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ATP

81: You Left Your Money in a Bank

 

00:00:00 ◼   ► Yes, don't ask the question if you're not looking at the file.

00:00:04 ◼   ► [BEEPING]

00:00:05 ◼   ► All right, so let's start with some follow up.

00:00:10 ◼   ► To begin, we have some follow up about the TiVo OTA,

00:00:14 ◼   ► or OTA, if you're Marco.

00:00:16 ◼   ► It's OTA.

00:00:18 ◼   ► My apologies.

00:00:18 ◼   ► The OTA.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Yeah, this feedback was from Joseph.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Last week, we talked about who the OTA might be good for.

00:00:25 ◼   ► I said, get it.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Try it out if you don't like it.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Don't stop paying your $15 a month

00:00:30 ◼   ► Joseph points out that Tivo's require a one-year commitment of service and as a 30-day money-back guarantee in which you can cancel in return

00:00:38 ◼   ► It but you can't keep it for a couple months to see if you like it

00:00:41 ◼   ► I didn't I didn't actually check whether this is true, but I trust Joseph. He seems like a trustworthy guy with a

00:00:47 ◼   ► Loan first name with no last name. So there you go. He also says that

00:00:53 ◼   ► Over the air is not a wasteland of just four networks as in San Francisco insert Dan Benjamin, San Francisco rant here

00:00:59 ◼   ► There is over 90 distinct channels of content available over the air

00:01:03 ◼   ► I said so some of its like religious or shopping but there's tons of that stuff on cable, too

00:01:07 ◼   ► So apparently some places actually have lots of channels coming over the air

00:01:11 ◼   ► Yeah, but like what kind of channels like is there anything you'd actually want to watch see that's the thing. So

00:01:15 ◼   ► Aaron and I have season tickets to the University of Virginia football team and

00:01:21 ◼   ► we've gotten pretty serious about the tailgates with a mutual friend of ours Brian and

00:01:26 ◼   ► he brings a generator and we bring a TV and we bring an over-the-air HD antenna and

00:01:32 ◼   ► In Charlottesville, Virginia, which we've all established that you two think is basically the middle of nowhere

00:01:38 ◼   ► Actually, it's past the middle of nowhere into straight-up nothingness and here in Richmond as well because I've tried the antenna here

00:01:45 ◼   ► We get I think Fox CBS

00:01:48 ◼   ► NBC ABC I

00:01:50 ◼   ► Do know we get the CW which was I was a little surprised to see but that's basically it and then all the all the

00:01:58 ◼   ► Standard channels like Fox and ABC and whatnot they have like two or three sub channels like weather

00:02:04 ◼   ► Which just shows the weather non-stop. It's like a dashboard if you will and

00:02:09 ◼   ► And that's pretty much all we get so I'm sure there are places that get

00:02:17 ◼   ► Plenty of channels, but I tell you what this is where I live is not one of those places

00:02:22 ◼   ► All right, do we have any other follow-up? Yes, don't ask the question if you're not looking at the file

00:02:28 ◼   ► So next is from Nate boating I'm doing well he sent us a

00:02:36 ◼   ► Link to a tumblr dedicated to frayed lightning cables. It is appropriately named frayed lightning cables dot tumblr.com

00:02:44 ◼   ► In fact, it has more than just frayed lightning cables on it,

00:02:47 ◼   ► but a lot of these things,

00:02:48 ◼   ► I think they were chewed by animals.

00:02:50 ◼   ► I have no, there's no promise

00:02:52 ◼   ► about what made these things fray.

00:02:53 ◼   ► I think it's just a tumbler of frayed lightning cables.

00:02:55 ◼   ► But if you wanted to see a bunch of frayed lightning cables,

00:02:57 ◼   ► you know, rule 34 and all, go for it.

00:03:01 ◼   ► - All right.

00:03:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, next bit of follow-up is about Amazon buying Twitch

00:03:08 ◼   ► and how Google was, looked like they were interested,

00:03:11 ◼   ► but then bailed out and people didn't quite know why.

00:03:13 ◼   ► Here is a rumor sent to us by Hunter on Twitter

00:03:15 ◼   ► saying the rumor is that the breakup fee was too high

00:03:19 ◼   ► relative to the risk of regulators killing it.

00:03:21 ◼   ► So if Google was going to buy them,

00:03:24 ◼   ► normally as part of the deal they say,

00:03:25 ◼   ► okay, well, we agreed to buy you,

00:03:27 ◼   ► and it turns out that the US government

00:03:29 ◼   ► doesn't let us buy you for antitrust reasons or whatever.

00:03:31 ◼   ► There's some fee that will still pay you

00:03:35 ◼   ► as part of this deal,

00:03:36 ◼   ► and apparently Twitch wanted a breakup fee that was too high.

00:03:39 ◼   ► And according to this rumor,

00:03:40 ◼   ► this is not confirmed or anything.

00:03:41 ◼   ► But anyway, that explains why Twitch might have accepted

00:03:44 ◼   ► an offer from Amazon that is reportedly lower

00:03:47 ◼   ► than what Google was willing to offer for them,

00:03:50 ◼   ► because there's more to the deal than just,

00:03:52 ◼   ► the number is also what you're paying in cash versus stock,

00:03:55 ◼   ► and also things like breakup fees.

00:03:56 ◼   ► So this is a plausible rumor about why Twitch

00:04:00 ◼   ► might have gone with Amazon instead of Google.

00:04:03 ◼   ► - All right.

00:04:03 ◼   ► - Look at that, we breezed your follow-up.

00:04:05 ◼   ► - I know. - It's gonna be a short show,

00:04:06 ◼   ► forget it.

00:04:07 ◼   ► - I'm impressed.

00:04:08 ◼   ► All right, let's start with something cool,

00:04:09 ◼   ► and then we'll get into the real meat of the episode.

00:04:12 ◼   ► - We are sponsored this week,

00:04:13 ◼   ► once again by our friends at Harry's.

00:04:16 ◼   ► I don't think I ever actually spelled it last time,

00:04:18 ◼   ► and so God knows how anybody actually thought

00:04:21 ◼   ► what I was saying, but anyway, it's H-A-R-R-Y-S.com,

00:04:25 ◼   ► that kind of Harry's.

00:04:26 ◼   ► You know, like with the apostrophe,

00:04:27 ◼   ► but you can't put an apostrophe in URLs, I don't think.

00:04:30 ◼   ► At least in host names.

00:04:31 ◼   ► Anyway, go to harrys.com and use promo code ATP

00:04:35 ◼   ► to save $5 off your first purchase.

00:04:37 ◼   ► So what is Harry's?

00:04:38 ◼   ► Harry's is less than one year old,

00:04:40 ◼   ► and they are already substantially disrupting

00:04:43 ◼   ► the shaving industry.

00:04:45 ◼   ► Harry's offers a better shaving experience

00:04:47 ◼   ► at better value than the giants in the space,

00:04:50 ◼   ► like Schick and Gillette.

00:04:52 ◼   ► So Harry's, this is very much like some of our other

00:04:55 ◼   ► sponsors, like what Warby Parker does for eyeglasses.

00:04:59 ◼   ► This is kind of what Harry's does for shaving.

00:05:01 ◼   ► And this is not a coincidence because one of the founders

00:05:05 ◼   ► of Harry's, Jeff, also was the co-founder of Warby Parker.

00:05:10 ◼   ► So there are many similarities here.

00:05:11 ◼   ► Both of them are disrupting huge stagnant industries

00:05:14 ◼   ► by offering great design, meticulous craftsmanship,

00:05:17 ◼   ► and great highly personal customer service.

00:05:19 ◼   ► And most of all, they're offering this at an amazing value.

00:05:22 ◼   ► The other founder, Andy, he was motivated to address shaving

00:05:26 ◼   ► because he went to a drug store one day

00:05:28 ◼   ► to restock on shaving stuff,

00:05:30 ◼   ► and he had to ask for help and wait around

00:05:32 ◼   ► for more than 10 minutes for someone to come unlock

00:05:34 ◼   ► the shoplifter resistant razor case.

00:05:37 ◼   ► And he was eventually permitted to buy a four pack of blades

00:05:40 ◼   ► and some shaving cream.

00:05:41 ◼   ► And for all this great privilege of, you know,

00:05:43 ◼   ► being treated like a criminal

00:05:44 ◼   ► and having a bunch of time wasted,

00:05:45 ◼   ► he had to pay over $25 for just four blades

00:05:48 ◼   ► and some shaving cream.

00:05:50 ◼   ► He knew there had to be a better way to do this.

00:05:52 ◼   ► Harry's makes amazing German engineered blades.

00:05:55 ◼   ► They care so much about the quality of these blades.

00:05:58 ◼   ► They actually bought a 93 year old German factory

00:06:01 ◼   ► that makes the blades.

00:06:02 ◼   ► They went to them like, you make great blades,

00:06:04 ◼   ► we're gonna just buy you out and we're gonna make a new company with this. So

00:06:08 ◼   ► Harry's is focused on providing men and women a great shaving experience for a

00:06:13 ◼   ► fraction of the price of their competitors. They charge less than

00:06:16 ◼   ► $2 per blade cartridge and if you go look around at what you've been paying

00:06:21 ◼   ► for razor cartridges from the big brands under $2 each is probably about half of

00:06:26 ◼   ► what you've been paying if you've been getting a good deal. So this is you know

00:06:30 ◼   ► fantastic price and I tried these blades they sent me they sent me the big

00:06:34 ◼   ► starter kit and everything that I tried these blades and they're really good I

00:06:37 ◼   ► was I was surprised you know I I was worried that I might I might like try it

00:06:42 ◼   ► and maybe I wouldn't like it and then I just wouldn't say anything it'd be kind

00:06:45 ◼   ► of awkward but I know I tried these and I like them a lot actually they I was

00:06:49 ◼   ► very impressed by the blades and by the handle the handles like nice and weighty

00:06:53 ◼   ► everything about it is very high quality the packaging is really nice I was I was

00:06:57 ◼   ► just very impressed by all of it. Harry's you get the convenience and ease of

00:07:01 ◼   ► ordering online, you get high quality blades, you get a great handle and

00:07:04 ◼   ► shaving cream, an excellent customer service, all this at half the price of

00:07:08 ◼   ► competitors. So you can get started today. You can try it yourself, you

00:07:11 ◼   ► can see what I'm talking about. Get started today with a set. It includes a

00:07:14 ◼   ► handle, three blades, and shaving cream for just $15 shipped to your door. That's

00:07:20 ◼   ► 15 bucks including shipping for a handle, three blades, and cream. You can't beat

00:07:24 ◼   ► that. Harry's even offers a custom engraving option on the handle if you are that kind

00:07:29 ◼   ► of person. So anyway, go to Harry's.com, use promo code ATP to save $5 off your first purchase.

00:07:35 ◼   ► Thank you very much to Harry's for sponsoring our show once again.

00:07:40 ◼   ► So Marco, when you were big into PCs, did you read Tom's hardware very often?

00:07:45 ◼   ► Of course. Yeah, I remember back when they made Intel recall the 1.1 gigahertz Pentium.

00:07:52 ◼   ► And Jon, I assume you were at least tangentially aware, if not a reader yourself.

00:07:56 ◼   ► No, well I knew about it, but I didn't read it.

00:07:59 ◼   ► Okay.

00:08:00 ◼   ► So, Tom's Hardware for Marco and myself was a really important resource and website, I

00:08:06 ◼   ► don't know, 10 years ago-ish, maybe even 15 now, to talk about the real nitty-gritty about

00:08:13 ◼   ► hardware for the PC world.

00:08:16 ◼   ► And to me, is it AnandTech or AnandTech?

00:08:20 ◼   ► I'm probably pronouncing it wrong both ways.

00:08:22 ◼   ► Do we know which one it is?

00:08:24 ◼   ► - John, you are in charge of pronunciation on the show.

00:08:26 ◼   ► - I got nothing on this one.

00:08:27 ◼   ► I have met the man in person,

00:08:29 ◼   ► still don't know how to pronounce it.

00:08:31 ◼   ► - So AnandTech seemed to me anyway,

00:08:34 ◼   ► to be very much the Tom's hardware

00:08:37 ◼   ► of the Apple world in 2014.

00:08:39 ◼   ► And if that doesn't sound like a compliment, it should,

00:08:42 ◼   ► because that is a huge compliment.

00:08:44 ◼   ► And apparently, now I'm gonna say Anand,

00:08:47 ◼   ► so I'm totally inconsistent, but Anand has left.

00:08:50 ◼   ► And as it turns out, he's going somewhere very interesting.

00:08:53 ◼   ► He's off to Apple.

00:08:55 ◼   ► So Marco, what do you think about all this?

00:08:58 ◼   ► - I think, I mean, I'm honestly, I'm disappointed

00:09:01 ◼   ► that we're not gonna get to read any more

00:09:03 ◼   ► of his awesome reviews because what he, you know,

00:09:05 ◼   ► like I compared him to John.

00:09:06 ◼   ► Like what John does for software,

00:09:09 ◼   ► and Ann would do for hardware.

00:09:10 ◼   ► And his insights on things like CPU design

00:09:14 ◼   ► and like where PC hardware was going

00:09:18 ◼   ► and what was becoming important and what wasn't.

00:09:20 ◼   ► And he was really just incredibly good

00:09:24 ◼   ► at both writing about this stuff,

00:09:26 ◼   ► at seeing what's here, seeing what's coming,

00:09:29 ◼   ► and explaining very, very complex things about,

00:09:32 ◼   ► you know, things like chip design,

00:09:34 ◼   ► you know, explaining that in a way that makes it relevant

00:09:37 ◼   ► to the readers of these reviews.

00:09:38 ◼   ► And so we don't know what he's doing at Apple.

00:09:41 ◼   ► We also know, like, they hired, is it Brian Klug?

00:09:44 ◼   ► Is that right?

00:09:45 ◼   ► - I believe that's right.

00:09:46 ◼   ► They hired Brian Klug, who was also a writer at OnanTech.

00:09:49 ◼   ► So Apple apparently hired him very quietly a few months back.

00:09:53 ◼   ► And so anyway, so now they got both of them.

00:09:57 ◼   ► It would be interesting to know what department

00:09:59 ◼   ► they're even working for.

00:10:01 ◼   ► I don't know what their qualifications are exactly.

00:10:03 ◼   ► I would venture a guess that--

00:10:05 ◼   ► I don't know much about Brian, but I

00:10:06 ◼   ► would venture a guess that Onan probably

00:10:08 ◼   ► has enough background to work on the chip design department.

00:10:11 ◼   ► But I really don't know.

00:10:13 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the question.

00:10:14 ◼   ► Like when he posted on the site that he was just retiring,

00:10:17 ◼   ► he didn't say where he was going.

00:10:19 ◼   ► He just said like, "I'm retiring from tech journalism,"

00:10:21 ◼   ► which is different than, "I'm leaving the website

00:10:23 ◼   ► that bears my name."

00:10:24 ◼   ► Like he didn't just say that,

00:10:25 ◼   ► so it's not like some power struggle

00:10:26 ◼   ► or something with the thing.

00:10:27 ◼   ► He wasn't just leaving the website to go for something

00:10:29 ◼   ► that said, "I'm retiring from tech journalism."

00:10:31 ◼   ► And my initial interpretation of that was,

00:10:34 ◼   ► he wanted to do something else, right?

00:10:36 ◼   ► Because he says retiring from tech journalism,

00:10:38 ◼   ► that means he's not going to show up writing reviews

00:10:40 ◼   ► of hardware on some other website.

00:10:41 ◼   ► He's not gonna start his own website with a different name.

00:10:43 ◼   ► you know, like that he was done with that

00:10:45 ◼   ► and he wanted to do something else, which is fine.

00:10:48 ◼   ► And then I tweeted the day like,

00:10:52 ◼   ► here are the list of companies

00:10:53 ◼   ► that should be trying to hire him.

00:10:54 ◼   ► And when I was doing that, I was trying to think like,

00:10:57 ◼   ► what value could he bring to a company

00:11:00 ◼   ► and to what company is he the most valuable?

00:11:03 ◼   ► And the top of my list was Intel

00:11:06 ◼   ► because aside from all his reviews and everything

00:11:08 ◼   ► and in all of his contact

00:11:10 ◼   ► with these various hardware vendors,

00:11:13 ◼   ► He definitely has some frustration with Intel,

00:11:15 ◼   ► like we all do, like trying to figure out

00:11:17 ◼   ► are they going to be, you know,

00:11:20 ◼   ► when they sold all their arm holdings to get rid of,

00:11:23 ◼   ► you know, they stopped trying to make arm chips

00:11:25 ◼   ► to do their own thing, the whole x86 on mobile

00:11:30 ◼   ► and how that's going and the various software initiatives

00:11:33 ◼   ► they occasionally have, are they just gonna be a fab,

00:11:35 ◼   ► are they gonna continue to sell chips?

00:11:38 ◼   ► He had interesting things to say about what he thought

00:11:40 ◼   ► Intel should be doing with their business

00:11:43 ◼   ► and how competitive their products actually are

00:11:45 ◼   ► and could potentially be in the future.

00:11:47 ◼   ► And I'm sure he told Intel all these things

00:11:50 ◼   ► and he told the same things to Nvidia,

00:11:51 ◼   ► which was another company I listed,

00:11:53 ◼   ► and a bunch of other people.

00:11:54 ◼   ► You know, it's kind of like an outsider's perspective

00:11:56 ◼   ► of like, look, inside the Intel bubble,

00:11:58 ◼   ► you maybe think you're doing the right thing,

00:12:00 ◼   ► but from my perspective, you are, you know,

00:12:02 ◼   ► you should be doing X, Y, and Z and you're not,

00:12:04 ◼   ► or you should do this sooner or that later,

00:12:06 ◼   ► or you should acquire this company

00:12:07 ◼   ► or start doing that or stop doing that.

00:12:09 ◼   ► So it seems like he had a lot of insight into their business and that would be valuable to them.

00:12:13 ◼   ► And same thing with the other companies, because that's what he'd be in contact with these hardware vendors

00:12:17 ◼   ► and he would meet with them and they would explain what their upcoming line of things are

00:12:21 ◼   ► and then he would write about it and presumably he would tell them to their faces like, you know,

00:12:26 ◼   ► "I think you should do this and this other company's doing that" and you know, like just giving his opinion,

00:12:30 ◼   ► like what he wrote on his website about all these issues.

00:12:33 ◼   ► Big picture things, not just like "let me tell you how many adders should be in your next CPU"

00:12:37 ◼   ► but just like, you know, a grand scheme of things strategy.

00:12:41 ◼   ► So then when he said, when it came out

00:12:44 ◼   ► that he was going to Apple, I didn't put Apple on a list

00:12:46 ◼   ► because I thought that of all the things he could offer,

00:12:51 ◼   ► Apple probably had existing people doing those same things

00:12:55 ◼   ► and didn't seem as like sort of rudderless, you know,

00:12:58 ◼   ► or as sort of flailing as some of these other companies,

00:13:01 ◼   ► like Apple seems to have it stuffed together, right?

00:13:04 ◼   ► But Apple did hire him, which again shows

00:13:05 ◼   ► they probably have their stuff together

00:13:06 ◼   ► more than the other companies, because the other companies probably don't even know they need someone like him,

00:13:09 ◼   ► but Apple does know that having someone like him is valuable.

00:13:11 ◼   ► And I was trying to think what he could do for Apple. A lot of people guessed that he would have something to do with

00:13:17 ◼   ► press relations, and he certainly does have a heck of a lot of experience at the interface between technology companies and press,

00:13:23 ◼   ► but he's always been on the other side of it. So I don't quite see what he would do for Apple on the...

00:13:28 ◼   ► I don't know. I mean, maybe... I think he has expertise in that area that could be used,

00:13:33 ◼   ► but I

00:13:35 ◼   ► Don't know if that would interest him. I don't know enough about his interest chip stuff

00:13:38 ◼   ► I don't know if he's ever designed a chip. He's got opinions on chip

00:13:41 ◼   ► He knows a lot about architecture in the broad level but down to the nitty-gritty

00:13:44 ◼   ► I don't know if he has that depth of knowledge about

00:13:47 ◼   ► You know laying out

00:13:50 ◼   ► Laying out circuits or deciding like I you know and and maybe you don't have to maybe it can be a more

00:13:55 ◼   ► You know an advisory supervisor role there

00:13:58 ◼   ► I really don't know enough about a skill set to even guess of what what department he could be in

00:14:03 ◼   ► It's kind of in the same situation that I always imagined myself to be in which is why Apple will never hire me

00:14:09 ◼   ► It's like the only job. I'm calling like to do at Apple is to tell everyone what to do

00:14:13 ◼   ► Those jobs are already filled by people who have earned the right to do that and not just by saying well, I have an opinion

00:14:19 ◼   ► Yeah, well, that's why you don't get that job, right?

00:14:21 ◼   ► But he has more than just an opinion. Like I think he has actual insights and has much more, you know

00:14:27 ◼   ► He has close contact with so many vendors in the hardware industry and such in-depth knowledge of all of their products that that

00:14:33 ◼   ► That is valuable to them. And so it seems like he would have to be in a position of

00:14:37 ◼   ► Some considerable authority like you're not gonna just make him be as simple as another cog in a machine

00:14:43 ◼   ► Like he left the website that he found it when he was 14 that has his name on it

00:14:47 ◼   ► so I think he's in a position where he's going to be able to make big moves and

00:14:54 ◼   ► be an important part of Apple's organization and I find that exciting.

00:14:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I hope so. So in the chat room, Pavan

00:15:02 ◼   ► linked to this thing we'll put in the show notes, this Apple Jobs

00:15:06 ◼   ► entry on their job site where the

00:15:10 ◼   ► job title is "Performance Marketing Analyst" and it says

00:15:14 ◼   ► "in this role you will develop test methodologies, test Apple devices and competitive

00:15:18 ◼   ► products, analyze test results and help prepare performance data to support

00:15:22 ◼   ► product managers in creating compelling performance stories

00:15:25 ◼   ► for product launch materials.

00:15:27 ◼   ► Okay, so anyway, what that all basically means is

00:15:31 ◼   ► he would be doing like reviews and comparisons

00:15:34 ◼   ► for internal use to put in marketing materials.

00:15:37 ◼   ► I cannot see him leaving his own site to do this.

00:15:41 ◼   ► Like this doesn't seem like it's a big enough cog

00:15:43 ◼   ► in an important enough part of the machine.

00:15:45 ◼   ► Like this--

00:15:46 ◼   ► - He's a little overqualified for that,

00:15:47 ◼   ► don't you feel like?

00:15:48 ◼   ► But on the other hand, Apple is the kind of company

00:15:51 ◼   ► get smart enough to get someone who's overqualified

00:15:53 ◼   ► to fill it because like, that position doesn't necessarily

00:15:56 ◼   ► have to be as kind of grunt worky as it seems

00:15:58 ◼   ► because you, it could influence the design

00:16:01 ◼   ► of future products.

00:16:02 ◼   ► Like it's, you know, from the outside,

00:16:04 ◼   ► and I can say like, oh well, here's what they did

00:16:07 ◼   ► with this CPU and this GPU combination

00:16:09 ◼   ► and really they would have ended up with a better platform

00:16:11 ◼   ► if they'd done X, Y, and Z,

00:16:12 ◼   ► but he can't actually make that happen.

00:16:13 ◼   ► Whereas if he's doing comparison tests

00:16:15 ◼   ► of like prototype hardware inside the company

00:16:17 ◼   ► and can say, okay, well, for this one,

00:16:19 ◼   ► you should tweak this, that, and the other thing,

00:16:20 ◼   ► for the next chip, I think these guys are gonna do X, Y, and Z that like he can actually

00:16:23 ◼   ► influence the roadmap as opposed to just commenting on it from the outside. So that is potentially

00:16:29 ◼   ► not this exact position, but like the head of all the people doing that is potentially

00:16:33 ◼   ► a powerful position within the organization because you can influence the hardware roadmap

00:16:37 ◼   ► of Apple's products. And that I mean, you know, that that's gonna be beneficial to Apple.

00:16:42 ◼   ► And I think it might be interesting to him. Yeah, I definitely think, you know, like if

00:16:46 ◼   ► if there is a chance that he's actually gonna be involved

00:16:48 ◼   ► in component selection, maybe, what you were saying,

00:16:52 ◼   ► trying to influence, not necessarily designing the chips,

00:16:55 ◼   ► but helping Apple figure out what kind of GPU

00:16:59 ◼   ► should they be looking for from PowerVR or whatever

00:17:02 ◼   ► for the next iDevice or whatever.

00:17:05 ◼   ► He could definitely be on that team.

00:17:07 ◼   ► I would imagine he's very much qualified

00:17:08 ◼   ► to do that sort of thing, but who knows?

00:17:11 ◼   ► This is very much a mystery, and I have a feeling

00:17:14 ◼   ► it might be a while before we even figure out, you know, what exactly he's doing.

00:17:19 ◼   ► Yeah, and the thing that's interesting to me about it is, he was kind of the big cheese

00:17:24 ◼   ► in this Apple bubble, or when it comes to hardware-related things. I mean, I think he

00:17:30 ◼   ► was certainly an extremely important person in the community, and if—I mean, maybe I'm

00:17:36 ◼   ► just an egotistic jerk, but if I were to—if I were Anand and I was thinking whether or

00:17:42 ◼   ► or not I should go to Apple, it would take a lot for me to say, "You know what? I'm

00:17:47 ◼   ► going to hang up my boots," or whatever the phrase is I'm thinking of, "and I'm

00:17:52 ◼   ► going to go work in a place that usually doesn't really smile upon being forthcoming and being

00:18:01 ◼   ► very public with what you do." And his whole existence up until this point was being forthcoming

00:18:07 ◼   ► and being public about what he did. And so whatever it is, it's got to have scratched

00:18:11 ◼   ► an itch that an Antec and Ontec couldn't scratch before.

00:18:16 ◼   ► So like you guys said, I'm extremely interested in seeing where he ends up.

00:18:22 ◼   ► And especially if he does end up in engineering, what is that going to mean?

00:18:27 ◼   ► I'm not sure what his background is.

00:18:28 ◼   ► It certainly sounds, the way he writes, it sounds like he's either got a formal or

00:18:32 ◼   ► an extensive informal education in engineering.

00:18:35 ◼   ► Like I said, I don't know his particular background.

00:18:37 ◼   ► But whatever it is, it's certainly an interesting move.

00:18:42 ◼   ► - Chat room says that Brian Klug is an optical engineer,

00:18:46 ◼   ► which you might've picked up by listening to the podcast

00:18:48 ◼   ► where he talks about cameras.

00:18:49 ◼   ► So I also don't know where he's working,

00:18:52 ◼   ► but if he is actually a trained optical engineer,

00:18:55 ◼   ► it makes sense that he might have something to do

00:18:57 ◼   ► with cameras in Apple's devices.

00:18:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, these are all very important areas.

00:19:02 ◼   ► So I think it's, you know,

00:19:03 ◼   ► if these guys wanted to keep doing press

00:19:06 ◼   ► or review type stuff, they would have kept doing that

00:19:09 ◼   ► on an Antec.

00:19:10 ◼   ► They had a great setup there.

00:19:11 ◼   ► They don't need to go to Apple to do that.

00:19:14 ◼   ► I think Casey, you're right.

00:19:15 ◼   ► They would need to go to Apple to do something else,

00:19:17 ◼   ► to do something more engineering focused maybe.

00:19:20 ◼   ► There's no way they're going to Apple to go make graphs

00:19:23 ◼   ► for the marketing department, not a chance.

00:19:25 ◼   ► - Yep, and since it's Apple,

00:19:27 ◼   ► it's not like we're ever going to know.

00:19:28 ◼   ► It's not like this is like, oh, well, we don't know now,

00:19:30 ◼   ► but I'm sure Apple will tell us exactly what.

00:19:32 ◼   ► No, they're never gonna tell us.

00:19:35 ◼   ► If we see him next year at WAC,

00:19:36 ◼   ► we can talk to him about it and maybe, you know,

00:19:38 ◼   ► but like how many people do we know at Apple?

00:19:41 ◼   ► And we know like what department they work in

00:19:42 ◼   ► and like, that's it.

00:19:44 ◼   ► You know, what specifically do you work in?

00:19:46 ◼   ► Oh, I can't tell you.

00:19:47 ◼   ► You know, it's like, well, you just accept it.

00:19:49 ◼   ► Like you're lucky if you can get, you know,

00:19:50 ◼   ► hardware or software, which hardware group,

00:19:52 ◼   ► which software group,

00:19:53 ◼   ► but that's as close as you can get usually.

00:19:55 ◼   ► - And we don't even know what Phil Schiller does.

00:19:58 ◼   ► We just know he does like everything

00:20:00 ◼   ► and his title is like marketing.

00:20:01 ◼   ► - He goes to Red Sox games, right?

00:20:04 ◼   ► And he mountain bikes, mountain bikes sometimes.

00:20:07 ◼   ► - He buys R8s for his team.

00:20:08 ◼   ► - All we know is that he does pretty much everything

00:20:12 ◼   ► and his title doesn't mean anything.

00:20:15 ◼   ► - And so real time follow up,

00:20:16 ◼   ► the chat room is telling us that Anand

00:20:19 ◼   ► has a computer engineering degree,

00:20:21 ◼   ► which sounds similar to myself in Syracuse,

00:20:24 ◼   ► from North Carolina State University,

00:20:25 ◼   ► which I actually very nearly went to.

00:20:28 ◼   ► It was between that and Virginia Tech,

00:20:29 ◼   ► and I chose Virginia Tech.

00:20:31 ◼   ► So he certainly has an engineering background.

00:20:33 ◼   ► Now, you could argue whether or not he's practiced that

00:20:35 ◼   ► in the traditional sense of the word in the last,

00:20:38 ◼   ► I don't know, 10 years or whatever,

00:20:39 ◼   ► but he certainly has the education to support him

00:20:42 ◼   ► being in the engineering department.

00:20:44 ◼   ► It's a question as to whether or not he actually is

00:20:47 ◼   ► in the engineering department.

00:20:48 ◼   ► - Right, like they wouldn't be hiring him

00:20:49 ◼   ► for the stuff he learned in college,

00:20:50 ◼   ► and they're hiring him for all this stuff he did on his web.

00:20:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:20:53 ◼   ► Because, yeah, and it can't be underestimated.

00:20:56 ◼   ► Like, who in the entire industry has had more contact

00:21:01 ◼   ► with the vendors that Apple feels competitive

00:21:04 ◼   ► with hardware-wise.

00:21:05 ◼   ► Like it's basically what kind of press goes to like

00:21:08 ◼   ► the Intel's IDF thing and goes to Samsung in Korea

00:21:12 ◼   ► and goes to all the manufacturers in the Far East

00:21:15 ◼   ► and like just is these incredibly detailed

00:21:18 ◼   ► technical briefings on hardware

00:21:20 ◼   ► and gets a sample hardware and tests it in benchmark.

00:21:22 ◼   ► Like who else has done that?

00:21:23 ◼   ► Like there's, maybe there's a couple other websites

00:21:26 ◼   ► that are maybe competitive, like real world tech

00:21:28 ◼   ► or Extreme Tech and Tom Hardware is still around or whatever,

00:21:31 ◼   ► but what kind of person is going on that circuit

00:21:34 ◼   ► and being in contact with these companies

00:21:36 ◼   ► over the course of years and years?

00:21:37 ◼   ► That is the experience that you can't buy

00:21:39 ◼   ► from someone who comes out of college,

00:21:41 ◼   ► which is an education, that's what they're hiring him for.

00:21:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I should also note more real-time follow-up

00:21:47 ◼   ► from a dear friend of the show, Ben Thompson.

00:21:49 ◼   ► Anand was more than just Apple, and he was,

00:21:53 ◼   ► and I didn't realize this, but apparently he and his site

00:21:57 ◼   ► were more of a general hardware review site.

00:22:00 ◼   ► - You never read that site?

00:22:01 ◼   ► You read Tom's Hardware, but not in OnTech?

00:22:03 ◼   ► - I did occasionally. - You were reading

00:22:04 ◼   ► the wrong sites.

00:22:05 ◼   ► He just got into Apple stuff like, you know,

00:22:07 ◼   ► sort of a late comer, like you and Marco,

00:22:09 ◼   ► you and Marco more or less, where it's like,

00:22:11 ◼   ► he reviewed, you know, all the PC hardware type stuff.

00:22:14 ◼   ► I was like, well, maybe Apple has some interesting stuff.

00:22:15 ◼   ► And he got sucked in because Apple stuff is really cool,

00:22:17 ◼   ► just like you two did.

00:22:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, wasn't the Retina MacBook Pro his first Mac?

00:22:20 ◼   ► - No, it was before,

00:22:21 ◼   ► oh, maybe it's for his first personal Mac.

00:22:23 ◼   ► But like, I mean, the Apple stuff leaked into his site

00:22:26 ◼   ► sort of slowly and then they just all got hooked.

00:22:29 ◼   ► I mean, it happened at Ars Technica too.

00:22:30 ◼   ► I may have had something to do with that.

00:22:32 ◼   ► - It's a lot like the way I read Ars Technica.

00:22:34 ◼   ► Like I always read your reviews

00:22:36 ◼   ► and then I'll read occasional things here and there.

00:22:38 ◼   ► I read occasional things that are non-tech.

00:22:40 ◼   ► I can't say I read every single post

00:22:43 ◼   ► by any stretch of the imagination.

00:22:45 ◼   ► - Well, like Marco said, in recent years,

00:22:46 ◼   ► it's been like, if you want a review of the iPhone

00:22:49 ◼   ► that is different than like, you know,

00:22:52 ◼   ► not just a product review,

00:22:53 ◼   ► but the guy who's gonna rip open the CPU

00:22:55 ◼   ► talk about all the art, you know, that's the site I would always go to. That was my go-to site for

00:22:59 ◼   ► that kind of review. Yeah, yeah. And then those are the reviews that I read, but I presume that

00:23:04 ◼   ► there's quite a bit more to a non-tech than just that in those I did not see. Yeah, I go there for,

00:23:08 ◼   ► I mean, they have storage reviews. I mean, there's lots of people writing there. I mean, the site,

00:23:12 ◼   ► I think, is in good hands. Like he doesn't write every single thing on the site, obviously, but I

00:23:15 ◼   ► go there for, you know, reviews about what's next and SSDs and, you know, graphic card stuff. And

00:23:20 ◼   ► That site is, like a lot of the PC-originated sites,

00:23:23 ◼   ► very big on benchmarks, lots of graphs.

00:23:25 ◼   ► You know, if I want to know what video,

00:23:27 ◼   ► how does one video card compare to another,

00:23:30 ◼   ► I do some kind of search,

00:23:31 ◼   ► and I think they have a big searchable benchmark database

00:23:33 ◼   ► for that, like, they're very thorough in that same vein.

00:23:36 ◼   ► They're a great site.

00:23:37 ◼   ► I'll still go to it, even though he's not there anymore.

00:23:40 ◼   ► And I hope he does great things for Apple.

00:23:41 ◼   ► So thumbs up for this move.

00:23:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, good luck.

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00:26:38 ◼   ► Okay, so also this week, this week has been a rough week, but this week it's been even

00:26:45 ◼   ► more rough for a bunch of celebrities, and I believe all of them, or nearly all of them,

00:26:51 ◼   ► are women.

00:26:53 ◼   ► And they seem to have been targeted in order to get access to pictures that really the

00:27:00 ◼   ► internet should not have access to.

00:27:03 ◼   ► And what has happened is there's a ton of celebrities.

00:27:06 ◼   ► I heard, and I honestly don't know how long the list is, but I heard it was like 50 or

00:27:10 ◼   ► 100 names long, a ton of celebrities that have had private photographs stolen from them

00:27:18 ◼   ► and posted around the internet.

00:27:20 ◼   ► And when this first happened, everyone seemed to blame iCloud.

00:27:25 ◼   ► And the going theory was that, I believe it was Find My iPhone specifically, did not have

00:27:31 ◼   ► rate limiting when you attempted to log into it.

00:27:34 ◼   ► So some enterprising, if you could call it that, individuals started firing away brute

00:27:41 ◼   ► force dictionary attacks against the Find My iPhone service, trying to figure out what

00:27:47 ◼   ► the iCloud password is for all these celebrities.

00:27:52 ◼   ► And eventually, by some mechanism, be it social engineering or this Find My iPhone thing or

00:27:57 ◼   ► whatever, they seem to have gotten access to a bunch of celebrities' private photographs

00:28:03 ◼   ► which have been leaked.

00:28:04 ◼   ► And so since this happened a few days ago, there's been a lot of debate whether or not

00:28:09 ◼   ► this is really the fault of Apple and iCloud.

00:28:12 ◼   ► And there's a lot of thoughts I have on this, but let me start with you, Jon.

00:28:18 ◼   ► Do you think this is Apple or do you think this is something else?

00:28:21 ◼   ► Where do you land on all this?

00:28:22 ◼   ► Well, here's the thing with the story.

00:28:25 ◼   ► The facts are thin on the ground.

00:28:29 ◼   ► It's not clear at all about anything about this.

00:28:31 ◼   ► Did the pictures come from Apple or from multiple places?

00:28:34 ◼   ► Are they old pictures?

00:28:35 ◼   ► Are they new pictures?

00:28:36 ◼   ► Was it an actual security flaw?

00:28:39 ◼   ► Was it a social engineering hit?

00:28:41 ◼   ► We know nothing.

00:28:42 ◼   ► All we know is these pictures are out there on the internet.

00:28:43 ◼   ► That's the nature of these type of things.

00:28:45 ◼   ► Someone stole a bunch of stuff.

00:28:46 ◼   ► Someone leaked it onto the internet.

00:28:48 ◼   ► We have no idea.

00:28:50 ◼   ► But it brings up all the same issues as we've talked about in the past.

00:28:56 ◼   ► Apple thus far has said they have not been able to determine that there's some kind of

00:29:00 ◼   ► security flaw, like the rate limiting thing has been fixed, so that's not an issue. And they

00:29:06 ◼   ► investigated and basically their statement was something to the effect that there is no like

00:29:10 ◼   ► inherent exploit or security flaw in like software-wise, they seem to be saying, in our

00:29:15 ◼   ► system that caused leaking of these pictures. My guess would be that these pictures

00:29:22 ◼   ► did not all come from Apple and did not all come from wherever they came from recently.

00:29:28 ◼   ► the theory that I've read, and again this is just a theory, it's not a fact, that sounds plausible to

00:29:33 ◼   ► me is that there is sort of an underground trading ring of, you know, illegally stolen digital data

00:29:41 ◼   ► that is fetched from servers where people have backups or whatever, and this was just a leak out

00:29:47 ◼   ► of that sort of little circle of people trading this illegally acquired data. So it's, you know,

00:29:53 ◼   ► because all these are leaked cell phones, they're not leaked from the people who took the photos,

00:29:57 ◼   ► They were stolen from the people who took the photos and then the people who stole them

00:30:00 ◼   ► Kept them to themselves in a little ring and then they were leaked out of that ring

00:30:03 ◼   ► That is the theory and it seems like a plausible theory to me because that type of sort of illegal

00:30:07 ◼   ► Software or illegally acquired digital goods being sort of a secret inner circle and then being pierced by somebody who lets something out and then

00:30:14 ◼   ► the inner circle is revealed

00:30:16 ◼   ► That sounds like a thing that you know, I've seen before on the internet and that sounds plausible

00:30:21 ◼   ► This is definitely people would want to do the question is

00:30:24 ◼   ► How did all these pictures get from the people's phones to the possession of the people who stole them?

00:30:30 ◼   ► And that's where we get into talking about Apple talking about security flaws

00:30:34 ◼   ► Apple is so big surely some of these things came from Apple. We've been through this before with the mat

00:30:40 ◼   ► What's his last name Matt Honan? Yep. Yeah that you know that the security flaws that we've been talked about

00:30:47 ◼   ► and the very worst ones are not technical flaws.

00:30:50 ◼   ► It's like, you know, read Kevin Mitnick's book,

00:30:52 ◼   ► like it's social engineering.

00:30:54 ◼   ► The fact that you can call someone on the phone,

00:30:56 ◼   ► pretend to be someone else,

00:30:57 ◼   ► answer their supposed security questions

00:30:59 ◼   ► that you can just look up on the internet about them,

00:31:01 ◼   ► like where they grew up or where they went to school

00:31:04 ◼   ► or what their mother's maiden name is or whatever,

00:31:07 ◼   ► and get their password, right?

00:31:09 ◼   ► And so that, no matter how strong your password is,

00:31:11 ◼   ► no matter how bug-free Apple security software is,

00:31:14 ◼   ► and the rate limiting thing is a software bug too,

00:31:15 ◼   ► But like even if all that was perfect,

00:31:18 ◼   ► if you can just call someone on the phone

00:31:20 ◼   ► and tell a sob story and get into their account,

00:31:22 ◼   ► like what the hell's the point of the rest of that software?

00:31:25 ◼   ► And that's the most difficult thing here.

00:31:27 ◼   ► You'd like to tell everybody,

00:31:28 ◼   ► "Hey everybody, make sure you have good passwords,

00:31:29 ◼   ► "don't reuse your passwords, blah, blah, blah."

00:31:30 ◼   ► But it doesn't matter if someone just call up Apple

00:31:32 ◼   ► and get all your crap anyway.

00:31:33 ◼   ► And what they're getting is usually like the backup

00:31:35 ◼   ► of your phone, like the iCloud backup of your phone.

00:31:38 ◼   ► And so, you know, and even that is encrypted,

00:31:41 ◼   ► but then once they have it in their possession,

00:31:42 ◼   ► they can decrypt it and you know,

00:31:43 ◼   ► once they get your password, they can do everything.

00:31:45 ◼   ► And it's in the interest of, if there is a group like this that's stealing pictures of celebrities and stuff like that,

00:31:50 ◼   ► it's in their interest not to like go into those accounts and like blackmail them or like erase all their stuff.

00:31:56 ◼   ► They just want to get in, get out, steal their pictures, and you know, this could have been going on for,

00:31:59 ◼   ► I'm sure it has been going on for years and years. And it's not just celebrities.

00:32:02 ◼   ► It's like everybody with an axe to grind and get somebody, you go to one of these little rings and say,

00:32:06 ◼   ► "Hey, can you get me a backup of my ex-girlfriend's phone? I want to see all her naked pictures or whatever."

00:32:10 ◼   ► It's just a criminal enterprise that's exploiting weaknesses in our systems, and they're weaknesses,

00:32:16 ◼   ► unfortunately, that most customers can't do much about except, I guess, complain.

00:32:20 ◼   ► The thing that was most ridiculous and surprising to me was that my understanding was a lot

00:32:28 ◼   ► of people were blaming the celebrities for using iCloud and Dropbox and things like that,

00:32:37 ◼   ► as though it was somehow their fault that somebody went in

00:32:42 ◼   ► and to your point, illegally stole their pictures.

00:32:45 ◼   ► Like, "Oh, you shouldn't have taken naked pictures

00:32:47 ◼   ► and put them on a high class."

00:32:48 ◼   ► Are you kidding me?

00:32:50 ◼   ► That's like saying, well, you left your house unlocked,

00:32:52 ◼   ► so it's your own fault that everything got stolen.

00:32:55 ◼   ► - It's not even unlocked.

00:32:55 ◼   ► It's like, well, you left your money in a bank.

00:32:57 ◼   ► What do you expect when the bank gets robbed?

00:32:59 ◼   ► Maybe you should've left your money in a bank.

00:33:01 ◼   ► Maybe you should think twice about using a credit card.

00:33:03 ◼   ► You know, well, you got your car stolen.

00:33:05 ◼   ► That's what you get for having a car.

00:33:07 ◼   ► I mean, this is not like leaving your house unlocked.

00:33:09 ◼   ► This is like having a car, having a bank account.

00:33:11 ◼   ► Everybody has a smartphone.

00:33:12 ◼   ► It's not an unfortunate bad thing to have.

00:33:14 ◼   ► Everybody takes pictures with their smart,

00:33:16 ◼   ► like it's ridiculous.

00:33:17 ◼   ► It's completely off the wall.

00:33:20 ◼   ► And you know, that's really,

00:33:22 ◼   ► this is not really the issue we're getting at here

00:33:24 ◼   ► with this iCloud hack,

00:33:25 ◼   ► but like what it really comes down to is

00:33:27 ◼   ► if you wanna go like keep cranking up the meta levels,

00:33:31 ◼   ► it's the weird attitude we have.

00:33:36 ◼   ► Maybe it's weird as a species if you look at it really broad view, go out to Mars or something, but certainly in the US

00:33:41 ◼   ► it's weird

00:33:43 ◼   ► puritanical view of nudity and sex that we have that it's like taboo and evil and like

00:33:49 ◼   ► that

00:33:51 ◼   ► the idea that like they're doing something wrong by taking naked pictures of themselves because if you were a good person you would not do

00:33:57 ◼   ► that and it's so and that that's how it's different in people's minds than keeping your money in the back.

00:34:01 ◼   ► Well keeping your money in the back is one thing but taking naked pictures, no, it's exactly the same thing. Two things

00:34:05 ◼   ► They're private that your possession that you're allowed to do. It's your money. It's your bank account

00:34:09 ◼   ► Other people shouldn't have access there your photos. So there's a photo of your plants

00:34:13 ◼   ► Your your house your kids you with clothes on without clothes on suddenly when you take clothes on it becomes this other category of craziness

00:34:20 ◼   ► That anyway, that's a whole we're not gonna fix the the problem of the United States and their

00:34:25 ◼   ► Screwed up attitude towards sex, but that is why that is why you get all this craziness

00:34:31 ◼   ► coming in here where people lose their minds about it.

00:34:34 ◼   ► And it's not even worth discussing that stupidity.

00:34:37 ◼   ► But I think the thing that's worth discussing is,

00:34:40 ◼   ► forget about what they stole.

00:34:41 ◼   ► I don't want anybody stealing backups of my phones.

00:34:44 ◼   ► I don't care what's on them.

00:34:45 ◼   ► Like, that's what we have to address here.

00:34:48 ◼   ► And I just, I wish Apple would work harder to,

00:34:53 ◼   ► I mean, like, so Gruber did a post about how the backups,

00:35:01 ◼   ► You know, the iCloud backups are a good thing

00:35:03 ◼   ► because people are much more likely

00:35:04 ◼   ► to lose all their photos of their kids

00:35:06 ◼   ► because their phone fell in a lake

00:35:07 ◼   ► than they are to get hacked.

00:35:08 ◼   ► And so it's a trade-off between,

00:35:10 ◼   ► well, if you just never do iCloud backups,

00:35:12 ◼   ► you're safe from hacking,

00:35:13 ◼   ► but you could lose all your pictures

00:35:14 ◼   ► and you're much more likely to lose all your pictures

00:35:16 ◼   ► of your kids than you are to get hacked.

00:35:19 ◼   ► And the other trade-off is in any security thing,

00:35:21 ◼   ► it's convenience versus security.

00:35:23 ◼   ► If they didn't have the stupid, you know,

00:35:25 ◼   ► tell me your mother's maiden name

00:35:26 ◼   ► in the high school you went to things,

00:35:28 ◼   ► people would get locked out of their accounts

00:35:29 ◼   ► and they'd be like, Apple would be like,

00:35:31 ◼   ► "Well, sorry, you lost your password.

00:35:32 ◼   ► "We never knew what your password is.

00:35:33 ◼   ► "You can't get it and just have to erase your phone."

00:35:35 ◼   ► And they would be like, "Are you kidding me?"

00:35:36 ◼   ► Like, people forget their passwords like crazy.

00:35:40 ◼   ► And so Apple is trying in the same terrible way

00:35:43 ◼   ► that everyone else is doing to make it

00:35:44 ◼   ► so that people aren't locked out of their phones

00:35:46 ◼   ► when they inevitably forget their password.

00:35:49 ◼   ► But what is it that you can replace a password with

00:35:51 ◼   ► that is as secure as a password or more secure

00:35:54 ◼   ► that people won't forget?

00:35:55 ◼   ► Like, there's no good solution for that,

00:35:57 ◼   ► except for maybe like touch ID or I think that like,

00:36:01 ◼   ► if I had to advise Apple on how to address this,

00:36:04 ◼   ► I would go more towards like the other systems

00:36:07 ◼   ► that we have for identity, like,

00:36:09 ◼   ► I don't know, do a video call with somebody

00:36:11 ◼   ► and record a video of them, get in touch with them,

00:36:13 ◼   ► make them prove through a trusted third party

00:36:15 ◼   ► that they are who they are,

00:36:16 ◼   ► some sort of really annoying process

00:36:18 ◼   ► that if you were concerned about security,

00:36:21 ◼   ► you could prove to them in a way,

00:36:23 ◼   ► in many different factors that you were who you were.

00:36:25 ◼   ► And then if someone wanted to reset their password,

00:36:28 ◼   ► they would have to reproduce that extremely annoying,

00:36:32 ◼   ► you know, proof that you are who you are.

00:36:35 ◼   ► But most people don't wanna do that.

00:36:37 ◼   ► And so Apple is kind of trying to aim

00:36:39 ◼   ► for the correct balance between security and convenience

00:36:43 ◼   ► that inconvenience is the fewest number of people.

00:36:46 ◼   ► But it is a trade-off and it is an imperfect trade-off

00:36:49 ◼   ► and it's an increasingly imperfect trade-off

00:36:51 ◼   ► when now it's so easy to find out the answers

00:36:54 ◼   ► people's security questions by just like trolling their Facebook and stuff.

00:36:57 ◼   ► Yeah, and I'm glad you jumped on me a few minutes ago in saying that it's like leaving your house

00:37:02 ◼   ► unlocked. That was an unfair analogy and you're absolutely right. These people did nothing wrong,

00:37:08 ◼   ► either by means of a flaw in Apple systems or perhaps some social engineering. They had

00:37:16 ◼   ► something stolen from them and that's just not fair. And the one interesting thing to me is that

00:37:22 ◼   ► When the internet decided that this was all Apple and iCloud's fault, nobody seemed to think that was

00:37:31 ◼   ► surprising. And that's a problem. Like if everyone, if there's this great, huge security leak,

00:37:40 ◼   ► and everyone says, "Oh, well, you know, that's iCloud," like that's a big freaking problem.

00:37:46 ◼   ► And-

00:37:47 ◼   ► Is a branding problem, you mean, right?

00:37:48 ◼   ► Yeah, and that's exactly right.

00:37:51 ◼   ► And here it is presumably with iOS 8 coming on Tuesday, or well, being talked about on

00:37:57 ◼   ► Tuesday and presumably they're going to talk about a lot of this photos in the cloud stuff

00:38:02 ◼   ► that they talked about at WWDC.

00:38:05 ◼   ► This is not a good time for this to be happening.

00:38:08 ◼   ► And so I just feel like at some point, and I know we've said this a thousand times, at

00:38:14 ◼   ► At some point, Apple's gonna have to get really serious

00:38:17 ◼   ► about their cloud services.

00:38:20 ◼   ► - But in this regard, it's not like the parts

00:38:22 ◼   ► where they're not good at online services.

00:38:24 ◼   ► This is the thing where seriousness won't save them.

00:38:29 ◼   ► It's not like there is something that other companies

00:38:30 ◼   ► know how to do that Apple is refusing to do or is bad at.

00:38:33 ◼   ► There is no good solution to this.

00:38:35 ◼   ► Like two-factor authentication,

00:38:36 ◼   ► where you have to authenticate not just with a password,

00:38:38 ◼   ► but also with something else that you possess.

00:38:40 ◼   ► Either they text your phone,

00:38:41 ◼   ► or someone pointed out today it's kind of ridiculous

00:38:44 ◼   ► with the SMS gateway on the Mac thing

00:38:46 ◼   ► that text will also appear on your Mac,

00:38:48 ◼   ► so if someone has access to your Mac and your Apple ID,

00:38:50 ◼   ► they can get that text too.

00:38:51 ◼   ► But anyway, two-factor authentication helps,

00:38:53 ◼   ► but the reason, it's like,

00:38:54 ◼   ► well, why doesn't everybody do two-factor?

00:38:57 ◼   ► You kidding?

00:38:58 ◼   ► People can't even remember their passwords.

00:38:59 ◼   ► Two-factor is still too complicated.

00:39:00 ◼   ► It's the balance between security and convenience.

00:39:02 ◼   ► And the current balance between security and convenience

00:39:04 ◼   ► is already, from most people's perspectives,

00:39:06 ◼   ► pushed too far into the side of security.

00:39:08 ◼   ► All these passwords they have to remember,

00:39:10 ◼   ► It's a crappy system.

00:39:11 ◼   ► Touch ID, I think, helps,

00:39:13 ◼   ► because that's a security convenience thing

00:39:15 ◼   ► where they can give you additional security

00:39:16 ◼   ► and also a little bit additional convenience.

00:39:18 ◼   ► It's not the usual trade-off that you can do there.

00:39:20 ◼   ► But there is not some obvious thing that Apple can do.

00:39:22 ◼   ► Like, boy, if only Apple was more serious.

00:39:24 ◼   ► The reason it's so easy to hack your accounts

00:39:26 ◼   ► is because it has to be that easy

00:39:28 ◼   ► for all the people who forget their passwords.

00:39:29 ◼   ► And there's just probably thousands and thousands of them

00:39:32 ◼   ► every day who forget their passwords

00:39:33 ◼   ► and use that system for its legitimate purposes

00:39:35 ◼   ► who would be pissed off if they couldn't.

00:39:37 ◼   ► You can't tell somebody, well, all your stuff is dead.

00:39:40 ◼   ► You forgot your password.

00:39:41 ◼   ► You don't remember what it is.

00:39:42 ◼   ► Your backup is encrypted.

00:39:43 ◼   ► No one else can decrypt it but you.

00:39:45 ◼   ► Then you've lost all the pictures of your kids again.

00:39:48 ◼   ► Like, well, I can prove that I'm me.

00:39:49 ◼   ► Like, we don't know who you are.

00:39:51 ◼   ► We have nothing.

00:39:52 ◼   ► And so that's why I think you have to,

00:39:55 ◼   ► it just has to be a social, sort of a change in society

00:39:58 ◼   ► to realize that if you care about your stuff online,

00:40:00 ◼   ► you have to protect it in a way that is inconvenient for you

00:40:04 ◼   ► in terms of proving who you really are.

00:40:06 ◼   ► And at the very least start with having a system.

00:40:08 ◼   ► The two factor is one example of that.

00:40:09 ◼   ► If you care about it, you can go through with two factor

00:40:12 ◼   ► and go through the hassle for the increased security.

00:40:15 ◼   ► They should have a step up from that

00:40:17 ◼   ► that involves like authenticating who you are

00:40:19 ◼   ► in every possible way, using all technology

00:40:21 ◼   ► and our disposal and the legal system and everything else

00:40:23 ◼   ► to really, really prove you are who you are.

00:40:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, and to also quote Ben Thompson,

00:40:30 ◼   ► he wrote a piece today which is in the chat room,

00:40:33 ◼   ► we'll put in the show notes about how,

00:40:35 ◼   ► And I think the way he phrased it is really good.

00:40:38 ◼   ► The problem is that Apple has no reservoir of goodwill

00:40:42 ◼   ► when it comes to iCloud.

00:40:44 ◼   ► And in this case, it may or may not even be

00:40:46 ◼   ► that iCloud was the issue.

00:40:48 ◼   ► It may be, to your point, John,

00:40:49 ◼   ► a bunch of really, really great social engineering.

00:40:52 ◼   ► - But that's still iCloud.

00:40:54 ◼   ► I mean, social engineering of Apple's service.

00:40:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, I guess what I'm saying is

00:40:59 ◼   ► it could be that iCloud was reasonably proficient

00:41:05 ◼   ► at blocking these sorts of attacks.

00:41:07 ◼   ► I'm not saying it is or it isn't,

00:41:08 ◼   ► but it could be that it was.

00:41:10 ◼   ► Yet, because we all know and assume

00:41:13 ◼   ► that iCloud is a steaming pile of crap,

00:41:16 ◼   ► as soon as somebody theorized that iCloud was the problem,

00:41:19 ◼   ► the entire internet decided, oh, well, it must be iCloud.

00:41:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause people can't differentiate

00:41:24 ◼   ► between like, well, their services aren't responsive

00:41:27 ◼   ► and their uptime is bad,

00:41:28 ◼   ► versus like security flaws versus social engineering.

00:41:30 ◼   ► Yeah, you're right, it just goes all into the same bin.

00:41:32 ◼   ► And the fact that just iPhones are popular,

00:41:33 ◼   ► iPhones are popular with celebrities.

00:41:35 ◼   ► Celebrities are, you know, like I said,

00:41:37 ◼   ► who knows where these pictures came from?

00:41:38 ◼   ► Some of them surely came from iCloud,

00:41:39 ◼   ► some of them surely came from other places.

00:41:41 ◼   ► Doesn't matter, just really matters

00:41:42 ◼   ► what's the headline of the story.

00:41:44 ◼   ► But I mean, Apple can,

00:41:45 ◼   ► I'm sure Apple won't make reference to this,

00:41:48 ◼   ► I'm assuming they won't,

00:41:49 ◼   ► but like, we'll talk about this in a bit,

00:41:51 ◼   ► on the September 9th event when they're presumably

00:41:53 ◼   ► going to introduce new iPhones,

00:41:56 ◼   ► Touch ID is a step in the right direction with this.

00:41:59 ◼   ► It's, granted, you can fool it

00:42:01 ◼   ► and it's not as secure as whatever and blah, blah, blah,

00:42:03 ◼   ► but it's an additional factor, right?

00:42:05 ◼   ► And they have existing two-factor authentication.

00:42:08 ◼   ► Apple is clearly trying to find ways

00:42:11 ◼   ► to make things more secure and more convenient

00:42:14 ◼   ► instead of just saying, okay, we'll give you

00:42:17 ◼   ► what I was suggesting, which is make it more secure

00:42:18 ◼   ► and less convenient for the people who need that security,

00:42:21 ◼   ► give them the option.

00:42:22 ◼   ► And another thing, in response to this, as I usually do,

00:42:26 ◼   ► I'm like, well, time to change my password again.

00:42:27 ◼   ► I just, why not? (laughing)

00:42:30 ◼   ► Make it even more ridiculous.

00:42:31 ◼   ► Anyway, when I was doing that,

00:42:34 ◼   ► when I tried to log into my Apple ID,

00:42:37 ◼   ► it was like appleid.apple.com or something,

00:42:40 ◼   ► I actually, what I was originally going in was

00:42:43 ◼   ► to see what my security questions were

00:42:44 ◼   ► to make sure they weren't like,

00:42:46 ◼   ► make sure they were nonsense basically

00:42:48 ◼   ► and not the truth or something,

00:42:49 ◼   ► 'cause someone could look up

00:42:50 ◼   ► because they only give you a choice

00:42:51 ◼   ► of like questions that anybody could look up.

00:42:53 ◼   ► And it wouldn't even let me into my account,

00:42:55 ◼   ► like let me see my security questions

00:42:57 ◼   ► or anything about my account

00:42:58 ◼   ► because as soon as I logged in,

00:42:59 ◼   ► it said, "Your password is too insecure,

00:43:01 ◼   ► please set a new one."

00:43:03 ◼   ► Again, I couldn't get to any of my other resources.

00:43:04 ◼   ► I couldn't see my email address,

00:43:06 ◼   ► couldn't see my mailing address, my payment info.

00:43:08 ◼   ► You couldn't get to the interface on the Apple ID site.

00:43:10 ◼   ► Everything worked fine.

00:43:10 ◼   ► I could still log in and use all my stuff,

00:43:12 ◼   ► but trying to manage your Apple ID,

00:43:15 ◼   ► they are apparently trying to enforce better passwords

00:43:18 ◼   ► by deciding whose password is or isn't secure.

00:43:21 ◼   ► So I changed my password to make it more secure.

00:43:24 ◼   ► I also looked at my security questions

00:43:26 ◼   ► and did a security pass.

00:43:28 ◼   ► You can do that.

00:43:29 ◼   ► I don't know how much that protects me.

00:43:30 ◼   ► If someone is really smooth and gets a bad telephone rep,

00:43:33 ◼   ► they could probably still social engineer their way in.

00:43:37 ◼   ► But yeah, I mean, and two-factor helps,

00:43:39 ◼   ► but security's a constant battle.

00:43:42 ◼   ► - And we can all keep talking about how Apple

00:43:47 ◼   ► could add all these things in to make things more secure,

00:43:49 ◼   ► give us options to lock things down

00:43:51 ◼   ► more tightly and everything,

00:43:53 ◼   ► but one of the biggest problems is

00:43:54 ◼   ► if these things are not the defaults

00:43:56 ◼   ► or the only way to do things,

00:43:58 ◼   ► then they're not really gonna protect most people.

00:44:01 ◼   ► And most of these celebrities who were targeted

00:44:05 ◼   ► for this mass theft over whatever amount of time it was,

00:44:08 ◼   ► they would, a good portion of them probably

00:44:13 ◼   ► would have all their phones on

00:44:14 ◼   ► whatever the default settings were.

00:44:16 ◼   ► And so unless you make the defaults crazy complicated

00:44:20 ◼   ► or make that the only option,

00:44:23 ◼   ► having the options is not gonna really help most people.

00:44:26 ◼   ► - Well, celebrities might be motivated

00:44:28 ◼   ► Like it made word who get around amongst celebrities like when you get an iPhone that asks you if you want to use your fingerprint

00:44:33 ◼   ► As a second factor say yes, like you know this this type of thing is something for people who are like

00:44:38 ◼   ► Targeted by likely to be targeted by these attacks even if they're not tech savvy because I think Apple does a pretty good job of

00:44:45 ◼   ► Like during your like phone setup dates like you should set a password passcode

00:44:49 ◼   ► and if you try to say no

00:44:50 ◼   ► It's like you sure you don't want to have a passcode and same thing with touch ID like

00:44:53 ◼   ► They are trying to encourage people to be more secure

00:44:56 ◼   ► And I think socially within groups of people who feel they are targeted for potential hacks have some motivation to talk amongst themselves

00:45:03 ◼   ► And say yes, you know your phone doesn't have a like like lock codes your phone doesn't have a lock code

00:45:07 ◼   ► You should totally have a lock code. Oh your phone doesn't also use touch ID. You should totally use that you know

00:45:11 ◼   ► So there's hope there. I think yeah, so breaking news as we're recording on this Thursday night

00:45:17 ◼   ► Apparently Tim Cook has given a statement or interview of some sort to the Wall Street Journal

00:45:25 ◼   ► because the Wall Street Journal is a bunch of idiots who thinks that they have to block all their content,

00:45:31 ◼   ► all I can read to you is the following. In his first interview on the subject, Apple chief executive Tim Cook said,

00:45:38 ◼   ► "Now it's getting really, really hard to read. Celebrity's iCloud accounts were compromised when the hackers correctly answered security."

00:45:44 ◼   ► Questions to obtain their passwords or when they were victimized by a...

00:45:48 ◼   ► Oh, thank you.

00:45:49 ◼   ► I deleted the thing on the DOM inspector.

00:45:51 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:45:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's the first thing I tried in their paywall,

00:45:55 ◼   ► but they actually don't put the whole text there,

00:45:56 ◼   ► which is a shame.

00:45:57 ◼   ► - The Google trick still works.

00:45:59 ◼   ► - I tried that and it didn't work for me,

00:46:00 ◼   ► but maybe it's user error.

00:46:01 ◼   ► - If I paste this into our Skype chat,

00:46:03 ◼   ► is that copyright infringement?

00:46:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, go ahead, but I don't think we need to read it,

00:46:07 ◼   ► but anyway, you can put a link to it

00:46:09 ◼   ► and do whatever everyone who has a website usually does.

00:46:11 ◼   ► You just put a link to the Google results so people can,

00:46:14 ◼   ► anyway, like they said, there's no flaw in our software

00:46:16 ◼   ► other than the rate limiting, which obviously they fixed

00:46:18 ◼   ► and they found, I'm not surprised that they found this.

00:46:21 ◼   ► that like they can find, okay,

00:46:23 ◼   ► pick some celebrity's account with their permission,

00:46:25 ◼   ► say we'd like to investigate how you got hacked,

00:46:27 ◼   ► find out how they got hacked

00:46:28 ◼   ► with someone called Apple's support line,

00:46:30 ◼   ► answer their security questions, got their stuff.

00:46:32 ◼   ► And that's exactly what I was talking about,

00:46:33 ◼   ► like that, that's not,

00:46:35 ◼   ► the security questions are less secure than a password.

00:46:38 ◼   ► And intentionally so,

00:46:39 ◼   ► because when you've forgotten your password,

00:46:41 ◼   ► they want you to have some way to get your stuff back.

00:46:44 ◼   ► And if you've forgotten your password,

00:46:45 ◼   ► we need to have something that you are less likely to forget.

00:46:47 ◼   ► You're less likely to forget

00:46:48 ◼   ► who your second grade teacher was, right?

00:46:50 ◼   ► than you are to have your password,

00:46:51 ◼   ► but it's also easier to get.

00:46:52 ◼   ► Like it's, you know, it's a trade off

00:46:55 ◼   ► and it is a very bad trade off for people

00:46:57 ◼   ► who could potentially be targeted.

00:46:59 ◼   ► So I think Apple is working in the right direction

00:47:02 ◼   ► with the biometric stuff

00:47:03 ◼   ► and I think they should continue to go even farther.

00:47:05 ◼   ► Who knows, maybe like little pictures, video, voice print,

00:47:07 ◼   ► like we can prove to each other more or less.

00:47:11 ◼   ► We don't have to worry about a couple of generations

00:47:13 ◼   ► having difficulty proving to each other

00:47:14 ◼   ► that we are who we are

00:47:15 ◼   ► because we have a distinctive look, people recognize us.

00:47:18 ◼   ► Eventually there's enough social proof that you are Mark Arment and people see you and

00:47:22 ◼   ► say that's him.

00:47:23 ◼   ► You don't have a twin brother as far as we know.

00:47:25 ◼   ► You know, plastic surgery is not good enough to match you exactly.

00:47:28 ◼   ► We don't have holograms.

00:47:29 ◼   ► They're like, we are in a place where we can prove you are who you are.

00:47:32 ◼   ► We just need to convey more of that.

00:47:35 ◼   ► And we have the thing is we have the technology to convey more of that information about proving

00:47:38 ◼   ► who you are.

00:47:39 ◼   ► We have video, we have audio, we have touch sensors.

00:47:43 ◼   ► We can make this happen.

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00:50:40 ◼   ► Thank you very much.

00:50:41 ◼   ► - So we are recording this on Thursday the fourth.

00:50:45 ◼   ► It will hopefully be out on Friday the fifth,

00:50:48 ◼   ► maybe Saturday the sixth.

00:50:49 ◼   ► And on the ninth, Apple is releasing something new.

00:50:55 ◼   ► So it would be wrong of us not to at least spend

00:50:59 ◼   ► a few moments discussing what do we expect to see.

00:51:03 ◼   ► So Marco, what do you expect to see?

00:51:05 ◼   ► - I mean, there's the obvious stuff.

00:51:07 ◼   ► The stuff that like the rumor sites have basically,

00:51:10 ◼   ► there's been enough smoke and enough parts leaks to--

00:51:13 ◼   ► - Stuff we've seen videos of.

00:51:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:51:16 ◼   ► Assembled, purported iPhone 6s, right?

00:51:19 ◼   ► - That one even powered on

00:51:20 ◼   ► and showed the firmware update screen.

00:51:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, seriously.

00:51:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I think if you can boot a new iPhone

00:51:26 ◼   ► into DFU mode, I think it's probably confirmation

00:51:29 ◼   ► that it exists.

00:51:30 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:51:31 ◼   ► So I think it's pretty clear we're getting a 4.7 inch

00:51:34 ◼   ► iPhone 6 at the bare minimum.

00:51:36 ◼   ► Now--

00:51:36 ◼   ► - Hold on, I'm not trying to be funny.

00:51:38 ◼   ► The thing in that video that was the 4.7 inch,

00:51:41 ◼   ► 'cause that thing looked huge to me.

00:51:43 ◼   ► - No, no, we haven't seen, we've seen almost nothing

00:51:46 ◼   ► from a 5.5 inch.

00:51:47 ◼   ► I believe somebody got a back panel a couple days ago

00:51:50 ◼   ► or something that might be from it,

00:51:51 ◼   ► but we've seen in general,

00:51:53 ◼   ► we've seen effectively nothing about the 5.5.

00:51:56 ◼   ► - I saw this device, this reported new iPhone

00:51:59 ◼   ► in this person's hand, and I thought it looked enormous.

00:52:02 ◼   ► And if that's the 4.5, 4.7, whatever it is,

00:52:05 ◼   ► man, I don't know if I can handle that.

00:52:07 ◼   ► - Well, see, we're close enough to the event now

00:52:10 ◼   ► that if the 5.5 wasn't a real thing,

00:52:12 ◼   ► you would think that Apple would do that thing it does

00:52:15 ◼   ► where it gets the message out

00:52:17 ◼   ► that maybe a 5.5 is not a real thing.

00:52:19 ◼   ► - Right, like, so there'd be a leaked report

00:52:21 ◼   ► Bloomberg or WSJ saying like, "Oh, well, actually..."

00:52:24 ◼   ► Or even not like... They can make either official statements or statements through people that...

00:52:29 ◼   ► Like, remember in the WRC when they weren't going to have hardware, they made it clear

00:52:32 ◼   ► they weren't going to have hardware without saying they weren't going to have hardware.

00:52:34 ◼   ► They don't care in the months leading up to it. But right before the event, I feel like if there

00:52:39 ◼   ► wasn't going to be two sizes of iPhones, big and even bigger, they would have been saying something

00:52:45 ◼   ► by now.

00:52:46 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:52:47 ◼   ► - Or getting the word out.

00:52:48 ◼   ► So I'm with Marco, 4.7, 5.5 iPhones.

00:52:52 ◼   ► I'm also totally in agreement that everyone has said that the 5.5 is gonna be more expensive,

00:52:57 ◼   ► not just because they wanna differentiate, but because the bigger screen costs more money,

00:53:01 ◼   ► bigger batteries cost more money, and that's a lot of the cost of the phone is in the screen

00:53:05 ◼   ► and the battery.

00:53:06 ◼   ► So yeah, those are the easy ones.

00:53:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's been a couple of very recent rumors, like in the last couple days, saying

00:53:12 ◼   ► that both the iPad Air 2 would be unveiled.

00:53:17 ◼   ► So a new iPad Air with an anti-glare screen,

00:53:20 ◼   ► which sounds interesting, and a better Touch ID sensor.

00:53:24 ◼   ► So apparently there's going to be a second generation Touch ID

00:53:26 ◼   ► sensor that then the iPad will get,

00:53:27 ◼   ► and then the phone, of course, will get it as well.

00:53:29 ◼   ► And another recent rumor is that the wearable device

00:53:32 ◼   ► will be announced, but won't ship until next year.

00:53:35 ◼   ► So there's a whole bunch of recent craziness

00:53:38 ◼   ► surrounding this event.

00:53:39 ◼   ► They're also building that giant white structure

00:53:41 ◼   ► that I think the most plausible speculation people have had is that it's actually a concert

00:53:46 ◼   ► venue for you two to perform. Who knows? What we do know is that anything we say in this

00:53:54 ◼   ► show predicting what's going to be there beyond a new iPhone, we're probably going to look

00:53:59 ◼   ► back at next week and laugh at because we're...

00:54:01 ◼   ► Don't you think we can all be safe in saying that there's a better than 50/50 chance that

00:54:07 ◼   ► they're going to announce a wearable?

00:54:09 ◼   ► I think so.

00:54:11 ◼   ► I feel safe in saying that.

00:54:12 ◼   ► Just because if this was gonna be only an iPhone event,

00:54:15 ◼   ► the invitation would have been more forthcoming.

00:54:17 ◼   ► - Did you see they have that countdown page

00:54:19 ◼   ► for the live stream?

00:54:21 ◼   ► And it's saying like there's so much more.

00:54:23 ◼   ► They're hyping this up a lot.

00:54:24 ◼   ► Apple is hyping this up more than usual.

00:54:26 ◼   ► - Right, and it's a giant venue.

00:54:28 ◼   ► The Flint Center is way bigger than the normal venues.

00:54:30 ◼   ► They invited tons of press to this thing.

00:54:33 ◼   ► It's not like in the little town hall.

00:54:36 ◼   ► It's not in the, it's a huge venue.

00:54:39 ◼   ► They're building this big structure,

00:54:40 ◼   ► which I assume is gonna be either be,

00:54:43 ◼   ► it's not the event's not gonna be there,

00:54:45 ◼   ► so it's either a hands-on area or a YouTube concert area

00:54:47 ◼   ► or like, who knows?

00:54:50 ◼   ► It seems like a much bigger deal.

00:54:53 ◼   ► And you wouldn't do this if it was just a bunch of iPhones

00:54:55 ◼   ► or even if it was iPhones and iPads.

00:54:56 ◼   ► And so what are we expecting from Apple?

00:54:58 ◼   ► Wearables or a TV thing?

00:54:59 ◼   ► A TV thing doesn't seem like it's in the cards.

00:55:02 ◼   ► I haven't heard much smoke about that.

00:55:03 ◼   ► So you gotta say it's a wearable thing.

00:55:05 ◼   ► And I also agree with the rumors that say

00:55:08 ◼   ► it probably won't ship because if it was shipping,

00:55:09 ◼   ► we'd be seeing the leaks.

00:55:10 ◼   ► Like they get to do the same thing they did

00:55:12 ◼   ► with the original iPhone.

00:55:13 ◼   ► Way pre-announce it, because it's not like

00:55:16 ◼   ► you're killing sales of an existing product.

00:55:17 ◼   ► And you have to do all this government FCC stuff

00:55:20 ◼   ► and other things that will cause it to leak,

00:55:21 ◼   ► and plus manufacturing and bazillion other things.

00:55:24 ◼   ► So, you know, announce it first, problem solved.

00:55:26 ◼   ► - Well, and also, I think this, like, so far,

00:55:31 ◼   ► if Apple makes any new product, we see parts leaks.

00:55:33 ◼   ► Like, if they make anything that's gonna ship imminently,

00:55:37 ◼   ► we see parts leaks in advance,

00:55:38 ◼   ► because they're making things at such big scales.

00:55:40 ◼   ► - That people care about.

00:55:42 ◼   ► Things that people care about,

00:55:43 ◼   ► because not enough people cared about the Mac Pro,

00:55:45 ◼   ► and that didn't leak. - That's true.

00:55:46 ◼   ► But they also weren't making that in massive volumes,

00:55:48 ◼   ► and that's-- - Yeah, exactly.

00:55:50 ◼   ► But you don't see leaks of new iMacs,

00:55:53 ◼   ► or for even the matter of laptops.

00:55:55 ◼   ► They're best-selling laptops.

00:55:56 ◼   ► It's like, "Eh, no one really cares enough."

00:55:58 ◼   ► - Well, but again, the volume that they're producing there,

00:56:01 ◼   ► they sell so many iPhones that they can't keep an iPhone

00:56:04 ◼   ► under wraps during the massive ramp-up

00:56:07 ◼   ► of getting the manufacturer and going before launch.

00:56:09 ◼   ► And so they definitely run the same risk

00:56:12 ◼   ► with a wearable thing,

00:56:13 ◼   ► but if they release a compelling wearable device,

00:56:16 ◼   ► they're probably gonna sell a butt ton of them

00:56:17 ◼   ► very, very shortly after launch.

00:56:19 ◼   ► And so they, especially,

00:56:21 ◼   ► well, it's probably gonna miss the holiday season,

00:56:22 ◼   ► but regardless, they're gonna sell a ton of them.

00:56:24 ◼   ► And so they're probably announcing it very far in advance,

00:56:28 ◼   ► if that is indeed what they're doing,

00:56:30 ◼   ► just so they can control the reveal of it.

00:56:33 ◼   ► it crushes them when they have this cool big secret thing

00:56:37 ◼   ► and then the internet ruins it with parts leaks

00:56:39 ◼   ► in months ahead of time or weeks ahead of time.

00:56:41 ◼   ► I'm sure Apple wants to control every bit of the narrative

00:56:45 ◼   ► of how this new device, if it exists

00:56:47 ◼   ► and it sounds likely to exist,

00:56:49 ◼   ► of how this device is unveiled to the world.

00:56:51 ◼   ► 'Cause suppose we just got a parts leak.

00:56:54 ◼   ► Suppose some rumor site had some picture

00:56:58 ◼   ► of some wrist cuff with the screen on the top

00:57:02 ◼   ► and an Apple logo on the back

00:57:03 ◼   ► and that's all we knew about it.

00:57:05 ◼   ► That would be anti-climactic at least,

00:57:09 ◼   ► and possibly underwhelming.

00:57:13 ◼   ► It's like, oh, well, they're just making something

00:57:14 ◼   ► that looks like a nice smartwatch.

00:57:16 ◼   ► And that's all we would know.

00:57:17 ◼   ► And the whole narrative would be controlled

00:57:19 ◼   ► by the rumor cycle and the speculative press.

00:57:22 ◼   ► Whereas if they have this event to show it off to us

00:57:24 ◼   ► for the first time, they control everything

00:57:27 ◼   ► about how it's perceived.

00:57:28 ◼   ► They set the tone, they set the talking points,

00:57:30 ◼   ► they tell us why it's so cool.

00:57:32 ◼   ► And then we get to go around telling everyone else

00:57:34 ◼   ► their talking points about why it's so cool.

00:57:37 ◼   ► That's so much better than trying to fight with the leaks

00:57:40 ◼   ► and trying to stay ahead of the PR on those.

00:57:43 ◼   ► So I think it's very clear why they would do something

00:57:47 ◼   ► like this very far in advance

00:57:48 ◼   ► for a brand new kind of device like this.

00:57:50 ◼   ► - I'm trying to think of when they did it.

00:57:51 ◼   ► Again, obviously, if there's no existing product,

00:57:53 ◼   ► you get to do it because you get to pre-announce

00:57:55 ◼   ► 'cause you're not killing sales of your existing product.

00:57:57 ◼   ► But then if it's an existing one like the phones,

00:57:59 ◼   ► like the things leak,

00:58:00 ◼   ► I think the last one I can remember, well, this is still an original type thing.

00:58:04 ◼   ► I was gonna say, like, the original iPad didn't leak.

00:58:07 ◼   ► People cared about the iPad, people cared a lot about the tablet, and I think they announced

00:58:12 ◼   ► that not too long before it went on sale, but we had no leak in that.

00:58:15 ◼   ► Not that there was that much leak, like, it's a tablet, the whole issue was, like, what's

00:58:19 ◼   ► gonna be on the screen.

00:58:20 ◼   ► But yeah, like, when they've had to combat leaks, like, think about the 5S, like, there

00:58:24 ◼   ► was gonna be a gold one, we already knew it was gonna be gold, and we saw all the parts.

00:58:28 ◼   ► had to, in their presentation, they had to sort of work their magic to say, "I know

00:58:32 ◼   ► you've seen lots of pictures of this gold backplate, and you've seen it compared in

00:58:35 ◼   ► different things, and you've seen the darker gold one, and you've seen the lighter gold

00:58:38 ◼   ► one, and you've seen it next to the grey one, and you've seen different colored blacks,

00:58:40 ◼   ► but we're going to show you a nice highly produced video with this liquid gold melting

00:58:44 ◼   ► stuff and tell you why it's great, and put Johnny Iov up there to tilt his head and tell

00:58:48 ◼   ► you about the diamond cut chamfer and all this other, oh, I'll say chamfer, and it'll

00:58:52 ◼   ► be great, and you will forget all about the other stuff."

00:58:55 ◼   ► You kind of do forget, but you're right Marco.

00:58:57 ◼   ► It's so much better to not have any of that to compete with

00:59:00 ◼   ► and just say your first picture,

00:59:04 ◼   ► your first introduction to this thing

00:59:06 ◼   ► will be through marketing materials that we have vetted.

00:59:08 ◼   ► You'll see it in the best light,

00:59:10 ◼   ► in the context we want you to see it,

00:59:11 ◼   ► and the purposes that we think this thing is gonna do.

00:59:13 ◼   ► And by the way, speaking of purposes,

00:59:14 ◼   ► a lot of people in the chat room have been talking about,

00:59:16 ◼   ► oh, you wanted better authentication for iCloud security.

00:59:19 ◼   ► Well, this wristwatch might help.

00:59:21 ◼   ► Yeah, it might if it has touch ID sensor.

00:59:23 ◼   ► I'm not sure something that's strapped

00:59:24 ◼   ► onto your wrist or on any other part of your body

00:59:27 ◼   ► has any better access to proving you are who you are

00:59:30 ◼   ► other than the same way as that a phone or a video

00:59:32 ◼   ► or some other thing can.

00:59:33 ◼   ► But anyway, that's an angle we can look for.

00:59:35 ◼   ► - It's interesting to me that Apple is so enthusiastic

00:59:41 ◼   ► to have put up a countdown.

00:59:47 ◼   ► It seems so not appley to me

00:59:52 ◼   ► to put up this countdown like this.

00:59:53 ◼   ► I mean, generally speaking, my impression of Apple

00:59:57 ◼   ► is they come out of nowhere and just drop this bomb

01:00:01 ◼   ► and say, "Hey, this thing that you never knew you wanted,

01:00:04 ◼   ► not only is it a thing, but guess what?

01:00:06 ◼   ► You want it."

01:00:07 ◼   ► And it's surprising to me to see this countdown

01:00:11 ◼   ► basically saying this thing that we all know

01:00:14 ◼   ► we're probably gonna talk about,

01:00:15 ◼   ► we're gonna talk about it in four days, 14 hours,

01:00:18 ◼   ► 49 minutes, and four seconds.

01:00:19 ◼   ► - I think they've done countdowns before.

01:00:21 ◼   ► Keep in mind, this is a countdown on a page

01:00:22 ◼   ► where the only line is "wish we could say more."

01:00:24 ◼   ► Like they don't even give you like a bad pun or a hint

01:00:28 ◼   ► or like they've gone so far as to make

01:00:30 ◼   ► the little twisting apple thing

01:00:31 ◼   ► to show a little lion behind it

01:00:33 ◼   ► with the back to the neck thing.

01:00:34 ◼   ► Like they give you some kind of vague,

01:00:36 ◼   ► even if the hint only makes sense in retrospect,

01:00:38 ◼   ► this one they're like you get nothing.

01:00:40 ◼   ► You get a white apple logo and you get a statement

01:00:43 ◼   ► that could only be construed if it's like

01:00:45 ◼   ► I wish we could make Siri say more things

01:00:47 ◼   ► or some BS stuff like that.

01:00:48 ◼   ► Like people are just desperate to mine

01:00:50 ◼   ► any nugget of information.

01:00:51 ◼   ► but they're essentially saying,

01:00:54 ◼   ► you know, I know that you know that I know

01:00:56 ◼   ► that you know that I have a wearable device

01:00:58 ◼   ► that I'm gonna, you know, and that's,

01:01:00 ◼   ► and really like, there's, the stakes in this

01:01:03 ◼   ► could not be higher.

01:01:04 ◼   ► Now first of all, putting aside like the poor CEO of Fitbit

01:01:07 ◼   ► who's gonna be watching this thing chewing on his fingernails

01:01:09 ◼   ► the whole time, right? (laughing)

01:01:11 ◼   ► Putting aside that, this is kind of, you know,

01:01:12 ◼   ► this is Tim Cook's like, not gonna say

01:01:15 ◼   ► make it or break it moment,

01:01:16 ◼   ► but this is an important moment for Tim Cook's Apple,

01:01:18 ◼   ► because previously the big complaint was,

01:01:19 ◼   ► yeah fine, Tim, you're doing well with the company

01:01:22 ◼   ► and the stock price has doubled or whatever

01:01:24 ◼   ► since you took over and selling more than ever or whatever,

01:01:26 ◼   ► but how come you haven't revolutionized the whatever world

01:01:29 ◼   ► and where is the iWatch, where is the, right,

01:01:32 ◼   ► so here's gonna be a new product category.

01:01:34 ◼   ► He's talked about it for a long time,

01:01:35 ◼   ► he's been talking about it probably too long.

01:01:38 ◼   ► If it happens, it seems very likely to happen now

01:01:42 ◼   ► or sometime this year and so this is,

01:01:44 ◼   ► people are gonna look at this and say,

01:01:47 ◼   ► Okay, well finally Apple enters a new product category

01:01:50 ◼   ► under Tim Cook.

01:01:51 ◼   ► Does it look like it's good?

01:01:53 ◼   ► Does it look like it's gonna be popular?

01:01:55 ◼   ► Does it look like a stinker?

01:01:56 ◼   ► Are people down?

01:01:56 ◼   ► And even then, like, you know,

01:01:58 ◼   ► people thought the iPad was a stinker too

01:02:00 ◼   ► and that sold pretty well.

01:02:01 ◼   ► So this is an important moment for Apple and for Tim Cook

01:02:06 ◼   ► and it will be an important rest of the year,

01:02:08 ◼   ► especially if the thing doesn't ship until next year

01:02:09 ◼   ► 'cause we won't really know until like

01:02:11 ◼   ► the first big burst of people who are desperate

01:02:13 ◼   ► to have this thing get it

01:02:14 ◼   ► and then the reviews come in and you know,

01:02:15 ◼   ► the whole nine yards.

01:02:16 ◼   ► So it's an interesting time.

01:02:19 ◼   ► The other interesting thing to me, and we alluded to this earlier, was a dear friend

01:02:24 ◼   ► of the show, underscore David Smith, pointed out the relative seating capacity of Apple

01:02:29 ◼   ► event venues.

01:02:30 ◼   ► The campus town hall, 301.

01:02:33 ◼   ► The urban center, 757.

01:02:37 ◼   ► Flint Center, where Tuesday's event is happening, 2,405.

01:02:42 ◼   ► I mean, obviously, and like you both said earlier, Apple is of the opinion that this

01:02:49 ◼   ► is going to be big.

01:02:50 ◼   ► If you look at the things that were released in the Flint Center, someone tweeted that

01:02:53 ◼   ► as well.

01:02:54 ◼   ► I think it was like the original Mac, the iMac, and then some product that was totally

01:02:57 ◼   ► forgettable.

01:02:58 ◼   ► You know, it's a bigger venue.

01:03:00 ◼   ► That's all you need to know.

01:03:01 ◼   ► It's like, it's way bigger.

01:03:02 ◼   ► It's not even close.

01:03:03 ◼   ► It's obvious.

01:03:04 ◼   ► I mean, they built a whole temporary building.

01:03:05 ◼   ► Like something is going down here.

01:03:06 ◼   ► And if they do this just for iPhones, it would be a terrible strategic blunder.

01:03:10 ◼   ► So it's not just gonna be iPhones.

01:03:13 ◼   ► Well, the iPhones will be great, you know,

01:03:14 ◼   ► I'm sure they will, and very interesting.

01:03:16 ◼   ► And by the way, we didn't even mention NFC,

01:03:18 ◼   ► with near field communications, you know,

01:03:20 ◼   ► the wireless thing that lets you

01:03:22 ◼   ► not touch your phone to something,

01:03:23 ◼   ► but sort of bring it nearby to sort of swipe over

01:03:26 ◼   ► and Apple's payment system that they're working on

01:03:28 ◼   ► has more and more rumors about that of, you know,

01:03:30 ◼   ► the deals they're making with,

01:03:31 ◼   ► group of just posted the deals they're making

01:03:33 ◼   ► with the banks to lower the fees to make, you know,

01:03:36 ◼   ► like it's all like all the things that we've,

01:03:38 ◼   ► We've been talking about NFC and iPhones for years now,

01:03:40 ◼   ► and now it looks like it might actually come to pass,

01:03:43 ◼   ► and that could be integrated with some sort of thing

01:03:45 ◼   ► that you wear as well.

01:03:46 ◼   ► So there's a lot of long rumored things coming to a head

01:03:49 ◼   ► in this September 9th event.

01:03:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's gonna be as big

01:03:55 ◼   ► as they're hyping it up to be,

01:03:56 ◼   ► because I think Apple is smart enough to know

01:03:59 ◼   ► not to hype up something that ends up

01:04:01 ◼   ► being another iPod Hi-Fi.

01:04:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, and by the way, I said they invited a lot of people.

01:04:05 ◼   ► I got invited to the event as well,

01:04:07 ◼   ► and much to the chagrin of everybody who knows me,

01:04:08 ◼   ► I will not be at the event.

01:04:10 ◼   ► Oh, come on.

01:04:10 ◼   ► Really?

01:04:11 ◼   ► You are the worst.

01:04:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I know you all hate it.

01:04:14 ◼   ► I hate you so much right now.

01:04:15 ◼   ► I mean, and so--

01:04:16 ◼   ► yeah.

01:04:17 ◼   ► So that's no heater there.

01:04:19 ◼   ► Trust me, there'll be plenty of people there to cover it.

01:04:22 ◼   ► If I went, I wouldn't be covering it.

01:04:24 ◼   ► Are they transferable tickets?

01:04:26 ◼   ► Because if so, I'm in.

01:04:27 ◼   ► No, there's nothing transferable.

01:04:29 ◼   ► Believe me, this will be a well-covered event.

01:04:31 ◼   ► It will be live streamed.

01:04:34 ◼   ► If this ends up being something really major

01:04:36 ◼   ► and like of historic value, you could have gone

01:04:39 ◼   ► and you're not going.

01:04:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, if I could go back in time

01:04:42 ◼   ► to the original Mac intro, maybe I would go.

01:04:44 ◼   ► I've seen a lot of Apple keynotes.

01:04:46 ◼   ► Like maybe I'll regret it, you're right.

01:04:47 ◼   ► But like I'm as exciting and important

01:04:49 ◼   ► as the wearable is to Apple thus far,

01:04:51 ◼   ► I am not particularly personally excited about a wearable.

01:04:55 ◼   ► - You don't even have an iPhone, of course not.

01:04:58 ◼   ► - That's exactly the only reason.

01:04:59 ◼   ► I don't even have an iPhone.

01:04:59 ◼   ► I might get this iPhone.

01:05:00 ◼   ► I could end up getting this iPhone.

01:05:03 ◼   ► Am I going to get a watch?

01:05:04 ◼   ► Look, Casey and I will watch your kids.

01:05:06 ◼   ► We will go to your house and watch your kids.

01:05:09 ◼   ► So you can go to this expense and I have to take time off work and we will buy your

01:05:12 ◼   ► ticket. Yeah, honestly, I am.

01:05:15 ◼   ► I would I would still wait.

01:05:17 ◼   ► I already told that I'm not going. I'm not going.

01:05:18 ◼   ► Ah, I would go have these with Marco on your ticket just to send your

01:05:22 ◼   ► curmudgeonly butt out there.

01:05:24 ◼   ► Oh, you are the worst.

01:05:26 ◼   ► Anyway, I will be watching it live with the rest of the world and I will get the

01:05:30 ◼   ► experience the same way.

01:05:31 ◼   ► I don't need to I don't need to be with the people who are actually

01:05:34 ◼   ► because I wouldn't be covering the event like when I go to WWDC.

01:05:37 ◼   ► I am doing something functional there.

01:05:39 ◼   ► I'm not just there for, you know, for my own edification.

01:05:44 ◼   ► I'm there to do research for a review that I then do.

01:05:47 ◼   ► So do you do anything for fun?

01:05:50 ◼   ► I do. Are you sure when?

01:05:56 ◼   ► Anyway, yeah. Don't anyway.

01:06:00 ◼   ► No, you're not off the hook yet, sir.

01:06:02 ◼   ► You have to at least give us one thing.

01:06:03 ◼   ► You guys can both answer this question for me.

01:06:05 ◼   ► I am confident.

01:06:06 ◼   ► What, do you do anything for fun?

01:06:08 ◼   ► Yeah, name some things I do for fun.

01:06:09 ◼   ► The answer's no.

01:06:10 ◼   ► No, name some things I do for fun.

01:06:11 ◼   ► I guess you might play a video game, but it seems like you hate-

01:06:13 ◼   ► Hey, that's a hard one.

01:06:14 ◼   ► Do you have to think a long time on that one?

01:06:16 ◼   ► Oh, what could he possibly do for fun?

01:06:17 ◼   ► And what else, Casey, do I do for fun that you can think of?

01:06:21 ◼   ► You watch a lot of TV.

01:06:22 ◼   ► And movies that I quote that you don't know.

01:06:24 ◼   ► Yeah, those two.

01:06:26 ◼   ► Don't you get angry with me, sir.

01:06:28 ◼   ► I'm just saying, like, what do you do for fun?

01:06:30 ◼   ► Like I pass through the things you know before, things that I do for fun.

01:06:33 ◼   ► You're like, I can't think of anything.

01:06:34 ◼   ► Oh God.

01:06:37 ◼   ► All I know is, so my dad has used to have, I guess they were like season tickets to

01:06:42 ◼   ► the Fillmore East, which I think was somewhere in either in New York City or

01:06:46 ◼   ► suburb of New York City years ago.

01:06:48 ◼   ► And he had like tickets to freaking every concert that was going on there.

01:06:53 ◼   ► And I think it was a new year's Eve show or something like that, that

01:06:56 ◼   ► Jimi Hendrix was playing and he thought, "Eh, well, I'll see him another time."

01:07:19 ◼   ► And let me tell you, my dad, I think this was like when he was roughly 20 when this

01:07:24 ◼   ► was an option for him.

01:07:25 ◼   ► He is just barely over 60 now and is still complaining about the fact that he didn't

01:07:30 ◼   ► go to that Jimi Hendrix concert.

01:07:32 ◼   ► But no, Jon, you do what you think it's like.

01:07:34 ◼   ► Well, Casey, I did see Steve Jobs's last keynote in person.

01:07:38 ◼   ► Keeping these devices in sync is driving us crazy.

01:07:43 ◼   ► I was sitting next to you.

01:07:45 ◼   ► And Marco.

01:07:46 ◼   ► So I feel like I didn't miss out on that.

01:07:47 ◼   ► And if this is Tim Cook's last keynote and I miss it in person, I'll be okay with it.

01:07:53 ◼   ► You are the worst.

01:07:54 ◼   ► I had a chance to go to the fish concert with the giant meat stick a few years

01:07:57 ◼   ► ago, that new year's Eve concert.

01:07:59 ◼   ► Somebody offered me a free.

01:08:00 ◼   ► Terrible.

01:08:14 ◼   ► And now Ben Thompson's in the chat taunting Marco and I saying, oh, well, I

01:08:19 ◼   ► got an invite too, but I don't think it's worth flying 26.

01:08:21 ◼   ► You people are terrible.

01:08:23 ◼   ► another person is not going. It's like, you know, we're gonna I'm gonna see the announcement in real time

01:08:27 ◼   ► It's not like I'm not gonna know about it. It's not a secret thing that's happening. We're all gonna see it

01:08:31 ◼   ► I'll probably have a better view here than I would in that giant auditorium

01:08:35 ◼   ► It's not like I'm gonna get a review unit. It's not like I'm going to write a review

01:08:39 ◼   ► I'm not even gonna cover the event. There's no reason for me to be there

01:08:42 ◼   ► Well, you could you would probably be invited to the hands-on area at least

01:08:45 ◼   ► Yeah, so you spend five seconds with it until Walt Mossberg slaps your hands away and sits at the table

01:08:50 ◼   ► Is that how they usually go I don't know I know I've never been in one of those hands-on rooms who knows

01:08:54 ◼   ► It'll be fine trust me it'll be okay, so angry at you

01:09:02 ◼   ► Are we done I'm so angry right now oh

01:09:06 ◼   ► My god

01:09:09 ◼   ► This is the worst we have a big after show to get to so I say we're done unless unless you can think of anything

01:09:13 ◼   ► Else to say about the September 9th event last chance to get in predictions

01:09:17 ◼   ► Hi, I have nothing bright to say I'm so angry at you right now. It's clouding my ability to think

01:09:23 ◼   ► Thanks to our three sponsors this week

01:09:26 ◼   ► Harry's Squarespace and lynda.com and we'll see you next week when John is not going to this event

01:09:34 ◼   ► Now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental

01:09:45 ◼   ► Oh it was accidental.

01:09:48 ◼   ► John didn't do any research.

01:09:50 ◼   ► Margo and Casey wouldn't let him.

01:09:53 ◼   ► Because it was accidental.

01:09:56 ◼   ► It was accidental.

01:09:59 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm.

01:10:04 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.

01:10:13 ◼   ► So that's Casey List, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-Marco-R-Men S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-Racusa

01:10:24 ◼   ► It's accidental (It's accidental)

01:10:28 ◼   ► They didn't mean to (Accidental)

01:10:31 ◼   ► (Accidental)

01:10:33 ◼   ► Tech podcast so long

01:10:37 ◼   ► I'm so glad you didn't know this. Casey has been yelling at me all week about it, but I didn't realize you hadn't even known.

01:10:43 ◼   ► This is going on. You didn't know this Marco? It seems like you didn't. No, I knew. I was just

01:10:47 ◼   ► saving my rage. Yeah, well you did a good job saving it. Yeah. All I know is, I see this is

01:10:54 ◼   ► not a joke. When you told me originally, which was around a week ago, I seriously had a mental

01:11:01 ◼   ► argument with myself debating whether or not to go telling your wife that you got an invite.

01:11:08 ◼   ► And if that- I told her as soon as I got there, what do you think? I'm keeping secrets from her?

01:11:12 ◼   ► I told her, she knows. We discussed it.

01:11:15 ◼   ► I didn't tell your wife because I didn't think that was an appropriate course of action,

01:11:20 ◼   ► and I didn't want to get involved in your marital stuff.

01:11:24 ◼   ► Well, good call, but it's silly to think that I wouldn't tell her.

01:11:27 ◼   ► Well, I told my wife, and she thinks you're crazy.

01:11:30 ◼   ► Yeah, I know. I get that a lot.

01:11:31 ◼   ► Ah, God, I'm so angry right now. All right.

01:11:35 ◼   ► Now that I'm all fired up and angry, let's talk about what's going on with women in gaming.

01:11:40 ◼   ► Oh, man, what a disaster that is, huh?

01:11:42 ◼   ► I read all these things all the time.

01:11:45 ◼   ► Like I follow a lot of people who are involved in the gaming industry.

01:11:48 ◼   ► I follow a lot of people who are women related to the gaming industry.

01:11:52 ◼   ► They post links to articles. I follow those links.

01:11:55 ◼   ► I read them. I read all the blog posts.

01:11:57 ◼   ► I read all like I mean, I I read a lot of gaming sites.

01:11:59 ◼   ► I read all these stories on them in this particular ticket.

01:12:01 ◼   ► I read a lot about it.

01:12:02 ◼   ► So I feel like I'm just soaking in and you just assume that everyone else

01:12:04 ◼   ► knows all the things that are happening, but they don't.

01:12:07 ◼   ► So that's why I think it's worth talking about because not everyone has read 9,000 articles on this already.

01:12:14 ◼   ► Yeah, so

01:12:17 ◼   ► the difficult thing to talk about this is there's no actual like the difficulty of YouTube getting up to speed is like there's no actual like

01:12:23 ◼   ► news there. There's nothing

01:12:25 ◼   ► there's nothing substantive for you to it's all like a meta story.

01:12:29 ◼   ► It's all a story about a story. The substantive parts like that you would think it's like a controversy where there's like one side

01:12:37 ◼   ► and another and they're against each other, but it's almost entirely one side.

01:12:41 ◼   ► It's essentially a bunch of women in the industry who are

01:12:45 ◼   ► fighting for more equality in the most like

01:12:50 ◼   ► tame, non-controversial way you could possibly imagine. The best example of this is Anita Sarkeesian's famous frequency videos.

01:12:58 ◼   ► She had a Kickstarter for it. Go watch these videos that she puts up. It's a critique of the treatment of women in gaming.

01:13:04 ◼   ► It is the most calm, like, gentle, hand-holding, like, non-controversial, like, in some ways

01:13:14 ◼   ► almost boring, like, just--

01:13:16 ◼   ► Emanently reasonable.

01:13:18 ◼   ► Example after example, she is not yelling at you.

01:13:21 ◼   ► She does not have unreasonable demands.

01:13:24 ◼   ► She explains things slowly and carefully in a way that people will understand with clear

01:13:28 ◼   ► language, right?

01:13:31 ◼   ► This is one example of the type of thing that drives people nuts, and that's why there's

01:13:33 ◼   ► is not a controversy because it's like,

01:13:35 ◼   ► what is it that you are opposed to in these things?

01:13:38 ◼   ► All right, so anyway, there's stuff like that out there.

01:13:40 ◼   ► There's articles about her,

01:13:41 ◼   ► there's articles about related issues.

01:13:42 ◼   ► I mean, just the general treatment of women in video games

01:13:45 ◼   ► and actual women who work in the gaming industry.

01:13:48 ◼   ► On the other side of this are people who are terrible

01:13:51 ◼   ► doing terrible things to other people.

01:13:53 ◼   ► Harassing them, posting their personal information,

01:13:56 ◼   ► sending them death threats, sending them terrible pictures.

01:13:58 ◼   ► This goes on all the time.

01:13:59 ◼   ► This is not new.

01:14:00 ◼   ► This is just a flare up of something that happens

01:14:03 ◼   ► time to women everywhere, not just in the gaming industry, but in particular these women

01:14:07 ◼   ► who are doing this terrible thing in the gaming industry by merely talking about these issues.

01:14:11 ◼   ► And in recent weeks it's been getting worse because the terrible people are trying to organize

01:14:17 ◼   ► and trying to be even more super terrible and women are leaving the industry because they can't

01:14:21 ◼   ► take the harassment and I don't blame them for doing it and that's like a victory fee. And so

01:14:26 ◼   ► it's not like you would say, "Well, there's a debate here. There's these people who did these

01:14:30 ◼   ► these bad things and these people got angry.

01:14:31 ◼   ► It's mostly just people doing bad things.

01:14:33 ◼   ► There's no other side to that.

01:14:35 ◼   ► And that's why I've been hesitant to discuss it

01:14:37 ◼   ► because I'm like, well, there's no story.

01:14:38 ◼   ► It's not like we can talk about this bad thing people did

01:14:40 ◼   ► and then people's overreaction to it.

01:14:41 ◼   ► No, we can talk about this completely tame,

01:14:44 ◼   ► totally rational, calm, normal, everyday thing

01:14:46 ◼   ► that happens all the time that is not bad in any way

01:14:50 ◼   ► and then these terrible people.

01:14:51 ◼   ► And so now this has just become a story

01:14:53 ◼   ► about the terrible people of like,

01:14:55 ◼   ► it doesn't matter what anyone,

01:14:56 ◼   ► even if they had done something like

01:14:58 ◼   ► a written a really mean blog post,

01:15:00 ◼   ► It doesn't matter, like they haven't,

01:15:01 ◼   ► it doesn't justify the crazy behavior that's going on.

01:15:03 ◼   ► And so I don't know what more there really is to say

01:15:08 ◼   ► about this other than whenever people ask me

01:15:10 ◼   ► about it on Twitter, my position is that the people

01:15:14 ◼   ► who are angry have no idea what they're angry about.

01:15:17 ◼   ► They think they know what they're angry about.

01:15:19 ◼   ► They think they're angry about ethics.

01:15:20 ◼   ► They think they're angry about people taking away

01:15:23 ◼   ► their games.

01:15:24 ◼   ► They think they're angry about people lying.

01:15:25 ◼   ► They have no idea what they're angry about.

01:15:28 ◼   ► It is the biggest case of self-delusion,

01:15:31 ◼   ► you know, like, and they will never be convinced

01:15:33 ◼   ► that they don't know what they're angry about.

01:15:35 ◼   ► What they are doing is trying, in their mind,

01:15:37 ◼   ► they're gonna be like, actually, what I really care about

01:15:39 ◼   ► is journalistic integrity in the video games.

01:15:41 ◼   ► Already really caring about is that someone is lying

01:15:45 ◼   ► or something like, they make up all these crazy conspiracy

01:15:47 ◼   ► theories and decide that they are really,

01:15:49 ◼   ► that they have a righteous cause.

01:15:50 ◼   ► They do not have a righteous cause.

01:15:52 ◼   ► What they are actually angry about has nothing to do

01:15:54 ◼   ► with the things they claim they're angry about,

01:15:55 ◼   ► which is so easy for everyone on the outside

01:15:57 ◼   ► bubble to see but inside the bubble that's what they really think and they're like oh well you

01:16:02 ◼   ► know they have a million issues they could you could just just look at any of these the reply

01:16:07 ◼   ► streams so any of these people and just see all the things they think they're angry about

01:16:10 ◼   ► these people are not angry about that they're they're they don't know the definition of

01:16:15 ◼   ► intellectual honesty they're intellectually dishonest both with themselves and other people

01:16:19 ◼   ► and it's it's just terrible and by the way this is this is gaming is where we're talking about this

01:16:25 ◼   ► This happens everywhere. Women are treated badly everywhere to varying degrees.

01:16:28 ◼   ► Like, if you don't believe it, talk to a woman in your life and ask them for stories.

01:16:33 ◼   ► And if they actually trust you enough, they will tell you these stories and it will sound

01:16:37 ◼   ► insane to you. And my advice to everyone listening to this and thinking I'm a crazy person is

01:16:41 ◼   ► Like, how do you... what do you do about this? Do you just like...

01:16:45 ◼   ► You know, what can you possibly do about it?

01:16:49 ◼   ► And I think that the thing that you can do about it if you are, and the odds are high,

01:16:55 ◼   ► a plain old American white male person listening to our tech nerd podcast

01:16:59 ◼   ► Just try reading these blog posts and watching these videos

01:17:04 ◼   ► Just like just do sort of like immersion therapy or whatever it is when you just have like

01:17:08 ◼   ► Just just immerse yourself in it

01:17:11 ◼   ► Not the ones you agree with

01:17:13 ◼   ► The other side the people who's saying it would be nice if women were treated better in video games

01:17:17 ◼   ► Just read those for like a year without saying anything

01:17:20 ◼   ► That's the only way I feel like you can get through to people like what you know

01:17:24 ◼   ► What actually what is the reality of the situation on the other side there?

01:17:27 ◼   ► if you just read things that you agree with or try to find things that like

01:17:29 ◼   ► Reinforce your own prejudices and make you feel better about the things that you feel because we were all brought up

01:17:35 ◼   ► We brought this up in the women's show. We're all brought up in a culture that

01:17:37 ◼   ► embeds in us biases, I

01:17:41 ◼   ► You know against all sorts of things

01:17:44 ◼   ► race religion

01:17:46 ◼   ► Gender everything we're all brought up in that environment

01:17:49 ◼   ► We don't want to think of ourselves as bad people. There's a cognitive distance thing going on there

01:17:52 ◼   ► the best thing you can do is just to immerse yourself in

01:17:54 ◼   ► the sort of the equality debate and

01:17:58 ◼   ► That's the only way I think people can get turned around because there's no way me arguing with someone on Twitter is gonna convince them

01:18:03 ◼   ► They're not mad about journalistic ethics and they don't know what intellectual honesty is and they have and they have really have no legitimate complaints

01:18:09 ◼   ► There's no way I can convince them like it's so clear that they're so far gone

01:18:13 ◼   ► There's no point in arguing with them

01:18:15 ◼   ► And the only thing I think in turn people around including people like us who are just like sort of you know

01:18:18 ◼   ► "Well, I'm not really involved in this. I'm not a terrible person. I'm not sending death threats.

01:18:21 ◼   ► I think there should be more equality in games too, but I don't want to get involved because it's a fight."

01:18:25 ◼   ► To get out of that mindset, I think you have to

01:18:29 ◼   ► really understand what's going on. And the way to really understand what's going on in a way that you might feel comfortable with is just to,

01:18:35 ◼   ► if you care about this issue, just to immerse yourself in it.

01:18:39 ◼   ► And read everything everybody has to say. It doesn't mean you have to take it all at face value,

01:18:43 ◼   ► but just feel like you can get a picture of it

01:18:45 ◼   ► that's beyond a picture that just reinforces

01:18:47 ◼   ► the things that make you feel good about yourself.

01:18:49 ◼   ► Read some things that actually make you

01:18:51 ◼   ► feel bad about yourself.

01:18:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:18:53 ◼   ► - So earlier today, and I'm not sure

01:18:56 ◼   ► if this is why he's bringing this up,

01:18:58 ◼   ► and I'm gonna bring it up and we'll see where it goes.

01:19:01 ◼   ► Earlier today, I made a perhaps dubious choice

01:19:06 ◼   ► of saying, and somebody said,

01:19:10 ◼   ► "We should talk about this tonight."

01:19:12 ◼   ► And I had said, "I'm not sure how to talk about it, and I'm not sure what to do."

01:19:17 ◼   ► Because I feel like, well, the people who are ostracizing women and threatening women

01:19:26 ◼   ► unequivocally, like Jon said, unequivocally are wrong.

01:19:29 ◼   ► And that's a terrible thing.

01:19:30 ◼   ► And how these people look at themselves in the mirror, I don't understand.

01:19:33 ◼   ► How they sleep at night, I don't understand.

01:19:35 ◼   ► It's terrible.

01:19:36 ◼   ► But I don't want to just shout into the echo chamber.

01:19:40 ◼   ► I want to try to do something to move things forward.

01:19:43 ◼   ► And whether or not I did a good job of portraying

01:19:46 ◼   ► that viewpoint on Twitter in 140 characters minus probably

01:19:50 ◼   ► 20 or 30 characters worth of @mentions,

01:19:54 ◼   ► I may not have done a good job.

01:19:56 ◼   ► But one way or another, I said, the way

01:20:00 ◼   ► in which I approach this I think is nuanced.

01:20:02 ◼   ► And I don't think that the discussion is nuanced.

01:20:06 ◼   ► I think that it's unequivocally these people are jerks,

01:20:09 ◼   ► and that's the end of it.

01:20:10 ◼   ► women should be treated better. That's the end of it. But the way I approach it is a little

01:20:14 ◼   ► nuanced. And I got what I felt was a considerable amount of hate and a considerable amount of yelling

01:20:23 ◼   ► directed at me on Twitter because I had said that I wanted to think for a minute before I spoke.

01:20:30 ◼   ► And it really upset me a lot. And it really bothered me. And I felt

01:20:38 ◼   ► a little bit like I think Marco felt, I think a week or two ago, with regard to the wire cutter

01:20:43 ◼   ► thing. Because here it was, I felt like I was trying to just be intelligent about it rather

01:20:49 ◼   ► than screaming about it. And I was getting yelled at for that. And the thing that was really

01:20:58 ◼   ► upsetting about all this, the thing that really bothered me and continues to bother me about all

01:21:03 ◼   ► all this now that I've got a few hours

01:21:05 ◼   ► to separate myself and relax,

01:21:07 ◼   ► is I dealt with three hours of a handful of people

01:21:12 ◼   ► being meaner than I think was necessary.

01:21:17 ◼   ► And it kinda messed me up for a while.

01:21:21 ◼   ► That was three hours.

01:21:23 ◼   ► Nobody threatened to rape me.

01:21:25 ◼   ► Nobody threatened to murder me.

01:21:28 ◼   ► Nobody sent me disgusting pornography.

01:21:31 ◼   ► nobody like came to your house.

01:21:33 ◼   ► - Nobody said they knew your address

01:21:35 ◼   ► and knew your family's address

01:21:36 ◼   ► and were going to go and kill them.

01:21:37 ◼   ► And it sort of showed you pictures of your family

01:21:39 ◼   ► that they had taken secretly.

01:21:40 ◼   ► - Yes, and I felt like a piece of crap

01:21:43 ◼   ► after this three hours, which had none of those things.

01:21:47 ◼   ► And it occurred to me,

01:21:49 ◼   ► if I feel like a piece of just utter crap

01:21:52 ◼   ► after three hours of people saying,

01:21:54 ◼   ► "Oh, you're not doing enough.

01:21:56 ◼   ► You shouldn't think about that.

01:21:57 ◼   ► Nuanced, are you kidding me?"

01:21:59 ◼   ► three hours of that and I felt like I wanted to crawl in a hole and just go away for a week.

01:22:05 ◼   ► And that was three hours. I cannot freaking fathom what it's like to be a woman in the tech…

01:22:16 ◼   ► well, really at all, but in technology and especially in gaming where there's so many just

01:22:22 ◼   ► absolute jerks. I cannot fathom what it's like. And as much as I didn't want to go through what

01:22:28 ◼   ► what I went through today, which I'm not trying to play the victim.

01:22:31 ◼   ► Really in the grand scheme of things was not a big deal.

01:22:34 ◼   ► But as much as it hurt and as much as I didn't want to go through it today, I'm kind of

01:22:38 ◼   ► glad that that happened because it made what women go through that littlest bit more real.

01:22:46 ◼   ► Because I just got the tiniest, tiniest little taste and I hated it.

01:22:51 ◼   ► I cannot fathom what it's like to actually deal with this.

01:22:55 ◼   ► That's probably one of the only other ways that you could convince somebody.

01:22:58 ◼   ► Now, you don't have this kind of control, but if you did, if you could, you know,

01:23:02 ◼   ► do the Freaky Friday body swap, another movie Casey hasn't seen, and let people...

01:23:05 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:23:07 ◼   ► I have seen it.

01:23:09 ◼   ► Let a bunch of... the original Casey.

01:23:11 ◼   ► I've seen both, you big jerk.

01:23:12 ◼   ► All right, all right. Let a bunch of men see what it's like to actually be a woman. Because,

01:23:16 ◼   ► again, so many things are just in our culture. We don't see them as bad because it's like,

01:23:23 ◼   ► like, well, it's just the way things are.

01:23:25 ◼   ► And there's always something like that.

01:23:26 ◼   ► In every era, there's stuff like that now,

01:23:28 ◼   ► 100 years from now, people are gonna look back on us

01:23:30 ◼   ► and then things that we accept as just the way things are.

01:23:33 ◼   ► One way you can see them is if you suddenly became a woman

01:23:35 ◼   ► and spent a few years as a woman,

01:23:38 ◼   ► and you had spent the rest of your life as a man,

01:23:40 ◼   ► you would be super pissed about how terrible you were treated.

01:23:43 ◼   ► You would be the most angry, obnoxious,

01:23:46 ◼   ► you would just be livid that people don't respect you,

01:23:51 ◼   ► treat you like a piece of meat,

01:23:53 ◼   ► look down on you, talk to you condescendingly,

01:23:56 ◼   ► just all the terrible things that happen to women

01:23:58 ◼   ► all the time, or even are just overly protective of you

01:24:02 ◼   ► or assume that you can or can't do certain things

01:24:04 ◼   ► or whatever, it's difficult to understand what that's like

01:24:08 ◼   ► if you haven't experienced that.

01:24:09 ◼   ► And Casey, you have the experience you had

01:24:13 ◼   ► of people being mean to you and stuff.

01:24:16 ◼   ► Imagine if that happened to you all the time

01:24:18 ◼   ► and then you were looking,

01:24:19 ◼   ► it would feel like an injustice.

01:24:22 ◼   ► you'd be like, "Hey, everybody knows this is happening to me, right?

01:24:24 ◼   ► Like what are you guys going to do about it?"

01:24:25 ◼   ► Because it's not just me, it's like everybody whose name is Casey is getting this kind of

01:24:28 ◼   ► abuse and it's not fair to people, "Just because my name is Casey, I get this kind of abuse."

01:24:32 ◼   ► And me and the rest of the Casey are like, "What the hell, guys?"

01:24:34 ◼   ► And everyone else is like, "Oh, I don't want to get involved.

01:24:35 ◼   ► Looks like it's a big mess."

01:24:36 ◼   ► Or like they don't want to get comments like this person in the chat room said, "John isn't

01:24:40 ◼   ► an expert on feminism.

01:24:41 ◼   ► He shouldn't talk about it."

01:24:42 ◼   ► And MTW in the chat room says, "Calling them out on it won't change anything."

01:24:47 ◼   ► I'm not an expert in feminism.

01:24:48 ◼   ► That's not a reason I shouldn't talk about it.

01:24:50 ◼   ► and calling them out on it like this is like negative feedback. Oh because I got

01:24:54 ◼   ► involved now I got to deal with negative feedback right? Well yeah I do. Calling

01:24:57 ◼   ► them out I won't change anything. That's why I say like arguing with people

01:25:00 ◼   ► trying to convince them that they're wrong is not a fruitful endeavor. The

01:25:03 ◼   ► people who need to be changed are the people who are good people who just feel

01:25:06 ◼   ► like they need to stay out of it because they're afraid of getting the kind of

01:25:10 ◼   ► feedback we are getting in the chat room, they're afraid of getting the kind of

01:25:12 ◼   ► feedback Casey got. You know that's like you have to you have to decide what you

01:25:19 ◼   ► think is important and if this is actually something that's important to

01:25:22 ◼   ► you you have to be willing to to do something about it and and it's it's

01:25:26 ◼   ► people like us who all agree like oh I totally agree with all these people it's

01:25:32 ◼   ► just that I don't want to get involved well then you're not really helping so

01:25:35 ◼   ► just I mean do something to help like you shouldn't be afraid that you're

01:25:39 ◼   ► going to do something that is going to turn you into a bad person right you may

01:25:44 ◼   ► do things that cause people to give you negative attention and complain about

01:25:47 ◼   ► about what you're doing, you may find out

01:25:51 ◼   ► that there are beliefs that you have,

01:25:53 ◼   ► like this is part of my experience of being steeped

01:25:56 ◼   ► in this stuff for the past several years.

01:25:57 ◼   ► You may find yourself having to re-examine beliefs

01:26:01 ◼   ► that you hadn't even thought were like beliefs at all,

01:26:03 ◼   ► but you're like, well, it's just the way things are.

01:26:04 ◼   ► You will find your own biases.

01:26:06 ◼   ► They will not feel good for you to find these things.

01:26:08 ◼   ► You will realize that you have said things

01:26:10 ◼   ► and done things in the past that do not live up

01:26:12 ◼   ► to the standards that you supposedly hold for yourself.

01:26:14 ◼   ► That is part of the experience.

01:26:16 ◼   ► but I think that is where the fruitful effort

01:26:19 ◼   ► can be put towards.

01:26:21 ◼   ► Not towards trying to save these terrible people

01:26:24 ◼   ► from whatever pain in their life is causing them

01:26:26 ◼   ► to lash out in this way, not by trying to convince them

01:26:28 ◼   ► that they're really not mad about journalistic ethics

01:26:30 ◼   ► 'cause they'll never be convinced,

01:26:30 ◼   ► 'cause they think that, you know, it's like self-delusion,

01:26:33 ◼   ► but by talking to the people who are already on your side

01:26:36 ◼   ► and just getting them to better understand the issue

01:26:40 ◼   ► and to be more willing to do something about it.

01:26:42 ◼   ► I'm not saying everybody has to jump in,

01:26:43 ◼   ► I'm not demanding that everyone take action

01:26:45 ◼   ► But like think of it if you were if everyone named Casey was constantly being harassed and the whole rest of the country was like

01:26:50 ◼   ► Sitting there with our arms folded you going well

01:26:52 ◼   ► I just don't want to get involved in that all the cases like are you kidding me like every day this happens?

01:26:56 ◼   ► You know and all the cases are getting harassed and everyone is like this is okay

01:27:00 ◼   ► Don't you feel like it's not you know it's it's you know, you know bring up the J word, but it's justice

01:27:04 ◼   ► It's like should this be happening. Well, no, it shouldn't be happening

01:27:07 ◼   ► I totally disagree with it, but it's not I can do about it there

01:27:09 ◼   ► there actually is like we need to make it as as

01:27:12 ◼   ► socially unacceptable to have these attitudes towards women. It's already socially unacceptable to harass people,

01:27:18 ◼   ► but it's not socially unacceptable to have all these attitudes towards women that

01:27:22 ◼   ► create these these terrible situations where people have

01:27:25 ◼   ► problems in their life and pain that they redirect in this direction. Why does it go in this direction? It's not random.

01:27:31 ◼   ► It's because of the media and culture that we're saturated in from the day we're born that leads in these directions.

01:27:36 ◼   ► And it's not just video games. It's movies, it's televisions. Everything's equally bad. Not equally bad, but it's bad everywhere.

01:27:41 ◼   ► It may be particularly bad in games.

01:27:43 ◼   ► Again, if you think this is all crazy talk, I encourage you to just watch the Feminist Frequency videos. We'll link them.

01:27:49 ◼   ► They are not super entertaining. You will not be blown away by witty jokes and everything like that, right?

01:27:54 ◼   ► Sometimes they're depressing. Sometimes they're just plain boring. Just watch them.

01:27:58 ◼   ► Don't, like, watch them and think you have to agree or disagree.

01:28:01 ◼   ► Don't watch them and think you have to go out and change the world or you have to send her angry email.

01:28:05 ◼   ► Just watch them. That's a start. Read articles about them. Read things that you disagree with.

01:28:11 ◼   ► and just try to understand the issue.

01:28:14 ◼   ► This is to all the good people,

01:28:15 ◼   ► terrible people, just go away, stop being terrible.

01:28:17 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:28:18 ◼   ► - I think it's important too, like what you said,

01:28:22 ◼   ► this has to become socially unacceptable

01:28:24 ◼   ► to a much more severe level than it is right now.

01:28:27 ◼   ► There are certain lines that are considered so offensive

01:28:32 ◼   ► and so socially unacceptable that, for instance,

01:28:35 ◼   ► if somebody tells, suppose you're in a small group of people

01:28:39 ◼   ► hanging out at a bar and somebody tells a really racist joke, like horrible racist joke.

01:28:47 ◼   ► In most groups of people now, that is considered so offensive that, and we have a long way

01:28:53 ◼   ► to go on racism as well, but in most groups of people now, that is considered so offensive

01:28:58 ◼   ► that somebody would be like, somebody would say something like, "Hey, that's not cool."

01:29:02 ◼   ► Like, you know, like you'd be called out on that for doing that in a lot of groups.

01:29:06 ◼   ► Not enough, but in a lot of groups.

01:29:08 ◼   ► And I think you'd be called out in a constructive manner

01:29:11 ◼   ► at this point, especially in the circles we travel in

01:29:12 ◼   ► of our little privileged tech nerds, right?

01:29:14 ◼   ► You would be called out in a way that you would not

01:29:16 ◼   ► immediately be ostracized from the group.

01:29:18 ◼   ► You would be told that that's not cool,

01:29:20 ◼   ► and if you argued about it,

01:29:21 ◼   ► then you would just do it from the outs, right?

01:29:23 ◼   ► But if you're like, oh, you're right, that's not cool.

01:29:26 ◼   ► We're trying to enforce social norms in a way

01:29:29 ◼   ► that doesn't, you're not immediately ejected

01:29:31 ◼   ► from the group if you tell a racist joke,

01:29:32 ◼   ► but if you tell a racist joke,

01:29:33 ◼   ► someone tells you it's racist and you argue with them,

01:29:35 ◼   ► that shows something, right?

01:29:37 ◼   ► or if you argue that it doesn't matter that it's racist. And so we need to get to that point with

01:29:43 ◼   ► sexism issues, and we're not there yet. And again, even racism, we haven't gotten to a

01:29:49 ◼   ► good enough point yet, but I think we're further ahead on it. People like me and Casey, people like

01:29:57 ◼   ► us who are wondering, "What can we do?" I think that's a big thing that everybody can do, that

01:30:02 ◼   ► everybody can start holding the people around them and themselves to a higher standard and to say and like

01:30:08 ◼   ► Call people out if they if they say something and again, you don't have to be a dick about it

01:30:14 ◼   ► You can do it constructively if if you could tell they didn't really mean it badly, you know

01:30:18 ◼   ► Like because again like as I said like this stuff is is subtle. It's it's big into our culture

01:30:23 ◼   ► It's it's very hard to even realize

01:30:25 ◼   ► Yeah

01:30:26 ◼   ► You won't notice it unless unless you've read 8,000 blog posts about stuff with crazy stuff that you don't agree with

01:30:32 ◼   ► unless you just steep yourself in it, you have to re-examine things that you just assume that are just okay,

01:30:37 ◼   ► that's just the way they are. Everybody has these beliefs, everybody. There is no person anywhere in the world who does not have

01:30:43 ◼   ► what are essentially regressive, non-rational beliefs because of the way they were brought up. And you will never examine them if you just

01:30:50 ◼   ► stay within the group of people that you're in, right? You have to extend yourself, you have to become uncomfortable.

01:30:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it's just so tough because

01:31:01 ◼   ► You know what the the things that bothered me that happened with me today. I

01:31:05 ◼   ► Think it was people that were

01:31:08 ◼   ► That that that were trying to defend

01:31:12 ◼   ► Feminism and trying to say, you know, oh this isn't nuanced. It's just plain wrong and oh your opinions aren't nuanced

01:31:19 ◼   ► it's either you you agree that it's wrong or you don't and

01:31:22 ◼   ► What I left that conversation there those conversations with

01:31:29 ◼   ► Even though it was conversations with people who I think by and large I agree with that. This is BS and that it is wrong. I

01:31:36 ◼   ► left with this feeling like oh my god, I'm never gonna talk about this again and

01:31:41 ◼   ► That doesn't help and

01:31:44 ◼   ► Just a few minutes later some person on Twitter started saying that oh tech me out

01:31:51 ◼   ► The tech industry is a meritocracy and oh, there's no sexism there and blah blah blah and for a minute

01:31:57 ◼   ► I thought—

01:31:58 ◼   ► Wait, somebody said that?

01:31:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:32:00 ◼   ► You should look at my—

01:32:01 ◼   ► Oh my god.

01:32:02 ◼   ► —at replies.

01:32:03 ◼   ► Oh, it was absolutely—

01:32:04 ◼   ► That's ridiculous.

01:32:05 ◼   ► Right, that's the thing.

01:32:06 ◼   ► And again, here it is—

01:32:08 ◼   ► That's worse than John not going to the Apple event.

01:32:10 ◼   ► Only barely, but yeah.

01:32:12 ◼   ► No, I'm just kidding.

01:32:13 ◼   ► But no, that's the thing is that to me, this is so absurd and ridiculous.

01:32:19 ◼   ► And this person was vehemently arguing that, "Oh, you don't know what you're talking

01:32:23 ◼   ► about.

01:32:24 ◼   ► Nursing is 92% feminine or female or what have you.

01:32:27 ◼   ► So clearly that's sexist.

01:32:29 ◼   ► Oh my God, it was so ridiculous.

01:32:31 ◼   ► And for a minute there, I thought, "You know what?

01:32:33 ◼   ► I'm just going to ignore this just completely backwards individual.

01:32:37 ◼   ► And I'm just going to let this go away."

01:32:38 ◼   ► Because I was just right off of being lectured about not wanting to shoot from the hip and

01:32:45 ◼   ► how wrong that was.

01:32:46 ◼   ► And then I thought, "You know what?

01:32:48 ◼   ► Screw that.

01:32:49 ◼   ► This person's being an idiot.

01:32:50 ◼   ► And I'm going to tell them they're being an idiot."

01:32:52 ◼   ► And this kind of gets into the conversation of should you or should you not feed the trolls?

01:32:56 ◼   ► And if there's anything I've learned, it's that I'm not good at drawing that line and

01:33:00 ◼   ► I'm not good at deciding when to feed the trolls and when not to.

01:33:04 ◼   ► But it felt more wrong to me to not do anything and not say anything than to take the easy

01:33:13 ◼   ► way out and just thinking to myself, "Well, this person is just completely backwards and

01:33:16 ◼   ► there's nothing I can do about it."

01:33:18 ◼   ► There's a lot of like tropes if you want to call them that and in this debate and like like I said in the past show

01:33:25 ◼   ► When we talked about you know women in the tech industry and everything

01:33:28 ◼   ► I'm trying not to use all the vocabulary because a

01:33:30 ◼   ► People who don't know what this is don't know the vocabulary and be people who do know the vocabulary

01:33:34 ◼   ► Find it to be charged, but one of the things that you said and that thing which caused people to flare up

01:33:38 ◼   ► I think is the sort of not feeding the trolls thing that is a nugget of net wisdom

01:33:44 ◼   ► From you know from ages ages ago, which is basically like if someone is doing someone is engaging in bad behavior online

01:33:50 ◼   ► Don't engage with them and they'll go away because all they want is attention

01:33:55 ◼   ► and that is an anti pattern when it comes to the women in tech and harassment issue because

01:34:00 ◼   ► That's what everyone used to say like these people would come in they would start harassing things and

01:34:04 ◼   ► Everyone else would say nothing because they weren't being the ones harassed and they would and they would defend this act this inaction by saying

01:34:10 ◼   ► "Oh, don't feed the trolls, don't engage with them."

01:34:13 ◼   ► Not engaging is fine when you're not

01:34:15 ◼   ► the target of the harassment.

01:34:16 ◼   ► You have the luxury of not engaging

01:34:18 ◼   ► and saying, "Oh, don't feed the trolls."

01:34:19 ◼   ► Not feeding them does not stop them

01:34:21 ◼   ► from doing the terrible thing

01:34:21 ◼   ► they're doing to their targets, right?

01:34:23 ◼   ► And that's why "don't feed the trolls" is such a sort of,

01:34:26 ◼   ► when people hear that, who are steeped in this debate,

01:34:31 ◼   ► they're like, you've fallen victim

01:34:33 ◼   ► for one of the classic blunders.

01:34:35 ◼   ► They just know this is one of those things,

01:34:37 ◼   ► like, "Oh, don't you know?"

01:34:39 ◼   ► everyone thinks like, oh, you should know everything

01:34:40 ◼   ► about this debate already.

01:34:41 ◼   ► Don't you know that Don't Feed the Trolls

01:34:43 ◼   ► is exactly the wrong thing to say?

01:34:44 ◼   ► But anyone who is new to this debate

01:34:46 ◼   ► is gonna come in and make all the same mistakes,

01:34:48 ◼   ► all the sort of beginner mistakes that everybody does,

01:34:50 ◼   ► and then you're gonna get jumped on by people

01:34:51 ◼   ► like, oh my God, don't you know Don't Feed the Trolls

01:34:53 ◼   ► is the worst thing ever?

01:34:54 ◼   ► You really have to stand up for these people

01:34:55 ◼   ► because they feed on your silence

01:34:57 ◼   ► and that allows them, and you know, you don't know,

01:35:01 ◼   ► 'cause you're not steeped in this debate,

01:35:03 ◼   ► and so you are coming, and that's gonna happen, right?

01:35:05 ◼   ► That's not, you know, even within the debate,

01:35:07 ◼   ► There's like those arguments over tactics like how should we achieve our radical goals of not being beat on constantly?

01:35:13 ◼   ► Yeah

01:35:13 ◼   ► should we achieve them in this way by being angry people yelling should we achieve them in that way by engaging and trying to work

01:35:19 ◼   ► With people or is that too much compromise and like and you know Marco brought up racism before like this

01:35:23 ◼   ► It's not just an individual thing. There's institutional levels of all this

01:35:26 ◼   ► It's all down the chain of like well

01:35:28 ◼   ► even if at a personal level everyone feels

01:35:30 ◼   ► The certain way and espouses certain beliefs if as an institution as a group we behave in a different way

01:35:36 ◼   ► Then that perpetuates all the other things if the media we create is only created by people who unconsciously

01:35:41 ◼   ► Put their biases into it and that feeds our children and it's loop like this is a big

01:35:45 ◼   ► You know, but look at how long we've been fighting against racism and you know making progress

01:35:50 ◼   ► but it's very slow and sexism is you know, it's probably even gonna be harder to knock down because

01:35:56 ◼   ► You know in some ways you might say it's better than racism in the US anyway, but in other ways it's worse

01:36:02 ◼   ► They're both really bad and they're both not going to bow easily.

01:36:05 ◼   ► Someone in the chat was asking what we can do about it at an individual level.

01:36:11 ◼   ► My suggestion is at an individual level is a combination of what Margo said before, which

01:36:16 ◼   ► is basically if someone does something that you think that you know is bad based on your

01:36:21 ◼   ► current worldview of, you know, like if you see someone doing something that's sexist,

01:36:26 ◼   ► that's unkind to women or unkind to anybody for crying out loud, don't be like, oh, don't

01:36:30 ◼   ► feed the trolls. Like, you know, if you know it's wrong, do something about it even if

01:36:36 ◼   ► you're not the target, right? Even though you know there are going to be consequences

01:36:39 ◼   ► for you. That's just like, that's something you can do. Because not doing anything is

01:36:43 ◼   ► not an option. Not doing anything leads to the current situation. Because, you know,

01:36:47 ◼   ► like whatever, you know, all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing,

01:36:51 ◼   ► right? All it takes for evil to triumph is for completely neutral, non-interested people

01:36:54 ◼   ► to do nothing. Just like, don't do nothing, right? And the second thing you should do

01:36:59 ◼   ► is try to learn about the things

01:37:02 ◼   ► that will reveal your own biases

01:37:04 ◼   ► and so you can re-examine them.

01:37:05 ◼   ► Like all the good people who already agree with everything,

01:37:08 ◼   ► who already agree that these people are terrible,

01:37:09 ◼   ► those are the people who we need to see.

01:37:10 ◼   ► Not only, we know you're not terrible like that,

01:37:13 ◼   ► but there are things that you are not seeing as well

01:37:16 ◼   ► and that once you see them,

01:37:18 ◼   ► it's kind of like seeing the Matrix,

01:37:20 ◼   ► once you see them, you're like,

01:37:21 ◼   ► how did I ever not see this before?

01:37:22 ◼   ► Many things can make you see them.

01:37:23 ◼   ► It could be reading blog posts,

01:37:25 ◼   ► it could be, as I've discussed in the past show,

01:37:26 ◼   ► having a daughter and finally seeing the world

01:37:28 ◼   ► through her eyes.

01:37:29 ◼   ► It could be just getting married or dating someone

01:37:31 ◼   ► and asking the significant other who's a woman in your life

01:37:34 ◼   ► what it was like for them if you don't know what that's like.

01:37:36 ◼   ► I mean, all these things can change your worldview.

01:37:38 ◼   ► And once your worldview has changed,

01:37:40 ◼   ► you can't see things that you thought were like normal

01:37:42 ◼   ► and okay as being okay.

01:37:43 ◼   ► You will watch TV shows that you've watched and enjoyed

01:37:45 ◼   ► and realize how insanely sexist they are.

01:37:47 ◼   ► Just like we watch like "Mad Men" now,

01:37:48 ◼   ► like, oh, how the '60s were so sexist, right?

01:37:50 ◼   ► Everything we see on our current video,

01:37:52 ◼   ► television and movies and entertainment

01:37:54 ◼   ► is exactly like that now.

01:37:56 ◼   ► And you can fast forward your brain

01:37:59 ◼   ► so that our current world looks like madmen to you.

01:38:01 ◼   ► And it's not an illusion.

01:38:02 ◼   ► That is the reality that's behind everything else.

01:38:04 ◼   ► And once you can see that, it will change how you act,

01:38:06 ◼   ► change how you raise your children,

01:38:07 ◼   ► change how you run your company,

01:38:09 ◼   ► change how you do everything.

01:38:10 ◼   ► That's what individuals can do.

01:38:11 ◼   ► The individuals who already are good people

01:38:13 ◼   ► can do things to affect change.

01:38:16 ◼   ► And that's what I would suggest for individuals,

01:38:18 ◼   ► what you can do.

01:38:19 ◼   ► Obviously, there's much more you can do.

01:38:20 ◼   ► The people who we're talking about are doing way more.

01:38:22 ◼   ► They're putting their careers, their lives,

01:38:26 ◼   ► their sanity on the line by trying to make changes that are much larger than

01:38:29 ◼   ► one person. We've got Anita Sarkeesian doing that, Brianna Wu doing

01:38:34 ◼   ► that. All these people who could just be quietly doing their job somewhere have

01:38:37 ◼   ► chosen not to, have chosen to speak out and be very loud and expose themselves

01:38:43 ◼   ► to harassment and criticism and abuse because they think the change is

01:38:47 ◼   ► important enough to do that. Those people are heroes. Not everyone can be a hero

01:38:51 ◼   ► but everybody can make themselves better and everyone can lend a hand, I think.

01:38:53 ◼   ► And don't be so... be open to the idea that you might be part of the problem, because

01:39:02 ◼   ► in some subtle way you probably are without realizing it.

01:39:05 ◼   ► And there's no shame in realizing you've been wrong about something in the past and

01:39:12 ◼   ► fixing it.

01:39:15 ◼   ► It's very hard for people to do that, but that's so much better than continuing to

01:39:20 ◼   ► be a part of the problem and just plug your ears and yell

01:39:24 ◼   ► or deny that you're part of the problem

01:39:27 ◼   ► or become even more a part of the problem.

01:39:30 ◼   ► And if any of our listeners are being part of this problem,

01:39:34 ◼   ► for God's sakes, cut that (horn honks) out.

01:39:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm pretty proud of my Twitter followers

01:39:39 ◼   ► for the most part because a lot of people

01:39:41 ◼   ► when they tweet about anything like this

01:39:42 ◼   ► get like tons of crazy people yelling at them.

01:39:45 ◼   ► And for the most part, when I tweet about this

01:39:47 ◼   ► retweet about this. Most of the people who follow me, I think, are either not interested at all and

01:39:53 ◼   ► say nothing or are good people who say supportive things. But I know that is not true of other

01:39:58 ◼   ► people. Lots of other people say, "I accidentally retweeted something from Feminist Frequency and

01:40:02 ◼   ► got a million crazy people yelling at me." And I just want to say thank you to all my followers

01:40:06 ◼   ► for not being like those people. Well, that's the thing. Like, something that struck me,

01:40:10 ◼   ► especially today, having seen some of the vitriol in this individual who was trying to

01:40:17 ◼   ► explain to me that the technology industry is a meritocracy.

01:40:23 ◼   ► I travel with, both in my online circles and in meat space,

01:40:27 ◼   ► I travel with people that are of at least enough intelligence

01:40:32 ◼   ► to realize that diversity is a good thing for everybody.

01:40:38 ◼   ► It is a good freaking thing.

01:40:40 ◼   ► And it just blows my mind that so much of both America

01:40:44 ◼   ► in the world at large seems to think that the only people that can do anything intelligent

01:40:52 ◼   ► are white men.

01:40:54 ◼   ► How does that make any frickin' sense?

01:40:56 ◼   ► It just stupefies me what these people genuinely believe.

01:41:02 ◼   ► And I'm not going to get into politics, but there's a political side to this as well.

01:41:05 ◼   ► I don't understand how people can think that.

01:41:09 ◼   ► It is so eminently obvious to me that diversity is the way it should be.

01:41:14 ◼   ► Being diverse is the way it should be.

01:41:16 ◼   ► It's the best possible way.

01:41:20 ◼   ► If I just lived in a world where everyone agreed with me, I would be furious.

01:41:24 ◼   ► I love my wife to death and sometimes she drives me crazy because we don't see eye to

01:41:31 ◼   ► eye and that's part of the reason why I love her so much is because we don't see eye to

01:41:36 ◼   ► eye all the time.

01:41:38 ◼   ► Just having a "yes woman" or "yes man" around, that just sounds so mind-numbingly

01:41:44 ◼   ► terrible to me.

01:41:46 ◼   ► I'm so glad, Jon, that you have—and I think I do too, generally—have the followers that

01:41:51 ◼   ► realize that diversity is good.

01:41:54 ◼   ► But what all of us, myself very much included, don't realize is there are so many people

01:42:00 ◼   ► out there that are backwards, that do live in 50, 100, 200 years ago and think that women

01:42:07 ◼   ► are evil and black people are stupid and it's just how can you think that how is that a

01:42:12 ◼   ► reasonable course of action in 2014?

01:42:14 ◼   ► Yeah, for the gaming industry in particular, it's like, again, I don't think this is the

01:42:19 ◼   ► approach I don't think you should try to convince people, like the terrible people that are

01:42:23 ◼   ► not terrible, but like, it's easier to convince the people who are sort of neutral or like

01:42:27 ◼   ► don't want to get involved or think they're just fine because they're not terrible. If

01:42:32 ◼   ► you just like look at it from a business perspective, like there's enough evidence people done this

01:42:37 ◼   ► with the movies too.

01:42:38 ◼   ► Like, there is a, you know, we just went over the demographics a couple shows ago, like,

01:42:42 ◼   ► you know, 48% of gamers are women, there's more adult women who play games than males

01:42:46 ◼   ► under 18, right?

01:42:48 ◼   ► This is an unserved market.

01:42:50 ◼   ► Like just from economic business point of view, like, replace women and men with some

01:42:54 ◼   ► other demographic that is less politically charged for your perspective, this is an underserved

01:42:59 ◼   ► market.

01:43:00 ◼   ► These people are buying things, they're buying games that were not made with them in mind

01:43:03 ◼   ► at all.

01:43:04 ◼   ► games that are terrible to them, that objectify women, that don't have their interest in mind.

01:43:08 ◼   ► And it's not just women. There are huge underserved markets in the gaming world.

01:43:14 ◼   ► And how are you going to make products to serve these markets? You can't just take the existing

01:43:18 ◼   ► teams of people who know how to make games for straight male gamers. You'll never serve those

01:43:23 ◼   ► markets with these people, or at least it'll be a hell of a lot harder. Hire some people with

01:43:27 ◼   ► different points of view who want to make different kinds of games. It's just like movies

01:43:33 ◼   ► in the theaters recently with female leads have been doing better than those with male

01:43:38 ◼   ► leads and there's like action movies and stuff like that.

01:43:40 ◼   ► And yet still, like, I mean, movies are more progressive than games in this regard.

01:43:45 ◼   ► Just look at like the Isometric Podcast, a gaming podcast with a bunch of women that

01:43:48 ◼   ► came out of nowhere and became very popular.

01:43:50 ◼   ► Why?

01:43:51 ◼   ► Because it's an underserved market.

01:43:52 ◼   ► Gaming podcasts mostly hosted by women, there's not enough of those.

01:43:55 ◼   ► There's not enough good ones of those.

01:43:56 ◼   ► There's lots of good podcasts hosted by men.

01:43:58 ◼   ► Those are good.

01:43:59 ◼   ► Those are fine.

01:44:00 ◼   ► You want to listen to them?

01:44:01 ◼   ► Fine.

01:44:02 ◼   ► There are people out there who are not having games made for them by people who understand

01:44:07 ◼   ► what they might like.

01:44:08 ◼   ► Ignore everything else.

01:44:09 ◼   ► It's just a stupid business sense.

01:44:11 ◼   ► Same thing with Hollywood, making the same stupid movies all the time.

01:44:16 ◼   ► Figure it out, people.

01:44:17 ◼   ► You can make more money and sell more games and more products.

01:44:21 ◼   ► I mean, Apple, to its credit, does a little bit better at figuring it out.

01:44:24 ◼   ► Apple does not make things just for straight white males.

01:44:27 ◼   ► They try to make things that appeal to lots of people.

01:44:30 ◼   ► possible thing. Do you like high technology? Do you like, I mean, they're going to go into

01:44:34 ◼   ► the fashion world. They have to make things that are interesting to people who care about

01:44:39 ◼   ► a diversity of issues. Do they just feature men in their commercials? Do they just feature

01:44:43 ◼   ► old people? Do they just feature children? Do they just, like, no, they show everybody,

01:44:47 ◼   ► they're trying to make products for everybody. You make more money that way, people. So that's

01:44:50 ◼   ► my gaming industry talk. If you are making games, if you are selling games, if you are

01:44:55 ◼   ► thinking of what games you're going to sell, if you're making a gaming product, half of

01:44:59 ◼   ► "But your buyers or women don't have your product made entirely by men for men."

01:45:03 ◼   ► And you say, "Oh, my products are made entirely by men, but they're not entirely for men."

01:45:07 ◼   ► It is almost impossible to have a product made entirely by men and not have that product

01:45:11 ◼   ► end up being a little bit more for men than otherwise. Because again, everyone's got all our

01:45:15 ◼   ► unconscious biases and we're really familiar with what we like, not so familiar with

01:45:19 ◼   ► what different type of people like. And replace gender with any other axes along which

01:45:23 ◼   ► people can vary. Economic background, age, race,

01:45:27 ◼   ► everything. That's like you said, Casey, diversity. People

01:45:29 ◼   ► think it's a dirty word. It's like it's just good business

01:45:31 ◼   ► sense. It just makes sense. You're leaving money on the

01:45:34 ◼   ► table. It also just makes you a better person. You know, like

01:45:38 ◼   ► it it broadens your world view to to bring more diversity into

01:45:43 ◼   ► your life, into your work and it makes you a better person to

01:45:46 ◼   ► not be aggravating these tensions, to not to not be

01:45:50 ◼   ► attacking people over trivial matters and and it you know,

01:45:55 ◼   ► some people are just miserable

01:45:56 ◼   ► and they're gonna do this regardless.

01:45:58 ◼   ► And I don't know how to solve that problem.

01:46:00 ◼   ► I don't think anybody really does know

01:46:01 ◼   ► how to solve that problem.

01:46:02 ◼   ► It's a terrible problem, but I don't know how to solve it.

01:46:05 ◼   ► But even if you're the kind of miserable person

01:46:09 ◼   ► who likes being very argumentative,

01:46:11 ◼   ► you can win more arguments if you take the high road

01:46:14 ◼   ► and don't leave people these areas

01:46:15 ◼   ► to attack what you're saying.

01:46:17 ◼   ► Like if you're some kind of awful sexist person

01:46:20 ◼   ► making awful sexist comments,

01:46:23 ◼   ► every time you try to win an argument about anything else,

01:46:25 ◼   ► you're gonna lose because of that.

01:46:27 ◼   ► And there's just so many reasons why it,

01:46:30 ◼   ► you know, even if you can't be motivated

01:46:33 ◼   ► by being a better person, which is unfortunate,

01:46:36 ◼   ► there are so many other reasons why you should do this.

01:46:38 ◼   ► But ultimately, I think the best thing we can really do

01:46:41 ◼   ► is, you know, what we said earlier,

01:46:43 ◼   ► just encourage the people who actively are trying,

01:46:47 ◼   ► or actively are intending to make things better,

01:46:50 ◼   ► and actively would like to help, to actually help.

01:46:54 ◼   ► Give them the tools and the social permission

01:46:59 ◼   ► to actually help.

01:47:01 ◼   ► It's important to realize,

01:47:03 ◼   ► like I saw Brianna Wu talking, I think,

01:47:06 ◼   ► earlier today or yesterday about how she's never talked

01:47:10 ◼   ► to a man who thought he was part of the problem

01:47:13 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:47:14 ◼   ► All of us listening, we all probably think,

01:47:19 ◼   ► oh well, we aren't part of the problem.

01:47:21 ◼   ► It's all the other people.

01:47:23 ◼   ► the other guys are the part of the problem.

01:47:25 ◼   ► But that's probably not true,

01:47:26 ◼   ► we probably are part of the problem

01:47:27 ◼   ► in ways you don't realize.

01:47:28 ◼   ► And so it's just so important to keep an open mind

01:47:30 ◼   ► about that and to add people to our social circles

01:47:35 ◼   ► like Brianna and like anyone who will help

01:47:40 ◼   ► point these things out to us when we do things

01:47:43 ◼   ► or say things that are unintentionally harmful to somebody.

01:47:47 ◼   ► I would like to know that, it's like having my fly open.

01:47:49 ◼   ► Like I would like somebody to tell me that, you know?

01:47:52 ◼   ► Because that's a problem that I would like to fix

01:47:56 ◼   ► rather than denying that it exists.

01:47:58 ◼   ► - The invisible fly that you can't see

01:47:59 ◼   ► until someone points out.

01:48:00 ◼   ► Did you know you have a fly, and by the way, it's open?

01:48:02 ◼   ► Yeah, that's, I mean--

01:48:03 ◼   ► - And by the way, it's archived forever,

01:48:04 ◼   ► and anyone can see it forever.

01:48:07 ◼   ► - If you're on these social networks,

01:48:08 ◼   ► that's another thing you've done.

01:48:09 ◼   ► And it takes a conscious effort that, you know,

01:48:11 ◼   ► I've been trying to do this over the past few years

01:48:13 ◼   ► with mixed results, but like I keep trying.

01:48:16 ◼   ► Follow people who you wouldn't normally follow, right?

01:48:19 ◼   ► And so you can see what they have to say.

01:48:21 ◼   ► read their blogs, like go outside of your comfort zone

01:48:24 ◼   ► or your normal thing, make a conscious effort

01:48:26 ◼   ► to expose yourself to these viewpoints.

01:48:29 ◼   ► If there is some kind of standard bearer

01:48:31 ◼   ► for a particular movement that you agree with in principle

01:48:34 ◼   ► but don't really know what you can do about,

01:48:35 ◼   ► just follow that person.

01:48:37 ◼   ► And again, every movement has different people.

01:48:38 ◼   ► There's always, there's your Malcolm X,

01:48:40 ◼   ► there's your Martin Luther King Jr.

01:48:42 ◼   ► Like there's the whole spectrum of people.

01:48:44 ◼   ► Maybe you don't like one person's approach,

01:48:46 ◼   ► maybe you like another person's approach,

01:48:47 ◼   ► but maybe you'd rather see a video or a blog

01:48:49 ◼   ► or read a Twitter feed, but just open yourself up to them.

01:48:53 ◼   ► And you don't have to do anything about it

01:48:54 ◼   ► like in the beginning, just let yourself see

01:48:56 ◼   ► what they have to say.

01:48:58 ◼   ► And if you follow them, maybe you'll find

01:49:00 ◼   ► it needs to reply, maybe they'll reply back to you,

01:49:02 ◼   ► and maybe that one time you say something

01:49:03 ◼   ► that you need to get called up on,

01:49:05 ◼   ► maybe they'll be there to call you out on that.

01:49:07 ◼   ► If you happen to have a lot of Twitter followers

01:49:09 ◼   ► like we do, make it a point to amplify the voices

01:49:12 ◼   ► of people who normally don't get heard,

01:49:14 ◼   ► or who are, if you're an individual Casey

01:49:18 ◼   ► in your house being harassed by the Casey haters,

01:49:20 ◼   ► you would really like it if someone with a large audience

01:49:22 ◼   ► would amplify your message that,

01:49:24 ◼   ► hey, by the way, did you know someone keeps

01:49:25 ◼   ► putting a flaming C on my lawn every morning

01:49:27 ◼   ► 'cause the anti-Casey people hate all Casey's

01:49:29 ◼   ► and this has been going on for years

01:49:30 ◼   ► and it seems like you guys don't care.

01:49:32 ◼   ► Just so you know, I'm out here, I'm getting harassed.

01:49:35 ◼   ► Amplify those signals to your audience of people.

01:49:39 ◼   ► And if you find yourself saying,

01:49:41 ◼   ► yeah, I would do that, I agree with them in principle,

01:49:44 ◼   ► but I don't wanna be like that guy

01:49:46 ◼   ► and have all the people who are following me

01:49:48 ◼   ► be like angry and be like,

01:49:49 ◼   ► we just wanna hear you talk about technology.

01:49:51 ◼   ► Don't talk about this.

01:49:51 ◼   ► It's like, well, decide, do you care about this

01:49:53 ◼   ► or do you not care about it?

01:49:54 ◼   ► Do you think all your followers are terrible anti-Casey

01:49:57 ◼   ► people or are they, you know,

01:49:59 ◼   ► like do you really want these people following you?

01:50:01 ◼   ► Like what do you actually care about?

01:50:02 ◼   ► You can't say, well, I agree in principle,

01:50:04 ◼   ► but I don't wanna do anything

01:50:05 ◼   ► that inconveniences me in any way.

01:50:06 ◼   ► Like at some point you have to,

01:50:08 ◼   ► some point you have to put your aura in.

01:50:10 ◼   ► - No, it's so true.

01:50:11 ◼   ► And one of the best things I've done in regard to this

01:50:17 ◼   ► is following Brianna Wu, who is SpaceCatGal on Twitter,

01:50:21 ◼   ► and seeing things through her eyes,

01:50:26 ◼   ► to the best as one can through Twitter,

01:50:28 ◼   ► is so fascinating and so enlightening.

01:50:31 ◼   ► And if you follow her and you get tired

01:50:35 ◼   ► of all the things that she's saying

01:50:36 ◼   ► about women in tech and whatnot,

01:50:38 ◼   ► because she says it a lot, then you know what?

01:50:40 ◼   ► Imagine what it's like to deal with that.

01:50:43 ◼   ► Like you're getting one, a hundredth

01:50:45 ◼   ► of what she has to deal with.

01:50:47 ◼   ► - Right, and you can turn yours off whenever you want to.

01:50:49 ◼   ► Whereas like women have to live with this every day.

01:50:52 ◼   ► - Exactly, and there are times I'm like,

01:50:55 ◼   ► holy crap, Rihanna, relax for a second.

01:50:57 ◼   ► Then I'm like, what are you talking about?

01:50:58 ◼   ► No, don't relax, this is terrible.

01:51:00 ◼   ► - But I would say like, you know,

01:51:02 ◼   ► it's not like you have to follow any specific person

01:51:03 ◼   ► because if Rihanna's approach to this problem

01:51:05 ◼   ► is off-putting to you, that's fine.

01:51:07 ◼   ► You can still not agree with her approach

01:51:09 ◼   ► to solving this problem.

01:51:10 ◼   ► Find someone else to read to follow or whatever.

01:51:12 ◼   ► Like there's a lot, like, just because you don't agree

01:51:14 ◼   ► with someone's tactics does not mean you, like,

01:51:16 ◼   ► I don't feel like you need to expose yourself

01:51:18 ◼   ► to some tactics that you find are off-putting, right?

01:51:21 ◼   ► But you should expose yourself to the viewpoint.

01:51:23 ◼   ► There are plenty of viewpoints out there.

01:51:25 ◼   ► There is a viewpoint that you will feel comfortable with

01:51:27 ◼   ► that can expose you to things you haven't thought of,

01:51:29 ◼   ► that can show you the experiences of other people.

01:51:31 ◼   ► And, you know, it's going to make you

01:51:33 ◼   ► a little bit uncomfortable.

01:51:34 ◼   ► I'm not saying like, you know,

01:51:35 ◼   ► like don't make your Twitter stream filled with like,

01:51:38 ◼   ► find the angriest person you can.

01:51:40 ◼   ► And by the way, as I said before,

01:51:41 ◼   ► I feel like if I was forced to switch genders right now,

01:51:43 ◼   ► I would be the angriest feminist the world has ever seen.

01:51:46 ◼   ► And so would most men, because we would just be incensed

01:51:49 ◼   ► at the injustice of being treated the way women

01:51:51 ◼   ► are treated all the time, because we know what it's like

01:51:52 ◼   ► on the other side.

01:51:54 ◼   ► Or changing to be black in the US or any other type of thing

01:51:57 ◼   ► or changing to be super short or like any other thing

01:52:01 ◼   ► that like is bad, not you Mark, you know.

01:52:03 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:52:04 ◼   ► Like this, you know, all of us would be just totally enraged

01:52:10 ◼   ► have to deal with any sort of prejudice that we don't that we didn't grow up with right

01:52:14 ◼   ► uh and so what you're just trying to do is be aware of those things somehow by exposing

01:52:20 ◼   ► yourself to different viewpoints uh we can put a list of people in the show notes everyone

01:52:24 ◼   ► on isometric would be great to follow this but even just like right like uh what's her

01:52:28 ◼   ► last name i always mispronounce it i'll put in the show notes susan aren't is that her

01:52:33 ◼   ► name i'm asking you guys you don't know remember you are the pronunciation agent for our show

01:52:37 ◼   ► Yeah, female journalists in the game industry, if they have been there for a while, they

01:52:42 ◼   ► have a valuable viewpoint.

01:52:43 ◼   ► They probably have something interesting to say on this topic.

01:52:45 ◼   ► And increasingly, like you can find the crazy terrible people who are making this big like

01:52:49 ◼   ► list of people who you should hate because they support equality and list of websites

01:52:55 ◼   ► you shouldn't visit.

01:52:56 ◼   ► Go find that list, you know, from these terrible websites and like follow those people and

01:53:00 ◼   ► read what they have to say, like use it for the opposite purpose.

01:53:03 ◼   ► uh yeah susan it's a-r-e-n-d-t but i guess it's just aren't anyway uh she's great i enjoy her

01:53:12 ◼   ► uh samus clone on uh on twitter maddie myers uh from uh isometric as well as another good person

01:53:18 ◼   ► to follow uh point is there there are things out there for you to follow and to read uh

01:53:25 ◼   ► something will suit your needs uh the worst thing you can do is nothing

01:53:28 ◼   ► and also i highly recommend wearing button fly pants because then your fly will never be

01:53:33 ◼   ► open accidentally, among other benefits. They really are better.

01:53:39 ◼   ► So much work though. No, see you get past it. Like, it's, you

01:53:45 ◼   ► know, you have to convert all your pants at once. You can't just have like one buttonfly

01:53:48 ◼   ► pair because then you'll hate them. But once you have, once you've converted to buttonfly,

01:53:53 ◼   ► you'll realize how superior they really are. And they loosen up after like the first couple

01:53:57 ◼   ► of days. That's the thing is unbroken in buttonfly

01:54:01 ◼   ► pants are the worst. Yeah, but that's like literally it's like a couple of days and then

01:54:05 ◼   ► then they're fine and they're nice. You know, then this is the worst the most inappropriate

01:54:09 ◼   ► segue of topics ever going from they really are better but pervasive systemic sexism to

01:54:16 ◼   ► flies on pants, you know, both both genders can wear button fly pants and often do this

01:54:23 ◼   ► is this is not a gender issue. I mean there there is a benefit to men. There's a there's

01:54:27 ◼   ► an extra safety involved there, but most of the benefits apply to both genders.

01:54:32 ◼   ► Oh, God. I think we should stop. Does that mean we're done with this topic

01:54:36 ◼   ► now? We're never going to be done with this topic.

01:54:39 ◼   ► This topic is not going to go away in our lifetimes, and I think we should keep talking

01:54:42 ◼   ► about it regularly. Yeah, it will come up again on the show,

01:54:46 ◼   ► I'm sure. It's sad that it only comes up when things get super bad, but that's just

01:54:52 ◼   ► the nature of it's just the nature of a topical show yeah it's homework for

01:54:58 ◼   ► everybody who listens yeah seriously do do something nice for for a woman in

01:55:03 ◼   ► your life and you'll be better for it and keep an open mind about pants as

01:55:08 ◼   ► well except for the people in the chat who are saying a velcro fly what you

01:55:13 ◼   ► got to be kidding that's the worst of everything skip that I I think we're

01:55:17 ◼   ► done I I got more fired up about that than I expected

01:55:19 ◼   ► God makes me so angry.

01:55:21 ◼   ► No, I think this is I think I think we

01:55:24 ◼   ► we're not going to regret having talked about this for this long.

01:55:27 ◼   ► If you guys like

01:55:29 ◼   ► Bionic, which I still have never listened to, but it sounds like

01:55:32 ◼   ► the type of show like you like Bionic, you should try asymmetric

01:55:36 ◼   ► because you're like, well, I'm not interested in games.

01:55:38 ◼   ► It's barely a game about games.

01:55:41 ◼   ► Just try it.

01:55:42 ◼   ► Throw throw a couple episodes in your podcast feeds and see what you think.

01:55:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I actually I did.

01:55:49 ◼   ► I did listen to a few, but they were pretty gaming heavy.

01:55:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess. I mean, I guess it is like, I guess.

01:55:54 ◼   ► I mean, it depends if they spending a long time talking about hand turkeys,

01:55:56 ◼   ► then that's not gaming related, but I guess they do spend some time on stuff.

01:56:00 ◼   ► But anyway, I find the show amusing in the same way.

01:56:01 ◼   ► It seems like you guys found Bionic amusing and it's like,

01:56:04 ◼   ► what is the show really about?

01:56:05 ◼   ► It's a lot of nonsense, a lot of fun. But.

01:56:07 ◼   ► Anyway, it's it's it's a viewpoint that usually don't hear like I don't.

01:56:12 ◼   ► There's a couple of gaming podcasts that I've listened to,

01:56:14 ◼   ► but none really regularly.

01:56:15 ◼   ► and I find myself listening to this one because it's like it's

01:56:18 ◼   ► it's viewpoints I don't get elsewhere.

01:56:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I'll give it another shot, because I want to hear that cast talk.

01:56:24 ◼   ► Like I follow most of them on Twitter.

01:56:27 ◼   ► Like I want to hear them talk, but I just I'm so not I'm so not a gamer.

01:56:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I feel I feel the same way.

01:56:35 ◼   ► There's a lot of references and vocabulary and, you know, like

01:56:38 ◼   ► they just assume everyone knows what these things are

01:56:41 ◼   ► and have a little discussion about it.

01:56:43 ◼   ► And it's like I don't have the context to even know what it is

01:56:45 ◼   ► you're talking about but i mean i don't know maybe casey will notice he's a lapsed gamer or whatever

01:56:49 ◼   ► i think casey and i are probably equally lapsed or similarly lapsed yeah i was actually about to

01:56:54 ◼   ► say that you're the bigger x gamer than i i think so you and i can fight over who's the who who used

01:57:00 ◼   ► to be a bigger gamer and is it is the worst gamer now and i think it's good actually to listen to

01:57:05 ◼   ► the show because if you only follow like like uh brianna or maddie on twitter and you only see them

01:57:11 ◼   ► as like the person who is, you know, fighting for equality and being the victim of harassment and

01:57:16 ◼   ► everything like that, you might start to forget that they're actual people. You listen to an

01:57:20 ◼   ► aspect of the age symmetric, you will realize they're actual normal people who just like,

01:57:24 ◼   ► they don't spend their entire time just being angry about feminism, like, which is the crazy

01:57:28 ◼   ► viewpoint people might get if they just like, well, they only ever see them when they're

01:57:31 ◼   ► retweeted by somebody a million times or whatever. Like, these are people, these are actual people

01:57:37 ◼   ► who have actual interests and lives and jobs and families and feelings and all this stuff.

01:57:42 ◼   ► That is a side benefit of happening to listen to a podcast of these type of people who are active on

01:57:48 ◼   ► these issues to realize just because you're active on this issue, it's like, "Oh my God,

01:57:52 ◼   ► they're regular people too, imagine." Yeah, the reason I haven't listened to it yet is because,

01:57:58 ◼   ► not at all because of the hosts. In fact, everything I've heard is that the hosts have

01:58:02 ◼   ► have an incredible amount of chemistry,

01:58:05 ◼   ► but because I am completely ignorant and clueless

01:58:09 ◼   ► about anything video game related,

01:58:13 ◼   ► I just kind of assumed that I would be completely lost.

01:58:16 ◼   ► - You should listen to the episode where Steve admits

01:58:18 ◼   ► that he's never seen Terminator 2

01:58:20 ◼   ► and then he watches it and didn't like it.

01:58:22 ◼   ► He is the Casey List of that show.

01:58:24 ◼   ► - Thanks, I think.

01:58:26 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:58:28 ◼   ► - Wow.

01:58:29 ◼   ► - How do you really feel, John?

01:58:30 ◼   ► - I don't think I've seen it.

01:58:31 ◼   ► Oh, you're perfect.

01:58:33 ◼   ► - I've seen it.

01:58:34 ◼   ► I've seen it.

01:58:34 ◼   ► I've seen it many times.

01:58:35 ◼   ► - Ding.

01:58:37 ◼   ► - Brianna's only said this on Twitter,

01:58:38 ◼   ► but I can't wait for the episode where she talks

01:58:40 ◼   ► about how much she likes the prequels,

01:58:41 ◼   ► the Star Wars prequels.

01:58:42 ◼   ► - Oh my God, that's gonna be amazing.

01:58:45 ◼   ► - I told you this is a diversity of opinions.

01:58:47 ◼   ► Some of them are terribly wrong, but they're diverse.

01:58:50 ◼   ► - You know, for what it's worth,

01:58:52 ◼   ► Terminator 2 and Top Gun were the two movies

01:58:56 ◼   ► that we had on Laserdisc that we,

01:58:59 ◼   ► well, now we had many movies on Laserdisc.

01:59:00 ◼   ► laser disc player. Yeah, yeah. But no, no, no. But the thing of it is, these two movies

01:59:04 ◼   ► in particular were amazing for using the scroll wheel that was on the remote control. Do you

01:59:11 ◼   ► know what I'm talking about? So it was kind of like, what do you call the thing on the

01:59:15 ◼   ► iPod, the click wheel or whatever you call it? But there was no clicking to it. But you

01:59:19 ◼   ► could go frame by frame because it was digital. Well, it kind of wasn't. You're right. It

01:59:25 ◼   ► It was weird, like it represented analog video signals on a digital medium.

01:59:31 ◼   ► It was very strange.

01:59:32 ◼   ► I'm not too familiar with the details, but...

01:59:34 ◼   ► One of the things was digital.

01:59:35 ◼   ► Was it the audio that was digital?

01:59:36 ◼   ► Audio I believe was digital, but the video was not.

01:59:40 ◼   ► It was weird, yeah.

01:59:41 ◼   ► It was digital-ish.

01:59:42 ◼   ► Yeah, it was very strange.

01:59:44 ◼   ► So the point I'm driving at though is when T2, the Terminator thing, would come out of

01:59:48 ◼   ► the wrecked 18 wheeler, spoiler alert,

01:59:51 ◼   ► and go from like liquid to person.

01:59:55 ◼   ► I remember just sitting there with the remote control

01:59:57 ◼   ► spinning backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards,

01:59:59 ◼   ► watching the special effect go frame by frame,

02:00:02 ◼   ► and it was amazing.

02:00:03 ◼   ► And then Top Gun was awesome

02:00:04 ◼   ► because it was a perfect example of surround sound,

02:00:07 ◼   ► which back in whatever the hell year this was,

02:00:09 ◼   ► was like a really new thing to have at home.

02:00:12 ◼   ► And oh my goodness, it was amazing.

02:00:17 ◼   ► somethingologist in the chat-ish-tologist,

02:00:21 ◼   ► says the controller in the remote

02:00:22 ◼   ► was a jog shuttle controller.

02:00:23 ◼   ► Some of the higher end VCRs had them too.

02:00:25 ◼   ► That's what I'm talking about.

02:00:26 ◼   ► And yeah, it was amazing.

02:00:28 ◼   ► Laserdiscs was better than, laserdiscs were better than,

02:00:32 ◼   ► I think they got credit for.

02:00:33 ◼   ► - Oh, we just, I forgot we had this.

02:00:35 ◼   ► You want to throw in a markdown?

02:00:36 ◼   ► Because we're never going to get to it

02:00:37 ◼   ► once the September 9th event comes in as well.

02:00:40 ◼   ► - Whatever, let's do it.

02:00:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, let's do it.

02:00:42 ◼   ► What the hell?

02:00:42 ◼   ► - Cut out all this stuff by laserdiscs in the middle.

02:00:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

02:00:44 ◼   ► - Tag the stuff on with it, but yeah.

02:00:45 ◼   ► I think we can dispense with this quickly because we all agree.

02:00:48 ◼   ► I'm keeping in the pants stuff though.

02:00:49 ◼   ► All right, go for it.

02:00:50 ◼   ► Of course.

02:00:51 ◼   ► Button fly agenda.

02:00:52 ◼   ► Let's talk about markdown, standard markdown, complex markdown, conventional markdown, whatever

02:00:58 ◼   ► the current flavor is, strict markdown.

02:01:03 ◼   ► Can one of you give me a quick summary about this?

02:01:05 ◼   ► All right, so the summary is John Gruber made markdown a long time ago.

02:01:08 ◼   ► He likes it.

02:01:09 ◼   ► Other people think there are problems with it, but they want to use variants of markdown.

02:01:14 ◼   ► There are many variants of Markdown that exist.

02:01:16 ◼   ► There's multi Markdown, there's GitHub-flavored Markdown, there's all sorts of different kinds

02:01:20 ◼   ► of Markdown.

02:01:21 ◼   ► One particular person has been upset with the way John Gruber's Markdown works for a

02:01:25 ◼   ► long time.

02:01:26 ◼   ► That's Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror.

02:01:28 ◼   ► He made a blog post two years ago that said, "I really wish that Markdown could be better

02:01:32 ◼   ► maintained and better defined and the spec could reduce ambiguities and bugs could be

02:01:37 ◼   ► fixed because we all want to use Markdown, but everybody uses a different implementation

02:01:41 ◼   ► of Markdown.

02:01:42 ◼   ► It's just a giant mess."

02:01:44 ◼   ► So recently he came out with something that he was calling standard markdown, which was

02:01:47 ◼   ► a much more highly specified variant of markdown where they removed or reduced, vastly reduced

02:01:56 ◼   ► the ambiguities in language to say this is how we want it to work, here's a test suite,

02:02:01 ◼   ► here's sample implementations, here's a specification, there if everyone complies with this we will

02:02:06 ◼   ► help markdown the degrees with each other and everything will be fine.

02:02:09 ◼   ► That was all well and good except for the fact that he called it standard markdown,

02:02:13 ◼   ► which was a slap in the face to Gruber,

02:02:15 ◼   ► because how can, he might as well have called it

02:02:18 ◼   ► the official real markdown.

02:02:19 ◼   ► (laughing)

02:02:20 ◼   ► That might as well have been the name.

02:02:22 ◼   ► The one and only genuine official real markdown.

02:02:24 ◼   ► That was a bad choice of name, it's for many, many reasons.

02:02:28 ◼   ► It makes it seem like that this is the one

02:02:31 ◼   ► and only official markdown, when that is clearly

02:02:32 ◼   ► not the case, there's a million different kinds of markdown.

02:02:34 ◼   ► It makes it seem like they are the people

02:02:37 ◼   ► who sort of own and control markdown,

02:02:38 ◼   ► which is not the case, they don't own and control markdown.

02:02:41 ◼   ► And so that was dumb.

02:02:43 ◼   ► And it's a shame because I agree with the goals

02:02:46 ◼   ► of a better markdown specification,

02:02:48 ◼   ► even though I don't like markdown.

02:02:50 ◼   ► But I don't agree with the idea of calling your thing

02:02:53 ◼   ► the one and only superficial, totally the main,

02:02:55 ◼   ► forget about all other ones markdown.

02:02:57 ◼   ► They should have, you know, used a different name.

02:03:03 ◼   ► Like just, and here's the thing about the name.

02:03:05 ◼   ► If they had picked a different name, like football,

02:03:07 ◼   ► like that was the name, just football,

02:03:09 ◼   ► that would have been fine too.

02:03:11 ◼   ► Like, I don't think it would have hurt their cause at all.

02:03:13 ◼   ► Anyway, they since renamed it to Common Markdown.

02:03:16 ◼   ► - I don't see how that's any real--

02:03:18 ◼   ► - Well, no, here's the best thing about that.

02:03:19 ◼   ► I don't know if you read this.

02:03:20 ◼   ► - I think it's slightly less terrible.

02:03:22 ◼   ► - Well, no, but here's the best thing about the post.

02:03:23 ◼   ► Like, I read it beforehand.

02:03:24 ◼   ► It starts off good, it's like, we're sorry,

02:03:26 ◼   ► we made a mistake, John Gruber made demands,

02:03:30 ◼   ► he wants us to take down our domain,

02:03:31 ◼   ► standardmarkdown.com, not have it redirected.

02:03:34 ◼   ► He wants us to rename our thing

02:03:35 ◼   ► and he wants us to apologize.

02:03:36 ◼   ► And he did all those things, but what they renamed it to

02:03:39 ◼   ► was like we sent a bunch of these names

02:03:41 ◼   ► and we said what about this name, that name,

02:03:43 ◼   ► and the other name, and we didn't get a reply

02:03:44 ◼   ► so we're using common markdown.

02:03:46 ◼   ► What are you doing?

02:03:46 ◼   ► You can't change the name, like the whole point is

02:03:49 ◼   ► call it something that doesn't have markdown in the name,

02:03:52 ◼   ► you're fine with that, call it whatever you want,

02:03:53 ◼   ► call it hand turkey, call it whatever you want.

02:03:57 ◼   ► That's fine, right?

02:03:59 ◼   ► Or call it something with markdown in the name

02:04:02 ◼   ► that Groober approves of.

02:04:03 ◼   ► You can't say we're gonna do everything you say,

02:04:05 ◼   ► we're gonna rename it and we'll send you a suggestion

02:04:06 ◼   ► of a name, but we got tired of waiting

02:04:08 ◼   ► So we just picked one that we felt like it and common is not really much better

02:04:11 ◼   ► It sounds like it's like common lisp. Like it sounds like the official one and only like

02:04:15 ◼   ► They're sabotaging their own cause their own cause is good

02:04:19 ◼   ► I think it is good to have what they're doing technically is good what they're doing socially is bad

02:04:23 ◼   ► It's very bad and they seem to just like it's like shoot themselves in the foot reload the gun point at the other foot and

02:04:30 ◼   ► Yeah, like just grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory here

02:04:35 ◼   ► I mean and that's the thing with this like, you know following Jeff I follow Jeff Atwood loosely and

02:04:41 ◼   ► And even following him loosely I've seen ever since they started Stack Overflow

02:04:46 ◼   ► How many years ago was that eight years ago? It's it's been a long time ever since they started Stack Overflow

02:04:53 ◼   ► Which which included markdown?

02:04:55 ◼   ► Jeff Atwood has been

02:04:58 ◼   ► very hostile dismissive and condescending towards John Gruber and his ownership of markdown and

02:05:05 ◼   ► The hostility has been so clear the entire time. It's it's very very clear that Jeff does not respect John

02:05:12 ◼   ► And and that and and that Jeff feels that he is entitled and yeah, and now there's other people involved

02:05:19 ◼   ► But but I think I think Jeff was pretty much running it for a while and probably is still very important in this process

02:05:24 ◼   ► This group of people very much obviously feels that they have the right to co-opt markdown

02:05:32 ◼   ► because Gruber has not done that much with it recently.

02:05:36 ◼   ► And the fact that it has not changed

02:05:39 ◼   ► in the better part of a decade,

02:05:41 ◼   ► that, like, there's so many,

02:05:44 ◼   ► I got into this a little bit on Twitter earlier,

02:05:45 ◼   ► like, there are so many bad counterarguments

02:05:47 ◼   ► people keep making to try to support

02:05:49 ◼   ► what they're doing here.

02:05:51 ◼   ► One of those bad counterarguments is,

02:05:53 ◼   ► well, Gruber hasn't touched it in like a decade.

02:05:55 ◼   ► Well, yeah, the MP3 file format hasn't changed

02:05:59 ◼   ► in a few decades, neither has the JPEG file format.

02:06:01 ◼   ► Like there are things that don't change,

02:06:03 ◼   ► that doesn't mean they're neglected or abandoned.

02:06:05 ◼   ► - But that doesn't matter.

02:06:06 ◼   ► Like I mean, it doesn't matter whether it's changed.

02:06:09 ◼   ► It doesn't, none of that really matters.

02:06:11 ◼   ► That's like-- - Yeah, it's true.

02:06:11 ◼   ► - That's explaining why Jeff is frustrated.

02:06:14 ◼   ► That's what it explains.

02:06:15 ◼   ► Why are people frustrated?

02:06:16 ◼   ► Why are people doing this all?

02:06:18 ◼   ► John Gruber's stewardship of Markdown explains

02:06:20 ◼   ► why people have the feelings they feel, right?

02:06:22 ◼   ► 'Cause I think that is, you know,

02:06:24 ◼   ► and I share those feelings, frankly.

02:06:25 ◼   ► Like I don't even use Markdown, so I don't care.

02:06:27 ◼   ► But I share, like, but then what do you do

02:06:29 ◼   ► with those feelings?

02:06:30 ◼   ► That's where the rubber hits the road.

02:06:31 ◼   ► Like, hey, I feel frustrated.

02:06:33 ◼   ► Then what?

02:06:34 ◼   ► Then do you demand that something happens?

02:06:36 ◼   ► No, 'cause you have no right to the demand.

02:06:38 ◼   ► Would you like to fork it?

02:06:39 ◼   ► By all means, to call it whatever you want.

02:06:42 ◼   ► You know, make your own thing.

02:06:43 ◼   ► Like, you have so much freedom available

02:06:45 ◼   ► to you to do these things.

02:06:46 ◼   ► And Gruber is even okay with things like multi-Mark Hammon

02:06:49 ◼   ► and GitHub Markdown.

02:06:50 ◼   ► They ask him, hey, we're GitHub, we're gonna make,

02:06:52 ◼   ► I assume that, I think GitHub Markdown

02:06:53 ◼   ► asks for permission, right?

02:06:54 ◼   ► We're gonna make some variant of Markdown.

02:06:56 ◼   ► We'd like to call it X, Y, and Z.

02:06:57 ◼   ► Thumbs up or thumbs down?

02:06:59 ◼   ► Why does he have the quote unquote right to give that?

02:07:02 ◼   ► Because he made Markdown.

02:07:03 ◼   ► It's a name that he made up for a thing that he made.

02:07:05 ◼   ► Like, it's just common courtesy.

02:07:08 ◼   ► Like, it's just, ignore all legalities entirely.

02:07:11 ◼   ► It's just like, it's just common courtesy.

02:07:13 ◼   ► Like, you're gonna say like,

02:07:15 ◼   ► "Well, if Markdown didn't exist,

02:07:16 ◼   ► "I would have made my own thing."

02:07:17 ◼   ► Maybe you would have, but it wouldn't be called Markdown,

02:07:19 ◼   ► would it?

02:07:19 ◼   ► It would be called whatever the hell name you made up.

02:07:21 ◼   ► So make up your own name.

02:07:22 ◼   ► And so like, the technical issues are just all,

02:07:24 ◼   ► and like, you know, the entitlement or whatever,

02:07:27 ◼   ► Like, that is all just an explanation of why people feel the way they feel, but none of

02:07:31 ◼   ► it justifies the actions that are going on.

02:07:32 ◼   ► And the actions, and justified like in terms of just, not even like morally or ethically

02:07:37 ◼   ► or legally, but just like being a nice person-ly, whatever word that is.

02:07:43 ◼   ► And even practically speaking, forget about being a nice person, practically speaking,

02:07:47 ◼   ► if you want your project to be successful, like don't shoot it, like don't get it off,

02:07:52 ◼   ► start off on the wrong foot.

02:07:53 ◼   ► Like, there's no reason, I totally applaud this effort, the technical effort they've

02:07:56 ◼   ► gone through to try to standardize what is an ill-specified, just probably untenable

02:08:03 ◼   ► markup system to be everything in spite of it. Like, they've made a heroic effort and

02:08:07 ◼   ► then they just destroy it all by doing something jerky. Like, why? Why would you do this?

02:08:10 ◼   ► Yeah, it's so unnecessary. Like, they, you know, no one is objecting to them making a

02:08:17 ◼   ► standardized markdown syntax. No one is objecting to that. The only thing people are objecting

02:08:23 ◼   ► to legitimately is the name.

02:08:26 ◼   ► or what the name represents. Co-opting, trying to co-op something, that's what it's like. The name

02:08:31 ◼   ► is the embodiment of that attempt to co-op, but the name is like, we are trying to co-op this

02:08:35 ◼   ► thing because we feel like it has not been maintained. Even the attitude in Jeff's post

02:08:40 ◼   ► tonight that they, that after the public outcry from a lot of people about standard markdown,

02:08:46 ◼   ► which is an incredibly arrogant name, to co-opt someone else's project and call yours the standard,

02:08:53 ◼   ► after that, this post saying that they renamed it calm markdown, it's like we

02:08:57 ◼   ► what he basically says is, uh, so we replied to John Gruber with these list of names that all

02:09:05 ◼   ► still contain the word markdown and are all compatible markdown, regular markdown, like,

02:09:12 ◼   ► I mean, Gruber said he's okay. He's okay with like some variant of markdown like, but you know,

02:09:17 ◼   ► he's like he gave like pedant pedantic markdown was it that he thought he might have, but the

02:09:21 ◼   ► But the whole point is--

02:09:22 ◼   ► He said strict markdown, which I think

02:09:24 ◼   ► that would be descriptive.

02:09:26 ◼   ► I would not be OK with strict markdown

02:09:27 ◼   ► either, because that still sounds like--

02:09:29 ◼   ► What they should do is don't use the word markdown at all.

02:09:33 ◼   ► That would leave them completely in the clear,

02:09:37 ◼   ► morally, argumentatively, and let their project proceed

02:09:41 ◼   ► into something productive.

02:09:42 ◼   ► Right now, it's always going to have this asterisk on it.

02:09:46 ◼   ► It's always going to be controversial.

02:09:48 ◼   ► And the worst thing is-- so if you read this post--

02:09:51 ◼   ► So Jeff said, so Gruber and them,

02:09:54 ◼   ► he, Gruber apparently sent them an email.

02:09:57 ◼   ► They reply back with this list of suggestions last night.

02:10:01 ◼   ► And tonight, since they hadn't received a response

02:10:04 ◼   ► in 24 hours, they just picked one of their suggestions

02:10:07 ◼   ► and assumed Gruber's okay with it.

02:10:09 ◼   ► - You were reading the post while I said that before,

02:10:10 ◼   ► but yes.

02:10:11 ◼   ► - Like, I can't.

02:10:13 ◼   ► - Like, why go forward?

02:10:14 ◼   ► You know you haven't gotten permission.

02:10:17 ◼   ► That is so, it's so rash and unnecessarily inflammatory.

02:10:22 ◼   ► Like seriously, just call it something else.

02:10:24 ◼   ► You will avoid all of these problems.

02:10:26 ◼   ► Just call it anything else so that your project can have

02:10:30 ◼   ► 100% credibility without all this controversy.

02:10:35 ◼   ► There is no reason, and even this post,

02:10:38 ◼   ► the way they went about this and the way they just assumed

02:10:41 ◼   ► they had permission after 24 hours of no objection.

02:10:44 ◼   ► - It's like what's the hurry?

02:10:45 ◼   ► - That's so arrogant, that is so just,

02:10:49 ◼   ► that's a terrible move, it's such a huge dick move.

02:10:52 ◼   ► - It's attempting to force someone's hand,

02:10:55 ◼   ► by like, well, we didn't hear it for you for a day,

02:10:56 ◼   ► so we're just gonna go forward with this,

02:10:57 ◼   ► and that's gonna force you to react,

02:10:58 ◼   ► and he's not playing that game, and it's just ridiculous.

02:11:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is awful, I mean,

02:11:03 ◼   ► I don't think Jeff Atwood's a bad guy,

02:11:05 ◼   ► I've met him a couple times,

02:11:06 ◼   ► I've talked to him a couple times,

02:11:07 ◼   ► I don't think he's a bad guy,

02:11:08 ◼   ► but this is just so incredibly tone deaf,

02:11:12 ◼   ► And it really just, it just,

02:11:14 ◼   ► and it's so easily avoidable.

02:11:16 ◼   ► This project is brand new.

02:11:18 ◼   ► Jeff Atwood has a hell of a microphone.

02:11:21 ◼   ► You can call it anything you want

02:11:23 ◼   ► and it will get off the ground just as well

02:11:25 ◼   ► as if you called it anything marked out.

02:11:27 ◼   ► You can call it anything.

02:11:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, it'll survive on its own merits.

02:11:31 ◼   ► And the merits are substantial

02:11:32 ◼   ► because they're fulfilling a market need

02:11:35 ◼   ► for these three big, very popular websites

02:11:36 ◼   ► that want a standard on this thing.

02:11:38 ◼   ► Go ahead, standardize it, pick a name out of a hat.

02:11:40 ◼   ► you know, like have a little contest for a name

02:11:42 ◼   ► like you did for the Stack Overflow logo.

02:11:43 ◼   ► Like, you know, you have the tools to do this.

02:11:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, like you can, you can really,

02:11:47 ◼   ► you can call it anything.

02:11:50 ◼   ► And this is the time to do that.

02:11:51 ◼   ► When the project has just gotten off the ground,

02:11:52 ◼   ► it's just starting, it's brand new,

02:11:55 ◼   ► you know, your version of it is brand new.

02:11:57 ◼   ► And that's the only thing that's a problem, is the name.

02:12:01 ◼   ► Just fix it, not a big deal.

02:12:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, there was a couple of people in the chat room

02:12:05 ◼   ► and elsewhere on the web were like,

02:12:06 ◼   ► "Well, the BSD license on markdown.pl,

02:12:09 ◼   ► Which is the Perl file that implements markdown to Groovermade says that you can't use the name markdown and blah blah blah

02:12:14 ◼   ► All that is irrelevant because that applies to the source code and nobody's using that source code

02:12:21 ◼   ► They're all trying to do their own independent implementations

02:12:23 ◼   ► Anyway, this has nothing to do with legality has everything to do with like not sabotaging yourself and not being a jerk

02:12:30 ◼   ► Like that's it like, you know

02:12:31 ◼   ► And I don't think we're gonna ever pursue it legally because that would be kind of pointless way

02:12:35 ◼   ► It's like it's just all about being nice to people and the reason they don't get replies is because they've been

02:12:40 ◼   ► You know obnoxious to him so many times. Would you keep replying to them? It's like what do you expect?

02:12:45 ◼   ► It's like well if you're not gonna reply

02:12:47 ◼   ► We're just gonna co-opt your thing and be jerks about it, and it's like well

02:12:50 ◼   ► If you're gonna be jerks about I'm not gonna respond to email well if you're not gonna respond to my email

02:12:53 ◼   ► I'm just gonna pick another name anyway. It's like there's needless

02:12:55 ◼   ► Needless drama that just yeah

02:12:58 ◼   ► I mean I I knew as soon as it said standard markdown that there was that there was a start your timer

02:13:03 ◼   ► That's not gonna last very long and sure enough

02:13:05 ◼   ► but I I have to admit that I was surprised when the rename post came and the new name was

02:13:10 ◼   ► With no permission and no blessing common markdown. It was like oh like I was so hopeful and like oh, this is speedy

02:13:17 ◼   ► They realized their mistake soon and they're correcting it. They're doing everything they're supposed to and they blew it

02:13:21 ◼   ► Yeah, well and again it's you can you can tell in the attitude of this post and that how they've gone about this

02:13:28 ◼   ► It's more of the same that they not only do they feel entitled to own Markdown themselves

02:13:34 ◼   ► But they really do not respect John Gruber at all

02:13:38 ◼   ► And and they don't respect him as a person even and that's that's what's become very clear here

02:13:43 ◼   ► They they really really look down upon him

02:13:46 ◼   ► Well, they don't respect him as an open source project maintainer, and I think he's a terrible open source project maintainer

02:13:51 ◼   ► But this doesn't give you the right to be a jerk about it

02:13:53 ◼   ► Like you can you can have it ever opinion you want about that you could be like, oh, I don't like how way you sound

02:13:57 ◼   ► fine, great, you don't like the way you handle it, but he doesn't like the way you handle a lot of your projects too.

02:14:01 ◼   ► And that doesn't, therefore I get to do this. No, not therefore you get to do that.

02:14:05 ◼   ► No, it doesn't follow. So it's like they're giving in to their frustrations on technical and sort of, you know,

02:14:12 ◼   ► issues of stewardship and stuff.

02:14:13 ◼   ► It's like, feel free to have those feelings, but like you cannot parlay those feelings into being a jerk and say, well,

02:14:19 ◼   ► it's justified because this guy's not good. He isn't running this project the way I would run it.

02:14:23 ◼   ► Yeah, well, get your own project, run it the way you want.

02:14:26 ◼   ► So I try, because I'm an idiot, to respond to most of the email I get.

02:14:33 ◼   ► And occasionally, I'll get just extremely kind, generous, wonderful emails.

02:14:41 ◼   ► You know how long it takes me to reply to most of those?

02:14:44 ◼   ► Somewhere between one and three weeks, because I get so much freaking email.

02:14:47 ◼   ► And I am nowhere near the level of celebrity that Jon Gruber is.

02:14:52 ◼   ► He did not respond because he's overwhelmed in email.

02:14:54 ◼   ► didn't respond because he didn't want to respond.

02:14:56 ◼   ► And like honestly, even if he totally planned to respond,

02:14:58 ◼   ► what's wrong with him taking a day or two to think about it?

02:15:01 ◼   ► Like, what's the big rush?

02:15:02 ◼   ► It's like--

02:15:03 ◼   ► - Here's the big thing about this.

02:15:05 ◼   ► Like somebody in the chat just said, here, let me see.

02:15:07 ◼   ► A tangible ghost in the chat just said,

02:15:09 ◼   ► "Yeah, I think all the disrespect comes from the fact

02:15:11 ◼   ► "that Gruber doesn't want to blank or get off the pot

02:15:13 ◼   ► "when it comes to Markdown."

02:15:15 ◼   ► Like, what people I think are not understanding well

02:15:21 ◼   ► in this argument is that John Gruber has no obligation

02:15:24 ◼   ► to do anything with Markdown.

02:15:25 ◼   ► He has no obligation at all to respond

02:15:29 ◼   ► to Jeff Atwood's emails.

02:15:31 ◼   ► He has no obligation at all to make changes

02:15:33 ◼   ► that people want or to fix perceived or actual bugs

02:15:35 ◼   ► or problems with Markdown.

02:15:37 ◼   ► It's his project.

02:15:38 ◼   ► He owns it.

02:15:40 ◼   ► Again, leaving aside the legalities of things

02:15:43 ◼   ► like trademarks, those are all arguable.

02:15:46 ◼   ► I think just common sense looking at this, he owns this.

02:15:49 ◼   ► And to think that you can just go up and take it as yours

02:15:54 ◼   ► and say, well, he doesn't seem to be using it,

02:15:57 ◼   ► so we're just gonna take the project over,

02:15:59 ◼   ► you know, there's a way to do that respectfully.

02:16:02 ◼   ► And the way to do that respectfully is to fork it

02:16:05 ◼   ► and use your own branding, period,

02:16:07 ◼   ► and not try to commandeer his,

02:16:10 ◼   ► because it does not matter what he is doing

02:16:14 ◼   ► or not doing with it, it is still his.

02:16:18 ◼   ► And there is nothing wrong with you doing your own take on it

02:16:23 ◼   ► with your name.

02:16:24 ◼   ► And see, in the normal open source world,

02:16:26 ◼   ► people get super pissed about forks and stuff.

02:16:28 ◼   ► And Gruber is like, fine, fork it.

02:16:29 ◼   ► Like, he is being much nicer than most maintainers

02:16:32 ◼   ► of open source projects who are like,

02:16:34 ◼   ► who view any kind of fork as a hostile attempt to take over,

02:16:37 ◼   ► especially if you give it a new name,

02:16:38 ◼   ► and it's like you want to be the new thing.

02:16:40 ◼   ► It's like, no way.

02:16:41 ◼   ► We're like-- they hate that.

02:16:42 ◼   ► Gruber's like, go ahead.

02:16:43 ◼   ► Like, do whatever you want.

02:16:45 ◼   ► Like, Markdown is not hard to munt yourself.

02:16:47 ◼   ► don't need his source code at all. It's a BSD license if you want to but then you

02:16:50 ◼   ► can't use it. But he's even willing to give you the source code as long as you

02:16:52 ◼   ► don't use the name Markdown. But like he's like go ahead call whatever the

02:16:55 ◼   ► hell you want make your own thing. Do like I don't care this is my thing feel

02:16:58 ◼   ► free to have your thing. He is in the grand scheme of maintainers open source

02:17:03 ◼   ► he is incredibly generous of what he's willing to let you do with his idea and

02:17:08 ◼   ► his source code. It's not even like GPL it's like a BSD variant. He's willing to

02:17:12 ◼   ► let people make things called insert modifier here Markdown which is way more

02:17:16 ◼   ► than most other open source people would let you do.

02:17:18 ◼   ► Yeah, try doing that with Twitter.

02:17:19 ◼   ► Right.

02:17:20 ◼   ► Try to make-- I don't know.

02:17:21 ◼   ► Maybe Postgres is good, but try to make a standard MySQL

02:17:25 ◼   ► and see how much the MySQL people like it.

02:17:27 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

02:17:28 ◼   ► You know, like, what-- and it all just

02:17:30 ◼   ► comes from frustration, like he's not running the project

02:17:33 ◼   ► the right way.

02:17:33 ◼   ► He's not running the project the way I would want.

02:17:35 ◼   ► I agree with all those things.

02:17:36 ◼   ► I do not think he's running the project the right way.

02:17:38 ◼   ► I don't think he's running the way I would want it.

02:17:40 ◼   ► But you can't then just-- it doesn't follow.

02:17:43 ◼   ► There's this huge gap between disagreeing

02:17:45 ◼   ► what someone's doing with their project and you deciding that you are now

02:17:49 ◼   ► you are now the the standard bearer for that project that you did not start.

02:17:53 ◼   ► All right. We got that pretty easily. I don't know.

02:17:56 ◼   ► I think it's pretty open and close.

02:17:58 ◼   ► I think common markdown will not last as a name and we will see more of this.

02:18:01 ◼   ► But the September 9th event will come and erase all this.

02:18:03 ◼   ► And so maybe we'll talk about it five shows from now when it is called something

02:18:06 ◼   ► that does not have marked on the name and we can finally get this all behind us.

02:18:09 ◼   ► Do you really think he's going to change the name again?

02:18:11 ◼   ► I don't think he will. He's got a chance.

02:18:12 ◼   ► He can't leave it as common. It's ridiculous.

02:18:14 ◼   ► If there's too much, too many people think he's a jerk

02:18:17 ◼   ► for doing it and they're right.

02:18:18 ◼   ► - But the attitude he has in this post,

02:18:21 ◼   ► it does not fill me with hope that he's going to admit

02:18:25 ◼   ► that this was not good and change it again.

02:18:27 ◼   ► - He admitted it once, he admitted that he screwed up

02:18:31 ◼   ► the first time and then screwed up a second time.

02:18:33 ◼   ► So he admitted he screwed up a second time

02:18:35 ◼   ► and get it right at the third time, right?

02:18:37 ◼   ► - I think it's interesting, not one of the names

02:18:40 ◼   ► that he suggested to Gruber didn't contain Markdown.

02:18:44 ◼   ► - But Gruber had said he's okay with like

02:18:46 ◼   ► pedantic markdown or maybe even strict markdown.

02:18:48 ◼   ► Like there is a precedent for modifier markdown

02:18:50 ◼   ► that Gruber is okay with.

02:18:51 ◼   ► All you gotta do is get permission.

02:18:52 ◼   ► If he says fine, use it.

02:18:53 ◼   ► But if he doesn't say fine to any of your names,

02:18:56 ◼   ► then just pick a new one.

02:18:58 ◼   ► It's really easy.

02:18:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, again, it's just, you know,

02:19:00 ◼   ► getting back to your discussion about good and bad business,

02:19:02 ◼   ► like, which admittedly was on a much more important topic,

02:19:05 ◼   ► but still, like, this is just bad business.

02:19:08 ◼   ► Like if you want your standard to actually have power,

02:19:12 ◼   ► to have a chance of becoming, quote, a standard.

02:19:15 ◼   ► Instead of just you saying it's a standard,

02:19:17 ◼   ► you know, insert XKCD comic here,

02:19:19 ◼   ► instead of just you saying that,

02:19:21 ◼   ► for it to actually be adopted, to be widely out there,

02:19:25 ◼   ► to be powerful, to be the standard,

02:19:28 ◼   ► it can't have stupid crap like this tying it down,

02:19:31 ◼   ► like stupid crap, like stupid arguments about the name.

02:19:34 ◼   ► - It's a sideshow, it's a distraction.

02:19:36 ◼   ► And people say, well, this sideshow is good for publicity.

02:19:38 ◼   ► Jeff Atwood does not need this sideshow to make publicity.

02:19:41 ◼   ► Like some people may need this kind of,

02:19:43 ◼   ► because otherwise no one would know it existed.

02:19:45 ◼   ► Jeff Atwood does not need this.

02:19:46 ◼   ► It is all downside for him.

02:19:48 ◼   ► - Exactly, and it's angering a lot of people

02:19:51 ◼   ► in the community of people he needs to attract.

02:19:54 ◼   ► - People who like Markdown, those people.

02:19:56 ◼   ► - Yeah.

02:19:57 ◼   ► - There's a lot of those, like those are the people

02:19:58 ◼   ► you don't want to piss off.

02:19:59 ◼   ► People like me, who cares?

02:20:00 ◼   ► I don't use Markdown and I don't care,

02:20:02 ◼   ► and even I'm against them.

02:20:03 ◼   ► And so it's like the people who love Markdown

02:20:05 ◼   ► really hate you for doing this.

02:20:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, because like, and Markdown has spread.

02:20:09 ◼   ► It has become so widespread because of people like

02:20:13 ◼   ► Jeff Atwood and like Markdown is on Tumblr

02:20:17 ◼   ► because I put it there.

02:20:18 ◼   ► 'Cause David didn't really know what it was or care

02:20:21 ◼   ► and I wanted it there.

02:20:22 ◼   ► So one day when Tumblr was still really small,

02:20:24 ◼   ► I just put it there.

02:20:26 ◼   ► Markdown is on Stack Overflow because Jeff Atwood

02:20:29 ◼   ► was the co-founder of Stack Overflow

02:20:31 ◼   ► and one day he wanted it there so he put it there.

02:20:34 ◼   ► It's this kind of community of people.

02:20:37 ◼   ► It's people who read John Gruber's site,

02:20:40 ◼   ► who follow stuff like this, who are a part of this community,

02:20:42 ◼   ► who are, you know, programmers who are into this sort

02:20:45 ◼   ► of stuff, who follow this stuff online.

02:20:47 ◼   ► It's people like us who are responsible for the spread

02:20:50 ◼   ► of this kind of technology and the spread

02:20:52 ◼   ► of these kind of standards or non-standards.

02:20:55 ◼   ► It's this community that he is polarizing

02:20:58 ◼   ► by being a dick about the name,

02:21:00 ◼   ► and that will really harm this.

02:21:03 ◼   ► He has to not let people object to it

02:21:07 ◼   ► on such a trivial ground as he stole the name

02:21:11 ◼   ► in a kind of dickish way.

02:21:12 ◼   ► Like, let people object to it over its merits,

02:21:16 ◼   ► or let it win on its merits.

02:21:17 ◼   ► Don't give people stupid ammo like this

02:21:20 ◼   ► that is so easily avoided, it's so easily changed,

02:21:23 ◼   ► 'cause that ultimately is harming

02:21:26 ◼   ► the goal he's trying to achieve,

02:21:27 ◼   ► in what I think is a bigger way than he realizes.

02:21:31 ◼   ► - Yep, but it's only been, what, 12 hours and 24 hours now?

02:21:35 ◼   ► So anyway, we'll revisit after the September 9th event,

02:21:38 ◼   ► see if anything came of it.

02:21:40 ◼   ► In the meantime, just keep doing what you were doing.

02:21:43 ◼   ► If you're using tiny American flags

02:21:46 ◼   ► for some markdown for others.

02:21:47 ◼   ► - So apparently there's, personally,

02:21:50 ◼   ► I don't understand that reference.

02:21:52 ◼   ► Second-- (laughing)

02:21:53 ◼   ► - I screwed up the quote, so you're forgiven.

02:21:55 ◼   ► - It's also the second time

02:21:56 ◼   ► you've used that reference on our show.

02:21:57 ◼   ► - I've used it way more than two times in my life,

02:22:00 ◼   ► believe me.

02:22:01 ◼   ► - Let's do titles.

02:22:03 ◼   ► Accidental Markdown, no.

02:22:05 ◼   ► Do you do anything for fun? I feel like that's worth it just to shame John, but it's probably not the best

02:22:11 ◼   ► Shame me for what? It's a shame you two for not being able to think of things I do for fun

02:22:15 ◼   ► Despite the fact that we talk about them constantly. Because you do nothing for fun

02:22:18 ◼   ► Nothing other than those things that we constantly talk about. You do nothing outside the house for fun

02:22:23 ◼   ► Ooh, stumped it, you got him there

02:22:27 ◼   ► Waiting for you guys to come up with the things I do for fun outside the house. I bet you can

02:22:31 ◼   ► I guess you can play games outside of your house on portable devices. Oh, no, that's true. But are the movies

02:22:37 ◼   ► Yeah, where are the movies there at the movie theaters on times? Where's the movie theater outside the house?

02:22:42 ◼   ► About restaurants do I ever go to restaurants are they in the house? Do you enjoy restaurants?

02:22:46 ◼   ► I know he does not enjoy them in New York more than I enjoy them here, but I do enjoy them. That's bullshit

02:22:51 ◼   ► Don't enjoy restaurants I do I

02:22:56 ◼   ► How's the prime rib who doesn't enjoy that that's good stuff

02:22:58 ◼   ► That was pretty good that happens once a year. I know in the middle of a trip that makes you miserable

02:23:04 ◼   ► Although the night after the house of primary always feel like someone should wheel me back to the hotel, but that's part of experience

02:23:13 ◼   ► How tall are you John?

02:23:16 ◼   ► Six two ish three ish something like so all 150 pounds and six foot two inches of you

02:23:22 ◼   ► Yeah, you really hey I clean my plate. There's nothing left when I'm not doing a whole Brent Simmons thing

02:23:28 ◼   ► That's he gets the dessert slice. That's hardcore. I'll forget it. I can't do that

02:23:33 ◼   ► Two years in a row I have eaten the entire thing

02:23:36 ◼   ► So good

02:23:38 ◼   ► It is so good. Everyone likes the markdown titles

02:23:41 ◼   ► the real official markdown would be a good title for

02:23:44 ◼   ► The markdown part of the thing, but that's you know

02:23:47 ◼   ► Two and a half hours in yeah, all right

02:23:50 ◼   ► Someone's gonna see the title and be like what are they gonna get to the fireworks factory another reference?

02:23:53 ◼   ► I've made a million times and I will keep making you cannot stop me

02:23:56 ◼   ► Did you don't have to make me give a shit either oh you should

02:24:01 ◼   ► Well, you can have your own references you can reference things that I haven't seen like saved by the Bell or something

02:24:07 ◼   ► You know, I don't know what you kids are into

02:24:08 ◼   ► I made a hunt for an October reference on Twitter earlier and I've seen a handful people got it and I was very happy with

02:24:14 ◼   ► Myself say we have common ground for references

02:24:17 ◼   ► I'm just saying you can feel free to make references that I don't get if you think there are any

02:24:20 ◼   ► That's not like a challenge. I said there should be plenty like it was fish saved by the Bell Dave Matthews band

02:24:26 ◼   ► I don't know anything about that crap. What's that thing something tycoon train tycoon rail tight railroad tycoon?

02:24:32 ◼   ► Transport tycoons for it's not just railroads. It's all trans about railroad tycoon was was worse. Please email Casey. I

02:24:39 ◼   ► Cannot believe you're not going to this event John

02:24:41 ◼   ► I seriously thought about it. I had a plan

02:24:46 ◼   ► But in the end I could not justify the time and expense

02:24:49 ◼   ► and yes the the discomfort of the travel

02:24:53 ◼   ► That is a factor cannot discount it the spreadsheet said no. I cannot go no. It's not a spreadsheet

02:25:00 ◼   ► It's just called weighing reasons for and against everybody does in their head whether they know it or not

02:25:05 ◼   ► Unfortunately a lot of people when they make decisions have invisible columns weighing down their invisible spreadsheet

02:25:12 ◼   ► They don't know there's a spreadsheet and they don't know what's in any of the columns

02:25:14 ◼   ► and they just make decisions and don't understand what they're made by.

02:25:16 ◼   ► Just because I understand what factors into my decision does not mean I'm making decisions

02:25:20 ◼   ► in a different way than other people.

02:25:22 ◼   ► All of your columns are labeled.

02:25:24 ◼   ► They're least visible.

02:25:25 ◼   ► Most of them, I think.

02:25:27 ◼   ► Most of them are visible.

02:25:28 ◼   ► [ Silence ]