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364: ‘Spooky Hole’, With John Moltz

 

00:00:00   I don't have World Cup fever. I'll just say that. I'd like to, you know, I'd kind of,

00:00:03   I wish I had World Cup fever, I guess. I don't know. I got so soured on professional sports

00:00:08   because of baseball. This is what happens when your team is not so great.

00:00:15   Yeah, but the Mariners have gotten good.

00:00:17   Yeah, they've gotten better. They've gotten better for sure. But it's been a while though.

00:00:20   I mean, it took, it only took 20 years to get back to the playoffs. That's not exactly

00:00:26   something that draws your constant attention.

00:00:29   You know, it's funny when we were growing up, when you and I were growing up, the two

00:00:32   big losers were the Cubs and the Red Sox, right? The teams that hadn't won since like

00:00:40   before World War I, the Great War. And they've both since gone on in recent years and decades

00:00:47   to win World Series, so they've ended it. But it is funny though. It's like you grow

00:00:51   up and it's just in the air. It's just, oh, the Cubs. Well, they never, you know, Cubs

00:00:56   and Red Sox, oh, they never win. They'll break your heart if you're the fan. They'll get

00:01:00   close. Once every 10 years, they'll get close and then they'll, you know, some weird little

00:01:04   however.

00:01:05   Yeah, some guy will touch a ball in the outfield.

00:01:09   And I just accepted it, you know, that, oh, well, you know, those, especially Red Sox

00:01:13   fans, they just love, you know, they love to lose. They're like pigs in mud. They just

00:01:17   wallow in it and that's, they just, you know, that's what they want. But then you get older,

00:01:22   you hit middle age and you realize, you know, you don't get many 20 year stretches in life,

00:01:29   you know, you run out of them.

00:01:32   Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, that must've been like, you know, I mean, think about how

00:01:36   many people grew up and died with those teams being just really not great. That's so, that's

00:01:46   so thankless. Yeah. And I, so I just didn't, you know, and I didn't want to be, I stopped

00:01:50   paying attention to it because I did, like, I didn't want to be that person, right? I

00:01:53   didn't want to be sitting there year after year and I love the game. That's the thing.

00:01:57   I love the game, but it's just like, you know, when you've got management that really just

00:02:00   doesn't seem to give a crap.

00:02:03   I do know, I know several baseball fans. I know them who know, but who really love the

00:02:08   game and baseball is an interesting sport to me because you can really love the game

00:02:14   and go to see minor league baseball and you know, you pay like seven bucks, you get a

00:02:20   great seat. The hot dogs and sodas and beer don't cost, you know, $15. And you get to

00:02:27   watch a really, you know, if you just like sitting in a ballpark watching a game, you

00:02:32   can pay a lot less money, get a much better seat and you get a really high quality product.

00:02:36   Yeah. Particularly now. I mean, we started going to the Rainier's game. We have a great

00:02:41   fun anyway, and they actually play pretty well. I think they've won the PCL a number

00:02:47   of times and the Rainier's here in town in Tacoma. And we used to take Hank all the time

00:02:52   when he was a kid. Cause they, they would let, they lean on in the middle, you know,

00:02:55   they do all these wacky promotions, you know, they like roll these big dice down the netting

00:02:58   and into the field. And then they, in the seventh inning stretch, they let the kids

00:03:02   out on the field to run the bases with the mascot.

00:03:04   Oh, that's wild.

00:03:05   Yeah. So he and I went, you know, we'd go out on the field and run around the bases.

00:03:08   So yeah, so this is super fun. Oh, and then in one year we, you know, you can afford to

00:03:12   get like box seats, you know, I mean like, it'll be a little bit expensive, but you

00:03:16   could sit right next to the, you know, right on the, we sat on the, right on the third

00:03:19   baseline one time and the, you know, it's just as a joke, the visiting, one of the visiting

00:03:25   pitchers dugout was right there. Cause it was, you know, or you know, that not the dugout

00:03:29   a bullpen. And the, one of the, the visiting pitchers leaned over and pretended he was

00:03:34   grabbing my beer. Like, you know, we're, we're like that close cause I'm sitting there and

00:03:41   talking to my, I'm talking to Karen and my friends and we're, and, and, you know, Karen

00:03:45   goes, Hey, Hey, Hey, she's like looking over my shoulder. Hey, Hey, Hey. And I turn and

00:03:48   look and this guy's reaching for my beer. It's like, get out of here.

00:03:55   That's funny. There's, it's funny because I'm looking for stuff to laugh at because

00:04:02   I'm looking at everything on my list here of things to talk about. One more thing I

00:04:05   wanted to plug this because I, I just came up, I forget, I forget. It's not me. It's

00:04:09   this, have you seen sleep baseball.com? No, it's a podcast. That is fake baseball announcements,

00:04:18   you know, to, to fall asleep to. So it's a game and they do it as if it's a, you know,

00:04:22   like it's a real game, but it's not real teams or anything. And the players are all made

00:04:26   up. And it's just guy, this guy who speaks like this, here comes Johnson and he takes

00:04:33   one loan inside and it's just, you listen for like two and a half, you know, it's a

00:04:37   game that's like two and a half, three hours, something like that. And it's just to fall

00:04:41   asleep to it. It's great. It's so good. And they have, they have, they, you know, they

00:04:44   have crazy ads. Like, you know, one of the players will say, hi, this is Brett McCowensky.

00:04:52   And when I was young, we used to do all kinds of crazy things like stand on our heads. But

00:04:58   now some of my friends have gotten in trouble with drugs. This, this has been Brett McConskey

00:05:04   and that's like the whole thing. That's the whole ad bit, the whole interlude. And then

00:05:10   they go back to the game anyway. Oh man. It's fun. I always thought golf, golf announcement,

00:05:17   you know, just, just take out the commercials and just regular golf announcement. Yeah.

00:05:22   Just have Jim Nantz. Well, they're, they're whispering anyway. Yeah. That's, that's why

00:05:26   it's so great. I think that, I think it could help. I think even a golf fan could, you know,

00:05:32   fall asleep to listen into golf. Just get some guy with a Scottish accent. Oh man. Lots

00:05:41   going on. I, why don't I just start, I'll start, I'm going to start by taking a break.

00:05:45   I love this. This is, this is a sponsored, they sponsored the website a couple of weeks

00:05:50   ago and I really, I've fallen in love with this app. It's called Sofa. S O F A. Just

00:05:56   spell it the regular way. All right. What do you do when you hear about a great new

00:06:01   TV show, movie, a book, or even a podcast? We just talked about a podcast. What do you

00:06:07   do? You probably scribble it down in your notes or to do app and you might forget about

00:06:11   it instead. Throw it in Sofa. Sofa is a dedicated app that lets you create lists of almost anything,

00:06:20   but it's meant for stuff like podcasts, apps, books, board games, even movies, TV shows,

00:06:26   music albums. You can then use these lists to decide your next book to read, movie to

00:06:31   watch or video game to play. The design is inspired by some of today's best productivity

00:06:37   apps but focused on helping you to be more intentional with your downtime. You think

00:06:42   about it, the tools we use for managing our downtime are designed for work. This includes

00:06:47   like to do apps and notes, apps, calendar apps. These are all designed for work. Sofa

00:06:51   is deliberately designed for, guess what? When you're on the sofa. It's actually a great

00:06:57   name. It's a really, really cleverly designed app and it does because it's meant, you know,

00:07:03   you can make lists of anything literally, but it because it knows that you might want

00:07:07   to enter stuff like TV shows and movies and books when you go to enter a movie or TV show

00:07:11   or book, it can auto complete the list from like a internet movie database source or something

00:07:16   like that where it knows what's the name of a movie, what's the name of a TV show, stuff

00:07:21   like that. The majority of Sofa is completely free to use. So you could just interrupt the

00:07:27   podcast right now, go to the app store, search for Sofa and start using it for free. You

00:07:33   can create unlimited lists, sync your data with iCloud, which means it syncs across devices

00:07:40   and it's completely private, track your activity and more. If you're looking for a little more

00:07:44   power, you can upgrade to Super Sofa. With Super Sofa, you get the ability to customize

00:07:50   lists with cover images and descriptions. You can add sticky notes to your items, personalize

00:07:56   the look and feel with over 100 different themes. And trust me, I went down this rabbit

00:08:01   hole when they sponsored my site. There went an afternoon and a whole lot more. It is available

00:08:10   for the iPhone, iPad and Apple Silicon Macs. If you want to start organizing your downtime,

00:08:15   head over to Sofa HQ, S-O-F-A-H-Q, SofaHQ.com/the-talk-show. SofaHQ.com/the-talk-show. Download it today.

00:08:29   I thank Sofa for supporting the talk show. And seriously, I'm telling you this, it is

00:08:34   absolutely sincerely a great native app that you should check out if you're actually enjoy

00:08:41   entertaining yourself with stuff like TV and movies. I swear, go check it out. I would

00:08:46   recommend this app even if they weren't sponsoring the show. It's that good. Go get it. SofaHQ.com/the-talk-show.

00:08:55   In the news this week. Oh my God. Usually there's no news around Thanksgiving. And thanks

00:09:01   to our good friend, our very good friend of the show, Mr. Elon Musk. A topic that has

00:09:15   already been in my sights because I am a long time Twitter user. I don't know if you recall

00:09:21   that. And I enjoy Twitter and I'm very interested in Twitter. So I've been following it and

00:09:27   as more or less, he has more or less single-handedly steered the entire Twitter saga directly into

00:09:34   the John Gruber wheelhouse. Yeah, it's weird that it's taken this turn

00:09:39   at this point, right? That it, yeah. First, first it was just some guy coming in, you

00:09:44   know, what's he going to do? And then it's, Oh, this guy is ruining this thing that I've

00:09:48   loved for 15 years. And now it's like, Oh, now he's like driving straight into Apple's

00:09:55   lane coming the opposite direction. I did predict this. My predictions on this

00:10:00   are clearly across the map in terms of how good these bets look given my infamous, I'm

00:10:08   more optimistic than ever about Twitter. Which, you know, it's our good friend Cable Sasser,

00:10:15   you know, admitted when he was making fun of me and threatening to make t-shirts with

00:10:18   the quote that my very next sentence was, but of course it's also very likely he might,

00:10:24   something to the effect of that, he might just steer Twitter right into a ditch. But,

00:10:28   uh, I did predict though, I predicted last week though, that the app store is going to

00:10:35   be a problem for him with the way he's going for sure. And in two ways, and of course,

00:10:42   like I will give him credit. At least he doesn't waste time. You know, that's true. I really

00:10:48   actually mean this. I would have thought it would have taken a lot longer, but we're here

00:10:52   already. You know, and a man who has gone from co-founding PayPal, which I get, all

00:10:58   right, let's say that's a long time ago, cause that's like the nineties, but has since made

00:11:04   the premier electric car company in the world, or, you know, I know he didn't found that

00:11:09   company, which I think is actually important. He has a rocket company that actually has

00:11:14   real rockets that do amazing things that no other rockets can do. Now is supposedly started

00:11:24   a tunnel company called the boring company, which the, the wall street journal. I don't

00:11:28   know. Did you see that story yesterday where they, they sort of had a, Hey, they're not

00:11:32   really doing anything except, except getting, uh, municipalities around North America to

00:11:38   stop planned, uh, high speed rail. Yeah. They're like, no, no, no. I wonder why they want to

00:11:44   do that. Yeah. Yeah. Guy who owns a car company wants them to stop. Oh, exactly. Uh, and I,

00:11:52   I do think it's unfortunate. I think it's just a, I think that I think most people who

00:12:00   work in local municipal government are very, they're doing it for the right reasons for

00:12:06   the most part. I don't think that these are overly political hacks on either side of the

00:12:10   spectrum. They're just trying to get stuff done, but I think they're in over their heads

00:12:13   on tech on technology. And I don't, I'm reading that wall street journal story about how the

00:12:19   boring company convinced various municipalities to stop these high speed rail programs. It

00:12:23   really seems like they're like, wow, this must be real because it's, you know, Elon

00:12:28   Musk, you know, here's this highly successful person. And it's not based on any sort of

00:12:34   expertise at the viability of the actual tunneling projects they said they would build and the

00:12:39   costs, you know, so like the one they had was Ontario, California, which I've never

00:12:44   heard of. It's apparently in the San Bernardino area, but it's an airport that was, uh, uh,

00:12:50   long been used for freight, very busy, but it's starting to grow significantly in commuter

00:12:56   traffic, you know, personal air travel. And they wanted to build, they have a rail station

00:13:03   for public transit, but it's four miles away from the airport. And they thought, well,

00:13:07   this so far makes total sense. We could get more people to go to this airport if we connect

00:13:12   that rail station with the airport, with public transportation. Sounds good to me. And it

00:13:18   was, uh, doing it as high speed rail might cost a billion to 1.5 billion significant

00:13:24   expenditure, I think for any municipality and you know, especially one that's not a

00:13:28   super mega city. And then the boring company came in and said, we can build a tunnel for

00:13:33   $50 million. So I, I look at that and I don't know, I am not a civil engineer. I had roommates

00:13:43   in college who were civil engineers. That's about as close to civil engineering expertise

00:13:48   as I've gotten. I read Dr. Drang's site. I'm not an expert, but you tell me that a project

00:13:54   that was, that the traditional way is one to 1.5 billion. And then the new way is 50

00:14:02   million. I immediately think, where's my wallet? Yeah, I'm putting my hand on my

00:14:09   pocket. Like I think, well, and the problem it creates of course is that, you know, he's,

00:14:13   he's telling everybody these things, right? And so when he says something like that in

00:14:17   public, a lot of people will just say, well, why are we building this thing? That's, you

00:14:21   know, even if it doesn't make any sense, people are saying, why would we build this

00:14:25   thing that's billion dollars when Musk says we can build this thing for 50 million?

00:14:29   Exactly. So you have no political cover, right? Other than, you know, I guess it's going

00:14:38   against Elon Musk and I get it. It's tough because then all of a sudden what happens

00:14:42   if he starts making fun of you on Twitter, you know, even before he owned the place?

00:14:47   No, you know what I mean? Like that? Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

00:14:50   you have, I mean, he has a, he has a very loyal fan base and reminds me of somebody.

00:14:56   Yeah. Yeah. Really? I saw, I don't want, I don't want to name any names. I don't want

00:15:02   to give these people any more popularity. But there was, you know, the whole thing with

00:15:08   Tim Cook came up the other day and somebody added at Musk, I was just having to look at

00:15:13   a thread and it was a picture of Tim Cook. And the, the, the point of the, the point

00:15:20   of the image where they put some sort of meme point of the image was, why not? Why not?

00:15:24   Hey, Hey, Elon, why don't you just buy Apple and fire Tim Cook? It's like, yeah, this,

00:15:32   that's not how math works. Well, usually he's, he is very wealthy, but he cannot buy Apple.

00:15:39   No. Um, there were, I remember years ago, uh, several, I don't know who knows these

00:15:45   days, how many years, but you know, there were people. I, I guess this is one of those

00:15:51   things circa 2013, right? 2013 was sort of the bad year for Apple where, um, that was

00:15:59   the, the height of the Apple can't innovate anymore. Samsung phones are bigger and that's

00:16:06   what people want. And Apple clearly, you know, it was, it's a disaster to name the operations

00:16:13   guy, the new CEO there, you know, every, you know, we were right to Apple can't, you know,

00:16:17   here we are two years after Steve jobs died that they need somebody like that. So Apple

00:16:22   should buy Tesla and then name it Elon Musk, the CEO. Right. That was, I mean, you could,

00:16:28   I don't have to even Google it. There's dozens and dozens of hot takes like that. And I would

00:16:33   say they were all, I bet the date on all of them is 2013. Uh, because what you, you know,

00:16:39   clearly what you all, you know, the only thing any company needs is a hot head. That's it.

00:16:45   That's the thing that made Steve jobs. Steve jobs is that he was, I mean, there was a huge

00:16:51   misconception about, um, Musk though, that he was, you know, big product guy and came

00:16:56   up with all these ideas when he really did not there. I don't have a link to it handy,

00:17:02   but somebody, I don't know if it was on medium or what I should look it up and try to get

00:17:07   it in the show notes. I actually should try to link to it from during fireball, but, um,

00:17:11   but the gist of it was the question that I think is on a lot of people's minds right

00:17:15   now is, wait, watching this man manage Twitter in public and you know, one thing we could

00:17:22   say about him is his, his management style so far has not been in secret. Watching him

00:17:27   manage Twitter, how in the world does he have, does he run two successful companies, Tesla

00:17:32   and space X and somebody answered somebody who worked at one of the companies, I think

00:17:37   it was like a medium answered and said more or less that, that these companies, a, they

00:17:42   existed before he came in and sort of had a thing in place and that, you know, he didn't

00:17:47   found either. He bought them and took over, but that they've both evolved company cultures

00:17:54   and structures that sort of isolate. It's like shop shock absorbers in a car, right?

00:18:03   That it's okay. We know work at work around his eccentricity and impetuousness. And so

00:18:10   there are people, you know, he can come in and say X, Y, Z, and they know that he might

00:18:13   just randomly come in and demand X, Y, Z, which don't make any sense. And they have

00:18:17   a system in place to more or less placate him. Yeah. And then meanwhile, they're continuing

00:18:23   to actually do things like land, you know, launch satellites into space and then land

00:18:29   the rocket back on a launch pad in the ocean and continuing to make cars that are very

00:18:36   popular and continue to sell in ever increasing numbers. So he's like, yeah, I'm doing

00:18:42   a great job, but they've, they've more or less got systems in place to keep him.

00:18:46   I will. The companies, the companies are continuing

00:18:48   to be successful despite him rather than because of them.

00:18:51   And that they've set up a hierarchy of management that is, that is meant for that. Whereas he

00:18:55   came into Twitter and this, there is no buffer. Right. There's no, there are no competent

00:19:02   actual, actually competent executives surrounding him who are, who are insulating the company

00:19:09   from his impetuousness. This is his management style. And then I sort of think going back

00:19:13   to my comment on the boring company, that's another one that he's seemingly launched

00:19:17   on a whim and it is a real company with a huge amount of funding from reputable VC firms,

00:19:22   you know, and, and the CEO, I forget his name, but he was hired away from space X. You know,

00:19:27   I guess I don't even know if you call that hired away when the same guy, you know, transferred

00:19:33   over from Elon's space X division to the boring company. And I hope they work again.

00:19:39   This is, it's another weird thing about Elon Musk is even as I grow to dislike him

00:19:43   more personally, I do root for his ventures, right? If this hyperloop thing ever came to

00:19:50   be and you could go up and down the East coast from New York to Washington at 700 miles an

00:19:56   hour underground or the, you know, similar, you know, I know everybody wants the one between

00:20:00   LA and San Francisco. That would be fabulous, right? I, I, who would, who would root against

00:20:06   that? Right. It's right out of, that's the one though that seems, you know, based

00:20:10   on everything that I've seen is more smoke and mirrors, right? I mean, you know, they

00:20:15   think that that wall street journal piece points that out. Whereas the other two are

00:20:20   actual, yeah. Actual things that are actually, whereas this one is like, no, we're going

00:20:25   to make a bunch of noise about this just to stop high speed rail. So that seems like more,

00:20:31   that's more of the purpose of that company as opposed to actually making the thing.

00:20:35   Yeah. Seems like it. So we're, you know, we're starting to get it, that sort of,

00:20:39   so we're starting to form at least a hypothesis, right? Let's not say it's proven, but there's

00:20:44   a hypothesis for how two of these companies are thriving and actually innovative and these

00:20:50   there's, it's more or less, is he actually running the company is the hypothesis. And

00:20:57   if the answer is yes, there may not, it may not be a good result. But I did predict this

00:21:03   Twitter Apple drama. And I knew, I, I, I, I don't think I deserve even my, one of my

00:21:09   famous being right points. Cause I think it, but on both fronts, it was so incredibly obvious.

00:21:15   Clearly the app store commission front, the the 30%, 70 30 70 split Apple takes for the

00:21:24   first year of any subscription and 85 15 afterwards, clearly, you know, the small business, I,

00:21:30   well, who knows, maybe he'll eventually get, get Twitter down to the under 1 million a

00:21:36   year, small business, small business threshold. He's, you know, he's working on it. So

00:21:43   he might, he might be able to go 85 15 right from the start. If he keeps going with Twitter,

00:21:48   the way he's going that was clearly going to be a conflict because, because by all reports,

00:21:58   many of his plans for adding additional stools to Twitter's revenue, which are, is primarily

00:22:05   advertising right now, involves subscriptions and subscriptions mean selling stuff to your

00:22:10   users. And if your users mostly use mobile apps, which is true for Twitter, that means

00:22:17   you're going to have to pay the app stores in Apple and Google. So that I, and there's,

00:22:23   you just knew that wasn't going to sit well with them. And then on the other front is

00:22:26   the, the content moderation loosening at Twitter or read, whatever you want to call what he's

00:22:34   doing by letting previously banned people back on today, as we record, they officially

00:22:42   rescinded their COVID misinformation rules, which that's one where I'm actually, I actually

00:22:49   feel that the COVID rules, I've personally feel that Twitter and maybe even Facebook

00:22:55   misplayed that. I think that, that by, I think the rules they had in hindsight, I think they

00:23:03   were well-meaning and I do think that they actually used actual scientific consensus

00:23:10   to guide them. But the problem there's two problems with that. I think that even if the

00:23:14   scientific consensus throughout the whole COVID drama, you know, 2020 and 2021 had been

00:23:22   accurate or almost completely accurate. I still feel that a complete ban on the other

00:23:28   stuff only feeds into the exact sort of thinking that leads people to the conspiracy theories.

00:23:38   I don't know. I don't know about, I mean, so what, then what's the difference between

00:23:42   that and political? I mean, you know, why, why do you think that's different from saying

00:23:46   that the election was stolen? I'm not, I'm not sure it should be, I don't know that it

00:23:53   should be against Twitter's rules to tweet, I think the election is stolen. I don't think

00:23:57   it should be, you know, I, I think hate speech clearly needs to be banned, something that

00:24:04   threatens people personally. And I think outright racism, racial slurs. I mean, there's, you

00:24:11   know, I, all of this stuff is all famously and everybody's written about it since he

00:24:18   took over Twitter. I mean, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the

00:24:20   Neil Patel had a great piece, but content moderation is the product ultimately, right?

00:24:25   It's the tweets. You, it's not really a software product. It's the actual tweets you see on

00:24:31   Twitter are the product. And whether you see them on their website or in an app or in a

00:24:35   third party app like Twitter, if I could tweet, but the product is the tweets and therefore

00:24:39   the content moderation is, is the actual product they make. So I, I'm, I don't know. I, I think

00:24:46   they kind of, I don't think it worked out well. The other problem with the COVID stuff

00:24:49   is that the scientific consensus was largely wrong throughout it, right? There was the

00:24:55   proof, infamously, the don't wear masks, don't wear masks, save them for our frontline responders

00:25:00   and masks don't matter. You know, wash your hands and scrub all your groceries as they

00:25:05   come in the door. Hey, you laugh. I mean, we all did it. I remember, I remember watching

00:25:09   that video, that doctor scrubbing all of the groceries and looking at that and thinking,

00:25:13   Oh my God, Oh shit. I'm just giving them a rent. Yeah. Right. Right. Like I've, I, Amy

00:25:21   and I, this is going to be my life for the next, you know, however long we were renting.

00:25:25   We were rinsing everything, but we were like, Oh shit, we're not, we're not doing that.

00:25:29   Oh, you know, it was a lot bleach. My oranges. There was a lot of stuff that turned out to

00:25:35   be wrong and you know, that's true. I don't know that people tweeting, I just don't think

00:25:42   that the rules did much. I don't know that they helped. I, and I think it's all, there's,

00:25:49   there's two sides to it. The, at the low end, Joe random Twitter user tweeting, I don't

00:25:59   trust this vaccine. I don't trust any vaccine that was developed in only 12 months or something

00:26:05   like that, you know, or, you know, obviously a lot of the anti-vaccine stuff was even worse.

00:26:11   I don't know that that was the problem as much as the fact that the main Twitter timeline

00:26:19   is algorithmically. I think it's both right though, because if you have less of that misinformation,

00:26:27   the algorithm is going to promote it less. And the, and the other thing that I think

00:26:30   that happens is that people who are bad actors tend to go after that stuff and try to promote

00:26:37   it further. And then the algorithm recognizes that as something like, Oh, people are talking

00:26:41   about this. I'm going to keep displaying this. And so you, you know, it's a, it's a snowball

00:26:46   effect. So I, you know, I'm not pretending like I have an answer. Maybe Twitter played

00:26:50   it perfectly. I'm actually amenable to the fact that maybe Twitter's COVID policy was

00:26:55   as like, like talking about democracy and capitalism, the worst system ever, except

00:27:01   for all the other ones. And maybe, maybe, maybe, well, yeah. I mean, I think that's

00:27:05   true. I mean, at least these were people who were legitimately trying to solve the problem

00:27:09   as opposed to people who were trying to exploit it for political purposes. But regardless,

00:27:15   we, we, you know, we know that he's loosening up the rules, their rules for content moderation

00:27:19   and less, fewer, fewer topics are banned and more people, people who were banned are coming

00:27:26   back and it's, in my opinion, none, none for the better. Yeah. But it's going to run into

00:27:34   Apple's Apple, probably more so than Google, but both of them have content moderation rules

00:27:42   surrounding the apps and that, you know, and it's all, you know, it, it, it all opens up

00:27:49   the entire gigantic, I was going to say can of worms, but it's more like one of those,

00:27:55   like those water towers, right? It's like a giant water tower full of worms that's supposed

00:28:00   to, you know, giant 10, $10 million. Why, why do they store the worms in there? Nobody

00:28:07   knows of Apple and Google's influence over everything we see because of their control

00:28:13   over their respective app stores. But Parler is a good example. Parler, P-A-R-L-E-R. If

00:28:22   you've never heard of it, you're lucky. Parler. I mean, that name just cracks me up every

00:28:27   single time because when I first saw it, I didn't hear the, you know, I don't listen

00:28:31   to TV news, so I didn't hear anybody say it. And I, you know, my first thing was, you know,

00:28:36   because I did years of French was this Parler. And then, and then like, not like five minutes

00:28:42   later it hit me, like who the people who made this site were and then I suddenly know, no,

00:28:47   it's not it's Parler. They just found a way to spell it. That was original, but I do think

00:28:54   there was a thing. I think they actually did have a thing going on though, where the site

00:28:58   was Parler, even though in French it would be pronounced Parler, but they were calling

00:29:01   their posts parlays, I think. And then I think they gave up on it because they're like, this

00:29:06   is just confusing people. Because they were spelling it in the English way, P-A-R-L-A-Y,

00:29:13   you know, for the posts. We'll get back to this when we talk about Macedon later, but

00:29:18   you gotta, you know, rule one of these things is you gotta have a cutesy name for your posts.

00:29:25   But with Parler, Apple, I guess I was after January 6, 2020 or no, 2021, where 2020 was

00:29:36   the pandemic year. That's right, John. That's right. 2021 was the sitting president of the

00:29:43   United States led an insurrection against the federal government. That was 2021. I'm

00:29:48   getting my seasons mixed up. No, but Apple removed Parler from the App Store early in

00:29:54   the year. I think they were off. I looked it up the other day. It was like three months,

00:29:58   but for content, for lack of content moderation and that people were posting things that Apple

00:30:04   thought were over the line and that the company did not have any sort of infrastructure to

00:30:12   moderate it. And therefore it was removed. Google did too. And I actually think, even

00:30:19   though I was just saying that Apple might be more stringent than Google, I believe,

00:30:24   I don't even know. Google get it first, right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And I think they were

00:30:28   off longer. I'm not even sure if they're back. No, it looks like it's back, but yeah, Google

00:30:34   Parler returns to the Google Play Store. That was September. Yeah. So Google kept Parler

00:30:41   off their store longer than Apple did. So maybe not, but Parler is the perfect example

00:30:46   though, where it was, it leaned for lack of a better word, leaned right in terms of who

00:30:52   was attracted to the platform because people on the right in the US, at least I think worldwide,

00:30:59   but especially in the US politically are obsessed, absolutely obsessed with the idea that Twitter,

00:31:09   Twitter's users, the blue check people, the people inside the company, the people running

00:31:15   the content moderation, the previous leadership of the company from top to bottom, all the

00:31:20   way down to the users were all democratic operatives and out to sabotage Republicans

00:31:27   and conservatives in the US in any way possible as opposed to the Occam's razor, you know,

00:31:35   what's the simplest explanation? No, it's, it's you who sucks. Yeah. I saw, you know,

00:31:45   people like there's, there's some kind of thing where you, when you give to political

00:31:48   as an individual, not a company, but as an individual and you contribute to politicians

00:31:53   and political campaigns, I don't know if you have to say your employer, I think you do.

00:31:59   Maybe, maybe that's part of it. I don't know. I think, I think, yeah, my wife does all the

00:32:02   political giving in our household, so God only knows what she fills in there, but, but

00:32:09   you know, but then there's records of this and all of these Silicon Valley companies

00:32:14   overwhelmingly employed donations well into the high 90 percentile give to Democrats instead

00:32:20   of Republicans. And I think the, again, the Occam's razor explanation is that people,

00:32:26   honestly, I know that, you know, it's true. People who live on the coasts tend to be more

00:32:31   liberal. I mean, California is a blue state. That's where these companies are located.

00:32:36   People with higher love degrees of education tend to be liberal and people who are smarter

00:32:42   tend to vote Democratic and these companies are full of smart people. And I'm not, you

00:32:46   know, this is not any kind of blanket statement that people who vote for Republicans are dumb

00:32:51   and people who vote for Democrats are smart. It's just, I don't think it's surprising demographically

00:32:56   at all that 90 plus percent of individual donations from companies like Apple and Google

00:33:02   and Twitter went to Democrats. And it's not a conspiracy. And I honestly think that Twitter

00:33:09   let conservatives post anything short of hate, you know, and, you know, insurrection. You

00:33:17   know, these are things that seem like they should be banned and aren't really against

00:33:22   your general political leanings. But anyway, so Parler drew, so what happened though, this

00:33:29   is where I'm going with Parler, is that these alternative Twitter-like services, private

00:33:34   services, there's, Parler was the one that got a lot of headlines because they got kicked

00:33:38   off. There was one called Gab that I think was even worse. And it was actually run by

00:33:43   an outright white nationalist neo-Nazi. And I happen to know this because he got involved.

00:33:49   He was like a top advisor to Doug Mastriano, who was the right wing Nazi sympathizer, who

00:33:59   was the Republican, was last month, the Republican nominee for governor here in Pennsylvania

00:34:05   and lost, thankfully, in a 20... As he is still not conceded. He is still not conceded.

00:34:10   He is never going to concede. And I love the guy who won Shapiro. His response, they're

00:34:18   like, "Hey, what do you... He still hasn't called to concede." And I love his response.

00:34:22   Who cares? Who cares? Just don't give him oxygen. It is, honestly, it's like parenting

00:34:29   advice. It's like when your kid is throwing a tantrum, don't pay attention to them, right?

00:34:34   It's the number one way to stop a tantrum with a small child is don't pay attention.

00:34:40   That's what they want is the attention. So don't drop everything. Just ignore them. It'll

00:34:44   drive them nuts and then they'll stop. It turns out that this is an important skill

00:34:51   for dealing with Republican candidates for governor.

00:34:55   And president.

00:34:56   And president. And president. Just don't pay attention. And the new CEO of Twitter, just

00:35:01   don't pay attention as we devote half the show.

00:35:05   Really, I know. We're not doing very well, are we?

00:35:09   There was Gab, which was even right-of-wing. But anyway, Apple did take Parler off the

00:35:14   store for three months. Google took it down for, I guess, half a year for content moderation.

00:35:20   And to whatever degree the content that is now allowable on Twitter has changed under

00:35:26   Musk's leadership, it is more in the direction of Parler and Gab, right? It is more friendly

00:35:33   to right-wing things, people who post the peppy meme unironically. That sort of stuff

00:35:44   is to some degree small or large. I'm not sure. I don't see it, but I use Tweetbot and

00:35:51   I follow people who I want to follow. And so my Twitter content, if I had a filter to

00:35:59   block the meta discussion of Twitter itself and Elon Musk, which those of you who do have

00:36:04   such filters and you don't feel a professional need to stay up to date on it, I'm so jealous.

00:36:11   My Twitter feed has not changed significantly. I don't think I would know that anything

00:36:16   is different.

00:36:17   And that was, well, I mean, I had several breaking points. One was him bringing Trump

00:36:23   back. That was the big one. And so I have stopped posting and I'm winnowing down my

00:36:29   followers just so that I'm less inclined to go into Tweetbot and read. But I'm down

00:36:37   to not, you know, my feed now is sort of a trickle, but that's the idea that he would

00:36:46   cut off third party apps was the other breaking point. Like if he had not taken, you know,

00:36:53   not put Trump back, but then cut off third party apps, there was no way I was ever going

00:36:56   to go to the website and read this.

00:36:58   Right. I, yeah, I'm so I'm a Tweetbot man myself, but I, yeah, if he cut off third party

00:37:05   apps, I don't know. I don't know that I'd completely stop, but it would, I've really

00:37:10   stopped checking Instagram regularly, maybe like once a week. It's over on my third home

00:37:15   screen at this point. I think Twitter would sort of fall into that category. Maybe I guess

00:37:20   I'd still look at my mentions in the regular Twitter app, but I'd probably, I, it's

00:37:26   hard to predict, but without Tweetbot, I would probably just look at my mentions as opposed

00:37:30   to looking at the main feed. And I know I've talked to people at Twitter, some, some people,

00:37:39   it's not luckily I don't root for, for layoffs, but because, because so many people

00:37:43   have, have left or been laid off from Twitter recently, there are a lot of an unusual number

00:37:50   of people willing to tweet or speak to reporters on the, or post blog posts on the record with

00:37:57   their name of their experience working at Twitter. Right. And it's, you know, I don't

00:38:02   have to point to one specific example. Many, many people I've talked to privately and

00:38:06   I've seen tweets publicly have said that it was an ongoing, never ending discussion

00:38:13   with Apple over content moderation on Twitter for years. This is not like a new thing under

00:38:19   Elon Musk and all of a sudden in the last four weeks, and now Apple is putting its eye

00:38:25   of sore on, on the content that's on Twitter. It has been never ending throughout the entire

00:38:32   history of the app store that Apple has, you know, and, and random, you know, famous, famously,

00:38:41   you know, if Twitter's one of these many, many companies whose release notes for an

00:38:44   update is always bug fixes and improvements, right. But it's just another random, whatever

00:38:51   version point three update with some bug fixes and improvements and it sales right through.

00:38:57   And then a week later they've got the point four version, which is just more bug fixes

00:39:02   and improvements. And it's really no major new features or changes, but all of a sudden

00:39:06   now it's held up an app review and app review gets back to them and says something like

00:39:12   I typed in hashtag boobs and look at, you know, and then there's screenshots of, you

00:39:18   know, and there is, there's actually there's actual pornography. If you go looking for

00:39:22   it, there is pornographic or at least nude, nude content on Twitter. And yeah, every once

00:39:28   in a while I would, I would do a search for something, you know, some weird, it's a

00:39:31   weird thing. And then it'd be like, Whoa. I mean, you get, you get things that come

00:39:35   up, you know, like you, sometimes you get unexpected results and it's, and I was like,

00:39:42   God, I really don't like, I feel like there's a whole other use for this site that I'm

00:39:46   not taking advantage of. Right. It is. It's actually Tumblr cultivated

00:39:51   that did an entire significant subculture on, on Tumblr is related to adult content.

00:40:00   You know, I don't know if it, I guess it used to be anyway, and now they're, you know,

00:40:05   I think they, I don't know if they timed it for this or I think it's, it's funny

00:40:09   that that, you know, pretty much a few days after Musk took over and these things started

00:40:14   happening, Tumblr changed its policy to allow nudity.

00:40:20   But there was a lot of, a lot of the reaction to that when, when Apple said, look, you know,

00:40:25   you can't have your, we're not going to allow your app in the app store if you have

00:40:28   this content and the app is so important to Tumblr that they actually had to concede to

00:40:33   Apple and say, okay, we're going to change our rules for this content Tumblr wide, just

00:40:38   to make sure that our apps can stay in the app store. And the, I would say the number

00:40:43   one response to that from people who were on Tumblr side, not Apple side was, well,

00:40:49   wait, what about Twitter? You can search for some of the same terms you're saying, I

00:40:54   search for term, whatever, again, hashtag boobs on Tumblr. And I get this, but if I

00:40:59   search for the same hashtag on Twitter, I get very similar stuff. And there's no problem

00:41:04   with Twitter. Again, Apple's policies with the app store are inscrutable externally.

00:41:11   And that inscrutability is perhaps the biggest problem with, with the app store. But I guess

00:41:21   from the outside, my guess is that Twitter was across a certain too big to fail line

00:41:28   that Tumblr wasn't in Apple's eyes. And because of their size and importance that

00:41:35   they, you know, could get away with more than a smaller app or network couldn't, I think

00:41:41   it's very certain that an upstart app like a parlor or a gab that had the same content

00:41:48   under hashtag boobs that Twitter did would get flagged and held up and said, you know,

00:41:55   that Twitter, but anyway, over the years, many, many times, though, there were times

00:41:59   where, you know, hashtag boobs would flag an app store review and an update would be

00:42:04   held for weeks. You know, it, people who run really big apps, you know, from companies

00:42:13   that you've heard of major, major apps have war stories about minor updates being held.

00:42:21   And sometimes it is for obvious reasons, like a tweak to like the Netflix, what happens

00:42:27   if you don't have a Netflix account and you want to sign up and net, you know, famously

00:42:32   several years ago, Netflix stopped taking in app signups, so they don't have to pay

00:42:36   Apple any commission. And what arguing over the exact language of what's on that page

00:42:43   to comply with Apple's weird, you're not allowed to talk about the rules. And, you

00:42:48   know, I wrote about this years ago, it's one of my favorite things ever, where Netflix

00:42:51   had a phone number, and you could call the phone number and talk to a real human being

00:42:57   and ask, Hey, I don't have a Netflix account, but I'm using the iPhone app, how do I get

00:43:02   an account? And then they said, Oh, you need to go to a computer and then go to the Netflix.com

00:43:07   website and you need to sign up there. And they, they can't put those words on the screen

00:43:14   in the app, but they can put a phone number in the app and you can, they can make it a

00:43:17   tappable link, you know, like when you automatically dial it automatically dials and then they

00:43:24   have the money to have people answer the real people, answer the phone and tell you exactly

00:43:30   what to do to get an account, which I thought was a very weird loophole, you know, and obviously

00:43:34   not available to smaller companies, unless you like, imagine like me and you and a couple

00:43:42   of pals just put my phone number on there, just put Moltz's phone number in there. And

00:43:49   every five minutes, you're just answering your phone, you know, like in the middle of

00:43:52   dinner and you're like, yeah, yeah, just go to our website. Chewing. Yeah. Oh, hey, yeah,

00:43:59   yeah, sure. Here's what you're going to do.

00:44:06   So that's been happening. And so anyway, what, what Musk is alleging, and it's in the news

00:44:10   today as we record it, I'm sure it'll still be in the news tomorrow, but it's, and it's

00:44:15   sort of changing the narrative with the big publications that are on the anti big tech

00:44:21   crusade, like the Washington Post and the New York times, where all of a sudden now

00:44:26   they're on Twitter and Elon Musk's side, because Apple is the clear, you know, in this battle,

00:44:32   Apple's against anybody, pretty much Apple's Goliath, right? There's only a handful of

00:44:36   companies where you could say that they're picking on somebody their own size, right?

00:44:40   There's Google, Microsoft, even meta at this point has been reduced, right? But when Apple

00:44:45   first instituted the app tracking transparency rules that apparently so adversely affected

00:44:53   Facebook's ad revenue, they would be considered a peer to Apple. Twitter is not a peer to

00:44:58   Apple in any way, size, revenue, whatever. But it, the coverage I've seen today seems

00:45:06   clearly on the, they're taking Elon Musk at his word. And, and the slant is clearly that

00:45:16   Apple's control over the app store is problematic, you know, which it might be, right? It's this

00:45:21   is the debate, you know, it really, I'm not saying it isn't, I'm just saying, I think

00:45:27   it requires tremendous nuance. And they're taking the sort of it just, it is clear, you

00:45:34   know, what, I don't know what the legal term is, but, you know, true on its face, that

00:45:40   it's just a huge problem that Apple has this control over Twitter's content. Musk is alleging

00:45:45   that they're threatening to remove Twitter from the app store. I don't know that that's

00:45:49   true. I don't believe anything he tweets. Yeah, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't be surprised

00:45:55   if what he's learning is that their updates get held up. And I wouldn't, I would actually

00:46:02   be surprised if their recent updates and I know I actually install my updates manually.

00:46:08   I don't have automatic app store updates, just so I like to keep track of what's being

00:46:13   updated. And then, you know, I just scroll through the list and then I hit update all

00:46:16   the time. I don't do it one by one. But I've noticed, you know, there have been Twitter

00:46:20   app updates for iOS in recent weeks, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're seeing longer

00:46:27   than usual delays while Apple has discussions over the content moderation. And, you know,

00:46:33   and Musk's take is that Apple should have no say in Twitter's content moderation and,

00:46:38   you know, nor should Google. You know, that's his definition of free speech that that is

00:46:42   one take. Yeah, it's weird. Right. Because I mean, it, in both of like this, this case,

00:46:52   and then we have Epic, like nice. The app store rules are arcane and real dumb in large

00:47:02   cases. But we have these two champions of breaking up the rules and I don't like either

00:47:10   of them. They're both doing it for nefarious reasons, seemingly to me. Right. I don't know

00:47:18   that the, yeah, Epic was not the most sympathetic. Yeah. I mean, Epic doesn't care about anybody

00:47:24   but Epic, of course. Right. And, you know, they clearly sandbagged Apple by clearly violating

00:47:31   the rules. Right. And so I saw even Tim Sweeney jumping into Twitter, you know, that's the

00:47:38   CEO of Epic CEO and co-founder or founder of Epic games. But, you know, certainly the

00:47:42   face of their public and legal battle against Apple over the app store rules was Tim Sweeney.

00:47:49   You know, and I'll get, you know, I don't agree with his angle. I don't agree with Epic's

00:47:53   tactics, but I'll certainly give him credit for, you know, sticking his chin out right

00:48:00   on something that most companies seem very fearful. Nobody wants to, people are fearful

00:48:06   of Apple and so people don't speak out about it. Right. It's, there's other, you know,

00:48:11   certainly you could make a phone book probably of companies with complaints about the way

00:48:17   Apple manages the app store, the review process, and certainly the commission structure and

00:48:22   the rules, the rules around routing around it by steering people to the web to pay without

00:48:29   giving Apple a commission. And that's long been my take just to put it, reiterate, you

00:48:34   know, is that I think what Apple should have done long ago, they're doing it ever so slightly,

00:48:39   like with the Japan trade commission agreement for a certain class of apps, their, their

00:48:45   quote unquote reader apps. I just think they should open it up to anybody and let people

00:48:50   say you can buy here, right here in the app right now. And it goes through Apple and Apple

00:48:55   gets the cut or click this link and it opens in Safari outside the app and you can pay

00:49:02   there. And if, you know, I think that that, that, that, that should just be something

00:49:07   apps can do. And if you don't even want to offer the in-app purchase, I think, you know,

00:49:13   like Netflix, I think Netflix should just, instead of a frigging phone number, they should

00:49:17   just say sign in, or if you need to sign up, tap, click this button, tap this button, and

00:49:24   it'll go to the web and you'll sign up there and then come back to the app and sign in

00:49:29   with the account you created on the web. You know, that the, if the convenience of doing

00:49:34   the commerce in app is so great, then let, let there be a link to the web to prove it.

00:49:40   And you keep, keep your cut in the app and do it for all classes of apps. And there you

00:49:45   go, you know, and then it would solve so many problems, you know, and I get, I, I, and I

00:49:50   also believe that it's fine if Apple opened that up like that to not allow it to be a

00:49:56   browser that's in the app. You actually have to leave the app. And I know that many, many

00:50:01   millions of people are confused about where they are, but at least people who know what's

00:50:05   going on would be able to see that they've left the app and now they're in Safari or

00:50:11   whatever other, you know, whatever their default iOS browser is. Because Apple did open that

00:50:15   up several years ago where you could set Chrome or DuckDuckGo or any number, Firefox or any

00:50:21   number of third-party browsers as your, you know, just go, but you're in your browser,

00:50:25   you're out of the app in the browser, sign up there. And then the last leg of this conflict

00:50:31   is Apple as an advertiser on Twitter. And this is sort of what prompted Elon Musk's

00:50:38   foray. Apple had, this is his tweet yesterday. It's two tweets, but it could have been one.

00:50:45   Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America? What,

00:50:51   what's going on here at Tim Cook? What's the betting line on Tim Cook responding to that

00:51:00   on Twitter? It's gotta be pretty tremendous. I'm going to say it's no line. I would think,

00:51:08   I think that could be it. You see it in game a lot. So now that, that sports betting is

00:51:12   legal and there's these apps and I don't know if you know this, but I like to, I like to

00:51:15   gamble occasionally. Oh really? Yeah. You can bet during the game. So like if, you know,

00:51:21   the Dallas Cowboys are playing the Minnesota Vikings like the other week and everybody

00:51:26   expected a close game, but all of a sudden it's not a close game and Dallas is up 33

00:51:32   to three. You can still place bets, but it's like at a certain point, maybe when it gets

00:51:38   to 33 to three or whatever the score was at some point, they stop letting you bet that

00:51:43   Dallas is going to win the game. They won't even offer like 10,000 to one odds, you know,

00:51:48   like bet, bet $10,000 to win a dollar. They won't even offer it. They just take it off.

00:51:53   They're like, no, cause I would say the odds of Tim Cook responding to this engaging on

00:51:58   Twitter itself were off the board. Do you, you couldn't even get like a 10,000 to one

00:52:03   odds on it. Yeah. Do you remember, it was a few years ago they did it, they did a joke

00:52:09   at the beginning of an event where they were looking for a remote, right? Yes. Yeah. He

00:52:13   tweeted, he tweeted, you know, it looked like he tweeted an accidental tweet. Yes. Can someone

00:52:19   get it here quickly? Yeah. When it was just like, it was a pro, you know, like a lead

00:52:23   in for the event. Yeah. I do remember that. That was very funny. That's the wildest thing

00:52:29   that he's ever, that he's ever tweeted. I mean, everything else is very by the numbers

00:52:33   and there's, yeah, there's no way he's responding. Yeah. For like a 10 AM Pacific keynote kickoff

00:52:39   at like 9 56 at Tim Cook tweeted something weird. Like has anybody seen it? You know,

00:52:44   bring it to me on stage and that is. Yeah. Right. Right. I think it's, can you get it

00:52:48   here quickly? I had my screen shot at it because at the time I was like, what the hell is this?

00:52:52   What's going on? And then, and then like, you know, watching the event of like, oh,

00:52:56   it's a gag. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I'd say the odds were zero and I, it makes Elon Musk look

00:53:04   a little thirsty. There's a, there's a certain, there's a low, all of this has, there's a

00:53:10   low energy vibe to it though. Right. Josh Marshall, who writes the great, or founded

00:53:16   and is still writes the editor's blog at talking points memo. One of my favorite political

00:53:20   sites was tweeting about it and called it real low energy vibes and was laughing at

00:53:25   it. I heard from somebody I, and I reported, I guess I, you know, I don't, don't claim

00:53:32   to quote unquote report much, but reported a day or two ago that some, a source who had

00:53:37   previously worked in Twitter's ad group told me that Twitter or Apple had been until recently

00:53:44   at Twitter's number one advertiser by spend and the Washington post today put a number

00:53:50   on it and said that in the first quarter of the year, Apple spent $48 million, which made

00:53:54   them their number one and it was 4% of Twitter's ad revenue. So not like essential, but you

00:54:05   know, 4% is what, like one out of 22. And I was surprised that they were the largest.

00:54:11   Yeah. I don't think I, I didn't really think about it very much, but I was surprised that

00:54:16   Apple would be the one who was spending the lowest. Yeah. And they've, you know, but in

00:54:21   hindsight, I guess it makes sense. Cause I know that when they have product announcements,

00:54:25   they'd like to buy those hash flags. They call them where you, you know, you can get a custom

00:54:30   hashtag and then it has like an animation that goes with it. They, you can buy a custom

00:54:35   like button that makes the like button and Apple logo or the, the logo, you know, how

00:54:41   the Apple likes to make a custom logo for each event announcement, you know, with the

00:54:46   theme. So Apple has tends to promote their events like that. I don't know what else they

00:54:52   do. I don't, cause I use tweet bots, so I don't see a lot of ads. Right. Yeah. And that's

00:54:58   probably why, I mean, I probably would have seen lots of them when I was looking at the

00:55:01   web, but, and you know, that unsurprisingly they've cut their ad spend according to Musk

00:55:08   almost entirely. They're not alone. No, that, that, that post article listed quite a few

00:55:15   major companies that have been coming back. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's a well-known

00:55:19   category, brand advertisers, right? It is companies, you know, Apple's certainly a big

00:55:25   one, but who else was on the list? I don't have it in front of me, but wasn't Ford one

00:55:30   of them. Yeah, I think so. You know, it's major American brands, the type of brands

00:55:35   that advertise in mass market, like on TV sports, right? Who advertises during a big

00:55:43   football games, those type of companies have pulled their Twitter ad spend and it makes

00:55:48   sense. Advertisers are incredibly conservative, not conservative in the political sense, but

00:55:54   conservative. It just in the plain meaning of the word conservative and they don't want

00:55:59   controversy. They want, and they, yeah. And so, yeah, not surprisingly, a lot of these

00:56:03   are like blue chip sort of yeah. AT&T American express, Chevrolet, Chipotle, Citigroup, CNN,

00:56:12   Apple, goes on and on. Yeah. But did, you know, think about what unites those brands.

00:56:17   They're big companies with established brands and they don't want their brand associated

00:56:22   with say Nazis, right wing, you know, white nationalism. No, probably don't want my hash

00:56:30   to hash flag, you know, anywhere near that or in people's minds. They also value tremendously

00:56:40   predictability, right? And, you know, so like when you, let's say you want to promote the

00:56:48   iPhone 14 and you're going to have your jaws and you're thinking about where are we going

00:56:54   to spend our December ads on TV and you're like, we should put some on 60 minutes. And

00:57:00   it's like, you don't need to call CBS and say like, hey, what's going to be on 60 minutes

00:57:06   on the December 11th episode? You kind of know what you're going to get, you know, it's

00:57:12   predictable. It is, you know, you know who the audience is, you know what the ratings

00:57:16   are going to be and you know, you know, the sort of content that 60 minutes puts on their

00:57:22   weekly news TV show. When you advertise during a football game, you know what you're going

00:57:28   to get. You're going to get a football game, right? What could steer advertisers away from

00:57:36   something like football? Well, ratings obviously would be the big thing. If football becomes

00:57:41   unpopular over the years, I mean, baseball has certainly become less popular over our

00:57:45   lifetimes to go back to baseball. It's no longer the most popular team sport in America,

00:57:52   but people still advertise because millions of people still watch. The whole concussion

00:57:56   thing with football would be a thing that, you know, it's clearly the biggest danger

00:58:01   to the NFL going forward because it is a serious issue. It's real, it's documented, and it

00:58:07   is incredibly controversial, right? That's a thing that would hurt. That's like the one

00:58:12   thing that could hurt the NFL in terms of their ad revenue. That is like a drop in the

00:58:17   bucket compared to where Twitter is these days in terms of predictability, right? And,

00:58:22   you know, who knows what the hell is going to be on Twitter in a week. So why in the

00:58:26   world would you? Why not wait for this to settle down? It's going to settle down. This

00:58:32   tumultuousness cannot, it can't keep up, right? I don't think. I don't know. It doesn't show

00:58:43   any signs of abating. It's been going on for weeks now. I don't know. So, but my take on

00:58:47   this controversy though is it seems as though it boils down to politically, Elon Musk is,

00:58:55   in my view, is clearly not trying to stake out some middle, both sides middle ground.

00:59:03   He's surprising, which is what I thought he would do, but I don't think I followed him

00:59:08   closely enough. I think people who did follow him closer therefore made better predictions

00:59:12   that he really does seem to lean right politically, or at least has for several years. And is

00:59:18   really making moves that are only to the side of placating people on the US political right

00:59:24   and making it friendlier for people who were banned to come back and to post things that

00:59:29   previously weren't allowed. And that there's no good news in this for people on the US

00:59:36   political left. And it's no good news at all for anybody, LGBTQ, a part of the community

00:59:45   or friendly to the community, allied with that community, nothing, no good news and

00:59:51   some significant bad news. People who were banned for truly vile content by speaking

01:00:04   out against that community in ways that I genuinely believe are harmful. I know that

01:00:12   this term stochastic terrorism is sort of new, but I think it's real. I think it's a

01:00:19   real thing that you can speak in coded terms and never call for violence, but use language

01:00:27   and tone and dog whistle code words that implicitly imply that violence is actually called for.

01:00:39   And that the stochastic is like a statistics term, but that means that you can't predict

01:00:46   anything specific, but you can take this and predict that it's going to happen at some

01:00:52   point. It's like you can't predict exactly where and when an earthquake is going to occur,

01:00:58   but you know that because of the fault lines, there are going to be earthquakes. And you

01:01:03   can take this rhetoric on Fox News and you can't predict, oh, that means that in Peoria,

01:01:12   Illinois some guy's going to go nuts and try to shoot up a place or something like that.

01:01:17   But you can't predict where, but you can predict that it's going to happen in the aggregate.

01:01:22   And I think it's a shocker. I think it's terrible. And I think it's something that

01:01:29   something like Twitter should fight against.

01:01:30   He's not interested.

01:01:33   No, I don't think though. I really don't think that Twitter, I don't know who knows what

01:01:39   Apple has said. Maybe Apple has said, hey, you guys are in jeopardy of us removing the

01:01:44   app from the store. And I wouldn't be surprised, maybe that's actually how bad it's gotten.

01:01:49   I think somebody told him about the op-ed piece that his former employee wrote in the

01:01:56   New York Times and he then reacted to that.

01:02:01   Right. That's the former head of Trust and Safety, Joel Roth. And I guess that's where

01:02:07   I know that Apple's had a continuing, he was forthright about it, that they've had

01:02:12   a never-ending discussion with Apple and Google about the content on the network. So it is

01:02:19   interesting to think that Apple's, there's money flowing both ways where Elon Musk is

01:02:26   now upset that he's learned that any kind of subscription they sell, they're going

01:02:30   to have to pay Apple a significant cut of it. And he's also mad.

01:02:35   It's a big surprise.

01:02:36   He's also mad now that Apple is choosing not to give Twitter money. I mean, again,

01:02:42   50 million and a quarter isn't a huge amount of money, but it's 4% of their ad revenue.

01:02:46   And ad revenue is the biggest thing. So it's, you know, and-

01:02:49   And they're not the only one. And so, I mean, all these other ones, I mean, everything adds

01:02:52   up and he's just using Apple as a particular target.

01:02:56   Yeah, like a proxy. Well, but I also don't think you have to be, I don't see how anybody

01:03:02   could deny it that a company as influential as Apple and as respected for their brand

01:03:08   and marketing expertise, right? I mean, it's actually the knock against Apple in tech circles

01:03:15   forever against people who don't like their products are, is that it's just, it's all

01:03:20   smoke and mirrors and marketing and they trick people, you know, with clever marketing into

01:03:25   buying inferior computers, you know, right? I mean, you and I have been covering this.

01:03:30   We've made like a careers out of it. That their marketing is so good that people who

01:03:35   don't like their products think that's why people buy the products. And therefore, that

01:03:40   other people would follow their lead, right? Like, well, we're not as good at marketing

01:03:44   and advertising as Apple. And if Apple is pulling out of Twitter, then we should pull

01:03:48   out of Twitter. And vice versa, like if Apple started advertising on some new, you know,

01:03:56   TikTok, right? If Apple, all of a sudden, the word comes out that Apple is spending

01:04:02   significantly increased amount of money on TikTok, a lot of other advertisers and smaller

01:04:07   companies would say, "Hey, if it's good for Apple, it might be good for us. Maybe we should

01:04:10   increase our spend on TikTok." I think that's probably obviously true that people follow

01:04:15   the leader and Apple is a leader in marketing and therefore Musk is trying to cut it off.

01:04:21   But it's also funny to me that he's done it by highlighting the fact, right? Like, that's

01:04:28   what makes him so...

01:04:29   I mean, he thinks he's going to win this, right? And he thinks he's going to bully them

01:04:32   into coming back, I guess? Or is it just, is it an effect of like saying, "Look how

01:04:39   obnoxious I am being to Apple. Imagine what I'm going to do to you."

01:04:42   Do you, right? I guess, maybe? I don't even know. I'm not quite sure. Yeah, I don't know

01:04:48   how much of it he goes, much like our former president. I don't know how much he does,

01:04:53   who I believe...

01:04:54   He's surprisingly like him. I mean, he is shockingly similar in his tweeting style as

01:05:00   well as seemingly his personal style.

01:05:03   Yeah, I think so too. And including the fact that he's obviously very cunning and he has

01:05:08   a very good sense of how things will play to his base, for lack of a better word, and

01:05:14   knows his base. And it's like the Pied Piper knows exactly what music the kids want to

01:05:21   listen to. He knows the tune. And those of us who aren't in the demo, right? We hear

01:05:29   the Pied Piper's music and we're like, "I don't get it." Right? That doesn't sound...

01:05:35   What's this crap?

01:05:36   Yeah, what's this crap? Why are you guys following this guy? I don't even like that. He knows

01:05:40   that. I don't know how it's going to play out. But I do think on the App Store front,

01:05:51   if I were at Apple, I would consider it... I would be having very serious meetings, strategy

01:05:56   meetings to deal with it. Because the one thing Apple hasn't really dealt with with

01:06:03   the App Store commissions is a high profile complainant. Epic is the closest, right?

01:06:16   Yeah. I mean, Epic is pretty close though, not because of Epic being Epic, but because

01:06:21   Fortnite was so popular.

01:06:22   Exactly, right. And that's what people are bringing that up with, "Well, Apple's not

01:06:28   going to just remove..." I've seen people say, "Apple isn't... No matter what Twitter

01:06:32   is, they're not going to just boot it off the App Store because they've got 200 million

01:06:36   users." But there were like, I don't know, like 100 million iOS Fortnite users. I mean,

01:06:42   it was massively popular and they booted it. But they booted it for actions that Epic took

01:06:51   that weren't in any gray zone at all. By Epic's own admission, right? Epic, for those who

01:06:57   don't remember, put an update to Fortnite into the App Store with no mention of this

01:07:03   feature being embedded in the app. And the app, I don't know if it was timed or if it

01:07:10   was like they would phone home and when Epic flipped a switch on their server, then the

01:07:14   app would know, "Okay, the switch has been flipped." And then all of a sudden, the app

01:07:19   that had already gone through App Store review and was on people's phones started offering

01:07:24   people the ability to buy V-Bucks, their in-game currency, without going through the App Store.

01:07:32   And Apple took none too kindly to it and within four days had removed Fortnite from the App

01:07:40   Store and it still is, lo, these many years later, a major lawsuit that Apple won still

01:07:46   isn't back. And I guess the one thing they didn't do, Apple did not flip the kill switch

01:07:54   that removed Fortnite from people's phones. I'm not even sure what that switch is. I don't

01:07:58   know that it deletes it. I think what they could do is remove a certification like that.

01:08:04   And then the app wouldn't run on your phones. You'd still have it taking up space on your

01:08:08   phone, but it wouldn't run. They didn't do that. But the way Fortnite works, and I think

01:08:15   most just about any multiplayer game, like the whole point of Fortnite is you're playing

01:08:22   against, I don't even know if there is a single player mode. I don't think so. I don't think

01:08:26   it would make any sense. So it's only multiplayer and they go, if you're not on the latest version

01:08:33   and everybody else on every other platform, like PCs and consoles is running a future

01:08:40   version with different maps and different characters, the old version can no longer

01:08:44   play. So it effectively killed Fortnite. Even without making the binary not run on your

01:08:50   phones, it effectively killed Fortnite. So they did it. But that was a epic declared

01:08:56   war, right? Epic by doing that. I don't see Apple doing that with Twitter. I really don't.

01:09:02   But they might, if it comes to it, if push came to shove and something was that alarming

01:09:08   to Apple content wise, I think the fact that they did it to Fortnite and they were making,

01:09:14   I don't know. I don't know how much money Apple was making from Fortnite on iOS, but

01:09:18   it was significant money because people do spend players of Fortnite do spend a lot of

01:09:25   money in game. And that's why Epic, I mean, if, if there weren't in game purchases, Epic

01:09:30   wouldn't have even bothered, right? This wouldn't be an issue. So there's a lot of money at

01:09:33   stake and Apple was making a lot of money from Fortnite and did it. Apple doesn't make

01:09:37   a lot of money from Twitter. There are very few in app purchases. The only in app purchases

01:09:41   that I'm aware of are, well, there's Twitter blue, blue, which I, you know, is the thing

01:09:47   that Musk wants to boost, but most people, I don't, I know very few people who pay for

01:09:52   it. And then you can do the super follow thing where there's like 2000 users of Twitter who've

01:09:58   opted into this super follow program where you get like a, it's like a member fold type

01:10:05   thing, but on Twitter. So you can, if I were to offer super follows, which I don't, but

01:10:11   you could super follow me for $3 a month and I'd get a dollar a month or something like

01:10:17   that. And then I can post special tweets that only show up to the people who are paying

01:10:21   me, you know, in videos and I don't know, whatever the features, it's not a very popular feature

01:10:27   so far. So it's not like Apple would be losing money by booting Twitter like they did with

01:10:32   Fortnite. So I think they might, but I just think, I just think Musk is taking umbrage

01:10:37   at the fact that Apple has any control over their software updates at all. Yeah. And people,

01:10:44   but, but a lot of people are taking him at his word that Apple has already threatened

01:10:48   to remove the app from the store. I don't think that's happened. No, I don't think that's

01:10:52   happened either. But who knows? I don't know. It's, it's interesting. I do think though,

01:10:58   I don't know. Where do you see it going with the money though? I do that, that I'll just

01:11:02   circle back to that before we close off the topic. But I do think Elon Musk can shine

01:11:09   a light on this. I mean, cause that's the other funny tweet that he had yesterday that

01:11:12   was positing it is, and again, it's very, for lack of a better word, Trumpian, you know,

01:11:20   the way that you, like one of Trump's big ticks of course is many people are saying,

01:11:25   right? So Musk doesn't, Musk doesn't do that one, but he, this is very Trumpian where you

01:11:34   allege that something that has been out in the open was done in secret. Here's his tweet.

01:11:41   Did you know Apple puts a secret 30% tax on everything you buy through their app store?

01:11:46   That's the whole tweet. But, uh, I loved your, uh, your, your, your end, your final sentence

01:11:54   when you wrote that up yesterday. Yes. I think I recall hearing something about this once,

01:12:01   but uh, Ben Thompson says, Ben, our friend of the show, actual friend, literal friend

01:12:06   of the show, Ben Thompson says that he was asked by several people yesterday, is this

01:12:11   true? You know, that there are people who don't know that Apple, you know, that don't

01:12:15   pay attention to this closely, people outside the tech circle, uh, you know, which I guess

01:12:20   should not be surprising. I think they're, they're probably the most people's concern

01:12:25   is does that mean they charge 30% more? Right. As opposed to, Oh, it's the same, you know,

01:12:31   it's the same, then they find it. It's the same price. They're like, Oh, I don't care.

01:12:36   Yeah. I, and yeah, cause that's my, my take too is that, all right, once these people

01:12:41   who didn't know about it, are they then outraged or are they not surprised at all? I mean,

01:12:47   you and I know this, but from having so many friends who are app developers full time,

01:12:53   um, that, or especially in the earlier days of the app store, when I think there were,

01:12:59   there was a lot more indie app action on the iOS app store. Um, but then people would go

01:13:06   and they'd say, Oh, well, what do you do? And you're like, I make iPhone apps and they're

01:13:10   like, Oh, so you work for Apple. And they're like, no, no, I make them on my own. And they're

01:13:15   very confused. And that there were a lot of people maybe still are who assume that just

01:13:19   about anything that's not from another big company on the app store is from Apple. You

01:13:24   know, again, that makes no sense if you know anything, but people, you know, they're not

01:13:30   that they're not paid to know anything, you know, they're the people that's not, people

01:13:34   don't need to know that, but an awful lot of people think like indie games are effectively

01:13:39   all like Apple arcade, right? That, that Apple is paying for them and that the money goes

01:13:44   to Apple.

01:13:45   Yeah. I mean, I didn't don't think about it that much just because, yeah. So I, I actually

01:13:51   know better. I actually, so I actually think there are a lot of people who would be surprised

01:13:55   that Apple quote unquote only takes 30% of the sale and they're like, 70% goes to somebody

01:14:00   else. That's not what it sounds like a good deal. Right. And it's, you know, I think people

01:14:06   on this wasn't, I mean, when Amazon had, you know, well, it was like book sales at least,

01:14:10   right. At least it used to be this way. When you wish, when you independently sold a book

01:14:14   through Amazon, they took like 90% didn't they back, you know, before the iPad, some

01:14:19   ridiculously large amount. I don't, I'm sure they don't do that anymore, but yeah, something

01:14:25   like that. It was, it was crazy and it didn't, I don't know. I don't remember, but it was,

01:14:31   it was, it was not as, it was not as friendly to the creators for lack of a better summer.

01:14:41   But it relatively, but I do think, you know, I, so I don't know that Apple is in trouble.

01:14:46   I am. In fact, I would say I don't think Apple is in trouble with their app store situation

01:14:52   just because now they have a high profile opponent who is going to publicize it endlessly,

01:14:59   but it's, it's uncharted territory for them, right there. They, they dealt with Epic. Epic

01:15:05   was the one who really put their, their chin out there and they're dealing with the government

01:15:11   regulators here in the U S and especially in Europe regarding this and companies like

01:15:16   Spotify doing it the traditional way by petitioning regulators and writing white papers and submitting,

01:15:23   you know, things through the process as opposed to just bleeding it out on Twitter. But it,

01:15:29   you know, I think it puts them in uncharted territory and it's, you know, again, it's

01:15:34   unpredictability is what makes Twitter much less desirable as an advertising venue for

01:15:39   brand advertisers right now. But the unpredictability works in Musk's favor for a public argument.

01:15:46   Yeah. It's, it's hard to strategize against an unpredictable opponent is, is one way to

01:15:54   put it. Right. All right. Let me take a break here and thank our next sponsor and it's

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01:17:51   to Squarespace. Uh, should we, I segue from Twitter. Yeah, I was going to say it's an

01:17:58   exhausting topic. It is led this point. It was fun at the beginning and now it's got

01:18:03   to the point where it's like every day is another let's segue from Twitter then to Mastodon,

01:18:10   which I have not really written about or talked about. Uh, it is what you, you're on it and

01:18:19   using it. So why don't you describe Mastodon for people? I'm sure everybody's heard about

01:18:23   it, but it's, Hmm. Yeah. So it's, I mean, from a user perspective, it seems a bit like

01:18:30   early Twitter. A lot of the apps are a little clunky. You either use the web interface or

01:18:36   you use an app that's clunky. The nice thing is that there, there are, there are a number

01:18:42   of apps, at least on the iPhone. There's only a couple on the Mac. Um, and none of them

01:18:48   are great, but this, but the idea is the, this is a server based thing that anybody

01:18:56   can set up their own server and then the servers talk to each other and you join a particular

01:19:03   server. So I have a join mastodon.social, which is the largest one. And I think has

01:19:08   since cut off, um, adding new people at least temporarily because they had so many people

01:19:13   who were switching from Twitter to Mastodon that they couldn't handle the load. Um, and

01:19:18   you know, people are doing this for not really any money, I guess. I mean, you know, he has

01:19:22   a, he has a, um, Patreon. Um, I do contribute to the Patreon and like, you know, like if

01:19:29   you, if you work for a company like, um, I think, uh, what's the company that, uh, makes

01:19:34   the tap bots. Yeah. Um, they have their own, they're running their own server now and,

01:19:39   um, it looks like they are going to do, um, a client map so that, um, looking forward

01:19:45   to that, the makers of tweet bot, the makers of tweet bot. Yeah. And I don't know what

01:19:51   else to say about it. Um, it's much more confusing than Twitter. Certainly joining is very much

01:19:57   more confusing than Twitter because you have to pick an instance that to join and then

01:20:02   your handle is like, wait, no, I'm it's mastodon.social/at-molt. That's my whole user ID and it becomes complicated

01:20:15   trying to figure out how to, um, link to tweets. It becomes complicated trying to figure out

01:20:19   how to link to someone that you want, you know, if you want to follow them or have other

01:20:23   people follow them or whatever, or yourself. Um, so a lot of it is difficult to manage.

01:20:31   And so I think for lots of people, it's not going to be easy to use. It's certainly not

01:20:35   as easy to use as Twitter, right? They call it the Fediverse it is because it's federated.

01:20:41   So the, the, the universe of federated websites or, or services that are, and it's not just

01:20:48   mastodon. It's called activity pub, I believe is the sort of pro the open protocol. So,

01:20:55   uh, and a lot of, a lot of other services are starting to tie into that. Right. Like,

01:21:01   um, tumblr has promised. Yes, it's not there yet, but micro micro.blog from again, actual

01:21:09   friend of the show, Manton Reese, which is not mastodon, but is micro blogging, which

01:21:15   is like, you can post really short, uh, no, you don't need a subject or anything. You

01:21:19   just post a little short thing. You, when you follow people on microblog, you can at

01:21:24   reply them and it's Twitter like at a very high level. And by integrating with these

01:21:32   protocols, your micro.blog account can federate with mastodon. And what you can do and what

01:21:42   works across this is confusing because it isn't centralized. Uh, you know, the analogy,

01:21:48   you know, the analogy actually works and it's modeled, I guess, on email in some way where

01:21:53   you, like you said, you're at moltz@mastodon.social. So you've got two at symbols, your name and

01:22:02   your, the at your instance name. And if somebody else is on, there's another big one called

01:22:09   mastodon.online and somebody else could be moltz@mastodon.online and there's, you know,

01:22:18   so that your name is not unique except on your instance, but that's just like email

01:22:23   where there's only one. Yeah. Jane Doe@gmail.com. God bless her if that's a real person, but

01:22:32   um, you know, there's all, there can only be one username at domain for email. There

01:22:40   can only be one username at domain for mastodon, but you can it. And again, email used to work

01:22:47   like this way back in the nineties, in the early days when all of the emails through

01:22:51   like pine and elm on the terminal, your local users, like when I was at Drexel university,

01:22:59   I didn't need to know their full address. I just needed their username, you know, so

01:23:03   I was UJ Gruber, undergrad J Gruber. It was my assigned email address in the computer

01:23:09   science department. I could email if you were there, UJ moltz@mastodon.com and I wouldn't

01:23:15   need to type in the rest of your email address if it was just your username. I was on there,

01:23:23   you know, and now, you know, my email client was the server. So you can do that on Mastodon,

01:23:28   like so I'm on mastodon.social as well and I can just @moltz you without the rest of

01:23:37   it and it'll work this. But to me that's a little confusing, right? It's and email quickly

01:23:43   got away from that where no matter even if you were at work and everybody has the same

01:23:48   at company.com address, you still are sending email to the username at company.com. Yeah,

01:23:55   it. I mean the nice thing that it allows that having those different instances allow is

01:24:02   that you can I mean if it works out correctly, you could have be on an instance where either

01:24:07   it's your company or it's a group of people that you share an interest with and when you

01:24:13   go you can look at just the timeline for that instance right and that has benefits that

01:24:18   I'm not taking advantage of any of those benefits because I happen to be on the largest instance

01:24:22   and looking at it is just you know it's useless because it's just a constant stream of right

01:24:27   random posts from different people. Right, it's effectively like looking at it because

01:24:34   mastodon.social is so big it is the biggest. It's effectively like looking at all of Twitter

01:24:41   in the early days. Yeah, when you used to have that tab. Thousands of users or a hundred

01:24:46   thousand users not hundreds of millions but you could and there are smaller instances

01:24:53   that maybe only have a hundred people or only friends you know somebody can set up a mastodon

01:24:58   instance and you know in theory I could set one up and have only former guests of the

01:25:04   talk show on and if you wanted an account you know maybe there'd you know so there'd

01:25:08   be like two dozen people on the instance. It's not the worst idea. I think it's a

01:25:17   really solid idea. I just think that it does not always work effectively. I think the idea

01:25:25   that it's going to lead to a fantastic outcome is idealistic and I'm certainly rooting

01:25:30   for it and again I hate to be the rainer on the parade. I guess you don't piss on a parade

01:25:35   but you could but let's just call it rain. I hate to be the weather weather man calling

01:25:43   for rain on the parade but I don't I don't see it working out as a as a replacement for

01:25:50   Twitter but I will say I will say that I mean I have but I've been able to it has it has

01:25:57   effectively replaced it has replaced the aspect of Twitter which is like being a part of a

01:26:03   community and being able to see posts from other people who I you know know online and

01:26:09   I mean the thing that it hasn't done is replace you know the news aspect of it very well because

01:26:16   there aren't any I mean there are some but there aren't very many professional news organizations

01:26:22   that have accounts on there to follow at this point or like you know entertainment stuff

01:26:29   I want to know you know I'm interested in because I do a podcast about dumb superhero

01:26:33   shows you know that kind of stuff so it it's a work in progress but you know I do see more

01:26:39   and more people joining it and I do see more and more organizations joining it right and

01:26:43   Neil Dash was on my show two episodes ago and mentioned there's a I'll put the link

01:26:49   in the show notes again it's in the Neil Dash show but there's a couple of tools including

01:26:53   one that's made with the Neil's company's tool glitch called Feta finder FED fed if

01:26:59   finder not like Kevin Fed what was that guy's name he married Britney Spears yeah Federer

01:27:06   not him and not Roger Federer it's about the Federation of Mastodon instances but you can

01:27:12   use Feta finder you log in with your Twitter credentials it crawls through you give it

01:27:16   permission it crawls through your Twitter followers and you can do things like there's

01:27:23   I should put this in the show notes to the link to the recommended what do you do if

01:27:27   you're moving to Mastodon or just even if you're staying on Twitter but are adding

01:27:32   Mastodon to your social presence how do you let people discover you there are recommended

01:27:37   ways of putting it in putting your your Mastodon ID in your bio for Twitter and a tool like

01:27:44   Feta finder will crawl through all of your followers the people you follow look for those

01:27:50   hey that this person you follow on Twitter they've got this thing in their bio they're

01:27:56   so-and-so at Mastodon whatever on Mastodon and then you can subscribe to them on on Mastodon

01:28:03   and it's you know it is it's it's super it's fun to see it moving fast it there is absolutely

01:28:10   positively a spirit of the 20 year ago open web yeah that that you know never went away

01:28:17   but obviously went through a long cycle where the the internet was ever increasingly dominated

01:28:24   by an incredibly large instances to borrow the the the the Mastodon term right Facebook

01:28:33   is an incredibly you know the largest it's hard you know literally with three or four

01:28:37   billion users as large as a social network could be without interplanetary networking

01:28:43   to other civilizations right as so long as the internet is limited to earth Facebook

01:28:49   is as big as anything could get but even email right email used to be everybody you know

01:28:55   20 some years ago there were very few people in my address book who had the same domain

01:29:02   name for their email right it was all you know everybody had you know either a personal

01:29:06   domain or a school domain and now it's all gmail.com or icloud.com or whatever you know

01:29:14   that that a handful of big instances won out but there's tools for that and that's that's

01:29:19   very fun yeah I think eventually we'll get to the point where I mean I would imagine

01:29:24   we'll get to the point where services like I'm trying to think of this Dreamhost which

01:29:33   is one of the services that I use currently you know they they have these one-click installs

01:29:38   for things like WordPress I would imagine that they will set up one-click installs for

01:29:41   a Mastodon instance at some point the trick of course is that you run into the same problems

01:29:47   the Twitter experiences if you're gonna run your own instance that's just you that's fine

01:29:51   but you're gonna run an instance that is like well I'm gonna say because I thought maybe

01:29:54   I should set one up and like invite some people to it and then you suddenly have to become

01:29:59   the moderator for that instance right and you're on the hook so for everything everybody's

01:30:03   been and this has been an issue with the early you know with this with this transition of

01:30:08   a lot of people fleeing Twitter and going to Mastodon is you're running into lots of

01:30:13   moderation clashes and one of the thing that's one of the things that's very well that is

01:30:19   sort of a cultural feature that's often used on Mastodon is content warning so they're

01:30:25   it's built into the system that you can you know obscure your post with a content warning

01:30:31   and write you know this is about whatever it is and then they if people don't want to

01:30:36   see what it is they you know like you know like grizzly murder you could you could put

01:30:41   it as a content warning or you know politics or whatever and you know and people who are

01:30:47   who are okay with going ahead to read it can click the button and then see the post and

01:30:53   you know a lot of people of color came over from Twitter to Mastodon and were just you

01:30:59   know posting things about racism and not putting them behind content warning warnings because

01:31:04   they shouldn't really have to but that's the kind of thing that riled people on Mastodon

01:31:13   and so they would you know get take umbrage and tell them that they should be putting

01:31:18   content warnings about this content about racism which is a really bad look for people

01:31:23   to do that because if you go around and tell people of color that they should not be talking

01:31:28   about racism openly then you're basically just you know providing cover for racism so

01:31:34   these kinds of things these kinds of problems have crept up here and there I really feel

01:31:37   like most I mean like there were a couple of moderation problems on Mastodon social

01:31:43   I think the you know the guy who runs that instance responded pretty well to to those

01:31:49   and you know said these okay this is a mistake I wish you apologies for both of these things

01:31:55   this is what we're going to try and do to go you know going forward to do this better

01:31:58   we're still looking for more more moderators because these people you know flooded over

01:32:02   from Twitter to Mastodon and and they can't keep up with the moderation right so you know

01:32:09   it's a lot of it's a lot of growing pains and um I I'm you know I think I feel like

01:32:15   for the most part everybody's trying to work them out but uh well you know it's well and

01:32:19   I work in progress for sure I sympathize with the long time Mastodon users I don't remember

01:32:24   what happened but apparently I signed up for Gruber at Mastodon social in 2018 it seems

01:32:30   like listening to other podcasts like ATP there's a lot of other people in our circle

01:32:36   who did the same thing I don't remember what it was I don't remember um yeah it was yeah

01:32:42   it was something politically related I believe a lot of us went over and started setting

01:32:48   up Mastodon instances and there's your accounts rather there's a lot there's a lot I don't

01:32:53   remember from around 2018 yeah trying not to uh but I had signed up for it then but

01:32:59   obviously there was some you know many thousands I don't know tens of thousands of people who've

01:33:07   been actively using Mastodon for four years and have created their own culture and were

01:33:13   very happy you know it's it's like you know homesteading right like so okay colonial America

01:33:21   was all on the east coast and then uh people Americans started moving west and they'd have

01:33:29   small pockets of small communities and then all of a sudden uh millions of people came

01:33:36   over and founded Chicago you know what I mean and you know it it it's it's clearly the influx

01:33:47   of recent in the last month massive influx surely I I it's got to be the case that there

01:33:53   are now more users on who've signed up for Mastodon in the last month than who signed

01:33:58   up in the previous four years combined but it's those people who'd been using it for

01:34:02   four years who established their own culture and these things like the content warnings

01:34:08   and I sympathize you know that if you were happy in September and October of this year

01:34:14   with the way Mastodon was working for you as your quiet little space that is Twitter

01:34:18   like but with your own community and these people and none of the nonsense that drove

01:34:24   you away from Twitter or you know if you used again maybe you still kept your Twitter going

01:34:29   but also enjoyed using Mastodon separately but embraced the differences culturally I

01:34:36   sympathize that all these Twitter people are coming over and are acting you know like yahoos

01:34:43   yeah like yahoos right which is you know and I hate to say it because I am I am I am a

01:34:49   proud American I even after all of this I love this country and you know I'm it's impossible

01:34:57   for me to separate my personality from American culture but it is a very American thing to

01:35:02   do I wreck I am self-aware enough of myself and America that that is a very American thing

01:35:07   to do is to be new in town and start demanding that you conform to the norms from Twitter

01:35:13   as opposed to the norms that you've happily established here the content warning thing

01:35:18   drives me nuts I think it's crazy now I would say the way to explain it and it's I guess

01:35:24   Twitter I guess clients have to use it I mean if they didn't I don't I it's so culturally

01:35:29   I don't know why they wouldn't I mean but you don't it's not on by default right so

01:35:33   but the best if you haven't used mastodon the best way to think about it is for spoilers

01:35:38   right so if yeah if mastodon had existed in 1981 you could go see the Empire Strikes Back

01:35:46   and then and again here I'll use the verb I mentioned that we'd use it instead of tweets

01:35:51   they have toots you can although that's changed too oh has it yeah cuz apparently it was originally

01:35:57   posts and then toots came about because some youtuber was talking about mastodon and joked

01:36:04   that if they changed it from posts to toots that he would donate to the development and

01:36:11   so they did and he got I don't know how much he donated I mean like but well some of these

01:36:16   youtubers have a lot of money so maybe yeah I know yeah and then they recently you know

01:36:22   in the I think in the 4.0 update for mastodon they set it back to post but a lot of the

01:36:28   I mean you know it's already in the culture and it's also in a lot of the third-party apps

01:36:32   so I don't know I don't know if it'll ever go away completely but it is not it's not

01:36:36   currently part of the official ringo they use it they you know as opposed to farting

01:36:42   there they they yeah it is like a trumpet you know tooting yeah well and you know I

01:36:48   think that the main developer is European and I think the the youtuber was also not

01:36:55   not American so that in that implication that definite meaning was not intended well then

01:37:00   I'll go back to post you could post on your mastodon and coming right out of the Empire

01:37:04   Strikes Back you could post that holy shit Darth Vader is Luke's father and then if

01:37:11   you put the appropriate content warning that it's a spoiler on it you would have you'll

01:37:16   anger nobody yeah and break no norms and ruin the movie for no one and only other your people

01:37:24   who follow you who've also been in line to see it on day one could unfurl it and then

01:37:29   they can write you know so spoilers would be the the it's actually the best that's

01:37:34   the well yeah I mean that's the that's the use that I think everybody can I yeah I think

01:37:40   that the culture around some some some communities on mastodon of using those things for practically

01:37:51   everything practically everything and I don't even understand some cases at least with like

01:37:55   you said like with talking about some people want anything of a discussion of racism behind

01:38:01   a button because it it bothers you to see anything think about it to even think about

01:38:06   it I mean I will say that you know I mean the years 2016 to 2020 there were a lot of

01:38:16   politics things that I did not want to look at and being on Twitter was extremely stressful

01:38:22   and you know no matter how much I muted certain people and topics you'd still end up seeing

01:38:28   something that would you know bleed over in one way or another and so I kind of I mean

01:38:33   I get it to I get it to a certain degree like I understand there are times there are definitely

01:38:40   times when I don't want to be and that's one of the nice things about being on mastodon

01:38:44   now is is that it's not so angst ridden I guess it's a it's a little bit more like

01:38:51   Twitter used to be back yeah you know before everything went to hell and a little bit more

01:38:58   fun that way so it's like I kind of get it but I also I also do think like oh my gosh

01:39:03   people are putting these things on on like posts that are in no way controversial right

01:39:10   yeah we're getting versatile yeah so I and I just sort of feel like I don't know I don't

01:39:16   think that's helping with their coat with the culture of friendliness and avoiding angst

01:39:21   my opinion if I become an active mastodon user I would I can't foresee using that for

01:39:27   anything other than spoilers for movies and stuff like that and and if anybody is bothered

01:39:33   by the fact that I'll tweet or toot or post or whatever about things that you think I

01:39:38   should put use these content warnings for then just don't follow I mean I that's and

01:39:44   again I'm not trying to be dismissive I'm just like I I'm not getting into that and

01:39:48   I actually think that's the whole point of following somebody is I would like to hear

01:39:51   and see what you do and I don't want to have to tap on all these things I find I think

01:39:55   I think that's a perfectly fine decision to make too and and you know I mean I I understand

01:40:01   that a little bit more than I understand putting content warnings on literally everything but

01:40:06   if you also want to do that that's fine too yeah I but I'm probably not gonna follow

01:40:10   you before we wrap up I should add that I do have that is me on Gruber at mastodon dot

01:40:17   social I have not posted anything yet I've favorited some I'm hesitant to become active

01:40:24   like if I want to become active I want to I want to know I'm there to stay and I'm very

01:40:28   uncertain then there's a thing there's a feature a couple of warnings in my opinion you can

01:40:36   move from one instance to another but it's it's a lot like moving from it's like you

01:40:42   can get a new email address your email doesn't come with you so let's say well you're yeah

01:40:46   you know your followers do yes so so you lose all your old I mean well you don't lose them

01:40:52   your old account will still be there I mean you can I mean I had I've had more than one

01:40:56   account and I moved from I moved from mastadon dead social to a different server so everybody

01:41:01   instantly who was following me on mastadon dead social was following me on the new server

01:41:05   right and then that server shut down so I moved back and they all came back but I lost

01:41:10   the posts right in between because that server shut down right it so if yeah so you're at

01:41:16   the liberty of the server you're on existing in perpetuity for your for your post to exist

01:41:22   in perpetuity I'm not complaining about the fact that when if I move to a different mastadon

01:41:28   server my account I think what they've done is perfect for what they've designed that

01:41:33   your followers move so if there's a thousand people out there who follow me and I move

01:41:38   to Gruber at mastadon dot something else and those thousand people just automatically still

01:41:45   follow me after I flipped that switch but my previous posts are still over on the old

01:41:50   server I get it that they can't move your posts with you because it would be a content

01:41:56   moderation nightmare some yeah somebody is on a an instance with a very liberal policy

01:42:04   on whatever subject matter X subject matter X and you've got 10,000 posts about it and

01:42:12   then you move to an instance where X is either not allowed or is much more stringently moderated

01:42:18   you can't just you well you could but he it's a good design that your 10,000 existing

01:42:23   posts don't move over and you know and then there's the old adage from way back at the

01:42:30   origin of the web like 1991 you know tim burners-lee that cool URLs don't change you know that

01:42:37   your URL for your posts shouldn't change from one instance to another but it just makes

01:42:42   me hesitant to dive all in unless I'm really really sure that mastadon dot social or wherever

01:42:47   else I might create an account is really where I want to stay yeah I and I wish I was on

01:42:52   a different I wish I was on an instance that I felt more I mean I mean I don't think this

01:42:56   one's gonna go anywhere but I don't you know I don't feel like it represents me in any way

01:43:01   and I don't feel like I'm getting any benefit out of that right it it seems like a neutral

01:43:06   server it's it means it means no more about who you are or what groups you're in than

01:43:11   being on Twitter itself I'm you know I guess I'm not as precious about my tweets I mean

01:43:19   I I have downloaded my Twitter my I downloaded my Twitter history like a few years ago and

01:43:26   then all these people recently were like oh I got a Russian me you know make sure I get

01:43:29   my archive got to get my archive before you know musk burns the whole site to the ground

01:43:35   and I was like I got a couple years ago so I don't really like I don't feel like I need

01:43:40   the the the the Delta between 2018 and today yeah I don't know it's it's breaking me down

01:43:50   though I might start to yeah I mean like I said I mean it's it's it's helped it's I

01:43:55   mean it it's like going on methadone after you know an addiction like I it's helped me

01:44:00   not be looking at Twitter all the time because I it man I've been on this been on that site

01:44:07   for 15 years and it really became part of my part of my everyday experience so yeah

01:44:13   part of this is part of your mental state every day yeah kinda for better better and

01:44:17   worse and this is really made it much easier to go without it so the last I guess the last

01:44:25   thing I'll say about it is maybe it's not the worst thing in the world that mastadon

01:44:29   seems by design and then human nature destined never to become a mainstream breakout maybe

01:44:37   that's yeah it could be maybe that's you know not the worst thing in the world that then

01:44:42   a lot of you know the things that I that the fond memories I have of early Twitter are

01:44:47   because it wasn't mainstream and and exactly mastadon has an upper ceiling on its mainstream

01:44:52   appeal because of its conceptual complication of the being federated maybe that's not the

01:45:01   worst thing in the world and maybe that's sort of the secret to it and why you know

01:45:06   five years from now we'll look back at this episode of the podcast and my hesitance to

01:45:11   dive in will look foolish you know because hey it's a lot better over there because right

01:45:16   our buddy elbert mcmurray who lives who I saw last night he had a he created a chart

01:45:22   this was a long time ago even but you know it was a it was a graph of number of Twitter

01:45:27   users and it's you know it's line that went you know slowly going up and then all of a

01:45:32   sudden shot up at the end and then he highlighted like the first the first three years in there

01:45:37   with it you know where the line was very low and and and put a bar around and saying the

01:45:42   good years so it is a little I think it's a little bit like that it's not exactly the

01:45:47   same of course but I get that sort of vibe sometimes all right I'm gonna take a break

01:45:52   here and thank our third and final sponsor our good friends at collide they spell it

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01:47:40   i we're back from the sponsor break but i have one more mastodon quip you mentioned

01:47:44   the dearth of mac native clients there's a bunch of ios apps that are in development

01:47:49   and you have a bunch to choose from it's actually so many it's fun it reminds me of the early

01:47:54   days of twitter you know where there's no consolidation in the third-party clients and

01:48:01   there's a lot of good options uh really no i hate to say it because i don't want to crap

01:48:07   on anybody's existing apps but there's no there's no good mac app there's mastodon is

01:48:12   the mass and that's the yeah that seems like the best one that's what i'm currently using

01:48:16   but it's missing a ton of features it's so early days it's well and i think yeah i mean

01:48:20   a lot of a lot of you know they were they these were probably just hobby you know side

01:48:25   gigs for people who are developing developing them for fun for the most part i guess i don't

01:48:30   know but um and so but they there was no urgency right there weren't that many users and now

01:48:37   there's a lot and um it's becoming a bigger bigger deal yeah but it makes me the the the

01:48:44   die-hard mac user in me is a little sad and it's you know nothing i'm not surprised by

01:48:47   but it's the way i'm not saying mac native mac development is dying but it's still shrinking

01:48:53   in my opinion and it's clearly being squeezed out by web apps right and and the answer is

01:48:58   well wait if there's no good mac clients what do people do on their desktop they use the

01:49:01   mastodon websites you know they go to the web the web interface you know it's like going

01:49:06   to twitter.com on your browser instead of using an app um and you know there's ways

01:49:12   to turn the website into a standalone app you know there's tools that let you do that

01:49:17   so you can command tab to it instead of just fishing it out of your browser tabs um but

01:49:23   i actually got this from you on mastodon today the most interesting mac client is a new one

01:49:30   called maxedadon and it looks really really cool but it's not going to be relevant to

01:49:39   a lot of people because it's actually a mac client for 68k yeah that's right classic max

01:49:46   in other words system system six system seven era 68k motorola 68 000 era max uh this is

01:49:54   not a joke it is a real client it warms my heart to see yeah oh yeah it's great i know

01:50:00   it's just you know the idea that somebody did that is um fresh fresh screen screenshots

01:50:06   of the classic system seven look with geneva nine all over the place so when when the most

01:50:13   interesting mac client is written for max that came out 32 years ago it's you know you

01:50:20   could kind of tell most people are using the website these days but hats off to i don't

01:50:25   think any i mean i have several you know max that run old operating systems but i don't

01:50:31   think any of them are connected to the internet currently there was no reason to uh what else

01:50:39   i had this on the agenda it's brief but talking about rumors of iphone iphone future iphones

01:50:46   um yeah there's a rumor that came out well number one there's the this iphone 14 production

01:50:52   hit i guess this isn't a rumor i mean there's uh really really interesting protests going

01:50:57   on all over china in reaction to their zero covid policy and the lockdown you know that's

01:51:04   the china people in china are fed up and it's an unprecedented in decades amount of public

01:51:11   protests in china uh about this i've linked to a couple things yesterday um but one of

01:51:18   the places that's been hit by this is apple's foxconn facility the you know and people call

01:51:24   it iphone town i think or apple town or something um but because of the the chinese government

01:51:31   zero covid policy when you know in covid spreading around over there uh they've locked down the

01:51:37   the campus and you know effectively turned the the dormitories at the factories into

01:51:42   a prison where you're you know not allowed to leave and i don't think it's an exaggeration

01:51:48   to describe it as a riot that you know riot broke out at one point a couple days ago amongst

01:51:53   the people who are employed there um people are upset i don't i honestly don't think that

01:51:58   this is out there's nothing apple can do about it there's nothing foxconn can do about it

01:52:02   it's the chinese government's policy um yeah but people are fed up but the downwind effect

01:52:08   of that for apple is apparently that you know and apparently it's particularly the factory

01:52:14   that is producing the iphone 14 pro models pro and pro max and bloomberg vlad savav who

01:52:22   used previously worked at the verge is now a reporting for bloomberg i think he's stationed

01:52:26   over in asia judging by his instagram he's a great photographer too but um that they're

01:52:33   projecting bloomberg reported that it's going to be a six million unit shortfall for the

01:52:39   quarter and the quarter is obviously the most important one for apple the holiday quarter

01:52:44   is when apple sells the most iphones by far you know that when you look at their quarterly

01:52:49   results there's it's you know not quite as pronounced as back in the ipod era but there's

01:52:55   this you know cycle cycle then the holiday quarter is a big spike and then it goes down

01:53:01   down you know and it's not like they sell few iphones yeah the other nine months of

01:53:05   the year but this is when they sell the most um ming chi kuo posted on twitter about an

01:53:11   hour ago and said that it's going to be more like 15 to 20 million oh that's and yeah there's

01:53:16   a big difference right and yeah uh ballpark math i mean apple famously no longer reports

01:53:22   things like the average selling price for an iphone but if it's only the iphone 14 pro

01:53:26   models i i think and a thousand dollars is a very fair average selling price considering

01:53:35   you know might even be a little conservative given the prices of the various capacities

01:53:40   and the max and etc but if you just to make the ballpark math easier say it's a thousand

01:53:45   dollars per iphone uh every million is a billion dollars of revenue so six million shortfall

01:53:54   is six six billion and if it's if ming chi kuo's correct 10 or 15 that's 10 or 15 billion

01:54:00   dollars in sales um yeah it you know you and i are are i think infamous for spending tim

01:54:08   kook's money during your appearances on this podcast um but i you know you don't have to

01:54:17   be uh you know a a crypto genius to to realize that we're talking about sums of money that

01:54:25   definitely get tim kook's attention sure oh yeah this is not a rounding error this is

01:54:31   not their 50 million dollar ad spend on twitter or you know uh 10 to 15 billion wow that i

01:54:38   mean that is humongous and i guess my question as a topic for discussion is how much of the

01:54:46   the bump the spike for this quarter's iphone sales year after year how much is because

01:54:53   this is the quarter when they're brand new and the enthusiasts are buying them because

01:54:58   they're new and how much is it the holiday gift buying because if it's just because they're

01:55:04   new i would think that all of those sales will get deferred until next you know the

01:55:10   first quarter of next year and you know just place the order now and when it comes it comes

01:55:15   but if it's for a holiday gift i don't know you know i i just checked if you miss christmas

01:55:20   you miss christmas right and i checked yesterday and if you try to order a new 14 pro on apple.com

01:55:26   the dates they're they're promising is december 28th for just i i didn't go through every

01:55:32   color and every combination but it seems pretty consistently december 28th which is after

01:55:36   christmas uh i think i don't know i'm i'm such a procrastinator on gift buying that

01:55:43   i'm not even sure but i believe that that's too late and i can't i can't help but wonder

01:55:49   if you're thinking like you know for you know your your teenager or your spouse or whoever

01:55:55   was thinking about getting an iphone 14 pro is a christmas gift and you can't get it in

01:56:00   time for christmas uh number one you might but i wouldn't take the chance if it was the

01:56:04   gift right because apple famously under promises and over delivers on those shipping dates

01:56:09   so i'll bet even though it says december 28th if if i ordered one right now i think there's

01:56:14   a very good chance it would arrive before december 25th but who can count on that yeah

01:56:20   for what again we're talking about a thousand dollars or more what's clearly going to be

01:56:26   if it were going to be a holiday gift would be like the biggest gift right that's the

01:56:30   big thing for so-and-so in the family this year they're getting a new iphone 14 have

01:56:35   you ever given given a night an iphone for uh like for christmas i guess for or for am

01:56:41   i like i don't even a birthday i don't like i think i've done it for hank yeah i think

01:56:45   we did i think we did it for jonas's first iphone yeah like like seven seven really i

01:56:51   don't directly recall that um but um i'm certainly given in computers before but right it always

01:56:57   seemed like a weird thing it's always funny when apple sends out their holiday like buying

01:57:03   guide or whatever it's like get somebody a two thousand dollar laptop like you really

01:57:10   overestimate what i spend on people same here and you know and same with about you know

01:57:15   a thousand dollar phone um i it seems like more of like a necessity thing to me that

01:57:21   you know you have to buy in and you know and since the cycle being what it is it usually

01:57:27   ends up being something we buy in september october yeah but i don't know there is that

01:57:31   spike so what explains it you know and uh you know yes i guess more people do it than

01:57:37   i could imagine personally you know if i were less of an enthusiast for the iphone and idiotically

01:57:44   by buy one as soon as they go on sale every single year but i could imagine that for me

01:57:49   i am no matter what no matter which way the universe rolled out there's no way that i

01:57:53   was not going to be the difficult person to buy gifts for i am i am very difficult to

01:57:58   buy gifts for because there aren't many things i like the things i care about i'm extremely

01:58:03   picky about and when i want when i want something i just buy it get it yeah i i as soon as i

01:58:09   want something for myself i buy it uh and so it's you know it's a constant source of

01:58:13   why in the world did you buy that for yourself in november you should have told me i could

01:58:16   have got it for you for christmas and i slapped myself and i have patience i just don't think

01:58:21   that way right so i can imagine that as a difficult person to buy gifts for and i want

01:58:26   a new iphone i say oh why don't you just get me a new iphone for christmas that'd be great

01:58:29   and then you know i'd say oh that's great because it's a thousand dollars it you know

01:58:33   done yeah it'll be done i don't have to worry about buying you a bunch of little things

01:58:38   to add up to something you could just get night one nice present under the tree and

01:58:41   that would be great so i think it's something like that and so those still might get deferred

01:58:46   because you want one anyway and you know i i would be the good spirit if it were me and

01:58:51   i would just say you know and and uh my wife was like oh my god i was gonna get you told

01:58:55   me to get you that iphone for christmas i waited i just checked it says it's not coming till

01:59:00   december 28th now i'm you know i i bet you're the same way i'm a good sport i would say

01:59:04   oh my god who cares that's fine just put put it on a card put a card under the tree and

01:59:09   i'll open you know that's that's a picture of an iphone yeah no hard feelings don't even

01:59:13   that don't even sweat it it'll be fun you know it'll be something for me to open a couple

01:59:17   days after christmas i don't care i'm not you know but if it's for a kid or something

01:59:21   i don't know yeah right right and again when you're talking about the amount of iphones

01:59:25   apple sells in this quarter if if it's a five percent hit that's that's serious you know

01:59:31   yeah i mean it's not going to tank the company but no but yeah but it's yeah i mean and it's

01:59:36   not the thing about it of course is that it's not a i mean it's a it's a headwind for them

01:59:42   right but it's not something that's fundamentally wrong with the company right or the products

01:59:45   well except for the fact that the only thing that it points to for the company isn't about

01:59:50   the quarter in particular but that it shines a spotlight on their depend dependence on china

01:59:55   yep yep and we've all known that that could be problematic right it's yeah you know there's

02:00:02   the of course uh the what if china invades taiwan right yeah and takes them by force

02:00:08   and does a russia ukraine with taiwan um that that could i mean again i don't think it would

02:00:15   put apple out of business but it would it would crater the company right in theory and

02:00:20   if if the u.s in response did to china what and a lot of other companies right a lot of

02:00:27   companies right it's it it would it would be it would be in terms of the upheaval it

02:00:34   would cause american companies it it it would dwarf the russia ukraine situation right and

02:00:42   the biggest uh export from russia is the gas and oil that europe depends on american you

02:00:51   know americans haven't been filling their cars or their house you know household heaters

02:00:55   with russian gas and oil but it's a big deal in germany and other countries in europe that

02:01:01   the china would dwarf that even by the european standards in terms of how much of the world's

02:01:06   manufactured goods come out of come through china in some way um but apple is absolutely

02:01:13   you know and the iphone in particular is absolutely beholden to chinese assembly and production

02:01:18   and i know they've expanded and they you know make some models in india and i know they

02:01:24   they've got foxconn plants in brazil too but they're just a you know drop in the bucket

02:01:31   compared to china and however fast they're trying to broaden their dependence and i know

02:01:38   there's other products they've been making in vietnam i think a lot of air pods maybe

02:01:41   uh yeah i think that that sounds right go through vietnam uh so there there must be

02:01:47   i mean you know i'm sure it's it's very difficult right i mean because the that area of china

02:01:53   is so specifically set up to do all of this stuff yeah it's a it's a dedicated business

02:02:02   zone that does this for multiple companies major companies and it doesn't really exist

02:02:10   other places at least not yet anyway and i'm sure it's really a difficult thing to try

02:02:16   and not rely on that um and it must be because tim cook is normally he's like the best operations

02:02:25   guy in the world and he hasn't been able to figure out a way out of this box right effectively

02:02:33   though the the one big gamble in tim cook's tenure as ceo and going back to coo has been

02:02:39   a bet that china will remain a dependable participant in the broader worldwide i don't

02:02:52   know what you would call it the the global alliance of of countries that share certain

02:02:57   values you know and participate in the global economy yeah um and invading taiwan would

02:03:03   violate that i don't i think china gets that yeah but it thinks so too but you would i

02:03:08   would have thought russia would get it too i mean i'm i'm less surprised by russia invading

02:03:13   uk yeah russia is you know i think china's political infrastructure is a little bit more

02:03:20   i mean there is a you know a main guy at top but it's not it's not in the same degree as

02:03:25   it is right it it's different in a lot of ways and they had china obviously has more

02:03:30   to lose than russia but still russia's a little bit more like twitter right now yeah but you

02:03:38   know this whole thing with the covid zero policy highlights that g is out of touch in

02:03:45   some ways by through his insulation through the party infrastructure and they're you know

02:03:51   the the the stranglehold he you know he's he's rewritten the laws of the country so

02:03:56   that he he's now starting a third term where it was previous you know he pulled a michael

02:04:01   bloomberg you know and and the the culture there of not telling the boss bad news and

02:04:09   letting bad news go up when lets them you know it if he convinced himself and seemingly

02:04:16   won't back down from a obviously ill-conceived we're not going to tolerate any outbreaks

02:04:22   of covid period and and now we you know see actual protests and riots breaking out across

02:04:29   the country you know you wonder you wonder what he's being told about what would happen

02:04:34   if they took taiwan by force i don't know um it's obviously a bet and that's the to

02:04:38   me is where it might uh again i don't you and i don't give stock advice but you know

02:04:44   where i could see this hurting apple longer term in terms of the stock in terms of people's

02:04:48   outlook isn't the six million or ten to fifteen million wherever that number is iphone 14

02:04:54   pros in the last three months of 2022 it's just opening people's minds to the idea of

02:05:01   hey when when something really bad happens in china apple is apple there's nothing apple

02:05:06   can do about it yeah yeah so i thought that was interesting i'm i'm curious too and and

02:05:11   i you know i don't know you know they're again talking back to apple's advertising

02:05:16   scratch strategy they don't explain it it's inscrutable but i would expect that whatever

02:05:21   they have flexibility on in terms like tv commercials i think are very very flexible

02:05:26   up to the last minute where they can you know if they previous you know they say we want

02:05:30   30 seconds on this football game they can give the network a new 30-second spot you

02:05:36   know maybe not the last second but you know days in advance billboards you know are harder

02:05:41   you know you can't change billboards change on a regular schedule but i'm curious to i'm

02:05:45   going to try to pay attention to tv commercials and see if they shift to promoting the non-pro

02:05:50   iphone 14 and i know that they were going to advertise that anyway even if everything

02:05:55   was hunky dory but i'm curious if they just shift all into promoting the non-pro 14 which

02:06:02   apparently isn't affected you know just because they can sell it right you know yeah so here's

02:06:09   that well and i think that was the wasn't that the the mix uh they i mean they may have

02:06:14   some left over because i'd worth the the pros selling really well and the non-pros not selling

02:06:19   so great to begin with i i don't know i i never i take those i take all of those things

02:06:24   with a grain of salt you should because it's it it doesn't seem to me like it always seems

02:06:29   to me with those numbers that the only people who really know aren't going to tell it's

02:06:33   like tim cook you know and there's you know luka uh my easy uh you know and whoever else

02:06:39   has access to their spreadsheets but uh to to do what else do we have i the only other

02:06:46   thing i wanted to do is just to wrap up and circling back to sofa our first sponsor but

02:06:50   uh i have a couple of things i just to suggest to watch and i know you watch a lot of tv

02:06:56   you said you do the you do the the biff podcast you know um i want to recommend wholeheartedly

02:07:04   i have two shows now but the first one is um the peripheral on amazon prime have you

02:07:12   seen this i have started it and i'm i'm only a couple episodes two and a half episodes

02:07:17   and i think something like that it's good yeah it's really good and i enjoy it quite

02:07:21   a bit i mean i've tried to read some of his work um it's what's his name i can't william

02:07:25   gibson william gibson yeah i tried to read some of his work back in the 90s and i found

02:07:29   it like overly obtuse like i couldn't it was so jargony and like i was just like oh god

02:07:34   i i think i tried to read um neuromancer right i think that was the the big one yeah i tried

02:07:40   to read one of his books and it was just like it was too much for me i put it down um this

02:07:44   is a book that came out like i think in 2013 that they're making based in the show off

02:07:50   of and it's much more um approachable it's not so much future jargon i mean it's it's

02:07:57   very relatable in terms of like look and feel for um it looks like it could be just like

02:08:03   five years from now yeah i i'm exactly with you i remember back in the 90s uh and i think

02:08:08   i'm i'm very very sure that he either wrote one great feature article for wired magazine

02:08:14   or maybe even a couple and i was like man i i've always had this guy's fiction on my

02:08:20   list of things to try i love his non-fiction for wired uh he's a great obviously a great

02:08:26   writer and then i got one of his novels and sort of had the same experience of you where

02:08:30   i was looking for like bubble gum to chew and it's like this yeah not that it's bad

02:08:35   but it wasn't it wasn't easy an easy swallow so i was like uh i think it translates very

02:08:41   well to to tv though you know and anyway the gist of it fried up without spoiling anything

02:08:47   it is william gibsony in terms of future projections of technology and parts of it take place in

02:08:54   the future and uh it is from showrunners uh jonathan nolan and lisa joy who did if those

02:09:03   names seem familiar to you were the showrunners for westworld which i guess has been canceled

02:09:08   now after the last series um if i can't imagine how anybody who enjoyed westworld especially

02:09:15   the first season or two uh you would not enjoy this show i i i would i would think there's

02:09:21   like if not 100 venn diagram overlap 99 i can't imagine why somebody would enjoy westworld

02:09:29   and not enjoy this show so if you liked westworld especially the first two seasons i think you

02:09:33   will enjoy i enjoy this more because it seems more cohesive yeah i think i i enjoy it more

02:09:37   too it's also a little less like i wish i only watched the first season of westworld

02:09:42   and i thought it was excellent um but it's also rough right yeah and it's yeah it's real

02:09:47   it's real violent and yeah dark um this is not i mean it's there's violence in it but

02:09:53   it's not as dark i wouldn't say i mean it's you know it's dystopian for sure but it's

02:09:56   not like it's less brutal it's not yeah yeah yeah yeah it it's it and less disturbing i

02:10:01   guess uh yeah it's a little more adventurey than um yeah really good great cast uh yeah

02:10:09   really and the highest compliment i can pay for it pay to it is it was on my list i started

02:10:14   watching i wasn't paying attention to how many episodes there are in the season i got

02:10:18   to episode seven a week ago and it was the last one and i was despondent i was like i

02:10:24   can't wait for episode eight oh my god uh and i still don't know how many i guess there's

02:10:29   ten episodes i don't know but then episode eight came out over the weekend and i watched

02:10:32   and i thought maybe this was the season finale but it's not and um i don't know what i don't

02:10:37   know if i was hoping it would be or not because now i don't know what to do again until friday

02:10:40   when another episode comes out excellent show i really really enjoy it and i think people

02:10:45   who listen to the show will and i don't want to say anything more other than that it's

02:10:50   uh it's just very compelling and interesting and the last thing i'll say has perhaps the

02:10:56   best projection of future technology that that i've seen in a long long time in terms

02:11:04   of feeling very real like oh that could be exactly what it's like and the way that the

02:11:10   characters interact with it is exactly realistic which is that they're they are non-plus they're

02:11:16   absolutely not not amazed by their amazing technology at all yeah and you were talking

02:11:23   about actors and i don't know the guy's name but the guy who plays her brother so there's

02:11:26   is it chloe grace smurts yeah is the main character and she's great but like and i was

02:11:31   sort of like expecting the guy who plays her brother to just be sort of like oh he's you

02:11:35   know they cast this pretty lunkhead yeah yeah but um but he's really good and i mean and

02:11:41   his part unfolds i sort of thought that he was just going to be like background character

02:11:44   yeah but his part has a has another layer to it that i won't like yeah yeah discuss

02:11:50   but yeah it's it's fun yeah uh and again just perfect material for a 10-part show you know

02:11:58   i don't think it would make it would have made for a good two-hour movie at all i think

02:12:01   it would have been so you know it's just perfect for this and i think that's that's so true

02:12:06   for novels right it's like the old hitchcock used to supposedly never read novels or stopped

02:12:13   reading them at some point early in his life because he said that uh i stopped reading

02:12:18   novels because i can't stop thinking about turning them into movies but they're terrible

02:12:22   as movies because you have to cut so much and yeah what he did he liked reading short

02:12:26   stories because short stories translate to two-hour movie perfectly and you can pad them

02:12:31   out anyway great recommendation yeah anything from you that you well i i can't believe you

02:12:38   haven't watched andor yet i'm kind of flabbergasted that i that you haven't gotten on that because

02:12:44   that is and you should you should get on it as soon as possible because it is i think

02:12:47   it's absolutely fantastic all it is i yeah i'm skating on thin ice because i've been

02:12:53   uh on as near total media blackout on andor as possible yeah but now that it's out and

02:13:00   you know it it it's harder and harder and i'm i'm not on it's not innocent but it's

02:13:04   not a series that's really like uh it's like there's not a lot of spoilers right right

02:13:09   you know like um boba fett's not showing up or anything you know i mean it's it's character

02:13:14   driven and so it's just it's very good characters and great writing and um and even what i just

02:13:21   happens to take place in the star wars universe really right what i've heard about it is that

02:13:25   it it's the best star wars expanded universe thing hands down that they've made and if

02:13:30   you were turned off in any way by some of the other stuff if you're like ah everybody's

02:13:34   raving about this mandalorian but i don't love it you still might really love yeah i

02:13:38   know yeah yeah i mean it's the most adult star wars property that they've they've ever

02:13:44   made yeah the only reason that i haven't watched it yet is i was saving it to watch with jonas

02:13:48   who's off at college and then he came home for thanksgiving and spent the whole time

02:13:53   with his high school friends typical other other than thanksgiving day you know which

02:14:00   isn't really the time to watch uh to watch star wars so right right uh i'm saving it

02:14:06   again for the christmas break when no when i have been told i have been told that there

02:14:13   will be some some time with jonas in the house on the couch and he's probably seen it already

02:14:19   he swears he hasn't and he's an he's an honest kid so i believe him he would tell me it would

02:14:25   be the easiest thing in the world because i'm again i it i'm i'm the dad who's not going

02:14:29   to i'm not going to be heartbroken if he said hey you know what i was out with some friends

02:14:33   and we watched and or you should just go watch i'm not going to be her but you know i'm also

02:14:37   not going to be the one who he if anybody breaks it it's going to be him not me so i

02:14:42   haven't but it's certainly high on my list um yeah the other thing i'll toss out we amy

02:14:47   and i just watched all eight episodes in two nights and this is rare i mean amy does not

02:14:52   do that she usually falls asleep uh 1899 which is a new series on netflix yeah that's another

02:14:59   one that i'm like uh i'm an episode and a half into but but it's it's good it's gripping

02:15:04   it is it's nice and slow at the beginning too yeah there's a lot of it takes its time

02:15:09   um it doesn't really rush into whatever the heck is going on which i don't even know yet

02:15:12   well it's it's yeah hey i don't see how you could but it's another but it is it it's it

02:15:18   reminds me a little of the peripheral and i think all of these sort of shows of the

02:15:23   mysterious science fiction genre spooky whole show yeah it was good i mentioned this on

02:15:30   the rebound the other day it was and then dan and lex were like what are you talking

02:15:36   about but there's this whole genre of shows that are spooky whole shows yes they're um

02:15:40   like yeah what's the outer range is one and then there's the there's like a space one

02:15:46   some sort of space one on it's a jk simmons and um sissy spacek on on amazon prime i can't

02:15:52   remember the name of it uh i don't remember that one either but yeah i only watched the

02:15:56   first like i only saw like the first episode of that did you get back to it snell gave

02:16:00   me this one years ago it's called counterpart it also has jk side oh yeah so counterpart

02:16:07   i'll toss this out there for anybody who wants to have their heart broken yeah and the heart

02:16:11   breaking the heartbreaking part is that it was clearly meant for multiple seasons but

02:16:15   it didn't get renewed so there's only one season and so there's two there's two oh well

02:16:20   yeah there's two seasons um but it does and and it and it has a like you can take the

02:16:25   the ending of season two as a wrap up if you i mean it it works but i do think that they

02:16:29   meant to have more seasons yeah all right well then there were two but i i i gobbled

02:16:33   it up so quickly yeah uh counterpart is it's great but it's a spooky whole show there's

02:16:39   a spooky yeah yeah yeah it is a spooky whole show yeah uh i should i spoil i think i can

02:16:47   spoil the premise of counterpart yeah i think yeah i mean it comes out pretty quickly in

02:16:52   the in the show yeah the premise of counterpart is that at some point in the late 1960s during

02:16:58   the cold war there was some kind of physics accident in in berlin and it's the 80s but

02:17:06   anyway oh maybe yeah but decades ago yeah maybe yeah you're right probably the 80s but

02:17:10   it was during the cold war some sort of physics experiment in berlin went went wrong and there's

02:17:17   an underground passageway in a government building in berlin where if you walk through

02:17:22   you come out in berlin but it's it's there's parallel universes it's too yeah like the

02:17:28   world divided into two and so it's not a multiverse with infinite ones it's just a yeah one four

02:17:34   into two universes but anybody who was born before 1984 had therefore has a counterpart

02:17:43   in the other universe right and you all have the same memories up until that point up until

02:17:47   that lives diverge because the two universes go in different ways you know in one it's

02:17:52   a cold it's a cold war story with another universe is what it is right in one universe

02:17:57   you know dan marino won a couple super bowls you know and uh you know and who knows what

02:18:02   crazy you know butterfly flapping a wing in china repercussions of that happened but it's

02:18:06   a really interesting premise that was cut short but that's a spooky whole show i would

02:18:10   say uh lost was a spooky whole show yeah pretty much yeah right yeah because i mean there

02:18:15   is there is the bunker right right the hatch was was a spooky hole um 1899 has a little

02:18:23   bit of lost to it and you know again i'm not spoiling to it but it's sort of like i i

02:18:27   often feel like i loved lost for a couple of seasons and i loved it so much that it

02:18:33   had there was so much affection for the first season or two in my heart that i watched everything

02:18:39   afterwards even as i i was like oh this is not yet this is not what it was yeah i think

02:18:44   i just got i got to the i got to the point where it was it seemed like they don't really

02:18:48   have like a clear idea of where they're going no no so like i thought they had this grand

02:18:54   plan behind all this and it's slowly becoming clear that they don't exactly know where they're

02:18:59   going i also kind of think that that's what happened to west world in my opinion it it

02:19:03   was kind of like we have this fabulous premise and we know we have a season one of plot and

02:19:11   it's such a great premise and season one is such a great plot and we've we've devised

02:19:16   this interesting coterie of characters surely we'll figure out where it's going you know

02:19:23   and then it does it and so it seems like a huge cottage industry of these modern shows

02:19:27   like 1899 and a lot of these other ones are sort of like what if we did lost but we knew

02:19:33   where it was going right and i really do think you know a lot of times the way to get you

02:19:39   know it's that stupid malcolm gladwell 10 000 hours you know you practice you know i

02:19:44   don't think there's anything magic about 10 000 hours but practice makes perfect and i

02:19:48   think having made west world but wanting to return to some of the same themes but like

02:19:53   hey what if we maybe had a better idea of where it was going and oh my god there's a

02:19:58   novel that you know a great storyteller already figured out where it's going it it's better

02:20:04   to me i i it's you know it's different it's not like a reboot of west world but to me

02:20:09   i enjoy it more and probably the problem with game of thrones right oh yeah the final chapter

02:20:14   was not written by the genius who started the whole series right they caught up to them

02:20:20   yeah right and then they're like oh now what are we gonna do well let's change everything

02:20:23   yeah let's come up with an ending that everybody dislikes did you ever watch dark because that's

02:20:30   the same people made dark make 1899 oh well then it's i it's supposed to be very good

02:20:36   i started it and it seemed like it was interesting um but it also seemed uh not to put too fine

02:20:42   a point on it dark um and it came out you know during uh the the presidency presidency

02:20:47   of someone i wasn't really fond of so i i was not able to keep watching it speaking

02:20:52   of dark reality was already dark enough for me all right well i'll uh put on you know

02:20:57   i'll give it a try now that amy and i have run out of this one but yeah amy amy is was

02:21:02   i i it really says a gazillion uh credits to 1899 that she never fell asleep and we

02:21:08   watched four hours of it two nights in a row that's yeah that's pretty good she thinks

02:21:12   the fact that there's a lot of subtitles there's characters who speak languages like german

02:21:16   and other languages and so there's a fair amount of subtitles uh she thinks that helped

02:21:20   because yeah right because you gotta you gotta keep your eyes open you gotta keep your eyes

02:21:23   open you can't just close your eyes and i'll just listen for a couple minutes anyway thanks

02:21:29   for joining the show hope you had a good thanksgiving break um i will thank our uh sponsors for

02:21:35   the day we had sofa where you can track these shows that we mentioned and movies and books

02:21:39   and anything else and squarespace where you can set up your own brand online and collide

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02:21:52   and linux computers thanks john thanks john

02:21:56   [LAUGH]