0:00:00That's right, it's given me time to, since we're in this no man's land,
0:00:02given me time to eat this delicious warm apple pie that Erin just brought up that she just made,
0:00:06because apparently that's what we decide to do when it's a thousand degrees outside.
0:00:09No eating while podcasting! What do you think you are, John Roderick? No eating while podcasting.
0:00:14Hey, did you hear anything up until I admitted it? Nope.
0:00:16Have you yet spilled any apple pie into your iMac?
0:00:19No. That would be quite an impressive feat, though.
0:00:22It really would, I mean...
0:00:24I just feel like eating and podcasting do not mix.
0:00:26Well, that's what the meat button's for.
0:00:28[MUSIC]
0:00:29It feels like we just got off the phone.
0:00:31Like we just got off of Skype for the last episode.
0:00:33- It really honestly does.
0:00:35- Here we are again, two nights later.
0:00:37- Yeah, 48 hours later, almost to the minute.
0:00:40- I barely published the last episode.
0:00:42- So as we record, it is Friday evening, the 22nd of July,
0:00:47and one of us is skipping town next week,
0:00:49and so we're recording early
0:00:51because we're dedicated to you, our listeners,
0:00:53and don't want you to go any time, or any weeks, I should say,
0:00:56without a new episode of this accidental of podcasts.
0:01:00And so we are recording very shortly after the last show
0:01:03and did not have a lot of time to accumulate follow-up.
0:01:07That being said, as always, we do have some for you.
0:01:11Do we wanna dive right in, gentlemen?
0:01:12- Let's do it.
0:01:13- Let's start with the dog rental,
0:01:15which was the namesake for the last episode,
0:01:20free to play dogs, or was it, yeah, that's right.
0:01:24Anyway, the internet has written in to correct us and has referred to the true gift to humanity.
0:01:30That is Snopes.com, which says the title they used was "Pika Q," which I thought was kind
0:01:36of funny.
0:01:38They correct us in the story that we told about the animal shelter and the dogs.
0:01:44To quote from Snopes, "Claim, a shelter rented dogs from embarrassed adult Pokemon Go players
0:01:49and raked in tons of cash for all their dogs were swiftly adopted.
0:01:53false. What's true? The Muncie Animal Shelter of Muncie, Indiana enacted a novel Pokemon Go dog
0:01:58walking program inviting locals to walk shelter dogs during their gaming sessions. What's false?
0:02:03The shelter didn't charge players $5 an hour per dog to "rent" dogs for--
0:02:08Well, so it was free to play.
0:02:10That's a fair point. Rent dogs for walking. They were not rapidly cleared of dogs for adoption,
0:02:16nor did they make MegaBox off a program designed to harness a gaming phenomenon to get shelter dogs
0:02:20some time outside. So that was all a bunch of BS for the most part, but it's still an
0:02:26adorable story and I'm kind of glad we talked about it anyway.
0:02:30Yeah, so two things on this. First, I intentionally didn't retweet people pointing us to the Snopes
0:02:36because I wanted to give people like a week to think it's real. Of course, it doesn't
0:02:40work if we record two days after the previous one. People who aren't listening to the live
0:02:44stream, I want to give them—I mean, maybe you guys already are cheated, so that's too
0:02:48bad. I did not.
0:02:49I didn't have the heart. I want to give people a week to believe.
0:02:52And like when we prefaced this in the past, in the last show, we were like, you know,
0:02:56who knows if this is true, it's on the internet, blah blah blah, but it sounds like a good story.
0:02:59And that's, of course, all the things that are made up on the internet sound like a good story.
0:03:02That's how they spread. But I like to give people a week to think it was real, because it was a nice, heartwarming story.
0:03:07And the second, Casey referred to Snopes as like the gift of the internet or whatever.
0:03:12It used to be a lot more than it is now. The Snopes website is pretty grim.
0:03:17pretty pretty grim. Like, it is not a nice place to be. I was scrolling through this
0:03:22story and there's like this picture of maggots at the bottom that's part of one of those
0:03:25terrible ads and everything is like blinking and moving.
0:03:28Oh, God, yeah, you're right.
0:03:29No, it's not a good sign. I don't know what happened to it. You feel like IMDb or whatever.
0:03:35I mean, IMDb has gotten worse too, but like you think these old sort of things that were
0:03:40around a long time ago that have value that sort of are category-defining websites should
0:03:44have found some way to make it work without making their sites more and more gross over
0:03:50time but alas.
0:03:52But that's just the web these days. I mean it isn't like Snopes is run by horrible people.
0:03:57I mean I don't know who runs it but…
0:03:58It's not just the web these days.
0:04:00No, it really is.
0:04:01It isn't. It's just in your cynical view that you think every website is doomed to
0:04:05this fate but that's not true. There are websites that are not like this. Like I said,
0:04:09even IMDB which has gotten worse in terms of usability but hasn't become festoon with
0:04:12ads and viruses and pictures of maggots, and there's a pro version that you can pay for
0:04:17that gets rid of a lot of that crap, like that's the way you do it. Or Wikipedia. Wikipedia
0:04:20is not, you know, it doesn't have "Tabooli" or whatever ads at the bottom of it, it's
0:04:25got what's-his-name's-face coming down asking you for money. But still, it's not, you know,
0:04:29this is not the ultimate fate of every website. This is the fate of websites that are slowly
0:04:33circling the drain.
0:04:35It's very hard to monetize a website in 2016 that doesn't have a very particularly targeted
0:04:41audience like Snopes in ways that aren't horrible. This is not like a gradual progression that
0:04:49happened over the last 20 years. This is a very rapid progression that happened over
0:04:53the last like three years. It's been very recent and very quick with the massive shift
0:05:00in traffic of like where traffic comes from going all the way into Facebook, a ton of
0:05:07desktop browsing going away being replaced by either phone browsing or just not browsing
0:05:11websites and just spending more time on social networks instead. And of course all the, you
0:05:16know, robo ad networks and all the problems that go along with those like the horrible
0:05:22ads and the massive fraud problems and I mean it's a tough business now to try to make money
0:05:28by just having an ad supported website. It's very, very hard. It's nearly impossible for
0:05:33most sites to do it in a way that they can both afford to have any kind of staff quality
0:05:38at all and also have a site that is not very focused, you know, audience-wise, so it can't
0:05:44get very expensive ads and that is not just full of horrible crap like that. I mean, look
0:05:48around. How many websites do you see that are really in great shape these days that
0:05:54have a staff of more than like two people? It's really hard to find any.
0:05:58Yeah, but all the more reason that like the well-known sites have a leg up because they're
0:06:02They're like, "Where does everybody go for movie stuff, IMDb?"
0:06:05I mean, Amazon bought them already, so they basically have already been saved by their
0:06:09plans.
0:06:10But, you know, it's not impossible.
0:06:13And if it's going to be more difficult now than it used to be or whatever, the ones that
0:06:17have the most advantage are the ones that are already established genre-defining categories.
0:06:22Even Slashdot never got this bad, or isn't this bad now, because I believe it still exists.
0:06:27Well, yeah, all of Slashdot's trash is in their comments.
0:06:29Fair point.
0:06:30So what about like the Sweet Home for example? That's not festooned with terrible ads all
0:06:35over the place. Now to be fair they are, they appear to be pretty reliant on affiliate,
0:06:39Amazon affiliate money and Ghostery is reporting what looks at a glance to be 20 different
0:06:45trackers that they're using on the site.
0:06:47Yeah, I mean it is basically a shopping site. So it's different. Like if you're a shopping
0:06:51site you can make money off of affiliate stuff or offer the profit of things you're directly
0:06:54selling. It's very different for you know something like Snopes which is like a very
0:06:59basic content site. You make money off of page views, period. And it is really hard
0:07:05to get anything good there these days, especially when you are both big and untargeted, like
0:07:11Snopes is.
0:07:12Snopes should be no different than Wikipedia, though. Because the same thing, Wikipedia
0:07:15is general purpose. There's no confined audience. It's extremely broad. It's a simple site
0:07:20that just contains text. And yet Wikipedia not festooned with ads or viruses.
0:07:24- Well Wikipedia also, first of all, it is donation funded
0:07:27by what seems like a pretty large amount of people,
0:07:30and even then, they still have to put
0:07:31the giant Jimmy Wales head on top of Wikipedia
0:07:33in what seems like a very increasing frequency.
0:07:38But that also, I'm pretty sure that they have
0:07:40a pretty small staff of actually paid people.
0:07:44And it probably also went non-profit, right?
0:07:47- How many people do you think Snopes needs?
0:07:49I don't think it needs a gigantic staff of people.
0:07:52I mean, they could leverage volunteers as well.
0:07:54This is not a site where people have to file seven stories
0:07:58a day about-- it's not like a gaming site or something.
0:08:00They are much harder categories than Snopes.
0:08:02It just feels like a shame that Snopes is exactly
0:08:04one of those sites that, because it's mostly purely text
0:08:06and it's a simple site, and it shouldn't require a giant staff
0:08:09and they're not reviewing cars or sending people
0:08:13to trade shows or doing anything else that costs a lot of money
0:08:15up front.
0:08:17It's just a shame that it is--
0:08:20because it's still popular.
0:08:21People still link to Snopes.
0:08:22I wish it had been replaced by like
0:08:23a Stack Overflow versus Quora equivalent
0:08:26where the crappy site gets replaced by the better one.
0:08:28But instead we all just go to Snopes
0:08:29and just every time we do it gets worse.
0:08:31- Well, and you know, it's also possible,
0:08:33you know, we don't know that the Snopes owner,
0:08:37who owns Snopes?
0:08:38Is it some big company or is it just kind of its own thing?
0:08:40- The maggots own Snopes now.
0:08:41- Yeah, right.
0:08:42But like, you know, they could just be really tired
0:08:46of running it and just maximizing profit for a while too.
0:08:48Like that is also a possibility here.
0:08:50But I think it's more likely that they are
0:08:53at least partially a victim of the problems
0:08:56that all web publishers face these days,
0:08:58with trying to get any money out of ads
0:09:00in an age where almost everybody browses on phones,
0:09:03almost all traffic comes from Facebook,
0:09:06and almost nobody clicks on ads on phones, by the way,
0:09:08so you have to make money in other creepy ways.
0:09:10And also the ads that you're selling are being sold
0:09:12by decreasingly few brokers with decreasing prices.
0:09:17- Fair enough.
0:09:18All right, and to bring this back to Pokemon,
0:09:22Hugh wrote in to say, "Hey, this is the rules.
0:09:25You gotta get through the follow-up before we move on."
0:09:28Hugh wrote in to say, "My friend was very excited
0:09:30to play Pokemon Go with her seven-year-old son.
0:09:32She excitedly installed it and said,
0:09:34'Let's go out and play!'
0:09:35But he was quick with his rebuttal.
0:09:37No, mom, Pokemon is for old people."
0:09:40Sad times.
0:09:42Just like that, we're all old all over again.
0:09:46- It's kinda true.
0:09:46Like, you look outside,
0:09:48There was a couple stories about this, about Nintendo targeting people in generational
0:09:53ways.
0:09:54Like if you played Pokemon as a kid, now you're ready to play it on your smartphone.
0:09:57Because at the same situation with my family, you realize that if your kid doesn't have
0:10:02a smartphone, it's very difficult to play Pokemon Go without at least one person with
0:10:06a smartphone that you can tether to.
0:10:07But you do have to be on the move with internet access at the same time.
0:10:11And seven-year-olds don't have a portable device with internet access that they can
0:10:16walk around the neighborhood with.
0:10:17They would have to go, I mean they should be going with a parent anyway, but like, when
0:10:21I look, when I see all those pictures, look at all these people, they're all playing Pokemon
0:10:24Go, I don't see 50% kids, I don't even see 25% kids, I see maybe like 5% kids and 95%
0:10:32young adults and adults.
0:10:34So it is a game for old people.
0:10:36I don't think Nintendo cares, old people have money, right?
0:10:39But we'll see, although finally Nintendo was making public statements trying to deflate
0:10:45his own stock price and I was like,
0:10:46"Do you realize we don't make that much money from this?
0:10:48"We get a license fee and the actual money
0:10:50"goes to this other company?
0:10:52"It's great that you doubled our stock price,
0:10:54"but perhaps you don't understand how this works.
0:10:56"We're not getting as rich as you think we are."
0:10:59- Delightful.
0:11:01All right, any other follow-up?
0:11:03- For 48 hours later, no.
0:11:05- Actually, we did get one really nice note
0:11:09from a person named Cap.
0:11:10Cap said, "Hi, one thing that's great about Apple
0:11:13"not updating the Mac for ages,
0:11:14there's never been a better time to buy a Mac secondhand.
0:11:18A few months ago I managed to pick up a 2011 iMac
0:11:20with a SSD installed for an absolute bargain,
0:11:23added a bunch of USB 3 ports via Thunderbolt dongle
0:11:25and couldn't be happier.
0:11:27It isn't just that this machine was ridiculously cheap,
0:11:29I also didn't feel like I'm missing out on anything
0:11:31besides retina by not getting a new Mac.
0:11:33And this is, I thought this was a really good point
0:11:35because like when you see that the entire lineup
0:11:39in certain families, if not the whole Mac lineup,
0:11:42has not changed that much in like three years,
0:11:45that means you can buy a three year old Mac
0:11:47and it's still pretty competitive
0:11:49with the brand new ones that are coming out today.
0:11:52And it's a mixed bag, obviously we'd like things
0:11:55to be getting better over periods of three years
0:11:58in the computer industry,
0:11:59but as long as they're getting better so slowly,
0:12:02or not at all, then you could pick up
0:12:06a three year old Mac Pro that's almost out of warranty now
0:12:10for probably a decent price,
0:12:12and it's still the same machine being sold new.
0:12:14More realistically, most people wouldn't be doing that,
0:12:18most people could get similarly great deals
0:12:20on like a MacBook Pro.
0:12:22You can get, the first generation Retina MacBook Pro
0:12:24is from 2012, that's now four years old,
0:12:27and it's not that different from the ones
0:12:29they're selling brand new still today.
0:12:31Like it isn't that much slower.
0:12:32You might have to replace the battery if it's worn out,
0:12:36but these lithium poly batteries don't wear out that quickly.
0:12:40So you can really get amazing deals
0:12:42on three to five year old Macs now
0:12:46that are almost as good as the ones
0:12:47they are still selling brand new today.
0:12:50- I have trouble bending my mind in such a way
0:12:52that this is actually a good thing.
0:12:53Like I know some people can, you know,
0:12:55like I'm not missing out, it's not much worse
0:12:57than what you could buy new, but it is still
0:12:59a really old and really slow computer.
0:13:02It just so happens that you can't even buy one
0:13:04that's that much better, but it doesn't change
0:13:06like in absolute values, the state of that old machine.
0:13:09And also, it may not change Apple's deprecation window of like my Mac Pro and a bunch of other
0:13:14machines don't have support for Mac OS, Sierra and stuff.
0:13:17I'm not sure that window, Apple's sliding window of dropping old hardware support for
0:13:21OS's, takes into account the fact that Apple is not making their computers much better.
0:13:25So I think that window moves along whether Apple releases new Macs or not, which is kind
0:13:30of sad.
0:13:31And really, you're right, they're not that much worse than the current ones.
0:13:34And in some cases, you can find a machine that's a couple years old that has some attributes
0:13:38that are actually a little bit better than the current machines, but all you're doing
0:13:42is putting yourself even farther back so that when the new Macs inevitably do come back,
0:13:48like that gap will suddenly wad because we all presume Apple will continue to produce
0:13:52Macintoshes in the future at some point.
0:13:56And when they come out, suddenly the feeling that you have is like, "Oh, this is such
0:14:01a bargain, it's such a good deal," because the gap between you and the best available
0:14:05is small, the gap between you and the best available is about to take a giant leap, and
0:14:10that's not going to feel too good.
0:14:11So yeah, I can see where this person is coming from, but to my mind and my personality, I
0:14:20think it's even worse to buy a used one now.
0:14:23It's kind of like if Apple was rapidly advancing, you could get a used one that is better in
0:14:28terms of absolute value, just because they're going forward so quickly that you'd end up
0:14:34with a better machine, but like, (sighs)
0:14:36I don't know, I think it's bad all around,
0:14:38but maybe I'm just sad about this.
0:14:40- Well, I mean, I suppose you could look at it
0:14:43the most horrible way, which is,
0:14:44if you buy a brand new machine from Apple today,
0:14:47you're basically buying a three-year-old machine
0:14:50for a brand new price.
0:14:52- Well, that's what I'm saying, like save your money.
0:14:54Rather than, don't buy a new one, don't buy a used one,
0:14:57just keep putting money into your little
0:14:59buy a Mac later fund, so that when they do come out
0:15:01with new ones, you can get a fancier one.
0:15:03- Sure, but if you need a Mac now
0:15:05and you need one for like, I don't know, 700 bucks,
0:15:08like what do you really,
0:15:09and especially if the Mac Mini is not going
0:15:12to suit your needs, which at 700 bucks
0:15:15it almost certainly won't,
0:15:16and even with infinite money it might not,
0:15:18if you really want a laptop,
0:15:19which almost everybody does these days,
0:15:22if you have that kind of budget
0:15:23and a good MacBook or MacBook Pro
0:15:26is gonna cost you nearly $2,000,
0:15:29once it's optioned reasonably,
0:15:32then that's a pretty good option to get a three year old one
0:15:36for basically get today's Mac
0:15:39for what it's actually worth today,
0:15:41which is a three year old one's price.
0:15:43- Yeah, if I had a business and I absolutely had to buy one
0:15:45since new employees were coming on board
0:15:47and we didn't have computers for them,
0:15:49I might buy the cheapest used one I could possibly get
0:15:51with the idea that I will buy a new one also
0:15:54like as soon as they come out.
0:15:56Because that is probably like,
0:15:58what's the least amount of money we can spend now
0:15:59to get a computer on your desk that you can use
0:16:02while we wait for the new Max to come out,
0:16:04knowing that as soon as they do,
0:16:06we're going to resell those used ones
0:16:07and get a new one for you.
0:16:09That makes sense to me.
0:16:10- I mean, you could probably get a used 101
0:16:13for the same price it'll cost
0:16:15to upgrade the new one to one terabyte.
0:16:18- Mm-hmm, yeah, don't remind me.
0:16:20(laughing)
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0:18:44- I talked a lot about this on a recent episode
0:18:51of Reconcilable Differences that I think is not out yet,
0:18:53so I don't really have that much to retread about it here, although honestly I'm not
0:18:58sure how much overlap there is in the audience between those two shows, so maybe we'll
0:19:00just say all the same things again in true Marco fashion, where he says he doesn't
0:19:04have anything to say about a topic and then just says everything over again.
0:19:08So this topic is Twitter's little verified checkmark that historically people have had.
0:19:15If you're a super important celebrity and people want to know, like, "Is this the
0:19:18real Sheryl Crow?" and you look at their little Twitter profile and it shows a little
0:19:22checkmark and you're like, "Oh, it must be the real one," and not the million parody
0:19:26impersonation accounts or whatever.
0:19:28Of which there are many.
0:19:29How did you land on Sheryl Crow as your example?
0:19:31Oh, I don't know.
0:19:32I was trying to think of a celebrity.
0:19:33Like, who do the kids know these days?
0:19:36Not Sheryl Crow.
0:19:37Is Sheryl Crow the most recent celebrity you can come up with?
0:19:39It's Free Association.
0:19:40No, it's not the most recent, but like, I mean, I guess I could have gone with Taylor
0:19:43Swift.
0:19:44I mean, I don't know what you have.
0:19:46Anyway, that's what the checkmark has been for historically, and I think we've talked
0:19:50about this topic before, how it would be much better if that kind of attestation where Twitter
0:19:57says "yes, we are telling you that this is actually the person you think it is," if that
0:20:02was available to many more people, because it's not just celebrities that suffer from
0:20:05accounts that impersonate them and otherwise make their lives miserable by people mistaking
0:20:12them for somebody else, just for different Unicode characters or capital I instead of
0:20:15an L or whatever.
0:20:16whatever. I mean, I don't understand that that much because you can just right-click
0:20:20on your web browser and fake a screenshot much easier than making a fake Twitter account.
0:20:23But anyway, the second aspect of this is because it's historically been celebrities that
0:20:29get to have this checkmark, Twitter has rolled out a series of different views and tools
0:20:35and filters and features in their official client that are only available to people who
0:20:39are verified, with the idea being they have so many followers and have so many replies
0:20:42to go through, they need extra tools to deal with their stuff.
0:20:45And again, a lot of people who deal with harassment and other problems on Twitter could also use
0:20:51those tools, but oh, they're not important enough to get verified.
0:20:55And so I think in our last conversation about this, I was saying, and so I think you two
0:21:00were agreeing, that verification should be available to everybody, and we understand
0:21:05that it takes time and possibly money to verify because they need a state ID, or they basically
0:21:10need to check that you really are you.
0:21:12And that takes time, and a human being has to do it, and that costs money.
0:21:15But we're like, "Just charge a fee for it."
0:21:18If it costs you money, we're not saying to anyone, "You have to give this away for free."
0:21:21Charge a nominal fee, because pretty much everybody I know who desperately wants to
0:21:25be verified for a purpose, to get the tools or to deal with harassment or to make sure
0:21:30that they're not impersonated, would gladly pay a nominal fee.
0:21:35They'll throw the money at you in two seconds to get the little checkmark that says, "Yes,
0:21:39I really am who I am."
0:21:40limited to celebrities, why not open it to everybody?
0:21:43So in theory, recently, Twitter has changed its rules in the light of the whole Ghostbusters
0:21:48abuse thing, and one of the stars of Ghostbusters got chased off Twitter by a bunch of terrible
0:21:53people.
0:21:54I don't know if that was the impetus behind this move, but timing-wise it sure looks like
0:21:59it.
0:22:00Twitter verification is now open to anybody who wants to fill out an application on Twitter's
0:22:04website.
0:22:05You fill in a bunch of fields, you have to tell them why you think you should be verified.
0:22:08If you're a brand or a company, you can check a checkbox for that.
0:22:12If you're an individual, you tell them, like, "Here's all the places where you
0:22:14can see who I am.
0:22:15Here's where I should be verified."
0:22:17And then it goes into a big black hole and in theory they come back and say, "Yes,
0:22:20you're verified," or, "No, you're not."
0:22:25And this comes up specifically as it relates to this show because Marco's been verified
0:22:30for a long time, right?
0:22:31Were you verified at the very beginning?
0:22:33- This is the thing, I got verified like three weeks ago
0:22:37or something, it was really recent.
0:22:39- I thought you'd been verified for a long time.
0:22:41- No, like I started ranting about, there was some,
0:22:45oh, it was when the, what was that app, Engage,
0:22:48that app they launched a couple weeks ago
0:22:49that we were all made fun of?
0:22:50- Oh, like the celebrity only app to like see
0:22:53what people are saying about your tweets or whatever.
0:22:56It's like ego surfing.
0:22:57- Yeah, I mean anybody could use it, but yeah,
0:22:59and I actually use it for a few days on my phone
0:23:01to kind of try out.
0:23:02But when that launched, I was basically ranting
0:23:05about how this app gave special privileges
0:23:09to verified people in the way that,
0:23:11not as verified people using the app,
0:23:14but if you were verified, your tweets would show up
0:23:17in these filtered views higher than non-verified people.
0:23:21And it was just like yet one more thing that was,
0:23:23'cause the verified system has,
0:23:25having a system like this has lots of problems
0:23:27and inequalities inherent in it.
0:23:29It's one thing if it's only for identity verification,
0:23:32but once you add any other bonus features
0:23:36or higher statuses, once you attach those
0:23:39to verified status, it makes this program
0:23:41something that should be available to everybody,
0:23:43because then it's like, well, if verified people
0:23:46get their tweets seen more in certain filters
0:23:49or get higher priority things or get certain
0:23:50abuse control filters that other people don't get,
0:23:53I mean, everybody should be able to be verified,
0:23:56because then it's a feature segment,
0:23:58not like a status thing.
0:24:00And to tie status to also like abuse control features
0:24:05and relevancy in search lists and stuff,
0:24:07that's kinda icky, you know?
0:24:10So I was ranting and raving about that
0:24:12and a nice person who worked at Twitter submitted me,
0:24:17but it seemed like that's just been up to the public now,
0:24:19and that's great, sort of.
0:24:21It's great in that, okay, well,
0:24:23now a lot more people can get verified,
0:24:26but it still is subject to some kind of importance,
0:24:30judgment on the side of whoever's reviewing his forms.
0:24:35'Cause we know, for example, Federico Vittucci got rejected.
0:24:38- Which is insane, by the way.
0:24:40- It completely--
0:24:40- A person who is like, he has his own website,
0:24:44popular website, it's been around for years.
0:24:47- Yeah. - It is like,
0:24:48I'm not gonna say a pillar of the community,
0:24:49but it's not an obscure place.
0:24:51He's not an obscure person, and he's not even just
0:24:55random person who happens to have a blog. This is years and years of working in. He
0:25:01should be verified under the old pass where Twitter went around to all the websites, all
0:25:06the tech websites or whatever, and said, "Hey, here you go. Anybody who works for your website
0:25:10can get a checkmark." He didn't get one then, and the fact that he got rejected now
0:25:14makes no sense.
0:25:15Exactly. Yeah, because they always had a lot of rule shifts over time of what kind of people
0:25:23would get verified. Initially, when it first started, it was basically like people who
0:25:27had the most followers on Twitter and they kind of like worked their way down the follower
0:25:30account until they got just above my number of followers and they stopped. And then it
0:25:35was, "Okay, well now we're just going to do like public figures like celebrities,
0:25:40politicians, and people who work for the media." And that was kind of loosely defined, the
0:25:45media. It always meant whatever kind of media I didn't do. So it was like, you know, not
0:25:49not just bloggers and not podcasters and not app developers,
0:25:53but if you work for a journalism thing,
0:25:58however they define that.
0:26:01These definitions always shifted and were very vague
0:26:03and really very much based on like,
0:26:06does some handful of people at Twitter
0:26:08think you're important this month?
0:26:10And then it was weird, it was like,
0:26:12if you worked for, if they declared
0:26:16a certain website or publication
0:26:17would be like a verified publication.
0:26:20Anybody who worked for them would get verified
0:26:22in this big batch that they would do.
0:26:24And so you'd have people who wrote one article
0:26:28for a paper somewhere, they have 400 followers
0:26:32and they're verified.
0:26:33And then you have people who have 50,000 followers
0:26:35who can't get verified.
0:26:36It was always a weird system.
0:26:39And it's always been these vaguely defined,
0:26:43very human judgy kind of clarification.
0:26:48I know one of our friends reached out about a year ago
0:26:52to try to get the three of us verified.
0:26:55And they told, 'cause he knew a guy who knew a guy,
0:26:58and the response was, "We don't consider podcasters
0:27:01"to be media personalities at this time."
0:27:04And YouTubers were getting it, but podcasters weren't.
0:27:07It's just like, again, it's always been this weird system,
0:27:10and it's always gonna run me the wrong way,
0:27:12and that's why I started complaining,
0:27:13and eventually I complained enough that I got verified.
0:27:15And I made a joke when I got verified
0:27:16that now that I got it, in like three weeks,
0:27:19they're gonna just end the program.
0:27:20And they didn't, instead they just opened up to everybody,
0:27:23which I guess is better.
0:27:25- Well, a couple things on that.
0:27:26So your complaint was originally,
0:27:28hey, like you said, it's stupid to tie features
0:27:32and things that a lot of people could use
0:27:33to this whole vague status thing, right?
0:27:35- Exactly.
0:27:36- And I'm not saying that whoever was to help you
0:27:38speaks for all of Twitter, but what happened was not,
0:27:42"Hey, you know, Marco, you have a point.
0:27:44We should change the way we do things."
0:27:45Instead, it was, "Hey, you know, Marco,
0:27:47if we give you a check mark, will you shut up?"
0:27:49Like, again, I'm not saying that was the intent or whatever,
0:27:52but like, it basically, the person who did this for you
0:27:56is not empowered to change Twitter's policy, right?
0:27:58So they can't, like, it's not the CEO
0:27:59that did this for you, I'm assuming, right?
0:28:01So they just tried to do the nicest thing they could
0:28:03to make you feel better,
0:28:04which is a good customer service move,
0:28:05and it's like, "I can't actually solve your problem,
0:28:07but how about if I do this as a make you feel better?"
0:28:09And they're like, "You know what,
0:28:10it kind of does make me feel a little better,
0:28:11But it didn't do anything to solve the actual problem,
0:28:14because the person who cared about this
0:28:15was obviously not the CEO or anyone in position
0:28:18to solve the problem.
0:28:19And as for the media things,
0:28:23to reinforce your point that anybody vaguely associated
0:28:26with the media thing could get one,
0:28:28when the Twitter checkmark fairy came to Ars Technica,
0:28:31it was offered to everybody, including to me.
0:28:34And I am one of those people who writes
0:28:35like one article a year.
0:28:36I didn't have 400 followers, but you know,
0:28:38I was not a, my contribution to Ars Technica
0:28:41though they may have been large in size, were few in number.
0:28:45And I was offered a checkmark.
0:28:47And I didn't take it because part of the conditions
0:28:49were you would be getting a checkmark as part of Ars
0:28:51Technica.
0:28:52So you had to use your Ars Technica email
0:28:53to be associated with it.
0:28:54And I didn't want a checkmark as part of ours,
0:28:56A, because I didn't feel like I was part of ours,
0:28:57like I was a freelancer.
0:28:59I don't have any sort of stake in the company.
0:29:02I'm not even a full-time employee and never have been.
0:29:05And B, I didn't want a checkmark as part of Ars Technica.
0:29:08I, because I'm a giant egomaniac or whatever,
0:29:11wanted to be recognized for myself.
0:29:13And if you don't want to recognize,
0:29:14give me a check mark for being me, then fine.
0:29:16I don't want one.
0:29:17Like I don't want to be on Ars Technicus coattails
0:29:19or whatever.
0:29:20So for multiple reasons, I turned that one down.
0:29:23And I figured like, look, well, you know,
0:29:24if I'm never gonna check mark,
0:29:25I'm never gonna need a check mark, right?
0:29:28But this whole thing of like, whatever,
0:29:30I wish you could find the press release or whatever it was.
0:29:33Opening it up to everybody,
0:29:34the application process may be open up to everybody,
0:29:36but as Vitigi shows,
0:29:38it's not as if they opened up the check mark to everybody.
0:29:40not only do they not open it up to everybody,
0:29:42but their definition doesn't make any sense
0:29:45because maybe it's a slightly broader definition,
0:29:48but if Viteeshi doesn't fit under the definition,
0:29:50then I shouldn't get a check mark either.
0:29:52And I don't like that because I want a check mark,
0:29:54and that's why this topic is here.
0:29:55Because beyond all reason, I want a stupid check mark.
0:29:59And as I wind about at length on Reconcileable Differences,
0:30:03I don't need a check mark like the people
0:30:05who actually need it.
0:30:06People who are actually the targets of harassment
0:30:08who need these tools, people who have huge number of accounts
0:30:11impersonating them.
0:30:13I mean, Brianna Wu is the poster child for this.
0:30:15The fact that she doesn't have a check mark around
0:30:17makes no sense.
0:30:18She's constantly in touch with Twitter,
0:30:20sending them hundreds of reports, getting accounts banned,
0:30:22and no one at the receiving end of this flood of reports
0:30:26that are abuse of Twitter goes, you
0:30:27know what might help this person?
0:30:29Maybe we should make her verified.
0:30:30And she has a huge number of followers too.
0:30:32Every criteria that you could possibly
0:30:34think of for someone who's not a publication or whatever,
0:30:38It doesn't make any sense.
0:30:39So I'm frustrated with these strange rules.
0:30:42I'm frustrated that even under the strange rules, I still don't have one.
0:30:46And yes, I did apply.
0:30:47I applied on Wednesday.
0:30:49I had to fill in a bio, which I had never filled out on Twitter intentionally, because,
0:30:53again, it was another 10 minutes of whining about this and reconciling differences.
0:30:57It's impossible to write a bio that doesn't sound god-awful.
0:31:00So I just wrote a god-awful bio.
0:31:01If you go look on twitter.com/saracusa right now, you'll see my god-awful bio.
0:31:06I had to put a birthday.
0:31:08I already had a header image.
0:31:10When I did the application, I was worried that they would get yelled at for my header
0:31:13image.
0:31:14My header image is a picture from the video game Journey, which I love and everyone should
0:31:16play and no one should be spoiled about.
0:31:19And it's like a wallpaper that you could download from Sony's website, but technically it contains
0:31:24like copyrighted images or whatever.
0:31:26Like if you go to the Sony site, it's like, "Hey, if you're just in Journey, come here
0:31:29and here are wallpapers."
0:31:30And that's one of the wallpapers, so I assume it's free for me to take and put as my header
0:31:34image.
0:31:35I don't even know.
0:31:36Anyway, I filled it out.
0:31:38I have not heard back from them.
0:31:39Everyone else is tweeting, "Hey, I entered a thing into the application and I heard back
0:31:43and I'm verified and I have a checkmark.
0:31:45All sorts of checkmarks, blue checkmarks are sprouting everywhere."
0:31:47Honestly, I shouldn't care.
0:31:49All I should care about is that the people who actually need checkmarks get them.
0:31:53And by the way, those people still aren't getting them, which I don't understand.
0:31:55But anyway.
0:31:56You need one, Jon.
0:31:57You need one.
0:31:58Yep.
0:31:59I'm not getting one either.
0:32:00This is like the good version of a Wikipedia page, because everyone thinks they want a
0:32:02on a Wikipedia page, but anyone's heard me talk
0:32:05about Wikipedia knows I have many problems with Wikipedia.
0:32:08I don't want a Wikipedia page.
0:32:09It's a curse more than a blessing.
0:32:10But a check mark, basically only upside.
0:32:14And no real downside.
0:32:16And anyway, I don't have one.
0:32:18- Let me tell you why you want one.
0:32:19I mean, 'cause why I want one,
0:32:21'cause we're all egomaniacs, first of all.
0:32:23But you can look at it from the original purpose
0:32:27of verified, and it's kind of like the lock icon
0:32:30on an SSL site.
0:32:32getting a little lock icon in your address bar.
0:32:34First of all, it's worth questioning,
0:32:36like is that even effective?
0:32:37Because we know very much that the lock icon
0:32:40in address bars has never been very effective
0:32:43because nobody goes to check it.
0:32:44And all the web browsers keep updating their designs
0:32:48to more and more emphasize the security level
0:32:51of the site that you're on.
0:32:53Or to put up even crazier and scarier warnings
0:32:56if something is not quite right.
0:32:58And yet people still get phished all the time.
0:33:00♪ Time for the music ♪
0:33:02and still enter their stuff in secure forms and everything.
0:33:05So we know that that kind of warning
0:33:09doesn't really work for the most part for most people,
0:33:12'cause most people just don't think to check
0:33:14that kind of thing,
0:33:14or they don't know to check that kind of thing.
0:33:17And even if they know,
0:33:17they sometimes forget and just miss it.
0:33:19Whether it's sort of that original purpose is kind of,
0:33:22it's not that relevant,
0:33:23because that original purpose is not a very strong purpose.
0:33:26What it really is is jewelry.
0:33:29It is a prize.
0:33:32It is a sign awarded to you that says, "I am important."
0:33:35And because it is emphasized everywhere,
0:33:39you're seeing those big blue check marks
0:33:41on all these important people in your timeline,
0:33:42so it is very much a status symbol.
0:33:45And whether you need or want
0:33:47the additional filtering features it brings,
0:33:50you wanna be a special person.
0:33:52And honestly, when I got it,
0:33:54I have almost felt like a responsibility
0:33:57has been granted to me,
0:33:58and I have to tweet more responsibly now.
0:34:00It's weird.
0:34:01- How does one go about tweeting more responsibly?
0:34:04What are you not tweeting that previously
0:34:06you would have tweeted?
0:34:07- It's like getting a BS title at work
0:34:10to try to make you more responsible.
0:34:12Like, it has totally worked on me.
0:34:14Where I'm like, well, I'm representing
0:34:16this blue check mark now.
0:34:17I better, you know, it's like how cops around
0:34:20are supposed to drink at bars in their uniforms.
0:34:23I kind of feel like I gotta be good for this check mark
0:34:26and be on better behavior now.
0:34:29- 'Cause you can't say that it's not really Marco?
0:34:31That's not really me, that's an impersonator.
0:34:33- No, it just, it kind of feels like I've been blessed
0:34:35with this honor that I have to treat well.
0:34:37I don't know, it's not rational, but that's how it feels.
0:34:40- Well, for what it's worth, there's an account,
0:34:44which is @verified, this is an account on Twitter,
0:34:48that from what I can tell, follows every verified account.
0:34:52And it follows 190,014 accounts, as we record.
0:34:56One of those accounts, ladies and gentlemen, is this guy.
0:34:59'Cause guess who got his blue check mark a couple days ago?
0:35:02I did, and man, Jon, does it feel good.
0:35:05Oh, I'm sorry.
0:35:06Yeah, it's okay.
0:35:07It's not bad.
0:35:08- So the thing that burns me up so much
0:35:09about your check mark is that you got it six hours
0:35:13after filling out the application.
0:35:14Like you fill out the application not too long before I did.
0:35:18Like basically I didn't fill it out
0:35:19because I was too busy podcasting with Merlin
0:35:21while trying to fill it out,
0:35:22which is why we ended up talking about it.
0:35:25And so when the show was over, I filled it out.
0:35:27You filled it out and you said what, six hours later?
0:35:29You got your check mark?
0:35:30Yeah, it was a little after noon on whatever day it was announced, and it was just before
0:35:36I recorded the latest episode of Analog that I received it.
0:35:41And so we actually talked—Mike and I talk about this on Analog as well.
0:35:44But yeah, it was somewhere around six or seven hours.
0:35:48It's like showing up to like some really popular event just after the whole crowd gets
0:35:52there.
0:35:53Like there's a line of five people, then you wait 15 minutes, then there's a line
0:35:55of 3,000 people.
0:35:56So now I'm somewhere back in a queue.
0:35:58I just assume I'm going to get rejected because that would fit perfectly with the
0:36:01completely arbitrary pattern of not giving Vatici one, rejecting Vatici and just never
0:36:07responding to Brianna.
0:36:08Like it fits perfectly with the whole notion that it's just like a hamster in a wheel
0:36:13over there or some kind of random number generator and no actual human with any kind of judgment
0:36:18is doing this.
0:36:19Because honestly, if there was anybody with any kind of judgment doing this, like not
0:36:22giving verified checkmarks immediately to every single target of Gamergate?
0:36:26Like I don't understand the meeting where you'd be like, "Should we do anything about
0:36:30this?
0:36:31Should we give them a check?"
0:36:32No, let's just not ever do it for like a year.
0:36:34Does that sound good, guys?
0:36:36Okay, good.
0:36:37Let's break for lunch.
0:36:38I don't understand the logic.
0:36:39I don't even understand the neglect.
0:36:40I don't understand.
0:36:41And how can it be staffed to such a degree that Casey's wait time is six hours and that
0:36:47they give him a thumbs up and yet all these other people don't get them?
0:36:51It doesn't make sense to me.
0:36:53It doesn't make sense.
0:36:54We totally recognize that this entire topic and conversation is obnoxious and that I shouldn't
0:36:59care.
0:37:00But we do care because they made us care.
0:37:03They manipulated us into caring with these blue check marks.
0:37:05There are some legit reasons that a regular person would want this, like people who don't
0:37:10need it like me.
0:37:11Like I said, because you get more features that make Twitter nicer to use.
0:37:15And I think your thing of the lock icon is great.
0:37:17It's just like, I want my account to seem trustworthy and to people not to think it's
0:37:22me.
0:37:23had a few impersonators who I've reported and their accounts have gotten closed and
0:37:26like whatever like it's not I don't have any any actual issues but it put it this way if
0:37:31they literally opened it to everybody with 10 bucks I would pay 10 bucks in a second.
0:37:36Oh yeah I mean like I registered the Overcast account for and I signed up or I filled out
0:37:41the form roughly the same time you did I think John and I haven't heard back from that either
0:37:45it's still pending but I did it for for basically that reason of like I wanted the Overcast
0:37:51Twitter account to appear official, to really make it look like this is a real business
0:37:55for a real app that matters in the world because it's good enough to get a blue checkmark.
0:38:00I want people to see that. It helps look more professional.
0:38:04I mean, we're going to do the same thing for the ATP account. @ATPFM on Twitter, I
0:38:09want people to know that's the official account of the show, and so a checkmark would
0:38:11be good to give them the reassurance that they're like, "What was the ATP one?"
0:38:14Because it's not just @ATP because that's a different one, and you might not be sure.
0:38:18And again, it's a thing I think should be open to everybody, as in if you have $10,
0:38:23boom, you've got a checkmark.
0:38:25Like a mechanical process with no humans involved, except for the verification part, and that's
0:38:29what you're paying your $10 for.
0:38:30But the idea of being rejected for verification doesn't make any sense to me.
0:38:34Yeah.
0:38:35Yeah, it is weird.
0:38:37With that said, in my, what is this, like three or four days of living the sweet, sweet,
0:38:43sweet blue checkmark lifestyle, I've only noticed two differences so far.
0:38:47Did you get your gift bag? Yeah, did you see that special present they gave us? Oh yeah,
0:38:52so good. That one was awesome. Anyway, so if I look at the Twitter website, in the settings area
0:39:01on the left-hand side where it begins with accounts, security, and privacy, blah blah blah
0:39:05blah blah blah blah. There's another one which I believe is new, that's notifications timeline.
0:39:11And I don't recall having seen this before, and it says, "Filter tweets by..." and then
0:39:17there's a checkbox, only one of them, that says "Quality Filter."
0:39:20It says, "Quality filtering aims to remove all tweets from your notifications timeline
0:39:24that contain threats, offensive or abusive language, duplicate content, or assent from
0:39:28suspicious accounts."
0:39:30I haven't yet turned that on, just because I don't feel like I really need to, and...
0:39:35What kind of people might need that feature?
0:39:37I'm having trouble thinking of any examples.
0:39:39What?
0:39:40Oh my god.
0:39:41- Is this not available to everybody?
0:39:42Yeah, 'cause I got the two accounts open here.
0:39:44- Well, it might not be available to everybody
0:39:45because like maybe there's a computational
0:39:47or like scalability thing or whatever, but--
0:39:49- Then too bad, fix that.
0:39:50We have computers now.
0:39:52Computers do these things quickly.
0:39:55- I'm trying to think of a scenario where it's reasonable,
0:39:57but even if you're gonna give it
0:39:58to a limited set of people, who would you give it to?
0:40:01Who might you give this thing that's limited?
0:40:02Say you only have, you know, 500,000 to hand out.
0:40:06Who would you give it to?
0:40:07I don't know.
0:40:08Maybe you would, like you said, divorce it from the verified
0:40:10and just offer it to people who are constant targets of abuse.
0:40:12Or no, maybe just not do that.
0:40:15So yeah, so there's that.
0:40:17And then it was actually Mike who got verified in a beautiful, wonderful turn of events,
0:40:23got verified after we recorded Analog.
0:40:26So I had an entire episode of Analog to lord over him and make fun of him for not being
0:40:30as cool as I am, which was delightful.
0:40:33But anyway, he had noticed once he got verified that apparently in the official app, there's
0:40:38There's a notifications tab, and there's a new entry in the segmented control there.
0:40:45So he sent me a screenshot, and what he had was all mentions, and I believe he said that
0:40:50the verified one was new.
0:40:52So he can look at notifications from everyone, notifications just in terms of mentions, again,
0:40:57this is the official app, or I guess mentions just from verified people, or perhaps any
0:41:02sort of notification that's sourced with a verified individual.
0:41:06And those are the only two differences that I've noticed.
0:41:07I don't know Marco if you've noticed anything else.
0:41:10- Well, not really just because I don't use
0:41:13the official client or the website very often.
0:41:15- Same here.
0:41:16- So most of the stuff only is visible in those places.
0:41:19And honestly that might be like,
0:41:22if I started getting a lot of abuse again,
0:41:24there have been periods in the past
0:41:26where I've gotten all here and there.
0:41:27I mean nothing like what people like Brianna get.
0:41:29It's not even close.
0:41:30But if that kind of thing became a problem for me,
0:41:33I would very much consider switching to these official apps.
0:41:36And again, if you're going to make this
0:41:39like a content filter kind of thing
0:41:41and an abuse filter kind of thing,
0:41:43you want as many people as possible
0:41:45who are legitimate account holders to be verified.
0:41:48And if you charge a bit of money to be verified,
0:41:50it really does, it puts a big barrier in front of,
0:41:55and not necessarily to the point where nobody can pay,
0:41:58but not a lot of people will pay,
0:42:00in order to make a bunch of dummy accounts
0:42:02to troll people with or to harass people with.
0:42:04but typically, when you pay for an account,
0:42:07you are less likely to be willing to just throw it away
0:42:11because you'll lose that money
0:42:12and you'd have to pay again
0:42:13if you wanted to come back to the service.
0:42:17My old friend, the Something Awful Forum
0:42:18is back from my early internet days.
0:42:21They had a system there where you had to pay,
0:42:23I believe it was 10 bucks to register an account
0:42:27and it was incredibly effective
0:42:30at keeping out spam and crap
0:42:32And if anybody got banned, if you broke a rule,
0:42:36you'd get banned, and you're out 10 bucks.
0:42:39And if you wanna come back, you gotta pay another 10 bucks.
0:42:41And it really did make a big difference
0:42:44in how well that community was run,
0:42:46and how little crap there really was there
0:42:48compared to the number of people that were there.
0:42:50- Yeah, that probably doesn't work for something
0:42:52that's supposed to be as mass market as Twitter,
0:42:54which is like, I think they'd have to come up
0:42:56with a hybrid strategy where they would have to be like,
0:42:59look, we will give out free checkmarks
0:43:01everybody who we think deserves them and then we will actually hire or set a policy where
0:43:06deserves make some sense to somebody in the entire universe and then anybody can get it
0:43:10if they pay.
0:43:11Like you need to hire because you don't want it to be like, "Oh."
0:43:14So few people will pay.
0:43:15You don't want it to be like only people with this amount of disposable income are
0:43:18allowed to participate in Twitter because I think Twitter has already established itself
0:43:21as sort of like everybody can be on Twitter.
0:43:23It's open to everybody.
0:43:25It's free.
0:43:27Maybe that's not sustainable either but it's kind of a shame to take a service with that
0:43:31broad of appeal, as opposed to something that's like a community like MetaFilter or those
0:43:35forums you were talking about where it's not going to be everybody.
0:43:37It's going to be a tiny subset, a very small community.
0:43:40And even there it's kind of a shame to select only people who can afford to add that money.
0:43:44But you're right that it is incredibly effective to raise inequality because no one wants to
0:43:51keep paying money to make sock puppets because it just gets expensive and it doesn't feel
0:43:57good.
0:43:58I mean, I guess unfortunately, at the scale Twitter operates, I can imagine people running
0:44:04Kickstarters to fund the creation of their sock puppet accounts.
0:44:06Like in the alternate universe where Twitter was always a pay thing, they would just raise
0:44:10tens of thousands of dollars from horrible people to constantly make it—anyway.
0:44:15This is, like so many things Twitter does, this is in this weird state where it's not
0:44:19clear what the new rules are.
0:44:21It's not clear how long this will last.
0:44:23As Marco said, who knows?
0:44:24They could get rid of checkmarks tomorrow and split these features into two different
0:44:28things, but at least it's some kind of motion on the front.
0:44:31And by the way, speaking of the checkmark, I use a third-party client because I'm an
0:44:35old Twitter user.
0:44:36I'm always surprised when people use the official client, but apparently lots of actual people
0:44:40do.
0:44:41Anyway, in my third-party client it has an option for whether it should show the checkmark
0:44:46overlaid on the little avatars for individual accounts, and I always have that turned off.
0:44:51Because I didn't like, when I'm going through my timeline, I didn't like the sort of visual
0:44:57indication that this person was more important and what they had to say was more important.
0:45:01I mean, if I dig into the account, if I ever have questions about, "Is this really the
0:45:04celebrity?" I tap on their name and I can see the checkmark. But seeing the checkmark,
0:45:08mostly because I actually follow a lot of people who have checkmarks who I actually
0:45:11know, I don't need to constantly be reminded that they all have checkmarks. And I felt
0:45:14like it was making me pay less attention to the ones that don't have checkmarks, so
0:45:17I just turned it off on all of them pretty quickly after that feature was available several
0:45:22years ago. And I would definitely not want to turn it back on.
0:45:24- Then you aren't seeing our bling.
0:45:27- I know, believe me, I know.
0:45:30Honestly, Marco, I thought you had had one for years.
0:45:33I'd forgotten about that whole little blow up thing.
0:45:36- Yeah, and the funny thing is right after I got mine,
0:45:38Marco and I were talking privately
0:45:40and we had concluded without a shadow of a doubt,
0:45:43collectively, that there was zero chance
0:45:46that you would solicit your own check mark
0:45:48because you are above that.
0:45:49And then fast forward like two hours
0:45:51and you said in the relay slack,
0:45:53"Oh, I totally asked them and I can't believe I haven't gotten them."
0:45:56No, I thought you knew this, that we discussed before.
0:45:58I wanted a checkmark forever.
0:46:00Well, no, no, no. We knew that you wanted the checkmark.
0:46:02That wasn't up for grabs.
0:46:03Yeah, but we also thought that there would be no chance that you would, like, apply.
0:46:06That I wouldn't apply? No, you have to. You have to apply.
0:46:08Once they say it's open to everybody, you have to apply.
0:46:10Like, I just choked down writing that stupid bio.
0:46:12I'm like, "Ugh, I gotta do it."
0:46:14Like, in the little box where they say, like, "Tell us why we should verify you,"
0:46:17I wrote, like, the most craven, like, disgusting, "Here's why I'm an important person" thing.
0:46:23Like, I'm just like, "This is the strongest argument I have. Here it is. No being coy,
0:46:29no beating around the bush, this is it." Thank God that's not public.
0:46:32What am I going to do? Be all shy and demure and say, "Well, probably you shouldn't give it to me,
0:46:39I'm not that well known." No, I think I should have it. Maybe I should have taken a couple
0:46:43sentences to say—I mean, I can't even be honest and say, "You should not be giving this to me
0:46:47before you give it to every single person who's ever been targeted by Gamergate."
0:46:51But if you start yelling at them and telling them what they should do, also not a good
0:46:54way to get a checkmark.
0:46:55So anyway, they're just not responding to my request anyway.
0:46:59So it's been, what, three days now?
0:47:02Whatever.
0:47:03So on analog, on the episode of analog that will be out by the time this episode is out,
0:47:08John, you're John, Mike and I discussed what we had written.
0:47:12And it was funny because we took two different approaches on what we wrote to justify our
0:47:17coolness.
0:47:18And I agree with you.
0:47:20I am not a fan of writing that sort of thing.
0:47:22Oh, look at me, I'm just so important,
0:47:24and let me tell you all the reasons why.
0:47:26But what I ended up doing was basically name-dropping
0:47:29people that I knew and interact with
0:47:32that are also verified.
0:47:35- That's not a power move, though.
0:47:37- My brother-in-law met Barack Obama once.
0:47:38- Sort of.
0:47:39- Right, exactly.
0:47:40I know Marco Armin.
0:47:41- Well, that was the thing.
0:47:42So, no, no, I mean, I'm serious.
0:47:44That was the approach I took was,
0:47:45hey, I share a podcast with verified user Marco Armin
0:47:48and John Saracusa.
0:47:49Well, the fact that he's verified that actually strengthens it.
0:47:54Right, that's my point.
0:47:55No, no, no, that was exactly my point.
0:47:57And I talked about how I'm also on Relay, which also has Jason Snell verified and CGP
0:48:01Cray verified.
0:48:02And my podcasts are heard by many thousands of people each week.
0:48:05That's a pretty good approach.
0:48:06I mean, obviously it worked, but then again, with this black box, we have no idea why it
0:48:11worked.
0:48:12It could have been because the person who decided to check your box listens to ATP.
0:48:15Boom, Casey List, done.
0:48:17Yeah.
0:48:18a different approach. Shoot, what did he say he did? I've forgotten now. But whatever it was...
0:48:21I spelled my name with a Y, which is much cooler than an I.
0:48:24Oh no, no, that's what it was. He had said, he thought to himself, "Well, why would they have
0:48:29made this available to everyone?" It must be because they want people to verify their,
0:48:38you know, their identity. And so Mike was all, "Oh, you know, I'm really concerned that people
0:48:42that listen to me might not be able to find the real me," you know, in playing the whole,
0:48:46like parody card. And I'm very poorly paraphrasing what he said. Go listen to that episode of
0:48:52Analog. But we took two different approaches and, well, I gotta tell you, Mike Bling looks
0:48:56great. How does he look, Marco?
0:48:58But he got his too. Mike's approach worked too, right?
0:49:01Yep.
0:49:02I mean, Mike totally deserves one too. Like, I mean, it's no question, but like that's
0:49:04an interesting approach. I mean, like I said, I have had actual impersonators using my avatar
0:49:09and using variations on my name with different Unicode glyphs and stuff to make a thing like
0:49:13that has happened to me. Not a lot, but it has happened. He ended up going with that
0:49:16approach and it working good. Was it, did he have real examples or was it just speculative?
0:49:21As in, like, I'm afraid this would happen to me one day.
0:49:23I don't recall. I feel like it was speculative, but I'm not 100% sure about that.
0:49:28Anyway, you have no idea how annoyed I'm going to be when I get rejected. Because then where
0:49:33do I go from there? Do I just reapply every six months? Forever?
0:49:37One month. Yeah, it's one month.
0:49:39month? I can't... I did save the paragraph of text I wrote in the box just so I don't
0:49:44have to think it up again, so I'll just paste it in every month. But like, what a lot...
0:49:47what a distance that is. At a certain point I'm just gonna stop. I'm not gonna be able
0:49:49to like, to muster the... it just... what is the quote from Jerry Maguire? Why in the
0:49:58world am I asking you guys? Chat room with Jerry Maguire quote. You're gonna lick it
0:50:03off now. Have you ever seen that movie? Yes, but forever ago. I actually did see it, but
0:50:08But I saw it when it was new,
0:50:10which was a very long time ago.
0:50:11- All I know is I love looking at my bling
0:50:13every time it flies by after I tweet.
0:50:15Mm-mm-mm, looks good.
0:50:16- For a while, I actually had trouble
0:50:19recognizing myself on Twitter.
0:50:20Like, if I'd double-click a tweet
0:50:22to get the conversation history,
0:50:23and mine would be at the root,
0:50:25'cause I wanted to see which of my tweets
0:50:26is in response to,
0:50:28for the first few days, it didn't register visually as me
0:50:33when I'd see the avatar with the checkmark on it,
0:50:34'cause that's not how I look on Twitter.
0:50:37- All right, here you go.
0:50:38This is the scene that you guys don't remember, but you should because it's full of quotable
0:50:42things.
0:50:43Oh, you're not cutting my Jerry Maguire quote out.
0:50:44This is gold.
0:50:45I'm going to cut out like half this topic.
0:50:47It's so long.
0:50:48Well, we don't have much on the other end of it, so you know, we need to fill it here.
0:50:53This is when Jerry's talking to whoever a kubu-ting junior was playing, like the athlete
0:50:57that he represents.
0:50:58He's a sports agent.
0:50:59He said, "I'm out here for you.
0:51:00You don't know what it's like to be me out here for you.
0:51:03It's an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about.
0:51:06Oh, I blew it.
0:51:07So close, so close!
0:51:09Anyway, Up at Dawn, Pride-Swallowing Siege.
0:51:13It's what I think of as a good description
0:51:15of reapplying to get Twitter verified every month
0:51:19because that is a hell of a pride-swallowing siege.
0:51:23Oh, wow.
0:51:24- Oh, Jon, I genuinely feel bad for you,
0:51:27and I really want you to get verified.
0:51:29- You shouldn't, no one should feel bad for me.
0:51:30For the love of God, please, no one feel bad for you.
0:51:32This is the most pathetic thing in the entire,
0:51:34it's not actually important.
0:51:36- No, it's not, but it is. - You should not feel bad
0:51:37You should you should pity me that I care about this at all well
0:51:40I do that too, but don't cry for John, Argentina
0:51:42Exactly, you know something from pop culture. Are you quoting like the Madonna remake? No I saw that
0:51:48Wait, which one we came out like in the 90s Madonna. That's the Madonna. Okay. That's the one I saw. Yeah, sorry
0:51:54It's fine. At least I saw one of them. I mean come on. Yeah. Yeah. Well anyway
0:51:58Well, I hope you get your checkmark in no small part because it'll make getting the ATP FM checkmark that much easier because we can
0:52:05say, "Hey, all three of us."
0:52:06- Well, it probably won't because apparently
0:52:08the process is random and Vititi doesn't deserve one
0:52:10and neither is anyone targeted by Gamergate.
0:52:12- Well, I mean, this is part of the problem
0:52:14with any of these human review,
0:52:16it's just like the App Store where even if you set rules
0:52:20in place and even if the rules don't change,
0:52:22which I think for Twitter's verification process
0:52:25those are two big requirements that probably
0:52:27have never been met before, but assuming you have
0:52:29codified rules that don't change much over time,
0:52:34you still have a team of humans enforcing them.
0:52:36And like, you know, when Viteaches went through,
0:52:39it could, it was right after this big rush started,
0:52:42it could have been a bunch of people
0:52:43who saw this giant pile behind them
0:52:45and it was right before lunch
0:52:46and they were tired and they were grumpy
0:52:48and they just started saying no, no, no, no to it.
0:52:50Like, it could be so many things
0:52:52once you have like humans trying to review
0:52:55a whole bunch of stuff subjectively.
0:52:57It's just, these kind of rule systems
0:53:00will never be consistently enforced
0:53:02as long as there is that subjective component to it.
0:53:05That's why they should remove that,
0:53:06and it should just be like,
0:53:08do you fit the basic qualifications?
0:53:09Can you prove your identity with a government issued ID
0:53:12that we trust, and can you maybe pay a few bucks
0:53:16for our time since we're gonna do this for a lot of people?
0:53:19That's it, that should be all it is.
0:53:21And as soon as you put in judgment calls of,
0:53:24well, are you important enough?
0:53:26It's never gonna be consistently enforced.
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0:54:38- So Marco, we're doing pretty well.
0:54:44We're about an hour in and we still have one more topic left
0:54:48and I think we might be able to dodge stupid Tivo
0:54:50for one more week.
0:54:51So we gotta stretch this one a lot.
0:54:53- All right, we'll see what we can do.
0:54:54- So tell me everything that I could ever possibly
0:54:57want to know about serial number tracking in forecast.
0:55:01- Okay, now that you've ruined both product names
0:55:03of the things I was gonna make.
0:55:04(laughing)
0:55:06- Wait, was that not, wait.
0:55:08- If he was looking in the show notes,
0:55:09you would know it was called that.
0:55:10- I know.
0:55:11- What was the other name?
0:55:12- Side track. - The audio alignment?
0:55:13- Yeah.
0:55:14- He didn't say that, you did, didn't you?
0:55:16- No, but it's in the show notes and I missed it.
0:55:18It's fine, it doesn't matter.
0:55:19- Oh, crap, I'm sorry.
0:55:21- Don't worry about it.
0:55:21- Have you not announced forecast?
0:55:23- I think I kind of mentioned it here and there.
0:55:25It's also, it's in the ID3 tags of every MP3 I've made
0:55:28in the last two months.
0:55:29So it's just sitting right there.
0:55:32People have asked me on Twitter like,
0:55:33"Hey, what's this forecast thing?"
0:55:35So yeah, they figured it out.
0:55:36- Oh God, I feel like such a turd.
0:55:37Oh, I'm sorry.
0:55:38Do we wanna rerecord that?
0:55:39We can rerecord.
0:55:40- No, it's fine.
0:55:41- No, no, no, now you have to explain
0:55:42the goofy origins of the name
0:55:43in typical Marco naming fashion.
0:55:46- I am excellent at naming things.
0:55:48I don't know what you're talking about.
0:55:50- Actually, this is perfect
0:55:51'cause this will delay TiVo even more.
0:55:52So please tell me the name about this thing
0:55:54that I just spilled the beans on?
0:55:56- Sure, so Forecast is my podcast post-production app
0:56:00for the Mac.
0:56:01It basically is an MP3 encoder,
0:56:04as well as a chapter and metadata editor.
0:56:07So it allows you to input any audio file,
0:56:11WAV, AIF, other MP3s, whatever else,
0:56:15and just edit the metadata on it.
0:56:17It encodes its MP3 if it isn't an MP3 already.
0:56:19It uses my parallel version of the lame MP3 encoder,
0:56:22like I discussed a few episodes back.
0:56:25I did succeed in making that.
0:56:26It does work.
0:56:27The last few episodes of this show have been encoded with it
0:56:29and nobody noticed, so that's good.
0:56:31And it also can do things like edit chapters.
0:56:33And you might have noticed in recent shows
0:56:34that not only have I been using chapters more
0:56:37in the encode here,
0:56:39but also that we've recently gotten,
0:56:42here and there I've been throwing in some chapter images
0:56:45where you have a special image showing up at certain times
0:56:48in certain shows that's topically relevant.
0:56:51And this is all being done by this app, Forecast.
0:56:54And the reason I named it Forecast
0:56:55is because it's what comes before Overcast.
0:56:57Come on.
0:56:58I mean--
0:56:59Oh, no, you got the three things.
0:57:00So it's the connection to the weather.
0:57:02So Overcast and Forecast, you forecast the weather.
0:57:04But you've also-- and then what was the one you just said?
0:57:07You do it before it appears in Overcast.
0:57:10And also, this application takes files
0:57:12and prepares them for Overcast.
0:57:16Yep.
0:57:17And Overcast ends in Cast, which is
0:57:20is because it's about podcasts.
0:57:21So it's all these different, you know,
0:57:23all these references and this name forecast, so.
0:57:26- And also you are the famous creator
0:57:27of the podcast application Instacast,
0:57:29as far as I'm concerned, is that right?
0:57:31- Yeah, that's, you know, people,
0:57:37for a while I thought I kind of owned
0:57:39like the Insta prefix with Instapaper,
0:57:42and then Instagram came out and the game was over,
0:57:44because now like everybody just thinks
0:57:46anything Insta, people think Instagram.
0:57:49So even if I tried to, and Instacast was a different
0:57:52podcast app by a different person,
0:57:55but even if that never existed,
0:57:56even if I tried to launch a new podcast app
0:57:59called Instacast, people would think I was ripping off
0:58:02Instagram's name, not playing off my own name
0:58:05of my own product from 10 years ago.
0:58:07So anyway, so my app is called Forecast,
0:58:12and it's a Mac app, although as far as I know,
0:58:15there's nothing really about it that would make it,
0:58:17that would preclude an iOS version in the future if I really thought that it was warranted.
0:58:21But there's not a whole lot of podcast production happening on iOS these days. So the demand
0:58:26is mostly on the computer side and probably mostly on the Mac side, if I had to guess,
0:58:30between Mac and PC. So that's what I'm doing. It's a small project. It's not like a massive
0:58:37thing. I've been working on it for a few weeks. It's in beta now, a very small private beta,
0:58:42And I haven't really decided how and when to release it and charge for it.
0:58:49And I talked a little bit about this on Under the Radar two weeks ago, so we'll link to
0:58:52that.
0:58:54Just basically considerations of whether you should even charge money for something like
0:58:58this or whether it's not even worth the hassle of charging money.
0:59:03Because charging money brings a certain degree of overhead and of support burden and things
0:59:08like that.
0:59:09If it's only gonna make a small amount of money overall
0:59:12because of small volume of sales,
0:59:15it's kind of questionable whether that's even worth doing.
0:59:19The entire run of Bugshot,
0:59:21when I was charging for it and when I still owned Bugshot,
0:59:27the entire run of it made something like $3,000.
0:59:30And $3,000 is a lot of money to a lot of people,
0:59:32and it was for me at the time as well.
0:59:33However, it also took a pretty big portion of my summer
0:59:38to do that and there was an opportunity cost there
0:59:40like I probably should have been working on Overcast
0:59:43at the time and instead I made Bugshot
0:59:45and to have made a relatively small amount of money
0:59:49over like a year worth of sales,
0:59:52it probably wasn't worth it in retrospect
0:59:55and that's why I eventually just decided
0:59:56to just make it free and just learn from it,
0:59:59whatever I could learn from having a free app in the store.
1:00:02So with Forecast, I'm kind of faced with a similar
1:00:05conclusion or a similar dilemma here
1:00:08of do I charge for it or not?
1:00:10And I talked actually a little bit about this last week
1:00:12when we talked about Sidetrack, my alignment utility
1:00:15that also exists, although forecast is way more
1:00:18in a releasable state because it's just a simpler problem.
1:00:21But anyway, I don't really know
1:00:23whether I'm going to charge for it or not.
1:00:25If I'm going to charge for it,
1:00:27it would probably be like 50 bucks
1:00:29because anything less than that,
1:00:31I don't think it would be worth it,
1:00:32but the problem is like how many people
1:00:34are gonna pay for a podcast chapter utility.
1:00:37Now there is a podcast chapter utility
1:00:40already in the Mac App Store today.
1:00:42I believe it's called podcast chapters.
1:00:44It's 20 bucks and as far as I can tell,
1:00:47it doesn't look at selling in meaningful volume,
1:00:50which is too bad because I think this is a market
1:00:52that should be a strong market.
1:00:54With me going in there saying,
1:00:56I wanna be able to charge 50 bucks for this,
1:00:58it's not very promising that there's already one for 20
1:01:01that appears not to be selling very well.
1:01:03So I think you gotta figure like,
1:01:05yeah, I could push it, I could use my brand
1:01:07and my blue check mark to really sell this thing,
1:01:09and like, but how many copies am I really gonna sell?
1:01:12How many people are really making chapterized podcasts
1:01:15and are willing to pay 50 bucks
1:01:16for my version of solving this problem?
1:01:19That number is probably something like 100 people at most,
1:01:23in the most optimistic projection, 100 people,
1:01:26probably more like 20 to 30 people,
1:01:30if I'm really being honest.
1:01:31it's probably a very small number of people
1:01:34who actually would buy this thing.
1:01:35So because it's so small, I'm leaning mostly towards
1:01:40not even charging money for it,
1:01:43because it just seems like the overhead of charging money
1:01:47would not really be worth setting all that up.
1:01:51That being said, I also have an app called Quitter,
1:01:54which we plugged poorly last episode.
1:01:57I also have a Mac app called Quitter,
1:01:59and it would kind of be an interesting learning experience
1:02:02to figure out how to charge money for Mac apps
1:02:05to set up the infrastructure to charge money for Mac apps.
1:02:07This is all outside the App Store
1:02:09because the Mac App Store does not really offer anything,
1:02:14it doesn't offer enough to make it worth the 30% anymore
1:02:18if it ever did.
1:02:19Anyway, so big question is do I release this thing
1:02:22and then do I charge for it
1:02:23and then if I charge for it, how do I charge for it?
1:02:26And then the follow-up topic to this,
1:02:28which is how do I do license management
1:02:31and piracy prevention, or rather, piracy reduction,
1:02:35I guess I should say, 'cause I'm a realist here.
1:02:37I know how these things work.
1:02:39So what do you think, what should I do here?
1:02:41- If you weren't gonna charge for it,
1:02:43which you're slowly convincing me.
1:02:45Before I was like, you should just charge
1:02:46a huge amount of money for it
1:02:47'cause five people are gonna buy it.
1:02:49And unfortunately, you're gonna get free copies
1:02:51of those five people, so really you're gonna sell zero.
1:02:53But now as you talk about it more,
1:02:55I'm like, well, if it's gonna be free,
1:02:56I start to think that not only should it be free, it should be open source.
1:03:00Because when some annoying corner case of the spec comes out, there's enough nerdy people
1:03:04that they'll just send you a pull request and why not get the benefits of it being free?
1:03:11You're not going to get any of the benefits of making any money if you're going to make
1:03:14it free.
1:03:15Why not go all the way in the other direction and say, "Not only is this free, this is open
1:03:18source."
1:03:19And then also, if you get tired of maintaining it, some other person who's more enthusiastic
1:03:24about maintaining it could take it over because you just want this tool to exist, which is
1:03:27why you're making it.
1:03:28Like you're scratching your own itch here.
1:03:29Sure.
1:03:30It's not as if this is your grand plan for world domination, right?
1:03:32I think you would be fine if someone took it over and kept up with all these, you know,
1:03:37whenever you get a report like, "Oh, I tried to use your tool and it didn't work on this
1:03:40particular weird thing encoded with this," like you don't want to deal with that crap.
1:03:44So I would say free and open source is a good option or closed source and charge a huge
1:03:51amount of money as a deterrent to keep away the look you lose.
1:03:59Yeah and then see how it works out.
1:04:01And if you really do want to figure out like how can people send me money for a Mac application,
1:04:07like maybe as people were saying in the chat room, maybe make it like a tip jar type of
1:04:11thing where it's not even like patronage.
1:04:14It's not even like you're promising that anyone that you're even going to like put that money
1:04:17into further development of this application.
1:04:19just like, look, this is free.
1:04:22If you like it and you wanna say thank you,
1:04:24put a dollar in this jar, you get nothing for this dollar.
1:04:27Like it doesn't even guarantee that I'm ever gonna make
1:04:29another version of this application,
1:04:30but if you just wanna be a nice person, do that.
1:04:33And I think that could make as much money
1:04:35as the one where you charge five people 50 bucks.
1:04:39- It might, well okay, so let me address these two
1:04:41separately, 'cause these are two big topics I think.
1:04:43So first, the open source question.
1:04:46That is a very, very good question,
1:04:47and it's an interesting theory of, you know,
1:04:49should this just be open source?
1:04:50And I've thought about that for this and Sidetrack.
1:04:53What I found though, you know,
1:04:54in just being a person using computers for a while,
1:04:57and a little bit of direct developer experience,
1:05:00but mostly just being a user of this stuff,
1:05:02what I found is that there tends to be
1:05:05not that much value to entirely open sourced applications,
1:05:10especially for fairly narrow uses like this.
1:05:13There is lots of value in open source components
1:05:15and utility libraries and stuff like that.
1:05:17There's lots of value there,
1:05:19but the value of open sourcing the entire app here
1:05:23is not incredibly great unless there's going to be
1:05:26a lot of contributors working on it.
1:05:29And for most apps, that simply doesn't happen.
1:05:31For most apps, getting a lot of contributors
1:05:34is like this fantasy that you have
1:05:36when you think about open sourcing it,
1:05:37but then if you actually do open source it,
1:05:39almost nobody contributes,
1:05:41and you get a handful of pull requests here and there,
1:05:43and then it just works.
1:05:44then it's just like, it's like going through resumes,
1:05:46but people put all this work into it,
1:05:47and then you have to like, you know,
1:05:49the ones you want to accept, you gotta like,
1:05:51you know, make sure they work, you gotta test them
1:05:53with all of Casey's unit tests, and all this crazy stuff,
1:05:56and then, and even the ones that work that you wanna add,
1:06:00it might not have really been in the way
1:06:01that you would have wanted to do it,
1:06:03or the code might be messy.
1:06:05- You gotta let go, when it's open source,
1:06:06you gotta let go of the thing, and like,
1:06:09and I think you don't want a whole bunch
1:06:10of a contributor or something,
1:06:11I think you just want like two smart people
1:06:12contributing to it, and that's it.
1:06:14And all it does is relieve the maintenance burden for you
1:06:17with the idea that eventually you'll be bored with it
1:06:19and someone else will just take it over
1:06:21and then you'll be sending them five line pull requests.
1:06:24- Yeah, but I think in reality,
1:06:26again, that's a great theory.
1:06:28In reality, that doesn't happen very often.
1:06:30And also, so when you open source things,
1:06:34especially a full app like this,
1:06:35you have the problem of you're generating work for yourself
1:06:39because you're gonna have to deal with the contributions
1:06:42and the reports from people and the pull request.
1:06:45- You don't have to deal with the contribution.
1:06:47You can just ignore it.
1:06:48Eventually people will fork it and like,
1:06:50that's the only-- - Yeah, but then you're a jerk.
1:06:51- No, it's not.
1:06:52I feel like that's every open source thing I've ever done
1:06:54that's been like, look, here it is.
1:06:56Maybe if I feel like it, I'll look at your pull request,
1:06:58but if not, 'cause if people are annoyed
1:06:59that you're not taking the pull request,
1:07:00they'll just fork it and then they've taken it.
1:07:02That's the only way you get people to take it over
1:07:04is you just neglect it and then someone else takes it over
1:07:06and you're like, oh, good, done.
1:07:10I'm thinking of it as totally not feeling any social responsibility because this is
1:07:16a very obscure thing.
1:07:18It is not a mass market thing.
1:07:20It's super obscure and it's just kind of your way of having… it's like buying a lottery
1:07:26ticket for removing a small amount of maintenance from your future, but it really is totally
1:07:30giving up ownership of it.
1:07:31So forget about picking a cool name for it and having any ownership or any stake in it
1:07:35or whatever.
1:07:36It's just completely open source.
1:07:37to the far extreme of these possibilities,
1:07:41which you have never done anything like this,
1:07:43and the only reason I'm suggesting it in this case
1:07:45is because this seems like the only time
1:07:48I would ever recommend it,
1:07:49because it's so clearly not a thing
1:07:53that has any potential upside that is significant.
1:07:57- Yeah, I agree with Jon.
1:07:58Unless you're gonna be charging an absurd amount of money,
1:08:01which I think in principle you could,
1:08:04because the kind of people that would use this
1:08:06probably the kind of people that make a decent amount of money making these shows.
1:08:10Mmm, that's not necessarily true. It's not necessarily true, but it's certainly
1:08:14possible. But regardless of that, I think Jon has convinced me, listening to him, that
1:08:21open sourcing it is probably the best way to go, because the key to open sourcing it
1:08:25is that you can point at that GitHub repo and just say, "Yep, shrug. It's up to you,
1:08:31I did my part now. It's up to you and
1:08:33And then if somebody complains to you that something isn't working you can you are completely absolved of any guilt because it is within
1:08:41Their power in principle to fix that that's a wonderful theory. That doesn't work in practice
1:08:47Like it's just it's just a change in attitude. You just say like like I'm not offering you support for this
1:08:54This is not a product. You didn't pay me anymore
1:08:56Like if anyone actually complained be like you're getting what you paid for
1:08:59I'll refund all zero dollars of your money. Like don't even respond to the emails
1:09:03Don't even look at the things like I'm good at that tons of tons
1:09:05Those are stuffers like that and I don't think anyone can get mad about it's like plop here it is
1:09:11And you can continue to edit your thing or like like there is no obligation
1:09:15I feel and this is you know
1:09:17This is a topic of some controversy in the open source world people like once you have it open source
1:09:21You have to like maintain it and deal with progress
1:09:23No
1:09:23You don't that my I'm totally of the opinion if you just want to plop a bunch of code down and be like here it is
1:09:28and never communicate with anyone in the entire world about it ever again.
1:09:32Just put it under a license.
1:09:33It's like, "You want it?
1:09:34Here you go.
1:09:35Fork it.
1:09:36Do whatever the hell you want.
1:09:37You and your friends do whatever you want.
1:09:38If you don't have the ability to change it, oh well.
1:09:42Sucks to be you."
1:09:43But whatever.
1:09:44I'm a programmer.
1:09:45I wrote this for my own purposes.
1:09:46And as a nice aside, I'm going to chuck it out there so other people can mess with it
1:09:49if they want.
1:09:50If I'm in the mood and someone sends me a progress, maybe I'll incorporate it, but no
1:09:53promises.
1:09:54Maybe I'll never look at it again, which I understand that doesn't feel good to a lot
1:09:57of people, but to me that feels like one of the beautiful things about open source.
1:10:05It's kind of like, rather than keeping it to yourself, say we take selling it to other
1:10:12people off the table, which I don't think it should be off the table, but anyway, say
1:10:15the alternative was "I wrote this out for myself and I used it myself," and this is
1:10:19the alternative, don't hide it.
1:10:21It's like taking all your belongings with you when you die.
1:10:24As soon as I die, I'd burn every one of the Van Gogh paintings I own because I don't want
1:10:28anyone else to ever have them.
1:10:29It's like, I made this thing for myself, but also I want to share it with the world, so
1:10:35if you want it, here it is.
1:10:37It is what it is.
1:10:40Go nuts with it.
1:10:41And them having it doesn't affect you because it's software.
1:10:43Like, you can both have it at the same time.
1:10:46And you can both do whatever you want with it.
1:10:49Develop it, not develop it, whatever.
1:10:53And the final thing is, it has all the benefits of being free, because if we look at the iTunes
1:10:57podcast directory, there are a huge number of podcasts.
1:11:01If you made a free tool like this, Word would get around among the tons and tons of sort
1:11:05of like, you know, whatever the bell curve looks like for podcasts in terms of traffic
1:11:10numbers, the long tail of podcasts that are out there.
1:11:13There are a lot of podcasts, and I bet a few of them, if they needed a tool that did this,
1:11:18and Word got out, they're like, "Oh, if you need a tool that does this, the easiest one
1:11:21is this free Mac app. Click on this thing, download the thing, and use it. Whatever.
1:11:26You're helping a lot of people do their podcast production, and if those people come looking
1:11:31for like, "Oh, I found a bug in this program," or whatever, you don't have to respond to
1:11:34them either because they got a free application off a GitHub page. Maybe they won't even
1:11:38be downloading it from your page. They'd be downloading it from the seventh or eighth
1:11:41person who forked it. Who knows?
1:11:43Well, okay. Those are all reasonable concerns and reasonable points, but I don't think
1:11:48I'm ready to give up that kind of control.
1:11:50- I know, I know, I totally know from your personality
1:11:53you don't wanna do this, but I'm just saying.
1:11:54- Right, and by open sourcing it,
1:11:56you close a lot of doors for yourself in the future.
1:11:59Like, I mean, yes, you open some,
1:12:00thank you, Richard Stallman,
1:12:02but you close a lot of doors for yourself of like,
1:12:05what if I wanted to start charging for it
1:12:06in the next version, or even just take this version
1:12:10and start charging for it.
1:12:11There are a lot of opportunities
1:12:12that you basically close off by doing that.
1:12:15Also, open source has a number of problems
1:12:19in today's world, and I don't know if this was always the case, but it certainly seems
1:12:23like today this is a big problem, where any kind of open source app now in the world of
1:12:29app stores will have lots of opportunistic vultures and scammers basically just taking
1:12:36it, changing the name maybe if you're lucky, and putting it on the app store for money
1:12:40and trying to make money off of it. This happens to all sorts of open source applications now.
1:12:45It happens a lot.
1:12:46- App Review would never allow that.
1:12:48- Yeah, right, that's hilarious.
1:12:51- Put a little icon of Mario on it.
1:12:54- Exactly.
1:12:54- And call it Minecraft 2.0,
1:12:56and I'm sure that will go right through App Review.
1:12:59- Exactly, and so basically, there's a lot of problems
1:13:03with entire open source applications, that's one of them.
1:13:07And so, yeah, I mean, I don't think I'll open source it.
1:13:11If I ever decided that I was done working on it
1:13:14that it was going to be unmaintained,
1:13:16maybe then I would open source it,
1:13:17that that would be kind of the classy move to do
1:13:19if there were no obvious problems by doing that.
1:13:21But that's, I think I'd keep a closed source
1:13:25until I figure out what to do with it.
1:13:27That being said, again, do I really charge for it or not?
1:13:33I don't know, I mean, ultimately,
1:13:36the world is better off if it's free,
1:13:38but I have a hard time justifying working on it if it's free
1:13:42So I have to kind of balance that like, you know,
1:13:44is it really, like, 'cause every day I spend working
1:13:47on this, I'm not improving Overcast.
1:13:50And I still need to do that too.
1:13:52And you know, I need to like, this needs to be a project
1:13:56that I only work on in short bursts so that I can get back
1:13:58to working on Overcast, which is still providing
1:14:00the bulk of my software income.
1:14:03So you know, it's, I don't know, it's a tough balance.
1:14:06I would love to be in a position where I could start
1:14:08making real money from podcasting tools,
1:14:11and have that start being an important enough part
1:14:14of my business that I could spend more time working on it.
1:14:16But I think as many people have found
1:14:18when they try to get into this business,
1:14:20it's just very hard to make money off of podcasting tools
1:14:22because even though podcasting is really doing very well
1:14:25right now, the number of podcast producers
1:14:28is still fairly small relative to things like blogging
1:14:30and stuff like that.
1:14:32It's still a pretty small number producing podcasts.
1:14:35And of the ones who produce podcasts,
1:14:37there are so many different ways to produce them,
1:14:39so many different tools people prefer to use
1:14:41can afford to use or need to use in various conditions
1:14:44that they're working in, that even if you make a tool,
1:14:48the percentage of the market that will actually choose
1:14:53to use that tool, especially if it's charged money for,
1:14:57you're talking about very small numbers of people.
1:15:00And if you raise the price high enough
1:15:04to make it worth your time to develop it,
1:15:06those people wouldn't be able to afford it anymore.
1:15:08So it's a very hard market to really make money in
1:15:13directly through direct sales.
1:15:15Now of course there are other strategies I could use here.
1:15:18I could give away a whole bunch of great production tools
1:15:20for free that are all optimized for how Overcast works.
1:15:24And so this would put me in a position to do things like
1:15:26add new metadata formats that Overcast could debut
1:15:30being the first app to read them.
1:15:32And that would also piss off a lot of people,
1:15:33but that's an option I could do.
1:15:36I could just have this thing be something that, you know,
1:15:40pushes the MP3 chapter format because I love MP3 chapters,
1:15:44I hate M4A chapters, that's a terrible format.
1:15:47And this would help push it towards MP3,
1:15:49which Overcast deals better with,
1:15:51which everybody deals better with,
1:15:52it's a much easier format.
1:15:54It's actually documented, that's a big one right there.
1:15:57Thanks Apple for never documenting
1:15:58the original AAC-enhanced format.
1:16:02Anyway, there's lots of options I have here.
1:16:04I don't know how interesting this is for all the listeners,
1:16:06so I guess I can move on from that portion
1:16:08of whether I charge for it,
1:16:11and then we can move on to discussing piracy, fun,
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1:17:47So based on what we know about you and how you don't want to do this open source and
1:17:54you don't want to get away for free or whatever, but also what you said about the maximum addressable
1:17:59market for this application being relatively small.
1:18:02It's making me lean pretty heavily towards the idea
1:18:04that you do not spend much time trying to prevent piracy.
1:18:07Because everybody's been discussing
1:18:09in Slack over the past weeks and has been discussed many times
1:18:12on the web, especially in the old days,
1:18:13back before the days of shareware and everything.
1:18:17You can invest essentially infinite time
1:18:19in trying to stop piracy.
1:18:20You will always lose.
1:18:21It's almost impossible to stop unless you're really
1:18:25bad to your legitimate users.
1:18:27And for what?
1:18:28to get two extra users out of an addressable market of 100.
1:18:32It's just not worth it.
1:18:33So not only should you not spend lots of your time
1:18:36on an application that you know is not gonna make
1:18:37tons of money, but of the time that you spend,
1:18:41all that time should be on the actual application.
1:18:44Very little of it should be on the part
1:18:47that prevents piracy.
1:18:48You wanna prevent super casual piracy,
1:18:50so do basically the simplest thing that will possibly work,
1:18:53and I would say that's it.
1:18:56And then just like, you know, you don't want to do nothing because it's so easy to just
1:19:00do something and that helps.
1:19:02But and especially if like, as you mentioned, the ambition to be like, this could be a stepping
1:19:06stone to like, you know, a suite of podcasting tools or an integrated podcast production
1:19:11application.
1:19:12Like you have to build your way up to an app like that.
1:19:13It's very difficult for a single developer with other applications to do that.
1:19:17Like, but if you are going to build your way up to it, you'd want to build it on a ladder
1:19:21of small applications that make money and that you learn things from.
1:19:24that once you do Marco's minimal casual piracy prevention kit, you just reuse that in all
1:19:30the other apps you do.
1:19:31And then, you know, it's an infrastructure win.
1:19:35Like, you do it once, do it to your satisfaction, don't worry about it again, and then try not
1:19:41to.
1:19:42Because as programmers, it's fun to get sucked into like, "Oh, I can battle these hackers,
1:19:45and what if I do this clever thing and that?"
1:19:47And you're gonna lose, and it's just a rat hole, and no one gives you money for thwarting
1:19:52hackers.
1:19:53no one gives you money.
1:19:54It's the old thing of how many of those people
1:19:56would have paid if you prevented it.
1:19:58Do enough to keep the people with a conscience
1:20:02vaguely honest and then call it a day.
1:20:04- Yeah, that's basically my thought here too,
1:20:07which is if I charge for this,
1:20:09which again, I'm really leaning mostly towards
1:20:13keeping it closed source but probably releasing it for free.
1:20:15But if I do charge for it, ultimately I agree
1:20:18because I grew up as a PC user
1:20:22in the late 90s, pirating tons of crap as a stupid teenager.
1:20:26I know how these things work,
1:20:28and it's been a while since I've been in that scene,
1:20:30but I'm pretty sure it basically works the same way now
1:20:33as it always has.
1:20:34The easiest case scenario is you share a key,
1:20:37and even if you start doing key checks,
1:20:39well then you just hack the binary to bypass the check.
1:20:42And no matter how obscure,
1:20:43and you can obfuscate the check,
1:20:45you can put multiple checks all over the code,
1:20:47there's all sorts of strategies and techniques you can do,
1:20:50And ultimately, none of them really work for very long.
1:20:53And you can look at the gaming market,
1:20:55the PC gaming market, for all their wonderful tricks
1:20:57they've tried to do over the years,
1:20:59and most of which get cracked fairly quickly.
1:21:02Granted, a big reason those get cracked
1:21:05is because there's a lot of people
1:21:06who want them to be cracked.
1:21:07And if for a very narrow tool like this,
1:21:11if there's only gonna be like 100 possible customers,
1:21:14it's very likely that none of those 100 people
1:21:16are actually professional crackers.
1:21:18But the reality is that I agree that it's not really
1:21:23worth spending a lot of time on.
1:21:24It is worth spending some time on
1:21:26because a little goes a long way.
1:21:28If you put in a system where like,
1:21:32all right, I just bought it and I wanna give it to Casey
1:21:35and I just, do I email him a copy of my key
1:21:38and he just enters it and it works?
1:21:40And then what if he wants to give it to a friend?
1:21:41Does he just pass along my key too?
1:21:43Like how does all these things work?
1:21:45Or in the case where none of us have bought it,
1:21:48Does he go on whatever the BitTorrent tracker of the month is
1:21:52and try to download it from there
1:21:54or download a crack from some big database or something?
1:21:56I don't know.
1:21:57It's been a long time since I tried to pirate anything,
1:22:00or at least anything that wasn't a TV show,
1:22:02but I assume that's how these things still work,
1:22:05and you're never gonna win against that.
1:22:06And so, yeah, it isn't worth a lot of effort.
1:22:09I am, of course, not naive enough to assume
1:22:14that every pirated copy is a lost sale
1:22:17and that if I make it impossible to pirate
1:22:19on the craziest something that I can,
1:22:22that I will somehow get all those sales again.
1:22:24I know that's not how the world works,
1:22:26but I would build something.
1:22:28I could do some kind of cryptographic key,
1:22:31that's pretty easy.
1:22:31I have a public/private key thing already set up
1:22:33so I can verify that my server generated a certain string
1:22:37with a signature and everything,
1:22:38but this all really seems like
1:22:40it's probably not necessary at all
1:22:41because it's probably not worth charging for,
1:22:43at least for a while.
1:22:44And maybe someday if I have,
1:22:47A few years down the road, if I have a suite of tools
1:22:50that I can release together as one suite,
1:22:52and maybe charge 50 or 100 bucks for that,
1:22:56maybe that becomes more compelling,
1:22:57and maybe I charge then,
1:22:59but I just don't see charging for this now
1:23:02in a way that would be really worth the trouble,
1:23:05because I think at most, I might make a couple thousand
1:23:10dollars over the course of a year,
1:23:12and I know that sounds like a lot of money to some people,
1:23:15But if I have to have this entire support system in place to make that, it's probably
1:23:21not worth it.
1:23:22You know, as I'm thinking about it and listening to you talk, the only reason I can see not
1:23:31to open source it on the assumption that it's free, which is what it sounds like you're
1:23:35kind of backing your way into, the only reason I can see not to open source it is if you
1:23:39wanted to eventually sell it down the road.
1:23:42that's a weak argument to begin with but if you make it free there's still a
1:23:48support burden it may not be quite as obnoxious as a paid app but you still
1:23:54have a support burden whereas if you open source it it should absolve you of
1:23:58any support burden I guarantee you it doesn't I guarantee it well but that's
1:24:02all in you right I think the free it's a free one absolves you of support too
1:24:06because if it's free like I don't think the open source gets rid of support like
1:24:09Like, what the open source does is, I was just saying, like, if people do send you patches,
1:24:13you don't have to accept those.
1:24:14But if you give a free app, too, there's no support button there.
1:24:18It's like, it's a free app.
1:24:19Like, this is what I'm using right now.
1:24:21I happen to put a link up on my website.
1:24:22You feel free to download it and use it, but you get nothing from me.
1:24:25I don't owe you anything.
1:24:26Again, I will refund your entire zero dollars that you paid for it.
1:24:29Well, but when, if it's open source, then you can say, "Well, go fix it yourself," which
1:24:33is obnoxious, but...
1:24:34No, you can't actually, you can't actually say that.
1:24:37You should never actually say that.
1:24:38And you can't say that because nobody who complains
1:24:40knows how to fix it.
1:24:41- Yeah, I mean, like, I am a programmer.
1:24:44I use lots of open source libraries and stuff and things,
1:24:47and I hardly ever fix bugs in them.
1:24:49I just, if I find a problem with one,
1:24:51I either work around it or I stop using it, usually.
1:24:53Because usually it's a deeper problem
1:24:56that I don't feel qualified to fix
1:24:58or don't wanna spend the time to get familiar enough
1:25:00with the code base to fix correctly.
1:25:02I mean, like, how many podcast producers
1:25:05are also Mac programmers?
1:25:07Some of them are, but probably not a lot of them.
1:25:09- Yeah, that's a fair point.
1:25:11I really feel like if you have a free app,
1:25:16you will definitely, a free closed source app,
1:25:20you will definitely get support requests and complaints.
1:25:24And if it were me anyway,
1:25:27I would feel a lot more compulsion to address those
1:25:32because I'm the only person on the planet
1:25:34who can address them,
1:25:36as opposed to if this thing was on GitHub,
1:25:38which admittedly the people who are emailing
1:25:40may not have the capability of fixing the problem.
1:25:42But at least there's some other human being out there
1:25:46that might be able to.
1:25:47And that's how I would rest easy at night,
1:25:49is knowing, look, I'm not helping all these people
1:25:51that are whining about what does or does not work,
1:25:55but I'm also not standing in the way of them
1:25:58figuring out a way to fix it.
1:26:00- Because any future designs on podcast production products,
1:26:04which clearly he has though,
1:26:05All you'd be doing is giving Head Start to your future competitors, essentially.
1:26:09Someone could just pick up that code and say, "I'm going to use this as the basis of my
1:26:11competing suite."
1:26:12And that's not a good plan if that's here.
1:26:15If you even plan to do that, but like, "I might do that," like Marco said, "I want to
1:26:20leave that option open."
1:26:23And getting back to the serial number thing, I think the most important feature of the
1:26:27anti-piracy thing, other than the fact that it exists at all as a non-zero barrier, is
1:26:33that it not annoy honest people.
1:26:36And that is the part where most of these systems fall down.
1:26:40Because really, we're like, it's again, it's so tempting to judge your anti-piracy system
1:26:45on how well it prevents piracy, but your anti-piracy system should be judged on how little it annoys
1:26:51people who are not pirates.
1:26:52And that's really hard to do.
1:26:55Mostly in terms of restraint, you have to back off and not be like, "But if I can't
1:26:59contact the server to verify the code, I shouldn't launch, right?"
1:27:01It's like, no, no, you gotta just let go.
1:27:05Just think about the honest user
1:27:07and how you never want to be in their face.
1:27:09- Yeah, no, I mean, because I am me,
1:27:13I have brainstormed all sorts of crazy ways
1:27:15that I could do this.
1:27:16Of course, I'm thinking about doing a passwordless
1:27:19email lock in, 'cause that's what I do.
1:27:22- We already beta tested that.
1:27:25The focus group is not good.
1:27:27- I still don't have a problem with it.
1:27:29- Yeah, that's because maybe your emails
1:27:31likely show up in time and you're not sitting there
1:27:32hitting refresh on your email client going,
1:27:34(imitates
1:27:35cursing Marco every time.
1:27:37- Yeah, so anyway, those of us with really
1:27:39email clients love these kinds of systems.
1:27:42- It's not the client, it's your damn server.
1:27:44It's stuck in a queue somewhere trying to get out of your ISP.
1:27:46- It's not my server, it's your client.
1:27:48- This is why you don't use the Gmail web app, kids.
1:27:50- This is why you don't use Gmail, kids.
1:27:52- Gmail's fine.
1:27:53- Gmail gets mails like instantly.
1:27:55- Except for yours, apparently.
1:27:57- No, no, some websites, third party websites
1:28:00that are not Googles, I go and I do like reset my password.
1:28:03I click the reset my password link
1:28:06and like before the mouse button is up,
1:28:09it arrives in the other browser window in Gmail.
1:28:12And when I see that, I realize it's not Gmail
1:28:14that's not checking my mail fast enough.
1:28:16It's something else.
1:28:17Whether it's internet traffic,
1:28:19email as a store and forward system,
1:28:20many things can go wrong.
1:28:21- It's not that, it's gray listing.
1:28:24It's always gray, if there's ever a delay
1:28:26in email arriving in 2016, it's gray listing.
1:28:29It is not like, oh, the postfix queue is full.
1:28:32No, we are so far past that point these days.
1:28:36So for those of you who aren't familiar,
1:28:37gray listing is a type of spam prevention technique
1:28:40where basically the theory is that spam servers
1:28:45have to go through this massive list
1:28:47and don't have time to retry and wait around
1:28:50if the server says I'm busy, try again later.
1:28:53So the idea, but a well-behaving mail sending server,
1:28:57If the destination server says,
1:28:59"Sorry, I'm busy, try again later,"
1:29:01it'll actually hold onto that message for a while,
1:29:03like a week, and it'll just try every hour, whatever.
1:29:07It'll try again after certain short intervals
1:29:10and then followed by long intervals.
1:29:11Anyway, it doesn't matter.
1:29:12So a spam provision technique that a lot of places do
1:29:16is upon the first time you get email from a certain sender,
1:29:20so you don't already know that they're legit,
1:29:22you just tell them, "Oh, you know what?
1:29:24"I'm busy right now, wait a bit."
1:29:25And the theory is that the spammers will just move on
1:29:28because the spam bots don't have enough memory
1:29:30to keep track of all those things and try again later.
1:29:33And then, but legit servers will try again later
1:29:36and it'll get through.
1:29:37And that's why so often the first email you get
1:29:40from a certain service or whatever else
1:29:42will be delayed by like an hour.
1:29:44That's what's happening.
1:29:45It is not any other reason, it is that.
1:29:47It is great listening.
1:29:47- But it's not, the first email from your servers
1:29:49that gets delayed, it's random.
1:29:51And it's not an hour, it's like 60 seconds,
1:29:54but it seems like a long 60 seconds
1:29:56when I'm sitting there waiting for it to arrive.
1:29:57- Well, no, it's kind of, it's up to,
1:30:00well, okay, I see what you're saying,
1:30:01where in your case, it's not that long.
1:30:04But yeah, 'cause I think it's kind of up to the client,
1:30:06up to the sender as to when they try again,
1:30:08but I think a common practice is about an hour
1:30:12or something like that, but yeah.
1:30:13- Anyway, it's kind of like the orders of magnitude
1:30:15in terms of instantaneous is less than the speed
1:30:18and not waiting is less than 100 milliseconds,
1:30:22There's certain orders of magnitude of like 10 milliseconds, 100 milliseconds, one second
1:30:28of when does attention wander, when do you feel like you can go off and do other things,
1:30:33when do you feel like you're waiting on it.
1:30:35And having a password and having it autofill and clicking the button is in a different
1:30:41order of magnitude than having to go to get an email.
1:30:45Even before you get into the idea of having to find a link to click on or whatever or
1:30:49copy and paste something or whatever it is you may have to do. It is just a whole other
1:30:53order of magnitude in terms of responsiveness of like, how long does it take me to log into
1:30:56this site and what other things does it involve. So not a fan.
1:31:01All right, thank you to our three sponsors this week, Hover, Trunk Club and Harry's.
1:31:07And we will see you next week.
1:31:08[Music]
1:31:11Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, 'cause it was accidental.
1:31:18Oh it was accidental.
1:31:20Accidental.
1:31:21John didn't do any research.
1:31:23Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
1:31:26Cause it was accidental.
1:31:28Accidental.
1:31:29Oh it was accidental.
1:31:30Accidental.
1:31:31And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
1:31:36And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at
1:31:42[MUSIC]
1:32:11Did you see all the articles?
1:32:13Like, oh, passwords, the end of the password,
1:32:15passwords are over.
1:32:17I don't know why I even click on those articles anymore,
1:32:19because all they're talking about is like, oh,
1:32:20a password to this login.
1:32:22It's like this hellscape where reset my password
1:32:24is the only way you can log into anything, essentially.
1:32:27- Well, but I mean, honestly, first of all,
1:32:29that is not that bad.
1:32:30I've done it, it's fine.
1:32:31Second of all, that is kind of the reality
1:32:34of how a lot of people log into things anyway,
1:32:35because a lot of people--
1:32:36- I know, but it's not a good reality.
1:32:38Like, it's a bad reality.
1:32:39I don't want that reality.
1:32:40- Agreed, but a lot of people always forget
1:32:43their password to everything, and they just click
1:32:46that link almost every time they log in.
1:32:48- I know, but anyway, you still need to pass
1:32:49it with your email.
1:32:50You eventually get down to a one password situation,
1:32:52and then hey, why not just use one password?
1:32:54- So here's a question.
1:32:55What if my key system was a web login,
1:33:00and what if it was basically in the app,
1:33:03it would have email and password?
1:33:05- No, no.
1:33:06Can you not make a client-side application
1:33:10does not have a server component.
1:33:11You do not need a server component.
1:33:13He's just like, I want to write PHP, damn it.
1:33:15I know it's a Mac app.
1:33:17Like, there's such a huge win to just giving people a binary,
1:33:20and then they never touch your servers.
1:33:22Like, it scales much better than you having to babysit servers.
1:33:25Well, but that does not do anything
1:33:26about key sharing, which is probably the biggest
1:33:29form of casual piracy.
1:33:30No, no, but I'm saying, like, if it's free.
1:33:31Like, if it's a free application.
1:33:32I just want to see you show a free-- like, Quitter.
1:33:35Quitter, I guess you did it.
1:33:36There's no server component to Quitter, right?
1:33:37Yeah, it's just free.
1:33:38but you're just dying to do something in PHP.
1:33:40Like, I could have a login page.
1:33:42- I like PHP.
1:33:44I love all the backslashes and the namespaces.
1:33:46No, I'm just kidding, I still have to use
1:33:47the single namespace 'cause I hate the backslash.
1:33:50- Right, you quickly got over Windowsland, huh?
1:33:53- Yeah, so, oh, I could talk about that briefly if you want,
1:33:56if we don't have an after show,
1:33:57it doesn't have to do with TiVo.
1:33:58So yeah, basically, I asked on Twitter,
1:34:02so TIFF wants to play a certain game
1:34:05only available on Xbox One, yeah, Xbox One and Windows.
1:34:10- You asked on Twitter,
1:34:12that's how you're gonna start the story?
1:34:14(laughing)
1:34:15- So what's the real start of the story?
1:34:17- The real story is, I was asked,
1:34:19because I'm a person who you know who plays games on Macs,
1:34:22hey, I wanna play Inside, how should I do it?
1:34:24And I told you the answer, two days pass,
1:34:26and then you post on Twitter,
1:34:28hey, can anyone tell me how I can play Inside?
1:34:29As if we had never talked,
1:34:31as if the discussion never took place,
1:34:32as if what I had to say was just garbage
1:34:34and obviously not trustworthy because what do I know having actually played Inside on
1:34:38a Mac?
1:34:39What did you tell, you had this conversation with me or Tiff?
1:34:41Oh, one of you two. You're the same person. You live in the same house.
1:34:44No, it's not!
1:34:45Oh, no they are not.
1:34:46No, wait a minute.
1:34:47Oh, no they are not.
1:34:48We are two different people.
1:34:49She was like, "Can you convince Marco to do this?" I'm like, "You can convince Marco.
1:34:51He's your husband. I bet you have some influence in that area."
1:34:54So, so wait. So before I tell you what I did, what should I have done? So my options were
1:34:59basically like, should I, should I attempt to go through the hassle of making a boot
1:35:03boot camp partition and of course you know then having to install, first having to get
1:35:07windows, having to install windows and then having to run windows or should we just buy
1:35:12an Xbox One? Because they're actually not that expensive these days.
1:35:16The answer, the surrounding context of this is that a bunch of people who are on the incomparable
1:35:19have played inside and it's the whole reason I wanted to play it was like they've already
1:35:24played it and they wanted to have a podcast about it and if you want to be on the podcast
1:35:28you have to have played it and at this point there was no implied schedule of like when
1:35:31we were going to do this thing, but the point is they had just played it, like three or
1:35:34four people had played it.
1:35:35So there was a possibility that, hey, three or four people played it.
1:35:37It could have gone up on the schedule for like next week's show, and so time was kind
1:35:41of of the essence here.
1:35:43And in that scenario, in the context of which it was asked, hey, a bunch of people played
1:35:45Inside, I want to play it too, I only have a Mac, the answer, the obvious answer is bootcamp,
1:35:51because it's not just an investment for this game, because you can play lots of things
1:35:54in bootcamp, there are lots of games that are only available for Windows, and it's really
1:35:59easy to do and I know you have tons of spare hard drives laying around and it gets you the game the
1:36:05fastest with the most bang for your buck. Now the Windows thing is an issue but had you followed up
1:36:11with me on that I would have told you the same thing everyone on Twitter did which you can get
1:36:14a free trial and does the free trial matter? For a game that takes three hours to play, who cares?
1:36:19A 90 day, 30 day free trial of Windows? Like this is the fastest way to go from zero to I have played
1:36:24inside with minimal—especially if you're not the one who has to install Bootcamp, just
1:36:29make you do it. Like, TIFF just makes you do it and it's fine. But even if you have
1:36:33to do it yourself, like I did, before you even got to the point where you asked the
1:36:36same question on Twitter to get the same answers from other people, I had finished the game
1:36:39already. I had installed Bootcamp, played the game, finished it. Like, it is not that
1:36:45bad. And now I actually have—I actually had a legitimate copy of Windows 7 from back
1:36:50in a day so now I have a more up-to-date boot camp partition and by the way yes
1:36:54my 2008 Mac Pro played inside just fine at native res of course so Casey what do
1:37:00you think I should have done oh you absolutely without a shadow of a doubt
1:37:03by the expo because that is the most Marco a solution to this problem but no
1:37:08but you don't know like the backstory in the Xbox one is there's two new ones
1:37:12coming out the a better version of the current one and then a much more
1:37:15powerful one a year later so this is kind of the wrong time to buy an Xbox
1:37:17one as well. How much is the Xbox one? You can get them on, you can get them on Amazon
1:37:22for about 250 bucks. You absolutely buy the Xbox one and then if you want to try to sell
1:37:28it for 100 bucks later. You're not going to be able to sell that Xbox one once the new
1:37:31ones come out. So here is my dilemma basically like, the Xbox is the lower effort, the lower
1:37:39effort slightly more money version than just buying Windows or whatever else. Which is
1:37:43the Marco version that is the Marco version yeah probably right however and
1:37:49and if it was if it was a ps4 and it already have ps4 I might have done that
1:37:54however our house is full of game consoles that we've played very briefly
1:37:59and then they just sit around for the next seven years collecting dust under
1:38:02the TV and I just I don't want another console because like if you leave these
1:38:08two options what do I have like after we're done with this if we whether it's
1:38:12like a Windows partition or an external Windows drive
1:38:14or whatever, or this game system,
1:38:17what am I stuck with afterwards in the house?
1:38:19Like what is going to collect dust in the house afterwards?
1:38:22If it's a boot camp partition, nothing.
1:38:24Or at worst, an external disk of some kind.
1:38:27If it's the game system, which admittedly is easier,
1:38:31I have this giant box sitting around
1:38:33and these controllers and these plugs
1:38:34and these adapters and all this crap.
1:38:36I have games, we have a PS3 in the closet
1:38:39that I hardly ever played.
1:38:41We have a PS4 that we've played,
1:38:43that Tiff played I think two games on so far.
1:38:47And VR stuff is gonna come out
1:38:49and make all these systems irrelevant anyway.
1:38:51- Well, let's not go crazy here.
1:38:52- We have a 360 that I bought back in 2008 or something
1:38:56that has very rarely actually,
1:38:59we've used it in bursts here or there,
1:39:01like Tiff would play a certain game on it
1:39:02or I'd play a certain game on it,
1:39:03but for the most part it didn't get a lot of use.
1:39:06Before that we had a Wii that didn't get a lot of use
1:39:08because like everyone else's Wii,
1:39:09We tried it, had fun for a month,
1:39:11and then never played it again.
1:39:13Somewhere we have a Wii Fit balance board
1:39:15where the same fate happened.
1:39:17I have all these giant plastic game systems
1:39:20all over the place trying to figure out
1:39:21what the hell to do with them.
1:39:21You can't really sell them.
1:39:22They're not really worth enough to justify
1:39:24their shipping weight once they're used and old.
1:39:27And so I was like, what the heck do I do with all this?
1:39:31And also, the Xbox One in the current generation
1:39:34just seems like the loser system.
1:39:36And I apologize for anybody who has one,
1:39:38But it just seemed like I have so often in my life
1:39:42made the wrong choice on a format war
1:39:45or a game console generation or something.
1:39:47I've so often like chosen the losing side
1:39:50and then been stuck with this like losing hardware
1:39:52and having all the problems that go along with that.
1:39:55And so I try to avoid that as much as I can these days
1:39:57'cause I've done that so many times.
1:39:59Like I bought a DVD plus R drive.
1:40:02I mean, come on.
1:40:03So I try to avoid that.
1:40:05And the Xbox One just seems like it has so definitively lost this generation.
1:40:10And, you know, some generations are closer than others.
1:40:12This one seems like it's not close.
1:40:14Well, the Xbox One, that's the reason you don't want to buy it now, because it is poised
1:40:17to win the .5 generation that they're both doing.
1:40:21So in the revised versions, not the Xbox that is essentially the same Xbox One but smaller
1:40:27and quieter.
1:40:28Right, it's coming out in a week.
1:40:29Yeah, whatever.
1:40:30Not that one.
1:40:31That's fine.
1:40:32That's just what they normally do.
1:40:33After that, which will be competing with the new PS4, they will both be more powerful consoles.
1:40:39The new more powerful Xbox One will be much more powerful than the new more powerful PlayStation
1:40:444.
1:40:45So it'll be an inversion of the current scenario where the PlayStation 4 is slightly more powerful.
1:40:49This will widen the gap in the opposite direction.
1:40:51Will that be enough to make the Xbox One do better in this generation?
1:40:55Probably not, especially since they'll have to make the games play on the Xbox One too.
1:40:58But all that means is that this is the wrong time to buy an Xbox One, essentially.
1:41:02Unless there's a whole bunch of games that you know you want to play but more importantly in this whole big thing that you've missed
1:41:07That you've gone through the most salient fact here is while you've been worrying about this TIFF has not been playing inside
1:41:13And she could be done already. It's a three-hour game
1:41:15You could have been done like all this hemming and hawing is like pointless and like oh you're not stuck with much in steam
1:41:21Not only you're not stuck with much if you make like a boot camp partition. That is an asset
1:41:25She will not delete it
1:41:26There are tons of games on Steam that are only available on Windows when they have steam sales
1:41:30she'll buy something for three bucks and get it a day's worth of fun out of it and that's a good deal like you won't be
1:41:35Like and I know you have hard drives here
1:41:37You don't have to buy a hard drive like you have them there this you should have already done this
1:41:41I feel like you're failing as a husband and probably as a father Adam is disappointed in you, too
1:41:45Let's be honest. So here's the other the other side of this the rationale on the boot camp side is
1:41:49I find windows dirty. Like I don't like windows. I I was there for so long
1:41:54I I fled and I don't want to go back and I have I have
1:41:59I occasionally maintained boot camp partition
1:42:01on my own computer, on my own Mac, very occasionally,
1:42:04and the last time was a very long time ago,
1:42:06because every time I do it, I regret having done it,
1:42:09because I just, I realize how much I hate Windows
1:42:11and how much I actually don't like gaming
1:42:12very much anymore anyway.
1:42:14But Tiff does play games, so I wanna do something for her,
1:42:17but her computer has no free space,
1:42:19'cause she has tons of photos on it,
1:42:20'cause she is a photographer, so tons of photos on there,
1:42:23there's no free space in the built-in drive.
1:42:25I eventually learned that, oh, you can actually do boot camp
1:42:28external drives these days. I didn't realize that until fairly recently. That solves a
1:42:32lot of these problems because then I don't feel like I have this dirty Windows partition
1:42:35sitting around like junking up my Mac all the time because I can just unplug the drive
1:42:38and put it in a drawer and then it's gone. But I also didn't want to put it on a spinning
1:42:45disk because those are huge and ugly and loud. I actually don't have any 2.5 inch spinning
1:42:49disks. I only have 3.5 inch ones that I could devote to it and that would be even larger
1:42:53and even louder and even hotter and slow and I don't think I even have any three and a
1:42:59half inch enclosures.
1:43:00So this is a lot of excuses.
1:43:02I installed it on a big spending 3.5 inch disk and you know what?
1:43:04I already played the game.
1:43:05Good.
1:43:06And I hate Windows.
1:43:07I guarantee I hate Windows more than you.
1:43:09Guarantee you.
1:43:10Yeah.
1:43:11Well anyway, so instead of doing any of those options, I had to buy something of course
1:43:17because I like buying things.
1:43:18I went on Amazon and I bought one of those little Samsung T3 external SSDs.
1:43:23Oh, of course you did.
1:43:24Yeah, because they're great overall.
1:43:27They're fantastic little SSDs.
1:43:29And I didn't have any other SSDs that were large enough.
1:43:33I had an old really tiny one, but none that were large enough.
1:43:35So I just bought the 250 gig one for like 80 bucks on Amazon a few days ago.
1:43:40It arrived yesterday.
1:43:42I installed it all this morning.
1:43:43I followed the Stack Overflow instructions on how to do an external Windows.
1:43:46First you have to load up VMware,
1:43:49load up Windows in that, use the disk image tool,
1:43:52whatever, automated install tools or whatever
1:43:54to do all this stuff to make it configurable
1:43:56on the external drive.
1:43:56Then install Windows on the external drive
1:43:58using these other Windows installation from your VMware.
1:44:00It's like all this crap.
1:44:01It's like all right, I'll put all this crap on my laptop
1:44:03to configure all this 'cause I don't want this
1:44:05cluttering up my desktop. (laughs)
1:44:07So I don't want a VMware installation.
1:44:09I'm never gonna use that.
1:44:10It's just gonna cause problems for me.
1:44:11So just put it on my laptop.
1:44:13I don't care.
1:44:14So then I configured it all
1:44:16and now it works.
1:44:17And as of this morning,
1:44:18we have now this bootable little Samsung SSD,
1:44:21this little USB SSD,
1:44:23that we can plug into either of our computers
1:44:25whenever a game comes along that we wanna play,
1:44:27and we can just play it.
1:44:28I installed Steam,
1:44:29and our account for Steam is already set up,
1:44:31and I already bought and downloaded inside.
1:44:33It's all ready to go,
1:44:35so TIFF can now play inside
1:44:36by plugging this into our computer and rebooting.
1:44:38And then when we're done,
1:44:39we can unplug it and put it in a drawer.
1:44:42And if I really need a disk for external use,
1:44:45going on a trip or something, I can just bring this disk and we have a disk. And afterwards
1:44:49I don't have this giant game console collecting dust, I have this useful little external drive.
1:44:55So I'm reminded of what Tiff told me when I was telling her that she should speed you
1:44:59along to get this done several days earlier instead of asking on Twitter and doing all
1:45:04this other stuff and not listening to the things that I already told you.
1:45:06You told her, not me.
1:45:08She told you too, you live together. Anyway, do you know what she told me? She said, "This
1:45:13This is what Marco does, you just have to let it run its course.
1:45:15You both know me so well.
1:45:17You just have to, this is what she said, you just have to let it run its course.
1:45:22Spoken like a woman who knows what she's dealing with.
1:45:26No one knows me better than her.
1:45:28So it has run its course, you have acquired a new toy, you have read web pages about how
1:45:33to do something techy, and now you're happy because you don't have an Xbox in the house,
1:45:38and you both have the capability to play Steam games.
1:45:40I just can't wait for you to be fighting over this.
1:45:42I guess you could just clone it at that point,
1:45:44but then you had to look up Windows disk cloning tools.
1:45:47- I guarantee you, there will never be a time
1:45:50when Tiff and I both at the same time
1:45:53want to play the same Windows game.
1:45:56That's not going to happen.
1:45:56- You should both play inside, it's fun.
1:45:58Although, yeah, you can just watch her play.
1:46:00It'll be fine for you, probably.
1:46:01- That's all I'm gonna wanna do, yeah.
1:46:03- I just, I cannot believe you spent this much time on this.
1:46:07What is it you're supposed to be doing on Overcast
1:46:10that you're refusing to do or avoiding doing
1:46:13with such passion that you're writing Mac apps
1:46:15and installing Windows?
1:46:17- A new watch app.
1:46:18- Oh.
1:46:19- From scratch for watchOS 3, that's what I have to be doing.
1:46:21- That's right, 'cause you skipped a generation
1:46:22like Apple and their Macs.
1:46:23- Yeah, because the generation sucked.
1:46:26Show me any watchOS 2 developer who's like,
1:46:28I'm glad I did that.
1:46:29I can't think of any.
1:46:32- Underscore is glad.
1:46:33- Is he?
1:46:34- 'Cause now he has the experience,
1:46:35now he can do watch apps in his sleep.
1:46:36He sneezes and a watch app comes out.
1:46:38(chime)