Decoder with Nilay Patel

Nilay Patel talks to Steven Yang, the CEO and founder of Anker Innovations. The conversation covers the full stack of Decoder topics: taking bets on new tech like gallium nitride, building a direct-to-consumer business on Amazon, and the complexity of managing the Amazon relationship, regulatory issues, platform fees — you name it. And all from a company that started making phone chargers. Anker is endlessly fascinating.

Links:

Anker CEO Steven Yang is all in on USB-C

Amazon-Native Brand Anker Goes Public

EU proposes mandatory USB-C on all devices, including iPhones

Gallium nitride is the silicon of the future

Video: Is gallium nitride the silicon of the future?

Anker MagGo devices snap on for wireless iPhone charging in your car and home

Amazon confirms it removed RavPower, a popular phone battery and charger brand

Another Amazon-first gadget brand has suspiciously vanished: Choetech

Doug DeMuro on Decoder

Nebula Capsule II mini projector review: TV in a can

Transcript:

https://www.theverge.com/e/22533880

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone, Alexander Charles Adams, and Andrew Marino. We are edited by Callie Wright. Our music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. 

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Welcome to a special Thursday edition of Decoder. You may have read on the site that Verge executive editor Dieter Bohn has been working on a documentary called Springboard: the secret history of the first real smartphone. It's about a company called Handspring and I think the Decoder audience will be really into this story so today we're interviewing Dieter. We talked about his documentary and he brought an exclusive clip that didn't make it into the film.

That documentary is streaming now on The Verge's new streaming apps that you can get on your TV or set top box. We have them for Android, for Amazon Fire TV, for Roku and Apple TV. We've been working on these for a long time. It's a little more complicated than you might think to make these apps, make them good, distribute them on everyone's app stores, some real Decoder pain points in there.

Links

Springboard trailer and how to get the streaming apps

Transcript

https://www.theverge.com/e/22526129

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Facebook announced a major corporate rebrand by changing its company name to Meta. The new name is meant to solidify the social media giant’s longterm bet on building the metaverse. On this episode of Decoder, vice president of Reality Labs Andrew Bosworth talked with The Verge’s Alex Heath about Facebook’s rebrand to Meta, how content moderation will work in the metaverse, and the hardware journey from virtual to mixed reality, and eventually, AR glasses.

Links:

Mark Zuckerberg on why Facebook is rebranding to Meta

Facebook is spending at least $10 billion this year on its metaverse division

Eight things we learned from the Facebook Papers

Facebook is planning to rebrand the company with a new name

Transcript:

https://www.theverge.com/e/22517027

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Andrew Marino and we are edited by Callie Wright. Our music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Adobe is one of those companies that I don’t think we pay enough attention to — it’s been around since 1982, and the entire creative economy runs through its software. You don’t just edit a photo, you Photoshop it. We spend a lot of time on Decoder talking about the creator economy, but creators themselves spend all their time working in Adobe’s tools. On this episode, I’m talking to Scott Belsky, chief product officer at Adobe, about the new features coming to their products, many of which focus on collaboration, and about creativity broadly — who gets to be a creative, where they might work, and how they get paid.

Transcript

Links:

NFTs Explained

Adobe brings a simplified Photoshop to the web

Adobe is adding a collaborative mood board to Creative Cloud

Soon you can use Photoshop to prepare your art as an NFT

The Dog Ramps Tweet

The Furry Lisa, CryptoArt, & The New Economy Of Digital Creativity

A $120,000 Banana Is Peeled From an Art Exhibition and Eaten

Adobe and Twitter are designing a system for permanently attaching artists’ names to pictures

"I still own you" clip

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone, Alexander Charles Adams, and Andrew Marino and we are edited by Callie Wright. Our music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week we are talking to Jeep CEO Christian Meunier – and there’s a lot to talk about. Jeep just announced its second hybrid electric vehicle in the US, the Grand Cherokee 4xe. It also announced a plan for its first electric car in 2023, and to have EVs across the line by 2025, which is very soon. And it’s now part of a huge global car company called Stellantis.

So I wanted to know: why start with hybrids, instead of jumping straight to EVs? What does it mean to be the CEO of a brand like Jeep inside of of a huge international company like Stellantis? How does the Jeep team make decisions about features and technology, and how much do they have to defer to a larger parent company? And what does it mean for Jeep, one of the most iconic American car brands, to be part of a huge global company now?

Christian and I talked about all of that, as well as how the chip shortage is affecting Jeep, what cars will look like in 2040, and Jeep’s use of the name “Cherokee” in 2021.

Yeah, this interview goes places.

Links:

The first plug-in hybrid Jeep Grand Cherokee is here

Tested: 2021 Jeep Wrangler 4xe Complicates a Simple Machine

2021 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon 4xe: A Hybrid That Comes Up Short

The electric Mustang Mach-E takes Ford in a whole new direction

Jeep Badge of Honor App

Jeep EV Day video

Episode Transcript

Credits:

Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone, Alexander Charles Adams, and Andrew Marino. And we are edited by Callie Wright. Our music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. 

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My guest today is Dave Limp, the senior vice president of devices and services at Amazon – or, more simply, the guy in charge of Alexa. Dave’s group at Amazon also includes the Kindle e-reader, the Ring and Blink security camera systems, the Eero wifi router, and a host of other products that connect to Amazon services. 

We wanted to know what the business behind Alexa looks like — Amazon sells Echo products at basically break even, it runs the Alexa for all of them for free, and it employs thousands of engineers who work on it. How does that make money? How might it make money in the future? How should we think about Alexa competing with other smart assistants, and for what kinds of business? The answers were not what you’d expect.

Links:

Why the global chip shortage is making it so hard to buy a PS5

Amazon's new Ring Alarm Pro combines a security system with an Eero Router

Say Hello to Astro, Alexa on wheels

Amazon is now accepting your applications for its home surveillance drone

Amazon Glow is a video chat gadget with built-in games to keep kids engaged

Amazon’s new Echo Show 15 is meant to hang on your wall

Amazon’s new Kindle Paperwhite adds a bigger screen, longer battery life, and USB-C

Amazon starts making its own TVs with new Fire TV Omni and 4-Series

Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max review: the one to buy

How to connect Alexa to Spotify, Apple Music, and more

Amazon's race to create the disappearing computer

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/22483986

Credits:

This episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone, Alexander Charles Adams, and Andru Marino. And we are edited by Callie Wright. Our music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In Land of the Giants: The Apple Revolution, Recode’s Peter Kafka explores the company that changed what a computer is — and then changed what a phone is. From its beginnings as a niche personal computer company, Apple became the preeminent maker of consumer tech products, a cultural trendsetter, and the most valuable company in the world. And along the way, it changed the way we live.

Listen to Land of the Giants on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Waymo is working on self-driving taxis. Which is a huge deal. Ridesharing apps like Uber and Lyft have remade cities, allowed people to give up their cars, and generally connected the buttons you push on your phone to real things happening in the world more directly than almost any other app. Nilay Patel talked to Tekedra Mawakana, co-CEO of Waymo, about expanding Waymo’s service to other cities, the hurdles in place, and how she thinks the company will make money over time. We also talked about the regulatory issues the industry faces as it tries to roll out self-driving more broadly, and whether things like Tesla’s “full self driving” are confusing the issue or helping it. 

This was a really fun conversation made even better because we recorded it live, on stage at Code Conference.

Links:

Meet the self-driving brains working with Tesla and Ford https://www.theverge.com/22627847/argo-ai-bryan-salesky-decoder-interview-lyft-self-driving

Ford CEO Jim Farley on building the electric F-150 -- and reinventing Ford 

https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/20/22444294/ford-f150-lightning-pickup-truck-jim-farley-interview

Waymo CEO John Krafcik steps down, replaced by two co-CEOs https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/2/22364317/waymo-ceo-john-krafcik-stepping-down-self-driving-cars-google-alphabet

Riding in Waymo One, the Google spin-off’s first self-driving taxi service https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/5/18126103/waymo-one-self-driving-taxi-service-ride-safety-alphabet-cost-app

Waymo starts offering autonomous rides in San Francisco https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/24/22639226/waymo-san-francisco-rides-self-driving-service

Tesla opens ‘Full Self-Driving’ beta software to more customers https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/26/22693610/tesla-opens-full-self-driving-beta-software-more-customers

Waymo’s self-driving cars are now available on Lyft’s app in Phoenix https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/7/18536003/waymo-lyft-self-driving-ride-hail-app-phoenix

Google is spinning off its self-driving car program into a new company called Waymo https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/13/13936782/google-self-driving-car-waymo-spin-off-company

Car companies will have to report automated vehicle crashes under new rules https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/29/22555666/nhtsa-autonomous-vehicle-crash-report-data

Transcript:

https://www.theverge.com/e/22472717

Credits:

Host - Nilay Patel

Lead Producer - Creighton DeSimone

Associate Producer - Alexander Charles Adams

Sr Audio Director - Andrew Marino

Editor - Callie Wright

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Nilay Patel talks to John Carreyrou about his reporting on Theranos from his Wall Street Journal articles that broke the scandal in 2015 to his podcast covering the trial of Elizabeth Holmes today.

Links:

Bad Blood: The Final Chapter https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bad-blood-the-final-chapter/id1575738174

Theranos’ greatest invention was Elizabeth Holmes https://www.theverge.com/22656190/theranos-elizabeth-holmes-wire-fraud-trial-founder-myth

Elizabeth Holmes is on trial for fraud over her time at Theranos https://www.theverge.com/22684354/elizabeth-holmes-trial-wire-fraud-theranos

Apple Podcasts launches in-app subscriptions https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/20/22381980/apple-podcasts-app-subscriptions-new-design

Hot startup Theranos has struggled with its blood-test technology https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-has-struggled-with-blood-tests-1444881901

*Tesla’s Autopilot was engaged when Model 3 crashed into truck, report states https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/16/18627766/tesla-autopilot-fatal-crash-delray-florida-ntsb-model-3

Uber halts self-driving tests after pedestrian killed in Arizona https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/19/17139518/uber-self-driving-car-fatal-crash-tempe-arizona

Elizabeth Holmes “was in charge” of Theranos, says Gen. Mattis https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/22/22689083/elizabeth-holmes-trial-james-mattis-testimony-theranos-fraud

Theranos reaches settlement with investor Partner Fund Management https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/01/theranos-reaches-settlement-with-investor-partner-fund-management/

Transcript:

https://www.theverge.com/e/22461304

Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone, Alexander Charles Adams, and Andrew Marino. And we are edited by Callie Wright. Our music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We talk a lot about the creator economy here on Decoder and one thing we’ve learned from all those conversations is that the creator economy is a market just like any other, with supply and demand, but that it’s also a market that is absolutely starved of information. So today I’m talking to Lindsey Lee Lugrin, the co-founder and CEO of a new platform called Fuck You Pay Me, which is an all-time great company name. FYPM is an app for creators to review and compare brand deals: what brands are paying, what it’s like to work with them, and whether people would work with them again. It’s kind of like Glassdoor or Yelp for influencers.

Links

The quirks and features of YouTube car reviews with Doug DeMuro https://www.theverge.com/22637871/doug-demuro-car-reviews-youtube-decoder-interview

Advertising is complicated, but Melissa Grady is very good at it https://www.theverge.com/22174582/decoder-podcast-interview-cadillac-cmo-melissa-grady-advertising

YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan on the algorithm, monetization, and the future for creators https://www.theverge.com/22606296/youtube-shorts-fund-neal-mohan-decoder-interview

The App With the Unprintable Name That Wants to Give Power to Creators https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/technology/fypm-creators-app-pay.html

Introduction to smart contracts 

https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/smart-contracts/

The golden age of YouTube is over 

https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/5/18287318/youtube-logan-paul-pewdiepie-demonetization-adpocalypse-premium-influencers-creators

Transcript

https://www.theverge.com/e/22448278

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