catatp.fm Unofficial Accidental Tech Podcast transcripts (generated by computer, so expect errors).

41: Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

Disk Utility repair results, Xbox One launch, PrimeSense, Apple’s potential in TV, Penny Arcade’s job posting, and facing trolls.

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Transcribed using Whisper large_v2 (transcription) + WAV2VEC2_ASR_LARGE_LV60K_960H (alignment) + Pyannote (speaker diaritization).

Transcript start

⏹️ ▶️ John Someone says Syracuse sounds really nasal. Yeah, welcome to the show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey We used a different version of the theme song last week. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey our friend of the show, Jonathan Mann, that’s M A double N, who is the guy who wrote the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey initial theme song and the slightly beloved bleeps and bloops version,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is the one that John likes, but nobody else does. He took it upon himself to write a new version and we

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sprinkled that into the show or I should say Marco sprinkled that into the show.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Did you hear apparently on the after dark for this week’s Back to Work Merlin Mann, our friend

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Merlin covered it briefly and said he was working on a full cover. I am very much looking forward to hearing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that and because the brief part that he did sounded really good.

⏹️ ▶️ John Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Relax the devil Relax the devil

⏹️ ▶️ Marco D with an added F sharp Hey Merlin you should finish that up and we will play it Which of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco course does nothing for you This is like, you should work for free for exposure He does this

⏹️ ▶️ John Sometimes he does like style parodies Like he did a lot of that with the What was it, the Mail Chimp

⏹️ ▶️ John Sometimes there’s a man Sometimes

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a man But anyway If he if I’m listening he’s doing a style parody. I would like to request an REM style

⏹️ ▶️ John parody you use you can do like You know murmurs or fables error REM

⏹️ ▶️ John Right in his wheelhouse

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Speaking of working for exposure well, we should get to the penny arcade thing but first we have some follow-up

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Who wants to talk about photo stream not it? John follow-up defaults to you

⏹️ ▶️ John all right. I mean like we keep talking about photo stream I don’t even remember where this link came from. But

⏹️ ▶️ John oh yeah, Dave, whose last name I won’t attempt to pronounce because he can’t agree on how he wants people to

⏹️ ▶️ John pronounce his last name, but it starts with a C-H. I think it’s Chartier. I think that’s safe. He changes his mind.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve heard him change his mind. Anyway, he posted a link to this knowledge-based article that looks

⏹️ ▶️ John like it is recent. It has a recent date on it, and it looks like it’s in response to confusion

⏹️ ▶️ John about PhotoStream. And the relevant passage here

⏹️ ▶️ John provides some information that previously was not provided by any of the other documents. And it’s not information about how

⏹️ ▶️ John photo stream works. It’s information about motivations. And that I think is what a

⏹️ ▶️ John lot of people have been missing. Because you can explain all these rules and give out all these numbers and, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John put all these facts about it. But it’s like, but why? Why? What are you trying to do with photo stream? So here’s the important sentence.

⏹️ ▶️ John The photos that you upload to my photo stream are stored in iCloud for 30 days to give your devices plenty

⏹️ ▶️ John of time to connect to iCloud and download them. That’s the key piece of missing information that I think is leading

⏹️ ▶️ John to a lot of confusion. What’s the point of PhotoStream? It’s there to get your photos somewhere

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not an individual device for 30 days so all your other devices can pull the stuff down.

⏹️ ▶️ John So all those limits and the numbers and everything or whatever don’t matter because bottom line is it’s supposed to just be

⏹️ ▶️ John a temporary holding pen for your stuff and it’s supposed to stay there long enough for you to pull it down

⏹️ ▶️ John on your other devices. So that nix is photo stream as any sort of solution to

⏹️ ▶️ John any sort of ever picks like solution to, you know, hold all my photos for me. Doesn’t matter what the limits

⏹️ ▶️ John are. Doesn’t matter anything else. Bottom line is it’s not gonna be there for more than 30 days. The whole it’s just a holding area. So I think that

⏹️ ▶️ John helped that clarifies for me. And it’s nice to see that from Apple because I that that was my impression

⏹️ ▶️ John of how it worked. Reading all the other things, but seeing Apple explain, you know, that simple sentence explaining the motivation

⏹️ ▶️ John of the service makes it clear that this is just not an Accidental implementation detail that soon it will hold all your photos

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever the intention of this feature is just a holding bin and Apple’s Saying it themselves So

⏹️ ▶️ John I feel a little bit I feel like I understand photo stream a little bit more now and now I know enough to not Really pay attention

⏹️ ▶️ John to it no matter what they do with the limits and speaking of photo stream I threw another link in the show notes

⏹️ ▶️ John here that Have almost nothing to say about except for here’s another one of these things is called space monkey

⏹️ ▶️ John comm triple dub space monkey comm and it It looks like some kind of hardware device combined with a software

⏹️ ▶️ John service, kind of like EverPix. The website is… It actually looks

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like Transporter, actually. Like if you look at it, if you read into it a little bit,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it basically… and we should disclose Transporter is a frequent sponsor of our show, so take this with a grain of salt. However,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it basically looks like Transporter, but with worse pricing.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, but they have a whole software component too, where it’s like, it’s supposed to… it’s more like a media manager. It’s not just

⏹️ ▶️ John like arbitrary file storage. Transporter is sort of like application agnostic it is a place for

⏹️ ▶️ John data And what data you put there is totally up to you and this looks like it’s trying to be a hybrid of

⏹️ ▶️ John Transport ever pics, but I looked at this website for a while. It’s totally like a web 3.0. We kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of bootstrap Built website with animated stuff I could

⏹️ ▶️ John not for life me figure out any like actual technical information about this thing so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah It’s pretty light on the information and pretty heavy on the marketing titles and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco graphics, but actual information is hard to come by on this site.

⏹️ ▶️ John It could be awesome, it could be terrible, I don’t know. I just wanted to throw it out there as yet another one of these things that

⏹️ ▶️ John is trying to solve the problem of where we put all our junk. The final thing on this topic

⏹️ ▶️ John is we talked briefly about Box yesterday and how it was kind of like an enterprise-focused version of Dropbox.

⏹️ ▶️ John I either said or strongly implied that Box could be self-hosted, and I got an email

⏹️ ▶️ John from box employing say that box is not self hosted. Also, it’s not called box.net anymore. That was

⏹️ ▶️ John the old name that I said in the past show. It’s it’s they dropped the dotnet. Anyway, it’s not self hosted. They host

⏹️ ▶️ John it for you. And the difference is between this and Dropbox. According to this box employee are that

⏹️ ▶️ John they manage their own data centers. They don’t put stuff in s3. So there’s a little bit more, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John deterministic security about the data. It’s not just put in another bucket through another third party. It’s just one,

⏹️ ▶️ John Box stores the data. They have admin tools and reporting and stuff that gives them more

⏹️ ▶️ John oversight on the data. So if you need some sort of auditing and reporting, they can provide that to you instead of again relying on Amazon

⏹️ ▶️ John to do that. And they’re compliant with a bunch of certifications and all the good stuff. So thanks

⏹️ ▶️ John to the Box employee for the clarification. And I think if you go to box.net

⏹️ ▶️ John it redirects. But anyway, go to box.com and you’ll find it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It seems like Box is I almost just said box.net because that’s always how I’ve thought of it. It’s one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the services that has like a billion users effectively and geeks

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in our circles almost never even considered existing, almost never think about it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey because it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not used by Mac nerds with laptops, it’s used like you know in the enterprise a lot and a lot of PC

⏹️ ▶️ Marco users use it and it’s just it’s like stumble upon when stumble upon first

⏹️ ▶️ Marco became big or even more recently when Pinterest started growing like crazy and the entire

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like tech geek world was basically ignoring it because it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was so popular among women, and the tech geek world is so dominated by men,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least the online press part of it, that it was invisible to that world. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of a sudden, we realized, oh my God, this is huge. I think that’s how Box is. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really massive, and tons of people use it, but we hardly ever see it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Now that I’m using it every day now, and it works similarly to Dropbox, but with an Enterprise band.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco picked a different name at least I mean if they were gonna go from box.net to something else could they have not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco made this very similar to a Dropbox service named box

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah well maybe that’s a strength in the enterprise

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t want to drop your software use box

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wow I thought that box predated Dropbox that is completely not fact-checked but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought that was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John the

⏹️ ▶️ John case it’s been around for a while anyway it’s not some new thing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wasn’t there something called X Drive before BMW used it wasn’t it like a something kind of someone that would give

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you like an X drive letter on your Windows PC. In case you know about this, obviously John wouldn’t.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I actually don’t know about this, but it sounds like something that a Windows… something that would be

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the Windows platform.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway. The chat is saying that Box.net, because at the time

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was called Box.net, is 2005, Dropbox 2008.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Alright. Obviously that matters a lot now. So,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco let’s move on to our first aid results. Casey, how did you do running disk utility

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as John assigned us in the last episode?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, so Captain Paranoid explained to us that we should be running disk utility on an hourly basis

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and verifying everything under the sun.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, no, no, repair, you gotta repair, verify, why bother verifying, you gotta repair.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey My apologies, you are correct, sir. To repair everything under the sun, and this is a real pain in the butt

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you run on a laptop like I do because then you’ve got to reboot into recovery mode, blah, blah, blah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, anyway, so I, as I’ve mentioned numerous times, I have two 15-inch high-res anti-glare

⏹️ ▶️ Casey MacBook Pros with optical drives, they’re both…

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Day and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey night.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey exactly. That’s, that, that, well, actually you could say that because one’s work, one’s not. But anyway, the point

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, the point is I tried it on both of them and one has an SSD,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one does not, and both of them had errors which were able to be fixed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey by disk utility. So as much as I begrudge Captain Paranoid for making me worry about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey something that I didn’t really feel like worrying about, it ended up it was for the best. So thank you, John.

⏹️ ▶️ John And by the way, I do recommend running Verify on your boot drive because then you don’t have to reboot. Like the common case

⏹️ ▶️ John of like, oh, everything is fine, you will be able to just run Verify on your boot. You still have to walk away from your computer

⏹️ ▶️ John because it will totally make your computer unusable. But just do it when you’re going for lunch or something. And

⏹️ ▶️ John most of the time when you come back, it’ll say, oh, Verify checked in. It’s fine. I only recommend repair on externals because

⏹️ ▶️ John if Verify finds errors, the very next thing you’re going to do is repair and it takes a similar amount of time to do both verify and repair.

⏹️ ▶️ John So on your boot drive, your only choice is verify, so do that. On external drives, you might as well just do repair because that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John what the next move is going to be anyway, if there are any errors. And if there’s not any errors, they’re equivalent.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Here’s a question. Is there much of a reason or even is it possible to do this on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a network time machine? So like we have it with the Synology setup, where Synology is using

⏹️ ▶️ Marco open source, whatever component to host Time Machine shares, which I think are stored as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco giant sparse images or something like that. Does any part of this apply to those?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no, any volume you can mount, any HFS plus volume you can mount, you can do this to.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are sparse images HFS plus

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John internally?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, underneath there is an HFS plus volume.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Okay.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like that’s what mounts when it does its thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right

⏹️ ▶️ Casey then. Yeah, but I didn’t see it in disk utility. I don’t believe.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you have to make it mount. Like, Time Machine does this sneaky thing where it’ll connect to the Synology and mount the volume.

⏹️ ▶️ John If you look at your desktop, you can see it appear sometimes. But it’s not, you know, it makes it all go away when the backup

⏹️ ▶️ John is done. Sometimes you don’t see it at all.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you can manually mount the share, just like, you know, just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John in Finder.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, just double-click the Sparse Bundle that’s there. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, yeah. OK.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. Moving right along.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Hold on, hold on. What about you? We

⏹️ ▶️ Marco got way more to do.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, first, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco might never have done my homework.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco surprise. Well, John told me that not to run it while you’re using it. And so I’ve been using it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you could have run it on your external drives. You don’t need more than one drive, right? All right, well, if you didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John do your homework, it’s OK. Lots of other people did who filled out the survey. I should have mentioned that after the show, I should have done this during the show,

⏹️ ▶️ John but after the show last week, I said, you know what, we should get some information on this. I wonder how many people listened to the

⏹️ ▶️ John last episode and decided, I’m going to run Disk Utility on my disks just like they talked about on the show.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I wanted to know how they did. So I tweeted out a link that said, if you listened to the

⏹️ ▶️ John show last week and decided to run Disk Utility, tell me how it turned out. It’s a two question survey.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I tweeted, I think I did it on app.net and Marco put it in the show notes, but it wasn’t mentioned

⏹️ ▶️ John on the show. And we got a lot of people replying, both before and after the survey, replying like, hey, I

⏹️ ▶️ John listened to your show and it did stuff. And I put a couple of, I grabbed a couple of tweets here. One person said, this is

⏹️ ▶️ John from D. Shepp, ran Disk Utility last week and it reported errors. Rebooted and repair was not possible.

⏹️ ▶️ John So it did verify it and it reported it was okay. Lots of things like without they’ll run it

⏹️ ▶️ John and it will say there’s a problem they’ll try to repair it it will say sorry couldn’t repair and then it’s okay or there’ll be errors and there won’t

⏹️ ▶️ John be errors there’ll be errors and there won’t be and that’s not reassuring to anybody involved like you know oh no I said there

⏹️ ▶️ John was errors but now there’s not I guess everything’s fine but instead you get this feeling of unease about hmm you know I don’t know

⏹️ ▶️ John about that. Here’s another one. Randisk Utility on my startup disk this is by ryb

⏹️ ▶️ John on my MacBook Air for the first time in over a year it fixed a free block count error, which freed up 70 gigabytes.

⏹️ ▶️ John Crazy. So that person got 70 gigabytes of disk space back because it apparently HFS plus and lost

⏹️ ▶️ John track of the the free block count. Wow. And you know, it’s like, they’re trees,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? So if you if you have a missing if the whole subtree goes missing in the metadata, it could potentially

⏹️ ▶️ John be pointing to lots of information. So he got 70 gigs back. This is from

⏹️ ▶️ John Evie Q ran disk utility got an error, followed the instructions, then disk utility recovery

⏹️ ▶️ John found no errors. Again, spooky. And lots of reports

⏹️ ▶️ John of what happened to me with my time machine volume, which is it had errors that I went to repair and it said, sorry, can’t repair.

⏹️ ▶️ John And then after that, the disk was unmountable. And that leads to something else I should have talked about

⏹️ ▶️ John last week. Verify disk is in theory, a read only operation repair disk is going to make changes to your disk.

⏹️ ▶️ John Those changes may be harmful to your disk. But if it’s got errors anyway, you say, well, I had errors, but it

⏹️ ▶️ John seemed to be working fine. You can take that into account and say, look, this thing has errors.

⏹️ ▶️ John But before I even try to repair, let me make sure that I have like this gets back to the multiple backups thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John You know, be aware that attempting to repair an error, as I described in last week’s show could make

⏹️ ▶️ John the disk even worse off than it was. It doesn’t mean that it was you should really use that backup before,

⏹️ ▶️ John but it could make things worse. So always have multiple backups before you start messing with anything before you start writing data

⏹️ ▶️ John to any disk, make sure that is not your only backup. And I don’t know what else to do. People like,

⏹️ ▶️ John it found errors, what should I do? If that’s your only backup and it has errors, it’s like, well, is your source

⏹️ ▶️ John disk okay? Because if your source disk is okay, make a second backup from it now before you start screwing with the other one, right? Don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John just rush into it. Or the one backup good.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway. Yeah, I would say that your story last week about how both your primary volume

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and your time machine backup were both corrupted, that is as big an ad as any

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for super-duper clones and cloud backup services.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That just shows you right there, just one volume and a time machine backup are not really enough.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And the thing is, maybe if I checked more frequently, one of them went bad

⏹️ ▶️ John first, and then I would have been able to fix it from one to the other, but maybe I

⏹️ ▶️ John waited too long, didn’t feel paranoid soon enough, and hadn’t checked it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was going to say we saw a really good tweet from Grady Neely who said,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the Army we had a saying pertaining to critical equipment, two is one, one is none,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so it goes for backups. And I think that’s absolutely true. If you only have one backup, that’s effectively not really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey having a backup at all, especially if it’s co-located with wherever your computer lives most of the time,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is why the three of us are so excited for CrashPlan or Backblaze

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or whatever your online cloud backup system of choices, it’s really nice to have that as well as

⏹️ ▶️ Casey something local or many things local.

⏹️ ▶️ John Although I dread ever having to restore from this. That really is my like my last last last resort.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like that’s why I like to have multiple local backups and I really want to have the cloud backup in case the house burns down. But

⏹️ ▶️ John if it doesn’t burn down, that’s I don’t want to have to go to that. Or unless I’m like, you know, away from my computer

⏹️ ▶️ John and I want to grab a file from back up, then it’s kind of handy to use whatever the iOS app is for your thing and grab stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, cloud backup is like, you can’t really test it without just trying to pull a file off of it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can’t really, you don’t have that same kind of reassurance that you do with a SuperDuper clone.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can just boot from it and just see if everything’s okay. Boot from it once a month or something and just test

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. You can’t really do that with cloud backup. You can try to pull a file off of it, but it’s kind of a process.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if you ever do have to restore, do a full restore for one, you might be downloading

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Terabyte of data off the internet which might take a while So it’s it is always

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good to you know the cloud backup really is your last resort that said though. I think Regular

⏹️ ▶️ Marco volume plus time machine plus backblaze. I think that’s a very good setup for most people geeks

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like us You know if you have extra hard disk lying around yeah, make a super duper clone also, but regular

⏹️ ▶️ Marco plus time machine plus a backblaze I think is fine.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and or the other alternative is like I said run disk utility more often

⏹️ ▶️ John so that you don’t end up a situation because they probably don’t both go bad at exactly the same time Right one of them goes first

⏹️ ▶️ John and if you’re running it off enough You’ll get in a situation where one went bad, but one is good and you can quickly,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know Dupe out a second backup and don’t by the way if you have if you only have two things

⏹️ ▶️ John your computer and a time machine Disk and the time machine and the time machine disk goes bad

⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t erase the time machine disk and then try to copy the backup because as soon as you erase a time machine disk now your it is in one

⏹️ ▶️ John place and that is somewhere you never ever ever want to be like it’s you just don’t ever be in that situation

⏹️ ▶️ John two places is bad enough if you have two places in one is bad a bad backup is better

⏹️ ▶️ John than no backup do not erase that disc just don’t touch it put it aside get a new disc back up to that

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah this is why we want companies to take care of this stuff for us because this is way too much for a regular

⏹️ ▶️ John person to handle anyone listening to this is like i don’t even want to think about backups i agree i don’t want to think about it either uh

⏹️ ▶️ John and i also don’t want to think about bit rod and the fact that none of these things, all this HFS

⏹️ ▶️ John plus checks are just checking the metadata. They’re not checking the data. The data could be totally hosed. We have no idea

⏹️ ▶️ John what state the data is in. I don’t want to think about it. Alright, so so the survey,

⏹️ ▶️ John the survey that I sent out there. I think maybe the

⏹️ ▶️ John sample group may be slightly biased, because it’s I guess it’s people who listen to a nerdy podcast or who follow a nerdy

⏹️ ▶️ John person on Twitter. And maybe those people are more likely to do complicated things with their discs

⏹️ ▶️ John that in turn could cause more errors or something. Uh, the one thing the survey has going for it is

⏹️ ▶️ John people didn’t know whether they were going to find errors or not before they ran disk utility, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s not like only the people who found errors filled this out. The survey was, if you listen to the episode and

⏹️ ▶️ John ran desk utility, what did you find? And none of those people I would imagine knew beforehand what they were going to find.

⏹️ ▶️ John So despite the sampling, the self selection of the people who take the survey,

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m hoping it’s not like only the people who found errors filled out the survey and the people who didn’t find errors

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t bother to fill out the survey. Because I guess, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know how statistically

⏹️ ▶️ John valid this is, let’s just say. But anyway, you guys want to guess at the results. I’ll tell you that 700

⏹️ ▶️ John at the time I pulled these data from it 758 people had responded to the survey. Wow. The first

⏹️ ▶️ John the first question was, this was how it was worded. If you listened to episode 40 of accidental tech podcast subsequently

⏹️ ▶️ John ran disk utilities first aid function on one or more of your HFS plus volume. So this encompasses all their disks, I didn’t want to ask them individually

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. Did it find any errors? So if you have five disks, and you find errors on one of them, you would say yes to

⏹️ ▶️ John this is just basically saying you ran disk utility on all your stuff. Did your stuff have any errors?

⏹️ ▶️ John And I didn’t ask them how many disks you have around any volumes ago, because I didn’t want this to be too complicated.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You want to do a sponsor read to build suspense in the middle of this?

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, and then the second question was, if you found errors was the repair function able to prepare. So I

⏹️ ▶️ John want you to to guess what you think, you know, did you find errors, percentage-wise,

⏹️ ▶️ John not numbers-wise. You guys guess, and then after the sponsor break, I’ll tell you the answer. But first, you should guess.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. My guess is the percentage of respondents who had errors found

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was 30%.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will guess 70%. Wow.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Which is aggressive. But I’m hoping that you’re right, Marco, because then maybe John will

⏹️ ▶️ Casey stop whining about HFS+.

⏹️ ▶️ John Never. It’s like the price is right. $1. $1. Are we doing prices right rules or closest wins?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is important. We’re

⏹️ ▶️ John going to do closest wins.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. This episode is brought to you in part by our friends at Warby Parker.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They sponsored us a couple months ago. They’re awesome. So Warby Parker believes that prescription glasses

⏹️ ▶️ Marco simply should not cost $300 or more. They should even be affordable enough for people to accessorize

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and have multiple pairs if they want to. Warby Parker bypasses traditional channels and sells

⏹️ ▶️ Marco higher quality, better looking prescription eyewear online at a fraction of the price starting at

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just $95 at warbyparker.com. Their designs are vintage

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⏹️ ▶️ Marco glasses online sounds like it would be risky. How would you know whether they would fit or whether they’ll look good on you?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, Warby has you covered, and actually quite impressively, if I may say so. So first, their website has a really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco helpful tool that uses your computer’s webcam to give you a preview of how the glasses will look

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on your face. And they can even help you measure your eyes and your face in this little tool to get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your fit exactly right when you order. But the best part of this is their home try-on program.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can borrow up to five pairs of glasses risk-free. They will ship them to you for free. You can try

⏹️ ▶️ Marco them on in the comfort of your own home for five days, then you send them back with a prepaid free

⏹️ ▶️ Marco return label. You don’t pay anything this whole process, and there’s no obligation to buy.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They also offer prescription and non-prescription polarized sunglasses. I love polarized sunglasses personally.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you ever had non-polarized, you really don’t know what you’re missing. And this really, you know, $95

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the base cost is really a great price even for non-prescription sunglasses. That’s really good for polarized sunglasses.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we did the spot a few months ago and I had my wife Tiff come in and because she had ordered two pairs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from them to talk about it on the ad. And I asked her for an update tonight, see how she’s liking them. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco she still uses them almost every day and she still really likes them. She has one pair of sunglasses, one pair of prescription.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And she loves it. She said the hard case that they come with is really nice and high quality so she loves that too. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so yeah, so I went back and looked at them tonight. I could actually use some sunglasses myself for driving because my current

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pair has kind of falling apart because I bought it from some shady shop in New Zealand for no money and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has no brand name, God knows what it is. So I’m looking forward

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to these myself because they’re really good. So what’s also great about Warby Parker

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that they believe in giving back to the world. Almost a billion people worldwide lack access

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to glasses and they can’t effectively learn or work. So for every pair of glasses

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Warby Parker sells, they give another pair to someone in need through nonprofits such as VisionSpring.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is a really great company, a really great message with really great people working behind it. So, go to warbyparker.com.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s W-A-R-B-Y, Parker.com. And check out their great selection of premium quality, affordable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco eyewear. Browse around, get yourself a home try-on kit risk-free. And if you decide to order

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your own pair, use coupon code ATP for free three-day shipping. So, thanks a lot to Warby Parker

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for sponsoring the show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you know, I told this story when they sponsored in episode 26.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey When I did the free try-on thing, I ordered like two or three pairs that I was pretty confident

⏹️ ▶️ Casey were my style and then two pairs that I didn’t think were me at all. It ended up that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I was able to try those, I actually ended up going with one of the pairs of sunglasses

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I didn’t expect to like at all and I just thought, eh, let me see what happens. I love those sunglasses.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Inevitably I will break them because I’m a klutz and I always destroy my sunglasses, but I will

⏹️ ▶️ Casey be devastated when I do because I really, really do like them.

⏹️ ▶️ John You mentioned the case that they come in. I’ve been wearing glasses since I was in third

⏹️ ▶️ John grade or whatever. This is the most impressive glasses case, the one that came with my prescription sunglasses that I’ve ever

⏹️ ▶️ John seen in my life. It is gigantic and it looks like you could run it over with a car

⏹️ ▶️ John and your glasses would be fine. The little box that they ship you with the glasses in it was impressive,

⏹️ ▶️ John but the case I was also impressed by that. And it’s nice having prescription sunglasses for the first time.

⏹️ ▶️ John I feel all fancy.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So what were the results of your survey, John? So Marco, you said 30%? I said 30%, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you said 70%. Now,

⏹️ ▶️ John what do you think is reasonable for, like, the job of the file system is basically to keep track of where your crap is.

⏹️ ▶️ John And Marco’s number at 30% is that you’re saying, it’s OK that

⏹️ ▶️ John on 30% of the max out there, assuming our sampling is significant, or

⏹️ ▶️ John is representative of the mass of Mac users. It’s OK for about 30% of the time for HFS Plus to

⏹️ ▶️ John screw up and for there to be potentially data destroying errors. And Casey’s saying 70 to try to be dramatic, but

⏹️ ▶️ John can we all agree that 70 would be unreasonable? That if 70% of the Macs

⏹️ ▶️ John out there had errors on their HFS Plus errors on the disks, again, not hardware problems, but

⏹️ ▶️ John just software problems, not keeping track, that would be unreasonable,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think. I’m not sure anything more than zero in theory is unreasonable.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Well,

⏹️ ▶️ John no, but you have to expect that 1% or 2% are going to have problems. Some person kicked the plug out or there was some crazy…

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, there’s always going to be a little bit of bugs or whatever. But I think once you start to get into double digit percentages,

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not like an aberration, like there was a power outage in the middle of the thing and I didn’t notice and it just built

⏹️ ▶️ John up or, you know, cosmic rays or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I would say like 10% should be cause for concern.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, because then that’s I would say anything over, you know, double digit percent is like, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John come some kind of systemic issue, like bugs in the software that are not

⏹️ ▶️ John just cosmic rays, or one off occurrences or hardware related, or maybe they could be hardware related,

⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s it seems like a lot. So I don’t know what I expected these

⏹️ ▶️ John numbers to be. But I’ve kind of felt like they were going to be like, my guess would have been like 1518%. That would have been

⏹️ ▶️ John my guess for because like 10% seem low to me. But surely it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John on like more than maybe 20% because I know I find the errors and I know if I go to someone’s computer

⏹️ ▶️ John and they’ve never run Disk Utility, they find errors. But I figure, again, people who listen to this podcast are probably nerds and they

⏹️ ▶️ John know about Disk Utility. I didn’t have to explain to anybody where it was. Like all these people found it themselves and ran it and did all this

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff themselves. So maybe they’d run it before or whatever. But here are the results.

⏹️ ▶️ John The results were, you know, did you find any errors? Again, this is across all the disks that you tried and I didn’t ask them

⏹️ ▶️ John how many. 44.3% found errors on their disks. Oh, nicely done, Marco.

⏹️ ▶️ John Marco is closer, but that is shockingly close to half. That’s really bad. Yeah, and

⏹️ ▶️ John that is much higher than I thought it would be. I was thinking 18%, 20%, maybe 25%. But 44%, that’s grim, I think.

⏹️ ▶️ John Second question was, if the errors were found, and was the repair function able to repair the

⏹️ ▶️ John errors? So of the people who found errors, eight people didn’t attempt to repair

⏹️ ▶️ John or didn’t answer that question. So I’m giving you percentages of out of all the people who

⏹️ ▶️ John attempted to fix the error, what percentage of those people with disk utility, not with a third party tool, not with anything

⏹️ ▶️ John else, how successful was disk utility repairing errors? Care to guess what the percentage is there?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say probably 75%. Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey see, I think it would be more than that. I would think it would be closer to 90.

⏹️ ▶️ John Marco gets it again, 73.17%. So you basically

⏹️ ▶️ John have a 1 in 4 shot, a little bit worse a one in four shot of Disk Utility being able

⏹️ ▶️ John to fix your errors. I don’t know how representative these results are, but they are worse

⏹️ ▶️ John than I expected, because I would have expected it errors to be on far fewer than 44 percent. And I

⏹️ ▶️ John would have expected Disk Utility’s fix rate to be like, it seems like to me, I just expected that we fix it. I would say,

⏹️ ▶️ John oh, 95 percent, something like that. 73 percent is not good. So that shows those errors weren’t just

⏹️ ▶️ John one tiny little error. It’s easy to fix, but they were the type of errors Disk Utility couldn’t fix. Now, some people reported to me that if you boot

⏹️ ▶️ John into single user mode and you do FSCK manually, which is more or less the same thing as Disk Utility

⏹️ ▶️ John does under the covers, but in single user mode you don’t have any contention for the catalog file, you’re the only process running

⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff, and some people are saying that it actually does repairs that Disk Utility can’t do, I’m not sure how much truth there is to that,

⏹️ ▶️ John but that is one more tool in your toolkit. If you get a Disk Utility that says it can’t repair,

⏹️ ▶️ John you can reboot into single user mode if you’re comfortable with that, and I feel like I shouldn’t explain

⏹️ ▶️ John it because if you don’t know what it is, then you’re not comfortable with it. And run FSCK with

⏹️ ▶️ John a couple of options and have it attempt to repair your volume. Again, if you’re not comfortable with this, don’t try to do it. It’s very easy

⏹️ ▶️ John to do the wrong thing from the command line in single user mode. But if you are comfortable with it, it’s worth a try.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s pretty bad. And I don’t want to encourage you to go on another file

⏹️ ▶️ Casey system rant, but that, I mean, well, we’ve beaten this. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey we haven’t beaten this horse. John has beaten this horse. But anyway, you know, the file system is one

⏹️ ▶️ Casey job, which is not to screw up your data. And HFS Plus is just not cutting the mustard, apparently.

⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s not even your data. Forget it. Who knows what state your data? This is just keeping track of where

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff is. Is that stuff the same as your data? Is it the same as when you wrote it? Who the hell knows? HFS

⏹️ ▶️ John Plus doesn’t know, doesn’t care. All it’s saying is, I put something on disk, and I’m supposed to keep track

⏹️ ▶️ John of where it is. And this file name has this data associated with it. I don’t know what that data is. It could all be zeros.

⏹️ ▶️ John It could be just random garbage by now, but I just want to keep track of that bucket of random garbage that is a certain length.

⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s the job of the file system. Keep track of the information about where the files are. We

⏹️ ▶️ John wish that it would also say, oh, and by the way, that data is the same as when you wrote it. But HFS plus says nothing. It

⏹️ ▶️ John totally silent. Just trust the hardware and says, yeah, it’s probably what you wrote. If it isn’t,

⏹️ ▶️ John if it isn’t, there’s nothing we can do about it now. And you have no way of knowing. A lot of people have talked about the,

⏹️ ▶️ John what is it called? There’s some tool that I can never remember the name of that I’ve actually, I think

⏹️ ▶️ John I bought it way back in the day. I think I tried it once. They will crawl your disk and put

⏹️ ▶️ John little checksums like in the direct in each directory checksums of all the files. And so in theory

⏹️ ▶️ John down the road, you can then recheck some of them and compare it against the contents of the file. And at least

⏹️ ▶️ John then you’ll know if, okay, well, at one point I made checksums of all the files in these directories and it said X

⏹️ ▶️ John and now I’m running checksums and it says Y. So something must have changed. I can’t tell you what it was and I can’t fix

⏹️ ▶️ John it. And I can’t even tell you if the state of your disk when I ran the checksums was

⏹️ ▶️ John in a known good state. It was just merely the state it was when I ran the original checksums. But at least it’s something. But it does

⏹️ ▶️ John have to crawl your whole disk. It does have to read every single byte of data off your disk to make the checksums.

⏹️ ▶️ John The first time anyway, and the second time it probably trusts file dates or something like that to be more efficient about it. But this

⏹️ ▶️ John is… I don’t really recommend this tool because it really beats up on your disks the first

⏹️ ▶️ John time you run And it’s really not the correct solution. The correct solution is a file system that does this when the data is on

⏹️ ▶️ John its way in and out. And we don’t have that yet. So we just cross our fingers and pray.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wow. So what you’re recommending is FAT32 for Mac OS.

⏹️ ▶️ John No,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I’m recommending just

⏹️ ▶️ John that. I can recommend the episode of the debug podcast that was on recently, where

⏹️ ▶️ John me and several other people talked about file systems and Mavericks, among other things. And part one of two

⏹️ ▶️ John was posted, because we We talked for like three and a half hours.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was really good. I’ll link to that in the show notes.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John That was definitely worth listening to.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco My

⏹️ ▶️ John favorite thing about it was that two of the people there are ex-Apple employees. It’s a lot better than just people who

⏹️ ▶️ John have seen Apple from afar talking about stuff. On that show, the rest of us could

⏹️ ▶️ John offer opinions on what we think Apple might or might not be like inside or might or might not be doing and then have actual

⏹️ ▶️ John ex-Apple people give thumbs up or thumbs down on whether that sounds reasonable.

⏹️ ▶️ John That was exciting. two Apple people were, who was it, Ryan Nielsen and Daniel Jalkut.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think I got the names right. If I didn’t, Marco will fix it in post.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s right.

⏹️ ▶️ John And then Guy English was on it too, and Rene Ritchie, you know, those guys.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, it was only one guy. Wow.

⏹️ ▶️ John Moving on.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so do we want to talk about Xbox One?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think we should. I think it’s important. John?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, Xbox One launched very close to the PlayStation 4. PlayStation 4 was making a big deal because

⏹️ ▶️ John they sold a million units in North America in 24 hours. Xbox One launched and had its own little press release. They said

⏹️ ▶️ John it sold more than 1 million consoles worldwide in less than 24 hours. It’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John an apples to apples comparison, but the bottom line is I think both are more or less supply constrained on launch.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think this is, I talked about it last week, that just because the early adopters are rabid

⏹️ ▶️ John for a new console as I imagine they will be doesn’t necessarily mean that this console generation is going to do as well as the previous

⏹️ ▶️ John or the one before that but it it definitely means that they’re not it’s not you know

⏹️ ▶️ John if they had both tanked on launch it would be a very very bad sign so they’re not both tanking on launch so

⏹️ ▶️ John far so good for the new console generation they’re selling out and and this is

⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit more impressive the Xbox one because it’s a hundred dollars more than the PlayStation 3 and people did not

⏹️ ▶️ John appear to be price sensitive or the supply was not enough to reveal the price sensitivity of consumers

⏹️ ▶️ John because everyone who wanted a PS4 on launch day, you know, bought them all and same thing with the

⏹️ ▶️ John Xbox one. So we’ll revisit this in a couple months to see how the consoles are doing. But

⏹️ ▶️ John so far, so good.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do wonder how many of the buyers were scalpers because with any new electronics

⏹️ ▶️ Marco launch that’s high profile, which is pretty much every new game console and every new iPhone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and most new tablets and stuff, there’s always a pretty large contingent of scalpers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco who are just buying it to put it on eBay or to bring it to countries where it isn’t available yet to charge a premium.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So opening day numbers or opening weekend numbers, you should always go

⏹️ ▶️ Marco into it with some skepticism because some of it is going to be that. And for different products, it’s a different portion

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it, but it’s certainly always substantial. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it would be more interesting to see what happens in two months, five months,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Over the next year we’ll see and I also still want to see What happens when any of these consoles

⏹️ ▶️ Marco gets a really good hit game? that’s exclusive to that console because that that’s really what makes the console

⏹️ ▶️ Marco market is is you know must have killer games and So far there’s none

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the new systems on on in any of three of them

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not I’m not sure the Xbox one when I’m thinking about more I’m not sure the Xbox one needs a killer app beyond

⏹️ ▶️ John Xbox live because if it just gets good versions of all the multi-format multi-platform

⏹️ ▶️ John games, it’s killer app is sort of that’s where your friends list is, you are on Xbox

⏹️ ▶️ John Live, you’ve been on Xbox Live with 360, you’ll be on Xbox Live with this. If a multi-platform

⏹️ ▶️ John title comes out and you are not a PC gamer, you have a choice of can you get the, should you get the PS4 version, the

⏹️ ▶️ John Xbox One version, and in the past generation a lot of people get got the 360 version just because that’s where

⏹️ ▶️ John their friends were on Xbox Live, and sometimes it looked a little better than the PS4 version. In this generation

⏹️ ▶️ John Xbox One version may looks slightly worse than the PS4 version in ways that only

⏹️ ▶️ John gaming forum nerds care about most likely. But people may still opt

⏹️ ▶️ John to buy the Xbox One version because that’s where their friends are. So the online social

⏹️ ▶️ John networking kind of network effect, social lock-in thing may be more of a factor than any killer

⏹️ ▶️ John game because it’s really hard for any platform to get a killer game that’s exclusive to it these days because

⏹️ ▶️ John the big titles are so big that Microsoft or Sony would have to pay. Can you imagine Microsoft

⏹️ ▶️ John or Sony ever paying enough money to Rockstar to make the next GTA exclusively on their console? I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John think they have enough money to do that. Because they make so much more money by putting it out everywhere

⏹️ ▶️ John that Rockstar says, well, if we’re going to forego PC and PS4, Microsoft, you’re going to have to pay us

⏹️ ▶️ John so much money. Are you ready for that? And the answer is no, they’re not. So I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of like big movie studios making a movie for $200 million and then only showing in a certain brand

⏹️ ▶️ John of movie theaters. No chain of movie theaters can afford to do that. It’s not quite the same, but I would

⏹️ ▶️ John love to see that. And of course, this first party games like Halo and stuff like that. But historically, it has been

⏹️ ▶️ John difficult for those games to match up with the with the cumulative massive sales machine

⏹️ ▶️ John that is the popular franchises that are multi platform like Call of Duty and what

⏹️ ▶️ John do you call it? Destinies coming out soon and and Teft Auto and all those things.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sports.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, all the EA games. Yeah, the Madden franchise, stuff like that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you know, so I’m not a gamer anymore. I, excuse me, I rarely play games

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my iPhone. I have a Wii or Aaron and I have a Wii that hasn’t been plugged in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for months now. And I was at my, we were at my, our friend Phil’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey house over the weekend and he has an Xbox One. And I didn’t play

⏹️ ▶️ Casey any games, although I saw him play Need for Speed, which looked extraordinarily boring, but it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was pretty. But we did use it because he has his TV going through

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it and I forget the technical term for that But basically the Xbox is eating the TV signal and I are blasting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to his direct TV receiver in order to change channels and so on And so forth.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe it’s called web TV

⏹️ ▶️ Casey For a second there. I thought you’re serious Anyway, so the point being that the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey audio controls, you know Xbox play or geo turn to tune to Comedy Central or whatever

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is. I’m probably getting that wrong. That was just like Siri in that when it worked,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was the work of magic. But when it didn’t work, which was, I would say two thirds

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the time, it was infuriating. But I can see where the Xbox

⏹️ ▶️ Casey One is a very nifty and different take on what the next iteration

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of television might be in that it’s all voice controlled. I never saw anything gesture based. I don’t even know

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if there’s a gesture based system, but it’s all voice-controlled, you can put the TV on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one side of the screen and put something else on the other side of the screen, like a video game or whatever. It was very, very cool.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nothing about it made me want to get one, but I could see why it would be appealing. And I can see

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if a person who liked to play games wanted something more than just a game console, I could absolutely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey see how this would be very, very appealing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wonder how much of it is, you know, Microsoft is really making a very clear bet here.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re betting on convergence. And of course, historically in our industry we’ve had things like WebTV

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and various attempts at convergence around the TV set and trying to mush

⏹️ ▶️ Marco two distinct devices that connect to TVs together into one. And usually those have failed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or at least been mediocre at best. Microsoft’s bet here is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they think that having your TV controlled through your game console is a really big deal and that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the game console is more than just a gaming console. It’s like a home media TV activity console.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whereas Sony’s gone for more of the pure gaming, so is Nintendo, the pure gaming

⏹️ ▶️ Marco system that’s separate and dedicated, as John has discussed a lot. The question is, I think, whether Microsoft

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is right. How many people want to merge those two experiences?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would actually guess it’s a low number. Relative to everyone who buys Xboxes, I would say the portion of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco them that want to also control their TV through it and and have those experiences be very merged together,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t guess it’s very high, but I could be very wrong about that.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think there’s a little bit of a potential we effect here in that one of the reasons that when

⏹️ ▶️ John we look at those graphs of console sales that the we’s line shot up like a rocket with such an incredible slope

⏹️ ▶️ John is because we had a, I don’t want to call it a novelty factor, but it’s more or

⏹️ ▶️ John less what it is, and that people were curious, what would it be like to play games by waggling

⏹️ ▶️ John a little remote around? because it was an experience that people hadn’t done. And people bought it just

⏹️ ▶️ John because, like they didn’t necessarily even think it was gonna be good, but they just said, well, this is a new thing, and

⏹️ ▶️ John I know some people have tried it, and I’m not one of those people. I need to get one of those so I can try it

⏹️ ▶️ John to see what this is like, good or bad. And the Xbox One, like 360 had Kinect, right? But it was an add-on,

⏹️ ▶️ John and add-ons have notoriously bad sell-through rates for consoles, like of all the Xbox 360s sold,

⏹️ ▶️ John what percentage of those people bought Kinect? It’s very low. all of the Xbox Ones come with a Kinect 2.

⏹️ ▶️ John And Microsoft was adamant about that, and it’s one of the many reasons that their console is $100 more than Sony’s. And

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re taking the hit. They said, look, we’re gonna make them all come with that. And that means every single Xbox One

⏹️ ▶️ John has the sort of Wii effect of people wondering, I wonder what it would be like to talk to my TV

⏹️ ▶️ John or to wave my hands around like a maniac and try to make menus go. Maybe those same people think it’s gonna be stupid

⏹️ ▶️ John and bad, or maybe they tried their friend’s Kinect One and didn’t like it, but they’re like, but this one is better. and

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s just that curiosity about it. And so that factor alone,

⏹️ ▶️ John no matter how it ends up being, even if it ends up being a total disaster, no one ever uses it anymore, they just use it to play games like they

⏹️ ▶️ John did with the 360, just the fact that it gets people in the door or curious about it, I think is a really big

⏹️ ▶️ John strength for Microsoft in this generation because they all come with Kinect.

⏹️ ▶️ John And as for actually using it, I’ve heard mostly reports that trying to use the Xbox One to watch television,

⏹️ ▶️ John like to control your television, is not a good experience for the same reason that the television

⏹️ ▶️ John market is littered with the bodies of companies that have tried to put a box in front of your TV and let you control your TV with it.

⏹️ ▶️ John It is just really hard and complicated because of our terrible, at least in the US, our terrible

⏹️ ▶️ John cable television system. It’s non-standardized and all this other stuff. And people were saying, it’s better to use my cable

⏹️ ▶️ John boxes guide than to use the Xbox guide. And that’s pretty damning when you have a $500 box

⏹️ ▶️ John that you attach to your TV, and it’s better to just use your cable box.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, everyone hates their cable box guide because they’re all terrible.

⏹️ ▶️ John Right. And they’re saying the Xbox one was worse. But I think even if the Xbox

⏹️ ▶️ John One, if it gets people to buy it for the novelty factor and then they just use it like a 360, that’s still a win for

⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft. Because using it like a 360 means using Xbox Live. When you’re watching TV, you’ll be

⏹️ ▶️ John able to quickly switch over to a game and play it, or switch back to TV when people are in the lobby and stuff like that. Even that

⏹️ ▶️ John functionality, which is not that big a deal, that’s something that Sony can’t match because they don’t have HDMI in.

⏹️ ▶️ John So I don’t think the Xbox One has to fulfill all the magical minority report

⏹️ ▶️ John voice recognition in Siri AI dreams. It just has to do one or two

⏹️ ▶️ John things that the PS4 can’t and basically be an updated 360 with Kinect built in.

⏹️ ▶️ John And maybe there will still not be any decent games that any gamer really cares about that use Kinect, but we’ll see.

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⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s pretty cool, you can also use a Ting device as a primary or backup tethering hotspot while traveling.

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⏹️ ▶️ John There’s an item lower down in the notes here that we might want to hoist up.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Your car complaints?

⏹️ ▶️ John No. Apple buys PrimeSense. Did you read that story? I didn’t.

⏹️ ▶️ John What’s this about? PrimeSense is the company that originally made the sensors

⏹️ ▶️ John for the Kinect, the original Kinect.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, that’s interesting.

⏹️ ▶️ John So click through to the link. I might have gotten that slightly wrong. But

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco basically, it’s the company. It

⏹️ ▶️ John looks like Kinect. Yeah, well, there’s a reason for it. That’s what this company does, makes Kinect-like sensors. And I think they

⏹️ ▶️ John were involved in the development of the original Kinect, if not the Kinect 2. And that

⏹️ ▶️ John is interesting, because Apple tends not to buy companies frivolously, unless they’re color.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That was a

⏹️ ▶️ John great domain name. Oh, jeez. They buy color, but they don’t buy Everpex.

⏹️ ▶️ John Fine. You would imagine, though, it’s like when they bought PA Semi,

⏹️ ▶️ John that they bought this company because they have an interest in some kind of sensor stuff. And I think everyone was thinking,

⏹️ ▶️ John OK, well, Microsoft’s doing the Xbox One and this TV integration, and Apple still has yet to make whatever we think their crazy

⏹️ ▶️ John move is going to be in the TV world other than a little black puck. Because Steve Jobs said in his book that, oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve cracked the problem, we haven’t seen anything that seems to match up with that. So we’re still waiting for the other shoe to drop

⏹️ ▶️ John on TV. And then they buy the SensorMaker. And on the one hand, it’s like way too late for them to be buying the SensorMaker

⏹️ ▶️ John if we’re expecting them to have a product next year that involves the sensor at all, if you think of how long it took for us to see clear

⏹️ ▶️ John fruits semi acquisition. But on the other hand, it also implies that they

⏹️ ▶️ John think that sensor related things are important enough for them to buy a company

⏹️ ▶️ John that probably has patents, but also expertise in that technology. So it’s beyond the phase where they’re like, let’s just get a connect

⏹️ ▶️ John and hook it up to some, you know, big box of wires and see if it’s a useful thing to have. It seems

⏹️ ▶️ John like they’re into the phase where they’re getting serious about this. And the question is, what do they do with this technology?

⏹️ ▶️ John And like I said, I think everyone assumes that it’s TV related, but I think it could just as easily

⏹️ ▶️ John be iOS device related, as in iPads and iPhones. Because I think about all the crazy stuff

⏹️ ▶️ John that Samsung does with their Galaxy phones with the stupid things that tracks your eyes and like that you don’t have to touch a screen and

⏹️ ▶️ John how terrible that works and I think All right, that’s terrible. But what if there was a

⏹️ ▶️ John way to do some tiny subset of that better? You know to an Apple level of quality where

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re happy with happy with making this part of the iOS device experience What can you do

⏹️ ▶️ John with the ability for your iPad or iPhone? To sense more about you than just

⏹️ ▶️ John where your finger is touching in the orientation and acceleration So I think I would give it a 50-50

⏹️ ▶️ John chance that the technology involved Coming the expertise in technology and

⏹️ ▶️ John everything coming from this company will show up in an iOS device Just as likely I think as it’s showing up in a TV

⏹️ ▶️ John like device and when I think about it on TV like device I don’t I don’t know what they would do with it. I would imagine

⏹️ ▶️ John they could do something something small and simple and like the proximity sensor, but more

⏹️ ▶️ John sophisticated, using the camera and more proximity sensors to be more intelligent about something using

⏹️ ▶️ John an iOS device. I don’t know. Whereas TV, what are we going to be standing up in front of a wave in our hands like we are in front of an Xbox

⏹️ ▶️ John One? I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wonder if it could even be used in any way to support the back camera,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe for looking at the scene in a way similar to how phase detect systems work

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in SLRs, maybe providing better focus performance or a more accurate depth map of what’s going on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the scene. Maybe something like that, who knows?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, because you can do interesting, like if you look at, the Kinect 2 is impressive technology. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if it doubled the resolution of the Kinect 1 or quadrupled it, but it is way better. Like, I think it can sense

⏹️ ▶️ John fingers now, whereas the Kinect 1 could barely sense hands. So the technology has come

⏹️ ▶️ John a long way, and obviously you can’t fit something like Kinect size into an iOS device, although you

⏹️ ▶️ John could in like a little TV bar type thing. But there’s surely something you can do

⏹️ ▶️ John If you can get IR, color image, edge detection, and depth map

⏹️ ▶️ John from these multi-sensor things, surely there’s something interesting you can do about that. Even if it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John only just like kind of having the phone have more awareness of what the person who’s using it is

⏹️ ▶️ John doing. Even if you never use it to control the phone or whatever, just so the phone kind of knows they’re staring

⏹️ ▶️ John at me, they’re not. I’m in a pocket. I’m not. I’m being held up to a head. I’m not. Like, just those simple

⏹️ ▶️ John things could make the phone experience better without ever actually Exposing a feature to the user and for the TV

⏹️ ▶️ John thing again I have no idea because no one has any idea what the hell they’re doing on TV But it is intriguing to say the least

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Am I the only one who doesn’t really care what they’re doing on TV? Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John I think you are the only one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just think like I don’t like the Apple TV I would love for the software on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to be more reliable and for the service that backs it the entire iTunes store For that to be more reliable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and and work more but the actual like Apple TV

⏹️ ▶️ Marco box and and software experience I think satisfies my needs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for what I want out of a TV connected box like and I know I know everyone wants you know more channels

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and more availability and live shows and everything else and that’s that’s more an issue of content deals than

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything else and that’s you know that’s probably gonna be held up no matter what they do with the hardware but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I just I’m fine with the TV as it is I have Netflix and everything has Netflix.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But you know, I have Netflix on there and I have iTunes, bought stuff, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s about all I really need. Like, what else am I going to do?

⏹️ ▶️ John You have minimal TV needs, because if you’re more like the average American who consumes some portion of sports

⏹️ ▶️ John programming, some portion of local television, and also some portion of network and cable, the experience

⏹️ ▶️ John is terrible because all those things are spread out in ten different places. I mean, even you would just for the two places, like, oh, is it

⏹️ ▶️ John on Netflix? Let me check. Oh, is it on Apple TV? Let me check. Even just that is bad. But imagine if you multiply that out

⏹️ ▶️ John by like three or four or five places to check and then you had way more content, some of which

⏹️ ▶️ John is not available online and some of which you had to see like you, the only way you could

⏹️ ▶️ John get it was it was broadcast to you and it would be on iTunes later and maybe you don’t want to wait a week because then the things will be spoiled

⏹️ ▶️ John for you. Like if you consume more television from more sources, it gets worse and worse and worse

⏹️ ▶️ John and everyone’s just waiting for something to clarify this in the same way that that you know, apple clarified

⏹️ ▶️ John music music. Granted, it’s a lot easier to do that with music, but hey, there was file labels or five big labels or whatever in

⏹️ ▶️ John the US. You can just go to iTunes to buy music. You don’t have to go to seven different places and synthesize

⏹️ ▶️ John some sort of system that I have a DVR to catch this and then I have Netflix and I have Apple TV and then I have

⏹️ ▶️ John Amazon instant video and then I have these devices and I can watch my TV on my iPad, but I also watch Netflix

⏹️ ▶️ John on my iPad, but I can’t watch Apple TV on the iPad, but I can watch directly from the iTunes store and it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John television continues to be a giant mess. Again, I’m speaking only about the US. I don’t know what it’s like in

⏹️ ▶️ John the rest of the world. So the more TV you consume and the more you use it, the worse it is. Maybe you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John still limping along with just Apple TV and Netflix and that satisfies you, but I think you’re in the minority in terms of

⏹️ ▶️ John your television consumption habits.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, sure. But how many of those problems are really software and content deal problems,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or not even like a software limitation, but more of a software choice that Apple has made? So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco software choices and content deals versus hardware and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco interface problems. Like, if they did some kind of big connect-like thing to the Apple TV, then we

⏹️ ▶️ Marco could wave our arms around to navigate the same small menu full of limited choices and expensive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco options. Like, that’s not gonna change anything.

⏹️ ▶️ John We’re not just looking for a hardware-software solution. We’re assuming, I mean, was iTunes a hardware-software solution?

⏹️ ▶️ John The iPod, iTunes in the store was everything. It was hardware, it was software, and it was content deals. That’s what we’re looking for, is

⏹️ ▶️ John something to save us all from everything. And if you just want to look on the hardware and software side, you can look at the iPhone as an example,

⏹️ ▶️ John where all they had in the beginning was hardware and software. But the hardware and software was so amazing

⏹️ ▶️ John that it was used as a lever to try to, I mean, it didn’t revolutionize the carrier industry,

⏹️ ▶️ John but it gave the handset maker more leverage than they ever had before. And it allowed us to have

⏹️ ▶️ John cell phones not crapped up with the stupid carrier adware and crap like that on it. That wasn’t a big

⏹️ ▶️ John change, but it was an improvement. And so I think even just alone with with with, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, totally adversarial evil things like carriers, Apple was still just through the power of its amazing

⏹️ ▶️ John hardware and software and the power of the consumers that wanted it affect some small change in the industry,

⏹️ ▶️ John at least again, at least in the US, for the better. So I would take that in the television world. If the

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple can’t do any content deals, and everyone hates them, just make some amazing device that everybody wants to make television

⏹️ ▶️ John better for the people who are using it and use that as a lever to say, Oh, well, if you’re okay, if you know, Time Warner cable

⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t want to be part of our thing, then all the people who want our magic dance in front of the TV device

⏹️ ▶️ John are going to be pissed at Time Warner and are going to change carriers like people were going to AT&T from Verizon or whatever

⏹️ ▶️ John because it was the only place that had the iPhone. Again, these are long shots.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not saying this is going to happen, but something.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can see part of that today, though, when whenever there’s some kind of dispute between one of the networks

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and one of the big cable companies, and the networks pulls themselves off the cable channel for like two weeks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The idea is that the network’s hoping the cable company will say, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh, come back to us because all of our customers are angry at us. Usually, they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just kind of quietly figure something out and nothing really changes in the end.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco People often look at—I think we’re seeing this a lot more recently from smart

⏹️ ▶️ Marco analyst-type you can look at the PC market in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 90s and so many things that we consider like common behavior

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the way things work is based on the Windows and Mac divide

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the 90s and as time is going on the smart analysts are starting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to look at this and say actually that seems more like a complicated fluke

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than the way things actually work you know open doesn’t always win whatever that means

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware being multi-vendor and software running on all of it versus the unified

⏹️ ▶️ Marco vertical integration, you know, doesn’t always work or not work. There’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all this wisdom that’s been based on how this one instance of something worked one time in the industry,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when in fact it’s much more complicated than that and it doesn’t always work that way. I think the way iTunes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco came about and the iTunes Music Store, I think that’s one of those things too, where that was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very special time in history that we’re not in a time like that anymore with any other medium

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or any other situation or industry. That was a one-time thing, and I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that anybody, Apple or otherwise, is going to be able to reproduce that in a new medium.

⏹️ ▶️ John Not the severity, but I think the same thing could happen over a much longer timeline, because there was like a big

⏹️ ▶️ John boom with iTunes.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe. I would say the breadth, though. though. Like that’s the breadth is where it’s going to really suffer.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, that’s what I’m saying. Like it’ll start off small. And what I’m thinking about there is not so much Apple doing it, but Netflix

⏹️ ▶️ John funding its own shows. Did they overnight obviate the need for the networks and HBO? No, they didn’t.

⏹️ ▶️ John But you get one or two shows that people are like, like, and it’s like, okay, you didn’t do a big bang. You didn’t wipe

⏹️ ▶️ John that. But suddenly a tiny, tiny sliver of the power in the content distribution

⏹️ ▶️ John world went over to Netflix, this thing that has no allegiance to any kind of, you know, carrier or anything like that.

⏹️ ▶️ John They got like two shows. So So if but if they did that every year for the next 15 20 years

⏹️ ▶️ John you can foresee a scenario where either Netflix or a similar player pulls power away from the cable

⏹️ ▶️ John companies and the carriers and you know all the other stuff until

⏹️ ▶️ John most or a majority of the shows that people want to watch are being funded in a way that has no connection to any cable

⏹️ ▶️ John Provider or any television network that would be an example of an iTunes like change instead of

⏹️ ▶️ John happening in three years happening in 15 or 20 Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, I was thinking about it while you guys were talking and I’m not so sure that you’re right, Marco,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the iTunes kind of phenomenon couldn’t be repeated. What I was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey thinking about was if you think about what made iTunes as paired with the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPod so magical is to me it’s a couple of things. It’s acquiring something,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s acquiring media and then consuming it. And so iTunes allowed you to acquire individual

⏹️ ▶️ Casey songs, which was very rare at the time. I mean, yeah, there were singles, but it was weird and clunky and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you could acquire these songs without leaving your house Which was really awesome and new and then you could when you decide

⏹️ ▶️ Casey decided to leave your house you could consume them on this magical new hardware device and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you guys made allusions to this earlier, but a Theoretical Apple TV where you can acquire

⏹️ ▶️ Casey content very easily and the content I’m thinking of is Sports content and I know that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco’s eyes just glazed over but for most Americans and I would argue most of the world,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sports are a big deal. And a lot of people have pointed out in the chat that the NFL has –

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s the National American Football League. Aaron Ross Powell That’s not the NAFL. Michael Svoboda It’s – well, you know

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I mean. So they have an exclusive deal with DirecTV, which is a satellite provider here in the United States,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and that runs out I think at the end of the season or if not the end of the season, very, very soon. And a lot of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey people are calling on Apple to just throw money at this problem and get that exclusive deal. And what that exclusive

⏹️ ▶️ Casey deal brings is if you’re, if you’re a direct TV customer, you can get what’s called NFL Sunday ticket because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey all the games are played on Sundays, most of them anyway, and you can watch any game you want. It when it’s aired

⏹️ ▶️ Casey live. And so for me, as an example, I happen to be a fan of the New York giants. I live nowhere near New

⏹️ ▶️ Casey York. I actually live near one of their rivals, the Washington Redskins. And as such,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I only ever get giants games. If it just so happens that red, that Redskins or any of the other

⏹️ ▶️ Casey local, uh, franchises aren’t playing at that time. So imagine a situation

⏹️ ▶️ Casey where the NFL and Apple reach an exclusive deal. So now you can get

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the content you want, which is the acquire piece, because you can watch any game you want.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the MLB already does this, Major League Baseball does this, the NBA, I believe, already does this, or in I think the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey NHL does. I’m probably getting some of that wrong, but whatever, you get the idea. Well, imagine a combination of NFL,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey NASCAR, and F1, all of them easily available on the Apple TV,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey both live and replay. And all you need to do is either pay Apple a little bit or just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey buy the darn device transporter style. And then on top of that, Apple has this really slick UI.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I like the UI in the Apple TV, maybe you don’t, but it’s certainly a lot better than most

⏹️ ▶️ Casey set-top boxes. Like my Verizon box looks like crap compared to the Apple TV. So now you’ve got the content

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or you can acquire the content and now you can consume the content in a nice and easy way. And I see some not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey direct parallels with iTunes and the iPod, but certainly some parallels nevertheless.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know that sports is enough to really get them over the proverbial hump, but I think it could be a really,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey really interesting way to attack traditional TV

⏹️ ▶️ Casey without having to go after movies and TV shows in the traditional sense.

⏹️ ▶️ John To reinforce Marco’s point, the big difference here is that the players know, the players saw what happened

⏹️ ▶️ John to music. And so everybody is super paranoid about putting too many eggs in one basket. So

⏹️ ▶️ John if Apple, by some miracle, decided to spend the billions of dollars it would take to get the NFL to that degree,

⏹️ ▶️ John any other sports franchise would be like, we sure as hell can’t go with Apple, because then they would have two sports franchises.

⏹️ ▶️ John And look what happened to music. It’s not collusion, but they all kind of see what each other

⏹️ ▶️ John are doing. And they’re all kind of trying to protect their turf and spread their bets.

⏹️ ▶️ John Just like the music labels, as soon as Amazon became viable, all the music labels like we got to go over there and just give Amazon

⏹️ ▶️ John everything because we cannot have Apple have all this power is like the the sole one and only awesome digital

⏹️ ▶️ John music distribution network. So all of the non music guys saw what happened in music.

⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s why it’s so hard to do anything with TV because they’re not going to make that same mistake. And that’s why I think

⏹️ ▶️ John it has to be a much longer period. And probably like

⏹️ ▶️ John the way it’s going to happen is the power that’s in the hands of the networks and the cable companies

⏹️ ▶️ John now will shift to a set of companies that look more like Netflix, if they’re not necessarily Netflix. I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think Apple is going to be in the business of generating content. So far, they haven’t shown that they’re willing to, for example,

⏹️ ▶️ John put up a couple hundred million dollars to make a new TV show. So all Apple can do is make deals with somebody. And I would imagine

⏹️ ▶️ John dealing with Netflix is way easier than dealing with NBC or the NFL. And so maybe there’s some synergy

⏹️ ▶️ John there.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That being said, though, I think you’re right that once one sports franchise

⏹️ ▶️ Marco gave exclusivity to the Apple TV or to Apple in general, I think that would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco give pause to the others. However, if that one was the NFL,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that’s enough. I think enough people—obviously, the rest of the world

⏹️ ▶️ Marco couldn’t possibly care less, but in the U.S.—and this is one of the problems with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco TV is that it’s very regional—in In the US, if you get the NFL,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re going to get a crap ton of people buying Apple TVs. And that’s really what they want.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What they would want out of this kind of effort would be tons and tons and tons of people buying

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Apple TV and having a really good reason to use it frequently. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you get the NFL exclusive on there, you’re going to get that. You’re going to get a lot of that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And people are not going to give up their cable subscription. still going

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have cable. So not getting the other sports networks wouldn’t matter as much. This would basically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be like an exclusive console game. This would be a killer app for the Apple TV

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a very large number of people in this country.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, every time we talk about TV, it’s just depressing because there are so many entrenched interests, and then we always have

⏹️ ▶️ John to keep coming back to the realization. And this is just the US we’re talking about.

⏹️ ▶️ John And Apple is a global company, and it cares about worldwide stuff. And you can kind of see how Apple, in their own means,

⏹️ ▶️ John be like, look at all this crap, and we’re only still talking about the US. Forget about it. Let’s just, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, whatever. Well, like, that’s why I think they like delegate that to like, let’s let Netflix fight it out and either

⏹️ ▶️ John die trying or figure out something to do. And even Netflix is, I think, mostly US-centric as well. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John I think the other countries have better ways to get the content they want over more modern digital systems

⏹️ ▶️ John than we do. And maybe they still have the same monopoly problems that we do. But like, I think people can

⏹️ ▶️ John see the soccer games that they want to see through some interesting digital thing that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John near them, whereas in the US, like the local television franchises still have such a stranglehold and like,

⏹️ ▶️ John with the black at the local blackouts and stuff like that, it’s just perverse. So it’s depressing.

⏹️ ▶️ John But I’m still like to see Apple do something, even if they do something and it flops, like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John if first you know, succeed, keep trying, like look at the Apple TV, the first couple weren’t that great, but the little black pluck is pretty darn

⏹️ ▶️ John good. So if there’s more to come in that vein, and they’re they’re buying this Kinect-like sensor company, well,

⏹️ ▶️ John let’s see what you got, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do think you’re right, though, that I can’t really see Apple devoting a massive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco chunk of money and a massive division of their product line, and therefore their attention,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to something that only works in the US or will only succeed in the US. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not like Tim Cook, that’s for sure.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, but what if you did something like the NFL, but it’s applicable to the rest of the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey world, like F1, for example, or soccer, perhaps.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the Apple-style move is, oh, hey, now our television is also an app platform. And

⏹️ ▶️ John you crazy app developers in every region of the country, you sort out how the hell to get your

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff, kind of like the MLB app. They made an app platform on iOS devices. They didn’t do a deal with Major League

⏹️ ▶️ John Baseball. They made an app platform. And then MLB made the app and then figured out its crazy way that you’re going to pay

⏹️ ▶️ John for it or whatever. But that’s an opportunity for people. And that is an Apple move, because a platform is global.

⏹️ ▶️ John and then individual applications are local.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is true.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do we want to move on to the sweet jobs that are available at Penny Arcade?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. I don’t know that there’s that much more to say about this. I kind of vomited all over Twitter all morning about it and wrote that big

⏹️ ▶️ Marco post.

⏹️ ▶️ John But people haven’t read your blog or read your Twitter, so you have to reiterate and summarize

⏹️ ▶️ John here.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And as someone who works for the man, Marco, you know quite a bit about these sorts of issues.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Shut up. I used to work for various men. Do you remember that?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was a long time ago. So Penny Arcade

⏹️ ▶️ Marco put up this job listing for one person who’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco responsible for basically developing and running all their websites and servers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all their in-house tools, like various inventory trackers when they sell goods and stuff like that,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco managing their conference site, stuff like that, and also doing all of their local

⏹️ ▶️ Marco IT for their workers in their office. And in exchange for all of this,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they will force you to be a workaholic. They kind of flippantly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco glorify how you won’t have any kind of free time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’ll work you to the bone and you’ll like it, and they’ll make up for it by

⏹️ ▶️ Marco paying you a subpar salary and giving you some

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of nice perks in the office, like, I don’t know, like nice chairs and snacks, whatever, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, something that would cost a lot less than a good salary would cost.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the whole posting has this arrogant attitude of like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is really a terrible job and you’re going to love it and we’re going to get tons of applicants.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now really quickly, genuine question. You’re assuming that the salary is crummy, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John No, they say it in the ad. They say, we recognize that we’re going to play, I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John know the exact words, but they say that we’re going to pay maybe below market because

⏹️ ▶️ John we’re not a money-oriented company or something like that and we run lean. I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John the ad is honest in the Penny Arcade style of honesty where they, have you ever seen a job

⏹️ ▶️ John ad before where they say, work-life balance, forget it. That’s basically what this says.

⏹️ ▶️ John Some places, every place always says, oh, we have great work life. They lie. The places that don’t have great work life, they still say

⏹️ ▶️ John in the job ad, oh, we’re great about work life balance. And in fact, if they talk a lot about work life balance

⏹️ ▶️ John too much in the ad, that’s also a warning sign. But this one, they come right out and say, no. You’re not really going

⏹️ ▶️ John to have a good work life balance. Work will be your life. That’s the type of person we’re looking for. That’s the type of job this

⏹️ ▶️ John is. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. The whole thing just kind of rubbed me the wrong way. It just basically,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco my problem with it, There’s a lot of terrible employers out there, and the tech industry is no exception.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco My problem with it is that Penny Arcade is very high profile, and it’s damaging to people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when they expect that this is the norm, that they should totally give themselves up to their

⏹️ ▶️ Marco job and have no personal life, and that this is what’s normally expected of them in this industry.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And yeah, that’s true for a lot of employers. That doesn’t make it good, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that doesn’t mean there’s not also a lot of great places to work that actually respect people. and respect

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people’s health and respect people’s lives and want people to stay there for more than a couple years.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Reading the forum posting from the guy who has this job now, and he

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of said, this is, I chose this and therefore, get out of my life kind

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of thing. But it just kind of confirms what we think they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean by the job posting. It just kind of confirms that where it’s constant work. You’re on call 24

⏹️ ▶️ Marco seven. He says he can’t go on vacation anywhere where he’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not reachable by cell phone and can’t get a data connection to log in and fix a server if it’s down. He sleeps with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco his laptop next to the bed. Right. I mean, and this is… I did a lot of this for Tumblr, which is why I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sensitive to it. This is basically… This was my job at Tumblr for the first four years.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The difference was I was paid very well and I got a lot of stock. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, I think, was fair. I was doing the work of a co-founder

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I was paid like a co-founder. And that’s very, very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco different than something like this, which is like, they already have something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, what was it, like 20 employees, somebody said? They already have a lot of employees. They run

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very popular website that gets a lot of traffic. They actually run multiple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco websites that get lots of traffic. obviously, you know, they could have two people doing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this. They don’t need to have one person doing all this that’s paid very badly, or they could have one well-paid

⏹️ ▶️ Marco person, and they’re choosing not to because they simply don’t need to, because they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so popular that enough people will apply that they can get somebody who will do it for almost nothing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s… Well,

⏹️ ▶️ John the other thing they’re offering is you get to be an employee of Penny Arcade, and like, the work-life balance that they

⏹️ ▶️ John say doesn’t exist, it’s because they kind of have this big work family thing going where

⏹️ ▶️ John the people who work there seem to be happy about the idea that

⏹️ ▶️ John the people you work with are like your family and the stuff that you would get in a normal

⏹️ ▶️ John home life you can get more of at work. I think some of the things in this forum said, like, some people do leave at five

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. That’s the trade-off though, is that

⏹️ ▶️ John you may not be getting high pay or something, but get

⏹️ ▶️ John presumably to work in an environment that’s much more fun than just working for some faceless corporation

⏹️ ▶️ John because you really like Penny Arcade because you think you’ll have fun with the people there and a lot of their interview process if you look at their

⏹️ ▶️ John past interviews is about trying to find someone who not only can do the job but also

⏹️ ▶️ John fits in with all the other people because they’re almost kind of like interviewing a new friend. We’re like, okay, so this person

⏹️ ▶️ John can do the job but we’re only going to hire them if we would like to hang out with this person because we know that’s kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of our work environment. all going to be hanging out together and doing stuff. And that sounds a lot like

⏹️ ▶️ John kind of a startup type environment with a bunch of friends who start a company. And like Margo said, that’s all well

⏹️ ▶️ John and good. But I know I personally would never in a million

⏹️ ▶️ John years want to do this job. If I was not also going to benefit from the fruits of my labor, like

⏹️ ▶️ John if you are in a startup, and you are an early employee, and you work like this, because that’s how everybody in startups works. They all

⏹️ ▶️ John do this. They all do 50 jobs, they’ll work ridiculous hours, they all don’t get paid a lot because it’s not a lot of money and you got to spend the venture

⏹️ ▶️ John capital on like servers and acquiring new customers and stuff. But the upside is that if you

⏹️ ▶️ John make it, you share in the in the victory like Marco shared and you know when Tumblr, you got Tumblr

⏹️ ▶️ John stock and when they sold to Yahoo, he shared in that right? He didn’t do all that work and

⏹️ ▶️ John then did they you know just quit and leave with nothing right? So if you’re in this job and no

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m basically no one should work this hard no matter how young you are, no matter how awesome the job is, no one should

⏹️ ▶️ John sacrifice the other parts of their lives to this degree if they don’t share in it. And that, I think, to me personally,

⏹️ ▶️ John the reason I wouldn’t take this job and the reason I would recommend, would not recommend anyone else take this job is

⏹️ ▶️ John that it seems to me, it’s so hard to tell because this is a privately held company, but it seems to me that

⏹️ ▶️ John some people are benefiting greatly from what appears to be the success of Penny Arcade. And those people

⏹️ ▶️ John are the founders of the company, like the two, you know, Mike and Jerry and Robert

⏹️ ▶️ John are benefiting greatly from it. Financially, it seems like again, we don’t know, we can’t tell. They’ve talked a little bit about it, but it seems

⏹️ ▶️ John like they’re making a lot. The rest of the people in the company, it doesn’t seem like are benefiting

⏹️ ▶️ John as greatly. And if you’re going to have a startup type environment where you’re asking this of all

⏹️ ▶️ John the people involved and the people are willing to do it and they’re happy, I feel like they should be sharing in the success

⏹️ ▶️ John of the company, because this is not like a new startup they’ve been around for years. And this team of people

⏹️ ▶️ John has made a very successful enterprise. I feel like maybe they don’t all share equally, but that whole idea that

⏹️ ▶️ John seven people work their butts off and three people get rich drives me insane, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Because I mean, most of the time nobody gets rich. Some people work their butts off and everyone goes home sad, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John But in the cases where seven people work their butts off, three people shouldn’t get rich. Seven people should get rich. Maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John three people will get richer, but that’s what I feel like should happen. And I can’t, from what I can tell on the outside,

⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t seem like that’s happening. And again, I’m, I’m framing this all as why I would not take the job and why I would recommend

⏹️ ▶️ John someone didn’t take it. But I think the much more interesting question is, is this a bad

⏹️ ▶️ John thing to do if everybody who works at Penny Arcade is happy with their job?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I think you guys are judging this from a very similar angle to the way I judge it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey However, it is not the only angle. And the reason I say that is because my first job

⏹️ ▶️ Casey straight out of school was at this company that made slot machines

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the group The group of – it was all guys

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the time. The group of guys that worked there were all expats from

⏹️ ▶️ Casey EA who had bought up the company that they had all sort of kind of co-founded.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was a game company called Chesmai based out of Charlottesville, Virginia. By

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pure happenstance, a large majority of these guys either didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey have children or didn’t have any immediate family, so no wives and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey no kids. So especially a couple of the guys there, like my boss when I first

⏹️ ▶️ Casey got there, who I adore, he didn’t happen to have a wife and didn’t happen to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey have any kids. And so because of that, he just ended up working a lot.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And he put on this exterior shell of, oh, I don’t –

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this job is a pain in the butt but it’s a job and this is what I do. But I think if you’ll

⏹️ ▶️ Casey allow me to armchair – be an armchair psychiatrist, I think he worked a lot partially

⏹️ ▶️ Casey because it was the most interesting, maybe not interesting, but it was, it was a really good way to occupy

⏹️ ▶️ Casey his time. And so I envisioned Penny Arcade in a similar way, not to say that these

⏹️ ▶️ Casey people don’t have kids or they don’t have, they don’t have families, but there are people that really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey do just love working a lot. And my boss at this place worked absurd hours, like 80 or

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a hundred hours a week, but nobody was really telling him to, or at least I didn’t think so. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey He just enjoyed doing work and he worked six days a week. Nobody else did,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but he always did. And, and I’m not trying to say that he didn’t have other things in his life. I’m not trying

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to say that he necessarily enjoyed every moment of it, but in certain circumstances, there are people

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that really do like you guys were saying, want to have, want to have a work

⏹️ ▶️ Casey experience that kind of is their lives. Is that me? Heck no. I think I speak for you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey guys in saying that it’s certainly not you guys either, But for some people that is and if you put yourself

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in that mindset, how would you write a job posting? To be honest, I’d write it kind of like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this

⏹️ ▶️ John But see the thing is like Robert Koo is that person he by his own admission has sacrificed

⏹️ ▶️ John Many other parts of his life to be successful in business. He is the reason penny arcade exists in the form

⏹️ ▶️ John It does now he sacrificed his life to make this amazing company. He deserves,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know all the credit for that The two artists, of course, are the spark of this entire thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John Nothing exists without them. So clearly those three, you know, deserve more

⏹️ ▶️ John than anybody else. But, like, for Robert, that was his choice. He came up, he said, this

⏹️ ▶️ John is the life I’m going to leave. I’m going to make this great thing, and I understand the sacrifices involved for it.

⏹️ ▶️ John For the two other guys, they have wives and kids, and my impression is, yes, they work hard and everything, and yes, there are many demands on

⏹️ ▶️ John their time, and so on and so forth, but it seems like their work-life balance isn’t all that bad. I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s again, it’s so hard to tell with happenstance. And that’s why I was getting back to like What if all their employees are happy

⏹️ ▶️ John and the people talk about like this job burns people out penny Okay, it’s been around 15 years and this job has had two people in it

⏹️ ▶️ John So like, you know seven and a half years each it’s obviously not a machine that burns through people or

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not seven and a half years each The first one was there for like eight years or longer even this the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the guy who’s that who’s quitting now He’s only been there for like two years.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well either way It’s like two people in the position for over the 15-year life of the company It is

⏹️ ▶️ John not a mill where they bring in people and they burn them out and bring in people and burn them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco out Well, but it has it has scaled up over that time as penny arcade has got up the job has scaled up So like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it I think it says something that that you know, they had a guy there for a long time He left

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you know, it got really big He left a new guy came in he did the job and and is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco quitting after only two years because he needs more money

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but like, but giving back to the same point, and I’m not, I’m not implying an answer here. Like what my real question

⏹️ ▶️ John is, like, if all their employees are happy, is the company still mean for making

⏹️ ▶️ John a job like this?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. I’m saying the same thing. If all the employees enjoy hanging out with the other employees a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey lot and enjoy working a lot, which is a big, a big assumption. But if that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the case, like if I was one of those people, like my boss at my first job and I wanted to write

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a very forthcoming and honest job posting, it would probably look a lot like this.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Does it make it right? Not necessarily. But – and would I ever apply for it? Heck no. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it would look a lot like this.

⏹️ ▶️ John So like I think my opinion on whether this is inherently a bad job posting

⏹️ ▶️ John is there are some inherently bad aspects of it that a lot of people point out. The inherently bad aspect of it is not so

⏹️ ▶️ John much for the people taking the job and not so much for a penny arcade, but for the industry that

⏹️ ▶️ John for the position that they’re hiring for, because the availability of positions like this devalues

⏹️ ▶️ John the work that those people do having a company that is attractive enough in the intangibles that they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John able to ask for people to sacrifice their entire lives and take below market

⏹️ ▶️ John pay. It’s not so much that they’re able to do that. It’s so much of the existence of companies that

⏹️ ▶️ John are able to do that makes the rest of the industry feel like they can turn down the dials

⏹️ ▶️ John on their hiring? It makes it seem like, well, you’re expected to work like a dog. And well, you’re expected

⏹️ ▶️ John not to make too much money. And if too many companies do that, it sort of makes it seem like, oh, everybody who works in IT

⏹️ ▶️ John can never go on vacation. And it’s like, no, you’re not Penny Arcade. You can’t do that. Because

⏹️ ▶️ John what are you giving me? What makes me sad is that this position,

⏹️ ▶️ John this job description, is like an honest description of many things like insurance companies or big

⏹️ ▶️ John Fortune 500 companies that are just as terrible as the subscription sounds, but they lie in their applications

⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re not fun places to work and they don’t give you anything to balance off of this. But still, the existence of Penny

⏹️ ▶️ John Arcade and the bill, it’s kind of like, Marco has talked about this on past shows and like life isn’t fair, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John The idea of developers and designers doing work for free devalues the work of developers and designers.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s like, well, why are they doing the work for free? Sometimes they’re doing the work for free because it’s fun, because they’re a college student and it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John fun to make apps it’s fun to do designs and you’re trying to make a living doing it. And you’re like, God damn,

⏹️ ▶️ John these people doing work for free. They’re devaluing the work of everybody who does. They are, they are devaluing with,

⏹️ ▶️ John but they’re doing it because it’s fun. And because like they’re intangibles. All right. And that that’s a rough situation to be

⏹️ ▶️ John in. And you could say, Penny Arcade should have a broader view and say, we don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John want to devalue the work of it workers. And so we’re going to try to, we have a more of sort

⏹️ ▶️ John of, I guess that we would call it like environmental awareness, but in a job market sense, instead of like actual environment,

⏹️ ▶️ John that would be a reason not to do this. That would be a reason that this job posting is a bad idea,

⏹️ ▶️ John regardless of how happy the employee is, and not because of the person who gets this job is gonna be sad, and not because

⏹️ ▶️ John Penny Arcade is an evil company, but just because of sort of environmental factors. And the second reason this job posting

⏹️ ▶️ John is bad is different, and I think is much, much more concrete, and this would make me appeal to Robert Koo,

⏹️ ▶️ John never have one IT person. We just talked about backups for a million years. Just as

⏹️ ▶️ John a person who runs a business, this is a bad move business-wise. It seems

⏹️ ▶️ John like Penny Arcade does not correctly value the role

⏹️ ▶️ John of web applications and, you know, technology infrastructure in their company, because

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a big company, there’s a lot at stake here. Never trust that to one person. Not because you’re exploiting them, not because no

⏹️ ▶️ John one person can do this, not because you should pay them more. Don’t pay one guy 10 times his salary.

⏹️ ▶️ John You need redundancy. You absolutely, positively need redundancy. And I think web stuff and online

⏹️ ▶️ John services is such an important part of the Penny Arcade Empire as it exists today, that there’s no way that

⏹️ ▶️ John I think there’s any justification to have a single person that does this for the sake of the company, for the sake

⏹️ ▶️ John of the founders, for the sake of the other employees. Nothing to do with what the job is like. You just cannot have

⏹️ ▶️ John one person. You cannot. It has the side effect that if you have two people, then one guy can actually go on vacation. There’s many upsides

⏹️ ▶️ John to that, but ignoring all that, pretend he’s just like an evil turn of the century, industrial revolution,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, robber baron, don’t have one guy, you gotta have redundancy. So

⏹️ ▶️ John that would be my appeal to the Penny Arcade guys that it’s insane that a company this big and successful is going to

⏹️ ▶️ John have one IT guy.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Especially because their website being up, or websites being up, is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco such an important part of the business. You know, they, I would imagine, I know they run packs, and that’s probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pretty big business, but I would imagine the majority of their income probably still comes from ad views

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the site. Do you think that’s fair to say?

⏹️ ▶️ John I would say it’s an even split between PAX merchandise and advertising on a site. But again,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s privately held companies, hard to tell. But they have multiple lines of business and they’re big. But the thing is, all of them have some

⏹️ ▶️ John aspect of it that involves websites and services and electronic transfers of money.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. Obviously, they’re going to lose a lot for any moment that the site is down.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the longer it’s down, the more they’re going to lose. It’s not like if some restaurant has the website

⏹️ ▶️ Marco go down, who cares? They might lose two customers in a weekend if they can’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco see the website and figure out their hours. But for something like this, yeah, you’re right, that is very important. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco part of it, I should even point out now, now that I’m thinking about this, my job at Tumblr wasn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco quite this extreme because David could log in and fix things. He wasn’t as good at

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it as I was. Yeah, you weren’t the only one. Like he that was like he that was like his

⏹️ ▶️ Marco secondary ability his primary ability was coding all the you know The front end and the middle layer But but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco he could log in and fix servers to some degree when I was not available which wasn’t that often but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, he could do it and he did do it and Sometimes he could only like, you know slightly manage things

⏹️ ▶️ Marco until I got back. Sometimes you could fix the problem completely So and the and the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco only reason that it was acceptable to have all of that even resting on me was because there

⏹️ ▶️ Marco were only two employees. Like that was it, it was just two of us for so long. That’s why

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was okay, because there was nobody else available and we couldn’t afford anybody else for a very long time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the beginning.

⏹️ ▶️ John The thing is, you can get away with it. They get away with having one person for 15 years. It’s not like I’m saying you’re doomed, you can’t have one person.

⏹️ ▶️ John The fact that they can get away with it, I think it’s just penny wise pound foolish. Like ignoring whether that person shares in the

⏹️ ▶️ John success of the company to the degree I think they should and none of us can know because we don’t know how big their bonuses are or whatever, although

⏹️ ▶️ John they didn’t mention any equity, whatever, ignoring all of that. And I’m willing to give them all the benefit of the doubt

⏹️ ▶️ John on that, as a matter of fact, because the few things they have said publicly, one of them is that they’re constantly

⏹️ ▶️ John getting buyout offers, because who wouldn’t want to buy them, because they’re just a money-making machine.

⏹️ ▶️ John When they entertain buyout offers, what the guys in charge did said, if we take this buyout offer,

⏹️ ▶️ John we’re going to dole out the money to all the people in the company. And that would be correctly sharing the income. It was like,

⏹️ ▶️ John we’re not going to take a buyout, and the three founders leave, and you guys just are out of a job, or whatever. was,

⏹️ ▶️ John if we take this money, we’re going to divide it, probably not evenly, but we’re going to divide it amongst all employees

⏹️ ▶️ John as if all the employees had equity in the company, which as far as I know, they don’t legally have equity in the company, but that

⏹️ ▶️ John was what the founders did. They’re nice guys. They’re looking out for their people. Again, this is like a family. And when they took

⏹️ ▶️ John a vote, they let the whole company vote on this and not a single person voted to take the buyout,

⏹️ ▶️ John even though they knew if we do this, you can get some large, presumably large amount of money.

⏹️ ▶️ John Not a single person in the company voted because all the people in the company wanted to. Yeah, I mean, Marco can, can, uh,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, identify with this. They wanted to continue to be masters of their own destinies. They wanted to continue to be the family

⏹️ ▶️ John that is, that decides we decide what penny arcade does. We collectively, we 12 or 20 people in this room,

⏹️ ▶️ John we are penny arcade. We don’t want to sell out. It’s more important to us than the money to continue

⏹️ ▶️ John to be able to steer our own ship. Uh, and I think that speaks to the kind of company it is.

⏹️ ▶️ John I just think one IT person, I mean, just as they don’t have a single artist in the company,

⏹️ ▶️ John they have multiple artists doing multiple things and multiple comic strips, and one person is not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough. It also, it looked like from the current job occupants post in the forum,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from his description of his work and his skills, it really does also look like he’s not a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very knowledgeable sysadmin, and that his main focus is development,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not server administration or infrastructure management, you know, running load balancers and stuff. And most

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that he just pays Rackspace to do. And, you know, and that’s actually very expensive,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco by the way, but most of that he pays Rackspace to do. And so it actually sounds like they don’t really have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a dedicated system admin at all. Like, it isn’t even that this person’s doing all four of those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco jobs with equal weight. It’s that he’s mostly a developer and he happens to do a little bit of system administration,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but for the most part, most system admin tasks seem to be going undone, or at least inadequately covered.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of like when a company that’s not a software company tries to write software internally. They don’t quite

⏹️ ▶️ John know what’s involved with doing software. And Penny Arcade seems like a company that it’s not.

⏹️ ▶️ John If your company was like Dropbox, where your whole company is this software and web service

⏹️ ▶️ John that you provide, the whole company’s focused around that. And Penny Arcade is a creative company. Their whole company is focused

⏹️ ▶️ John on creative endeavors. And they do the creative stuff great, right? They don’t think of themselves as a company

⏹️ ▶️ John as, like, oh, we run a website. website is like just how we get our creative outlet to people. And it

⏹️ ▶️ John seems like they don’t either don’t know how to manage or don’t know how to value it correctly. Because yeah, you’re right, paying all that money to rack

⏹️ ▶️ John space again, penny wise pound foolish. And like for the for the penny arcade, for the

⏹️ ▶️ John penny arcade expo ticket sales, I think the outsource that this year to some other company that does like ticket sales things

⏹️ ▶️ John and it did not go well like it went the same whenever we used to use like cover it live or whatever those live

⏹️ ▶️ John blogging platforms that were out there there. I tried to buy tickets for PAX this year, and it was the same

⏹️ ▶️ John situation as if you cover it live, where the site was down, and you were in a queue, and you couldn’t get pages to load, and

⏹️ ▶️ John then it would load without the CSS, and you couldn’t tell if you’ve purchased anything. They

⏹️ ▶️ John outsourced that, and that didn’t work well either. That is a core part of their business. They should be investing in it way more than

⏹️ ▶️ John they are.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s almost as if, in the Tumblr early example, it’s almost as if they already have hired

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a David, but they haven’t hired a me. have like I mean

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that in the least arrogant way that I can say it like they have the front-end developer and like the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco middleware developer and they haven’t like this is the job of two people at least

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they’ve only hired for the front half of it and not for like the back end half

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and of course they’re not gonna pay somebody enough to do both if they can even find

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John one

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah the pay thing low it’s it’s they the ad the ad is honest to a fault

⏹️ ▶️ John and you but we don’t have numbers, so you don’t know, like, maybe they think they’re paying below

⏹️ ▶️ John market, but they’re still actually offering a reasonably good salary, or maybe they’re offering a ridiculously low salary.

⏹️ ▶️ John We can’t tell from the ad. All we can tell is from the people who work there and this one person

⏹️ ▶️ John who’s leaving. It’s hard to tell from them. The guy who was there for eight years obviously enjoyed

⏹️ ▶️ John it and probably just moved on to something else in his life. Like they don’t have a lot of turnover in their company. They do

⏹️ ▶️ John run it more like a family. It seems like all the people who work there are happy with it. Otherwise, why would they stay? It’s not like a

⏹️ ▶️ John place where, you know, and it was a lot of making a big deal about the, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John you, it’s an offensive work environment or whatever. Someone was saying that’s like legally is boilerplate.

⏹️ ▶️ John And that sounds vaguely plausible to me because at least one job that I worked at, I had to sign a thing that said,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, as the chorus in a matter of course, doing this job and doing competitive research, you may come across websites. So

⏹️ ▶️ John the people find offensive and blah, blah, blah. Basically was just saying you may see porn sites as part of your work and you promise

⏹️ ▶️ John you won’t sue us because of it. right and Because they’re out there on the web and you may be

⏹️ ▶️ John going and that that if you work at penny arcade And it’s a comic strip that it

⏹️ ▶️ John you know has adult themes and doing competitive research you may run across other things or whatever that seems

⏹️ ▶️ John like actually kind of a reasonable thing to say up front to people that like Presumably you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John familiar with penny arcade, but just so you know this is what it’s about This is what you may come in contact with it is not I

⏹️ ▶️ John think I think trying to have people sign away their rights to be sexually harassed or something because I have to believe

⏹️ ▶️ John that if anything like that was going on inside Penny Arcade we would hear about it, right? Like that

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not the NSA, they’re not CIA, they’re not silencing people as they go out the door.

⏹️ ▶️ John Everyone who works there seems to like working there, they all seem to like each other, the people who leave do not leave disgruntled

⏹️ ▶️ John and hating it. Maybe it’s like a cult and they’re brainwashing everybody but I have a really hard time believing that.

⏹️ ▶️ John I still think this is an ill-advised hiring decision, and I sure as hell wouldn’t take that job

⏹️ ▶️ John myself, but I definitely have mixed feelings about, is this good

⏹️ ▶️ John or bad for the person who ends up taking that job

⏹️ ▶️ John and being happy with it? How can you say, if someone takes that job and they’re super happy with it for,

⏹️ ▶️ John even if they’re only happy with it for two years, people sometimes are in jobs for less

⏹️ ▶️ John than two years, who are you to say to that person that they shouldn’t have taken that job? Maybe in retrospect they will feel

⏹️ ▶️ John like they shouldn’t. I know if I took that job and then grew to my current ripe old age, I would regret having taken

⏹️ ▶️ John that job. But that’s me. Everyone’s different. So I don’t know. I don’t know what to think.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, to wrap this up, because I think we’re running a little long here, I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it’s a complicated issue because it divides people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco along the same lines as how much the government should mandate about how things are done

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or how you live your own life. And people are so split on issues like this.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Labor laws almost always have this kind of problem, where it’s like, well, if the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco government or the society’s expectations, or from critics like us,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we might say, oh, well, having workaholism be the norm

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is really bad, and you need to have codified vacation schedules and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco limited hours or paid overtime to discourage constant overworking and stuff like that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You have issues where a lot of people think that that should be regulated,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the government should say – the government should step in and be like, well, it’s really better for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people overall if you live by these rules or follow these guidelines

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or restrictions or limits. It’s kind of like a parent rule. We know better for you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than what you’re claiming. So even if the employer wants you to do something, and you agree,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you will do it, and you’re happy doing it, the government might say, that’s actually worse

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for people in general, so we’re not going to allow that. And that’s a very controversial thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Similar to that, all of our opinions on this, like you said earlier, Casey and John, both,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if the employees there are happy in that environment, is it really that bad? And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I think we can’t really, you know, we can say this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is bad in general and generally you shouldn’t take this job but if they happen to find somebody who will take that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco job which they probably they almost certainly will very easily because they have such a big following

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we you know we can’t really say like that person’s an idiot like they’re making that choice but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think we can say in general you shouldn’t do things like this but even that is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even that’s controversial

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah you should even for person taking that job, like you, you can’t be sure that you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John going to like it as much as you do. Uh, and talk about like labor laws and stuff like that

⏹️ ▶️ John in general, like this is all sort of talk about first world problems here, like labor labor

⏹️ ▶️ John laws. There’s so much low hanging fruit in terms of stopping the Walmart, Walmart. So the world’s not paying their

⏹️ ▶️ John employees enough. This person is going to be paid enough to like get food on the table. Right? So

⏹️ ▶️ John in the grand scheme of things, it pales in comparison to the worker exploitation that happens lower down in the scale of

⏹️ ▶️ John things. But for our little, you know, enlightened world of developers and stuff, this is like the

⏹️ ▶️ John like the crazy equivalent of that among developers is that

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve probably all been in jobs where we felt like we were overworked and we felt like we weren’t appreciated and didn’t share in the success of

⏹️ ▶️ John the company. And we see this is a place where that could happen. So be aware. Don’t go in thinking it’s all going

⏹️ ▶️ John to be rose and sunshine, because it’s really, really tough. And especially when we see a young person doing it where they don’t know, they don’t know they’re going to

⏹️ ▶️ John like it. They don’t know if they’re going to be happy because they don’t have any experience with anything. And maybe they’ll think they’ll like it, and maybe, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, the burnout is definitely a possibility. Maybe they’ll be happy for the first year and realize, I can never go anywhere and I’m miserable

⏹️ ▶️ John and I’ve sacrificed my entire life and I didn’t realize I was doing it. It’s mostly like you’re trying to tell people go in

⏹️ ▶️ John with their eyes open. And I think the brutal and honest ad kind of helps in that, but it

⏹️ ▶️ John also kind of makes it seem more exciting and daring to young people with less experience of like, oh, I’m going to do this thing because

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s super hard and everything. In general, it’s not. Even

⏹️ ▶️ John if they were fixed on this stupid plan of hiring a single person to do all these jobs, there were better ways to

⏹️ ▶️ John go about presenting that position to have a better chance of

⏹️ ▶️ John finding a successful match with someone who really will be happy in that position. I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ John With private companies, it’s difficult. But we should all just wait outside the company for that person to leave 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10 years from now

⏹️ ▶️ John and say, how was it? Was it what you thought it was? Are you happy? We told you so. Get off my lawn.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, maybe. We didn’t tell you. Maybe they’re going to love it. Maybe they’re going to think it’s awesome.

⏹️ ▶️ John I have to say, having consumed tons and tons of Penny Arcade content over the years

⏹️ ▶️ John and seeing all of what their work life is there, many times I’ve said, boy, I wish my work was like that. Boy, I wish I cared

⏹️ ▶️ John about my co-workers the way they apparently care about theirs. And that’s why they get all these employees. And we just

⏹️ ▶️ John want them not to take advantage of that and exploit somebody. We know we have this environment

⏹️ ▶️ John that looks awesome on camera And secretly, inside, we’re evil. And we’re going to abuse this person.

⏹️ ▶️ John And we’re going to get some sucker in. That’s what we fear. But we don’t know what’s going on. So that’s a fear.

⏹️ ▶️ John But you can’t say that’s definitely what it’s like inside Penny Arcade. I don’t know. I definitely have mixed feelings. And

⏹️ ▶️ John this is not even touching Mike’s many foot and mouth disease problems and

⏹️ ▶️ John his major problems understanding. I’m not even going to get into these topics. I don’t think you guys know about them.

⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s probably not appropriate for a tech show. But this job listing is.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, then.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Let’s wrap it up. Thanks a lot to our two sponsors this week, Ting and Warby Parker,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we will see you next week.

⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey even mean to begin, cause it was accidental, oh it was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental. John didn’t do

⏹️ ▶️ John any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him, cause it was accidental,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is accidental. And you can find the

⏹️ ▶️ John show notes at ATP.FM. And if you’re into Twitter, you

⏹️ ▶️ John can follow them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S. So that’s Casey Liss,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, Penny Arcade

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a divisive issue.

⏹️ ▶️ John a company that engenders strong feelings. So we’ll see if we get tons of feedback from the people who hate

⏹️ ▶️ John Penny Arcade and say that we were defending it too much, and from the people who love Penny Arcade and say we were saying bad things about it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Or maybe we’ll get almost no feedback at all, which means that there’s no overlap in our audiences.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wonder, what do you think will be more hated? Our collective opinion on the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Penny Arcade job posting, or me or Casey?

⏹️ ▶️ John Why can’t it be both?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s probably the right

⏹️ ▶️ John answer. I really hated Margo and Casey’s opinion of the bit. No, I think I’ll get the worst of it, because the problem with trying to have a

⏹️ ▶️ John position that’s nuanced, where you acknowledge the

⏹️ ▶️ John unknowns in the situation, that all we have to go on is this job posting and a bunch of videos and none of us really know.

⏹️ ▶️ John That uncertainty and that hedging seems like, well, you’re defending them, you’re saying they’re better. I’m just acknowledging

⏹️ ▶️ John the unknowns. hate that because it’s not they just want to see you decisively come down for or against

⏹️ ▶️ John and that sort of wishy-washy they interpreted as wishy-washy but I feel like it’s it’s accuracy

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s acknowledging the unknowns you can’t make definitive statements without more information and that

⏹️ ▶️ John comes off as not as certainty is much more attractive and interesting and so they want you to be certain about something and

⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t I’m I’m I’m pronouncing divisive wrong

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco probably

⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve always heard divisive I bet if I looked it up in the dictionary now it will tell me this two pronunciations.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Anyway. You know,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I almost called you out on it, but since I’ve gotten burned my—I’ve burned myself so bad on these things,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like Richard Pryor, you know, I’ve lit myself up trying to smoke, if you will. Not literally, but figuratively.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I refuse to make any sort of commentary on grammar or pronunciation

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John issues.

⏹️ ▶️ John It says one pronunciation divisive. Oh well. It’s a divisive issue. I’m still—I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John still way ahead of Gruber on mispronunciations.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco See, your problem, John, is that you’re a fan of Penny Arcade. You actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know them. You’re closer to them than me and Casey. I don’t know them. I read

⏹️ ▶️ John the comic though.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Well

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, Casey and I, as far as I know Casey, we don’t give a shit about Penny Arcade. I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco never got into the comic. I’ve known of it for, I don’t know, years, a decade?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I’ve never read it regularly. I’ve never really cared. Honestly, when people link me to it, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t even find it that funny. It’s just not my kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John You have to be a gamer. It’s a gamer’s right

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but like but you’re actually close enough that like any opinion You make and you know as you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco said like by having a nuanced hedged opinion Anything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you say is going to actually anchor both sides Like the people who who don’t like them from this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco job posting are gonna be like you didn’t come down hard enough and the people Who are fans of them? You’re like you traitor. You’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of us.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah But the thing is it’s like the cult of personality where people you think you know people who listen

⏹️ ▶️ John to their Podcasts and everything and a certain point reading penny arcade for 15 years and going to all

⏹️ ▶️ John the conventions you start to feel like you Know the people and when they do terrible stupid things

⏹️ ▶️ John If you don’t know them you just simply condemn them and say you have done a terrible stupid thing if you do

⏹️ ▶️ John know them You’re like, oh damn you did a terrible stupid thing Like if your friend does it don’t you want to like talk to your friend and say

⏹️ ▶️ John what are you doing, man? Like because they’ve done lots of terrible stupid things and I even

⏹️ ▶️ John though I don’t know these people at all the feeling I get is not like, hey, there’s this thing I never heard of. You know

⏹️ ▶️ John when someone links you to something, where someone said something dumb, and you have no idea who it is, all you know is like, oh man, this person

⏹️ ▶️ John is a terrible person, right? Like some YouTube video of some person saying something terrible, or some politician you never heard of

⏹️ ▶️ John saying something terrible. You just instantly go, well, that guy’s a bozo, right? But if someone links you to like, your

⏹️ ▶️ John brother saying something terrible, you want to talk to your brother and say, what are you doing, man? You know,

⏹️ ▶️ John you’d hopefully say, I know you’re not as terrible as that is, or maybe you are as terrible, and we need to talk about it, or whatever. or whatever. And that’s how I feel

⏹️ ▶️ John about the Penny Arcade stuff. There was a good post from MC Frontalot, which is a musician and also

⏹️ ▶️ John a friend of the guys, with a similar conflict going, you’re doing a terrible thing. But

⏹️ ▶️ John I know you guys have it in you to A, realize that it’s terrible and B, fix

⏹️ ▶️ John it. And seeing them not take those two steps, not seem to realize what was wrong with what they did,

⏹️ ▶️ John and not seeming to fix it is just so frustrating. And a lot of people are just sort of cutting ties or like,

⏹️ ▶️ John you’ve had, you know, three strikes you’re out. You keep doing these dumb things and maybe they just don’t have people around them

⏹️ ▶️ John explain to them what the problem is or maybe they can’t internalize it. Uh, and like

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s, it’s a tough situation. And again, I feel like, I feel like I have this unspoken relationship

⏹️ ▶️ John with these people where I totally don’t the same way that people feel like they know us cause they listen to our podcast. And so, yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John I definitely am closer to it, but I don’t, what I don’t want people to think is because I’m close to it, I

⏹️ ▶️ John defend these terrible things they do, which again, I don’t want to get into it, but it’s simply of the job posting itself. I don’t think

⏹️ ▶️ John that was the right way to go about that on so many different levels, despite the fact that I acknowledge that

⏹️ ▶️ John it is very possible that the person who takes that job will be happy with it and will come out of the company saying,

⏹️ ▶️ John I was glad I took that job.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, it’s funny hearing you talk about, you know, knowing someone who does something stupid and knowing and not,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, or seeing a stranger do something stupid. And I feel like, Marco, that’s why you get burned a lot because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re very passionate and very opinionated, which in and of itself is not bad,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I think that a lot of times you come across as arrogant and because I know you, and well, both

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of us know you as well as we do, I don’t think a thing of it. And then I’ll see, and I can’t think of a great example, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll see the internet go freaking nuts because Marco said this ridiculously arrogant thing. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me, I’m just like, wait, what? Because I know you and I know enough about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey where you’re coming from to know that’s probably not how you meant it. or even if it is, you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey meant it at level two out of 10 and the internet’s taking it as level 10 out of 10.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it’s a very similar thing. And so it’s often funny for me to watch some of the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey skirmishes you either get yourself into or put yourself into, because not always,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but most times, I’m like, oh, well, yeah, it’s just Marco B. Marco, whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John You get graded on the curve. Once you have any amount

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey of fame,

⏹️ ▶️ John the scrutiny is much higher. And Penny Arcade, that’s not excusing them at all. Penny Arcade has tons of

⏹️ ▶️ John fame, and they, Guess what, you get the good and the bad that comes with it. I mean, same with the market. Would you rather have people not care what

⏹️ ▶️ John you say or overreact about what you’re saying? And that’s the price of- It depends on the

⏹️ ▶️ John day. I know, but that’s the price of being well-known. That’s the price of being successful in your endeavors

⏹️ ▶️ John is that things you say are going to be scrutinized. I mean, the biggest example is any kind of politician or the president

⏹️ ▶️ John or whoever, they say anything. They fart the wrong way. They say they don’t like broccoli and it’s an international incident. Remember that, but

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe you don’t, George Bush. Anyway. We were alive for that. that comes with the territory.

⏹️ ▶️ John And the poor Penny Arcade guys, A, end up doing legitimately bad things, and

⏹️ ▶️ John B, rail against the unfairness of being held to the

⏹️ ▶️ John standard that they didn’t want to sign up for. And I understand the emotion, but

⏹️ ▶️ John you have to realize that comes with the territory. You can’t,

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s no ninja move where you’re like, ha ha, but I don’t accept that you’re going to scrutinize me. Therefore, my

⏹️ ▶️ John actions shouldn’t be taken as seriously as It’s like you don’t get to decide that right you do

⏹️ ▶️ John speak for a large media conglomerate empire Your words do have more in effect than

⏹️ ▶️ John they would if you’re a regular person. You can’t go back to being a regular Joe Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s that’s the way it is I I feel like I should just if I sit down with them for like Okay

⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe maybe it’d have to be an island for a month because sometimes I feel like If I could just deceive

⏹️ ▶️ John jobs in a room I could convince him of XY I’m like no realistically he would walk out of the room. I need to have him prisoner

⏹️ ▶️ John in a nice way So that they can’t run away and eventually though It’s like in that movie where like

⏹️ ▶️ John some you know There’s a prisoner or even just like a student who like in the beginning they hate the teacher and they teach it for

⏹️ ▶️ John the first Six months, but then they finally come around and then the real work gets going. That’s what you need I feel like someone should

⏹️ ▶️ John be able to Talk to these guys and explain to them what it is. They’re missing because I really believe they can be turned

⏹️ ▶️ John around They just haven’t done it yet

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it’s I don’t think they think there’s anything wrong with this. I

⏹️ ▶️ John know that’s that’s problem zero That’s the hair it is. I mean like and this is like Maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John someone could explain it to you. Maybe no one’s explaining it the right way. Let me explain it again

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Here’s what’s wrong? Well, and you know, it’s hard when when you get as much crap as they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get which I can only begin to imagine you know, I get some small fraction

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that amount of crap and I am I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco always surprised in the new ways that I’ve accidentally offended people.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like it’s a new… it’s like every week I accidentally stumble upon a new way that I’ve offended

⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody. And it gets to me. It really does. Because I, you know, I want

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be a nice guy. I don’t want to be a dick. I don’t want people to think I’m a dick. But you’re just so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good at it! But I really don’t mean to be! Like that’s… that’s totally unintentional.

⏹️ ▶️ John But you… but you would learn from your mistakes. Again, I don’t want to get into the specific

⏹️ ▶️ John instances, but they’ll say something that is unintentionally sexist or

⏹️ ▶️ John transphobic or something, and they literally don’t know what they just did wrong. And that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the problem, right? And the worst reaction is to get defensive and double down on it, and

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what they do. They get defensive and double down on the wrong thing that they did. And it’s the whole thing of

⏹️ ▶️ John trying to educate someone. If you do something that is legitimately, you know, if you said something that actually

⏹️ ▶️ John is arrogant, you know, the way you said it is dismissive of other people and whatever. I

⏹️ ▶️ John feel like that you learn from that experience and learn to say the same thing in a different way or be more clear about what you’re saying,

⏹️ ▶️ John right, or, you know, express your express your sentiment more accurately, so it’s less likely to be misinterpreted the wrong

⏹️ ▶️ John way. But I don’t think you’ve ever been in a situation where you said something that is like, totally wrong

⏹️ ▶️ John and terrible, and double down on it. And we’re like, No, actually,

⏹️ ▶️ John screw you. And let me tell you why. I’m going to say that even more like that total, you know, emotional reaction,

⏹️ ▶️ John your reaction always is, you know, introspective. And well, not always something

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John moments, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no, that’s, that’s the problem is like my instinct, I think, I think, which is a natural instinct is to be defensive, like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and, and I look back on, on these on like, you know, things that that blow up that I didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean to blow up that I look back on, like what I actually said and did, after it’s all over and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can see like wow I did completely the wrong thing like I I got defensive I was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco being immature or angry or impulsive like I look back and I’m ashamed of it but you know it’s it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco easy to say but you but

⏹️ ▶️ John you learn from it though don’t you but like you don’t make that exact specific mistake again right

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah but I find new ones like you know it’s it’s easy to say oh if I was in this situation

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this I would I would do XYZ like I would react this way. But then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you’re actually in that situation, a lot of times it doesn’t turn out that way. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s so hard when your instinct is to be defensive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or to say things off the cuff as if you’re talking to a smaller group of people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco who likes you more than the actual group of people you’re talking to that’s much bigger.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s really hard to get used to that and it’s really hard to fundamentally change your behavior and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco personality to to sand off those rough edges. I mean I’m 31

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I still haven’t figured out how to do that quite well yet. Like I’m trying but I really have not figured

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it out yet.

⏹️ ▶️ John They’re similar ages. I think they’re between you and I. I think they’re in their 30s. They have kids

⏹️ ▶️ John a similar age. Like they’re trying to figure it out as well and yeah that that instinct to lash out like

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s it’s not just the instincts to lash out it’s like the things that you get called on are just

⏹️ ▶️ John so minor compared to the things they do wrong and it’s…

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I think it’s mostly because I have a much smaller audience, though. Like, if I had an audience the size of theirs,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I would get as much as they do, if not more, because I’m even less

⏹️ ▶️ Marco experienced at talking to an audience as large as theirs as they are.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, here’s… I don’t know. I’m not gonna name name, but like, say you said something like,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, well, everyone knows the girls can’t climb trees. Like, you said something sexist like that, right? And you didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John understand that that statement was sexist. All you can see is about the tree climbing business,

⏹️ ▶️ John and you didn’t understand… Conceptually, you’re like, what’s sexist about

⏹️ ▶️ John that? It’s just a statement of fact. Everyone knows girls can’t climb a tree. You don’t understand the broader context in which that statement…

⏹️ ▶️ John And then you double down on it, you could argue about it, and you get lost in the details. It’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John you like there is a base understanding of what is at stake here that that

⏹️ ▶️ John does not exist in your head. And so even if you get to the point, as they frequently do, where they’re in apology

⏹️ ▶️ John mode and they’re like, we’re, we’re sorry, we the last thing we want to do is offend people. We care about

⏹️ ▶️ John all these people like honest statements of apology, but they don’t understand what they’re apologizing for. They don’t understand like

⏹️ ▶️ John the, you know, the historical and cultural context of sexism versus just

⏹️ ▶️ John the I said something wrong kind of at some point and now I have to apologize for it, but I don’t really understand what

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m apologizing for. That’s their problem, and they keep doing that over and over again, and nothing you have done has ever

⏹️ ▶️ John reached that level of like, you not, because you understand why someone is like, if you say something

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s dismissive of like some programming language and people get, you understand it’s because you were dismissive of programming. There’s not like

⏹️ ▶️ John a millennia-long oppression of PHP programmers that’s like, that’s the context

⏹️ ▶️ John that you are completely unaware of or not able to internalize, and it’s hard. A lot of people are not able to internalize those things.

⏹️ ▶️ John And one way is to just shun. And the other way is to try to

⏹️ ▶️ John explain to, they call them allies, someone who wants to do the right thing but doesn’t understand what they did wrong,

⏹️ ▶️ John to try to bring them onto your side by explaining what they did wrong. Those blowups, I think, serve a purpose.

⏹️ ▶️ John Because I feel like I have, in seeing not just them, but every other internet blowup where someone says something and

⏹️ ▶️ John then some interest group jumps on them and shreds them to bits, has made me more aware,

⏹️ ▶️ John Not that like that interest group is a totally right and that guy is totally wrong, but just more aware of issues that I wasn’t aware

⏹️ ▶️ John of before in a way that gives me a bigger picture of like humanity, like makes you question your assumptions

⏹️ ▶️ John about things that you hadn’t thought about before. So that, you know, so I think I

⏹️ ▶️ John hope some portion of the audience seeing these train wrecks is coming out of it. Like, maybe those

⏹️ ▶️ John people, those allies are being educated, even if the people involved in the conflict or not.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s too bad I’m only on tech podcasts because I would love to be on a podcast to talk specifically about the issues involved in here, but it is

⏹️ ▶️ John not appropriate for a tech podcast.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You just make a new one. I mean, what’s another podcast?

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, please. No more podcasts.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, if us three idiots can do it, then anyone can.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s funny. I was just complaining to Marco – maybe not complaining, but lamenting is probably a better word to Marco. I think it was earlier

⏹️ ▶️ Casey today, that as part of my newfound notoriety as like an F triple minus

⏹️ ▶️ Casey list celebrity is I feel like I’m getting the point, and maybe it’s just because I’m an idiot,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I feel like I’m getting the point that everything I post anywhere in any capacity is met with a million

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like silly critiques. And it just gets

⏹️ ▶️ Casey annoying and it gets frustrating. And a lot of times I want to engage and where I think

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco and I are both learning is I’m trying to get better about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not engaging. But my initial reaction is, you know, like somebody posted on Twitter,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I forget what exactly they said, but something along the lines of, oh, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s what it was. It was, you know, Sean Blanc had asked me to do something for his new website

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and somebody had posted, you know, why the hell do I care what this other guy has to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey say? And so because I’m an idiot, I engaged and I said something along the lines of, well, you know, even the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey other guy has an opinion every once in a while. And the response, which I should have expected was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey something along the lines of, you know, honestly, I don’t like you or Marco, I just listen for John, which is pretty much

⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone that listens to the show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John But

⏹️ ▶️ John I think I remember this. Did you see what I responded to that person?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No, I don’t think I did.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s because I didn’t see see you. But if you could look at look at the thread, you’ll see like I rarely engage

⏹️ ▶️ John as well. but sometimes it’s worth doing.

⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe it wasn’t appropriate for you to engage in that thing, and there’s certainly times when I don’t. Here’s the thing about

⏹️ ▶️ John it. A lot of times people will say that they don’t like your whatever thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John They don’t like listening to your podcast. They don’t care about your opinion. They will

⏹️ ▶️ John be expressing in not so many words that they have different priorities than you do. The

⏹️ ▶️ John fact that they’re throwing that in your face me bother you, but you have to also say like, it’s okay for

⏹️ ▶️ John people to have a different opinion. It’s not like what you do, like, all right, like, there’s nothing.

⏹️ ▶️ John There’s not an argument to be had. You’re not going to turn them around. You’re not going to. It’s not my job

⏹️ ▶️ John and not my desire to find everyone who doesn’t like me and convince them they should like me, right? The only thing I will engage

⏹️ ▶️ John on is people being mean for no good reason and people getting facts wrong. And even

⏹️ ▶️ John even those I will selectively engage on. So if people get facts wrong, I will correct them

⏹️ ▶️ John because that is something where there is, you know, an argument to be having. And I only do that if I’m feeling energetic.

⏹️ ▶️ John And people being mean most of the time, I will let that slide. But today when I saw that tweet that you were talking

⏹️ ▶️ John about, I didn’t want to let that slide. And I think my response was don’t be a jerk.

⏹️ ▶️ John Because like, seriously, don’t be a jerk. You wouldn’t like that’s being that’s just being a jerk. You don’t like them fine.

⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t like what had to say fine. Don’t keep throwing in their face and saying you’re we don’t like you. You’re like anything

⏹️ ▶️ John you say, Okay, fine. Don’t listen to the show the end period don’t be a jerk about it And so

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s you know, that’s like it’s okay not to like them. It’s not it’s nothing wrong with them Maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t like to listen to that There’s plenty of things that I don’t like to listen to or watch either But I don’t seek the people out

⏹️ ▶️ John and tell them how much I don’t like them repeatedly. That’s just being a jerk

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think people people who don’t get a lot of random strangers giving them feedback

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would probably be shocked at at how much crap you get when you have a lot of random

⏹️ ▶️ Marco strangers giving you feedback on the internet. Like, you know, just for an extreme version of this,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco look on Twitter, look at the at-reply stream of like a celebrity or somebody who has

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like hundreds of thousands of followers or more. Like, look at Gruber’s celebrity, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at Gruber’s stream, look at his at-replies. You know, look at anybody who has

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a large following who says anything of any, you know, ever

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you’re gonna see hundreds and hundreds of people calling them an asshole and telling them they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco an idiot and you know when you put yourself out there once

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you get any size audience at all you’re gonna get a lot of really good feedback

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from people and you could get you could get a hundred positive emails and tweets

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a day saying that they liked what you wrote and that was great And then you get four idiots

⏹️ ▶️ Marco who tell you that you’re just a moron and they hate everything you do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and It’s really you know for some people who have a thick skin You know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s easy to let that you know just roll off your back and okay, that’s fine

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Some people it bothers them like and I think that is the natural the natural reaction is for that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to bother you and I’m one of those people it bothers me and And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco every nasty thing that I get bothers me. Which is one, so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco my recommended thing to Casey, but I told him earlier of where I am, my strategy for this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is if somebody says something uncivil or by my definition

⏹️ ▶️ Marco unreasonable in some way over Twitter, I just block them. First time, first offense,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t care, block. And then it’s gone because modern Twitter clients, when you block somebody, actually remove

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the tweet from your timeline. You stop seeing it. And generally speaking,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot more hate comes from a lot fewer people than you think. And so,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, you might have like four guys who troll you with everything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you write or say. And the same four guys every time. So if you just hand out four blocks, you’re eliminating

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like 80% of your trolling that you see. And I know that, you know, a lot of people, and John,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even you just said, you know, A lot of people would engage with that or try to comment or fight

⏹️ ▶️ Marco back. I found that almost universally never to be worthwhile.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Almost universally always makes everything worse and makes me get more angry or annoyed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or feeling bad about it. It just builds the negativity. The best way for me to handle it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just to remove it because I can’t deal with that. Joel Spolsky left blogging

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because of this. on software there’s so much good stuff on there but because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco he wrote things with strong opinions to an audience of programmers he got the worst crap from people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever in addition to all the positives and he wrote him in one of his one of his last like main post when his blog

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was was still active but he was basically saying he’s quitting one of the things he wrote was like he could get a hundred

⏹️ ▶️ Marco positive comments and one negative one and that negative one would bother him all day and I totally get that I’m the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco exact same way

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco oh

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah

⏹️ ▶️ John if you can learn to to that’s the thing you should because I think you should do whatever

⏹️ ▶️ John it takes to have an even keel. And if it’s blocking, that’s what it is. But as someone

⏹️ ▶️ John who usually, I very rarely block. I block spammers, obviously. But I very rarely block

⏹️ ▶️ John people who are being jerks to me. Because if you can learn to absorb that, there

⏹️ ▶️ John is very often some kernel of truth in the negative feedback that you

⏹️ ▶️ John get, particularly in the negative feedback that you hate the most. Because if someone says something to you, like

⏹️ ▶️ John if they said to me that I’m tremendously overweight, that would not bother me because I’m not tremendously

⏹️ ▶️ John overweight, right? But if they say something that’s close to home, right, then that bothers you more. And

⏹️ ▶️ John the closer they get to the truth, even if they’re super mean about it, and don’t really aren’t, you know, this, if they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John saying it much worse than it is, if there is some kernel of truth, you tend to have the most visceral negative reaction to that.

⏹️ ▶️ John And if you can learn to absorb that what you can do is come away from it and learn from

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever that kernel of truth that is, figure it out, examine it and try to improve on that axis Going

⏹️ ▶️ John for if you think it’s an important thing to improve on maybe that person Saying you’re doing something that they think is bad that you

⏹️ ▶️ John think is good then fine Whatever ignore them But if if it really bothers you because you also kind of

⏹️ ▶️ John deep down agree That’s a bad thing you work on it and try to make it better It doesn’t mean you have to absorb tons

⏹️ ▶️ John of abuse to make this happen. You could still block the person or whatever but the the anti pattern

⏹️ ▶️ John is totally blocking out all negative feedback and just you know sort of of becoming a

⏹️ ▶️ John Hollywood rock star where you don’t let

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco anything negative,

⏹️ ▶️ John you become Tom Cruise or you don’t, I don’t know what this means, Tom Cruise. But anyway, you know, where you don’t let anything

⏹️ ▶️ John negative in and you start living in your own bubble and that’s your way to deal with things. And that’s, you don’t want that to happen.

⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t want to isolate yourself so much from feedback that you are inside a bubble. And I

⏹️ ▶️ John found that most people, if you call them on their BS, most people will be, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, a little bit, they’ll do a little bit of introspection. If you do it in the right way, it’s very difficult

⏹️ ▶️ John to do. You have to disengage yourself from the process. But one example is, remember the Iowa 7 kid video?

⏹️ ▶️ John The kid who was like, you know, crying about Iowa 7, we talked about on the show, right? So I tweeted that before, I think it was before

⏹️ ▶️ John the show, I tweeted that. And some person responded to me and said, boy, that kid,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, your kid is a big brat or something like that, right? And so there’s two things going on. One,

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not my kid. And two, like, it’s a seven-year-old, like crying about, or five-year-old,

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever it is, crying about things that five year olds cry about, right? And so I could have just ignored that.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not going to convince them that that kid is not a brat. That’s not my goal, but they got a fact wrong. So

⏹️ ▶️ John I said, that’s not my kid, which is true. And you know, I didn’t try to say, and you would know that if you listened to the blup.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, I just said, that’s not my kid. Might want to correct the fact. And the second thing is I said, that’s not my

⏹️ ▶️ John kid. And that’s an unkind thing to say, because it’s an unkind thing to say. You’re going to say a kid you see in a video who’s just a little

⏹️ ▶️ John kid who’s crying at some point is a brat. That is an unkind thing to say. And that’s it. I said and this

⏹️ ▶️ John was an older woman who said this or whatever and right or wrong you know You think like this older woman should be some people

⏹️ ▶️ John are all sorts of people are mean This person was not convinced my by my you know, they agreed that

⏹️ ▶️ John it was a mean thing to say But then also tried to you know justify why they said it or okay Well,

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m glad that’s not your kid, but I still think they’re kind of bratty and that was it Like I’m not gonna pursue that further But

⏹️ ▶️ John I think that that tiny piece of feedback I gave them correcting the fact and saying that they were being unkind.

⏹️ ▶️ John Hopefully they gave him a moment’s notice of saying, yes, I was saying an unkind

⏹️ ▶️ John thing about a five-year-old on the internet just now. And maybe they dismiss it and move on with their life. But I hope that’s planting a little

⏹️ ▶️ John seed in there, reminding them that that’s not a nice thing to say. And if that was

⏹️ ▶️ John my kid, maybe my reaction would be much more violent. I would block them, and I would argue with them. But

⏹️ ▶️ John the correct reaction, if you’re going to engage at all, is to try to help that person realize what a jerk they’re being,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more or less. Well, right. What you said is exactly correct, is like, you know, when the criticism

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a little bit true, that’s what hurts the most. And I think, John,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re exactly right that blocking out sources of negative criticism completely

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not good. That’s really bad. I mean, one thing I love about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco putting myself out there online is that I get challenged on so many things that it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco forces me to become a better person. It makes me a better writer. It makes me a better thinker.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes me a better person to have so much constant feedback good and bad.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The problem is it’s you have to draw a line somewhere you have to be able to distinguish between

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good feedback and people just being unreasonable or being trolls

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and when you have a large audience you’re going to get a lot of both and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you also have to be have to make sure that you’re not going to get such a massive deluge of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco negative feedback constantly that it will discourage you from continuing to be present

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there and and you know make you leave the internet or stop doing something like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have so many horrible vocal traits somehow

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not a lot of people have called me out on it in public because people aren’t that mean I guess and so I’m able

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have a career as a podcaster. I would never have thought five years ago that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would be making a good chunk of my living from podcasts because I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not a good speaker at all. I have so many problems. I’ve thought about going to a speech therapist as an

⏹️ ▶️ Marco adult to fix weird things I do when I talk but I haven’t had a pressing reason

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to yet because no one’s calling me out on it. But it’s important

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to distinguish between people being mean for invalid reasons or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just being mean because they’re mean.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Right. Can I jump in here?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I have a great example. So this person we were talking about earlier that was being a troll was just saying,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, literally this person said, I wish there was a way to mute out Marco

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and me. And that’s just really not necessary. And like Like John said, John replied

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and said, don’t be a jerk. However, I’ve seen a lot of feedback for myself, things

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, why do you hedge so much? You don’t need to do that. When I say, well, here’s this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey big long opinion, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but that’s just what I think. I don’t need to do that. That’s not necessary.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is sometimes hurtful feedback because it strikes close to home, just like you were saying,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it’s good and positive and constructive feedback as opposed to,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wish I could mute you two idiots. just not that’s not helpful and there is a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey big difference between the two.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right and like you know if if so many if like hundreds of listeners

⏹️ ▶️ Marco told you after the very first show you hedge too much or if hundreds of listeners told

⏹️ ▶️ Marco me after my very first podcast that they don’t like the way I talk we almost would have certainly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stopped and left and you know that’s then like you know then everyone loses we

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lose people who like the show lose you know so like it that’s bad for So it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really is important to have some kind of balance and you can’t control what people are gonna say to you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it’s really important to just be able to Manage that somehow and you know, that’s why

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hand out Twitter blocks aggressively It’s just to manage that incoming stream just so that you know, I’m not trying to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco block out all criticism I do want to hear valid criticism I just want to try to filter out a lot of invalid

⏹️ ▶️ Marco criticism and a lot of unnecessary nastiness and And if I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco filter all that out, I’m afraid I would just get tired of it and leave.

⏹️ ▶️ John One of the reasons I’m lighter on the blocking is because it’s like I will never unblock a person. I don’t even know how to – I guess

⏹️ ▶️ John you go to Twitter website, like an animal as they say, and

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco find – and

⏹️ ▶️ John like unblock them, but you’re never going to do that. And like everyone has a bad day. Everyone is cranky about something. They didn’t like something

⏹️ ▶️ John you say. They’ll say some mean thing. I’m willing to give people the benefit of the doubt

⏹️ ▶️ John if they say some jerky thing Until it becomes like, oh, here’s the person, all they ever say

⏹️ ▶️ John is that jerky thing. They’re clearly not even a fan of the show or anything that I do, they’re just here to harass me. And

⏹️ ▶️ John then they just become, it just becomes harassment. And then, yeah, you pull out the block. I don’t have people like that,

⏹️ ▶️ John but for example, getting back to the sexism thing, many women online do have that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Tons and tons of people who are just there to be evil harassers in dangerous kinds of ways. And I strongly

⏹️ ▶️ John encourage them to hand out the blocks like crazy in that instance. All of us, I think, are lucky enough not to deal with

⏹️ ▶️ John that at all, and I can’t even imagine what that would be like because we’re whining about people saying that we don’t have a good

⏹️ ▶️ John podcast, which is nothing compared to the crap they get. But yeah, there’s different categories,

⏹️ ▶️ John and the category of negative feedback I get is of a kind where I do

⏹️ ▶️ John not find myself having to hand out the blocks. Spammers, on the other hand, get the immediate block.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it’s just a little bit. Well, John, you’ve also – you’ve managed to develop your way of arguing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and presenting points it so well and this is probably because you’re so ancient compared to us

⏹️ ▶️ John the power of usenet if you want to see me making terrible arguments

⏹️ ▶️ John go search for the use that archives for yeah that’s a burned in the crucible of

⏹️ ▶️ John flame wars on usenet

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yes now surrounded by tons of Google Ads but you know like you you’ve developed this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for what a decade longer than we have or close to it you know that like you’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot better at it you’re like you know you’re like you this large chunk of time ahead of us

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in having all those rough edges worn down off of your argument style so that now you’re really good at

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. So I think you get a lot less of the crap than Casey and I do.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think it’s necessarily age because you can find 50-year-olds who are just as babyish as – like I

⏹️ ▶️ John think it just comes from – like this – when I found the internet, the thing I wanted to do with it was argue

⏹️ ▶️ John about computers with it.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco with

⏹️ ▶️ John it, like so many other people, and argue about computers I did. And arguing about computers with smart

⏹️ ▶️ John people eventually teaches you what you’re wrong about and

⏹️ ▶️ John how to construct an argument and how to be able to either, it makes you flee, or you double

⏹️ ▶️ John down and become even a bigger jerk. Or if this is really something you want to pursue, which it was for me, I became

⏹️ ▶️ John better at it. It’s like any kind of skill that you build up. It’s like if you start playing

⏹️ ▶️ John tennis and you keep getting your butt kicked and your reaction is to just hit the ball as hard as you can into the air,

⏹️ ▶️ John that is not getting better at it. That is doubling down on your idiocy. Or you can say,

⏹️ ▶️ John why do I keep getting beat? What techniques can I learn to make myself better? Let me practice, you know, and different

⏹️ ▶️ John people have different reactions. I think it’s, it’s not so much the years of experience, although it helps,

⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s like what you did with those years. Because again, I know plenty of people on, you know, on using it in forums or whatever,

⏹️ ▶️ John who are just as abrasive and terrible and illogical and irrational and emotional as they they were 10, 15

⏹️ ▶️ John years ago and have learned nothing. But there are lots of other people who left that environment entirely, and there are

⏹️ ▶️ John other people who are slowly getting better and who eventually, because if you pursue that as like, this is

⏹️ ▶️ John something I’m interested in, I’m interested in arguing. Sounds crazy, but some people are into it.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I definitely am. I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think to our audience, that does not sound crazy at all, especially coming from you, that you would be interested in arguing.

⏹️ ▶️ John Right. And I think to some degree, all of us are. But it’s like, Marco, why do you bother putting your opinions on blogs?

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, why do you, you know, like, you want you want to say, here’s what I have to say, what do you have to say? And you want to

⏹️ ▶️ John hear like, good feedback from smart people. And so you can go back and forth. If you didn’t care, if you weren’t interested in that,

⏹️ ▶️ John you wouldn’t be putting your opinions out there. Like you wouldn’t crave that back and forth. So

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s something you’re doing with your life.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, the first when I publish a blog post, the very first thing I do is basically spend the next 45 minutes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco monitoring Twitter and email and, and, you know, hoping that I get some feedback

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and reading at all and possibly addressing it. Like, that’s the very first thing I do, like, if I couldn’t do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, it would feel very lonely. And it wouldn’t give me

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as much of a return of satisfaction, which is probably saying a lot about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco me and my, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey egotism

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and our modern culture as a whole. But, like, getting that feedback

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is of utmost importance. And it would feel very strange now if I didn’t get that kind of feedback. Marc

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Thiessen, Jr.: Yeah, you know, and very close friend of the show, underscore David Smith said in the chat a moment ago,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I find it really important to have a group of trusted friends who can tell you honest criticism. Unsolicited feedback is where

⏹️ ▶️ Casey things get really rough. And I completely agree with him. I think it’s nice to have a little bit of unsolicited feedback as

⏹️ ▶️ Casey long as it’s constructive because sometimes, like I was saying earlier, you know, I might not think

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco’s being an asshole because I know Marco and I know that more often than not, he’s not intending to be an asshole.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But maybe somebody who doesn’t know Marco thinks he is being an asshole, and so it might be

⏹️ ▶️ Casey useful for Marco to hear some random person say, hey, you know what? You really came off like an asshole on that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But generally speaking, I think it’s extremely important, just like Dave said, to have a group

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that can call you out and say, you know what? You really need to work on whatever this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is. And it can be about what you’re working on. It could be about something called – just how you treat

⏹️ ▶️ Casey people. It could be about any number of things. But having that I think is very important.

⏹️ ▶️ John I can just hear all the handbrakes that are going to cover that section if it actually ends up in the podcast.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, my bad. I think this is better than the show. This

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco is a little

⏹️ ▶️ John different. It’s definitely not a tech podcast. By the way, speaking of things that people get wrong, no one has called me

⏹️ ▶️ John on that. Where are my friends calling me on these things? Did the chatroom call me on this? They called

⏹️ ▶️ John me on divisive, but did not call me on this. I believe when I partitioned Merlin for an R.E.M.

⏹️ ▶️ John style song parody for our – style parody for our song, I erroneously

⏹️ ▶️ John misspoke the name of the REM album, and I think I said plural murmurs, and that’s crazy talk,

⏹️ ▶️ John and I knew it was bad as soon as I said it. I just wanted everyone to know I know what the title of the album was. It’s singular.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just me eating it. Speaking of things that are eating away at you, and it’s like if someone calls me on that, oh, this is the other one that

⏹️ ▶️ John happens constantly. It’s like my mispronunciation of nuclear. Like I mispronounce it all the time. I know it’s wrong. I’m not

⏹️ ▶️ John doing it on purpose. I’m not like, oh, I’m taking a stand. I’m going to say it the wrong way. Nope. say it the right

⏹️ ▶️ John way every time it just comes out nuclear so many times and as I said in the

⏹️ ▶️ John many tweets I blame the 80s like I do not want to say that it just happens I don’t want it to

⏹️ ▶️ John happen I know it’s wrong thank you for all the feedback people I’m trying

⏹️ ▶️ Casey well so I didn’t really intend for this to become group therapy but I’m kind of glad it did this was this was pretty good

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah it’s like back to work

⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah yeah I was just thinking to myself this feels a little back to work

⏹️ ▶️ John next week OCD and comics

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco lots of comics

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Lots

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco and lots

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and lots of comics.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh man. I actually, I would love for Merlin to address this kind of topic at some point. I mean, it doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really fit into his

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John show. He

⏹️ ▶️ John has, I think. I think he’s talked about this, about how to handle negative feedback. And I think he

⏹️ ▶️ John talks a lot about like negative self-talk, like you being your own worst enemy and talking negatively about

⏹️ ▶️ John blah blah blah. It’s very, it’s a similar type of thing where sometimes the things you’re saying to yourself are just mean, and sometimes

⏹️ ▶️ John the things you’re saying to yourself are like, there’s a kernel truth that you need to address. And I

⏹️ ▶️ John feel like he has talked about this. I felt like we just kind of did a miniature middle of some weird back to the work

⏹️ ▶️ John thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Back to the work. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John supposed to correct you. I did not mean to say the there. I know. As your friend. Yes.

⏹️ ▶️ John As your friend. This is one of the things, the problem with being on a podcast is you would think the connection between your brain and your mouth

⏹️ ▶️ John is fairly solid. And I listen to myself on these podcasts and I’m like, what in the hell did you just…

⏹️ ▶️ John I had no idea during the podcast that I said it. come out that just aren’t should

⏹️ ▶️ John not be there. It’s called misspeaking and I am baffled as anyone else when

⏹️ ▶️ John I hear myself say it. I if you had told me what I just said, I heard that though, but anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s terrible.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love how many people tweeted me over the last week, thinking that when I said X bone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco repeatedly last week, that was serious. Like, how long have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you listened to me? You don’t get that I joke about stuff like that sometimes. Come

⏹️ ▶️ John I like the what I like about Xbone is that I don’t think like the

⏹️ ▶️ John gamer community and internet fan base at large has decided whether Xbone is derogatory

⏹️ ▶️ John or Like a pet name like a term of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco endearment or even just like like will that just become the way everyone says it

⏹️ ▶️ John so far I think it’s both some people say it to try to be like You know to put down the

⏹️ ▶️ John Xbox and I think a lot of fans say it as a term of endearment And I just want to see how it comes out in the end.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s end up being mostly a term I think it’ll end up mostly being a term of endearment

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is a lot easier and faster and and unambiguous to say that that does anything else and less

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stupid than the third

⏹️ ▶️ John Xbox

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. I mean, it’s a stupid Microsoft gave it such a stupid real name that we have to come up with stupid alternatives

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, good old Sony. They put a number after it. They make the number bigger

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You want to do titles before I pass out

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, let’s let’s wrap it

⏹️ ▶️ John up Why are you always so tired? Are you one of those jobs where they work you like a dog, Casey? Are you doing manual labor, breaking

⏹️ ▶️ John rocks

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey all

⏹️ ▶️ John day? No, no, no, no. You’re in the same time zone as us, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, yes. I’m just, I’m old. I go to bed early. You people with your

⏹️ ▶️ Casey children, you know, we can’t get on the mic until nine o’clock. I’m usually crawling in bed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at 10. I’m old.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think Casey should take over as the new old man crawling into bed at 10.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I’m not arguing. I didn’t think it was ever really, I didn’t think that was ever up for grabs. Pennywise pound four

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is just pretty good.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I think that’s it. That’s so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s such an old man.

⏹️ ▶️ John Speaking of old man, that’s such an old man phrase. I’m gonna go out and play with my hoop and stick later.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it has… But it… Was that ever a real thing? Like, do people actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do that? The

⏹️ ▶️ John hoop and stick was a real thing, but Simpsons have done a lot. I was referencing the Simpsons joke.

⏹️ ▶️ John They have, yeah, I think they had the… The first time I remember who was stuck on Simpsons was Monty Burns was like a

⏹️ ▶️ John kid and he was playing with… Anyway, this is a really

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey old phrase.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I’m fine with that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s good because it works because we… Because not only I think, John, I think you actually said that exact phrase during the Penny

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Arcade discussion. I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John did. But you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s so much about Penny Arcade. Like it’s…

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t even think of that. There you go. That’s terrible. Wow.