ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► How do you pronounce S-T-A-H-P?

00:00:02 ◼   ► What? That's not a word.

00:00:04 ◼   ► Yes it is. Well, not really.

00:00:06 ◼   ► But it's what the kids say when they really want you to stop doing something.

00:00:09 ◼   ► Is it "STAP"?

00:00:10 ◼   ► I guess.

00:00:11 ◼   ► "STAP"? I don't know.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Something like that. I don't know.

00:00:14 ◼   ► I'm gonna go with "STAP".

00:00:16 ◼   ► Like maybe, maybe like the Great Lakes accent.

00:00:19 ◼   ► "STAP".

00:00:20 ◼   ► Oh god.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Yes, because that's what this podcast needs, is more talk about regional accents.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Yes, definitely.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Definitely.

00:00:26 ◼   ► I actually got called out at work today in a happy way.

00:00:31 ◼   ► Some co-worker asked me, a co-worker that I just started working with, asked me if I

00:00:34 ◼   ► was from Jersey.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Well, that part wasn't happy at all.

00:00:36 ◼   ► That was miserable.

00:00:38 ◼   ► But point being, I said mash on something as in to like hit emphatically or repeatedly,

00:00:45 ◼   ► and apparently that's a northeastern thing or so I'm told.

00:00:48 ◼   ► Well that's a drink in Great Britain, right?

00:00:50 ◼   ► Smoosh or whatever?

00:00:51 ◼   ► Oh, that was squash that you're thinking of.

00:00:53 ◼   ► Squash!

00:00:54 ◼   ► I thought it was smush.

00:00:55 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:00:56 ◼   ► So Tiff's opinion of that, when she heard this, she said it's probably like getting

00:01:02 ◼   ► like frozen fruit concentrate here, like the fruit juice concentrate.

00:01:05 ◼   ► I think that's correct.

00:01:06 ◼   ► From the most I can piece together, but as we talked about on the last episode of Analog,

00:01:12 ◼   ► I sent an emergency text to underscore David Smith, the Internet's arbiter of all things

00:01:18 ◼   ► UK versus American and also the Internet's historian.

00:01:24 ◼   ► And he indicated to me that we do not have anything that's really equivalent to squash.

00:01:28 ◼   ► Well, we have things that have that name, but it's different.

00:01:31 ◼   ► It's like football.

00:01:32 ◼   ► It's like, "Well, we have that, but that's not what you think it is."

00:01:34 ◼   ► Yeah, well, it's either football or vegetable.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:37 ◼   ► So anyway, I was asking you what's going on with cellular downloads on Overcast.

00:01:43 ◼   ► And this is okay because I see in the show notes it says "pre-follow-up" and then

00:01:48 ◼   ► Marco talks.

00:01:49 ◼   ► I did not type that this time.

00:01:51 ◼   ► I don't know who did.

00:01:52 ◼   ► Clearly, it was John.

00:01:53 ◼   ► - I just keep adding sections.

00:01:54 ◼   ► What about pre-pre-follow-up?

00:01:56 ◼   ► - We'll get there, maybe next episode.

00:01:58 ◼   ► - What happens if the pre-follow-up generates follow-up?

00:02:01 ◼   ► What do we do with it next episode?

00:02:03 ◼   ► Where do we put it?

00:02:04 ◼   ► - Then it gets lumped into regular follow-up.

00:02:06 ◼   ► - It doesn't get pre-follow-up follow-up?

00:02:08 ◼   ► - I don't think so.

00:02:09 ◼   ► This is getting recursive, I'm uncomfortable.

00:02:12 ◼   ► No, I was asking you what's going on

00:02:14 ◼   ► with cellular downloads and overcast

00:02:16 ◼   ► because you seem to be stressing out about it quite a bit.

00:02:19 ◼   ► - Well, this is a constant battle I have

00:02:22 ◼   ► with designing Overcast is like,

00:02:25 ◼   ► where do I strike the balance between offering settings

00:02:29 ◼   ► for customization versus complexity of the app?

00:02:33 ◼   ► Because if you look, so many well-featured,

00:02:37 ◼   ► well-regarded podcast apps have just these

00:02:40 ◼   ► massive setting screens.

00:02:42 ◼   ► And it's not because they're badly designed by idiots,

00:02:45 ◼   ► it's because it's a hard problem,

00:02:47 ◼   ► and when you make a podcast app,

00:02:48 ◼   ► everybody asks for all these features.

00:02:50 ◼   ► And it's really hard to please a large number of people

00:02:53 ◼   ► without adding a ton of options

00:02:56 ◼   ► and customizations and features.

00:02:58 ◼   ► I've always tried to differentiate Overcast

00:03:01 ◼   ► from the other well-established clients

00:03:04 ◼   ► by being simpler in those regards.

00:03:07 ◼   ► It's really, really hard to keep that up, to manage that.

00:03:10 ◼   ► 'Cause right now I'm working on version 2.0.

00:03:12 ◼   ► One of the big features of 2.0

00:03:14 ◼   ► that I'm willing to talk about is streaming.

00:03:16 ◼   ► I've been working on streaming for a long time,

00:03:18 ◼   ► as I mentioned on this show a couple times

00:03:19 ◼   ► in various after shows, it does finally work.

00:03:23 ◼   ► It is working, I've been using it myself

00:03:24 ◼   ► for the last couple of weeks, I don't really like it.

00:03:26 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:03:28 ◼   ► It works well, it is solid, and it is awesome.

00:03:33 ◼   ► - And to be clear, it works with Smart Speed.

00:03:35 ◼   ► - Of course, I wouldn't do it without it.

00:03:36 ◼   ► - That's what I thought, just wanted to make sure.

00:03:38 ◼   ► - Now I have to face the other issues

00:03:40 ◼   ► of having streaming in the app,

00:03:42 ◼   ► so there are certain options that it needs.

00:03:46 ◼   ► Things like, what do you do when a new episode comes in,

00:03:49 ◼   ► do you market for streaming

00:03:51 ◼   ► or do you download it automatically?

00:03:53 ◼   ► There has to be some choice there.

00:03:56 ◼   ► There has to be an issue of like,

00:03:57 ◼   ► what do you do if you're playing a playlist

00:03:59 ◼   ► and the episode that you're on ends

00:04:01 ◼   ► and the next episode is a streaming episode

00:04:04 ◼   ► but you are offline, what do you do?

00:04:07 ◼   ► No matter what you pick,

00:04:09 ◼   ► you're gonna anger some people

00:04:11 ◼   ► and you're gonna please some people.

00:04:13 ◼   ► And it's really hard to know a lot of times ahead of time

00:04:16 ◼   ► which one of those sides will come out ahead, you know?

00:04:18 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:04:19 ◼   ► So the question I have now is,

00:04:22 ◼   ► should I permit cellular data usage for streaming?

00:04:27 ◼   ► 'Cause right now, I have cellular downloads.

00:04:30 ◼   ► And so in a world where you,

00:04:31 ◼   ► in an app that you have mixed streaming and downloads,

00:04:35 ◼   ► now you have to have a little more control over that.

00:04:37 ◼   ► So it's questionable.

00:04:39 ◼   ► So no question, the thing that I agree on, no question,

00:04:44 ◼   ► is that cellular data not only will be

00:04:47 ◼   ► allowed for streaming, but it will be allowed by default and

00:04:50 ◼   ► it'll be on by default because in the world we live in today, I

00:04:55 ◼   ► think people widely expect things to just work when you

00:04:58 ◼   ► tap them and lots of other media apps stream by default

00:05:02 ◼   ► over cellular and don't ask you first things like YouTube or

00:05:06 ◼   ► most of the streaming music services. Although I think

00:05:09 ◼   ► Apple Music does not. I think they ask you first. But anyway,

00:05:12 ◼   ► almost all media streaming apps, they will just do it. If

00:05:16 ◼   ► If you say play this video and you're on cellular

00:05:19 ◼   ► on your phone, it'll just do it over cellular

00:05:21 ◼   ► and that's fine.

00:05:22 ◼   ► So no question streaming has to be there

00:05:25 ◼   ► and it has to be enabled by default over cellular.

00:05:28 ◼   ► The problem is there are lots of,

00:05:30 ◼   ► and when I posted these tweets, it's funny,

00:05:32 ◼   ► everybody thinks that they have the most advanced

00:05:35 ◼   ► world view on this issue.

00:05:37 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:05:38 ◼   ► And of course I'm the stupid American,

00:05:40 ◼   ► so I don't know what the rest of the world is like.

00:05:41 ◼   ► So I have heard from about equal numbers today

00:05:45 ◼   ► of people saying both in my country, we have very bad data

00:05:49 ◼   ► plan, so you have to have restrictions and the rest of the world works this

00:05:53 ◼   ► way and therefore you need to have very strong restrictions and I've also heard

00:05:57 ◼   ► from other people saying well in my country everybody has unlimited data and

00:06:01 ◼   ► that's that's the world we live in now and so you don't need to even bother

00:06:03 ◼   ► with this.

00:06:04 ◼   ► I've heard both ends of this a lot, but right now I have I have two cellular

00:06:11 ◼   ► options in the app and I wish I could get away with just one.

00:06:14 ◼   ► But right now I have two.

00:06:16 ◼   ► So the big one, the main one is whether I allow background

00:06:21 ◼   ► or foreground, whatever, when the app downloads full

00:06:24 ◼   ► episodes ahead of time or when it gets a notification

00:06:26 ◼   ► or whatever, when it downloads full episodes,

00:06:28 ◼   ► do you download the whole thing over cellular

00:06:30 ◼   ► or do you wait for wifi?

00:06:32 ◼   ► So that is an option and I think that option is good.

00:06:35 ◼   ► That deserves to stick around because if you just stream

00:06:39 ◼   ► and you say all right, play this right now,

00:06:41 ◼   ► that's an action you're taking.

00:06:42 ◼   ► You're deliberately saying, play this episode right now

00:06:45 ◼   ► and I'm recognizing that I'm playing a podcast

00:06:48 ◼   ► while I'm on my phone on a cell network,

00:06:50 ◼   ► this might use data, fine, you know.

00:06:52 ◼   ► But if you background download things that just come in,

00:06:55 ◼   ► like overnight somebody could blow their data cap

00:06:57 ◼   ► if a whole bunch of episodes are released

00:06:59 ◼   ► by their favorite podcast, maybe their feed messes up

00:07:02 ◼   ► and it releases like 10 new episodes accidentally

00:07:04 ◼   ► and then the phone downloads 10 things over cellular

00:07:06 ◼   ► without them even knowing or initiating it.

00:07:08 ◼   ► So it makes sense to differentiate

00:07:10 ◼   ► between automatic background downloads using it

00:07:12 ◼   ► and things that you initiate as the user

00:07:15 ◼   ► for playback using it.

00:07:16 ◼   ► So that makes sense.

00:07:17 ◼   ► You should have an option to disable cellular

00:07:20 ◼   ► on background downloads, fine.

00:07:21 ◼   ► But then there's an iOS annoyance that I have.

00:07:26 ◼   ► It's, I consider it a bug.

00:07:28 ◼   ► I'm not sure that Apple does.

00:07:30 ◼   ► For every app that you have on your phone

00:07:32 ◼   ► that uses data at all, you can go into settings

00:07:35 ◼   ► and you can turn off cellular data usage

00:07:37 ◼   ► for the app at the iOS level.

00:07:40 ◼   ► So the app doesn't have to have an option for that.

00:07:42 ◼   ► You can just go in and disable it,

00:07:43 ◼   ► and many people do who are on limited plans

00:07:45 ◼   ► who really need to watch their usage.

00:07:49 ◼   ► So the problem is, in previous versions of iOS,

00:07:53 ◼   ► you've always had this so-called reachability API.

00:07:56 ◼   ► It actually has this long CF network, whatever name,

00:07:58 ◼   ► but it's shortened to everyone says the reachability API.

00:08:01 ◼   ► And this is the API that can notify you

00:08:04 ◼   ► of changes in internet connectivity

00:08:06 ◼   ► so that you can, for instance, your app can know whether the connection's offline and

00:08:11 ◼   ► when it goes back online. And you can also tell whether it's online via cellular or Wi-Fi

00:08:16 ◼   ► or neither, right? So you can make a whole bunch of intelligent decisions and it isn't

00:08:19 ◼   ► perfect. Sometimes it isn't that reliable, but it's pretty close. It's pretty good most

00:08:22 ◼   ► of the time. In previous versions before iOS 8, if somebody turned off that cellular option

00:08:29 ◼   ► for you in system settings, so that they say this app can't use cell data anymore, your

00:08:34 ◼   ► would see when it asked the reachability API, "Am I online?" The system would say, "No,

00:08:40 ◼   ► you're offline." So the app couldn't tell this switch was on. It just seemed like it

00:08:45 ◼   ► was offline. And so if the app tried something, it would show that annoying dialog box that

00:08:52 ◼   ► everyone has seen that says, "Cellular data is disabled for app name. You can enable it

00:08:57 ◼   ► in settings." And there's no way for an app to initiate a network connection that does

00:09:03 ◼   ► does not show that box.

00:09:04 ◼   ► So there's no way that I can say like,

00:09:06 ◼   ► you know what, I'm gonna do a background sync here.

00:09:08 ◼   ► If it fails, the user doesn't even need to know.

00:09:10 ◼   ► Doesn't matter, it's not that important.

00:09:12 ◼   ► Or I'm gonna download some artwork for the show

00:09:14 ◼   ► that's showing in this table cell.

00:09:16 ◼   ► If that fails, it doesn't really matter either.

00:09:18 ◼   ► Just, you know, you don't have to alert the user

00:09:19 ◼   ► with a modal dialog box saying cell data's off

00:09:22 ◼   ► for me downloading artwork to show in a table cell, right?

00:09:24 ◼   ► Doesn't matter.

00:09:25 ◼   ► The smart thing to do as a developer in that case

00:09:28 ◼   ► was to, before you do something optional

00:09:32 ◼   ► that the user didn't really initiate,

00:09:34 ◼   ► you know, something like a background sync

00:09:35 ◼   ► or an artwork download.

00:09:36 ◼   ► Check reachability, and if it says it's offline,

00:09:39 ◼   ► don't even try.

00:09:40 ◼   ► And then that dialog will never show up.

00:09:42 ◼   ► 'Cause if you don't do that,

00:09:44 ◼   ► then every time somebody goes to your app

00:09:46 ◼   ► and it tries to do a background sync,

00:09:47 ◼   ► and they've disabled cell data for your app,

00:09:49 ◼   ► the connection will not only fail,

00:09:51 ◼   ► but it'll show that box and it'll annoy the crap out of them.

00:09:53 ◼   ► And so then they will write you saying,

00:09:55 ◼   ► why does your app keep showing this box?

00:09:56 ◼   ► 'Cause they don't know it's a system box

00:09:58 ◼   ► that you don't have any control over.

00:09:59 ◼   ► So that's bad.

00:10:01 ◼   ► Anyway, with iOS 8, there's what I consider a bug,

00:10:05 ◼   ► which is if someone has disabled cellular data

00:10:07 ◼   ► for your app in iOS settings,

00:10:09 ◼   ► Reachability API will tell you that you are online.

00:10:13 ◼   ► It will not say you're offline anymore,

00:10:16 ◼   ► so that you have no way to tell

00:10:18 ◼   ► whether you are online unrestricted

00:10:21 ◼   ► or whether you are online but with cell data disabled.

00:10:24 ◼   ► And so you can't avoid making those requests.

00:10:28 ◼   ► and you also still can't make a request

00:10:31 ◼   ► that's marked as some kind of optional

00:10:32 ◼   ► so it doesn't show that dialog box.

00:10:34 ◼   ► So therefore, if someone disables that for your app

00:10:39 ◼   ► and you try to make a connection,

00:10:40 ◼   ► it will show that box every time,

00:10:42 ◼   ► or at least once every 10 minutes or whatever.

00:10:44 ◼   ► There's some kind of throttling on

00:10:45 ◼   ► so it doesn't show them constantly,

00:10:46 ◼   ► but it still shows them enough

00:10:48 ◼   ► that it annoys people and they email me.

00:10:50 ◼   ► So in order to work around this slightly,

00:10:53 ◼   ► I had to add the second option called Sync Over Cellular,

00:10:58 ◼   ► and it's in my nitpicky details settings level,

00:11:01 ◼   ► which is where I bury all my other options.

00:11:03 ◼   ► And the reason why this is there

00:11:05 ◼   ► is not to let people save data,

00:11:07 ◼   ► because it doesn't save that much data.

00:11:09 ◼   ► It's to let people avoid that dialog box

00:11:11 ◼   ► if they've disabled cell data for my whole app.

00:11:14 ◼   ► Because with that, if you trigger that option,

00:11:16 ◼   ► then I won't even attempt

00:11:18 ◼   ► to make those connections over cellular.

00:11:20 ◼   ► Because again, I can't distinguish between

00:11:22 ◼   ► cellular that I'm allowed to use

00:11:23 ◼   ► and cellular that I'm not allowed to use.

00:11:26 ◼   ► So with that setting, that's what that whole thing is for.

00:11:28 ◼   ► It's to work around this giant bug in iOS 8

00:11:31 ◼   ► that I think is still there in 9.

00:11:34 ◼   ► You know, I'll have to do some tests.

00:11:35 ◼   ► Maybe, I really hope 9 fixed it, but I don't think it did,

00:11:37 ◼   ► but I'll double check before next week,

00:11:39 ◼   ► and I'll, well, before our fake next week show,

00:11:42 ◼   ► and I'll report back.

00:11:43 ◼   ► Because if that fixed it, I can remove that whole option,

00:11:46 ◼   ► and that would be awesome.

00:11:48 ◼   ► Anyway, sorry for the very long-winded thing here.

00:11:52 ◼   ► Anyway, so now, faced with the question of adding streaming

00:11:57 ◼   ► to this and having some kind of cellular control

00:11:59 ◼   ► over streaming, do I have three cellular data options?

00:12:03 ◼   ► That's terrible.

00:12:05 ◼   ► I'd have to just make a whole separate screen for them

00:12:07 ◼   ► and explain, and that's, I mean, I will if I have to,

00:12:10 ◼   ► but that sounds terrible.

00:12:12 ◼   ► Or my best idea so far is to keep the two options

00:12:16 ◼   ► I have now and just attack streaming to the second one

00:12:20 ◼   ► so that the background downloads

00:12:22 ◼   ► are still separately controllable.

00:12:23 ◼   ► 'Cause that's something, I can see somebody

00:12:25 ◼   ► wanting to do background downloads only when they're on WiFi

00:12:28 ◼   ► but be willing to stream wherever they are

00:12:30 ◼   ► if they actually ask for it.

00:12:32 ◼   ► The second option, rather than calling it sync-over-cellular,

00:12:35 ◼   ► rename it to stream-end-sync-over-cellular.

00:12:38 ◼   ► Does that make sense?

00:12:40 ◼   ► I know this is very long, probably very boring.

00:12:42 ◼   ► We'll cut all this out.

00:12:44 ◼   ► - I think it does make sense.

00:12:46 ◼   ► I would probably agree with you that sync-over-cellular

00:12:49 ◼   ► become stream-in-sync over cellular.

00:12:53 ◼   ► I don't know, it's interesting because I have an unlimited data plan from AT&T on my iPhone.

00:12:58 ◼   ► I've gotten grandfathered in and I've never had a terribly compelling reason to walk away

00:13:03 ◼   ► from it.

00:13:04 ◼   ► I know that I could probably save a few bucks a month if I didn't keep it anymore, but whatever,

00:13:08 ◼   ► it is what it is.

00:13:10 ◼   ► However, on my iPad, as I've said numerous times in the past, I have the free 200 megs

00:13:17 ◼   ► a month from T-Mobile.

00:13:19 ◼   ► And that's typically how I use cellular on my iPad, if I'm

00:13:23 ◼   ► going to use it at all.

00:13:24 ◼   ► And occasionally, if I'm on vacation, for example, I'll

00:13:27 ◼   ► actually pay for a few gigs for that month or whatever.

00:13:30 ◼   ► But generally speaking, I just live on the 200 megs a month.

00:13:35 ◼   ► And so I have gone in on my iPad and turned off cellular

00:13:38 ◼   ► data at the iOS level pretty much everywhere.

00:13:41 ◼   ► And I can assure you that if I saw that dialogue all the

00:13:45 ◼   ► time when using Overcast, it would drive me nuts.

00:13:46 ◼   ► So I think you need to stick around with the nitpicky

00:13:49 ◼   ► detail version.

00:13:51 ◼   ► And I see no reason not to put sync in there--

00:13:53 ◼   ► or excuse me, stream in there.

00:13:56 ◼   ► Especially since any time you're streaming, from what

00:13:58 ◼   ► I've gathered from you, any single time you're streaming,

00:14:01 ◼   ► like you've said a couple times, it's

00:14:03 ◼   ► based on user action.

00:14:04 ◼   ► So at that point, I should know what I'm doing.

00:14:07 ◼   ► And I should know, no matter how advanced a user I am, if

00:14:11 ◼   ► I'm trying to play a podcast that is not on my device, it's

00:14:14 ◼   ► going to have to come from somewhere.

00:14:16 ◼   ► and if I'm not on Wi-Fi, if I'm not on the fan,

00:14:19 ◼   ► as we jokingly call it around these parts,

00:14:22 ◼   ► then I know that it's gonna have to go via cellular,

00:14:26 ◼   ► and I should be able to figure that out.

00:14:29 ◼   ► So I think you've got the right approach,

00:14:30 ◼   ► but I'm curious to hear what Jon has to say.

00:14:32 ◼   ► - Well, and there is one little complexity that you said,

00:14:35 ◼   ► as long as you're streaming and you always chose that,

00:14:37 ◼   ► there are scenarios in which you can unexpectedly stream.

00:14:41 ◼   ► - That sounds like a condition.

00:14:43 ◼   ► - Yeah. (laughs)

00:14:44 ◼   ► Wow, all right.

00:14:45 ◼   ► Oh, my so, for instance, suppose you are on a trip that you know, suppose you

00:14:52 ◼   ► have it set so that new episodes come in in streaming mode, so that basically you

00:14:56 ◼   ► disable auto download right so so new episodes come in and their marks for

00:15:00 ◼   ► streaming only they're not automatically downloaded by default. Okay, so you have

00:15:04 ◼   ► a set that way.

00:15:04 ◼   ► You are listening to a playlist and you've downloaded everything on the

00:15:08 ◼   ► playlist anyway because you were going to go somewhere and so you're like a lot

00:15:11 ◼   ► of want to burn all my data when I'm on this trip. So I'm going to download

00:15:13 ◼   ► everything in advance.

00:15:14 ◼   ► While you are listening to something and the screen is off,

00:15:17 ◼   ► a new episode comes in, it's marked for streaming by default

00:15:21 ◼   ► and it's inserted right after the thing you're listening to.

00:15:23 ◼   ► So as you're listening, the episode that you're listening to

00:15:26 ◼   ► ends, it starts up the next episode,

00:15:29 ◼   ► which is a streaming only episode.

00:15:31 ◼   ► So it is possible for streaming to happen to you

00:15:35 ◼   ► somewhat unexpectedly.

00:15:37 ◼   ► It's not gonna be the common case, but it is possible.

00:15:39 ◼   ► - It's like the web, it just happens to you.

00:15:41 ◼   ► - Right. (laughs)

00:15:43 ◼   ► - Exactly, so you see like there are lots of little

00:15:45 ◼   ► complexities, like a lot of people said,

00:15:48 ◼   ► why don't you just pop up a dialogue asking people

00:15:50 ◼   ► to approve streaming when you're on cellular

00:15:52 ◼   ► or have an option to do that.

00:15:53 ◼   ► The problem is, lots of times when I have to make

00:15:57 ◼   ► that decision, the display of the phone is off

00:16:00 ◼   ► 'cause it's in somebody's pocket or it's in somebody's dock

00:16:02 ◼   ► somewhere in a car or in their house and a lot of times

00:16:04 ◼   ► like if you're driving, I really shouldn't be asking people

00:16:07 ◼   ► to interact with the UI, that's dangerous.

00:16:10 ◼   ► or you're like exercising and it's in your pocket.

00:16:15 ◼   ► There's all these situations where I have to make

00:16:19 ◼   ► a decision without asking the user with a dialog box.

00:16:23 ◼   ► So I think the way to do it is to just have,

00:16:26 ◼   ► is to just never prompt the user for this decision.

00:16:29 ◼   ► You just have a setting that you can change,

00:16:31 ◼   ► either on or off.

00:16:32 ◼   ► - I don't know, John, what do you have to say about this?

00:16:34 ◼   ► - You talk about all these settings makes me think

00:16:36 ◼   ► that like the key point here is not the raw count

00:16:40 ◼   ► of little toggle switches you have in your settings.

00:16:42 ◼   ► I know there's sort of a combinatoric explosion

00:16:45 ◼   ► of possibilities that you have to debug,

00:16:47 ◼   ► so keeping the counter under control

00:16:48 ◼   ► is a good first approximation

00:16:50 ◼   ► of how you should keep your app from going crazy.

00:16:52 ◼   ► But for the cellular stuff, setting aside the bugs,

00:16:55 ◼   ► which, you know, what can you do?

00:16:56 ◼   ► Just file the radars and keep your fingers crossed.

00:16:59 ◼   ► The settings that come to mind

00:17:02 ◼   ► when you're describing all this functionality

00:17:04 ◼   ► that I can imagine users feeling comfortable with,

00:17:06 ◼   ► and the way I'm conceptualizing this,

00:17:08 ◼   ► somewhere in the settings screen,

00:17:09 ◼   ► There's gonna be a list of either split into Wi-Fi

00:17:13 ◼   ► and cellular or just do cellular if you're not gonna

00:17:16 ◼   ► disable anything in Wi-Fi.

00:17:17 ◼   ► Here are the things I want this app to be allowed

00:17:19 ◼   ► to do on cellular.

00:17:20 ◼   ► And it's just a fairly long list of things.

00:17:23 ◼   ► I wanna say yes to that, no to that, yes to that.

00:17:25 ◼   ► You can get increasingly specific about them.

00:17:27 ◼   ► You could start off with a few number.

00:17:29 ◼   ► That's when I hear like stream and sync over cellular.

00:17:32 ◼   ► I'd rather just see a cellular section.

00:17:33 ◼   ► What am I allowed to do over cellular?

00:17:35 ◼   ► Download new episodes.

00:17:36 ◼   ► Stream episodes that I've asked you to stream.

00:17:38 ◼   ► download, you know, stream episodes that come in while I'm listening to it, but I don't

00:17:42 ◼   ► know what the options are.

00:17:43 ◼   ► But it's like, you can go through all the possibilities and just, because I think, yeah,

00:17:46 ◼   ► that's a lot of options and it's like, who wants to answer all these questions?

00:17:50 ◼   ► You're going to come up with some set of defaults that you think are appropriate for most people.

00:17:53 ◼   ► But when someone goes to settings, I can imagine them going down the list and going, yes, no,

00:17:58 ◼   ► no, yes.

00:17:59 ◼   ► And if you want to help them, you could even put like average of X number of megabytes

00:18:03 ◼   ► over the past month, which probably won't help them initially because you can't pre-populate

00:18:06 ◼   ► that because you don't know what the usage is unless you collect it for everybody.

00:18:09 ◼   ► But after a month of usage, they can go down that list and say, "What's using all my cell

00:18:12 ◼   ► data?"

00:18:13 ◼   ► It's like, "I want Overcast to..."

00:18:15 ◼   ► You know, they can only guess, like, "What things?

00:18:17 ◼   ► I don't understand.

00:18:18 ◼   ► Does this take up a lot of data or not?"

00:18:19 ◼   ► And you can see over the past month, because you allowed us to download new episodes over

00:18:23 ◼   ► cellular, it's used this amount of data, right?

00:18:26 ◼   ► And then they can, you know, just a bunch of switches going, "Yes, no, no, no, yes,

00:18:29 ◼   ► no."

00:18:30 ◼   ► I feel like six, seven, eight, nine, even 10 options and that type of thing isn't crazy,

00:18:33 ◼   ► especially when you look at the actual iOS settings screens,

00:18:36 ◼   ► they're just giant walls of toggle switches

00:18:37 ◼   ► and people are okay going, who can use location data?

00:18:40 ◼   ► Not you, you, not you, you, you, not you.

00:18:42 ◼   ► Like, I think that's a reasonable interaction,

00:18:46 ◼   ► even though it seems really complicated.

00:18:47 ◼   ► If you're gonna have this complexity anyway,

00:18:49 ◼   ► because you've got to have all these conditionals

00:18:50 ◼   ► in the code of like, when do I do this?

00:18:51 ◼   ► When do I do that?

00:18:52 ◼   ► And you're gonna pick defaults for them,

00:18:54 ◼   ► just throw in the switches, bury it in a section

00:18:56 ◼   ► if it makes you feel better.

00:18:57 ◼   ► But I think that is actually the most straightforward way,

00:19:00 ◼   ► As long as you sort of organize these fleets of switches

00:19:03 ◼   ► into logical groups, then people feel like they're,

00:19:06 ◼   ► you know, that each one, because like there's a topic,

00:19:09 ◼   ► the topic is, I don't know how you'd phrase it,

00:19:12 ◼   ► but like this is what Overcast is allowed to do

00:19:14 ◼   ► over your cell connection.

00:19:15 ◼   ► Like when they're in that frame of mind,

00:19:17 ◼   ► I feel like they're in the mode to go down those questions

00:19:21 ◼   ► and just sort of, you know, give yes or no's,

00:19:23 ◼   ► rather than just going down a list of options

00:19:26 ◼   ► and having to read each one and see what the topic is,

00:19:28 ◼   ► what is it discussing, and what is the decision I have

00:19:30 ◼   ► make them go to the next one which is entirely unrelated what is this one

00:19:32 ◼   ► talking about what is it discussing you know whatever I don't know I maybe I

00:19:37 ◼   ► haven't thought of all the options but of all the ones you listed so far I'm

00:19:40 ◼   ► like those are all reasonable things that people could conceivably want

00:19:45 ◼   ► settings for but I think there's no way to to express that in the UI without

00:19:51 ◼   ► just a really big long list of options I think when you try to combine them into

00:19:55 ◼   ► a single line item, it gets confusing because it's less clear what's going on or people

00:20:01 ◼   ► might want different options for the two things that you've combined into one of your settings.

00:20:05 ◼   ► - Well, and there's more complexity to it than that.

00:20:08 ◼   ► It isn't as simple as do I have combo settings or do I have a whole bunch of settings and

00:20:13 ◼   ► a big long list?

00:20:14 ◼   ► 'Cause one of the biggest problems is if presented with a big long list, there is a cost to having

00:20:20 ◼   ► that in the app in that people will see that screen.

00:20:24 ◼   ► will confuse them and it will give them the general impression that either this app is

00:20:29 ◼   ► too complex for my taste or I don't understand this app and therefore I don't feel good about

00:20:35 ◼   ► it and it's, you know, people don't like to be made to feel dumb or to be confused.

00:20:38 ◼   ► Well that's why you're burying it. You bury it in the advanced or nitpicky or whatever

00:20:41 ◼   ► section like I don't think anyone's gonna go to settings period unless the app doesn't

00:20:44 ◼   ► do what they want by default so it's all about picking the good defaults as you discussed.

00:20:47 ◼   ► I think you have a good handle on what the reasonable defaults are. You just want to

00:20:51 ◼   ► have a go-to section, and when someone gets into that mode where they feel like this app

00:20:55 ◼   ► is doing something that I don't, that's why I mentioned the sizes on the things, because

00:20:59 ◼   ► what they really want is stop using so much of my data.

00:21:02 ◼   ► And if they just see a bunch of switches, or even one or two options, even if it's just

00:21:06 ◼   ► two options, like which one of those, if I change, will make it use less of my data.

00:21:10 ◼   ► That's why stats on like, because this thing has been enabled, we have downloaded this

00:21:15 ◼   ► number of things over your cell connection over this period of time.

00:21:18 ◼   ► even if it's just two settings and two numbers,

00:21:20 ◼   ► then go, okay, well that's the one that's using my data,

00:21:22 ◼   ► so I wanna turn that one off.

00:21:23 ◼   ► - Right, and I probably, stats are tricky,

00:21:27 ◼   ► because I don't know if I can really guarantee them.

00:21:30 ◼   ► Like, I think it'd be hard to measure

00:21:33 ◼   ► total bytes used accurately.

00:21:35 ◼   ► There's things like redirects and header sizes

00:21:39 ◼   ► and everything that like, you know,

00:21:41 ◼   ► I'd have to go very low level in the APIs

00:21:43 ◼   ► to be able to actually count all of those accurately.

00:21:45 ◼   ► So like, I wouldn't, I don't really want to be

00:21:48 ◼   ► game of being incredibly specific.

00:21:50 ◼   ► 'Cause also there's some degree of liability there.

00:21:53 ◼   ► And maybe not, I'm sure legally it wouldn't cause me

00:21:55 ◼   ► huge problems, but it might anger people.

00:21:57 ◼   ► If I say something that is wrong.

00:22:00 ◼   ► So if I say, for instance, if I have in the app

00:22:03 ◼   ► a big toggle that says all cell data off,

00:22:07 ◼   ► I don't offer that.

00:22:08 ◼   ► Because I can't guarantee that my app will use no cell data.

00:22:11 ◼   ► The iOS at the system level option can.

00:22:14 ◼   ► I can't, because there are things like WKWebView.

00:22:17 ◼   ► and a web view that tries to load images.

00:22:20 ◼   ► I can't prevent that from hitting the cell network easily.

00:22:23 ◼   ► Like I can't guarantee that my app will use no data,

00:22:26 ◼   ► so that's why I don't offer that option.

00:22:27 ◼   ► Also, I don't show the file sizes of the podcasts

00:22:32 ◼   ► before they're downloaded.

00:22:33 ◼   ► A lot of people request this.

00:22:34 ◼   ► The big problem with that is that it basically would

00:22:37 ◼   ► require doing a head request in the file

00:22:38 ◼   ► before you download it, and like right before you download it

00:22:41 ◼   ► to really get it accurately.

00:22:43 ◼   ► 'Cause there is a field for in feeds

00:22:45 ◼   ► where people are supposed to specify that.

00:22:46 ◼   ► we do in our feed, but that is manually entered by a human being. So it is unreliable and

00:22:52 ◼   ► it is often absent. So the only way to do it is to do a head request and I can do that

00:22:55 ◼   ► server side for every single thing that's complicated and that's also kind of unreliable

00:23:00 ◼   ► because then what if the server, you know, what if one of these things blocks me, then

00:23:03 ◼   ► I report zeros for everything. What if my information is out of date, where like the

00:23:06 ◼   ► first crawl, maybe it was just one megabyte because they uploaded only part of the file

00:23:10 ◼   ► and then you go to download it, you know, two hours later and it's a hundred megs and

00:23:14 ◼   ► and then you're angry at me 'cause I said it was only one meg.

00:23:16 ◼   ► There's all these weird complex edge cases

00:23:19 ◼   ► that I don't want to make a promise I can't keep.

00:23:23 ◼   ► - Well, you can fudge it.

00:23:24 ◼   ► Like the people who say in the chat room,

00:23:25 ◼   ► low, medium, high, percentages.

00:23:27 ◼   ► I'm trying to just reconceptualize this whole cellular thing

00:23:30 ◼   ► from a user's perspective.

00:23:32 ◼   ► What they're concerned about is,

00:23:34 ◼   ► they can get the idea from the settings thing

00:23:37 ◼   ► of which apps are using most of my data,

00:23:39 ◼   ► like Apple provides that, but then if they find out,

00:23:42 ◼   ► Okay, Overcast is a big consumer of things.

00:23:44 ◼   ► I subscribe to a lot of podcasts

00:23:45 ◼   ► and the settings app says it does a lot.

00:23:48 ◼   ► I like podcasts, I don't want to uninstall Overcast.

00:23:51 ◼   ► I want to continue to listen to them,

00:23:52 ◼   ► but now I have to go into Overcast

00:23:53 ◼   ► and say, how can I make Overcast use less data?

00:23:56 ◼   ► And other than the big giant switches

00:23:57 ◼   ► that says no cell data at all,

00:23:59 ◼   ► they're going into Overcast with a mission.

00:24:01 ◼   ► And the mission is figure out what little thingies

00:24:04 ◼   ► I have to flip to make it use less data.

00:24:07 ◼   ► And anything to guide them in terms of

00:24:10 ◼   ► which one of these options will have the most effect

00:24:12 ◼   ► rather than relying on people reading the descriptions

00:24:14 ◼   ► and understanding which one is bigger.

00:24:17 ◼   ► And you know, it can't give sizes in megabytes.

00:24:19 ◼   ► Maybe you can give percentages,

00:24:20 ◼   ► maybe give low, medium, high, I don't know.

00:24:23 ◼   ► I'm just, that's what I'm trying to think.

00:24:24 ◼   ► But like, rather than worrying about it

00:24:27 ◼   ► from the people who are like super picky

00:24:28 ◼   ► and wanna control every aspect of your app

00:24:30 ◼   ► and wanna like be able to write their own code

00:24:32 ◼   ► to make decisions on each decision point,

00:24:34 ◼   ► most people just wanna know how to make the app

00:24:38 ◼   ► use less data and know what the consequences are.

00:24:41 ◼   ► Here's what the option says,

00:24:45 ◼   ► here's some sort of rating for if I were to turn it off,

00:24:47 ◼   ► how much might I save,

00:24:49 ◼   ► and then I'll make that decision to understand

00:24:51 ◼   ► because I turned that off,

00:24:52 ◼   ► now I won't get that anymore from on a cell network.

00:24:53 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:24:54 ◼   ► It is a hard problem,

00:24:55 ◼   ► but I'm trying to simplify it in two ways.

00:24:58 ◼   ► One, changing the way you think about it

00:24:59 ◼   ► with terms of what is the goal?

00:25:01 ◼   ► The goal is to use less data

00:25:02 ◼   ► and I feel like sizes or ratings

00:25:03 ◼   ► or something like that have to be in there.

00:25:05 ◼   ► And then two, the other extreme is, you know,

00:25:09 ◼   ► just introduce the topic,

00:25:11 ◼   ► give a big fleet of things that can go

00:25:12 ◼   ► and then people will just go down the list

00:25:14 ◼   ► and go yay or nay.

00:25:16 ◼   ► And like that sync over cellular thing,

00:25:18 ◼   ► I've never even seen that option.

00:25:19 ◼   ► So I don't, you know, like I'm trying to think of my usage.

00:25:21 ◼   ► I don't think I've ever been to the overcast setting screens.

00:25:23 ◼   ► Maybe it's because you just happened to pick the defaults

00:25:25 ◼   ► that are right for me.

00:25:26 ◼   ► Maybe it's because I'm always on wifi, but yeah.

00:25:30 ◼   ► The people who write you in to complain about cell usage,

00:25:35 ◼   ► They may be noisy, but I think most of your job is just picking good defaults and then

00:25:40 ◼   ► after that I think you have to worry less about the intimidation of your settings screen

00:25:43 ◼   ► because I don't think many people even visit it.

00:25:45 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:25:46 ◼   ► Well, the other problem is, this is what I affectionately call the power user problem,

00:25:51 ◼   ► that if you give people settings they will use them and then they will forget that they

00:25:56 ◼   ► use them and then the app will behave differently from the default because they change settings

00:26:02 ◼   ► and then they forgot that they changed them.

00:26:04 ◼   ► And then they will write in or complain on Twitter

00:26:06 ◼   ► or complain in public that my app is not working properly

00:26:08 ◼   ► because of a setting they changed.

00:26:10 ◼   ► This happens all the time

00:26:12 ◼   ► with the continuous playback setting,

00:26:15 ◼   ► where in the playback effects pane thing,

00:26:19 ◼   ► I have an option that most people would consider

00:26:22 ◼   ► called continuous play, and I title it

00:26:24 ◼   ► When This Episode Ends, and at the bottom,

00:26:27 ◼   ► I have two buttons, Play Next or Stop.

00:26:30 ◼   ► And I thought this was very clear.

00:26:33 ◼   ► Many people, when they're poking around in the options,

00:26:36 ◼   ► they will toggle that.

00:26:37 ◼   ► Then they will forget that they toggled that.

00:26:39 ◼   ► And then they will write in saying,

00:26:41 ◼   ► my app used to just automatically move

00:26:42 ◼   ► to the next episode, and now it doesn't.

00:26:44 ◼   ► What happened?

00:26:45 ◼   ► It's a bug.

00:26:46 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:26:47 ◼   ► And every time I have to explain,

00:26:49 ◼   ► this is kind of like a blow on the power cord

00:26:52 ◼   ► kind of solution.

00:26:53 ◼   ► It's like, I don't want to embarrass them in my response.

00:26:55 ◼   ► So I have to be very gentle in how I say this.

00:26:58 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:26:59 ◼   ► but it's just a bad thing for everybody

00:27:01 ◼   ► because if you give people settings, they will use them.

00:27:03 ◼   ► Many of them will forget about it or use them badly

00:27:05 ◼   ► or in ways they don't understand.

00:27:07 ◼   ► And then the app will break for them.

00:27:09 ◼   ► And regardless of what it does to me or my reputation,

00:27:11 ◼   ► it makes the app suck for them.

00:27:13 ◼   ► So that's also something I want to avoid.

00:27:15 ◼   ► - Aren't they happy when you gently lead them to the option?

00:27:19 ◼   ► Aren't they like, oh, my problem is solved.

00:27:21 ◼   ► I found a setting, I've plus a little title switch,

00:27:23 ◼   ► and now I feel like, I mean, I feel like it turns around

00:27:26 ◼   ► on them at that point where it's like,

00:27:28 ◼   ► I thought that this app that I used to like was ruined for me forever, but really all

00:27:32 ◼   ► I needed to do was tap a little toggle switch.

00:27:34 ◼   ► Yes, but a lot of times those people are not writing in.

00:27:38 ◼   ► So like this is all, these are always indicative of like, well, if these five people on Twitter

00:27:43 ◼   ► said this happened to them and they didn't understand that's why it happened, think of

00:27:47 ◼   ► how many people there are who didn't get in touch with me, who just thought the app was

00:27:51 ◼   ► broken.

00:27:52 ◼   ► Why do people like to, I don't understand why someone would turn that off while they're

00:27:55 ◼   ► wandering through settings or why they'd be wandering through settings.

00:27:58 ◼   ► I've also never seen this setting.

00:27:59 ◼   ► I don't even know, I guess the default is to go

00:28:01 ◼   ► to the next track, 'cause I think that's what mine does.

00:28:03 ◼   ► - Oh, Jon, you are a responsible power user.

00:28:06 ◼   ► You are the power user that developers wish

00:28:08 ◼   ► all power users were like.

00:28:09 ◼   ► But unfortunately, that's not the case.

00:28:12 ◼   ► And there are so many people who,

00:28:14 ◼   ► if you give them a way to customize or change something,

00:28:17 ◼   ► they will, and they will always demand more of those things,

00:28:20 ◼   ► and then they will become support problems for you.

00:28:22 ◼   ► - You know what, don't go to settings,

00:28:23 ◼   ► I just launched the app just to figure out.

00:28:25 ◼   ► It's because it's not a gear icon.

00:28:26 ◼   ► and I'm like, where the hell is settings in this thing?

00:28:28 ◼   ► We've been through this before.

00:28:29 ◼   ► No wonder I never go to settings, it's hidden.

00:28:31 ◼   ► - That was one of those things, like I said,

00:28:34 ◼   ► can I get away with not using a gear icon?

00:28:37 ◼   ► - You can, it keeps me away from the settings.

00:28:39 ◼   ► - That's why maybe, you know,

00:28:42 ◼   ► regular people are so confused by everything

00:28:45 ◼   ► because everything is horrible,

00:28:46 ◼   ► that they'll push anything and not think about it.

00:28:50 ◼   ► Power users look for a gear, and they don't see a gear,

00:28:53 ◼   ► they just assume, well, I guess there's no settings.

00:28:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, so that's perfect.

00:28:55 ◼   ► Maybe I should make all my icons make less sense.

00:28:58 ◼   ► - Have it squirm out of the way when you try to tap it.

00:29:00 ◼   ► - Wasn't that a thing?

00:29:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, like on Windows.

00:29:02 ◼   ► - You can't do proximity detection with the...

00:29:04 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:29:05 ◼   ► - Wait for the iPad that has the stylus support,

00:29:08 ◼   ► then you'll have proximity detection.

00:29:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, for all my iPad users, yeah.

00:29:12 ◼   ► - Totally, hey, I'm one of them.

00:29:13 ◼   ► So before we leave this topic--

00:29:14 ◼   ► - It's like less than 5%.

00:29:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, before we leave this topic,

00:29:18 ◼   ► maybe you mentioned this and I blanked,

00:29:20 ◼   ► but why not just have one universal,

00:29:23 ◼   ► can I do anything on cellular, yes or no?

00:29:26 ◼   ► - Because I can't enforce that, basically.

00:29:30 ◼   ► Because that's why, like I said earlier,

00:29:32 ◼   ► if a web view for show notes loads an image,

00:29:35 ◼   ► there's stuff that is very hard to enforce.

00:29:38 ◼   ► - Well, you could rephrase it.

00:29:40 ◼   ► Can I download any podcast-related materials over,

00:29:45 ◼   ► well, that's okay, that's still a little weak,

00:29:46 ◼   ► but you know what I'm driving at?

00:29:47 ◼   ► You could wordsmith it to get the wording right.

00:29:50 ◼   ► Do you just think that's not granular enough

00:29:53 ◼   ► for your average user?

00:29:55 ◼   ► - Well, I think people either want the app

00:29:57 ◼   ► to literally use zero, in which case they have

00:29:59 ◼   ► to use the iOS system toggle,

00:30:00 ◼   ► which they probably already have

00:30:02 ◼   ► without even looking in the app,

00:30:03 ◼   ► 'cause most apps don't have these options.

00:30:04 ◼   ► Most apps just do it, and it's up to you as the user

00:30:07 ◼   ► to minimize the usage or to go in settings and disable it.

00:30:10 ◼   ► So if somebody wants to literally use no data,

00:30:15 ◼   ► they will use the system pane for that.

00:30:17 ◼   ► I think some data, 'cause every app

00:30:21 ◼   ► that syncs with the web or get status or info from the web,

00:30:25 ◼   ► like you're losing a few hundred kilobytes here and there

00:30:29 ◼   ► to all these apps and you just have to not care about

00:30:33 ◼   ► that level of usage if you're gonna have cell data enabled

00:30:36 ◼   ► for anything.

00:30:37 ◼   ► So some data usage is fine, but again,

00:30:40 ◼   ► I don't want to make a promise that I can't really keep.

00:30:44 ◼   ► And especially with something like this

00:30:45 ◼   ► where making a mistake here could cost people money.

00:30:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I guess that makes sense.

00:30:50 ◼   ► It's a tough thing for sure.

00:30:52 ◼   ► But before we move on to start the show with follow-up,

00:30:57 ◼   ► you should probably tell us about something that's cool.

00:31:00 ◼   ► - I agree.

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00:33:39 ◼   ► - All right.

00:33:42 ◼   ► So now that we're, what, 30, 40 minutes in,

00:33:44 ◼   ► let's do some follow-up.

00:33:45 ◼   ► (John laughs)

00:33:47 ◼   ► - See what you've done here with this pre-follow-up?

00:33:49 ◼   ► You've just broken the show.

00:33:50 ◼   ► (John laughs)

00:33:51 ◼   ► Not a complicated format.

00:33:53 ◼   ► - No. - It's really straightforward.

00:33:55 ◼   ► - All those years of follow-up ruined.

00:33:58 ◼   ► - Just like that, just like that, I'm sorry.

00:34:00 ◼   ► Some men just like to see the world burn.

00:34:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's true.

00:34:03 ◼   ► - That's a reference, John.

00:34:05 ◼   ► Except I think that's actually watch the world burn,

00:34:07 ◼   ► but that's okay.

00:34:08 ◼   ► - Is it, wait, is this like Nero or?

00:34:10 ◼   ► Yeah, Marco just learned about the cowbell SNL skit today.

00:34:15 ◼   ► So he's coming down.

00:34:17 ◼   ► So when so no, this is how this went.

00:34:19 ◼   ► I wanted to find myself here.

00:34:20 ◼   ► Tiff said she made like the cowbell fever joke, and I knew there was a joke about more

00:34:25 ◼   ► cowbell and I wasn't quite sure where it was from.

00:34:27 ◼   ► So I said, oh, is that from Spinal Tap?

00:34:30 ◼   ► And it turns out no, but I at least knew that the joke was about having more cowbell in

00:34:35 ◼   ► that Blue Oyster Cult, whatever song that is.

00:34:40 ◼   ► The thing is that it's something that you heard about but didn't know the original of.

00:34:45 ◼   ► That's correct.

00:34:46 ◼   ► That's what we're getting at.

00:34:47 ◼   ► It's not whether you get references, it's that you haven't actually experienced the

00:34:51 ◼   ► original piece of media from pop culture.

00:34:56 ◼   ► I can't believe you didn't recognize that quote from Dark Knight.

00:34:59 ◼   ► Now I know how Jon feels with me.

00:35:01 ◼   ► You know, I've seen that.

00:35:02 ◼   ► So good.

00:35:03 ◼   ► It's one of my favorite movies.

00:35:06 ◼   ► Oh, God.

00:35:07 ◼   ► Anyway, so we should probably correct our incorrect statements about Half-Life for like the third week in a row.

00:35:13 ◼   ► Half-Life just keeps coming. It's the real one is out for the Mac.

00:35:16 ◼   ► Has been for a long time, not just the source port, but the plain old cruddy-looking original Half-Life.

00:35:22 ◼   ► So Half-Life is completely and fully available for the Mac.

00:35:25 ◼   ► I can't believe this game came out when I was like 16 and we're talking about it still.

00:35:28 ◼   ► Kind of like Halo, also completely available for the Mac. Too little, too late.

00:35:33 ◼   ► Wait, what? The original Halo is on...

00:35:35 ◼   ► That's that's where I played the original hell I played it on the Mac what I genuinely did not know that I

00:35:40 ◼   ► Assumed it was always Xbox one. Oh, thank God

00:35:43 ◼   ► I was gonna email you I know cuz I knew there was like a history with like bungs

00:35:47 ◼   ► He was making it for the Mac and then Microsoft bought them and then they canned it, right?

00:35:50 ◼   ► Yeah, you guys I guess you guys weren't in Apple circles when they were when they the Halo trailer was shown to Macworld or whatever

00:35:56 ◼   ► That was no was it Macworld? Yeah, I guess I'm had to been a Macworld. Anyway on stage

00:36:03 ◼   ► Look at this amazing new game coming for the Mac. I don't want to talk about it

00:36:06 ◼   ► It hurts too much to talk about it's dark time. Yeah

00:36:10 ◼   ► All right, so thank you Christian for that correction

00:36:16 ◼   ► This is from hunter mentioned last week about on-demand resources

00:36:21 ◼   ► Where if your app doesn't come with a bunch of stuff it can download them on demand and you can sort of spec that out

00:36:26 ◼   ► When you build your application which resources?

00:36:28 ◼   ► Won't be bundled with the application but can be downloaded by the application

00:36:33 ◼   ► at any point and I mentioned that it didn't seem like there was enough UI hooks to give

00:36:38 ◼   ► a good user experience.

00:36:39 ◼   ► The Hunter says that the on-demand resource API does support NSProgress for tracking progress

00:36:44 ◼   ► and displaying it to the user.

00:36:45 ◼   ► So that's nice, although you think you have it bad.

00:36:49 ◼   ► Think about games that have like 500 megalevels that download levels over cellular?

00:36:54 ◼   ► Yes, no.

00:36:55 ◼   ► What's the right answer there?

00:36:56 ◼   ► Probably no, but then if they're playing a game in a car ride and they get to the next

00:37:00 ◼   ► level, the only thing you really do is say, "Sorry, you can't play the next level because

00:37:05 ◼   ► you have cellular downloads, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," and the kid immediately goes

00:37:08 ◼   ► in, changes his setting, turns it on, and uses all of his parents' data. Or just waits

00:37:12 ◼   ► a really long time for the next half an hour in the car for the 500 meg level to download

00:37:16 ◼   ► while he travels along the highway. Anyway.

00:37:17 ◼   ► - Right. Or any game that uses it gets so many one-star reviews from people having this

00:37:20 ◼   ► problem that it stops using it.

00:37:23 ◼   ► - Yeah. But I think it's still a good option. You just gotta break it up into smaller chunks,

00:37:28 ◼   ► you know, like, instead of, hopefully no levels 500 megs, but if games are like 3 gigs and

00:37:35 ◼   ► they have a small number of levels, each one's got to be pretty big.

00:37:38 ◼   ► Anyway, I hope game developers figured this out.

00:37:40 ◼   ► I kind of like the PS4 thing where if you download a game you can start playing it before

00:37:46 ◼   ► the game is entirely downloading because they just download the early parts of the game

00:37:49 ◼   ► sooner.

00:37:50 ◼   ► It still takes a long time to download, but it's nice that you don't have to wait for

00:37:52 ◼   ► the whole thing to download because you're not going to outrun it by playing.

00:37:56 ◼   ► Like some of these games take a certain minimum amount of time to get through, especially

00:37:59 ◼   ► when you're playing for the first time.

00:38:00 ◼   ► They just let you start playing as soon as you've got like the first, you know, hours

00:38:04 ◼   ► worth of levels or something.

00:38:05 ◼   ► And by the time you grind through those, even if you're an expert in the game, the rest

00:38:08 ◼   ► will be downloaded, or so they hope.

00:38:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't see this working out.

00:38:13 ◼   ► We'll see.

00:38:14 ◼   ► Someone's gonna implement it.

00:38:16 ◼   ► I do think it's interesting also that like there seems on the iOS app store, there seems

00:38:20 ◼   ► to be no correlation between game size and commercial success.

00:38:27 ◼   ► Okay. Think about it. Man, you guys are off tonight. Either everyone else is crazy or

00:38:35 ◼   ► I am. Alright, so keep going. You expect there to be? Like, you expect big

00:38:40 ◼   ► games to be more successful? Yeah, I'm kind of saying like maybe it's not worth making

00:38:44 ◼   ► games so big. Well, it really depends on the type of game.

00:38:48 ◼   ► Like if you're making a puzzle game, how big could it possibly be, right?

00:38:51 ◼   ► I mean, talk about having no assets, how big is letterpress?

00:38:54 ◼   ► I don't know if there's any graphics in that entire game.

00:38:56 ◼   ► There's just like the launch icon.

00:38:57 ◼   ► That's it.

00:38:58 ◼   ► Right.

00:38:59 ◼   ► But other types of games, like if you're making a 3D game, there's going to be geometry, there's

00:39:02 ◼   ► going to be textures, and like there's no getting around that, and it's going to be

00:39:05 ◼   ► much bigger than a game with a static screen.

00:39:09 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:39:10 ◼   ► I don't think people have the same expectations of mobile games, but I think genre plays into

00:39:16 ◼   ► how big things are.

00:39:18 ◼   ► Art style if you do things with texture mapping textures take up room if you do everything with flat shading you just have geometry then

00:39:24 ◼   ► You know I?

00:39:25 ◼   ► Think it's reasonable on a small platform like this desert golf not be enough for anybody

00:39:29 ◼   ► Yeah, you love that game so much. It's really good. I haven't played that since the Alto came out

00:39:36 ◼   ► I realized so I still haven't installed, but I'm stuck at whatever yeah me too

00:39:40 ◼   ► I'm not stuck stuck if I played it. I will continue, but it like it's not not making progress

00:39:44 ◼   ► But I do not install because I'm afraid that if I delete it. I'll lose my progress

00:39:48 ◼   ► I don't know if that's actually true, but I'm afraid it is yeah

00:39:51 ◼   ► I've never played it, and I'm pretty happy about that get out those adventure. It's better game

00:39:55 ◼   ► I have it. I've had it for weeks still never played it

00:39:57 ◼   ► Disagree you think you don't think out those adventures better than desert golfing I

00:40:02 ◼   ► Think everyone else thinks it is, but I don't think it is

00:40:05 ◼   ► This is like you as a gamer in a nutshell

00:40:12 ◼   ► It's too much like a game. I don't like that gamey game part.

00:40:15 ◼   ► Can you put me in a desert with a ball? That's all I can handle.

00:40:17 ◼   ► No, I mean, they're both good games.

00:40:19 ◼   ► I would say they're both excellent games, but I got a lot more time out of desert golfing

00:40:24 ◼   ► just because of the kind of zen commentary qualities I got out of it,

00:40:30 ◼   ► where Alto is a great game, but once I played, like, I played it on one plane flight,

00:40:38 ◼   ► and then I was like, "All right, well, every time I play this game, it's basically the same thing."

00:40:42 ◼   ► over and over again.

00:40:44 ◼   ► And I know desert golfing is similar,

00:40:45 ◼   ► but for whatever reason,

00:40:47 ◼   ► I didn't get any depth out of Alto.

00:40:49 ◼   ► So it was cool for the one day I was playing it a lot,

00:40:53 ◼   ► but then I tried playing it here and there afterwards,

00:40:54 ◼   ► and I just like, okay, it just felt too repetitive to me.

00:40:57 ◼   ► - You don't have any competitive juices flowing.

00:40:59 ◼   ► Alto is all about competing with yourself,

00:41:01 ◼   ► trying to best your previous best run,

00:41:03 ◼   ► or competing with other people,

00:41:04 ◼   ► whereas there's no competitive aspect

00:41:06 ◼   ► in desert golfing, really.

00:41:08 ◼   ► - That's what makes desert golfing so great,

00:41:10 ◼   ► is that it really shows you how pointless

00:41:13 ◼   ► everything else in the universe is.

00:41:16 ◼   ► - This is a man whose wife plays all console games

00:41:18 ◼   ► in hard mode, by the way.

00:41:19 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:41:20 ◼   ► - Could not be more different.

00:41:21 ◼   ► - That's correct, yeah.

00:41:21 ◼   ► No, she is the gamer, I am totally not.

00:41:24 ◼   ► She's playing Prison Architect now, thanks to CGP Grey.

00:41:27 ◼   ► - That sounds awful.

00:41:29 ◼   ► Like, it just sounds like work to me.

00:41:31 ◼   ► - I mean, it looks, it's like Theme Hospital, you know?

00:41:33 ◼   ► Like, it's one of those kind of games.

00:41:35 ◼   ► Like, you know, it's basically Sim Prison.

00:41:37 ◼   ► If I was like more of a gamer right now,

00:41:39 ◼   ► I would probably play it too,

00:41:40 ◼   ► 'cause it looks pretty cool.

00:41:42 ◼   ► I just don't, I can't, you know,

00:41:44 ◼   ► like I'm doing great with work stuff,

00:41:46 ◼   ► with Overcast and with the show and everything else,

00:41:49 ◼   ► and I'm like, the last thing I wanna do

00:41:51 ◼   ► is take time playing games.

00:41:52 ◼   ► Like I just, I don't, whenever the opportunity comes up

00:41:55 ◼   ► to spend time doing something,

00:41:56 ◼   ► I'd rather work than play games.

00:41:59 ◼   ► - And can you tell everybody exactly what level

00:42:01 ◼   ► you're on in Desert Golfing?

00:42:02 ◼   ► So they can add some context to your previous statement.

00:42:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, give me a sec.

00:42:08 ◼   ► It's been a while that played it so I gotta take it up the man who doesn't want to spend too much time playing games

00:42:12 ◼   ► Go ahead. What level?

00:42:14 ◼   ► 3054 all right, and I've been stuck on this one for a long time. That's

00:42:18 ◼   ► 3054 holes people yeah, I think we've solved that I don't know though. I haven't seen prison architect, but

00:42:25 ◼   ► So clearly I'm unqualified to talk about it with that said let me talk about it

00:42:29 ◼   ► It sounds like so much work

00:42:31 ◼   ► And I stopped doing work like that at Sim tower like Sim towers when I pretty much stopped doing work

00:42:37 ◼   ► for games. I remember vividly trying World of Warcraft when it was relatively new and

00:42:44 ◼   ► all I did was run around killing like boars or something like that and I lasted two hours

00:42:49 ◼   ► before I decided I'm just doing work. This isn't a game, this is just me doing work.

00:42:53 ◼   ► Eric Michael Rhodes President Architect is more like Transport

00:42:56 ◼   ► Tycoon than WoW. I mean…

00:42:59 ◼   ► Jared Ranere Yeah, it's more like the building sim games,

00:43:02 ◼   ► But even, I love Transport Tycoon.

00:43:06 ◼   ► I haven't played it in probably five years.

00:43:08 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, I haven't played it in more than that.

00:43:10 ◼   ► - Right, because like, and OpenTTD is awesome.

00:43:13 ◼   ► Like it was such a fantastic re-implementation

00:43:16 ◼   ► of the game engine and added so much stuff

00:43:18 ◼   ► and it's fantastic.

00:43:19 ◼   ► I lost a lot of time to it like, you know,

00:43:21 ◼   ► in 2007 or 2008 kind of era, but again,

00:43:25 ◼   ► I just, like there's never a time when I want to spend

00:43:29 ◼   ► hours and hours and hours playing games

00:43:31 ◼   ► instead of producing something that I want to be working on.

00:43:35 ◼   ► And that's just me, that's just like,

00:43:36 ◼   ► it's what motivates me right now.

00:43:38 ◼   ► And maybe that'll change over time.

00:43:40 ◼   ► I'm sure it'll be different once my kid's old enough

00:43:42 ◼   ► to enjoy games and I wanna do it with him.

00:43:44 ◼   ► But for now, I just don't care about games.

00:43:48 ◼   ► - Over 3,000 holes, people.

00:43:49 ◼   ► Over 3,000. (laughing)

00:43:52 ◼   ► Doesn't wanna spend a lot of time playing games.

00:43:54 ◼   ► He'd much rather be doing something else.

00:43:55 ◼   ► - That was almost a meditation for me.

00:43:58 ◼   ► Desert Golfing, it was-- - Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:43:59 ◼   ► You're lucky that game does not have a count of hours played inside it.

00:44:04 ◼   ► No it doesn't, but I mean I know it took like 8,000 strokes.

00:44:07 ◼   ► I mean that's, that kind of, you can figure some idea, like you know, well if each one

00:44:11 ◼   ► takes a few seconds or whatever, but you know, so obviously I know I spend a lot of time

00:44:14 ◼   ► there but how much time do I spend on Twitter?

00:44:17 ◼   ► It's way more than that.

00:44:18 ◼   ► Alright, what do you have to show for that?

00:44:20 ◼   ► There's no whole count on Twitter.

00:44:21 ◼   ► We don't even know, there's no background color change, no nothing.

00:44:24 ◼   ► No rocks, not a cactus in sight.

00:44:27 ◼   ► My god, I don't even know what kind of things you're seeing today at three whole three thousand

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00:44:37 ◼   ► Do it or doing things before follow-up that that would really take this entire show right off the I had an idea

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00:48:00 ◼   ► - Little bit more followup.

00:48:01 ◼   ► Jon, tell us about Satya Nadella.

00:48:03 ◼   ► - No, I'm saving it for next week.

00:48:04 ◼   ► We're moving on.

00:48:05 ◼   ► - Good cock.

00:48:06 ◼   ► All right, we're done with followup.

00:48:07 ◼   ► - Really?

00:48:09 ◼   ► - This show's out of control.

00:48:10 ◼   ► - We're almost an hour in.

00:48:10 ◼   ► - We are really only an hour in?

00:48:12 ◼   ► We're done with followup?

00:48:13 ◼   ► - Boy, I wonder what made that take so long.

00:48:16 ◼   ► - It must be too much follow up.

00:48:18 ◼   ► - God, I'm staying out of this.

00:48:20 ◼   ► Okay, so are we talking about the end of TikTok

00:48:23 ◼   ► or is that also not for right now?

00:48:25 ◼   ► - Oh, I think that's a good one.

00:48:26 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, I don't know why that has that prefix on it.

00:48:27 ◼   ► I'll fix it.

00:48:28 ◼   ► - So this says in the show notes,

00:48:29 ◼   ► next week end of TikTok,

00:48:31 ◼   ► which kind of makes it sound like TikTok

00:48:33 ◼   ► is ending next week.

00:48:34 ◼   ► - It could be.

00:48:35 ◼   ► - All right, so what is--

00:48:37 ◼   ► - This is the end of the computer age.

00:48:39 ◼   ► Oh, I messed that up too.

00:48:40 ◼   ► Damn it.

00:48:41 ◼   ► It was welcome to the end.

00:48:43 ◼   ► We might as well just stop the show now

00:48:45 ◼   ► 'cause we're all out of control.

00:48:47 ◼   ► - Welcome to the end of the Computer Age.

00:48:50 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:48:53 ◼   ► (drumming)

00:48:58 ◼   ► - Jon, try to bring us back if you please

00:48:59 ◼   ► and tell us about TikTok and why it's ending.

00:49:02 ◼   ► - Oh no, the one part I didn't put in the show notes

00:49:04 ◼   ► is the part I always forget.

00:49:05 ◼   ► So I'm gonna wing it.

00:49:06 ◼   ► Intel has this strategy that they call TikTok

00:49:09 ◼   ► where they make a new microarchitecture

00:49:12 ◼   ► And then the next round of chips that they offer for sale is,

00:49:17 ◼   ► oh, I screwed it up already.

00:49:20 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:49:21 ◼   ► - Since 2007, Intel has been operating

00:49:23 ◼   ► on a staggered release schedule

00:49:25 ◼   ► that alternates manufacturing process shrinks, TICs,

00:49:28 ◼   ► with major micro architectural changes, TOCs.

00:49:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, if you don't help me know which is the which.

00:49:33 ◼   ► Sometimes they just do a shrink.

00:49:34 ◼   ► - That would be a TIC.

00:49:36 ◼   ► - And sometimes they change the micro architecture.

00:49:39 ◼   ► - That's a TOC.

00:49:40 ◼   ► - All right, there you have it.

00:49:41 ◼   ► How am I the voice of reason between the three of us?

00:49:44 ◼   ► What is going on?

00:49:45 ◼   ► - I can never, they picked a bad naming scheme.

00:49:47 ◼   ► The point is they alternate.

00:49:48 ◼   ► And so this has been sort of regular schedule.

00:49:50 ◼   ► What it meant was that every other round of chips,

00:49:54 ◼   ► you would get a new process size.

00:49:57 ◼   ► So you'd have 32 nanometer chips,

00:49:59 ◼   ► another set of 32 nanometer chips,

00:50:01 ◼   ► and then you go to the next size smaller,

00:50:02 ◼   ► which I think was 28, or they skipped a 22.

00:50:04 ◼   ► Anyway, we've had 14 nanometer chips

00:50:09 ◼   ► for two generations now.

00:50:11 ◼   ► And so in theory, the next round of chips

00:50:13 ◼   ► should be on their next processor,

00:50:14 ◼   ► which is supposed to be 10.

00:50:16 ◼   ► But Intel has basically said the next round of chips

00:50:19 ◼   ► will not be 10 nanometer,

00:50:20 ◼   ► they'll be a third round of 14 nanometer chips.

00:50:24 ◼   ► Basically because their 10 nanometer manufacturing process

00:50:26 ◼   ► is not ready yet, so.

00:50:28 ◼   ► - Well and also it's worth pointing out

00:50:29 ◼   ► that the 14 nanometer process

00:50:31 ◼   ► is just barely coming online now.

00:50:34 ◼   ► Like it was also, whatever it was saying

00:50:37 ◼   ► was the broad belt delay, much of that,

00:50:39 ◼   ► or maybe all that, I don't know,

00:50:40 ◼   ► Much of that was the process,

00:50:43 ◼   ► the 14 nanometer process being so delayed.

00:50:45 ◼   ► And so they had a huge delay just trying to get this out.

00:50:48 ◼   ► It was about a year late or a year and a half late, right?

00:50:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, and so this is like getting out ahead

00:50:53 ◼   ► of the next one by saying,

00:50:54 ◼   ► we're not gonna do what we did,

00:50:55 ◼   ► but be like, oh, we're kind of on schedule,

00:50:57 ◼   ► but things are kind of late and they'll come out

00:50:59 ◼   ► or whatever, it's like, look,

00:51:00 ◼   ► it's just 10 nanometers is not going to be ready.

00:51:03 ◼   ► But we're also not gonna delay having a new line of chips.

00:51:08 ◼   ► we are going to make one more round of chips on 14 nanometers.

00:51:11 ◼   ► And they had to come up with a new name for them, apparently doing the names of these

00:51:15 ◼   ► things.

00:51:16 ◼   ► It was going to be Skylake, and then it was going to be followed by Cannonlake.

00:51:18 ◼   ► So in between them, the third line of 14 nanometer things is going to be KABY Lake.

00:51:25 ◼   ► Anyone want to take a swing at that?

00:51:27 ◼   ► >> KB?

00:51:28 ◼   ► It's pronounced hover.

00:51:29 ◼   ► >> KB, Kaby, I don't know.

00:51:32 ◼   ► I'm sure it's probably KB.

00:51:34 ◼   ► That's what they're going to call the third round of 14 nanometer chips, which is pretty weird as we've discussed on previous shows

00:51:40 ◼   ► Moore's law can't continue forever because they're as far as modern science knows there is a minimum size that things can be

00:51:48 ◼   ► We're always trying to smash them up and do smaller and smaller pieces to find out what can be smaller

00:51:52 ◼   ► But the rules of physics change in crazy ways when you get really small, so we were not going to

00:51:58 ◼   ► Double the number of things we can fit in a unit of space every 18 months

00:52:03 ◼   ► forever and ever. This does not mean the end of Moore's law, it just definitely needs to slow down.

00:52:10 ◼   ► I think I'm fine with that. I like the fact that Intel is owning up to this rather than just saying,

00:52:17 ◼   ► "Oh, it might be a little bit late," because then they're just, you know, they're gonna end up

00:52:20 ◼   ► shifting a whole year over, and I'm glad that they're gonna do another round of 14-nanometer

00:52:24 ◼   ► chips rather than just delaying forever and ever until 10 nanometers is ready.

00:52:29 ◼   ► Well, but I mean, they basically did that with Haswell.

00:52:33 ◼   ► - I know, and it was bad, wasn't it?

00:52:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, I'm using one now.

00:52:36 ◼   ► Right now, if you've bought a Mac in the last couple years,

00:52:41 ◼   ► you've gotten a Haswell, unless you bought

00:52:43 ◼   ► one of the 2015 revisions of only the Retina MacBook 13,

00:52:47 ◼   ► the MacBook Air, or the MacBook One.

00:52:53 ◼   ► The 15 still using Haswell, the iMac is still using Haswell,

00:52:57 ◼   ► the Mac Pro is using the Pentium Pro.

00:53:00 ◼   ► I mean, it's like everything is delayed and old

00:53:05 ◼   ► because this one was so, so delayed.

00:53:08 ◼   ► Like, beginning to 14 was so delayed.

00:53:11 ◼   ► And so what Intel did in the last year and a half,

00:53:14 ◼   ► while Broadwell was being delayed,

00:53:16 ◼   ► they released a kind of like 1.5 version of Haswell.

00:53:19 ◼   ► You know, it's the same core,

00:53:21 ◼   ► but they just like gave us like higher binned,

00:53:23 ◼   ► higher clocked parts just to kind of tide us over

00:53:26 ◼   ► and tide over their partners like Apple

00:53:28 ◼   ► who are trying to sell computers around these things

00:53:29 ◼   ► trying to make decisions around these things. That's why I'm using a 4 GHz computer right

00:53:34 ◼   ► now because like Haswell didn't start out at 4 GHz and it probably, I'm sure Apple's

00:53:38 ◼   ► margins on the 4 GHz chips are not that great because of the various binning and yield issues

00:53:43 ◼   ► that are typical of the business. But they had to give us some kind of minor increase

00:53:48 ◼   ► like all right, take what we have, raise the clocks as much as we can without shrinking

00:53:52 ◼   ► the process and we'll do something. We'll give people something new to tie them over

00:53:58 ◼   ► while we work out our next revisions delays.

00:54:00 ◼   ► So they already did a third revision, kind of, with Haswell.

00:54:05 ◼   ► So what they're basically saying here is that

00:54:08 ◼   ► this is going to happen again.

00:54:10 ◼   ► This time we're just warning you in advance.

00:54:13 ◼   ► - And they're giving it a new name.

00:54:14 ◼   ► And I don't think much is known about this new line of chips.

00:54:16 ◼   ► Like, will it just be, like you said,

00:54:18 ◼   ► just the higher binned versions of the other things

00:54:20 ◼   ► with maybe a couple of little errors fixing them or something

00:54:23 ◼   ► or will it be, you know, like, will they bump the GPU for it?

00:54:27 ◼   ► like, well, this will actually be a significant new line of chips.

00:54:31 ◼   ► It seems like that by giving it a new name, a new lake name, that it's not just going

00:54:36 ◼   ► to be like a 1.5, but it's certainly not going to be a new architecture, a tock, right guys?

00:54:41 ◼   ► It's not going to be a new architecture, I guess.

00:54:44 ◼   ► They're saving that for, I don't know.

00:54:47 ◼   ► It's confusing.

00:54:48 ◼   ► Although, like, the relationship between Intel's roadmap and what Apple releases, in some ways

00:54:53 ◼   ► it seems like it's tied tightly together where you're like, oh, Apple can't release the machines

00:54:56 ◼   ► because Intel doesn't have the chips ready,

00:54:59 ◼   ► but in other respects, they're totally unrelated.

00:55:01 ◼   ► See the Mac Pro.

00:55:02 ◼   ► - Well, no, that's not entirely true.

00:55:04 ◼   ► The Mac Pro is very related,

00:55:05 ◼   ► but it's related to the Xeon roadmap.

00:55:07 ◼   ► - I know, but aren't they already behind

00:55:09 ◼   ► an entire year on Xeon chips?

00:55:11 ◼   ► - They are, but the last revision of Xeons

00:55:13 ◼   ► was a little bit questionable.

00:55:14 ◼   ► The problem that I saw when looking at

00:55:17 ◼   ► what you would do with the Haswell chips,

00:55:19 ◼   ► on the Xeons, Intel sells most of these things in servers,

00:55:23 ◼   ► and the server business is very different

00:55:25 ◼   ► from the desktop workstation business that the Mac Pro sits in. And on servers, what

00:55:29 ◼   ► you really--what you generally want with the market demands is more and more cores, even

00:55:35 ◼   ► if each core isn't as fast. And so that's why you have most of the Xeon lineup, the

00:55:39 ◼   ► ones--at least the high ones that sell nicely and have nice profit margins and have all

00:55:44 ◼   ► the PCI express lanes and everything. Most of those optimize for core count and have

00:55:49 ◼   ► a clock speed of like 2 gigahertz, you know, so that you're getting like relatively low

00:55:53 ◼   ► clock speeds, very high core counts. The Mac Pro, it uses a very small number of these

00:56:00 ◼   ► chips. It offers three or four of them, and they're like the highest clocked versions

00:56:05 ◼   ► they can get at each core count basically without blowing thermals it seems. When they

00:56:10 ◼   ► moved from the previous ones, which was Sandy Bridge EP I think, into Haswell EP, well when

00:56:16 ◼   ► Haswell EP came out, sorry, this is the generation that they've skipped, there really was not

00:56:21 ◼   ► much of a gain to be had in the areas that the Mac Pro

00:56:24 ◼   ► actually sells chips from.

00:56:26 ◼   ► Like in those parts, it really was like,

00:56:29 ◼   ► the core counts went up slightly,

00:56:31 ◼   ► like you could get like a 10 core,

00:56:33 ◼   ► and like a 14 core, and stuff like that.

00:56:34 ◼   ► There was like a small core count upgrade,

00:56:36 ◼   ► but like all the clock speeds went down or stayed the same,

00:56:38 ◼   ► and power was a little bit weird.

00:56:40 ◼   ► So it was not a great update.

00:56:43 ◼   ► And so that might have been why Apple seemingly hasn't,

00:56:46 ◼   ► and seemingly won't use those.

00:56:49 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:56:51 ◼   ► But it also, you know, the Mac Pro also has

00:56:54 ◼   ► skipped generations before, this won't be the first time.

00:56:56 ◼   ► And so it might also just be partly that,

00:57:00 ◼   ► that it wasn't a major upgrade from Intel,

00:57:02 ◼   ► and partly Apple doesn't care that strongly

00:57:05 ◼   ► about upgrading these on a frequent basis.

00:57:08 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:57:09 ◼   ► - Back in the good old days, when a new chip came out,

00:57:11 ◼   ► everybody voted in their machines, because you had to,

00:57:13 ◼   ► because there was competitive pressure to.

00:57:15 ◼   ► And for the most part, that was a pretty good thing.

00:57:18 ◼   ► even if these were not a big upgrade over the old ones,

00:57:22 ◼   ► especially on the thing like the Mac Pro,

00:57:23 ◼   ► like, oh, more cores, who cares?

00:57:25 ◼   ► But like, that's, isn't that what people are buying this for?

00:57:27 ◼   ► Like the super parallel task where two extra cores

00:57:30 ◼   ► would be a significant difference, right?

00:57:32 ◼   ► Like of all the machines that are actually gonna care

00:57:34 ◼   ► that you have, you know, 12 versus 10 cores,

00:57:36 ◼   ► the Mac Pro is the one.

00:57:38 ◼   ► The tips are saying that they didn't have

00:57:40 ◼   ► any good GPU options, so they would have had to jump the,

00:57:42 ◼   ► bump the CPU without the GPU.

00:57:44 ◼   ► But anyway, Apple historically has not liked

00:57:46 ◼   ► to play that game, and they're like,

00:57:47 ◼   ► unless we have an impressive new machine,

00:57:49 ◼   ► we're not just gonna give you new CPUs,

00:57:51 ◼   ► except I guess in the laptops where they'll do that

00:57:54 ◼   ► with the Pazwell 1.5s, I don't know.

00:57:56 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, I mean they, I don't know if they've ever

00:58:00 ◼   ► skipped a major laptop CPU generation until now

00:58:04 ◼   ► where they appear to be skipping quad-core Broadwells

00:58:07 ◼   ► and going right to Skylake, but this,

00:58:10 ◼   ► and this is a weird situation with the timing

00:58:12 ◼   ► of those things, I don't think they'd ever skip one

00:58:14 ◼   ► before that.

00:58:15 ◼   ► So what does this mean if hypothetically you have two copies of, I think it's a late 2011

00:58:21 ◼   ► Hi-Res Antiglare 15-inch MacBook Pro, and there is not a singular, there is not one

00:58:26 ◼   ► retina Mac in your entire household, and you're thinking you're going to hold on for the next

00:58:31 ◼   ► major MacBook Pro revision, or, well, I shouldn't say major, but you know, the next big chipset.

00:58:37 ◼   ► Last I heard, that was theoretically coming this fall.

00:58:40 ◼   ► Does any of this change that?

00:58:41 ◼   ► - No, 'cause what they're saying is that

00:58:44 ◼   ► the generation of chips that we're moving into,

00:58:47 ◼   ► the 14 nanometer, this is what started with Broadwell

00:58:51 ◼   ► this past spring with the MacBook One,

00:58:52 ◼   ► and then the Airs, and then later on the 13.

00:58:55 ◼   ► That generation is the 14 nanometer one,

00:58:57 ◼   ► and that's, we are just in the infancy of that.

00:59:00 ◼   ► - And we're gonna be at 14 for a while,

00:59:01 ◼   ► is what they're saying. - Yeah, exactly.

00:59:02 ◼   ► - Just the 14, which is fine,

00:59:04 ◼   ► 'cause Skylake is apparently a big deal,

00:59:07 ◼   ► get some nice power savings.

00:59:09 ◼   ► I don't think it's the end of the world,

00:59:10 ◼   ► and it's not, you know, if you're waiting

00:59:13 ◼   ► for a new line of Macs to buy,

00:59:15 ◼   ► when the Skylike Macs come out,

00:59:17 ◼   ► they oughta be pretty nice machines.

00:59:18 ◼   ► So that's not a big deal.

00:59:20 ◼   ► It's just, the next year and the year after,

00:59:24 ◼   ► I don't know what the strategy is for,

00:59:27 ◼   ► I mean, if it's just gonna be three years

00:59:30 ◼   ► of 14 nanometer chips, yeah.

00:59:33 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, we've had, what,

00:59:34 ◼   ► two and a half years of Haswells,

00:59:36 ◼   ► and, you know, it hasn't been great.

00:59:39 ◼   ► Like we've been kind of stalled at performance

00:59:41 ◼   ► for a long time, but they're still good chips.

00:59:45 ◼   ► I mean like this iMac, this four gigahertz,

00:59:47 ◼   ► four core iMac that I have is amazing.

00:59:50 ◼   ► Like it is by far the best computer I've ever owned.

00:59:54 ◼   ► And by far, not by far, it's one of the fastest.

00:59:57 ◼   ► I did briefly have the six core cylinder Mac Pro

01:00:01 ◼   ► and that was faster in parallel tasks,

01:00:04 ◼   ► but this actually beats it in single threaded,

01:00:06 ◼   ► which is another problem the Xeon line has

01:00:08 ◼   ► that the consumer desktop chips, because they are newer

01:00:12 ◼   ► in their core revision, usually beat the Mac Pro Xeons

01:00:17 ◼   ► in single-threaded tasks,

01:00:18 ◼   ► which is embarrassing for the Mac Pro.

01:00:20 ◼   ► Anyway, I don't think this is gonna be that bad of a thing.

01:00:23 ◼   ► I think it's gonna be really just a continuation

01:00:26 ◼   ► of what we've seen for the last few years,

01:00:28 ◼   ► just now again, now they're just making it official.

01:00:30 ◼   ► Now they're admitting up front and warning us up front,

01:00:33 ◼   ► okay, this is what's going to happen again,

01:00:36 ◼   ► and we'll see what we can do about it.

01:00:37 ◼   ► On a final note, I should point out, lest my father, the ex-IBM-er, give me hell about

01:00:43 ◼   ► it, that IBM is actually at 7 nanometers, is that right?

01:00:46 ◼   ► Not really, they're just demoing, it's like a tech demo, like "look what we can do in

01:00:50 ◼   ► the lab, my cross is no object!"

01:00:53 ◼   ► Try shipping millions of those things every quarter.

01:00:55 ◼   ► I agree, I agree, but I just wanted to point it out, because obviously other people are

01:01:00 ◼   ► making progress in this arena, but just like you both said, that's not producing millions

01:01:05 ◼   ► of them, that's making one in a lab.

01:01:07 ◼   ► great expense with very exotic materials. What element are they using? Expensive stuff.

01:01:14 ◼   ► In summary, it's going to be expensive. Well, no, it's the same, like, I remember back in

01:01:21 ◼   ► the PowerPC days, they had similar type of things. Companies would say, "We can make

01:01:24 ◼   ► a chip at amazing speeds." It was probably like 1 GHz or 2 GHz back then, but we were

01:01:29 ◼   ► at like 300 MHz. Like, "Wow, how can you make something that fast? We use these exotic materials."

01:01:33 ◼   ► you could do lots of things for enough money, right?

01:01:37 ◼   ► But you can't, if it's gonna cost $10,000 per chip

01:01:39 ◼   ► or whatever, that doesn't make a difference.

01:01:41 ◼   ► It's not viable, you have to make it into something

01:01:44 ◼   ► that could be manufactured cheaply

01:01:46 ◼   ► and then you've got something.

01:01:47 ◼   ► That's Intel's whole thing, like they're gonna do a shrink

01:01:49 ◼   ► and suddenly the cost of all their chips

01:01:51 ◼   ► aren't gonna triple.

01:01:52 ◼   ► - The first computer magazine issue I ever bought

01:01:55 ◼   ► from a newsstand had a cover that was advertising

01:01:58 ◼   ► 100 megahertz.

01:01:59 ◼   ► 'Cause this was a big deal in 1995.

01:02:02 ◼   ► 3 or something and it was it was a DEC alpha chip that had been announced

01:02:08 ◼   ► that could hit 100 megahertz and I was very disappointed to learn that. I vividly

01:02:12 ◼   ► remember having a really intense argument with a I think he's a second

01:02:18 ◼   ► cousin of mine I know a relative of mine who was in college at the time and I was

01:02:23 ◼   ► in like middle school or something like that and he had if memory serves he had

01:02:29 ◼   ► had, I want to say it was like a gigabyte of storage across probably like six hard drives

01:02:35 ◼   ► because it was that long ago. And I remember arguing with him, there is no possible way

01:02:40 ◼   ► a human being could use a gigabyte of storage. It's just not possible. What could you possibly

01:02:45 ◼   ► put over a gigabyte of storage?

01:02:47 ◼   ► - It was back then you were storing like, you know, pages or like Word documents. It

01:02:51 ◼   ► wasn't like anything big. It was like...

01:02:53 ◼   ► - It didn't have like these podcast apps downloading as audio and leaving their temp files around

01:02:57 ◼   ► in your disks.

01:02:58 ◼   ► - Well done, well done.

01:03:00 ◼   ► But yeah, it's wild how things change.

01:03:02 ◼   ► In any case, why don't you tell us about one last thing

01:03:04 ◼   ► that's awesome and then we have one more thing

01:03:05 ◼   ► to talk about.

01:03:06 ◼   ► - Our final sponsor this week is MailRoute.

01:03:09 ◼   ► Once again, MailRoute.

01:03:10 ◼   ► Go to mailroute.net/atp.

01:03:12 ◼   ► You've heard from me over the years that I don't use Gmail.

01:03:16 ◼   ► I use regular IMAP hosts

01:03:18 ◼   ► because I don't like proprietary email systems

01:03:20 ◼   ► and I don't like webmail.

01:03:22 ◼   ► And I just want something that will work

01:03:23 ◼   ► with regular mail apps that I can get them anywhere

01:03:27 ◼   ► on any platform and I don't have to be tied to,

01:03:30 ◼   ► you know, somebody's web interface I don't like

01:03:32 ◼   ► or somebody's terrible IMAP gateway Gmail.

01:03:35 ◼   ► So anyway, and one of the problems when you try

01:03:38 ◼   ► to host mail somewhere other than Gmail, somewhere else,

01:03:41 ◼   ► or you try to host it yourself, if you're on your own server

01:03:44 ◼   ► or if you have a business and you have to administer

01:03:46 ◼   ► their email server, one of the big problems

01:03:49 ◼   ► with doing this is spam filtering.

01:03:51 ◼   ► Spam filtering is so complex these days, it's so advanced,

01:03:54 ◼   ► that really doing it right requires a dedicated service

01:03:58 ◼   ► that specializes in that, like a cloud service

01:04:01 ◼   ► that can combine wisdom from all sorts of things

01:04:03 ◼   ► and not just be like one installation,

01:04:04 ◼   ► like a simple Bayesian filter is not enough these days.

01:04:08 ◼   ► So MailRoute is a professional spam

01:04:12 ◼   ► and virus filtering service.

01:04:13 ◼   ► So what you do is you point your domain MX record at them.

01:04:18 ◼   ► So they become your official email host to the world.

01:04:21 ◼   ► Then you give them the address of your real MX record,

01:04:24 ◼   ► or your real server, and so they act as a proxy,

01:04:26 ◼   ► as a middleman between the internet and you,

01:04:28 ◼   ► and they shield you from all the crap

01:04:30 ◼   ► people try to send you that's spam and viruses.

01:04:32 ◼   ► I admit, when I first heard about it, I was skeptical.

01:04:35 ◼   ► I thought, you know, how well could it really work

01:04:37 ◼   ► compared to the customizable spam filtering and stuff

01:04:40 ◼   ► that Fazmail had that I'd be using for years before that?

01:04:43 ◼   ► And it worked so well that I,

01:04:45 ◼   ► when I was using other things, I would still get spam.

01:04:50 ◼   ► I would get maybe three to five spam messages a day,

01:04:53 ◼   ► and I thought that was about as good as it can get, really.

01:04:56 ◼   ► And then I switched to mail route, I don't know,

01:04:57 ◼   ► maybe six months ago, something like that.

01:04:59 ◼   ► It is so good that I had received one spam message

01:05:03 ◼   ► one day last week, and that was noteworthy,

01:05:06 ◼   ► because I just hadn't seen one in weeks or months.

01:05:09 ◼   ► Like, mail route is so good, you literally go from

01:05:13 ◼   ► whatever amount of spam you're getting,

01:05:14 ◼   ► you go to zero most of the time.

01:05:17 ◼   ► Like, it becomes a very rare occurrence

01:05:19 ◼   ► to see spam actually get delivered onto your inbox.

01:05:21 ◼   ► It is that good.

01:05:22 ◼   ► it isn't so aggressive that they're constantly

01:05:25 ◼   ► throwing away legitimate mail either.

01:05:27 ◼   ► Anything that's kind of on the border

01:05:29 ◼   ► where they're not quite sure if it's spam,

01:05:31 ◼   ► they put it in the quarantine section

01:05:32 ◼   ► for like a week or two or something,

01:05:34 ◼   ► and then they email you a summary

01:05:36 ◼   ► of just like the subject lines of those things.

01:05:39 ◼   ► And you can just give a quick little glance down that list

01:05:42 ◼   ► every day, every week, or whatever,

01:05:43 ◼   ► and you can see, all right, you know what,

01:05:44 ◼   ► that one, that was legitimate, let that through.

01:05:46 ◼   ► All the rest of these, forget about it.

01:05:48 ◼   ► Those are all spam.

01:05:49 ◼   ► So it's very, very easy to make sure

01:05:50 ◼   ► you don't have false positives for too long,

01:05:53 ◼   ► and to train it not to do that anymore

01:05:55 ◼   ► for whatever slightly spammy things

01:05:57 ◼   ► that you get emails for.

01:05:59 ◼   ► But the spam filtering is just shockingly good.

01:06:02 ◼   ► It is so good.

01:06:03 ◼   ► I don't think I will ever go without it now.

01:06:05 ◼   ► It is, I can very, very highly recommend it.

01:06:08 ◼   ► Over the years, I've recommended people go to IMAP posts.

01:06:11 ◼   ► I've recommended Fast Mail a lot specifically.

01:06:13 ◼   ► I will say now, I very, very highly recommend

01:06:17 ◼   ► putting MailRoute in front of your IMAP post.

01:06:19 ◼   ► It is really good.

01:06:20 ◼   ► From what I hear from Gmail people,

01:06:22 ◼   ► it sounds like it's actually better

01:06:23 ◼   ► than Gmail spam filtering.

01:06:25 ◼   ► And I know a lot of Gmail people think it can't get better,

01:06:27 ◼   ► but if you're ever seeing spam, it can get better.

01:06:31 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:06:32 ◼   ► That's basically it.

01:06:33 ◼   ► So mail route really is amazing.

01:06:34 ◼   ► I very highly recommend mail route.

01:06:37 ◼   ► If you have your own domain name, or if you host email,

01:06:40 ◼   ► or if you have your own post,

01:06:41 ◼   ► put mail route in front of your mail, trust me.

01:06:43 ◼   ► It is that good.

01:06:44 ◼   ► They're not paying me to say that.

01:06:45 ◼   ► They're paying me to say this other script

01:06:46 ◼   ► that I'm mostly ignoring

01:06:46 ◼   ► 'cause I'm telling you something better,

01:06:47 ◼   ► which is I use it and I love it

01:06:50 ◼   ► and I can tell you first hand it works for me.

01:06:52 ◼   ► Nobody can buy me saying that.

01:06:54 ◼   ► I'm telling you that because it's true.

01:06:55 ◼   ► Anyway, back to their script.

01:06:57 ◼   ► Go to mailroute.net/atp for a free trial

01:07:01 ◼   ► and if you use that link, mailroute.net/atp,

01:07:04 ◼   ► you will also get 10% off for the lifetime of your account.

01:07:08 ◼   ► Not 10% off for your first purchase, not 10% off once,

01:07:11 ◼   ► 10% off for the lifetime of your account.

01:07:13 ◼   ► That is awesome.

01:07:14 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to MailRoute, mailroute.net/atp.

01:07:17 ◼   ► So lately there's been a humongous kerfuffle with Reddit.

01:07:22 ◼   ► I have to admit I don't really ever use Reddit.

01:07:26 ◼   ► I think I may have mentioned in a show on the show in the past, I don't know if it ever

01:07:30 ◼   ► made it to the final version, but the only time I ever really used Reddit was when I

01:07:35 ◼   ► needed to acquire things after one of my favorite websites got shut down.

01:07:42 ◼   ► And I used Reddit here and there for that.

01:07:44 ◼   ► But I don't use it for discussions. I don't use it for really anything else. And I guess

01:07:50 ◼   ► there was a real big—there was a lot of agita with regard to their now ex-CEO, Ellen

01:07:57 ◼   ► Pao. Is that right? Did I get that right?

01:07:59 ◼   ► I believe so.

01:08:01 ◼   ► And I can't pass judgment as to whether or not she was good at her job because I don't

01:08:06 ◼   ► really use Reddit. But it seemed like a lot of people came out of the woodwork to try

01:08:12 ◼   ► to get her out of the CEO position. And it seemed like, from an outsider's perspective,

01:08:18 ◼   ► the whole of Reddit tried to kind of hoist her out of the chair, if you will.

01:08:25 ◼   ► And the only real concrete information I've gotten about this is from Hello Internet,

01:08:30 ◼   ► and I just listened—I think it was today, actually—to their latest episode, and we'll

01:08:34 ◼   ► have a link in the show notes, where they talk about this. And CGP Grey seems to be

01:08:38 ◼   ► a pretty big Reddit user and a pretty big Reddit fan, whereas Brady Hare and the other

01:08:43 ◼   ► host seems to have a much more similar perspective to myself, or I should say I have a more similar

01:08:50 ◼   ► perspective to him, in that it all seems really gross to me from the outside.

01:08:55 ◼   ► And it all seems like a kind of crummy corner of the internet, but I'm probably judging

01:09:01 ◼   ► unfairly because I'm only hearing about the crummiest parts of this corner of the internet.

01:09:07 ◼   ► So I don't know, Jon, do you use Reddit at all?

01:09:11 ◼   ► Do you have any thoughts on this?

01:09:12 ◼   ► I do.

01:09:14 ◼   ► I think it's worth explaining what Reddit is, broadly speaking, because if people don't

01:09:21 ◼   ► use it, like, I don't think the name tells you anything about it, and you could get confused

01:09:26 ◼   ► about what the heck goes on there.

01:09:29 ◼   ► It is in the grand scheme of things.

01:09:30 ◼   ► There's a website where people go to have little communities.

01:09:36 ◼   ► You make a subreddit about whatever topic you're interested in talking about and there

01:09:39 ◼   ► people can share links with each other and they can comment on the links and they can

01:09:43 ◼   ► also vote on each other's comments.

01:09:45 ◼   ► That's basically what it boils down to.

01:09:46 ◼   ► You've probably heard of lots of sites like this where you can make a little sub-community,

01:09:50 ◼   ► you have an account, you can share information with each other in links and comments and

01:09:56 ◼   ► then the things that you share other people can comment on and then everyone gets to vote

01:09:59 ◼   ► on the things that you say and it seems like all right well whatever but you know we've

01:10:02 ◼   ► had web bulletin boards we had you know dig and hacker news and like a million other sites

01:10:09 ◼   ► that are like this reddit is one of those sites it was one of the ones that it kind

01:10:14 ◼   ► of caught on it's very large very popular there are subreddits for everything you could

01:10:18 ◼   ► possibly imagine from technologies to cats to alligators to knitting to everything you

01:10:23 ◼   ► imagine. It seems like, you know, everything's like, whatever. It's, it's like, Content-Ask owns them

01:10:30 ◼   ► now. I'm not sure if they ever made money. They have difficulty trying to come up with a

01:10:33 ◼   ► monetization pattern, but they get a tremendous amount of traffic and it's a place where people go.

01:10:37 ◼   ► Everything else about it, like, is sort of problems of their own making, because if the,

01:10:44 ◼   ► setting aside, how do you make money? Like, we talk about that to death. Like, hey, you got a

01:10:47 ◼   ► lot of traffic, you got a lot of users, you got a lot of eyeballs or whatever, figured how to

01:10:50 ◼   ► monetize them, stuff like that. The decision Reddit is faced with is a decision that many

01:10:56 ◼   ► sites that are very popular are faced with, and almost every site I can think of off the

01:11:00 ◼   ► top of my head makes better decisions about this, which is, since anyone can come and

01:11:03 ◼   ► make an account, and anyone can come and make a little subgroup or whatever about whatever

01:11:06 ◼   ► topic they want, do you have some kind of policy, terms and conditions, code of conduct,

01:11:16 ◼   ► Something saying what are you allowed to do and say and what kind of groups are you allowed to have on this site?

01:11:22 ◼   ► And I like me I can't think of another

01:11:25 ◼   ► Website that doesn't have something like that certainly Twitter does and Twitter

01:11:29 ◼   ► You know ways complain about the harassment on Twitter and stuff like that at least they have a policy right

01:11:33 ◼   ► Reddit's big thing was like no man free speech anybody can come here and make a subreddit about anything and

01:11:40 ◼   ► Like we should be allowed to say what it like

01:11:43 ◼   ► Anyone tell me when someone brings up free speech on the internet. I just I don't think I've seen an example of it being correct

01:11:50 ◼   ► Maybe because I don't hang out on constitutional law boards

01:11:52 ◼   ► Maybe that's the place to work. What people really mean is I'm allowed to say whatever I want on someone else's website

01:11:58 ◼   ► Because free speech right so read it the people who run read it fancy themselves as like we're not just a website

01:12:04 ◼   ► we are the internet and we are completely neutral and

01:12:08 ◼   ► Even though we're a privately held company that pays money to someone to run our servers and pays employees to write the software for them

01:12:14 ◼   ► And does all this stuff really we are just a giant level playing field for everybody to come and and do it

01:12:22 ◼   ► And therefore we don't want to have pretty much any controls over what you're allowed to do what you're allowed to say

01:12:29 ◼   ► What kind of groups you're allowed to have all?

01:12:32 ◼   ► everything is welcome, all people, all ideas, all behavior, as long as I guess you don't hack us and

01:12:38 ◼   ► destroy our servers or something like that because that would be bad.

01:12:40 ◼   ► But anything beyond that, like if you're just using our site, if you are typing words into a box and clicking buttons,

01:12:44 ◼   ► anything you do is a-okay with us. And a lot of the controversy with the new CEO came in because she

01:12:51 ◼   ► decided that some things are not okay, that we're gonna have some sort of barriers and rules about, "Oh, okay,

01:12:57 ◼   ► well, you can't just type any words you want into this box.

01:12:59 ◼   ► You can't have communities surrounding anything you want because we don't want we don't want you those type of people using our website

01:13:07 ◼   ► We don't want them to be part of our quote-unquote community and you were saying case like oh

01:13:11 ◼   ► It seems like an icky place or whatever

01:13:12 ◼   ► There is no reddit community ready this gigantic reddit has people who are just obsessed with cute cat pictures, right?

01:13:17 ◼   ► And then reddit has people who were just you know

01:13:20 ◼   ► Showing was it pictures of fat people to make fun of them or whatever or like racist bulletin boards or you know

01:13:29 ◼   ► like every possible while ID you can imagine the whole idea is like oh this is this is a place where we can go and

01:13:34 ◼   ► we're allowed to use these people's website and put our information in their database servers and

01:13:38 ◼   ► Send requests to their web servers and it's all free speech man. We can do whatever you want and

01:13:43 ◼   ► Reddit trying to add some kind of controls like okay well certain things

01:13:47 ◼   ► We don't want to be on something that reddit.com like the certain things

01:13:51 ◼   ► We don't want so if you want to do that go someplace else and do it

01:13:54 ◼   ► The reddit community such as it is like the people who believe in free speech

01:13:58 ◼   ► Like you can't stop us from putting words into your servers. That's our

01:14:03 ◼   ► That's our birthright reddit is about free speech

01:14:07 ◼   ► And it's just so depressing to me to see and by the way, they're backsliding on that now

01:14:13 ◼   ► They're like, oh that that CEO is gone and the new person in here

01:14:16 ◼   ► I don't know all the backstory this but the new person is actually one of the early people in reddit is like actually we want

01:14:21 ◼   ► We want you to allow it to be do anything you want

01:14:24 ◼   ► except for these very few things that we narrowly define as being bad.

01:14:29 ◼   ► I don't understand what the sort of the mental barrier here is to the people who are running

01:14:35 ◼   ► the site, putting their foot down and saying, "This is okay, and this is not." They somehow

01:14:40 ◼   ► feel like by doing that they're crushing freedom under their jackboot. Like you just run reddit.com,

01:14:45 ◼   ► it's a website on the internet where people type words into boxes and put them into database

01:14:49 ◼   ► servers that you run. That doesn't define free speech. So I find it incredibly frustrating to see

01:14:55 ◼   ► all this posturing and all this anger all so misdirected. And the only thing I put in the

01:15:02 ◼   ► show that's about this is two tweets from Laurie Voss, who I think sum up this entire thing.

01:15:07 ◼   ► She says, "The tragedy of all online community spaces is that the goals of inclusive and safe

01:15:13 ◼   ► are at the extreme mutually exclusive goals." So what she's saying is like, "Do you want to

01:15:18 ◼   ► Want to have a place where everybody is welcome?

01:15:20 ◼   ► Oh, we are an inclusive site.

01:15:21 ◼   ► Anyone can come to Reddit, anyone can make a subreddit.

01:15:23 ◼   ► Like it's good to be inclusive.

01:15:24 ◼   ► Everyone likes inclusive, right?

01:15:25 ◼   ► We don't tell you you can't come here

01:15:27 ◼   ► because your eyes are the wrong color

01:15:29 ◼   ► or because you speak the wrong language

01:15:31 ◼   ► or you're into the wrong, you like dogs instead of cats.

01:15:34 ◼   ► We're an inclusive site, right?

01:15:36 ◼   ► But also safe, what does safe mean, right?

01:15:39 ◼   ► Our next tweet, at some point you have to exclude someone.

01:15:41 ◼   ► You get to pick if it's the people feeling unsafe

01:15:44 ◼   ► or the people making them feel unsafe.

01:15:46 ◼   ► So at some point you have to exclude somebody

01:15:47 ◼   ► if you let everybody come in, people come in and do terrible things. So you have to

01:15:51 ◼   ► at a certain point exclude somebody. Who do you want to exclude? Do you want to exclude

01:15:54 ◼   ► the people who don't feel safe because there's a bulletin board about how to rape women and

01:15:59 ◼   ► that kind of makes the women on Reddit not feel very good, that they are somehow associated

01:16:03 ◼   ► with the same website where this board exists? Or do you want the people who are making the

01:16:08 ◼   ► "let me tell you how to rape women" subreddit, do you want to make them leave? You have to

01:16:12 ◼   ► exclude somebody because if you let everybody in, some people are not going to feel safe

01:16:16 ◼   ► or comfortable or welcome in this community. These two tweets basically sum it up and incredibly,

01:16:22 ◼   ► every time I read anything from these Reddit people, they make the decision of like,

01:16:25 ◼   ► what we really want is for the people to be able to make the rape boards. Like, you know,

01:16:30 ◼   ► not the specific examples, I don't know if they've banned them or whatever, but like,

01:16:32 ◼   ► some people are made to feel uncomfortable by what pretty much anyone would say is vile, terrible

01:16:40 ◼   ► ideas and behavior. And it's like, well, they need to be allowed to do that because we are

01:16:45 ◼   ► the government of the United States, and we must allow them the freedom to put their words into

01:16:49 ◼   ► our database servers. Therefore, free speech. Sorry, I just got to let them do that." It boggles

01:16:56 ◼   ► my mind. It makes me angry and frustrated, mostly because there is a lot of good stuff on Reddit,

01:17:00 ◼   ► because again, the people who are making the cute cat pictures, those cat pictures are really cute.

01:17:04 ◼   ► They're not bothering anybody. And the thing is, I think I saw a graph somewhere trying to show the

01:17:11 ◼   ► overlap between the various boards. There is some surprising overlap, but it's sometimes not so surprising overlap.

01:17:17 ◼   ► Like, you know, how many people are member of the white supremacy board, but also member of the cute cat pictures board?

01:17:23 ◼   ► Okay, how about members of the white supremacy board and members of the men's rights board?

01:17:26 ◼   ► All right, and you start to see a little bit more. Members of Gamergate and members of the young Nazis of America board. Like, you know,

01:17:33 ◼   ► it's not 100% overlap,

01:17:35 ◼   ► But I don't I would love to see a graph of like are the cat people really just cat people or

01:17:40 ◼   ► So many people love cats that an equal number of neo-nazis are in the cat boards as are in every other board. I don't know

01:17:47 ◼   ► Anyway, I think that that it is a ridiculous thing that the people running reddit can't seem to get a handle on the idea that

01:17:55 ◼   ► They get to choose what kind of people get to put words into their database servers and they seem

01:18:02 ◼   ► incapable of making any sort of common sense decision about what should be allowed to happen on reddit or

01:18:08 ◼   ► Maybe they're just totally for like we there maybe they're anarchists

01:18:11 ◼   ► Maybe they say we want to run a bunch of servers and we want to let everyone say anything

01:18:14 ◼   ► Go for it and like there you go

01:18:16 ◼   ► that's that's what you're gonna do but that's why people keep talking like the downfall of reddit and everything because I think

01:18:20 ◼   ► Most people who use reddit had an idea that the people who ran reddit had

01:18:26 ◼   ► Similar standards them about what is and isn't sort of decent and acceptable and the people who run reddit want to let everybody do everything

01:18:33 ◼   ► The rest of the people have to think are just gonna slowly fade away because no one wants to be associated with a site like that

01:18:38 ◼   ► Like a very small number of you're just gonna turn into you know, 4chan or 8chan, right?

01:18:42 ◼   ► Like if if you let everybody in eventually everybody leaves except for the most terrible people and congratulations, you know reddit

01:18:49 ◼   ► You are running a site filled with the most terrible people

01:18:51 ◼   ► Feel free to do that. Feel free to let them all type in text boxes to each other

01:18:55 ◼   ► I hope you feel good about the new site you've built

01:18:57 ◼   ► because that's what you're effectively creating

01:19:00 ◼   ► by allowing anybody to do everything.

01:19:03 ◼   ► - I don't have much to say on Reddit

01:19:04 ◼   ► because I don't know anything about Reddit.

01:19:07 ◼   ► And every time I have visited it for something,

01:19:10 ◼   ► either trying to find information on something

01:19:11 ◼   ► or following a link there,

01:19:13 ◼   ► every visit to it has made me never want to visit it again.

01:19:16 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:19:17 ◼   ► Literally, I'm not exaggerating.

01:19:19 ◼   ► Every time I'm like, oh, this is terrible, why do people,

01:19:21 ◼   ► and I know, academically,

01:19:24 ◼   ► I know there are good parts of it.

01:19:26 ◼   ► I've never stumbled upon those really.

01:19:28 ◼   ► - I never read a good Ask Me Anything or I Am A Thing.

01:19:32 ◼   ► - Those are usually really hard to navigate.

01:19:35 ◼   ► First of all, I hate nested comments.

01:19:36 ◼   ► Like, and I was an old forum nerd back in the day,

01:19:40 ◼   ► so I know the whole, I know the problems

01:19:43 ◼   ► with both nested comments and also flat threads.

01:19:47 ◼   ► They both have dysfunction, just different dysfunction.

01:19:51 ◼   ► so you know I I'm very familiar with the challenges in both the community

01:19:57 ◼   ► monitoring and regulation and also the technical side of how community software

01:20:03 ◼   ► online had like how how this community style thing is built and and how things

01:20:09 ◼   ► are enforced it's it's a very hard problem not to mention my time at

01:20:12 ◼   ► tumblr we saw a lot of things not quite the same level as what reddit is dealing

01:20:18 ◼   ► with, but a lot of kind of related problems of things like, you know, like

01:20:23 ◼   ► every every couple days we get a phone call from like a high school principal

01:20:28 ◼   ► or like some kind of like, you know, middle of nowhere police department or

01:20:33 ◼   ► something complaining about something that some kids had about some other kid

01:20:36 ◼   ► on tumblr and wanting us to take it down and like when you you have to deal with

01:20:40 ◼   ► stuff like that when you're a community site it's dealing with community stuff

01:20:43 ◼   ► is just really messy.

01:20:46 ◼   ► It's very difficult and it's very, very messy.

01:20:49 ◼   ► For all the reasons you just said, Jon,

01:20:50 ◼   ► like there's a lot of these decisions

01:20:53 ◼   ► that there is no good option.

01:20:55 ◼   ► You just have to choose between two bad options

01:20:57 ◼   ► and a lot of things, like what I was saying

01:20:59 ◼   ► with my cell download stuff earlier,

01:21:01 ◼   ► like a lot of these things, you just have to pick

01:21:04 ◼   ► the lesser of two evils and no matter what you pick,

01:21:06 ◼   ► it's gonna have big downsides for someone

01:21:08 ◼   ► or it's gonna disincentivize good stuff

01:21:10 ◼   ► or incentivize bad stuff.

01:21:12 ◼   ► - But we're not even at the hard questions.

01:21:15 ◼   ► There are the type of things like,

01:21:16 ◼   ► am I allowed to threaten to rape somebody on Reddit?

01:21:18 ◼   ► And the Reddit CEO is like, well, I'll allow it.

01:21:20 ◼   ► Technically, it's not a threat of violence.

01:21:22 ◼   ► - Oh, God.

01:21:23 ◼   ► - I mean, we're not talking about the people

01:21:25 ◼   ► getting into a heated argument

01:21:26 ◼   ► and should they be allowed to call each other jerks

01:21:28 ◼   ► and sort of ad hominem attacks are not allowed.

01:21:32 ◼   ► That's in the gray area.

01:21:33 ◼   ► It's difficult to figure out or whatever.

01:21:34 ◼   ► We're talking about just straight up racism,

01:21:39 ◼   ► sexism, real threats of violence,

01:21:42 ◼   ► and seriously, the new CEO is on the board going,

01:21:46 ◼   ► responding to people, "I'm not sure if that,"

01:21:48 ◼   ► you're not sure?

01:21:50 ◼   ► I guess that's the kind of community you want.

01:21:52 ◼   ► Again, I'm not saying he shouldn't be allowed to do this.

01:21:54 ◼   ► Feel free to make this kind of community,

01:21:55 ◼   ► but if he's waffling, like, "These are the tough decisions.

01:21:57 ◼   ► "Boy, should we allow rape threats,

01:21:59 ◼   ► "or is that against the rule?"

01:22:00 ◼   ► I guess we have to allow it.

01:22:01 ◼   ► I don't want that guy's speech to be impinged

01:22:03 ◼   ► because I am the government of the United States of America.

01:22:06 ◼   ► - Well, and I think, first of all,

01:22:08 ◼   ► So we should definitely say that the last episode

01:22:11 ◼   ► of Hello Internet and the last two episodes of Rocket

01:22:14 ◼   ► covered this probably way better than we can

01:22:16 ◼   ► 'cause those are people who know a lot more

01:22:17 ◼   ► about Reddit than we do.

01:22:18 ◼   ► And so they really did a very good job of that.

01:22:21 ◼   ► So listen to those if you want more of the inside stuff

01:22:23 ◼   ► about what specific challenges that the CEO of Reddit faces

01:22:27 ◼   ► and why Ellen Pao might have been good or bad for that.

01:22:33 ◼   ► Anyway, but it seems like one of the big pressures

01:22:37 ◼   ► they have now is business.

01:22:39 ◼   ► They make some money, and they have this corporate owner,

01:22:44 ◼   ► and they have a board of directors,

01:22:46 ◼   ► and they want more money because the money they make

01:22:49 ◼   ► is not really commensurate with the amount of traffic

01:22:51 ◼   ► they get, they should be making a lot more.

01:22:53 ◼   ► - But is this what you would do to make more money?

01:22:56 ◼   ► Like wouldn't you try to go mainstream?

01:22:58 ◼   ► Like don't you wanna--

01:22:59 ◼   ► - Well, so that's the thing.

01:23:00 ◼   ► So let me tell you another story from my past

01:23:02 ◼   ► that's long and boring.

01:23:03 ◼   ► The reason I'm telling it is because it's actually

01:23:05 ◼   ► about the same coffee shop as the last Long and Boring story.

01:23:08 ◼   ► - Oh God, here we go.

01:23:09 ◼   ► - So this coffee shop in my hometown,

01:23:10 ◼   ► Cuppa Joe in Bexley, Ohio,

01:23:13 ◼   ► while I was there, they had a big problem

01:23:16 ◼   ► where middle schoolers discovered it.

01:23:19 ◼   ► And so it was always packed full of like 12 year olds

01:23:23 ◼   ► who were just kind of loitering around,

01:23:27 ◼   ► hardly buying anything but just taking up all the seats

01:23:30 ◼   ► and hanging around outside and kind of standing around

01:23:32 ◼   ► smoking and all it's like it was just not a great scene and and they it kind

01:23:37 ◼   ► of drove other customers away because who wants to hang out around a bunch of

01:23:42 ◼   ► delinquent middle schoolers who are bored and loitering and not doing

01:23:45 ◼   ► anything and smoking and so one summer they banned them I don't know how

01:23:50 ◼   ► doesn't really matter how they banned all the middle schoolers they implemented

01:23:54 ◼   ► some kind of like minimum age thing or you had to be with a parent or whatever

01:23:56 ◼   ► it doesn't matter somehow they banned them and for a while the place was empty

01:24:01 ◼   ► and I knew the manager at the time, and I asked him,

01:24:03 ◼   ► like, you know, how was this going?

01:24:04 ◼   ► And he said, they were making more money than ever.

01:24:07 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:24:08 ◼   ► Because, you know, even though it wasn't getting

01:24:12 ◼   ► the volume it got before, it was getting more

01:24:15 ◼   ► of the profitable customers, the older people,

01:24:18 ◼   ► like the college students who were there studying

01:24:19 ◼   ► and buying drinks all day, the people who would come

01:24:22 ◼   ► in the morning and come in the evenings,

01:24:24 ◼   ► who, you know, were just buying stuff,

01:24:26 ◼   ► drinking it and leaving, and making, you know,

01:24:28 ◼   ► cycling the tables more often, not putting off other people

01:24:32 ◼   ► like when they when they come in there, and I don't know how

01:24:35 ◼   ► the result that I left, but

01:24:37 ◼   ► they I was very surprised at the time and looking back on it. I

01:24:42 ◼   ► shouldn't be that that worked so well for them and you know

01:24:45 ◼   ► read it. I think faces not that different of a dilemma here

01:24:50 ◼   ► where it's like if they want to become more mainstream, if they

01:24:52 ◼   ► want to become more attractive to advertisers and therefore

01:24:55 ◼   ► more profitable, if they want their the value of their ads to

01:24:57 ◼   ► go up, if they want the number of advertisers to go up, I think they have to get rid of

01:25:02 ◼   ► all this garbage. They have to get rid of all this, like, you know, anarchist/libertarian,

01:25:07 ◼   ► free speech, crazy people who are really just aggressive, hateful people for a lot of them.

01:25:13 ◼   ► Like, you know, not all of them, obviously, but many of them are just these very aggressive,

01:25:16 ◼   ► hateful people who feel entitled to have their words all over the place. I think you can't

01:25:21 ◼   ► have both ways. You can't have that garbage on your site that is highly offensive, legally

01:25:26 ◼   ► questionable, no advertiser wants to be associated with that, and also make more money with advertising.

01:25:33 ◼   ► You have to pick one or the other.

01:25:34 ◼   ► And it seems like they're trying to hide the most objectionable stuff. Like, "Okay,

01:25:39 ◼   ► a lot of people are offended by this, but we won't run ads against it, so we're

01:25:42 ◼   ► technically not making money off of it." And everyone's like, "Well, you're just

01:25:45 ◼   ► subsidizing it with the other stuff, and we'll put it off in the corner and they'll

01:25:47 ◼   ► stay by themselves." And it's like, why are you bending over backwards to make sure

01:25:52 ◼   ► that these people have a place to share hate with each other? Never mind that it's not

01:25:56 ◼   ► not just, "Oh, we're just letting them put their words into our database."

01:25:59 ◼   ► If you want to go on to the sort of secondary effects of allowing a place for people to

01:26:05 ◼   ► reinforce each other's hateful ideas and recruit new people and like, "Oh, no incitement to

01:26:10 ◼   ► violence that's against the Reddit guidelines."

01:26:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm sure that will work exactly as intended when you get a bunch of hateful people talking

01:26:15 ◼   ► to each other constantly over and over again and sharing hateful pictures and videos and

01:26:19 ◼   ► all sorts of terrible things.

01:26:21 ◼   ► I'm sure nothing bad will come out of that.

01:26:22 ◼   ► It will just be positive.

01:26:23 ◼   ► Like as long as they stay within the terms and conditions, no.

01:26:25 ◼   ► It's so ridiculous.

01:26:26 ◼   ► It's so asinine.

01:26:28 ◼   ► And again, if that's the site they want to run, go for it.

01:26:30 ◼   ► But if their job is to make money for their parent company,

01:26:34 ◼   ► this is not the way to do it.

01:26:35 ◼   ► And using your middle school coffee shop example,

01:26:37 ◼   ► it's as if at a certain point,

01:26:39 ◼   ► all the non-middle schoolers left,

01:26:41 ◼   ► and all that was left was middle school students,

01:26:44 ◼   ► and you realize, well, now we have to cater to them

01:26:46 ◼   ► because they're our only customers.

01:26:47 ◼   ► Like they're, not that Reddit is at this point,

01:26:49 ◼   ► but it's like, if you suddenly turn into,

01:26:51 ◼   ► well, I guess we have to become a dance club or something.

01:26:53 ◼   ► Because everyone else is dumb, right?

01:26:57 ◼   ► Reddit is not at that point, not even close to it.

01:26:59 ◼   ► But if you just keep going down this path, I feel like the regular people will leave

01:27:04 ◼   ► and you'll just be left with, "We are a community of hate speech bulletin boards because these

01:27:09 ◼   ► people have no place else to go."

01:27:10 ◼   ► It's like 8chan or 4chan to a lesser extent.

01:27:14 ◼   ► That's not the kind of business you want to run.

01:27:16 ◼   ► That's not a growth market.

01:27:17 ◼   ► That's not a lot of people with a lot of spending power.

01:27:20 ◼   ► If you want money, you want to go mainstream.

01:27:21 ◼   ► And it just seems like the Reddit CEO is trying to preserve this ideal, like we provide a

01:27:29 ◼   ► forum for people to openly share ideas.

01:27:32 ◼   ► That's sort of a high-minded ideal of Reddit, but the consequences of it are not going to

01:27:37 ◼   ► be good for Reddit's bottom line, or for the popularity of Reddit, or for Reddit's reputation,

01:27:44 ◼   ► or for his reputation, or just anything really.

01:27:46 ◼   ► It just seems like all downside.

01:27:47 ◼   ► And again, go ahead, you know,

01:27:49 ◼   ► if that's what the company wants to do,

01:27:52 ◼   ► feel free to pursue that path,

01:27:53 ◼   ► but I don't see it turning into anything good

01:27:56 ◼   ► for anyone involved.

01:27:57 ◼   ► - So this probably doesn't mean anything

01:28:00 ◼   ► for the purpose of our discussion,

01:28:01 ◼   ► and I probably shouldn't take as a sign

01:28:03 ◼   ► of me being right or wrong about this,

01:28:05 ◼   ► but that coffee shop closed last fall.

01:28:07 ◼   ► - Coffee shops close all the time.

01:28:09 ◼   ► - I know, it sounded like the building they were in

01:28:12 ◼   ► sold to get knocked down and built something bigger.

01:28:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I don't know.

01:28:17 ◼   ► That's part of the whole ideal of the sort of the,

01:28:21 ◼   ► someone in the chat room said

01:28:22 ◼   ► there really is a Reddit community.

01:28:23 ◼   ► I think there's a stereotype of a typical Reddit user

01:28:27 ◼   ► that's perhaps somewhat accurate,

01:28:29 ◼   ► but I think there are a lot of people,

01:28:31 ◼   ► like all three of us, who don't go to Reddit

01:28:33 ◼   ► unless someone links to it.

01:28:34 ◼   ► And when we link to it, we look at the funny cat GIF

01:28:36 ◼   ► and then we move on with our lives, right?

01:28:39 ◼   ► But are we Reddit users?

01:28:40 ◼   ► Are we part of the community?

01:28:41 ◼   ► We're not part of the community, but we follow,

01:28:44 ◼   ► It's a popular site, people link you to it, you end up there, you look at something and

01:28:48 ◼   ► then you go someplace else.

01:28:49 ◼   ► I think a lot of that traffic is from things like that.

01:28:52 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe they know the breakdowns.

01:28:55 ◼   ► I don't know if most of their traffic comes from people just posting hate to each other

01:29:01 ◼   ► and over and over again or getting in big arguments and 17 level indented comment threads

01:29:05 ◼   ► attached to things.

01:29:06 ◼   ► Maybe that is where their stuff comes from.

01:29:08 ◼   ► It just seems to me it's a bad decision.

01:29:11 ◼   ► I think less of the people who run Reddit every time I hear one of their decisions or

01:29:14 ◼   ► see them in this sort of like laurely nuanced discussions as they try to parse what should

01:29:20 ◼   ► and shouldn't be acceptable behavior on Reddit and just reveal themselves to have no understanding

01:29:24 ◼   ► of other people's experiences.

01:29:28 ◼   ► I'm sure that all the specific examples I cited in this podcast are not accurate.

01:29:32 ◼   ► Feel free to wander Reddit yourself and try to find out what these people's opinions are.

01:29:36 ◼   ► But every time I see anything from them, every time I go to Reddit and see these discussions

01:29:39 ◼   ► with the new leadership behind Reddit, I just think.

01:29:44 ◼   ► I was excited when Ellen Pao came in and started making changes, like really straightforward,

01:29:50 ◼   ► sensible changes.

01:29:51 ◼   ► Get rid of the hate groups.

01:29:52 ◼   ► And it was like, "Oh, you can't get rid of the hate groups.

01:29:54 ◼   ► What do you mean?"

01:29:56 ◼   ► Again, I don't know the details.

01:29:59 ◼   ► I don't know why she was pushed out.

01:30:01 ◼   ► I'm sure she was subject to the same harassment that every woman gets who opens her mouth

01:30:05 ◼   ► and says anything ever, let alone is the CEO of a company, is in charge of a bunch of little

01:30:10 ◼   ► man-children who are just angry about everything.

01:30:12 ◼   ► Especially that company.

01:30:15 ◼   ► I can't imagine a more hostile, well maybe there are some, but that was definitely on

01:30:20 ◼   ► the more hostile side.

01:30:21 ◼   ► Yeah, and I don't know if she, you know, I have no idea what hers is, but all I know

01:30:26 ◼   ► is that the few things I heard announced come out of her leadership seemed like good ideas,

01:30:30 ◼   ► and then there was backlash against them.

01:30:32 ◼   ► I felt depressed about it, and then when she was kicked out, I got even more depressed,

01:30:35 ◼   ► and then seeing the views of the new CEO who is apparently one of the founders, it's just

01:30:38 ◼   ► like, nope, they're not getting it.

01:30:40 ◼   ► So anyway, Reddit is really not for me.

01:30:44 ◼   ► And furthermore, I think if Reddit's goals are to be a place that continues to have a

01:30:50 ◼   ► lot of traffic and then makes a lot of money, that the current strategy they're pursuing

01:30:54 ◼   ► doesn't make any sense to me.

01:30:55 ◼   ► I think the other thing that I find fascinating about all this, which I kind of hinted at

01:30:59 ◼   ► earlier is how a group of users of a website can seemingly have so much influence that

01:31:06 ◼   ► they can cause the chief executive officer of a company to be fired, dismissed, quit,

01:31:16 ◼   ► whatever. That's just weird to me that even a couple hundred thousand people, I think

01:31:23 ◼   ► I'd heard that there were a couple hundred thousand signatures on this petition, this

01:31:27 ◼   ► online petition, which isn't even really signatures but whatever, that that many people came together

01:31:33 ◼   ► to decide to try to oust a CEO, man, woman, it doesn't matter.

01:31:40 ◼   ► That's just insane to me that the users of a website, none of whom I think are paying

01:31:47 ◼   ► the website any money, seem to think that they can have that kind of influence and in

01:31:50 ◼   ► numbers seem to have that kind of influence.

01:31:54 ◼   ► And I think a lot of this started,

01:31:55 ◼   ► if I understand things correctly,

01:31:57 ◼   ► because a really beloved moderator was dismissed

01:32:01 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:32:02 ◼   ► I guess the person who did the--

01:32:03 ◼   ► - Well, this is kind of like,

01:32:06 ◼   ► this is really about ethics in gaming journalism.

01:32:07 ◼   ► It's like that was not really the reason.

01:32:10 ◼   ► That was what ignited a lot of the argument,

01:32:13 ◼   ► but it was really a lot of other pressures, I think,

01:32:16 ◼   ► is what it sounds like.

01:32:17 ◼   ► But, you know, and especially 'cause it was,

01:32:20 ◼   ► even that is just like the game journalism BS line.

01:32:23 ◼   ► Even that official storyline is questionable

01:32:25 ◼   ► because she didn't fire that moderator.

01:32:28 ◼   ► The male co-founder did.

01:32:30 ◼   ► - I didn't realize that.

01:32:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, this whole thing's a mess.

01:32:32 ◼   ► Anyway, getting into details of it is just a rathole.

01:32:36 ◼   ► There's no good to come of diving into the details of it

01:32:40 ◼   ► because that's not really what the argument was about.

01:32:42 ◼   ► And what it comes down to is if a whole bunch of users

01:32:46 ◼   ► were calling for someone's head

01:32:48 ◼   ► and that resulted in her getting what I call quitfired,

01:32:52 ◼   ► says, you know, she was, you know, she was forced to quit.

01:32:54 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:32:55 ◼   ► That was not, you know, oh, I think I'm just done now,

01:32:58 ◼   ► coincidentally this week.

01:33:00 ◼   ► No, she was quit fired.

01:33:01 ◼   ► It's cool, happens to the best of us.

01:33:03 ◼   ► But that wouldn't have happened if just some angry users

01:33:07 ◼   ► who are, you know, hateful, horrible people,

01:33:10 ◼   ► if just they had a problem with her.

01:33:12 ◼   ► The reason that happened, I think you can read into

01:33:14 ◼   ► who they appointed instead.

01:33:16 ◼   ► This other co-founder who's been gone for a while

01:33:19 ◼   ► who has these very much like, you know,

01:33:21 ◼   ► libertarian, kind of anything goes viewpoints.

01:33:24 ◼   ► If the board appointed him as the new CEO,

01:33:28 ◼   ► that means that the members of the board

01:33:31 ◼   ► and the people, you know, who have control

01:33:33 ◼   ► and equity and influence of the company,

01:33:35 ◼   ► a good portion of them want this anything goes attitude

01:33:39 ◼   ► to stay.

01:33:40 ◼   ► It's not enough that a whole bunch of users complain.

01:33:43 ◼   ► If only these users were getting angry