Devindra: What's up, Internet, and welcome back to the Engadget Podcast. I'm Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar.

Cherlynn: I'm Deputy Editor Cherlynn Low.

Devindra: Also, Podcast Producer Ben Ellman. Hey, Ben. Hey, everybody. Hello. This week, Blue Sky is on fire. I guess in a good way. I've been using the site for a while, and it is wild to see a huge influx of new people.

Over a million people have joined Blue Sky over the last week leaving X slash Twitter. I wonder why. Blue Sky. I don't know, you take your guests, folks. We'll be talking about that. Like why blue sky has become such a new home for, for Twitter expats. What is, I think the advantage of blue sky over other things?

Like I know you're a big threads user, Cherlynn. So I really want to know like how you're feeling about it versus threads. Cause I, I never felt threads even though like they were like, Oh yeah, we got, we got hundreds of million people already, like almost immediately because we're just Facebook. Bringing over all our Instagram users that felt like cheating.

We'll talk a bit about that. I also want to talk about you know, we occasionally dabble in Elon Musk news and he has been certainly in the news this election cycle. We'll talk about how he is sort of ingratiating himself into the Trump administration and kind of what that means. And to help us dissect that too, we're going to have an interview with Justin Hendrix, CEO and editor of Tech Policy Press.

He's going to help us break it down too. So stay tuned for all of that stuff. As always, folks, if you're enjoying the show, please be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or your podcatcher of choice. Leave us a review on iTunes, drop us an email at podcast@engadget.com. Join us Thursday mornings around 10 45 AM Eastern for our live stream on our YouTube channel.

We're doing it this morning. We missed it last week for. Reasons for reasons you can probably guess but we're happy to be back. It's great to see the crowd here And I don't know I'm just gonna I'm gonna post and create content through the hellscape trillin I don't know what your plan is, but I guess that's it.

Just do the job and try to help our local communities, right?

Cherlynn: Right lots of volunteering And trying to stay, trying, trying to figure, trying to not be deported for no reason.

Devindra: That too. That too. I mean, listen, it's not just you. I am also a naturalized citizen, Trillian, so I was not born in this country. They could come up with all sorts of reasons to deal with us.

Anyway, folks. Let's talk about Blue Sky. Let's talk about, I think, better, more fun news. Cherlynn, have you seen in your time off, have you seen Blue Sky blowing up? Because it's something I've been seeing just happening over the past week.

Cherlynn: No, because I tried to take a break from most social media during this time off, but also I read our article about this Blow up, blow up.

And I think what was it? The user number grew from something like 9 million, maybe a month or so ago to about 15 million, which you just mentioned threads is general user account is in the hundreds of millions, but for something as niche as blue sky. I think maybe, you know, it's, it's exponential growth and the growth that coincided with a large number of people leaving Twitter or X.

I didn't personally see it during my time off and I'm not sure how convinced I am of Blue Sky's general, like long term sustainability. But I do want to point out that there are people in the general public and our chat on the live stream that are like, Hey, what is blue sky? Never heard about it.

Or like Simon B or B like young key gorgeous. Like I heard about blue sky about six months back. I had it on my phone, but I never tried to do to privacy. I think there is a broader audience outside the tech space that doesn't even know what the heck is a blue sky. Other than the thing outside our windows.

Devindra: This is a good time for a refresh. I think when these other social media, you know, ideas, when these other services popped up, it was blue sky. It was mastodon and threads. A lot of people wanted to make the anti Twitter. Basically a similar thing to Twitter, but a little different, more decentralized.

And blue sky, just like Mastodon is a decentralized social network. So it's not relying on like a single server somewhere. It is kind of spread out across servers all over the place. The actual protocol I believe is open source. Blue sky is not like a single major corporation either. Like it is a, it is a small organization and they're trying really hard to like.

Make the service itself. Like not, not be just like Twitter. It's really interesting because when we, when we talked about this stuff, Mastodon was like the super nerdy Mastodon was like the Linux of this whole situation where the nerdiest folks went in on like the highly technical stuff, also super decentralized.

You can access blue sky feeds from within Mastodon, all federated. Blue sky was the one that was initially backed by Jack Dorsey. And a lot of people had their like concerns about that too. The blue sky community basically Chased him away, like basically chased him away with like really being committed to the idea of an open decentralized social network and One that would not stand for like the stuff that Dorsey was was Seemingly okay with remember Dorsey's post about the there's one person he sees that can shepherd x slash Twitter Shepherd Twitter at the time To the future, and that was Elon Musk.

Cherlynn: Wonder what he thinks about that now, but cool.

Devindra: You know, doesn't matter. He's still got a lot of money. He has gotten millions from that deal too. Just

Cherlynn: philosophically, but yeah.

Devindra: It's true. It's true. But yeah, Blue Sky is like the other one. Threads essentially was a copycat. Threads was born out of, you know, Instagram code.

And there was a lot of news about Zuckerberg and the team over at Meta just being like, Hey Twitter is weak. Let's, let's, let's make a Twitter super fast. And they made it really quickly. It feels like you just take a part of Instagram and you turn it into a Twitter clone. That's what Threads is. And I know you've liked Threads, Cherlynn.

When that thing launched and when I started using it, all it felt like, it was like, when you go to a party in New York, right. And everybody's a cloud chaser. Everyone's Oh man, get, Oh my God. You're doing this thing. I'm doing this thing. Look at my thing. You're going to come to my show. You're going to, you're going to buy my album.

You're going to do my thing. And it was always, it was always very transactional. It's Oh my God, retweet my thing. And I'll do this thing for you. And it never felt real. Nobody really felt real on threads to me. Also threads was very much not a proper timeline. It was a purely algorithmic time timeline.

So you couldn't really track real time news. Sometimes your timeline would show posts from days ago. You can do a real time feed now, but it's, or a feed of just your folLowrs, but it's not default. You can't make it the default. Also Zuckerberg and crew were very much we're not going to emphasize news.

Or you know, media on blue on threads very much. It's going to be about good vibes, good feelings. It really felt like a point

Ben: where they were just, they mentioned that to their advertisers. This is going to be a good vibes only platform as a way of saying that it was brand safe.

Devindra: Yes. Sort of like the Disneyland of social networks, I'd say.

But yeah, go ahead.

Cherlynn: I'm curious how much either of you use threads nowadays.

Devindra: I've used, I mean, I get pings from it cause I get people tag me in it. So I don't know about you, Ben. I'm in it. I occasionally visit the feed and it's sort of like when I visit Instagram of Oh, this, this thing is kind of unusable in a way where I can't find any friends.

The stuff I'm actually seeing is mostly garbage. They also just announced that they're going to be working on bringing ads to threads next year. Yep. And that is another advantage of something like blue sky, where people can. They're the only plan they have now is not for advertising. It is for like a premium model for the pro users who really want to invest in the platform to kind of pay for a little bit.

Yeah.

Cherlynn: And, and Ben, what was your use again?

Devindra: Zero.

Cherlynn: Okay. So I'm a pretty frequent user of threads when I'm not trying to distance myself from social media in general. Some of the big current problems with threats continue to be the engagement bait that dominates your not your, the algorithmic timeline, not your folLowr following only timeline.

And a lot of duplicative content. I get the same feeling you do sometimes Devindra that a lot of this is, you know, when, when people on Twitter used to just wholesale copy and paste things from Reddit and put it in Reddit and Twitter just to get that and subscribe sort of, collateral and cash.

I think there's a lot of it that is very similar to the early days of Twitter. And yeah, the news that came out recently about ads coming to threads sooner than we had initially heard from Zuckerberg and co. Specifically, I think, Moseri, Moseri, I don't know, That guy and co. Adam Mosseri. Yeah. Adam Mosseri.

Yeah. So, so there is a bit of like warnings on the horizon and there are some vibes that aren't only good vibes. I will say that I think over the very short time it's been around and Threads was like one of the newer ones compared the Mastodons and the Blue Skies and whatever else actually I think Twitter clones came out.

There were more, we just don't remember them anymore. The threads has actually made significant changes and improvements to some of its like tool set and like feature set. So like the fact that there is a folLowr only timeline, they're like, Oh, we heard you. And then there's, I actually enjoy the audio thread feature on threads more than Twitter, which was instantly like when it first launched didn't even have like subtitles or captioning, whereas like the way threads does it is you record a voice thing into the app and then it'll attach your voice as a file but then transcribe what you said as the post content.

I mean there's stuff there that's good and then there's a lot of stuff that feels like obvious ripoff of Twitter, which it is trying to be. And. Facebook meta, whatever. Hasn't been like embarrassed about the fact that it does do that.

Devindra: It was a blatant clip. Like they were not shy about saying we're just copying Twitter.

But also, yeah. Oh God. Or clubhouse. But the thing is I don't think I can't really trust any meta own social network at this point. Like I go to Instagram and my actual feed is garbage. And the only useful stuff in Instagram is occasionally reels. Cause occasionally I find funny stuff there. I guess WhatsApp kind of counts.

Cause I do a lot of private chats and WhatsApp. So there's that, but using Facebook, using Instagram is such like a terrible user experience to me. Like I can't find where things are. I, they keep shifting the UI. You mentioned early Twitter and I think that's the thing. I'm thinking of one of the original, like one of the first skits from Portlandia, right?

The dream, the dream of the nineties is alive in Portland. The dream of really Twitter. Is alive on blue sky, the weirdness, the people just sharing like whatever shit they want and like being less concerned about okay, I got to tweak this thing to go viral. Or it's like to build the engagement bait or whatever.

They have really good moderation like good content filtering tools. So you can just like basically nuke, whatever words you want or whatever type of content you don't want to see. The block feature is like a nuclear block. So it. Removes that person from your view also removes yourself from their view I think too and you just like never have to think about that person again, too So

Ben: do

Devindra: you

Ben: know if that was inspired by twitter making its block?

No,

Devindra: that was that was long before that was like one of the key features so they the At the very least, like blue sky feels to me like what I remember the internet used to be when we used to make services that were like driven by the users and the actual creators and the coders behind it, the builders were not as concerned about revenue and not as concerned about just Insane growth.

That's the thing you look at threads and Zuckerberg and crew were, we could not wait to say, Oh yeah, we hit 50 million users. We hit a hundred million users. It was all about the growth. It was all about the engagement and blue sky for a long time. Just was not about that. Now they're getting the influx of people from X slash Twitter.

And. And I think like I'm seeing people I've not talked to in a long time because they are just coming in and using the service. It feels like meeting old friends again. That's at least for me being a long time, 2008 Twitter user. So I feel like those vibes are there. It's really like constructive, which is nice.

Yeah.

Cherlynn: I personally feel that what we're going to see if. Considering like all these platforms stay, you know, around for as long as each other, I think what we're going to see is that threads by nature of the fact that it was born from like Instagram and like that sort of thing, will see a very specific type of content because its users are very specific type of people.

They're very like Visual first, right? For example, Threads one of their, I think one of their more popular slash well liked features is that when you post Like several pictures in a post and you pinch to zoom them they connect and become one Long panorama picture and so it's been very fun to play around with that Like people post two halves of a picture But they're like disconnected halves really and then you pinch them and they connect into this like loony little picture.

It's cute And photographers like it because they can post panoramas and people can actually see it It's kind of the first time we gonna see them be displayed. So you've got the people who are very picture firs, very like video firs and influencers and creators that are very curated looking. Whereas I think a blue sky sort of space, which I have been on, right, but I have not been on a lot recently and maybe it's because I don't see a lot of the type of content I want to connect with there.

It's probably gonna appeal to the people who are like, yeah, like I don't you know, very interested in a more nerdy space. Maybe I don't know if it's nerdy is the right word, but it's a, it feels a bit different from the threads user. And then at the same time, threads posts are like, you can opt into the Fediverse.

So your, your posts can be seen everywhere. And I think blue sky. Either already does or is going to do that, right?

Devindra: It is. It is. Yeah, they've joined the Fediverse. So,

Cherlynn: so ultimately the app you use is going to be the one you vibe with more. And then all our posts are going to be able to be seen across platforms, hopefully.

Devindra: That would be the ideal. Yeah, it would be nice. But we, we, we do have to think I feel like Meta and Zuckerberg were really like, initially they were like all in with the idea of making threads part of the Fediverse. And now I think it's kind of opt in. They're sort of de emphasizing it. Yeah, it's opt in.

They also realize that. It, once those posts are kind of out there, you are free to move your entire account to Blue Sky or you're free to move your entire thing to Mastodon or somewhere else. And the thing about Facebook is they just want to keep you, they want to keep you in their walled garden, like as much as possible.

So that's possible. I,

Cherlynn: I opted into the Fediverse, like I want to say two or three months, well, two months ago or. One month ago, something like that. And nothing really has changed other than that little dot that shows up. And then when I opted in, it definitely gave me a warning which may be indicative of their concern here, which is that Hey, if you, the second you allow these posts out into the Fediverse, it, you know, you're not.

using the same moderation tools. Those are out there. Other people can see them. People that you have blocked here might still be able to see them elsewhere, that sort of thing, which is, you know, fair warning. Right. So maybe that was part of the concern, but they've made the language very clear for people who are opting in.

It still shows at the top of my profile every day on the threads page that Hey, your content is being shared at the Fediverse. Just To let you know that your stuff is not always protected by our tools.

Devindra: Does it give you an easy way to see what's happening on blue sky within threads? Cause I don't think that's the thing.

So it's sort of like you're spitting into the Fediverse, but you're not like engaging with it. Exactly.

Cherlynn: That's what I do. Yeah, exactly. So I churn content for the Fediverse, but I don't actually engage with any of it. Out there. I don't even know how to see replies. Well, I think you can see replies from the Fediverse from within threats.

Devindra: Yeah, I think you can, but yeah, I don't know. Like I added you to my my skeet about this episode and I forget if it was, that was that your, your normal blue sky

Cherlynn: blue sky. Yeah.

Devindra: Okay. Okay. Anyway, things are messy. I will say as somebody who's been using Twitter since 2008 and who remembers the old social networks.

Like I am, I love Twitter. The internet guys, like the thing that brought me to the internet in the first place in 1995 96 was like video game message boards, anime message boards as an anime chat rooms, you know, those things in college. It was like plan world and the sort of like internal social networks.

You could do Facebook was never a big part. Facebook basically hit as soon as I was leaving college. So it wasn't a part of my college life. And it was just like this thing was like, Oh, this is interesting. This is a really sanitized America online version version of the social networks we've seen before, like live journal and Zynga and everything.

Cherlynn: Friendster and Myspace,

Devindra: So Facebook was like a real sanitization of the space. I just never had any love for it, but then Twitter hit and Twitter was like, Oh, you're just like blogging. You're just like blogging, but shorter thoughts, instant access. And I was a micro blogging, micro blogging even. And I was just a huge fan of it because like you could have conversations with actual people like artists big time directors and whatnot.

So it was helpful for being in the media industry for starting a podcast for all sorts of stuff. I just think moving forward for me. Blue Sky feels like the network that will survive because it's so decentralized and because, you know, the people working on it seem like they want to build a thing and not just make a ton of money.

I think that's the main thing.

Ben: So, Devindra, what would you say to the idea that after you went down this walk down memory lane of old internet platforms and, like, how nice they felt? What if blue sky feels like that only because it has like that magic number of users to make it fun to interact with, but not so overwhelming.

And that's what you're actually nostalgic for, like just a internet that was overall smaller.

Devindra: Maybe, maybe that could be it too. I mean, it's, it's not like I'm following, I don't follow a ton of people. Even on Twitter, like I didn't have a huge following. It was like, I don't know. Over twenty thousand I guess.

I mean, I think

Cherlynn: to Ben's point it's also that more and more people on the internet are now people who have grown up with the internet and have never known a day without the internet. And they're, they come at it with a very different approach, right? They're And I think that's some of what I personally might be reacting to that I find a lot of the I'm being an old person, older person feeling as if these youngins coming in are, you know, ruining everything maybe.

And so I think that is part of it. But I also think that we're seeing, you know, More and more people who didn't have the internet before join the internet and use it as a space to just channel their hate into Whereas people who are a bit more positive and like chill might just be channeling their positivity into the real world outside going up for walks and hikes and Working with charities.

I don't know Wild guess.

Ben: Well, yeah, and we're coming back to the idea of like more people on the internet in general means less good etiquette overall. More or less

Cherlynn: good energy, right? Eternal September, all of that

Ben: stuff.

Cherlynn: Like less being outside and enjoying and soaking in good vibes. The internet is such a triggering place sometimes.

It is a good place if you're only subscribed to are made me smile or like just really positive things. But that's not the stuff we've learned over the years. That's not the stuff that gets the engagement. People react more to things that they're angry about. And so it's slowly becoming or has rapidly become a place where only negativity is fostered.

Devindra: This is true, but I think that's also a broad paintbrush, Rylan, because that, that paintbrush was basically meta. That is what Facebook did for a very long time in terms of what they did with Instagram. And Twitter now, but what if, what if you could rebuild a service from scratch, knowing the mistakes of what everybody before you has made, put in good, put in good moderation, put in good blocking tools.

I feel like blue sky is kind of a response to that. So yes, we should all go outside more, especially now and take some time offline and recenter yourself and everything. But if we were. We are social creatures, like we're not going to get rid of social networking. That's not a thing that's going to disappear.

And the internet itself feels like it was made to be a social network. You know, that the connection you have with somebody. over a computer screen. That was the initial magic for me. So I think like for me, at least Blue Sky seems like it has learned a lot of the lessons that has failed all these other services, like Twitter and Facebook and everything have given up on misinformation claims, like trying to moderate misinformation and deal with that.

Blue sky, like you can deal with that on a community level. You could see if other people are blocking a particular account and know that this is a, an account you should be aware of. That could be a problem. So,

Ben: okay. But community level also relies on the number of people being like manageable for you to understand.

Devindra: That is true. That is true. Anyway, I'm just saying from what I've seen, blue sky is good. I see, I see why it's good. That's probably where I'll be spending my more of my time. If you can find me there. I'd recommend you guys check it out too. If you want just like a, I think the internet can be better. We have seen, we have seen better internet and it's not just the sheer volume of people.

Is it

Cherlynn: Is, is blue sky still invite only? Cause I want to point out someone in the chat that remind us that it was invite only for a while. It was for a while.

Speaker 4: Yeah. That

Cherlynn: does. It's add to the idea, right? That fosters a bit of a different vibe. If you're only invited to be in this place, then when you're let in, you're very happy.

Now it's open to all, which is nice. And I think but there is still that vibe, like you said, of early Twitter where not everyone knows about us. We're still this special crowd and, and there's still maybe a bit of, you know, joy associated with that. I think that that time

Devindra: has long been done because it's been open to, to join for a long time.

Right. And how do people Also point out.

Ben: Wow, okay, Blue Sky went no invite only as of February of this year. I thought it was like just a few months ago. No, it's been open for a while. The other thing I'll point out Technically, February

Cherlynn: is a few months, as in it's more than, It's not a few months.

It's not more than 10 months ago. It's still half a year.

Ben: But the idea of a couple is two and a few is three. Really?

Cherlynn: A few is three, that's interesting to

Devindra: me. The other thing is yeah, I guess sure, any invite only system Could be like an insular little club. There are really smart reasons for not opening up a thing until it's too ready.

You know, because you want to actually build the moderation tools. You want to actually listen to users and see like things that you, you should actually be building also say like in the invite only mode, blue sky was also a home for all of our users. Huge numbers of marginalized populations. So sex workers were on blue sky.

Trans people had a huge community on blue sky. The service like was, was a safe haven for people for a long time. And I also feel like that's a good thing, especially as they started to feel less welcome on X. For sure. So anyway, I think blue skies it's interesting. We'll be tracking all of it. I hope to see you all there.

I'm at DaVindra on blue sky. Let us know what you think. Podcasts and gadget. com. Are you just tired of all the social networks? I don't know. Have you given up? Let us know folks.

Speaker 4: And

Devindra: the thing we have really not been saying, but it's kind of tied to all this is the elephant in the room. The elephant in the room is that the the huge migration away from X is a lot, largely due to Donald Trump winning the presidency, Elon Musk supporting it heavily to the tune of a estimated 200 million.

There were a lot of stories about how wild Elon was getting around all this stuff, including bussing people who didn't know what they were supporting to you know, to ring doorbells and whatnot. And not paying them and moving them around the new halls, really terrible stuff, but essentially, I don't know, felt a little bit like he was buying our democracy.

That all happened. And then we've seen reports, especially from the New York times and a lot of other sources that Elon Musk is essentially now like a an honorary member of the Trump family. He is everywhere. There's a big piece at the New York times that everybody should check out. It's called at Mar a Lago.

Uncle Elon Musk puts his imprint on the Trump transition. Apparently Musk with his four year old son X. Yeah. And his nanny have been hanging out at Mar a Lago. He has been in a lot of meetings with Trump. He has been weighing in on cabinet positions just general things altogether, like things that the, the administration is doing.

Word is he has more, he's had as much influence as the people who were, you know, hired to actually help run the administration. We also saw the news. Did you guys see the news about the department of government efficiency? I saw the Elizabeth Warren

Cherlynn: tweet in reaction to that.

Devindra: A lot of red flags.

So yeah Trump announced that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are our favorite tech bros will lead something called quote, the department of government efficiency end quote. Yes, the acronym is DOGE. I hate it here. A couple, a couple of things we want to point out to, to actually I just

Ben: looked up the price graph for DOGE coin and it is a hockey stick right now, just so you know, it's all, it's all money, folks.

It's all money anyway. Well, it's all money, but it's also like, All kind of speculative, like the fact that he called it Doge is probably just trying to pump

Devindra: the price of Dogecoin too. But that's always been Elon Musk. Yeah, no, it's always been that. Let me make one thing clear before we start going deeper into this, is that when you say you're creating a new federal department, that, that has to be approved by Congress.

And that is a big thing to actually accomplish. Yes, Republicans will have full control of the House and Senate. They, they have all control of the branches of government and we are in for a really dark and interesting four years and aftermath of all that stuff. So it could potentially happen. I don't think like looking at these guys, Elon Musk, who is still on paper CEO of several of his companies is still a busy guy.

Otherwise. I don't, I don't think he will actually do this. I don't think Rama Swami will actually want to sit down and run a whole department. This seems more like a really fancy name for an advisory panel. Right? Like just a couple of guys who get together in a meeting room, cut this, this, and this from the budget.

They're saying they want to cut 12 2 trillion from the federal budget. Actual economists. I believe like Larry Summers was like, that is ridiculous. You cannot do that. That is insane. Even if you fired every federal worker. Working for the government. That is impossible. So just like a full self driving, you know, maybe a promise that will never be fully realized by Elon Musk.

I also want to point out department of government efficiency needs two people to run it. That's not very efficient.

Cherlynn: That's Elizabeth Warren's tweet, right? Like you're referencing.

Devindra: That's not very efficient at all. I don't know. I don't know if she said it, but it's something I have been thinking about and I love Liz Warren.

So sure. I'm, I'm not. I mean, that was exactly

Cherlynn: what I saw. The tweet that I saw. Yeah. And I thought that was freaking hilarious. I almost swore. So

Devindra: it's, it's just, it's just ridiculous. I mean, I would laugh if I wasn't so terrified of what a lot of this will lead to. But essentially Elon Musk has his like finger in the administration.

He has put a lot of money in the administration probably to save, you know, on paying the taxes that he, he owes the actual country. They're going to save money by Lowring taxes on the rich. I'm sure somehow that will lead to more money. For, for the government. Julian, do you have thoughts on Musk or, or Ben?

Ben: Yeah. Can I get really nerdy here for a second? The department of government efficiency could be a cover for something that was in project 2025 and something that was. Also really like well known among kind of like the Musk and Peter Thiel techno libertarian circles. This idea of firing a bunch of government employees to not make the government more efficient but actually make the government more compliant because you have these like long term government employees who might have their own thoughts about whether or not what What one administration or another administration does is a good idea.

So this was floated in 2020, around the time Trump was up for re election the last time. That was under the term Schedule F. The F might have stood for firing? I'm not sure. And then it was also 2025. When it comes to Peter Thiel's influence on this, and his connection to J. D. Vance, there is, you know, this guy Curtis Yarvin, who is, you know, a big thinker, really does not believe in a democracy, and has been entirely bankrolled by Peter Thiel for a long time.

The people

Devindra: who want

Ben: to essentially

Devindra: believe like a new monarchy should be the thing, right? The tech people should be A techno monarchy. Yeah. Yes,

Ben: yes. And so, Curtis Yarvin, under his blog pen name Menacious Moldbug, or whatever, has been talking about an acronym called RAGE for a while. Retire All Government Employees.

This is something that J. D. Vance has talked about, and this is something that, let me look it up for a second, the Arizona Senate candidate who was also bankrolled by Peter Thiel.

Devindra: Yes! It's all connected. This is not a surprise. Like you can draw a straight line from those initial schedule F plans to project 2025, which is the far right wing plan for what they want to accomplish with the next Trump administration, which is all very tiring.

And you know, frightening. You can definitely draw a straight line to all this stuff. It's all interconnected. There were reports that Peter Thiel and Trump were like, initially, they were friends of each other. But I think those support, the subordinates like J. D. Vance, J. D. Vance was like an acolyte of Peter Thiel.

It's all, it's all

Ben: connected. So we want to raise The guy I was thinking about was Blake Masters. Yes. Blake Masters also talked about rage.

Devindra: The line between tech and big tech and certainly like the big billionaires of tech and influence in the government is like It is, it is very much a thing now. That is why crypto is such a big thing that they're talking about in the new Trump administration.

It's all there. This is going to be an ongoing story for us, but we wanted to just kind of point it all out because we're going to be hearing more about this. We're going to hear more about Elon Musk having an actual influence in our politics, which It's just kind of a weird thing. Cause normally he's been the guy to be like, don't just don't regulate me, bro.

Just, just leave us alone. Let me build my things or let me apologize for when my not so self driving cars have accidents. So. Which is a whole other level of things that we'll be talking about. So that's why I want to chat with Mr. Justin Hendrix, the CEO founder and editor of Tech Policy Press.

It's a non profit news site focused on the intersection of technology and public policy. They do news, they do newsletter they do a lot of work to explore how the tech world is really influencing the way our government is working. And I think they're doing a lot of good work there too. So I want to get Justin's thoughts on Musk, on Elon Musk and everything he's trying to do in the Trump administration now.

Here's our chat. Justin Hendrix, thank you so much for joining us on the Engadget podcast. Thank you for having me. Before we begin, I really want to give you a chance to talk about Tech Policy Press and what you guys are doing there, because I remember your work, Justin, you were at the was it the NYC Media Lab,

Justin: right?

Absolutely. I spent eight years at New York City Media Lab, a consortium of universities and media and news organizations here in New York City, focused on emerging media technology, looking at a range of questions about how to use What we called machine learning then, but now people call it artificial intelligence in the media.

Before that, I spent a dozen years at the Economist. So I've always had this sort of strange career at the intersection of media and tech. Started teaching a class called Tech, Media, and Democracy. Been teaching that for Now seven, eight years at NYU and now lately also at Cornell tech. And along the way, you decided that's the intersection I want to work at full time and tech policy press along with my co founder, Brian Jones kind of came out of that instinct.

Devindra: Very cool. And you guys are, are basically a nonprofit media organization, right?

Justin: Absolutely. We are a five Oh one. C3 nonprofit charity, you know, and our goal is to advance debate, discussion, analysis, perspective on tech policy issues really at that intersection of, of tech and democracy, tech and society.

So cover a range of topics, but a big part of it is trying to diversify. The number of voices and the kind of diversity and improve the you know, geographical and other forms of diversity about people who are in the tech policy debate

Devindra: when this new started happening, Justin, basically after the election we were all in deep despair and I'm, I'm still in I think the, the grief or anger stage, I think at this point But I was thinking about you and the work you guys do in terms of kind of reflecting on the intersection of technology and and policy and everything.

And then I saw the news about Elon Musk and his like deeper insertion in the Trump administration. And I really just felt like we had to chat about this. First of all you guys did a really cool thing. You you published a kind of a timeline of Elon Musk's like political I dunno, contributions or like political work.

Up to this point can you guys talk about like, how, how has Elon Musk been as a person who's been influencing policy at this point? Cause it seems like he is, he's just like deeper in it than he ever has been before.

Justin: Yeah, we've come a long ways from the days that, you know, some journalists and major outlets were questioning whether it's possible to pin down Elon Musk's politics.

It now seems very possible not only to pin it down, but to look at a long evidentiary record. Of multiple years of effort in the United States, but also abroad. I mean, in various countries around the world, Elon Musk has gotten involved in politics, got involved in various political scuffles, often where it suits his business interests, you know, where he's after either natural resources or other, some other form of resource that's useful to his business, where he's after more business, of course or, you know, where it seems to suit his interests.

Political interest and, and maybe his personal interest in feeling that he is important and respected and helping to, to shape world events. I mean, clearly this is a person who, you know, thinks in kind of historical terms, thinks in a kind of looking down from some high up place on, on the globe as a thing that needs to be terraformed in his interest.

Thank you. ,

Devindra: I'm really you, we, we discussed the amount of money he poured into the Trump campaign to kind of help influence this election. I feel like at this point we can safely say he, he sort of just bought his influence here, right? Like the, the New York Times article basically says that he has been everywhere with Trump taking some key meetings, helping with decisions and whatnot.

And that, that came from his 200 million estimated contribution to the campaign is I mean, yeah, is that what you guys are seeing on your end too?

Justin: Yeah, you know, if you think about the amount, it may not seem like that much from Elon Musk's perspective, a couple of hundred million dollars or more isn't that much, but one of the things I would just encourage your listeners to realize that when you hear that number it's, it's not the only amount of money this individual has spent certainly to influence American politics over the last couple of years.

And there's been a lot of reporting lately that goes back to 2022 in some cases earlier. where Musk has been financing various activities, financing campaigns, getting involved in politics helping to shape, you know, various outcomes across the country. He's really been spending a lot of money, really been putting a lot of his own personal energy into these efforts perhaps for longer than most people realize.

And it makes me wonder, You know, whether certain events that have occurred in the past, certain things that have been emphasized for instance, by Republicans at a high level, you know, to what extent was Elon Musk consulted to what extent was he possibly driving some of that activity and behavior?

At least in some ways now this is out in the open very much. He is hanging out at Mar a Lago with the president elect. Apparently some folks there are jokingly referring him to him as, you know, Uncle Elon. He's appearing in family photos and apparently you know, even Trump is sort of mystified at the extent to which he wants to stick around.

Devindra: We kind of brought this up around you know, Russia's war against Ukraine early on Starlink had a major role to play there too, because they were you know, a Musk's company was helping to bring internet to the Ukrainian war front. And then he also basically kind of inserted himself into that war to like, there was a story about him basically turning off Starlink connections at the, at the battlefield or at the, the front of the lines or something.

I guess that, that is, that was kind of the first step where I was like, Oh, he is. He's sort of like an unelected government official at this point because his companies are so deeply entwined in Governments around the world to not just America.

Justin: Absolutely, you know, check my figures, but I think he's done at this stage It's easy to say billions of dollars in business with the United States government And probably very similarly impressive figures with many other governments around the world you know, he is a unique figure in, in world history who is both a technologist and, and such obviously politically interesting character.

And I think we probably haven't seen anything yet. I mean, despite what happens with Donald Trump and despite what happens over the next few months, you know, Elon Musk is projected to become the world's first trillionaire in just a handful of years. I don't think that. I understand, and I doubt many of your listeners do, what it would even be like to look at the world through the eyes of a trillionaire, someone with such extraordinary resources and the ability to bend history to your will.

Devindra: It is. I think that is, that's probably a big part of it too. We talk about you know, Zuckerberg's major I don't know, glow up. But also the way he has viewed the world too. And him talking about Oh, he's doesn't want to apologize anymore about things. It almost seems like he has gained a perspective, maybe from therapy or life coach or something to help him center himself with his influence and his wealth.

Whereas I feel like Elon is just too online. You know, he is somebody, I feel like he bought Twitter, right. Just to be King Twitter to kind of control the, the the conversation there. And that was the end up, I don't know, I don't know if he's going to see that as a success or not, but it's also another thing where it's man, that really helped to influence a conversation to like his way over Twitter, his purchasing Twitter, yet another thing.

We try not to speculate too much about like how these people are thinking, but. It must be weird to be Elon Musk, but also to be a guy who can have this idea about he wants to reproduce a ton, right? But he can also make that a reality and build his compound in Texas and house his I don't know, ever growing family.

He has the money and the power to make his dreams come true. And I guess that's more true than ever now, at least for the next four years. Right?

Justin: Absolutely. And you know, when it comes to Mark Zuckerberg, I don't know what to I mean, I know the headline on him today is he's Just dropped a cover with T Pain.

You know, so things are weird there too. Let's not go there necessarily. But you know, another thing to think about when it comes to Elon Musk and, and his potential influence is the extent to which at some point he may wear out his welcome with the president elect who notoriously You know, does not like to be seen, to be puppeted, or to have a, a boss.

If you remember back in kind of 2017, 2018 time frame, there was a lot of conversation around whether Steve Bannon was the one pulling the strings in the White House. You know, he was, of course, the kind of chief strategist there. And I believe SNL kind of had a skit where they made fun of the idea that Steve Bannon, you know, was in fact the kind of real brains of the, the Trump administration.

And I suspect that if there's something similar like that with Musk, where folks are beginning to question, well, you know, who's really making these appointment suggestions, or who's really setting policy, or who really wrote that executive order, I can imagine that potentially, you know, making Donald Trump.

Respond in a similar vein that he did to Steve Bannon, who, if you recall, was only in the office for, I think, about six months.

Devindra: Yeah, yeah, there are several stories, not just Bannon, but other people who have helped Trump who were fundraising or working on his campaign, and he let them go for similar reasons, because it seems like he doesn't want other people to seem like they're stealing his spotlight or his attention, so, I don't know, we've got a bunch of very rich, thin skinned men with a lot of power nothing can go wrong here, right?

Justin: Well, on the other hand, you know, it's possible that Musk is now so important to the GOP generally. I mean, it's, remember, he didn't just give to Trump's campaign this go round. He was funding efforts at up and down the ticket in various geographies. And, you know, even in some cases getting very granular in terms of the, Types of representatives and you know, he, or types of elected candidates that he was supporting.

So, you know, is this guy the new, you know, Charles Coke or something along those lines? I, I, I think it's, it's possible that he could be.

Devindra: He is, yeah, he's the meme Lord version of Charles Koch, I guess. We, we briefly mentioned the stories about him essentially trucking over people to do canvassing and to do campaigning for Trump traveling, you know, moving them around in U Hauls and not paying some people to like just the grossest stories which.

It, at this point, I don't think he'll ever be punished for. Right. Like that, that just seems like a thing that happened. And we're just moving on with this new reality. I want to ask you, Justin did you all have any thoughts about the ideas around the department of government efficiency, which we we're very clear about would not be an actual department unless it was approved and, you know, by Congress and even that seems not, I guess it would be unlikely typically, but also now they've, they control all the branches.

So it's going to be really tough. What have you guys seen or heard about the department of government efficiency from the tech policy press side of things?

Justin: Yeah. I mean, this is a, you know, a promise essentially that, that Trump made to Musk some time ago that he'd involve him somehow in his government.

And. I think it was Elon Musk who came up with the idea that it would be called this Department of Government Efficiency. And of course experts, including I'm sure some that you've quoted folks like Don Moynihan that we quoted from you know, academic who studies the administrative state.

Pointed out that the president can't set up a real department that requires an act of Congress But I think there have been some questions raised in the subsequent reporting about Whether there might be an attempt at some kind of end run around that That there may be an effort at potentially trying to You go in a different direction and challenge some of the kind of legal basis for the limitations on the president's power in this regard.

So we'll see what happens. I mean, I think, you know, I know when I posted news of the idea that even though they've chosen this name, and of course it's a bit of a play on Doge and Dogecoin you know, that, that perhaps it would require there to be more involvement from Congress. You know, other people kind of commented back to me, and I think probably rightly so.

You know, hey man, you, you're imagining there is a rule of law, you know, you're imagining folks are potentially going to follow the rules rather than just run rush shot over them. So we'll see. I mean, we'll, we'll just see what happens over the next few months.

Devindra: We will, that's kind of the thing I think we're all repeating to ourselves over the next four years.

We will see, we will see. Well, you know what, Justin, thank you so much. I definitely want to chat more as we delve deeper into the Trump Admin 2. 0. Is there anything can you, can you tell us like where can we find your work online and tell us more about Tech Policy Press as well?

Justin: Yeah, absolutely.

Well, we're at techpolicy. press, P R E S S you can find me on, on BlueSky these days, LinkedIn, Mastodon would appreciate engaging with folks

Devindra: there. We, we just had a long conversation about BlueSky and why, why it is a very worthy Twitter platform. You know, alternative at this point. So yeah,

Justin: it does seem it's, it's a little bit of a bubble right now, and I'm hoping that it will diversify and maybe some of your listeners out there will, will join in and help us to kind of make the conversation a little bigger there.

Cause I missed the peripheral vision. I feel like Twitter did give us with regard to other people's points of view, you know? But, you know, one thing, I just, I'll leave your listeners with this, which is that we invite perspectives and analysis to Tech Policy Press and I'm particularly keen on thinking about the year ahead and thinking beyond it, thinking about what type of future are we trying to build here?

What are we really up to? And to me, looking at the kind of specter of, This union between Trump and Musk and sort of taking apart the administrative state and, you know, some of the ideas that they've got about what they want to do. I don't know if that's the future that I imagine when I think about, you know, a potentially more just, more equitable, more sustainable world.

So I'd be interested in perspectives, you know, that may square that somehow or might otherwise kind of, you know, lend a critical eye to, towards these issues. Cause I think there's a lot of work to do.

Devindra: I feel like that is a good takeaway, Justin. There's definitely a lot of work to do ahead for, for all of us, but yeah, so much and hope to chat again.

Thank you.

In a sign of how weird the world is right now, the onion. The onion, which has been resurrected, the satirical news site has bought Alex Jones's Infowars. This is real. This is real news and did it in the funniest way possible. First of all, I would recommend you guys go read the onions announcement of this because.

There are just some great quotes here because it's written in the style of an onion piece, even though the news is actually real. In the New York times version of it, you could see that we don't know how much they actually paid. They basically bought it at a auction out of auction. The Infoswars had declared bankruptcy, but they also did it in cooperation with approval of the families of Sandy Hook or the parents from Sandy Hook.

So it was all like a coordinated. Thing, because I think like morally, I was hearing this news being kind of talked about yesterday a little bit. And I was like, is it weird to give Alex Jones money, even though it would be really funny if the onion bought, bought InfoWars and it seems like it is a whole thing, like the onion is going to turn InfoWars into a satirical news site, sort of against gun violence.

Sort of similar to what they're doing with a lot of their other very, very similar sites, but the families who are affected by Sandy Hook are directly going to be part of this whole thing. So I think that's good. It's whenever there's a massive school shooting, everybody retweets that one or shares that one onion story, you know, the, what's the headline?

Like no way to avoid this. No way

Ben: to. Avoid this as only nation where this regularly happens. One sort. And it gets reposted with the details of the most recent mass shooting. And it's basically like the most grim form of Mad Libs. And it has its own Wikipedia article now. You can go back and see other iterations of there's no way that we could have prevented this as only nation where this regularly happens.

Devindra: This is, this is a good thing. I do want to point out like the Onion has started they just started doing print. Papers once again and from what I hear they're saying these subscriptions to that have been very very successful So that's helped to bankroll this whole thing. This is just a weird reality So let's get

Ben: into why that is though because Cody B in the chat says onion resurrected What is this the apocalypse?

Well, no, this is actually a rich guy using his rich guy money for For good rather than evil, because recently the onion was bought by a new owner, this guy Jeff Lawson, co founder and former CEO of Twilio, the customer service software company. And he was like, I want to make the onion like amazing again.

I've started seeing people in YouTube comments say this is the first time I've seen an onion video that isn't 12 years old because they've started doing a lot more videos. Again, now. This is really interesting also because this move by the new owners of the onion kind of reminds me of something that Cards Against Humanity would do.

Because Cards Against Humanity is so well known for doing stunts, like buying a piece of land at the Mexican U. S. border to block a border wall. And Weird Connection, clickhole that was once part of the onion, spun off and was bought by Cards Against Humanity. That's the whole thing. So I'm really welcoming this new age of The Onion's greater independence and being more audacious with a benevolent rich guy founder.

Devindra: It's a good thing but it's a sad thing that satirical news sites are the ones like really that are free to say true things. I think that is, comedy has always been like the gateway to do that in a society where sometimes people don't want to. Say things clearly or out loud, but it is, it's a weird thing.

I also wanna point out like the CEO of the new onion is Ben Collins, who used to do disinformation reporting, dark web reporting at NBCI believe. So also like the, the weird, the rare TRA trajectory for a technology reporter to end up building something kind of a. It's weirdly related to what he was doing before.

Any thoughts on this, Cherlynn?

Cherlynn: I thought when I saw it that the fact that the Onion bought InfoWars is actually a good thing, even though I think I share similar concerns about giving that person who shall not be named money. I will say the, the post written by, Bryce P. Tetrahedder? I don't know how to pronounce their last name.

CEO? I'm

Ben: pretty sure, yeah, no, that's a fake name. I know, I know.

Cherlynn: Anyway, it's Tetrahedder is really kind of why they're, they're doing it. But anyway the CEO, whatever the post was on The Onion, which is also fake. It does say stuff like, Oh, no price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds.

Yeah, in his joke of good fortune, formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars, a forgettable name with an already forgotten name, and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain, less than one trillion dollars. I mean, it's obviously a bit of farce and everything, but I mean, I think it's, it's so, it's such a funny, but also Cogently made point if you're good enough to read between lines, like if you're, I don't know, I, I, I have my own doubts nowadays, right?

But I think it's

Devindra: I think, you know, it's a joke. It's good

Cherlynn: satire, well written. I think it's a lot, a lot of this also makes me go, Oh, right. We've always been like, we've seen, the, the philosophical, theoretical right, or whatever it is, the opposing side you want to call is twist things to fit their narrative, right?

How about we twist things that they are trying to put as their narrative to, to, and by we, I don't know, I don't feel like taking sides, but I also am like, We can do that. I think you can take sides and

Devindra: it's also not the same. Like InfoWars existed to basically sell misinformation. I mean, it's in the name.

To sell fake news. Well, and also to sell shitty vitamins to people because that's what Alex Jones was doing. So there's a video of him having a meltdown on a live stream right now, this morning. So that's really funny to see. It's not doing what they did, right? The answer to this isn't about making your own garbage, Fake stories about like the other side.

It's about just like making demonstrable reality, a thing sort of like what they did satirically with with the, you know, the actual purchase letter. So anyway, good news, rare, rare bit of light, but also really does emphasize the fact that we live in a six ad world and straight up gadgety news. Did you guys see LG's new stretchy display, which can now stretch from 12 to 18 inches.

Cherlynn: I saw the I mean, it was what, earlier this week and it will stretch from 12 inches as like it's normal state or all the way to 18 inches and it can like twist in different angles and you know, like on upon itself, not just stretch. Right? So it's just a basically very flexible display. Stretch,

Devindra: twist, bend.

Kind of

Cherlynn: weird. I mean,

Devindra: we, we, we follow LG display because they do weird ass things all the time. Like when they did the rollable. OLED TV, which I think they, I'm pretty sure they're not making that anymore, but they've done all sorts of weird projects just to say that you could do them. These are not OLEDs.

That's the interesting thing here. This is a micro LED backlighting to make this thing happen. Who knows if this will actually lead to anything because we were just getting around to understanding what you could do with foldable OLEDs and still, there are still many problems with that, but cool to see.

Just hey, hey, a little bit of the sci fi future could actually end up happening. It's just gonna cost a shit ton of money. I'm

Ben: tempted to say wrong answers only, what would you use this for? But I don't want any wrong answers, because that could get really nasty really quick. What would you actually use this for?

Devindra: I mean, toilet paper at Elon Musk's home. You know, like he would use it to, to wipe himself to actual factual news. I'm sure, I'm sure he'd want to do that. That would be the ultimate. No. And then he would post about it on X as he does it. Yes. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I'm not actually. Dell

Ben: says clothes and yeah, that's actually pretty interesting.

There is a video that was going pretty viral in like New York city specifically of someone who was wearing. a like LED screen as a top and it had the scroll that you would see on a lot of food trucks like like all the halal foods they have. So yes, this is actually a could be a really good application for clothes.

I just don't think that like where would you put the battery would not be for clothes. You'd have to like this would be for

Devindra: like your your magazine technology or something like a future Kindle that you could actually bold and bend and fold and whatever. That'd be a thing. It's, it's, just want to say it's happening.

Ben, I think you were interested in the next story, the one about the Beatles are nominated for two Grammys, thanks to AI. Oh yeah, that's that song, right? Yes.

Ben: So, well, okay, if you just read the headline, you're like, oh no, somebody trained like an AI language model to make a new Beatles song and somehow they got nominated for a Grammy because of that.

It's different. And I think this is actually indicative of the way that we could use AI in creative pursuits in the future. So this was for a song where they recorded it a long, long time ago, but they weren't able to separate John Lennon's vocals from the piano that he was playing without the voice or the piano getting all messed up.

So now they are able to do that and And yes, it's technically an AI application, but really this is just a plug in. It's also not a crutch. Don't record things badly. Don't just have one mic for the piano and your voice. But this is not AI doomerism. This is not somebody making a completely new Beatles song.

This is just a inventive application of AI for something that was already recorded on reel to reel tape. Tapes for goodness sake.

Devindra: It's cool. It's a cool thing that it's sort of like when we talked about how we saved a recording of our podcast when a jackhammer was happening outside of a window, like Yup.

Separating audio in a really tedious way is possible by humans, but tough, really, really tough. And this is cool. This is a cool thing. And this is, I guess, a good example of a good way to use AI constructively. And maybe that is the lesson people can take away from that. I want to talk about the next story, RIP to Elwood Edwards, the guy behind the You've Got Mail voice.

He's the You've Got Mail voice for AOL. He was definitely one of the first things I heard when I started using the internet, like 94, 95. Yes,

Ben: and that's the entire point. That's the entire point. Because. He is the welcome and goodbye guy

Devindra: too, right? The goodbye guy I think that was when you were like, also signing off, but maybe when you were leaving AIM as well.

Just, just kind of a weird thing just hearing that sound effect there's a whole generation of kids now who have no idea what it is, other than maybe, ironically, memeable. At this point for like vaporwave music, who knows, who knows? But it does bring me directly back to the old crappy Packard Bell PC I was running, which was powered by a 486 processor, had eight megabytes of Ram, it's hardcore stuff, man.

RIP to this dude who really helped shape our, our introduction to the internet, I guess, yeah.

Ben: And having worked with voiceover people now for several years, a lot of the time they just take a job because it's oh, you only need me to say three words and you're gonna pay me like a pretty good amount of money?

Yeah, sure, I'll do that. And they have no idea how important they end up being.

Devindra: For sure, for sure. It's just hard to, hard to predict where any of this stuff will go. Anyway, there's a video, if you check out our news posts of it, there's a video that AOL actually did back when we were also AOL but on AOL YouTube where he talks about recording that role.

And we get, we get to hear him say it too, as of 13 years ago, I believe, 12 years ago. So check that out. Let's move on to what we're working on. Anything you want to shout out, Cherlynn?

Cherlynn: I actually want to shout out stuff that we didn't get around to talking about last week because there was no live stream.

I don't actually know if we did an episode. I think we did, right? You can

Devindra: scroll down in that document you've got there, Cherlynn, and see. I saw the Spotify thing,

Cherlynn: which I'm glad you were able to fix for us. No, I just wanted to shout out all of the work that our team has been doing, specifically you with a lot of the Mac reviews.

Our iMac review should be up shortly. And you also had to do like the PS five pro PS five Pro Pro or help out in the MAC mini use. The PS five PRO review. Yeah, the MAC mini, the MacBook M four PRO. And then also the, you also did the VI focus. I did, but

Devindra: that was, that was like done for a while. So the, the vibe focus review also went up last week.

I basically had four reviews go up last week. That was fun. And that's a

Cherlynn: lot of work. So I think that's, I mean, I just want to shout out that, you know, we, if you haven't seen it yet, go take a look. And if not, we do bi weekly review recaps on the site. And you can use that as a way to quickly catch up on things you might have missed.

And then, yeah, are we talking about working on? Yes. So, I am in the midst of some crazy year end planning along with CES 2025 planning. Kevin says in the chat was like, are you talking about CES? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Not, not publicly, but we are internally.

Devindra: Oh my God.

Cherlynn: Yeah, all CES all day for me every week for a bit now.

But and, and while juggling a few other things. So there's that. And I'm actually very excited for it. Cool.

Devindra: A couple of things, I don't know, I'm working on, I would like to write something about Dragon Age the Vilgard, which we'll talk about more in a bit. There is certainly a lot of CS prep on my end, but maybe some some shows I'm looking to get coverage for including that, that video game show that's heading to Amazon prime.

We just saw the trailer for that last week. So I want to do that because it's from the people who did love death and robots. So,

Ben: Oh, you're not talking about it's in the game.

Devindra: But yeah, we're, we're going to be doing a lot of prep certainly for the holidays, for end of year stories. So just stay tuned to everything.

Check out our new homepage too. I'm not sure if everybody realizes that Engadget. com looks a little different now. It's cleaner, easier to navigate. Definitely let us know if you have any thoughts on that stuff too. But it's nice to see things getting a little more modern. Anything you want to shout out for pop culture picks this week, Cherlynn?

Cherlynn: So I had a few that I wanted to bank, but I'm just going to spill them all at once. I saw a couple of movies recently because I was able to finally get some time off and one that I is kind of old by old, I mean like not released in the last few months but in the last year or two, this is called the portable door.

It's an Australian. Film or production stars. And y'all are going to hate me because I'm going to refer to this guy as the Jurassic Park guy, but Samuel. I am going to hate you for saying that.

Devindra: Yes.

Cherlynn: Okay. Yeah, he is great. He is wild in this film. It's basically a film about two young boys.

Especially gifted people who joined this agency or company that is basically influencing the world one small way at a time. And I think, I didn't think about it this way because when I watched it, it was before the election results. But yeah, you think about it, there are so many little things that could impact like the quantum universes, whatever theories parallel universes theory Anyway, it's a, it's fantasy.

I enjoyed the vibe, the world that it built, all of that stuff. On the other end of the spectrum this was something that was just recently released. I was able to watch heretic and I loved it. I mean, it was Hugh Grant as this menacing murderer person. And it, it, it delves into, well, it talks about two women who are, I guess, missionaries, yeah.

Yeah, for the Church of the Latter Day Saints, and they're just going to visit Hugh Grant and his home to kind of talk about their religion and stuff. And things take a sinister turn. I really liked it. I thought it was really well acted. I got scared a few times and then promptly got laughed at.

For being scared. So there you go. Those two I've also been reading a lot of books, but I'll save those for it, like another time when maybe I'm short on

Devindra: cool. Cool. Thank you so much. I want to shut out a couple of things. Yeah, I am playing dragon age, the veil guard. It is a very, very nice way to just.

Take my mind off of things for a little bit. I'll be writing something about that soon, but Hey, this is a good dragon age. And I also forgot that I I've played like a couple of them before. This is, feels like more of an action fantasy game than I expected, because the combat is just more, a lot more visceral, a lot more real time.

You can still pause the world to and engage your powers or direct your, your friends to do things. But it, it feels more like an action game, which is kind of cool. It looks incredible. Just think amazing design of the world here to this'll probably be a big like focus of my piece, but the ray tracing in this game looks incredible.

Just like the reflections of on the water, the reflections of the way shadows look based on objects, like real world, interesting looking shadows. Also tremendous score as well, which kind of tags into something I'll be talking about in a bit, but the score is written by Hans Zimmer. And Lauren Balfe.

So those are guys that I love. Lauren Balfe in particular has been doing the Mission Impossible soundtracks lately, just amazing, thrilling stuff. I'm really loving Dragon Age, The Veil Guard, and yeah, I'm already like 12 hours in, so I definitely needed a distraction over the last week. Also separately, a little bit related.

I'm obsessed with the trailer for Mission Impossible, The Final Reckoning, which was just released a couple of days ago. I love the series. I love this franchise. The last movie. Was not my favorite in the series, but I, I have a lot of faith in Christopher McQuarrie that was the one about AI called the entity, and they're trying to stop AI from destroying the world.

And this is the second half of that story. It is a really fun mission impossible movie, just not as good as stuff like rogue nation or or fallout, but this trailer is fantastic. Again, custom trailer song by Mr. Lauren Balfe. It looks incredible. I cannot wait to see it. And yeah, folks go, go watch the mission possible moves.

I read about it at some point when they upscaled the 4k versions of the earlier films. So I read about that for a gadget, but I don't know, maybe we'll find more reasons to cover now There's more AI involved there, too.

Cherlynn: Well, that's it for this week's episode, everyone. Thank you, as always, for listening.

Our theme music is by game composer, Dale North. Our outro music is by our former managing editor, Terrence O'Brien. The podcast is produced by Ben Ellman. You can find Avendra, I'm supposing, on Blue Sky at?

Devindra: Blue Skies at the Mastodons. I, I'm, I mean, I'm still like at presence on Twitter, but I'm not really posting.

But find me, find me on Blue Sky. Join Blue Sky, you know, see what's happening there. Also find me on the Filmcast at thefilmcast. com.

Cherlynn: If you need me, I am continuing to ignore most of social media. So just send me an email at Cherlynnn at engadget. com or cherr at engadget. com. You can also send us your thoughts on the show at podcast at engadget.

com. Leave us a review on wherever you're getting your podcasts and also subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.