74: Mining for Computronium

00:00SPEAKER- I spent this afternoon building Dyson spheres.

00:02SPEAKER- What?

00:03SPEAKER- You can't do that by yourself.

00:04SPEAKERYou need at least like three other people

00:06SPEAKERto absorb all the radiation emitted by a star.

00:09SPEAKER- Look, phase one, build a giant Mecca.

00:12SPEAKERPhase two, build a bunch of factories

00:15SPEAKERthat build the parts of other stuff.

00:17SPEAKERPhase three, question mark, phase four,

00:20SPEAKERabsorb all the energy of the sun.

00:22SPEAKER- Profit and whatever the energy absorption

00:24SPEAKERversion of profit is.

00:25SPEAKER- Look, Mr. Burns built the shade over Springfield.

00:28SPEAKERThat worked out well for him.

00:29SPEAKERI don't know if I ever saw the end of that episode,

00:31SPEAKERbut I feel like it's a good strategy.

00:33SPEAKERThat game...

00:35SPEAKER- Never really saw you as an industrial magnate before,

00:37SPEAKERbut I guess, you know, people pivot careers all the time.

00:40SPEAKER- Is there something broken about my psyche

00:43SPEAKERthat makes those kind of factory/world devourer games

00:47SPEAKERso compelling to me?

00:48SPEAKER- I was not, so I sat in on a video

00:50SPEAKERand watched Vinny play that game this week,

00:52SPEAKERand I don't know why it didn't occur to me,

00:54SPEAKERbut I was not ready for the world devouring aspect

00:56SPEAKERof that game.

00:57SPEAKERIt was like, to me, it was just a very positive,

00:59SPEAKERlike, you know, it was an additive,

01:01SPEAKERlike, oh, let's build this thing.

01:03SPEAKERThe part where you have to basically strip mine

01:05SPEAKERan entire solar system in order to do that.

01:07SPEAKER- Multiple solar systems.

01:08SPEAKER- It kind of escaped me, that you essentially,

01:10SPEAKERyou're like, you really would have to just eradicate

01:13SPEAKERevery planet in the system to even come close

01:15SPEAKERto doing something like that.

01:16SPEAKER- I don't think there's enough,

01:17SPEAKERI think, hmm, this is hazy memory,

01:20SPEAKERbut I believe that there's not enough mass

01:22SPEAKERin the solar system to make even a ring.

01:25SPEAKER- Really?

01:26SPEAKER- Around the sun at the orbit that you would need

01:28SPEAKERto do a Dyson sphere for it to be stable.

01:31SPEAKER- So when you say the orbit you would need,

01:32SPEAKERis that like the minimum safe distance,

01:34SPEAKERor is that more of the optimal, like,

01:36SPEAKERenergy absorption range?

01:37SPEAKER- Look, I'm not a NASA scientist,

01:39SPEAKERbut my understanding is that you have to be

01:42SPEAKERa certain distance for the speed to go,

01:44SPEAKERfor it to rotate at a speed that it's gonna give you

01:46SPEAKERone G of gravity when you're standing on the inside

01:49SPEAKERlooking up at the sun.

01:50SPEAKER- Interesting, that's not the limiting factor

01:52SPEAKERI would have expected, but okay.

01:54SPEAKER- But also, like, even to do that,

01:55SPEAKERit would be like making aluminum foil,

01:57SPEAKERlike a thing a few atoms thick all the way around,

02:00SPEAKERwe still don't have enough mass,

02:01SPEAKERso you gotta get interstellar travel

02:03SPEAKERbefore you can even think about doing this.

02:05SPEAKER- We are nowhere near even a type two,

02:07SPEAKERnot even a type one civilization yet.

02:09SPEAKER- No, have you ever read, like, hard science fiction

02:12SPEAKERabout, like, rings, and have you read Ian Banks' books?

02:17SPEAKER- No, I've always thought about, I've read about him,

02:21SPEAKERI've thought about dabbling with his stuff.

02:22SPEAKER- So first off, only read his books

02:24SPEAKERthat are by Ian M. Banks,

02:26SPEAKER'cause, like, those denote the science fiction books,

02:28SPEAKERthe other ones are often disconcerting

02:32SPEAKERwith wasps and things.

02:33SPEAKER- Interesting.

02:35SPEAKER- But the culture books are fabulous,

02:37SPEAKERand are the best kind of weird, hard science fiction

02:43SPEAKERfrom the distant, distant future.

02:46SPEAKERAnd they talk about, like, one of those books

02:48SPEAKERis set on a ring world that society collapsed on,

02:52SPEAKERand because there's no minerals and stuff buried

02:55SPEAKERin the Earth underneath the bottom of the ring,

02:57SPEAKERthere's just, it's just, it's just a ring.

03:00SPEAKEROnce society collapses, they can't start back

03:02SPEAKERfrom basics and rebuild it.

03:04SPEAKERIt has to be bootstrapped by people outside the ring.

03:08SPEAKERSo it's like, there's like feral, I'm gonna say humans,

03:12SPEAKERbut I think they're probably not humans on the,

03:14SPEAKERthat inhabit this ring in, like, a neo-lithic world

03:18SPEAKERwhere they're taking scraps of metal

03:19SPEAKERand stuff they find from the environment,

03:21SPEAKERand using those to make spears and shit.

03:23SPEAKER- Sounds true.

03:24SPEAKER- When there's, like, laser engines and stuff all around,

03:26SPEAKERand they just don't know how to use it,

03:26SPEAKER'cause it's magic and demons and all that.

03:28SPEAKERHe's very good.

03:29SPEAKER- That sounds very high, it's a very high concept.

03:31SPEAKERThe book I was reading about by him recently,

03:34SPEAKERI think is a one-off.

03:36SPEAKERI don't think it was part of any series,

03:37SPEAKERbut I can't remember the name of it.

03:39SPEAKERIt seemed to be, like, the actual plot, I think,

03:41SPEAKERwas some kind of, like, spy fiction,

03:43SPEAKERlike, assassination plot, murder mystery,

03:45SPEAKERkind of high intrigue sort of thing.

03:47SPEAKERBut the thing that caught my attention

03:49SPEAKERwas that it was set on a rogue planet,

03:50SPEAKERwhich is to say, a planet that has been ejected

03:52SPEAKERfrom its galaxy.

03:54SPEAKER- No, that's a culture book.

03:56SPEAKER- Oh, is it really?

03:57SPEAKER- Yeah, or at least from its solar system, yeah.

03:58SPEAKER- Okay, but interesting.

04:00SPEAKERYeah, but, like, what I gathered from reading the synopsis

04:02SPEAKERis that that detail didn't even really have

04:04SPEAKERany bearing on the plot.

04:06SPEAKERI just, I could really appreciate

04:07SPEAKERthat you would incorporate such an exotic concept

04:09SPEAKERinto your story and not even really focus on it.

04:11SPEAKERIt's just kind of there.

04:12SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, like, it's, those culture books are neat

04:15SPEAKERbecause they are in a distant enough future

04:18SPEAKERthat, like, spaceships are sentient hive minds.

04:20SPEAKERThis is what Elon Musk names the landing ships after,

04:23SPEAKERlike the, "Go not gently into this dark night,"

04:26SPEAKERor whatever the landing ships are named.

04:28SPEAKERThose are all culture ship names.

04:30SPEAKERAnd they're not, like, spaceships,

04:34SPEAKERthe way we think of spaceships is like a metal skin

04:36SPEAKERwith stuff around them.

04:37SPEAKERThey're just, like, force fields encompassing a mass

04:40SPEAKERof, like, houses and stuff that just travels through space.

04:47SPEAKERAnd they just kind of go, like, they just don't stop.

04:50SPEAKERThey just kind of keep going on these big routes

04:52SPEAKERand you can jump on and jump off

04:53SPEAKERand there's smaller ones and bigger ones.

04:55SPEAKERAnd it's a trip.

04:56SPEAKERThey're really good.

04:58SPEAKER- Like you said, magic.

04:59SPEAKER- Magic.

05:00SPEAKER(upbeat music)

05:17SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

05:27SPEAKER- Welcome to "Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod."

05:30SPEAKERI'm Will.

05:31SPEAKER- I'm Brad.

05:31SPEAKER- I briefly forgot the name of the show there,

05:33SPEAKERI'm not gonna lie.

05:33SPEAKER- You could have fooled me, I did not notice.

05:36SPEAKER- The pause was very pregnant.

05:37SPEAKER- Seamless.

05:39SPEAKER- Look, sometimes things just,

05:42SPEAKERyou just, they just run out of juice

05:44SPEAKERand you forget their name.

05:46SPEAKERAnd then you just, like, everybody walks away

05:49SPEAKERand stops making it, like, maybe Google Stadia.

05:52SPEAKERI don't know.

05:53SPEAKER- That's true.

05:54SPEAKERThat's, wow, an incredible segue.

05:54SPEAKERYes, here we are.

05:55SPEAKER- It was strange.

05:56SPEAKER- This was a rare, late on a Friday recording,

05:59SPEAKERso bear with us.

06:00SPEAKERThe show is a little all over the place.

06:02SPEAKER- It's also, like, 85 degrees in my office right now.

06:04SPEAKERI've been playing games in here with the door shut all day.

06:06SPEAKER- It's kind of warm here, too.

06:07SPEAKERI was enjoying the cold weather, but here we are.

06:09SPEAKER- Yeah, well, I had to take the sweat pants off

06:11SPEAKERand put on different sweat pants that are slightly warm,

06:14SPEAKERless warm.

06:15SPEAKER- But breathable.

06:16SPEAKER- But yeah, so there was Google Stadia news

06:18SPEAKERa couple of weeks ago.

06:19SPEAKER- Yeah.

06:19SPEAKER- And I've played a little bit of stuff on Stadia.

06:23SPEAKERLike, I played,

06:26SPEAKERPUBG sent me codes for PUBG on Stadia.

06:28SPEAKER- I mean, I don't think I realized PUBG,

06:30SPEAKERI should know this,

06:31SPEAKERbut I didn't realize PUBG was on Stadia for some reason.

06:34SPEAKER- Well, so I was interested in playing it

06:36SPEAKER'cause I wanted to see what rendering--

06:38SPEAKER- Or I forgot, I should say, sorry.

06:40SPEAKER- Well, I just want to see what rendering in the cloud

06:42SPEAKERdid to desync.

06:43SPEAKER'Cause, like, that game is a little bit desynchy

06:45SPEAKERat the best of times, and I wanted to see

06:47SPEAKERif moving the renderer back and transferring it to video

06:51SPEAKERwas gonna make that stuff go away.

06:52SPEAKERAnd it kind of, it just changes the way it feels

06:54SPEAKERa little bit, but nobody ever really played it there.

06:56SPEAKERSo it wasn't an issue.

06:59SPEAKERIt didn't get a develop, it didn't get an audience

07:01SPEAKERlike it did on, say, like Destiny 2 has, it seems like,

07:04SPEAKERand some other stuff.

07:06SPEAKER- So yeah, Google essentially has discontinued

07:10SPEAKERthe first-party development of games

07:12SPEAKERby its internal studios for the Stadia platform,

07:14SPEAKERand they're kind of talking about pivoting

07:16SPEAKERto some sort of technology licensing sort of situation.

07:20SPEAKER- Well, they also said they, I mean, Phil Harrison

07:23SPEAKERsaid explicitly that they were just gonna work with partners

07:26SPEAKERto bring games to the platform, not develop games themselves.

07:28SPEAKER- Yes, yes, yes, the branded Stadia platform will persist,

07:31SPEAKERand they will continue to add third-party games to it.

07:33SPEAKERI don't know if they'll ever get around to the,

07:35SPEAKERwhat it seems like they should have done

07:36SPEAKERfrom the beginning, which is the flat subscription fee

07:38SPEAKERfor a lineup of games, as opposed to purely selling games

07:42SPEAKERall at cart for money.

07:44SPEAKERIt seems like, I don't know why they thought

07:46SPEAKERthat was the way to go, especially with Google's reputation

07:48SPEAKERfor killing things, which is the whole point

07:50SPEAKERof this conversation, and with the extra ephemeral nature

07:55SPEAKERof buying games that only exists in a streaming format,

07:57SPEAKERlike people, you know, enough people are already skittish

08:00SPEAKERabout buying digital games that at least still live

08:02SPEAKERon a hard drive under their TV.

08:04SPEAKERLike when you even take that out of the equation

08:07SPEAKERand it literally is not even in your house anymore,

08:09SPEAKERlike I feel like, you know, we're not really here

08:12SPEAKERto dissect their business model so much,

08:14SPEAKERbut like, I feel like even that,

08:15SPEAKERthey were kind of shooting themselves

08:16SPEAKERin the foot from day one.

08:17SPEAKER- Well, like the biggest, if we want to postmortem

08:21SPEAKERthe service is not dead yet, the biggest mistake

08:23SPEAKERthat they made was that when they launched this thing

08:27SPEAKERthat was $120 or $130 buy-in at the beginning,

08:32SPEAKERand they didn't actually like launch with any games really

08:35SPEAKERthat used the features of it,

08:37SPEAKERnor were they working actively with third parties

08:40SPEAKERand saying, hey, we will pay you

08:43SPEAKERto bring your third party game,

08:44SPEAKERlike we will cover the cost of porting your third party game

08:46SPEAKERto our weird new platform,

08:48SPEAKERbecause we want there to be a bunch of games,

08:49SPEAKERso they ended up launching with like a bunch

08:52SPEAKERof three, four year old games and like two original IPs

08:56SPEAKERthat kind of nobody cared about,

08:58SPEAKERand then slowly rolled out, like Destiny eventually came,

09:01SPEAKERlike when Destiny 2 went free to play,

09:02SPEAKERit came to Stadia and a bunch of other kind of games

09:05SPEAKERlike that landed, and then they had internal studios as well,

09:09SPEAKERbut like, I don't want to be the old guy

09:14SPEAKERthat's talking about the Nintendo 64,

09:16SPEAKERbut nobody would have bought that machine

09:18SPEAKERif it didn't come with Mario 64,

09:20SPEAKERand like something as weird and new as Stadia

09:24SPEAKERneeded its own Mario 64.

09:27SPEAKER- Totally, you get into the whole chicken and egg problem

09:29SPEAKERof like, how do you make games before there's a platform,

09:32SPEAKERbut how can you have a platform when there are no games?

09:34SPEAKERI mean, you know, there's- - You write big checks, Brad.

09:36SPEAKERThat's how you do it.

09:37SPEAKER- Yeah, but also, you know, games take years to make

09:39SPEAKERand you need to do it in secret

09:41SPEAKERif you're not even talking publicly about the platform

09:43SPEAKERthey're gonna run on yet.

09:46SPEAKER- Well, and in addition to writing big checks,

09:48SPEAKERyou also have to make those big investments.

09:50SPEAKERLike, it's not like Google doesn't have money to spend.

09:54SPEAKER- I mean, we will get into that later in this episode,

09:56SPEAKER'cause I think that is really the meta question

09:58SPEAKERI have around this, which is how does a company

10:00SPEAKERas flush with resources as Google kill stuff off like this?

10:04SPEAKERAnd I suspect there are probably bureaucratic,

10:07SPEAKERdeeply bureaucratic reasons for that,

10:08SPEAKERbut we'll get there in a little bit.

10:11SPEAKERBut yeah, like the upshot is they are no longer

10:15SPEAKERdeveloping Stadia games themselves internally.

10:17SPEAKERThey've laid off the people at the studios

10:18SPEAKERthey had built to do that.

10:20SPEAKERThe Stadia platform will be around

10:22SPEAKERand they will continue letting third parties

10:24SPEAKERput games on there.

10:25SPEAKER- Yeah.

10:26SPEAKER- But the kind of X factor to this,

10:28SPEAKERand probably the thing that's maybe the most relevant

10:30SPEAKERto this podcast is this,

10:32SPEAKERI'm going to quote from this Kotaku article

10:34SPEAKERthat Steven Tatiello wrote like minutes

10:36SPEAKERbefore the official blog post went up.

10:38SPEAKERHe kind of, he broke this news

10:39SPEAKERand he's got a little bit more like,

10:42SPEAKERI guess, straight talk about what they're doing

10:43SPEAKERthan Phil Harrison's blog post,

10:44SPEAKERwhich was a lot more corporate sounding.

10:48SPEAKERGoogle plans to begin offering its Stadia tech

10:51SPEAKERto publishers, opening up the possibility for Stadia

10:53SPEAKERto become the streaming tech for other video game companies,

10:57SPEAKERwhich sounds to me more like a middleware situation

11:01SPEAKERthan like, to me, that doesn't sound like,

11:03SPEAKERhey, you're going to put your games

11:04SPEAKERon a platform called Stadia.

11:07SPEAKERYou're going to get access to the underlying,

11:08SPEAKERlike, you know, kind of codecs and input latency minimization

11:13SPEAKERand whatever other like custom stuff they built

11:15SPEAKERin the stack to make Stadia run.

11:17SPEAKER- Yeah, they built custom video codecs

11:19SPEAKERand stuff for that thing.

11:20SPEAKERIt's like, it's bonkers.

11:21SPEAKER- Like, is that what that line sounds like to you?

11:23SPEAKERLike, is this straight up going to turn into

11:24SPEAKERlike a licensing operation?

11:26SPEAKER- To me, that says that if I have the right flags

11:28SPEAKERin my Google developer account,

11:30SPEAKERand I go into the app console,

11:31SPEAKERthen there's an opportunity for me to upload my Stadia app

11:34SPEAKERthat then is delivered however I see.

11:36SPEAKERSo like, it may not be something that you deliver

11:38SPEAKERthrough the Stadia service.

11:39SPEAKERIt may be that, you know,

11:41SPEAKERhow all the high-end games are landing on Switch these days,

11:45SPEAKERand it's like, Hitman 3 is a streamed version

11:49SPEAKERof Hitman running from the cloud someplace.

11:51SPEAKERThat's my guess is what they're saying is like,

11:54SPEAKERlook, so Google's weird in that they often have,

11:58SPEAKERthey have problems that normal companies don't have

12:00SPEAKERin that, like when they launched Gmail,

12:03SPEAKERthey had this problem in that they had a whole buttload

12:05SPEAKERof storage that they weren't really using for anything.

12:07SPEAKERThey're like, well, what can we do with the storage?

12:09SPEAKEREverybody has run out of space in their email all the time.

12:11SPEAKERLet's give them a gig of email space.

12:13SPEAKER- What can we do with the storage?

12:14SPEAKERLet's just give it away.

12:15SPEAKER- Yeah, but I mean, in giving it away,

12:18SPEAKERthey also developed a market for that,

12:19SPEAKERand then we all got addicted to the storage,

12:21SPEAKERand now I'm paying money to Google every year

12:22SPEAKER'cause I have too much fucking email.

12:26SPEAKERBut like that is a, looking at that with compute,

12:32SPEAKERlike they've added compute, CPU compute,

12:34SPEAKERthey've added GPU compute,

12:35SPEAKERand that stuff's great for machine learning,

12:37SPEAKERbut that market is relatively small.

12:39SPEAKERLike it's a market that uses a lot of that service,

12:43SPEAKERbut it's not billions of consumers using it.

12:45SPEAKERIt's hundreds of thousands or millions of people

12:48SPEAKERusing that machine learning stuff.

12:50SPEAKERSo what can they apply the resources to in Slack time?

12:54SPEAKEREven if it's a small, relatively small scale

12:58SPEAKERat a consumer business worldwide, it's interesting.

13:00SPEAKERAnd the other thing, so the other thing,

13:02SPEAKERnot to jump back a little bit,

13:03SPEAKERbut the thing that when you read that Totillo quote

13:07SPEAKERfrom the Kotaku article, it makes me think that look,

13:10SPEAKERrealistically, if they're making bets

13:12SPEAKERand they've been given X number of million dollars,

13:15SPEAKERare they better off spending $50 million

13:17SPEAKERbuilding a big AAA title internally

13:19SPEAKERthat could be a hit or a miss

13:20SPEAKERone way or the other?

13:21SPEAKERLike that is a hard thing to do

13:23SPEAKERfor people who've been doing it for decades

13:26SPEAKERand companies that have been doing it for decades.

13:27SPEAKERLike the fact that Ubisoft ships an Assassin's Creed game

13:31SPEAKERmore or less every year is a miracle.

13:34SPEAKERSo is it better for Google to spend that $50 million

13:37SPEAKERon one big, big ass AAA game,

13:39SPEAKERor is it better for them to spend a million

13:42SPEAKERor half a million getting 40 or 50 or more AAA games

13:47SPEAKERthat they know are successes on that platform

13:49SPEAKERor from successful franchises?

13:51SPEAKERAnd like the latter is probably the better business decision.

13:54SPEAKERIt isn't a big vote of confidence in the platform though.

13:57SPEAKER- Oh, definitely not.

13:58SPEAKERLike, I mean, it certainly does make you wonder

14:00SPEAKERif the days are numbered for Stadia period,

14:02SPEAKERnot just for first party, but just as a platform, but.

14:06SPEAKER- I mean, look, Google kills anything at any moment.

14:08SPEAKERThey'll kill it.

14:09SPEAKER- Right.

14:09SPEAKER- Search, we're turning it off.

14:11SPEAKERSearch is going away.

14:12SPEAKERDuckDuckGoose is your new future.

14:14SPEAKEREnjoy it.

14:14SPEAKER- And again, that's why the game ownership issue

14:16SPEAKERwas such a problem for me.

14:17SPEAKERI mean, conceptually,

14:18SPEAKERI was never gonna buy one of those games anyway,

14:19SPEAKER'cause I wouldn't trust Google with something like that.

14:21SPEAKERBut like, nobody should have, right?

14:23SPEAKERBecause if that service does go away,

14:25SPEAKERwhat happened to those purchases?

14:26SPEAKERLike, I guess Google is a big enough company

14:30SPEAKERthat like maybe they would do something for you

14:32SPEAKERif you would spend a bunch of money on the platform.

14:33SPEAKERI don't know what form that would take, but.

14:36SPEAKER- I mean, it's all, what will happen is all in the licenses.

14:39SPEAKERSo like if the service goes away and it's Google's fault,

14:43SPEAKERthen there's probably terms in the contract

14:45SPEAKERthat you agree to when you sign up to a Firstadia account

14:47SPEAKERthat say, hey, we will refund blah, blah, blah,

14:50SPEAKERminus depreciation or whatever over the course of time,

14:52SPEAKERor we'll give you a gift card for whatever.

14:55SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, you know, if this were a startup

14:56SPEAKERthat had taken a bunch of VC to make this happen

14:58SPEAKERand it was their sole business model

15:00SPEAKERand they bet the farm on it and they went away,

15:01SPEAKERlike that, you would just lose all that stuff, right?

15:03SPEAKERLike it was just-

15:03SPEAKER- Like Gaikai or online.

15:05SPEAKER- Right, right, it would just go poof.

15:06SPEAKERBut yeah, Google obviously is, you know,

15:08SPEAKERbeing one of the biggest companies in the world,

15:09SPEAKERyou would think they would at least do something

15:11SPEAKERfor people that are stuck in that situation.

15:12SPEAKERBut yeah, like, is there much more to expand on,

15:17SPEAKERyou think, with this stuff about them

15:19SPEAKERextending the technology to other companies?

15:22SPEAKER- Well, I mean, I think other companies to me says,

15:27SPEAKERhey, EA is releasing Madden

15:29SPEAKERand they want it to run on Switch,

15:31SPEAKERbut it's not gonna run on Switch,

15:32SPEAKERor they want it to run on phones,

15:33SPEAKERbut it's too, you know,

15:34SPEAKERespecially with ray tracing and stuff

15:36SPEAKERin the newer games that are launching on the new consoles,

15:39SPEAKERlike that stuff, there's no hope of back.

15:42SPEAKERIf you already, if you're,

15:46SPEAKERthere's a time in the not too distant future

15:47SPEAKERwhen games will be developed ray tracing first,

15:50SPEAKERprobably it's already happening, right?

15:51SPEAKER'Cause they'll start to assume

15:52SPEAKERthat people have 2000 series Nvidia cards

15:55SPEAKERand what is it?

15:59SPEAKERBig Navi, whatever the current gen ATI AMD cards are.

16:02SPEAKER- RDNA2. - RDNA2, thank you.

16:05SPEAKEROn PC- - And the big thing

16:07SPEAKERis the consoles, of course,

16:07SPEAKERnow that both consoles have it,

16:09SPEAKERthat will start trickling down from there.

16:11SPEAKER- Yeah, so if you're looking at,

16:13SPEAKERif you're looking at as a PC vendor,

16:15SPEAKERas a game publisher, do we write two full pipelines

16:19SPEAKERand do two full sets of the assets

16:21SPEAKERthat are required to make ray tracing work

16:22SPEAKERand the traditional raster renderer work,

16:26SPEAKERthen do you,

16:29SPEAKERdo you go out and launch,

16:33SPEAKERdo you do that work or do you just pay Google

16:35SPEAKERX number of dollars on every $60, $70 copy sold

16:40SPEAKERso that you can put that game on Switch

16:41SPEAKERand hit the 60 million people

16:43SPEAKERor whatever owns Switches now, Google just talked to me.

16:48SPEAKER- (laughs) They know, they're listening, fuck.

16:51SPEAKER- But yeah, I mean, the point is it's probably cheaper

16:53SPEAKERto pay to run it on Stadia than it is

16:56SPEAKERto build a second renderer

16:57SPEAKERif you're looking in the future two years.

16:58SPEAKER- Right. - And that's what,

16:59SPEAKERGoogle is really good at looking at the future

17:01SPEAKERand seeing, oh, is this a business that's gonna grow

17:04SPEAKERor is this a business that's gonna fade?

17:06SPEAKERAnd they don't keep the ones

17:07SPEAKERthat are fading around for very long.

17:08SPEAKER- Yeah, you can say that again.

17:09SPEAKERWe'll get to that in a little bit.

17:11SPEAKER- Yeah. - I wonder,

17:14SPEAKERespecially in a marketplace like the Switch,

17:16SPEAKERlike the eShop, I wonder how much the fact

17:19SPEAKERthat a game is streaming starts kind of getting buried

17:21SPEAKERbelow the fold or whatever the fold equivalent is

17:24SPEAKERon a store page, you know what I mean?

17:25SPEAKERWhere like they sell the game,

17:27SPEAKERbut they don't necessarily call attention to the fact

17:28SPEAKERthat it's not running locally, that it's a streaming thing.

17:30SPEAKERI mean, I guess you always have to give people enough

17:32SPEAKERof a heads up to make sure their connections are adequate.

17:36SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I would assume, but at this point,

17:39SPEAKEReverybody has Netflix and like the connection

17:44SPEAKERfor a 720p stream on a handheld Switch

17:46SPEAKERis not that much different than watching Netflix, right?

17:49SPEAKER- Right. - I guess the bigger question

17:52SPEAKERI'm wondering about is when in the consumer's mind

17:55SPEAKERthat distinction stops mattering so much.

17:59SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm looking to see what Hitman looks like

18:02SPEAKERin the store.

18:03SPEAKERHere it is, Hitman 3 cloud version free.

18:07SPEAKERSo I guess they do a demo so you can play it

18:10SPEAKERand get going.

18:12SPEAKERLike the thing that's interesting to me about this

18:14SPEAKERis for games, like if you look at Call of Duty,

18:17SPEAKERit's a bazillion gigabytes.

18:19SPEAKERI don't, I play Call of Duty maybe once a month.

18:22SPEAKERA 70 meg version of Call of Duty that just lives

18:26SPEAKERon my computer and I tap into the cloud

18:29SPEAKERwhenever I wanna play, actually sounds like a much better way

18:31SPEAKERto play that than devoting 250 gigs of my hard drive

18:34SPEAKERto that right now.

18:35SPEAKER- Sure.

18:36SPEAKER- So I like, I'm not averse to this.

18:39SPEAKERI like, I think, I don't know.

18:43SPEAKERIt's called Hitman 3 cloud version and it doesn't,

18:46SPEAKERon the PC at least, the store page doesn't say anything

18:49SPEAKERabout, let's see, does it say you need a network connection?

18:52SPEAKERNo, it just says cloud version.

18:54SPEAKEROh wait, here we go.

18:55SPEAKERYou can only download a free launcher to test the game

18:57SPEAKERfor a limited amount of time.

18:58SPEAKERThe game uses cloud streaming technology

18:59SPEAKERand you require a nearly, a persistent high speed

19:02SPEAKERinternet connection to play the game.

19:04SPEAKERIf your connection becomes unstable,

19:05SPEAKERthe service will disconnect after a few minutes.

19:08SPEAKERPlease use the free launcher to test the availability

19:10SPEAKERand quality of service for your region.

19:13SPEAKERSo there you go.

19:14SPEAKER- Yeah.

19:14SPEAKER- I think that's a small print.

19:16SPEAKER- Okay, I wanna say language like cloud version

19:18SPEAKERor cloud edition has started becoming pretty common, so.

19:22SPEAKER- I wonder if you have to have,

19:23SPEAKERI guess you don't have to have online to play that

19:25SPEAKER'cause it's a single player game

19:27SPEAKERand it doesn't say online required,

19:29SPEAKEReven though it is only, is coming across the network.

19:32SPEAKERWeird, what a weird future.

19:34SPEAKER- It's a very strange fact.

19:36SPEAKERWe did not expect it to spiral out

19:37SPEAKERin all these weird directions.

19:39SPEAKER- Me neither.

19:40SPEAKER- So, I mean, I'm having to resist the urge here

19:43SPEAKERto talk about Stadia in the past tense.

19:46SPEAKERI apologize to anybody who still works on the platform.

19:49SPEAKERLike in my mind to a large degree,

19:51SPEAKERit's like, ah, well, it's over.

19:52SPEAKERLet's just talk about what it was and where they screwed up.

19:54SPEAKERBut you know, it is still a going concern,

19:56SPEAKERbut there are some things I wanna talk about

19:58SPEAKERkind of from the perspective of like,

20:00SPEAKERwas this a screw up on their part?

20:03SPEAKER- Look, if the plan is we're going to reinvest the money

20:06SPEAKERthat we were spending on first party dev

20:08SPEAKERinto getting more third parties on the platform

20:10SPEAKERin a more timely manner,

20:11SPEAKERthen they absolutely screwed up by not saying that.

20:14SPEAKER- Yeah. - Right?

20:15SPEAKERLike it may be that Phil didn't wanna come out

20:17SPEAKERand say something that was gonna be thrown back in his face

20:19SPEAKERsix months from now when they haven't landed any new titles

20:22SPEAKERand everybody's pissed off.

20:24SPEAKERBut like, you know, either we're seeing death

20:28SPEAKERby a thousand cuts or a major shift in the plan

20:32SPEAKERand they didn't communicate that particularly well.

20:35SPEAKER- Yeah, you're right.

20:36SPEAKERThis could very well just be a pivot that we look back on

20:38SPEAKERand say like, oh, that's when Stadia actually took off.

20:40SPEAKERI mean, you know, they're putting it in TVs this year

20:42SPEAKERfinally, and kind of those meat and potatoes moves

20:45SPEAKERthey needed to be making before now, but-

20:47SPEAKER- Does it work on the Chromecast that has a UI,

20:50SPEAKERthe one with the remote?

20:50SPEAKER- I don't, I mean, I don't have a Chromecast.

20:52SPEAKERI don't know the exact distinction,

20:53SPEAKERbut I do know that there are still Chromecasts out there

20:55SPEAKERthat it does not work on.

20:57SPEAKER- Hmm, that's unfortunate.

20:59SPEAKER- The one that you could buy

21:00SPEAKERas part of the actual Stadia starter kit it worked.

21:03SPEAKER- It's the old one I think.

21:04SPEAKER- I want to say the newest model out of the box

21:07SPEAKERdoes not support Stadia.

21:09SPEAKER- That's the Chromecast TV, I think.

21:10SPEAKER- I believe that's the case still.

21:14SPEAKERSo like they've got, you know, I assume they did

21:16SPEAKERsome measure of kind of data center build out

21:19SPEAKERto support this thing, right?

21:20SPEAKERLike now they've got all these racks of Stadia hardware

21:23SPEAKERsitting there.

21:24SPEAKER- Well, but racks of Stadia hardware are probably just GPUs

21:27SPEAKERand CPUs and boxes that are used for this

21:30SPEAKERand for the machine.

21:31SPEAKERLike the thing, if you haven't ever gone and logged into

21:34SPEAKERlike the things that you get access to as a developer

21:37SPEAKERon Google or Amazon, AWS, whatever, like you can buy,

21:42SPEAKERwhen we were doing machine learning training,

21:45SPEAKERrather than run the machine learning training thing

21:47SPEAKERfor a week in one of my engineer's basements,

21:51SPEAKERwe just paid 50 bucks for the same amount of compute time

21:55SPEAKERover an hour, 'cause like you're paying for compute cycles

21:59SPEAKERper hour, basically.

22:01SPEAKERAnd like you can use it for all sorts of weird stuff.

22:03SPEAKERIf you have like data, if you have to munch a bunch of video

22:06SPEAKERwe used to use it to compress the video

22:08SPEAKERthat before it went up on YouTube

22:10SPEAKERin the old days it tested.

22:11SPEAKERLike it's, yeah, it's less,

22:17SPEAKERit's much more fungible than, hey, these are Stadia racks

22:22SPEAKERin a data center or something.

22:24SPEAKER- It's not like that's the only thing

22:25SPEAKERthey can be used for.

22:26SPEAKER- I mean, I don't know that for sure,

22:27SPEAKERbut that's my assumption.

22:28SPEAKER- I mean, there was kind of a fair amount of fanfare

22:30SPEAKERwhen they first announced the platform about like,

22:32SPEAKERwe've just designed these custom server blades

22:34SPEAKERthat are more powerful than any console.

22:37SPEAKERSo they are bespoke to some degree

22:39SPEAKERis the point that I'm making.

22:41SPEAKER- But so all of their blades are bespoke though,

22:44SPEAKER'cause they design all their own hardware at this point.

22:46SPEAKERIt's not like they're buying blades and jamming,

22:48SPEAKERyou know, 3080s or Titan RTXs into the blades.

22:53SPEAKERLike it's just, look,

22:58SPEAKERthis is where Dyson Sphere Project comes in.

22:59SPEAKERThey're not building computers,

23:01SPEAKERthey're building Comtronium, right?

23:02SPEAKERThey're building matter that you can use

23:05SPEAKERfor compute and storage without having to know anything

23:08SPEAKERabout what the matter is.

23:11SPEAKER- Slightly tortured analogy, but I think I'm with you.

23:13SPEAKER- Yeah, it's, I mean, yeah, it's a weird thing.

23:17SPEAKERIt's a weird way to think about computers

23:19SPEAKERwhen you're used to thinking about a motherboard

23:21SPEAKERand a CPU and RAM and a video card.

23:25SPEAKER- Yeah, and I assume if you were one of these companies

23:27SPEAKERthat's using the Stadia Tech to build a streaming game,

23:29SPEAKERyou would probably also be in for time

23:33SPEAKERon their infrastructure to actually serve it, right?

23:36SPEAKER'Cause what else would you do?

23:37SPEAKER- Well, so, I mean, that's a licensing question.

23:39SPEAKERI'm really curious.

23:40SPEAKERI don't know, I don't know if they do,

23:47SPEAKERso like do you just pay,

23:49SPEAKERdo they look at the amount of time

23:50SPEAKERit's gonna take to play "Hitman 3"

23:52SPEAKERand they say, okay, IO, you pay us X number of dollars

23:55SPEAKERdistribution for every copy of this game that's sold.

23:58SPEAKERI don't know that IO is using Stadia for their backend

24:01SPEAKERon the Switch version of this game,

24:03SPEAKERbut like, how does that work?

24:04SPEAKERNintendo's, like, are you paying,

24:08SPEAKERif somebody goes in and plays 3000 hours of "Hitman 3,"

24:11SPEAKERdoes that mean IO loses money on that game?

24:13SPEAKERLike, how does this all break down?

24:15SPEAKERI'm really curious about it.

24:16SPEAKERIf at some point, if people keep playing that game

24:19SPEAKERfor too long, is IO gonna have to turn off?

24:22SPEAKERBecause they're like, your guys are costing,

24:24SPEAKERyou've run 3000 hours of this,

24:26SPEAKERyou're costing us too much money, you're done.

24:29SPEAKER- That's, surely, that could not be sustainable, right?

24:32SPEAKERLike, who would actually agree to terms like that?

24:34SPEAKER- Well, it's pretty cheap.

24:35SPEAKERI mean, compute's pretty cheap is the thing.

24:38SPEAKERI mean, it's not as cheap as storage,

24:39SPEAKERbut it's trending cheaper,

24:40SPEAKERand that's where the Gmail thing makes a ton of sense, right?

24:45SPEAKERLike, they're paying a lot of money for storage

24:47SPEAKERwhen they launched Gmail in 2003, but by 2010,

24:50SPEAKERthe amount of storage that a Gmail account

24:52SPEAKERwas a rounding, a Gmail account took in their cloud

24:54SPEAKERwas not even a rounding error for a rounding error.

24:58SPEAKERIt was nothing, right?

24:59SPEAKER- Was it, first of all, it was 2004, does that sound right?

25:03SPEAKER- 2003, and April Fool's Day is when they launched Gmail.

25:06SPEAKER- Do you remember, was it a gig and a half?

25:07SPEAKER- One gigabyte.

25:08SPEAKER- One flat?

25:09SPEAKER- And it increased as the longer your account was alive.

25:12SPEAKER- Right, okay.

25:13SPEAKER- So it was, there was a little ticker

25:15SPEAKERthat was constantly going, they stopped that after a while,

25:17SPEAKER'cause it turns out maybe not a great idea.

25:20SPEAKERBut yeah, I don't know, it's weird.

25:25SPEAKERThe whole thing is weird.

25:27SPEAKERI'm wildly curious to see what they do with this

25:30SPEAKERand what the direction that this takes is.

25:34SPEAKERAnd it seems like, yeah, the Google TV,

25:37SPEAKERthe Chromecast with Google TV still doesn't seem to have

25:41SPEAKERa Stadia app on it that I can see.

25:44SPEAKER- If there's a bellwether for how much support this has

25:46SPEAKERinternally, that seems like it.

25:48SPEAKER- Yeah.

25:49SPEAKER- But I don't know, you tell me.

25:50SPEAKERDo you have any thoughts on,

25:53SPEAKERthis doesn't necessarily have a lot of bearing

25:55SPEAKERon the fact that they killed their first party development.

25:57SPEAKERThis seems like it would matter more for third parties,

25:58SPEAKERbut the fact that they made their hardware

26:01SPEAKERand their game development requirements Linux-based.

26:05SPEAKER- For Stadia?

26:06SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause that's kind of something people

26:10SPEAKERhave been talking up as maybe a competitive advantage

26:12SPEAKERwith Amazon's Luna stuff,

26:13SPEAKERbecause you're just running Windows versions of games there

26:15SPEAKERand not requiring a bespoke port

26:17SPEAKERthat you might not otherwise sink time into

26:20SPEAKERif you weren't on Stadia?

26:21SPEAKER- I think you have to have,

26:23SPEAKERI think the Luna/Geforce Now approach

26:27SPEAKERis probably dramatically better

26:30SPEAKERif you want to get more people on your platform

26:33SPEAKERwithout having to spend a buttload of money.

26:34SPEAKER- Totally, so what do you think?

26:36SPEAKERDo you have any insight into what might have driven

26:38SPEAKERthat decision or what upsides there would be?

26:40SPEAKER- Oh, so probably all of their cloud stuff runs on Linux

26:43SPEAKERand probably they didn't want to have to,

26:47SPEAKERthey didn't want to have to build Windows versions

26:50SPEAKERof their, like Amazon offers Windows terminals

26:52SPEAKERas a cloud server option.

26:54SPEAKERI don't think Google does.

26:56SPEAKERSo my guess is they didn't want to have,

26:58SPEAKERlike their backend shit just doesn't work on Windows

27:00SPEAKERwould be my guess.

27:03SPEAKERSo probably like down to the motherboard and chipset level,

27:06SPEAKERthey don't have drivers for Windows

27:09SPEAKERfor like core components of those racks

27:11SPEAKERand therefore they didn't have to emulate it

27:14SPEAKERin virtual machines, which is not super good

27:18SPEAKERor something else, I don't know.

27:20SPEAKER- Maybe that starts to take us into the territory

27:21SPEAKERof like how projects are run inside of Google

27:24SPEAKERand then what determines what survives and what does not,

27:27SPEAKERbecause like looking at the Stadia announcement,

27:29SPEAKERI don't know if you remember that stream

27:30SPEAKERfrom a couple of years ago,

27:32SPEAKERI guess it's been about two years now.

27:33SPEAKERLike they had a full on stage show,

27:35SPEAKERlike the CEO of Google came out,

27:37SPEAKERlike he doesn't come out for everything,

27:39SPEAKERfor every product launch, you know what I mean?

27:40SPEAKERThey hired people like Jade Raymond and Phil Harrison

27:43SPEAKERwho are like big kind of long time industry executive names,

27:48SPEAKERcontent people, like it seemed like they were getting

27:50SPEAKERbehind it is the point I'm trying to make.

27:52SPEAKERLike there was a level of fanfare

27:54SPEAKERand kind of pomp around the launch of Stadia

27:56SPEAKERthat you'd certainly don't see for every Google thing,

27:59SPEAKERbut then you're talking about behind the scenes,

28:00SPEAKERmaybe, you know, certain aspects of the company

28:03SPEAKERwere not willing to build out massive infrastructure

28:05SPEAKERto support it in the way that it needed.

28:07SPEAKER- Well, I mean, yeah, not building out infrastructure

28:10SPEAKERis one thing, but like not going,

28:13SPEAKERthat's like not supporting Windows on that

28:16SPEAKERis an example of not supporting the market,

28:19SPEAKERthat is the, like on consumer space,

28:23SPEAKERWindows is the market leader for games

28:25SPEAKERby an enormous, ridiculous margin.

28:28SPEAKERSo rolling out a Linux project is gonna say,

28:30SPEAKERokay, we're limiting, we're cutting out anything

28:33SPEAKERthat EA, UB, and it's probably less of a deal for indies

28:39SPEAKERwho are mostly using third-party game engines.

28:41SPEAKERSo for example, if you're using Unity, it's not trivial,

28:45SPEAKERbut it's not as difficult

28:46SPEAKERto cross compile a Linux version, right?

28:49SPEAKERIf you're using Unreal,

28:50SPEAKERyou can cross compile a Linux version if you,

28:52SPEAKERbut like a company like Supergiant

28:54SPEAKERthat builds their own game engines

28:56SPEAKERhas to then do the work of porting that thing over.

28:58SPEAKERAnd that's somebody working on,

29:00SPEAKERit's at least one person working for months

29:02SPEAKERand months and months.

29:03SPEAKERYou're looking at easily 50, 100, $250,000,

29:06SPEAKERwhich is a ton for a small developer.

29:08SPEAKER- Right, or like EA with Frostbite

29:09SPEAKERis probably a good big example.

29:11SPEAKERLike I can't, I'd have to check and make sure

29:14SPEAKERthat they don't ship stuff like Battlefield on Linux.

29:16SPEAKERI'm sure they do not.

29:17SPEAKER- Yeah, I can assure you.

29:19SPEAKER- So like something like a little slate

29:21SPEAKERof Frostbite-driven games,

29:23SPEAKERprobably not gonna get ported to Linux anytime soon.

29:25SPEAKERI don't know.

29:26SPEAKER- Well, yeah, like fuck man,

29:27SPEAKERthey can't get Frostbite to work on PC and PS3

29:30SPEAKERuntil recently, PS4 until recently.

29:32SPEAKERSo yeah, no, you're not gonna see Frostbite

29:34SPEAKERon Stadia anytime soon.

29:35SPEAKERI don't think it's,

29:36SPEAKERI didn't realize it was a Linux-based thing.

29:38SPEAKER- Yes, that was kind of one of the big data points about it

29:42SPEAKERwhen it first launched,

29:45SPEAKERI actually just pulled up a press release about

29:47SPEAKERfrom last year about EA getting into Stadia,

29:51SPEAKERbut it's stuff like, it's stuff like Jedi Fallen Order,

29:54SPEAKERwhich is an unreal game and stuff like that.

29:58SPEAKER- So if you want that stuff to work, you can do that,

30:01SPEAKERbut you have to spend a shitload of money, right?

30:03SPEAKERLike you have to throw money at it in a big way

30:06SPEAKERor else people aren't gonna buy in

30:08SPEAKERbecause like why is EA gonna risk the half a million,

30:12SPEAKERyou know, $200,000 it'll take to port a B tier game

30:17SPEAKERto run on Linux if, you know,

30:20SPEAKERGoogle doesn't have some cheddar in the game.

30:22SPEAKER- Okay, well that probably brings us fully

30:24SPEAKERinto the second part of this episode

30:26SPEAKERbecause what company on the planet

30:28SPEAKERhas more cheddar than Google?

30:29SPEAKERI mean, there might be a couple,

30:30SPEAKERthere aren't many. - Apple, Amazon.

30:32SPEAKER- Right, so.

30:34SPEAKER- Maybe Microsoft, I don't know.

30:35SPEAKER- Like how do we get to the point where like barely

30:37SPEAKERa couple of years after Stadia was announced

30:39SPEAKERwith all this fanfare,

30:39SPEAKERthey feel like, it feels like they're starting to cut

30:41SPEAKERand run before it ever really got started.

30:43SPEAKERLike how does that, you know,

30:46SPEAKERyou don't work at Google anymore than I do.

30:47SPEAKERLike we don't know how things go internally there,

30:50SPEAKERbut like, is it just some massive bureaucracy

30:52SPEAKERwith a bunch of different power bases

30:54SPEAKERworking across purposes and like.

30:57SPEAKER- Hmm, I think that's Microsoft.

30:59SPEAKERThat's the description I've always heard of Microsoft

31:02SPEAKERwhere there's different divisions

31:04SPEAKERand different departments that are actively working

31:07SPEAKERto push their own narratives,

31:08SPEAKERwhether it's Office versus Windows

31:11SPEAKERversus entertainment versus, you know.

31:14SPEAKERThe thing I feel about, my understanding of Google

31:16SPEAKERis that they are really, really focused on growth

31:21SPEAKERand the things that grow and are growing it,

31:25SPEAKERlike they're not afraid to kill something

31:26SPEAKERthat's not growing it at the pace that they want even.

31:29SPEAKERSo like where you or I have a business

31:31SPEAKERand you know, if the tech pod was growing at 10% per month,

31:35SPEAKER10% new subscribers a month, I would be thrilled.

31:38SPEAKERI would be doing car wheels, right?

31:41SPEAKERIf Google has something that's growing at 10% per month,

31:43SPEAKERthey're like, yeah, it's okay.

31:45SPEAKERWe're never gonna hit a billion users with this.

31:46SPEAKERLet's just shut it down and move on, try again.

31:49SPEAKERAnd they do that all the time.

31:50SPEAKERLike there's a website of all the shit

31:51SPEAKERthat Google has killed because they do this so often.

31:54SPEAKERIt's become a joke kind of.

31:57SPEAKER- Yes, killedbygoogle.com.

31:58SPEAKERWe brought it up, I think on the last email episode briefly,

32:01SPEAKERbut maybe it's time to dig into it a little bit more.

32:03SPEAKERBut I mean, like, is there just no concept

32:05SPEAKERof sunk costs to them whatsoever?

32:07SPEAKERBecause like they, you know, they put quite a bit-

32:09SPEAKER- Sunk cost fallacy is a fallacy for a reason, Brad.

32:12SPEAKER- Well, I guess so.

32:15SPEAKERIt's just, again, it just seems like they invested more

32:17SPEAKERin Stadia than they did.

32:18SPEAKERThey have in quite a few of their products.

32:21SPEAKER- So if they had asked me before they launched Stadia

32:23SPEAKERand obviously they did not, because who cares what I think,

32:26SPEAKERthen I would have said, hey, if you want this to go

32:30SPEAKERand you want this thing to work,

32:31SPEAKERyou need to spend a fuckload of money making sure

32:33SPEAKERthat it has all of the games that people want to play.

32:37SPEAKERBecause like, yes, there's an argument for making the service

32:41SPEAKERfor people who play these big live service games

32:43SPEAKERlike Call of Duty and Destiny and stuff like that.

32:45SPEAKERBut either you have to have enough people playing

32:48SPEAKERthose games for this thing to work and the games to work,

32:52SPEAKERor you have to be able to make them cross platform

32:54SPEAKERwith at least PC and ideally PS4 and Xbox as well.

32:58SPEAKERAnd it seems like Destiny is just the Stadia people

33:02SPEAKERplaying with Stadia people, right?

33:04SPEAKERI think. - Yes, that's correct.

33:06SPEAKER- That's how PUBG works.

33:07SPEAKERSo it was like, that's PUBG added bots

33:09SPEAKERbecause of the Stadia version.

33:14SPEAKERSo yeah, I don't know, it's super, the whole thing's super.

33:20SPEAKERIt's weird to me that you would spend this much money

33:22SPEAKERspinning this up, probably in reality,

33:25SPEAKERthe video codec stuff that they're doing for games

33:28SPEAKERis probably applicable to a bunch of other stuff

33:30SPEAKER'cause suddenly latency and video

33:31SPEAKERis making a lot more sense.

33:33SPEAKERAnd we're gonna see that more as like AR stuff

33:35SPEAKERstarts to show up too, I think.

33:37SPEAKER- Sure.

33:39SPEAKER- And that is the technological advancement on Stadia

33:42SPEAKERthat's I think the most interesting

33:43SPEAKERis that they have a 1080p slash, I think for up to 4K even,

33:48SPEAKERcapable video codec that isn't encumbered by licenses

33:52SPEAKERthat is developed in-house that is incredibly low latency

33:55SPEAKERto render and that's a trip.

33:59SPEAKER- You can think of some other applications for that,

34:01SPEAKERfor sure. - Yeah.

34:03SPEAKERAll right, what do you wanna do with "Killed by Google"?

34:06SPEAKER- You wanna just start going down the list

34:07SPEAKERand naming things? - Start going on the line

34:08SPEAKERhere, see what we got here.

34:09SPEAKERAngularJS, what do you think?

34:12SPEAKER- That's an open source front-end framework.

34:15SPEAKERI'm sure there's nerds that write web code

34:17SPEAKERthat are really upset about that, doesn't impact me.

34:20SPEAKERI was shocked that they killed Chrome apps though.

34:22SPEAKER'Cause that's the thing that let you package apps,

34:25SPEAKERthey're basically souped up extensions for Chrome.

34:27SPEAKER- Okay, so I've seen them advertising that stuff

34:30SPEAKERbut I wasn't quite sure what the distinction was.

34:31SPEAKERSo is that just stuff like docs and sheets,

34:33SPEAKERlike the standard, but in plugin format?

34:37SPEAKER- They're a key part of Chromebook use.

34:40SPEAKER- Okay. - So if you have

34:41SPEAKERa Chromebook, then you probably have an icon

34:43SPEAKERon your desktop, whatever that thing's called,

34:47SPEAKERthat is docs, they were like photo editors

34:50SPEAKERand all sorts of stuff that like needed more front-end UI,

34:55SPEAKERlike Chrome control over the UI Chrome,

34:59SPEAKERthen you can get in a typical extension.

35:01SPEAKERSo I'm curious about that one.

35:02SPEAKERI like whether they killed it

35:03SPEAKERbecause they're extending extensions

35:06SPEAKERor because nobody was using it or because it was like,

35:07SPEAKERthere also was a lot of malware in that section too.

35:09SPEAKERSo maybe that's the real reason.

35:13SPEAKERHangouts, something I used daily for years.

35:17SPEAKER- Totally, and like now there's Google Meet

35:19SPEAKERand I could not, I've used both extensively

35:21SPEAKERand I could not tell you what the difference is.

35:23SPEAKER- Well, so Hangouts is still embedded in Gmail

35:27SPEAKER'cause there are two people

35:28SPEAKERthat I talk to in there all the time.

35:30SPEAKER- Still with Hangouts?

35:31SPEAKERWell, you've got to let her know.

35:34SPEAKERFive months, four months?

35:35SPEAKER- I gotta get Joey's cell phone number.

35:37SPEAKER(laughing)

35:38SPEAKER- You've got another four months to hang out with Joey

35:41SPEAKERbefore they shut this thing off.

35:42SPEAKER- Oh no, not Joey.

35:45SPEAKER- But yeah, they've done, there's a whole,

35:47SPEAKERprobably a whole section down here

35:48SPEAKERof like the text replacements

35:52SPEAKERslash video conferencing replacements

35:56SPEAKER'cause they had Allo and whatever the other one was.

36:03SPEAKERIt was supposed to be like iMessage for Android

36:05SPEAKERbut it didn't fail over to SMS

36:08SPEAKERwhen you didn't have somebody on that system.

36:10SPEAKERSo that meant anytime you tried to text somebody from there

36:12SPEAKERwith an iOS account, it just went into the ether

36:16SPEAKERand disappeared or failed, which was great.

36:19SPEAKERLoon, they killed Loon?

36:22SPEAKER- What is Loon?

36:23SPEAKER- Oh, Loon was a Google X project

36:24SPEAKERwhere they were using these huge long duration

36:28SPEAKERstratospheric balloons to provide wifi

36:30SPEAKERto disaster areas in undeveloped parts of the world.

36:33SPEAKEROr not wifi but internet service.

36:36SPEAKER- Not showing enough growth.

36:38SPEAKERLook, disaster relief is not a growth market, Google.

36:41SPEAKER- I would bet they looked at Starlink and were like,

36:44SPEAKERprobably this balloon thing is gonna be way harder

36:46SPEAKERthan having a bunch of satellites.

36:47SPEAKER- That's fair.

36:48SPEAKERStarlink is a SpaceX's thing, is that right?

36:50SPEAKER- SpaceX is a cell service.

36:52SPEAKERThey're apparently starting to hit people for pre-orders.

36:56SPEAKERAnd it's like if you're beyond DSL range,

37:00SPEAKERlike my parents live in rural Virginia

37:02SPEAKERand they can't get DSL or cable modems there.

37:06SPEAKERSo right now they have a cellular modem on a tower

37:11SPEAKERthat's a fixed antenna tower to a 4G tower

37:13SPEAKERthat gives them like five megabits each way.

37:16SPEAKERSo Starlink would be good for them.

37:19SPEAKER- See the story going around recently

37:20SPEAKERabout the guy who kind of defacto started his own ISP

37:24SPEAKERbecause he couldn't get good internet where he lived

37:26SPEAKERand he was just like, screw this,

37:27SPEAKERI'm just gonna invest the--

37:29SPEAKER- That happens all the time.

37:30SPEAKER- $150,000 or whatever it was to get a line run in

37:33SPEAKERand then I will just start leasing it to my neighbors

37:35SPEAKERand it'll end up paying for itself in like a year.

37:37SPEAKER- Yep, yep.

37:39SPEAKER- There's like, if you live on a place with a hill

37:42SPEAKERin the country, you can do that crate.

37:45SPEAKEREspecially if there's already a town.

37:47SPEAKERLike the trick, the guy that my parents buy internet from

37:50SPEAKERsold, gave rights to build a tower

37:55SPEAKERon a hill that the cows were pasturing on.

37:58SPEAKERAnd he retained rights to put his own shit on that tower

38:01SPEAKERwhen he did the deal.

38:03SPEAKERSo Verizon came in or Sprint or somebody came in

38:06SPEAKERand built a big cell phone tower

38:07SPEAKERon top of this hill for him.

38:08SPEAKERAnd then he just has to climb up and pay somebody

38:10SPEAKERto dangle off antennas every once in a while

38:12SPEAKERwhen somebody new signs on.

38:14SPEAKERAnd he has like a DS3 or OC3 or something

38:17SPEAKERcoming to his house now.

38:18SPEAKERSo yeah, good for him.

38:19SPEAKER- Wow, that's pretty good.

38:20SPEAKER- Yeah, in rural ass Virginia.

38:22SPEAKER- That's better than gigabit.

38:25SPEAKERYeah, I'll try to remember to put the SARS technical link

38:27SPEAKERthat I found in the show notes from last month.

38:31SPEAKERJared Mosh in somewhere in Michigan.

38:34SPEAKERPull quote, I had to start a telephone company

38:36SPEAKERto get internet access.

38:39SPEAKERYeah, it's good stuff.

38:41SPEAKER- This Google Home Max one is a trip.

38:43SPEAKERThis thing's like a year, two, three years old, I guess.

38:46SPEAKER- I was actually gonna mention how grim the language is

38:49SPEAKERon most of these.

38:50SPEAKER- Well, it's intentionally grim.

38:52SPEAKER- Oh, I know that.

38:53SPEAKERI mean, there's a reason there are icons of guillotines

38:56SPEAKERnext to most of these.

38:57SPEAKER- Well, those are the ones that are not dead yet

38:59SPEAKERbut are in the chopping block.

39:00SPEAKER- And gravestones.

39:01SPEAKERI mean, yes, the whole thing is a little macabre

39:03SPEAKERbut killed 22 days ago, getting unplugged in five months.

39:09SPEAKER- Rip.

39:10SPEAKER- Actually the one, the part where every one of these items

39:12SPEAKERends with, it was about four years old.

39:15SPEAKER- Yeah.

39:16SPEAKER- It will be over three years old.

39:18SPEAKERThere's like something really awful and like childlike

39:21SPEAKERabout the way that they word this stuff.

39:23SPEAKER- Look, they're using the time command, right?

39:27SPEAKER- Yeah, I know.

39:29SPEAKER- Nest Secure was a,

39:33SPEAKERlike made your Nest doorbell cameras into security cameras.

39:38SPEAKERHas the whole Nest thing been ruined?

39:40SPEAKERLike, I feel like I just see nothing

39:41SPEAKERbut people complaining about how much worse it's gotten

39:43SPEAKERafter it got bought.

39:46SPEAKER- I did not, I don't know that I had any Nest stuff

39:49SPEAKERbefore it was bought.

39:50SPEAKER- Okay.

39:51SPEAKER- So I don't know what it was like before.

39:53SPEAKERMy thermostat's fine.

39:54SPEAKER- Yeah.

39:55SPEAKER- That's the only thing I have.

39:58SPEAKERFrom a feature set perspective

39:59SPEAKERand an Amazon being shitty perspective,

40:02SPEAKERI would advise absolutely everyone

40:04SPEAKERto get rid of their Ring doorbells if that's what they have

40:07SPEAKERbecause Amazon shares stuff with police departments

40:10SPEAKERand has, like they're doing this new thing

40:12SPEAKERwhere they share your internet connection

40:14SPEAKERwith other Ring users.

40:16SPEAKER- What?

40:17SPEAKER- In the Ring device, Ring, other Ring users' devices.

40:20SPEAKERSo like, if you have better wifi at your property line

40:23SPEAKERwith your neighbor and they have a Ring camera

40:25SPEAKERon the property line, then they'll use your wifi

40:28SPEAKERthrough the other Ring devices on your network.

40:30SPEAKERYou gotta like get away, like avoid Ring.

40:34SPEAKERWhereas the Nest thing, if you have unlimited upstream,

40:38SPEAKERdoes some really neat stuff, like they do face recognition.

40:40SPEAKERSo like your Nest tells you that it was the UPS person

40:44SPEAKERand not like a solicitor when there's somebody at the door,

40:47SPEAKERwhich is creepy, but also seems really useful.

40:50SPEAKER- Yeah.

40:52SPEAKER- Play music is a big one.

40:53SPEAKERThis was like nine years old.

40:54SPEAKERPeople are pissed about it.

40:56SPEAKER- That was one of the few on here that I actually used

40:58SPEAKERfor some period of time, like paid for.

41:00SPEAKER- I had it free with the YouTube TV for a while.

41:02SPEAKER- Yeah, I can't remember which end I bought in on.

41:05SPEAKERI can't remember if I bought in on YouTube Red/TV

41:09SPEAKERor if I paid for play music, but anyway.

41:12SPEAKERI don't know what the distinction is,

41:13SPEAKERbut I see nothing but complaints about YouTube music,

41:16SPEAKERwhich is the successor to this or the replacement for it.

41:18SPEAKER- Yeah, I know multiple people who've asked me

41:20SPEAKERfor Spotify information

41:22SPEAKERbecause they're getting off of YouTube.

41:25SPEAKERThis Google Photos print one is really silly.

41:27SPEAKERAs a Google Photos subscriber,

41:30SPEAKERthe idea that I would pay money to have Google

41:33SPEAKERpick out the 10 best photos from the last month

41:35SPEAKERand mail them to me is like,

41:40SPEAKERI mean, maybe if the price was right,

41:41SPEAKERI would have done that, but it seems kind of expensive.

41:43SPEAKERIt didn't even make it a whole year.

41:47SPEAKER- Especially 'cause, I mean, obviously,

41:49SPEAKERthey're just picking those photos algorithmically, right?

41:52SPEAKER- Well, it does a really good job

41:53SPEAKERpicking photos algorithmically

41:55SPEAKERthat are at least hilarious.

41:57SPEAKERSo when they're bad, they're hilariously bad.

41:59SPEAKER- Sure.

42:01SPEAKER- 'Cause we have one of the Nest Hubs in the kitchen

42:03SPEAKERand it has just like our hit photos

42:07SPEAKERfrom the last month cycle through it.

42:10SPEAKERAnd it's pretty good.

42:12SPEAKER- Like I had my iPhone do the,

42:15SPEAKERI've never seen it do this before.

42:16SPEAKERThis is actually my first experience

42:17SPEAKERwith this feature period,

42:18SPEAKERbut it automatically assembled a little like slide show

42:21SPEAKERvideo presentation of like photo memory stuff.

42:25SPEAKERIt was just like, I think it did it at the end of last year

42:27SPEAKERor so a couple months ago.

42:28SPEAKERAnd it was just like, there we've put together

42:30SPEAKERyour best memories from 2020.

42:32SPEAKERAnd because, you know, who the hell went anywhere

42:34SPEAKERand took pictures of anything in 2020,

42:36SPEAKERit was nothing but pictures of food.

42:38SPEAKERIt was entirely pictures of food,

42:41SPEAKERincluding a video that it inserted right in the middle

42:43SPEAKERwith some really ridiculous jazz music

42:44SPEAKERwhere I had caught my fork wobbling

42:47SPEAKERon the edge of the plate.

42:49SPEAKERAnd I took like 30 seconds of video of it.

42:50SPEAKERAnd it was shoved that right there in the middle of the,

42:54SPEAKERI think it was on my Thanksgiving plate.

42:55SPEAKERAnd it was just like, it was the most ridiculous,

42:57SPEAKERlike assembled by robots kind of situation

42:59SPEAKERthat I've had in some time.

43:00SPEAKER- So the Google one is really,

43:01SPEAKERthe way Google does it is really neat.

43:03SPEAKERThey, the things that show up on the nest in the kitchen

43:06SPEAKERare like, sometimes it's some like,

43:11SPEAKERit pulls from a bunch of different buckets.

43:13SPEAKERAnd one of them is like on this day in past years

43:16SPEAKERor around this day in past years,

43:19SPEAKERsome of them are things that it knows.

43:20SPEAKERLike if it sees a cake in the picture

43:22SPEAKERor something like that,

43:22SPEAKERit'll know that that's like a celebration of some kind

43:25SPEAKERand it'll group some celebration pictures

43:27SPEAKERfrom the same time together.

43:28SPEAKERSome of it's like something that if two of the people

43:31SPEAKERthat it knows live in the house,

43:32SPEAKERthis is really creepy as I say this stuff out loud,

43:34SPEAKERbut when it knows, since it knows that three of us live here

43:37SPEAKERif there's two people in the photo and one person's not,

43:39SPEAKERit'll put that up.

43:39SPEAKERCause it thinks that maybe I wanna see the picture

43:41SPEAKERof my wife and kid on a walk.

43:42SPEAKER- That is a little bit much.

43:45SPEAKER- I mean, look, I can also search for cat

43:47SPEAKERand it shows me all the pictures of cats.

43:48SPEAKERSo like you get some convenience in there.

43:50SPEAKER- Frozen con spray.

43:51SPEAKER- Yeah.

43:53SPEAKER- Oh, hey, remember hosting all of our podcasts

43:55SPEAKERon Hangouts On Air, the number one service

43:57SPEAKERfor having dropped video and audio.

43:59SPEAKERIf you want to do a production with a bunch of people

44:01SPEAKERon a YouTube stream.

44:04SPEAKER- No, no.

44:05SPEAKER- It was bad.

44:07SPEAKER- Okay.

44:07SPEAKER- God, I use so much of this stuff.

44:09SPEAKERWow, they killed YouTube gaming.

44:10SPEAKERI missed that one.

44:12SPEAKERWait, gaming vertical for YouTube.

44:15SPEAKERI was in 2019.

44:16SPEAKER- I also missed that, what the hell?

44:18SPEAKER- Inbox by Gmail, never forget the best email client

44:23SPEAKERI've ever used.

44:24SPEAKER- I was gonna say, I think that of everything on this list

44:27SPEAKERthat I've scrolled through is probably the thing

44:28SPEAKERthat I saw the biggest outcry around when they killed it.

44:32SPEAKER- No, Google Reader was the biggest outcry.

44:33SPEAKER- Reader, you think so?

44:35SPEAKER- Yeah, cause Reader was all the,

44:37SPEAKERlike no normal people use readers,

44:38SPEAKERbut every journalist and huge, extremely online person.

44:43SPEAKER- Was that just Reader?

44:44SPEAKERLike some kind of RSS parser or something?

44:46SPEAKER- God, did you not use it?

44:47SPEAKERIt was fabulous.

44:48SPEAKERWas it, I don't know, maybe.

44:49SPEAKER- Imagine if you had Gmail tag like label functionality

44:55SPEAKERon news feeds and you dump all your feeds in there

44:58SPEAKERand it would prioritize the ones that,

45:00SPEAKERit didn't do any algorithmic sorting.

45:02SPEAKERSo you could just scroll through and pick the,

45:04SPEAKERyou could hit, you could put stuff in buckets

45:06SPEAKERbased on the source or the author.

45:10SPEAKERAnd so like, if you only wanted to get

45:12SPEAKERSteven Tatillo posts from Kotaku,

45:13SPEAKERyou could really easily do that.

45:15SPEAKERAnd you could have like a top feed of all of the people

45:17SPEAKERthat you like to read.

45:18SPEAKERIt was very good.

45:19SPEAKER- That actually does sound pretty good.

45:21SPEAKER- Yeah, but only nerds used it.

45:22SPEAKERSo it got killed.

45:24SPEAKER- What was up with Inbox?

45:25SPEAKERLike, is that an alternate email client

45:28SPEAKERto the actual Gmail experience?

45:31SPEAKER- Yeah, Inbox was a purchased, it was an acquisition

45:36SPEAKERand it was a Gmail, it was a custom Gmail client that,

45:42SPEAKERlet's see, how did it work?

45:43SPEAKERIt kind of sorted things into buckets

45:45SPEAKERthe way Gmail does now.

45:47SPEAKERSo like you had like purchase stuff

45:49SPEAKERand you had like newsletters and you had like,

45:52SPEAKERlike the kind of spam that comes from signing up

45:54SPEAKERfor forums and news, news groups and stuff like that.

45:57SPEAKERAnd it would sort them all and it would let you

45:59SPEAKERput all of the things in one category in the main Inbox

46:03SPEAKERin like a thing that you could blow up if you wanted,

46:05SPEAKERbut you could just blow past it if you needed to.

46:08SPEAKERAnd it would let you set,

46:11SPEAKERit would let you turn on notifications

46:13SPEAKERbased on a single person.

46:15SPEAKERSo like, if I wanted to always see notifications

46:17SPEAKERwhen you sent me an email,

46:18SPEAKER'cause you rarely send emails and they're usually important,

46:20SPEAKERthen I could do that, which was incredibly useful.

46:23SPEAKER- That sounds very useful, actually, yes.

46:25SPEAKER- If you had a high volume Inbox,

46:27SPEAKERit was incredibly powerful.

46:29SPEAKERIf you didn't, low value.

46:31SPEAKER- I do have a high volume Inbox,

46:32SPEAKERbut I still don't trust algorithmic email sorting.

46:36SPEAKERI just call me paranoid.

46:38SPEAKERI'm just too worried I'm gonna miss something.

46:40SPEAKER- I find if it's something really important, they text you.

46:43SPEAKER- Which means that I invariably missed something

46:45SPEAKERbecause I'm sorting through like a couple hundred emails.

46:47SPEAKER- That's the thing is like, yeah.

46:51SPEAKERFor what it's worth,

46:52SPEAKERHey has almost replaced Inbox in my heart,

46:55SPEAKERbut it's a hundred bucks a year.

46:56SPEAKERSo your mileage may vary.

46:58SPEAKER- So you're still with them?

47:00SPEAKER- I'm still using Hey.

47:01SPEAKER- Still on board?

47:03SPEAKER- Yeah, it does.

47:04SPEAKERI'm down, at the beginning I was filtering 30

47:07SPEAKERor between 30 and 50 email addresses a day.

47:09SPEAKERNow it's usually 10 or 12.

47:11SPEAKERSo, you know, I don't know, it's bad.

47:15SPEAKERChromecast audio, that was a cool thing.

47:18SPEAKERAnd this is bumming me out.

47:20SPEAKER- Glass OS was a version of Google's Android

47:24SPEAKERfor Google Glass.

47:25SPEAKERRemember Google Glass?

47:27SPEAKER- I have a pair of Google Glass in my garage.

47:29SPEAKER- I can't even say Google Glass three times fast.

47:31SPEAKER- It was very hard to say.

47:34SPEAKERI still have a pair.

47:36SPEAKERI haven't plugged them in in years

47:37SPEAKERand batteries probably exploded.

47:38SPEAKER- I should hope not.

47:40SPEAKER- The Google search appliance, this was a cool thing.

47:42SPEAKERYou could plug it into your intranet.

47:44SPEAKERRemember those?

47:45SPEAKERAnd it would run Google indexes on your document chairs.

47:48SPEAKER- Huh, interesting.

47:49SPEAKER- So you could Google your file server.

47:52SPEAKERWeird.

47:53SPEAKER- That is weird.

47:54SPEAKER- And it would be off the main,

47:55SPEAKERand like it would be private was the gist.

47:59SPEAKER- There's some really dumb names in here.

48:02SPEAKER- Yeah.

48:03SPEAKER- Songza.

48:06SPEAKER- Oh man, they killed soundstage?

48:08SPEAKERThat's a bummer.

48:09SPEAKERI think that one got open.

48:10SPEAKEROh, the other thing we were gonna talk about is Tilt Brush.

48:12SPEAKERTilt Brush, they basically said,

48:13SPEAKER"Hey dog, we're just gonna end up, we're gonna,

48:16SPEAKERthis is dead, but it's open source now

48:18SPEAKERso you can make it your own."

48:19SPEAKERWhich is actually a cool way to kill stuff, I guess.

48:21SPEAKER- Do you think, and I mean,

48:22SPEAKERnot that we have any special insight,

48:23SPEAKERbut do you think they were just going to kill it

48:25SPEAKERand then somebody like went to bat

48:26SPEAKERfor letting it live on in an open format instead?

48:29SPEAKER- I would say there's probably enough people using that

48:32SPEAKERthat if they hadn't made it somewhat maintainable

48:34SPEAKERin the future in some way, there would have been,

48:37SPEAKERit would have been, like they turned a bad press situation

48:39SPEAKERinto a good press situation by taking the effort

48:42SPEAKERto make that open.

48:43SPEAKER- Yeah.

48:46SPEAKER- What else?

48:47SPEAKERI'm gonna scroll down a lot.

48:49SPEAKER- I'm just-- - A little steamer.

48:51SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm just going through looking

48:52SPEAKERat all these bad product names now.

48:53SPEAKERBump, with an exclamation mark.

48:55SPEAKER- That, is that the, oh, oh, I remember that.

48:59SPEAKERThat's when they added an NFC

49:00SPEAKERso you could bump the phones together.

49:02SPEAKER- Yes.

49:03SPEAKER- And the accelerometer would register the movement

49:05SPEAKERand hit the NFC tag and be like, "Okay, I know you."

49:07SPEAKER- Transfer contact is bump now, yeah.

49:09SPEAKER- It was kind of like squirting music from zoom to zoom.

49:12SPEAKER- Ugh.

49:13SPEAKER- Ugh, man.

49:15SPEAKEROh, the Nexus Q was that they did a big deal about that.

49:18SPEAKERThat was the digital audio player that they showed it.

49:21SPEAKERIt looked like a pre-mini, pre-Nest or Alexa.

49:25SPEAKERIt was a little tiny orb

49:26SPEAKERand it was all loaded with speakers and stuff,

49:29SPEAKERbut no microphones, I think.

49:33SPEAKERGoogle Talk, remember that?

49:35SPEAKERGoogle G-Chat. - AG, what was Google?

49:37SPEAKERIs that what that was?

49:38SPEAKER- Yeah, it was an XMPP protocol.

49:40SPEAKER- Right, yes, I used to log into that through Pidgin.

49:42SPEAKER- Uh-huh, or Trillion would work too.

49:45SPEAKER- What are you chatting on now?

49:46SPEAKERIs that Hangouts that you're technically typing into?

49:48SPEAKER- Yeah, so they killed Talk.

49:50SPEAKERThey renamed Talk Hangouts, I think,

49:52SPEAKERis what technically happened.

49:54SPEAKERAnd they took out the XMPP support, maybe.

49:55SPEAKERI can't remember.

49:56SPEAKER- God, remember IM clients, geez.

49:58SPEAKER- Yeah, those were good days.

50:00SPEAKERPicnic became Google Photos.

50:02SPEAKERSome of these are not actually killed.

50:03SPEAKERSome of them got converted into other things.

50:05SPEAKERSparrow was the email client that became Inbox.

50:07SPEAKER- I remember Sparrow.

50:09SPEAKER- Yeah.

50:10SPEAKER- Huh, okay.

50:10SPEAKER- It was 10 bucks in the app store.

50:12SPEAKER- Started on mobile, right?

50:14SPEAKER- Uh-huh.

50:15SPEAKER- I think I used Sparrow for a little while.

50:17SPEAKER- Google Wave, the stuff from it ended up getting rolled

50:20SPEAKERinto Docs and all that stuff.

50:22SPEAKERBut that was like, anybody can write in the document

50:24SPEAKERat any time and it could support infinite users

50:26SPEAKERand all that stuff.

50:27SPEAKER- Yes, right.

50:28SPEAKERI'm amazed we've made it this far

50:30SPEAKERwithout talking about Google+.

50:32SPEAKER- Nobody ever needs to talk about Google+ again.

50:35SPEAKER- Right, it's not even on here.

50:38SPEAKERHow's that possible? - Do you remember Google+?

50:40SPEAKERThat was the social networking, microblogging,

50:42SPEAKERand messaging tool that was integrated with Gmail.

50:44SPEAKER- Sure.

50:45SPEAKER- It predated Plus.

50:46SPEAKER- I'll take your word for it.

50:48SPEAKER- Remember, they gave you a place to make public statements

50:50SPEAKERinside the place that you make private statements

50:52SPEAKERand nothing possibly could ever go wrong with that.

50:54SPEAKER- Yes, of course.

50:55SPEAKERI don't know how Plus is not on this list, actually.

50:57SPEAKER- It's on the list.

50:58SPEAKERYou just missed it.

50:59SPEAKERIt's up near the top.

51:00SPEAKER- Search for the word Plus.

51:01SPEAKER- Yeah, you gotta search for a plus.

51:04SPEAKER- Oh, like a literal plus sign?

51:05SPEAKER- Literal plus sign.

51:06SPEAKER- Is that what the branding was?

51:07SPEAKER- Yep, Google+, 2011 to 2019.

51:10SPEAKERKilled it was two years ago.

51:11SPEAKER- I don't know why in my memory

51:12SPEAKERit was a spelled out full word, but...

51:15SPEAKER- 'Cause bad branding?

51:17SPEAKER- Yeah.

51:19SPEAKERWhat do you think is the most mocked product on this list?

51:22SPEAKERPlus?

51:24SPEAKER- Probably.

51:26SPEAKER- Like the most...

51:29SPEAKER- Dodgeball.

51:30SPEAKER- The target of the most...

51:31SPEAKER- Nobody mocks Dodgeball anymore.

51:32SPEAKER- Wait, what is Dodgeball?

51:33SPEAKER- Dodgeball was a social media

51:35SPEAKERfor location-based social media.

51:37SPEAKERSo it was a startup they bought.

51:39SPEAKER- Oh, but that's like early 2003.

51:42SPEAKER- It was early social media.

51:43SPEAKER- Yeah.

51:49SPEAKER- I think, to me, Plus is by far the target

51:52SPEAKERof the greatest mockery on this list.

51:55SPEAKER- Google+ was bad.

51:58SPEAKER- Yeah, remember circles?

51:59SPEAKER- Buzz was bad though.

52:00SPEAKERI think Buzz was actually worse than Plus,

52:03SPEAKERwhich is really saying something.

52:04SPEAKER- It's entirely possible.

52:07SPEAKER- Oh, you're right.

52:08SPEAKERYeah, like they list Grand Central on here as being killed,

52:10SPEAKERbut it flat out says acquired by Google

52:13SPEAKERand turned into Google Voice, which is going strong.

52:15SPEAKER- Yeah, and Google Voice is basically,

52:17SPEAKERlike they've done basically nothing to it

52:19SPEAKERsince they shut down Grand Central.

52:24SPEAKER- No.

52:26SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess Plus is probably the thing

52:28SPEAKERmost worthy of mocking here.

52:30SPEAKER- I don't know, maybe the Google TV stuff.

52:34SPEAKERDid you ever actually see the Google TV we had tested?

52:38SPEAKERIt had, you know how the Apple remote for the Apple TV

52:42SPEAKERhas like five buttons on it, six buttons,

52:44SPEAKERand it's really lovely and smart and it's simple to use

52:48SPEAKERand anybody picks it up and you know exactly what you do

52:50SPEAKERand this is where you press

52:52SPEAKERand this is how you move the cursor and all that.

52:57SPEAKER- The Google TV, the original Google TV remote,

53:01SPEAKERthe one that we got from Sony

53:02SPEAKERwas about the size of a big PDA from the late 90s.

53:06SPEAKERMind you, this is in 2010 or 2011.

53:08SPEAKER- Oh my God.

53:09SPEAKER- And it had a full keyboard.

53:11SPEAKERIt had two D pads.

53:12SPEAKER- I'm looking at it right now.

53:14SPEAKER- Are you looking at the Sony one?

53:15SPEAKER- Holy shit, yes.

53:16SPEAKERWhat in the world, who thought this was a good idea?

53:19SPEAKER- No one.

53:20SPEAKER- This is grotesque. - Literally no one.

53:22SPEAKERAlso, it didn't work.

53:23SPEAKERLike there were no apps.

53:24SPEAKERI don't even think you could get Netflix on it.

53:26SPEAKERWhy you launched something without Netflix,

53:27SPEAKEReven in 2010, was shocking.

53:30SPEAKER- It's even better that the photo I managed to find

53:33SPEAKERis of a very grungy, extremely used one.

53:36SPEAKERIt just looks filthy.

53:39SPEAKEROh no, we have an episode image.

53:41SPEAKER- Gross.

53:42SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know why I wanted to try to ascertain

53:45SPEAKERlike what is the most mocked product on here.

53:49SPEAKERI think it's just 'cause the Valley Press

53:50SPEAKERseems so vicious a lot of the time.

53:53SPEAKER- Google Pie was really stupid too.

53:54SPEAKERThat was when they tried to come at Slack

53:56SPEAKERwith a terrible thing and they called it pie.

54:00SPEAKER- That's not, nothing about the word pie

54:02SPEAKERmakes me want to talk to people about work.

54:06SPEAKERIt just makes me want to eat pie.

54:08SPEAKEROf course, to be fair, I guess the word slack

54:09SPEAKERdoesn't necessarily promote the desire to work either.

54:12SPEAKER- Yeah, but they were the first ones that did it.

54:13SPEAKERSo, you know. - Yeah, that's fair.

54:15SPEAKER- The Chromebook Pixel was really ridiculous too.

54:18SPEAKERIt was a thousand dollar Chromebook, which is insane.

54:21SPEAKER- I saw that on here.

54:22SPEAKERI assume the regular Chromebook line is still trundling

54:25SPEAKERright along, right?

54:26SPEAKER- Selling bazillions of them this year.

54:27SPEAKER- Really?

54:28SPEAKER- Half of the school systems have them.

54:30SPEAKERLike our school, my school system handed them out

54:32SPEAKERto everybody who didn't have a computer.

54:33SPEAKER- No kidding, wow.

54:34SPEAKER- When the quarantine started.

54:35SPEAKER- Are they still x86 based?

54:40SPEAKER- I don't think all of them are.

54:43SPEAKERI think they're a mixture of ARM and x86.

54:45SPEAKERI'm not sure.

54:48SPEAKER- Google.

54:49SPEAKER- Yeah, Google, what are you going to do?

54:51SPEAKER- They've done a lot. - They've done a lot, yeah.

54:53SPEAKERIt's a force of nature.

54:54SPEAKERIt's a fact of life at this point.

54:55SPEAKER- I mean, look, I'm sure there's an equally long list

54:57SPEAKERsomeplace of products that Google hasn't killed.

54:59SPEAKERThey got search, they got ads,

55:00SPEAKERthey got all that cloud hosting crap.

55:03SPEAKERThey got Keep.

55:05SPEAKERThat one's probably not long for the world though,

55:07SPEAKER'cause you looked at me, you just gave me the,

55:09SPEAKERwhat the hell is Keep?

55:10SPEAKERLook, I'm sure there's other things, but they do stuff.

55:15SPEAKER- Google's going to do what Google's going to do.

55:17SPEAKER- That's it.

55:18SPEAKERIs this the time of the show when we think,

55:20SPEAKERoh, first off, next week, I believe,

55:25SPEAKERwell, in the next two weeks,

55:27SPEAKERwe're going to do a Q and A episode, an email episode.

55:29SPEAKERSo if you have emails,

55:30SPEAKERyou should send them in to techpod@content.town.

55:33SPEAKER- Yes.

55:34SPEAKER- That's techpod@content.town.

55:36SPEAKER- Oh my God, we're going to be back

55:37SPEAKERon the last week of the month schedule for emails.

55:39SPEAKER- Yes, we are.

55:40SPEAKERI wanted to prime that pump before we get to that point.

55:45SPEAKERThen they can be about stuff we've talked about on the show.

55:47SPEAKERThey can be about random stuff that you have questions about.

55:49SPEAKERThey send them in, we don't care.

55:51SPEAKERBrett, no cannibalism, please, that's my request.

55:53SPEAKER- Oh boy, what have we done?

55:56SPEAKER- Look, when you have to put a,

55:58SPEAKERplease don't send any more emails about cannibalism

56:00SPEAKERand that's a real turning point for any young podcast.

56:06SPEAKERBut it's the time of the show where we thank our patrons.

56:08SPEAKER- Yes.

56:09SPEAKER- Thank you, patrons.

56:11SPEAKERWe really appreciate you. - Thank you so much, yes.

56:15SPEAKER- If you want to be a patron of the show

56:17SPEAKERand support the show with money instead of just time,

56:21SPEAKERwhich we appreciate either one, really,

56:23SPEAKERthen for two bucks a month,

56:24SPEAKERyou can get access to the fabulous techpod discord

56:27SPEAKERwhere you can hang out with like 1,400, 1,500 other

56:31SPEAKERwonderful nerds and talk about all sorts of things.

56:33SPEAKERWe just started a science channel.

56:36SPEAKERDid you do that? - Yes, we did.

56:37SPEAKERI did that, in fact. - Okay, I assumed you did.

56:39SPEAKER- Someone asked, someone, by someone,

56:41SPEAKERI mean our friend, Doug Ellison from JPL.

56:44SPEAKER- Science Doug, we call him.

56:45SPEAKER- If anyone were in a position to request a science channel,

56:49SPEAKERI would say it's him.

56:50SPEAKER- Look, if Doug asks for a channel,

56:52SPEAKERI'm gonna give Doug a channel, that's all.

56:54SPEAKERHe gets, he's been a double guest.

56:56SPEAKERHe's the first double guest, so.

56:57SPEAKER- If anybody else on the server also drives robots

56:59SPEAKERon other planets, they too can request a science channel.

57:02SPEAKER- Look, and actually, you don't have to be Doug

57:05SPEAKERto request a channel.

57:07SPEAKER- You're right, that's a pretty high bar.

57:08SPEAKERAnybody actually can request a yes, but we do.

57:12SPEAKER- Yeah, Chappell asked for a F1 racing channel once

57:14SPEAKERand we made that happen, so.

57:16SPEAKEROr sports channel, maybe.

57:18SPEAKER- Yes, yeah, especially with, I mean, you know,

57:21SPEAKERthis is what we had Doug on to talk about,

57:22SPEAKERbut with Perseverance landing next week,

57:25SPEAKERor is it the week after?

57:26SPEAKER- The 18th, so six days from today.

57:28SPEAKER- Holy crap, that is less than a week

57:30SPEAKERfrom the time of this recording.

57:33SPEAKEREven less time by the time you hear this.

57:35SPEAKER- Thursday, Wednesday, next week sometime.

57:37SPEAKER- It's good that we have that channel

57:38SPEAKERso people can talk about the landing now.

57:40SPEAKER- Yeah.

57:41SPEAKER- I gotta find out what time that's happening.

57:42SPEAKERI kinda wanna follow a long life.

57:43SPEAKER- It's around lunch time.

57:44SPEAKER- Is it?

57:45SPEAKER- Yeah.

57:46SPEAKER- Okay.

57:47SPEAKER- 1130 is what Kishore said the other day.

57:48SPEAKER- That's exciting.

57:49SPEAKER- They'll know, I think when we talked to Doug

57:51SPEAKERa few weeks ago, it was 1238 is what they were shooting for,

57:53SPEAKERbut yeah, so you're gonna--

57:56SPEAKER- I'm sorry, I have to say, just to push the Discord here,

57:58SPEAKERwhen you mentioned the Discord, I opened it briefly.

58:01SPEAKER- Yeah, when I saw it.

58:02SPEAKER- Someone who was a veteran of the Navy saying,

58:04SPEAKER"What I feel like every time I tell my old Navy stories,"

58:07SPEAKERand they posted a picture of Cup

58:08SPEAKERfrom "Transformers" the movie, so.

58:11SPEAKER- This is a good server to align with my personal interests,

58:13SPEAKERat least.

58:14SPEAKER- That's pretty good.

58:18SPEAKERSo yeah, if you wanna get in on the Discord, you can.

58:19SPEAKERWe do a patron-exclusive podcast once a month,

58:24SPEAKERall sorts of good stuff all the time,

58:26SPEAKERand you can find out about that at Patreon,

58:29SPEAKERsorry, TechPod, nope.

58:31SPEAKERYou can find out about that at patreon.com/techpod.

58:35SPEAKER- There you go.

58:37SPEAKER- And always, as always, we wanna thank

58:39SPEAKERour executive producer-level patrons.

58:41SPEAKERThe Bunny Fiend, Jacob Chappell, David Allen,

58:43SPEAKERand James Kamik.

58:44SPEAKERThank you all so much, and thanks everybody,

58:47SPEAKERwhether you listen, whether you back the Patreon,

58:50SPEAKERwhether you tell your friends, we appreciate it.

58:53SPEAKERAlso, TechPod folks pushed my daughter almost

58:56SPEAKERto her cookie goal last week.

58:57SPEAKER- Oh my God, that's amazing.

58:59SPEAKER- If anybody wants some Girl Scout cookies,

59:00SPEAKERyou don't know any Girl Scouts in real life,

59:02SPEAKERyou can find cookies at cookies.techpod.com.

59:05SPEAKER- Do you just get, is there just a thermometer

59:08SPEAKERfilling up on your end, or do you get actual breakdowns

59:10SPEAKERof who's buying what, or what he's selling the most?

59:13SPEAKER- Theoretically, in a normal year,

59:14SPEAKERwe would deliver them by hand.

59:16SPEAKER- Sure, this current wave, I'm just curious what's--

59:20SPEAKER- You wanna know, I don't think I have data analytics

59:23SPEAKERabout which cookies are the most popular, unfortunately.

59:26SPEAKERBut let me look and see.

59:29SPEAKER- My girlfriend's got some co-workers,

59:32SPEAKERchildren, daughter, selling at her workplace,

59:35SPEAKERand it was suggested in the course of all that happening

59:39SPEAKERthat nobody likes the lemon ones.

59:41SPEAKER- Fuck them, lemon ones are dope.

59:42SPEAKER- Okay.

59:43SPEAKER- Those people are giving you bad information.

59:45SPEAKER- I thought that was, I mean, they're not my favorite,

59:46SPEAKERto be clear, but I thought that was maybe a little harsh

59:48SPEAKERtoward the lemon ups.

59:50SPEAKER- Look, if you wanna talk about, okay,

59:52SPEAKERmy official stated policy is that all Girl Scout cookies rip.

59:56SPEAKER- Okay, that's fair, I mean, you know what,

59:58SPEAKERcookies are better than no cookies, I'll say that.

1:00:01SPEAKER- But what I'm gonna say right now,

1:00:03SPEAKERthis is just between you and me,

1:00:04SPEAKERwe're not gonna put this out, nobody, like, shh.

1:00:07SPEAKER- Samoas kinda suck, dude.

1:00:09SPEAKER- What?

1:00:10SPEAKER- No, no. - Coconut men,

1:00:12SPEAKERdon't eat coconut, coconut's bad.

1:00:13SPEAKER- Why?

1:00:14SPEAKER- It's just gross.

1:00:15SPEAKER- Is it actually bad or is it just a personal preference?

1:00:17SPEAKER- No, I just don't like it, I think it tastes bad.

1:00:20SPEAKER- Coconut's fine, coconut's fine.

1:00:21SPEAKER- If I was stack ranking the Girl Scout cookies,

1:00:24SPEAKERThin Mints, number one with a bullet,

1:00:26SPEAKERLemon Ups, number two, Dosey Dose,

1:00:28SPEAKERthose peanut butter sandwich cookies,

1:00:30SPEAKERnumber three, Trefoils, number four.

1:00:34SPEAKERWe have extraordinarily different tastes in Girl Scout

1:00:38SPEAKERcookies, I have to say. - S'mores, very good.

1:00:40SPEAKERThe S'mores, I might actually put the S'mores

1:00:42SPEAKERabove the Dosey Dough when I think about it,

1:00:43SPEAKER'cause it's the better sandwich cookie now.

1:00:45SPEAKER- I have not had the S'mores, I could see that,

1:00:48SPEAKERthe Dosey Dose are very good, I think S'mores are just fine.

1:00:51SPEAKERThin Mints, I feel, are very fairly middle of the pack.

1:00:54SPEAKER- Get, wow.

1:00:57SPEAKER- We got a box, though, and they went straight

1:00:59SPEAKERin the freezer, so I had Frozen Thin Mints,

1:01:01SPEAKERwhich was quite an experience.

1:01:03SPEAKER- If you never had the Frozen Thin Mints,

1:01:04SPEAKERyou gotta put 'em in the freezer.

1:01:05SPEAKER- I don't think I'd ever, I didn't really seek out Thin Mints,

1:01:07SPEAKERlike I said, you know, they're a mid-tier.

1:01:09SPEAKER- Do you not like mint?

1:01:10SPEAKER- That's fine. - Do you not like chocolate?

1:01:12SPEAKER- It's fine, it reminds me a little bit of toothpaste.

1:01:16SPEAKER- If you're using chocolatey toothpaste, man,

1:01:18SPEAKERthat is messed up. - That's not the part that,

1:01:21SPEAKERI think Tagalongs might be my number one.

1:01:24SPEAKER- You know, the peanut butter in Tagalongs,

1:01:26SPEAKERI like the Tagalong, but I don't,

1:01:30SPEAKERI don't like that kind of like cookie/candy

1:01:33SPEAKERpeanut butter is not my favorite thing.

1:01:34SPEAKER- Really?

1:01:35SPEAKEROh, man, it's just like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup

1:01:37SPEAKERin cookie form.

1:01:39SPEAKER- So yeah, I don't know, I don't get a,

1:01:41SPEAKERunfortunately, I don't get a breakdown by variety of cookie.

1:01:46SPEAKER- That's a shame.

1:01:46SPEAKER- It's a real letdown for all of us.

1:01:48SPEAKER- I would love to know.

1:01:50SPEAKERGod dammit.

1:01:50SPEAKER- I mean, I could go through manually and find it, but.

1:01:53SPEAKER- I have to close this, nothing against your daughter,

1:01:54SPEAKERbut I have to close this page.

1:01:56SPEAKER- What, you should just get some cookies, Brad.

1:01:57SPEAKER- I'm not supposed to be eating cookies right now.

1:01:59SPEAKER- Don't eat cookies right now, they're bad for you.

1:02:03SPEAKERBut yeah, that's cookies.content.town.

1:02:06SPEAKERWe'll see you all next week, I guess.

1:02:08SPEAKER- You guess?

1:02:09SPEAKER- I mean, I'm not going anywhere.

1:02:11SPEAKER- So I wanna hear a little more certitude here, please.

1:02:14SPEAKER- Thanks for listening, everybody.

1:02:15SPEAKERWe'll see you all next week.

1:02:17SPEAKER(upbeat music)

1:02:33SPEAKER(upbeat music)