Hello! This is The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Verge... and your life. Every Friday, Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn make sense of the week's tech news with help from our wide-ranging staff. Join us every week for a fun, deeply nerdy, often off-the-rails conversation about what's happening now (and next) in technology and gadgets.
How clips ate the internet
It's now surprisingly easy to watch most of a movie without ever trying to, or to spend hours with a podcast without ever playing an episode. In the burgeoning clip economy, everything is being cut into bite-sized pieces and being blasted around the internet hoping to land in your feeds. The Verge's Mia Sato explains the machinery of how all this works, and wonders what it means for our social media experience. After that, The Verge's Victoria Song joins to discuss the Fitbit Air, the new $99 Google fitness tracker she and David have both been testing. It's a fascinating, thoroughly AI-ified device, and it actually has some pretty good ideas. (And some bad ones!) Finally, Vee sticks around to help David answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email vergecast@theverge.com!) about smart glasses, and whether helping you find your other gear might just be a killer app.
Further reading:
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(Timestamps are approximate.)
00:00:00 Brick Your Phone
00:03:00 Clips Go Industrial
00:06:00 How Clipping Platforms Work
00:08:00 Why It Looks Organic
00:11:00 Clavicular Case Study
00:13:00 Shady or Just Marketing
00:20:00 Platform Rules and Reality
00:26:00 Slop and the Future of Clips
00:36:00 Watch Band Color Debate
00:38:00 Why Fitbit Air Matters
00:40:00 Whoop Dupe Or Fitbit Roots
00:45:00 Google Health AI Coach
00:50:00 Limits And Lab Upload Friction
00:53:00 Privacy And Data Tradeoffs
00:56:00 AI Health Personalities Compared
01:04:00 Hotline Smart Glasses Tracking
01:09:00 Future Of All Day Glasses
01:13:00 Wrap Up
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