00:00:03 ◼ ► We have a little bit of follow-up and then honestly I have no clue what the rest of the
00:00:18 ◼ ► Yeah, this is a little bit of follow-up on the software, the complexity of software and
00:00:28 ◼ ► a few themes I noticed in the feedback. One theme was a lot of people who either are involved
00:00:43 ◼ ► may be, physics, chemistry, engineering, computer science, math. I don't know if they misunderstood
00:00:54 ◼ ► discussion they wanted to have. And it reminded me of this quote again from, you know, as
00:00:59 ◼ ► the original place I see all quotes apparently is Usenet SIGs. And this one is "Computer
00:01:04 ◼ ► science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." I have a link to it
00:01:13 ◼ ► URL is disputed. So maybe it's disputed where that quote comes from. But anyway, that I
00:01:17 ◼ ► think gets to the heart of why we weren't talking about fields, computer science versus
00:01:21 ◼ ► any other field, because computer science is not about computers. We were talking about
00:01:26 ◼ ► software, and computer science is tangentially about software, but not really. But anyway,
00:01:33 ◼ ► those are different discussions to have about which field is superior to or a subset of
00:01:42 ◼ ► is people still want to talk about job difficulty. Like, my job is harder than your job, you're
00:01:50 ◼ ► they clear in the last show, but apparently not clear enough to not have people come in
00:02:04 ◼ ► One person sent in something about programming and complexity and the things we were talking
00:02:09 ◼ ► about in the last show, which is from one of MIT's courses on the structure and interpretation
00:02:20 ◼ ► I think that's the name of the book, the book that they teach off. But anyway, MIT has lots
00:02:24 ◼ ► of video lectures, and they said from minute nine to about 10 minutes and 45 seconds in
00:02:32 ◼ ► the same argument I was making, but touches on a lot of the same points that I was using
00:02:40 ◼ ► professor teach for a while. So we'll have that link in the show notes as well. And it's
00:02:44 ◼ ► only a minute and 45 seconds. You don't have to watch the whole thing. Just scrub forward
00:02:58 ◼ ► All right, so this wonderful feedback we got from a guy named John, @purplepilot on Twitter.
00:03:17 ◼ ► to nest. Dead wood, i.e. that which has been felled and chemically treated, is of no use
00:03:22 ◼ ► or interest to woodpeckers. So a wooden civilization would be secure from woodpeckers, but probably
00:03:43 ◼ ► It would have been much better if he pretended he was serious, because towards the end it's
00:04:26 ◼ ► So you might remember a long time ago we told you about RAMObjects Oxygen, which is a cross-platform
00:04:31 ◼ ► language that it was based on Pascal and it would let you compile for Mac, iOS, Android,
00:04:59 ◼ ► and it has a lot of the same advantages, in fact, probably all the same advantages as Oxygen. So this
00:05:21 ◼ ► Right, so I took a look at it very, very briefly, but I did take a look at it, and I did try
00:05:32 ◼ ► objects and it was really weird but I definitely liked it. Basically what they do is they let
00:05:40 ◼ ► you write in C# but just like you said Marco you're writing against the Cocoa Touch framework
00:05:46 ◼ ► and so rather than using the .NET framework which is I believe Zamarin's approach which
00:05:52 ◼ ► is more we're going to abstract away Cocoa behind the .NET framework that you're probably
00:05:57 ◼ ► familiar with. This is a little closer to the metal, so to speak, in that you're writing
00:06:24 ◼ ► My code for those of you who write C# is var view = new UIAlertView space with title paren
00:06:44 ◼ ► The advantage there being that you're really just putting a thin veneer on top of it and
00:07:12 ◼ ► And it basically compiles the binary, dumps it onto that Mac, and lets you run your app
00:07:17 ◼ ► either in the simulator or on a device or whatever. It's actually very straightforward,
00:07:21 ◼ ► very easy to set up. It works really well. And I liked it. I can definitely see how this
00:07:37 ◼ ► So if you're interested in getting your own thin layer of light glue and writing native
00:08:26 ◼ ► you know, hey, what with the .NET framework being gone, what about cool stuff like link?
00:09:24 ◼ ► made way too many of them because you could see how Apple wanted to get away from 30-pin
00:09:29 ◼ ► everywhere. There was this lone, I guess the iPad Classic still too, but like lone real
00:09:34 ◼ ► product lurching along with 30-pin. We talked in past shows about why they would still want
00:09:42 ◼ ► They just want the lowest price possible, but also might want the big screen and don't care
00:09:45 ◼ ► about retina and so on and so forth. But it just seemed like it, but it just went on for just so
00:09:50 ◼ ► long. And the thing is they're replacing the iPad 2 not with like the next model up, but with two
00:09:56 ◼ ► models up. That's how old it is. That it's like they can't even bring themselves to replace the
00:10:19 ◼ ► decided to—the thing they wouldn't move, the thing they wouldn't budge on was battery life,
00:10:25 ◼ ► and so they made the thing thicker. And I wish they would do that with phones and laptops.
00:11:29 ◼ ► people who want super thin, super small, but then they can have this bigger one for people
00:11:35 ◼ ► When I was listening to that episode, I felt like reminding you and reaching the podcast
00:11:44 ◼ ► out. So that's kind of what happens. If they just keep going thinner, they're like, "Well,
00:11:47 ◼ ► you can't go too thin because we got to have the camera." It's like, "Screw the camera.
00:12:12 ◼ ► I think kids want them, based on talking to my children's friends and my little cousins
00:12:25 ◼ ► They aspired to have an iPhone when they're a cool teenager in high school or whatever,
00:12:37 ◼ ► I don't think, I haven't even seen an iPad Mini in the wild amongst the young kids yet.
00:12:44 ◼ ► Maybe, I think that might be too big to give a kid or maybe, I don't know, too expensive,
00:12:58 ◼ ► My sister-in-law who was in high school, for the longest time until she somewhat recently
00:13:21 ◼ ► let me rephrase, let me start this over. She was John Syracuse and had an ancient non-smartphone
00:13:47 ◼ ► that they're going to be like, "We don't need to make it thicker. We get all this extra area,"
00:13:51 ◼ ► because they will. They'll get a bigger battery because the phone is bigger length and width-wise,
00:13:55 ◼ ► and they won't make it thicker or higher. So I would imagine it'll be the same thickness
00:14:01 ◼ ► as the 5. And I think they're not above having the camera stick out a little bit like it does
00:14:07 ◼ ► in the iPod Touch or perhaps even more, because I think unless they change the whole design to
00:14:11 ◼ ► to be designed around this, I think that Apple absolutely does not want to bulge. All of
00:14:16 ◼ ► the Android phones that you see out there, or even the Nokia ones, when they want a bigger
00:14:23 ◼ ► camera, they're like, "We will smoothly raise up some kind of lump," or it'll be like a
00:14:27 ◼ ► lump with little ramps on the side, or some kind of organic bulge-type shape. And Apple
00:14:34 ◼ ► could come up with a rounded bulging design, kind of like the E-Mate, if people remember
00:14:46 ◼ ► In fact, every time I think of an iPhone 6, I think of something that's curved and tapered
00:15:19 ◼ ► But if they stick with the current design trends, that means flat, and if they're going
00:15:22 ◼ ► to have the camera stick out, it will be a completely flat surface with a cylinder that
00:15:30 ◼ ► But especially since so many people put cases on them anyway, all that does is make the
00:16:05 ◼ ► can—every possibility has a good argument for it would be something that Apple would do. You know,
00:16:10 ◼ ► none of them can you just rule out and say, "Well, Apple would never do that," because all of them
00:16:16 ◼ ► Tom: So I have a somewhat related question. One of the things that bothers me about a caseless
00:16:24 ◼ ► iPhone is a probably all-in-my-head fear that I'm going to scratch the lens of the camera.
00:16:33 ◼ ► And I wonder if the current research or—I guess they're actually not even researching—they're
00:16:48 ◼ ► that's just the clear thing that covers the lens of the phone. So if you've got a scratch on that,
00:16:54 ◼ ► I'm not even sure optically whether that would show up in your pictures, but even if it would,
00:16:59 ◼ ► That's not like that that part of the phone assembly does not bend the light as far as I know it is purely there to protect the lens that does bend the light so I'd imagine they could replace it for you reasonably inexpensively.
00:17:10 ◼ ► Well and also optically because of where it is in the optical path. It would have to be a really bad scratch to show any kind of flaws in your photos.
00:18:42 ◼ ► are made every year, that's a lot of sapphire. And what we heard when the iPhone 5S first
00:18:50 ◼ ► came out, when it was pretty supply constrained, I believe the prevailing wisdom on that was
00:19:02 ◼ ► that there's only so much involved in touch ID, the sapphire might have been the limitation.
00:19:16 ◼ ► If Touch ID is going to go on all their devices, then they're going to need way more Sapphire.
00:19:21 ◼ ► And so you don't need something like, "Oh, they're going to cover the screens with Sapphire."
00:19:28 ◼ ► It'll be on all sorts of things, iPads, the mid-range phones, and so you're going to need
00:19:42 ◼ ► and the A7 and pretty much every benefit of the iPhone 5s went into both iPads as well,
00:19:54 ◼ ► an iPad. But Touch ID was an obvious thing they left out there, and it was kind of questionable
00:19:59 ◼ ► why they left it out, and I think supply constraints make a lot of sense for that. And yeah, certainly
00:20:04 ◼ ► John, I agree that if they're bulking up Sapphire production, it really could just be for more
00:20:18 ◼ ► — you see the little demos where they're like bended and show that it withstands bending
00:20:22 ◼ ► and is strong in other ways besides just being scratch resistant. And I'm not sure if Sapphire
00:20:35 ◼ ► don't know. It's someone who knows better about the relative material abilities of Sapphire
00:20:42 ◼ ► and Gorilla Glass, I'd say. But it's definitely a different thing. So I wouldn't just say,
00:20:45 ◼ ► "Well, they say it's better and they say it's harder. Therefore, we should cover the whole
00:21:01 ◼ ► No, yeah, all right. So it's curved, and they show it like in the little demo video, they
00:21:04 ◼ ► show it sitting on a table, and it curves up like a little, you know, it's like concave,
00:21:11 ◼ ► the table. Like that's more or less how much flex it has. I think it was LG, I don't remember
00:21:15 ◼ ► which. But anyway, that amount of flex makes me wonder what the point is. It also makes
00:21:40 ◼ ► I wonder, too, this is one of those things that people always fantasize about, and there's
00:21:50 ◼ ► that. And I wonder, what is the use case for that? What use is a slightly flexible phone
00:22:06 ◼ ► as durable as things that are flexible. They're as durable as, you know, you can't break
00:22:11 ◼ ► it. All you can do is bend it and it springs back to its original shape. So it's a durability
00:22:15 ◼ ► type thing. And a little bit of flex is maybe a step along the way to extremely flexible
00:24:14 ◼ ► other apps can integrate. And over 45 apps on iOS 7 so far have integrated TextExpander
00:24:24 ◼ ► snippets and it all works. Really, really great. Dropbox Sync, awesome. So go to Smilesoftware.com/ATP
00:24:34 ◼ ► to learn more about this. It's hard to really cram into this ad read everything TextExpander
00:24:41 ◼ ► can do. Think of it as expand keyboard shortcuts into predefined things, but with so much power
00:24:47 ◼ ► behind that and so many options and so many ways you can do that, that it's really quite
00:24:51 ◼ ► incredible. And this is one of the reasons why I've never heard a text-dependent ad read
00:25:01 ◼ ► Smilesoftware.com/ATP. Also, if it helps, Smile is just run by really, really good people.
00:25:08 ◼ ► been around forever making Mac and iOS software. Really, they make good stuff and they're
00:25:13 ◼ ► good people. So check them out. Smilesoftware.com/ATP. Thanks a lot for sponsoring our show.
00:25:19 ◼ ► The Tireless Chat Room has done a research for us and found a link that has information
00:25:23 ◼ ► about sapphire versus Gorilla Glass. Apparently, sapphire is 1.6 times heavier and Gorilla
00:25:42 ◼ ► an interview with someone from Grilly Glass, so obviously they're going to tell you all
00:25:45 ◼ ► the things that are horrible about sapphire. Like, you know, how much energy it takes to
00:25:49 ◼ ► manufacture it and how much it costs, all those things you could change, but the materials,
00:25:53 ◼ ► attributes of it might be more difficult to change. So yeah, maybe don't look for a sapphire
00:25:57 ◼ ► screen on the iPhone 6, but definitely look for Sapphire camera covers and touch ID thingies.
00:26:09 ◼ ► I just closed the tab. There is, I think, an official term for it, but that's all right.
00:26:14 ◼ ► What else is going on? Do we want to talk about this book that came out about how Apple
00:26:19 ◼ ► is haunted by the ghost of Steve Jobs? I really don't have much to say about it, but I felt
00:26:33 ◼ ► thinks they have to comment on it, and I recognize by going on this rant I'm commenting on
00:26:41 ◼ ► say anything you want about anything. Like, the whole point of this book is to get mentioned
00:26:46 ◼ ► and become a controversy and get discussed so that everyone goes out and reads it. That's
00:26:52 ◼ ► whole point. And by lending credence to what is clearly, from almost all of the reviews,
00:26:58 ◼ ► what is clearly a pretty terrible book based upon a presupposed argument that really is
00:27:22 ◼ ► suggestion that we need to defend ourselves or to defend our position, or that Apple needed
00:27:27 ◼ ► to respond to it, or anything like that. Like, why does anyone even need to be talking about
00:27:32 ◼ ► Well, I mean, the circles we travel in, there are a couple different strains that are working
00:27:36 ◼ ► against this. One is that any book that ends up being critical of Apple—if you read mostly
00:27:44 ◼ ► bad things about Apple is wrong because, let me tell you why all the things they say are
00:28:53 ◼ ► "I'm going to write a book about why Apple's doomed and started from that premise and just
00:29:01 ◼ ► It could be that she went in just trying to write a story about it, and the few supporting
00:29:07 ◼ ► fact she found, so that's the only theme I can sort of tease out of all this information, mostly from
00:29:11 ◼ ► second and third hand information, and I need something that's like dramatic, and the two things
00:29:17 ◼ ► you can have are dramatic are like, you know, the Steve Jobs 2 era story, which is Apple rising from
00:29:22 ◼ ► the ashes. That's one kind of dramatic. And once they've risen from the ashes, the only other
00:29:26 ◼ ► dramatic story left is watching them fall. So I don't know, like everyone who says, who is
00:29:32 ◼ ► familiar with the author before reading the book, says that she was a good reporter and did a lot of
00:29:36 ◼ ► of good stories. So I'm not entirely willing to go full cynical and say she was writing
00:29:41 ◼ ► like a hatchet job and just trying to gin up controversy. It could be that this is where
00:29:54 ◼ ► well-supported argument within the book. And also every single time I see her name, which
00:30:34 ◼ ► But people said her reporting was good. Like, her stories were good. Like, they weren't
00:30:36 ◼ ► trashy stories. They look like they're well-researched stories and insightful and so on. Again, I'm
00:30:55 ◼ ► you see, like, these are legitimate journalists supposedly writing about this, and then you
00:31:08 ◼ ► With this, the fact that she's a reporter doesn't really mean anything. To me, reporters,
00:31:13 ◼ ► while they are good ones, the average is pretty bad. Especially these days, the average is,
00:31:18 ◼ ► I'd say, really bad. So just being a reporter alone, even if you've done it for a long time,
00:31:22 ◼ ► and even if some people think you're a good reporter, that doesn't necessarily mean you're
00:31:26 ◼ ► qualified to write a book about a tech company, especially one as secretive and controversial
00:31:46 ◼ ► badly supported facts into a predefined narrative and not doing a very good job of even doing
00:32:08 ◼ ► they had to spend months on it and some publisher had to pick it up and everything. But the
00:32:18 ◼ ► being published all the time. The publisher published this book because they knew it would
00:32:38 ◼ ► needs to talk about it. It certainly doesn't mean that the burden is on us to somehow prove
00:32:44 ◼ ► to the world that this book is stupid or that we need to ignore it. The fact is, books are
00:32:52 ◼ ► just as fallible as everything else and have roughly the same quality average as everything
00:32:56 ◼ ► else. I think the jury's still out though on the theme of the book, like ignoring the content of
00:33:01 ◼ ► the book and how well the theme is supported. This is the right time for a book about how Apple may
00:33:05 ◼ ► be in decline, right? Because we don't know if it's in decline yet. It's too soon to say,
00:33:09 ◼ ► everyone's still waiting on, you know, whatever Apple's going to do next or whatever. So if you're
00:33:12 ◼ ► going to write a book about how Apple's decline, you better do it before they come out with
00:33:22 ◼ ► comes out with something or they come out with a brand new product and bet the whole company on
00:33:25 ◼ ► it, it's a flop. If you then write a book about Apple's decline, you have to wait longer. You have
00:33:29 ◼ ► to wait for the postmortem because you don't seem like you're insightful, right? So a book about how
00:33:38 ◼ ► you could pitch that to a publisher. This is the right time for that book. It just doesn't appear
00:33:42 ◼ ► to be a good book based around that title, right? But that is, like you said, the publisher is going
00:33:52 ◼ ► because now is the time for that book." And if Apple does go down the tubes, like, people
00:33:57 ◼ ► are going to be citing this book, it's like, "See, everyone said that book was terrible,
00:34:04 ◼ ► if you make an argument and you don't support it well, and you're sort of self-contradictory
00:34:52 ◼ ► We've been complaining, or I believe we complained about how little storage is in the devices,
00:34:59 ◼ ► So I don't think that any of us are incapable of being upset with Apple or disagreeing with
00:35:12 ◼ ► if I am a shill for Apple, I want to at least know it, admit it to myself, and then admit
00:35:24 ◼ ► that keeps me going. When Marco before mentioned about journalists and how the average is pretty
00:35:31 ◼ ► low and they get things wrong, I was reminded of that—was it Time magazine? It was something
00:35:50 ◼ ► He so rarely does interviews, and he decides to do an interview, not because it was a product
00:36:15 ◼ ► Like I've just been ignoring it because I knew it was gonna be no good and like I don't
00:36:20 ◼ ► I don't have to read it because it's not like this is the one person who had special exclusive
00:36:27 ◼ ► But anyway, this Johnny Ive interview is like the person who did the interview read the
00:36:34 ◼ ► Anyway, his Johnny Ive book also suffers from not having a ton of access, but he did the legwork,
00:36:42 ◼ ► and he got as much access as he could to his people as close as Johnny Ive as he could. And
00:36:46 ◼ ► there was a lot of new and good information in there. Even if you could tell, it's like,
00:36:49 ◼ ► boy, he really didn't get as much time as I'm sure he would have wanted with Johnny Ive himself
00:36:54 ◼ ► and with Apple. But what can you do? But the Johnny Ive book, I would recommend reading,
00:36:57 ◼ ► even if you can totally tell that it suffers from a lack of access. But that's not the author's
00:37:01 ◼ ► fault. But the interviewer read that book, summarized it third grade book report style,
00:37:06 ◼ ► and then asked Johnny Ive three dumb questions and wrote his answers. And that's their super
00:37:10 ◼ ► exclusive interview. It's like, seriously? I mean, maybe if you haven't read that book,
00:37:15 ◼ ► you might think, "Oh, this is some new information here." It's all just from the book. Like,
00:37:19 ◼ ► I don't know if he got it from Johnny Ive himself, but he's just summarizing the book. And then the
00:37:22 ◼ ► questions he asked Johnny Ive were just like the same questions he's answered a million times.
00:37:26 ◼ ► And it just wasn't interesting. It was such a squandered opportunity. Not squandered, again,
00:37:30 ◼ ► in the same way that Walter Isaacson squandered it because Johnny Ive isn't dead and because he's done
00:37:34 ◼ ► other interviews and so on and so forth and he was not designated as the one, you know, person who's
00:37:39 ◼ ► going to write the definitive autobiography of Johnny Ive, but boy that was a bummer of an
00:37:44 ◼ ► interview. Well, I love that the one thing that they grilled Johnny Ive on was "What do you do
00:37:52 ◼ ► with your old iPhones?" Who cares? What do you think is going to happen? The hermetically sealed
00:37:57 ◼ ► operating system, whatever the hell that means. I think he was trying to get it like that
00:38:09 ◼ ► are always changing. I made a tweet about it. I'm like, I just bought this 30 pin connector
00:38:14 ◼ ► barely a decade ago and now you're going to change it on me? Like, you've got to be kidding me.
00:38:18 ◼ ► It's clear that he just didn't understand the market. He's like Googled for people angry at
00:38:22 ◼ ► Apple and found like non-replaceable batteries, people complained about lightning connector,
00:38:26 ◼ ► And it's like those are not the thing seriously of all the things that Apple has done that are very Apple like that piss people off
00:38:32 ◼ ► Changing from a 30 pin connector to lightning after like a decade and a half or however the hell long the 30 pin connector was
00:38:38 ◼ ► Around that is not one of the Apple things to do like that's not one of the they do lots of things like that
00:38:42 ◼ ► Soldering the RAM sealing in the batteries, but they've had two connectors in the entire lifetime this thing
00:38:49 ◼ ► That article was super disappointing and that's an example of someone wrote a good post about this
00:38:57 ◼ ► They're like, "Look, publications out there, when Apple gives you exclusive access to one
00:39:14 ◼ ► should have sent me or like my friends, but like seriously, you have these opportunities.
00:39:19 ◼ ► It can't be that hard to find somebody who knows something who is also a competent interviewer
00:39:52 ◼ ► But old style Apple PR would try to pick the person, but these days they seem to pick the
00:40:05 ◼ ► These people who they send the dunces, they're worse because they're trying to press Johnny
00:40:09 ◼ ► Ive on things that are no longer controversies or never really were about replaceable batteries
00:40:16 ◼ ► That's not what you want to lean on Johnny Ive about is your tough questions or her medically
00:40:21 ◼ ► He doesn't even know what he's getting at, but past controversies are things that aren't
00:40:38 ◼ ► These guys are coming in like, "I'm going to be tough," and asking the tough questions,
00:40:42 ◼ ► Johnny's like, "I think I understand what you're getting at, but didn't we—that controversy—you
00:41:07 ◼ ► But let it be known, news publications of the world, that if you need someone to interview
00:43:25 ◼ ► said, suffers from a lack of access, but I would still recommend people reading because
00:43:45 ◼ ► Yeah, well, did you see this at all in your isolation bubble, Marco? Your jury duty isolation
00:43:56 ◼ ► time, but unfortunately during my quick time at lunch I have to actually eat lunch, and
00:44:00 ◼ ► so there's actually not a lot of time to browse the internet that much. So yeah, all I saw
00:44:05 ◼ ► always that they are apparently making one or working on one. And I thought it was funny
00:44:10 ◼ ► because it seems like VR headsets are being worked on roughly every three to five years
00:44:16 ◼ ► by somebody new, and they never seem to really get anywhere. I know there's the Oculus Rift,
00:44:26 ◼ ► This is coming to a head though, because like, it's not, this is not a regular cycle type
00:44:30 ◼ ► thing. This is more like, there's been people who have dabbled before and there was like
00:44:38 ◼ ► you'd see at video arcades and parties. But it went away for a long time because we just
00:44:42 ◼ ► learned that stuff doesn't work. And Oculus has been bringing it back in a big way. And
00:44:49 ◼ ► the rumors of Sony doing it were also bringing it back. It's like, well, Oculus is this—I
00:45:04 ◼ ► well if he's going there, he's no dummy. He's not going to be like joining up in this company
00:45:08 ◼ ► that really has no, they must have something. And people have tried it. They've tried the
00:45:12 ◼ ► dev kits. They've said it's interesting and impressive. They have the second version of
00:45:18 ◼ ► like it's getting going, that's what you get. Like the first one is like, there's something
00:45:25 ◼ ► Sony doing it, it's like, okay, well if Sony's looking at it, this isn't just a crazy research
00:45:28 ◼ ► product. Because Sony wants to sell things to use with your PlayStation. They don't want some weird
00:45:33 ◼ ► thing that's not practical in the real world. So at GDC, I haven't read a lot about the story yet.
00:45:39 ◼ ► I've mostly only read the headlines, but I know the highlights. At GDC, the Game Developers
00:45:42 ◼ ► Conference, Sony announced that they're going to have some kind of headset thing, and they showed
00:45:48 ◼ ► their history. They've been working on this thing for years and years, and they show all the various
00:45:51 ◼ ► old prototypes. And this is not a shipping product yet. There's no pricing or availability, I don't
00:45:55 ◼ ► think, but they have announced their intention to have a shipping product. So now I think that's
00:45:59 ◼ ► now you kind of have a quorum. It's like Oculus was going to ship their thing anyway, and like,
00:46:03 ◼ ► it's the real deal as far as people are concerned. People are actually playing games in it,
00:46:07 ◼ ► whether it would be amazing or fun or a revolution in gaming or not, it was going to be a real
00:46:12 ◼ ► product. But once Sony does it, it's like, okay, this is real, real. Like, I mean, the Kinect,
00:46:15 ◼ ► for all you may say, that's like useless for games or silly or only fun for certain things.
00:46:22 ◼ ► Microsoft shipped it. They shipped the Kinect, they revised it, they made it better, they shipped the Kinect 2, it's part of Xbox One.
00:46:27 ◼ ► It is a real thing that's out there in the mass market, and it seems like VR is very soon going to be a real thing that's out there in the mass market.
00:46:37 ◼ ► But I think this topic is fascinating, mostly because of the technology problems that are involved in doing VR.
00:47:02 ◼ ► Because you think of it as like you put this thing on your head, and it's like a screen
00:47:06 ◼ ► close to your face, and it shows what you would see in a first-person shooter, and you're
00:47:14 ◼ ► it years ago. That doesn't work for tons and tons of reasons. So I put a huge number of links here
00:47:19 ◼ ► in the show notes. We'll try to put them up in roughly chronological order. Marco, if you don't
00:47:24 ◼ ► have anything to read during jury duty, I challenge you to get through even just the links in this
00:47:28 ◼ ► article that I put here because they're extremely tactical and in-depth. And by the time you're done
00:47:32 ◼ ► reading it, you'll be like, "Man, I don't want to implement the VR headset because that sounds
00:47:35 ◼ ► really hard." The problems are just so different when you have screens right up close to your face
00:47:56 ◼ ► It's very difficult to even do simple things with screens that are shoved in your head.
00:48:08 ◼ ► I would really love to try something like this, but I have not had an opportunity to try it.
00:48:12 ◼ ► But if Sony comes out with one, I will probably buy a PlayStation 4 and buy one of these crazy
00:48:18 ◼ ► things and sit in my living room looking like a crazy person with something on my head,
00:48:30 ◼ ► boy when those were a thing? I'm genuinely asking. That's not the same as VR. That was stationary,
00:48:50 ◼ ► I just remember, and this is a true story, when I was a kid, I want to say this was like,
00:49:13 ◼ ► early 90s VR where you would like hold something, I think it was like a first-person shooter
00:49:26 ◼ ► Because it was like the same like VR demo that was in all like the little science centers
00:49:37 ◼ ► Not bloody deathmatch game against each other and I remember, you know, I'm not a big guy
00:49:45 ◼ ► Massive helmet on my head and barely being able to lift my damn neck because the thing weighed like 20 pounds and oh my gosh
00:50:03 ◼ ► What those things always felt like and the reason they sucked and went away very quickly
00:50:06 ◼ ► is they felt like you were using your head. It felt like you don't have someone who's like
00:50:10 ◼ ► disabled in a wheelchair in some way and they can't use their limbs. So they have lots of
00:50:14 ◼ ► controls for their head because they do have neck control where you can hit a button with the side
00:50:18 ◼ ► of your head. It feels like you're using your head to operate the controls of a first person shooter.
00:50:23 ◼ ► It does not feel like you are looking around in a virtual world because the lag was so horrendous
00:50:28 ◼ ► They would just be like it would be like, you know, you'd be sending sending instructions via telegram to
00:50:44 ◼ ► Some of them are actually interesting because they're related to television challenges as well
00:50:47 ◼ ► Like they're using obviously LCD screens in front of your eyeballs because you're not gonna put CRT's there
00:51:26 ◼ ► And that's not the way it works in the real world. As soon as you start moving your head,
00:51:28 ◼ ► what you see in front of you changes. And it's actually bad for the image to sort of be there all the time.
00:52:04 ◼ ► effect and not have that motion blur and everything to say, "Let's strobe the backlight really
00:52:17 ◼ ► blanking interval and then it shows another one. With LCDs, televisions, and with these VR headsets,
00:52:23 ◼ ► it turns out to be better for perception to show an image, really bright image, one frame of it
00:52:29 ◼ ► really quickly for a tiny amount of time, make the screen black until the next image is ready,
00:52:33 ◼ ► and show the next image. And that turns out to be better because the way our visual system works is
00:52:37 ◼ ► not, like you read all these articles, it is not like, "Oh, it's like a camera that records what's
00:52:41 ◼ ► in front of us and sends the picture to our brain." Our visual system is all screwed up,
00:52:45 ◼ ► and lots of stuff happens in the brain and it is not as straightforward as you think it is
00:52:49 ◼ ► so you have to do all these hacks and tricks to work with the quirks of our visual system
00:52:54 ◼ ► to make something that doesn't make people sick, that feels realistic and that feels immersive
00:52:57 ◼ ► and that's what Oculus is doing, that's what people are excited about, it's like they're
00:53:00 ◼ ► actually starting to get those hacks right. I mean once they're figured out people in hindsight will
00:53:05 ◼ ► be like "oh you just got to do x, y, and z" but we're figuring it out now. When I think about this
00:53:10 ◼ ► I worry a little bit about Sony like the oculus guys have great. You know if John Carmack we're working on crowd
00:53:18 ◼ ► Maybe Sony just wants to be kind of in the me too Club and they're just gonna take two screens and slapped in front of
00:53:22 ◼ ► It our eyeballs and it's gonna not gonna take advantage of all the stuff that oculus knows
00:53:28 ◼ ► And I think oculus is scared of that too as you would think oculus would be scared that so many things gonna be great
00:53:37 ◼ ► Oculus wants the Sony VR thing to be awesome too because they don't want the Sony VR thing to come out everyone to try it
00:53:42 ◼ ► It to suck and then everyone to go oh VR sucks and then oculus comes out and they're like now we're ignoring you because we all
00:53:48 ◼ ► Know the VR sucks now like oculus wants VR to be a real thing and so Sony's thinking it up would be bad
00:54:02 ◼ ► You know to PSP or to PlayStation Vita screens shoving in front of our eyeballs and calling it a day there
00:54:07 ◼ ► They look like they're doing the hard work as well. No no no they're putting trinitrons in front of your eyeballs
00:54:13 ◼ ► It would also solve the persistence problems low persistence screen images yeah nice and easy
00:54:19 ◼ ► See problem solved you're welcome might cause a few other problems though like you know neck pain
00:54:24 ◼ ► That was one of the points they made at the Sony one is Sony highlighted the fact that their headset does not rest on
00:54:30 ◼ ► your nose or like, doesn't rest on your nose or maybe they even said also on your forehead
00:54:35 ◼ ► like because that's one of the fatiguing things if you want to put this, I mean they're not
00:54:38 ◼ ► that heavy but they're heavy enough, they're heavier than glasses for you know and if they
00:54:41 ◼ ► rest on your nose and you use them for a while it'll make like your neck and your, the bridge
00:54:50 ◼ ► around your head kind of like a visor type cap and then it hangs the picture, the screens
00:54:58 ◼ ► real world problems. Oh, and also they're open on the bottom so they don't fog up inside
00:55:09 ◼ ► question in the chatroom, like I said, no, I have not tried the Oculus Rift, any version.
00:55:12 ◼ ► I haven't tried this on anyone either. I would be willing to try either one of those things
00:55:50 ◼ ► and speaking of things that—controversial things we could go down, or maybe not controversial,
00:55:55 ◼ ► it's a poor choice of words, but speaking of things I'm not sure I want to touch because
00:55:58 ◼ ► it's going to piss off the world no matter how eloquently we handle it, it's, you know,
00:56:12 ◼ ► John: Well, I don't think there's anything about the specific case that—it's not like we need to
00:56:16 ◼ ► go in depth about the details of it. But the larger issue, I think, is worth discussing.
00:56:21 ◼ ► If we don't take the opportunity to discuss this issue when something happens related to it,
00:56:31 ◼ ► then we're just never going to talk about it. If it remains one of those things that everyone's
00:56:36 ◼ ► uncomfortable with and we just never say anything about, and we just want to ignore it until it goes
00:56:40 ◼ ► away or blows over or don't want to follow it, then I feel like things won't get better.
00:56:50 ◼ ► I'll say one thing about this specific case, and then we can talk about the general issue if you
00:56:55 ◼ ► guys aren't still too afraid. In this specific case, when something like this comes up,
00:57:02 ◼ ► there's always the, "Well, all we've got is one person's side," or "We've got the other person's
00:57:09 ◼ ► side," or it's one person's word against another, or people pick sides and websites in one way
00:57:15 ◼ ► One website is on this side, and one website is on that side, and the whole website starts
00:57:23 ◼ ► And even without knowing any of the details, though, one of the things that comes up in
00:57:30 ◼ ► know what I'm referring to, that people like to take the rules that apply in Marco's jury
00:57:54 ◼ ► So for criminal cases, the bar is high because we don't want to send people to jail when
00:58:07 ◼ ► And so I think we should be more free to have an opinion based on, you know, just whatever
00:58:14 ◼ ► other criteria we think are reasonable because we're not saying we're sure. We're not saying
00:58:17 ◼ ► this person should go to jail or whatever. We're just saying, like, if I had to put money on it,
00:58:21 ◼ ► like, if you think about that, we put the Vegas odds of, you know, what this is. And when I see
00:58:25 ◼ ► a story like this and I see all the hate going back and forth, the Vegas odds on—in this type
00:58:32 ◼ ► of situation where a woman feels wronged by an employer, the Vegas odds are she was wronged by
00:58:38 ◼ ► an employer because it happens all the time. Like, if I had to put money on it, I would say the money
00:58:43 ◼ ► is on that the woman telling her first-person account of having a bad experience at work
00:58:48 ◼ ► is telling the truth. Because that's almost always how it is. And it doesn't mean like,
00:58:51 ◼ ► "Oh, that's why you should just convict them all." That's not the criteria you can use to actually
00:58:54 ◼ ► convict someone or to say with certain someone, "GitHub is bad" or good or whatever. But if I
00:58:59 ◼ ► had to put money on it, that's what I would put money on. And people are even afraid to make that
00:59:03 ◼ ► assertion because they're like, "Well, you don't know, and you just got one side." All that is true,
00:59:07 ◼ ► but I think it's fine to kind of like get a feel for how you think things are going to turn out.
00:59:13 ◼ ► because you're not saying for sure, you're not condemning anybody, you're not pointing a finger at some specific person at GitHub and saying they're a bad person,
00:59:19 ◼ ► you're just saying, "From a distance, I feel like when this thing comes out, and all the laundry is finally aired, and if it does go to court or whatever,
00:59:27 ◼ ► that when the truth finally comes out and everyone kind of agrees by consensus of what the truth is, what will come out is that the woman was wronged."
00:59:37 ◼ ► And the fact that we can't even say that without saying, "Well, you're just prejudice against
00:59:47 ◼ ► It doesn't seem like that's just another stopgap against, "If you say anything, you need to
00:59:52 ◼ ► have 100% proof, otherwise you're a bad person, and it's just he said versus she said, and
01:00:09 ◼ ► you're not making any decisions and you're not saying anything with certainty. But anyway,
01:00:21 ◼ ► thing that scares me is I want to handle it delicately, and given that our audience, all
01:00:58 ◼ ► I just want to make sure that I, if not all of us, handle it delicately, and I'm a little
01:01:12 ◼ ► And if you misspeak on a sensitive subject, it's no more intentional than when you misspeak
01:01:21 ◼ ► topic becomes so incredibly charged that you're worried if you accidentally say the wrong
01:01:34 ◼ ► Like, because it is a charge issue, you may suddenly get all defensive or whatever, and
01:01:56 ◼ ► And of all of them, we have one young lady that is a tester and is part of our same group
01:02:12 ◼ ► it's really not a good thing, and it really bums me out. And I don't think it's deliberate
01:02:17 ◼ ► on any of our parts. We're a fairly progressive company. I think we would certainly love to
01:02:28 ◼ ► 60/40 or whatever, would be awesome. But as it turns out, our particular group is almost
01:02:34 ◼ ► exclusively a bunch of dudes. And I wish that wasn't the case. And I have not worked with
01:02:39 ◼ ► very many women developers in my entire career, which is around about 10 years now. And I
01:02:46 ◼ ► I don't like it. It's no good. But it's, I mean, even in school, I barely saw any women engineers.
01:02:54 ◼ ► And I don't know why that is. I don't know if it's a social or societal thing, or at least in America, but I wish that wasn't the case.
01:03:04 ◼ ► And so the things that, what is it, Jean McDonald that is doing AppCamp? I totally got that wrong. Do you know what I'm talking about?
01:03:14 ◼ ► Okay, okay. I did get that right. Like I think that's awesome. And I'm really stoked and
01:03:19 ◼ ► hopeful that that really makes a difference, and I think it will. I don't know, like Marco,
01:06:33 ◼ ► have worked with a lot of women and have been like, "Well, I work with women, and everything
01:06:51 ◼ ► a nice person and if you hang out with other nice people, if someone is being a jerk somewhere,
01:06:57 ◼ ► you might not see that because there's the whole culture of women trying to keep their heads down
01:07:02 ◼ ► and not make a big fuss about these things. And so, it could very well be that you are working
01:07:06 ◼ ► in a company with a bunch of women who you treat perfectly fine, but who nevertheless get terrible
01:07:11 ◼ ► treatment from others and just don't say anything about it. And you're not aware of that because
01:07:14 ◼ ► they don't say anything about it. It doesn't apply to any of us. Well, I mean, I suppose it could
01:07:17 ◼ ► apply to me, but for you two who are not working with a lot of women, that's not going to come up.
01:07:22 ◼ ► But when I think about things we can do, it's like, even if you're not in this situation,
01:07:27 ◼ ► if you just read enough about it to know what the pathologies are, to know, like, yes, it is possible
01:07:32 ◼ ► for you, a nice person, to be working alongside women who are being terribly treated and you
01:07:36 ◼ ► not know it because they don't feel confident in confiding in you because they don't complain
01:07:40 ◼ ► about it. And so like you don't even, this is like, oh, well, you could support women who have
01:07:44 ◼ ► these problems or whatever. It's like, you can't support them if you don't know what's happening.
01:07:47 ◼ ► So that's like step one, be aware of what you might not even know. Like you might not even know
01:07:51 ◼ ► that these things are happening. And this is not, by the way, when I think about the GitHub thing,
01:07:54 ◼ ► this is a specific case with a possible gender slant, but jerky bosses are everywhere. And those
01:08:00 ◼ ► those I have experienced. And jerky bosses can be jerks. They tend to be jerks to everybody.
01:08:10 ◼ ► or emotionally abused by their boss, by their boss's spouse, by anybody else. Regardless
01:08:14 ◼ ► of what gender they are, people have terrible bosses and terrible work relationships. And
01:08:23 ◼ ► is treating them very badly at a job and they don't want to say anything because it looks
01:08:29 ◼ ► working alongside them and not even know it. That's another reason I believe these things,
01:08:33 ◼ ► because toxic work relationships between superior and subordinate work relationships that are toxic
01:08:40 ◼ ► are just everywhere. And I have experienced those, and I've seen them firsthand, secondhand,
01:08:44 ◼ ► and heard about them from others. They're worse when gender is involved, but even if gender is
01:08:49 ◼ ► not involved, it happens so much. The anti-pattern of give somebody a little bit of power and have
01:08:57 ◼ ► them have any sort of imbalance and they start abusing that power and taking it out on the
01:09:00 ◼ ► people below them and just so many bad things happen in companies because of that. And if
01:09:06 ◼ ► you're not aware of it, because if it's not happening to you, you might not see it. And
01:09:10 ◼ ► so that I think would be like the first step that any of us could take is be aware that
01:09:17 ◼ ► what you do about that. But I guess I guess being aware is the first step. And the second
01:09:29 ◼ ► Like, don't start a company like that, don't be a company like that, don't be a boss like that,
01:09:59 ◼ ► Silence is the worst thing that could happen here, because people just kind of keep their
01:10:16 ◼ ► Most of my past jobs have—well, the first startup I worked at, I was the only programmer,
01:10:23 ◼ ► But the graphic designers were female, and then we hired another programmer who was female.
01:10:29 ◼ ► A couple of my other jobs have been more lopsided, where you expect it was either zero women
01:11:07 ◼ ► untrain yourself from these terrible things that were, you know, these expectations and
01:11:11 ◼ ► biases that we have. But no, our hiring definitely seems to not discriminate based on anything.
01:11:19 ◼ ► And female developers, as far as I'm concerned, as far as it seems to be all my coworkers concerned,
01:11:24 ◼ ► are not treated any differently than any other developer. But there could be bad things happening
01:11:30 ◼ ► somewhere that I don't know about. I really hope not. I haven't seen any of it, but I worry about
01:11:35 ◼ ► it sometimes. Because I read all... I mean, maybe it's like going to WebMD and finding out everything
01:11:40 ◼ ► cancer. You read all these stories, you're like, "Maybe that's happening in my company."
01:11:43 ◼ ► And like I said, I have been at companies where bosses have been jerks, like all, you know,
01:11:46 ◼ ► gender not involved at all, but just terrible, terrible situations between people and groups
01:11:56 ◼ ► Yeah, it's a very tough thing. And I'm sitting here thinking to myself, you know, let's suppose
01:12:02 ◼ ► that I start working with a female developer, and let's suppose she gets crapped on by either
01:12:45 ◼ ► Like, what I have the gumption to say, "Dude or lady or whoever, boss person," is, "You
01:13:00 ◼ ► confrontational. That's another thing that keeps people from saying anything, because they're like,
01:13:04 ◼ ► but by doing that, it's like, you know, am I infantilizing them by making it sound like they
01:13:12 ◼ ► can't defend themselves and coming to their rescue, which is also a sexist thing. And so,
01:13:15 ◼ ► well-meaning people are paralyzed by the fear that they're going to do something wrong. And
01:13:19 ◼ ► sometimes they would have done something wrong, but doing nothing is almost worse. So you need
01:13:24 ◼ ► leeway on all sides. Everyone involved has to give everyone leeway. You have to understand that if
01:13:32 ◼ ► didn't like it, judging yourself by your motivations, but other people by their actions,
01:13:46 ◼ ► So you need understanding all around to make the situation go better, not to condemn people
01:14:22 ◼ ► a lot of times it's people who are on the same side fighting with each other about how best to help each other.
01:14:33 ◼ ► Because I have enough people sniping me from every possible angle with everything I write.
01:14:39 ◼ ► The last thing I need is to enter a discussion on a topic where it is so hot-button and there's...
01:14:45 ◼ ► And you're right, even in a discussion trying to defend women or condemn sexism, even in
01:15:07 ◼ ► And if you enter this extremely contentious discussion, you are taking a big risk, especially
01:15:22 ◼ ► And so to me it's not worth the risk of entering a discussion where I am so intimidated
01:15:28 ◼ ► to add anything to the discussion, and I also don't really think I have much constructive
01:15:34 ◼ ► And so there's not a whole lot of upside there for me, and there's a whole lot of downside,
01:15:48 ◼ ► Well, I'm not saying you have to write about anything you don't want to write about, but
01:15:55 ◼ ► like I said, we all have these gender biases that are in us, and they are going to come
01:16:00 ◼ ► out unintentionally in what you write, and people are going to call you on it, and that's not going
01:16:04 ◼ ► to feel good, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong. It's difficult to react to it in
01:16:09 ◼ ► the right way, which again may be a reason you just choose not to write about it, which is a
01:16:12 ◼ ► perfectly valid choice. But sometimes I feel like at a certain point, if everybody does that, if
01:16:17 ◼ ► everybody's like, "Well, I know I have many internal biases, and if I try to speak about it in any way,
01:16:22 ◼ ► those biases will come out and people will call me on it and I'll feel bad, and I'll have difficulty
01:16:26 ◼ ► reacting in a nice way, therefore I'll say nothing." If everybody did that, that just continues
01:16:29 ◼ ► the status quo and like nothing gets better ever. And so like some people kind of have to
01:16:34 ◼ ► a) fall on your sword to just you know be willing to if that's something you feel like you want to
01:16:38 ◼ ► do and the second thing is by doing that by trying to say anything like we're trying to now
01:16:43 ◼ ► and inevitably like getting things wrong and revealing our own biases part of the process
01:16:52 ◼ ► of people yelling at you about that is making you more aware of them and working on them so that the
01:16:56 ◼ ► next time you don't make the same mistakes and you kind of like like you would hope that you
01:17:26 ◼ ► basically reading other people getting getting attacked from the things that they say like I'm not a participant but I'm seeing it happen and
01:17:31 ◼ ► What I'm coming away with is I might have said that same thing and I would have been just as wrong and I agree with this
01:17:44 ◼ ► Exposure to this the masses being exposed to this even though the masses are not participating just like the few people who are yelling each
01:17:50 ◼ ► they're participating. Being exposed to this debate online, even in the terrible form that
01:17:56 ◼ ► it exists online, will hopefully help everyone who reads it to sort of move along the path towards
01:18:02 ◼ ► whatever they think their goal is. I guess it may be able to make the terrible people more terrible,
01:18:10 ◼ ► You know, something that Marco said a minute ago kind of struck me. You said you're intimidated
01:18:18 ◼ ► to join the discussion." And I think that was a verbatim quote, but if not, it was a spirit.
01:18:28 ◼ ► what kind of a wuss am I where I'm intimidated to join the discussion? I can't imagine how
01:18:34 ◼ ► intimidated I would be to be the recipient of this kind of BS treatment." You know? And I'm—I
01:18:40 ◼ ► completely agree. Like, I'm a little uncomfortable about talking about this because I don't want to
01:18:57 ◼ ► of things, I cannot fathom how uncomfortable I would be if my boss treated me like crap
01:20:34 ◼ ► saw some of your own wrongs in some of the things you read. Are there any examples you're
01:20:39 ◼ ► willing to share? Because I'm trying to think of, I know I think of things wrongly in many
01:20:46 ◼ ► ways, but I can't think of a specific example of where I know I'm wrong about something
01:20:49 ◼ ► or, or where I've read something lately and been like, Ooh, yeah, I've probably done that
01:20:54 ◼ ► Are there any examples you can think of where you've had that kind of reaction that you're
01:21:06 ◼ ► They're insulting to use those anti-homosexual slurs that we all said when we were kids when
01:21:21 ◼ ► like, that's one of those things that once you learn how offensive it is, your reaction shouldn't
01:21:26 ◼ ► be like to double down and be like, "Nope, I'm going to keep saying it because I know I'm not
01:21:30 ◼ ► homophobic and I don't mean it that way, therefore I'm going to keep saying it." That's not a mature
01:21:35 ◼ ► and appropriate response. And the same applies to women. I mean, I wonder if anyone will call you
01:21:40 ◼ ► out for referring to the woman who you work with as "young lady" because that's insulting because
01:21:48 ◼ ► Oh, God, I didn't even think of it. See, here it is. That's a perfect example, because I'm trying
01:21:53 ◼ ► to think of what in my screwed up brain is the least offensive and most innocent terminology
01:22:00 ◼ ► possible. Right. And it's just because what we were conditioned to do growing up, and that's not
01:22:05 ◼ ► an excuse. It's just an explanation. And so, the idea is to become aware of these things that we do
01:22:10 ◼ ► just out of habit and how they position the people who are on the receiving end of them. And seeing
01:22:16 ◼ ► other people called on it may make you think, "I say that a lot too, don't I? And I should
01:22:21 ◼ ► think of it as something else that I could substitute for that." And a lot of this you'll
01:22:26 ◼ ► see online is people like, "Oh, that's the political correctness police and these certain
01:22:29 ◼ ► words that you can't say," or whatever. And obviously you can take anything too extreme
01:22:37 ◼ ► "women" is insulting because it has "men" in the name. Obviously, you can go crazy with that.
01:22:44 ◼ ► Whatever people say like automatically because their parents said it because they said it when they were saying kids some people will just
01:22:50 ◼ ► Defend that to the death and they'll be like, nope. I gotta be able to say that forever
01:22:59 ◼ ► therefore you trying to make me not say that is impairing my freedom and it's political correctness gone awry and it's like
01:23:06 ◼ ► You know, that's that's not a fight worth having that is you're on the wrong side of that
01:23:19 ◼ ► If everybody calls the women of the office "girls," and you just do that instinctively,
01:23:34 ◼ ► They are younger, they are children, but the men of the office run things, and the girls
01:23:40 ◼ ► will shape your thinking just by saying the words, right? And so it's worth actually making
01:23:45 ◼ ► a concerted effort to change the way you speak about it, because it will change the way you
01:23:49 ◼ ► think about it. Not because someone's making you, not because they're taking away your freedom,
01:23:52 ◼ ► or because of political correctness. It's just basic self-improvement. I could think of many
01:23:58 ◼ ► more examples, and you can keep going out into farther and farther reaches with not just gender
01:24:03 ◼ ► issues, but homosexuality, and race, and everything else, everything that is some difference between
01:24:08 ◼ ► us like you can chase all these things down and inevitably in all of us there's something we're
01:24:13 ◼ ► doing that we could do better that is hurting these marginalized groups so what was the what
01:24:18 ◼ ► would you say was the proper term that I should have used women fair enough that's a fair answer
01:24:24 ◼ ► I don't know I for some reason I feel like but you shouldn't feel bad like you shouldn't it's not we
01:24:29 ◼ ► know you didn't mean anything by it but like this is one of those cases where it's yeah yeah the
01:24:33 ◼ ► macro just comes out of your head and like it's and the fact that you were second-guessing yourself
01:24:38 ◼ ► like that's how you get into the panic like oh what am I supposed to say because you're just
01:24:41 ◼ ► you know the pet you're ingrained you're used to saying something else so it takes actual concerted
01:24:44 ◼ ► effort to stop saying one thing and say something different and you're going to slip up and like you
01:24:49 ◼ ► just but it's like that's not a reason just to double down and say well I'm never going to try
01:24:53 ◼ ► to change myself at all I'm just going to always say the same thing forever and if you try to stop
01:25:11 ◼ ► you know, perfectly fine or neutral as you intend it to be. You know? Like when I wrote
01:25:19 ◼ ► my review of Vesper, I used the word "balls" all over the place. It takes balls to do blah,
01:25:31 ◼ ► the article were about, you know, "Of course I would write this because this is John Gruber's
01:25:43 ◼ ► for him." You know, that was most of my feedback, which of course is easy to disregard. But
01:25:48 ◼ ► I got, I think, one or two comments about how the word "balls" was kind of unintentionally
01:26:02 ◼ ► made me think, and it, I didn't at the time think that it was worth rewriting the whole
01:26:08 ◼ ► article and let's not use the word "balls," but it definitely made me stop using it like
01:26:16 ◼ ► Well, see, when you say "unintentionally sexist," it's unintentional in that sexism and gender
01:26:21 ◼ ► relations were not in your mind when you wrote it, and of course it's a common saying that
01:26:29 ◼ ► not responsible for the sexism in that term, but the person who first came up with that
01:26:36 ◼ ► "Men are tough, men are brave, men do things that are brave, so it takes balls." This organ
01:26:42 ◼ ► in males' bodies that women don't have, that really has nothing to do with toughness at all,
01:26:50 ◼ ► that like it is a hundred percent a sexist term, but it's so ingrained in the culture that at a
01:26:54 ◼ ► certain point it just loses all that sexism and just becomes part of the background noise. But
01:26:58 ◼ ► that part of that background noise is, yes, it takes balls to whatever. And you see women co-opting
01:27:04 ◼ ► it and saying that they have balls and it just becomes a generic term or whatever, but what I
01:27:07 ◼ ► always think about that as like, "All right, so I didn't mean it that way, but it totally
01:27:12 ◼ ► does mean that. And does it hurt me to use a different term?" And it's the same analysis
01:27:17 ◼ ► you went through. It's like, "Maybe I'm not going to go back and rewrite the thing, but
01:27:32 ◼ ► that would have gone into my head when I find myself having to say that. Like, you know,
01:27:37 ◼ ► it will make you think, "Well, it's no skin off my back to use a different term. There's plenty
01:27:46 ◼ ► Why don't I not use the one that is demeaning to women or excludes them from the realm of having
01:27:54 ◼ ► bravery?" You know what I mean? Right. And, you know, I think going back to my earlier question
01:28:08 ◼ ► and perception and assumptions that we can get called out on occasionally and then question
01:28:13 ◼ ► and then edit ourselves to think about that in the future. To be like, "You know, actually,
01:28:20 ◼ ► that is unnecessarily exclusive or has unnecessary baggage and I could use this alternative instead
01:28:25 ◼ ► better. That, I think, is something that everybody can do. And unfortunately, these are the kind
01:28:31 ◼ ► of things that usually, day to day, most people won't get called out on things like this.
01:28:35 ◼ ► Well, the thing is, you're not going to call the people out on it now, but your grandchildren will
01:28:41 ◼ ► call those same people out on it. Because it's like now when we look back at TV shows from the
01:28:44 ◼ ► '50s, or even Mad Men. You just look at it like, "Oh, look how sexist they were." That's exactly
01:28:54 ◼ ► sexism that we have to come back from is so massive that for millennia people are going
01:28:58 ◼ ► to look back three or four or five generations and go, "Oh, look how sexist they were." Like,
01:29:05 ◼ ► "Boy, can you believe we were ever like that? That was so long ago." Well, they're going to
01:29:08 ◼ ► say exactly the same things about us. And since we can't do that, since from our perspective,
01:29:13 ◼ ► you saying it takes balls, it's like, that's not in the front of your mind when you're doing it.
01:29:29 ◼ ► And optimistically speaking, they'll say that, right? And it's just a difference of perspective.
01:29:42 ◼ ► stop saying these things, make it unacceptable to say them amongst our friends. All the terrible
01:29:46 ◼ ► things that I and my friends said when we were little boys, we are stuck living with that.
01:29:54 ◼ ► will not do those things. They'll do different things that are bad, and, you know, we hope
01:30:02 ◼ ► 100, 200 years, like, people seem to get more terrible, more sort of like, just unevolved
01:30:18 ◼ ► realizing we are exactly—going to look exactly the same to people multiple generations from now.
01:30:24 ◼ ► And so, you know, just try to do the best you can. Try to go as far forward as you possibly can.
01:30:35 ◼ ► on the fine line of politics, and that's scary. >> JEREMY SCAHILL-WILKINSON Right. That we won't
01:30:45 ◼ ► there's plenty of people on both sides of that. Whereas sexism—the reason we see this coming up
01:30:55 ◼ ► It's just been in the background, and no one talks about it. And it's like, "Well, everything's
01:31:00 ◼ ► sexist, so what? You can do about it." Now I think more people speaking up and getting support from
01:31:06 ◼ ► other people, this is becoming more—it still amazes me when some company will—someone in
01:31:12 ◼ ► in their PR department will issue some terrible sexist statement. It's like, "Don't you read
01:31:15 ◼ ► the internet?" Even if you are a terrible sexist person, if your job is PR, don't you understand
01:31:20 ◼ ► that this is a thing? There's so little self-awareness. The worst offenders are the least
01:31:25 ◼ ► self-aware. I hope that increased communication of the internet and everything is spreading
01:31:39 ◼ ► you guys weren't watching movies in the 80s and stuff like do you remember the movie working girl I
01:31:43 ◼ ► Know that it exists. I've never seen it. It was like Melanie Griffith and maybe Harrison Ford
01:31:50 ◼ ► But anyway, like they'd have these female empowerment movies in the 80s, but if you go back and watch them now
01:31:54 ◼ ► It's like this was the female empowerment movie. This is terrible. This is terribly sexist and it's just like
01:32:02 ◼ ► You can have a job and wear a suit too and like and that was progress back then but like
01:32:07 ◼ ► You know, it's not even that long ago and you look at it now, it's like, you know, and I was feeling that like
01:32:19 ◼ ► The feedback from the masses in real time in large volume like it was movie studios and they'd send it out to you know
01:32:24 ◼ ► Like it just we weren't all there to participate. So it seems like we couldn't we couldn't do sort of like the the the right
01:32:32 ◼ ► debug iterate whatever cycle you know what I mean like it that cycle is so much faster now with us
01:32:37 ◼ ► yelling a thing yelling at each other in real time about every little thing and even though that whole cycle seems silly and annoying and
01:32:43 ◼ ► Just like people want to ignore it or whatever. I think that cycle either the fact that the iteration is faster is
01:33:14 ◼ ► that I'm assuming—when I look at my Twitter followers, like the thing where you can look
01:33:19 ◼ ► at your analytics, what percentage of your Twitter followers are female, and almost none
01:33:41 ◼ ► Are 50% of the people listening to this show women, but 90% of the feedback we get is from