Fear and loathing at OpenAI

11:21Brendan Carr:I think the part where I grabbed the main logic board of an iMac and just 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 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 up stuff. Because what you need is an empty case to fit the board in. Anyway, it's done. We're going to leave it alone.

11:58Brendan Carr:The other hilarious thing about better display that I should say, 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. 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 when I turn on my computer, now, because that's a TV and it doesn't respect sleep commands. So it's like, okay, I found that display. I fixed its IP address on my router.

12:36Brendan Carr:And it just turns it on and off with a computer now over the network. I've never been happier with a little thing, like an unnecessary little feature. 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. The software is like wild. It is not complete software. It's obviously made by people who care a lot about displays in very nerdy ways and assume you know everything that they know.

13:01David Pierce:Sure. but when you figure it out it works amazing that is pretty cool i just realized a we need to do like a nilai patel studio tour thing uh but it's a mess 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 you're like an ongoing geek squad project that no one wants at the end.

13:31Brendan Carr:It's not wrong. Uh, except it, you know, it's like the attic next to my daughter's bedroom. Nice. And it is just a mess in here. Like there's just stuff everywhere. I need to clean it up.

13:42David Pierce:That's why it's like, no one wants a studio tour. People think this is all very glamorous 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 cloud coding like a maniac, like for months now. But I have finally built my dream productivity tool, which no one is going to care about. But I've had very funny adventures with it recently. So 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.

14:23David Pierce: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 keep all my life together 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 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 MCP servers.

15:19David Pierce:They've built really robust APIs. And in many cases, they've built command line interfaces for working with AI. So I was like, oh, rather than try to like reinvent Todoist, which I use for Todoist, which I think is like a really great infrastructure, but a really ugly app, I can just build my own thing to look at Todoist. And so now I have a thing that pipes in my calendar events from Google, my Todoist from Todoist, my notes from a text file, which I sync with Obsidian, and then two other services, one Readwise Reader, which I use for saving and reading articles and Raindrop.io, which I use for bookmarking.

15:53David Pierce: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 I wanted to build this thing for mobile, right? It's a web app. I can use it as a progressive web app, but I was like, there's some little things I want to do.

16:20David Pierce: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, I'm just going to build this thing 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. 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 Vercel web app and compiled it onto my desktop the strangest thing I've ever experienced it was like I've been doing this thing inside of CloudCode for like three weeks now like building and refining this thing and I was like okay just make this thing a DMG and it goes great I've compiled this for you to run on your desktop so I run it and install it completely different.

17:11David Pierce:I just got somebody else's private web app inside of my thing. And I responded to Cloud Code. I was like, 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.

17:23Brendan Carr:No.

17:24David Pierce:So you could just do it. It just went and got it for me. And this is a thing that has actually happened a few times where 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 Google API credentials have just been public on GitHub for five minutes. I hope that's not a problem. And so it's just like all of these, I know you've been using these tools a bunch too, but it's like, it has this relentless ability to just keep trying to do stuff.

17:59David Pierce:And 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 just give it to you. Like 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 know the URL. I can just tell you what it is. It'll be fine. And it's like, oh, that'd be great. You've been, you've been working for an hour and you know, we've, we've burned down the 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.

18:39Brendan Carr:And it's just a regular piece of software that you made that runs on your desktop natively.

18:43David Pierce: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 stuff to it.

18:49Brendan Carr:Where is the web app hosted?

18:50David Pierce:Vercel.

18:51Brendan Carr:Okay.

18:52David Pierce: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?

18:57Brendan Carr:I feel like I can start assigning you stuff.

18:59David Pierce: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 I did it. There's this insane process. It took too long. Could I have successfully used the limited amount of HTML and CSS and JavaScript that I have to build this myself? Probably. But instead, last night, I spent three hours playing video games. This is a real story. I'm sitting there playing FIFA, and every time the ball would go out of bounds, and there's a throw-in or halftime or whatever, I would just lean over and do another command for Cloud Code.

19:35David Pierce:And it's just sitting there building this thing for me as I'm playing video games. And I'm like, this is a future I can get behind.

19:40Brendan Carr:Yeah. I have two thoughts about this because I'm going to talk about my own little Vibe Coding Adventure. 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, you had 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 dreams 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.

20:15Brendan Carr:And as we can all tell, it, like, kind of 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. I think that's fine. There's something about that that I think is really important. And 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 OpenAI 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 AGI is here because it can write software for you.

20:53But then you, the outputs are like,

20:56Brendan Carr:I made myself a little piece of software. Like I, 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 but i defeated the smart things api on the frame tv i'm very proud of myself okay you let the ai control your house now no no no i'm much more of a scaredy cat than you oh okay so i have a macbook neo that now has canva on it because uh we got max a cry cut printer for her birthday nice and so like we're just going to use it for that but also it's my agentic toy, toy playground, you know, uh, that's the right combination of things.

21:35David Pierce:Yeah.

21:35Brendan Carr:Let it design your elementary school child and open claw. What could possibly go wrong? So just using co-work because co-work is a little bit better behaved. Sure. Also, anthropic changes its pricing for open clause. 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 Dakota 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.

22:10Brendan Carr:I bought a Stream Deck, a Stream Deck Neo. It's little and cute. And 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 Amoron Desktop, which has a Stream Deck plug-in. So you set up the scene, push the button. Great. The lights all change.

22:31David Pierce:As someone who has seen you fight with just changing the image on the frame TV, this seems very exciting.

22:38Brendan Carr:Right. So the frame TV runs Tizen, which is controlled by SmartThings, 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 that it's just it is the thing that is and smart things the platform in particular is very bad because it from what i can tell the tv runs like a little web server that the smart things app on your phone has to connect to a new every time as though that it has never even considered 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 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.

23:28Brendan Carr:Right. Or importantly, I know you've run into this, turn the TV on and off in a predictable way. That is just not a choice you can make with a frame TV.

23:36David Pierce:That's because on and off is not a concept the frame TV understands.

23:40Brendan Carr:Right. There's on, there's kind of on

23:41David Pierce:and then there's also off but off is sometimes on and on is technically also off.

23:46Brendan Carr:Yes.

23:46David Pierce:Everything I just said is accurate. It's 100 % true. Frame TV users.

23:51Brendan Carr: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 things just like don't exist in the SparkThings API. So I asked Claude to do it. Claude, and yeah, it's like, I don't know. Like I have a little kid. you've got a little kid, it's like watching them just fall off the bed. It's like, oh, don't do that. Oh, you did it.

24:26Brendan Carr:And it's like, I'm going to use the SmartThings API. And I just watched it try to use the SmartThings API. 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 WebSockets locally on the network. And I have never set this up because you need like a Raspberry Pi. like running python 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 wrote a 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 had to talk to the tv it had to figure out the file list of all the images on the TV and which images I wanted.

25:16Brendan Carr: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 don't let Claude use my terminal. Like again, I'm much more of a scaredy cat than you are. So I was copying and pasting commands and code back and forth, which is slow. But again, this is my level of understanding.

25:51Brendan Carr:I could read the code and make sure, and these are not long commands, right? I could make sure it was doing what I thought it was supposed to do. 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. I understand what I'm looking at here. Is there a crypto miner on my frame TV now? Like, I don't know 100%, but I'm reasonably confident. Anyhow, so we 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.

26:24Brendan Carr:It turns the lights. It does a macro. It changes the lights to white. It sends the command and picks the image on the TV. And this is like a huge victory that because I have a baby, 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 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 going to be able to do a lot more things and that is worth taking seriously.

26:49David Pierce:Yes.

26:50Brendan Carr: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 of their frame team. Like it's just, we're still pretty far away from that, but there's a glimmer of something important here.

27:14David Pierce:Yeah, I agree. And it's also, 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 get, we should, we're gonna move on from this. But one tiny example is a thing I've been thinking about a lot. It's 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 it's understanding of where you are looking and where it's supposed to work from doesn't exist. You have to give it all the context. Cloud 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.

27:51David Pierce:And then it's like, well, what, where is that? I can't find the folder you're looking for. And then I have to go back to cloud and be like, what's the address of this folder again? Give me the full thing to ask. And it's just like 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.

28:22David Pierce:So you can like 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.

28:32Brendan Carr:And the gap that I would close there is most people cannot describe the problems they have in terms of software. Your problem, like it described 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. Yeah, very straightforwardly. And like software is made for that. Yeah. And like most software is look at this database. Like we keep having CEOs on Decoder and I'm like, all right, CEO 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.

29:05Brendan Carr:And we've just done like 100 episodes 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, but that's all I'm saying.

29:30David Pierce:That is true.

29:30Brendan Carr:What is the frame TV but a database of artwork?

29:35David Pierce:Is the database on or is it off, Eli? 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, I didn't think we were going to get another invitation. I mean, it's a week-to-week thing, I would say, but for now, you barely made it by the skin of your teeth. Neela, you gave a speech last time. Do you want to give a shorter version of the speech this time about what the Hype Desk is?

30:12Brendan Carr:Yeah, the Hype Desk is where 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 integrations, you can buy them because you can't buy us. And this makes our ethics policy stay pure, which is very precious to us. My favorite part of the hype desk last week is the YouTube audience completely understood what was going on and was very happy to see Ross and Ashley. And the audience that leaves comments on TheVerge.com was like, why do you have to make money?

30:46David Pierce:I literally got an email last week that was like, why are you guys doing stuff that seems like you're trying to make money? And I was like, well, this is fascinating and we should talk about it. but it is a thing we will do always is try to make very clear what is and is not sponsored in the hype desk like 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 unsponsored for flavor fun and not profit exactly all fun no profit that's what we're doing Ross and Ashley what have you guys been up to what do you have for us this week oh man I mean, well, we've been both obsessing over Artemis 2.

31:27That's like, but before we talk about that, Ross, I think we need to discuss the terrible tragedy that has befallen us name, the Super Mario Galaxy movie. Yeah, there are two through lines in both these, which I'm very proud of, and it means this happened. We're going to be talking space. Is it just galaxies? Yes. We're going to be talking space, and we're going to be talking plumbers in both of these segments. In both stories, weird overlap. Very good. It works out really good. But first, we're going to talk about the Mario Galaxy movie. It had the opening weekend,$370 million. It didn't quite hit what the first one did, but just barely.

32:02I mean, it's going to be a billion-dollar movie at a time when theaters just need that. 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 liked it. Yeah, I thought it was solid. I thought it was cute. It was cute. But oh, boy. The critics don't care for it. They are angry. The critics are actually furious about it. Somebody said it was physically painful to sit through.

32:30Brendan Carr:Goodness. And so is it just people are going to see it because it's something to do? Because the critic populist gap is bigger than ever in all things lately.

32:40David Pierce:This was also sort of true with the first Mario movie, which was like critics were kind of like, yeah, 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 of times going, how did we get to this point?

33:10Cause I had just forgotten how they jumped around. Like the thing that 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? 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... I want the spinoff. I want a whole Luigi's Mansion spinoff. I want a whole series. It feels like they're going for the Smash Bros. cinematic universe.

33:41Like, 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 told me that there was a character in it. He's, oh, I'm just going to spoil it. I don't care. Somebody was like, he was like, Mama, I guess my mother took him to go see it before we could see it together, which is a great offense to me as a Nintendo fan. But he said, 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 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 Brothers 2 oh wow

34:30Brendan Carr:can I put this on like a spectrum of things yes yeah there's I would say the Lego movie the first Lego movie or even the Lego Batman movie amazing 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

34:49Nilay Patel:is just a non-stop sequence of references hung together in a plot that i think ends with being

34:54Brendan Carr:like you should not trust mark zuckerberg like something happened there um but like you know ready player even the book is just like do you remember this do you remember this do you remember

35:02David Pierce: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 yeah like i'm not i'm not exaggerating no it's yeah i remember that so this is i'm just this is my my spectrum for whatever

35:21Brendan Carr:it's worth and you can argue about what movies that is a scale yeah okay but you can understand these are like they're it's a spectrum quality children's entertainment and maybe less quality quality children's entertainment based on toys and not stuff references right where where is this mario movie on the range of lists let's say from barbie to ready player one where barbie had a statement and really use the IP and has something bigger to say. This is closer to Ready Player One, like two thirds of the way on that. It's speed running a theme park. I'm going to put it squarely around the Minecraft movie, which I enjoyed very much.

35:55It'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 I had fun. I think if people walk away feeling like they had fun, that's great. Obviously, I always want like the Lego movies of the world, the Barbies, the K-pop demon hunters, like that's, I want those. Quality children, you can make quality things for kids, but yeah, I mean, 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 major statement.

36:35So.

36:35Brendan Carr:The reason I brought up Luigi's Mansion is a movie or that game came out when I was in my early 20s, and it just made it clear to me that 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 going to 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 literally makes no sense. It does not make any sense. And that's the movie. That is the movie. I'm fine with that. But do you know who else could have used two plumbers this week.

37:09Oh, my God. Artemis 2. Incredible transition. I love it. I loved it. Great. So good. Tell us what happened. They're having a toilet problem. They're not able to eject urine from the bathroom. But Ross, explain this better because... They actually, yeah, so they actually fixed it. So Artemis 2... They did fix it. 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.

37:43And Christina Koch, one of the four, I think she's a mission specialist, won on that. She called herself a space plumber, and she got it fixed. Now space plumber won. Then it broke again. This is my favorite weird anecdote. The frozen urine in the exterior event line was just 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.

38:09Brendan Carr:That's like day three or four. This, by the way, is the entire thesis of data centers in space. Yeah. We can harness the power of the sun to do amazing things. Yeah. And there's this amazing line, I think it was Jackie Mahaffrey, a mission capsule controller 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, no. I'm sad, Trombone. Amazing, actually. Like, all of this happened.

38:41Brendan Carr:We haven't seen a launch of this scale. It's like the great victory. And it's like, whoops. Toilet busted. It's such the most humane thing because space is like, it's an amazing, like, adventure to go out. We've gone farther now as humans than 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 a 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 situation.

39:13Yeah. 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.

39:22Brendan Carr:Yeah. You can't screw around with that. I thought right next to it, there are problems with Outlook. We're very good. Yes. where they like literally the calls like we have two copies of outlook running on this computer we don't know why and it's like no one knows why no one knows why they did solve that as well it

39:36David Pierce:has been an extremely internet emission in all of the best ways right like the photos have been unbelievable like unbelievable the photos unreal just gorgeous it makes me want to quit astrophotography because they're that good like i'm just like i'll never what's what is 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

39:55Brendan Carr:a Samsung phone, it'll just generate photos of the moon left and right. It's going to be fine.

40:00David Pierce:This has been my favorite run of memes on the internet has been people being like, oh, thank God, all of Samsung's moon photos are going to get even better now because these are so good. 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. So many amazing internet moments. The way that this has just dovetailed into the best parts of the internet, like 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.

40:31And, 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 inspiring. And then also just imminently memeable. You can just meme it all day. Yeah, it's beautiful. And also, honestly, kudos to the astronauts, because like this is a moment where like everything they say is going to matter. And they've been all of them surprisingly poetic.

41:08There was a line I think Victor Glover gave on Easter. And I just 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 Neelai describes the Verge cast.

41:30Brendan Carr:So it's funny, because my favorite quote was when they woke them up with Pink Pony Club by Chapel Rhone. Yes. And then didn't play the chorus. 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 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. All right, we have to end on hope. I think we need to, I mean, my rule is you can make a little bit of fun to astronauts and say they're goofy, but these photos are incredible.

42:01Brendan Carr:Amazing. They're the best. And also kudos to Emma Roth on the Verse team who pulled out the EXIF data. So we know they're using Nikon cameras to take these amazing photos. That is cool. They are using Nikon 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 on a Hasselblad. No, it's because the ISO is like, crank. 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.

42:32Brendan Carr:They don't have like internet access. And I think that's also really interesting because the, you know, the fancy cameras take whatever process and I think the iPhones are much more candid. And seeing the candids making them more human in space, I think, is also very important. It is really cool.

42:47David Pierce:It's been very cool. We'll link to some of the photos, but the eclipse photos in particular, every time I look at it, it melts my brain. It blows my mind. It's just so amazing. It's unbelievable. All right, Ross, Ashley, thank you. I think you've earned it. You can come back next week. This is great. Good to have you both here. We're going to take a break, and we're going to come back and talk about some AI news. We'll be right back.

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44:33Nilay Patel:If your identity is stolen, we'll fix it guaranteed. One last big number. Save up to 40 % your first year. Visit LifeLock.com slash podcast for the threats you can't control. Terms apply. 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 going to 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.

45:14David Pierce: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. And in particular, this big New Yorker story about Sam Altman. I'm assuming, Neela, you've read this story.

45:29Brendan Carr: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. Oh, nice. So if you have questions, you can email us at decoder at theverge.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.

45:48David Pierce:Which would be astonishing. Given the length, yes. Well, given the length and also given what this story is. I mean, I think, I tried very hard not to see this story as pure David confirmation bias, but I'm starting to feel like the take that I espoused last summer, which is that OpenAI is a house of cards and is about to collapse, just can, we've been talking about this a lot, like this company feels like a mess. It's right. And in particular, I would say the takeaway from this story about Sam Altman, which is very long, but is terrific. Like it is exceedingly well reported. It's full of good data.

46:27David Pierce:It is like, I think it's about as measured a way of saying Sam Altman 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 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 opening eye changed forever and only for the worse

46:51Brendan Carr:yeah I think that's right not to talk about journalism but like big features like this often just validate the 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 Ilya left and started a 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.

47:33Brendan Carr: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, been hard. Just in a lot of ways, that's been hard. Two, Google did not just concede. They were not – that was just not a thing they were going to do. And I think, you know, Sundar like shuffled his entire executive team and they are vastly more competitive now. And their products are good and people like them.

48:09Brendan Carr: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 meaningful and good ways. And then there's everything else opening eyes doing, which is trying to raise money endlessly, courting Saudi money and Chinese money. Like all of the stuff in this 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 the reporting in this piece. But two, it's so reflected in everything else that has happened.

48:45Brendan Carr:And the idea that they could just stumble into a Google scale business that would paper over all the flaws, 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?

49:18Brendan Carr:Like they're so good at that, that it funds all of the noise and open AI is nowhere close to that. 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's not paying any attention to the business he's running. Like his business is raising money.

49:38David Pierce:Right. And I think 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 very robber baron activity. And this is a thing, quote unquote, great businessmen have done for generations, right? Like you play some games, 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.

50:16David Pierce:And the ultimate goal is to build your business as big as you want. and then the government fights you in an antitrust. And like, this is what we do, right? Like we have heard stories about businessmen 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 10 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 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 from lines at Disney World.

51:20Brendan Carr:And it was the Bronx Zoo. We're not at Disney World. But yes, it's kind of like Disney World. We published I published scoops about that from the Bronx Zoo on my phone. That's a real thing that happened.

51:30David Pierce: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 open AI, 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 open AI because they were like, no, no, no, we care about this thing. 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?

52:07David Pierce: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.

52:23Brendan Carr:Yes, they love telling you that those are the stakes.

52:25David Pierce:Right. 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 ChatGPT. And then it immediately changed. And I think that's clearly correct because 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.

52:59David Pierce: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, again, 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's where we are, what do we even do? Do you trust the government more with this? Do you trust the European government more with this? We're in this place of, if not Sam Altman, then who?

53:40David Pierce:is I just, I don't know, I ended this piece in this place of like, how do we fix any of this? I'm a little less nihilistic about things

53:49Brendan Carr: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? 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. Right, but I don't know. You can take the example of Elon and Doge.

54:26Brendan Carr: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 have been modified to reflect reality. Right? All 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.

55:05Brendan Carr: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 SaaS apocalypse. 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 CMOS title at OpenAI from CEO of applications to CEO of AGI deployment. Because I think the industry has coalesced on the idea that being able to write software is AGI. Jensen Wang is like, AGI is here. We're going to deploy digital Jesus. But I don't think that they're at the, like they keep setting these benchmarks.

55:45Brendan Carr: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 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 promised 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.

56:18Brendan Carr:And you can see the opportunities to find a business process that looks like a loop in a database and automate that yourself. Like, that's going to be huge. I have no doubt that that is going to be huge. And you can see Anthropic, by comparison to OpenAI, lasered in on that opportunity from the very beginning and said, we're going to solve business. We're going to 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 Anthropic's customers are huge businesses that are not out to destroy the world.

56:52Brendan Carr: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.

57:00David Pierce:Yeah.

57:00Brendan Carr:And like Claude can just do that. And that is amazing. I'll give you an example just from our own little database. 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.

57:32Brendan Carr:It's amazing.

57:34David Pierce:Its ability to strip bad HTML and replace it with good HTML is like a fundamental capability of clock code.

57:40Brendan Carr:Yeah. And I don't have this like labor anxiety about it because in no world was that ever 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. 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.

58:15Brendan Carr: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 their responsibility pledges. Right. I think there's a reason Google is like constantly talking about how responsible they are. So at least in 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.

58:51Brendan Carr:I'm still unconvinced. I think 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.

59:06David Pierce: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.

59:16Brendan Carr:But I think that ceiling is related to do I think software is everything. Sure. If you believe software literally controls the world, the ceiling on AI is AI will control the world. Sort of.

59:28David Pierce:AI will build software that controls the world is not the same as AI will control the world.

59:32Brendan Carr:Or use that software.

59:34David Pierce:Sure. No, again, like I think the ceiling on that is very high, but it's really, if you believe as many AI people do, and I'm not generalizing this as a thing I've heard people say out loud in the last week, that AI will be more important and more transformative than the industrial revolution. If you believe that, the stakes are different because it changes the way we live our day-to-day lives. Again, you're smiling because you don't believe that.

1:00:02Brendan Carr:No, I'm smiling because I'm thinking about Thomas Jefferson and I remember 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. This is like how David and I live our lives. Because you went to UVA, right? I did. Which is Jefferson's university. I remember this conversation. We call him Mr. Jefferson. Mr. Jefferson. It's very important. You can tell. There's a lot of depth to the Verge Cassidens. 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.

1:00:31Brendan Carr: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 going to happen. That is not Sam Altman being like, we should rewrite the social contract, which is a real thing OpenAI published this week.

1:00:54David Pierce:Yeah.

1:00:55Brendan Carr:Right, but maybe the fact that everyone can run their own little small business because the AI tools will allow you to do that 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 Altman 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 York piece written by Ronan Farrow that says it for you.

1:01:47Brendan Carr:And Tina Nguyen, our DC reporter, ran around with OpenAI's policy proposal this week and asked a bunch of DC policymakers. And they're like, this would be great if it didn't come from OpenAI. That is the problem for this company.

1:01:58David Pierce:I think OpenAI is in the middle of digging itself what I would call the meta hole where it has gone from the company that is so obviously out in front of this that is kind of 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.

1:02:19Brendan Carr:Especially if it doesn't have a great product. And I'm telling you right now, maybe Codex is a great product that will compete with Cloud Code. It's not the thing that's going to win public opinion.

1:02:26David Pierce:No, it's not. And I think especially, I mean, 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 your point that maybe there is a business case to being the responsible AI company is a good and hopeful one. It feels, I don't know, it feels small as a moat right now for any of these companies. It does.

1:02:59Brendan Carr:And Anthropic keeps walking away from its own commitments, which is basically the through line of the open AI piece. And do you know why?

1:03:07David Pierce:It's all for this 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 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 there, there were$10 billion companies before they ever launched anything. Like there is now so much money that the ability to operate on like moral, let's do what's good for the world grounds is just rapidly starting to disappear.

1:03:49David Pierce: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 doing, but it's doing some of it. And I think for a long time, student Arpichai would say things about how Google was moving slowly and trying to be responsible, essentially as a tool for being slow. But now it's like that, that's an opportunity Google has that no one else has.

1:04:25David Pierce:And 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.

1:04:37Brendan Carr:Yeah. To me, 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 OpenAI 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 OpenAI's ad products are bad because all of the people are gone. Like literally the amount of turnover in OpenAI's 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 going to 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.

1:05:35Brendan Carr:And as they add ads into ChatGPT, people will perceive that experience to be degrading.

1:05:41David Pierce:So you're saying already having InShittified is actually better than going through it publicly. You're probably right.

1:05:46Brendan Carr:And especially if Google, you know, the free version of ChatGPT, which is fundamentally what most people are using, is like not very good. No. Right? They're trying to save costs there. And 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 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.

1:06:11David Pierce:I think you're right. All right. Everybody should go read that piece. We'll link to it in the show notes. It's a long one. So carve out an afternoon. We're going to take a break.

1:06:19Brendan Carr:If you have questions for Ronan, decoder at the verge.com. Decoder at the verge.com.

1:06:22David Pierce:Yeah. Send him. Send him Neelai. I have questions for Ronan. Most of all, they're largely about his hair. But that's a different question. We're going to take a break. We're going to come back to the lightning round. We'll be right back.

1:06:34Nilay Patel:For the last 10 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. America 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 going to 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.

1:07:18Nilay Patel:It really does feel like so reactive. You know, I think this Iran thing is also going to 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 Estet Herndon and welcome to America, actually.

1:07:41David Pierce:All right, we're back. It's time for the lightning round. Unsponsored. Again, for flavor. You see the problem.

1:07:50Brendan Carr:We can't accept the sponsorships. 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 i pictured it and the reason i was saying that 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 i actually know for sure

1:08:25David Pierce: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.

1:08:32Brendan Carr:Brendan Carr is a dummy. It's a remix. I'm not a stung to sest.

1:08:42Nilay Patel:Dummy. You gotta be kidding me.

1:08:47David Pierce:Oh, this is great. We are stacking theme songs. This is original Brendan Carr is a Dummy theme by Robert B. remix by Wesley, who describes it as a New Age remix inspired by Enigma's 1990 banger Sadness. Hell yeah, everybody. That was awesome. Brendan Carr doesn't deserve theme music this good. It's a real problem.

1:09:07Brendan Carr:Yeah, we are kind of getting, we're giving him a little too much, but that was awesome.

1:09:11David Pierce:That was. Thank you. What do we have this week, Neal?

1:09:13Brendan Carr:Everyone knows what we have this week. Yep. It is very dumb. It is Brendan just way out over his skis as usual, saying a thing that he shouldn't say with power that he 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 think we're safe to say it is not going well, and no one likes it. There was an announcement of a two-week ceasefire after Trump threatened to destroy an entire civilization, which scared a lot of people. They've announced a two-week ceasefire. Everyone claimed victory. Pete Hegseth claimed victory.

1:09:54The Iranians also notably claimed victory. They put out a statement saying, we've won.

1:10:00Brendan Carr: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, 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 going to do what we want. You can agree or disagree with that, but that is the posture that they are taking. Yep. Trump puts out a true social statement only responding to CNN, saying the alleged statement put out by CNN World News is a fraud as CNN well knows.

1:10:36Brendan Carr: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 in post 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 don't know what else to say about that.

1:10:59David Pierce:I was just about to say, I assumed you read that wrong and then realized I'm looking at the screenshot and was like, oh no, he just read the words as they were presented.

1:11:07Brendan Carr:It ends with CNN is being ordered to immediately withdraw the statement with full apologies for their as usual terrible reporting. Results of this investigation will be announced in the near future. Okay, the president of the United States cannot do this. Can't do it. It turns out in America, you can lie. There's an amendment. It's actually the first one, and it protects you from consequences of your speech from the government.

1:11:28David Pierce:Also, importantly, CNN didn't.

1:11:30Brendan Carr:Also, importantly, the president is ordering CNN to immediately withdraw the statement is not a power the president has. And in fact, 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, it's the first one. It's the first amendment. You might recall it. It has historically been very important. It's 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 gets to be the speech police.

1:12:06Brendan Carr:He loves being the speech police. So he quotes it on X and he says, more outrageous conduct from CNN.

1:12:25Brendan Carr: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 be able to use the internet. 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 airwaves. In fact, CNN mostly operates as clips by Aaron Rupar on X.

1:12:56Brendan Carr: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 bite 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.

1:13:37Brendan Carr: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, 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.

1:14:11Brendan Carr: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.

1:14:26David Pierce: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's what's about to happen by this merger that I'm going to allow for this particular political reason. Like, it's just there.

1:14:41Brendan Carr: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 better be happy with CNN as well.

1:14:51David Pierce:Yep.

1:14:51Brendan Carr: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 going to do it to CNN too because it might all be run by one news organization. This is just straightforwardly like corruption. Like there's no other word for it. It is straight up the state trying to corrupt the free speech of the media in this country. And 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 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 will have because they operate on the airwaves and how you expect to explain to everyday Americans why the government should interfere with speech in this way.

1:16:02Brendan Carr:Because this is so far over the line. It's like why you came on 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. 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, you're welcome on this show, or really any show, that does the Brendan Carr is a Dummy segment. And I'll be there to tell you you're a dummy to your face.

1:16:29David Pierce:It's taken off. The Brendan Carr is a Dummy cinematic universe continues to expand. We welcome all comers.

1:16:34Brendan Carr:That's been Brendan Carr is a Dummy, America's favorite podcast in the podcast.

1:16:37David Pierce:That's good stuff. All right. I just have one for you, which is, I think, the other sort of big journalism-y moment of the week, which is 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 will just frame this for anybody who has not read it so far as it's set up very much like a process story, right? Like John Kerry Rue, who's the author, who was right at the forefront of exposing Theranos, has won Pulitzer Prizes, is like as legit as anybody in this business doing this stuff, starts 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.

1:17:20David Pierce: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.

1:17:36Brendan Carr:Which, like, you would if you were Satoshi. You know what I mean? You would. Yeah, I mean, look, I agree. John Kerry 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.

1:18:06Brendan Carr:Like, these are two people or two characters in the end that have all these 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. But other than that, 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.

1:18:37Brendan Carr:It's true, yeah. Like it's like very, there's something there 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 run around saying everyone is satoshi uh and once you know who the person is and there's like secondary markets are gambling about when these tokens will move the incentives to screw with the Bitcoin economy, just keep going up.

1:19:15Right.

1:19:15Brendan Carr: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?

1:19:38David Pierce:I agree with you completely. I mean, I think no matter how you feel about crypto and Bitcoin in particular, no good comes of knowing who Satoshi is. 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, like it really changes the vibe of the system. it exposes Adam back to real risk. I mean, we've seen horrible stories of people getting kidnapped and essentially held captive for their Bitcoin passwords. Like it's a real sort of physical danger to put this person in because we know how much money they have and we know where it's stored.

1:20:21David Pierce:Like this stuff is scary for a lot of reasons, but also 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.

1:20:49Brendan Carr:Yeah, if all those Bitcoins start moving, weird stuff starts happening. So they have to stay where they are forever.

1:20:55David Pierce: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 unmasked may have lost his motivation to not play the games and 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 think John Kerry Rue did a really good, really compelling investigation. I don't 100 % clock his certainty 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.

1:21:33David Pierce:And I think John Kerry is a serious journalist who does a good job. So that's interesting. But like, I was not 100 % compelled by the story. But I do think if it is true, and this person has now been definitively unmasked, the crypto world is about to change in some weird and probably bad ways.

1:21:51Brendan Carr:yeah as always i will point out and as i've been pointing out on the show and 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 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 never 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 you know like how much they're worth 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 unless you're doing crimes in which case

1:22:38David Pierce:it's very compelling apparently yeah uh yeah ben mckenzie uh who wrote a book about crypto he made a documentary about crypto he was also ryan atwood on the oc if that name rings a bell uh he's on the show on Tuesday talking about a bunch of this stuff too. So stay tuned for that. Um, Nilay, you have to go. My internet is barely hanging on by a thread, so we should get out of here. Uh, 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.

1:23:11David Pierce:To everybody who wasn't able to get tickets, uh, keep an eye out. This is the thing we're going to do again. It's, I'm excited at the response we've had so far. I think it's going 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 going to get to as many of them as we can in two Tuesdays. Call the hotline 866-VERGE-11. Send us an email, vergecastatheverge.com. We love hearing from you on that and absolutely everything. Until then, we're out of here. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

1:23:40David Pierce:This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuk. We will be back on Tuesday. We're talking about crypto with Ben McKenzie, and we're talking about continuous glucose monitors with V song. Version history this week is about the Western Electric 500, the, the landline phone. Next week on Decoder, you can check out Ronan Farrow talking about more of all the open AI stuff, plus whatever Neelai and the team have been cooking up. I'm sure it's great. Thank you, as always, for watching and listening. We will see you next time. Rock and roll. How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer?

1:24:12David Pierce:Too many to say here. multi-vehicle discount safe driver discount new vehicle discount storage discount legacy how many

1:24:19Nilay Patel:discounts will you stack up tap the banner or visit usaa.com slash auto discounts restrictions apply