Matter Smart Home Standard

Hello and welcome to the Virgecast, the flagshhip podcast of Liquid Crystal on Silicon, a technology that all Snapchat users care deeply about and look forward to adopting on their faces. I'm friend David Piarsce Nells here your home. This is like I forot what it looks like when you sit in your actual house making podcasts. Yeah. And like it all works and you're not staring out at a window with a staircase behind me. I'm sad about the staircase. The staircase got a lot of love last week. It did. The staircase was a true hit on a bircast. We have a lot to talk about this week Fox is buying Roku, which means we are for sure going to bring the G ninety scale back. and we have a lot to talk about There's some AI news, Brendon Carars up to stuff There's a lot going on, but we have to start with specs So Snapchhat Evan Spiegel has been talking about making AR glasses ten years, I think. L long time. Since the the first version of spepects, I think was almost exactly a decade ago. And this has been the future of the company for a very long time. They announced a while ago that they were going to ship consumer ready AR glasses this year. And now they've they've shown them off And they've announced them They're called specs. And Neili, just before we started recording, you did the thing that I have been doing obsessively, which is look at pictures of specs on people's faces. Yes let me just run with run down the specs of these specs before we before we get into the thing. becausecause what's interesting about this and what I want to talk about is like These seem to be technically very impressive in a certain way, right? Like you and I've talked a lot about the Vision Pro being sort of one end of what you can do with this technology, right? Like However you want to feel about what it is in the world, it is a remarkable piece of technological engineering Spec has a little bit of that going on too. There are two different models. One is forty seven millimeters, one is fifty two The lighter one weighs one hundred and thirty two grams, which just for context like the iPhone seventeen is one hundred and seventy seven grams So imagine like almost an iPhone seventeen kind of on your face And a normal pair of Rayban wayayfarers is about forty five So it's like three normal pairs of sunglasses on your face They have removable inserts for prescriptions, which they also think of as a way to do multi user support, which is kind of clever. You can just like pop out your lenses They have a fifty one degree field of view, which Evan Spiegel compared to having a twenty four inch monitor in front of you or one hundred fifteen inch TV ten feet away They have two snapdragon processors, seven millisecond latency. Four hours of battery life, which is Uh and four more charges in the case They're like these seem to be about as good a pair of glasses with a display on them as you can make right now And then you see someone wearing them And here we are. tellell me the pictures you've been looking at Evan Spiegel is married to Miranda Kerr, right he's married to supermodel. so he got a bunch of beautiful models to wear his glasses. And Jimmy Butler, the NVA Cler. And Jimmy Butler. Ka Gerber, Cyneyrawford's daughter is the first picture I saw. She's legitimately a beautiful person. Yeah. And she looks ridiculous in the glasses. Like you can't make anything this big look good on anyone. Jack Harlow does not look one glasses U immagen heap actuallyually, imag and heap might look cool in the glasses Imagagey Heap is one of those people who like could sincerely get away with wearing gigantic glasses. Yeah, actuallyually the most interesting thing about these pictures is They're in black and white, but to indicate the glasses have a display, they put a slight color haze on the lenses and these photos which to me is the whole game Right? The point of these glasses is not that they have cameras in them. It's that they are a full on little computer with a display that you look at in front of your eyes,, whatever viewing angle, we have to see them in this context don't mean a lot. Like the specs of a new pair of glasses product category that is totally nascent and no one has proven to work or have any demand whatsoever. It doesn't matter if the specs of this one are better than the specs of the X real glasses. sure So I mean, you know, there's an Eli scale of wearable bullshit, which is The utility of wearing the object on your face has to far outweigh the fiddliness of the thing. Yes. So regular glasses have enormous utility because they help you see and they're really not very fiddly, but they're pretty fiddly The Apple W, not very fiddly at all. You just have to charge it. You wear it in a wrist like a regular watch. enormous utility at is a success. headadphones. you put themem in your ears, they're very useful. you take them off, you just have to charge them. It all works out on the curve. Yeah. Every pair of things that you wear on your face has died in this way. Every computing device you have to strap to your head has died because they're so fiddly impose an enormous fashion cost and the utility of them has really not been that high Right? It Maybe only in a case of the meta glasses which are a camera on your face and not very much else. Has anyone been like, okay, I can work this out and this is a category like Here there's some shots of apps And like a video streaming and a maps app. We really don't have any particular details on who writes those apps How power hungry those apps are, how good they are compared to your phone Right? This is a self contained device. It's supposed to compete with the phone And to do that, they had to make enormous compromises on its form factor because they needed to basically put a phone on your head. And then we don't know if it's going to work well enough to pull it off Yeah, I mean, there's there's some interesting stuff going on just in the fact that this is snap doing this, right? Because Snap has been building the lenses and stuff into Snapchat for a long time. They've sort of been building this technology in public that was obviously ultimately meant for glasses. There was this thing they announced it at some developer conference and Bobby Murphy, the co founder of Sap showhed off a bunch of sort of demos, sort of developer, they like coded on stage a little bit. But there's one where it's like, you're wearing the glasses and you're playing Uno And you can sort of see it as like a rectangle in the middle of the screen. Again, it's like imagine having a computer monitor in front of your face is that is see through. That's like it's not immediately not a sort of normal way to think about how you interact with the world U But he's essentially, you know, they'reicking cards and putting them down. and it's every AR demo you've ever seen, right? Like everyverybody has the same idea about how this stuff is supposed to work The idea is just now You can use your hands to control it and you don't have to look through your phone in order to do it Snap is interesting because it's been building this kind of experience for forever, right? It's been doing these like virtual try on things with clothes longer than most. It has built all of the camera lenses that make you do, you know, the rainbow when you open your mouth. It's building some of these games like This is what I mean by Snap is actually able to do this maybe as well as anyone is able to do this because it has just been at it this long And so it's like I just I have a hard time imagining what the software would have to be in order to make any kind of hardware like this appealing, especially at the price, which I haven't said, which is two thousand one hundred and ninety five dollars This is a quote unquote consumer product that is not remotely for consumers But then you look at the thing. L, hold on. Okay. So you mentioned Evan Sppegel. U after they did this announcement, he went on CNBC. about it. He did a couple of interviews with people actually wearing the specs. Let me just play you this one clip that I have a feeling is going to be very, very hard for Snap to overcome. Watch and Evan, thanks for joining us here today. You're wearing your new specs, which you just unveiled. They cost two thousand one hundred ninety five do. I'm just going to pause it here. rightight now, again, I'm so sorry if you're if you're not watchatching. But just imagine Evan Pgelle is sitting here in this crowded room. Evan's like he's a good looking guy. He's got the specs on. they're enormous and they are just crushing the hell out of his ears. Like they're too thick and too tall to go where they're supposed to go, which is like behind your ears. And so it's literally they're just resting on top of his ears. There is no shot that is comfortable. justust none And you'll notice even in a lot of the like beautiful photo shoot stuff that you're talking about that they did, the real advertising photos in almost every case They've hidden the people's ears in some way. L it's hidden behind hair. Even Jack Harlow, they clearly like styled his hair to not show it smooshing his ears because these things these just obviously are not comfortable to wear on your face And and there's no getting past that. Like The lesson we keep learning from all of these things is like people buy the Rayban Meadows because they're just a pair of glasses that do more stuff. And that has turned out to be vastly more compelling than put a giant computer on your head. We'll give you lots of stuff to do All right, so here's why there's a giant computer. And I want to give Snap credit for this because I have been at this for a long time. They've diligently pursued one vision. They haven't done a bunch of weird side quests. Tk Ma has done These are the first true AR glasses I think we have seen. And what I mean by that is att least there are screenshots in videos on their marketing materials where the glasses, the cameras and glasses are looking at the world. processing that. and they are putting information directly over the world. Yes. And of course the demos are the same demos everyone has ever seen. There's people playing chess, a virtual chess board. There is a Hilariously there's you can replace the coolant in a car, which tracks perfectly with a hoolllow lens demo. I got ten years ago where they had me change a spark plug. There's people putting furniture in a room and doing measurements But the idea that the cameras are processing Reity And then on a display that overlays reality. so the real light is passing through your eyes. In low latency, they're putting digital information of the real world is incredible There really has not been that thing. Maybe the Hollands got closest Maybe magically leap did it. Apple couldn't get there and they did Division Pro where they did mixed reality where they totally had to everything in on the camera and composite it. and then show you a screen Snap is not doing that here, right? They're overlaying actual reality, which is very challenging. Yeah. This is hdest to God, augmented reality. And I don't want to discount at all What I'm pointing out is to do that, you are stuck in this form factor Right If you don't have a phone to offload the processing to or're very proud, this thing is self contained.. You need to put the cameras in there, you need to put the connectivity in there. you need the processors. It has two snapdragon processors in there, whichQualcon is very proud of. It says it willll enable all kinds of experiences like this in the future. And then you need batteries to run it Where's that stuff going to go? It's going to go right here. It's going to go right across your temples O only place for it to go. Well, here we are. like this is they needed to get there first because Ma is trying to get there because Apple is trying to get there. And I think these are the compromises that have kept those companies from shipping a product like this I think if Apple wanted to ship a product like this, they could. They've shown us enough AR demos on an iPad and enough events proved that if they wanted to do tracking and composing, the vision proro exists, they can do tracking and compositing.. I think this form factor is the natural compromise of all of the things you need to pack into the the glasses to make this experience work and this is the experience they want Well, and the irony is, I think Again, as we've talked about and according to the N Iel theory of wearable bullshit The form factor is actually the only thing you can't compromise on Like over and over, this is the lesson that is learned is you have to start with I like wearing it on my face or you you're nowhere. Like at least with the technology is currently constituted There is nothing that even suggests you can back into. Sure I'll put this on my face And and this this to me is like, this is this is why Specs I think is so interesting. It's like If you look at this as the best it is possible to do right now And I think there's a lot of evidence that it is. And again, there's some genuinely cool demos here No one seems to want this. L the overwhelming response to this has been like investors hate it. users are like, what on earth are you doing? No No one I see is like, oh my Godd, I can't wait to wear this on my face. Its just people don't see it Again, to be fair, it's hard to know if it's any good until you wear it. You cannot read the spec sheet of this thing in what's it seven milliseconds of latency. You cannot know what that means unless you're wearing them. And you can feel what seven milliseconds of latency of digital information augmenting real light passing through your eyes feels like. As it smushhes your ears to bits Is it worth it? Like I don't, I don't know. Like I don't think there's enough devices in this category for us to look at a spec sheet and say, oh, they got the specs right, such that it overcomes the form factor They just bluntly. I don't think that'sue. I think it's kind of true in VR. likeike We can talk there have been enough VR headsets that I can look at a specsheet and be like, all, I kind of get what they're doing here.. This is new It's new, you know, yes, it's very expensive, but it As a consumer device, this is wholly new and Maybe changing your oil in augmented reality is so awesome I mean, it's not it's. you don't believe that It's not I don't know. Yes, you do. What are we doing here? I don't know Maybe it rules. You think there's a world in which, given even the limited amount of stuff that we know now This combination of technology and features works. Let's forget the price I don know It sounds like there's apps. L like is any are any of these things a killer app? I do not know. I think to me the the single most probleblematic thing in this whole space, always. all the way back to Magic Leap. is that it gives great demo You put it on you wear it for five minutes and you go, oh my God, this is it Every everybody has this experience. We have this experience way back when with like the very first oculus Rift that you put it on and your brain explodes. You're like, I can't believe this is possible This is incredible. And you take that to mean This is something I want in my day to day life. and actually the gap between those two things is enormous and has not gotten that much smaller even as the technology has gotten better. L Will you will if someone in your life has a pair of these and you put them on and they're like here, do this Pokemon G style thing that you can do in the Snap specs. You'll do it and you'll be like, oh, cool And then you will take them off and you will go about your life and you will tell people about the cool demo that you had. And the distance from that to, I want to spend two thousand dollars on these and wear them for four hours at a time is vast I mean, this is the this is the utility versus cost. Like How fiddly is it? How much does it cost in dollars Is a type of fiddliness? in my opinion. Dollarsars are fiddly. Yeah. I mean like you gotta it's like, how much do I have to care about this? It's two thousand two hundred dollars I have to care about this Right? And are they huge and heavy ind have to charge them every four hours? It's all cost And then there's how much utility is there? And I'm not saying it's so much utility because you change your own oil is the thing Just pointing out like there's obviously a set of apps here. And they want, yes, they all give good demo But most people have never experienced anything like this. Exactly my only like hit the braes and not going to judge it is You actually don't know how people react to having the real world augmented digital information And maybe it turns out all anyone ever wanted was a timer floating above their pasta water I don't think so But I'm just hesitant to be like, I absolutely know this won't work because most people have literally never come close to this outside of watching a movie And there's other foibles here that are going to get in the way. None of these demos are in anything close to the dark So like can these cameras see in a dark well enough or even in dim light well enough? All of these things are outside in bright sunlight be able to recognize what they're looking at didentify it, you know, send it to whatever AI system is going to do all that recognition and blah blah blahah. And then appropriately center the digital information over that in the dark huge glaring question mark. Yeah. becausecause then the utility this falls even farther R? You can only wear it outside Well, that sucks, right? Yes. U my kitchen is very is really quite dark Will that work for my pasta water because it's like dark in the kitchen? Like these are questions I think they have to answer. I'm just looking at these photos and I'm thinking about my theory of wearable bullshit Oh, the cost here is staggering compared to the utility I'm just not going to prejudge no one will like this because I don't think Anyone has actually experienced this product in this way I think that's fair. And I think my argument is less no one will like this and more cannot imagine how this clears the boundary for people. And I think there's something to Like very specific use cases for smart glasses, right? Like this is what we saw is Google Glass where it's like people who want to Fix carburetors in cars have an actual use for Google Glass Google Glass couldn't do that. But like eventually they did a bunch of the entnerprise edition stuff and it started to work for some of these features. People used it to like scan codes in factories as you're like running around moving stuff or in warehouses, you can scan the code picked up the product just by looking at the Google Gass like That is a great use case for these glasses. It's also a very specific thing that you then take them off after Yeah Evan Spiegel. is once again making this grand case that what we are doing is we are bringing computing into the real world. We're taking you away from looking at a screen and we're making the world and the screen one and the same. And like on the one hand You look at some of these things and it's literally designed as if there's just a floating computer monitor in front of your face, which is the wrong UI. L some of these things are just giant display is in between you and what you're attempting to look at, which is not what this is supposed to look like But then on the other hand, it has four hours of battery life. It's going to smooush your ears to bits. It cost two thousand two hundred dollars. L I just don't I don't see any evidence clears the boundary to like yes, this is a thing I will just wear in my day to day life. Yeah. and again, the only reason I'm offering The the benefit of the doubt is most people have never experienced this thing. Like I'm not sure I've experienced the full vision of what they have here and I've tried almost all of these centas We're going to look at the world and we're going to augment it with digital information in real time. in self contained glasses is just not a thing that has existed before, really And Snapchat's AR prowess is real This company has been at this longer than most And a lot of the stuff that it's built is very cool and very popular, right? Like We don't talk that much about Snapchat on this show, but it is like It's a it's a weirdly sort of unsuccessful company that has built a massively like generationally important communication. Like Snapchat is culturally central to lots and lots of people in the world. And they've built some really interesting stuff with the camera. They've been way ahead on a lot of things. So like I want this stuff to work And I was really excited about these glasses and then the minute I saw them on somebody's face, it's like, doesn't this doesn't seem like it's. R to do the thing you wanted to do The technology doesn't exist yet, and so the form factor is compromised in very real ways. Yeah. And. We've been talking about that for how long Here's things they didn't demo They didn't demo facial recognition. They didn't talk about what it means to be constantly recording the world around you to augment it with digital information. they didn't talk about the privacy implications of having two cameras on either side of your head all the time that are looking at the world. There's a lot here you have to really consider. and I think people are already pushing back on with the metaglasses and other glasses If you want to build this device There's no way to get around the fact that you have to be constantly ingesting the world so that you can augment it with digital information. Another thing didn demo, my favorite question to ask all these folks, if you look at the Capitol builduilding and say, what happened here on january sixth, What is the answer you're going to get? Is it an insurrection or not You have a content moderation problem staring at your augmented reality glasses that no one wants to acknowge Yeah, I think they They put all of their emphasis on let's build the dream and this is the form factor they can execute now because I don't think anyone else has gotten any closer than this But then the actual problems are like I mean, you know Snappper is a content business. They run content moderation. they do it. they know what to do. Boy are these like an entirely new set of problems to have when you are altering the physical experience people have through their eyes Right? It's not a screen. It's like, I'm really looking at this and there's really an arrow pointing it at the Capitol builduing me like, Notably on january sixth here, a number of people got a tour of this building. like that's not what you want peopleeople got a tour technically accurate in a certain way. Some people wandered the building. Yeah, look, I think I think a lot is going to you're right, be very clear the minute we are able to put one of these things on. And I'm like I'm genuinely excited that SnAap is shipping these, right?'ve We've watched this company sort of coil in the background and keep shipping stuff but not actually shipping it and like Kudo is for actually just putting thing out in the world. Like I think it's I think it's cool They can't think they're going to sell a lot of these. They have to believe that they needed to put a stake in the ground that they got there first. I think that's right And then in theory, you sell some of these And it makes it easier to both build and sell the next one and like I can see the playbook and also I think they promised they were going to do it this year and they just like it probably if you're a company like Snap who has had the business track record they have, it was very important to ship these things I get all of those things. I just look at this and I'm like if this is the best anyone can do and I think it probably is Are we actually anywhere And we'll see. you're right. wait. I think just to be one hundred percent clear, I think the answer is no But I'm also willing to say very few people, if any have ever actually experienced a product like this there's something to just keeping your mind open to that. Like maybe people are gonna lose their minds I doubt it But I'm not willing to just like close it off before that actually happens I really hope somebody makes like a cool accessory that like straps it around the back of your head And we just go full like cyberpunk croaky situation. That's going to be awesome. That's a free idea for anybody wants it. All right, we just take a break, and then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about a product everyone uses against their will, which is Roku. at. All right, we're back. Let's talk streaming Wars Uh The big news this week is that Fox is buying Roku or at least is planning to buy Roku Wh knows if any deal ever gets done in the world in which we live. It's a twenty two billion dollars deal. It would put these two companies together. Locklin Murdoch, who runs Fox is making a lot of promises about the future of Roku, and we can get into some of those. Neili, give me your immediate reaction to this deal This is a sort of nightmare vertical integration and distribution that Maybe Lena Khan was like the most opposed to and the Trump administration loves the most. Loves so much Wait, explain. what is the like I think people have had a hard time this week as I've been talking to people and reading about it sort of imagining these two companies do for each other in that like company that makes content buys other company that makes content. you're like, oh I get that. Now it's a bigger company that makes content. This is like a bunch of Ostensible puzzle pieces all sort of smshing together Like what is your sense of how these things all combine I think when media companies buy each other in an effort to get scale, they almost always do themselves. But you only need listen to the Virgecast know I believe this in my heart. This is Neil's Warner Brother Time Warner AL theory way back when. It's possible that the only antitrust policy this country needs is to prevent AT and T from buying anything ever and to prevent anyone from buying time Wner. And like maybe we'll be fine. Likebe that's all we need to accomplish is preventing those two things from doing anything and we'll be fine So you know, big content companies by big content companies, paramount by CBS. L who who cares? They don't have any distribution. This is actually the problem for all of these companies, right? audiences wake up, they pick up their phones and they push a button that is owned by a big tech company and they distribute all the content to you And if Mark Zuckerberg wants to see one thing on Instagram, he can turn the knob and he can deliver it to you. If YouTube wants you to see one thing on YouTube, Neil Mohen can turn the knob and deliver one thing to you. And they all deny that this is true. Yeah. But it's true. like they control the distribution and they might have built systems to prevent them from having such contontrol the reality is that they have control And so it doesn't matter how much content you make or how good it is you're subservient to the distribution I just I believe this with all my. And most companies try to deal with this by buuying enough scale, having enough stuff people want that they can roll up to YouTube or Instagram or whatever and saying, look at how much stuff we have Pay us more money. Right becausecause we have the stuff that you need. You have to negotiate with us. It's not competition, it's leverage. It's leverage. Yes. If we go away the thing your audience. loves will come with us. And mostly the platforms have like looked at that, laughed and killed those companies L just looked him dead in the eye and like, what if we kill you instead This is the buzzfeed story Joonnah Predy was on D decoder and I was like the original sin of the internet is you thought you could make stuff so viral Facebook would pay you money. And then we argued about that for a full hour G len episode. That's theriginal s. Okay, so Fe how you want about Fox, feel how you want about the Murdox U It's weird that every now and again I agree with them. It's weird that every now and again on the show, I agree with the Wall Street Journal editorial page. They've understood this From the beginning. They are always their companies are always yelling about Google search. They have been since the start. They are suing these companies. They know, the Murdochs are Australian. There's a reason that Australia was the first country to pass the laws requiring social media companies to pay for links, which Maybe dangerous and bad. like maybe as a policy decision for the internet, very bad, but the Murdochs made sure that links to their content got paid for They have understood their relationship with distributors from the beginning and they have been the most aggressive. So here we are you know whatever end of whatever internet we're looking at And they're like, oh, most video is distributed on these platforms on Roku, Fire TV, Google TV, whatever it is. And they just went and bought one. they bought the only independent one becausecause I can't bu Google TV They can't buy fire TV I think Samsung would let you do anything you want with ties in, but no one's going do that What are you going to do? What is the only independent platform for watching television that exists, it's Roku And they went and bought it, and the quotes surrounding this deal are naked about their ambition. Anthony Wood, CO Roku on a call said, promoting Fox owned and operated properties on the Roku home screen is a key component of the company's plan to increase profits. What are they doing? They own the interface, right? They bought the platform that has all the apps on it. They've made a bunch of noises about remaining neutral But they're going to use that to put their content and their services first This is what every platform does Right And again, you can feel how you one of these companies. I think it's pretty obvious how I feel about some of these companies But they're the only ones who understand that owning the point of distribution is the way that you compete with Googles of the world Everyone else is trying get leverage over Google and trying get Google to pay more money and they never will They simply will not do that. And I think Fox figured out early and said, OkayK, we're going to find lots of other ways to leverage over So on the one hand, this deal is very smart. On the other hand Fox is going to own everyone' streaming box, and they're going to prme a lot of Fox content. I bet a lot of Rogu customers are going to have a lot of feelings about that in a huge variety of ways. Roku is already being ins certified, which is something you complain about all the time. There's a data component here where I don't think a bunch of streaming service providers are going to want their competitor in Fox to have the analytics that Roku provides because Roku tracks everything. Roku is also the advertising provider. If you have an app on a Roku platform and you want to serve ads in that app, Roku gets a cut All of those streaming service providers now want to start to being cut to Fox, which competes with them for advertising. There's like layers and layers and layers of why people will be angry at the deal, but just from the very abstract strategic point of view. Fox is the only media company that's like, oh, we need to buy distribution. And they went out and they bought it Well, and all the reasons Everybody else would be mad about the deal or kind of exactly the reasons to do the deal, right? Like Roku, I think has been this fascinating thing for a long time which is that it started as Switzerland, R?ike it started as a thing inside of Netflix. and then Netflix was like, okay, well actually Doing this inside of Netflix is going to make it very hard to do the thing that we want to do, which is partner to the entire streaming ecosystem because we will be perceived to be biased towards Netflix. So they spun it out, Roku becomes its own thing. and part of the way that it won is exactly what you're just saying. It is the only one of these that is not owned by somebody with bias, right? L Of course you go on a fire TV and it's going to sell you Amazon stuff. Like it would be insane if they did anything else sameame go for Apple TV, same go for all of these other platforms. and Roku was the only one that could with a straight face be like, we actually don't have a dog in this fight. We just want you to use our product Whatever you want to do on it is up to you. And that was like that was a pitch they made to users. That was a pitch that they made to streaming services and it worked for a super long time. And then Roku became fundamentally an advertising business and started to compete with all of those people. But by then it was so big Where are you going to go I mean, they basically reinvented the cable box in like a cell phone framework So they gave all the hardware away essentially for free. Like there are expensive high in Rokus, but But you could buy it for nineteen dollars in the checkout line at CDS. Like there's's easy now. If you sign up for a checking hat, you get got to work here. likeike they mass distribute the hard every shitty TV you buy is right. Yeah, they sell really cheap TVs at run their operating system. And they went to all the service riders and said, look at all the scale we have. putut your apps here. We won't preference any of them. but If you want to sell ads We will be the ad provider And then we will have to scale to sell your ads. And there's we don't talk about connected TV ecosystems on the show really ever. but that is where all the action is right now in Adworld. likeike there's tons of money flowing into CTV. So Roku just has this big play where they are a massive connected TV advertising provider and they squeeze the app makers So if you want to do something else or something innovative, They're like, no. And the relationship looks a lot like Apple on the App store. Oh that's interesting. Yeah Right? Like It is the same kind of model there And consumers get all the benefit for free because R is like, as long as they have all the hardware makers won't have any choice but to deal with us. R Well you add Fx to that mix. And it's like, well, a bunch of those people are going to say, no, we don't want to be in business with our competitive this directly actuallyct we want different terms. Actually maybe we'll find anitrust lawsuit to walk this deal. Like there's just like real business concerns of having the supplier by the distributor in this way in a normal administration, you would you would already hear Well, and I like we'll see To your point, some of the reporting that's come out since this deal was announced is that Netflix also sniffed around buying Roku and in fact, walked away from it because it was worried about the antitrust concerns, that it was like, I mean, and this is, you know, Netflix that ran into like a buzzaw of weird antitrust stuff when it tried to buy Warner Brros. looked into this was like, okay, we're going to get the same smoke and just decided not to do it U Fascinating But I agree with you like this whole this whole idea of Roku beinging so big It is undeniable and you can't walk away even if you want to because this is what the business has become. A, I think is true, and B is like central to this whole idea working, right? Because if there were a bunch of other good platforms people could go to, this would not be nearly as appealing to Fox because it's like, okay. We can inidify this to the point where people will just leave. like, no, you can't Like, that TV right behind my computer here runs Roku, and I literally can't stop it without buying a new television. Well you can, you just disconnect from the internet and plug an Apple TV into it This is more of a dvV. But this is, well, have you heard of the Nvidia Shield This is more of a danger to all of this than I think either of these companies believe Right? There's a lot of free TV's out there running a lot of Rotu software. Yeah. and maybe you're locked in and maybe you can put Fox sports programming on a home screen nothing and you're you're going win or maybe Roku is already getting in shitified. It's already pushing people towards the Roku channel. It's already making people feel bad about how much tracking it's doing. And what people are going to do is they're going to turn off the WiFi and their TV and plug in anything else because the screen still works just as well as the day to as they bought it and I think Amazon can deliver a lot of free fire sticks to an audience like that playay that game. I think If Apple had any sense at all, it would have cheaper Alees. There's a lot of ways you can get away from the Roku ecosystem Wout having to buy home new TV Especially when you many people enter the Roku ecosystem by buying a nineteen dollars stream All of that is true in theory and I think like demonstrably not true in practice, right? Like No, I think the switching cost of TV streamers is way lower than anyone thinks. Yeah, but people don'ts this is my point. Like I have I have been arguing that Roku has gotten steadily worse for like five years as Roku watch share and market share has just continued to climb Because I mean, it's it's if what you were saying is true, Dumb TV's would be on sale. Do you know what I mean? Like there's just you're describing a world that doesn't exist where people will do something other than buy the cheapest possible television that is very bright in a best buuy. Like that's actually not how people for these products. I think people are totally like unaffected by shitty interfaces. Yeah. We're surrounded by them all day and all night I think they might be a little bit more affected by I don't want to see Fox News on this home screen. I don't want literally the Murdoch family to own this surveillance device in my home I actually think that is a higher order consideration for people, than this interface is pretty bad now That's very possible. I will say, I think Fox has done a pretty good job historically of keeping Fox News in front of Fox Ns people and away from other people. L Fox stududios and Fox News have actually not. overlapped in the way that you would think if this company was not as savvy about this stuff as it has been That said It of hard. The studios are gone there. Disney Yeah, but like it's there's still some stuff but anyway, it's not a hard thing to imagine this company putting Fox newews on people's home screens. and I think they will rebel against that. But like It wasn't that long ago that Roku just rolled out this huge redesign that instead of your home screen being just a grid of apps, it's now a few apps and then a bunch of like recommended content, which like spoiler alert, all of which will eventually be sponsored Roku is going to turn into Amazon in that you're going to search for something and the first seventeen things are going to be ads and you're not going to know which is which. That is where this company is going. and too the extent that six of them are just going to become Fx properties ure I just have a hard time imagining that being like the thing that turns a bunch of people towards buying an Apple TV. I hope I sincerely hope I'm wrong. Again, I just think I think bad interfaces are one thing and we maybe you and I are not tolerant of them, although you have a Roku TV for some insane reason. I have a Google TV streamer plugged into it. I never use that because I can't find the remote anymore. Perfect I'm just say like, you know, the cold strategic logic of this, this makes sense the content creator is buying the distribution because they get leverage over all the rest of the distribution, probablyrobably the only play that will ever work Um I know like there are people who are like, at the end this will get swallowed by an even bigger player because it's a connected TV marketplace is so important And there maybe maybe maybe this all all get acquired yet again That's the business logic of it. I think the execution of this where There is a political component to literally the Fox Brand and the Murdch family and the point of this deal in the quotes in the press conference is to promote that content That is a buzzaw. Like yes. America's deeply polarized and politicized. However you feel about bad interfaces is one thing. How you feel about The Fox Business channel is another. Yeah, here guys. two none of my hottest ste. please. I was just at home on a farm where I was with Becky's whole family. Do you know why all Becky's older aunts and uncles have fire sticks Be they run Android and they can be jailbroken to steal TV on IPTV services. Oh, interesting. Like there's there's gets cooler and cooler man. I mean this is why I actually wrote the Yanko Rucker story Everyone's stealing TV because I was like, this is wild. Like I'm in the I'm on the farm. Wow. And we are pirating television. like They're not though, not those if the police are listening, They pay the money. Also motion smoothing was on all of their TVs and I didn't have the heart to turn it off because then they would not it, you know, anyway. home. This is what happens when I go home It's lovely, and then I'm like I need to fuck with all your TVs. Anyhow, I'm pointing out is like there's another exit ramp here that people care a lot about that is not on the books Maybe more people are going to take thatact No, I think that's fair. like I sort of hope you're right that there is a check on this for Fox that is like, okay, it makes sense. that you want to own the distribution and have something that feels like a more closed ecosystem. If you ruin it, people will run just not positive, I think that's true. There is one other thing about the steal that I just want to talk about briefly before we switch gears here, which is There is some sort of huge new streaming service potential brewing inside of this thing We've talked a bunch about Tubbe, which is At this point basically Fox's main streaming service. Fox has had a weird relationship with streaming services over the years. They've like tried a bunch of different things to be really worked. That was an acquisition I think four or five years ago. Fox One is now kind of having a moment because it's where you can watch the But like, It never had the sort of high end SVod streaming service But what it now might have is like a Titanically huge free streaming service. So I went and looked and the numbers for both the Roku channel, which Fox is buying and Tubbe, which already owns are like shockingly huge. So the Roku channel This is according to the Nielsen gauge, which tracks all kinds of TV viewing. The Roku channel accounted for three percent of total monthly TV viewing in March of this year to be accounted for two point two percent If you combine the two which they have not said they intend to make it one streaming service, but if you combine these two free streaming services, you have a streaming service about the size of Disney pllus, just like that. which is nuts. and As everyone is running towards advertising, you have the Roku channel, which is already a really successful advertising business. you have Tube, which is already a successful advertising business. You can make this thing just a monster of a free streaming service all at once if you want to. And they're different in interesting ways. Like a lot of people on the Roku channel watch fast channels Tubbe is much more on demand. They have lots of like, I'm deep in the world of licensing deals for a story I'm working on about why I can't stream the movie the Nice guys. This story has like slowly taken over my life, but I've learned how companies acquire content. This company would be hugely powerful in doing that. If they decide to fold the Roku channel into Tub be or do some combination of the two We suddenly have another like a list streaming service at Fox, which I just think is underrated and fascinating. They have so far said they're going to run them independently But that's what they always say. Everybody has always said that about every acquisition ever. and it has I don't think it has ever once successfully been true To me is a shocking success story. It just works. If I you can open that app and watch it without any kind of loggin, I think is one of the smartest strategic decisions and all the streaming. Angeie S sued that COTB has been under deccoder. I mean, like, what's it like working for the Murdoxs? And she deferred. like, Nope. ye. She's a pro. I appreciated it, but she was like, nope. Uh, but like, You know, she's beCO Vo. She's basically figured out like, oh, we need to put free streaming front of a lot of people. this is a huge opportunity for us and they've managed to grow at a pretty huge clip without the benefit of being the Roku channel the default free thing that runs in your nineteen dollars shooting box. Right. whichich Roku advertises to death.ike you cannot avoid the Roku channel every time you' run on your Roku. and that is very much on purpose. So I mean, imagine if you can take the Roku channel and the benefit of just being the default And we've learned how to market the free streaming service Pre pretty good likeike you can see the opportunities there I suspect they will combine the advertising reach for the two without the service itself because all of this is just ad based. Yeah, you can sell them both on the back end like together without smosshing them together as one product. And then maybe you leave your antitrust concerns alone, who knows? Maybe Synergies, baby. That's what we do here. Should we go ninety these things? just this is a useful clarifying exercise. Is it time to bust out the go ninety scale of Doom streaming services for But only only talking about to be in the Roku channel, right So I want to do Tubi and I want to do the Roku channel and I want to do just this whole deal. You sort of You sort of alluded to the idea that like maybe this is being bundled up to be rebundled to some even bigger player which would presumably be a tech company. like Could YouTube buy this combination and have that kind of make sense? YouTube has connected TV Like the thing that most of the players have already is some big connected TV play Apple has one. they have the Apple TV. They have their service. like They there's They' able to get I mean, Apple doesn't care about advertising so much that they You know, they run an app to run the TV in the same economics. But Google has massive connected TV rich with YouTube and YouTube TV and Google TV. Roku obviously has it. Amazon obviously have it. They run prrime, they it. So doesn't have one. Microsoft doesn't have one, Ma doesn't have one. There are lots of big digital advertising ecosystem players where' like, oh, this would this would be the thing you'd buy for a cononnected to me. Now I think meta has no institutional focus on its core business right now So who knows Yeah, maybe. All right, well let's just do these three quickly before we get out of here. So Uh T be, I think we both agree, probably belongs toward the zero of the list. that T be survives. yeah, it's hard to imagine a world in which we come out of this deal and T be is completely gone So are we putting it do you want it zero? It said zero. T be, two me is great. And this foox is baby So righto kill its own baby, right? That's fair. Yeahah, I agree with that. All right, so Tuby goes to a zero on the G ninety scale of Doom' streaming serervices, named, by the way after the Verizon. Streaming service G ninety, which immediately went ninety because it was disastrous. Yes. Zero is alive and ninety is dead. ninety G go ninety you die you keel over and you die.. All right, two bes a zero Uh whereere do you put the Roku channel I'm going put it at ninety N And here's my argument. Maybe the words the Roku channel exist as an app icon somewhere. Okay. But there's no world in which to be and a Roku channel compete in the marketplace for content Be they got to go buy stuff, right? Yeah. They got to buy shows and movies and whatever to stream on these services If they compete, the prices go up. So there's They're going to unify the content acquisition right? They're going to go out the market and say we're gonna run this. They're going to unify the advertising, and eventually you're basically going to get a skin on T be called the Roku channel Oh, that's interesting I could see that. So it's kind of like in the old way of television, it would be like having like Nickelodeon and Nick Juni. where it's like These are technically different things, but they exist only to have more places to put things acquired by Nickelode. I think that's great. Okay I dont I don't want to go all the way to ninety just because the Roku channel is so shockingly successful that maybe if you're foox, You're just like, we're just going to leave this alone, sell some ads, try to make our money back. fun But spiritually, I like it. eighty eight. O it at eighty eight. eighty eight feels good. Right. I think they're going to hollow out its business operations. and they'll it's successful Nobody cares about the business operations of the Roku channel? No. And Tubi is a vastly better brand. Like it had a big moment with the Super Bowl. They're going to keep getting stuff like that. like Tubbe has a really interesting bunch of creator plays going on. Like if you're going to pick a streaming service, it's obviously TubB. Yeah, Charles Puliamore did a story for us about how Tub be goes and courts black creatives specifically And that is a market they've identified It's really interesting. Angelie S, their CEO is reallyally interesting to hear talk about how they think about content, which is very different from any other platform that I've talked to. All right So that's fun. So this means I would say the whole Fox Roku tie up has got to go somewhere in the middle And this really depends on like, do you think this is being packaged to be sold for, you know, a hundred billion dollars to some giant tech company Or do you think there's a real competitive streaming player here? What do you think? I think the Murdoch family does not want to be owned by anything else They're certainly not hurting for money. And like I said, I think meta maybe is a buyer, Microsoft maybe the people who don't have connected TV advertising stories are potential buyers here They all lack any kind of focus on anything human beings want They're all totally distracted by super intelligence or whatever. I feel like Microsoft has tried the Xbox TV thing too many times to R It just makes no sense for them. And they're going to sell Xbox. By the way, this is my super hottest take. but you put Xbox in the go ninety. Like it feels like they're just pairing it down to sell it, right? So they want out of this game So I think I think right now you got to leave it at forty five likeike deead center. I't know Yeahah, deead center. I don't if this deal will close. I don't know if the atttorney genereneral of California is going to file anitrust lawsuit. I don't know if the other studios will. I don't know if Netflix will show up and be like, here's more money Right? Like there's a lot here. Yeah. So and I'd say forty five. L they go either way right now. Okay I was I would say if the deal goes through, like if you could tell me one hundred percent of this deal is going to get done, I'd put it at like a twenty s Be I think I do think this thing is like It might be too expensive a deal, but it's powerful enough. as a platform that it might work if you throw in the just possible for like political insanity over this deal U includluding around the world, by the way. L Roku is a big global platform that is going to make a lot of people feel a lot of things. There's been a lot of fulinating in Europe. There's a lotess fulminating in Europe. That's the thing it feels right. full coin toss what this thing gets to be in the future I like it. All right. U by the way, one last button on this. Did you see the story this week about what happened after Stehven Colbert's show went off the air to the ratings of CBS This is Byron Allen doing comics unleashed and likeaking CBS. Yeah. They basically, they sold the time Steven Colbert's time slot to to Byron Allen, essentially like it's he's doing an infomercial on And they found that Stehen Colbert's Ratings were super high at the very end and then they immediately lost two thirds of the audience and that actually it's having a ripple effect becausecause one of the things that happens is a lot of people turn off their TV's at night and then they turn it back on in the morning and the channel that it's on winds up being important. So like if they're watching Jimmy Kimmel at night, they're going to watch ABC's morning show instead of CBS's morning show. So there's like there's just this It just it goes back to the same thing we're talking about a distribution, by the way, right? Like being the place peopleeople go to find you is vastly more important than anybody realizes. and it's actually very hard to just content your way through that problem. Yeah. And this is just a tiny little microcosm of that thing U. Nobody is watching Bron Allen's show And as a result It's hurting the rest of CBS because people have changed the channel. And that is just the audience of people who have linear television either broadcast or table And they turn on their TVs and it just starts playing stuff. And that's enough. Wild. Yeah. And CBS's response is like, well, we're making money from that time slot. whatever. I mean, yees,B can we look at CBS and go to ninety sc They they're like eighty five and sprinting towards ninetikey. Look at a dead run towards Nighty All right we take a break, then we're getting back We got the hy desk, we got a lightning. All right, we're back. It's time now for the hype desk whereere our friends Ross and Ashley come and tell us. what's cool on the internet and in the world. You're both here this week. Ross, Ashley, Hello. Hello reunited does it how does it feel Bleak That sounds about right. I'm told you guys have both been to movies that you both have feelings about this week. U actuallyually, I want to start with you because I am reliably told that you have what I would call an extremely surprising take about a movie. Okay, hit us with it. You gott to hear me out, everyone, which is He Man is is a sleeper hit and everyone should go see it and you're totally missing out on it. Masters of the Universe is so much fun It is just don't believe I don't believe Okay. I agree. I agree that the trailers did not sell this movie the way that it should have. I think they did a little bit. So he manan, the guy who plays Adam is so good and so charming. It is the perfect summer Himbo movie. Like it is the perfect summer Himbo movie This movie canan I just stop? This implies that that is a thing that I'm after, but go ahead. But I'd argue that we could all use a little joy, right? Like a little joy. Sure. I'm with you. And I feel like this movie is just like if especially if you are a kid of the eighties, but even if you're not, it's like It's still really entertaining you really cannot Jared Letto plays Skeletor and I was like very dubious about mean immediately out then. I was like I hate you sort of l because So this movie has gone through deevelopment hell like it it was there was like multiple different versions of the script. There were different actors attached. like it's gone through some stuff. Like there were there was a whole other version of this movie that was happening not years ago I feel like. This is a hell of a sales picture. So that's okay. but I'm selling it because I'm saying I was so skeptical about it coming into it. I was just like, I don't know. I think it's going to be so bad that I want to go see it. Like it's going be so and I was so pleasantly surprised. It really has Thor Ragnarok vibes, It's like very fun. It's just like it's a light it's a light romp. The movie is like two hours and fifteen minutes long. That's not a light romp. That's't like draged at all. Pacing was great. felt like the movie kept going. like there wasn't any like weird side quests. L I never felt like the movie like got into a weird like, oh, the movie needs to be longer. So like let's make them have some obstacle to go do a fetch quest. So there was none of that It's like he gets the sword. goes to attney. likeike it's a whole thing So everything like leans into the conceit of this being ridiculous. And it is like there's a moment early on where like skeletor is like laughing. and it's sort of very Austin powers where like, he's like laughing and then he looks around. he's like, I didn't st like it isop' laughing like or whatever. And so and Allison Breee plays Evil Ly And she is like very good. and it's wild how much this movie came together when it absolutely against the like against all odds. This movie should not be entertaining and it absolutely is. And I highly recommend everybody go see it for a fun summer rump. All right. Ross, you also went to a movie theater. Yeah. What Speaking of eighties nostalgia that looks different on paper, I went to go see Dclosure Day, the newew Spielberg film Um I don't want to go after a Master of the Universe because that's such a good case. and I do not have the same case for a Spielberg film that sounds really wild to say Um But is it is interesting, because it's akay,' Spiberg doing aliens. All back in the earlyens, the question is How would humanity react if we all just found out at the exact same time on social media or wherever we're looking in modern times that aliens are real and we've been lied to for years And it is a like people call it classic Spillberg. And I think for the first half, it is classic Spillberg. You've got car chases men and black It's two kind of disparate narratives that spoiler kind of come together. In one, you've got Josh O'Connor as like, the whistleblower, who knows the truth and wants the world to know And in the other, you've got Emily Blnt as a random local meteorologist in Kansas City who just starts speaking alien language And then all of a sudden it's just The committed to going drive somewhere she doesn't even know where They're big shadowy figures, organizations. Colin Furth is like the head of like an ominous corporation When you get to the first half of the movie, it is the most be The first half is theater. It is theatater tier is some of the best like carchet scenes and explosions of destruction that Spielberg has done And I really want to tell you the rest of the movie is good and there's a reason it's not in the marketing because it's a spoiler, Spielberg's done this before. He did close encounters, right? I am Richard Dreryfist. I saw UFO. holy shit, I am so fascinated by it. I have nothing but hope and optimism really want this to happen Al almost feels like in many ways like Spiber kind of trying to recreate that moment. But in modern times, and modern times are just so much more cynical It's not are aliens real? It's more. yeah, we all know aliens are real, but How much is the government covering it up? and how I be to find out? Do you remember that movie Don't look Up that came out during COVID that was like every great actor you've ever heard of, basically. and it was like an allegory for how we experienence information. And it winds up being like the bleakest possible movie about the end of the world. I feel like you just described that movie to me again. Yeah Yes, but I will say and this is not spoiler It is Spielberg. So in many ways, it does end on hope, right? Spielberg is a person of hope. If you look at these directors, they all they all have their thing, right. Christher Nolan. It's going to be a movie about time and memory Denny Villenu loves cycles of violence Spillberg. Aliens exist, and if you live in the suburbs, you're probably gonna see one but ultimately, humanity is pretty cool Like that's every film he's ultly made. And this is no different, but it just has that such a bleak political thriller start that it just has this shift. and I love it. It is also a great airplane movie. It's a perfect airplane movie. Tough. I'm a sum up pippe desesk and forward Gkip Spielberg, S. Wow, wow. That's a lot tough. S All right, before we get out of here Neili, I'm told you have a contribution to the Hype Desk. I do. I'm very excited about this. So as you may or may not know, the New York Nicks have won the NBA fininals, They're the Champions of the Lague. They're veryy exciting to be anywhere close to New York right now. I could hear the screams in California.'s And friend of the Vverge, Chris Person, who's written for us is now afterftermath, which a great indie game site, goo subscribe to Aftermath, read everything Chris does. He posted on Blue Sky that he was at a techno festival U during game five and I guess one person put a laptop on a chair on a table and the entire techno festival basically stopped. and watch the next one on a single tiny like ity bitty laptop. This is one of the funniest pictures I've ever seen. It's like the most verg way into the NBA finals I can think of. This video is incredible. J just run the video clip. Yeah, I will say before we get to the video, I just want to say if you're not watching this A, I'm sorry and B Click on the link Because Chris takes us through a truly incredible journey. It starts with a picture of like a few people gathered around a laptop watching the next at this festival And then a few minutes later, a bunch more people are watching a laptop at the festival. And then Chris just tweets, okay, they put one of the laptops on a chair now and like a crowd starts to build. And then a few minutes later, it is literally I don't know, one hundred fifty hundred hundred people That's one hundred fifty people watching my go. And then lapt. And then it culminates in this video literally like massive festival level cheering for a laptop because the mix iss very good That is incredible It's very good It's also good This is I know you've all heard the Let's go Nick chance across across the country and world cheering it on lapop on a chair, which It's perfect thirteen inch laptop screen. That is absolutely incredible. Chris also posted somewhere else in that thread that the other thing that was like the thing that was supposed to be happening at the Technano Festival was an artist who was just Paying a pair of giant subwoofer cones with a sheet of plastic And he's like, I don't know how this is music, but it also kind of rules. Oh my God.'s amazing. L the prod events Like I was like, I know how to bring the NBA finals onto the Virgecast and it is through the post of Chris personerson. So thanks for Ch and we can show that stuff. So thanks to Chris. goo read afterftermath. you know, you know all the rest of it. Yep. That's the hypest thing that happened It's good stuff. was that was a great. Big week. maybe we should all watch Disclosure Day and Masters the Universe on a laptop. a laptop. laptop. That goes on scale so. I don't accept I don't accept All right Rs, Ashley. good to see you guys. Thanks for being here Cheerssill All right, now it is time for America's favorite podcast within a podcast F friend and carars Shout out to Violeta Goomba who created that and also to the people who email us about all the funny places that you are when that theme song appears and whether it fits the vibe. I we have it Maybe next week the entire segment is just us reading those emails. Oh, I like that. We can definitely do that. But this week, Brendon's doing stuff What are he doing? He's always doing something. He. So first, I'm angry at Brendan Wh he he's struck in an indirect way this time. There's like a second order Brendon effect. Okay. upset that Brendan has forced me into agreement with Ted Cruz. Of It's rough. That's rough stuff. Yeah U so, you know, the actions of this administration have scrambled political lines all over the place. I think this is actually the second time you've agreed with Ted Cruz on the podcast. Ted Cruz is for his many, many faults does not like it when you screw with the First Amendment. true So Center Cruise and Senator Ron Wyden introduced a thing called the jawbone Act which would let individuals sue the government when they meddle with their speech and create transparency requirements for government communications with social media, AI and broadcast companies. And what they're saying that they're worried about is the government messing with AI because If the goverment can go to Google and demand that Gemini say some things, but not o other things. What happened at the Capitol building on january sixth? That's a real problem. And so if your speech is interfered with legally, there should be some remedy And so the Joban Act would create that remedy, would allow Jimmy Kimmel to sue the FCC job owning his speech And it would allow all of us to see what these government agencies are saying. Now there's layers and layers of complication here. like Is this built off of some bad faith readings of how the Biden administration talked to Facebook about public health initiatives at the tail end of the Of course it is. Did that case also go to the Spreme Ct And did the Spree Court say all that was above board and was fine because ultimately Facebook said no a lot And I was fine. sureure. O do most companies feel as embolded in as Facebook to say no? L they do not. So this law sort of like creates the balance, but I'm just upset that I've been forced into agreement with Ted Cruz in this way This bill is coponsored by Ted Cruz and Ron Wyden Two people you would not expect to be simultaneously excited about the same thing. Ron Wyden wrote two hundred thirty Yeah Right? Like these are free speech warriors to the internet in a very prficed way. They've got a pool of supporters, the ACLU, FIR, which is another free speech organization, the Nnight First Amendment Institute of Columbia. All people we've talked to about people that are you know we know to be defenders of the First Amendment in particular ways Trump is particularly mad Brandon Car here. And so he's just issuing fiery quotes Brandon carar. Of course, like I said, there's also some nonsense about the Biden administration weaponizing the blah, blah blah, the pressure. It's like whatever, man. Maybe you believe that. Actually that that case did go to the Supreme Court. We did read all the emails. Yeah, and we did see that the tech companies were like, no Yeah, turns out it's not illeal to ask somebody questions generally speaking,or f. I just want to say, by the way Uh Jawbone, in this case is a backronym. It stands for justice againainst weaponized bureaucratic overreach to networked expression A, very good. And B, if you are the person in any of these offices responsible for coming up with the name to make the acronym make sense You're the only person in the world I care about My white whale story is how bills get named because they start with the acronym and work backwards And I want to I want I want those stories. It's all I care about May very good. That's very was great five years ago and you one hundred percent know the answer right now is Claude Oh, that sucks. Yeah They're like, we call it the Jobbone A. What could actually be called? Fire up those GPs budd Justice against weaponized bureaucratic overreach to network expression Like Ted Cruz are like walking on the plane come up with us whispering into his phone. All right, one other thing, we talk about this a lot, the notion that everything is owned by a tiny handful of Trump allies in media. There are some rules preventing people from owning too many radio stations or too many broadcast TV networks in an area. those rules are getting waved over and over again.on loves those rules until loves those rules U this week, a bunch of radio CEOs are meeting with Carr and saying they need to quickly and substantially relax the radio ownership rules so they can own more radio stations in given areas How are there any left? Dididn't we like just combine all of them into one company do itV channels. Now we're doing with radio. Yeah. we did with TV channels. We're doing it again. And their big argument is that local radio doesn't just compete with other local radio stations, they compete with YouTube. And so what have I been saying about the ill fated way to compete with YouTube? You need enough scale to bring YouTube to It's never gonna to happen for you. that you just wantan to own all the local rio stations and monopolize local media. We compete with sleep is like everybody's argument about everything now Brandan loves to characterize this as like the scrappy independent local news. And it's like, no these are billionaires with political viewpoints. so they want to voist on everyone in a given region. and we actually want competition Anyhow, That's Brendon this week. The corruption is naked, the stupidity is high. Brandon, as always, if you want to come on the show or any show and defend yourself or just issue whatever gobbly gooked nonsense that usually comes out your mouth, you're welcome to I'm available I'll answer the call ay that's been Brenon Carsr D done the America'savorite pcasts in the pcast Beautiful. The corruption is naked, the stupidity is high, is a merch idea waiting to happen. And I just wan to mark that right here in the podcast. Itounds like the pool status sign outside the reflecting pool I sion take. H. That's pretty good actually. How are the waves make it? That's very good. All right My first lighting round item is about threads And I just I have a number to throw at you that I have been trying to figure out what to make of for a couple of days, and I want to know what you think about it. So it's about to be Thread's third birthday. It came out in July of twenty twenty three. U and they just announced that they have five hundred million monthly active users on threads On the one hand This is a very big number. On the other hand, I think there are a lot of ways in which it is not a very big number, which I am happy to explain. But I'm curious, like five hundred million threads users. How does that number hit you I wonder how many of them clicked on an Instagram carousel and didn't realize their were opening threads. Yes I assume the answer is like three quarters of them, right? Like I honestly think that is right. like There's a way to look at it that says, okay U five hundred million people use threads every month kick ass growing really fast, doing great. Like we used to talk about how Threads adds a blue sky every day That number seems to probably still be at least true time On the other side There are about three billion people in the metaam of products Meta is unusually good getting people between products and unifying the products and sort of making you exist across its many platforms. That is like Meta's whole thing is like, okay, well Facebook is dying. We're just going to get everybody onto Instagram. And like that's that works. That's a game they can keep playing So the idea that after three years, only a sixth of that user base even touches threads once a month feels kind of like failure. I don't know. This is what I mean. like it's a huge number and a tiny number all at the same time. Yeah, I mean it's much bigger than X, right? X is in decline. Blue sky is stagnant to decline. threads is growing Are they growing because sccreenshots of tweets on Instagram aren't as good as a carousel of threads posts and you can kick them out to threads That's a user behavior you can kind of get into Maybe Meta says almost all of the daily users on threads increase because of communities. Right? So like NBA threads is it like rockin or like whatever it is. I think you know we talked about it for a long time on the show last week that making these big networks feel smaller is what everyone is chasing. And so here's more evidence threads it iss going to lean into communities, it's going make that thing feel smaller, and that's where the growth will come from. Conor Hayes, who runs threads at Meta, says right now all of their communities are made by Meta, but soon they will let users make their own communities, which might unlock even more growth There's something there. They're doing a Rddit too. Everybody's doing a Reddit right now. I actually think the opportunity for threads is to be like, we're the only social network that isn't going to turn into TikTok because Instagram already exists. Instagram is doing a fine job of turning in TikTok. It really is So we treads you look at it and you say, well, all of our money is in realels. What if we just put Reels on threads But then you can just make Instagram it. I think like they'll put reels on threads, but it'll kick you back in Instagram. and that little dynamic is actually an opportunity for may be true. Yeah, I'm forever trying to figure out the extent to which threads has been Ahe had versus like kind of a subtle failure. Like to the extent that Mark Zuckerberg wanted to create something as culturally central as Twitter once was, Like that was a big part of it, right? that There was a lot of good reporting that Mark Zuckerberg was always sort of jealous of Twitter and the fact that Cable News was people reading tweets and that that was where people went for real time information on real time events that it was like it was the heartbeat of the internet in a way that Facebook, even though it was much larger never was, and he wanted to do threads to make that Red is not that at all. No. That thing largely doesn't exist. and to the extent that it does, it's still on X Um but it largely doesn't exist. And so I think in that sense Threads has not achieved the goal But on the other hand, five hundred million people use it every month. I'm sure it's a brisk advertising business that is growing fast for Eap. And they think they can get to a billion. I think maybe the question is just how much based posting is going to grow at all Right compompared to the thing people are doing all day long, which is watching social videos. Wait, actually can we we can end on your lightning round item, but I have another metal one to talk about. Sure, which we should talk about. So U this week Facebook announced a new AI mode U which is basically its answer to Google's AI mode, which you know, tries to instead of giving you links to search results tries to sort of stitch together a narrative for you from your search results. Meta's AI mode Ah It just sounds insane to say this out loud. Meta's AI mode, instead of synthesizing the web, synthesizes all of the public posts across Meta's various networks to give you information about things And Nili, if I were to say, What is the least reliable corpus of information on the internet? Wouldn't you say people's Facebook posts Right. Like Facebook limiting itself to the content that people post on Facebook is just this thing will be inssane from your jump Like my community's local Facebook posts are some of the wildest conspiracies And this is like a it's like a nice New York community. Yeah. U it's going to be great. I'm super excited for everyone's drunkest uncle. to be the source of Facebook's AI training It's very funny because they Alison Johnson and our team tried it and had a couple of funny experiences with it. But The way they frame it is the same way everybody frames everything, which is like trip planning and find stuff to do around me. Always trip planning. It's NAPA. In our example,'s are going to NAPA And what's funny is on the one hand, I actually think a bummer about the internet is a lot of that stuff did for a time get moved to Facebook. Like for a long time, if you wanted to see if The restaurant you wanted to go to was open or closed. Most up to date source was probably their Facebook page, right? That was like When Facebook was ascendant, a lot of that stuff just moved there. And so a lot of the like, what is going on around near me moves to Facebook And then it died. So now you have this like incredibly old David. set of information about all of the places around you And for me, the idea of like, what's going on that would be fun for the kids nearby this weekend is a good idea that I want very badly I just I don't think there is any chance and Alison seem to have the experience of it not really working because Meta is just not an reliable source of information in any sense. I mean again We had a power outage here on Sunday night and my local Facebook groups were like, there was an explosion and then just like wild speculation about what caused theage My My neighborhood, it just makes me think of like my next door, which is just like Pictures of people in hoodies being like, arere they criminals? I like Nope. They're teenagers. It's fine. We will misidentify criminals at the highest rate of any AI system It's very true. All right You get you get the last lightning aroundound item what do you got Is this a light inound item? All right. Oh no. Genui The nation's number one matter and thread reporter. is struck again I mean, I love this is what I'm here. Why believes in matter so. I believe in matter so much are we doing? Why does thege exist? It's to make sure that someone covers matter as hard as Jen covers matter? Absolutely. is the most important thing. So if you don't know what Matter is, why you're listening to the show? Matter is a universal smart home connectivity platform that's supposed to bring everything together. And the experience of using matter, For five years now, more has been to assume it can do things it cannot do Right' sometimes to assume that because they directly say that. Right because like the literal obvious promise of a universal smart home standard is that everything will work together. And every step of the matter journey has been like, what if it didn't? Yes What if it was slightly and yet completely broken? And then then not to downplay how complicated it is to make everything work together. We end up in this situation where like matter one point three A will introduce thread network credential sharing so that my ero routers can pick up the password for the thread network created by my Apple homehubs None of this makes sense to any human being. Literally the only person who understands it is Jen. and I think Jen understands it better than the people who run matter. Oh, I'd a hundred percent agree with that Uh So this is just like a huge and thread is like a different network. So this is all crazy all over the place. Anyhow. Matter one point six was announced this week at Unify, the Connectivity Standards Alliance Inaugural Conerence in Austin, Texas. Jen is there. She's on the ground Matter one point six includes a new spec David. Joint fabric Do get it, Trered? fabric They are good with with the mer names. I respect that And in one point six, when everything is updated to one point six, there will just be one smart home system that all of the different things can talk to at once So you won't have to set up the device in Apple and Samsung and Google and Alexa. You will finally be able to be like, there's a smart plug. It's I set it up in Apple and my Google can see it just as well from the jump without having to set it up all over again. I was describing Matter. This is What Matter is supposed That legitimately what I it would do five years ago it was announced But we're here, budd. Matter one point six. we're finally doing matter Excuse me, it's called joint fabric I want you to get it right There are other there are other features in in matter one point six U There's something called Thrmostat suggestions, which is obviously very important NFC said, but joint fabric is going to finally unify the smart home Just as soon as it is implemented in the spec, the spec is launched and all of the smart home makers support it all at once. So ten years from now, yeah, joint fabric operate. I will say there is a lot of pressure on these platforms to get this right because bringing the AI system into your house and saying turn on the lights and it not happening is a problem for all of them. And they have more incentive just solve it so they can all get access to the same system than ever before because this is all a product they want to make. And if you're Apple and you're going to relaunch Syria and a new home pod this fall or whatever you're going to do and everyone's stuff is already in Alexa, your incentive to support joint fabric and get the Alexa stuff into your system is actually really high Will that actually happen people respond rationally to the incentives put in front of them for interoperability I would say question mark But the incentives are there. I agree I also wonder if any of these companies care at all Like is is Google Google announced this week that their home speaker is finally about to start shipping Google give a crap if you use like do their no for home things. like if you buy the speaker and use it to talk to Gemini and that makes you a more dedicated Gemini user for other Gemini things, What if smart homeome just remains the eleventh most important thing that any of these products do. And like, what if Jen is the only person on Earth who actually cares about the smartphone This is worried about have. Yeah have but I always care about. You like wired your house with hernette and got weird into home assisting. You're off on like a different'm not even, I mean, the people who are in home assistant, they're like another level. Like they will never None of this will ever have mattered to them because they have figured out their own joint fabrics. Yeah Like if you want to homebrew a joint fabric you can do that today with a raspberry pie and a couple of beers Like you can get it done. It's absolutely right. But this is like I think the fact that it is not a priority is the incentive Do know what I mean? Sure if you have a vision for how it should work being like, we're going to the resources behind going to every weird Chinese smart plug vendor and making sure they work with us versus We're just going to support matter and everything will work It's way easier to support matter and that's the The CSA, the Cony Center Allines is made up of engineers and product people from all these companies I just think I'm starting to worry there's a real sort of tragedy of the Cons problem here in that The only way this works is if everybody sort of equally decides to hold hands and do it together And there's not anyone reallyally with so much incentive to like drag everybody else along with them. It's like Phips Hugh is maybe the one who has the most to gain from all of this working together. Everybody intellectually understands this to be a good idea I'm just increasingly struck by like There aren't that many parties for whom it is like crucially important for this to work And I hope you're right As more people get these new devices with Gemini for homeome and the new Apple Home stuff, which seems to be very good and Siri AI and all of the stuff coming from Alexa pllus, like As more people get those things into their home and they start having higher expectations of their smart home, maybe that forces all these companies to raise their game But so far it's like everybody everybody thinks this is a good idea. Everybody believes in matter Everybody wants matter to work. Nobody really needs matter to work. and I feel like that is The thing that worries me the most right now about matter You see more smart home stuff in your assate. I come over I'm come over to the big pile of lights switches Some of those govey outdoor bulbs I'llange your mind Dude, I'm down. I have spent a lot of time shopping for Govy things recently. I have It's like, what if Phillips Hu but cheaper and basically their It's Phillips Hu, but cheaper and runs on Matter And that's their whole company and they winning, like straightforwardly winning U Yeah. No, I mean, look, they care insofar as that we're at one point six in years and years of development And it's the companies that fund it And the products exist now at scale You know, the fact that it doesn't actually do the thing you wanted to do is very silly, but we're we're way past This device only works with Google Home and this device only works with Homekit and this device only works with the Weexa. Likees. That core problem is solved. You just buy the one light bulb from GoV and it works for everything because matter it just works Yes The next problem is unless you buy it from IKEA, and then it's like mostly broken for reasons. and just doesn't work at all. Yeah A different set of problems Anyway, look, I don't know when joint fabric is going to change the world But I amm hoping it does I want I'm trying to end on a high note It's beautif look again, this is the thing. Matter is the right idea. It is filled with the right ideas And I God, I hope at some point I get a product filled with all of She's in awes.ight idea. She's at the conference. Yeah If anyone can get them in line, it's Jen. She's You know, she's she's a she's a mom She's ferocious. she's raised teenagers She can get these companies in line. Yeah, absolutely right. Jen will save everything, I think is basically where we've met it. Yeah She's got the accent. but there's a lot of pieces for it's like Jen will solve it. H's the title the episode Don'try Jen we'll fix it All right, we should get out of here. Two quick things before we go. One, Vversion history is back. The Harmony remote episode was super fun. If you didn't hear it, I would say there is a non zero chance you're going to hear it on the Vircast feed very soon because we're going to be off tomorrow for juneenth. We'll be back normal scheduled programming next week. Roomba is this week at Un Vversion History. Super fun episode with Colin Engle the co founder of Iroobot. G good times Neili,'s the Catater next So we are off This week we took our little july fourth break early. becausecause on the third of July We are running our annual grill episode. We did it again, which is a full circle victory for me. Our first grill episode was Roger Dal the CEO of Blackstone, the Giddle Company. And it was like right when they were starting like pandemic darling and a little company, it's figuring it all out. and they got so big that they bought Weber. So he's back But now he's the CEO of Weber And we wanted to have him last year, but he was an antitrust review so he couldn't come on So this is the full circle moment for the Dakoter Grill episode When we started, our producers and I were like, We got to get Webber, Like eventually we're going to get our way to Weber And we got there because our first guest ever bought Weber I can't I can't be happier about this That's that's like an equal victory lap on both sides. It's for for dec Coder and for the CEO of Weber. You literally heard it here first That's awesome That's really good. U Listen to that. it's going to be very fun. We'll make sure you you know it comes out when it comes out I'm As always, you can subscribe to the Verge to get all of our podcasts, including the ones we just talked about. ad free, plus all of our exclusive newsletters, all of our coverage, everything else Vverge d. com slash subscribe We get a lot of people asking us how you can support like us and the show. A. And we're grateful for all of you. and that is the single best thing you can do. That is how you make Nili unovernable and also someday buy him a yacht. That's the one Someday far in the future The yachtts called Sunday There you go Also, send us email irversgecast the vers dot comot callall the hotline eight six vers one one I truly love hearing from you about anything and everything, including your thoughts about grills. My dad, by the way is currently in the market for a grill. if you've grill thoughts hit me up so I can sound smart when I tell my dad would grill to buy. I'm sorry. We've had Blackstone, obviously in twenty twenty one. Then we had Traeger We've had big green egg. lastast year we had shhark Ninja This is a this is a real series that we have done now. Yeah. This is our fifth one Next up is like a, I don't even know. We're gonna have to start a verge grill and then that's the move. We build our own grill is the end of the project. Ifave you ever w want to hear me just desperately try to hang on in a coder or go listen to thats shuck Just like I'm like, wow, my man likes to sell Sark Ninja products. Yeah, judging by their TikTok ads, that does not surprise me before tell that. All right, the first cast is Vverse production and part of the Vox Media podcast network. Today's show is produced by Josh Kaahas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kef for Travis Llarchuck, and Aaron Loccasio We'll see you next week. Ni.