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Go to retool.com/verchcast, we all need to retool how we build software. If you give someone a cookie, they may eat three more and then feel horribly guilty. There is this like question about whether or not you're actually making you a good choice, and what does that say about who you are as a person, so we fully entered into the morality that's associated with sugar.

How did sugar become the boogie man?

“And is it as bad as we're led to believe that's this week on Explained It To Me?”

New episodes, out Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. This week on Network and Chill, we're live from South by Southwest with California Governor Gavin Newsom, the politician behind viral TikToks and one of the most talked about figures in American politics. After years of leading the country's most populous state, Governor Newsom is getting candid about why rent is too high, why groceries cost too much, and

how the government isn't showing up for everyday Americans. Get ready for an unfiltered conversation about the wealth gap, housing, AI's impact on the economy, and what it'll actually take to build a better financial future. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on youtube.com/yourrichbff. Hello, welcome for Chast, my shit podcast, binding on the Sparishman Agreements.

It's contentious this week, who's allowed to say what about whom, I think I got the who and whom right there.

I'm your friend Nila, I'm here, I'm running the show for the first time in years.

I'm going to kind of remember how to do it. It's going to be great. David Pierce is off because he has the temerity to have children and need to care for them. And I think that's completely inappropriate, but so, because anyway, to replace David

“and all star crew, Sean Hollister is here, I am here, I am not David Pierce.”

Don Preston, sir. Hey, also, not David Pierce. Maybe we'll summon him throughout the show. No, it's fine. David had a good subject to care of, well, there's our break.

We've got Sean and Dom. It's a huge week of gadget news. If you're in paying attention to the show, we did all of the Apple news in a live stream earlier this week. You can go watch that.

You can watch me get a spec wrong and then just melt into a puddle of embarrassment. I got texts from my friends who told me it was okay because they have not seen me be embarrassed by getting a spec wrong in that way and quite a long time. Thank you to everybody in the chat. We got it right in the end.

It's an OLED display. I don't want to talk about it anymore. That's it. That's how you get for me. But aside from Apple, it was an enormous week of gadget news.

Dom was at Mobile World Congress along with Allison, a million Android phones were launched

there as well as 6G, which, sure, Sean, you covered Google and Epic settling a giant dispute in the play store. There's all kinds of other gadgets to talk about this week. I actually want to start by talking about a gadget one second. I do want to say there's other news in the world.

There's a war going on. There's a massive conflict between anthropic and a pentagon. We've got all that on the site. In particular, we're going to have hate and on with David to talk about the anthropic pentagon situation in detail on Tuesday.

One of the reasons we're not doing it right away is as we are recording. Four things are changing. So we're just going to hold for that story to resolve one tick further before we dive all the way into it. But there's a ton of coverage from Hayden on that on the site.

It's some of the most in-depth reporting anywhere on what the contract terms actually mean. So go, we'll link at the show notes. Go read that. She's going to be on the show on Tuesday to dive into that in full.

We have all that coverage and there's more coming on the show. It's just literally as we were going to record today more happened. We're depending on side more stuff today. So we're just going to wait for that to resolve. And then the last thing I want to say before we get started, the new season of version history

starts on Sunday with Furby, which is wild. Do we have the Furby trailer Travis?

“Do you remember the most exciting gadget of 1998?”

It was a robot that ended up in millions of homes. And it was very high tech. It had a light sensor, it had a sound sensor, it had fur. On this season of version history, we have six stories about the tech that we talk to. What's the first rule of fight club?

Don't talk about fight club. You can go out some interventions. What if a conference call was a social network? And the tech that talked back. Listen to the podcast, watch it on YouTube every Sunday starting on March 8.

It's great.

“It starts with Furby, which I believe is one of the most politically intense episodes of”

version history we've ever done. I mean, we did the Macintosh, like the 128K Macintosh this season, it was really fun to do. But I think the Furby is going to inspire even more emotions. Version history now has its own YouTube channel, it's @versionhistorypodcast, go subscribe to that channel.

I can't wait for you guys to see this season. I think David's like really cracked the code on version history this time around. It's great. I'm excited for you to see it and in particular tell us how you feel about Furby's. Because there's more going on there than you can possibly now.

I cannot wait for you to see these Furby. It will haunt your nightmares. Okay, so on Wednesday, I promised that I would start this show with five minutes of me just being happy about a gadget. And so I'm going to keep my promise and I'm not with this review is in publish.

We're not ready to like issue a definitive ruling on this product yet. But if you all recall, when I went away on Prentle Eve over the summer, I said, I'm going to get a kaleidoscape, the high-end movie streamer, and I'm going to, I'm going to, it's all I'm going to do. I'm going to watch movies with my baby.

I did not do this because the idea of reviewing a gadget while I'm leaving this dumb, because the baby has many more needs than I do.

It turns out, this is our second time around.

We think I would have realized this, but I had this dream when I failed to realize this dream. Then we hired John Higgins, who was like a legitimate expert TV and AV reviewer. He knows way more about this than anybody of our own boy. And he knows everybody.

And so the kaleidoscape people are like, do you actually want to review a kaleidoscape? And so they've sent John and I kaleidoscape systems. If you don't know what a kaleidoscape is, it is the single highest bit rate movie streamer you can get. The way it's supposed to work is you don't just get one device you get to.

You get a server and you get clients that you place in your house.

“So the reason you have to have a server and clients in your house is because the files are”

so big. The movies you download are so big. You can't actually stream them over the internet. You have to download them first and then stream them locally on your own network. So the server that they sent me was a kaleidoscape mini-teraprim.

It's an 8-terabyte SSD. It can only hold 115 movies. It's not the files are so big. And then I have a stratoe player, which has its own little storage and you can just buy the thing by yourself if you want.

The stratoe player alone is $2,500. The mini-teraprim server that I have is $10,000. So I have $13,000 of movie streamer in my house right now. It's out of control.

It is the single most incredible experience I've ever had watching movie my turn last.

In my entire life. I've been so happy. I have a Sony 895L, which is one of the best TV's you can buy. I'm some of our units still the best TV could buy. And then we have a 514 Atmosystem running through a big Sony receiver.

We have four speakers in the ceiling. We have five around in a huge subwoofer. And basically the experience of watching full uncompressed 100 megabit per second video files with full uncompressed Atmos audio or fully uncompressed DTS HD Master audio is mind blowing. It's like you're seeing reality for the first time.

This is a very niche thing to say. You can drive your car fast on highway and you know that you're not supposed to do that. Right? And you're like, you're having this thing. That's pretty cool.

Have you ever driven a car on a racetrack, like a fat like ever had a suspension or even like a go car? Have you ever driven a go car on a racetrack? Go car. I love my car.

Right? And you're like, oh, this is how it's supposed to be. Like I'm supposed to go this fast. Like my car is much faster than the highway. This is very much the experience of lighting up my TV and my speakers with full uncompressed

audio and video. Oh, wait. All of this stuff I've been watching looks like shit. Look at how much more headroom there is. It is incredible.

I love that you've picked a solution to watch movies like reality that you can actually share with other people, whereas I am by living room of my couch with a pair of glasses watching 3D movies. I cannot stop watching 3D movies. Oh, my gosh.

That feels like Sea Graality for the first time to be.

But everybody around me is like, what are you doing if you're living room with glasses on? So all I have to ask is, is this a better TV than the vision pro that you were? Yes.

“So here's the thing I'm saying, it's like, I already had the TV.”

I already had the admin system, it was, to your point, Sean, about one and two with other people, in our previous house, when we lived in the woods in the pandemic, I put up all that stuff in the basement and no literally no one wanted to go to the basement. Like, I was like, do you want to watch a movie and I would be like, yeah, like, let's go downstairs and I would go alone to the basement to watch a movie with all the time.

We don't have like a separate theater room. We don't have any other stuff anymore. We just have like kind of the one big TV with all that stuff. And like that means mostly we watch this blue-y, like the reality of this setup is like very expensive on theater is that we mostly watch blue-y on it.

And then you watch Disney+ streaming or Netflix streaming and all that stuff looks fine and it's like appropriately on it.

But like we're watching basically kids movies, right all the time because we have kids.

I want to hear about the nature of reality. We're watching all that stuff and compressed. Right. But let me get to it. So all that stuff is still streaming at like 15 to 25 megabits per second.

Like I'm a high side. You're getting 25. That's a lot of compression and in particular, it's a lot of color compression. It's like it's very wonky but you know, you know, see those numbers when you set up your HDMI signal.

Like do you want 422 or 444 or whatever, like that is a way to describe color compression. And people have a lot of feelings about bits versus it's fine. But that is a way to describe color compression and you get a lot of that on streaming. Just a lot of color compression on streaming.

“That's why red, like the color red in digital video, often blocks so hard that's just”

an artifact of the amount of color compression that happens. And then compression generally, bit rate compression is why when there's fast motion at the super-like, the confetti comes down the whole image blocks up. Like there just isn't enough bandwidth to show you the motion happening at all once. So you've got a lot of color compression, you've got a lot of motion compression.

It 15, 25 megabits per second, this is like fine for blue and you don't see it.

We get the colitiscape and we're just watching Incredibles 2, right? The same movie that we watch in Disney Plus and you're like, oh, this is way better. Like, I'm actually seeing more of this movie. I'm noticing more things in the image of this movie because there isn't any color compression or that it's much less color compression and the overall bit rate is so much higher that

frame-to-frame there's more detail. This is crazy. I accidentally watched all of Pacific Rim again because so much of Pacific Rim happens in the rain that when you watch it on streaming, you're basically not watching anything. A 1080p blue ray still looks better than, in the case, streams from Netflix.

Because of this. Absolutely, because of the bit rate is so much higher on a 1080p blue ray that you actually get motion frame-to-frame. So anyway, I have this like $13,000 extra of the movie stream hours. And I'm watching Incredibles 2 and rewatching Pacific Rim for some reason.

And it is, it's not necessarily the TV in the speakers, like, obviously the one I have

“has so much ability to show you the quality that that's why I mean by it's like a driving”

a fast car fast. You're like, oh, this car is meant to go very fast and like mostly I put around at 30 miles an hour. Like, oh, this car could actually go 100 miles an hour. Like, that is what that feels like.

So what I'm hearing is, you're going to invite the Virgil for it. It should all have a kaleidoscope, right? But what you really get is like, oh, it is a crime how much compression these streamers voice to upon us. Like, there's a big delta between 25 and 100, right?

And I would pay more to a lot of these streamers to get higher quality. The only one, like, Apple's a little bit better, like Apple, I think, will peak out at 30. Like, it's like moderately better. It's like not that much better. The only one that I think you can get, which I also have in my dumb Sony TV is Sony

Pictures, Brabiecourt, whatever it's called now, where it will stream only Sony movies it up to 85, and but that's like, you can only get Sony movies.

Like, you can watch Spider-Man 2 as many times as you want, it's for a second.

And to the spiderverse that color compression, you're going to like have less of it. There you go. All of that. All of that all the Sony's. Like, you should watch.

It's just a movie store. It's just, it's got everything, it's got TV shows. I'm going to, they sent me 97 kingdoms or haven't watched yet, but I'm excited to watch it on this thing. And I'm like, your options, if you want source material that can live up to the quality

of the display that you've bought are to collect blue rays, which I think a lot of people are into, or $13,000 of a classmate. That's right. That's it. That's what you got.

I don't know, I mean, obviously, it's reviewing it, John, I'm going to write reviews of this. I'm sure his review actually far more technical, like, he has things to say other than this is sick. It's so, I'm excited to co-bibe that's true for you. I mean, there's some really, truly wonky stuff about this product.

“Like, I had to open it to configure it, you have to go on the web and then like log into”

a little web portal on the device. It's like ridiculous, like, the, it's meant for installers to put in for rich people. It's not meant for normal humans to have. I, but I had to do that not for any particular, like, complicated reason. You have to do that to enable HDMI CEC because it doesn't, because for $13,000, you do

not get a remote control, because the assumption is, because the assumption is that your

sitting down in the theater and your Butler is beginning this point.

I feel like far too much of the tech industry has been premised on the idea that HDMI CEC is a viable solution to solve it for me. I got it. It's, it works kind of. So now we can release click around with my TV or, but to turn it on, I have to open and

app on my phone. So there, there's some real edges here, but then you, like, it's a video playback device. Who cares? Once you, once you're in it, you're in it. And I've just been rewatching all of these old movies that are in the catalog that came

with the device, because I'm like, oh, it's like I can see what's actually going on to the first time. I highly recommend it. It's, it's, it's very much that, that Ferris Bueller came with Ferrari, like, if you have the needs.

Anyway, that's, it's, it's the gadget of all gadgets.

I've never been happier. We're going to write an actual review of it. Like I said, there are, there are some, some rough edges around this thing, and make it not a consumer device. And of course, just to, to get the whole system is delivered to me, you're $13,000 in

the whole. And it doesn't come with any movies. Like you start to buy or rent the movies.

“Did they cost, like, more than usual, like, 70 bucks a movie, 100 bucks a movie?”

No, it's not the same. No, it's not the same. It's the other ones I've looked at. It's like, it's, like, $6 or $7 to rent in $25 to buy. So, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not a battery.

That's fine. I'm, you can also buy a used Blu-ray player for, like, $150 in just buy Blu-ray. So, this is a thing you can also do. For now, they're, they are discontinuing a lot of this Blu-ray players. For now.

But, like, I've, like, I've been saying, it is, I just haven't been happy with a gadget in ages. 'Cause this thing isn't trying to do anything. It's not trying to, like, replace all white-collar work, right? It's, like, these movies will look better than the regular movies, like, yep. It's super does, they'll get around that.

Even my wife noticed it. The other day, like, I made her watch up, it's really good at concerts. So, there's a lot of concert, because, again, it's uncompressed audio. So, we're just sitting around watching the cure and in excess and the Rolling Stones live for no reason.

And she's like, this sounds really good. I'm like, yeah, it's uncompressed out and she's like out of the room by the time I finished it. But, it's like, it's just, you get so much more dynamic range than the audio that they have built a little business doing, like, concert streams or concert footage rather, because watching

a streamed concert, you're like, this sounds bad. But, if you have, if you have all the, all the channels I'm compressed, I, I told the people I was a huge nerd and so I had to prove that I'm a huge nerd after getting a speaker on earlier this week. Just invite a few of them in to testify.

I went to Nealize House. I'm sure the cloud escape people will be happy for you to come demo their products 13, 13 G's at a time. But, we'll have a full review, John, I'm going to work on. He's got other stuff to do.

He's got other products to do. You can imagine what some of the display products yesterday are. They're in the mix. We're working on some of that stuff. But when we get a free moment, we will review the cloud escape just so I can talk

about it again on the show. That's what I have for you. All right, we should start with the actual news, which is not just me insisting that everybody comes with their mile of my home and look at how good my TV looks. John, you're at MWC, I've been at MWC in years, it's since we're Mobile World Congress

in St. Barcelona. It's the biggest phone show telecom show in the world.

“I think a really interesting dynamic right now, playing out for us here in the United States,”

phones outside the United States are getting so much more interesting than anything we have here. Yup. And MWC is where that's happening, describe the show to us. There's one I want you to absolutely start with.

But then I want you to talk about just how different phones are getting over there. Yeah, I mean, I think the big theme of MWC for me this year was hardware is getting weird on this side of the Atlantic and people are pushing hardware and as many weird directions that they can, mostly in the camera, but not exclusively. The emblematic handset here is the Ukatel WP63.

You probably don't know Ukatel they are a rugged phone brand, so they make these sort of big bulky phones with giant batteries and it's said what the proof thing and that kind of thing.

The WP63 is pitched as a camping phone, it's got a 20,000-million-pound battery, it's

got a camping light, it's got a super loud speaker that you can use for listening to music or for sort of sounding it along or something. They also has a firelighter built inside as an igniter and ignites your sort of a generously putting this. This is basically like an old car cigarette lighter, it's a tiny little electric plate.

Embedded inside the phone, there's a button on the outside which has a little red fire icon

“on it and you push the button, I think you can also do this like then the phone and the”

little plate slides out and it is just the size of the end of a cigarette. Are they selling it to the late cigarettes? They are pitching it as a camping accessory, the rugged adventurers.

When you need a rugged adventurer outside of the bar for 5 to 10 minutes, we've been

open that.

“No more stylists, instead your pet shaped object is a cigarette lighter now?”

Yeah, I mean, they just need the slot for the cigarettes to slot in the phone as well and then we're ready to open it. So I'm looking at picture this, it's not a pen shaped, it's just like a tiny little disc that slides out. It really is the size of the cigarette tip, it is like this, you know quarter of an inch

by quarter of an inch square that slides out out. Like, you know how like we've criticized various phone companies for the batteries, not big enough. Just make the phone thicker and put bigger battery in there, this is like a, this is like they made the phone gigantic and with all of this extra battery, we're going to do

resistive heating on a coil of metal so you can spark up with cigarette like I respect it. It is very much a 1980 cigarette lighter, like this is the thing that was in my parents' cars. That's retro tech and maybe cigarette to the next retro thing that the Gen Z is going

to get into and everyone's going to take a while. This is what I mean about what's happening overseas, like you can start a company where you're entire, first of all, it's called Okato. Your entire, like, promise to the consumer is like, it's just an Android phone, but this one can, it's like, and like, maybe you have a business, because there's just like more

access to the market there, like this thing is not going to be in the tea mobile store. I suspect no, I'd be pretty impressed if they could pull that off.

And not least because I never saw it light a cigarette, we tried to see this thing work

three times, and I was repeatedly in contact with the girls, I know other people did see it work. I could did work. I've spoke to other journalists who watched this thing like something on fire. Every time I went, I had broken about 10 minutes before I arrived, and there's happened

on three different occasions. Alice and I kept trying to see this thing, but we never once saw it light up because they had one sample and it broke every single day of the show.

“This is the same company that does like the giant batteries in their phones, right?”

Yes. And this one has the giant batteries. It's got a 20,000 men and pop battery as well. They have others that go bigger than that. Once you have a big enough battery, like, what can we do with it?

It's like cigarettes. Yeah. You can do anything with it. And just stick a little resistive heat plate next to the battery, and, you know, all right. So this is what I mean, like, if phones are there are just getting weird, right?

Because there's more access to consumers, there's more Android users outside of the United States than not, like, there's just a different, what's app is a more dominant messaging platform that lets people switch more easily. There's all this stuff. And then you can see, phone makers are competing on hardware.

So cigarette lighters aside, we should talk about the robot phone because this to me is like the most, let's compete on hardware phone in quite a while. I know they're calling it a robot, it appears that they've just put a gimbal on a phone. Oh, yeah. It is absolutely.

The robot phone name is a real stretch.

“This is the gimbal phone or the stabilized camera phone or the DJI Osmo Pocket phone.”

Any of those would work just fine. It is. This is from honor. As well as saying, this one is China only, but they do say it's coming out. This is a sort of thing you look at and you think, oh, that's some goofy concept device

that someone's come up with and they made three of them and they're never going to sell

it. They insist they are making this. There is a production run. They're going to sell them in China. They talk about it like it's a product line that will have more of them.

They talked about the idea that it will come to Europe in the future or future versions might, this is something they are supposedly exploring. But yeah, it is. It is a phone with a DJI Osmo Pocket style mini gimbal that kind of sits in the rear camera unfolds up out of the top of the phone.

And then it can rotate, it can look around, it can do stabilize video, it can do subject tracking video. You can swivel it around and use it for your selfie cameras. You're getting this kind of rear main camera quality for your selfies. The robot of it all is it has a LLN powered chat app and it makes cute noises and it's

head at you and shake its head and don'ts to imagine dragons and also it's a horrifying thing like that. But if you're part of your video, by the way, as you point out, it can dance to imagine dragons but no other songs. No other songs.

That is for sure. That is for dragons. Yeah. I asked if it knew other dances and other songs and they were like, you know, it will.

But you know, for the demo, the demo we have this. Yeah. Do you think that they licensed the imagine dragons songs or anything they were just like they'll be fine? I hope they did if only for how often it was being blasted.

I heard it. I don't know. At least two or three times during the press conference, they had this dance routine on stage of that booth. I had it played there.

Any time anyone went on the demo and said, like, hey, robot phone, play some music. Suddenly imagine dragons drops bursting imagine that with ten robot phones in a ring and it's the one demo everyone wants to see is it dancing to music. So I've had a lot of magic in some of that. I feel like it shouldn't be too much of a stretch for this company to couple of like some

reasons that you might want to robot. Like maybe the little gimbal could be your eyes if you can't see very well and at the

This feels like there could be legitimate reasons for that. Yeah. They didn't pitch accessibility uses at all. The way they went down the robot angle was that kind of it's a companion. So that's all we're having an accessory.

The clips don't go back back and they were saying it could describe what you're seeing. But in that kind of like you could be on vacation and it will describe the scenery and talk about where you are to you and that kind of thing.

But wait, hold on, I know this isn't the first time we've encountered the rough.

“This is the first time you've gotten to like see and hold it, right?”

I didn't get to hold it. But this is the first time we have seen it turned on and working. It has previously been shown off in a pure CGI, maybe AI slot concept video. And then if CES I got to see one but turned off and I was not allowed to touch it and I didn't move or anything.

That was just to like, here's a plausibly a dummy unit. You know, this is what it would look like. This time they had a load of them on the booth working moving but no one was allowed to watch you grab the thing. So three months from now you'll be able to touch one.

Yeah, at some point. They said second half of this year will come out. We'll see. Right. You can just see that you can see the progression every three months.

You get ever closer to the robot.

I'm just saying, it seems like they've backed in to needing to make it more of a robot because of AI. Like you really get a robot phone and actually on is a gimbal that pops out and moves around mechanically. It's enough.

“Like, we doesn't actually have to be a robot.”

The extra bit of context here is that honor is building towards an IPO. And they do not want to IPO as just another company that makes phones and tablets and smartwatches. And so robots, they just thought we'll do robots instead. That'll be the thing that pushes us forward.

I was told by someone on it, they kind of looked at EVs but the Chinese EV market is already sprawling an enormous and has countless brands and shamies there and doing a very good job so far. So I want to kind of thought we can't fit there. But you know, robots, we could probably do robots.

And so they're attempt to convince everyone they were about how many of us are putting a gimbal on the phone. This is all fine. I'm actually very taken with the gimbal on the phone. I watch your video.

I watch some other videos. And I'm like, oh, this is neat. Yeah, like you get stabilized video. It can do the tracking, it's tracking Allison and a crowd of people in your video. And then like in the back of my head was isn't the S26 Ultra doing all this with a crop

sensor. Like there's a real dynamic here right now where they did a lot of mechanical stabilization and it's cool because people like mechanical gimbals, they like the awesome pocket. Yeah. I enjoy the gimbal I have for my phone and then I'm looking at Samsung and they're like,

you don't need that. It's just a huge sensor. It was just crop it really fast. You're reviewing the S26 for us. That has the horizon lock on it, right?

Yeah, that has horizon lock as well. It doesn't have the giant 200 megapixel sensor that the Ultra does but it also has horizon lock and I tested it out after seeing the robot phone. I thought I would play with horizon lock a bit and see how they compare. Yeah, horizon lock seems to work really well.

It seems impressive what it's doing on the software side is kind of amazing. I think it's plausible. The hardware solution will be better in terms of pure quality you're going to get, but you're not cropping into the sensors much. You can have the full resolution.

You can do all this other stuff. Maybe even the actual stabilization will end up being better because they have hardware and software going all the ones. But you get all these other problems. This thing is probably going to cost a load whenever it comes out.

I can only assume it will be unreasonably fragile compared to any other phone on the market. In China, I don't know how well set up on a raise for our past system, things like that. They are a big company. They have a big presence in China, maybe like going to be able to repair people's broken robot phones.

If they have a launch it overseas, I would never really put my faith in them to be able

to handle fiddly repairs on this tiny little gimbal arm. I assume the waterproofing will be near zero and the dustproofing. I assume we're going back to the early foldable days where they just have to shrug and say, we can't protect this in the way that we could as well. I will say, as somebody who does use an Osmo Pocket 3 all the time.

I film on my videos. You're actually looking at me right now through one. I can probably get its gimbal active track going. This thing is wonderful, but I always feel like I can't quite tell what I'm filming on it. The postage stamp size screen is not big enough.

So you kind of want to pair it with a phone so I can definitely see it. I've used a pocket as well. I had the same thing. The postage stamp screen is very hard to work with sometimes. Getting that experience on a big phone screen, all in one device.

You get to edit on that device, right? If you're willing to edit on your phone screen, but you can edit on a phone better than you can edit on an Osmo Pocket. That's a logic.

“If you, but I think the most important thing is getting the sensor out of the phone so you”

can make it bigger and you can pick up much better.

Well, we don't know actually the sensor, but it's still a 200 megapixel sensor.

“We know it's 200 megapixel, and that is it.”

Oh, and I have said zero other camera specs. So if nothing about the actual sensor size, the aperture or anything like that, it will also have an ultra-wide in a telephoto, and even still has a selfie camera filled into the screen because they, I asked them about that, they didn't explain it kind of make sense that you might want to use face unlock or something, and you don't have to

wait for the robot to pop its head up every time you want to do face unlock on your phone. But I'm just saying all those stuff that AI stuff they're trying to do to make a robot. It's just put Google eyes on the gimbal and call it a robot, and like I remember, it's fine. Honestly, half the people took it like, it's alive.

You know? Like the presence of Google eyes, but yeah, that's definitely alive. You don't need to do this, yeah.

But you mentioned dust resistance.

Once they also announce a new foldable, what's the V6, the magic V6, which is sort of the most toughest foldable route, right? It is now IP68 and IP69, beating Google's Pixel Time Profile, which is just IP68. The difference between those is that the eight is a false immersion in water, and the nine is for high temperature and high pressure jets of water.

So it has both ratings, it can survive submersion, but also, I don't know, a really intense

“pressure wash if you want to subject your phone to that.”

You know, it's funny. I still like getting nervous about putting my regular phone underwater, and then it's like, "Oh, this folding phone, you can put in a car wash." It's like, "I don't, I'm not going to do that." But you should.

The IP ratings, that sealant is good once twice, maybe, as salt gets into it as chemicals either way at the sealant, it's for that accident, but do not rely on it to do it more than once. All right. Well, I'll keep my folding phone out of the car wash.

I found stories of a Google employee, I know, in the UK, who once in the early days of IP68 Pixel, very proudly demonstrated the waterproofing on his Pixel phone by dunking it in the swimming pool, which it did not survive. So, Johnny was there, they had a much like a phone, some other stuff, what's going on there? Yeah, they had a huge launch, they had lots of different stuff.

The main things are the Xiaomi 17 series phones, which had launched in China very late last year. This was their big European unveiling. So there was the 17, which is their iPhone 17/S26/Pixel10 kind of compact-ish flagship phone.

They jumped from the 15 series to the 17 series. They quite explicitly said at the time they did this in China that it was to match their numbering to Apple's, which is delightful. I love that. The more exciting thing was the 17 Ultra, and then this kind of like-a-branded spin on

that, which is officially the like-a-lites phone. What a name. It's great. I mean, so this actually the fourth light's phone, but the other three were all made by shop, and they were only available in Japan, and they were this kind of weird little

phone that a lot of like-a-nodes got excited about and couldn't have a buy on the site. They made a trip to Japan.

This is the first light's phone to be global by which I mean, not the US, but ever

or else. It is kind of extraordinary as cameras go. It's basically just the 17 Ultra to be clear, like the light's phone is not a whole different thing. It's the 17 Ultra, but with a load of extra like-a-branding, they put the like-a red dot

logo on it. It comes with like-a-branded accessories. The software has been not totally co-graded with like-a, but tweaked with like-a-lik-a-s-acetic has been put all over Android and all over the camera app. So it feels a bit more like you're using a like-a device from that kind of UI experience,

just like the fonts that run through it and things like that. And then the big fun, silly gimmicky bit on top of it is that the rear camera ring rotates. So if you get the like-a version of the phone, you can use that rear camera, you can twist it around, and it can control zoom or exposure, or you can set it to sort of move between different filters in the camera app and things like that, which is fun, and I thought I

would love this. I was so excited for it, and I discovered that, although in my head, the camera, they're like the camera island on these, these Ultra flagships, feels enormous, and they are enormous. They stick out of the phone loads, there's a huge black circles on the back of the phone. They look really outlandish compared to what Samsung and Apple do.

But when you compare it to actually a camera, and you try and hold it, and grip the lens mount with your hand, you just cover it's tiny, it's really fush against the camera buddy. There is nothing beyond the hold on to, and it's really okay to actually try and use that as a zoom control or focus or something.

It doesn't actually work in the way you really feel like it should. Yeah.

“I've always wondered who are these branded camera phones for?”

Are they for like a nerds who are like, I want to have this microphone, in addition to my like a camera, or do these people just, they pull out the actual camera? Not bothered with the phone. Yeah. So I'm lucky enough to know two black nerds.

They buy everything like a mix, and I'm going to just say this at loud.

to like a, I hope like a starts like a scholarship fund or something, because that would

be the true circle of life. But like literally everything down, there's like I made like a subscription camera app. Okay, my, my, my buddy was like, well, I have to have it, and I was like, no, you absolutely do not. I was like, I just download daylight, like you will be fine, and there was no, like, they're

going to buy this phone. I'm sure, and they're going to buy the lens cap, which is by far the best accessory for the phone. The huge lens cap that goes over the back. Oh, yeah, I frame on the video, you got this like like a branded lens cap on the back

of the case that comes with your hand is pretty. Okay, how to feel about the fact that the like a logo is on the back are meant for our

“important, because I think this is the, the mistake of this phone is that those logo”

should be, to be holding the phone and landscape. So the funny thing about this is, is that this originally came out in China as the Xiaomi 17 ultra-like edition, and it had a slightly different design there. It had a two-tone finish, whereas it's, it's now just a single color on the back. A couple other small tweaks, and a China, it's landscape, and then the, the international

version, they changed it to portrait. No! And everyone is curious about it, or all those little likeers, that is that the thing everyone has said, why did they change the logo or information they ruined it? Because that's what makes it look like you can't have it.

All right.

Well, hopefully it's, this is never going to come to the United States, so hopefully if you're

buying on a great market, you can obviously choose, right? So I would say by the Chinese one. Other companies, Vivo, Techno, there's a Unhahertz phone, and talk about walking through these. Okay.

Vivo didn't bring like a full phone launch, but it did a tease of its X300 ultra, which is going to be its equivalent to this Xiaomi phone, its rival, its similarly priced top top-top spec, similar giant camera module, it announced for the first time that's going to bring that phone to Europe, which it's always been China exclusive before. They said that this ultra will come in internationally, and it teased a set of ridiculous

accessories to go with it.

So last year Vivo was the first of the big Chinese firm brands to release a, called a

telephoto extender lens, which I've viewed at the time, it was a 200 millimeter lens that you strap on to the back of the phone, and you stick it on top of the existing telephoto on the phone, and then you get this full 200 millimeter telephoto experience.

“Then now doubling that with a 400 millimeter telephoto extender, which I think might be more”

millimeter than I need for my phone focal length to be honest, it's going to be a lot of zoom. I love all of Allison's pictures of this one, because it's just all the gear around the phone, you can't see the photo at all, it's very good, yeah, then they are releasing a camera cage together with small rig, which is a company that basically makes all these

the camera cages and other OTT professional-ish accessories for phones. So this is a dual hand grip camera cage with a fan on the back and a mount for a light, and you can mount a tripod to the bottom and all this stuff, and they're really trying to pitch this as now, like, you can be have a professional cinema setup with a phone at its center, and this can be the phone, and you know that they're announcing some other

video features support for a 10-lit log across all three real lenses that you stop doing with look-up tables and compacts video things that mostly go away over my head at some point, I'm going to have to get my head around because I'm going to have to review this thing somehow, but they're really like meaning out on this idea that cool what we can do to stand out is just go full in on professional cinema as what this phone does,

which I will say in the credit, one thing I like about this is it's kind of refreshingly

“on us for a company like this to confirm that that's what you need when you want to produce”

this kind of hail of this was shot on a phone content, and that, that, that, that, that, that hype spiel for this, this, this camera case, this grip rig thing, is, oh, this is what we use when we shoot our product launches and produce all the promo videos for it. It's a nice contrast compared to other brands which love to tell this thing was shot on the phone, and they leave this big blank around what that means, right?

Yeah, Samsung just said this at the S26 launch, yeah, and I mean Apple does this every time, but it Samsung literally just did this weeks ago at the S26 launch, and you saw the photo, the actual rig they're using to shoot the S26 launch, and like, where's the phone? Yeah, like, you're, you kind of get your place where it could be any phone? Exactly, because you, you've, you've put so much around it.

If you was demonstration of this, they literally had a setup, you could go and try it out, where they are taking this whole rig amounted it on a dolly, and you could sit and use the, the tracking dolly to like, take a shot and try out the new pro video out they have. And again, I just love that they're like, cool, when we talk about using this, this cinema great stuff, we mean with all these other thousands of dollars worth of equipment around the phone.

Then you've got this company techno, which is, it's all just like Pogo Pins and Magnets, like, can't make the phone bigger and weirder, and then I actually went in by talking about Lenovo, which I have a lot to say about this, Lenovo laptop, and it's modular ports. So I talk about the techno, because we're, we're just in an age of like modularity in like, specific ways, right? Now you're going to build your own phone out of parts, but, you know, in this case,

“you've got, okay, we're going to be honest that what you need to do is mount the phone in a rig,”

and then mount accessories to the rig. This techno company is like, we're going to be honest, that you're just going to clip a bunch of magnets to our phone, and then I think Lenovo is on drugs.

But let's talk about techno first. Yeah. So the techno one is back into, this is full concept territory.

This is not a product that they're intending to release. We've seen multiple films before. I like this. I think this is one of those smarter implementations of it. I've seen imagined. It is just a very, very thin phone thinner than a USB port, and it doesn't have a USB C port. It has a tiny battery, but they have various program and magnetic attaching plugs in the back, where you can slap on power backs, and you can stack multiple ones on top of each other.

So you could kind of keep stacking these various 3,000mAh power banks on until you've got as many as you want to have. They had microphone attachments, weaker attachments. They had various types of camera attachments. They had small little action camera things. You could slap on the back, but also you could just put on a, well, basically look like a full mirrorless camera and pogo pin that back to the phone. This is the dream. It is a dream. The magnets are not strong enough. I help this thing.

And if you were not supporting the full weight of the camera lens with one hand, it just immediately wanted to follow. This is the, this is the reality of all pogo pin. Yes. It is not quite enough for a full camera to stick with.

Can be turned essential. The essential phone had a magnetic, short-open camera touch.

“Just ask your question if the essential phone, is that company still around?”

Obviously not. It has so many other issues. But magnetic and pogo pin does not go. Name a, name a pogo pin product at scale. It still exists. All I am saying are the, is the only reasons to buy a new phone in the world at a bar are because your battery is too old, or because you want a better camera. So with the sooner we get to, just slap a new camera on your phone, slap a new battery on your phone, the better we will be. I know the dream of pogo pins is alive.

By the way, I just like St. Pogo pins. But it is true that the dream of modular accessories are just being kind of a thing. It's going to live forever. By the way, I think I can answer my own question. I believe the only at scale still existing pogo pin product is the surface, because I think the surface keyboard is pogo pins. That's it. That's all I got. You correct me if I'm wrong. I think that might be it.

There are so many pogo pins in my life. I don't remember which ones are still sold at retail. Who are you? All right. The reason I want to bring this up in modularity is because I want to end by talking about this Lenovo concept, which is a concept. It is basically a framework laptop shop. You've covered the framework at depth. Talk about another company that is just chasing the pogo pin dream to its complete conclusion. So this is just a lot of stuff you can take apart.

I know you've seen it done. The thing that gets you about it, and this just kills me,

“is they're like the thing you should do with modularity, is be able to replace the ports.”

And so you can swap in an HDMI port. You can swap it in a USB-C port. This is all very funny, because they also made a little case for you to carry your ports around, so that when you need the HDMI port, you like open your little ring box. And it's like, no, this is just dongle. You just

made the world's most inconvenient dongle that you can never replace. But now you have a little

jewelry box for your modular ports done. What was the idea here? I can't speak to everything they were thinking with this. Other than someone wanted a port pouch, like you said. I mean, this was like a weird concept that combined two things at once. It was the module ports, which you can swap in and out, which I think were USB-C with the A and HDMI. But then it also just had this odd setup with a screen that was mounted on the back of the laptop lid

and could detach. You could then connect it as an external monitor with a cable, and sort of an external monitor that magnitude to the back of your laptop when you didn't need it. But you could also grab it and stick it on the bottom and have a dual screen laptop setup. So just screen where the keyboard should be and more screen where the screen should be. You know, you know that I'm fixated on the ports when I don't mention the removable screen. I know either on the keyboard deck or the

back of the existing screen. Oh yeah, that's fine. That's some normal stuff. We're going to record these ports. Yeah. It will not surprise that a log type readers of the version know that I am all over this. I want this and I am especially excited that these modular ports are not now tiny USB-C connectors that go into your motherboard, but rather tiny M.2 connectors that go into

eGPUs in giant solid state drives and anything else that could run over a PCIe large bus.

“Really good for for the for a 2026 in which buying GPUs in fast storage is completely achievable for”

most people. I have a lot of dreams. I love it. It sounds like I'm going to use crazy. Dumb you were also at the nothing event today, a true hero leaving Barcelona to go with nothing event today. They launched for a pro briefly talks about that and we're going to say break. Yeah. So nothing launched two phones. The phone for a phone for a pro and also a pair of headphones.

They had phone A, which are basically just a $100 cheaper version of their over-air headphones

that they released last year. The foray in the foray pro are kind of interesting because they are two near identical phones in terms of specs. It's very little like tiny little variations in the exact chipset and how bright the screen is. Things like that. They're basically the same phone, but they look totally different. So the foray, which is the cheaper one, which is not coming out in the US. Someone's just European India. The foray looks a lot like a regular nothing

phone. If you've seen anything phone, they've done it with positive years. It's got this

“transparent back. It comes with this good design where you can see what a meant to look”

suggestively like the inner's of a phone, but are in fact not the inner's of a phone. They're just some other bits of plastic and screws. And it comes in some nice colors as white black, but they've also got a really punchy blue and pink, which I actually kind of love. The only will kind of shift with the foray is they've got a new glyphlighting set up. This is nothing's kind of designed. They put on the back of all the phones with some sort of funny set

weird lights that you can use for notifications and alerts and timers and things like that. Here they have a new set of which they call the glyph bar, which is just seven vertical lights in a strip. A red one at the bottom that can be a video recording light. And they just go up and down. So you can use a volume slider and how much how many lights go up tells you what volume you're on and you have a timer where the blocks count down and things like that. I do love

changing the volume I firmly looking at the back of it. It's very satisfying. Yeah, I tried this for a video and I was like, it goes up the lights go on. It goes down the lights go off great.

You could do that for 20 seconds tops. The foray pro is a big shift for nothing. It's their first

metal phone. So they have had these transparent designs all the way along. This one drops that. It's a big shift to their aesthetic. Suddenly the bulk of the body is just metal. It comes in silver or black or a kind of suggestion of a pink. Yeah, this is a very flush. It's a bit even blush fills a bit generous. It's a silver with kind of a hint that there might have been some pink near it once. But then they have a camera module which looks a bit like the other

previous nothing thing. So once you get to the camera, that bit's transparent. And that bit again has these little bits of plastic dohikis underneath and you can see and it looks fun and exciting. And then that phone has what nothing calls the glyph matrix, which is basically just a round dot matrix display. Yeah, this they also done the phone three fly trip last year. This is this isn't totally new. The version on here is bigger, but it's also substantially lower resolution.

There are a lot fewer square LEDs to light up in there. So it's actually a lot less useful in some ways. I was really ready to like the fact that it was a bigger size because I found the phone three that won a little unhelpful. I liked the idea or I didn't actually find it very useful in any sort of practice. This one I feel is going to be even worse. They have options like a glyph mirror where you can see yourself lit up in the squares. But it's now so low resolution. You

cannot make out any meaningful shapes in this display. It's just a blur. This, I was saying, look at this photo of it all, you push the photo of it all lit up and has my immediate reaction is, okay, there's a clock. There's almost nothing else you could put on here. Yes. It isn't one big sort of

eight bit icon. You could put like a rain cloud on here to be like it's raining. And that's basically

“what I think will end up being a lot of the use guys they suggested before and that I think”

they're going to push through here. It's just the idea of like you can set a custom little emoji S icon to say different notifications. You know, the joke they made in the keynote is have a crying face emoji for when you get slack notifications or something like that. So you can customize it and do things like that, which is fine. It's all very manual from the phone three at least when I reviewed that before, you really have to go through by app and come up with these

designs yourself. You cannot load images into it, but it doesn't do anything smart like just automatically pull the app icon and suggest that as a thing here. You'd have to go and download the WhatsApp icon if you wanted the WhatsApp logo to be what appears when you do it. That's ridiculous. Yes, I can't believe they didn't join that up. It's the most obvious part of this, but yeah. I think this would be a kind of controversial design for nothing fans because the

transparency is so central to all the designers that they've had all the way along since they started the company. But I kind of see the logic because they did go transparent with the phone three and everyone hated that design. It was not popular at all in the fans of the I personally

There's more of a symmetry to it. It looks a bit more thoughtfully laid out. I like the look of it, but we'll see. Did they say, why, why are they changing it? I think part of it is that it can get slimmer. This is their thinnest phone yet. Partly from going to the metal rather than rather than using the plastic. Otherwise, mostly just evolving the design language and things like that. You know, they they talk a lot of not moving away from transparency, but evolving the transparent design,

refining the transparent design, things like that. I feel like nothing. This is like the challenge of being a sort of Android phone maker in a market like European Asia where you're up against the robot phone and a like a co-brand, like this phone. Let's focus on the market. There's so aggressive now that nothing started as being like, we're the solution to the iPhone. We're going to be the counterculture rebels and they got locked into and that means our phones are transparent and that

“is not enough. At this point, like, you have to do something else. I'm you know, you”

car pay is out there and he's like, we're going to be an AI company, like everyone else says all the time, but I think they got kind of backed into the phones or transparent and that's our whole brand. Because the brand was not supposed to be about transparent phones. It was supposed to be a much bigger ideas. We'll see what they do next. All right, we got to say a break. It's funny. We talked so much about like the Android market, the hardware market for Android, you can just see it and it

done. It seems like it was very much on this way down that you see there's stuff happening. I market it. There's just not, we're not coming to United States. Like our market is much more constrained. We have different carrier relationships. We got all this stuff going on and we're going to come back and we're going to talk about on the software side. It seems like Android is up for yet another round of changes that Sean has been digging into. So we got to take a break. We'll be back.

“We're going to talk about Google and Epic. We'll be right back.”

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We did it with first we did it with robots. Now we're going to do what if you didn't have

Google and Epic reached a new settlement. I'm actually, you know, I was covering Apple this week

and this happened on the same day. So I only skimmed over the top of it really. My understanding is Google and Epic already tried to settle this lawsuit and I trusted Android. And the judge basically said, "I don't trust you. Go away." And then now they're just like whatever we're settling anyway. What is going on here? Let me just preface that it was incredible to be in the courtroom for the settlement hearing with Judge Jannato trying very, very hard not to say out loud. But instead

to make the people in front of him, make Epic CEO Tim Swenney and make Android boss Samir Sama. He was trying very hard to make them say instead of him that the two companies are completely

“allies right now. They have a secret $800 billion back to a deal that Tim Swenney basically said”

he would never do anything like. And him being careful, the judge being careful not to break this

confidentiality. But they can't get around this as they're evaluating the settlement. And eventually Tim Swenney just blurt out what's going on. All right. So I want to get that. So just to put it everyone's brain, Epic, which makes Fortnite very famously sued both Apple and Google for an interest violations in particular because they don't want to pay the 30% fee for in-app purchases in Fortnite, which is all their money. And Fortnite's so huge that they basically are going to

forward to get kicked off of both these app stores and not have Fortnite in mobile because they will just collect money from children by dances on every other platform. PlayStation especially. And this has been going on now for most of my adult life, for what I, for what I recall six years. Yes, it's every day I wake up in Epic and Apple and Google are sitting each other and that's

“the way it's going to be. So we, the Epic and Apple case is totally different that an MX”

case or a very, very different. That isn't undergrain. So in maconations, the judge in that case is very mad at Apple and particular or all kinds of stuff going on there. Put that out of your brain. This is a different case. In the Google case, because Google runs Android and then it has to ship Android on other company's phones, there's just more evidence of Google doing monopoly stuff. Like, there's just more emails from Google to Samsung and Google to honor. Like, Google has to run

its ecosystem. And every now and again, a Google executive is like, do what we want or will kill you. And they just have to write it down an email and send it, which is not what Apple has to do. Right. Like, Apple is like, come to Tim's office and then you'll, you'll net, you don't know what happens there. Like, right, Apple is integrated company. It's all one stack because the entity ecosystem has to be controlled. There was just vastly more evidence in a Google case

of Google doing monopoly stuff, tremendous amounts of emails. So, so many, and also evidence that Google was trying to cover up some of this by deleting some of those emails. The judge was very angry about this at the time. Right. So, Epic wins, like, running away in Google case. In a way that, you know, you can argue at the results of the application and that one's still ongoing. But in the Google case, because there are so much evidence, Epic just wins

running away. And then there's, there are, I still, let's try to wrap my head around the timeline. And then the, the judge is going to like issue a remedy of ruling, say what the punishment is. And then these two show up and they're like, we've settled. And then somewhere in that settlement,

Tim's, we need just admits that there's like a secret, eight hundred million on your deal.

And the judge says, no, I don't believe you, that this is bad. And this is the part of it. And now they're just doing it anyway. What is going, like, truly, what is going on here? Okay. Okay. Let's say. Years after Epic wins unanimously in this jury verdict. And we've gone through we've gone to the appeals. And we're waiting to see the Supreme Court takes this up suddenly. Yes, Epic and Google come out together and say we're settling this. Now, what does that settlement mean?

“Because you have to remember that these companies are already past the point where any”

company would usually settle here. The judge has already issued a permanent injunction here. That says, hey, Google, you cannot do all of these things anymore. You cannot make these, you know, these secret deals that incentivize companies to bring games exclusively to Android. You cannot, you cannot have all these apps on this platform completely under your control. You need to create a place where rival app stores can exist inside the Google Play Store.

And you need to give them access to the full catalog of Google Play apps so that an upstart app store could possibly compete against Google Play from within. It's like this, this entire, this entire host and carrier process here where these other app stores can maybe now break Google's monopoly. The judge agrees to all of this incredibly. And now that that injunction has not only been in place for a long time, but been upheld by an appeals court. Now,

suddenly, Google and Epic want to be friends. And the judge is incredibly skeptical about

Brawler said all this stuff about secret deal, we find out that they're, you know, Google and Epic are now joined at the hip for whatever happens next. They come out this week. And they say, we are moving ahead with many of these things that the judge was skeptical about being proper remedies for the monopoly that Google had. They're going to move ahead with lower app store fees, which sounds great. Traditionally, you'd have this 30% fee that an up developers would have

to pay to Google. They'd take 30% of what was going through the app store. Unless the app in question was a subscription fee that your paying, which gives it be less, or unless it was going to be

the first million dollars of revenue for an app developer. There was a smaller fee for that,

but generally, 30%. That is the standard app store tax, quote unquote. Now that fee is going to be less for one reason because Google is going to reduce it to a 20% standard up down from 30 for in-app purchases. And also because Google is decoupling, building, it's billing fee from its service fee. One of the things that we decided that was decided in the Epic versus Google case is that billing and services were illegally tied together. Google is not supposed to be able

“to say, you have to use our billing system. The judge decided, you cannot do that. You will not”

be able to do that anymore. You'll have to have rival billing systems, app developers should be able to choose another provider like Stripe or PayPal or something to process those transactions. So Google is saying, we're going to go ahead and do that everywhere around the world. We're going to reduce our fees and we're going to decouple billing from payments. But since things are still going on going in the United States, it's not really a settlement here until the judge

has approved that this is a better idea. So it's just front running the judge. They're like, "Hey, judge, this is already happening, but don't you want to be cool?" And it's going to happen almost everywhere else around the world. Google, I talked to Google, Android boss Samir Samad, and he's like, "We're going to do this everywhere else where we don't need to wait for a judge to approve this. We're going to do this everywhere else we can. We're going to do this everywhere

where we don't already have an ongoing case with Epic or we're not being sued. We'll just go ahead and just roll this at everywhere else." And so you, United States, you can do this different

“more honest process if you want. But maybe you should do it the way we're doing it everywhere else.”

Why not? And so they're now proposing that the judge modify the permanent injection yet again to reflect the new state of things that they're doing everywhere else around the world. So basically, like here's our conclusion that we've come to it with Epic, judge, don't come up with your own system, just do the thing we did with Epic. Pretty much. There are a couple other weird things going on in there.

Well, I'm just curious, since they've obviously paid Epic, you reported on various terms of this payment topic. This weird secret deal that we don't know a lot about, right? They're going to do metaverse apps on it. I don't know what we're doing here. Tim Sweeney is a very unhappy with us, because we, you wrote a story pointing out that he's not allowed to disparage Google's Play Store or App Store policies. And he has to say that they're like a pro competitive

actor. And he's out there being like, I don't know what that buddy. But like, Google has gotten a lot out of this. Like, it seems like Google is driving this car in Epic, which one is suddenly just like a long for the ride. But I don't, that dynamic to me only makes sense if there is

hundreds of millions of dollars changing hands. Well, in this case, it's probably $800 million

for his changing hands over a number of years, because that is the number that came up publicly. Now, because they have a secret unreal engine and services deal of some sort where Google is now going to be using possibly some unreal engine things. And Epic is going to be having Google hosting,

“I think, for for these servers. But they're also the whole metaverse apps. We don't know what”

that's about yet. It was revealed in this term of sheet. Well, it's one of the most successful metaverse concepts that everybody loves. If, if, if you believe that maybe the phrase, metaverse browser's refers to fortnight refers to possibly decline, can I? No longer being considered a game, but I just can't stop this here. I don't, I mean, I know me to Sean, you are just a messenger and you're my co-founder here at the version. I love you deeply.

I'm so mad at you for making me consider the idea that fortnight is a metaverse, you know? Like, I stop it. Stop telling you to fortnight a metaverse. I'll jump to the conclusion. There is a huge redacted section of the term sheet that we have now seen go through the court

filings. This huge redacted section, it might just be about this formerly secret 800 million dollar

metaverse browser's section is redacted. It might have to do with maybe epic has gotten some kind of

secret suede heart deal for fortnight in general, and maybe Google is agreeing to no longer consider it to be a game, and so they might even have a more favorable rate than the 21% or 15%. Because it's a metaverse browser. Because it's a metaverse browser not again. We don't know this for sure. It's all redacted. Lots of blackacted. Again, I'm going to just try to bracket my level of upset from use personally. So that's fine.

I'm still very upset with you. This came up in the Apple case, right? It's fortnight a game, is roblox a game. You can make these arguments that like in particular, like for example, roblox is actually just an app development environment in which games are routinely expressed in roblox in this alternative game. You just have to leave reality behind to do this. Like most people do not

experience these things in this way, and you're saying there's some evidence here that Google has decided that fortnight is not a game, but rather a metaverse. A more generous rating might be that there's some few true metaverse browser that is not fortnight.

“Something else that epic wants. Every time you say metaverse browser, I think I got to be”

I'm leaving. I got on a shot this time. Another interesting thing, which we've not spent a lot of time reporting out yet, but might be interesting to listeners of this Furchcast. Epic and Google in these revised permanent injunctions and these settlements that they want to make, they're trying to define Android as the as the as the injunction refers to it. Like when when you when you're trying to decide where can Google not make sweet heart deals, where you're trying to decide where can

Google not impose various things that may be seen monopolistic. Epic and Google are trying to define Android as the as Android apps as things that are running explicitly on phones and tablets. And I will tell you right now that while Android is this one thing, Google's currently working on another operating system called aluminum or aluminum, perhaps. I believe so, technically it's of aluminum and aluminum. I don't even mean like a US versus UK English thing. I mean like

“I believe it's actually called aluminum. It is spelled that way. It is spelled with the British”

English spell. So yes, I'm aluminum it is. This operating system, it is also revealed in court

filings is basically Android for PCs. And so if epic and Google can somehow say, well, you know,

apps for aluminum shouldn't be, shouldn't be subject to all of these, you know, permanent injunction things that we don't like very much. And all of a sudden, aluminum is everywhere rather than Android and Google effectively manages to quietly rebrand everything it's doing to aluminum. I wonder what that's going to do to this, you know, this attempt to restrict Google's monopoly. That's a lot of very subtle, very coordinated moves for Google.

Do you know what I mean? This is true. I don't like I wrote it over there, but then I said it has to be cool. But like we're going to, we're going to do a series of very subtle, very stealthily coordinated moves that add up to a big result at the end. Let's go Google. Like, what? Come on. Like, is it plausible? I don't know. The thing that I don't understand is why they think that judge will buy this.

Like, just laziness, just the docket's full and, you know, I'm tired of you too. Like, fine. Because the judge has already seemed so skeptical of all of this. On my call with, with Samar, head of Android, he tried to be very differential out loud to the judge. He did not want to suggest that in any way, the court would like take this modified injunction that Google and Epic want and run with it. We talked a little bit myself, Samar and Tim Swining about the

two worlds that might exist after this is all set in time. And they were very clear that there

is not going to be a world. There is not a third world where there will be rival Android App

stores living within the Google Play store and registered App stores that you download from the web and put on your phone. It will be one or the other and the judge gets to decide which of those is it is in the United States. But it might be the whole world is going on with registered App

“stores and everybody gets their non Google Play stores by downloading through the web. That's how”

it's going to be around the rest of the world. Or it might be that the United States is the exception where the United States has to carry rival stores within its store and you'll download

But everywhere else in the world, you might have to do something different in download that

rival App store from the web. It might be that two-world scenario. I feel like bringing that to the judge and doing like, don't you want to be like the rest of the world is one of the least convincing things you can do to a judge in the United States of America possible. Like they're like, yeah, I don't care about that. I don't who cares. And then you're like, well, yeah, because in the rest of the world, they've got robot phones. It's already totally different

out there. Just as a point of leverage, it just seems very confusing to me. Like, don't you want to be like the rest of the world historically is one of the least convincing things you can say to any person in the United States? The guy, no, the answer, like, wholeheartedly is like, no, we will not have health insurance. Like, like, no point is anyone here. Like, yes, the rest of

“the world has it right. I think it just might be different here in the US from here on that. And”

I wonder if maybe that's a good thing. They all of the reduced fees that Google is going to

spread around the world, the best versions of them are contingent on app developers joining very specific new programs that incentivize them to be very closely tied to Google. Use Google APIs, bring their apps to more devices. And to be a, you know, play devil's advocate for a moment to make their apps run nicely. I would love to have my phone app run great on a tablet and run great in XR run great on my, you know, my TV or my car. And that's the thing that Google would

like to see happen and is incentivizing. This is one of the more interesting dynamics between the Apple and Google cases with that pick. You can see that Google desires the level of control over the app ecosystem that Apple has. And the mechanism of Apple's control is like a long history of beautiful design and like Apple bloggers saying that absolutely. And like there's a normative culture around Apple. And then it has the app store where it's like, would you like to be featured?

“Make your app beautiful. Right. And there's just like a, there are layers of control there.”

Some of which has nothing to do with Apple itself. And a lot of which have to do with Apple's controller redistribution. But because it's all just Apple, you can't be like there are monopoly over the app store because if you buy an iPhone and get the app store, Google to exert the control over the ecosystem has to be like, how do we get leverage over Samsung? And then they do, they have to go get it and use it and like write the email, being like, we have identified or

leverage over you. Here it is. Comply or death. Neil, you and I have been here long enough that we have, there was a point that you and I were advocating for Google to have this control. We were, we were tired of fragmentation. We were so tired about it for Android fragmentation. We were like, look at these skyhook filings. Yes, Google is cracking the whip and making sure Sam's dog doesn't fuck up the phone. If you can write us an email and explain what

Sean means by look at these skyhook filings, I will, we'll find a way to get you some words like, that is a deep cut, my dude. No, I'm with you, right? But that was also a reflection in fact that all the skins of the manufacturers were putting an Android or bad. I'm saying here in 2026, we're not looking at whatever water droplet sounds such as garbage. We're looking at a bunch of filmmakers around the world legitimately pushing that platform beyond the boundaries of what anybody

considered it could do, right? And it all kind of looks like iOS and it all kind of looks like this, and that's like, you can have whatever feelings you want about that, but we're not in the crazy arrow fragmentation. We're like boundary pushing on the platform and Google's need for control is kind of like completely, like it, it's tangential to it, right? Dom, like do you see like there's not a Google influence at MWC? They're there, but none of these devices depend on Google's innovation.

No, you don't see a really big push for them on how Google either funds are. I can say all the you wise, a very different to what you'll see on a pixel that often, like you said, close to one iPhone, that a pixel phone, a lot of them will have, you know, that they're Android and they've got Gemini, things are there, but they're not talking about Gemini, they're talking about their own AI tools, their own AI assistance. Well, this stuff that's built on top of it and built around it,

and no one's really, no one's even comparing themselves to Google and to pixel phones and taking them as a yardstick of what counts as success in the industry or an idealized version of an Android phone or what they should be aspiring to or building from. Whenever they talk about any other companies, just Apple or Samsung. Google is there, there's this bit called Android Avenue, whether you can go and play the demos of new Android features, and that's kind of about the

presence of house. Yeah. I just like the idea that they're going to show up to a judge in the head state, so don't you want it? You don't want it in a head state, so different. And it's like,

“well, even if you just look at the market, it already is so different. And then who cares?”

Anyway, Sean is deep in it, we're going to keep hovering this quasi settlement that's not a settlement.

If you know what's going on with a secret $800 million deal and whether or not

$410 is a metaverse Bradley, you just let us know. We're in the game. We're I'm very curious

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how they work with Zapier and AI. Get started for free by visiting Zapier.com/verge. That's what I want to do, my not-to-kind student. The master-by-tack lab Tobicher Soft behind the internet, so master is really great. You can say that you can do it. You can do it for a story, right? But you don't understand. You can do it for a long time. You can do it for a long time. You can do it for a long time. You can do it for a long time, but you can do it for a long time. You can do it for a long time.

It has nothing to do with me. No one can ever pay to tell me what to do. But other people who don't work at the verge, you can pay to tell them what to do. You just think about that for one minute. Think about what that might mean. All right, let's start. We got to start German. I apologize for this. We do this to start the light in the end every week. It's time for America's favorite podcast within a podcast. Brennan Cars and Dummy. Travis tells me we don't have theme music this

week, and I'm looking at the note for why. And I just want to tell the audience. I'm very disappointed you know. And the note for why is that apparently we're going to go over one with AI slot music for Brennan Cars and Dummy. And we don't want to play the AI slot music. I'm sorry. So if you can make really really good AI music, which we have played in the past, I believe Travis correct? We'll play

“that. If you want to make your own Gregorian chant, which we ran last week, and which I believe”

Travis, we should run again this week. We'll play that. But no mid tier AI slot. That's the rules. Can we get some like Brendan Card beat boxing? Yeah, some of that. We've played some very avant-garde Brendan Card themes. Travis, can we just run the Gregorian chant more time to start this one for Brennan Cars and Dummy? So this week, this is a very short Brennan Cars and Dummy because we've had too many gadgets. It's quite frankly, Brennan's a dummy, but it waxes and wanes.

This isn't true first amendment, Brennan car, stuff. This is just the man is done in lives in the past.

So this week, he proposed a rule that FCC is going to vote on this month, trying to incentivize United States companies to bring their call centers back to America, and then further require the people who work in the call centers to be proficient in American standard English. I just pointing out the reason the call centers are abroad is because the labor is cheaper in other countries. And so if you bring, if you force the American companies to bring the call centers over

here, they're not going to pay the higher labor rates. They're just going to let AI answer the phone. I can't say it any clearer than that. They're already trying to do this because the AI is cheaper

“than the already cheap foreign labor. And so if you're like, you have to have your call centers”

in the United States. They're in data centers now. He's such a dummy. This is such an obvious outcome of this rule. So the way he's doing this, you can't actually tell people where to put their call centers. He can put limits on call volume going to other countries, which would then

force you to put your call centers in the United States. This is the most incredible kind of rate

regulation you could have in 2026 on a global Telecom network. This is the exact sort of stuff that they argue against net neutrality. They're like, why would you regulate the networks and do

hearing foreign accents. So I will do intense rate regulation on the phone network, which I

legislation over, which I have jurisdiction over. And I'll move the call center to the United States where the companies will happily pay full freight American labor rates in not USA. It's very done, man. I've got to say anyway. I don't know why you're so skeptical about this. I mean, Trump Mobile managed to set up this call center in the US quite successfully from the

“United States. But that's the only thing they do. All of these are all centers who just accept”

your money and send you nothing. That's a great business. Like, if you could set up a business where you employ a bunch of a very kind people in Kansas to answer the phone, take your credit card and then charge you $200. Like, at scale, like, that is a, but then do nothing else.

Great business. It's like, it's some point you've collected enough, you've collected enough pre-order

payments to just run your call center on the interest alone while you buy crypto, which I'm confident is what Don Jr is doing. Anyway, Tom, by the way, do you have a Trump mobile update for us this week? Only that it was not at MWC. I did look. I looked for a Trump in the MWC database. I looked the liberty mobile, which is the sort of MVNO that really feels like is Trump mobile behind a sort of gold chain. But it was no sign of them whatsoever. I really tried. You know, we're hoping they'd be

“there with some sort of flag waiting booth, accepting American exceptionalism abroad or something.”

When you said you were going to look for them there, I was like, I don't, why would Trump mobile be in Europe? Like, they don't go there. That's not allowed. We don't acknowledge Europe. But I was going to open and see them because they had some brand of the eight. A stamp of US flag on Boston on a soil. I mean, while I was there, there was a lot of stuff in the news about Trump saying very angry things about Spain and Spanish politics for reasons I didn't

fully understand. So, but doing the perfect excuse to go on, you know, late on the more MWC too. Yeah. It does. All right, that's been brand of cars to down me with a little side show into the Trump phone. I'm Brandon, if you're listening, and you would like to investigate liberty mobile, which is just collecting payments for a phone that doesn't exist by all means. We would love to hear the results of your investigation. In the meantime, I'll remind you that it's 2026. No one's watching

broadcast television. And if you move calls to the United States, they will 100 percent be answered by

chatGBT. It is as much of a guarantee as I can give you, Brandon. You're always welcome to come

“on the show. I think you're a coward in a dummy. That's been running cars in dummy. Americans,”

favorite podcasts for the podcast. Brandon, Kai, is a Tommy. I mean, that alone is so much more high quality thinking than anything Brandon has done in the past year. I don't know how else to say it. All right, we got a lightning round. Sean, what do you got? I have a 61 pad machine that eats plastic and spritz sounds bricks. I'm waiting for the return label. This is the clear drop, soft plastic impactor. We saw that this thing was going to be at CS. It pulls in all of your household plastic,

all the thin house old plastic, the bag that you took off your computer, your snack wrappers, your zip locks, all that kind of stuff. You put it in the machine. Eventually, weeks later, it will compress it and then heat it into a three pound brick, 2.6, 3.3. It varies a little bit. And then you mail that off across the country to some guy's house. But properly, after they change the shipping labels, it won't be some guy's house anymore. It will then go, it's just,

it's just on the break. Who's house? Matt, Matt, it went to Matt Daily's house. Matt Daily is an advisor and kind of a head of product and marketing for the company. He seems to be a very nice guy who gave us a great virtual tour. Also, on the website for this product, which he is an advisor, there are two testimonials from him about how good the product is. And for some reason, the bricks were going to his house to make sure that they didn't have too much stuff.

I don't want to heap too much criticism of Matt Daily. He gave us a great virtual tour and has been very patient with our questions at the entire process. But where the bricks should go and eventually did go in our case, is to a facility and in the Anna where they get ground up and turned into downcycled plastic products in the future. So that might begin composite lumber for decking or lawn furniture. They might be in highway, the highway guard rails the way they get connected to the

poles that they're on. Sometimes through a very cheap place of plastic, it might be in those. This is what you can do to keep your plastics out of the landfill. Assuming you want to pay $1,400 over two years for the machine and for the mailers that let you send these bricks to them once a month. I read your review. I watched your video. I have to say I enjoyed the

seemed ill-advised. The answer is Sean is remains intact, has not been turned into a brick.

And then essentially a negative review where you're like, "This doesn't make any sense and I won't buy this." And the company was like, "Thank you." And that happens so rarely the company is like, "Yes, you've pointed out a number of flaws in the idea." The best I've ever gotten before today from a PR representative after review vaguely like this is

“your tough but your fair. This one was like, "Gloag. Divers just real journalism. You should read”

this site by the way we think we should fix these things." So this is wonderful. And from the guy, who I accused of, you know, having a send the bricks to his house and writing those testimonials. He says he wrote them before. He started working for the company. So it's all good. There's a number of products in this zone out here. There's a bunch of smart composters. It all feels like you can buy consumer goods to make you feel good about buying other consumer goods

and at the end none of them ever math out. That's just how that feels to me. The idea and justine, justine, our senior science reporter, Justine Calma, who co-wrote this piece with me and tackled like the plastic section of it. She is adamant and she has the experts to back it up that we cannot fix the plastics problem by getting rid of the plastics that are already out there. We need to make fewer things out of plastic in order to not have a tremendous amount of

plastics overwhelming our world and our landfills. And so she came in this worried that this might actually be a project that the plastics industry might have funded to make it look better, to make the use of plastics look better. Because some of the advisors for this company have some ties to the plastics company. We didn't really find that out. I don't know that this is necessarily that. They put a lot of work into creating a device and that actually seems to

exist. But still it's, this is not the solution right now and it may never be. Yeah. All right,

down what you got. Okay. I have the Infinix Note60 Ultra, which is another stupid weird phone. But what I really have is the wireless charger that Infinix shipped to me with it, which is shaped like a racing car. It is an enormous cheat charger, which the actual cheat charger is just a small puck in the center, which you can kind of pop out. But it's in this enormous, quite like weighty solid plastic base, fully shaped like a sort of chrome and carbon fiber racing car.

It has really strong like Simpsons, I sleep in a racing car to you energy to it. It's incredibly now. The whole thing has happened because the phone, Infinix, full of swear through a company that they're one of the Chinese manufacturers that are on by a bigger company called Tranchion, who also owns techno, who we spoke about earlier with the Modular phones. Infinix is a very big in Africa, parts of South America, parts of Asia, particularly Southeast Asia, not no presence

at all in Europe, really. This phone that the first Ultra is a partnership with the car design company,

Pinnon Farina. So the whole thing is ostensibly car themed. But what's funny is the actual phone itself has almost no car-theming whatsoever. There's like one RGB light on the back that they

“call the, I think it's the floating tail light. And it's just like, sure, there's a light.”

Cars have lights on the back too, that that checks out. That's just a tail light. Yeah, it doesn't look like the red bar across the back of the, yeah. It's, it's, I mean, maybe I'm doing it down. It is, it is a bit like a tail light, but that's the only car-ish touch to the whole thing. They're like adult matrix display on the back of the phone. That is not a car thing. Cars don't tend to have dot matrix displays last day check. But they just went all end on these

accessories, which I don't even know if you can buy. You know, like, they sent this to me, but there might just be some weird thing they sent to the press. It also like, they sent me a sim tool, which is shaped like a racing car. Like, I can just like pop out my sim with my tiny little racing car sim tool. And I love this. I, I'm going to treasure the sim tool at least. I don't know if I quite want to charge my phone on a racing car every night. But I do, I swap sims a lot.

Because I'm reviewing phones all the time. And so I do have a sense of like the sim tools I like. You know, I like some nothing ones because they have a kind of chunky plastic handle to them.

“But I think the racing car might be the, the pride of my collection now.”

Okay, two things. One, a pin-in-freen is, is just a very funny company. I don't have years deep into car worlds. I am the opposite of a car guy, so I know, like, okay, so pin-in-freen is famous for designing so much iconic for our ease of all time. Like, you would, and like parked other Italian brands at Starbucks, can be a test to Rossa. Yeah, just like hilariously pin-in-freen and it was like, they were the ones. And a bunch of

fiat's like, there are cars on company. But now they make their own cars. They make their own weird EVs. And so like, they're constantly trading on this history that is long on because,

it's just like the, this picture you have of the lock screen, where there's just a random quote on the lock screen. And there's just read you what the lock screen says. There is no chance, no destiny, no fate that can hinder the firm resolve of a term and soul. And it just says that on the lock screen. I think it's beautiful. It was delicious. Is that, is that, can you change that? Or is that just

what it always says on the box? There are two to pick from. They're not really like fully on the

lock screen. You kind of like swipe up into them. And there's no explanation of what they are, why they're there, whether you can add more, change them, whether they're going to, you know, add more in an update or something. I don't know. I'd love to kind of keep getting more of these. I'm going to see if I can, no, I don't have the other one to answer. The other one is something

“about crying and about how that's what you call it. If you cry, it's because you're, you know, too strong”

or something. Crying is all the sign of weakness. It's a sign of strength. But in much more grandiose kind of upsetting wording. That's true. By the way, Sean, they did design. Jennifer, I did design and test Rosa. I went there. Sure, did. And now, I think the crying is because Johnny,

and they're doing weird EVs. That's incredible. All right. My lightning round one, I think this is the

funniest little stat about our audience I can give you. So on Apple Day, cover all the new Apple stuff. Yeah, iPhone 17E, the new MacBook Air, the MacBook Neo, which is a huge everyone wants to see it. The iPad Air, which no one wants to see. So we're like, look in the traffic, David, I'm like in the car on the way back to the office to be like, what's everyone interested in? We're like prepping for the livestream. And it's the traffic. I'm dead serious. The number one story on the site was

“the MacBook Neo. Guess what number two was. God, God, I guess we're number two us.”

Cobo it was the Cobo remote, which is not not any of the other Apple products. The number two story on the site on Apple Day was the Cobo remote, which is just a little clicker for Cobo E readers that you can just press the button and it turns the page. And it was the MacBook Neo, and then this, like, I don't even know how much it is. It's 30 dollars. It's 30 dollars. It's so expensive. It has a horrible branding on it. It says Rakuten Cobo on it. The thing is incredibly ugly. It's a $30

clicker. It has two buttons on it. And one of this page four to one is page track. We have a great headline. Angela Sashi wrote this headline. He's like, I love this thing. I love clicking my E reader in bed. And I'm just telling you, it was the number two traffic on our site on Apple Day. It is my favorite. It's like, everything I need to know about the Virgin audience. It's right there. Like, what do you actually want? You want a remote free E reader that doesn't require a weird

Bluetooth hack. Very good. Secret is, everybody wants to be bundled up in a blanket. Nobody wants to

“put their hands on a book. Books. That's the one. Sean, what's your other letting out?”

I have the Lego smart brick. I have the Lego smart brick right now. But you're going to hold it. The Lego smart brick. I have two of them. I got four of them, actually. So I heard that they were out like people could buy them. None of the software to it. Yeah. So the thing about them is they're not supposed to require any software. In fact, Lego, the Lego grip just did like an hour long live stream the other day saying that these things work out of the box. You do not need to use the

app. Some of the designers said I've been working on this product for two years. I've never even seen

the app. The app is just for downloading updates for future functionality and for turning down the volume if you are a parent. These are the only things that it is for. It is important that it has both of these functions, though, because number one, they are loud and annoying. They make the same sounds over and over again, which is not something I expect to go again. And two, they do not have all of their functionality out of the gate. The original sets that the original three sets that come with

them all of which I have here and can lift if you want. X-wing tie fighter and throne room dual. All three of these, they use light sound, color sensor to make certain different sounds. They can detect a figure nearby, but they don't have all the most fun stuff we saw at CES. Being able to tell precisely where two bricks are from one another. How close and what their orientation is like, they don't have ambient light sensor functionality. They don't have any, they're not using

their microphones to detect sound yet. And there are very few, as far as I've seen, multi-brick interactions where you can actually see all kinds of cool stuff going on. That isn't simply swoosh and blast and so on. So I have here, this is the X-wing with a Lego smart brick inside. Take this thing up. Is that one dead already? By the way, they only have about 45 minutes of battery life. Lego recommends that you leave them on the charger when not in use. And I did not

And so we got Luke in there, placed the four themes, you know, that Luke's in there. You can hear our two occasionally. If I spin the thing upside down, yeah, we got some sounds. He's going to a little scream. He's going upside down at some point. And so I can blast, so I pressing this button maybe. Here we go. It does seem like what Lego has made here is like one of those crazy

“sound effect boards for morning suit crews radio shows. I think that's like the vibe I'm getting”

from this demo that you're giving me right now. When we were at sea, yes, they showed us all

kinds of amazing things that it could do. Like you could have a little police car. And you could

have a safe try to like come into your that police car. It would sound the alarm wouldn't let him in. And then you brought the police guy over there. And then come on, let me shake that thing again. You brought the police guy over there. And he would be allowed to be in his own thing. Let him in. And then the the robber would scream when the police guy enters the car. All this kind of fun stuff that's like multiple figure interaction. But with these ones here,

the best I've gotten is you can have the sets blast each other a little bit with the multiple bricks. Let me get this millennium falcon up here. There we go. I do feel like I need to remind you, Sean, although we are on YouTube. This is primarily a radio show. Oh, and this is some of the most tortured radio that has ever been made in history for a world. I did ask if you wanted to see them and I did not wait for your answer. I was not going to launch into this. They're right here.

Okay. No, I feel like I understand what's going on here. When these things were announced and you wrote about them, I would say I caught this from you and I 100% caught it from the the audience that everyone wants us to be great. Everyone sees a potential and everyone is fully expecting to be disappointed. And I'm watching you disdainfully shaken millennium falcon at me right now in history. And I would say the disappointment is high. Yeah. Yeah. The Lego, the smart brick, it deserves

better than these first Star Wars sets. And and I'm worried. I'm a little worried that if this is what they've got for us out of the gate maybe there are some hidden limitations that they did not discuss it see as maybe some of the better functionality uses way more battery life. Somebody's already torn apart one of these bricks. The battery, the mill amp hours in this

“battery can be measured in the tens. I think it has like 42 milliamp hours or something like that.”

So it's very small. They recommend that you always leave the thing on the charger when you're

not using it. The batteries are not removable, not replaceable. The entire brick has disposal instructions for it when they eventually run out of charge and can't use it anymore. And it's all very expensive. You're paying, you know, 7080 for one of the starter sets. And it comes with a few things to do like you can have a little storm trip or turret blast at your X wing and you can have a scanning station scanner on my my six year old loved scanning around for Darth Vader with a scanning

station. But after like a day or so of me leaving this stuff on my coffee room table for them to play with whenever they wanted to. They were not playing with them whenever they wanted to. They were watching screens. They were asking for minecraft videos. They were reading books. They were playing with their dolls. So I don't know. Yeah. Well wait for that full review, although I suspect. I know

what was going to say. All right Tom, what else you got? Okay, so first bit of context here. I've been

in Spain for months to the post week. The first thing I knew about the war in Iran was waking up one morning. My hotel room, opening blue sky, seeing oh a wall started half an hour ago. Cool. That's great. Very 2026 situation. I've got to go to a phone launch now. So, you know, I'm going to go see a robot phone and I'll hope this this wall sorts itself up. I was in really busy all week. They'll run a lot of phones. We don't know about that. So the second thing I saw related to the Iran war

was a minute long video put out by the White House Twitter account, which was a call of duty highlight video, including video game footage and shots of missiles hitting Iranian targets. Oh god. That's the most I know about what's actually happening in Iran right now. This is like a video. They treated it out saying courtesy of the red white and blue and it opens. We're like a 10 second clip which is genuinely from Call of Duty. It's a code from Call of Duty more than more

fit three apparently. It's a so the animation of when you call in a nuclear strike after you've

“got a kill streak sufficiently high. Oh good. That's what you want. Very reassuring. And then there's”

50 seconds of just clips of actual missile strikes that have been hitting actual targets over the past week, presumably some of which should have included casualties. The whole thing is set to music and there's a couple bits with like voice box, which I assume are also from Call of Duty. They sound very much like those kind of like little NPC lines knocked out by a character in Call of Duty.

I do feel like we've spent so much time on this show on the site, on to talking about deep

“fakes and reality detection and cryptographic signatures, C2PA and plenty of this work and like”

we rarely contend with the fact that people are routinely confused by video game footage. Yes, all the time and it's not weird AI stuff. It's literally just screenshots of Call of Duty and Microsoft Flight Simulator and like all this stuff. And I don't know that there's like a you can't be like we will do deep faith detection of Call of Duty. Yeah, that's real called. You actually weird existential crisis. No, that's a real video game.

Yeah, that didn't, but it happened in the video game, but you're just using it to lie. You just need more video game journalists. You need more video game journalists everywhere on

the staff of every newsroom to be like, that is not that's Call of Duty. Yeah, that's Call of Duty.

That is, that is, that is, that is bad. That's horrible. We're doing a story, by the way, Tina Nguyen on our site has been trying to identify the people in the administration

“who post these things where they come from. There's a pretty elaborate system that we can”

kind of like see that the shape of in the world where they're like discord servers or people like make these things in some of the administration. If you know you, you tip us. You just send us a note because we're reporting that out. I'm, once you see a content farm, like once you're going to media for a long enough, you like you recognize a content farm from like 100 miles away. You're like, oh, the Trump administration is running a content farm. It's just a very weird

content farm that post Call of Duty clips in front of real war footage, but it's a content farm. I know what that looks like. So we're trying to find the shape of it. So if you know, if you have any insight, send us a note because we're chasing that one down. All right, my last one. Okay, this is very quick. We're just way over. This is an happens in David's eye here. They just let me off the leash. In the background of all of this ticket master is on trial for being an

“legal monopoly here in the United States. It's a very weird one because the Trump administration”

has to pick up a case that the Biden administration started. Right. And this, you know, this also started with like Taylor Swift tickets and all this in the background, there's a lot, there's a lot of history here. But the Trump DOJ is pursuing this case. There was a thought that it would get settled early because previous figures from Trump won were lobbying for ticket master. There's just endless complexity of this one. But it's at trial right now. Lauren Finer is in that courtroom.

It is wild stuff left and right. And the one she filed today, just as we were coming on,

is basically a story in which the Barclay Center thought that it might leave its contract with

ticket master and go seeking an in retaliation ticket master, which also manages a bunch of artists pulled the Billie Eilish show at the last minute. And you just see this stuff now, it's just coming to light. Like the whole industry's been talking to this stuff forever. But it's in the background of this. And the reason I'm bringing up here on the versecast is I keep pointing this out. Like our whole world is run by databases that people control and like ticket master is just a database of

venues and artists and literally seats and who owns the seats. And like all that sort of like up for grabs lately. And like some of the biggest monopolies in the world are just like weird databases and ticket master is one of them. And Warren's in the courtroom right now is like maybe it's going to get torn down and like more people get more access to databases in weird way. Once you start noticing this, you're like, oh, that's all AI is going to do to DoorDash. Right. Like it's the dynamic of like

who gets to access the database and how and and what terms who that's up for grabs. Right. Like just like fully up for the what is the play store? It is a database of apps like who gets access it on what terms and who has to pay who and for what all of that right now is up for grabs. And it's crazy to look at the live nation case and take a master case and see the same dynamic. So go read Lawrence coverage because it's all in there. And also we'll make you very mad at

it's like a master which from what I understand is a feeling people enjoy. For clock it's time for our two minutes hate it, take a master like it's like a thing people like. So that coverage is on site. It's very good. There's all kinds of other stuff on the site. We had a wild week on the verge this week. Go read it. As a reminder, you can subscribe to the verge to support all that journalism to make it so that no one can tell us what to do,

which is my favorite thing that I'm working here at the verge. And you get ad for episodes of our podcasts, including decoder and version history. You get a bunch of newsletters. You can email us at the vergecasts of the verge.com. You can also call the hotline at 866 of verge11. The vergecasts of the preaction of the verge and box me in the podcast.org. Today's show is released by Eric Gomez, Brandon Keefer and Travis Larchuk. We will be back next week.