0:00:00Someone says, Syracuse sounds really nasal.
0:00:02Yeah, welcome to the show.
0:00:08We used a different version of the theme song last week.
0:00:12And so our friend of the show, Jonathan Mann, that's M-A-double-N, who's the guy who
0:00:17wrote the initial theme song and the slightly beloved bleeps and bloops version, which is
0:00:23the one that Jon likes but nobody else does.
0:00:26He took it upon himself to write a new version and we sprinkled that into the show, or I
0:00:29I should say Marco sprinkled that into the show.
0:00:31Did you hear apparently on the After Dark for this week's Back to Work,
0:00:35Merlin Mann, our friend Merlin, covered it briefly and said he was working on a full cover.
0:00:40I'm very much looking forward to hearing that, because the brief part that he did sounded really good.
0:00:45[MUSIC]
0:00:54Hey Merlin, you should finish that up and we will play it.
0:00:57Which of course does nothing for you.
0:01:00This is like, you should work for free for exposure.
0:01:04He does this, sometimes he does style parodies, like he did a lot of that with the Male Chimp
0:01:08[music]
0:01:10But anyway, if Marilla's listening and he's doing a style parody, I would like to request
0:01:19an REM style parody.
0:01:21You can do like, you know, Murmurs or Fables or REM.
0:01:25[Music]
0:01:28It's right in his wheelhouse.
0:01:29Speaking of working for exposure, well, we should get to the penny arcade thing, but first we have some follow-up.
0:01:34Who wants to talk about PhotoStream?
0:01:36Not it.
0:01:37Jon, follow-up defaults to you.
0:01:39Alright, I mean, like, we keep talking about PhotoStream, and I don't even remember where this link came from, but...
0:01:45Oh yeah, Dave, whose last name I won't attempt to pronounce because he can't agree on how he wants people to pronounce his last name, but it starts with a "CH".
0:01:52I think it's "Chardier". I think that's safe.
0:01:54I think that's safe.
0:01:55He changes his mind.
0:01:56I've heard him change his mind.
0:01:57Anyway, he posted a link to this Knowledge Base article
0:02:00that looks like-- that is recent.
0:02:02It has a recent date on it.
0:02:03And it looks like it's in response
0:02:05to confusion about PhotoStream.
0:02:08And the relevant passage here, it
0:02:11provides some information that previously was not provided
0:02:14by any of the other documents.
0:02:15And it's not information about how PhotoStream works.
0:02:18It's information about motivations.
0:02:21And that, I think, is what a lot of people are missing.
0:02:23because you can explain all these rules
0:02:25and give out all these numbers
0:02:26and put all these facts about it,
0:02:28but it's like, but why, why?
0:02:29What are you trying to do with PhotoStream?
0:02:30So here's the important sentence.
0:02:32The photos that you upload to my PhotoStream
0:02:34are stored in iCloud for 30 days
0:02:36to give your devices plenty of time
0:02:37to connect to iCloud and download them.
0:02:40That's the key piece of missing information
0:02:41that I think is leading to a lot of confusion.
0:02:43What's the point of PhotoStream?
0:02:45It's there to get your photos somewhere
0:02:48that's not an individual device for 30 days
0:02:50so all your other devices can pull the stuff down.
0:02:53So all those limits and the numbers and everything
0:02:55or whatever don't matter because bottom line is
0:02:57it's supposed to just be a temporary holding pen
0:02:59for your stuff and it's supposed to stay there long enough
0:03:02for you to pull it down on your other devices.
0:03:05So that nixes PhotoStream as any sort of solution to,
0:03:09any sort of Everpix-like solution to hold all my photos
0:03:12for me.
0:03:13Doesn't matter what the limits are,
0:03:14doesn't matter anything else, bottom line is
0:03:16it's not gonna be there for more than 30 days,
0:03:18it's just a holding area.
0:03:19So I think that clarifies for me.
0:03:21And it's nice to see that from Apple
0:03:23because that was my impression of how it worked,
0:03:25reading all the other things,
0:03:26but seeing Apple explain,
0:03:28that simple sentence explaining the motivation
0:03:30of the service makes it clear
0:03:31that this is just not an accidental implementation detail
0:03:34and that soon it will hold all your photos or whatever.
0:03:36The intention of this feature is just a holding bin
0:03:38and Apple is saying it themselves.
0:03:39So I feel a little bit,
0:03:41I feel like I understand photo streaming
0:03:42a little bit more now.
0:03:43And now I know enough to not really pay attention to it
0:03:46no matter what they do with the limits.
0:03:48And speaking of photo streaming,
0:03:49I threw another link in the show notes here
0:03:51that have almost nothing to say about it except for here's another one of these things. It's
0:03:55called SpaceMonkey.com, triple dub SpaceMonkey.com, and it looks like some kind of hardware device
0:04:00combined with a software service, kind of like Everpix. The website is...
0:04:04It actually looks just like Transporter, actually. Like, if you look at it, if you read into
0:04:09it a little bit, it basically—and we should disclose Transporter as a frequent sponsor
0:04:13of our show, so take this with a grain of salt, however—it basically looks like Transporter
0:04:17but with worse pricing.
0:04:19Well, but they have a whole software component too, where it's like, it's more like a media
0:04:24manager.
0:04:25It's not just like arbitrary file storage.
0:04:26Transporter is sort of like application agnostic.
0:04:28It is a place for data, and what data you put there is totally up to you.
0:04:32And this looks like it's trying to be a hybrid of Transporter and Everpix.
0:04:36But I looked at his website for a while, and it's totally like a Web 3.0-y kind of bootstrap-built
0:04:44website with animated stuff.
0:04:45I could not for life figure out any actual technical information about this thing.
0:04:50It's pretty light on the information and pretty heavy on the marketing titles and graphics,
0:04:56but actual information is hard to come by on this site.
0:04:59It could be awesome, it could be terrible, I don't know, I just wanted to throw it out
0:05:01there as yet another one of these things that is trying to solve the problem of where we
0:05:06put all our junk.
0:05:08And the final thing on this topic is we talked briefly about Box yesterday and how it was
0:05:11kind of like an enterprise-focused version of Dropbox.
0:05:15And I either said or strongly implied that Box could be self-hosted, and I got an email
0:05:20from a Box employee saying that Box is not self-hosted.
0:05:23Also it's not called Box.net anymore.
0:05:25That was the old name that I said on the past show.
0:05:27They dropped the .net.
0:05:28Anyway, it's not self-hosted.
0:05:30They host it for you, and the difference is between this and Dropbox, according to this
0:05:33Box employee, are that they manage their own data centers.
0:05:36They don't put stuff in S3, so there's a little bit more deterministic security about the
0:05:42data.
0:05:43It's not just putting in another bucket through another third party.
0:05:45It's just one box stores the data.
0:05:47They have admin tools and reporting and stuff that gives them more oversight on the data,
0:05:52so if you need some sort of auditing and reporting, they can provide that to you instead of, again,
0:05:55relying on Amazon to do that.
0:05:58And they're compliant with a bunch of certifications and all the good stuff.
0:06:00So thanks to the Box employee for the clarification.
0:06:04And I think if you go to Box.net it redirects, but anyway, go to Box.com and you'll find
0:06:08it.
0:06:09It seems like Box is, I almost just said Box.net because that's always how I thought of it.
0:06:14It's one of the services that has a billion users effectively and geeks in our circles
0:06:20almost never even considered existing, almost never think about it.
0:06:23Yeah, because it's the same to Pandapro.
0:06:25Right, it's not used by Mac nerds with laptops.
0:06:28It's used in the enterprise a lot and a lot of PC users use it.
0:06:32And it's like StumbleUpon, when StumbleUpon first became big.
0:06:36Or even more recently, when Pinterest started growing like crazy.
0:06:39And the entire tech geek world was basically ignoring it because it was so popular among
0:06:47women and the tech geek world is so dominated by men, at least the online press part of
0:06:52it, that it was invisible to that world.
0:06:56And all of a sudden we realized, "Oh my god, this is huge."
0:06:58I think that's how Box is.
0:07:01It's really massive, and tons of people use it, but we hardly ever see it.
0:07:05Now that I'm using it every day now, it works similarly to Dropbox, but with an enterprise
0:07:10event.
0:07:11Could they have picked a different name, at least?
0:07:13If they were going to go from box.net to something else, could they have not made this very similar
0:07:18to Dropbox service named Box?
0:07:20Yeah, well, maybe that's a strength in the enterprise.
0:07:24You don't want to drop your software.
0:07:26Use Box.
0:07:27Wow.
0:07:28I thought that Box predated Dropbox. That is completely not fact-checked, but I thought that was the case.
0:07:34It's been around for a while anyway. It's not some new thing.
0:07:36Wasn't there something called xDrive before BMW used it? Wasn't it like a
0:07:40something kind of similar that would give you like an xDrive letter on your Windows PC?
0:07:44In case you know about this, obviously John wouldn't. I actually don't know about this, but it sounds like something that a Windows
0:07:50or something that would be for the Windows platform. Yeah.
0:07:54Anyway.
0:07:57The chat is saying that box.net because at the time it was called box.net is 2005 Dropbox 2008
0:08:03All right, obviously that matters a lot now so
0:08:09Let's move on to our first aid results Casey
0:08:13How did you do running disk utility as John assigned us in the last episode? Right? So captain paranoid
0:08:19explained to us that we should be running disk utility on an hourly basis and
0:08:24Verifying everything under the Sun no no repair you got to repair verify why bother verifying you got a repair my apologies
0:08:31You are correct sir to repair everything under the Sun and this is a real pain in the butt if you
0:08:36Run on a laptop like I do because you got a reboot and see recovery mode blah blah blah well anyway
0:08:41So I as I've mentioned numerous times. I have two 15 inch high-res anti glare MacBook Pros with optical drives. They're both day and night
0:08:50Yeah, exactly.
0:08:51That's-- well, actually, you could say that,
0:08:53because one's work, one's not.
0:08:54But anyway, the point is I tried it on both of them.
0:08:59And one has an SSD, one does not.
0:09:02And both of them had errors which were
0:09:05able to be fixed by disk utility.
0:09:07So as much as I begrudge Captain Paranoid for making
0:09:10me worry about something that I didn't really
0:09:12feel like worrying about, it ended up it was for the best.
0:09:14So thank you, John.
0:09:15And by the way, I do recommend running
0:09:16verify on your boot drive.
0:09:17Because then you don't have to reboot.
0:09:19the common case like a like out everything is fine
0:09:22you will be able to just run verify your boot is used on the walk away from
0:09:25computer because it will totally make your computer unusable
0:09:28uh... but just in a do it when you go on for lunch or something and most of the
0:09:31time when you come back to say i'll verify checked and it's fine
0:09:34i only recommend repair external because
0:09:36if verify finds errors the very next thing you're going to do is repair and
0:09:39it takes a similar amount of time to do both verify and repair
0:09:42uh... so on your boot drive your only choice is verify so do that on external
0:09:45drives you might as well just to repair because that's what that's what that
0:09:48move is going to be anyway, if there are any errors. And if there's not any errors, they're
0:09:52equivalent. Here's a question. Is there much of a reason, or even is it possible, to do this
0:09:56on a network time machine? So like we have it with the Synology setup, where Synology is using,
0:10:03you know, open source whatever component to host time machine shares, which I think are stored as
0:10:09giant sparse images or something like that. Does any part of this apply to those? Yeah,
0:10:14no, any volume you can mount, any HFS+ volume you can mount, you can do this to.
0:10:17Are sparse images HFS+ internal? Yeah, underneath there is an HFS+ volume.
0:10:22Okay. Like, that's what mounts when it does its thing.
0:10:25Alright then. Yeah, but I didn't see it in disk utility. I don't believe.
0:10:29Well, you have to make it mount. Like, Time Machine does this sneaky thing where it'll connect to this analogy and mount the volume.
0:10:34If you look at your desktop, you can see it appear sometimes, but it's not, you know, it makes it all go away when the backup is done.
0:10:39You know, sometimes you don't see it at all. And you can manually mount the share just like, you know, just in Finder.
0:10:44just like, you know, just in finder.
0:10:45Yeah, just double click the sparse bundle that's there.
0:10:47Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:10:48Okay.
0:10:49All right, moving right along.
0:10:52Well, hold on, hold on.
0:10:53What about you?
0:10:54We've got way more to do.
0:10:55Yeah, I might not have done my homework.
0:10:58There's a surprise.
0:10:59Well, John told me not to run it while you're using it, and so I've been using it.
0:11:03Well, you could have run it on your external drives.
0:11:05You don't have more than one drive, right?
0:11:07All right, well, if you didn't do your homework, it's okay.
0:11:10Lots of other people did who filled out the survey.
0:11:11I should have mentioned that after the show, I should have thought of this during the show,
0:11:14After the show last week, I said,
0:11:15you know what, we should get some information on this.
0:11:18I wonder how many people listened to the last episode
0:11:20and decided I'm going to run Disk Utility on my disks,
0:11:23just like they talked about on the show.
0:11:25And I wanted to know how they did.
0:11:26So I tweeted out a link that said,
0:11:27hey, if you listened to the show last week
0:11:31and decided to run Disk Utility, tell me how it turned out.
0:11:33It's just a two-question survey.
0:11:35And I tweeted it, I think I did it on app.net,
0:11:38and Marco put it in the show notes,
0:11:40but it wasn't mentioned on the show.
0:11:42And we got a lot of people replying,
0:11:43both before and after the survey were popping like, "Hey, I listened to your show and I did stuff."
0:11:47And I put a couple of... I grabbed a couple of tweets here. One person said, this is from
0:11:51D. Shep, "Ran disk utility last week and it reported errors. Rebooted and repair was not
0:11:55possible. So it did verify it and it reported it was okay." Lots of things like where they'll
0:12:00run it and it will say there's a problem, they'll try to repair it. It will say, "Sorry,
0:12:03couldn't repair it," and then it's okay. Or there'll be errors and there won't be errors.
0:12:06There'll be errors and there won't be... And that's not reassuring to anybody involved.
0:12:09"Oh, no, it said there was errors, but now there's not. I guess everything's fine." But
0:12:13but instead you get this feeling of unease about,
0:12:15hmm, I don't know about that.
0:12:17Here's another one.
0:12:18Ran Disk Utilium on my startup disk, this is by RYB.
0:12:21On my MacBook Air for the first time in over a year,
0:12:23it fixed a free block count error
0:12:25which freed up 70 gigabytes, crazy.
0:12:28So that person got 70 gigabytes of disk space back
0:12:30because apparently HFS+ had lost track
0:12:33of the free block count.
0:12:34- Wow.
0:12:35- And it's like, they're trees, right?
0:12:38So if you have a missing,
0:12:39if the whole sub-tree goes missing in the metadata,
0:12:42it could potentially be pointing to lots of information.
0:12:44So he got 70 gigs back.
0:12:46This is from EVQ, ran disk utility, got an error,
0:12:51followed the instructions,
0:12:52then disk utility recovery found no errors.
0:12:54Again, spooky.
0:12:55And lots of reports of what happened to me
0:13:00with my time machine volume,
0:13:00which is it had errors that I went to repair
0:13:03and it said, sorry, can't repair.
0:13:04And then after that, the disk was unmountable.
0:13:06And that leads to something else
0:13:08I should have talked about last week.
0:13:10Verified disk is in theory,
0:13:11read-only operation. repair disk is going to make changes to your disk. those
0:13:15changes may be harmful to your disk but if it's got errors anyway you say well
0:13:19it had errors but it seemed to be working fine. you can take that into
0:13:23account and say look this thing has errors but before I even try to repair
0:13:26let me make sure that I have like this gets back to the multiple backups thing
0:13:29you know be aware that attempting to repair an error as I described in last
0:13:34week's show could make the disk even worse off than it was. it doesn't mean
0:13:38that you should have really used that backup before, but it could make things worse.
0:13:42So always have multiple backups.
0:13:43Before you start messing with anything, before you start writing data to any disk, make sure
0:13:47that is not your only backup.
0:13:50And I don't know what else to do.
0:13:51People like, "If I found errors, what should I do?"
0:13:52If that's your only backup and it has errors, it's like, "Well, is your source disk okay?"
0:13:57Because if your source disk is okay, make a second backup from it now before you start
0:14:00screwing with the other one.
0:14:01Don't just rush into it.
0:14:02More than one backup good.
0:14:04Anyway.
0:14:05I would say that your story last week about how both your primary volume and your time
0:14:10machine backup were both corrupted, that is as big an ad as any for super-duper clones
0:14:18and cloud backup services.
0:14:22That just shows you right there, just one volume and its time machine backup are not
0:14:25really enough.
0:14:26Yeah.
0:14:27I mean, and the thing is, maybe if I checked more frequently, one of them went bad first,
0:14:32then I would have been able to fix it from one to the other.
0:14:35But maybe I waited too long, didn't feel paranoid soon enough, and hadn't checked
0:14:39it.
0:14:40I was going to say, we saw a really good tweet from Grady Nealey who said, "In the Army,
0:14:46we had a saying pertaining to critical equipment, 'Two is one, one is none, so it goes for backups.'"
0:14:53And I think that's absolutely true.
0:14:54If you only have one backup, that's effectively not really having a backup at all, especially
0:14:58if it's co-located with wherever your computer lives most of the time.
0:15:02Which is why the three of us are so excited for Crash Plan or Backblaze or whatever your
0:15:07online cloud backup system of choice is.
0:15:10It's really nice to have that as well as something local.
0:15:13Or many things local.
0:15:14Although I dread ever having to restore from, that really is like my last, last, last resort.
0:15:19That's why I like to have multiple local backups.
0:15:21And I really want to have the cloud backup in case the house burns down, but if it doesn't
0:15:25burn down, I don't want to have to go to that.
0:15:27Or unless I'm like away from my computer and I want to grab a file from a backup, then
0:15:31it's kind of handy to use whatever the iOS app is for your thing and grab stuff.
0:15:35Yeah, Cloud Backup is like, you can't really test it without just trying to pull a file
0:15:39off of it. You can't really, you don't have that same kind of reassurance that you
0:15:44do with a super duper clone. You can just boot from it and just see if everything's
0:15:49okay. Boot from it once a month or something and just test it. You can't really do that
0:15:53with Cloud Backup. You can try to pull a file off of it, but it's kind of a process. And
0:15:57If you ever do have to restore, do a full restore for one, you might be downloading
0:16:02a terabyte of data off the internet, which might take a while.
0:16:05So it is always good to, you know, if the cloud backup really is your last resort.
0:16:10That said, though, I think regular volume plus time machine plus backblaze, I think
0:16:15that's a very good setup for most people.
0:16:17Geeks like us, you know, if you have extra hard drives lying around, yeah, make a super
0:16:20duper clone also.
0:16:22But regular plus time machine plus backblaze I think is fine.
0:16:25Yeah, or the other alternative is, like I said,
0:16:28run disk utility more often
0:16:30so that you don't end up in a situation,
0:16:32because they probably don't both go bad
0:16:33at exactly the same time, right?
0:16:35One of them goes first,
0:16:36and if you're running it off enough,
0:16:37you'll get in a situation where one went bad
0:16:39but one is good, and you can quickly,
0:16:41you know, dupe out a second backup.
0:16:43And don't, by the way, if you only have two things,
0:16:46your computer and a time machine disk,
0:16:48and the time machine disk goes bad,
0:16:51don't erase the time machine disk
0:16:53and then try to copy the backup,
0:16:54Because as soon as you erase a time machine disk,
0:16:56now your data is in one place,
0:16:57and that is somewhere you never ever ever wanna be.
0:16:59Like it's, you just don't ever be in that situation.
0:17:02Two places is bad enough.
0:17:04If you have two places and one is bad,
0:17:06a bad backup is better than no backup.
0:17:08Do not erase that disk, just don't touch it,
0:17:10put it aside, get a new disk, backup to that, yeah.
0:17:14This is why we want companies to take care
0:17:15of this stuff for us, 'cause this is way too much
0:17:17for a regular person to handle.
0:17:18Anyone listening to this is like,
0:17:19I don't even wanna think about backups.
0:17:20I agree, I don't wanna think about it either.
0:17:22And I also don't want to think about bitrod and the fact
0:17:25that none of these things-- all these HFS plus checks
0:17:28are just checking the metadata.
0:17:30They're not checking the data.
0:17:31The data could be totally hosed.
0:17:32We have no idea what state the data is in.
0:17:35I don't want to think about it.
0:17:37So the survey that I sent out there,
0:17:42I think maybe the sample group may be slightly biased
0:17:45because it's people who listen to a nerdy podcast
0:17:48or who follow a nerdy person on Twitter.
0:17:50And maybe those people are more likely to do
0:17:52complicated things with their disks that in turn could cause more errors or something.
0:17:56The one thing the survey has going for it is
0:17:58people didn't know whether they were going to find errors or not before they ran Disk Utility, right?
0:18:06So it's not like only the people who found errors filled this out. The survey was if you listen to the episode and ran Disk Utility
0:18:12what did you find? And none of those people I would imagine knew beforehand what they were going to find.
0:18:16So despite the sampling,
0:18:19the self-selection of the people who take the survey.
0:18:22I'm hoping it's not like only the people who found errors filled out the survey and the people who didn't find errors
0:18:28didn't bother to fill out the survey because I guess, I don't know, I mean,
0:18:31I don't know how statistically valid this is, let's just say. But anyway, you guys want to guess at the results?
0:18:37I'll tell you that at the time I pulled this data from it, 758 people had responded to the survey.
0:18:43Wow, the first the first question was this was how it's word if you listen to episode 40 of accidental tech podcast
0:18:49Subsequently ran disc utilities first aid function on one or more of your hfs plus volume. So this encompasses all their discs
0:18:54I didn't want to ask them individually or whatever. Did it find any errors?
0:18:57So if you have five discs and you find errors on one of them
0:18:59You would say yes to this is just basically saying you ran disc utility on all your stuff
0:19:03Did your stuff have any errors?
0:19:05And I didn't ask them how many discs you have around any volumes ago because I didn't want this to be too complicated
0:19:09You want to do a sponsor read to build suspense in the middle of this?
0:19:12Oh, and then the second question was, if you found errors, was the repair function able
0:19:17to repair?
0:19:18So I want you two to guess what you think, you know, did you find errors percentage wise,
0:19:23not numbers wise.
0:19:24You guys to guess, and then after the sponsor break, I'll tell you the answer.
0:19:27But first, you should guess.
0:19:28All right.
0:19:29My guess is the percentage of respondents who had errors found was 30%.
0:19:36I will guess 70%, which is aggressive.
0:19:43But I'm hoping that you're right, Marco, because then maybe John will stop whining about HFS+.
0:19:48Never.
0:19:49It's like the price is right.
0:19:50One dollar, one dollar.
0:19:53Are we doing price is right rules or closest wins?
0:19:57This is important.
0:19:58We're going to do closest wins.
0:20:00This episode is brought to you in part by our friends at Warby Parker.
0:20:05They sponsored us a couple months ago.
0:20:06They're awesome.
0:20:07So Warby Parker believes that prescription glasses
0:20:10simply should not cost $300 or more.
0:20:13They should even be affordable enough for people
0:20:14to accessorize and have multiple pairs if they want to.
0:20:17Warby Parker bypasses traditional channels
0:20:19and sells higher quality, better looking
0:20:22prescription eyewear online at a fraction of the price,
0:20:24starting at just $95 at warbyparker.com.
0:20:29Their designs are vintage inspired
0:20:31with a contemporary twist.
0:20:32Translation, you look cool.
0:20:34Every pair is custom fit with anti-reflective, anti-glare,
0:20:37polycarbonate prescription lenses.
0:20:40And every pair comes with a hard case and cleaning cloth,
0:20:42so you don't need to buy any overpriced accessories
0:20:44with them.
0:20:45Buying glasses online sounds like it would be risky.
0:20:48How would you know whether they would fit
0:20:49or whether they'll look good on you?
0:20:51Well, Warby had you covered, and actually quite impressively,
0:20:53if I may say so.
0:20:54So first, the website has a really helpful tool
0:20:57that uses your computer's webcam to give you
0:21:00a preview of how the glasses will look on your face.
0:21:02and they can even help you measure your eyes and your face in this little tool
0:21:06to get your fit exactly right when you order.
0:21:09But the best part of this is their home try-on program.
0:21:12You can borrow up to five pairs of glasses risk-free,
0:21:15they will ship them to you for free,
0:21:17you can try them on in the comfort of your own home for five days,
0:21:20then you can send them back with a prepaid free return label,
0:21:23you don't pay anything this whole process,
0:21:25and there's no obligation to buy.
0:21:28They also offer prescription and non-prescription polarized sunglasses.
0:21:31I love polarized sunglasses personally.
0:21:34If you ever had non-polarized, you really
0:21:36don't know what you're missing.
0:21:38And this really, $95 as the base cost,
0:21:40is really a great price even for non-prescription sunglasses.
0:21:43That's really good for polarized sunglasses.
0:21:45So we did the spot a few months ago,
0:21:47and I had my wife, Tiff, come in,
0:21:49because she had ordered two pairs from them
0:21:51to talk about it on the ad.
0:21:53And I asked her for an update tonight,
0:21:54see how she's liking them.
0:21:56And she still uses them almost every day,
0:21:59and she still really likes them.
0:22:00She has one pair of sunglasses, one pair of prescription.
0:22:03And she loves-- she said the hard case
0:22:05that they come with is really nice and high quality,
0:22:07so she loves that too.
0:22:08And so yeah, so I went back and looked at them tonight.
0:22:10I could actually use some sunglasses myself for driving,
0:22:13because my current pair is kind of falling apart,
0:22:15because I bought it from some shady shop in New Zealand
0:22:17for no money.
0:22:19And I don't-- it has a no-brand name.
0:22:21God knows what it is.
0:22:23But yeah, so I'm looking forward to these myself,
0:22:25because they're really good.
0:22:28So, what's also great about Warby Parker is that they believe in giving back to the world.
0:22:33Almost a billion people worldwide lack access to glasses, and they can't effectively learn
0:22:38or work.
0:22:39So for every pair of glasses that Warby Parker sells, they give another pair to someone in
0:22:43need through nonprofits such as VisionSpring.
0:22:46This is a really great company, a really great message with really great people working behind
0:22:49it.
0:22:50So go to warbyparker.com.
0:22:51That's W-A-R-B-Y parker.com, and check out their great selection of premium quality affordable
0:22:57eyewear. Browse around, get yourself a home try-on kit risk-free. And if you decide to
0:23:02order your own pair, use coupon code ATP for free three-day shipping. So thanks a lot to
0:23:07Warby Parker for sponsoring the show.
0:23:09Yeah, you know, I told this story when they sponsored in episode 26. And when I did the
0:23:16free try-on thing, I ordered like two or three pairs that I was pretty confident were my
0:23:20style and then two pairs that I didn't think were me at all. And it ended up that because
0:23:26Because I was able to try those, I actually ended up going with one of the pairs of sunglasses
0:23:31that I didn't expect to like at all, and I just thought, "Eh, let me see what happens."
0:23:35And I love those sunglasses.
0:23:37And inevitably I will break them because I'm a klutz and I always destroy my sunglasses,
0:23:42but I will be devastated when I do because I really, really do like them.
0:23:46You mentioned the case that they come in.
0:23:48That's the—I've been wearing glasses, you know, since I was in like third grade or whatever.
0:23:53This is the most impressive glasses case, the one that came with my prescription sunglasses
0:23:56that I've ever seen in my life.
0:23:57It is gigantic and like, it looks like you could run it over with a car and your glasses
0:24:02would be fine.
0:24:04The little box that they ship you with the glasses in it was impressive, but the case
0:24:07was, I was also impressed by that.
0:24:09And it's nice having prescription sunglasses for the first time.
0:24:12I feel all fancy.
0:24:14All right, so.
0:24:17So what were the results of your survey, Jon?
0:24:19So Marco, you said 30%?
0:24:21I said 30%, and you said 70%.
0:24:23Now, what do you think is reasonable for--
0:24:26the job of the file system is basically
0:24:28to keep track of where your crap is.
0:24:29And Marco's number at 30% is that you're saying,
0:24:33it's OK that on 30% of the Macs out there,
0:24:36assuming our sampling is significant,
0:24:39is representative of the mass of Mac users.
0:24:42It's OK for about 30% of the time for HFS+ to screw up
0:24:46and for there to be potentially data destroying errors.
0:24:48And Casey's saying 70% to try to be dramatic,
0:24:51But like that, I mean, can we all agree that 70 would be unreasonable?
0:24:56That if 70% of the Macs out there had errors on their, you know, the HFS+ errors on the
0:25:01disks?
0:25:02Yeah, not hardware problems, but just software problems, like not keeping track.
0:25:04So that would be unreasonable, I think.
0:25:05Well, sure, anything more than zero in theory is unreasonable.
0:25:08Well, no, because like you have to expect that one or 2% are going to have problems.
0:25:11Some person kicked the plug out or there was some crazy, like there's always going to be
0:25:14a little bit of bugs or whatever.
0:25:15But I think once you start to get into double digit percentages, that's not like an aberration,
0:25:20there was a power outage in the middle of the thing that I didn't notice and it just
0:25:24built up, or cosmic rays or whatever.
0:25:28Yeah, I would say 10% should be cause for concern.
0:25:30Yeah, because then that's, I would say anything over double digit percent is like, that's
0:25:36some kind of systemic issue, like bugs in the software that are not just cosmic rays
0:25:42or one-off occurrences or hardware related, or maybe they could be hardware related, but
0:25:47it seems like a lot.
0:25:49So I don't know what I expected these numbers to be, but I kind of felt like they were going
0:25:53to be like, my guess would have been like 15, 18 percent.
0:25:57That would have been my guess for, because like 10 percent seemed low to me.
0:26:02But surely it's not on like more than maybe 20 percent because I know I find the errors
0:26:06and I know if I go up to someone's computer and they've never run disc utility, they find
0:26:09errors.
0:26:10But I figure again, people who listen to this podcast are probably nerds and they know about
0:26:13disc utility.
0:26:14I didn't have to explain to anybody where it was.
0:26:16Like all these people found it themselves and ran it and did all this stuff themselves.
0:26:19So maybe they'd run it before or whatever.
0:26:22But here are the results.
0:26:23The results were, you know, did you find any errors?
0:26:26Again, this is across all the disks that you tried, and I didn't ask them how many.
0:26:29Forty-four point three percent found errors on their disks.
0:26:32Oh, nicely done, Marco.
0:26:33Marco is closer, but that is shockingly close to half.
0:26:36That's really bad.
0:26:37Yeah, and that is much higher than I thought it would be.
0:26:40I was thinking 18, 20 percent.
0:26:42Maybe 25, but 44, that's grim, I think.
0:26:46question was, if the errors were found, and was the repair function able to repair the
0:26:51errors? So of the people who found errors, eight people didn't attempt to repair or didn't
0:26:57answer that question, right? So I'm giving you percentages of, like, out of all the people
0:27:01who attempted to fix the error, what percentage of those people, with disk utility, not with
0:27:06a third-party tool, not with anything else, how successful was disk utility repairing
0:27:10the errors? Care to guess what the percentage is there?
0:27:12Hmm, I would say probably 75%.
0:27:16Oh, see, I think it would be more than that.
0:27:19I would think it would be closer to 90.
0:27:21Marco gets it again.
0:27:2373.17%.
0:27:24So, you basically have a one in four shot, a little bit worse than a one in four shot
0:27:30of Disk Utility being able to fix your errors.
0:27:33Again, I don't know how representative these results are, but they are worse than I expected,
0:27:37because I would have expected errors to be on far fewer than 44%.
0:27:41And I would have expected Disk Utility's fix rate to be like,
0:27:44it seems like to me, I just expected that we'd fix it.
0:27:47I would say, oh, 95%, something like that.
0:27:4973% is not good.
0:27:51So that shows those errors weren't just one tiny little error
0:27:54that's easy to fix, but they were the type of errors
0:27:55Disk Utility couldn't fix.
0:27:56Now, some people reported to me that if you boot
0:27:58into single user mode and you do FSCK manually,
0:28:01which is more or less the same thing
0:28:02as Disk Utility does under the covers,
0:28:04but in single user mode, you don't have any contention
0:28:06for the catalog file, you're the only process running
0:28:08and stuff, and some people were saying
0:28:10actually does repairs, the Disk Utility can't do. I'm not sure how much truth there is to that, but
0:28:13that is one more tool in your toolkit. If you get a Disk Utility that says it can't repair,
0:28:18you can reboot into single user mode if you're comfortable with that. And I feel like I shouldn't
0:28:23explain it, because if you don't know what it is, then you're not comfortable with it. And run
0:28:27FSCK with a couple of options and have it attempt to repair your volume. Again, if you're not
0:28:32comfortable with this, don't try to do it. It's very easy to do the wrong thing from the command
0:28:36in single user mode.
0:28:38But if you are comfortable with it, it's worth a try.
0:28:40That's pretty bad.
0:28:42And I don't want to encourage you to go on another file system rant.
0:28:46Why not?
0:28:48Well, we haven't beaten this horse. John has beaten this horse.
0:28:52But anyway, the file system is one job, which is not to screw up your data.
0:28:58And HFS+ is just not cutting the mustard, apparently.
0:29:00And that's not even your data. Forget it. Who knows what state your data is?
0:29:04This is just keeping track of where stuff is.
0:29:07Is that stuff the same as your data?
0:29:09Is it the same as when you wrote it?
0:29:10Who the hell knows?
0:29:11HFS+ doesn't know, it doesn't care.
0:29:13All it's saying is, "I put something on disk, and I'm supposed to keep track of where it
0:29:17is, and this file name has this data associated with it.
0:29:20I don't know what that data is.
0:29:21It could all be zeros.
0:29:22It could be just random garbage by now, but I just want to keep track of that bucket of
0:29:24random garbage that's a certain length."
0:29:27And that's the job of the file system.
0:29:29Keep track of the information about where the files are.
0:29:32wish that it would also say, "Oh, and by the way, that data is the same as when you wrote
0:29:35it," but HFS+ says nothing, totally silent. Just trusts the hardware and says, "Yeah,
0:29:40it's probably what you wrote. If it isn't, there's nothing we can do about it now, and
0:29:45you have no way of knowing." A lot of people have talked about the... what is it called?
0:29:49There's some tool that I can never remember the name of that I've actually... I think
0:29:53I bought it way back in the day. I think I tried it once. They will crawl your disk and
0:29:58put little checksums, like in each directory,
0:30:01checksums of all the files.
0:30:02And so in theory down the road,
0:30:04you can then rechecksum them and compare it
0:30:07against the contents of the file.
0:30:08And at least then you'll know if, okay, well,
0:30:10at one point I made checksums with all the files
0:30:12in these directories and it said X,
0:30:14and now I'm running checksums and it says Y,
0:30:16so something must have changed.
0:30:17I can't tell you what it was and I can't fix it.
0:30:20And I can't even tell you if the state of your disk
0:30:23when I ran the checksums was in a known good state.
0:30:25It was just merely the state it was
0:30:26when I ran the original checksums.
0:30:27But at least it's something.
0:30:28But it does have to crawl your whole disk.
0:30:30It does have to read every single byte of data
0:30:32off your disk to make the checksums the first time anyway.
0:30:35And the second time, it probably trusts file dates
0:30:37or something like that to be more efficient about it.
0:30:39But I don't really recommend this tool
0:30:42because it really beats up on your disks
0:30:44the first time you run it.
0:30:45And it's really not the correct solution.
0:30:47The correct solution is a file system
0:30:48that does this when the data is on its way in and out.
0:30:51And we don't have that yet.
0:30:52So we just cross our fingers and pray.
0:30:56Wow.
0:30:56So what you're recommending is FAT32 for Mac OS?
0:31:01No, I'm recommending just--
0:31:03I can recommend the episode of the debug podcast
0:31:07I was on recently where me and several other people
0:31:10talked about file systems and Mavericks, among other things.
0:31:13And part one of two was posted because we talked for like 3
0:31:15and 1/2 hours.
0:31:16So--
0:31:17Yeah, it was really good.
0:31:17I'll link to that in the show notes.
0:31:18That was definitely worth listening to.
0:31:20My favorite thing about it was that two of the people there
0:31:23are ex-Apple employees.
0:31:24And it's a lot better than just people
0:31:25you know have seen apple from afar talking about stuff
0:31:28and on that show the rest of us could
0:31:31offer opinions of what we think apple might or might not be like inside or
0:31:34might or might not be doing and have
0:31:36actual ex-apple people
0:31:38you know give thumbs up or thumbs down on whether that sounds reasonable and
0:31:42that was that was exciting the two apple people were
0:31:44who was it Ryan Nielsen and Daniel Jowkut
0:31:47uh... I think I got the names right if I didn't Marco will fix it in post
0:31:52and then Guy English was on it too, Rene Ritchie, you know, those guys
0:31:55Well, it was only one guy.
0:31:56[LAUGHS]
0:31:57Wow.
0:31:58[LAUGHS]
0:31:59Moving on.
0:32:00[LAUGHS]
0:32:01All right, so do we want to talk about Xbox One?
0:32:04Yeah, I think we should.
0:32:05I think it's important, Jon.
0:32:07[LAUGHS]
0:32:08Yeah, Xbox One launched very close to the PlayStation 4.
0:32:12PlayStation 4 was making a big deal because they sold a million units in North America
0:32:15in 24 hours.
0:32:16Xbox One launched and had its own little press release.
0:32:18They said it sold more than one million consoles worldwide in less than 24 hours.
0:32:23It's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but the bottom line is I think both are more or less supply constrained on launch
0:32:28I think this is I talked about it last week that just because the early adopters are
0:32:34Rabid for a new console as I imagine they would be doesn't necessarily mean that this console generation is going to do as well as
0:32:40The previous or the one before that but it it definitely means that they're not
0:32:44It's not you know if they had both tanked on launch. It would be a very very bad sign
0:32:48So they're not both tanking on launch so far so good for the new console generation
0:32:53they're selling out. And this is a little bit more impressive than the Xbox One because
0:32:57it's $100 more than the PlayStation 3 and people did not appear to be price sensitive
0:33:02or the supply was not enough to reveal the price sensitivity of consumers because everyone
0:33:06who wanted a PS4 on lunch day, you know, bought them all and same thing with the Xbox One.
0:33:12So we'll revisit this in a couple months to see how the consoles are doing but so far
0:33:16so good.
0:33:17I do wonder how many of the buyers were scalpers.
0:33:21Because with any new electronics launch that's high-profile, which is pretty much
0:33:25every new game console and every new iPhone and most new
0:33:29tablets and stuff, there's always a pretty large contingent of scalpers
0:33:33who are just buying it to put it on eBay or to bring it to countries where it isn't available yet to charge a premium.
0:33:37So opening day numbers
0:33:41or opening weekend numbers, you should always go into it with some skepticism because
0:33:45some of it is going to be that. And for different products, it's a different portion of it,
0:33:49but it's certainly always substantial. So I think it would be more interesting to see
0:33:55what happens in two months, five months, just over the next year we'll see. And I also
0:34:01still want to see what happens when any of these consoles gets a really good hit game
0:34:06that's exclusive to that console. Because that's really what makes the console market
0:34:10is, you know, must have killer games. And so far there's none on the new systems, on
0:34:16any of three of them.
0:34:17I'm not sure the Xbox One, when I've been thinking about it more, I'm not sure the Xbox
0:34:21One needs a killer app beyond Xbox Live. Because if it just gets good versions of all the multi-format,
0:34:27multi-platform games, its killer app is sort of, that's where your friends list is, you
0:34:32are on Xbox Live, you've been on Xbox Live with 360, you'll be on Xbox Live with this.
0:34:37If a multiplatform title comes out and you are not a PC gamer, you have a choice of should
0:34:42you get the PS4 version, the Xbox One version.
0:34:44And in the past generation, a lot of people got the 360 version just because that's where
0:34:48their friends were on Xbox Live.
0:34:50And sometimes it looked a little better than the PS4 version.
0:34:52In this generation, Xbox One version may look slightly worse than the PS4 version in ways
0:34:58that only gaming forum nerds care about most likely.
0:35:03But people may still opt to buy the Xbox One version because that's where their friends
0:35:07are.
0:35:08So the online social networking kind of network effect, social lock-in thing may be more of
0:35:13a factor than any killer game.
0:35:14Because it's really hard for any platform to get a killer game that's exclusive to it
0:35:18these days because the big titles are so big that Microsoft or Sony would have to pay.
0:35:24Can you imagine Microsoft or Sony ever paying enough money to Rockstar to make the next
0:35:27GTA exclusively on their console?
0:35:29I don't think they have enough money to do that.
0:35:32because they make so much more money by putting it out everywhere that Rockstar says, "Well,
0:35:36if we're going to forego PC and PS4 or Microsoft, you're going to have to pay us so much money. Are
0:35:41you ready for that?" And the answer is no, they're not. So I don't know. It's kind of like big movie
0:35:46studios making a movie with $200 million and then only showing in a certain brand of movie theaters.
0:35:51No chain of movie theaters can afford to do that. It's not quite the same, but I would love to see
0:35:56that. And of course, there's first-party games like Halo and stuff like that, but
0:35:59historically it has been difficult for those games to match up with the cumulative massive
0:36:05sales machine that is the popular franchises that are multi-platform like Call of Duty and
0:36:10what do you call it? Destiny is coming out soon and NTF Auto and all those things.
0:36:16Sports?
0:36:18Yeah, all the EA games. Yeah, the Madden franchise, stuff like that.
0:36:23You know, so I'm not a gamer anymore. I
0:36:25Excuse me. I rarely play games on my iPhone
0:36:29I have a Wii or Aaron and I have a Wii that hasn't been plugged in for months now and
0:36:35I was at my fur we were at my friend Phil's house over the weekend and he has an Xbox one and I
0:36:42Didn't play any games. Although I saw him play need for speed which looked extraordinarily boring, but it was pretty
0:36:50But we did use it because he has his TV going through it, and I forget the technical term for that,
0:36:55but basically the Xbox is eating the TV signal and
0:36:58IR blasting to his direct TV receiver in order to change channels and so on and so forth.
0:37:03I believe it's called Web TV.
0:37:05For a second there, I thought you're serious.
0:37:07Anyway, so the point being that the audio controls, you know, Xbox, Play or turn to, Tune to Comedy Central or whatever it is,
0:37:16I'm probably getting that wrong. That was just like Siri in that when it worked it was the work of magic
0:37:22But when it didn't work, which was I would say two-thirds of the time it was infuriating
0:37:28But I can see where the Xbox one is a very nifty and different take on
0:37:33What the next iteration of television might be in that it's all voice controlled. I never saw anything gesture-based
0:37:41I don't even know if there's a gesture based system, but
0:37:44It's all voice controlled. You can put the TV on one side of the screen and put something else on the other side of
0:37:49the screen like a video game or whatever. It was very very cool.
0:37:51Nothing about it made me want to get one, but I could see why it would be appealing and I can see if a
0:37:58person who liked to play games wanted something more than just a game console, I could absolutely see how this would be very very appealing.
0:38:05I wonder how much of it is, you know, Microsoft is really making a very clear bet here.
0:38:11here, they're betting on convergence. And of course, historically in our industry we've
0:38:15had things like Web TV and various attempts at convergence around the TV set and trying
0:38:20to mush two distinct devices that connect the TVs together into one. And usually those
0:38:26have failed, or at least been mediocre at best. Microsoft's bet here is they think
0:38:33that having your TV controlled through your game console is a really big deal, and that
0:38:37The game console is more than just a gaming console.
0:38:39It's like a home media TV activity console.
0:38:43Whereas Sony's gone for more the pure gaming,
0:38:46so is Nintendo, the pure gaming system
0:38:48that's separate and dedicated, as Jon has discussed a lot.
0:38:52The question is, I think, whether Microsoft is right.
0:38:55How many people want to merge those two experiences?
0:38:59I would actually guess it's a low number.
0:39:02Relative to everyone who buys Xboxes,
0:39:03I would say the portion of them that want to also
0:39:06control their TV through it and have those experiences be very merged together.
0:39:10I wouldn't guess it's very high, but I could be very wrong about that.
0:39:14I think there's a little bit of a potential Wii effect here in that one of the reasons
0:39:19when we look at those graphs of console sales that the Wii's line shot up like a rocket
0:39:23with such an incredible slope is because Wii had a, I don't want to call it a novelty factor,
0:39:29but it's more or less what it is, in that people were curious, what would it be like
0:39:34to play games while waggling a little remote around.
0:39:36Because it was an experience that people hadn't done.
0:39:38And people bought it just because, like, they didn't necessarily even think it was going
0:39:42to be good, but they just said, "Well, this is a new thing, and I know some people have
0:39:46tried it, and I'm not one of those people.
0:39:48I need to get one of those so I can try to see what this is like, good or bad."
0:39:53And the Xbox One, like, 360 had Kinect, right?
0:39:55But it was an add-on, and add-ons have notoriously bad sell-through rates for consoles.
0:39:59Like, of all the Xbox 360s sold, what percentage of those people bought Kinect?
0:40:03very low. All of the Xbox Ones come with the Kinect 2, and Microsoft was adamant about
0:40:08that and it's one of the many reasons that their console is $100 more than Sony's, and
0:40:12they're taking the hit. They said, "Look, we're going to make them all come with that."
0:40:15That means every single Xbox One has the sort of Wii effect of people wondering, "I wonder
0:40:20what it would be like to talk to my TV or to wave my hands around like a maniac and
0:40:24try to make menus go." Maybe those same people think it's going to be stupid and bad, or
0:40:28maybe they tried their friends' Kinect 1 and didn't like it, but they're like, "But this
0:40:31one is better and like there's just that curiosity about it and so that that
0:40:37factor alone no matter how it ends up being even if it ends up being a total
0:40:40disaster no one ever uses it anymore they just use it to play games like they
0:40:43did with a 360 just the fact that it gets people in the door or curious about
0:40:47it I think is a really big strength for Microsoft in this generation because
0:40:51they all come with Kinect and as for actually using it I've heard mostly
0:40:56reports that trying to use the Xbox one to watch television like to control your
0:40:59television is not a good experience for the same reason that the television market is
0:41:04littered with the bodies of companies that have tried to put a box in front of your TV
0:41:08and let you control your TV with it.
0:41:09It is just really hard and complicated because of our terrible – at least in the U.S. – our
0:41:14terrible cable television system.
0:41:15It's non-standardized and all this other stuff.
0:41:17People were saying, "It's better to use my cable boxes guide than to use the Xbox
0:41:21guide."
0:41:22That's pretty damning when you have a $500 box that you attach to your TV, and it's
0:41:26better to just use your cable box.
0:41:27Also, everyone hates their cable box guide because they're all terrible.
0:41:30Right, and they're saying the Xbox One was worse.
0:41:33But I think even if the Xbox One, if it gets people to buy it for the novelty factor and
0:41:37then they just use it like a 360, that's still a win for Microsoft.
0:41:41Because using it like a 360 means using Xbox Live.
0:41:44When you're watching TV, you're able to quickly switch over to a game and play it, or switch
0:41:47back to TV when people are in the lobby and stuff like that.
0:41:50Even that functionality, which is not that big a deal, that's something that Sony can't
0:41:54match because they don't have HDMI in.
0:41:56So I don't think the Xbox One has to fulfill all the magical minority report voice recognition
0:42:02Siri AI dreams.
0:42:03It just has to do one or two things that the PS4 can't and basically be an updated 360
0:42:10with Kinect built in.
0:42:11And maybe there will still not be any decent games that any gamer really cares about that
0:42:15use Kinect, but we'll see.
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0:44:55There's an item lower down in the notes here that we might want to hoist up.
0:44:59Your car complaints?
0:45:01No.
0:45:02Apple buys PrimeSense.
0:45:05Did you read that story?
0:45:06I didn't.
0:45:07What's this about?
0:45:08TimeSense is the company that originally made these sensors for the original Kinect.
0:45:13Oh, that's interesting.
0:45:14So, click through to the link.
0:45:16I might have gotten that slightly wrong.
0:45:17But basically...
0:45:18It looks like the Kinect.
0:45:19Yeah, well, you know, there's a reason for it.
0:45:22This is what this company does.
0:45:23Makes Kinect-like sensors, and I think they were involved in the development of the original
0:45:27Kinect, if not the Kinect 2.
0:45:29And that is interesting, because Apple tends not to buy companies frivolously, unless they're
0:45:35color.
0:45:36That was a great domain name.
0:45:39Oh, geez.
0:45:41They buy color, but they don't buy Everpix.
0:45:44You would imagine, though, like it's like when they bought PA Semi, that they bought
0:45:49this company because they have an interest in some kind of sensor stuff.
0:45:52And I think everyone was thinking, "Okay, well, Microsoft's doing the Xbox One and this
0:45:55TV integration, and Apple still has yet to make whatever we think their crazy move is
0:45:58going to be in the TV world other than their little black puck, because Steve Jobs said
0:46:02and has booked that, oh, we've cracked the problem.
0:46:04We haven't seen anything that seems to match up with that.
0:46:07So we're still waiting for the other shoe to drop on TV.
0:46:09And then they buy the sensor maker.
0:46:11And on the one hand, it's like way too late
0:46:13for them to be buying the sensor maker
0:46:14if we're expecting them to have a product next year
0:46:16that involves the sensor at all,
0:46:17if you think of how long it took for us to see clear fruits
0:46:19of the PSME acquisition.
0:46:22But on the other hand, it also implies that they think
0:46:25that sensor-related things are important enough
0:46:28for them to buy a company that probably has patents,
0:46:31but also expertise in that technology.
0:46:32So it's beyond the phase where they're like,
0:46:34let's just get a Kinect and hook it up to some,
0:46:36you know, big box of wires
0:46:38and see if it's a useful thing to have.
0:46:40It seems like they're into the phase
0:46:41where they're getting serious about this.
0:46:42And the question is,
0:46:44what do they do with this technology?
0:46:45And like I said, I think everyone assumes
0:46:47that it's TV related,
0:46:48but I think it could just as easily be iOS device related,
0:46:52as in iPads and iPhones.
0:46:54'Cause I think about all the crazy stuff that Samsung does
0:46:56with their Galaxy phones,
0:46:58with the stupid things that tracks your eyes
0:46:59and like that you don't have to touch the screen
0:47:00and how terrible that works.
0:47:02And I think, all right, that's terrible.
0:47:05But what if there was a way to do some tiny subset of that
0:47:07better to an Apple level of quality
0:47:11where they're happy with making this part of the iOS device
0:47:14experience?
0:47:15What can you do with the ability for your iPad or iPhone
0:47:19to sense more about you than just where
0:47:21your finger is touching in the orientation and acceleration?
0:47:25So I think I would give it a 50/50 chance
0:47:27that the technology involved-- the expertise
0:47:30technology and everything coming from this company will show up in an iOS device just
0:47:35as likely, I think, as it's showing up in a TV-like device.
0:47:37And when I think about it in a TV-like device, I don't know what they would do with it.
0:47:41I would imagine they could do something small and simple and like the proximity sensor,
0:47:46but more sophisticated using the camera and more proximity sensors to be more intelligent
0:47:51about something using an iOS device.
0:47:52I don't know.
0:47:53Whereas TV, what are we going to be, standing up in front of it waving our hands like we
0:47:56are in front of an Xbox One?
0:47:57I don't know.
0:47:58I wonder if it could even be used in any way to support the back camera, maybe for looking
0:48:06at the scene in a way similar to how phase-detect systems work in SLRs, maybe providing better
0:48:10focus performance or a more accurate depth map of what's going on in the scene.
0:48:15Maybe something like that.
0:48:16Who knows?
0:48:17Yeah, because you can do interesting—the Connect 2 is impressive technology.
0:48:21I don't know if it doubled the resolution of the Connect 1 or quadrupled it, but it
0:48:24is way better.
0:48:25it can sense fingers now, whereas the Kinect one can barely sense hands. So the technology
0:48:31has come a long way, and obviously you can't fit something like Kinect size into an iOS
0:48:36device, although you could in a little TV bar type thing. But there's surely something
0:48:40you can do if you can get IR, color image, edge detection, and depth map from these multi-sensor
0:48:47things. Surely there's something interesting you can do about that, even if it's only just
0:48:52It's like kind of having the phone have more awareness of what the person who's using it
0:48:56is doing.
0:48:57Even if you never use it to control the phone or whatever, just so the phone kind of knows,
0:49:01they're staring at me, they're not.
0:49:03I'm in a pocket, I'm not.
0:49:04I'm being held up to a head, I'm not.
0:49:07Just those simple things could make the phone experience better without ever actually exposing
0:49:10a feature to the user.
0:49:12And for the TV thing, again, I have no idea because no one has any idea what the hell
0:49:15they're doing on TV, but it is intriguing to say the least.
0:49:18Am I the only one who doesn't really care what they're doing on TV?
0:49:21Yeah, I think you are the only one. I just think like I don't like the Apple TV
0:49:26I would love for the software to be more reliable and for the service that backs at the entire iTunes store
0:49:32For that to be more reliable and and and work more
0:49:35but the actual like Apple TV
0:49:38box and and software experience
0:49:42I think
0:49:44satisfies my needs for what I want out of a TV-connected box.
0:49:48And I know everyone wants more channels and more availability
0:49:52and live shows and everything else.
0:49:53And that's more an issue of content deals than anything
0:49:56else.
0:49:57And that's probably going to be held up no matter what
0:49:59they do with the hardware.
0:50:01But I'm fine with the TV as it is.
0:50:04I have Netflix, and everything has Netflix.
0:50:07I have Netflix on there, and I have iTunes-bought stuff.
0:50:11And that's about all I really need.
0:50:13What else are they going to do?
0:50:14You have minimal TV needs because if you are more like the average American who consumes
0:50:18some portion of sports programming, some portion of local television, and also some portion
0:50:22of network and cable, the experience is terrible because all those things are spread out in
0:50:26ten different places.
0:50:27I mean, even you, just for the two places, like, "Oh, is that on Netflix?
0:50:30Let me check.
0:50:31Oh, is that on Apple TV?
0:50:32Let me check."
0:50:33Even just that is bad, but imagine if you multiplied that out by like three or four
0:50:35or five places to check, and then you had way more content, some of which is not available
0:50:40online, some of which you had to see like, the only way you could get it was it was broadcast
0:50:46to you and it would be on iTunes later and maybe you don't want to wait a week because
0:50:49then the things will be spoiled for you.
0:50:52If you consume more television from more sources it gets worse and worse and worse and everyone's
0:50:56just waiting for something to clarify this in the same way that Apple clarified music,
0:51:01granted it's a lot easier to do that with music, but hey there was five big labels or
0:51:05whatever in the US.
0:51:07You could just go to iTunes to inspire music, you don't have to go to seven different places
0:51:10and synthesize some sort of system that I have a DVR to catch this and then I have Netflix
0:51:14and then I have Apple TV and then I have Amazon Instant Video and then I have these devices
0:51:18and I can watch my TiVo on my iPad but I also watch Netflix on my iPad but I can't watch
0:51:22Apple TV on the iPad but I can watch it directly from the iTunes store and it's television
0:51:27continues to be a giant mess.
0:51:29Again, I'm speaking only about the US.
0:51:30I don't know what it's like in the rest of the world.
0:51:32So the more TV you consume and the more you use it, the worse it is.
0:51:36Maybe you're still limping along with just Apple TV and Netflix and that satisfies you
0:51:39but I think you're in the minority in terms of your television consumption habits.
0:51:43Well sure, but how many of those problems are really software and content deal problems,
0:51:49or not even like a software limitation, but more of a software choice that Apple has made.
0:51:53So software choices and content deals versus hardware and interface problems.
0:52:01Like if they did some kind of big connect like thing to the Apple TV,
0:52:04then we could wave our arms around to navigate the same small menu
0:52:08full of limited choices and expensive options. Like that's, it's, that's not going to, that's
0:52:13not going to change anything.
0:52:14We're not just looking for a hardware software solution. We're assuming, I mean, was iTunes
0:52:18a hardware software solution? The iPod, iTunes, and the store was everything. It was hardware,
0:52:22it was software, and it was content deals. That's what we're looking for is something
0:52:25to save us all from everything. And if you just want to look on the hardware and software
0:52:28side, you can look at the iPhone as an example, where all they had in the beginning was hardware
0:52:33and software. But the hardware and software was so amazing that it was used as a lever
0:52:37try to, I mean it didn't revolutionize the carrier industry, but it gave the handset
0:52:42maker more leverage than they ever had before and it allowed us to have cell phones not
0:52:46crapped up with the stupid carrier edware and crap like that on it.
0:52:50That wasn't a big change, but it was an improvement.
0:52:53And so I think even just alone with totally adversarial evil things like carriers, Apple
0:52:59was still just through the power of its amazing hardware and software and the power of the
0:53:02consumers that wanted it affect some small change in the industry, at least again, at
0:53:07least in the US, for the better.
0:53:09So I would take that in the television world.
0:53:11If Apple can't do any content deals and everyone hates them, just make some amazing device
0:53:14that everybody wants that makes television better for the people who are using it and
0:53:18use that as a lever to say, "Oh, well, if Time Warner Cable doesn't want to be part
0:53:22of our thing, then all the people who want our magic dance in front of the TV device
0:53:26are going to be pissed at Time Warner and are going to change carriers."
0:53:29people were going to AT&T from Verizon or whatever because it was the only place that
0:53:33had the iPhone. Again, these are long shots. I'm not saying this is going to happen, but
0:53:39something.
0:53:40You can see part of that today, though, whenever there's some kind of dispute between one of
0:53:44the networks and one of the big cable companies, and the networks pulls themselves off the
0:53:48cable channel for like two weeks, and the idea is that the networks hoping the cable
0:53:54company will say, "Oh, come back to us. All of our customers are angry at us." Usually
0:54:01they just kind of quietly figure something out and nothing really changes in the end.
0:54:08People often look at—I think we're seeing this a lot more recently from smart analyst
0:54:12type people. You can look at the PC market in the 90s. So many things that we consider
0:54:20like common behavior or the way things work is based on the Windows and Mac divide in
0:54:27the 90s. And as time is going on, the smart analysts are starting to look at this and
0:54:33say, "Actually, that seems more like a complicated fluke than the way things actually work."
0:54:40Open doesn't always win, whatever that means. Hardware being multi-vendors and software
0:54:47running on all of it versus the unified vertical integration doesn't always work or not work.
0:54:55There's all this wisdom that's been based on how this one instance of something worked
0:54:59— one time in the industry — when in fact it's much more complicated than that and
0:55:03it doesn't always work that way.
0:55:04I think the way iTunes came about and the iTunes Music Store, I think that's one of
0:55:10those things too, where that was a very special time in history that we're not in a time
0:55:15at that anymore with any other medium or any other situation or industry. That was a one-time
0:55:21thing, and I don't think that anybody, Apple or otherwise, is going to be able to reproduce
0:55:26that in a new medium.
0:55:28Not the severity, but I think the same thing could happen over a much longer timeline,
0:55:32because there was like a big boom with iTunes.
0:55:34Maybe. I would say the breadth, though. The breadth is where it's going to really suffer.
0:55:38Well, that's what I'm saying. It'll start off small. And what I'm thinking about there
0:55:42is not so much Apple doing it, but Netflix funding its own shows.
0:55:45Did they overnight obviate the need for the networks and HBO? No, they didn't.
0:55:49But you get one or two shows that people like, and it's like, okay, you didn't do a big bang,
0:55:54you didn't wipe them out, but suddenly a tiny, tiny sliver of the power in the content distribution
0:55:59world went over to Netflix, this thing that has no allegiance to any kind of carrier or anything
0:56:04like that. They got like two shows, so what? But if they did that every year for the next 15,
0:56:0920 years, you can foresee a scenario where either Netflix or a similar player pulls power away from
0:56:14the cable companies and the carriers and you know all the other stuff until most or a majority of
0:56:22the shows that people want to watch are being funded in a way that has no connection to any
0:56:26cable provider or any television network. That would be an example of an iTunes-like change
0:56:31instead of happening in three years happening in 15 or 20. Yeah, you know, I was thinking about it
0:56:36while you guys were talking and I'm not so sure that you're right Marco that the iTunes
0:56:40kind of phenomenon couldn't be repeated. What I was thinking about was if you think about
0:56:46what made iTunes as paired with the iPod so magical is to me it's a couple of things.
0:56:53It's acquiring something, it's acquiring media and then consuming it. And so iTunes allowed
0:56:58you to acquire individual songs which was very rare at the time. I mean yeah there were
0:57:02They were singles, but it was weird and clunky.
0:57:05And you could acquire these songs without leaving your house, which was really awesome
0:57:08and new.
0:57:09And then you could, when you decided to leave your house, you could consume them on this
0:57:13magical new hardware device.
0:57:15And you guys made allusions to this earlier, but a theoretical Apple TV where you can acquire
0:57:22content very easily, and the content I'm thinking of is sports content.
0:57:26And I know that Marco's eyes just glazed over, but for most Americans, and I would argue
0:57:31most of the world, sports are a big deal. And a lot of people pointed out in the chat
0:57:37that the NFL has—that's the National American Football League.
0:57:40That's not the NAFL.
0:57:41Well, you know what I mean. So they have an exclusive deal with DirecTV, which is a satellite
0:57:47provider here in the United States. And that runs out, I think, at the end of the season,
0:57:52if not the end of the season, very, very soon. And a lot of people are calling on Apple to
0:57:56just throw money at this problem and get that exclusive deal. And what that exclusive deal
0:58:00brings is if you're a DirecTV customer, you can get what's called NFL Sunday Ticket because
0:58:05all the games are played on Sundays, most of them anyway, and you can watch any game
0:58:08you want when it's aired live.
0:58:11And so for me as an example, I happen to be a fan of the New York Giants.
0:58:14I live nowhere near New York.
0:58:16I actually live near one of their rivals, the Washington Redskins.
0:58:19And as such, I only ever get Giants games if it just so happens that Redskins or any
0:58:25of the other local franchises aren't playing at that time.
0:58:29So imagine a situation where the NFL and Apple reach an exclusive deal.
0:58:36So now you can get the content you want, which is the acquire piece, because you can watch
0:58:41any game you want.
0:58:42And the MLB already does this, Major League Baseball does this, the NBA, I believe, already
0:58:46does this, or I think the NHL does.
0:58:48I'm probably getting some of that wrong, but whatever, you get the idea.
0:58:50Well, imagine a combination of NFL, NASCAR, and F1, all of them easily available on the
0:58:57the Apple TV both live and replay and all you need to do is either pay Apple a little
0:59:03bit or just buy the darn device transporter style.
0:59:06And then on top of that Apple has this really slick UI.
0:59:09Well I like the UI in the Apple TV, maybe you don't, but it's certainly a lot better
0:59:13than most set top boxes like my Verizon box looks like crap compared to the Apple TV.
0:59:18So now you've got the content or you can acquire the content and now you can consume the content
0:59:22in a nice and easy way.
0:59:23I see some, not direct parallels with iTunes and the iPod, but certainly some parallels
0:59:29nevertheless.
0:59:30I don't know that sports is enough to really get them over the proverbial hump, but I think
0:59:34it could be a really, really interesting way to attack traditional TV without having to
0:59:42go after movies and TV shows in the traditional sense.
0:59:47To reinforce Marco's point, the big difference here is that the players know, the players
0:59:51saw what happened to music. And so everybody is super paranoid about putting too many eggs
0:59:55in one basket. So if Apple, by some miracle, decided to spend the billions of dollars it
1:00:01would take to get the NFL to that degree, any other sports franchise would be like,
1:00:05"We sure as hell can't go with Apple," because then they would have two sports franchises.
1:00:08And look what happened in music. It's not collusion, but they all kind of see what each
1:00:13other are doing, and they're all kind of trying to protect their turf and spread their bets.
1:00:18It's like, just like the music labels, as soon as Amazon became viable, all the music
1:00:21labels were like, "We gotta go over there and just give Amazon everything because we
1:00:24cannot have Apple have all this power as like the sole one and only awesome digital music
1:00:29distribution network."
1:00:30So all of the non-music guys saw what happened in music, and that's why it's so hard to do
1:00:35anything with TV, because they're not gonna make that same mistake.
1:00:39And that's why I think it has to be a much longer period.
1:00:42And probably, like, the way it's going to happen is the power that's in the hands of
1:00:47the networks and the cable companies now will shift to a set of companies that look more
1:00:52like Netflix, if they're not necessarily Netflix.
1:00:54I don't think Apple is going to be in the business of generating content.
1:00:57So far, they haven't shown that they're willing to, for example, put up a couple hundred million
1:01:01dollars to make a new TV show.
1:01:02So all Apple can do is make deals with somebody.
1:01:04And I would imagine dealing with Netflix is way easier than dealing with NBC or the NFL.
1:01:10And so maybe there's some synergy there.
1:01:12That being said though, I think you're right that once one sports franchise gave
1:01:17exclusivity to the Apple TV or to Apple in general, I think that would give pause to
1:01:22the others. However, if that one was the NFL, I think that's enough. Like even, I think
1:01:30enough people, and obviously the rest of the world couldn't possibly care less, but in
1:01:34the U.S., and this is one of the problems with TV is that it's very regional. In the
1:01:41U.S., if you get the NFL, you're going to get a crap ton of people buying Apple TVs.
1:01:48And that's really what they want. What they would want out of this kind of effort would
1:01:52be tons and tons and tons of people buying the Apple TV and having a really good reason
1:01:58to use it frequently. And if you get the NFL exclusive on there, you're going to get that.
1:02:03You're going to get a lot of that. And people are not going to give up their cable subscription.
1:02:10they're still going to have cable. So not getting the other sports networks wouldn't
1:02:14matter as much. This would basically be like an exclusive console game. This would be a
1:02:19killer app for the Apple TV for a very large number of people in this country.
1:02:24Yeah, every time we talk about TV, it's just depressing because there are so many
1:02:29entrenched interests, and then we always have to keep coming back to the realization, "And
1:02:33this is just the US we're talking about, and Apple is a global company, and it cares
1:02:37about worldwide stuff, and you can kind of see how Apple, in their own meetings, would
1:02:40be like, "Look at all this crap, and we're only still talking about the US. Forget about
1:02:45it. Let's just, you know, whatever." Well, that's why I think they delegate that to,
1:02:48"Let's let Netflix fight it out and either die trying or figure out something to do."
1:02:53And even Netflix is, I think, mostly US-centric as well. I think the other countries have
1:02:57better ways to get the content they want over more modern digital systems than we do. Maybe
1:03:02Maybe they still have the same monopoly problems that we do, but I think people can see the
1:03:08soccer games that they want to see through some interesting digital thing that's near
1:03:12them, whereas in the US, the local television franchises still have such a stranglehold,
1:03:17and with the local blackouts and stuff like that, it's just perverse.
1:03:21So it's depressing.
1:03:23But I'd still like to see Apple do something.
1:03:25Even if they do something and it flops, if the first thing you know is to succeed, keep
1:03:30trying.
1:03:31The first couple weren't that great, but the little black pluck is pretty darn good.
1:03:34So if there's more to come in that vein and they're buying this Kinect-like sensor company,
1:03:38well, let's see what you got, right?
1:03:40I do think you're right, though, that I can't really see Apple devoting a massive chunk
1:03:46of money and a massive division of their product line, and therefore their attention, to something
1:03:52that only works in the US or will only succeed in the US.
1:03:57That's not like Tim Cook, that's for sure.
1:03:59Well, but what if you did something like the NFL, but it's applicable to the rest of the
1:04:04world, like F1, for example, or soccer, perhaps?
1:04:07Well, the Apple-style move is, "Oh, hey, now our television is also an app platform, and
1:04:13you crazy app developers in every region of the country, you sort out how the hell to
1:04:17get your stuff."
1:04:18Kind of like the MLB app.
1:04:20They made an app platform on iOS devices.
1:04:22They didn't do a deal with Major League Baseball.
1:04:23They made an app platform, and then MLB made the app, and then figured out its crazy way
1:04:27that you're going to pay for it or whatever.
1:04:28But that's an opportunity for people.
1:04:30And that is an Apple move, because a platform is global.
1:04:33And then individual applications are local.
1:04:36That is true.
1:04:38Do we want to move on to the sweet jobs that
1:04:41are available at Penny Arcade?
1:04:44I don't know.
1:04:45I don't know that there's that much more to say about this.
1:04:46I kind of vomited all over Twitter all morning about it
1:04:49and wrote that big post.
1:04:51But people haven't read your blog or read your Twitter.
1:04:54So you have to reiterate and summarize here.
1:04:56And as someone who works for the man, Marco, you know quite a bit about these sorts of
1:05:01issues.
1:05:02Shut up.
1:05:03I used to work for various men.
1:05:07Do you remember that?
1:05:08It was a long time ago.
1:05:10No, I think—so Penny Arcade put up this job listing for one person who's responsible
1:05:19for basically developing and running all their websites and servers and all their in-house
1:05:26tools, like various inventory trackers when they sell goods and stuff like that, managing
1:05:31their conference sites, stuff like that, and also doing all of their local IT for their
1:05:37workers in their office.
1:05:39And in exchange for all of this, they will force you to be a workaholic.
1:05:46They kind of flippantly glorify how you won't have any kind of free time.
1:05:53they'll work you to the bone and you'll like it
1:05:56and they'll make up for it by paying you a subpar salary
1:06:01and giving you some kind of nice perks in the office,
1:06:06like I don't know, like nice chairs and snacks, whatever,
1:06:09something that would cost a lot less
1:06:10than a good salary would cost.
1:06:12And the whole posting has this arrogant attitude
1:06:19of like, this is really a terrible job
1:06:21you're going to love it and we're going to get tons of applicants.
1:06:23Now, really quickly, genuine question. You're assuming that the salary is crummy, right?
1:06:29No, they say it in the ad. They say we recognize that we're going to play,
1:06:34I don't know the exact words, but they say that we're going to pay maybe below market because
1:06:39we're not a money-oriented company or something like that and we run lean.
1:06:44I mean, the ad is honest in the Penny Arcade style of honesty. Have you ever seen a job ad
1:06:50before where they say, "Work-life balance? Forget it." That's basically what this says.
1:06:55Every place always says, "Oh, we have great work life." They lie. The places that don't
1:06:59have great work-life balance, they still say in the job ad, "Oh, we're great about work-life
1:07:03balance." In fact, if they talk a lot about work-life balance too much in the ad, that's
1:07:07also a warning sign. But this one, they come right out and say, "No, you're not really going to have
1:07:11a good work-life balance. Work will be your life. That's the type of person we're looking for.
1:07:15That's the type of job this is." Yeah, I don't know. The whole thing just kind of
1:07:19of rubbed me the wrong way. It just basically…my problem with it…there's a lot of terrible
1:07:25employers out there, and the tech industry is no exception. My problem with it is that
1:07:30Penny Arcade is very high profile, and it's damaging to people when they expect that this
1:07:36is the norm, that they should totally give themselves up to their job and have no personal
1:07:41life, and that this is what's normally expected of them in this industry. And yeah, that's
1:07:46Yeah, that's true for a lot of employers. That doesn't make it good. And that doesn't
1:07:50mean there's not also a lot of great places to work that actually respect people and respect
1:07:55people's health and respect people's lives and want people to stay there for more than
1:08:00a couple of years.
1:08:03Reading the forum posting from the guy who has this job now, and he kind of said, "I
1:08:10I chose this and therefore get out of my life kind of thing.
1:08:13But it just kind of confirms what we think
1:08:17they mean by the job posting.
1:08:19It just kind of confirms that, where it's constant work.
1:08:22You're on call 24/7.
1:08:24He says he can't go on vacation anywhere where he's not
1:08:28reachable by cell phone and can't get a data connection
1:08:31to log in and fix a server if it's down.
1:08:33He sleeps with his laptop next to the bed.
1:08:35Right.
1:08:35And I did a lot of this for Tumblr,
1:08:37which is why I'm sensitive to it.
1:08:40This was my job at Tumblr for the first four years.
1:08:44The difference was I was paid very well
1:08:47and I got a lot of stock.
1:08:48And that I think was fair.
1:08:51I was doing the work of a co-founder
1:08:55and I was paid like a co-founder.
1:08:58And that's very, very different than something like this,
1:09:03which is they already have something like,
1:09:05what was it, like 20 employees somebody said?
1:09:07They already have a lot of employees.
1:09:09They run a very popular website that gets a lot of traffic.
1:09:14They actually run multiple websites
1:09:16that get lots of traffic.
1:09:17There's obviously, they could have two people doing this.
1:09:22They don't need to have one person doing all this
1:09:23that's paid very badly,
1:09:24or they could have one well-paid person,
1:09:27and they're choosing not to
1:09:28because they simply don't need to
1:09:31because they're so popular that enough people will apply
1:09:35that they can get somebody who will do it
1:09:36for almost nothing.
1:09:37And that's-- - Well, the other thing
1:09:38their offering is you get to be an employee of Penny Arcade.
1:09:41And the work-life balance that they say doesn't exist, it's because they kind of have this
1:09:45big work-family thing going, where the people who work there seem to be happy about the
1:09:51idea that the people you work with are like your family, and the stuff that you would
1:09:58get in a normal home life, you can get more of at work.
1:10:01And I think some of the things in this forum said, "Well, some people do leave at five
1:10:04or whatever."
1:10:05But that's the trade-off, though, is that you may not be getting high pay or something,
1:10:13but you get presumably to work in an environment that's much more fun than just working for
1:10:18some faceless corporation because you really like Penny Arcade because you think you'll
1:10:21have fun with the people there.
1:10:22And a lot of their interview process, if you look at their past interviews, is about trying
1:10:27to find someone who not only can do the job, but also fits in with all the other people
1:10:31because they're almost kind of like interviewing a new friend.
1:10:34We're like, okay, so this person can do the job,
1:10:36but we're only going to hire them
1:10:37if we would like to hang out with this person,
1:10:39because we know that's kind of our work environment.
1:10:41We're all going to be hanging out together and doing stuff.
1:10:44And that sounds a lot like a startup-type environment
1:10:48with a bunch of friends who start a company.
1:10:50And like Marco said, that's all well and good,
1:10:52but I know I personally would never in a million years
1:10:57want to do this job if I was not also going to benefit
1:11:01from the fruits of my labors.
1:11:02If you are in a startup and you are an early employee
1:11:04and you work like this,
1:11:05because that's how everybody in startups works.
1:11:07They all do this.
1:11:08They all do 50 jobs, they all work ridiculous hours,
1:11:09they all don't get paid a lot
1:11:10'cause it's not a lot of money,
1:11:11and you gotta spend the venture capital on servers
1:11:14and acquiring new customers and stuff.
1:11:16But the upside is that if you make it,
1:11:18you share in the victory,
1:11:20like Marco shared in Tumblr,
1:11:22he got Tumblr stock and when they sold to Yahoo,
1:11:24he shared in that.
1:11:26He didn't do all that work
1:11:27and then they just quit and leave with nothing, right?
1:11:31So if you're in this job, basically no one
1:11:34should work this hard, no matter how young you are,
1:11:36no matter how awesome the job is,
1:11:37no one should sacrifice the other parts of their lives
1:11:40to this degree if they don't share in it.
1:11:41And that, I think, to me personally,
1:11:43the reason I wouldn't take this job
1:11:45and the reason I would not recommend
1:11:47anyone else take this job is that it seems to me,
1:11:50it's so hard to tell because this is a privately held company
1:11:52but it seems to me that some people are benefiting greatly
1:11:56from what appears to be the success of Penny Arcade
1:11:59and those people are the founders of the company,
1:12:01like the two, you know, Mike and Jerry and Robert,
1:12:04are benefiting greatly from it financially, it seems like.
1:12:07Again, we don't know, we can't tell,
1:12:09they've talked a little bit about it,
1:12:10but it seems like they're making a lot.
1:12:12The rest of the people in the company,
1:12:13it doesn't seem like, are benefiting as greatly.
1:12:16And if you're going to have a startup-type environment
1:12:19where you're asking this of all the people involved
1:12:21and the people are willing to do it and they're happy,
1:12:23I feel like they should be sharing
1:12:25in the success of the company
1:12:26because this is not like a new startup.
1:12:27They've been around for years.
1:12:29And this team of people has made
1:12:31a very successful enterprise.
1:12:33I feel like maybe they don't all share equally,
1:12:35but that whole idea that seven people work their butts off
1:12:38and three people get rich drives me insane, right?
1:12:42Because I mean, most of the time nobody gets rich.
1:12:44Seven people work their butts off
1:12:45and everyone goes home sad, right?
1:12:47But in the cases where seven people work their butts off,
1:12:50three people shouldn't get rich, seven people should get rich
1:12:52maybe three people who get richer,
1:12:53but that's what I feel like should happen.
1:12:55I can't from what I can tell in the outside doesn't seem like that's happening and again
1:12:59I'm framing this all as why I would not take the job and why I would recommend someone didn't take it
1:13:03but I think the much more interesting question is
1:13:05Is this a bad thing to do if everybody who works at penny arcade is happy with their job?
1:13:11So I think you guys are judging this from a very similar angle to the way I judge it
1:13:17However, it is not the only angle and the reason I say that is because my first job straight out of school was
1:13:25at this company that made slot machines and
1:13:28The group of, it was all guys at the time, the group of guys that worked there were all
1:13:36expats from EA
1:13:39who had bought up the company that they had all sort of kind of co-founded. It was a game company called Kesmai based out of
1:13:46Charlottesville, Virginia and
1:13:48by pure happenstance a large majority of these guys
1:13:53either didn't have children or didn't have any immediate family. So no wives and no kids.
1:14:00And so,
1:14:02especially a couple of the guys there, like my boss when I first got there, who I adore,
1:14:06he didn't happen to have a wife and didn't happen to have any kids. And so because of that,
1:14:11he just ended up working a lot. And he put on this exterior shell of,
1:14:19"Oh, I don't, you know, this job is a pain in the butt, but it's a job and this is what I do."
1:14:23But I think if you allowed me to armchair—be an armchair psychiatrist—
1:14:29I think he worked a lot partially because it was the most interesting—maybe not interesting,
1:14:34but it was a really good way to occupy his time.
1:14:37And so I envisioned Penny Arcade in a similar way.
1:14:41Not to say that these people don't have kids or they don't have families,
1:14:44but there are people that really do just love working a lot.
1:14:48And my boss at this place worked absurd hours, like 80 or 100 hours a week.
1:14:53But nobody was really telling him to, or at least I didn't think so anyway.
1:14:57He just enjoyed doing work.
1:15:00And he worked six days a week.
1:15:02Nobody else did, but he always did.
1:15:04And I'm not trying to say that he didn't have other things in his life.
1:15:07I'm not trying to say that he necessarily enjoyed every moment of it.
1:15:10But in certain circumstances, there are people that really do, like you guys were saying,
1:15:16to have a work experience that kind of is their lives. Is that me? Heck no. I think
1:15:22I speak for you guys in saying that it's certainly not you guys either. But for some people that
1:15:27is. And if you put yourself in that mindset, how would you write a job posting? To be honest,
1:15:33I'd write it kind of like this.
1:15:34But see, the thing is, like, Robert Koo is that person. He, by his own admission, has
1:15:39sacrificed many other parts of his life to be successful in business. He is the reason
1:15:43Penny Arcade exists in the form it does now, he sacrificed his life to make this amazing company.
1:15:49He deserves, you know, all the credit for that. The two artists, of course, were the spark of this
1:15:54entire thing. Nothing exists without them. So clearly, those three, you know, deserve more
1:16:00than anybody else. But, like, for Robert, that was his choice. He came up, he said, "This is the life
1:16:06I'm going to leave. I'm going to make this great thing. And I understand the sacrifices involved
1:16:10for it. For the two other guys, they have wives and kids, and my impression is yes,
1:16:13they work hard and everything, and yes, there are many demands on their time and so on and
1:16:16so forth, but it seems like their work-life balance isn't all that bad. I mean, again,
1:16:21it's so hard to tell with happenstance, and that's why I was getting back to like, what
1:16:24if all their employees are happy? And people talk about like this job burns people out.
1:16:28Penny Arcade's been around for 15 years, and this job has had two people in it. So like,
1:16:32you know, seven and a half years each. It's obviously not a machine that burns through
1:16:36people or whatever.
1:16:37seven and a half years each. The first one was there for like eight years or longer even.
1:16:42The guy who's quitting now has only been there for like two years.
1:16:45Well, either way, it's like two people in the position for over the 15-year life of
1:16:50the company. It is not a mill where they bring in people and they burn them out and bring
1:16:53in people and burn them out.
1:16:54Well, but it has scaled up over that time as Penny Arcade has scaled up. The job has
1:16:58scaled up. So I think it says something that they had a guy there for a long time. He left.
1:17:04It got really big, he left.
1:17:07A new guy came in, he did the job, and is quitting after only two years because he needs
1:17:11more money.
1:17:12Yeah, but giving back to the same point, and I'm not implying an answer here.
1:17:17My real question is, if all their employees are happy, is the company still mean for making
1:17:22a job like this?
1:17:24Right, I'm saying the same thing.
1:17:25If all the employees enjoy hanging out with the other employees a lot, and enjoy working
1:17:31a lot, which is a big assumption. But if that's the case, like if I was one of those people,
1:17:36like my boss at my first job, and I wanted to write a very forthcoming and honest job
1:17:42posting, it would probably look a lot like this. Does it make it right? Not necessarily.
1:17:47But would I ever apply for it? Heck no. But it would look a lot like this.
1:17:52So I think my opinion on whether this is inherently a bad job posting is there are some inherently
1:17:58bad aspects of it that a lot of people point out. The inherently bad aspect of it is not
1:18:02so much for the people taking the job and not so much for Penny Arcade, but for the
1:18:06industry for the position that they're hiring for. Because the availability of positions
1:18:11like this devalues the work that those people do. Having a company that is attractive enough
1:18:16in the intangibles that they're able to ask for people to sacrifice their entire lives
1:18:21and take below market pay, it's not so much that they're able to do that, it's so much
1:18:26that the existence of companies that are able to do that makes the rest of the industry feel like
1:18:31they can turn down the dials on their hiring. It makes it seem like, "Well, you're expected to work
1:18:36like a dog." And, "Well, you're expected not to make too much money." And if too many companies
1:18:40do that, it makes it seem like, "Oh, everybody who works in IT can never go on vacation."
1:18:45And it's like, "No, you're not Penny Arcade. You can't do that because what are you giving me?"
1:18:51what makes me sad is that this position is this job description is like an honest description of
1:18:57many things like you know insurance companies or big fortune 500 companies that are just as
1:19:01terrible as the subscription sounds but they lie in their applications and they're not fun places
1:19:06to work and they don't give you anything to balance off of this but still the existence of
1:19:09penny arcade and the bill it's kind of like marco has talked about this on past shows and like life
1:19:14isn't fair right the idea of developers and designers doing work for free devalues the work
1:19:19of developers and designers. And it's like, well, why are they doing the work for free? Sometimes
1:19:22they're doing the work for free because it's fun, because they're a college student and it's fun to
1:19:26make apps and it's fun to do designs. And you're trying to make a living doing it and you're like,
1:19:30"God damn, these people doing work for free, they're devaluing the work of everybody who does."
1:19:34They are, they are devaluing it, but they're doing it because it's fun and because they're
1:19:38intangibles. And that's a rough situation to be in. And you could say, "Penny Arcade should have
1:19:43a broader view and say, 'We don't want to devalue the work of IT workers, and so we're going to try
1:19:49try to – we have a more of – I guess we would call it environmental awareness, but
1:19:53in a job market sense instead of the actual environment. That would be a reason not to
1:19:59do this. That would be a reason that this job posting is a bad idea regardless of how
1:20:04happy the employee is, and not because the person who gets this job is going to be sad,
1:20:08and not because Penny Arcadia is an evil company, but just because of environmental factors.
1:20:12The second reason this job posting is bad is different, and I think is much, much more
1:20:16concrete and that this would be my appeal to Robert Koo, never have one IT person.
1:20:21We just talked about backups for a million years. Just as a person who runs
1:20:25a business, this is a bad move business-wise. It seems like Penny Arcade
1:20:30does not correctly value the role of web applications and you know technology
1:20:38infrastructure in their company because there's a big company, there's a lot at
1:20:42stake here. Never trust that torn person, not because you're exploiting them, not
1:20:45Not because no one person can do this, not because you should pay them more, don't pay
1:20:49one guy 10 times his salary.
1:20:51You need redundancy.
1:20:52You absolutely, positively need redundancy.
1:20:54And I think web stuff and online services is such an important part of the penny arcade
1:20:58empire as it exists today that there's no way that I think there's any justification
1:21:03to have a single person that does this for the sake of the company, for the sake of the
1:21:06founders, for the sake of the other employees.
1:21:09Nothing to do with what the job is like.
1:21:11You just cannot have one person.
1:21:12You cannot.
1:21:13side effect that if you have two people then one guy can actually go on vacation. There's
1:21:16many upsides to that, but ignoring all that. Pretend he's just like an evil turn of the
1:21:20century industrial revolution, you know, robber baron. Don't have one guy. You gotta have
1:21:26redundancy. So that would be my appeal to the penny arcade guys, that it's insane that
1:21:30a company this big and successful is going to have one IT guy.
1:21:33Especially because their website being up, or websites being up, is such an important
1:21:39part of their business. I would imagine, I know they run PAX and that's probably a pretty
1:21:44big business, but I would imagine the majority of their income probably still comes from
1:21:48ad views on the site. Do you think that's fair to say?
1:21:50I would say it's an even split between PAX merchandise and advertising on a site. But
1:21:55again, it's privately held companies, hard to tell. But they have multiple lines of business
1:21:59and they're big, but the thing is all of them have some aspect of it that involves websites
1:22:02and services and electronic transfers of money.
1:22:04Obviously, they're going to lose a lot for any moment that the site is down.
1:22:10And the longer it's down, the more they're going to lose.
1:22:12It's not like if some restaurant has their website go down, who cares?
1:22:17They might lose two customers in a weekend if they can't see the website and figure
1:22:21out their hours.
1:22:22But for something like this, yeah, you're right, that is very important.
1:22:26And part of it, I should even point out now, now that I'm thinking about this, my job
1:22:30at tumblr wasn't quite this extreme because David could log in and fix things. He wasn't
1:22:35as good at it as I was.
1:22:37Yeah, you weren't the only one.
1:22:39Right. That was like his secondary ability. His primary ability was coding all the front
1:22:44end and the middle layer, but he could log in and fix servers to some degree when I was
1:22:50not available. Which wasn't that often, but he could do it, and he did do it. And sometimes
1:22:55he could only slightly manage things until I got back. Sometimes he could fix the problem
1:22:59completely. And the only reason that it was acceptable to have all of that even resting
1:23:06on me was because there were only two employees. That was it. It was just two of us for so
1:23:11long. That's why it was okay because there was nobody else available and we couldn't
1:23:15afford anybody else for a very long time at the beginning.
1:23:18The thing is, you can get away with it. They get away with having one person in 15 years.
1:23:22It's not like I'm saying that you're doomed you can't have one person. The fact
1:23:24that they can get away with it, I think it's just penny-wise pound foolish. Ignoring whether
1:23:28that person shares in the success of the company to the degree I think they should and none
1:23:32of us can know because we don't know how big their bonuses are or whatever, although they
1:23:34didn't mention any equity, but whatever.
1:23:36Ignoring all of that, and I'm willing to give them all the benefit of the doubt on that
1:23:40as a matter of fact because the few things they have said publicly, one of them is that
1:23:44they're constantly getting buyout offers because who wouldn't want to buy them because they're
1:23:47just a money-making machine.
1:23:51When they entertain buyout offers, what the guys in charge did said, "If we take this
1:23:55buyout offer, we're going to dole out the money to all of the people in the company."
1:23:58And that would be correctly sharing the income.
1:24:00It was like, we're not going to take a buyout
1:24:02and the three founders leave and you guys just are out
1:24:04of a job or whatever.
1:24:05It was, if we take this money, we're going to divide it--
1:24:08probably not evenly, but we're going
1:24:10to divide it amongst all employees, as if all
1:24:12the employees had equity in the company, which as far as I know
1:24:14they don't legally have equity in the company.
1:24:16But that was what the founders did.
1:24:17They're nice guys.
1:24:18They're looking out for their people.
1:24:19Again, this is like a family.
1:24:21And when they took a vote, they let the whole company
1:24:23vote on this.
1:24:24And not a single person voted to take the buyout.
1:24:27Even though they knew, like, if we do this, you can get some large, presumably large amount
1:24:31of money.
1:24:32Not a single person in the company voted because all the people in the company wanted to, yeah,
1:24:35Marco can identify with this, they wanted to continue to be masters of their own destinies.
1:24:41They wanted to continue to be the family that decides, we decide what Penny Arcade does,
1:24:45we collectively, we 12 or 20 people in this room, we are Penny Arcade, we don't want to
1:24:49sell out.
1:24:50It's more important to us than the money to continue to be able to steer our own ship.
1:24:56And I think that speaks to the kind of company it is.
1:24:58I just think one IT person, just as they don't have a single artist in the company, they
1:25:04have multiple artists doing multiple things and multiple comic strips, and one person
1:25:08is not enough.
1:25:09It also looked like from the current job occupants post in the forum, from his description of
1:25:15his work and his skills, it really does also look like he's not a very knowledgeable
1:25:20sysadmin and that his main focus is development, not server administration or infrastructure
1:25:27management, you know, running load balancers and stuff. And most of that he just pays Rackspace
1:25:31to do. And that's actually very expensive, by the way. But most of that he pays Rackspace
1:25:37to do. And so it actually sounds like they don't really have a dedicated sysadmin at
1:25:42all. Like, it isn't even that this person's doing all four of those jobs with equal weight.
1:25:48He's mostly a developer, and he happens to do a little bit of system administration,
1:25:51but for the most part, most system tasks seem to be going undone, or at least inadequately
1:25:56covered.
1:25:57It's kind of like when a company that's not a software company tries to write software
1:26:00internally.
1:26:01They don't quite know what's involved with doing software.
1:26:03Penny Arcade seems like a company that—if your company was like Dropbox, where your
1:26:09whole company is this software and web service that you provide, the whole company's focused
1:26:14around that.
1:26:15And Penny Arcade is a creative company.
1:26:16whole company is focused on creative endeavors, and they do the creative stuff great, right?
1:26:21They don't think of themselves as a company as like, "Oh, we run a website." The website
1:26:25is like just how we get our creative outlet to people, and it seems like they either don't
1:26:29know how to manage or don't know how to value it correctly, because yeah, you're right.
1:26:32Paying all that money to Rackspace, again, penny-wise, pound foolish. And for the Penny
1:26:36Arcade Expo ticket sales, I think they outsourced that this year to some other company that
1:26:41does ticket sales things, and it did not go well. It went the same. Everyone used to use
1:26:46like CoverItLive or whatever, those live blogging platforms that were out there.
1:26:50I tried to buy tickets for PAX this year, and it was the same situation as like CoverItLive
1:26:55where the site was down and you were in a queue and you couldn't get pages to load,
1:26:58and then it would load without the CSS and you couldn't tell if you've purchased anything.
1:27:03That was -- they outsourced that, and that didn't work well either.
1:27:06That is a core part of their business.
1:27:07They should be investing in it way more than they are.
1:27:09Yeah, it's almost as if, in the Tumblr early example, it's almost as if they already have
1:27:15hired a David, but they haven't hired a me. Like, they have, like, I mean that in the
1:27:20least arrogant way that I can say it. Like, they have the front-end developer and, like,
1:27:25the middleware developer, and they haven't, like, this is the job of two people, at least,
1:27:31and they've only hired for the front half of it, and not for, like, the back-end half.
1:27:36And of course, they're not gonna pay somebody enough to do both, if they can even find one.
1:27:39Yeah, the pay thing though, the ad is honest to a fault, but we don't have numbers.
1:27:47So you don't know, like maybe they think they're paying below market, but they're still actually
1:27:50offering a reasonably good salary.
1:27:53Or maybe they're offering a ridiculously low salary.
1:27:54We can't tell from the ad.
1:27:56All we can tell is from the people who work there.
1:27:58And this one person who's leaving, it's hard to tell from them.
1:28:01The guy who was there for eight years obviously enjoyed it and probably just moved on to something
1:28:06else in his life.
1:28:08don't have a lot of turnover in their company. They do run it more like a family. It seems
1:28:11like all the people who work there are happy with it. Otherwise, why would they stay? It's
1:28:14not like a place where, you know, and some people are making a big deal about the, you
1:28:20know, it's an offensive work environment or whatever. Someone was saying that's like legally
1:28:25a boilerplate. And that sounds vaguely plausible to me because at least one job that I worked
1:28:30at, I had to sign a thing that said, you know, as the chorus, in a matter of course of doing
1:28:34this job and doing competitive research, you may come across websites that other people
1:28:37find offensive and blah blah blah.
1:28:38Basically it was just saying you may see porn sites as part of your work and you promise
1:28:41you won't sue us because of it, right?
1:28:45Because they're out there on the web and you may be going.
1:28:49If you work at Penny Arcade and it's a comic strip that has adult themes and doing competitive
1:28:54research you may run across other things or whatever, that seems like actually kind of
1:28:58a reasonable thing to say up front to people that like, presumably you're familiar with
1:29:02Penny Arcade, but just so you know, this is what it's about.
1:29:05this is what you may come in contact with. It is not, I think, trying to have people
1:29:09sign away their rights to be sexually harassed or something, because I have to believe that
1:29:13if anything like that was going on inside Penny Arcade, we would hear about it, right?
1:29:17Like that they're not the NSA, they're not CIA, they're not silencing people as they
1:29:21go out the door. Everyone who works there seems to like working there. They all seem
1:29:25to like each other. The people who leave do not leave disgruntled and hating it. Maybe
1:29:29it's like a cult and they're brainwashing everybody, but I have a really hard time believing
1:29:32that. I still think this is an ill-advised hiring decision and I sure as hell wouldn't
1:29:38take that job myself, but I definitely have mixed feelings about is this good or bad for
1:29:47the person who ends up taking that job and being happy with it? How can you say if someone
1:29:51takes that job and they're super happy with it for, you know, even if they're only happy
1:29:56with it for two years? People sometimes are in jobs for less than two years. Who are you
1:30:00to say to that person they shouldn't have taken that job. Maybe in retrospect they will
1:30:04feel like they shouldn't. I know if I took that job and then grew to my current ripe
1:30:07old age I would regret having taken that job, but that's me. Everyone's different, so I
1:30:12don't know. I don't know what to think.
1:30:14I mean, to wrap this up, because I think we're running a little long here, I think that it's
1:30:19a complicated issue because it divides people along the same lines as like how much the
1:30:26government should mandate about how things are done or how you live your own life. And
1:30:32people are so split on issues like this. Labor laws almost always have this kind of problem,
1:30:37where it's like, well, if the government or the society's expectations are from critics
1:30:44like us, we might say, oh, well, having workaholism be the norm is really bad. And you need to
1:30:53to have codified vacation schedules and limited hours or paid overtime to discourage constant
1:30:59overworking and stuff like that, you have issues where a lot of people think that that
1:31:07should be regulated. That the government should step in and say, "Well, it's really better
1:31:13for people overall if you live by these rules or follow these guidelines or restrictions
1:31:19or limits. It's kind of like a parent role. We know better for you than what you're
1:31:25claiming. So even if the employer wants you to do something and you agree and you will
1:31:29do it and you're happy doing it, the government might say, "That's actually worse for
1:31:34people in general, so we're not going to allow that." And that's a very controversial
1:31:39thing.
1:31:40Similar to that, all of our opinions on this, like you said earlier, Casey and John both,
1:31:45If the employees there are happy in that environment, is it really that bad?
1:31:51And so I think we can't really—you know, we can say this is bad in general, and generally
1:31:57you shouldn't take this job.
1:31:59But if they happen to find somebody who will take that job, which they probably—they
1:32:03almost certainly will very easily because they have such a big following, we can't
1:32:08really say like, "That person's an idiot."
1:32:10Like, they're making that choice.
1:32:12But I think we can say in general, you shouldn't do things like this.
1:32:17But even that's controversial.
1:32:21You should, even for the person taking that job, you can't be sure that you're going to
1:32:25like it as much as you do.
1:32:27And talk about labor laws and stuff like that.
1:32:30In general, this is all sort of, talk about first world problems here.
1:32:35Labor laws, there's so much low hanging fruit in terms of stopping the Walmarts of the world
1:32:39not paying their employees enough.
1:32:41person's going to be paid enough to get food on the table, right?
1:32:45So in the grand scheme of things, it pales in comparison to the worker exploitation that
1:32:49happens lower down in the scale of things.
1:32:51But for our little enlightened world of developers and stuff, this is like the crazy equivalent
1:32:58of that among developers, is that we've probably all been in jobs where we felt like we were
1:33:03overworked and we felt like we weren't appreciated and didn't share in the success of the company.
1:33:07And we see this is the place where that could happen.
1:33:09So beware, don't go in thinking it's all going to be Rose and Sunshine because it's
1:33:13really, really tough.
1:33:14And especially when we see a young person doing it where they don't know, they don't
1:33:16know they're going to like it.
1:33:17They don't know if they're going to be happy because they don't have any experience with
1:33:19anything.
1:33:20And maybe they'll think they'll like it and maybe, you know, the burnout is definitely
1:33:23a possibility.
1:33:24Maybe they'll be happy for the first year and realize, "I can never go anywhere and
1:33:27I'm miserable and I've sacrificed my entire life and I didn't realize I was doing it."
1:33:30It's mostly like you're trying to help people go in with their eyes open.
1:33:33And I think the brutal and honest ad kind of helps in that, but it also kind of makes
1:33:38it seem more exciting and daring to young people with less experience of like, "Oh,
1:33:41I'm going to do this thing because it's super hard and everything."
1:33:45In general, it's not...
1:33:47Even if they were fixed on this stupid plan of hiring a single person to do all these
1:33:51jobs, there were better ways to go about presenting that position to have a better chance of finding
1:33:58a successful match with someone who really will be happy in that position.
1:34:01I don't know.
1:34:04private companies is difficult, but we should all just wait outside the company for that
1:34:08person to leave one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, ten years from now and say, "How
1:34:12was it? Was it what you thought it was? Were you happy?"
1:34:15We told you so. Get off my lawn.
1:34:17I mean, maybe. We didn't tell you. Maybe they're going to love it. Maybe they're going to think
1:34:20it's awesome. I have to say, having consumed tons and tons of Paneerahic content over the
1:34:25years and seeing all of what their work life is there, many times I've said, "Boy, I wish
1:34:28my work was like that. Boy, I wish I cared about my coworkers the way they apparently
1:34:32care about theirs, right? And that's why they get all these employees and we just
1:34:35we just want them not to take advantage of that and like exploit somebody. It's like,
1:34:39we know we have this environment that looks awesome on camera and secretly
1:34:43inside we're evil and we're going to abuse this person but and we're gonna
1:34:46get some sucker in like that's that's what we fear but we don't know what's
1:34:49going on so it's that's a fear but you can't say that's definitely what it's
1:34:52like inside Penny Arcade. I don't know, I definitely have mixed feelings. And this is even this is not
1:34:56even touching the Mike's many foot-and-mouth disease problems and his
1:35:01these major problems, understanding, I'm not even going to get into these topics. I
1:35:05don't think you guys know about them, but it's probably not appropriate for a tech
1:35:07show. But this job listing is.
1:35:09All right, then.
1:35:10Let's wrap it up. Thanks a lot to our two sponsors this week, Ting and Warby Parker,
1:35:16and we will see you next week.
1:35:17[Music]
1:35:18Now the show is over They didn't even mean to begin
1:35:25'Cause it was accidental Oh, it was accidental
1:35:31John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him
1:35:36'Cause it was accidental (accidental)
1:35:39It was accidental (accidental)
1:35:41And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm
1:35:47And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them
1:35:51@c-a-s-e-y-l-i-s-s
1:35:55So that's Casey List, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:36:00Anti-Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C, U-S-A, Syracuse.
1:36:07It's accidental.
1:36:09Accidental.
1:36:11They didn't mean to.
1:36:13Accidental.
1:36:14Accidental.
1:36:15Tech broadcast so long.
1:36:20Penny Arcade is a divisive issue, a company
1:36:27that engenders strong feelings.
1:36:28So we'll see if we get tons of feedback from the people who hate Penny Arcade and
1:36:32say that we were defending it too much, and from the people who love Penny Arcade and
1:36:35say we were saying bad things about it.
1:36:37Or maybe we'll get almost no feedback at all, which means that there's no overlap
1:36:40in our audiences.
1:36:43I wonder, what do you think will be more hated?
1:36:47Our collective opinion on the Penny Arcade job posting, or me or Casey?
1:36:55Why can't it be both?
1:36:57That's probably the right answer.
1:36:59I really hated Margot and Casey's opinion of the bit.
1:37:01No, I think I'll get the worst of it, because the problem with trying to be like, to have
1:37:05a position that's nuanced, where like, you acknowledge the unknowns in the situation,
1:37:10that like, all we have to go on is this job posting at a bunch of videos and none of us
1:37:14really know.
1:37:15And you know, like, that uncertainty and that hedging seems like, well, you're defending
1:37:19them, you're saying they're better.
1:37:20I'm just acknowledging the unknowns.
1:37:21And people hate that, because it's not, they just want to see you decisively come down
1:37:25for or against, and that sort of wishy-washy—they interpret it as wishy-washy, but I feel like
1:37:30it's accuracy, it's acknowledging the unknowns. You can't make definitive statements without
1:37:34more information. And that comes off as not as—certainty is much more attractive and
1:37:40interesting, and so they want you to be certain about something, and I can't.
1:37:43Oh, I'm pronouncing divisive wrong? Provise of?
1:37:47I've always heard divisive. I bet if I looked it up in the dictionary
1:37:50now it would tell me there's two pronunciations. Anyway.
1:37:52You know, I almost called you out on it, but since I've gotten burned, I've burned
1:37:56myself so bad on these things, I feel like Richard Pryor.
1:37:59I've lit myself up trying to smoke, if you will.
1:38:02Not literally, but figuratively.
1:38:04And so I refuse to make any sort of commentary on grammar or pronunciation issues.
1:38:08It says one pronunciation, divisive.
1:38:10Oh well.
1:38:11It's a divisive issue.
1:38:13I'm still way ahead of Groover on mispronunciations.
1:38:18Your problem, John, is that you're a fan of Penny Arcade.
1:38:22You actually know them. You're closer to them than me and Casey.
1:38:26I don't even know them. I read the comic, though.
1:38:28Well, yeah. Casey and I, as far as I know Casey, we don't give a shit about Penny Arcade.
1:38:32Nope.
1:38:33I never got into the comic. I've known of it for, I don't know, years, a decade.
1:38:40But I've never read it regularly. I've never really cared.
1:38:42And honestly, when people link me to it, I don't even find it that funny.
1:38:46It's just not my kind of thing.
1:38:48Yeah, you have to be a gamer. It's a gamer's comic.
1:38:50But you're actually close enough that any opinion you make, and as you said, by having
1:38:57a nuanced hedged opinion, anything you say is going to actually anchor both sides.
1:39:03The people who don't like them from this job posting are going to be like, "You didn't
1:39:07come down hard enough."
1:39:08And the people who are fans of them are like, "You traitor!
1:39:10You're one of us!"
1:39:11Yeah.
1:39:12But the thing is, it's like the cult of personality where you think you know people who listen
1:39:16into their podcasts and everything,
1:39:18and at a certain point, reading Penny Arcade for 15 years
1:39:21and going to all the conventions,
1:39:22you start to feel like you know the people,
1:39:23and when they do terrible, stupid things,
1:39:25if you don't know them, you just simply condemn them
1:39:29and say, "You have done a terrible, stupid thing."
1:39:31If you do know them, you're like,
1:39:32"Oh, damn, you did a terrible, stupid thing."
1:39:34If your friend does it, don't you wanna talk to your friend
1:39:36and say, "What are you doing, man?"
1:39:39'Cause they've done lots of terrible, stupid things,
1:39:41and even though I don't know these people at all,
1:39:44the feeling I get is not like,
1:39:45"Hey, there's this thing I never heard of."
1:39:47Like, you know when someone links you to something
1:39:48where someone said something dumb
1:39:50and you have no idea who it is,
1:39:51all you know is like,
1:39:52"Oh man, this person is a terrible person," right?
1:39:54Like some YouTube video of some person
1:39:55saying something terrible,
1:39:56or some politician you never heard of
1:39:57saying something terrible.
1:39:58You just instantly go,
1:39:59"Well, that guy's a bozo," right?
1:40:01But if someone links you to like,
1:40:02your brother saying something terrible,
1:40:04you wanna talk to your brother and say,
1:40:06"What are you doing, man?"
1:40:06I, you know, you'd hopefully say,
1:40:08"I know you're not as terrible as that is,"
1:40:10or, "Maybe you are as terrible
1:40:11and we need to talk about it," or whatever.
1:40:12And that's how I feel about the Penny Arcade stuff.
1:40:14There was a good post from MC Frontalot, which is a musician and also a friend of the guys,
1:40:19with a similar conflict going, "You're doing a terrible thing."
1:40:23But I know you guys have it in you to, A, realize that it's terrible, and B, fix it.
1:40:30And seeing them not take those two steps, not seem to realize what was wrong with what
1:40:33they did, and not seeming to fix it, is just so frustrating.
1:40:36And a lot of people are just sort of cutting ties.
1:40:38They were like, "You've had three strikes, you're out.
1:40:41You keep doing these dumb things and maybe they just don't have people around them explaining
1:40:45to them what the problem is or maybe they can't internalize it.
1:40:48And it's a tough situation.
1:40:51And again, I feel like I have this unspoken relationship with these people where I totally
1:40:56don't the same way that people feel like they know us because they listen to our podcast.
1:41:00And so, yeah, I definitely am closer to it.
1:41:01But what I don't want people to think is because I'm close to it, I defend these terrible things
1:41:06they do, which again, I don't want to get into.
1:41:08But it's simply the job posting itself.
1:41:10I don't think that was the right way to go about that on so many different levels, despite
1:41:14the fact that I acknowledge that it is very possible that the person who takes that job
1:41:18will be happy with it and will come out of the company saying, "I was glad I took that
1:41:22job."
1:41:23You know, it's funny hearing you talk about knowing someone who does something stupid
1:41:27and seeing a stranger do something stupid.
1:41:31And I feel like, Marco, that's why you get burned a lot because you're very passionate
1:41:36and very opinionated, which in and of itself is not bad.
1:41:39But I think that a lot of times you come across as arrogant and because I know you, and both
1:41:44of us know you as well as we do, I don't think a thing of it.
1:41:47And then I'll see, and I can't think of a great example, but I'll see the internet go freaking
1:41:51nuts because Marco said this ridiculously arrogant thing.
1:41:54And to me, I'm just like, "Wait, what?"
1:41:57Because I know you and I know enough about where you're coming from to know that's probably
1:42:03not how you meant it.
1:42:04Or even if it is, you meant it at level two out of 10 and the internet's taking it as
1:42:09is a level 10 out of 10.
1:42:10And it's a very similar thing.
1:42:12And so it's often funny for me to watch
1:42:14some of the skirmishes you either get yourself into
1:42:17or put yourself into.
1:42:19Because not always, but most times, I'm like,
1:42:22oh, well, yeah, it's just Marker being Marker, whatever.
1:42:24- But you get graded on a curve.
1:42:26Once you have any amount of fame,
1:42:28that scrutiny is much higher.
1:42:29And Penny Arcade, that's not excusing them at all.
1:42:31Penny Arcade has tons of fame, and guess what?
1:42:34You get the good and the bad that comes with it.
1:42:35I mean, same with the Marker.
1:42:36Would you rather have people not care what you say,
1:42:38or overreact about what you're saying.
1:42:41And that's the price of--
1:42:42Yeah, depends on the day.
1:42:43I know, but that's the price of being well-known.
1:42:46That's the price of being successful in your endeavors,
1:42:48is that things you say are going to be scrutinized.
1:42:50I mean, the biggest example is any kind of politician,
1:42:53or the president, or whatever they say anything.
1:42:54They fart the wrong way.
1:42:55They say they don't like broccoli,
1:42:56and it's an international incident.
1:42:57Remember that?
1:42:58But maybe you don't, George Bush.
1:42:59Anyway--
1:43:00Yeah, we were alive for that.
1:43:02That comes with the territory.
1:43:04And the poor plenty arcade guys, A,
1:43:06up doing legitimately bad things, and B) rail against the unfairness of being held to the
1:43:14standard that they didn't want to sign up for. And I understand the emotion, but you have to realize
1:43:19that comes with the territory. There's no ninja move where you're like, "Haha, but I don't accept
1:43:27that you're going to scrutinize me, therefore my actions shouldn't be taken as seriously as
1:43:31as they are, it's like, you don't get to decide that, right? You do speak for a large media
1:43:36conglomerate empire, your words do have more in effect than they would if you were a regular
1:43:40person. You can't go back to being a regular Joe. Yeah, that's the way it is. I feel like
1:43:47I should just, if I just sit down with them for like, okay, maybe it would have to be
1:43:50on an island for a month. Because sometimes I feel like I was with Steve Jobs. If I could
1:43:54just get Steve Jobs in a room, I could convince him of X, Y. I'm like, no, realistically,
1:43:57he would walk out of the room. I need to have him prisoner in a nice way so that they can't
1:44:03run away. And eventually, it's like in that movie where there's a prisoner or even just
1:44:08like a student who in the beginning they hate the teacher and they hate the teacher for
1:44:11the first six months, but then they finally come around and then the real work gets going.
1:44:13That's what you need. I feel like someone should be able to talk to these guys and explain
1:44:18to them what it is they're missing because I really believe they can be turned around.
1:44:21I just haven't done it yet.
1:44:23Well, I don't think they think there's anything wrong with this.
1:44:27I know, that's problem zero. There it is. Maybe someone could explain it to you. Maybe
1:44:33no one's explaining it the right way. Let me explain it again. Here's what's wrong.
1:44:38It's hard when you get as much crap as they get, which I can only begin to imagine. I
1:44:45get some small fraction of that amount of crap, and I'm always surprised in the new
1:44:54ways that I've accidentally offended people. Like, it's like every week I accidentally
1:45:00stumble upon a new way that I've offended somebody. And it gets to me, it really does,
1:45:06because I want to be a nice guy. I don't want to be a dick. I don't want people to think
1:45:11I'm a dick. But you're just so good at it. But I really don't mean to be. That's totally
1:45:16unintentional. But you would learn from your mistakes. Again, I don't want to get into
1:45:22specific instances, but they'll say something that is unintentionally sexist or transphobic
1:45:28or something, and they literally don't know what they just did wrong. And that's the problem, right?
1:45:34And the worst reaction is to get defensive and double down on it, and that's what they do.
1:45:39They get defensive and double down on the wrong thing that they did. And it's like,
1:45:42that's the whole thing of trying to educate someone. If you do something that is legitimately...
1:45:46If you said something that actually is arrogant, the way you said it is dismissive of other people
1:45:52and whatever. I feel like that you learn from that experience and learn to say the same thing
1:45:56in a different way or be more clear about what you're saying, right? Or express your
1:46:01sentiment more accurately so it's less likely to be misinterpreted the wrong way. But I don't think
1:46:05you've ever been in a situation where you said something that is like totally wrong and terrible
1:46:10and doubled down on it and were like, "No, actually, screw you and let me tell you why.
1:46:16I'm going to say that even more." Like that total emotional reaction. Your reaction always is,
1:46:20is introspective and, well, not always.
1:46:24Sometimes you have moments.
1:46:25- No.
1:46:26(laughing)
1:46:27No, that's the problem.
1:46:28It's like my instinct, I think,
1:46:30which is a natural instinct, is to be defensive.
1:46:32And I look back on things that blow up
1:46:37that I didn't mean to blow up,
1:46:39and I look back on what I actually said and did
1:46:42after it's all over, and I can see,
1:46:44wow, I did completely the wrong thing.
1:46:46I got defensive, I was being immature,
1:46:49or angry or impulsive, I look back and I'm ashamed of it.
1:46:53But it's easy to say--
1:46:55- But you learn from it though, don't you?
1:46:56But you don't make that exact specific mistake again, right?
1:47:00- Yeah, but I find new ones.
1:47:01Look, it's easy to say, oh, if I was in this situation
1:47:05like this, I would do X, Y, and Z.
1:47:08I would react this way.
1:47:09But then when you're actually in that situation,
1:47:12a lot of times it doesn't turn out that way.
1:47:14And it's so hard when your instinct is to be deficient
1:47:19defensive or to say things off the cuff as if you're talking to a smaller group of
1:47:25people who likes you more than the actual group of people you're talking to that's
1:47:28much bigger, it's really hard to get used to that. And it's really hard to fundamentally
1:47:35change your behavior and your personality to sand off those rough edges. I mean, I'm
1:47:4131 and I still haven't figured out how to do that quite well yet. I'm trying, but
1:47:45I really have not figured it out yet.
1:47:47They're similar ages.
1:47:48I think they're between you and I.
1:47:50I think they're in their thirties.
1:47:51They have kids a similar age.
1:47:53They're trying to figure it out as well.
1:47:55And that instinct to lash out, it's not just the instinct to lash out.
1:48:01The things that you get called on are just so minor compared to the things they do wrong.
1:48:07Well I think it's mostly because I have a much smaller audience though.
1:48:09If I had an audience the size of theirs, I think I would get as much as they do, if not
1:48:15because I'm even less experienced at talking to an audience as large as theirs as they
1:48:21are.
1:48:22Well, I mean, here's, I don't know, I'm not going to name names, but like, say you said
1:48:26something like, you know, "Well, everyone knows the girls can't climb trees."
1:48:30Like, you said something sexist like that, right?
1:48:32And you didn't understand that that statement was sexist.
1:48:36All you can see is about the tree climbing business, and like, you didn't understand,
1:48:41conceptually, like, you're like, "What's sexist about that?"
1:48:43That's just a statement of fact.
1:48:44Everyone knows girls can't climb a tree.
1:48:46You don't understand the broader context in which that statement is.
1:48:50Then you double down on it, you could argue about it, and you get lost in the details.
1:48:55There is a base understanding of what is at stake here that does not exist in your head.
1:49:01And so even if you get to the point, as they frequently do, where they're in apology mode
1:49:04and they're like, "We're sorry.
1:49:07The last thing we wanted to do was offend people.
1:49:09We care about all these people."
1:49:10honest statements of apology but they don't understand what they're apologizing for.
1:49:13they don't understand like the you know the the historical and cultural context
1:49:18of sexism versus just the "I said something wrong" kind of at some point
1:49:23and now I have to apologize for it but I don't really understand what I'm
1:49:25apologizing for. that's that's their problem and they keep doing that over
1:49:29and over again and nothing you have done has ever reached that that level of like
1:49:32you not because you understand why someone is like if you say something
1:49:36that's dismissive of like some programming language and people get you
1:49:38understand it's because you were dismissive of programming. There's not like a millennia-long
1:49:43oppression of PHP programmers that's like the context that you are completely unaware of or
1:49:47not able to internalize. And it's hard. A lot of people are not able to internalize those things.
1:49:51And one way is to just, you know, shun. And the other way is to try to explain to, you know,
1:49:58they call them allies, like someone who wants to do the right thing but doesn't understand what
1:50:01they did wrong, to try to bring them onto your side by explaining what they did wrong.
1:50:06like those blowups I think serve a purpose because I feel like I have, and it's seeing not just them,
1:50:10but every other internet blowup where someone says something and then some interest group jumps on
1:50:14them and shreds them to bits, has made me more aware, not that like that interest group is
1:50:19totally right and that guy is totally wrong, but just more aware of issues that I wasn't aware of
1:50:23before in a way that gives me a bigger picture of like humanity, like makes you question your
1:50:28assumptions about things that you hadn't thought about before. So that, you know, so I think I hope
1:50:35some portion of the audience seeing these train wrecks is coming out of it like maybe
1:50:39those people, those allies are being educated even if the people involved in the conflict
1:50:43are not.
1:50:44No, we should have a...
1:50:46It's too bad I'm only on tech podcasts, because I would love to be on a podcast to talk specifically
1:50:49about the issues involved in here, but it is not appropriate for a tech podcast.
1:50:53You just make a new one, I mean, you know, what's another podcast?
1:50:56Oh, please, no more podcasts.
1:50:58I mean, if us three idiots can do it, then anyone can.
1:51:02Oh, yeah.
1:51:03It's funny. I was just complaining tomorrow. Maybe not complaining but lamenting is probably a better word to Marco
1:51:08I think was earlier today that as part of my newfound notoriety is like an f triple minus list celebrity is I
1:51:15Feel like I'm getting to the point and maybe it's just cuz I'm an idiot
1:51:18But I feel like I'm getting to the point that everything I post anywhere in any capacity is met with a million
1:51:24like silly critiques and
1:51:28And it just gets it gets annoying and it gets frustrating and a lot of times
1:51:32I want to engage and and where I think Marco and I are both learning is
1:51:37I'm trying to get better about not engaging but my initial reaction is you know like somebody posted on Twitter
1:51:46I forget what exactly they said, but something something along the lines of oh, you know, that's what it was
1:51:51it was you know, I Sean Blanc had had asked me to do something for his new website and
1:51:57And somebody had posted, you know, why the hell do I care what this this other guy has to say?
1:52:01And I and so because I'm an idiot I engaged and I said something along the lines of well
1:52:05you know, even the other guy has an opinion every once in a while and
1:52:08The the response which I should have expected was something along the lines of you know, honestly, I don't like you or Marco
1:52:14I just listen for John which is pretty much everyone that listens to the show
1:52:18I think I remember this did you see what I responded to that person? No, I don't think I did
1:52:22That's because I didn't CC you but if you can look at look at the thread
1:52:25you'll see. Like, I rarely engage as well, but sometimes it's worth doing.
1:52:31Maybe it wasn't appropriate for you to engage in that thing, and there's certainly times when I
1:52:37don't. Here's the thing about it. A lot of times people will say that they don't like your whatever
1:52:44thing. They don't like listening to your podcast. They don't care about your opinion. They will
1:52:49be expressing in not so many words that they have different priorities than you do.
1:52:54the fact that they're throwing that in your face may bother you, but you have to also say like,
1:52:59it's okay for people to have a different opinion that's not like what you do.
1:53:02Like, all right. Like, there's nothing, there's not an argument to be had. You're not going to
1:53:08turn them around. You're not going to, it's not my job and not my desire to find everyone who doesn't
1:53:13like me and convince them they should like me. Right? The only thing I will engage on is people
1:53:18being mean for no good reason and people getting facts wrong. And even those I will selectively
1:53:23gauge on. So if people get facts wrong, I will correct them because that is something where
1:53:28there is an argument to be had. And I only do that if I'm feeling energetic. And people being mean,
1:53:33most of the time I will let that slide. But today, when I saw that tweet that you were talking about,
1:53:38I didn't want to let that slide. And I think my response was, "Don't be a jerk." Because seriously,
1:53:43don't be a jerk. That's just being a jerk. You don't like them? Fine. You don't like what they
1:53:49have to say? Fine. Don't keep throwing in their face and saying, "We don't like you. We don't
1:53:53like anything you say, but okay fine don't listen to the show, the end period, don't be a jerk about it.
1:53:57And so that's, you know, that's like it's okay not to like them. It's not, it's nothing wrong
1:54:03with them. Maybe you don't like listening to them, there's plenty of things that I don't like to
1:54:05listen to or watch either, but I don't know, seek the people out and tell them how much I don't like
1:54:10them repeatedly. That's just being a jerk. Yeah, I think people, people who don't get a lot of
1:54:15random strangers giving them feedback would probably be shocked at how much crap you get
1:54:22when you have a lot of random strangers giving you feedback on the internet.
1:54:25Just for an extreme version of this, look on Twitter, look at the @reply stream of a celebrity,
1:54:33or somebody who has hundreds of thousands of followers or more. Look at Gruber's
1:54:38celebrity, look at Gruber's stream, look at his @replies. Look at anybody who has a large following
1:54:46who says anything of any value ever.
1:54:50And you're gonna see hundreds and hundreds of people
1:54:53calling them an asshole and telling them they're an idiot.
1:54:55And when you put yourself out there,
1:54:59once you get any size audience at all,
1:55:03you're gonna get a lot of really good feedback from people.
1:55:05And you could get 100 positive emails and tweets a day
1:55:10saying that they liked what you wrote and that was great.
1:55:13And then you get four idiots who tell you that you're just a moron and they hate everything you do.
1:55:21And it's really, you know, for some people who have a thick skin, you know, it's easy to let that,
1:55:28you know, just roll off your back and, okay, that's fine. Some people, it bothers them.
1:55:34And I think that is the natural reaction, is for that to bother you. And I'm one of those people.
1:55:39it bothers me. And every nasty thing that I get bothers me.
1:55:48So my recommended thing to Casey, I told him earlier where I am, my strategy for this is
1:55:54if somebody says something uncivil or by my definition unreasonable in some way over Twitter,
1:56:02I just block them. First time, first offense, don't care, block, and then it's gone.
1:56:06modern Twitter clients, when you block somebody,
1:56:08actually remove the tweet from your timeline.
1:56:10You stop seeing it.
1:56:12And generally speaking, a lot more hate
1:56:17comes from a lot fewer people than you think.
1:56:20And so you might have like four guys who troll you
1:56:25with everything you write or say.
1:56:27And the same four guys every time.
1:56:29So if you just hand out four blocks,
1:56:31you're eliminating like 80% of your trolling that you see.
1:56:34And I know that a lot of people, and Jon, even you just said,
1:56:37like a lot of people would engage with that
1:56:40or try to comment or fight back.
1:56:42And I found that almost universally never to be worthwhile.
1:56:47And almost universally always makes everything worse
1:56:50and makes me get more angry or annoyed
1:56:53or feeling bad about it.
1:56:55Like it just builds the negativity.
1:56:56And the best way for me to handle it is just to remove it
1:56:59because I can't deal with that.
1:57:01Like, Joel Spolsky left blogging because of this.
1:57:05Like, Joel on Software, there's so much good stuff on there, but because he wrote things
1:57:09with strong opinions to an audience of programmers, he got the worst crap from people ever in
1:57:15addition to all the positives.
1:57:16And he wrote in one of his last, like, main posts when his blog was still active, but
1:57:20he was basically saying he's quitting, one of the things he wrote was, like, he could
1:57:23get a hundred positive comments and one negative one, and that negative one would bother him
1:57:27all day.
1:57:28And I totally get that, because I'm the exact same way.
1:57:30Oh yeah. If you can learn to, not to say that you should, because I think you should do whatever
1:57:36it takes to, you know, have an even keel, and if it's blocking that's what it is, but as someone who
1:57:41usually, I very rarely block, I block spammers obviously, but I very rarely block people who
1:57:47are being jerks to me, because if you can learn to absorb that, there is very often some kernel
1:57:54of truth in the negative feedback that you get, particularly in the negative feedback that you
1:57:59hate the most because if someone says something to you like if they said to me that I'm tremendously
1:58:05overweight that would not bother me because I'm not tremendously overweight, right? But if they
1:58:09say something that's close to home, right, then that bothers you more. And the closer they get
1:58:13to the truth, even if they're super mean about it and aren't, you know, if they're saying it much
1:58:19worse than it is, if there is some kernel of truth, you tend to have the most visceral negative
1:58:22reaction to that. And if you can learn to absorb that, what you can do is come away from it and
1:58:28learn from whatever that kernel of truth is,
1:58:31figure it out, examine it,
1:58:32and try to improve on that axis going forward.
1:58:34If you think it's an important thing to improve on,
1:58:36maybe that person saying you're doing something
1:58:38that they think is bad that you think is good,
1:58:39then fine, whatever, ignore them.
1:58:40But if it really bothers you
1:58:43because you also kind of deep down agree
1:58:45that that's a bad thing,
1:58:46you work on it and try to make it better.
1:58:48It doesn't mean you have to absorb tons of abuse
1:58:50to make this happen.
1:58:51You could still block the person or whatever,
1:58:53but the anti-pattern is totally blocking out
1:58:56negative feedback and just sort of becoming a Hollywood rock star where you don't let
1:59:01anything negative – you become Tom Cruise.
1:59:03I don't know what this means, Tom Cruise.
1:59:05But anyway, where you don't let anything negative in and you start living in your own
1:59:09bubble and that's your way to deal with things.
1:59:11You don't want that to happen.
1:59:13You don't want to isolate yourself so much from feedback that you are inside a bubble.
1:59:17And I found that most people, if you call them on their BS, most people will be a little
1:59:25They'll do a little bit of introspection if you do it in the right way.
1:59:29It's very difficult to do.
1:59:30You have to disengage yourself from the process.
1:59:31But one example is, remember the Iowa 7 kid video?
1:59:34The kid who was crying about Iowa 7, we talked about on the show, right?
1:59:38So I tweeted that before, I think it was before the show, I tweeted that.
1:59:41And some person responded to me and said, "Boy, that kid, your kid is a big brat," or
1:59:47something like that.
1:59:48And so there's two things wrong with that.
1:59:50One, that's not my kid.
1:59:51And two, it's a seven-year-old, or five-year-old, whatever it is, crying about things that five-year-olds
1:59:56cry about.
1:59:57Right?
1:59:58And so I could have just ignored that.
2:00:00I'm not going to convince them that that kid is not a brat.
2:00:03That's not my goal.
2:00:04But they got a fact wrong.
2:00:05So I said, "That's not my kid," which is true.
2:00:08And I didn't try to say, "And you would know that if you listened to the bloop."
2:00:11No, I just said, "That's not my kid.
2:00:13Want to correct the fact?"
2:00:14And the second thing is, I said, "That's not my kid, and that's an unkind thing to say."
2:00:17Because it's an unkind thing to say.
2:00:19You're gonna say a kid you see in a video who's just a little kid who's crying at some
2:00:21point is a brat?
2:00:23That is an unkind thing to say.
2:00:24And that's it.
2:00:25That's all I said.
2:00:26And this was an older woman who said this or whatever.
2:00:28And right or wrong, you know, you think like this older woman should be saying, people
2:00:31are, all sorts of people are mean.
2:00:33This person was not convinced by my, you know, they agreed that it was a mean thing to say,
2:00:37but then also tried to, you know, justify why they said it.
2:00:40Okay, well, I'm glad that's not your kid, but I still think they're kind of bratty.
2:00:43And that was it.
2:00:44Like, I'm not going to pursue that further.
2:00:46But I think that tiny piece of feedback I gave them, correcting the fact and saying
2:00:50that they were being unkind, hopefully they gave them a moment's notice of saying, "Yes,
2:00:55I was saying an unkind thing about a five-year-old on the internet just now."
2:00:59And maybe they dismiss it and move on with their life, but I hope that's planting a little
2:01:01seed in there, reminding them that, you know, that's not a nice thing to say.
2:01:06And if that was my kid, maybe my reaction would be much more violent and I would block
2:01:10them and I would argue with them, but like that, you know, the correct reaction, if you're
2:01:13going to engage at all is to try to help that person realize what a jerk they're being.
2:01:17Well, right. And what you said is exactly correct, which is like, you know, when the
2:01:21criticism is a little bit true, that's what hurts the most. And I think, Jon, you're exactly
2:01:28right that blocking out sources of negative criticism completely is not good. That's really
2:01:34bad. I mean, one thing I love about putting myself out there online is that I get challenged
2:01:41on so many things that it forces me to become a better person.
2:01:44It makes me a better writer, it makes me a better thinker,
2:01:47it makes me a better person to have so much constant feedback,
2:01:51good and bad.
2:01:53The problem is you have to draw a line somewhere.
2:01:56You have to be able to distinguish
2:01:58between good feedback and people just being unreasonable
2:02:03or being trolls.
2:02:05And when you have a large audience,
2:02:07you're going to get a lot of both.
2:02:09And you also have to make sure that you're not gonna get
2:02:13such a massive deluge of negative feedback constantly
2:02:18that it will discourage you from continuing
2:02:21to be present there and make you leave the internet
2:02:24or stop doing something.
2:02:25I have so many horrible vocal traits.
2:02:30Somehow, not a lot of people have called me out on it
2:02:33in public because people aren't that mean, I guess.
2:02:36And so I'm able to have a career as a podcaster.
2:02:39I would never have thought five years ago that I would be making a good chunk of my
2:02:44living from podcasts because I'm not a good speaker at all.
2:02:49I have so many problems.
2:02:50I've thought about going to a speech therapist as an adult to fix weird things I do when
2:02:54I talk, but I haven't had a pressing reason to yet because no one's called me out on it.
2:03:00But it's important to distinguish between people being mean for invalid reasons or just
2:03:08being mean because they're mean.
2:03:10Right.
2:03:11Can I jump in here?
2:03:12Because I think I have a great example.
2:03:14So this person we were talking about earlier that was being a troll was just saying, literally
2:03:20this person said, "I wish there was a way to mute out Marco and me."
2:03:25And that's just really not necessary.
2:03:27And like John said, John replied and said, "Don't be a jerk."
2:03:30However, I've seen a lot of feedback from myself, things like, "Why do you hedge so
2:03:35much?
2:03:36You don't need to do that."
2:03:37say, "Well, here's this big long opinion, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," but that's
2:03:41just what I think. I don't need to do that. That's not necessary. That is
2:03:45sometimes hurtful feedback because it strikes close to home, just like you were
2:03:49saying, but it's good and positive and constructive feedback as opposed to, "I
2:03:55wish I could mute you two idiots." That's just not helpful, and
2:03:59there is a big difference between the two. Right, and if
2:04:04If so many, if like hundreds of listeners told you after the very first show you hedge too much,
2:04:11or if hundreds of listeners told me after my very first podcast that they don't like the way I talk,
2:04:15we almost would have certainly stopped and left.
2:04:19And you know, that's, then like, you know, then everyone loses.
2:04:22We lose, people who like the show lose, you know, so like, that's bad for everyone.
2:04:27So it really is important to have some kind of balance, and you can't control what people are going to say to you.
2:04:33So it's really important to just be able to manage that somehow.
2:04:38And that's why I hand out Twitter blocks aggressively.
2:04:40It's just to manage that incoming stream, just so that I'm not trying to block out all criticism.
2:04:45I do want to hear valid criticism. I just want to try to filter out a lot of invalid criticism and a lot of unnecessary nastiness.
2:04:51And if I don't filter all that out, I'm afraid I would just get tired of it and leave.
2:04:57leave.
2:04:58One of the reasons I'm lighter on the blocking is because it's like I will never unblock
2:05:01a person.
2:05:02I don't even know how to-- I guess you go to Twitter website, like an animal as they
2:05:05say, and find them and like unblock them.
2:05:08But you're never going to do that.
2:05:09And like everyone has a bad day.
2:05:11Everyone is cranky about something.
2:05:12They didn't like something you say.
2:05:13They'll say some mean thing.
2:05:14I'm willing to give people, you know, the benefit of the doubt if they say some jerky
2:05:19thing until it becomes like, "Oh, here's the person."
2:05:22All they ever say is that jerky thing.
2:05:24clearly not even a fan of the show or anything that I do, they're just here to harass me.
2:05:28Then it just becomes harassment and then you pull out the block. I don't have people like
2:05:33that, but for example, getting back to the sexism thing, many women online do have that.
2:05:39Tons and tons of people who are just there to be evil harassers in dangerous kinds of
2:05:42ways and I strongly encourage them to hand out the blocks like crazy in that instance.
2:05:47All of us, I think, are lucky enough not to deal with that at all and I can't even imagine
2:05:50what that would be like because we're whining about people saying that we don't have a good
2:05:54podcast which is nothing compared to the crap they get but yeah there's different categories
2:05:59and the category of negative feedback I get is of a kind where I do not find myself having
2:06:05to hand out the blocks. Spammers on the other hand get the immediate block.
2:06:10Well John you've also you've managed to develop your way of arguing and presenting points
2:06:17so well and this is probably because you're so ancient compared to us.
2:06:21(laughing)
2:06:22- It's the power of Usenet.
2:06:24If you wanna see me making terrible arguments,
2:06:26go search the Usenet archives for,
2:06:28burned in the crucible of Flame Wars on Usenet, yes.
2:06:32- Now surrounded by tons of Google Ads.
2:06:35But you've developed this for, what,
2:06:39a decade longer than we have, or close to it?
2:06:41You're a lot better at it.
2:06:44You're like this large chunk of time ahead of us
2:06:48in having all those rough edges worn down off of your argument style so that now you're
2:06:53really good at it.
2:06:54So I think you get a lot less of the crap than Casey and I do.
2:06:57I don't think it's necessarily age, because you can find 50-year-olds who are just as
2:07:02babyish as—I think it just comes from, you know, like, this—when I found the internet,
2:07:07the thing I wanted to do with it was argue about computers with it, like so many other
2:07:11people, and argue about computers I did.
2:07:14And arguing about computers with smart people eventually teaches you what you're wrong about
2:07:21and how to construct an argument and how to be able to—either it makes you flee or you
2:07:26double down and become even a bigger jerk, or if this is really something you want to
2:07:29pursue, which it was for me, I became better at it.
2:07:33Like any kind of skill that you build up.
2:07:35It's like if you start playing tennis and you keep getting your butt kicked and your
2:07:39reaction is to just hit the ball as hard as you can into the air, that is not getting
2:07:43better at it.
2:07:44that is doubling down on your idiocy. Or you can say, "Why do I keep getting beat? What techniques
2:07:49can I learn to make myself better? Let me practice." And different people have different reactions.
2:07:53I think it's not so much the years of experience, although that helps, but it's like what you did
2:07:59with those years. Because again, I know plenty of people who I'm using it in forums or whatever,
2:08:03who are just as abrasive and terrible and illogical and irrational and emotional as they were 10,
2:08:0715 years ago and have learned nothing. But there are lots of other people who left that environment
2:08:12And there are other people who are slowly getting better and who eventually, because
2:08:16if you pursue that as like, this is something I'm interested in, I'm interested in arguing.
2:08:20Sounds crazy, but it's, you know, some people are into it.
2:08:22I think to our audience, that does not sound crazy at all, especially coming from you,
2:08:27that you would be interested in arguing.
2:08:28Right.
2:08:29And I think to some degree all of us are, but it's like, Marco, why do you bother putting
2:08:33your opinions on blogs?
2:08:34Like why do you, you know, like you want to say, here's what I have to say, what do you
2:08:38have to say?
2:08:39And you want to hear like good feedback from smart people and so you can go back and forth.
2:08:42If you weren't interested in that, you wouldn't be putting your opinions out there.
2:08:47You wouldn't crave that back and forth.
2:08:49So, that's something you're doing with your life.
2:08:52When I publish a blog post, the very first thing I do is basically spend the next 45
2:08:57minutes monitoring Twitter and email and hoping that I get some feedback and reading it all
2:09:03and possibly addressing it.
2:09:04That's the very first thing I do.
2:09:06If I couldn't do that, it would feel very lonely.
2:09:11wouldn't give me as much of a return of satisfaction, which is probably saying a lot
2:09:17about me and my egotism and our modern culture as a whole. But getting that feedback is of
2:09:25utmost importance, and it would feel very strange now if I didn't get that kind of
2:09:28feedback.
2:09:29Yeah, you know, and a very close friend of the show, _DavidSmith, said in the chat a
2:09:34moment ago, "I find it really important to have a group of trusted friends who can tell
2:09:37honest criticism. Unsolicited feedback is where things get really rough. And I completely agree
2:09:42with them. I think it's nice to have a little bit of unsolicited feedback as long as it's constructive.
2:09:46Because sometimes, like I was saying earlier, you know, I might not think Marco's being an
2:09:51asshole because I know Marco and I know that more often than not, he's not intending to be an asshole.
2:09:56But maybe somebody who doesn't know Marco thinks he is being an asshole. And so it might be useful
2:10:01for Marco to hear some random person say, "Hey, you know what? You really came off like an asshole on
2:10:05on that. But generally speaking, I think it's extremely important, just like Dave said,
2:10:10to have a group that can call you out and say, "You know what? You really need to work
2:10:15on whatever this is." And it can be about what you're working on. It could be about
2:10:20something called—just how you treat people could be about any number of things. But having
2:10:25that, I think, is very important.
2:10:26I can just hear all the handbrakes that are going to cover that section if it actually
2:10:30ends up in the podcast.
2:10:31Yeah, my bad.
2:10:32I think this is better than the show.
2:10:34uh... it's not definitely not a tight i guess i'm by the way speaking of things
2:10:38that people get wrong known as call me and i were my friends calling me on
2:10:41these things the the the term call me as they call me and divisive but not call
2:10:46me as i believe when i petition merlin for
2:10:49and are in style song parody for our style parity for our song
2:10:53i erroneously uh... misspoke the name of the arianna album and i think i said
2:10:59plural murmurs that's crazy talking it was bad as soon as i said just want
2:11:02everyone to know I know what the title of the album is. It's singular.
2:11:05This has been eating it. Speaking of things, they're eating away at you and it's like if
2:11:08someone calls me on that, oh, this is the other one that happens constantly is like
2:11:12my mispronunciation of nuclear. Like I mispronounce it all the time. I know it's wrong. I'm not
2:11:16doing it on purpose. I'm not like, oh, I'm taking a stand. I'm going to say it the wrong
2:11:19way. Nope. I totally want to say it the right way. Every time it just comes out nuclear
2:11:24so many times. And as I said in the many tweets, I blame the '80s. Like I do not want to say
2:11:29It just happens. I don't want it to happen. I know it's wrong. Thank you for all the feedback, people. I'm trying.
2:11:35Well, so I didn't really intend for this to become group therapy, but I'm kind of glad it did. This was pretty good.
2:11:41Yeah, it's like back to work.
2:11:43Yeah, I was just thinking to myself, this feels a little back to work-
2:11:45Next week, OCD.
2:11:47And comics. Lots of comics.
2:11:49Lots and lots and lots of comics. Oh, man.
2:11:55I actually I would love for Merlin to address this kind of topic at some point
2:11:58I mean, it doesn't really fit into his show. He has I think I think he's talked about this about
2:12:03How to handle negative feedback and I think he talks a lot about like negative self-talk like you being your own worst enemy
2:12:09Oh, yeah
2:12:10Negatively about the bullet, but it's very it's a similar type of thing where sometimes the things you're saying to yourself
2:12:14Are just mean and sometimes the things you're saying to yourself are like there's a there's a kernel of truth that you need to address
2:12:19And like I feel like he has talked about this
2:12:22I felt like we just kind of did a miniature middle of some weird back to the work thing.
2:12:28Back to the work?
2:12:29I'm supposed to correct you.
2:12:30I did not mean to say "the" there.
2:12:31As your friend.
2:12:32As your friend.
2:12:33This is one of the things, the problem with being on a podcast is you would think the
2:12:36connection between your brain and your mouth is fairly solid.
2:12:40And I listen to myself on these podcasts and I'm like, "What in the hell did you just
2:12:44– like, I had no idea during the podcast that I said it.
2:12:47Words come out that just should not be there."
2:12:50It's called misspeaking.
2:12:51And I am baffled as anyone else when I hear myself say it.
2:12:56If you had told me what I had just said, I heard that, though.
2:12:58But anyway, it's terrible.
2:13:00I love how many people tweeted me over the last week thinking that when I said Xbone
2:13:05repeatedly last week that that was serious.
2:13:10How long have you been listening to me?
2:13:11You don't get that I joke about stuff like that sometimes?
2:13:13Come on.
2:13:14I like the...
2:13:15What I like about Xbone is that I don't think the gamer community and internet fan base
2:13:21large has decided whether Xbone is derogatory or like a pet name like a
2:13:27term of endearment. Or even just like like will that just become the way
2:13:30everyone says it? So far I think it's both. Some people say it to try to be
2:13:35like you know to put down the Xbox and I think a lot of fans say it as a term of
2:13:40endearment and I just want to see how it comes out in the end. It's end up being
2:13:42mostly a term I think it'll end up mostly being a term of endearment. It is
2:13:46a lot easier and faster and and unambiguous to say that that does say
2:13:50anything else. And less stupid than the third Xbox being the Xbox One. Right, I mean it's
2:13:55a stupid... Microsoft gave it such a stupid real name that we have to come up with stupid
2:13:59alternatives. Yeah, good old Sony. They put a number after it. They make the number bigger.
2:14:05He wanted to do titles before I pass out. Yeah, let's wrap it up. Why are you always
2:14:11so tired? Are you one of those jobs where they work you like a dog, Casey? Are you doing
2:14:14hard manual labor, breaking rocks all day? No, no, no, no. You're in the same time zone
2:14:18is us, right? Yes, yes. I'm just, I'm old. I go to bed early.
2:14:22You're not old. You people with your children, "Oh, we can't
2:14:25get on the mic until 9 o'clock." I'm usually crawling in bed at 10. I'm old.
2:14:30Yeah, I think Casey should take over as the new old man, crawling into bed at 10.
2:14:34Yeah. No, I'm not arguing. I didn't think it was ever really, I didn't think that was
2:14:37ever up for grabs. Pennywise Pound Fool is just pretty good.
2:14:41I think that's it. That's so good. That's such a, that's such a, oh, speaking of old
2:14:44man, that's such an old man phrase, I'm gonna go out and play with my hoop and stick later.
2:14:48But it has...
2:14:49But it...
2:14:50I can't even take these...
2:14:51Is that ever a real thing? Like, do people actually do that?
2:14:57The hoop and stick was a real thing, but Simpsons have done a lot. I was referencing the Simpsons
2:15:02joke. They have, yeah, I think they had the first time I remember hoop and stick on Simpsons
2:15:07was when Monty Burns was like a kid and he was playing with... Anyway, this is a really
2:15:11old phrase.
2:15:12Oh, I'm fine with that.
2:15:15It's good because it works out because we, because not only I think, Jon, I think you
2:15:18actually said that exact phrase during the Penny Arcade discussion, but you know, it's
2:15:22so much about Penny Arcade, like it's so good.
2:15:26Ah, look at that, I didn't even think of that.
2:15:28There you go.
2:15:29That's terrible.
2:15:30Wow.
2:15:31[Laughter]
2:15:31[LAUGHTER]