As the tech world has standardized on USB-C, charging your devices has become much simpler. But it’s still not simple enough. Sure, most things plug into most other things, but now you have to worry about power and data throughput, making sure that everything works properly with everything else. That’s why we’ve spent years longing for what we call the God Cable: the one with fast enough everything to be the perfect charger for devices from phones to power tools.
On The Vergecast: power cables, crypto corruption, and AI agents.
David Pierce is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.
On this episode of The Vergecast, we start by talking about one company’s effort to build its own version of the perfect charger. Twelve South didn’t try to build the God Cable, and founder Andrew Green argues that you probably wouldn’t want it even if he could get it made. He walks us through how his team developed the new PowerCord, why he thinks an integrated charger still makes sense for lots of people, and all the decisions you have to make to get your charger just right.
After that, The Verge’s Tina Nguyen joins the show from the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas to talk all things crypto and politics. She tells us about the rise of $TRUMP, what the crypto community and the Trump administration want from each other, and whether the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Act will actually amount to anything.
Finally, we answer a question on the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email [email protected]!) about which tasks we might be willing to offload to AI agents. It’s a good question, and a tricky one, and we want to hear from you about it. Call the hotline, send us an email, and let us know: what are you willing to let an AI bot do you for, and what do you hope they might be able to do soon? And what are your big-screen tasks now?
If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started:
- The Twelve South PowerCord
- The Vergecast USB-C Holiday Spec-tacular
- Everything you need to know about switching to USB-C
- How a crypto bro shorted $TRUMP coin — and scored a dinner with the President
- Presidential seals, $100,000 watches, and a Marriott afterparty
- Trump’s media company says it’s buying $2.5 billion in Bitcoin
- The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Act will soon ramp up in Congress.
- Crypto funds seized by the government may go into a ‘digital Fort Knox’
- Google’s future is Google googling
- OpenAI’s new Operator AI agent can do things on the web for you
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