This Week in Tech 479 (Transcripts)

Leo Laporte:  It's time for TWiT, This Week in Tech, and a great panel for you with John C. Dovorak, Patrick Norton, and Nilay Patel.  We are going to debate what Apple is going to announce on Thursday; none of use agree.  We will talk about Gamer Gate and what it really means, and a little bit about Microsoft's amazing new software that lets you write text on your smartwatch.  It's all coming up next on TWiT.

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Leo:  This is TWiT; This Week in Tech, Episode 479 recorded October 12, 2014.

I Love Saggy Pants

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It's time for TWiT, This Week in Tech.  Oh, sorry.  The show where we talk about the week's tech news.  I started to do a pig call I think there and that's because we have from the middle of the country, Racine, Wisconsin, Mr. Nilay Patel.  

Nilay Patel:  I left.

Leo:  He has moved to the Big Apple, but he is always a Green Bay fan, it is always in his heart.  Congratulations on the victory.  

Nilay:  Aaron 12 last minute, good stuff.

Leo:  That's exciting, and now you've got The Verge all to yourself.

Nilay:  I am a tyrant.

Leo:  You got rid of that Topolsky guy and it's all you all the time.

Nilay:  I'm mad with power.  Josh, like he just launched Bloomberg Politics, he's doing great with that.

Leo:  I saw that.  I saw that.  He's doing digital for Bloomberg which is probably a very interesting job.

Nilay:  Yeah, I'm sure.  He's got a lot of money to play with and Politics looks great so congratulations to him.

Leo:  He's not doing technology at all?  It's just politics?

Nilay:  I think that they are going to launch a range of sites, and I think he has got a big job ahead of him.

Leo:  That's first.

Nilay:  But The Verge is mine.

Leo:  I'm in charge of The Verge!

Patrick Norton:  You've got to say that in the Daffy Duck voice.

Nilay:  Yeah, exactly.  No, look, we ran the thing together for a long time and now I am proud to carry it on.  We've got a great time, and most of our front league team is still in place, and it's going to be fun.

Leo:  Awesome.  We haven't had you on in ages so welcome, it's good to have you back.

Nilay:  It's been a busy year, so I'm glad to be here.

Leo:  And Green Bay won.

Nilay:  They won, last minute.  Did you see the fake spike?

Leo:  No, that's how they won?  They faked a spike and then ran it in?

Nilay:  No, they faked a spike, came very close, and then Aaron Rodgers is the best quarterback in football.

Leo:  I do like Aaron Rodgers.  He's the double click double check guy.

John C. Dovorak:  He sells insurance.  They pay him so much that he has to sell insurance.

Leo:  Hey, that's John C. Dovorak, always optimistic, always upbeat.  John is with channeldovorak.com.  He is @therealdovorak on Twitter.

John:  Yeah, @therealdovorak, please add me.  What?

Leo:  That's funny; it's just something about the way that he says that.  That's Patrick Norton, look at that, my old buddy from The Screen Savers now at techzilla.com.  Patrick and I are the low rent Nilay and Joshua of The Screen Savers.

Patrick:  I would prefer to say the Nilay and Josh without taste and style, but...

Leo:  The same might be.  Or as someone once at Tech TV once said the lunch bucket Nilay and Josh.

Patrick:  No, I was the one who owned the lunch bucket crowd.  

Leo:  Anyway we join together each week, it's like church...

John:  Every Sunday.

Leo:  News every Sunday.  I think that we should talk about this Apple invitation first.  The last Apple event, last month, the iPhone event, the invitation did not have any kind of hints.  It was just kind of really basic, you couldn't read into it.

Patrick:  Did you have to?

Leo:  Well, we knew it was an iPhone, you are right.  But this time, and even though I would say most people say oh yeah this is their October iPad event, their invitation was very cryptic.  Of course this is great marketing because what do you think happens?

John:  What do you think that is?  I see something; I see a finger pushing into mush.  The new screen is going to be very mushy and soft.  It's a soft screen.

Leo:  Actually, I suppose one could say that that is more than just the apple stem and the top of the apple, that that could be interpreted as other things like a finger pushing in the mush.

Patrick:  One could if one was playing Pictionary and drunk.

John:  I don't think you have to be drunk.

Leo:  I feel taken advantage of because I don't want to feed into this Apple let's get some free publicity by...

John:  But you are doing your best.

Leo:  Let's move on to the next story.  I can't, I can't.  It's been way too long.

John:  It says that right there.

Leo:  That is a challenge.  They are throwing down the gauntlet saying what do you think?  Obviously Nilay knows, so we will just ask Nilay.  What does that mean?

Nilay:  I think that we are going to see a lot of emphasis on the Mac at this one.

Leo:  Really, not the iPad?

Nilay:  The iPad of course, but the iPad is on a yearly cadence so I think there will almost certainly be a new iPad.  I think that it will get bigger.  I think that they have to do something with the iPad to induce growth.  The iPad sales have been flat for a long time, so I think a bigger iPad that is more Enterprise geared, that can do multiple apps, and all of that stuff will happen.  That's pretty expected, but I think way too long is actually a reference to Macintosh.  Yosemite is about to come out.  I think that will almost certainly happen at this event.  Then you will see, here are my guesses, and they are just guesses, I think Retina iMac and a Retina MacBook Air probably on the 12 inch size.  I think those will be actually enormous sellers.  I think the fact that those 2 will be enormous sellers against the incredible growth of the iPhone is the reason that the iPad needs to be changed in some way because the sales have been flat, I think the people who have the iPads know what they can do, they are understood products.  There is nothing surprising about a new iPad for people, whereas when it's time to upgrade a Mac you know what you will get out of a new Mac the way that you don't necessarily know what you will be getting upgrading from an iPad 4 to an iPad Air besides it's thinner.  So I think you will see new Macs.  I think that they will be exciting.  I think people will buy a lot of them.  The question mark is how do you differentiate the iPad in a world where you are selling lots and lots of Airs.  Apple is now the 5th biggest PC vendor in the world according to IDC and you are selling a gigantic iPhone that I have and I love, the 6+, which is really creeping in on the iPad Mini territory.  So the question mark is really, it's been way too long, is that about the Mac?  Are they going to come at the Mac with a lot of innovation?  Apple is very excited about how well the Mac is doing right now so I think they are going to combat that really hard.  The question is really the iPad and how do you start differentiating the iPad against these other 2 products?

John:  I think the main thing that they are going to do here is they are going to roll out some touch screen iMac, touch screen Air; that's the mushy thing.

Leo:  You think that's the mushy thing?  I have to say until you said that I thought it was an apple, foolish me.  It does though, and when you say it it looks a little like something squishing in.

John:  I think that they are going to make a big deal out of it as though they invented it and then the next thing you know they are going to sell a lot.

Leo:  Alright, I'm going to tell you all what it is, but first let's have Patrick guess.

Patrick:  I want to see the iPad in the form factor that the iPhone 6's are in.  I want to see anything that looks like a decent performance improvement and more memory on the Macs.

Leo:  The 6 is beautiful I have to say, especially the smaller 6.  It's really elegant.  They will do TouchID, right?  They will do a fingerprint reader.

Patrick:  I guess.

Leo:  Another thing that they will talk a lot about I think on this event is Apple Pay which rolls out later this month.

Patrick:  I was going to say well do Apple Pay on the tablets.  Is that the differentiator?

Leo:  You can't do it without the TouchID, right?

Nilay:  So Dieter Bohn, the Executive Editor of The Verge, he recently got a promotion, his big theory is that the iPad will have Apple Pay but as a register.  So small biz will use Apple Pay as their cash register.  

Leo:  Yeah, because you are not going to carry around an iPad like you would an iPhone and try to pay for stuff with that.  That doesn't make sense.

Nilay:  People use them as cameras, why wouldn't they?  But I think that is really interesting.  The idea of an iPad going into many, many more Enterprise environments is really interesting.  John, I absolutely don't think that they will put touch on a Mac for a long time.  That is so far away from what they have said previously.

Leo:  I agree with you Nilay, but they also said that they would never do a 5.5 inch phone. Who would have thought?

Nilay:   They have said a lot of things that they wouldn't do, but I think that this actually makes sense because as soon as you...

Leo:  Who wants touch like this?  I don't know.

Patrick:  I don't see that one coming; I am completely with Nilay on that one.  I can completely see them putting Apple Pay on the tablets because I see people carrying their tablets everywhere and ignoring their friends.

Leo:  I like it as a point of sale system.  I think that is a good idea.  You know, the advantage that Apple Pay has is privacy, and this is what Apple is now doubling down on.  This is their distinguishing factor.  Tim Cook is saying, oh, Google doesn't care about you.   

Patrick:  Photos?

Leo:  I know, but I think that they are conveniently ignoring the fappening and they are just moving ahead.  What else are they going to do?

Patrick:  Okay, well that's part of my issue with moving into Enterprise space because they completely walked away from all of their Enterprise services, and all of their Enterprise back and stuff, and anybody who is running that is still pissed off about that.  They walked away from the service, and the service from all of the Enterprise stuff was atrocious over the last couple of years.  

Leo:  Well I think that we will see new iPads, they will have TouchID, there may be a 9 inch iPad and iPad Pro; that's been strongly rumored.  I think Apple Pay and Yosemite, the next version of OS X will both figure prominently.  But I think that you have both missed the thing that they are talking about when they say it's been way too long, the Apple TV.  It has been, in fact if you look at MacRumors Buyers Guide where they tell you how long it has been since there has been an update; it's been 949 days since the last Apple TV.  That's the longest of any Apple product.

John:  What are they going to add to it?

Leo:  HomeKit and I believe apps.  Now they may not do apps right away, but I think apps are the thing that I think Apple should add to Apple TV.  As they get closer and closer to this Apple TV being a central, more than just a television set, you know when the Apple TV came out as Steve Jobs famously said, it was a hobby.  It really was just a way to put internet access in a TV.  Every TV has internet access anymore so that's not a product anymore.  Apple TV could be a gateway into the living room for a lot of apple stuff including I think HomeKit.  HomeKit is their home automation solution.  That's just the right size for a base unit that does home automation, it's already interconnected.  I'm going to go out on a limb; by the way I'm always wrong, so it's a safe bet to bet against me.

Nilay:  I will absolutely bet against you Leo.

Leo:  Really, you don't think so?

Nilay:  Here's why, I think the reason that they made the watch was because they couldn't figure out the TV.  I think basically that the world's ultimate troll, the number one troll in the world today, is Steve Jobs telling Walter Issacson that he figured out the TV, that he cracked it.  

Leo:  Yeah, you might be right.

Nilay:  He literally trolled the world's most valuable company into chasing their tail around a TV.  They couldn't do it, and their issue was that they needed to find another growth market.  The iPhone is going to grow really fast, the iPad is stalling out, and investors and the public were constantly asking where is your next growth market coming from?  They chased after TV a lot.  I've heard about it forever.  They were trying to get the deals because to make a TV is not hard.  Samsung will tell you that it's not hard; Visio will tell you that it's not hard, and LG will tell you that it's not hard.

Leo:  I don't mean to say that they are going to make a television set.

John:  No, you are saying that they are going to upgrade the little box.

Leo:  They are going to make Apple TV much more capable.

Nilay:  This other thing that you are talking about, which is basically HomeKit...

Leo:  Home automation, home automation.

Nilay:  But what the rest of the industry will tell you is called the internet of things.  What you are really talking about is connected lights, and a smart microwave, and door locks.  Apple can't make that stuff right now.  That market is totally nascent.  So for them to bet that the Apple TV will be what August connects to, and Nest connects to, and Slage Locks connect to, and Lutron, who has a massive business in smart light switches, connects to is that they have to go get those deals.  The problem with the TV, and the reason that I bring up the TV in the context of deals, is everything about connected home and smart TV completely depends on how well Eddie Cue and Tim Cook can go get deals.  That means you will hear about it.  You will definitely hear about Tim Cook flying to every lock manufacturer and be like hey, be our partner for the smart home.  

Leo:  And we haven't heard that, have we?

Nilay:  Right, and you see the watch and the watch has no partners, right?  Except for the pre-existing IOS partners who Apple can say hey, like come build an app for a watch, don't tell anybody.  If you screw us we will kick you out of the app store.  So you see where Apple is using their leverage, so that smart home piece is really interesting.  It will happen someday, but I guarantee you that the next version of the Apple TV will be very simple and it will continue being simple until Apple figures out how it can get leverage and use that leverage to acquire the deals it needs across all of the devices it needs to control.

Leo:  Although with HealthKit then can do the same thing as HomeKit by making an endpoint without making any of the peripherals.  And not reaching out to make the peripherals.  

John:  I don't understand why Apple doesn't make a real TV.  They have got those stores everywhere.  There is all kind of room to put up a TV and sell it to people for a slight premium and if you have been to the Costco recently they have rolled in 3 or 4 models of the 4K TVs and they are gorgeous.  The LG one is really dynamite.  They are running 4K content on it, and 4K content is really pretty.

Leo:  That might be something that an Apple TV could deliver is 4K.

John:  I think that a lot of people would buy one.

Patrick:  There is no 4K content; there is no margin on televisions right now.

Leo:  There is 4K content because all movies are 4K now, but nobody has been able to figure out how to deliver it.  In fact, there is a Blue-ray player that is 4K that is coming someday soon.  But that's physical media.  If you could master 4K content delivery, and I think nobody is better positioned to do that...

Patrick:  YouTube has been doing 4K content delivery.  Netflix can do 4K content delivery.  

Leo:  Netflix does it.

Patrick:  Everything looks crappy on YouTube.   That's a YouTube issue.

Leo:  One of the things that Apple does is they have their own CDNs.  Even when you are using Netflix on an Apple TV you are actually getting it from Apple.

Patrick:  But you are talking about even if you have extraordinary compression you are still talking about something that can easily be 3-4 times the size of a 1080p file, so it's expensive online delivery.  It's basically huge sustained streams that nobody wants to pay for, but more importantly even if they do an extraordinary job it's going to be enormously difficult for Apple to pull out any kind of margin that makes it justified to go into the television market.  Nobody's making any money on televisions right now.

John:  They need to put something in these stores.

Leo:  In fact it is bankrupting these companies.  It's bankrupting Samsung and...

John:  Samsung is damn near out of business I understand.

Patrick:  I don't know about that.

Leo:  Well, they are down 60%.  

John:  I don't think so.

Nilay:  I will guarantee you that Apple doesn't make another TV for the next decade. 

Leo:  Yeah, a TV set; I think that you are right.

Nilay:  TV set, and here is why...

Leo:  By the way, Mark Gurman would agree with you Nilay Patel.  He tweeted, and this is interesting, I didn't realize this, but that Apple logo from the invite if you look at it is just a clip from the Mac 30th anniversary logo.

Nilay:  Yeah, Johnny Ives is getting lazy.

Leo:  These don't happen by accident, so I think that maybe Mark Gurman who is very knowledgeable from 9to5Mac and he is about 12 years old; but I'm not going to hold that against him.

Nilay:  He is a smart kid.

Leo:  He is amazing and I think that he agrees with you Nilay, he thinks new Macs.  I think Macs are not important to Apple at all.  It's been really clear that they don't care about the Macintosh.  They see mobile, they see phones, they see iPads.

John:  That's a shame.

Leo:  I agree, I'm a Mac fan.

Nilay:  I think Macs are more important to Apple in a sense of their identity than how they market it to the outside.  They are very proud of the Macintosh.  They are very proud of how it is performing.  They are very proud of beating Windows PC makers.  They talk to us about it when they cover Macs.  They are extraordinarily proud of how successful the Air is against every PC.  They hate the fact that the Air is so copied.  The thing about TVs, and I just want to focus on this, they are not going to make a TV for a decade and the reason is very simple.  It will take a decade for the primary delivery mechanism for television, TV shows, to go from cable and satellite to the internet.  Until you get the primary delivery mechanism to switch mediums Apple can't control the user interface.  So they can make a great TV and it can have Netflix, and Apple Movie rentals, and all of that crap on it, but you will switch back to Input 2 to run your Time Warner Cable box.  Until that stops being reality Apple won't make a TV.  They just don't have the horsepower to beat Comcast at that game right now because, have you walked through an airport lately?  I laugh every time I walk through an airport because Comcast has giant billboards in every airport in American right now that says the Comcast X1 operating system.  It's a picture of an iPad running an app.  Comcast has gotten to the point, their hubris has reached a level where they believe their iPad App has reached an operating system.  

Leo:  That's hubris is right.  

Nilay:  They are crazy.

Leo:  I have an X1 by the way.  It's the right idea, but their implementation is ineffective, it doesn't work.

Nilay:  Right, but is absolutely the right idea.  We will put everything in the Cloud.

Leo:  Right, Cloud based DVR instead of a hard drive based DVR.

Nilay:  Do you think Apple, Tim Cook, or Eddie Cue, or Johnny Ive can walk into Comcast and tell Brian Roberts, like yo, your iPad app isn't actually an operating system.  We own the operating system and you should build an app on our operating system.  

Leo:  I think Apple has also learned because they did approach all of these guys.  They approached Time Warner, then they approached Comcast, they approached all of the content creators as well.  As far as I know they have been rebuffed, but they have had these conversations.  

Nilay:  Right, I think that is what I mean by the world's greatest troll.  I think if Steve Jobs was here he could maybe go to Comcast, and maybe go to Time Warner, and maybe go to RCN and have that conversation, say look, your business is going to die.  My customers are cutting the cord in favor of Apple TV rentals.  Come put your shows on my platform.  I don't think that any of the other guys have that horsepower.  You just won't see them build a TV until they can guarantee is the number one thing that you do on that TV is use Apple services.  They cannot do that right now, and I will tell you that I don't think that they can do it for a decade.

Leo:  Well we will find out Thursday at least what Apple has got up its sleeve in the short term.  We will broadcast live starting at 9:30 am Pacific, 12:30 pm Eastern time live coverage of the Apple event which they are going to stream again so we can look forward to the simultaneous Chinese translation.  That will be a lot of...

Nilay:  Pham Live Love is very popular because of the stream fails, so I'm rooting.

Leo:  Apple went after you because they put a live blog in on their website, didn't they?  In fact they live blogged themselves.

Nilay:  Yeah, and it crashed.  It's hard to go after our, we've been doing it for a long time.

Leo:  Our core competency is the word.

Nilay:  It's hard to go after what we have known for a long time.

Leo:  And Apple I think had to stream it because to not do so would basically be capitulation.  Never mind, we thought we could do that but we can't.  No, they have to do it, and this time they have to do it right.  I imagine that heads rolled after the last event and new heads will prevail.  We are going to take a break, I do want to talk a little about Apple Pay.  I want to talk about the sad story of a little sapphire company that listened to and believed to Apple until the world changed out from under them.  We have more to talk about as well with Google and Samsung.  We are going to talk about women in Facebook.  We are going to talk about hackers.

John:  We are going to talk about Nadella, aren't we?

Leo:  Satya Nadella, you know I almost didn't want to talk about that story.

John:  Why?  It's a great story, it's hilarious.

Leo:  Because it's gotcha journalism.

John:  It's hilarious. 

Leo:  You know, he didn't...

John:  You are defending him, okay.

Leo:  I'm not going to defend him because what he said is not defensible, but I am going to defend him in the respect that I thought he misspoke.

John:  I just lost $5, thanks for nothing.

Leo:  It's gotcha journalism.  Curry said that I would defend him?

John:  Yeah, the nitwit.

Leo:  It's time to talk a little bit about stamps.com.  Really, why would I defend him?  

Patrick:  Let's talk about the nice sponsor.  Save the drama for later.

Leo:  I will defend him and then you can win your $5.  But I want half.

John:  No, the $5 is done because he said that you would defend him.

Leo:  Okay, our show today is brought to you by stamps.com.  You do not want to do to the, did he say this?  You do not want to go to the post office anymore.  Nothing wrong with it, I like the post office.

John:  He likes the post office.

Leo:  Who doesn't?  The post office brings us cool stuff, but going to the post office to buy stamps or bringing an armload of packages is not exactly professional.  In fact, if you are selling stuff on EBay or Etsy, if you are mailing brochures or bills you want to look a little more professional.  Unless you set up the glue on the front of it putting up a couple of extra just so you don't get postage returned.  Stamps.com gives you 24 hours access to the post office right from your computer.  You can buy and print us postage.  You don't need a postage meter or any special anything, just your computer and your printer.  You can print US postage for any letter or any package.  There is no guesswork because you get a digital scale that automatically calculates the exact postage you need.  It even suggests the class of postage that you might want to use to save money.  It prints the postage directly on to the envelope even, so with your logo and return address it will put the sender address from QuickBooks or your address book.  If you sell on Amazon, eBay, Etsy, PayPal, or that kind of place it will automatically pull that information in.  You will no longer have to fill out forms, even custom's forms; it does it all with one click.  Discounts, package discounts and postage discounts you just can't get at the post office including discounted package insurance all with one click of the mouse.  I love stamps.com.  I know that you will love it too.  Any mailing, if it is part of your business, simplify your life, go to stamps.com and we have got a special offer, click the microphone in the upper right hand corner and sign up for our no risk trial.  Just use the offer code T-W-I-T, TWiT.  It's $110 bonus offer including a digital scale, $55 in free postage, really a great deal.  Stamps.com, click the microphone, use the offer code TWIT, and stop going to the post office.  I think Apple Pay is an intriguing play.  We have heard now that Walgreen's, according to an internal memo, is planning to launch Apple Pay October 18th.  That's this Saturday.  We know that because of the new laws chip and pin or pin and signature will be required sometime next year.  Visa and MasterCard both say that by October of next year will be all chip and pin.

John:  Chip and pin.

Leo:  That means stores have to buy a new thing...

John:  Chip and pinner.

Leo:  So when they are buying it they are obviously going to say does it do Apple Pay?   I hope they will say does it do Google Wallet because I want to see more than just Apple.

Patrick:  What most of them are going to say is how do I avoid buying a new machine?

John:  That's the first thing that they will say.

Leo:  Well, you know I think that Congress thought about that, because one of the things that is in this bill regarding fraud, right now how is responsible for fraud?  Not the consumer, the bank probably.

Patrick:  Essentially the credit card issuer and the bank.

Leo:  So they've changed that so that whoever has the least technology pays.  Really this is the banking industry going to the congressmen because what that means is if the merchant doesn't upgrade to modern chip and pin technology they are liable for losses incurred if you stick with the signature, which I think if you are a small business that is a bit of a hurdle.

Patrick:  The problem hasn't really been the signature and the small scale fraud.  We hope you've enjoyed your meal, and you hand them your credit card, and they wander off, and they write the information down and the code off of the back.

Leo:  But that happens.

Patrick:  It happens, but I'm not particularly worried about the waiter at the restaurant grabbing my credit card.  What I'm irritated by at this point is that I'm basically going to go through a second credit card replacement in 6 months because Target got hacked, and now Home Depot has been hacked.

Leo:  Well that's a big cost to them.

Patrick:  Well it's a big cost.

Leo:  Half of all credit card fraud is in the US because we don't have a secure system.

Patrick:  Right.

Leo:  We don't care as consumers because we are not responsible.

John:  No, they make up for it in the 18%+ interest.

Leo:  Right, they don't care either, do they?

Patrick:  I care because I had to go through and update my number for every single auto pay system and every account that I have.  That probably took me about 7 hours.

Leo:  The way Apple Pay works they don't actually even get a credit card or even information about who you are.  They just get a token that says we at Visa guarantee this payment.  That's nice, the merchant doesn't hold your stuff and with all of these breaches at Target and Home Depot that sounds like a good thing to consumers I would guess.

Nilay:  I think with Apple they are very good at designing systems.  They are very good at knowing the right thing to do, and the right way to build things, and knowing that they have to depend on other people to build the right parts of things.  So they have gone to Chase, they have done all of the right things on the back end.  The problem with Apple now is that they seem to be not very good at writing software. 

Leo:  Yeah, you know, I have been using IOS 8 and I might tend to agree with you there.

Nilay:  Right, and they launched IOS 8, it was super buggy.  They launched Swift, the new programming language, developers are up in arms.  HealthKit didn't work and they had to retract all of the HealthKit apps.  They put out an update to IOS 8 that destroyed the functionality of making a phone call.

Patrick:  But only for 40,000 phones; only 40,000.

Nilay:  It's fair, its 40,000 people, but a small percentage.  At this point the question with Apple is can they launch a software product to scale without screwing it up?  It's actually kind of a fair question to ask in a way that has never been true of Apple in the past.  I think that will be the thing about Apple Pay.  If they do it right what they've got is a lot of people who excitedly upgraded to a new iPhone.  I will say that I think iPhone 6 and 6+ sales will be off the charts because changing the form factor and giving people a bigger screen is very exciting.  Everybody I know has an iPhone 6 now.

Leo:  6 or 6+?

Nilay:  A lot of 6's, a handful of 6+'s.  I personally think that the 6+ is the one true iPhone, but that's me.  

Leo:  But you are also a Green Bay Packers fan, so your judgment may be suspect.

Nilay:  Look, I pick winners Leo.  

John:  Why aren't you rooting for the 9er's then, or Seattle, a team that actually does win?

Leo:  I actually look at the 6+ and kind of feel like it's too big, but it's a personal choice, that's fine.

Nilay:  My point is that if they do it right what they will do is they will flip on a payment system that is inbuilt into this massive installed base and they will win, they will just win.  Everybody with an iPhone will start demanding to use this new feature.

Leo:  But everybody with an iPhone is only half of the universe in the United States and less elsewhere.

Nilay:  Yeah, but they are a powerful half of the universe with a lot of money to spend and loud voices to use in a way that HTC can't do with the next HTC One.

Leo:  Or Google can't do.  Although Walgreens has had Google Wallet tapped to pay for a while as has Starbucks, as has McDonald's.  That's been around.  

John:  I'm sticking with cash.

Patrick:  Right.

John:  Well, it's secure.

Leo:  It's anonymous.

John:  It's anonymous.

Patrick:  That's a nice side effect.

Leo:  It's secure unless somebody points a gun in your face.

John:  You know, I've never had that happen.  I'm pretty old, too.  Never happened to me ever.

Leo:  Me either, me neither, me neither.

John:  You have the fear, but it doesn't seem to...

Leo:  It happens though.

John:  I would suppose it does.  Yeah, it's happened.

Leo:  You don't know anyone who has been robbed?

John:  People have been hit by lightning bolts, too.

Leo:  You don't know anyone who has been robbed?

Patrick:  Yeah.

John:  With a gun to their head, straight to their head?  No.

Patrick:  I went to high school...

Leo:  We both know somebody who was robbed at gunpoint of his laptop at TechTV.

Patrick:  I knew people, I also went to college in New York City before they cleaned it up, so I know lots of people who got rolled.  I have a question.  If Google, or if Google Pay, not Google Wallet, if Apple Pay works does Apple have to open that up for it to be effective?

Leo:  No.

Nilay:  They are already doing it.  They will open it up in a cut.  The demo at the last event was Uber saying that you don't need an Uber account, you can't just use the Apple Pay and get a car.

Leo:  They aren't going to open it up to Android devices.

John:  That sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Leo:  Why would they?  Isn't that a selling point for an iPhone?  Isn't that one of their many selling points?  You can only pay with an iPhone.

Nilay:  It's a selling point in that no other platform, Android you have to think about a collection of platforms built on top of a platform, so it's a selling point in that Samsung's platform won't offer you the scale of Apple's platform.

Leo:  They will always be able to say that only we support TouchID.

Nilay:  Samsung has a fingerprint reader.  I'm sure that Google will put out a fingerprint reader.

Leo:  They don't work as well, though, because doesn't Apple own the fundamental technology that actually works?  They bought that company, Athentech?

Nilay:  I think that there are many ways to build technology that works.  

Leo:  Apple is the only fingerprint reader that I have used that seems fairly reliable.

Patrick:  You should try a ThinkPad.

Leo:  Are they pretty good now?

Nilay:  Oh no, no, ThinkPad fingerprint readers to log in to Windows have been great for like a decade.  It's shrinking the technology and making the software work.  Samsung's fingerprint reader is a garbage fire, it's awful.

Leo:  My thought, that's what I was saying really, is that Apple has got it.

Nilay:  But Lenovos on Windows is wonderful.  The core technology is there, Apple's skill is integrating it better than everybody.

Leo:  Okay.  What about GT Sapphire?  I feel kind of bad for these guys.  They kind of built up their business hoping they would be making a lot of Sapphire screens for Apple.  Apple apparently reneged after investing $800 million in the company and the Chapter 11 for GT Advanced Tech.  In fact, they want to close the Sapphire factory.  

Patrick:  My understanding is that they were never scaling on the Sapphire the way that they wanted to.

Leo:  It was their fault.

Patrick:  I don't know.  I guess if the technology didn't work.

Leo:  It feels like it could be.  I guess we don't know, do we?  It feels like one of those things were Apple said, yeah, we will buy a lot of Sapphire.  Probably not.  That happens, right?  They don't have any, they gave them a lot of money.  You are right, it could be that the product just didn't work.

Patrick:  Here's the one that I was looking for.  Basically, many of the expected features of the Sapphire were in the iPhone 6 didn't materialize apparently due to low yields of the material.

Leo:  Okay, then it's GT's fault.

Nilay:  It's only their fault if Apple said that we are going to buy it when you make it.  

Leo:  If it works.

Patrick:  If they can't make enough Sapphire big enough make screens for the new phones then they can't supply the Sapphire screens for the new phones.  So, you know, they may have bet big and failed hard is what it sounded like.

Leo:  You are not going to see Colin Kaepernick wearing Beats By Dre anymore.  Wait a minute, yes you are.  

Nilay:  He is wearing them today.

Leo:  He got a $10,000 fine last week.

John:  Yeah, it's paid for by Beats.  It's cheap advertising.

Leo:  They asked him who pays for this?  He said let's not talk about that.

Nilay:  Beats is clearly paying the fines, there were at least 3 or 4 players wearing them today.  

Leo:  I love this story.  I don't know why, but since we were talking about the NFL.   You remember, up until last year you saw those very prominently labeled Motorola headsets on all of the coaches.

John:  Now it's all Bose.

Leo:  And Bose bought the contract, paid the NFL a lot of money, and of course the headphones are now Bose.

Patrick:  It's not just the headsets that the coaches are wearing, it's that nobody is supposed to be wearing any non-Bose branded headsets.

Leo:  Apparently the athletes have agreed that within 90 minutes of the game beginning or end you may not wear anything but Bose.  So what does Colin Kaepernick wear at the press conference after the game by last week?  Beats By Dre.  He is actually in the ads for Beats By Dre.

Nilay:  So is Richard Sherman.  

Leo:  Richard Sherman, right.

Nilay:  This is great publicity for Beats.  I guarantee you Beats is paying the money for these fines.

Leo:  I can imagine the call.  Hey Colin, you know that $10,000 fine?  Just don't worry about it, wear the headphones.

John:  Well look what it costs for a 1 minute ad for any football game.  It's a lot more than $10,000.

Leo:  And it's a lot better than an ad because Colin Kaepernick says I'm not wearing Bose, I love my Beats.  I will pay $10,000 to keep using my Beats.

John:  If they fine him $250,000 that will stop it.

Nilay:  Here's the thing, and you are talking about it, and I guarantee on Sports Center they will talk about it, it's terrific advertising for Beats.

Patrick:  And they both pretty much sound like crap compared to any decent set of headphones.  Isn't that ironic?

John:  They sure do, don't they?  

Leo:  I would imagine that these Bose that they are giving, by the way every NFL player got a pair of Bose headphones obviously.  I would imagine that they would sound as good as the Beats, but they don't look as good as the Beats.  They don't have that style.

John:  Really they are just cans.

Leo:  They are just cans man.

John:  They don't even look that great.

Leo:  And if you have a multimillion dollar endorsement with Beats as Kaepernick and Sherman do you would just say yeah, I don't think so.

Nilay:  That Richard Sherman Beats ad before the Super Bowl last year was one of the best sort of sports tech pop culture crossover ads in history.

Leo:  Did they do the same thing that they did with Kaepernick which was everybody yelling at him and mad at him but he doesn't hear it because he's got his Beats on?

Nilay:  Yeah, but for Kaepernick, Kaepernick is the hero, he is the quarterback.  The Sherman ad came right after Richard Sherman was screaming on ESPN at Michael Crabtree, the racist thing that we do when we talk about angry black people being thugs happened.   Then the ad is him listening to that and then putting on the headphones and then a day later winning the Super Bowl.  I love that.

Leo:  I love this ad.  The tagline is "Hear What You Want".  So Sherman is getting grilled by the press in the locker room, he's got his Beats, and at some point he goes, yeah, that's enough, and he puts his Beats on.  These are great ads.  

Nilay:  Yeah, they are well done.

Leo:  Now is that Apple now? 

Nilay:  At the time this was just Beats I think.  

Leo:  But when Beats pays Kaepernick's $10,000 fine is that Apple?

John:  It's got to be.  They own them.

Nilay.  Now it's Apple, yeah.  But I think this is what Apple bought, was this level of cool and this level of being plugged into the culture whereas Apple used to be the company that defined the broad what's on your iPod kind of culture.  But what they are plugged into now is actually, technology is around this guy's head, he's a superstar, he's an athlete, he's living the life.  He's wearing this stuff on his head, and Apple is now a part of that conversation in a way that they weren't before.

Leo:  How are they going to do that?  How do they make this Apple?

John:  It seems to me with the Ray Rice situation and the beating of women that Beats is not a really good name for anything.

Leo:  Oh come on, it’s the beat of the drum.

John:  I'm just saying that there is a connection here.  Thank you chat room, that was from the chat room.  I appreciate the humor.

Leo:  I'm not surprised.  Hey what about beating women?

John:  They are writing my material.

Nilay:  It's a terrible joke.

John:  The Sherman anti-Bose act.  What about that?

Leo:  Stop please, stop with the chat.  How do you convert this, though, if you are Apple?  Yes, Beats has that brand...

Nilay:  You don't.

John:  Oh, who cares?

Leo:  I don't think that you can.

John:  I don't think that matters, it's just a consumer brand.

Patrick:  It's funny right, because they are pulling Bose out of the Apple Store.

Leo:  Yes, all of the Bose is gone.  

Patrick:  That may be just an irritation with the fight over the headphones, but they are pulling the Bose out of the Apple Store.  They probably let Beats do what Beats does best and try to be as hands off with that as possible.

Leo:  Just make money on the Beats sales and not worry about integrating it with the Apple.

Patrick:  Or maybe you will start seeing a lot of sponsorships where people who were using their other phones are using their Beats headphones with and iPhone 6, and they are holding the iPhone 6 as prominently as they are the Beats headphones.

John:  I find when you go on an airplane and you have got some guy with these big cans on that it looks stupid.  You ever go on the airplane and some guy has got his little phone and he's playing music; he's got these huge cans on his head.  You are one of them?  You are wearing big old, you too?

Nilay:  Beyer MDX 1880s?  Yeah.

John:  Oh brother.

Leo:  Oh I love those Beyerdynamics.

Nilay:  Walk away from this conversation John.

Leo:  I think you are at the wrong table.

John:  I'm at the wrong table for sure.

Nilay:  Just walk across the door, open the door, walk through the door, close the door, and never look back.  I'm telling you, this is a thing that we don't understand as people who talk about consumer technology because what we are actually talking about is fashion and personal expression.  Those things work on different levels than how we assume.  What you are saying is I hate people who wear baggy jeans.  What you are saying is I hate people who wear NFL t-shirts to the bar.

John:  That's bull, nobody is saying that.

Nilay:  It's absolutely the same.  It’s the same conversation. 

John:  No it's not.

Nilay:  Yes it is.

John:  No it's not.

Leo:  It's actually the exact opposite.

John:  I wear noise cancelling headsets, I just don't like these big giant cans.  It doesn't mean I don't like baggy pants or I do like baggy pants.  I resent that.

Nilay:  You are saying that it's the same category.  

John:  I didn't say anything about categories.

Nilay:  You are saying I wear this thing because they have this function but these other things that people are wearing...

John:  You are stereotyping.

Nilay:  I'm not stereotyping at all. 

John:  You are stereotyping.

Nilay:  I'm saying that you are saying I hate these people who wear cans in airports.

John:  I never said that.  I said that I don't like going on an airplane and seeing a bunch of people with big cans.

Leo:  Do you like people who wear saggy pants?

Nilay:  That's ridiculous.

John:  I love saggy pants.  Especially on you Leo.

Nilay:  That's all I'm saying.  You are looking at people who are making stylistic decisions and fashion decisions...

John:  So I can't say that I don't like that?  I have to agree that oh, they are in style?  Are you kidding me?

Leo:  He's making a fashion decision.  I think that Nilay makes a good point...

John:  He's making a good point.  He's calling me a racist.

Leo:  No, he's not calling you anything.  He's pointing out, and I think that this...

Nilay:  I said walk through the door, close it, and don't look back.  You are looking back.

John:  Why?  Because I'm a racist?

Nilay:  You keep looking at it.  You keep looking through that door.

John:  You have a lot of nerve.

Nilay:  I do have a lot of nerve because I'm right and you are wrong.

John:  Okay, that ends it.

Nilay:  It's an easy argument for me either way.

Leo:  I do think, though, that it's very interesting to watch companies, and Apple really is at the forefront of this.  Technology companies realize that marketing is a very different business in the 2010s and it really isn't about speeds and feeds, bits and bytes, it's about style, and fashion, and something that really has nothing to do with technology.  Is that what you are saying Nilay?

Nilay:  Absolutely.  The technology is evaporating.

Leo:  John and I come from the speed and feed side of the fence.  

John:  I don't even know what that means.

Patrick:  I think the challenge right now, to go back to what you were saying Nilay, is they can't deliver, right?  Jennifer Lawrence is not going to go boy, I can't wait to use iPay.  There's a whole lot of people who are looking at Apple and are like okay, I downloaded IOS 8 and my phone stopped.

Leo:  Do you think that people know that?  That's the thing that style insulates you from is broken, bad technology.  Nobody has asserted that Beats headphones are great headphones.  You wear them because they are Beats.  So that's the advantage of this, it that it insulates you a little bit from crappy technology.  

Patrick: Nobody ever bought a pair of Beats and then 2 days later were not able to make a phone call because nobody ever updated the firmware on Beats.  Nobody took a bunch of selfies and then found out that their selfies are were showing up on reddit.  Nobody is looking at Beats and thinking, gosh, can I trust my credit card here.  And maybe nobody that bought an iPhone 6 is thinking that, but I suspect that a lot of people are.  If your technology fails in a way that cuts you off from your friends, your family, your business then it becomes, it may not be speeds and feeds, but it's bad for the fashion.

Leo:  I agree.

Nilay:  You guys are way away from the real issue here.  You know what Beats are better than?  Absolutely better than?  The headphones that came with your phone.  They are, without question they are light years from that.  Do know what they also do?  They prove that you have money to spend on fashionable, well marketed, and quite frankly cool looking brand.  They look cool to a lot of people and they mean something to a lot of people.

Leo:  Here's one thing that I would bet.  I bet Jennifer Lawrence is still using an iPhone.

Nilay:  I bet she is.

Leo:  I would almost guarantee you that.  She certainly didn't switch to Android because of this.

Nilay:  You are collapsing a lot of things here.  The privacy issues of iCloud, and Cloud services, and Apple versus Google are deep.  They are way deep into how people are not too technical.  Let me put it to you this way, I run a big website, about 1 million people a month read my website every single month.  We do not put spec in our reviews.  We don't put charts of performance in our reviews.  We tell people what it is like to own this stuff, and to be alive, and to live in the culture of rapid technological change.  That's all we do, that's our thesis at The Verge, and everybody likes it, and our site is growing, and all that means is that we have to understand technology not as speeds and feeds, and privacy issues, and very granular issues about how we are coding the stuff, and where our passwords are going.  We have to understand it as part of everyone's lifestyle.  To understand technology as part of a lifestyle means that we have to start accepting other people's choices in technology.  It's not being objective but is being very, very subjective.

John:  Yeah, let's stop being objective.  This is the most arrogant thing that you have said today.

Patrick:  Actually, it's not John.

John:  He's the one who said stop being objective.  So you don't like the idea of having performance numbers or anything?   Is that you Patrick?

Patrick:  You know, at some point unless you are buying a 4K monitor or a Q ABC monitor it really doesn't matter at this point if you are spending much more than $200 on a GPU, right?  A lot of people that are watching The Verge, The Verge is creating an audience of people that are hungry for technology but are not looking for what Engadget, or Gizmoto, or BoyGenius Report, or a lot traditional sites are who are going to talk about okay, how many miliamperes is on this, is it going to last that long?   What they are going to say is hey, we took out this product, we tested it, and this is what it did.

John:  How do you do that without some information?

Nilay:  Just pointing out, I did run Engadget for 4 years.  I have been in that crowd and I have been deep in that world.

John:  And you don't like that anymore?

Leo:  Wait a minute, I think that Nilay is saying something very apt.  It's not Nilay's fault, but the world has moved on from this notion of that it even matters.  It's more about the feeling, the emotional connection you have to technology then whether it even works which is of course to you and me Patrick, or to John, is stunning because we spent our entire careers talking about is this better than that?  Does this work better than that?  I think Nilay, you have probably got your pulse on the people as opposed to just, I noticed that The Verge is very much more like a lifestyle brand than a technology brand, is it not?

Nilay:  I think you will see us move very hard towards being a lifestyle brand.  The reason that you will see that, and the thesis of our site, and it has been the thesis since we launched, is that we spent 4 years at Engadget, the core senior team that launched the site, we spent 4 years there covering the explosion of mobile.  What's the screen going to look like?  Are we going to do resistive or capacitive for touch?   Are we going to do IPSL CD or TFTL CD?  Are we going to do LTE or are we going to keep upgrading 4G?  I have been in those arguments.  I have had every level of depth of those conversations when I ran Engadget.  We arrived at a number of conclusions.  Now all of us have a supercomputer in our pocket that is connected to a broadband network.  What is more interesting to think about is what happens now.  How will the world change around the fact that all of us have a supercomputer in our pocket and not so much what is the best supercomputer.  The people who focus deeply on what is the next supercomputer, or how big should the screen be, or what should the touch technology look like, they are going to fall behind.  They are always going to fall behind.  That is the conversation about should you wear Bose noise cancelling headphones or Beats?  Because what you are really saying is what people want to wear is good headphones that look cool.

Leo:  I completely understand that.  I agree with you.  I have had the same conversation with myself.  We are not going to change, we are going to continue to do speeds and feeds and which technology is better.  That is fine, we've never aimed for a mass audience and for the audience that wants that kind of stuff I think that it's appropriate that such a thing exists.  You are probably going to, you are already doing 10 times better, you will do 1,000 times better by targeting lifestyle.  I'm not arguing with that, I think that is a sensible thing.  If I were a business I would be doing that, but I'm not.  This is what I want to do.

John:  It's too shallow.

Leo:  This is what I want to do.

John:  I don't think it should be encouraged.

Leo:  It can be encouraged.  There is room.

John:  It's shallow.  It's just dumbed down the public more then there are already.  Let's make everybody so they don't know, now we are condemning the public.

Patrick:  The Verge isn't stupid.  The writing isn't stupid.  I got to say, I love any place that can basically bring the style and the attitude that it does and basically bring a 1,000 word article on the IBM Model M.  

Leo:  I think you are going to see fewer and fewer articles like that though, the Greatest Keyboard Ever Made article, which is a great article.

John:  Where was this?  On The Verge?

Leo:  Yeah, it was on The Verge.  You are not going to keep doing that kind of stuff?

Nilay:  Of course we are, that was one of the most popular things we've ever done.

Leo:  That just shows you that people still want tech.

Nilay:  They love tech.  What people love is their lives.  What people love is us connecting their lives to the bigger story of the world.  That's all we have to do.  So here is this keyboard that you have sat in front of for 10 years in your data entry job in Kansas?  I've got a whole story about that to tell you and I have a whole culture to connect you to.  People are into that.  What they are not into is here is us going to Qualcomm's factory to talk to one engineer about the next generation of LTE.  

Leo:  That's okay, because we will do that, you don't have to do that.  There will always be somebody to do that and you know what, just like Hi-Fi Magazine got dwindled down to a very small group of people who were interested in that and Rolling Stone took off because it wasn't any more about RMS wattage, it was about content.  That is exactly what happens.

John:  Rolling Stone was never about RMS wattage.

Leo:  It wasn't, that's the point.  But the HI-Fi Magazine...

John:  They were not competing with each other.  It wasn't in the same market.  That's a crazy analogy.  

Leo:  No it's not because what happens is the Hi-Fi Magazines, which were very popular, you were old enough to remember the 50's.

John:  I remember the 50's.

Leo:  They were very popular, people cared about that.  The RMS wattage of your amplifier was more than what you were listening to on it, and then of course, content in the same way that computer industry has matured the audio industry matured and nobody cared anymore.  Nobody knows what wattage their amplifier supports.

John:  That may not be true.

Leo:  Well, there are still some, and you know what, we are that magazine.  We are Hi-Fi Magazine and I'm going to go down swinging.  

Nilay:  Here's the thing, and I just want to remind everybody of this; I did run Engadget.  That stuff is critically important to me, I think about it all of the time.

Leo:  I understand, but you realize that the audience doesn't care.

John:  Some audience doesn't care.

Patrick:  Let Nilay speak, I want to hear this quote.  Speak man.

Nilay:  But we realize that the information that we have is better delivered to a mass audience by packaging it through the lens of here's how your life is going to change and here are these people who are deep in the ish of processor speeds, and RAM sizes, and how much storage iPhones should have now in 2014.  Apple what are you doing at 8GB?  We understand those parts of it, but what we are really going to tell you about is how your life is going to change when you spend $500 on the new iPhone.  That to us has been validated by data, like the actual data of our readership has been validated by the fact that we tell people about experiences and not about raw granular information about technology.  Because what people want to know is how is my life changing and the chaos underneath the industry is nonstop rapid technological change which is super exciting and worth understanding on a granular level.  So that means that people will always watch your show, people will always read Engadget, they will always read CNet, they will always read Giz, or Anandtech, or whatever and everyone should read Anandtech because it's brilliant.

Leo:  Even though their two best guys went to Apple.

Nilay:  I told Anand that I by your side anytime you want.  I asked him for 5 years and he wouldn't bite.

Leo:  Awe man that killed me. 

Nilay:  But here is what I know, the bigger audience, the world, you would rather have me telling those stories to them than...

Leo:  Oh, I agree, then that nitwit on CNN.  I agree 100%.

Nilay:  Right, or Vanity Fair, or whatever.  Our mission is to bring up the tech press to the lifestyle side instead of watching the lifestyle side of the world try to understand the tech side.   

Leo:  I completely agree with you.

Nilay:  I guarantee you that we will win that fight.

Leo:  I completely agree with you.  Good luck to you, god bless you.  It should be geeks that tell that story, I agree.

Nilay:  I feel like we have many more stories to talk about and I should just shut up.

Leo:  We are, we are moving on.  But I think that is an important point to make.  I think that is a good discussion.  I'm going to continue to do what we do.  I like doing hardcore tech, This Week in Computer Hardware is an awesome show.  Patrick and Ryan do that and boy you get nitty gritty.  That's great stuff.

Patrick:  But a lot of it also is, especially in the past decade people want to know more about...

Leo:  You think people want more of that?

Patrick:  No, no, no, people want more, there is a lot of people who like looking at graphics, or benchmarks, or graphs, or numbers, or raw numbers, but what most people want to know is is my game going to run better if I buy a $200 card?  Is my game going to play better if I buy a $500 card?  Oh, I really want to buy a $3,000 gaming system.  Great, why don't you spend more money on a monitor first because your $3,000 gaming system isn't going to do anything without a 1080p monitor that your $1,000 gaming system isn't going to do.  

Leo:  I think that's a little different than what Nilay is talking about.  Nilay, I think you bristle when people say softer because that is not what you are trying to do.

Nilay:  No, what we are trying to do is understand that everybody has a phone in their pocket, and there is a way to talk to everybody that unites this moment in our culture and our society.

Leo:  I think that is great stuff, and we are going to spend time on This Week in Google talking about trends and needs.  We spend time on this show talking about that too.

Nilay:  That's what this show does.  There is a reason that I come on this show because this is my audience too.  I think the question is how do we bring this audience up to the point where we are talking about the world, which is what we are trying to do, broadly about how society works, and how we bring that mainstream audience up to the point where we are talking about technology.  Somewhere in the middle is a really interesting place.

Leo:  I just hate the mainstream audience, I kind of don't want them.

John:  You have them.

Leo:  Oh dammit.  We are going to take a break.

John:  You are just not talking about lifestyle.

Leo:  No, I just don't have a mainstream audience, but that's fine.  I celebrate the geek, I think that's fine.  There is room in this world for all sorts of things.  Our show today is brought to you by the good folks at Citrix.  They make GoToMeeting, the powerfully simple way to meet with people all over the world whether they are co-workers or clients.  You know, nowadays you've got your teams all over the world.  It's hard for them sometimes to get on the same page.  GoToMeeting makes that possible.  It supports good communication which is absolutely crucial for business.  If your teams need to stay connected there is no better way, and because you pay a flat monthly rate you can turn it on in the morning when you get to work and have your Frankfurt bureau and your Talien bureau be on the same meeting and you are all there all day long.  You can see each other face to face with crystal clear HD video conferencing.  You can share your screens, you can work, you can collaborate together.  That's why millions of small business professionals rely on Citrix GoToMeeting and I think you should try it too.  It's a proven solution for meeting and collaborating online with built in HD video conferencing.  It works on any Mac, on any PC, on any tablet, it even works on smartphones.  That camera that is built in there, even in your iPad, you can use that and it's great.  The audio on your iPad too, you don't even need a conference bridge anymore although they offer one.  It's very flexible.  See why millions choose Citrix GoToMeeting.  Start hosting your own face to face online meetings today.  30 days free awaits you at gotomeeting.com with the "Try It Free" button; gotomeeting.com.  I did have to laugh at Tom Warren's article in The Verge, not just you Nilay Patel, but everybody covered this crazy Microsoft keyboard for Android Wear.  This to me shows that Microsoft doesn't get it.

Nilay:  Really, why's that?

Leo:  Because who the hell wants to type on their wristwatch?

Nilay:  I don't think anybody wants to type on their wristwatch.  I think Microsoft doesn't have a platform to do this on and they are screwing around.  

Leo:  They are screwing around is a good description.

John:  That's funny.

Nilay:  I enjoy that Microsoft is willing to go to other platforms to learn what works and what doesn't.

Leo:  That's what is really interesting, isn't it?

Nilay:  Microsoft at this point is struggling to find an identity and I think this is basically like Goth Microsoft.  Like Microsoft, this is the week that they write Android keyboards, and next week they will be surfers, and the week after that they will be really into the Cure, and the week after that they are going to dye their hair blue.

Leo:  Are they getting emo on us?

Nilay:  Yeah, like Microsoft is learning what it wants to be when it grows up.  They don't know.  

Leo:  I respect Nadella because he has said that we are not the Windows company and we are not tied to the PC platform.  He wants to have a devices and services company across all platforms. 

Patrick:  It's just where all of the money is coming from.

John:  All of the money.

Patrick:  That's in a shoe.

Nilay:  They are spending it all on keyboards.

Leo:  You are right, they are trying to figure out what they want to be when they grow up.

Nilay:  I am happy for them.  I think Nadella has bigger problems.  I am, like I'm happy that they...

Leo:  Let's talk about Nadella's...

John:  Gaffe.

Leo:  Gaffe.  So, I don't know, you tell me, what happened John C. Dovorak?

John:  He said that women have superpowers and shouldn't ask for a raise.

Leo:  He said that it's a mistake to ask, you know, let's read the quote because I think that's one problem that...

John:  The funny thing is that the day before this he was down at Adobe MAX and he was down on the stage with the head of Adobe and you know, every time I see Nadella he just does not look presentable.  He's like a CEO that wears these, he's got these, here we go again, these mediocre looking jeans and a kind of a black type...

Leo:  Does he sag?

John:  No, they don't sag that I know of.  I wasn't looking at his butt.

Leo:  So he was being interviewed, he was at an event for women in computing.

John:  The first man to give a keynote at that event by the way.

Leo:  He says, when asked about his advice to women who are uncomfortable requesting a raise, he says, "It's not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having the faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along."

John:  Yeah, that's a winner.

Leo:  Well, he may be wrong on that.  In fact, for men or women you can't really count on the system to figure out what you should be paid properly.  

John:  He says you can.

Nilay:  Here is the thing about Nadella in that quote.  He is a moron for saying that, and thinking that, and believing that.

Leo:  His tweet response was "Was inarticulate how women should ask for a raise.  Must close gender pay gap."

Nilay:  No, he was wrong, and the person that asked him a question had a clue, right?  She's on the board with Microsoft.  If there is one person that you don't deliver the wrong answer to there it's one of your board members.  So he screwed up like in a terrible way.  He is wrong.  If you want a raise, whoever you are, you should ask for one.

Leo:  Man or woman.  

Nilay:  You should get paid what you think you are worth.

Leo:   He sent an email out to Microsoft employees saying that he had answered the question completely wrong.  "I believe men and women should get equal pay for equal work.  When it comes to career advice and getting a raise, when you think it is deserved, Maria's advice was the right advice," and Nilay's now. If you think you deserve a raise, you should just ask.

Nilay: Here’s what I think that’s reflective of. I think it’s really important for all of us to understand this. Nadella is a Microsoft guy, right? Like he has worked at Microsoft forever and he was raised in the Microsoft system. So he believes the way Microsoft is built and the way it works and what he now presides over is fair, just, and accurate. Because of course it is. They’ve probably been arguing about it for a long time. So Microsoft famously has stack ranking where they have all the…

John: It’s been discontinued by the way.

Leo: He stopped it! As soon as he came in, he stopped it.

Nilay: Obviously he thinks his decisions about performance measurement are better than the ones that came previously. So he believes Microsoft has some system in place that actually measures performance and awards people appropriately. In those systems inherently, reflect the structural biases for the people that built them. If you were a smart man, they’re going to reflect how smart men ask for promotions and raises. If you’re a smart woman, they might reflect how smart women ask for stuff. But historically in this world, smart men are the people who get to build these systems. And I think understanding that explains why he would be so stupid to say such a thing like this.

Leo: It was a stupid thing to say. It’s wrong. But I also feel like it’s a little bit of a gotcha journalism thing.

John: There’s a bigger story than that.

Leo: Unless you feel like it reflects a deep-seated misogyny on his part or a structural institutional misogyny-on Microsoft’s part-if you feel that it does represent that then it’s a worthy subject.

Nilay: It absolutely reflects deep-seated misogynistic structural bias on the part of our society. On the part of our industry. And part of Microsoft.

Leo: Then it’s appropriate to bring up.

John: Let me just say this one thing. There’s going to be lawsuits resulting from this from past problems that have happened for 30 years on anyone that worked under this guy. They’re going to be in court; this is going to be a huge problem for Microsoft.

Leo: That might be a good point. In that case it was really dumb.

John: Anyway I’m sorry. Go ahead, Patrick.

Patrick: I was going to say the follow-up quote to the quote to Maria Klawe was that might be one of the initial super powers that quite frankly women who don’t ask for raises have. It’s good karma and it will come back. And it was just like compounding that. Like, it’s probably… and where he might had been thinking in stack ranking, but oh ow. It’s wrong on like every level.

Nilay: There’s a belief in the meritocracy that exists particular in the tech industry that does not recognize that our ability to value merit tends to reflect who we are. And if who we are is mostly men, we will understand merit in the context of men instead of the context of people.

Leo: It is particularly tone-deaf to say that at the Grace Hopper celebration.

Patrick: I know that’s irony of that. I just love that.

Leo: So at best you could say he spoke without thinking. He was tone-deaf and perhaps reflected an institutional bias against women. At worst you could say this guy’s a jerk. And this is the guy running Microsoft.

Nilay: He doesn’t get invited to that conference if we believe in at worst. I think he made a legitimate mistake that reflects a belief that we’re all going to be valued equally. And that we all talk to each other on Twitter and IM and email instead of talking to each other as people in real life. And that is a difficult thing for all of us to contend with.

John: I just think the thing’s hilarious. Because it’s going to be a little drama for a while with Microsoft. It’s going to be quite funny to watch. This guy’s the CEO, so it will be very interesting.

Leo: That’s a good point, he’s not just some guy.

John: I mean there’s a number of instances with situations…

Leo: Have there been any lawsuits since? I mean, you’re right. There’s got to be some phones ringing.

John: There’s phones ringing. There will be something that happens.

Leo: Microsoft we found out gets $1B a year on Android phones. Something between $3-5 a year. This is a result of litigation. Microsoft sued Samsung saying you owe us interest, $3.5M in interest.

Patrick: No, $3.5B? $3.4B?

Leo: No that’s how much it’s made but it didn’t pay its interest. So they were suing over interest but in the revelations we found out that in fact yea, $3.5B from Samsung alone a year. Because Microsoft we think assert a patent on Linux.

John: Oh this again.

Leo: Well that’s what this is. It’s not clear.

John: They never bring out these patents to show anyone.

Leo: Yea, they always stop before that happens.

Nilay: Well they bring them out when they actually sue each other. Microsoft has been very good at signing these deals over time. And I think the reason the number is so high with Samsung is that Samsung sells so many phones. The real number is 3% of total phone sales or some minor percentage of phones.

Leo: But still, it’s not a bad business.

Nilay: But everybody runs this business. That’s what I’m saying. What you don’t know is how much Microsoft is paying to Samsung.

Leo: That’s true. It may be a net-zero. We don’t know.

Nilay: What you don’t know is how much Microsoft and Apple pay each other because they have a patent-licensing deal that they just renewed. So what you’re really looking for in all these Android patent battles is you’re looking for Apple and Google to settle against each other. Which may or may not ever happen. So what you’re seeing is all of these side deals basically against who’s going to pay who to get out of that main Apple-Google fight.

Leo: I love this though. Microsoft apparently has 310 patents that asserts are infringed by Android and that’s why it licenses these to companies like Samsung. But Phyllis Mueller who is the blogger at Foss Patents says if we look at in terms of Microsoft patents that are presently after four years of litigation, enforceable against Android devices, there is one patent. And that covers the scheduling of meetings from a mobile device.

Patrick: Weak, weak, weak.

Nilay: Microsoft and Motorola sued each other for a long time. These patent battles are happening over basically the people who own the software technology versus the people who make the money. And the only reason that it all feels so lopsided in favor of Microsoft is because Microsoft makes the money on mobile devices.

Leo: Right, so we know what they’re getting is from patents. I did see though that the number of patent lawsuits in dropping. Is that right? I think that’s good news.

Nilay: Yea, the number of software patents granted is dropping precipitously because of CLS Bank versus Alice; CLS Bank which was a Supreme Court case that said some things about how software patents should be litigated. And how they should be enforced. The business method patents are also not being improved at the same rate. So what you’re seeing is the pendulum is swinging. After all this noise, after all this with Apple, you’re seeing the pendulum start to swing. And the patent office begins to understand-and the courts-begin to understand what should and shouldn’t be patentable.

Leo: Is it the end of software patents?

Nilay: No, I don’t think there should be an end to software patents. If you really think about what we’re talking about, software patents are not slide-to-unlock or something like should you be able to send a meeting request from your calendar app. What you’re really talking about is like image-handling algorithms. What you’re really talking about is things like how to do compression of video. And those things are really difficult problems to solve. And the companies that invest tons of money against stopping those problems in software, should be rewarded by being able to sell that stuff and not have any of it be copied. And somewhere in the middle of that is a balance. And what you’re seeing right now is the pendulum swing all the way to the other side. And it will probably swing again. And we’ll just, hopefully it will settle. But it will take many years for it to settle.

Leo: The patent involved in CLS Bank versus Alice, the one that this summer started to shake the apple cart was a business process patent. Holding money in escrow to prevent either company from backing out. And then implementing that on a computer. I think that’s fair to throw that one out.

Nilay: It should be.

John: Litigate these things, no matter what you think.

Nilay: So when we talk about software patents, we’re talking about a big pie. We’re saying is it everything in software? Or is it just the hardest things in software? And then the question of what is hard is really complicated and should probably be taken up with the patent office by people who understand how to make software. The problem with people who understand how to make software is that Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft tend to pay them a lot of money to make software. So it’s literally an understanding problem. It will take some time for it to all settle down.

Leo: Samsung, we were talking about how well Samsung is doing in TV. They may be doing well in TV but they told analysts that their profit is going to drop 60% as sales slow. Most of their profit comes from mobile devices. They warn investors that sales are tumbling on Samsung phones.

John: The thing is like my phone. I hate to keep bringing this up but…

Leo: You love your Nexus 5.

John: This is not a Nexus 5. It’s a Nexus Galaxy. It’s almost five years old and has the same specs as an iPhone 6. It’s got all the same specs and is fast, it does the job. It’s everything you need in a phone and it works. And look there’s not a scratch on it. And I put it in my pocket with my keys and I don’t have a cover.

Leo: When you do this can you say wake up Moto X? And it wakes up.

John: Oh, no I can’t do that because it’s not a Moto X. You’re back to the Moto X?

Leo: Temporarily.

John: What happened to your iPhone 6?

Leo: I am not an iPhone fan.

John: Do you feel like it pulls the hair out the side?

Leo: Yea, it pulls the hair, no. I think iOS, besides the fact of how buggy iOS 8 is and I’ve had all sorts of trouble with third-party keyboards and all sorts of things. But I just feel like it’s kind of an antiquated operating system. I like the way Android uses the screen real estate. I don’t have to launch apps to find out what time it is. Or what my emails are, my voicemails are. And I just feel like that’s a better way of doing things. What do you use?

Patrick: I’m using a Moto G right now, paid out of my own pocket.

Leo: The G’s nice. And inexpensive.

Patrick: Yea, the Android software situation is messy.

Leo: Messy how?

Patrick: There’s an interesting article-I can’t think of the name of the company that did it-at say flashlight applications and what they were asking for on Android.

Leo: Some of them were free and some were $20.

Patrick: No, permissions they’re asking for. The idea that…

Leo: Flashlight apps shouldn’t ask for anything except can I turn the flashlight on?

Patrick: It gets into your phone, your contacts and everything else. It’s kind of extraordinary. There’s a lot of messiness in the Android store.

Leo: Do you feel that? The Apple promise is hey don’t worry you don’t have to find out what this thing will do. We’ll take care of that. Do you feel like that works? Apple apps ask your permission. They have the same kind of capabilities.

Patrick: Apple locks down their software in a different way. I’ll be honest, my biggest problem with Android is the fact that I bought my phone directly from Motorola. AT&T controlled when I get my software upgrade so I can actually get my SD card slot to work.

Leo: Well that’s why I buy unlocked phones.

Patrick: I bought an unlocked phone. The carrier still controlled access to it.

Leo: Why?

Patrick: Because Android…

John: AT&T. Enough said.

Patrick: Motorola wouldn’t make the software update available until AT&T released it.

John: I find this interesting.

Leo: We’re going to see the Nexus 6, the shamoo. That’s the reputed code name. You know who shamoo is?

John: The big giant thing.

Leo: Big black fish. Killer whale and it is a killer whale of a phone. 5.9 inches according to rumors. But we’ll see that fairly soon. And the Nexus line is very popular because they’re affordable and you get all the updates. This will be the first phone with the L-Android operating system.

Nilay: That stuff might come out on Wednesday. There are rumors that Google dropped it right before Apple.

Leo: Oh and that would be ironic.

Patrick: It would.

Leo: But these guys don’t pay attention to anyone else’s schedule. That’s what I’m saying about the Moto X. I might replace that with Shamoo.

Patrick: I just want it to have a better camera.

Leo: You know what…

John: Buy a camera!

Leo: I love the iPhone 6 camera. But I’m not convinced that in every respect it’s better than any other camera.

Patrick: It’s because you’re not using a delete-expletive 5-megapixel rank-ass camera of a cheap phone.

Nilay: The 6 Plus camera is a revelatory camera. There’s something about it that is… it’s off his pixels.

Patrick: I just like saying that. I have a friend of mine who probably owns $15,000 of camera equipment that he’s bought in the last two years. And he’s actually stopped carrying half of it because he’s so in love with the camera on the iPhone 6.

Leo: Mike Elgin’s son got married yesterday. I didn’t bring a good camera. I just brought a Moto X and I feel I was able to get some pretty nice pictures out of the phone.

John: You went to the wedding?

Leo: Yea.

Patrick: All those pictures I’ll tell you, you were outside.

John: You can’t go wrong.

Leo: Bright light.

Nilay: The second you go inside with that camera it goes to garbage. The thing about the iPhone is that it’s good in low light. The reason I say it’s revelatory, it’s the first small camera or phone camera I’ve had that is as good in low light as one of my four-third’s camera or a DSLR’s. And that to me is going to change the game.

Leo: Let me show you though three pictures I took on a foggy morning outside my house. And look at these three pictures and tell me which one of the three you like best. There’s one, I won’t tell you which one. These are all taken at the same time. And this is a fairly low-light situation. That’s the one-plus-one. I think that one’s pretty garbagy. Although one-plus-one is doing an upgrade that will give you raw.

Nilay: That picture I can tell you is bad. What phone?

Leo: This is the Moto X. Both were set for auto-HDR. But the Moto X decided to use it the iPhone 6 did not.

Patrick: Is that the first one?

Leo: That’s the iPhone 6. This is the Moto X. I think this is over-HDR. You can tell in the skyline. But nevertheless, I feel like… hey look, I don’t think there’s such a huge difference anymore that it’s worth saying oh I’m never going to buy an iPhone.

Patrick: I’ll be honest with you. That’s because you’re not using cheap phones.

John: I got the…

Leo: Well right. At the high-end though, I think they’re all… and Nilay by the way I’m on record saying there is no better camera. Even the 1020, Lumia 1020, there’s no better camera than the iPhone 6. I think it’s an amazing camera. It’s just not good enough for me to us iOS on.

Nilay: Right and I think that is the story. For most people using iOS, the 6 and 6 Plus are improved in iOS or hardware. And make it this pretty great camera. I think for some of those using a Moto G, it is almost good enough. It’s almost enough of an upgrade for Patrick to switch to iOS. Because it’s so much better.

John: Here’s a camera for you, Leo. You like to buy the top-best cameras out there. Why don’t you run with the Pentex 645Z.

Leo: I’ve heard very good things. This is a medium-frame format camera.

John: 54 megapixels.

Leo: And you know how much it is?

John: I don’t know. It’s not too much for you!

Leo: It’s like 11 grand!

John: No, no, $850.

Leo: But you have to buy a lens.

John: Well, there’s that.

Leo: Believe me, I’m drooling over that camera. But I’m afraid I’m not going to buy that camera. It’s a medium-format too which is not what…

John: It’s what you want.

Leo: You know what I use is the Sony A7S. I don’t think you can get a picture this good with any other camera.

John: This is under $10,000.

Nilay: Yes, but this one you can use with lenses you might actually own.

Leo: And the other thing I love is hyper lapse which you can only get on an iPhone. The video on the iPhone is very interesting. The slow-motion. Look, believe me I’m not one of those people saying the iPhone is a bad choice. It’s an excellent choice. This is a hyper lapse I did of London when riding on a double decker bus. It’s so much fun. Image stabilization.

John: You got lots of cameras coming in.

Leo: These are, you’re going to love this. In fact I was thinking of giving you this camera instead. It is a Pentex. And the colors are great on these.

John: Oh yea. You mean the gold and pink.

Leo: Why don’t you take the lens off, there’s actually nothing in it. It makes it a very light camera. I feel a very nice…

John: Even with the lens on it… that’s not the way the 645Z…

Leo: So Nilay you’re happy with a 6 Plus? That’s your phone?

Nilay: That’s my phone!

Leo: And you can live with iOS 8?

Nilay: I cannot say I’m pleased with it every day. But in terms of the entire package. I went from Nexus 5-that was…

Leo: Also many consider the greatest phone of all time.

Nilay: The Nexus 5 is a brilliant phone. I had a red one.

Leo: Crap camera though.

Nilay: Miserable camera. So I used the Nexus 5 as my main phone. And I had my iPhone 5s as my camera. That’s literally how I carried things around. And with this 6 Plus and iOS 8, I can get away with many things that I was doing with the Nexus 5. And it’s fine. It’s a little buggy, but at this point…

Leo: Well 8.2 comes out this week, right? This is going to be, they’re going to break health kit or are they going to fix health kit?

Nilay: Here’s the thing about the 6 Plus and the reason it made me switch. Because of the 6 Plus, I don’t use my iPad. If I just had an iPhone 6 I would still have these problems. The 6 Plus is so big.

Leo: I also should point out that nobody’s yet supporting the screen resolution. So all you’re really getting is blown up apps. Apps with bigger text but the same amount of text, right?

Nilay: The initial sub-headline of our iPhone 6 Plus review was the iPhone 6 Plus is comedy gold. Because it is!

Leo: It’s a clown shoe phone!

Nilay: The thing is screaming at you all the time that it is running big apps. But after it’s been awhile, I think Facebook is probably the biggest lagger. Twitter is updated, Gmail is updated. Most of my other apps. So it will take a minute, but I think they’ll get there. And I think the real question for Apple, again like we talked about at the top of the show, is what are they going to do to the iPad to make me want to use it again. And that’s a big question.

Leo: Instead of using the 6 Plus which is big enough for you.

Nilay: If you turn the 6 Plus sideways and watch a video on it, because of the aspect ratio, it’s almost as big as watching a video on the iPad mini. And you’ve got to give me some reason to want to use the iPad mini now.

Leo: Remember when Facebook bought What’s App? What did they pay, $1B?

John: No it was over $1B for sure.

Leo: The final price tag is in. And you will not believe it. But first…

John: Oh a teaser.

Leo: All this is going to do is make everyone fast forward through the show because they’re so anxious to find out. That’s why I give you kind of crappy teases.

John: That was a good tease.

Leo: You won’t believe what Facebook paid for What’s App. You won’t believe it! Actually you might believe it.

John: Probably will.

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John: What?

Leo: Those are actually Fo-Beats. Why are they laughing?

John: It’s because everyone looks like an idiot where big cans.

Patrick: And you know what, I’m not giving my big cans up! Because I’m wearing them for me!

Leo: I like big cans. And I cannot lie.

John: There we go.

Leo: The price tag after adjustment for Facebook stock-which is what they used to pay for this What’s App thing. $22 billion!

John: What?! I didn’t realize it crept to that.

Leo: Oh God.

Patrick: Has the Facebook stock gone up that much?

Leo: Apparently!

Nilay: What price did Facebook for the rest of the users?

Leo: Twenty. So, John Kuhn who was the founder, he’s going to get $2B. It’s in stock, vests over four years. So if Facebook tanks, bad news. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s tanking in four years. But this keeps them up.

John: And you can buy colors anyway and get out of it. It’s not like impossible.

Leo: They paid more than I thought. $4.59B in cash, plus $178M Facebook shares. And then $46M in restricted stock where he has to keep employees in check for four years. $21.8 billion. But, if you feel bad about that the good news is…

John: Why would anybody feel bad?

Leo: …John Kuhn will only get a $1 a year salary.

John: Oh that’s always such bogus nonsense. I think that’s an insult to the public at large.

Leo: Why do they do that? Because you know Jobs did it. Zuckerberg does it.

John: It’s just to tell you to screw yourself. I think it’s an insult to the public.

Leo: You know if you take my draw out of the equation, I don’t even get a $1 a year.

John: I get nothing.

Patrick: Do you still get the tip jar?

Leo: No, I don’t get the tip jar.

Patrick: Do you make profits?

Leo: That’s why I said take out my draw, I don’t make anything.

John: Whatever that means.

Nilay: By the way I think that’s totally worth it for Facebook and What’s App.

Leo: No, you lie!

Nilay: No it’s totally worth it. It’s what the rest of the world uses instead of Facebook.

Leo: Does $22B have no meaning anymore?

Nilay: No.

Leo: $22B, you could launch a rocket to Mars.

Nilay: Well, let me ask you a question. If you’re Mark Zuckerberg and you could pay $22B to buy an existing platform that everyone in the world uses. That’s a wildly successful, verging on being a standard. Or, you could launch Facebook Poke?

Leo: Okay, oh I agree. But that’s the big one. You put in a clause there that I think I could debate which is verging on being a standard. There is all messaging apps, they’re equal. They all do the same thing. Right?

Nilay: But they’re built in the network effect. They’re only as valuable as how big their audience and platform is. And What’s App has an audience that you and I don’t see because we live in America.

Leo: I understand that.

Nilay: The rest of the world. My family who wants to communicate with me from India. They’re able to use What’s App. And I use What’s App and I look at it and think it’s garbage because it looks like garbage. And the UI is ridiculous.

Leo: But if you want to talk to family and friends overseas, you have to.

Nilay: So that is the standard over there. So if I’m Facebook, either I can run around launching Facebook Paper and Facebook Poke, and Facebook whatever Snapchat competitor they’re going to launch in a minute. Or I could pay good money on success. And I think the only question we’re asking is what is the multiple you’re willing to pay for success? Because you can either spend the billion dollars launching and marketing poke. Or you could spend 22 to X that and buying the winner. And I think the value being on the winning team for Facebook right now is very high.

Leo: I agree if it were the winning team.

Nilay: Facebook has shown no ability to launch an app outside of Facebook that is successful.

Leo: Their messaging app is now outside of Facebook.

John: Not trying hard enough.

Nilay: It has one star.

Leo: But is the same, it is functionally identical to What’s App. I can’t remember where I read this article, was it the New York Times? Someone was writing about this; I think it has all taken as written, the network effect. Everybody uses it so you’ve got to use it. The woman who wrote this article pointed out when you’re using a messaging group-it’s a small group of people, 8-10 people-there’s not that much to keep that group. That small group. If it were a larger group, then maybe. But to keep that small group from saying hey guess what I like Facebook Messenger. Let’s go there. It takes no time. So I’m not convinced that there is this rock-solid network effect that’s keeping people loyal to apps. I think any messaging app is equal to any other messaging app. And there’s nothing that makes Facebook any better.

Nilay: The bet you’re making is that people will leave Facebook for Ello.

Leo: That I know is not going to happen.

Nilay: The bet you’re making is people have a habit for appetite. It’s eight people short for you. But all of those eight people have eight more people. So now we’re talking about 128 people, or 256 people, and now the network effect is real. And until Facebook can find a way to either capture that or one of Facebook’s competitors can find a way to bring everybody at once. It will be very hard to leave Facebook and What’s App. I don’t think you could start an Instagram competitor today. I don’t; I think it would be impossible. And the reason is because people are tied into their networks on Instagram that have nothing to do with their friends. You can make a mid-level salary in Manhattan right now managing Instagram hashtags for various advertising agencies.

Leo: Really? Wow.

Nilay: Because it’s that big of a network.

Leo: That’s a reason to leave Instagram.

Nilay: It’s a good reason to quit the world and live in the woods. But it’s a great reason for Instagram to be worth as much as it’s worth.

Leo: I think it’s very easy for us in the middle of it to say hey you know nothing would ever happen to IBM. They’re going to be here forever. Nothing could ever happen to them.

John: They’re still here.

Leo: Well they’re kind of here but they’re not dominant in the same way. And I think it’s easy in the short run to say What’s App. They’re going to be an incumbent for a good-how many years do you think, Nilay? Ten, twenty, thirty?

Nilay: Thirty.

John: 30 years from now you’ll never hear of them.

Leo: And you’re making a buck a year per sub.

Nilay: Sure.

Leo: But it’s not about how much you’re going to make or lose. First of all, it’s funny money because most of it is stock.

John: You can cash in most stock.

Nilay: It’s a lot of money. But if you’re Facebook and you can turn that into people engaging with one of your brands, you’re doing great. If you’re absolutely…

Leo: I’m going to do Wolfram Alpha search on how many countries have a GNP of $22B or less.

John: Lots.

Leo: More than a few.

Nilay: Right but that’s a hard thing to look at. Because What’s App isn’t a country, first of all. Second, it operates in many…

Leo: Well I understand it’s apples to oranges, but.

Nilay: What’s App operates in a hundred countries. So you’re looking at the discretionary income of millions of people across multiple environments. And the reason that the valuation seems insane to us is because we don’t use it. We’re literally not using What’s App the way people in Asia use it. The way people in Europe use it. The way people in India use it. Every time we talk about What’s App, I check myself and think, I think this app is stupid and garbage and I use Hangouts instead. But everyone else I know uses this thing. But Hangouts is also stupid and garbage.

Patrick: I was going to say, wow man. Hangouts is just miserable.

Nilay: But Hangouts is where my people are. I’m not going to tell my wife to sign up for What’s App. Instead of using Hangouts today. Because we’re just using it. It’s just doing the job. And until you can provide something better than just doing the job, we’re not leaving.

Leo: I can’t find any countries with a GNP with less than $22B. So forget about it.

John: You’re not looking in the right place.

Leo: Oh wait I said $2B, I should have said $22B.

John: Plenty.

Leo: Thank you Wolfram Alpha. Oh I feel bad for the woman, even though she was a minor drug dealer…

John: Now there’s an interesting intro.

Leo: Even though she was arrested as a minor drug dealer, the Department of Justice and DEA agent after arresting her, said hey do you mind if we use the information from your phone.

Patrick: No!

John: One no is good enough.

Patrick: I don’t think they asked her permission.

John: I think you’re right. They just did it.

Patrick: An agent took it upon himself to create a fake Facebook page to bring other people or contact other people. I believe they did it without her permission. And I believe the Department of Justice feels this is perfectly okay.

Leo: So this is their justification. And it may be true, it’s probably implicit that if you say to the federal agent or whoever has arrested you, and he says hey can I use your phone as part of this criminal investigation. You might, given that you’re in handcuffs and they have denied you a Coca Cola for the last two hours, say yea, go ahead. They got her phone and they took pictures off her phone. Some of them, risqué. And they said hey, let’s create a fake Facebook account and invite a bunch of felons to follow it. And she’s a little upset. She’s suing, she said.

John: She should.

Patrick: She should.

Leo: She said, wait a minute. I didn’t give you permission. And not just her. Her kids’ pictures. And that’s really…

Patrick: It’s worse than that. It’s like her niece and nephew. It’s not her kids.

Leo: Her son and her niece. Young kids. That is so unconscionable that the DEA agent even thought this was okay. It’s just stunning. By the way, the DOJ is defending. She plead, and received a reduced sentence. The judge said, she’s not a significant player. She’s a small-time drug dealer according to this. I think that’s pretty nasty. She got five years of probation, six months of weekend incarceration, six months of home detention. Her probation has been terminated. I don’t know about her Facebook account.

John: Turns out she has a lot of followers.

Patrick: It’s interesting. Apparently 24 hours after Buzz Feed news published the story, then the DOJ said the incident and issue in this case is under review by justice department officials. Whoops. There’s also the thing that Facebook doesn’t allow people to pretend to be other people. They haven’t pulled the page down.

John: They’ve got an FBI office in there.

Patrick: As it turns out, Facebook has pulled down the page since the story broke.

Leo: Thank you, Facebook. Nice job.

John: Finally!

Leo: I don’t know where to go with the gamer-gate hashtag and the really nasty stuff.

John: Let’s get a briefing on it. He’s got a briefing. They did a big story on Verge. You guys do something on that?

Nilay: We did.

John: Yea, tell us. Give us a briefing.

Leo: Let’s take a break. When we come back, when we come back a briefing.

Nilay: Oh another teaser?!

Leo: I just want to get this out of the way. But first, if you’ve missed a moment of TWiT this week, holy cow. What a great week. This was a great week.

John: Are you kidding me? This is a house ad.

Leo: No, it’s a little video we made to show you what you missed.

John: That’s called a house ad.

[Voices]: Previously on TWiT: oh man I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. Boom, big bottom! Triangulation: we’re talking to Phil Libbon. He’s the CEO of Evernote. They’re going away with big apps. It’s going to be the decade of apps. That happens in this industry. Remember the decade of CD-ROMs? Giz Whiz: Padre has found this amazing drone and it’s… ow! Now how much would you pay? Marketing Mavericks: Our guest today is Ted Cohen. You’ve been a part of crafting the licensing agreement in which iTunes Music was built. I remember one time I went to download something and it told me I downloaded too many copies. And I went, who came up with that stupid rule. And I went, oh yea, me. MacBreak Weekly: people are bitching that their hair is getting caught in the cracks of the iPhone 6 Plus. That’s got to be good news for somebody inside Apple to realize that okay, looks like they’re finally running out of things to complain about. TWiT: it keeps going and going, and going.

Leo: Credit to Christina Warren who made that Mac video for Mashable.

John: Who is doing the voice over there on that?

Leo: That’s the fabulous Jim Cutler. Maybe you’ve heard him as the voice of ESPN or many radio stations coast to coast.

John: So you’re paying now for voice over work?

Leo: No, he gives it to us for free because he’s a fan. Thank you, Jim. He is really great.

John: Call me.

Leo: What?!

John: Nothing.

Leo: What do you want to get him in the union?

John: Let me get this straight. He did this to you for gratis because he’s a fan. Is that right? I just wonder. I’m always bringing this up. It’s because you talk the lease of betony who did the intro and outro for DH Unplugged and grilled her as to whether or not we paid her.

Leo: I don’t even remember that. What is DH Unplugged?

John: It’s the Horowitz thing that I do. They’re on the stock market.

Leo: I grilled her?

John: You did.

Leo: He’s done work for Jimmy Kimmel, Warner Brothers, NFL, HBO, Fox, ABC, CBS, and a little network you might have heard of called Tech TV. He was our staff announcer at Tech TV. Comedy Central, Spike. The price is right!

John: You could do this.

Leo: I could do this. I’m actually thinking of retiring and just doing voice overs for game shows.

John: It’s like $5 a line or something. It’s not really that much money.

Leo: Well how many lines do you get?

John: Depends on what you’re talking about. But generally speaking, when it comes to voice over, maybe ten at most.

Leo: That’s $50. No, that’s not good enough. Before we do that, a big week ahead.

Mike Elgin: Coming up this week…

John: Is he here?

Mike: … eBay and Netflix do the same on Wednesday. And IBM does there’s on Thursday. Also on Thursday, Apple is holding a big announcement at the town hall auditorium on the company’s Cupertino campus at 10am Pacific. Tune in for our special live coverage of the events starting at 9:30am Pacific on live.twit.tv. Apple’s iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus become available in China on Friday, October 17^th. That’s what’s coming up this week. Back to you, Leo.

Leo: Thank you, Mr. Mike Elgin!

John: is he here?

Leo: No. Unlike Tom Merit, Mike does not come in to record those. Tom would like to mess with you a little bit. But no, Mike says I don’t want to see Dvorak. Did you know Mike in his days as an editor in chief at PC World and PC Computing…

John: He was at MacUser for a while, that I competed it.

Leo: You were a ziff guy, he was an IDG guy.

John: I think for a while.

Leo: It used to be. It’s funny how it used to be there was like a rivalry.

John: That’s because competition is good.

Leo: But now it’s like a bunch of old farts that don’t care.

John: Yea, nobody cares.

Nilay: Yea, I don’t care anymore

Leo: I don’t care.

Nilay: I’ve stopped caring completely. My team won today. I’m just drinking.

Leo: I don’t care. Competition is so last century. You know that iPad announced Thursday, we’re pretty sure there will be new iPads. Now’s the time if you’re thinking you might want the new iPad, go to gazelle.com. This is a little public service.

John: Sell your old one.

Leo: No, cause you don’t know. You want to get a quote. And I can guarantee you the price is going to drop as we get closer to Thursday.

John: Oh I know what you’re doing.

Leo: It’s playing the game.

John: Locking in the price.

Leo: Locking in the price. I admit, you’re gaming the system. But go in there. You’re going to have 30 days to take advantage of it. It’s a guaranteed lock for 30 days. So get the best value.

John: Does Gazelle know you’re doing this?

Leo: Shh, we don’t bring it up.

Nilay: I hope so.

Leo: We don’t bring that up. Look at that, a retina, 16 gig Wi-Fi, like the crappiest retina made, $175 for the iPad mini.

John: It’s a steal.

Leo: So here’s the deal. While you’re doing it, go through your drawer. See what you can find. Don’t laugh. Go through your drawers.

John: Well hopefully I don’t find an iPad in there.

Leo: See what you can find. Phones, tablets, an old Samsung tablet or Nexus tablet. Maybe you’ve got a Surface in there. In your drawer. If you have a Surface in your drawers, get it out. And get a quote! And now, when the time comes, you’ve got the new iPad. You can check-out and they will send you a box with postage on it already so you don’t pay anything. They’ll turn it around fast. If it’s broken, they’ll buy many broken iPads and iPhones. If you can’t wipe the data or forgot, don’t worry. They’ll do it. They’ll even adjust your offer. We got a $30 offer for the iPhone 4 as we got the new iPhones. $30 off for…

John: That’s it?

Leo: Well it was an iPhone 4. I thought that was kind of crappy, but better than nothing. They upped it to $120.

John: Holy crap!

Leo: I know. I’ve never heard of a company doing that. I’m not kidding. It’s weird. Anyway, that’s, well they have integrity. They have honor. And they’re Gazelle. I want you to try them, gazelle.com. Find out why over a million customers have received nearly $170M in payouts. Gazelle.com. And now’s the time, don’t wait. Because Thursday the price goes way down. So I’m really challenged on how we talk about Gamer Gate.

John: I want the briefing.

Leo: Give us the briefing, Nilay Patel.

Nilay: Here’s the briefing. And I will tell you this and be upfront and honest from the beginning. I am not an objective source of information because my staff and my reporters are being attacked and harassed. I’ve been attacked and harassed. And so screw those guys.

Leo: This is by Gamer, or people who claim to be gamers. Who initially were upset about what they felt was unfair biases and conflict of interest in the gaming press.

Nilay: Let me tell you where that came from. I think this is really important. So what happened in gaming over the past-I would say-two to three years, is that many more people started playing video games. And because many more people started playing video games, many more people started writing and thinking of video games. And many more people started making video games. And when you expand the category of people who are thinking about an art form, necessarily you will start making different kinds of games. And people will start criticizing things that have come before. And what happened, and this is where the ethical argument comes in, is that people started criticizing big AAA games for being sexist. Which many of them are. For not thinking about any audience other than 18-35 year old young men, which is a fair criticism. And for in particular, being made by only one group of people. Which is why Sony gets criticized and the Verge ran an article about this a year ago. Sony gets criticized for only having men on its stage at E3 events and things like that. So there’s a base of criticism that’s starting to happen in video games journalism. Next to that is the historical reality of video games journalism which is deeply corrupt. Fact. Right? Video games journalism is built on access. So the first popular video games publication in the world was Nintendo Power Magazine. Published by Nintendo. And if you think about that cycle of access and consumerism and just basic graft, what you get is a press that basically sucks up to AAA video game publishers. And console makers.

Leo: This happens by the way in belt-wearing journalism, in cars, in stereos. Trade press in particular tends to be in situation.

John: Hold on a second. I don’t consider it graft if you’re a company and you do a trade magazine and all you do is promote.

Leo: It’s your company.

John: I thought this magazine was owned by Nintendo.

Leo: That’s where it started.

Nilay: Let me finish. So there is that. There is this deep video game corruption in the historical magazines. Then you have a new crop of sites, like Joy Stick and Kitaku, and Polygon, and Disclosure. Polygon is owned by Vox Media which is the company I work for and my friends work there.

Leo: It’s a great site.

Nilay: It’s good. I think they do a terrific job. You have the new sites which are starting to talk about criticism on a deep level. And they are engaging with video game developers. Some of which work at the big studios. Some of which work at Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. And some of them are independent developers. And this is just reality. Independent developers are much less constrained by the corporations they work for when they talk. Because they don’t have a boss. So they’re more open, and honest. They go out for drinks. They’re in the mix with reporters. In a different way. Which is great for reporters, you get better stories out of it. And what’s happening in Gamer Gate is a conflation of gamers, like original hardcore gamers, who see that as their identity, being mad at the criticism leveled at games. For being sexist and too violent and not including women, and being targeted at white men. Being mad at that criticism and then targeting their anger at that criticism towards the older problem of graft and corruption in gaming. Because the reality, and this is true, the reality is if I wanted to be corrupt about an independent games developer, honestly I would make no money. Right? It would not be worth it to me to stake my publication’s credibility on that. And I know, Polygon again, my sister publication-I know the people that work there-not worth it to Chris Grant the editor and chief of Polygon, to stake his credibility, his career, his publication on pushing forward depression.

Leo: So this contention that the game press is biased or there’s conflict of interest; it’s probably bogus. But it has gone so beyond that that the hashtag-gamergate means a whole lot more. And at this point it seems to be frankly aimed at women.

Nilay: It is absolutely aimed at women now. And it is aimed at the idea that women who are criticizing games or people who…

Leo: Or anything, or just standing up and saying hello.

Nilay: Or being alive… are somehow complicit in massive conspiracy to shut down any number of crazy arguments. And most of those arguments have to do with things like men’s rights. Most of those arguments have to do with things like where, it basically boils down… let me just give you a small sample of things we dealt with this week at the Verge. We dealt with our writers being harassed on Twitter.

Leo: Massive harassment.

Nilay: Literally. And I’m not kidding, a neo-Nazi site writing about one of our writers’ haircuts and saying her father should have beaten her with the back of her hand until her hair grew out. This did not have anything to do with video games. It just has to do with what they thought about her and something she had written about race and Ebola. What we’re dealing with is basically the idea that people on the internet should not have standards about how they talk to other people. And what they’re doing now is Gamer Gate as a movement has decided the way that they will further their goals is by attacking our advertisers. Which is fair. If you attack my economic interests, maybe I’ll change my mind. But if your argument is that we don’t…

Leo: That’s the conflict of interest!

Nilay: Maybe. But if their argument is I don’t have journalistic ethics and your strategy is to attack my advertisers until I do what they want, then you have completely obviated your argument. And that’s…

Leo: You’re assuming there’s any logic in this kind of trolling at all. It has nothing to do with logic. It’s whatever you can get away with. I feel sorry for Brianna Wu, the game developer who has literally been chased from her house with horrific threats. The police are investigating and I suspect that the nature of these threats gives the police a foothold in pursing it. Almost always coming from Twitter. And I have to point out that Twitter has become a true cesspool. One of the problems that is happening is that Twitter has to continue its 25% monthly growth or the stock market price will tumble. And the whole house of cards will collapse. So they have zero incentive to take care of this stuff by say banning IP addresses, looking up the names…

John: Oh, I’m not buying that. You track the people down who were giving; like two or three years ago. Didn’t you find some guy in Fresno?

Leo: Say you find somebody… yea, I did. It was in Chicago and it was a kid. But we needed warrants, subpoenas in Petaluma and Chicago. We needed the cooperation of local police here and in Chicago. And that by the way, because there’s death threats here, this will happen with this particular situation with Brianna.

Nilay: We hope so.

Leo: No one hopes. Because you have to find cooperative police.

Nilay: I saw a great tweet today. I don’t know where it came from. It was basically this: if you torrent a movie from Warner Brothers, there’s a good chance you’ll be arrested. If you tell a woman on the internet that you will kill or rape her, Twitter will tell you there’s nothing you can do.

Leo: And I really think Dave Costello is a nice guy, blah, blah. But I think Twitter and its board are at this point really culpable. Because they will not shut these accounts down.

John: They shut down accounts all the time. Why don’t they shut these down?

Leo: Well that’s the point. You can create a new account. And they don’t shut it down effectively. Which they could, technologically. But they have no desire to do; in fact they want people to create new accounts because that shows their grown 25% more each month.

Nilay: I agree with you, Leo. I think Twitter is deeply culpable. I think all these platforms on which people can harass other people, we have to take a hard look in the mirror and decide okay, well the internet is interwoven into our lives. How should we treat each other? And how should we punish people for treating each other badly? Or deal with people that are treating each other badly on these platforms.

Leo: Twitter is a blob at this point. And I think men have to stand up and say this is not acceptable.

John: Can I ask a question here, because I triggered this thought. I’m going to ask you. What specifically triggered this craziness? It just sounds like a non-story that blew up for some unknown reason and I don’t know what the reason is.

Patrick: It’s been blowing up for over three months. It’s been building.

John: Okay, it’s been three months. But what’s triggered it?

Leo: In my opinion because there has been a downward, a really downward trend over the last year or two. And I think primarily thanks to Twitter and the fact that you cannot stop this stuff on Twitter. You can stop it on Google Plus, you can stop it on Facebook. You cannot stop it on Twitter. That’s where it lives and I have to say that the quality of conversation in the general internet world is very deteriorating.

John: It’s always been crap.

Leo: I agree it’s never been great. But it’s got worse and worse. For a long time I really through that the publicity would promote civility; that the ugly voices would get pushed out. And it’s going in the other direction at this point.

Nilay: Let me answer John’s question. Where it came from is basically two people and two pieces of content of media that were created. One is Anita Sarkeesian’s women on YouTube. Where she literally just analyzed video games, mass-market video games from a feminist perspective. And pointed out that women in games are often used as sex objects or the male gaze. Which is when the author of a piece of work tends to look at women the way a man would look is prevalent in video games. And you could watch these and disagree with them. I disagree with them. The same way that I read Jessibelle and I disagree with Jessibelle. They are worth their topics are worth discussing. And she presents them in a particularly strong way which I think is great. So that is a thing that exists. The next thing Zoe Quinn and the variety of games she has made, that have nothing to do with being video games. They have everything to do with telling stories in an interactive way. And the games press took both of these things and thought they were interesting. The games press over the past few years, and again because I work at a company that runs Polygon, I think Polygon’s mission is to take video games and talk about them as if they’re art. The whole business model for Polygon is everybody plays video games now. Let’s run a site for everybody. So if you look at the way they talk about video games, they talk about them in a broad encompassing way. Again I’m biased, they’re my friends.

John: All I learned from that is you read Jessibelle every day.

Nilay: I do. But I disagree with Jessibelle all the time. It’s interesting to me as a person who wants to be disagreed with. I’m an f’ing lawyer. I like to be argued with.

Patrick: What kind of a lawyer was this?

Leo: Well one that apparently likes sexual intercourse.

Nilay: Let me finish the story.

Leo: I think it’s gone so far beyond gaming and the gaming press.

John: I think it’s crazy, this story.

Leo: It’s an eruption of trolling that is appalling.

Nilay: Let me finish this. What you were seeing was that stuff compounded in the gaming press started to threaten it an identity. An identity of being a gamer. Of being a young person who felt they existed in this other subculture. An identity politics is something our culture understands, right? It’s something that’s easy to attack other people for not understanding your identity. It’s easy to attack other people for being outside your identity. And what has actually happened to Gamer Gate is that the language and the tactics of the culture war and the identity politics that are toxic to our society have been hoisted onto video games. So now what we’re talking about is feminism. Now what we’re talking about it straight up, like are you a gamer. Do you believe in what I believe in? And so the angry tweets I get are about things like you’re just supplicating yourself to the feminist agenda. When really what the Verge is talking about is should women be better-represented in video games. And so you can have these arguments. They are worth having. What should our art look like? Should our art include the category of things we traditionally call video games? I would argue that they should. But if you want to disagree with Roger Ebert, if you want to win the argument that video games should be considered art, you necessarily have to let other artists into the mix. You have to necessarily let other kinds of criticisms into the mix. So when feminists critique Michael Bay movies, you don’t get Gamer Gate. What you get is people being like, oh it’s happening again. And then less people watch Michael Bay movies. When feminists critique Grand Theft Auto 5, what you get is Gamer Gate. And that is actually the problem. That’s the whole circle of the problem. Is that the people who believe that this is their identity and these publications belong to them, are refusing to understand. And they’re refusing to accept that that circle should get wider. And again, I feel very strongly about this because it has been personally effectant to me over these past few weeks. And for my friends who work in video games journalism over the last three months. But I will tell you that this is the right side of the argument. And there’s a wrong side; and the wrong side is being a dick to people on the internet.

Leo: I agree. And I feel like we got to do something to make it a better place. Not just for women but for everybody in general. And I think we got to call out Twitter because it’s really become…

Patrick: As somebody who works with…

Leo: I don’t use it anymore. I have abandoned Twitter.

Patrick: It’s not just Twitter. Some of the stuff that people post under reviews that Veronica did or Shannon does on Tekzilla…

Leo: Comments will do.

Patrick: Oh, comments. Email. Twitter.

Leo: Twitter has become the YouTube comments of the internet. They fixed you to comments so everybody went to Twitter. Maybe that’s what happened.

John: I don’t know if they fixed them.

Leo: Well they’re better. At least you have an identity associated with it.

Patrick: Yea, but people are still evil under their own identity. Or nasty.

Leo: That’s so I’m noticed by the way. Your real identity, much less so, aren’t they?

Patrick: Yea, generally speaking.

Leo: They don’t want you to come knocking on their door.

Patrick: But it’s not that hard to create a fake identity.

Leo: The thing I like about Google Plus and this actually goes onto YouTube as well; if you don’t like somebody, you just block them. They can’t see your stuff, you can’t see their stuff.

John: You can do that with Twitter.

Leo: No you cannot.

John: I block people all the time.

Leo: Yea, only you don’t see it. Everybody else still sees it.

John: I don’t care.

Leo: Well I agree. That’s what I do too. But it isn’t getting rid of it in the same way.

John: Doesn’t bother me.

Leo: Because out of sight out of mind. I think this is a good conversation but that’s why we mostly cover hardware and software. And stick with speeds and CPUs. If you want to know more about CPU speeds, GPUs, and the like, TWiCH, This Week in Computer Hardware every week with Patrick Norton and Ryan Shrout. Of course, Ryan Shrout. And of course, Patrick does Tekzilla, tekzilla.com every week. As you said with Shannon. What else are you up to? What are you doing these days? Anything excited? Are you racing?

Patrick: I’m parenting.

Leo: Parenting the adorable children.

Patrick: Going to see them in a couple of weeks. We’ll be getting our car geek on.

Leo: The big Vegas car accessory show.

Patrick: CES for cars. Have you ever been?

Nilay: I have not.

Patrick: You should come.

Leo: Are you covering it for revision three?

Patrick: We’re doing a couple episodes of Die Trying down there, and a couple of Tekzilla. We’re launching it, I think it will be called the transportation hub. Automotive transportation hub. Yea, it will happen soon on the Verge.

Leo: Vox wants to take over everything, doesn’t it? Is that the goal?

Patrick: Vox can do whatever. The Verge wants to take over everything.

Leo: Screw Vox! What about the Verge?

Patrick: I left the Verge for six months and launched vox.com. They’re great, they can do whatever they want.

Leo: That’s what you were doing when you left the Verge, by the way. Was working with Vox and the Vox platform. The Vox is as we mentioned Polygon, the Verge, SB Nation. You’ve got now Eater. I saw that. Curbed, Racked. What’s Racked?

Patrick: Racked is our shopping and fashion site.

Leo: I’m telling you everything. With the death of paper magazines, that’s smart move. I think you’re in the right position.

Patrick: In our office in New York, we have three floors, the 9^th, 10^th, and 11^th of our office building. We have instituted a foreign exchange program where the people from the Verge go up and sit. And the Racked people come downstairs and sit with the Verge team. There’s a lot of crossover that’s happening in all these spaces and it’s really fun.

Leo: It’s cool. And you see it at theverge.com. Thank you, Nilay for being here. I appreciate it. He’s reckless.

Nilay: I had a lot of fun. Sorry or all the ranting.

Leo: And he’s still on Twitter.

Patrick: Good rants!

Leo: Expect some exciting tweets, reckless, any minute now.

Nilay: I’ll do one right now.

Leo: I think you already have some. John C. Dvorak, he’s at the Real Dvorak. He’s also at channeldvorak.com, noagendashow.com. Anything else? And your hog is here.

John: I noticed that. My ride.

Leo: Your ride is ready.

John: Noagendashow.com.

Leo: I mentioned that.

John: If you had a Square Space ad, we could have tried to bring the noagendashow.com site down but apparently you didn’t have that ad.

Leo: I don’t know why. I think Square Space should advertise every time you’re here.

John: But people should listen to that show once in a while.

Leo: I agree. I can’t disagree. I agree. We thank you for joining us. Oh, I’m sorry. Chad Johnson?

Chad Johnson: One more thing. We’re coming up on the end of the year. And so I want audience participation help. You can change how TWiT looks at the end of the year with our best of episode if you go to twit.tv/bestof. And submit your favorite moments from this show throughout the year.

Leo: I think maybe one or two are from this show.

Chad: It might possibly be.

Leo: Twit.tv/best of for any of our shows. And you know there’s this little thing they say, what’s the time code. You don’t have to know the time code. It would help if you did but I understand most of you don’t know the time code.

Chad: Even something like beginning of the show, end of the show. That would help a ton.

Leo: Or you could say, I don’t know. What’s time code?

Chad: We don’t check to make sure that it’s in time code format.

Leo: What is the time code of the moment you would like us to repeat? But we do want to do a nice best of. We’re also going to be doing a big New Year’s Eve show which you guys are all invited to. Even you, Nilay.

John: When’s it going to be?

Leo: We haven’t set a date yet.

John: If it’s next week, I can make it.

Leo: 3am New Year’s Eve to 3am New Year’s Day. We did it last year. This year we’re doing it for charity for UNICEF. It’s a lot of fun. And we have always lots of games and things. We like our hosts to come by and show some other ability. Like you could come and maybe change the wings…

Patrick: My wife’s birthday is New Year’s Eve.

Leo: Bring Sarah! She’ll love that.

Patrick: Bring the gang.

Leo: Last time Patrick was here I left like half an hour after the show. Because we say hi to the fans and take pictures. Patrick and his son are sitting outside, what are you changing the oil on your truck?

Patrick: No.

Leo: He was doing car repairs in front of the…

John: In front of the toy that’s going to get dropped the oil down the sewer down here in Petaluma.

Leo: Were you grinding the cylinders and changing the rings? What were you doing?

Patrick: No, I have a 12-valve Cummins engine in my truck. And the killer dowel pin hit.

Leo: Wait, you have a 12-valve Cummins in our pickup truck? Are you towing like, an air stream?

Patrick: Yes. Did I put 4,000 pounds of concrete from my backyard into it to the recycling center? Yes.

Leo: I take it the Cummins is not stock on a Ford truck.

Patrick: No, it’s a Dodge and it is stock. It’s not really stock anymore but that’s a whole other conversation.

Leo: So what is it, the striker pin?

Patrick: The killer dowel pin hit.

John: It makes sense.

Leo: Does it really? Could you pull up to McDonald’s and say give me some fry oil?

Patrick: That’s greasle. It’s a whole other problem.

Leo: I love driving behind cars that are using greasle because they smell like French fries.

Patrick: Or worse.

Leo: We do this show every Sunday about 3am. No, sorry, 3pm. I’m doing the show at 3am. I don’t care about you guys.

Nilay: Leo, if you say you’re doing the show at 3am, I’ll do it with you.

Leo: That’s 6am your time. That’s not bad. 3pm Pacific, that’s 6pm Eastern time, 2200 UTC on the TWiT network, live.twit.tv. If you want to watch live, be in the chat room. We love that. If you can’t on demand audio and video always available. All our shows at the website twit.tv or wherever you get your podcasts. How do you like that hat? You’re looking good with that. I think we finally understand John’s true colors. See that giant key the eagle’s holding? That’s the key to all our stuff.

Nilay: I like the established 1952 on the brim.

Leo: Little NSA hat. John C. Dvorak, wear that in good health. Wear that on the next No Agenda Show.

John: Next time I go to… it’s not going to do me much good.

Leo: I like hanging that around. People are nicer to you.

Patrick: Microwave that hat to make sure there are no electronics in it.

Leo: What could possibly go wrong? Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next time. Thank you to our live audience. If you want to be in the live audience, email tickets@twit.tv. You all did that, right? Some of you will leave. I’m sorry sir, you’ve got to go. No, we welcome everybody. But that way we’ll have a seat for you.

John: Just show up.

Leo: Okay, yea. Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next time. Another TWiT is in the can!