Land of the Giants: This Changes Everything

Today, I’m talking with Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath, whom I first interviewed on the show back in 2021. Those were heady days — especially for upstart EV companies like Polestar, which all seemed poised to capture what felt like infinite demand for electric cars. Now, in 2024, the market looks a lot different, and so does Polestar, which is no longer majority-owned by Volvo. Instead, Volvo is now a more independent sister company, and both Volvo and Polestar fall under Chinese parent company Geely.  You know I love a structure shuffle, so Thomas and I really got into it: what does it mean for Volvo to have stepped back, and how much can Polestar take from Geely’s various platforms while still remaining distinct from the other brands in the portfolio? We also talked about the upcoming Polestar 3 SUV and Polestar 4 crossover, and I asked Thomas what he thinks of the Cybertruck. Links:  Can Polestar design a new kind of car company? — Decoder The Polestar 3 isn’t out yet, and it’s already getting a big price cut — The Verge The Polestar 4 gets an official price ahead of its debut — The Verge Polestar makes the rear window obsolete with its new crossover coupe — The Verge Volvo and Polestar drift a little farther apart — The Verge Polestar gets a nearly $1 billion lifeline — The Verge Car-tech breakup fever is heating up — The Verge Polestar is working on its own smartphone to sync with its EVs — The Verge Polestar’s electric future looks high-performing, and promising — The Verge Electric car maker Polestar to cut around 450 jobs globally — Reuters Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23912151 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, Verge transportation editor Andy Hawkins and I are going to try and figure out Tesla. I said try — I did not say succeed. But we’re going to try. That’s because Tesla has been on a real rollercoaster these past two weeks, in terms of its stock price, its basic financials, and well, its vibes. If you’ve been following the company, you know that that gap between what the business is and how its valued has been getting bigger and bigger for years now – and lately, with Elon Musk saying he’s going all-in on autonomy and announcing a robotaxi event in August, it seems like we’re getting closer to a make or break moment, especially as competition in the broader EV market heats up.  Links: Tesla reaches deals in China on self-driving cars — NYT Elon Musk goes ‘absolutely hard core’ in another round of Tesla layoffs — The Verge Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving linked to dozens of deaths — The Verge Elon Musk says Tesla will reveal its robotaxi on August 8th — The Verge A cheaper Tesla is back on the menu — The Verge Tesla’s profits sink as the company struggles with cooling demand — The Verge Tesla lays off ‘more than 10 percent’ of its workforce, loses top executives — The Verge Tesla recalls all 3,878 Cybertrucks over faulty accelerator pedal — The Verge Elon Musk says it’s “time to reorganize” Tesla — The Verge Elon Musk lost Democrats on Tesla when he needed them most — WSJ Credits:  Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A lot has changed since the last time Ola was on Decoder. Back then, he said Mercedes would have an all-EV lineup by 2030 — a promise a whole lot of car companies, including Mercedes, have now had to soften or walk back. But he doesn't see that as a setback at all, and he and Mercedes are both still committed to phasing out gas in the long run. We also spent some time talking about what's happening both on the outside of cars — Mercedes' classic look and its EV look aren't necessarily quite in the same place — and on the inside of them, as infotainment becomes a huge point of competition and design. Links:  How Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius is refocusing for an electric future - The Verge Mercedes-Benz opens its first 400kW EV charging station in the US - The Verge Mercedes-Benz is the first German automaker to adopt Tesla’s EV charging connector - The Verge Is the metaverse going to suck? A conversation with Matthew Ball - The Verge The Mercedes G-Wagen, the ultimate off-road status symbol, goes electric - The Verge Mercedes workers file federal charges with NLRB to stop union busting - The Alabama Political Reporter The MBUX Hyperscreen - Mercedes-Benz USA Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23904592 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, we’re talking about the brand-new TikTok ban — and how years of Congressional inaction on a federal privacy law helped lead us to this moment of apparent national panic about algorithmic social media. This is a thorny discussion, and to help break it all down, I invited Verge senior policy reporter Lauren Feiner on the show. Lauren has been closely covering efforts to ban TikTok for years now, and she’s also watched Congress fail to pass meaningful privacy regulation for even longer. We’ll go over how we got here, what this means for both TikTok and efforts to pass new privacy legislation, and what might happen next.  Links:  Biden signs TikTok ‘ban’ bill into law — The Verge TikTok ban: all the news on attempts to ban the video platform — The Verge Anyone want to buy TikTok? — Vergecast Congress takes on TikTok, privacy, and AI — Vergecast Tiktok vows to fight 'unconstitutional' US ban — BBC ‘Thunder Run’: Behind lawmakers’ secretive push to pass the TikTok bill — NYT On TikTok, resignation and frustration after potential ban of app — NYT Lawmakers unveil new bipartisan digital privacy bill after years of impasse — The Verge A real privacy law? House lawmakers are optimistic this time — The Verge Congress is trying to stop discriminatory algorithms again — The Verge Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, I’m talking to Jason Citron, the co-founder and CEO of Discord, the gaming-focused voice and chat app. You might think Discord is just something Slack for gamers, but over time, it has become much more important than that. For a growing mix of mostly young, very online users steeped in gaming culture, fandom, and other niche communities, Discord is fast becoming the hub to their entire online lives. A lot of what we think of as internet culture is happening on Discord. In many ways Discord represents a significant shift away from what we now consider traditional social platforms. As you’ll hear Jason describe it, Discord is a place where you talk and hangout with your friends over shared common interests, whether that’s video games, the AI bot Midjourney, or maybe your favorite anime series. It is a very different kind of interface for the internet, but that comes with serious challenges, especially around child safety and moderation.  Links:  Discord opens up to games and apps embedded in its chat app — The Verge Discord is nuking Nintendo Switch emulator devs and their entire servers — The Verge Inside Discord’s reform movement for banned users — The Verge Discord ends deal talks with Microsoft — WSJ Discord cuts 17% of workers in latest tech layoffs — NYT Discord to start showing ads for gamers to boost revenue — WSJ Discord says it intentionally does not encrypt user messages — CNN How Discord became a social hub for young people — NYT ‘Problematic pockets’: How Discord became a home for extremists — WashPo Discord CEO Jason Citron on AI, Midjourney — Bloomberg Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23898955 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, we're talking about Disney, the massive activist investor revolt it just fought off, and what happens next in the world of streaming. Because what happens to Disney really tells us a lot about what's happening in the entire world of entertainment. Earlier this month, Disney survived an attempted board takeover from businessman Nelson Peltz. While investors ultimately sided with Disney and CEO Bob Iger, the boardroom showdown made something very clear: Disney needs to figure out streaming and get its creative direction back on track.  To help me figure all this out, I brought on my friend Julia Alexander, who is VP of Strategy at Parrot Analytics, a Puck News contributor, and most importantly, a former Verge reporter. She's a leading expert on all things Disney, and I always learn something important about the state of the entertainment business when I talk to her.  Links:  The Story of Disney+ — Puck News ​​Disney’s CEO drama explained, with Julia Alexander — Decoder Is streaming just becoming cable again? Julia Alexander thinks so — Decoder Disney Fends Off Activist Investor for Second Time in 2 Years — NYT For Disney, streaming losses and TV’s decline are a one-two punch — NYT Disney’s ABC, ESPN weakness adds pressure to make streaming profitable — WSJ Disney reportedly wants to bring always-on channels to Disney Plus — The Verge The Disney Plus-Hulu merger is way more than a streaming bundle — The Verge Disney’s laying off 7,000 as streaming boom comes to an end — The Verge The last few years really scared Disney — Screen Rant Credits:  Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At the absolute most basic, Dropbox is cloud storage for your stuff — but that puts it at the nexus of a huge number of today’s biggest challenges in tech. As the company that helps you organize your stuff in the cloud itself goes all remote, how do we even deal with the concept of “your stuff?” Today I’m talking with Dropbox CEO Drew Houston about those big picture ideas — and why he thinks generative AI really will be transformative for everyone eventually, even if it isn’t yet now. Links:  Dropbox AI and Dash make it easier to find your files from all over the web | The Verge Kids who grew up with search engines could change STEM forever | The Verge No, Dropbox's cafeteria didn't get a Michelin star | VentureBeat It's official: San Francisco's office vacancy rate just set a record | San Francisco Examiner Jeff Bezos: This is the 'smartest thing we ever did' at Amazon | CNBC Dropbox is laying off 500 people and pivoting to AI | The Verge Congress bans staff use of Microsoft's AI Copilot | Axios Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23892647 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today we’re talking about Vice, the media company: Where it came from, what it did, and, ultimately, why it collapsed into a much smaller, sadder version of itself.  This is a lousy time for digital media, and it’s hard to make a profit from putting words on the internet right now. So when Verge senior reporter Liz Lopatto went to go report on what happened, she and I both assumed Vice had been done in by the brutal economics of digital advertising on the web. But the Vice story is more than that — in the word of one executive that talked to Liz, it was a “fucking clown show.”  Links: How Vice became 'a fucking clown show' — The Verge Vice is abandoning Vice.com and laying off hundreds — The Verge Vice, decayed digital colossus, files for bankruptcy — NYT Vice Is Basically Dead — New York Magazine Shane Smith and the Final Collapse of Vice News — The Hollywood Reporter At Vice, cutting-edge media and allegations of old-school sexual harassment — NYT HBO cancels ‘Vice News Tonight,’ severing relationship with Vice Media — CNN Shane Smith has a secret multimillion-dollar Vice deal — New York Magazine Credits:  Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cloudflare is an infrastructure provider basically protecting more than 20% of the entire web from bad actors. When everything is going well, you don't even have to know it exists. It's one of the only defenses — sometimes the only defense — standing between websites and the people who want to take them down. Protecting free speech on the internet around the world, across war zones and hundreds of different kinds of government, is no easy feat. That puts the company, and CEO Matthew Prince, right at the heart of some of Decoder's biggest challenges and themes.  Links:  A Cloudflare outage broke large swathes of the internet | The Verge Why security company Cloudflare is protecting U.S. election sites for free | Fast Company The Daily Stormer just lost the most important company defending it | The Verge (2017) Cloudflare to revoke 8chan’s service, opening the fringe website up for DDoS attacks | The Verge (2019) Cloudflare blocks Kiwi Farms due to an ‘immediate threat to human life’ | The Verge Why Cloudflare Let an Extremist Stronghold Burn | Wired Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince interview on Ukraine cybersecurity | Semafor 3 ways the ‘splinternet’ is damaging society | MIT Sloan Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23885440 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, and welcome to Decoder. This is David Pierce, editor-at-large at The Verge and co-host of The Vergecast, subbing in for Nilay, who’s out on vacation. Regular Decoder programming returns next week. In the meantime, we have an exciting episode for you today all about video game emulation, which, as it turns out, is a whole lot more complicated than it seems.  Gaming emulation made headlines recently because one of the most widely used programs for emulating the Nintendo Switch, a platform called Yuzu, was effectively sued out of existence. There’s a whole lot going on here, from the history of game emulation to the copyright precedents of emulators to how the threat of game piracy still looms large in the industry. To break down this topic, I brought Verge Senior Editor and resident emulation expert Sean Hollister on the show. Let’s get into it.  Links: Nintendo sues Switch emulator Yuzu — The Verge Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu will fold and pay $2.4M to settle its lawsuit — The Verge Steve Jobs announcing a PlayStation emulator for the Mac — YouTube Fans freak out as Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom leaks two weeks early — Kotaku Tears of the Kingdom Was Pirated 1 Million Times, Nintendo Claims — Kotaku The solid legal theory behind Nintendo’s new emulator takedown effort — Ars Technica How Nintendo’s destruction of Yuzu is rocking the emulator world — The Verge How strong is Nintendo’s legal case against Switch-emulator Yuzu? — Ars Technica Credits:  Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices