The company at the heart of the AI bubble

Rabbit’s adorable R1 gadget launched with a lot of hype, but early reviews of the device were universally bad. Now, a core feature, its long-promised LAM Playground has arrived. I had a lot of big questions for CEO Jesse Lyu about how it all works — not just technologically, but if his plans are sustainable from a business and legal perspective.  Links:  Rabbit R1 review: an unfinished, unhelpful AI gadget | The Verge Loopholes aren’t a technology | Buzzfeed News (2012) I tested Rabbit R1's next generation LAM — and it tried to gaslight me | Tom’s Hardware I tried Rabbit's LAM Playground, and I'm still disappointed | Android Authority Rabbit's AI bot will try to help you do anything (keyword is 'try') | Fast Company Rabbit’s web-based ‘large action model’ agent arrives on R1 October 1 | TechCrunch Rabbit R1 founder defends “unfinished” AI gadget | City AM AI hardware is in its flip-phone phase | Fast Company The iPhone 16 will ship as a work in progress | The Verge Humane AI Pin review: Not even close | The Verge Marques Brownlee says ‘I hear you’ after fans criticize his new wallpaper app | The Verge Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/24024222 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

7 Loka 20241h 18min

Today, I’m talking to Jason Schreier, a Bloomberg journalist and author of the new book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment. If you don’t know Blizzard, you do know its games — the studio behind Warcraft, Diablo, and Overwatch has achieved legendary status over three decades. At the same time, the company has become emblematic of many of gaming’s biggest failings. Jason’s book is out on October 8th, and it’s an incredible, detailed accounting of how Blizzard started, grew into a hitmaker and, eventually, became a victim of its own mismanagement. Oh, and there are a series of chaotic acquisitions along the way, culminating in Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard last year. In this episode, Jason and I get into all of this and more.  Links:  Play Nice: The Rise, Fall and Future of Blizzard Entertainment | Hachette  How Blizzard’s canceled MMO Titan fell apart | Polygon Blizzard was built on crunch, co-founder says, but it’s ‘not sustainable’ | Polygon Inside Activision and Blizzard’s corporate warcraft | Bloomberg Blizzard cofounder’s new company Dreamhaven aims to recreate old magic | Bloomberg Activision Blizzard’s rot goes all the way to the CEO, alleges report | The Verge Activision Blizzard’s workplace problems spurred $75 billion microsoft Deal | WSJ California settles Activision Blizzard gender discrimination lawsuit | The Verge Microsoft completes Activision Blizzard acquisition | The Verge Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees | The Verge Credits:  Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

3 Loka 202449min

Matt Strauss is the Chairman of Direct-to-Consumer at NBC Universal. That’s a big fancy title that means he’s not only in charge of Peacock but also every other streaming video offering the company has worldwide. So you can bet Matt and I got into what that structure even looks like, and how it all operates under the overall ownership of Comcast, which is in the middle of its own massive transition as its traditional cable TV business continues to fade. There’s a lot in this one – tech, media, sports, and culture, all at once. It’s quite a ride. Links:  Comcast's new DVR ditches the hard drive, stores your recordings in the cloud (The Verge, 2013) Comcast and Charter Lost Another 269,000 Broadband Customers Last Quarter (The Motley Fool) It's official, people aren't watching TV as much as they used to (The Verge) The future of TV is up in the air (The Verge) Peacock Quarterly Loss Narrows to $348M as Subscribers Drop to 33M (THR) OTA and free online video drives higher US TV-video viewing hours (S&P Global) Streaming was part of the future — now it’s the only future (The Verge) US pay-TV losses reach a nadir (Light Reading) The 2024 Olympics were a big win for TV of all kinds (The Verge) Court blocks Disney-Fox-WBD sports streaming bundle (The Verge) An AI version of Al Michaels will deliver Olympic recaps on Peacock  (The Verge) Transcript:  Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

30 Syys 20241h 11min

We have a very special episode of Decoder today. It’s become a tradition every fall to have Verge deputy editor Alex Heath interview Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the show at Meta Connect. This year, before his interview with Mark, Alex got to try a new pair of experimental AR glasses the company is calling Orion.  Alex talked to Mark about a whole lot more, including why the company is investing so heavily in AR, why he's shifted away from politics, Mark's thoughts on the link between teen mental health and social media, and why the Meta chief executive is done apologizing for corporate scandals like Cambridge Analytica that he feels were overblown and misrepresented.   Links: Hands-on with Orion, Meta’s first pair of AR glasses | The Verge The biggest news from Meta Connect 2024 | The Verge Mark Zuckerberg: publishers ‘overestimate the value’ of their work for training AI | The Verge Meta extends its Ray-Ban smart glasses deal beyond 2030 | The Verge The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses actually make the future look cool | The Verge Meta has a major opportunity to win the AI hardware race | The Verge Instagram is putting every teen into more private and restrictive new account | The Verge Threads isn’t for news and politics, says Instagram’s boss | The Verge Facebook puts news on the back burner | The Verge Meta is losing a billion dollars on VR and AR every single month | The Verge Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/24017522 Credits:  Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt; our editor is Callie Wright. This episode was additionally produced by Brett Putman and Vjeran Pavic. Our supervising producer is Liam James.  The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

25 Syys 20241h 6min

Today, I’m talking with Josh Miller, co-founder and CEO of The Browser Company, a relatively new software maker that develops the Arc browser. The company also has a mobile app called Arc Search that does AI summaries of webpages, which puts it right in the middle of a contentious debate in the tech industry around paying web creators for their work.  We’ve been talking about these topics pretty much nonstop for last year here on Decoder. So I was really excited to have Josh on the show to explore why he built Arc, what he hopes it will accomplish, and what might happen to browsers, search engines, and the web itself as these trends evolve.  Links:  Researcher reveals ‘catastrophic’ security flaw in the Arc browser | The Verge The Arc browser is the Chrome replacement I’ve been waiting for | The Verge Arc’s mobile browser is here — and it’s not really a web browser at all | The Verge Arc is getting better bookmarks and search results, all thanks to AI | The Verge Arc Search combines browser, search engine, and AI into something new | The Verge Judge rules that Google ‘is a monopolist’ in US antitrust case | The Verge Google paid Apple $20 billion in 2022 to be Safari’s default search engine | The Verge One startup's quest to take on Chrome and reinvent the web browser | Protocol Scenes from a dying web | Platformer Perplexity’s grand theft AI | The Verge Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/24011410 Credits:  Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

23 Syys 20241h 8min

Google’s in the middle of its antitrust case in just as many months, after it lost a landmark trial in August over anticompetitive search practices. This time around, the DOJ is claiming Google has another illegal monopoly in the online advertising market.  Verge senior policy reporter Lauren Feiner has been on the ground at the courthouse to hear testimony from news publishers, advertising experts, and Google executives to make sense of it — and, ultimately, to see whether a federal judge hands the company another antitrust defeat.  Links:  Google and DOJ return for round two of their antitrust fight | The Verge Judge rules that Google ‘is a monopolist’ in US antitrust case | The Verge In US v. Google, YouTube’s CEO defends the Google way The Verge Google and the DOJ’s ad tech fight is all about control | The Verge How Google altered a deal with publishers who couldn’t say no | The Verge Google dominates online ads, says antitrust trial witness, but publishers are feeling ‘stuck’ | The Verge US considers a rare antitrust move: breaking up Google | Bloomberg This deal helped turn Google into an ad powerhouse. Is that a problem? | NYT Credits:  Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

19 Syys 202431min

Today, I’m talking with Roy Jakobs. He’s the CEO of Royal Philips, which makes medical devices ranging from MRI machines to ventilators. Philips has a long history —- the company began in the late 19th century as a lightbulb manufacturer, and over the past century it’s grown and shrunk in various ways. Basically, while every other company has been trying to get bigger, Philips has been paring itself down to a tight focus on healthcare, and Roy and I talked about why that market is worth the focus.  Roy and I also talked about an ongoing controversy at Philips that he had a part in: In 2021, after years of consumer complaints, Philips was made to recall millions of its breathing machines. Those devices were eventually tied to more than 500 deaths. That’s a pretty big decision, with massive life-or-death consequences, and you’ll hear us talk about it in detail. Links:  Problems reported with recalled Philips ventilators, BiPAP & CPAP machines | FDA FDA says 561 deaths tied to recalled Philips sleep apnea machines | CBS News Philips kept complaints about dangerous breathing machines secret | ProPublica Top Philips executive approved sale of defective breathing machines | ProPublica Philips reaches final pact with DOJ, FDA on ventilator recall | WSJ Philips suspends U.S. sales of breathing machines after recall | NYT CPAP maker reaches $479 million settlement on breathing device defects | NYT Philips exits shrinking home entertainment business | Reuters Original TSMC investor Philips sells off final shares | PC World Philips unveils new AI-powered cardiovascular ultrasound | Mass Device Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/24006874 Credits:  Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

16 Syys 20241h 7min

We’ve been covering the rise of AI image editing very closely here on Decoder and at The Verge for several years now — the ability to create photorealistic images with nothing more than a chatbot prompt could completely reset our cultural relationship to photography. But one argument keeps cropping up in response. You’ve heard it a million times, and it’s when people say “it’s just like Photoshop,” with “Photoshop” standing in for the concept of image editing generally.  So today, we’re trying to understand exactly what it means, and why our new world of AI image tools is different — and yes, in some cases the same. Verge reporter Jess Weatherbed recently dove into this for us, and I asked her to join me in going through the debate and the arguments one by one to help figure it out. Links:  You’re here because you said AI image editing was just like Photoshop | The Verge No one’s ready for this | The Verge The AI photo editing era is here, and it’s every person for themselves | The Verge Google’s AI ‘Reimagine’ tool helped us add disasters and corpses to photos | The Verge X’s new AI image generator will make Taylor Swift in lingerie and Kamala Harris with a gun | The Verge Grok will make gory images — just tell it you're a cop. | The Verge Leica launches first camera with Content Credentials | Content Authenticity Initiative You can use AI to get rid of Samsung’s AI watermark | The Verge Spurred by teen girls, states move to nan deepfake nudes | NYT Florida teens arrested for creating ‘deepfake’ AI nude images of classmates | The Verge Credits:  Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

12 Syys 202441min