The ups and downs of the iPhone 16E

28:29It's a solved problem, parentheses, by Qualcomm, right? Yeah, yeah. In every way, it's just Qualcomm all the way down. You put the Qualcomm thing in your phone. It works. I rarely notice like, oh, the signal seems to be dropping out and it shouldn't. But yeah, this is something I'll be on, obviously, very interested in with the 16E. So we'll see. I'm kind of excited about it. I first got into tech journalism and reviewing phones like right as LTE was becoming a thing, which feels like thousands of years ago now. But like doing the thing where you just wander around on the streets taking 100 speed tests just to see what happens is like a surprisingly joyful part of it.

29:15Yeah, it's going to be a throwback. Yeah, it's great. I'm going to run some speed cuts. I'm very curious to see. I will say the other thing that has come up a bunch in our comments is people who are now wondering if Apple making these modems in-house is going to make it easier slash more compelling for Apple to put modems inside of MacBooks, which is a thing that I have hoped for for many years and would very, very much love to see. I have no idea why any human would pay for that. But I do not understand why Apple has not done it. Charge you an extra 200 bucks for that? Done. Sure. I don't understand why they haven't done that.

29:54I would have agreed with you until an experience I had last year with the M4 iPad Pro, which was the first time I had my whole life sort of e-simmed. And I literally just turned on the iPad Pro. I was like out at a coffee shop. I didn't connect it to Wi-Fi. I didn't do anything. And it was just online. I logged into my account and was just online. And it was it was one of the coolest technology experiences I've had in years of just like, like, it's the difference between when you had to turn your computer on and off every time you used it and just opening the lid and it started to be on again, that all of a sudden, like the whole thing just feels better and more accessible.

30:33this idea that everywhere I am, I can just pop my laptop open and start working is like, there's something real there. I would use a Starbucks hotspot from my house if it saved me money on my cell phone bill. Like what, like adding another device to your thing. I understand. I think it makes a ton of sense for business users. It does sound amazing and magical, but it's a lot of gadgets, a lot of gadgets. I say all that, but I've always been too cheap to buy the cellular Apple Watch. And it's the same thing, right? It is like magically connected everywhere is the whole pitch. And I get it and I want it and I wouldn't pay anymore for it.

31:15But I think I would on a laptop. I would almost never use it because I just sit at home on my Mac Mini every day, but it would make me feel good. I would enjoy it. All right. We should talk about one more phone before we get off of phones. And that phone is the Oppo Find N5, a phone that is not coming to the United States. Dom Press and our team reviewed it. Allison, I just want to know how jealous you are that you have not gotten to try and review this phone. This is the thinnest foldable phone in the world. According to Dom, it got a lot of the hardware things right. It's basically as thick as a USB-C port, plus the least metal you can possibly imagine.

31:55I believe, let me see, I'm just going to read a sentence that he wrote. When closed, this is less than a millimeter thicker than an iPhone 16 Pro Max or Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and weighs only two grams more than the Apple phone. Open, it boasts a bigger screen than an iPad mini, but is thinner and weighs less. It's lighter than any of the foldables you can buy in the US right now and is a full three millimeters thinner than the Galaxy Z Fold 6. like this is this looks like what a foldable is supposed to look like like they did it they did it yeah and i kind of i love dom's kind of thesis on this review is like now what you know it's still a pretty expensive phone um i think we just got word of the pricing is like around well it's not coming to the U.S., which we've established, but it would cost around$1 ,800 if you just did the calculation.

32:48Which, to be fair, is like that's the going rate for foldables, but that is still literally 100 % too expensive. Yeah, yeah. It should be half of that price, and then I think these things would have a real shock. It's only three iPhone 16Es. I can see you get there. Like the on-screen amount alone, that kind of adds up. It's interesting. Yeah. You could take three 16 Es and make a trifold. Yeah, like accordion style, your three 16 Es. Dom asked, is this the end? And the answer is no, more screens. Yep. What if I took all these and just took them apart into many screens? Yeah, it looks so beautiful.

33:27I'm going to find one at Mobile World Congress and put it in my pocket and run out of the convention hall. No, and it sounds silly or like, well, they were already pretty thin like comparably and but like every millimeter really does make a difference especially when you're folding in half and i just keep coming back to the pixel fold too nine pro fold um where you're like could that really be as nice as it seemed like the the specs the dimensions seem right and then you pick it up you're like this is right it feels so nice to use this. That's the impression I got from Dominic on the Apple phone.

34:12And I want to pick one up and not give it back. I do think it's really exciting that it seems like we are getting closer to the point where the hardware works, right? Like, I quibble with Dom a little bit on the idea that, like, you can't see the crease. And it's like, no, it's right there in the picture, in every picture. like I see it there's still a crease and these things all need to be sturdier they need to be more durable they need better cameras like I actually think there's quite a bit of refining and improving left to do in a lot of these devices but as a as a pure piece of hardware design like we're actually we're getting close and then it's like okay now we just have to take this thing and cut$700 off it and and sincerely I have no idea if that's possible but I think if it's not we're sort of done here, right?

35:02Like I think the market for an$1 ,800 phone of any kind is just never going to be very big. I just don't see it. And I think most people are like, if I could have this phone exactly or this phone exactly, but it opened up to be bigger, I would take the one that opened up to be bigger, but I'm not willing to make any trades in service of that thing, I think is where most people are. That's 100 % where I am. Huge nerd. Would love a folding phone. Really cool. The cameras are ever so slightly worse and it costs$600 more. Yeah. Yeah. That's not worth it for me. Right. Yeah. And it's like, I think it's a phone that like my parents would really like.

35:44Like they would love to unfold their phones and read something and be able to make the text bigger or whatever. See pictures of their grandkid and big, bigger size. But I am never going to recommend one to them. It's, you know, the durability is just too much of a question mark. And Dom makes a good point in the review that if you can't afford to replace this phone or make a very expensive repair to it, then you should not buy a folding phone. And I think that's exactly right. That's a good rule of thumb. Yeah, like if you couldn't afford to walk into the store and buy two of these, you probably shouldn't walk into the store and buy one of these.

36:21Have you fixed the like your your fingernail will crease the screen forever problem on foldables yet? Because that's that's horrifying. That's better. Yeah. Better is still. Yeah. I still don't risk it too much. And you definitely don't want to like have a piece of debris in your bag and like that like the phone folds over on. I've carried a lot of folding phones in the bottom of my tote bag, which is dusty and gross. and they've all been okay. But I haven't done that for like two years or three years, you know, so. Yeah, the long-term durability of one of these is still the biggest question to me.

37:05Like the, is it going to break the first time you open it thing? Not completely solved from any of these companies, but like mostly solved. It's gotten a lot better than the like, oops, I accidentally peeled off the screen, which was not that long ago. but we're still at a point now where like that that thing you just said Allison about like debris in your pocket is like you you're gonna get a little nervous every time you just throw this into your purse or your backpack and until you solve that we're just not quite there but we're getting there and I think the idea that there are a bunch of companies pushing really hard at this design stuff is cool and I wish they'd stop worrying about thinness and start fixing the durability stuff.

37:49But that's how I feel about all phones right now. The iPhone Air, I'm going to say this again in September. And whenever we get the Galaxy S25, was that the Air 2? Edge. Edge, that's right. I feel the same. We're doing a thin phone year. And I'm like, what if our phones didn't break? That'd be cool. I'm into that. We would like that. Yeah. But yeah, this thing is not coming to the US, which is sad. It's devastating. we're gonna we're gonna find one there was a world in which we thought oneplus might take this and launch it itself i don't understand why oneplus just came out and we're just like we're not gonna do it i know they just came out and broke our heart broke our hearts yeah i don't understand what was in this for them they could have kept us going at least for a little all year all year we could have been pleading with them there's like yeah hey you know that phone everybody's really hyped about this week like the one that that people are more excited about maybe than this iPhone.

38:43Not going to do it. We're just like, we could pass. Don't bother. Yeah. OnePlus, the company that for years, all it ever did was build hype. This time it's like, no, no, no, don't get excited. We have nothing for you. Anti-hype. Yeah. All right. We need to take a break and then we're going to come back and we are going to talk about the saddest little gadget sitting on my desk right now. We'll be right back. Let's be honest. Are you happy with your job? Like, really happy? The unfortunate fact is that a huge number of people can't say yes to that. Far too many of us are stuck in a job we've outgrown, or one we never wanted in the first place.

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42:24All right, we're back. Enough phones. It's time to talk about the gadget that will inevitably for sure replace your smartphone. Who cares about the iPhone? No one needs it anymore. The humane AI pin will solve it. Everything's going to be just fine. I'm so excited. I think there's a lot of potential here. David, what's the latest? So I think it was about, what, nine months ago that the AI pin had launched. it went poorly I would say. I was mean to it and not as mean to it as I should have been in retrospect. We'll get back to that but there was this rumor going around that Humane was actually looking to sell itself.

43:07This company had raised a ton of money, it had brought on a ton of hype it kind of bombed with its first product we didn't think it was going to work and then it was trying to sell itself to HP for somewhere between $750 million and a billion dollars and we were all like That seems high. Also, LOL at HP paying a billion dollars for Humane's weird AI operating system and this thing, the AI pin that basically didn't work at all. That never came to anything. Humane kind of went quiet. They were like slightly apologetic. And then we're like, well, we're also making an operating system. That's going to be a whole thing.

43:47Batten down the hatches, do their thing. And then this week, it was announced that HP was buying technology from Humane. HP actually reached out to us to very carefully confirm that HP was not acquiring Humane. It was buying some technology and assets and hiring some people from Humane. But that Humane as we know it, including the AI pin, is shutting down. and as of february 28th so a week from friday today as you're hearing this uh the ai pin will essentially be dead they're turning off the service it won't do any cloud stuff there's a thing in humane's faq uh one of the questions is basically like what will my device be able to do and it's like it'll be able to tell you its battery level yeah this thing this is really really rough like i like like you if you bought one you knew you were an early adopter but like Like straight up, your$700,$800 pin is just dead.

44:45Like it's doing nothing and basically nobody is getting a refund. In less than a year. That hurts. Just gone. Yeah, that's bad. Yeah, Humane is doing refunds for people who are in the 90-day window in which people could normally get refunds. Would love, love to know how many people that is. Oh my God, I had the same thought. Like if you bought - You think they set aside any money for that? Let's see, three months ago would have been like Thanksgiving. So if you bought a Humane AI pin, let's say between November 1st and today, please email us, vergecastattheverge.com, and tell us everything about why and who and under the influence of what and what has happened since.

45:30I want to know everything. Who got one for Christmas? Oh, my God. I bet that happened. There are people who are like, oh, I have a nerdy nephew. Like, what can I buy him? Oh, no. A$700 pin. Oh, man. Which required subscription as well. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Love to spend all of the money in the world. You could buy an iPhone 16e for less than a human app. David, you reviewed this thing. I did. Right. They had these big promises about the future of AI, the future of wearables. They were trying to redefine gadgets, right? Move into a post-smarfering era. Were they onto anything? Well, this is where Allison and I have been fighting for a year and will continue to fight.

46:18Because I still think the answer is yes. I think the answer to how much are they onto and how meaningful is the thing that they were onto, TBD, right? But I think the idea that you should have a way to interact with AI that doesn't involve taking your phone out of your pocket. Yes, I am convinced there is something there. And I think after this happened, Wes Davis on our team DMed me and he's like, this thing would have been better if it was just a Siri microphone that you could wear, wouldn't it? And I was like, yep, it would have. And I think that's really true. So but Humane's thing was they just went too hard at it.

46:59And they did a bunch of stuff that was technically sort of impossible that they like they made a laser projector as one of the key user interfaces. Like all this stuff sounds absurd in retrospect. And it seemed absurd then, frankly. It seemed absurd the whole time. But they had a laser projector instead of a touchscreen. And it's like we're all pretty good at messing around on screens now. It was designed to do everything by voice. It was designed to have everything be totally abstracted away from you. And the vision of that is actually what a lot of people have. Like people talk about agentic AI and the idea that all of these systems should be able to go work for you.

47:37OpenAI is working on that. Google is working on that. We've seen some of the stuff that they're working on. They're all working on it as like chatbots in web browsers and apps on your phone. Humane was like, okay, well, what if this is actually a dedicated device and requires a complete rethinking of how everything happens? And I think that was where it got the thing wrong. So it's like if you boil it all the way down, I think Humane's like the very first like meeting at a bar where they were like, here is the thing we should do, I think was not that far off. And then every decision they made after that was the wrong one.

48:11I think what's so hard there is like what they wanted to do within the current, you know, world of phones is just impossible for a third party app. Right. And what they were trying to do even a year ago when they launched was not something you could do on your Android phone, was not something you could do on your iPhone. I fast forward a year and you have AI built in natively that is starting to be able to do these things. And so it's almost like they were, you know, they're pirates trying to board the ship and it just wasn't going to happen. And Allison, where was it that you were clashing with David on this?

48:51You were in the just do it in the smartphone camp? Yeah, the future of the AI gadget is it's a phone is is my stance. And I love a gadget. And I saw the humane pin a year ago at Mobile World Congress and was like, this is a gadget. Like, it's kind of fun. Is it a good idea? No, we clearly that's how it panned out. But yeah, it's like, why take all of these things and try to, like, reinvent the wheel and, like, put a worse processor and, you know, make a whole new interface system that people have to learn and figure out heat dissipation, which they did not because the thing would shut itself down all the time.

49:37And yeah, clearly, like, that didn't work out for them. So, Allison, I think it's a real bummer that the AI pin didn't work out because it makes your argument look even stronger than it did already. I noticed that. But I do think the thing to me that gives me the strongest evidence against everything should just be a phone is the camera on the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses. Because that is a thing in which my experience of taking photos is meaningfully different and in many ways better because I'm not holding my phone in front of my face. And so it's like that's the thing that I look at is like, OK, there are things we can do if we're going to sort of disintermediate the phone and put those components in different places that can be better for it.

50:22Yeah. And that's unfortunately the only one that I have found so far. But it is like that's the one I hold on to that I'm like, maybe there is something to this. And I think the idea of a microphone that is also more accessible than the one in my pocket feels meaningful to me in that same way. And I think it like like building on what the phone already has, like it already has a processing power. It can already connect. Most phones can already connect reliably to cloud services with their Qualcomm modems or whatever. like instead of throwing all that away and starting like way out here with something else like the meta ray bands makes so much sense because it just sort of starts with like okay here's one capability and it works with your phone and you don't need it if you don't want to carry it at that particular moment and then kind of building on that the way they've been adding the AI features, I think is way more compelling than just throwing it all out and being like, what if no phone?

51:27I've been thinking a lot about last, let's see, it would have been right about now last year. I went to New York to Humane's offices and actually like spent some time with Imran Chowdhury and Bethany Bongiorno, who are the co-founders. And they were like, it was right before the product was launching. So they had one of those like room set up where they had the exploded parts and walked me through how it all works and all the stuff they had developed. And they had early prototypes. And we were just talking through basically like how they had built this thing and where it came from. And one of the questions I asked them was, why do this much the first time?

52:01Like you're a first gen hardware startup. You've never done any of this before. Nobody has seen any of this stuff before. Why push this hard on something this expensive and this complicated and this new on your first try. And I believe it was Imran said, because if now that we've done all of this work, it will make doing the lesser things much easier. And I actually like there is something sort of compelling in that argument, right? It's like we've done the incredibly complicated things. So now we're going to strip out the cellular modem. We're going to basically make this thing an accessory to your phone and it'll it'll be easier and cheaper and better.

52:40And now we can do that because we've done the hard work already. The thing that they didn't reckon with is that they were never going to get the chance because this thing went so badly. Right. And I think what I look at the opposite is like the rabbit where like this thing couldn't do anything, but it was two hundred dollars and it was like cute and fun. And I think it bought that company some time because people didn't have the same sort of like visceral negative reaction to how bad it was because it wasn't trying nearly as hard. And I think the lesson there was like, and frankly, like Apple, where Imran and Bethany worked before, learned the same thing with Vision Pro.

53:19Like what Meta did with the Ray-Bans is like do the least and then try to build from there. And Apple was like, what if we did the most? And it turns out that's actually, in a lot of ways, the wrong approach. And I've just been thinking like the prototype for the simpler, cheaper phone attached thing that I think would have made more sense for Humane, I am very sure it exists. And they should have shipped that instead. Humane went way too far in the hardware, which is, I think, part of the thing that was attention grabbing about Humane was, right, it's this mysterious gadget, it has a projector, it's tiny, it doesn't have a screen.

53:54Obviously, it was a disaster, but I am curious, you got to use it, you tested it, you reviewed it. We know it was bad about it. was there anything about the hardware that you're like you know what there's something there it's um no I tried I tried to find something I'm torn on this in that in a certain way it speaks very highly of the team that made it that it exists at all like it's a beautifully made little thing like it's it's small it's it's really nice to like fiddle and worry with it had a really clever set of accessories. The magnet works really well. It has really pleasant noises. Like the touch reaction is good.

54:36There's like all the little tiny details that most companies don't get right on the first try. They got right on the first try, right? There are surprisingly few of those sort of rough edges we're used to from startup products. But then they had the opposite problem, which is that all the big things they were trying to do didn't work at all. And the big swings that they made were things like the laser projector, which just essentially was useless. Like the interface didn't make any sense. You functionally couldn't use it at all in any kind of light. And it just didn't, they just didn't need to exist.

55:08Right. And so you could tell that all of the stuff they spent like real huge money and resources on were just pointed in the wrong direction. But then there's a team who was tasked with like making the thing nice and they did a really good job. Like, we talk about, like, polished turds a lot, and it's a real, like, we kind of mean this as an insult, but this is, like, a really nicely polished turd. It really is. I mean, it's like, right, you said it, like, the rabbit sold because it's$200, and it's bright, and it's colorful, and it's nice, and this thing also very pretty, just way in a different world.

55:46Yeah, I mean, and I think the other mistake that Humane made was the way that they went about talking about this thing. Like in writing about it this week, I went back and watched the first TED talk that Imran Chowdhury gave where he like described the thing. And A, that demo is fake. Like I just, please lawyers come at me with evidence that that is not true and I will happily recant it. I have now watched that demo a hundred times. I've been using this product for a year and it is impossible that he was able to do those things on stage. to get it to translate between languages without any prompting to get it to answer a phone call.

56:26I know how you answer a phone call on this thing. And it is by doing a gesture with your hands that he doesn't do standing on stage and it answers the phone call. It's just impossible. But anyway, so they made it out to be this very like, you know, hugely important. Like they were very quiet about it and they made this like very dour, serious video about how important this gadget was going to be. and they got it named to Time's Inventions of the Year. And it was like they set this up to be some huge consequential moment in the history of technology, and it sucked. I mean, it's very funny. It couldn't do what they promised it would do, which is kind of a big strike to start out with.

57:08But I think there's also this element of they promised it would bring in this sort of new world of ambient computing where you're not staring at your phone so much. Things just sort of happen in front of you. You don't have to worry about it. And I think what we see with the Meta Ray-Bans is people already wear glasses and sunglasses. That's really natural. And putting a chunky pin on your shirt that is kind of uncomfortable and may not stick on. And then having to like hold your hand up and look at a projector. That's actually like more obtrusive than just quickly pulling out your phone and doing something.

57:44Yeah. Uh, and so like there, there was clearly this kernel of an idea that, that I, I think really resonates with like everyone. Like it would be great to use our phones less. It would be great if things just sort of happened a little bit more ambiently and executed on it in, I think one of the most perplexing ways, uh, imaginable. Yeah. So Josh Miller, the, the CEO of the browser company, uh, I don't think he'll mind me telling this story on the Vergecast. Uh, we'll see Josh. Sorry. uh introduced me not that long ago to this concept of novelty fatigue which is basically that if you try to do too many new things even if they're the right things at the same time it will feel wrong to people and that and that actually what you have to do in product design is build slowly like you you can have improved everything imaginable all at the same time and you'll still leave people behind because it won't it won't feel right it won't feel familiar and so that that cadence of introducing novelty to people is actually a huge part of the process of product design and i think like the most generous possible interpretation of what happened to humane and i don't believe this at all but i think one of the mistakes that they made and one way to look at all of this is they just went way beyond novelty fatigue with everybody they're like we are going to reinvent everything about how you do everything all at once.

59:10And I think even if it had all worked, it wouldn't have worked because it just it felt wrong and it wouldn't have made sense. It's funny, like I understand exactly why he's saying that. And it's because his browser arc is really perplexing when you first use it. I bounced off that thing like five different times and now I use it every day and I'm furious that they're like low key, maybe not working on it anymore. I do. I think you're probably mostly right there. But I do think there's also this thing of like, you know, the two of you have tested every phone under the sun. I feel like usually you can tell if there's if there's a little kernel of something in there that is working, you can see it.

59:54And it I think you are right that they they tried way too many things. But I'm not even sure if there was one thing that was clicking there for people. Yeah, just seems like the concept, really. And the way they sold it was like, yeah, don't look at your phone. Just talk to this thing. Just be free in the world. And like, who doesn't want that? But yeah, it has to work. But like, how are you free in the world when there's this like heavy, chunky thing, like literally pulling your shirt down? I think ultimately one of the most convincing arguments against the humane pin from the beginning was everything about this makes more sense in an apple watch and i think that is true even the things about it that i like which are like it's not in my pocket it's easier to access it's something i can sort of discreetly talk to without having to stare to screen like we've found the wearable spot for that and i think it's probably on your wrist and i want to be like straight up i i think it is like troubling and unfortunate and bad for technology as a whole that basically we have to wait for apple or google to do this right it would be great if if humane could come along and say hey we made a watch it's going to hook into your iphone it's going to do all the iphone things and we've added all the stuff that right in a world where they could do that i i would not be surprised if they had just done that yeah this is why i'm so curious to see what sam altman and johnny ive are working on uh because there is a version of some AI gadget that is essentially headphones or mostly just a microphone or something that is like, give me a tool that just lets me do the sort of advanced voice mode stuff with my AI bot.

1:01:43And there's something pretty interesting inside of that, especially as these models start to get better and more capable. But again, you can't. It is not allowed because Google and Apple will not let you. Which also like Meta is freaking out about this. Like this is going to be the big limitation on future versions of the Ray-Bans. Yep. Which is, I think like a little frightening if you look at it, because the Ray-Bans are one of the most interesting and sort of exciting products because they're doing so much with so little. And clearly they have big dreams there and it's not quite clear. Even if they could pull them off, it's not clear how much they can pull off.

1:02:20Metaphone. We need the metaphone. what was that called was that the cha-cha was that the facebook phone was it the htc cha-cha i think there's a name no one has said out loud in a really long time uh wait i just i literally just i think that is still in the reviews closet we have i was primarily for text messaging and also features tight integration with the social network facebook which includes a dedicated facebook button below its keyboard which allows users to quickly share content on the service. I just like imagine like a poorly designed BlackBerry that they finished making. And at the very like the like the last second, five minutes before they shipped it, somebody went, oh, God, we were supposed to have a Facebook button and just slapped it on the bottom.

1:03:04That's the ACC ChaCha. I never saw one in the wild. I'm going to go looking for that. And if you owned one, get at me. I have a lot of questions for you. All right. So So this HP thing, we're just writing off, right? Like there's no reason to continue to believe anything is going to happen here. The press release for this was so like damning in the way that it came out from HP. Like, can I just read you a sentence from HP's executive? This is from Twan Tran, who is the president of technology and innovation at HP. Humane's AI platform Cosmos, backed by an incredible group of engineers, will help us create an intelligent ecosystem across all HP devices, from AI PCs to smart printers and connected conference rooms.

1:03:52Like just the fall from grace from we have found the successor to the smartphone to connected conference rooms and smart printers is just tough. I can't think of a place I want AI less than a printer. Like printers are annoying to start with, with no extra, with no chatbot like making things up. Like, can you imagine? It's a nightmare. Listen, if they put one of those projectors in the printer, I think there's something there. It's like instead of printing, I guess projectors exist. I don't think it could get worse, is my theory on the smart printer thing. is like, sure, ChatGPT. Like, let me just tell you the website I'm trying to print and you figure it out.

1:04:40I don't care. What could possibly go wrong? I'll describe it to the printer and it can invent the thing I'm trying to print. I love it. Before we search gears there, we should briefly talk about Rabbit, which I think is actually continuing to like, push it the thing it's trying to do. Like, the R1 sucked. I like watching you very gently try not to over, over, give him too much credit. Yeah, like I want to give Rabbit the least possible credit while still giving them credit is where I'm at with Rabbit. But they're trying to do the thing. The big promise of Rabbit in the R1 at the beginning was this thing called the local action model that was going to actually go and do stuff for you.

1:05:29This is what we now call agentic AI. Like, again, these are the right ideas, at least if you believe the rest of the tech industry. This is what everyone is working on right now. And Rabbit was actually relatively early to be like, we're going to build a thing that lets you do stuff and we'll go do stuff on your behalf. That stuff didn't work ever reliably in any way, because all it's doing is clicking around a virtual instance of a really insecure browser for you. but rabbit has continued to poke at this and i think smartly uh got pretty quiet for a while like the thing came out everybody's like this is stupid and then everybody's like oh whatever it's 200 i won't worry about it and i think that like bought rabbit a minute to just kind of go do their thing uh and they've been slowly launching some of the stuff that they've been talking about so the the thing that came out this week uh is an agent that can actually go and use android apps for you and it's just a research prototype and it's essentially like if you've used operator or any of these other things or even like read the white papers it's exactly what you think it's basically like clicking around an app on your behalf but like it's starting to be able to do those things and so i think again this question of do i want it to happen on this device that is going to go in my pocket or do i want it to happen on my phone that is already in my pocket that's that's a big hurdle even once somebody figures out this technology but like genuine kudos to rabbit for continuing to plug away at this thing and i think it'll be interesting to see where it goes it's the the other answer to your question jake of like how do you build ai for people if you aren't apple or google how do you get in you know without getting into those ecosystems is like you you make a little flashy gadget and release it and get a lot of attention and then maybe they were just always going to do this you know the large action model and and maybe it's like sort of tangentially related to the hardware but it just clicks around for you and like it's it's interesting it's intriguing but i still i see it and i think like well the app intense that's coming, you know, with like smarter Siri and iOS 18 is kind of going to be able to do those things for you.

1:07:52It seems like it seems like they're trying to shortcut their way around. Like we can't get into the operating system the way that Apple obviously can. And it's like a weird wonky kind of workaround. I do think there's something really delightful in that we were like, well, it's too complicated to get all the APIs and nobody can give us access to all this. Let's just train computers to be able to understand everything that they see and move a mouse around and just do all the things a human can do. And then we don't have to get actual access, which is just so wildly complicated. But also like I get that works that you can do everything if you can do that.

1:08:34It's such a damning critique of like regulatory systems and capitalism. that is the case it's like oh you can either make apple play nice or you can invent several unforeseeably new technologies that just end around the whole process and it's like well i guess we'll just go invent the new technologies and it'll be fine to that end actually one more thing we should talk about before we take a break uh and then go to the lightning round is uh amazon is having an event next week where i would say we're somewhere between like kind of confident and extremely confident that they're going to finally launch this new Alexa we've been hearing about forever.

1:09:11It would be so funny if this was just like, here's some new Eros, like the ones we launched this week. Look at Eros. Here it is. We did a ring again. But I think it's going to be the new Alexa. And I think Amazon is the company maybe best positioned other than Apple and Google to build this AI stuff in a much more coherent way, right? Like it has lots of business relationships with the companies it would need to get the data to do this stuff. We've heard that it's working with providers more directly instead of like trying to do the hacky, go to use the DoorDash website. They're actually going to like integrate with DoorDash in a more meaningful way.

1:09:49And if anybody has the literal resources and time and energy and whatever to bake this stuff in in a way that feels sturdier than just clicking around a virtual Chrome instance, it would be Amazon. And yet every single piece of reporting and rumor about Amazon suggests that the new Alexa is going to be very bad. And I just, I don't know how to feel about that. I still do not think people are going to pay for this. Yeah. Oh, I, yeah. Oh, they're going to charge? That's the, the rumor has been that it's going to, it's going to come with an upcharge. And I don't think that's a good idea. I mean, Google and Microsoft have both found very quickly that people will not pay extra and they're starting to roll it back.

1:10:28So like now in workspace, you just get it for free and you're like, can I turn off Gemini? And Google This is absolutely not. Under no circumstances will you turn off Gemini. Gemini is going to ask you every time you try to type anything if you wanted to type in your address instead. Okay, they put the Gemini button in the spot where the comment button used to be. Oh, no. And oh, my God, is this driving me insane. Command shift M, Jake. What? Command shift M. This is... Ooh. It'll change your life. That's how you do a comment. I'm talking to you for an hour and a half every day. Select the text.

1:10:58Command shift M. This is what we're here for. That's huge. They'll change that to be Gemini. And then what will you do, David? Then I'm done. I'm switching to teams after that. I don't know. All right. Allison, we're going to let you go. Thank you for joining us. You're going to have to come back once you've used the 16e and report back on life without MagSafe because I'm very curious. Sounds good. Thanks for having me. All right. And we're going to take a break and then we're going to come back in a sliding round time. We'll be right back. Every story you love. Every invention that moves you.

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1:12:54All right, we're back. Time for the lightning round unsponsored for flavor. I just want to say I suggested on the show Jake you were not here for this but Neil I just randomly out of nowhere called the lightning round unsponsored for flavor like two weeks ago he didn't know what he meant by that but it has stuck in my brain ever since and last week I suggested that we should make t-shirts that say unsponsored for flavor on it and you would be amazed at the number of people who have since told me they would buy these t-shirts so I can't promise this is going to happen but this is now a thing I'm increasingly I mean, you guys talked literally the entire lightning round into existence.

1:13:32So I listen, I think there's something here. Listen, if we if we can make a shirt that just says emails, that is a reference no one gets. I think we can do unsponsored for. Yeah, I feel good about it. All right. We have a lightning round. We're going to do this lightning round in two parts. First, Jake, you and I are going to run through some news. We're going to talk about some stuff and then we're going to take we're going to stop. We're not going to take a break. We're just going to stop. And then we're going to call Lauren Feiner, who is going to come in and she's going to tell us about the week in Trump and Elon and Doge and various governmental shenanigans.

1:14:04Everyone's favorite segment, Brendan Carr is a dummy, is on hiatus for this week while Neela is on vacation. But we'll be back with a vengeance on next Friday's show. And so if you we will give you a moment to stop listening, if you want to stop listening or watching or experiencing us in whatever way you experience us when we start talking. So that's what we're going to do. But first, Jake, let's run through some news. Let's roll. The first thing I would like you to do is explain quantum computing to me. Yeah, easy. We have how much time now? Okay, so there's these little blah. Yeah. Okay. Sorry, should we describe the story?

1:14:40Yeah, so Microsoft announced a thing called Majorana 1, which is a new chip for quantum computing that includes several amazing words that I would just like to say to you out loud very quickly. um microsoft's called it the world's first topo conductor which kicks ass it also has a new material made from indium arsenide and aluminum also kicks ass there is a thing called a topological qubit love this i don't know what any of this means but it appears as far as i understand that microsoft made a chip that it thinks is going to make quantum computing more accessible for more of things. Am I close?

1:15:18So I think it's one of those, I think with all of these quantum computing achievements, there's a little bit of like a, maybe like nobody's quite sure. You know, it's a stepping stone towards something bigger. I will say, I think, you know, with AI, if you would ask me three years ago, is AI going to happen in our lifetime? I would have been like, not a chance, not even close. And with quantum computing, I have been the same way where I'm like, I don't need to worry about this. This is like, it's not a thing. It's just not going to happen. And there have been a bunch of really big announcements about quantum computing recently.

1:15:50And it feels like, you know, the researchers in the field are maybe finally taking steps there. And I don't think the answer is that we're going to have Myron on one ships in our houses anytime ever. But I also one thing I'm starting to realize about quantum computers, you don't necessarily need them to be everywhere. You just need one quantum computer and you do a lot. and I think we're still quite a ways away, but it's a cool name, cool chip. Yeah, I think the thing that is making it feel more real for me is exactly what you just said, the idea that this is not like the next, next computer that you own in your house.

1:16:27It's the next, next thing that exists in a data center that makes all of this stuff vastly more powerful. And it's really interesting. I would encourage everybody to go watch the video that Microsoft published because the way that they talk about the possibilities for quantum computing is a lot of what we hear companies say about ai which is just the things you can do when you massively scale the amount of processing and the amount of information that a system can understand are very similar it's really interesting um so that's one uh thing number two is i would just very quickly like to pour one out for amazon chime the funniest and worst piece of video conferencing software that i have maybe ever used in my life uh amazon is shutting down chime, which is it's I think there was a brief period where chime was going to be like an important part of an Amazon suite of business services.

1:17:19But then video calling became completely commoditized and that just everybody kind of gave up. And the only time I've ever used chime is when I'm forced to in order to talk to people who work at Amazon. And even the people at Amazon, even the people who use Chime think it's bad. I know that for sure. But the thing I just want to say is that this thing was announced and a bunch of people were in our comments talking about it. And all anyone said was Chime sucks. I worked at Amazon. It was awful. And it was great. And I just enjoyed it very much. A bunch of people who had AWS reps who forced them to use Chime and now they will not have to.

1:18:00It's a good day for everybody. I just have to say that, you know, before the segment started, David said to me, Jake, are there any of these stories that you don't want to talk about? And you can't say Chime. And the only story that I did not want to talk about Chime. So this is the last time I'm ever going to get to talk about the AI pin and Chime on this podcast. You have to let me have this. I feel like Chime was just invent. Like, who was using this thing? Why were they using it? Why did it exist? I have always thought there was like a 50 ,000 word feature in company choices of business software.

1:18:33Why did Amazon think they needed a video calling service? There are 900 of them. Well, do you remember that moment? Surely they have a Teams subscription. One would think. Do you remember that moment, though, at the beginning of the pandemic? Didn't Verizon have one? Yeah, Verizon bought BlueJeans. Remember BlueJeans? This is what I'm saying. A PR person got mad at me once because I used BlueJeans wrong. I was like, this is your fault. This is, I didn't choose BlueJeans. I'm pretty sure Meta used BlueJeans for a minute. Like, truly, I have always thought there is a big story in how companies pick conference call providers.

1:19:09Like, Apple uses WebEx and demands that everyone who speaks to them uses WebEx. I'm just going to say, there are two acceptable video calling services. There's Google Meet, there's Zoom, and anything else, get it out of my face. 100 % agree. I have no notes. Done. Also, if you have a team subscription, bring back phone calls. I'm so with you. Listen, people don't answer their phone anymore. I'm going to sound so old and crotchety. Listen, anytime I get a phone call, I'm like, ooh, who's always calling? I want to pick this up. This could be anything. It's a surprise. It's exciting stuff. It really is.

1:19:42It's always spam. But that's why nobody answers. I had a person I was talking to for a story this week text me right before we were supposed to get on our Google Meet. and she was just like, hey, can we instead just do a phone call so I can go on a walk? And I responded to being like, that sounds like that's an awesome idea. Yeah, of course. And truly the joy in her voice when I called her and she was like, I'm outside talking to you. I was like this, let's bring that back. Anyway, enough chime, RIP chime. You were a real one. Mira Mirati, former CTO of OpenAI, joins the open AI diaspora in starting a, I would say, somewhat mysterious new AI company.

1:20:28I don't know that we know much about this company at all yet, do we? Yeah, she's spoken a bunch of vagaries. They're like, we're going to release research. And I'm like, oh, great. Listen, Mira, obviously a wildly talented AI engineer. You know, she was a CTO of OpenAI while they did some very impressive stuff. So I think there's a lot of potential here. She's attracting a lot of major talent. However, to your point, there are a lot of companies in this, you know, AI diaspora. And I don't know if there's room for all of them. it is sort of fascinating how much of this industry is going to be people who started their company because they disagreed with sam altman in some meaningful way like that's the anthropic story that's the mira's company is called thinking machines lab which is not a good name i like it i like it it's like it's like the browser company if it was thinking machines labs if it were thinking machine labs and fine with that too it's they put the s in the wrong place What about who is possessive?

1:21:34Thinkings Machine Lab. Oh, I like it. It's Dr. Thinkings. Yeah, I like that a lot. Yeah, he's their mascot and, you know, he's got a little lab coat on. Dr. Thinking, he's like a question mark with a cloud above. That's pretty good. Yeah. I like that a lot. Dr. Thinking, TM. That's who you chat with. Yeah. But yeah, and we're just in this place where it is kind of open AI's ideas percolating out in these sort of mutated forms in lots of different ways. In the same way that like a huge portion of the electric car industry is people who cut their teeth at Tesla and then went on to do other things.

1:22:11And I think that has made that industry different as a result. Open AI is very much doing the same thing around the AI world. Yeah, fascinating. All for it. We'll see. Everybody's raising the most money it is possible to raise on earth. So congrats to everybody. Next one, the New York Times, speaking of companies against open AI, which is suing OpenAI. Oh, we should disclose here that Vox Media has some kind of content sharing deal with OpenAI that that's all I know about. So disclosure. The New York Times, which is suing OpenAI, put out some guidance to its team about how to use AI in their actual work in journalism.

1:22:54And I put this one on here for you, Jake, in particular. You are our executive editor. You run our newsroom. How do you feel about this? I mean, it's funny because I don't think there are any reporters who want to use AI, like at least for the writing, right? Like the writing is the fun part. Like that's the part of the job that we want to do. And so, and it's funny, if you look at the New York Times guidance, they're kind of, they're like, don't write with this. The thing that the New York Times suggested that their teams do with AI is like, I don't know that everybody will know this, but like when you publish an article onto the Internet, you know, you would think there is a headline and an image and then the entire article.

1:23:40And you'd be like, great, I put those things in. I'm done. But there's actually like 50 other really annoying and kind of tedious fields you have to fill out. You got to fill out a separate headline for Google. You've got to fill out a separate headline for Facebook. You've got to fill out separate descriptions for all of those things. And this kind of just multiplies. And so New York Times is like, maybe you could use it to fill that stuff out that you just don't want to do. Maybe you could use it to, like, write copy for a tweet or whatever. And, you know, I think those are the areas that people find the stuff tedious.

1:24:17I want to say, like, currently, we are not using it for any of that. And I do think it is really interesting to see the New York Times like a pretty, clearly like a very, very traditional newsroom trying to offer their team some leeway. But yeah, I think like for us internally, again, like the writing is the fun part. We're not going to be using that. Yeah, I think the question of kind of where does a good use of AI end and a problematic use of AI begin is like the open question, right? Because I think a lot of what the Times said is the stuff you're talking about, like all this sort of metadata and the kind of the work around the work.

1:24:56But then it's like there was a training video. A lot of this is according to good reporting from Sammophore, a training video that included using AI to like develop news quizzes. And that's a really interesting one because to some extent, that's a real like honest to God editorial product. And I think the thing that ultimately becomes for me with AI is like, okay, great. If it can do this stuff faster, I can potentially see it. But once you're having AI put together a large body of work, the amount of work you personally are going to have to put in to fact check it, to make sure it is correct, is potentially going to be more work than if you had just done it.

1:25:32Yeah. Yeah. The whole I have to let AI do it and then I have to fact check every part of it so it actually takes longer is extremely real. All right. Two more. One, kind of breaking ish news today, Thursday as we're recording this. Amazon now has creative control over the James Bond franchise. This is something I suspect you and I both have feelings and maybe deep misgivings about. Okay, this is hilarious because like a month ago, the Wall Street Journal had some like blockbuster report about how the broccoli family, which controls, you know, the bond rights in some manner, just like hated Amazon.

1:26:13And so now it sounds like maybe they were paid a lot of money. Like that seems to be what happened. Okay, I'm glad we're on the same page about this. I went through exactly the same. Like a lot of money. Here is a quote from the Wall Street Journal story. To friends, Barbara Broccoli, who has for decades overseen all of the James Bond stuff, has characterized her thoughts on Amazon this way. These people are fucking idiots. That was December 19th. That was two months ago. And now, yeah, the only answer I can come to is Amazon wrote a big giant check, which makes sense. if I were Amazon, I would write a big giant check.

1:26:51Amazon bought MGM for a huge amount of money. James Bond is the most important IP that MGM owns. The franchise is a disaster. Like it's been a while since they put out a movie. The franchise is great. Like I love James Bond movies, but in recent years, it's been a mess. They don't have a movie. They don't have an actor. They don't have a script. Like James Bond does not exist because the Broccoli's and Amazon have been at the stalemate. So at some point, write the check so you can start making James Bond movies. is just the obviously correct thing to do. There's something very like old school and nice about, you know, the franchise having, I don't know, this protector.

1:27:29And obviously it relies a lot on the Broccoli's having good taste and making correct decisions with the franchise. You know, I think they've done okay. I'm not a Bond expert. I don't, but, you know, I do think like, Oh, good. The mega corporation that owns lots of things now controls one of the most lucrative franchises in existence. Like, yeah, like this. If you want more Bond content, this is fantastic news. if you want more good bond content uh tbd strong tbd it really does feel like we're we're like one turn of this away from like a prime video series where james bond is wearing like amazon basics t-shirts and this all just like james bond is going to start appearing on thursday night football okay but the bond uh alexa voice that's gonna be good oh that i would be into i would take that yeah but then it would have to say alexa at the beginning of every single like as if it was bond that's good stuff yeah so i that one as somebody who has almost universally loved james bond movies that one is exciting because i think we'll get movies but also uh does not bode well for them being any good so we'll see all right last one before we switch gears uh a headline i swear we have run 600 000 times on theverge.com spotify's hi-fi streaming could finally arrive this year.

1:28:58We can't help ourselves, Jake. Chris Welch has a tradition every year on the anniversary of Spotify saying it would launch a hi-fi streaming service posting, hey, they still haven't done it. It is now been four years. But hey, this could be it. This could be the one. You know what I think? I think no one will care anymore. I think ironically, it has been so long that the number of people who were like psyched about the idea of truly lossless streaming has gone down to almost zero. Everybody just bought AirPods and moved on with their life. And so the rumor is, or the story here is, Spotify is going to add an additional subscription for$6 a month that gets you hi-fi and like early access to concert tickets and some other features.

1:29:51And I think like it feels like a hard sell because I think you're right. Like, do people care? It was hard to tell that you were listening to flack under even the best of circumstances. And every other music service just includes it in their default plan. So, like, you know, I'd like it, but, you know. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see. Yeah, the report is that there's going to be a new tier called Music Pro. and it'll be fascinating to see what Spotify can put in there because obviously Spotify needs to figure out a way to charge people more money in order to make all of its investments in Joe Rogan worth it.

1:30:34And the question of like, what else will people pay for remains relatively hard to know, I would say. All right, hard pivot time. If you do not want to listen to us talk about Donald Trump, and Elon Musk and politics for the next, I don't know, 20 minutes. Turn off the Vergecast. We're done. We're already way over. We did it for you anyway. That's it. That's the Vergecast. But there is a lot going on and we have to talk about this stuff because it matters and it is important to everything The Verge covers. So Lauren Feiner is going to join us right now and she's going to walk us through all of the latest in Doge and Elon and Trump and chaos.

1:31:21So let's get into that. Lauren Feiner, welcome. Hi. Thanks for having me. We have brought you here for a new way of talking about governmental chaos on the show, which is quickly and at the very end. I think this is this felt like a good week to do this because there's been like a lot has happened, but not that much sort of hugely new stuff has happened. So this felt like a good moment to just kind of catch up on all of the goings on, because I think unless you're paying attention minute to minute, all of the little stuff adds up to so much that it can be hard to keep track of. So at the risk of making you do a completely unfair thing that is impossible, walk us through what has happened this week.

1:32:06Let's start with What's Doge been up to this week? Oh, Doge. Well, Doge has been continuing to be showing up at different government agencies. Yesterday, there was some reporting that the 19-year-old Doge staffer, who's gone by big balls in the past, showed up at CISA, which is the cybersecurity arm within DHS. Can I just say, by the way, that the speed with which we've all just gone to saying Big Balls without it like being you don't even notice that it's like just saying a person's name. You're like, oh, yeah, Big Balls is there the other day. It sucks. And I hate it. Yeah, we do have a federal office named after MemeCoin.

1:32:50So at this point, everything is fair game. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, keep going. Yeah. So, I mean, we've seen, you know, Doge continuing to do its thing. We've seen some attempts to, you know, pull back on that. You know, so far, there's kind of been this like mixed bag from the courts. A judge ruled this week that Doge could keep accessing government data for now. Basically, they said, you know, this emergency motion, there wasn't enough there to keep Doge from transferring data from a handful of government agencies immediately. But the judge also indicated there could be there could be a different ruling on the merits later on.

1:33:38So, you know, they're continuing to move forward at this point. And, you know, in the meantime, you know, even in an accelerated way, the courts are going to take time to sort all of this out. And in the meantime, a lot of government employees are still being laid off. The CFPB was gutted late last week. You know, pretty much all their technology staffers that help investigate the tech side of things within fintech have been let go. So, you know, a lot of this is already the damage is going to be done and it's still causing a lot of chaos around here. And that's kind of the bet, right, is that the speed with which this team can work will outpace anyone's attempts to stop it and the damage will essentially already be done.

1:34:31Exactly. I mean, Musk has been known for, you know, sleeping and on factory floors, trying to just work around the clock to get these things done. And there was reporting earlier on that this is part of it. He's thinking he can kind of outpace government staffers that he sees as, you know, lazy or not that productive, which, you know, a lot of government staffers that I've talked to find pretty offensive. You know, these are people who have devoted their lives to these jobs that are in the civil service. And they, in a lot of cases, especially in tech roles, take big pay cuts to work in these sort of roles.

1:35:15So, yeah, that does seem to be the bet here that they can just move forward at a pace that accomplishes what they want to accomplish before the courts can catch up. And it also seems like it's not like Doge is like covering itself in glory and getting everything right and making a series of incredibly like smart, thoughtful decisions, too. Right. Like what was the the eight million versus eight billion dollar, you know, teeny tiny miss that they made this week? Right. So there was a on the Doge website where they try to keep track of like everything they're cutting. There was this, I guess, decimal place error where there was a contract that they claimed to have cut that was that they listed as eight billion dollars.

1:36:04But it actually was 8 million. And, you know, the problem might have stemmed from an issue in how that number appeared in a different, you know, government database. But, you know, it kind of just goes to show that this is something that's being done very quickly, maybe with not a lot of checking on the finer details here. And, you know, I think that Elon Musk has even said, you know, there'll be some error. You know, we're not always going to get it completely right. But and that's to be expected. But at the same time, when you're talking about government services that impact a lot of people, it's really important to get it right in a lot of these cases.

1:36:50There was a Wired headline this week that was like the Doge incompetence is a feature and not a bug. And I've been thinking about that ever since, like doing well is not the point. Like you call this whatever you want. I keep talking to people who are like, well, they're not even like identifying the things that would save all that much money. And I keep being like, that's the money is not the point. I mean, this is the Twitter playbook, right? Like Elon didn't care if it broke a little bit. He gutted the company. And he let things break. And then he just sort of built on top of that broken core.

1:37:25And, you know, it's one thing when it's a micro blogging service or whatever. And it's another thing when it is the federal government of the United States. And there are millions and millions and millions of people who rely on getting checks and services and benefits to to survive. um like you know in many ways we optimize to make sure that everything happens correctly and he is optimizing to make sure that uh there are no or you know he claims he claims to be optimizing for making sure that there's zero error but in doing that um there's going to be so much error in what gets missed because he's just pulling stuff apart yeah i liz lopato and I were joking on the show a couple of weeks ago about like, thank God we filed our taxes early before Doge got into the IRS and blew it all up.

1:38:22And it now seems like Doge is in the IRS blowing it all up. And I think like we've talked a bunch about what will be the thing that really makes this feel real for people, because so much of this is like theoretical, right? Like big balls has your social security number, right? Like that seems bad, but it's hard to know what to do with that. That's like a very 2025 sentence, but I think most people don't really know what to make of that piece of information. But this thing about like, oh, it's my tax refund is going to be massively delayed or canceled or taken away from me for political reasons is like, those are the things that may start to happen fairly quickly here.

1:39:03And it's going to be some mix, like you're saying, Jacob, of like commission and omission, right? Things that fall apart on purpose and things that fall apart because there's literally no one left to pay attention to them. Yeah, I definitely think that's going to be the thing that gets people kind of clued into what's going on here. If things that they rely on start to break or, you know, they're not getting their VA benefits or Medicare benefits or things like that. I also think that there might be some things that won't become apparent for quite some time. You know, for example, at the CFPB, who's checking on the consumer complaints now?

1:39:38Who's getting back to those? And that might not be something that you file every day or even, you know, every year. But at some point, it's going to become apparent if, you know, those sorts of complaints aren't being answered to. Yeah. Wasn't there a bill last week to, like, increase bank fees? That's like, this is the sort of thing that the CFPB exists to make sure does not happen. And that overdraft fees can't kill you as a person who made a mistake with your ATM card. Like these are the things that we just don't have in place anymore. Lauren, a couple of specific things I do want to touch on here.

1:40:14One is Trump's executive order about the FTC and the FCC. Can you explain that? I can try. It's the best we can hope for. Yeah. Basically, in this new executive order this week, President Trump basically asserted that the White House has this kind of authority to supervise what have typically been independent regulatory agencies, agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission. And these are agencies that the president does get to select who leads the agency and therefore sets the agenda, decides what things get voted on or not. But at the same time, they're staffed by other commissioners from different parties.

1:41:06There's rules about how many commissioners from each party there can be. So there's somewhat of a balance there. And it's hard for a chair to just unilaterally lead an agency in a certain direction. But in this way, it seems like the president is trying to assert this kind of oversight over these independent agencies to, it seems, make sure that their agenda is in line with what he wants. So that's really contrary to how these agencies have worked in the past. You know, obviously, he's already installed people that he seems to think align with him and his political values. If you look at Andrew Ferguson at the FTC and Brendan Carr at the FCC and some of the recent statements they've made.

1:41:54They have been just thrilled to talk about how much they love doing Donald Trump's bidding. Like, if anything, you're underselling the extent to which he already has lackeys in charge and has decided that was not enough. Yeah, I'm confused why he would even need to do this. Like, is Brendan Carr going to go rogue and be like, you know, neutrality is pretty good? Yeah, I think, you know, obviously, I think this applies to many more agencies than just those two. I think it would apply to agencies like the SEC, for example. But, you know, I think it just is another way of Trump asserting his power and asserting his influence over as much of the federal government as he can.

1:42:35And I don't know exactly what it will look like for this to be executed. You know, it seems like he kind of wants these agencies to run by what he calls significant regulatory actions by the executive office of the president. Um, what does that entail? Um, I guess it remains to be seen, but, um, basically it's just another way to exert this sort of influence and, you know, whether that's going to be through, um, official or unofficial communications with these agencies, I think there's going to be some level of, um, of kind of trying to get these agencies to work in a way that's in line with the president's values.

1:43:18Clearly, there is no pretense of separation of powers anymore. Like, that's not the Trump administration has let go of the idea that they even need to pretend they're interested in the separation of powers. I mean, you have you have Trump saying, what was it when when someone saves his country? No laws are broken. They're all saying they're just going to ignore the judges. Like, it's it's pretty straightforward. What is happening here? It's just been interesting to see, Jake, to your point, where they feel like they need to actually. put pen to paper on this stuff and where Trump can just like truth social it into existence and hope that that works.

1:43:56Yeah. Everything's just like YOLOing, like seeing how far they can go with it. Well, I think a lot of these executive orders, it's, you know, we've seen an executive order, I think on maybe the first day of his presidency, where he kind of just said, yeah, the First Amendment exists and we can't censor. And it's like, yeah, that already it already said that. But I think there's just this sense of wanting to assert via executive order. Here are my values as president and here's how I am going to lead this office. Yeah, makes sense. All right. Last one. Tariffs. We got tariffs going so well for everyone, I would say, have gone just swimmingly for everyone involved.

1:44:41No strangeness. So we're doing more of them. We're doing more tariffs now. Yeah, so Trump was threatening a 25 % and higher tariff on chips. And we've already seen Acer saying that it's going to raise laptop prices 10 % in response to the 10 % tariff on incoming goods from China. So, you know, this is they're kind of saying, all right, we see you're raising this. We're going to raise our prices. And I think that's exactly the thing that a lot of economists have feared is that this is really going to raise prices for consumers. I think the Trump administration would say in the long run, this is going to be better for consumers.

1:45:27It's going to make things more fair. It's going to provide more opportunity within the U.S. But that's a pretty big gamble here. I love Acer's response here where they're just like, it's like, yeah, price can go up 10%. Like what? Like 10 % tariff, 10 % price hike. Like it's kind of it. That's literally how it works. Like we've been waiting for somebody to say this. And finally, you know, Acer CEO came out and was just like, that's, yeah, it's math. Your government made it 10 % more expensive. So now it's 10 % more expensive. Yeah. It's just science. What is your sense, Lauren, of how this is working as a political move?

1:46:06Because I think it's like there are all kinds of complicated economic rationales behind all of this. But I think one thing Trump has always said is that this is like a move of power and strength for the Trump administration. And it is like a statement of purpose in the world. And with Mexico and Canada, they were kind of like, we're doing it, too. And then Trump was like, never mind. And it doesn't feel like it's working. Is does it is it working? That probably depends who you ask. I think maybe he's thinking all along this is a negotiation tactic. And I'm going to start from this really strong stance on how we're going to do trade policy and, you know, land somewhere in the middle.

1:46:48But, you know, on the other hand, you're talking about putting tariffs on a historical ally like Canada that has really changed the dynamic with that country. So I think it's really I don't know if it would necessarily be the way that Trump anticipated it would work out. Maybe it is, but it's certainly causing a lot of chaos around the world. Yeah. And I just feel like I keep reading all the stuff that Trump says about like, you know, they'll just build factories and plants in the United States. And it's like, oh, that's that it's fine. That just takes like, what's that like two weeks? Like, my God, you're a real estate developer.

1:47:30You know how long buildings take. And then Intel's over here. We gave them all the money in the world. They still can't build chips that anybody wants. Like maybe this stuff is hard. And maybe maybe that's not the fight that we should be fighting. But I digress. Anything else, Lauren? What else is top of mind in the in the. Trump and Doge and Musk universe right now before we get out of here? Oh, I mean, there's just so much. I think, you know, I'm just going to be continuing to track all of this and, you know, continuing to see where Doge goes next, what sort of data they're trying to get and hopefully eventually get an understanding of what they're going to use it for.

1:48:08I don't know if that's something that even they know right now, but I think that's the thing that we really want to understand ultimately. What's your read on how the pushback is going? Because like you said, there have been some court decisions stopping things that have gone, I would say, those court decisions have been some degree of respected and disrespected over time. But there's definitely been more energy on the other side of the aisle fighting back against this stuff. How is that going on that side? Yeah, I think we've seen a little bit of success from the opposition. You know, we've seen some court orders that, you know, at least put some sort of pause on, you know, accessing or changing data or, you know, further firings.

1:48:57But it's definitely been kind of all over the place. We saw that the Treasury Inspector General said that they'd investigate Doge's access to the payment system, and that was in response to Senate Democrats who had asked for that kind of investigation. So, you know, we're starting to see a little bit of this opposition gain some traction. That said, you know, like I mentioned earlier, there's a lot that it seems like Doge is already doing that could, you know, mess up some systems or access data or lead to layoffs that are really hard to undo later on. Totally. All right. Lauren, thank you for coming and doing this with us.

1:49:47This was extremely helpful. And I think we're going to have to do this more. We need to get out of here. I have officially made Jake late for a meeting that I promised I was not going to make him late for. We've gone way over. Thank you both for doing this. This was incredibly fun. hopefully nila just stays on vacation we don't we don't need that guy uh we'll be back next time lots of stuff left going on thank you both thank you all that's the verge cast and that's it for the verge cast this week and hey we'd love to hear from you give us a call at 866 verge 11 the verge cast is a production of the verge and the vox media podcast network Our show is produced by Will Poore, Eric Gomez, and Brandon Kiefer.

1:50:29And that's it. We'll see you next week.

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