 Hey there, and welcome to the Vergecast, the week of January 13th. What is it? What do we decide? It's January. Whatever. It's January. It's 2014. It's mid-January. I'm Josh. I'm Josh Topolsky. I'm Nilay Patel. Hi, I'm Addie Robertson. Yes, it's Addie. She's with us today. And I got to say, Addie and I are very cash today. We're casual. I'm trying to... We're like maybe we're having some cocoa. Having some cocoa. I feel like this is like cold weather gear. This thing is really thick, this shirt. Yeah, yeah. It's got the patches. What is happening with my hair? It's like there's a weight on the side of it that's pushing it downward. I feel a little like surfing safari curl. A little surfing. This is a natural. That's all natural right there. It's good. It looks a lot better. Much better. So much better. It looks perfect. Yeah, no, it looks great. Just don't ever show it from the side again or I will rip off this mic and kill you in the control room. It's kind of like Brie Pettis hair. Brie Pettis hair? Brie Pettis hair. Also known as prayer. Netflix is bringing Lily Hammer back for a third season. Lily Hammer? That's the show I've never watched. No, I watched the first episode of Lily Hammer and I did not like it. I don't think anyone has ever liked it. Well, it's done. They're doing three seasons of it. Just goes to show you how much you can do being unsuccessful. It's pretty crazy. I don't know. Have you ever met a person who's like, oh, Lily Hammer, that's my show. Have you ever seen it get an award? Have you ever heard anybody talk about it? I think TC mentioned he didn't hate it once. TC, man, what does he know? You can't trust him. That's like an alien who just came to the earth for the first time and is like, you know, I think Lily Hammer is a pretty good show. Yeah, no, the first part of that story was- Is this a trailer for Lily Hammer? TC was like, I was blazed and playing magic and it was on in the background and then I didn't hate it. It was an adequate background show. The plot of the show is that this mobster who's like, this guy, what's his name? Steven Van Zant? Yeah. Steven Van Zant who's in the E Street Band, by the way. Guitar player for the E Street Band. And also has a great show on- I feel like the E Street Band, in terms of members who have gone on to great things, he's the best. Because Max Weinberg is- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's the boss. They're all like, we're all basically the boss. We're close to the boss. Yeah, do you need a guy? Call the E Street Band. You need an actor for Lily Hammer? Call somebody from the E Street Band. So he plays a mobster who is relocated in witness protection or something to Sweden? Norway. Norway. Yeah. But Lily Hammer. A Lily Hammer, right. Yes. And then obviously hilarity ensues. Yeah. Hilarity that no one has ever seen. He's an Italian American mobster living in a very foreign- I know the show actually looks pretty good to me watching this trailer. I gotta say. Sure it does. I mean, the thing is if it weren't Netflix, we'd probably be like, oh, this is probably a pretty good show because it would be just in the middle of whatever terrible offerings the channel would have. You think? It would be like on AMC after The Walking Dead. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. This looks pretty good. I'm going to start watching Lily Hammer. You heard it here first. I'm going to start watching it within a week. Anyhow, is that on our topics list, Neil? No, I just saw it blazing by as I was scrolling through. I'm excited about that. It's actually been kind of a wild week of news. Very wild, very intense week of news. Everything has been intense this week. It's like after CS, people wanted to like, after skimming over the surface of everything at CS- Time to get deep. It's like, I saw a robot. I saw some glasses. Here's a laptop. I saw a robot eating glasses. Yeah. Yeah. He was like, he had bad vision. Wearing a bicycle. And I asked the guy, I was like, why didn't you just give him perfect vision? He said, I saw a robot. Yeah. You didn't have an answer. No. I made that up. That's not real. That didn't happen. Oh, I'm juice cleansing this week. I'm juice cleansing right now. How does that make you feel, America and the world? You feel good. I feel great. You're sprightly. I feel great. You're on your game. I'm never going to stop juicing. No, I feel fantastic and I recommend it. I'm still fed up. It's an extremely expensive habit though. I might as well just get addicted to drugs or something. I'd be out less money. Juice? Yeah. You'd be cheaper to just do coke, honestly. But you know what? It's not as healthy probably. It's probably that. And in terms of people who have said the phrase, I'm broke because I bought all this juice. Yeah. You probably have the saddest story. They really do. It's like the worst. No, I actually meant juice. My body is a temple. My pocketbook is empty. Well, Vegas is still within me. Yeah. Oh, that's not good. I'm waiting desperately for it to leave. How are you feeling post Vegas? I mean, I came home. I actually felt okay. I just can't wake up anymore. Yeah. My body thinks it's 3 a.m. Yeah. But didn't you feel... I felt like it just didn't... I mean, we were up... Our hours were so weird and intense that I feel like my body just doesn't care anymore. I thought that too. I was like, this is gonna be fine. I was waking up at 5 a.m. half the time there anyways. I haven't been going to bed really. It was not fun. I'm later than normal. And actually, I had one night this week where I went to bed at the normal hour and I woke up in the morning. I was like, oh my God, I feel great. And then completely blew it the next day. Like it just didn't stick. It was like a joke. My body was playing on me. Like imagine if you were a normal person. There's been a lot of people waking up at like 4 a.m. and not knowing what to do anymore and just like sending emails. That's what they should do. We've done a lot of work at 4 a.m. this week. I feel like I'm doing everything at half speed. Hit post. Like I'm trying to play Dishonored and I'm just like slowly looking at this guy. Slowly? Have you not finished Dishonored? I got the DLC, the second one. Whoa, there's multiple DLCs for Dishonored? And it's great. Oh my God. I really came around. Is there a Dead Rising 3 DLC out yet? Can someone tell me? Can someone tweet it Neilai? Are you on Twitter? Yeah. Tweet it Neilai. Yeah, you'll get a notification here on your iPhone. My giant creature. By the way, later in the show, big iPhone conversation from Josh Topolsky. Get ready. Let's talk about actual topics though. All right. So the biggest one, the week started with kind of huge news, which is a Google purchase nest. Huge news. That's kind of a big deal. Huge news for $3 billion. $3.2 billion. And big news if you're like, if you skew nerdy. Yeah. Like I think normal people. No, I mean, I called my parents, I was like, hey, they're like, what's going on? I'm like, hey, you know, the thermostats you have in your wall. And they were, they like got, I was talking to them for like regular reasons. No, no, no, no, no, no. But like Neilai Patel's parents, I don't think really count. Like my parents read the comments on the verge. Okay. They're like, these guys are saying very nasty things about you. I'm like, yeah, you need to not be reading that. I think anytime Google does anything. I'm just saying our parents don't count. Yeah. Well, this is also Google doing anything with a company that people who liked Apple really liked. Yeah. They just like put you in their nests and get really angry. Really? Oh yeah. I mean, there's like four guys. Oh yeah. I'm sure it's like four people. Well, it's like 100 Apple employees. They just bought it. It's also interesting. The guy who invented the iPod, like the guy used to run the iPhone. That's true. Like that's true. It's a big acquisition for them. Google should do is get Rubenstein in the mix. That'd be incredible. That would be so amazing. Yeah. Google hire Rubenstein for something. I don't care what it is. I just want to see him out there again doing something. What is he doing? Is he still on the beach in Mexico? He's been chilling for several years and his life is awesome. Do you think he's going to buy a webOS TV? Only if it's really small. I'll take your smallest TV. Only LG makes like a 13 inch TV. In terms of all of the trends he failed to predict or capitalize on, big phones is right up there. That was one that he was like, no, no, tiny phones. I mean, he really was psyched about the Pixie. I'm sorry. We're out of tangent here, but that's what we do. It's weird. I bought this company. I'm obviously a big fan of Nest. I wish I could have one. I love Tony. I did an interview with Nest. You don't have a Nest? No, I can. I live in New York City. Who has a thermostat? You can put it in your... What am I going to hook it up to? Just have it on the wall. Don't you have a thermostat? No, we have like big wall units. I can't even control the heat in that. I have to open the windows to cool it down. I have three thermostats in my house. You should let Google into your home. Dude, I have no problem with that. They know a lot more about me than like the temperature of my living room. I'm not worried. Google could, believe me, the stuff that Google's seen fly through their servers, they can ruin me several times over. So this is the thing. So Tony was like... Tony was instrumental. That's Tony Fidel for those of you who aren't good friends with the founder of Nest, the creator of the iPod, and now Google employee number 500,000. Yeah, right. Well, there's a lot to... It's weird. Tony Fidel and Andy Rubin working together is kind of nuts. And Andy stole the bunch of ideas and made them into Android after the iPhone came out. They're very open about it. I'm sure they're buddies though. They used to work together at General Magic. They have cubicles next to each other. What about Matthias? Do you know his feelings on Matthias? I don't know his feelings on Matthias. I see those guys in a room together. How weird is that room? Think about that room though. Their room's getting pretty awesome. It's the guy who did the iPhone, a guy who did WebOS, and the guy who made Android. They can all get in a room and do some crazy stuff. Here's our... Product marketing guy. That's not Tony Fidel. We had a Tony Fidel interview when the Nest launched. That's the same. We also have a great... You did a Q&A with him right after the Google acquisition. And everybody should read that because it's... Well, so here's the thing. So it's crazy to me because it's crazy how disappointed I felt like everybody was when this announcement was made. And I frankly felt the same way. I thought Tony was building a company that could stand by itself and be a big crazy company outside of the platform wars. So they made products that worked well with iOS and with Android. They were independent of this crazy noise and everything wasn't leveraged to make you use Android or force you to use iOS. Well, but Google hasn't done much of that. Let's be clear. Google has not done a lot of lock-in. You look at what they've done with their iOS apps, they have a robust suite of iOS apps that tap into all of their services. They seem to be sometimes better than their Android counterparts. They're not ignoring iOS and they're not ignoring Mac users. A lot of people... I know pretty much everybody at Google uses a Mac. Right. I don't think it's a Mac. I think it's more... They're gonna start to integrate the Nest stuff into the Google ecosystem. It's going to happen. The big question was, are you gonna use our privacy policy? And they're like, not right now. And then their answer is, our privacy policy is clear. We can only use your data to improve Nest products and services. So do you think... I can list off 10 ways right now that if you integrated with Google's data, you can improve your services. Addy, when you think of the Google Nest purchase, does it make you scare you? No, I mean, well, it doesn't scare me because, yeah, Google knows everything about me. That scares me more than it should. What kind of stuff do they know? Can you tell me? I mean... Give me an example of some of the things you wouldn't like to share. Well, Google can tell where you go. And it can tell if you come there with somewhere and you leave without them. And then you go to a store. She went to an abandoned building with a friend. Now the friend did not leave the abandoned building. Although they did shut down Latitude. So at least won't broadcast it to everyone now. The reactions fell into three buckets. It was consumers were like, Google ruins everything and they shut things down in the end. And I saw a lot of that. It was tech investor dudes who... Ben helped me with this part of the report, who were like, Google Ventures invests in companies and then they buy them. And so we're at a disadvantage. That's rough. And then it was privacy people who were like, we don't want to give Google any more data. What is there to be excited about? That's the thing. Is there anything cool? Well, I think the thing to be excited... You mean about the purchase? Yeah. Just... Well, I would say the thing to be excited about is that Google easily has the money and time and people required to supercharge what NASA is doing. To say, okay, your technology is great and you've made two connected devices. That's really good. But let's start making more connected devices. Let's get them into more stores. Let's sell them for less money. Let's get some of the Motorola hardware guys. They could just do whatever it is with that firewall they have and bring them over. Well, the Motorola guys don't even have bad... These guys now work for Google in a way that the Motorola guys don't. And I... Are they going to shatter it? You don't think they're going to shatter it. I don't think they're going to. I think it's a great brand. I think people like it. Right. They're in the Apple store. So do you think they'll remove from the Apple store there's been an ad? Do you think that they would... No. I think the comments is like, see you later. That's going to leave the Apple store. But I don't think Apple's like that. They make money selling the Nest. Yeah. I don't think they care. It's still going to be compatible. They're not going to change the compatibility with platforms. It's going to continue to be compatible with iOS devices. Right. No, I think that the story really is like, here was this company that everybody was rooting for. It was an underdog and people wanted the underdog to turn into a behemoth. And instead they just sold it. They wanted Nest to be like Google. Yeah. But I'll tell you, man, if Tony can influence... Stop scrolling wild. I didn't realize that. If Tony can influence Google into making awesome products, awesome consumer products, if Tony's the one guy who's going to pick up a Nexus 5 and be like, this camera is a very good guy. Make it better. No, but Tony is the guy that they need to do that. We were just talking about cameras, smartphone cameras before we started. Of course we were. But he's the guy, he's the kind of guy who would say like, yo, this camera sucks and we're not going to release this. If Google can, if Google's going to put him in that role. I mean, if Tony was like head of hardware at Google, I would be, if I were Apple, I'd be scared to death. Yep. And if I were Google, I'd be like really excited. And as a consumer, I'd be really excited. Yeah. I mean, I hope they do that. I hope that they continue to do Nest as a business and grow that. But I would love to see some of these guys. I mean, they have really smart people. I mean, amazing. Yeah, no, that would be really exciting. Tony's co-founder Matt is like an original iPhone engineer. These guys are the real deal. I mean, they've hired some of the best people in the industry. And so like for Google to get them is a big deal. I think that the fears are, I wrote a whole piece on it. Like people are freaking out. It's weird. Yeah. And it should be a slam dunk. So that was the big news. Hey, is there any way you could turn down this ear quaking volume of my earpiece there, you guys in the control room? Because I'm suffering, suffering here and you don't seem to care at all. It's not coming down in any, in any attempting to turn it. That's the kind of high level technology we're dealing with here on the Vergecast. They can maybe turn down the volume. There it goes. They've done it. That's a little quiet actually right now. You messing with me? All right. So that's the, that's the big, like. That was the big product news. That's the big product news. But there's a much actually bigger, more important story this week. Yeah. Maybe, maybe you guys. Addie's been covering the news more. Why don't you intro the news of the week. And I'll just react angrily to the news. Okay. So in a court case earlier this week. The open internet rules, which were the FCC's net neutrality rules went on trial finally because Verizon sued them years and years ago. And Verizon won dramatically. Yeah. I mean they beat the FCC. They beat them on basically like 95% of counts. There was one thing they didn't get. What was that one thing? So there were three things that they were more or less trying to take down. There was a rule against blocking content. There's a rule against discriminating against or for content. And there's a rule saying, okay, look, you have to be transparent. If you're doing a thing, you have to tell them. Those first two are gone. Right. Yeah. But if you are screwing with your data, they're going to let you know. Yeah. That's great. So, so Neelai, put it in perspective for us. What does this mean for the future of the internet? I think it's real bad for the future of the internet. I think. Go on. I do. I've been saying it for years and years. This is like with that behind you, this looks like the Kanye performance. It's like the start, like the start graphic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Scroll down. Get me, get the skull above. Can we get the skull near? Yes. It's terrible. No, look, I think it's awful. And I think the FCC has done a terrible job of advocating for what should be a super simple idea, which is that the internet connection should just be neutral. Like it should be equal for all comers to do things on just like your phone line. Just give me the dumb, give us the dumb version of what this means. Like the. Sure. Like, like I'm a dummy. I don't know anything about the internet. I don't know anything about the internet. Sure. Up until now, here's my experience. I can make this super personal. Just here's my experience with the internet up until now. I pay for a Time Warner. I pay for their internet. I get it. I pay a hundred bucks a month because I have Docsis or whatever, and I get 50 down five up and I can just do whatever I want on. I could stream whatever I want. I can watch whatever videos I want. So right at this second, this means that internet operators, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner, there are now all free to start monkeying with that connection in ways that you might not anticipate. You might say, well, we don't have a good deal with Netflix, so we're going to throttle their traffic. So you're more inclined to use Verizon's video. They'd probably give a better excuse though, right? Like Netflix uses an enormous amount of bandwidth and our networks are, you know, are ill equipped to handle that particular type of bandwidth. However, you know, Verizon video streaming is, or Time Warner's video streaming services. Notably these rules never really applied on mobile, which is why I say FaceTime could be blocked forever. That's right. And Hangouts, remember when Hangouts first came out at IO? 18th, they wouldn't let it run. Oh right. And iMessage was, I think, was there? Oh no, iMessage was fine because it's Apple. But so all this stuff, if you look at the way that mobile carriers shape your data or restrict the apps you can use or say you can't have it. Or let people sponsor your data. Or let people sponsor your data now. All this stuff can now come to the majority of the consumer net, which is the broadband you plug, you get from the wall. Which means hypothetically, any carrier could say, sorry, any provider could say, you know, Skype is a bandwidth hog and you'll have to pay an additional fee in order to use a service like Skype on our, $5 extra a month to use Skype. Yep. There's a great, do you have that graph that everybody pulls up? Oh yeah, the chart, the fake chart. Can you pull that up? It's the best chart. Somebody pull that up. But here's the interesting thing about it. I feel like in mobile, we've just started to get to a point where the conversation is happening where it's like, hey, the way we handle mobile data, which has increasingly become a utility for people, increasingly is a thing you must have in the 21st century, is we're now starting to, we were just starting to get to the point where we're like, hey, we need to reevaluate how we're handling this. The FCC has said to AT&T, you can't block FaceTime over LTE or whatever, whatever their weird. They didn't really actually say that much today. I mean, the FCC makes, here's the thing about the FCC. What are we looking at here? This is the fake chart. So you pay your company $30 a month, and if you want to use Google, you pay another five. If you want to get CNN, that's another five. If you want to get Hulu, that's another 10. You can tell how old this fight is by the fact that MySpace is on here? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, this has been going on in one form or another since basically 2000. This is our serious future if we don't change this right now. Here's the deal. Basically, we need to stop playing this game, right? It is a language game. That was a big thrust of your article. I think what makes the whole thing so weird is that if you actually just read through the court order, it sounds like they love the FCC and are like, the thing you're doing is really important and you make a great argument. The court came right out and said, the FCC has adequately convinced us that broadband providers are a threat to broadband deployment, which is insane. Broadband providers, their business is deploying broadband, but their real business is extracting more and more revenue from the wires they already have in the ground. The best way for them to do that is to start restricting what you can do with those wires, creating scarcity and charging more. They said that. They say it out loud all the time. They want that. No, no, no. I'm saying the court said, essentially said- The court said broadband providers are a threat to broadband deployment. If they can start- Because their job, because their business isn't broadband deployment, it's- It's extracting revenue from their already sunk costs. Exactly. And increasing the cost. Which, by the way, is fair. They own other companies, like they own content companies. They own- Right. And increasing subscribers, when increasing subscribers happens through deployment of broadband, it's only by accident. Right, because they're like, well, we need to be here. Right, exactly. So what Comcast should do is say, we can't artificially discriminate what you do on our wires, so we should go out and create new uses for the wires we have in the ground. Right. But if you don't constrain them from charging you more for the wires you have, they're never gonna go that next step. Right. They're never gonna find new creative ways for you to use the bandwidth. So the court is saying over and over again, the FCC has proven its case, they need these rules, these rules are acquired for this kind of innovation. They've proven that innovation doesn't happen on the backbone, it happens at the edges. That's what they call it. So we're an edge provider in the court's language, right? You mean the verge. The verge is an edge provider. Yeah. So we sit at the edge of one network, there's a big backbone in between, and the user sits at the end of another edge. Right. So the edges are where the innovation happens, right? Damn right, they are. They're at the edge of the platform. The verge is technically the edge. Yeah, so it's almost, you know it means penis in French. It does mean penis in French also. So they say over and over again, we believe you, the FCC should have the authority to do this, but in 2002 you made the wrong decision. And instead of classifying broadband the same way that you classify landline phones, you said we're gonna take a light touch and you're an information service like AOL. Like original dial AOL was an information service, because you would call their server and their server would do a bunch of stuff. Right. It was a direct. It was very different. It processed, AOL processed information, they gave it to you and they said, well we can't regulate those guys. And brought cable internet. Because it's like a glorified ABS. Cable broadband, you know, maybe everyone's gonna have a server and your ISP will give you an email address. That's an information service and they didn't classify them like the phone companies. And immediately everything went to hell, like basically. And that's it, like that decision in 2002. Well we couldn't, I mean they just didn't see what was obviously going to happen, which is broadband is a utility. Yeah. It is, it is. I mean it's so obvious to everybody who's paying attention. I get that, I get, there may be some like confusion at the moment because we've just crossed over very recently into the necessity for broadband as like in the way that utilities are necessary. But and people are like, what are you talking about? It's a luxury. I don't need it. You know, but you do, but you do need it. And everybody needs it. And for America to be, I'm just, we're talking about America here because other countries have very different laws about how this works. But for America to be America, this thing needs to be freely and openly available. Like that's just a fact. Like I guess there can be gatekeepers who make you pay for access to the thing. That I get. Well I mean just think about the. I understand like the idea of saying, hey we're the phone company and we are going to provide this service to you and you're going to pay us X. But it cannot be a compartmentalized, you know, die of stuff. And this is a ridiculous historical analogy. This is going to be great. Like dawn of the internet historical analogy. So a long time ago when AT&T built the entire network, their argument was we built the entire network, right? We got the lease from the government. We're going to put wires where we built the whole network. It's ours. You can't do anything with it. Like we're going to sell you the phone. We're going to send it to the receiver. If your phone breaks, we got to sell you a new one. Our installer has to come. This is landline phones. Like, you know, not that long ago by the way, not that long ago. There are amazing seventies advertisements about why they should continue to be a monopoly. Right. And I'm referring to every argument that you hear from wireless carriers or Comcast or whatever to maintain the integrity of the phone network. You have to let us own it from end to end. And they actually had an argument where like they did have the entire thing built like it was theirs. It's so different from how it is now because we have many, many competing networks in different areas all over the country. We have, yeah. Anyway, I don't mean landlines. I mean, I mean for broadband, there are. You mean like wireless, but that's still pretty rough, right? They're not one to one competitors. Like you're never going to throw away your Comcast cable connection for a Verizon wireless connection. I disagree. Not anytime soon. You don't think so? Verizon's got that capped. It's got it locked. It's got it. But I'm saying like the potential is there for a Verizon, a wireless Verizon connection to be faster and more efficient than a. Well, you're living in a world where. You're definitely making like the cable company argument right now. How would you even watch it? Like you run up against your data cap so quickly. I'm not trying to make the argument. I'm just saying that. I'm not too good at having this data. I'm saying technically speaking, that is a possibility, but anyhow, go on. Yeah. I mean, our build out of. That technicality is very far away. Anyway, so there was a company that literally made a plastic attachment that went on the end of your AT&T receiver. It wasn't electronic. It was mechanical. It was a big plastic horn. It was called the Carter phone and it let you hear the phone better. It was like a big, it was just a piece of plastic. It was an accessory. And AT&T sued them to block it, to block them from sales of it. And the Supreme Court, this Carter phone decision, you know, look it up. It's ancient. They said, no, no, no, AT&T can't do this. You have to be able to attach anything you want to the network. And that resulted in an explosion of innovation because suddenly this network was available for people to use. It's what resulted directly in modems being allowed to be connected to the internet, connected to the phone system. It's why the internet fundamentally exists. And all that happened was the government said, good job AT&T. You built this network. Now you have to let people use it any way they want. And what our court is saying today is that's a great policy goal. People should be able to use the internet any way they want. We understand it. But to do that, FCC, you have to tell people it's a utility. You have to tell people it's the same as the landline phone system. And until the FCC makes that decision, which we talked to a bunch of people yesterday, that's the way to go. That's the thing they have to do. We're kind of screwed. Because we're back to that era of Comcast saying, well, to connect anything to our network, you want to use a laptop, you need to buy our laptop. That's a possibility. My argument for the way mobile networks are their business is. You can compare them directly. Think about what you can, Wi-Fi is a great example. How good is the router that Comcast gives you? It's usually terrible. Very bad. Very bad. Anybody listening to this show, I think, probably turns off their provider's crappy router that you're given and buys a much nicer router. Because you can iterate. You can get a better one. There's competition. You can't do that with your cell phone. You're locked into contracts. You can't connect anything. But they charge you to tether. There's all this stuff that mobile carriers can do. The charge to tether is bullshit. Let's analyze. Let's just for a second step back and think about this in the world of the internet, in your broadband at home, and think about what tethering is. Here's the deal. You have a contract. I pay for eight gigs from AT&T. They're like, okay, cool. You bought this eight gigs of data from us that you're going to use on your LTE device, which is often faster than my home broadband, which is why I made that point. Often faster than my home broadband. But you have Time Warner Cable. Yes. And it's very bad. You know why Time Warner Cable sucks? It's because they have zero competition. No competition. So here's the thing. They're like, okay, cool. You're spending X amount of dollars on your eight gigs. I'm like, oh, good. I want to use my phone as a conduit to get some data onto my laptop because sometimes I need to use a larger device to type some things. Oh, you want to use your laptop to get your data? Through your phone as a connector? Sorry, that's going to be an additional... No, it's like... Is it 20 or 25? No, we're going to charge you an additional fee, which by the way, there's nothing that you can do because this phone, this is a computer. This does everything a computer does. I can BitTorrent on it. I can stream music on it. I can watch Netflix on it. It does every single thing a computer does. That's your list of things computer. No, I'm just saying those are the things that people get that the carriers will tell you like, well, on a computer you may start BitTorrents or whatever. It's like, yeah, no, that's like maybe last decade. That was the situation. So how crazy is it that they can literally impose a random fee for zero reason on data you already pay for because of the thing you will connect to it? The fact that we even accept that for a moment is insane. The reason they can do it is because they're not regulated in the way that a utility would be regulated where they... Well, but there's this big difference. So on mobile, they've always said, and it's believable to a point, our networks aren't... We don't have enough spectrum. The networks that we have are too congested already. They can throttle data. There's also a much bigger argument I think for competition on mobile though because you can actually literally... They have a very strong incentive to build big networks. You're watching T-Mobile and Sprint do this challenger thing. You can't get Comcast in New York. Right. If you want to live... If I was in Washington Heights, I could only get Time Warner Cable. Right. No, that's how it is in my neighborhood. But with mobile, there are actually competing national networks. There's at least four of them. Then you're watching this stuff kind of cap in, right? Like T-Mobile is unlimited data. They're pushing on AT&T's reacting. Fine. Mobile, we didn't regulate it as hard. Well, it needs to be regulated harder. I agree. But on landmine, we did try to regulate it hard. And we said, you can't block devices and services from a cable internet connection. You can't discriminate on what kind of content. You can't speed things up and slow them down. You can't... And when you do it, you have to be transparent about it, right? And the court agreed, that's all great. Because you don't want Comcast to say, to use your own Wi-Fi router, you have to pay me an extra 20 bucks. Which they can do now. The rule is gone. Comcast is more than able now to say, to use your own networking equipment at the end of our connection. There's an additional fee. And they already have the plans. They'll deploy them next month. They're ready to go. I'm not joking. Here's the thing. This makes SOPA look like child's play. SOPA is like, I would love to have SOPA in place of this. I mean, SOPA is obviously awful and I don't want it. But if you had to pick, right? What would you pick? What would you pick? Like 99% of the consumer internet is like the same as it is and you're not allowed to go to piracy sites. Or Comcast gets to... And there's the occasional... Or Comcast just gets to bone you whenever they want. I mean, like the people who are up in arms about SOPA should be... I mean, this is like such a threat to, without being dramatic, like this is not, we're not sending people off to war for no reason, but like this is such a threat to... It's a threat to like free speech. Freedom of speech. I mean, freedom of speech is the first thing that I think about. Like the idea that they could impose a rule that discriminates against anything, any one server service or server or site. I mean, they literally... Verizon could literally be like, the Verge's content is not appropriate for our network. Like we need to, we're going to limit the amount of Verge content you can see. What's really ironic is that Verizon tried to say that net neutrality was violating their First Amendment rights. Which never actually came up in court because they were like, what the fuck? Is this like, are they doing that because of corporate personhood or? Their argument is that they're, it's like if a newspaper were being forced to carry certain content, they... That's so wildly out of, that's so wildly wrong about like... Comparisons. What you would consider the network to be. It's a net, you're not a newspaper, you're a network. A newspaper is not a network. A newspaper is a newspaper. They're very, it's a specific thing. No, no, but this is Verizon will tell you over and over again that they're an integrated information service that when you, that every customer signs up for Fios and they use their Fios email address and their homepage is fios.com with the personal... Yeah, sure. Dude, I have Fios, all of your shit sucks. Like I want you to turn all of it off and give me the money back. But that's beside the point. But it's like this charade, it's like they're insecure. That's like saying that like, you know, that's like just because you go to a hotel, you don't watch the hotel network when you turn your TV on there. You change the channel. Right. You know? It's not a great comparison. Well, Verizon and all these companies are used to being TV providers too, where you are the content network. You are the thing. And I mean, they're just, this is just a lie that they've told and it's a lie that our government accepted. Oh, by the way, the TV thing, that's a great example. You know, you have these companies like Comcast that own... NBC. Networks. And then you started to look at like, Hey, you know what's a real threat to NBC? Netflix. Right. You know what's a threat to NBC? Hulu, even though they're, you know, they partner on stuff. But like all they have to do is say, you know what, this is bad for our business. They won't say it out loud. They'll say Netflix streaming is... Well, they're already doing that. They're doing, they will not count, shoot, what's the company that will not count X TV service against Xfinity? Xfinity. Yeah, Xfinity. You stream Xfinity TV through Comcast. To your Xbox. Doesn't count against your data cap. They got all kinds of trouble for it. Which is basically like the thing that AT&T is trying to do. Yeah, sponsor data. Right. Except it would only be like AT&T data. But I think AT&T actually does that too. Right. If you use AT&T's music service, it doesn't count. So I will say, we have an interview. Addy and I talked to Michael Powell, who is a former FCC chairman. He was the guy who, he wrote the first no blocking rule when he was Republican FCC chairman. Now he's the head of the National Cable and Telecom Association, which is a big cable group. And we, you know, he's very convincing. He's a very charming man. And I will say he made some... Most politicians are. He made good points when he talked to us yesterday. He's like, look, the market, if you're a cable guy with wires in the ground, you're never going to block services because you want all of that infrastructure to be used at max capacity all the time. It's not enough. It doesn't matter to say never. And I just don't... It's like I got off the phone, I looked at Addy and I was like, man, I kind of believe him. And then like five minutes later, I was like, I don't think so. No, here's the thing. It's fine. That's great. Then make, put it in fucking writing. Make it real. Like you're never going to block service. Say you're never going to block service. Let it be a thing. Like you can't block service. You're not going to put it in writing because you need to be able to block service. Because at some point you're going to decide there's something that is a threat to your business or your needs and you're going to block service. This is the thing about regulation. This is why regulation exists. This is why our government is important and we need them. We need somebody else whose interests are not financial. And yes, often the government and financial interests from private companies align in bad ways. But there are also instances where, I mean, the telephone network example is a great one, where you need someone to say you can't just like, I promise I won't do it. You need to actually do it. Like this is why laws exist. You know what? Guess what? We can all say we won't murder anybody. But the fact that murder is illegal and that you'll go to jail or be put in the electric chair for it is definitely a larger deterrent. It's important that we say, you know what? Yeah, we all know murder is wrong and you all swear you won't murder. But also if you do murder someone, there will be a punishment for you. There will be repercussions. Like you can't just do it and then go like, well, I didn't mean to. Well, the arguments, yeah, one of the arguments is that even when these rules aren't in place, the uncertainty, the fact that maybe the FCC could put them in place is keeping people in check. Right. Well, but I mean, which is, yeah, which means that if you turn them, if you overturn them and you definitively say, look, these don't work, then that's totally gone. I mean, I guess I understand like, I guess Verizon, they lost a ton of money last year, didn't they? Yeah. I mean, Oh, I was joking. I think they had record profits. I think Verizon had record profits. Well, it's actually, well, the difference between wireless and the landline business. No, I think the landline, I mean, well landline. But this is right. But like Verizon wire, Verizon in the ground and Verizon wireless are vastly different and their Verizon, I think is playing a game where they're making their wire line business look worse than it is. Right. In order to say we don't, we no longer have the regulatory, you can't tell us that we have to run this business anymore. Well, it's also, that's like my theory. It's like a pet theory. My other theory is that it's like how the NRA, even though, you know, they don't care about like people murdering people with plastic guns are still going to like oppose them because that will open the door to any other regulation. Right. Like I've had, I've talked to people at various sort of libertarian think tanks and they basically do say just, yeah, this is a Trojan horse. Like net neutrality is a Trojan horse. Well what, a Trojan horse for further regulation? Basically yes. Yeah. That's not actually true. I mean, yes, there will. There will be a precedent set if there's net neutrality regulation that's real. But you know, we all, we have other, we have other regulatory precedents in this country and like they're really important. Like you know, freedom of speech is a thing that we have in this country. Like it has to be, first off it has to be like regulated around, like people have to come up with the way that we actually, the way we make free speech happen. But it's also a thing that we said we're going to do because we think it's important. And it's like that happens all the time in this country and it doesn't like, it's on a snowball of like, like, oh, well now murder, like again, like now murder is legal because speech is legal. There are no market forces that like make free speech happen. Right? Right. And what I think is interesting is that, I wrote this at the end of my piece yesterday. It's what you're going to hear and you're going to hear, I mean again, Comcast owns NBC. So MSNBC, which I think is the most overtly liberal of the cable networks, even they're going to say, I guarantee it, there are headlines of this are going to be like the Democrats want to regulate the internet, which is not true. You know what we want to do? We want to regulate the internet providers. Like and that's real because Verizon and Time Warner and Comcast and AT&T are not the internet. They're the conduit by which the internet is great. And the internet's great because we're all able to connect to each other without them getting in the way. And they're not good at getting out of the way because when they stand in the way, they can charge you to get past them. I mean, there's no denying this simple fact, which is everything that we have that is the internet would not exist in a scenario where Verizon, Comcast or any other provider could like stop somebody from getting to you or stop somebody from getting through on their network and like, or change the way it gets to you. Or say, this is one of those things. Netflix would not exist the way it does now. The verge would not exist the way it does now. Um, the, the, I mean every single Reddit would not exist, like would not exist. Well, I mean, and this is, I think, uh, maybe this is a much more melodramatic, uh, story to tell, but like just think about the fact that we left AOL when we all worked for Angadget. Sorry. Addy. Addy, you thankfully did. Addy, Addy came to us fully formed. Uh, she was like, I have arrived. And we're like, thank God. Um, no, we, so we, we left AOL. AOL is a huge internet service provider. It still is. It may runs dial up, runs broadband. It's actually, it's actually, I'm pretty sure still how they're making most of their money. They make a lot of money that way. It's dial up. Imagine if AOL was still a dominant internet service provider and they were mad at us and they said to all of their customers, well, these guys are jerks. They quit our business and we're not going to let you go to their business. Yeah. And that would be terrible. And it would be capricious and awful. And maybe, you know, I certainly people at AOL wouldn't have thought that way, but maybe they would have. Right. And there would have been nothing. And right now there's nothing standing in the way. I mean, it's, it's somebody at Comcast saying, I don't like that guy is a jerk. MSNBC is a great example of like, you know, it's a Comcast owned business that it's in their best interest to have more eyes on MSNBC than it is on CNN. So they might say like, Hey, you know what? We're going to have to meter the amount of data that CNN puts through our network because they have a lot of video. Yeah. And if we're going to have MSNBC, we're going to provide free of charge as a, as a, as a, to make up for the limiting of CNN. And this rule that they have to be transparent is a great rule, but I mean, it doesn't matter how transparent you are when there's no regulation to stop you. If you've ever rented a car, the car companies, they're regulated. Hertz is regulated to the point where they, the law specifies the font and font size of the contracts so that consumers read them. And they still get around. I mean, if you look at a rental car contract, it's not like a pleasant transparent documentary read. I just get all the insurance. I get every insurance. I'm like, do you have any extra insurance offers? Great. Somewhere on Verizon's homepage, there'll be a link buried to like how they're throttling MSNBC or whatever, and they'll be over. Disclosure is not important. What's important is that like you either can do it or can't do it. Like to admitting, admitting to doing the crime is not like an issue. I murdered a guy. Yeah, no, again, I mean the murder thing is a great, I think it's a great argument. It's like, it's like, it doesn't, it doesn't matter if you admit to it. All that matters is that there are repercussions. All that matters is that you were stopped from doing it. Yeah. I mean, murder is kind of a bad example because you can't really regulate, you can't regulate murdering. I mean, you can, you can regulate the laws around murdering. Yeah. We regulate murder all the time. Well, we don't, but it's not like you can't, this is a thing where if it's regulated properly, it will stop the thing we don't want from happening. Murder's not like you can't regulate it. So it's like he's physically incapable of murdering now. Like, well, you can't fit. I mean, you can't stop. I mean, Comcast got caught throttling BitTorrent. It's not like they went and installed filters on their equipment. They just told them to stop doing it. Well, the other thing though is that Comcast genuinely did after the order got overturned, keep up their, like they didn't start blocking BitTorrent again. Although they argued and stuff. Yeah. Every ISP yesterday put out very statements that were like either inspiring or terrifying, right? Like Verizon's, the court's decision will allow room for more innovation. And it's like, these are like a gleeful, like innovative accountant somewhere at Verizon is like, finally. Yeah. What does that mean? It's just weird. It's like Verizon remains committed to the open internet that provides consumers with competitive choices and unblock. It's like great jerk ass. Like why did you file a loss? I like this. As the FCC assesses AT&T, as the FCC assesses the impact of today's court decision, AT&T can assure all of our customers and stakeholders that our commitment to protect and maintain an open internet will not change. It's like that in a quarter will get you a newspaper because here's the thing. That is the, this is like the dictionary definition of lip service. Yeah. Meanwhile, there's a guy behind them like counting stacks of money going like, you know, you know, if we throttle Netflix, we can actually make like 10 cents more on the dollar. Like here's the thing. These companies, not a single one of them has your best interest in mind, not Verizon on AT&T. No private for-profit company has your best interest in mind as a consumer. Now it may do nice things for you. It may provide wonderful things for you as a, as an accident in making money. They may also give you something you want. But there is no single, I mean, I shouldn't say there may be some company that's for-profit that also wants the best for its customers, but a company like Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, they do not. What they want is profit. Like what they need is profit in order to continue being the company they are in the having the monopoly they have, they need to grow profits. So your best interest is secondary, quite secondary to their needs. And like whatever they have to say, unless someone can physically stop them, unless the government and that's the only entity that can, unless like suddenly, they just get really organized and do a lockout. Or maybe Google, except then Google will do the same thing. You can make a super, the literal. I mean if Google builds its own new open internet. That's not going to happen. And then they will lock you into Gmail. Well then they'll be like, oh, I got to see Google ads everywhere. No, I mean they. Or whatever the argument is. You know, Google is in trouble, right? They rolled out Fiber and they had a weird terms of service that prevented you from running a server on it. And we all like yelled and screamed and they changed their terms of service, right? Like ISPs are ISPs. They have the same incentives. And even if you're Google and you are in Kansas City and you hook up every single person in Kansas City, how do you make more money in Kansas City? But also like the answers. No, but the answers are simple. It's either you find ways to charge those people more. I mean that's it, right? That's like you've run out of people in Kansas City. You got to charge them more somehow. Right. There's only two choices. One, you can make them use more internet, which is hard. That's difficult. Like find new ways for them to use more capacity. So you can charge them more for additional capacity. Or you can say, we're leaving the capacity the same, but we're just going to charge you more for it. And you invent reasons to charge people more for it. And those reasons are stupid. We're going to charge you to hook up your Wi-Fi. We're going to throttle Netflix and you have to pay a little bit more for it. You like YouTube and you don't like Vimeo, well too bad. More people use YouTube. So Vimeo will go at the same speed and YouTube will be a little bit slower unless you pay. And those are the things that you're going to see. And you're seeing the comparison one to one is with phone companies. Because the phone companies do this stuff all day and all night. And because we've never regulated them out of doing it, it seems normal to us. What's crazy is we lost protection of an open internet. And AT&T's statement that they're committed to it. If you were really committed to the open internet, you would have said don't. If Verizon was committed to the open internet, they wouldn't have filed the lawsuit. Exactly. If Comcast was committed to the open internet, they wouldn't have filed the lawsuit the first time in 2007. What's interesting about the Kansas City analogy is that what good is great broadband in Kansas City when everything that has to get there has been blocked or throttled? You know what I mean? Because here's the thing, that's the internet. The internet isn't about the place where you are, it's about the stuff that comes in and goes out obviously. If you consider the network effect of all of this, it is so scary and awful. This is a real threat to our freedom in my opinion. It's a threat to our economy. It's a threat to businesses in this country. It's a threat to free speech in this country. It's a threat to healthy competition. It has to be stopped. This has to be changed. It has to be overturned. It has to be overturned and there has to be real new proper language. I'm collecting some people who aren't me to help me write stories. It can't just be me yelling all the time. No, it can be. As entertaining as that is, we're talking to a lot of people out there who are going to help us write some stuff, do some what to do next kind of stuff. So just look for it. There are really two things that they can do. They can appeal or they can try to reclassify. That's what the FCC can do. Our readers, I don't think they're going to do it. You can march on the Supreme Court right now. I mean honestly, if this were, I think civil unrest is a great idea. I mean I think calling. I think violent civil unrest. I've talked to some people about why SOPA, PIPA protests were effective and the answer that I've gotten, which is really interesting, it wasn't the blackout. It wasn't what happened online. It wasn't emails. It was people picking up the phone and calling the representatives and basically phone line de-dossing Capitol Hill and just being like, you have to talk to us about this. And that was super effective. I think this needs to be stronger though because I think they learned from SOPA. I think they are now more ready for it. There needs to be a stronger message sent. It's also easier to stop something than to get something started, which is this. And getting something started is difficult. Tom Wheeler, he seems like he says the wrong thing a lot. He's the new chairman of the FCC. Sometimes in the second time around, he says the right thing. Well, that's because he heard the first thing he said. He was like, wait a second, that was right. Everyone has a lot of frowns in this room actually. What I meant was I love the open internet. He used to be the president of the NCTA. He used to be Michael Powell. He was the head lobbyist for the cable company. The amount of cronyism there is a little out of control. The cronyism is a great way to put it. The cronyism is out of control. We'll see. He's been on the job for three months. He's brand new. I'm sure the first thing he wants, his first thing on the job, his fancy new job, is to preside over the total gutting of the FCC. I don't think he's too interested in that. Fix the broken internet. We'll see. We'll see how he does. That's depressing. We're going to have a lot more on that on The Verge in the coming days and weeks. I don't really want to talk about this. You know what this phone is? It's running CyanogenMod. I don't really care. I love this camera. It's ridiculous. Do we have to talk about this? No DLC for Dead Rising 3S. I was the one who asked, just so you know. Thank you, Kevin. You told the people who tweeted me. Did I tell them to tweet at you? Yeah. Because you have a computer open. Oh, I did. You're right. That's upsetting. When does that happen? I need something to do in my downtime. Because I'd sit and stare at a wall. The only reason I think this phone is interesting is because it's running like... It's running in Android. CyanogenMod is a company that makes Android skin. Well, it's not a skin. It goes much deeper than that. It's a completely different build of Android. It's essentially like a Linux distro. But Google will tell you that TouchWiz is a different build of Android. Do you really want to talk about this? This is the Oppo N1. I just like this camera. Yeah, so Time Warner. You know, I think Comcast is a great service. The money for dollar proposition with Comcast. I think what we were saying before was really misguided, actually. And we should give Time Warner and all of these providers, Verizon, Comcast, just give them a chance to see... I think we should just let them see... Especially because the verge will not count against your data caps now. That was very nice of them. Yes, that was a great text message I got from the heads of... Look, whenever I see that Verizon red color, my heart swells with pride. Yeah, I think that we need to just trust that they do have our best interest in mind. They are committed to the open internet. They are so committed. And let's not worry so much about this neutrality. You know what? Why would you care about that? What's being neutral? Who ever got anywhere by being neutral? Yeah. Right? Let's have an opinion. Let's take a side. Let's pick a side. Anyhow, yes, our... That might be the first Switzerland... Our internet just crashed. Actually, our TriCaster had some sort of hardware failure is what we're being told. But I believe it probably has to do with Comcast. Comcast sends a charge. Comcast sent a... There's a button that takes down the verge cast. What's the thing called? An EMP? Yeah, an EMP. Thank you. Okay, so we were talking about the Oppo N1, which I don't really care to talk about. But it's a great... Addy said the same exact thing. I said when I picked it up. This rotating camera thing is the ultimate creep shot. But then she started doing this and we were like, yeah, but maybe not because this looks super duper obvious. Way more obvious than like, I'm like, oh, I'm typing something, then I'm creep shotting you. That's it. You just do it very slowly. No, look here. Look, I'm sending you an email. I'm sending an email. But look, I'm also taking a picture of you. You wouldn't know. I'm just telling you. I mean, being in the middle of a creep shot off is... I like how I'm also the person who's creep shot is like, oh, yeah. All right, you wanna talk... Speaking of cameras, you wanna get into this? I wanna talk about... Josh did something... And then we're gonna talk about the Academy Awards, then we're gonna talk about... Case two. Yes. 1984. 1984. Really quickly, speaking of closed systems... Oh, my God. Hello, I'm contemplating returning to the iPhone, and here's why. Now, a few weeks ago, I got the Z1, which I love. I think it's a great phone. And I was like, I think this camera is better than the iPhone's camera. And it is a very, very, very good camera. Excellent camera. JPEG compression is out of control. No, I don't think so. I think you need to... They updated the software. I think you need to look at some of my full res photos. I might use some of my free time when we zoom in deep. I think in the version that we tested, which was 4.2 something, that they were doing harsher compression. I don't think at 4.3, it's nearly the same deal. Z1, excellent camera, excellent phone, tremendous battery life. But the camera is really good, right? So good, I was like, this is one of the best cameras I've ever used. I think it's better than the iPhone camera, the iPhone 5S camera, honestly. And we've done... We had spent CS, like head-to-head shooting things. And there were some great shots, like some really good shots on this. But then I started doing some, just some in-home experimentation this week, just going shot for shot with an iPhone 5S and the Z1, because I really wanted to know, what are the real differences? Where does it really break down? And it's just crazy how much better the iPhone camera actually is than every other camera, including the Z1, unfortunately. It's sad for me to say. But I took a picture of my duvet, I have this white duvet on our bed, and I took a close-up macro shot of some of the wrinkles on it. And this did a beautiful job, took a really nice photo of the duvet, looked totally like a great photo. Then the iPhone one was like great photo, and I could see the fibers of the duvet fabric. I mean, it's so much more detailed. And I'll tell you, this is the only number one reason I still have an iPhone. Okay, right. I'm jealous of the screen size. I'm getting to the point where this looks kind of like normal to me. Yeah, I mean, this to me, well, I went from, you know, I can't remember what it was, but there was like Moto X and Nexus 5. They're both relatively small. And then I had the S4, and I was messing around with the one is relatively a decent size. And then I got into this, I was like, oh, this is big, but it's not that big, but it's almost as big as a Note, actually. And then I looked at the Note. It's almost as big as a Note? Yeah, it's pretty close in size. This looks like, this is what I'm saying, this is the new normal for me. This is how big I think the phone should be. But it's good, it's fine, it's a great, uh oh. What was that? That was... Are we still on the air? Comcast. Comcast. This phone is unlocked, isn't it? Yes, it is, actually. That's what's happening. But, so here's the thing. So I started doing these tests with the iPhone that I have at home, and it's just like wildly better. And I really need, I need the best camera that I can get that is in a phone for a variety of reasons. And I'm tired of playing games. I've looked at every phone. And don't say Lumia 1020. I'm not using a Windows phone for several reasons. There's so many reasons, but I'm just, don't even, I know you're tweeting me right now, dude, you gotta get a Lumia. It's not gonna happen. There's a lot of reasons, but I can tell you the main one is a Windows phone, and it just doesn't do what I need it to do. But so, I was like, okay, let's get real. If I'm gonna use an iPhone, I need to really, if I'm gonna go back to one in iOS 7, I need to make some, I need to make this work for me. So Google Apps in iOS 7 are actually pretty good. We were just talking about this. Chrome is great. Gmail, Gmail has gotten better. It is not as good as it needs to be, but it's a lot better. Drive, a bunch of apps. Drive is great. A bunch of apps that work well. Google Plus works well, all that stuff. You can do auto backup with Google Plus, like of your photos. I mean, it's interesting that what we're really talking about is how well the iPhone integrates with Google services. Yes. I think for most people is the most important thing. Well, so my thing was like, okay, there's some real problems here. So jailbreaking has recently gotten good again for iOS 7. So I jail broke and I added a bunch of, I tweaked a bunch of things. There's an app that lets you, all Safari links will open in Chrome, for instance. There's an app that will make it so that, it's not an app, it's a tweak, it's an extension, if you will. There's one that will make it so that all mail to links open in the Gmail app. I gotta jailbreak my phone. Yeah, yeah. So it took me literally five minutes. You plug it in, you hit jailbreak. The next thing you know, you're jailbroken and you're all good. There is an application called Activator that will let you set all kinds of things you can do with the buttons. You can say, when I shake my phone, it opens the camera. Or if I triple tap my button, it goes to this app. Or if you tap on the status bar, it does this thing. I think Billy read a forum post about this a while ago. So there's that. There's a speed, reduce all animation speed app that will completely speeds up the phone and becomes as fast as a Galaxy Nexus with all the, not a Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 5 with all the animations turned off. And yeah, there's all these little tweaks. And then there's also skinning, there's Winterboard, which is funny, is a skinning app. And this is actually the point that I'm getting to. So after doing all this stuff, I'm like, okay, I can see how I can use this day to day and it's not gonna be the enormous pain that I expected. So live icon for weather. That's an extension you can get. It changes the icon to the temperature and the weather conditions of the day. So is this it right here? It's amazing. Wait, what is that? What is that app that you're using? Is that animated? Am I just seeing things or is that an, is it weather icon? Oh, live weather icon. Yeah, that's what I have. Oh, so I guess it animates when there's like stuff happening. That's cool. Now, by the way, makes the phone way better. Like crazy better. These little tweaks make it faster. It means that I can use the apps that I wanna use to do the things I wanna do. There are still some hugely annoying things. Like I can't save things to pocket from apps. It's really hard. I can do it from Feedly. I can do it from other apps that have a specific call out to pocket. Can't do it from the browser. Chrome doesn't give you an option to save to pocket. Really annoying stuff. Can't send a picture to Instagram from the camera roll. It's insane to me. Like it's so insane. I'm so used to doing it from Android. Like yeah, whatever app you want, put this picture in it. With the iPhone, it's like, yeah, I can put it on Flickr. Great. Thanks a lot. So I haven't used Flickr in like 14 years. Like that's really awesome. But here's the thing. So with all of these tweaks, the phone becomes like enormously better. And it does show you how, like the mistakes that Apple's made in my opinion are, I mean, yes, like iOS 7 is still ugly to me and I'll be skinning it as soon as I get home. But the mistakes they actually, the things that to me are like the most annoying are the ones where it just, it's like I just need a little bit of choice. Like I just need to be able to not, I need to be able to say like, yeah, I don't want to, I just don't want to use Safari. I don't like the way it works. There's another browser that I prefer. Oh, there's also an extension you can get that removes the restrictions that Apple puts on its third party. Oh really? So it's faster? Yeah, that gives the fast JavaScript stuff to like the Chrome app and a bunch of other stuff. Yeah, dude, it's super easy. I've been using it for a long time because I just don't want things to break. So have I, so have I. And it is admittedly like really janky. Like it's, it's like the jailbreaking process is easy, but then getting all that stuff, it's like a little bit, you know, like, is this going to like completely break my phone? But I have to say, so here's the thing. So after doing that, it's like become almost acceptable. But it is striking to me. Here's two things that are striking. One how tiny the phone is, how just like it's, it's too small. Like web pages as they've gotten visually more complex, the iPhone has not risen to the occasion. I mean, looking at a website on my Z1 or any other slight, even slightly larger Android phone, even like the Moto X by comparison to the iPhone is like, I'm squinting at text on that screen. I mean, it's truly bizarre. And so like they really need to, I was thinking a lot about this last night too. It's weird to me that Apple who was like, we got a, here's an 11 inch, a 13 inch, a 15 inch, a 17 inch. Like they've done, like they're really good at going like, we get that there are, you know, here's a small iPad and a big iPad. It's so weird that they have iterated on this phone. What is it now? We're five times? No, it's six times. Well, if you count the iPhone five C. Wait, iPhone three G, three Gs. So you have like original iPhone three G, three Gs, three Gs and a seven. So like seven iterations of this phone. Plus the five C. And like they did add, they did add admittedly, they made the screen a little taller. Does that count? Which, which I feel like is a complete whatever move. It's crazy to me that they have, obviously they're going to do this. Like let me, let me put it this way. I'm going to say this right now. There is no way Apple releases a, whatever the next version of the iPhone is and does not release a larger version of the phone. Like there's no way. And if they do like you're done. Like you're done at knowing how to make phones. Like you blew it because the phones of today, even the ones that are a little bit larger are so much easier to hold and read on than before. Like the iPhone is really small. Maybe if you're like a little, you know, tiny person. I'm ambivalent about this because no, these are genuinely are getting too big for my hands. There are no, that thing is ridiculous. And even this thing is like really big. Like this is a very big phone, but, but like the Moto X or the Nexus, the Nexus five, I actually find the Nexus five to be incredibly, they are very similar. And like the GS four doesn't feel that big. I mean, honestly, I see the GS four everywhere. Yeah. So do I. I mean, honestly, if the G I really, really, really wish the GS four had a better camera. I really, really wish the GS four was a good phone. To me the stock, but I gotta say, if the stock, I don't think it's that ugly. You get cool backs for it. Get some cool graffiti backs for it. If the stock GS four, if the stock, no comment. If the stock GS four, well, I got it out because I was like, I want to really put this camera through its paces. But actually the GS four camera can be good. The four point, the performing four kick out update helps the camera a little bit on the stock version, but it's still garbage compared to the iPhone. So anyhow, I'm reaching a point. So my two observations were it's incredible to me that they have made the same size phone for six years now. I mean, they haven't made the same size phone for six years. They upped it from four point or three point five to four, right? Whatever it's been like two years. It's actually not the height. That's the problem. Yeah. That's the problem. Like they need to give it a half an inch on the side as well. The next one, they added a row of icons this time. They're going to add one on the other side. They're going to be like, look, we've added a whole column. So, but then the, the, my other observation is just, um, shame on every single Android phone maker. Like, I don't know. You're blowing it. This is software. The camera, the sensor in this is bigger than the iPhone sensor. It's a Sony lens. Like they can make a good camera. I mean, Sony is dominant in the camera business. This thing takes great photos where it falls short is like it's processing and like I just don't understand it. But seriously, shame on all Android phone makers. Like it's so lame of you that you can't get this. You can't beat the iPhone or get equal to the iPhone. Like, well, Sony in particular, I mean, Sony, you made that, you made it. They, their cameras are great. Like the next cameras are fantastic. It's insane. There's some of the best, their broadcast cameras are like, they're dominant in the industry. Like, just call those guys. It's not like, don't you have a bunch of point and shoot guys don't have anything to do right now? Give them a call. See what's up. It's totally nuts. Yeah. Anyhow, that's my rant. And I just had to say, um, that's hilarious. That's my, uh, that's my rant. And I may actually have to be honest with you. Like I may write something on this cause there are very specific reasons why, where I, why I'm considering going back to the iPhone. But I will also say that without the jailbreaking stuff that I just did, I don't think, even though I have very good reasons, I'm not sure that I could make the switch because I find it just aggravating and annoying to use the stock iPhone is. And like, you know, you talk about now that like, I mean, Apple's market share has shrunk so much that like when you look at the realm of smartphones that they can net, no one will ever be able to make the argument that like they should open the app store up or allow people to be able to select this app or that because it's like, they're right as a citizen, like they just don't have enough market share. But what a, what a bummer. Yeah. Like I use, you know, Google's keyboard has evolved because of things like swipe and all these new technologies that have made it like way easier to do one handed typing. Like one handed typing on the iPhone is great because like you can reach all the keys. It's terrible and slower because like it doesn't have something like swipe and like you'll never be able to experience that stuff on an iPhone. And it sucks and it does, it does retard innovation in the truest sense of the word retard in the musical sense. Not, not retarded. Anyhow, finally, Oh, Academy Awards. Yep. There's a big, and then Obama's doing his speech tomorrow. Going long, going long on this one. In which we will talk about how we need things to regulate the government because the government does not have the best interests. So we have a, we have a, we have a, a post on the site right now. Yeah, Addy and Russell and Carl. Just went up. And Dylan, our designer. Dylan did a, Dylan did a. It's a scorecard. It's a scorecard for how Obama has done. No, it's a scorecard for how Obama will do when he's done it. Oh, right. So tomorrow Obama has big speech NSA reform. I think no one is particularly hopeful, but he is to address a number of recommendations that a panel has given him on how to change all this stuff. And so we just made a scorecard for him. Here's my prediction. Can I make some predictions? Are you going to do any of it, Barry? He's going to get up there and he's going to talk about how important it is that we have, that American citizens have privacy and that, that, you know, we, we don't let our unregulated spying get out of control. He's going to go on and that's going to be like, he's going to front load that thing. It's going to be a solid 15 minutes of how important it is. Lots of anecdotes. There's transparent, there's transparency and that, that American citizens feel safe and, and that their privacy is not invaded. And then he'll say, but national security. We have a real threat. Terrorism is everywhere. Nonstop terrorism, all 24 seven terrorism. And as a result, we have to, you know, balance these two things. And then he'll announce some like extremely minor stuff like I'm going to have some more oversight committees and that'll be the last. And by the way, Americans of all stripes, you just sign up for TSA pre-check so we can monitor you. You can go through the airport with dignity. Exactly. Well, but his thing is though, he never, he doesn't actually do the sort of scaremongering talk about terrorism the way that I guess you would have, I don't know, five, 10 years ago. I don't think it's scaremongering. He doesn't care about it. He's just like, yeah, we'll make everything transparent here. I don't think black box transparent. No, I don't think Obama is this is, it would be scaremongering. I think it's like, but here are the facts. Like we're living in a world that's filled with nonstop terrorism and we have to be able to defend against it. And like, that's it. That's all you have to say is like invisible enemies all around us who we never see, but like I can assure you like we're being protected from like that rhetoric has not changed. It just like toned down a little bit. Yeah. I mean, everybody besides Obama does that. Like that was the decision that shut down the ACLU's claim was the guy opened with 9-11 changed everything. It was a bold judo move. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what that means. Okay. So the Academy Awards are happening. Speaking of threats all around us. Speaking of threats to American security, the Academy Awards are happening. I was going to say Kristen Stewart starring in a 1984 remake. We're going to get to that. That is truly. We're going to get through these. We're going to be doing some. Live vlogging. We're going to do is like everybody sits, everybody sits and watches the things like the Academy Awards. We did with the Golden Globes and there's actually some news, especially like, you know, particularly in our little sphere, right? You know, there's like a lot of the net Netflix won a bunch of stuff. Netflix got nominated. Yeah. There's gravity is going to as long as I find movies that are in the running and just like movies that we're interested in generally. And so so, you know, it's, we're going to be doing this thing. We did something at CES where we basically collected tweets and Instagrams and just random stuff from our team and put it into a live stream. So we're going to enjoy a live blog. So we're going to do that during the Academy Awards. I think we're going to pull in, you know, tweets from other people, tweets from our team. Yeah. This is no filter. That's just a gigantic picture of Michael Shane. This is just a huge picture of I don't know what is amazing tweets from when he was delirious. Yeah. This is TC was like quarantine. It is. Yeah. Anyhow. So this is going to do this for the Academy Awards. Yeah, we do it. Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to get on, I'm drinking, I'm tweeting. Like those are just going to get sucked into a live blog on the verge and you'll have an easy place to find my drunk tweets about like the dress that somebody was wearing. Ultimately, and that's what the verge is all about. And that's what an easy place to find Josh's drunk tweets. Yeah. And I think we'll pull in some other people to other, other respected critics and, and Twitter personalities. Um, Chris and Stuart is starting the remake of 19 of 1956, 1984. This morning I saw this headline on our site. I thought to myself, we've been hacked. Yeah. Like that's like an onion headline. Kristen Stewart is starting in the remake of a 1956 is 1984. This is actually a great movie. It's 1984 from 1984. John screwed up. Oh, John Hurt is in the movie. Yeah, actually. But I'm very depressing. I mean, if you've read the book, that shouldn't be a surprise. But, uh, I mean, I'm actually wondering if it's, this is being billed as like a romantic take on it. Is the 1956 version actually like a romantic 1984? I don't even understand. Like, well, there is some, there's a weird, all you have to do is change the ending and then suddenly it's these two people who are rebelling against a regime and they love each other very much. All you have to do is change the meaningful ending. Yes, there is. The extremely meaningful ending that like tells the, hey, for people who may not have read, by the way, if you haven't read 1984, like what are you doing? Why, what's wrong with your life that you have it? Although it is like a huge downer. It would almost be more subversive now. Everyone expects that of 1984. I mean, actually, if you read 1984, you'll be like, if you haven't read it and you read it now, you'll be like, wait a second. This is just normal. This isn't just normal, the normal life that we live right now. We live in brave new world. No, that's that combination. I have never described a woman as pneumatic. I do. I think we're, I think we're, it's a hybrid of, it's a hybridized brave new world, 1984 society that we're living in. We have the disposable clothing. We have the awesome, the drugs, the drugs, the nonstop so virtual reality. There's a club in Vegas called Soma, I assume. There's an actual drug called Soma. You know, there's a, you know, there's a sequel to brave new world or like a beginning of a sequel. No, that he started called, it's called like, no, seriously, can you look this up? I think there is, because he had a lot of regrets about the ending of brave new world. Can you just look this up? Brave new world sequel, please. I think it has an amazing name too. Brave new world revisited. No, that's not a good name. Maybe. That's a terrible name. Yes. Is it? No, I'm looking, I'm trying. I did not, I did not make this up unless I had an amazing dream. It's like, yeah. Brave new world revisited. Brave new world revisited. Okay. Well, it's a boring name, but it's kind of funny that like, I remember, well, the sequel did not revisit the story or the characters, but it was the ideas. Oh wait. So is it a full book? I thought it was just the beginning. I thought he'd never finished. It's 12 essays. Maybe he didn't finish. Oh, I see. Okay. I think I've read one of the essays. I once, I once gave a copy of brave new world to a friend. There was an episode of boy meets world called brave new world. Well, I know it's from Shakespeare. It's a real book. Hold on a second. Can you imagine that episode of boy meets world? I used to do this thing when I was younger. We picked your profession for you. I used to do this thing where I was occasionally, when I was younger, I would occasionally give, I would give somebody a book, like a famous book as a gift, and then I would sign it from the author. And I remember that one I signed to my friend. It was may all your world be brave and new. Yeah. All of this Huxley signed, all this Huxley. Which I thought at the time was extremely clever. It doesn't now out loud, doesn't sound as clever. I think Kristen Stewart would actually be perfect for um, Lenina crown in brave new world. Yeah. She's kind of bored and like bangable. Yeah, she's bored and she's yeah. Wow. Really? We went there. Okay. Maybe not that, but. Did you say bangable? I mean, honestly. Because that's how all the women are. Honestly. I mean, we're going to get so many complaints about sexism now. I hope you're happy. I mean, if I had to pick. By the way, the verge cast should be not, should not be used as a judge of any of what happens at the verge. I was pliable. I mean, that's how the women in brave new world are. She's forward. No, she's forward. And like, that's sort of bored about it. Blase. Yeah, that's, well, you know, I mean, we've seen that in Kristen Stewart. She had this torrid, but boring affair. Toring, but relatively bored. You could tell like the whole time she was like, yeah, okay, I'll kiss, I guess. See, that is entirely what brave new world is about. Yeah. I guess we can kiss. Um, all right. And I think with, on that note, on that dark, weird sexual note, we should wrap this up. I mean, truly. Any final thoughts, Addie? I'm really excited for this movie. Wow. Neal, any final thoughts? I have not. I'm disappointed. Did you see, uh, what was the movie? The Host? Wait, which one? That's like, that's like written by Stephanie Meyer. No, the one, the Stephanie Meyer one, not the Korean. I read the book. No, the host, the Korean host is actually really good. No, it's a very good movie. No, the book actually, if it had been cut by about 300 pages, it would have been great. The host movie was like, it was, it was, they said like, oh, it's, I mean, I read some movies and they're like, it's unintentionally funny. I'm like, yeah, come on. I mean, but yes it is. It's like kind of crazy. It's great because it's like romantic animorphs. On that note, by the way though, I will say this about the host killer trailer, killer. One of my favorite trailers from last year. Yeah. What? It's got a great trailer. What are you doing? What is this? Oh yeah. Are we watching? Can we get the volume up? It's got, uh, it's got some great songs in it. Also its protagonist is like a brain slug. That's great. Yeah, it is. It's a brain slug. It's a natural, it's, it's, you gotta see it. It's like aliens that are brain slugs. I mean, it's all on Netflix. You just watch it. Like it require only, it only required two hours of your life to be sucked away by the host. And that's the Vergecast for this week. If you'd like to get in touch with us, you could find us on Twitter. Oh, you can email us. I'm sorry. You can email us. Vergecast at the verge.com. Uh, you can find us on, oh, you can, uh, yes, you can find us on Twitter, uh, at Verge. I'm Joshua Topolski. Nylai is reckless. Addie is just the dextrarchy, the dextrarchy, which is not. Easy to say, not easy to spell, not easy to type. That's okay. Thank God for auto predict. Yeah. Can you spell it for us? It's the, and then it's like patriarchy. No space. No space. Yeah, no space. And then dex. Okay. Forget it. Yeah. Okay. Um, and what? Oh, it's on the screen right now. Totally legible. Just copy that, copy and paste that. Um, and of course, uh, you could, of course you can leave. Uh, of course you can leave a comment when this post goes up. You can, uh, you can start a thread in our forums and tell us how wonderful we are or how horrible we are. It's your choice. I know which way it's going to go. I think I know also. Um, oh, by the way, somebody, I just kind of just, I just mentioned this. I saw there was a forum post. It was like, did the verge violate its own ethics policy? It was, it was, did we eat the 3d printed candy? Just so you know, it would not be a violation of our ethics policy to try out the 3d candy from the 3d printer. Number one. Number two, I did not eat the 3d candy. And I regret not. Somebody said that you didn't and they spoke highly. I don't think they spoke highly of you, but they implied it. Apparently drunkenly on the verge cast. I might've said it's yes, that I did not eat it because it was within our, it's not an ethics policy thing. I think somebody just got it out from under me before I had the chance. Anyhow. Okay. That's the verge cast. Uh, and, uh, we'll be back next week. And as always, uh, you know, you and your family tough, tough situation. Timecast forever.