Speaker 1: All Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed Zitron. I've
Speaker 2: spent the last fifteen years in tech, both as a
Speaker 2: reporter and a public relations executive, and over that career,
Speaker 2: I've realized that many see the tech industry as kind
Speaker 2: of a monolith. It's actually a lot simpler than you'd imagine.
Speaker 2: And it's my mission with this podcast to got through
Speaker 2: the buzzwords and nonsense and explain to you how venture
Speaker 2: capital and big tech are trying to change the future
Speaker 2: for better or for worse. Today, I'm joined by Robert
Speaker 2: Evans of Cool Zone Media to break down a theory
Speaker 2: I have that is pretty much core to everything I
Speaker 2: think about and we'll talk to you about on this podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me ed. I love that we're
Speaker 1: coming on to talk about this because the concept you're
Speaker 1: about to introduce was like the thing that made me
Speaker 1: reach out to you about doing this show, or at
Speaker 1: least one of the major ones. I think everyone has
Speaker 1: this feeling that like something is fucked up and wrong.
Speaker 1: We can remember this period of like optimism about technology
Speaker 1: and the Internet and like not just feeling excited about
Speaker 1: like new shit that we could buy, but feeling excited
Speaker 1: about the things that technology was going to bring us,
Speaker 1: the promise of like the new Digital age, and that
Speaker 1: all fell aside to be replaced by this looming sense
Speaker 1: of doom so quickly that I don't I don't think
Speaker 1: a lot of us have a good idea about like
Speaker 1: why it happened.
Speaker 2: And you know what, I think that's actually a great
Speaker 2: place to start with a very simple question, why does
Speaker 2: it feel like the tech we use every day is
Speaker 2: getting worse? Look your search results. They're full of sponsored
Speaker 2: content and articles that don't actually answer any questions, or
Speaker 2: just a big thread of people asking the same question
Speaker 2: without ever getting an answer. Your friends aren't popping up
Speaker 2: on Instagram, you constantly gained product emails, notifications pop up,
Speaker 2: spam emails, and people you've maybe spoken who wants to
Speaker 2: buy some Dodad. But then you look at the news
Speaker 2: and seemingly every tech company is making billions of dollars,
Speaker 2: growing at this alarming, almost unsustainable rate, all while laying
Speaker 2: off tens of thousands of people a year. And that's
Speaker 2: because there is a problem at the center of the
Speaker 2: tech industry and actually the market's at large. It's a
Speaker 2: cancerous problem and it's at the fabric of how capital
Speaker 2: is deployed in modern business. Public and private investors, along
Speaker 2: with the markets themselves, have become entirely decoupled from the
Speaker 2: concept of what good business truly is, focusing on only
Speaker 2: one goddamn thing, only one noxious, shitty metric growth In
Speaker 2: the row economy, products are made worse, customers are abused,
Speaker 2: labor is disposable, and executives are getting richer every single day. Now,
Speaker 2: growth in this case is not necessarily just about being
Speaker 2: bigger or better. It's just about more. It's always more.
Speaker 2: Everything must be generating more money, must be having a
Speaker 2: higher headcount, even when laying people off. No, the problem
Speaker 2: here is growth in this case is not necessarily about
Speaker 2: being bigger or better. It's just about more. It means
Speaker 2: the company's generating more revenue, higher valuations, and gaining more
Speaker 2: market share. And then it's looking around and saying, you know,
Speaker 2: that's just not enough. We must have more. Businesses are
Speaker 2: expected to be in fact, they're rewarded for being so
Speaker 2: eternal engines of capital. They must continue to create more
Speaker 2: and more shareholder value while hopefully at some point providing
Speaker 2: a service of some kind to a customer. In the
Speaker 2: public markets. This means that companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft,
Speaker 2: they're all rewarded for having these unfocused, capital intensive businesses,
Speaker 2: they're also involved laying off tens of thousands of people.
Speaker 2: Over the last use hundreds of thousands of workers have
Speaker 2: been laid off as multiple tech companies have been worth
Speaker 2: half to three quarters to even a trillion dollars. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's uh. I think like one of the really
Speaker 1: important things to nail in here is that, like this
Speaker 1: isn't a question of profitability. The fact that you tie
Speaker 1: it to growth is so important because like the issue
Speaker 1: is not that these companies are not profitable, Like profit
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with these decisions. It's about all
Speaker 1: I mean Abida does, which is basically like profit over
Speaker 1: costs and stuff. But it's like it's this this question
Speaker 1: of like growth, right that if you're not if you're
Speaker 1: not returning this kind of algorithmically scaling growth, then your
Speaker 1: company is seen as a failure by a lot of
Speaker 1: the people who who are responsible for like the financial decisions,
Speaker 1: and so all of these choices that are kind of
Speaker 1: choking the Internet out and making the stuff we use
Speaker 1: every day work less aren't about It's not a question
Speaker 1: of the company could can't be profitable if we don't
Speaker 1: do this, It's that we won't have the right number
Speaker 1: on a sheet to show somebody.
Speaker 2: And Microsoft is actually a really good example. So Microsoft,
Speaker 2: of course, they bought Activision Blizzard for sixty eight billion
Speaker 2: dollars recently. They then even more recently, downsized the gaming
Speaker 2: division at the cost of about nineteen hundred jobs, and
Speaker 2: then they became more valuable than Apple in the process.
Speaker 2: In December, shares of Spotify jumped by nearly seven point
Speaker 2: five percent upon the news that it was slashing seventeen
Speaker 2: percent of its workforce, adding nearly two point six billion
Speaker 2: to the company's market cap. And the process, none of
Speaker 2: these companies, of course, were punished for their poor planning,
Speaker 2: or their stagnating products, the mismanagement of human capital, or
Speaker 2: their general lack of any real innovation. And it's because
Speaker 2: the number kept going up, and that is all that
Speaker 2: seems to matter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I like, when I was a kid kind
Speaker 1: of questioning why stuff like layoffs hat and you know
Speaker 1: where my dad got laid off from his and tech
Speaker 1: and stuff. It was always framed to me as like, well,
Speaker 1: these are. You know, companies aren't charities. They have to
Speaker 1: like do this to turn a profit, otherwise they can't
Speaker 1: afford to operate. And I think it's so crucial that
Speaker 1: like that is not at all what's happening here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Microsoft had twenty two billion dollars in profit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: their lost learnings. Yeah, these companies are fine. Google when
Speaker 2: they did mass layoffs last year and in yes, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, they had like ten billion dollars in profit.
Speaker 2: These companies are in the green and they're fine. There's
Speaker 2: no reason to lay off these people other than the
Speaker 2: fact that they can and they don't need them anymore.
Speaker 2: Or perhaps they just ran the company in this big, shitty,
Speaker 2: messy way. And nowhere is that more obvious than with Meta.
Speaker 1: Oh god. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So back in October of twenty twenty two, I said
Speaker 2: that Mark Zuckerberg was going to kill Meta. Perhaps I
Speaker 2: was a little bit early on that one, but I
Speaker 2: genuinely think that they're on the path to death. So
Speaker 2: my argument is that their user numbers are declining. They
Speaker 2: will occasionally have a time when they go up by
Speaker 2: the percent, perhaps, but then they'll drop. But also the
Speaker 2: user experience of Facebook and Instagram has just become awful.
Speaker 2: They spend these insane amounts of money, tens of billions
Speaker 2: of dollars on Meta's reality division, which is where they
Speaker 2: stick the horrible VR experiences that everybody hates, and the
Speaker 2: term metaverse. But what was crazy was Mark Zuckerbog didn't
Speaker 2: get punished for literally lying about the metaverse. The street
Speaker 2: did not mind the fact that he very clearly misled everybody.
Speaker 2: In the announcement of Meta, he played a video of
Speaker 2: a bunch of stuff that no one can do is
Speaker 2: technologically impossible, shit jumping through things all around you with
Speaker 2: no headset, completely insane. The stock had a little bit
Speaker 2: of a wobble, but nothing happened. Yet once he fired
Speaker 2: eleven thousand people and claimed that twenty twenty three would
Speaker 2: be the year of efficiency, the market loved him, double
Speaker 2: digit increases in the price of Meta shares. Nothing happened
Speaker 2: to Zuckerberg with the next part, though, because he also
Speaker 2: lost thirteen point seven billion dollars on the metaverse thing
Speaker 2: that has never made them any money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and for some reference, thirteen point seven billion dollars
Speaker 1: is about the GDP of Rwanda. Like that, that's how much.
Speaker 1: That's a rwanda worth of losses. He's lost a rwanda
Speaker 1: in his in his metaverse.
Speaker 2: Bet it's actually a bit more as well, because recently.
Speaker 1: It's more than it is more than a rwanda.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's actually multiple. It might even be as many
Speaker 2: as three rwandas, because an estima from last year suggested
Speaker 2: that he's lost nearly forty two billion dollars on the metaverse.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. So yeah, that's that's about. That's almost three
Speaker 1: and a half Macedonias.
Speaker 2: And it doesn't matter to the markets. You'd think a
Speaker 2: public company that makes his money meta off of social
Speaker 2: media experiences and selling ads on them, you think the
Speaker 2: markets would care. The Instagram, one of their largest products,
Speaker 2: one of their big money makers, an app for sharing
Speaker 2: and following your friends photos and videos, no longer reliably
Speaker 2: shows you content from those you follow. That's because meta
Speaker 2: must simply interrupt your feed with sponsored content based on
Speaker 2: and actually impossible to define amount of data. It is
Speaker 2: not obvious how they choose. There are things that have
Speaker 2: appeared on my Instagram that I've only ever said out loud.
Speaker 2: It's very strange. And this is because it doesn't matter
Speaker 2: if the product sucks. If meta is growing by double
Speaker 2: digit percentages if they're making billions of dollars, even if
Speaker 2: they're fucking the user in the process. Another great example
Speaker 2: for you is Google. It doesn't matter that Google's aipower
Speaker 2: Gmail plugin literally makes up it hallucinates email conversations. But
Speaker 2: because they put AI on Gmail, Google's market cap goes up.
Speaker 2: Everyone loves Sanda Pishe despite the fact that he gets
Speaker 2: paid two hundred and eighty million dollars and layser tens
Speaker 2: of thousands of people seemingly all the time. And it
Speaker 2: really doesn't matter. And this is one that really bothers
Speaker 2: me because I think we're all kind of stuck with Amazon.
Speaker 2: The Amazon experience is even worse. You go on there
Speaker 2: and you type spoon or spatula, and there's eighty seven
Speaker 2: different knockoffs with names that sound like someone had a
Speaker 2: seizure while typing that skib spatula eleven dollars will deliver
Speaker 2: in three minutes. But because Amazon is able to show
Speaker 2: double digit percentages of growth every year, yay, it's fine.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter that the product sucks. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 2: Only a few things really matter when it comes to
Speaker 2: big tech in their oh outsized valuations, layoffs, growth and
Speaker 2: the promise of growth, no matter how faint or how speculative.
Speaker 2: The markets lack any long term thinking, and they lack
Speaker 2: the analysis that would actually force businesses to become sustainable
Speaker 2: and make great products. And when I say sustainable, I
Speaker 2: don't mean anything about the environment. I mean and this
Speaker 2: is a crazy concept, Robert. This one's going to really
Speaker 2: blow you away. That they make more money than they
Speaker 2: spend and don't have to fire people all the time.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, what a concept in business.
Speaker 2: If the markets actually cared about sustainable companies that could
Speaker 2: last the test of time without constantly burning capital and
Speaker 2: firing people, the markets might not have ignored the fact
Speaker 2: that Meta got a four hundred and ten million dollar
Speaker 2: fine from the EU under the General Data Protection Regulation,
Speaker 2: which is the laws that govern data use and customer
Speaker 2: data in Europe. And they also would have probably noticed
Speaker 2: the fact that European users now have to deliberately opt
Speaker 2: in to share their data. Now. As a little aside,
Speaker 2: Facebook makes their money off of using cookies and various
Speaker 2: other means of getting your data and then presenting you
Speaker 2: with ads based on that. Some of it comes from
Speaker 2: how you use the platform, but a lot of it
Speaker 2: comes from this very insidious hidden tracking. What's happened here
Speaker 2: is that European users will no longer have that by default.
Speaker 2: They will have to choose whether to help Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 2: by another fifth of Hawaii.
Speaker 1: Hey, just MAUI just MAUI.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sorry, terribly sorry. I wouldn't want to hurt
Speaker 2: mister Zuckerberg. But what's really bad about this is statistically
Speaker 2: users do not like opting into these things. Only about
Speaker 2: twenty five percent of iOS users have chosen to opt
Speaker 2: in to app tracking, which was a feature that was
Speaker 2: actually added a few versions of iOS Ago to your iPhone,
Speaker 2: your iPad and so on and so forth. And by
Speaker 2: the way, this means that basically every app is kind
Speaker 2: of on notice if it's an Apple device. Now users
Speaker 2: know when they might be sharing their data, and it's
Speaker 2: genuinely a threat to a lot of the tech ecosystem
Speaker 2: that a lot of people don't know. In fact, Meta's
Speaker 2: business model is intrinsically linked to the repurposing of customer
Speaker 2: data into ad targeting. But the markets don't seem to care.
Speaker 2: And I get it. It might seem unthinkable that mister
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg's fancy party could come to an end, but we
Speaker 2: really need to be clear about something. Meta's core advertising
Speaker 2: models depend heavily on things that in the next decade
Speaker 2: will likely become impossible to do legally. They might not
Speaker 2: even be possible technically, because now Apple is adding apptracking transparency,
Speaker 2: which I've kind of mentioned with the iOS update, and
Speaker 2: this means that people are first of all aware of
Speaker 2: when their date is being shared, and they're probably going
Speaker 2: to tell them to pound sand. There are other different
Speaker 2: changes that are happening as well, alphabet which Google of
Speaker 2: course they're going to be retiring third party tracking cookies.
Speaker 2: Meta is kind of a point where if anyone was
Speaker 2: paying attention, they'd be a little bit more worried. And
Speaker 2: that existential threat is why Mark Zuckerberg is so desperate
Speaker 2: to distract you with dreams of the metaverse. It's so
Speaker 2: desperate to make you think that Meta will be the
Speaker 2: thing that builds the artificial general intelligence, which is just
Speaker 2: the buzzword for an AI that can have kind of
Speaker 2: human level intellect, despite the fact that most generative AI
Speaker 2: right now just makes shit up and when you really
Speaker 2: look at it, And this is what confuses me about
Speaker 2: how much this company is worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
Speaker 2: Their other products don't make that much money. And Zuckerberg's
Speaker 2: last big idea, the one that he changed his goddamn
Speaker 2: company name for, lost them billions of dollars. Forty two billion,
Speaker 2: probably be sixty billion next year.
Speaker 1: God. Yeah, why Street loves six seven Macedonias.
Speaker 2: Yeah, multiple Macedonias there. Since I published my original thoughts
Speaker 2: on the row economy, their share process is more than doubled.
Speaker 2: It was one hundred and seventy seven dollars then and
Speaker 2: it's now four hundred dollars right now. It's despicable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the thing you have to understand when
Speaker 1: you look at like, how can a company be burning
Speaker 1: money at this rate and their stock price increase as
Speaker 1: much as Facebooks has, or Metas has. I guess we
Speaker 1: have to call it. I don't. I still don't like
Speaker 1: calling it that. I feel like that's giving him a win.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's not fair.
Speaker 1: It's not fair. But I think part of what you
Speaker 1: have to understand is that like the people buying the stock,
Speaker 1: like their vested financial interest is in it, continuing to like,
Speaker 1: this is not all that different from what was happening
Speaker 1: with n FTS right in that like there is this,
Speaker 1: there is very much a group of people with a
Speaker 1: vested interest in that stock price raising well above what
Speaker 1: can actually be justified by the performance of the business,
Speaker 1: and the people who are making a fortune on that
Speaker 1: right now understand that it is a limited timeframe that
Speaker 1: this game will work in. I don't know that Mark
Speaker 1: fully does. He may he's he maybe to some extent
Speaker 1: a little deranged himself at this point. But I think
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who absolutely do understand
Speaker 1: and are heavily invested in Facebook now trying to get
Speaker 1: as much of that as they can while it lasts,
Speaker 1: but they understand that it's not going to last forever.
Speaker 2: And I think there is a big fall of Rome
Speaker 2: style story coming for tech, and I think the rot
Speaker 2: economy is behind it because so much of tech has
Speaker 2: become engineered to growth at all costs. It's a phenomenon
Speaker 2: that controls everything. And I think the place where it
Speaker 2: hits the most people because you know, Instagram's annoying, Facebook's annoying,
Speaker 2: but you can kind of get around it. But I
Speaker 2: think the place that hits home the most is Google. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so the thing that everyone knows Google for is. Of course,
Speaker 2: Google search used to be a place where crazy idea.
Speaker 2: You go and you type in a thing, tip tap
Speaker 2: tap search, and then a bunch of results come up
Speaker 2: that are actually useful. Now it's a labyrinth full of
Speaker 2: optimized garbage. Search engine optimization is an important thing to
Speaker 2: remember here, which is companies have worked out how to
Speaker 2: trick Google into making you see their link rather than
Speaker 2: Google finding a useful thing. This is partially ruined Google Search,
Speaker 2: but the other problem is adds sponsored content and of
Speaker 2: course artificial intelligence crap. So Charlie Wazel over the Atlantic,
Speaker 2: he argued a couple of years back, he said, Google Search,
Speaker 2: what many consider an indispensable tool of modern life, is
Speaker 2: dead or dying. And I agree. Users have to effectively
Speaker 2: find a way to cheat and con Google into giving
Speaker 2: them what they want. They add things like I don't
Speaker 2: know you put PC repair error, put the error in
Speaker 2: plus reddit To get anything approaching a reliable answer, If
Speaker 2: you go and type a regular tech problem in as
Speaker 2: I mentioned earlier, you just get a lot of shit.
Speaker 2: You just get a bunch of things that it will
Speaker 2: seem right. You'll say, oh, this is how to fix
Speaker 2: forty two on my iPhone. Cool, and then you click
Speaker 2: through and there's not actually really much useful content. It's
Speaker 2: have you tried resetting your iPhone? Is your iPhone broken?
Speaker 2: Is something wrong? Have you tried restarting your iPhone? Useless garbage?
Speaker 2: But nevertheless, pushing traffic towards media outlet's the kind of cretinous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's like, I think it's important both as
Speaker 1: you noted, a lot of the fucking worst shit in
Speaker 1: tech can be strangled by stuff like what the EU
Speaker 1: has done to force the companies to not allow you
Speaker 1: to be opted in on stuff that's directly against your interests.
Speaker 1: And likewise, if that were to be, if that were
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that we could like make more
Speaker 1: moves like that in the United States. You're not just
Speaker 1: strangling the worst parts of big tech with that, You're
Speaker 1: strangling a lot of really predatory, toxic media with that
Speaker 1: that all of their money comes from that kind of
Speaker 1: shit one way or the other. That like, they are
Speaker 1: an integral part of this and can be harmed by
Speaker 1: like doing damage to this fundamentally dishonest way of doing business.
Speaker 2: And Google spends decades, they claim trying to improve the
Speaker 2: quality of organic results, but it's for over a decade,
Speaker 2: has been easily gained by anyone who knows how to
Speaker 2: create an algorithmic headline, a headline that will make the
Speaker 2: Google spider that looks over all the websites say this
Speaker 2: is the thing, this is the answer. I personally don't
Speaker 2: know whether Google does this deliberately or whether they've simply
Speaker 2: lost track of everything, whether the evil parties are winning.
Speaker 2: But you mention media companies and these predatory ones. The
Speaker 2: problem is it's not just predatory ones. A large chunk
Speaker 2: of modern media is obsessed with affiliate marketing, which is
Speaker 2: you'll see these things, which is like best apps for
Speaker 2: blah blah, and those would be affiliate links, yeah, which
Speaker 2: give them a little bit of little bit of money,
Speaker 2: or best super Bowl deals again a little bit of cash,
Speaker 2: little bit of money every time you buy something through it.
Speaker 2: And it's turned a large chunk of the web, but
Speaker 2: especially Google Search, into this complete slot, and without finding
Speaker 2: a way to negotiate with it, you're offered this kind
Speaker 2: of fragmented buffet of content based on what Google kind
Speaker 2: of thinks you want to see, but it's more based
Speaker 2: on how much money Google is paid and how often
Speaker 2: Google has been trigged. Let's be honest, and I think
Speaker 2: it's fair to argue that Google no longer provides the
Speaker 2: best results to any query. It provides an answer that
Speaker 2: it believes is most beneficial or profitable, which can sometimes
Speaker 2: be the thing you want, isn't always.
Speaker 1: I think one of the problems is that I don't
Speaker 1: know of a search engine that I would say is
Speaker 1: better than Google in the way that Google used to
Speaker 1: be better than anything else, right, and I'm talking ten
Speaker 1: years ago. I do know there are search engines and
Speaker 1: options that are better than Google at certain things. I've
Speaker 1: come to learn that, like, if I use Perplexity AI,
Speaker 1: it'll be worse than Google at a bunch of stuff,
Speaker 1: but there are a few specific things it's better at,
Speaker 1: and like that has increasingly become how I use search, right,
Speaker 1: is that I cycle through different options with the same
Speaker 1: question to try to figure out, like, well, who's gonna
Speaker 1: fuck me least on trying to get this information?
Speaker 2: And it sucks as well, because sure we all know
Speaker 2: that any free service online isn't free. There is some
Speaker 2: way they're making money, and that's fine, you've got it,
Speaker 2: service cost money, whatever, But at some point, how much
Speaker 2: profit is too much and also how can you justify
Speaker 2: this much profit while making things so much worse? And
Speaker 2: I mean, the result is that it just sucks. It sucks.
Speaker 2: Googling sucks now, it's an exercise in pain. It leads
Speaker 2: you to a bunch of content that is so obviously
Speaker 2: engineered to get your clicks rather than actually provide any service.
Speaker 2: That the web is slower. This makes the Internet slower,
Speaker 2: It makes the flow of information between people and countries worse.
Speaker 2: And what's worse is Google loves this monopoly and they
Speaker 2: pay a pretty penny to keep it. They pay Apple
Speaker 2: eighteen billion dollars a year. And this came out in
Speaker 2: a recent US versus Google antitrust case. Eighteen billion dollars
Speaker 2: a year to be on your iPhone, to be on
Speaker 2: Apple devices. It's not because they're better, it's not because
Speaker 2: Apple even thinks that they couldn't do better. This is
Speaker 2: specifically to stop Apple trying and to make your lives
Speaker 2: worse so that Google can make their search worse to
Speaker 2: make more money and give some Dharkashi two hundred and
Speaker 2: eighty million dollars. And it's depressing. It's something that makes
Speaker 2: me I have to fight the cynicism every time I
Speaker 2: use Google. This is a problem that hits billions of people.
Speaker 2: This is a real thing, and this isn't an attack
Speaker 2: on any journalistic outlet, But why the fuck is the
Speaker 2: horror head. This is a horrifying thing. Yeah, this would
Speaker 2: be like if certain freeways just randomly led you to
Speaker 2: a different place because someone paid the the ot money.
Speaker 1: It would be like if we had a I don't
Speaker 1: want to oversell this, but like what we're talking about
Speaker 1: is there was a brief period that, for the first
Speaker 1: time in human existence, all knowledge ever collected and earned
Speaker 1: by human beings was easily accessible to the vast majority
Speaker 1: of people if they had an Internet connection, and that
Speaker 1: is becoming no longer the case with rapidity, and it
Speaker 1: is it is a problem. It kin to like if
Speaker 1: we had a cure for cancer and then we decided
Speaker 1: to start like breaking it if you didn't buy like
Speaker 1: the pancreatic cancer bonus pack, like like it is it
Speaker 1: is that big a problem, Like when you think about,
Speaker 1: like what it means for all human knowledge to be
Speaker 1: accessible and then to throw that away so that Sundar
Speaker 1: pat I can get two hundred and eighty million dollars
Speaker 1: a year.
Speaker 2: It is an obscenity, and then you have the level
Speaker 2: up from that as well as think about it from
Speaker 2: those of us who spend I don't know, twenty two
Speaker 2: of our twenty four hours a day online, we're aware
Speaker 2: of what SEO content looks like. Search engine optimization. There,
Speaker 2: content that is built just to rank highly on Google,
Speaker 2: to send money to an out there and traffic to
Speaker 2: an out there. We know what that looks like. We
Speaker 2: know when we are being misled. We know when the
Speaker 2: flow of our information is being interfered with. I don't
Speaker 2: argue that most people do, and this isn't their fault.
Speaker 2: This is a nuanced topic, but this is horrifying. Google has,
Speaker 2: like every major tech company, focused entirely on what will
Speaker 2: make revenues and market share increase, even if the cost
Speaker 2: of doing so is just destroying its entire legacy and
Speaker 2: interrupting the free flow of information around the world. Last year,
Speaker 2: they launched their own bard ai to compete with being
Speaker 2: Microsoft Search Engine and their Chat GPT integration. By the way,
Speaker 2: Chat GPT, all these generative AI things. Yeah, they make
Speaker 2: stuff up. They hallucinate it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, they hallucinate more than I do, and
Speaker 1: I did permanent damage to my brain by experimenting with
Speaker 1: sugaran chemicals.
Speaker 2: And what was crazy was bing Ai came out and
Speaker 2: immediately started hallucinating things bart Ai. Google did a media
Speaker 2: day and they showed a demo of Bartii and you thought,
Speaker 2: for a second, oh shit, this might replace search engines.
Speaker 2: This might be a moment where they sell us back
Speaker 2: an experience we had before. And then literally in the
Speaker 2: demo it made a factual error. Yeah, Google attempted to
Speaker 2: sell us back search engine results and then provided us
Speaker 2: just another broken Google kind of like chat GPT is
Speaker 2: just a broken form of knowledge.
Speaker 1: Well, and didn't they also or was that Microsoft that
Speaker 1: absolutely like lied in the demo and like it pretended
Speaker 1: that they were showing live results when it was really
Speaker 1: something they'd curated.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure which one it was, but seemingly every
Speaker 2: company does some sort of con like this. It sucks
Speaker 2: and it just it doesn't help anyone. And you'd think,
Speaker 2: and we're describing what is a big shitty mess, We're
Speaker 2: describing something that takes billions of people, that was decayed
Speaker 2: a very important product. You think the markets would respond negatively,
Speaker 2: and you would be wrong. There was a couple percentage
Speaker 2: points that got shaved off Google when they had that
Speaker 2: initial wobble with barred Ai, and then it went right
Speaker 2: back up. The markets they bloody love that Microsoft is
Speaker 2: invested in chat GPT. They love the open Ai is
Speaker 2: partially being meddled with by Microsoft, despite the fact that
Speaker 2: that company does not make any profit. And that's because
Speaker 2: the markets do not prioritize innovation. They don't prioritize sustainable growth,
Speaker 2: companies that can last on their own without screwing over customers.
Speaker 2: They don't care about stability. The result is that companies
Speaker 2: don't function with the intent of making good businesses anymore.
Speaker 2: They want businesses that kind of seem right there, kind
Speaker 2: of feel good, and they sell a product and they
Speaker 2: make money. But I don't really care about anything else
Speaker 2: as long as it keeps growing exponentially ten eleven, fifteen,
Speaker 2: twenty percent every quarter. It's disgraceful. Sadly, the rock economy
Speaker 2: and its growth at all costs fuck with customer mentality
Speaker 2: isn't limited to big tech startups, so private companies that
Speaker 2: invested in by venture capital firms, private equity firms. They're
Speaker 2: regularly pumped full of venture capital dollars enticing users with
Speaker 2: a subsidized product, meaning that they basically sell something at
Speaker 2: a massive loss to pump up their user numbers. That
Speaker 2: gradually becomes worse and worse and more expensive over time
Speaker 2: as they attempt to reach some sort of vague stability.
Speaker 1: I think really crucially too, like they pump up the
Speaker 1: price after they've killed everyone who provided maybe a better product,
Speaker 1: but yeah, charged more money for it. Like it's the
Speaker 1: uber effect, right.
Speaker 2: Oh, and I will get to uber because a big
Speaker 2: part of this, and it's what Corey doctor O calls
Speaker 2: in shitification, which is a painful neologism that actually pretty
Speaker 2: accurate in describing the startup ecosystem. A big part of
Speaker 2: that is they get pumped full of these ventured dollars
Speaker 2: and they become these horrifying companies that are not good companies.
Speaker 2: They burn capital, they barely make anything, but they destroy
Speaker 2: businesses that say run based on offering a product that
Speaker 2: users paid for that is priced higher than the cost
Speaker 2: of the product, making the company something known as profit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that's I think that's so im important,
Speaker 1: especially for like the younger people who maybe you never
Speaker 1: fell for it. I did for a little while in
Speaker 1: the early two thousands fall for some of Google's shtick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the the thing that they delivered for a while
Speaker 1: was miraculous, like using Google before it exists, like when
Speaker 1: it like when it first came out, Like the degree
Speaker 1: to which it was superior to any other way to
Speaker 1: access knowledge that it ever existed was wild, and like
Speaker 1: you wanted to believe, maybe these people are not a
Speaker 1: bunch of fucking demons.
Speaker 2: And it was don't be evil? That used to be
Speaker 2: that tagline, Yeah anymore, no zoop, How don'd you go?
Speaker 2: Now it's don't comma be evil with an exclamation.
Speaker 1: They did a lot of a lot of and I
Speaker 1: don't know that's it's a it's a fooling wance sort
Speaker 1: of situation. I'll never I'll never love again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is enough. And seeing Google decay, by the way,
Speaker 2: really has That's what's jokified me. That's what's driven me
Speaker 2: a little insane. But then when you look up the
Speaker 2: startup side, and now that when you're aware of the
Speaker 2: rot economy, you're aware of incitification, you can kind of
Speaker 2: watch it in real time, and it drives you a
Speaker 2: little crazier still because there is a very abusive cycle. Here,
Speaker 2: companies are born, they're funded, and they're grown in this
Speaker 2: unnatural way where they're subsidized on It's funny a lot
Speaker 2: of these right leaning venture catalysts they hate welfare, but
Speaker 2: they love putting startups on it because venture capital exists
Speaker 2: in many ways at times in the tech industry to
Speaker 2: keep companies alive that should be left to die. And
Speaker 2: they would have that same attitude to a regular person
Speaker 2: who could not meet their bills through unsustainable spending or
Speaker 2: even sustainable spending. Nevertheless, they're fucking hypogrites. But the problem
Speaker 2: is with these companies as well is their services. Because
Speaker 2: they are not sustainable, eventually have to become worse. They
Speaker 2: grow the dependence of the market, they kill everything else
Speaker 2: in the market, and then they make them worse in
Speaker 2: shitifying them again. Corey, love you, buddy, but no terrible term.
Speaker 1: Great idea, I like, Yeah, I think we could all
Speaker 1: agree he's got the idea right. It is really hard
Speaker 1: to get, like your mom to buy into using that term.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a little bit epic bacon for my taste. Look,
Speaker 2: if these stars were held to real standards, crazy ideas
Speaker 2: that a business should make more money that it spends
Speaker 2: and be able to survive independent of investor capital. There
Speaker 2: are a lot of starts that would just die. In fact,
Speaker 2: that's kind of happened in twenty twenty three. There was
Speaker 2: a phenomenon known as the zero interest free period, when
Speaker 2: it was just easy for venture capitalists to get a
Speaker 2: bunch of money at low interest or zero percent interests.
Speaker 2: That went away into late twenty twenty two early twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three. As a result, venture capitals suddenly realized, oh,
Speaker 2: are we just spending money on bullshit? So they killed
Speaker 2: the startups. They just pulled the plug. They didn't send
Speaker 2: them any more money. There were no more venture rounds
Speaker 2: and real companies, good companies died because no one got investment.
Speaker 2: And it's sad, But don't worry. I'm major a promise
Speaker 2: and I'm keeping to it. We've got to talk about Uber.
Speaker 2: Uber is the ultimate rot economy startup.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like that. It was the thing where
Speaker 1: you know, unlike with Google, there was no like trade off, right,
Speaker 1: like nothing was getting harmed with Uber. You always knew
Speaker 1: the company was evil. But also it was so much
Speaker 1: easier to get a fucking ride when you were like hammered, right,
Speaker 1: Like it did make a problem go away for a lot.
Speaker 2: Of people, and at first it wasn't. When Uber launched
Speaker 2: in twenty eleven, it was mostly with like town cars,
Speaker 2: black cab services. So when we call them back home,
Speaker 2: I guess you'll just live. I don't know there's an
Speaker 2: American term, I'm sure. But nevertheless, you were getting these
Speaker 2: Lincoln town cars and you were able to call them,
Speaker 2: and it was kind of magical and you were like, oh, wow,
Speaker 2: we could do this. Eventually, they'd launch Uber X. Anyone
Speaker 2: can pick up a phone and start driving their car
Speaker 2: from mine with Uber. The press at the time, because
Speaker 2: everyone was kind of still thinking that tech was the
Speaker 2: good guys, kind of let it go by that these
Speaker 2: people were paid below minimum wage, they had questionable insurance policies,
Speaker 2: and absolutely no goddamn profit. They were screwing the drivers
Speaker 2: while also not actually building a sustainable company. Very confusing
Speaker 2: to me. Uber only became profitable last year. They had
Speaker 2: a three hundred and twenty six million dollar operating profit
Speaker 2: in August of twenty twenty three. To get there, it
Speaker 2: had to burn thirty two billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Hey, you gotta spend money to make money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what an incredible return just but for the sake
Speaker 2: of clarity, it's also worth noting that Uber had previously
Speaker 2: reported profitable quarters, but they didn't come from actually providing
Speaker 2: rides or delivering food or any kind of business. They
Speaker 2: were just selling stuff they'd bore. It's just Uber frustrates me.
Speaker 2: Their business model is just incredibly precarious and relies seedingly
Speaker 2: heavily on governments failing to impose labor laws. So much
Speaker 2: of their existence is predicated on being able to screw
Speaker 2: general contractors. Its continued existence would not have happened without
Speaker 2: bullying local authorities, without local authorities seeding ground to these
Speaker 2: companies because at the time they were like, yeah, taxis
Speaker 2: kind of suck. Taxis are bad. Sure, And of course
Speaker 2: Uber needed a bunch of money, with the largest amount
Speaker 2: of that coming from the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund three
Speaker 2: point five billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 2: And also Uber just burns capital. They burned billions of dollars,
Speaker 2: and their share prices doubled in the last year and
Speaker 2: now has a larger market cap than Forward and Stilantis combined.
Speaker 2: The markets are on crack.
Speaker 1: It's it's so fucking frustrating. It's like if it's like
Speaker 1: if there were a network of guys running those shell
Speaker 1: games where you put like a dollar in worth three cups, right,
Speaker 1: and some VC guys were like, hey, just give someone
Speaker 1: money every time they pick a cup, no matter what
Speaker 1: cup it is, and then we'll also buy up all
Speaker 1: of the ATMs and shut them down. So this is
Speaker 1: the only way to get cash, right, Like that that's
Speaker 1: almost the way that it works, right, Like it is
Speaker 1: replacing something that, like cabs needed to be. I hate
Speaker 1: to say this disrupted, right, like it was a business
Speaker 1: that existed. System is not working exactly exactly. There needed
Speaker 1: to be a way for you to get one wherever
Speaker 1: you happen to be or whatever, and do it through
Speaker 1: your phone and not have to like fucking call a
Speaker 1: cab company. Like there was a degree to which innovation
Speaker 1: needed to happen. But one of the side effects that
Speaker 1: I mean, in addition to the stuff you've brought up,
Speaker 1: is that, like it's so much less safe. You have
Speaker 1: no way of knowing if your driver is either qualified
Speaker 1: or going to like sexually assault you, like, which is
Speaker 1: the thing that happens a lot.
Speaker 2: I had an Uber driver last year when my parents
Speaker 2: were here in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada, who was very
Speaker 2: clearly drunk and just mumbling swear words the entire time.
Speaker 2: I reported to Uber and I'm like, yeah, that sucks,
Speaker 2: so we'll make sure you're not paired with him again. Thanks.
Speaker 2: I hope he doesn't crash his car.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Cool. And the thing is the punishment should come from
Speaker 2: the markets. It really should the markets. If the free
Speaker 2: markets actually functioned in the way that guys with Grecian
Speaker 2: statue avatars claimed it did on Twitter, then the market
Speaker 2: would deal with this. But it doesn't. But there is
Speaker 2: actually another culprit, and that's the media. They kind of
Speaker 2: fuel the growth mongering. C NBC, for example. I generally
Speaker 2: like CNBC, but the way they report earnings and many
Speaker 2: people do. Lots of different media companies do this. They
Speaker 2: don't acknowledge the fact that Uber just burns money, that
Speaker 2: they spent fifteen goddamn years burning money, that they have
Speaker 2: an unsustainable business. The Travis Kalanick, who's long since departed,
Speaker 2: obviously was running a very mob esque thing where he'd
Speaker 2: sidle in with Bradley Goddamn Tusk, a form of lobbyist
Speaker 2: pr creature that he found in More Door and just
Speaker 2: bullying local markets until they agreed. He would just launch
Speaker 2: Uber places and be like, what you're gonna do about it?
Speaker 2: And then the local box would say, uh, yeah, we're
Speaker 2: gonna gonna do something, and then nothing would happen and
Speaker 2: would be made legal and local. And just to be clear,
Speaker 2: if you don't know this about your Uber driver, every
Speaker 2: time you take Uber and you think, oh, I've paid
Speaker 2: twenty bucks for that, the driver gets like less than
Speaker 2: half I believe, Oh yeah, get they get screwed and
Speaker 2: they don't have insurance in many cases, or they're not insured.
Speaker 2: And this is a very technical thing, but this is
Speaker 2: important to know. When your Uber driver has you in
Speaker 2: the car, oftentimes they're insured. When they don't. When they're
Speaker 2: just driving around, they oftentimes need different insurance because they're
Speaker 2: not running a business while they're driving around. These are
Speaker 2: the kind of things that happen when you don't have
Speaker 2: strong labor laws, when you don't have the government protecting workers.
Speaker 2: It's just it's frustrating, and like I can understand where
Speaker 2: the media probably doesn't want to cover this because otherwise
Speaker 2: the markets would be varying levels of yeah, this company sucks,
Speaker 2: this one sucks. Also this one's bad. Uber. They really
Speaker 2: just don't make enough money to really make sense. And
Speaker 2: if they had, I don't know, ten twenty percent drop
Speaker 2: in writing, I mean, they probably fall apart. They don't
Speaker 2: want to say that, so they just want to just
Speaker 2: look at it. They just want to go, Okay, here's
Speaker 2: what's happening today. Uber also really cannot be killed now.
Speaker 2: And that's a horrifying future we live in and a
Speaker 2: horrifying present, I guess. And because people keep buying the stock,
Speaker 2: it's a valuable company, and it's valuable in the eyes
Speaker 2: of markets that seemingly have cataracts. And look, the raw
Speaker 2: economy is why you see these oscillations of hiring and firing.
Speaker 2: It's why you see Google or Microsoft making billions tens
Speaker 2: of billions of dollars each quarter, then fire in ten
Speaker 2: fifteen thousand people while the executives get rich. It's because
Speaker 2: these companies are never actually punished for failing to operate
Speaker 2: their business is in a sustainable way. There is no
Speaker 2: punishment for them. There's not really a punishment for them
Speaker 2: missing something. There's no CEO seems to be fired for, say,
Speaker 2: over hiring by tens of thousands of people, that's fine,
Speaker 2: you know what, Easy come, easy go. Not for the
Speaker 2: people who got laid off, though, And when it comes
Speaker 2: to the startup industry, when it comes to startups in general,
Speaker 2: the rot economy is probably a much bigger deal than
Speaker 2: you realize. Because startups got used to getting venture capital
Speaker 2: whenever they needed it. Businesses like Uber were predicated on
Speaker 2: an endless supply of cheap money, even though the FED
Speaker 2: steadily ratcheted up interest rates in the years leading up
Speaker 2: to the COVID pandemic, only slashing them to mitigate the
Speaker 2: pain of COVID and to a lesser extent, the US
Speaker 2: China trade war. They were trying to incentivize investment. They
Speaker 2: were trying to incentivize putting money into companies that allegedly
Speaker 2: would create jobs. But once the specter of inflation reared
Speaker 2: its head, well things got kind of nasty. And then
Speaker 2: there was the war in Ukraine. It's the collateral damage
Speaker 2: of China zero COVID policy, the labor shortage. Things started
Speaker 2: to unravel and now there isn't really any free money
Speaker 2: to go around. We're in an illogical point in economic history,
Speaker 2: and it's scary to me. It's scary when I look
Speaker 2: at how many companies that just should not exist, and
Speaker 2: it scares me. It scares me that the markets don't
Speaker 2: react when they see like mass hiring of people to
Speaker 2: capture consumer demand. They don't think, oh, what if consumer
Speaker 2: demand goes down? They just don't think in that way.
Speaker 2: They don't react when Microsoft, just an example, lays off
Speaker 2: people almost every year and then makes billions of dollars,
Speaker 2: makes giant acquisitions that don't even make sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's this enshraining of instability as a sign of virtue,
Speaker 1: and like, yeah, like that is that is really dangerous
Speaker 1: because like the more instability you accept and the more
Speaker 1: you like reward the people running these companies for creating
Speaker 1: situations that make the lives of their employees unstable and
Speaker 1: our economy unstable, Like, the more you incentivize that, and eventually,
Speaker 1: like it's going to oscillate too much for balance to
Speaker 1: be regained, you know.
Speaker 2: And I fear them, Yeah, and I fear the fact
Speaker 2: that the market also has no memory. In twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: sach An Adella, CEO of Microsoft, he called for a
Speaker 2: and I'm serious here I referendum on capitalism, telling businesses
Speaker 2: to start grading themselves on the wider economic benefits that
Speaker 2: they bring to society rather than profits. To be clear,
Speaker 2: this was four months after Microsoft laid off one thousand
Speaker 2: people and one year before they hired twenty three thousand people,
Speaker 2: and then in early twenty twenty three they laid off
Speaker 2: a further ten thousand people to and I quote, deliver
Speaker 2: results on an ongoing base while investing in their long
Speaker 2: term opportunity. And these savage job cuts have continued into
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four as well. As I mentioned, they laid
Speaker 2: off nineteen hundred people from Activision Blizzard and their Xbox
Speaker 2: division as well, and that's like eight percent of the
Speaker 2: overall Microsoft gaming team. To be clear, Bobby Kotik, the
Speaker 2: horrible pervert freak who used to run Activision Blizzard, he
Speaker 2: got a several hundred million dollar payoff while all of
Speaker 2: these people got fired. And then a week after laying
Speaker 2: off these people, Microsoft would report solid second quarter earnings.
Speaker 2: They beat expectations in both revenue and profit, and they
Speaker 2: became the most valuable company in the world. And the
Speaker 2: process human capital used as food and fuel for the rich.
Speaker 2: And I hate to get that kind of alarmist, preachery feeling,
Speaker 2: but that is what is happening, and it's something that
Speaker 2: people need to realize and look at and scream at
Speaker 2: because it's disgraceful. Real people with real problems lose their jobs,
Speaker 2: and I know, tech workers get paid or whatever. There's
Speaker 2: still people with mortgages, with rent, with families with children.
Speaker 2: Satch Nadella has billions of dollars. He's fine. Bobby Kotik,
Speaker 2: who was a reprehensible guy oversaw a period of multiple
Speaker 2: alleged sexual harassment things over at Activision, paid off unfathomably rich.
Speaker 2: Why did that asshole get money, Well, these people got
Speaker 2: laid off. It's because the street doesn't care. It's because
Speaker 2: the street doesn't see that as a problem. They don't
Speaker 2: see moral problems or even logical problems like, huh, we
Speaker 2: could have saved a bunch of money. No, they want
Speaker 2: to reward the people that buy into their wretched, rotten system.
Speaker 2: It's a scummy way of running a business that society
Speaker 2: in the market seem to deeply appreciate, and it's actually
Speaker 2: killing innovation. It rewards bad ideas that make lots of money.
Speaker 2: It rewards shitty businesses that fail their customers but make
Speaker 2: tons of money, And it rewards abusing customers in a
Speaker 2: way that I find wretched.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. It is disgusting the degree to which
Speaker 1: the wealth of the billionaire class, and I guess even
Speaker 1: to be even more specific, the CEO class, hinges upon
Speaker 1: the regular human sacrifice, Like that is what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Like part of why they hire people is so that
Speaker 1: you can do these big layoffs when you need to
Speaker 1: do them in order to increase stock value enough to
Speaker 1: hit whatever your bonus target for that year or that
Speaker 1: quarter is. Like it is very much, it is very
Speaker 1: much just human sacrifice so that they can get an
Speaker 1: extra however many million dollars a year that fucking bonus
Speaker 1: provision in their contract give them.
Speaker 2: What's crazy is there are guys like Mark Benioff, who
Speaker 2: runs Salesforce again, another company that burns billions to make millions.
Speaker 2: That guy has laid off ten thousands of peace all
Speaker 2: while getting these glossy cover stories that talk about his
Speaker 2: o'hanna philosophy where everybody is important up until the point
Speaker 2: that they're not. And also, listeners, if you want to
Speaker 2: email me easy at better offline dot com, do you
Speaker 2: know what Salesforce does? Because I know multiple people who
Speaker 2: pay for it.
Speaker 1: Who don't they have their big tower with a shitty
Speaker 1: screen on top of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's a way for Mark Benioff to make
Speaker 2: a bunch of money, and that does not flow down
Speaker 2: laying off tens of thousands of people. It's just it's disgraceful.
Speaker 2: But you know what, it does begin somewhere, and I've
Speaker 2: kind of hinted this with Uber, but it's important to
Speaker 2: realize how much of this comes from this much more reckless, ugly,
Speaker 2: and violent form of funding. I'm talking, of course, about
Speaker 2: venture capital. Venture capitalists are sometimes firms who get money
Speaker 2: from something called a limited partner, so they get a
Speaker 2: pool of money that they invest in startups, using their
Speaker 2: alleged smarts to pick the winners of the future. And
Speaker 2: then when they put that money into these companies, they
Speaker 2: hope that this company will either go public much like
Speaker 2: Uber did and Facebook did, or be sold to another company.
Speaker 2: And when you look at many of the problems that
Speaker 2: you find in the tech industry, when you search for something,
Speaker 2: you think you've said the right thing and just eleven
Speaker 2: lines of nonsense pop up, or you go to look
Speaker 2: at your grandmother's pictures on Facebook, but someone tries to
Speaker 2: sell you a fitness supplement. This is what's happening. The
Speaker 2: rot economy is working against you. The CEOs of the
Speaker 2: companies of the products you're using, they don't care. They
Speaker 2: care as much as they need to monetize you. But
Speaker 2: deep down they're going to choose themselves and their shareholders
Speaker 2: and their board members way before you, and they currently
Speaker 2: have all the power and the web. I'm scared, but
Speaker 2: I don't want you to be. I want to inform
Speaker 2: you about how this is happening. I want the Better
Speaker 2: Offline podcast to be a place where you can understand,
Speaker 2: where you can be educated about how you are being
Speaker 2: conned about how they are monetizing your digital lives. And
Speaker 2: I very much look forward to telling you more about
Speaker 2: this in the future. Thank you for listening. Please check
Speaker 2: out Better Offline dot com and email me at easy
Speaker 2: at better Offline dot com if you've got any thoughts.
Speaker 2: Thank you Robert so much for joining me. By the way,
Speaker 2: I very much appreciate the coosone Media rocks. I've very
Speaker 2: much enjoyed building this with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited to hear what you come up with
Speaker 1: next and continue this conversation because I think you're putting
Speaker 1: like a name to a demon that has been like
Speaker 1: haunting all of our nightmares for a while now. And
Speaker 1: that's not you know, the only thing that you need
Speaker 1: to do to beat it, but it's certainly where like
Speaker 1: turning back the tide starts.
Speaker 2: And I really look forward to walking through these problems
Speaker 2: with you and many other incredibly smart people in the future.
Speaker 2: And of course, Better Offline is a weekly podcast. You
Speaker 2: can find us every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app and
Speaker 2: wherever else you find your podcasts. The editor and composer
Speaker 2: of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You can
Speaker 2: check out more of his music and audio projects at
Speaker 2: Matasowski dot com, M A T T O S O
Speaker 2: W s ki dot com. More information, Got a Better
Speaker 2: Offline dot com or email me at easy at better
Speaker 2: offline dot com. Thank you for listening everyone.
Speaker 1: Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media.
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