Meta's quest to own your face

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26:59All right, we're back. I will never forgive Brendan Carr or the United States government for making us do the first 20 minutes of The Vergecast about this. I will never forgive them. But it was nice to have Neelai back. We have released Neelai into his baby care and weekend. And now let's get on with the good stuff. Jake Kastronakis is here. Hi, Jake. Hey there. What did Neelai do? Neelai just came in firing. It was nice to have him back. Richard Lawler is also here. Hi, Richard. Hello. Let's talk about sports, but not the Packers. Who have you been yelling about the FCC to recently? Steve Ballmer, of course.

27:37Richard, you and I are going to do a sports thing because one of the angry feelings I've had this summer is that watching sports is a nightmare, and maybe I just don't like sports anymore. Maybe the simplest thing to do is just not like sports anymore. So we're going to come back to that. Do you ever like sports? Listen, not now, Richard. Not now. We're going to talk about Meta because Meta Connect was this week. Big week for smart glasses. Big week for awkward demos in front of large audiences full of people. Big week for Mark Zuckerberg wearing sunglasses that may or may not look very good on his face.

28:10We have a lot to talk about. So we're going to go through Meta Connect. then we have a lightning round full of like a lot of surprisingly huge news this is like an easy four hour verge cast kind of week but we are going to do our best not to do that three hours maximum um but let's start with meta connect so the the top line of the news here is that meta announced a bunch of newsmark glasses i want to get into all of them but basically there is a new product called and i have to look at these names because they're such horrendous name crimes there is the meta ray-ban display which is smart glasses with a little display that we'll get into uh v song who has worn all of these and reviewed all of them said they're the best smart glasses she's ever tried and that is not a thing v says lightly i think that's big deal there's also the oakley meta vanguard sure and then there is the new meta ray-ban smart glasses sorry david that's the ray-ban meta no did they unless they changed it it's so this is This is like super inside baseball, but like the original product is the Ray-Ban Metas or Ray-Ban Meta.

29:15But like nobody knows that. We're like, oh, it's the Meta Ray-Ban. And so it's just like writing about these on our website is just constantly switching the meta back and forth as we figure out which way it goes. They need they need better naming. I absolutely guarantee you that behind all of these names were teams of executives and lawyers sitting in conference rooms debating whose name comes first. It's like if you ever watch the credits of a movie and you wonder, there's like, you know, they'll say a bunch of names. And then at the end, it'll be like, and, you know, Alec Baldwin or like and also guest starring whatever, Peter Gallagher.

29:55the order in which those names appear and the like prepositions that come before them is like endlessly litigated and contracted. And I just want everyone watching and listening to this podcast to imagine the meeting in which they decided which glasses would be the meta Ray-Ban and which would be the Ray-Ban meta and be so, so happy that you are not in a life that makes you be inside of that meeting. That's all I have. Just be glad that whatever choices you have made, you did not have to be in the meeting where you decided which one was the meta Ray-Ban and which one was the Ray-Ban meta. They're not even names.

30:31They're just a collection of brands listed together. It has such like Mark by Mark Jacobs, starring Mark Jacobs energy. I'm sorry, I gotta go the other way on this. You guys are out here disrespecting the meta Ray-Ban Gen 2. My favorite pair of smart glasses. I mean, I know who makes it. do you though? Are you sure? Have you looked at their blog posts? They go back and forth between calling them the meta Ray-Ban I'm sorry the Ray-Ban meta glasses Gen 2 see I did it myself I'm there also and the Ray-Ban meta glasses Gen 2 so is Gen 2 part of the name or is it not? So even the company that wants us to buy these things doesn't know what they're actually called.

31:17This is the first time ever I've been like maybe Sony has it right just by having endless hexadecimal situations every time they want to sell a new phone instead of headphones. I still remember when we had to ask if it's iPod Shuffle or iPod Shuffles or iPods Shuffle. Oh, God. And Apple's whole thing where you can't put the in front of the name. They don't call it the iPad. It's just iPad. Anyway, if we keep talking about names, I will actually go insane because I could do this forever. Let's start with the display. Well, the screen one, as we are going to call it from now on. um this is one we've been hearing a lot about for a while our our former colleague and current contributor alex heath has been like scooping this roadmap for years and uh we got a demo of orion which is i would say like the the more impressive version of this idea uh last year and then this year it this is the first sort of relatively mainstream available version of smart glasses with a screen, which we've known Meta was going to be working on, but now it actually exists.

32:21Let me just run through the specs real fast before we get into it, because I'm very curious what you both make of this, because I have reacted to this in a way that I did not expect. Basically, they look like sunglasses. They're a little thicker and a little heavier than even the smart glasses we've seen before. They weigh 69 grams, which if that means nothing to you, it's like double the weight of an AirPods case. So just do with that what you will. tie two of those to your head and see how it feels. They get about six hours of battery. They have 5 ,000 nits of brightness on this little screen that sort of shows up in front of your, it looks like your right eye.

32:54And it's just a little tiny heads up display. It's not like a full augmented reality thing. It's just a little 600 by 600. I think it's 20 degree field of view screen that sits right in front of your eyes. And it's very bright. And everybody who's worn it says they're able to see it in even in bright light. V song said, if you look directly into the sun, you won't be able to see it, but also don't do that. So that's fine. It's just a, it's a pair of smart glasses with a little tiny display that does some stuff. And I think that is like, that's both kind of it and kind of enough to me. And I want to get into the control system in a minute, but the glasses alone, I feel like are actually pretty exciting.

33:35But I'm curious, Richard, what was your, what was your reaction to these? I still wonder if they're maybe a little bit too early with these. And I understand they're maybe still planning only on selling limited amounts of these. I don't know how many they think they will move. But one of the things that they mentioned, and I think we'll get to their conversation with Alex Heath, is that lots of people wear glasses already. And as a person, I don't know, David, are you a glasses contacts guy? I'm not a glasses contacts guy. Oh, you're one of those 2020 vision people? Actually, it's better than 2020 vision.

34:05Like, not to brag. It is bragging. I just knew there was something weird about him. It's fine. I don't have a lot going for me. I've been trading the ability to look a little bit more punchable for being able to see for basically my whole life. And I don't know if I want to wear slightly thicker glasses just to have a screen and to have to charge them all the time. Yeah. So can I just read you the quote that Mark Zuckerberg said about this? Because I actually thought it was really instructive and interesting about how they're talking about this. So this is an interview with Alex Heath. and he said there are between one to two billion people who wear glasses on a daily basis today for vision correction.

34:40Is there a world where in five or seven years the vast majority of those glasses are AI glasses in some capacity? I think that's kind of like when the iPhone came out and everyone had flip phones. It's just a matter of time before they all become smartphones. I would say the iPhone comparison there doesn't make any sense. That is, he just described two completely different things where it's not that everyone who had flip phones upgraded to smart, like that's just, none of that is how it worked. I think it's fascinating to hear him say that our target market is people who wear glasses. Because we've had a lot of conversations on this show and elsewhere, basically asking the question, are any of these companies going to be able to convince people who don't wear glasses to wear glasses?

35:18And I think that is a steep, steep, steep, steep hill to climb for all of these companies. But the idea that they're just saying, okay, how do we take the glasses you're already wearing and try to put some intelligence and smarts into them, vastly more achievable. Like, yes, smaller market, hard for lots of different reasons. People's prescriptions are complicated. Managing this stuff is complicated. These things get expensive really fast, like on and on. But I think thinking about that as the target market is just really interesting to me and not at all what I expected. So like he's after the two of you who wear glasses and he is trying to convince you way before he tries to convince me that these things are worth wearing all day, every day.

35:57Also, to Richard's point, I'm wearing wireframe glasses right now. Wireframe glasses are—listen, I'm not going to put myself out there as a fashion expert, but I feel like they are much more in than the super chunky, thick, hipster glasses that I think the meta Ray-Ban display glasses are much more in line with. They had those 15 years ago. Oh, man, they would be right on target. These things are cyclical. Maybe they'll come back around. Maybe they can convince us. But right now, they're thicker than a standard pair of Wayfarers. And I'm not sure that's even the most popular type right now. So look, these are a fashion product.

36:40It has to be fashionable first and foremost. Whether the tech can get there is a whole other question. So I think they have a challenge, number one, in just bringing these two different styles of glasses. Right now it is in one style, as far as I can tell, and it is bigger than a standard pair of glasses. They look all right. They're like, it's stylized. It's like heavily stylized. Can they make that work in smaller pairs of glasses? It's going to take a while. And I think that's like a big part of the story here. Yeah, and for whatever it's worth, it does seem like Meta is better set up to do that than almost anybody, right?

37:16This huge partnership they have with Esler Luxottica is a big deal, and that's the company that makes most people's glasses. And so the ability to move this stuff through styles and lines and brands over time is there. But I agree. Jake, the gap between what we saw today and your glasses is enormous. Yeah. We're nowhere close. Even like Richard's glasses, which have some plastic to them. I don't think we're anywhere, anywhere close to this. No, it's massive. And they are big in a way that when someone sees you wearing them, they're saying, oh, you've got those on. Yeah. Which as a glasses wearer, I can say it's not the thing that you want to hear from someone who has noticed that you wear glasses.

38:03Oh, you've got those on is such a real thing that's happening right now in all of these spaces. Because I think, to me, like I wear the, I have the original Meta Ray-Bans that I like a lot. And I wear them mostly to use as headphones. And ironically, as they've become more popular, people are noticing them more on my face. Which is not what I expected. Like you expect this stuff to sort of blend in as you start to see more people wearing it. Like you don't notice somebody wearing AirPods anymore, right? Like you don't clock AirPods as they go by. If I wear these, I get constant notices. Because, like, you can tell because people inadvertently make eye contact with you.

38:45Because they're looking at your eyes. And so as I'm walking down the street, I'm constantly getting people who are just, like, sort of giving me these sideways glances as I walk by them. And, yeah, that is not what anybody is looking for with their pair of glasses, I don't think. The screen does seem to be good, right? They did it. It is. And this is this is the thing that is like fascinating about this whole road that Meta is on right now is it seems like the screen works. And to me, if you're if you're going to get a pair of glasses like this, a screen makes absolute perfect sense, right? A bunch of the stuff that they're talking about doing on this is simple things like being able to, you know, get turn by turn directions in your heads up display.

39:26Perfect use case for this kind of thing. live translation in front of your eyes as you're talking to somebody perfect use case for this kind of display like using your vision to uh line up a photo that you're taking with the camera in your glasses perfect use case for this kind like if we're gonna do smart glasses they need displays i think we've known that for a while and it seems like if you're meta you've got it if not right then than largely right. Like we'll have to see and use the thing and review it properly. But I think you're right. It does seem like the early returns on this thing are that Meta kind of got it right.

40:04The question is just even more so, is this a thing that I want? I don't know. And I think the thing that I'm so struck by with this one in particular is there is this weird kind of distant look you get in your eyes when you're looking at a heads-up display that is just awkward in life. And a lot of our coverage pointed this out. And I think it's just a strange thing that like, no, you're not going to be able to see my screen if I'm wearing these glasses, right? Like if you and I are just sitting here looking at each other, and we're both wearing glasses, you're not going to be able to see that my screen is on.

40:38But you're going to be able to see that I'm focusing my eyes kind of up here and not on you. And it like a lot of the pictures I've seen kind to make it look like people are just sort of staring at nothing. And it's just this weird, distracted thing that's happening. And at the same time, the not knowing is just as big a problem to me. Like, we went through this with glass holes. And this question of like, are you recording is a problem. And so not only are you recording, but are you listening to me? Are you paying attention to me? Can you, are you looking at me? Is like, there's so many like social cues that a pair of glasses like this totally destroys.

41:20And I just, I don't know how we figure that out. I sort of worry that we are completely past that, right? You think? Oh yes. Cause Google Glass came very early smartphone era, right? People were not used to screens and cameras being everywhere yet. you know, 10, 15 years on, you can strap 10 cameras to your face and somebody's just like, yo, what's up? Like that's not right. Like the, the other pair of glasses they make, their headphones and cameras on your face. Nobody cares. Right. Like that's, that's kind of the point, right? Like, I think if I have a, if I put a GoPro on my face, you, you, you know, the answers to all of your questions already, right?

41:59Like I'm wearing a GoPro on my face. Yes. I have a camera on that is recording you. If I'm just wearing a pair of glasses that has a camera in them. Like the subtlety is actually the problem in a strange way. If this thing just had a big ass screen that like came out of the glasses and folded down and you just saw it right here, that would be worse in some ways, but better as in a like human interaction kind of way. Because then at least I know what's going on. Whereas my read of you as a person is now totally incongruous with reality. It's like the transparency mode in AirPods, which I think this has borne out in a lot of interesting ways.

42:38Like when, if you guys are wearing headphones and you go into a store, what do you do? If you're gonna, you're like, you're up at the counter at the coffee shop. You have both headphones in. Do you take one out? Do you just pause your music and talk through your headphones? Like, what do you do? I usually just pause the music and talk. Okay. Jake, what do you do? Oh yeah, I'm taking them out. Yeah, it's like, it's in the way. I mean, it's like the same thing if, if I go into the store and I'm wearing sunglasses, like I'm gonna take them off to talk to somebody. I will always like performatively take out one of my headphones to be like, like as I'm walking up just to make it very clear that like, yes, I am listening to you.

43:13Like, cause I think it communicates something, right? And there's like, you can see sometimes when somebody is talking to you and you're wearing headphones, they don't know if you can hear them. And there's just like, there's just a million things like this in, in modern life and smart glasses exacerbate every single one of them. And Jake, you're, you're probably right that if we're not over that yet, we will get there quickly and i'm not saying we should get used to it or whatever but it's just i don't know this is just a thing i keep thinking about and even looking at pictures it's like there's something uncanny about some of the pictures we took even a v where she's looking at the camera but she's not looking at the camera and you can feel it and it's strange i don't know that said these glasses seem awesome i i mean i'm so torn on well this is the thing like they've been building toward this for many years now, and they've been pretty public about the fact that they're building toward this.

44:08And they're one of many companies, right? Snap has also been racing toward this. And it's, I don't know, it hasn't been clear to me that we were going to get to a consumer product version this quickly. And obviously we still have to test them. But, you know, in these initial demos, it seems like they have built a reasonably functional product in a reasonably functional form factor, a little thick, a little chunky. But, you know, that's farther than I think anybody expected Meta, the company that makes Facebook, to get with a hardware product, let alone to be leaders in the field. Totally. Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

44:47And I think this is probably where we should also talk about the neural band, which is a thing that Meta is doing differently from a lot of these other companies that I happen to think is maybe the smartest single decision that Meta has made. So the way that you control a lot of the stuff on these smart glasses is not with like eye tracking or wacky, you know, camera hand tracking stuff. You wear this thing on your arm that actually measures and responds to your motor movements. And it uses the term is called electromyography, which is a thing that I know a lot about. So if you'd like to talk about it, we please can.

45:26But basically you like you put this thing on and then you don't have to have your hands up in view of your glasses. You don't have to have your hands anywhere. You can just, you can just sort of sit here with your hands in your lap and you, you, I think you pinch to select or to go back depending contextually and where you are. You double pinch your fingers to get the display up or dismiss it. You like make a fist and sort of joystick swipe on it to do other stuff. You, you pinch and rotate to, to do, um, zoom in photos or to change the volume. It is like the closest thing we've done yet to the minority report interface.

45:59It's just like a smaller, more subtle version of Tom Cruise, like moving all the windows around with his hands. And again, this is another thing that like all the demos say it works. Everybody says it is vastly more natural than what you have to do with a lot of these other devices, which is like in the Vision Pro, you have to get used to really carefully focusing on every single thing you want to do, which is just like not how people exist in the world. And on a lot of these other devices, you spend your time like putting your hands up in front of you in order to take actions and that's awkward and so i think the idea of it being a separate accessory is probably not ideal in the long run but is to me a way better system of controlling this kind of thing than basically anything else we've seen before am i crazy it's subtle too it like it looks like a wristband and like my the immediate thought is like they're gonna put a watch on this thing right like Ooh, that's a good call.

46:57Like this feels like it becomes something. It seems like it's cool tech on its own, regardless of the glasses. If this was just, if it was like this, but also a Fitbit, like, yes. Yeah, I'm in. I'm so in. I don't even need the screen stuff. Like I got all the screen up here. Just give me like step and sleep tracking and I'll wear that thing all the time. Done. That's a great idea. Mark, get ass. I don't know. Richard, what do you think? I think that's definitely the right decision. We've shown this is how controls work. Have you ever played a video game? Have you ever used a computer? We've had this battle.

47:36Being able to use your hands to control something is just better than voice or eye tracking or head or trying to wave in front of you at virtual things. Even if you're not holding something, it's just the correct way. Yeah, I agree. And I think making it like a core part of this system probably, again, alienates some people. Because, again, it's like if the goal is just to get people who wear glasses to wear these different glasses, you've now asked me to do even more stuff. Yeah. Right. I'm spending more money on bigger glasses with a different style and I have to wear this other thing. but for like if if you sort of back your way down from what the technology can do this feels like exactly the right road to be going down um yeah i just think i think these are very cool and i'm very curious to see how they do i think um i think it was andrew bosworth one of the meta executives told alex heath that they're only planning to make a couple hundred thousand of them which suggests that these are not supposed to be like a huge mainstream product um even the the Ray-Ban metas, we've been hearing single-digit millions for what they've sold, which is a hilariously different term.

48:51Single-digit millions can mean an awful lot of different numbers. But even that, compared to a couple hundred thousand, makes clear really what they're going for here. Which brings us to the next one, which I think I have come to think might be sneakily the coolest thing meta launched this week, which is the Oakley meta Vanguard, which are some deeply baller ass wraparound oakley sunglasses with a camera in the nose bridge like essentially the way i've come to think about these things is it's a gopro on your sunglasses and that strikes me as maybe exactly the correct thing to have done here jake you wear wraparounds to and from work every day if if memory serves yeah as you can tell i'm big into uh extreme sports so whenever jake is not on the verge cast i want you to picture him bass fishing uh that's that's important to me i even what's the opposite of extreme sports like i even ask too much for me um these look outrageous and kind of amazing and the the the thing is there really is just like a big chunky camera right above your nose and it looks a little goofy but also that the entire like vibe of these oakleys is like boom in your face it kind of works and for like that for what you're trying to film oh that's perfect well so they do fitness tracking too and the camera bit yeah they'll do they have a heart rate monitor they do the the camera stuff and uh it has like a bunch of partnerships with strava and garmin and you can do you can use the LED that I think is supposed to show you heart rate stuff also to give you like pacing information as you're going for runs.

50:45So there's there's a lot of like knowledge about who is actually buying sunglasses that look like this anyway. Like again, it's the same sort of thing we were talking about where it's like we want to take people who might buy something that look like this anyway, and give them all these new things to do for this price. But instead of everyone who wears glasses, it's people who buy glasses that look like this. And that to me is such a smart way of thinking about this, right? Where like wayfarers are a choice you make if what you want is sort of the least offensive thing that looks good on the most people kind of glasses.

51:18This is the opposite. It's like here is a slice of people and it is a very specific place of people who are going to wear tinted, rainbow colored, cool ass wraparounds. and we're just going to give them things that those people might want. And that is a completely different way of thinking about what smart glasses might be. But to me, it's like, if you want to make one that works right now for people, that's how you do it. I also like, I think there's a really interesting distinction there. The meta Ray-Ban displays, the display smart, those are smart glasses. They're glasses with a screen that show you stuff.

51:54that all of these other ones, they are fancy headphones in the shape of a pair of glasses, right? Yes. Like the AirPods now do heart rate tracking. These are just AirPods that also like block the sun, right? That is a thing people want and buy, right? People like fitness tracking. People like headphones. People like sunglasses. Combining all three makes a ton of sense. And being good at one doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be good at making true smart glasses. So I think like there's still a lot they have to prove out with that idea. But were they early to this let's stuff headphones into a glasses form factor and let's start making that, you know, even more useful and more valuable?

52:38Absolutely. And the Vanguard, like as kind of ludicrous of a product as it seems, oh, they're just putting more and more like useful things that people already buy and want into a pair of sunglasses, which, again, to your point, David, there's already a market for these sunglasses. Now they're just making them better. It's cool. Right. Yeah. And it's like, I think if that's, if you're a meta and you want this stuff to be useful to people, that's the way to do it. Find sunglasses people are already buying and give, put the things that people are doing when they wear those sunglasses into the sunglasses.

53:09And one of those things is like bass fishing with a GoPro on. And again, there are like a bunch of features on this that suggest that who this is for again, right? The battery is even longer. It's nine hours of battery. um like like you said jake they're pretty chunky and thick but again that's that's to get a pretty big camera in here um it does up to 3k and up to 120 frames per second of video but not at the same time the more frame rate you get the less resolution you're going to get because otherwise you would essentially light your face on fire i think these things would get so hot but yeah they had they have the heart rate monitor it's like it is so distinctly obvious who these glasses are for and I just think that's very smart.

53:50They are a total name crime. Again, because they're the Oakley Meta Vanguards, which is just a bad name. But the other ones were just called HSTN the last time Oakley and Meta did one together. And it's like the Houston, Houston, whatever glasses. Those were dumb. This is better. That's my take. I agree. And the Oakley of it all is so essential to it, right? Like, again, this literally is a product people are already buying. people already want these specific sunglasses from oakley now you're just giving them an upgrade version richard i feel like you'd look cool in wraparounds what are your thoughts never tried but maybe i think a verge cast fashion show in which you try them on no one can see and we talk about it fabulous idea podcast fashion show is a thing we're going to pioneer here on this show it's going to be amazing um so the other device that meta announced is the more like mainstream-y Ray-Ban smart glasses.

54:48This is the new version of the ones that have been out there for a while. And like you said, Jake, they are headphones. Functionally, they are... I compare these to Alexa devices a lot where there are technically lots of things that they can do and are for. Everybody does the same two things. And on Echo devices, people play music and they set timers. And then there's a long list of other things that almost nobody does. on these glasses, you can listen to music and you can take pictures. And there's a long list of stuff that people can do. You can do the live AI. Lots of interesting ideas about what you might do with a pair of smart glasses.

55:27They are sunglasses with speakers and a camera. That's it. That's the whole pitch. And so if that's your whole pitch, doing what Meta did here, I think is correct. The new model is, it's more expensive, which is a bummer. but pricing is goofy. Tariffs and inflation and everything has made the cost of everything insane. So do with the$80 price increase what you will. It's$379 instead of$299. But it has double the rated battery life. Eight hours on a charge, which is a big deal. The difference between getting four hours of battery on your sunglasses and getting eight is actually the difference between the battery being annoying and the battery not being annoying, I think in most cases, especially if you have the charging case, which puts it up to, I think it was 48 hours of total battery life.

56:17So this is like a, you're charging your sunglasses once a week kind of thing. And that's a pretty solid setup. They also have a bunch of the camera improvements. So you can do up to 3k video and up to 60 frames per second, but not at the same time, all for up to three minutes at a time, again, to keep your face from lighting on fire with the heat of your sunglasses. That'd be a tough way to go to the hospital, by the way. They're like, what happened to you? What are these third degree burns all over your face? And you're like, well, I was taking some sweet beach pics and here we are. But anyway, this is like the mainstream version of this thing.

56:52And I think it continues to be good and interesting and kind of more compelling than anybody else who is doing this sort of thing. This is a tricky upgrade. Like on one hand, double the battery. Great. They did the exact thing they should do. Perfect. eight hours is in the ballpark of where you should be. On the other hand, you know, to keep repeating my argument, these are headphones and they're now$379. Pair of AirPods Pro 3 are$250. Those things are going to be on sale for lower than that in a couple of months. So I don't know, this gets tricky. Like I feel like when the old model, which I guess is still available for$299, but you know, when they were available at that price, I think that's closer in price to what you might pay for a pair of wireless headphones anyway.

57:41This seems like it's getting a little up there, maybe a little tricky. If you're a big fan of these already, maybe this makes sense. I do wonder if this is going to make it harder for them to get sort of that impulse buy that maybe they were banking on for the original model, where people were kind of just like, wow, I can't believe I can get a pair of sunglasses that do that. Yeah, I think if you're at a point where it's like a$100 markup to get all this stuff in it, you start to have an easier case to make. But when it's like double the price and now it'll play music when you already own a pair of headphones, I do agree that it's a different set of things that Meta is trying to get you to be into here.

58:22Yeah. And it really depends on the AI being good. And my experience with Meta's live AI and frankly all of these live AI systems is that they're not very good. Sometimes they're good. Sometimes they're trash. And actually, wait, can I play you a clip from Meta Connect, which was, I would say, we've all been to a lot of these events. We've covered a lot of these events. We have more sympathy than most for the cringy demo fails. but in the annals of cringy demo fails Meta Connect was a tough one this year. So let me just set this up for you and then I'm going to play you the full 53 seconds of this clip because you need to experience every second of it.

59:04So in an effort to test the live AI stuff on the smart glasses we have a chef standing up on stage or he's standing somewhere in front of a table with a bunch of ingredients on it and the idea is he's going to use the live AI with the camera and all of the different systems, the whole multimodal AI setup to make some food. Here's what happens. You can make a Korean-inspired steak sauce using soy sauce, sesame oil, fresh... What do I do first?

59:40What do I do first? You've already combined the base ingredients. So now grate a pear to add to the sauce.

59:52What do I do first? You've already combined the base ingredients, so now grate the pear and gently combine it with the base sauce. All right, I think the Wi-Fi might be messed up. Sorry, back to you, Mark. It's all good. You know what? It's all good. it's uh the irony of the whole thing is that you spend years making technology and then the wi-fi at the uh day kind of catches you all right um can we just say first of all that was obviously not a wi-fi problem nope like extremely not a wi-fi problem and uh and not the only time that happened that was well that was the start of the demo fails of the day It was tough.

1:00:39But it's like that to me was so illustrative of like the whole AI experience. Like imagine being in front of lots of people doing this demo and even just in your own kitchen trying to talk to the AI. And it is like you've put all the base ingredients together. And actually what's happening is you're standing in front of an empty bowl and you've done nothing. That experience is so awful. and because it's AI, because it's voice, because it's sort of directionless like this, it's not clear where to go. It's not clear how to go back. It's not clear how to fix things. It's not clear how to start over.

1:01:14Like the UI of this is so unfinished and the quality of it is so intermittent. I've been stuck in this thing so many times too, where it's like, you're just trying to ask a simple question, but you need the answer before you can do something. But because you're doing it with AI, you've gone down some insane, impossible rabbit hole. And the idea that I'm going to like trust my ongoing day-to-day life to this thing that I can chat with, it's like that's, you can just see why it breaks all the time. And it's not because of the Wi-Fi. It's just not. so okay i i'm curious are you guys pro these live demos like do you think that uh companies should still do these despite the very obvious possibility of failure embarrassment like this right because the obvious thing is that then everybody makes fun of you right it's just very easy for them to not do these and to script these yes i mean i i have spent years wondering how valuable these events are at all for these companies.

1:02:18But also, I love live demos. And I think the flip side is when these live demos work and are cool, it's really impressive. What we've seen is a lot of even quote unquote live demos are not live. So even the ones that seem live, you should take with a real grain of salt at this point. These things are so on rails. and like I think about the truck demo where the so-called self-driving truck was just rolling down the hill. Like it's some of this is and is not real, but I genuinely applaud Meta for trying to do this stuff live on stage. And Google sometimes tries to do it live on stage, although even it is going more towards some of these canned demos.

1:03:00Like it's just, you should be able to do this in front of people if you're going to ship it to the world, right? Like if the demo fails, maybe your product's not done. I think is kind of where I'd land. Yeah, I mean, if you're telling me this is going to work in my house, you know, sometimes the Wi-Fi is bad. Sometimes a step has been missed or the AI just doesn't catch something the right way. If it can't recover, then that kind of is the question. That is the whole sales pitch and you should make it. And I think largely that when these failures happen, if the product is good when it comes out, people forget about it very quickly.

1:03:35Yeah, but then when it sucks, everybody goes back to these launches And I was like, oh, right, it sucked. What they really did is they should have taught this poor chef how to actually use the glasses. Like, this is such a, like, he was given a set of things to say, knowing the responses he was going to get. And they just put the whole demo on Rails. And it's like, what actually needs to happen if you want to use one of these systems is you need to learn how to use it. Like, if you want to be good at AI, you need to learn how to do good prompting. And you need to learn how to engage with the thing.

1:04:06and you need to learn how to back it up and you need to learn how to start over, like they're going to fail. And actually we've seen some of these demos. OpenAI has actually done this a lot in some of its product launches where it is people who are clearly like conversant in speaking with an AI system. And you see the difference where it's like, even when stuff fails, they're able to sort of redirect and they understand how the system works and they're able to back up and start over and try new things. And that ends up actually seeming more impressive in a lot of cases because it's like, oh, this is this imperfect thing that you are interacting with, but you understand how to bend it to your will.

1:04:42And it's like, if this AI stuff is going to work, that's the bar for all of us. We all have to be able to bend these things to our will because they're just going to fail otherwise. But also, like, please keep doing live demos. It's so much more fun to cover when they're live demos, whether they're good or they fail. Anyway, we should take a break. Then we're going to come back and we're going to do the lightning round. And I might wear my meta Ray-Bans the whole time just to really freak everybody out. We'll be right back. Every day, millions of customers engage with AI agents like me. We resolve queries fast.

1:05:16We work 24-7 and we're helpful, knowledgeable, and empathetic. We're built to be the voice of the brands we serve. Sierra is the platform for building better, more human customer experiences with AI. No hold music, no generic answers, no frustration. Visit sierra.ai to learn more. Every great company's story is defined by moments when the founders make bold decisions. These are high-stakes moments that risk the business, but can lead to greatness. I'm Muriloff Boota, managing partner of Sequoia Capital and the host of Crucible Moments. We're returning for a brand new season. Join us as leaders from Stripe, Zipline, Palo Alto Networks, Klarna, Supercell, and more.

1:06:08Share what it's actually like to navigate the make or break decisions. Crucible Moments is back on October 23rd. Until then, catch up on seasons one and two wherever you find your podcasts.

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1:06:57All right, we're back. It is time once again for the lightning round. Jake, it's been a week. Are you over it? How are you feeling? This has hurt me to my core, David. There's not a night that passes that I don't sleep. The sound of thunder causes anxiety for me now. It's like love lost now. This is, this is, yeah. It reminds me of what things could have been. Things were, listen, it's not, be glad that it happened. You know what I mean? Don't be sad that it's over. Be glad that it happened. The Thunder Round was a nice time that you had. And now it is dead. It was a beautiful, beautiful summer.

1:07:31The Lightning Round is back, unsponsored, for flavor. I have to take these off. I feel absurd wearing these glasses. This was, you look good. I had a great time. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure Facebook is going to sell me ads based on what we've been talking about here. But let's just run through some stuff. There's actually like a surprising amount of news this week. So we're going to try to plow through a bunch of it as quickly as we can. Richard, why don't you go first? What do you have? Reddit. If we haven't talked about enough AI already, let's talk about what really powers AI. You. Posters.

1:08:02People who post on the internet, who have their opinions about things. Something that, and I think Josh Jezza had an article that we published a little while ago about how humans really power these AI tools that you see. And Reddit has been profiting from that. They have a deal with Google that they've had for a while. And Bloomberg reported this week that they're trying to renegotiate. and part of it seems to be that they want not only to provide results and data for Google and other companies to process to use for AI training, but also for Google and whoever else to do things that feed back into making people post on Reddit more, which would improve those tools because they would have more data to be sourced from.

1:08:42And you kind of see how there's this very interesting thing where we think about how generative AI works and, oh, it's just these computers doing things but really it's people and in this case it's uh posters we we broke down the uh type of guy who posts and uh you sir are very valuable this is to me it's like this is just reddit saying the quiet part loud right which is like we made this deal with google the the open web is is just falling into complete chaos there are no good websites left except the verge.com subscribe to the verge uh and without reddit results google is effectively useless which is more and more true every single day like it is at least in my own day-to-day experience it is wild how often i end up on reddit after doing a google search like more and more all the time it feels like that's where people land and so reddit is like okay well you've now hitched your wagon to us because we're the only thing left on the web pay up like this this is how this is how you make it more valuable for all of us you're going to give us you're going to give us money and you're going to give us users and in exchange we're going to keep this whole flywheel going for you and uh i wonder if google is already starting to regret the extent to which it is relying on reddit because it's actually google specifically is making reddit very very very powerful and i I think that's so fascinating.

1:10:09And this company that could, for years, couldn't figure out how to be effectively run or rub two nickels together is all of a sudden like the last bastion of the web. And boy, would I not have predicted this a couple of years ago. But it is now, and now it's in a position where like Reddit's really powerful because you're right, Richard. Like it is the most valuable, consistent resource of humans on the internet right now for so, so many different things. Yeah, and part of the reason why it's so valuable and so consistent is because it's moderated and so many other areas aren't. Yeah. But that's really the difference.

1:10:43And because Reddit is willing to then structure and sell all of the data, which is like, that's the flywheel. And I think it seems to have decided that it's fine and users will not revolt and it will be okay. And now it's just going to milk that for all it's worth. This is such a power play from Reddit. Like, we talked about this last week, right? Every change they're making is built around the fact that they know at this moment in time, they have a huge influx of traffic from Google. And they have the leverage. They have no idea how long it's going to last. And so as they're going back, they're just being really blunt about it.

1:11:22Give us our users. Because they know long term, this deal maybe doesn't work out for them. But right now, Reddit just is Google search. Google is just giving you Reddit results, which is bewildering. But yeah, this makes complete sense. Like they're just trying to move Google's users over to being their users before Google cuts that fire hose off. Well, and you would think, and we talked a little bit about this last week too, so we shouldn't spend too long on it. But there's one way to look at this that is like Reddit is in this incredibly precarious position, right? Because as soon as Google turns down the algorithm, it'll die, right?

1:12:00So there's like, is Reddit trying to like get while the getting's good? But then the reporting we've been reading, particularly from Bloomberg, suggests that actually Reddit is trying to get a lot more money out of Google, which really makes it seem like Reddit knows Google has nowhere else to go. Like, yeah, it is genuinely possible that Reddit is the last thing keeping plain vanilla Google search from being useless for lots and lots of things because it's being totally overrun by AI slop and nonsense. And so for Reddit to come in and say, not just like we need guarantees that you're going to keep sending us traffic, but we want more money is such an interesting like inversion of power from the way that any other website that relies on Google for traffic is able to negotiate with Google.

1:12:48It's just nuts. All right, Jake, you're up. What do you got? Okay, this has been going on for a while. We're finally coming to the end of the saga. Allegedly, the US and China may finally have come to a deal on TikTok. was supposed to get banned earlier this year. There's like a federal law about this.

1:13:07I don't know what has held it up. I do not know exactly what the problem is. Yes, you do. Corruption and chaos. Like, we can just say what it is. That is correct. So apparently, maybe possibly this week or this month or soon, who really knows with these things, there's some forward motion. It sounds like they have buyers, da-da-da-da. The thing that is interesting to me, and this has been coming out over the past several weeks or maybe months, but there's apparently still a point of the current deal, is that TikTok has built a new version of its app just for the U.S. And once this deal goes through, everyone in the U.S.

1:13:46is going to have to stop using the current version of TikTok and go download this new version of TikTok. and I am curious if you guys think that that is going to be a disaster for them or if everybody just can be like okay new tiktok whatever like that seems that's a lot to ask of people I think disaster I think like on the one hand my general belief is that most people don't want to download apps uh I also think tiktok is very important to society at this moment in time so like if If anybody could bully 100 million people into downloading an app all in the same day, it's probably TikTok. But it just feels like a mess.

1:14:30Like, there's just no way this transition goes any kind of smoothly. The report has been that basically Andreessen Horowitz, Silver Lake, and Oracle are going to be the major owners, which is like its own mess. And like, what's less cool than Oracle owning TikTok? Like, I literally couldn't think of a less cool owner for TikTok in the United States. But yeah, to me, it's the new app thing is like, if anybody can do it, it's TikTok. But I kind of doubt anybody can do it. Well, to your last point, David, I wonder if one of the questions I have is, who do you trust less with your data? The Chinese government or Larry Ellison and Anderson Horowitz?

1:15:12And I'm not sure what the answer to that question is. It's a terrific question. It's kind of where we are. But I think they might be able to pull it off. If they have enough support, is it even going to be noticeable? Like, is it going to be something where it just happens on your device? You had an app, and now it has been replaced in the app store by another app. You don't even have to sign in again, and you never know. Is it still good? Is the algorithm suddenly putting some very political videos in your feed all the time? Or is it the same as it was? I feel like now even sometimes like the TikTok algorithm can vary wildly from one session to another.

1:15:48But if it's still the same TikTok and if it's not too much of a lift, I mean, this is the app where people were learning Chinese and downloading Red Note. So, yeah, they need their TikTok. That's real. Yeah. I mean, we've seen a little bit of what it looks like when you have to get to a new app to do TikTok things. I deleted TikTok off my phone for the summer because I was like on leave and just wanted fewer reasons to look at my phone. And what that actually meant is I just ended up looking at YouTube shorts a lot all summer. YouTube shorts, not good. Not good. Don't do that. It's amazing how something with 20 years of data on what videos I like is so bad.

1:16:23Right? I feel the same way. It's like YouTube does the thing that Instagram used to do that would always drive me crazy, where it's like if you watch one short about something and you watch it for like 45 seconds, something in the YouTube algorithm goes, oh, that's the stuff. And then it shows me 600 consecutive videos of that thing again until I'm like, I never want to see this again as long as I live. And now the whole shorts algorithm has been ruined for me because there's no way to start over, which is like the thing that TikTok has gotten so good at is the way that it explores and it bounces around and it changes and it moves.

1:16:59like there is something still different about what tiktok is doing that no even all the ones that have tried to copy it have not successfully copied it so we'll see i just want to say before we move on i call bullshit on all of this i don't think any of this is real i don't think the deal is going to happen i don't think tiktok is going to get banned i think we are just going to live in this limbo state forever uh if i'm wrong please play me this clip of me being wrong because i will be thrilled to never talk about this again but i think all of this is nonsense i think that's a reasonable prediction yeah all right i have i have two that we're going to just talk about very quickly one uh is i would just briefly like to yell at qualcomm um for its name crime of the week which is that it took the snapdragon 8 elite and updated it to the snapdragon 8 elite gen 5 and if you're saying david what about gens 2 3 and 4 i don't know they don't exist and um Here is Qualcomm's blog post explaining this stupid naming decision.

1:18:02It says, it might look like we skipped generations, but the truth is simpler and more powerful. Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 marks the fifth generation of our premium 8 series platform since we introduced our new single digit naming and visual identity. So while the naming may look new, it's actually a continuation of our established framework. That says nothing, means nothing, and this is a bad name. I don't understand. Every couple of years, they have to just like fully change up the naming scheme. And I'm not saying their earlier naming scheme was good. It was like only tech obsessives could follow what, what, what it was 800.

1:18:35It was 800 series. I don't know what numbers they were at, but they incremented them. It was fine. I could say the eight whatever was higher than the eight other thing. Now I don't know what they're doing. They're just adding more words. So just, I just want to read you the names in order. Okay. There was the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, Snapdragon 8 Elite and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Good. Very good. Well done, marketing team. I'm glad you are all earning salaries. You're all fired. The next thing is a brief follow-up to last week. We had seen some info on the new nothing Ear 3 earbuds.

1:19:14We got the full reveal this week. And as it turns out, we predicted what the talk button on the side of the charging case was going to be almost exactly. It is primarily meant to be used when you have your headphones paired to your phone and it's essentially just an external microphone. You can hold it to your mouth to make phone calls, which should sound better. You can do voice notes. You can do memos into the Essential Space AI app, which we also predicted. We crushed it and I just think, good job, us. I also think this is a very good idea. I had this thought when I saw somebody out the other day, earpods in or airpods in holding their phone up to their mouth talking into their phone and i had the unbelievable urge to be like that's not how it works your phone is accomplishing nothing with you holding it like this right now uh but it is true that when you have a microphone closer to your mouth it is going to sound better like one way to sound better on a phone call is to put the microphone closer to your mouth.

1:20:15And something like this, when you want to sound good, whether you're like on a Zoom call out in the world or you're making content or whatever, having a thing that is like attached to the device that you're already using, that is just a sort of always on immediate external microphone, I think is very clever. And I think people will use this. So kudos to nothing and also to us for getting it exactly right. I second that. uh richard what's your second one my second one yes uh youtube this week they had their big made on youtube event that they have pretty much every year but for this time it's been 20 years they were talking about the next 20 years and one thing they were talking about is what might actually get the lightning round a sponsor if we get a sponsor later we can use ai to dynamically insert the ads so it'll just suddenly appear with new ads and it's one of those things it's a little change but also kind of changes things in a big way because we've seen how creators have gotten used to saying, oh, and my sponsor for this video is blah, blah, blah, blah.

1:21:13But they don't have to do that if they can just change it like next week or next year when they get a different sponsor. And the way that you make money on YouTube is getting some pretty big revamps. The way that people use AI to do different things on YouTube to enable shopping. But one of the things that seems like is that YouTube is in a pretty significant way becoming a shopping channel. Yes. This seems to be every video platform's best idea about how to make money is like, what if we just let you buy the products shown on screen? And I'm not saying that's a bad idea or the wrong one or won't work.

1:21:50It's just the only idea anybody has is like ads and also click to buy the cool wraparound sunglasses that somebody is wearing. Like, that's it. That's all. That's all we're doing here. but I agree with you that I think the dynamic ads thing is a big deal it's going to mean a lot of deals shift for creators away from like basically making sponsored videos to like if you can get to the point where you just make a lot of videos that get a lot of views that's going to be much easier to monetize than it has been in the past or if you have an old video that suddenly becomes popular now you can sell a new sponsorship on it right and you're gonna yeah you're gonna be able to make brand deals across your whole channel all at once and that's like there's just a lot of ways in which uh youtubers only get to make a specific kind of deal and now this is a different new kind of deal that i think might make everyone's viewing experience much worse probably but what we've seen from youtubers is that they respond very quickly and i think in maybe ways that we didn't expect to changes in the way that you make money why does everyone make 20 minute videos now a lot of the different things that you see.

1:23:00Take it mid-rolls. When the incentives change, their actions change. Totally. And this is like yet another push from YouTube into just being live television, right? Like there's a reason every 30-minute comedy is structured the way that it is, and it's because of ad breaks. And there's like everything is tuned to, you know, every X number of minutes, there's going to be an ad break, and we don't have control of what's there. We're not sort of seamlessly integrating it in. We just have to stop the thing but make sure you come back. And like you said, I suspect we're going to start to get a lot of like, there's going to be cliffhangers six minutes into every YouTube video so that you keep watching after like, all of this stuff is going to happen.

1:23:39And you're exactly right that the the people making this stuff have absorbed and morphed to what the platform wants, and especially how the platform monetizes really fast. And so I think you're going to start to see this super quickly all over YouTube. Like the era of the 30-minute multi-camera comedy on YouTube legitimately might have just begun. It's going to be fascinating. There's also a thing that you can do now with side-by-side ads in live streams, which I hate in principle and hope no one ever uses, but I'm confident that they will. I'm going to go next because, Jake, I want you to go last.

1:24:19My next one is a fascinating bit of weird chip machinations, which is that NVIDIA just invested$5 billion into Intel, essentially just by buying a bunch of Intel stock. But they have a plan between the two companies to jointly develop chips both for PCs and for data centers using a lot of NVIDIA's technology. So I think the idea is essentially like Intel CPU, NVIDIA GPU in chips together. uh it's weird times for both of these companies uh intel just sold part of itself to the government and part of itself to softbank nvidia made weird revenue sharing deals with the government like all these companies are just like tied up with each other in really bizarre ways uh but there's just a fascinating thing here where like i think richard you're you're more i would say up on the PC chip game than I am.

1:25:20But my impression recently has been that AMD is like a real threat in the mirror of both Intel and NVIDIA. And this is a way for them to combine to try and push back. Is that a fair way to look at this? I think it really is. It's something where Intel has been behind and NVIDIA has, at least in certain ways, been ahead. But by combining, they do some of the things that AMD has been doing, where they can do both the CPU and the GPU side of it that is so crucial to these AI applications. and having that integration. And also kind of on a personal computing level, gaming, if you can have a system where you're buying suddenly an NVIDIA GPU slash GPU, that's quite different than what we've seen before.

1:26:03And feels like, I mean, again, we'll have to see how this actually nets out, but the idea of being able to buy like NVIDIA integrated graphics in your high-end laptop seems like potentially a very exciting idea. Yeah. Also, poor Intel is just like this pathetic little company that no one wants to let die but maybe you should just die and like if this company can't figure out how to turn it around now with the the support of everybody trying to keep it alive no matter what the cost i don't know i don't know what we do here this does feel related to that right like one of the problems intel and its foundries have had is customers are like i don't know if you're gonna be here like should i make a deal with you if And, you know, I say what you will about the U.S.

1:26:50government taking a stake in it for money that Intel was already being given. But some of that was meant to, I think, send a signal like, hey, Intel, they're going to be here. And I think NVIDIA doing the same thing is kind of in the same ballpark, right? NVIDIA is saying like, hey, we have some faith in Intel. Not only do we have faith in Intel, we have skin in the game now. So this is like feels pretty meaningful for Intel in terms of their ability to turn around. They still have to do it. They still have to do the thing and make good products, which apparently has been a challenge for them.

1:27:23Yeah, it's hard work. But they just got a bunch of money and they've got, you know, NVIDIA's expertise. So that that certainly certainly should help. Yeah, it was funny. There was like a huge stock rally after this because like just rubbing elbows with NVIDIA instantly makes your company exciting to a lot of people. Like this one's going to be fascinating to watch shake out. Jake, end us with some sheer abject rage. Yeah, I mean, I know you guys are always saying like, man, the screen on my refrigerator is not big enough. The screen in my refrigerator is one of the most valuable, useful screens in my house.

1:27:59I wish you could do more things. I love gaming on it. I love being productive on it. Samsung loves that screen too. And in good news for everyone everywhere, but specifically in the US where this is happening, there are now going to be advertisements displayed on the screen of your Samsung smart fridge. okay like that how that's actually like i i'm like this is galling this is like really bad right they sold you a product this is a product that lives in a major room of your house and now they are changing the product they sold you to put ads in your face like this this should not be allowed number one this is like a terrible product feature number two stop putting screens on fridges.

1:28:44Number three. That's all I got. Okay. Allow me to make the other case. Oh, all right. I'm just kidding. Subsidize the fridge. Go the telly route. Zero cost fridge, but it's always showing advertisements. It's always showing advertisements, but okay, here's how you do the advertisements on my fridge. You make it, you use the camera on my Samsung fridge to take a picture of the inside of my fridge. And then you fill it with sponsored products. Oh my god. And you're like, wouldn't it be great if you had all this stuff in your fridge? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I can just be like, boop, boop, boop, give me those, and it immediately Instacarts them to my house.

1:29:20That is a perfect advertising scheme that I would fall prey to. Prime energy drinks? Yeah, you're just like, oh, dope, I have some chocolate Haagen-Dazs in my freezer, and it's like, no, you don't, but you could. You know what? They would get me. But no, I think this is a total disaster. And I also think in April, uh jen tui asked samsung executives if there were going to be ads because like the smart person that she is she looked at an enormous screen in a prominent place in your house and said i bet they're going to sell ads on that uh and the quote said uh they don't currently have ads and quote no plans regarding the inclusion of advertisements on ai home screens which we took back then as like oh thank goodness they're not going to do ads now what i'm hearing is uh we still haven't figured it out but we're gonna do it for sure we just we don't have our plan yet yeah no plans is uh not no correct no plans is not no is a useful useful thing this is like genuinely like throw out your fridge and get a new one possibilities here if if they're doing this ad in the wrong like if you play an auto playing video ad on my fridge screen i'm just on i like that thing is going either off of network or into the for sale section of my next door app very quickly.

1:30:44You don't want going to the fridge for a snack to be like pumping gas? No? That's not what you love? So all the podcasts that I've been listening to recently have been advertising for Jordan Peele's new movie, which is about football players. And it's this very like creepy low voice. He kind of sounds like Harrison Ford talking about it. And I'm just imagining every time I walk into my kitchen it's like, coming this fall. I'm just like, I'm going to walk into my fridge at 2 o 'clock in the morning, and there's just going to be some scary person on my fridge to promote Jordan Peele's new movie, and I'm going to throw my fridge through a window.

1:31:18The end. This is the worst idea of all time, and I hope Samsung just immediately walks it back, because it should. Jake, you're not mad enough about this. I know. I've just been so pro-fridge ads. Just all the time, I've been like, The money they're leaving on the table. They put a screen in everybody's kitchen. No. It's really on us for not seeing this coming. I mean, to be clear, I don't think we've been all that pro fridge. I know there are people out there. They have screens in their fridges. I don't know how they got there. Is anyone using them? Are they valuable to you? I don't have a screen on my fridge.

1:32:01But yeah, I think don't trust Samsung with that is the lesson. Yeah. That said, if you work for Telly and you decide to go ahead with your refrigerator, Jake would like some credit. All right. We have gone way over. There's too much happening. If everybody could just stop for like a minute and not do all of your news in September, it would be great. We would be very grateful. There's more coming, by the way. There's an Amazon event scheduled for September 30th, so in two weeks. We think we're going to see the next generation of Echo stuff now that Alexa Plus exists. And now that Panos Panay, who used to run Windows and hardware at Microsoft, is running the stuff over there.

1:32:39That should be interesting. There's some more Google stuff coming. There's just a lot going on this fall. So we'll be here a lot. But also, if everybody could stop, that'd be great. But for now, we should get out of here. Richard, Jake, thank you for being here with me. This was a delight. Neelai is off doing God only knows what. We'll see him next time there are speech crimes. So presumably very soon. If you have questions about any of this or other things you want us to talk about or feelings about whatever is going on in the world, you can always email us at vergecast at the verge.com. You can call us 866 verge one one is the hotline.

1:33:11There are an increasing number of people who want to get in the slack room that automatically pulls in all the voicemails we get on the hotline. So keep them coming. We love the hotline. The verge cast is verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. It's produced by Travis Larchuk, Brandon Kiefer and Eric Gomez. Because we will be back next Tuesday. We're going to talk about YouTube. We're going to do some more takes. I have feelings I need to get out. We're going to talk about them. See you then. Rock and roll.

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1:34:20Like tea time you. Mmm. Or this tea time you. Or even this tea time you. Sad you hear about Dave. Or even tea time, tea time, tea time you. So update on Dave. It's up to you. We'll take the laundry. Rinse. It's time to be great.