Becca Farsace’s series Full Frame won both awards for technology video, and The Vergecast won People’s Choice for technology podcasts! Thanks to all who voted for us — our funky spring-shaped trophies are all thanks to you, and we couldn’t be more grateful.
Next year: EGOT or bust.
[The Webby Awards]
Our friend Marques Brownlee has been teasing a product launch for a while, and now it’s out: the M251, a shoe he made in partnership with Atoms. The shoe is black and red, natch, and has some Jordan-y vibes to it. (Can’t believe there’s no dongle anywhere, though.) There are a couple of fun behind-the-scenes videos out with the launch — but who’s gonna do the MKBHD-style review of the MKBHD shoe?
And we managed to make it in just the first few minutes of The Vergecast! Then we talked Snap, Netflix, and much more. But Laser Bong will be our legacy. It’s a laser bong.
Does this episode of The Vergecast feature several of the world’s best-known rappers? That depends on how you define “feature,” which turns out to be a pretty thorny question. This episode definitely features laser bongs and Snapchat bots, though. But not blue checkmarks or Netflix DVDs. None of those anymore.
Eric Migicovsky is no longer a hardware hacker for a living — you might remember he used to run Pebble — but he’s apparently still out here building sick doodads. This time, it looks like a BB Q20 keyboard attached to a screen running his universal messaging app Beeper. I don’t know why, but I want one.
The tech industry is abuzz about a new standard for social networking that is more open, more user-centric, and potentially more powerful than Twitter and Facebook. But we’ve been here before.
TikTok’s probably not going away anytime soon, but will that stop governments around the US from trying? Why is it that only two companies make Android phones worth buying? And can Chris Welch convince you to spend $3,000 on a new TV? On The Vergecast, these and other big questions. Like: what is a quantum dot?
Other than the My AI chatbot launch, the most interesting thing at Snap’s Partner Summit today was definitely the AR mirrors. The company thinks you might use it in a store to try stuff on, or just goof around while you wait for your friend to check out. It all seems very early, but pretty fun.
Also... AR vending machines are apparently a thing now.
The Washington Post just published a really cool breakdown of where chatbot training data really comes from. It’s just one data set being studied here — Google’s C4, which is used by Meta’s LLaMa and some other models — but it reveals a lot about how LLMs learn from the web, and what they’re really learning.
The least surprising bit? There’s a whole lot of Wikipedia in there.
