298: Don't Accidentally Become a Bank

00:00SPEAKER- Brad, we survived Tsunami 2025.

00:02SPEAKER- Did we?

00:03SPEAKERI think I might've slept through it.

00:05SPEAKERI guess that's a form of surviving it.

00:07SPEAKER- Did you not get a notification?

00:08SPEAKER- On my phone?

00:09SPEAKERLike the blaring, like, hey, you might be in danger,

00:11SPEAKERget to high ground kind of thing?

00:13SPEAKER- Well, no, it starts with, hey, tornado.

00:16SPEAKERSorry, not tornado.

00:17SPEAKERTsunami warning.

00:18SPEAKER- God, let's not also have tornadoes here, please.

00:20SPEAKER- I mean, we do have those occasionally now.

00:22SPEAKERIt's great.

00:23SPEAKERThanks, Obama.

00:25SPEAKERThe, yeah, no, I got a notification last night

00:27SPEAKERthat was like, hey, there was a giant earthquake in Russia

00:31SPEAKERand you're in the tsunami warning zone,

00:33SPEAKERmore information to come.

00:35SPEAKER- Dude, that thing was an 8.8.

00:37SPEAKER- Yeah, it was a big, it was a big boy.

00:39SPEAKER- That's like historically big.

00:41SPEAKER- It's the biggest one in a decade, top 10.

00:43SPEAKERIt's up there with like the Chile one in 2010

00:46SPEAKERthat killed a bunch of people

00:47SPEAKERand the one in the Indian ocean

00:50SPEAKERthat caused that big tsunami

00:51SPEAKERthat they made a bunch of movies about.

00:53SPEAKER- Like the Christmas day one or Christmas Eve, yeah.

00:56SPEAKER- Yeah, so anyway, off of Russia,

01:00SPEAKERthere was a 8.8 earthquake last night

01:01SPEAKERand different parts of the Pacific rim

01:06SPEAKERhad different levels of effectiveness, right?

01:09SPEAKERWhich is weird about,

01:11SPEAKERlike every time a tsunami warning happens,

01:13SPEAKERI have to learn about tsunamis 'cause this is weird,

01:15SPEAKERbut they didn't teach us about tsunamis

01:16SPEAKERin Tennessee Elementary School,

01:18SPEAKERlike they did tornadoes and hurricanes.

01:19SPEAKER- Yeah, weird.

01:20SPEAKER- Yeah, so.

01:22SPEAKER- I'm gonna say, (laughs)

01:24SPEAKERI'm gonna say if there's ever a tsunami big enough

01:26SPEAKERto reach Tennessee,

01:27SPEAKERany level of disaster preparedness is probably inadequate.

01:31SPEAKER- Look, I've seen deep impact.

01:32SPEAKERI know how that goes.

01:33SPEAKERBut yeah, no, the kind of TLDR

01:37SPEAKERis that we ended up getting an advisory,

01:40SPEAKERwhich means don't be in the water.

01:42SPEAKERAnd if you have a boat,

01:43SPEAKERmaybe consider taking it out of the harbor

01:45SPEAKER'cause like it'll be fine in the ocean,

01:46SPEAKERbut we'll get jacked up against the dock

01:48SPEAKERand the jetty and all that stuff.

01:51SPEAKERAnd sure enough, I woke up this morning

01:53SPEAKERand there's video of Half Moon Bay Harbor,

01:55SPEAKERwhich is like 10, 15 miles south of me.

01:57SPEAKERAnd there's boats going up and down a meter

01:59SPEAKERand yeah, we've got two to five feet, it looks like.

02:02SPEAKER- That's pretty substantial.

02:04SPEAKER- Yeah.

02:05SPEAKER- Everything I have ever read and heard about,

02:07SPEAKERnot even just tsunamis,

02:09SPEAKERbut also just incoming water really of any amounts

02:12SPEAKERis that way, way, way less water by volume

02:16SPEAKERthan you think is extremely dangerous.

02:18SPEAKERBasically like ankle high water moving fast enough

02:21SPEAKERcan knock you off your feet.

02:23SPEAKER- I mean, you've stood in the ocean

02:24SPEAKERand you've had a big wave kind of wobble you, right?

02:28SPEAKER- Yeah.

02:28SPEAKER- Yeah, it happens.

02:30SPEAKER- And I'm like, I actually,

02:32SPEAKERthis was during the hurricane in Southeast last year, Helene.

02:37SPEAKER- Yeah.

02:38SPEAKER- I saw, I don't know if it was the Weather Channel

02:39SPEAKERor somebody did a visualization.

02:40SPEAKERIt was like, they might've been using Unreal Engine for this.

02:43SPEAKERIt was one of those like real-time 3D graphics things,

02:45SPEAKERlike with the meteorologists,

02:47SPEAKERlike standing in the middle of this whirling maelstrom,

02:49SPEAKERbut they visualized in like

02:51SPEAKERa standard suburban neighborhood,

02:52SPEAKERlike what rapid water rise would do.

02:55SPEAKERAnd it's terrifying to watch like even just a few feet

02:57SPEAKERis like picking everything up off the ground

02:59SPEAKERand swirling it around and creating like a,

03:02SPEAKERreading this like blender effect of debris,

03:04SPEAKERlike sharp debris, like swirling around, slicing things up,

03:07SPEAKERlike water is scarier than you think.

03:10SPEAKER- Somebody shared the Japanese

03:13SPEAKERWeather Disaster Preparedness Association's infographic

03:17SPEAKERto show why tsunamis are dangerous.

03:20SPEAKERAnd it's because the, it was really illustrative

03:23SPEAKERbecause usually you see a tsunami

03:25SPEAKERand you think about like the abyss or, you know,

03:28SPEAKERthe cartoon big wave that the guy's surfing on.

03:32SPEAKERBut the thing about the tsunami is the wave's long, right?

03:35SPEAKERIt's not like a four foot high wave

03:38SPEAKERand then it immediately goes away.

03:40SPEAKERIt just breaks and washes away.

03:41SPEAKERIt's the wave is like two miles long and it's four feet high.

03:44SPEAKERSo it's an enormous amount of water,

03:46SPEAKEReven if it's not as high as like the waves are

03:49SPEAKERduring a big storm at high tide.

03:52SPEAKERSo anyway, but it was fine here.

03:54SPEAKERWe, I think the 2007 tsunami, the Fukushima,

03:59SPEAKERthe one that got Fukushima in Japan.

04:02SPEAKER- Was that 2011, I think?

04:03SPEAKER- It was 2011, yeah.

04:05SPEAKERWe had enough of a suck out that like,

04:09SPEAKERwe went up to the hill in Pacifica

04:11SPEAKERand watched it do the little,

04:12SPEAKERwe have a little like horseshoe shaped kind of inlet

04:14SPEAKERwhere the beach is, where the main beach is

04:16SPEAKERhere in Lindemar and it made us,

04:19SPEAKERit made a spiral, like a whirlpool on one of the edges

04:26SPEAKERwhere the water was getting pulled out so hard

04:28SPEAKERthat it made turbulence that made it like,

04:30SPEAKERmake literally like your bathtub drain, whirlpooling.

04:33SPEAKER- Wow, you saw this with your own eyes?

04:36SPEAKER- Yeah, and most importantly, and this is, it's funny,

04:40SPEAKERthis is one of those things that I think one of the tourists

04:42SPEAKERthat was impacted by that tsunami in the Indian Ocean said

04:49SPEAKERis that their kid knew that when the water's receded

04:53SPEAKERdramatically, you have to run like hell.

04:55SPEAKERThat's your sign to run as fast as you can to high ground

04:58SPEAKERand literally saved a bunch of people's lives on that beach

05:03SPEAKERbecause they were, they listened to their kid

05:05SPEAKERwho had apparently learned about tsunamis

05:07SPEAKERin elementary school.

05:08SPEAKER- Hey, public education works.

05:10SPEAKER- Yeah, but anyway, we saw that too.

05:13SPEAKERWe saw the water go way down in 2011.

05:15SPEAKER- That's gotta be ominous.

05:16SPEAKER- It was, ominous is exactly the right word

05:20SPEAKER'cause you saw parts of the water,

05:23SPEAKERof the beach under the water that you don't normally see,

05:26SPEAKERlike pieces of black rock that are never out of the water,

05:28SPEAKEReven at the lowest of low tides.

05:31SPEAKERAnd yeah, unsettling.

05:34SPEAKER- Well, hey, what a cheery thought

05:35SPEAKERon which to start this podcast.

05:37SPEAKER(upbeat music)

05:40SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

06:06SPEAKERWelcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.

06:08SPEAKERI'm Will.

06:09SPEAKER- I'm Brad.

06:10SPEAKER- But today we're gonna talk about something

06:13SPEAKERthat we are wildly underqualified to talk about.

06:16SPEAKER- Right, a slick emo for this podcast.

06:20SPEAKER- You say, well, kind of, I mean,

06:22SPEAKERso I end up doing a lot of research for stuff

06:25SPEAKERfor different reasons, either because of where I work

06:27SPEAKERor the job that I'm doing or something like that.

06:30SPEAKERAnd I say that in the real way,

06:32SPEAKERnot the pejorative doing my own research way.

06:35SPEAKERBut payment processors have come up

06:38SPEAKERand I talked to a bunch of people,

06:42SPEAKERincluding some people in the Discord

06:43SPEAKERand in the podcast community

06:44SPEAKERabout payment processors last year,

06:46SPEAKERbecause I was thinking about doing a startup

06:48SPEAKERthat was gonna involve them.

06:50SPEAKERAnd then I had two kinds of conversations

06:53SPEAKERwith people about that.

06:54SPEAKER- I think I could have stopped you after startup.

06:57SPEAKERI was thinking about doing a startup period.

07:00SPEAKER- Sometimes startups are good.

07:01SPEAKER- The itch has returned?

07:04SPEAKER- I mean, maybe it's like-

07:06SPEAKER- No pun intended, in light of the subject

07:09SPEAKERwe're about to discuss, to be clear, to be clear.

07:12SPEAKERThe urge, perhaps I should say,

07:13SPEAKERthe urge to startup has returned.

07:16SPEAKER- It's too early to be clever at that level.

07:18SPEAKERSo, no, I was talking to some folks about doing a startup.

07:22SPEAKERIt's still maybe something I'll do,

07:24SPEAKERbut when I got to the part about

07:27SPEAKERhow payment processing works,

07:29SPEAKER'cause it's like, at a certain level these days,

07:33SPEAKERif you wanna take money from people online for a business,

07:36SPEAKERyou just sign up for a Stripe account,

07:38SPEAKERand then they handle all the stuff

07:39SPEAKERthat used to be a real pain in the ass,

07:41SPEAKERincluding the compliance and regulatory stuff.

07:43SPEAKERAnd we'll talk about that in a minute.

07:44SPEAKERBut I had two types of conversations

07:47SPEAKERwith people who've done this before,

07:48SPEAKERand one was like, yeah, it's pretty straightforward,

07:51SPEAKERjust use Stripe, but also it's kind of a nightmare.

07:57SPEAKERYou know you're gonna lose X percentage

07:59SPEAKERof your stuff on transaction fees.

08:01SPEAKERBut you should also know that if you're big enough,

08:02SPEAKERyou can kind of negotiate that

08:03SPEAKERand get a little bit more from them.

08:05SPEAKERAnd then I talked to some people

08:06SPEAKERwho had some really wildly successful startups

08:09SPEAKERthat they ended up selling for significant chunks of money

08:12SPEAKERwho were like, oh yeah, once you hit scale,

08:14SPEAKERyou can negotiate a lower percentage

08:16SPEAKERand make a bunch more money in your transactions,

08:17SPEAKERand you won't even have to worry about that for a while.

08:19SPEAKERBut when you do, man, it is the real juicy money.

08:23SPEAKERAnd I was like, oh, okay, I don't think I should do this.

08:29SPEAKER'Cause then there was also a lot of advice like,

08:30SPEAKERhey, don't do anything that's gonna accidentally

08:32SPEAKERturn you into a bank because then like,

08:36SPEAKERjust, you don't need to understand why,

08:38SPEAKERbut being a bank is really bad, okay?

08:41SPEAKER- Are you sure?

08:42SPEAKERI could say, well, I mean,

08:43SPEAKERit's probably got some upsides too if you're good at it,

08:45SPEAKERbut fraud.

08:47SPEAKER- Yeah, like you end up,

08:49SPEAKERif you accidentally are in a situation,

08:51SPEAKERthis is why when you put money into your Xbox account,

08:54SPEAKERit shows up as points and not money for a long time,

08:57SPEAKERis because some lawyer at Microsoft was like,

08:59SPEAKERman, we can't be a bank, okay?

09:01SPEAKER'Cause once we're a bank,

09:02SPEAKERthen that means we have to do money laundering rules,

09:04SPEAKERand we have to do fraud protection rules,

09:05SPEAKERand there's a bazillion different legislation requirements

09:10SPEAKERfor banks in different countries,

09:13SPEAKERand you have to know all of them,

09:14SPEAKERand then you end up with like 200 people on your team

09:17SPEAKERthat are each responsible for one small region of the world,

09:20SPEAKERand it's a pain in the butt.

09:22SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, two points of order here.

09:23SPEAKERNumber one. - Yes, hi, hello.

09:25SPEAKER- Are you interested in talking about your startup idea?

09:27SPEAKERIs this the type of idea? - No.

09:28SPEAKER- Okay, so there are two types of startups.

09:31SPEAKERThis is an idea that I think nobody else has had,

09:33SPEAKERand I can make a big impact by doing something new,

09:36SPEAKERor there's just the disruption type,

09:39SPEAKERwhere it's like, hey, this has been done 20 times already,

09:42SPEAKERbut I think I can do it better and displace the people on top

09:44SPEAKERso it sounds like this is the former,

09:46SPEAKERand you will not be disclosing your idea.

09:48SPEAKER- No, yeah, I think this is a good idea.

09:52SPEAKERI think it's more, I ended up waving off on it

09:57SPEAKERbecause it became clear that the kind of work

09:59SPEAKERthat it was gonna be is the kind of work

10:01SPEAKERthat I actually don't like doing.

10:02SPEAKERIt wasn't about building something.

10:05SPEAKERIt was about establishing a regulatory framework,

10:08SPEAKERand it was gonna take a fairly significant

10:10SPEAKERupfront investment, which I wasn't interested in

10:12SPEAKER'cause I don't, like I think the potential upside

10:14SPEAKERis pretty good for a small-scale funded business,

10:19SPEAKERbut not good for a big funded business.

10:21SPEAKER- Fair, fair. - In the current climate.

10:23SPEAKER- Okay, and the other point of order

10:25SPEAKERis we should talk about why we are even discussing

10:27SPEAKERpayment processors in the first place here.

10:29SPEAKER- Well, you hit it, we had an itch, right?

10:31SPEAKER- Yes. - There's an itch,

10:32SPEAKEReverybody has an itch problem occasionally.

10:34SPEAKER- There's an itch, probably, yes.

10:35SPEAKERWell, it's not just itch.

10:37SPEAKER- Wait, just to be clear. - It's a steamy itch.

10:38SPEAKERI don't know what it is. - Oh, God, that's even worse.

10:40SPEAKER- I know.

10:41SPEAKER- We shouldn't, I don't wanna single out itch here

10:44SPEAKER'cause I think- - Yeah, no, yes.

10:45SPEAKER- So the thing we're dancing around is that

10:49SPEAKERa couple days ago, about a week ago now, I guess,

10:52SPEAKERboth itch and steam, itch.io, for people who don't know,

10:56SPEAKERis a incredibly small indie distributor

10:58SPEAKERfor games, books, comics, audio files.

11:04SPEAKERBasically, a nerd a long time ago sat down and was like,

11:07SPEAKER"Hey, I wanna make Bandcamp, but for everything else

11:11SPEAKER"that's kind of just Bandcamp stuff."

11:13SPEAKER- I'd never thought of the Bandcamp comparison,

11:14SPEAKERbut that's a pretty good, and I actually like,

11:18SPEAKERI guess I knew this 'cause I see people advertise

11:19SPEAKERother types of products on itch,

11:21SPEAKERbut I still think of itch as a video game platform,

11:23SPEAKERprimarily in it. - Yeah, but it,

11:24SPEAKERlike people put board games on itch, like-

11:26SPEAKER- Yeah, like when Austin Walker launched his tabletop game,

11:29SPEAKERwhen he, he sells that on itch,

11:31SPEAKERand that's like PDFs you can download.

11:33SPEAKER- It's an easy way to sell your thing

11:36SPEAKERfor people who make things that don't fit

11:39SPEAKERinto other buckets easily, right?

11:41SPEAKERAnd- - And now, to be clear,

11:43SPEAKERI would guess that, I would guess the overwhelming majority

11:46SPEAKERof their inventory is still video games.

11:49SPEAKER- I don't- - I could be wrong.

11:50SPEAKERI don't know. - I mean, there's a bunch

11:51SPEAKERof different ways to slice that, right?

11:53SPEAKERIs it like, what's the pretentious, what's their revenue?

11:55SPEAKERIs it all video games?

11:56SPEAKERIs it other stuff?

11:57SPEAKERIs it, I don't, I don't know.

11:59SPEAKERThey don't, like it's, it's privately held.

12:01SPEAKERFor a long time, it was like one or two people running itch.

12:05SPEAKERI think LIFO is the, is the founder who wrote it in like a,

12:11SPEAKERlike as a project for fun, like a programming project for fun

12:13SPEAKERit kind of started out as it seems like.

12:15SPEAKER- I think they've said in the course of messaging

12:17SPEAKERabout this kerfuffle that they're like maybe 20 people now

12:19SPEAKERor something, so it has grown, but so-

12:21SPEAKER- It's still super small.

12:23SPEAKER- Yeah, and for what it's worth,

12:24SPEAKERif you're not familiar with it,

12:25SPEAKERit's also a platform where you can give things away.

12:27SPEAKERYou can just post things for free,

12:28SPEAKERor they also have a pay what you want model as well,

12:32SPEAKERin contrast to Steam.

12:33SPEAKER- The thing that they're famous for, well, okay,

12:36SPEAKERyou can also pay, you can also determine,

12:39SPEAKERlike the old Humble Bundle stuff does,

12:41SPEAKERyou can determine the amount that you want to pay to them,

12:43SPEAKERto the creator, to itch to the creator.

12:46SPEAKERSo they'll do some stuff without taking anything more

12:48SPEAKERthan just the transaction fees

12:50SPEAKERthat their credit card processors charge, right?

12:53SPEAKERI think they defaulted to charging 10%,

12:56SPEAKERbut there's a slider that you can use to remove that

12:59SPEAKERif you so desire.

13:00SPEAKERAnd like you said, you can post stuff with a,

13:03SPEAKERhere's the recommended price, you can pay nothing

13:07SPEAKERif you're a creator and you want to do that, so.

13:09SPEAKER- So, you know, a much looser and more open platform

13:12SPEAKERthan Steam, but Steam and itch both have been

13:15SPEAKERequally affected by the thing we're about to talk about.

13:17SPEAKER- Yeah, so a regulatory, sorry, not a regulatory grant,

13:21SPEAKERan activist group in Australia called-

13:24SPEAKER- Collective Shout.

13:26SPEAKER- Collective Shout, thank you,

13:27SPEAKERran a open letter that generated a few thousand emails,

13:31SPEAKERit sounds like, and calls to payment processors

13:33SPEAKERlike MasterCard, Visa, Discover, PayPal,

13:36SPEAKERabout not-safe-for-work games on Steam and itch.

13:40SPEAKER- Yeah, or I might even narrow the scope there,

13:42SPEAKERlike they, sorry, I had-

13:43SPEAKER- It was one particular game, right?

13:46SPEAKERThat they were really dumb-ho about.

13:48SPEAKER- Yes, but I also, I had the language in front of me,

13:50SPEAKERlike it's, okay, like incest, blackmail,

13:55SPEAKERunavoidable, non-consensual sex are terms that they used.

14:00SPEAKERI'm sorry, no, I believe those were terms associated

14:02SPEAKERwith game No Mercy.

14:03SPEAKERI'm looking at a Guardian article here about this

14:06SPEAKERand I'm not clear if that's Collective Shout's language

14:09SPEAKERor if that is actually language that No Mercy itself used

14:13SPEAKERto describe its content, I'm not quite sure.

14:15SPEAKERI, that, I don't, I didn't dig into the specifics

14:19SPEAKERof that beyond the fact that like a tiny number of calls

14:25SPEAKERprompted the payment processors to basically threaten

14:28SPEAKERto kill Steam and itch's access to credit cards

14:34SPEAKERthrough intermediaries, which is an existential problem.

14:38SPEAKERSo anyway, we'll talk about that in a bit.

14:40SPEAKER- Yeah, like we probably don't need to belabor

14:42SPEAKERthe nuances of what type of content we're talking about here

14:46SPEAKERbut it's the classic, it's the classic situation

14:48SPEAKERof they say they are targeting things like rape

14:51SPEAKERand child abuse being depicted in games

14:54SPEAKERbut then the net that has been asked

14:56SPEAKERis sweeping up a vastly wider spectrum of types of games

15:00SPEAKERthan what they say they're targeting.

15:02SPEAKER- Well, and we can talk about why that is too

15:04SPEAKERbecause like people were fairly upset,

15:08SPEAKERespecially with itch because it has a reputation

15:11SPEAKERof being a place that you can kind of post

15:15SPEAKERwhatever stuff you make and there's a lot of games

15:18SPEAKERthat are highly personal on itch, right,

15:20SPEAKERabout dealing with trauma and abuse and stuff like that

15:23SPEAKERthat are definitely include the themes

15:27SPEAKERthat these people were targeting

15:28SPEAKERand that MasterCard and PayPal and Visa

15:31SPEAKERsaid that they couldn't have anymore

15:33SPEAKERbut also are, you know, creations that have artistic merit

15:39SPEAKERand are helping people process trauma and stuff like that.

15:44SPEAKERAnyway, before we get to that though,

15:46SPEAKERlet's talk about what payment processes are

15:47SPEAKER'cause this is a thing that I think

15:48SPEAKERpeople don't really understand.

15:50SPEAKER- Yeah, and it sounds like it's gotten more stratified

15:52SPEAKERover the years, like I think back to,

15:55SPEAKERI mean, what was using a credit card in the '80s,

15:57SPEAKERyou know, like you had the little physical carbon copy

15:59SPEAKERslidey machine and there was probably, I guess,

16:01SPEAKERa transaction happening over a phone line

16:03SPEAKERand that was kind of it

16:04SPEAKERbut now there are a lot of intermediaries, right?

16:07SPEAKERThat's the thing that I feel like has changed

16:09SPEAKERis that the stripes of the world

16:10SPEAKERare like a new layer in this process, is that accurate?

16:13SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't, yeah, I mean,

16:14SPEAKERthey're definitely new layers.

16:16SPEAKERIn the '80s, before they had the phone line thing,

16:18SPEAKERyou'd use the little kachunk kachunk carbon copy machine

16:22SPEAKERand they'd also have a book that came out every week

16:25SPEAKERor every month with a list of bum credit card numbers in it,

16:29SPEAKERright? - Okay.

16:30SPEAKER- And at the end of the week,

16:32SPEAKERyou'd take those credit card slips to the bank

16:34SPEAKERand then the bank, your merchant bank would deal

16:36SPEAKERwith the transactions on paper.

16:39SPEAKER- The idea of non-instantaneous,

16:42SPEAKERlike delayed credit card transactions

16:44SPEAKERor more to the point, credit cards being used in a world

16:47SPEAKERwithout instantaneous telecommunications

16:49SPEAKERthat can verify transactions,

16:50SPEAKERlike the idea of a bunch of bad credit card transactions

16:54SPEAKERjust sitting around in a book

16:55SPEAKERthat they can't actually invalidate as bad

16:58SPEAKERuntil sometime later is completely nuts

17:00SPEAKERbut I guess that's how the system came about, right?

17:03SPEAKER- Yeah, so then they went to calling

17:05SPEAKERwhen you did credit card, especially if you,

17:07SPEAKERI think they probably were profiling people

17:09SPEAKERand like if you look shady, then you would get called

17:12SPEAKERand if you were like a middle-aged white guy,

17:14SPEAKERyou're probably okay.

17:16SPEAKERThen they got modems and they had little boxes

17:18SPEAKERlike the ones that we know now,

17:19SPEAKERexcept for they were not always connected

17:21SPEAKERand they would dial up into the internet.

17:23SPEAKERSo every time, every single time somebody swiped

17:27SPEAKERa credit card, it would do the dun, dun, dun and you'd have

17:30SPEAKERto, like the transaction would take as long as a modem

17:33SPEAKERto connect and then send the numbers

17:35SPEAKERand then send the auth back.

17:38SPEAKERBut anyway, so in those days though,

17:40SPEAKERmostly the individual merchants had deals

17:45SPEAKERwith credit card providers.

17:46SPEAKERSo like, if you were a grocery store,

17:49SPEAKERyou would take Visa and MasterCard but maybe not Discover

17:52SPEAKERand not Diners Club and not, you know,

17:55SPEAKERand obviously Square and Venmo and Apple Cash

17:57SPEAKERand all of those things didn't exist at that point.

17:59SPEAKER- God, you're reminding me, I had forgotten

18:01SPEAKERhow much more of a crapshoot it was, say 30 plus years ago,

18:04SPEAKERwhether a given store would take a given type

18:06SPEAKERof credit card, like it was much more siloed off.

18:10SPEAKERYou know, it's like, oh, like you said,

18:11SPEAKERthe store only takes Visa and MasterCard,

18:13SPEAKERDiscover is no good here or vice versa.

18:15SPEAKERLike it's kind of a thing of the past, right?

18:16SPEAKERYou almost never have to think about,

18:19SPEAKERdoes this establishment take a specific card anymore?

18:23SPEAKER- Yeah, I had a job once that I had an American Express card

18:25SPEAKERthat was my, like they gave me an American Express card

18:29SPEAKERto do business expenses with 'cause I was traveling a lot

18:32SPEAKERand there were places that just you were,

18:34SPEAKERno, the American Express wouldn't be accepted, period.

18:37SPEAKER- Yeah.

18:38SPEAKER- So, okay, so now we have these things

18:41SPEAKERcalled payment processors that kind of sit

18:43SPEAKERbetween the credit card companies and the merchants, right?

18:47SPEAKERSo instead of you as a grocery store,

18:50SPEAKERas a place that sells, you know, games online,

18:55SPEAKERmaking a relationship with Visa and PayPal

18:58SPEAKERand MasterCard and Discover and American Express

19:03SPEAKERand all these other companies,

19:05SPEAKERyou make a deal with Stripe,

19:07SPEAKERor actually confusingly PayPal in this case,

19:10SPEAKER'cause they kind of are both of these things.

19:11SPEAKERThey both do the transaction on the user end

19:14SPEAKERand then they also will do the intermediary business

19:16SPEAKERbetween the credit card companies and the business.

19:18SPEAKER- Right, and I think somewhere down the stack

19:20SPEAKERthey are also a bank probably if you choose to use them

19:23SPEAKERthat way.

19:24SPEAKER- PayPal absolutely will let you use them as a bank, yeah.

19:28SPEAKERYou have to opt into that and when you do that,

19:31SPEAKERthey collect a bunch of additional personal data about you.

19:34SPEAKER- And that's, you know,

19:35SPEAKERI'm like envisioning the business model here.

19:36SPEAKERIt's like you come in as a middleman

19:38SPEAKERand then you start offering the very same service

19:42SPEAKERthat the company below you in the stack is also offering.

19:45SPEAKERReally quietly try to supplant them.

19:47SPEAKERI mean, is PayPal going to run Visa out of business

19:50SPEAKERnext week?

19:51SPEAKERAbsolutely not, or Wells Fargo, absolutely not,

19:53SPEAKERbut you know what I mean.

19:54SPEAKER- Well, but PayPal exists because they were like,

19:57SPEAKER"Hey, what if we did money but on the internet?"

19:59SPEAKER- Right.

20:00SPEAKER- Right, like we've done this multiple times.

20:02SPEAKERSquare Cash is the same deal.

20:03SPEAKERHey, what if we made accepting credit cards

20:05SPEAKERfor your business a lot easier?

20:07SPEAKERAnd that was a physical dongle

20:11SPEAKERthat you could plug into your phone's headphone jack.

20:13SPEAKERRemember those?

20:14SPEAKER- Yeah, are those still out there?

20:15SPEAKERLike that was the big bellwether to me was seeing,

20:18SPEAKERit did plug into the headphone jack, right?

20:19SPEAKERLike this little square-ish credit card swipe thing.

20:22SPEAKERLike you'd see like street vendors,

20:23SPEAKERespecially in a big city like this,

20:25SPEAKERyou'd see like street food vendors and stuff like that.

20:27SPEAKERAll of a sudden everybody had an iPad

20:29SPEAKERwith that little square dongle sticking out of it.

20:31SPEAKER- Yeah, but the real sauce on their platform

20:33SPEAKERwas they did all the backend payment processing stuff

20:36SPEAKERfor you as well.

20:38SPEAKERAnd yeah, Square's still around.

20:39SPEAKERThey sell things you slam an iPad into,

20:43SPEAKERor just a screen that, like those screens that flip around,

20:47SPEAKERa lot of those are square screens now.

20:48SPEAKER- Okay.

20:50SPEAKER- So, okay, so these people, instead of being a bank,

20:54SPEAKERinstead of being a credit card company,

20:56SPEAKERthey just sit in between the merchant

20:59SPEAKERand the credit card company and they do a lot of stuff.

21:01SPEAKERWhen you swipe, like when you tap your card

21:03SPEAKERon a square terminal, it does a bunch of stuff.

21:05SPEAKERFirst it checks to see if it's a fraudulent card.

21:07SPEAKERAnd they have a bunch of heuristics for that

21:10SPEAKERthat are different for online transactions

21:12SPEAKERand for in-person transactions.

21:14SPEAKERBut they'll even like, they'll even query the bank

21:17SPEAKERand be like, hey, where was the last physical transaction

21:20SPEAKERfor this card?

21:21SPEAKERAnd if you do something like,

21:22SPEAKERwe had a question about this last week.

21:24SPEAKERIf you buy something from Knoxville

21:26SPEAKERand then three minutes later you buy something from Phoenix,

21:29SPEAKERthat will trigger one of the fraud warnings, right?

21:31SPEAKERThere's a bazillion layers of that

21:33SPEAKERbecause those payment processes get a better deal

21:38SPEAKERif their fraud rates are lower.

21:40SPEAKER- Oh, sure.

21:41SPEAKER- Like they pay a lower percentage for each transaction

21:44SPEAKERfor lower fraud rates,

21:45SPEAKERwhich means then they make more money

21:46SPEAKERon the flat transaction rate that they charge

21:49SPEAKERtheir customers based on the contracts that they sign.

21:52SPEAKER- I wonder if the, okay, let me pause for just a second here.

21:56SPEAKERWe're talking about front end processors, right?

21:58SPEAKERLike the stripes and squares of the world are,

22:01SPEAKERyou've got here in the notes, front end processors

22:04SPEAKERare the ones that you kind of see at point of sale.

22:05SPEAKERAnd then I assume-

22:07SPEAKER- Those are the ones we're all familiar with.

22:08SPEAKER- Right, and then the backend processors

22:10SPEAKERare probably names you've never heard of before

22:12SPEAKERthat are handling the actual transactions.

22:14SPEAKER- Well, you've heard of the names before,

22:15SPEAKERbut they're like big merchant banks and they interact.

22:19SPEAKERLike they handle the actual movement of money.

22:22SPEAKER- So the front end processors move numbers in a ledger

22:26SPEAKERand the backend processors turn those ledger moves

22:28SPEAKERinto money in a way that only makes sense to people

22:31SPEAKERwho are really deeply embedded in the financial system.

22:33SPEAKER- Sure.

22:34SPEAKER- In the same way that like if you buy stock

22:37SPEAKERfrom your Merrill Lynch fund,

22:40SPEAKERyou're not actually getting a certificate of stock.

22:42SPEAKERYou're getting a divot in your Merrill Lynch account

22:47SPEAKERthat says, hey, Brad has one share of this stock.

22:52SPEAKERThat is in our fund overall.

22:54SPEAKERAnd we will give him growth represented by this share

23:00SPEAKEReven though you don't actually own those shares

23:02SPEAKERfor all intents and purposes.

23:04SPEAKER- It's just layered abstractions all the way down.

23:06SPEAKER- Yeah, pretty much.

23:07SPEAKER- Okay, so the reason I wanted to define front and backend

23:09SPEAKER'cause you were talking about front end processors

23:11SPEAKERdoing fraud checks.

23:12SPEAKERI wonder if the backend fraud protection

23:16SPEAKERhas gotten more lax because they're relying on

23:21SPEAKERlike the stripes to perform that kind of thing.

23:23SPEAKER- I got to the part where I looked at the backend processor,

23:26SPEAKERhow that stuff works and it got to the,

23:28SPEAKERhey, we have to talk to the federal reserve on the regular

23:31SPEAKERabout how to move money around.

23:32SPEAKERAnd I kind of like my eyes glazed over.

23:35SPEAKER- Just noped out.

23:37SPEAKER- Yeah, basically it became a here there be dragon situation

23:40SPEAKERand it doesn't apply to normal businesses

23:43SPEAKER'cause the thing is your backend processors,

23:45SPEAKERyour front end processors and your credit card companies

23:48SPEAKERand your merchant banks all have deals with these backend

23:51SPEAKERprocessor types.

23:53SPEAKERAnd for the most part, unless you're somebody's CFO,

23:56SPEAKERyou don't have to understand how this works.

23:58SPEAKERMaybe not even then.

23:59SPEAKERYou probably just pay somebody and then they figure it out.

24:01SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess I was just wondering if there are now

24:04SPEAKERlike onerous fraud checks at every level.

24:07SPEAKER- Yes.

24:08SPEAKER- Okay, so it's not just that it's been shifted

24:09SPEAKERto the front end ones and the backend ones

24:11SPEAKERare kind of relying on that.

24:12SPEAKER- I think it's probably more about money laundering

24:14SPEAKERand stuff like that than fraud at the higher level,

24:16SPEAKERbut I don't know for sure.

24:19SPEAKER- Okay, so your front end processor,

24:22SPEAKERyou tap your credit card.

24:23SPEAKERThey check to make sure it's not fraudulent.

24:25SPEAKERThey're like, okay, this looks good.

24:26SPEAKERThis is clean.

24:27SPEAKERBrad's okay.

24:28SPEAKERYou're there.

24:29SPEAKERYou have a Snickers bar in your hand.

24:30SPEAKERYou're waiting.

24:31SPEAKERThis is all happening in like fractions

24:32SPEAKERof a second at this point.

24:34SPEAKERAnd then they say, hey, I'm gonna talk to Brad's bank

24:37SPEAKERand see if he can actually afford the Snicker bar.

24:40SPEAKERAnd the bank, they hit the bank and the bank is like,

24:43SPEAKERhey, how much is the Snicker bar?

24:44SPEAKERAnd the man's like, it's like $3.

24:46SPEAKERAnd the bank is like, yeah, Brad's cool for $3.

24:49SPEAKERThumbs up.

24:50SPEAKERThe payment processor, the front end processor

24:54SPEAKERdoes another, like they have secret sauce in here

24:57SPEAKERthat they don't talk about because it's all proprietary

24:59SPEAKERand being 3% better, this is billions of dollars a year

25:03SPEAKERin additional revenue.

25:06SPEAKERAnd then they approve the transaction

25:07SPEAKERor they decline the transaction.

25:09SPEAKERAnd if they approve it, you get your Snickers bar

25:11SPEAKERand you walk out of the store

25:12SPEAKERand you never think about this again.

25:13SPEAKERAnd if they decline it, then they say, hey, man,

25:15SPEAKERdo you have another form of payment,

25:16SPEAKERsomething more fungible, perhaps cash or Bitcoin?

25:19SPEAKERAnd then you give them that

25:20SPEAKERand then you take your Snickers bar

25:21SPEAKERor you put your Snickers bar down on the counter

25:24SPEAKERand walk out, or you grab the Snickers bar

25:26SPEAKERand run faster than the guy behind the counter.

25:28SPEAKERAnd then, you know, like everybody wins.

25:31SPEAKERSo-

25:32SPEAKER- That's a kinetic form of payment.

25:34SPEAKER- Yeah, you're just giving him a good story to tell.

25:37SPEAKERSo this is where Stripe lives, this is where Square lives.

25:42SPEAKERThere's a bazillion other payment processors.

25:44SPEAKERLike literally, there's meta sites

25:47SPEAKERthat help you find the perfect payment processor

25:49SPEAKERfor your business.

25:50SPEAKERBecause if you're doing any kind of volume at all,

25:54SPEAKERnegotiating a better rate with your payment processor

25:57SPEAKERis good for a single digit percentage increase on your sales

26:03SPEAKER'cause it's less revenue that's taken

26:05SPEAKERfor you on credit card charges.

26:06SPEAKER- Yeah, I found this is just a random site

26:09SPEAKERand I can't vouch for it, but stripealternatives.com

26:12SPEAKERis an aggregator of other payment methods

26:15SPEAKERand like there are a lot of them, man.

26:17SPEAKERLemon Squeezy, Gumroad, Payoneer, Fast Spring, Recurly.

26:22SPEAKERI mean, some of these you've heard of in other contexts,

26:24SPEAKERbut Zoho Billing, Braintree, there are a lot of these.

26:27SPEAKER- Some of them get bought by the payment processors.

26:30SPEAKERSo that's a fairly common out for that kind of site

26:33SPEAKERis that they'll give you an overview of the payment thing.

26:37SPEAKERAnd then one of the payment processes is like,

26:38SPEAKERhey, we're getting a lot of referrals from these people.

26:40SPEAKERIt's cheaper for us to just buy them than pay them.

26:42SPEAKER- Mm.

26:44SPEAKER- So, okay.

26:46SPEAKERAnd this ease of this stuff happening

26:50SPEAKERled to a lot of diversity in payment methods

26:53SPEAKERat the checkout now, right?

26:55SPEAKERSo like this is why a lot of places

26:58SPEAKERyou can just use Venmo to pay or PayPal

26:59SPEAKERwhen you're at a physical checkout in the real world

27:02SPEAKERor Apple Cash works everywhere

27:04SPEAKERbecause Apple became a payment processor, right?

27:09SPEAKERGoogle is a payment.

27:10SPEAKERGoogle and Samsung are payment processors

27:12SPEAKER'cause they have all these phones

27:13SPEAKERand they wanted to get a little bit of this--

27:16SPEAKER- Little taste.

27:17SPEAKER- Little taste of this medicine.

27:19SPEAKERNow, you have these front-end payment processors

27:23SPEAKERand they're making money based on a percentage

27:25SPEAKERof every transaction and they charge customers

27:29SPEAKERa different percentage based on what the business is.

27:31SPEAKERThey all have a lot of rules.

27:33SPEAKERThey all have rules about, you know,

27:38SPEAKERwhy, and when I'm talking about payment,

27:41SPEAKERthere's two places that have rules, actually.

27:44SPEAKERThe credit card companies and the people

27:46SPEAKERthat accept payments like Venmo,

27:47SPEAKERlike Square Cash and all these have rules.

27:51SPEAKERThe credit card companies have rules

27:52SPEAKERand it's all tied to the risk of the transaction.

27:55SPEAKERSo a lot of processors will only accept low-risk transactions

28:02SPEAKERbecause they don't wanna mess up their percentage

28:05SPEAKERbecause they wanna offer the lowest percentages available

28:07SPEAKERand on transaction fees.

28:10SPEAKERAnd that means that they don't wanna have fraud strikes

28:13SPEAKERor declines or disputes, all of which increase their overhead

28:20SPEAKERand decrease their ability to charge

28:23SPEAKERthe lowest possible rates for these transactions.

28:26SPEAKER- You're talking about the front-end processors

28:27SPEAKERcharging rates to the merchants?

28:29SPEAKER- I'm talking about both the front-end processors

28:31SPEAKERand the credit card companies.

28:33SPEAKERThe credit card companies hate fraud.

28:37SPEAKERThey hate disputes.

28:40SPEAKERThey hate fraudulent transactions that cost,

28:43SPEAKERthose all cost them money, right?

28:45SPEAKERSo for example, if I'm MasterCard

28:48SPEAKERand I know that Stripe is really good,

28:51SPEAKERtheir anti-fraud stuff is really good

28:52SPEAKERand they have a really low dispute rate,

28:54SPEAKERI will give them a 1.5%,

28:57SPEAKERthese are made-up numbers, just for the record,

28:59SPEAKERI'll give them a 1.5% transaction rate.

29:02SPEAKERSo that means 1.5% of every transaction

29:07SPEAKERthat Stripe passes through MasterCard

29:10SPEAKERgenerates 1.5% of revenue for MasterCard, right?

29:13SPEAKER1.5% of that transaction.

29:15SPEAKERNow, Stripe is charging their customers 4%

29:18SPEAKERfor that same transaction.

29:20SPEAKERSo if Stripe's fraud and dispute rates stay low

29:23SPEAKERand they don't have problems that increase their costs

29:25SPEAKERfor their upstream partners,

29:28SPEAKERthen they make 2.5% on every single one

29:32SPEAKERof those transactions.

29:33SPEAKERNow, in reality, everybody negotiates a different rate

29:36SPEAKERwith Stripe once you get to a certain size

29:37SPEAKERand it's complicated, but that's the business, right?

29:41SPEAKERIs credit card companies charged this much?

29:43SPEAKERStripe charges a little bit more.

29:46SPEAKERAnything Stripe can do to make that gap bigger

29:48SPEAKERmeans more money for Stripe.

29:50SPEAKERAnd honestly, the same thing on the credit card side.

29:52SPEAKERSo what that means is they establish all sorts of rules

29:56SPEAKERabout what kind of transactions happen on their things.

29:59SPEAKERAnd there are some transactions

30:00SPEAKERthat are incredibly high risk.

30:01SPEAKERFor example, digital only goods and services.

30:06SPEAKERCredit processing companies do not like those

30:09SPEAKERbecause there's a high recidivism risk on the transactions.

30:13SPEAKER- Anybody who's ever tried to buy a quantity

30:15SPEAKERof virtual Steam gift cards.

30:19SPEAKER- Yes.

30:19SPEAKER- And tell you how goddamn difficult it is to do that.

30:22SPEAKER- And the weird thing is if you go to Amazon

30:25SPEAKERand buy a bunch of physical gift cards for Steam, no problem.

30:29SPEAKER- You mean physically as in they will literally

30:31SPEAKERship you a card in the mail?

30:32SPEAKER- They are printed on a piece of paper

30:33SPEAKERwith a scratch off thing.

30:34SPEAKERThat's not an issue.

30:35SPEAKER- Right.

30:37SPEAKER- Adult processing stuff, adult services.

30:41SPEAKERTypically really, really difficult.

30:42SPEAKERNow there's legal stuff as well,

30:45SPEAKERbut like paying for sex work on credit cards

30:47SPEAKERis typically completely impossible in most countries because-

30:52SPEAKER- Even where the sex work is actually legal?

30:54SPEAKER- Even where it's legal because people go have their,

30:58SPEAKERyou know, have their sex work session

31:00SPEAKERand then they dispute the charge 'cause they're like,

31:02SPEAKERwell, I didn't, I clearly wouldn't have hired a prostitute.

31:05SPEAKERAnd so credit card companies

31:06SPEAKERjust aren't going to deal with that.

31:08SPEAKER- That makes sense.

31:08SPEAKERI know the marijuana business has also been notoriously-

31:13SPEAKER- Cash only.

31:13SPEAKER- Yeah, cash only or like very difficult to find

31:17SPEAKERinstitutionalized payment processing and banking

31:19SPEAKERthat they can work with.

31:20SPEAKERAnd even in states where that's been legalized.

31:22SPEAKER- So the marijuana thing is more complicated

31:24SPEAKER'cause while it's legal on a state level

31:26SPEAKERin a lot of states in the United States now,

31:27SPEAKERit's also illegal on a federal level.

31:29SPEAKER- Right.

31:30SPEAKER- That adds a level of complexity that goes beyond

31:34SPEAKERlike the federal, the fact that it's illegal

31:38SPEAKERon a federal level means that these incredibly

31:40SPEAKERconservative, in this case, I mean financially conservative,

31:44SPEAKERbut I can mean both senses of the word.

31:47SPEAKERThese conservative credit card processing companies

31:50SPEAKERare not gonna take the risk that the feds

31:52SPEAKERare gonna come down on them

31:53SPEAKERbecause they're taking weed money.

31:55SPEAKER- Right.

31:57SPEAKER- So for example, this is a fun example

32:01SPEAKERI found last night.

32:02SPEAKERBecause they have all these rules about

32:07SPEAKERavoiding contest rates and avoiding disputes

32:09SPEAKERand avoiding fraud and all this stuff.

32:16SPEAKERIf you have a sex toy store,

32:18SPEAKERif you wanna make Brad's dildo shop-

32:21SPEAKER- I'd go on.

32:24SPEAKER- And you want to be able to-

32:26SPEAKER- I'm not making that the title, I'm sorry.

32:27SPEAKER- No, no, we're not gonna,

32:28SPEAKERno, don't, for the love of God, no.

32:31SPEAKERIf you wanna make your sex toy store

32:33SPEAKERand you wanna do it online only,

32:36SPEAKERit's gonna be really hard for you

32:38SPEAKERto get credit card transactions

32:41SPEAKERfrom a lot of payment processors.

32:43SPEAKER- Even though you're trafficking in physical goods?

32:46SPEAKER- Yeah, because of high recidivism rate

32:48SPEAKERfor the transactions.

32:49SPEAKER- It's specifically because you don't have

32:51SPEAKERa physical presence?

32:52SPEAKER- If you open a brick and mortar version

32:54SPEAKERof Brad's dildo store,

32:56SPEAKERthen you'll have a much easier time of it.

32:58SPEAKER- Coming soon? - Yeah.

32:59SPEAKER- Got it, interesting, all right.

33:01SPEAKER- Because that physical location means it's less likely,

33:05SPEAKER'cause they're not just worried about fraud

33:06SPEAKERon the consumer side too,

33:07SPEAKERthey're worried about you making a fly-by-night operation

33:10SPEAKERand then taking a bunch of credit card transactions

33:12SPEAKERand then disappearing without fulfilling those transactions.

33:15SPEAKER'Cause they're on the hook for that.

33:16SPEAKERYeah, that's part of the service

33:17SPEAKERthe credit card companies provide.

33:19SPEAKERSo they like physical goods sold,

33:23SPEAKERthey don't like online-only businesses,

33:26SPEAKERthey definitely don't like adult stuff,

33:28SPEAKERthey don't like things that are legal in some places

33:30SPEAKERand illegal in others,

33:33SPEAKERand they don't like anything that causes them hassle.

33:35SPEAKERNow, this is where it gets complicated, right?

33:38SPEAKER'Cause we've been complicated at this point,

33:40SPEAKERbut these people don't understand feedback online,

33:43SPEAKERbecause they don't,

33:44SPEAKERlike feedback online for a credit card company is like,

33:48SPEAKERhey man, I got a fraudulent charge

33:50SPEAKERfrom a skit from my card being skimmed,

33:53SPEAKERnot, hey, a thousand people who are cranks about porn

34:00SPEAKERwrote a letter campaign to say, hey, this is bad.

34:05SPEAKERSo they got more email than they've ever seen,

34:07SPEAKERmore calls than they've ever seen

34:09SPEAKERbecause of this collective shout campaign.

34:14SPEAKERThey're not experienced in being on the receiving end

34:17SPEAKERof like mass messaging campaigns is what you're saying?

34:20SPEAKERThey are not equipped to do this.

34:22SPEAKERCoordinated campaigns are not something

34:23SPEAKERthat they've received on the regular?

34:25SPEAKER- Exactly, and their default response to any feedback is,

34:29SPEAKERwhat's the most concern,

34:31SPEAKERwhat's the safest thing we can do, right?

34:33SPEAKERFor the business.

34:34SPEAKERSo they shut it down.

34:37SPEAKERThey called Steam, they called Itch,

34:40SPEAKERactually they didn't call either of those companies,

34:41SPEAKERthey called the people that run the transactions for those

34:43SPEAKERand said, hey, it looks like there's adult stuff

34:46SPEAKERon your transactions,

34:49SPEAKERand this is speculation to be clear.

34:52SPEAKERIt looks like you have adult stuff on these platforms

34:54SPEAKERand we're not charging you the adult rate.

34:57SPEAKERBecause the thing that we haven't talked about yet

34:59SPEAKERis that there are a lot of payment processors

35:01SPEAKERthat specialize in risky transactions.

35:04SPEAKERSo there are payment processors that handle adult stores,

35:07SPEAKERthere are payment processors that handle stuff

35:09SPEAKERlike OnlyFans, there are payment processors

35:11SPEAKERthat if you wanna make your own porn blog

35:14SPEAKERand take money from people, you can absolutely do that

35:16SPEAKERand they will happily charge you eight or 10 or 12%,

35:20SPEAKERsome multiple of the normal going market rate

35:22SPEAKERfor non-pornographic content,

35:26SPEAKERand you can absolutely do that.

35:30SPEAKERWhat they're saying is, hey, Steam's using a loophole.

35:33SPEAKERThey're posting, they're running porn on their site,

35:36SPEAKERbut we're giving them the non-porn rate

35:38SPEAKERon their transactions.

35:40SPEAKERAnd Valve likes making money.

35:42SPEAKER- I've heard this.

35:43SPEAKERThat 30%, it didn't happen by accident.

35:48SPEAKER- Look, Gabe can't buy his 60 yachts on hopes and dreams.

35:54SPEAKER- No, no, no, no.

35:57SPEAKERAnd Itch is the same boat.

35:59SPEAKERThey were on a video game and music and movies

36:02SPEAKERprobably deal with, I think they said PayPal and Stripe

36:06SPEAKERwere their payment processors.

36:09SPEAKERAnd so they had to make, they got this note that said,

36:14SPEAKERhey, we've noticed that you're doing this thing

36:16SPEAKERyou're not supposed to do

36:16SPEAKERaccording to the terms of our agreement, make it right.

36:19SPEAKERAnd you know, Valve has hundreds of employees

36:22SPEAKERand they went through and pulled out the things

36:24SPEAKERthat looked like they were obviously against the rules

36:27SPEAKERand delisted a lot of stuff.

36:29SPEAKERItch just said, hey man, there's not that many of us.

36:32SPEAKERWe just turn it off all the not safe for work stuff

36:34SPEAKERfor a minute.

36:35SPEAKERAnd they posted kind of a not great letter,

36:37SPEAKERjust in fairness that said, here's what we're doing,

36:40SPEAKERhere's why.

36:41SPEAKERAnd then didn't really talk about what else was going,

36:44SPEAKERbut the fact is for either of these getting cut off

36:48SPEAKERfrom their payment processor is probably at best

36:52SPEAKERan incredible disaster for the businesses

36:55SPEAKERand worst an existential threat for the business,

36:57SPEAKERdepending on what their churn is like and stuff like that.

37:00SPEAKERSo.

37:01SPEAKER- I guess we have no way of knowing

37:02SPEAKERunless one of those platforms came out and said explicitly,

37:04SPEAKERwere they threatening to revoke their access

37:06SPEAKERto the payment processor entirely

37:08SPEAKERor just move them to a much higher rate

37:11SPEAKER- We don't know.

37:12SPEAKER- Based on the content.

37:13SPEAKEROkay, yeah.

37:14SPEAKER- My assumption would be that they were threatening

37:15SPEAKERto revoke their access to those processors entirely

37:18SPEAKERand then they would have to get another payment processor

37:21SPEAKERat a higher rate.

37:22SPEAKER- Like that could lead to like some period

37:24SPEAKERof the store is just not operating right now.

37:26SPEAKER- Yeah.

37:27SPEAKERAnd even if it comes back for something like Itch,

37:30SPEAKERespecially where like the percentage that you pay Itch

37:33SPEAKERis variable and they have deals in,

37:35SPEAKERlike if they have agreements in place,

37:37SPEAKERlike Itch is a weird example

37:39SPEAKER'cause like Itch doesn't gate new content on the platform.

37:42SPEAKERRight?

37:43SPEAKERIt's you, anybody can sign up for Itch

37:45SPEAKERand just start posting stuff on Itch immediately.

37:46SPEAKERIt's not like Valve where there's a review process

37:48SPEAKERand you have to pay a fee to sign up as a developer

37:51SPEAKERand all that stuff.

37:53SPEAKERSo the upshot was that when they got the nasty gram

37:56SPEAKERthat said, hey, we're gonna kill your business

37:57SPEAKERunless you take this stuff down,

37:59SPEAKERtheir immediate response was we're gonna take down

38:01SPEAKERall the not safe for work tag stuff

38:04SPEAKERand then everything tagged adult

38:06SPEAKERand a certain number of other tags

38:07SPEAKERand we're gonna review everything manually

38:09SPEAKERand it's gonna take a little bit.

38:11SPEAKERSince then they updated their post

38:14SPEAKERto have more information about their strategy

38:17SPEAKERand the fact that they're looking

38:18SPEAKERat other payment processors,

38:19SPEAKERincluding not safe for work friendly payment processors,

38:23SPEAKERbut it wasn't great.

38:25SPEAKERAnd like one of the things that I saw people

38:28SPEAKERtalking about online was why don't they just start

38:32SPEAKERtaking money directly from credit card?

38:35SPEAKERWhy don't they talk directly to the credit card companies?

38:36SPEAKERWhy don't you change payment processors?

38:38SPEAKERIt's A, the payment processors also do a bunch

38:41SPEAKERof regulatory stuff, which we kind of touched on a little bit

38:43SPEAKERbut it's stuff around money laundering

38:45SPEAKERand not becoming a bank and all these other requirements

38:49SPEAKERthat if you take international money,

38:54SPEAKERyou take money from international customers,

38:56SPEAKERyou're subject to the banking and finance laws

38:58SPEAKERin all of those countries,

39:00SPEAKERwhich is why a lot of places say,

39:02SPEAKERokay, we're only gonna take money

39:02SPEAKERfrom people in the United States.

39:04SPEAKERIt's why Venmo and PayPal and those services

39:07SPEAKERare so valuable is because they let you take money

39:10SPEAKERfrom people anywhere in the world

39:13SPEAKERand they handle all the regulatory stuff for you.

39:16SPEAKERSo you just have to take the money

39:20SPEAKERand then you have to talk to your accounts

39:21SPEAKERand find out if you've paid taxes in those regions

39:23SPEAKERand then, but they do all of the,

39:27SPEAKERhey, is this a money laundering transaction

39:29SPEAKERor is this a legitimate transaction stuff?

39:31SPEAKERWhich is shockingly onerous.

39:34SPEAKERAnyway, so the TLDR is a lot of not safe for work stuff

39:38SPEAKERgot removed from Steam and Itch

39:40SPEAKERover the last couple of weeks.

39:42SPEAKERAnd it's kind of uncomfortable to talk about this stuff

39:44SPEAKER'cause I don't like these games, generally speaking.

39:46SPEAKERI don't engage, well, hold on, that's not fair.

39:49SPEAKERI don't engage with the non-consensual sex incest,

39:54SPEAKERlike the adult tagged games on Steam

39:57SPEAKERI just turned off years ago so I don't ever see them

39:59SPEAKER'cause there's a lot of kind of skeezy stuff there.

40:01SPEAKER- I've thought over and over about turning that off.

40:03SPEAKERI made the opposite decision at some point,

40:05SPEAKERwhich was I cover video games professionally.

40:07SPEAKERI need to know what these platforms are doing.

40:09SPEAKERI need to get the full spectrum of what they're offering

40:12SPEAKERand how they are offering it.

40:14SPEAKERAnd as a result, my kind of new and trending,

40:17SPEAKERlike the whole recommendation engine on Steam,

40:19SPEAKERwell, the top carousel is still pretty relevant.

40:23SPEAKERThat's still like Warhammer and some boomer shooters

40:25SPEAKERand stuff, but like the full-on like the flat top sellers

40:29SPEAKERand new and trending and stuff like that is like nothing

40:31SPEAKERbut like no name, asset flip porn games and stuff

40:35SPEAKERat this point, like 80%, yes, absolutely.

40:38SPEAKER- See, that seems like a real degradation of service

40:41SPEAKERfor, anyway, okay, well.

40:43SPEAKER- Maybe that's a little, maybe that's, I'm looking,

40:46SPEAKERokay, you want me to look right now?

40:48SPEAKERIt varies by the day. - Run down the list.

40:49SPEAKER- It varies by the day, actually.

40:51SPEAKEROkay, looking at new and, I've got Steam open right now.

40:52SPEAKERNew and trending only has like two

40:57SPEAKERor maybe actually just one.

40:58SPEAKER- Well, it's probably 'cause they took them all down.

41:00SPEAKER- That's possible, that is certainly possible.

41:02SPEAKERSex House Orgy Party is the one that really stands out

41:05SPEAKERin my new and trending right now as being of that ilk.

41:10SPEAKERAnyway, I've thought many times about turning off,

41:12SPEAKERor actually, sorry, turning on those filters

41:15SPEAKERso I can actually just see stuff

41:17SPEAKERthat I might actually play, but.

41:19SPEAKER- A friend of mine got real into Sex Divers,

41:22SPEAKERa Hell Divers parody a few months ago.

41:24SPEAKER- Wait, what?

41:25SPEAKER- Yeah, we should play that on the stream sometime.

41:27SPEAKERIt's a remarkable, it's basically like Hell Divers,

41:31SPEAKERbut instead of going back to your ship

41:34SPEAKERand playing the Drop Simulator game,

41:38SPEAKEReverybody just has sex.

41:40SPEAKER- Oh, this is wildly explicit.

41:43SPEAKER- It's pretty ambitious for a wild game.

41:44SPEAKER- This is wildly explicit,

41:44SPEAKERbut then there's a screenshot in here

41:46SPEAKERthat looks like it could,

41:47SPEAKERI mean, it's a very low rent clone of Hell Divers,

41:50SPEAKERbut it's full on just a guy in armor,

41:52SPEAKERover the shoulder shooting at a big pile

41:54SPEAKERof Starship troopers licking bugs.

41:56SPEAKER- Yep.

41:56SPEAKER- And then, but then.

41:58SPEAKER- Then the sexy stuff happens.

42:00SPEAKER- And then a lot of fornication.

42:01SPEAKER- Yeah, getting covered in bug goo

42:03SPEAKERmakes soldiers horny, I guess, I don't know.

42:05SPEAKER- A lot of fornication on a spaceship.

42:07SPEAKERAlso, one of these shots looks like Hell Divers,

42:09SPEAKERexcept there's a little inset,

42:11SPEAKERpicture in picture of a naked woman on a live cam,

42:13SPEAKER'cause apparently while they're fighting for liberty,

42:16SPEAKERthey need to see some boobs at the same time,

42:19SPEAKERor I'm not, anyway, the Steam is an interesting place.

42:22SPEAKER- Yeah, so, okay.

42:23SPEAKER- But we should point out,

42:24SPEAKERI think I alluded to this earlier,

42:26SPEAKERbut like a lot of, like you said,

42:27SPEAKERa lot of creators that are working in a more like intimate,

42:31SPEAKERand I guess I would say artsy space

42:33SPEAKERhave also gotten swept up in this.

42:34SPEAKERLike Robert Yang is a well-known developer

42:36SPEAKERwho has like taught at NYU

42:38SPEAKERand has made a lot of games about like gayness

42:41SPEAKERand male sexuality and stuff like that,

42:42SPEAKERwho apparently has been targeted by this.

42:45SPEAKER- Yeah.

42:46SPEAKER- For example, like people, you know, like you said,

42:48SPEAKERpeople are making games that are much more like instructive

42:52SPEAKERor like, you know, not necessarily objectionable,

42:54SPEAKERcatering to a more niche audience.

42:57SPEAKER- Well, and so like the net was wide, especially on Itch,

43:02SPEAKERbecause they just turned everything off

43:04SPEAKERand kind of didn't communicate that.

43:06SPEAKERTheir letter was clear, but ambiguous, I guess,

43:08SPEAKERis my way of saying it.

43:10SPEAKER- Yeah.

43:11SPEAKER- Consume Me is a game that was marked adult

43:13SPEAKERbecause of adult themes and some light nudity,

43:16SPEAKERand it won this Seamus McNally grand prize

43:19SPEAKERat the IGF last year or the year before.

43:22SPEAKERNina Freeman, who has made a whole series

43:24SPEAKERof autobiographical games that are incredible

43:28SPEAKERand very personal and like definitely not porny,

43:33SPEAKERgot caught up in the dragnet,

43:38SPEAKER'cause her game Last Call got pulled,

43:41SPEAKERwhich is about domestic violence, right?

43:44SPEAKERSo the reason it's important to talk about this stuff

43:47SPEAKERis 'cause it's not just about porn games.

43:51SPEAKERLike the people, the Collective Shout people

43:55SPEAKERlike to portray this as being about games

43:59SPEAKERwith no redeeming value that are just about

44:02SPEAKERdomestic violence and assaulting women.

44:04SPEAKER- Yeah, that's why I mentioned like rape

44:05SPEAKERand child abuse earlier, because those are things

44:07SPEAKERthat any decent person can get behind opposing.

44:10SPEAKERBut again, the net that ends up being cast

44:13SPEAKERis dramatically wider than those things.

44:15SPEAKERWell, you're seeing the same thing

44:18SPEAKERwith this UK Online Safety Act.

44:20SPEAKERLike it really feels like some dark clouds

44:22SPEAKERare swirling recently in regard to kind of online censorship

44:27SPEAKERand like onerous authentication requirements.

44:29SPEAKERI mean, like various states in the United States

44:32SPEAKERhave individually been enacting stuff like this

44:34SPEAKERfor a couple, a few years now.

44:36SPEAKER- Yeah.

44:37SPEAKER- But you're seeing defenders of the UK Online Safety Act

44:39SPEAKERsaying the same thing, you know, the refrain is always,

44:42SPEAKERhello, so you support child abuse, huh?

44:44SPEAKERIf you don't want to have to like provide your face

44:46SPEAKERand ID to every single site you log into from now on,

44:49SPEAKERlike the, like...

44:51SPEAKER- So yeah, the UK Online Safety Act

44:53SPEAKERrequires age verification for social media and end-to-end,

44:57SPEAKERand it requires filtering for end-to-end

45:00SPEAKERencrypted messaging apps and a bunch of other stuff.

45:03SPEAKER- I don't want to speak out of turn here,

45:04SPEAKERbut I believe you now have to like provide identity

45:07SPEAKERand age authentication like to Discord in the UK

45:10SPEAKERto log into Discord now?

45:11SPEAKER- Blue Sky, Instagram, all of those,

45:16SPEAKERwhich is A, both like giving that kind of

45:19SPEAKERpersonal identifiable information seems bad

45:22SPEAKERfor a whole host of reasons

45:24SPEAKERthat we don't need to get into here,

45:25SPEAKERbut like, and B, you know, anonymity online is important

45:31SPEAKEReven if it results in bad stuff.

45:33SPEAKERSometimes it's my kind of take on that.

45:36SPEAKERThe big thing with the collective,

45:39SPEAKERalso there's another Children Online Safety Act

45:43SPEAKERgoing through the Senate right now, I believe,

45:45SPEAKERthat is worth calling your Congress people about

45:48SPEAKERand complaining about because it adds similar language here.

45:52SPEAKERThere's a thing in Australia that passed,

45:54SPEAKERone of the people behind Collective Shout

45:56SPEAKERis on the implementation commission for that.

45:57SPEAKERThat's another age verification gate,

46:00SPEAKERwhich I think it bans social media access

46:03SPEAKERfor kids under 16, which maybe I don't necessarily

46:07SPEAKERdisagree with, but the implementation

46:10SPEAKERof making everybody verify their age

46:12SPEAKERis a bad way to do that.

46:16SPEAKERThe thing I was gonna say is that the MO

46:19SPEAKERfor these kinds of activist groups is often,

46:23SPEAKERhey, we just wanna get the really dangerous stuff

46:26SPEAKERaway from people like the incest and child abuse

46:29SPEAKERand all that stuff, and then once it comes to find out

46:36SPEAKERthat those adult content sweeps include all stories

46:42SPEAKERof LGBTQ content, all stories about queer gay people,

46:48SPEAKERwhether they view them as pornographic,

46:50SPEAKERwhether they're pornographic or not, right?

46:52SPEAKER- Right, it never stops with the issues

46:54SPEAKERthat are listed on the label.

46:55SPEAKER- Yeah, so the concern is that this is just another way

46:59SPEAKERto crack down on LGBTQ content in general.

47:04SPEAKERAnd yeah, that's pretty much it.

47:09SPEAKERYeah, you put a note here that is absolutely correct.

47:14SPEAKERThe libertarian right and the left in game space

47:17SPEAKERare pretty united about this being bad.

47:21SPEAKER- You do not have to hand it to Elon Musk,

47:22SPEAKERbut he has come out pretty strongly against this.

47:25SPEAKERBut there are a lot of people on the right

47:27SPEAKERbecause you look at this as a moralizing censorship issue

47:30SPEAKERthat the right would be championing,

47:33SPEAKERbut there are quite a few of the more free speechy

47:35SPEAKERlibertarian types out there who are coming out

47:37SPEAKERpretty strongly against this as well.

47:39SPEAKERSo a pretty broad spectrum of the game space

47:42SPEAKERis pretty vehemently angry and opposed to this right now.

47:46SPEAKER- And also it's worth mentioning

47:48SPEAKERthat they have targeted 10 as well

47:55SPEAKERbecause of the horrifying swaths of truly nightmarish porn

48:00SPEAKERthat are hosted on his service post.

48:03SPEAKER- And also, and we should also mention

48:05SPEAKERthat he has been pretty explicit about his desire

48:08SPEAKERto turn Twitter or whatever you wanna call that business

48:11SPEAKERinto its own payment processor and bank.

48:13SPEAKERSo he's got a vested interest in beating that drum

48:17SPEAKERfor his own business interests.

48:20SPEAKERBut a lot of people are very against this right now.

48:22SPEAKERSo there is a massive ongoing email and phone call campaign.

48:27SPEAKER- Yeah, I think the payment processors are learning

48:28SPEAKERthat a few thousand letters maybe isn't as many

48:31SPEAKERas they would think it is.

48:33SPEAKERThere's a big email campaign, a big calling campaign.

48:37SPEAKERThere's a lot of stories on Reddit about this specifically.

48:40SPEAKERThey're like, "Hey, I called the credit card company."

48:42SPEAKERAnd they were like,

48:43SPEAKER"Yeah, we were getting a lot of calls about this."

48:46SPEAKERWe'll put a couple of links in the show notes

48:49SPEAKERthat tell you kind of where to go to find more information.

48:52SPEAKERBut the short version is call your stripes

48:55SPEAKERand your Mastercards and your PayPals and your visas

48:58SPEAKERand let them know that this sucks.

49:03SPEAKER- It's getting rocky on the internet.

49:06SPEAKERIt was always rocky for a lot of reasons,

49:07SPEAKERbut in a more institutional, governmental sense,

49:10SPEAKERthings are getting wild lately.

49:14SPEAKER- Every time I think things can't get much worse,

49:17SPEAKERI realize that at some point,

49:19SPEAKER10 years or 12 years in the future,

49:21SPEAKERI'm gonna look back to the current moment

49:22SPEAKERas the good old days and not feeling great about that, Brad.

49:27SPEAKER- Let's hope not, let's hope not.

49:30SPEAKERI pulled a few supplemental questions

49:32SPEAKERfrom past Q and A's we never got to.

49:34SPEAKER- Okay, some bangers from the past.

49:37SPEAKER- We've got a little time left here.

49:38SPEAKERIf you want to supplement this episode

49:40SPEAKERwith maybe some slightly more cheerful

49:42SPEAKERor at least less depressing.

49:44SPEAKER- Yes, so just to put a bow

49:46SPEAKERon the payment processing stuff.

49:50SPEAKERI apologize if I got anything wrong.

49:52SPEAKERI did, I spent four months digging into this stuff,

49:54SPEAKERdeciding if I wanted to start a business

49:56SPEAKERin this space last year before deciding that,

49:59SPEAKERno, maybe the Bitcoin people were right.

50:02SPEAKER- Oh boy.

50:04SPEAKER- Just in terms of-

50:05SPEAKER- Maybe the Bitcoin people were right, Will Smith.

50:07SPEAKER- Do not put that as the title for the episode.

50:11SPEAKERBut just the overhead in terms of regulation

50:16SPEAKERand how hard it is to start a business in this space

50:19SPEAKERmeans that if you wanted to start Stripe today,

50:24SPEAKER'cause for all intents and purposes,

50:26SPEAKERStripe is the big, is the juggernaut here.

50:30SPEAKER- I've been meaning to ask

50:30SPEAKERif you just kept using Stripe as the go-to

50:32SPEAKERbecause it's easy to say,

50:33SPEAKERor if they are the 800 pound gorilla

50:35SPEAKERand it sounds like the latter.

50:36SPEAKER- They make it very easy to start.

50:38SPEAKERSo we use Stripe for Patreon.

50:40SPEAKERMy newsletter uses Stripe.

50:42SPEAKERIt's like a defacto, you get a good rate.

50:44SPEAKERIt's gonna be easy to set up.

50:46SPEAKERIt's integrated with everything.

50:47SPEAKERSo that's the other part,

50:48SPEAKERis you have to be able to integrate it with your website.

50:51SPEAKERSo because Itch is written in weird Lua stuff,

50:57SPEAKERBrad's making faces.

50:58SPEAKER- I'm looking at the Stripe Wikipedia page.

51:02SPEAKERThey listed $1.4 trillion of payment volume

51:06SPEAKERprocessed in 2024.

51:07SPEAKER- Yeah, so what's 4% of that?

51:09SPEAKERWell, what's 2 1/2 or 3% of that, I guess?

51:11SPEAKER- They have a $91 billion valuation.

51:14SPEAKER- Yeah, it's an enormous company.

51:16SPEAKERAnd they got that way because they were the easy one.

51:18SPEAKERAnd they were the one that everybody used.

51:20SPEAKERBut they're also pretty much the only one

51:22SPEAKERthat is widely supported

51:24SPEAKERacross a bunch of different platforms.

51:26SPEAKERSo if we wanted to use another payment processor on Patreon

51:29SPEAKERto collect fees from our patrons,

51:31SPEAKERwhich you can do at patreon.com/techpod,

51:35SPEAKERwe would have, there's no way to do that.

51:37SPEAKERWe just don't have a choice

51:38SPEAKERbecause that's the only one that Patreon supports.

51:40SPEAKERIf we had our Ghost install,

51:42SPEAKERthen we could install whatever plugin we wanted

51:45SPEAKERor write our own for whatever payment processor we wanted.

51:48SPEAKERBut that's a big pain in the ass.

51:50SPEAKERAnd also, then you're gonna get,

51:52SPEAKERwhen your customers buy something from you,

51:54SPEAKERthey're gonna get a credit card transaction

51:56SPEAKERfrom Porn Masters Unlimited, the porn transaction processor.

52:03SPEAKERAnd that's gonna show up on their credit card bill.

52:05SPEAKERAnd then your significant others will be like,

52:07SPEAKER"Hey, why'd you spend $300

52:10SPEAKER"on Porn Masters Unlimited this month?

52:12SPEAKER"That seems like a lot."

52:13SPEAKERSo anyway, Stripe is enormous.

52:18SPEAKERIt's not a monopoly, but in a lot of ways it is.

52:21SPEAKERIt's not like the legal definition of a monopoly,

52:24SPEAKERbut in a lot of ways it is

52:25SPEAKERthat matter to small independent creators.

52:28SPEAKERThat's it.

52:29SPEAKER- All right.

52:29SPEAKER- Let's do some questions.

52:30SPEAKER- Okay, all right.

52:32SPEAKERWhy don't we dip into a few Discord questions here?

52:35SPEAKERI don't know how we didn't even highlight this one.

52:37SPEAKERWe have not even flagged this to read,

52:39SPEAKERbut I feel like we should read it from Mad Cat.

52:43SPEAKER- Okay.

52:43SPEAKER- Some neighbors that we know but not that well

52:46SPEAKERcame around to the house and asked for the wifi password

52:49SPEAKERso that their son could use a tablet.

52:52SPEAKERIt seemed innocent and I didn't want to be rude,

52:54SPEAKERso I gave them the password.

52:56SPEAKERI have a PF Sense router and access points,

52:58SPEAKERbut no guest network yet.

53:00SPEAKERMy neighbors are close enough

53:01SPEAKERthat they could probably pick up our wifi signal.

53:03SPEAKERBeing paranoid, I have now changed the password

53:05SPEAKERand am looking into guest networks and network segregation.

53:09SPEAKERHow do you deal with people you know?

53:11SPEAKERI'm sorry, how do you deal with people you kinda know

53:13SPEAKERaccessing your network?

53:15SPEAKERIs a guest network and cycling passwords

53:16SPEAKERafter every visit a good idea?

53:18SPEAKERVLANs, any other suggestions?

53:20SPEAKERAt one point in the past,

53:21SPEAKERI limited the number of IP addresses available,

53:24SPEAKERso to add a new device,

53:25SPEAKERI would have to increment the available addresses

53:27SPEAKERby one manually, but that was a total pain in the ass.

53:30SPEAKER- So that IP address thing won't actually work

53:32SPEAKERif somebody knows what they're doing

53:33SPEAKER'cause they'll just look for an unused number

53:35SPEAKERin the available range for some device that's turned off

53:38SPEAKERand squat on that.

53:39SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't think you're asking this here,

53:42SPEAKERbut I would never ever just let a random person

53:44SPEAKERthat I don't know well onto my network.

53:47SPEAKER- Yeah, like family members get access

53:49SPEAKERto the real wifi, right?

53:50SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, but I don't know exactly

53:54SPEAKERwhat all the ins and outs here would be,

53:55SPEAKERbut if they do anything truly illicit on your home internet,

53:58SPEAKERyou're probably liable for that,

54:00SPEAKERunless it works its way through law enforcement enough

54:04SPEAKERthat you can prove that it was somebody else

54:06SPEAKERthat was using your internet access

54:09SPEAKERto access something awful.

54:13SPEAKERNot something awful, the forum, to be clear,

54:15SPEAKERbut something terrible. - I mean, look,

54:16SPEAKERthat should be criminal in a lot of jurisdictions.

54:19SPEAKER- That is a very valid point.

54:20SPEAKER- So like, for example,

54:23SPEAKERI've known my neighbors for 15 years, right?

54:25SPEAKERAnd if their cable modem was down and they were like,

54:27SPEAKER"Hey, can you hit us with wifi for a few days

54:30SPEAKERwhile we wait for cable to come back up?"

54:32SPEAKERFirst, I would tell them to consider fiber,

54:33SPEAKERand then I would run the long ethernet cable over

54:36SPEAKERto their house and plug it into their business for them.

54:39SPEAKER- I mean, if it's somebody you're really close to,

54:41SPEAKERit's probably fine, but I still can't,

54:42SPEAKERmy mind can't help playing out all the possible scenarios

54:45SPEAKERof like, what if that device gets stolen?

54:47SPEAKERWhat if somebody that you don't know

54:49SPEAKERis over at their house and starts using it

54:51SPEAKERto do something bad?

54:52SPEAKERLike, it's just, I feel like you're just exposing yourself

54:54SPEAKERto a known risk that's just not worth it.

54:57SPEAKER- Well, I was gonna say, so we used to,

55:00SPEAKERlike when we had babysitters come over regularly,

55:02SPEAKERthey would get the wifi 'cause cell service

55:04SPEAKERis bad in our neighborhood.

55:06SPEAKERSo I set up a guest network,

55:07SPEAKERwhich is like most routers that do this,

55:09SPEAKERyou can do it manually with VLANs and all that stuff,

55:12SPEAKERbut I just had a separate SSID

55:14SPEAKERthat they were able to log into,

55:16SPEAKERgave them full access to the outside network,

55:18SPEAKERbut they couldn't see anything inside the network,

55:21SPEAKERand they were getting a different internal IP address range.

55:24SPEAKERSo presumably if they did something gnarly,

55:27SPEAKERthen I could go back and see which device it was

55:30SPEAKERbased on a series of other things.

55:32SPEAKERBut like, I guess babysitters are relatively trustworthy

55:36SPEAKER'cause we were using a service that did background checks

55:38SPEAKERand stuff like that.

55:40SPEAKERI, yeah, I don't know about neighbors,

55:44SPEAKERlike if the neighbors were moving in

55:46SPEAKERand didn't have internet yet,

55:47SPEAKERI would probably be okay with that,

55:48SPEAKERbut like that would be a short-term solution.

55:50SPEAKERI'm not interested in funding their internet.

55:53SPEAKER- Yeah, I think the maximal approach here,

55:55SPEAKERshort of just a zero tolerance,

55:56SPEAKERnever letting people on your LAN, period,

55:58SPEAKERis to make a guest network

55:59SPEAKERand even people you know should just go

56:02SPEAKERon the guest network for segregation,

56:03SPEAKERand then you don't have to worry about it anymore.

56:04SPEAKER- Yeah, I think if I went over and was like,

56:06SPEAKER"Hey, our internet's done, can my kid use your wifi?"

56:09SPEAKERAnd they were like, "No, fuck you."

56:10SPEAKERI would probably think they were axe murderers.

56:12SPEAKER(laughing)

56:13SPEAKER- Fair.

56:16SPEAKERI guess it seems like I think probably

56:17SPEAKERa lot of commercial routers and systems

56:20SPEAKERlike Ubiquiti, Unifi, stuff,

56:23SPEAKERhave got like relatively easy sort of guest networks

56:25SPEAKERset up in there.

56:26SPEAKERYou don't have to know how a VLAN works

56:29SPEAKERand how to route between different subnets

56:30SPEAKERor anything like that these days.

56:31SPEAKERI mean, obviously, if you do know that stuff,

56:33SPEAKERyou can set more elaborate stuff up.

56:35SPEAKERBut I think a lot of the time,

56:37SPEAKERit's like, in a lot of commercial routers,

56:39SPEAKERisn't it as simple as just kind of,

56:40SPEAKERthere's a separate dialogue

56:41SPEAKERfor making a guest network, SSID?

56:44SPEAKER- It literally says, "Hey, make a guest network here,"

56:46SPEAKERand it partitions them off from the rest of the,

56:49SPEAKERbasically all it does is turn off

56:50SPEAKERtalking to other internal IP addresses.

56:52SPEAKER- Right, especially if it's that easy,

56:54SPEAKERjust go ahead and set one up.

56:55SPEAKER- Well, and the nice thing about that is,

56:58SPEAKERon some of the newer ones,

57:00SPEAKERnewer like consumer routers I've used,

57:03SPEAKERyou even manage it with an app

57:04SPEAKERand you can hit the button to turn the guest network

57:06SPEAKERon and off when somebody's over.

57:08SPEAKERSo like, yeah.

57:10SPEAKER- Yes.

57:11SPEAKERRKHarris62, I'm pretty sure

57:13SPEAKERwe have not answered this question.

57:14SPEAKERI apologize if we have.

57:16SPEAKERI don't think we have.

57:17SPEAKEROkay, the question is,

57:18SPEAKER"I'm looking at OLED monitors for my gaming PC.

57:21SPEAKERWhat's the difference between QD OLED and WOLED,

57:24SPEAKERor WOLED?

57:25SPEAKERDo you have a preference?

57:26SPEAKERI love my LG OLED TV,

57:28SPEAKERbut I wasn't even aware of the distinction when I bought it."

57:31SPEAKERI think the short version here is

57:32SPEAKERyou probably really don't need to worry

57:34SPEAKERabout the distinction.

57:36SPEAKER- Yeah, I know.

57:38SPEAKER- RTINGS.com, I guess.

57:40SPEAKEREvery time I bring up that website,

57:41SPEAKERI question whether I'm saying it right.

57:43SPEAKERI'd still- - I think it's RTINGS.

57:45SPEAKER- Should you save RTINGS when there's no A?

57:47SPEAKERI'm not sure.

57:47SPEAKERRTINGS.com, like probably maybe the most authoritative

57:52SPEAKERlike display review site on the internet out there.

57:55SPEAKER- They do good work, yeah.

57:56SPEAKERThey've got a really good explainer article

57:59SPEAKERfor the difference here.

58:00SPEAKERIt really, all it really has to do with

58:03SPEAKERis the layers of technology on the display

58:06SPEAKERand how the OLED produces color.

58:08SPEAKERLike the W, I believe in WOLED stands for white.

58:11SPEAKER- Yeah.

58:12SPEAKER- 'Cause that's using white OLEDs.

58:14SPEAKERQD OLED is using a quantum dot layer,

58:16SPEAKERwhich a lot of other non-OLED TVs also use,

58:19SPEAKERwhich enhances color reproduction.

58:21SPEAKERI believe the OLEDs or the LEDs are blue in that case.

58:25SPEAKER- The quantum dots also improve brightness as well.

58:28SPEAKER- Yeah, yes.

58:29SPEAKERSo as you kind of alluded to in this question,

58:33SPEAKERLG uses white OLED and Samsung uses QD OLED,

58:38SPEAKERif that matters to you.

58:39SPEAKERAnd also I believe the other thing

58:40SPEAKERwhich is mentioned in that article

58:41SPEAKERis that they tend to use different sub-pixel layouts.

58:44SPEAKER- Yeah, Samsung's always done their own sub-pixel layouts,

58:47SPEAKERwhich like cause some problems in the early days of phones,

58:50SPEAKERbut it's been pretty okay lately.

58:52SPEAKER- Yeah, and I like that.

58:53SPEAKERI think the only reason that would ever really matter to you

58:55SPEAKERis if you're using the display as a computer monitor, right?

58:58SPEAKER'Cause I think that's got some ramifications

58:59SPEAKERon like text rendering sharpness and stuff like that.

59:02SPEAKER- You can typically calibrate the text rendering to the pan.

59:05SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

59:06SPEAKERBut I think probably you shouldn't worry about

59:10SPEAKERthat level of specifics in the tech of the display.

59:13SPEAKERI think you're probably better off

59:14SPEAKERjust looking at reviews of displays you're interested in

59:18SPEAKERand going on a more like a qualitative sort of assessment.

59:24SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

59:24SPEAKERLike read about like what is the real world experience

59:27SPEAKERof looking at the screen?

59:28SPEAKERI'm not like, what do they say about the brightness

59:29SPEAKERand the color accuracy and don't necessarily worry so much

59:33SPEAKERabout what tech is driving the display under the hood?

59:35SPEAKER- I was gonna say for me,

59:36SPEAKERit's more the things that matter to me much more

59:39SPEAKERare what refresh rates does it support?

59:42SPEAKERHow does the, which HDR specs does it support?

59:45SPEAKERSo I think Samsung still doesn't support a couple of those.

59:49SPEAKERThen like, this is like a tertiary decider for me.

59:53SPEAKER- Yeah.

59:53SPEAKER- It's usually tied to brand.

59:55SPEAKER- Yeah, but there are some quirks there.

59:57SPEAKERLike I believe this is still the case

59:58SPEAKERwhen I was shopping for TVs for my parents

1:00:00SPEAKERa couple of years ago when we talked about that.

1:00:03SPEAKERAt the time, the Samsung OLEDs that use quantum dot layer

1:00:07SPEAKERhave a weird quirk where in like very bright light,

1:00:10SPEAKERlike sunlight, they have a little bit of like

1:00:12SPEAKERa pinkish purple cast to them.

1:00:15SPEAKERAnd I think that's still the case.

1:00:16SPEAKERSo like there are some maybe little gotchas there

1:00:19SPEAKERassociated with the technology to look for.

1:00:21SPEAKERBut again, that type of thing should be mentioned

1:00:24SPEAKERin reviews without you having to know like

1:00:26SPEAKERwhat type of OLED is embedded in the screen.

1:00:29SPEAKER- The Artings conclusion of their QD led

1:00:32SPEAKERversus WOLED article basically says

1:00:36SPEAKERif your room's really bright, the WOLEDs are clear winners.

1:00:39SPEAKERAnd otherwise it doesn't kind of matter.

1:00:41SPEAKER- Yeah, yep.

1:00:42SPEAKEROkay, Fishy J, which is the smarter move,

1:00:45SPEAKERbacking up my PCs to my Synology NAST

1:00:48SPEAKERand then backing up my NAST to Backblaze,

1:00:51SPEAKERor backing up my PCs and NAST to Backblaze separately.

1:00:54SPEAKER- I kind of like doing all at once,

1:00:55SPEAKERbut it's a real pain in the butt to restore.

1:00:57SPEAKER- Well, there are a couple of things there.

1:00:59SPEAKERThere's like you just mentioned,

1:01:00SPEAKERthere's the logistical process of restoring the backup

1:01:04SPEAKERto the NAST and then having to restore the PCs

1:01:06SPEAKERfrom backups on the NAST.

1:01:07SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:01:08SPEAKER- But there's also the pricing issue on Backblaze

1:01:09SPEAKERand the way they segment backup types.

1:01:13SPEAKER- Yeah, NAST backups on Backblaze are really expensive now.

1:01:15SPEAKER- Yeah, so it'll be far cheaper.

1:01:18SPEAKERBasically they're, unless something has changed,

1:01:20SPEAKERI haven't looked in a couple of years,

1:01:21SPEAKERbut the segmentation they used to have,

1:01:22SPEAKERand I assume still do, is kind of client machines

1:01:26SPEAKERcan back up to their flat rate service.

1:01:28SPEAKERSo like those machines, Macs, I don't know about Linux.

1:01:32SPEAKERI doubt they include Linux in that to be fair.

1:01:36SPEAKER- I'm looking right now.

1:01:37SPEAKER- Maybe they have a way of like kind of detecting

1:01:39SPEAKERdesktop Linux, but like what they're trying to do

1:01:41SPEAKERis prevent people from backing up like massive home servers

1:01:45SPEAKERand NASAs and stuff like that to their flat rate service.

1:01:48SPEAKER'Cause like, what is the, I haven't looked in a while.

1:01:50SPEAKERI think the flat rate--

1:01:50SPEAKER- It's 99 bucks a year.

1:01:51SPEAKER- Oh, wow, okay.

1:01:52SPEAKER- You buy annually.

1:01:53SPEAKER- So that's even less, I was gonna say 10 bucks a month,

1:01:55SPEAKERbut that's even less than that.

1:01:57SPEAKERLike if you have Windows Mac machines,

1:01:58SPEAKERyou want to back those up directly

1:01:59SPEAKERbecause it's just that flat rate per month,

1:02:01SPEAKERno matter how big they are.

1:02:03SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:02:04SPEAKER- But they charge by the data.

1:02:06SPEAKERThey charge by the gigabyte or terabyte

1:02:08SPEAKERif you're backing up from any kind of server or NAS.

1:02:11SPEAKERSo, you know, if you don't have a ton of extra data

1:02:14SPEAKERon those machines, you could just back them up to your NAS

1:02:18SPEAKERand then back that up.

1:02:18SPEAKERAnd you wouldn't be paying a lot extra

1:02:20SPEAKERif you're doing small backups from your client machines.

1:02:23SPEAKERBut if you're backing up a lot of data from those clients,

1:02:25SPEAKERyou should back those up directly

1:02:27SPEAKER'cause it will get a cheaper rate.

1:02:29SPEAKER- Yeah, their NAS backup has a start now button

1:02:32SPEAKERthat ends with contact sales.

1:02:34SPEAKER- Yeah, right.

1:02:35SPEAKER- It starts at six bucks per terabyte.

1:02:37SPEAKER- Yeah, is that still,

1:02:39SPEAKERthat was under the Backblaze B2 umbrella?

1:02:42SPEAKER- Yeah, it's the B2 cloud storage, yeah.

1:02:43SPEAKER- I looked at that briefly when I was thinking about

1:02:46SPEAKERbacking stuff up to the cloud,

1:02:47SPEAKERbut I don't have that much on my NAS

1:02:50SPEAKERthat's like truly mission critical.

1:02:52SPEAKERI would die if I lost it.

1:02:54SPEAKER- So, I was gonna say for me,

1:02:56SPEAKERthere's a two-tier approach to this.

1:02:58SPEAKERLike, as long as I have two copies of everything,

1:02:59SPEAKERI kind of don't care where the second one is.

1:03:03SPEAKERI back up my local PCs, including like my wife's Mac.

1:03:06SPEAKERI need to set up backup on my daughter's computer, actually,

1:03:08SPEAKERwhen I think about it, to the NAS.

1:03:11SPEAKERAnd that runs automatically every once, every, you know,

1:03:13SPEAKERmultiple times a week, whatever.

1:03:16SPEAKERThen I have a 20 terabyte external drive

1:03:20SPEAKERthat just sits in, that connects to the NAS

1:03:23SPEAKERand gets all the changes dumped in.

1:03:26SPEAKERSo, I have two copies plugged into the NAS.

1:03:28SPEAKERIt's probably not the most secure thing,

1:03:30SPEAKER'cause like if something happens to the NAS

1:03:32SPEAKERand stuff starts getting deleted,

1:03:33SPEAKERit'll replicate those down over the next time

1:03:35SPEAKERthe NAS backup runs every week.

1:03:38SPEAKERBut that's probably good enough for me,

1:03:41SPEAKERgiven what I have on there.

1:03:42SPEAKER- Yep, yep.

1:03:44SPEAKERAnything really important, I don't know.

1:03:46SPEAKERPut it on a USB drive in a safe deposit box.

1:03:48SPEAKER- Well, or like I put it on Dropbox, you know?

1:03:52SPEAKERI put it in a encrypted folder in Dropbox

1:03:54SPEAKERand then it's hard to get rid of.

1:03:55SPEAKER- Yeah, I thought about,

1:03:57SPEAKERthis is beyond the scope of this episode,

1:03:59SPEAKERI thought for a long time about messing with like the,

1:04:02SPEAKERthe Azure blob storage or like Amazon Glacier,

1:04:05SPEAKERsome of those like super duper long-term,

1:04:07SPEAKERvery cheap storage options.

1:04:10SPEAKERThat would be for like family photo type stuff

1:04:13SPEAKERor home movies like, or just like really important,

1:04:17SPEAKERirreplaceable stuff.

1:04:18SPEAKER'Cause those services are very cheap to upload and store.

1:04:22SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:04:22SPEAKER- They only get expensive if you have to retrieve the data.

1:04:25SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like you don't wanna be pulling data

1:04:27SPEAKERfrom them on the right.

1:04:28SPEAKERYou wanna pull it down once after a disaster.

1:04:30SPEAKER- Right, it's like a place to put stuff

1:04:31SPEAKERthat you don't think you'll ever actually need to retrieve

1:04:34SPEAKERunless, if you get to the point where you would need

1:04:36SPEAKERto retrieve it and pay their large fee to do so,

1:04:38SPEAKERyou would probably be happy to pay the fee

1:04:39SPEAKERbecause whatever it is you put there was that important.

1:04:43SPEAKER- Yeah, like I wouldn't put my DVD rip

1:04:45SPEAKERand Blu-ray rip collections on that.

1:04:47SPEAKER- No, I'd like to, absolutely not.

1:04:48SPEAKER- Because who cares, I'd just re-rip 'em.

1:04:51SPEAKER- Again, it's like kind of like family or personal stuff

1:04:53SPEAKERthat's like really irreplaceable.

1:04:55SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:04:56SPEAKER- All right, you wanna call it there?

1:04:57SPEAKER- We can call it there, yeah.

1:05:00SPEAKERI hope you, I hope folks enjoyed the show.

1:05:02SPEAKERAs always, "Bread and Will Made a Tech Pod"

1:05:04SPEAKERis a listener supported podcast.

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1:05:22SPEAKERminus the Stripe transaction fee and Patreon's fee,

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1:05:28SPEAKERI don't know, I gotta look at that,

1:05:30SPEAKERyou can gain access to the Tech Pod Discord

1:05:32SPEAKERand our monthly patron exclusive episode

1:05:35SPEAKERwhere this month we talked about whether,

1:05:39SPEAKERlook, we broached new ground in the is it a sandwich debate.

1:05:42SPEAKEROkay? - We did, yeah.

1:05:43SPEAKER- Talked about North Carolina stuff.

1:05:45SPEAKER- Yes, we talked about driving old cars.

1:05:47SPEAKER- Talked about driving old cars,

1:05:48SPEAKERwe talked about Brad's dirty old gas.

1:05:51SPEAKER- Whoa.

1:05:52SPEAKER- I'm sorry, I just had to get it out there.

1:05:54SPEAKER- Look, the gas is now in the tank,

1:05:56SPEAKERit's getting driven, it's getting burned off, it's fine.

1:05:57SPEAKERMan, some early feedback on the Discord

1:06:00SPEAKERabout the driving old car stuff

1:06:02SPEAKERhas kind of put a new fear in me about driving that old car.

1:06:05SPEAKER- Like I had forgotten about the problem

1:06:08SPEAKERwith steering columns prior to 1967 or whatever it is.

1:06:11SPEAKER- Oh wait, was there like a law passed?

1:06:13SPEAKERIs there a specific cutoff? - I believe so, yeah.

1:06:14SPEAKER- Oh my God, 'cause that car is a '66

1:06:16SPEAKERand the description of what the steering column

1:06:20SPEAKERtends to do to the driver in a collision

1:06:22SPEAKERhas got me a little spooked.

1:06:25SPEAKER- Yeah, don't go fast, gotta go slow.

1:06:29SPEAKERBut anyway, you can go to patreon.com/techpod, sign up,

1:06:32SPEAKERget access to the Discord,

1:06:33SPEAKERhang out with a bunch of beautiful nerds.

1:06:35SPEAKERWe had several extended conversations.

1:06:38SPEAKERActually, I got some real good shoe tips

1:06:41SPEAKERfrom the TechPod Discord this week

1:06:42SPEAKERbecause my feet have gotten larger as I've gotten older.

1:06:45SPEAKER- So I had an older family member on this trip.

1:06:48SPEAKERI bought a pair of shoes while I was out there

1:06:50SPEAKERand I just kind of got talking to him about it

1:06:51SPEAKERand they told me that same thing,

1:06:53SPEAKERthat your feet get bigger as you age and I had no idea

1:06:55SPEAKERand I looked it up and sure enough, it's true.

1:06:57SPEAKER- Well, and for me, it's a double whammy

1:07:00SPEAKERbecause when I started working at home,

1:07:01SPEAKERI stopped wearing like normal,

1:07:03SPEAKERyou know, going out of the house shoes

1:07:04SPEAKERand started wearing stuff that's more floaty.

1:07:06SPEAKERSo I went from a 12 and a half to a 13

1:07:08SPEAKERand that puts you in a different A, selection of shoes

1:07:12SPEAKERand B, price ranges, which stinks.

1:07:15SPEAKER- I bought a pair of 13s,

1:07:17SPEAKERwhich I have worn for years on this trip

1:07:19SPEAKERand they were too small and I have them,

1:07:20SPEAKERapparently I'm now a 14.

1:07:21SPEAKER- Oh, hey, what'd you get on the 13s?

1:07:23SPEAKERMaybe I'll take them off your hands.

1:07:24SPEAKER- Actually, another family member took them off my hands.

1:07:27SPEAKER- Damn it.

1:07:28SPEAKER- 'Cause they saw me wearing the 14s and they liked them

1:07:30SPEAKERand then they tried on the 13s before I sent them back

1:07:32SPEAKERand they fit, so now they are in--

1:07:33SPEAKER- Beautiful. - Yes.

1:07:35SPEAKER- But anyway, so yeah, all sorts of interesting stuff.

1:07:38SPEAKERI learned something new there every day.

1:07:39SPEAKERIt's a wonderful, wonderful community full of nerds.

1:07:42SPEAKERAnd you can go to patreon.com/techpod and sign up.

1:07:46SPEAKERAs always, thanks to all of our patrons,

1:07:49SPEAKERbut a very special thank you goes out

1:07:50SPEAKERto our executive producer tier patrons,

1:07:52SPEAKERincluding Jason Lee, Andrew Slosky, Jordan Lippett.

1:07:56SPEAKERThe Bunny Fiend is watching.

1:07:58SPEAKER- Whoa. - Twinkle Twinkie,

1:08:00SPEAKERDavid Allen, James Kamik, and Pantheon,

1:08:02SPEAKERmakers of the HS3 High Speed 3D Printer.

1:08:05SPEAKERThank you all so, so much.

1:08:06SPEAKERWe appreciate each and every one of you.

1:08:08SPEAKER- Thank you, thank you, thank you.

1:08:10SPEAKER- And that'll do it for us this week.

1:08:12SPEAKERWe'll be back next week with another episode of the Tech Pod.

1:08:16SPEAKERAs always, please consider the environment

1:08:18SPEAKERfor printing this podcast.

1:08:20SPEAKER(upbeat music)