Pragmatic 114: Monopoly (Not The Game)

Okay, game faces on, so to speak. Voices, game voices? That's not even a thing. Oh well. [BLANK_AUDIO] Pragmatic is a show about technology and contemplating the finer details in their practical application. By exploring the real world trade-offs, we dive into how great ideas can be transformed into products and services that impact our lives. Pragmatic is entirely supported by you, our listeners. If you'd like to support us and keep the show ad-free, you can by becoming a Premium Supporter. Premium Support is available via Patreon and through the Apple Podcasts channel subscription. Premium Supporters have access to early release, high quality versions of episodes, as well as bonus material from all of our shows not available anywhere else. I am doing fantastic, how are you? Just visit engineer.network/pragmatic to learn how you can help this show to continue to be made. Thank you. I'm your host, John Chidjie, and today I'm joined once again by my good friend, Vic Hudson. How you doing, Vic? I am also doing fantastic, in relative terms at least, because I'm enjoying marginally cooled air coming into my sound booth, which is great. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's certainly better than hot air coming in, or no air coming in, which is what I've been doing up until a few weeks ago. Yeah, I remember you were pretty toasty the last time we recorded. But anyway, yeah, hmm. Yeah, I was. Yeah, sweat was dripping off. [BLANK_AUDIO] It was not a pleasant experience. I mean, recording with you was a pleasant experience, but just sweating in order to get to a site that you get cover of all the topics was enough to nearly not quite kill me, [LAUGH] but certainly make me question my decisions in life. [BLANK_AUDIO] But anyhow, so one of the things that I've been working towards slowly has I've been stuck in this situation where I spent a lot of money building the sound booth. Again, all patrons supported effectively, and the sound booth has been built now for six months. But the problem was I built it and I got it done just before summer, and that was fine in the wintertime. But then as we started coming into summer, it was getting too hot, and I'd sort of run out of money, and I needed a chance to sort of financially recover a little bit from the podcast point of view. And then by the time I had enough money to buy the spare parts, the other parts I needed to build the baffle boxes and the cooling system, it was then essentially the middle of summer. So in January, February this year, which is, of course, summer in the Southern Hemisphere, it was way, way, way too hot to get out the circular saw, jigsaw, hacksaw, every saw. All the sauce. And actually build this thing properly. So all the saws and all the little teeth and saws cutting through wood and all that sort of stuff. [BLANK_AUDIO] And honestly, it just reached that point where I'm like, you know what, I'm just going to take this portable air conditioner on wheels. And I built, I bought this, it's like a plastic, it's like cardboard, but made out of plastic. And it's got like two layers on the outside and a little ribbed layer on the inside, and they're all pressure treated and glued together. And this particular board, they often use it for like advertising signs and so on. So I bought, I think it's called Core Flute Board, or at least it is here. I don't know if there's a different name for it in other parts of the world. But in any case, that's the stuff. And I built a cowling or cover, I guess, that fits over the top of the air conditioner, the portable air conditioner. So that's one of those things on four, we've got four little wheels and you wheel it from room to room. In this case, it's not going far. Anyway, so I've got this HVAC, 150 millimeter or six inch diameter HVAC tube that's been essentially taped to, you know, a very carefully crafted exit hole. So that when you put the cowling over the top, it feeds nice cool air down this tube and into the sound booth, making recording a heck of a lot more pleasant than it was before. So that's great. Recently then cut a rectangular hole in the bottom for one of the air vents that I've, that I purchased for this. It is now unceremoniously jammed in that hole. But hey, at least cool air is getting in here and I'm not, I don't know, I have sweat pouring off of me, but because it's leaking like a sieve, it's probably only getting about 50, 60% of the air in here and there's no outlet. So obviously if there's no outlet, it's going to bleed out through all of the little, and I say little gaps, they're huge gaps in the bottom. But in any case, you won't be able to hear it. I've done a whole bunch of noise reduction in post-production, but I can hear it as I'm recording, but the noise reduction as we're talking through audio on Discord, you can't, you can't hear it. And when I do audio noise reduction, it completely removes it. You can't hear it either in the final result. Otherwise I wouldn't be recording with it on. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm still using Brussfree, or Brussfree, I don't know how to pronounce it, but it's, it does a fantastic job and it just takes out normal background noise from the resistance in the dynamic microphones. It's really, really nice. So, and I've tested on this and it is, it is, you cannot, you really cannot tell the difference. So hopefully now that the weather's cooling down finally, I mean, it's still a bit, you know, it's still warm-ish. Like we had a warm-ish day today, but it was like, you know, high 20 Celsius, which is, I'm not going to convert off the top of my head, but it's not, it's not super hot. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's, it's getting more pleasant. Nighttime temperatures are dropping, which is nice. So yeah, it's getting better. So I'm getting back to the temperature where I can start building it. >> Would you consider it fall there yet or is it just kind of late summer? Oh yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely autumn. Okay, so you're in the fall, okay. Yeah, I'm definitely in the fall. [BLANK_AUDIO] We don't, we don't, obviously we don't call it the fall, but I like the idea of calling it the fall because all the leaves fall off the trees. And I like that. But most of the trees we have here are not siduous. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] They, they don't have that. Like you look around, the trees, there's not a single tree in my yard that loses its leaves year round. So yeah, pretty much. >> So you're surrounded by evergreens. [BLANK_AUDIO] But then most of Australia is evergreen. We're the only, the only plants in Australia, the trees that lose their leaves. I'm not, okay, I'm not a botanist, so maybe there's a few that lose their leaves, but I think they're all imported from overseas. [BLANK_AUDIO] So yeah, we don't get that cold, I don't think. Fair enough. There's probably some, there's probably some in the alpine regions down around, alpine regions, you know, like snowy mountains. [BLANK_AUDIO] Maybe there's some trees there that lose their leaves, but that's the only reason you would lose them. It doesn't get cold enough here. So anyway, but yeah, so autumn, fall, whatever you want to call it. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Heck yeah, we're in it and summer is over. It can go and get bent because it was not fun. It was horrible. Is eagerly the right word? Yeah, we're still kind of eagerly awaiting it. [BLANK_AUDIO] Do we like summer? What's the consensus? I don't, I don't. Well, here in Kentucky, so. Well, what, well, what's summer like in Kentucky having never been? [LAUGH] Never been. As with much of the United States at this time of year, but it's really bad. Hmm. Like in the central part of the country, especially like Kentucky and Tennessee. We like to describe springtime in Kentucky as you get four seasons in one day. So it's kind of like wintertime at night and you get spring in the morning, Okay, well, there you go. a little bit of summer in the afternoon, and then you're back to fall by evening. [LAUGH] Because like, just to give you an example, Hmm. Yeah, no, it doesn't sound that bad. I think today's actually going to be a relatively cool day. Well, no, here you go. We have a low of 43 and a high of 67, that's in Fahrenheit, mind you. [BLANK_AUDIO] I, I mean, if you're, you know, if you're high 70s going into 80s, that'd be annoying. No, but. [BLANK_AUDIO] But I mean, the thing is, it's funny, you know, Melbourne, they often say Melbourne is the, is the city in Australia that has four seasons in one day. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Brisbane doesn't. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's Brisbane these days is feeling a lot more like the tropics. So I grew up in Rockhampton and Rockhampton's right on the Tropic of Capricorn. I say right on it. It's, you know, it's six or seven kilometers away from the actual marine, the actual 23 degree, half degree south, whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah, there's a big spire and he says, hey, you're right in the tropic. [BLANK_AUDIO] And then, then you realize, oh, it's actually still out by several meters, but nevermind. Anyway, it doesn't matter. The point is that it's in summertime, it's really hot and humid and in a monsoonal sort of a summer that we've had. Mm-hm. And it was just hot and humid all the time and you get rain and it would just be hot and humid. [BLANK_AUDIO] It would rain hot and humid. It would rain and just go wash, rinse, repeat. Everything was wet. Everything was hot and humid all the damn time. If you go in the pool, your towels would never dry. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] You'd hang them up and they just still be damp the next morning. And it's just like, it just got really tiring. So, and having had some flooring done in the house and such, we were just over it and just over summer. Mm-hm. So anyway, but this is all, this is all a digression. All this is to simply say, my sound booth is actually relatively pleasant. [BLANK_AUDIO] I wouldn't say it's really pleasant, but I just sort of like stopped for a second there and the air conditioner has now been running for about 40 minutes. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] And honestly, it's starting to feel quite pleasant in here. Like it's not cold, cold, but it's not stinking hot. So it's working. That's cool. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah. Hell yeah, it is. Because I mean, after a while you build it and it's so damn hot, you can't use it. And you're like, did I make a mistake building this? [LAUGH] That's a question that'll keep you up at night. [LAUGH] [BLANK_AUDIO] My son, my oldest son said to me, this thing's going to be stinking hot. You're never going to be able to use it. And I said, I'm going to air condition it. He said, yeah, well, you're not going to be able to use it until you air condition it. I'm like, yeah, well, we'll see about that. Like he's 18 and I was just so mad keen to get this thing built. And then I realized that it, unfortunately for me, my son was absolutely right. I had always intended to air condition this thing. It just took a bit longer and it happened through summer. Yeah. So, but that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. [BLANK_AUDIO] Do yourself a favor and never let him hear you say that. He may listen to this show and then that's it. [BLANK_AUDIO] Oh, well, sometimes he actually has listened back to this show and he sort of said, yeah, you're funny. Yeah. And I'm like, am I? [BLANK_AUDIO] Oh, cheers. Thanks, mate. Anyway. Okay. I'm not sure. [LAUGH] That's a compliment, mate. Any time my kids, any kind of time my kids listen to any of my podcasts, they always say, you're even more of a nerd than we realized. [LAUGH] That's okay. Well, you go, you take that as a compliment, take that in your stride. I don't think they mean it as such, but. [LAUGH] [BLANK_AUDIO] That's what I would do. I'd be like, I'd be like, oh, hey, RG, thanks, man. That's nice. Thank you. There you go. All right. [BLANK_AUDIO] Switching gears slightly. I've got a few little things I want to catch up on and then we'll get stuck into the main topic. It's not that big a topic, but still, it's a topic. Anyway. Mm-hm. All right. [BLANK_AUDIO] So, I had mentioned on previous episodes, I was going to get more solar panels installed. I currently have 13.2 kilowatts of panels feeding a three-phase 10 kilowatt inverter. And I had applied for Energex to go to a full 15 kilowatts connected to the grid. Mm-hm. And Energex, who's the local power supply authority, after seven months of back and forth and back and forth, [BLANK_AUDIO] they have said, no, go away. And I'm like, okay, I guess I will. [LAUGH] So, I guess, oh, well. One of the problems with connecting to a grid that has essentially got too much solar going into it, [BLANK_AUDIO] too many renewables, is that there's nowhere to consume it and there's nowhere to store it. So, they are simply now rejecting it. So, we in Queensland have reached that point. So you can actually overload the grid with that nice, clean, green energy. Well, people don't -- I don't know. [BLANK_AUDIO] I mean, some people don't understand the way electricity grids work, right? I mean, assume that they're lossless just for a second. But you put power in, it doesn't just magically sit there. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] It needs to be consumed. Right. So, either you consume it in a load and have that load do work for your money, [BLANK_AUDIO] or you store it in a battery, or you store it in pumped hydro, or you store it in some way, either a chemical battery, mechanical battery, anything. And, yeah, because if you produce power, the power has to be consumed. That's it. You can't just pump it in there and then, you know, it'll stay there until you need it. And, unfortunately, there's so many people with so much solar on their roofs now that the grid simply has nowhere to store it. So, they're introducing laws to enforce anyone that has more than 10 kilowatts of load to have a disconnect switch. Mm. [BLANK_AUDIO] So, they can send a master command out to your house to disconnect your solar from the grid if the grid becomes unstable because there's too much power being forced into it. Yeah. So, yeah, some would say nice problem to have. [BLANK_AUDIO] Others might say, "Well, that's what poor planning gets you," or actually there's a whole bunch of things you could probably say. Mm. But, irrespective, me being selfish for the moment, I got rejected by Energex. [BLANK_AUDIO] Oh, well, shrug a doodle doo. I guess I got to get over it and move on with my life. Mm. [BLANK_AUDIO] If I wasn't connected to the grid, I could do whatever the hell I wanted, but I'd also need to install batteries, and that's even more expensive. I was getting ready to say, you could put in one of those Powerwall thingies and, Yeah. That is true, but I did the math. and store all that good, clean, green energy for yourself. [BLANK_AUDIO] With one and a half electric cars, I would need two power walls in order to ensure I had enough to charge my cars as well as power the house. [BLANK_AUDIO] If I had three days of bad weather in a row, I'd need two power walls. That's a whole lot of batteries. It is a hell of a lot of batteries, which is exactly why I haven't done it. [BLANK_AUDIO] It would cost me somewhere in the region of about $30,000 to $35,000 to do that. I don't have that kind of money up my sleeve. That's Australian. That's Australian dollars, yes. [BLANK_AUDIO] If you want to talk in other forms of fake money, I don't know what that is in Bitcoin. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] But never mind. [LAUGH] I have a love-hate relationship with Bitcoin. Let's just be really clear for those people who think that I love crypto. [BLANK_AUDIO] I do in some ways, and other ways it melts my brain a bit because money isn't real and I just don't get it anymore. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] But never mind. I'm not trying to be an economist. All right. Moving on. Well, I guess the problem is that for Bitcoin to be-- I just wish it wasn't so dependent upon server farms heating up the planet and consuming lots and lots of energy. [BLANK_AUDIO] That's my biggest knock against it. See, my-- That, well, that and the Bitcoin bros, but. [BLANK_AUDIO] I actually-- Yeah, I find Bitcoin, bros, to be more annoying than the technology. The technology is actually fine. It's just the way it's evangelized by some people and the way that they talk to other people that aren't on board with it is just quite embarrassing, and they don't realize how embarrassing they're being. But anyway. No, my issue with Bitcoin is not Bitcoin. There's a lot of other-- [BLANK_AUDIO] Well, like they call them coins, but whatever, that are not Bitcoin, that are all-- that have board members and people buy, and they do initial coin offerings, and then they do a traditional pump and dump. They're very analogous to pyramid schemes, and it's all very dodgy. Mm-hm. And all of that is also crunched using-- [BLANK_AUDIO] Well, not all of it, but many of them are crunched using proof of work. I've kinda gotten the impression over the last few years that I think most of [No audio] cryptocurrency is basically just a different stock market people are playing in Yeah, and a lot of it is. these days. [BLANK_AUDIO] The thing with Bitcoin that's different is that there is no one that controls or can control it. [BLANK_AUDIO] Bitcoin, the only thing-- So Bitcoin is the only one I'm aware of that has a fixed limit, and it is proof of work, and the only downside of proof of work is that it does consume a lot of electricity or energy when you're competing to win to find the block. And honestly, you can choose whatever energy you want. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] If you're smart about it, you will mine off of free energy, like solar panels. If I had solar panels that are feeding into a very small battery storage system Mm. [BLANK_AUDIO] to drive a Bitcoin miner, that would be fine. It's like that doesn't hurt anybody or anything. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Now you can argue if that's a good waste of-- like a good solar panel and batteries and some ASICs doing some mining, you can have that philosophical discussion if you like, but that's not heating up anything, except on a micro scale, Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] I guess you could argue. [No audio] And you're not emissioning anything. No, not really. No. No. That's not a word. Emissioning. I mean-- [LAUGH] You're not generating emissions. No, but the problem is that people only see that piece of it [LAUGH] and they don't fully appreciate the other piece of it, [BLANK_AUDIO] and the other piece of it is, well, I go to a bank and I hand over a $20 note and so on. So it's like the act of my doing that, that transaction, it takes energy, printing that note, keeping that note in circulation, destroying it, the person at the bank, the person at the federal treasury, all of that all takes energy, and people are just--we just accept, look, that's just the way it is, Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] and they think, oh, well, there's no consequence. It's like, yeah, but if you're transacting everything digitally and through a blockchain approach where there's a distributed ledger, Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] you don't have any of that, and so you're saving all of that energy. You don't have to expend it anymore. And it's funny. I mean, I covered some of this previously on previous episodes of Pragmatic. It's not as clear-cut as people think, and I find it extremely reductive and disrespectful to simply say any kind of cryptocurrency is--and even particularly Bitcoin, which gets caught up with all these other cryptocurrencies Mm. that are nothing like Bitcoin. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's like it's not a scam. It's not a pyramid scheme. It doesn't fit any of those criteria. Whether or not you think Bitcoin is good or bad, you need to step back and consider all of the other implications of using a normal monetary system. And the other problems with the normal monetary system Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] is inflation and deflation and government intervention and people fighting wars and all sort of other rubbish that goes on with it, whereas Bitcoin, you can fight as many wars as you like. It's never going to change. So it's like the value of a sat-- Mm-hm. Good times. [LAUGH] [BLANK_AUDIO] Here's the funny thing with currencies, right? Currencies are all meaningless. They don't mean anything. Like the value of a dollar doesn't mean anything. And because it's like you could argue, Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] "Well, Bitcoin's price has been constant. It's just all the fiat currencies around the world that keep changing," which is, of course, as much nonsense as the argument is the other way around. Mm. It's like the U.S. dollar is the only currency in the world [BLANK_AUDIO] and every other currency fluctuates relative to it. No, they all fluctuate relative to each other. And when you see how all those values go up and down all the damn time for all these different reasons, none of it makes a hell of a lot of sense. It's all smoke and mirrors and puppeteering and BS in the background, Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] and it's just very sad. You can't take any of it with you, so what's the damn point? Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] Never mind. All right. I want to talk about something else. So I have some follow-up on an Apple Watch episode, 110. Mm. [BLANK_AUDIO] Okay. [BLANK_AUDIO] Now, every now and then my wife asks pointed questions, and I not all the time but regularly do feel the need to answer them. And one of the challenges she put to me is, "You know, darling, you spend a lot of money on Apple Watches." And I'm like, "Surely not. Surely that is not the case." Oh, boy. [BLANK_AUDIO] I mean, really. I looked down at this Apple Watch Ultra, and I'm like, "Hmm. No, okay." So I went and actually went through all of my receipts for the last nine years. I have spent 6.4--or $6,400 Australian dollars, Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] which is $4,200 U.S. dollars on Apple Watches in the last nine years. Yeah. How many watches have you had again? Too many. I think I've had six. [BLANK_AUDIO] [LAUGH] And, yeah, and I just--I thought about it, and I'm like, Six, okay. [BLANK_AUDIO] "That doesn't even include the bands. That's just the watches." Oh, right. [BLANK_AUDIO] Now, I never bought a watch without a band as part of it, because you can't buy an Apple Watch from a store without a band. So I say "without bands." I mean, like, "Without bands, I bought in addition to what came with the watch." Now, I don't want to do the math on the bands Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] because I imagine that number will be over $1,000 as well just for bands. But, I mean, the reason I bring this up, Mm. [BLANK_AUDIO] rather than just to answer my wife's question, I thought it would be instructive of--and let's just also be clear. This is not a--this is a total amount spent, but what I would do is I would sell the watch to help then pay for the next one. So, in reality, I haven't actually consumed an entire amount of money. But, yeah, you buy a watch, you wear it for two years, you sell it, it loses value. So, you know, it's--you know what I mean, right? Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] So, yeah, so I thought about it, and I'm like, Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] "You know what? For that kind of money, I could have actually bought a really nice watch. Mm. Like, I could have bought a really nice watch that would have lasted like a long time." [BLANK_AUDIO] Because when you--yeah, I mean, seriously, Yeah, but. [BLANK_AUDIO] I could have bought a nice Longines watch, let's say, you know, or maybe a-- Yeah, but that watch isn't going to give you notifications and reminders and Yeah, I know, but-- to-do items and phone calls and messages and. Oh, no. I know. [BLANK_AUDIO] And here's the thing. In the last probably six to nine months of my life, I have been tuning out notifications because it started to become triggering. Like, it's starting to get to the point where I'm starting to resent notifications. Mm. [BLANK_AUDIO] I'm starting to resent being plugged in all the damn time. And there's part of me that, like, I'll get home and I will take off my watch so that I don't get notifications because I just need a break. And the thought occurred to me that, you know, when I was in a-- Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] So right now I'm in a technical lead role. I don't actually have a team of engineers reporting to me at this exact moment. So half of my career, I've been in people leadership roles Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] that are also technical leadership roles. At the moment, I'm in a technical leadership role, but I don't have anyone directly reporting to me. I'm not counting the project teams and the projects that I'm running. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] You could argue I do have people reporting to me indirectly through project structures, but let's not go there. The point is I've reached that point where I essentially don't get hundreds of emails a day. I'll get probably 20, 30 emails a day, and I'll get people messaging me from time to time, but the volume of noise is dropping back, and I'm still finding it too much. Yeah. So I accept the fact that those things can be beneficial, [BLANK_AUDIO] but I just look at the numbers, and I think to myself, "You know what? The longest a watch has been relevant-- sorry, relevant, supported, sorry, by Apple that has a battery that still works is probably about six years. Now, your mileage may vary. Yeah, sounds right. Your series zero, how long did it last?" [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah, okay. I think it's in a drawer somewhere with the screen popping off again. So that's not--that's--okay. [LAUGH] We need to define what lasting means, but if the screen's popping off, [BLANK_AUDIO] I'm going to suggest that that doesn't last, and that's--funny that. Yeah, no, actually I think I got rid of it because the screen was popping off and then I was worried that it was going to catch the house on fire or something one day, so. This is a valid concern. [BLANK_AUDIO] Mm-hm. That and Apple had stopped supporting it too, and it was abysmally slow. Sure. So there reaches a point after six years or so where your watch will no longer do anything. [BLANK_AUDIO] It won't tell the time. It won't give you notifications. It essentially will not be supported by Apple, and you'll have something that you can't use, Mm-hm. and you could have put down $1,000 on this watch, let's say, because as you know, Vic, I had a predilection. It's like I had to have stainless steel or titanium. I had one aluminum watch in the series zero, and after that I decided, no, I went to stainless steel, and I couldn't go back. [BLANK_AUDIO] I needed the sapphire glass because apparently I just bump stuff a lot. Anyway, so now if I had have spent, it would have cost me less than that Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] to have bought a nice watch, and I'll bring up Longines because I like the look of the Longines watches, but still, I could have bought one of those, and that would have lasted 50 to 75 years, [BLANK_AUDIO] and even with servicing costs, it would still be cheaper, and it would still work after 75 years. So I could hand that down to my kids, and this is the thing, although I don't know which one. I don't know if I'd hand it down to the one who pointed out this would be too hot in here. It's an heirloom piece. [BLANK_AUDIO] Maybe he doesn't get it, but I don't know. We'll see. Mm, next down the line. Yeah, next year, yeah, my third born, yeah, that one. [BLANK_AUDIO] Anyway, so I thought that was an interesting thought experiment, and I'm not getting at anything specifically right now because I still have my Apple Watch, and I still have my series three, [BLANK_AUDIO] which I wear now in a two-watch lifestyle because my son no longer wants it, and I'm like, "Oh, fine. I'll have that." Yeah. So I have actually gone to a two-watch lifestyle, so I've got one for sleep tracking. [BLANK_AUDIO] Oh, yeah, one more thing. I'm not buying yet another Apple Watch, which I could get a 41-millimeter sports one potentially, which I did briefly consider doing, and then I added up how much it costs to date, and I'm like, "No, I'm not doing that." Oh, I wouldn't buy a new one right now. Not just for sleep. I wouldn't buy a new one right now. No, I wouldn't either. Well, actually I don't think the reason I wouldn't buy a new one right now Hmm. affects you. Have they disabled the, what was it, the, oh, the blood oxygen sensor. No. They haven't disabled that in your country, have they? No, no, no, that's just--that's the United States only, so, yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah, I wouldn't buy one here right now. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's one of those rare situations where being in America is a disadvantage for an Apple product. Yeah. There aren't too many cases where that is the case, but this is one of them. [BLANK_AUDIO] I cannot believe they've let this thing drag on the way they have. It's a matter of principle. Just send the dump trucks full of money and we'll resolve this thing, man. [LAUGH] You've got your trillions of dollars in the bank, man. I guess. Come on. You might need that someday to fight off the Department of Justice. [LAUGH] Greedy bastards. [LAUGH] Oh, my God. Which we'll get to. True that, true that. Maybe they do need that money, I'll swear. Maybe they do. [BLANK_AUDIO] Oh, dear me. All right. They're not making it sell in the Apple Vision Pros. No, they certainly aren't, and come to think of it, we should probably talk about that too. [BLANK_AUDIO] [LAUGH] [BLANK_AUDIO] So, it's still not--at time of recording right now, it is still not available outside of the United States. There are noises that it might be getting released in other countries in coming months, possibly ahead of WWDC in June. As far as I'm aware, it's all just speculation, though. It's still only available in the U.S., at least that's my understanding. So, one of the things I wanted to just mention briefly on Apple Vision Pro Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] is when we spoke about it last time, we talked about prism value, Yeah. and one of the things I just wanted to circle back on and correct myself on [BLANK_AUDIO] was that I had said originally I believed at the time that prism value [BLANK_AUDIO] was related to multifocal or varifocal or progressive lenses, whatever the heck you want to call them, similar names for much the same kind of thing. And it's not, so no, it is to correct for people that suffer from double vision. So, that is something that the Apple Vision Pro does not support. So, you can't get corrective lenses to attach inside the Apple Vision Pro if you have double vision. I think it's a relatively rare condition, but irrespective, that's frustrating for people that have got it, but it is, irrespective of that, it is not what I thought it was. So, I talked a lot about barrel distortion. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] So, when you've got a multifocal or progressive lens like I've got on my glasses, you can pay more money, of course you can, to get less barrel distortion beyond the center point of where you look through the glasses. So, the very first, this is only my second set of progressive lenses, and I'm due to get another set this year because these ones are trashed, they're like three and a half years old now. I got them during COVID, that was a fun time, but never mind. Anyway, I paid extra for minimal barrel distortion, because the first set I did, I just got the cheapest ones, and you find you have to turn your head more, left and right, because you can't, everything to the left and right of center, beyond about maybe plus or minus 30 degrees from where your eyes are looking straight forward, it starts to get very distorted, you get this barrel effect. Mm-hm. And it's just got to do with the refractive index of the glass. [BLANK_AUDIO] So, the more expensive glass, higher refractive index, less barrel distortion. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] So, you pay for the privilege. But in any case, so I said in the last time when we talked about it, Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] I said that I was going to let North Americans be the guinea pigs and tell me what the deal was, and the other little tip that I was looking for was that the Apple Vision Pro's focal distance for vision is at 1.3 meters, which is a pretty standard kind of a figure for VR headsets. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] So, if I do, I would get, if I do go, so I am actually going to see the optometrist in another week's time, because I've been putting off for too long, I've got to go and do it. I will ask them that question, if the script will be good for use at 1.3 meters. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] So, because I want to get some contact lenses because I'm going and hoping, planning to go back to playing cricket for a few seasons while I still can. So, that's another story. That's cool. [BLANK_AUDIO] So, yeah, apart from that, other things about Apple Vision Pro, I think there's a lot of stories about people like returning them en masse. I don't know how true that is, although I have heard they have got plenty of them in stock. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] So, it does sort of suggest that they overestimated. Yeah. So, they're not taking the world by storm, it seems. [BLANK_AUDIO] But then I think back to the original iPhone launch and they didn't either. So, people loved them. The people that had iPhones loved them. I mean, you charge, what is it, 3,400 or 3,400? I love mine. 3,400, yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah, you charge 3,400 for a very expensive Gen 1 product. Yeah. No. No. It's still struggling to find its use cases. [LAUGH] And doesn't have a lot to do on it right now. And I don't know, it's really funny. People don't just clamor to buy them. [BLANK_AUDIO] No, they don't. I mean, there was the initial wave, which was, I mean, let's be honest, people that were gonna buy them no matter what anyway. But then after that, things just really tapered off. I think because I was thinking about this a few weeks ago, [BLANK_AUDIO] I was listening to a podcast where some people had them and they were talking about their experiences, of course. Mm-hm. And, you know, rather like when I sent you 3D photos, [BLANK_AUDIO] but you didn't have any way of looking at them, it's like, Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] "Well, this is a nice photograph of a cake, but, you know, [LAUGH] [BLANK_AUDIO] what do you want me to do with this?" It's sort of like you can talk about it as much as you like, but until it becomes more ubiquitous, there's a limit. And not enough people have had enough VR headsets in their lives. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] There are people, many, many, many people who have never used a VR headset. So, yeah, I would say that is true too. I was gonna say, that I would say the overwhelming majority have never used it. [BLANK_AUDIO] So, it's kind of like the smartphones back in the day, like BlackBerrys were something that only business people had. The majority of people hadn't used a BlackBerry, Yeah. which is probably the world's first really popular smartphone. [BLANK_AUDIO] And it wasn't really a full-blown smartphone in the same sense that a smartphone is considered these days to have started with the iPhone. And even when the iPhone first came out, the same thing could have been said of that. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] So, I look at where we are with the Apple Vision Pro, and it doesn't worry me. It's like I think that this product is going to eventually be a success. It's just that I've decided as much as I am excited Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] and I would love to have one, I'm not going to buy one on the basis that it's just not quite ready yet. It's not quite good enough yet for mass adoption. In the same way the original iPhone 2G, whatever you want to call it, was before the 3G came out and then the 3GS, and things really started to look up. So, yeah. Yeah. [Audience member asks a question] [BLANK_AUDIO] Oh, yeah, sure. [Audience member asks a question] Yes, I think it was. Yeah. [Audience member asks a question] Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah, well, see, I was a freak. Mm-hm. I had one of my brothers-in-law was over in Vegas, and I got him to buy me one from the Vegas Apple store, an original iPhone 2G, because you couldn't buy them in Australia, [BLANK_AUDIO] and I went through all the jailbreaking in order to activate it to work on Telstra in Australia. And so I was the only person I knew that had an iPhone, Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] That's hardcore. and I was crazy. [BLANK_AUDIO] It was amazing, though. Beautiful technology. I loved the way it felt. But you couldn't get anything for it. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] It was unique in Australia at the time, so the original iPhone was never even sold here. I should have kept it as a collector's item, Yeah. even when the battery refused to charge. [BLANK_AUDIO] After a while it just died. The charging circuit was dead on it. Yeah. No app store in those days. No. But anyway, so then I did over edge. But you had the internet in your pocket. And you could see a lovely checkerboard if you scrolled a page too fast. Truth. [LAUGH] But I bought the 3GS, and then the 3GS was really transformative. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] But anyway. Mm. [BLANK_AUDIO] All right. So we talked a little bit before about solar panels and things electric and cars and so on very briefly, but I also have another new toy, Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] because this one, however, is a little bit more practical in some senses. It's a ride-on mower. I actually invested in a Ryobi RM300E electric ride-on mower. I also got the grass catcher and the trailer with it as well. And we had a Makita push mower, electric push mower, Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] which had served us well for nearly three summers, Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] and this was the summer that broke us, Right. because it was hot and wet, like I sort of said actually before, [BLANK_AUDIO] talking about the sound booth. And the effect that it has on grass is the grass just keeps growing, Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] and it's always too wet when you mow it. It just glugs up, and the whole thing just turns into a green, gluggy, muddy mess, Mm. [BLANK_AUDIO] and the grass catcher never really works properly, so when you're mowing an acre, it also took a very long time. So we used to have a ride-on mower like in this place. It was a petrol-powered mower like 20 years ago. We had it for about 10 years, but it was costing us $1,000 every two years to keep it running in maintenance, because it's a specialized engine. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's a small engine, so these service shops made their money on charging you lots of money to keep your mower running, Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] and I couldn't strip an engine to save my life. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] I'm an electrical engineer. I'm not a mechanical engineer. I'm not a mechanic. I don't know--I don't want to know how to do all of that, Mm-hm. and that's just me. [BLANK_AUDIO] I don't want to spend my weekends learning how to do it either. So, you know, having said that, I'm sure I could figure it out if I really applied myself, but anyway, suffice it to say it got very expensive. Right. So the mower itself at the time cost us about $3,500,000, and over the life of the mower it cost us another $4,500,000 roughly in 10 years to maintain it. So the whole thing was horrible, [BLANK_AUDIO] and so we decided after 10 years that we would outsource it, and we paid someone to come and actually mow the yard for us, which wasn't cheap, but it was still cheaper than trying to maintain a Yeah. ride-on mower. So fast-forwarding to today, this thing costs, [BLANK_AUDIO] with all of the other bits, in equivalent dollars, almost the same amount of money as the ride-on mower cost 20 years ago. So in the same kind of ballpark, but because it's electric Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] and there's three electric motors, so you've got one drive motor and one for each of the two cutting blades because it's a twin deck, and it's a 30-inch cut. Mm-hm. So this thing will rip through the whole yard. When the grass is under control, you'll get through the whole yard [BLANK_AUDIO] in an hour, maybe an hour and 15 minutes. That's cool. Can you do that on a single charge? Oh, yeah, easily. That's cool. You can do all that on a single charge and have plenty to spare. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's awesome. Now, yeah, now the only downside, the only downside is this is the That's cool. [BLANK_AUDIO] cheapest electric ride-on mower that you can get, and it's the cheapest for a reason. Yeah. It has lead-acid batteries. Uh-oh. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah. So there are many people that say after anywhere from two to four years, those batteries are just going to die. They're standard lead-acid absorbent glass mat. Same thing as what's in our cars, right? [BLANK_AUDIO] Well, the ones in most people's cars are still wet cells, but, yeah, Oh, okay. these are AGM, so absorbent glass mats. [BLANK_AUDIO] So you really can't do much with them, and when they die, they die. So anyway, although -- yeah, anyway, so these particular batteries are not going to last that long, but you can actually get lithiums to replace it, Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] and the lithiums will last a lot longer. And, yeah, you retrofit it yourself, it costs you about $800, $900 to retrofit it, Mm. [BLANK_AUDIO] and then after that you should get five years of life easily out of them. So, yeah, and that is still cheaper to maintain and replace batteries every That sounds like the way to go. [BLANK_AUDIO] five years than it was to get my petrol-powered mower maintained. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] So I still think that is a net win. Everything's so quiet. Oh, it is so much quieter, and the vibration is practically none. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's like -- obviously you get vibration from the cutting deck, Yeah. but because there's no pulleys, therefore there's no clutch, [BLANK_AUDIO] there's no -- like all those other moving parts, it's just so much simpler. Right. You can literally -- you pull out four locking pins, and you can drop the deck [BLANK_AUDIO] and remove it and change the mower blades if you want. Mm. It's so easy. It's incredible. [BLANK_AUDIO] So, yeah, kind of loving it. It's my new toy, so yeah. And it's a practical one, so that's good. But anyway, so yes, so that's fun. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Mm. All right. That's cool. [BLANK_AUDIO] I actually got to play with a zero turn for the-- Really? I've never actually driven one. What was it like? [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Gonna be using it going forward in the future, I think, for a while. Yeah. Due to circumstances I won't go into, because they're really other people's business. Mm. Nice. The neighbor lady across the street is in possession of a zero turn mower that used to belong to her husband, who no longer lives in the home. And she approached me with a deal that I considered too good to pass up. She was like, hey, if you do my yard too, I'll let you use the zero turn to do your yard. And I was like, okay. [BLANK_AUDIO] It was an interesting experience. Yeah. There's a little bit of a learning curve on it. I got a pretty funny video that the wife took of me doing my first few passes through the backyard. I'll send you one when we get done. [BLANK_AUDIO] Mm. There's a little bit of a learning curve to it, but it was a pleasant experience. I'm going to enjoy getting used to using it. Started out pretty rocky. By the end of the mow, by the time I got back around to see, like, I started in my backyard on purpose, because I was like, if I screw anything up, I want to do it back there. [LAUGH] I don't want to do it in her yard, and I don't want to do it in my front yard. So by the time I got around to my front yard, I was doing pretty good. And by the time I was finishing her yard, I was feeling really comfortable on it. Okay. So the next time I'm about, it should be a pretty pleasant experience. Yeah, they're kind of the workhorse of people that do that sort of thing for a living. [BLANK_AUDIO] So I can't think -- I think every time I've seen like -- yeah, like government council That's, yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] or, you know, like the private -- like the people we used to have that would mow the lawn, you know, like Joe's Lawn Mowing Service, they all use zero-turn mowers. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] Like the one I've got is not a zero-turn. It's the traditional lawn tractor style. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] But yeah, zero-turn, nice. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] Cool. Well, I couldn't quite stretch to that, unfortunately, because that was like an extra two and a half thousand. Yeah, well, they're expensive. Oh, yeah. [LAUGH] Right, yeah, they're expensive. There's a reason I don't have one, and I probably never will have one. Cool. All right. Very good. [BLANK_AUDIO] All right. I just want to talk a little bit about -- there's two more things, and we're almost at the main topic I want to talk about. I want to talk a little bit about OP3, which is the Open Podcast Prefix Project. Have I ever spoken to you about this before? I can't remember. I don't think so. All right. Well, OP3 is a -- so there's one -- it's an initiative that was kicked off [BLANK_AUDIO] in relation to -- but it's not part of -- Podcasting 2.0. And it's -- so the guy behind it is a guy called John Spurlock, and he developed this to run off of Cloudflare infrastructure. And what it does is you put a prefix -- well, like any tracker that you have in your podcast media files, you attach a tracker to the front of the MP3 file, and then every time -- and then you put that in the RSS feed. [BLANK_AUDIO] So when a downloader like Overcast does a client or Apple Podcasts grabs a copy of your MP3 file, it first goes to the prefix, which is the op3.dev prefix, and it registers an account as to where it's coming from, as in like country Yep. and time and date, yada, yada, yada. [BLANK_AUDIO] And then it redirects you to the actual file, and then you download the file directly. So it's like any other prefix for any other tracker. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] But the difference is that this is -- it's fully open source, so anyone can actually inspect the code, and basically it is not for profit. [BLANK_AUDIO] So I started supporting op3 about a year and a half ago. I haven't really spoken too much about it, but I probably should because when you're with someone like -- because I've been with Libsyn as a media host for my MP3 files. I was with Libsyn for a long time in two separate stints, and I was also with Blueberry for a while, and I've also hosted my own on my own server Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] with no stats at all. And I sort of -- stats are kind of -- when I'm not chasing sponsors, stats are almost irrelevant. But it is a nice litmus test to at least say, "C.A., is there something wrong?" Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Like when I put an episode up, and if I'm only getting a few hundred downloads instead of a few thousand, it's like, "Okay, well, there's something wrong here. What's going on?" So that's the first thing. The second thing is it's nice to know if the show is growing or shrinking as just a rough guide. But the problem with download stats is that they can be very easily manipulated such that it's like -- if you're doing it for advertising purposes, Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] there's more of a potentially malicious intent, shall we say, with trying to amp up the numbers a bit to attract sponsors, but still. Yeah. Since I'm not doing that, I don't care about that. [BLANK_AUDIO] But anyway, bottom line is -- so I donate $10 U.S. a month to John Spurlock, to the OpenOP3 project, and there's a whole bunch of other sponsors from companies or individuals. I'm only sponsoring at the minimum level as a podcaster because I'm getting benefit directly out of it. So if you don't want to host your files on somewhere like Blueberry and Libsyn, Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] you want to do your own thing like me, or if you want to have a truly independent open-source way of tracking your statistics, have a look at OP3. You don't have to donate anything. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's up to you. But I just think it's been great, solid, reliable, and it gives you charts that in many ways are better than Libsyn because you had to pay for Libsyn Pro to get the pro-level statistics. This is not quite as detailed as the Libsyn Pro, but it's damn close. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] Hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] Libsyn Pro was--I'm trying to remember what it was, but it was more than I was paying a month. I was just getting basic stats. I think I was getting like--I think I was doing--yeah, That's, that's, yeah. I was doing 5 plus 7--oh, 5 plus 2 was--so $7 a month times by 3 shows, [BLANK_AUDIO] so analytical, pragmatic, and causality because you have to pay at Libsyn per show, whereas OP3, it's just like it's pay what you like sort of thing. Mm-hm. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] You don't have to pay anything if you don't want to. But, you know, anyway, so $10 a month is still much cheaper than what I was costing at Libsyn. And I'm hosting all of my files on storage in DigitalOcean in a bucket backed behind Cloudflare. Mm-hm. So the whole exercise is not costing me as much as it used to, [BLANK_AUDIO] but at the same time I'm getting better statistics than I used to. So I have no issue, you know, throwing money John Spurlock's way Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] to pay for the service because he gets a bill from Cloudflare. The money goes to pay the Cloudflare bill. So anyway, just thought I'd mention that. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] I'm looking at it. This is pretty cool. So I've got links. [BLANK_AUDIO] If you go to--yeah, I mean, if you go to the Engineer Network website I'm looking at their example travel podcast stats page. [BLANK_AUDIO] Mm-hm. and go to Causality, like select the actual show Causality, [BLANK_AUDIO] if you scroll right to the bottom, you'll see there's a link right at the bottom Mm-hm. that says simply Stats. [BLANK_AUDIO] So if you select Stats at the bottom, you'll go to the OP3 page that shows all the statistics for Causality now in OP3. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] And these are open. Anyone can look at them. So if you've ever wondered how many downloads Causality gets, Mm-hm. so like I think the 30-day average is something like just over 4,000 downloads [BLANK_AUDIO] an episode for Causality, for example. Mm-hm. And there's only stats in there for the last four or five episodes [BLANK_AUDIO] because I've only been using OP3 for that long. So I don't have in my prior statistics. So yeah, anyway, there you go. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] Have a look. If stats are your thing and you're very curious, Mm-hm. then OP3 is a good way of doing it. [BLANK_AUDIO] The only downside of it is that some people will say, "Oh, yeah, but then your stats are public." And it's like, "Yeah, so what?" Some people are very coy about how many downloads they get. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] But anyway, all righty. If you're, if you're chasing sponsors, then you kind of need them to be anyway. Well, I don't guess they need to be public. Well, the problem that you've got is that if you're chasing advertisers, [BLANK_AUDIO] there's this little club called the IAB. And IAB certified statistics have a bunch of rules around it, but you have to pay to be certified, and it costs money to maintain certification, which I sort of understand, Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] but at the same time it's just another system for measuring what is a valid download and what isn't. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] So you've got like block lists and different things, and John Spurlock has a whole bunch of that stuff. He doesn't certify it as being IAB compliant, but it's pretty close. So it's got all the common sense ones in there. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] But I mean I honestly think if you're an advertiser these days, advertisers don't trust anybody. Well, the big ones don't. So what they'll do is they'll say you have to use this prefix and add this Yeah, true. [BLANK_AUDIO] prefix onto the episodes and they'll track it. So they'll give you their own. And it's gotten so bad with prefixes that some shows have got like -- [BLANK_AUDIO] I think they were saying on Episode of Podcasting 2.0 they found one MP3 file that had 15 trackers appended to it, 15 redirects, if you can believe it. Wow. [LAUGH] That's a lot of redirecting. It's ridiculous. So, yeah, so my issue is that if there's no agreed standard, [BLANK_AUDIO] if the numbers can be gamed, then is it really a good measure for an advertiser? True. [BLANK_AUDIO] And the answer is, of course, no, it's not. But it is for a lazy advertiser. And the way it -- like the way the professionals do it is they'll say, well, I'm going to give your show a shot because you say you've got 25,000 downloads, you know, an episode or whatever. Right, yeah. Now, because of that, they'll then say, right, here's a promo code. [BLANK_AUDIO] Now, you go and use your promo code in the episode and you say, oh, you know, sign up to like Round Area, let's say. Mm-hm. It's a website building place, Round Area. You may have heard of it. And we're going to use coupon code Pragmatic Rocks, [BLANK_AUDIO] and that will get you 50% off of Round Area for the next, you know, Mm-hm. people that sign up. [BLANK_AUDIO] But the problem is that it's like download share and mind share drives coupon code usage. So, for example, let's say that another podcast, let's say the Intentional Technology Show, and on the Intentional Technology Show they have also got Round Area. And Round Area coupon code for them is, you know, Intentional Technology Show Rocks. So people will listen to both Pragmatic as well as Intentional Technology Show. And when it comes time to sign up for Round Area, they'll say, oh, well, which was the first show that comes to mind, the show that has the larger mind share, and then they will go and put in the promo code from the other show, not mine. So I don't get any credit for it. So then it sets up as like a game between all the listeners and then the show, the podcast hosts. And it's like, well, if you sign up, you want to support the show, sign up using my promo code, then you'll listen to the next show, it's the same advertiser with a different code. No, no, no, sign up with my promo code. And the poor person is sitting there thinking, I like both shows, what do I do? And so what tends to happen is the big get bigger and the small get pushed out, and that's the way that has happened. So then they will say, so Round Area will then look at all their coupon code usages and say, well, Pragmatic has got like three or four and Intentional Technology Show has got hundreds. And it's like, right, you know what I mean. Intentional technology show. [LAUGH] Yeah. Yes, exactly. Dear listener, when faced with this predicament, support the little guy. [BLANK_AUDIO] But, I mean, I'm well out of that, and I don't necessarily want to go back to doing that because it becomes part of that game, and I don't. Yeah. It's just it's tiring, you know, it's tiring because you're forever trying to produce content and you're trying to produce content and appeal [BLANK_AUDIO] to the listeners and say sign up for this, sign up for that. All I say to listeners of my shows is if you want to help keep this show ad free, you can help by becoming a supporter. That's all you've got to do. Yeah. And you don't support on a, you know, necessarily you can choose [BLANK_AUDIO] a whole bunch of different, you know, levels that you can support at if you want to or not at all. It's entirely up to you, different perks for different levels. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] And, you know, the Podcasting 2.0 crew, and Adam Currie in particular, really loves this whole idea of value for value where you don't even have bands. You don't say here's a dollar a month, $3 a month, $5 a month. It's like just give us what you want. Yeah. If you think I'm worth 50 cents, you give me 50 cents. [BLANK_AUDIO] If you think I'm worth $5 million, I'll happily accept your $5 million. You know, it's like you pay, yeah. It's on the way right now. [LAUGH] And that's fine if that's the way you want to do it. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's not the only way to do it, but it is a way to do it. And, I mean, I've, you know, I look at it like this. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] If someone really wants to give you money, they're going to do it. And no matter which system you use, I don't think any one is better or worse. I like the idea of being paid or people being showing appreciation and paying like for an episode and saying, "Well, I really like this episode." And like, for example, with Satoshi's and boosting, and I know this goes back to the whole cryptocurrency thing, but if you don't mind the contentiousness of it, [BLANK_AUDIO] for example, the last episode of "Causality," I got like in Australian dollars the equivalent of a $46 boost from someone who'd loved the show. And the comment was, "I need to listen to this again." And I'm like, "Well, thanks, man. That's awesome." Now, they're not a patron or anything like that, and that's not advertising either. And I have no idea when it's going to come in. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] I have no idea if people are going to like what I do. So I just keep doing what I'm doing. People that are going to support me are going to support me. Advertising is a very, very different game, and it's a game that, frankly, I'm glad that I'm not playing anymore because it just seems--it is a bit of a hustle, It's a real hustle too. [BLANK_AUDIO] and it seems a bit disingenuous in a lot of ways. And so, yeah. Anyway, all of this is to say, OP3 rocks. Support it if you're interested in stats. That's cool. And, yeah, because honestly, I'm never going to give another cent to Libsyn. [BLANK_AUDIO] I'm done with Libsyn. Yep. Yeah. And it's really easy to use too. I mean, if you're already using something like Blueberry, you can do this. Exactly right. You're just appending a prefix to your URL. So it's like you could use this on the entry level of Libsyn [BLANK_AUDIO] and use this as a prefix, and you will get better stats. So, like, use Libsyn for your file hosting Yeah. and then just get all your stats somewhere else [BLANK_AUDIO] if that's what you care about. Anyway, enough said. Enough said. Advertising is what it is. Okay. I do want to quickly talk about something that's cricket-related. So for people that hate cricket, you can skip this chapter if you'd like. But I went to a Test Match. Do you know what a Test Match is? I do not. Okay. [BLANK_AUDIO] No judgement. That's fine. It's just like when someone says it's the sixth out on the fourth inning and I don't know what that means. It's something to do with baseball. Mm. I don't know. Oh, you know more than I do. Really? [LAUGH] Okay, great. Yeah. There's a thing called an end zone, and I don't know what that means. I really don't pay much attention to any of the sports balls or sports pucks or sports this or that. [BLANK_AUDIO] But apparently someone who has a quarter on their back throws a ball and they receive things. Anyway, look, I am showing my complete ignorance of other sports, but it doesn't-- That sounds very interesting. [LAUGH] My God, I'm terrible at this. No, not at all. I'm terrible. I'm terrible. [LAUGH] I'm sorry if I've just insulted all the listeners that love-- [BLANK_AUDIO] I think that'd be NFL. Fair enough. I don't really have anything against sports fans these days, but I just don't have any personal interest in it really. Well, look, I've loved cricket ever since I was a kid. [BLANK_AUDIO] And I used to go up to the nets and practice all the time, Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] play cricket with my mates. And it turns out I'm terrible at batting. I'm actually a pretty half-decent bowler. I bowl right arm offspin, for those that know what that means. And I grew up in Rockhampton, which is a downside because Rockhampton's in the middle of nowhere, well, so to speak, such that no big international teams would regularly visit Rockhampton. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] If you wanted to go to them, you'd have to drive for seven hours and go to Brisbane, which is, of course, now where I do live, so I can go and see international games any time I want. Mm. So the very first form of cricket, the first format of cricket, [BLANK_AUDIO] was referred to as a test match, and they still exist today. And test matches go for five days maximum. And you have two teams, and each team has 11 players with a 12th man that's there in case someone gets injured. And they generally run around, run the drinks out, and substitute people when they need to go off and whatever, anyhow. And there are two innings each. So depending upon who bats well and who bowls well depends on whether it goes for five days. Some test matches have been over in a single day. That's very rare. Two days, sometimes three days is common. Four days is also common. Test matches that go to four or five days these days are becoming a bit of a rarity. But in any case, the form of cricket, the original form of cricket, and some say the only true form of the game, if you believe that, then, you know, yeah, I know, right? Boy. This is when you start religious wars about cricket. [BLANK_AUDIO] Got the purist. Yeah, the purists, right? [LAUGH] So they call the test matches the original and the best form of cricket. [BLANK_AUDIO] And I do believe that test matches have a lot going for them. But you need one thing with test matches, and that is as someone who's enjoying the game, you need patience. And not only that, you need up to five days in a row. So for most people that work a full-time job, getting five days off in a row to watch a single game is a bit of a commitment. Yeah. But anyway, so when I was a kid, [BLANK_AUDIO] I never saw an international test match ever, and I always wanted to. I never saw a one-day international, which is strangely played in one day, as the name suggests, or a T20, which is a 20 overs per side, Mm. [BLANK_AUDIO] limited overs game, it's over in three hours, three and a half hours roughly. So anyway, finally, at 47 years old, I went to a test match. It was Australia versus the West Indies, Mm. [BLANK_AUDIO] and it was played at the Gabba Cricket Ground, which is in the suburb of Woolloongabba, hence the Gabba, which is the Aboriginal name for the area. [BLANK_AUDIO] So the Gabba is our largest cricket ground in Brisbane and Queensland, and I went there with two of my kids, my daughter and my third-born, so my second son, who just loves playing cricket. So it was lovely to finally go to a test match. I wrote a blog article about it on Tech Distortion. That's cool. [BLANK_AUDIO] It just took me a long time, but I finally got to it, and it was beautiful being able to go with my own kids, because my wife hates cricket with a passion. She made--well, she hit it well in the first few months of our relationship, Mm. [BLANK_AUDIO] but then she cracked and confessed that she hated it. See, you had the old bait and switch. You had the old bait and switch. [LAUGH] In that dimension, at least, yes, [BLANK_AUDIO] because, yes, she would come along and watch me play back when I was playing in the Warehouse Cricket Competition. This was going back 22 years ago. And so, yes, when I was playing, she would come along and watch, but I would find more and more excuses to her coming along, and I sort of asked her one time. I said, "Hey, what's--you haven't been coming along to as many games." She said, "I need to break something to you." I'm like, "Okay, here we go." So, yes, but never mind. [LAUGH] It was a conversation that started with the phrase, Something like that. you know I love you, right? [LAUGH] It possibly was, yes. But anyway, well, that's fine. It's not everyone's game. I absolutely understand that, and it does consume a lot of time, [BLANK_AUDIO] unlike some games that are over in an hour or two. So I do understand why some people find it a bit much. [BLANK_AUDIO] That's okay. But anyway, so, yes, finally went to a Test Match, had a great time, and I wrote a long blog post going through all of that for anyone who cares, which may not be very many people, so we should probably move on to something that more people do care about. What do you think? Okay. Yeah? [BLANK_AUDIO] Time for a sponsor? I'm just kidding. Sounds good. Sure. I'm kidding. [LAUGH] I'd like to talk to you about a sponsor for this episode, [BLANK_AUDIO] and that is the Department of Justice and an Apple antitrust lawsuit. So, hmm, strange sponsor. Mm. [BLANK_AUDIO] All right. So have you been following the antitrust lawsuit the DOJ raised against Apple? Mainly just via the coverage from AATP. Right. Okay. And I must concede I haven't heard the most recent episode yet. Okay. So I guess I wrote a long article about this, and I'm going to, you know, again, [BLANK_AUDIO] I'll stand up and admit that I looked at incorrect numbers because my problem was, when I originally did all this analysis, when it comes to the definition of, you know, the definition of like--so antitrust is all about a company has a monopoly and not the game, but they're restricting competition because they have a monopoly. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] And so--if it's up to the DOJ, they'd probably send Tim Cook to jail if they could. So we're not, we're not, we're not, we're going directly to jail. We're not passing go and we're not collecting $200. [BLANK_AUDIO] They won't be able to, but good luck with that. [LAUGH] [BLANK_AUDIO] Anyway, my God, anyhow, all right. So here come all the monopoly jokes, man. [LAUGH] They should have bought Mayfair when they had the chance and built some hotels. [BLANK_AUDIO] Anyway, just don't land on it. My family always played it with a huge pile of money under the free parking square. Did you guys ever do that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we did. If you ever land exactly on that, you get the pile of money. Mm-hmm, yep, oh yeah, good times. Yeah. It's funny, though, people tweaking the rules. I actually haven't played Monopoly since I was a kid, but I remember it being a pretty fun game. No, we played--like, we played it a few times. A pretty intense game sometimes, but pretty fun. We played it a few times during COVID, and my wife, being a ruthless former accountant, [BLANK_AUDIO] would tend to win almost every time. Oh boy. [LAUGH] And she said to me a couple of years ago--it wasn't that long ago, about 18 months ago, I guess-- [BLANK_AUDIO] "Oh, we should play another game of Monopoly." And I'm like, "Why?" "So you can kick our asses again." And I was like, "No." Wait, I got it. Oh, you didn't start the conversation with, you know I love you, right? [LAUGH] That is generally not how I start conversations with my wife, unless--yeah, anyway, all right. [BLANK_AUDIO] We're going to get back on topic. Okay. So when I did all my math and calculations and digging into all of this, one minor detail, [BLANK_AUDIO] because I'm not American, and in fact 96% of the world's population aren't American either, but the problem is, of course, the Department of Justice is American, and hence they are looking at this from a point of view of American statistics, not global statistics. Right. So when I originally wrote the article, which I do have an item on my to-do list to adjust the numbers, [BLANK_AUDIO] but it doesn't change the conclusion, but in the United States, Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] iPhones have a market share of about 60% of the market. Now, that is not a monopoly. That is a majority. No. It is just a majority, but it is not a monopoly. Yes. [BLANK_AUDIO] There is a difference. So globally, it is nowhere near that. So Apple's influence is very U.S.-centric, and I mean, I've been an Apple fanboy for years. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] I've got--like, I'm podcasting on a MacBook Air, an M2 MacBook Air. I love this thing. I have an Apple Watch on. I have an iPhone. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] I've got all the Apples except the edible kind because I don't like apples, but don't worry about that. If you look at it from a global perspective, then in Q1 of--like, from Q1 2023, Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] Samsung effectively, they own--they more qualify for being a monopoly--well, not a monopoly, Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] but certainly a big majority. So Apple and smartphone sales globally, six out of the eight quarters in the last two years, Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] 2022 and 2023, they were beaten by Samsung in terms of sales, and their market share is about 20% globally. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] So 20% globally and 60% in the United States, you know, do they really have market power over the remainder? And there is no set--there's no set threshold, but if you are at 50%, would you say you have market power over the other 50%? No. If you've got 51%, do you have market power over the other 49%? No. [BLANK_AUDIO] Very, very slight. Not really, not really. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's like, at what point does that break over? And it's like somewhere between 75% to 80% market share, I would say you are at a point when you could be considered to having your approaching monopoly. And the thing that's interesting is going back to the last Department of Justice antitrust thing, Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] they had a go at Microsoft, and Microsoft had something like 90%, 95% of computers had a Microsoft Windows running on it. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's like that was a monopoly. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] That fit the definition of what a monopoly was, but this is not. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah, yeah, I know. You know the part that amused me about that is that in that whole thing, they never really got bent about the fact that it was Windows on 90%. It was just the bundling of Internet Explorer got everybody's panties in a wad. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's like--so this is the thing is I didn't want to spend too much time talking about the statistics and the debate over what's a monopoly and what's not a monopoly. It's just that, you know, the intention is are they restricting trade? Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] Are they, you know--is what they're doing like--is it stifling competition? Is it anti-competitive? And so if you read some of the lines out of it, and I read through the whole submission from the DOJ, Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] and I'll read some of it out here because I think it's useful just to--well, maybe-- I'm not going to try and poke fun at it, but I will point out the problems. It's iPhone Monopoly. So starting off, this is a quote. "Unless Apple's anti-competitive and exclusionary conduct is stopped, it will likely extend and entrench its iPhone monopoly to other markets and parts of the economy." Sure. [BLANK_AUDIO] Sure it will. Next thing. "This case is about freeing smartphone markets from Apple's anti-competitive and exclusionary conduct Mm-hm. and restoring competition to lower smartphone prices for consumers, reducing fees for developers, and preserving innovation for the future." And then the last one I will quote is, "By maintaining its monopoly over smartphones, [BLANK_AUDIO] Apple is able to harm consumers in a wide variety of additional ways." Yeah. So all of that contains several references to exclusionary conduct, monopoly over smartphones, [BLANK_AUDIO] and essentially control of the market, and hence the markets need to be free for smartphones because of the exclusionary conduct, and there's not enough competition. Yeah. So the thing that's interesting is that if you look at the stats, [BLANK_AUDIO] Apple's market share in the United States is dropping, and if you look at the stats globally, it's been pretty average for a long time. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] So there's no evidence that actually backs up that. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] So the assertion is that if it's allowed to continue, it's just going to entrench its monopoly. Well, forget that it's a monopoly because it's not a monopoly, but it's going to grow over time, Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] and it's not growing. That's been part of the complaint with Apple lately. To compensate for the lower sales, they're jacking their prices up, right? Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] So it's not actually--yeah, I know, right? Right. >> The services, man, services. [BLANK_AUDIO] So there are lots of problems when factual inaccuracies are a lot of the DOJ's submission, and so I wrote a whole article just called "Antitrust," [BLANK_AUDIO] and I've got to tweak some of the numbers to make sure that that adds up. I'll update that. By the time this comes out, I probably will have done it. But in any case, so they do actually have a reference to the Act and how it interprets a monopoly. So I will read this. This is not out of the DOJ submission. This is out of a reference to the original Sherman Act, which is, "An unlawful monopoly exists when one firm has market power for a product or service Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] and it has obtained or maintained that market power not through competition on the merits but because the firm has suppressed competition by engaging in anti-competitive conduct." Yeah. So my problem is I wanted to break this down as to--apart from the fact that that wording is really clumsy. [BLANK_AUDIO] That's not actually the Sherman Act. That is a legal interpretation made by a government body in subsequent years [BLANK_AUDIO] because the Sherman Act goes back a long time. So in any case, it goes back a ways. A long time. [BLANK_AUDIO] So I will start with it says "for a product or service." So when they say "product," they don't mean that in a singular literal sense, like a single widget. If you make the same widget and you make 100 widgets, they're exactly the same from the same supplier, certified made by that supplier, then every widget by this definition would be a monopoly. [BLANK_AUDIO] So clearly it doesn't mean a physical product. Right. It's more a product in the interpretation of a product class or a product type, [BLANK_AUDIO] maybe even a product category, but it's like in air quotes "smartphone." Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] So if this thing is called a smartphone and it does all of the same sorts of features but it's made by different companies, that's what they're really talking about. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] So it doesn't--but it's not phrased that way. So the problem is that you can't--so you can use the phrase "an iPhone monopoly," and that's actually a non sequitur because the iPhone is the iPhone. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's not a monopoly because you're the only company that makes the iPhone. You could argue--of course they do. Yes, Apple has a monopoly on iPhones. [BLANK_AUDIO] And in the same--obviously, right? [LAUGH] This is the stupidity of the wording, right? So the reality is that it's not. It's the product type. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] So you could say it's a smartphone monopoly. So one of the many things that I call out in this DOJ submission is that they actually do use the correct wording later in the document. They do actually refer to it as a smartphone monopoly, which it isn't, although they assert that it is. Mm-hm. But you could also argue the same is true of service because I say product or service. [BLANK_AUDIO] So similarly, you could say a service is really not a service but a service type. And in the context of a smartphone, it could be text messaging, multimedia messaging, email, like whatever. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] Like it's a service that is provided that goes with the device. And for those ones I've listed, none of them qualify as being monopolies either. When I sort of thought about this some more, it's like, well, what did the Department of Justice really mean to say? Because there's what they said, which was, you know, a bit average, or as the cool kids these days say, it's a bit mid. But you know what? It's fine. They're just a bunch of people trying to do something that they don't fully understand. But their intent, I think, if I were to extrapolate from the key points, Mm-hm. I would have phrased it like this. [BLANK_AUDIO] So I'll quote myself from my article. "All smartphones and personal computers shall be open to install and run applications, apps, at the discretion of the owner and user of the hardware in question." I actually think that that would resolve all of the non sequiturs and BS in the DOJ's submission. If I had an iPhone and I could install any app I wanted on it, that would satisfy them, in short. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] That's not what they say in their submission, exactly, but that is what they are getting at. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah, and you should not be, by extension, therefore locked to an app store where they skim money off the top, Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] which I didn't put in my little one-sentence summary, but, you know, one thing leads to another. I should be allowed to do this if I want to, like I can on my Mac. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] And this is what bugs me about this whole situation, is that Apple have this thing in their head that the way it is on a Mac is the way it's always been. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] And so I can sort of like install whatever the hell I want on my Mac, and it's at my own risk. Boy, I'll bet you there's a contingent in there that would love to change that if they thought they could get away with it. Of course, and they've added system integrity protection, they've added Gatekeeper, [BLANK_AUDIO] you know, a whole bunch of different technologies in recent years that make it, Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] where they add warnings and they say, "Oh, you know, you're installing this software from somewhere on the Internet, you know, could be bad." Gotta click on the scare sheet. Yeah, so whatever you want to call it, the scary dialog box and stuff that warns you, [BLANK_AUDIO] you know, the sky could fall, and then you click OK and nothing happens, and it's like, "Great, well, thanks, cheers." [BLANK_AUDIO] And it's like, but they don't stop you. But on iOS, you don't even get that choice. You won't even see the app, it won't even get to you. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] And so Apple will cite a whole long list of reasons to justify their restrictiveness on iOS. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] Like, "Oh, it's a mobile device, you don't want bad actors on your mobile device because it's connected through mobile phone networks and there's download restrictions and they could, you know, spam people." It doesn't really matter. They could bring down the whole cellular network with a rogue application. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah, you see, it doesn't really matter. And the reason that it doesn't matter anymore is because I think they've crossed, the smartphone category has crossed the line from being a toy or a curiosity or something just for tech nerds or rich geeks or like whatever people to play with as a thing. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's now become ubiquitous and people are reliant. They've become reliant. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yes. We as a culture, yeah, it's become a... [BLANK_AUDIO] It's a utility. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's almost up there with electric and water. Yeah, exactly. And this is the thing, no one seems to be talking about this, [BLANK_AUDIO] which is, you know, I look at all platforms that succeed, [BLANK_AUDIO] and I've been thinking about this for years and I'm just never bothered to write it down until now. So thank you, DOJ, for helping to crystallize my thoughts on this. But anyway, I think that all platforms, no matter what they are, will go through several stages of existence, at least the ones that end up going somewhere. And when I say platform, I try to keep it generic because a mobile phone or a smartphone platform, you could argue that, you know, like a smartphone is a kind of a derivative of a mobile phone, [BLANK_AUDIO] and a mobile phone is a derivative of a telephone that was plugged into a wall, you know, and the telephone plugged in the wall is a derivative of you yelling at someone from the next room, like whatever. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] You know, it's not... I'm trying to point out that, I mean, railroads, for example, and I talk about railroads in the article, like railroads were a formative technology and a platform, so to speak, to get people like goods and services and people around the world and countries as well. So it's like I tried to keep it generic and say platform because I genuinely believe that this is a generic life cycle that all of these things go through. So I've sort of suggested there are six stages to this. And the first stage is invention. It's got to start with invention. [BLANK_AUDIO] There was a time before railways existed. There was a time before phones and smartphones and mobile phones existed. So these platforms did not exist. They were invented. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] And then initially, you'll have people that will be the early adopters. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] They'll be the ones that, not just people, but companies as well. So like, or even governments, like people that will see this technology that's been invented [BLANK_AUDIO] and realize that this is a platform that's going to be very useful for whatever reason, but it's still fringe. Very little of it exists. There's not much there. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] So you need to invest in it and build it out before it becomes really recognized as a platform. So the next stage after that is competition. So you're not the only person that thinks as an early adopter, it might be the first smart, true smartphone you could argue, I think, in its form that we believe today was the iPhone. But it was shortly followed by many, many more different platforms, different companies, [BLANK_AUDIO] all competing, and that's that competition phase. And so after you've reached that level of competition and the platform has essentially been, Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] has spread far and wide, it reaches the point of ubiquity, at which point when you say to someone, "Hey, have you seen this new smartphone, blah, blah, blah," they know what you're talking about. And when these things become ubiquitous, they've become ubiquitous for a reason. They make our lives easier. You get on a train, you can go from New York to Boston Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] in not a very long period of time. That's a good thing. People want to get around. It becomes ubiquitous. "Oh, I'm just going to jump on the train and go from blah, blah, blah." It becomes a thing. "I'm just going to make a call on my phone." It becomes a thing. It's ubiquitous everywhere. And then after that happens, then we reach this point, and this is a very fuzzy line, but at some point we cross from ubiquity to reliance. And that's the point at which you take that away, things start falling apart. You start relying on this technology. So people will say, "Well, there's this town on the railway line and there's no clean water source, but there's gold," let's say, or "There's no food, Mm-hm. there's no crops in the area because it's in the middle of a desert," or "There's a place that's 5.1 kilometers [BLANK_AUDIO] up in Peru," for example. I was reading about it a few days ago where there's a gold mine, [BLANK_AUDIO] but there's very little sanitation or anything like that, and they bring mercury to the place Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] to leech out the gold and extract and purify the gold. So there's now people dying of mercury poisoning That sounds great. [BLANK_AUDIO] and stuff like that. Yeah, good stuff. But it's like the place has no reason to exist. It's become reliant on the train going past to deliver supplies. [BLANK_AUDIO] So you take the technology away, they're reliant on it, so you can't not have it anymore. Right. It's going to have real-world impacts, and the smartphone has crossed this line. [BLANK_AUDIO] It is now something we rely on. There are forms that you fill in to play on sports teams, to do banking with. There are some banks that are fully virtual. You can't actually go into a bank branch. They don't have any. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] They're purely dependent upon the computers and our smartphones, and everyone these days has a smartphone, so everyone's like, "Well, we're going to use smartphones for ticketing now." Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] So you want to get on a train, like around town. You want to get on a bus. You tap on when you get on the bus, you tap on when you get off, and we'll charge your credit card. It's like these things have become the only way in which certain things can be done. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Now, a lot of people say, "Oh, that's bad. That's terrible. You shouldn't do that. There should always be a manual system and a manual workaround." Mm-hm. And maybe that's true, but that doesn't change the fact that we have become reliant upon them. [BLANK_AUDIO] So we now reach the sixth and final stage, which is the one everyone hates, and that is regulation. Now, there's no reason why you've got to wait until you're reliant on something before it gets regulated. In fact, you probably shouldn't, but the truth is Apple has reached that point with its smartphones. It is now we are reliant upon these devices, and so governments like the EU are going to legislate. In the U.S., apparently they don't like to legislate. They just like to throw antitrust lawsuits at big companies because they think it's fun. [BLANK_AUDIO] I don't know, but either way, it's going to get regulated. That's a party, man. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's a party, and one person's invited, and his name's Tim Cook. Anyway, the thing is that it's inevitable. Where we've reached right now is absolutely inevitable. Mm. [BLANK_AUDIO] Now, whether or not the Department of Justice should have raised an antitrust lawsuit or not, in my opinion, no. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] They should never have bothered because it doesn't qualify as a monopoly. They don't really have market power, and if they really wanted to do something properly, [BLANK_AUDIO] they would have gone down the road of the Digital Markets Act or something similar to it. Yeah, legislation, yeah. That's what they should have done, legislated, and eventually they will do that. [BLANK_AUDIO] But that's a different department, right? That's not Department of Justice. So that's some other department in the government writing legislation. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] But, you know, hey, it's fine. It's whatever. But the point is that I genuinely believe that people should have the right to install what they want on their device. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's their device. They've paid for it. Stop telling them what they can and can't do on their damn device. If they want to do it, they can. It's that simple. Mm-hm. App stores, you know, can exist. There's no reason why they can't exist. [BLANK_AUDIO] But that cannot be the only way that you can put... Because it's like Apple doesn't own my phone. I own my phone. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] So, like, don't tell me what I can and can't put on it. That is the essence of an open market, is that you have a device where you can openly choose. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] It'd be like, I bought my house from Apple, so now I have to buy only the breakfast cereal that Apple has on their shelf. And they only have one kind. It's called Froot Loops. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] And I hate Froot Loops because there's too much sugar in it. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, oh, too bad. And it's basically, yeah, and it's basically just as much a general purpose computer as anything else these days. What? It's become that. Exactly. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yep. And some people don't even have a computer. They just have a smartphone. [BLANK_AUDIO] They don't have a desktop. They don't have a laptop. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] Because you can do practically everything on a smartphone now. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] I mean, it's insane. It's great. It's amazing. It's incredible. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] You can shove a computer in your pocket, effectively. Like young me, you know, hacking away on the VIC-20. Mm-hm. When you look at an iPhone now, it's like, my God, how far we have come. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's insane. But it's like, but Apple need to snap the f*** out of it. Because seriously, they have lost. They will lose in the long term. They will not get their way. They will have to allow side loading. And they are going to have to get over it. Do you think the world will ever see a world where people are using the same technology as they are using it? Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] I think so, too. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] And I think all it's going to do is highlight. Because what this is doing is it will highlight there are alternatives for people that didn't already know this. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] But you know what? The majority of the world's population already knows that there are alternatives, and they are using them right now. So it's like, okay. And they're making themselves look so greedy and petty. Do you think Apple will ever be able to achieve what they want? Yeah, they are. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's really, it's a sad day, I think. But ultimately, I think this antitrusting will fail. They certainly won't achieve what they want it to achieve. It will get dragged on for years, if not decades. Mm. [BLANK_AUDIO] All the while, legislation will be written that will actually do the job properly. And Apple will be forced to do it if they want to sell phones in their own country. Yeah. It's just that is 100% inevitable. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah, I would stake Bitcoin on it. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Anyway, so look, I am going to tweak the numbers. That's a strong bet. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah, really. Honestly, I wrote that article a few weeks ago. Mm-hm. It's up on Tech Distortion. There's a link to it in the show notes. Feel free to read it. [BLANK_AUDIO] I know everyone has had their own opinions on this. And there was a bunch of talk on other tech podcasts. I won't name them. But it's funny that some people sort of say, well, smartphones are different. And so therefore, they should be treated differently to a Mac platform. And I'm like, we're arguing over physical differences that don't make any sense anymore. [BLANK_AUDIO] You know, like. No, it's just a historical precedent that the MAC has always been unrestricted. Well, I mean, here's the thought experiment, right? [BLANK_AUDIO] If I have a laptop and I give it a virtual keyboard and a touch screen, which do exist on non-Apple machines, this is not a revolutionary idea. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] Mm-hm. You could argue that at that point you have got a large phone. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah. OK, if you've got an iPad, that's what an iPad is already. [BLANK_AUDIO] Mm-hm. Now, I can't use the iPad as an example in this thought experiment because the iPad runs iOS. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's restricted by the App Store. So that's not a valid comparative. So take that off the table. But look at a Microsoft Surface, right? Yep. Microsoft Surface has got a touch screen. You can type on it on a keyboard and you can get a 3G modem and you can use it as a phone. [BLANK_AUDIO] Mm-hm. So the only real difference in an Apple laptop is it's not got a touch screen or a 3G modem. [BLANK_AUDIO] But you could add both if you wanted to. So if you do that, then suddenly it's OK to have an App Store. Does that make any sense? Like, it's like just, it doesn't make any sense at all. Sounds kind of crazy to me, John. [BLANK_AUDIO] In some of these cases, the silicon in these machines is identical. Like the iPad, iPad Pros have the same damn chip in it as a Mac, as a MacBook Air does. So, like, it's not even the technology underlying it. It's exactly the same tech made by exactly the same company. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's just the software that's written on it is slightly different. That's it. When I say slightly, I know it's actually quite different, but that's not the point. The point is it is just software. So you cannot justify it based on its utility. It does not make sense. But never mind. It's fine. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] I guess I just find the whole thing to be almost bloody minded, to be honest, from Apple. And it's disappointing. I am disappointed in Apple. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah. I think that they're trying to dig their heels into what is a lost cause. [BLANK_AUDIO] And they're making themselves look so bad. [BLANK_AUDIO] And they just need to get over it. It's getting hard to see the difference between the two. Yeah. Yeah, they are. But... [BLANK_AUDIO] [silence] I need some of this stuff, man. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. [BLANK_AUDIO] A couple of other comments that I've heard around the traps is, you know, like, Apple's treating the situation like they're still the underdog. I don't know if that's necessarily true. I don't think that they're projecting where the underdog, we're going to fight this thing. That's certainly not the way it comes across. [BLANK_AUDIO] If that's their mindset, I don't know how you can have that mindset when you've got trillions of dollars in the bank. Because they haven't been a scrappy startup for a very long time. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] So I don't even think that they're that delusional or that they're that high in their own supply. No. I don't believe that. [BLANK_AUDIO] No, I can't remember which host said this. [silence] I think it was Marco, but it's an entitlement mindset, man. Yeah. This whole thing exists because of us. [silence] So we deserve our pound of flesh for everything that runs through it. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's kind of funny, you know, because I was thinking about the... There's so many analogies that make this look like an insane conversation. Mm-hm. Like, Apple has no leg to stand on. [BLANK_AUDIO] Think about roads. Our governments and private companies build roads. Okay, there are rules that say what safety features a vehicle has to have. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] There's training about how to drive on those roads, sure. Mm-hm. But ultimately, the government doesn't force you to only buy cars through the government. [BLANK_AUDIO] You can buy what... Yeah, you can buy... Through them, yeah. They don't get a cut of the cars. Well, there's flaws in this analogy because depending upon what country you live in, [BLANK_AUDIO] you can argue, well, they do have import duties or they do have company taxes and so on. Well, yeah, I guess that's true. But it's not... Yeah, it's not really the same thing. [BLANK_AUDIO] Anyone can... So if I buy a car and it's sanctioned, like, it's legally allowed to be sold in this country and I can buy it in this country, you know, brand new, secondhand, third, fourth hand, whatever, depending on how much I've got, what sort of car it is, I can drive that on whatever road I want. There are no restrictions. So it's like the government can't tell me not to drive it on this one particular road because they own the road. You could argue they own all the roads. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] It doesn't... It does not make any sense at all. The government have no right to tell you what road you are and aren't allowed to drive on because the government built the roads for everyone to use. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] So if the argument is Apple said, well, we only bought our phones so that Apple users can use them. I guess that's an obvious thing to say, but it's like, yeah, but they bought the phone, they own the phone. So you can't tell them they can only run apps that you say they're allowed to run Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah. because you don't have the right to say that. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah. If it doesn't run because there's a technical reason it doesn't run, that's not what I'm talking about. [BLANK_AUDIO] If it could run, but you've just chosen to say, well, I don't like it, so you can't have it, that's none of your damn business. It's not your phone, Apple, it's my phone. You have zero rights on my phone. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] I mean, another part of this Apple situation that really irritates me as well is the music thing. It's got the same problem. Like I remember one time a few years ago, I woke up and I went to play a song in Apple Music from one of these bands that you will probably never have heard of, [BLANK_AUDIO] Australian bands from back in the '80s called 1927. So despite the name of the band, none of them were born in 1927. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] It doesn't matter. The point is I went to listen to this song and at some point in the prior six months since the last time I listened to this band, there was a dispute [BLANK_AUDIO] and the band pulled their music from Apple. So now I go to play and I can't play the music. Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] That's right. It's unavailable. Even though you'd previously added it to your library. [BLANK_AUDIO] Now people say, well, you're streaming it, you didn't buy it. Yep. And it's like, well, that's not true. [BLANK_AUDIO] I actually had a CD of this and I had a CD that I bought back in the '80s and what I did is I digitized it and then I uploaded that in through the whole iTunes Match thing [BLANK_AUDIO] Mm-hm. and something got balked along the way. [BLANK_AUDIO] I have no idea why, but all I do know is that at some point it preferred streaming. I switched libraries, I switched machines, something lapsed somewhere, something broke somewhere. [BLANK_AUDIO] I don't honestly know what happened. A DRM copy that I could only stream. And your ripped copy got replaced by, yep. [BLANK_AUDIO] Another time I went on a flight and I pre-downloaded a whole bunch of music to my phone and then Apple had decided and iOS had just decided that because I had only four or five gigabytes Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] of free space left that they would just get rid of a whole bunch of my MP3s that I downloaded [BLANK_AUDIO] specifically because I was going to be on a long flight to the US. And it's like, I can't stream because I'm on a plane. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] You can't. And you get on the plane and you're all ready to jam out and there's no tune. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's stuff like that that really grinds my gears. It is my phone, don't delete my stuff off of it. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] I'll delete it when I want to. And that's my music that I paid for. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] You will not just take it away because you, for whatever reason, you've just decided that you should. Now, I realize that they're subtly different arguments and there's a lot of nuance there that I'm glossing over, Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] but it's symptomatic of the current way of living versus the way we used to, which is you go and buy something and it's yours. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] I buy my phone, I own it. I buy the CD, I own it. I can use them whenever I want, however I want because they're mine. They don't belong to Apple. [BLANK_AUDIO] They don't belong to the artist because I own a copy of the music. I can play it when I want. I own a phone. I can use it when I want. And where things start falling apart is when companies stop realizing that that is what people want. Yep. [BLANK_AUDIO] And they start thinking, well, you know, we could do is not you should do. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] So, yeah, you could have an app store, but now you become the gatekeeper and everyone hates the gatekeeper and you want to set yourself up for failure. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] And this was always going to happen. It was only a matter of time. Anyway, so I don't think I've got too much more to say about that. So if you want to read the article on tech distortion, there'll be a link in the show notes. Knock yourselves out. And, yes, I will adjust the numbers and hopefully by the time you read it, the numbers will be adjusted and none of that will matter. But there'll be a copy of it cached probably somewhere on the Internet so you can go back and say, There you go. [BLANK_AUDIO] you know, John, there was a time when you were wrong. And I'll be like, yeah, I guess. No. [BLANK_AUDIO] But, oh, well, I fixed it. [LAUGH] So go on, whatever. It's gonna be, I won't say exciting, it's gonna be interesting to see how this thing plays out over the next probably couple of years, I'll bet. [BLANK_AUDIO] I'm not sure the word "interesting" is the one I'd use. I'd say it's going to be farcical to watch, but okay. I mean, I don't know. Well, yeah, that's a good one too. Entertaining. [LAUGH] I actually don't know if I'm going to have the patience to follow along with this [BLANK_AUDIO] because the whole thing just seems so ridiculous. The premise is so ridiculous. I keep having flashbacks. Who's the head of the DOJ these days? Oh, I don't know. I don't even know. I don't know. I was thinking maybe we could get him and Tim Cook to settle this thing with a trial Yeah, I was actually thinking, you know, I need to go back to the whole -- by combat, a la Game of Thrones style. [LAUGH] [BLANK_AUDIO] Loser goes out the moon door. well, geez, that's harsh. [LAUGH] I was actually thinking, you know, we should go back to the whole Hamilton days [BLANK_AUDIO] because now I've seen Hamilton the musical and I understand a little bit more now of American history, Mm-hm. modern history anyway. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah, we should do the whole Pistols of Dawn thing in the middle of some swamp. Mm. [LAUGH] And I demand satisfaction or blah, blah, blah, whatever the heck it is. [BLANK_AUDIO] But never mind. That always works out well. Yeah, nothing goes wrong. [BLANK_AUDIO] Whatever. Anyway, it's fine, really. So if you want to talk more about this, you can reach me on the Fediverse at [email protected] [BLANK_AUDIO] or the network at [email protected]. If you are enjoying Pragmatic and you'd like to support us and keep the show ad-free, you can by becoming a premium supporter. Just visit engineered.network/pragmatic to learn how you can help this show to continue to be made. Thank you. A big thank you to all of our supporters. A special thank you to our silver producers, Mitch Bilger, Shane O'Neill, Lesley, Callan Frodelius-Fujimoto, Jared Roman, Joel Maher, Katarina Will, Chad Juring, and Ian Gallagher. And an extra special thank you to our gold producer, Stephen Bridle, and our gold producer known only as R. Pragmatic is also a podcasting 2.0 enhanced show. And with the right podcast player, you'll have episode locations, enhanced chapters, and real-time subtitles on selected episodes, and you can also stream sats and boost with a message if you like. There's details on how, along with the Boostergram leaderboard, for this and all the shows on our website. [BLANK_AUDIO] If you'd like to get in touch with Vic, what's the best way they can get in touch with you, mate? Just look for me all over the Internet, just because someone. Awesome. I think the thing you can most reliably find me doing these days is streaming games sporadically on the Twitch, as we cut someone. [BLANK_AUDIO] Sporadic twitching. That's how we know you're alive. Excellent. Sporadic twitching. [laughs] [LAUGH] Oh, my God. Sporadic twitching. There you go. No, that is not the show title. [BLANK_AUDIO] This is not the episode title. Okay. Mm. No. No. I've struck out twice. Yep. Mm-hm. That's it. [BLANK_AUDIO] Third one, you're out. Okay. Special thank you to our supporters, and a big thank you to everyone for listening. And as always, thank you, Vic. It's always great having you on, mate. [no dialogue] It is always great to be here. Thank you for having me. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] Moving on, and by saying moving on, I haven't got too much else to say. I did, however, want to talk to you about, very briefly, before we wrap this up, about Doctor Who. And this is gonna be a spoiler warning for anyone who hasn't watched the Christmas special, which was four months ago. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] And anyone who hasn't watched any of the trailers for the forthcoming season, this year in 2024, with the new Doctor. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] So if you are one of those people, or if you are someone that does not like Doctor Who and wonders why the heck Vic and I love Doctor Who, well, that's fine. It's all good. Okay. All right, so I don't do spoiler horns. [BLANK_AUDIO] So thoughts and comments? [BLANK_AUDIO] Would you like a spoiler sound? [BLANK_AUDIO] No, I would not like a spoiler sound. This is pragmatic. We don't do sounds here, right? Mm-hm. This is chaos. [BLANK_AUDIO] We don't do sounds here. Okay. So thoughts on the Christmas special? [BLANK_AUDIO] Do you have thoughts on the Christmas? I didn't think it was terrible. [BLANK_AUDIO] I didn't think it was my favorite intro to a new Doctor story. [LAUGH] [BLANK_AUDIO] That is so delightfully politically correct of you. I did enjoy it, and I am looking forward to shooting as the Doctor. I didn't. [LAUGH] [BLANK_AUDIO] I liked him. Some of the writing I thought was kind of weak. [BLANK_AUDIO] You think? Yes, I would agree with that assessment. Yeah. None of my complaints have to do with him or Ruby, or I can't remember. [BLANK_AUDIO] I feel terrible. What's the actress's name playing Ruby? [BLANK_AUDIO] I don't remember. [BLANK_AUDIO] I thought they were fantastic. I just, I don't think that they had a ton of great material to work with, which was really ironic because I really felt like RTD kind of knocked it out of Yeah, so that was the other thing. the park with the tenant specials. But then maybe he spent everything on those and he needed more time to recoup [BLANK_AUDIO] before they made that Christmas special. I don't know. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Like I said, it wasn't terrible. I did enjoy watching it. It was a good, fun Doctor Who romp, but I just, I felt like it wasn't the greatest new Doctor story. No, I would echo your sentiments, but I'd be slightly more brutal. [BLANK_AUDIO] And I would say it was poorly written. It was a bit, how should we say? Yeah. It was almost too childish, as in really, Doctor Who has traditionally walked a fine line between being a kids show [BLANK_AUDIO] that's a kids show and being genuinely scary. And some of the best Who that you're gonna get is the stuff that is scary, Right. [BLANK_AUDIO] not campy kid stuff that is meant to be cute and funny that would make a four year old giggle. But no one else is gonna like cringe maybe. Yeah, I think they do. There was too much cringing for me to enjoy that. It's like there were moments, and I actually think that the two lead actors, actor and actress, I think they've got chemistry, to be honest. I actually enjoyed, they do, I think they do. [BLANK_AUDIO] So I think that they've chosen well. I have high hopes for both of them as how they act this season. Yeah. I just freaked out, cuz I'm like, I really hope that RTD brings his game for this season in terms of the writing, because that was not a strong start at all. That was not good. [BLANK_AUDIO] So my son, my oldest son who loves all of the Modern Who, Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] he's watched almost every episode of Modern Who since 2005. Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] There were a few minutes left in the episode, he got up and walked out of the room. He hated it. He didn't even watch the end. [LAUGH] He hated it. Yeah. He said, no, I can't do it. [BLANK_AUDIO] I just can't, I'm sorry, I'm done. I'm out. [BLANK_AUDIO] Some things that I do like about it and the potential for the future season is while I don't think they nailed it or knocked it out of the park Yeah. in that particular episode, I like the idea of the premise that we're going to start dabbling into some fantasy, so to speak, and some supernatural because that's something that, like, I mean, [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah. I don't, what I'm about to say is going to sound like a really weird, stupid statement, but like Doctor Who always tried to kind of ground itself in sci-fi reality. [BLANK_AUDIO] It wasn't-- there were monsters and there were bad guys, but there were aliens Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] and there was science or pseudoscience behind it all. , It wasn't just pure supernatural, magical fantasy type stuff. So I'm interested in-- because I think that opens a lot of new doorways and for a lot of fresh stories and bad guys that we haven't really seen before in Doctor Who, and I am very excited about that potential. I don't really like that-- while I really enjoyed the specials that's with David Tennant and Catherine Tate, I don't really like that this Mavity thing is sticking around, it seems like. just silly. Honestly, But I think that, you know, that's RTD doing RTD. He wanted to plant a seed that he can run with throughout the season, I guess, when so we'll see how that plays out, but I don't know. Every time I hear "Mavity," I just like-- I kind of cringe a little. No, they look pretty exciting. I saw the trailers for this upcoming season, they didn't look that bad. They looked like, that's not so bad. They look good to me, so we'll see. Mm-hmm. And I'm really, really, really hoping that the Christmas special was just rushed. Mm-hmm. And they didn't, yeah, they just rushed it and it was undercooked. I don't know. But I wanna circle back to the whole, the three David Tennant specials. Cuz I've gotta admit, I thoroughly enjoyed all of them. Mm-hmm. The first one was, I thought, had its moments where it was a little bit sluggish. That was by far my favorite of the three. But there was so much good, I guess I was just so excited to see David Tennant and Catherine Tate back again. I was like, the second episode was absolutely fantastic on the edge of. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah, that was so good. It was good classic who, it was, I just thoroughly enjoyed that. Mm-hmm. It was just nothing but an hour of sheer delight of David Tennant And then the third episode. [BLANK_AUDIO] and Catherine Tate just doing what they do best I know. [BLANK_AUDIO] and knocking it out of the park, man. Yeah, that was so good. It was funny, it was creepy, it was-- yeah. It was so good. It was classic who and I loved it. And then. [BLANK_AUDIO] It was creepy, yeah. But then the third episode, I also, Mm-hmm. Neil Patrick Harris. I'd probably say it was my second favorite episode, was the third one. And as much as the actor's name, I'm feeling bad I didn't take notes on this. You'll say his name and I'll know who you mean, because he was the guy from Modern Family. Thank you, Neil Patrick Harris. Yeah. He, I mean, he, the thing that I loved about his performance Mm-hmm. as the Celestial Toymaker was that he threw absolutely everything into it. Yeah. He did. Like he did not hold back a single bit. And I love it when actors do that and they can pull it off. And he pulled it off, even though there were moments there when he was like [laughs] running around through unit HQ and to Spice Girls, which was just. [LAUGH] It was a bit much, but honestly, I still thought it was. Almost as shocking as when we heard Britney Spears in "The End of the World." [BLANK_AUDIO] [laughs] They played it on the iPod jukebox. Yeah, that one. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, this is classic Earthrealm music from whatever. It was like Toxic by Britney Spears. [laughs] Yeah, but yeah, but like watching him like running around to that and Mm-hmm. choreographed and everything, it was so ridiculous. Mm-hmm. But even though it was so ridiculous, somehow he still pulled it off in a way Mm-hmm. that was, it was both funny and almost a bit scary. It's, it's, yeah, so honestly I have, I have very few complaints about that, that episode, but I just preferred the second one better. But at the end of it all, the thing, Yeah. the overwhelming feeling I had was, why did they only make three? Yeah. [LAUGH] Please, I could have done with some more. Yes, they could have and should have. They could have done a whole season of that as far as I'm concerned. Tennant's not even my favorite doctor. [BLANK_AUDIO] He's probably like, I don't know, my second or third favorite doctor, but I just-- I really enjoyed him in these specials, man. Yeah, yeah. Which I was honestly surprised by, [BLANK_AUDIO] because there wasn't ever a point when I dreaded him coming back in these specials when they dropped that surprise bomb on us, which I was completely surprised by. Mm. I was completely out of the spoiler loops. I didn't see that coming at all. But near the end of his original run, [BLANK_AUDIO] I was really kind of ready for him to go and kind of ready to move on, because I just felt like it was getting to be way too heavy and way too David Tennant-centric, for lack of a better word. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] You know, it was too doctor-centric. You know, his last handful of episodes, he had no regular companions, and some of those stories weren't the greatest, Yeah, that was good. although "The Waters of Mars" was fantastic. Yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah. But once these things got started, I just-- I don't know. In a lot of ways, he was still Tenn, Mm. [BLANK_AUDIO] but in a lot of ways, he was something else, too. And I really enjoyed the "something else" that he brought to it. And I enjoyed, you know, Donna once she'd gotten all her memories back Mm. and she was fully realized again and the way that character had evolved and grown. And I just-- I don't-- I've got mixed feelings on the whole. There's two Doctors out there floating around now, but I honestly wouldn't complain about a second parallel series [BLANK_AUDIO] about the Doctor and Donna's adventures. [LAUGH] [silence] Exactly. So, this is the thing that, you know, I mean, I understand that, and Shudi Gatwa, I think. I don't think it's wrong, and maybe it's just the nostalgia, but that's all there is to it. So, I'm gonna mangle this, the new doctor's name. Was it Naka, Nakani, Kut, Kut, Shudi, Shudi Gatwa, there we go. Yeah. I mean, he's young, he's bringing a lot of energy. [silence] He reminds me a little bit of Matt Smith in the sort of level of energy, [silence] the kind of youthful sort of energy he's bringing to the role. Which is, don't get me wrong, I think that that is a good thing. Whether or not he can pull it off or not, I'm still not sold, but [silence] I will be watching to find out. Right. But it's like, it's not that, because you can't just keep going back to Tenet over and over and over again. You can't bring back all the old favorites all the time, nor should you. I think Doctor Who's made its success and its longevity is based on the fact that they don't do that. No. They only bring them together for specials, and maybe that's fine. Mm-hmm. But there was just something about, like, the second and third episodes of that brief three that really, [silence] I actually was mourning the fact that that was the Who that I loved the most. Yeah. You know, like, so from 2005, so the first one, Christopher Eccleston, yes. [silence] Eccleston? Yeah. Yeah. He was amazing. David Tenet was amazing. Matt Smith was amazing. He was. Took me a while to get the hang of Matt Smith, but once I got the hang of him, I loved him. [silence] And then after that, yeah, he's a lot of people's favorites. He's probably honestly my favorite Doctor. [laughs] A lot of people's favorite, I think. Yeah. And then things got a little bit too heavy too quickly. [silence] They wanted to break the mold and shake it up a bit for that very first season of Peter Capaldi. Cabaldi. And that turned a lot of people off. They softened him up after that. [silence] However, they did introduce Missy, which was fantastic. They did, and Missy's awesome, but still. [silence] That's the thing. And then I felt so frustrated with Jodie Whittaker because the material that they gave her and Shibnall really did, really squandered. They squandered. Yeah. Yeah, she did. I think she was a little bit of a stick so bad, Yeah. because honestly, I think that given better writings and production, Yeah. I think that she probably could have displaced Matt Smith for me as my favorite Doctor. Yeah. The energy that she brought to what she had to work with Hmm. Yeah. was pretty fantastic, considering what she had to work with was poo-poo. [laughs] You know? So, I sort of, so having been through the Capaldi roller coaster and then the Jodie Whittaker sort of almost like a stalemate really, [silence] They wasted her so bad. and it was like her acting talent and what she brought to the role was really undercut by poor writing and just nonsensical stuff. They wasted her talent so much. I'm really frustrated with that because she could have done so much more with it. [silence] But irrespective, it's done now. So, we now move forward and having that brief taste of Tenet for a few episodes just made me realize how much we've lost in Doctor Who over the last six or seven years, maybe 10 years. Yeah. It's like that, that is what I found myself as I was watching those episodes. [silence] I'm like, "Why can't they make more?" And it's like, "Yeah, but they can't just keep going back doing the same thing." You know what? But it's like, "Yeah, but they used to do it so much better than they have." So, what's going on? Hmm. You know what I'd like to see happen more than anything? Yep. I don't know. Maybe it's possibly already in the works. I don't know. Like I said, I don't pay attention to any of the blogs anymore. I only listen to the Doctor Who podcast when they're doing recaps when the show is running. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I listen to that too. Matt Smith was undoubtedly my favorite Doctor, but my favorite era was the Tenet era. Because you had this RTD show running and writing some episodes, and you had people like Stephen Moffat and a handful of other really fantastic writers writing episodes. I'd really like to see Stephen Moffat come back as a writer. Yeah, so would I. Yeah. He wasn't the greatest showrunner in my opinion, Yeah. but I really love... I've always loved a good Moffat-written episode. [silence] Well, I mean, he was behind the Weeping Angels, you know, like Blink. Mm-hmm. And he's. Mm. Well, and all the way back to even Season 1, you know, the Unearthly Child and the Doctor dances and stuff. Yeah. That's true. And I think... Yeah. Silence in the library. I may be wrong about this, but I think that the library episode, I think, was him. You know, when we get introduced to River Song? Yeah. Yeah. And it just... Yeah, or Riverstone was his, his, yeah. So, so many great episodes came from his mind. Mm. And now that they're dabbling into the fantasy and the magical and that type of element, he's got a whole fresh new palette he could work with. [laughs] Yeah, well, potentially. I guess we'll see. [silence] But in any case, at the moment, that was all I really wanted to talk about. I, I am, I'm nervous about the new season, but I am still looking forward to it. I do, I want to give, I want to give it the benefit of the doubt and see if they can turn this around. So, they've got, they've got good chemistry. He's bringing a lot of youthful energy to the role, which is great. Mm-hmm. And honestly, I'm, I'm curious to see where it goes. [silence] I just hope that the RTD and his writing, and as a showrunner, does a better job than the last bloke. Yeah. It's hard, hard to do worse. Anyway. All right, so. Yeah. I really honestly... It is.