Episodes
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We have a very special episode of Decoder today. It’s become a tradition every fall to have Verge deputy editor Alex Heath interview Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the show at Meta Connect. This year, before his interview with Mark, Alex got to try a new pair of experimental AR glasses the company is calling Orion.
Alex talked to Mark about a whole lot more, including why the company is investing so heavily in AR, why he's shifted away from politics, Mark's thoughts on the link between teen mental health and social media, and why the Meta chief executive is done apologizing for corporate scandals like Cambridge Analytica that he feels were overblown and misrepresented.
Links:
Hands-on with Orion, Meta’s first pair of AR glasses | The Verge
The biggest news from Meta Connect 2024 | The Verge
Mark Zuckerberg: publishers ‘overestimate the value’ of their work for training AI | The Verge
Meta extends its Ray-Ban smart glasses deal beyond 2030 | The Verge
The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses actually make the future look cool | The Verge
Meta has a major opportunity to win the AI hardware race | The Verge
Instagram is putting every teen into more private and restrictive new account | The Verge
Threads isn’t for news and politics, says Instagram’s boss | The Verge
Facebook puts news on the back burner | The Verge
Meta is losing a billion dollars on VR and AR every single month | The Verge
Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/24017522
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt; our editor is Callie Wright. This episode was additionally produced by Brett Putman and Vjeran Pavic. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Today, I’m talking with Josh Miller, co-founder and CEO of The Browser Company, a relatively new software maker that develops the Arc browser. The company also has a mobile app called Arc Search that does AI summaries of webpages, which puts it right in the middle of a contentious debate in the tech industry around paying web creators for their work.
We’ve been talking about these topics pretty much nonstop for last year here on Decoder. So I was really excited to have Josh on the show to explore why he built Arc, what he hopes it will accomplish, and what might happen to browsers, search engines, and the web itself as these trends evolve.
Links:
Researcher reveals ‘catastrophic’ security flaw in the Arc browser | The Verge
The Arc browser is the Chrome replacement I’ve been waiting for | The Verge
Arc’s mobile browser is here — and it’s not really a web browser at all | The Verge
Arc is getting better bookmarks and search results, all thanks to AI | The Verge
Arc Search combines browser, search engine, and AI into something new | The Verge
Judge rules that Google ‘is a monopolist’ in US antitrust case | The Verge
Google paid Apple $20 billion in 2022 to be Safari’s default search engine | The Verge
One startup's quest to take on Chrome and reinvent the web browser | Protocol
Scenes from a dying web | Platformer
Perplexity’s grand theft AI | The Verge
Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/24011410
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Missing episodes?
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Google’s in the middle of its antitrust case in just as many months, after it lost a landmark trial in August over anticompetitive search practices. This time around, the DOJ is claiming Google has another illegal monopoly in the online advertising market.
Verge senior policy reporter Lauren Feiner has been on the ground at the courthouse to hear testimony from news publishers, advertising experts, and Google executives to make sense of it — and, ultimately, to see whether a federal judge hands the company another antitrust defeat.
Links:
Google and DOJ return for round two of their antitrust fight | The Verge
Judge rules that Google ‘is a monopolist’ in US antitrust case | The Verge
In US v. Google, YouTube’s CEO defends the Google way The Verge
Google and the DOJ’s ad tech fight is all about control | The Verge
How Google altered a deal with publishers who couldn’t say no | The Verge
Google dominates online ads, says antitrust trial witness, but publishers are feeling ‘stuck’ | The Verge
US considers a rare antitrust move: breaking up Google | Bloomberg
This deal helped turn Google into an ad powerhouse. Is that a problem? | NYT
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Today, I’m talking with Roy Jakobs. He’s the CEO of Royal Philips, which makes medical devices ranging from MRI machines to ventilators. Philips has a long history —- the company began in the late 19th century as a lightbulb manufacturer, and over the past century it’s grown and shrunk in various ways. Basically, while every other company has been trying to get bigger, Philips has been paring itself down to a tight focus on healthcare, and Roy and I talked about why that market is worth the focus.
Roy and I also talked about an ongoing controversy at Philips that he had a part in: In 2021, after years of consumer complaints, Philips was made to recall millions of its breathing machines. Those devices were eventually tied to more than 500 deaths. That’s a pretty big decision, with massive life-or-death consequences, and you’ll hear us talk about it in detail.
Links:
Problems reported with recalled Philips ventilators, BiPAP & CPAP machines | FDA
FDA says 561 deaths tied to recalled Philips sleep apnea machines | CBS News
Philips kept complaints about dangerous breathing machines secret | ProPublica
Top Philips executive approved sale of defective breathing machines | ProPublica
Philips reaches final pact with DOJ, FDA on ventilator recall | WSJ
Philips suspends U.S. sales of breathing machines after recall | NYT
CPAP maker reaches $479 million settlement on breathing device defects | NYT
Philips exits shrinking home entertainment business | Reuters
Original TSMC investor Philips sells off final shares | PC World
Philips unveils new AI-powered cardiovascular ultrasound | Mass Device
Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/24006874
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
We’ve been covering the rise of AI image editing very closely here on Decoder and at The Verge for several years now — the ability to create photorealistic images with nothing more than a chatbot prompt could completely reset our cultural relationship to photography. But one argument keeps cropping up in response. You’ve heard it a million times, and it’s when people say “it’s just like Photoshop,” with “Photoshop” standing in for the concept of image editing generally.
So today, we’re trying to understand exactly what it means, and why our new world of AI image tools is different — and yes, in some cases the same. Verge reporter Jess Weatherbed recently dove into this for us, and I asked her to join me in going through the debate and the arguments one by one to help figure it out.
Links:
You’re here because you said AI image editing was just like Photoshop | The Verge
No one’s ready for this | The Verge
The AI photo editing era is here, and it’s every person for themselves | The Verge
Google’s AI ‘Reimagine’ tool helped us add disasters and corpses to photos | The Verge
X’s new AI image generator will make Taylor Swift in lingerie and Kamala Harris with a gun | The Verge
Grok will make gory images — just tell it you're a cop. | The Verge
Leica launches first camera with Content Credentials | Content Authenticity Initiative
You can use AI to get rid of Samsung’s AI watermark | The Verge
Spurred by teen girls, states move to nan deepfake nudes | NYT
Florida teens arrested for creating ‘deepfake’ AI nude images of classmates | The Verge
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Today, I’m talking with Mike Krieger, the new chief product officer at Anthropic, one of the hottest AI companies in the industry. Anthropic’s main product right now is Claude, the name of both its industry-leading AI model and a chatbot that competes with ChatGPT.
Mike has a fascinating resume: he was the cofounder of Instagram, and then started AI-powered newsreader Artifact. I was a fan of Artifact, so I wanted to know more about the decision to shut it down as well as the decision to sell it to Yahoo. And then I wanted to know why Mike decided to join Anthropic and work in AI — an industry with a lot of investment, but very few consumer products to justify it. What’s this all for?
Links:
Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger is Anthropic’s new chief product officer | The Verge
Instagram’s co-founders are shutting down their Artifact news app | The Verge
Yahoo resurrects Artifact inside a new AI-powered News app | The Verge
Authors sue Anthropic for training AI using pirated books | The Verge
The text file that runs the internet | The Verge
Anthropic’s crawler is ignoring websites’ anti-AI scraping policies | The Verge
Golden Gate Claude | Anthropic
Inside the white-hot center of AI doomerism | New York Times
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, on the paradoxes of AI safety | Hard Fork
No one’s ready for this | The Verge
OpenAI announces SearchGPT, its AI-powered search engine | The Verge
Amazon-backed Anthropic rolls out Claude AI for big business | CNBC
Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/24001603
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
The web has a problem: huge chunks of it keep going offline. The web isn’t static, parts of it sometimes just… vanish.
But it’s not all grim. The Internet Archive has a massive mission to identify and back up our online world into a vast digital library. In 2001, it launched the Wayback Machine, an interface that lets anyone call up snapshots of sites and look at how they used to be and what they used to say at a given moment in time. Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine, joins Decoder this week to explain both why and how the organization tries to keep the web from disappearing.
Links:
When Online Content Disappears | Pew Research
Game Informer is shutting down | The Verge
When Media Outlets Shutter, Why Are the Websites Wiped, Too? Slate
MTV News lives on in the Internet Archive | The Verge
The video game industry is mourning the loss of Game Informer | The Verge
Guest host Hank Green makes Nilay Patel explain why websites have a future | Decoder
How The Onion is saving itself from the digital media death spiral | Decoder
The Internet Archive is defending its digital library in court today | The Verge
The Internet Archive has lost its first fight to scan and lend ebooks | The Verge
The Internet Archive just lost its appeal over ebook lending | The Verge
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Decoder is off this week for a short end-of-summer break. We’ll be back with both our interview and explainer episodes after the Labor Day holiday. In the meantime we thought we’d re-share an explainer that’s taken on a whole new relevance in the last couple weeks, about deepfakes and misinformation.
In February, I talked with Verge policy editor Adi Robertson how the generative AI boom might start fueling a wave of election-related misinformation, especially deepfakes and manipulated media. It’s not been quite an apocalyptic AI free-for-all out there. But the election itself took some really unexpected turns in these last couple of months. Now we’re heading into the big, noisy home stretch, and use of AI is starting to get really weird — and much more troublesome.
Links:
The AI-generated hell of the 2024 election | The Verge
AI deepfakes are cheap, easy, and coming for the 2024 election | Decoder
Elon Musk posts deepfake of Kamala Harris that violates X policy | The Verge
Donald Trump posts a fake AI-generated Taylor Swift endorsement | The Verge
X’s Grok now points to government site after misinformation warnings | The Verge
Political ads could require AI-generated content disclosures soon | The Verge
The Copyright Office calls for a new federal law regulating deepfakes | The Verge
How AI companies are reckoning with elections | The Verge
The lame AI meme election | Axios
Deepfakes' parody loophole | Axios
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Decoder is off this week for a short end-of-summer break. We’ll be back with both our interview and explainer episodes after the Labor Day holiday, and I’m very excited for what we have coming up on the schedule.
But while we’re out, we’d like to highlight a great episode from the Land of the Giants podcast, which is over at Vulture this season, for a deep dive into Disney. Can it be a tech company? It’s the question that defines the struggles of its streaming service Disney Plus — and it also tells us where it needs to go in the future to compete with Amazon, Apple, and Netflix.
Links:
Disney Is a Tech Company? | Vulture
Why Disney plussed itself | Vulture
Disney’s CEO drama explained, with Julia Alexander | Decoder
The clock is ticking on Disney’s streaming strategy | Decoder
The Disney Plus, Hulu, and Max streaming bundle is now available | The Verge
Disney reportedly wants to bring always-on channels to Disney Plus | The Verge
How baseball's tech team built the future of television | The Verge
The year Netflix ended the streaming wars | The Ringer
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
The Onion is a comedy institution — and like everything else in media, it went on a pure nightmare hell ride in the 2010s. We could do an entire episode on the G/O Media calamity, but the short version is: A bunch of friends just managed to buy The Onion, and they're busy relaunching the website, going back to print, and, clearly, having a blast doing it. CEO Ben Collins and chief product officer Danielle Strle joined me to explain how that even works in 2024.
Links:
The Onion sold by G/O Media | The New York Times
Sam Reich on revamping the game show - and Dropout’s success | NPR
Platformer’s Casey Newton on surviving the great media collapse | Decoder
Craig Silverman: Digital advertising’s structure has been weaponized | Digiday
US Warns a Gaza Ceasefire Would Only Benefit Humanity | The Onion
The Truth is Paywalled but the Lies are Free | Current Affairs
A newsroom expands and The Onion is out again on paper | Washington Post
Report: Nuclear War Sounds Fucking Amazing Right Now | The Onion
Google defends AI search results after they told us to put glue on pizza | The Verge
Jury awards nearly $1B to Sandy Hook families in Alex Jones defamation case | CNN
‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens | The Onion
Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23989633
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Today I’m talking with Thomas Dohmke, the CEO of GitHub. GitHub is the platform for managing code – but since 2018, it’s also been owned by Microsoft. We talk a lot about how independent GitHub really is inside of Microsoft — especially now that Microsoft is all-in on AI, and Gitbhub Copilot is one of the biggest AI product success stories that exists right now. But his perspective on AI is pretty refreshing: It’s clear there’s still a long way to go.
Links:
Original GitHub landing page | Wayback Machine
Introducing Entitlements | GitHub Blog
ashtom (Thomas Dohmke) | GitHub
The developers suing over GitHub Copilot got dealt a major blow in court | The Verge
GitHub Copilot can now help start a project with AI | The Verge
GitHub users can mess around with different AI models | The Verge
GitHub’s AI-powered Copilot will help you write code for $10 a month | The Verge
Google DeepMind co-founder joins Microsoft as CEO of its new AI division | The Verge
Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23986019
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
There’s a major internet speech regulation currently making its way through Congress, and it has a really good chance of becoming law. It’s called KOSPA: the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act, which passed in the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support late last month. At a high level, KOSPA could radically change how tech platforms handle speech in an effort to try and make the internet safer for minors.
It’s a controversial bill, with a lot going on. To break it all down, I invited on Verge senior policy reporter Lauren Feiner, who’s been covering these bills for months now, to explain what’s happening, what these bills actually do, and what the path forward for this legislation looks like.
Links:
Senate passes the Kids Online Safety Act | The Verge
The teens lobbying against the Kids Online Safety Act | The Verge
How the Kids Online Safety Act was dragged into a political war | NYT
House Republicans won’t bring up KOSA in its current form | Punchbowl News
Why a landmark kids online safety bill is still deeply divisive | NBC News
Why Sen. Schatz thinks child safety bills can trump the First Amendment | Decoder
Child safety bills are reshaping the internet for everyone | The Verge
Online age verification is coming, and privacy is on the chopping block | The Verge
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Today, I’m talking with Replika founder and CEO Eugenia Kuyda, and I will just tell you right away, we get all the way to people marrying their AI companions, so get ready. It’s a ride.
Replika’s basic pitch is pretty simple: what if you had an AI friend? The company offers avatars you can curate to your liking that pretend to be human, so they can be your friend, your therapist, or even your date. That’s a lot for a private company running an iPhone app, and Eugenia and I talked a lot about the consequences of this idea and what it means for the future of human relationships.
Links:
The AI boyfriend business is booming | Axios
Speak, Memory | The Verge
Your new AI Friend is almost ready to meet you | Verge
What happens when sexting chatbots dump their human lovers | Bloomberg
AI chatbot company Replika restores erotic roleplay for some users — Reuters
Replika’s New AI App Is Like Tinder but With Sexy Chatbots — Gizmodo
Replika’s new AI therapy app tries to bring you to a zen island — The Verge
Replika CEO: AI chatbots aren’t just for lonely men | Fortune
Gaze Into the Dystopian Hell of Bots Dating Bots | Slate
Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23980789
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Today, I’m talking to Jonathan Kanter, the assistant attorney general for antitrust at the United States Department of Justice. This is Jonathan’s second time on the show, and it’s a bit of an emergency podcast situation. On Monday, a federal court issued a monumental decision in the DOJ’s case against Google, holding that Google Search and the text ads in search are monopolies.
The court hasn’t decided on the penalties for all this yet — that process is scheduled to start next month. But it’s the biggest antitrust win against a tech company since the Microsoft case from two decades ago. I wanted to know what Jonathan thought of the ruling, what it means for the law, and most importantly, what remedies he’s going to seek to try and restore competition in search.
Links:
Judge rules that Google ‘is a monopolist’ in US antitrust case | The Verge
All the spiciest parts of the Google antitrust ruling | The Verge
Now that Google is a monopolist, what’s next? | The Verge
DOJ’s Kanter says the antitrust fight against Big Tech is just beginning | Decoder
The DOJ Antitrust Division isn’t afraid to go to court | The Verge
The US government is gearing up for an AI antitrust fight | The Verge
Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23979725
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. This episode was edited by Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Today, I’m talking with Glenn Fogel, the CEO of Booking Holdings, which owns a large portfolio of familiar travel brands: OpenTable, Kayak, and Priceline, as well as its largest subsidiary, Booking.com. This episode is pure Decoder bait all the way through — from Booking’s structure, to competition with hotels and airlines increasingly going direct to consumer, even to how European regulation affects competition with Google. Oh, and of course, how Booking is incorporating AI; Glenn has some fascinating thoughts there.
Glenn really got into it with me — there’s a lot going on in this space, and it’s interesting because there are so many players and so much competition across so many of the layers, even among Booking’s own subsidiaries. I think we probably could have gone twice as long.
Links:
The oral history of travel’s greatest acquisition | Skift
Long-term travel looks like a strong growth industry, says Booking’s Glenn Fogel | CNBC
Ryanair wins screen-scraping case against Booking.com | Airways
Aggregation Theory | Stratechery
A Call for Embracing AI—But With a ‘Human Touch’ | Time
Booking.com launches new AI Trip Planner | Booking
Priceline releases new AI platform and ‘Penny’ chatbot | Skift
Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23976178
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. This episode was edited by Amanda Rose Smith. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Every time we talk about AI, we get one big piece of feedback that I really want to dive into: how the lightning-fast explosion of AI tools affects the climate. AI takes a lot of energy, and there’s a huge unanswered question as to whether using all that juice for AI is actually worth it, both practically and morally.
It’s messy and complicated and there are a bunch of apparent contradictions along the way — so it’s perfect for Decoder. Verge senior science reporter Justine Calma joins me to see if we can untangle this knot.
Links:
This startup wants to capture carbon and help data centers cool down | The Verge
Google’s carbon footprint balloons in its Gemini AI era | The Verge
Taking a closer look at AI’s supposed energy apocalypse | Ars Technica
AI is exhausting the power grid. Tech firms are seeking a miracle | WaPo
AI Is already wreaking havoc on global power systems | Bloomberg
What do Google’s AI answers cost the environment? | Scientific American
AI is an energy hog | MIT Tech Review
Microsoft’s AI obsession is jeopardizing its climate ambitions | The Verge
The answer to AI’s energy needs could be blowing in the wind | The Verge
AI already uses as much energy as a small country | Vox
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. This episode was edited by Callie Wright and Amanda Rose Smith. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Today, I’m talking with Hanneke Faber, the CEO of Logitech. Hanneke’s still pretty fresh to the role: She joined the company last October, after former CEO Bracken Darrell left following the pandemic boom and subsequent economic slowdown that halted Logitech’s growth. Hanneke, who comes from Unilever and Procter & Gamble, is new to the world of consumer electronics.
So we talked about the structural changes she’s already making at Logitech, and the changes she intends to make in the future. It sounds like some Logitech products, like its smart home doorbells and cameras, are not long for this world. You’ll also hear Hanneke talk about a concept called the “forever mouse” — a mouse you buy once and upgrade over time with new software features — features that of course might carry a subscription fee. Subscription mice! It’s a lot.
Links:
How Logitech bet big on work from home | Decoder
Logitech CEO Bracken Darrell is leaving for another job | The Verge
Webcams have become impossible to find, and prices are skyrocketing | The Verge
Logitech appoints Hanneke Faber as new CEO | Reuters
Logitech’s new low-profile keyboard fits Cherry MX keycaps | The Verge
Logitech’s Meta Quest stylus helps artists work in 3D | The Verge
Logitech targets faster growth via education, health and AI | Reuters
Logitech wants you to press its new AI button | The Verge
Logitech’s best gaming mouse just got better | The Verge
Logitech’s articulating arm webcam launches on Indiegogo | The Verge
Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23970888
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
The Supreme Court has just taken on the entire idea of the US administrative state — and the Court is winning. Earlier this month, a conservative majority overturned a longstanding legal principle called Chevron deference. The implications are enormous for every possible kind of regulation — and net neutrality looks poised to be the first victim. Verge editor Sarah Jeong joins me to explain why.
Links:
Supreme Court overrules Chevron, kneecapping federal regulators | The Verge
What SCOTUS just did to broadband, the right to repair, the environment, and more | The Verge
FCC votes to restore net neutrality | The Verge
Reinstatement of net neutrality rules temporarily halted by appeals court | The Verge
Clarence Thomas' 38 Vacations: The Other Billionaires Who Have Treated the Supreme Court Justice to Luxury Travel | ProPublica
The Supreme Court's coming war with Joe Biden | Vox
Transcript:
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Today, I’m talking with Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe. RJ was on the show last September when we chatted at the Code Conference, but the past 10 months have seen a whirlwind of change throughout the car industry and at Rivian in particular. This year alone, the company unveiled five new models in its lineup and also just announced a $5 billion joint venture with Volkswagen. We got into all that and more.
If you’re a Decoder listener, you’ve heard me talk to a lot of car CEOs on the show, but it’s rare to talk to a car company founder, and RJ was game to talk about basically anything — even extremely minor feature requests I pulled from the forums. It’s a fun one.
Links:
Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe isn't scared of the Cybertruck | Decoder
VW will invest up to $5 billion in Rivian as part of new EV joint venture | The Verge
Rivian blazed a trail with its adventure EVs — can it stay on top? | The Verge
Rivian R2 revealed: a $45,000 electric off-roader for the masses | The Verge
Rivian surprises with R3 and R3X electric SUVs | The Verge
Rivian puts its Georgia factory plans on pause | The Verge
Rivian’s R1 vehicles are getting a gut overhaul | The Verge
Rivian R1S review: king of the mountain | The Verge
Rivian’s long, narrow road to profit | WSJ
Tesla’s Share of U.S. Electric Car Market Falls Below 50% | NYT
Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23965790
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
This week I’m talking to Matthew Ball, who was last on the show in 2022 to talk about his book “The Metaverse: How it Will Revolutionize Everything.” It’s 2024 and it’s safe to say that has not happened yet. But Matt’s still on the case — in fact he just released an almost complete update of the book, now with the much more sober title, “Building the Spatial Internet.”
Matt and I talked a lot about where the previous metaverse hype cycle landed us, and what there is to learn from these boom and bust waves. We talked about the Apple Vision Pro quite a bit; if you read or watched my review when it came out, you’ll know I think the Vision Pro is almost an end point for one set of technologies. I wanted to know if Matt felt the same and what needs to happen to make all of this more mainstream and accessible.
Links:
Fully revised and updated edition to the “The Metaverse” | W.W. Norton
Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it’s not | The Verge
Apple’s Vision Pro: five months later | Vergecast
Is the metaverse going to suck? A conversation with Matthew Ball | Decoder
Interviewing Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth on the Metaverse, VR/AR, AI | Matthew Ball
Interviewing Epic CEO Tim Sweeney and author Neal Stephenson | Matthew Ball
An Interview with Matthew Ball about Vision Pro and the state of gaming | Stratechery
Tim Sweeney explains how the metaverse might actually work | The Verge
Fortnite is winning the metaverse | The Verge
Is the Metaverse Just Marketing? | NYT
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
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