Mario and Spider-Man are both back in a big way

Mario and Spider-Man are both back in a big way

Image: William Joel / The Verge

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 11, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome to the Installerverse, which is officially a thing now — we did it, everybody — and you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

I’m traveling this week, so I’ve got a slightly abbreviated issue for you. But there’s just way too much good stuff not to share.

This week, I’m spending all my free time playing Subpar Pool, testing Twine as my new go-to Android RSS reader, watching Zane Lowe talk music with Blink-182, learning about the incredible work of the masters of film set design, reading Cory Doctorow’s new book, The Internet Con, finally for real canceling some too-expensive streaming services, and preparing for my kid’s first flight by downloading every Sesame Street episode I can find.

I also have for you a new Mario game, an old tech magazine, overlooked TV shows, AI image makers, and much more.

As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What do you want to know more about? What awesome tricks do you know that everyone else should? What app should everyone be using? Tell me everything: if you’re getting this in your inbox, just reply to this email and tell me everything. Otherwise, you can always hit up installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.

Alright, Mario has waited long enough. Let’s go.

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The Drop

• Super Mario Bros. Wonder. The thoroughly modern side-scrolling Mario game that so many of us have been waiting for. Wonder is a really neat mix of a simple game with simple mechanics but also plenty of room for exploration and improvisation. I am going to play a lot of this game.
• The OnePlus Open. Yay, foldable phones! I really love the design of the Open, and OnePlus has some really cool feature ideas — but the whole thing is definitely let down by the price and durability issues. But smush this together with the Pixel Fold and Samsung’s Z Fold, and there’s a kickass foldable phone in there somewhere.
• Search Engine’s “Is there a sane way to use the internet?” I’ve probably recommended Search Engine before, but it’s the first podcast in a while to make it into my “listen to every episode no matter what it’s about” rotation. This episode, with Ezra Klein, is a particularly thoughtful and helpful way of thinking about the internet now.
• Meta in Myanmar. This is a terrific four-part series about the rise of Facebook, WhatsApp, and the internet in general in Myanmar and the genocide that occurred in the country. Erin Kissane doesn’t really do a history lesson but more of a long, deep study about how communities are built online — and how they fall apart. It’s a tough read in spots, but it’s worth it.
• Trust & Safety Tycoon. Ever wondered what it’s like to try and make moderation, policy, and business decisions on the fly? Wonder no longer! This game from Techdirt is like a corporate training manual… but a good and useful one. (Techdirt’s other game, Moderator Mayhem, is similarly useful and fun.)
• The Wedding Scammer. A true-crime podcast about a guy who joined a media startup that turned out to be a scam — and not even a particularly clever one. But the scammer behind it all had lots of other moves, and they all kept working! Only one of the show’s seven episodes is live so far, but it’s off to a really fun start.
• Franz. Imagine a Tamagotchi or a Neopet, but, like, super-duper cursed. That’s essentially the premise of this Android and iOS app in which you interact with and try to help a little AI companion that is pretty much always trying to take advantage of you in some way. It’s weird, y’all, but it’s a fascinating story and game.
• Whole Earth Index. The rabbit hole to end all rabbit holes for any tech-history buff: the entire archive of Whole Earth Catalog, the counterculture journal that was at the beginning of so much of Silicon Valley and tech and blogging and the internet and everything, is now online.
• Spider-Man 2. I absolutely loved the first Spider-Man game, which made “spending a long time moving from place to place” more fun than any game I can remember. The new game is more of the same, and I mean that in the best way: big action sequences, lots of quests, oh so much fun swinging from buildings. It’s PS5-only, which might be a problem for some users, but this is a heck of a reason to upgrade.
• The secret life of Jimmy Zhong. Meet the man who stole 50,000 Bitcoin from the Silk Road, became a billionaire, stored a ton of money in a Cheetos popcorn tin (who knew that was even a thing!), and spent it all so lavishly he got caught. This is about the crypto-iest crypto story you’ll ever watch.

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Screen share

Remember a few weeks ago when everyone on Threads was sharing their homescreens? There were a lot of cool ones, but I was taken with one in particular: it had an amazing wallpaper, this super-clean set of icons, and a really nice widget. The vibes, as they say, were immaculate. I messaged its owner, hoping they’d tell me more.

That person turned out to be Bart Claeys, a designer at Meta. I needed Bart to tell me everything, and he did!

Here’s Bart’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:

The phone: A Pixel 7 — I may switch to Pixel 8 (Pro) using my $400 Google Fi credit (but I’ve got until January 2024 for this, so waiting things out until there are more Pixel 8 reviews).

The wallpaper: “Mountastic” by Kxnt from the Backdrops app. I picked this particular image because it strikes a great balance between being inspirational, matches the Cascade and Olympic mountains where I live, and has areas allowing for icons and widgets. Additionally, it matches my phone case.

The launcher: I am a loyal user of Nova Launcher, allowing me to customize a lot of parts of the user interface, among which is setting a custom grid, removing app labels, and changing each icon individually. I’ve got two areas for icons: a 4 x 4 grid featuring my most-used apps — all using the Whicons icon pack — located at the lower half of the phone, optimized for single-hand usage. Then, you have smaller icons on the bottom from the Min icon pack. Removing colors from icons allows me to be more intentional about which app to use without being lured in by color. And finally, I have two additional mini clock widgets from the regular Google Clock app.

The apps: Facebook, Threads, Hue Lights, Starbucks, Messages, Chrome, Google Maps, WhatsApp, Calendar, Google News, Google Photos, Google Keep, Google Tasks, Instagram, YouTube Music, Authy.

I also asked Bart to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he said:

• TryCamel, which doesn’t do much besides offering a sharing target allowing me to track the price history of products by sharing Amazon links to it.
• As an X / Twitter escapee, my most recently installed app is Threads, which has some fun trends going on, like people sharing their mobile homescreen (inspiring this post) and, more recently, people generating DALL-E images based on their bio. I also regularly look through the eBay app to find vintage-pressed steel toy airplanes and airplane inspection panels for an art project I hope to finish one day.
• More recently, I’ve been playing with the Coohom web app modeling our living room. It’s really fun, and honestly, I went a little crazy on the details, like adding our actual furniture and plants. Next step would be to convert this somehow to a VR experience so we can try out some remodeling ideas as close to reality.
• And finally, we’ve got a Lego wildflower bouquet gifted by overseas friends, which we’re trying to finish, at least when Mochi, our cat, does not obstruct our plans.

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Crowdsourced

Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week.

“Checking out Halloween Horror Nights tomorrow! And you can bet I’ll be streaming The Exorcist tonight, then browsing the horror catalog of Peacock afterward.” – Christian

“With the mention of Roblox last week, I’d be remiss not to send in People Make Games’ two-part video series, ‘How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers.’” – Michael

“I think of Remix as Instagram meets AI. I’ve had a lot of fun with it, as my prompting skill improves the more I use it. There’s also the concept of ‘remixing,’ which creates threads of related posts. Quite fun!” – Jason

“As a Canadian, we often are introduced to the pros (and cons) of culture from both the United States and the English Commonwealth. These two series — Gangs of London and Mr Inbetween — are sorely overlooked in the US, one from the UK and the other from Australia. Among my group of friends, these two are among our favorite shows, and both top my top five shows of the last decade.” – Don

“As a Simpsons fan, this book just hit preorder stages, and I’m very excited to eventually get into it. It’s basically a collection of various memorabilia and merchandise throughout the course of the lifetime of the show.” – Joseph

“Killers of the Flower Moon opens this weekend.” – Junbo

“Catchup is a simple but polished utility for keeping track of when you last talked to people close to you. You set how frequently you want to be in touch with each person (weekly, monthly, etc.) and see who’s due for a call. Catchup helping me FaceTime friends more regularly makes me more of the person I want to be, especially while living abroad right now, so it’s central on my iPhone homescreen as a push toward one of the most rewarding uses of my iPhone.” – Lachlan

“Just finished Cocoon on PS5. Brilliant puzzle adventure game where you’re carrying orbs that house different realms and traversing between them. It’s also by one of the minds behind Inside and Limbo. Short, sweet, and a perfect precursor to Spider-Man 2.” – Jackson

“Offsuit, AI offline poker app. Really clean interface, leaderboards, etc.” – Jonathan

“Putting all my social apps in a folder on my homescreen has completely prevented the weird, ‘automatic opening’ I used to do. That single layer of not having the app within one click has completely tanked my random clicking of apps, and my screen time has gone down a bit. Still monitoring to see if it stays down long term, but it’s been very noticeable so far!” – Nicholas

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Signing off

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks deep down the self-hosting rabbit hole working on some Vergecast stuff coming soon. I have this idea that I might be able to replace a lot of the (increasingly unreliable) cloud services I use with some self-hosted ones. So far, I have mostly failed. But I did buy a mini PC and turn it into a Plex server and a Nextcloud file-storage system, so I’m already feeling like a capital-h Hacker over here. But the best thing I’ve found so far is Derek Sivers’ step-by-step guide to “Tech Independence”: it’s a super-detailed manual for setting up your own domain, moving all your services to systems you own, and ditching the tech giants for good. I didn’t do everything Sivers recommended — I’m good with Gmail, honestly — but if you’re looking for a fun and empowering weekend project, this is an excellent one.

See you next week!

The Race to Avert Quantum Computing Threat With New Encryption Standards

The Race to Avert Quantum Computing Threat With New Encryption Standards Quantum technology could compromise our encryption systems. Can America replace them before it’s too late?

So long, small phones

So long, small phones

The 2013 Moto X, Nexus 4, and iPhone 13 Mini. I pine for the days this size was normal. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Ever Googled for “Best Small Phones”? I’ll save you the click: the guides you’ll find feature phones that are old, underpowered, or simply not small to begin with.

I’ve long been a small phone guy. I loved my 2013 Moto X, with its 4.7-inch screen, and I’ve used a 5.4-inch iPhone Mini for years. But when Apple discontinued the Mini last month, I decided it was time to jump ship. I saved my money for the Pixel 8, figuring I’d eventually learn to live with a “new normal” of 6.2-inch handsets.

But for gadget enthusiasts like me, Google had other plans: it’s arbitrarily pushing buyers to the ginormous Pixel 8 Pro instead, bragging about how its larger handset can handle niftier features even though both phones have the same cameras and chips.

That’s why I began my hunt for the last good small phones — but gosh is it slim pickings.

For example, perhaps you’ve heard the Asus Zenfone 10 is a small phone because it has a 5.9-inch screen — smaller than 6.1, 6.5, or 6.7. But did you know the phone itself is almost identically sized to a “normal” Galaxy S23 or iPhone 15, not counting camera bumps?

Images by CompareSizes.com

From left to right: Zenfone 10, Galaxy S23, iPhone 15. The Zenfone is slightly narrower — but thicker.

Some guides suggest the 2022 iPhone SE, perhaps because it’s got a 4.7-inch screen — even smaller than a 5.4-inch iPhone Mini, right? Wrong:

Images by CompareSizes.com

The iPhone SE is smaller than a “normal” phone in 2023, but not by much.

Pixel 6A and Pixel 7A? Absolutely nope — both are bigger than a standard Samsung or Apple phone. Even unlocking their under-display fingerprint sensor feels like a stretch for my average-sized hand.

Images by CompareSizes.com

How are these Pixels making their way into “Best Small Phone” guides?

While Android Police calls the Sony Xperia 5 V “the compact flagship Android phone enthusiasts always wanted,” I think this size comparison speaks for itself:

Images by CompareSizes.com

The Xperia is slightly narrower than the competition, but taller.

And if you think folding flip phones are small, well...

Opened, the Samsung Z Flip and Moto Razr are roughly as big as the Pixel 8 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max, two of the biggest flagship handsets out there.

Images by CompareSizes.com

Folding screen phones are many things, but “small” is not yet among them.

Closed, the Z Flip’s girth doubles, making it that much harder to wrap a hand around — and it’s plenty wide, too. Plus, Samsung doesn’t actually let you use it like a small phone by default — you’ve gotta jump through hoops to use apps on the outer screen. Even with the Z Flip 5’s larger cover screen, it’s awkward.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Because I’m feeling nostalgic, here’s a 2013 Moto X vs. a 2023 Z Flip 5.

There is one company doggedly still pursuing small phones. It’s called Unihertz, and its Jelly line is tiny and has nifty features like a BlackBerry keyboard or programmable buttons and extra LEDs. But they’re also exceptionally budget, designed for minimalists, not those who want a great processor and a great camera like me.

Why isn’t someone building the iPhone Mini of Android, you might ask? They’re trying! But the latest dispatches from the Small Android Phone Project are... not great. The project hasn’t had a meaningful update in five months, and team leader Benjamin Bryant admits he had to pause to look for consulting work on the side.

Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Bryant clarified to us that BOE is responsible for the Find N, not the Find N2.

In some ways, they’re still at square one: the entire design revolves around the phone’s display, but display manufacturers don’t publicly offer the kind of small, high-end screen Bryant’s team is looking for — those are typically produced under contract to specific manufacturers.

“The problem is Apple has exclusive rights to [the iPhone Mini’s] display — so, even with the line being discontinued, [Samsung Display] isn’t going to give us access,” he told supporters last month.

The situation has slightly improved since then: Bryant says his team just had its first real call with Samsung Display US. “Samsung Display US is willing to champion us; the challenge will be convincing the Korean HQ that we are a viable enough project for them to invest time and resources into,” Bryant tells me.

Other options: there are “apparently more than enough” refurbished iPhone Mini displays on the market to fill the Small Android Phone Project’s needs; the external cover display on the Oppo Find N2 looks promising; and there are other displays that could work if they’re willing to build a phone with a chin.

But I would not expect a phone out of them anytime soon. Bryant admits that, in general, the small phone outlook is “bleak” and that some of his prospective customers “will be forced to upgrade in the coming year.”

Personally, I don’t feel forced: I could theoretically replace the battery in my Mini yet again and keep it running another year. But instead, I impulsively nabbed a Z Flip 5 at its Prime Day price to try something different for a change.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

This is my life now. I call it the Z Flip Raptor Grip.

I’m on day four, and while I’m definitely not satisfied with the size, I don’t want to be stuck on small phones the way I was stuck on physical keys. A decade ago, smartphone manufacturers pulled the physical QWERTY keyboard from my cold Droid hands. This time, I’m getting out before I get left in the past.

Twitch will now let streamers simultaneously stream on any service they want

Twitch will now let streamers simultaneously stream on any service they want

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Twitch will now let its creators simultaneously stream across any live streaming service, the company announced on Friday as part of a big batch of news from TwitchCon. Previously, streamers could simulcast on mobile platforms like TikTok and Instagram, but as of Friday, Twitch is significantly broadening where streamers can simultaneously go live. (Well, assuming the streamers don’t have a Twitch exclusivity agreement in place.)

As of late, some Twitch streamers have been exploring options on other platforms. Big names like xQc, Amouranth, and Nickmercs have signed major deals with Twitch competitor Kick this year; xQc’s and Nickmercs’ deals are non-exclusive, and given that Amouranth has a video on her Twitch account from a couple months ago, it seems hers is non-exclusive, too. Ninja dropped his exclusive contract with Twitch in September 2022 so he could simulcast on multiple platforms. (He dined with Twitch CEO Dan Clancy earlier this month and seems pleased with Friday’s news.)

There are a few guidelines for Twitch’s new simulcasting policy, according to a support document. Streamers will have to make sure the quality of their stream on Twitch is “no less than the experience on other platforms or services.” Streamers “should not” share links to their Twitch community to their simulcasts on other platforms. (Streamers can still share links to third-party websites on their About pages on their channels, they just can’t link out to their other simulcasts while they’re also live on Twitch.) And streamers can’t use third-party services to do things like merge chat across platforms.

At some point in the future, Twitch says it will add a tool so that streamers can indicate that they are simulcasting.

Twitch also announced a big update to its off-service conduct policy. “To further protect our streamers, we’re adding doxxing and swatting to the list of Off-Service Conduct behaviors we will enforce against,” the company says (emphasis Twitch’s), and the changes are in effect as of Friday. The addition of doxxing to the policy follows a recent controversy involving YouTuber Jacksfilms accusing SSSniperWolf of doxxing him in an Instagram story; on Friday, YouTube announced it would be temporarily demonetizing SSSniperWolf’s channel and SSSniperWolf posted an apology on X (formerly Twitter).

Twitch revealed some product changes, too. Guest Star, which lets streamers host co-streams with others, will now be named Stream Together and will be getting features like the ability to merge chats. Twitch says a version of its TikTok-style Discovery Feed that surfaces live channels is in testing. And Twitch’s own alerts system for notifications like subscribers and Bits donations will “soon” support a streamer’s custom animated emotes.

My six-month dive into podcasting’s very chaotic year

My six-month dive into podcasting’s very chaotic year

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

This is Hot Pod, The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.

Well, this is a weird email to write — today is technically my last day at Hot Pod. But you’ll still see my byline around from time to time because I’m joining The Verge’s news team in November. Starting next week, the newsletter will entirely be back in the very capable hands of lead Hot Pod reporter Ariel Shapiro. Although I’m sad to leave, I’m also really excited to see her take the reins again and continue to churn out the coverage that Hot Pod is known for.

It’s probably not a surprise to most of you that I knew very little about podcasts before taking this job back in April — a time that also coincided with some seismic changes in the podcast industry itself. Although my background is in tech reporting, I’m normally known for writing stories like this and stories like this. Weirdly enough, I also covered Spotify’s acquisition of Podsights and Chartable way back in 2019 for Engadget — a story that I have no memory of actually writing. I learned a ton in a short period of time by relying on the work of my Hot Pod predecessors, which include Ariel, Ashley Carman, and Nicholas Quah — as well as the help of my editor, Jake Kastrenakes. But I also relied on the tips and expertise of numerous Hot Pod readers. So thanks for your help over these past several months — as well as trusting me to tell your stories.

A couple of people at Podcast Movement noted that all of the Hot Pod writers have had very distinct styles. Obviously, we’re all different people — but we all took over during very distinct periods for the industry at large. In my view, Nicholas and Ashley covered the promises and failed hopes of the “golden” era of podcasting and the rush of dumb money that made it possible. For me and Ariel, our challenge seems to be how to document an industry that is in the middle of a contraction — but also figuring out how to survive and reinvent itself.

During the time I was in charge of Hot Pod, Spotify laid off hundreds and effectively killed its in-house podcast production units, Gimlet and Parcast. It seemed like every entity, from public radio to news publishers, made cuts to their podcast units. Companies folded, and left their creators hanging. The film industry effectively went on hiatus this summer as both the unions for screenwriters and actors went on strike, which, living in Los Angeles, I saw firsthand. The loss of Hollywood ad dollars led to real consequences for public radio — both WNYC’s president LaFontaine Oliver and former Southern California Public Radio chief Herb Scannell cited it as a factor in layoffs. A few celebrities lost podcast deals — but it seems like every day, a new famous person gets a podcast.

To that end, it’s still a mystery to me why most popular podcasts got that way. I don’t know why Joe Rogan’s weekly drop of three hours of unedited babble is always one of the top podcasts in the country. I don’t know why so many people like Morbid or Alex Cooper. When I look at the top podcast charts, I see a mix of disposable true crime, news podcasts from major media outlets like NPR or The New York Times, and buzzworthy celebrity-led efforts like Strike Force Five or SmartLess or that one hosted by Taylor Swift’s boyfriend and his brother. But while the titles that have wide appeal may be a mystery to me, they clearly resonate with others.

I was heartened to see Heavyweight, a former Gimlet podcast hosted by Jonathan Goldstein and now made by Spotify Studios, do well now that it’s available widely on all players — it currently ranks number 36 on Apple Podcasts. But it was also kind of surprising, given that many interpreted Spotify letting go of Gimlet and Parcast as a sign that narrative podcasts were over. I’m sure Goldstein’s ties to the early days of Gimlet and This American Life no doubt plays a factor in its success.

But at the end of the day, I do think people still have an appetite for good stories. It’s easy to forget that, I guess, during an age where “everything is content” and virality is the key to survival. The number of views or streams on a video or news article or a post often seems like the only thing that matters. While algorithms can be tweaked — I do think certain concepts are timeless.

YouTube’s uncertain podcast future

Can audio-only podcasts actually thrive on YouTube? Despite an ongoing effort by YouTube to cater to traditional podcasters this year, the answer to that question is still uncertain — and YouTube’s idiosyncratic approach to ads and RSS remains the big reason why.

Google sunset Google Podcasts this year and announced plans for those users to migrate to YouTube Music, which will effectively double as both a video platform and a conventional audio podcast player by adding RSS support later this year. Many popular traditional podcasts have already made the transition to YouTube and YouTube Music, with very mixed results.

Rob Walch, vice president of podcaster relations at Libsyn, told Hot Pod that he viewed a webinar on Thursday that YouTube Music hosted for podcasters. He said that as the webinar progressed, a Slack channel he was a part of for podcasters “filled with expletives.” The overall reaction was very negative.

“No one I talked to is going to recommend [YouTube Music] to podcasters,” said Walch.

A sizeable dilemma for audio-only podcasts is how YouTube will handle their ads. Neither YouTube nor YouTube Music allows dynamically inserted ad spots. YouTube’s terms of service explicitly state that podcast content can’t contain ad formats that compete with YouTube’s own. Technically, there’s an exception that applies for host-read ads or baked-in ads — podcasters can disclose them by checking the paid promotions box. But even if podcasters are able to keep their original ads, YouTube will still run its own ads against the videos, splitting revenue with the creator, rather than the dynamic ones a podcaster may want served and that would pay out only to themselves.

“Nobody will accept ads on their content that they have no control over,” said Walch.

It’s not a surprise to many in the podcast industry that “putting your podcasts on YouTube” is harder than it sounds. “It’s always been a little strange to me that people understand that video-only platforms like YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok work in fundamentally different ways, and that content between them is not interchangeable, but still expect podcasts to automatically work on YouTube,” noted Bikram Chatterji, CEO of Maximum Fun in an email to Hot Pod. Max Fun has experimented with putting some of its podcasts like FANTI on YouTube but notes that YouTube’s practice of inserting its own ads “could be a problem” for them on YouTube Music.

There’s a growing sentiment in the podcast world that YouTube’s podcast vision is (perhaps unsurprisingly) designed for video-first content creators.

There’s a growing sentiment in the podcast world that YouTube’s podcast vision is (perhaps unsurprisingly) designed for video-first content creators. The company’s messaging doesn’t jibe with the day-to-day reality of most people who make audio-only podcasts, as well as the numerous hosting, distribution, and monetization services that form the traditional podcast ecosystem in place for decades. Surveys from Edison Research and others that concluded that YouTube was the number one platform for listening to podcasts failed to capture what kind of podcasts those people were listening to.

Hot Pod reached out to a number of different podcasts and podcast networks to see what their plans were for YouTube Music. Some still plan on making their podcasts available on YouTube and YouTube Music, if only for discovery purposes. Others are taking a “wait and see” approach for now.

“We have asked for more info, and gotten very little so far from our YouTube rep,” wrote The Vergecast’s supervising producer, Liam James, to Hot Pod in a Slack message.

The Vergecast only uses YouTube’s ads for now — but wants to eventually bake ads into its videos. The podcast only started publishing on YouTube in the beginning of the year. “Right now we make peanuts on YouTube. It’s a loss for us overall but we are looking at it as an investment,” wrote James.

Betches Media plans to put its audio-only podcasts on YouTube Music when it rolls out RSS ingestion. “We see any new distribution platform as an opportunity to reach new audiences, but as YouTube’s strategy becomes clearer, we’ll continue to evaluate and see what is right for Betches and our podcast network,” wrote David Spiegel, chief revenue officer of Betches Media, in an email. Betches currently relies on YouTube to run pre- and mid-roll ads.

“While YouTube’s decision to not allow podcasters to monetize their ads directly isn’t what we’d prefer, it is not surprising at all, at the end of the day, restricting podcaster’s ability to monetize will affect their interest in promoting the platform,” noted Spiegel.

But the challenges with YouTube Music and RSS ingestion — as well as YouTube and podcasts more broadly — go beyond just ads.

“YouTube uses a different language than us,” Bryan Barletta, the founder of podcast research group Sounds Profitable, told Hot Pod.

One example: when YouTube talks about podcasts on YouTube, what it’s talking about is a cached video that is audio-first that can have a full video component or static video. And even when YouTube adds RSS support, it won’t work as a traditional podcast player. “They’re pulling from your RSS feed, caching it, so it’s one call from YouTube and that’s it,” said Barletta.

If a podcaster wants to change the audio after an episode is published, they only need to update the audio file on their hosting platform — which automatically carries over to all podcast players. Except, it turns out, for YouTube. Podcasters will have to manually update the audio on YouTube Studio.

Listener stats are another issue with YouTube podcasts. In a video titled “Why YouTube Music ingesting podcast RSS feeds could be a huge mess,” Justin Jackson, the co-founder of hosting platform Transister.fm, highlights some of those problems. Whenever a listener presses play in a podcast player like Spotify or Overcast or Apple Podcasts, it requests the RSS feed from a hosting platform. Hosting platforms, therefore, hold a ton of data on who listeners are and where they’re coming from. But YouTube is doing something very different from other podcast players in that it will literally host the audio — instead of redirecting listeners to the hosting platform.

This also means hosting platforms won’t be able to access any of a podcast’s YouTube listener stats. While it’s true that you can see listener stats on YouTube Studio, the data offered by hosting platforms is much more detailed.

“This will make it harder for podcasters to analyze where their listeners are coming from, which episodes are most popular, and how episodes perform over time,” wrote Jackson in an email.

Lightning Round

Jon Stewart and Apple are reportedly parting ways over creative differences, including the host’s intention to cover topics such as AI and China. I’ll be curious to see what happens with the podcast, considering it performed so much better than the TV show.

Speaking of former Daily Show hosts, Trevor Noah’s podcast on Spotify is set to launch on November 9. The show, which is hosted and distributed by Megaphone, will be released across podcast platforms as part of Spotify’s shift away from exclusivity.

Audioboom is still making deals, announcing yesterday that it has signed exclusive partnerships with Girls Next Level, The Bulwark Podcast, We’re Here to Help, and Out of the Pods.

On October 26, Serial will debut The Kids of Rutherford County, a new investigative podcast that examines how a juvenile court in Tennessee abused its power. The show was produced in partnership with ProPublica and WPLN Nashville Public Radio, and is hosted by WPLN reporter Meribah Knight.

Suge Knight is making a podcast from prison, and according to TMZ, it’s all about personal beef.

Triton released its September podcast ranking, with Dateline NBC ranked number one. Two caveats to the ranking, which is that NPR is excluded temporarily because of a data migration. The second is that it also does not include Spotify podcasts, so Joe Rogan (the real number one) is not on there.

Spotify reports earnings on October 24, and will be followed by Cumulus Media on October 27 and SiriusXM on October 31 (spooky!).

- Ariel

Sam Bankman-Fried’s Trial Reveals New Details of How FTX Died

Sam Bankman-Fried’s Trial Reveals New Details of How FTX Died Prosecutors in the criminal fraud case have built the most intricate account to date of the cryptocurrency exchange’s frantic final days.

Slack is retiring its status account on X

Slack is retiring its status account on X

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Slack is retiring its status account on X that previously shared updates about issues and outages on the platform, the company announced on Thursday. “We made the decision to retire the @SlackStatus account in order to consolidate our communications around incidents and focus resources on those most widely used by our customers,” Kevin Albers, VP of customer experience at Slack, said in a statement to The Verge.

The account was a useful way to be notified when Slack was investigating problems, especially for those of us at The Verge who end up writing about those issues. (It was also a good account to monitor with TweetDeck — which is now called XPro and is only available to paying X Premium subscribers.) If you want to keep tabs on Slack’s status moving forward, Albers pointed to Slack’s main status page and said that “we’re also happy to answer any questions related to incidents from our main account, @SlackHQ.” You can also get alerts by subscribing to Slack’s RSS and Atom feeds.

X sent an autoreply to my request for comment: “Busy now, please check back later.”

We have made the decision to retire this account. Moving forward, the Slack Status site, https://t.co/pvGy3wW3MN, will be the source of truth for all incident news. Alerts will also be available through the RSS and Atom feeds linked at the bottom of the Slack Status home page.

— Slack Status (@SlackStatus) October 19, 2023

Other companies have also reduced their investment in X. American Express, for example, made its @AskAmex account private and began telling customers it was inactive as early as August 1st. Air France, according to an April message, no longer does customer service over X direct messages “since Twitter has changed their conditions” (perhaps referring to X’s API pricing tiers it implemented earlier this year).

Israel-Hamas war: how social media companies are handling the response

Israel-Hamas war: how social media companies are handling the response

Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The war in Israel presents content moderation challenges for the most popular social media sites.

Following the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, social media companies are facing increased pressure to crack down on violent content, hate speech, and disinformation.

Some social platforms are already sharing details of their response: Meta is tightening security measures amidst an increase in content violating its rules, while TikTok has also committed to stepping up its moderation in the wake of the attacks.

Despite this, both Meta and TikTok are facing scrutiny from the European Commission over whether their response complies with the Digital Services Act, a set of rules that hold large social media companies accountable for preventing illegal content from being posted to their platforms.

The European Commission is looking into the way X (formerly Twitter) is handling the Israel-Hamas war as well and also sent a letter to YouTube to remind the company of its responsibility to keep illegal content and disinformation off its platform.

Here are all the updates on what social platforms are doing in response to the Israel-Hamas war.

An Industry Insider Drives an Open Alternative to Big Tech’s A.I.

An Industry Insider Drives an Open Alternative to Big Tech’s A.I. The nonprofit Allen Institute for AI, led by a respected computer scientist who sold his company to Apple, is trying to democratize cutting-edge research.

WhatsApp will soon let you stay logged in to two accounts at once

WhatsApp will soon let you stay logged in to two accounts at once

Illustration: The Verge

If you use two different WhatsApp accounts, you’ll soon be able to access both from just one device. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that WhatsApp is rolling out the ability to switch between accounts on Android, and you won’t need to lug around an extra device or continuously log out of your account to be able to do so.

This new feature should make it easier to manage your conversations across multiple accounts, like if you have one WhatsApp account for work and another for messaging friends and family members. It’s rolling out in the coming weeks.

Meta notes that you’ll still need a separate phone number and SIM card (or a phone that accepts multi-SIM or eSIM) if you want to set up a second account. You’ll also need the second phone or its SIM card to receive the one-time passcode that WhatsApp will send via SMS to gain access to your second account on a different device. After this initial verification, the app will continue to work for both accounts without the second device or SIM, says WhatsApp spokesperson Ellie Heatrick.

Meta has been working to make it easier to access your WhatsApp account on different devices, rolling out a multi-device feature in 2021 that lets you use your account across Android tablets, browsers, or computers. Meta recently expanded this feature to include additional smartphones as well, which no longer limits you from using your account on a single phone.

Elon Musk answers Tesla pricing question with anti work-from-home rant

Elon Musk answers Tesla pricing question with anti work-from-home rant

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

On Tesla’s Q3 earnings call, CEO Elon Musk said people who work from home take advantage of the people who cannot work from home and are “detached from reality.” In the middle of talking about rising interest rates and their effect on the affordability of vehicles, Musk launched into a discussion about “Marie Antoinette” vibes of the person he describes asking why doesn’t everyone work from home.

“Like... what about all the people that have to come to the factory and and build the cars? What about all of the people that have to go to to the restaurant and make your food, and deliver your food? It’s like, what are you talking about...”

Musk carried on, saying “Why did I sleep in the factory so many times? Because it mattered,” referring to lowering the costs of a Tesla. He’d been asked how he thought about price elasticity in the current macroenvironment.

In a CNBC interview earlier this year, Musk called remote work “morally wrong” and argued it’s unfair to those who can’t have the option, like food delivery workers. “Get off the goddamn moral high horse with the work-from-home bullshit,” Musk said at the time. Last year, Musk said work from home was “no longer acceptable” at Tesla and issued requirements for 40-hour work weeks in office.

Only Nintendo DS lovers will fully appreciate this dual-screen handheld PC

Only Nintendo DS lovers will fully appreciate this dual-screen handheld PC

The Ayaneo Flip DS. | Image: Ayaneo

Boutique handheld gaming company Ayaneo has announced the Ayaneo Flip DS — a 7-inch 120Hz handheld gaming clamshell with a second screen that’s clearly inspired by the Nintendo DS, and might let it play games like one too.

According to Liliputing’s Brad Linder, who deserves kudos for calling out the company’s attempt to plant a “leak,” both the Flip DS and a similar Flip KB will be powered by AMD’s Ryzen 7 7840U. That’s the same chip that’s in practically every other flagship Windows gaming handheld at the moment, including quite a few from Ayaneo itself.

Image: Ayaneo

The Ayaneo Flip DS...

Image: Ayaneo

...vs. the Ayaneo Flip KB.

While that AMD chip sounds like overkill for Nintendo DS titles — I’m very curious about battery life — a secondary screen to properly display Nintendo’s top-and-bottom games is a rarity in the emulation world.

Lots of handhelds (and phones) can already emulate the DS, but they often put the top and bottom screens side by side or let you switch between looking at the top or bottom at any given time.

That’s one of the reasons the emulator community was excited about the rise of folding phones like Samsung’s Galaxy Fold:

And it’s why some Steam Deck owners have gone out of their way to bolt a second screen onto their handheld.

If you’re interested in the Ayaneo Flip DS, know that it’s likely going to take a convoluted path to market. Not only does Ayaneo crowdfund all its products, but it also tends to trickle out details as slowly as it possibly can ahead of their Indiegogo debut. The company also announces new designs faster than it can ship them — by the time I’ve received one of the company’s products for testing, it’s almost always already moved on to a newer, more desirable model.

At this point, we’re waiting on these two clamshells, a sliding keyboard handheld PC, a big-battery + big-screen + touchpads handheld PC, another big-screen + touchpads PC, and another mystery one that uses Qualcomm’s new chip. The company says it started shipping its first Android handheld in September, on top of the... nine? ten? Windows handhelds it’s already shipped in two years. I genuinely don’t understand how the company can afford it.

Reddit’s blockchain-based Community Points are going away

Reddit’s blockchain-based Community Points are going away

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Reddit is sunsetting its blockchain-based Community Points product, the company announced on Tuesday. A Reddit admin (employee) shared the announcement about Community Points, which uses the Ethereum blockchain, on a few subreddits, including r/CryptoCurrency (which had its own “moons” crypto token), r/FortniteBR (which had its own “bricks” token), and r/EthTrader (which had its own “donuts” token).

The value of those tokens has, predictably, fallen off of a cliff, as CoinDesk reports drops of between 60 and 90 percent. Some Reddit posters claim thousands of dollars in value disappeared from their wallets immediately, while others are pointing at transactions made just prior to Tuesday’s announcement that they think are suspicious.

Community Points will go away by November 8th. According to the announcement, the admin said that the company shutting down Community Points because “there was no path to scale it broadly across the platform.” While the moderators and communities that supported the feature “have been incredible partners,” the admin said that “the regulatory environment has added to scalability limitations.” The admin added that Community Points “wouldn’t migrate well” to the updated reddit.com experience “without an outsized commitment to resources.”

Instead, the company plans to focus on “more scalable programs” like the recently launched Contributor Program, which will let you turn Reddit gold into real money, the admin says. When Community Points are officially sunset, you won’t see them in your Vault on the Reddit app.

Reddit launched Community Points in May 2020. Reddit has already pulled its website about for Community Points, but you can see an archive of the page from September (where the company still called the product a beta) on the Wayback Machine. In August 2022, Reddit announced an integration with the now-disgraced cryptocurrency firm FTX. Reddit is still supporting its blockchain-based Collectible Avatars, which are NFTs, spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt tells The Verge.

The Meta glassholes have arrived

The Meta glassholes have arrived

Quest 3 in an elevator. | Video: @kukurio59 (TikTok)

It’s happening: people are once walking into public places wearing a video-recording face computer on their heads. Only this time, the faceputer is sold by Meta, not Google.

Say hello to Meta’s Glassholes.

OK don't be mad. But someone had to do it.

walked into a cafe in mixed reality pic.twitter.com/WSJEMWuG00

— CIX (@CixLiv) October 16, 2023

Over the weekend, as buyers got their first uninterrupted stretches of time with the new Meta Quest 3 headset, some started posting videos of themselves interacting with the real world instead of playing games.

Sure, it’s cool to blast low-poly baddies breaking through your walls, but isn’t it more technically impressive that Meta’s new headset lets you cook a meal or sweep your floors or enjoy a fancy coffee on a beautiful day without ever taking off the machine? That’s what the Quest 3’s full-color, low-latency passthrough video allows.

@carrotsurvivor

Meta quest 3 is a game changer. #VR #meta #metaquest3 #future

♬ Walking On a Dream - Empire of the Sun

It didn’t take long for people to begin pushing the limits — both technologically and socially. Jay Mayo walked the New York Comic-Con floor with the headset on, recording clips of strangers along the way.

Kukurio59 filmed themselves waiting for an elevator, already one of the most socially awkward spaces humanity has to offer. (They also filmed some less public demos.)

@kukurio59

Waiting for the Elevator in Mixed Reality is crazy! #quest3 #mr #ar #mixedreality #augmentedreality #elevator #waiting #virtualreality

♬ original sound - Kukurio

And, in the video you already saw atop this post, XR and AI booster Cix Liv went nearly full Glasshole by walking straight into a San Francisco coffee shop and placing an order, without bothering to hide the cafe’s address.

Here’s that video again:

I spoke to Ray Ng, co-owner of Fiddle Fig Cafe, the coffee shop in question, and he thinks it was just “a stunt for laughs and giggles.” Liv didn’t sit down and drink his coffee with the headset on, says Ng. “They took the set off, sat down, and that was it,” he tells me over the phone. The whole thing was over in “maybe 5 minutes.”

But that won’t necessarily stop other attention-seekers from following Liv’s lead — they might even embolden each another. “Now I don’t feel bad walking around with the headset during comic con,” Mayo replied to Liv, after the artist who filmed themselves walking around New York Comic-Con saw Liv’s cafe video.

We’ve been through all of this before, of course — a decade ago, public opinion turned against Google Glass, with public business owners in particular coming out against the tech. Diners, movie theaters, casinos, bars, and other public establishments outright banned the headset — one woman was allegedly assaulted for wearing Google Glass in San Francisco, and an XR pioneer was assaulted in Paris while using a similar-looking device.

But that was a decade ago, and I argued last year that our definition of privacy, our tolerance for public photography, and our resistance to wearable technology have all changed considerably since Google first introduced Glass. Maybe it won’t be such a problem this time around? Smartphone cameras everywhere is now the norm, and small businesses often benefit from an influencer plug; Ng was fine with me naming Fiddle Fig Cafe in this story.

I do wonder if Meta was prepared for the Quest 3 to be the glasshole’s headset of choice, though. While the company has put considerable thought into making sure its glasses-like Ray-Bans don’t fall into the same trap — publishing privacy explainers and guidelines on using those glasses in public, including proactively letting people know you’re recording — the Quest 3 doesn’t seem to have similar published guidelines.

It’s also a bit harder for bystanders to tell when the Quest 3 is recording. It simply pulses a white light, slowly, and it’s a light that’s already on by default. When I asked my wife if she thought I was recording, she said she had no clue.

Then again, if I saw someone walking into a cafe with a bulbous white object atop their face with multiple camera slits, I’d just automatically assume they were recording absolutely everything.

Meta didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Pixel 6 owners who use multiple profiles run into problems with Android 14

Pixel 6 owners who use multiple profiles run into problems with Android 14

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Some Pixel 6 users are reporting strange issues after updating their devices to the new Android 14 OS, which launched on October 4th for Pixel devices. One critical-sounding bug that seems to have spread to multiple users is losing access to internal storage, which ends up in a complete loss of data. Others seem to have other odd issues, like repeat UI launcher crashes. A Verge tipster pointed out the reports, which show a pattern of striking users with multiple user accounts set up on their devices.

The original poster reports “storage is full” errors once they rebooted following an overnight update to Android 14, while another commenter said they lost access to internal storage entirely. The Android 14 update launched officially last week alongside Google’s new Pixel 8 devices with updates to the UI, additional customization options, and more.

Screenshot by Umar Shakir / The Verge

All I did was make a new user account and run software updates. However, I am on the Android 14 beta.

I have personally tried to reproduce the issue on my Pixel 6A by setting up a new account and attempting to run software updates. While I did not get storage issues, my 6A did crash multiple times. I also got a “System UI isn’t responding” error. But if I switch back to the other account, the issues are no longer present. I should mention that I am on the Android 14 beta, and I have not run into any other issues since attempting this.

We reached out to Google for comment on the issues presented by the users, but we didn’t hear back by the time of publication.

Biden, Trolling Trump, Joins Truth Social: ‘Converts Welcome’

Biden, Trolling Trump, Joins Truth Social: ‘Converts Welcome’ The Biden campaign is in search of any edge with voters who could be persuaded to his side.

Intel’s new 14th Gen CPUs arrive on October 17th with up to 6GHz out of the box

Intel’s new 14th Gen CPUs arrive on October 17th with up to 6GHz out of the box

Image: Intel

Intel is launching its 14th Gen desktop processors this week, promising boost frequencies of 6GHz out of the box for its flagship Core i9-14900K. Known as Raptor Lake Refresh, Intel is maintaining pricing for its 14th Gen Core i9, i7, and i5 processors this year, sticking to the same retail pricing as the 13th Gen when these new chips launch on October 17th.

The 6GHz boost on the new Core i9-14900K makes it the “fastest desktop processor at volume,” according to Intel, referring to its special-edition 13900KS that first broke the 6GHz barrier at stock speeds last year but didn’t ship at volume. The more interesting 14th Gen processor in this refresh could be the Core i7-14700K, though, thanks to a significant bump to its efficiency cores.

This year, Intel is increasing the core count on its Core i7 processor, moving from eight efficiency and eight performance cores to 12 efficiency and eight performance cores. That’s 20 cores in total for the Core i7-14700K, close to the 24 found on the Core i9-14900K. The base clocks on the P-core are 3.4GHz and 2.5GHz on the E-core for the 14700K, the same that we saw on last year’s 13700K. These added efficiency cores should help with creator tasks and even gaming performance for titles that take advantage of multithreading.

Image: Intel

Intel latest 14th Gen Core i7 compared to previous generations.

Intel has some favorable benchmarks against AMD’s Ryzen 9 7950X and even its own previous Core i7 chips for creator tasks, but we’ll have to wait and see how this new Core i7-14700K compares to AMD’s impressive 7800X3D chip for gaming benchmarks.

Over on the flagship side, Intel’s Core i9-14900K adds the 6GHz Thermal Velocity Boost frequency found previously on the $699 special-edition Core i9-13900KS variant. Frequencies for the P-core max turbo are up 200Hz to 5.6GHz this time around, alongside a 100MHz bump on the E-core max turbo side. Even the base frequencies for both the P- and E-cores are up 200MHz.

Image: Intel

Intel’s full 14th Gen lineup.

Intel also has a refreshed Core i5 this year. The i5-14600K includes a total of 20 cores (six P-cores and eight E-cores) and has a base clock of 3.5GHz on the P-core side and up to a 5.3GHz boost.

All of these 14th Gen processors will work in Intel 600- and 700-series motherboards, as Intel is still using its LGA 1700 socket. They also include support for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 through a discrete option that motherboard manufacturers can include in refreshed Z790 boards. Intel is also supporting DDR5 5600 and DDR4 3200 memory speeds with its 14th Gen chips.

The Core i9-14900K will be priced at $589, with the Core i7-1700K priced at $409 and the Core i5-14600K launching at $319. All three processors will be available from system builders and retailers on October 17th.

Apple has an edge over its competitors in the fight against climate change

Apple has an edge over its competitors in the fight against climate change

Apple CEO Tim Cook talks to an employee at a solar farm in Hanstholm, Denmark. | Photo by Christoph Dernbach / picture alliance via Getty Images

A new report compares climate initiatives by Apple, Dell, Google, HP, Microsoft, and Nvidia. Apple’s far from perfect, but so far, it’s ahead of the pack, according to today’s report.

It’s the only company among the six tech giants that has set targets for its suppliers to switch to renewable energy. “Other brands need to send similarly clear signals to their suppliers,” Gary Cook, global climate policy director for the nonprofit Stand.earth that published the report, said in a press release.

To be sure, a completely separate report published by a different environmental group last week casts some doubt on Apple’s recent carbon neutral claims. Stand.earth’s new report, however, puts Apple’s broader climate initiatives in perspective by scrutinizing several tech companies at once.

“Other brands need to send similarly clear signals to their suppliers.”

Big Tech produces 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than aviation. The new Stand.earth report published today includes recommendations for companies to rein in that pollution.

Crucially, companies need to be more strategic about how they purchase renewable energy. Most power grids don’t have enough solar and wind farms online yet to fulfill companies’ goals of becoming carbon neutral. Many of them, including Apple, instead purchase Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) meant to support clean energy projects. But this financial incentive often isn’t enough to actually bring more renewable energy online, particularly if the RECs are unbundled. To change that, Apple, Google, and Microsoft have strategies to get more renewable energy into local grids where they operate.

On top of that, the report says tech companies ought to work together more closely to fight climate change. “There remains a substantial lack of meaningful collaboration and unified action among sector leaders,” it says. They could use their collective might to advocate for policies that promote the adoption of clean energy, for instance.

And of course, supply chain emissions are still a sore spot across the board. The biggest chunk of a company’s carbon footprint is often its suppliers. By the end of the decade, Apple has said it wants to be carbon neutral across its operations and supply chain. The company’s suppliers more than doubled their clean power between 2021 and 2022. This year, some 300 had committed to only using clean energy by 2030 when making Apple products. Their commitments helped Apple make its first announcement of carbon-neutral gadgets last month: “select” combinations of cases and bands for the Apple Watch.

Apple still has to be more transparent about its supply chain emissions

“While Apple may be too quick to claim their products are ‘carbon neutral,’ they are the only ones who are both setting a strong example in how they are moving their own operations off of fossil fuels, and working aggressively to get their suppliers on a path to be 100% renewably powered by 2030,” Cook said.

Despite that progress, Apple still has to be more transparent about its supply chain emissions, according to the separate report published last week by the nonprofit Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE). Apple stopped asking its suppliers to disclose their emissions this year, according to the report.

“Given that Apple’s suppliers do not publicly disclose their clean energy use and greenhouse gas emissions data, how can it be publicly verified that the manufacturing process for the three carbon neutral Apple Watch products uses 100 percent clean electricity?” IPE asks.

The Verge reached out to each of the companies in the report. “We will continue to advocate and share our rigorous, science-based approach to decarbonize our products — in close partnership with our suppliers, and with third-party validation — as a way to drive further progress across industry,” Apple spokesperson Sean Redding said in an email to The Verge.

Nvidia director of corporate communications Liz Archibald said in an email that the company “consistently engages suppliers to evaluate additional initiatives and facilitate further emissions reductions across the supply chain.” Other companies didn’t immediately respond or declined to comment on the record.

How ‘A.I. Agents’ That Roam the Internet Could One Day Replace Workers

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Lakers legend Rick Fox built a house that can suck CO2 out of the atmosphere

Lakers legend Rick Fox built a house that can suck CO2 out of the atmosphere

Laker legend-turned-actor Rick Fox has a new passion: sustainable concrete. | Image: Partanna

A new house in the Bahamas is built with an alternative concrete that sucks CO2 out of the air. It’s a home that’s supposed to help in the fight against climate change, and the plan is to build 999 more like it.

That’s the slam dunk NBA Lakers legend-turned-actor Rick Fox is working toward now on the small island nation where he grew up. Fox is the CEO and co-founder of the sustainable building materials startup Partanna that unveiled its first home today. If they’re successful in the Bahamas, the goal is to make its alternative concrete an everyday building material that could cut down pollution from construction.

“I shut down my entire career that was in Hollywood to pursue and create [climate] solutions,” Fox tells The Verge. “I had to move around the industry that was new to me and meet people that were looking at me like, ‘What the hell are you doing in concrete?’”

“What the hell are you doing in concrete?”

Concrete just happens to be a major source of the greenhouse gas emissions causing more intense storms, wildfires, and other catastrophes through climate change. The culprit is actually cement, a key ingredient in concrete that alone is responsible for more than 8 percent of carbon dioxide emissions globally.

“My entry into the world of concrete was one out of just sheer survival and the need to innovate in my own home country,” Fox says. Hurricane Dorian struck the Bahamas in 2019, wrecking 75 percent of homes on the worst hit island of Abaco and displacing thousands of people. Fox was in Los Angeles at the time. “The closest thing I could do was race to CNN to scream from the rooftops that we needed to do something better,” he says.

Soon after, he met California-based architect Sam Marshall, whose home had sustained damage in the 2018 Woolsey fire, one of the most destructive blazes in the state’s history. Marshall had already “caught lightning in a bottle,” according to Fox. Working with material scientists, they’d developed a way to make concrete without using carbon-intensive cement. Together, they co-founded Partanna.

The pair are pretty tight-lipped around the process, but the main ingredients are brine from desalination plants and a byproduct of steel production called slag. By getting rid of cement as an ingredient, Partanna can avoid the carbon dioxide emissions that come with it. Making cement produces a lot of climate pollution because it has to be heated to high temperatures in a kiln and because it triggers a chemical reaction that releases additional CO2 from limestone.

Partanna says its mixture can cure at ambient temperatures, so it doesn’t have to use as much energy. It also says binder ingredients in the mixture absorb CO2 from the air and trap it in the material. In a home or building, the material continues to pull in CO2. Even if that structure is demolished, the material holds onto the CO2 and can be reused as an aggregate to make more of the alternative concrete.

That’s how the startup and can call its material and the newly constructed home “carbon negative.” The 1,250-square-foot structure is supposed to have captured as much CO2 as 5,200 mature trees a year.

To be sure, carbon-counting with trees is tricky. A Guardian investigation earlier this year found that 90 percent of rainforest offsets certified by one of the world’s leading carbon credit certifiers, Verra, are “worthless” because they likely didn’t lead to actual reductions in pollution. Verra is also certifying carbon credits for Partanna. Fox says the CO2 Partanna captures is easier to quantify than forest offsets and isn’t as vulnerable as forests that need to be protected from deforestation in order to store carbon.

It’s also worth noting that Partanna’s key ingredients, slag and brine, come from energy-intensive steel and desalination facilities that can produce a lot of CO2 emissions on their own. Partanna isn’t counting those emissions in its carbon footprint. “That’s not on us ... These are waste materials that we are taking and using for good,” Fox says.

“It’s good that they’re making use of waste,” says Dwarak Ravikumar, an assistant professor at the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University. Even so, Ravikumar says, “We need to conduct a robust analysis of this from a systems perspective to understand what is the overall climate impact.” It’s important for the company to share its data so that researchers can assess Partanna’s entire environmental footprint and how scalable its strategy is, he says.

“We are not just on the frontline of climate change; we are the frontline of solutions.”

Fox isn’t the only one on a mission to make a more sustainable building material than traditional concrete. Microsoft announced last month that it’s testing low-carbon concrete for its data centers. And other startups are working to take CO2 out of the atmosphere and trap it in concrete.

Partanna says it has an edge since its material is made with brine. It’s actually supposed to get stronger with exposure to seawater — an attractive trait to a country made up of many low-lying islands exposed to worsening storms and sea level rise.

“We are not just on the frontline of climate change; we are the frontline of solutions,” Philip Davis, prime minister and minister of finance of the Bahamas, said in a Partanna press release.

The Bahamian government is partnering with Partanna to build 1,000 homes, starting with a community of 29 more houses that are supposed to be built by next year. No one is living in the first one in Nassau yet; it’s a prototype. But the next are expected to be part of a program to help first-time homeowners.

This mushroom brick could replace concrete

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