Fear and loathing at OpenAI

Summary

The Vergecast - "Fear and Loathing at OpenAI"

Date: April 10, 2026
Hosts: Nilay Patel, David Pierce
Guests/Contributors: Ashley Esqueda, Ross Miller

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Overview

In this episode, The Vergecast crew dives deep into several themes at the heart of the current tech zeitgeist:

• The chaotic state of OpenAI post-Sam Altman’s firing and the fallout chronicled in a new New Yorker profile
• The peculiar and highly personal uses of generative AI agents by the hosts
• The way consumer and developer access to AI is shifting what’s possible with technology
• Space news (Artemis 2), the Super Mario Galaxy movie phenomenon, and current challenges in tech journalism, including the "unmasking" of Satoshi Nakamoto and media freedom in the U.S.

The tone is sharp, geeky, unfiltered, and self-aware, with frequent forays into the hosts’ own tech misadventures.

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Personal Tech Projects & AI Tinkering

Timestamps: 05:06–29:33

Nilay’s iMac Monitor Saga

• Nilay describes his quest to retrofit an old iMac as a 5K monitor, buying the newest display retrofit board (the “Stone Tascan R 1820”) because “you gotta buy the newest one, not the one everyone’s been using for years.” (06:04)
• He walks through:
  • Scavenging old PCs and inventively installing Chinese firmware updates
  • Navigating non-English menus: “I ended up sitting there with Gemini, taking pictures of the display, translating menus, until I found the one.” (09:24)
  • Ultimate success: “Anyhow, I figured it out. It’s in English now. … It works. … It’s totally acceptable to have an excellent looking 5K display connected to my Mac studio.” (10:41)
• Reflection: “How upset do you think Jony Ive would be if you showed him the inside of your iMac now?” “I think the part where I grabbed the main logic board of an iMac and just yanked it out...someone worked on this very hard...and it just started pulling out stuff because what you need is an empty case to fit the board in.” (11:19)

David’s Custom Life-Organizer App (Built with Claude)

• Chronicling a months-long adventure using Raycast, Claude, and web APIs
• Synthesis of multiple productivity services (Todoist, Readwise, Raindrop, Google Calendar) into a custom web/Electron app
  • “I have finally built my dream productivity tool, which no one is going to care about, but I’ve had very funny adventures with it recently.” (13:53)
• AI code generation foibles:
  • Claude accidentally compiling and running the wrong person’s web app due to bad URL inference.
  • “It has this relentless ability to just keep trying to do stuff. And generally speaking, I’ve had to interrupt it...I know the URL. I can just tell you what it is. It’ll be fine.” (17:21)
  • The “emotion vs. reality” of AI-only coding: “I have the same general reaction to all these stories that I do when people tell me about their dreams. I’m like...I feel nothing. Because you’re describing a literal hallucination that your mind created while you were asleep.” (19:38 — Nilay)

Real-World Agentic AI Use:

• Hosts debate whether these custom workflows signify an imminent consumer AI revolution, or are just “enthusiast nerd” demos, not mainstream yet.
• Quote: “No normal person is ripping open their iMac and writing Python scripts to change the art on their Frame TV. … We’re still pretty far away from that, but there’s a glimmer of something important here.” (26:18 — Nilay)

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The Hype Desk: Pop Culture & Space News

Timestamps: 29:39–42:53

Super Mario Galaxy Movie Phenomenon

• Ashley and Ross: Movie had a $370 million opening, not a “good film,” but a massive, reference-packed spectacle; critics hate it, audiences love it.
• “It is designed the way you design a Nintendo game. There’s a bunch of really cool scenes that are loosely connected and it is just like breakneck pace.” (32:48 — Ashley)
• Worthwhile comparison: “Let’s say from Barbie to Ready Player One … this is closer to Ready Player One, like 2/3 of the way on that. It is like it’s speedrunning a theme park.” (35:35 — Ashley)

Artemis 2 and the Joys/Challenges of Space Plumbing

• Recap of the toilet malfunction and freeze-up aboard Artemis 2, and how “space plumber” Christina Koch fixed it using solar heating.
• “I love how everyone’s been kind of humanized by going, we need to know if you’re okay with your restroom situation.” (38:46 — Ashley)
• Poignant and poetic real astronaut quotes:
  • “All this emptiness. This is a whole bunch of nothing. This thing we call the universe. You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together.” (41:08 — Victor Glover, quoted by Ashley)
• Discussion of viral space photography, memes, and humanity in space.

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The OpenAI/Sam Altman and AI Power Crisis

Timestamps: 45:44–66:51

New Yorker Profile of Sam Altman & OpenAI’s Tumult

• Hosts discuss the impact and revelations of the Ronan Farrow New Yorker feature, soon to be discussed on Decoder.
• Main points:
  • Consensus: OpenAI, once Altman returned after his firing, changed “forever and only for the worse.” (46:18 — David)
  • Misguided ambition: “OpenAI thought it could stumble its way into defeating Google… You cannot stumble into being Google.” (47:30 — Nilay)
  • Sam Altman’s business focus: “He’s not paying any attention to the business he’s running. Like, his business is raising money.” (49:54 — Nilay)
• Broader reflection on the tech industry's “robber baron” attitude versus the world-ending stakes assigned to AI.
  • “If you believe as many AI people do ... that AI will be more important and more transformative than the Industrial Revolution ... those are the stakes.” (59:57 — David)

The “Sasspocalypse,” AGI, and The Real Limits of AI

• Nilay: “A lot of people got very wealthy and very powerful because they had the ability to write software... Now you have a robot that can just make software, it will delete your status.” (54:21)
• Control and responsibility: “There is a competition to be the most responsible and reliable character...[but] do you buy this is going to be so explosive everywhere? ... It’s not clear that software development is all of the human experience.” (58:55 — Nilay)
• Real consumer potential is (still) unfulfilled; huge for automation, business software, not yet for most people's lives.

Google’s Strategic Advantage and the “Meta Hole”

• Google can “wait everyone else out” and benefits from already having a heavily monetized, ad-filled user experience—adds “AI mode” to search without customer outcry. (66:11)
• OpenAI’s internal chaos and exodus of talent affects its products/payoff.

Quote:
“It feels like Google has two fronts. One, it has to respond to Anthropic in software development ... and two, they have to keep OpenAI away in search. ... OpenAI’s ad products are bad because all of the people are gone.” (65:07 — Nilay)

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Lightning Round

Timestamps: 68:42–77:31

Brendan Carr Is a Dummy (Remix)

• FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr again criticized for overreaching on media regulation, this time regarding demands for CNN to “change” after a ceasefire report on Iran.
• “Brendan has no authority over cable news networks. None at all. ... This is straightforwardly like corruption. There’s no other word for it. It is straight up the state trying to corrupt the free speech of the media in this country.” (75:20 — Nilay)

Satoshi Nakamoto Unmasking Reaction

• NYT's John Carreyrou claims to have identified Adam Back as Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator.
• Hosts’ skepticism:
  • “The parts I found most compelling were when he lined up the dates... But… it kind of feels like every other ‘I’ve unmasked Satoshi’ expedition…” (78:33 — Nilay)
  • “No matter how you feel about crypto… no good comes of knowing who Satoshi is...” because it could destabilize the ecosystem and puts the person in personal danger. (80:32 — David)
  • “People only care about bitcoin because of dollars... It is dollars. And that is forever going to be the problem that bitcoin runs into.” (83:05 — Nilay)

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Notable Quotes

• On Altman's OpenAI era: “It is as measured a way of saying Sam Altman is a sociopath who wants power and will destroy the world to get it as you could possibly ask for.” (46:18 — David)
• On custom AI coding: “I have the same general reaction to all these stories that I do when people tell me about their dreams. ... You were describing a literal hallucination that your mind created…” (19:38 — Nilay)
• On AI as a software democritizer: “Maybe with AI, every single person can run a little company because you don’t need to hire a staff and everybody can.” (61:10 — Nilay)
• On space, humanity, and awe: “All this emptiness. This is a whole bunch of nothing. This thing we call the universe. You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together.” (41:08 — Victor Glover, quoted by Ashley)

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Episode Structure & Key Segments

• [05:06]–[29:33]: Personal AI/computer projects - monitors, Python scripts, and automating life
• [29:39]–[42:53]: Hype Desk: Mario movie & Artemis 2 (space/plumbing/photography/the Internet at its best)
• [45:44]–[66:51]: Deep-dive: OpenAI, Sam Altman, Google, the future/present of AI, moral hazard
• [68:42]–[77:31]: Lightning round: Carr’s media threats, Satoshi unmasking, crypto & power

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Conclusions & Takeaways

• OpenAI and the tech industry at large are facing a reckoning around personality-driven leadership, the practical business of AI, and the actual capabilities of modern AI tools.
• The shift toward agentic AI is real but still out of reach for most consumers—current gains are enthusiast/hacker-level.
• Media and regulatory threats continue to grow; transparency and ownership of tech/media companies matter more than ever.
• Space, pop culture, and the Internet’s ability to foster joy and memes remain alive and well, offering a refreshing counterbalance to institutional and existential anxieties.

Next Up:

• Interviews with Ronan Farrow on OpenAI/Altman and Ben McKenzie on crypto
• Deep-dive listener mailbag episode with the Verge publisher

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Nilay Patel]

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[David Pierce]

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[Nilay Patel]

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[Nilay Patel]

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[Nilay Patel]

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[David Pierce]

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[Ashley Esqueda]

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[David Pierce]

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[Nilay Patel]

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[David Pierce]

Welcome to the Vertcast, the flagship podcast of Being Unconstrained by Truth, which is what we do here on the Verdict.

[Nilay Patel]

Wow.

[David Pierce]

I'm your friend David Pearson. Elab tells you.

[Nilay Patel]

Did you say in this media environment that we are the flagship podcast of that? Because I don't. RFK started a podcast this week. You know what I mean?

[David Pierce]

It is a very high bar for being unconstrained by truth on a podcast. But we're here today. We're gonna do our very best.

[Nilay Patel]

The webby for Being Unconstrained by Truth. The voting is now open.

[David Pierce]

It's beautiful. That, of course, is a line from a New Yorker profile of Sam Altman that is deeply fascinating and has been making the rounds this week. We're going to talk about it. There's another big story about Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin that's been going around that we're going to talk about. We have some Brendan stuff to talk about. We have some anthropic stuff to talk about. We have a lot to talk about. All that is much less Important than weird things Neil, I and David have been doing on their computers this week. We also have a couple of housekeeping items for you. One is, please vote for us in the webinar Webbies. The voting is open until next Thursday. We are currently winning for best technology podcast, but it's too close and it's making me uncomfortable.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah, we're not winning by enough.

[David Pierce]

I would like to win in a way that hurts everyone else's feelings. Do you know what I mean?

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah. I'd like to win in a way that we have to be good winners. Do you know what I mean? Right.

[David Pierce]

It becomes incumbent on us to, like, give a nice speech acknowledging the others.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah. Like, if. If, like, you make an error. I was like, oh, my God, I'm so happy I won. But, like, if you win by enough, if you don't nail the speech, you're a jerk. And I want to be in that position. I want that level of stress and pressure on the five word Webby acceptance speech.

[David Pierce]

I respect that. I would like to be required. I want. I want the, like, Tom Brady, Michael Jordan level of success where we do so well that we still find haters. And everybody's like, wow, the amount of rage and anger that you have to have to still find haters amongst all this success, that's what I want for us.

[Nilay Patel]

And then thrive on them.

[David Pierce]

Right.

[Nilay Patel]

I think it's clear that I thrive on my haters, David. I don't. I don't know that we need to find any more. It's true.

[David Pierce]

People have been saying this about you. Also, the Verge Movie night on April 27th is already sold out. Not only did the IFC center have to bump us to the bigger theater to go see Sneakers with all of you, it's already sold out. So A, very excited to see a bunch of you for Sneakers in a couple of weeks. B, I think this is officially a thing we're going to have to do again. So keep an eye out. We're going to do more of these. It's going to be very fun. Last one. In two Tuesdays, I think. April 21st, we're going to do a whole Vergecast about the Verge and the Vergecast, the media business and journalism and AI and our feelings about everything. So you and I are going to spend a whole episode answering as many questions as we can. We're going to loop in Helen, have like, our publisher to talk about the business a little bit. If you have questions about the Verge or the Vergecast or the state of media or why Nilay is like this. You can always call the hotline 866-verge-11. Email us vercasthevirge.com Send all that stuff in. We're gonna answer as many of those as we can in two Tuesdays. So you've got a little bit of time, but not too much. Get all that stuff in as quickly as you can. That ends up being, I think, one of my favorite episodes to make. We do this like once a year. I would say, on average it's very fun. Get all your questions in.

[Nilay Patel]

David and I have this like old school journalism. Don't do inside Baseball and make this story about yourself. And then you look at every famous creator and influencer and they're like, here's what I wore today. And we, we're just going to try to. We're going to try to thread that needle a little bit more.

[David Pierce]

Yep, a hundred percent. But all of the news this week, I think is, is demonstrably less important than weird stuff that Nili and David have been doing on their computers this week.

[Nilay Patel]

Let's make the show about ourselves, David. As I was saying, let's just, let's just do it.

[David Pierce]

Let's start with you, Nilay, because you, I think, owe us updates on a couple of different projects, starting with your imac as Monitor Saga, which has become it and elevated to the level of a saga here on the Vergecast.

[Nilay Patel]

It is a little bit of a saga. It's not so much of a saga, but it's a little bit of one.

[David Pierce]

I believe where we left off was you were going to try some wacky firmware shenanigans.

[Nilay Patel]

Yes.

[David Pierce]

What's been going on?

[Nilay Patel]

So I bought the stone Tascan R 1820, which is now a model number that I know and talk about as though everyone cares about imac display retrofit boards. There is a community and that community is great. And they have been working on this for years. You can go read those threads. They are literally years long on various forms. So I bought the newest board because you got to buy the newest one, not the one everyone's been using for years. That obviously works, right? You have to buy the newest one. The 1811 is the one that everyone's using for years. That already works. But I bought the 1820 because it's new. You understand what I'm saying?

[David Pierce]

Sure.

[Nilay Patel]

So 1820, I came to my house, opened the imac. It was harrowing in its way, but not as hard as people say. Put the board in, kind of did a bad job. I call that snazzy labs that needed a way better job. Go watch that video. It's way more impressive than whatever I did. Set it all up. It works. It lights up. It looks beautiful. I have a little color calibrator so that, you know when the display is in an imac, Apple controls the color. So it's like perfect in the way that Apple color is perfect when it's just running native off some board you bought from China. It's just sort of a little green. So I color calibrated it, made it look good. And then you install the software called Better Display to control the brightness with the keyboard, which you obviously have to do. I mean, how could you not? And that the backlight mapping was inaccurate. And so as you stepped up the brightness, it would get to 100 and then reset, like halfway through and then do it again. So, one, this is not a problem because you can just set it to 100. You can set it to its obvious brightest setting and leave it alone. But I cannot do that.

[David Pierce]

It has to on principle.

[Nilay Patel]

So I find myself emailing with Stone Task, and just as a customer, they don't know who I am. They were very responsive. Feel great about that. They sent me a very blurry video of how to update the firmware using a piece of software that only runs on Windows and only addresses the card over DisplayPort.

[David Pierce]

Oh, Lord.

[Nilay Patel]

Here's problem one. All of my Windows PCs don't have display ports. Like, they're all ancient. The only one in our house that does is Becky's work computer, which she would not allow me to install Chinese firmware updaters on. Fair 2, I never anticipated using the DisplayPort on this thing. And the board is now sealed inside the imac whose screen has been glued back on, right?

[David Pierce]

Because you get to the end of this process and you're like, I am never going to open it.

[Nilay Patel]

Set up. It's plugged into the Mac studio. By the time I buy a new computer, this adventure will have to come to some sort of conclusion, right? This display will be like 20 years old. I will have to buy a new one. I made it work in this setup, and that's how long it's going to take. Now I need the DisplayPort. So the only way to. I'm not going to cut the display open again. So I have to dig around the memory access door with a DisplayPort cable and try to get it in the board. So that's one. And then two, I was like, I need a computer with a DisplayPort. And we looked in the reviews closet I said last week. And we found a Surface laptop from, like, 2019 with a mini DisplayPort. And I took it and I took it out of the reviews closet, and I put it on my desk in my office, and then I promptly left the office without it. So now what am I going to do? I installed Windows 10 on Becky's old Intel MacBook Air, which has been sitting on a shelf for ages with a USB C to DisplayPort. Figured it all out, downloaded the weird software, watched a very blurry video that was. The software is in Chinese. Part of There's a lot going on in this video. Nailed it. Nailed it out the gate and won. Terrifying. The MacBook Air has now been reset because it had a Chinese firmware update or installed on Windows on it. So that is no longer doing whatever it may have been doing to my house. And then I booted it all up, and it worked great. And the entire interface of this monitor is now in Chinese. Okay.

[David Pierce]

I mean, I hate to say you both deserve this and should have seen it coming.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah, it's excellent customer service. Just one last step that I needed to resolve. So I ended up sitting there with Gemini, taking pictures of the display, translating menus, until I found the one. I mean, this is like, if you look at the buttons, it's just a RAW PCB that sticks out of the back of an imac casing on a ribbon cable, and it just has some unlabeled buttons on it. So there's just a lot of mistakes to be made as you navigate sort of backwards on the front of the thing in Chinese with Gemini in your hand. Like, none of that was elegant, I

[David Pierce]

would say, but I feel like monitor interface is like four buttons, right? It's like you can figure out which icon means contrast and which icon means brightness, and then you just move it to the thing and it's fine. Right.

[Nilay Patel]

I would say that they did not use icons. The universal language of graphics is not present in this interface.

[David Pierce]

In contrast, you have the dark half and the light half. Brightness is the sun. Like, it's. It's.

[Nilay Patel]

We've developed a language. I was trying to change it to English, which is, like, I think in the grand scheme of all language settings, the fact that the one that lets you change the language is always in the language you don't understand. Yeah, like, that's how that goes. Anyhow, I figured it out. It's in English now. It works. The only thing is, uh, when you turn on the computer and it wakes from sleep, it lights up, and then it turns off and it thinks real hard and then it comes back again and then it's fine for the day.

[David Pierce]

Okay.

[Nilay Patel]

It's this one little problem is it does a little handshakey weirdness but like totally acceptable to have an excellent looking 5K display connected to my Mac studio.

[David Pierce]

This is now a. What is Nilai's threshold for solving this problem question. Because are you going to do that for 10 days and then be like I could fix this and and go through this again or have we officially reached I'm never touching this thing ever again.

[Nilay Patel]

We're never touching it. It is buttoned back up. There's a display port extension coming out of it. As long as I was fishing, I put a USB C extension in the back of there. We're done. We're super done.

[David Pierce]

How upset do you think Jony I've would be if you showed him the inside of your imac now?

[Nilay Patel]

I think the part where I grabbed the main logic board of an imac and just yanked it out of Jony I've's carefully constructed, exquisitely packaged internals because I was like it doesn't matter if this breaks. And I just yanked it. I literally thought about Jony I've. In that moment I was like someone worked on this very hard because you know, it's like it's beautiful in the Apple way. You open it and it is beautiful inside. And I was like huh, that sucks for you. And it just started pulling out stuff because what you need is an empty case to fit the board in. Uh, anyway, it's done. We're gonna leave it alone. The other hilarious thing about better display that I should say, my other monitor, my Zoom monitor, my Google Meet video conferencing monitor is the sort of infamous Samsung curved TV that I bought almost a decade ago now.

[David Pierce]

Amazing because it's all you need.

[Nilay Patel]

You just need a 40 inch screen over there to run some video conferencing software on and there's like a webcam in front of it. It's better display can talk to that screen over WI Fi over the Internet.

[David Pierce]

Oh.

[Nilay Patel]

So it. When I turn on my computer it now because that's a TV and it doesn't respect sleep commands. So it's like okay, I found that display, you know, I fixed its IP address on my router and it just turns it on and off with a computer now over. Over the network. I've never been happier with like a little thing, like an unnecessary little feature.

[Ross Miller]

Yeah, that's.

[Nilay Patel]

I used to have to turn on that thing with the remote every day. And now it's like the computer is like, I see it, I'll just send the packet to it, and it just does it. It's amazing. The software is, like, wild. It is not complete software. Like, it's obviously made by people who care a lot about displays in very nerdy ways and assume you know everything that they know.

[David Pierce]

Sure.

[Nilay Patel]

But when you figure it out, it works. Amazing.

[David Pierce]

That is pretty cool. I just realized, A, we need to do, like, a Neelai Patel studio tour thing, but B, my picture of your studio. I'm just realizing this right now is that you essentially are in, like, the back room of a Best Buy with just a bunch of, like, weird old stuff.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah. That.

[David Pierce]

That you've just sort of. It's like you're like an ongoing Geek Squad project that no one wants at the end.

[Nilay Patel]

It's not wrong. Except it, you know, it's like the attic next to my daughter's bedroom.

[David Pierce]

Nice.

[Nilay Patel]

And it is just a mess in here. Like, there's just stuff everywhere. I need to clean it up. That's why I was like, no one wants a studio tour.

[David Pierce]

People think this is all very glamorous and exciting. And I'm like. I'm staring over my laptop at a. Just a giant pile of unfolded laundry. Like, this is just what we're doing today.

[Nilay Patel]

That's very good. All right, what's your project?

[David Pierce]

So I've been Claude coding like, a. Like a maniac, like, for months now, but I have finally built my dream productivity tool, which no one is going to care about, but I've had very funny adventures with it recently. So Thomas Paul Mann, the CEO of Raycast, came on this show a while ago and told me his big theory of AI is that the best thing you can do with these generative tools is build software, because you can do it once. And when you get the thing to work, then it works every time that, like, reinventing the wheel and having this thing go out and do explorations for the same thing over and over and over. The sort of agentic world we're talking about is the wrong approach. But what you can do is you can build specific, useful software that you can then test and verify. And once you have that, it can just be reliable software. So he was like. He was one of the first people who really turned me onto the idea of, like, why, like, AI software is actually a really powerful idea for a lot of reasons. So I have set out to build myself, like, my ideal to do list and notes and, like, keep all my life Together tool. I need to write a long story about my many adventures, but I basically, like, I tried to build a whole thing from scratch, got super far down the road and then got annoyed by all the bugs I couldn't figure out how to fix and bailed. I then tried to do a less ambitious thing that I got bored with and bailed. And what I eventually found was I use a bunch of different services, all of which have built MCP servers, they've built really robust APIs, and in many cases they built command line interfaces for working with AI. So I was like, oh, rather than try to like reinvent todoist, which I use for to dos, which I think is like a really great infrastructure but a really ugly app, I can just build my own thing to look at todoist. Uh, and so now I have a thing that pipes in my calendar events from Google, my to DOS from todoist, my notes from a text file which I sync with Obsidian, and then two other services. One Readwise Reader, which I use for. For saving and reading articles, and Raindrop IO, which I use for bookmarking. And all of this just pours into one little web app that I've built myself that looks exactly the way that I want to and is just full of all the things that I make every day. And then at the end of every day, I export a markdown file with everything I did and created that day that now is like, in a searchable archive of text files on my desktop. And it's awesome and I love it very much. But the funniest thing that has happened to me recently is I wanted to build this thing for mobile, right? It's a web app. I can use it as a. As a progressive web app. But I was like, there's some little things I want to do. I want to build this as like a more robust desktop app on my computer. So I start futzing with Electron. We go through this whole thing. It's like, okay, I'm just going to build this thing as a. As a DMG on my Mac so that I can pin it on top of other apps essentially and like, access it with global shortcuts. And from the menu bar and stuff like this, you have to build slightly more on top of a tab in order to make that work. I told it to just do this and it's like, cool, I can do that for you. Goes off and does it. It pulled an entirely different Vercel web app and compiled it onto my desktop. The strangest thing I've ever Experienced. It was like, it was like, I've been doing this thing inside of cloud code for like three weeks now, like, building and refining this thing. And I was like, okay, just make this thing a dmg. And it goes, great. I've, I've compiled this for you to run in a desktop. So I run it and install it completely. I just got somebody else's private web app inside of my thing and I literally, I responded to cloud code. I was like, I don't know what this is, but this is a completely different app. And it goes, oh, sorry, grabbed it from the wrong URL.

[Nilay Patel]

No.

[David Pierce]

So you could just, you could just do it just went and got it for me. And this is a thing that has actually happened a few times where it, it mistakes. Like, it guesses what your GitHub link is and pulls the wrong thing based on what it thinks its name should be. It has tried to upload things to the wrong place. It at one point made this whole thing public and then was like, hey, your, your Google API credentials have just been public on GitHub for five minutes. Hope that's not a problem. And so it's just like all of these, I know you've been, you've been using these tools a bunch too, but it's like, it, it has this relentless ability to just keep trying to do stuff. And generally speaking, I've had to interrupt it a bunch of times and be like, hey, you need this one very small piece of information. I can, I can just give it to you. Like, you, you don't have to go guess where it exists on the Internet or try to figure it out or do a bunch of weird shit to go find this API. Like, I, I, I know the URL. I can just tell you what it is. It'll be fine. And it's like, oh, that'd be great. Like, why didn't, you've been, you've been working for an hour and, you know, we've, we've burned down a rainforest so that you could do this. But at the end of all of this, I did it. I have, I have, I have vibe coded myself an app that I use all day, every day.

[Nilay Patel]

And it's just a regular piece of software that you made that runs on your desktop natively.

[David Pierce]

It's mostly still a web app because I wanted to be able to use it like A, everywhere and B, like in a browser and pull stuff to it.

[Nilay Patel]

Where's the web app hosted?

[David Pierce]

Vercel.

[Nilay Patel]

Okay.

[David Pierce]

And I could tell you the URL, but then you'd presumably be able to just use it. Yeah, I should.

[Nilay Patel]

Can you give me access to URL? I feel like I can start assigning you stuff.

[David Pierce]

I would like you to add things to my to do list. That would honestly be helpful for me. But yeah, and it's like I feel sort of the way I bet you feel about your imac, which is that, like, it. I. I did it. There's this insane process. It took too long. Like, could I have successfully used the limited amount of HTML and CSS and JavaScript that I have to build this myself? Probably. But instead, like last night I spent three hours playing video games. This is. This is a real story. I'm sitting there playing FIFA and every time the ball would go out of bounds and there's like a throw in or halftime or whatever, I would just le over and do another command for Claude code. And it's just sitting there building this thing for me as I'm playing video games and I'm like, this. This is a future I can get behind.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah. I have two thoughts about this. Cause I'm going to talk about my own little bipooning adventure. One, I have the same general reaction to all of these stories that I do when people tell me about their dreams. I'm like, this had. You had real emotions, you felt real feelings. I feel nothing. Because you were describing a literal hallucination that your mind created while you were asleep. Like, I. I'm sorry. Like I under. And like, some people are really into other people's dreams and some people aren't like, actually, Addie Robertson wrote this headline about AI generated art for us, like years ago because people would make it and they'd be so excited about it. And as we can all tell, it like kind of doesn't hit unless it's like a dancing baby strawberry. And you're like, something is happening in America. That's how I feel about all of those.

[David Pierce]

I think that's fine.

[Nilay Patel]

There's something about that that I think is really important and it connects to how all the software people we know are having full emotional crises about the nature of software development. And they're landing on the thing is alive. And the way OpenAI and Anthropic now talk about their coding tools, specifically they just call them AGI. We'll come to this. Right? They've arrived at like, it's obviously AGI is here because it can write software for you, but then the outputs are like, I made myself a little piece of software. I'll say mine. Like, I made myself A little piece of software this week. It is very stupid. It is so much stupider than yours. But I defeated the SmartThings API on the Frame TV and I'm very proud of myself.

[David Pierce]

Okay, you let the AI control your house now.

[Nilay Patel]

No, no, no, no. I'm much more of a scaredy cat than you.

[David Pierce]

Oh, oh, okay.

[Nilay Patel]

So I have a MacBook Neo that now has Canva on it because we got Max a Cricut printer for her birthday. Nice. And so like, we're just going to use it for that. But also it's my agentic toy. Toy playground, you know, that's the right combination of things.

[Ashley Esqueda]

Yeah.

[David Pierce]

Let it elementary school child and openclaw. What could possibly go wrong?

[Nilay Patel]

So just using Cowork, because Cowork is a little bit better behaved.

[David Pierce]

Sure.

[Nilay Patel]

Also, Anthropic changed its pricing for openclaw, so that's all a mess. But so this week, and so I just like, won't let it out of the box. And so I really want, you know, I have two shows. You know, I host Decoder and we are doing the Vergecast and I need to change the picture on this tv. And then also we've decided that gamer lights are appropriate for the Vergecast and not appropriate for interviewing CEOs. So, like, the lights need to change. Like, the lighting preset needs to change. I bought a Stream Deck. A Stream Deck Neo. It's little and cute and it just has buttons on it. And I was like, when I push the button, the lights should change and the image on the TV should change. And the lights are easy because the lights run on a piece of Mac desktop software called Amaron Desktop, which has a Stream Deck plugin. So you set up the scene, push the button. Great, the lights all change.

[David Pierce]

As someone who has seen you fight with just changing the image on the Frame TV, this seems very exciting, right?

[Nilay Patel]

So the Frame TV runs Tizen, which is controlled by SmartThings, which is software written by Samsung. And Samsung, I would say, has not taken advantage of the Vibe coding revolution to make better software. Yeah, you know, it's just. It is the thing that it is. And SmartThings, the platform in particular, is very bad because it, from what I can tell, the TV runs like a little web server that the SmartThings app on your phone has to connect to anew every time, as though that it has never even considered this opportunity in its life. It's like, oh, my God, I can see your tv. Would you like to set it up? Like every time. It's like utterly Confused about what's going on, on. And nothing about that API lets you do the one thing that you might want to do on a frame tv, which is change the artwork. Right? Or importantly, I know you've run into this. Turn the TV on and off in a predictable way. That is just not a choice you can make with a frame tv.

[David Pierce]

That's because on and off is not a concept the frame TV understands.

[Ashley Esqueda]

Right?

[David Pierce]

There's on, there's kind of on, and then there's also off. But off is sometimes on and on is technically also off.

[Nilay Patel]

Yes, it.

[David Pierce]

Everything I just said is accurate.

[Nilay Patel]

It's 100% true frame TV user. You want to turn on a frame TV into art mode and then set an image. You would think this is like the most basic thing you would want to automate on this tv. It is possible to light up a frame tv, pick one of Samsung's built in free streaming apps and like select a channel. It is not possible to turn it on in art mode and select an image. These things just like don't exist in the SmartThings API. So I asked Claude to do it. Claude. And yeah, it's like, I don't know. I have a little kid. You've got a little kid. It's like watching them just fall down this. Fall off the bed. It's like, oh, don't do that. Oh, you did it. And it's like, I'm going to use the SmartThings API and I just watched it try to use the SmartThings API and it failed. And then it found a bunch of Reddit threads that I was also familiar with from the past, where people have discovered the controls to do these things with WebSockets locally on the network. Network. So if. And I have never set this up because you need like a Raspberry PI, like running Python. Like, you have to. You need a little computer somewhere on your network that will just always talk to this thing. And I just haven't like gotten all the way there. But when you have Claude, it's like, oh, I wrote a Python script for your Mac that sits right in front of the tv. And now the stream deck just runs that Python script. And it, you know, took a long time. It had to. And I'd talk to the TV and had to figure out the file list of all the images on the TV and which images I wanted. And all of this is stuff like you're saying, before I had children, this would have been a somewhat frustrating yet ultimately rewarding weekend of screwing around in the Terminal and, like, reading Reddit threads. And instead it was a somewhat frustrating, but ultimately rewarding, like, half afternoon in between meetings of letting Claude just run at smart things and watching it happen. And I. And I don't let Claude use my terminal. Like, again, I'm. I'm much more of a scaredy cat than you are.

[David Pierce]

Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

So I was copying and pasting commands and code back and forth, which is slow. But, like, again, this is my level of understanding. Like, I could read the code and, like, make sure. And these are not long commands. Right. I could make sure it was doing what I thought it was supposed to do. Again, very, very basic. I'm not even remotely pretending that I am good at this. I can just read three lines of Python and be like, okay, you're sending a command to the TV to get its file list. Like, I. I understand what I'm looking at here. Yeah. Like, is there a crypto miner on my frame TV now? Like, I don't know, 100%, but I'm reasonably confident anyhow, so we. We made it. Made the scripts, they are sitting on this machine that I podcast from, and when I push the button on the stream deck, I'll do it right now. It can. It turns the lights, it does a macro, it changes the lights to white, it sends the command and picks the image on the tv. And this is like, a huge victory that because I have a baby, I would have never had a Saturday to be able to do. And, like, I just feel great about this. Did I just describe to you a dream? Like, with all the emotional stakes of describing a dream, I think so. But I think you and I both look at this and you're like, oh, a lot more people are going to be able to do a lot more things. And that is worth taking seriously. Yes. Now, I don't think any of this is, like, consumer software, which is the thing I keep saying. Like, this is. We are. Both of you and I are like, enthusiast hobbyists. Like, whatever category of tech nerd we are. Like, I could not. No normal person is ripping open their imac and writing Python scripts to change the art on their frame T. Like, it's just. We're still pretty far away from that, but there's a glimmer of something important here.

[David Pierce]

Yeah, I agree. And it's also, it. It is way too much work. Like, even. Even the idea that you have to open up the terminal and copy and paste a bunch of commands, like, just to get. We should. We're gonna move on from this. But one tiny Example is a thing I've been thinking about a lot is like, when you get into the terminal, one thing you constantly have to do is tell the terminal which part of the computer to address. Right. Like it's understanding of where you are looking and where it's supposed to work from doesn't exist. You have to give it all this context. Cloud code by default doesn't do that. So you're constantly, at least my experience has been I'm constantly running the wrong terminal command. And then it's like, well, what, where is that? I can't find the folder you're looking for. And then I have to go back to cloud and be like, what's, what's the address of this, of this folder again? Give me the full thing to ask. And it's just like that you've lost people, right? Like this is no longer a system that just works in any meaningful sense of the word. But the end result is very powerful, which is you have a problem that no one else has and I have a problem that no one else has. And we have both successfully solved that problem. And that's very powerful because I do think everybody has a problem that no one else has. So you can like, I think you're exactly right. Like there is a glimmer of something here, but it is like we're still nowhere near this being mainstream consumer technology yet.

[Nilay Patel]

And the gap that I would close there is most people cannot describe the problems they have in terms of software.

[David Pierce]

Right.

[Nilay Patel]

Your problem like described like very abstractly in terms of software, is there's a bunch of databases that I would like to look at all at the same time.

[David Pierce]

Yes, very straightforwardly.

[Nilay Patel]

And like software is made for that.

[David Pierce]

Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

And like most software is, look at this database. Like we keep having CEOs on decoder. And I'm like, all right, CEO Zillow, you made a database and all of your money is in the app that looks at that database. And now someone else might just show up and look at that database without your app in the way. And we've just done like a hundred episodes that are basically that theme. And something about AI is going to upend all of that. But for consumers being like, so what in your life is a database? You just get the blank stare, there's no follow up conversation. You're just sitting alone at your bar being like, but databases are important.

[David Pierce]

Which to be clear, is good and correct. People should not have to think about databases in their lives.

[Nilay Patel]

Your life is run by databases.

[David Pierce]

That's all I'm Saying that is true.

[Nilay Patel]

What is the frame TV but a database of artwork?

[David Pierce]

Is the database on or is it off? Neeli, think about that.

[Nilay Patel]

That is unclear.

[David Pierce]

All right, let's turn now to the Hype Desk, our new segment about what is cool and rad in the world. Welcome back. Ross Miller and Ashley Esqueta to tell us what is truly hype on the Internet these days. Ross, Ashley, welcome back.

[Ross Miller]

Hello.

[Ashley Esqueda]

Thank you for having us again.

[Ross Miller]

Yeah, I didn't think we're going to get another invitation.

[David Pierce]

I mean, it's a week to week thing, I would say. But for now, for now, we.

[Nilay Patel]

You.

[David Pierce]

You barely made it by the skin of your teeth. Uh, Nilai, you gave a speech last time. Do you want to give a shorter version of the speech this time about what the Hype Desk is?

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah. The Hype Desk is where Ross and Ashley, who are our friends who do not work at the Verge, come and tell us what's hot in, I dunno, entertainment. Video games, cool stuff out in the world. And then because they don't work at the Verge, if brands want to do brand integrations, you can buy them because you can't buy us. And this makes our ethics policy stay pure, which is very precious to us. My favorite part of the Hype Desk last week is the YouTube audience completely understood what was going on and was very happy to see Ross and Ashley. And the audience that like leaves comments on TheVerge.com was like, why do you have to make money?

[David Pierce]

I literally got an email last week that was like, why are you guys doing stuff that seems like you're trying to make money?

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah.

[David Pierce]

And I was like, well, this is fascinating and we should talk about it. But it is we. A thing we will do always is try to make very clear what is and is not sponsored in the Hype Desk. Like, what we want to do is we want this to be good even when no one's paying for it. And we want it to also be good when someone is paying for it. Today is unsponsored for flavor,

[Ross Miller]

fun and not profit.

[David Pierce]

Exactly. All fun, no profit. That's what we're doing. Ross and Ashley, what have you guys been up to? What do you have for us this week?

[Ross Miller]

Oh, man. I mean, well, we've been both obsessing over Artemis too. That's like. But before we talk about that, Ross, I think we need to discuss the terrible tragedy that has befallen us. Named the Super Mario Galaxy movie.

[Ashley Esqueda]

Yeah. There are two through lines in both these, which I'm very proud of. And it means this happened. We're gonna be talking space.

[Nilay Patel]

Is it just galaxies?

[Ashley Esqueda]

Yes, we're gonna be talking space and we're gonna be talking plumbers in both of these segments.

[Ross Miller]

In both stories, weird overlap. Works out really good.

[Ashley Esqueda]

But first we're gonna talk about the Mario Galaxy movie. It had the opening weekend 370 million. It didn't quite hit what the first one did, but like, just barely. I mean, it's gonna be a billion dollar movie at a time when theaters just need that, like, it's a very good thing for film. It's not a good film, but it's a great spectacle.

[Nilay Patel]

I thought the first one was good.

[Ashley Esqueda]

I. I liked it.

[Ross Miller]

Yeah. I thought it was solid. I thought it was cute. It was cute. But oh, boy, the critics don't care for it. They are angry. The critics are actually furious about it. Somebody said it was physically painful to sit through goodness.

[Nilay Patel]

And so is it just. People are going to see it because it's something to do. I don't. Because the criticism, like, populist gap is bigger than ever in all things lately.

[David Pierce]

This was also sort of true with the first Mario movie, which was like, critics were kind of like, nyeh. And audiences loved it. I loved it. So I'm like, I was optimistic coming into this one. I have not seen it yet.

[Ashley Esqueda]

I think you will like it too. I enjoyed it, but I enjoyed it going in with the right mindset. Like, it is not trying to make like a narrative brilliant movie. It is designed the way you design a Nintendo game. There's a bunch of really cool scenes that are like very loosely connected and it is just like breakneck pace. I remember I went to see it with a friend this week and I looked over a couple times going, how did we get to this point? Because I had just forgotten how they jumped around. The thing that I cannot convey enough is I am struggling to think of a Mario game that has not been referenced between these two movies. It's like Nintendo illumination thought they would get no other chance, so they threw every single idea they had.

[Nilay Patel]

Did they get to Luigi's Mansion in the first movie?

[Ashley Esqueda]

There's a reference to it. And that's as far as we've gotten. And if there is a third movie,

[Ross Miller]

I want the spin off. I want the whole. I want a whole Luigi's Mansion spinoff. I want a whole series.

[Ashley Esqueda]

It feels like they're going for the Smash Brothers Cinematic Universe. They're just throwing every Nintendo idea.

[Ross Miller]

They introduce a lot of characters in this one. Yeah.

[Ashley Esqueda]

Not a spoiler. Star Fox is in this.

[Ross Miller]

Star Fox, Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

Star Fox is in the trailers, right? Yeah.

[Ashley Esqueda]

Yes.

[Ross Miller]

Yeah. My son told me that there was a character in it. He's, oh, I'm just gonna spoil it. I don't care. Somebody was like. He was like, mama. Guess my mother took him to go see it before we could see it together, which is great offense to me as a Nintendo fan, but he said, mama, Rob is in this movie. And I'm like, what? First of all, huge high five to my six year old for knowing. For remembering who Rob is. But yeah, he's like, rob is in this movie. And I was like, that feels like a lot like that feels like they really jammed them all in there. Phanto is in this movie from Super Mario Bros. 2.

[Nilay Patel]

Can I put this on, like a spectrum of things?

[Ashley Esqueda]

Yes.

[Ross Miller]

Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

There's. I would say the Lego Movie, the first Lego Movie, or even the Lego Batman Movie. Really well done. Lots of references, very commercial, like the toys are alive. On the other end of the spectrum is, I don't know, Ready Player One, which is just a non stop sequence of references hung together in a plot that I think ends with being like, you should not trust Mark Zuckerberg. Like something happened there. But like, you know, ready Player. Even the book is just like, do you remember this? Do you remember this? Do you remember this?

[Ross Miller]

It is.

[David Pierce]

Wait, this is just a total random side. I listened to the audiobook of Ready Player One, which is read by Wil Wheaton and is excellent. But there's literally there are parts of that book that are just several minutes long of him saying 80s movies. Like, I'm not, I'm not exaggerating.

[Ashley Esqueda]

No, it's.

[David Pierce]

There's.

[Ashley Esqueda]

Yeah, I remember that.

[Nilay Patel]

So this is, I'm just. This is my, my spectrum, for whatever it's worth. And you can argue about what movies.

[Ross Miller]

That is a scale. Okay.

[Nilay Patel]

But you can understand these are like,

[Ross Miller]

it's a special quality children's entertainment and maybe less quality quality children's entertainment based

[Nilay Patel]

on toys and not references. Right. Where. Where is this Mario movie on the range of list?

[Ashley Esqueda]

Let's say from Barbie to Ready Player One, where Barbie had a statement and really used the IP and has something bigger to say. All right, this is closer to ready player one, like 2/3 of the way on that. On that, like, it is like it's speedrunning a theme park.

[Nilay Patel]

Sure.

[Ross Miller]

I'm going to say, I'm going to put it squarely around the Minecraft movie, which I enjoyed very much. It's a fever Dre of A film that satisfies the fans of the IP that go see it. But also, if you are not a huge Nintendo fan, you might walk away being like, I don't know what happened there. But also, it was cute and I had fun. I think if people walk away feeling like they had fun, that's great. Obviously, I always want, like the. The Lego movies of the world, the Barbies, the. The K Pop Demon Hunters. Like, that's. I want those quality children. You can make quality things for kids. But yeah, I mean, I think if anyone's ever played a Mario game, I don't really think that any of those make any sort of major statement.

[Nilay Patel]

The reason I brought up Luigi's Mansion is that game came out when I was in my early 20s, and it just made it clear to me that storytelling was a wide open field. You're like, here's what it is. It's Mario's brother, and he has a vacuum cleaner that sucks up ghosts. You're gonna play this game for 60 hours. And I was like, okay, anything is possible. My world has cracked open in an all new way.

[Ross Miller]

It can do anything.

[Nilay Patel]

But it literally makes no sense.

[Ross Miller]

It does not make any sense.

[Ashley Esqueda]

And that's the movie.

[Ross Miller]

That is the movie.

[Ashley Esqueda]

I'm fine with that.

[Ross Miller]

But do you know who else could have used two plumbers this week?

[Nilay Patel]

Oh, my God.

[Ross Miller]

Artemis. Too.

[Nilay Patel]

Incredible.

[David Pierce]

What a transition. I love it.

[Ashley Esqueda]

I love them. Great.

[Ross Miller]

So good.

[David Pierce]

Tell us what happened.

[Ross Miller]

They're having a toilet problem. They're not able to eject urine from the bathroom.

[Ashley Esqueda]

But Ross explained this better because they actually fixed it. So Artemis 2, they did fix it. It's been an amazing moment for humanity in space. And I love this. And I do want to talk a little bit about the toilet because it was something that every daily press conference came up. Everyone had to know what's going on. Hours after Artemis 2 launched, the toilet broke. The urine portion of the toilet broke. And Christina Cook, one of the four, I think she's a mission specialist, won on that. She called herself a space plumber and she got it fixed.

[Ross Miller]

Now space plumber won.

[Ashley Esqueda]

Then it broke again. This is my favorite weird antidote. The frozen urine in the exterior vent line was just causing cloggage. So what they did is they took the Orion capsule and they decided to rotate the whole capsule toward the sun to use solar heat to thaw urine blockage and fix the toilet. This is like day three or four.

[Nilay Patel]

This, by the way, is the entire thesis of data centers in space. Yeah, we can harness the power of the sun to do amazing things.

[David Pierce]

Yeah.

[Ashley Esqueda]

And there's this amazing line. I think it was Jackie Mahaffrey, a mission capsule controller communicator. She said, quote, you are go for all types of use of the toilet. Like just an all time great space quote.

[Nilay Patel]

Incredible. The fact that it happened right after a launch in that way when everyone was paying attention and they're like, go for toilet. And then

[Ross Miller]

the sad trauma actually like

[Nilay Patel]

all of this happened. We haven't seen a launch of this scale. It's like the great victory.

[Ross Miller]

And it's like, whoops, whoops, toilet busted.

[Ashley Esqueda]

It's such the most humane thing. Cause space is like, it's an amazing adventure to go out. We've gone farther now as humans we've ever done before. And this is a very important part of it. How do you eat? How do you sleep? How do you stay hygienic? And it seems silly to talk about. It's quite literally toilet humor what we're doing. But it is such a vital part. And I love how everyone's been kind of humanized by going, we need to know if you're okay with your restroom situation.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah.

[Ross Miller]

As a person who lives in a house with one bathroom and three people, I understand that's a critical issue that needs to be fixed immediately.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah. You can't screw around with that. I thought right next to it, their problems with Outlook were very good.

[Ross Miller]

Yes.

[Nilay Patel]

Where they like, literally the call is like, we have two copies of Outlook running on this computer and we don't know why. And it's like, no one knows why.

[Ross Miller]

No one knows why.

[Nilay Patel]

They did solve that as well.

[David Pierce]

It has been an extremely internety mission in all of the best ways. Right. Like the photos have been unbelievable. Like unbelievable. The photos.

[Ross Miller]

Oh, unreal. Just gorgeous. It makes me want to quit astrophotography because they're that good. Like, I'm just like, I'll never. What was the point of this? I'm just taking pictures of what's out there, not taking pictures of us.

[Nilay Patel]

Well, it's fine. Look, you just get a Samsung phone, it'll just generate photos of the moon left and right.

[Ross Miller]

That's fine.

[David Pierce]

This has been my favorite run of memes on the Internet has been people being like, oh, thank God, all of Samsung's moon photos are going to get even. Even better now because these are so good. But then there was also like the beautiful moment where they're naming a crater after one of the astronauts late wife. And it's this gorgeous. And just a bottle of Nutella Floats by, like, so many amazing Internet moments.

[Ross Miller]

The way that this has just dovetailed into the best parts of the Internet. Like, I think. I think sometimes we all miss, like, what sort of this idea of, like, what the Internet used to be. Used to be this, like, very fun place. And, and. And now I think we got, like, we've been reminded of, like, what that was. We have this kind of collective joy at this thing that is, like, really inspiring and really moving, but also incredibly memeable. And it's just been very, like, that's the best time on the Internet is when something is, like, really interesting or, or cool or inspiring and then also just imminently memeable. You can just meme it all day.

[Ashley Esqueda]

It's beautiful. And also, honestly, kudos to the astronauts because this is a moment where everything they say is gonna matter. And they've been, all of them, surprisingly poetic. There was a line I think Victor Glover gave on Easter, and I want this on a poster. All this emptiness. This is a whole bunch of nothing. This thing we call the universe. You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together. Who just drops fire like that in the middle of a press conference or an interview with cbs?

[David Pierce]

That's so weird. That's how Nilay describes the Vergec.

[Nilay Patel]

So it's funny. Cause my favorite quote was when they woke them up with Pink Pony Club by Chapel Roan and then didn't play the chorus. And then they were like, we were all waiting for the chorus. And the poor flight controller was like, we'll try again tomorrow.

[Ashley Esqueda]

And the Wake up music, there's an official Spotify playlist. So if anyone wants to know, at the time of recording, Lonesome Drifter by Charlie Crockett was the last thing they woke up to.

[Nilay Patel]

That's pretty good. We have to end on hope. I think we need to. I mean, my rule is you can make a little bit of fun astronauts and say they're goofy, but these photos are incredible.

[Ashley Esqueda]

Amazing.

[Ross Miller]

They're the best.

[Ashley Esqueda]

And also kudos to Imma Roff on the Verse team who pulled out the EXIF data. So we know they're using Nikon cameras to take these amazing photos.

[Ross Miller]

That is cool.

[Nilay Patel]

They are using Nikon cameras and a lot of people have been comparing these photos because hello World, which is the new photo of Earth from that distance, doesn't quite stack up to blue marble in ways. And everyone's like, it's because they shot blue marble on a Hasselblad. No, it's because the ISO is like, cracked it's like 51,000. I love this. I love, like, this is what we're doing. They also have a bunch of iPhones up there primarily for photo and video. They don't have Internet access. And I think that's also really interesting because the fancy cameras take whatever process. And I think the iPhones are much more candid, and seeing the candidates, making them more human in space, I think is also very important.

[Ross Miller]

Yeah, it is really cool.

[David Pierce]

It's been very cool. We'll link to some of the photos, but the Eclipse photos in particular are just. Every time I look at it, it blows my mind.

[Ross Miller]

It's just so amazing.

[David Pierce]

It's unbelievable. All right, Ross, Ashley, thank you. I think you've earned it. You can come back next week. This is great. Good to have you both here. We're going to take a break and we're going to come back, talk about some AI news. We'll be right back.

[Nilay Patel]

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[David Pierce]

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[David Pierce]

All right, we're back. So let's talk about some news. The biggest thing on the Internet this week, as has been the case for many weeks the last few years, is OpenAI and in particular this big New Yorker story about Sam Altman. I'm assuming, Nila, you've, you've read this story?

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah, I did read it. It's really interesting and actually a little decoder preview. Ronan Farrow, who co wrote the piece is on decoder next week talking about.

[David Pierce]

Oh nice.

[Nilay Patel]

So if you have questions you can email us decoder@the verge.com we really do read all the emails as I keep saying. Would love to hear what you want to know and we'll see if we can get Ronan to tell us some stuff that didn't make it into print,

[David Pierce]

which would be astonishing given the length. Yes, given, well given the length and also given what this story is. I mean I think I, I, I tried very hard not to see this story as pure David confirmation bias, but I'm starting to feel like the, the take that I espoused last summer, which is that OpenAI is a house of cards and is about to collapse. Just can we've been talking about this a lot like this company feels like a mess. It's a mess. And, and in particular I would say the the takeaway from this story about Sam Albin, which is very long but is is terrific like it is. It is exceedingly well reported. It's full of good data. It is like I think it's about as measured a way of saying Sam Altman is a, is a sociopath who wants power and will destroy the world to get it as you could possibly ask for. People should read the piece. But it's very hard to come out of this piece and not feel like when Sam Altman got fired a couple of years ago and then came back, OpenAI changed forever and only for the worse.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah, I think that's right. Not to talk about journalism, but like big features like this often just validate a feeling that everyone has had with rigor.

[David Pierce]

Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

Do you know what I mean? Like a lot of people knew Sam Altman lied. A lot of people knew that the weirdness of him getting fired and coming back was extremely weird. And the inside story of that was not a secret. I think in the AI community like Ilya left and started a new company and Mira left and started a new company and all of the players left and started new companies and Sam hired lots of new people in particular from Meta. And I really feel as though OpenAI thought it could stumble its way into defeating Google. From business terms. They're like we made a thing that people like better than Google. Google will be slow and flat footed and captured by innovators dilemma and they won't do anything and we'll just be the new Google and we'll figure out ads and now we're Google. And that is one, been hard just in a lot of ways that's been hard. Two, Google did not just concede that was just not a thing they were going to do. And I think Sundar shuffled his entire executive team and they are vastly more competitive now and their products are good and people like them. I think there's a lot of AI slop at the top of search results but whatever, set that aside, they responded to the threat in meaningful and good ways. And then there's everything else OpenAI is doing which is trying to raise money endlessly courting Saudi money and Chinese money. Like all of the stuff in this story that's like Sam talks out of both sides of his mouth and doesn't feel bad when one side feels lied to. One, that is very much the heart of why he was fired according to the reporting in this piece. But two, it's so reflected in everything else that has happened and the idea that they could just stumble into a Google scale business that would paper over all the flaws to me feels like the story of OpenAI. You cannot stumble into being Google. And for all of Google's own distraction and boy have we talked about Google's distraction over the years and the products they spin up and kill and their Reorganization Alphabet and are they going to make contact lenses that detect diabetes? There's a lot of distraction. And Google, they never take their eye off the ball of how much money is search making? Is search a good business? Are we winning in search? Like, they're so good at that that it funds all of the noise. And OpenAI is nowhere close to that.

[David Pierce]

Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

That to me was like the big takeaway of the story is here's a long story about Sam Altman and his personality and what they think the technology can do. And what it masks is he's not paying any attention to the business he's running. Like his business is raising money. Right.

[David Pierce]

And I think I was really struck by both the piece and the reaction to it, which I think lay out the whole sort of AI debate along really correct lines. And on the one hand, you can look at everything that Sam Altman is doing as essentially normal behavior for a particular kind of ruthless capitalist. Right. Like, it's very robber baron activity. And that this is a thing, quote, unquote, great businessmen have done for generations, right? Like you, you, you play some games, you, you tell some lies, you say one thing to one person because it's what they want to hear, and you say a different thing to somebody else because it's what you want to hear. And the ultimate goal is to build your business as big as you want. And then the government fights you in an antitrust. And like, this is what we do, right? Like, we have heard stories about businessmen who do most of these things for a long time. Lots of people lionize it and try to be those things. Lots of people think it's terrible and those people should be put in jail. But the piece actually starts with the thesis espoused by people like Sam Altman 10 years ago that AI is different, that if you look at this thing as. As important and big and transformational and literally world changing, as all of these people say that it is, and have been saying that it is since the beginning, does it require a different kind of person to lead it a different kind of way? And I think that to me is like, is the question to ask about people like Sam Altman and about. And really is the foundation of a lot of the stuff you're describing, right? Like, you covered Sam Altman's firing very much in real time, I think, like from lines at Disney World, the zoo,

[Nilay Patel]

it was the Bronx. We're not at Disney World. But yes, I published scoops about that from the Bronx U on my phone.

[David Pierce]

That's a real thing.

[Nilay Patel]

That happened.

[David Pierce]

But even then there was this question of, like, we are doing something that requires more than a great startup CEO that we have. We have a moral responsibility to the world to do this differently and handle it differently. And that was a big part of the original pitch and corporate structure of OpenAI. Right? Like, there's a whole section in the piece about Google offering people these monstrous salaries to go do AI work there. And people went to OpenAI because they were like, no, no, no, we care about this thing. We're.

[Ashley Esqueda]

We.

[David Pierce]

We are here for moral reasons because we want to do the right thing the right way with this unbelievably important technology that is as important as fire, right? Like, these are the stakes. If you believe these are the stakes, then. Then what we require is a different kind of person to run it a different kind of way, or else all of this is going to shit and we're all going to die. Like, those are the stakes. Those are the. The AI people would tell you those are the stakes.

[Nilay Patel]

Yes, they love telling you that those are the stakes.

[David Pierce]

Right? And, and yet what we have increasingly. And I think there's this very telling moment in the story where Sam Altman basically is like, my job was really fun until we launched ChatGPT. And it's. And, and then it immediately changed. And I think that's clearly correct because at, at some point you get to run like a. A cool frontier research laboratory that is doing really interesting work that has this huge potential to be transformative. And then you launch the thing and people give you money for it, and that changes everything. And this is a. I mean, you and I have seen this story happen over and over and over and over again. This is, this is what happens in tech. People launch a thing, somebody gives them money, somebody demands more money for their money, the incentives change, the business change, and ultimately you end up building business software. Like, this is the AI story again. And I just think, like, again, I'm so hung up on. If this thing is as big as anybody says, the idea of it being run by quote, unquote, great businessmen should be terrifying. And if that is, if, if that's where we are, what do we even do? Like, do you trust the government more with this? Do you trust some. Do you trust the European government more with this? Like, we're in this place of. If not Sam Altman, then who is? I. I just. I don't know. I ended this piece in this place of, like, how are we. How do we fix any of this?

[Nilay Patel]

I'm a little less nihilistic. About things than you are, I think.

[David Pierce]

Glad to hear that, because I've just

[Nilay Patel]

come to the conclusion that a lot of people got very wealthy and very powerful because they had the ability to write software.

[David Pierce]

Sure.

[Nilay Patel]

And this is just broadly true. Right. Like tech bros exist, you know, and it's because they could write software or they were good at managing teams of people who could write software. And software largely controls our world. Right. And that is true to a limit. Most people do not perceive most of the software that drives their world every single day.

[David Pierce]

Sure. Right.

[Nilay Patel]

But I don't know. You can take the example of Elon and Doge. Doge showed up in the federal government. And how did it exert power? Well, yeah, it fired a bunch of people. It also took over databases. And then Elon got very confused about how the databases, like the Social Security database, had been modified to reflect reality.

[David Pierce]

Right.

[Nilay Patel]

All the dead people were just zeroed out columns because it's easier to change the database than change reality. But Elon's brain is backwards. He's a software brain. And he's like, the software is real, reality is wrong. And so I just think if you're in that mode and a lot of these people are very powerful and they have earned their wealth and their status because of their ability to make software. And now you have a robot that can just make software, it will delete your status.

[David Pierce]

Right.

[Nilay Patel]

Or change the way software is made forever. This is why they all talk about the sasspocalypse.

[David Pierce]

Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

This is why they're all thinking about whether or not enterprise applications are AGI. I'm not even kidding about that. They changed Fiji CMO's title at OpenAI from CEO of Applications to CEO of AGI deployment. Because I think they. I think the industry has coalesced on the idea that being able to write software is AGI. Jensen Huang is like, AGI is here.

[David Pierce]

We're going to deploy digital Jesus.

[Nilay Patel]

But I don't think that they're at the, you know, like, they keep setting these benchmarks, like it's as smart as a PhD candidate. And it's like a PhD in what? And it turns out what they meant is a PhD in software development.

[David Pierce]

Right.

[Nilay Patel]

And they, you know, you can, like, measure that in some way. You can, like, look at it and say, okay, this is as good as the people that we have been managing and evaluating for years. Outside of that, I'm not sure that these tools can do the things that they promise to do. So you just have this moment where a lot of people with a lot of money and status have made a tool that might radically change their money and status and costs a lot of money to run and a lot of people want to use. And you can see the opportunities to find a business process that looks like a loop in a database and automate that yourself. Like, that's going to be huge. I have no doubt that that is going to be huge. And you can see Anthropic, by comparison to OpenAI, lasered in on that opportunity from the very beginning and said, we're going to solve business. We're going to be an enterprise software company. And they are successful. I think Dario likes to style himself as being safer and more responsible. But the reality is most of Anthropic's customers are huge businesses that are not out to destroy the world. They're out to, like, do logistics a little bit better or, like, connect five databases from three different vendors that were acquired over 15 different years. And, like, Claude can just do that. And that is amazing. I'll give you an example just from our own little database. The Verge is a database like what is a website. It's a big database full of stories. There's a bunch of old features in our database that are broken because of successive redesigns or web standards changes or whatever it is. After 15 years, there are stories on our site that are broken. I'm like, we should just let Claude fix them. This is a classic example of we would never pay a human being to go through the archive because we'll never get enough traffic to pay back the work. And it's like, I can. This is what it's for. This is amazing.

[David Pierce]

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

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah. And I don't have this, like, labor anxiety about it, because in no world was that ever a good idea to set a human upon doing. Like, it just economically made no sense. And even, like, if you said a human undoing, you're like, is anyone ever going to read this? Like, this is a real conversation I've had. Like, engineers want to make new things that people care about. They don't want to make old things or fix old things anyhow. So I just see this moment where you're describing, like, should people like Sam Altman be in charge of the fate of the world? I'm like, I'm not sure that this extends, like, the world insofar as it is describable by databases. Yeah, we should. And I think there is ferocious competition to be the leader of that. And I think there's a reason Anthropic basically markets itself as like we're so dangerous.

[David Pierce]

Right.

[Nilay Patel]

Like they want the perception of that responsibility even as they walk back their responsibility pledges. I think there's a reason Google is like constantly talking about how responsible they are. So like at least in the, the spaces where there's product market fit, I actually think that there's a competition to be the most responsible and reliable character. It's. Do you buy that this is going to be so explosive everywhere? I'm still unconvinced. I think in one field in software development, it is absolutely true that AI will change everything. It is not clear that software development is all of the human experience. And I think a lot of software people are very confused about that.

[David Pierce]

I agree with that. And I think ironically your lack of nihilism comes from the fact that you don't think the ceiling on AI is nearly as high as a lot of AI people. People do. Right.

[Nilay Patel]

And I think that ceiling is related to do. I think software is everything. Sure. But if you put in like software literally controls the world, the ceiling on AI is AI will control the world.

[David Pierce]

Sort of. AI will build software that controls the world is not the same as AI will control the world or use that software. Sure. No, I, I again, like, I think, I think the ceiling on that is very high. But it's, it's really, if you believe as many AI people do, and I'm not, not, I'm not generalizing this as a thing. I've heard people say out loud in the last week that the AI, that AI will be more important and more transformative than the, than the Industrial Revolution. If you believe that the stakes are different because it changes the way we live our day to day lives. Again, like you're smiling because you don't believe that.

[Nilay Patel]

No, I'm smiling because I'm thinking about Thomas Jefferson. And I remember you and I once got drunk at a Mexican restaurant and talked about Thomas Jefferson. That's why I'm smiling.

[David Pierce]

It happens from time to time.

[Nilay Patel]

This is like how David and I live our lives. Because you went to uva, right?

[David Pierce]

I did.

[Nilay Patel]

Which is Jefferson's university.

[David Pierce]

I remember this Jefferson, we call him Mr. Jefferson.

[Nilay Patel]

It's very important. You can tell there's a lot of depth to the Verge, Cassidy. It's like we got drunk over tacos and talked about Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson's version of America. And again, Jefferson's problematic character in American history. But he was like, we should all be Independent farmers. Like, this is his big agrarian vision of America. Okay, Maybe with AI, every single person can run a little company because you don't need to hire a staff and everybody can. Sure. Like, maybe all that's going to happen that is not Sam Altman being like, we should rewrite the social contract, which is a real thing. OpenAI published this week.

[David Pierce]

Yeah, right.

[Nilay Patel]

But maybe the fact that everyone can run their own little small business because the AI tools will allow you to do that at a scale that no one could ever do before. Yeah, maybe that will change all of society. I just don't think, like, Sam Altman gets to dictate that. But, like, that was a very Jeffersonian notion of America. It just didn't come to pass. And maybe it's like you showed TJ some AI. Maybe he'd be like, finally, we can all be farmers. But I just. I don't think Sam Altman gets to say it or make it true. And one thing that I think is very true about this piece is, like I said, great features validate things. A lot of people already felt like Sam Altman couldn't be trusted, and now they know or they are validated in that feeling. And it is no longer a. You no longer have to go out on a limb to say it, because there's a big New Yorker piece written by Ronan Fair that says it for you. And, you know, Tina Nguyen, our DC reporter, ran around with Open Policy Proposal this week and asked a bunch of D.C. policymakers and, like, this would be great if it didn't come from OpenAI. That is the problem for this company.

[David Pierce]

I think OpenAI is in the middle of digging itself, what I would call the meta hole, where it is, it has gone from the company that is so obviously out in front of this, that is kind of the. The leader in the face of a movement to being a company that I think is going to have to fight its reputation at every turn in the court of public opinion.

[Nilay Patel]

Like, especially if it doesn't have a great product. And I'm telling you right now, maybe Codex is a great product that will compete with cloud code. It's not the thing that's going to win public opinion.

[David Pierce]

No, it's not. And I think especially, I mean, the. The New Yorker piece ends, I think, in the right place, which is with the whole battle with the Pentagon right between Anthropic and the Pentagon that OpenAI just sort of happily jumped into. And they were like, well, we made a deal. And everybody was like, well, that actually seems like it Sucks. And so I think, I think your point that maybe there is a business case to being the responsible AI company is a good and hopeful one. It feels, I don't know, it feels, it feels small as a, as a moat right now for any of these companies. It does.

[Nilay Patel]

And Anthropic keeps walking away from its own commitments, which is, you know, basically the through line of the open eye piece.

[David Pierce]

And do you know why? It's all for the money. This is the point, right? Like the, the thing that changed was that AI became where all of the money went. And when all the money goes there, you have to figure out how to pay it off. And these companies, the race became so intense and moved so fast and all of these companies got so big so quickly, and Everybody who left OpenAI after the firing, which they now call the blip, raised billions of dollars. Right? Like there were $10 billion companies before they ever launched anything. Like there is now so much money that the, the ability to operate on like, moral let's do what's good for the world grounds is just rapidly starting to disappear. And ironically, you mentioned Google. This puts Google in an incredibly powerful position because Google has enough money that it can just wait everybody else out. Google can continue to run the best business in the history of the Internet and be the good guy in the AI world, which I don't really, I don't think it's exactly doing, but it's doing some of it. And I think for a long time sundarpichai would say things about how Google was moving slowly and trying to be responsible essentially as a tool for being slow. But now it's like that. That's an opportunity Google has that no one else has. And it'll. It'll be fascinating to see how much Google is willing to play the. We're the good guys taking our time on this card while everybody else just trips all over themselves trying to figure out how to make money.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah. To me, I feel, it feels like Google has two fronts. One, it has to respond to anthropic and software development, which they have talked about, and I don't think they're quite as good at yet, but presumably they will respond. And then two, they have to keep OpenAI away in search. And maybe OpenAI has pulled some search queries away from Google, but it hasn't pulled the money away yet.

[David Pierce]

Right.

[Nilay Patel]

And I don't see that money going anytime soon because OpenAI's ad products are bad because all of the people are gone. Like, literally the amount of turnover in OpenAI's executive ranks is like through the roof. And Google isn't going to sit still. And Google has the single best distribution in world history because it owns search and they can just keep putting AI mode in search until you just keep using it. And using ChatGPT doesn't seem important to you. And I think they're just going to keep doing that. And the other piece of that, which I think is super fascinating is everyone already expects Google search to be littered with ads. And as they add ads into ChatGPT, people will perceive that experience to be degrading.

[David Pierce]

So you're saying already having initiatified is actually better than going through it publicly? You're probably right.

[Nilay Patel]

And especially if Google, you know, the free version of Chat gp, which is fundamentally what most people are using, is like not very good.

[David Pierce]

No. Right.

[Nilay Patel]

They're, they're trying to save costs there and you can, you can see it and you can feel it. And Google can spend a little bit more money because it's already monetized. And so you, they just have a game to play in consumer that I think will ultimately lead them to be what Google is, which is the default answer engine for most people.

[David Pierce]

Yep, I think you're right. All right, everybody should go read that piece. We'll link to it in the show notes. It's a long one, so carve out an afternoon. We're gonna take a break.

[Nilay Patel]

If you have Questions for Ronan dakotheferge.com

[David Pierce]

decoderattheverge.com yeah, send him Nilay. I have questions for Ronan and most of all are like, they're largely about his hair, but that's a different question. We're going to take a break. We're going to come back to the lightning round. We'll be right back.

[Ashley Esqueda]

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[David Pierce]

specialoffer K Pop Demon Hunters, Haja Boy's Breakfast Meal and Hunt Tricks Meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi?

[Nilay Patel]

It's not a battle. So glad the Saja Boys could Take

[Ashley Esqueda]

breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.

[Nilay Patel]

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[Ashley Esqueda]

No, really stop.

[Nilay Patel]

You can really feel the respect in this battle.

[David Pierce]

Pick a meal to pick a side

[Nilay Patel]

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[David Pierce]

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[David Pierce]

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[Nilay Patel]

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Now a teenager who calls them vintage will offer that same small fortune back. Sell them easily on Depop.

[Nilay Patel]

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[Nilay Patel]

You see the problem? We can't accept the sponsorships.

[David Pierce]

Right.

[Nilay Patel]

We had a CFO at Vox Media ages and ages ago and he described his job as just being in the like ready position in a gym class to catch money when it arrived, which I've always like. I don't know how our business works. We're going to do the mailbag with Helen. She will tell us how it actually works. But that's always how I pictured it. And the reason I was saying that YouTube audience understands it is because every YouTuber does brand deals, right? And we can't. We. I just like, we won't do it. So we just need to catch the money. That's all I'm saying. We're just gonna catch the money. It's. It's waiting for us.

[David Pierce]

I, I actually know for sure that it is once again time for America's favorite podcast within a podcast. Because I know what he did this week. It's time for Brennan Carr as a dummy.

[Nilay Patel]

It's a remix. You gotta be kidding me.

[David Pierce]

This is big. We are, we are stacking theme songs. This is original Brandon Carr's a Dummy theme by Robert B. Remix by Wesley, who describes it as a new age remix inspired by Enigma's 1990 banger Sadness. Hell yeah, everybody.

[Nilay Patel]

That was awesome.

[David Pierce]

Brendan Carr doesn't deserve theme music this good.

[Nilay Patel]

It's a real problem we are kind of getting. We're giving him a little too much. But that was awesome.

[David Pierce]

That was. Thank you. What do we have this week, Nilay?

[Nilay Patel]

Everyone knows we have this week. It is very dumb. It is Brendan just way out over his skis as usual saying a thing that he shouldn't Say with power that he absolutely does not have. So if you are awake in the world, you know the United States and Israel have launched a war against Iran, which is not going well. I think we're safe to say it is not going well and no one likes it. There was an announcement of a two week ceasefire after Trump threatened to destroy an entire civilization which scared a lot of people. They've announced a two week ceasefire. Everyone claimed victory. Pete Hegseth claimed victory. The Iranians also notably claimed victory. They put out a statement saying we've won. Here's our 10 point proposal that the United States has agreed to. They put it out in their official state media channels. News organizations across the spectrum reported on the statement. It was again put out by the Iranian government. Iranian officials on Iranian news channels. CNN reported on this and it says that they've won. Like that's just their posture. Like we won. Like you're going to do what we want. You can agree or disagree with that, but that is the posture that they are taking. Yep, Trump puts out a true social statement only responding to CNN saying the alleged statement put out by CNN World News is a fraud. As CNN well knows, the false statement was linked to a fake news site from Nigeria. This is not true. Immediately picked up by CNN and blurred out as legitimate headline. The official statement by Iran was just released and posted on Truth below. Authorities are looking to determine whether or not a crime was committed on the issuance of fake CNN world statement or was it a sick rogue player. First of all, if you just read Trump posts for what they are, it is clear this man is not well. I don't know what else to say about that.

[David Pierce]

I was just about to say I assumed you read that wrong and then realized I'm looking at the screenshot and I was like, oh no. He read the words as they were presented.

[Nilay Patel]

It's just how they. And it ends with CNN is being ordered to immediately withdraw the statement. Full apologies for their, as usual, terrible reporting results. This investigation will be announced in the near future. Okay, The President of the United States cannot do this. Can't do it. It turns out in America you can, you can lie. There's a, there's an amendment. It's actually the first one and it's, it, it protects you from consequences of your speech from the government.

[David Pierce]

Also importantly, CNN didn't.

[Nilay Patel]

Also importantly worth remembering, but cnn, the President is ordering CNN to immediately withdraw the statement is not a power the President has. And in fact the framers of our government, the founding fathers of this country Made sure that that was not a power the government has. And they put it again, it's the first one. It's the First Amendment, you might recall, has historically been very important right there. So Trump posts this and you know, the way that Trump posts things and people take them seriously or not, whatever. Our boy Brendan cannot, cannot resist. Cannot resist. He gets to be the speech police. He loves being the speech police. So he quotes it on X and he says more outrageous conduct from cnn. Fake news is bad enough for the country. Pushing out a hoax headline in such a sensitive national security moment is this requires accountability. Iran put out an official statement that simply cannot be squared with the one CNN's false headline attributes to them. Time for change at CNN. So Brendan has no authority over cable news networks. None at all. He has no authority of the Internet. As we've discussed on Brendan Carr's dummy time and time again, his authority is over things that use the broadcast spectrum, that public airwaves which are a scarce public resource in America. And he's not supposed to use that authority to control speech on those airwaves, but he is doing it right. That's why he's going after broadcast networks like ABC and CBS and whoever else. CNN does not operate on the public airways. In fact, CNN mostly operates as clips by Aaron Rupar on X. Like that's like fundamentally where CNN's audience is now. Like, there's no way that Brendan can attack CNN like this. When he says time for change, what he very specifically means is the Ellison family is about to buy Warner Brothers and control cnn. And he believes, and he wants CNN to change its programming and he thinks that Ellison will change the programming. Programming. This is very bad.

[David Pierce]

Yep.

[Nilay Patel]

Like it's dumb because Brendan has no authority. But now he's not only stepping into speech regulation where he has no authority, he's saying, I think our politically aligned billionaire donor is going to make the changes that I want that the President wants. And this is just laying it bare.

[David Pierce]

Yep.

[Nilay Patel]

Even if you report the truth, just the dead ahead truth, there was a ceasefire called. Here's a statement from our government. Here's a statement from the Iranian government that CNN went on air and defended. They said, no, we, this is the right statement. And the Iranian government has since repeated it. Even if you report the truth, the President will attack you for not toeing the line. And Brendan will show up and say, I might not have the official power, but I can say time for change at cnn. And everyone knows what I mean is that David Ellison is about to buy this network, David Ellison, controls cbs, which is a broadcast network over which I do have authority. Authority. And I will make sure that that authority carries through to cnn. That's a real problem. And I think Brendan is just such an unsavvy operator that he keeps saying it out loud that everyone's on notice.

[David Pierce]

Yeah. I mean, this is a message to David Ellison as to like, oh, you want to make this merger happen? Here's what you need to keep promising me in order to get this done. It's a message to everyone that here is what's about to happen by this merger that I'm going to allow for this particular political reason. Like, it's just there.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah. You want there not to be news distortion cases of CBS or you want to buy a new station or you need more bandwidth on the airwaves. Well, I. I better be happy with CNN as well.

[David Pierce]

Yep.

[Nilay Patel]

And you can already see what's happened to CBS News. Its ratings are tanking because people do not like the new ideological position of CBS News. You're going to do it to CNN too, because it might all be run by one news organization. This is just straightforwardly like corruption. Like there's. There's no other word for it. It is straight up the. The state trying to corrupt the free speech of the media in this country. And again, I always think, like, if Brendan was just one turn smarter, he would just do this quietly and it. Maybe it would be a scandal if people found out, but he just is doing it out loud.

[David Pierce]

Yep.

[Nilay Patel]

And I think that is giving a lot of people cover to not listen. Because they're like, no, we actually don't take our marching orders from the government here in this country. We have freedom of speech. We have the First Amendment. And I don't know, Brendan, I think you're a dummy. I'm dying for you to come on the show and explain to me how you think you can separate regulation of CNN from the coming regulation of CBS that you will have because they operate on the airwaves and how you expect to explain to everyday Americans why the government should interfere with speech in this way. Because this is so far over the line. That's like why you came out and you said, I know what it's going to be about. Everyone knew this was over the line and everyone sent it to us. Yeah, there's no. You don't have to explain this to anyone. The president ordering the investigation of a truthful news report is so far over the line, it's almost cartoonish. And then, of course, there's Brendan human cartoon. Anyhow, that's been Brendan Carr as a dummy. Brendan, as always, you're welcome on this show or really any show that does the Brennan Carr as a dummy segment. And I'll be there to tell you a dummy to your face.

[David Pierce]

It's taken off. The brand of Carr is a dummy. Cinematic universe continues to expand. We welcome all comers.

[Nilay Patel]

That's when Brandon Carr is a dummy. America's favorite podcast on the podcast.

[David Pierce]

It's good stuff. All right, I just have one for you, which is, I think, the other sort of big journalismy moment of the week, which is the purported unmasking of Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, by the New York Times. I just need to know what you think of this story. So I will just frame this for anybody who has not read it so far as it. It's set up very much like a process story. Right. Like John Carrey Rou, who's the author, who is right, was right at the forefront of exposing Theranos, has won Pulitzer Prizes, is like as. As legit as anybody in this business. Doing this stuff starts with I went to investigate and then walks through all of the steps of his investigation of how he decided that this guy Adam Back, is in fact Satoshi Nakamoto. And it ends in a pretty conclusive position. He is confident. He has identified this man, Adam Back, as the Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of Bitcoin. What do you think of this story? Do you think Adam Back is Satoshi?

[Nilay Patel]

I think Adam Back has issued strong denials of the fact that he's Satoshi,

[David Pierce]

which, like you would. If you were Satoshi, you would.

[Nilay Patel]

I. Yeah. I mean, look, I agree John Carrier is an excellent reporter. I've talked to him before. He's very diligent, very thorough. He's obsessive in the way that obviously comes out in the story. Like, you can't assign a reporter to do this. No, only someone who's compelled to do it will. Will do it to this level of detail. I just. The parts I found most compelling were when he lined up the dates of posting. And he was like, when Satoshi was posting a lot, Adam was not. When Adam was posting a lot, Satoshi was not. Like, the ideas all line up like these are two people or two characters in the Internet that have all the same ideas. And then the other most compelling part was he kept asking for the email headers of specific emails, and Adam would completely ignore that request. So that's fishy in its way. But Other than that, it kind of feels like every other I've unmasked satoshi expedition that has ever existed. Like, I read a bunch of stuff on the Internet, and then I read someone else's stuff, and I did an analysis, and I've concluded it to you. I do think the fact that Adam got his photo taken for the Times, right? There are photos in the Times.

[David Pierce]

That's true. Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

Like, it's like, very. There's something there that I think is interesting secondarily, and I'm curious for your view on this. The idea that there's somebody out there who owns this many bitcoins that can just upend the bitcoin economy is perpetually the danger in bitcoin. And so the bitcoin community, they're like, stop it. We don't want to know who this person is. And they run around saying, everyone is satoshi. And once you know who the person is and there's like, secondary markets for gambling about when these tokens will move, the incentives to screw with the bitcoin economy just keep going up. Right? Especially if you've, like, made insider trading a valuable thing to do on top of owning the bitcoins. And so I kind of worry that all of these people who claim or don't claim to be satoshi are. They're just attracting a kind of attention because of the secondary gambling nature of things that is, like, just generally not good for money. Do you know what I mean?

[David Pierce]

I agree with you completely. I mean, I think no matter how you feel about crypto and bitcoin in particular, no good comes of knowing who satoshi is. It. It kills the mystique of this thing that is supposedly bigger than one person. Right? Like, if you believe in a trustless system, but you actually have to trust this dude named Adam. Like, it. It really changes the vibe of the system. It exposes Adam back to real risk. I mean, we've seen horrible stories of people getting kidnapped and. And essentially held captive for their bitcoin passwords. Like, it's a. It's a real sort of physical danger to put this person in because we. We. We know how much money they have and we know where it's stored. Like, this stuff is scary for a lot of reasons, but also it does. It puts this one person in this incredible position of power over everyone else's money, which is a really unusual position for any person to be in because it is all so centralized for a decentralized currency. It's all kind of centralized around this one entity called satoshi. Nakamoto. Which is, I think, why a lot of people really want it to be a group of people or somebody who died. Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

If all those bitcoins start moving, weird stuff starts happening. So they have to stay where they are forever.

[David Pierce]

Right. It's actually much better for the rest of the ecosystem for none of that bitcoin to ever move again. And the idea that it is just this British dude who, upon being unmasked, may have lost his motivation to not play the games and go get some of that money, it could change in really huge ways. So I think I sort of land where you do. Where, like, I think John Carrey Roo did a really good, really compelling investigation. I don't 100% clock his certainty at the end of it. I think he got about as far as anybody has gotten, and I don't feel like he found a definitive answer. He seems to believe he found a definitive answer. And I think John Carreyrou is a serious journalist who does a good job. So that's interesting, but I was not 100% compelled by the story. But I do think if it is true and this person has now been definitively unmasked, the crypto world is about to change in some weird and probably bad ways.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah. As always, I will point out, as I've been pointing out on the show and decoder for years and years and years now, people only care about bitcoin because of dollars. And this story has a lot of talk about libertarian currency and all this other stuff. And. Yeah, no, it's because it's a lot of dollars.

[David Pierce]

Yep. It is a lot of dollars.

[Nilay Patel]

It is very hard to get anyone to care about any of this unless it is worth millions of. Of dollars.

[David Pierce]

Yep.

[Nilay Patel]

And that is just the fundamental truth of cryptocurrency. Never wants to argue about. Everyone wants to argue with me about that all the time. But, like, if you're like, it's a bunch of. It's a bunch of stuff on a hard drive. And, like, he has a lot of them, and you're like, how much are they worth? You're like, 50 cents. Like, no one cares. Like, it is dollars. And that is forever going to be the. The problem that bitcoin runs into. Unless you're doing crimes, in which case it's very compelling, apparently.

[David Pierce]

Yeah. Ben McKenzie, who really wrote a book about crypto, he made a documentary about crypto. He was also Ryan Atwood on the OC if that name rings the bell, he's on the show on Tuesday talking about a bunch of this stuff too, so stay tuned for that. Nilay, you have to go. My Internet is barely hanging on by a thread, so we should get out of here. But just quick reminder for everybody who is here, please go vote for us in the Webby Awards. The award voting is open until next Thursday. Please vote for us for Best Technology Podcast. Also, to everybody who's coming to the movies with us in a few weeks, we're very excited to see you. To everybody who wasn't able to get tickets, keep an eye out. This is a thing we're going to do again. It's I'm. I'm excited at the response we've had so far. I think it's going to be very fun. Also, send us questions about the Verge and about the vergecast and about all of your feelings about the media and journalism and everything. We're going to get to as many of them as we can in two Tuesdays. Call the hotline 866 verge11. Send us an email vergecast of the verge.com we love hearing from you on that and absolutely everything. Until then, we're out of here. The vergecast is Verge Production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kieffer and Travis Larchuk. We will be back on Tuesday. We're talking about Crypto with Ben McKenzie and we're talking about continuous glucose monitors with V song version history. This week is about the Western Electric 500 the the landline phone. Next week on decoder you can check out Ronan Farrow talking about more of all the OpenAI stuff plus whatever Nilay and the team have been and cooking up. I'm sure it's great. Thank you as always for watching and listening. We will see you next time. Rock and roll. Your next chapter in healthcare starts at Carrington College's School of Nursing in Portland. Join us for our open house on Tuesday, January 13th from 4 to 7pm you'll tour our campus, see live demos,

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[David Pierce]

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