. I remember this very distinctly. We had an entire, let's find a different name meeting. Yeah. It was like me, Paul, Ross, Josh, cause we're all rebelling. I remember, I remember hearing about this. I just remember it was very dark in Paul's apartment and Paul was like in the corner upside down, riding a bike with the wheels in the air, just like muttering words, like muttering nouns. I mean, it's a proven fact. What do you have a photo? I have a photo that somewhere. It's a proven fact that, uh, that when you want to come up with a name for something, trying to come up with a name for it is the most impossible. Yeah. Yeah. You know? Uh, but, um, but anyhow, it's been, it's been, it's been a year of being launched. I mean, we keep in mind, we were working on the verge. Stop shaking. We were working, stop shaking. We were working on the verge. Just the microphone. I hear sounds, but it doesn't understand. We were working on the verge, uh, long, long before this hair is really bothering me. This is like the worst hair day ever for me. Here, just wear it. It's better. You have a number of. No, no, no, it's good. We were working on some weird things. We were working on the verge obviously long before the verge happened and we had, this is my next. And even before this is my next, I mean, we were, you know, figuring out, you know, there was a period where we were kind of like, well, what are we going to do? And then it was like, this is my next. And it's like, okay, now we have to start building this thing while we're doing this is my next. And it was longer than a year that we were actually, we've actually been like doing a new thing. But it's been a year officially since the launch day of the verge, which seems crazy. I'm still really proud of it since we're talking about names of the, this is my next name because it like, I mean, it was riffing on the thing you would always say on the podcast. Like, this is my next phone. And like the idea of something like that, what we were going to build was the thing that the new thing that we were excited about, you know, we weren't building something on spec for somebody. We, hopefully other people would be excited. Yeah. But we were building something that we really wanted. That we wanted except for the layout, which you didn't want. Yeah. That's the one small piece. Yeah. But yeah, no, I, that name is, I wish in a way we could have held onto the name. I mean, I don't know if I talked about this, but I did, we did bat around the idea of calling it next. Yeah. And I actually emailed people at Apple and I was like, is there any way you'd be willing to let us use that URL next.com? They said no. Needless to say, they did not accept my offer of $0. What are they using it for, man? Hey, you never know. Could revive the brand. They actually said yes, but they only, if you do it capital N lowercase e. Yeah. We had to use the original logo. I was like, you can't do that on the online. Actually you can't, but anyhow, the point is, but we toyed around with lots of different next names, but then the next web existed and it was like, we don't want to be confused with anybody. And, and, and, and we went back to that. We ultimately went back to the verge. We originally was just like, I wanted to call it verge, but verge is owned by a company that the URL verge is owned by a company that's doing nothing with it. That wanted, had ridiculous requests. When we asked them, they were basically like, we're going to need your first born and Paul Miller. Yeah. In addition, and also a million dollars. And we were like, okay, well we'll just be the verge. I mean, it was going to be the verge, but it was going to be verge.com. And now it's just the verge and it's the verge.com. It's fine. Anyhow. So feel free to, feel free to DDoS verge or whatever. Please don't. Not our problem. Yeah. Well, we are, it is the week of the 5th of November. Yeah. So, you know, time to, time to rise up. Yeah. Time to get your Gee Fox mask on and rise up. I think it's Gee Fox. Well, nobody, it's Guy if you live in America. Yeah. Well, it's not a, it's not pronounced. I prefer to pronounce it Guy, fuck ass. I think that's right. You know, you know who doesn't impact my life at all now that I'm not on the internet? Anonymous. They've never done anything to me. They've never sent me a letter. You have any experience with that? They've never done anything to me. They've never been outside of my door. They haven't DDoS your P.O. box? No. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. P.O. And a sleeping female. I'm going to see some watching. I'm going to have to spoof myself. Because you speak too little English. You just don't listen. I'll keep it direct, don't attack my business, just don't motivation. I will wak43 out by Kirk. You're going to be a working bunny. Yeah, but he had something to do. He said- I was pressing full politically. The point is, if you're going to Lessons for laugh, that's what it is. She's a well who knows They are legion, okay So we have some news to talk about we do just a little bit stuff happen All right, and then we have a lot of I have a whole list of you don't want to give a day by day Saga this entire year a list of do you want to do that day two? Day one woke up brush my teeth. Yeah. I mean we were up very late the first day I'll never forget the feeling though. I think I might have even said it to you when we launched it was like Oh, yeah now but it was a really good feeling. It was like now we have to work tomorrow like a regular job It was like it was like up until that point we'd been Just working on making it yeah, and then it was like oh tomorrow like we just have to cover the news Yeah, it was very exciting. We've made a promise The promise of the verge. Yeah, well you mean because we launched this up when you put up the site on the internet You've made a promise that you're gonna keep on doing the thing that the site does yeah, yeah Yes, because otherwise people won't will probably not want it. It's a promise to yourself Yeah, well, no, but promise all sorts of people. Yeah. Yes, that's a route about way of thinking of it But anyhow, go ahead tell me about your news. All right, so there's Big things to discuss today and one just broke literally as we are coming in which is that AT&T has under threat of lawsuit revised its stance you see People have power stance on what on face time? You don't have to get the special plan. I say this. No, did you did I kind of are you asking us? Have you said it cuz I don't know what's going on and then you can and then you can be Let me like correct you Smug before after you give me So here's what happened so AT&T said I was six is out. We're only allowing face time if you upgrade your plans to these mobile ship, right? I remember that then a bunch of public interest groups public knowledge free press said that's illegal because of the net neutrality provisions Right. There's only one that exists for mobile phones Which is the carriers can't block competitive voice and voice and video services like exactly AT&T's counter argument was no no, we won't block apps you download but apps that are bundled We can block as we wish which is insane right the all those groups said we're gonna sue you They threatened to sue they have reached a settlement with AT&T. So they're not gonna sue And AT&T has promised within eight to ten weeks to allow FaceTime They've done as little as possible to allow FaceTime on LTE devices that have tiered data plans Okay, so if you upgraded to an iPhone 5 and you were grandfathered into unlimited still can't get it They're still making you change your plan. I don't understand that there is little as possible Do they really think it's gonna use so much that it's gonna like bring the system to a halt and so over there I don't over eight to ten weeks. They're like slowly So it's gonna take two months there moving the mouse across the screen and then there's like a drop down menu and click The drop down menu they allow don't allow You know, we're gonna need about ten weeks to just get the infrastructure right yeah, because nobody's using video on Skype apps Yeah, like we just need to get a bunch of stuff in order And so if you're an iPhone 4s user, right? You're screwed Even though your phone so if you have an iPhone 4s and AT&T It says 4G in the corner just to taunt you a little bit This is an outrage. AT&T the first sign of the press release as you may know We have always allowed FaceTime to be used on Mobile share plans and over Wi-Fi, right? Thanks AT&T. I'm so glad I can't just tell you. Yeah, I was I was Thinking about this and you know, I don't know if Verizon allows me to use stuff over Wi-Fi or not I'm so happy that AT&T is there the goodness to protect what I can do on Wi-Fi Like, you know, they're letting me use FaceTime over Wi-Fi. There are places you can't use FaceTime on Wi-Fi What was where we're aware of mobile or a cellular carrier will will come into your house They'll put like a Wi-Fi shield around your device that doesn't let just certain things access your Wi-Fi that you're not Doesn't do that. What was really? Thank you to AT&T for just being a super bro Yeah, be an awesome bro to me and to the rest of the consumer during the hurt Thank you during the hurricane when I the power went out and I didn't have cell service But all my friends on Verizon had cell service. Yeah, I could use Wi-Fi AT&T let you Know we know we're having the 40th Street go ahead and use Wi-Fi We know these other networks that work. We know that allow it We know that our greatly inferior network has gone down But right. Hey, we still provide Wi-Fi to you through other people who aren't our business Yeah that where no money changes hands to us and it's not our Wi-Fi at all. Yeah, but you're allowed to use it No problem. Go. I mean, this is how they're set. They've been that you know, this is they've done as little as sorry Can we I would like to point out this how insane it is that they even that they keep can say that Yeah, you always say it you look in my hair. Are you yeah Do I like over there and it's just that little piece which one oh Now you've got a very direct now you've got an antenna You access Wi-Fi through that guy what I got a piece There we go, happy birthday JT oh now you got a string here that's good the string Yeah, I'm not fix the string There you go That's good. That's here. That's your birthday present. That's kind of wing. I need a haircut. That's all Guys, I need a haircut. Um Someone get here. Yes Get a pair of scissors. Okay for my birthday for the birthday of the virgin party weird. So can I do my Michael Rose he rose in there to get scissors. Can I do my see I told you? Yeah, okay. Oh, go ahead Yeah, I'm very so so when this happened we all freaked out it is stupid ATT is Idiots and our idiots. Yes. Yeah, they're idiotic. They're they there's all idiots. You know, this is Anti this is a what you would call it's anti-consumer anti-consumer Consumer hostile. Yeah And the free market is like, uh, people are gonna freak out and complain and they're gonna change So I wait wait, I wasn't a hundred percent right because they didn't change all the way but I feel like I was a percentage Right. I know What I was saying is this happens all the time they make horrible Consumer hostile decisions and then people forget and then the piece you're missing though Is it the reason that they changed because they had one week regulation they were threatened I think what I'm hearing there's like a force I think the over but Paul's got an underlying message What is what I'm hearing from him? Let companies do whatever they want because the market will self-correct when consumers are Do it but I think what what Paul I think Paul's suggestion and maybe I know maybe I'm wrong but I think what you're suggesting is like The people consumers will speak out about things that they're unhappy about and the companies will respond I consumer speaking out I just feel like it's like if you catch it, but like I think Here's how the market it's slowly gotten better and I I don't know it's getting worse That's what I'm saying. It is actively getting worse all the time You could not do some of these things with your devices. There was times Well, there was a time when I had to wait for it I Look It's AT&T didn't change its mind because consumers are like screw it. I can't use FaceTime. I'm gonna pay my early termination fee So yeah, there was no but there was no market most force I never heard what AT&T responded to was we're gonna get sued and we're going to lose That's another thing that companies respond to The reason that you sued Well oiled machine, but hold on you understand that that is different than the market. I didn't ever But you understand that the getting sued Just trying to paraphrase what you whichever one of you you put this thought whichever I would just like to correct this notion there they were afraid of being accused of I Keep looking at that camera because it's like you're looking right Yeah, no They were afraid of a regulation an effective regulation is weak and is half-assed as we've decided to put net neutrality on mobile That's what this is. My regulations are necessary. We don't have to the consumer doesn't have to keep people in check, right? It's not my job to police AT&T And what is this the wild? I mean we should be allowed to like vote with our dollars Like AT&T should have a video calling service and Apple should have one and Skype should have one and we should all pick the one We want a what who not be structurally limited by a let's say Let's say tomorrow that there was consumer revolt and that and they were like, oh man We're just gonna allow FaceTime over cellular like like Verizon does because consumers are revolting. Isn't it just a big waste of everybody's time? For for we I don't did any what do you think their move was like somehow correct? The only people who thought their move was correct was 18 because they wanted more money. Well, I do think you know we're definitely at this place with with these wireless companies that They have made their money by selling us minutes for a long time It's true and they can't do that anymore. And now they sell us data yeah, and data is pretty anonymous and straightforward and obviously They they would there have to look at much slimmer margins competing on pretty much straight data price Which is great. We would joy that we would love that. That's very fun for us. That's not foreign fun for them as a business That's why they're switching all these plans, right? Business they want to maintain a juicy margin Maybe they should have come up with a better strategy more selling minutes that these guys You ran here juicy margin. My feeling is like if the market is is If it's a free market, right? It's on them for have not to not have come up with a better plan than just selling minutes. It is right No, and so what they're doing right now their plan right now is limiting some applications like Facebook trying to hold on to their precious Ground and I don't think it's gonna work. That's one thing I wrote. I wrote about Wi-Fi calling a while ago I think that's a good force on these companies Because ultimately they have to compete with the applications You're going to be able to use over Wi-Fi right with their with their data networks And so because you have a data network that kind of feels like Wi-Fi when you can't do something on a data network It feels wrong and they're gonna ultimately have to compete with that. And I do think that's gonna be some of a force there So this is where this is where AT&T is really not I know what you're saying make a complete perfect sense and they know it And so what they're trying to do now is they're trying to claim dominion over Wi-Fi And that's why AT&T is always saying we allow you to do this over Wi-Fi Yeah, but they can't claim dominion over Wi-Fi. They're trying and they're not gonna be in Verizon are both building out Wi-Fi networks And they say when you go out in public we mean what oh you mean like they're hot right and they're like, please use our hotspots Yeah, you know why cuz it takes the load They do they want to know that service they want to get a limit do they limit what can be done on the Wi-Fi networks? They would be able to they would love to they would be able to this is why net neutrality is so important So thank God Barack Obama has been reelected Into the office of the White House the president's role in the president's This is the other piece of news that we had to talk. We should talk about so I I think the election itself Everybody knows what happened because this is a room divided I Voted for Obama you voted for Gary Johnson and Paul voted for Mitt Romney. It's true, Gary Joe All the other percentage of the vote he got now I like to know Florida on the election and I didn't say what party was and it turns out a lot of people didn't know I was conservative Yeah, it surprised me. It's because you have a conservative you have some conservative You have some very strong conservative convictions Mm-hmm, but you have a you have a generally fairly liberal You seem to have a like a liberal kind of personality. Yeah, I seem like a liberal I think I think I get along better with liberals. I think you do too because deep down you're liberal No, no, I didn't vote for Gary Johnson guys. No I wrote an editorial called why I'm voting for Barack Obama. I think Ross Perot, I think I think Actually on the important social issues of our time you're largely conservative On the on the I think economic issues. You're you have very strong conservative views on our national security issues you have powerful conservative views Your views are all pretty conservative. Yeah But you look like a liberal. Thank you. It's the hair. It's Ethan Hawkins. Yeah, Ethan Hawkins Board, you got a skateboard. No, so here's the election is I think everybody knows who won and what happened? Well, we don't know They called Florida today too We're very concerned about the interesting stuff about the election which I think all of us can appreciate Can anybody tell me how Karl Rove is still in existence? Can somebody just why I'm sorry He just needs to be removed vanish. He needs to be sent to like an outer space colony of War criminals with with him Donald Rumsfeld Dick Cheney and and Ari Fleischer who who's also on now on television and of course George Bush Yeah, you know, I actually like, you know, like in comparison like Bush Romney Yeah, like I felt kind of bad for Romney. Why I don't know. He seems like he just you know He just wanted to be a president really bad It feels like it like like I felt like it's somebody we took away like a kid was like getting Expecting a really good like Christmas morning gift. Yeah, he's like, I know my parents got me that action figure I've been wanting. Yeah, and then he's like they got me a tie and that action figure was control of the most powerful They got me a tie And that action figure was control of the most powerful. They got me a socks. Yeah, they didn't get me the spider-man action figure I wanted so here's there's just a few things we can talk about here. Yeah And none of them really have much to do with politics directly. Yeah So there was a lot of discussion about voting machines. Yeah, there was a lot of discussion rampant voting machine fraud Well, I mean it's not that one video. I think everybody hates voting machines or the state of affairs. Yeah, I was We don't have to debate that because New Jersey had to implement Emergency vote by email which might be legal at one point Seemed like it was just you were literally being told to send your votes to a personal hotmail address. I mean New Jersey Which is a crazy That's great at any moment and then I think the last thing that's really hotmail would Sarah Palin had her email No, yahoo. Yeah, it's same thing. I mean like it's not a secure place for votes imagine those new like hotmail like automatic filters for like like filtering out spam like catching votes like like Obama like sorry, I was in a spam filter I mean so Jesse wrote Jesse Hicks who's great wrote a feature for us about the history of voting machines Yeah, and kind of how everything is controlled at the state level so we don't have like one unified policy, you know, which is good in some ways and Keeps us like this constant state of paralysis I don't think it's good at all and I have to say like, you know There there's a lot of this like the small government movement is very much about like let the states just let this take it to The state level. Yeah, let the states work on that. Yeah, and like like, you know all sorts of things like abortion and schools And like they're saying like states should decide like I don't know why they think that states are just a smaller version of federal government They like they're not less government. It's just of government in a different location. It's more It's you're gonna be more responsive. You know what? Yeah, I don't buy that. Well, this is um We get into this is like a 1700 sort of argument No, but I were like what I just like like for voting. I think here's what I think about voting number one Should be done on a Sunday So everybody can do it should be a holiday or it should be a national holiday where it's like you have off work if you need Well, it should be like Saturday and Sunday to cover Two days and then it's tallied on Monday because if you have a religion that gets both Saturday and Sunday, that's pretty okay. I mean other other countries do it on Sunday. I just think it's We just Think Brazil they do it on Sunday and that I mean we sell largely Christian Day, we celebrate the birthdays of various presidents day I gotta go to Sears a president's day sale at Sears and I can't get a president's I can't get a voting day sale Yeah from Sears Roebuck Corporation But but but it first off it should be everybody oh, I think it should be mandatory, right? I think you should you should have to vote or a fine. Yes. Yes What that I think you should be fined if you don't and you have to vote for Josh Don't you think it's insane that we don't require our citizens to cast a vote? No, I think it's incredibly Rational not to require people to vote. I think everybody should be required to vote you pay $25 and I think that Whatever the fine it seems appropriate I think that I think that I think that it should be a holiday or it should be a day when everybody can go do It so you don't have to worry about and I think that the voting voting should be we should have a group of geniuses get together like scientists and computer scientists and Artists and great filmmakers and I don't you don't know makers. No, but we should get a group together It's like we're gonna figure out a logical sensible way to do like what the is of ballot gonna look like How is it gonna work? Yeah, I don't care if it's a computer or a piece of paper or whatever I just think it should be I would like a graphic designer to have a yeah No graphic designer should absolutely be my ballet in Wisconsin was literally I had to color in an arrow and I was like who designed You voted in Wisconsin. Yeah, I've colored in that's my permanent address our that's illegal. I think Yeah in New York it was like a school test where you had to color in the the circles But there were multiple options you could know you say I'm a twice. Can anybody tell me why? You could you could choose a bomb as a Democrat? Democrat working families or or there was another one was there? Yeah, I think there was a third one I wouldn't know because I didn't vote for Barack. The point is you still had to look at it. Yeah Yeah, the guy not only didn't vote but I was unable to see his name anywhere Yeah, due to my hatred for his socialist government. Okay, anyhow But yeah, no designers and smart people should get together and say like here's the most logical clear way for everybody to vote and it's the Same everywhere like it's not like oh we had hanging chads in Florida and over here You've got weird Xboxes and like those colored lines and right in in Wisconsin it's like what it's the you're voting for the president right? You're not voting for like, uh, you know What color the new Beatles should be? I don't know what that means. Yeah, I can be like like hey We're gonna have one crazy color this year. Would you want to be pink? Like it's a bit important. That's like M&Ms. You're thinking about M&Ms like what's our new M&M car? It's like an important thing and we have these voting systems that are ours was insane. You have this list you've Barack Obama, I mean, maybe there's a reason I get it fine. He's in working families So this is actually another we should I'm gonna just try to have a plan a tangent this hair is so can I just get I? Just want a hair product bring my hair trying to mess it up at this one. I don't know. All right, let's keep going We're like toss. You know, so this was actually a big story on Election Day And I something I saw everywhere was my entire Facebook feed was people taking pictures of their ballots, which is illegal Which is illegal. Nobody knows it's legal. I mean whatever in those about bigger problems That's a felony. Well, he's gonna go get there. I'm gonna like oh the Facebook's Oh John Smith on Facebook What I do is you live on this is like and arrest him for a felony for taking a picture of his ballot I would know what by the sheriff's Problems in this country. So you have an economy and distress we have jobs that we got we need jobs All the jobs, you know, we got we got heated Partisan politics tearing us apart. This is an example. Nobody take a picture of your ballot But it's a place where the technology like just the sheer existence of technology Yeah, is like actually turn people into criminals without knowing. Yeah, and it's like And then use a printer an instant printer in the booth to reprint a copy of it and then Then vote it twice. Yeah using a fake Because those laws against taking photos and polling places are designed to prevent voter intimidation But now it's like well, they ought to have a lot it to prevent Black Panthers who are intimidating people America I like these reports on Fox News about Black Panthers intimidating people pulling places like like there's Black Panthers in like You know, Idaho at polling places my friend Anyhow, sorry, but that's voter intimidation is not the problem here. Well, I just think it's interesting I mean this was like the problem we have I saw this wave of a postal service level Organization of our voting process in America for voting in the president like if you've been to the post office lately No, I know you have you know, the post office is a single organization. No, I know they subsidized by the oh which government Yeah, but it's been it's been chipped away. It's been chipped Is that the state government? It's been chipped away. Oh, yeah, because the postal service will work a lot better The post service will work a lot better if it were a state to state organization with it. You can ship No, but only here in New York work a lot better if it wasn't subsidized and so UPS and FedEx could mail to your your mailbox Because you know what you know what the thing about UPS and FedEx is they're known for their affordable shipping rates. Yeah, they because they want to bring value to the customer. They don't just want to gouge prices, you know, I feel like I feel like I'm in a like a like a contractual lock-in with the Postal Service and I have to pay billions of dollars to Send everything I think the Postal Service has been has been Mailbox, I do think that that the Postal Service is the kind of thing that we that when Republicans talk about defunding things Mm-hmm. What what they're really talking about is defunding things like the Postal Service and they have they have been at work Defunding the post at the Postal Service, which is seen as like, you know, do we really need that? It's like schools. They want to privatize schools Like do we need to show the government be involved in making sure we have the best schooling system in the world or should it be? Dow Jones or not Dow Jones Dow corn. No, who's is it not? Who is the Dow Corning? Is that a they don't actually run schools? But they're like a big Johnson and Johnson should Think about talking about Owned by Johnson wax, that's great. Yeah. Wow Maybe we're making a mistake here. Well, I could pick up any here's the thing about I can pick up any phone in the school And I can't random four digits and get like VPS at SCG. Yeah And also everything was all the tables were really really there. Everything was very clear as we next everywhere Anyhow, I'm saying is I don't know Here's the thing about talking about politics on the podcast one. I lost and so I'm sad. Yeah, too Too is that you can't just say a series of sentences that are like wild political assertions Without being able to really suss them out and we don't have time Why not? So But do you want to talk about the public school? America we got a lot of problems in America. What would you say is the biggest problem in America right now the fact that we're talking About politics. No, no, no, what's the biggest problem in America right now that we need to deal with? We got to bring jobs back to America Which is also an economy. Yeah, right so I I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna transition from here to the thing. I wanted to talk about sharing industrial complex gadgets No, well, this is a this is the nerdy your thing and I think this this actually touches on that And you sure the biggest problem face in America? No It's that the real story of this election in terms of how it was won was that it was won by the Obama campaign Using an enormous amount of data and the media narrative was driven by whether or not Nate Silver at the New York Times and another set of Quantitative analysis nerds who most of whom were professors universities. Mm-hmm, whether they're modeling of polls now would do better than the Republican consultant class which all predicted a Mitt Romney landslide and obviously Nate Silver hit perfectly a Number of those professors to the Mitt Romney lands. Yeah, not all I didn't really hear that I mean if you like it's right is where you send one of the George I mean like I just saw George Wells did it Rasmussen did it a Peggy Noonan? I mean I saw over and over again There were certain I believe that people Romney will be win because you know I think what we've learned is the turnout won't be as high I think what we saw is like and what so but but to just Say we've reached this transition data is right but to finish this transition one of the biggest classes of people that was underestimated Was women in America and how they would vote in the issue they would vote on abortion is an enormously important one, right? Yeah, and that is like well that is the actually the in this election I mean it when we in not to get back onto this topic But when we kind of have to if we're gonna talk about it and it just does kind of go back to that data but you know in this election there were a bunch of points where it seemed like abortion came up as an issue in a way that Was negative for yep seemed very negative for the Republicans and and it's clear that that that well based on this election and we can assume the previous election that women in America Certainly want to have a say in they're worried about not having a say in what and how they and how they live, right? And so so just to finish the transition and get way off abortion I want transition abortion deep deep. No No, but the model, you know, the Obama campaign knew it right? They knew that they had the model in their favor that targeting these issues would break the model in their favor, but Obama didn't make a They didn't more than they're running a lot of ads about their social policies It was more like so they were targeting their ads were targeting like very deeply targeted So they had all this money and they would they were literally I think time Time ran a big expos. Yeah, they had a big piece on their day And it was like they're running ads on like Sons of Anarchy and like weird Bravo shows That nobody would think to run ads on because it usually political ads are run on like 60 minutes and like daytime news shows We're in that crazy PBS ad for like two days, right? So they they were doing this like they call it micro targeting, right? And it's just I think that is Fascinating where we have now reached the point where the campaigns are having what is essentially a science and technology battle Yeah over how they're gonna target their messages to specific voters. Well, they need to reach It's also kind of the and that is far more than You know, let's put the two guys on stage and have them talk It's also a little depressing that like we can be as a people can be like broken down to yeah groups and data but I also think that speaks to how Yes, that sounds exactly how to win this election I don't think every election is like that because I think some elections have slightly, you know Stark have had in the past starker differences between the candidate when I think that I think at this point You're really tweaking people's a little bit of emotion a little bit of thoughts on this, you know emphasizing a specific Issue kind of scaring people about one thing and stuff like that. It's Well, right, but so I'm saying like if you look at some point maybe so you probably don't You you pride in experiences, but there was for the past month and a half or so I've been getting an email a day from the Obama campaign. Yeah, I'll have like really insane They think line I mean he probably would have been getting Romney emails every day. I never saw right but so the thing the thing about Males is they were they were literally placing they were a be testing Strategies that worked for very I turn out right so they would say should the next email come from Biden or Michelle Obama Right should the subject line be hey or I need you and they were betting within the Obama campaign. They were Their subject lines were completely insane Well, so I just think you're gonna take that I know what you're saying. I just think that ultimately there are there are two things that people there's like there's a clear decision between What actually this president will actually do and what this president will actually do and then there is is How we end up voting who ends up going to the polls right why we end up voting for one person or other I'm gonna actually just totally The conventional wisdom in America for forever has been that money wins elections, right and that's Kind of on each of them had a ton of money though Right, but in this election so Obama's enormous amount of money was organized and centralized in his campaign Which was doing this targeting around using the data and the Romney campaign The Romney campaign had this enormous amount of money in super PACs that were funded because the Supreme Court voted in Citizens United that corporations are people and they could spend as much money as they wanted Obama had A plenty super PACs to he did but the most of his money Funneled through directly into his campaign and he was allowed to organize it and spend it in a data-driven way and the Republican Advantage of money was undone by their disadvantage of Obama not targeting Obama have more money No, he was always they they did at some point, but then it went It doesn't matter who won in this one what actually won I was this use of Driven data so I and the clear link to it is this is what all the companies on the Internet do No, I serve this is what Facebook What I'm saying is that I would rather we didn't pick our candidate or our president based on if they said hello or hey In the subject line to the email to me. Well, that's you know, I mean, but that's what I'm saying I agree, but the use of data is use of data is probably Definitely, but we don't Pick our candidates on that we actually what he's saying is I think I mean is that the when you take the aggregate of all? Those little beacons sure that you're able if you know how to and what they in what the Obama campaign may have done better than The Romney campaign or did do better if we believe what we read is Find a way to to shape the beacons into two useful information And so you can draw the line from this is how Google sells Adsense This is how Google sells Adsense. I just say I this was a close election and like they may have done a better job But they it's not like it was a landslide like they just tapped into some sort of like it wasn't a landslide Like most I mean 332 to 209 or what? I mean, that's an enormous margin of victory the electoral college and the popular vote are very different And if you look at the three million popular vote, it's not I wouldn't call it a landslide I think everybody's referring to his landslide and what I will say is put a candidate in there who is In my opinion less flawed than Romney and more like with reality, right? And I'm not so sure this election would have gone the way it went to be perfectly honest Right kind of like a tough pill to swallow for a lot of people I think like that's like a different a different ticket Like this is the thing that's crazy me about America is that we had like a landslide? There's a landslide victory for Obama last election and then in four years people were like, you know what? I Didn't get what I wanted out of this. I'm so fickle I want the guy who's gonna do something better for me, right? And they think like the next guy they think if you have four years like you can just get all the problems fixed and then You can go on to the next guy or and if you don't get them you can go on to the next guy But that's what's so crazy to me is that yeah all this data and all this money and everything that went into like winning this Election it's amazing, but it isn't like they somehow snapped Victory from the jaws of defeat. I they didn't if you think they were then they was it was close then they won If you think it's close and they and you're telling me it's close. I was a close Then a lot closer than it should have been for all of the all the things that I did Democrat and a guy who who thinks of Barack Obama's doing a pretty good job I Didn't get the impression that the rest of the country feels as strongly as I do about that and that and that Like a little bit a little bit better on the other side. We might have a new president right now No, but that's the thing. That's what that's and I don't think it's here's the takeaway I think for from this election better candidates No, what is it? It's just he has to be a better person. This is a candidate This is you know what he was somewhat more appealing to yes to yes non-white and women How do you do that? Well, you do that a better candidate. What does the better candidate look like? I mean, I don't know like Barack Obama No, you know I'm like my question you're asking. I'm sorry. I like Ronnie a better product or better marketing I don't know. It's like McCain and Romney. Look everybody everybody made the Republican matter I'll look in part better products better out and I agree in the Republican Party So that is but I think even Paul will admit the Republican Party seems kind of out of touch You got to admit they seem a little bit out of touch Wait the party the party like the people they're putting up on stage as their candidates are like Seem like the wrong people for America, which is increasingly diverse increasingly gay increasingly not white so it's like Increasingly recently stone increasingly stone increasingly women have not just a vote but a voice and You know you look at the Republican Party and it is a lot of older white dudes and like I don't think they're connecting with America America doesn't look like this America. They think it looks like I think it looks and that's I think that's a Issue it's like the older white dude saying is I would like to point out no, it's not a cliche, but it's not a cliche It's so real. Oh, okay It's real look at the voter serious serious contenders in the Republican primary were women and and Ross really wants us to talk about a bird. I want to talk about a bird that you I don't know how we got into this political conversation maybe because our new president I want to talk about it's just funny because the two I'm I'm wrapping this up. You don't get to wrap this one up Let me say one more thing that you can wrap it. Sorry. That's maybe a nicer way to say There there is marketing no there's there's marketing There is what a product appears to be and there's what a product is and I agree with Josh if Romney it just appeared to be More with it more hit one. Oh if he actually was he might appeared was no, I think you have to be Well, he tried to but here what I wish the election was and maybe we're past this ever being the case I do wish it was about what they actually are. Well, here's my can I can I'm gonna we're gonna be done with this No, but what I'm hearing is not everything what I'm hearing from both of you everything Is this you know, I'm marketing budget for the kid Yeah, and the market rejected it, but I would say Ross like I believe it I like out he's like see you I'm trying desperately to know into this Where's my hair gets I can't sum up what we think you have to sum up with you. Yeah, go ahead I'm trying to solve what no you what you think what I what I think is that what I'm hearing from both of you? No, you can't say that no You think I think what you're trying to say, but I think both of you are wrong. I think okay I think why what do you what's what am I saying? That's wrong? I don't think you guys you don't think that the election was close I think I think it was a win in battleground states. I voted in battlegrounds Because I felt it would be close. I said it was a winnable election for both. It was a winnable election for both It makes me say yes and the popular vote is only a few million, right? But I think the total if I'm a came away with a very decisive victory And I think the reason that that the victory is clear No one's debating the reason that that happened was because he played a superior data-driven game He played a two-hour game period no, yes period. Yes. He's game was better. He was more consistent He has a record was his game better. He No, okay. First of all, he's an incumbent. Second, he has a provable record of being president. Big deal. Hold on. He's been consistent in his message. He's not an unknown. He's not an x factor. You're saying like, this is how- If the candidate had been- Look, just- I understand that you think data didn't- No, no. This is why they won. This is why they are saying they won. And I think that is vitally important. They're not just saying they won. They won. No, but- I don't understand- Is that their own cake? I don't understand- Can we get plates for those? I don't understand your argument. I really don't. It's- They won. And I'm a supporter, and I don't feel like your argument is- Oh Josh, you're a big beard- Bird. And you're like, do you want to be- So many hands. So many hands. The monster's blue. On this. I'm blue. You should be red. You're red. I feel like we're in the midst of a heated- And Ross is just ending this moment. All right, let's blow them out before they melt all over the place. Okay. I love you. Great. Call American. Make a wish. I wish. I wish for this conversation to be over. I wish for, for another another four years of Barack Obama. Like after this four years. Yes. Like DiPoll Bloomberg. Like, yeah. They'd be like, you know what, guys? I think I should continue to be president. What? Anyhow, I still don't understand your argument. Can you just tell me while I'm eating this? Sure. And, can we get napkins, by the way? Napkins. Michael's actually eating a cupcake right now. But they won, they won the winnable election for them and Romney lost because Obama's campaign used the same kinds of targeting, tracking and like voter messaging tactics that Google uses, that Facebook uses. I think that they won- And I agree- And you're saying that's a better game? That is now the only game. No, no, no, no, no, no. I think they won- I agree with Neelai. I'm just lamenting that that is true. No, no, I disagree. I think they won utilizing those and playing them to their advantage. I think they would have had a much harder time winning if they'd had somebody more formidable to go up against. Sure. So both things have to be in place. You have to have a candidate who is good and another candidate who isn't as good and you have to run a good election. Right. Which is just like every election. But in this case, they were close enough that the marketing won. Yes. Yeah. We all are good with something. I disagree. Like having a different candidate- Please stop for God's sake. Happy birthday, dude. Happy birthday to America. For our birthday, Josh disagrees with everything. It's not America's birthday. America just turned one. All right. Well, that sounds a lot. Can I have a napkin? Ross is withholding napkins. We're only, we're done with politics. We talk about our first year. Yeah. Got milk? Yeah. Do we have milk? Yeah. This is, he's so angry. Can I have a napkin? Thank you. Here. Remember when Obama won the election? Pile of birthday trash. Oh man, we're the worst. You know what though? This is not our best show. Not even close. But I mean, so far from our best show. Can we see our best show from here? Yeah, we can. I'll be honest with you. I worry that our best show is behind us. Is it over the hill and down the valley? Is it morning again for the verge cast? Oh my God. Or are the best years of the verge cast behind, the best year of the verge cast behind us. I think we should go forward. Did you ever see the, I don't know if it's the Simpsons or Futurama where they have presidential candidates and they're talking about their, they're talking about their platform and they're like, yeah, yeah. They're like, we should go forward, not backward. Left, not right. Up not down. Like just saying, I swear there were times when these candidates were talking and it just started to sound like that to me. Obama's slogan was forward. That's the joke I was making. I was making a joke. No, I know, but I'm saying that there were times with both candidates that I was just like, you're just saying stuff. Right. You're not even, these aren't even being. Ross is literally stabbing himself in the back of the room. Obama was forward, not backward. And Romney was different, not the same. No he was like a Sesame Street. His was a, was a. Why are we so Sesame Street themed today? I don't know. It was on sale at party city. I was at party city. Thanks. Hey, Jim, hey, look at that. What are you doing here? No, you're not. You're on the other side. You're on the other side of the glass, man. He's like knocking the camera. Has Jim ever been on any of our stuff? Jim, you want to come in for a second? Just cameo cameo. Just cameo on in here. Yeah, this is a good transition to our birthday. This guy, this guy hand writes me a check every month. Come on in. Come on in. In the memo line he says, he says, keep up the good work in the memo line of the check that he hand writes me every month to say, CEO of Vox Media. You only see your, just the bottom part of your head. There you go. CEO of Vox. Yeah. How's it going, buddy? I want to create, I want to have a jiffable moment here. What can I do? It's a jiff. It's a jiff. Well, it could be, it could be, it rhymes with gift. It could be either. It's either. No, it's not. The creators, we all decided in 1995 that it's gift. The creators actually pronounced the jiff and there's some debate about how it's going to be pronounced. There is a Vox Media style guide though and it says that you have to alternate pronunciations. You have, you're just, by the way, you're disembodied. My mom calls me Polly, but that doesn't mean my name is Polly. Pollygon. Pollygon. Speaking of Pollygon, big launch party tonight. We can't talk about it because I don't want to be swarmed with people. It's in Burbank and we're getting it. We're getting on Vox One, our jet. Where are we with the jet? What's the status of that? Vox One. Well, the nervous laughter. You say it in the singular. Our fleet. So we're fleet prepared yet? We're working on the fleet. Very excited. There's both pricing. So we're taking Vox Four. Vox Four. It's an interesting, but Jim, good to see you. It's an exciting day for Vox in general because we're celebrating. We're celebrating, this is where we're having our first year birthday version. You want a cupcake? And we've been talking about politics for 45 minutes straight. I've been trying to be funny and ironic here, but on a sincere note, happy birthday to the Verge. I haven't seen you guys since we've emailed and we've IMed. But we did you the anniversary. You use all manner of internet communication. Yeah, exactly. Email, IM. All sorts of internet. Twitter, we tweet, we tweet each other. Skype. We give each other gifs. I think from time to time we go to meetings. We go to meeting often. We love going to meeting. But sincerely, you know how proud I am. And thank you to the audience for making it all possible. Don't thank these animals. No, they're wonderful. Well, we'll see you at the party. You missed the abortion conversation. You really, you really. Jim's out of here. No comment leaving. All right. We'll see you later. Okay, we'll toast. We'll have a toast. Is there going to be toast there? See if they have cream cheese too. Let's get these hats on, shall we? All right. Oh, so we're talking about the year now? Yeah, we're going. We're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about our first year. Oh, shoot. I thought we were reviewing it. I think this hat will help keep my hair in place. I'm not. Can I get a drink though? You think there's something wrong with your hair? What is happening? Look at my hair. What is this? My hair always segments out here like this. Is this right? You think there's something wrong with your hair, but I've got my own problems. You do have a segment. See, I've got like a thing. I'm going to keep it. Yeah. All right. So there's a way I wanted to talk about this. Okay. I think we've launched a lot of new products. We've done a lot of weird new things. Go on. Josh is a doctor during the plague. Yeah. Hey, looks like you're going to die. See you. I'm going to treat some other people who are also going to die. Oh, by the way, I won't be washing my hands. Well, it looks pretty bad. You're definitely going to die. But on the bright side, everyone else is going to die. Yeah. Good. Let me go over here and I'll wash my hands. Welcome to the plague. Welcome to the plague. This isn't going well. Yeah. I think it's going great. Worst Axl Rose solo record ever. Anyhow, let's talk about your- Do you have a way you want to talk about this? I did. Well, you know, it's just we have, we're kind of like three things, three or four things that we do. If our year, if our first year was great, and I think it was, this Verge cast- Thank God. It represents the, it's like the antithesis. That's the opposite, right? This is like the, this is like everything that we weren't this year encapsulated in a single Verge cast. No, this is like, like the Verge won like seven Tour de France's this year. And now this is our, this is our doping. We were doping by- We're doping. Yeah. Right now. And then we're going to get- We're being stripped of our titles. Yeah, we're going to get stripped of our titles because of this podcast. No, we should definitely talk about Lance Armstrong doping. That would be a great place for us to go. We've been, this has been such a high- Four against. Yeah, this has been four. Nothing wrong with doping. Kids. Nothing wrong with doping kids either. Yeah. Just take your own blood, save it, and then put it back in your body. Totally normal behavior. Let's talk about the Verge. Everybody was doping. We were all doping this year. Is that going to be a problem? So here's what I think. Can we be like, if we're up for a Webby, can the Webby be taken away? If we were doping. Because we were doping. Yeah. Yeah, I took some of my blood, I set it aside. Unless you're doping in Colorado or Washington state. Yeah. I don't think what you think of as doping and what I think of as doping are the same thing. Are you winking at me? No, I'm doing the- Head nod. Brian Williams, head nod. I'm doing the- Brian why? See, my nose is crooked, but if I tilt it like this, it's straight like Brian Williams. So here's my belief about this podcast. Be willikers. It's really difficult to talk about yourself. Like I find it very hard to- That's why we're talking about abortion. That's why we will talk about anything else except ourselves. I don't know how to be like, we did a really good job doing this. I write- Let's talk about abortion. I write a weekly column about myself. I'm very good at this point. How good are you at writing your own resume? Oh, pretty bad. Yeah, right? In my resume, every time I write it, it's like, here's my position on abortion. Have you been writing resumes a lot lately? Yeah, I'm leaving a lot of here. Well, you know- Every time I, by the way, every time I see somebody appear on LinkedIn, no matter what, I'm like, oh, oh. Like Sean Hollister is like, Sean friended you on LinkedIn. I'm like, oh boy. Is that normal? So we did some wild stuff this year. Yes. So we can break it into like some categories. Cats, some cats. The first thing that we've, that is wild that we have is that we built a whole new like features program in team and we kind of didn't know what we were going to do with it. And it's grown into today, we did just today a wild layout for Film Crit Hulk. Yeah. Film Crit Hulk. Which is- Interview. It's really good. We're trying to push- You should read it. It's like wild design. It's a crazy design. You can do Bruce Banner or Hulk mode. Really? You didn't know that? There's a button. Hulk mode is all caps and Bruce Banner is like regular- Oh, that's wild. Really? Regular capitalization. Yeah. So here it is. Here it is. I got to go back to- Oh, don't look at that. Go down and go into Bruce Banner mode. Well first off, let's just take a look at this awesome feature. It's so great. Yeah. Also like it's amazing. You should read it because it's Film Crit Hulk. We're just watching it on the side scroll. So yeah, there it is. There's the, if you're listening to this on audio, that sucks. We're literally just watching it. Because there's way more interesting stuff going on in the video. There we go. There's Bruce Banner mode. Check it out. That's crazy. And it's like regular. Yeah. Isn't that cool? Yeah. Anyhow, we built our future. We knew going into The Verge that we wanted to do big features. One of our things was like big reviews, big features. We don't just want to do, we said, we're not a blog. We're going to build a news site. And part of that news site is going to be big, big features that we're going to spend a lot of time and energy and money and blood, sweat, and tears on. And we started, our first one was, I think the launch day was Condo at the End of the World, where we went to these crazy survival condos. By the way, we're going to have a series of posts where we kind of put together some of our best of's from the year. So those will be coming out shortly. But the features team has just grown, and here's Condo at the End of the World, has just grown and mutated. And we found new things, we figured out ways to do things that we didn't know how to do before. And it was a really, really incredible, exciting thing to be able to build something new that you kind of don't know what you're building. I think one of the things I say about The Verge all the time, we didn't know what we were making until it was there. I mean, in my opinion, we had all these ideas about things we wanted to do. And I think even now we're still evolving what it is. I don't think we're anywhere close to being what The Verge will be. I think we're just starting to edge into places that we wanted to go. And the features thing was just one of those things we knew we wanted to do, but we didn't know how it would work or what it would look like. And we started putting all the pieces together. Now we have a real team that does it. And it's been very exciting. And every time we do a new one, there's a new evolution of what we're doing. Even from the first program. Sorry, I want to say one other thing. Sorry, I don't mean to cut you off. But the other thing I wanted to say is that we knew we wanted to do it. And we've been figuring out how to do it. We've been learning. It's been very exciting. But what we didn't know was would all the time and money and energy and blood, sweat, and tears make, would people care? And the thing that's been most encouraging and most exciting is that the features are like some of our biggest, they're some of our biggest posts. Like just people love them. And it's awesome and encouraging. Go ahead. I was just going to say, even from the perspective of a writer going in, I wanted to write things that were beyond my ability to write. And that's been a lot of fun with The Verge is that like getting to create something I know I want, I know I want to try to tell this story that's a lot bigger than any story I've ever told before and trying to tell it and trying to get better at that. That's been really exciting and fun for me. I don't know if it's as fun for everybody else that has to try to read it. Your first big one was Romila. Oh yeah. The Dennis Hong. The Dennis Hong piece. Oh yeah. Walking in the shadow. Which like, I remember we were going, it was like. Oh, did we do the Starcraft one before that? Or was that after? I think that was after. I think, but I could be wrong. But anyhow, but you did this big piece. You went down to Dennis Hong's like lab and you, you know, but I remember we were kind of like, you wrote a ton of stuff. It was really long at first. I had to stay up at IHOP like overnight all the time to try to write. Cause I couldn't like focus during the day. Yeah. But it was cool to figure out like, what is it, what will we do and what will we not do in this piece? Or how will it function? What was so fun about that? I don't know if people, I mean, there was a time in my career that a new robot would come out and I would write a blog post about it or maybe even an editorial about it. You know, quick thoughts from Paul Miller on this cool new robot, you know? But with that thing, like, it's like, I want to understand how hard it is to teach a robot how to walk. And cause it's a huge thing that we haven't really achieved as a society is building robots that walk on two legs. Right. And once we do, we're done. We're all done for. Terminator style. So, so anyway, so I got to write that story, which was way bigger. And so I just, I think, I mean, you'll do that a lot along the way. And I think just the offline thing and, and, and you know, the piece you did where you went to the rally, you know, which turned into an kind of an incredible feature, like both from a writing standpoint and, you know, I don't want to, I'm not trying to just Pat us on the back, but for, no, I know this is why we got to get back to abortion. But you know, that's one of those things where it was like, Oh yeah, we can do this. And I think this is something that other, that, you know, other people won't, wouldn't do like this. They wouldn't have, they wouldn't have attacked it the way we did. And it's a really fascinating, I mean, if you haven't seen this piece, there was this Hasidic Orthodox, Jew, Jewish rally kind of anti-internet rally. And it, it sort of, they were like, you know, we have to be aware of the dangers of the internet and it's good to kind of not overuse it. And you know, it coincided with your offline thing. Very close. It was very close. And, um, and I just turned into a really fascinating piece. And so I think that the thing is the feature stuff has been very exciting to me. And it's been, uh, doubly exciting because not only have we gotten to push, I think journalism online, but, uh, I hope, but also people like it. People actually like it. It's beyond, I hope. I think that's actually the features program for me is, I mean, we've, we've done it and I hear it from people and I think that's really rewarding, but what's really cool is that we've taken that and what we've learned from that and how we we've done features that I think are very normal, right? Like I went, uh, when Vizio is launching PCs, I went and talked to Vizio and we did profile of Vizio's PCs. And that's like, I've been reading that in my career, in my life for a long time. Yeah. But we took that, we made it weirder. We did, we have a great video team. They did a great video with it. We're using what we learned doing sort of what's normal to do really weird stuff. Yeah. And then the really weird stuff is now feeding back into what's normal. Yeah. And that's to me is like the best, like that's when we can take something that you think you're going to expect when you kind of understand what it, what it's going to be and then it surprises you. I think that's the most interesting thing. And can I, can I, um, can I name names? Yeah. Well, I don't know. When we're talking about features. Oh, people. Props to Laura and Joe and Thomas and Jesse. Yeah. Jesse and Jesse. And I was, cause I was thinking ahead to James Chay who does a lot of our big layouts, which is insane. And also I do want to say Thomas Huston is my best friend and he does ton of these layouts and he can't ever hang out with me because he's working so late making awesome features. The layouts thing is really interesting. When we started, we were like, let's build a tool that we can, it'll make it easier to do these like elaborate layouts. And we did, we did come up with a tool that makes it easier, but it's still like really hard and like you, if you want to do same basic, you can do same basic fairly easily. But if you want to get complex, which we do on these features, you have to know what you're, you really have to know what you're doing. And we didn't have James until very recently. I mean, James just joined us. Well, I guess now it's been like six months or something. I don't know. But you know, we didn't have a designer at all. So that's especially the first set of features when you look at that's like. Thomas is like doing those himself, like all by hand, you know, here's a new one. This is one we did on, on dead, dead mouse or dead mouth, dead mouth five is I like to refer to him. Um, but, uh, look at this, this is cool. Yeah, this is weird. I like the fact that we can fit things that are in our template, like in our website that just don't look like our website. That's always exciting to me. But um, anyhow, but that, so that's been something that I'm very excited about. And you're right. Like it's been the hard work. I mean, the people who've worked really hard. It's Thomas Houston, Laura June, uh, uh, Joe Flatley and Jesse Hicks have been the core of the feature, the features team, um, since the start really. Uh, and obviously James Chay and there's a bunch of other people who contribute and Josh copstein has done a bunch of stuff. And I mean the list, almost everybody has participated, has done a feature on the, on the team, but there's a core group of people who are driving the core is that it's been able to help people like me who I was not a features writer, like helping people along creating stuff we want to create. Yeah. So I mean, that's been very exciting. Um, you know, w the same thing is true for reviews. I think we've done something that we, we don't do reviews. I mean, I think that, that when we started talking about reviews, we're like, well, everybody does reviews. We've been doing, we'd been doing them for years at Engadget. Um, and what's useful, like what's good for people? What, what is better than just saying, you know, just doing a regular blog layout, divisive scores down to the device, the scores down to the 10th of the point. I mean, we had scores and they were a matter of great debate. And one of the big debates was like, we had just scores. It was like, we'd score something in eight. Yeah. You know, and people were like, how did you get to eight? We want to know, like, what did you score? So when we started doing the new system, we were like, let's break it down. Like let's have variables for all of these products. Let's say like, well, it's, it's because of this and this and this and this. And that's how we got to the score. It turns out that that turns out that like if you can give anybody anything to feel like to feel angry about, even if it's a sub score of a total score, you score something like an eight, but something within the score is a five. They won't pay attention to the eight. The top score, the main score is an eight, but there's a five in there. The five is the only score that they'll think about. So like in a way it's been a blessing and a curse to show people why, how, how we score and why we score. I also think there's this thing that, that, you know, we have a lot of readers, especially the guys who are really into the reviews, the guys and girls, of course, ladies, other ways ladies. But, uh, they really are there. They're talking about data, their data nerds. And so if like a score is like has some, if there's some variances between like, Oh yeah, Vlad review this smartphone and Josh review this one. And they've got, this one says the screen is an eight and this one says the screen is a seven, but they've got the same screen. How is this possible? I reviewed the 13 inch retina MacBook pro and I gave it a 7.8 total score. And the averages of my scores added up their average to 8.6 and I got like freak out emails. That's a huge, that's a huge, it's less than one point. Did you, I docked it point eight for a, for overall value, right? What you get for the price and like people, there was such anger at me. What we need is a slider that just shows what we docked it. Yeah. It's like, I literally, I was like the overall value of this package. Like it deserves anyway, but like, it's just funny to me that all of this discussion and all of this, like, uh, it's consternation. Is that the word I'm looking for? But it's, I'm actually now more committed to the idea of these scores than like ever before. And not, not because I'm like out for page views or, uh, any of that bullshit. It's just because I think when you are reviewing a product and you have to think about these elements and you have to say, is this better than the other thing? Where does this fall? If I had to give this a one to 10, it makes you evaluate the product much more stringently. And it makes you decide if this something is good or not. I often, when I'm writing my review, I won't, um, I'll, I'll wait to write my wrap up until I've sat down and gone through my scoring. You know, I'll like sit there and say, okay, I'm at the point now where I need to make a statement about the final statement here. Like what, how can I quantify my feelings about all of these things? Is there a way to do it? And the way to do it for us is to numerically say like, well, this felt like this and this, and they are like feelings. That's the thing that like, I think it's like dangerous to confuse the way a reviewer feels about something with what is empirical fact. Like does the fact that I gave a screen an eight make it empirically better? Like is it a fact that it's better than a screen with a seven? Not really. Like that wouldn't make a lot of sense, especially if I didn't do both reviews. Would I be able to say like, and then there's the time thing where it's like, I reviewed a screen, it was a nine last year and now a different device with the same screen is an eight or a seven. Why is that? And you know, there's all kinds of factors, but I do think that it helps you to, to focus your opinion, which is often very vague on a product. Like sometimes it'll be like, well, I do like this thing and I don't like that thing. And the sound quality was good, but the screen wasn't the best. It's like, how do I quantify this stuff into usable information for people? And I think that like for an average reader, for a person who just needs to know, like tell me what this is like, like what, you know, how is it? How's the screen, you know, how, how's the performance? Like there needs to be a way to quantify that, to say in a snapshot. And that's what we're trying to do. I don't think it's perfect. I don't think it's perfect. One thing that's really, but okay. Well, I will say that, that I am really grateful. We all stopped at a die there. We're learning to care for each other. We really are. Day at a time. You have to reach Josh. This happened. All right. That'll be, that'll be a, that'll be a gif. I am definitely somebody who has gone to websites and just scroll down, looked at the score. I'm definitely somebody who's gone to magazines and, and, and page through and just looked at the pull quote. So what I'm really grateful for, who either don't have the time to read every word or like, you know, just aren't as obsessed with certain aspects of, of a story or a product and just want different parts of it. I'm glad those people put up with the other stuff and want, you know, are okay with the whole verge and letting us geek out in different directions that, you know, we've kind of gotten this permission to do things the way we do them and people can, you know, they take different, you know, well, so the thing I think is really values from it, how they, how they want, different takeaways, obviously, that's what I want to do. Different takeaways. So polygon just launched and they, their review system, which is built on the same stack, the media stack chorus is our site. They have updatable reviews so they can at the bottom of the game review, if like new DLC comes out or there's a patch or something, they can update the score, they can add a little bit more and then you can see all the old scores back in time. And uh, you know, we're, I think we're playing stealing score versioning score versioning at their, their literally versions. I think, I think, yeah, and we're going to steal a bunch of stuff from them and that matter. I don't know if you agree with that, but I think to the, to your point, we don't see the verge as a finished thing. We see it as a work in progress and, and, and the hope is we got it to a place that's good and we can get it to a place that's better tomorrow. You know, I think one of the tenants of our, one of our tent, you know, our beliefs, core beliefs is like we're to never be satisfied with the product that we've made and to feel that that product can always be better. And, and you know, there are a lot of people, it's funny, there's a lot of people in, in many industries and we've seen it in technology. We see it in, in publishing, we see it all, you know, in startups, whatever, where people just say, this is the best thing you've ever used. Yeah. This is just going to be the best experience you can possibly have. And that is not my style. I don't think like, are we the best? I mean, I, if you think we're the best, that is, that blows me away. And I'm so happy. Do I think that, that we're doing the best that we can do? I mean, we may be very good. Maybe we're the best at some things, but I wouldn't say it. I'd say like, we're doing the best that we can do right now and I think we can do better tomorrow. Yeah. And we're going to like work really hard to get better tomorrow. And to me, that is a feeling. I mean, I've always had that feeling when I was making music, it was like I'd finish a song or something and just feel like I should go back to the drawing board on this, you know, I did so much ecstasy and cocaine. I wanted to do that. All that ecstasy, everything sounded good while I was making this. That was a mistake. But you know, I just think it's like, it's important to have a, to put yourself in a, in a, to be realistic with yourself and know that like there are a lot of people who like a lot of different things and I don't think we're going to please every person. And I don't think that's our goal, but I think trying to please ourselves and trying to make something great every day is very important to everybody who's on the team. And I think they work really hard to do that. And you know, and it's, I think it's working. I think people have responded to it, but people in the community can get a little bit, well, they can overreact I think sometimes to some of what we say, like when we give a phone at seven and it's a Nokia, a large majority of them react and it's awesome. Large majority are reacting well within the realm of awesomeness. Yeah. And then there's just that once in a while we'll get a few non non awesome reactions. Well, I think it's, I mean it's, we had a community and I think actually they just lived within the comments and then now we have this whole forum, which is a world. Yeah. The forums are, we didn't know, I was one of the things about the forums that's cool is that, is that I read the forums like a, I'm a forum reader. I try to participate, but often like I feel like my participation is distracting. It can be distracting. And I'm just like, I like, it's hard for me to maintain too many conversations. I already have like 400, I read emails every day, but I love reading the forums and I see stuff in the forms all the time and I'm like, I did not know about that. And I'm like learning from our forum members, which is exciting. And also it's a great, I love the fact that our forum members have, they write amazing posts. Yeah. Like stuff that I'm like, this is an awesome thing to read and you decided to put it here and that is incredible. And I, you know, find stuff out about things I don't know about. I learned about things that I thought I knew about that I don't fully know about. And it was like news in there and people's opinions and their own reviews and clever art and just all kinds of wacky stuff. And also they can complain to us, which is great. We are meta. We have a meta forum, which is sometimes it's very meta, you know, about just like general verge stuff, but often it's like, Hey, this thing is broken, but there's actually really useful because before like the system of any on a normal site, like this isn't a hearing from your readers is convoluted. The first post in meta right now is why the verge has to stop scoring. Yes. I mean, you know, that's, and that's great that they can even say that, that we have a community that can talk to us. And by the way, we read that and then we spit on it. No, I'm kidding. But we're not going to stop scoring. Yeah. There's also one here called Josh DePaul see versus the world. Yeah. I've, I'm, it's me versus the world. I don't really know what I've done. I think I've been pretty fair generally. Yeah. Whatever. You know what? It's fine. You don't like me. You don't have to like me. No one's, no one told you it was not a rule that you have to like Josh to Polsky. Josh to Polsky loves you. Not this Josh to Polsky, a different one, a much nicer one, much nicer. All right. Are we going to end this? We should really wrap up. Let's hear it. Let's hear it just quickly. Let's see if any, anybody in the, in the comments in the chat room, they're just busy figuring out what other words go. Do they want it? Do they want it? Megatron.ontheverge.com any favorite moments they'd like to Holly gondola. Is there anything they'd like to know about the verge, the year, year one of the verge right now. Here's your chance. If you're in chat, we have no phone. If you're in chat right now, if there's anything you want to know from us about the verge or the first year or whatever, or abortion, just go ahead and ask. We're hiring West coast writers. Yeah. Asking that we're hiring, we're going to, we're hiring. What else? What else? Yeah. They're just saying the words West coast writers. Just West coast writers. And then election.theverge.com. Election works. They're literally guys. We know many words and O N there's a 20 second buffer. Really? Think we could do something about all the spam and chaos in there with a 20 second. Oh, comment system. You want to talk about it? Oh, comment. Well, I've talked about this before. We're, we're, we're bringing the stuff that they did for polygon back to the verge, editable comments, collapsible comments are coming. Hopefully the next, I don't know, it could be a week, two weeks. I don't know. It's happening soon. And we're going to continue to improve the comedy system. We are fully aware. I mean, one thing is, you know, we want to build a really great comedy system. I think we have a good, a good one. I think it has a lot of room to grow and a lot of stuff it needs, but you know, we want to build a great comedy system. That's really useful to our readers and we use it. So we're aware of the things that are annoying. We use it all the time. And we're aware that on big pages, when there's a million comments, the pages get slow and funky. We're working on that stuff. We're aware of it. There's no question that we're going to improve it. You know, it's just a matter of time. Yep. Okay. Here's, here's a question. What do you got? I know the answer. You're the, you're the reader. Were you guys scared when you left in gadget that a new tech site wouldn't take off? Yes. Terrified. I was actually convinced. Mortified. I was relatively sure. That's a shameful feeling. No, mortified. Sort of like embarrassment. That doesn't really work. That's not right. I was, I was actually, the thing that was most shocking to me of everything when we launched, you know, Paul said he didn't like the layout of the site. Now I had a very, like, I was like, I want the layout to be different. I worked, we worked with code and theory and with our, with our developers and we talked a lot about how the layout would be different and what it would do and how it would function and what that would bring or not bring to the table in terms of, and we did a lot of stuff different. The features were really different, you know, the way we handle the product database is different, you know, and that's by the way, I think big stuff is coming for that, like big improvements on that too. But there were all these things and I just thought I was terrified the night that we launched. I was sure that people were going to be, we're going to hate it. I was actually like, I'm actually hard on myself, but I thought like people are going to see this and just be so angry and mad, like, cause everybody was, you know, they really liked this is my next, which was super basic and we'd gotten used to this very basic. It was like the most basic form of blogging. So I was terrified that we were not, that people were not going to get it and not like it. And the reverse happened and I could not have been more happy about it. I was when left in gadget, I was like really totally not scared. I was like really chill about it and like just cause it felt so right, especially like going with, with, with you guys and the other people who came over from engadget just, and the people we started hiring right away, just knowing that these are obviously the best people and it's going to be, these people are totally going to be able to make the best thing, but then the night, yeah, pulling the trigger. That's really, that's really scary. It was scary. And you also don't know one of the things that I've talked about this before, I think, but in the developer side, it was really funny that when we launched, I was like, wow, this site is really big. Like there's a lot of stuff, like a lot of places to go. And I didn't kind of didn't realize it. I kept, you know, just pushing and we just kept pushing for more things and doing more things and in the heat of it, you kind of don't realize. And then we launched and it was like, whoa, this is like a lot to tend to. Yeah. Right. You know, but yeah, I was team to tend to it. Now we have a big team. I mean, we had, we had a much smaller team then, a growing team when we launched, it was smaller, but it was a, yeah, it was scary because our team now we're like over 50 people. Yeah. It's 55, 55, something in that range. And we're going to be continuing to, to broaden our horizons. What else? Any other questions? They want to know about reader meetups. So we want to do something. I want to do something for our readers. But anything but meet them. Yeah, no, I want to do something like that. And I think this year it'll be, I think, I think reader meetups, you know, that concept is one way to think of it. I think that maybe there are other ways to come at it. I want our readers to be able to go and engage and do stuff with us. And I want to be able to provide something that's, it's cool and fun and interesting for them to do. So yeah, I mean, yes, the answer is basically yes to that question. The bigger answer that I would like to give is how do we do that? That's cooler and better and more interesting than, than like our, just a reader meetup. I think you, I think anyone can do a reader meetup. With a four hour raffle. Yeah, yeah, right. You know, like what could we do? That's that's that's and I'm open by the way, email me like I'm not all years. If you, if you're a reader and you have an idea, all right. What else could do like a treasure hunt, treasure hunt, Easter egg. I'm not, I'm not letting you into the IRC room. Nope. It's not going to happen. We should, we could do a public IRC. All they want to know what's your next six months like? Kind of more of the same. I've got a, I, so yeah, it's been six months without the internet and I, the other day I stacked all the books that I've read because I was just trying to see if I've gotten what's the, I've got about like this many. I'm pretty proud of that, but I'd like to have maybe more than double that read. What's the best, what's the best book you've read since you've been offline? I really liked, I mean the Odyssey was like the first one I read. I also really liked Plato's minnow dialogue. I think, you know, Socrates talking and it's just, he's just really weird and funny. Do you think you've gotten smarter since you've been offline? I think, I think I'm, I think I think slower now, if that makes any sense. So I think I can be smarter in some ways and I'm dumber in other ways. Like I don't formulate tweets in my head anymore, you know, like I don't have that style of thought process so I can sit down and maybe just read one book at a time, but maybe I don't have as many ideas about it, you know, so it's, it's interesting, but I, that's what I chose. I want to read books and stuff like that. This is the path you put yourself on. Yeah. So you got to walk that path. I am. I'm walking on it. I love it. It's the best, best decision I made. What else? Any other questions? Let's see. No. Really? They don't want to know anything. They want to know a bunch of stuff, but I think we have, we hit the two hour market. Yeah. It's two hours and our new office is opening in January. Uh, yeah. Well, I got to push back from the hurricane. So it's like early February. Sure. Uh, once we have that office, I will say this, once we have that office and we're in there and our studio is in the same place as us and we're all actually together, uh, things will be awesome. Next year is going to be some wild stuff. Just first 2.0. Next year. Yeah. I mean, next year for us is a bit, a year of big, like if we built a foundation, I think company Y with Vox. Yeah. Um, this is the year, this next year is the year that we, we put the house on top of that foundation. Ooh. Yeah. And that house is going to be a sick mansion. Oh, sorry. A McMansion. It's going to have like one of those, those walls that like pivots around and then there's the secret room with the communication. Yeah. Way to keep it secret. Yeah. We're going to have a phone. You pull off the wall and then the whole thing, the floor spins around. Yeah. Exactly. Like Indiana Jones. Yeah. Where is, yeah, just in general, there's also a new office in DC that we're opening. Yeah. Um, which has been delayed also. Things always take longer than you think they're going to. Yeah. But no, and it's, it is next year's big, it's exciting. Yeah. And we have CES. We're going to CES. Yeah. Uh, which will be a new, we're going to have some new stuff. Inevitably going to CES. Inevitably going to CES in January. We have some new stuff. The holidays are coming up. Yeah. Got some stuff to talk about during the holiday season. I am writing a great feature right now. It's going to be awesome. It's about Xmas. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, that's our, that's our Virgcast for this week. Sorry Ross. We covered a lot of ground. Most of it was horrible, but I think we learned something about ourselves. Then we shouldn't do the Virgcast. We learned that we should not do the Virgcast and we should definitely not talk about abortion or politics or politics at all. Or net neutrality. Or neutrality of any type. How'd you make a noise? Anyhow, we'll be back next week of course with more. How'd you make it do that? Oh. Because it's upside down. Because it's broken. We'll be back next week with more Virgcast-y goodness. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, you can email us at virgcast at the virg.com. You can, you're making me nervous. Ross is like nodding when I do something correct. You're like, yeah, that's right. You can, you can leave a comment in the post. You can leave a comment in the post when it goes up or you can find us on Twitter. The Virg is at Virg. I'm Josh Witopolsky. Neelai is reckless. God. Paul is future Paul. Ross is oh no Roscoe, no E on the end. And I think that's it for us. As always, I wish you and yours the very best and you know, whatever you do, don't turn out your bedroom lights this weekend. Rock and roll. Paul. Wow.