Speaker 1: Alone media, nobody say anything weird.
Speaker 2: Than me.
Speaker 1: Hello, Ande, Welcome to Better Offline. This is the second
Speaker 1: episode of Better Off Live, the life to tape show
Speaker 1: that I do whenever I travel, and I pick up
Speaker 1: wonderful people like my good friend Mike Isaac from The
Speaker 1: New York Times, who joins me today, and of course
Speaker 1: Kylie Roberson, the one for Kylie Robison from The Verge.
Speaker 1: Thank you both for coming, thanks for having me, Thank you.
Speaker 1: And today is and I'm definitely checking the date on
Speaker 1: my phone Friday, the nineteenth of July. So nothing big
Speaker 1: has happened today other than everything breaking. So for those
Speaker 1: of you listening, this is likely going to come out
Speaker 1: after the CrowdStrike episode. I had to write the moment
Speaker 1: I got back from breakfast until the moment I left
Speaker 1: for this episode, and there will be a full explainer there.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do this, and again this will
Speaker 1: be after it. So I don't know why I'm even
Speaker 1: saying that we're in a weird time in the tech industry.
Speaker 1: It feels like we are watching, at least I think,
Speaker 1: the end of the world. On some level. We're watching
Speaker 1: the institutional failures that are just creating more and more problems.
Speaker 1: And then also we're watching open AI on the other side,
Speaker 1: just like every two days, Like yeah, there's five levels
Speaker 1: of reasoning and we are on number one, which is
Speaker 1: just a very annoying chat bot that sometimes those things,
Speaker 1: and level two will be when it's a smart computer,
Speaker 1: and then level five smartest computer of all time or
Speaker 1: without like an actual product people really care about. It
Speaker 1: just feels strange. I feel weird right now, and I'm
Speaker 1: pretty weird anyway.
Speaker 3: I'm just waiting for them to be useful. Does that
Speaker 3: make sense or like, like I don't know, Like it
Speaker 3: feels very I mean you tell me, like we're like
Speaker 3: super steeped in it, but like it feels very like
Speaker 3: everyone I have decided this is the thing we have
Speaker 3: to build, or this is the thing we're moving towards,
Speaker 3: and like the utility of it almost comes later, like
Speaker 3: they're sort of like ahead of themselves.
Speaker 1: A little strange.
Speaker 4: I'm surprised, but I'm also steeped in it, and I
Speaker 4: try to get my friends to use it to see
Speaker 4: if it's helpful. My civil engineer partner has started using
Speaker 4: it for seismic projects, which is very very niche thing,
Speaker 4: but obviously it's not accurate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, orever, that's not ever. That's the thing though.
Speaker 1: They keep saying, well, it hallucinates now, but it won't
Speaker 1: in the future. And then you say why and they go, oh, sorry,
Speaker 1: how even and they go, well, we will get to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah after right, answer this phone call in the other room.
Speaker 2: So it's like five miles down the road.
Speaker 1: Because watching the last few years with the metaverse and
Speaker 1: Crypto and all this, this is kind of beginning to
Speaker 1: look like I realized there's a product. No, but I
Speaker 1: remember back in twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, there
Speaker 1: were these roadmaps you get. You get the roadmap for
Speaker 1: like the Border Yacht Club, and it would be like
Speaker 1: the first thing would be whatever they launched, and no,
Speaker 1: you're a big investiment.
Speaker 2: Please don't try. That's a joke. Just to be clear.
Speaker 1: New York Times editorial part. If they do, it's my joke.
Speaker 1: You have these roadmaps, it would be like, yeah, step one,
Speaker 1: we released the apes. Step two, we will have a
Speaker 1: special chat room for the apes. Step eight.
Speaker 2: Step one release the apes. Good you can swear, okay,
Speaker 2: just check.
Speaker 1: This is a cuss fill podcast. You can say fucking
Speaker 1: shit and all the words, okay, but on the rub
Speaker 1: and then step eight would be like a real life
Speaker 1: club in Miami for apes, And I'm actually being serious
Speaker 1: that is on the roadmap, and they've promised this like
Speaker 1: metaverse where you can play as your apes in the computer,
Speaker 1: and all of that seems more real than steps two
Speaker 1: through five of the open AI reasoning thing. But it's
Speaker 1: almost like to your point, it's like everyone is just
Speaker 1: committed to this bit now.
Speaker 3: I feel like for me a lot of the time
Speaker 3: and I'm thinking about it just feels like constant fomo
Speaker 3: across the industry and like always keeping your eye on
Speaker 3: like what your.
Speaker 2: Competitors are doing.
Speaker 3: And like part of this I think may be legitimate
Speaker 3: because of people are always like, oh, we missed the
Speaker 3: smartphone right, or we missed like the next platform play
Speaker 3: that we shouldn't have and that's instructive and because Google
Speaker 3: really cares about this, we should too. And like like
Speaker 3: with with self driving, if you remember, like everyone was
Speaker 3: all in on self driving cars and all these companies
Speaker 3: spun up and they're all like falling out and it
Speaker 3: just I don't know, like maybe there's some sort of
Speaker 3: there's there is a logic to it, but to me,
Speaker 3: it just feels like a cart before the horse a
Speaker 3: lot of the time when when I'm trying to grasp
Speaker 3: like what do we with generally do with gen Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a good distinction, like jen AI versus like AI
Speaker 3: being like because AI is not also like not a
Speaker 3: new thing, right, Like it's not. You can't just speak
Speaker 3: about it as like, Okay, this is just happening.
Speaker 4: Me and Edward just talking about this about the generative distinction. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I don't know. I do kind of buy the hyphe
Speaker 4: a little bit. I guess I don't know it's good.
Speaker 5: Ed knows this.
Speaker 4: But did you guys see the lighter model. Do you
Speaker 4: guys have some opinions about that.
Speaker 1: I don't have opinions that tell.
Speaker 5: Me, oh god, the lighter model is cheaper.
Speaker 4: Uh. They say it's smarter, but technically it's supposed to
Speaker 4: be you know, less computing power for cheaper, so people
Speaker 4: can build whatever shit they want that they couldn't because
Speaker 4: it was way more expensive with a larger and more
Speaker 4: capable model. And you don't need to like build a
Speaker 4: shitty little bot with like a giant model anyways, a
Speaker 4: little model exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay, I get the sense in that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so but they did that because you know all
Speaker 4: of these Mistral just released a lighter, tinier model, Anthropic
Speaker 4: has a tiny model, Google has a tiny model, and
Speaker 4: people developers are more likely to go to those models
Speaker 4: whether I build something, and Chat did not have anything
Speaker 4: of the sort.
Speaker 1: So yeah, So my biggest problem with that is everyone
Speaker 1: is racing to the bottom, and a race to the
Speaker 1: bottom is not traditionally something associated with good outcomes. And
Speaker 1: so it is good that it's cheap or whatever, but
Speaker 1: also this company is still not profitable. This company is
Speaker 1: still not particularly useful, and so you've got this situation
Speaker 1: where everyone's like, well, on top of not being profitable
Speaker 1: and on top of not being super useful, we're also
Speaker 1: all having to make the thing cheaper. It is not profitable, yes,
Speaker 1: and it's just and also that will surely increase usage,
Speaker 1: which will not fix the sustainability problem. It just feels
Speaker 1: like we're accelerating towards a wall in the tech industry
Speaker 1: and I feel a little bit crazy.
Speaker 4: No, I'm really interested in that. I mean, there's the
Speaker 4: was it six hundred billion dollar problem, right, yes.
Speaker 1: And then the trillion dollar Goldman Sax problem.
Speaker 5: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 4: It does feel that way that there it's just like,
Speaker 4: let's just keep dumping money into this thing that it's
Speaker 4: it's not useful now, we hope it'll be useful in
Speaker 4: the future.
Speaker 1: You know. It all just feels kind of disingenuous as well,
Speaker 1: because they're not even dumping six hundred million dollars into
Speaker 1: AI because Google has had AI initiatives. In fact, Google
Speaker 1: deliberately avoided the metaverse. Yeah, incredible one move by Sun
Speaker 1: Dar Well done, mate, But they've been piling money into
Speaker 1: AI like over a decadic quite deep mind every time,
Speaker 1: but like this is the one you put the money into,
Speaker 1: like this is this is your king and it's just
Speaker 1: it's just artly confusing as well. But I also think
Speaker 1: it puts the tech media in this really weird position. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where I get and I'm not putting anyone on blust,
Speaker 1: including you. I get why people have to say humor this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh I get it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get why people have to say, like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: the five magical layers of reasoning, even though the logic
Speaker 1: with that and by the way, for the listeners and
Speaker 1: just skipping over a thing you should I should have
Speaker 1: told you about. There was a story that came out
Speaker 1: in Bloomberg and it was saying open AI now has
Speaker 1: five levels of reason, of steps towards of artific intelligence
Speaker 1: towards superintelligence, and step one is like chat bop. Step
Speaker 1: two is like agents agents, and it's just very vague.
Speaker 1: In the story from Bloomberg was like completely flat faced.
Speaker 1: She's like, yep, this is perfectly reasonable. But the logic
Speaker 1: is it's like saying I'm a man and I'm on
Speaker 1: step one of becoming Spider Man, right, And it's just
Speaker 1: I get why we have to mine Max Journey from
Speaker 1: Royer's sorry Max, well, actually Max Rocks he put he
Speaker 1: put it to me quite well, and he was saying,
Speaker 1: it's open a eye is important, though we have to
Speaker 1: cover them even and I mean, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Just say this is bullshit and he's right. And Bloomberg
Speaker 1: especially like and even like the Times as well. It's
Speaker 1: not like your opinion writer, it's Kylie. You can get
Speaker 1: a bit into the opinion. And we talked about it
Speaker 1: also in your GPT four, oh mini piece you even
Speaker 1: talk about the problems associated with there. But it's weird.
Speaker 1: It's this weird situation where what happens if this is
Speaker 1: all bullshit what happens now, and it's been like three
Speaker 1: cycles of bullshit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, crypto is instructive, I think there. But I totally
Speaker 2: agree with you that it it sort.
Speaker 3: Of becomes a self fulfilling or like it it becomes
Speaker 3: like weighty because of the attention it gets, and it
Speaker 3: gets more attention because of that. I do think that
Speaker 3: like there is a way of covering it, and hopefully
Speaker 3: a way that media learned from a lot of the
Speaker 3: bubble around crypto, A lot of the bubble around I
Speaker 3: think self driving again is like another instructive case, just
Speaker 3: because like everything was five years away for twenty years basically,
Speaker 3: and I I think it's like I think you're right.
Speaker 3: I think we're stuck in like a dilemma of you
Speaker 3: can't ignore it because more like all like half of
Speaker 3: VC is going into AI right now. I literally like
Speaker 3: those are the numbers, and so so you have to follow, Yeah,
Speaker 3: what was it an ass?
Speaker 2: I need to read my own pero, but.
Speaker 3: I really don't read my own bo But but so
Speaker 3: you can't ignore the money. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: I do think you can. You can at least introduce
Speaker 3: a level of which I hope we're getting better at,
Speaker 3: which is like, Okay, this is like a thing. Everyone
Speaker 3: thinks it's the thing, but like, can we please take
Speaker 3: the temperature down a little bit? And I do think
Speaker 3: that like Goldman, Sachs and Sequoya notes that you're referencing,
Speaker 3: which poor at least some cold water on it is
Speaker 3: getting there is moving us towards that.
Speaker 1: Sekoya one though, because he's just like, yeah, it's no
Speaker 1: real problem being solved, super expensive and yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: I still think it's good.
Speaker 2: It's just the way you gotta talk to your book.
Speaker 1: There's a great bit in it as well where he
Speaker 1: was saying like, yeah, the new the new B one
Speaker 1: hundred processes man video that they're like twenty five percent better,
Speaker 1: but only like twenty five percent more expensive. It's not
Speaker 1: like he's saying, look more efficient, because that's if video
Speaker 1: came up with something which Jensen Wong is incapable of doing,
Speaker 1: that was more power efficient rather than more powerful, that
Speaker 1: would actually be significant because look, I would hate to
Speaker 1: do this. I would be so mad. I just want
Speaker 1: to be clear. If I'm wrong about generative AI, I
Speaker 1: will look like such a bell end. I'm gonna look
Speaker 1: like the biggest twat in all the world. Everyone's gonna
Speaker 1: laugh at me. I'm going to point you idiot, but
Speaker 1: I'm not wrong, and I'll disappear if I am. But
Speaker 1: it's just all of these things keep coming out, and
Speaker 1: it feels like, because to your point, sure the media
Speaker 1: got taken by crypto and the metaverse, I don't think
Speaker 1: they're not being taken. I think you two are you
Speaker 1: do you guys? You're doing the right thing.
Speaker 5: Because we're in front of Mike's.
Speaker 1: But also I wouldn't have brought you on here if
Speaker 1: I didn't like it that otherwise I would just be
Speaker 1: like in trouble, you fucking But it's it feels like
Speaker 1: the rest of the media is kind of flubbing it
Speaker 1: as well, because there is a level on buff you
Speaker 1: do this whis good. There's a lack of context any
Speaker 1: of this shit, the sheer amount of money this costs,
Speaker 1: and the way that people look at the tech industry
Speaker 1: outside of pech is souring so badly because of this,
Speaker 1: because it's kind of like politics. It's people are souring
Speaker 1: because the media, in the chasing objectivity becomes even more
Speaker 1: subjective because when you don't subjectively apply reasoning to open AI,
Speaker 1: for example, you end up in this weird situation where
Speaker 1: it's like you're actually just parroting their talking points.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 4: It's really important to have that distinction. And this is
Speaker 4: a really good advice that I got from one of
Speaker 4: my favorite podcast hosts, is that you should write about
Speaker 4: You should write about what you're what they're doing today
Speaker 4: and not what they're saying they're going to do later.
Speaker 4: And I think that's a really important distinction and really
Speaker 4: really hard because most of the conversations you're having with
Speaker 4: them is stuff what you're going to be doing with
Speaker 4: this technology, not really stuff we're doing today.
Speaker 5: Most of today's kind of.
Speaker 4: Boring research safety mechanisms that they're deploying and very like
Speaker 4: tiny tiny, tiny little steps to the large language model.
Speaker 4: But it's not like we're going to solve the climate
Speaker 4: crisis and also destroy the climate and physics.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's wild.
Speaker 3: I feel like some of the problem around coverage and
Speaker 3: I don't think everyone does this, but I think like
Speaker 3: this is all happening at the same time the media
Speaker 3: is getting destroyed as and so like institutional knowledge goes
Speaker 3: out the door a long time. Like I feel like
Speaker 3: I mean, just speaking for myself, I feel lucky that
Speaker 3: I've had a tech job for fourteen years or covering
Speaker 3: tech for fourteen years, so like still like a drop
Speaker 3: in the bucket as far as like the history of
Speaker 3: the valley, but like I've.
Speaker 2: Been through a few of these cycles, so I can
Speaker 2: at least.
Speaker 3: Rattle off shit that I know, like from whatever. And
Speaker 3: I feel like when Google is no longer servicing news
Speaker 3: in the same way it is, Facebook has pulled out
Speaker 3: of news completely, like it's it's killing everyone, but the
Speaker 3: like really big players and even the really big players
Speaker 3: are getting hit.
Speaker 2: So I think it's just like it's not there are
Speaker 2: a few things going on there. I guess what I
Speaker 2: would say, Do.
Speaker 5: We think that the Perplexity incident changed anything?
Speaker 1: So the Perplexity incident for listeners is.
Speaker 2: For me, it's no I have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have wonderful listeners who are not in the
Speaker 1: tech indust trying to learn from me. Your mistake, not mine.
Speaker 1: This is the Perplexity AI. They're a company that lets
Speaker 1: you search using the power of AI. When they first
Speaker 1: announced it was like ship this is Google's dinner being
Speaker 1: eaten in front of them. Wow. And the latest thing
Speaker 1: they did was they do article summaries, which is just
Speaker 1: otherwise known as stealing, and they ripped an entire Forbes
Speaker 1: article I believe it was from and it was fantastic writer. Seriously,
Speaker 1: like Forbes has got its problems with several fucking rocks.
Speaker 2: But tech tsk is great.
Speaker 1: And so you have this thing where it would generate
Speaker 1: this story and just rip it off. And they ripped
Speaker 1: off the Forbes story. And then when Forbes complained, John
Speaker 1: Pachowski is John and he just ripped them public and
Speaker 1: so Perplexity's answer was to add citations at the top
Speaker 1: to four or five places that had aggregated.
Speaker 2: The yeah story.
Speaker 1: And it's just like, this is the thing. I do
Speaker 1: not understand why the tech media is not more antagonistic
Speaker 1: to these people, because fucking how, come on, man, don't
Speaker 1: steal my shit. You've already been doing it. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it feels at this point like some of the tech
Speaker 1: media are kind of like trying to kick that football
Speaker 1: at Charlie Brown. Yeah, they won't screw us over this time,
Speaker 1: And then they do and it's even worse than before.
Speaker 4: But I don't know if it's like a level of
Speaker 4: complacency though, it's just like, I don't know. It just
Speaker 4: seems like people are so tired and everyone's getting fired
Speaker 4: and things are We're so over, you know, we're so cooked.
Speaker 5: It's like it's like, what do we do ever been
Speaker 5: so bad? So I feel like that's a bit of
Speaker 5: it as well. At least that's what it feels like
Speaker 5: to me, is people are like this sucks. I don't
Speaker 5: know what to do.
Speaker 1: Also, what's weird as well is everyone's acting like tech
Speaker 1: isn't fun anymore, and it isn't. When you look at
Speaker 1: what's in the tech media now there is. I'll send
Speaker 1: this to Max zep from tech Crunch. Lovely Fella used
Speaker 1: to be a Gizmodo. I was talking to him about
Speaker 1: this and it's like, take is this industry when you
Speaker 1: look at it that combines the best of sports journalism,
Speaker 1: financial journalism, entertainment journalism, and gossip. There's all sorts of
Speaker 1: weird freaks, strange little weirdos like Sam Altman in this
Speaker 1: weird broken house. He's like, I don't know why my
Speaker 1: house is so sharing, like ship into the yard a coyotes.
Speaker 1: By the way, Samman is currently suing the people who
Speaker 1: sold him a house.
Speaker 5: In diligence on as well, because he.
Speaker 1: Did no inspection and like a coyote took up residents
Speaker 1: in his backyard, bloody to his house. It's like, I
Speaker 1: can't believe I lost money as he drives like a
Speaker 1: five million dollar ugly assed car.
Speaker 3: Like, oh yeah, I didn't even know. I've never even
Speaker 3: heard of that car in my life. I mean, I
Speaker 3: saw THEE.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying anyone should do this, but if someone
Speaker 1: let out the tires, very funny.
Speaker 2: No comment.
Speaker 1: No, I'm not saying anyone should do it, but if
Speaker 1: it happened unrelated to me, especially legally speaking, take picture
Speaker 1: easy better offline dot com, email me THEE.
Speaker 5: I did say he was busy this weekend, so that
Speaker 5: makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah, and it's it's definitely not just hanging
Speaker 1: out with my friend and drinking a bunch of beers.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, like that is great gossip journalism,
Speaker 1: Like that's just fun.
Speaker 2: She gives a shit.
Speaker 1: Katen the Topless BI has done a really good job
Speaker 1: at this as well, Like there's so much fun in
Speaker 1: this industry. I just bought this weird little thing called
Speaker 1: a GPD Win four and it's like a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: little computer. It looks like a PlayStation VT. You can
Speaker 1: run Windows on, it's playing Diablo four on it. That
Speaker 1: shit's fun. And you've got this weird crap being made
Speaker 1: in China. Now we can't possibly touch it compossibly. Weve
Speaker 1: got to talk about Sam Mortman's magic broken API. Thing
Speaker 1: kind of sucks. And it's just I think that.
Speaker 4: Tech journalists touch a lot of I mean, I think
Speaker 4: that's like a narrow vision of what we're talking about.
Speaker 5: It's the most popular stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't even know if it's the most written about. Though.
Speaker 1: It feels like we've gotten away from the time when
Speaker 1: we talked about the fun shit. Yeah when it talks,
Speaker 1: because it's like the money isn't there, and I think
Speaker 1: that that really is it. Like the money to your point,
Speaker 1: we have to cover open AI to some extent because
Speaker 1: even if they are building nothing, they're taking a lot
Speaker 1: of money to do so, and they're making potentially one
Speaker 1: hundred billion dollar deals with Microsoft to build a supercomputer.
Speaker 1: But it feels like the funds just kind of got
Speaker 1: like we're not enjoying I don't everyone I talked to
Speaker 1: is kind of just like to your point, kind of
Speaker 1: like tired, yeah, and everything so on fine, Like I
Speaker 1: think the I would like it if open Ai actually
Speaker 1: did what they claim they were doing. That would be interesting.
Speaker 1: I don't want jobs to go away, but I'd love
Speaker 1: like the computer to be smart. I love my phone
Speaker 1: to work sometimes like intelligence Intelligence Tim cooked and he.
Speaker 2: I don't know if.
Speaker 1: It was an episode, but it's just it's frustrating because
Speaker 1: there is real joy and really interesting ship, like even
Speaker 1: in the Valley. But it feels like there's less journalists
Speaker 1: in San Francisco these days. They still are here, but
Speaker 1: there's not as many. It's not like twenty fourteen twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen when you had weird indie go go freaks and hackathons,
Speaker 1: which is still happening. But they're not getting me attention.
Speaker 1: I wonder what is I think.
Speaker 5: I don't know the people in San Francisco. The journalists
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 4: I have like a twenty twenty five people deep group
Speaker 4: chap just young tech journalists, well not all tech, but
Speaker 4: journalists in San Francisco.
Speaker 3: People in one chat yeah whatever the sms or.
Speaker 5: Like wha, yeah, it's just a bunch of wack.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 5: But they exist.
Speaker 4: I think they're still figuring it out and you know,
Speaker 4: but not to plug my own company. But it's the
Speaker 4: reason I went to the Verge is because it's just like,
Speaker 4: will you pay me to write weird shit? And that's
Speaker 4: all they do. I mean, they just did a bunch
Speaker 4: of posts on Legos the other day, like.
Speaker 3: The yeah oh that I saw that ye yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: I literally this morning and I work slack.
Speaker 3: I was like, I sort of miss blogging, like it
Speaker 3: was very it's very yeah.
Speaker 4: Posting just let me just let me say whatever, and
Speaker 4: they do, like I can really just go at it
Speaker 4: with any I love blogging. That's why I got into
Speaker 4: tech reporting.
Speaker 1: So I feel like that is actually text salvation.
Speaker 2: Hm, it's blogging.
Speaker 5: Save the blog.
Speaker 1: I'm not serious, because it's the thing I wrote today,
Speaker 1: which will become a script and you're gonna read it
Speaker 1: and then you're gonna hear it. You'd be like the
Speaker 1: newsletter and the podcast was similar, and you fucking do
Speaker 1: an episode anyway. But writing that up and being able
Speaker 1: to go at it, and I'd realize them in a
Speaker 1: different position to you too. But it's like opinion journalism,
Speaker 1: even just even if the opinion is I like it
Speaker 1: and it's good something some life all things digital when
Speaker 1: there and some great writers came out of There's a
Speaker 1: Beast and once again I'll apologize missread Ronny stories and
Speaker 1: made a snarky tweet. You have my ass forever. You've
Speaker 1: got to get give them wrong. But that's the thing.
Speaker 1: It feels like TECK has got so rigid and it's
Speaker 1: turned into almost different aberrations of Bloomberg type things. But
Speaker 1: then you occasionally get something out of the journal and
Speaker 1: that's very presient where it's like the training date ya one.
Speaker 1: It just yeah, it doesn't feel like tech journalism is
Speaker 1: given the freedom it needs to actually deal with the tech.
Speaker 5: Industry totally, totally.
Speaker 4: I haven't had that experience of writing analysis until I
Speaker 4: came to The Verge, and it was kind of beaten
Speaker 4: out of me in a sense, is that you're really
Speaker 4: not supposed to have an opinion, and you're really supposed
Speaker 4: to be, you know, just just very very neutral. And
Speaker 4: then I found a lot of the people who follow
Speaker 4: my work really liked when I said what I thought
Speaker 4: about a specific topic, which is I know, silly and
Speaker 4: kind of a given for many people, but I think
Speaker 4: it's it's valuable.
Speaker 2: You know, did you come up in traditional orgs.
Speaker 5: I came.
Speaker 4: I started at BI so that was I was a
Speaker 4: software developer culture reporter. So it was like this software
Speaker 4: developer built this project and they're doing this ye know.
Speaker 5: Which which was so fun.
Speaker 4: But then it was like scoop City, Peloton stuff, so
Speaker 4: that's very you know, and then it just and then
Speaker 4: I came to Fortune and then it was all Twitter
Speaker 4: Fortune Magazine, so it was all Twitter reporting the implosion
Speaker 4: ex Twitter, and so then that wasn't so fun. I mean,
Speaker 4: it was really fun as a journalist, and then the
Speaker 4: audience is like, I'm really tired of hearing about this, honestly,
Speaker 4: So yeah, now I get to do more of the
Speaker 4: like analysis.
Speaker 1: Just what sticks out to me is when you really
Speaker 1: take a step back, this entire industry is just what
Speaker 1: did Sam Oltman get up to you today? Oh my goodness?
Speaker 1: And he had a bit of that with what with
Speaker 1: w w DC. You have people taking a photo of
Speaker 1: him and then he did nothing, which is I love
Speaker 1: that Tim Cook humiliated him. I didn't see it that, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: he didn't say anything about him. Sam Wilton was there
Speaker 1: and everyone was posting pictures of so yeah, and then
Speaker 1: no mention of s going to get up, and says
Speaker 1: Tim Cook, And there was a picture of Eddie Q
Speaker 1: talking to Samueltman and he looked like he was kind
Speaker 1: of ripping him.
Speaker 2: It was great.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was like a normal conversation, but I'd
Speaker 1: like to believe.
Speaker 6: It was like okay here and I said, sit at
Speaker 6: the back, Samuel, I did I have heard more of
Speaker 6: the It's actually really interesting because like there was this
Speaker 6: period of like, let's I mean, this is in my head,
Speaker 6: but I feel like there was the like heyday of
Speaker 6: tech where it was like guys and hoodies and everyone
Speaker 6: was like, ooh, this is aspirational.
Speaker 3: Then we went through like a correction of like more
Speaker 3: accountability journalism and like everyone's going after X company or whatever,
Speaker 3: and like I think that exists to some degree now
Speaker 3: still in a big way. But I also feel like
Speaker 3: there's maybe a push from some folks with the sentiment
Speaker 3: that you're giving, which is like can we is there
Speaker 3: like fun or interesting or aspirational things that we can
Speaker 3: write about or think about again that we miss hearing about,
Speaker 3: which I've.
Speaker 2: Been I've been thinking about a lot more.
Speaker 3: It's like it's weird, like to like historically I feel
Speaker 3: like I've done a lot more of the like critical stuff,
Speaker 3: but I like there are interesting things going on that
Speaker 3: maybe we could focus on. But it's also not like
Speaker 3: an either or you know, like I still feel like
Speaker 3: you can do both of those things. It's just figuring
Speaker 3: out who can do that and who wants to do that,
Speaker 3: maybe totally.
Speaker 1: And it's advice that so both Kylie and I share
Speaker 1: the same mentor the wonderful Matt Weinberger. I see enough
Speaker 1: to this the guys sen say bloggers. And one of
Speaker 1: the things he said to me, and I'm sure he
Speaker 1: said to you is people come to you for your voice.
Speaker 1: And it's true, and it sucks because you have so
Speaker 1: many people like you, Mike. I'm not saying anything's wrong
Speaker 1: with the times, but it's not like your style comes
Speaker 1: through there is.
Speaker 2: It's like a house style. Yeah I have to sort
Speaker 2: of yeah.
Speaker 1: But also an interesting fucking fellow and it doesn't get
Speaker 1: to come through. And Fard we need far haadback.
Speaker 5: Mike's sweets for sure.
Speaker 1: Far had He did the thing about men not washing
Speaker 1: their asses, and I was like.
Speaker 3: God, that was a good If you've not heard of him,
Speaker 3: he is a writer, is a Slate.
Speaker 1: He's at the New York Times, and he would just
Speaker 1: a lot of his articles have just him going like
Speaker 1: the American Adrian chills, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Adrian Childs, Yeah, guy who writes like I have a.
Speaker 1: Urinal in my house and my guests are upset far
Speaker 1: had did and kind of what Kate in the Topless
Speaker 1: is doing business inside it. And I swear to God
Speaker 1: that is where tech finds its salvation because all of
Speaker 1: this financialization of everything is just fucking boring. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I will do I do my episodes about it, but
Speaker 1: I'm pissed off for many reasons at all times. But
Speaker 1: a lot of it is cutting through the financial stuff
Speaker 1: to say, what's actually happening. Why did Google Search get worse?
Speaker 1: It wasn't because like the computer got unplugged. It's because
Speaker 1: of organizational issues. Why does that happen? It's a cultural issue.
Speaker 1: It's the push of management. But it's when you incentivize
Speaker 1: an entire assystem to growth. Goh blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Everyone's heard those rants. But the actual fund is the
Speaker 1: weird ship being built. It doesn't have to be perfect.
Speaker 1: When I had Alex Krantz in the Verge on for
Speaker 1: an episode the very first Better Off Live. She was
Speaker 1: talking about these gaming the same like the gpd wan
Speaker 1: for these weird gaming things, and she's like, it's kind
Speaker 1: of shit, but I love them. Yeah, I feel like
Speaker 1: that is tech to me more than anything. It's these weird,
Speaker 1: quirky things. Like the first gadget I ever really am
Speaker 1: is like a creative nomad CD player sized MP three players.
Speaker 3: Wait, it was that huge chunky I had that too,
Speaker 3: because it was like a fat piece of shit.
Speaker 2: But it could hold five thousand song.
Speaker 1: It's all good. Five thousand at the time is incredible.
Speaker 2: Love that and it's weird.
Speaker 1: It's like tech doesn't have to be perfect, but it
Speaker 1: has to do something. But the tech industry right now
Speaker 1: feels like it's not perfect, but it's also not good totally.
Speaker 1: It's just we need to get back. We need crunch
Speaker 1: gear back crunch gear. Crunch gear was the tech they
Speaker 1: did the gadget thing Neving called away. Legend met him
Speaker 1: in Canada about a month and a half ago. Legend
Speaker 1: just why about any old ship and it's fun and
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I feel like I will say that Bloomberg
Speaker 1: when it comes to financial coverage, is actually excellent and
Speaker 1: also Ed Ludlow is for Bloomberg TV. Surprisingly he is everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's I feel like we lean less financial for journalism.
Speaker 1: We don't no one's getting anything. It's all people. This
Speaker 1: is not putting anyone on blast his specifically, but no
Speaker 1: one's getting an actual scoop about open AI right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all the like real meaty stuff is kind of
Speaker 3: I mean, well, I think they have a lot at
Speaker 3: stake because everyone's sort of locked down and shut up because.
Speaker 5: It's and they're making a lot of money.
Speaker 3: Exactly, Like why would they they talk shit when they're
Speaker 3: gonna make it?
Speaker 7: But open ai isn't know, but I think the verticals
Speaker 7: the reason so I actually I think about this a
Speaker 7: lot is like how can we how does coverage like
Speaker 7: change or how can like big.
Speaker 3: Companies or big institutions like mine or like whatever like
Speaker 3: do that, And like a lot of it is down
Speaker 3: to Okay, a business desk needs a beat reporter for X,
Speaker 3: Y and Z companies because this is how you is
Speaker 3: how you do it or this is how we do it,
Speaker 3: and like it's a business desk, so it has to
Speaker 3: have like some form of financial angle. But at the
Speaker 3: same time, like over the past few years, are we
Speaker 3: doing more accountability stuff or does this have nothing to
Speaker 3: do with the business, you know, And like a lot
Speaker 3: of the times, it can feel very just sort of
Speaker 3: confused to me, confused.
Speaker 2: On what the what is the mission here?
Speaker 3: Are we saying this is a bad business because it's
Speaker 3: not making money? Are we saying it's a bad company
Speaker 3: because it's bad for the world in X, Y or
Speaker 3: Z way, you know, And the stories kind of feel
Speaker 3: schizophrenic or like at odds with one another, and like
Speaker 3: I don't know, I don't know if that's a you
Speaker 3: have to define that.
Speaker 2: And then like just also like I can just speak
Speaker 2: with the times.
Speaker 3: It's like very like this is what a reporter is
Speaker 3: versus an opinion person. And like coming from like blog land,
Speaker 3: I have less I like blurring those lines a little
Speaker 3: bit more. But I also work here, so it's one
Speaker 3: of those things, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Fortune was very much like that, where it's a
Speaker 4: very specific tone and we had discussed this before and
Speaker 4: at the verge it really is. I mean, like I
Speaker 4: just I barely get edited. It's just whatever I'm writing
Speaker 4: at any given time.
Speaker 5: Which is fun because it feels like a personal thing.
Speaker 1: And that's why Misato, for example, she rucks why she
Speaker 1: has been the one person getting se O right. Mea
Speaker 1: open invite to the show. Fantastic look at Misto the Verge,
Speaker 1: because she is one of the only people who actually
Speaker 1: got se O right, and she got it right like
Speaker 1: a year before everyone else, including myself totally Like she
Speaker 1: whipped my ass on that one. I've had to site.
Speaker 1: It works so much, it's great. That's because of the
Speaker 1: open remit of The Verge. Now I have my critiques
Speaker 1: of The Verge. You're not going to bring up to
Speaker 1: day because next episode write me. But that kind of
Speaker 1: open format reminds me of all things digital, which for
Speaker 1: listeners who didn't know it was like a kind of
Speaker 1: a predecessor to the Wall Street Journal's Tech desk. And
Speaker 1: Kara Swisher, who I will rip to ship on another episode,
Speaker 1: is pretty good at mentorship though and team building.
Speaker 2: Who's great a talent.
Speaker 1: She helped me a lot, and that's the thing, Like
Speaker 1: I go on Carrot a lot and I'll continue to
Speaker 1: do so come on the show, Carl, let's work this out.
Speaker 2: That would be great, Actually, I would love it.
Speaker 1: She not responded to my emails. I can't imagine why.
Speaker 1: But the one thing she did was she can't let
Speaker 1: you guys go loose. And that's why you had like
Speaker 1: Jason Delray, who was one of the best e commerce reporters.
Speaker 1: He's a fortune now Fantastic News. I didn't actually know that.
Speaker 1: And you, Mike, you got your start there, Jowski, I
Speaker 1: believe as well.
Speaker 2: Like Pat's great. I can't remember, no it.
Speaker 1: Was, but you he was a plastic writer early, one
Speaker 1: of the best mobile reporters. And also Kara Swisher was there.
Speaker 1: And but what made that good was it was kind
Speaker 1: of messy. People just went at some ship and it
Speaker 1: was good. It was and it was actually at the
Speaker 1: right time. It was not critical enough. But I don't
Speaker 1: think that that was. No one was critical at that time.
Speaker 2: That's right. I think that. I think that.
Speaker 3: I so, yes, A, I think Kars was really good
Speaker 3: at spot. I mean, just take myself out of it.
Speaker 3: I think she was good at like she did this
Speaker 3: recode later just like figure out who's hungry, who's like
Speaker 3: not been around and jaded for long enough and wants
Speaker 3: to like hit it hard and then go back to
Speaker 3: them and like fortunately I was twenty three at the time,
Speaker 3: so I had more energy than I do now, but
Speaker 3: or no, twenty five. Fuck, I don't know, but maybe
Speaker 3: twenty five. But I that is I think about that
Speaker 3: a lot, just in the like actually Cope used to
Speaker 3: tell me this a lot, which was he was like
Speaker 3: in a lot of places, you're asked to like do
Speaker 3: a story and then go get an analyst who can like, yeah,
Speaker 3: put like pat quote in you know or whatever, and like, look,
Speaker 3: there's there is they can say a thing that and
Speaker 3: sometimes when I call these people they do give me
Speaker 3: actually like good er original insights, but like you can
Speaker 3: also just say what you think based on your expertise
Speaker 3: of the matter and like it like assuming you know
Speaker 3: what you're talking about or whatever, just have done the
Speaker 3: reporting in the background to get to a point where
Speaker 3: you know where you're talking about. Like people respond to that,
Speaker 3: you know. And I think Twitter has been like my
Speaker 3: hack or work around for a long time until before
Speaker 3: it like fucking broke. But like I think that, yeah,
Speaker 3: that just sort of I'm trying to think of like
Speaker 3: where that exists really now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean besides what you guys do all.
Speaker 5: Things decreated some like just monster reporters and to.
Speaker 4: Hear that you guys got that kind of freedom really
Speaker 4: early on, and like early in your career too, to
Speaker 4: be like, dude, you know this, you spend all your
Speaker 4: time working on this, like say what you think here
Speaker 4: in Yeah, And I think.
Speaker 1: These conditions also created. And I'm not saying it's anyone
Speaker 1: in the media's fault, because it's not the media's job
Speaker 1: to stop them running shitty companies. But I believe that
Speaker 1: that period where and it's like the really the late
Speaker 1: twenty tens where the media just kind of was like,
Speaker 1: we trust these guys, right, and then we couldn't like
Speaker 1: we like And I'm not even trying to be nihilistic
Speaker 1: saying you can't trust the single te fun but I
Speaker 1: don't know. I wouldn't have trust Mark Zuckerberg. He's a
Speaker 1: very damn looking guy as well. But trusting these companies
Speaker 1: was a mistake. But also when the whole industry was
Speaker 1: trying to be enthusiastic because it was fun. Mid twenty
Speaker 1: tens were a lot of fun.
Speaker 5: I watched Silicon Valley recently, and Cara's on that.
Speaker 3: It really stands up by the way it's really good.
Speaker 1: I actually disagree.
Speaker 2: Oh, I thought it was so good.
Speaker 5: It was shocking.
Speaker 1: I watched it and all I could think, and this
Speaker 1: is because pr person I'll watch it went it feels
Speaker 1: like people only like it because it's like they're taking
Speaker 1: me seriously. I'll take lunch disruptors in it.
Speaker 2: That real they did, Yeah they did.
Speaker 5: That's great.
Speaker 1: But that's the thing. I watched it, and I was
Speaker 1: just I think I was just an early cynic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just like fresh off my first divorce, just like, fuck
Speaker 1: these people, but it's my first. But also it's funny
Speaker 1: because things have soured so quickly that I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone's had time to adjust the irony ears. I think
Speaker 1: kind of to your points as well. The adjustment that
Speaker 1: was made to not trust these companies was to have
Speaker 1: less opinion that a lack of object sorry, a lack
Speaker 1: of objectivity was what the problem was, when actually, I
Speaker 1: think we need more I think we need more people.
Speaker 1: Peter Kafker over at Business Inside of former All Things Digital,
Speaker 1: he has had some of the most presient things and
Speaker 1: business Insider. I can't believe I'm saying this. I do
Speaker 1: work there occasionally has somehow got ahead of everyone with
Speaker 1: the discourse columns.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, totally good at that.
Speaker 1: But we need more. We need more of the verge.
Speaker 1: We need more of this stuff. We need more four
Speaker 1: o four.
Speaker 5: But four or four rocks, four or four rocks.
Speaker 1: But also, come on, let the freaks out, let them
Speaker 1: dogs out. You've got you got Cobler over there, you
Speaker 1: got you got, you got coal, You've got all these
Speaker 1: people who can have just the most ass opinions.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's also like this insane distrust in media as well.
Speaker 5: Come on with it.
Speaker 4: So like if you've seen like you have an opinion,
Speaker 4: or if you vote a certain way or anything, it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 4: they're just like a plant.
Speaker 5: I actually had someone ask me. I won't say who.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you guys after the podcast, but who asked
Speaker 4: me if I believe that there's like Chinese spies.
Speaker 5: And media, I'm not even kidding me.
Speaker 1: Damn, you guys.
Speaker 5: Definitely know who this is. But anyways, I actually.
Speaker 1: Don't have Actually, so.
Speaker 5: Anyways, there's like this crazy distrust.
Speaker 4: And so when I was coming onto the scene, I'm like, okay,
Speaker 4: like I don't want anyone to think that I'm going
Speaker 4: to Jesus Christ. But yeah, so I think it's really
Speaker 4: banged into you at that point. It's just like, Okay,
Speaker 4: everyone kind of hates us and doesn't trust us, Like,
Speaker 4: so why should we get to have an opinion?
Speaker 3: I do think there's some So I have to be
Speaker 3: careful anyways, just because of where I work and because
Speaker 3: I will get a handslap if I go too far.
Speaker 3: But like so I kind of know where my internal
Speaker 3: line is, if that makes sense. But like there is
Speaker 3: some element of strategy in holding back sometimes if it
Speaker 3: makes If that makes sense.
Speaker 5: Like you have to say it.
Speaker 4: You can let the reader like show them, you know,
Speaker 4: and let the reader have that opinions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I.
Speaker 2: Just think that. Like, look, I think there's two ways.
Speaker 3: There's a few ways to go about just from a
Speaker 3: reporting sense, Like I know reporters who are very outspoken
Speaker 3: of their point of view, and that works as a
Speaker 3: sourcing tactic, right, Like they'll be like, okay, people will
Speaker 3: come to me because they really I'm not talking about
Speaker 3: the writing side. It's more like a like for me,
Speaker 3: like just in reporting, I'm like, all right, I can
Speaker 3: get a range of folks if I'm it's not really
Speaker 3: fence sitting. But I just I I have thoughts that
Speaker 3: I don't always put out there, if that which makes sense,
Speaker 3: and I think it works to an extent, you know, like,
Speaker 3: but also there's different strategies.
Speaker 2: I know guys who are just like yeah and whatever.
Speaker 5: That's also a strategy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally it is.
Speaker 1: But also I don't get done Like it's not like
Speaker 1: you get random people from Google being like you should
Speaker 1: hear the ship. I'm like, great, what do I do
Speaker 1: with this?
Speaker 2: Use it? Man?
Speaker 1: I have with other people and went by the way,
Speaker 1: if I send you a story and you don't pick
Speaker 1: it up. Some exceptions there, of course, I will remember
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about anyone in this room, just to
Speaker 1: be clear. But the thing is, I think that there
Speaker 1: is a kind of a fallacy there, which is if
Speaker 1: you don't have an opinion, if you're objective, people are
Speaker 1: still going to say you're not objective. They're still going
Speaker 1: to be like, well, reading between the lines here, what
Speaker 1: you think is like, no, I wrote this, I know
Speaker 1: what I think, Well, why is it said this because
Speaker 1: of the editor? And they're like, well, so they are
Speaker 1: also in the pocket of China or someone else. And
Speaker 1: it's just it it almost feels like there's not enough
Speaker 1: solidarity between the tech media writ large, but also on
Speaker 1: the editorial the higher editorial side. There's not really a
Speaker 1: back the fucking or forever, right.
Speaker 3: I do think that putting each we all are very competitive,
Speaker 3: and like, one thing that actually really bothers me is
Speaker 3: when companies use this to their advantage and like play
Speaker 3: us off of each other, and like plant they know
Speaker 3: X Person's about to write this, so they're going to
Speaker 3: go to why person and plant it, and or like god,
Speaker 3: there's one person who I won't name, who does this
Speaker 3: a lot and gets spun by a different company to
Speaker 3: go after reporter stories, which is another great tactic that
Speaker 3: companies use. But it's to your thing about like the
Speaker 3: solidarity and press should be more of a thing.
Speaker 1: Well, so if someone is doing that, honestly the best thing.
Speaker 1: And I know that no one would actually do this,
Speaker 1: but I'm a gremlin, so I would. If I heard
Speaker 1: that happening, I would just tell everyone. But that would
Speaker 1: that's the way to stop that.
Speaker 4: That's how it all works. I don't think it's just
Speaker 4: it's not just one person.
Speaker 5: It's how it all works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, yeah, the oppositional stuff. It's difficult. And I
Speaker 1: think the part of the reason I brought you in
Speaker 1: here was I kind of want the listeners to understan
Speaker 1: than the chaos of this stuff and how multi lad
Speaker 1: the problems are at the media face in tech because
Speaker 1: it's such a weird time and it's you've got tech
Speaker 1: crunch under new management. You've got fortune under basically old
Speaker 1: business inside of people at time a fortune.
Speaker 3: Mink still owns fortune, right is that not even Jesus,
Speaker 3: let's get you up to dig.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's the listeners. This is important to know.
Speaker 1: These are lets are being built and.
Speaker 5: Sold owns time now.
Speaker 1: And by the way, did you too read the Time
Speaker 1: And I'm doing air quotes listeners. Article about Ariana Huffington
Speaker 1: and Sam Ormond's new health.
Speaker 2: I didn't read it, now. How is that he really.
Speaker 4: Liked it, Charlie Warzaw, I haven't finished the article, but
Speaker 4: he like lee paragraph.
Speaker 5: Have you read his read up?
Speaker 1: I have?
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm sorry of your opinions. Yeah, I read like
Speaker 4: the for two paragraphs. It feels like he rips them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, paper Machette thinking of But it's good article and
Speaker 1: he also has a smart point about the belief and
Speaker 1: I'll include links. Don't worry listeners, Jesus Christ. But the
Speaker 1: problem with that was was he was in front of
Speaker 1: Sam Altman and asked him the limpest questions I've ever
Speaker 1: heard in my fucking life. Charlie, go for the fucking throat,
Speaker 1: choke him out. Maybe he likes it, don't know. But
Speaker 1: it's this article, which was a press release.
Speaker 2: Or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, dog shit, it was a joint written between Arianna
Speaker 1: Huffington and Sam Ortman and the secret version of chat GBT.
Speaker 1: That's even worse, and it just sucked. And it was
Speaker 1: all of these made up things about how like AI
Speaker 1: and healthcare will into play, and it was a disappointing
Speaker 1: moment for me in the media. Though Charlie did a
Speaker 1: great job doing what he did, and there was a
Speaker 1: guy at Slater also did a good job, but everyone
Speaker 1: was just there was a bunch of other people just
Speaker 1: reporting this thing, just blandly. And I don't think that
Speaker 1: people realize how terrible it is for trust with the media,
Speaker 1: because what a normal person and I know, like I
Speaker 1: put a past plint my hairdresser and shit, like I'm like,
Speaker 1: look at shit. And it was like regular people like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this sounds fucking stupid. Yeah, But this whole financialization of
Speaker 1: the tech media, this whole situation where the money is
Speaker 1: kind of controlling things. Is just leading to this point
Speaker 1: where these things are going past, and at some point
Speaker 1: I worry that we're going to have the equivalent of
Speaker 1: what's happened in politics. I say, this is someone who
Speaker 1: will stand to benefit if this happens, So I apologize
Speaker 1: to everyone. But the distrust in the media is going
Speaker 1: to come to tech, and I think, and we'll get
Speaker 1: to it after the ad break coming up. The whole
Speaker 1: thing with CrowdStrike, for example, Everyone's kind of reporting what's happened,
Speaker 1: but not why, and I think the why is what
Speaker 1: people really need. Right now. Everyone's seen years years of
Speaker 1: the tech industry kind of fall on its face and
Speaker 1: break its dick off and look terrible everywhere, while also
Speaker 1: being told these people are richer than ever while the
Speaker 1: products get worse. And I feel like we need as
Speaker 1: the industry as the media industry, which I guess I'm
Speaker 1: kind of in right.
Speaker 5: You're fully in it. You have a podcast.
Speaker 1: It's just I don't think people realize at some point
Speaker 1: a racist tech publication is going to pop up. Pirate
Speaker 1: Wires is not going to get be it because it's
Speaker 1: so poorly written. Do not read it is so bad
Speaker 1: unless you want to laugh, and also turn on ad blocker,
Speaker 1: don't subscribe, don't give them any data. But at some
Speaker 1: point this whole techno fascist movement into the whole techno optimist,
Speaker 1: which just means fascist when you're quoting Nick Lan, Fuck
Speaker 1: you andresen. But that's my opinion. I guess it just
Speaker 1: feels like we're in this point where tech media needs
Speaker 1: to grow up, grow up, or just grow in a
Speaker 1: better direction, because otherwise there is going to be a
Speaker 1: competitor and it's going to be so much worse. I'm
Speaker 1: just worried. I'm just a bit worried about the consequences
Speaker 1: of the lack of trust in media. It's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: When are we gonna do something.
Speaker 3: Very curious if they can You remember Andrews and Horwitz
Speaker 3: put that put publication together, Yeah yeah, and then it
Speaker 3: no one published because like they really realized that, Like
Speaker 3: I mean, getting people to write is hard, getting them
Speaker 3: to like commit to do it and have like a
Speaker 3: regular cadence on doing it, and like turn in your
Speaker 3: copy is hard, and like I think they.
Speaker 5: Media is hard. Yeah, Like I think.
Speaker 3: They got ahead of their schemes on that. Like people
Speaker 3: can riff or whatever, but like it's just I am
Speaker 3: waiting to see what that looks like. And I think
Speaker 3: that's why they bet so big on substack, because their
Speaker 3: whole thing is like, all right, if we don't do
Speaker 3: an in house thing, then maybe we'll get a legion
Speaker 3: of people to do it on their own, and then
Speaker 3: like they can sort of like aggregate that in like
Speaker 3: however subtect does. But like, yeah, I'm I'm, I'm I'm
Speaker 3: wondering if it's like less an institutional publication and more
Speaker 3: like random bloggers who everyone sort of subscribes to and
Speaker 3: to your point, like just sort of like a fasci
Speaker 3: version of what tech coverage would look like becomes more
Speaker 3: of a thing.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you a question. What is a podcast?
Speaker 1: Miserable little pile of secrets? But nevertheless, how about you
Speaker 1: have an ad break and we're back. We're back with
Speaker 1: Better Off Live episode two, which is like episode thirty
Speaker 1: two of this show, Good Lord, And of course today
Speaker 1: is the crowd strike situation, and there's an episode about it.
Speaker 1: We'll get to it, but this feels like to me,
Speaker 1: at least, we're not gonna get into the technicalities don't worry,
Speaker 1: because I am certainly not prepared. Right with the crowd
Speaker 1: strikes situation, it feels like the beginning of something more
Speaker 1: than the end. It feels like the final punishment of
Speaker 1: the move fast and break things generate. And my biggest worry,
Speaker 1: and I raised this in the newsletter, is how do
Speaker 1: people think this is going to improve? Because so the
Speaker 1: very basic level is an update that went through CrowdStrike
Speaker 1: that's in basically every Windows machine, especially the enterprise ones,
Speaker 1: fucked everything up, did a massive kurdl panic and everything. Sure,
Speaker 1: by the time I say this, there's already a tweet
Speaker 1: out there that proves me wrong. But nevertheless, put it again.
Speaker 2: On rad this is where we are.
Speaker 1: It feels like we're in a situation where organizations just
Speaker 1: fire and hire people so goddamn much that this has
Speaker 1: to happen again, Like there's something something like this is inevitable,
Speaker 1: especially when you've got generative code, You've got more less
Speaker 1: software engineers generating more code, and the people above and
Speaker 1: below them are being fired at random. It's the first
Speaker 1: time I felt scared in this industry. And I moved
Speaker 1: to America in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2: Wow, yeah, good time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what to do
Speaker 1: with it. And also I mean other than the three
Speaker 1: thousand word news but it's I'm just a bit scared
Speaker 1: because it feels like every tech company is wrung just
Speaker 1: in this very messy way, like they're still in the
Speaker 1: startup mode but also huge.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it like I don't know the thing.
Speaker 3: Maybe this is naive, but like I often like think
Speaker 3: about things in the window of what is it called
Speaker 3: Handlan's razor, which is like, don't attribute to malice, which
Speaker 3: could be more often chalked up to stupidity or incompetence, right,
Speaker 3: And like I feel like there to be clear, there
Speaker 3: are very many bad people in the world doing bad things,
Speaker 3: but like a lot of the time it's just like
Speaker 3: dumb shit. Someone pushed like a thing to production instead
Speaker 3: of the test code environment or whatever, and now you
Speaker 3: took down half the fucking world.
Speaker 2: Right, So like I don't I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's like better or worse than
Speaker 3: people maliciously doing things.
Speaker 1: But if I'm sound it, I don't think someone at
Speaker 1: CrowdStrike was like, right, I'm gonna crash every window computer.
Speaker 1: Excellent bit that would be I mean a good bit. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just to see what I was doing a bit. No,
Speaker 1: I think that the problem is Hanlan's razor here is
Speaker 1: that just tech companies like we must grow, we must grow,
Speaker 1: and if something breaks, will fix it. Right Mmm, totally,
Speaker 1: except they don't seem to have fixed it yet still broken,
Speaker 1: might still stuck at the airport.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you flew in early, I guess, yeah, and I.
Speaker 1: Was nearly delayed due to thunder in Vegas. I don't know.
Speaker 1: But also this feels like a situation where the tech
Speaker 1: media is going to have trouble covering it because it's
Speaker 1: so complex.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I bout out early this morning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I no, I mean, I do think that's where tech reporters,
Speaker 3: if they're super into it, can like shine. And I
Speaker 3: don't think cybersecurity reporting is like as much of a
Speaker 3: specialty at mainstream publications. It's like like it's like random,
Speaker 3: Like the guy Brian Krebs is like his independent dude
Speaker 3: who he used to work at the Post but now
Speaker 3: he's just a hardcore security researcher guy who has his
Speaker 3: own blog and everyone in the security industry trust him. Basically,
Speaker 3: and like but yeah, like that, I mean, yeah, yes,
Speaker 3: who's great Joe Cox, Joe is awesome. Uh So, like you,
Speaker 3: there's a version of this that could shine. But I
Speaker 3: think you're I'm very curious. There are already like things
Speaker 3: blaming well, actually you might have a different take on this.
Speaker 3: There are things that are blaming Microsoft that are uh
Speaker 3: there was like a headline that was like Microsoft fucks
Speaker 3: up the whole world or whatever, right right, and like,
Speaker 3: technically it wasn't their fault, but your your position is
Speaker 3: ultimately it is their.
Speaker 1: Fault, yes, because they Microsoft runs Windows. But also the
Speaker 1: reason the CrowdStrike managed to fuck up so much is
Speaker 1: because Microsoft could have built this themselves and indeed have
Speaker 1: a competing product, a Falcon. There was a whole exlusive
Speaker 1: explanation for that, but it kind of sucks, and they
Speaker 1: were like, we could save money just giving it to
Speaker 1: this other giant public company who was only worth eighty
Speaker 1: nine billion, and is both of their thoughts, but this
Speaker 1: is a situation where and what was it I was
Speaker 1: reading the other day We just had him on the show,
Speaker 1: an economist called Darren Usimoglu. I'm probably saying his name wrong.
Speaker 1: Mit just interviewed him. I should know it better by now,
Speaker 1: it's been a long day down but he said that
Speaker 1: there should be criminal prosecution. CEOs will actually fully fucking agree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know this sounds crazy, but if you break half
Speaker 1: the world's computers, you should go to fucking prison. Satcha
Speaker 1: in cuffs today, hot take to have sounds hit that
Speaker 1: I'm only fifty percent joking because if your direct decisions
Speaker 1: and neither I know both of you don't want to
Speaker 1: touch this with.
Speaker 2: A we can talk about it in an abstract.
Speaker 1: But also just giving it making it clear that I
Speaker 1: can say the crazy shit. But it feels like that aren't.
Speaker 1: And Duron's argument is not put them all in chains.
Speaker 1: It's these consequences should exist.
Speaker 5: And consequences should exist.
Speaker 1: Yes, the back of them is why these things keep happening. Because, Okay,
Speaker 1: an FDC find that finds Facebook four billion dollars is
Speaker 1: bad for the homogenous lump. That is meta, but it
Speaker 1: isn't like Mark Zuckerberg has any fear there.
Speaker 4: And it was pretty good when he had apologized to
Speaker 4: the families stood up in court.
Speaker 5: But I don't think that's real consequence, you know.
Speaker 1: Slightly embarrassing for the man without feelings and it's it's
Speaker 1: just Sachy Nadella should have a criminal a criminal inquiry here.
Speaker 1: There should be an actual Department of Justice investigation into this.
Speaker 1: With both CrowdStrike and Microsoft, there will not be. I
Speaker 1: had one hundred percent of they might be a Senate
Speaker 1: hearing if we're lay. But it's all of these CEOs.
Speaker 1: They operate in this weird kind of bubble where oh,
Speaker 1: it's a corporate thing. We don't get angry at people
Speaker 1: for corporate things. But if I went around because I
Speaker 1: was the Flash I assume, and smashed every like five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand computers with a big crow bar, if they
Speaker 1: could catch me, but I'm the Flash, they couldn't. They
Speaker 1: would put me in jail. Have to be I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the raft from Spider Man of mixing
Speaker 1: up my Marvel and DC right now. But nevertheless, it's
Speaker 1: like this person who smashed a bunch of computers would
Speaker 1: go to jail, but the person who's direct decision making
Speaker 1: was the reason that all of these computers went down,
Speaker 1: they're fine. And it's like, it feels like that needs
Speaker 1: to have there needs to be some regulation of this.
Speaker 1: But also where are the consequences. It's why Sam Altman's
Speaker 1: accumulated all this power, it's why all of these Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs horrible man, but he the crimes he committed that. Well,
Speaker 1: the California DA came after him for welfare. That was
Speaker 1: a form of consequence, and it was extremely effective. He
Speaker 1: went from being a deadbeat father to a shitty one,
Speaker 1: which is progress from mister Jobs. And it's just what
Speaker 1: I'm very much trundling towards is it doesn't feel anything's
Speaker 1: gonna change as a results of this, right.
Speaker 2: I think that's right.
Speaker 3: I think that the fines point is really important because
Speaker 3: I think they just price it into their budget.
Speaker 4: You know, there was a great Times article about training
Speaker 4: data and how these like meta executives in their boardroom were.
Speaker 5: Like, we that was so good. I talk about it
Speaker 5: all the time. These have you seen this?
Speaker 4: I have not these meta executives in their boardroom or wherever.
Speaker 4: They were like, we need training data and we don't
Speaker 4: care if we breaked a law because we need to
Speaker 4: be first.
Speaker 5: And it's so explicit, like we don't care. It's priced in.
Speaker 5: We need to be.
Speaker 4: First, and we don't care if we're stealing content, which
Speaker 4: is crazy.
Speaker 1: And I will say this, that's where The Times did
Speaker 1: their job the best.
Speaker 5: That was a really great article people, But the fact.
Speaker 1: I didn't read it is my fault. But also that
Speaker 1: should have been fucking CNBC TV every day. That should
Speaker 1: have been a bigger story. The fact that these companies
Speaker 1: can operate not just without concern for safety, but basically
Speaker 1: being like, oh, it's not a fine, it's a fee.
Speaker 1: M it's insane. But if Mark Zkapa could go to prison,
Speaker 1: I mean I wouldn't lost a day.
Speaker 2: I do think a lot of the.
Speaker 3: I have frustrations just because of how I wonder how
Speaker 3: deep you can go in a mainstream publication on pretty
Speaker 3: technical stuff before losing people, and like even like i've uh,
Speaker 3: I've been super interested in the open source debate, which is, like,
Speaker 3: you know, in short, just like should all the code
Speaker 3: for these things.
Speaker 2: Be out there or not?
Speaker 3: Some people believe it's very dangerous, some people are I
Speaker 3: think that's over exaggerating it.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't know which one is.
Speaker 1: Right, by the way, is why I've not done an
Speaker 1: open source episode, right, I don't know, And.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's yeah, and like I find that whole
Speaker 3: thing very interesting, and like I've been trying to write
Speaker 3: about it a lot, but like I'm like, a lot
Speaker 3: of this ship is very dense and very and heart
Speaker 3: not just for and there's no like actual answers to
Speaker 3: a lot of it and trying to like get that
Speaker 3: out to a mainstream audience while saying, here's why it's important,
Speaker 3: here's why you should care about it, here's why you
Speaker 3: should read this article in the first place. I think
Speaker 3: gets stopped a lot of the time compared to some
Speaker 3: things that might be easier to grasp.
Speaker 2: But I don't, you know, and that's not to insult
Speaker 2: the general public.
Speaker 3: It's just sort of like these things that require a
Speaker 3: lot of attention and reading just to like break into
Speaker 3: where the argument starts.
Speaker 4: I've been cut I don't know how many times from
Speaker 4: writing articles because they're too technical or and a thing
Speaker 4: I've had to do lately.
Speaker 2: Which is so funny.
Speaker 4: I'm like, okay, if it's really highly technical or just
Speaker 4: kind of a waste of space, like tokens, how much
Speaker 4: does this model cost for input output tokens? And I
Speaker 4: didn't include it in a Verge article recently, and the
Speaker 4: comments were like, well, how much does it cost? I
Speaker 4: was like, God, durmit guys, so I replied, I was like,
Speaker 4: I will add it next time, but like, who cares
Speaker 4: about the tokens anyways.
Speaker 1: I actually see where the readers are coming from.
Speaker 5: If they want it, I want to deliver it to them.
Speaker 4: But if they don't want it and it takes up
Speaker 4: space in their mind and they can't comprehend the material,
Speaker 4: then it's not helpful. So like figuring that out for
Speaker 4: readers can be hard well.
Speaker 1: So as someone went, like the average better offline and
Speaker 1: listener is like most of their days taking up like
Speaker 1: holding people up at gas stations, stealing Catholic converters stuff
Speaker 1: in that and these people, I'm so sorry. But what
Speaker 1: I've found is because my listeners are because of I
Speaker 1: think iHeartRadio because of the way they is. I get
Speaker 1: a lot of people who aren't the traditional listeners, and
Speaker 1: I do love them. And you don't steal Catholic converts
Speaker 1: unless you do.
Speaker 5: And shout out them.
Speaker 1: Shout out to the wrong.
Speaker 2: Uns are cadmium.
Speaker 1: It's it's what I'm funny is that people actually want
Speaker 1: things explained more, even the technical stuff. Robert Evans, Surphie
Speaker 1: Lichten and wonderful people run calls. The all thing is
Speaker 1: to like break it down. Whatever you think is too simple,
Speaker 1: go simpler. And I think people in the media for
Speaker 1: good reason overestimate how difficult something is to get. And
Speaker 1: I because when you start explaining stuff and planning, it's
Speaker 1: just like tokens, for example, very confusing and offuscated things.
Speaker 1: But it's just isn't it just one token? A word?
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, a character? So it is it's it is
Speaker 4: very simple. But how many times do I explain that
Speaker 4: per article? Every time? I'm like these you know, it's
Speaker 4: kind of a it's like algebra that you have to
Speaker 4: do when you write so many of these articles. If
Speaker 4: the audience wants me to do it, that's you know,
Speaker 4: that's what I told them. I will do it. But
Speaker 4: it's you know, something Weinberger told me is like, if
Speaker 4: you can't explain it simply, then you don't understand it,
Speaker 4: you know. And I think about that all the time
Speaker 4: because I feel like I see that all the time
Speaker 4: with tech reporters. No shade is that like you're seeing
Speaker 4: something really complicated, probably because you don't understand it. And
Speaker 4: that's fine, but it's really it's really hard to break
Speaker 4: these complex topics.
Speaker 1: Down early days of the newsletter. I'm just gonna admit
Speaker 1: that definitely happened.
Speaker 5: I did that when I was a young reporter. I
Speaker 5: still am a young reporter, but.
Speaker 1: Still still though it's and I think it's because it's
Speaker 1: just media is kind of hot and take. You do
Speaker 1: actually have to understand a lot of shit. Y Yeah,
Speaker 1: like especially with the general Avai I said. And it's
Speaker 1: funny because as much I bang on about people not
Speaker 1: doing it right, it is extremely annoying to explain yes.
Speaker 5: Every single time.
Speaker 4: It feels like you have to include so much context
Speaker 4: and it's like when is this helpful for the reader
Speaker 4: and not kind of like X formerly Twitter all the
Speaker 4: readers really please just stop saying formally, Twitter.
Speaker 1: Stop my epic based website, Please stop stop dead naming.
Speaker 1: I do feel like.
Speaker 2: It's it's very I think they're a different challenges.
Speaker 3: Okay, Like I'll explain it just in terms of like
Speaker 3: the Times challenge, which is like who are you trying
Speaker 3: to reach? Who's reading this? Uh, what is the like
Speaker 3: format for what you're writing sort of thing? And like
Speaker 3: I I like to what you were saying, I definitely
Speaker 3: don't I think readers are can be smart and curious
Speaker 3: about what's happening in the world, and I don't think
Speaker 3: treating them like idiots is the right way to go.
Speaker 3: I do think it's like, how do you present that
Speaker 3: in a way that doesn't either derail the story you're
Speaker 3: trying to tell or make your story three times longer
Speaker 3: than it might need to be, or whatever, which I
Speaker 3: think as like a tangent like length is often equated
Speaker 3: with quality, which I don't think.
Speaker 2: Is always the case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh, I think in the media industry, like someone's like,
Speaker 3: we dropped a five thousand word piece, and I'm like, eh,
Speaker 3: I think they could be like a two thousand word
Speaker 3: piece throught that, but like, and that's not always a case,
Speaker 3: but like, I just think that you can probably do
Speaker 3: it in different like formats or different like story packaging
Speaker 3: ways that that I don't know that and but it's
Speaker 3: like a challenge for me constantly because I'm like, all right,
Speaker 3: who am I talking to? Am I talking to someone
Speaker 3: in New York who is never used a computer? Or
Speaker 3: am I talking to like someone in the valley who's like,
Speaker 3: don't explain this to me for the fifteenth time, And
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's every time I don't explain something, one of the
Speaker 1: listeners I assume, in between holding a knife to a
Speaker 1: granny is will be like, you didn't explain that clearly enough,
Speaker 1: And actually I like that. I like explaining it because
Speaker 1: also this whole thing about like word counts, I do
Speaker 1: not have that problem with my newsletter. I put on
Speaker 1: even thousand words.
Speaker 5: Just like just like completely go at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just fuck it. But also people get so.
Speaker 2: Angry when they're like Jesus christad in all.
Speaker 1: The funniest one was I did like a four thousand
Speaker 1: word one and someone sent me an email being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was too long, And the next one was eleven
Speaker 1: thousand words and.
Speaker 2: Relationship your audio, I know.
Speaker 1: He was planning to bomb.
Speaker 5: A bank, like thousand words quickly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this helpd me up.
Speaker 1: Your general if a I think was a great soundtrack
Speaker 1: to me chasing a man down the street with a hatshit.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry.
Speaker 8: I know you guys on all criminals, just a large majority.
Speaker 8: Maybe it's funny because you've really crystalized the problem here,
Speaker 8: which is what the fuck does the tech media actually do?
Speaker 1: Like what is the actual job here? And it doesn't
Speaker 1: even feel like the various bulkanized outlets.
Speaker 5: No, can I say what I think it is? I
Speaker 5: don't know.
Speaker 4: I am the most junior person in this room. Let
Speaker 4: me say extremely good thank you. But I think you
Speaker 4: do more work than I do, so you guys, But
Speaker 4: I think like what I want to do is bring
Speaker 4: information that they want or didn't have, like love a
Speaker 4: good scoop, Like, look, I'm giving you information you've never seen,
Speaker 4: and I want to give it to you in a
Speaker 4: way that's like that's helping you understand the world better.
Speaker 4: And that's kind of why I joined The Verge too,
Speaker 4: because they had like crazy multimedia team and I really,
Speaker 4: I really love podcasts because it's an easy way for
Speaker 4: me to consume stuff. And I think there's a younger
Speaker 4: generation who is not consuming stuff like you know, five
Speaker 4: thousand words. So like, however, you can get that information
Speaker 4: to people to help them, you know, whether it's podcasts
Speaker 4: or you know, newsletters, any of that, I think that's
Speaker 4: our job.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, look on oh, I.
Speaker 3: Was like, I fully agree. I think the thing that
Speaker 3: I really enjoy too is just like it makes me
Speaker 3: feel good when someone who may be like intelligent but
Speaker 3: unfamiliar with a topic came away from a piece that
Speaker 3: I wrote and says that was interesting.
Speaker 2: I probably wouldn't have read about that before.
Speaker 3: But like now, I like, even if I don't dig
Speaker 3: it into it anymore, I enjoyed reading about that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, and like that's ideal for me, just in
Speaker 3: some form of like why are we doing this?
Speaker 5: Why are we doing this?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: And I think it can be really corroded by so
Speaker 4: many things, money and egos and like any other business,
Speaker 4: And that's what I think we see, like kind of
Speaker 4: that pressure at the top for a lot of us
Speaker 4: journalists and maybe why they're really tired. But I think,
Speaker 4: you know, the best journalists really just want to do
Speaker 4: their job for the reader the best that they can.
Speaker 5: You know, it's not but it's not easy, and we're tired.
Speaker 1: We need more fucking nerds.
Speaker 5: We do need more nerds.
Speaker 2: I agree with that.
Speaker 1: We need more little goblin freaks like myself like that.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And it's enough about my festival for nerding out
Speaker 9: on this stuff is good, Like it's just like you
Speaker 9: understand the topic, you want to get in the weeds
Speaker 9: of it.
Speaker 2: That's a good thing.
Speaker 1: But also a list that is in between brewing poisons,
Speaker 1: they love it though, and the crimes explained of your audience. No,
Speaker 1: but in no serious my non criminal listeners and indeeds
Speaker 1: some of the criminals. They like the fact that so
Speaker 1: my last Step episode that went out and it's a
Speaker 1: weird timeline when I'm recording this. But the episode that
Speaker 1: I think really changed my show was did you read
Speaker 1: this paper? Chat GBT is bullshit?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 1: It s there's this paper by these three academics in
Speaker 1: Glasgow called chat gbt's bullshit? But it's based on the
Speaker 1: Frank thirty and definition from on bullshit defined bullshits. Oh
Speaker 1: I remember that, and so I cannot remember what the
Speaker 1: definition is. Just bullshitting myself, I guess. And I get
Speaker 1: on the call thinking this is going to be like
Speaker 1: three starchy academics and they're cracking beers and they're having
Speaker 1: a good time and we had the funniest chat for
Speaker 1: an hour and I came out there being like, it's
Speaker 1: one of the best episodes ever. But also I think
Speaker 1: people want more of that. In take, everyone knows the
Speaker 1: Opening Eye is fucking everything up. Everyone's going to know
Speaker 1: about the crowd strike situation. Everyone's going to know all
Speaker 1: of these things, and they're all dominated by bad news,
Speaker 1: good news, weird news. But we need to get back.
Speaker 1: We need to get back to talking about the weird
Speaker 1: shit again because of me earlier stuff Kylie. In business
Speaker 1: you were talking to weird random device.
Speaker 3: I loved it so much.
Speaker 1: I went into weird communities. And I think the tech
Speaker 1: right now is saturated by stories about everything and everyone
Speaker 1: for good reason. By the way, just with sympathy here
Speaker 1: there is everyone wants it, everyone wants the traffic. You
Speaker 1: have to write, Kylie about the jupt for Minie like
Speaker 1: h Everyone has to cover these things because it's your beat,
Speaker 1: but it's getting in the way of the weird fun shit.
Speaker 1: Like I ran a pr from at day job and
Speaker 1: I write like eighteen thousand letter words I don't know,
Speaker 1: can't speak newsletters every week. I should not be the
Speaker 1: one finding the weird shit and talking to them. I am, though,
Speaker 1: because I'm paid to. But I just feel like there's
Speaker 1: so much magic in this industry. There's so much like
Speaker 1: as doom and gloom as I can be on this show.
Speaker 1: The joy of sending a weird picture of some dumb
Speaker 1: shit I found on Twitter to someone on someone yesterday,
Speaker 1: it was this picture of doctor Robotnik in a forklift
Speaker 1: it said, you're too late, Sonic. I'm for Forklift certified,
Speaker 1: and that made my day. It's still magic to the Internet,
Speaker 1: and there's still fun and people are fucking mad about
Speaker 1: the Internet, but they're still such good in there. People
Speaker 1: are always saying, in between reading the Unibomber's manifesto, my
Speaker 1: listeners will say I got something there. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I want to know, but in between various crimes,
Speaker 1: just gonna summarize that. My listeners, they also will say
Speaker 1: I want something positive, and then I respond, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: you need to find you download another podcast. I'd say
Speaker 1: download it all in.
Speaker 2: But too far, too far.
Speaker 1: Jason Jason calacanis very damp anyway, dampness aside. The positivity
Speaker 1: is that and I myself have found myself falling into
Speaker 1: this kind of I don't want to say doomerism because
Speaker 1: I think it's a fucking stupid term, but the doom
Speaker 1: and gloom that everything, and we do need to cover
Speaker 1: these companies messing up. But I think what the problem
Speaker 1: is and where my anger comes from, and I think
Speaker 1: you'll share this is all of the bad stuff's getting
Speaker 1: in a way of some really funny shit TikTok and
Speaker 1: all of this needless cinophobia. But like, yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: we've got to ban TikTok because they're stealing data. They're
Speaker 1: like using data with our our users. We only let
Speaker 1: American companies do.
Speaker 2: That, right.
Speaker 1: TikTok has given birth to some of the funniest and
Speaker 1: sweetest posts. There is a growing community of zoos on
Speaker 1: TikTok and Instagram, whereas just they put like a camera
Speaker 1: on a spoon and I feel like worms to and
Speaker 1: it's like there is still magic, there's still joy within
Speaker 1: this industry. And I think that the return to blogging
Speaker 1: that I am so sivorously suggesting and the wider head
Speaker 1: zychron empire that I dream of one day is genuinely
Speaker 1: like a return to this, a return to this kind
Speaker 1: of not seeing the movie. It's a return to this
Speaker 1: thing where we kind of need to stop mining this
Speaker 1: shit again. We need to get back to finding the
Speaker 1: quirky little startups that might die but they're doing something interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the weird I think less the meme stuff. I do
Speaker 1: think people who just cover memes all day should get
Speaker 1: real job. Sorry, Uh, someone's gonna be angry at that.
Speaker 1: I get it, but like there's about Internet culture and
Speaker 1: more just about the things being built there the course,
Speaker 1: the fact that you've still got a shit ton of
Speaker 1: open source software people who are just like. One of
Speaker 1: my early joys in tech was PlayStation portable and the
Speaker 1: PlayStation Vita and the homebrew communities on them. Ray Wong,
Speaker 1: formerly of Imbers got laidoffs. Bullshit. Ray Wong's great. He
Speaker 1: was talking to me the other day about the PlayStation
Speaker 1: portaborn hacking that thing. It was so much fun, the
Speaker 1: earlier iPhones with Sita, the helm brewing community, and I
Speaker 1: remember g O Hot has now become a very weird guy.
Speaker 1: I mean he was before. Oh he did like an
Speaker 1: autonomous cast start up. Okay, but these, I feel like
Speaker 1: are the more worthy stories than everyone pursuing the same thing.
Speaker 1: And I again, you're in a weird position.
Speaker 3: I get No, I do think that there's an element
Speaker 3: of I mean, honestly, there's corollaries and tech of like
Speaker 3: oh this person dropped this story or like this is
Speaker 3: I mean, Twitter and media probably played into it for
Speaker 3: a while, but like I heard mentality, mentality around what
Speaker 3: people should be caring about or writing about, and like
Speaker 3: that actually like even though I have a I guess
Speaker 3: I have a beat, but also like I get away
Speaker 3: with pitching a lot of non beat stuff.
Speaker 2: But I think the the thing that.
Speaker 3: Maybe that keeps it interesting for me, but also I
Speaker 3: think can probably help just my job and maybe my
Speaker 3: career is like trying to zag when other people are
Speaker 3: going after zigging or whatever line it's very is that,
Speaker 3: oh god, I sound awful, really like genuinely watch where
Speaker 3: everyone's going and then like go pursue not just for
Speaker 3: the sake of it, but because there's something interesting there,
Speaker 3: you know, And like I think that can really it
Speaker 3: can distinguish you just from a career perspective, but also
Speaker 3: just like find like shit that's different, because people get
Speaker 3: tired of like reading the same yeah, the same article
Speaker 3: from five different publications that are saying the same thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, totally.
Speaker 4: The reason I know ed and Weinberger shout out is
Speaker 4: because I tweeted when I was in college I want
Speaker 4: to read about weird software developer culture shit, and then
Speaker 4: he hired me that way, and then that's when I
Speaker 4: wrote a bunch of I wrote a bunch of weird shit.
Speaker 5: I wrote about furries. That was awesome. Yeah, I love
Speaker 5: those like niche communities.
Speaker 4: Oh my first article, one of my first articles was
Speaker 4: about tech talk. So it was just like all of
Speaker 4: these technologists. It was a bunch of develop helpers who
Speaker 4: like software developers who make informational or like parody tiktoks
Speaker 4: about software development. It was very tech talk, Yes, tech
Speaker 4: talk like TikTok. It was actually in my pitch like
Speaker 4: when I was my my exam. When you get hired. Anyways,
Speaker 4: Uh yeah, I think that's really important to find those
Speaker 4: like fun stories.
Speaker 3: Well, and like I, I, I imagine everyone in this
Speaker 3: room and maybe if you are really into caring about tech,
Speaker 3: probably there was probably at least some time and maybe
Speaker 3: still now like where you enjoyed being a part of
Speaker 3: it or enjoyed understanding it or right like I, I
Speaker 3: definitely consider myself like a nerd at heart and like
Speaker 3: grew up building computers. I don't know if I could
Speaker 3: do it now, but like I used to and like it.
Speaker 3: I'm sure it is, like I'm sure with like even
Speaker 3: more now with fucking YouTube's the youtubes.
Speaker 1: That are but a double past is just that me?
Speaker 1: Was that say again, thermble pace you could just get
Speaker 1: could you have it?
Speaker 2: Just like.
Speaker 3: Ummy, but like there has to be an element of
Speaker 3: like caring about this stuff, enjoying this stuff, Like there's
Speaker 3: a reason why I still enjoy fucking around on the internet,
Speaker 3: Like like, yes, there's I have criticisms of maybe like
Speaker 3: the homogenization of how products develop because other companies are
Speaker 3: looking at how this person is doing it and we
Speaker 3: should have to do it like that. But you can
Speaker 3: still have fun on there and you can still find stuff,
Speaker 3: and like I agree that, like trying to find more
Speaker 3: of that is not a.
Speaker 5: Bad thing totally.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I think The Times is going to bring back bits.
Speaker 3: Dude. That's where I started in twenty Do you know
Speaker 3: what bits is? Oh dude, twenty joined twenty fourteen, and
Speaker 3: we used to have long before my gosh, ten years
Speaker 3: in June it was ten years.
Speaker 2: I'm a millennial, so I should be hopping around jobs.
Speaker 5: But it's good.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: I know now I can't leave, but I but we
Speaker 3: It was a blog. It was literally The Times had
Speaker 3: a tech blog called Bits and it was it was
Speaker 3: kind of a function of like everyone's blogging at the time,
Speaker 3: and like, you know, we need to be blogging. And
Speaker 3: I'm not sure they got rid of it because I'm not.
Speaker 2: I don't really know why. The exact reason is probably
Speaker 2: because it doesn't they Yeah, I think now.
Speaker 3: I think now it's like and even now they're still
Speaker 3: in like a transition period where they're like, we do
Speaker 3: either huge heaves or now they do like live blogs
Speaker 3: on like the big breaking thing they do, and like
Speaker 3: this sort of in between sort of.
Speaker 2: Things are going away, is what i'd say.
Speaker 3: The like, yeah, five hundred to seven hundred word articles
Speaker 3: they don't care about as much. And there's probably internet
Speaker 3: traffic reasons for that. There's probably just like what readers
Speaker 3: want from a Times article. But Bits was amazing because
Speaker 3: it was a blog where I could just dump random
Speaker 3: shit that I that we found interesting and bits.
Speaker 1: And the funny thing is, I'm sure of the arguments
Speaker 1: that be well real reporting. That's where we get right
Speaker 1: except if you remember, and I do because I'm nine
Speaker 1: hundred years old in like Mike's age, there was this
Speaker 1: little guy called Evan Spiegel who Nick Bilton, in a
Speaker 1: remarkable act of journalism, wrote about for the first time
Speaker 1: in Bits. It was like one of the first one
Speaker 1: of the first Snapchat articles. Wasn't bits that's funny and
Speaker 1: It's like, guess what, when you have that flexibility, when
Speaker 1: you have a bit of fun with it, you find
Speaker 1: weird little NEPO baby freaks who make insanely unprofitable software.
Speaker 1: Being an asshole here obviously, but that is an example
Speaker 1: I think where the verge can do well. The Virtus
Speaker 1: also had one of my favorite articles of all the time,
Speaker 1: which is one about the Internet cables.
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh, yes, yes, that was before I started.
Speaker 5: That was so good.
Speaker 1: Didn't get back to me what I mean, very very hurtful,
Speaker 1: very unfair. I actually forget his name and will now
Speaker 1: look it up like when I'm talking. But it but
Speaker 1: stories like that, But that one's slightly different because that
Speaker 1: was a heavily report. So yeah, but it was good
Speaker 1: because it was dear. It's a bit weird. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: want and I hope someone does a story about an airport,
Speaker 1: like a regional airport that got shut down by CrowdStrike.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, look something like that.
Speaker 5: Free story idea right.
Speaker 2: There, free story is Actually it's pretty good.
Speaker 1: Go for it please, because it's like that is what
Speaker 1: the big failure I think of the tech media. The
Speaker 1: biggest is assuming that tech is not and Taylor Renz
Speaker 1: made this point as well, that tech is not.
Speaker 5: Real life, that it's not a human problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that it's just the thing that happens. The Internet
Speaker 1: is over here and the real people are over here
Speaker 1: for sure, when it's not been that for like fifteen years,
Speaker 1: and it's just the stories like this, I think, like
Speaker 1: the free story idea of giving away because I do
Speaker 1: not have the time, but like a regional airport that
Speaker 1: got fucked up because of the Windows update, that.
Speaker 5: Is the reas' going to talk to the humans.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. And also this is the practical implications of this.
Speaker 1: We talk about tragicta what have you, but like, when
Speaker 1: you get down to it, what does this actually do
Speaker 1: for real people? What's an actual fucking thing happening? And
Speaker 1: I want like I want bits.
Speaker 2: Back my boss?
Speaker 1: Who's your boss? Email them now?
Speaker 2: I actually don't talk to.
Speaker 1: Year mister. That's it with your news prepper fuck ship now.
Speaker 1: It's it's frustrating as well. And the joy of this
Speaker 1: show is the I get to do a bit of that,
Speaker 1: but even then I don't get to go like I
Speaker 1: don't have the time. If they bade me like three
Speaker 1: million dollars a year, which is what I demand. No,
Speaker 1: but if I had more time, it would be like
Speaker 1: sending people out to do that. It could happen here,
Speaker 1: which is a sister show a better offline. I guess
Speaker 1: we're a sister show of it. They do great work
Speaker 1: because they go out and find these weird fucking stories,
Speaker 1: and I want more of that about like, I want
Speaker 1: more of the weird because we already know how bad
Speaker 1: of Google is and I'm going to keep doing it.
Speaker 1: Sorry everyone, but it it feels like everyone being tired
Speaker 1: is the problem. And also not talking about any specific outlet,
Speaker 1: but gearing coverage towards conferences has become the other problem,
Speaker 1: where it's like, well, if we do this, we'll get
Speaker 1: the guy to speak on stage and say the same
Speaker 1: thing he said in the press release, and then we
Speaker 1: will get the money. The writers will not get the money,
Speaker 1: because that's not how this worked, but they will do
Speaker 1: the labor. And perhaps I'm saying that the people who
Speaker 1: run these publications haven't written a fucking word of meaning
Speaker 1: in maybe ten or fifteen years, or maybe their entire lives,
Speaker 1: and perhaps these publications need to be run by people
Speaker 1: who actually fucking write stuff instead of these goddamn management
Speaker 1: consultants who don't know what the fuck they're doing. But
Speaker 1: that's just one thing I had.
Speaker 2: Well, I feel like that the.
Speaker 3: It's funny because there's like models. That's the thing about
Speaker 3: media now that I feel like is being hauled out
Speaker 3: is like either there's the big players who have a
Speaker 3: very specific model of like, Okay, these are our reporters,
Speaker 3: these are our opinion people.
Speaker 2: Reporters go out and do this.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of overhead in that because reporting is
Speaker 3: expensive and you're not going to produce for weeks or
Speaker 3: a week or whatever, and then you have the one
Speaker 3: or two person shops or whatever on substack or something
Speaker 3: that can riff.
Speaker 2: But like.
Speaker 3: Either, ay, you need to produce like regularly to live, no,
Speaker 3: and you don't have the bandwidth to like fly to
Speaker 3: to Wyoming and talk to you know, the airport that
Speaker 3: got fucked or just like or it's not your thing
Speaker 3: and like you do a different sort of thing. And
Speaker 3: I'm like it would be ideally, And I think The
Speaker 3: Times even did a push for this where they were
Speaker 3: doing like a newsletter when everyone when everyone in media
Speaker 3: was doing like a newsletter thing.
Speaker 2: Funny, the idea is like, all right, now.
Speaker 3: We can sort of everyone gets subscribed to a newsletter,
Speaker 3: it can riff or whatever.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't know where we like net out there,
Speaker 2: you know, like I just don't know.
Speaker 1: It was like a classic manager who doesn't write thing.
Speaker 1: It's just like, why is this newsletter big? Because it's
Speaker 1: a newsletter, right, Like, damn, that's so smart. Let's pay
Speaker 1: a million dollars in salaries to people to do the
Speaker 1: same thing they're already doing, which we were already emailing people.
Speaker 5: I can get a million dollars just in emails.
Speaker 1: It was just the aggregate spend there. And I think
Speaker 1: the problem is that it's I go back to my
Speaker 1: point I just clunkily made, which it's like the people
Speaker 1: at the top are not fucking writing, They're like pell whatever.
Speaker 4: This is what I was going to say, is that
Speaker 4: when I came to the verge, as you're going to say,
Speaker 4: like I did not expect he is like really in
Speaker 4: the newsroom and he is writing all the time, like
Speaker 4: we have this little thing that says like someone published
Speaker 4: an article this in the articles have been published today,
Speaker 4: And he is always on there publishing.
Speaker 5: Stuff, which I've never had that at a newsroom, which
Speaker 5: is crazy for him. I know he's a unit.
Speaker 1: He is and I have my problems with him, and
Speaker 1: one day we'll hash it out. But otherwise he's going
Speaker 1: to come on, I know, love that yet to email
Speaker 1: me back either. I don't know why. It could be
Speaker 1: the things I say in all seriousness is the Verge
Speaker 1: is actually a great example of Yeah, the top person
Speaker 1: should be writing all the time, because if you're not writing,
Speaker 1: how the hell do you know what writing is? What
Speaker 1: do you don't even know what good writing is? You
Speaker 1: don't even know where You can't even have the same
Speaker 1: struggles as a reporter. And when a reporter, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I could we talk about anyone says something very rude
Speaker 1: in your publication, you fire them the next day for
Speaker 1: pissing off tech bros could be talking about anyone. You're
Speaker 1: not building solidarity and you're definitely not supporting actual reporting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the Virgin Boxer fire at this.
Speaker 4: Sorry to say gen z terms, but they're really really good.
Speaker 2: They're busting. Moment came out of my mouth. I was like,
Speaker 2: oh God, don't worry. When I say it, it sounds.
Speaker 5: No cap.
Speaker 4: But I think, like, that's that's why I came is
Speaker 4: because they let you write weird ship. They give their
Speaker 4: weird writers like all the bandwidths to do whatever they want,
Speaker 4: and Neili is in the trenches with you writing. He
Speaker 4: actually was the one who pointed me towards the Google
Speaker 4: glue story. He was like, this is fucking crazy, and
Speaker 4: it was like my first week and he's just got like,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I agree with that's fair enough.
Speaker 5: Stay out of it.
Speaker 4: We don't know it's too much you write.
Speaker 5: You remember Google AI overviews. They if you say, oh
Speaker 5: the pizza thing, yes, fuck yeah.
Speaker 4: Blue story, and that was like, yes, that was awesome,
Speaker 4: but yeah. So having someone who's like in the trenches
Speaker 4: with you is so cool because you get to learn
Speaker 4: from them and he can tell me like, hey, like
Speaker 4: there's a story over there.
Speaker 5: I know it.
Speaker 1: You know. It's one of the reasons Wineburger was so great.
Speaker 1: He didn't write once, and I'm gonna just chotting at
Speaker 1: Matt Weinberger the entire show. By the way. He did write,
Speaker 1: he did a little, he didn't write enough. One of
Speaker 1: the greatest he was running so much, which is a
Speaker 1: great tech story but also a classic Weinberger story, is
Speaker 1: he did a review of the latest Madden at the
Speaker 1: time without understanding the rules of football. So the whole
Speaker 1: thing is just to be like, Okay.
Speaker 2: Why is this very funny?
Speaker 1: But honestly, I actually think that kind of stuff's extremely
Speaker 1: It's good. I would love to like get like a
Speaker 1: line cook chat, GPT and just record what their thoughts,
Speaker 1: like someone just disconnected for whose regular job is a
Speaker 1: real job which actually like sucks and like involves them
Speaker 1: having to deal with people like not like a.
Speaker 2: Party, I actually but again free.
Speaker 1: Ideas the whole show. I would love like a We're
Speaker 1: currently in a big studio and I would love like
Speaker 1: a tech like a tech radio show, and I could
Speaker 1: live in here be very damp keyword damp and no cap.
Speaker 1: But also that's in the site. By the way, the
Speaker 1: Internet cable story is Josh Diseaser dz I easy a.
Speaker 1: I will put that in the notes as well. Incredible
Speaker 1: story and also scary that the Internet is run by
Speaker 1: a bunch of cables. Good break. It's I feel like
Speaker 1: what we're discussing here though, is the same thing of
Speaker 1: we're discussing how people actually interact with tech, and I
Speaker 1: feel like too much writing is about how people they
Speaker 1: think people interact with tech. We're writing for tech enthusiastics
Speaker 1: rather than how people experience the world. One thing I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about, and I don't know how to fucking
Speaker 1: do this podcast is and by the way, the listener,
Speaker 1: the listener who keeps bugging me about this, singling you
Speaker 1: out without naming you.
Speaker 2: What crime do they commit?
Speaker 1: I was actually just thinking of what guy currently writing. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no. It's a fair thing. They say, I'm not
Speaker 1: critical enough of Apple. But the one story I want
Speaker 1: to do, and I think this is one that everyone
Speaker 1: needs to be honest. Have you used the app store recently?
Speaker 1: It's extremely bad. It is so bad, It's so very bad.
Speaker 1: The apps that chart in some sections are just flat
Speaker 1: out dog shit, ad filled nonsense. The discovery on there
Speaker 1: is nakedly corrupt. The people in the app store editorial
Speaker 1: fuck you if you're listening. Okay, not really, but no
Speaker 1: cap no cap. Seriously, the apps tore editorial people is
Speaker 1: so nakedly corrupt. Right now, I don't mean fuck you.
Speaker 1: Please don't punish any podcast other than mine, punish me.
Speaker 1: But then they just feed the richest people. They're featuring
Speaker 1: popular things. They feature popular apps like why do I
Speaker 1: need to feature Facebook. I'm actually gonna load this shit
Speaker 1: up right now. I'm fine, I hope I'm not wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna look like a real toss pot. Okay. The
Speaker 1: top thing on here is tour Monopoly goes Amazing Destinations.
Speaker 1: Monopoly Go makes billions of dollars. Why is that what
Speaker 1: Apple is surfacing?
Speaker 2: That's weird. That's like a featured thing and not like
Speaker 2: a charting.
Speaker 1: It is the first thing when you open the apps.
Speaker 1: Next Amazon Music, Top apps right now, TikTok Max, Disney Plus, Snapchat,
Speaker 1: Amazon Music. Next one.
Speaker 5: I went to one of their south By Southwest parties
Speaker 5: and sud Group love there. That's my only the.
Speaker 2: Most useful part of Amazon Music.
Speaker 1: It was, Yeah, the most useful part of Amazon Music
Speaker 1: is an offline. Next thing up is Toka Bocal World.
Speaker 1: That's a they make at least one hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: a year. Next one up Squadbusters, which is a game
Speaker 1: by super Cell Multimer millions of dollars. Every single thing
Speaker 1: on here is just making the rich Richard. The next
Speaker 1: is Bluey, which is literally worth billions.
Speaker 2: Isn't that a dog?
Speaker 3: I saw?
Speaker 1: I saw Bluey at a Clippers game. Drunk Off is asked,
Speaker 1: leering at the cheerleaders. They kicked him out for being
Speaker 1: too drunk. Didn't even make it to the half anyway.
Speaker 1: Jokes about blueish side. That's a that's a real problem.
Speaker 1: That is a real algorithmic problem that everyone is facing.
Speaker 1: But everyone's kind of in the tech media for good reason.
Speaker 1: Folks in the open AI focused on AI AI AI AI.
Speaker 1: It needs to be this when the real problems are
Speaker 1: sitting in front of us, and those are the ones
Speaker 1: that people actually are affected by the fact supercell is
Speaker 1: rich because Apple is helping them get rich because Apple
Speaker 1: wants thirty percent, Why not send that traffic to someone else,
Speaker 1: send it to small developers. It's too much like hard work.
Speaker 1: And it pisses me off because well everything pisses me off.
Speaker 1: I guess it pissed me off because it doesn't feel
Speaker 1: like the tech media is currently built to handle this.
Speaker 1: And I don't think it's even the fault of the writers.
Speaker 1: There needs to be an app store reporter. How do we.
Speaker 5: What they would get?
Speaker 4: I mean, there's no fifty there's no infrastructure. I mean,
Speaker 4: tell that to the media executives. That's what I'm trying
Speaker 4: to say.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying you're wrong, like what you know, what
Speaker 1: you're describing is the actual problem. These executives don't want
Speaker 1: to invest in that. But if the argument is what's important, yeah,
Speaker 1: then this is important. It's more important than anything else
Speaker 1: like Google search, app stole, These are the things that matter.
Speaker 1: But it feels that the media is engineered towards clicks,
Speaker 1: which is then engineered towards pleasing Google, who is currently
Speaker 1: fucking up the news media. It's just we're in this
Speaker 1: weird cycle now. I don't even think real paper wrong over.
Speaker 3: It's really funny because I would always, like very vociferously
Speaker 3: fight back against the like clickbait sort of argument, but like,
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 2: I think it's harder to depend against these days because
Speaker 2: of how how traffic has declined and how like I
Speaker 2: do think metrics play a role across Like every outlet
Speaker 2: has an SEO person who is like paying attention to
Speaker 2: what is trending or whatever, you know, and I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's and and I'll I will make
Speaker 2: the distinction that I don't think are outlet and I
Speaker 2: don't think most out it's our only driving traffic as
Speaker 2: the primary reason. But I do think because like, look,
Speaker 2: you have a mission, you have like a thing that
Speaker 2: your north star of coverage should be. But like there
Speaker 2: is more awareness than there was ten or fifteen years
Speaker 2: ago of like what is happening traffic wise and what
Speaker 2: you should be thinking about. And that's a real thing.
Speaker 1: And you know what's also happening. Immediately after I stopped talking,
Speaker 1: You're going to hear an advertisement. And when you hear
Speaker 1: that ad, you're going to be like, damn, that is
Speaker 1: so thematically relevant. Everything it says that wasn't embarrassing to
Speaker 1: add ed didn't feel really annoyed. It didn't make a
Speaker 1: specific rule on his reddit so that people don't talk
Speaker 1: about it. That ad was so well placed. An eye,
Speaker 1: a new customer of this perfect company will love it.
Speaker 1: So please enjoy this extremely relevant ad and we're back.
Speaker 1: So the whole traffic thing's funny because clickbait is not
Speaker 1: is part of it. And actually I think Bi's done
Speaker 1: really well with keeping clickbait going but actually doing good
Speaker 1: shit in the topless She's actually found the middle ground,
Speaker 1: which is like straight up like clickbait, but the inside's
Speaker 1: so good but.
Speaker 3: You like it, right, Yeah, Like m Coca actually has
Speaker 3: riffed one this before is like that the idea of
Speaker 3: like you made that headline for people to only click,
Speaker 3: like you want people to be interested in your story,
Speaker 3: like there's gonna be. There isn't an art to it, right,
Speaker 3: It's not all.
Speaker 5: A thousand words and you know a couple of words.
Speaker 2: You gotta figure that out totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's funny as well because I actually think
Speaker 1: that the take media really needs to realize that other
Speaker 1: than chasing clicks. It's like tech stories get a shit
Speaker 1: ton of traffic. That alone should be a sign that
Speaker 1: there's magic to be found here. And it's not from
Speaker 1: doing the same thing, and it's from I think that
Speaker 1: there is a way of dressing up like software communities.
Speaker 4: Oh that's what That's what I did for almost two years.
Speaker 4: That was my job, was talking about software developer communities
Speaker 4: and it was rad.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I think The Verge is actually the first time I've
Speaker 4: worked at a publication where there are no KPIs or
Speaker 4: like traffic goals or sub schoals. No, no, no one
Speaker 4: bothers me about that. So it's it's sick, yeah, because
Speaker 4: you know a lot of people experience that, and people
Speaker 4: get yelled about that, like you you you could get
Speaker 4: fired over not reaching traffic. So I don't have to
Speaker 4: worry about that, which is great, and I think that's
Speaker 4: really healthy for writers. I wish more writers had that experience.
Speaker 4: But unfortunately, like where where we're at.
Speaker 1: It's does the times have stuff like that?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: No, I mean, like I think it's like general vibes, right,
Speaker 3: like if I fucking didn't put anything out in a month,
Speaker 3: then like whatever, then I might get a phone call.
Speaker 3: But like, as far as I can tell, or at least,
Speaker 3: I don't get called about it.
Speaker 2: But I don't. I don't wait, like I've never seen
Speaker 2: yeah exactly, but I which time, yeah, short time.
Speaker 3: I do think that like yeah, I do think there
Speaker 3: is more attention to paid to like metrics now, but
Speaker 3: like and I, oh god, I'm just thinking back on
Speaker 3: like my super earliest days of writing, and they.
Speaker 5: Have screens back then where they showed like ranking authority.
Speaker 5: I heard that when I first started journalism.
Speaker 1: I was like, what, you have a tyrodactyl that used
Speaker 1: to do the typing for you and turn to your
Speaker 1: living Mike is the same age exactly.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I know I get to be resident old guy
Speaker 3: but like it now. Even then, you know, I was
Speaker 3: still having to churn out more, but now it's just
Speaker 3: gotten like ten times worse. I am totally like all
Speaker 3: the folks who I won't like mention outlets, but like
Speaker 3: I just have colleagues or friends who work at different
Speaker 3: places and have you have to do this mini a
Speaker 3: week or like this is your quota, and like even
Speaker 3: when I was starting out, it was like I had
Speaker 3: to do at least one a day, which I could
Speaker 3: do when I was like twenty four or whatever however old.
Speaker 3: And now I'm thirty nine and I'm fucking I can't
Speaker 3: even think about that. Yeah, you know, so like it's
Speaker 3: just a very yeah, I don't know, it's super depressing.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to complain about it too much.
Speaker 4: I was in the trenches when I was in college,
Speaker 4: so I would I was doing all my college classes,
Speaker 4: and then I was also writing for BI and they
Speaker 4: have famously and well publicized very stringent goals about what
Speaker 4: you're supposed to reach. And I was in the trenches,
Speaker 4: but at least I was writing stuff that was really fun.
Speaker 4: And also it was my first job in journalism, so
Speaker 4: I thought that was the norm.
Speaker 5: Just get them all through.
Speaker 4: But I think, like speaking to why isn't the tech
Speaker 4: media getting stuff right? They have really really, really really
Speaker 4: rich and powerful people who own their company, and then
Speaker 4: trickles all the way down to people breathing down your
Speaker 4: neck and like, have you written ten stories this week?
Speaker 5: The Messenger is a great example of this.
Speaker 2: The poor messenger gone, I forgot all about that.
Speaker 5: Now company forgot until just now, Horri.
Speaker 1: You're not dead yet, which is not an actionable threat,
Speaker 1: but the Messenger is a great example. I think of
Speaker 1: a problem that faces the tech media, which is, again,
Speaker 1: the people making the publications aren't really the ones touching them.
Speaker 1: Fink le Stein, formerly of The Hill, a hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars off selling The Hill to I assume a private
Speaker 1: equity firm. I did say it in a previous episode.
Speaker 1: I forget everything I say the moment I say it,
Speaker 1: and it's it's frustrating. But also at some point I
Speaker 1: think that the tech media could look more like a
Speaker 1: bunch of four h four medias. I wish I think
Speaker 1: it's going that way, because look, the biggest fallacy of
Speaker 1: all of these tech pubs is are you can't do
Speaker 1: them profitable without a bunch of trap. Fuck you, you can
Speaker 1: make them super profitable if you don't have fifty people,
Speaker 1: if you have focused people. My granded dreams turn newsletter
Speaker 1: in a thing where I just have a bunch of stringers, freelancers,
Speaker 1: free idea for anyone to copy. You just have to
Speaker 1: be able to write three thousand words in an hour, bitch,
Speaker 1: but it's two. But nevertheless, it's I think that that
Speaker 1: is where it's going because four or four has done
Speaker 1: probably the best Internet culture reporting.
Speaker 5: I love them so much.
Speaker 4: It's so cool to get to see them succeed in
Speaker 4: the way that they have and just completely smash it
Speaker 4: and deliver the best fucking reporting.
Speaker 1: What Samlely, Cole Cobbler. They're all fucking brilliant, and they're
Speaker 1: brilliant because they're all Internet weirdos. Yes I mean that affectionately.
Speaker 2: Yes, Well, on the Motherboard DNA exactly, Sarah Derek, they
Speaker 2: all used to work on Motherboard and that was like
Speaker 2: mother Board was one.
Speaker 3: Of the real good and weird internet sites before Vice
Speaker 3: killed it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, all those people at the top.
Speaker 5: Host I wanted to be them so bad.
Speaker 1: They're great too, super great, No, seriously, like one of
Speaker 1: my heroes Edward im Guiso Junior.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good guy.
Speaker 1: I wish he wrote more. I love his work, but
Speaker 1: also another I don't know. He's a logic. I believe
Speaker 1: now he's gonna be on the next Better Off Live.
Speaker 2: Oh that's cool.
Speaker 1: He's so cool.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 1: But it's it's like guys like that having an opportunity
Speaker 1: a place like Motherboard is so good. I want to
Speaker 1: see like more of these clustered publications because if you
Speaker 1: really look at the old school tech Crunch, and I
Speaker 1: know people have fairly very negative views about Michael Arrington.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about him as a person because all
Speaker 1: of that sucks. However, the original days of tech Crunch
Speaker 1: resemble four oh four media so much more than they
Speaker 1: do tech Crunch today in that it was a bun.
Speaker 1: It was Michaelarrington, and there's a big myth that it's like, well,
Speaker 1: tech Crunch is very dry. It was be like Mike
Speaker 1: Clownton going, You'll never believe who I saw the melt.
Speaker 3: I forgot the creamery like a black or the ghost
Speaker 3: of it is a black from here and he.
Speaker 1: Would just like hang out. They'd be like, you'll never
Speaker 1: believe what I And it's great This is why I
Speaker 1: say gossip.
Speaker 2: Because this is what it is.
Speaker 1: Is what it was in the oldest, Like ooh, I've
Speaker 1: heard that Inside Partners is going to do this. It's
Speaker 1: inside Partners. Is that one of the VY people, one
Speaker 1: of the big vcs, he'd hear some ship and and
Speaker 1: that would be an even poor cars dirty but even
Speaker 1: he did the same thing. Sarah lazy but it's okay,
Speaker 1: that's a bit me and she did some good ship.
Speaker 1: But nevertheless, she.
Speaker 2: Did a really good book, actually the once You're Lucky
Speaker 2: Twice You're good. You should read that.
Speaker 1: That's the thing, shouldn't.
Speaker 5: I need to learn way more about this old school.
Speaker 3: I mean, we've fought a lot over the years, but
Speaker 3: she has ship. Some of her reporter is really good.
Speaker 1: But also, this is what my longer term vision I'm
Speaker 1: just saying it on the pod is. I want to
Speaker 1: rebuild solidarity within the tech media. It's a very lonely industry.
Speaker 1: Everyone's very much an island. Even the Virgin which I love.
Speaker 1: The Virginal podcast is the Virgin people talking to the
Speaker 1: Virgin power stuff every four and four. Same deal. I
Speaker 1: love four and four, but the same deal, and it's
Speaker 1: everyone's bulkanized a bit, but also it will allow for
Speaker 1: delicious beefs and gossip, and I think that people love that.
Speaker 1: I think people like it's like, oh, you'll never believe.
Speaker 1: Oh they're angry at each other again. People love this shit.
Speaker 1: It's low stakes drama. Oh you got the scoop on grumbus.
Speaker 1: I had the scoop on grumbus. You aggregated my grumbus.
Speaker 5: I just had this conversation today. Actually, grumm.
Speaker 3: I do think that we It's like journalists can be
Speaker 3: often very catty and insecure, and that is.
Speaker 5: Like the biggest culture shot. Getting into this.
Speaker 4: I was like, fuck, this is like like throwing elbows.
Speaker 4: I feel like I got like literally elbowed in the
Speaker 4: teeth so many times by people.
Speaker 5: I'm like, fuck God, but it isn't.
Speaker 3: Yes, sorry, I was more agro I think when I
Speaker 3: was younger, and I get it, Like I think I'm
Speaker 3: also like because I work at the times, there's a
Speaker 3: whole weirdness around that and like people often with good
Speaker 3: reasons in the past, like we didn't used to like
Speaker 3: not link a lot. Now I think we're way I
Speaker 3: will spend time that. Yeah, I mean I get it
Speaker 3: all the time. But I think I was trained, probably
Speaker 3: because I came up and blugging to like link and
Speaker 3: like credit and I think our desk is very good
Speaker 3: about it now. But like everyone is just like I
Speaker 3: described this a lot, like I feel like journalism today
Speaker 3: is a lot of like very insecure overachievers, and everyone's
Speaker 3: kind of like looking over their shoulders and trying to
Speaker 3: compete and trying to like make their mark or whatever.
Speaker 3: And I think getting your I have a fucking ego,
Speaker 3: but trying to get yeah, exactly, try trying to tamp
Speaker 3: that down as much and just like keep it and also,
Speaker 3: like people, one thing I've tried to do, even though
Speaker 3: it's hard, is like people like really remember when you
Speaker 3: pay them compliments on us totally like just doing a
Speaker 3: nice posting like that was a great story.
Speaker 2: I think it's a nice thing.
Speaker 1: That's something I do with lots on this show, because
Speaker 1: like I really am, I've got and it's.
Speaker 2: Easy to like shoot on someone's stuff and then they
Speaker 2: fucking they'll remember that, right. I remember, you.
Speaker 1: Can't do one you have to do like, okay, you
Speaker 1: can't do just being nice. I realized that is an option.
Speaker 4: That I it's down here on the low road.
Speaker 1: You think I've gone lower, I will, but there is
Speaker 1: a degree here of like, of course I'm like, I
Speaker 1: will criticize Jesus, fuck that word up. But there's so
Speaker 1: much good there and I think the like four or four.
Speaker 1: The reason I bring them up so much is they're
Speaker 1: the're fucking like they are, Like, I love sharing their work. Yeah, Defecto,
Speaker 1: which Irillas is outside of tech David Roth. Most people
Speaker 1: like Ray Rato, like you've got really like specialized reporters,
Speaker 1: and that's sports, I realized. But that model of Hey
Speaker 1: defined voices that people really love, that love for who
Speaker 1: they are. Drew McGarry covering Ship. People aren't going there
Speaker 1: just to hear about sports. They're going because Drew has
Speaker 1: a thought. Same with David. And I think that model
Speaker 1: in tech is something that the verge has done a
Speaker 1: good job on. I think they can go further, but
Speaker 1: it's something that was in bits. It was something that
Speaker 1: had Man'd you do?
Speaker 2: Did I think that The Times is uh? This is
Speaker 2: my personal view.
Speaker 3: I think that they can be ambivalent on personalities, like
Speaker 3: in one way, like it serves them a lot to
Speaker 3: have columnists who like people will go for you know,
Speaker 3: this is a different generation. But like David Brooks or
Speaker 3: Tom Friedman or these folks who have been coming there
Speaker 3: and drive a lot of traffic or talk to the
Speaker 3: president and like are important in some capacity. But at
Speaker 3: the same time, I think Times folks are Times. People
Speaker 3: at the top are always like the brand is first, right,
Speaker 3: it's a New York Times. It's not Mike Isaac at
Speaker 3: the New York Times some thing right, And like, I.
Speaker 2: Do think there's a tension there.
Speaker 3: But in this one thing that I think have expressly
Speaker 3: said outwardly is like in an age of Ai producing
Speaker 3: mountains of bullshit, one advantage we might have is knowing
Speaker 3: that our reporters are people and explaining that they have
Speaker 3: expertise and like going into them. So like it, I
Speaker 3: do think there's like a tension there. I would love
Speaker 3: if they let us be a little more free.
Speaker 5: But like that is the tension, and we all see it.
Speaker 4: And I think that's kind of what you give up
Speaker 4: for the Times, is what it seems like as the outsiders, like, Okay,
Speaker 4: if you want to work for the Times, you're gonna
Speaker 4: have to give that up. And that's it's not just
Speaker 4: the Times. The it's like you know, like a lot
Speaker 4: of of the top publications. You you're not gonna have
Speaker 4: that voice because of what they do.
Speaker 5: It's different.
Speaker 1: What's funny, though, is I'm old enough to remember that
Speaker 1: this was the model. David Poge at the New York Times,
Speaker 1: Eric Benderoff, I think it was at the Tribune here
Speaker 1: was a bray. I think at the Boston Globe you
Speaker 1: had tech colonists and they were insane. You still got
Speaker 1: like Jim Rossman, I think that that was morning use
Speaker 1: mixing up with someone. Nevertheless, you have a few, but
Speaker 1: regional tech columists used to get paid insane money. M
Speaker 1: there was a rumor. There was a rumor that, like
Speaker 1: I think seen it, tried to pay Nick Bilton a
Speaker 1: million dollars.
Speaker 2: I remember that. I don't even remember.
Speaker 5: I've heard Felix Salmon stories.
Speaker 4: This is like passed down from older journalists to me
Speaker 4: through generations.
Speaker 2: So the Fusion days, Oh that was great?
Speaker 1: What was this? We need to tell you?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Well do.
Speaker 3: You remember the Fusion Do you remember Fusion?
Speaker 2: Does that?
Speaker 5: I remember? Like the logo?
Speaker 3: I mean you shouldn't because it was literally like a
Speaker 3: production of Telemundo that wanted to do is tech company Olsen.
Speaker 1: Or h ship.
Speaker 3: There was a bunch of cash Hill there. Kevin Russ
Speaker 3: work there, and what they did was uh uh And
Speaker 3: they hired Felix Oh like just magical. So what they
Speaker 3: did though was like come in and throw like money
Speaker 3: at everyone. I fucking rude the day that I didn't
Speaker 3: try to get a job there because my salary would
Speaker 3: be like four x what it is nice but right, right, right,
Speaker 3: But I think the rumor was I'm not going to
Speaker 3: say exactly what it was, but just there were rumors
Speaker 3: on how much people were getting paid and we all
Speaker 3: should have done that great and that the company went
Speaker 3: out of business like two week years later. No, no,
Speaker 3: they bought got bought by Gizmoto, which then fucking I
Speaker 3: don't even know what.
Speaker 2: No, Gizmoto got bought by Telemando.
Speaker 5: Media is not just fun anymore.
Speaker 3: Fucking human centipede of shit that is media industry.
Speaker 1: Again. I will have drinks every city I'm in. Everyone
Speaker 1: will get drunk together, and then everyone will be mad
Speaker 1: at each other and then we'll have stuff like this.
Speaker 1: But it's I think it is partly also the remote
Speaker 1: work movement.
Speaker 5: And I've only been a remote journalist, which is crazy.
Speaker 2: You're are going to an office.
Speaker 5: I will, but like, I've never had a newsroom never.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a that's a bummer.
Speaker 5: Whenever I say that, people who are journalists before COVID
Speaker 5: or like that sucks.
Speaker 1: I feel like, also though that is somewhat romanticized though, because.
Speaker 2: You're because you're anti you're anti.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's not even a remote work thing. It's just
Speaker 1: the newsroom of Future Publishing when I work there. Eight shit,
Speaker 1: don't live in England anymore. Future Publishing there was there
Speaker 1: was just a mood of depression in that books. It
Speaker 1: was a depressing place to work run by us White.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 1: And so then you go into the BBC one or
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg one, you're like, Okay, I fucking get it.
Speaker 4: Like I would be, oh, yeah, the Bloomberg one sounds awesome,
Speaker 4: but the BBC one, at least the old one.
Speaker 1: I haven't been into the Big Tower too, And I
Speaker 1: feel like that it'd be cool if a tech newsroom
Speaker 1: exists like that. It just in the world, just practically speaking.
Speaker 1: But also I don't know if one. I guess all
Speaker 1: things that you kind of had one.
Speaker 3: I mean, we had like a we were like weirdly
Speaker 3: remote hybrid. We had like a work space or something
Speaker 3: in Soma, but I think that like, like, look, it's
Speaker 3: we are romanticizing it. But I do like and I
Speaker 3: fucking work from home literally all the time. But but
Speaker 3: my the thing that I miss about working at headquarters
Speaker 3: in New York was just like you walk around run
Speaker 3: into people bullshit.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: I actually do sometimes come up with interesting things or
Speaker 3: like share tips and whatever just because you saw someone.
Speaker 2: And I do think there's.
Speaker 4: Value there, No, there is, there is definitely. And I
Speaker 4: was to say box as a New York office business
Speaker 4: insider does fortune does.
Speaker 5: I just have always lived in California my entire lifests
Speaker 5: and I'm not moving to New.
Speaker 1: York updated long term a heads that I was recently
Speaker 1: releasing the psychiatric Ward for example, That's where we met
Speaker 1: those people. Like they may remember, I was very pro
Speaker 1: remote work and I still am. I've never been his
Speaker 1: anti office at all. Yeah, and that is like the
Speaker 1: reason I do these in studio ones is because remote
Speaker 1: is fine. But this is cool. This is energy, Yes,
Speaker 1: each other. We can be focused, and I think the
Speaker 1: I do it's the real dumb startup guy thing in
Speaker 1: my house, like we should have a coworking splost for
Speaker 1: the tech media. That's like a really good twenty eleven
Speaker 1: asked Idea.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, I think the thing that gets lost from
Speaker 3: like again, I'm older than you and like I came
Speaker 3: up in like where remote work was not a thing,
Speaker 3: not really, and like now I am very much a
Speaker 3: remote per in a lot of the time.
Speaker 2: But like I do at least appreciate the.
Speaker 3: Time that I had in I think it means something
Speaker 3: very different when you're when you're younger in your career
Speaker 3: rather than you're older in your career, and I forget that.
Speaker 3: Like I was in the Times headquarters from twenty fourteen
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen, and that was super valuable for me because
Speaker 3: like just the whole like fucking face time with who
Speaker 3: you should know or what everything is real? You know?
Speaker 1: And I will like again, I'm like missed the remote work.
Speaker 1: But my first job was at Pcson Magazine with Future,
Speaker 1: and as miserable as that place was, it was because
Speaker 1: of the management, yep, not because of people like Will
Speaker 1: Porter and Steve Hogatine, people I work with who were
Speaker 1: there to tell me to stop playing World of Warcraft
Speaker 1: during work. And then I would say to them, no,
Speaker 1: I've done all my work, and then they would say, no,
Speaker 1: you haven't, and then I would say, yes, I have
Speaker 1: go check and then they would be really pissed off
Speaker 1: and tell me to stop playing anyway. Jokes aside, having
Speaker 1: Will redline my shit in person broke my spira.
Speaker 5: Oh, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: But actually it was really valuable because I then went
Speaker 1: and had coffee with Steve Hogerti, who then said he's
Speaker 1: right though, and that also hurt. But it was also
Speaker 1: the fact that I could go back to Will and
Speaker 1: actually have a conversation about what the fuck he meant.
Speaker 1: He's a wonderful edity, genuinely like and having that experience
Speaker 1: and then kind of like having the moment being like,
Speaker 1: oh my spirit, but not having that on my own
Speaker 1: at home, separated from the world, I actually think was
Speaker 1: quite valuable. It's just I keep coming back to this
Speaker 1: solidarity thing. I think it's just.
Speaker 5: We have that solidarity.
Speaker 4: I think, like physical physical I have adapted as a
Speaker 4: journalist just fine. I would have loved a newsroom that
Speaker 4: would be great, but I adapted. I went to tons
Speaker 4: of events, I've met tons of and then I've also
Speaker 4: like reached out to like more established journalists a ton
Speaker 4: I'm like, hey, can I get your advice on this?
Speaker 4: All the time, and people my age, I think, like
Speaker 4: I definitely have that as harsh as it is, like
Speaker 4: especially in San Francisco, like, for instance, people on my beat.
Speaker 4: Rachel met at Bloomberg. I see her at events. We
Speaker 4: talk all the time, like having those people who are
Speaker 4: more established who can be like hey, like, we still
Speaker 4: have that, I think, but younger generalists have to know
Speaker 4: to reach out for that.
Speaker 1: I guess maybe it's more defined. I'm just trying to find,
Speaker 1: like an excuse to throw a party.
Speaker 2: I think I would go to your party.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The last time I saw Mike at a party actually
Speaker 4: there was a thing in December.
Speaker 1: But let's wrap this up though. So I've really enjoyed
Speaker 1: having you both here. Thank you so much. Mike. Where
Speaker 1: can people find you?
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm writing occasionally at The New York Times,
Speaker 3: where I work for my full time job, and then
Speaker 3: on Twitter, but more on Instagram too now just like
Speaker 3: google my name and then you can find on my show.
Speaker 3: So I wrote a book which if I would love
Speaker 3: to plug. It's called super Pumped The Battle for Uber
Speaker 3: And if you don't like reading, you can watch the show,
Speaker 3: which is on Netflix.
Speaker 2: Right off the show, Thank you very cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll just say I love that show so much
Speaker 4: because I had such a huge crush on Jesseph Gordon
Speaker 4: Levitt was growing up. And then I also didn't know
Speaker 4: Travis Kalenick was such a dick. That show is awesome.
Speaker 2: J g l is also a lovely human being, but.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, I love him, so you.
Speaker 2: Can be yeah, doubly secure.
Speaker 1: And problem with that show was it felt like they
Speaker 1: cost the wrong guy as Travis. There's a guy who
Speaker 1: just looks exactly like Travis Kalenick who plays like coming.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it was funny.
Speaker 3: A lot of super employees were like, they should have
Speaker 3: Kyle Chandlers.
Speaker 5: So good. I ate that up.
Speaker 4: Okay, you can find me on Twitter x at Kylie Bites.
Speaker 4: I'm on threads at Kylie dot Robinson not Robinson with
Speaker 4: an N in the middle, no en And then I'm
Speaker 4: right the Verge full time about AI and tech stuff.
Speaker 1: And you can find me, of course on the Better
Speaker 1: Offline podcast. Ask your parole officer to listen to you
Speaker 1: one podcast. I'm so sorry, I promise I don't think
Speaker 1: all of you are criminals. I love you all. I'm
Speaker 1: saying it like I love you all, like the menu
Speaker 1: if you remember that. Don't know if they let you
Speaker 1: watch that clink, but thank you so much for listening everyone,
Speaker 1: Better offline dot com. You'll then get the same liner
Speaker 1: that plays off every episode. Thank you for listening, Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer
Speaker 1: of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You can
Speaker 1: check out more of his music and audio projects at
Speaker 1: Mattasowski dot com, m A T T O s O
Speaker 1: W s ki dot com. You can email me at
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Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 5: Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media.
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