Our biggest stories and favorite things of 2024
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Walk to the verge guests, the flagship pg guests of cozy games. I'm a friend, David piers, and I just bought a bunch of pants. So we ve been talking a lot about no books and stuff on the show over the last few weeks.

I actually can talk a little bit more about IT on this show. But a thing that I should admit that I don't talk about a lot here on the verdict or in life, is that a on the side of being like a digital note, taking lunatic are also kind of a notebook lunch. I go through these phases, everyone's on a while.

Or i'm like, okay, i'm become a notebook guy. I spent too much time on my phone. My phone is really useful. But what I need is just when i'm gna write things down, i'm going to do IT on pending paper. It's going to be great love IT.

I always forget that the real problem is that my handwriting is awful and that my hand hurts when I write too much. So I just buy a bunch of no box and like this fix IT. So I have like old, like five start school notebooks.

I I have a bunch of like more skin knock off. I have an actual mall skin. Uh, I have this thing called the top book from a company called studio or need that I really like, uh, I have one that I bought at staples.

This one is my journal from high school in which I wrote a bunch of poetry to my girlfriend that no one is ever allowed to read. Uh, but the thing that I realized most is that A, I need a new book that is with me most of the time. So what I usually of doing is getting like a little field notes thing that can just sort of live in my pocket.

But the main thing is I need pens, like a million pens. I don't want to spend any money on pens, so i'm going name is on and I thought these, they are called the pilot precise V R T. Uh, I think I found them from a wire color review that was like, these are good pens that you don't have pressed to be hard on.

So I bought twelve of them, and my plan is just to put them and everywhere, like one in the car, one of my backpack, one at my desk, one upstairs, one next to the bed. And then the goal is just to, like, always have a pen within reach. I tried to Carry a pen around, but I find them pretty good at having my new book, terrible having my pen with me.

So i'm going with like an infinite pens situation can be great and i'm going to write in the books more often. anyway. That is not what we're heard to talk about.

Today is a holiday week, at least here in the U. S. Is thanksgiving. So instead of Normal news, y verge cast on a week where there's not really any news, we figured that we do something slightly different.

So what we're going to do today is we're going to talk to a bunch of different folks on our staff about some of the biggest stories of the year, the most important things that they worked on, the most important things that we covered. There are favorite new thing that happened this year that had nothing to do with any this stuff that we covered. It's just fund to talk to our staff and get to know them what they are into and what they are interested in.

And we've done this before on the show and uh, I had a great time doing that. And you'll seem to like IT, too. So we invited a bunch people back and talk to them about some of their favorite and some of the biggest things from twenty twenty four.

All that is coming up in just a second. We got a bunch of people to get to lots of stuff, if you're on like a long drive, this lots of stuff for you to listen to you, lots of fun verse stuff to hang out with all that's coming up. But first, I really, I have to go distribute this mountain of pens all over my house, and then systematically lose them one by one until I have to buy twelve more tenants. This is the first test over right back.

Support for the verge cast comes from strike. Strike is a payments and billing platform supporting millions of businesses around the world, including companies like uber, bmw and door dash. Stripe has held countless startups and establish companies alike, reached their growth goals, make progress on their missions and reach more customers globally.

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Come back right before we get into IT, one tiny piece of housekeeping. So on december tenth, two two days from now, we're gone to do a whole episode about the verge cast and the verge. We've done this before and IT was really fun.

And basically, I want all of your questions about how the verge works, how the verge cast works, what we're doing, what we're thinking, what we're planning for the future, all of IT. Also, if you have thoughts on what we should be doing, but aren't, I want to hear those two, send them all our way. You can neither call the hotline eight, six, six, verge one one or email verge cast at the verge shot com.

Send a sire questions. December tenths are going to do that. Epo de, it's going to be really fun. Alright, let's get into IT. So we give a bunch folks on our staff very small bit of homer k basically come with what you think is the story of the year, your favorite texting of the year and your favorite new non texting of the year.

All these things are very broad, deliberately, because we figured people would interpret them differently in come with different ideas about what makes for a sort of the year and what constitutes new texting of the year. Everybody came with delete, fully different and interesting answers. And I think we're going to get swap of basically all the things the verge cares about kind of all in one place, plus just a sense of some of our favorite stuff.

Alright, we have eight people to go through. Let's do this first step. J Peters, new that on our team. J Peter, hello.

I did. IT, how are you?

I'm good. We are not going to talk about this for too long, but you're here on wired your podds that you just bought and this is not going to factor into our discussion. But I just want to congratulations on your wired to your pots. Thank you. If that headphones on earth .

for twenty dollars, yes, thank you. I plaguing them directly to my macbook here someday all upgrade for iphone fellow mini. And guess what? The plug straight into those two, it'll be fantastic.

I can't wait honestly like all the cool kids were wired headphones again and um I get IT it's like I was on a train the other day and I accidentally spent twenty minutes trying to connect my mac to someone else's both headphones instead of my boss headphones and I was like, oh, I have the cable and I played IT in and it's found this life is Better this way. Yeah right. So we gave you some homework. Let's start with story the year.

What is your story the year? Uh, the story the year to me is google being ruled a monopoly. Um I think this is huge because depending on what happens as a result of that ruling, including A A potential break up of the company, different pieces like IT could fundamentally transform the way we use the internet, how we search for things um and like what the defaults on our phones are. A I think this can be really, really, really massive in ways that we just don't even understand yet because we don't know what the end result is going to be.

I like this one, and I also feel like the fun thing about this story is, if you might be correct, this year and next year and the year after that and you're after that and the year after that, and then I might be nothing, which is why this story is so much fun because IT is IT is either I think you're write this like single most consequential thing happening in tech or IT is going to be a off a lot of hand ringing and nonsense employer fees and ultimately amount to nothing. Yep, if if you were a betting man, which one would you pick of those .

who outcomes um i'm going to say a little bit closer to the big deal and verse nothing. And to me, IT seems like kind likely that the governments going to say google can't make the defauts deals, especially like the one of the iphone that is made know the pervasive mobile search on iphone. And so like I think that is just kind of absolutely massive changed in the line.

Yeah, I didn't agree. And I think I was reading something uh, the other day about the all the way is in which this trial and the microsoft trial from twenty five years ago are just scarily similar in the way that you're going yeah and that won't a really fun case because what ultimately happened was not that much. But while microsoft was so focused on at the internet happened and this company called google like did a bunch of smart things that microsoft didn't have time or energy or attention to do, and just the existence of that crazy thing, screw up microsoft and changed the internet. And especially if you believe that A I as as big deal, as people say, we're sitting in the medal that again.

yeah IT IT seems like the A I companies I don't see like a direct like, oh, this is obviously the next google type thing. But like IT seems like there there is something in that everybody is starting to realize that maybe google isn't the only option and that could have a very large verifications and how we use tech every single day.

I am am with you. Are you using any V A I surch engine by the way?

No um I so far have not been a huge fan of them um but I think it's also time for me to explore them a little bit more.

I feel the same way there's something in the muscle memory of IT that has just been much harder for me to a change than I .

expected and that might just be because of my like day. They work of like writing news as fast as possible all the time. Like, yeah.

we like google suffer a living. Yeah, like a real I have like really .

specific ways that I find this information, that I know that IT works ninety five or seven times that, like other such tensions may not be strictly built for my use case, but that might also not be sure there might be ways that I can use these things that I haven't trying.

Yeah, alright. What's your new thing in the year? Presumably it's not a search engine.

What's your new thing outside? My favorite new thing is a game I played this year. I was final financing seven rebirth.

I say this is a huge fan of the original play station game. I love to the remake. And so I had a really high expectations going into this one, and I totally exceeded them.

It's like this just giant RPG you're hanging out with your friends, these characters that like I followed and fall in love with various, for various reasons, playing the game forever. And I thought squaring just toy delivered on this really incredible, huge champions RPG. I also have a very special memory in that I played so much of IT in the middle night while my new child was sleeping on me. So like, I have this like kind of really cool attachment, like what that game represented, in addition to the time my life that I, I mean, right now.

the genera of video games, you can play with a sleeping child on top of you is is a special, special thing. yeah. Uh, okay.

I have never had the occasion to do this to somebody on this podcast, and i'm going to make you do this right now. I have never played one second of final enery in my time OK not for A A good reason. It's just never happened. Uh, so can you give me like the the sixty second case for someone who has never play final fani to get into specifically final fema y seven rebirth .

wouldn't start with rebirth k specifically because it's part two of a three part giant story you should start with.

I see now i'm just tired, all right, but no problem.

I've already has spent so much time in IT that I had to see IT.

All right. If you're .

going to start start with remake, which I think um IT captures everything that people loved about the original on the original playstation brings IT up to all modern graphics and modern gap standards and um they they clearly know the source material very well and they know that people relieve they really love IT and they really treat IT with like care and and expanding IT in ways that are very interesting and still feel various true to the source material um but also have some kind of new interesting spins on this story that raises very familiar with my original game into this new stuff. So like it's long you know as a parent I don't know when we will find fifty three hours to dig into that, but like if you really want some me to like settle into and and just stick into its awesome and is IT the code .

of game you can play in long stint or short since can you play in a year fans of time yes I I would argue so if only because um that's a muscle i've .

had to develop and can just in general is like understanding that not every session is going to be like two hours on the couch of the animal day is like tones here toyman's there and I think you can do IT in that there's always like either like geral quest to be doing or you can know advanced farther along along what I remained story path that you're doing um and you can play IT on steam deck which I don't even have a steam deck but I love my steam decades fantastic thing for a few of kid you just need to play game somewhere around the house three of time I think you .

can do IT alright I love IT alright lasting favorite non texting .

of the year um well the sentimental choice is is my new child obviously. If I have to think I fix something else um I got a pack of field notes notebooks from attending the X O X O conference in the final one important this year. This is like a special brand that they made just for the show.

And Normally i've not ever Carried about field notes, but I actually started like using them a bunch. I think they're awesome. They're very pocketable. Um I like the little grade on the ones that I got here is very nice for getting random stuff and I find that like i'm finding that writing to do this or or outlining stories just with ten in paper and no computer has been like a really great thing for my brain to process stuff um and it's something i've done just way more than I ever expected. Like I thought as a new parent I be like OK super locked and all my text stuff I got to be super zero on that. But sometimes the sketching in an open cattle in the day has been a really, really good way to getting him along things.

I love that. I think field notes, I have always struggled because, like you said, they are the exact right size, like as as no books go. IT is the thing I want, but I have never figured out how to like hold IT in my hands correctly to write in IT s because it's just it's just not quite rigid enough.

yes. And and there's something I I end up fascinating between these like giant super study, no books that are like really easy to write on in any circumstance, and these like ti anyones that fit in my pocket and I love a field notes, they make great stuff. But there is there is something about IT that is like I just occasionally find the annoying the right .

and and address me crazy. What I think I found is I do like the your hand is the is the back, like it's the the support for everything. But i'm also not doing a ton of extensive journal. It's like all dash office sentence here, all rights and bullet here. And that, I think makes IT.

So like, if I just sit down, and right, if I was sketching out a novel on this, this would not be my favorite ite place to do IT, but for taking notes or thinking through ideas and, you know, alright, a sentence. I'll sit on something and think about IT, write another sentence. It's been really perfect for me. So I would recommend IT for that.

That's really good use case. I love that. Yeah, fed notes for the wind.

There's like an entire corner of old head bloggers who just got very excited hearing you. Jay, thank you. Always appreciate that.

Thanks, David. Okay, moving on. Next up, jack astronauts, the first executive. Jack, hello, thanks for me. I the sweater game with you was eyes very strong. Most people will not be able to see this, but the sweat game is very strong .

with jack all the time. I tell you Thomas ricker, when he came from the netherland od cta, that's the europeans know what they are doing. Thomas.

at one point, was wearing a sweater that I thought was very good, and then he put a scar phone over the sweat and even, and then he put a jacket over the scarf in the sweater that was even Better, entire the hole.

IT was the most incredible thing. I have workshop less .

in comparison to truly, uh, alright, jack, we gave you some homework. What's your story here?

Okay, I hate to be that guy. I I really do. I really do. But I have to tell you is A I O K, I K, obviously. But came from a year where AI .

is the most .

hopelessly overhyped a technology all year non stop. And I hate to be the person, but I think A I is actually good. Now there's this only for humanity.

I that but but just fundamentally, on a product level, I can punch a button on my phone and have a conversation with zu. I I don't know what IT is if you can diagnose the problem with my air conditioning system, right? I am.

I don't know how to do that myself. I can. I tell you my own story just from the other day. So uh, it's open enrollment time. If vox media, we're all doing our benefits, I had to decide whether we wanted to do my health insurance that we get or my wife's health insurance through her job. And I looked at the summary of benefits document for, like I swear to get hours and my eyes glaze over.

I couldn't remember which was which the the word I uploaded the two documents to notebook L M, and was just like which one's Better given what I think is coming for the next year? They had a couple of weeks and they told me the answer, and that was create IT was the most incredible thing. Have everything in a minute half IT was just like, IT was like, here is all the information you need about which insurance to pick and I was like, oh, I had the same thought.

You did. Oh yes, good. Now I I take you back.

This is the thing everybody has that moment eventually. And it's like, I don't know that this is going to completely revolutionize the world, at least as IT is right now. But these small moments where it's like that just save me ten minutes of googling right, is not one hundred percent correct. But like I got me in the ballpark and that's actually what I need right now.

I totally, I hate some money while I go tell me that if you just look at A I as the world's most powerful summarizing machine, uh, that is both a much smaller vision for IT and also really cool and full of need, things that I can do. And I like everything about that ever since like that. There is a lot you can do there and that's actually .

think it's good at I I think we have these may be impossibly high standards for A I and look like I. It's our job to hold these companies to those high standards. That's fine. I'm going to keep the menu. They make these things Better.

Um but if you told me, you know a year two ago that I can on hand have somebody who will you know give me a ballpark correct answer or do math for me or or you know write something for me and it'll be like reasonably good, that would seem impossible um and I think reasonably good is still pretty impressive. Again, problems about, I will be the first to admit that, but these things exploded. They are suddenly in everything. I do not know if people are actually using them in most of these places, but I have a suspicion that a lot of these very minor, small youth cases just writing stuff Better or summer sing stuff is going to become second nature for people very quickly.

Yeah, totally. And I think twenty twenty five is, I hope the year where like high minded retorted gets a little closer to the actual reality， like the tech is going to get a little Better .

but also every is a video like five hundred million dollars, something I don't don't call me on our own exactly.

but not something .

something feels a little off there like it's cool technology. But like, if you will need to chill out a little bit yeah .

not god just yet. Yes but maybe you know we'll do this again in twelve months, who knows? Uh, right. What's your next one? Your favorite new thing of the year.

very new thing in the year. I'm cheating a little exist from end of last year. I bought IT this year um but I want to hip up the wim amp.

Um this is if you are a cycle like me who has a book shelf speaker system, right you don't have an only one, right no sound bar a you just buy some powered speakers. You have speakers that need to be powered by the APP, that need a different input sources fed into them. You've probably gone through the absolute madness and chaos of having a bunch of different parts and pieces.

You need the amp, you need the streamer, you need the final, and you need all these. Everything we made up says, hey, I know it's all that sounds Better. If you get five hundred different and income and stack together, what if we skip all that is going to put everything in? One is three hundred dollars.

IT sounds reasonably good. And IT does all the things that I I hate that all these fancy sound system parts do not do IT automatically turns on and off. IT doesn't get flaming hot in my cabinet. Um it's streams, things IT switches, inputs automatically. My T V in control is great.

I love IT I cannot describe to you how convincing a pitch that just was A I think think about my parents all the time who bought this like as tall as me set of speakers when I was A K and they still have IT and all the other parts of their system that they, the C, D. Player in the all that stuff is a million years old in long dead. But the speaker still on, amazing.

And they have spent all this time trying to figure out the speakers are just sitting in the basement. And they like, what do we do with this? Because, again, like you said, it's, do I rebuild a room full of stuff? I'm not literally i'm going to buy this from my parents for Christmas.

and I just going to play their minds. I'm telling you if, as somebody who has done IT over and over, gant is not worth rebuilding, like all these separate items and string them together, IT is such a hassle. The sound is not that much Better.

Don't come for me, you know, just give into the simplicity. Know your speakers are still gonna sound great. And this has basically nearly everything A C system needs, with the one exception of a phone input. IT doesn't have that that's a power um see doing in a separate amp for that but otherwise I can stream crocs can stream airplay um I don't else a can hook up to your TV it's great.

I love IT. All right the last thing favorite non text thing of .

the they are on testing in the year um this is a again, not this year. I'm cheating, but for me personally, I count me ah I found a card game that has been A A hit of all of the board game nights I have been to. IT is super simple.

I think as i've gone order, i've strayed from the games where they take like two and half hours supply and need to read instructions manual from forehand. The game is called china ology. IT is super simple.

I love IT and basis a deck of cards. And each card has an event and year on IT. And everybody starts out with one year, right? And summer is gna. Read you another one. And so in front of you, you might have something that says, uh, apple computers is founded and says one thousand nine and seventy six as what happened right um OK so now years and David and I to reach the next card and IT says, L, B, J becomes president after jeff case destination and you have said, did this happen before? After.

before, before? Easy.

okay, not too Better. But now you've got two cars sound, right? You've got eighty seven, nine, sixty. So I say, uh, the beatles appear on ed solvin.

What he was up before, after a in between now is this conflict you like sexy was in between the six, right? And this one is a really, really super easy to learn, super a fast party game. And it's fun because you got to, you know, rid your friends about not knowing history. I don't know anything.

Yeah I feel like i'd be i'd be good until about the dates that you said, and then I would all fall apart for me. It's like the things where people talk about something that happened in like the roman empire and my god, that was like the fourteen fifties, right? And there are like, that was six B, C. The amount .

of time IT took me to think on, I got .

a par r ah yeah.

I A lot of people felt was a really a long time ago.

That should be enough like you should get a half point for just being like IT was IT was before .

the bees that I I knew you get the point I knew before the beetles. That was all I need. You know.

that's pretty good games called .

chronology chino logy um highly recommended for a chill fun boarding night.

I like r jack. Thank you on this.

Go to you later.

Next up on the list just stem comma or senior science reporter just in hello .

hello coming .

to us from the control room of one of our pocket studies. Yes, I love this. Uh, r so we gave you some homework. Uh, the first thing you had to do was come with your story of the year. What was destroy the year?

Well, that for me was a no brainer. He was definitely the U. S. Presidential election while outcome of the elections.

This is, you know, this is what I am losing sleep over leading up to next year. I mean, I just changes IT IT affects everything right? Um for me on the science task m an environmental reporter.

And so there are literally studies out there around how much more pollution we can expect with this next administration, how much more that's onna, warm the planet, recover your life in the future. And so you know we're looking at a hotter future um all kinds of fall out and you know across all of the death that we cover. I do a lot of work with the policy team.

Over the past year, we were covering some major supreme court decisions. This spin court has been absolutely made over with trumps previous appoints that made IT more difficult. Some of those supreme court decisions have made IT more difficult to regulate industry. So you know that has wide reaching effects. And so I that for me is as the story of the year going into next year.

is there anything on your mind on that front right now other than just sort of sheer object screaming and rage all the time? I feel like we're in a moment now where where like we as reporters and also just like we as people, we're going to have to figure out like how to talk about this stuff other than just what sometimes feels like direction list screaming all the time, like what what's on your mind as you're thinking about kind of the the stories inside of this state you're thinking about over the next year?

Or one thing that's going to be really interesting to watch is what happens at the state and local level. Um you note in the past of that has been where people have counteracted. Um what's going on at the federal level made progress when there's been in action at the national level. And so I will be really interesting to see what comes out of that sort of local organizing moving forward. And then another interesting place to watch um which is like very divisive in the environmental community but surprisingly, where bipartisan is gonna be, uh nuclear energy.

And if you about .

o yeah exactly. So I mean, if you're looking at just might be on the word, I think one of the biggest stories has been this is IT too soon to send clear. Rena island is probably too soon but there's anything renaissance like overkill LED right.

But yeah but there's been whole lot of interest in nuclear energy, particularly from tech companies looking for uh, electricity for energy hungry data centres. This is a growing issue with a eye. We saw a sw of nuclear energy deals from amazon, google, microsoft. Ah three mile .

island is coming back like what a weird version of the line here so they .

say we'll have to watch and see. But but yes but you know term has been supportive of nuclear energy in the past. It's gotten by partisan support.

Um if you look at trumps pick to lead the department of energy, Chris Wright, he is um a fossil fuel executive CEO of a fracking company but also sits on the board of a nuclear energy company with sam altman. So that'll be really interesting to see that company is developing advanced nuclear reactors. I don't know how to see what happens.

Yeah, I feel like with a lot of that stuff, I always get tripped ed up trying to figure out how long these things take because on the one hand, we have these like super pressing issues and the the the three mile island guy was basically saying, like, we're ready. Let's spin this back up and go back to work. Everything's going to be terrific.

And then you hear about all these projects that are you know where we're talking about, like 24 deadlines for things and like god only knows where will be by twenty 4。 Uh, is this gonna start to become sort of meaningly real next year, do you think? No.

okay. I think I think we may see more deals, but the earliest projections that i've seen for the first advanced nuclear reactors coming online um are going to be probably the early twenty thirties. And so it's gonna be a while before we see these um these new technologies.

And to be clear, those are next generation nuclear reactors that have not been deployed in the us. yet. You know they still need to get all of the regulatory approvals and everything, not to mention the costs because both traditional like old school nuclear reactors, the big plants that we we have today, they're really extended to build these.

These next generation technologies are supposed to be smaller and cheaper, but projects have also run into rising to. So yeah, so that's why a lot of this stuff is still up in the area. You have all of the regulatory and permitting delays and then you have everything that's going on when IT comes to making this actually an affordable source of energy. Got IT. okay.

And I would say IT doesn't seem like the regulatory state is going to get more efficient and effective. And in the very future. So I would not see my hopes are super eye. But hey.

we'll take IT. Yeah, yeah. I will see what this efficiency task for that. I mean, you could just be like, good, do whatever you want.

I mean, fair that would I would go faster than that would go faster. Uh, alright, what was your a favorite new thing in the year?

Okay, so I have a plug. I am a really big documentary. You can um I just I love non fiction, but I to plug this documentary that is still in theatres called nurses and seen it's about Philippines nurses.

I am phillipines mamm is a nurse and you know at the ams this year you the host talk about how E R went like fifteen seasons without ever having a Philippine on nurse. If you go into almost any hospital medical establishment, you're bound to find a lot of Philippine ones. So this dock ring goes into the whole history of that, why there's been a pipeline of nurses coming to the U.

S. From the Philippine since really world war two, the Philippines of the U. S. territory. But IT also just talks about um IT really focuses on how these nurses were on the front line es during the pandemic.

And so I just get really gives voice to a community that spent overlooked ant has just done a lot for our health care system. So that was one of my favorite documentary of the year. That's really that is dreaming.

I was just Better to ask. It's still it's still in theatres right now.

It's still in theatres. I have heard that there. Well, I don't I don't want to get anything. I'm hoping that it's streaming.

So fair ough fair ough, i'll try IT down in the theater. I love a documentation on the big screen. By the way, it's like it's sort of usual thing. IT feels like this is onna sound less like a compliment than I mean IT but IT feels like school in like the best possible way to sit in, and especially in like a little tiny, like art house thing.

I went to a jazz documentation, like, Frankly, I don't care about jazz, but like, I just set in a room with a bunch people who like I to learning about. And IT was delightful. And I like, I like, I give me more of those moments of, like sitting in electro watching something really are just me, other like economic good stuff.

Well, okay, ay, i'll say my guilty pleasure. This years I did go to a cat film festival in new york city.

a cat film festival, yeah.

which is exactly how IT sounds, is like basically your instagram or tiktok real full of cat videos for on a big screen. But you don't go for the videos, you go for the community. And all of the people love cats is what as you do and like all of them, like cute kids that are having a great time and it's just I don't know yeah exactly you you go to documentaries and um yeah those kinds of screenings .

to just be with your people fantastic CAD yeah like we're going to pretend this is a movie but it's just so much to cap people coming out each other.

It's going I think yeah I think that festival is on tour as well.

I believe at all. I have no note, right? Did you have one more pick for us? What what else is in less?

okay. Well okay. I did pick one other documentary that that I also saw in theaters, but it's also streaming on disney plasin who lew it's called sugar cane um IT premier at the twenty twenty four a dance film festival this year is a really important watches.

It's a tough fun as well. It's about an investigation into abuse at an indian residential school run by the cathode church in canada after they found unmarked graves. IT was created by an advocate who was actually a source I ve interviewed in the past. He's an environmental justice advocate but he his dad went to the school and it's a really powerful story to about healing and um his relationship with his dad and how they move forward. Um so that was another another pic for me.

That's a really good one. I feel like we're in this funny moment of like there are so many great documentary out there and my list of ones to watch now is so infuriating. The long that I just I have to lake, I need to cancel all of my streaming services except for the documentary, once for like six months, and just catch up on documentary can be great, very good, Better.

Yeah, yeah. I M right. Just thank you. Much appreciated in this.

Yeah, thanks all. sorry. The other thing for the non tech thing I forgot was our two thousand four package was incredible. Al, this year like just I just brought me back to high school and even just are talking about making that happen was just so much fun. Like all of us on the verge staff like coming through our pictures um trying to find them from two thousand and four and discovering that they're all vanished and then seeing the story that came out of that was was awesome.

The first run of people's pictures from two thousand and four was pretty spectacular. Everybody seemed to have like one photo from that year. And it's always. Incredibly embarrassing and would just terrific love you very much. Yeah, all the ninety thousand and four photos are just like me wearing two pop colors and like a puke hole neckless not like a cool time in my history.

I oh my god. yeah. I can see that so clearly.

Well, that's the mean, a thing you've ever said to me. Just.

no, no, that was. I mean, who didn't have a bookish that place, right?

I got out of IT. That's all I can say. IT is IT back yet. I'm like all .

that life is coming back, right? I'm just waiting to I see the high school rocking again.

I assume. So I have two news. Ws, in high school right now, neither of them were wearing pooka.

But like frosted tips, I think we're started in the come back. So like it's it's coming. The big is are coming. It's it's a terrifying thought.

I'm like i'm seeing my friends posts pictures on social media and I can't tell if it's them or their children because they're dss. They're dressed like how my friends dressed in like middle school in high school. So you know.

it's real, it's real. It's terrifying, but it's all alright. So thank you for the first.

Thanks so much. right? We got to take a break. And then we're going to come back with more folks from the verge sharing more of their biggest and favorite stuff of the year. 我 break back。

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Rachel cohen had decided that volunteering .

her time .

wasn't really worth her time.

Thirty two years old. And i'd say really, since I was in late high school junior senior year, I started see volunteering as kind of pointless IT wasn't gonna make a big difference on the things I Carried about IT wasn't gona move the needle so I just .

stop doing IT but then he changed her mind and then that changed her life.

Hi, it's our Rachel with we are family I have a groceries and protects and today .

explained you will need something good for twenty twenty five and .

we have an idea for you all the news, even some good news in your fees every weekday.

We're back. Let's just keep roman next up via in poverty or supervising producer on our video. They are in hello, hello.

You told us before we started recording that you didn't prepare IT at all. So this is going to go really great or really terribly. Either way, I I am very excited. It's gona go great. I I feel .

good about IT. I'm always underprepared for everything that we do.

So under promise and over deliver, it's the the different .

story IT usually is a pretty good. So you know .

is that I mean, to you, one was the story, the year, what's i'm .

immediately coming with a car ball here. I'm going to pick a video of the year. I am a supervising producer at the verge. So I feel like, I feel like I can pick a video is that OK can to break .

the rules here? Yeah, you pick everyone.

And for video of the year, I have to go with the vision pro review because there was just one of like classic verge reviews that was just like way overproduced in a short period of the time. He was a whole team just working together like late into the night. The script that nei delivered came in incredibly late.

And IT was incredibly good. IT was just like one read. And I was like, this is amazing.

The only problem is it's currently thirty five minutes long. We're gonna have to cut like a third of IT out in which we did. But he was such a strong strip, IT was really good.

And then just know I was a new, new product category for apple. Lot of eyes on IT. Yeah, I just felt like I love the hustle.

I love the time crunch, I love embargoes, I love all that stuff. IT is exhAusting. But I was very exciting time of the year.

And I was like very much at the beginning of twenty twenty four. And he feels like feels like I was either like two days ago or like seven years ago. I can decide .

yeah I hear that. I feel like if if we had been talking in february like what are going to be the you know technology stories of the year for twenty twenty four, I we all would have picked the vision pro to be one of them. And our video was very good.

The vision pro less good. Uh, and I think that what we've seen in the ten months since that thing came out at this point is that kind of feels like I just died. I don't like, does anyone you know talk about or care about the vision pro anymore?

No, there's always like a moment on threads. Maybe when somebody who has a vision pro is like, hate, this cool thing came out, you should look at and I see this screwing on. My god, that's great. Move on. But like like two weeks of the ultrawise minor support came out.

People are cited about this.

Yeah, looks pretty sick. Like pairing IT with a mac mini and having that like that work space incredibly amazing. You will still need to monitor. It's not like you can just live in vision me pro and like fulling to me yourself into IT.

Um I did use that you know doing our testing period and and everything, and that was the thing that I actually enjoy the most just external monitor using IT as just like an extra monitor, like leaning into a lighter room photo right, or like just getting closer to IT and doing some like brushes and coLoring. And everything did actually feel incredibly fun, like I thighed enjoyed that. I don't know if I can do for hours and hours and hours, but being in the vision per like virtual monitor or using IT, that was like that was for me the best use case for IT.

I do wish like apple pencil gets some kind of support there because IT IT takes you away when you have to. I go back to keyboard and mouse sort of thing you like. It's just it's like, okay, i'm still using kind of a similar input here even though the like the feature is good.

So I wish there was like more there to do, even just like summer in or like doing more stuff with IT. So that was like a good use case. So I do understand why people are very excited. But the ultra c monitor a bit, the Price is just a too extreme for anyone to like buy this and and use a but now that it's impressive and it's just too expensive.

yeah I I could not agree more and the improvement is, uh, increasingly far away. IT seems like like the solutions to this problem seem like they keep slipping out. But let's move on. Not think about you, your favorite new thing .

of the year division .

for now getting how do .

you get to yeah, by the way, ah, I struggle with this one a little bit because they are like two things. That one also came out a long time ago, or at least I was an also a long time ago. O it's to four G X one hundred six.

Yeah I figured that my bear answer.

I I I know I am so predictable. Um the thing about that is that you know i've had the x one hundred out of not a second or third generation long time ago and decided to get rid of IT and i've been missing IT ever since. So when this one came out, I was still little hesitant. My god, have really has put money on, had another camera and I did IT. Um I took eight months for you to get delivered, so I just got .

IT last month once .

a wow yeah I order, I order like the day came out yeah we talked .

about on the show how you were like in the middle of talking yourself in to buying IT oh my god.

that is very true. I forgot I look at this what a beautiful first circle so i've only been using for a little bit and i've had a couple of trips, couple word trips and is just like, oh, this is this is my favorite thing like I just love this camera so much um i've been also reviewing some bigger cameras and the like dead difference between like hey, it's time a little thirty five millimeter camera and a big fool friend camera is I still love this little tiny camera so much um so that was that's probably my .

uh pic i'm also like incredible person kino APP .

the hili video .

one right yeah okay. Like you know I did .

the iphone review uh in tender with nei this year and I was kind of the first time a little bit declared I my first my my my personal photo was like a thirteen pro IT didn't have any of the face and recording features. So IT was like, oh, now I have process. Now I have apologue.

wow. Process is like, so huge I can work with this. Cho was the option that had the, you know, H E V C files use that the elective to have belton are really good.

I would like Tyler salmons lock the most. It's just really nice. I've been using a lot more.

So finally, I have an action button. IT is programmed to open cano. Uh, I use an iphone as a camera. A lot more this year than ever before.

That's a good. I like that right last, your favorite non tech thing in the year. This can be anything you want. IT just can't be tech.

This was tough. Liam was helping me out because because I did ask about, I had a time. We just walked away from meeting and I was like, you know what actually is the kind I can be anything like maybe you're got good at making coffee in fact, yes, I didn't get a coffee mine.

yes. So that's one of the things. The other one is um yeah it's good to step away from our tech bubble. We're all in our tech bubble. And the way that I do IT recently is this magazine called mounting because if IT is absolutely massive and I do mean like physically is just like .

a big magazine.

okay sure 不是。 算了吧。 Outdoors and stuff is all about like skill in depends on the season, but sky snowboarding is being outdoors. IT is uh IT used to be a magazine long, long time ago and someone who lives up in ta hoo area, he decided to buy the brand back and now he's making this really beautiful ly crafted magazine. And I feel like, and I am a print person, so I do like print products, and this just feels nice to kick back, open IT up, look at a some a beautiful photography and read about stuff that I really like, which keeking a snowberry.

So I love, know, I thinking about the other day, I haven't bought a coffee table book in a million years because we exist anymore. A we make, but b like magazine. As coffee table is kind of an incredible idea. Just I give me a big, giant thing I can bring into my house.

I think that would be IT. I, I don't know. I don't. I, I don't know. I got into and .

what's what coffee machine did you buy? Tell me that .

is one of the brave ones that has a grinder on top and a milk thing on to decide.

oh, the hall you get the whole pipeline go now. Yes, once you once a milk froth r becomes part of your coffee experience, there's just no going back. Yeah, IT life is Better and IT will never go back. Yeah, IT is very nice.

But I did struggle first, like, like figure. I like, what you are you going to do here? I like went through many like bags, like beans and bags of coffee.

And I like, great. I spent like sixteen dollars and these beans, and I got like three cups of coffee. This is bushed.

I'm going to go back to me this Price support. Uh, no, but I finally figured that out. There's a lot of coffee shops in the neighborhood really like. And every time I like a visit new york, I go to a few of them as well, unlike any other beans. So yeah, I really became a little bit of a snob, but not not an annoying snob.

but welcome because, again, there is no going back. IT cost a fortune and IT takes forever. But IT is IT is worth IT.

I still think you cost less than buying coffee anywhere else. So .

thank you. Always appreciate.

C. M.

Next up on my list, Kelly Robinson or senior A, I reporter. Kelly, hello, hello. hey. Feeling you feel like you got A A winter cold thing on on.

I hope not. I don't shit. That's okay. You can. Yeah, I have a little bit of a cold that i'm happy to be here.

good. All right. Well, we won't keep you long. This is lush ous blast through this. So i'm just gonna preface this with someone else already picked A I as the story of the year so you can pick IT if you want to but just know that you'll be copying jake. All that said, what's your story here?

It's going to be just a common theme of billionaire ry babies. Sorry, sorry guys, but that's true. Like the common theme of the year, all i'm thinking about is a jeff base of stamp his feet, elon stamping his feet, same stamp his feet, same omen um lots of billionaire stamp their feet over uh issues and um running their way and less regulation. That's the common team of the year for sure. Whether it's A I or you know energy or know what have you hardware for .

american politics like really there are like several childish billion's who seem to just be everywhere doing everything all that they're making popular podcasts now yes, just let us have this one.

Yeah you put a way of .

a strategy under .

my pottery two one .

percent .

that but yeah, I think that's probably something we're going to continue seeing. I feel like uh, with incoming trump administration, that's something that's only gona strengthen is um billion's saying, you know it's let's be chill, be chill with my products, my company um please you like you like iphones, right? Come on. And so that is the theme of this year, and I think we're just going to continue seeing that.

Do you think it's going to be that? Or do you think the billionaire now going to be like we've won, let's go away, hide, not even hide.

but like .

at some point, it's like they did IT right. They got everything they wanted and now go enjoy all of your money and yet, or whatever.

Interesting, I think they're stolen. To have to argue with trump against terror are so weird in elan has his ear. And that something i'm thinking a lot about because I was reading the open eye elon last suit to me that reads like, you know, I have the incoming president's year and look, they're being entire competitive. And you know so I think these people, if islands on trump side, these people are still gonna to let you know kiss up islamic sense.

true. Or in on the flip side, they get to start pointing at their enemies inside actly. K, but that's not the most uplifting one i've heard. But unfortunately, I think you can describe a lot of what happening in the world to that small group of people.

Yeah, i'm sort of delicious and suit fed. And I is, of course, the first thing that came to mind it's IT.

Alright, what was your favorite new texting of the year?

IT was starting value.

okay. It's very like whenever .

I say that they are like people like, oh, I played that in copy. Where are you playing IT? Now the new update just came out for the switch which means I get different coloured cats and all sorts of new ways to explore um the town but yeah that cozy comfort games um I have a very cozy comfort house. I just love starting value.

It's can you just explain starting value to me? I've never played IT course, and I feel like everyone describes IT in a way that almost never makes any sense. Wow, everybody is very nice things like you just said.

But you just feel like now I have different colored cats. And that's like the explanation for why this game is Better. Explain this to me. Teach me about, started that.

Do you know animal crossing? Is I do animal crossing with combat.

Oh, that is very compelling. Yeah, it's very fun. A good case.

Yeah, you get to like, beat up monsters and caves and you know, like you have to grant really hard for resources, almost like a minecraft situation, you to grant for these resources and then you get to make like you're cool little farm. You got to marry someone in the game. I trusted an interview with somebody for the verge that is yet to come out, but they said that they are really to start you in the first thing, we asked each other, who did you marry minus harvey? He's the doctor.

the town's doctor.

yeah. That actually we asked me .

that when I first arted at the age, okay interesting .

but yeah there is a new update. Um you can sink on godless amount of hours into IT because IT is so fun and chill and yeah .

cose comfort games I really have developed undefined for games that are like pointless in the best way uh like for for forever. All the games I liked were like games where you work up to the big boss on and you beat the big boss on and the game is over here. That was what I always played.

And I would encounter games like starting or even like animal crossing or minecraft in these games. And I would just be like, what's the point of this game? And IT took me so long to wrap my head around the idea that the point of the game is just to play the game. And it's like, it's fun to play the game and that's actually enough. And there's a real like it's the friends we made along the way kind of vive to these games that I have like really come to appreciate in the last couple of years totally.

And crossing was a bit too pointless for me like I was going to vegetable with that one. But starting has like you know stuff worked towards like goals and quest, which I really appreciate. I restarted sky room this year too, which is like another pointless time thing from two thousand and eleven.

But got to love IT. I yeah agree. I've also recently gone back all in on the switch.

Nice and it's can be start time. Good choice. I have this old yellow original switch battery is trash, but the games are awesome to care. It's amazing.

I hear you might be getting another switch next year, but they've said that every year for many years.

honestly, it's getting to the point now where like every one of these in intend to header x is A A little funny than the last because it's a very, very funny thing that nintendo is doing where everybody wants to switch. And they are like, just kidding. We did a museum and an alarm clock in a music APP like, very funny, but also just released the damp switch.

please. I do. I would like to have IT in my house. I give me one and .

then keep doing .

this funny jokes. And just the two of us. perfect. Not Andrew webster r because he he doesn't want one at all and doesn't spend all his time. They came about this perfect. Are, at last thing, your favorite non texting of the year.

My favorite non tex thing has been good sound's so lame because I wrote down and now that sounds more lame on a podcast created players in fresh flowers that's all you need in life is a nice little playlist. I made one for november because i've been traveling so much. I was in new york scene, you guys um I went on another reporting trip out of the state um and i'm going to texas for thanksgiving break.

And you need a playlist for that. And then to share that with everyone you like is a good time. So a little playlist to get you through and validation from your .

friends about IT. What's your play listing process? Do you like spend hours?

Oh no OK no no. Purely vives based the one that I have right now called non stop november. And um it's mostly like indeed you know whose suki waterhouse ses yeah lots of suki waterhouse um you know sad find autumn vibes uh yeah non stop november.

Just what i'm looping basically like I am addicted to these songs and I need them in a play list and here is of you know one hundred songs that are just like that one um is sort of my players five, uh, and fresh flowers. They're cheap. They make you happy.

H, I have a vase next to my front door and then one on my desk. So I get to flex IT in my what's on your desk series. But yeah, they're simple.

They make you happy. Um that's all you need. Is music and fresh flowers.

Do you have a favorite of flower? Or is this just whatever whatever they're selling of the boa?

Wow, the bodega, the bodega. Okay.

you're going to in new york you to learn the word boga. K, that's we're just starting .

this now verge casters, if you have a sublet with fresh tool PS. Yeah, it's it's tulips. I think that they're really pretty and then they opened slowly.

And yeah, I love this. really. Thank you. It's just a cozy fall full of fresh flowers. The something nice .

I know IT is it's pouring rain here and I have a slide code and that's okay and i'll play my cozy games or write my you know weird A I stories about billion aire.

It's a good time. You're like one oversized to think of sup away from being like a long com character right now, right? And that's that's what we should all aspire to. I think you're like you're the beginning of a Christmas vie was happening right now. It's going to be important.

I would hope that you know in the Christmas movies, you don't have the winter cold. They leave that out for some reason.

This is true once you come out of that. And then then everything is Better.

Obviously.

kindly feel Better. Thank you. Thank you. All right, moving on.

Barber crash ff reviews editor, here we go. Barbera, hello, hey there, OK, we gave you some homework. Let's do your story the year first. Let's start there. What was your story the year?

Well, actually it's two or more stories of the year. It's the election coverage that we had. Um I was especially impressed by adding the primates guy to the twenty twenty four presidental election I mean, I read that about five times IT gave more information about um what the candidates had done in the past and what they were saying now about various support issues.

I just wanted to sort of printed out and mail IT to every body I knew um and that, of course, uh, new is S A vote for Donald d trump is to vote for school shootings of measles. I mean, you you got to mention that I mean that that was just amazing. Probably the best headline .

we are written this year. I don't know how you talk.

That is a headline. I honestly don't. I certainly, and I won, I won, had the good put IT up either. So be very gay that already achieved IT. So those were my favorites for the year.

Those are good ones. I agree with all this. Uh, what was your texting of the year?

I found this of all three pieces of homer quel had to do. I found this to be, by far the harness. What was? What was yours?

Well, I bought myself a little steam deck. It's it's not brand new here. I'll showed you I forgot IT unpack right now because I was playing with some stuff but you know um there IT is I love IT the stream decades.

I think everyone at the verge, I think has had a stream decet one point or another. Uh, I I think it's very good.

Yeah and I I love playing with IT.

What are you doing with IT? What's what's on the what's .

on the board, right? Well, nothing because.

Not a great sign for the stream deck. I had to tell you like that it's a blood.

not a great sign. Well, that course I was moving IT from computer to computer but um I basically use IT for very quick answers to things. So that school and just to get places from one to the other, my problem is I do not have a smart home so I can't use IT for the really sexy things that gene uses IT for, for example. Yeah um but also I just like playing with IT. I I like playing with different things that i'm gna play with IT some more .

what what fun stuff of you discovered, things that haven't stuck. I feel like i'm with you is just in the sense that having a bunch of buttons in front of me is just endless sleep fun and I will find a bunch of wildly unproductive things to do with them just because it's fun.

Depressed button. Well, I would try to attached to my grown cast.

Oh, that's good.

I haven't done in yet, but that's my next project because at home, well, we have just the one T. V. And what we tend to do is we run.

These are constantly backgrounds of on birds in various interesting places, or two kittens, because IT gets to the blood pressure down. And what I wanted do is to be able to just press a button and have the cute gets pop up on the T. V. So that's that's my next project.

That is an extremely good idea. I have been spending all year trying to figure out how to more quickly play a specific set of youtube videos. My problem is I have a tod ler who, between three and twelve thousand times a day, just stares at me and demands moana.

And i've like that to the shortcut button on the road, to remote, to get there. I've done a bunch of stuff i've tried to figure out, like, you know, all these micros that will do IT. I love the idea of just having a button that is just like play the happy video and I then he can do himself just play the city.

And also because we are we are unfortunately a uh google voice household and sometimes that just does not work. And much rather just press the button and have dead flix or whatever come up, then have to try to say IT or have to do IT the really old fashion way and do IT on the remote. So that's where I am.

right? I like that a lot. Can I give you one other tip? As as a person I know who has also like, uh, using the stream deck to change my slack status has been wonderful and also has made me a Better coworker because I now reliably change my slack staus. So just to have a thing that's like, I have one that like A B R B with a little hanging B R B sign yeah and I just have a button on IT that I can press on the stream back and that puts me up at B R B for sixty minutes. Perfect game of .

that is perfect. Thank you. I definitely take that into consideration.

All right. What's the other thing? Non texting.

totally not texting, is googly eyes.

See this so good.

And the reason is basically when we had our meeting um I had been to the office for like a year and so we had our meeting I was looking around at one of the stations and one of our um colleagues basically said, I have this big for google eyes. Does anyone want any and I said, roll, take a couple and I stuck IT to the back of my phone.

And it's the most relaxing thing that I anytime I get like tense or upset or whatever, I just look at these, these really wide, sympathetic tic google eyes. And I go, oh, things aren't too bad. So that's my totally favorite non tech thing for right now.

IT does make your phone feel much nicer like I feel like I like your phone more than I like most phones.

Well, yeah, look, I look at this poor cute thing. Basic for those who are looking, i've got a dark blue um backing um on my a pixel six had the too little lies against the dark blue backing and just just looking at your White almost like kid you know and saying, hi, I love you. You're nice, it's adorable and they're .

like almost perfectly aligned but just say they are it's great. They said there is a real google ze thing happening in our newsroom now that, uh, I love very much A V song on our team. I know instead of getting the new mac mini, just put google eyes on her old mac mini e to make yourself feel Better about IT. And that seems to worked very well for her.

This is what who gave me this?

So SHE starting a trend here. Google eyes. All the things do, you know, look under housing. Like, what else can I google eyes? I feel like a .

bag of google eyes makes someone very dangerous. Well, absolutely, looking on amazon or something, i'm gonna a big of those. So so that I can not only use them on things here, but so I can Carry them with me. So I meet somebody who's like, not in a good way. I'll just hand them a couple of google eyes.

just just hand the two google ice and walk away with the no explanation and people intently understand.

I think so that's really kid.

are right. Barber, thank you very much.

Are very good.

All right. We got to see one more break, and then we have a couple more people to talk to you about all the favorite and biggest stuff from the back. Support for the show comes from service. Now the A I platform for business transformation. You've heard the big hype around A I, but the truth is A I is only as powerful as the platform is built into service.

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Alex heath, deputy atter, the verge and the author of the very good command line newley alif, hello, hi. You have an A I background and you just alert IT us to the riverside mac APP, and this is the greatest day of my life. So I just all of my answers before have changed my think of the years that riverside would use record this pot gas now has a best top APP and everything .

will be wonderful.

happy. thanks. Seriously, what me too here, right? So we gave you some homework. Uh, what was your story, dear.

is the theme and i'm calling at the A I rat race, which is just this idea that all of the big tech companies and OpenAI anthropic have just been trying to one up each other. All you're long with all of these announcements to a kind of petty, hilarious degree, and I expect that to only continue next year. But this year really felt like a rejected up quite a bit. And apologies if others have said something along these lines, but that I don't think you can like seriously say there was a bigger story in tech this year.

The matter, I agree, and I actually think I like that way of thinking about IT to what we've had is this like incredibly high six expensive game of like tiny, tiny one upsmanship all year, like everybody is just doing five percent Better than everybody else every three weeks all year and spending on godless months of money.

yeah. And and and all works together and you reflect back on the year. And it's like, I guess ChatGPT is a little Better to use. Cloud is Better like all of these things feel Better but I haven't felt the kind of aha early eyes on moment this year is just felt very kind of constantly IT of yeah we we like skip .

straight to the iphone fourteen era of yeah so you said you think it's going to continue next year. Yeah, do you think so? Like there's another case to be made that like we're hitting sort of a slow down with these models.

Maybe there's like a bubble that's gonna burst. Maybe everybody is going to finally like take a deep breath and start to ask real questions. But I you don't think that's coming.

Oh, David, it's like you are reading my newsletter before comes out there will have come out by this time again. Uh, no, that is actually an interesting point. There is this concept in A I called the scaling wall that seems to be sitting everyone in the face, which is just this idea that everyone thought that new models would get dramatically smarter.

The more compute and money user into training them. And that's turning out now to not be the case. So I and others have reported that google and others are seeing diminishing returns from training their next of tier models. And the consensus seems to be that, that's okay because there's a lot of work that needs to be done with just building good experiences around the models that exists today. yes.

And agents are a saying, I think we're going to be hearing a lot more about next year, which are basically l lumps that do things under behalf that can change together multiple actions, take over a desktop interface or a phone or something like that. And you can achieve agents with the models exist today. It's all the magic is done in post training. And what happens after you've trained one of these large models and the scaling wall seems to be applying to to training, uh, new models but not necessarily improving the ones that exists today.

That's fair. Do you think the leader board has changed this year? Like as we look at who is winning this race, it's been a wild game of kind of leap frog. But looking back, you feel like we're in a different spot than we were twelve months ago.

I think it's hard to say with a straight face that anyone other than open a eye is the winner right now. I would say open my eyes, especially with its own one reasoning model. Release is still kind of ahead of where the puck is going.

Um everyone is going to be doing, I say, reasoning with air quotes, reasoning models next year. I will say IT does feel like meta has significantly moved up the litter board this year with lama and the excitement around in an adoption of IT german. I seems to be doing okay.

Um I think google is happy with that but wishes that more businesses we're using at anthropic is killing IT on the business side on you're just being accessible through every cloud provider. I OpenAI is the big consumer about you know that the ChatGPT is gonna the next gool or the next facebook IT kind of has to be to justify open a eyes insane valuation. Um so it's a lot of the same players.

They all kind of constantly move up and down. That's why I call a right race. But going into the new year, going to december um and I covered all this was saying a year ago my thanksgiving was ruined because sam altman got suddenly fired from OpenAIr.

I guess that sense an awful lot has changed into a months .

and and me I was that I think disney land and we were just constantly calling each other while he was in between rise, trying to confirm uh reporting that we had always long and very um so you know who knows what could happen? The air industry is very fast, but as of right now feels like open ice still has a little bit of an edge. But that edge is rapidly during this is interesting.

Yeah yeah. I ur right. Next thing in the list, your favorite texting .

in the year. This is not it's not river side for mac, though I am also very happy about this. It's another APP that, you know, I just think a lot of a eye apps on't very good.

But there's this one i've found that I used on my mac all day long called corona. And it's a meeting note taking up. IT gets around wiretapping laws by not actually recording your calls.

But what IT does that runs a hyper mineralized L M. Alive while you're on a google meet, assume whatever face time call and transcribes IT in real time. So IT doesn't save the audio file or let you listen to IT after, but IT gives you a transcript.

And then IT has been kind of post trained to really focus on summarizing a summarizing an an actionable way, how you would want to see notes from a meeting almost like you've got a personal assistance that's like in the meeting with you. Um i've been using IT for like our editor calls for interviews um and it's got you know a pretty nice interface and it's fairly well integrated into into macos. Uh so that's my pickets like a simple, actually useful application of A I in a work kind of setting.

Does the action items thing actually work? I feel like we've got with the transcription stuff on a lot of these services that is very fast and very good. But I M so skeptical of the thing that I we're going to tell you, the three most important things that happen in this mean.

just good, pretty, yes, very good. And IT recognizes voices and IT knows how to make distinctions. And you know IT gives me like next steps after a meeting based on how we talked about IT.

You know like for example, like really long ones where a lot is said, it's actually pretty helpful breaking all of that down. You stop. Perfect, but it's definitely the best I ve used um in this context. And that's got a bunch of like integrations with other apps like you can drop a summary straight and to slack or your email lap or something like that. So they are continuing to build on IT, and i'm pretty bullish on IT as a product on a sley just because it's it's a very good mesh application of a AI.

Yeah that's that's that's prety cool actually. Ah what about non take things?

I went to japan um this summer so far and i'm just going to pick alcohol. You know that kind of sums up my year.

Anyway, I thought you were going to just pick japan, but I like just picking alcohol just as much pretty .

yeah yeah I mean, japan is awesome but I I fell in love with shows you in japan, which is like, um it's not socket. It's not so due it's like a higher A B V almost like whisky, clear, very easy to drink, earthy smoke, japanese spirit um and I want to find more of IT in the states but yeah any time I see show you now I I ordered immediately how .

easy easy to find in the .

states you know I thought would be easier. I'm in a lay um and it's so it's a little bit easier here. We just we have a lot of japan SE people and really good restaurants. Um there are japanese in L A, but um it's harder to find when I travel. Um but yeah show you it's it's good.

And to try this I very briefly a couple of years ago during the PH endemic was like i'm going to get into japanese whisky and IT is so good but IT was it's such a different world of booze that I I eventually was like i'm going go back to learning about like kentuchy burbo because that .

as much as conquer, I I love to .

do that sometime. I like IT, right? Alex, thank you. Always appreciate.

IT are, at last, but certainly not least, ash parishes, virtuous video games. Reporter, here we go. Ash, hello.

hi. It's been a minute, even, even on this a while. You need to come on the show more often.

I think I was talking about tears of the kingdom.

and that's right. We also talked about G, T. A. Six like a hundred years ago. I like very much because there was like that weird league that happened forever ago. Okay, I do remember that.

but I don't remember being on the verge cast about IT.

You were IT was great with the truth time I enjoyed every second of IT, but so we gave you some homework. What was the story the year for you?

So the story there are for me um i'm going to do something a little bit different and i'm onna choose the story from my b which is video games which issa necessarily like the biggest story for the verge of all because I ve it's like a tech website in there. A lot more important things happening in the tech world then what's going on in the world of video games. But I have like two buckets for the biggest story of the year.

On my beat i've got like the actual factual. This is objectively the biggest story. And then the biggest story like to me personally.

So big story objective. Al, actual factual is the switch to N G T S S. They are these like almost oppressive figures looming in the distance that is like slowly coming towards the video game industry.

And when IT hits, it's gonna be this like massive event. And both of those things are supposed to happen next year, like nintendo is not. You they're being coy about exactly when, but they're saying we are definitely, definitely going to announce the switch successor at some time before the end of q one twenty twenty five.

And that and this just been like a constant like not deluge, but like nintendo feels like with everything they're doing now, it's like we're clearing the books. We are getting everything off of our plate, just clearing the runway for when this massive story hits. And so that's on the hardware side.

And on the software side, you have G T, A six, which is probably going to be the biggest video game released in our lifetimes. I don't know how else to explain IT um is just this gentis s is just this massive, crazy, insanely popular thing that has been hyped up um possibly too much. Um hopefully rockstar k can deliver on um not their promises, but at least the idea or that people have in their head for what this video game is supposed to be.

So let me IT let me actually caught on that because this is A A thing that I have been wondering about a lot recently, which is a it's sort of wild that the two biggest things in video games right now are things that don't exist yet. And I think you're absolutely right that they have like been the stories of the year all here despite not existing. And there's like a lot of existence, al, questions you could ask about games as a result. But I do wonder, after all of this, is that even possible for these two things to live up to the type? Like, yes.

you think I do OK nintendo, nintendo, yes, we've had some stinkers like with the with you and and things like that in the past. But I think no matter what IT is, no matter what IT does, IT will be big because it's an intent. Do like nintendo had that alarm o thing out like IT, which was this is like little you alarm clock that was just like nothing and is sold out within seconds.

okay? IT is just an alarm clock that plays like nintendo, beeb's and boobs. People want IT because of who makes IT and that's exactly the case for both of those things.

It's a rockstar game. It's an intendo system. No matter what the kind of quality IT is, is still gna. Satellite ganging busters may not perform the way that the bookeen pers want them to perform if they are a lower quality. But it's still gonna be like the massive, massive million dollar, million copy .

thing selling things OK. I just like either know I feel like we've been burned, especially on the on the game side, by these huge things that just turned out to be even slightly worse than we expected. And if IT IT becomes this whole giant catastrophe and it's like if if G C S.

Six does what, like cya twenty seventy seven did, the world will collapse in on itself. I think that maybe i'm just hardening myself against that possibility. As somebody who is very excited about this game.

I understand that I you know, we haven't seen very much of G T, A six outside of a trailer and leaked materials. Rockstar hasn't really told us all that much about what the game is. We haven't really seen official game play yet.

So we we actually have no idea what to expect from them. And I think that's probably smart on there. The kind of like manage expectations, like you can't get matter us for something about this because we never actually told you what this thing is.

We just said I was G. T. A. We gave you the trailer.

We put put IT out there. We didn't tell you to expect this this this this or this. We just you know did our thing and put IT out there. But you know I don't know if you're right in that there have been these big huge releases that have been kind of underwhelming um but I don't know, like I said, doesn't matter what kind of quality IT is because it's rock to start because IT says GTA sex on the box it's gonna a sell ten million cops yeah .

for enough air I I believe you okay so those are the big stories. What's the what's the one nearest areas to your heart?

So the thing that is important to me that I think is like my personal big story for the year is the story of the video game industry layoffs, the rise of game gate two point to as IT were. Um we are in the second year of this like trend of studios being shut down of massive, massive, massive amounts of people being laid off. We're really gone to start feeling that I believe in twenty twenty five there was embracing group put out um with there with their earning statement uh maybe a couple weeks ago saying that we've got this dried up released pipeline without really qualifying that with the fact that we close like six different studios and let off over thousand of our employees and like you don't have people working for you anymore because you close everything down, inspire everybody. Of course, your production pipeline is gone to suffer and you're not going to have games out that are going to make the money that you need to appease your shareholder is like we're starting to see the the the knock on effects of this, like this layoff last two years, like really starting to hurt and pinch these big CoOperations because now they have nothing to show for IT. They laid off everybody, they close these studios and now they have no product more because there's nobody around to make IT on the other end of that, you've got this rising culture war thing within video games where people are trying to attribute the problems of the video game industry with the layoff s and the closures and all and like you know, games fAiling with the idea that it's minorities and people of colors, which is absolutely patently absurd.

You because, you know, doing this again somehow yeah.

pretty much we're doing this again. And these people, you know, they have nothing interesting to say. They're not really paying attention to facts. They're just upset that the cultural storytelling in video games, both like on the screen and in the development room, shifting away from trying to appeal to i'm going to use extremely heavy quotes because it's not true.

Traditional gamers, which have always been straight, this hitherto sexual White men and into this more diverse tapestry where we're making stories that appeal to people of color, uh L G B T Q people um disabled folks. And we're starting to see development rooms also reflect that diversity as well. And you know people can handle change like that and they get really bad and they start getting bad of people for the wrong reasons.

And it's important to me that these stories get covered so we can understand why they're happening and why IT is not true. Well, we can counteract their narratives that, like o this game failed because he was woke. You can know how, which is ridiculous. And then this woke game that was really, really good, succeeded because actually IT wasn't work. That which, like the other side of that argument, right?

The democrats, secretly republican, exactly. yeah. Somehow it's just like, do you ever look at this industrial?

Like, oh, IT just is all the site like how many times in history like Green of TOTO nintendo a is doing a thing and everybody is losing their minds and mad. And we're kind of doing gamer gate lake IT, just this is just the cycle. We're just doing IT .

all over again. I think the the problem that is specialized, the video game industry is that we do not have the kind of um like institutional memory that um other industries have because of the way that the industry is currently working in terms of journalism and in terms of like you know having a dedicated group of people that are covering these kinds of issues, but we fire them all the next day, like it's really, really hard to keep a job in video games journalism right now. And that and because of that, because IT is so hard to you maintain a steady job and because the these kinds of reporting doesn't necessary move the needle like top ten ways you can get the most out of your switch or you know that kind hit. We don't have the institutional memory to say the way I don't know the movies do or any other kind of like cultural thing because everybodys gone, they have to move on and go somewhere else so they can make money and pay their bills and not, you know, be destitute.

Totally a all right. Well, these are good things. And again, we you need to come on the show more often. This is.

you know, where I metaphorically live.

I do know, talking about this before I. Now, this is great news. Uh, right.

Let's let's keep going to this. So the next thing was, uh, your favorite new thing in the year. And for most people, even making them say tech. But if you want to do like, you know, games are tech enough. So if you want to do games, we can do games tech what you want.

The tech thing is not necessarily this year, but IT came out late enough last year where I think IT counts kind of like that window where this movie came out twenty and twenty four but is not eligible for the Oscars until the next year. It's that it's the playstation portal.

Oh my god, you're the playstation portal an the one .

that out there I am the one playstation portal fan now because of the recent news that playstation portal now let you stream games from the cloud. Before that, like, I already appreciated the device because IT allowed me to play my play station games on the couch and still be in the same room with my husband. We can like, watch T, V, or do whatever.

And I appreciate that. Like, I like, I don't like being sequestered or taking away, like the living room television from him. So because I have to do this thing because I am literally working, you know, he can't watch, you know, whatever silly think that he wants to watch. And so that kind of that makes IT easier for me.

But the big thing is that that kind of like breaks open this device and now makes IT kind of like a must own for, like anybody who has a placation five is the idea that now you can stream games without the need of being tether to a place station five because it's going to let you stream cloud games if you've got a play station premium plus membership. I don't remember exactly how that works, but yeah that that makes IT like, okay. Now this is on the level of the steam deck. Maybe no of the same technical heavy lifting spects as a steam deck may have, but definitely the utility that I think is onna make IT like, okay, this is this is something that I need to, that I need own.

Now that's really good. That's fair. And I I have to say, I also personally very excited about this because the portal is such a lake. Lovely little thing like they made in nice object and they have just ham strong are a stupid way. It's nice to see IT actually start to do the thing I should have .

been doing all along. correct? correct. Now, if we can make IT such that, you know, IT doesn't drop the connection because I can't wire my playstation where IT is like, where I have IT like, so we can make up the way that, you know, dreams from the playstation. And so I don't have to, like, reconnect every couple minutes, then will be like cooking with the expert until then. You know what?

I can live with this. I ve IT right and lasting your your non texting clear.

I think you might already know what the answer to that question is. Um it's my new cognitive py. bo. Um his real name is bucephalus because I named him after my favorite historical horse, uh, Alexander the great horse by fullest. But we call him bo for short.

Do you can boost settles when you matter him like is that when you're like, you know sternly talking to him?

You know I haven't yet, but I think that might be a thing.

But because I feel like that's IT if I heard someone elling that at the dog park who is serious stuff.

you know, when you hear someone yelling at the dog park like that is the .

biggest nerd that I also but yeah.

he a three month old corgi who a love chewing on feet and he's trying to do on mine now because he's teaming and he is absolutely shit monster. But I love death. So that is my favorite non texting of year.

I love. So three months he's just a terror. He's he just a destroyer .

that for sure but then he like sleep .

on top of your head and you're like.

fine pretty much yeah yeah then he makes his little noise when he's like yarning or something like that. And it's so so anuti.

He is very cute. There are a bunch of dog dedicated slack channels at the verge uh and vox media general and like it's not so much that you've like won those channels with poor, but like you you you did IT, it's like pretty hard to compete with with blue situation right now.

Yeah, you know that's the goal. He still .

could work. Uh, right. Ash, thank you. Always is great to have you come back soon. I I think a of stuff to do to talk .

about IT into five for sure we will see you then.

thanks. All right.

that is IT for .

the verge cast today. Thank you to all of the verge staff came on the show for coming on the show, for doing your homework, for talking to fairy stuff. There is lots more on all this stuff, all the stories of the year, all of our favorite things, like to, at the verse 点 com， I put as much as I can in the show nuts.

But I trust that you will tell me all of the things that I forgot to put in the show nuts. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, and again, particularly if you have questions that you want us to talk about on the verge cast, about the verge cast and about the verge and about the future of media, you can always email us at verge, cast at the verge shot com, call the hotline, eight, six, six, verge, one, one. I want to hear all your thoughts, all your questions, all your ideas, everything, lots of fun stuff to come in next couple of weeks, including big thoughts without the future of media can be great.

This shows produced by liam James Wilson or and argo as the verge caste is a verge production in part of oxford. A pig caps network will be back on tuesday to talk about some fun than life, three things and some microphones then will be back on friday to talk about the news IT. All just keeps happening, friends, we are winding towards the holidays, so we're going to get into some year and stuff here pretty soon.

But lord knows the AI news isn't gona stop just because it's thanksgiving. If you're in the U. S, I hope you have a onder ful thanksgiving. I hope you have an awesome weekend. We will see you on tuesday rocking all.

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