A Vergecast holiday re-run marathon
The Vergecast
Deep Dive
WHY are undersea cables so important?
Undersea cables carry the vast majority of international internet traffic. Global platforms like YouTube and TikTok, financial data transfers, international calls, and even seemingly local websites rely on them. A major cable break could disrupt banks, companies, supply chains, and websites.
How often do undersea cables break and how are they fixed?
Around 200 cable breaks or faults occur annually. When a break happens, traffic is rerouted, and a specialized ship sails to the location with spare cable. The crew uses grapnels (hooks) to retrieve the broken ends, splices in new cable, tests the connection, and lowers it back to the seabed.
What is the biggest threat to undersea cables?
Accidental damage from fishing vessels and ships' anchors is the most common cause of cable breaks, followed by natural disasters like undersea landslides, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Hostile attacks are extremely rare.
WHY is the undersea cable maintenance industry considered vulnerable?
The industry is relatively small, with only about 22 dedicated maintenance vessels worldwide. Many of these ships are aging, and the industry faces challenges in attracting new talent. A major event, like a large earthquake or a targeted attack on a cable chokepoint, could overwhelm the current maintenance capacity.
WHY did Tony Iles start his own food delivery service?
Tony, an Uber Eats driver in Seattle, saw demand plummet after apps imposed a $5 local operating fee in response to a city-mandated minimum wage increase for delivery workers. He believed he could offer a better, more personal service at a lower cost.
What is Tony's critique of app-based food delivery services?
Tony believes that apps create a toxic relationship between restaurants, drivers, and customers. He argues that the focus on speed and cost has led to rushed, sloppy, and impersonal service, ultimately ruining the takeout experience.
What is Tony's vision for food delivery?
He aims to strip away the tech and anonymity of apps, offering a friendly, neighborhood-focused service. He prioritizes personal connections with customers, even considering capping the number of orders he takes to maintain a sense of community.
How did Riley Testut get started with emulation?
In high school, Riley discovered an open-source Game Boy Advance emulator and modified it to run on his iPhone without jailbreaking. He shared it with friends, then released it on GitHub, where it gained unexpected popularity.
WHY did Riley create AltStore?
After Apple rejected his emulator app, Delta, from the App Store, Riley was determined to find a way to distribute it. He leveraged a loophole that allowed free Apple ID sideloading from Xcode and built AltStore as a platform for installing apps outside the App Store.
What was Apple's reaction to the DMA and AltStore?
Apple initially told Riley his emulator would be allowed. After a year of development, they reversed their decision. When AltStore launched in the EU, Apple was reportedly caught off guard by the team's preparedness and the completeness of the platform. Shortly after, Apple unexpectedly allowed emulators on the App Store, a move widely seen as a response to AltStore and the DMA.
WHY are some people developing dedicated AI gadgets instead of just using smartphone apps?
While smartphones are powerful and convenient, some developers believe dedicated AI gadgets offer a more seamless and intuitive user experience. They argue that constantly pulling out and interacting with a phone can be cumbersome and distracting, especially when multitasking.
What role do earbuds play in the AI gadget landscape?
Earbuds provide a convenient, socially acceptable way to interact with AI assistants without constantly handling a phone. Features like transparency mode and noise cancellation further enhance the user experience.
WHY is paper considered a crucial invention?
Unlike earlier writing materials like stone, clay, papyrus, wax tablets, or parchment, paper offered both permanence and practicality. Ink on paper was indelible, making it ideal for business records, legal documents, and preserving knowledge, ultimately enabling the development of modern capitalism.
What were Zibaldoni, and what do they reveal about the past?
Zibaldoni were personal notebooks kept by Florentines in the 14th century. They contained a mix of recipes, poems, prayers, medicinal cures, and other snippets of information, offering a window into the daily lives, interests, and beliefs of ordinary people.
WHY do notebooks continue to be popular in a digital world?
Notebooks offer simplicity, portability, and durability. The act of writing by hand engages different parts of the brain than typing, leading to deeper processing and understanding. The physicality of a notebook also creates a sense of place and memory that digital notes lack.
What is the central dilemma David Pierce faces regarding gaming consoles?
He wants a portable handheld console to play games outside his usual desk setup and while travelling, but his favorite game, FIFA (EA Sports FC), has compatibility issues on the leading handheld, the Steam Deck.
WHY is the Steam Deck considered the best handheld gaming option despite FIFA's issues?
The Steam Deck offers superior performance, customizability, and a vast library of compatible games compared to Windows-based handhelds or the Nintendo Switch. It's also hackable and can stream games from other platforms, including PlayStation and Xbox Cloud Gaming.
What is the proposed solution for David's gaming dilemma?
The recommended solution is to optimize his home network for PlayStation streaming, use the Steam Deck's Chiaki app to stream FIFA at home, and explore the Steam Deck's extensive game library for other titles while travelling or for offline play.
WHY are major record labels suing AI music companies?
The RIAA alleges that companies like Suno and Udio trained their AI models on copyrighted music without permission, infringing on their intellectual property rights. They argue that these AI tools are directly competing with them in the music marketplace.
How do the outputs of AI music models demonstrate copyright infringement?
By prompting the AI with specific artist names, genres, and time periods, the models can generate near-identical reproductions of copyrighted songs, demonstrating that the original works were used in the training data.
What is the significance of the music industry's legal action against AI?
The music industry has a history of aggressively protecting its copyrights, and its legal action against AI companies could set a precedent for other creative industries grappling with similar issues of fair use and intellectual property in the age of generative AI.
How did the word "podcast" come into existence?
The term arose from a confluence of factors: the rise of MP3 players, audio production software, and blogging. Ben Hammersley is credited with first publishing the word in a 2004 Guardian article, though he likely drew inspiration from earlier discussions in the tech community, particularly among developers working on early podcasting software like iPodder. Danny Gregoire also used the term in an email to the iPodder developer group, solidifying its adoption.
What role did Adam Curry and Dave Winer play in the development of podcasting?
Adam Curry, a former MTV VJ and radio personality, envisioned a system for distributing audio content via RSS feeds and created iPodder, an early podcasting app. Dave Winer, a prominent blogger and RSS pioneer, collaborated with Curry and others on the technical aspects of podcasting and promoted the term and concept.
How did Apple contribute to the popularization of podcasts?
Steve Jobs' 2005 announcement at WWDC, highlighting the integration of podcasts into iTunes, significantly boosted the medium's visibility and accessibility, leading to its mainstream adoption.
WHY did the hydrogen highway fail to materialize as envisioned in California?
Despite initial enthusiasm and government funding, the hydrogen highway faced several obstacles: slow development of a robust fueling network, the unexpected rise of battery electric vehicles, and the lack of a major industry disruptor like Tesla to drive innovation and market adoption.
What challenges are hydrogen fuel cell car drivers facing in California?
Drivers encounter frequent station outages, skyrocketing fuel prices, limited range, and difficulty finding working pumps, leading to range anxiety and regrets about purchasing their vehicles.
WHY is Toyota continuing to invest in hydrogen fuel cell technology despite the challenges?
Toyota views hydrogen as a long-term hedge against the dominance of battery electric vehicles and sees potential for fuel cell technology in other sectors like trucking, buses, trains, and stationary power generation.
WHY did Nilay Patel give the Apple Vision Pro a score of 7?
While acknowledging its innovative features and "fun" factor, Nilay deducted points for the Vision Pro's inconsistent input system and high price. He ultimately settled on a 7, indicating a product that is "fantastic but useless."
What are some of the key criticisms of the Apple Vision Pro?
The Vision Pro's high price ($3,500), reliance on camera-based passthrough instead of true AR, potential limitations of hand and eye tracking as primary input methods, and limited app ecosystem at launch are major concerns.
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