507: It Sucks, Doesn't It?

0:00:00I am here on time in part thanks to a product

0:00:05that I never thought I would use before,

0:00:07a rapid tire deflator.

0:00:10- Isn't that just called a knife?

0:00:11- Yeah, right. (laughs)

0:00:13- I think a knife is the most rapid tire deflator,

0:00:15but unfortunately that makes it difficult

0:00:17to use the tire afterwards.

0:00:19I first got this when I first started driving on the beach

0:00:22because you're supposed to air down your tires

0:00:25down to like the 20 PSI-ish range

0:00:27when you're driving on the sand here

0:00:29to keep things, not only to keep yourself from getting stuck

0:00:31but to keep yourself from tearing up the beach too much

0:00:34unnecessarily and tearing up some of the routes.

0:00:37- Oh, I just realized, now that I've been thinking

0:00:38about this, it sucks, doesn't it?

0:00:41(laughing)

0:00:43- No.

0:00:44- 'Cause that's the only way it could work, right?

0:00:45Go on, go on.

0:00:46- So anyway, so I frequently have to change my tire pressure

0:00:49in both directions between like 20-ish

0:00:52and like, you know, 40-ish PSI.

0:00:54If I'm going on a long highway drive,

0:00:56I wanna put it up to about 40

0:00:58just for additional rigidity and safety

0:01:00and a little bit of efficiency.

0:01:01Although it's a giant box. - Whoa, slow down.

0:01:03- Like it's not gonna be that efficient, but you know.

0:01:04- How did you land on 40?

0:01:07- It, well the car wants me to do 50,

0:01:08and I think that's dumb, so I get impatient

0:01:11and stop after 30. - No way it wants 50 pounds.

0:01:13- Is that what it says on the door jamb?

0:01:15- Thank you, Jon.

0:01:17- I think it says 45 or 48 on the door jamb.

0:01:20- No way.

0:01:21- Is this a case where Casey asked to Google

0:01:23for the PDF of your car manual again?

0:01:25- Yes, either way the-- - Seriously.

0:01:27- What year is your car?

0:01:28It's a Land Rover Defender, what year?

0:01:29- 2021.

0:01:30- I will solve this.

0:01:31- Okay.

0:01:32So, and it has, like, the one that happened to be

0:01:35on the dealer lot in the color I wanted

0:01:37has this optional accessory of an onboard

0:01:39inflator deflator thing, which is really fun.

0:01:41It's in the trunk and you come to this big hose,

0:01:43you reach all four tires.

0:01:44So it's fun, it's just slow.

0:01:46And so I haven't found a rapid tire inflator yet,

0:01:48besides, you know, I don't know, a bomb,

0:01:50but a rapid tire deflator is this thing that,

0:01:55Again, I'll put it in the show notes

0:01:57when I'll find the link and dig it up.

0:01:58But it's this weird little contraption that normally,

0:02:02if you wanna deflate it as higher quickly,

0:02:03you can do a compressor that just kinda like

0:02:06holds the valve in and lets air out.

0:02:09Or you can poke the valve stem with a coin or a key

0:02:12or something if you wanna do it that way.

0:02:14But what this thing does is it screws onto the valve

0:02:20stem thing and then there's an inner thing that you twist

0:02:24once it's screwed onto the valve,

0:02:27you twist this inner thing the opposite direction

0:02:29and it unscrews the inner valve stem

0:02:33and lets it pop out inside of itself

0:02:36and then you just pop a thing and it just,

0:02:39psh, lets huge amounts of air out.

0:02:41It can go from 40 PSI to 20 PSI in 20 seconds.

0:02:46It's massively fast.

0:02:47- I find this very alarming.

0:02:49So I could be, yeah, it doesn't suck.

0:02:51- Yes, it just basically disassembles

0:02:53your tire valve temporarily,

0:02:55and I was able to deflate all four of my tires

0:02:58from 40 to 20 in less than five minutes.

0:03:01It was shockingly fast. (laughs)

0:03:04So anyway, I don't know who needs this product

0:03:07besides a very small handful of people,

0:03:09but if you are one of those handful of people,

0:03:11this is amazing.

0:03:12Check it out. (laughs)

0:03:14- Why is it so difficult for me to find

0:03:16the owner's manual for this car?

0:03:18Why is this like state secrets?

0:03:20I will say this is actually gonna be

0:03:22the KCEO's Marco apology tour episode apparently,

0:03:25but according to a spot of Googling,

0:03:27it was, I found a very unofficial looking site

0:03:30that said it was like 47 or 50 pounds,

0:03:32which is what you said to your credit,

0:03:33and I said no frickin' way.

0:03:35But I'm trying to find the actual owner's manual,

0:03:38and I can't.

0:03:40- So one thing, it lets you kind of customize

0:03:43the different sections of the dashboard

0:03:45to a few different selections,

0:03:46and I want a constant display on the left side

0:03:49of the four tire pressures.

0:03:51There is no option for that.

0:03:53However, if it's below the recommended pressure,

0:03:56it puts it up there by default

0:03:57until you click a certain button.

0:03:59And because mine are always below the,

0:04:02this is why I know the recommendation is higher than 40,

0:04:04mine are always below the recommendation.

0:04:05And so because of that,

0:04:08as long as I don't hit this one button,

0:04:10it's displaying the four tire pressures all the time,

0:04:12which is a nice little accidental feature,

0:04:14but I'm really enjoying it.

0:04:16- Well, I owe you an apology.

0:04:18I am apparently very wrong.

0:04:20Oh wait, okay, oh no wait, I found it, but it's not a PDF.

0:04:23Just give me a friggin' PDF!

0:04:25God, I hate everything.

0:04:26(electronic beeping)

0:04:28- So, before we get into topics,

0:04:29I wanna start this episode also

0:04:31with a public service announcement.

0:04:33If you know people in your life with Apple Watches,

0:04:38in the most kind way possible,

0:04:40if you see them using an Apple Watch face

0:04:44that has complications, you will blow their mind

0:04:49If at some opportune time,

0:04:50if they're open to such suggestions,

0:04:52you tell them, hey, by the way,

0:04:53you know you can change what those are.

0:04:56So in my experience, I have a bunch of friends

0:04:58who are kind of nerdy,

0:05:00who they're nerdy enough to get an Apple Watch,

0:05:02and they're nerdy enough to care about it being good,

0:05:06but not nerdy enough to be able to know some of that stuff,

0:05:09like you can customize the face and all the complications.

0:05:13And I've shown a couple of people this

0:05:15in the last couple of weeks,

0:05:17And these are people who've worn an Apple Watch for years.

0:05:20And every time, I'll see that they're using

0:05:23the Infograph modular face, it's full of complications.

0:05:26And the default set is like, it's okay,

0:05:28you know, you got a weather, okay,

0:05:29then you got the compass, like eh, it's like how you,

0:05:32you know, there's a couple things on there

0:05:33I think most people wouldn't use.

0:05:35And sometimes they'll see mine, they're like,

0:05:37oh, what face is that?

0:05:38'Cause mine's of course all customized.

0:05:39And when I show them, like hey, you can hold down here,

0:05:42swipe over, and then you can change every single one

0:05:45of those to all these different things.

0:05:47Everyone's like, oh my god, it changes their,

0:05:50it blows their mind.

0:05:51They're so amazed.

0:05:53No one knows that you can customize watch faces,

0:05:56especially complications.

0:05:58So just PSA, if someone you know uses a face

0:06:02with complications and you see that they're all the defaults

0:06:04'cause they usually are, again, some opportune time,

0:06:07don't be like the annoying nerd like, you know,

0:06:08like you know, at some nice time, be like, hey, by the way,

0:06:10you know you can change that and here's how

0:06:12and show them how.

0:06:13You can also show them that they can have multiple faces

0:06:16they can swipe between really easily.

0:06:18No one knows that either.

0:06:19And both of those things I have had

0:06:22very strong positive reactions to when I have shown people.

0:06:25- As a non-Apple Watch wearer who does know

0:06:28that you can change complications,

0:06:29every time I try to change complications

0:06:31on someone else's Apple Watch for them,

0:06:32I have to like refigure out how to do it.

0:06:34It is not an obvious UI,

0:06:36so I don't really blame people for not,

0:06:38I mean, I kinda blame them for not knowing it's possible,

0:06:40but even when you know it's possible,

0:06:43it's not obvious how to do it

0:06:45if you haven't done it recently.

0:06:46- Yeah, exactly.

0:06:47Like so many things about touchscreen discoverability,

0:06:50like it's so much worse on the watch

0:06:51'cause it's such a small screen.

0:06:52- It is way worse on the watch 'cause there's just nothing.

0:06:55There's nothing there for you.

0:06:56And I think the, sort of the credit

0:06:58to the original Apple design,

0:07:00having two things that you can press,

0:07:02the button and the crown both press in,

0:07:05does add to the number of possibilities

0:07:07of things that I have to blindly try

0:07:08before I figure out how to work things.

0:07:10And then of course, oh, I forgot,

0:07:11you can turn the ground too.

0:07:12And it's like, it's just,

0:07:13I go through the same little dance every time I do it.

0:07:15It's ridiculous.

0:07:17- Do you know Marco, if you have 18, 19, 20 or 22 inch rims?

0:07:20- 19.

0:07:21- Then 47 pounds up front, 50 in the back.

0:07:24- Bam. - I am wrong.

0:07:26Well done.

0:07:27I have never seen tire pressures that high.

0:07:29Goodness.

0:07:30- It's 'cause they're big tires, right?

0:07:31It's big.

0:07:32- I mean, I guess.

0:07:33- Yeah, they're pretty big.

0:07:34- Yeah, I did eventually find it because Google,

0:07:36not because of Land Rover site,

0:07:37which as I've heard is trash.

0:07:39- Yes.

0:07:40- But hey, you know what is not trash?

0:07:42What is not trash is ATP merch,

0:07:45which is available right now, baby, at ATP.fm/store.

0:07:49So, you know how every time I say,

0:07:52"Oh, you really gotta order quick

0:07:53"'cause you never know if something's gonna sell out, huh?

0:07:55"You never know."

0:07:56Well, guess what?

0:07:58Guess what?

0:07:59It's happened.

0:08:00Chicken hats, boom, gone.

0:08:02Second run of chicken hats,

0:08:03which we did like under duress, boom, gone.

0:08:07Pint glasses, gone.

0:08:08Mugs, gone.

0:08:09You snooze, you lose.

0:08:11No sympathy from me.

0:08:12This is what you get.

0:08:13You had sympathy from the other two, not from me.

0:08:15I warned you, I warned you.

0:08:17We did the visualization exercise,

0:08:19which I'm pretty sure I stole from Mike Hurley.

0:08:20We did the exercise together.

0:08:22You still didn't order, and this is on you.

0:08:24But for those that haven't ordered

0:08:26and would still like lovely, excellent, delightful merch,

0:08:29we still have M2 shirts in colored and monochrome versions.

0:08:33We have the classic ATP logo shirt.

0:08:35we have the utterly delightful ATP hoodie, all available.

0:08:38So if you're interested, and you should be,

0:08:41go to ATP.fm/store, and you can buy any of these three,

0:08:46four items, the two different varieties of shirt,

0:08:49well, three if you include the ATP one and the hoodie,

0:08:51all available.

0:08:52And remember, members, if you are a member,

0:08:55and you can become a member at ATP.fm/join,

0:08:58then you get 15% off.

0:08:59You can get your bespoke discount code on your member page.

0:09:01It's all linked from ATP.fm/store.

0:09:04Go get yourself some treats.

0:09:05treat yourself, you deserve a treat,

0:09:06you deserve several treats, treat yourself,

0:09:08treat your friends, treat your husband,

0:09:09treat your wife, treat everybody, ATP.fm/store.

0:09:12- Couple more items on the store.

0:09:15Reminder about the monochrome M2 shirt,

0:09:18it just shows like a blue shirt with white,

0:09:20but it comes in a whole bunch of different colors.

0:09:21So if you know, the regular M2 one,

0:09:24the really expensive one with the color stripes

0:09:26just comes in black, but this other one comes in like red,

0:09:30purple, green, pink, teal,

0:09:32so check out the different colors,

0:09:33think a lot of them look really good.

0:09:34Second thing, if you, for one of the sold out items,

0:09:37chicken hat, pint glass, or mug, all three of which,

0:09:40I specifically warned you about last week

0:09:42as the ones that would sell it first.

0:09:43And they did in the order that I said.

0:09:46- Wait, in all fairness, before we rag on people

0:09:48too hard on this, which Casey already did,

0:09:50you do have some sympathy for me because, like,

0:09:52the first batch of the chicken hats,

0:09:54it was like halfway gone before we even published

0:09:56the episode, just from bootleg listeners.

0:09:58- Yeah, that is true, that is true.

0:09:59- We ordered, we guessed wrong on the demand

0:10:03for the chicken hat, that's on us.

0:10:04But we did do a second order,

0:10:06and we did a second order for more than twice

0:10:08the amount of the first order, and that sold out too.

0:10:10- Yeah, as much as I'm snarking earlier,

0:10:12that is 100% accurate, and that is 100% on us,

0:10:15that we clearly underestimate, which is lovely,

0:10:17and actually a heck of a compliment

0:10:18from our wonderful listeners.

0:10:20It was a complete miss on our part.

0:10:22We thought nobody would be interested in a hat

0:10:25that we presented as something that John bought

0:10:2820 years ago and really likes, but it turns out--

0:10:30- And it's weird shaped. - And it's weird shaped.

0:10:32- But it turns out the poll of John Siracusen

0:10:35has no bounds, knows no bounds.

0:10:37- Morbid curiosity is what I would call it.

0:10:39But anyway, related to the sold out items,

0:10:41if you go, they're still on the store page,

0:10:43they just put like sold out text on them,

0:10:45but you can still click through on them.

0:10:46Click the little buy link, click the name,

0:10:48click the image, like anyway, click through to the item.

0:10:51It has a button on the store that says bring it back.

0:10:53It's just cotton beer is like normal,

0:10:54like hey, I want this even though it's not in stock.

0:10:57If you still want a hat, a pint glass, or a mug,

0:11:00click through on it and then click the bring it back thing.

0:11:02it makes you enter the email address

0:11:04'cause they wanna email you when it comes back in stock.

0:11:05And I know that's annoying,

0:11:06but Cotton Bureau is good with email.

0:11:08That's how we knew, sort of,

0:11:10that's how we gauge demand

0:11:11for the second order of chicken hats

0:11:13based on how many people click the bring it back link

0:11:15and enter an email address.

0:11:17And that gave us a rough estimate

0:11:18of how many people probably wanted them.

0:11:19And I think we got it pretty close

0:11:20'cause towards the end of selling out of the chicken hats,

0:11:23the sales were really slowing down.

0:11:25It was like just a real trick alike.

0:11:27The number wouldn't move at all for like hours at a time.

0:11:29So I think we kind of mostly met demand,

0:11:31but we're not entirely sure.

0:11:32And the mugs we did a new order of,

0:11:34and the pint glass we were just selling through an old order.

0:11:36So in order for us to have a better idea for the next sale,

0:11:41how much demand there is for this stuff,

0:11:43you can use that bring it back button,

0:11:45and it just ticks up a counter

0:11:47that we can see on our internal dashboards

0:11:48to know how many people are actually interested

0:11:50in this again.

0:11:51So that's my suggestion there.

0:11:53And then finally,

0:11:54lots of people are sending pictures of the chicken hats.

0:11:56If you ordered it, especially if you were in the first batch,

0:11:58you might get them already.

0:11:59I already got my chicken hat,

0:12:00and lots of people are getting them,

0:12:02'cause the things that are in stock,

0:12:03I think, I'm not sure about the mugs and the pint glasses,

0:12:05but certainly the hats,

0:12:06they just ship them as soon as they get them.

0:12:07The other ones we have to wait until the campaign is over

0:12:09so they know how many they have to print

0:12:11'cause they're gonna make them

0:12:12based on how many people order them.

0:12:14Anyway, people are sending me pictures

0:12:15of them wearing the chicken hat.

0:12:17Bad on us for not including instructions with the hat

0:12:19and far be it for me to tell you how to wear hats.

0:12:24And I was like, yeah, you put it on your head.

0:12:25People are getting that far.

0:12:27But part of the reason it's called a chicken hat

0:12:29is 'cause it looks a little bit like

0:12:31the little thing on top of a chicken or a rooster's head,

0:12:34the little floppy thing.

0:12:35- The little mohawk thing?

0:12:37- Yeah, and that mohawk thing,

0:12:39it's like a vertical fin that goes from front to back.

0:12:41That's how, I'm not gonna say supposed to be warm,

0:12:44but that's how I wear the chicken hat,

0:12:46is front to back, like a shark fin, right?

0:12:50And then second thing to know is,

0:12:52this hat, although it's pretty uniform,

0:12:54it does have a seam.

0:12:56Like there is a seam down one part,

0:12:57and the seam goes in the back,

0:12:59like most items of clothing that have a seam.

0:13:01The seam goes in the back,

0:13:03which means that the little ATP tag

0:13:05is also more towards the back.

0:13:07Originally, we wanted that tag to be in the front,

0:13:09but they made the first batch of them with them on the back,

0:13:11and then seeing people put them on their heads,

0:13:15and especially with glasses,

0:13:16the tag, when it's on the front,

0:13:17kind of interferes with the glasses

0:13:19and messes up the line of the thing.

0:13:21So we made the second batch.

0:13:22I said, "Put the tag in the back.

0:13:23I think it looks better there."

0:13:24But everybody who I see wearing this online

0:13:26thinks the tag goes in the front,

0:13:27And it can, like it's a uniform hat, it's a single color.

0:13:30No one's gonna see that the seam is in the front.

0:13:32But technically the seam goes in the back

0:13:34and the hat goes vertically forward and backwards.

0:13:37You wanna wear it any other way, feel free.

0:13:39It's your hat, you can do whatever you want with it,

0:13:41but I'm just saying for the, if you're wondering,

0:13:43how does Jon wear his chicken hat?

0:13:45I wear it chicken style, like a dorsal fin

0:13:49with the seam in the back.

0:13:51- All right, we got a lot to talk about.

0:13:53Let's do some follow up.

0:13:54I need to continue my apology tour for Marco.

0:13:57Apparently based on our feedback freaking nobody knew how to use the AirPods Pro 2 volume control

0:14:04Vindicated. Yeah, I assumed that this was obvious. I do not have Pro 2. I only have the the

0:14:10pedestrian original OG AirPods Pro

0:14:13And I just assumed this was pretty self-explanatory and wow did I assume wrong because we got a lot of very kind feedback saying

0:14:20Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for telling me how to do this. I had no idea

0:14:24So Marco, first of all, I'm sorry because I think I was snickering in your general direction

0:14:29last week and saying, "Oh my gosh, are you serious?"

0:14:31And it turns out I was wrong.

0:14:33Second of all, would you mind reiterating, since we brought it up again, can you just

0:14:36quickly reiterate how is it that you control the volume on an AirPods Pro 2, please?

0:14:42So you don't use two different fingers in motion, as I was doing, like front and back

0:14:47kind of, you know, doing something to it.

0:14:51You don't do that.

0:14:53Instead, you put the thumb of your hand

0:14:56on the back of the stem to hold it in place,

0:14:58and with your index finger, you swipe up or down

0:15:02on the front flat part of the stick

0:15:05to change it up and down.

0:15:06And you know you did it because only that AirPod

0:15:09will make a little click sound out of that ear

0:15:12to confirm that you did it.

0:15:14And so my mistake was moving both fingers.

0:15:16What you're supposed to do is support it with one finger

0:15:19and swipe with the other.

0:15:20- Yep, so my apologies, Marco,

0:15:22you were right to bring it up and I was wrong.

0:15:25- I am so happy, so many people wrote in

0:15:27and were like, yeah, I didn't know how to do it either,

0:15:28or I've been doing it wrong, I also wrote it off.

0:15:31I'm so vindicated, I thought I was the only one.

0:15:33I felt so dumb when I finally figured it out.

0:15:36That's why I wrote it up on the show,

0:15:38to be like, hopefully somebody else can feel less dumb

0:15:42by this, and sure enough, many people now feel less dumb.

0:15:45So mission accomplished. - Dozens, dozens.

0:15:47- Yes. - And hearing your

0:15:48complication story, I wonder if the people

0:15:49who didn't know that you could adjust the volume

0:15:51by swiping and were just too embarrassed to write in.

0:15:53(laughing)

0:15:54- You can change complications?

0:15:56- What?

0:15:57- You can change, well, and keep in mind,

0:15:58this volume thing only works on the AirPods Pro 2.

0:16:02It doesn't work on the AirPods 3,

0:16:04it doesn't work on the original AirPods Pro,

0:16:05even though they all look kinda similar.

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0:17:59Thank you so much to Linode for hosting all my servers

0:18:02and sponsoring our show.

0:18:03- I have a little bit of news about my beloved,

0:18:09don't call it a park bench picnic table.

0:18:12Went there to do a little bit of work today because it was very nice staying here in Richmond

0:18:15It's just a touch chilly but not too bad and I was all slick with myself

0:18:18I was all excited because I've got my fancy pants new iPad Pro

0:18:22It's got 5g it can support 5g ultra wideband by Verizon, baby. I'm ready

0:18:28Except I got there and my phone, you know took a few seconds when my phone shows 5g uw 5g ultra wideband

0:18:36I am ready to rock on the phone

0:18:38The iPad says you got 5g

0:18:41So I wait a little bit still got 5g

0:18:43Wait a little bit kind of diddle around on the iPad a little bit

0:18:46You know do a fast.com text test just to see if that would kick it into like, you know

0:18:50high gear or whatever and I look and it's

0:18:53Still just 5g. Oh, no, did your phone work on it? Yeah. Oh, yeah, my phone was fine. My phone was good to go

0:19:00So, okay what's going on here? Remember that this has a physical SIM

0:19:05I was briefly confused by this when I did the transfer because I was waiting for it to transfer the eSIM

0:19:10that wasn't an eSIM. But anyways, so I get on the Verizon chat, which while annoying,

0:19:15has actually got a pretty high success rate, their online chat, for getting me an answer

0:19:21and/or getting me what I want. You know, I got my cable card through the online chat.

0:19:26That mostly worked. I've done a lot of stuff via the online chat, and so I get on the online

0:19:30chat and I did that thing you should never do, and I kind of led with, "Do I need a new

0:19:35SIM card, you know, is the SIM card which was, you know, originally in an iPad that

0:19:39did not support 5G, it only supported LTE, does the SIM card perhaps not have whatever

0:19:45magic bit flipped or whatever it may need in order to get 5G Ultra Wideband?

0:19:51And after a considerable amount of time waiting for the person that was surely helping 35

0:19:56other people, it turns out that there are multiple iPad plans in Verizon.

0:20:01The one that I have is normally $20 a month,

0:20:04but because of my phone's plan,

0:20:06I only pay $10 a month for it, it's half off.

0:20:08And that gives me 5G, and it gives me 15 gigs of data,

0:20:12of quote unquote premium data,

0:20:15which I guess means basically you get 15 gigs

0:20:17and they start to throttle you.

0:20:18But if I want ultra wide band, I need to go to $30 a month,

0:20:23which I think would only be five bucks more for me,

0:20:25'cause I think all of the iPad plans are half off,

0:20:27but I gotta do some research on this.

0:20:28Anyway, so strictly speaking, $30 a month,

0:20:31Then I can get my 5G Ultra Wideband

0:20:33and I go from 15 gigs of premium data to 30 gigs.

0:20:37So I gotta confirm,

0:20:39'cause this is not worth an additional $10 a month,

0:20:42'cause remember, my plan is supposed to be 20,

0:20:45I pay 10 because of the way I have my phone set up.

0:20:48I would pay probably $5 more a month for this

0:20:50because darn it, I want my Ultra Wideband,

0:20:52that's the whole point, man.

0:20:53But I don't think I would pay 10 more dollars for this,

0:20:55so I gotta figure out what the story is.

0:20:56And yes, I know I'm frugal/cheap/whatever,

0:20:59but I gotta look into that.

0:21:00But I just thought in case anyone else,

0:21:02yes, this is kind of another PSA,

0:21:03another entry in the PSA corner,

0:21:05in case anyone else was confused,

0:21:06that apparently is the case for Verizon.

0:21:08I cannot speak for any other carrier.

0:21:10And I just, I did not expect that.

0:21:11So I was disappointed,

0:21:12but I was at least happy to understand it.

0:21:14So there is that.

0:21:16- Is this also another case where if you were to hotspot

0:21:18to your phone, you'd be throttled

0:21:20by the Bluetooth bandwidth maybe?

0:21:21- Yeah, or whether it's using Bluetooth or wifi,

0:21:24yeah, you're way throttled,

0:21:25but even by wifi you'd be throttled.

0:21:27- Yeah, that's correct.

0:21:28In fact, when I first was piddling with the ultra wideband stuff, I had done it via a

0:21:33physical USB connection to my computer, and it was dog-slow on the computer end.

0:21:38And I'm like, "What the heck?

0:21:39I've got like 2.5 gigabits per second down on the phone.

0:21:43Why the--" Oh, right.

0:21:44This is USB 2.0.

0:21:45It's slower than dirt.

0:21:46Whoopsie-doopsie.

0:21:47And so I decided, "Oh, if I'm going to tether, I am not going to tether via the USB connection.

0:21:52I'm not going to tether, to your point, via Bluetooth.

0:21:54I will tether via Wi-Fi.

0:21:56Even if I have the phone connected to the computer for power purposes, I will still

0:22:01tether via Wi-Fi because that is as close as I can get to full bandwidth from UltraWideband.

0:22:07So yeah, you're exactly right.

0:22:08Anyway, I just thought that was fascinating.

0:22:10We have a lot to talk about with regards to system settings, Jon.

0:22:13Tell me about this in Ventura, please.

0:22:15This was something that someone asked about a while ago that I found when I was digging

0:22:20through some old stuff regarding the switch controls in system settings.

0:22:25The Switch is like the ones on your iPhone.

0:22:26When you go to settings on your iPhone,

0:22:27there's a little on/off switch that goes horizontally,

0:22:29a little circle goes horizontally

0:22:31in a little channel, right?

0:22:33And of course, system settings in Ventura

0:22:35looks a lot like that now.

0:22:36And lots of people were throwing this entry

0:22:39from the Apple Human Interface guidelines

0:22:40back in Apple's face when the betas were out.

0:22:43I was worried, this is not the item

0:22:45that was brought to my attention, but is relevant to it.

0:22:48So in the Apple Hig,

0:22:49at a location that we'll link in the show notes,

0:22:52Apple says, "Avoid using a Switch control

0:22:54for a single detail or minor setting.

0:22:56A switch has more visual weight than a checkbox,

0:22:58so it looks better when it controls more functionality

0:23:00than a checkbox typically does.

0:23:01For example, you might use a switch to let people turn on

0:23:04or off a group of settings instead of just one setting.

0:23:07In general, don't replace a checkbox with a switch.

0:23:10If you're already using a checkbox in your interface,

0:23:12it's probably best to keep using it.

0:23:13That's what the Apple Human Interface guidelines say.

0:23:16Arguably, Apple violates that 10 ways to Sunday,

0:23:18but with the Ventura System settings,

0:23:20because pretty much all those things used to be checkboxes

0:23:21and they didn't leave them alone,

0:23:22and pretty much all of them are controlling

0:23:25a single detail or minor setting.

0:23:27So there is that, right?

0:23:29But that's not the biggest thing,

0:23:30'cause you can argue, oh, well, is this a minor setting?

0:23:32Is it a big setting?

0:23:33Is it important for it to match the iOS settings

0:23:35for familiarity?

0:23:36You can go all around in different directions and that,

0:23:37although it is kind of weird that it is directly

0:23:40in violation of what they say

0:23:41in the Apple Hint-Erase guidelines.

0:23:42But this is inarguable in another example of,

0:23:45I don't know, just sort of not meeting the minimum standard

0:23:49for a Mac user interface.

0:23:51And this, kind of like complications

0:23:53or possibly changing the volume on your AirPods,

0:23:55it may be a thing that nobody knows about,

0:23:57but I feel like if anyone should know about it,

0:23:59it's the people making GUIs for the Mac who work at Apple.

0:24:03I don't think that's too high of a standard.

0:24:05And that is this, on the Mac, when you have a checkbox,

0:24:08and also on the web, by the way, if you do it right.

0:24:10But anyway, on the Mac, if you have a checkbox

0:24:12and it says like, you know, turn on turbo lasers

0:24:15and it's got a checkbox and the text next to the checkbox

0:24:17says turn on turbo lasers, right?

0:24:19Or turbo lasers on, I don't know.

0:24:20I'm doing a bad job with the copy here,

0:24:22but suffice to say there's a label next to the checkbox.

0:24:24You can click the checkbox to make the checkbox

0:24:27be on or off, but you can also click the label text.

0:24:31And the reason why you might wanna do that

0:24:32is the label text is way bigger than the checkbox.

0:24:35Checkboxes are pretty small.

0:24:38They can be hard to even see.

0:24:39That's one of the arguments people make for switches.

0:24:41Oh, the switches are so much bigger than checkbox.

0:24:42They should use the switches

0:24:44because they're just easier to hit.

0:24:45It's a bigger target, and there is something too,

0:24:46it being a bigger target, right?

0:24:48Although the switches on Mac

0:24:49are actually kind of small,

0:24:50but the label is a way bigger target.

0:24:53It's very wide and just as high as the checkbox,

0:24:55if not higher.

0:24:55That's why on the Mac, you can click the label

0:24:58anywhere in the label text,

0:25:00and it will activate and deactivate the checkbox.

0:25:02And you can do it on the web if you know what you're doing,

0:25:04and you should, and if you don't do it on the web,

0:25:05you should feel bad.

0:25:06All right.

0:25:07(laughs)

0:25:08So the question was, hey, in Ventura system settings,

0:25:11when they have these big, long lists of labels and switches,

0:25:16can you click the label to toggle the switch?

0:25:18and the answer is, at least in the one that I tested,

0:25:20no, you can't, and that is bad.

0:25:23That is very bad, 'cause that is way worse than a checkbox.

0:25:26And yes, I know the labels are distant from the slider,

0:25:28from the little switch too,

0:25:29instead of right next to it like checkboxes,

0:25:31but I think it's also kind of bad.

0:25:32But why can't I click the label

0:25:34to activate and deactivate the slider?

0:25:36That is a Mac idiom, and this is a replacement for a,

0:25:39I mean, I don't know, maybe there's somewhere

0:25:40in the human error state guidelines

0:25:41where they say explicitly don't do this,

0:25:42but that makes the targets for every one

0:25:44of these little things so much smaller than they used to be.

0:25:46They're bigger than checkboxes,

0:25:47but they're way smaller than a checkbox and a label.

0:25:49And I just don't understand that.

0:25:51I don't understand how that comes to be

0:25:54where they replace all the checkboxes

0:25:56with this kind of control.

0:25:57And then, oh, and by the way,

0:25:58we forgot for this type of control

0:25:59to make the label clickable.

0:26:02Upsetting.

0:26:04- Very upsetting.

0:26:06And then apparently some things are disappearing

0:26:08from the settings, system settings, system preferences,

0:26:12whatever it's called.

0:26:13- Yeah, we noted like the network locations was gone.

0:26:15I don't know why that feature disappeared, but it did.

0:26:17But there's one more feature that disappeared

0:26:19and it's relevant to my interest because I use this feature.

0:26:21It's a feature I've talked about in the past

0:26:23that used to be an energy saver in system preferences.

0:26:26There was a GUI for setting a time

0:26:28when you want your computer to wake up

0:26:30and setting a time when you want your computer

0:26:31to go to sleep.

0:26:32And I use these features to have my computer

0:26:33wake up in the middle of the night when I'm sleeping,

0:26:35do a bunch of backup stuff and then go to sleep.

0:26:38So I put my computer to sleep when I go to bed

0:26:40and then while I'm sleeping it wakes up,

0:26:41does a bunch of stuff, backup stuff

0:26:43and then goes back to sleep, right?

0:26:45Those, the ability to do that, like timed waking up

0:26:48and going to sleep, still exists in the OS.

0:26:51They just either got rid of or didn't have time

0:26:54to re-enactment the GUI for that, which is kind of a shame.

0:26:57We'll put a link in the show notes to Apple's support

0:27:00document that shows you how to do it from the command line.

0:27:02So I had to go and read the man page and come up

0:27:04with the command lines that are equivalent to my settings

0:27:07in case I ever want to restore them.

0:27:08It's an easy way to get rid of the schedule

0:27:11and it's an easy way to add it back.

0:27:12So it's not so bad, but no one's ever gonna find

0:27:15document the GUI was much friendlier way to let people change this and since the

0:27:18feature is still there I hope the GUI will come back someday. Indeed. A really

0:27:23quick thing I wanted to note I should have talked about this earlier but it

0:27:26completely slipped my mind. I am NOT trying to be funny. When did landscape

0:27:31iPads start treating the volume up down physical volume up down switches as

0:27:37backwards? Wait they do? Right thank you! What do you consider backwards when it's

0:27:43left and right. Well, so here's the thing. I will, this is like natural scrolling all

0:27:48over, which I believe in. I believe in natural scrolling, but last I recall, I don't think

0:27:52either of you do, but I do not. And I disagree with the terminology too. It's like a death

0:27:57tax. I don't, I don't accept your framing. I'm just using the Apple terminology. So the

0:28:02way I'm, the way I'm used to it is that, okay, hold your iPad either mentally or physically

0:28:07hold your iPad in portrait, you know, tall. So on the right hand side, for larger iPads anyway,

0:28:14the volume up button is the top button, volume down button is the bottom button, right? So far,

0:28:20so good. That makes sense. Take that and twist it counterclockwise. So you're taking the top and

0:28:27sliding it so it's now the left. I am used to, and in every other iPad I've ever used, the left side

0:28:35is volume up, the right side is volume down,

0:28:38because it's the same function.

0:28:39- It's the same button as it was before.

0:28:40If you had kept your finger on the buttons,

0:28:42it would be the same button.

0:28:42- That's what mine's doing.

0:28:43- So on my brand new iPad,

0:28:45and I believe I read that the Mini is doing this as well,

0:28:48but I could have that wrong.

0:28:49On the brand new iPad,

0:28:50which actually is not in the room with me,

0:28:52I wish it was, but if I have a portrait twist 90 degrees

0:28:56to the left, so now the top is the left,

0:28:58volume up is the rightmost button,

0:29:01volume down is the leftmost button.

0:29:03Now if you think about it for half a second,

0:29:05that actually does make more sense

0:29:07because you are looking at the meter

0:29:09as you're voluming up and down.

0:29:11And as you increase volume, it goes to the right.

0:29:15As you decrease volume--

0:29:16- If you change your language to Arabic, does it change?

0:29:19- (laughs) I don't know, or Hebrew or something.

0:29:21- Wait, so Benzi in the chat has,

0:29:24and Jitengur in the chat also have pointed out,

0:29:28this is actually now a setting.

0:29:29- Yeah, I looked for that and I must have missed it

0:29:32because I looked for it and didn't,

0:29:34oh no, you know, that's what it was.

0:29:35I told myself, no, embrace it.

0:29:38This is backwards.

0:29:39The way you're used to doing it, Casey, is backwards.

0:29:42- Just like a quote unquote natural scrolling

0:29:44advocate would do. - Correct, exactly right.

0:29:46Exactly right.

0:29:47- Yeah, you see the error of your ways, don't you?

0:29:49Now that you know the settings there,

0:29:50you can restore sanity.

0:29:52- No, I disagree.

0:29:53I think this does make more sense.

0:29:54It's just because it's not what I'm used to,

0:29:56that I'm flummoxed by it.

0:29:58But I do think it actually makes more sense

0:29:59because again, as you're voluming up,

0:30:01this slider is moving from left to right.

0:30:03As you're voluming down,

0:30:04it's moving from right to left.

0:30:05So it does make sense,

0:30:07but the fact that the buttons are software controlled,

0:30:11which obviously they were the whole time,

0:30:12but like you feel, or I felt at least,

0:30:15as though they were hardware buttons.

0:30:17Does that make sense?

0:30:17You know, like this button will always

0:30:20and forever be volume up.

0:30:21This other button will always and forever be volume down.

0:30:25And it turns out that, well, no,

0:30:27they aren't quote unquote hardware buttons.

0:30:29they're just giving a hint to the software to do something.

0:30:33And yeah, it actually does make sense to me anyway,

0:30:35to have the right one go up and the left one go down,

0:30:38but it took me by such surprise.

0:30:39And I forget what I was doing.

0:30:40I don't think I was like in bed with Aaron

0:30:42or anything like that, but it was at a time

0:30:44when I was not expecting a bunch of volume

0:30:46and I wanted to turn the iPad down

0:30:48and I mashed down on the right hand button

0:30:52because I was in landscape,

0:30:53mashed down the right hand button, it just got louder

0:30:54and I was like, "Oh my God, what's happening?"

0:30:56And then it occurred to me, oh, this is reversed.

0:30:59- Unintended volume acceleration?

0:31:00- Yeah, exactly right.

0:31:02Hashtag Toyota, am I right?

0:31:03But anyway, so yeah.

0:31:04- Howdy, come on, get the fake story right.

0:31:06- Oh, sorry, my mistake.

0:31:07Are you sure it wasn't Toyota?

0:31:08- I guess, was it later Toyota?

0:31:10The Audi one wasn't real, I think, but I don't remember.

0:31:13- I thought it was Toyota. - I think either of them

0:31:14were super real.

0:31:16The big story was about Toyota,

0:31:19but I think it was a little not super solid of a story.

0:31:23- Well, anyway, for the volume button thing,

0:31:25I guess we have to wait for Apple to come out

0:31:27with the brand new landscape volume buttons to match their landscape camera, which is

0:31:31what they call it when they move the camera to the other side.

0:31:33Well, if they move the volume buttons to the other side of the iPad, I guess, like the

0:31:38short side, then it'll be up and well, it'll be up on landscape.

0:31:42It'll basically give the landscape one a top.

0:31:43I guess it already has a top because once you put the camera on the landscape edge,

0:31:46that's the top in landscape.

0:31:47So then they can put the volume button somewhere and then I guess, you know, they would be

0:31:51on the left side and then up would be volume up and down and be volume down.

0:31:54- And then you can debate how they should work

0:31:56when it's in portrait.

0:31:57- Yeah, yeah.

0:31:58Anyway, this took me by surprise.

0:31:59Obviously--

0:32:00- Apparently that's how the mini works, too.

0:32:01- Yeah, I think that's correct.

0:32:03- 'Cause they had to have room for the pencil.

0:32:04That's right, the pencil's along the edge.

0:32:06- Right, again, I don't have a mini, so I can't verify,

0:32:08but I believe that's correct.

0:32:09Anyway, I just thought that was very, very confusing

0:32:11and surprising, and I don't remember that

0:32:12having been mentioned anywhere, perhaps it was.

0:32:15- It was probably mentioned in the keynote,

0:32:15but it was a long time ago.

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0:34:05- Hey, would you tell me about the great news

0:34:12coming out of The Verge, among other places,

0:34:14with regard to the new Apple TV 4K,

0:34:15which arrives Friday, if I'm not mistaken.

0:34:17Isn't that right?

0:34:18- I think so, yeah, it's okay news.

0:34:20We talked about, I should have had the expansion

0:34:24of the abbreviation in the notes here

0:34:26with a quick media sync, I believe it was, QMS, HDMI QMS.

0:34:29It was part of the HDMI 2.1 standard

0:34:31that lets the television change frame rates

0:34:34without blacking out the screen,

0:34:36like leveraging the VRR, the variable refresh rate feature

0:34:40that already is an HDMI, the main television support,

0:34:42QMS is the thing on top of that

0:34:43that would try to avoid some of those black screens.

0:34:46I talked about the limitations of it last week

0:34:47that one limitation is that everything except for the frame rate has to stay the same and

0:34:51I wasn't sure if that included HDR versus SDR, so you still might be getting black screens

0:34:55when you go from your Apple TV menu screen to a video program if the HDRness doesn't

0:35:01match but we'll see.

0:35:02But the real main limitation is both devices have to support HDMI QMS.

0:35:09And so the news is that Apple says that, and I don't know, this was in the Verge article

0:35:14and a bunch of other articles, Apple must have just told people reviewing the Apple

0:35:16TV this information, but Apple basically says that the Apple TV 4K will be getting QMS in

0:35:23a future software update.

0:35:25No timelines or whatever, but it's coming, right?

0:35:27But as the Verge article says, "How many TVs work with QMS VRR, you asked?

0:35:32Well, zero at the moment, but you'll start seeing them hit the market next year."

0:35:36I really hope they'll be able to do firmware updates because if you already support VRR,

0:35:39which most fancy modern TVs do, supporting QMS VRR seems like it's within the realm

0:35:46of possibility for a firmware update, but you never know with TV makers. Sometimes they

0:35:50just never update old TVs to be able to do something that a new TV does. So my fingers

0:35:54are crossed for my television, which doesn't currently support QMS, that someday in the

0:36:00future it will support QMS. And also someday in the future the Apple TV 4K that's coming

0:36:04to my house will eventually support QMS.

0:36:06Yeah, so I was looking at this briefly and I believe that VRR and QMS are part of HDMI

0:36:132.1, I think?

0:36:16but they're optional like every part of HDMI 2.1.

0:36:18- So I guess the question is, you know,

0:36:20what version of HDMI do all of our televisions support?

0:36:23- It's not the version, the standard is so crappy.

0:36:26You can be compliant with HDMI 2.1

0:36:28if you only support HDMI 2.0 features.

0:36:30It's a ridiculous standard.

0:36:31Like it just, it lets people put the label on.

0:36:33You have to, that's why you go to these review sites

0:36:35and they have a giant grid of like,

0:36:36what features does it actually support?

0:36:38ALM, VRR, you know, it's all these acronyms,

0:36:40soup or whatever.

0:36:41But HDMI 2.1 tells you almost nothing.

0:36:44All it tells you is that it's plausible

0:36:46that it might support these things.

0:36:47Whereas if you see HDMI 2.0, you know it absolutely doesn't.

0:36:50But you have to look at the individual specs

0:36:53to know which alphabet soup thing

0:36:55that you're actually interested in.

0:36:56It's stupid.

0:36:58- Yeah, well, we'll see what happens.

0:37:00Talk to me about iCloud shared photo library,

0:37:03which by the way, due to breaking news,

0:37:05I finally got the chance to have Erin update her phone

0:37:09to 16.1 just like an hour and a half ago.

0:37:12And so as we are recording, I am moving 47,733 items

0:37:16to the shared photo library,

0:37:17which based my network bandwidth seems like

0:37:19is actually like a thing.

0:37:22Like it is, it almost appears as though things are,

0:37:25these photos are moving back and forth.

0:37:26You would think that it would just be like,

0:37:28oh, take all these on the server side

0:37:30and glob them into the new shared photo library.

0:37:32But it does not appear to me that that's what's happening.

0:37:33I don't know.

0:37:34- I don't think it's moving your data at all.

0:37:35Like I said last week,

0:37:36I think it is purely a metadata based operation.

0:37:38And I think when you did the move of 40,000 or whatever,

0:37:42You should have seen within a few seconds all 40,000 disappear.

0:37:45If you were on the personal library view,

0:37:47they should have all disappeared from the personal library

0:37:49view in your local thing.

0:37:50And then there's the countdown.

0:37:51Again, scroll down to the bottom for the progress.

0:37:54But I think it's just a purely metadata move.

0:37:55I don't think it's moving any of the data at all.

0:37:57But I don't know.

0:37:57Someone who works on Apple Photos can come and tell us.

0:38:00Do you think anybody who works on Apple Photos would actually

0:38:03be on speaking terms with us?

0:38:04That is a plausible thing that could happen.

0:38:07Unrelated to that, here's some news about photo-shared library.

0:38:11Mikhail Gok told us that in the camera settings on iOS,

0:38:16there's a toggle to send photos you take

0:38:19directly to the shared library.

0:38:20I'd asked about that last week.

0:38:21What if I just want everything I take,

0:38:22every photo I take with my phone

0:38:23to go right into the shared library?

0:38:24I don't want it to suggest to me

0:38:25when it thinks they should go there.

0:38:27I don't want to move them manually.

0:38:29There is an option for that.

0:38:30I think during the onboarding process on the phone,

0:38:32it asks you that and says, "Hey, do you want me to do this?"

0:38:34But I onboarded on the Mac, and so that's not my phone.

0:38:37And so either I missed that option

0:38:39or it didn't even ask or whatever.

0:38:40But if you want every single photo you take on your phone

0:38:44to go directly into the shared library, you can turn that on.

0:38:46It's in the camera settings on your iPhone.

0:38:49As for my unsaved photos warning,

0:38:51I'm not sure if Casey saw that when he was trying

0:38:52to move his 40,000 photos, but if you select a bunch

0:38:54of photos and try to move them to the shared library,

0:38:56you might see something that says,

0:38:57"Hey, you've got unsaved photos.

0:38:59"Do you wanna save them?"

0:39:00And I wondered what the heck that was about.

0:39:02Lots of people gave me the answer

0:39:03that those are the shared with you photos.

0:39:05If you have that feature on, when someone sends you a photo

0:39:09in messages, like an iMessage.

0:39:11There's a feature that will surface that photo

0:39:14in your photos application, and it'll say like,

0:39:16oh, this was from Casey when you were having a message thread,

0:39:19and it shows his name and a little message icon

0:39:21or something or whatever.

0:39:23Those are the ones that haven't saved.

0:39:24And what it means by saved is we're showing you this photo

0:39:27because it's in one of your message threads.

0:39:29We're showing it to you in the photo grid view

0:39:31or in the Mac version of Photos app,

0:39:33but you haven't actually saved this photo

0:39:34to your photo library.

0:39:37And by saved, because I did select all

0:39:38or select a whole bunch,

0:39:40some of the things I selected were shared with you photos.

0:39:43So you have two choices.

0:39:44You could either save them,

0:39:45which means basically copy them out of the message thread

0:39:48and put them into your photo library

0:39:49where they will live forever.

0:39:50Or you can go to the, on the Mac anyway,

0:39:52I think on the iOS one too,

0:39:53there's like a filters menu option in the upper right.

0:39:57You can tell it to filter out,

0:39:58like don't show me the shared with you photos.

0:40:01And then it just won't show them.

0:40:02And then when you select huge swaths

0:40:03and you don't have to worry about that.

0:40:04So that's that feature, that's that mystery solved.

0:40:08D duping.

0:40:09So D duping is still definitely a frustrating situation.

0:40:13And I'm not even, you know,

0:40:14I'm not even talking about D duping

0:40:17like with two people's accounts.

0:40:18Like I said, last week, my wife and my account

0:40:20on the same Mac, I'm talking about D duping

0:40:21where two people contribute the same photo

0:40:23to the shared library,

0:40:24or there's a photo in the shared library

0:40:25and also in a personal library.

0:40:27And it's a tricky situation.

0:40:28So just to give an example, an example that I tested,

0:40:32if I and my wife both contribute the exact same photo

0:40:35to the shared photo library,

0:40:36which might happen if we both got like air dropped

0:40:38the photo from someone else.

0:40:39It's literally the same photo down to the bite,

0:40:41no differences whatsoever.

0:40:43There'll be two copies in there.

0:40:45And deduping is a little bit tricky

0:40:47because if we dedupe that,

0:40:49I mean, to do it right, what you would have to do

0:40:51is keep track of the fact that two different people

0:40:55contribute this photo, because,

0:40:57and I'm noticing this when I'm hopping back and forth

0:40:58between accounts, if you're in the shared library,

0:41:01you can take one of the photos and say,

0:41:02move this back to my library.

0:41:04But if you're not the one who contributed

0:41:06to the share library, you can't,

0:41:07it doesn't say move it back,

0:41:08'cause you didn't contribute it.

0:41:09So if two people contributed,

0:41:11the system has to remember,

0:41:12hey, both people contributed to this.

0:41:14And so if you move it back,

0:41:16A, it has to understand that you're allowed to move it back

0:41:18because you were one of the two contributors,

0:41:20or one of the three contributors,

0:41:21or one of the four people who contributed, or whatever,

0:41:23it has to understand that you're allowed to do that.

0:41:24And B, it should probably leave it there

0:41:28for other people to get back,

0:41:29because they contributed it, but they didn't pull it back.

0:41:31So you can pull your copy back.

0:41:35it's got a lot of weird edge cases.

0:41:36It's not as simple as just, oh, just delete one of them.

0:41:38Because if you do that,

0:41:39then you're left with like the one contributed by one person

0:41:41but now the other person can't pull it back

0:41:43even though they think they contributed it.

0:41:44So it is complicated and confusing,

0:41:47but I do hope it's on the list.

0:41:48I don't think I put it in a feedback for that,

0:41:50but I probably will at some point.

0:41:51But I hope this is already on the roadmap somewhere

0:41:52because it would be a useful feature.

0:41:55It's surprisingly easy to get dupes.

0:41:57And the reason it's surprisingly easy to get dupes,

0:41:58at least for me, is we've had just like

0:42:00years and years, decades, at least a single decade,

0:42:03a long time where we've had separate libraries.

0:42:06And inevitably there are photos that end up

0:42:08in both of the libraries

0:42:09because even when one is the real library,

0:42:11sometimes I wanna have like the good pictures on my phone

0:42:14so I can make wallpapers, so I can post them to Instagram.

0:42:17And there are just so many photos that are both on my phone

0:42:20and also in the quote unquote real library.

0:42:22And trying to manually sort that out is fraught.

0:42:26I'd rather just dump everything into the shadow of the library

0:42:29and say, "No, dee doop," and have it handle that,

0:42:31but it doesn't do that yet.

0:42:33and it doesn't have a way for you to ask it to do,

0:42:34but just does it on its own sweet time, which is not great.

0:42:37And finally, people and faces.

0:42:39So here's how, as far as I can tell,

0:42:41the people and faces stuff.

0:42:43The people and like the names of the people

0:42:46and all the face data doesn't seem like

0:42:48it goes with the photo.

0:42:51So if I contribute a photo and I have all the faces named,

0:42:54you know, and like identified all the people in them,

0:42:56that stays, like I don't lose that

0:42:58by pushing into the shared library.

0:42:59It's exactly there because I'm contributing the photo.

0:43:01But other people who see that photo,

0:43:03they have to then run face recognition

0:43:05according to their face database,

0:43:07and they have, you know,

0:43:08assigning their names or whatever.

0:43:09And so in theory, if you want to be weird or funny,

0:43:12you could have totally different names

0:43:13and totally different face assignments for multiple people

0:43:16looking in the same photo in the shared library.

0:43:18But the face data and the name data is not shared.

0:43:21It is private to each contributor.

0:43:24There's a privacy angle to that,

0:43:25or you might not want to know that, you know,

0:43:28Uncle Bill is named Poopyface

0:43:29in your library or something.

0:43:32But for families, it would actually be kind of convenient

0:43:36if the people data could be shared.

0:43:38Kind of like the keywords are shared,

0:43:39'cause that's another privacy thing.

0:43:41Like I said a couple weeks ago,

0:43:44when you assign a keyword to a photo and you share it,

0:43:46other people see that keyword.

0:43:48So I hope your keywords aren't like, you know,

0:43:50something you don't want other people to see.

0:43:51It's just text, you know, it's not a big deal

0:43:53in terms of the sharing,

0:43:54but it saves a lot of time and energy

0:43:56'cause I want the keywords to be shared rather,

0:43:59so that I can take advantage of the years

0:44:01I have spent keyword tagging photos.

0:44:03- You know, as you were talking

0:44:05and I was looking at the show notes

0:44:06and I noticed that I, or I realized

0:44:09I hadn't looked at the shared library settings

0:44:11within camera, within settings on my phone.

0:44:14And it's worth noting there's some clever stuff here.

0:44:16So, you know, there's a kind of global,

0:44:19do you wanna share photos directly from your camera?

0:44:21Yes, no.

0:44:22Then below that, you have two choices,

0:44:23share automatically or share manually.

0:44:25And if I understand this right, basically,

0:44:28If your phone, or my phone in my case,

0:44:30sees Aaron's phone nearby, it will automatically,

0:44:33if I so choose, share photos that I take

0:44:37while we're near each other to the shared library.

0:44:40And then additionally,

0:44:41which I think they had talked about on a keynote somewhere,

0:44:43but additionally, there's share when at home, yes, no.

0:44:47And so whenever I'm at home,

0:44:48irrespective of whether Aaron is physically near me

0:44:50at the time or not,

0:44:51it can optionally share directly

0:44:53to the shared photo library, which I think is very slick.

0:44:55And we'll see whether or not any of this actually works,

0:44:57but I'm very impressed that these options are available.

0:45:01It seems reasonably well thought out.

0:45:03The one thing that I do think I screwed up though,

0:45:05is I wanted to capture photos of the four of us

0:45:10and basically anything since Aaron and I met.

0:45:12And I think what I accidentally did was an and not an or.

0:45:16Like it seemed to me like I was doing an or operation.

0:45:19Like take anything that is, you know, from before

0:45:23or from the time we met and after, and, or,

0:45:26I have to choose my words carefully here.

0:45:27- Did you mean like during the onboarding

0:45:29when you were at the-- - Correct, sorry, yes.

0:45:30- prompted you to say like,

0:45:30hey, what photos do you want me to send over?

0:45:32Yeah, I didn't understand - Exactly right.

0:45:33- any of those options, which is why I said,

0:45:35I'll do this myself later, whatever that option was.

0:45:37- Yeah, see, that's why I should've learned from your,

0:45:40I was gonna say mistakes, but not mistakes.

0:45:42I should've learned from you.

0:45:43And so I think, what I did was I said,

0:45:45start from whenever we met and take the four of us.

0:45:48And it appears to me that what it heard when I said that

0:45:52is take pictures of the four of us

0:45:54rather than just glob everything from 2005 onward,

0:45:59it's actually just, I think it's just taking photos

0:46:03that it recognizes as either me, Aaron, Declan, or Michaela,

0:46:06which I'm gonna have to go back and add a whole bunch more,

0:46:08but what are you gonna do?

0:46:09Also, I mean, it's still churning, so maybe I'm wrong.

0:46:11Maybe I'm basing this off of what's in progress,

0:46:14and once it all settles down, maybe it'll be what I expect.

0:46:17- You're just reminding me of how much the search

0:46:19in photos annoys me either because I can't figure it out,

0:46:21in which case someone, again, from the Apple Photos team,

0:46:23please tell me how to do this because I want to do it,

0:46:25but like, photos has had for many years now

0:46:28a search box in the upper right,

0:46:29and you can type stuff in there like you can on your phone,

0:46:31like you can type the word dog

0:46:32and it will find all the pictures of dogs, right?

0:46:34That, and it has, it understands a whole bunch of things.

0:46:37It's very useful, and now it also does text,

0:46:39so if you take a picture of a street sign,

0:46:40it'll do OCR on the text, so you can type that text, right?

0:46:42Powerful search field up there, right?

0:46:44Also, there is a thing called smart folders

0:46:46that are in the sidebar, and smart folders

0:46:49have never heard of that search field in the upper right,

0:46:51because everything that search field can do,

0:46:53Smart folders are like, I have no idea what that is,

0:46:54don't even talk to me about it.

0:46:55So if I wanted to do something like,

0:46:57show me photos with these people,

0:46:59show me photos of a dog that were taken

0:47:01between these years, the smart folder is like,

0:47:02ha ha ha, I don't know what a photo of a dog is,

0:47:04what are you even talking about?

0:47:05Unless you keyword tagged it with dog,

0:47:07I have no idea about that AI thing.

0:47:08You can't even, and it doesn't know

0:47:09about face recognition either.

0:47:10Smart folders are like, show me photos of these five people,

0:47:13but also that, like it's just, it's so,

0:47:16they're so divorced from each other

0:47:18based on like the year and team that they were created,

0:47:20and I'm like, look, if you can do these searches,

0:47:21the smart folders should support everything

0:47:23the search field can support and vice versa,

0:47:24but they don't.

0:47:25There's so many smart folders that I wanted to create

0:47:29to help me deal with the migration and stuff

0:47:31that just aren't possible to do.

0:47:32Or maybe they are, please tell me I'm wrong

0:47:34and let me know how to do this.

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0:49:35(upbeat music)

0:49:38- So we had some news that happened this week

0:49:42and it's one of those times when like the entire internet

0:49:46points to you and says, did you see this?

0:49:48Did you see this?

0:49:49Like there was a,

0:49:50I probably won't be able to find it for the show notes,

0:49:52but there was like a satirical thing

0:49:53where an FFmpeg fan talks about FFmpeg.

0:49:56It was not directly about me as far as I'm aware,

0:49:58but like the entire internet sent it to me.

0:50:01If I remember it, and if I can dig it up,

0:50:03I'll put it in the show notes.

0:50:04But in this case, I was not the star.

0:50:06It was John.

0:50:07And you were the star because coming out of,

0:50:11apparently out of the woodwork is rewind.ai.

0:50:14And rewind.ai is by another name, a life stream.

0:50:19And this is something I've heard you talk about for years.

0:50:22So John, remind me what a life stream is and tell me what's going on.

0:50:27Not to be confused with life day. Um, yeah, I had to dig up where I talked about this.

0:50:31Most recently back in November of 2021,

0:50:34I talked about it with Merlin on rectifs, uh, reconcilable differences.

0:50:37I keep abbreviating. People don't know what that is. Another podcast I do.

0:50:39I'll put a link in the show notes. If you, uh,

0:50:41a timestamp length to 53 minutes and 22 seconds

0:50:44if you want to hear my most recent conversation about it.

0:50:46But way before that, back in May of 2014,

0:50:49I talked about it on this very show, on ATP episode 66,

0:50:52at 1 hour and 52 seconds into the show.

0:50:55And it's not a thing that I made up.

0:50:57As I said in both of the times I talked about it,

0:50:58it's a thing I saw on TV when I was a kid,

0:51:00possibly a teenager, but in my advanced age,

0:51:03it seems like when I was a kid.

0:51:04And it was like some research thing

0:51:06that some academic had done and written papers about

0:51:09or whatever.

0:51:10I was digging some more stuff about this.

0:51:11Someone wrote a paper about implementing this

0:51:13on the Newton PDA back in the day.

0:51:15I don't know who's ever implemented.

0:51:16A lot of the papers had broken links.

0:51:18But anyway, as I think I described

0:51:20in both times I talked about this,

0:51:21it was back early enough where people were still thinking

0:51:24about new ways to look at data on computers.

0:51:27We're all kind of familiar with the files and folder metaphor

0:51:30of sort of arranging things in a hierarchy

0:51:33and the desktop metaphor and like, you know,

0:51:35filing things like that.

0:51:36We're also kind of aware these days of the search paradigm,

0:51:40where things, you know, files and objects have attributes,

0:51:44and you can search based on those attributes,

0:51:45unless they're Apple photos, in which case,

0:51:47you can only search on some of them in the sidebar.

0:51:48But anyway, that's a different way to view your text,

0:51:51view your content, you could use search,

0:51:52and then the search doesn't care where the thing is located,

0:51:55it just cares that they're all pictures of dogs or whatever.

0:51:58And another way you can think about slicing and dicing data

0:52:01is purely based on time.

0:52:03We don't care if it has a picture of a dog in it,

0:52:05we don't care where it is in the file system,

0:52:07all we care is when something happened to it.

0:52:09And so you can imagine every single thing

0:52:12that you interact with on a computer

0:52:14being a time-ordered sequence.

0:52:17I looked at this thing, I clicked this thing,

0:52:19I made this thing, I wrote this text, I did this,

0:52:21and it's just a long stream of things.

0:52:23You can visualize, I think they even visualize it

0:52:25on the thing I was watching on PBS

0:52:26is just like a, you know, kind of like a rollercoaster ride

0:52:29where you're flying through a whole bunch of things

0:52:30and the past is way out there

0:52:32and the future is in the other direction.

0:52:33And they called it life streams or life streaming.

0:52:36And it was bigger than that.

0:52:37It was like, what if I wear a camera on my head

0:52:39and record myself 24 hours a day or whatever,

0:52:40but just in the realm of computers,

0:52:42imagine if you could see everything

0:52:46that you've interacted with on the computer

0:52:48ordered by time.

0:52:49And the reason I brought that up probably on both podcasts

0:52:52is because I always find it frustrating

0:52:54when I know I saw something somewhere the other day,

0:52:58but I can't remember where it was.

0:53:00Was it a tweet?

0:53:01Was it an email somebody sent me?

0:53:03Did someone send me a message?

0:53:05Was it in Slack?

0:53:07Was it a phone call?

0:53:08Was it an in-person meeting?

0:53:09I know this doesn't help with that,

0:53:10but that is a thing that, again,

0:53:12at my advanced stage, very often,

0:53:14the lines blur between things that happen on the computer

0:53:16and things that happen in real life.

0:53:18And I hate it when I can't, I hate that feeling

0:53:21where it's like, I know I saw this, I just saw it,

0:53:23and like, I go through my history and my browsers

0:53:25and I'm searching the file system

0:53:27and I'm trying to search Slack

0:53:28and hoping that like the free Slack, you know,

0:53:30hasn't scrolled off the end

0:53:31'cause it doesn't keep everything, you know,

0:53:32it's just, I hate when I can't find it.

0:53:34And I always think, if I had live streams,

0:53:36this wouldn't be a problem

0:53:37because the whole point of livestreams is just,

0:53:39it notes everything you do and orders it by time.

0:53:41And if I can remember it happened sometime yesterday,

0:53:44then I can find it

0:53:45because that's the only thing I care about.

0:53:46I don't care about, did it happen in Slack?

0:53:48Did it happen in messages?

0:53:49Was it an email?

0:53:50I don't care about that.

0:53:51And I certainly don't care about

0:53:53where it is in the file system,

0:53:54where the file was saved, if it is a file or whatever.

0:53:56I just wanna find the data.

0:53:58So this startup at rewind.ai

0:54:01has basically implemented livestreams.

0:54:05When I talked about it on Erectifs back in November 2021,

0:54:08I talked about the pitfalls

0:54:11of potentially implementing this.

0:54:13And so Rewind.ai has implemented it,

0:54:15so now we have a concrete implementation to look at.

0:54:17And what it does is you run it on your Mac,

0:54:19it's a Mac application,

0:54:20so cool for people making innovative new Mac applications,

0:54:24and it tries to implement live streams.

0:54:26And so if you're like,

0:54:27what was that thing that I see,

0:54:29it was something about the TPS report,

0:54:31I think they used TPS report in their demo video.

0:54:32- Yeah, they did. - TPS reports,

0:54:34yesterday where was that?

0:54:36And you don't remember and it will find it

0:54:37in the example they give is like,

0:54:39what if it was just something that was on somebody else's

0:54:41screen in a Zoom call, right?

0:54:43They did screen sharing on a Zoom call

0:54:44and that's where it was.

0:54:45You're never gonna find that

0:54:46'cause it's not even on your desk.

0:54:47It's not in your browser history.

0:54:49There's no history in Zoom where you could find

0:54:51text that was on a document that was being shared over Zoom

0:54:55for someone who's doing screen sharing, right?

0:54:57But rewind.ai will find it.

0:54:59And how does it do this you may ask?

0:55:01Exactly the way you're thinking.

0:55:03It records everything that happens on your screen,

0:55:06and that's where people start to get scared.

0:55:08But honestly, that's the only way to do it

0:55:10with current technology is,

0:55:12what if we just record everything that happens

0:55:14on your screen, every single window, OCR, all of it,

0:55:17do text to speech from any audio that happens,

0:55:20and just record it all?

0:55:21Because that's the only way we're gonna find anything.

0:55:23So it doesn't really care what it is,

0:55:24it doesn't need to integrate with your browser,

0:55:26it doesn't need to do any of that stuff.

0:55:27It's just basically gonna record everything.

0:55:29And if you are technically minded,

0:55:31you're thinking many things.

0:55:32You're thinking about the privacy implications

0:55:34and you're thinking about the technical implications.

0:55:35But if we're going to get into all that

0:55:36and there's a lot to get into, I just want--

0:55:37- I think about the legal implications.

0:55:39- Yeah, yeah.

0:55:40- Like two-party consent for recording.

0:55:42- I just want to say that, as always

0:55:44when I was discussing on rectifs,

0:55:46that I would love this feature,

0:55:48but anyone who actually implements it,

0:55:50it becomes immediately terrifying

0:55:52and probably also not technically possible.

0:55:53And I think what I said back on the rectifs,

0:55:55so that I haven't listened back to the whole thing,

0:55:56is like the only company that I wouldn't even remotely trust

0:55:59to implement this in some future

0:56:00where implementing it doesn't bring my system to its knees,

0:56:04it would be a platform or like Apple that is privacy focused

0:56:07because anybody else who implements this,

0:56:10it is so scary that I would,

0:56:15how could I possibly have trust in them?

0:56:16And as we'll get to in a little bit,

0:56:19this is a venture-funded company.

0:56:20And so I'm like making, like it's like,

0:56:23do I want a venture-funded company being responsible

0:56:28for keeping all my data privacy

0:56:29as it records everything that happens on my screen?

0:56:32Probably not, but anyway, that's the product.

0:56:35I think it actually is cool.

0:56:36I am certainly a fan of livestreams.

0:56:38I think it's technically cool,

0:56:39but it also scares the heck out of me.

0:56:41- I'm not sure I would trust even Apple with this,

0:56:43for a number of reasons.

0:56:45I mean, number one, I think just the liability

0:56:48that you're creating by recording everything

0:56:51that passes through your screen and/or microphone

0:56:54or whatever else, if somebody had access to that,

0:56:56even if it's just somebody who sat down at your computer

0:56:59and you walked away for a minute,

0:57:00it's having access to everything

0:57:03that has shown on your screen.

0:57:04And granted, this app says they could do things

0:57:06like exclude your private Safari windows

0:57:09so when you're looking at stuff

0:57:10you shouldn't be looking at in polite company.

0:57:14- Or exclude the Zoom window if your work

0:57:16doesn't want you to record and stuff like that.

0:57:18They built the features you would expect

0:57:20that they would build in, but it's not like,

0:57:23getting back to the live streaming thing

0:57:24of the guy who has a camera on his head

0:57:26and records his whole life, it's the same idea.

0:57:28and this is a topic visited very often in science fiction.

0:57:31Obviously they're doing it for like as academic,

0:57:33let's try this thing, but just think about

0:57:34what it would be like if you recorded

0:57:35your entire life all day with your AR glasses,

0:57:38it just recorded everywhere you went.

0:57:41That is a tremendous, like you said, a tremendous liability.

0:57:44Nobody wants every moment of their life recorded

0:57:47and able to be recalled by somebody who's not them.

0:57:49I don't even want it to be recalled by someone who is me.

0:57:52I don't want to be able to go back

0:57:53and see every moment of my past,

0:57:55but I certainly don't want any arbitrary person

0:57:58who gets access to my AR or goggle recording

0:58:01to be able to jump back in time and look at what,

0:58:03that is fodder for dystopian sci-fi entirely.

0:58:07We're just talking about what happens on a computer,

0:58:09but that's plenty scary enough.

0:58:11- Yeah, 'cause your whole life is on your computer,

0:58:13and the things you do, I mean, there's so much,

0:58:15there's so much information there

0:58:18that could be used against you in some way,

0:58:20whether it's if you happen to flash a view

0:58:23of your bank account on a browser somewhere,

0:58:25or just sensitive emails you get,

0:58:27you know, just sensitive documents you have to deal with,

0:58:30what you're browsing for legitimate reasons,

0:58:33like there's just so, there is so much there,

0:58:36you are creating a massive honeypot reward

0:58:41for one bad actor in any part of it to be able to access

0:58:46and do horrendous things with.

0:58:47And even, again, I wouldn't even trust Apple to do this.

0:58:51And I trust Apple with a lot.

0:58:52I trust that even though we will complain about them

0:58:56when it's warranted, I do trust them a lot

0:59:00with a lot of data and integrity.

0:59:02That being said, as they push more into trying

0:59:06to be an ad company with, I think,

0:59:10somewhat spotty morals in that department,

0:59:13I don't know that we could even trust them with that.

0:59:15'Cause I think what Apple's argument would be is,

0:59:18well, we will keep it secure,

0:59:20and we won't sell your data to other companies,

0:59:23which is what they call tracking,

0:59:25but Apple itself would probably at some point

0:59:29use that for advertising targeting purposes.

0:59:31Again, we're in a different world now.

0:59:34Now that Apple is not only an ad company

0:59:38and a rapidly expanding ad company,

0:59:41but also now that Apple is having some tough quarters

0:59:44with services growth, they're gonna tighten the screws,

0:59:48they're gonna keep going.

0:59:49This past month or quarter, whatever,

0:59:52we had all of a sudden price hikes for all the services.

0:59:54That's not a coincidence.

0:59:55Look at their growth rates, look at their revenue rates.

0:59:58It's slowing down.

0:59:59All of a sudden we have lots of ads launching

1:00:01around the app store.

1:00:02Again, not a coincidence.

1:00:04They're gonna keep tightening the screws

1:00:06because what they call quote services

1:00:09are all things where they can fairly easily

1:00:12just like increase the spigot a little bit.

1:00:14Just they can do things here and there

1:00:16that will degrade things for users or developers

1:00:19or both or whatever, but we'll give them

1:00:21a little bit more money in the short term.

1:00:23This is what companies do, Apple's not immune to it.

1:00:25They're gonna keep doing this.

1:00:26And so I can clearly imagine a future,

1:00:29and I hope this never happens,

1:00:30but I think it's extremely plausible

1:00:34where if Apple had this feature of their platforms,

1:00:37this total recording everything feature,

1:00:39which frankly I don't think they would ever do

1:00:41'cause I think it's too problematic

1:00:43and they would know that,

1:00:44but if they were to ever launch such a thing,

1:00:47There is no question in my mind that they would find a way,

1:00:51once a bad quarter came around,

1:00:52they would find a way to twist some logic to say,

1:00:55okay, we're gonna now start using that data

1:00:56to target ads to you.

1:00:57And only in our apps though.

1:00:59We're gonna be super privacy sensitive

1:01:01and only we can do this creepy thing to your data.

1:01:05But that's what they would do.

1:01:07And so again, you look at even Apple,

1:01:10who we trust so much,

1:01:11who has a pretty good track record in most of these areas,

1:01:14I think even they would be a very small step away

1:01:17from taking advantage of that kind of thing

1:01:18in a creepy way, and that's Apple.

1:01:20Imagine any other company with access to that kind of data.

1:01:24And I mean, especially, I think a VC funded company

1:01:27is especially scary about that,

1:01:28because it is really hard to look at that

1:01:31and not be tempted when times get tough.

1:01:34So when you're not meeting your numbers,

1:01:36when you need a little bit more revenue

1:01:38to hit some goal or to avoid some problem,

1:01:41it's really, really hard to not tap that resource.

1:01:44And it's a massive resource that could be used

1:01:46in immensely creepy and terrible ways.

1:01:49Not to mention, even going beyond stuff

1:01:52like legal problems with it, which again,

1:01:54there are many legal problems with like,

1:01:57if you are recording things on your computer

1:01:59without people's consent,

1:02:00they're on the other side of those things,

1:02:02that's a bit of a problem in a lot of places.

1:02:04- I'm not sure if the law has caught up with that,

1:02:06but certainly NDA law has caught up with that, right?

1:02:08If you're under NDA, you're not supposed to record

1:02:12anything that happens in the meetings

1:02:14that you have at work or whatever.

1:02:16If people use enterprise software to do their tele-meetings or whatever, they explicitly

1:02:21disable recording if they don't want you to be able to record it, if that's their corporate

1:02:24policy.

1:02:25And of course, if you install a third-party app that also records on your computer using

1:02:28for corporate stuff, you are certainly violating your employee agreement or some NDA or whatever,

1:02:32which is a more well-trodden area of the law than...

1:02:36The phone system, the law has kind of caught up with that.

1:02:38So we have all the recording statutes that probably apply to recording someone saying

1:02:43audio, but recording like an image that goes across your screen because someone sent it

1:02:47to you in like a WhatsApp thing, it's so technically esoteric that I do wonder if the law in various

1:02:53states would be able to, would be able to grapple with that or if it's just, you know,

1:02:57something that hasn't ever been tried because this technology is so new.

1:03:01It's funny also, one of the things that's on the rewind website is, you know, you can

1:03:07record your meetings and at the bottom of this page it says, oh shoot, where did it

1:03:12go?

1:03:13like, "Oh, how does this work?" And then there's like a help page about it. At the bottom of that,

1:03:20it says, "Make sure to read this article as well, colon, the importance of consent." And they talk

1:03:26a little bit about it, and they say at the bottom of this article in bold, "We believe all users of

1:03:32our product should proactively seek consent from everyone they record, even if they are not

1:03:35illegally obligated to do so." And apparently, news to me, because I was looking at this earlier,

1:03:41There are only 11 American states that are two-party.

1:03:45Shoot, I lost the list, but somewhere around here.

1:03:47I believe Massachusetts--

1:03:47- California's a big one.

1:03:49- Oh, here it is.

1:03:50California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland,

1:03:51Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire,

1:03:53Pennsylvania, and Washington.

1:03:55Not New York, apparently.

1:03:56- Yeah, and again, this is not the first thing

1:03:58that records your screen.

1:04:00Screen recorders exist and have existed forever,

1:04:02and all the legal things are also caught by that.

1:04:04And in my time in corporate America in the latter years,

1:04:08we routinely recorded every meeting.

1:04:10It's basically like, oh, for people who couldn't show up

1:04:11to the meeting, make sure we record it,

1:04:13and it would get shoved into the cloud somewhere,

1:04:15and some Microsoft thing, and then other people

1:04:16would be able to view the meeting.

1:04:17So recording meetings is not a thing that really happens.

1:04:20What didn't happen as often is someone locally recording

1:04:22using a third-party piece of software that they installed,

1:04:24like it gets recorded and pushed to the Microsoft OneDrive

1:04:28through the Microsoft Teams thing or whatever.

1:04:29That is a feature that most people who work in corporations

1:04:32want, but they wanna be able to control it.

1:04:34So it's not like this is letting the recording

1:04:36or screen-reading out of the bottle,

1:04:37but the idea of it being pervasive,

1:04:39because to get the value of it,

1:04:40it kind of has to be pervasive.

1:04:42And maybe you could just say,

1:04:43I would just run that on my home computer,

1:04:44not my work computer, but that also kind of cuts into things

1:04:47if the thing that was sent to you was like a message,

1:04:49a non-work related message sent to you in messages,

1:04:52you're not gonna see it

1:04:53if you go through your live stream later at home.

1:04:57So here's what the CEO had to say about it

1:04:59in a little Twitter thread

1:05:00to sort of explain why his product is okay.

1:05:03Local and private by design.

1:05:06We record anything you've seen, said, or heard

1:05:08and make it searchable.

1:05:09For your privacy, we store all of the recordings

1:05:10locally on your Mac, only you have access to them.

1:05:12So as you would imagine, if they're trying to not be

1:05:15immediately, ridiculously evil,

1:05:16they do not take these recordings.

1:05:18If you're a local computer and throw it into the cloud,

1:05:19it's all just on your Mac.

1:05:21It's, you know, it's all local, right?

1:05:23Mind boggling compression.

1:05:25This gets to the technical feasibility.

1:05:26How can I record everything that's happening

1:05:28on my screen all day without filling my disc, right?

1:05:30Starring all the recordings locally

1:05:31means compression is very important.

1:05:33We compress raw data up to 3,750 times.

1:05:37What an odd number.

1:05:38Without major loss of quality, for example,

1:05:4010.5 gigabytes of raw recording data

1:05:42becomes 2.8 megabytes.

1:05:43And then finally, no cloud integration or IT required.

1:05:46In order to enable you to search anything you've seen,

1:05:47we use native Mac OS APIs with its optical character

1:05:50recognition to recognize and index all the words

1:05:52that appear in your screen.

1:05:52So it's all happening locally.

1:05:54It's all on your device.

1:05:55And they're able to compress things

1:05:57so that they get down to size.

1:05:58And in terms of the-- they also touted their VC funding,

1:06:01which is why everybody knows about it.

1:06:03In terms of the business bottle, here's

1:06:04something they had to say.

1:06:05I think this is on their website,

1:06:06on the how much does rewind cost.

1:06:07Rewind is completely free for now.

1:06:09Not reassuring, company.

1:06:10- No.

1:06:11- Don't put an exclamation on that, not reassuring.

1:06:12Anyway, we plan to offer a free product indefinitely,

1:06:15I'll bet, and for users to get a ton of value,

1:06:17we will charge them a monthly subscription,

1:06:19AKA freemium.

1:06:20And then this is, this is not getting better here.

1:06:23We aren't yet sure what the price will be

1:06:24or what the features will be in the free product

1:06:26versus the paid product.

1:06:27We'll make that decision based on feedback we get.

1:06:29One thing's for sure,

1:06:30we will never sell your data or do advertising.

1:06:33Are you sure about that?

1:06:34- See, I would like to know what was their pitch

1:06:37to the VCs, because I bet it contains

1:06:39much more detail than that.

1:06:41- I mean, they didn't get a huge amount of VC money,

1:06:43and the person who, the CEO also had previously,

1:06:46I think he was from Optimizely, which got--

1:06:48- I love, hold on, just the ridiculousness

1:06:50of like $10 million not being a huge,

1:06:52and you're right, like in terms of,

1:06:54but it's just, it's ridiculous.

1:06:56- You know what I mean, but like in the grand scheme,

1:06:57this is Andreessen Horowitz.

1:07:00It's a big VC company, and he's had a successful company

1:07:03that presumably he did well for the VCs

1:07:04and when they invested in that company,

1:07:05that's why he invested in his new company.

1:07:07So here's the thing about this feature.

1:07:09If you had gone back to my childhood

1:07:11and found some technically minded adults

1:07:13and said that a company's gonna make a product

1:07:15that keeps track of our location all day, every day,

1:07:18and makes that information accessible

1:07:20to other people potentially,

1:07:22they would say, "What, someone's gonna spy me

1:07:24"and know where I am all the time?

1:07:25"My device is gonna track my location on the Earth

1:07:28"24 hours a day?

1:07:29"This is a dystopian nightmare.

1:07:30"We all have phones and we don't care about that."

1:07:32It's like, well, it's just location data

1:07:33and we trust Apple not to share with anybody.

1:07:35And yeah, there was that thing where Google accidentally,

1:07:37we let people get at every location and see that you're,

1:07:39you know, where you go during the day.

1:07:41Like there is kind of a,

1:07:43an acclimation to technology tracking things

1:07:47that were previously seemed like the surveillance state.

1:07:50So, I mean, how many people use their phones

1:07:52and turn location off so it's never tracked?

1:07:53None of us do that because there's just so much utility

1:07:56for a device that knows where we are.

1:07:58Whether it's find my friends to find out

1:08:00where people in your family are,

1:08:01or just being able to set a reminder

1:08:02so it knows when you get back home,

1:08:04or maps features, or keeping track of your runs,

1:08:08or how many steps you've taken and where you walked.

1:08:10We have pretty much all accepted

1:08:12and found a vendor that we can trust well enough

1:08:16that we're okay essentially carrying a tracker around.

1:08:19We're carrying a tracker around with us all day.

1:08:21It's always keeping track of where we are

1:08:22and it's recording it.

1:08:23And we're like, yeah, we've worked out the kinks in that.

1:08:26People are mostly okay with it.

1:08:28But if you had dumped in somebody from the '70s

1:08:31and describe that, it'd be like, no, I don't want this tracker.

1:08:34Yes, it's an amazing peak of technology,

1:08:36but I don't want it to be tracked.

1:08:37And oh, you say it's only on the device,

1:08:39or it's shared in this cloud.

1:08:40You describe it, you say it's safe,

1:08:41and it can't-- like, you have to do so much reassurance

1:08:44and explaining of the cultural context for that to be OK.

1:08:47Part of the reason that happened is

1:08:49because we passed the technical threshold where doing that

1:08:51is not prohibitive.

1:08:53I'm not entirely sure that we have passed the threshold.

1:08:56We're doing full screen recording or per window

1:09:00recording an OCR is not oppressive because especially if you're on a laptop

1:09:03it's gonna hurt your battery like there's a page on this site that says

1:09:07look we're using the imaging powers of the M1 SoC to do all this compression

1:09:11and I bet they are but every one of those little things takes power and that

1:09:16you know especially on battery-powered devices like laptops but even on like a

1:09:19desktop you're burning CPU cycles doing this thing that presumably will have

1:09:24value later but you're burning it all the time like I mean again to get value

1:09:29out of it, you can't just like run it for one hour a day.

1:09:31You have to run it all the time.

1:09:33So I do feel like the utility of this,

1:09:36if this could exist immediately and magically work

1:09:40and like be seamless and not impact your life

1:09:43and not impact battery life,

1:09:45I think the utility of it actually is tremendous,

1:09:49but like getting over the hump of from where we are now

1:09:54where it's not and people are scared of it

1:09:56to the other side where it's just as scary

1:09:59in the wrong hands,

1:10:01but people are now used to the utility of it,

1:10:03is kind of inevitable as everything,

1:10:07I don't know if this is gonna happen,

1:10:08but I've always talked about this before,

1:10:09of like technology catching up with our perceptions, right?

1:10:12So audio, we've got the technology

1:10:14to make audio good enough for our human ears.

1:10:16Like we can do it.

1:10:17Like even if you're a crazy audio file person

1:10:19who wants 192 kilohertz, whatever, 48 bit,

1:10:22like we can do that, it's no problem.

1:10:24audio does not need to get better for humans

1:10:26until and unless we evolve better hearing,

1:10:28and that's gonna take a long time, right?

1:10:30We haven't caught up with video

1:10:31'cause video still is pixelated and it's not 3D

1:10:34like our eyes see and you know, blah, blah, blah.

1:10:36But if Moore's law continues long enough,

1:10:39and eventually Moore's law does stop

1:10:41'cause you can't make things smaller forever,

1:10:42see quantum physics, right?

1:10:44If Moore's law continues long enough

1:10:46that we max out on audio, vision, smell, touch,

1:10:51like all our senses basically,

1:10:53and we still have some more like doublings

1:10:57of transistor density to go,

1:10:59we're gonna get lifestreams whether we like it or not

1:11:01because it'll basically be free

1:11:02and to not do it would seem like wasteful, right?

1:11:06And hopefully we will have the security things

1:11:07worked out then hopefully we're all didn't die

1:11:09in the water wars like there are many caveats

1:11:11to what I'm describing here in this particular

1:11:13timescale argument.

1:11:14But the utility of this is tremendous

1:11:17because if I said, look,

1:11:19we're not gonna do any privacy things

1:11:20but now a genie has granted you a wish

1:11:22and you can go back to any moment and find anything

1:11:26and where was that thing?

1:11:27Like you have that magical ability, it's not technology,

1:11:28it's literally magic.

1:11:30People would take that in a second.

1:11:31It's a superpower.

1:11:32It's this kind of superpowers that computers give us.

1:11:35Things that we can't do easily as human,

1:11:37like remembering things or erasing things perfectly

1:11:39or whatever, like computers can do.

1:11:42They give us the power to do that.

1:11:44This would be a superpower that computers could give us

1:11:47if it could be harnessed in a way that we find acceptable

1:11:49and doesn't totally destroy our lives.

1:11:51Is 2022 the time and the place for that to happen on Mac OS

1:11:56from a VC funded company?

1:11:59Probably not, but I remain fascinated by the idea

1:12:03and I think the utility of the idea is unavoidable.

1:12:08Eventually, if we have excess computing capacity,

1:12:11somebody's gonna do it and some generation of people

1:12:13are gonna grow up and they're gonna think of it

1:12:14the way we think about our phone's GPS tracking

1:12:17or the way we think about Google searches.

1:12:18Just as part of life, that it would be barbaric

1:12:21live without because what the heck is the point of computers if not to do this thing?

1:12:24It was interesting watching the intro video as well, which is literally a minute, I think,

1:12:29to the second. And the CEO, Dan Soracher, I probably pronounced that wrong, but anyways,

1:12:34he said that he went deaf or, you know, lost a lot of hearing in his 30s and then was able to get it

1:12:41back by way of a hearing aid. And then he thought to himself, allegedly, you know, well, what else

1:12:45could we apply this principle to? Like, how else can we like supercharge a human being? And, and

1:12:50And he eventually landed on, well, what if you had perfect memory?

1:12:53And that's kind of what this rewind thing is trying to do.

1:12:57I don't know, I have very mixed feelings about it.

1:13:00I like the fact that somebody is doing something innovative on Mac OS, because that seems to

1:13:05be happening so rarely these days.

1:13:08It is funny, like you had said, John, you know, unleashes Apple Silicon.

1:13:12Rewind utilizes virtually every part of Apple's silicon system on a chip.

1:13:16rewind doesn't tax system resources like CPU and memory while recording allegedly.

1:13:20It uses every part of the SoC but doesn't tax CPU. You know CPU is part of the SoC.

1:13:26And either way when you're using parts that don't count as a CPU, I'm not using the CPU,

1:13:30I'm using the H.265 encoder. That still uses electricity. Like I know it uses less than doing

1:13:37it on the CPU but like there's no avoiding the there is technical overhead for doing this.

1:13:42Technical overhead for the compression, there's technical overhead for doing this the I/O for the

1:13:45the storage and there's overhead of actually doing the screen recording.

1:13:49It's not huge overhead, and I think our machines can mostly handle it, but it is going to impact

1:13:53your battery life some amount.

1:13:54I don't think they throw out any figures of like, "1% worse battery life," or "4% we don't

1:13:59know what it is," but it's not zero.

1:14:01Yeah, but I don't know.

1:14:03As someone who genuinely has a pretty crummy memory, I find this very fascinating.

1:14:10It is not often that I think to myself, "Oh, where did I see that thing?"

1:14:15But it definitely happens.

1:14:16And in a situation where I felt like I could trust

1:14:19whatever vendor is providing this service,

1:14:23I would probably be interested in it.

1:14:25But I echo what both of you, particularly Marco,

1:14:27was saying about the privacy implications,

1:14:30about the consent implications.

1:14:33Like, yeah, I guess every time I speak to anyone

1:14:35on my computer, I can ask them if I have their consent

1:14:38to record them.

1:14:39- Or you could turn it off like it was a big switch

1:14:41in the menu bar.

1:14:42Like if, you know, again, it cuts into the value

1:14:44if you turn it off, but it's a thing that you could do.

1:14:46- But nevertheless, like,

1:14:47I think this is a very fascinating idea.

1:14:49And the fact that this group of people seems to claim

1:14:53that they can realize this idea, that's super cool.

1:14:57Now I'm skeptical that that's reality,

1:14:59but I dig the demo, if nothing else.

1:15:02Now maybe it's all smoke and mirrors,

1:15:03but it looked really slick.

1:15:05So I don't know, I would definitely be interested in this.

1:15:08I put my name or my email in the list

1:15:11just because I'd like to toy with it for a minute

1:15:12and see what it does.

1:15:14But a lot of the incentives that I see,

1:15:18namely the fact that it's VC funded,

1:15:21and they don't really seem to know

1:15:22how they're gonna make money,

1:15:23that does not align well with the incentives

1:15:26I want them to have,

1:15:27which is privacy beyond anything else.

1:15:30Efficiency is a second tier, right behind privacy.

1:15:34I don't know, I'm very skeptical.

1:15:36Quick aside, by the way,

1:15:37I just realized a few minutes ago

1:15:40where A16Z came from. Did you know this? I think I figured it out.

1:15:43And I had like, everybody knows, but you, I everyone, but new.

1:15:46Did you know that the Beatles is a music pun?

1:15:49I did actually know that. Um, but I had no idea it was all the,

1:15:53it was 16 characters between the A and the Z anyways. Um, I don't know.

1:15:56Would you use the, let me start with Marco. Would you use this both,

1:15:59both rewind specifically and a fantasy, let's call it Apple.

1:16:04Yes, I agree with all you were saying about Apple and services, but you know,

1:16:08Would you use an Apple-provided version of rewind?

1:16:11Would you use the rewind-provided version of rewind?

1:16:13Let me start with Marco and then John,

1:16:14I'd like to hear your two cents.

1:16:16- I just, I don't see this ever being a thing

1:16:20that is worth the risk.

1:16:23It's almost like, imagine if nuclear power

1:16:26was far less safe than it really is.

1:16:29And so imagine, so it'd be like, yeah,

1:16:32there's value in generating this power,

1:16:33but every couple of years it's gonna have a giant meltdown.

1:16:36and I was like, well, maybe that's not worth it.

1:16:38And I know in reality this is a bad metaphor

1:16:40because it's way safer, but anyway.

1:16:42I think you look at this product and like,

1:16:47first of all, even if we ignore the VC part of it,

1:16:51just conceptually a product like this,

1:16:54well, the very first thing it's gonna have to do

1:16:57is add multi-device sync,

1:16:59because that's the very first feature request

1:17:01people are gonna have, because they're gonna go,

1:17:02oh, I was doing this thing,

1:17:05But I forget whether it was on my desktop or my laptop

1:17:08or my phone or my tablet.

1:17:10So you're gonna have, and I guess you can't really do

1:17:12any of this on iOS, but who knows how they would

1:17:15get around that, but anyway.

1:17:17So like, you can start to see, all right,

1:17:19the very first thing people are gonna want

1:17:20is something that's gonna require them to have this data

1:17:23synced somehow between devices and therefore

1:17:26probably stored on some kind of server, maybe encrypted.

1:17:30So there's already like a lot of red flags even there.

1:17:33But again, even if you just stick with

1:17:35what they've announced and you assume

1:17:37they will never need money,

1:17:38and so all that's off the table,

1:17:40all those concerns are off the table,

1:17:42and again, even heck, even assume,

1:17:45not only Apple did it, but Apple of 15 years ago did it,

1:17:49before they really got into the ad business.

1:17:51Even with all those assumptions,

1:17:53I think this is creating a massive liability

1:17:57that the liability is greater

1:18:00than the value that it creates.

1:18:02And I cannot see this going well long-term for the people who

1:18:07use it.

1:18:08John?

1:18:09I also signed up for the thing.

1:18:10I'll definitely try it out of technical curiosity.

1:18:13When I talked about the way Apple might implement this,

1:18:15because they're the platform owner,

1:18:16they have more invasive access to apps running on the system.

1:18:19And also, they can do a thing that third parties can't,

1:18:22which is they can vend APIs that third parties can then

1:18:24adopt to sort of opt into this.

1:18:26So it can be both more efficient and more privacy preserving

1:18:29and with sort of like an impartial referee in the middle

1:18:32being Apple the platform owner,

1:18:34kind of like how does location services work?

1:18:36Like it's an Apple vended API that they control

1:18:38and Apple is able to control the privacy of it

1:18:41to some degree through both the App Store

1:18:43and the way the APIs work.

1:18:44And same thing with sandboxing and a lot of things like that.

1:18:47That's why I envisioned Apple trying to,

1:18:50being able to pull this off in a more secure way.

1:18:51I still think the technical overhead of it

1:18:53is probably not worth the trade off,

1:18:55but like I was saying before

1:18:57with the sort of long-term thinking about this

1:19:00and how we think about GPS.

1:19:02I mean, there are tons of technologies

1:19:05that have terrible privacy implications

1:19:10that we don't like as tech nerds who are sensitive to this,

1:19:13but the world disagrees, like Facebook, for example, right?

1:19:17Or so many things having to do with the web.

1:19:20- Or even like workplace man-of-the-middle security products.

1:19:23- Yeah, I mean, the workplace ones, I think,

1:19:27kind of more justifiable because it's like at least you at least that you know what you're getting into there and it's your employer and you

1:19:31Could separate your personal or whatever things like Facebook

1:19:33We're like, oh just give them access to your whole life and they will sell ads against it and like

1:19:37You know people have different thresholds for how much they care about this and it seems like there are a lot of things

1:19:44That may be terrible for privacy

1:19:46but also clear pretty much everybody's threshold right and

1:19:49A product like this is probably only one generation away setting aside the technical hurdles from clearing

1:19:56enough people's threshold that it doesn't matter.

1:20:00Who cares if everybody listening to ADP

1:20:02is horrified by it, right?

1:20:03That the masses writ large have different,

1:20:07make different trade-offs, they have different weights

1:20:09and different values to these different things.

1:20:11When they weigh X against Y, they're like,

1:20:13"Oh, Facebook, I see cool pictures of my friends

1:20:14"and have fun.

1:20:15"Told, you know, privacy destroy anything?"

1:20:17I don't care about that, it's weird, esoteric,

1:20:19I'm not a tech nerd, who cares, right?

1:20:21I'm not saying they're right, obviously we disagree

1:20:23with that, but if you think like,

1:20:25I don't see this ever catching on

1:20:26'cause I find it distasteful.

1:20:28I don't think that's, you know,

1:20:31my pessimistic view is that's not gonna save us.

1:20:34In terms of like me trying this for real,

1:20:39like, oh, will you run this on your computer all day?

1:20:42Right now, I have to say no.

1:20:43Like I'm interested in seeing it run.

1:20:45I wanna see how it works,

1:20:46but my personal trade-off is as annoyed as I am

1:20:50when I can't find something,

1:20:51I'm not annoyed enough to give this.

1:20:54But someday I'm going to get old and die,

1:20:56and then the next generation of people

1:20:58may not have the same foibles that I have.

1:21:01And the thing I mentioned,

1:21:02dystopian sci-fi, I'm reusing this issue a lot.

1:21:05Someone in the chat room pointed out

1:21:06that there was an episode of Black Mirror

1:21:08that touches on this exactly.

1:21:10I've seen every episode of Black Mirror,

1:21:11and so I vaguely remembered it,

1:21:13but they looked it up for me.

1:21:13It's the entire history of you.

1:21:14It's more about, hey, if you have the ability

1:21:16to go back and look at any of your memories

1:21:18'cause your whole life is recorded,

1:21:19maybe you'll obsessively go back and look at a memory

1:21:21that's like, you know, that you'll sort of like spiral

1:21:25on that one memory and keep obsessing over it

1:21:26and looking at every corner or whatever.

1:21:28It's kind of like a romance and someone's like, you know,

1:21:30I think it was like someone was cheating on someone else

1:21:32and someone's rewinding the memory and looking at it.

1:21:33- This would be my personal hell.

1:21:35Like I'd be so tempted to like go back to like middle school

1:21:37and then I would just torture myself

1:21:39with like all the dumb crap I did and said and acted like,

1:21:42oh God.

1:21:43- Yeah, I mean, like again, Black Mirror is not a,

1:21:46you know, it's not a happy show.

1:21:49Although San Junipero is the best episode

1:21:51the entire series and it stands alone.

1:21:53It is not a series of continuity.

1:21:54So you like these, these are independent for the most part,

1:21:57independent episodes.

1:21:57So just watch San Junipero, just find that one episode.

1:22:00I forgot which season and what episode it's for.

1:22:02It's S-A-N space, J-U-N-I-P-E-R-O.

1:22:05Put a link in the show notes.

1:22:06That episode is worth watching

1:22:08and is one of the best episodes of television ever.

1:22:09And it is totally standalone.

1:22:11You need no continuity,

1:22:12but every other episode of Black Mirror is so grim.

1:22:15And the entire history of you is also grim.

1:22:17And I'm sure there have been decades and decades

1:22:20sci-fi novels that have examined what it would be like if every moment of our lives was recorded

1:22:25by us, by a totalitarian state that's ruling over us, by aliens. There are so many things in there

1:22:31that are scary to us, which is why companies like this are trying to be careful with how

1:22:34they introduce this technology. But I pretty much do feel that something like this is unavoidable,

1:22:40as long as technology, as long as Moore's Law continues long enough to get us into a place

1:22:46where this can be implemented in such a way that it like that the technical trade-off and the battery

1:22:51life trade-off or whatever are rendered moot and then it's just a matter of who's bothered by it

1:22:55we'll all be gone so we don't have to worry about it and i think the generation of people who live

1:22:59there probably go that's useful i'll do that and they'll care about privacy they won't want it to

1:23:03be super bad and you know if we've done well as a human race we will have implemented laws that

1:23:09protect our privacy much more than we have today but i'm not feeling particularly optimistic about

1:23:14about that at this moment in 2022.

1:23:15So check again in a hundred years.

1:23:18- I forgot to mention,

1:23:19and the how does the recording of meetings work

1:23:23in the Rewind website?

1:23:25Where's the data sent?

1:23:27Video data is never sent off your Mac.

1:23:29The only data sent to a cloud service is the audio.

1:23:32We send it to a cloud transcription service

1:23:34in order to generate a transcript of what was said.

1:23:36This transcript is created so you can read it

1:23:38and search for specific words that were said.

1:23:41Yikes.

1:23:42- Nope, nope, nope.

1:23:43- It's on device too, but maybe that's the one

1:23:45that kills the battery, you know,

1:23:46like maybe that eats up the CPU,

1:23:48maybe the speech attacks is not as good on Apple's system.

1:23:51- It's not.

1:23:52- As Jason H says in the chat room,

1:23:54every episode of Black Mirror ends up

1:23:56on a tech company's roadmap.

1:23:57(laughing)

1:23:59- Oh no, this, 'cause that's the thing,

1:24:01like, it's so easy to see like, oh well,

1:24:05we're gonna poke this hole in our security model

1:24:07that we previously established or that you thought you had

1:24:10in order to provide this great value.

1:24:12Now there's one hole already.

1:24:13Oh, we gotta send your audio off to a cloud thing.

1:24:16Okay, well, what's next?

1:24:18It's so easy to make a couple little exceptions.

1:24:21Well, we have to make this exception here

1:24:23to provide value to you and/or us.

1:24:25But that becomes so easy to do.

1:24:28Once there's any holes, oh, we'll just add a little more

1:24:32here, just a little more.

1:24:33Oh, one more little exception here.

1:24:35And again, the liability of this is so high,

1:24:39it is not worth even creating.

1:24:42I do think it's a very interesting technical challenge with what appears to be a very interesting

1:24:48solution, but yeah, the more I think about it—and I was already getting the heebie-jeebies

1:24:53to begin with, but the more I think about it, the heebie-er my geebies get, if you will.

1:24:58It is creepy.

1:24:59You know what else is creepy?

1:25:02Elon Musk officially owns Twitter now.

1:25:04Yay.

1:25:05I don't even know what to say about this.

1:25:09People are acting like this is some kind of massive change and huge turn for the worse.

1:25:15Now I think this is not good in absolute terms.

1:25:20However, in relative terms to the way Twitter has always been led, I don't know that it's

1:25:27that much worse.

1:25:29Twitter has always been terribly led by horrible people.

1:25:33It's never been well moderated.

1:25:36It's been terribly led, but has it been terribly led by people who have ideas that are as wrong

1:25:42as his are?

1:25:43Yes!

1:25:44Yes, it has!

1:25:45I don't think so.

1:25:50The reason we all think Twitter has been mismanaged is because the crew that was running Twitter

1:25:54for all these years has just seemed unable to do anything.

1:25:57So it was like status quo was the safe move.

1:26:00Because like, "Hey, we've got this thing.

1:26:03It's kicking off where it's becoming super popular."

1:26:06becoming part of the culture, it's blah, blah, blah.

1:26:08Let's just not rock the boat.

1:26:09So they did nothing for Twitter, to Twitter for so long.

1:26:12They didn't really figure out how to make a lot of money.

1:26:13They made money, but they didn't make a lot of money.

1:26:16They could have made potentially more money.

1:26:18They didn't add features, that's for sure.

1:26:20They screwed third party developers

1:26:21and then kinda like backed off a little bit on that.

1:26:23Like they didn't do a great job,

1:26:25but it was mostly inaction.

1:26:26It was people who didn't have any good ideas.

1:26:29The best idea they had was,

1:26:30it seemed to me that they understood

1:26:32the limits of their competence.

1:26:34They were like, we don't know what to do.

1:26:35So let's just not do anything,

1:26:37which is not good leadership, to be clear,

1:26:39but it is different than, I know what we should do,

1:26:42we should do bad things.

1:26:44Now, Elon Musk, to be fair, says lots of crap.

1:26:46You have no idea what he's gonna do,

1:26:47it's just kind of like it's hard to talk about

1:26:49his owning Twitter until he actually does anything.

1:26:51You can't really pay attention to what he says,

1:26:53he says a lot of things, right?

1:26:55But a lot of the things he says make the world think,

1:26:59I don't like those ideas, and if you were to do them,

1:27:02I would be sad.

1:27:03And that's different than the people

1:27:04who were running Twitter before.

1:27:05The people who were on Twitter before

1:27:06weren't constantly saying,

1:27:07"We wanna let more Nazis back."

1:27:10They weren't saying that.

1:27:11What they were saying is,

1:27:11we're trying to get rid of them,

1:27:12but it's hard and we're incompetent.

1:27:14Which is not, again, not good leadership.

1:27:17The way they handled moderation was not good,

1:27:21but in general, the noises they made was,

1:27:25"We agree that this should be better than it is,

1:27:27"and we're trying to make it better,

1:27:28"and we're failing at making it better."

1:27:31That's very different than saying,

1:27:33"Actually, I think we should make it worse."

1:27:35And that's what a lot of people hear

1:27:36when they hear Elon Musk speak,

1:27:38'cause he has ideas that we say,

1:27:39"No, that would make everything worse."

1:27:40And he's like, "Yeah, isn't that great?"

1:27:42And that's why Elon Musk potentially is way, way worse

1:27:45than the incredibly incompetent people

1:27:47who were running Twitter before.

1:27:48- See, I think people are forgetting some of the details

1:27:51of how crappily Twitter has been run.

1:27:54And I'm not just talking about product direction.

1:27:58We can say things like,

1:27:59"Oh, they should have had edit tweet," or whatever.

1:28:02That's one area, and honestly, it's hard to imagine

1:28:05anybody doing worse than what Twitter has been doing

1:28:07to date in that area, but you know, I think it's--

1:28:09- Don't forget Killing Vine and stuff like that.

1:28:11They just generally didn't know what to do.

1:28:12- But I think it's important to remember

1:28:15Twitter's past leadership was extremely libertarian,

1:28:20extremely hands-off with moderation,

1:28:23and let a whole bunch of hate and Nazis

1:28:27and horrible stuff on the platform indefinitely

1:28:29with poor controls and poor enforcement.

1:28:32- But which direction did they go in?

1:28:33They went in the direction of improving that

1:28:35incredibly slowly and not to the level

1:28:38that we find acceptable,

1:28:39but it didn't go in the other direction.

1:28:41There was no sort of consensus with the leadership

1:28:43that in fact, you know how bad it is now?

1:28:45We should make it worse.

1:28:46Instead they said, okay, we kind of grudgingly agreed

1:28:49that maybe we should make it better,

1:28:50and they acted too slowly and did a bad job.

1:28:52But directionally, they were not heading

1:28:54in the wrong direction, they were heading

1:28:55the right direction from a place of terribleness too slow.

1:28:58- Mm, I think they were so far from right before,

1:29:03and I don't mean right as a conservative,

1:29:04I mean right as incorrect,

1:29:05they were so far from good before

1:29:09that I don't even know if we can judge their micro moves

1:29:12as being even in the right direction.

1:29:14- They did move in the right direction

1:29:16and did make important proves,

1:29:18especially within the last few years.

1:29:20- Here's the thing, everyone points to like,

1:29:24oh look, Twitter finally kicked off Donald Trump.

1:29:28You know when Twitter kicked off Donald Trump,

1:29:29the second his term was clearly done,

1:29:33like the second he had no more use to them,

1:29:36they kicked him off.

1:29:36They kept him on the entire four years before that

1:29:40and didn't enforce a goddamn thing against him.

1:29:42When he broke all the rules,

1:29:44he was himself directly abusive and breaking laws constantly

1:29:48and they did nothing against him

1:29:49because he was too convenient to have on the platform

1:29:51and it would have been too politically bad

1:29:53for, in their mind, to kick him off.

1:29:55So they kept him on.

1:29:56stupid weasels kept him on the entire term and let him do all the damage he

1:30:00did and they only kicked him off like after January 6th when it was when he

1:30:05was politically tanked and when his term was effectively over that's when they

1:30:09kicked him off they rung every single bit of value out of having him on that

1:30:13platform and then they look like heroes kicking him off so forgive me if you

1:30:16think like you know if Elon flirted the idea of maybe letting him back on that

1:30:20doesn't make him any worse than the previous leadership that makes them both

1:30:23both turds to be clear, but it's no worse than them.

1:30:27- They did kick him off and he would be reversing that,

1:30:29so that's worse.

1:30:30Like obviously not kicking him off for so long is terrible

1:30:32and you could, you know, like they waited too long

1:30:34and they did a bad job or whatever,

1:30:36but reversing it is worse.

1:30:38Like, I mean, it's comparing two bad things to be clear.

1:30:40I don't disagree with anything you said about what they did,

1:30:44but Twitter is more than just him.

1:30:45Twitter is how they handled all the moderation and stuff

1:30:47and there were people in Twitter trying to move things

1:30:51in a good direction.

1:30:52And part of what enabled people to try to move things

1:30:56in a good direction on Twitter

1:30:57was the ineffectiveness of leadership.

1:31:00That they were able to try to do good within the org,

1:31:02despite the fact that the leadership may have disagreed

1:31:04with the good they were trying to do.

1:31:05You know what I mean?

1:31:07Like that they weren't paying attention,

1:31:08and while they weren't paying attention,

1:31:09the head of the Trust and Safety Department

1:31:11was able to try to do good things

1:31:12and hire some good people briefly, right?

1:31:15Again, you can't put this at the feet of the line,

1:31:17'cause what has he done so far?

1:31:18Not much, right?

1:31:19He's fired a bunch of people

1:31:20that people think he hasn't fired, so.

1:31:22- Yeah, and that's the thing.

1:31:23I think the reason why I am slightly optimistic about this

1:31:28is that, is not necessarily because I hugely believe in him.

1:31:32It's more that I just had so little faith

1:31:35in the previous leadership.

1:31:36And so I think he is, he's showing signs in both directions.

1:31:41He's showing signs that seem like things

1:31:43are gonna be terrible, and signs that show

1:31:46that maybe he's gonna make some refreshing changes.

1:31:48I don't know yet.

1:31:49don't know yet. He, you know, as John said a few minutes ago, like, Elon floats a lot

1:31:54of ideas in public and he's a total troll and he does a lot of it for attention or for

1:32:01laughs. Sometimes he's actually legitimately floating an idea he thinks actually might

1:32:04work. You know, he's not like good socially. He's not a serious person. No, he's not a

1:32:10serious person. He also, you know, he has obviously pretty poor social skills, you know,

1:32:18possibly for reasons that I can't diagnose

1:32:20'cause I'm not a professional,

1:32:21but there might be something there.

1:32:23I think he clearly,

1:32:25you can't take everything he says at face value,

1:32:29but you also can't rule him out

1:32:33as being totally incompetent

1:32:35because of all the crap he says,

1:32:39some of it he actually does and it turns out pretty good.

1:32:41Not all of it, but some of it.

1:32:43And so I think it's important when dealing with him,

1:32:46I think it's important to try to just not feed

1:32:51into his trolling with your attention

1:32:54and just focus on the results.

1:32:56Is he gonna actually do good stuff?

1:32:58And the answer to that is we don't know yet.

1:33:00It's too soon, but Twitter's previous leadership was awful

1:33:05and so I think the bar is low for him to be

1:33:08at least no worse than them.

1:33:10- Well, the thing that's attractive

1:33:14in any sort of situation where you want a strong man

1:33:16to come in and wipe the slate clean or whatever.

1:33:19It's like, you want decisive action, right?

1:33:20I'm so sick of these people doing nothing

1:33:22or saying they're gonna do something

1:33:25and never doing anything,

1:33:26or saying they're moving in the right direction

1:33:28but they move so slow, it doesn't even matter.

1:33:29I want decisive action.

1:33:31And at a certain point,

1:33:32dissatisfaction with the status quo becomes so pervasive

1:33:37that decisive action is the most important thing.

1:33:39Doesn't even matter what that action is,

1:33:41I just want decisive action.

1:33:42And very often, the biggest problem big corporations have

1:33:46is there's no one there who's empowered

1:33:48to do something decisive.

1:33:50Because once you have a company that's really, really big,

1:33:53especially if the people running it

1:33:54aren't the people who founded it and don't own it all,

1:33:57you just kinda wanna not screw things up

1:33:59and you have your options vest

1:34:01and get your golden parachute.

1:34:02And there's lots of motivations to not rock the boat.

1:34:05Because everyone, and so it becomes hard

1:34:08for big corporations to do anything.

1:34:09It becomes hard for leadership to do something.

1:34:11What Elon Musk has going for him

1:34:13and the things people find attractive is he doesn't care.

1:34:15He doesn't care because he's already rich.

1:34:17He doesn't care because he doesn't care, whatever it is.

1:34:19He has no problem with taking decisive action.

1:34:23And people find that attractive.

1:34:25But that is obviously the trap is,

1:34:27if it's decisive action doing something terrible,

1:34:29that's not good, right?

1:34:31And very often people will say,

1:34:34"Yeah, he did the terrible thing, but it was so decisive."

1:34:36And that is attractive to people.

1:34:38Like people can hold that in their head and say,

1:34:41"I don't agree with what he did,

1:34:43but at least he did it decisively

1:34:44and that makes me admire him, right?

1:34:46And the other thing is, well,

1:34:47you can't argue with the results.

1:34:48The results were great.

1:34:49Very often people are put in a situation where,

1:34:52you know, not being as incompetent as the last person

1:34:56is seen as a victory, for example, right?

1:34:58Or just sort of like, knowing,

1:35:02the question is, if you had picked a random person

1:35:06off the street and put them in that same situation

1:35:08and said, "Consequences are meaningless to you.

1:35:10No matter what happens, don't worry, you'll be fine.

1:35:13do whatever you think is right.

1:35:15Tons of people would be able to do what Elon Musk did.

1:35:18The thing that say, oh, I will attribute to this,

1:35:20he's a genius, is like, he was just uninhibited.

1:35:23Was he uninhibited because that's the wise thing to do?

1:35:26I don't know, but he was, he was uninhibited

1:35:28and he was able to do the thing that other people

1:35:31didn't have the guts to even try

1:35:33and it worked out a few times and it also helped

1:35:34that he was born rich and blah, blah, blah, right?

1:35:36So I don't, like saying like, oh, he was involved

1:35:40with things that were a success,

1:35:41therefore he knows what he's doing.

1:35:43I don't see that at all

1:35:44because this is a totally different realm

1:35:45and we kind of see how he uses Twitter

1:35:49and if that's what he likes about it,

1:35:51it's potentially, I potentially don't wanna be

1:35:54on the Twitter that Elon Musk thinks he would enjoy,

1:35:57but I'm also not ready to celebrate his decisiveness

1:36:00until I see what he is decisive about

1:36:02because I do want to see the decisions

1:36:04and who knows what they will be

1:36:06because it's not as if he's immune to feedback and learning,

1:36:10But he'll try all sorts of things,

1:36:12and he'll say all sorts of things,

1:36:13and hopefully he will try something,

1:36:15it'll be a disaster, he'll try something else.

1:36:16That's what, you know, then the clock is ticking on his debt

1:36:18and all his other financial things or whatever.

1:36:20But that's his MO, and that's what people

1:36:23who have nothing to lose do.

1:36:24People who have nothing to lose can be refreshing,

1:36:27but kind of like rewind.ai, sorry, rewind.ai.

1:36:30Having nothing to lose can also be terrifying, right?

1:36:33It really depends, and that's why, in general,

1:36:35it's not a great idea to have single, unaccountable people

1:36:39with nothing to lose in control of things that are important.

1:36:41Just putting that out there.

1:36:42- Yeah, and I totally agree with that.

1:36:44But I think that when people judge

1:36:49whatever he's gonna do with Twitter,

1:36:50and look, he might completely ruin it for all we know,

1:36:53but I think it's very important to just always

1:36:55contextualize like, well, how good was it before?

1:36:58In the case of things like moderation decisions,

1:37:01I don't necessarily care if Twitter is filled

1:37:04with a bunch of people whose stuff I don't wanna see

1:37:07if I'm not seeing it, right?

1:37:09And I don't really care if there's people

1:37:13who try to abuse me or people I care about

1:37:17if I and they don't see it.

1:37:20So I think it's important to recognize,

1:37:22like, you know, when you have a social network

1:37:25as big as Twitter, it's really hard to say,

1:37:29like, you know, people of type or belief, X, Y, Z,

1:37:32should not even be allowed to use this,

1:37:34because it is really blurring the line

1:37:36between public infrastructure and a private company.

1:37:39So that's a tough thing to manage.

1:37:41- I think the line is very blurry when one person owns it.

1:37:44And it's a private company.

1:37:45Literally it's a private company.

1:37:47Where's the blurred line?

1:37:48- Well, but again, I mean, look,

1:37:49I make the diagrams all the time about the App Store

1:37:52and about how the App Store has become such a required

1:37:56and massive part of so much of everyday life and commerce

1:38:00that it does kind of cross the line

1:38:03and start to need public style regulation, right?

1:38:06social network, large social networks,

1:38:08the handful that there are,

1:38:09are kind of like that in certain ways.

1:38:11Like it's tricky, you can't just say,

1:38:14oh, somebody who's ultra conservative,

1:38:16who's a huge (bleep)wad, you can't just say like,

1:38:19oh, they can't use this platform

1:38:21because of something stupid they said.

1:38:24But you can say, no one needs to see what they say.

1:38:27And so it's really, it's so hard.

1:38:29- I think you can say they can't use the platform.

1:38:30That's the whole point of having a private company.

1:38:32I totally disagree with that,

1:38:33Twitter is the public square.

1:38:34It's like 200 million tech nerds and journalists.

1:38:37It's a private company.

1:38:38The public square is the public square.

1:38:40The internet, you could say, is the public square.

1:38:42But anybody can start a social network.

1:38:43You can make your own acid on server.

1:38:46I will never be on board with that.

1:38:47It is ridiculous.

1:38:48- Yeah, but you know what?

1:38:49Look, everyone, look.

1:38:51This is not the first time that Twitter has made us all mad.

1:38:57And this is not the first time that lots of us have,

1:39:00with great principled stands, say we're leaving Twitter.

1:39:04Go join us somewhere here on this new other thing.

1:39:07Come join us here because Twitter has made us mad

1:39:09and all those other things have pretty much gone nowhere

1:39:12because that's not how social networks work.

1:39:15And so I think it's, to everyone out there

1:39:17who's like fleeing Twitter, look, do what you gotta do.

1:39:19If you feel strongly enough to do that, go for it.

1:39:23But don't assume that you will never come back.

1:39:27Don't assume that Twitter is guaranteed to be bad

1:39:30under this new ridiculous leader.

1:39:33Keep an open mind that maybe this will be fine,

1:39:36or at least no worse than it has been,

1:39:38and maybe leave the door open to come back,

1:39:41because you're not gonna get anyone else

1:39:43to go in mass to some new thing that's the same thing,

1:39:46but just not Twitter.

1:39:47That's not how anything works,

1:39:49and we've seen this time and time again.

1:39:51So I would advise everyone,

1:39:54before you go fleeing to your alternative

1:39:56and delete your Twitter account,

1:39:57maybe don't delete the account,

1:39:58maybe leave it open,

1:39:59and don't post saying I'm never coming back.

1:40:01Maybe just, you know, leave the door open

1:40:03and don't burn the bridge.

1:40:05- Also, to go back a little bit, is Elon that decisive?

1:40:09Like he seems to be waffling about what to do

1:40:12with Twitter Blue and whether or not--

1:40:14- He came in and threw his weight around immediately,

1:40:16making like, add this feature in a week and do this

1:40:18and firing a bunch of people and telling a bunch of people

1:40:20to do a thing within a week is probably stupid,

1:40:24but definitely decisive.

1:40:25He didn't have a year's worth of meetings with people

1:40:27before deciding what to do.

1:40:28He's just doing stuff.

1:40:28- Sure, sure. - Is he doing things

1:40:30with forethought or things that are wise to do or things that will be useful, we'll find

1:40:34out. But he did a bunch of stuff, that's for sure.

1:40:36Well, but then he's getting in fights with Stephen King, or not even getting in fights,

1:40:39he's asking Stephen King, "Well, what do you think I should do?"

1:40:41Oh, no, he does stupid stuff all the time. Like, that's all he does all day is stupid

1:40:44stuff, right? And the things he did to quote unquote, that was my whole point with the

1:40:47decisive league, is firing a bunch of people and trying to make sure they don't get severance,

1:40:51like, "Oh, it's decisive." But it's bad. You're doing, it's like, you're firing the

1:40:54wrong people and you're doing it in a dickish way and like, but because it's decisive, like,

1:40:59something is happening.

1:41:01So if your thing was like, "I hate stagnation of Twitter, I want to see something happen,"

1:41:05the finger on the monkey's paw curls and says, "Okay, something's happening now."

1:41:11And we'll see, we'll see how it turns out.

1:41:13But things are happening.

1:41:14I feel for the people who work there, because I'm sure lots of people who work there would

1:41:18like things to be better and they don't have control over this.

1:41:22But I'm sure this is not the last time we'll talk about this.

1:41:25And it is hard to do, because all the things he's doing so far are rumors of what he's

1:41:28doing internally that are leaking out and it's like that's not relevant to us

1:41:31as users of the thing we have to see what happens to the Twitter that we use

1:41:35and right now there's not much visible except for tons of things that he's

1:41:39talking about doing but hasn't actually done yet so we'll see.

1:41:42Yeah I don't know I just I've spent a unreasonable amount of time trying to

1:41:49understand random randos on Twitter randos in the chat room people that I am

1:41:56acquainted with friends, many of whom seem to worship the ground that Elon walks on.

1:42:01Because he's decisive and he's rich and might makes right and he's a strong man. Like this

1:42:05is not a new phenomenon. Thousands of years of human history have shown people love the strong

1:42:09man. People love the authoritarian. Fascism is popular for a reason. It is explicable. It is

1:42:15should not be shocking. We would hope that people would, you know, learn the lesson of history,

1:42:19but they don't. Uh, it is attractive. It will always be attractive probably until unless we

1:42:24we evolve away from it or wipe ourselves out.

1:42:26- Yeah, but he also, he has a lot of the same appeal

1:42:28that Trump did to a lot of people of like,

1:42:30you know, he is like, despite being like, you know,

1:42:34the richest person in the world most of the time,

1:42:36he is, he's seen as like the everyman to a lot of people

1:42:40who feel like society is against them.

1:42:42- Yeah, the everyman, he came from nothing,

1:42:44the son of a diamond emerald miner in South Africa.

1:42:47- Yeah, yeah, just like Trump was self-made

1:42:49and a good businessman, right, all that BS.

1:42:51- Self-made multimillionaire.

1:42:54- Right, started off with nothing but a few hundred million

1:42:56from his father.

1:42:56- But like, yeah, but like, what appeals to people

1:43:00about him, there's so much overlap with Trump,

1:43:03and it's many of the same people, and so I don't agree

1:43:06with pretty much any of that, but I understand why

1:43:11a certain personality type would think he's basically God,

1:43:15and we have to deal with that, like that's the reality,

1:43:18and we might as well try to understand it and deal with it.

1:43:21The project of society is to try to make it so that those notions do not find root and

1:43:28we are doing a bad job of educating society.

1:43:33So far we're not burning witches, we got away from that, but barely.

1:43:37Barely.

1:43:38And in any second it threatens to come back.

1:43:42That's the thing, is that like, I've had lengthy conversations with some of these Elon super

1:43:47fans, it's so troubling because they seem to think a lot of them, "Oh, well just listen

1:43:54to this interview," or "Oh, did you just know this one tidbit?" or "Oh, what if I told you

1:44:00this?" Like suddenly, "Oh, you're right. Elon is God. I am a mere peon in the world that

1:44:07he lives and owns." And I don't get like, I don't understand, and I guess I should just

1:44:14let it go because it's probably not making for good programming. I just,

1:44:17I don't understand how people are so enamored with him. I just don't,

1:44:20I don't think that his cars are very good.

1:44:23SpaceX I don't know enough about to have an opinion.

1:44:26Starlink seems like it's clever, but not really going to amount to a whole lot.

1:44:30I mean, part of it,

1:44:32part of it was what you're explaining right now that you associate all those

1:44:35things with a single person, which is a ridiculous thing, right?

1:44:37But it's a thing that we all do is a shortcut. It's like Steve jobs is Apple.

1:44:41Elon Musk is Tesla, and obviously,

1:44:43those are companies filled with people doing things.

1:44:46And because he owns them or funded them

1:44:50or made important decisions that led them to their success,

1:44:54we attribute it all to that one person.

1:44:56And that type of thing is the same thing

1:44:57that leads you to, you know, to like, any,

1:45:00you assign accomplishments, accrual of wealth,

1:45:05power, good looks, height, like all these things,

1:45:08all these attributes that people can have,

1:45:10we connect them to virtue and say, you know, if you,

1:45:14if you have a limp that is less virtuous than the person

1:45:17who walks without a limp, right?

1:45:19If you get a disease that is like,

1:45:21and we connect everything with virtue, right?

1:45:23Your hair color, your skin color, your height,

1:45:26how much money you have, what family you belong to,

1:45:29things that are in your control,

1:45:30things that aren't in your control, we say,

1:45:31and therefore that is connected to virtue.

1:45:33What virtue?

1:45:34Brains, wisdom, strength, you know, leadership qualities,

1:45:40and that causes people, you know,

1:45:41why do they worship these people?

1:45:42Because all of those accomplishments are connected

1:45:44with merits that they believe in,

1:45:46and they say, of course I believe in him,

1:45:48he is a hero, he is amazing, he is brilliant,

1:45:50he is making the world a better place,

1:45:52because they, you know, these accomplishments,

1:45:56which can be accomplished by terrible people,

1:45:58they say, but no, because he did those things,

1:46:00because he has those things, because he is those things,

1:46:02therefore he has these other virtues, right?

1:46:05and that is, it's an unavoidable trap of human nature

1:46:10and a shortcut that we take.

1:46:11So anybody who acquires any of those things,

1:46:15people start to see all those other virtues in them, right?

1:46:17And of course, there's the people who see virtue

1:46:20in the punishing of the people they don't like,

1:46:21which gets into a bigger problem with fascism and racism

1:46:24and so on and so forth, but it's depressing,

1:46:26but it is well-trod territory,

1:46:29and it is difficult to combat,

1:46:31especially when other things are going poorly as well.

1:46:34- Yeah, it's just, I just can't wrap my mind around

1:46:36how people who I know that strike me

1:46:38as intelligent human beings look at this

1:46:40professional internet troll.

1:46:42He seems like just a dirtbag human,

1:46:44and yet these people like worship the ground he walks.

1:46:46I just don't get it, but we should move on.

1:46:48- I think it's important too to separate

1:46:51the personality details of this person from his work.

1:46:56And I think, you know, there was a good discussion

1:46:59on the talk show about this this week.

1:47:00It was actually a great episode with Federico Vaticci

1:47:02and John Greer, great episode, I recommend it.

1:47:04There was a great discussion there about kind of

1:47:05separating the artist from the work

1:47:07when somebody turns out to be a turd in real life

1:47:10and that comes to light, but you still enjoy their work

1:47:14or what they've made before you found out they were a turd.

1:47:16You can look at the various companies

1:47:18that he's been involved with so far,

1:47:21and I think largely they've been pretty good.

1:47:25You know, they're not all perfect,

1:47:27and some of his wacky ideas didn't get off the ground

1:47:30or were too ridiculous to even consider.

1:47:33But Teslas are pretty great cars

1:47:35and they are selling an absolute ton of them

1:47:38and they've done great things for car electrification.

1:47:42So that's a pretty huge thing.

1:47:44They did great things in batteries,

1:47:45they're working on doing great things in solar.

1:47:48SpaceX is itself a pretty great thing,

1:47:51doing itself pretty great things.

1:47:53Starlink is a bunch of asterisks

1:47:56with the space debris problem,

1:47:58but that's a pretty amazing idea

1:48:00as well that from the handful of people I know

1:48:02who have used it, it's pretty great.

1:48:05So I think owning Twitter, again,

1:48:08if we just don't even pay attention to the crap he says,

1:48:13just look at the work, and I know that's hard

1:48:15because he says a lot, and most of it's horrendously

1:48:19inflammatory or ridiculous or whatever,

1:48:22but just ignore everything he says,

1:48:25and just look at the work.

1:48:27Owning Twitter kind of fits in the sense that

1:48:30It's yet another massive challenge in yet another area

1:48:34that he has at least started out knowing nothing about.

1:48:37But do you think he knew how to make cars before Tesla?

1:48:39Do you think he knew how to make rockets before SpaceX?

1:48:41Do you think he knew how to launch satellites

1:48:42and run an ISP before Starlink?

1:48:45This is actually fitting a pattern that he does

1:48:47of tackling truly ridiculous, pretty large scale,

1:48:52pretty difficult problems that he thinks he can do.

1:48:55Regardless of why he thinks he can do them

1:48:58or the ridiculous ideas that he gets when he,

1:49:01that he spouts off on Twitter.

1:49:03Again, if you ignore all of that,

1:49:06because he's a massive troll and kind of a dick,

1:49:09so if you just ignore all of that

1:49:12and just look at the work,

1:49:14he does actually achieve some pretty remarkable things,

1:49:18and so that's why I think, hey, you know what?

1:49:21I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

1:49:22I'll stick around on Twitter

1:49:23to see what the heck he does with the place,

1:49:24because again, it wasn't well run before,

1:49:27And so he's tackling a massive problem again.

1:49:32And in the past, when he has tackled massive problems,

1:49:35it's actually worked out pretty well eventually.

1:49:39Again, if you ignore everything he says.

1:49:41So I'm willing to apply the same strategy here.

1:49:44Turns out his car company makes pretty great cars

1:49:47that a lot of people like.

1:49:48His rocket company makes pretty good rockets

1:49:51that are doing important work.

1:49:52His satellite company is covering space

1:49:55with these disposable satellites that,

1:49:58all those issues aside,

1:49:59are providing a good service to people.

1:50:01So again, big problems, ignore all the crap

1:50:05that comes out of the guy's mouth,

1:50:06and I hope no one has to work for him in the process,

1:50:10'cause apparently that's not a super fun amount,

1:50:12or that's not super fun either,

1:50:13but when you look at the work,

1:50:16when you look at what comes out of this jerk,

1:50:20it actually is often pretty impressive.

1:50:23- Well, it's not a blank slate when it comes to Twitter,

1:50:24'cause we kind of, like, we may not know

1:50:26what he thinks he wants to do with Twitter,

1:50:28but we know how he uses Twitter.

1:50:29It's not like Twitter, he's not new to Twitter.

1:50:31He's been on Twitter for years.

1:50:32He is a very experienced Twitter user.

1:50:35And if you see the way he uses Twitter and you think,

1:50:38how would this person make Twitter more to their liking,

1:50:42it's not optimistic.

1:50:43That doesn't mean that's what he's gonna do.

1:50:44It doesn't mean he's gonna make Twitter more to his liking,

1:50:45but I have a feeling that he--

1:50:46- Look at how Jack used Twitter.

1:50:48- All right, well, I know.

1:50:50But like, I mean, I think it kind of fit.

1:50:52The way he used it was like,

1:50:53I kind of like it the way it is,

1:50:54and so it didn't change that much.

1:50:56But Elon wants to change Twitter.

1:50:57I mean, the reason he bought it practically is,

1:51:00it's like, this is a thing I use all the time,

1:51:02and I think it should be different than it is,

1:51:04so I'm just gonna buy it 'cause I'm super rich, right?

1:51:06So it's not as if we're like,

1:51:08I'm just gonna learn about social networks now.

1:51:09I mean, he is gonna learn about how it is to run them,

1:51:11but we're not starting from zero in terms of,

1:51:13I have no idea what Elon thinks about Twitter.

1:51:16We at least know what he thinks about it as a user.

1:51:18We don't know necessarily that he's going to tailor

1:51:20the service to his own personal tastes,

1:51:22but I have a hard time believing he'll do much of anything.

1:51:25So I'm going in predisposed to think

1:51:27that the changes that he is going to make

1:51:29are not going to appeal to me

1:51:31and people who are of similar mindset, but we'll see.

1:51:34Like I totally agree, it's like it's hard to talk about

1:51:37until he's actually done something.

1:51:38'Cause it's point like,

1:51:39we're not even talking about all the things that he said,

1:51:41'cause whatever, he says lots of things.

1:51:43He's changed what he said 17 times.

1:51:45Let's just wait to see what he actually does.

1:51:47But I am not particularly optimistic

1:51:49because pretty much every idea that he's floated

1:51:52with a few minor exceptions,

1:51:54does not seem like the way to go to me,

1:51:56but we'll see.

1:51:58- Well, but see, even that,

1:52:00in all the stupid crap he has floated,

1:52:03there's usually been a little kernel of something

1:52:06that was actually correct or good about it.

1:52:07- Well, if you say everything, eventually,

1:52:09one of the things is gonna be,

1:52:11if he covers all the bases.

1:52:12- But all the stupid crap he said

1:52:14that everyone jumps down a third about,

1:52:16usually it's like, okay, that's 80% a bad idea,

1:52:19but 20% of it, you were actually on track

1:52:21for something good, you know?

1:52:22And I think that's how he does lots of things.

1:52:24That like, if you look at the way he runs his companies

1:52:26and some of the ideas he tries,

1:52:28he does, he tries lots of crazy stuff,

1:52:30where he floats a lot of crazy ideas,

1:52:31or he says lots of crazy things.

1:52:32Some of them never happen, thank God.

1:52:34- Some of them do, like the Cybertruck.

1:52:35- Right, yeah, well, that doesn't happen yet.

1:52:37It's not out yet, you can't buy it yet.

1:52:39- Oh, it'll arrive just before Linux on its desktop

1:52:43really arrives, it'll be the same time.

1:52:45- Yeah, but anyway, like, you know,

1:52:46he has a bunch of ridiculous ideas.

1:52:48He tries, like, you know, look at some of the things

1:52:50he's talked about on Twitter so far.

1:52:52So, you know, some of the immediate controversies

1:52:54are that he wanted to lay off a bunch of people.

1:52:57Well, yeah, Twitter's way too big for what it is.

1:52:59How he does it--

1:53:00- Well, but slow down, but he laid off the wrong people.

1:53:03Right, it was the wrong people.

1:53:04- So this is the 80% bad part.

1:53:06But the 20% of it, like, he identified a real problem,

1:53:10so he might have solved it poorly.

1:53:12- If you had picked someone off the street

1:53:13and put them in charge of Twitter,

1:53:14they also would have laid off a lot of people,

1:53:16'cause everyone knows it's overstaffed.

1:53:17It's like, that's what attributing this is like,

1:53:19you know, the obvious thing that everybody knew

1:53:22but no one had the guts to,

1:53:22it's a condemnation of previous Twitter management,

1:53:25obviously.

1:53:25- Yeah, the previous dropping door of leadership

1:53:27never touched it, so you know, so that's one thing, okay?

1:53:30- Oh, they're the ones that hired all those people.

1:53:31- Right, so that's one thing.

1:53:32So there's also, you know, look at his dumb idea

1:53:35about tying verification to Twitter Blue.

1:53:37Well, some of that is terrible,

1:53:40but also, Twitter Blue is a premium service

1:53:43that no one I know bought.

1:53:45I know so many people who are Twitter power users.

1:53:48I don't know a single person who buys Twitter Blue.

1:53:51And I have no use for it,

1:53:52and I've been using this platform for like a decade, heavily.

1:53:55And yet, so obviously, they launched a premium product

1:53:58that most of their premium users don't want.

1:54:01Secondarily, you know who could pay for verification,

1:54:04who would love to pay for verification?

1:54:07Businesses, every single business.

1:54:09I have a verification mark on Overcast,

1:54:12we have one on ATP, and in part,

1:54:14the reason why I sought those

1:54:16was because it makes us look more legitimate.

1:54:18And if I could have those on other platforms as easily,

1:54:20I would get them there too.

1:54:21Because again, and businesses are,

1:54:23yeah, you don't wanna make every journalist in the world

1:54:27have to pay for something they might be able to afford

1:54:29or whatever, but businesses sure can.

1:54:31So again, there's a kernel of like, okay,

1:54:34you have businesses capturing all this value on Twitter,

1:54:40why not let businesses pay not $20,

1:54:43make businesses pay $100 a month

1:54:44for a verification check mark?

1:54:46Like, these aren't terrible ideas completely.

1:54:50The details that he has floated so far,

1:54:52or that have been rumored that he said,

1:54:54some of the details are awful,

1:54:55many of the details are awful,

1:54:56but at the heart, like, you know,

1:54:58Twitter is a platform that most people have identified

1:55:02as totally failing as an advertising delivery service.

1:55:05And everything people want is away from ads.

1:55:09So what if they launched a premium thing

1:55:11that people wanted to pay six or eight

1:55:12or 10 or 20 bucks a month for?

1:55:14That's not that bad.

1:55:15Well, but did you do the math on that, though?

1:55:17You do the back of the envelope math, it's not great.

1:55:20That's what you get with just saying things and saying,

1:55:23oh, well, you know, this way.

1:55:24Just do the back of the envelope math.

1:55:25Like, how much are they money they make from ads now?

1:55:27And everyone agrees they're not doing a good job with ads.

1:55:29But how much do they make from ads now?

1:55:30How much would they make if every single person

1:55:32who's on Twitter pays what he's saying a month?

1:55:34And you know 100% of people aren't gonna pay for it.

1:55:36And it's like, it's way less, right?

1:55:38So what's the plan?

1:55:39And obviously, that's why it's so hard to engage with this.

1:55:41Like, who cares?

1:55:42He hasn't actually done anything yet, we'll see.

1:55:43and what if it's only additive and blah, blah, blah.

1:55:45Like there's all these theories about how it could go

1:55:47or whatever, but back of the envelope,

1:55:49like being able to pay for verification

1:55:51and those type of things, you know,

1:55:53like as most of the articles that talk about this say,

1:55:56I think there was a, this isn't the new Libetel one,

1:55:58that the product of Twitter is moderation, right?

1:56:00That that's what they're selling.

1:56:01- That was a great article, yeah,

1:56:02The Verge, Welcome to Hell.

1:56:04- Right, because that's true of anything

1:56:06that's advertising driven or whatever.

1:56:08Like you need the people to be there

1:56:09so you can advertise to them.

1:56:10So you have to make it a hospitable place.

1:56:12Twitter has arguably not been great about getting people

1:56:15to be there, but it's got a lot of the quote unquote

1:56:17valuable people there who are valuable to advertise to

1:56:20or whatever.

1:56:21Like that all makes sense, it just hasn't been

1:56:23a leverage very well.

1:56:25And verification is part of the moderation product

1:56:29because you want to make it so that there's a way

1:56:31for people who use your service to determine

1:56:33if this is really McDonald's or not McDonald's,

1:56:34you know what I mean?

1:56:35Like that's part of the product that they're selling, right?

1:56:39You could sell other things on top of that,

1:56:40like let the people who are willing or able to pay

1:56:42get better features or whatever,

1:56:44but that is all in service of making it a place

1:56:47where it is safe and suitable to advertise.

1:56:52Because the money you're gonna get

1:56:53from the people who pay for any of these services

1:56:56is nothing compared to,

1:56:57like literally every single person on Twitter pays this,

1:57:00it's not going to match your advertising income

1:57:02unless you charge every single person $3,000 a month.

1:57:05When you do them, and again,

1:57:06I use the everybody because that's ridiculous,

1:57:08what percentage of people,

1:57:10no matter how good you make this product,

1:57:11what percentage of the people even can pay for it,

1:57:13let alone will pay for it,

1:57:15then add up all their money

1:57:16and weigh it against your potential advertising

1:57:18to these people who are valuable to advertise to

1:57:20and advertising keeps winning.

1:57:22And so in the end,

1:57:23if you look at this from a business person's perspective,

1:57:26if you want to make more money than they're making now,

1:57:28you can cut costs,

1:57:29which is what everybody does when they buy a company,

1:57:31lay off a bunch of people, lower your costs,

1:57:32and you can increase revenue.

1:57:34And where is that really gonna come from?

1:57:35You can get some revenue from your users,

1:57:37but there's not a lot of them.

1:57:39Twitter is not as big as Facebook, you know?

1:57:42So they can't get a fraction of a cent from everybody

1:57:45and be bazillionaires.

1:57:46They have to get larger money from advertisers

1:57:50to give access to their relatively small,

1:57:52mere hundreds of millions or whatever

1:57:54Twitter's user base is,

1:57:55of people who are valuable to advertise to.

1:57:58And then there's the value of the conversation

1:58:00that happens on Twitter.

1:58:01Again, makes it a place where people wanna be

1:58:04so you can advertise to them.

1:58:06Are there other ways to make money from Twitter?

1:58:08fine, but any way you come up with to make money from Twitter, you have to say,

1:58:10okay, is this in lieu of advertising? Because if it is,

1:58:12it has to make at least as much money. But it's not in lieu of advertising.

1:58:15Does this make it an environment where advertisers still want to advertise?

1:58:19And that's where I feel like he gets into trouble with a lot of his schemes that

1:58:22he's throwing out there.

1:58:23Not that they're bad ideas because I've always been a proponent of have people

1:58:26pay for a service so they can support it with money.

1:58:28But Twitter is so long past the point. Like it's,

1:58:31it's too big to be supported by its users because you know,

1:58:35not enough people will pay to run Twitter.

1:58:38You can't run Twitter on, you know,

1:58:39you can't make it like app.net where everyone who's on it

1:58:41pays something or whatever.

1:58:43Twitter is too big for that.

1:58:44But it's also too small to say,

1:58:47"It's a free for all and I don't care

1:58:49"because we have literally five billion people

1:58:51"so you will advertise with us."

1:58:53It's in that uncomfortable place in between

1:58:55where it's just barely too big to be supported by its users

1:58:58so you have to advertise to it,

1:59:00but it's filled with people who want to make it a place

1:59:02where advertisers don't wanna advertise.

1:59:05Well, I'm tired of talking about this.

1:59:07- You do wonder if Elon Musk watches Black Mirror

1:59:09and again, like the joke in the chat room,

1:59:11sees every episode and says, "That would be awesome."

1:59:13- Don't give him any more ideas.

1:59:15- Seriously, Jesus, Jesus, John.

1:59:17- Thanks to our sponsors this week,

1:59:20Squarespace, Trade Coffee, and Linode.

1:59:23And thanks to our members who support us directly.

1:59:25You can join at atv.fm/join.

1:59:28We will talk to you next week.

1:59:30(upbeat music)

1:59:33Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

1:59:37'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

1:59:40Oh, it was accidental (accidental)

1:59:43John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

1:59:48'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

1:59:51Oh, it was accidental (accidental)

1:59:54And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

1:59:59And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

2:00:08So that's Kasey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

2:00:12Auntie Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A

2:00:19It's accidental (it's accidental)

2:00:23They didn't mean to accidental (accidental)

2:00:28♪ The tech podcast so long ♪

2:00:31- Can we have something light in the mood please

2:00:34and thank you?

2:00:35- I don't know, maybe we just have to come to it.

2:00:37I did enjoy the part where he thought Stephen King

2:00:39was balking it paying $20 so he said, "How about eight?"

2:00:42(snorts)

2:00:43- He's so dumb, he's so dumb.

2:00:45- He's not dumb, that was trolling.

2:00:47That was like, come on.

2:00:49- Was it?

2:00:50- He is a troll.

2:00:51- Oh, he's unquestionably a troll, unquestionably.

2:00:54- I mean, part of that, part of saying that he's always,

2:00:58that he's always a troll is attributing to him

2:01:00an intelligence, wisdom, and self-awareness

2:01:03that is not an evidence, because it seems like--

2:01:05- Right, thank you! - You know what I mean?

2:01:07It's easier to say that because, well, obviously,

2:01:09he must be smart 'cause he's rich,

2:01:10and so when he says something stupid,

2:01:12it must be because he's trolling to get a rise out of you,

2:01:14but no, sometimes he's just stupid.

2:01:15- Well, I mean, and the things,

2:01:17like this strikes me as trolling,

2:01:19but I'm not convinced it is.

2:01:21- Yeah, for sure, he is definitely a troll.

2:01:23Like, I'm not arguing with him.

2:01:24- I don't know, he's 1,000% a troll.

2:01:26But sometimes it's hard to tell when he's trolling

2:01:29when he's just dumb because there's enough

2:01:30of both to go around.

2:01:31- Well, and this is such an absurd tweet.

2:01:34He tweeted a couple hours ago,

2:01:35advertisers should support this poll.

2:01:37Option one, freedom of speech.

2:01:39Option two, political quote, correctness quote.

2:01:41- That's trolling.

2:01:42- I know it is, but it's so,

2:01:45like why do we worship this jacket?

2:01:47Why?

2:01:48I don't get it.

2:01:49- I don't think a lot of people worship.

2:01:51I don't think it's an epitheco-version.

2:01:53It's an epidemic of positive regard,

2:01:55which is how we got Trump as president. That's what it is.

2:01:58Can we please talk about anything else for the love of Christ, please?

2:02:01I don't care what, anything, anything else. Why did I bring this?

2:02:05I brought this on myself. I'm an idiot. I shouldn't have brought it up.

2:02:08I mean, we avoided it for as long as we could. He's like, well, he's,

2:02:11he was going to buy it, but then he's trying to get out of it.

2:02:14It's been going on for months. You know, it went on for, and eventually it,

2:02:17you know, it ended the way again,

2:02:20things that fly in the face of the idea of being him,

2:02:23him being a mastermind that he, it seems like he wanted to buy Twitter and just sort of

2:02:27a fit of peak of like, "I should control this because I'm on it all the time and it sucks

2:02:31and I can make it better and I should buy it for a ridiculous price." And then he kind

2:02:34of said, "Well, actually, maybe I don't want to do that. It seems like a dumb idea. Can

2:02:37I get out of it? Oh, no, I can't. Oh, I guess I'm buying it." Like, that is not the sign

2:02:40of a stable genius. Like, it's not the sign of somebody who has got their stuff together

2:02:47and is, you know, it's sure is decisive action. He took a decisive action to do a stupid thing

2:02:52and then he decisively said,

2:02:53"I'm getting the hell out of this,"

2:02:54and he decisively couldn't do that.

2:02:55(laughing)

2:02:57It does not reflect well on him.

2:02:59If someone who was not a millionaire did that,

2:03:01you would pity them, right?

2:03:03You're not a billionaire, sorry, Elon.

2:03:06Not the America's richest man.

2:03:08You would feel pity for them

2:03:09and how little hold they had over their life

2:03:12and what poor decisions they make.

2:03:13But when someone who's fabulously wealthy does it,

2:03:15people will bend over backwards

2:03:16to attribute genius to those moves.

2:03:18Those moves are not genius, not at all.

2:03:20Just ask the bankers who lent him the money.

2:03:22[beeping]

2:03:24[ Silence ]