One way to think about the tech industry is just as a series of people trying to build stuff they saw in movies. Ready Player One helped kick of a flood of interest in the metaverse, despite the movie’s deeply dsytopian undertones. If you’ve talked to anyone working in AI, they’ve surely told you about […]
Today, I’m talking with Matt Mullenweg, the founder and CEO of Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, Tumblr, and a whole host of other products like the new cross-platform messaging service Beeper. This is Matt’s third time on Decoder; back in 2022, we had him on twice, first to talk about Automattic and WordPress broadly […]
A lot of the future of AI will be settled in court. From publishers to authors to artists to Hollywood conglomerates, the creative industry is picking a big copyright fight over the vast quantities of data used to train AI models – and the ultimate output of those models. (Disclosure: Vox Media, The Verge’s parent […]
After years of grand promises about how robotaxis would change the way we buy and use our cars, Tesla finally launched its taxi service. In one small portion of one city. With only a few cars and a few riders. Plus safety monitors in the passenger seat. Caution is a good thing in this industry, […]
Today, I’m talking with Hinge founder and CEO Justin McLeod. Hinge is one of the biggest dating apps in the United States — it’s rivaled only by Tinder, and both are owned by the massive conglomerate Match Group, which has consolidated a huge chunk of the online dating ecosystem. A fair warning here: I’ve never […]
The idea behind Trump Mobile is relatively straightforward. It’s easy to launch a mobile carrier these days, and it can be extremely lucrative – just ask Ryan Reynolds! You should know, though, that Trump Mobile is a pretty bad deal. And the network’s supposed flagship phone? We’re willing to bet that this $500, made-in-America, coming-soon […]
The Nintendo Switch 2 is great. In many ways, it’s exactly what we hoped for: a Switch, only better. And yet there’s something… underwhelming about it. Maybe it’s unfair, but we’ve come to expect Nintendo to consistently amaze us with either how its consoles work or the games you can play with them. In this […]
The Switch 2 is a hit (and a supply chain success story). Microsoft is starting to show off its plan for the future of Xbox. And everywhere you look, there are reasons to think we’re headed toward a very different kind of gaming device. Maybe it’ll be even more modular and portable. Maybe it’ll be […]
The tech world is full of cycles. Things are always bundling and unbundling, going from minimalist to maximalist, embracing nostalgia before diving head-first into the future. And right now, it appears, we’re doing glassy again. On this episode of The Vergecast, Nilay and David are joined by The Verge’s Allison Johnson and Victoria Song to […]
Today, I’m talking with Taskrabbit CEO Ania Smith. Taskrabbit is one of the original gig worker platforms that’s really focused on work you might need done in your home; it’s been around for nearly 20 years, and you might be surprised to know that the core product has not changed all that much. Taskers can […]