222: War of the Chatbots

00:00SPEAKER- I've made a profound discovery.

00:02SPEAKER- Oh?

00:03SPEAKER- As we were about to beep for this podcast,

00:05SPEAKERas we have talked about, our little pre-podcast ritual.

00:09SPEAKER- Uh-huh.

00:10SPEAKER- We both use iPhones.

00:11SPEAKER- Yes.

00:12SPEAKER- We have turned the volume all the way up when we beep,

00:14SPEAKERand I noticed, you know how on iOS,

00:16SPEAKERwhen you hit the volume button,

00:17SPEAKERyou get a tiny little volume meter on the top left?

00:19SPEAKER- Yeah, like- - It just kind of shows-

00:20SPEAKER- Well, it slides out next to the buttons.

00:22SPEAKER- Yes, yes. - Yeah.

00:23SPEAKER- If you grab that thing with your thumb-

00:26SPEAKER- Oh no. - Before it goes away,

00:28SPEAKERyou can just jog it up and down with your thumb

00:29SPEAKERlike a slider until you're happy with volume.

00:32SPEAKER- I like that it has the word volume above it

00:34SPEAKERso you know that it's the volume now, too.

00:36SPEAKERWow, this is truly revelatory.

00:39SPEAKER- Yes.

00:40SPEAKER- Revelatory? - Revelatory.

00:41SPEAKER- Revelatory.

00:43SPEAKERThat's fantastic, I had no idea.

00:45SPEAKERI'd never seen that before.

00:46SPEAKER- Yeah, hidden UI tricks.

00:47SPEAKER- I'm gonna tell you, I used my,

00:50SPEAKERI can't remember what they call it,

00:50SPEAKERthe special button that replaced the silence button

00:53SPEAKERthe other day for the first time.

00:55SPEAKER- Oh, do you have that?

00:56SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause like when I-

00:58SPEAKER- Right, right, you got the new phone.

00:59SPEAKER- I ended up getting it after all.

01:01SPEAKERMistakes were made, but it goes to a portrait selfie

01:04SPEAKERso I can never take selfies, just like always, it's perfect.

01:07SPEAKER- Wait, can't you customize the action?

01:09SPEAKER- Yeah, you can make it do whatever you want.

01:10SPEAKERI chose portrait selfie 'cause I was like,

01:11SPEAKERI'm gonna start taking selfies.

01:12SPEAKERTurns out I don't ever take selfies.

01:15SPEAKERYeah, mission accomplished, guys, good job.

01:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm not sure I'm going to love that

01:19SPEAKERwhen that inevitably rolls out to whatever next phone I get.

01:22SPEAKER- I gotta tell you, rumors are there's an SE4

01:24SPEAKERcoming next year.

01:25SPEAKER- Oh, wait, next year?

01:27SPEAKER- Well, this year.

01:27SPEAKER- Now it's this year, right?

01:28SPEAKER- Yeah, it's this year now, I guess.

01:30SPEAKER- Next year became this year about six weeks ago.

01:32SPEAKER- Yeah, something like that.

01:33SPEAKER- Yeah, not being able to see or feel

01:36SPEAKERif the switch is on or off to know if it's muted or not

01:38SPEAKERis not great for me.

01:40SPEAKER- Well, it turns out you have a little icon at the top

01:43SPEAKERright next to your Verizon thing that says,

01:46SPEAKERoh yes, the alarms are silent.

01:47SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess.

01:48SPEAKERSometimes you just want to be able to reach in your pocket

01:50SPEAKERand feel if that switch is on or not.

01:51SPEAKER- Nope, nope, I don't ever want to reach in my pocket.

01:53SPEAKERMy pockets are too tight to put my hand in there

01:55SPEAKERwith the phone.

01:56SPEAKERI gotta pull the phone out to do anything.

01:57SPEAKER- You got the baggy pants.

01:58SPEAKER- Yes, before this cold open is over,

02:00SPEAKERyou want to talk about "Helldivers"?

02:01SPEAKER- Yeah, I was gonna say, speaking of baggy pants,

02:03SPEAKERyou ever jumped from space into a hot drop combat zone?

02:08SPEAKER- Yes.

02:09SPEAKER- Over and over, it's possible, I think both of us

02:12SPEAKERspent our normal podcast preparatory time during the week

02:17SPEAKERpotentially rescuing Super Earth from the alien

02:20SPEAKERand/or robot menace.

02:21SPEAKER- Or trying to.

02:23SPEAKER- Look, this isn't gonna be a battle that's won overnight.

02:27SPEAKERWe're gonna be managing democracy for years to come,

02:30SPEAKERI think.

02:30SPEAKER- Oh, I mean, first Arrowhead needs to win their battle

02:32SPEAKERagainst their servers.

02:34SPEAKER- I mean, watching them respond to this this week

02:38SPEAKERhas been remarkable.

02:39SPEAKERI think they've done a really, really good,

02:41SPEAKERthe servers are still having problems, just to be clear.

02:43SPEAKERWe're recording this on Saturday morning.

02:44SPEAKER- Yeah, some pretty severe ones.

02:46SPEAKERBut I don't blame them.

02:48SPEAKERI kind of feel for them because they have flat out said,

02:51SPEAKER"Hey, this thing sold four to five times more copies already

02:55SPEAKERthan our wildest projections."

02:57SPEAKER- Yeah, it's the kind of, they're getting player numbers,

03:00SPEAKERlike they had a peak yesterday of 257,000 players

03:04SPEAKERor something Friday night.

03:05SPEAKERAnd like that seven days into this new game,

03:09SPEAKERthe first game was successful enough to get a sequel,

03:11SPEAKERbut it didn't light the world on fire.

03:15SPEAKERIt's like getting that kind of numbers

03:16SPEAKERis gonna expose bottlenecks and bad stuff

03:19SPEAKERin your network infrastructure

03:21SPEAKERthat just there's no way to predict, right?

03:23SPEAKERLike you can't, you can't, it's not like they could have

03:25SPEAKERtested this, they could have set up a testing apparatus

03:28SPEAKERthat would have helped them find whatever the problem is

03:30SPEAKERwith their login stuff.

03:34SPEAKERAnd even if they had, it probably wouldn't have been worth

03:37SPEAKERspending money to fix prior to launch,

03:40SPEAKERbecause why would you fix a problem that only impacts you

03:42SPEAKERif you're the fifth most popular game on Steam?

03:44SPEAKER- Yeah, or three, it was actually,

03:46SPEAKERit was almost over two last night.

03:47SPEAKERThey were, by Counter-Strike, still way out in front.

03:50SPEAKERI think Dota was number two, is that right, still?

03:53SPEAKER- I think that's usually what it is, yeah.

03:55SPEAKER- It was within like 10,000 players

03:57SPEAKERof number two most played game on Steam.

03:59SPEAKER- I saw, like right now they're number three,

04:03SPEAKERright now with 337, right now is the 24 hour peak

04:07SPEAKERSaturday morning, so 330,000, 333,827 players

04:12SPEAKERthat will probably continue to rise throughout the day.

04:14SPEAKERLike they are, they are, yeah,

04:19SPEAKERlike there's no way to predict this.

04:20SPEAKERThey're doing a really good job.

04:21SPEAKERI think the fact that the game is working

04:22SPEAKERfor anyone at any given time,

04:24SPEAKERI think they've said they keep increasing the capacity

04:27SPEAKERand the rate at which they can sign in players,

04:31SPEAKERbut it's still, you know, it's,

04:34SPEAKERthey're learning and reacting as they go, I think.

04:38SPEAKERSo yeah, it's an incredible game.

04:40SPEAKERReally, really remarkable.

04:41SPEAKER- It's very, it's so good.

04:43SPEAKER- How good is it?

04:44SPEAKER- It's so good that last night

04:45SPEAKERwhen trying to log into the game

04:47SPEAKERwas just giving an error that said minus one, nothing else.

04:51SPEAKERIt was that broken.

04:53SPEAKERI still sat there trying to get in over and over

04:55SPEAKERuntil I finally got in.

04:56SPEAKERAnd then even knowing there was a problem

04:57SPEAKERwhere missions were not rewarding any kind of progress.

05:01SPEAKER- Doesn't matter.

05:02SPEAKER- I still played an hour of it

05:03SPEAKERand sure enough got no progress at the end of those missions.

05:05SPEAKERIt turned out actually like to their credit,

05:07SPEAKERit turned out logging out and back in

05:09SPEAKERwould then reward you all the currency

05:10SPEAKERand XP that you missed.

05:11SPEAKER- That's nice.

05:12SPEAKER- So I didn't actually lose anything,

05:13SPEAKERbut even sitting there banging my head against it

05:16SPEAKERand knowing it wasn't quite gonna work right,

05:17SPEAKERI still couldn't do anything but play it.

05:20SPEAKER- I finished my Fortnite stream last night.

05:21SPEAKERWe played a round of rounds as is our way.

05:24SPEAKERAnd then I rolled straight,

05:27SPEAKERlike everybody else logged off.

05:28SPEAKERI was like, I'm gonna go play some hell divers.

05:29SPEAKERAnd I sat there and waited.

05:30SPEAKERIt took me 10 minutes to log in, but I got in.

05:33SPEAKERFor people who don't know,

05:35SPEAKERit's basically like this is reductive and I apologize,

05:39SPEAKERbut it's like they made Starship Troopers the video game,

05:42SPEAKERbut without the Starship Troopers license.

05:44SPEAKERAnd also it's good.

05:45SPEAKER- Yes.

05:46SPEAKERExcept for when it's actually the first five minutes

05:49SPEAKERof Terminator 2, the video game instead of Starship Troopers.

05:52SPEAKERIt's either or.

05:53SPEAKER- Yeah.

05:53SPEAKERAnd it's a really,

05:58SPEAKERit seems like they toned down the team damage

06:00SPEAKERon the lower difficulty levels this week,

06:02SPEAKERwhich was a nice change.

06:04SPEAKERAfter last week's,

06:05SPEAKERhey, let's try the widespread aerial bombardment mission.

06:09SPEAKER- I don't know.

06:09SPEAKERI consider that more of a feature

06:11SPEAKERthan something to be balanced.

06:12SPEAKER- I mean, well, it's interesting.

06:14SPEAKER'Cause it is like there they,

06:15SPEAKERwell, I think we're gonna dig into this

06:18SPEAKERin maybe the patron episode

06:19SPEAKERwhen we're allowed to talk about off-topic stuff,

06:20SPEAKERbut it like they broke a bunch of good co-op game

06:23SPEAKERdesign rules and it works.

06:26SPEAKERAnd it's like kind of shaken up people

06:28SPEAKERin that space that I know.

06:30SPEAKER- Yeah.

06:31SPEAKER- People are having a lot of fun with it.

06:32SPEAKER- If this becomes the next big,

06:35SPEAKERmost influential game in multiplayer design,

06:37SPEAKERI'm gonna be very happy.

06:38SPEAKERI'll put it that way.

06:39SPEAKER- The one thing I will say is that I really love,

06:41SPEAKERI love the way they're communicating when people are like,

06:43SPEAKERhey, this needs a PVP mode

06:45SPEAKERif you're gonna be serious about it.

06:46SPEAKER'Cause basically it's a co-op PVE extraction shooter, right?

06:49SPEAKERYou have to go in, you lose some stuff,

06:51SPEAKERyou do some missions and then you get out.

06:53SPEAKERSo imagine Tarkov, but without the other people

06:55SPEAKERthat make the game miserable.

06:57SPEAKERAnd of course the Tarkov crowd is like,

06:58SPEAKERman, we want it, we want PVP.

07:00SPEAKERAnd the guy's like, no, we don't want you.

07:01SPEAKERYour communities are toxic and bad.

07:04SPEAKERSo we're just gonna make our PVE game.

07:06SPEAKERAnd like, if you want that, go play Tarkov.

07:08SPEAKERIt's there for you.

07:09SPEAKER- That's great.

07:10SPEAKERThat's great.

07:11SPEAKERHave you seen their studio Motto?

07:13SPEAKERA game for everyone is a game for no one.

07:15SPEAKER- It's great.

07:15SPEAKERIt's perfect.

07:17SPEAKERI mean, except for they're the third most popular game

07:18SPEAKERon Steam today.

07:19SPEAKERSo I guess everyone does like, yeah.

07:21SPEAKERAnyway.

07:22SPEAKER- Maybe paradoxically they did make a game for everyone.

07:24SPEAKERHey, let's do this podcast.

07:26SPEAKERSo how'd you wanna?

07:27SPEAKER- Play some Helldivers after we edit the podcast.

07:30SPEAKER- Maybe.

07:30SPEAKER- Yeah.

07:31SPEAKER(upbeat music)

07:45SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

07:59SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.

08:02SPEAKERI'm Will.

08:03SPEAKER- I'm Brad.

08:04SPEAKERHello.

08:04SPEAKER- Hi, hello.

08:05SPEAKERHi, hi.

08:06SPEAKER- Hello.

08:07SPEAKERHello.

08:08SPEAKER- This is the first time I've played a game

08:09SPEAKERthat's left me awake in the wee hours of the morning

08:11SPEAKERin a while.

08:12SPEAKER- Yes.

08:13SPEAKER- This is the first time I am past the stage in my life

08:15SPEAKERwhere I can sleep in.

08:16SPEAKER- Oh no, I don't have a problem with that.

08:17SPEAKER- Without chemical intervention.

08:20SPEAKERSo staying up till say one or two in the morning.

08:23SPEAKER- You're paying for it?

08:24SPEAKER- Yes.

08:25SPEAKERIt just means I'm going to truncate my total sleep time

08:26SPEAKERrather than shift it back some number of hours.

08:29SPEAKERSo Friday was rough.

08:31SPEAKERI'm doing better today.

08:32SPEAKER- I'll take a good nap at the end of the day.

08:33SPEAKERLike if I'm five o'clock I'll lay down for like 30 minutes,

08:36SPEAKERbe good to go.

08:37SPEAKER- There are no people on the planet I am jealous of

08:40SPEAKERor despise more than people who sleep easily.

08:44SPEAKERI can't nap.

08:45SPEAKERI just lie down and lay there for whatever allotted time

08:48SPEAKERI have to nap.

08:49SPEAKERI lie there trying to sleep and then get back up.

08:51SPEAKER- So I put in the AirPods,

08:53SPEAKERI put on the Sleepy Mix on Apple, Apple Music,

08:55SPEAKERand just close my eyes and it's just off

08:57SPEAKERto Never Never Land and then I wake up.

08:59SPEAKER- Man.

09:00SPEAKER- Yeah.

09:01SPEAKERThis week, Brad, it's kind of a weird podcast week.

09:04SPEAKERWe were gonna do the John Romero book

09:07SPEAKERand then for reasons that are inexplicable to me,

09:09SPEAKERI didn't finish reading it this week.

09:10SPEAKER- Yeah, weird.

09:12SPEAKER- Yeah.

09:12SPEAKER- I wonder how that happened.

09:14SPEAKER- I'm like, I just got to the part where they had

09:17SPEAKERto make the SNES version of Wolfenstein.

09:19SPEAKER- Dude, that part, we'll talk about it.

09:21SPEAKER- Is buck wild.

09:22SPEAKER- There was something very revealing in there

09:24SPEAKERthat blew my fucking mind because maybe there's

09:27SPEAKERa little teaser for the upcoming episode.

09:29SPEAKERSomething they had to do to frantically get

09:31SPEAKERthat SNES port of Wolfenstein done kind of dictated

09:35SPEAKERthe entire course of development of Doom and Quake

09:37SPEAKERfrom there on.

09:39SPEAKER- Oh, I haven't gotten to that bit yet.

09:40SPEAKER- Oh, well okay, I will tell you what it is.

09:42SPEAKERYou'll find out very shortly.

09:43SPEAKER- Oh, wow.

09:44SPEAKER- It's like one of the most amazing examples

09:46SPEAKERI have ever seen of kind of like necessity

09:48SPEAKERbreeding invention kind of thing, you know?

09:50SPEAKEROf like, oh my God, we have a contract

09:52SPEAKERthat we have to fulfill in two weeks.

09:54SPEAKERHow are we gonna get this done?

09:56SPEAKEROh, hey, this algorithm we've never heard of before.

09:59SPEAKER- Oh.

10:00SPEAKER- You'll get there.

10:01SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

10:02SPEAKER- You'll get there. - Okay, yeah.

10:03SPEAKERSo yeah, the book is called Doom Guy Life in First Person.

10:06SPEAKERIt was written by John Romero.

10:07SPEAKERIt feels like it was actually written by him

10:09SPEAKERand not by like a ghost writer, collaborator type situation.

10:13SPEAKER- A, I think they would have to credit a ghost writer,

10:16SPEAKERbut maybe you can pay somebody enough

10:19SPEAKERto not credit them, I guess.

10:21SPEAKERBut B, like if you've read his blogs or his Twitter,

10:23SPEAKERlike the book is written exactly the way that he writes.

10:26SPEAKER- It's voicey, yeah.

10:27SPEAKER- His blog is also great.

10:28SPEAKERWe'll save that as well.

10:30SPEAKER- Yeah, but anyway, so if you wanna read that,

10:31SPEAKERI think next week we have Q&A and then the week after,

10:34SPEAKERso you have two more weeks basically to hammer through it.

10:36SPEAKER- Yeah, I think three weeks feels like a better window

10:39SPEAKERto ask people to get and read a book than one.

10:41SPEAKER- Well, so that was the other thing is,

10:43SPEAKERlike reading digital books, I never know how long books are.

10:45SPEAKER- Yes.

10:46SPEAKER- And I mowed through like the early childhood

10:50SPEAKERand like early programming days.

10:51SPEAKERI was like, "Oh, this isn't gonna be that long."

10:53SPEAKERAnd then I looked down and I was like,

10:53SPEAKER"Oh, I'm at 8% or something."

10:56SPEAKERSo it's not a long book, but it's not like a Patrick Rothfuss,

11:01SPEAKERGeorge R.R. Martin deal, but it's also not a short book.

11:03SPEAKER- Yeah, there's some heft to it.

11:05SPEAKERYeah, I hate that about, I mean,

11:06SPEAKERmaybe different e-readers are different about it,

11:08SPEAKERbut at least on the Kindle,

11:09SPEAKERa lot of books I get these days

11:11SPEAKERdon't even have traditional page numbers.

11:12SPEAKERIt's like location.

11:14SPEAKER- Well, you can turn it on.

11:15SPEAKERThat's a setting on the Kindle app.

11:17SPEAKERSome events, if you're using Libby, it's different

11:19SPEAKERor the, like when I check out books from the library,

11:22SPEAKERit's different than what I am from Amazon.

11:24SPEAKER- That's what it is.

11:26SPEAKERIt's mostly library books through like OverDrive and stuff.

11:29SPEAKER- Yeah.

11:30SPEAKER- It'll be like location and other like weird

11:31SPEAKERand abstract ebook metrics,

11:33SPEAKERbut not traditional page numbers.

11:34SPEAKER- Hey, so I learned something the other day.

11:37SPEAKER- What's that?

11:38SPEAKER- Well, did you know little library systems

11:40SPEAKERthat you don't live in will give you ebook library cards?

11:43SPEAKER- No.

11:45SPEAKER- Yeah, so like I can get an ebook library card

11:46SPEAKERfor San Francisco libraries.

11:48SPEAKERYou can get one for San Mateo libraries

11:50SPEAKERand then you have a wider pool of available books

11:53SPEAKERto borrow without the queue.

11:55SPEAKER- How does that work?

11:56SPEAKERDon't they authenticate off of something?

11:58SPEAKER- Some of them don't care.

12:00SPEAKERA lot of them are just like,

12:01SPEAKERif you're for ebook and e-materials checkouts

12:04SPEAKERwhere you don't have to live in the region.

12:07SPEAKER- Oh, this is sanctioned?

12:08SPEAKERThis is not a--

12:09SPEAKER- It's not like a hack.

12:10SPEAKERNo, no, it's like the San Mateo one was like,

12:13SPEAKERthe San Mateo, when I went to get it,

12:15SPEAKERI had to go get a physical library card

12:17SPEAKER'cause I've had an electronic one for ages from San Mateo

12:20SPEAKERand the county in which I live, just to be clear.

12:24SPEAKERAnd when I went in to get the physical card,

12:26SPEAKERthe librarian was like, "Hey, by the way,

12:27SPEAKERdo you have a San Francisco library card?"

12:29SPEAKERI was like, "Well, I used to when I lived in San Francisco."

12:30SPEAKERShe's like, "Well, you're allowed to still use

12:34SPEAKERthe San Francisco Public Library

12:35SPEAKERwhen you live in California."

12:37SPEAKERSo, there you go.

12:39SPEAKER- I'm cutting this from the podcast.

12:41SPEAKER- What?

12:41SPEAKER- I can't increase my competition for books and movies.

12:45SPEAKER- So the San Mateo one doesn't use the cue system,

12:47SPEAKERyou just, everybody gets it.

12:49SPEAKER- Oh, what?

12:50SPEAKEROh, it's not a number of copies?

12:53SPEAKER- Something like, I didn't understand what she was saying.

12:55SPEAKERIt was confusing and scary to me,

12:56SPEAKERbut I just nodded and said, "Yes, that sounds great."

12:58SPEAKER- I mean, that's kind of like a site license-y

13:00SPEAKERsort of thing, right?

13:01SPEAKERLike San Francisco, most books, it'll be like,

13:03SPEAKER"Hey, we have like 30 ebook copies and 28 of them

13:06SPEAKERare checked out," that kind of thing.

13:08SPEAKER- So she said that they're using a new thing in San Mateo

13:10SPEAKERthat doesn't have the normal cue.

13:11SPEAKERAnd I don't know what that means yet,

13:13SPEAKER'cause I haven't tried it.

13:14SPEAKERThat's why I had to go get the physical card.

13:16SPEAKERAnyway.

13:17SPEAKER- Okay.

13:18SPEAKER- So, libraries, but this week we're gonna talk about,

13:22SPEAKERthere was interesting tech news

13:23SPEAKERthat was I think worth getting into.

13:25SPEAKERI think we talked about it and we were like,

13:26SPEAKERthere's interesting stuff here to talk about.

13:28SPEAKERSo, you probably saw it, there was on Friday,

13:31SPEAKERthere was a OpenAI, Sora AI-created video montage

13:36SPEAKERthat they posted.

13:39SPEAKERWe're also gonna talk today

13:40SPEAKERabout the EU's Digital Markets Act,

13:42SPEAKERwhich among other things, targets large tech companies

13:46SPEAKERthat are gatekeepers for users,

13:48SPEAKERand it's going to have some pretty significant changes

13:50SPEAKERfor the app store and third-party app stores

13:52SPEAKERin the EU at least.

13:53SPEAKER- Yeah, that's manifested in a couple of very acute ways

13:56SPEAKERwith Apple in particular the last month.

13:58SPEAKER- I don't think they're very acute personally, but.

14:00SPEAKER- No, probably not, but I think the Digital Markets Act

14:04SPEAKERitself has been around for a year or two,

14:06SPEAKERbut it's more like how platform holders

14:09SPEAKERare now starting to have to respond to it.

14:10SPEAKERThat's what's news here.

14:12SPEAKER- Yeah, and some of them, I mean,

14:13SPEAKERwe're not gonna get into all the,

14:14SPEAKERit affects App, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple,

14:17SPEAKERByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft.

14:19SPEAKERWe're not gonna talk about all this,

14:20SPEAKERwe're just gonna talk about Apple today,

14:21SPEAKER'cause it is a pretty broad,

14:23SPEAKERimpactful piece of legislation.

14:25SPEAKERApple's reacting to it is kind of sketchy.

14:27SPEAKERAnd then the last part is DICE happened this week.

14:29SPEAKERDICE is the, it's like, if GDC is where the people

14:33SPEAKERwho make games go to do stuff,

14:36SPEAKERDICE is where a lot of the games business happens.

14:39SPEAKER- It's where all the money is.

14:40SPEAKER- Well, it's kind of like, there's like a,

14:42SPEAKERif you're selling a game, if you are a studio

14:45SPEAKERand you wanna pitch your game to publishers

14:46SPEAKERand get publisher deals, you start usually,

14:48SPEAKERyou kind of precede some stuff before DICE,

14:50SPEAKERyou get a bunch of DICE meetings,

14:51SPEAKERand then you go sign deals at GDC

14:53SPEAKERis the ideal kind of pipeline.

14:56SPEAKERAnd so I was curious, was asking friends

14:59SPEAKERwho were there, Danny O'Dwyer posted some stuff on 10,

15:03SPEAKERwho was also there, like the vibe out of DICE.

15:06SPEAKERWe'll talk about that at the end of the show,

15:07SPEAKERbut let's start with Sora.

15:11SPEAKERThis is--

15:12SPEAKER- I didn't take you for a Kingdom Hearts fan, but go on.

15:15SPEAKER- Yeah, I was gonna say, is this a Final Fantasy thing

15:18SPEAKERor a Kingdom Hearts one?

15:19SPEAKERI can't remember.

15:19SPEAKER- Sora is very much Kingdom Hearts thing,

15:21SPEAKERbut I doubt that's where this came from, but who knows?

15:24SPEAKER- I guarantee you it's where it came from.

15:26SPEAKERGuarantee you.

15:27SPEAKER- So for somebody who listened to, I don't know,

15:33SPEAKER30 hours of waypoints, lore reasons,

15:35SPEAKERstuff like trying to understand what Kingdom Hearts is,

15:38SPEAKERI still don't know why they would name it Sora,

15:41SPEAKERbut it's an AI-driven video generation tool.

15:44SPEAKERSo in the same way that ChatGPT will create text

15:48SPEAKERout of copyright infringement,

15:49SPEAKERand Dolly will create images out of copyright infringement,

15:56SPEAKERSora will create video out of copyright infringement now,

15:58SPEAKERit seems like.

15:59SPEAKER- Is Dolly OpenAI's one?

16:02SPEAKER- Dolly is OpenAI, I believe.

16:04SPEAKER- Okay, I have a hard time keeping track.

16:06SPEAKERWho's mid-journey, is that one open?

16:08SPEAKER- You know what, you're right.

16:09SPEAKERDolly is mid-journey is OpenAI, I think.

16:12SPEAKER- Okay, Dolly is open, I wanna say, or it's not theirs.

16:17SPEAKERAnyway, OpenAI is like the monolith in the space, right?

16:22SPEAKERI mean, everybody's doing AI stuff now,

16:23SPEAKERbut they're the one that's like, oh,

16:26SPEAKERbillions of dollars in investments,

16:27SPEAKERand Musk, and Sam Alton, and like that.

16:30SPEAKERThey're the kind of like valley darling of AI, right?

16:32SPEAKER- So they're one of the big ones, and I had it backwards.

16:35SPEAKERDolly is OpenAI's, mid-journey is independent.

16:41SPEAKERThey've raised a whole bunch of money

16:44SPEAKERfrom a bunch of different people.

16:46SPEAKERThey have a large Microsoft investment,

16:48SPEAKERthey're tied to Microsoft in some key ways.

16:51SPEAKERThey're also licensing, I wanna say that Elon Musk's thing

16:55SPEAKERon 10 is as a chat GPT license.

16:58SPEAKERThere's a bunch of people that are licensing chat GPT

17:03SPEAKERfor tech spots.

17:05SPEAKER- Interesting, I didn't realize they were just,

17:07SPEAKERpeople were just taking it and slapping new names on it.

17:09SPEAKER- That seems like, and maybe like putting some,

17:12SPEAKERtrying to put some guard rails on it a little bit.

17:14SPEAKER- That's good, that's good.

17:15SPEAKERI'm just surprised that they are allowed

17:17SPEAKERto just rebrand it as such.

17:20SPEAKER- Well, I mean, you think about

17:21SPEAKERwhat their compute costs are generating these models

17:23SPEAKERand then running the free web front ends for them,

17:27SPEAKERand they have to make money somewhere,

17:29SPEAKER'cause even with billions and billions of dollars investment

17:32SPEAKERthey still have, and just to be clear,

17:35SPEAKERtheir valuation is enormous, right?

17:39SPEAKERIt's dozens of billions of dollars, $80 billion, I think.

17:44SPEAKER- 80 billion is what I'm seeing.

17:45SPEAKER- Yeah, after the Microsoft, I want to say

17:50SPEAKERthat was the Microsoft deal, but it might've been before.

17:52SPEAKERYeah, Microsoft backed OpenAI valued at $80 billion

17:54SPEAKERafter the deal completes.

17:56SPEAKERSo that's a tripling of valuation in 10 months.

17:59SPEAKERThe problem is it's really expensive

18:01SPEAKERto do generative AI stuff, right?

18:03SPEAKER'Cause it requires a massive amount of compute,

18:05SPEAKERit requires a lot of GPU, it's all expensive

18:07SPEAKERto run the queries, to generate the models

18:09SPEAKERthat you run the queries against, it's all expensive.

18:12SPEAKEREven when you're not paying anyone for content

18:15SPEAKERyou're paying for very little content.

18:18SPEAKERSo they released a SORA video, which is like, what,

18:19SPEAKER10 or 12 clips of different types of video,

18:22SPEAKERincluding animation and photo realistic people,

18:28SPEAKERcloseups of people, kind of drone shots of landscapes,

18:36SPEAKERpaper animation, paper craft animation,

18:39SPEAKERlike tracking drone shots of a car,

18:41SPEAKERlike from a car commercial, CG animation.

18:45SPEAKERThey didn't do any 2D animation,

18:46SPEAKERwhich I thought was interesting.

18:48SPEAKERYeah, you're right, you're right,

18:49SPEAKERCG animation they did do.

18:52SPEAKERThere's one on their page of prompt is historical footage

18:55SPEAKERof California during the gold rush,

18:57SPEAKERwhich is a bizarre anachronism.

18:59SPEAKERAnd it's like a drone shot down a creek

19:03SPEAKERon like a gold rush town, it looks like.

19:05SPEAKERLike it's weird, but it's weird because they apply it

19:07SPEAKERin old timey, kind of shaky old film stock

19:12SPEAKERsort of filter to it.

19:13SPEAKERYeah.

19:14SPEAKERTo capture a time when that didn't even exist.

19:16SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

19:17SPEAKERIt's just like, it's just a generic aesthetic

19:19SPEAKERof old video or old film,

19:21SPEAKEReven though you couldn't have made this in real life.

19:24SPEAKERYeah, and it's almost sepia.

19:27SPEAKERLike it's almost like it's a bad sepia.

19:29SPEAKERAnyway, but the point is it's all generated off of,

19:34SPEAKERand they showed the text query beforehand.

19:35SPEAKERSo for example, a gorgeously rendered papercraft world

19:38SPEAKERof a coral reef rife with colorful fish and sea creatures.

19:42SPEAKERAnd then you see like paper, kind of papery looking fish.

19:47SPEAKERI don't know, they don't, I don't,

19:50SPEAKERit doesn't look like a thing you could really make

19:52SPEAKERwith paper in a way that like, it doesn't look real,

19:55SPEAKERlike a real paper animated scene would look necessarily.

19:58SPEAKERNo, it looks fake.

20:00SPEAKERYeah.

20:02SPEAKERI will say for what it's worth,

20:05SPEAKERespecially a lot of this real life stuff,

20:06SPEAKERlike it's the first AI generated video I've seen

20:09SPEAKERthat is believably real looking, I guess I would say.

20:13SPEAKERIt's funny 'cause it's stuff that I think to me,

20:16SPEAKERif it showed up in like,

20:18SPEAKERas like a three second shot in something,

20:20SPEAKERI would totally buy it as real.

20:22SPEAKERBut if you have any time at all to linger.

20:24SPEAKEROh, for sure.

20:25SPEAKERThere's a closeup of an old man and you look at him

20:27SPEAKERand it's like nose and glasses and eyes

20:29SPEAKERand the wrinkles on his face and his beard look really good.

20:32SPEAKERHis hair's a little bit wispy,

20:33SPEAKERbut then you look at his ear and it's not an ear,

20:37SPEAKERlike it's vaguely reminiscent of an ear.

20:40SPEAKERIt's absolutely gonna have all the telltale signs of AI

20:43SPEAKERnot understanding reality.

20:44SPEAKERI mean, they actually mentioned that on the,

20:47SPEAKERit's openai.com/sora for what it's worth.

20:50SPEAKERThe current model has weaknesses.

20:51SPEAKERIt may struggle with accurately simulating the physics

20:53SPEAKERof a complex scene and may not understand specific instances

20:56SPEAKERof cause and effect.

20:58SPEAKERFor example, a person might take a bite out of a cookie,

21:00SPEAKERbut afterward the cookie may not have a bite mark.

21:03SPEAKERThe model may also confuse spatial details of a prompt,

21:06SPEAKERfor example, mixing up left and right,

21:08SPEAKERand may struggle with precise descriptions of events

21:10SPEAKERthat take place over time,

21:11SPEAKERlike following a specific camera trajectory.

21:15SPEAKER- So like there's also places

21:17SPEAKERthat it just makes weird mistakes.

21:18SPEAKERLike this is a stop motion image video of a flower blooming.

21:24SPEAKERAnd when you look at the flower,

21:26SPEAKERit's like, oh, the flower looks good.

21:27SPEAKERIt's in a clay pot that looks pretty normal.

21:29SPEAKERAnd then you look at, it's clearly on a sill.

21:32SPEAKERThere's a curtain, so it's inside.

21:34SPEAKERAnd then when you look behind it,

21:35SPEAKERthere's like a couple of windows,

21:37SPEAKERand it's the outside edges of the windows

21:39SPEAKERwith like outside window siding on it.

21:41SPEAKERAnd so it's like both sides are outsides.

21:44SPEAKERI don't know.

21:45SPEAKERMaybe it's supposed to be louvered shades.

21:47SPEAKERIt's hard to tell, but a lot of it's kind of unsettling.

21:52SPEAKER- Yes.

21:54SPEAKER- Like the animated stuff is,

21:56SPEAKERthey do these really long two paragraph long prompts

21:58SPEAKERfor the animated characters.

22:01SPEAKERLike one of them's like a little furry demon guy.

22:04SPEAKERAnd when you look at it, they just don't have any of the,

22:06SPEAKERthey don't follow any of the 15 principles of animation.

22:09SPEAKERSo there's no, or if they do, it's only because of the,

22:13SPEAKERit's only because the stuff that it's copying does that,

22:15SPEAKERmaybe?

22:16SPEAKER- Sure.

22:17SPEAKER- So it lacks intentionality that,

22:19SPEAKERlike the neat thing about animation is usually that,

22:22SPEAKERyou know, somebody literally posed every frame

22:26SPEAKERor every third frame or every fifth frame or whatever.

22:29SPEAKERAnd when you remove that intentionality from animation,

22:31SPEAKERit often just doesn't, it doesn't work the same way.

22:34SPEAKERIt doesn't have the same kind of magic

22:36SPEAKERand it doesn't revoke the same human reaction in us.

22:40SPEAKER- Yeah.

22:41SPEAKEROn the subject of AI copying stuff,

22:42SPEAKERhave you seen this thing where,

22:43SPEAKERand I don't know which model they were using for this,

22:45SPEAKERbut like this was going around on Twitter,

22:46SPEAKERthat they were able to,

22:47SPEAKERwith the most generic prompts possible,

22:49SPEAKERbasically have it spit out Joel and Ellie

22:52SPEAKERfrom The Last of Us over and over and over

22:54SPEAKERwith different, again, extremely vague descriptions

22:58SPEAKERof like middle-aged man and teenage girl in an apocalypse.

23:02SPEAKERLike just stuff like that flat.

23:03SPEAKER- Weird.

23:04SPEAKERWhat a weird coincidence.

23:05SPEAKER- And it was just coming out with iteration after iteration

23:08SPEAKERof characters that were so unmistakably

23:10SPEAKERthose two characters.

23:11SPEAKER- That's not unsurprising to me.

23:13SPEAKER- Yes, yes.

23:14SPEAKERI'll say like the most believable thing on here

23:16SPEAKERthat I've seen is probably this like follow shot

23:19SPEAKERof like some kind of truck driving

23:21SPEAKERon like a windy mountain road.

23:23SPEAKER- Yeah, I thought that one was pretty,

23:25SPEAKERthat one was pretty good.

23:27SPEAKERThe TVs, like the TVs, the old TVs stacked up

23:31SPEAKERwith a bunch of random footage on them

23:33SPEAKERworked for me weirdly.

23:37SPEAKERThe guy sitting on the cloud reading the book

23:39SPEAKERwas pretty good until you looked at it for a moment

23:41SPEAKERand then you're like, oh right, that's not the way,

23:43SPEAKERnone of this is gonna work that way.

23:44SPEAKERThat doesn't seem right.

23:46SPEAKERAnd then the tilt shift construction site

23:48SPEAKERwas okay too, I thought.

23:49SPEAKERBut like, just generally speaking, it's,

23:54SPEAKERI mean, a lot of it, it's kind of like karaoke, right?

23:58SPEAKER- Sure.

23:59SPEAKER- So like this picture of the squirrel or chipmunk

24:02SPEAKERor something bouncing through the forest

24:03SPEAKERwith huge DreamWorks cartoon eyes.

24:06SPEAKERAnd then it just, it's like they know

24:09SPEAKERthat the big eyes make the animal cute.

24:11SPEAKERThe machine knows that the big eyes make the animal cute,

24:13SPEAKERbut it doesn't know the other things that you do

24:17SPEAKERto make the animal cute.

24:18SPEAKER- Jesus, God, man, I just pulled that thing up.

24:20SPEAKERIt's terrifying.

24:20SPEAKER- Yeah, it's really fucking disturbing.

24:23SPEAKER- That's awful, but I also can't stop looking at it.

24:26SPEAKER- Well, it's like here, I'm gonna,

24:30SPEAKERI got our screenshot for the image here for the episode.

24:33SPEAKER- Right.

24:34SPEAKER- But yeah, it's just like, it's just disturbing.

24:38SPEAKERYou've nailed it.

24:40SPEAKERSo, and like all of the open AI stuff,

24:43SPEAKERpresumably this is made with stolen copyrighted content

24:47SPEAKERthat they're trying to make not a fair use,

24:51SPEAKERthat they're trying to claim as fair use.

24:53SPEAKERSo I see this and I am bummed out by it.

24:59SPEAKER- Yeah, pretty much same.

25:01SPEAKERThis definitely falls under the bad use of AI

25:03SPEAKERwhen we've talked about like DLSS is good.

25:06SPEAKERThat open source library that identifies species of birds

25:10SPEAKERin real time is good.

25:12SPEAKER- Well, we talked about this in my Twitch chat

25:14SPEAKERthe other night and somebody was like,

25:15SPEAKERyeah, I saw a company the other day

25:16SPEAKERthat's doing like an AI to help you manage

25:19SPEAKERlike healthcare stuff, like finding doctors

25:23SPEAKERand dealing with insurance companies and all that.

25:25SPEAKERI was like, that actually sounds like a useful,

25:26SPEAKERlike that's a time-saver.

25:27SPEAKERIf I had, yeah.

25:28SPEAKER- If it works, if it works, right up until it gives you,

25:32SPEAKERright up until it misunderstands your condition

25:34SPEAKERor like gives you the wrong advice

25:35SPEAKERin a time sensitive situation or something,

25:37SPEAKERmaybe we'll get to that in the other little AI story

25:39SPEAKERwe have here after we're done with this video.

25:42SPEAKER- Just to be clear, I think that's not for,

25:43SPEAKERit's not for like medical advice.

25:45SPEAKERIt's more for like an agent that will deal

25:48SPEAKERwith your insurance company for you.

25:50SPEAKER- Sure.

25:51SPEAKER- So.

25:52SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, if it's able to understand your policy

25:54SPEAKERbetter than you have time to do, then maybe that, sure.

25:57SPEAKER- Yeah, let's just let my chat bot,

25:59SPEAKERlike the insurance company gets a chat bot.

26:01SPEAKERWhy don't I get a chat bot to grind down their chat bot?

26:03SPEAKER- Is this is what the coming robot war is?

26:06SPEAKERHe's gonna be the chat bot versus chat bot.

26:08SPEAKER- God.

26:09SPEAKER- More of the chat bots.

26:12SPEAKERI wrote a question here in the notes about Sora

26:14SPEAKERand other AI driven video.

26:15SPEAKERWhat ultimately is this going to be used for?

26:17SPEAKER- Spam.

26:18SPEAKER- Yeah, right, like what actual use case

26:21SPEAKERis this going to fill in a way that is convincing

26:23SPEAKERand actually serviceable?

26:24SPEAKER'Cause like the people out there going like,

26:27SPEAKERoh, you're gonna just come home and generate another season

26:30SPEAKERof that canceled TV show you love at night

26:33SPEAKERinstead of pulling up Netflix.

26:35SPEAKER- Those people don't understand

26:36SPEAKERwhy people engage with art.

26:37SPEAKER- Right, like that's completely delusional

26:39SPEAKERunless there's some massive paradigm shift

26:42SPEAKERthat we have yet to see.

26:44SPEAKERSo that's not happening.

26:46SPEAKERSo like, what are they going to do with this?

26:47SPEAKER- Well, okay, so we've already seen the rise

26:49SPEAKERof the large language models basically render

26:51SPEAKERthe text web useless, right?

26:56SPEAKERUnless you search for specific sites

26:58SPEAKERor you limit your search in specific ways,

27:00SPEAKERlike you can't ask a generic question

27:02SPEAKERwithout getting just page after page

27:04SPEAKERof absolute garbage now.

27:05SPEAKERSo my take on this is that when we make these tools

27:11SPEAKERto create the content easier, and then the AI companies

27:15SPEAKERsay things like, we're taking important safety steps

27:18SPEAKERahead of making SOAR available in OpenAI's products.

27:20SPEAKERWe're working with red teamers, domain experts

27:23SPEAKERin areas like misinformation, hateful content, and bias

27:25SPEAKERwho are adversarially testing the model.

27:27SPEAKERNow, what that says to me is, yes,

27:29SPEAKERwe're doing the bare minimum that we have to do

27:31SPEAKERto make sure that this thing that we unleash into the world

27:34SPEAKERdoesn't cause genocides, maybe.

27:39SPEAKERBut the problem is, there's a finite number

27:42SPEAKERof the red teamers, there's a finite number of people

27:44SPEAKERthat are moderating the content

27:46SPEAKERthat comes out of this thing, and because you can generate,

27:50SPEAKERit's so easy to generate content, you can make stuff

27:52SPEAKERthat is specific to an individual target.

27:57SPEAKERIt's not like you have to generate,

27:59SPEAKERin the old days, if you wanted to generate a spam email,

28:01SPEAKERyou would generate it and you'd write one email

28:03SPEAKERthat would go out to 300,000 people,

28:05SPEAKERand you'd hope that 1/10 of a percent of people

28:07SPEAKERclicked on that and you got 10 bucks out of it, right?

28:10SPEAKERWith this, you can make 300,000 videos,

28:13SPEAKEReach individually targeted and unique.

28:16SPEAKERSo there's no moderation, it's not like you can moderate

28:19SPEAKER300,000 independent videos, and as a result,

28:24SPEAKERwe're gonna make the moderation problem

28:26SPEAKERfor this content that's generated infinite, basically,

28:29SPEAKERand the threat surface is just bigger and bigger and bigger

28:32SPEAKERwith every new type of content.

28:34SPEAKERSo yeah, sure, they'll prevent you from making a video

28:38SPEAKERof Joe Biden saying that he's going to have

28:40SPEAKERDonald Trump summarily executed,

28:43SPEAKERbut they're not gonna be able to stop the guy who's like,

28:46SPEAKERyeah, give me a video of a guy with brown hair

28:50SPEAKERand a red beard with white at the chin and glasses

28:53SPEAKERbegging for his life so that they send that to my parents

28:56SPEAKERand ask for ransom money, right?

28:58SPEAKERLike, that's the outcome, that's where we're going.

29:01SPEAKERIt's already, we're already seeing voice models being used

29:04SPEAKERto mimic people and to extract ransoms from parents

29:09SPEAKERand loved ones and stuff like that.

29:11SPEAKER- Yes.

29:12SPEAKER- It's grim.

29:13SPEAKER- It's grim.

29:14SPEAKER- This is a grim future.

29:14SPEAKERWe had like 20 years where the information

29:17SPEAKERwas generally available and pretty reliable

29:19SPEAKERfor the most part, and that's all evaporating now.

29:22SPEAKERSo thanks, AI companies.

29:23SPEAKER- Yes, thanks for that.

29:25SPEAKER- Not applying to Jobs AI companies on an unrelated note.

29:28SPEAKER- Got a couple other quick AI tidbits here.

29:31SPEAKER- Yeah.

29:32SPEAKER- Did you see NVIDIA is this?

29:33SPEAKERI mean, this blog just went up on 13th.

29:35SPEAKERI don't know if they had announced this prior to this.

29:37SPEAKERChat with RTX.

29:39SPEAKERHave you seen that?

29:39SPEAKER- This was, this is, oh, hold on.

29:42SPEAKER- This is basically a local chat bot

29:44SPEAKERthat will run on your NVIDIA card that they're putting out,

29:46SPEAKERbut I believe you have to plug the large language model

29:49SPEAKERinto it yourself.

29:50SPEAKERIf I'm not mistaken.

29:51SPEAKER- That makes sense, maybe.

29:52SPEAKERWhich large language model do they want you to use?

29:55SPEAKER- Mistral and Llama 2 are two that they mentioned.

29:58SPEAKER- Hmm.

29:59SPEAKER- And users can quickly easily connect local files

30:01SPEAKERon a PC as a data set to an open source,

30:04SPEAKERlarge language model like Mistral or Llama 2.

30:07SPEAKER- Hmm.

30:08SPEAKER- Which is essentially a way to kind of give you

30:10SPEAKERa chat GPT equivalent that runs on your graphics card,

30:13SPEAKERit seems.

30:14SPEAKER- I'm probably okay.

30:15SPEAKER- Yeah.

30:16SPEAKER- Turns out.

30:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know that,

30:18SPEAKERI don't know that I, yeah, I don't know.

30:19SPEAKER- I mean, look, I think,

30:20SPEAKERI think that there are places where,

30:23SPEAKERwhere this stuff will end up being useful.

30:25SPEAKERI don't think it's creating entertainment, honestly.

30:30SPEAKER- Yes.

30:31SPEAKER- Like, I think having an AI, having a chat model

30:34SPEAKERthat can, I like, at the same time,

30:36SPEAKERlike the thing that all the things I think of are bad,

30:39SPEAKERlike would I want to use a large language model

30:41SPEAKERto call in a pizza order for me

30:42SPEAKERso I don't have to talk to somebody on the phone?

30:44SPEAKERNo, only an incredible asshole would think

30:46SPEAKERthat that is a good idea.

30:47SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, no thank you, no thank you.

30:50SPEAKER- And then yeah, as far as,

30:51SPEAKERas far as like generating entertainment,

30:52SPEAKERI mean, I have seen some AI driven stuff on Twitch

30:55SPEAKERthat people have run, like that Seinfeld thing.

30:57SPEAKERAnd there was like a fake presidential debate channel

30:59SPEAKERrunning for a while.

30:59SPEAKERAnd like those things ended up being funny,

31:01SPEAKERbut not for the reasons that human created material

31:05SPEAKERis funny, you know?

31:06SPEAKERThey were, they were only funny

31:07SPEAKERin the way that they were fucked up.

31:08SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

31:09SPEAKERIt was like, this is like surreal

31:11SPEAKERin a way that only AI could do,

31:14SPEAKERbut that's not what you're looking for

31:15SPEAKERif you are a Seinfeld fanatic

31:17SPEAKERand want a new season of Seinfeld, right?

31:19SPEAKER- Well, it's funny.

31:20SPEAKERSo I read an article completely unrelated

31:22SPEAKERto this the other day about people

31:24SPEAKERwho are trying to find the funniest words

31:27SPEAKERand like what made some words funnier than others.

31:30SPEAKER- Oh good, I bet this'll turn out great.

31:32SPEAKER- This is, I'm gonna go and tell you

31:33SPEAKERit's gonna make you worried.

31:35SPEAKERSo the idea is that words like,

31:39SPEAKERthere are words that sound,

31:41SPEAKERthere's several classes of words

31:42SPEAKERand some of them don't matter for my argument here.

31:44SPEAKERLike for example, words that sound dirty,

31:46SPEAKERbut aren't like Wong or Dongle or Focky,

31:50SPEAKERthose are funny words,

31:51SPEAKERbut it's 'cause they sound like words

31:52SPEAKERthat are inappropriate.

31:53SPEAKERSo if you have like a reaction to thinking you're hearing

31:55SPEAKERa rude word, then it turns out to not be rude.

31:58SPEAKERK, words with Ks in them generally are funny

32:01SPEAKERand it's because K comes up in specific structures

32:06SPEAKERand when K sounds are outside of those specific structures,

32:09SPEAKERit's novel and weird and your brain reacts often

32:12SPEAKERwith a laugh out of that.

32:14SPEAKERSo I'm trying to come up with the example,

32:18SPEAKERI'm looking for the examples right now,

32:19SPEAKERbut it was like codswallop and lummox,

32:27SPEAKERwhich is kind of a K sound at the end there.

32:32SPEAKERThe K sound being novel and phonemes coming into the word

32:36SPEAKERin an order that's not part of the normal structure

32:39SPEAKERis one of the things that made words funnier

32:42SPEAKERwhen like toothy weasel is a funny phrase they said

32:47SPEAKERand it has a bunch of phonemes that go together

32:49SPEAKERin a way that is almost entirely unique

32:51SPEAKERin the English language.

32:52SPEAKERSo anyway, I think that's why that Seinfeld stuff is funny

32:56SPEAKERis 'cause they were juxtaposing things

32:58SPEAKERthat aren't normally against each other

33:00SPEAKERthat were often nonsensical,

33:03SPEAKERbut like your brain was just so off kilter

33:05SPEAKERfrom what it was getting that it ended up working,

33:09SPEAKERbut only in a limited context.

33:10SPEAKER'Cause the problem is after you watch that Seinfeld thing

33:12SPEAKERfor like 45 minutes, it stopped being funny at all.

33:14SPEAKER- That was exactly it.

33:16SPEAKERLike, oh, this is novel and kind of throwing me for a loop

33:18SPEAKERand I'm laughing at some of it.

33:19SPEAKERAnd then yeah, eventually very quickly you're like,

33:22SPEAKERall right, I've gotten the gimmick, I'm good.

33:24SPEAKER- Yeah, a friend of mine who's funnier than me

33:26SPEAKERdescribed that as the family guy effect.

33:28SPEAKER- Okay.

33:29SPEAKER- 'Cause he was like, look,

33:30SPEAKERit's just a series of infinite non-sequiturs,

33:32SPEAKEReventually the non-sequiturs stopped being funny.

33:34SPEAKERIt's why the guy has to be 23 minutes long.

33:36SPEAKER- Sure, I can see that.

33:37SPEAKERThe one other little AI story here is this piece

33:40SPEAKERfrom Ars Technica about this Air Canada refund,

33:44SPEAKERkerfuffle, farce.

33:46SPEAKER- Yeah.

33:47SPEAKER- Where a customer asked, I mean, like many companies,

33:49SPEAKERAir Canada was using a chat bot

33:51SPEAKERto automate their online chat support, textual chat support.

33:56SPEAKERA grieving customer who had lost a family member

33:58SPEAKERwas looking to book like a day of plane ticket,

34:01SPEAKERasked the chat bot about their bereavement policy.

34:05SPEAKERThe chat bot gave that customer

34:06SPEAKERa much more generous bereavement policy than actually existed

34:09SPEAKERand they bought a ticket,

34:11SPEAKERassuming that that was going to be the case,

34:13SPEAKERtried to pursue the refund, was told like,

34:14SPEAKERno, that's not actually the policy.

34:17SPEAKERAnd that customer took them to court

34:19SPEAKERand they were forced to pay.

34:20SPEAKER- Good for them, good for the customer.

34:22SPEAKER- Yes.

34:23SPEAKER- This has happened a couple of times.

34:24SPEAKERThis isn't the first time.

34:25SPEAKERThere was a chat GPT AI tool

34:28SPEAKERthat somebody has been selling to auto car dealers in the US

34:32SPEAKERand somebody was able to push the chat bot

34:36SPEAKERto offer them a $1 deal on a $58,000 car

34:41SPEAKERby just kind of poking at the chat bot

34:43SPEAKERin a way that is like using known vulnerabilities, right?

34:47SPEAKER- I saw that going around,

34:48SPEAKERbut I had surely they were not forced

34:49SPEAKERto honor anything like that.

34:50SPEAKER- I don't think the lawsuits happened yet.

34:52SPEAKERI think they'll, I mean,

34:53SPEAKERI feel like there was ill intent with that,

34:55SPEAKERthat it didn't, it wasn't implied with this one.

34:58SPEAKER- Sure, yeah, I mean, this one is 100% benign

35:01SPEAKERand I'm on the level.

35:02SPEAKERAnd this is also the first legal judgment I've seen

35:04SPEAKERthat has forced a company to comply

35:06SPEAKERwith their out of control chat bot, so.

35:09SPEAKER- Yeah, this is great.

35:10SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, this quote from the R story is insane to me.

35:14SPEAKER- Which one?

35:16SPEAKERThere were several that struck me.

35:17SPEAKERI'm curious which one grabbed you.

35:18SPEAKER- That's the one I pasted here.

35:19SPEAKERAccording to Air Canada, Moffat, that's the customer,

35:22SPEAKERnever should have trusted the chat bot

35:23SPEAKERand that the airline should not be liable

35:26SPEAKERfor the chat bot's misleading information

35:28SPEAKERbecause Air Canada essentially argued that quote,

35:30SPEAKERthe chat bot is a separate legal entity

35:33SPEAKERthat is responsible for its own actions.

35:36SPEAKER- So the interesting thing to me is that they cared enough

35:38SPEAKERto go to court for 600 bucks.

35:40SPEAKERI think that's what this was.

35:41SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause it seems like setting this precedent

35:44SPEAKERmaybe is bad for them.

35:46SPEAKER- Way worse, they should have just paid him.

35:48SPEAKER- Yeah, right.

35:50SPEAKER- I mean, it's interesting 'cause the thing to me

35:53SPEAKERthat stood out was that the judge was like,

35:54SPEAKERyo, how is this customer supposed to know

35:57SPEAKERthat one part of your website is less reliable information

36:01SPEAKERthan the other part of your website?

36:02SPEAKER- Like that's one of the most insane arguments

36:04SPEAKERI have ever heard about anything.

36:05SPEAKER- Yeah, so.

36:06SPEAKER- Like full stop, like what are you talking about?

36:09SPEAKER- So yeah, I assume at least in Canada,

36:12SPEAKERprobably we'll see a lot of these chat bots go away

36:14SPEAKERin the short term.

36:15SPEAKER- That's exactly what I was gonna say.

36:16SPEAKERIt seems, this seems like the fastest route

36:18SPEAKERto companies abandoning this technology wholesale.

36:21SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, ultimately I think it's a really,

36:24SPEAKERit's a good thing for users.

36:26SPEAKERI would love to see similar action taken

36:29SPEAKERin the United States 'cause while chat bots

36:31SPEAKERare occasionally useful,

36:32SPEAKERI feel like the less reliable they are,

36:35SPEAKERif they're not providing reliable information,

36:37SPEAKERthey might as well be fired into the sun.

36:41SPEAKER- Agreed.

36:43SPEAKERBefore we move on real quick,

36:44SPEAKERwe were talking before we started recording

36:45SPEAKERand you mentioned that AI investments

36:48SPEAKERhas entered the, or AI, like the fervor around AI

36:51SPEAKERand the companies advancing it

36:53SPEAKERhas entered the trough of despair,

36:54SPEAKERwhich I did not realize.

36:56SPEAKERI kind of, I assumed in this like

36:58SPEAKERchilled investment environment,

37:00SPEAKERAI was the one thing that was immune to that

37:02SPEAKERand was still siphoning a lot, a bunch of money,

37:03SPEAKERbut maybe not.

37:04SPEAKER- I mean, it seems, so just in general,

37:06SPEAKERit seems like nobody's, there's not a lot of deals

37:08SPEAKERhappening anywhere right now, right?

37:09SPEAKERSo I think that the Sora thing came out

37:12SPEAKERbecause OpenAI is probably about to start doing fundraising

37:15SPEAKERand they just did this Microsoft deal,

37:18SPEAKERwhich infused some cash,

37:19SPEAKERbut they have so many people and so much expense,

37:25SPEAKERand also they're paying,

37:27SPEAKERit's not like they're hiring at reduced salaries or whatever,

37:31SPEAKERthey're paying hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars

37:34SPEAKERfor people who can do the AI engineering work

37:37SPEAKERthat's required for this.

37:38SPEAKERSo it's, you know, like there's no arbiter of this.

37:44SPEAKERThis is just to be clear,

37:45SPEAKERwe're talking about the Gartner hype cycle again,

37:46SPEAKERwhich we've talked about before.

37:47SPEAKERIt's the idea that new technology comes out.

37:51SPEAKERThere's an initial wave of excitement

37:54SPEAKERas people are inflating their expectations

37:57SPEAKERuntil it reaches an impossible to attain

38:01SPEAKERlofty kind of vision in the public.

38:03SPEAKERWe saw this happen with,

38:05SPEAKERhonestly, we saw this happen with smartphones.

38:07SPEAKERIt happens to almost everything.

38:08SPEAKERPhones, VR, AI, the crypto and web3 stuff

38:12SPEAKERwent through it incredibly quickly.

38:15SPEAKERAnd then after you get to this peak,

38:18SPEAKERthe reality sets in, the ideas of reality sets in,

38:20SPEAKERand you start seeing the edges of this.

38:23SPEAKERNow, the AI, the generative model AI stuff especially

38:26SPEAKERhad a really good first reaction to that,

38:29SPEAKER'cause like the jump from no generative models

38:31SPEAKERto generative models that were way better

38:33SPEAKERthan you would expect happened really, really quickly.

38:37SPEAKERAnd people got really excited about it.

38:38SPEAKERAnd that's when I started getting questions

38:41SPEAKERfrom people at the playground at my daughter's school

38:43SPEAKERthat were like, "Hey, can I use this chat GPT

38:45SPEAKERto do my marketing job?"

38:46SPEAKERI was like, "Yeah, sure, you should absolutely do that

38:48SPEAKERif you want to prove to your managers

38:49SPEAKERthat you don't need a job

38:50SPEAKERand they should just replace you with the machine."

38:54SPEAKER- And another thing in that context I'm seeing,

38:56SPEAKERI've seen mentioned of this on Twitter in places

38:58SPEAKERis people saying they've gotten employees

39:01SPEAKERfeeding confidential company information

39:03SPEAKERinto remote chat bots run by other entities.

39:05SPEAKER- Perfect.

39:06SPEAKER- Which is not ending well for their employment status.

39:09SPEAKER- I also love that when you,

39:11SPEAKERI spent a fair amount of time on LinkedIn and job sites,

39:13SPEAKERand one of the most common pieces of advice I got is like,

39:16SPEAKER"You should run your cover letter and resume

39:18SPEAKERthrough the generative models

39:19SPEAKERto see what they say you should do."

39:22SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Yes, that sounds like a great way

39:24SPEAKERto make your resume sound

39:25SPEAKERjust like every other person's resume on the planet."

39:27SPEAKER- Brilliant.

39:28SPEAKER- Of course, at the same time,

39:30SPEAKERthe employers are filtering everyone's resumes through AI,

39:33SPEAKERAI filters.

39:34SPEAKERSo maybe it is not a bad, anyway, I don't know.

39:37SPEAKERI'm not an expert there.

39:39SPEAKERBut the point is it feels to me

39:41SPEAKERlike we're into the trough on the AI stuff.

39:44SPEAKER'Cause the chat GPT-4 was a little bit of a regression

39:47SPEAKERover three in a lot of ways.

39:49SPEAKERIt was better in some ways,

39:50SPEAKERbut definitely a step back in others.

39:52SPEAKERWe're seeing blowback from customers on this.

39:56SPEAKERThere are some markets that just wholesale,

40:00SPEAKERtech journalism and video games.

40:04SPEAKERIf you come out as, "Yeah, we built our product with AI,"

40:07SPEAKERyou're going to have a real hard time marketing your product,

40:10SPEAKERit seems like right now.

40:11SPEAKERSo we're gonna see a wave this year

40:16SPEAKERand next year of games that secretly use AI.

40:19SPEAKERYou saw what happened with Wizards

40:21SPEAKERwhen they replaced card art made by artists

40:24SPEAKERat a company that was built on the labor of illustrators.

40:29SPEAKERAnd it didn't go well for Wizards.

40:31SPEAKERI mean, I think they've recovered probably.

40:32SPEAKERBut then the idea is that eventually

40:35SPEAKERsome stuff comes out of this.

40:36SPEAKERAnd just to be clear, all of this can stop at any time.

40:39SPEAKERSome stuff comes out of the trough.

40:41SPEAKERMaybe VR has, I don't know that I would agree

40:43SPEAKERwith that necessarily.

40:45SPEAKERThe web three stuff definitely didn't.

40:47SPEAKERCrypto probably is still worth a lot of money,

40:49SPEAKERbut I don't see further investment.

40:53SPEAKERAnd eventually it becomes either part

40:55SPEAKERof the normal background noise or continues to grow.

40:58SPEAKERPhones continue to grow, VR kind of stalled.

41:01SPEAKERBut yeah, it seems like the investment in AI stuff

41:03SPEAKERis relatively small despite this big Microsoft deal.

41:06SPEAKERAnd I think the winners will be the big people like OpenAI.

41:10SPEAKERAnd if you have a small AI startup,

41:12SPEAKERyou should plan to weather some bad times in the next year.

41:17SPEAKERSo if you live in the European Union,

41:22SPEAKER- Which I do.

41:23SPEAKER- Wow, congratulations.

41:25SPEAKER- I don't.

41:26SPEAKER- For your socialist paradise, Brad.

41:27SPEAKER- And you use iOS devices.

41:30SPEAKERYou should expect to see some changes in coming months

41:34SPEAKERthanks to the EU's Digital Markets Act,

41:38SPEAKERwhich basically targets gatekeepers.

41:41SPEAKERAgain, these are software services and companies

41:46SPEAKERthat the EU identified that kind of limit access

41:51SPEAKERto limit customer choice in certain specific areas.

41:56SPEAKERSo for example, Alphabet on a lot of places

42:01SPEAKERlimits search and advertising on search

42:06SPEAKERto only Google companies and they control the results

42:10SPEAKERthat you see on Google searches.

42:13SPEAKERThey identified operating systems,

42:14SPEAKERwhich are Android, iOS, and Windows PCOS.

42:19SPEAKERSo I never thought of it as Windows PCOS before.

42:22SPEAKER- Windows PCOS, sure.

42:25SPEAKER- Yes, it's for the personal computer.

42:26SPEAKER- It's true, yes, the IBM compatible.

42:28SPEAKER- Yeah, they looked at browsers, Chrome and Safari.

42:30SPEAKERWe're both identified Chrome on Windows presumably

42:33SPEAKERand I guess everything and Safari on iOS specifically.

42:37SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I like broadly what this is

42:39SPEAKERis basically interrogating the question of

42:41SPEAKERhow much should a platform holder

42:43SPEAKERwho has made the investment to build the platform

42:45SPEAKERthen get to gatekeep what happens on the platform.

42:47SPEAKER- Yeah, that is a good way to put it.

42:50SPEAKERSo this applies to Apple because we're starting to see

42:53SPEAKERthe first betas of the post-DMA versions of iOS come out

42:58SPEAKERand people have thoughts.

42:59SPEAKERApple also released a giant document that described

43:03SPEAKERwhat their response to this,

43:05SPEAKERwhich is to allow third-party app stores on iOS

43:10SPEAKERexclusively in the EU, it seems, and for EU customers.

43:14SPEAKER- Oh, what is that?

43:15SPEAKERThat's actually not like even the third-party app stores

43:17SPEAKERare not gonna make it to the US?

43:19SPEAKER- I do not believe that the third-party app stores

43:20SPEAKERwill be accessible in the United States, Brad.

43:22SPEAKER- Interesting, I mean, this is where you see

43:24SPEAKERthe difference between software implementation

43:26SPEAKERand hardware manufacturing because all the iPhones are,

43:30SPEAKERI mean, all the phones themselves, I should say,

43:33SPEAKERare going to USB-C because of the, right,

43:36SPEAKERor maybe it was going to happen eventually anyway,

43:38SPEAKERI don't know, but-

43:40SPEAKER- I think, I mean, there was a data transfer reason too

43:43SPEAKERas well, 'cause like, as you're using iPhones,

43:47SPEAKERtheir story about using iPhones as professional cameras

43:49SPEAKERis kind of hampered by the fact that the ability

43:51SPEAKERto get data off the phones was limited to USB-2 speeds.

43:54SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fair, I guess there is something to that,

43:57SPEAKERbut still it's happening just coincidentally

44:01SPEAKERexactly when the EU was forcing it to happen.

44:03SPEAKER- Yes. - And that's global

44:04SPEAKER'cause they're not gonna run two different production lines

44:08SPEAKERto put different types of phones out

44:10SPEAKERor, you know, phones with different charging ports on them

44:12SPEAKERin different territories,

44:14SPEAKERbut software, much easier to lock out regionally.

44:17SPEAKERWitness, and this is way even pre-Elon Musk,

44:20SPEAKERlike witnessed the much heavier moderation

44:22SPEAKERof Nazi related content in Germany on Twitter.

44:26SPEAKER- Weird.

44:27SPEAKER- Than ever took place in other territories.

44:31SPEAKERSo yeah, I guess much easier to lock out

44:33SPEAKERsomething that's software based based on territory.

44:37SPEAKER- Yeah, that's exactly it.

44:38SPEAKERSo the thing that's gonna happen with this

44:41SPEAKERis they are gonna allow third-party app stores,

44:43SPEAKERbut they put an unbelievable number of checks on them.

44:47SPEAKERSo when you post software, even through

44:50SPEAKERone of the third-party app stores,

44:51SPEAKERApple still is gonna check it for malware,

44:53SPEAKERlegal compliance and data collection stuff

44:55SPEAKERto make sure it falls within their terms.

44:58SPEAKERIf you want to run a third-party app store,

45:00SPEAKERyou need to show that you have access

45:02SPEAKERto a one million euro credit line

45:04SPEAKERso that you can guarantee that you can pay devs

45:06SPEAKERin the time that they specify.

45:09SPEAKERApps that ship on third-party stores

45:12SPEAKERwill still have to pay Apple a core technology fee

45:14SPEAKERonce they cross a million downloads.

45:16SPEAKERSo if you, like this is the punishing for success

45:20SPEAKERportion of your thing, and this is just to be clear,

45:22SPEAKERthis is all apps, not just paid apps.

45:25SPEAKERSo if you ship a free version of your app

45:27SPEAKERon a third-party store, once it crosses

45:30SPEAKERa million downloads, you have to pay

45:32SPEAKERhalf a euro per device annually,

45:36SPEAKERwhich I think the ARS article pointed out

45:38SPEAKERis remarkably similar to the Unity access fee

45:41SPEAKERthat they tried to switch over to,

45:44SPEAKERwhich was soundly rejected by both the dev

45:46SPEAKERand player community.

45:47SPEAKER- Yes, so in essence, half a million euros

45:51SPEAKERper million downloads is what you owe Apple.

45:54SPEAKER- No, no, no, no.

45:55SPEAKERIt's after you, after the first million.

45:58SPEAKER- Sorry, yes.

45:59SPEAKER- Minus half a million euros.

46:01SPEAKER- Yes, after the first million,

46:02SPEAKERbut every million after the first

46:04SPEAKERis half a million euros in fees to Apple.

46:07SPEAKER- Yeah, this particular, this structure feels to me

46:11SPEAKERlike it's precisely targeted to kind of shut down

46:14SPEAKERfree-to-play games where there's a relatively

46:16SPEAKERlarge player base and a relatively small number

46:19SPEAKERof paying players.

46:20SPEAKER- Yes, for sure.

46:21SPEAKER'Cause I mean, what is like a good monetization rate

46:25SPEAKERin free-to-play?

46:26SPEAKER- I have no idea these days.

46:27SPEAKER- 2%, 5%, I mean 10%, I don't know.

46:30SPEAKER- It's a single-digit percentage, probably, yeah.

46:32SPEAKER- Right, of downloads turning into money.

46:36SPEAKER- So if you're paying half a euro annually

46:38SPEAKERper device that it's installed on,

46:41SPEAKERthen that means like you're gonna actively dissuade

46:43SPEAKERsomebody from installing something on their phone

46:44SPEAKERand their iPad at the same time.

46:46SPEAKERIt is, it's also worth mentioning it's unclear to me

46:48SPEAKERif this applies to iPad OS or if it's just phone,

46:50SPEAKERthe phone version of iOS.

46:53SPEAKER'Cause I think the idea is that Apple,

46:57SPEAKERI mean the DMA language that I saw all talks about iOS,

47:01SPEAKERbut I think iPad OS is in Apple's eyes a separate OS

47:04SPEAKERand I'll be interested to see if this applies

47:06SPEAKERto non-phone devices.

47:07SPEAKER- Yes.

47:09SPEAKER- Do we know how this is gonna affect transactions

47:11SPEAKERfor things that are like consumable items

47:13SPEAKERin free-to-play apps?

47:14SPEAKERLike once you've already got the app

47:15SPEAKERand like let's say V-Bucks or something?

47:18SPEAKER- Well, so it's a good question.

47:20SPEAKERI don't know, it seems like this is a flat fee

47:23SPEAKERof 50 cents, 50, half a euro per year per device.

47:30SPEAKERI don't believe that there's a royalty fee on top of that.

47:33SPEAKER- What is the sub-euro denomination?

47:35SPEAKERI'm sure all of our European listeners are screaming.

47:37SPEAKER- They're laughing now.

47:38SPEAKER- They're screaming or laughing at the radio.

47:41SPEAKER- Also it's not a radio.

47:42SPEAKER- It's a fractional, it's a milli-euro, right?

47:43SPEAKEROr a centi-euro?

47:45SPEAKER- Sure.

47:45SPEAKER- They believe in decimal system over there.

47:47SPEAKERI don't know, I'm American, Brad,

47:49SPEAKERI don't have to understand this.

47:51SPEAKERBut yeah, so to contrast this from the normal app store

47:55SPEAKERwhere up until you cross a million,

47:57SPEAKERif you're just shipping, just to be clear,

47:59SPEAKERthis doesn't apply if you're using the Apple App Store.

48:02SPEAKERThey're making the Apple App Store terms

48:04SPEAKERjust as favorable to developers as they always have been.

48:07SPEAKERUp until the point at which you cross a million dollars

48:09SPEAKERin annual revenue, you devs pay 15% of their price.

48:14SPEAKERAnd after that, it's 30%.

48:15SPEAKERSo when you succeed, you pay more, which is nice.

48:18SPEAKERI think that's good to stick it to the winners

48:22SPEAKERrather than the people struggling.

48:25SPEAKERBut yeah, this is a real...

48:30SPEAKERTim Sweeney, I think, described this as malicious compliance.

48:33SPEAKER- Sure.

48:35SPEAKER- As in they're following the letter of the law,

48:37SPEAKERbut not the intent.

48:38SPEAKER- There didn't.

48:39SPEAKERThere just seems to be something a little spiteful about it.

48:42SPEAKER- I mean, I think my guess is that

48:47SPEAKERthat 50 cent annual fee is basically designed

48:51SPEAKERto make sure that Fortnite is...

48:55SPEAKERThe more Fortnite succeeds, the more they have to pay.

48:57SPEAKERSo yeah, anyway.

49:00SPEAKER- Well, sure enough,

49:01SPEAKERApple has reinstated Epic's developer account in the EU.

49:04SPEAKER- Yep.

49:05SPEAKERAnd they've announced that they're making it

49:08SPEAKERthe Epic store for iOS for EU customers only.

49:13SPEAKERSo presumably that means we'll see Fortnite

49:15SPEAKERfor EU players back on the phones

49:18SPEAKERlater this year or next year, maybe, I don't know.

49:21SPEAKER- What is the capacity for location spoofing on an iPhone?

49:24SPEAKER- You can run anything through a VPN, right?

49:26SPEAKER- Not that I multiply Fortnite on an iPhone,

49:30SPEAKERbut I'm sure a lot of people in the US will.

49:32SPEAKER- Well, I assume the authentication was much more stringent

49:36SPEAKERthan just where does your IP appear to originate from?

49:39SPEAKER- Oh, I think you'll have to activate it

49:40SPEAKERthrough a European provider probably and do that whole...

49:43SPEAKERThere's almost certainly a rigmarole.

49:45SPEAKER- Yeah.

49:47SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know.

49:48SPEAKERThe whole thing, this feels...

49:52SPEAKERSo I would say this seems relatively harmless

49:55SPEAKERfor most stuff, except as part of this,

49:59SPEAKERApple has, part of this also is that they have to allow

50:03SPEAKERthird-party renderers on the phone,

50:05SPEAKERwhich they've traditionally resisted for web pages.

50:08SPEAKER- Yeah, web browser rendering engines, we should say.

50:11SPEAKER- Yeah, so like on, for example, on Android,

50:15SPEAKERif you load Firefox, you get a different web rendering engine

50:18SPEAKERin the YouTube views, Chrome.

50:19SPEAKER- Okay, I'm gonna quiz myself here.

50:21SPEAKER- Yeah, do you remember?

50:22SPEAKER- Can I name all of them?

50:23SPEAKERI think it's Gecko on Firefox, isn't it?

50:25SPEAKER- I believe that's correct.

50:25SPEAKER- Gecko is Firefox's renderer.

50:30SPEAKERApple's WebKit is Chrome, it's not Chromium.

50:35SPEAKERWhat is the name of Google's?

50:36SPEAKER- Chromium is the, I believe Chrome and Safari

50:39SPEAKERare both WebKit.

50:41SPEAKER- Oh, Chrome is still, I thought, actually,

50:42SPEAKERI think I wanna say, I'm sure people can really care

50:46SPEAKERabout this, I think Google forked WebKit long enough ago

50:50SPEAKERthat they have now rebranded their fork to something else.

50:54SPEAKER- Oh, that might be.

50:55SPEAKERThis is one of those things that used to matter a lot more.

50:58SPEAKER- Yeah, like, I mean, I feel like a blink.

51:00SPEAKERI believe blink is now what Google calls.

51:06SPEAKERAnyway, this is a digression we don't have to get into,

51:09SPEAKERbut it's, you know, it's kind of,

51:10SPEAKERespecially when we're talking about stuff like this,

51:12SPEAKERlike it is kind of nice to know what the underlying

51:14SPEAKERtechnology is running your browser,

51:15SPEAKER'cause it's something people,

51:17SPEAKERsome people may still not realize,

51:19SPEAKERevery browser on iOS is actually just WebKit under the hood.

51:24SPEAKERIt's actually Apple's page rendering code

51:27SPEAKERrunning within something like Chrome or Firefox,

51:29SPEAKERor even like kind of like downloadable web apps or whatever.

51:34SPEAKERLike it's all Apple's web browser with the trappings

51:38SPEAKERof something like Chrome on top of it.

51:39SPEAKER- Yeah, when you click a Reddit link

51:40SPEAKERand it opens a webpage in Reddit that's using Safari,

51:44SPEAKERit's using Safari's renderer,

51:45SPEAKEReven though it doesn't have the rest

51:47SPEAKERof the Safari stuff around it.

51:48SPEAKERSo the upshot on this is that there,

51:52SPEAKERso on iOS now there's kind of three tiers of apps.

51:55SPEAKERThere's like apps from the app store

51:57SPEAKERthat you have to go into the store,

51:58SPEAKERyou have to authenticate, you have to download.

51:59SPEAKERThey can have in-app purchases,

52:01SPEAKERthey can talk to Bluetooth devices,

52:02SPEAKERthey can use like your maps and geolocation

52:05SPEAKERand all the sensors on your phone if you give it permission.

52:09SPEAKERThere's, in Safari, there's a button you can hit

52:12SPEAKERthat says save this webpage as a home screen shortcut.

52:15SPEAKERAnd that just basically makes it a shortcut

52:17SPEAKERdirectly into that Safari tab on your device.

52:22SPEAKERI use that a lot for things like our Beep tool,

52:25SPEAKERit turns out.

52:26SPEAKER- Okay, but in that case, to be clear,

52:28SPEAKERin that case it is just opening Safari the app

52:31SPEAKERand loading that tab, correct?

52:32SPEAKER- Well, see, it's funny 'cause once you,

52:34SPEAKERnow that you can change the default browser,

52:36SPEAKERit opens whatever your default browser is.

52:39SPEAKERSo like when I click it, it opens a Firefox tab now.

52:41SPEAKER- What I mean is it doesn't open a discrete app quote unquote

52:44SPEAKERas far as the operating system is concerned,

52:46SPEAKERit's just spawning your existing browser app

52:48SPEAKERand opening within that.

52:49SPEAKER- That's right, it just opens another tab

52:51SPEAKERin your default browser.

52:52SPEAKER- Yeah, and that's a distinction to make

52:53SPEAKER'cause I think there is this third category, right?

52:56SPEAKER- Yeah, this third category that I think maybe

52:57SPEAKERa lot of people don't realize is a web app.

52:59SPEAKERAnd it's basically like a souped up website

53:02SPEAKERthat has access to things like push notifications

53:05SPEAKERand you can get geolocation data,

53:09SPEAKERthere's some sensors you can give access to,

53:10SPEAKERbut not stuff like Bluetooth.

53:12SPEAKERAnd you can also cache the stuff

53:13SPEAKERthat allows it to work offline,

53:15SPEAKERwhich is an important distinction.

53:17SPEAKERThese are called Progressive Web Apps by Google.

53:20SPEAKERApple kind of invented this when the first iPhone

53:22SPEAKERbefore there were app stores.

53:24SPEAKERLike this is what the HTML5 apps

53:26SPEAKERthat they talked about early on were

53:27SPEAKERand then immediately ditched with the second iPhone

53:30SPEAKERin favor of having an app store where they had more control.

53:33SPEAKERAnd often you'll see a webpage will be like,

53:37SPEAKER"Hey, do you want to install on your device?"

53:39SPEAKERAnd you click that and it doesn't go to the app store,

53:40SPEAKERit just installs.

53:41SPEAKERThat's the web app version.

53:43SPEAKERSo Apple's getting rid of those in the EU

53:45SPEAKERbecause they say that if they have to give,

53:47SPEAKERif they have to support other rendering engines in WebKit,

53:52SPEAKERthen they just can't do it safely.

53:55SPEAKERIt's impossible, technologically impossible

53:57SPEAKERto do safely and securely.

54:00SPEAKERAll of these choices that they're making,

54:01SPEAKERthese difficult choices they're making,

54:03SPEAKERthey say are to protect consumers and users

54:06SPEAKERfrom malicious software and bad applications

54:09SPEAKERand data privacy violations and stuff like that.

54:12SPEAKER- This does not sound like

54:13SPEAKERan entirely disingenuous argument to me.

54:15SPEAKERI mean, is the requirement that they support

54:17SPEAKERany and every other renderer that could possibly be run

54:21SPEAKERbecause you could never validate all of them

54:24SPEAKERif anybody can just come along and make their own?

54:26SPEAKER- So the argument is that they have to support

54:29SPEAKERthird-party renderers, it doesn't,

54:30SPEAKERthere's no specification as far as I can tell.

54:33SPEAKERBut the point is, it's a little,

54:37SPEAKERI mean, look, my guess is that the number of users of these

54:42SPEAKERversus the full-on, like full-blown app versions,

54:48SPEAKERyou were talking about stuff like Google Maps

54:50SPEAKERand The Guardian and giant websites for the most part

54:55SPEAKERsupport these, I went through and pulled,

54:59SPEAKERthere's a site called appsco.pe.

55:02SPEAKER- Appscope.

55:03SPEAKER- Yep, Appscope, that lists all of these, tons of them.

55:07SPEAKERLike there's one for Instagram, there's one for,

55:11SPEAKERthere's games, there's Rubik's Cube solvers,

55:14SPEAKERthere's all sorts of stuff,

55:15SPEAKERand they just show up as apps on your home screen.

55:17SPEAKERLike the benefit, the nice thing about these

55:20SPEAKERis they're easy to, since they use the webkit renderer,

55:23SPEAKERand if you have a webkit ad blocker installed on your phone,

55:27SPEAKERthey just, the ads just end up blocked in them,

55:29SPEAKERwhich it turns out is kind of a nice user feature

55:31SPEAKERwhen the same thing on a app version

55:35SPEAKERwouldn't block the ads necessarily.

55:38SPEAKERBut yeah, it feels like a hey, you didn't specify

55:43SPEAKERthat we have to keep this feature.

55:45SPEAKERIt's a low-use feature, so we're gonna get rid of it.

55:49SPEAKER- Maybe not a lot of people have an arms about it, but.

55:53SPEAKER- It just feels spiteful, honestly.

55:55SPEAKER- Yeah.

55:57SPEAKER- So yeah, that's it, that's it on that.

56:00SPEAKERI'm curious if people have PWAs that they particularly like.

56:04SPEAKERMaybe send them in to our,

56:05SPEAKERthe Discord or techpot at content.town.

56:07SPEAKER- Yeah.

56:08SPEAKER- The last one on this is,

56:11SPEAKERGruber had a good thing about RCS support.

56:14SPEAKER- I just saw this tucked in,

56:18SPEAKERtucked at the bottom of the notes here,

56:18SPEAKERand I had forgotten to click this link,

56:20SPEAKERand wow, this is actually something I'm super interested in,

56:22SPEAKERbecause the constant blue bubble, green bubble,

56:27SPEAKERstrife, turmoil on social media

56:30SPEAKERhas gotten me looking into other kind of

56:35SPEAKERalternative messaging protocols, let's say,

56:36SPEAKERto iMessage or messages, whatever they call it now.

56:39SPEAKER- Yeah.

56:40SPEAKER- And I believe, actually,

56:40SPEAKERwe probably could have thrown this in there.

56:42SPEAKERI think, didn't the rule that Apple does not have

56:44SPEAKERto open up messages to other platforms, that one.

56:47SPEAKER- That is correct, yeah.

56:48SPEAKERIt's not part of the DMA.

56:50SPEAKER- It's not, I forget what the legal designation was.

56:53SPEAKERIt's not core enough to the platform

56:54SPEAKERor something along those lines.

56:56SPEAKERIt's not considered an essential part of the service.

56:58SPEAKER- It is not a gatekeeper, is the phrase that they use

57:02SPEAKERfor the platform, yeah.

57:03SPEAKER- And I'm sure the existence of WhatsApp

57:05SPEAKERand other similar cross-platform options

57:09SPEAKERwas a big part of that.

57:11SPEAKER- Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, all those, yeah.

57:15SPEAKER- Yes.

57:16SPEAKER- But RCS, I haven't looked into it that much,

57:18SPEAKERbut RCS is kind of like,

57:20SPEAKERisn't it sort of the successor to SMS?

57:22SPEAKER- Yeah, so SMS was made in the '90s at this point.

57:25SPEAKERIt's really old.

57:27SPEAKERAs you know, if you get SMS pictures from people,

57:30SPEAKERthey're like flip phone resolutions,

57:33SPEAKERcandy bar phone resolutions.

57:36SPEAKERSo, yeah, the idea is that RCS has encryption

57:39SPEAKERand some other stuff.

57:40SPEAKERI don't think it's end-to-end encrypted.

57:42SPEAKERI think it's encrypted point-to-point

57:45SPEAKERfrom carrier to phone and carrier to phone.

57:49SPEAKERBut it's not, just to be clear,

57:52SPEAKERit's not an interoperability platform

57:54SPEAKERbetween current, what we think of as messaging platforms

57:58SPEAKERlike Signal and WhatsApp and iMessage.

58:00SPEAKERIt's a text message replacement.

58:03SPEAKER- Right, it's a new baseline for,

58:05SPEAKERyou can't use your platform or third-party messaging thing.

58:08SPEAKERThis is the fallback kind of thing.

58:09SPEAKER- Yeah, Apple has said they weren't gonna support it.

58:11SPEAKERThey said they weren't gonna support it for a long time,

58:13SPEAKERand then all of a sudden they changed their mind

58:15SPEAKERright around the time all this DMA stuff came out.

58:17SPEAKER- Oh, weird, who would've thought?

58:20SPEAKER- Yeah, the point Gruber makes at Daring Fireball,

58:24SPEAKERI think is probably accurate,

58:25SPEAKERwhich is that the EU doesn't really care about RCS,

58:29SPEAKERbut China sure does.

58:32SPEAKER- Okay.

58:33SPEAKER- And his take is that China is making them support RCS.

58:39SPEAKER- Interesting.

58:40SPEAKERIs that, do we have some kind of government ruling

58:43SPEAKERor something in place here?

58:44SPEAKER- Well, Chinese carriers have been proponents of RCS.

58:47SPEAKERThe last year, they codified into law

58:51SPEAKERthat to achieve certification,

58:52SPEAKER5G devices will be required to support RCS in China.

58:55SPEAKER- Okay, that's the key.

58:59SPEAKER- And weirdly, the important factor about RCS

59:03SPEAKERis that there isn't a standard for encryption built into it.

59:06SPEAKERSo weirdly, the Chinese government

59:10SPEAKERisn't really worried about that.

59:11SPEAKERI don't know.

59:13SPEAKERSo yeah, that's, and Gruber has a thing that he does

59:18SPEAKERwhere he cites little birdies,

59:20SPEAKERwhich means he's talked to somebody at Apple generally.

59:22SPEAKERAnd that's why they're supporting RCS all of a sudden

59:25SPEAKERis because they wanna continue selling phones

59:27SPEAKERto the billion people that live in China.

59:29SPEAKER- Yeah, hopefully that'll be global.

59:31SPEAKERI would certainly hope,

59:33SPEAKER'cause I mean, that can only benefit people

59:35SPEAKERlike messaging between an iPhone and Android, for example,

59:38SPEAKERif they didn't bother to go get something like WhatsApp.

59:40SPEAKER- Yeah, it's interesting 'cause I think that the reason,

59:43SPEAKERI think that, so there's a thing

59:44SPEAKERthat people maybe don't realize,

59:46SPEAKERwhich is that iMessage is two separate things.

59:48SPEAKERIt's the client for SMS messages on your phone,

59:51SPEAKERbut it's also a client for phone to phone iOS communications

59:56SPEAKERor device to device iOS and Mac communications.

59:58SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it's essentially,

59:59SPEAKERit's like two different protocols in one,

1:00:01SPEAKERand that's what's denoted by the color of the bubble.

1:00:03SPEAKER- Yeah, but, and that's why the EU said

1:00:07SPEAKERit wasn't a gatekeeper, right, is because it's not,

1:00:10SPEAKERit isn't the only way you can communicate.

1:00:12SPEAKERYou can still use SMS to communicate inside these places.

1:00:14SPEAKER- Yeah, but you know, like as somebody who texts with,

1:00:16SPEAKERI mean, probably everybody has this experience, right?

1:00:19SPEAKER- Nope, I've cut 'em all out of my life for green bubbles.

1:00:23SPEAKER- Didn't take you as one of those.

1:00:25SPEAKER- No, I'm kidding, I don't give a shit.

1:00:26SPEAKERI honestly, I hardly ever text is the thing.

1:00:29SPEAKER- Yeah, but I mean, just having a better standard

1:00:31SPEAKERas a fallback if you're messaging somebody

1:00:33SPEAKERwho's not using another iPhone,

1:00:34SPEAKERlike just having a more capable baseline standard

1:00:37SPEAKERto fall back to would be great.

1:00:39SPEAKER- Yeah, and it's funny 'cause as I,

1:00:42SPEAKERmy daughters come into school age,

1:00:45SPEAKERI do interact with a lot more green bubbles than I used to,

1:00:48SPEAKERand it's always a problem because it's like they,

1:00:51SPEAKERwell, now they can see emojis and stuff

1:00:53SPEAKERthat you add onto the messages,

1:00:55SPEAKERbut it was always challenging.

1:00:57SPEAKERPeople miss group messages, the whole thing.

1:00:58SPEAKERIt adds unneeded drama to our lives.

1:01:02SPEAKER- I guess, I mean, I guess this makes me a certified old,

1:01:06SPEAKERlike as long as the text gets through,

1:01:07SPEAKERI kind of don't care.

1:01:09SPEAKERI honestly, I just wish that Apple would make iMessage,

1:01:14SPEAKERlike I wish they'd make iMessage clients

1:01:16SPEAKERfor Windows and Android.

1:01:17SPEAKERIt would be lovely to have as somebody

1:01:19SPEAKERwho uses a Windows PC as the daily driver.

1:01:23SPEAKER- To be able to iMessage from this Windows machine

1:01:25SPEAKERwould change my life.

1:01:26SPEAKER- It would be a significant improvement.

1:01:28SPEAKER- I know, and I know people will probably write in

1:01:30SPEAKERor talk about this on the Discord.

1:01:31SPEAKERThere are options for doing that,

1:01:33SPEAKERbut they're somewhat limited.

1:01:34SPEAKER- I use PhoneLink, the Windows app on my Windows desktop.

1:01:38SPEAKERIt's fine. It's also really annoying.

1:01:41SPEAKERWhenever I make a call or use the voice activation,

1:01:45SPEAKERit acts like there's a call on my phone,

1:01:47SPEAKERwhich is just bizarre.

1:01:48SPEAKERIt's yeah, it is a frustrating mix of good and bad,

1:01:55SPEAKERthese PhoneLink software.

1:01:57SPEAKER- Yes, they're all kind of dodgy hacks to get that to work.

1:01:59SPEAKERWhat was the app?

1:02:00SPEAKER- Beeper was the one you're thinking about.

1:02:02SPEAKER- Beeper a few months ago was the one that they,

1:02:04SPEAKERI basically, they exploited a vulnerability,

1:02:07SPEAKERI believe is what they were doing.

1:02:08SPEAKER- Weirdly they got shut down, I don't know why.

1:02:09SPEAKER- Yeah, to let people use iMessage properly

1:02:12SPEAKERwith their phone number without an Apple account,

1:02:14SPEAKERand that lasted about three days.

1:02:17SPEAKER- Yep, that's about how long they usually last.

1:02:20SPEAKERBeeper's been trying this for years now.

1:02:21SPEAKERThey've been working on it.

1:02:22SPEAKERI think they had a solution that you ran

1:02:24SPEAKERa piece of software on a Mac someplace,

1:02:25SPEAKERor pay them monthly to run a piece of software

1:02:27SPEAKERon one of their Macs.

1:02:29SPEAKERBut I'm less enthusiastic about giving third parties

1:02:33SPEAKERaccess to my N10 encrypted communications.

1:02:36SPEAKERAnyway, that's it for the DMA stuff.

1:02:39SPEAKERI'm sure there will be more from this

1:02:40SPEAKERfrom the other affected people,

1:02:42SPEAKERincluding TikTok, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft.

1:02:47SPEAKERIt seems like the Amazon stuff is mostly store and ads,

1:02:53SPEAKERmarketplace and ads, which is interesting.

1:02:55SPEAKERI'm surprised that they didn't look at any

1:02:57SPEAKERof the backend hosting stuff that Microsoft and Amazon do.

1:03:00SPEAKERSo, last up, it's dice time, baby.

1:03:06SPEAKER- Was dice time?

1:03:07SPEAKER- Was, it's over now.

1:03:09SPEAKERUsed to be dice, but it's over now.

1:03:11SPEAKER(laughing)

1:03:14SPEAKER- Go on, go on.

1:03:15SPEAKER- Yeah, so dice, we talked about this

1:03:16SPEAKERat the start of the show, but dice is where a business,

1:03:20SPEAKERI mean, look, there's creative people at dice, too,

1:03:22SPEAKERbut it's a lot of business happens at dice.

1:03:24SPEAKERIt's a lot of pitching games,

1:03:25SPEAKERand a lot of figuring out how to pitch your game,

1:03:27SPEAKERand the AIAS Awards happens at dice,

1:03:31SPEAKERwhich is one of my, I think it's my favorite

1:03:34SPEAKERof the video game awards shows.

1:03:36SPEAKERThe GDC Awards were also very good.

1:03:39SPEAKERAnd talking to some friends who were there,

1:03:42SPEAKERtalking, seeing people, like Danny O'Dwyer

1:03:45SPEAKERtweeted the gist of this whole article yesterday,

1:03:48SPEAKERwhich is, I mean, the whole talk here yesterday,

1:03:50SPEAKERwhich is that no business is happening at dice,

1:03:53SPEAKERwhich is unusual.

1:03:54SPEAKERLast year, a little bit of business happened at dice,

1:03:56SPEAKERbut typically dice is where a lot

1:03:58SPEAKERof your independent studios sign publishers

1:04:01SPEAKERfor their upcoming titles, or sign platform deals,

1:04:03SPEAKERor whatever, or at least get the ball rolling on that.

1:04:08SPEAKERAnd yeah, this year nobody's doing any business,

1:04:11SPEAKERnobody's spending money, and everybody's pretty much

1:04:15SPEAKERgrousing about Embracer.

1:04:18SPEAKERIf you don't know Embracer Group, this was a,

1:04:20SPEAKERI think this happened for such a long time

1:04:22SPEAKERthat it became a running bit on multiple gaming podcasts,

1:04:25SPEAKERincluding the bomb cast, I think, right?

1:04:27SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah, this started way before

1:04:29SPEAKERthey were even Embracer.

1:04:31SPEAKERThey were THQ Nordic prior to the Embracing kicking off,

1:04:36SPEAKERat which point, I have to say, I think they,

1:04:38SPEAKERthe first time I remember this being in the news

1:04:41SPEAKERwas when they bought kind of the entire stable of THQ IP.

1:04:45SPEAKER- Yeah, that was the first big buy.

1:04:47SPEAKERAnd then they bought, over the years,

1:04:49SPEAKERthey bought like Tripwire, the people who make Killing Floor,

1:04:52SPEAKERthey bought Gearbox, they bought-

1:04:54SPEAKER- Right off Montreal, they came in possession

1:04:56SPEAKERof a ton of other IP, like Tomb Raider, and Deus Ex, and-

1:05:00SPEAKER- Didn't they buy all of the IP that IO had,

1:05:03SPEAKERexcept for Hitman?

1:05:05SPEAKER- I can't remember. - Or was it part of that deal?

1:05:06SPEAKERI can't remember, maybe that was somebody else.

1:05:07SPEAKERMaybe it was, maybe that was the Square Enix sold.

1:05:09SPEAKER- Yeah, yes. - Yeah, anyway.

1:05:11SPEAKER- Yeah, IO was part of Square Enix,

1:05:12SPEAKERand then ended up bungie-ing themselves

1:05:14SPEAKERback into independence.

1:05:16SPEAKER- But anyway, the point is, Embracer has bought

1:05:18SPEAKERa bunch of studios, and also mid-tier publishers,

1:05:20SPEAKERimportantly, so like, publishers that work

1:05:22SPEAKERin that three to $20 million budget range.

1:05:27SPEAKERAnd last June, famously, they had spent

1:05:31SPEAKERa whole bunch of money, and expected to get more investment

1:05:33SPEAKERfrom their partners, and then the investment didn't come,

1:05:36SPEAKERor the deal that was gonna seal the investment didn't come.

1:05:39SPEAKERAnd they looked up, and I guess they realized

1:05:42SPEAKERthey were completely out of money.

1:05:43SPEAKER- That was a surreal day.

1:05:45SPEAKER- It was a bad day.

1:05:46SPEAKER- If you follow Games Industry News,

1:05:48SPEAKERbecause I think it was the CEO, right?

1:05:50SPEAKERI think it was literally Lars Wingefors, or whatever.

1:05:53SPEAKER- Yep.

1:05:55SPEAKER- I think he might've been due

1:05:56SPEAKERat some financial conference anyway,

1:05:57SPEAKERand the deal had just collapsed the night before.

1:06:00SPEAKER- It was the day before their quarterly reporting.

1:06:02SPEAKER- Oh, that's what it was.

1:06:03SPEAKERAnd he looked visibly disheveled,

1:06:05SPEAKERand not quite holding it together.

1:06:09SPEAKERLike, it was bizarre to see an executive

1:06:12SPEAKERgo on stage in that state.

1:06:15SPEAKER- Their COO resigned over this.

1:06:17SPEAKERLike, it was a multi-billion dollar IP deal,

1:06:20SPEAKERbut I still don't think we know what the IP was, necessarily.

1:06:23SPEAKERI think people have guessed.

1:06:25SPEAKER- Yeah, we do know the investor

1:06:26SPEAKERwas the Saudi Arabian fund, though.

1:06:28SPEAKER- Yes.

1:06:29SPEAKER- But anyway, I've thought from time to time,

1:06:32SPEAKERlooking back at that, it was definitely the bellwether

1:06:35SPEAKERfor the way games business has gone,

1:06:37SPEAKERwith layoffs and investment falling through and everything,

1:06:40SPEAKERbut it was not the cause, you know?

1:06:41SPEAKERLike, I've looked back at points going like,

1:06:44SPEAKERdid that get the ball rolling?

1:06:45SPEAKERAnd then a bunch of other people started following suit.

1:06:47SPEAKERWas that a domino falling?

1:06:48SPEAKERBut I mean, the way that the larger economy

1:06:50SPEAKERand the larger business world is tracking,

1:06:52SPEAKERI don't think it's not unique to games,

1:06:53SPEAKERand things were probably gonna go this way regardless,

1:06:57SPEAKERand maybe the Embracer thing just accelerated it.

1:06:59SPEAKER- Well, so the tech worlds, the Googles and Facebooks

1:07:03SPEAKERand all those had been doing layoffs

1:07:05SPEAKERprior to Embracer having this problem.

1:07:08SPEAKERBut the thing that this did was just basically

1:07:10SPEAKERwas nails in the coffin for any new game investment

1:07:13SPEAKERin that kind of double A, mid-range, indie kind of space.

1:07:20SPEAKERObviously, also the interest rates going up

1:07:22SPEAKERhad a lot to do with this, too,

1:07:23SPEAKER'cause interest rates going up

1:07:24SPEAKERmeans that people weren't willing to take

1:07:26SPEAKERas quite the same level of risk that they typically do.

1:07:28SPEAKERJust to be clear, games are a risk.

1:07:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it's a bunch of things.

1:07:31SPEAKERWe've talked about it on numerous podcasts numerous times.

1:07:34SPEAKERIt was not just the interest rates going up.

1:07:35SPEAKERIt's the fact that they were non-existent for years.

1:07:38SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:07:39SPEAKER- It's the fact that there was an abnormal growth

1:07:42SPEAKERin consumer spending over the pandemic that has slowed down.

1:07:45SPEAKERLike, it's a bunch of factors that cause people

1:07:46SPEAKERto make a bunch of risky bets that have now failed.

1:07:49SPEAKER- Well, and in gaming, especially,

1:07:51SPEAKER'cause gaming really benefited from the pandemic.

1:07:54SPEAKERFor black, not to, you know.

1:07:57SPEAKERPeople were staying home and looking for new things

1:07:58SPEAKERto do with their time, and it brought a lot of people

1:07:59SPEAKERinto games that had either left

1:08:01SPEAKERor had never been into games before.

1:08:03SPEAKERAnyway, people at DICE apparently were spending

1:08:05SPEAKERa lot of time grousing about Embracer,

1:08:07SPEAKERlaying off 8% of their workforce,

1:08:08SPEAKERwhich I think accounted to 1,400 people,

1:08:11SPEAKERand canceling 30 games, which is,

1:08:14SPEAKERI don't think anybody else has had,

1:08:16SPEAKERlike any of the other publishers,

1:08:18SPEAKERor people have laid off more people, for sure.

1:08:21SPEAKERBigger companies have laid off more people.

1:08:23SPEAKERBut I don't think I've seen anybody else

1:08:25SPEAKERthat was responsible for canceling 30 games.

1:08:27SPEAKER- A lot of games.

1:08:28SPEAKER- Thanks, Embracer.

1:08:29SPEAKERAnd then, of course, their quarterly report came out today

1:08:31SPEAKERthat's showing that while their growth was down a little bit,

1:08:34SPEAKERtheir profit was still up in the last quarter.

1:08:37SPEAKERAnd Lars reinforced that their overruling principle

1:08:40SPEAKERis to always maximize shareholder value

1:08:42SPEAKERin any given situation.

1:08:43SPEAKER- I mean, that is the most generic thing you can say

1:08:45SPEAKERabout publicly traded companies in a capitalist system.

1:08:49SPEAKERLike, I get why people would be angry about that,

1:08:51SPEAKERbut also that's like literally the handbook.

1:08:53SPEAKER- But I mean, usually you say that quietly.

1:08:55SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:08:56SPEAKER- So you don't put it in the annual report.

1:08:58SPEAKER- Yeah, I get that, yes,

1:09:00SPEAKERyou maybe shouldn't come out and say that,

1:09:01SPEAKERbut also it's just like, this is the very pathology

1:09:04SPEAKERthat makes the system so destructive

1:09:07SPEAKERand predatory in the first place.

1:09:10SPEAKERThere was some other quote from him about layoffs.

1:09:13SPEAKERWhat was it?

1:09:14SPEAKERWas it just being something people need to get used to

1:09:16SPEAKERor something that everyone needs to get through?

1:09:20SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:09:21SPEAKER- Was the quote about layoffs?

1:09:23SPEAKER- Well, the COO, in fairness, the COO did resign

1:09:26SPEAKERafter the deal fell through last year, so good on them.

1:09:31SPEAKERThe funny thing was on the link that I clicked

1:09:37SPEAKERfor the story, in between the ads for mail enhancements

1:09:43SPEAKERand get buff protein powders was a,

1:09:48SPEAKERyou might also like this story,

1:09:49SPEAKERand it was the thing about Iwata not taking a pay cut

1:09:53SPEAKERinstead of laying people off at Nintendo

1:09:55SPEAKERand how that worked out for them.

1:09:57SPEAKERIt's like, it seems like weird,

1:09:59SPEAKERweird that the algorithm picked this up.

1:10:01SPEAKERThese two things are related.

1:10:03SPEAKERAnyway, so I think that's it for us

1:10:06SPEAKERon the news roundup this week.

1:10:07SPEAKER- Yeah, that sounds grim.

1:10:09SPEAKERNot something we didn't expect already,

1:10:11SPEAKERbut I guess if there was going to be any kind of turnaround,

1:10:14SPEAKERyou would have seen hints of it at dice,

1:10:16SPEAKERbut it sounds like it's just going to be more of the same.

1:10:19SPEAKER- I think survive 24 months

1:10:22SPEAKERis the general business advice right now.

1:10:26SPEAKERSo hopefully everybody who's affected

1:10:28SPEAKERhas some cash in the cash bunkers.

1:10:32SPEAKER- Yeah, which is crazy when you sort of overlay that

1:10:37SPEAKERwith the hints coming out of like this Xbox news

1:10:40SPEAKERthis past week.

1:10:42SPEAKER- Oh yeah, we didn't even talk about that.

1:10:43SPEAKER- Like there's, and Sony for that matter,

1:10:45SPEAKERlike there's already talk of the next consoles

1:10:47SPEAKERand when are those going to get here

1:10:48SPEAKERand are they going to be sooner than people thought?

1:10:51SPEAKERAnd it's like, you can't put out new platforms.

1:10:53SPEAKERThese platforms are so underutilized as it is,

1:10:57SPEAKERit's embarrassing and nobody is able to make games anymore.

1:11:00SPEAKERLike what are we doing?

1:11:01SPEAKER- Well, and also for all intents and purposes,

1:11:04SPEAKERthese platforms are like a year old

1:11:06SPEAKERin terms of general availability.

1:11:08SPEAKER- Availability and also- - Because of the pandemic.

1:11:09SPEAKER- Right, and also like kind of development practices

1:11:11SPEAKERand games made explicitly just for this hardware

1:11:15SPEAKERand not cross-gen, like, I don't know.

1:11:19SPEAKERI would love to hear from developers on this,

1:11:21SPEAKERbut I get the sense there's still plenty of headroom

1:11:22SPEAKERon these things.

1:11:23SPEAKER- Well, at the same time though,

1:11:25SPEAKERthey like, if you look at the things

1:11:26SPEAKERthat are really moving the needle

1:11:28SPEAKERwith the ray tracing and all that stuff,

1:11:30SPEAKERthese consoles are pretty underpowered

1:11:33SPEAKERcompared to a mid range PC that you buy today, so.

1:11:37SPEAKER- Ray tracing and machine learning

1:11:39SPEAKERhardware is limited to non-existent on these things.

1:11:42SPEAKERSo I feel like those two specific kind of sea changes,

1:11:46SPEAKERthese consoles really missed the boat on by coming out

1:11:48SPEAKERjust even one or two years too early.

1:11:51SPEAKER- What's the read on the handhelds?

1:11:54SPEAKERI saw that both Sony and Microsoft,

1:11:56SPEAKERthere were rumors of new handhelds from both.

1:11:58SPEAKER- Oh, I didn't see the Sony stuff.

1:12:00SPEAKERI don't think, I don't know that the Microsoft rumors

1:12:02SPEAKERabout a handheld have any substance

1:12:04SPEAKERother than that they have said explicit,

1:12:05SPEAKERor like repeatedly, multiple platforms,

1:12:08SPEAKERmultiple hardware devices, multiple screens,

1:12:10SPEAKERlike they keep hammering the, you know,

1:12:12SPEAKERanywhere you play Xbox games as an Xbox kind of ethos.

1:12:16SPEAKERI think maybe some people are just looking at the Steam Deck

1:12:19SPEAKERand the availability of fast APUs now and saying,

1:12:22SPEAKERhey, Microsoft should do that, but I don't,

1:12:24SPEAKERI don't know if there's any more concrete stuff

1:12:27SPEAKERthan that for them.

1:12:28SPEAKER- Okay, yeah, I'm interested 'cause it's like,

1:12:32SPEAKERit's a weird, that whole handheld market is a weird,

1:12:34SPEAKERis in a weird space right now 'cause it's like,

1:12:36SPEAKERa lot of people are really doing a lot of work

1:12:39SPEAKERin that space.

1:12:41SPEAKERFor the PC World stuff I've been doing,

1:12:42SPEAKERI've spent some time with both Lenovo

1:12:44SPEAKERand the Asus handhelds and like there,

1:12:48SPEAKERit is a very weird market is all I can say.

1:12:52SPEAKERWe'll talk about more on the upcoming PC World videos,

1:12:55SPEAKERI guess.

1:12:56SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, that stuff's really interesting

1:12:57SPEAKERin the PC space.

1:12:58SPEAKERI think if people are expecting like a portable Xbox

1:13:00SPEAKERthat plays the same games as a new, like,

1:13:03SPEAKERset top entertainment center Xbox,

1:13:05SPEAKERthey're in for a rude awakening though.

1:13:07SPEAKER- Unless you put a screen on the back of your series S,

1:13:10SPEAKERjust jam it, put a couple of controllers on the side,

1:13:13SPEAKERit'll be fine.

1:13:13SPEAKER- Carry that thing around.

1:13:15SPEAKER- Yeah, unless the platform holders mandate,

1:13:17SPEAKERhey, you have to produce a build

1:13:19SPEAKERthat runs on this handheld now.

1:13:20SPEAKERLike if that's part of the actual platform requirements

1:13:23SPEAKERis hey, you now have to support three targets.

1:13:26SPEAKER- People love more targets, that I will tell you.

1:13:28SPEAKERDevelopers love supporting more targets.

1:13:32SPEAKERI guess that'll do it for us this week.

1:13:33SPEAKERBrad, as always, thank you, it's always a pleasure.

1:13:35SPEAKER- Yeah, thank you.

1:13:37SPEAKER- Thanks also to all of our listeners.

1:13:39SPEAKERAs always, Brad and Will is,

1:13:41SPEAKERMade at TechPod is a 100% listener supported podcast.

1:13:44SPEAKERIf you would like to find out how you can support the show,

1:13:46SPEAKERyou can go to patreon.com/techpod.

1:13:49SPEAKERAgain, that's patreon.com/techpod.

1:13:52SPEAKERAnd for five bucks a month,

1:13:53SPEAKERyou get access to the fabulous TechPod Discord,

1:13:55SPEAKERjust full of beautiful nerds just like you.

1:13:57SPEAKERIf you listen to this whole show and you enjoyed it,

1:13:59SPEAKERthere are people in there that you would like to talk to,

1:14:00SPEAKERI assure you.

1:14:02SPEAKERWe also do a monthly Patreon episode.

1:14:04SPEAKERIf I had to guess, I would say that this month's episode

1:14:06SPEAKERis going to be about hell diving and JB Weld.

1:14:09SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, that cable.

1:14:11SPEAKER- It was windy last night, did it hold?

1:14:13SPEAKER- The cable may or may not still,

1:14:14SPEAKERit's only been up for less than 24 hours now.

1:14:18SPEAKER- I wanna hear the story, but not here.

1:14:20SPEAKER- The tension on the cable, it was not wanting to stick.

1:14:23SPEAKERI had it to do over again, I would have gone out there

1:14:24SPEAKERwith a roll of some kind of heavy duty tape.

1:14:27SPEAKERAnd after I applied to the JB Weld,

1:14:29SPEAKERI would have then taped the little cable holders

1:14:31SPEAKERto the wall long enough for it to set and cure.

1:14:34SPEAKEROr is it the other way around, does it cure and then set?

1:14:36SPEAKER- It gets sets and then cures.

1:14:37SPEAKER- Okay.

1:14:38SPEAKER- I don't know, I've never really used JB Weld.

1:14:40SPEAKERI'm interested to hear about this,

1:14:41SPEAKERbut we'll do that on the Patreon episode

1:14:44SPEAKERin the next week or so.

1:14:45SPEAKER- It smells terrible.

1:14:46SPEAKER- I mean, all epoxy stuff smells bad, it turns out.

1:14:50SPEAKERBut if you would like to join,

1:14:51SPEAKERif you would like to back the Patreon and support the show,

1:14:54SPEAKERyou can go to patreon.com/techpod.

1:14:56SPEAKERAnd as always, a very special thank you goes out

1:14:58SPEAKERto our executive producer, to your patrons,

1:15:00SPEAKERincluding Paddle Creek Games, makers of Fracture and Fail,

1:15:03SPEAKERAndrew Slosky, Jordan Lippett, Bunnyfiend, The, Just Wedge,

1:15:06SPEAKERJoel Krauska, Twinkle Twinkie, David Allen, James Kamik,

1:15:10SPEAKERand Pantheon, makers of the HS3 high-speed 3D printer.

1:15:14SPEAKERThank you all so, so much.

1:15:15SPEAKERWe appreciate you all.

1:15:16SPEAKER- Yes, we do.

1:15:17SPEAKER- And on that note, we will be back next week.

1:15:18SPEAKERHave a good week, everyone.

1:15:20SPEAKERWe will talk to you then.

1:15:22SPEAKERAnd spread managed democracy, I guess.

1:15:30SPEAKER[BLANK_AUDIO]