11: A Particularly Exuberant Adolescence
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Yeah retweet everything and then let's get going so nobody gets bored and leaves. I think we already lost that battle
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So, what are we talking about this week, so what are we talking about? Well, this was a big week and
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first and foremost
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WWDC tickets happened they did that was
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Interesting. It was nothing like we predicted at all. We were completely wrong
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right because I I
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But I don't remember what I said. What did I say last time? I think I said that I thought I would get a ticket
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Well, how about that?
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You know, I don't know. I just I saw it going very differently in my head
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I mean, I knew it would be quick
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But I think I saw someone who kind of someone who had the source that cannot be named that said it was 71 seconds
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yeah, they said like it was like somebody I guess had dinner with somebody who would know and
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And they said it was something like that. Yeah, that seems reasonable to me
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I mean based on what I saw that that seems right and that's just that's insane
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So my question are two questions really to you guys our two-part question is one as
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It has has been talked about in our little circle of life ad nauseum
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Is this sustainable and two does Apple give a crap anyway?
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So Marco, I'm sorry
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I mean, that whole line of reasoning doesn't make any sense to me, where if people are
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angry about how things went, they decide that it has to be some kind of neglect or malicious
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neglect on the part of the personified entity that is this company that somehow they don't
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care. They care.
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I think it's… Almost everyone who has a blog and likes Apple stuff in the last week
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has written something about WWDC and ideas on either how it could be fixed, whether it
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needs to be fixed, or what this means in the universe.
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My position is basically that, basically agreeing with Jon, and Jon you wrote this great thing
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about the lottery, how it basically is, it has become a de facto lottery, even though
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it technically isn't one, because even if you were there in the very first minute, it
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was pretty random whether or not you got a ticket,
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because there were so many server errors,
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as everybody slammed the server even
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from the very first few seconds.
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So it is a lottery now.
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And this is kind of-- isn't that the same way
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that Google I/O goes generally?
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There was something where--
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I never tried to get a ticket, but it goes fast.
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Yeah, I think it's similar in that it's basically random.
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Like whoever gets-- like the first 5,000 database connections
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get it, basically.
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So there's something like that.
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There's no point in that, because if there's
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There's nothing you can do to increase your odds than it is a lottery.
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I mean, you could say, "Well, there's something you can do to make sure that you have non-zero
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odds," but you can't do anything to increase them because it's just the luck of the draw.
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What hit on the database you happen to get when your CDN refreshes to have the new content,
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there is really nothing you—the only thing you can do is decide to enter or not.
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Entering means basically being paranoid for months and then being relieved when you find
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out it's going to be preannounced, and then sitting there at your computer with hopefully
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a synchronized clock and reloading the page a bazillion times.
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All that annoying effort is essentially you putting your little ticket into the box.
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Everything that happens after that is out of your control.
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It's a lottery.
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It's the world's most annoying lottery, because if it was a regular lottery and they just
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said three months ahead of time, "Put your name in this box if you're interested in WWDC,"
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then you'd be like, "All right, I did that."
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Then there'd be no more.
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You'd be wondering if you got it, but you wouldn't have to be sleeping with your phone
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next to you on loud for months at a time and signing up for alerting services and sitting
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there at your computer clicking, clicking reload.
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None of that would be required.
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That's all just pointless stress for the people involved.
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At that point, why not just make it an honest to goodness regular lottery where you say,
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"Hey, for this week, or for this day, we're going to sign you up, and then two days later,
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we'll draw out of a hat."
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I don't know.
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It seems like what we've got isn't right.
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And maybe that's just because all of the people who didn't
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get a ticket have launched onto the internet, like Marco said,
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and complained about it.
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But I don't know.
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It just doesn't feel right to me.
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And one thing I read was Dan Provost, who is co-founder
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of Studio Neat, who makes the Cosmonaut and the Glyph and
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other cool things like that.
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He had an interesting post, which I just put in the chat,
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about how you could do kind of a half lottery,
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half merit system.
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this, I believe he based on your post, John, where he had said, and I'm going to
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butcher the details because I read it a few days ago, but he said something like,
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"Hey, for some marathon, I think it was a New York marathon, you get preference
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based on seniority, sympathy, the elite, legwork, or charity."
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And so he said, "Hey, what if we did that for WWDC?"
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Where, you know, and his examples were seniority.
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If you attended the past 10 WWDCs, then you'll more likely get a ticket or maybe
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be guaranteed to get a ticket.
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Or sympathy, if you lose the lottery for three consecutive years, well, wamp wamp, we'll
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give you a ticket.
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Or elite, or leg worth, or charity, you know, there's many ways in which you could say,
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"Hey, if you apply, if you're one of the 100 or 1000 people that apply to these categories,
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we'll give you a ticket, but everyone else you're going in a regular lottery, tough
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And I don't know if that's right, but I thought it was a very interesting kind of
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halfway to do it.
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I think there's a lot of problems with that.
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is it's not that it increases your odds if you fulfill those things. It was grouped
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into guaranteed and non-guaranteed. And the guaranteed people got tickets and non-guaranteed
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were all put into lottery, right? The problem with—
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I think that's right.
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Not the specifics of that, but the problem with having any type of things that human
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beings can do to guarantee a ticket is that all you're doing is shoving the race into
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another realm. And just 20,000 people would do what it takes to be guaranteed. And then
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it would be like, "Okay, well, to be guaranteed, you have to climb Mount Everest and save a
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a child from a burning building. I mean, you're just kidding. I have no doubt that all those
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people who are sitting there hitting reload would do the things required to be guaranteed.
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And if you oversubscribe the "guaranteed pool," well, then you're back to the same stupid
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problem again.
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That's the problem I see. The marathon, I guess the marathon helps a little bit because
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inherently it's a difficult thing to do. So if some of the guarantees are like, "Run a
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whole bunch of marathons," and that's perhaps—maybe if that was the actual requirement to be guaranteed
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for a WWDC ticket, you have to run three marathons in a year, certified." Obviously, it's
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not going to make any sense, but I'm saying, if the things—I tried to imagine what those
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things could possibly be, and I think the post went into them as well. What could the
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criteria be for getting a guaranteed ticket? If they're physically possible, people will
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do them, because there's that much demand, I think.
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Well, I think it's worth asking. A lot of these systems to try to prioritize people
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or give certain people an easier time getting tickets.
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A lot of them have assumed that loyalty is one of the big factors that matter.
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Like if you've got the seniority, you've gone to X past ones
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and you guarantee a ticket now or whatever.
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But isn't that kind of counter to WVDC and what it's for in Apple's mind?
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Apple loves having a very high percentage of first-timers there
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because that really shows they're bringing new people into the ecosystem.
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They're training new people.
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you know, there is some repetition between...