AI gadgets, bendy phones, and more from MWC
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Welcome the verge cast the flagship podcasts of region locked phones. I, my friend David piers, and I am standing outside of the alamo draft us, where I just saw doing part two. Now I don't know him like the expert on whether june movies are any good.

I saw part one just the other day on an ipad on a train. I haven't read the books. Love the first movie.

Love the second movie. It's really long. It's really intense.

It's really loud. I had a great time. Everybody should go see IT. Ideally on the biggest screen you can possibly find.

But june is not what we are here to talk about on the verge cast today. They were talking about mobile world congress. M C is one of those trade es that some years is kind of boring. It's just a bound companies being like look on android phone. And some years is really interesting, and this year was one of those interesting years.

So we are going to a have john porter and alison Johnson, two verge reporters who were at the show in bara over the past week, and they're going to tell us about all the interesting gadgets they saw and maybe whether we got a hint of what the future of gadgets really looks like. All that's coming up and just sec, but first i'm going to go home and sleep for a bit because it's really late because that is three hour long movie. Then we get to IT. This is the verge test.

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Alright, are back. I got some sleep. I'm now deep in the june behind the scenes youtube rabbit hole. I've learned a lot of fun facts about Austin Butler's hair. Let's get into the show.

So mobile world congress is, I would say, typically the second most interesting trade show of the year, at least most years. C, E, S is the big one in most for the whole electronics and tech industry. But mwc has for years, had kind of a special niche as a place that is all about one thing.

And that one thing is obviously mobile. Often that just means lots and lots of phones. And this year, IT meant that too. But the thing about mobile right now is that the definition of that word is starting to change. So thanks to AI, we're getting new kinds of devices altogether. And because apple and google have so thoroughly dominated the smart phone era, there are lots of companies that are looking to figure out what's next.

Even in the Scott phone world, the idea that your phone should just be a slap of class that runs a bunch of apps that come from an APP store that run by either apple or google, there are so many good reasons for companies and for people, Frankly, to trying get past that idea. And so not only are we getting lots of new phones, we're getting lots of new ideas about what a phone or a mobile device in general should look like and how we can work and what IT should mean in our lives. This is my of stuff to talk about.

We're going to talk about IT. The virtuous Allison Johnson and john porter were both at abc last week. They played with all the devices, and they try to figure out what they all say about the future of mobile and some macula sly.

They both made at home safe and not sick. And they're here to help me doing in all of IT. Alson Johnson, hello, hello. John n. Porter, welcome back to our cast.

hello.

So you guys survives. Yes, tell us a little bit about what I is. I first, it's a one years since I went and it's like ba. So IT seems romantic and lovely in a way that like going to vegas for ce does not seem romantic and lovely, but like give me the the twenty twenty four vibe check of M D B C this year.

So I read A I love to comment the referred to W C as a very nice overseas trip for this journalist ah and I I read that comment while sitting in a dingy hotel room uh with a bathroom sitting that was leaking at appropriate eleven thirty P M. On a saturday evening. I was writing my third embargo of the weekend so I think I think that kind of sums up maybe how lares how lama mwc is.

But I mean, like a lot of free shows, I think a lot of companies want to kind of get out ahead of the show itself. So IT means the weekend is of filled with with these press events and you you can end up kind of rushing from from one to the other to the other, like barely keeping track of of what's happening because everything your company just trying to just the not step on each others toes too much, but maybe step on them a little and then the shoe kicks off on on monday illness. And then it's just this frantic rush to to see the kind of the smaller players that aren't able to hold a big press conference over the course of the weekend and actually kind of get hands on time with with the gadget themselves .

isn't what was your read? Was this this isn't your first? M. T. V C.

Was IT this once? My first time to see a IT lived up to the hide, I guess. Yeah, I was surprised by how busy. Yeah, the weekend was.

IT was just like starting around ona, just to see different staff and just that added like difficulty level like I don't know in any of these street names, but i'm going to find i'm going to find that bends. But IT was great. IT was, you can be meat and cheese in your hotel room at eleven thirty.

writing embargoes, glares, job. We do IT really IT seem like watching from a fire, not only kind of an unusually y show, but an unusual ool show.

So in the sense that there was like, not just kind of the giant slew of all the phones that are kind of the same as the other phones that MBC falls into every once in a hours, just like every company shows you their version of the same phone that everybody else is making and there sixty thousand of them. And that some W C. This year, I felt like there were some some big weird swings in a way that I don't remember seeing in a while. Did I feel like that on the ground that was IT cooler and more exciting? Maybe some of we've in the years.

that is my impression IT was kind of a lot of running around to see like where the little things like the same, same galaxy ring was kind of out on display for the first time. So we got to go see that the humane aim was kind of an unannounced guest appearance. So we ve got to see if that in action.

I think the dis telecomm booth, which in the us. Is like t mobile, is a very like t mobile vibe of like everything they are, like baking rides and stadium seating and kind of like carnival. H, I was like, wow, this is really wild, some cool stuff. Yeah, I made a list .

of kind of the coolest gadgets that I read about you guys seeing. And I just want to sort of run down your experiences with a bunch of them. And IT, seems me that if you were onna, pick one that was kind of like the the star of the show that everybody was talking about.

IT feels to me like it's lenovo transparent laptop. Do you think that right? Is that the right answer?

I love the novos transparent laptop. I can't articulate what I would ever use IT for. I filled me with joy, hearing the novo themselves, trying to articulate why you what you would use IT for. But then that feels like a kind of part of the process with unveils a concept laptop like that.

You show the thing off the world, and I budget, people see, and a lot of people go, and I know really what this achieves, but then maybe like one person right in the back raises their hand and goes like, what about and then you can take you back to your lab, kind of like optimize IT for that kind of like idea that that just came up. I will say the ova big idea if for this laptop, which if you haven't seen, firstly, go see IT. It's a transparent micro d display.

Get this bright is like a thousand nets. But IT doesn't have a kind of a contrast layers. So that thing is just transparent in a way that you can't control when all the pixel are lit up, like when it's bright White.

If you say had like a notepad open or something, you can see through that. But kind of other than making the whole screen White, you kind of don't have don't have control over this thing. So he doesn't .

like there is that LG TV at ce because sort of rolled up the thing behind IT so that IT would have something .

to to contrast against. This doesn't have that IT is through all the way this wherever to make IT to to production. But their idea for why you might want this was they can have this artistic idea for IT. Or maybe you're an artist, you're sign, you're sketching and you can see things behind that.

Maybe you you put some sunflowers behind behind the screen and then you're then the sembrich beyond the the low half of the tablet, which is this kind of drawing tablet, where when you bring a stylus close to where the keyboard, the illuminator keyboard disappears and suddenly it's kind of like a wack on surface type thing. And then you can kind of sketch what's behind the laptop, which I think would make sense if this thing was the size of A T. V, like the novice thing.

But when you're talking about, I forget exactly held the screen, the things maybe like fourteen, fifteen inches, you can just look around you like I I don't know anyone out there that's like hard are the unknowable joys of what could be behind my laptop. So like my theory for who would buy this thing if I did ever make into production. And like to be clear, they not make any promises about my introduction.

They were of confident that the technology would may be appear in the future product. But my guess would be that this would be a thing for kind of really high end from desks and like banks to buy, like the kind of place you you walk into. And maybe nowadays they have an imac because they, because they want to a project, the air of high tech sophistication, and maybe the future they go.

Hey, check IT out. We all look like weird minority report. Don't you want to, you know, spend the bunch of money at this business because it's a real it's like it's a showy thing.

But I don't know like where the practical element of of this thing comes in. But I hope that, like, I hope IT started the conversation the way they hoped. And I hope that someone at the bag is kind of thinking, actually, I have this perfect use case for the full transparent left to play.

yeah. I appreciate that with the whole transparent display technology happening right now, nobody knows what to do with that, except to put IT in fancy waiting rooms, which is so funny there. And it's like the L, G, T, V.

There were like IT could be IT could be a virtual fish tank at or dentist soft things like are IT like, sure, i'm down. Let's do IT I I have no issue with that. I also will never ever buy one for my house.

But I am just honestly glad that anyone is doing weird laptops. The world is Better when there are weird laptops. And I appreciate vo for not just making think pads, but for also making weird laptops.

We should also point out that they are very sensible business. Laptops are probably actually the more impactful announcement from the show because that they've on a bunch of work I fix IT to kind of make these things more reparable. So I went through this call demonstration with a couple of I fixit guys who were like pointing out all the kind of that, the little things they've done.

So I think, for starters, loto components can be removed with just a phillips heads screw. And then they've got the light on kind prints into the chatty to kind of go, okay, you want to to remove. The battery, you want to remove these three screws, and then theyve got A Q R code in that you can scan.

And IT takes you to a page on the novice website, where IT shows you, a, what part you need, and b like video showing you how to how to replace this. And like, it's like that the transparent laptop kind of gets you in the movs door. And then when they are there, they are like, okay, but this is the less, less attention grab. Sure, I think is actually going to have like A A huge impact on like the thousands and thousands of businesses that by those think laptops.

Now I remember years ago, somebody, I think IT was at lanovitch ld me that they make really cool colored laptops to bring you over to the shelf so that you'll buy their black laptop. And I I have thought about that ever since that they're like, everybody loves this, like red, orange thing that we made, and absolutely nobody buys IT.

But IT is literally marketing for our other colors, just like, you know what if that's what we do with this new stuff. I can live with that for what, Alice, on speaking of truly, in saying things that will probably never come to a real product, but I love to pieces anyway. Use our thing that I believe you have named to bendy.

the bendy phone. Bendy phone. Tell us this is a phone that bends. No, this is a similar thing. Motorola, you know billen.

yeah, we're just doing a whole innova thing here. I didn't even mean yeah so yeah, that's always .

so the show is no, they have this is a concept phone, so similar, they are just kind of like we're trying this out. It's just to see if we can do IT. They showed IT off, I think like last year, earlier this year, but it's a actual phone like they showed me IT runs apps and all that stuff, but IT just spends backwards.

You sort of get to that point of like, okay, so why? And the the couple of things they had worked out was like there's a little metal brace let you could put on. And then IT was the case that the the the phone was in would just kind of clean a ponder and then you have this like massive chunks y race or watch on your own.

Okay, probably though .

yeah I don't think good aware that but like okay, that's the thing you can do and then sort of like IT doesn't just kind of bend one way. You can sort of like curve the top part of this Green a little more. And they had IT, though IT would kind of run a little long chair on like half of the screen, just pretty much of the way the flip razor phones like cover screen work.

So you get like little wig and you can run a full lap if you aren't. But it's weird. Yeah, I would just kind of a fine like, you see, you are like, oh, I don't know what is this then I ve come around like, it's a gadget like, this is fine. Why you shouldn't we have fun? I totally agree.

And then I think all the way in the other end of the like, is this a thing? Spectrum, you also saw the galaxy ring, which you mentioned. What I am totally fascinated by. I am desperate to become a smart ring person but yeah, the only one I have is the ora and it's just like a little big and I noticed IT too much on my hand and I know let IT, but I am very excited about the galaxy and you got to try IT, which we had not before had to go.

Would you make up IT? So as a disclaimer, I do not have an orring. I'm not super familiar with the category, but I was allowed to put the galaxy going on. It's surprisingly light like the pictures of IT.

IT looks kind of dance and you think, you know, there's like a battery and adventure of sensors and there IT might be kind of heavy, but bit was land has kind of like this concave shape on the outside. So IT sort of like takes up less space on your finger than you think it's going to. And just the the overall concept is like, you know, not everybody wants a smart watch or can really wear us or smart watch.

Maybe you don't want like notifications buzz on your ARM all day, but you want some kind of finnish tracking or wellness tracking kind of deal. And that's where this will come in. And I think that's a pretty compelling pitch.

I agree. John, are you a smart ing guy?

I'm not a smart thing guy. I K, I saw I wasn't able to actually hold the ring, but I did pay at IT through a prospect box of Samson's book, and that thing looks so slim. S, felt I saw really tempted by IT, but I also kind of really in the garden, eat like health truck ecosystem.

And so the thing I want out of smart rings the moment is basically for them to kind of be a little bit more commoditized and kind of work across different ecosystems. I believe those those one quote that kind of suggested that maybe the galaxy ring would work exclusively with with android phones to start and that they are kind of hoping to support iphones down the line. And that feels like that could be the tRicky thing to get over. And initially that if this thing is gonna be a, hey, you like your in samsung com in the android ecosystem works all that stuff. But there's a there's a war between that and the conflate the broad wearable ables smoker yeah .

that that is very first. Speaking of variables, actually I think there were two kind of big name watches that dropped to the show rate was at the show me one in the one plus watch whether any other big watches the people are talking about.

If I just saw those too, I think there is that the show me is super quite as you can take the vessel off and like they have different ones, you can change IT with like .

instead of just changing your your strap out to make IT look different, you can actually change the bezel. That's cool. I mean, to that.

like hypothetically, maybe you got a garden watch as a gift and it's in this kind of fetching turk coys color. And you can change the strap, but you can change the bezzle around the screens will never quite look right. You just stuck with turk coys hypothetically, if you're in that situation, yeah the genome watched three could be exactly, exactly what you need.

So two watches they watch, which is their kind of like lower and watch. And then they had the jamming watch too, which is their kind of slightly higher. And a wear O S really, really get too much for china to play around with those. But Sunny from like an industrial design perspective, they look that is pretty like a lot of Jamie stuff really the I think Allison got a chance to try out the jammy fourteen and just there's a very nice looking phone IT .

is yeah tell me .

about them yeah into the strategy phones these days in the show me fourteen has embraced. They're on the right side of history, but the new curves, the adjust, no, it's just very nice. And we got to see the fourteen ultra. That's the one with the like one in camera sensor in all the stuff. And the vegan leather back, which I also like.

that's the one IT has the round camera bum, right? Yes, I love a around camera bum.

Yeah, yeah. It's like we're not trying to hide this thing that is right here. This is, this is a camera with a phone attached, basically. So I used the roomy fourteen a little bit, but fourteen year wasn't quite available yet to us, and I really want to get my hands on that one.

He looks, he looks awesome. You have a have a pole code in the story you wrote about IT that just says I witnessed the approach moving, which is such a like, ominous thing to say but it's also like that means .

it's a camera that's yeah that third thing this year is that IT has a variable appeared that actually, like every smart phone camera, basically has affected the appear that one, the apure can get bigger and smaller, just like a dedicated camera lens. Is that a good idea? I don't know. Like I don't think it's actually like that a practical I kind of put IT in the category of like SONY experience phones that had like uh actual continuous zone between two focal length. And I was like very small and you're like, I don't know quite what the point of this is, but you did IT IT works.

You did do IT. You can argue with that, john. You get to see nothing's new phone right at what seemed like one of the more are showings of any kind of gadget that we had to them to you see this year yeah.

this phone is a sensibly being launched on march the fifth. But nothing is at the point in this hype cycle way is just posting full and on box. And we kind of we know that for the service immediate tech diversities seventy hundred pro, I think.

And then we kind of went along to this event in the evening. So of course, nothing like the nmc show floor is so stuffy. It's just that's for like dog telecom and chocolate.

You know, nothing doesn't play by their rules, so nothing instead has has this kind of an evening event where we show up and like everyone, everyone es can like me around and they would just these like two thousand one style monolith, just kind of like dotted around. And I just like a catch on design, like I am betting you there's a phone in two way behind inside that one. So we just kind of spend the rest just like standing by one of these things and of course then nothing stand up on stage.

They go ah we have think things such coming everyone this is argue is going be our third smart phone which we so so excised to repeat IT to the world and and then suddenly, like all of these monists that the sheet gets taken off and it's look at the prospect box with nothing phone too away in IT and oh that it's the flashing gifts so we go, uh, we OK I don't know like how inside baseball, one who David very keep going OK cool. So Alice and I game plan this, we like we going to stand by where we think the phone is going to be revealed. I will have my camera.

You will have your iphone fifteen. I will snap the photo as quickly as I can, and I will hand you the S, D card. You will quickly put the S, D card into your, the U.

S, B, C. adapter. Put that on the phone, get that upload on the verge and like rather than like tweet IT or putting on on threads or whatever will like have the images on the verge super quickly. And then of course, just weigh over, engineer this entire .

situation apart.

It's so .

quickly. And the iphone sucked up the raw file, or first off out and opens on msy carbons. Like, why do you have some people of keyboards .

and hijo through at one thousand pictures of keyboard?

And I ride a bang. We had the nothing phone to a shot and then you can of copies them over that we upload them into .

our our C M S corus I D log back in the corus IT logged me out, of course.

And then course is like we can't we can't take a profile with sorry. And so just the whole IT was not nearly quickly .

as you this is in the category of you luxurious trip to overseas countries where i'm like literally standing under a plan. Like there was a big plan like to and I had my laptop out at this fancy restaurant and I like opening I mean camera raw, like to touch some photo as an upload than records. I am like this is I just don't know how to explain this, any Normal person .

yeah way to some way to just keep them coming by like reading because we were on the kind of maturity table and they were trying to get like cuttery out of this. And then of course, friend of the vote sand by just like shows like his phone, just like just taken on your small phone, small phone cameras.

a real gods. He was just watching us, like, not saying I told you so, but he was like, all over his face.

You are listening to this. You are wondering if you should get an detective. Nale m, the answer? yes.

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All right, we're back with Allison and john. So the the last thing I had on my lake, cool things you guys saw list, is also kind of the big picture thing that I feel that was happening at them. Abc, which is basically what is a phone if it's not just a collection of apps that google or apple runs.

And john, you are about this going in is kind of what you were thinking about entering into the show. And I think that really proved out right, that the idea is what is sort of the post APP smartphone look like. And an Alice and you ve got a demo, I think, of an a phone or an APP.

Er, I don't even know what I call IT from a company called brain AI that is doing something along these lines, right? I still I have trouble explaining what this thing is to people, but you've now seen IT. Can you explain what this thing is?

Yeah so they're kind of building IT as an act phone. And the spoiler er is that the phone has apps, is like a regular phone. But this company, brain AI, is launching IT replanting to launch IT with to you telecom A K A T mobile.

And it's right now what IT is, is this sort of like you have the Normal O S. And then there's this like almost like digital and where you can launch a page and it's IT looks a little bit like a ChatGPT kind of text box where you're like, tell me about this. But the idea is you you ask for things, you want to book a fly, you want to look for a gift or something you kind of type IT in and IT starts building this inner face around whatever you're asking for.

So you're not going directly into like a travel booking APP. You just sort of like asking to become a travel booking APP. And IT builds IT around you.

But instead of just doing text for everything, it'll actually try and like redo the interface for whatever .

you're trying to do. Yeah they see the train this ai on interfaces. It's not like a large language model. It's sort of like here's how you present information so someone can do something with IT.

And then I think the really cool part is like you ask for something like the deal they gave me was like show me a ideas for a gift for my girlfriend who likes tennis and and you get you know kind of a page of results in your growing through and you can stop at something and kind of tap on IT and ask for, you know, a question. You can ask a question about IT. You can say, show me a video of the thing and IT did like IT answered the question correctly about how fast to achieve tennis balls.

IT was a tennis ball machine, or like a little youtube video module kind of pop up under IT. So IT all just kind of happens in the site, like kind of fluidly in the same space. You're not going, I want to watch a video this.

I'm going to jump over to a different APP IT type in some text, which is a really compelling way to think of like, yes, maybe our phones don't have to be these you know boxes with drain them where you're constantly you know drilling down to the thing you want. There's so much that's unproven about this right now. It's very focused on like shopping, which is I think A I companies love the idea that we just always want to book flights and same ference is good now ever whatever.

Like I want to help with my email like what about productivity in all these things? And Jerry, the founder of the company, is like that is coming that kind of the next step. But yeah, they don't have a launch state.

They are targeting europe in the U. S. But they couldn't give like A A definitive timeframe. But i'm super interested in IT.

It's a new idea. Yeah, john, what did you see? I know you came in kind of looking at this question of like what's next after APP stores? Do you see anything that picture interest?

I will say, no. I think I saw I saw a much more traditional show that I think I was I was expecting. But also I think my kind of my take away for a lot of the stuff we saw was for me, I I kind of ended up kind of comparing, contrasting the humane A I pen with the rabbit, a one from C S.

The rabbit, a one I wasn't presented in c. But I think that so much of introducing a new product category is talking about now a potential rather than what exactly I can do. And I think when talking about potential is very easy to kind of get very philosophical and very naval gays in a way that kind of puts people off, which I think is the direction that humane has kind of gone in.

And then everyone can actually seen the pin kind of goes, well, this is this a, this is a 感 that like does adventure gage stuff and that's and that's cool。 But it's kind of been wrapped up in this, in this very philosophical idea of all we want to get rid. Smart phones and screens are bad and stuff.

And it's so interesting kind of comparing the the reception of the humane open to the to the rabbit r one which from what I could see was very warmly received despite having A A similarly kind of experimental approach towards what a non phone gadget can be. And the difference seems to be in in in that kind of like itchy I mean all so I think the a ones of teenage engineering, industrial design kind of help help and you have to look at the human I pay and go where you just one teenage engineering deal away from like a much more positive. But yes, that was like a lot of my takeaway is that it's the the story that you wanna a tell about the next step.

I think if you kind of shoot hie, you lose people. And if you shoot low than you end up with a kind of this is today's smart tones, but but slightly faster. And so there's that kind of, I think the apple phone thing kind of sits in the middle there quite nicely where you go usually have this thing you really know the form factor over. But what if what if there are less apps you download? And what if IT was more kind of customized to towards your needs?

Yeah, else. And you're got to use the pin. Well, use, use might be a slightly strong word for what happened with you in the pin. But what was your experience?

What you make IT yeah I I hovered near a couple of people as they used the pin and I just .

yeah think the way you said that was somebody use the pin at you yeah that's that's .

good enough you I did try to like, I was like, can I just like general close to you and like cavet project on on my hand and we only tried that first. Like I was very awkward and didn't really work.

Like hug them from behind and reach her home had .

on your shoulder that was like very sweet of them and .

let me .

try that yeah exactly like Johnson. It's a gait like you hear all the marketing and the ted talks to know is stuff and they're just like, know what piece of technology could ever live up to like what I am hearing about A C and person, you're like this is just kind of call like I think I would make a lot more sense if IT was something that was designed to compliment your phone and and the spokespeople I talk to were very like, no, no, this isn't supposed to replace your phone.

It's like, you know, it's just when you kind of want unplugged from your phone, you have IT, but IT costs seven hundred dollars, IT has a subscription fee, has sim card. Like I don't know a lot of people who are going to have a phone and a budget for like a basically another phone. So it's I still have weird feelings about I still have questions.

But what I saw was kind of call like the the navigation, you know that you do kind of A A pinching pinch thing to score through the menu that the laser projecting on your hand. I saw one of these spokespeople, SHE, had to like check the wifi settings on IT, which is just sounds like a nightmare thing to do. And that kind of a sense. He was like, okay, doing a little like manuvers. And I don't know, it's gonna a wild when I .

think I really love the idea of projecting a settings menu like huge onto the wall next to me while I slowly score through all the wifi options. This works for me. I mean, to this.

the future, right?

Let's do. We're going to do a really quick M, C awards lighting round. And then i'm like, you guys get out here because you both need to sleep after M, C. The silliest thing that you saw them to be, you see that you kind of love. Anyway, john .

covers a, the idea of H, R, D, make a big song, adults about a bari flip phone that's coming.

That's a good ones there. Very good answer. Uh.

Alice son really got, I think I got ta go with bandy phone. I played connect four on IT. They had IT like set up. That's like one of things you can do with that. Oh, I like this.

Actually, I am so sorry. Can I change my answer? sure. Twenty eight thousand million power battery phones.

yeah. Think your headline .

for that was this gigantic battery has a phone attached to IT.

I A hundred percent stole former colleague lood. Like four four or five years ago, they had eighteen thousand million power phone. Now they are back thousand million power. That's call progress .

maybe yeah get out here of eighteen thousand. Come on. That's what inflation does. I love um right thing. You think a lot of people are most likely to buy very soon that you just saw what screams like big hit coming soon?

Well, I mean, I don't know about about big hit. But then of us reparable laptops, that's that's just gonna businesses all over the world there are going to have those things people are bad to think about that, but going to be some I T admin with a little phillip ed screw driver just going like I S this laptop will live live another day. Thank you very much.

Love IT as and you yeah.

I don't have big hit, but like galaxy ring, I think here's a lot of potential, I would say, especially for something that we is not brand new, but it's sort of a new category for samsung and IT. So it's kind of rare to be like, oh yeah, and I can see where you guys are going with this and I I i'm curious to see what happens. Okay, I love IT. yeah.

I am super bullish on smart rings as a thing. I think there's like a lot of stuff left to do, but I think that categories ies can be really interesting for a while. Um right last one thing you held in your hands in most wish you could have just taken home with you in that moment that you're like, this is mine now i'm going to leave. I'm going to pick pocket someone in barcelona and this blogs to me now, john.

what you O K it's like. So this company, infinites, this wasn't like a brand new for mwc, but they had a concept of phone call, the e color shift where basically, whenever IT charges, IT has an e ink display on its rear, the rapidly changes between different color schemes. And then the idea is, you like, yes, out the power called when the color hits, it's the the color that you like.

You like, cool. This is, this is the color of my phone. Now, this is great. It's so fun.

It's so, it's so great and like it's not even a functional al phone and IT is it's a concept thing. They think maybe in the next couple of years, they're actually bring this thing out. Yeah, you're just like a check out. You can't decide between the like really adventurer color and and black like one of both.

I've love that out about you.

I'm gonna the show me fourteen ultra like sub category of the photography kit they introduced this last yeah series and it's like a little cm graph you put on the phone IT sounds so stupid, but I loved IT has a little shutter button. They're doing IT again this year for the fourteen, but it's like actually more useful the battery in IT. I love what they do with their cameras and it's just like a camera nerds phone I want.

I like IT alright, you both need to go get some sleep and recover from all of your many travels. Thank you both for you. This super fun, can we again.

yeah.

thank you. Thank OK. We got to take one more .

break and then were going to come back and answer a question from the first cast.

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All right, we're back. Let's get to the hot line. As always, the number is eight, six, six.

Verge one one. The email is verge cast at the verge dot com. We love all your questions. We try to answer at least one on the show every week. Thank you. As always, to everybody who calls the details we love hearing from you this week, we have a question from Taylor.

Hi, this is Taylor, from color to like the show. And I was heard so much about color bottom. And the problem is A I what do you think the impact to be on what sites like the way back machine that are arriving internet and in some way to are R T then accessing in new york times and other places behind table, but also really important to uh wikipedia and the uh history of the internet. We looking know more what you think like.

I love this question because IT gets IT something that actually I wrote about on the verge a couple of weeks ago. I put the link in the shows. But this idea of access and basically who controls what is public and what is private on the web. And just tailor to answer your question directly, the answer is yes, it's a huge deal and it's potentially a huge change and how a lot of these things work.

So there's things like the net archive, right, which is going out and literally just downloading versions of web pages periodical in order for you to be able to go find them later at A N of years ago, essentially said we're doing for humanity and we are going to do IT no matter what you think. So every website, in theory, has this thing called robot start T X T, which is just, if you go to whatever the website is, amazon 点 com slash robot start T X T。 It's just a simple text file.

And basically what IT does in most cases is, say, which web caller bots are allowed in and which are not allowed. And for like three decades, this is actually a thing that was created in the nineties back when, you know, having a bunch of colors on your website could actually crash your website because infrastructure was slow and didn't work out that well. But for the last three decades, it's mostly been about search engine.

The idea was, do I, as a website owner, want google to craw my website? And essentially question about exchange of value, right? So you say I want google to crown my website, that means google is going to use some of my band, wep costs to cost money to let its crawl, come and look at all of my way, pages.

And IT means google has access to a cash of every one of my web pages at some interval of time. In exchange, I get to be in google search engine, and google was some traffic to my website. So there are a bunch of versions of that being runs a crawler that is very some other things.

But for a long time, that was the exchange. The net archive was a slightly different one where in a sense, you're getting something back from the internet archive, but it's not like they're sending you traffic. The traffic to the internet archive goes to the internet archive, their download of your website.

In general, I think most people think the net arve is like a net good for humanity. So I think this wasn't really a huge issue. But if you didn't want the internet archive to crawl your website for whatever reason, and there are plenty of valid reasons not to, you could, in theory, in that robot, start T, X, T, page, block the internet, archive, the internet.

Arve said, I think in twenty seventeen, that IT was just no longer going to respect that, that its mission was too important, that I was doing things that were good and valuable, and IT was no longer interested in respecting the wishes of somebody. Y's robots tx t page, that page has huge sort of Normal tive value on the internet but no actual real legal authority that has no technical authority. It's just kind of a way of saying, you know, please keep out it's like putting a sign on your tree house.

IT doesn't accomplish anything, but that does send a message. But if you don't want to listen, you don't really have to. So that has all been happening over the years. And there have been people who want more sophisticated tools to actually keep people out.

There have been more sophisticated reasons for the protocol to exist behind robot tax t, but in general, IT has just been around, and IT is more or less works and more less than okay with people. But now, like Taylor saying, with A I two things are happening. One, a lot of these companies that run websites are starting to think a lot more carefully about what isn't is not allowed on their website.

So you can say not just I won a black google, but I want to black OpenAI because I don't want my stuff going into OpenAI training data for a large english model. So you could black GPT bot, that's the one that OpenAI does. Most of the other A I companies have crullers of their own.

They all need this giant mass of training data. So not only are all of these website donors having to go into that web page and I want to block GPT bot or whatever s it's causing them to think more broadly about access, right? You have an anti trust case against amazon that is fundamentally, in large part, about amazon's ability to cross the web.

IT was doing this thing where IT would go around the web and look for Prices on products that were also listed on amazon and then allegedly doing a bunch of really shade itself. If I found that you are listing something for cheaper than you were listing IT on amazon, you can do that if you don't have an automated way to crowd the webb. It's just too much work for a single person to let go.

Click on every product page on the internet. So this is the kind of thing that used in tons of ways, right? And not only are these companies going in, okay, who do I want in and who do I want out, one particularly powerful way to keep people out is a paywall.

And like Taylor said, one of the things we're starting to see is more and more companies, publishers, whatever, putting their stuff behind the payout like one of the reasons facebook has always required you to log in is because IT doesn't want google and everybody else to be able to access all of the data on facebook because that data is really valuable. And now we're seeing companies like reddit start to realize how valuable their data is in strike deals with A I companies. So there's just this shift in how data on the internet is understood.

For a long time, I was kind of net public. The idea is to be in their place. That was going to be fine. And now to some extent, the website or the APP or whatever, is actually less valuable in sort of real dollar terms.

Then the data underneath IT, like the content of redit posts, is probably more valuable and more important than read IT, which is weird because one can exist without the other. But that very much where we are. So all of this is up in the air right now for the first time in a really long time, and in a pretty big way, I think, threatens to kind of rewrite the web.

IT could put much more stuff behind registration walls and start to slow things off even more. We've talked a lot about the sort of open future of social with activity pub and the federal s are masted on. And I think all of that is very cool. I also think there are lots and lots of incentives for all of these platforms to build bigger walls, not knock them down. Because if you knock them down, you give lots of companies and crawlers and people access to your stuff in ways that can be adversarial and problematic for you.

This is one of the things I have spent a lot of time thinking about and talking about the people because it's one of these sort of norms of the internet, right? That like if I have a web page and you have a way page, we should both just be cool. And IT is amazing how far that got us.

But now there are so much money and so much change and so many new reasons, both to crawl someone else's website and to be worried about someone crawling website, that I think a lot of this is about to change. And what i've heard from publishers and stuff is that they didn't touch their robots start T, T page for years. And now it's becoming like a sea sweet level meeting.

You have to have about who do we want in, who do we want to block, and who do we want to go. Try to make some kind of commercial agreement with. So I don't want to oversee IT, but i'm gonna kind of overstated.

Like I think this is possibly going to be part of the huge change that we're about to see on the web. We've seen the problems with close platforms, and we're now in a face, I think, where there is a real push back toward the open web. But there are also really good reasons if you are part of that open we B2Close you r doo rs.

So we will see. But my great hope, if i'm completely honest, is that things like the next archive in wikipedia and all of these things continue to be free and open because I think the idea that they are generally good things and should continue to exist on the open internet, that feels right to me. Alright, anyway, that is that for the verge cast today.

Thanks to john and for being here. And thank you, as always, for listening. There's lots more from everything we talk about on the verge dot com.

R M, D, C cover videos. Go to take talk to. You can see tons of good stuff from them touching and spinning around and playing with all these cool l gadgets.

But in general its a super noisy time right now so check out, as always, if you have thoughts or questions or feelings or want to get my human AI hint from me when I finally get one, you can always email us at verge cast at the verge dot com or keep calling the hotline eight, six, six, verge, one, one we love hearing from you. Send us all of your thoughts and questions and ideas. We are rapidly nearing, what I would say is like the first gadget season of the year.

We're going to get to my eye e stuff, we're onna get some apple stuff, are going to google stuff not coming. So keep all your questions tell you we love her. This show is produced by engine marino, liam James and willing or the verge cast is verge production and part of the box media podcast where new alex and would be back on friday to talk about the new macbook care and everything else having a tech right now. We'll see then rock or.

Support for this episode de comes from A W S. A W S, generate A A, I gives you the tools to power your business forward with the security and speed of the world's most experienced club. Hey, it's lee.

From decoder with new IP top. We spent a lot of time talking about some of the most important people in taking business about what they're putting resources to and why they think it's so critical for the future. That's why we're doing this special series diving into summer.

The most unique ways companies are spending money today, for instance, what does that mean to start buying and using A I at work? How much is that costing companies? What products are they? And most importantly, what are they doing with IT? And of course, podcasts? Yes, the thing you listening to right now, well, it's increasingly being produced directly by companies like venture al firms, investment funds and a new crop of creators who one day want to be investors themselves.

And what is actually going on with these acquisitions this year, especially in the A I space, why are so many big players in tech deciding not to acquire and instead license tech can hire away cofounder? The answer, IT turns out, is a lot more complicated than that seems. You'll hear all that and more this month. I'm decoder with the light presented by strike. You can listen to the coder whatever you get your podcast.