This Week in Tech Episode 932 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for Twitter. This week in tech. We have a really, oh, I love these guys. Great panel for you. Ashley. Esther joins us. Longtime CNET person. She's got some new projects she'll tell you about from Tech Crunch. The great Alex Wilhelm. Of course, with those two, we're gonna talk about gaming. The BLO four is on the, is on the horizon. We'll also talk about Reddit is at the end of the line for everybody's favorite social network. And Google yet another Google product down the tubes. It's kind of hard to believe all that and more. Coming up next on Twit

TWiT Intro (00:00:36):
Podcasts

Leo Laporte (00:00:37):
You

TWiT Intro (00:00:37):
Love from people you trust. This is T Twit.

Leo Laporte (00:00:49):
This is twit this week in Tech. Episode 932, recorded Sunday, June 18th, 2023. There's always a cow level. This week at Tech is brought to you by Duo. Duo protects against breaches with a leading access management suite, providing strong multi-layered defenses to only allow legitimate users in. For any organization concerned about being breached that needs a solution Fast Duo quickly enables strong security and improves user productivity. Visit cs.co/twit today for a free trial and buy express vpn. If you wanna get way more shows and save money while you're at it, go to express vpn.com/twit. Protect your privacy and security today. Go to express vpn.com/twit and get a three extra months free with a one year package. And buy Mint Mobile inflation is everywhere. Whether it's gas, utilities, or your favorite streaming services, thankfully Mint Mobile can give you a much needed break. Get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month and get the plan shipped to your door for free@mintmobile.com slash twit. And buy Grammarly Go. You'll be amazed at what you can do with Grammarly. Go go to grammarly.com/go to download and learn more about Grammarly. Go. It's time for Twin. This week in tech show, we get together with the best people I could find on short notice on Father's Day and talk about the week's tech news. Alex Wilhelm, a new father actually showed up. I really thought you might have. Yeah,

Alex Wilhelm (00:02:40):
No, no, no, no. I, I said I would and I'm, I'm here and I'm gonna miss bedtime tonight. So this is kinda like a vacation for me, so we need to make sure we make it to at least seven 15 and then we're

Leo Laporte (00:02:50):
Good. Actually, that's a good Father's Day gift is like let Liza do bedtime. Yeah,

Alex Wilhelm (00:02:55):
Yeah. Well, you know, she's not excited about it. She's a little bit annoyed. Cause whenever I go on Twitter, I just disappear for the back half of the day. And now that we have a kid, it's actually slightly annoying that I disappear.

Leo Laporte (00:03:04):
Six months old.

Alex Wilhelm (00:03:05):
She's a saint, so

Leo Laporte (00:03:06):
Six months old. Oh, and you love it. How are you feeling? You must, you're kind of coming out of the exhaustion zone at this point. Yes.

Alex Wilhelm (00:03:13):
Yeah. Coming out of that, I mean, what's, if you don't have a kid? You haven't seen this, but the, the amazing thing is you'll wake up on like a Saturday morning and your child will have learned a new thing. Like the weekend Ada discovered she had a tongue. She just stuck her tongue out for few days and it was that

Leo Laporte (00:03:26):
Hilarious. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (00:03:27):
Learned how to blow raspberries. Yeah. At the same time she was eating solid food for the first time. <Laugh>, or now covered in, there's like, it's hilarious. Like it's things you never thought were gonna happen keep happening, and it, it keeps you on your toes. And yeah. I'm, I'm tired as hell, but I'm good.

Leo Laporte (00:03:41):
Yeah. Congratulations. It's great to see you. Alex works for TechCrunch and a variety of capacities. You do the podcast still, right? The

Alex Wilhelm (00:03:51):
Yeah, we are 600 and some episodes in on that. Wow. Amazingly enough. Wow. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:03:56):
What's it called?

Alex Wilhelm (00:03:57):
It's called, oh, it's called Equity. If you wanna learn more about venture capital and startups, and if you don't like those two things, you will hate that show.

Leo Laporte (00:04:04):
Well, I'm gonna get your take on Spez in a second. Yes. But first, let's say hello to Ashley. Esther, always a pleasure to see Ashley and how old is always a

Ashley Esqueda (00:04:14):
Pleasure to be here.

Leo Laporte (00:04:15):
How old is your baby now?

Ashley Esqueda (00:04:17):
40. I mean, it's amazing. No, he's four <laugh>. He'll be four going, he's four going on 18. It feels like. I honestly, he is,

Leo Laporte (00:04:24):
It's amazing. He's four now. He's a, I can't believe that

Ashley Esqueda (00:04:26):
He's, he's a delight. Yeah. His birthday's in a couple weeks and we hired he's really into Star Wars, like really into lightsabers very specifically. Everything is a sword right now. Yes. A sword or a weapon. Yes. Everything's a weapon. Yes. And so we hired a Jedi to come to his birthday party. Oh. And teach the kids how to do lightsaber combat. And then Darth Vader's gonna show up in half hour later. And then they all get to fight Darth Vader.

Leo Laporte (00:04:50):
That's incredible. Birthdays have been been a long, I'm waiting

Ashley Esqueda (00:04:53):
For my mom of the year award. Yeah, no, good. I'm waiting for that. So that'll be

Leo Laporte (00:04:56):
Really nice. Nice. In December, my mom gave me a stick for birthday. That was it.

Ashley Esqueda (00:04:59):
It's a sword. Congratulations. You got a sword for your birthday.

Leo Laporte (00:05:03):
I jumped off a wall, landed on it, broken into three pieces. That was the end of that.

Ashley Esqueda (00:05:07):
Then you had three swords.

Leo Laporte (00:05:08):
Ashley's been busy though since you left cnet. You wrote a book coming out. I did soon. Right.

Ashley Esqueda (00:05:15):
This summer. The Art of OTTs too. If you if you love Double Fine the Game Studio. If you happened to cross the 32 episode, psychotic documentary, which was just recently made eligible for the Emmys, which is really cool. I wrote the art book about it. So it's a real nice companion piece. It's massive. For 50 bucks, you get 400 pages of amazing psycho Knotts art. And

Leo Laporte (00:05:40):
It is a certain style, isn't it? That Psycho Knotts Beautiful

Ashley Esqueda (00:05:43):
Style. Yeah. Bespoke everything's bespoke. Which is really incredible.

Leo Laporte (00:05:47):
Character is hand painted. It's all hand

Ashley Esqueda (00:05:48):
Painted. It's all hand. Wow. Well, the the, the concept art team is is just a machine. I mean, they, they're from their character designers to their 3D artists. It's just really just an amazing team of you

Leo Laporte (00:05:59):
Know, you could kind of tell, I think that's one of the things that makes the Psycho Knotts such a great game, is you can kind of tell's a human made it.

Ashley Esqueda (00:06:07):
Yes. Well, there's a, there's a, there's a philosophy that they follow called the Psycho Knotts Wonk in that specific game, which is really interesting. And we dive into that in the book. It's there are three very specific rules and and it makes the world kind of look what it looks like, which is pretty neat.

Leo Laporte (00:06:22):
Ashley's just launched a new business. We'll talk about that too in, in a little bit. Rowdy skeleton. Woo. I love the name. But first speaking of skeletons, let's talk about Reddit.

Ashley Esqueda (00:06:34):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:06:36):
<Laugh>. Holy cow. Holy cow. Yeah. Oh boy. Cow. And I'm sad. You know, we, so I kind of seen this happen with kind of slow motion with Twitter. Yeah. And apparently Steve Huffman, who was the current CEO and the original, one of the original founders of Reddit, admires <laugh>, Elon Musk, and is kind of following along in the Elon Musk playbook, which seems demented.

Ashley Esqueda (00:07:04):
Yeah. That it doesn't seem you know, I was just reading Casey's

Leo Laporte (00:07:11):
Casey Li Lis a platformer.

Ashley Esqueda (00:07:13):
Casey Newton's Newton yeah, yeah. Casey, Casey Newton's bit about Twitter. Was talking about this is actually like, maybe one of the worst acquisitions in the hi history of Wall Street. And so I'm like, I don't know that that's anything that you would like to aspire to. Do you really want, like, it seems like

Leo Laporte (00:07:31):
A bad idea. Wanna you wanna emulate that? Yeah. The latest Twitter news is they're getting kicked out of their offices in Colorado. Cause they In Boulder. In Boulder cuz they don't, didn't pay the rent, which they're not doing in every other office as well, including San Francisco, the headquarters. And England. The apparently the royal estate is suing them for rent <laugh>. I don't think you should really stiff the king, but I, you know, maybe that's just me. And now they also have announced they're not gonna pay their Google Cloud bills. Which is kind of problematic.

Ashley Esqueda (00:08:06):
I should, I, I'm gonna correct myself here. This is actually from the, the thing that Casey excerpt posted an excerpt of was from a puck news post

Leo Laporte (00:08:16):
Puck is great. I subscribe. I pay for

Ashley Esqueda (00:08:18):
Puck. I pay for Will, will Elon Lose Control of Twitter is the name of the, the article. So it was very, very interesting.

Leo Laporte (00:08:23):
Pay for Platformer. Casey Newton's and I pay for puck. Oh yeah. I think it's pretty clear. I don't know. We got, we got sidetracked from Reddit. We'll get back to it in a moment, folks. Don't worry. We're gonna talk about Elon all day. We have <laugh>, but we've got new villains in town. I do think it looks like, although Elon at their latest upfront said, ad sales are up 40%. But when I go to Twitter and I look at what they're selling ads to, if I have to see that stupid airplane ad one more time, I will. I'm just gonna plots. So I'm thinking that I

Ashley Esqueda (00:09:00):
Block them.

Leo Laporte (00:09:01):
Oh, you block them.

Ashley Esqueda (00:09:03):
I buy You can block. They're all just, yeah, I just block them. Like I, it's most of them, I'm just like, this is junk. Like, it's all junk. It's, it feels like as seen on tv. It feels like I'm watching late night infomercials. It.

Leo Laporte (00:09:15):
That's what it is. It's all that crap. Yeah. Like, I don't think you should replace your weed whacker with a spinning steel blade. That seems like a bad idea.

Ashley Esqueda (00:09:28):
I don't, that seems like a real, that's

Leo Laporte (00:09:30):
Amazing. The steel wire cutter trimmer head never breaks. No, but you might,

Ashley Esqueda (00:09:36):
It will break you. It will break

Leo Laporte (00:09:37):
You. Why would you put a blade on something unshielded that seems so dumb. Like, oh yeah. Well, you know, you know, it could do is you could put a chainsaw on it. That would really work.

Ashley Esqueda (00:09:48):
Yeah. Why not? Just, yeah, why not just put a chainsaw at the end? It's just like legend a Zelda, you just fuse a chainsaw with a stick <laugh>. It's just, that's it. You just go forward and you

Leo Laporte (00:09:58):
Can just see all things. Maybe that's where all of the new Silicon Valley ideas will come from. Tears of the kingdom

Ashley Esqueda (00:10:02):
<Laugh> only tears of the kingdom. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:10:05):
Oh, so you just can block those and you'll never see 'em again.

Ashley Esqueda (00:10:08):
I just block them. I like, I, there are some, like, larger companies that I haven't blocked because they're, you know, they're still advertising. Like, I haven't blocked McDonald's because they have totally unhinged content sometimes. But but yeah, like I, most of them I just, smaller company, I just block them.

Leo Laporte (00:10:22):
So BFE Mart, which is, by the way, I don't know if that's inspired or a terrible name, but I can just say

Ashley Esqueda (00:10:28):
Chat. G B T wrote that name. Yeah, a hundred percent. I'll put money

Leo Laporte (00:10:31):
On that. I can block Burey Mart. Yeah. Chat. G B T probably came up with the idea of putting a blade on a weed whacker too. That's gotta be, that sounds like exactly what a, what an evil computer program would say,

Ashley Esqueda (00:10:41):
Come on, give me ideas for low cost. Come on. Low cost products. Yeah. With an element of danger. Oh, give me 50 product ideas and EY Mart.

Leo Laporte (00:10:51):
Yeah. Got their money. So, so this is William Cohen who actually has a lot of m and a experience, right. Alex, he's a smart guy. Yeah. Writing on Puck, saying what seems like is that the banks are just gonna say, okay, you're done.

Ashley Esqueda (00:11:07):
You've had your fun,

Leo Laporte (00:11:08):
You've had your fun. They have th 13 billion worth of debt. Elon apparently is making the interest payments, which we thought he might not even do. Next one's due in September.

Alex Wilhelm (00:11:20):
He made the first two that I saw. But I, I did a little math on the ad numbers that they had for, I think it was late 2022 and then the start of this year compared to their historical revenue results and then kind of figured out their, their debt payments. The company might be making enough money to do that. But I think when you ca calculate it also in like cloud expenses and personnel and so forth, it's probably pretty far in the red still. And I don't think it's gonna change because I don't think it's becoming a, a better place to be and not to open up this particular can of worms. But Twitter today was mostly Elon and Joe Rogan bullying a pediatrician. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:11:54):
My god. Vaccine. You know what I, I actually said, that's it. I'm done. Cuz I would, I was using Twitter read only.

Alex Wilhelm (00:12:02):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:12:02):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And the fact that they can gang up on Peter Hotez, who is, you know, this guy went to school and studied this stuff. He's a phy, he's an md, he's a immunologist, he is a public health expert. And for Joe Rogan and R FK Jr. And Elon Musk to say, oh no, we know better is infuriating. And now they're saying, well, if, if you really, if you're right, you should debate us on the Joe Rogan show, to which Peter is wisely saying no.

Alex Wilhelm (00:12:35):
Y Yeah. Do you wanna sit there for three hours with a guy who made people eat bugs on television and try to talk about your life's work? Oh, it's not the intellectual dark web, it's the intellectual web of weeds. Like, these people are pathetic and small-minded. And what's what's bad here isn't just that they apparently now just are the only personalities on Twitter that matter in terms of reach, but also they're gonna get, get people killed. And I'm, I'm not in favor of the disinformation that leads to,

Leo Laporte (00:12:57):
That's my point Lib's health outcome. Yeah, it's fine. If Balaji wants to bet a million dollars that Bitcoin's gonna get to a million dollars three months. Yeah, I bet. Which he lost. I hope somebody collected on that. But when you're talking about public health, this is not a pla And the problem is, a lot of people, I think, see this and believe it. They don't.

Ashley Esqueda (00:13:14):
Oh, a hundred percent. They take what he, what Rogan says is gospel. This is like a very, even though, you know, he'll say like, wow, I didn't know that. Hey, look that up on Google. And it's like, oh God. Like, no. But yeah, I mean, I think I, I just yeah, I, for me, it can boil it down to what Mark Twain has said famously, which is never argue with a fool. They'll simply bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience. So it's just, you can't, you can't argue with, you know, people who come, you know, prepared with bad faith arguments and, you know, these sort of like, they just, there's no changing minds there. And I like, I think that it's just like, we just want you to come on and then, and then crow to people that we owned you. Like, it's, it's about winning. It's not

Alex Wilhelm (00:13:58):
About actual debate Ben Shapiro method of debate, which is just try to just talk over people and then claim that you won. I like that Mark t twin quote, though, I'm more familiar with the, the porcine version, which is don't wrestle with the peg because you'll both get dirty and the pig will enjoy it. <Laugh> Yes, yes. Is a very similar kinda argument. Indeed. There. Indeed.

Leo Laporte (00:14:13):
I think that was S Johnson actually said that. <Laugh>

Alex Wilhelm (00:14:17):
Oh, thank you Leah for the historical reference. But I, I wanna go back to the, the Reddit Elon point that con here, because I think that when people are discussing in a business context, the, the desire to emulate Elon, what they mean more than how Elon has particularly run Twitter's ad business, per se, is more that run a much smaller company. Much that's much leaner and with much less I would say employee say. And how things are, are, are done. I don't think that Elon Musk is part of the, the pro-union caucus, in other words. And so if you can work your employees more and get more out of them for a, a less kind of overall costly cost basis, well then why not? And I think Spez is trying to get his company public. And I think he's struggling with that.

Leo Laporte (00:15:01):
Let's go through the, let's go through the history. Well, desperate. Let's go through the backstory. Cause so we could talk about it, by the way.

Ashley Esqueda (00:15:06):
Yeah. Cause there's a lot, there's a lot happening with Reddit. Yes. That has led us to this point. Yes. Of like, there's literal Reddit blackouts, some

Leo Laporte (00:15:13):
Of the largest commun It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, not L B J gbs, George Bernard Shaw. Neville wrestles with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.

Alex Wilhelm (00:15:22):
Oh, that's, that's, I I was close. But

Leo Laporte (00:15:24):
Yeah. Even better. Mark, between Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw, and Lyndon Baes Johnson. We got it covered. <Laugh>. So it all started not so long ago. Twitter decided not Twitter. Reddit decided they wanted to go public. I'm sure you covered this, Alex, when it happened, but what did their prospects for an I P O Good what were their prospects?

Alex Wilhelm (00:15:47):
Well, they filed privately. Okay, so I'm just pulling that up now. I I forgot date. So December 16th, 2021. So they filed privately

Leo Laporte (00:15:54):
Public that a long time ago, which they can

Alex Wilhelm (00:15:55):
Do. But keep in mind what was going on in late 2021? It was the apex, it was the, the peak of the last asset in venture capital. Boom. So they filed probably with great aspirations to go public right before everything changed and went kind of to, to hell, frankly. So I think they're probably dealing with some inpatient bankers and backers.

Leo Laporte (00:16:14):
They wanted to go public. No,

Ashley Esqueda (00:16:15):
I'm, I think you also argue that wasn't, oh, sorry, Leo. Don't you also argue that like, this is sort of a very similar problem that a lot of tech companies had, which was they saw this, like, meta is a really good example of this, where they saw a huge boom in users during the time when everyone was staying home and locked down with nothing to do, but be on the internet or use their meta quest and, and decided that that was going to be the new normal. And that they somehow convinced people, oh yeah, this, these are our new normal numbers. They'll just always be this way.

Alex Wilhelm (00:16:47):
I mean, a great example of that was Roblox. Yeah. Right. I mean, Roblox was doing a simply insanely amazing business at the time. Just in Coinbase was very similar. Money was just raining down from the sky. Incredible profits. These companies looked you know, bulletproof and, you know, generation making sources of wealth. But things changed. And so Reddit, I think is dealing with yes, a change in the valuations climate. And also, as, you know, everyone in the podcast world knows Leo a decline in overall ad spend. And so it's, it's a tougher market for them. And I think where you're going next is how they reacted to that.

Leo Laporte (00:17:18):
Well, let me ask first ha, have they ever had a profit?

Alex Wilhelm (00:17:22):
It's hard to say. I don't, I don't probably think so. Cause they sold back in the day for not that much money. And then they got other forms of investment.

Leo Laporte (00:17:29):
They were ac they were acquired by Conde Nast. Conde spun it off as a standalone, although they still hold the majority of shares filed for the private I p O a couple of years ago, but didn't do anything about it. And they were apparently, according to the information planning, this I p o, this is from a story on Valentine's Day. So a few months ago in the second half, we are in the second half by the way, or we, we will soon be in the second half. Hard to be, hard to be due to a good ip. Is it hard, Alex, you're an expert. Can you do an I P O if you've never turned a profit?

Alex Wilhelm (00:18:04):
So you can it depends a little bit on how your business is set up. A lot of software companies, for example, will go public when they're growing pretty quickly, but still consuming cash. And then people expect their growth rate to slow down over time and then become more profitable a bit like Salesforce or Microsoft or whatever. The issue that Reddit has is that it's a social media company kind of, and so it's comps are not Salesforce or Atlassian. They're meta or Snap or Pinterest. And those companies tend to trade at lower multiples. And so I think there's probably less market willingness to allow them to go public if they're unprofitable, or more importantly, if they're still consuming a lot of cash. Because you can be cashflow positive and still unprofitable under gap terms. And I know that's too deep, but the point is, profit's a little squishy. And so I don't think we know offhand how well Reddit's doing on that metric, but because they haven't gone public yet, Leo, I presume the answer is not so well.

Leo Laporte (00:18:53):
Well, and that's probably why they filed in 2021, but still never went public because they were waiting for something to, yeah. Something to get better market conditions. The market itself or perhaps their own profitability. As far as I know, they've never had a PR turn to profit. So they have raised hundreds of millions of dollars. Right. last round of funding was 10 billion valuation in 2021. That might encourage you, you know, we're, we're worth 10 billion. That seems so high. <Laugh>

Alex Wilhelm (00:19:30):
Red, it, I, I don't

Leo Laporte (00:19:31):
Know. It was reportedly opening for a 15 billion valuation on the market. They were on the precipice according to the information of going public last year. But then hit pause. Meanwhile, fidelity, who has, by the way, valued Twitter at 13 billion, interesting number fidelity valued Reddit at 6.6 billion. So there is some gap between what Reddit thinks it's worth and what everybody else might think it's worth. In any event, it was clear, I think probably at the highest levels of Reddit, we gotta figure out a way to make more money <laugh>. Right. If we're

Alex Wilhelm (00:20:10):
Gonna go and how, what a great idea, Leo. Nothing wrong after that

Leo Laporte (00:20:13):
Initially. There initial, I, so here's what they, I think did they look at the balance sheet. They say, well, we get, we have this much revenue, you know, we have advertising. It wasn't a great advertising platform, but they have advertising. I pay for Reddit. There is a subscription system for Reddit mm-hmm. <Affirmative> mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And then they're looking at their bandwidth bills. And they're saying, well, you know what's interesting? More than half of our bandwidth, I'm guessing a number, but I would guess more than half of our bandwidth isn't serving our webpage or our apps. It's serving third party apps that's costing us some amount of money. We should monetize that. Oh, by the way, no, no third party app has ads. So we're not monetizing the third party apps at all. And so Steve Hoffman, who started Reddit with Alexis Ohanian and Aaron Schwartz a couple of months later and it came back as CEO after Reddit, had a very rocky up and down leadership problem.

(00:21:10):
Ellen Powell, for instance, who left you know, furious, I'm sure with the boys club. So Steve took it, said, I'm gonna, no, it's my company. I started it. I know how to run it. I'm gonna run it. Steve says, well, I know one way we can make some more money is cut off these third party apps. Look, Elon just did it on Twitter <laugh>. In fact, Twitter's done it before third party apps. Oh yeah. Suck bandwidth. And, and, and don't show your ads. So Twitter cut off the third party a long time ago. They slowly, Ken came back Elon cut it off in a very ugly fashion late last year when he just turned off the API and put a lot of companies in mortal danger. So I think what happened is, is Huffman said, what? We're not gonna be evil like, like Twitter. We're gonna let 'em know. Unfortunately, gave 'em one month. And the API costs, they proposed, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, were 24 cents per thousand hits

Alex Wilhelm (00:22:14):
Per thousand calls. Yeah. I think that matches money. Money for calls.

Leo Laporte (00:22:17):
Yeah. It was a lot of money. That's a huge amount of money. The number one Reddit app and app I use and love. Because by the way, we should also mention Reddit does have iOS and Android apps. They're unusable. Yeah. They're awful.

Alex Wilhelm (00:22:30):
I I did not know there were third party iOS apps on Reddit or for Reddit. And so I've been using the, the official one and oh my God, it's awful. It is not good. Yes. But

Leo Laporte (00:22:37):
Apollo is bad Rich, written by a guy named Christian Selig is fantastic. And there's others. Reddit is fun. Riff on Android. I used Joey on Android for a long time. There's narwhal, there are is a fairly rich ecosystem of third party apps. Christian Selig on a phone call talking to them, they said 24 cents for a thousand calls. He did some math. He said, that's gonna cost me $20 million a year. To which they said, yeah. And <laugh>.

Alex Wilhelm (00:23:07):
So better put some ads on there.

Leo Laporte (00:23:10):
<Laugh> better do something. Yeah. well what they, what Spez is what Spez is is Steve Huffman's handle on Twitter. What he said was, well just charge your users for that. You know, five bucks a user, you're gonna be great. It's more complicated than that. He's got grandfathered users because of fees from Apple, for instance, which takes 30% and the credit cards mm-hmm. <Affirmative> it would not be $5. It wouldn't be, it would, he would actually, he said he was on technos weekly this week on Thursday. Told Micah and Jason Howell it would, I would lose 10 cents a user if I charged five bucks a month. So, and he reasonably says, I can't charge more than five bucks a month. So he says, I'm outta business end of the month now. I'm sure he is made a good, good living. Apollo was, I think, well funded.

(00:23:55):
He had a lot of users and I paid for it. A lot of people did. Riff also said, yeah, we're, we're gonna cut the cord in in the month. We can't pay this number of third party apps. Said, all right, we're out of business. But this bothered the users. I think one of the problems that <laugh>, one of the problems Elon and Huffman have is they forget. They think people go to Twitter because of the software. They think people go to Reddit because of the software. People don't go to Twitter and Reddit because of your fabulous software, because of your servers, because of your trust and safety. They go there because of the other people, the content, which is all made by, by in fact,

Ashley Esqueda (00:24:36):
Leo, which is made for free. For free by those users.

Leo Laporte (00:24:40):
Reddits even, well actually more in debt because Reddit uses volunteer mods. Mm-Hmm.

Ashley Esqueda (00:24:45):
<Affirmative> mm-hmm.

Leo Laporte (00:24:46):
<Affirmative>, who really put in the time. I mean, I might post once in a put in while put in the work, but that's hard work. The mods are upset because a lot of the tools they use use the api and oh, by the way, they prefer the third party apps anyway. So the mods were upset. So they said we're, well, we're, we're gonna have a little boycott June 12th through 15th. And about half the, I think it was about half the mods, half the subreddits, the, the, the channels on Reddit went dark. Right. It was a lot, it was a lot to which thousand. Huffman goes on a very ill-advised publicity tour, gives interviews to the Verge, npr, nbc, and says the moderators are landed gentry, they're, you know, they're, they're, they are the problem. We're gonna make it possible for the users to vote the mods out and we're gonna force these communities to reopen. And that really pissed people off. <Laugh>. Yeah. The, my favorite one is a r slash picks, which decided, so iPhone for instance, went dark forever. They say, move to move to Discord, we're gonna have a Discord channel. Our slash picks decided we're only gonna post picture. It's a place where you'd post your pictures. We're only gonna post pictures of John Oliver from now on. And it's all John Oliver all the time. Nothing else. What a great protest, by the way.

Ashley Esqueda (00:26:19):
Yeah. You're using up the servers, the bandwidth. You're using up server bandwidth to put John Oliver on your subreddit. Very good. Very good use. Very good use. Very good. But here's the thing, like Reddit, this is what Reddit is best at. Right. It's like this sort of like this

Leo Laporte (00:26:33):
Is the culture.

Ashley Esqueda (00:26:35):
Yeah. It's like, it's, it's this, like, this is exactly Reddit culture. I've been, I've been on Reddit. I, I don't even wanna say how long I've been on Reddit, cuz it's age me, like too much <laugh>. But I, like, literally, I've been on Reddit a long time and like I love, I love Reddit. I love so many of these communities. Like there are so, so many of the funniest people I've ever encountered on the internet. I've seen on Reddit. Like some of the funniest stories I've ever read have been on Reddit. And you know, this is exactly the kind of like good chaos. Reddit is known for like a lot of, you know, there are some other less good communities that have, you know, kind of moved on or have been sort of shadow banned. But the thing is, is like, you know, collectively there is a chaotic good about most of like, mainstream Reddit that when harnessed and and and pointed in a certain direction can be very powerful.

Leo Laporte (00:27:29):
Well, and it's interesting cuz Steve Huffman, who you would think would understand the culture completely, you'd think so misunderstood how users would react. He sent out a memo to the team saying, a, don't go outside in your Reddit gear because you'll get tomatoes thrown at you. And B, it'll all pass. Don't worry. This, this is just, you know, these are ba they're babies, they're landed gentry. They're gonna whine and moan and everything will be back to normal. Is he right?

Alex Wilhelm (00:27:57):
No,

Ashley Esqueda (00:27:58):
I don't think so.

Alex Wilhelm (00:28:00):
No, I don't. So I, I think, I think going back to Leo's comment about how people don't go to Twitter and Reddit for the software mm-hmm. <Affirmative> is actually a bit of an understatement given that Reddit and Twitter have famously crap server Cassity. Yes. They're

Leo Laporte (00:28:11):
Terrible.

Ashley Esqueda (00:28:12):
Remember the fail whale?

Alex Wilhelm (00:28:13):
Yes. The two apps that still don't work somehow in 2023 in the era of a multip public cloud environment, they can get their interest rate. So no, I think people only come for the community and people are going to leave and find other options slowly. I mean, there isn't,

Leo Laporte (00:28:26):
I have to say I've looked, you know, there's a fe averse thing called Lemi. There's a k k bill, K bit, but there isn't really anything. There's discord. I guess there's nothing like Reddit, discords

Ashley Esqueda (00:28:39):
Hard cuz it's like, it's not easily browsable. Right? Right. It's like you have to know what you want. Like when I go and I wanna join a community like Club Twit, like I'm, I know what I'm looking for and that's what I joined. But it's like when on Reddit, you can just surf Reddit and find a community that you didn't know existed. You know, it's like maybe you don't go to you know, maybe you never would've found a community had you not just seen a post surface a a really hot post surface on Reddit. And then you find like this really great community like restoration, our restoration is like one of my favorite Reddit communities. Like, I love seeing people restore photos. I find it terribly fascinating. And I would've never found that had it not just popped up on my feed one day because one of the posts was, was really blowing up. And so I, I went in there and I'm like, oh my God, I love this. I love this subreddit. I'm gonna hang out in here. Yes. And so I, you know, join the subreddit. So the discoverability factor, I think is really a key thing that makes Reddit different from any of its potential competitors. Like a Discord. I think Discord in particular would be the one that would come to mind first, but I

Alex Wilhelm (00:29:44):
Still read.

Leo Laporte (00:29:45):
Well, I think Twitter have the, have the advantage that if you wanna know what the zeitgeist is of the internet, you can go there and you can quickly get a handle on what people are talking about. What people care about. Yeah. And so for me it's hugely val, they're both very, very valuable. Furthermore mm-hmm. <Affirmative> Reddit is valuable for a lot of people who instead of searching Google, they will add site colon reddit.com on their Google searches. Cuz

Alex Wilhelm (00:30:09):
It, that's what I do. They get

Leo Laporte (00:30:10):
Much more useful

Ashley Esqueda (00:30:11):
Information, get better, better results, better results all the

Leo Laporte (00:30:14):
Time. Who's gonna suffer from this? We should also point out, and perhaps this is what got the, what got Huffman and the board upset, is that OpenAI was in all probability trained on the entirety of Reddit. Reddit, they know exactly how much OpenAI sucked from Reddit. And it probably was a huge amount. And they're looking at open AI's valuation and then seeing Fidelity cut their valuation by half. Might have pissed them off. Alex, you don't think it's gonna survive this?

Alex Wilhelm (00:30:45):
Well, I, I, I think I was actually gonna bring up the AI point, so I'm glad you did. I really do think that we need to figure out some way to receive compensation for work that is ingested into AI products that has been sold to other people. Like that just seems very reasonable to me. The, the reason why I I, I don't worry as much about discoverability or the other issues that are very clear when we talk about why Twitter and Reddi are still around is because I don't think there's gonna be a one-to-one replacement for them right away. But I do think there's a slow poison effect of this Leo. Like, whenever I'm on Twitter now, I'm, I feel like I'm helping Elon make his Yeah. Interest payments. Yeah. And now when I'm on Reddit, I feel like I'm helping somebody who tried to union bust unpaid mods. And so it just takes away some of the spark and joy for me. And that means I'm probably gonna use it less and less over time. Slow poison. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I, I, I think, I think it's are, are Reddit's best days ahead of it? I think it, you'd be hard to find someone who said, yeah, this is the direct direction to go in. And I think it's gonna take a couple years to play out. But I, I wouldn't be surprised if we're past peak Reddit now.

Leo Laporte (00:31:47):
There's also a, yeah, poison's a good word. Cause it isn't gonna go away any more than Twitter went away. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But if half the subreddits that I follow went away, yeah. I'll still, I could still go to Reddit and get some of what I got, but maybe I wouldn't even notice. But there's gonna be some thinning of the quality plus the people who are gonna stick around who are insensitive to what's happening. Maybe not the people I wanna follow. I wanna follow, you talked about Reddit's culture, Ashley, there was a very quirky, unique culture. And I have to think a lot of the people who contribute to that will leave if they haven't already left.

Ashley Esqueda (00:32:26):
Yeah. I mean, well, there's a lot of moderators who, or, you know, bots, people who build bots. That's another aspect of Reddit that I think a lot of people really appreciate. Like, regardless of whether it's a super useful bot or a sillier bot you know, there are people who put in that work even on Reddit. And so it's just, it's a real, it's a real house of cards because once you start removing people who are conduits for the zeitgeist, then all of a sudden there is no zeitgeist. You can't, you, you can't get that temperature check. And then that's when those people who get the temperature checks on Reddit start using it even less. You know, it's just, it's, it's a real cascading effect. And, and, you know, you have to appreciate that your users are utilizing your service in order to connect with each other and also create content that other people like.

(00:33:17):
And so to, to kind of fly in the face of that and ignore it is really, it's like shocking to me as, as someone who co-founded Reddit, you, like you said, Leo, like, it's shocking to me that Spez is so defiant in this. But I think this speaks to that like, overall problem, and, sorry, my dog's barking at a squirrel outside, if anyone can hear it. <Laugh> squirrel. He's just going absolutely Banana bananas right now. Mean squirrel <laugh>. The, the sun came out for a day and he's like, I've had it with any living creature in this yard, <laugh>. But I think it's really speaks to this kind of growth at all costs forever. That's just unsustainable. It's just an unsustainable business model. This like, oh, we must have year over year growth every year at in perpetuity. Like, it's just not a thing that's realistic. And you know, to, to be able to sit there and call your moderators who work for free, you're calling them landed gentry. I mean, it's just ole Oh my

Alex Wilhelm (00:34:13):
God. So

Ashley Esqueda (00:34:14):
Timeless. I mean, it's just so dramatic. First of all, like, stop it. Like stop, sit down.

Alex Wilhelm (00:34:20):
Yeah. I, I wanna say in the Virgin interview that sped he discussed how, you know, if Google had had third party apps would've been public and people could kind of get Google's results in their app, but didn't charge for it and use Reddit's a sorry Google's API to kind of suck their search results out. Would Google have allowed that? So why should Reddit? And initially I kind of sat back and was like, oh, okay, that's an interesting argument. But then I realized that the, the work that makes Reddit great, the company doesn't do. Whereas the search results that made Google special when it did go public were actually the company's work. And so to me, there's just a misunderstanding of where the value comes from this company. And I think that that's leading to some poor choices. And this may end up driving enough nourishing revenue to go public and Spez will get feted for that and patted on the shoulder and given his block of money and fine capitalism.

(00:35:06):
But, you know, as someone who's been on Reddit now for 14 years, according to my profile, I just pulled up and as a charter member of what was then called Reddit Gold. I'm disappointed that the side that I spend so much time on is apparently forgetting who it is and who made it worth what it may be worth to the market sometime. It's just, it's just, it's a bummer. But also, you know, Red's been around for a long time. Maybe this, it had to go the way of Facebook at some point, right? All, all ad-based properties eventually decay into the point in which they commit suicide. Google search is a good example of this. It's the

Leo Laporte (00:35:36):
As Curry au called it, the in acidification of the internet. It's what happens.

Alex Wilhelm (00:35:42):
Cory's been doing a lot of great writing lately. We should give him five points for that because he's been really just,

Ashley Esqueda (00:35:47):
Just to, in crushing it,

Alex Wilhelm (00:35:48):
Blunt shotgun to the, to the, the zeitgeist. I think he's been doing it and I I've really appreciated it. He's the right person for the right time at the right

Leo Laporte (00:35:56):
Time. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,

Ashley Esqueda (00:35:56):
Are they like Kim Casey Newton. Like, I'm really enjoying, I'm really enjoying Casey's work as well. Like I, I think you know, and also like, I'm really enjoying Kara Swisher just not giving an f about anything ever. She

Leo Laporte (00:36:11):
Never did like seeing her,

Ashley Esqueda (00:36:12):
Can I just say something? She never did. She never did. But, but even more so now, like she just, it's, it's like every minute of every day she becomes more powerful. And it's just really, that's like an exciting thing for me to see on twitter.com. That's like one of the, again, a ze she is a conduit for the zeitgeist. And I love, I love seeing her takes for that reason.

Alex Wilhelm (00:36:33):
But the, if you're on the other side of Kara though, it's tough. Like, I

Ashley Esqueda (00:36:36):
Don't ever be on the other side of Kara. That's my best advice.

Alex Wilhelm (00:36:39):
You, you, me, Ashley. But I think I've, I've met Kara like by four or five times, <laugh> back when I was much more on like the tech circuit, if you will. Mm-Hmm. And like, every time we met she looked at me over was sunglasses, was like, who are you? And I'm like, we've met four times. And so she, she somehow makes you feel about two inches tall. It's she's,

Ashley Esqueda (00:36:55):
Yeah, she's, it's impressive. She's a she is a formidable human being. Yes. I am. I am scared of her. Like fully admitted. I'm scared of her, but like, in a good way. Like, I fi I see her on Twitter and I'm like, I'm so, I would never wanna be in your cross hairs, but also like keep, keep on keeping on,

Alex Wilhelm (00:37:10):
You know, the, the point, the point about like what Cory is doing and what Casey are, are doing to me actually hits me kind of in the heart because I feel like they are writing about and thinking about the most important things today in like, the world of digital. And I feel like my professional niche is sufficiently far from the current like cross airs that I'm, I'm almost like missing the moment based on what I do for a living. I kinda

Leo Laporte (00:37:34):
Wish

Alex Wilhelm (00:37:35):
I

Leo Laporte (00:37:35):
Had more. That's no. You know, come on. FOMO is is an absolute continuous <laugh> thrum background radiation for anybody in our business. Constantly. Yeah. Constantly.

Ashley Esqueda (00:37:49):
Yeah. I have Jomo now I have joy of missing out <laugh>. I'm

Leo Laporte (00:37:52):
Glad I'm not,

Ashley Esqueda (00:37:52):
I don't,

Leo Laporte (00:37:54):
I I know. I mean, look, I was reading that poetry earlier about for Father's Day. I can't read it on the air cuz it's profane by Philip Larkin. And I'm thinking, how did I not become a poet? <Laugh>? So,

Alex Wilhelm (00:38:06):
Oh, I, I know why

Leo Laporte (00:38:08):
<Laugh>.

Alex Wilhelm (00:38:09):
I know why Leo, why? It's because even you and I will never commit such financial suicide as to pursue poetry. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:38:16):
That's true.

Alex Wilhelm (00:38:17):
Because we were not born with a billionaire parents. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:38:20):
There you go. That's why. Yeah. all right, let's, so the prognosis for Reddit not good, Steve. Clearly I do. People go crazy. They get to a certain age and they lose their marbles. What happened to Steve? He wrote the thing, common list money thinks money. He see the money. Money. It's money. It's all

Ashley Esqueda (00:38:39):
About money sees, the money sees. It's like pe Everybody wants that. Everybody wants like the bank account of Elon Musk. Everybody wants the Zuckerberg treatment. It's like, it's just, you know, it's, it, the lure is too, it's too shiny. It's too exciting.

Leo Laporte (00:38:56):
Yeah. Yeah. Money is the root of all evil, I guess. I mean,

Alex Wilhelm (00:39:04):
Curse me with a bit more of it. I mean, I won't say no. Well, maybe

Ashley Esqueda (00:39:07):
No, it's true. Maybe the,

Leo Laporte (00:39:08):
This phrase should be adjusted. Not having money is the root of all evil <laugh>, but wanting more

Alex Wilhelm (00:39:16):
<Laugh>, the only thing worse than having too much money is not having enough. Yes. I think is the, the way that I would put that, that, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:39:21):
That's, that's good. George Bernard Shaw, ladies and gentlemen like that. Ge, George Bernard will aka

Alex Wilhelm (00:39:26):
Lbj AKA Mark. Yeah. Yeah, totally. We're just going through history today on the show.

Leo Laporte (00:39:31):
Yeah. All I know is the rich are not like you and me. Let us take a break. Ashley, Esther is here. Great to have you, Ashley. We'll talk about Rowdy Skeleton in your new enterprise in just a little bit. Alex Wilhelm also here from TechCrunch, the Equity podcast. And of course he writes for TechCrunch. And I read you religiously because that's the only way I can figure out what the hell's going on in the finance world. It's just, it's crazy time. It's crazy time. Our show today, I should mention our fine sponsor brought to you by it's crazy time out there. So you need Cisco Duo. Duo protects against breaches with a leading access management suite. Man, nowadays breach is such a problem. Just had a caller on the Ask the Tech Guy show earlier today who said, oh yeah, you know, on Thursday, the Louisiana Department of Motor Vehicles announced that almost everybody in Louisiana's information has been stolen by a breach.

(00:40:31):
Like everything gone. That's why you need, don't let this happen to you. Strong multi-layered defenses and innovative capabilities that allow only legitimate users in keep the bad actors out. And if suddenly you get the urge, <laugh>, suddenly you say <laugh>, you wake up and say, we gotta do this. Now, if you need protection fast, you can be sure Duo is easy and fast to implement. It can quickly enable strong security. And by the way, without impeding your productivity, your employee productivity, in fact, it can improve it. And I'll tell you how I'll explain this. Duo prevents unauthorized access with multi-layered defenses and modern capabilities that thwart sophisticated, malicious AC access attempts. You need that, right? And even better, because Cisco and Duo are constantly monitoring the threat landscape, it will automatically increase authentication requirements in real time as the risk rises. Now how does this help high productivity?

(00:41:38):
Because it only requires authentication when needed. So your users aren't gonna say it's harder to get in. No, it's, it's swift, it's easy, but it's also Secure Duo also provides an all-in-one solution for strong multifactor authentication for passwordless. That's all the rage these days. Single sign-on and trusted endpoint verification duo helps you implement zero trust principles by verifying users and their devices. And that's good for everyone. Start your free trial. Sign up today. Cs.Co/Twit. I love that short url. That's so good. Cs.Co/Twit for Cisco Duo. They, they say spell it out. Honestly, I don't know how you could do it without spelling it out. Cs.Co. I guess I could say that. Cs.Co/Twi t for Cisco Duo. It's a great solution. Ah, I'm just loving these photos of John Oliver <laugh>.

(00:42:45):
But it makes me sad cuz I I r slash iPhone I use all the time. There's a lot of same. Yeah, there are a lot of subreddits and you know, I feel a little guilty cuz I probably should have rewarded mod. I don't know. Is there a way to reward mods? You should thank your mod. Yeah. Give gold. Give gold. Yeah. I should give more gold. I have lots of gold. Give more gold. Well, speaking of annoying big tech, Google has decided they are going to offload Google Domains. I don't know why I'm running this up top except it's pissing me off. Google Domains, which was actually a very good way to buy a domain name. They had 300 TLDs. It wasn't the cheapest, but it was certainly affordable. And now they're sell, they sold it to Squarespace.

Alex Wilhelm (00:43:38):
<Laugh>, I'm sorry, there's a funny account called like killed by Google. And all it does is track different products that Google kills off. And I, I'm pretty sure when this happened, they had the best day ever. They're like, yes, I was right. I I think the pitch here, Leah was focused, but I mean, it it seems pretty shortsighted to kill off all the things that built consumer surplus at the company

Leo Laporte (00:43:59):
Nine years long. I mean, look, we have a sponsor Hover, which is a great domain registrar and that's what I use. That's who I use. Yeah, it's good. It's not like there's a shortage of good domain registrars, but I have to feel for all the people who registered their domain at Google Domains that soon gonna be owned by Squarespace. I'd be so annoyed. I would be so annoyed. There will be a transition period. Squarespace takes it all over. 10 million domains hosted on Google domains. Millions of customers. Google said, we're sharpening our focus, sharpening their knives. This is right after, by the way, Google announced the.zip t l d, which was a security nightmare. So this was like their last hurrah. Okay, we're gonna introduce a TLD that could really hack your computer and then we're gonna sell the business

Ashley Esqueda (00:44:57):
<Laugh> Goodbye too. Dov. Which also is like, yeah. What, what it, what?

Leo Laporte (00:45:03):
Oh,

Ashley Esqueda (00:45:04):
Why Steve gives you, why don't you just buy pdf? Yeah, there you go. Like I just, it's like just I don't like, oh yes, you can find me at Ashley Eske pdf. Like what?

Leo Laporte (00:45:14):
Oh my God.

Ashley Esqueda (00:45:15):
<Laugh>. I mean is that the only way it could have been worse is if they had also

Leo Laporte (00:45:21):
Well that's if's pretty bad

Ashley Esqueda (00:45:22):
That PDF

Leo Laporte (00:45:23):
Because in fact, Steve covered this on a security now last week, you know, you put a link on a, in an email or a website that's, you know, download zip or whatever. It goes to a website, downloads in the background, a malicious file. I mean it's a terrible idea. Come see our website. <Laugh>. Well Squarespace now ones.zip and not move as it as well

Ashley Esqueda (00:45:44):
Take my advice. Squarespace discontinue those immediately.

Leo Laporte (00:45:49):
<Laugh>, I don't know how, what is Google feels like it's shredding before our very eyes.

Ashley Esqueda (00:45:54):
Well this is like pretty classic Google stuff. I mean they've been, they've been launching in Hell yeah. Initiatives. Hell and then shutting them down since time immemorial.

Leo Laporte (00:46:03):
Yeah. Look at 'em All killed by Google. I'd

Ashley Esqueda (00:46:06):
Be concerned if they weren't killing things. That's when I get scared for Google when there's nothing left to take

Leo Laporte (00:46:12):
Stadia. I felt bad for, but you know, I understood that I wasn't going Yeah. Wasn't going anywhere.

Ashley Esqueda (00:46:17):
Good tech technology. Just, I think it, I think that it was just so ambitious. They wanted to make their own like kind of console platform. And I like they should have just sold it. They should have licensed the technology. Cuz that's, I mean that's where it's

Leo Laporte (00:46:29):
Maybe they tried to and Squarespace didn't want it. I don't know.

Ashley Esqueda (00:46:32):
Ugh. Probably. You're probably right. <Laugh>, jeez. Fans.

Leo Laporte (00:46:35):
Squarespace only has so much money. Guys come on. Can't believe they bought Google Domains. Like that was the best you could do. I mean, look, nothing wrong with Squarespace, but they're they're a web design, you know, website company. Yeah, do not, and incidentally, for years I've said to people, do not get your domain from the same people who you do as your, do your web website. Yeah. That's convenient. Right? But it's a bad idea. You should have. Right. Have it somewhere else like hover.

Ashley Esqueda (00:47:03):
Well, and didn't, wasn't there a time where like you couldn't, which then maybe I'm mixing up services, but there was a point where you couldn't buy, you couldn't import a domain to Squarespace. Like you had to buy it through

Leo Laporte (00:47:15):
Squarespace. I would be surprised

Ashley Esqueda (00:47:16):
If you wanted to build a site. Like it was, like, if you wanted to use a domain, you had to do it through them, which means if you had already registered a website, forget it. Forget it. Like

Leo Laporte (00:47:26):
It just didn't Well that was, I'm sure they changed that. That's a idea.

Ashley Esqueda (00:47:31):
Or if they haven't already now they can. There

Leo Laporte (00:47:33):
Is a larger question though. I mean, yes, of course Google should kill stuff that doesn't make money or whatever. Every company should do that. But at some point doesn't it hurt you? Like people are, you know, and then now Google comes up with some shiny new thing. I'm gonna be, I'm really gonna think twice before I adopt anything Google comes up with. Right?

Alex Wilhelm (00:47:52):
Oh, I I'll nothing that they come up with. I mean, I, I don't think, I don't They have the follow through.

Ashley Esqueda (00:47:56):
Yeah. I mean, think about Gmail is like one of the only things I use and drive. That's like it.

Alex Wilhelm (00:48:03):
Yeah. But think about how Google really did well in the past. They launched Google search, which was amazing. Yeah. Very ad light. They made a bunch of money, enormous amounts of consumer surplus there. Gmail came out, have a gigabyte of storage change the way we think about the internet. They made Chrome. Here's a light we browser that's super fast. And since then they have and should to use Corey's language search, Gmail has stagnated to the point of being vetted. And everything else they've done that slowly kind of decay. I mean, it it's a company that appears to be more run by consultants than technologists. And it answers to Wall Street more than users. And I think that it just shows top to bottom it's disappointment, but felt really became big enough. It's

Leo Laporte (00:48:43):
Kind of a disease that's mm-hmm <affirmative> everywhere now endemic. Yeah. In the technology business,

Ashley Esqueda (00:48:51):
It's just less, it's so much less about users and it's more about investors, right. It's just shareholders and that's it. Like that's really the only thing, you know, it's like they're, a lot of, a lot of companies feel like right now that, or you know, and over time, like the last few years especially, it just feels like there is such a devaluation of the user experience in favor of like just whatever boost shareholder income. I mean, even in, and this is not even like exclusive detect, this is like happening in Hollywood as well with the writer strike and everything that's going on there. And you know, these really big corporations buying up studios and stuff and, and deciding that, you know, oh well we're, we're gonna issue creatives in favor of our shareholders. And it's like, oh, we're just gonna take a big tax write off on, you know, space Ghost was, was put fully pulled off of Max this, this last week.

(00:49:41):
Oh, you're kidding. Like Space Coast, coast to coast. You're fully pulled off Max. And it's like, because they don't wanna pay royalties on it and they just wanna take a big write off on it. And so it's like, I assume that they say, okay, well this is a show that like, you know, probably not a ton of people rewatch, but also it's enough that, you know, just the cost of them keeping it online is, is enough that, you know, and it's an older show, so probably the residuals are a little bit better. And so it's like to keep that, you know, in place, it's like it didn't make sense for shareholders, but not for people who are using this service. So it, that is a real bummer and it's just really prevalent right now. It does feel like it's everywhere.

Leo Laporte (00:50:18):
Here's

Alex Wilhelm (00:50:19):
I think part of the reason why that's happening is because we're pretty far after the last technology generation shift, right? Yeah. That's mm-hmm. Whenever there's a new platform or a new major method of building stuff new stuff comes out, it really changes the game, makes a lot of money and it hasn't been so finally optimized for net income that there's a lot of consumer surplus left and then, you know, this far into the last cycle. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:50:38):
But watch as open AI speed runs the ification cycle. Cause they're, yes. They're gonna go right through it. Let me read you, this is from Cory's post TikTok and shit notification. This is how platforms die first. They're good to their users. Reddit, Google, then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value from themselves. Then they die. <Laugh>, I call this it's not at

Ashley Esqueda (00:51:13):
All perfect. That's a pretty perfect life lifecycle. Beautiful. Yeah, that's a pretty perfect lifecycle image.

Leo Laporte (00:51:20):
He says, I call this in acidification. And it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a two-sided market, where a platform sits between buyers and sellers. In the case of Reddit, the readers in the u posters holding each hostage to the other raking arf, an ever larger shale of share of the value that passes between them Happened at TikTok, happened at Twitter. It's happening at Reddit. He uses Amazon as Amazon.

Ashley Esqueda (00:51:52):
He is Amazon is a great example. Yeah. Great

Leo Laporte (00:51:54):
Example. When a platform starts, it needs users. So it makes itself valuable to users, often selling below cost, right? Think of Amazon. For many years it operated at a loss using its access to the capital markets to subsidize everything you bought. They kept, they kept going back to raise more money. And when, when VC said, no more money, they started borrowing it, sold goods below cost and shipped them below cost. It operated a clean and useful search. If you search for a product, Amazon tried its damnedest to put it at the top of the search results. That was a hell of a good deal for Amazon customers. Cory writes, lots of us piled in and lots of brick and mortar retailers withered and died, making it hard to go elsewhere.

(00:52:36):
But then that tempted in lots of business customers, marketplace sellers who turned Amazon into the everything store to promise from the beginning. As these sellers piled in, Amazon shifted to subsidizing suppliers. Kendall and Audible creators got generous packages. Marketplace sellers reached huge audiences. Amazon took low commissions for them, made it harder for shoppers to find anything anywhere except Amazon. But, but it also meant more sellers had to be on Amazon. That's when Amazon started to harvest the surplus from its business customers and sent it to Amazon's shareholders. Today, marketplace sellers are handling or handing 45% of the sale price to Amazon in fees. 45%. The company's 31 billion advertising program, and put that in scare quotes. Really a payola scheme that pits sellers against each other. Surpluses are first directed to users. Then once they're locked in, surpluses, go to suppliers. Then once they're locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of poop. Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (00:53:42):
It's effectively the dentist system from, it's always sunny, but for apps,

Leo Laporte (00:53:47):
Tell me that. Cause I don't see, I don't watch that show. Okay.

Ashley Esqueda (00:53:50):
So, and it's always sunny. In the fifth season, there was this like very classic famous episode called the Dennis. It's <laugh>, the dentist system. I will

Leo Laporte (00:53:59):
Watch this. Okay.

Ashley Esqueda (00:54:00):
Introduces this, this introduces this thing called the Dentist System. And Dennis in, it's always sunny, if you're not familiar with his character, is basically a sociopath and borderline psychopath. There are, there's a subreddit about it, I'm sure. And so the dentist system is his system to to get women to sleep with him. And so he's like, the dentist system is d demonstrate value. Yeah. E engage physically. Yeah. And nurture dependence and neglect emotionally. Then inspire hope, and then separate entirely <laugh>. And it's like, every time I think about tech technology, I'm like, it's always sunny in Philadelphia. Literally. That's brilliant. Inspired this somehow, like, I don't know how it happened, but the dentist system predicted our current situation.

Leo Laporte (00:54:46):
Oh my God. How many? It's the dentist system. I've been using that system for years. Percent. I didn't even, there was a name system. Yeah. Oh,

Ashley Esqueda (00:54:53):
It's the dentist system. It's from 2009. Like, it's, this is an episode that aired a long time. It's, it's such a funny, God, this show is so funny. Still's a Genesis system. They

Leo Laporte (00:55:01):
Just, what is it? Nine 10th?

Ashley Esqueda (00:55:02):
It's still good many. How is it? It still good? Yeah, it's still good. There are some, there are some still, like, they still manage to have at least one like absolute banger episode every season. That is just like a instant classic. And I think

Leo Laporte (00:55:15):
15 years they've been doing this. It's amazing.

Ashley Esqueda (00:55:17):
Long time. Yeah. And they've had how many seasons? I like it's 16.

Leo Laporte (00:55:21):
16

Ashley Esqueda (00:55:22):
Seasons. 16 seasons. I mean, it's just, and it's a timeless show. That's, that's the great thing about it. It's like, it's not, you know, it's a timeless

Leo Laporte (00:55:29):
Show because Max will kill it as soon as they're not making any money on it. Right. Why? Why do you have to call Max?

Ashley Esqueda (00:55:35):
Yeah. I, I don't, yeah, I can't. Where

Leo Laporte (00:55:37):
Does that FX ends up on Hulu. But isn't Hulu about to be sold?

Ashley Esqueda (00:55:42):
Well, Hulu's gonna, yeah, Hulu's gonna to Disney stay down now, because Disney, right. Cuz Disney is like they're, I think it's Comcast is selling, selling. Its last. If they, they held like 10% and then they're finally letting that

Leo Laporte (00:55:54):
Go. And then at that point, what Disney Plus and, and Hulu become the same, or

Ashley Esqueda (00:55:58):
Yeah, they're, they'll make one big app and I'm sure because the thing is, is like, so it doesn't suit them to really have two separate apps like that. Especially now that they've implemented parental controls and r-rated content on Disney Plus, which for a while they didn't. They were, there were, you know, separation of adults and kids content, kids content. But now it's, they're, they're like, well now we have, you know, some adult content. You have Gates and, you know, parental controls and stuff. So now we're just gonna merge

Leo Laporte (00:56:25):
Them. What would they call it? Would they call it They should, since there's max, they should call it Mini

Ashley Esqueda (00:56:31):
<Laugh>. Mini

Leo Laporte (00:56:32):
Mini, like mini Maxs, I'm pretty sure

Ashley Esqueda (00:56:34):
Find you for that. Should have the ears in the bow Disney mini, like right there. Mini Disney Mini. You can either subscribe to Mini or Max or Max, which

Leo Laporte (00:56:41):
One get the one you like. It's a bad, the streaming thing that good is another example of ification. I think it's just,

Ashley Esqueda (00:56:48):
It's a mess. It's a mess. I think also the, I the studio system in general is like a very complicated and specific business model that often does not work with people who are traditionally used to making money in like non, like in regular VC and like that startup space, like are and Silicon Valley. And so now that all of these Silicon Valley technology executives are kind of like getting their hands into the studio system, it's kind of a mess. It's like lifting up a rug and finding like a disaster and being like, oh my God, this is really bad. How can we undo this? And it's it's just, it's not, I don't know that anybody's right in it, but it's just like, it definitely is, like, the studios have done it their way for a really long time, and there's a very specific way that their finances are structured.

(00:57:44):
And, and this is like, flies directly in the fa it's like indirect opposition of like how traditional like startups and corporations make money and report them on taxes and stuff. So that's why you're now just seeing all of these, like tax write-offs, like stuff leaving services as a big tax write-off that'll never get seen again and stuff. It's because now they're having more traditional money and shareholder and, you know, investors get involved in the studio system and they're, they're demanding that the returns be done, quote unquote properly. Which the studio system never really did it that way.

Leo Laporte (00:58:18):
I was reading you know, there's a new Indiana Jones <laugh> movie, the last there is the last Indiana Jones. Yeah. because, well, I don't know, I'm sure they'll have more, but the last one with Harrison Ford mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And I was reading the review and somebody in the review pointed me to the original Indiana Jones Review in the New Yorker by Pauline Kale. And it was very interesting. When was that? When did that come out? Is it it was 1989. Indiana Jones. That's the third one.

Ashley Esqueda (00:58:53):
No, that's the later one. Yeah, that was, that was the last crusade I think she

Leo Laporte (00:58:56):
Said, oh, here it is. The temples

Ashley Esqueda (00:58:58):
Of Do Doo. Because I think Temple of Doom was 83. The second one, I think it was the year was the second one. That was the year I was born 83. So, Aw. I think there was an Indiana Jones year. It

Leo Laporte (00:59:05):
Was a very good year.

Ashley Esqueda (00:59:07):
Is return to The Jedi and Indiana Jones. So people were just like really hot on Harrison Ford. That was the year of Harrison Ford in 83.

Leo Laporte (00:59:14):
Is she also your Metallica dropped ride the Lightning actually. Oh,

Ashley Esqueda (00:59:18):
Maybe, maybe.

Leo Laporte (00:59:20):
Pauline Kale. In 19 81, 84,

Ashley Esqueda (00:59:25):
Right. The Lightning

Leo Laporte (00:59:27):
In 1981 wrote her review of in the first Indiana Jones, the title is Whipped <laugh>.

Ashley Esqueda (00:59:36):
Love this.

Leo Laporte (00:59:36):
And this is in 81, remember? This is what, 40 some years ago? 42 years ago. Oh, the marketing executives of the new high priests of the movie business.

Ashley Esqueda (00:59:48):
Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:59:48):
Basically, she said, and this is 40 years ago, movies are now made because the marketing department says, yeah, we can sell that. And she predicted that it would all be comic book movies, <laugh> superhero movies and and horror movies. Basically. Comic strip pulp or sloppy horror, she said is the future of the movie business. She wasn't wrong.

Alex Wilhelm (01:00:17):
No. Also, do you know how excellent that headline was for that article? Do you, you know, how poorly that would've done in SEO terms? <Laugh>?

Leo Laporte (01:00:24):
What

Alex Wilhelm (01:00:24):
Have we lost? Yeah. You Cause of Lost.

Leo Laporte (01:00:26):
No, that's right. Yeah. You couldn't have a one word review, as clever as it is.

Alex Wilhelm (01:00:32):
No. I try this all the time. I try to make clever headlines and then my team <laugh> just deletes them. And Alex, a couple of options, Alex, that people will

Leo Laporte (01:00:40):
Find. And to prove this, I was searching for this review and I came up with the, the later ones cuz they had better seo. It took me a while to get the whipped whipped. So this has been going on forever, right? I

Alex Wilhelm (01:00:56):
I I just don't understand the staying power of it. Like she was right, that it became essentially comic books turned into films, but like, didn't we all lose interest like 10 years ago? Like, there's a new Flash movie and I know this because there's some controversy with some one person on the cast and don't, well,

Leo Laporte (01:01:09):
Also, it's supposed to be a horrible movie. Have you seen it really?

Alex Wilhelm (01:01:13):
Leo The Flash, the 15th Flash movie isn't good. I'm blown away. I thought it was gonna be the new fricking Shakespeare. I thought this was gonna break new ground in the American zeitgeist. So what it means to be alive, of course, it's crap. It's the flash.

Leo Laporte (01:01:27):
And you know how we know it's crap because Variety says the flash disappoints with the 55 million debut <laugh>. That's how we know it's bad. Mean, couldn't market that one. I guess

Ashley Esqueda (01:01:39):
If only somebody a superhero could go back in time, could use their superpowers, change, change history, spend

Leo Laporte (01:01:46):
The world backwards, maybe that might work.

Alex Wilhelm (01:01:48):
Super.

Ashley Esqueda (01:01:48):
I think a big part of it is, I mean, merchandising like, doesn't, I mean, it's a big, it's just a big machine, right? It's like, you know, I think merchandising like, doesn't, doesn't hurt. Right? And it's like, and also there are new people discovering that stuff every day.

Leo Laporte (01:02:02):
Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (01:02:04):
You're gonna find this out, Alex, one day your kid's gonna be like, I like super kitties. And you're like, what is that? Oh. And then you watch it and you're like, this is actually like, pretty good. But also like, now I have to buy you those toys. Do you

Leo Laporte (01:02:15):
Have to watch children's TV now? Ashley?

Ashley Esqueda (01:02:19):
I've watched so much children's TV that I feel qualified to say that <laugh> so much of it is actually very good. Oh, good. There's, there's some, there's some really good kids TV out there. And, and also, so there is some of it that is very clearly very bad. And I'm sure the companies making those the executives at the studios making those shows would love nothing more than to ask Bard or chat g bt to write those episodes. Yeah. Because why not? They, they just don't care. They don't care.

Leo Laporte (01:02:55):
Baby Shark could be written by any, any proficient AI in the world. <Laugh>,

Ashley Esqueda (01:03:01):
Fortunately my kid, like I am very like hashtag Blessed. My kid is not into that song and Oh, that's good. We never play. He listens to regular music. Good. So it's like,

Leo Laporte (01:03:10):
Yeah, I figure your kids would be pretty hip.

Ashley Esqueda (01:03:12):
He likes the Beastie Boys. Oh, he's like his favorite song. He loves Inner Galactic. That's his favorite song right

Alex Wilhelm (01:03:17):
Now. My third grade basketball team, that was our warmup song. Wow. That's a good one. Wow. Got me really into beat. That's

Ashley Esqueda (01:03:23):
A hype song. That's a hype

Alex Wilhelm (01:03:24):
Song. Totally a hype song. It's fantastic. But I wanna go back to the, the technology companies getting involved in the studio game, trying to do things and stuff. Please, I

Ashley Esqueda (01:03:31):
Would love to hear from you about this

Alex Wilhelm (01:03:32):
Amazing how the quality is so variable, because do you remember when Amazon dropped their Lord of the Rings Yeah. Universe

Leo Laporte (01:03:41):
Thing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and the Rings of Power.

Alex Wilhelm (01:03:44):
Yeah. And like, I'm a, I'm, we

Leo Laporte (01:03:45):
Spent a lot of money on that, by the way.

Ashley Esqueda (01:03:48):
Yeah. A lot of money. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (01:03:49):
A lot of money.

Ashley Esqueda (01:03:49):
Basically. Really wanted a Game of Thrones.

Leo Laporte (01:03:51):
Yep.

Alex Wilhelm (01:03:51):
Bad. And then I'm watching Apple TV plus Max's new show Silo, which is based on a series of novels. I have somewhere on the shelf over here,

Leo Laporte (01:04:00):
And it's actually Right.

Alex Wilhelm (01:04:02):
Wool. Yeah. Wool. She's, we're

Leo Laporte (01:04:03):
Interviewing the, the author of Wool on in our club in a cup.

Alex Wilhelm (01:04:10):
Yeah. Really?

Ashley Esqueda (01:04:10):
Alex is like, how do I get in on this?

Alex Wilhelm (01:04:12):
No, I, you gotta join track. June 29th, discord

Leo Laporte (01:04:15):
Hug Howie. Wow. June 29. You're in our, you're in the club.

Alex Wilhelm (01:04:19):
I'm in the club. I, I it's all one of my Discord accounts. I gotta show up to that because that, that show is good. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:04:24):
And, and it apparently it follows, follows the novels pretty closely, right?

Alex Wilhelm (01:04:29):
It does. And so there's an enormous quality gap that seems to play out in these tech companies trying to get into the media game. But I think fundamentally they won't be good at it over a long period of time because art doesn't scale the way technology does. And I don't think the people who do accounting will ever actually understand that.

Leo Laporte (01:04:44):
Actually, I wish I had let me, there's a couple. We're gonna take a break. We have to, and then I wanna talk about the fact that Google's entire financial model, it might be under threat by the EU <laugh>. Oh, yeah. Which is, which is a problem, which is a good story. But I wa there were a couple of Pauline Kale quotes from this whipped review that I, I wanted to to read to you, cuz I thought they were so, I should have, I should have marked them. One is, I think he said George Lucas. She said George Lucas is basically selling toys. That's really <laugh> what his job is. Oh, Cru. Well, I, so there were some really awesome quotes in here. Anyway, are you gonna go see the new Indiana Jones and the, the worst name ever, the dial of death,

Alex Wilhelm (01:05:41):
You

Ashley Esqueda (01:05:41):
Know, is it the dial of death or is it the dial of destiny?

Leo Laporte (01:05:44):
Darn dial of destiny. D it's a dial is all I know. A

Ashley Esqueda (01:05:47):
Dial. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (01:05:48):
I think I'd rather watch Nicholas Cage steal the Constitution again than watch another Indiana Jones movie that's literally spun up to try to do the nostalgia grift on my

Ashley Esqueda (01:05:56):
Generation. I'll watch it. I'll watch it. I love pulp. So I love a good pulp adventure. And I also really love Phoebe Walbridge. So I'll, I'll totally watch it. Oh, she's, she's working on, she's working on the new Tomb Raider too, which Amazon also now is like got their hands

Leo Laporte (01:06:10):
On kale. Kale writes, there's nothing at stake in Raiders. No revelation, no surge of feeling at the end. The thrills are fully consumed while you're seeing this movie. And it's totally over. When it's over, it's a workout. You feel as if you'd been to the desert digs at the end. Your mind is blank, yet you're parched, your puffing hard. You want relief <laugh>.

Ashley Esqueda (01:06:30):
Look, man, I really love Chicken McNuggets. They're not healthy. Well, there you go. They're not healthy for me. Yeah, they're not healthy for me. They, I don't, I I feel nothing as soon as the high of eating them wears off. Like, I don't, I don't necessarily feel good about myself, but also I had a really good time while it was happening. And that's what matters.

Leo Laporte (01:06:47):
All right. I don't wanna harsh your mellow, though. You're absolutely right. <Laugh>.

Ashley Esqueda (01:06:51):
Absolutely. Let me have my pulp Leo, let me have my pulp adventures. Keep your

Leo Laporte (01:06:54):
Pulp. We're gonna take a break when we come back more with our fabulous panel, and we are gonna talk gaming. We had a very, very good discussion before the show. And I kind of want to ask you about Diablo four, where all three of us playing it and, and other games. And I'm sure, Alex, you have some sort of quirky world building game that you can't stop playing. And you got me into, it's true. You got me into, what was it? Faithless frontiers. Endless frontiers. Far

Alex Wilhelm (01:07:18):
Farthest

Leo Laporte (01:07:18):
Frontier. Farthest Frontiers. Actually, it's very, it, I liked Age of Empires, so it fits in with what, you know. I like that style gaming. Anyway, we'll talk about that in a bit. But first, speaking of streaming, let's talk about express vpn. It is not uncommon these days to spend over a hundred dollars a month on streaming services. Just look at your bill. I bet you you do Netflix and Disney Plus and Prime. And you can save a little bit by using Express vpn. See, it turns out Netflix has, as an example, many more shows than you've seen on the us Netflix. You don't see them because it depends on what country you're in. So what you see on Netflix here, for instance, completely different to Netflix, Italy, or Netflix, South Korea, Netflix is all over the place. Japan, England. Well, this is one of many reasons you should use Express vpn.

(01:08:12):
It's easy to change your online location. Express VPN has over 90 countries to choose from. So if you've got some interesting tastes in tv, you just switched to another country. You wanna see South Korea, Netflix, believe me, it's got some great stuff. There you are. You like anime, Netflix, Japan, it's heaven baby. Right now you can watch all of Downton Abbey on Canadian Netflix with Express V vpn. You just tap one button, change it to Canada, refresh the page, boom. There you are. You don't have to pay extra Express. V PN invests in the speed of its servers HD video. No problem. You not only put it on your iPhone, your Android, your Mac, your pc, your Linux. You can also put it on your, on your router. They sell some really good routers. The routers they sell are excellent quality. Or you could put it on an ex on some existing routers.

(01:09:06):
Protect the whole house. And I guarantee you, no one will complain. They won't know because Express V P N doesn't slow you down. They're also great for privacy because when you emerge on the public internet, you don't emerge as yourself. You emerge with an express VPN IP address. So people don't <laugh>. They, you, you just don't have to worry about being tracked. You're not gonna be. And of course, for Security Express VPN's the best. You could even get discounts on Express V vpn. If you buy Netflix in Argentina, it's less Express V vpn, less than seven bucks a month for the best V P N service out there. Yes, your privacy is absolutely guaranteed. Express V P N. There was a great article on bleeping computer about how they run their servers. It was quite impressive. They go the extra mile. Yes, of course they don't do any logging.

(01:09:52):
They say that in their privacy policy, they're independently audited. So we know that's true. But listen to what they do to make sure that nothing will be preserved from your visit. They run a a, a special custom Debbie and Distro on all their servers that wipes the drive every time they reboot. Every day wipes the drive, nothing's left. Plus when you spin up your Express VPN server, it's, it's, it's a technology they wrote called Trusted Server runs in Ram. Sandboxed can't write to the hard drive. The minute you close it, it disappears, and so does every trace of your visit. It's the little things like that that make such a difference to me. It's why I use Express vpn. It's no brainer. If you want to get way more shows save money, go to express vpn.com/twit and please use our special link so you get three extra months free with a one year package. And so that they know you saw it here. Express vpn.com/twit pss s vpn.com/twit. It's the only VPN I recommend and use express vpn.com/twit.

(01:10:57):
Google, I don't know if this is trouble for Google or not. The EU is getting more and more aggressive with American big tech companies. Now, the EU says Google's online advertising practices violate antitrust laws. They filed new charges against Google. Now remember, the EU can charge huge fines. I think it's up to 4% of global revenues. The case was brought by the European Commission. It's the fourth time Google's been charged with violating antitrust and has in the past cost them significant amounts of money. They were accused of abusing a monopoly over their online technology back in January, Britain's antitrust by the US Department of Justice, Britain's antitrust authorities also been investigating their advertising practices. Most of Google's revenue, almost all of it, surprisingly, does not come from Google Domains. It comes from <laugh>.

Alex Wilhelm (01:11:58):
Wow. I'm shocked, Leo.

Leo Laporte (01:11:59):
Shocking. On what, what comes, it comes from advertising. Margaret Steiger, the executive vice president of the European Commission, said Google is present at almost all levels of the so-called ad tech supply chain. Our preliminary concern is that Google may have used its market position to favor its own intermediation services. They both buy and sell. They co they have both sides of the of the transaction, which is, yeah, I think that's probably <laugh> kind of not okay. But it's how they do business. Alex, what's the remedy? Is it, is, does, will Google have to sell off? Double click.

Alex Wilhelm (01:12:41):
So I, I pulled up the European Union statement on this, and I just found this to be really funny and it's about remedies. So hear me out. The, the commission preliminarily finds that in this case, a behavioral remedy is likely to be ineffective, to prevent the risk that Google continues. Oh, such self-referencing conducts or engages in new ones. So that limits what they can do it to. Some pretty harsh things if they do find Google to actually be infringing Article 1 0 2 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union.

Leo Laporte (01:13:12):
Typically when this kind of thing happens with a d oj, the ftc, the eu, a company will say, all right, well, let's make a deal. I will do this or that. I'll sell off Instagram or I will give a discount. They, they try to find a way out of it. Microsoft, yes, famously said, we'll make a deal with the PlayStation, that for 10 years we won't do an exclusive on Call of Duty. That kind of thing. Those are the behavioral remedies they're saying. They won't accept that

Alex Wilhelm (01:13:41):
They're saying it probably won't work because Google won't actually stop being bad. Well, that's probably true. And I gotta say <laugh>. Yeah, I mean, it, it's funny to see it so bluntly put in kind of like diplomatic speak, if you will. But I, I, I reread their complaints and it seems a little bit cut and dry. It's kind I know Google has a different opinion about this, and a lot of people that I I know work there, so I hope they're okay. But the EU is an enormous economic block and can throw around its weight. And Google cannot afford to not operate there, because that would put an enormous chunk of the global GDP outside of its reach. So, I don't know where this is gonna go. Obviously Google will fight this with an entire army of lawyers and lobbyists. So it's, it's far from like guaranteed. But Leo, could we be working towards an environment in which Google gets forced to break up?

Leo Laporte (01:14:29):
I think that's, is that what they're talking about?

Alex Wilhelm (01:14:31):
So, I mean, I, I don't see another way around it. It

Leo Laporte (01:14:33):
Takes a while. So Google has been fined billions of dollars by the eu, all of which currently being appealed. So they haven't paid a penny yet, including Android antitrust, remember the shopping service antitrust mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. they, you know, there've been a number of fines levied, all of which are held up by appeal. Golly <laugh>.

Alex Wilhelm (01:15:02):
It's, it's, it's shocking to me because it took this long almost to get here. It isn't like these technology companies are doing stuff that's brand new to their business model. In fact, the, the EU statement says, you know, since at least 2014 Google has been doing these things we don't agree with. And I'm like, cool. You know, that is a decade ago. Yeah. and you know, part of the Coinbase s e c Fraus right now is because Coinbase is, is occupying a greater number of places in the kind of trading stack, if you will. And Coinbase is like, well, we've always done that. And the SCC is saying, well, that doesn't mean it was okay. It just means we're now, you know, tapping your wrist for it.

Leo Laporte (01:15:38):
Yeah. Coinbase defense was, well, what <laugh> what did they, the, the the government said, well, you can pay taxes on that, right? Or something like that. And they said, well, doesn't that mean what we're doing is legal? No, it just means you can pay taxes on it. <Laugh>

Alex Wilhelm (01:15:53):
You can always pay taxes on It. Doesn't mean that the, it's not a seal of approval. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:15:57):
Yes.

Alex Wilhelm (01:15:57):
Yeah. it, it's interesting to see regulation catch up with certain business models that I've worked in the technology space that have been incredibly lucrative over a long period of time. And then tech people are acting all surprised with both hands in the cookie jar that they control both of in this case, I think we all kind of agree that Google might be slightly more powerful in the online advertising world, then is good for the

Leo Laporte (01:16:23):
Internet. It's killing us between Google and Spotify and Facebook and Amazon and Microsoft. You know, PO podcast ads are dwindling rapidly. I don't Oh, I

Alex Wilhelm (01:16:33):
Know. My, my podcast is currently unsponsored, so Yeah. That sucks. Yeah. Makes me sad. I'm like, I I hate doing ads cause I'm not good at them like Leo is, but when I don't have one, I'm like, ah,

Leo Laporte (01:16:43):
Well, you know, you're doing it

Alex Wilhelm (01:16:44):
Free to come. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:16:45):
Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you're, you're the Google domains of Tech Crunch is what you're saying?

Alex Wilhelm (01:16:49):
No, I'm not being sulfur. So for, for nine figures, I'm just currently sucking resources down for production. And that's a good point. You know? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:16:57):
It's,

Ashley Esqueda (01:16:57):
That's a record. I can in fact be sold for nine figures, <laugh>.

Alex Wilhelm (01:17:02):
Oh, too.

Ashley Esqueda (01:17:03):
No one's at out

Alex Wilhelm (01:17:04):
There. Me too. Oh, yeah. No one has offered

Ashley Esqueda (01:17:05):
Nine figures. That seems, yeah, that seems all right.

Alex Wilhelm (01:17:09):
Spotify. Spotify is, I'll go on show Rogan. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:17:12):
Spotify. If you want me to say Covid is good. Vaccine's bad. I'll be glad to just give me a a hundred million. It's no problem. No problem. Yeah, I'll

Alex Wilhelm (01:17:20):
Do it for 99,000,099. Good. I'm buying buy seven figures right there.

Ashley Esqueda (01:17:24):
I know. It's, it's right there. Drop it from eight to seven, it'll be fine.

Alex Wilhelm (01:17:28):
On the antitrust thing though, I, i I, I do think there will come a time in the next half to full decade in which we have to take a pretty hard look at some of these major tech companies and say, enough, I was pretty opposed to the Activision Blizzard Microsoft deal, because Are you? Yes. Why? Because of course, it's anti-competitive. They're not spending that amount of money to not generate some sort of edge. Right. They, they're not buying it altruistically. They're not buying it for fun. They're not buying it just because it's

Leo Laporte (01:17:54):
A long, are you saying it's a profit deal?

Alex Wilhelm (01:17:56):
I, I'm trying to say, Leo, that a company that has lived as long as Microsoft has, and it created trillions of dollars in value, knows how to make money. Yeah. And I don't think we should allow them to purchase major assets that could give it increased market leverage.

Leo Laporte (01:18:10):
Well, it looks like it's down to you in the uk. We'll see, we'll

Alex Wilhelm (01:18:13):
See. It's down to Melina, Conn in the uk. But, but

Leo Laporte (01:18:15):
Actually the FTC is, is moving ahead, aren't they? Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (01:18:18):
Yeah. That was the last news item in, in that particular saga. Yeah. But Google is enormously powerful and getting larger. Microsoft is the same Apple to a similar degree. Meta is kind of taking care of itself, if you will, which is interesting to watch. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:18:31):
That's one of the arguments is that won't these companies all in the end suffer you know, nothing succeeds forever. They're not gonna grow infinitely at some point Times will change and there'll be another company to come along. Right.

Alex Wilhelm (01:18:46):
Maybe that, that might be the case, but it doesn't actually mean that the harm during the period of incumbency isn't real, just because it'll eventually end. Right. I don't think, I, I don't think eventual death is enough to say that, that a crime is not worth noting along the way. Mm-Hmm. To make an analogy, if you will. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So I think we're gonna have to decide as an American society, and sure the EU is involved in this case, but I think here in the States, cuz the biggest technology companies that are active around the world really are American, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Chinese companies tend to be limited to that geography to a large degree. And so we're gonna have to make a decision about how we treat these companies. Do they get to be nation states that are, you know, essentially beholden to nobody but themselves? Or should we make them smaller and more competitive? I, I, I mean, I'm a capitalist, but I really think the latter makes more sense than letting them grow for, sorry.

Leo Laporte (01:19:38):
No, I'm, I, you know, I don't, I just feel like this is a really tough one because there's so much benefit. Well, let's talk about Apple's Vision Pro. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, no Garage entrepreneur could have created that. It took a company willing to sink tens of billions of dollars, thousands of man hours of manpower, you know, humans into a product that No, nobody apparently wants to buy at this point. You know, it's a big, it's a big risk, but only a big company

Ashley Esqueda (01:20:12):
Like that. I know me and Alex are like, we wanna buy it. Yeah. We love to buy it.

Alex Wilhelm (01:20:15):
I'm pitching the wife already to allocate budget for my dumb

Leo Laporte (01:20:18):
3,500. We've

Ashley Esqueda (01:20:19):
Already, we've already agreed. We have a, we've literally have already agreed to, to a splitting of the, of an avp. We, oh, good. I want it. I want, well, look, this is as close as I'm getting right now, Leo. Like this has, that's

Leo Laporte (01:20:30):
Pretty good. What is it? This all I got. Did you steal that from the Daff punk guys? Did you break their helmet? I

Ashley Esqueda (01:20:34):
Did. It's just a sun visor that I wear by the pool. This is all I

Leo Laporte (01:20:38):
Have. Do you really wear that?

Ashley Esqueda (01:20:40):
Hell yeah. It's great. <Laugh>. I don't have any, I don't get any nose bumps.

Leo Laporte (01:20:44):
They, you have giant, you have a giant like white

Ashley Esqueda (01:20:47):
Privacy screen

Leo Laporte (01:20:47):
Swat across your

Ashley Esqueda (01:20:48):
Face. That's a don't, that's called a don't talk to me screen. That's called a Don't talk to me, don't perceive

Leo Laporte (01:20:53):
Me. She might be

Ashley Esqueda (01:20:54):
An alien. Leave me alone. I wanna be by the pool without discussion. It

Leo Laporte (01:20:58):
Is a mirrored shade that is the size. It goes from her forehead to the bottom of her nose.

Ashley Esqueda (01:21:04):
It's motorcycle. It's effectively, it's a motorcycle visor. It's a front of a visor and sin, but it's just that. And then it has a soft no helmet thing on the No

Leo Laporte (01:21:12):
Helmet.

Ashley Esqueda (01:21:13):
Yeah. No helmet,

Alex Wilhelm (01:21:14):
Helmet, visor point.

Leo Laporte (01:21:15):
But, but only it takes a lot

Alex Wilhelm (01:21:16):
Of money to make the vision break.

Leo Laporte (01:21:17):
Yeah. It Apple could do that. Nobody's gonna, you know, I mean, admittedly Palmer lucky that a kick started to create the Oculus Rift, but there is a big gulf between the Oculus Rift and the Vision Pro.

Ashley Esqueda (01:21:29):
Right. But but at the end of the day, I mean, I think that it's, there will always be those scenarios and that that shouldn't mean that they, that these corporations get to suck all the oxygen out of the room and snap up. You know, I, I look at Facebook as a really good example of like, I think of all of the startups that Facebook has eaten because it felt threatened or, or just copied, like, just straight up stole their homework and copied directly from, and put other companies outta business. And it's just like none of those companies are, are being given a chance unless they have a C E O who is very, like, specifically opposed to being acquired. And even then it takes a tremendous and skilled ta you know, ta a series of events that have to happen in order for them to even get, not even like close to, but, but just get any kind of success when you're fighting against companies like, you know, the, the former FANG companies.

Alex Wilhelm (01:22:38):
I, I, I also wanna say that you don't have to start with the Apple Vision Pro. Right. You could make something Right. That was simpler and build a company Sure. And then make more advanced hardware as you go. So I think Apple is certainly coming outta the gate with something that makes me as, as a, as a technology nerd, as a fan of gadgets and someone who bought the original zoo you know, like, I like to buy stuff, let's go. And I'm totally here for it, but I, I don't think we would end up in a world which that stuff isn't possible. If we had technology companies that were smaller, in fact, I would say it's more likely to happen.

Ashley Esqueda (01:23:11):
More likely,

Alex Wilhelm (01:23:11):
Yeah. Right? Because there, there's more internal competition at these companies and I think it would make for better companies, just smaller ones. Instead

Leo Laporte (01:23:17):
Of One Vision Pro, you might get 10 unique takes on this category or something like that,

Alex Wilhelm (01:23:23):
Because there, so I don I mean it's, it's why plays for sure beat iPod. Yeah. And if you don't get that joke and why it's sarcastic, well congratulations on not being a nerd. Back in the day, <laugh>.

Ashley Esqueda (01:23:31):
Cause phones were like this too, right? Like, we very, for a really long time we didn't see any variation in phones, like cell phone. We had a lot at the beginning

Leo Laporte (01:23:40):
And we're not seeing any

Alex Wilhelm (01:23:41):
Alone.

Ashley Esqueda (01:23:41):
We had so weird and different, and now there's, it's like, is a slab. That's it. And like we now, we sort of have for the folding like flip, we have the, the folding, folding phone which is an interesting new category. But, you know, I think that there's just, you know, those, those smaller companies who might have been willing to take a risk or be, have the ability to do such a thing, like they, those just aren't really around anymore. Like, it's just not

Leo Laporte (01:24:06):
What if, what if Google just disappeared from the face of the earth tomorrow?

Ashley Esqueda (01:24:10):
Man, what? Wouldn't that be so weird?

Leo Laporte (01:24:11):
Would we be okay?

Ashley Esqueda (01:24:13):
Yeah. No, I'd be really mad about my Gmail account. <Laugh>.

Alex Wilhelm (01:24:16):
Well, the entire technology world runs on G Suite, right? Yeah. And then also Google Cloud is an enormous business. Now, APY was a big chunk of the internet. It's kinda like if we deleted aws, we would not be okay. Right? Problem. If, if I lost the ability to, to, to have a terrible consumer shopping experience on Amazon, I would be fine. But I do worry about the end for these coming.

Leo Laporte (01:24:37):
What if, what if I said that's kinda the point. What if I said, okay, in a week Google's gonna disappear quick, move Gmail to whatever Outlook, move your cloud to Azure or aws, you know, if I gave you, but

Ashley Esqueda (01:24:49):
Do these other, those other competitors have have the infrastructure to support?

Alex Wilhelm (01:24:54):
Well,

Ashley Esqueda (01:24:54):
Don't they a massive chunk of the internet to come to them in a week? Like, I don't know.

Alex Wilhelm (01:24:59):
But I mean, Leon, Megan, the other argument, I I i I I would say that what we need to have is more public clouds versus just one, two, or three. Like, yes, Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud R fantastic for what they do. But wouldn't it be cool if there were five versus three? Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (01:25:16):
Yeah. Or 10. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (01:25:17):
Nice. Like remember when Amazon used to cut prices on AWS like all the time and it was awesome, and then they got a bunch of competition and then it became the sore dri sole driver of operating income at Amazon. So now they

Leo Laporte (01:25:27):
Don't, so in some ways the solution to in certification is competition.

Alex Wilhelm (01:25:33):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:25:34):
So that okay. So if your company's decided to prioritize making money over your interests, then go to an equivalent, another one, an equivalent company. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. You're not stuck. Exactly.

Ashley Esqueda (01:25:45):
But right now, we don't have that. You are stuck. There are a lot of places where there isn't an alternative. Right. And we're just trapped in these ecosystems where, like, a really good example, I think a lot of people in my timeline wish there was an alternative that was, you know, even half of what, you know, off what they get, what they used to get on Twitter, like they want out. But there is no real alternative. And it's very similar with a lot of older people who still use Facebook. It's like, you know, it's just like, what's the alternative for them when, when they get so much of their life updates and group invites and, you know, all of that stuff. Like, they get all that stuff from that ecosystem. And it's like, it's very hard to break people out of an ecosystem when they're, when they are so reliant on it that it, it becomes a massive part of their, you know, user experience when they, when they pick up their phone.

Leo Laporte (01:26:36):
Hmm.

Alex Wilhelm (01:26:38):
I think also just having two oss for, for phones are not, is not, not enough. And I think that tying one of them to the largest ad stack on the Internet's not so great either. Yeah. Just my personal opinion. Yeah. So I, I think, I think if we applied a bit of Cory to a bit of this world, it would be okay. But to be clear, we're not gonna do this. Right. It would require a, a shift in Congress and a shift in how we approach antitrust regulation and a change in the power between the American government and these companies. Currently the only thing Microsoft's not allowed to do is by the makers of StarCraft. They've already bought a lot of other stuff. <Laugh>. So my argument here is certainly on the losing side, and I'm not trying to

Leo Laporte (01:27:13):
Starcraft that's the game you're gonna focus on, <laugh>.

Alex Wilhelm (01:27:17):
Well, you know what I don't play is Call of Duty, because I didn't drink a lot of Bush light in college. So <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:27:24):
Oh, I'm telling Paul Thout you said that.

Alex Wilhelm (01:27:27):
Actually, no, Paul doesn't like me already.

Leo Laporte (01:27:29):
Paul actually, believe it or not, just went through a withdrawal, three months withdrawal. He stopped playing call for Call of Duty to light. Oh, I

Alex Wilhelm (01:27:37):
Thought you were gonna say stop drinking Bush Life Bush.

Leo Laporte (01:27:41):
Well, it might have gone along with the Bush light. I don't know. Maybe I'll have to ask, might have given him Maybe, maybe,

Ashley Esqueda (01:27:46):
Maybe in hand,

Alex Wilhelm (01:27:47):
The reason why I picked StarCraft is Blizzard to me is, is Warcraft the raid? Starcraft? No,

Leo Laporte (01:27:52):
You're right.

Alex Wilhelm (01:27:53):
And yeah, and the other game that we talked about before the show but StarCraft and StarCraft two will always have a special place in my, in my heart. Yeah. And I will go down on that ship.

Ashley Esqueda (01:28:01):
So I, before we talk about any, any blizzard, Activision. So I have, I have a, I have a duty to alert people that my husband works for Activision and my brother works at Blizzard, so.

Alex Wilhelm (01:28:11):
Wow.

Leo Laporte (01:28:12):
Yeah. It's all in the family. It's

Alex Wilhelm (01:28:13):
Person

Ashley Esqueda (01:28:14):
Ever. I can't, I cannot comment. I don't like, I mean, I've talked about it on, on Twitter. So like, I, I don't What does your husband do? I don't have any official comments.

Leo Laporte (01:28:22):
What does he do with occupation? Is he a designer? Is he a lawyer?

Ashley Esqueda (01:28:25):
What is his? No, he's a, he does logistics for all of their eSports. So he's cool. So does he makes sure that all of the, basically, like my husband is one of the linchpins that ensures all items, products, jerseys, computers, webcam, like literally all equipment gets to its destination and, and the events happen the way they're supposed to happen. So

Leo Laporte (01:28:45):
What's the prognosis for eSports? Cuz I've thought for a long time that's the next big thing and then all of a sudden it seems to be collapsing in on itself.

Ashley Esqueda (01:28:54):
Esports is really hard. I think, I think a lot of people saw what was happening in South Korea and really got excited in, in, you know, StarCraft and you know, league of Legends. And a lot of that in South Korea is just, you know, there's a very different, there's a very different culture around eSports. And, you know, for me, like kind of non-exclusive to what's Activision or Blizzard, just eSports in general. I think one of the hardest things is, is that, you know, we don't really have I've always wondered why we don't have home teams that have like arenas like that the, we don't have a place for fans to go to. It's always like, oh, they're gonna play, like in la it's like, oh, they'll play at, you know, Microsoft Theater, right? Or they'll, they'll play here, whatever. But it's like, there, there should be like a location that is the team's stadium, as it were.

(01:29:48):
It doesn't have to be huge. And that's the place where fans can come for signings and they can come for, you know, press press events and they can sell merch there and they can meet the players and like learn about them more. And one of the things we have in other sports that we, you know, that are very niche in eSports, I think to a degree, is superstars that are known outside of the sport it itself. So it's like a lot of people know a lot of football N F L players, even though they never have watched a football game. Like, oh, I've seen Michael Strahan on live with Yeah, they're celebrities. Kelly and, and Michael. Yeah. It's like they're celebrities. And the thing is, is I think that there's a real difficulty in one, a lot of these kids are kids. They're 18 and they are, you know, they're not great at talking on camera.

(01:30:37):
They're not good at reading a teleprompter. They're not good at being a spokesperson. They're just used to being in at their desk and streaming. And they're really good at it. Like they're really good at it. But that doesn't necessarily translate to a successful career as a, as a, as a celebrity or a personality, a bigger personality. And I think really they, there's a, there's kind of a, a disconnect there between, like, you have to kind of create a superstar in some ways, but also it's that lightning in a bottle where you have to find the right person. So I don't know that they've really found that formula yet. And and also you have to really, the most successful eSports teams have super dedicated fan bases locally. If you look at like, Houston Outlaws for Overwatch, like they have a massively dedicated fan base. They love them, they love that team, and they will, like, their fans are crazy about the team. They follow them. It's, it's all the same things you see in other professional sports leagues. But the thing is, is like, it doesn't happen with every team. That's what

Leo Laporte (01:31:34):
Iss hard. So what's it gonna take? How do we, how do we fix that? I suppose StarCraft three, <laugh> StarCraft three, I suppose it is a a maturing process where you get the eSports athletes to become more camera ready. You know, maybe they hired a rowdy skeleton, but they get them more. Yes. You know, I look at Alex and I are Formula one fanatics. What turned that around in the US was the Netflix show drive to Survive.

Ashley Esqueda (01:32:02):
Strive to Survive. Great show, which amazing.

Leo Laporte (01:32:04):
Which exploded F1 in the US. Yep. and I don't know if it's intentional or not, but F1 seems to choose its drivers not just for their ability to drive. Clearly. They've gotta have that, but because, but they're all damn fine looking people with, with pretty good personas on camera. Right,

Ashley Esqueda (01:32:22):
Right, right. Well, you pick the people who are interesting. Right? It's, it's the same model as Real Housewives. It's, I mean, it literally is, which is like you're following a group of people who are forced to interact with each other right. Over a season. And there's an act, there's an air of competitiveness to it's

Leo Laporte (01:32:40):
Do we need that? Do we need a a reality show based on an eSports team to,

Benito (01:32:45):
Hi. So this is Benito by the way.

Leo Laporte (01:32:46):
Bonito our oh my God.

Ashley Esqueda (01:32:47):
Benito, get in here.

Benito (01:32:48):
I was an eSports journalist for like three years and I, I ran the eSports

Ashley Esqueda (01:32:51):
Tell us Benito

Benito (01:32:52):
Ran all the eSports coverage at Games Spot for a couple of years. So the problem with eSports is the stigma attached to it in America. That's really it. They're

Leo Laporte (01:33:00):
Nerdy

Ashley Esqueda (01:33:00):
At the time. That's a big, yeah, that's a big one too. At the

Benito (01:33:02):
Time, that's when eSports was, when I was covering eSports, was about to take off, was like starting dudes take off. I was trying to be like on the vanguard of that. And what I noticed is that people are really willing to drop a lot of money if there's only, only if there's a promise of a lot of money. And like, well, yeah. And that's exactly what happened in the eSports business. People dropped a ton of money. Look

Leo Laporte (01:33:21):
At this guy disguise toast, who created an eSports team. He says, it cost me a million dollars. It's a terrible business. Everyone's losing a lot of money. He created a team for Valor Pro called DSG and lost just a ton of money.

Ashley Esqueda (01:33:39):
But it's like, who's talking about valor?

Leo Laporte (01:33:42):
Like I, yeah, maybe that was a mistake.

Ashley Esqueda (01:33:43):
I generally have these questions. It's just like, I don't, I don't know anybody. I know people who play valor and it's a, it's a perfectly fine game, but I don't know anybody who's like so hype about it that it's their entire personality, the way that I literally know people whose entire personality is a football team. Well,

Benito (01:34:01):
It's also a matter of time football.

Leo Laporte (01:34:03):
I'm enjoying watching Alex cuz he doesn't

Ashley Esqueda (01:34:04):
Realize. No, that's true. That's true. He's

Leo Laporte (01:34:05):
Muted his mic. So he, he hasn't been able to get a word edgewise on this whole thing. And he is, he's champing at the bit, if I might use, I

Alex Wilhelm (01:34:15):
I have been politely

Leo Laporte (01:34:16):
Loud from an older sport. Yes. What's your thoughts, Alice? As a do two fan?

Alex Wilhelm (01:34:23):
No, no, actually not at all.

(01:34:26):
I, I've said this before I think on Twit, but like, when I was a child, I used to drive to my parents' office cause they had faster internet. So I could watch Korean language VODs of brood war games that were uploaded to YouTube. Cause there wasn't Twitch at that time. Right. So I'm a, I I am politely in eSports og in the sense that I've really cared about it for a long time. I think the problem was there was a period of rapid growth with things like the League of Legends proceed, and then people got a little bit ahead of themselves on the revenue potential, put more money into the nick could sustain. And now we are dealing with a pretty standard business. Is

Leo Laporte (01:34:57):
That true Benito? Would you say that's

Alex Wilhelm (01:34:59):
Fair? I say that's 100% accurate. Yeah. Like

Ashley Esqueda (01:35:01):
Post the same as the pandemic. Yep. Same as companies saying this is the new normal. Right. This is the new baseline. Right. And it wasn't right now. There went, it wasn't at all. It was just a, it was an anomaly and yeah. People, people over invested. And by the way yeah, it was just inflated historically.

Leo Laporte (01:35:15):
That seems to always happen. I think back to the railroad boom when we had acro, when they finally built a cross country railroad in the United States, all the railroads of that time went bankrupt. But what we got out of it was the infrastructure. So a whole new generation of railroads could emerge. And the same thing they say happened in the tech bust at the end of the last century. There was an overbuild of fiber because everybody was so bullish in the late nineties that.com was gonna rule the world. They, there was the.com bust, but we still have all of that fiber. And so I think that's a normal business cycle. Alex, you kind of follow the business cycle. I think that's accurate. Yeah. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (01:35:58):
I think that's true in a lot of, a lot of say cases when we're talking about physical infrastructure. Like there was a canal building boom in, in the, in Britain back in the day. Right. the difference with eSports though is it's pretty digital and so there's less of an asset. There's no

Leo Laporte (01:36:10):
Infrastructure at all. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (01:36:12):
Yeah. Well, I mean, I mean, unless you're

Leo Laporte (01:36:14):
Talking about arenas doing

Alex Wilhelm (01:36:16):
Physical things, but it's not quite the same, same substance. I, I think also it's just, it's too advertising driven a product right now. Even though they did manage to bring in Blue chip sponsors. Like if you watch League of Legends proceed, you'll see Visa logos and other big names and that's great and, and shout out to them. But it's not gonna be growing as much as people thought it might a couple years ago. And so people are dealing with the, the pain of Overinvestment, but at the same time, compared to what there was when I was 15, 14, like the modern eSports scene is so incredible. So sure it's not gonna take over the N F L or the n l the next couple of years, but there's still so much going on that me Yeah. Someone who never thought this would happen because no one else cared when I was a kiddo. Modern people that are fans have so much more, I'm just excited about that. So to me, I'm measuring from the bottom up. Yeah. Not from the top down on this

Ashley Esqueda (01:37:06):
One. Think about Dungeons and Dragons, which for a very long time was considered incredibly uncool, the foundation, but the foundations were there and then it just took a few big hits, like critical role and Stranger Things and everything to bring it back to the zeitgeist and, and make it part of like, popular culture and make it cool and then all of a sudden, like that was the thing. So it's, to me, it's, it's a long game. I mean, and I also can I also share my bonafides. I was a, I was a professional unreal Tournament, 2003 player back in like, hey, oh four, I think oh four. I was like signed with the Global Gaming League and I got to open for Jane's Addiction in Cleveland. So dude, that was my claim. That's my, that's my eSports claim to fame. I used to play eSports before eSports was eSports. That's amazing.

Alex Wilhelm (01:37:52):
I believe.

Leo Laporte (01:37:53):
But I, I believe there is a video of you.

Ashley Esqueda (01:37:56):
I hope to God there is not <laugh> on

Leo Laporte (01:37:58):
Stage at the concerts. Leo.

Ashley Esqueda (01:38:02):
There must, there must never. I have thought this was scrubbed from the internet. I didn't Because this is before you, this is pre YouTube, so I hope there isn't. Oh my God. No.

Alex Wilhelm (01:38:10):
I was quake three person more than an Unreal Tournament

Ashley Esqueda (01:38:15):
Person. Ah, yes. We, I think we played with the Quake. The Quake guys. Cuz I remember so crates specifically, like I remember a, like a handful of guys that we hung out with all the time.

Alex Wilhelm (01:38:25):
Yeah, yeah. And then who was fatality of course was one of the early

Ashley Esqueda (01:38:28):
Fatality. Yeah. Really early kind of money. Esports. Yeah. Esports influencer slash early adopter of eSports scene. Like he was Yeah, I think he was like probably the most famous eSports person here is

Alex Wilhelm (01:38:41):
League of Legends is

Ashley Esqueda (01:38:43):
The West. Yeah. Pre, pre like in the before time, like in the early phases of eSports

Leo Laporte (01:38:48):
From an, from Instagram. Here is Ashley playing.

Ashley Esqueda (01:38:51):
Yeah. There's me tournament

Leo Laporte (01:38:52):
Playing in front of James.

Ashley Esqueda (01:38:54):
The crowd of a bajillion people

Leo Laporte (01:38:55):
Jane's addiction. And what

Alex Wilhelm (01:38:56):
Type of computer is

Leo Laporte (01:38:57):
That? On a lime green.

Ashley Esqueda (01:38:58):
That's a, that's an Alienware alien. Wear the lime green Alienware laptop.

Leo Laporte (01:39:02):
Yes.

Alex Wilhelm (01:39:03):
You've love to see it.

Ashley Esqueda (01:39:04):
You love to see it. I have my lip gloss stuffed in my, in my skirt right there cuz I didn't have pockets.

Leo Laporte (01:39:09):
And your denim, your denim mini.

Ashley Esqueda (01:39:10):
My denims mini. That's man, early two thousands. Wild time.

Alex Wilhelm (01:39:15):
I like when New Park is still blowing up. It's a good time to be alive.

Leo Laporte (01:39:17):
Good time. I like Meteora and I, she's wearing a, a wrist, a towel on her wrist cuz you know you don't want sweat on the mouse. No. And wow. No, no, that's

Alex Wilhelm (01:39:27):
A wrist

Ashley Esqueda (01:39:27):
Guard. It was extremely humid. Yeah. It was a risk guard, but also it was extremely humid in Cleveland. I will say Dave Navarro was really nice to us and he was like very fascinated by eSports. That was that he was like asking us a lot of questions about it, which was super weird.

Benito (01:39:42):
I just wanna say there's one more aspect to this that no one talks about.

Leo Laporte (01:39:45):
Benita. Yes.

Benito (01:39:46):
These games are owned by companies. Nobody owns basketball. Nobody owns football. Nobody owns hockey.

Ashley Esqueda (01:39:50):
Very true.

Leo Laporte (01:39:51):
Yeah. Well and look what happened to the Mario was the Mario tour.

Benito (01:39:56):
Yeah. You get they people who were throwing up smash tournaments got cut off by Nintendos

Leo Laporte (01:40:01):
Nintendo, cut off the smash tours. Like

Benito (01:40:03):
The NBA isn't gonna come in and stop somebody's basketball game.

Leo Laporte (01:40:06):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Here's the story from last November. Nintendo shuts down Smash World tour without any warning organizers say they'll lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. They thought the Nintendo was happy with this tour and it was very good. They weren't using mods or anything. It was a very good ad for smash Brothers or whatever they call that game. Super Smash Brothers. But Nintendo decided, and this was comp, there was a whole bunch of complicated stuff going on with this. It wasn't just Nintendo unilaterally deciding there were competitors and so forth. Didn't end well. Yeah. Didn't end well. And so that's part of the problem too. I still feel like in my lifetime this is gonna happen and I'm not gonna live much longer. So it's gonna happen. Pretty <laugh>. It's coming soon.

Alex Wilhelm (01:40:59):
Leo. You pretend to be like 97 years old, but you're still not.

Leo Laporte (01:41:04):
Let me tell you something.

Ashley Esqueda (01:41:04):
Well, you were talking about the railroads and I was like, what were you Leo, like five or six when that happened?

Alex Wilhelm (01:41:10):
I nailed the golden spot myself.

Ashley Esqueda (01:41:11):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:41:13):
We played when the Unreal Tournament came out on the set of the Screen Savers back in 19, whatever it was, 99 or something. Oh man. We built the ultimate gaming machine. What a great game. And we played it like crazy. We loved that

Ashley Esqueda (01:41:26):
Game. It's a really fun game. Unreal tournament. The Rocket launcher. Rocket Launcher is so satisfying. Yeah. And the flat cannon was also like a very satisfyingly designed weapon,

Leo Laporte (01:41:35):
But we would play the Rocket Launcher only level. And that was, that's very fun. Was much fun. Yeah. That's very fun. That was so much fun. You

Alex Wilhelm (01:41:42):
Know, you know what I miss about games in that era is that they were really, really simple. So like, I played a Little Destiny and Destiny two, and like, I, I got, I gotta say game. It's

Leo Laporte (01:41:50):
Too complicated. Great game. No, but it is. I agree with

Alex Wilhelm (01:41:52):
You. It's just, there's so much, there's too many stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:41:53):
There's, there's a lot dials and knobs and buttons. Give me a rocket launcher, <laugh> and somebody over there. That's all I need. And a castle. And I'll run around. There's,

Ashley Esqueda (01:42:04):
We're showing our age

Alex Wilhelm (01:42:05):
Right now. Yeah. He locked me in a room and said, Alex, you can only invite four friends over. You're playing Quake three q3. DM six is the map, and yeah, that's all you have to do. And here's this 12 ounce soda done. I would have the best

Leo Laporte (01:42:15):
Net advice done. And I think that actually hurts eSports, because you can't just pick up and watch League of Legends and understand. I mean, you really have to there. Now, maybe I'm wrong on that because I have to say there are, you know, football's pretty complicated. Cricket's. Pretty complicated. Yeah. And they're massive audiences for these games, but I feel like,

Alex Wilhelm (01:42:33):
But those have institutional

Leo Laporte (01:42:34):
Support. They have, right.

Ashley Esqueda (01:42:36):
You grow

Leo Laporte (01:42:36):
And also you grow up learning baseball. Right.

Ashley Esqueda (01:42:39):
Also. Yeah. Right. You grew, grow. And there are some, I mean, I think there are some initiatives they have, there are out there that are like, you know, eSports in high schools and stuff now, which, like, I'm seeing more of that. There's a, that's becoming more prevalent.

Leo Laporte (01:42:53):
Lemme take a break. I don't, I I like this conversation. We got some gamers here. Benito. Thank you for chiming in. Please continue to do so. Yes. I forgot that you covered eSports for all those years.

Ashley Esqueda (01:43:04):
Get it. Bonito.

Leo Laporte (01:43:05):
Benito's, awesome. Bonito runs our best board for the show and is one of our best editors and and tech guys. He's a do it all studio guy. Thank you. Worked at Twitch before this, right? Yeah, right before this. I worked at Twitch. Yeah. we gotta get the bonito cam going. Did you turn off? Yes. Yeah. Turn off the lights on. Bonino cam have lights on there used to be lights and cameras back there. I think. Benito's, shy <laugh>. Anyway, when actually you're one of our, I think you might be our second newest Viva's. Newer than you. Viva and Thai and Tai. That's right. So you're, you're pretty, pretty new here. But boy, we love having you here. Thank you. Let's take a little break. And we're not done with gaming. I wanna talk some more about gaming in just a little bit, cuz I think there's a lot more to talk about, including the hot game of the week, but far a word from our sponsor.

(01:43:53):
Mint Mobile. Love the Mint Mobile. Gotta love this. I was looking at, you know, I have a subscription with all the major carriers because I have a bunch of phones, but also part of my job to review them. I was looking at one of these carriers, I just gotta bill 300 bucks. Of course we have several phones and the family and stuff, but it's like, ugh, if I can move that whole family to Mint Mobile, no brainer. I'm on 15 bucks a month. That's all in, there's no hidden secret fees or nothing. Mint Mobile's the first company to sell premium wireless service online only. That means no stores you can order from home. You, you, they, you. There's no hidden stuff, no secret plans. You just save a ton because they don't have to pay for retail. Their phone plans start at $15 a month.

(01:44:46):
They have a family plan. That's fantastic. It's very, the thing about the family plan, it's very simple, <laugh> and I think sometimes you look at it and you go, wait a minute. No, that can't be that simple. Yeah, it's very simple. Premium wireless for just 15 bucks a month. All the plans include unlimited talk and text, high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You use your own phone if you want. They will send you a sim. They don't even charge you for the sim. Plus they do EIM now. So if you have an EIM capable phone, easy peasy. You can be using Mint mobile tonight. You can port your phone number over all your contacts go with you. They cell phones as well. They're very flexible. I, I, it's just, it's a no-brainer. Now what do you get? 15 bucks a month?

(01:45:36):
You get unlimited nationwide talk and text. And by the way, mint bubble has inflation. They inflate the amount of data you can use. It used to be four gigabytes a month when I started. This is now five gigabytes of data a month. I think that's enough for most people. And now they've go, what's this thing with the 15 gigabytes a month and 20 and unlimited? All $15? All plans. Wait a minute. Hold on there. Hold down. Holy cow. Look at that. To get your new wireless plan, 15 bucks a month, you pick the plan to get it shipped to your door for free. Go to mint mobile.com/twit mint mobile.com/twit. It is, I mean, it's just e it's, I don't understand why you wouldn't do it. It's so fantastic. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month. Mint mobile.com/twit. Ooh. They've got a deal on the Google Pixel. They cell phones too. I got my iPhone SE from them. It was also 15 bucks a month. So for 30 bucks a month, brand new phone and at, at the time, four gigabytes a month plus unlimited talk and text. Unbelievable. Mint mobile.com/twitter. We thank 'em so much for their support. Ashley was getting hot in here because she was using her fan. I think all this talk about gaming getting you, getting you excited

Ashley Esqueda (01:46:59):
Permanently roasting in the studio when the lights are on. So

Leo Laporte (01:47:02):
My, oh, I'm sorry. Okay.

Alex Wilhelm (01:47:04):
People don't realize how big of a problem that is because I have to turn off my AC unit. Get my, yeah, you gotta shut

Ashley Esqueda (01:47:08):
Everything. Shut me off.

Alex Wilhelm (01:47:09):
And so I just slowly

Leo Laporte (01:47:11):
Broil. Oh, like you do twi and

Alex Wilhelm (01:47:13):
Then when we end, I gotta

Ashley Esqueda (01:47:14):
Keep a fan.

Leo Laporte (01:47:15):
Yeah, that's good. Oh, what can we do? A little. I like your fan. It's a, it's not a physi, it's a Japanese

Ashley Esqueda (01:47:21):
Fan. No, I get, yeah, I keep a, I just, just keep a fan. Got it. A drag con. It's great. Real good. You wanna a good fan? Good. A high quality fan. Get it. A drag

Leo Laporte (01:47:28):
On that is a large fan. I mean, that is a big It

Ashley Esqueda (01:47:30):
Is. And it's got a good snap.

Leo Laporte (01:47:32):
Ooh.

Ashley Esqueda (01:47:32):
It's very good. Very nice. Yeah, it's good.

Leo Laporte (01:47:34):
Wow.

Ashley Esqueda (01:47:36):
I like

Leo Laporte (01:47:36):
It. All right. Yeah, we don't, you don't really need to wear risk guards on this show, but maybe it's, no, maybe you might have to start if it gets any hotter. All right, so your guys, you are all playing Diablo four. That's the game of the week, isn't it? Came out.

Ashley Esqueda (01:47:50):
Game of My Life.

Leo Laporte (01:47:51):
Sixth. Well, yeah, I'm, I'm with you. I played Diablo one, I played Diablo two, played Diablo three over and over again for a long time. Four seems pretty similar, right? Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (01:48:03):
I mean, well, I don't think, you know, core Diablo is

Leo Laporte (01:48:06):
Diablo's Diablo.

Ashley Esqueda (01:48:07):
Kill lut, repeat. It's just like, that's it. That's the best thing about Diablo I ever, that's why heard.

Leo Laporte (01:48:12):
I like it. It's pretty mindless, right? Yeah,

Ashley Esqueda (01:48:14):
It's great. It's click, click, click, click, click. I like the clicking sound. Just reminds me of being in high school. My, my best friend and I had a mu had a mutual friend who was the manager. I don't know what this guy was thinking. Guy owned a land cafe in our hometown and he made my 16 year old friend Ron, a manager, <laugh>. And he did not care about the business, I guess. And so of course not. Ron would just run after school. You, the Land Cafe would open at three o'clock. It was just never open before that. Cause no one ever showed up. So he would run it from like three to 11. And then after hours, my best friend Juan and I would go and he would let us in. And we would just, we would just play Diablo too until, you know, four in the morning or whatever. And so, and he would just let us play for free. So, cuz we, neither of us had the internet connection to like, play Diablo at home. So that was that was our, that was my, like, that was my high school. My mom was always like, I don't worry about you because like, you're gonna go play play Diablo at a land ca playing computer games at a land cafe. And I'm like, I am so lame. Like, I'm so lame. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:49:15):
Now I should warn you, it does not work on a Mac. No. Whippy, whippy Goldberg was pretty darn upset. She bought it and found out she mad. They had been, they used to work on Macs, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> no Mac this time around, but who cares? I'm playing on the Xbox. You guys are PC players? It is Cross.

Ashley Esqueda (01:49:34):
I got PS five. I'm playing on

Leo Laporte (01:49:35):
PS five. PS five. But it's cross platform, which is nice.

Ashley Esqueda (01:49:38):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:49:39):
But the, I think it's

Ashley Esqueda (01:49:40):
Really, and you can log in cross platform too. So that's like, I like that as well. It's basically I can log in as my same

Leo Laporte (01:49:46):
Here. The slot machine video games, right?

Ashley Esqueda (01:49:49):
It is a little bit, it does feel a little bit like that. There's no, it does feel a little bit like roulette, <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:49:53):
There's no strategy. You're not wrong. You're just hitting, you're going tap, tap, tap, tap till somebody dies and drops some loot. You pick up the loot. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Why

Ashley Esqueda (01:50:01):
Don't, okay, wait a minute. All right. Hold on a minute, Leo. Because I'm in world tier. I'm almost in world tier three, and I would just like to say that later in the game, that actually there is some strategy there. Oh, good. Okay. And I'm a little sad. I think my, I play, I rolled an necromancer. This is like my number one character last D three. I rolled a witch doctor and I was, wait

Leo Laporte (01:50:23):
A minute. You say you rolled, you pick, you let it pick what you're gonna be.

Ashley Esqueda (01:50:27):
No, no. I just chose, I chose Oh, it

Leo Laporte (01:50:29):
Chose, it did. Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (01:50:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but but yeah, so I, I have a Necro banter and so I have been enjoying that. And there is, but there is some I like, depending on the build you have, it's like, you know, you have a glass Cannon maid that it's like, there is some strategy there that usually involves evade, like you're dashing

Alex Wilhelm (01:50:47):
A lot. What is, what is world tier three? Cause I'm playing world tier two and it hasn't been very hard yet. I I'm not as far as you.

Leo Laporte (01:50:53):
No, I don't want it to be hard.

Ashley Esqueda (01:50:55):
So world tier it to be hard three is you can unlock it's the next, like, it's the next difficulty yet. So you're, you get more, more gold, more better, you know, better loot drops and all that stuff. You have to finish the campaign and the, and a capstone dungeon though, to unlock it. Okay. So it's, it's locked until you finish the campaign and get everything done.

Alex Wilhelm (01:51:11):
Okay. So I, I wanna make a hot take here because going back to the, the d and d thing, one very interesting thing that I, that I've picked up recently is Balders Gate three and Oh, boulders Gate. Yeah. And I know, I know we're all aging ourselves by talking about the old RPGs B used to play, but I, I will say like, I've only played some d and d in my life. I will say Boulders Gate three is a better game than Diablo four. Diablo four is perhaps more e easy, like it's easier to enjoy cause there's less thinking involved. It's just slashing things. But I think BG three really is going to be a high watermarking gaming and storytelling.

Ashley Esqueda (01:51:46):
Ballers Gate is a very good franchise. I like, I don't, I don't, I ha I hate to pit them against each other because I think you could enjoy, if you love Diablo, you, you would probably really like Boulder's gates. Okay. So I like, I, there's so few kind of really solid, like, kind of top-down loot Lutie Mans instead of Hoo Mans, I call 'em Lutie Mans. They're like loot man games. I'm like, I, so I feel like, you know, between the two of them you could have a really good time. I am looking forward to, looking forward to seasons. Like I think that'll be interesting. And I really, they keep saying, can we talk about the cow level? Because

Leo Laporte (01:52:24):
Is there a cow level this year?

Ashley Esqueda (01:52:26):
Well, here's the thing, Leo, every time one of these games launches, they say there is no cow level. This is like, this is the, this is the company line. You have to say there is no

Alex Wilhelm (01:52:34):
Cow level. But

Leo Laporte (01:52:35):
There always, but there could be one is

Ashley Esqueda (01:52:36):
A cow level, but maybe there isn't. And also like some people

Leo Laporte (01:52:39):
Notice first all tell people what the cow level is. Cuz not

Ashley Esqueda (01:52:42):
Everybody in Diablo two. Yeah. And Diablo two, there's a secret level in every Diablo game. So in Diablo three, it was Whimsy Shire, which was a very colorful and bright place where you could literally murder like little unicorns and like teddy evil teddy bears and stuff. I love it. It was very funny. But you had to, you have to go through like a, a very specific chain of events, quest chain and do all these things to unlock it. And so this also happened in Diablo two. So in Diablo two there were like mur rumors whispers of a cow level. And everybody was just like, all, you know, blizzard was like, there is no cow level. We don't know what you're

Leo Laporte (01:53:17):
Talking about. All it is is cow. Here it is. It's all cows and

Ashley Esqueda (01:53:19):
All it is is cows. It's all cow men. It's all cow men with axes. And so, oh God, this is really taking me back. And so yeah, so this is the cow level. And once again, Diablo four launches. And Rod Ferguson is like, nah, we wanted to stick with the the grim nature. It's a

Leo Laporte (01:53:36):
Very sanctuary. It's a grim game. It's probably Grimer than Grim Diablo previous. Yes.

Ashley Esqueda (01:53:42):
It's very sad. Like all the, I will, the supplementary writing on Diablo four is really good. Like, really, really good. Some of the side

Leo Laporte (01:53:50):
Questions. All the npc fantastic. Such sad stories.

Ashley Esqueda (01:53:52):
Interesting, sad stories. Like it's very depressing. Very depressing. It's

Alex Wilhelm (01:53:57):
Called Diablo. I mean, like, I, I don't know like if it was anything else but that, like what if he bought Diablo five and

Ashley Esqueda (01:54:03):
It was like, it's supposed to be depressing.

Alex Wilhelm (01:54:04):
The Shire. You're a little, yeah. Everyone's

Leo Laporte (01:54:06):
Had it. Ashley as an expert. I mean, clearly Alex and I are punters com Compared to you as an expert, could you describe this game for somebody who's never played it? Pretend that I'm your older.

Ashley Esqueda (01:54:18):
Well, the story or the actual like type of

Leo Laporte (01:54:20):
Game. It's just like what's Yeah, just what is, what is the experience? Like I don't need the story. Nobody. Okay. No. Look, does anybody really care about the story? What sanctuary is? And

Ashley Esqueda (01:54:30):
I care. Leo, how dare you. How Daddy Arius Happy Father's Day, daddy and Aria. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:54:36):
Oh yeah. Happy Father's Day in Aria. I

Ashley Esqueda (01:54:38):
Forgot. Happy Father's Day to you and Aria. Yeah. Yeah. We've so quickly, we've all forgotten to wish an arias a happy Father's day. So cuz we all know RMAs not doing it for him anyway. So I, my what I would say to people is Diablo is a top down.

Leo Laporte (01:54:58):
Yes. You're not first person horror game. You're not wandering through seeing it top down. The first person, you're, you're looking, what is it called? Isomorphic. You're looking down. Mm. Iso metric. You're looking down at your player and the enemies.

Ashley Esqueda (01:55:11):
Yep. and it's sort of like a three quarters view. It's not directly top

Leo Laporte (01:55:15):
Down. Right. Right. Three quarters view. Yep.

Ashley Esqueda (01:55:16):
And so you have this three quarters top-down view of your character. And this game is basically the goal of this game is to like just demolish the hordes of enemies in front of you and collect, loot, and make your character look cool.

Leo Laporte (01:55:32):
And then there's towns,

Ashley Esqueda (01:55:33):
This really, this is like the thing. Yeah. There's towns I guess.

Leo Laporte (01:55:35):
Fine. And you sell the money back or you, or you salva to get

Ashley Esqueda (01:55:39):
Money.

Leo Laporte (01:55:39):
Gold get money. Looting gold. Looting gold. And then you go back out, it's all loot and you get quests. But the quests really are very simple. Go in there, fight, design a lot of bad guys. Get the loot and then leave. Get the

Ashley Esqueda (01:55:53):
Loot and get out. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:55:54):
That's

Ashley Esqueda (01:55:54):
Quests are always, that's the game where it's like loot, loot, loot. And then also, you know, it's really fun to play with your friends. You can play multiplayer. It's multiplayers as well. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (01:56:01):
You, you've missed a very important part of the Diablo experience, which is picking up your 74th size and trying to figure out in your inventory, is this better? Which one's actually the best one? Yeah. Cause it's like plus 4% all elemental inversions. Like, okay, cool. This one has 4%

Leo Laporte (01:56:16):
Intelligence. It's so complicated. They have, they compare. Did they have compare before

Ashley Esqueda (01:56:20):
Comparison? Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:56:21):
They do. They do. Okay. I like compare. So they compare. So I have compare next to what I'm looking at and it That's very nice. It's a little better here. It's a little worse here. I don't know. It's poison resistance versus lightning resistance. I don't know. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So Yeah. I I thought that was just me. I thought you pro. So

Ashley Esqueda (01:56:36):
It's a complicated, immediately complicated stats game. <Laugh>.

Alex Wilhelm (01:56:39):
Yes. Actually you're in Southern California, right? Yes. And, and Leo, you're in northern,

Leo Laporte (01:56:44):
Northern California. Yes. And you're Rhode Island. We're

Alex Wilhelm (01:56:46):
Places where certain consumables are illegal in certain parts of the country. They're not. Oh. But if you have consumed any of those substances Oh. And you are trying to decide which pair of gloves are boots is the best. Hard It's impossible. <Laugh>. It's literally,

Ashley Esqueda (01:56:56):
No, it's not impossible. The answer just becomes the prettiest ones. Okay.

Alex Wilhelm (01:57:00):
That's, that's how I play.

Ashley Esqueda (01:57:02):
That's, I, I am a fashion. I'm fashion Diablo. This is like my game that I play. I just wanna look really cool. So it's like whatever it takes to get to. Cool. Also, you have trans mug, so it's like you can, if you have a piece of gear that you look really cool in, but the but the stats are terrible. You can just, most of them you can salvage and then it will become available to like apply as a skin to your character. And then you can also d everything and make it match, which is really nice.

Alex Wilhelm (01:57:28):
Oh, you just blew my mind.

Leo Laporte (01:57:29):
That's why you're collecting all those strange herbs

Ashley Esqueda (01:57:32):
If you, so Of course. Yeah. Gotta get my death mollow or whatever that's out there. No, I gotta make elixirs with that stuff. Yeah. And you do all your upgrades and everything. That's like, really, it's really nice.

Alex Wilhelm (01:57:43):
It's a lot of fun. If you wanna kill not just a couple of like, you know, devil mps or large cows. You wanna kill thousands of them mindlessly. It's amazing. If that's not your jam. It's not your jam, but like it's, it, it's well done. I I'm very happy that D four solid to to be as good as D three. Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (01:58:00):
Yeah. Solid.

Leo Laporte (01:58:01):
I wish I could show you. There's

Ashley Esqueda (01:58:02):
A whole sub, there's a whole sub community within the Diablo four community dedicated to like, DIA fashion Diablo. Like, it's just people like showing their, their sneeze. The drip is strong. Like it's really good.

Alex Wilhelm (01:58:14):
I'm so here for

Leo Laporte (01:58:15):
It. I wish I could show you how ugly my druitt is. It is, it is <laugh>. There's no fashion here at all. It's just the ugliest thing you've ever seen.

Ashley Esqueda (01:58:26):
Leo, I'm gonna tweet. I'm gonna tweet right at you. I

Leo Laporte (01:58:29):
Will, I will take a screenshot and and tweet it back. All

Ashley Esqueda (01:58:32):
Right. I would take a screenshot of mine and I'll, I'll send it over. Okay. I think I look cool. I have a red, I had a red Necromancer costume. It's

Leo Laporte (01:58:38):
Very nice. I have a fat Dr. He's really fat and he's wearing like, for some reason antlers and and he's got the ugliest, like he's got a skirt on. It's just, it's horrific. And and there's nothing I could do about it. So <laugh>, I'm just gonna stay. Well,

Ashley Esqueda (01:58:56):
You're just out there living your life in nature. I'm

Leo Laporte (01:58:58):
Out there living my life in nature. Exactly. <laugh>. Exactly. Speaking of games, speaking of Whoopi Goldberg, Whoopi, there is a way to play Diablo four on the Mac. Apples kind of let this out at Worldwide Developer conference and a few people picked up on it. Christina Warren's article here in Inverse. Thank you. Christina. I didn't know she was still writing. She's now at GitHub. She's on the show last week. Didn't mention that she was gonna write this long article about Apple releasing up update to wine that lets you run direct X 12 games on Apple silicon computers. It's a 20,000 line code patch for wine <laugh>. But it works. And ostensibly Apple says, oh, that it's not to play Diablo for on the Mac, it's just to see if Diablo four works well and it would be portable to the Mac.

(02:00:00):
But as it turns out, a lot of people are using it to run. Well, here's an example. A Diablo four running at 60 frames. Good for them. Yes. On an M two max computer. So you can't absolutely do it. This is at Ultra. And and so Whoopi just, you know, you might want to check this, check this out. I don't know how your hacking skills are these days. Yeah. But you could do it. Was I stupid to do it at Druid? Should I have done a Necro master? No, you're both necro answers. There must be something about it.

Ashley Esqueda (02:00:38):
I like having a skeleton entourage. That's just, that's how I've always Oh, so cool. Always. I like to have an entourage. I like, I was a witch doctor in D three and I have a whole bunch of minions.

Leo Laporte (02:00:46):
Yeah. Minions. I don't know. Do druid get minions? Probably not. I think you

Ashley Esqueda (02:00:51):
Do you get wolves? We get 1 million. Is

Leo Laporte (02:00:53):
There something I bear might out there? We might get a bear with

Ashley Esqueda (02:00:55):
Us. I think you can turn into a

Leo Laporte (02:00:56):
Bear. I can turn into a bear. Which is really fun. Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (02:00:58):
Yeah. That's exciting. I, that seems cool. I would, I rolled the barbarian and named her Barbie, but I haven't loved her yet.

Leo Laporte (02:01:05):
<Laugh>, I think the, when Diablo three, I was playing as a barbarian most of the time cuz I liked that.

Ashley Esqueda (02:01:09):
That was a fun class in D three. Yeah, that was fun class in D three a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:01:15):
Well now

Alex Wilhelm (02:01:16):
I play, I play a wizard, so.

Leo Laporte (02:01:17):
Oh, you're a wizard, not a necromancer. Well, it's kind of the same. No, no,

Alex Wilhelm (02:01:21):
No, no. I, I was gonna say, this is topic wizard D three in Boulder's Gate three. I play as a wizard. Oh. I said to change it up and be a necromancer in

Ashley Esqueda (02:01:27):
D four. Mm mm. Evil wizard, bone wizard <laugh>. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:01:32):
Oh, I'd rather talk about gaming than the rest of this. But all right. I guess we have to change the subject. Anything you wanna say Bonita before we move on?

Benito (02:01:43):
No, my tastes about Diablo far too spicy for the internet.

Leo Laporte (02:01:46):
Oh, you don't like Diablo? Oh. Oh, tell us now.

Benito (02:01:50):
No, I've just, I I've, I've divorced myself from all Skinner boxes. So

Leo Laporte (02:01:53):
It is a Skinner box. You press, you press the button, you get a little bird food. Yeah.

Benito (02:01:58):
I don't play loot games anymore.

Leo Laporte (02:02:00):
It is, it absolutely, that's all it is, is a loot game. You play dwarf fortress. What is that? What do you call that?

Benito (02:02:05):
That's a, that's a deep simulation.

Leo Laporte (02:02:06):
Deep. It's deep <laugh> simul.

Alex Wilhelm (02:02:08):
No, it's not.

Benito (02:02:09):
It's a simulation.

Leo Laporte (02:02:11):
Well, you probably like Farthest Frontier. That's a simulation. Simulation. Sims are the best. Or be a beaver on timber borne. That's a good one. The only enemy in timber borne apparently is, is drought. But <laugh>. Yes. Yes. If you could survive drought, as you said Alex, before the show, it's all about water management. <Laugh>.

Alex Wilhelm (02:02:29):
It's, it's a, it's a great game. Or you can play frost bunk and your enemy is the cold. I mean, like, these are fun things. Yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:02:35):
Yeah. Lena Kahn, we were talking about her. I'm sorry. Not Lena Conn and my other hero in the Biden administration. Jessica Waren. Morsel Ro Rosen Morsel. Can you say this for me? Rosen Morsel, chairman of the FCC says everybody hates data caps, but ISPs clearly, and I've been having this debate, I've had this debate for 20 years with John z Devore. She's now confirming that I was right. Isps clearly have the technical ability to offer unlimited data. It costs them very little. So the FCC has announced that there will be a notice of inquiry asking comments from you, the people public, to better understand, to better understand why the use of data caps continues to persist despite the increased broadband needs of consumers and providers demonstrated technical ability to offer unlimited data plans.

Alex Wilhelm (02:03:39):
Well, if you're gonna download a fine new game like Diablo four, ballers gate three, yeah. You're gonna download like what, 60, 70, 80, 90 gigs. Gigs. And if you have a hundred gigabyte data cap, well no more internet for you.

Leo Laporte (02:03:51):
I used to have a terabyte a month cap on Comcast and I pay, and you know, this is the, obviously their plan. A huge amount of money not to have a data cap. Just cuz I don't wanna have to think about it. I hated it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> to get to the end of the month and say, you know, you're almost, you've almost gone through your terabyte. So I used to have

Alex Wilhelm (02:04:10):
A, a cap on my Verizon plan. I had like one of those old 10 gig plans before it all went to fake Unlimited. And I went over a couple times and that made me absolutely furious. And then now they just throttle you up to a certain point. But it, this feels a lot like back in the day when you had to pay for like, a certain number of SMS messages per month. Oh God. Do you

Leo Laporte (02:04:26):
Remember that?

Alex Wilhelm (02:04:27):
Yes. And it was like, you get 500 free text messages a

Leo Laporte (02:04:29):
Month. It used to be 10 cents a message. It was crazy. And

Alex Wilhelm (02:04:33):
It was

Leo Laporte (02:04:33):
Misery. And, you know, what happened happened as a result. Go ahead. Tell us.

Alex Wilhelm (02:04:37):
Oh, I was gonna say like, one, one thing that we had was actual competition in the mobile scene. A number of players. And then we saw an overall better consumer solution down the road. The problem with the ISPs is that they're often effectively regional monopolies. And so they're able to enact a greater tax on essentially normal usage of their product.

Leo Laporte (02:04:54):
Well, what happened? The cc what happened is WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger and Telegram and a bunch of databased messengers emerged mm-hmm. <Affirmative> so you wouldn't have to pay. So then what did they do? Well now we better have data caps because we get, we can't get our 10 cents a message anymore. So we're gonna get you on the data. And I think there's a direct correlation between the, the cellular carriers trying to make money on text messages and then saying, well, well instead we'll make it on data. Yeah,

Ashley Esqueda (02:05:24):
That's a good call.

Leo Laporte (02:05:26):
Yeah. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (02:05:27):
I mean, like, no one likes their I S P. I've literally, I think no one in my entire life never heard someone say, you know what, my ISP is fantastic. No complaints. Yeah. so

Ashley Esqueda (02:05:35):
I'm The best you get is it's fine. And

Leo Laporte (02:05:37):
If, by the way, if you do talk to somebody who likes their isp, you can't get it <laugh>. Yeah,

Ashley Esqueda (02:05:43):
Yeah. It doesn't exist anymore

Leo Laporte (02:05:45):
For, they're not,

Ashley Esqueda (02:05:45):
Not accepting new customers. I have

Leo Laporte (02:05:46):
Rocky Mountain net and it's fantastic. But you have to be in the southwest corner of Montana to get it. <Laugh>. Oh, well thank you. Actually, we have a very good I S P here, which you guys can't get called Sonic. And they offer 10 gigabit symmetric fiber

Ashley Esqueda (02:06:03):
For And corn dogs.

Leo Laporte (02:06:04):
And corn dogs for everyone. Meta has decided to lower the age requirement for Quest VR headsets to 10, used to be 13.

Ashley Esqueda (02:06:17):
So as if any 10 year old's ever heard of Facebook, by the way, like anybody under the age of 20 cares about Facebook in any capacity or

Leo Laporte (02:06:25):
Wants to wa buy a meta quest. I think kids like me like a VR initially. Sure. And then they get bored with it. Yeah. It's cool. And then, and they want, it's cool. It's weird. They want a light saber and say, forget it. Are you gonna tell your son about when Darth? Is he listening?

Ashley Esqueda (02:06:42):
Well, okay. We where he, so no. And my husband is like a vanguard against people spoil. Like he will jump, he will tackle a person about to spoil

Leo Laporte (02:06:53):
Them. So they're not, you're not gonna say, Hey, you know this guy Darth Vader, who's invading you? Nope. No, you're not the same

Ashley Esqueda (02:06:58):
Thing. We literally have like pulled, we literally have like blacked out, not blacked out, but like, we've literally, like, we won't read him some of his five minute Star Wars stories.

Leo Laporte (02:07:07):
Oh, that's awesome.

Ashley Esqueda (02:07:07):
To keep the secret. We're like secret. Cause he'll be, he'll be devastated.

Leo Laporte (02:07:11):
Are you, are you looking forward right now to the, like how old will he be when he can watch episode four or whatever empire?

Ashley Esqueda (02:07:16):
God, when he can watch Empire Empire, probably when he's seen, he's seen one and two. Okay. He's seen, he's seen episode one in episode two. So right now, as he knows it, he's And some Clone Rocks. You're

Leo Laporte (02:07:25):
Making him watch it in chronological order.

Ashley Esqueda (02:07:27):
He's the hero. He's the hero of Well, I wanted to do it in the machete order, which is, so Drew McWeeny is a a, a film writer. He's a really fantastic film writer. And he used to do this thing called film Nerd, or film, I think Film Nerd 2.0. And he talked about introducing his kids to movies and like speaking about them critically to his kids and all this, that stuff. His kids are grown up now. He was gonna write a book for a while. And he, one of his posts that really stuck with me was his, the way he introduced 'em to Star Wars. And it was, he showed them four five, then went back and showed them 1, 2, 3, then showed them six <laugh>. And, and his justification for this was, he was like, they, they went along for the ride in a new hope. They were, they were devastated by this like, revelation in episode find in Empire Strikes back, and then before finding out how it all worked out or like what happened, he made them go back cuz they wanted to know what happened. So

Leo Laporte (02:08:28):
You're, so you're machete order at Skywalker

Ashley Esqueda (02:08:30):
Follow. I like that. Well, I think the Machete order cuts out one. Yeah. Like I think that's a specific Yeah. There's

Leo Laporte (02:08:34):
No one specifically that cuts

Ashley Esqueda (02:08:35):
Out

Leo Laporte (02:08:36):
The one, but the, the idea is follow Luke Skywalker, I wanna cut it up a little. You follow his evolution by following his storyline? Focusing on his storyline. Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (02:08:45):
So it's so to go back, but we're doing it with him like just in chronological, just in order. Yeah. Like one, yeah. Because the thing is, is like he's four, he'll be four in like a couple weeks, so he's not, he can't, it's hard for him to remember stuff like that even though he's got a memory, like a steel trap sometimes. But yeah, he's so as of right now, like Anakin Skywalker is the hero of the Clone Wars to him. So he'll this will be,

Leo Laporte (02:09:07):
You should start with and or Right. Isn't that the earliest, is that the earliest one?

Ashley Esqueda (02:09:11):
I think No, that's after Revenge of the, that's after Revenge of the sth,

Leo Laporte (02:09:15):
So. Oh, okay.

Ashley Esqueda (02:09:16):
Yeah. And it's like, it's right

Leo Laporte (02:09:18):
Here's the Before Rogue Ones, the events

Ashley Esqueda (02:09:20):
Of Rogue One,

Leo Laporte (02:09:21):
The USA Today Unaccountably has an entire article on how to watch it and what orders there are. <Laugh>

Ashley Esqueda (02:09:28):
Watch it in whatever order You feel like, I mean, honestly,

Leo Laporte (02:09:30):
Order of release chronological with a TV series.

Ashley Esqueda (02:09:33):
Yeah. Yeah. See I don't know that we'll do everything. Cause like I, you know, it's, we'll probably just do the movies and then he can watch the TV shows and stuff when he gets a little older. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:09:42):
That's hysteric. And he really

Ashley Esqueda (02:09:43):
Loves, loves he loves Lightsabers. He has a book. There's a really cool, just, it's called like, it's like lightsabers. It's a book of lightsabers and it's all just high res images of lightsabers from Star Wars and who they belong to in a short little bio. And it's, they have light side and dark side and then like the New Jedi. Like it's, it is really cool. It's a cool little book.

Leo Laporte (02:10:04):
So, I mean this is the new Grims fairy tales, right? He's four. Yeah. This is like, instead of fairytales, this is his new and I think that's actually what George Lucas wanted. I think that was his old Yeah. This is a new mythology. That's how

Ashley Esqueda (02:10:15):
He really loves the Hero's journey. Yeah. Like that's like his all time favorite, you know, thing. He loves Joseph Campbell and so, right. This is his hero's journey. And he loved old pulp stuff like the Lone Ranger and you know, all of those radio cereals. And so this is, you know, that was his version of it. And I think Yeah. Makes sense. You know, it's just really fun. It's like a fun, it's a fun space opera. It's not, I like, like people, I, I didn't get into Star Wars when I was a kid, cuz I missed it. Like I did. It wasn't in theaters. So the first time I was exposed to it, I was like 15.

Leo Laporte (02:10:46):
Yeah. When I was a kid. It was howdy duty. We didn't have Star Wars.

Ashley Esqueda (02:10:50):
Oh, howdy Duty time.

Alex Wilhelm (02:10:52):
Okay. I've let this go on for a long time. Now I'm gonna jump in. Yes. Given that every single Star Wars movie is the same and they're all bad. Does it matter what order you watch them in <laugh>? Ooh. Like, oh my God. What? Why that conversation? No. You know, what're

Ashley Esqueda (02:11:05):
That? Alex, Alex says this as the parent of a very small child. Yeah. Wait for a few years. Four. Yeah. You're gonna change your mind. I'm telling you. Like

Leo Laporte (02:11:12):
It's gonna, I think that's the most important thing, Alex. They're kids stories and a four, they're, they're perfect for a kid, four years old. Cuz they are, they're children's stories.

Ashley Esqueda (02:11:23):
He's upset. Like he wants to watch lightsaber fights. We literally have a YouTube playlist I understand called lights saber battles. And it is all just fights with lightsabers. That's

Leo Laporte (02:11:32):
All. How does he feel about Disney?

Ashley Esqueda (02:11:34):
He's like, you know, he, well we have, we live very close to Disneyland, so we have magic keys and we go a lot. Oh. But but he's,

Leo Laporte (02:11:42):
Are you gonna add me? He's like, you know, Hey Disney voice to your Amazon Echo.

Ashley Esqueda (02:11:46):
Absolutely not. We don't have any voice assistance in this house. We don't, we're not, we're not that kind of family. That was an

Alex Wilhelm (02:11:51):
Instant. No, that was a hard hell

Leo Laporte (02:11:53):
No. Immediate. That was a hell no. Instant.

Ashley Esqueda (02:11:55):
No, I don't want any voice assistance in my house. I, it is just not a thing I'm interested in. You're

Leo Laporte (02:11:59):
Smart.

Alex Wilhelm (02:12:00):
My my father-in-law has dozens of, he, he had like boxes of like Google home mayonnaise and like, it was, it was pandemic. So whenever you said like, sir Siri set an alarm or whatever, the whole house would just blow off like a bomb.

Leo Laporte (02:12:13):
Yeah. Welcome to my house.

Alex Wilhelm (02:12:13):
And it was a terrible couple of years.

Leo Laporte (02:12:15):
Oh no. Welcome to my house. I have everywhere there is a voice assistant. I have Siri, echo and Google side by side. Oh,

Ashley Esqueda (02:12:24):
Everywhere. Hell Leo. No, <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:12:25):
Everywhere. Leo. And, and exactly like your father-in-law, if you say echo, if you say the keyword, it wakes up in several different rooms and you have to say no, no, no. Yes. This one if I ask Google to play a song, it plays everywhere. Oh. Oh, I forgot. I also also have Sonos. I have Sonos. I have yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (02:12:43):
See I have Sonos.

Leo Laporte (02:12:44):
Yeah, but do you have the voice of Sonos?

Ashley Esqueda (02:12:46):
Nope. Absolutely not. No,

Alex Wilhelm (02:12:47):
No. About the non Yeah, same zoo.

Leo Laporte (02:12:50):
Oh. If you say, Hey Sonos, I get the owner of LA Pollo Los Pollo Romanos telling me <laugh> are, sorry Gus. I can't do that. Gus telling you I get Gus ffr. Man. it's, it's a little creepy cuz it's clearly Gus ffr and he mostly can't do anything. So he says I'm a lot. I'm sorry, <laugh>. It's a little, I wonder if I can play this. Is this

Ashley Esqueda (02:13:18):
That's unnerving.

Leo Laporte (02:13:20):
Let's see if this let me turn on my sound and see if this is Gus F Ring's voice.

Ashley Esqueda (02:13:24):
Hey, Sonos. What's playing?

Sonos (02:13:27):
This is superstar by Beach

Leo Laporte (02:13:30):
House. Yeah. See, it's Gus FFR answering

Ashley Esqueda (02:13:32):
Jean Carlo es Esposito, man. Like that's

Leo Laporte (02:13:34):
So John Juan Carlo es Esposito. I love him as an actor. He's so good. <Laugh>, I'm not sure why I'm coming outta my speakers. Jan Laun, who is the one of the fathers of AI and is working on AI at Meta says, good news AI won't destroy jobs forever. <Laugh>,

Ashley Esqueda (02:13:57):
Just for now.

Leo Laporte (02:13:57):
Just for now. <Laugh>. I got nothing. This is a BBC headline. I just love it. I don't, I don't know what else to say about that. Not forever. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (02:14:05):
I'll, I'll jump in here. So how many technological revolutions have we had going back in time? Like agriculture, we industrial revolution to

Leo Laporte (02:14:13):
Like nine? Are you gonna go all through all of 'em though?

Ashley Esqueda (02:14:15):
Five. Like really major ones like probably what, between five and seven?

Alex Wilhelm (02:14:20):
Sure. Pick, pick a number. You can even bring in some smaller ones too. Make it 25. Yeah. sure. Unemployment right now in the US is like, what, 4%? 3%? It's very, very low. I I, I don't think this is gonna be the first technological revolution that actually ends human employment <laugh>. So that's, that's why

Leo Laporte (02:14:37):
A good point. I like that

Alex Wilhelm (02:14:38):
This is going to impact jobs. Sure. But everything has, and so to me the whole concern about AI taking over the economy is a little hyperbolic. So th this to me is more him saying, look, things are gonna change, but it'll be okay. And I far be for me to agree with meta on something, but yeah, I think, I think Jan Lako is is dead on here. He's

Leo Laporte (02:14:58):
Right. Okay. Yeah. Don't worry about

Alex Wilhelm (02:15:01):
It. It's gonna be

Leo Laporte (02:15:01):
Fine. Speaking of ISPs, Comcast has complained to the fcc, you know, the FCC has passed this bill or Congress passed this bill that you'd have to have these broadband facts just like nutrition labels next to your bill, you know, next to your bill, next to your advertisements, so that consumers will know exactly what speed you're gonna get at what price and so forth. In a filing last week, Comcast told the fcc is, is we can't <laugh>. It's too complicated. It's too hard. We don't Well,

Ashley Esqueda (02:15:38):
Have they ever tried to cancel themselves their own

Leo Laporte (02:15:40):
Service for themselves? That's too,

Ashley Esqueda (02:15:42):
Yeah. That's really hard too. It's really complicated. But you know what? I know people who have done it.

Alex Wilhelm (02:15:48):
Yeah. But, but it's, this is an admission of guilt, right? This is not a defense. Yeah. This is saying this is too

Ashley Esqueda (02:15:52):
Complicated.

Alex Wilhelm (02:15:54):
We do need this system because we can't even do it ourselves. And I think, I hope, I hope that your government says, okay then maybe you should make it simpler.

Ashley Esqueda (02:16:00):
Yeah. Like really that's the answer. That's the response's. Exactly right. Alex

Leo Laporte (02:16:03):
And I would point out Comcast billing software seems to be able to figure it out

Alex Wilhelm (02:16:09):
Consistently. In fact, every month for everybody on time.

Ashley Esqueda (02:16:12):
Yeah. So weird how that happens.

Leo Laporte (02:16:15):
Comcast doesn't actually wanna show you how much it's gonna cost. No, that's that's the fact.

Ashley Esqueda (02:16:22):
Well it's like, you know, cheesecake Factory went crazy when they said, yo, you gotta put the calorie counts next to everything on the menu. It's like, it's the same thing. They're just like, we can't possibly calculate this. Like, have you seen the size of our portions?

Alex Wilhelm (02:16:34):
Like we can't print them in these zeros. We're not run out of ink. There's too

Ashley Esqueda (02:16:37):
Many zeroes here. People will think it's the price,

Alex Wilhelm (02:16:41):
The Oh wow. That pinpoint for that joke. That was actually fantastic <laugh>. But this reminds me a little bit of like my, my, my family's Verizon, bill e Every month I get a text saying, thank you for paying this. This was charged to your, your account. And it's a, it just feels like a random number that goes up by like 2% a month. And I swear to God in like five years, it's gonna be an infinite amount of money. Yes. But I have no idea why, how the number was put together. Like, like zero idea. They just take some money every month. And I go, huh, okay. And that's how I feel about my ISB as well. So, yep. Simplifying this makes a lot of sense. And I hope that the seven people who work at the FCC can take on a industry worth several hundred billion more power too. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:17:20):
It's, it's just so funny that they, they, we can't figure this out. Our billing software can, but, but we're not gonna, we're not gonna figure this out. Hey, let's take a quick break. Wanna wrap things up and I gotta find out about Rowdy Skeleton, which is your brand new business, right?

Ashley Esqueda (02:17:36):
Yeah, yeah. This is my, we launched a media training company. I'm excited about it.

Leo Laporte (02:17:41):
What's media training? What does that mean?

Ashley Esqueda (02:17:44):
Well, you know when you see somebody from a company and they are on something like a developer direct or if they are talking to the press usually executives get extensive media training. But there are lots of people at companies who don't get media training. And they should because we there are a lot of companies out there who wish they had more people who could speak eloquently and impactfully about the business and services they provide. And so instead of leaning on your, you know, your p pr arm or your HR arm to help your employees speak on camera, which can be very difficult and is often a very specific skillset. Leo, you know, what's up with that? I, leading

Leo Laporte (02:18:28):
A teleprompter isn't easy. I'm, I'm conscious. Am I doing some am Anything that you would note that <laugh>, I'm doing something wrong.

Ashley Esqueda (02:18:34):
You, you're great. Leo brought, you're a legend. You're an icon. I

Leo Laporte (02:18:37):
Was so insulted cuz Tech TV brought in a media training person and we were all supposed to bring her our tapes and sit down and I was so insulted <laugh>. Cause it's like, I don't want, I don't want to be trained by you. I don't even know what you're, but this

Ashley Esqueda (02:18:53):
Is, well you were already a host,

Leo Laporte (02:18:55):
But I was already on tv. Exactly. Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (02:18:57):
This is for, we like to

Alex Wilhelm (02:18:58):
Train people. This makes a up

Ashley Esqueda (02:18:59):
Who are Yeah. Who are, who are nervous on camera. How do

Leo Laporte (02:19:02):
You, how do you train people to be better on camera? I would like to know that we,

Ashley Esqueda (02:19:06):
We do a lot of different things. I mean recently we just did a we, we built from the ground up a workshop for Microsoft for the Xbox team. Oh, cool. And a lot of the employee full-time employees at Microsoft who were part of the program were very scared to be on camera. And we created a, a week long that involved them learning how to read teleprompter better doing things like do you

Leo Laporte (02:19:33):
Dress up as lith and jump out from behind the camera?

Ashley Esqueda (02:19:35):
Totally. Just to get 'em jump scare people. Yeah. Just to get the people. A hundred percent. I I will do that. If the price is right, I will media train you anyway that you prefer <laugh>. But yeah, we did, we did a really fun workshop and by the end of the week, I mean even after the first day we showed them the very first thing they did on camera and then the last thing Oh, that's awesome. The most recent thing. And they couldn't believe the difference. I mean, it's such a star difference for so many of them. And to give them that sense of confidence and really get them to a head space where we also do things like we train people on abuse, online abuse and harassment prevention. Oh my God. We tell people how to protect their peace.

Leo Laporte (02:20:11):
How do you do that?

Ashley Esqueda (02:20:12):
That when they start appearing on camera, it's, and that comes from my, you know, many years of

Leo Laporte (02:20:17):
Experience. Oh, Jesus. Yes.

Ashley Esqueda (02:20:19):
Being ano being harassed by people on the internet. Yeah. and how do

Leo Laporte (02:20:23):
You keep your peace? How do you, cuz I'm working on that. I don't know if I'm very log out log. That's out. <Laugh> log.

Ashley Esqueda (02:20:29):
Yeah. No, I, big one is for me, like a really big one is I I tend to nu my first one is I always tell all my friends and family, please do not go fight for me on the internet. Yes. That's like such a big one. Yes. That a lot of people don't do, they don't think about

Leo Laporte (02:20:43):
It, don't engage. Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (02:20:44):
It's like, you cannot go defend me on the internet to everybody who doesn't like me. And then also the other part of the, the second half of that is, is you won't be for everybody. And that's okay. Right. Like, it's totally fine. You, you will not be for everybody. And and that's fine. You're gonna have people who find you very annoying. I'm sure there are people listening right now who find me very annoying and that's okay. I I totally respect your opinion.

Leo Laporte (02:21:06):
Yeah. Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (02:21:08):
I mean, if people who are listening right now find you annoying, Leo, I'm not sure what they're doing listening. But <laugh>, I would argue they show up for

Leo Laporte (02:21:14):
You. I, I don't, this always puzzled me, but there are people who hate watch that's true. Or hate listening. There are some hate watchers. I hate shout out to all of our haters. I hate I'm gonna listen to you <laugh>

Ashley Esqueda (02:21:24):
Every day tell

Leo Laporte (02:21:25):
You pick everything you're doing, everything you're wrong. You, it's, it's the first Thank you. It's the, I would not choose a to be in the public eye If, I mean, get, don't do it unless you really won. Have to because yeah. As soon as you're also, as soon as you stick your head up, there's, you're, somebody's gonna try to chop it out stuff. Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (02:21:44):
Yeah. But, but there's also, you know, the one thing that I think we have seen and continue to see is, you know, there are a lot of companies out there who really want to diversify. There's stable of on-camera talent because, you know, maybe they do have a very diverse pool of employees, but not necessarily, they are not necessarily diverse at the top, which like, that's its own issue. But what do you think, you know, maybe they wanna train more people to talk about what they do specifically at a company. What

Leo Laporte (02:22:11):
Do you think about Apple's decision to not do events in person anymore, to pre-record something and then show it on a screen?

Ashley Esqueda (02:22:23):
I really like it. I think that there's a, I think that there is a, a love of live events that I have that, you know, because there is that Oh, anything can happen

Leo Laporte (02:22:35):
Feeling. Yeah. I like that Apple.

Ashley Esqueda (02:22:37):
I, I really like that. And I, I do think that they

Leo Laporte (02:22:41):
Apple doesn't want that <laugh> for good reason.

Ashley Esqueda (02:22:44):
But you also, there's also a loss there, right? When you take away the live event, you don't get like the raucous applause of a crowd. Right. Which, and, and to some extent that can be really exciting and help you do a better job on stage cuz you really feel the energy.

Leo Laporte (02:22:57):
Sure. Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (02:22:58):
That's

Leo Laporte (02:22:59):
Why we, so they, by the way, that's why we do these shows live in front of an audience.

Ashley Esqueda (02:23:03):
Yeah. It's like exciting. It's,

Leo Laporte (02:23:04):
It's, I it's, it's always gonna have more energy and be better if you don't have a second take available to you, I think.

Ashley Esqueda (02:23:09):
Right. And so, but, but I think Apple really just in and of themselves, like they are a very, they're a company that is very much all about control. Yeah. Well, they're about control. They, they have a very controlled image brand. You know, the message. Like, they're very tight on their messaging. Like, and, and for all of the fun and jokes we make, we can make about things like, you know, the reality distortion field like that is you know, that is a, that's a real thing that Apple has done a very good job of curating. Like they're very good curators. Yeah. Both of, both externally and also like internally with their message, they, they are laser focused on that stuff. And so it didn't surprise me that they moved to that. And I think the pandemic gave them a very good excuse to move to that format.

(02:23:52):
But it also is it's hard because you're, you know, you do get a lot of takes. But the thing is, is, you know, if you don't know how to read teleprompter the right way, like it's still gonna look like you're reading. And there are executives that I can still see like Apple and at other companies that are very clearly like reading off a teleprompter because they're not good at it. And they're also, I mean, we've all seen, we see like the Oscars where an actor, this, you know, getting paid 20 million a movie just cannot read a teleprompter to save their life. It's a very specific skill.

Leo Laporte (02:24:21):
Oh yeah. Who was it that on that Samsung event? Was it director right? Who?

Ashley Esqueda (02:24:27):
Michael Bay.

Leo Laporte (02:24:28):
Michael Bay. Michael Bay. The prompter went down. I'll

Ashley Esqueda (02:24:30):
Never forget that.

Leo Laporte (02:24:31):
And he lost it. I'll never forget it. He couldn't down.

Ashley Esqueda (02:24:32):
He lost it and he left. He

Leo Laporte (02:24:34):
Left,

Ashley Esqueda (02:24:35):
He stormed off stage <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:24:37):
Wow.

Ashley Esqueda (02:24:38):
Do you remember that, Alex? Do you remember that? It was at ces?

Leo Laporte (02:24:41):
No, I, I've been to a number of cess, but that was back when I still drank. So I don't really remember many of the

Ashley Esqueda (02:24:47):
It's a truly iconic moment in CES's history.

Leo Laporte (02:24:50):
Here's a, a little, here's a little bit of it if you wanna, if you wanna see it,

CES speaker (02:24:54):
Director and producer Michael Bay.

Leo Laporte (02:24:58):
This is, this is so awkward. So, so this is Samsung reveal. Michael, you're getting this famous director out here.

Michael Bay (02:25:06):
My job as a director is I get to dream for a living.

CES speaker  (02:25:12):
Michael, you know, you're known for such unbelievable action. What inspires you? How do you come up with these unbelievable

Leo Laporte (02:25:19):
Ideas? This is all impromptu. I

Michael Bay (02:25:20):
Create visual worlds that are so beyond every, everyone's normal life experiences. And Hollywood is a place that creates a viewer.

Leo Laporte (02:25:30):
He has no, no idea what he's gonna say.

Michael Bay (02:25:32):
What I tried to do is I, as a director, I try,

Ashley Esqueda (02:25:36):
He also seems very nervous.

Alex Wilhelm (02:25:38):
I this is causing me physical

Michael Bay (02:25:40):
Pain. I'm sorry, but I'll just wing this. Tell us what you think. Yeah, we'll just, we'll, we'll wing it right now. I take, I try to take,

Leo Laporte (02:25:47):
This is probably why he is behind the camera for

Michael Bay (02:25:49):
An emotional ride.

Leo Laporte (02:25:50):
Not in front of the camera. He can't remember any of the, but

Ashley Esqueda (02:25:53):
Anybody can learn this. Yeah. Anyone can learn this.

Alex Wilhelm (02:25:55):
This may turn. I wanna die. Wanna die inside. How does it

Leo Laporte (02:25:57):
How do you think it's gonna impact? I think Michael Bay died inside. It's your movie. He walks off eventually. Excuse

Michael Bay (02:26:02):
Me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte (02:26:04):
That's it. <Laugh>,

Alex Wilhelm (02:26:07):
Let's

Leo Laporte (02:26:08):
Make Michael Bay. Michael Bay. Thank you Yik. We just paid him half a million dollars for nothing.

Alex Wilhelm (02:26:13):
Okay. So a couple things. One, you have to people who enjoy being on stage or, or a different breed mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. I I'm actually only Are you shy? I've done, yeah. I I'm a shy introvert. I I fake it here and there, but I, I get what happened to him. Also don't tell Apro and script a conversation because it'll always sound like that. That always

Leo Laporte (02:26:32):
Sounds terrible. Yes.

Alex Wilhelm (02:26:34):
But going back to the Apple conversation, I wanna say that I do agree that it is a, a better way for a company without a singular star to create a, a consistent product. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it's a very powerful multi-hour infomercial that nerds myself still tune into.

Leo Laporte (02:26:49):
Yeah. We all watched it and we'll say though, we were all glued it. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (02:26:52):
Never missed one. But I will say this, go back and watch Steve Jobs introduce the first iPhone and watch how that event he's felt

Leo Laporte (02:27:00):
Oh, brilliant. He's

Alex Wilhelm (02:27:01):
Brilliant versus Yeah. Oh yeah. Every other of these prerecorded things because it has taken the soul out of it and allowed them to essentially turn it into a, a, a commercial that is not compelling in the same way. And so to me, there has been something lost there. Maybe it was never preservable, but it is definitely. I think I, I don't think the video stuff is as good.

Leo Laporte (02:27:18):
No. That was my feeling. But I think Ashley's right. I mean, how many Steve Jobs are there? Right. And, and you know, it is probably a lot safer. Safer, but I do agree you lose a lot of energy, but that's why I like live music mm-hmm. Compared to recorded music. Mm-Hmm. That's why I like, like live theater compared to movies I like live because I it's, it's made of people. Yes. And and the canned stuff has somewhat soulless, somewhat soulless.

Ashley Esqueda (02:27:49):
And, but I can train you for both. Whatever you need. I

Leo Laporte (02:27:52):
Am so thrilled that you're doing this. You and Ross Miller, who put two, two people who really know what they're doing with many thousands of hours on camera time time in front of the microphone.

Ashley Esqueda (02:28:04):
Yeah. And behind it, I mean, we both are producers and Ross is a development person and we've, you know, we've spent a lot of time just, you know, and just by proxy of having been around, you know, for a while, it's like you just pick up little things that maybe, you know, you don't, you don't get trained on. And also, you know, there's a lot of PR teams and stuff out there who are just being crushed by the workload they have. And it's like, just, you can always call us. Like if you're, if you're overwhelmed, you don't, you can't do it, then you can just call us. And we're, we're happy to do it. And we'll, we, we scale to size. So it's like we can do the biggest companies in the smallest startups. Like, we're, we're happy to do it.

Leo Laporte (02:28:42):
Some people are naturals at it, but everybody can learn how to do it. I think. And

Ashley Esqueda (02:28:46):
Everyone can learn how to be compelling and natural on camera.

Leo Laporte (02:28:49):
Yeah. But you have to learn it. It's not, it's not something that comes Na, I was terrible for on the, I, well, I started on the radio. I was on the radio. I was terrible for 10 years. <Laugh>, I mean, really bad. Yeah. And that was

Ashley Esqueda (02:29:02):
Awful. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:29:03):
Until I, until I, you know, did it long and had enough hours under my belt. But also I think until I stopped trying to appeal to people and gave up mm-hmm. <Affirmative> as soon as I thought, oh, screw

Ashley Esqueda (02:29:15):
It's screw. It's not till I gave up that I <laugh>. And

Leo Laporte (02:29:17):
When I gave up, that started going well, honestly,

Ashley Esqueda (02:29:19):
No. It's, I think that happens a lot of the time. It's like you try to, you're trying to, to force a square peg into a round hole and it doesn't work. And then once you give up on that and you're just like, I'm just gonna do this and see what happens. Like usually

Leo Laporte (02:29:30):
That's in the best, the best part. And it was ingratiating is annoying. I just said, screw it the hell with you. I don't care.

Ashley Esqueda (02:29:36):
<Laugh> even Alex says, he's like, you know, the, the Alex you were saying like banter and stuff, like, don't script that. But it's like, no, we, we, you can teach that. You can teach how to have natural, natural. You can write that script, you can write, you can learn to write that banter every movie. Make it

Leo Laporte (02:29:49):
Sound natural. You've ever seen, every TV show you've ever seen. The banter is scripted, but you can deliver it. Yeah. If you know what you're doing. In a natural way. In a natural way. Yeah. Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (02:29:58):
It's true.

Leo Laporte (02:29:59):
But that is one good lesson, which is if you have somebody untrained, don't, don't give them a script cuz they aren't gonna No,

Ashley Esqueda (02:30:05):
Don't.

Leo Laporte (02:30:06):
Like that's painful. Yeah,

Ashley Esqueda (02:30:07):
Yeah, yeah. It's for them especially, I mean, it's for your company too, but I mean for them also, it's like, that's really hard and it's really scary. What is it that, wasn't there a old thing that was like people were more afraid of public speaking than just Sure.

Leo Laporte (02:30:18):
Like it's the scariest thing. We, everybody's had a dream of standing in front of an audience naked or whatever, and it's just terrifying. So instead go to rowdy skeleton.com and get a little training. I think that's absolutely required for any business that has any public component. Thanks. And I, I really agree about the online preparing people for the inevitable harassment is also very important. I wish I'd done that with a lot of our hosts.

Ashley Esqueda (02:30:45):
And it is inevitable

Leo Laporte (02:30:46):
<Laugh>. Cause it is inevitable and nothing you can do about it,

Ashley Esqueda (02:30:48):
Even in a small amount, it's inevitable. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:30:50):
Yep, yep. Yeah. Everybody, well, you're doing it in public so everybody has an opinion. Yep. Yep. It's true. Let me, let me take a break. Some final thoughts with our wonderful panel, Alex Wilhelm from TechCrunch, Ashley Eske of Rowdy Skeleton, and our new book, art of Psychonauts two. Our show today, brought to you by Grammarly. Go. Hey, if you're writing, it's awesome. We tried it in beta for a long time because we're all doing a lot more communicating than ever before. Whether you're writing a thank you note or creating a business plan, give yourself a helping hand with Grammarly Go. It's a communication assistant powered by yes, generative ai. It's really a fun thing to have by your side. And it is a great way to solve writer's block to get you unstuck, to get you even with an email or a a a note.

(02:31:40):
It helps you compose intelligently. You write the prompt into Grammarly Go. It will generate high quality writing so you don't have to do all that wordsmithing, but then you can also personalize it. Customize your style of communication. There's a button called Set Voice. You can uses the tone indicator at the top of the Grammarly Go Window. And then personalize your tone. If you want it to be more formal or more casual or kind of neutral, you can choose personable, confident, empathetic, engaging, witty, or direct. Sometimes when Lisa and I are writing emails to staff direct is not the problem. We maybe wanna soften it up a little bit. Grammarly Go will help you with that. Grammarly Go understands your unique context, your preferred voice, but even more importantly, your goals to generate high quality writing quickly, with just a few quick clicks. You can ideate, you can compose, you can rewrite, you can reply thoughtfully.

(02:32:42):
And you by the way, you don't have to provide it with a prompt. You can actually send it text and have it rewrite for tone, clarity, and length. Grammarly Go helps you fine tune your writing to reflect your personal style and be effective in any situation. Select the text. You wanna rewrite it, activate Grammarly, go, boom, it's rewritten. Sounds more exciting maybe or more professional may maybe more direct, more inspirational. You can do that. It's really a fun tool. You'll be amazed at what you can do with Grammarly. Go go to grammarly.com/go to download and learn more about Grammarly. Go. Another thing I'm gonna throw into this ad, Grammarly is a is a fantastic software company out of Ukraine. They are working hard. They deserve our support. They're doing a great job. They make a great product. G r a m m a r l y grammarly.com/go. Give it a try. You can try it out and I think you'll be very impressed. Grammarly. Go. We had a fun week this week, ONT Twitter. Oh indeed, we did. Thank goodness We've memorialized it in this fabulous video.

Leo Laporte (02:35:22):
Twit tv your source for the latest tech insights and learn a lot about our hosts. I had no idea Sean had that experience. That's fascinating. If you are not yet a member of Club Twit, don't forget that Sean Power's interview and many of the things that happen happen in our club. Twit Discord, including, I'm very excited. Our interview fireside chat with Hugh Howie, the author of Wool, the books that inspired Silo, the Apple TV plus series that's coming up in a couple of weeks. The Tariff Formers, our book club with Stacey Higginbotham. Of course, we have a lot of other exclusive programming and club to it, including Hands on Mac with Micah Sargent Hannah on Windows with Paul Thot, the Untitled Linux show, our our home theater geeks, which we've brought back thanks to our club members with Scott Wilkinson. Seven bucks a month, you get ad free versions of all of our shows.

(02:36:13):
You get extra shows we don't do anywhere else. You get access to the Discord, which is absolutely the best social network ever. It's just a great community of other twit listeners. Talking about everything that geeks love, including comic books and videos and yes. Animated gifts you see. Yes. TWIT tv slash club twi. If you're not yet a member, check it out. Seven bucks a month. It's not, it's not expensive, but it sure makes a difference to us. Thank you in advance. I think, I think we've pretty much covered everything. I should mention that that story we were talking about on Windows Weekly, the FTC was worried that Microsoft would just go and and merge with Blizzard just anyway. And so they actually got an injunction from a judge, a temporary restraining order saying you can't make the deal while reviews go through. Is that unusual, Alex? It seems to me that they would say it's on hold. The FTC is final.

Alex Wilhelm (02:37:20):
I I don't want to get too far over my skis here because this is an, a part of law involving technology where I'm not the the greatest expert. But if they were concerned about that, we have to at least presume that it was a possibility.

Leo Laporte (02:37:32):
I think Microsoft is planning it. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (02:37:35):
Yeah. And don't forget what Microsoft's top lawyer said about the UK's complaints about the the deal. He was brutal about it. So I think these companies are pretty much accustomed to getting their way and don't like being told no. And we're gonna force this through. And so I'm proud of the, the US government has discovered that it has at least a couple of vertebrae and it's spying. Congratulations. Go

Leo Laporte (02:37:53):
Team. Yeah. And Microsoft can't sneak in <laugh> the the acquisition ahead of time. The administrative judge hears the case in the US in August. I, I don't think the UK's backing down. I think Microsoft's gonna appeal that this is all about the merger with Ashley's husband and brother, the Activision Blizzard Esham merger

Alex Wilhelm (02:38:17):
<Laugh>. Sorry for, for my comments about the merger. Maybe, maybe it'll be

Ashley Esqueda (02:38:21):
No, I don't, I mean, I look, I I'm a neutral. I'm like genuinely a neutral third party. I'm like, I don't know what's gonna happen. And so I'm just watching it. I'm just kind of here with popcorn being like, I'm not sure what's gonna happen. But hopefully whatever happens like means that my husband still has a job. Like that's all I care about. So

Alex Wilhelm (02:38:38):
I'm sure he will no matter what.

Ashley Esqueda (02:38:40):
I like health. I like health insurance. Yeah. And so that's all I care about. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:38:44):
What is your, now your, your husband's doing the eSports thing. What's your brother doing there?

Ashley Esqueda (02:38:48):
He's a game producer on World of Warcraft.

Leo Laporte (02:38:50):
Oh, nice.

Ashley Esqueda (02:38:52):
He, he started his, my brother started his Blizzard career on Diablo three doing qa. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:38:58):
That's so cool.

Ashley Esqueda (02:38:59):
So he he, I like to say, I tell him he, he got his job because of me because he was very bummed out. He had gone through a breakup and was like very miserable. Aw. And I was like, Hey, I gotta go cover the world of Warcraft ca Cataclysm launch. Like, can you just come with me? And he was like, I go, I need a camera guy, so just come with me. Good. And I was like, okay, that's so sweet. So we went and we ended up just like, because we both had already pre-ordered the game, we didn't have to wait in the big line. And I was just covering it for YouTube and for my YouTube channel. And so we just happened to sit down to a next, to a guy at the food trucks who, who worked at Blizzard and who was working on Diablo and was like, you should apply. You'd be, you'd be great at, you know, you'd be you. I think you would love it at Blizzard. And he was just like, there's no way I'm gonna get a job at Blizzard. And he, cuz he was working at Target. He was working in an electronics par department at Target at the time. And so he got a QA job at on Diablo three. And then he's been there ever since

Leo Laporte (02:39:54):
And he worked his way up and he's now producing World Warcraft.

Ashley Esqueda (02:39:56):
Yeah. Game produce a game producer on World Warcraft.

Leo Laporte (02:39:59):
That's pretty amazing.

Ashley Esqueda (02:40:01):
I'm very proud of him. He's like, yeah, first of all, my brother's awesome and we love video games and we play Diablo like literally every night. He's, if you think I'm a Diablo fan, like, he's like, I don't even,

Leo Laporte (02:40:12):
So did your mother when you were kids say, what are you gotta do, play video games for a living?

Ashley Esqueda (02:40:17):
No, that was my, that was my dad <laugh>. My, that was my dad. My dad, my dad now tells all of his patients. He's like, yeah, I used to tell my son all the time, like, you gotta get outside, play less video games. Like, I'm really kicking myself now. That was wrong. I got the cried. Can't believe I was totally wrong. My mom was actually, she bought me an ne NES when I was three for my third birthday. My N nes my Nintendo. And I used to watch her play video games and that was how I got into games.

Leo Laporte (02:40:42):
So your mom was a gamer. Wow.

Ashley Esqueda (02:40:44):
She totally bought it for herself. She did not buy an N nes for a three year old. She bought it for herself. And so yeah, my I remember watching my mom and just thinking, she was like amazing because she was playing Sylvania too, Simon's Quest. And I just thought she was a genius for finding the invisible Oh my God. Mansion.

Leo Laporte (02:41:02):
So you're, you're not gonna have any trouble if your son decides he wants to play video games and Yeah, it's fine.

Ashley Esqueda (02:41:07):
It's fine's. Totally fine. But he loves, he, I mean, he loves music. He loves, I mean he's, who knows what he is gonna do. He's like, he contains multitudes.

Leo Laporte (02:41:14):
I think to some degree the worst thing you can do is say, no matter what, you can't play video games. Cuz that makes it the forbidden fruit. And Yeah. Then it's all of a sudden he

Ashley Esqueda (02:41:22):
Doesn't, we play, we play a little Mario Kart. Like he's got, we, we don't play a lot of video games, but he's but we play some, he, he likes Animal Crossing and Mario Kart and he calls Platoon Squid Game, which is very funny to me. That's cute. He's like, mommy, let's play Squid Game. Cute. And I'm like, let's not play Squid Game because that is very dangerous. But we can play sto. That's fine.

Leo Laporte (02:41:43):
I am gonna let you go be with your husband. Wish him a Happy Father's Day. I'm, I apologize for dragging you away on this special, special day, but have a w it's so great to see you, Ashley. Thank you for being here.

Ashley Esqueda (02:41:58):
Happy to show up and not shut up about anything. Yeah, thanks for

Leo Laporte (02:42:02):
Having me. I don't want you ever to shut up about anything. Rowdy skeleton.com. If you wanna hire Ashley and Ross to do your media training, it's a must have. And look for the Art of Psychonauts too. Comes out this what, sometime in the next, I think this

Ashley Esqueda (02:42:17):
Summer.

Leo Laporte (02:42:17):
Yeah, this summer. In the summer. Next couple of months. Yeah. art of Psychonauts too. And of course on the Twitter. Ashley Esther. Thank you. Ashley. E s Q E D A. Yes. Thank you, Ashley. Real new father, six month father, this is your first Father's Day and please apologize to Eliza. I am so grateful to her that Alex could be here. Alex Wilhelm proud Papa. Yeah. Well, I

Alex Wilhelm (02:42:41):
Haven't gone in and said hi. So it's been three hours of me not knowing how bedtime went. So we'll see how it goes when I get back

Leo Laporte (02:42:46):
In the house. If she's mad, have her call me. Okay.

Alex Wilhelm (02:42:50):
Oh, trust me.

Leo Laporte (02:42:50):
I will. And I know a secret place in the basement where sh where she can lock you. <Laugh>, you don't know this Ashley, but Alex lives in my childhood home where I did Oh my goodness. Where I did not play video games. Those <laugh> Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (02:43:03):
One of those small world moments.

Leo Laporte (02:43:05):
Yeah. That's wild. Isn't that wild? It's in Rhode Island of all places. Yeah. It's a, yeah, I can't believe it. It's a long story, but everybody at Twit knows it, so I won't repeat it.

Alex Wilhelm (02:43:16):
Yeah. But I'm, I'm gonna say like, you know, it was, it was weird to wake up on Father's Day for the first time in my life and, and had it be about me.

Leo Laporte (02:43:23):
It's about you. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (02:43:25):
You know? Yeah. Like, yeah. Strange. You deserve it. But I will say my my kiddo is the most beautiful and amazing in the entire world. Of course. She's so

Leo Laporte (02:43:32):
It's yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (02:43:34):
It's, it was a, it was a surprisingly lovely day.

Leo Laporte (02:43:36):
Yeah. Yeah. Happy Father's Day. She's

Ashley Esqueda (02:43:37):
Very

Leo Laporte (02:43:38):
Cute. Aw. Like, oh

Alex Wilhelm (02:43:39):
Dude, Ashley, you don't even,

Leo Laporte (02:43:41):
I've got,

Ashley Esqueda (02:43:43):
I I gladly now follow you on Twitter, and so I await the barrage if I'll find you on Signal or some other place, discord, whatever. I, I await the barrage of adorable baby photos.

Leo Laporte (02:43:56):
Aw. She's aw.

Alex Wilhelm (02:43:57):
Chunky and hilarious. And yeah, I just think

Leo Laporte (02:44:01):
At all either you concerned about putting pictures of your kids online?

Ashley Esqueda (02:44:09):
As mine has been getting older, he wants to see them like after I take them. And so I, I have slowed down quite a bit on posting more recent pictures of him. I mean, if I take a real banger of a portrait like that, I don't ever wanna post anything that makes, that would make him feel embarrassed. Yeah. If he saw it in five years. Yeah. So that's, I think that's my rule is

Leo Laporte (02:44:30):
Like, I just, it's not a, a security issue. It's, you just don't wanna Yeah. Yeah.

Ashley Esqueda (02:44:34):
I don't wanna, I don't want him to feel embarrassed and I don't, I also just, you know, it's like, it's not a security, so much security thing. I don't post a lot pictures of him, but like I talk about him a lot, so. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:44:45):
Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (02:44:46):
So we just don't show her face. Like, I, I think after like, she was a week old, we just stopped. So like, I just pulled this up and like the last photo of her on Twitter is the back of her head in her room. And then there's a picture of me feeding her, but I put a little emoji on her face just like, yeah. It, it's, it's, I, I, everyone's own choices are fine, but like my view is it's her body, it's her

Leo Laporte (02:45:05):
Mm. Privacy, don know I'm respect that we don't know, you know, 10 years from now when that picture will still be on the internet, what kinds of things government and industry can do with it. So I, you know. Right. It's

Ashley Esqueda (02:45:17):
Probably, well I think with like deep fakes and ai, I mean it's just, there's a lot of things like that. So I I have slowed down pretty significantly on it.

Leo Laporte (02:45:25):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Alex is Alex on Twitter, although it's true, his handle is currently Alex tired. <Laugh>.

Alex Wilhelm (02:45:35):
It's because, it's because, and I, I don't mean to break new ground here, but I, I'm tired. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:45:39):
All the time. I underst understand

Alex Wilhelm (02:45:41):
Trust because between three dogs and one baby, I trusting it's

Leo Laporte (02:45:43):
Not enough sleep. I know.

Ashley Esqueda (02:45:45):
Two dogs and one baby. And I'm sorry to say that, that does not change. It just gets different. Tired.

Leo Laporte (02:45:51):
Yeah. Well my daughter's 31, my son's 28 and I'm still tired, so

Ashley Esqueda (02:45:57):
Yeah. See, it never

Leo Laporte (02:45:58):
Ends. Never ends. <Laugh> never ends. I love you guys. Oh gosh. It's so great to have

Ashley Esqueda (02:46:01):
You. I'm sure I make my mom exhausted all the time. So even as an fully grown adult. So I, I get it. I get it.

Leo Laporte (02:46:09):
<Laugh> thank you so much, Alex. Thank you so much, Ashley. You guys are wonderful. Thank you all to the audience as always, we, we couldn't do it without you. If you wanna watch Twit happen live, it's every Sunday right after as the tech guys that's 2:00 PM Pacific, 5:00 PM Eastern, 2100 utc. Of course after the fact, you can get a show cuz it's a podcast. Really the live recording, we just do, like I said, for the energy and the fun of doing it live. But after the fact, you go to twit tv and that's our website. Get a copy or you can go to the YouTube channel dedicated to this week in tech. Or you can even probably best thing to do, subscribe in your favorite podcast player and that way it's always ready for you on a Monday morning before you go to work, something to listen to. Thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you next time. Another twit is in the can. Oh bye.