Unmasking Satoshi Nakamoto

Support for the show comes from Hostinger . Ever had an idea for a business or side hustle, but never actually launched it? With Hostinger , you can turn that idea into something real in minutes instead of weeks. Hostinger is an all-in-one platform that brings everything into one place: your domain, website, email marketing, AI tools, and AI agents. You can create websites, online stores, and custom apps with simple prompts. Then use AI agents to automate tedious tasks and grow your business. Go to hostinger .com slash vergecast to bring your idea online for under $3 a month. Use promo code VIRGCAST for an extra 20% off . Dell PCs with Intel inside are built for the moments you plan and for the ones you don't . For those early morning news sessions, or when you're on the go and leave your charger at home, or even the times you need the best processing speed to just get the job done. Dell-built tech that adapts to you. Built with a long-lasting battery so you're not scrambling for an outlet. And with built-in intelligence that makes updates around your schedule, not in the middle of it. Find technology built for the way you work at Dell .co.uk forward slash DellPCs . Built for you . Welcome to the Verdcast, the flagship podc Which is what we do here on the Verdcast. Wow. I'm your friend David Pierce, Neil App Talk. Did you say in this media environment that we are the flagship podcaster back? Because I don't. Whew! RFK started a podcast this week. You know what I mean? The webby for being unconstrained by truth. The voting is now open. It's beautiful. That of course is a line from a New Yorker profile of Sam Altman that is deeply fascinating and has been making the rounds this week. We're gonna talk about it. There's another big story about Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin that's been going around that we're gonna talk about. We have some Brendan stuff to talk about, we have some anthropic stuff to talk about. We have a lot to talk about. All that is much less important than weird things Neil and David have been doing on their computers this week. We also have uh a couple of housekeeping items for you. One is uh please vote for the us in Webbies. The voting is open until next Thursday. We are currently winning for Best Technology Podcast, but it's too close and it's making me uncomfortable. Yeah, we're enough. I would like to win in a way that hurts everyone else's feelings. Do you know what I mean? I yeah, I'd like to win in a way that we have to be good winners . Do you know what I mean? Right. It becomes incumbent on us to like give a nice speech acknowledging the others. Yeah. Like if if it like it makes an error I was like, oh my God, I'm happy I won. But like if you win by enough, if you don't nail the speech, you're a jerk. And I want to be in that position. I want that level of stress and pressure on the five-word webby acceptance speech. I respect that. I would like to be required I want I want the like Tom Brady, Michael Jordan level of success where we're we do so well that we still find haters and everybody's like, wow. The the amount of rage and anger that you have to have to still find haters amongst all this success, that's what I want first. And then thrive on them. Right. I I think it's clear that I thrive on my haters, David. I don't I don't know that we need to find anymore.. That's true People have been saying this about you. Um, also, um, the Verge movie night on April 27th is already sold out. Um, not only did the IFC Center have to bump us to the bigger theater to go see sneakers with all of you, it's already sold out. So A, very excited to see a bunch of you for sneakers in a couple of weeks. B, um, I think this is officially a thing we're gonna have to do again. So keep an eye out. We're gonna do more of these. It's gonna be very fun. Uh, last one in two Tuesdays, I think April 21st, uh, we're gonna do a whole verge cast about the Verge and the VergeCast, the media business and journalism and AI and our feelings about everything. Um, so you and I are gonna spend a whole episode answering as many questions as we can. We're gonna loop in Helen Have our publisher to talk about the business a little bit. Um, if you have questions about the Verge or the VergeCast or the state of media or why NeLi is like this, um, you can always call the hotline, 866 Verge11. Email us, vergecastheverge.com. Send all that stuff in. We're gonna answer as many of those as we can in two Tuesdays. So you've got a little bit of time, but not too much. Get all that stuff in as quickly as you can. That ends up being, I think, one of my favorite episodes to make. We do this like once a year, I would say on average. Uh it's very fun. Get all your questions in. David and I have this like old school journalism, don't do inside baseball and make the story about yourself. And then you look at every famous creator and influencer, and they're like, here's what I wore today. And we we're just gonna try to we're gonna try to thread that needle a little bit more. Yep. 100%. Um, but all of the news this week, I think is is demonstrably less important than weird stuff that Neelai and David have been doing on their computers this week. Let's make the show about ourselves then. Let's start with you, Neilai, because you I think owe us updates on a couple of different projects. Um, starting with your iMac as monitor saga, which has become it has been elevated to the level of a saga here on the verge. It is a little bit of a saga. It's not so much of a saga, but it's a little bit of a point. I believe where we left off was um you were gonna try some wacky firmware shenanigans. Yes. What's what's been going on? So I bought uh the Stone Taskin R eighteen twenty, which is now a model number that I know and talk about as though everyone cares about iMac display retrofit boards. Yeah. There is a community, and I uh that community is great, and they have been working on this for years. You can you can go read those threads, they were literally years long on various forms. So I bought the newest board because you got to buy the newest one. N theot one everyone's been using for years that obviously works. You right? You have to buy the newest one. Uh the 1811 is the one that everyone's using for years that already works. But I bought the 1820 because it's new. You understand what I'm saying? Sure. So 1820, I came to my house, opened the I MAC. It was harrowing in its way, but not as hard as people say. Um put the board in, kinda did a bad job. I called out Snazzy Labs. They needed a way better job. Go watch that video. It's it's way more impressive than whatever I did. Um set it all up. It works. It lights up. It looks beautiful. I have a a little color calibrator so that you know the when the screen when the display is in an iMac, Apple controls the color. So it's like perfect in the way that Apple color is perfect. When it's just running native off some board you bought from China, it's just sort of a little green. So I color calibrated it, made it look good. And then the you'd install this software called Better Display to control the brightness with the keyboard, which you obviously have to do. I mean, how could you not? And that the backlight mapping was inaccurate. And so as you stepped up the brightness, it would get to 100 and then reset like halfway through and then do it again. And this so one, this is not a problem, because you can just set it to 100. You can set it to its obvious brightest setting and leave it alone, but I cannot do that. Like it's on principle. So I find myself emailing with Stone Task and just as a customer, they don't know who I am. They were very responsive. Feel great about that. They sent me a very blurry video of how to update the firmware using a piece of software that only runs on Windows and only addresses the card over display port. Here's problem one . All of my Windows PCs don't have display ports. Like they're all ancient. The only one in our house that does is Becky's work computer, which she would not allow me to install Chinese for more updaters on. Fair. Two, I never anticipated using the display port on this thing. And the board is now sealed inside the IM ac whose screen has been glued back on. Right, because they you you get to the end of this process and you're like I am never going to open HTMI port set up it's plugged into the Mac Studio by the time I buy a new computer this adventure will have to come to some sort of conclusion, right? Sure. This display will be like 20 years old and I I will have to buy a new one. I made it work in this setup and that's how long it's gonna take. Now I need the display port. So I the only way to I'm not gonna cut the display open again. So I have to dig around the memory access door with a display port cable and try to get it in the board. So that's one. And then two, I was like, I need a computer with a display port, and we looked in the reviews closet I said last week and we found a surface laptop from like 2019 with a mini display port. And I took it and I took it out of the reviews closet and I put it on my desk in my office and then I promptly left the office without it. So now what am I gonna do? I installed Windows 10 on Becky's old Intel MacBook Air, which has been sitting on a shelf for ages with a USB C to display port, figured it all out, downloaded the weird software, watched a very blurry video that was the software is in Chinese, part of there's a lot going on in this video. Nailed it. Nailed it out the gate in one. Terrifying. The MacBook Air has now been reset because it had a Chinese firmware update or installed in Windows on it. So that is no longer doing whatever it may have been doing to my house. And then I booted it all up and it worked great and the entire interface of this monitor is now in Chinese. Okay. I mean I hate to say you both deserve this and should have seen it coming. Yeah, it's excellent customer service. Just one last step that I needed to resolve. So I ended up sitting there with Gemini taking pictures of the display, translating menus until I found the one. I mean this is like if you look at the buttons, it's just a raw PCB that sticks out of the back of a IMAC casing on a ribbon cable and it just has some unlabeled buttons on it. So there's just a lot of mistakes to be made as you navigate sort of backwards on the front of the thing in Chinese with Gemini in your hand. Like none of that was elegant, I would say. But I feel like monitored interface is like four buttons, right? It's like you can figure out which icon means contrast and which icon means brightness, and then you just move it to the thing and it's fine, right? I would say that they did not use icons. Uh the universal language of graphics is not present in this area. In contrast, you have the dark half and the light half. Brightness is the sun. Like it's it's we we've developed a language. I was trying to change it to English, which is like I think in the grand scheme of all language settings, the fact that the one that lets you change the language is always in the language you don't understand. Yeah. Like that's how that goes. Uh anyhow, I figured it out. It's in English now. It works. The only thing is uh when you turn on the computer and it wakes from sleep, um, it lights up and then it turns off and it thinks real hard and then it comes back again and then it's fine for the day. Okay. It's this is one little problem is it does a little handshaky weirdness, but like totally acceptable to have an excellent looking five K display connected to my next studio. This is now a what is Neilai's threshold for solving this problem question? Because are you gonna do that for 10 days and then be like, I could fix this and go through this again? Or have we officially reached I'm never touching this thing ever again? We're We're never touching it. It's it is buttoned back up. There's a display port uh extension coming out of it. I I as long as I was fishing, I put a USB-C extension in the back of there. Uh we're done. We're we're super done. How upset do you think Johnny I ve would be if you showed him the inside of your iMac now? I think the part where I grabbed the main logic board of an IMAC and just sh yanked it out of Johnny Ive's carefully constructed , exquisitely packaged internals. Because I was like, it doesn't matter if this breaks. And I just yanked it. I literally thought about Johnny Ive in that moment. I was like, someone worked on this very hard. Because you know it's it's like it's beautiful in the Apple way, you open it and it is beautiful inside. And I was like, huh, that sucks for you. And it just started pulling out stuff . Because it what you need is an empty case to fit the board in. Anyway, it's done. We're gonna leave it alone. The other hilarious thing about better display that I should say, uh my other monitor, my Zoom monitor, my Google Meet video conferencing monitor is the sort of infamous Samsung Curve TV that I bought almost a decade ago now. Amazing. Because it's all you need. You just need a 40-inch screen over there to run some video conferencing software on. And there's like a webcam in front of it. It's a better display, can talk to that screen over Wi-Fi, over the internet. Oh. So it when I turn on my computer, it now, because that's a TV and it doesn't respect sleep commands. So it's like, okay, I found that display. I, you know, I fixed its IP address on my router. Um and it it just turns it on and off with the computer now over over the network. I've never been happier with like a little thing, like a unnecessary little feature. Yeah. I used to have to turn on that thing with the remote every day. And now it's like the computer is like, I see it. I'll just send the packet to it. And it just does it. It's amazing. That's it. The software is like wild. It is not complete software. Like it's obviously made by people who care a lot about displays in very nerdy ways and assume you know everything that they know. Sure . But when you figure it out, it works amazing. That is pretty cool. I've just realized, A, we need to do like a Neilai Patel studio tour thing. Uh but B, my picture of your studio, I'm just realizing this right now, is that you essentially are in like the back room of a Best Buy with just a bunch of like weird old stuff. Yeah. That that you've just sort of it's like they're you're like an ongoing geek squad project that no one wants at the end. It's not wrong. Uh except it you know, it's like the attic next to my daughter's bedroom. Nice. And it it is just a mess in here. Like there's just stuff everywhere. I need to clean it up. That's why it's like no one wants a studio tour. People think this is all very glamorous and and exciting. And I'm like, I'm staring over my laptop at a just a giant pile of unfolded laundry. Like this is just what we're doing today. It's very good. All right, what's your project? So I've been clawed coding like a like a maniac, like for months now. Um, but I have finally built my dream productivity tool , which no one is gonna care about, but I've had very funny adventures with it recently. So um Thomas Paul Mann, the CEO of Raycast, came on this show a while ago and told me his big theory of AI is that the best thing you can do with these generative tools is build software because you can do it once. And when you get the thing to work, then it works every time. That like reinventing the wheel and having this thing go out and do explorations for the same thing over and over and over, the sort of agentic world we're talking about, is the wrong approach. But what you can do is you can build specific useful software that you can then test and verify. And once you have that, it can just be reliable software. So he was like, he was one of the first people who really turned me on to the idea of like why like AI software is actually a really powerful idea for a lot of reasons. So I have set out to build myself like my ideal to-do list and notes and like like keep all my life together tools. I need to write a long story about my many adventures. But I basically like I tried to build a whole thing from scratch, got super far down the road, and then got annoyed by all the bugs I couldn't figure out how to fix and bailed. Uh I then tried to do a less ambitious thing that I got bored with and bailed. And what I eventually found was I use a bunch of different services, all of which have built uh MCP servers, uh they've built really robust APIs, and in many cases they've built command line inter faces for working with AI. So I was like, oh, rather than try to like reinvent to doist, which I use for to-dos , which I think is like a really great infrastructure but a really ugly app, I can just build my own thing to look at to doist. And so now I have a thing that pipes in my calendar events from Google, my to-dos from to doist, my notes from a text file, which I sync with Obsidian, and then two other services, one readwise reader, which I use for for saving and reading articles, and Raindrop.io, which I use for bookmarking. And all of this just pours into one little web app that I've built myself that looks exactly the way that I want to and is just full of all the things that I make every day. And then at the end of every day, I export a markdown file with everything I did and created that day that now is like in a searchable archive of text files on my desktop. And it's awesome. And I love it very much. But the funniest thing that has happened to me recently is uh I wanted to build this thing for mobile, right? It's a web app. I can use it as a as a progressive web app, but I was like, there's some little things I want to do. I want to build this as like a more robust desktop app on my computer. So I start futzing with Electron, we go through this whole thing, it's like, okay, where I'm just gonna build this thing as a as a DMG on my Mac so that I can pin it on top of other apps, essentially, and like access it with global shortcuts and from the menu bar and stuff like this. You have to build slightly more on top of a tab in order to make that work. Um I told it to just do this and it's like, cool, I can do that for you. Goes off and does it. It pulled an entirely different Vercell web app and compiled it onto my desktop. The strangest thing I've ever experienced. It was like, it was like I've I've been doing this thing inside of Cloud Code for like three weeks now, like building and refining this thing. Uh and I was like, okay, just make this thing a DMG. And it goes, great. I've I've compiled this for you. It'll run on a desktop. So I run it and install it. Completely different. I just got somebody else's private web app inside of my thing. And I literally, I responded to Cloud Code. I was like, uh, I don't know what this is but this is a completely different app and it goes oh sorry grabbed it from the wrong URL no so you could just you could just do it just went and got it for me and this is a thing that has actually happened a few times where it it mistakes, like it guesses what your GitHub link is and pulls the wrong thing based on what it thinks its name should be. It has tried to upload things to the wrong place. It at one point made this whole thing public and then was like, hey, your your Google API credentials have just been public on GitHub for five minutes. Um hope that's not a problem . And so it's just like all of these I know you've been you've been using these tools a bunch too, but it's like it it it has this relentless ability to just keep trying to do stuff. And uh generally speaking, I've had to interrupt it a bunch of times and be like, hey, you need this one very small piece of information. I can I can just give it to you. Like you you don't have to go guess where it exists on the internet or try to figure it out or do a bunch of weird shit to go find this API. Like I I I know the URL. I can just tell you what it is. It'll be fine. And it's like, oh that'd be great. What didn't you 've been working for an hour and you know we've we've burned down a rainforest so that you could do this. But at the end of all of this, I did it. I have I have I have vibe coded myself an app that I use all day, every day. And it's just a regular piece of software that you made that runs on your desktop natively. It's mostly still a web app because I wanted to be able to use it like A everywhere and B like in a browser and pull Where is the web app hosted? For sale. Okay. And I could tell you the URL, but then you'd presumably be able to just use it. Yeah. I should can you give me access to I feel like I can start assigning you stuff. I would like you to add things to my to-do list. That would honestly be helpful for me. But yeah, and it's like I feel sort of the way I bet you feel about your IMAC, which is that like it, I I did it. There's this insane process. It took too long. Like like, could I have successfully used the limited amount of HTML and CSS and JavaScript that I have to build this myself? Probably. But instead, like last night, I spent three hours playing video games. This is this is a real story. I'm sitting there playing FIFA and every time the ball would go out of bounds and there's like a throw-in or halftime or whatever, I would just lean over and do another command for clog code. And it's just sitting there building this thing for me as I'm playing video games. And I'm like, this this is a future I can get behind. Yeah. I have two f thoughts about this because I'm gonna talk about my own little bike pony venture. One, I have the same general reaction to all of these stories that I do when people tell me about their dreams. I'm like, this had had you real emotions. You felt real feelings. I feel nothing. Because you were describing a literal hallucination that your mind created while you were asleep. Like I'm sorry. Like I under and like some people are really into other people's dre ams and some people aren't. Like actually Addie Robertson wrote this headline about AI generated art for us like years ago because people would make it and they'd be so excited about it and as we can all tell it like kinda doesn't hit unless it's like a dancing baby strawberry and you're like, something is happening in America. That's how I feel about all of those. Um I think that's fine. There's something about that that I think is really important. And I it it connects to how all the software people we know are having full emotional crises about the nature of software development and they're landing on the thing is alive and the way open AI and Anthropic now talk about their coding tools specifically . They just call them AGI. We'll come to this, right? Like they've arrived at like it's obviously we're AGI is here because it can write software for you. But then you the outputs are like, I made myself a little piece of software. Like I I'll I'll just I'll say mine. Like I made myself a little piece of software this week. It is very stupid. It is so much stupider than yours. Um, but I defeated the smart things API on the frame TV. And I'm very proud of myself. Okay. You let the AI control your house now. No, no, no, no. I I'm much more of a scaredy cat than you. Oh, okay. So I have a a MacBook Neo that now has Canva on it because uh we got Max a a a cry cut printer for her birthday. Nice and so like we're just gonna use it for that, but also it's my agentic toy toy playground, you know? Sure. Uh that's the right combination of things. Yeah. Let it design and print So just using cowork, because cowork is a little bit better behaved. Sure. Also, anthropic changes its pricing for open claw, so that's all a mess. Um but so this week, uh and so I just like won't let it out of the box. And so I really want, you know, we I have two shows. You know, I host decoder and we are do the verge cast, and I need to change the picture on this TV. And then also we've decided that gamer lights are appropriate for the VergeCast and not appropriate for interviewing CEOs. So like the lights need to change, like the lighting preset needs to change. I bought a Stream Deck, a Stream Deck Neo. It's little and cute, and it, you know it just, has buttons on it. And I was like, when I push the button, the lights should change and the image on the TV should change. And the lights are easy because the lights run on a piece of Mac desktop software called Amaron Desktop, which has a Stream Deck plugin . So you set up the scene, push the button, great, the lights all change. As someone who has seen you fight with just changing the image on the frame TV, this seems very exciting. Right. So the frame TV runs Tizen, which is controlled by smart things, which is software written by Samsung. And Samsung, I would say, has not taken advantage of the vibe coding revolution to make better software. Yeah. You know, the the it's just it is the thing that it is. And smart things as a platform in particular is very bad because it from what I can tell, a TV runs like a little web server that the smart things app on your phone has to connect to anew every time is though that it has never even consider ed this opportunity in its life. It's like, oh my God, I can see your TV. Would you like to set it up? Like every time. It's like utterly confused about what's going on. And nothing about that API lets you do the one thing that you might want to do on a frame TV, which is change the artwork. Right. Or uh importantly, I know that you've run into this, turn the TV on and That's because on and off is not a concept the frame TV understands. Right. There's on, there's kind of on and then there's also off, but off is sometimes on and on is technically also off. Yes. Everything I just said is accurate. It's 100% frame TV users. You want to turn on a frame TV into art mode and then set an image . You would think this is like the most basic thing you would want to automate on this TV. It is possible to light up a frame TV, pick one of Samsung's built-in free streaming apps, and like select a channel. It is not possible to turn it on in art mode and select an image. These these things just like don't exist in the Smart Things API. So I asked Claude to do it. Claude, I and you know it's like like I don't know, like I have a little kid, you've got a little kid. It's like watching them just r fall down this like fall off the bed. It's like, oh don't do that. Oh, you did it. And it's like, I'm gonna use the smart things API. And I just watched it try to use the smart things API. Um and it failed. And then it found a bunch of Reddit threads that I was also familiar with from the past where people have discovered the controls to do these things with web sockets locally on the network. So if and I have never set this up because you need like a Raspberry Pi , like running Python. Like so like you have to you need a little computer somewhere on your network that will just always talk to this thing. And I just haven't like gotten all the way there. But when you have Claude, it's like oh,, I w arote Python script for your Mac that sits right in front of the TV. And now the Stream Deck just runs that Python script. And it and it, you know, it took a long time. It had to it talked to the TV, it had to figure out the file list of all the images on the TV and which images I wanted. And all of this is stuff, like you're saying, before I had children, this would have been a somewhat frustrating yet ultimately rewarding weekend of screwing around in the terminal and like reading Reddit threads. And instead it was a somewhat frustrating but ultimately rewarding like half afternoon in between meetings of letting Claude just run at smart things and watching it happen. And I and I don't let Claude use my terminal. Like again, I'm I'm much more of a scaredy cat than you are. Yeah. So I was copying and pasting commands and code back and forth, um, which is slow, but like again, this is my level of understanding. Like I could read the code and like make sure, and these are not long commands, right? I can make sure it was doing what I thought it was supposed to do. Um again, very, very basic. I'm not even remotely pretending that I'm good at this. I can just read three lines of Python and be like, okay, you're sending a command to the TV to get its file list. Like I I know I understand what I'm looking at here. Yeah. Is there a crypto miner on my frame TV now? Like I don't know 100%, but I'm reasonably confident. Anyhow, so we we made it made the scripts. They are sitting on this machine that I podcast from. And when I push the button on the stream deck, I'll do it right now. Uh it can it turns the lights, it does a macro, it changes the lights to white, sends the command, and picks the image on the TV. And this is like a huge victory that because I have a baby, uh, I would have never had a Saturday to be able to do. And like I just feel great about this. Did I just describe to you a dream? Like with the all the emotional stakes of describing a dream? I think so. But I think you and I both look at this and you're like, oh, a lot more people are gonna be able to do a lot more things. And that is worth taking seriously. Yes. Now, I don't think any of this is like consumer software, which is the thing I keep saying. Like this is we are both of you and I are like enthusiasts, hobbyists, like whatever category of tech nerd we are. Like I could not no normal person is ripping open their iMac and writing Python scripts to change the art on their frame T. Like it's just we're still pretty far away from that, but there's a glimmer of something important here. Yeah, I agree. And it's also it it is way too much work. Like even the idea that you have to open up the terminal and copy and paste a bunch of commands, like just to give we should we're we're gonna move on from this, but one tiny example is a a thing I've been thinking about a lot is like when you get into the terminal, one thing you constantly have to do is tell the terminal which part of the computer to address, right? Like you you it's it's it's understanding of where you are looking and what where it's supposed to work from doesn't exist. You have to give it all the context. Claud code by default doesn't do that. So you're constantly, at least my experience has been, I'm constantly running the wrong terminal command. And then it's like, well, what where is that f I can't find the folder you're looking for? And then I have to go back to Cloud and be like, what's what's the address of this f of this folder again? Give me the full thing to ask. And it's just like it that, you've lost people, right? Like this is no longer a system that just works in any meaningful sense of the word. But the end result is very powerful, which is you have a problem that no one else has, and I have a problem that no one else has, and we have both successfully solved that problem. And that's very powerful because I do think everybody has a problem that no one else has. So you can like I I I think you're exactly right. Like there is a glimmer of something here, but it is like we're still nowhere near this being mainstream consumer technology yet. And the gap that I would close there is most people cannot describe the problems they have in terms of software. Right. Your problem, like it described in like very abstractly in terms of software, is there's a bunch of databases that I would like to look at all at the same time. Yes. Very yeah, very straightforward . And like software is made for that. Yeah. And like most software is look at this database. Like we keep having COs on Decoder, and I'm like, all right, CO Zillow. You made a database, and all of your money is in the app that looks at that database. And now someone else might just show up and look at that database without your app in the way. And we've just done like a hundred epis odes that are basically that theme. And something about AI is going to upend all of that. But for consumers, being like, so what in your life is a database? You just get the blank stare, there's no follow-up conversation, you're just sitting alone at your bar being like, but databases are important. Which to be clear is good and correct. People should not have to think about databases in their lives. Your life is run by databases. That's all I'm saying. That is true. What is the frame TV but a database of artwork? Is the database on or is it off, Neila? Think about that. That is unclear. All right. Let's turn now to the hype desk, our new segment about what is cool and rad in the world. Welcome back, Ross Miller and Ashley Esqueda to tell us what is truly hype on the internet these days. Ross, Ashley, welcome back. Hello. Thank you for having us again. Yeah, didn't think we're gonna get another invitation. I mean it's a week to week thing, uh I would say, but for now, for now we you you barely made it by the skin of your teeth. Uh Neela, you gave a speech last time. Do you want to give a shorter version of the speech this time about what the hyped desk is. Yeah, the hype desk is where uh Ross and Ashley, who are our friends who do not work at the Verge, come and tell us what's hot in I don't know, entertainment, video games, cool stuff out in the world. And then because they don't work at the Verge, if brands want to do brand integr ations, uh, you can buy them because you can't buy us. And this makes our ethics policy uh stay pure, which is very precious to us. My favorite part of the hyped desk last week is the YouTube audience completely under stood what was going on and was very happy to see Ross and Ashley. And the audience that like leaves comments on the Verge.com was like, why do you have to make money? I literally got an email last week that was like, Why are you guys doing stuff thats seem like you're trying to make money? Yeah. And I was like, well, this is fascinating and we should talk about it. Um, but it is we a thing we will do always is try to make very clear what is and is not sponsored uh in the hype desk. Like we what we want to do is we want this to be good even when no one's paying for it, and we want it to also be good when someone is paying for it. Today is is unsponsored for flavor. Fun and not profit. Exactly. Fun, all fun, no profit this week. That's what we're doing. Uh Ross and Ashley, what do you guys been up to? What do you have for us this week? Oh man. I mean, well, we've been we've been both obsessing over Artemis too. That's like uh but before we talk about that, Ross, I think we we need to discuss the a terrible uh the terrible tragedy that's befallen us named the Super Mario Galaxy movie. Yeah, there there are two through lines in in both these, which I'm very proud of. It didn't just happen. We're gonna be talking space. Is it just galaxies? Yes. We're gonna be talking space and we're gonna be talking plumbers in both of these segments. In both stories, weird overlap. Works out really good. But first, we're gonna talk about the Mario Galaxy movie. It had the opening weekend, 300 seventy million. It didn't quite hit what the first one did, but like just barely. I mean it's gonna be a billion dollar movie at a time when theaters just need that. Like it's a very good thing for film. It's not a good film, but it's a great spectacle. I thought the first one was good. I I liked it. Yeah, I thought it was solid. I thought it was cute. It was cute. But oh boy. Um the critic s don't care for it. They are angry. The critics are actually furious about it. Somebody said it was physically painful to sit through. Goodness. And so is it just people are going to see it because it's something to do? I don't because the critic populous gap is bigger than ever in all in all things lately. This was also sort of true with the first Mario movie, which was like critics were kind of like and audiences loved it. I loved it. So I'm like, I was optimistic coming into this one. I have not seen it yet. I think you will like it too. I enjoyed it, but I enjoyed it going in with the right mindset. Like it is not trying to make like a narrative brilliant movie. It is designed the way you design a Nintendo game. There's a bunch of really cool scenes that are like very loosely connected, right? And it is just like breakneck pace. Like I remember I was I went to see it with a friend this week and I looked over a couple times going, How did we get to this point? Because I had just forgotten how they jumped around. Like the the thing that I I cannot convey enough is I am struggling to think of a Mario game that has not been referenced between these two movies. It's like Nintendo and Illumination thought they would get no other chance. So they threw every single idea they had. Did they get to Luigi's Mansion? They in the first movie there's like a reference to it, and that's as far as we've gotten. And if there is a third movie, it I want the spin-off. I want the whole I want a whole Luigi's Mansion spin-off. I own a whole series. It feels like they're they're going for the Smash Brothers cinematic universe. Like they're just throwing every Nintendo idea. They introduced a lot of characters in this one. Yeah. Not a spoiler. Star Fox is in this. Star Fox, yeah. Star Fox is in the trailers, right? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. My son uh told me that there was a character in it. He's oh I'm just gonna spoil it. I don't care. Uh somebody was like he was like, Mama, guess it my my uh mother took him to go see it before we could see it together which is great offense to me as a as a nintendo fan but he said oh mama rob is in this movie and I'm like what first of all huge high five to my six-year-old for knowing for remembering who Rob is. Uh but yeah, he's like, Rob is in this movie. And I was like, that feels like a lot. Like that feels like they really jammed them all in there. Fanto is in this movie from Super Mario Bros. 2. Can I put this on like a a spectrum of things? Yes. Yeah. Uh there's I would say the Lego movie, the first Lego movie, or even the Lego Batman movie. Really well done, lots of references, very commercial. Like the toys are alive. On the other end of the spectrum is I don't know, Ready Player One, which is just a nonstop sequence of references hung together in a plot that I think ends with being like you should not trust Mark Zuckerberg. Like something happened there. But like, you know, Ready Player, even the book is just like, do you remember this? Do you remember this? Do you remember this? It is. Wait, this is just a total random side. I listened to the audiobook of Ready Player One, which is read by Will Wheaton and is excellent. But there's literally there are parts of that book that are just several minutes long of him saying 80s movies. Like I'm not I'm not exaggerating. No, it's there's yeah, I remember that. So this is I'm just this is my my spectrum for whatever it's worth and you can argue about what movies belong in my life . That is a scale. Okay. But you can understand these are like they're it's a spectrum. Quality children's entertainment and maybe less quality children. Quality children's entertainment based on toys and non stuff references.. Yeah Right. Where where is this Mario movie? On the range of let's let's say from Barbie to Ready Player One, where Barbie had a statement and really used the IP and has something bigger to say. All right. This is closer to Ready Player One. Like two-thirds of the way on that on that. Like it is like it's speedrunning a theme park. Sure. I'm gonna say, I'm gonna put it it squarely around the Minecraft movie, which I enjoyed very much. It's a fever dream of a film that satisfies the fans of the IP that go see it. But also, if you are not a huge Nintendo fan, you might walk away being like, I don't know what happened there, but also it was cute. And so I had fun. I think if people walk away feeling like they had fun, that's great. Obviously, I always want like the the Lego movies of the world, the Barbies, the the K-pop demon hunters. Like that's I want those. Quality children. You can make quality things for kids, but yeah. But yeah, I mean I I think if anyone's ever played a Mario game, like I don't really think that any of those make any sort of like m major statement. So the reason I brought up Luigi's Mansion is that movie or that game came out when I was like in my early twenties, and it it just made it clear to me that like storytelling was a wide open field. You're like, here's what it is: it's Mario's brother, and he has a vacuum cleaner that sucks up ghosts. You're gonna play this game for 60 hours. And I was like, okay, anything is possible. My world is cracked open in an all-new way. It can do anything. But it like literally makes no sense. It does not make any sense. Um And that's the movie. That is the movie. Uh but do you know who else could have used two plumbers this week? Oh my god. Artemis too. Incredible. Transition. I love it. I love the great. So good. Um they they're having a toilet problem. Uh they're they're not able to to eject the uh urine from the from the bathroom. But Ross explain this better because they actually yeah, so they they actually fixed it. So Artemis II it's been an amazing moment for humanity and space, and I love this and I do want to talk a little bit about the toilet because it was something that every daily press conference came up. Everyone had to know what's going on. Hours after Artemis II launched, the toilet broke. The urine portion of the toilet broke. Um, and Christina Cook, uh, one of the four, I think she's the mission specialist, one on that. Uh, she called herself a space plumber and she got it fixed. Now space plumber one. Then it broke again. This is my favorite, like weird anecdote. Uh the frozen urine in the exterior vent line was just like causing cloggage. So what they did is they took the Orion capsule and they decided to rotate the whole capsule toward the sun to use solar heat to thaw urine blockage and fix the toilet. That's like day three or four. This, by the way, is the entire thesis of data centers in space. Yeah. Like we can harness the power of the sun to do amazing things. Yeah. Um, and there's this amazing line, I think it was Jackie Mahaffrey, a mission capsule controller, uh communicator. She said, quote, you are go for all types of use of the toilet. Like just an all time great space quote. Incredible. The fact that it happened right after a launch in that way when everyone was paying attention and they're like, go for toilet. And then like sad trauma All of this happened. We haven't seen a launch of this scale. It's like the great victory. And it's like whoops. Whoops. Toilet busted. It's such the most humane thing. Because like the space is like it's an amazing adventure to go out. We've gone farther now as humans we've ever done before. And this is a very important part of it. How do you eat? How do you sleep? How do you stay hygienic? And like it seems silly to talk about. Like it is, it's quite literally toilet humor what we're doing, but like it is such a vital part. And I love how everyone's been kind of humanized by going, we need to know if you're okay with with your restroom situ ation. Yeah. As a person who lives in a house with one bathroom and three people, I understand that this is that is a critical issue that needs to be fixed immediately. Yeah. You can't screw around with that. I thought uh right next to it their problems with Outlook were very good. Yes. Where they like literally the call is like we have two copies of Outlook running on this computer and we don't know why. And it's like no one knows why. No one knows why. They did solve that as well. It has been an extremely internet emission in all of the best ways, right? Like the photos have been unbelievable. Like, unbelievable, the photos. Oh, unreal. Just gorgeous. It makes me want to quit astrophotography because it they're that good as well. Like, I'm just like, I'll never what's what was the point of this? I'm just taking pictures of what's out there, not taking pictures of us. Well, it's fine. Look, you just get a Samsung phone, it'll just generate photos of the moon left and right. It's gonna be fine, Ash. This has been my favorite run of memes on the internet, has been people being like, oh thank god, all of Sams ung's moon photos are gonna get even better now because these are so good. Uh but then there was also like the beautiful moment where they're naming a crater after one of the astronauts' late wife and it's this gorgeous and just a bottle of Nutella floats by like so many amazing moments. The way that this has just dovetailed into the best parts of the internet, like I think I think sometimes we all miss like what sort of this idea of like what the internet used to be. It used to be this like very fun place. And uh and and now I think we got like we've been reminded of like what that was. We have this kind of collective joy at this thing that is like really inspiring and really moving , but also incredibly memeable. And it's just been very like that's the best time on the internet is when something is like really interesting or or cool or insp iring and then also just imminently meme memeable. You can just meme it all day. Yeah is beautiful. And and also honestly, kudos to the astronauts because like this is a moment where like everything they say is gonna matter and they've been all of them surprisingly poetic. Uh there was a line I think Victor Glover gave on Easter, and I just I I want this like on a poster, like it all this emptiness. This is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe. You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together. Like, who just drops fire like that in the middle of like a press conference or an interview with CBS? That's so weird. That's how Neil I describes the Verge cast. So it's it's funny because my favorite my favorite quote was when they woke them up with Pink Pony Club by Chapel Roan. Yes. And then didn't . And then they were like, we were all waiting for the chorus. And the poor flight controller was like, we'll try again tomorrow. And and the the wake up music, there's an official Spotify playlist. So if anyone wants to know at the time of recording, Lonesome Drifter by Charlie Crockett was the last thing they woke up to. That's pretty good. We have to end on hope. We we we I I think we need to I mean my my rule is you can make a little bit of fun astronauts and say they're goofy, but these photos are incredible. Amazing unreal. And also kudos to uh Imma Roth uh on the Verse team who pulled out the exif data. So we know they're using Nikon cameras uh to take these amazing photos. That is cool. They are using icon cameras. And a lot of people have been comparing these photos because Hello World, which is the new photo of Earth from that distance, doesn't quite stack up to blue marble in like ways. And everyone's like, it's because they shot blue marble in a hassle blab. No, it's the ISO is like cracked. It's like 51,000. I love this. I love like this is what we're doing. They also have a bunch of iPhones up there, primarily for photo and video. They don't have like internet access. And I think that's also really interesting. Uh, because the you know the fancy cam eras take whatever process and i think the iphones are much more candid and seeing the candidates making them more human in space i think is also very important yeah it is really cool it's been very cool we'll link to some of the photos but the the like eclipse photos in particular are just every time I look at it, it it melts. Blows my mind. It's just so amazing. It's unbelievable. Alright, Ross, Ashley, thank you. Uh I think you've earned it. You can come back next week. This is great. Good to have you both here. Uh we're gonna take a break And all the things it could be used for. But what does that all mean in the real world? Just talking about it doesn't actually get things done. For that, you need actual tools, like Zapier. Zapier is a way for you to break the hype cycle and put AI to work across your company. For real. With Zapier's AI Orchestration Platform, you can bring the power of AI to any workflow so you can do more of what matters. It lets you plug leading AI models like ChatGPT and Claude into the tools your team already uses. So AI shows up exactly where it's the most useful. And it's built for everyone, not just technical teams. In fact, their data shows teams have already automated more than 300 million AI tasks using Zapier. Join the millions of businesses transforming how they work with Zapier and AI. Get started for free by visiting Zapier .com/slash Virg. That's z a p i er .com slash virch. For the last ten years, everything in American politics has basically revolved around one man. And as a political journalist who came of age during Donald Trump's rise in 2016, I've had a front row seat. I am officially running for president of the United States. It's going to be only America first . Amer ica first. Thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building . But is it possible to talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump? That's the question I'm gonna ask in our new show from Vox. The idea of like a post-Trump or not exactly Trump focused show can exist because he's not really driving any agenda items. It' reallys does feel like so reactive. You know, I think this Iran thing is also gonna cause a big split in the GOP. So far it doesn't among like people who say they're MAGA voters are still with Trump, but like for the first time you see on a major issue open opposition from the start of this war. I'm Estheth Herndon and welcome to America actu ally . Hi, I'm Brene Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's gonna be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree, and we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday. All right, we're back. So let's talk about some news. The biggest thing on the internet this week, as has been the case for many weeks the last few years, is open AI. Uh and in particular, this big New Yorker story about Sam Altman. I'm assuming Neila you've you've read this story. Yeah, I did read it. It's really interesting. And actually a little decoder preview. Ronan Farrow, who co-wrote the piece, is on Decoder next week talking about. Oh nice. So if you have questions, you can email us decoder at the verge.com. We really do read all the emails, as I keep saying. Would love to hear what you want to know. And we'll see if we can get Ronan to tell us some stuff that didn't make it into print. Which would be astonishing. Given the length, yes. Given well, given the length and also given what this story is. I mean, I think uh I I I tried very hard not to see this story as pure David confirmation bias. Um but I'm starting to feel like the the take that I espoused last summer, which is that OpenAI is a house of cards and is about to collapse. Uh just can i I we've been talking about this a lot. Like this company feels like a mess. It's mess. And and in particular, I would say the the takeaway from this story about Sam Altman, which is very long but is is terrific. Like it is it is extr exceedingly well reported. It's full of good data. It is like I think it's about as measured a way of saying Sam Altman is a is a sociopath who wants power and will destroy the world to get it, as you could possibly ask for. People should read the piece, but it's it's very hard to come out of this piece and not feel like when Sam Altman got fired a couple of years ago and then came back. OpenAI changed forever. Yep. And and only for the worse. Yeah. I think that's right. Not to talk about journalism, but like big features like this often just validate a feeling that everyone has had with rigor . Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like a lot of people knew Sam Altman lied. A lot of people knew that the weirdness of him getting fired and coming back was extremely weird. And the inside story of that was not a secret, I think in the AI community, like uh Ilia left and started a new new company and Mira left and started a new company and all of the players left and started new companies and Sam hired lots of new people in particular from Meta. And I really feel as though OpenAI thought it could stumble its way into defeating Google. Like just from like business terms. They're like, we made a thing that people like better than Google . Google will be slow and flat-footed and captured by innovators' dilemma and they won't do anything and we'll just be the new Google and we'll figure out ads. And like now we're Google. And that has one, uh been hard just in a lot of ways that's been hard to Google did not uh just concede they were not that was just not a thing they were gonna do and I think you know Sundar like shuffled his entire executive team. And they are vastly more competitive now. Uh, and their products are good and people like them. I think there's a lot of AI slop at the top of search results, but like whatever, set that aside. Like they they responded to the threat in in meaningful and good ways. And then there's everything else OpenAI is doing, which is trying to raise money endlessly, courting Saudi money and Chinese money. Like all of the stuff in the story that's like Sam talks out of both sides of his mouth and doesn't feel bad when one side feels lied to. One, that is very much the heart of why he was fired, according to uh the reporting in this piece. But two, it it's so reflected in ever ything else that has happened. And the idea that they could just stumble into a Google scale business that would paper over all the flaws to m to me feels like the story of OpenAI. Like you cannot stumble into being Google. And for all of Google's own distraction, and boy, have we talked about Google's distraction over the years and the products they spin up and kill and their reorganization alphabet and are they going to make contact lenses that detect diabetes? Like there's a lot of distraction at Google. They never take their eye off the ball of how much money is search making. Is search a good business? Are we winning in search? Like they're so good at that that, it funds all of the noise and open AI is nowhere close to that. Yeah. That to me was like the big takeaway of the story is here's a long story about Sam Altman and his personality and what they think the technology can do. And what it masks is he is not paying any attention to the business he's running. Like his business is raising money. Right. And I think I I was really struck by both the piece and the reaction to it, which I think lay out the whole sort of AI debate along really correct lines. And on the one hand, you can look at everything that Sam Altman is doing as essentially normal behavior for a particular kind of ruthless capitalist, right? Like it's it's very robber barren activity. And and that this is this is a thing, quote unquote great businessmen have done for generations, right? Like you you you play some games, you you tell some lies, you say one thing to one person because it's what they want to hear, and you say a different thing to somebody else because it's what you want to hear. And the ultimate goal is to build your business as big as you want. And then the government fights you in an anti-trust. And like this is what we do, right? Like that we have heard stories about business men who do most of these things for a long time. Lots of people lionize it and try to be those things. Lots of people think it's terrible and those people should be put in jail. But the piece actually starts with the thesis espoused by people like Sam Altman ten years ago that AI is different. That if you look at this thing as as important and big and transformational and literally world-changing as all of these people say that it is and have been saying that it is since the beginning , does it require a different kind of person to lead it, a different kind of way. And I think that to me is like is the question to ask about people like Sam Altman and about and really is the foundation of a lot of the stuff you're describing, right? Like you, you covered Sam Altman's firing in very much in real time. I think like It's a good phone calls. I published scoops about that from the Bronx Zoo on my phone. That's a real thing that happened. But even then, there was this question of like we are doing something that requires more than a great startup CEO. That we have we have a moral responsibility to the world to do this differently and handle it differently. And that was a big part of the original pitch and corporate structure of OpenAI, right? Like there's a whole section in the piece about Google offering people these monstrous salaries to go do AI work there. And people went to OpenAI because they were like, no, no, no. We care about this thing. We're, we, we are here for moral reasons because we want to do the right thing the right way with this unbelievably important technology that is as important as fire. Right. Like these are the stakes. If you believe these are the stakes, then then what we require is a different kind of person to run it a different kind of way, or else all of this is going to shit and we're all going to die. Like those are the stakes. Those are the the AI people would tell you those are the stakes. Yes. They love telling you that those are the stakes. Right. And and yet what we have increasingly, and I think there's this very telling moment in the story where Sam Altman basically is like, my job was really fun until we launched ChatGP T, and it's and and then it immediately changed. And I think that's clearly correct because it at some point you get to run like a cool frontier research laboratory that is doing really interesting work that has this huge potential to be transformative. And then you launch the thing and people give you money for it. And that changes everything. And this is a, I mean, you and I have seen this story happen over and over and over and over again. This is this is what happens in tech. People launch a thing, somebody gives them money, somebody demands more money for their money, the incentives change, the business change, and ultimately you end up building business software. Like this is the AI story again. And I just think like again, I I'm so hung up on if this thing is as big as anybody says, the idea of it being run by quote unquote great businessmen should be terrifying. And if that is if if that's where we are, what do we even do? Like do you trust the government more with this? Do you trust some do you trust the European government more with this? Like we're in this place of if not Sam Altman, then who ? Is I I just I don't know. I ended this piece in this place of like I how were we how do we fix any of this? I'm a little less nihilistic about things than you are, I think. Glad to hear that. Because I've just come to the conclusion that a lot of people got very wealthy and very powerful because they had the ability to write software. Sure. And this is just broadly true, right? Like tech bros exist, you know? Uh and it's because they could write software or they were good at managing teams of people who could write software. And software largely controls our world. Right. And that is true to a limit . Most people do not perceive most of the software that drives their world every single day. Sure. Right? But I don't know, like you can take the example of Elon and Doge. Doge showed up in the federal government and how did it exert power? Well, yeah, it fired a bunch of people. It also took over databases. And then Elon got very confused about how the databases, like the social security database, had been modified to reflect reality. Right? It it all all the the dead people were just zeroed out columns because it's easier to change the database than change reality. But Elon's brain is backwards. He's a software brain. And he's like the software is real. Reality is wrong. And so I just think if you're in that mode and a lot of these people are very powerful and they have earned their wealth and their status because of their ability to make software, and now you have a robot that can just make software, it will delete your status, right? Or change the way software is made forever. This is why they all talk about the cesspocalypse. Yeah. This is why they're all thinking about whether or not enterprise applications are AGI . I'm not even kidding about that. They changed Fiji CMS title at OpenAI from CEO of applications to CEO of AGI deployment. Because I think they I think the industry has coalesced on the idea that being able to write software is AGI. Jensen Wong, it's like AGI is here. We're going to deploy digital Jesus. Well, but I don't think that they're at the you know like they keep setting these benchmarks. Like it's as smart as a PhD candidate. And it's like a PhD in what? And it turns out what they meant is a PhD in software development. Right. And they, you know, you can like measure that in some way. You can like look at it and say, okay, this is as good as is the people that we have been managing and evaluating for years. Outside of that, I'm not sure that these tools can do the things that they promise to do. So you just have this moment where a lot of people with a lot of money and status have made a tool that might radically change their money and status and costs a lot of money to run and a lot of people want to use. And you can see the opportunities to to find a business process that looks like a loop in a database and automate that yourself. Like that's gonna be huge. I I have no doubt that that is gonna be huge. And you can see Anthropic by comparison open AI lasered in on that opportunity from the very beginning and said, we're gonna, we're gonna solve business. We're gonna be an enterprise software company and they are successful. I think Dario likes to style himself as being safer and more responsible. But the reality is most of Anthropix customers are huge businesses that are not out to destroy the world. They're out to like do logistics a little bit better or like connect five databases from three different vendors that were acquired over 15 different years. Yeah. And like Claude can just do that. And that is amazing. Um I'll give you an example just from our own little database. Uh, the Verge is a database. Like, what is a website? It's a big database full of stories. There's a bunch of old features in our database that are broken because of successive redesigns or web standards changes or whatever it is. After 15 years, there are stories in our site that are broken. I'm like, we should just let Claude fix them . This is a classic example of we would never pay a human being to go through the archive because we'll never get enough traffic to pay back the work. And it's like I can this is what it's for. This is amazing. Its ability to strip bad HTML and replace it with good HTML is like a a fundamental capability of clock code. Yeah and I and I don't have this like labor anxiety about it because in no world was that ever a a good idea to set a human upon doing. Like it just economically made no sense. And even like if you set a human on doing you're like, is anyone ever going to read this? Like this is a real conversation I've had. Like engineers want to make new things that people care about. They don't want to make old things or fix old things. Uh anyhow, so I just see this moment where you're describing like , should people like Sam Altman be in charge of the fate of the world? I'm like, I'm not sure that this extends . Like the world insofar as it is describable by databases, yeah, we should and I think there is ferocious competition to be the leader of that. And I think there's a reason Anthropic basically markets itself is like we're so dangerous. Right. Like they want the perception of that responsibility. Even as they walk back the responsibility pledges. Right. I think there's a reason Google is like constantly talking about how responsible they are. So like at least in the the spaces where there's product market fit, I actually think that there's a competition to be the most responsible and reliable character. It's do you buy that this is going to be so explosive everywhere? Right. I'm still unconvinced. I think in in one field, in software development, it is absolutely true that AI will change everything. It is not clear that software development is all of the human experience. And I think a lot of software people are very confused about that. I agree with that. And I think ironically your lack of nihilism comes from the fact that you don't think the ceiling on AI is nearly as high as a lot of AI people do. Right. And I think that ceiling is related to do I think software is everything? Sure. But if you believe software literally controls the world, the ceiling on AI is AI will control the world. Sort of. AI will build software that controls the world is not the same as AI will control the world. Aaron Ross Powell or use that software. Sure. No, I I again like I think I think the ceiling on that is very high, but it's it's really if you believe as many AI people do, and I'm not I'm not generalizing this is a thing I've heard people say out loud in the last week, that the AI that AI will be more important and more transformative than the than the industrial revolution. If you believe that, the stakes are different. Because it it changes the way we live our day-to-day lives. Again, like you're you're smiling because you don't believe that. No, I'm smiling because I'm thinking about Thomas Jefferson, and I remember w you and I once got drunk at a Mexican restaurant and talked about Thomas Jefferson. That's why I'm smiling. It happens from time to time. I did. Which is Jefferson's University. I did this. Mr. Jefferson, uh it's actually we call him Mr. Jefferson. Mr. Jefferson, it's very important. Uh you can you can tell. There's a lot of depth to the verge cast, and it's like we got drunk over tacos and talked about Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson's version of America, and again, Jefferson's problematic character in American history. But he was like, we should all be independent farmers. Like this is his big agrarian vision of America. Okay, maybe with AI, every single person can run a little company because you don't need to hire a staff. And everybody can sure. Like maybe all that's gonna happen. That is not Sam Altman being like we should rewrite the social contract, which is a real thing OpenAI published this week. Yeah. Right? But maybe the fact that everyone can run their own little small business because the AI tools will allow you to do that in a at a scale that no one could ever do before. Yeah, maybe that will change all of society. I just don't think like Sam Altman gets to dictate that. But like that was a very Jeffersonian notion of America. It just didn't come to pass. And maybe it's like we showed TJ some AI. Maybe he'd be like, finally, we can all be farmers. But I just I don't think Sam Al tman gets to say it or make it true. And one thing that I think is very true about this piece is like I said, great features validate things. A lot of people already felt like Sam Altman couldn't be trusted. And now they know or they are validated in that feeling. And they it is no longer a you no longer have to go out on a limb to say it. Because there's a big New Yorker piece written by Ronan Fair that says it for you. And you know, Tina Wynn, our our DC reporter, ran around with open AI's policy proposal this week and asked a bunch of DC policymakers. And I'm like, this would be great if it didn't come from open AI. That is the problem for this kind of thing. Yeah. I think open AI is in the middle of digging itself w what I would call the meta hole, uh where it is it has gone from the company that is so obviously out in front of this that is kind of the the leader and the face of a movement to being a company that I think is going to have to fight its reputation at every turn in the court of public opinion. Like Especially if it doesn't have a great product. And I'm I'm telling you right now, maybe Codex is a great product that will compete with Claude Code. It's not the thing that's going to win public opinion. No., it's not And I think especially, I mean, the the New Yorker piece ends, I think, in the right place, which is with the whole battle with the Pentagon, right, between Anthropic and the Pentagon that opening. I just sort of happily jumped into and they were like, well, we made a deal. And everybody was like, well, that actually seems like it sucks. And so I think I think your your point that maybe there is a business case to being the responsible AI company is a good and hopeful one. Um it feels I don't know, it feels it feels small as a as a moat right now for any of these companies. It does. And Anthropic keeps walking away from its own commitments. Which is you know basically the through line of of the open IP scene or And do you know why? It's all for the same money. This is the point, right? Like the the thing that changed was that AI became where all of the money went. And when all the money goes there, you have to figure out how to pay it off. And these companies, the the race became so intense and moved so fast and all of these companies got so big so quickly and everybody who left open AI after the the firing, which they now call the blip, uh raised billions of dollars, right? Like they were there were 10 billion dollar companies before they ever launched anything. Like there is now so much money that the the ability to operate on like moral, let's do what's good for the world grounds is just rapidly starting to disappear. And ironically, you mentioned Google. This puts Google in an incredibly powerful position because Google has enough money that it can just wait everybody else out. Google can continue to run the best business in the history of the internet and be the good guy in the AI world, which I don't really, I don't think it's exactly do ing some of it. And I think for a long time, student architecture I would say things about how Google was moving slowly and trying to be responsible, essentially as a a tool for being slow. But now it's like that that,'s an opportunity Google has that no one else has. And it'll it'll be fascinating to see how much Google is willing to play the we're the good guys taking our time on this card while everybody else just trips all over themselves trying to figure out how to make money. Aaron Powell Yeah. To me, I feel it feels like Google has two fronts. One, it has to respond to anthropic and software development, which they have talked about and I don't think they're quite as good at yet, but presumably they will respond. And then two, they have to keep open AI away in search. And maybe OpenAI has pulled some search queries away from Google, but it hasn't pulled the money away yet. Right. And I don't see that money going anytime soon because OpenAS ad products are bad, because all of the people are gone. Like literally, the amount of turnover in OpenAIS executive ranks is like through the roof. And Google isn't going to sit still. And Google has the single best distribution in world history because it owns search. And they can just keep putting AI mode in search until you just keep using it, and using ChatGPT doesn't seem important to you. And I think they're just gonna keep doing that. And the other piece of that, which I think is super fascinating, is everyone already expects Google search to be littered with ads. And as they add ads into chat GPT, people will perceive that experience to be degrading. So you're saying already having in shitified is actually better than going through it publicly. You're probably right. And especially if Google uh you know, the free version chat GB, which is fundamentally what most people are using, is like not very good. No. Right? They're they're trying to save cost there. And you can you can see it and you can feel it. And Google can spend a little bit more money because it's already monetized. Yeah. And so you they there's they just have a they just have a game to play in consumer that I think will ultimately lead them to be what Google is, which is the default answer engine for most people. Yep. I think you're right. Um all right, everybody should go read that piece. We'll we'll link to it in the show notes. It it's a long one, so carve out an afternoon. Uh we're gonna take a break. If you have questions for Ronan, Dakota RuthVirge.com. Dakota Ruthverge.com. Yeah. Send him, send him Ne Lai. Um, I have questions for Ronan. Most of all are like they're largely about his hair, but that's a different question. Uh we're gonna take a break. We're gonna come back to the lightning round. We'll be right back . Keep going! You're doing it! That's the sound of Sam learning to swim in a Hilton resort pool. Oh, that's delicious. Mmm. And that's the sound of Sam and his family enjoying dinner in the hotel restaurant. Good evening. Welcome back. With stays in your favourite destinations and everything taken care of, you can savour what's important. Do you want to know? When you want your holiday to feel like a holiday Alright, we're back. It's time for the lightning round. Unsponsored . Again. For flavor. You see the problem ? We can't accept the sponsorships. Right. We had a CFO at Vox Media ages and ages ago, and he described his job as just being in the like ready position in a gym class to catch money when it arrived. Which I've always like, I don't know how our business works. We're gonna do the mailbag with Helen. She will tell us how it actually works. But that's always how he pictured it. And the reason I was saying the YouTube audience understands it is because every YouTuber does brand deals. Right. And we can't. We I just like we won't do it. So we just need to catch the money. That's all I'm saying. We're just gonna catch the money. It's it's waiting for us. Uh I s a I I actually know for sure that it is once again time for America's favorite podcast within a podcast because I know what he did this week. It's time for Brendan Carr is a dummy. Brendan Carr is a dummy . It's a remix start to exist . You gotta be kidding me . Uh this is big . We are we are stacking theme songs. This is original Brandon Carza Dummy theme by Robert B. Remix by Wesley, who uh describes it as a new age remix inspired by Enigma's nineteen ninety banger sad ness. Hell yeah, everybody. That was awesome. Brandon Carr doesn't deserve theme music this good. It's a real profit. We are kind of getting we're giving him a little too much. But that was awesome. That was. Thank you. What do we have this week, Mila ? Everyone knows what we have this week. Yep. Uh it is very dumb. It is Brendan just way out over a skis as usual, saying a thing that he shouldn't say with power that he uh absolutely does not have. So if you are awake in the world, you know the United States and Israel have launched a war against Iran, which is not going well. I would I I think we're safe to say it is not going well, and no one likes it. Uh-huh. There was an announcement of a two-week ceasefire after Trump threatened to destroy an entire civilization, which scared a lot of people. And they've announced a two-week ceasefire. Everyone claimed victory. Pete Hag Seth claimed victory. The Iranians also notably claimed victory. They put out a statement saying, We've won, here's our 10-point proposal that the United States has agreed to, and they put it out in their official state media channels. News organizations across the spectrum reported on this statement. It was again put out by the Iranian government, Amer Iranian officials on Iranian news channels. CNN reported on this. And it says that they've won. Like, that's just their posture. Like, we won. Like, you're gonna do what we want. You can agree or disagree with that, but that is the posture that that they are taking. Yep. Trump puts out a truth social statement only responding to CNN, saying the alleged statement put out by CNN World News is a fraud, as CNN well knows. The false statement was linked to a fake news site from Nigeria, this is not true, immediately picked up by CNN and blared out as a legitimate headline. The official statement by Iran was just released and posted on truth Below. Authorities are looking to determine whether or not a crime was committed on the issuance of fake CNN world statement or was it a sick rogue player? First of all, if you just read Trump posts for what they are, it is clear this man is not well. I I don't know what else to say about that. I was just about to say I was I assumed you read that wrong and then realized I'm looking at the screenshot and I was like, Oh no, he just he read the words as they were presented. statement full apologies for their as usual terrible reporting. We're results of this investigation will be announced in the future. Okay, the president of the United States cannot do this. Can't do it. It it turns out uh in America, you can you can lie. Uh there's a there's an amendment. It's actually the first one. Uh, and it it protects you from consequences of your speech from the government. Aaron Powell Well also importantly, CNN didn't also importantly worth remembering but CNN the president is ordering CNN to immediately withdraw the statement is not a power the president has . And in fact, uh the framers of our government, the founding fathers of this country, made sure that that was not a power the government has. And they put it, it's the again, I it's the first one. It's the first amendment. You might recall it. Right there. So Trump posts this, and you know, in the way that Trump posts things and people take them seriously or not, whatever. Our boy Brendan cannot, cannot resist. Cannot resist . He he gets to be the speech release. He loves being the speech police. So he quotes it on X and he says, More outrageous conduct from CNN. Fake news is bad enough for the country of pushing out a hoax headline in such a sensitive national security moment is this requires accountability. Iran put out an official statement that simply cannot be squared with the one CNN's false headline attributes to them. Time for change at CNN . So Brendan has no authority over cable news networks. None at all. He has no authority of the internet. As we've discussed on Brendan Carr's dummy time and time again, his authority is over things that use the broadcast spectrum, that public airwaves, which are a scarce public resource in America, and he's not supposed to use that authority to control speech on those airwaves, but he is doing it. Right. That's why he's going after broadcast networks like ABC and CBS and whoever else. CNN does not operate on the public airways. In fact, CNN mostly operates as cli ps by Aaron Rupar on X. Like that's like fundamentally where CNN's audience is now. Like there's no way that Brendan can attack CNN like this. When he says time for change, what he very specifically means is the Ellison family is about to buy Warner Brothers and control CNN and he believes and he wants CNN to change its programming and he thinks that Ellison will change the programming. This is very bad.. Yep Like it's dumb because Brendan has no authority. But now he's not only stepping into speech regulation where he has no authority, he's saying, I think our politically aligned billionaire donor is going to make the changes that I want, that the president wants. And this is just laying it bare. Yep. Even if you report the truth, just the dead-ahead truth. There was a ceasefire called. Here's a statement from our government. Here's a statement from the Iranian government. That CNN went on air and defended. They said, no, we this is the right statement. And the Iranian government has since repeated it. Even if you report the truth, the president will attack you for not towing the line, and Brendan will show up and say, I might not have the official power, but I can say time for change at CNN. And everyone knows what I mean is that David Ellison is about to buy this network. David Ellison controls CBS, which is a broadcast network over which I do have authority, and I will make sure that that authority carries through to CNN. That's a real problem. And I think Brendan is just such an unsavvy operator that he keeps saying it out loud that everyone's on notice. Yeah. I mean this is a message to David Ellison as to like, oh, you want to make this merger happen? Here's what you need to keep promising me in order to get this done. It's a message to everyone that here is what's about to happen by this merger that I'm going to allow for this particular political reason. Like it's it's just there. Yeah. You want there not to be news distortion cases of CBS or you want to buy a new station or you need more bandwidth on the airwaves. Well, I I better be happy with CNN as well. Yep. And you can already see what's happened to CBS News. Its ratings are tanking because people do not like the new ideological position of CBS News. You're gonna do it to CNN too because it might all be run by one news organization. This is just straightforwardly like corruption. Like there's there's no other word for it. It is straight up the the state trying to corrupt the free speech of the media in this country. And I again, I always think like if Brendan was just one turn smarter, he would just do this quietly . And it maybe it would be a scandal if people find out. But he just is doing it out loud . Yep. And I think that is giving a lot of people cover to not listen because they're like, no, we we'd actually don't take our marching orders from the government here in this country. We have freedom of speech. We have the first amendment. And I I don't know, Brendan. I think you're a dummy. I'm dying for you to come on the show and explain to me how you think you can separate regulation of CNN from the coming regulation of CBS that you you will have because they operate on uh on the airwaves and how you expect to explain to everyday Americans why the government should interfere with speech in this way because this is this is so far over the line that's like why you came out and you said I know what it's going to be about. Everyone knew this was over the line and everyone sent it to us. Yeah. There 's no you don't have to explain this to anyone. The president ordering the investigation of a truthful news report is so far over the line, it's almost cartoonish. And then of course there's Brendan, human cartoon. Anyhow, that's been Brendan Carr is a Dummy. Brendan, as always, or really any show uh that does the Brendan Carr is a Dummy segment. And I'll be there to tell you a dummy to your face. It's taken off. The Brendan Carr is a dummy cinematic universe continues to expand. We we welcome all comers. That's when Brandon Carr is a dummy, America's favorite podcast from the podcast. It's good stuff. All right. I just have one for you. Um, which is I think the other sort of big journalism-y moment of the week, which is the the purported unmasking of Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, by the New York Times. I just need to know what you think of this story. So I I I will just frame this for anybody who has not read it so far as um it it's set up very much like a process story, right? Like John Carrier , who's the author who is uh right was right at the forefront of exposing Theranos, has won Pulitzer Prizes, is like as as legit as anybody in this business doing this stuff. Um star ts with I went to investigate and then walks through all of the steps of his investigation of how he decided that this guy, Adam back , is in fact Satoshi Nakamoto. And it ends in a pretty conclusive position. He is confident he has identified this man, Adam Back, as the Satoshi Nakamoto creator of Bitcoin. What do you think of this story? Do you think Adam Back is Satoshi? I think Adam Back has issued strong denials of the fact that he's Satoshi. Which like you would if you were Satoshi. You would. I yeah, I mean I look I agree, John Carrier is an excellent reporter. I've talked to him before. He's very diligent, very thorough. He's obsessive in the way that obviously comes out in the story. Like you can't assign a reporter to do this. No. Only someone who is compelled to do it will do it to this level of detail. I just the parts I found most compelling were when he lined up the dates of posting and he was like, when Satoshi was posting a lot, Adam was not. When Adam was posting a lot, Satoshi was not. Like the ideas all line up. Like these are two people or two characters in the internet that have all the same ideas. And then the other most compelling part was he kept asking for the email headers of specific emails and Adam would completely ignore that request. So that's fishy in its way. Um but other than that, it it kind of feels like every other I've unmasked Satoshi expedition that has ever existed. Like I read a bunch of stuff on the internet and then I read someone else's stuff and I did an analysis and I've concluded it's you . I do think the fact that Adam got his photo taken for the Times, right? There are photos in the Times. True. Like it's like very there's something there uh that I think is interesting. Secondarily, and I'm curious for your view on this, the idea that there's somebody out there who owns this many bitcoins that can just upend the Bitcoin economy is like perpetually the danger in Bitcoin. And so the Bitcoin community, like they're like, stop it. Like we don't want to know who this person is. Right. And like, you know, they they run around saying everyone is Satoshi. Uh and once you know who the person is and there's like secondary markets for gambling about when these tokens will move, the incentives to screw with the Bitcoin economy just keep going up . Right. Especially if you've like made insider trading a valuable thing to do on top of owning the bitcoins. And so I kind of worry that all of these people who claim or don't claim to be Satoshi are they're just attracting a kind of attention because of the secondary gambling nature of things that is like just generally not good for money. Do you know what I mean? I agree with you completely. I mean I I think no matter how you feel about crypto and Bitcoin in particular , no good comes of knowing who Satoshi is. It it kills the mystique of this thing that is supposedly bigger than one person, right? Like if you believe in a trustless system, but you actually have, to trust this dude named Adam. it Like it really changes the vibe of the system. Um, it exposes Adam back to real risk. I mean, we've seen horrible stories of people getting kidnapped and and essentially held captive for their Bitcoin passwords. Like it's a it's a real sort of physical danger to put this person in because we we we know how much money they have and we know where it's stored. Like this stuff is scary for a lot of reasons, but also it it does it puts this one person in this incredible position of power over everyone else's money, which is a really unusual position for any person to be in because it is all so centralized. For a decentralized currency, it's all kind of centralized around this one entity called Satoshi Nakamoto, which is I think why a lot of people really want it to be a group of people or somebody who died. Yeah, if all those Bitcoins start moving , we weird stuff starts happening. So they have to stay where they are forever. Right. It's actually much better for the rest of the ecosystem for none of that Bitcoin to ever move again. And the idea that it is just this British dude who , upon being on masked, may have lost his motivation to not play the games and get go get some of that money, it could change in really huge ways. So I think I sort of land where you do where like i he I think John Kerry Roo did a really good, really compelling investigation. I don't a hundred percent clock his certainty at the at the end of it. Like I think he got about as far as anybody has gotten, and I don't feel like he found a definitive answer. He seems to believe he found a definitive answer. And I think John Kerry Roo is is a serious journalist who does a good job. So that's interesting. But like I was not a hundred percent compelled by the story. But I do think if it is true, and this this person has now been definitively unmasked, the crypto world is about to change in some weird and probably bad ways. Yeah. As always, I will point out, and as I've been putingt out in the show in Dakota for years and years and years now. People only care about Bitcoin because of dollars. And this story has a lot of talk about libertarian currency and all this other stuff. And yeah, no, it's because it's a lot of dollars. Yeah. And it is a lot of dollars. It is very hard to get anyone to care about any of this unless it is worth millions of dollars. Yep. And that is just the fundamental truth of cryptocurrency and everyone wants to argue about everyone wants to argue with me about that all the time. But like if you're like it's a bunch of it's a bunch of stuff on a hard drive and like he has a lot of them and you're like how much they're worth you're like 50 cents. Like no one cares. Like it is dollars. Yeah. And that is forever going to be the the problem that Bitcoin runs into, uh, unless you're doing crimes, in which case it's very compelling, apparently. Yeah. Ben McKenzie, uh who w wrote a book about crypto, he made a documentary about crypto. He was also Ryan Atwood on the OC if that name rings bell. He's on the show on Tuesday talking about a bunch of this stuff too. So stay tuned for that. Neil I you have to go. My internet is barely hanging on by a thread, so we should get out of here. But just quick reminder for everybody who is here, please go vote for us in the Webby Awards. The award voting is open until next Thursday. Please vote for us for Best Technology Podcast. Also, uh to everybody who's coming to the movies with us in a few weeks, we're very excited to see you. To everybody who wasn't able to get tickets . Uh keep an eye out. This is the thing we're gonna do again. It's I'm I'm excited at the response we've had so far. I think it's gonna be very fun. Also send us questions about the Verge and about the VergeCast and about all of your feelings about the media and journalism and everything. We're gonna get to as many of them as we can in two Tuesdays. Call the hotline 866-Virge11, send us an email, vergecast of the Verge.com. We love hearing from you on that and absolutely everything. Until then, we're out of here. The VergeCast is Verge