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NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore spoke about their continued stay aboard the International Space Station during a press conference held yesterday. The two are now fully incorporated into the ISS crew, as the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that was meant to take them home last week was instead sent back to Earth uncrewed.
Early on, the two were asked if they felt “let down” by Boeing.
“Absolutely not,” said Wilmore:
“This operation is not easy. NASA does a great job — the people at Nasa do a great job — of making a lot of things look easy. Sending probes beyond the edge of our solar system; going in [and] getting samples from asteroids; humans in space. It’s a very risky business and things do not always turn out the way you want.”
NASA decided not to fly the craft back with the two aboard after finding thruster issues and helium leaks in Starliner. But Wilmore said that with more time, “we could have gotten to the point, I believe, where we could have returned on Starliner. But we just simply ran out of time.” Instead, the two have become part of the ISS crew.

Williams, who Wilmore said will become the Commander of the ISS soon, said the transition to the space station’s crew was “not that hard,” as she and Wilmore had been preparing to go to the station for years prior to their flight earlier this year. She said their later return in a SpaceX Dragon capsule at the conclusion of NASA’s Crew-9 mission is a unique opportunity for the two test pilots, adding, “We’re excited to fly in two different spacecraft; I mean, we’re testers, that’s what we do.”
Neither astronaut expressed dismay at being aboard ISS longer. “Space is my happy place,” Williams said, ”…every day you do something that’s ‘work’ — you can do it upside down, you can do it sideways, so it adds a little different perspective.”
NASA’s Crew-9 mission, which is due to launch later this month, is expected to bring both astronauts back to Earth as soon as February next year.

NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore spoke about their continued stay aboard the International Space Station during a press conference held yesterday. The two are now fully incorporated into the ISS crew, as the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that was meant to take them home last week was instead sent back to Earth uncrewed.

Early on, the two were asked if they felt “let down” by Boeing.

“Absolutely not,” said Wilmore:

“This operation is not easy. NASA does a great job — the people at Nasa do a great job — of making a lot of things look easy. Sending probes beyond the edge of our solar system; going in [and] getting samples from asteroids; humans in space. It’s a very risky business and things do not always turn out the way you want.”

NASA decided not to fly the craft back with the two aboard after finding thruster issues and helium leaks in Starliner. But Wilmore said that with more time, “we could have gotten to the point, I believe, where we could have returned on Starliner. But we just simply ran out of time.” Instead, the two have become part of the ISS crew.

Williams, who Wilmore said will become the Commander of the ISS soon, said the transition to the space station’s crew was “not that hard,” as she and Wilmore had been preparing to go to the station for years prior to their flight earlier this year. She said their later return in a SpaceX Dragon capsule at the conclusion of NASA’s Crew-9 mission is a unique opportunity for the two test pilots, adding, “We’re excited to fly in two different spacecraft; I mean, we’re testers, that’s what we do.”

Neither astronaut expressed dismay at being aboard ISS longer. “Space is my happy place,” Williams said, ”…every day you do something that’s ‘work’ — you can do it upside down, you can do it sideways, so it adds a little different perspective.”

NASA’s Crew-9 mission, which is due to launch later this month, is expected to bring both astronauts back to Earth as soon as February next year.

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A GameCube controller, post-mod. | Image: 8BitDo

8BitDo announced it’s taking preorders for a new mod kit that lets you retrofit a wired GameCube controller with Hall effects joysticks and Bluetooth connectivity. The company is charging $25.98 for the kit, which it says is a simple, solderless mod.
8BitDo has made a few of these in the past for old Nintendo controllers, including those for the N64 and earlier consoles, and now it’s the GameCube’s turn. The kit replaces your controller’s existing PCB with a drop-in board that has Hall effects joysticks and a USB-C-rechargeable 300mAh battery attached. It also comes with a trigger pack, and 8BitDo says the battery will get 6 hours of playtime between charges. It’s compatible with the Switch and Android, according to the product page.

Introducing the 8BitDo Mod Kit for Original NGC Controller. Easily modify your original wired NGC controller into a Bluetooth controller, bring wireless compatibility with Switch and Android. Including Hall Effect joysticks and the Trigger Pack.Pre-oder on eShop now:… pic.twitter.com/oeEUq4WRlP— 8BitDo (@8BitDo) September 14, 2024

The catch is that you’re replacing its wired controller option, and you’ll have to pick up a separate, $25.98 8BitDo “Retro Receiver for GCN” to connect it to your GameCube. Undoing the conversion could be a little tricky — a video installation guide on the page includes a step for cutting the cable that powers the vibration motor — so you’ll want to consider that if you prize gaming hardware preservation.
Still, plenty of GameCube controllers have endured abuse in the last two-plus decades; I’d certainly consider it if I had one lying around that had drifting analog sticks or a cord that’s been chewed up by pets or cut off by scissor-happy children. For a less invasive wireless controller transition, though, there’s always 8BitDo’s GBros. adapter.
8BitDo says it will start shipping the new mod kit on September 25th.

A GameCube controller, post-mod. | Image: 8BitDo

8BitDo announced it’s taking preorders for a new mod kit that lets you retrofit a wired GameCube controller with Hall effects joysticks and Bluetooth connectivity. The company is charging $25.98 for the kit, which it says is a simple, solderless mod.

8BitDo has made a few of these in the past for old Nintendo controllers, including those for the N64 and earlier consoles, and now it’s the GameCube’s turn. The kit replaces your controller’s existing PCB with a drop-in board that has Hall effects joysticks and a USB-C-rechargeable 300mAh battery attached. It also comes with a trigger pack, and 8BitDo says the battery will get 6 hours of playtime between charges. It’s compatible with the Switch and Android, according to the product page.

The catch is that you’re replacing its wired controller option, and you’ll have to pick up a separate, $25.98 8BitDo “Retro Receiver for GCN” to connect it to your GameCube. Undoing the conversion could be a little tricky — a video installation guide on the page includes a step for cutting the cable that powers the vibration motor — so you’ll want to consider that if you prize gaming hardware preservation.

Still, plenty of GameCube controllers have endured abuse in the last two-plus decades; I’d certainly consider it if I had one lying around that had drifting analog sticks or a cord that’s been chewed up by pets or cut off by scissor-happy children. For a less invasive wireless controller transition, though, there’s always 8BitDo’s GBros. adapter.

8BitDo says it will start shipping the new mod kit on September 25th.

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Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge

Courtesy of iFixit, a new teardown video of the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold reveals what the repairability advocate organization’s Shahram Mokhtari says is “the most exciting foldable we’ve seen on the iFixit teardown table.”
iFixit offers very clear shots of the phone’s internals in the video and its accompanying blog post, along with some very detailed Lumafield CT scans of the foldable. Mokhtari notes in the video that Google is offering official repair guides and replacement parts for the phone.

iFixit found impressive modularity in the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, including easily removable wearable parts like the USB-C port and SIM card tray, and the site praised the use of 3IP screws throughout. The repair experts were also able to pull off the outside screen and back cover using only prying tools — no heat gun required.

Photo: iFixit
iFixit couldn’t get the batteries out using the pull tabs alone.

The only criticism iFixit has is that the 4.68Wh and 13.4Wh batteries were impossible to remove using the pull tabs under them. Mokhtari also noted he couldn’t remove the folding screen without destroying it.

GIF: Pixel 9 Pro Fold CT scan

Aside from including this nice rotating GIF of the phone, iFixit’s blog post contains a zoomable, rotatable interactive scan of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold for maximum techno-peeping. Just scroll to the bottom to find that.

Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge

Courtesy of iFixit, a new teardown video of the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold reveals what the repairability advocate organization’s Shahram Mokhtari says is “the most exciting foldable we’ve seen on the iFixit teardown table.”

iFixit offers very clear shots of the phone’s internals in the video and its accompanying blog post, along with some very detailed Lumafield CT scans of the foldable. Mokhtari notes in the video that Google is offering official repair guides and replacement parts for the phone.

iFixit found impressive modularity in the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, including easily removable wearable parts like the USB-C port and SIM card tray, and the site praised the use of 3IP screws throughout. The repair experts were also able to pull off the outside screen and back cover using only prying tools — no heat gun required.

Photo: iFixit
iFixit couldn’t get the batteries out using the pull tabs alone.

The only criticism iFixit has is that the 4.68Wh and 13.4Wh batteries were impossible to remove using the pull tabs under them. Mokhtari also noted he couldn’t remove the folding screen without destroying it.

GIF: Pixel 9 Pro Fold CT scan

Aside from including this nice rotating GIF of the phone, iFixit’s blog post contains a zoomable, rotatable interactive scan of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold for maximum techno-peeping. Just scroll to the bottom to find that.

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Not included: a desk that’s a country mile wide. | Image: Samsung

A running gag here at The Verge and on The Vergecast is that ever since Samsung switched to a six-day workweek for its executives, it’s made some particularly wild decisions — like throwing out its own unique earbud design for glorified Apple knockoffs with light strips. And right now, Samsung will not only sell you its impressive 49-inch Odyssey OLED G9 (G95SC) 49-inch curved ultrawide gaming monitor for $1,099.99 (a discount of $700), but it’s also including a second, 24-inch Odyssey G30D monitor for free (a $150 value).
The deal price is being matched at Best Buy and Amazon but without the freebie second monitor. And why wouldn’t you want a second baby monitor to compliment your wraparound surfboard of a main monitor?
The 49-inch Odyssey G95SC is one of Samsung’s top-tier options for gaming monitors, offering up to a 240Hz refresh and a fast 0.03ms response time that’s fit for even twitch shooter-style competitive games. But it’s not all about speed — the OLED panel means the G95SC renders some beautifully deep blacks with contrast that really makes your games pop.

Saturdeal morning’s alright for saving

Speaking of performance-intense PC gaming, you can get the PC version of God of War Ragnarök for $49.79 (around $10 off) at Fanatical with code FANATICAL17. One of PlayStation’s best games from 2022, it can look even more beautiful on Windows if you have capable hardware. The port features unlocked frame rates and ultrawide support, so you can watch Kratos tear through enemies with a higher level of quality and detail than ever before. Read our review.
The Anker 6,600mAh Qi2 power bank is selling for its lowest price of $29.99 ($40 off) after clicking the on-page coupon at Amazon. It’s one of the best compact, futureproof magnetic wireless charging batteries you can get, able to top off Qi2-compatible iPhones (the iPhone 15 generation and the upcoming iPhone 16 models) at up to 15W output. And it even comes in some fun colors that may slightly match the base iPhone 16.

OnePlus is selling its Nord Buds 3 Pro noise-canceling earbuds for $49.99 ($30 off). The ANC earbuds had an aggressive price of $79.99 when they launched just recently in July, but this deal makes them quite cheap. We haven’t reviewed them yet, but with IP55 water resistance and multipoint connectivity that’s a lot on offer for just $50 — they even come in a nice jade color in addition to black.

Not included: a desk that’s a country mile wide. | Image: Samsung

A running gag here at The Verge and on The Vergecast is that ever since Samsung switched to a six-day workweek for its executives, it’s made some particularly wild decisions — like throwing out its own unique earbud design for glorified Apple knockoffs with light strips. And right now, Samsung will not only sell you its impressive 49-inch Odyssey OLED G9 (G95SC) 49-inch curved ultrawide gaming monitor for $1,099.99 (a discount of $700), but it’s also including a second, 24-inch Odyssey G30D monitor for free (a $150 value).

The deal price is being matched at Best Buy and Amazon but without the freebie second monitor. And why wouldn’t you want a second baby monitor to compliment your wraparound surfboard of a main monitor?

The 49-inch Odyssey G95SC is one of Samsung’s top-tier options for gaming monitors, offering up to a 240Hz refresh and a fast 0.03ms response time that’s fit for even twitch shooter-style competitive games. But it’s not all about speed — the OLED panel means the G95SC renders some beautifully deep blacks with contrast that really makes your games pop.

Saturdeal morning’s alright for saving

Speaking of performance-intense PC gaming, you can get the PC version of God of War Ragnarök for $49.79 (around $10 off) at Fanatical with code FANATICAL17. One of PlayStation’s best games from 2022, it can look even more beautiful on Windows if you have capable hardware. The port features unlocked frame rates and ultrawide support, so you can watch Kratos tear through enemies with a higher level of quality and detail than ever before. Read our review.
The Anker 6,600mAh Qi2 power bank is selling for its lowest price of $29.99 ($40 off) after clicking the on-page coupon at Amazon. It’s one of the best compact, futureproof magnetic wireless charging batteries you can get, able to top off Qi2-compatible iPhones (the iPhone 15 generation and the upcoming iPhone 16 models) at up to 15W output. And it even comes in some fun colors that may slightly match the base iPhone 16.

OnePlus is selling its Nord Buds 3 Pro noise-canceling earbuds for $49.99 ($30 off). The ANC earbuds had an aggressive price of $79.99 when they launched just recently in July, but this deal makes them quite cheap. We haven’t reviewed them yet, but with IP55 water resistance and multipoint connectivity that’s a lot on offer for just $50 — they even come in a nice jade color in addition to black.

Read More 

Image: Capcom

Capcom’s Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is a fine addition to the lawyer game canon. Capcom’s Ace Attorney Investigations Collection, the spinoffs to the popular if wildly legally inaccurate Ace Attorney series, are finally out. The two-game collection includes a long-awaited gift for Ace Attorney diehards: the official Western release of Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit. And though Investigations suffers from gameplay issues that run counter to the spirit of the overall series, the characters and story make the collection a must-have for any Ace Attorney fan.
Though there are two games in the collection, I’m going to focus exclusively on Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit. Despite getting a Japanese release on the DS in 2011, the game never officially made it to the West until now. Prosecutor’s Gambit puts you in the cravat of prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, Phoenix Wright’s childhood friend, opposing counsel, and, if you subscribe to certain parts of the fandom, longtime lover. (Not me, though, I’m firmly a Gumshoe / Edgeworth girlie.)
The game plays similarly to Ace Attorney. Somebody gets murdered, somebody innocent gets accused, and Edgeworth must investigate crime scenes for clues. Once the necessary information has been gathered, Edgeworth interrogates people, pointing out contradictions in their testimony with evidence to eventually determine someone’s guilt or innocence.
I often visited the game’s bonus content just to rewatch all the outrageous, “Oh no, I’ve been found out!” animations
In Prosecutor’s Gambit, the characters are wonderfully colorful, and it’s always a treat to watch them fall apart whenever Edgeworth discovers their lies. I often visited the game’s bonus content just to rewatch all the outrageous, “Oh no, I’ve been found out!” animations.

Image: Capcom
“Oh no, I’ve been found out!”

Because Ace Attorney Investigations is a spinoff series, you don’t need any knowledge of the main games to understand what’s going on. But if you do, oh man, are you rewarded. I was geeking out playing a case that has a massive — and I mean massive — impact not only on the events of the first Ace Attorney game but also on Miles Edgeworth’s entire reason for being.
Though the game’s story and characters are just as charming as they are in the main series, Prosecutor’s Gambit sets itself apart with its unique gameplay features, both of which are a bit lacking. New in Prosecutor’s Gambit are the Mind Chess and Logic minigames. The Logic game requires putting together two pieces of information found during an investigation to create new clues. During an investigation at a prison, Edgeworth learns that a critical piece of evidence — a key — has gone missing. He also knows that a metal detector went off in the vicinity of the prison’s alligator enclosure. (Listen, in any Ace Attorney game, things can get very… quirky.) You very literally smash those two pieces of information together to deduce that the alligator swallowed the key. Armed with new information, the game can progress.

Image: Capcom
An example of the Logic mini-game in Ace Attorney.

Completing Logic games is exceedingly easy, demanding none of the deductive puzzle-solving skills that make Ace Attorney games so enjoyable. They’re so simple that they’re actually a waste of time. It’s as though the developers needed to add something to make this game distinct from the main series but couldn’t figure out anything interesting, so they came up with what is essentially evidence gathering with superfluous steps.
Mind Chess, however, suffers from the exact opposite problem. It’s a worthwhile gameplay addition, but the logic required to beat it is completely impenetrable. In Mind Chess, a subject has a piece of information they don’t want to give up, and Edgeworth must pick from a rotating selection of dialogue options to wear them down until they spill the beans.
The problem with Mind Chess is that, unlike anywhere else in the game, you’re not using evidence to pick apart false statements. Rather, you’re trying to read and respond to an opponent’s… vibes? If you pick a dialogue option that doesn’t jive with your opponent’s emotions, you fail. The game does try to help you out with clues. In one case, Edgeworth notes that a mentally weak opponent will clam up if I pick aggressive options, so when they inevitably got all weepy on me, I correctly remained silent. However, those clues didn’t work in every situation, leaving me floundering. I lost that game of Mind Chess because I once again stayed quiet when that weepy opponent got even more weepy.
The great thing about both Ace Attorney series is that I’m rewarded for being thorough. I feel like a genius when I catch someone in a lie because I took the time to learn everything about every piece of evidence, which often involves noticing the tiniest or most cleverly obscured detail. And when I’m wrong, it’s not difficult to revisit my case files to find what I missed.

Image: Capcom

Guessing until you get to the right answer is the antithesis of that — no brain power, just button mashing. And since Mind Chess relies on what the player can somehow intuit (from a bunch of pixels, no less!), instead of what they concretely know, I wound up guessing in every instance. I might as well have been playing Cookie Clicker.
But suffering through Mind Chess is well worth the clues you get to solve the game’s greater mysteries. In the main Ace Attorney series, most cases aren’t too closely related, and if they are, the connections are incidental. An important character from one case will show up as a brief cameo in another, or one murder might have minor implications for a later one. But Prosecutor’s Gambit is the first time I’ve seen every single case and every single character (even the dead ones!) have a direct and major impact on the game’s climax.
All of those connections did muddy the story and create a voluminous record of evidence that was difficult to sift through. But when I finally uncovered the grand mastermind, my body did that slow transition from relaxed and reclined to straight and alert. It was exactly like a scene in a murder mystery when the detective happens upon the one perfect clue that cracks the case, something that playing every Ace Attorney game should feel like.

Image: Capcom

Capcom’s Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is a fine addition to the lawyer game canon.

Capcom’s Ace Attorney Investigations Collection, the spinoffs to the popular if wildly legally inaccurate Ace Attorney series, are finally out. The two-game collection includes a long-awaited gift for Ace Attorney diehards: the official Western release of Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit. And though Investigations suffers from gameplay issues that run counter to the spirit of the overall series, the characters and story make the collection a must-have for any Ace Attorney fan.

Though there are two games in the collection, I’m going to focus exclusively on Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit. Despite getting a Japanese release on the DS in 2011, the game never officially made it to the West until now. Prosecutor’s Gambit puts you in the cravat of prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, Phoenix Wright’s childhood friend, opposing counsel, and, if you subscribe to certain parts of the fandom, longtime lover. (Not me, though, I’m firmly a Gumshoe / Edgeworth girlie.)

The game plays similarly to Ace Attorney. Somebody gets murdered, somebody innocent gets accused, and Edgeworth must investigate crime scenes for clues. Once the necessary information has been gathered, Edgeworth interrogates people, pointing out contradictions in their testimony with evidence to eventually determine someone’s guilt or innocence.

In Prosecutor’s Gambit, the characters are wonderfully colorful, and it’s always a treat to watch them fall apart whenever Edgeworth discovers their lies. I often visited the game’s bonus content just to rewatch all the outrageous, “Oh no, I’ve been found out!” animations.

Image: Capcom
“Oh no, I’ve been found out!”

Because Ace Attorney Investigations is a spinoff series, you don’t need any knowledge of the main games to understand what’s going on. But if you do, oh man, are you rewarded. I was geeking out playing a case that has a massive — and I mean massive — impact not only on the events of the first Ace Attorney game but also on Miles Edgeworth’s entire reason for being.

Though the game’s story and characters are just as charming as they are in the main series, Prosecutor’s Gambit sets itself apart with its unique gameplay features, both of which are a bit lacking. New in Prosecutor’s Gambit are the Mind Chess and Logic minigames. The Logic game requires putting together two pieces of information found during an investigation to create new clues. During an investigation at a prison, Edgeworth learns that a critical piece of evidence — a key — has gone missing. He also knows that a metal detector went off in the vicinity of the prison’s alligator enclosure. (Listen, in any Ace Attorney game, things can get very… quirky.) You very literally smash those two pieces of information together to deduce that the alligator swallowed the key. Armed with new information, the game can progress.

Image: Capcom
An example of the Logic mini-game in Ace Attorney.

Completing Logic games is exceedingly easy, demanding none of the deductive puzzle-solving skills that make Ace Attorney games so enjoyable. They’re so simple that they’re actually a waste of time. It’s as though the developers needed to add something to make this game distinct from the main series but couldn’t figure out anything interesting, so they came up with what is essentially evidence gathering with superfluous steps.

Mind Chess, however, suffers from the exact opposite problem. It’s a worthwhile gameplay addition, but the logic required to beat it is completely impenetrable. In Mind Chess, a subject has a piece of information they don’t want to give up, and Edgeworth must pick from a rotating selection of dialogue options to wear them down until they spill the beans.

The problem with Mind Chess is that, unlike anywhere else in the game, you’re not using evidence to pick apart false statements. Rather, you’re trying to read and respond to an opponent’s… vibes? If you pick a dialogue option that doesn’t jive with your opponent’s emotions, you fail. The game does try to help you out with clues. In one case, Edgeworth notes that a mentally weak opponent will clam up if I pick aggressive options, so when they inevitably got all weepy on me, I correctly remained silent. However, those clues didn’t work in every situation, leaving me floundering. I lost that game of Mind Chess because I once again stayed quiet when that weepy opponent got even more weepy.

The great thing about both Ace Attorney series is that I’m rewarded for being thorough. I feel like a genius when I catch someone in a lie because I took the time to learn everything about every piece of evidence, which often involves noticing the tiniest or most cleverly obscured detail. And when I’m wrong, it’s not difficult to revisit my case files to find what I missed.

Image: Capcom

Guessing until you get to the right answer is the antithesis of that — no brain power, just button mashing. And since Mind Chess relies on what the player can somehow intuit (from a bunch of pixels, no less!), instead of what they concretely know, I wound up guessing in every instance. I might as well have been playing Cookie Clicker.

But suffering through Mind Chess is well worth the clues you get to solve the game’s greater mysteries. In the main Ace Attorney series, most cases aren’t too closely related, and if they are, the connections are incidental. An important character from one case will show up as a brief cameo in another, or one murder might have minor implications for a later one. But Prosecutor’s Gambit is the first time I’ve seen every single case and every single character (even the dead ones!) have a direct and major impact on the game’s climax.

All of those connections did muddy the story and create a voluminous record of evidence that was difficult to sift through. But when I finally uncovered the grand mastermind, my body did that slow transition from relaxed and reclined to straight and alert. It was exactly like a scene in a murder mystery when the detective happens upon the one perfect clue that cracks the case, something that playing every Ace Attorney game should feel like.

Read More 

Image: The Verge

The iPhone 16 lineup has 8GB of RAM, from the base model to the 16 Pro Max, and it’s all thanks to Apple Intelligence. Apple VP of hardware tech Johny Srouji confirmed as much in an interview with Geekerwan, published yesterday, that 9to5Mac spotted.
Srouji explained in the interview that “DRAM is one aspect” when it comes to deciding hardware characteristics needed for Apple Intelligence, saying that the feature “led us to believe we need to get to 8GB.” He added that the extra RAM would also “help immensely” for tasks like high-end gaming on devices.

Apple hadn’t previously stated how much RAM the iPhone 16 line has, but MacRumors discovered references to the 8GB number in Xcode after the phones were announced. Apple, which isn’t the only hardware maker that has recently boosted RAM to offer AI, has said that iOS 18 won’t bring Apple Intelligence to the iPhone 15, which only has 6GB of RAM, when the feature set launches. Apart from the iPhone 16 line, the iPhone 15 Pro will be the only other phone that supports it.
Aside from that, Srouji spends the roughly 17-minute interview discussing the company’s hardware performance philosophy, characteristics of the A18 chips in the new phones, Apple’s approach to thermal design, and iPhone 16 and 16 Pro video and image processing.

Image: The Verge

The iPhone 16 lineup has 8GB of RAM, from the base model to the 16 Pro Max, and it’s all thanks to Apple Intelligence. Apple VP of hardware tech Johny Srouji confirmed as much in an interview with Geekerwan, published yesterday, that 9to5Mac spotted.

Srouji explained in the interview that “DRAM is one aspect” when it comes to deciding hardware characteristics needed for Apple Intelligence, saying that the feature “led us to believe we need to get to 8GB.” He added that the extra RAM would also “help immensely” for tasks like high-end gaming on devices.

Apple hadn’t previously stated how much RAM the iPhone 16 line has, but MacRumors discovered references to the 8GB number in Xcode after the phones were announced. Apple, which isn’t the only hardware maker that has recently boosted RAM to offer AI, has said that iOS 18 won’t bring Apple Intelligence to the iPhone 15, which only has 6GB of RAM, when the feature set launches. Apart from the iPhone 16 line, the iPhone 15 Pro will be the only other phone that supports it.

Aside from that, Srouji spends the roughly 17-minute interview discussing the company’s hardware performance philosophy, characteristics of the A18 chips in the new phones, Apple’s approach to thermal design, and iPhone 16 and 16 Pro video and image processing.

Read More 

A demo of Visual Intelligence from Apple’s iPhone 16 announcement video. | Image: Apple

Apple’s new “Visual Intelligence” feature was one of the most impressive things shown at Monday’s iPhone 16 event. The tool lets users scan the world around them through the iPhone’s camera to identify a dog breed, copy event details off a poster, or look up just about anything around them.
It’s a handy-looking feature that fits right in with the iPhone’s new camera button. But it may also be setting the stage for bigger products down the road: it’s the exact kind of thing Apple will need for future tech like AR glasses.
It’s not hard to imagine how Visual Intelligence could help you out on a device that sees everything you see. Take the idea of learning more about a restaurant, like Apple showed for Visual Intelligence on an iPhone: instead of fishing your phone out of your pocket to look up information about a new spot, with glasses, you could just look at the restaurant, ask a question, and have the glasses tell you more.
Meta has already proven that computer glasses can be good
Meta has already proven that computer glasses with an AI assistant can be a good and useful tool for identifying things. It’s not a great leap to imagine Apple doing something similar with a very high level of fit and finish for theoretical glasses. Apple would almost certainly make glasses connect back to all of your apps and personal context on your iPhone, too, which would make Visual Intelligence even more handy.
Of course, Apple already does have a headset covered in cameras: the Vision Pro. But most people don’t walk around with their headset outside of their house, and they probably already know about the things they have at home. It’s long been reported that Apple wants to develop a pair of true AR glasses, and that feels like the ultimate destination for this kind of tech.
The thing is, Apple-made AR glasses might be very far away. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported in June that a 2027 launch date has been “bandied about” for its in-development glasses but noted that “no one I’ve spoken to within Apple believes the glasses will be ready in a few years.”
But whenever those glasses arrive, they’re going to need software — and you can see Apple building out the basics of it here. Visual Intelligence might be Apple’s first step toward the killer app for computer spectacles, and by starting now, Apple will potentially have years to refine the feature before it shows up in glasses.

It wouldn’t be unprecedented for Apple to take that approach. The company iterated on AR technologies in the iPhone for years before launching the Vision Pro. Yes, the Vision Pro is arguably much more of a VR headset than an AR device, but it’s clearly a first step toward something that could turn into AR glasses. As Apple improves that hardware, it can work on software features like Visual Intelligence on the iPhone, too, and when the time is right, pack all of the best ideas into a glasses-like product.
A glasses computer might be a major new frontier, with companies like Meta and Snap investing heavily in AR glasses, Google showing off prototype glasses, and Qualcomm working on mixed reality glasses with Samsung and Google. If Apple makes a pair, Visual Intelligence will probably be a key way it tries to compete. Let’s just hope it works well on iPhones first.

A demo of Visual Intelligence from Apple’s iPhone 16 announcement video. | Image: Apple

Apple’s new “Visual Intelligence” feature was one of the most impressive things shown at Monday’s iPhone 16 event. The tool lets users scan the world around them through the iPhone’s camera to identify a dog breed, copy event details off a poster, or look up just about anything around them.

It’s a handy-looking feature that fits right in with the iPhone’s new camera button. But it may also be setting the stage for bigger products down the road: it’s the exact kind of thing Apple will need for future tech like AR glasses.

It’s not hard to imagine how Visual Intelligence could help you out on a device that sees everything you see. Take the idea of learning more about a restaurant, like Apple showed for Visual Intelligence on an iPhone: instead of fishing your phone out of your pocket to look up information about a new spot, with glasses, you could just look at the restaurant, ask a question, and have the glasses tell you more.

Meta has already proven that computer glasses with an AI assistant can be a good and useful tool for identifying things. It’s not a great leap to imagine Apple doing something similar with a very high level of fit and finish for theoretical glasses. Apple would almost certainly make glasses connect back to all of your apps and personal context on your iPhone, too, which would make Visual Intelligence even more handy.

Of course, Apple already does have a headset covered in cameras: the Vision Pro. But most people don’t walk around with their headset outside of their house, and they probably already know about the things they have at home. It’s long been reported that Apple wants to develop a pair of true AR glasses, and that feels like the ultimate destination for this kind of tech.

The thing is, Apple-made AR glasses might be very far away. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported in June that a 2027 launch date has been “bandied about” for its in-development glasses but noted that “no one I’ve spoken to within Apple believes the glasses will be ready in a few years.”

But whenever those glasses arrive, they’re going to need software — and you can see Apple building out the basics of it here. Visual Intelligence might be Apple’s first step toward the killer app for computer spectacles, and by starting now, Apple will potentially have years to refine the feature before it shows up in glasses.

It wouldn’t be unprecedented for Apple to take that approach. The company iterated on AR technologies in the iPhone for years before launching the Vision Pro. Yes, the Vision Pro is arguably much more of a VR headset than an AR device, but it’s clearly a first step toward something that could turn into AR glasses. As Apple improves that hardware, it can work on software features like Visual Intelligence on the iPhone, too, and when the time is right, pack all of the best ideas into a glasses-like product.

A glasses computer might be a major new frontier, with companies like Meta and Snap investing heavily in AR glasses, Google showing off prototype glasses, and Qualcomm working on mixed reality glasses with Samsung and Google. If Apple makes a pair, Visual Intelligence will probably be a key way it tries to compete. Let’s just hope it works well on iPhones first.

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Image: The Verge

Disney and DirecTV are back in business with each other after a carriage dispute that has kept ESPN, ABC, and other Disney-owned networks off of the cable provider since the beginning of September. ESPN and other channels Disney had blocked have been restored, giving DirecTV subscribers access, once again, to Monday Night Football, college football games, and other programming from Disney’s channels.
As part of the deal, DirecTV will offer packages that include Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus as bundles or a la carte options. It’ll also include “Disney’s upcoming ESPN flagship direct-to-consumer service” when it launches, for no extra cost. And DirecTV will be able to “offer multiple genre-specific options — sports, entertainment, kids & family” to customers.

The companies issued a joint statement on the deal:
“Through this first-of-its-kind collaboration, DIRECTV and Disney are giving customers the ability to tailor their video experience through more flexible options. DIRECTV and Disney have a long-standing history of connecting consumers to the best entertainment, and this agreement furthers that commitment by recognizing both the tremendous value of Disney’s content and the evolving preferences of DIRECTV’s customers. We’d like to thank all affected viewers for their patience and are pleased to restore Disney’s entire portfolio of networks in time for college football and the Emmy Awards this weekend.”
Disney and DirecTV’s spat began on September 1st, when negotiations between the two for a new carriage deal broke down, and Disney pulled all of its programming. Disney had a similar, 12-day dispute with Charter this time last year, blocking its channels for Spectrum subscribers in the middle of the US Open.

Image: The Verge

Disney and DirecTV are back in business with each other after a carriage dispute that has kept ESPN, ABC, and other Disney-owned networks off of the cable provider since the beginning of September. ESPN and other channels Disney had blocked have been restored, giving DirecTV subscribers access, once again, to Monday Night Football, college football games, and other programming from Disney’s channels.

As part of the deal, DirecTV will offer packages that include Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus as bundles or a la carte options. It’ll also include “Disney’s upcoming ESPN flagship direct-to-consumer service” when it launches, for no extra cost. And DirecTV will be able to “offer multiple genre-specific options — sports, entertainment, kids & family” to customers.

The companies issued a joint statement on the deal:

“Through this first-of-its-kind collaboration, DIRECTV and Disney are giving customers the ability to tailor their video experience through more flexible options. DIRECTV and Disney have a long-standing history of connecting consumers to the best entertainment, and this agreement furthers that commitment by recognizing both the tremendous value of Disney’s content and the evolving preferences of DIRECTV’s customers. We’d like to thank all affected viewers for their patience and are pleased to restore Disney’s entire portfolio of networks in time for college football and the Emmy Awards this weekend.”

Disney and DirecTV’s spat began on September 1st, when negotiations between the two for a new carriage deal broke down, and Disney pulled all of its programming. Disney had a similar, 12-day dispute with Charter this time last year, blocking its channels for Spectrum subscribers in the middle of the US Open.

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You can wear the NotePin or clip it almost anywhere — which is pretty much its whole appeal. | Image: Plaud

Kudos to Plaud for one thing: in a year otherwise marred by high-profile failures and oh so much AI vaporware, it made an AI gadget that does exactly what it claims to do and does it pretty well. The gadget is called the NotePin, and it’s a $169, pill-shaped voice recorder that can transcribe, summarize, and pull important information out of your audio. This is something current AI systems can actually do well! There’s good and mature tech at every step along the pipeline here, from tiny microphones to speech-to-text transcription to natural-language processing and AI summarization. The NotePin does it well.
But the reason the NotePin works is also the reason I wouldn’t recommend buying one. AI voice recording is great and handy and being commoditized at an absolutely blistering pace. With iOS 18 or macOS Sequoia, you get transcriptions and summarization built into the Voice Memos app. Google’s Pixel Recorder app is terrific and is built into both the Pixel phones and the Pixel Watch. You can also get similar features from lots of apps. Do you need a dedicated voice recorder?
This is, of course, the eternal question about AI assistants as a whole. Are they a feature of your existing devices or a gadget category unto themselves? Plaud’s argument for dedicated hardware is about the same as all the other AI startups: that ease of use is everything. The NotePin’s accessories are core to its appeal: there’s a braided lanyard so you can wear it around your neck, a wristband so you can wear it Fitbit-style on your arm, and a clip so you can put it almost anywhere else.
Plaud’s argument for dedicated hardware is about the same as all the other AI startups: that ease of use is everything
In my time testing the NotePin, I’ve mostly had it around my neck, and I’ve used it to note reminders while driving, ramble long ideas to myself while walking the dog, and summarize calls and conversations. It’s certainly handy being able to just reach down, press the NotePin until it vibrates to indicate it’s recording, and then yammer away at nothing while my necklace dutifully listens. Once, when I was particularly enjoying a podcast, I just played the whole thing on speaker so the NotePin would transcribe and summarize it. The NotePin is easier to access than my phone in my pocket, and it’s definitely simpler than holding my wrist in front of my mouth for minutes at a time while shouting into my watch. The form factor definitely matters.
The NotePin’s mic is perfectly fine: the audio it records never sounds amazing, but in every realistic scenario I tried, it was good enough for solid transcription. Plaud estimates the device’s battery lasts for about 18 hours of recording or 30 days of standby time, and in my testing, I’ve done about four hours of recording over about 10 days, and the battery just hit “Low.” The NotePin charges on a tiny pad, which I’m confident I’m going to lose very soon, and I wish it was just a simple USB-C plug. But look: the thing works. It does what it says on the tin.

Screenshots: David Pierce / The Verge
Plaud’s transcriptions and summaries are mostly pretty good! But that’s just not enough.

The major problem with the NotePin, and frankly every other AI gadget, is that it’s not useful enough on the other side. Once you’ve made some recordings with the NotePin, you import them into the Plaud app, which is relatively quick and simple. But then you have to go into each recording and manually tell the app to transcribe it, pick a “template” you want to use for how it’s summarized, and then come back a few minutes later to see what it came up with. (You get 300 monthly minutes of transcriptions and basic templates for free, or for $80 a year, you get 1,200 and more templates and features.) That’s too much busy work. Plus, how much effort am I really saving if I have to pull out my phone — twice! — anyway?
The transcriptions are good, and the summaries are helpful, and so far, I haven’t had any huge mistakes or hallucinations. But once they’re done, they just live in reverse-chronological order in the Plaud app. The app correctly noted that one of my recordings was a reminder to buy retinol; it didn’t remind me of anything. It just made the title “Reminder to buy retinol.” When I wandered my kitchen speaking a grocery list into the NotePin, the app accurately transcribed that list for me but just titled the note “Grocery List with Various Food Items and Household Essentials.”
It’s not really the NotePin’s fault that it can’t do more than turn my nonsensical ramblings into text files. It’s not Plaud’s fault, either. It’s just that what I really want — and what should really happen — is for it to take that grocery list and add it to the grocery list I already have on my phone. It should add that reminder to my to-do list. At the very least, the app should be able to combine my grocery list note with my other grocery list note, but it can’t do that, either. Ultimately, no matter what you’re recording, odds are you want to do something with it afterward, and Plaud simply can’t do most of those things. Eventually, the Plaud app just began to feel like another inbox I needed to check.
All that is why your phone or smartwatch might be insurmountable foes in the AI assistant wars. They might be marginally less convenient — you have to pull it out of your pocket instead of just reaching down to your chest — but they’re far more connected with the rest of your digital life. Building your whole world around a transcription app just doesn’t make any sense.
It’s possible, over time, that these things could become more open. Apple and Google could open up APIs that allow AI assistants to interact with the other apps on your phone, or theoretically, the assistants could get smart enough to just interact with the apps on your behalf. Lots of developers are working on both options. But as it stands right now, the Plauds and Humanes and Rabbits of the world just can’t do enough. AI voice recorders are a great idea — but they’re not a new kind of gadget.

You can wear the NotePin or clip it almost anywhere — which is pretty much its whole appeal. | Image: Plaud

Kudos to Plaud for one thing: in a year otherwise marred by high-profile failures and oh so much AI vaporware, it made an AI gadget that does exactly what it claims to do and does it pretty well. The gadget is called the NotePin, and it’s a $169, pill-shaped voice recorder that can transcribe, summarize, and pull important information out of your audio. This is something current AI systems can actually do well! There’s good and mature tech at every step along the pipeline here, from tiny microphones to speech-to-text transcription to natural-language processing and AI summarization. The NotePin does it well.

But the reason the NotePin works is also the reason I wouldn’t recommend buying one. AI voice recording is great and handy and being commoditized at an absolutely blistering pace. With iOS 18 or macOS Sequoia, you get transcriptions and summarization built into the Voice Memos app. Google’s Pixel Recorder app is terrific and is built into both the Pixel phones and the Pixel Watch. You can also get similar features from lots of apps. Do you need a dedicated voice recorder?

This is, of course, the eternal question about AI assistants as a whole. Are they a feature of your existing devices or a gadget category unto themselves? Plaud’s argument for dedicated hardware is about the same as all the other AI startups: that ease of use is everything. The NotePin’s accessories are core to its appeal: there’s a braided lanyard so you can wear it around your neck, a wristband so you can wear it Fitbit-style on your arm, and a clip so you can put it almost anywhere else.

In my time testing the NotePin, I’ve mostly had it around my neck, and I’ve used it to note reminders while driving, ramble long ideas to myself while walking the dog, and summarize calls and conversations. It’s certainly handy being able to just reach down, press the NotePin until it vibrates to indicate it’s recording, and then yammer away at nothing while my necklace dutifully listens. Once, when I was particularly enjoying a podcast, I just played the whole thing on speaker so the NotePin would transcribe and summarize it. The NotePin is easier to access than my phone in my pocket, and it’s definitely simpler than holding my wrist in front of my mouth for minutes at a time while shouting into my watch. The form factor definitely matters.

The NotePin’s mic is perfectly fine: the audio it records never sounds amazing, but in every realistic scenario I tried, it was good enough for solid transcription. Plaud estimates the device’s battery lasts for about 18 hours of recording or 30 days of standby time, and in my testing, I’ve done about four hours of recording over about 10 days, and the battery just hit “Low.” The NotePin charges on a tiny pad, which I’m confident I’m going to lose very soon, and I wish it was just a simple USB-C plug. But look: the thing works. It does what it says on the tin.

Screenshots: David Pierce / The Verge
Plaud’s transcriptions and summaries are mostly pretty good! But that’s just not enough.

The major problem with the NotePin, and frankly every other AI gadget, is that it’s not useful enough on the other side. Once you’ve made some recordings with the NotePin, you import them into the Plaud app, which is relatively quick and simple. But then you have to go into each recording and manually tell the app to transcribe it, pick a “template” you want to use for how it’s summarized, and then come back a few minutes later to see what it came up with. (You get 300 monthly minutes of transcriptions and basic templates for free, or for $80 a year, you get 1,200 and more templates and features.) That’s too much busy work. Plus, how much effort am I really saving if I have to pull out my phone — twice! — anyway?

The transcriptions are good, and the summaries are helpful, and so far, I haven’t had any huge mistakes or hallucinations. But once they’re done, they just live in reverse-chronological order in the Plaud app. The app correctly noted that one of my recordings was a reminder to buy retinol; it didn’t remind me of anything. It just made the title “Reminder to buy retinol.” When I wandered my kitchen speaking a grocery list into the NotePin, the app accurately transcribed that list for me but just titled the note “Grocery List with Various Food Items and Household Essentials.”

It’s not really the NotePin’s fault that it can’t do more than turn my nonsensical ramblings into text files. It’s not Plaud’s fault, either. It’s just that what I really want — and what should really happen — is for it to take that grocery list and add it to the grocery list I already have on my phone. It should add that reminder to my to-do list. At the very least, the app should be able to combine my grocery list note with my other grocery list note, but it can’t do that, either. Ultimately, no matter what you’re recording, odds are you want to do something with it afterward, and Plaud simply can’t do most of those things. Eventually, the Plaud app just began to feel like another inbox I needed to check.

All that is why your phone or smartwatch might be insurmountable foes in the AI assistant wars. They might be marginally less convenient — you have to pull it out of your pocket instead of just reaching down to your chest — but they’re far more connected with the rest of your digital life. Building your whole world around a transcription app just doesn’t make any sense.

It’s possible, over time, that these things could become more open. Apple and Google could open up APIs that allow AI assistants to interact with the other apps on your phone, or theoretically, the assistants could get smart enough to just interact with the apps on your behalf. Lots of developers are working on both options. But as it stands right now, the Plauds and Humanes and Rabbits of the world just can’t do enough. AI voice recorders are a great idea — but they’re not a new kind of gadget.

Read More 

Synergy king! | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images

JD Vance’s appearance at the All-In Summit was easily the most comfortable I’ve seen him, but then he was with the people he understands best: other VCs.
The All-In podcast appearance was what business leaders refer to as a display of synergy. Cohost David Sacks’ and Vance’s political fortunes are tied together — if Trump wins, Sacks looks like a kingmaker and has a vice president who owes him favors and will take his calls. If Vance loses, remaining close to his real community — venture capitalists — gives him a valuable network to tap into for future campaigns.
“Donald Trump cares more about the details of public policy than almost anyone I’ve met in public life.”
Vance has called Sacks “one of my closest confidants.” (His other friends include Curtis Yarvin, an anti-democracy software developer, and VC Peter Thiel, about whom, more later.) Sacks has been shoring up influence in the Republican party, first with his flop attempt at coronating Ron DeSantis as the Republican nominee and now with Vance. Besides his fundraising activities, Sacks’ All-In podcast has also hosted Donald Trump and is a place Sacks routinely rants about his take on politics.
As far as I can tell, the purpose of Vance’s appearance on All-In, which is also cohosted by fellow Trump supporter and Silicon Valley SPAC king Chamath Palihapitiya, was to explain away the anti-immigrant sentiment coming from the Republican party.

Vance’s appearance was almost entirely disingenuous. According to Vance, anything bad you have heard about former President Donald Trump is because the lousy people in the American media have been busily lying about him. “The media doesn’t often tell you the truth about Donald Trump,” Vance says. “Donald Trump cares more about the details of public policy than almost anyone I’ve met in public life.” If you don’t believe him, Vance says, “I just encourage you to listen to what he actually says.”
Yes, let’s. The same day the video of the All-In interview was uploaded to YouTube, Trump debated Vice President Kamala Harris. Asked why he had killed an immigration bill, Trump said the following, “First, let me respond to the rallies. She said people start leaving. People don’t go to her rallies, there’s no reason to go.” He went on to discuss how he had “the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.” Okay, but maybe I’m cherry-picking! Let’s try another one. Asked if he had a plan for repealing Obamacare, Trump replied, “I have concepts of a plan.”
Thiel characterized himself as “pro-Trump, pro-JD”
So much for Trump’s grasp on public policy. As much fun as I am having quoting Trump, I am less interested in fisking Vance’s appearance and more interested in what he’s doing on All-In in the first place.
Vance has played at being a man of the people, but he owes his place on Trump’s ticket to Silicon Valley’s billionaires. After all, he is a pet of Thiel, who put forward $15 million for Vance’s Ohio Senate campaign. (There were other wealthy donors, too, including Oculus founder Palmer Luckey.) Thiel said he would sit out this race, but Vance has publicly said he is attempting to get Thiel “off the sidelines” and donating into Trump’s campaign. (In his own All-In appearance, Thiel characterized himself as “pro-Trump, pro-JD” and said that though he is not donating money, he is “supporting them in every other way possible.”)
In Thiel’s absence, his fellow PayPal mafioso Sacks has aggressively moved into politics. Sacks hosted a $300,000-a-person dinner at his mansion to raise tech money for Donald Trump in July. That room wanted Vance for vice president, and it got him.
If you are wondering why Sacks, who is already rich, might be seeking more wealth and power, it’s worth remembering that VCs are middlemen. They have to periodically raise money for their funds, and that’s easier if they look knowledgeable, impressive, connected. Sacks has now hosted both the Republican presidential and vice presidential candidates on his show, and he’s quite cozy with Vance. These kinds of political ties might make fundraising easier or put him in the room with better founders. Even if Trump and Vance lose, he’s still made a powerful statement.
Halting immigration is key to the Trump campaign
That’s the “connections” side of this equation — but Vance’s real job was the “knowledgeable” part. All-In is playing to people who consider themselves tech intelligentsia. They want one of their own to reassure them that despite Trump’s tendency to blurt out nonsense about immigrants eating housepets, he’s a reasonable man like them. Claiming the media is unfairly biased against Trump is the kind of thing that plays in these rooms, where people already believe in an unfair media bias against tech CEOs.
More specifically, the real reason for Vance’s appearance can be found near the middle of the podcast, when he began discussing immigration.
Silicon Valley is full of immigrants, from top (the current CEOs of Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and IBM) to bottom. Immigration is a crucial issue for this group of people. In 2016, when VC Marc Andreessen endorsed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, he said, “The Valley wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t be doing any of this if we didn’t have the amazing flow of immigrants that we’ve had in the last 80 years. And the idea of choking that off just makes me sick to my stomach.”
Halting immigration is key to the Trump campaign, as evinced by signs reading “Mass Deportation Now” that were held up during the Republican convention. In his previous term, Trump targeted the H-1B program, the visas that many tech workers use to come to the US. Andreessen appears to have settled his stomach about this, as he now endorses Trump and had nothing to say about immigration on his own podcast when he explained his decision. Vance’s job was to reassure anyone who might still be feeling queasy.
Any immigrant should be paying attention to Trump’s mass deportation plans
Vance started by making the Republicans’ anti-immigrant stance palatable to anyone who fears it might be bad for business. “Generally I agree, okay, we’re going to let some immigrants in,” he says. “We want them to be high-talent, high quality people. You don’t want to let a large number of illegal aliens in.”
Per Vance, his ticket is about letting the right kind of immigrants in and keeping the wrong kind out. He reminded the crowd that he is married to “the daughter of legal immigrants to this country.” It’s just all the undocumented people that are screwing up America, he says. And all those bad immigrants are going to vote for Democrats. No, seriously, here’s what Vance said:
When somebody like Chuck Schumer says, “Well, you know, we’re going to have an emerging Democratic majority because we’re going to have all these new immigrants and all the old Americans, well, they’re going to vote for Republicans, but we’re going to replace them with a bunch of new people who vote for Democrats,” it’s like, that’s pretty sick.
Vance awkwardly tried to downplay the calls for deportation. “You try to take it one step at a time,” he says. “But the most important thing — and I think the deportations focus, again, it is important because we’re eventually, we are going to deport people — but the most important thing is to stop the bleeding.”
Any immigrant should be paying attention to Trump’s mass deportation plans. Trump has said he wants to deport 15 to 20 million people; the logistics of this will likely be horrifying. People who are here legally may be picked up by accident and detained or deported. It’s awfully convenient for Vance to show up and address an industry full of foreign workers, minimizing the threat. There are shades of his mentor Thiel’s famous comment from 2016: take Trump seriously, but not literally.
We’ve actually had a Trump presidency since those comments, of course. And it suggests Trump should be taken both seriously and literally when he talks about choking off immigration. It’s something he’s already done!
And when Vance says on All-In that he would not have certified the 2020 election — “I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors” are his words, echoing past remarks — that’s something I am inclined to take both seriously and literally, too. Vance is buddies with a monarchist; his mentor Thiel has written, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” His running mate has said, “Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore!” Vance clearly believes in proximity to power. I’m not sure he believes in much else, democracy included. And that seems to suit his Silicon Valley buddies just fine.

Synergy king! | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images

JD Vance’s appearance at the All-In Summit was easily the most comfortable I’ve seen him, but then he was with the people he understands best: other VCs.

The All-In podcast appearance was what business leaders refer to as a display of synergy. Cohost David Sacks’ and Vance’s political fortunes are tied together — if Trump wins, Sacks looks like a kingmaker and has a vice president who owes him favors and will take his calls. If Vance loses, remaining close to his real community — venture capitalists — gives him a valuable network to tap into for future campaigns.

Vance has called Sacks “one of my closest confidants.” (His other friends include Curtis Yarvin, an anti-democracy software developer, and VC Peter Thiel, about whom, more later.) Sacks has been shoring up influence in the Republican party, first with his flop attempt at coronating Ron DeSantis as the Republican nominee and now with Vance. Besides his fundraising activities, Sacks’ All-In podcast has also hosted Donald Trump and is a place Sacks routinely rants about his take on politics.

As far as I can tell, the purpose of Vance’s appearance on All-In, which is also cohosted by fellow Trump supporter and Silicon Valley SPAC king Chamath Palihapitiya, was to explain away the anti-immigrant sentiment coming from the Republican party.

Vance’s appearance was almost entirely disingenuous. According to Vance, anything bad you have heard about former President Donald Trump is because the lousy people in the American media have been busily lying about him. “The media doesn’t often tell you the truth about Donald Trump,” Vance says. “Donald Trump cares more about the details of public policy than almost anyone I’ve met in public life.” If you don’t believe him, Vance says, “I just encourage you to listen to what he actually says.”

Yes, let’s. The same day the video of the All-In interview was uploaded to YouTube, Trump debated Vice President Kamala Harris. Asked why he had killed an immigration bill, Trump said the following, “First, let me respond to the rallies. She said people start leaving. People don’t go to her rallies, there’s no reason to go.” He went on to discuss how he had “the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.” Okay, but maybe I’m cherry-picking! Let’s try another one. Asked if he had a plan for repealing Obamacare, Trump replied, “I have concepts of a plan.”

So much for Trump’s grasp on public policy. As much fun as I am having quoting Trump, I am less interested in fisking Vance’s appearance and more interested in what he’s doing on All-In in the first place.

Vance has played at being a man of the people, but he owes his place on Trump’s ticket to Silicon Valley’s billionaires. After all, he is a pet of Thiel, who put forward $15 million for Vance’s Ohio Senate campaign. (There were other wealthy donors, too, including Oculus founder Palmer Luckey.) Thiel said he would sit out this race, but Vance has publicly said he is attempting to get Thiel “off the sidelines” and donating into Trump’s campaign. (In his own All-In appearance, Thiel characterized himself as “pro-Trump, pro-JD” and said that though he is not donating money, he is “supporting them in every other way possible.”)

In Thiel’s absence, his fellow PayPal mafioso Sacks has aggressively moved into politics. Sacks hosted a $300,000-a-person dinner at his mansion to raise tech money for Donald Trump in July. That room wanted Vance for vice president, and it got him.

If you are wondering why Sacks, who is already rich, might be seeking more wealth and power, it’s worth remembering that VCs are middlemen. They have to periodically raise money for their funds, and that’s easier if they look knowledgeable, impressive, connected. Sacks has now hosted both the Republican presidential and vice presidential candidates on his show, and he’s quite cozy with Vance. These kinds of political ties might make fundraising easier or put him in the room with better founders. Even if Trump and Vance lose, he’s still made a powerful statement.

That’s the “connections” side of this equation — but Vance’s real job was the “knowledgeable” part. All-In is playing to people who consider themselves tech intelligentsia. They want one of their own to reassure them that despite Trump’s tendency to blurt out nonsense about immigrants eating housepets, he’s a reasonable man like them. Claiming the media is unfairly biased against Trump is the kind of thing that plays in these rooms, where people already believe in an unfair media bias against tech CEOs.

More specifically, the real reason for Vance’s appearance can be found near the middle of the podcast, when he began discussing immigration.

Silicon Valley is full of immigrants, from top (the current CEOs of Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and IBM) to bottom. Immigration is a crucial issue for this group of people. In 2016, when VC Marc Andreessen endorsed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, he said, “The Valley wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t be doing any of this if we didn’t have the amazing flow of immigrants that we’ve had in the last 80 years. And the idea of choking that off just makes me sick to my stomach.”

Halting immigration is key to the Trump campaign, as evinced by signs reading “Mass Deportation Now” that were held up during the Republican convention. In his previous term, Trump targeted the H-1B program, the visas that many tech workers use to come to the US. Andreessen appears to have settled his stomach about this, as he now endorses Trump and had nothing to say about immigration on his own podcast when he explained his decision. Vance’s job was to reassure anyone who might still be feeling queasy.

Vance started by making the Republicans’ anti-immigrant stance palatable to anyone who fears it might be bad for business. “Generally I agree, okay, we’re going to let some immigrants in,” he says. “We want them to be high-talent, high quality people. You don’t want to let a large number of illegal aliens in.”

Per Vance, his ticket is about letting the right kind of immigrants in and keeping the wrong kind out. He reminded the crowd that he is married to “the daughter of legal immigrants to this country.” It’s just all the undocumented people that are screwing up America, he says. And all those bad immigrants are going to vote for Democrats. No, seriously, here’s what Vance said:

When somebody like Chuck Schumer says, “Well, you know, we’re going to have an emerging Democratic majority because we’re going to have all these new immigrants and all the old Americans, well, they’re going to vote for Republicans, but we’re going to replace them with a bunch of new people who vote for Democrats,” it’s like, that’s pretty sick.

Vance awkwardly tried to downplay the calls for deportation. “You try to take it one step at a time,” he says. “But the most important thing — and I think the deportations focus, again, it is important because we’re eventually, we are going to deport people — but the most important thing is to stop the bleeding.”

Any immigrant should be paying attention to Trump’s mass deportation plans. Trump has said he wants to deport 15 to 20 million people; the logistics of this will likely be horrifying. People who are here legally may be picked up by accident and detained or deported. It’s awfully convenient for Vance to show up and address an industry full of foreign workers, minimizing the threat. There are shades of his mentor Thiel’s famous comment from 2016: take Trump seriously, but not literally.

We’ve actually had a Trump presidency since those comments, of course. And it suggests Trump should be taken both seriously and literally when he talks about choking off immigration. It’s something he’s already done!

And when Vance says on All-In that he would not have certified the 2020 election — “I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors” are his words, echoing past remarks — that’s something I am inclined to take both seriously and literally, too. Vance is buddies with a monarchist; his mentor Thiel has written, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” His running mate has said, “Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore!” Vance clearly believes in proximity to power. I’m not sure he believes in much else, democracy included. And that seems to suit his Silicon Valley buddies just fine.

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