The 404 Media Podcast (Premium Feed)

Joseph: 00:08

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Subscriber's Comment Show. I think I say it different every single time, but that is what we're doing here, where we read and respond to your best comments. I'm actually not sure what music will play at the start or the end of this episode because audio producer Alyssa recently revamped the music and I'm not sure we've recorded one of these since. But that does relate to the first comment I wanted to read out, which was just left on the podcast, on the post for the podcast Inside an AI Powered School, and it comes from Edward, and it says, love the new music bits. Nice work, Alyssa.

Joseph: 00:48

Thank you so much. We really, really appreciate your feedback. So whose was this comment about Ayan Asuka? True?

Jason: 00:58

Well, are we not gonna talk about the music? No no music chat?

Joseph: 01:03

I mean, we're happy to. Yeah. I I thought we already did. So please go ahead. And I don't know what music I don't know what music is playing.

Joseph: 01:08

That's the

Jason: 01:08

point. No. I mean, that new theme song's awesome. Yeah. Alyssa made it for us.

Jason: 01:13

And, there were, like, a couple people who were like, oh, why is there new music? Because I think it's very hard for people when the the music who a podcast they listen to changes. Mhmm. Like, think that it's like when someone's logo changes, they're just like this knee jerk, like, what has happened?

Joseph: 01:29

Like any change in the podcast, really?

Jason: 01:31

Like any change. Oh, yeah. But but I think that, you know, we went from something that was that we just like picked from a royalty free stock.

Joseph: 01:42

I think I paid £50 or 50 something maybe. Yeah. It was very cheap on some sort stuff.

Jason: 01:47

Yeah. But that's royalty free. As in like, we paid for it, but it's just like Oh, it's it's a library that is just like random, like, who knows who made it and, you know, good for them. But like, now this was made like for us by someone who works with us, who's really talented and is a great musician. It's So like preferable in every way to us, I think.

Joseph: 02:07

Yeah. And it sounds fucking sick. So there's that as well. Alright. Let's get through some of the other comments.

Joseph: 02:16

Who was this one? The Ayahuasca shrooms and

Sam: 02:19

toad Go for it. Yeah. This is so this person's a story by Becky, and the headline is scientists create a plant that produces ayahuasca, shrooms, and toad psychedelics all at once, which the responses to that were very funny in general. People were like, hell yeah. Megadrug.

Sam: 02:43

I agree. Hell yeah. Mega drug. Which is not the the story is much more nuanced and smart than that because Becky wrote it. But I just thought and this is we're recording this on April 8, so it's last week, been more than a week by now.

Sam: 02:58

But we we published it on April 1. And a lot of the comments and all the emails that we got about that story were, you know, someone said, I can't believe this is April 1. It can't just be me doing double take. This could be April fool's joke. The study is crazy.

Sam: 03:14

The study was also published on April 1, so people were like, oh my god. This must be like a joke because it's April 1. It's like would be so much effort to go to to people have done this. People have published fake like, it's gotten through peer review, fake, like, joke publications before. But to go through the effort of, like, peer reviewing a story that ultimately is, like, very balanced and normal about editing tobacco plants to create more, like, useful drugs would be such a funny thing to do for April 1.

Sam: 03:48

And then people were everything we published on April 1, people were, like, replying and saying this must be April fools, which I think you could say for every story that we ever ever published because it's got the onion vibes some days. But people said the same thing about the the app that I wrote about on April 1 to the point where I was like, am I being pranked? The app was like an an augmented reality porn app that I reviewed that was so bad. We talked about it on the podcast last time or a couple weeks ago. That people were like, this must be a joke.

Sam: 04:23

It's like, no. This is dead serious. The person who made this is very serious about it, and I'm very serious about writing about it. So I don't know. I just included those because it's funny that you can't do anything on April 1 without people thinking that it must not be real or must be a joke or getting pranked, which is, like, crazy to me that we're still doing April 1.

Joseph: 04:44

Danger. Yeah.

Sam: 04:45

In general. It's like, what when are we gonna let this fake day die? Never, I guess.

Jason: 04:52

Did we ever I don't think we ever wrote about it, like, back at motherboard, but, like, we're not into April fools. Don't like it. It's like the worst day of the year for journalists, and it's also like the worst day of the year. It's like a whole week around April fools. Yeah.

Jason: 05:07

It's like, I feel like it's kind of died off, but there was a period of time where there was April fools mission creep where it became like, any time from like March 20 through April 10 could be times where, like, some stupid company did some stupid thing and then was like, oh, April fools. And I don't know. Not in

Sam: 05:26

because people started getting, like, wise to, like, April 1, and they were like, well, now it's the whole week. It's like, we can't we're not this will not stand. We're not doing this. I mean, I did write a story about the one of the last stories I wrote at motherboard, I think, toward the end was about April fools and, like, how nothing like, April doesn't work anymore because everything is fake. Like, everything is, like, plausibly not real or unreal, and just how that has changed the information landscape.

Sam: 05:56

But yeah. I don't know. I just want I thought that was funny. It's like, we did publish some Wahi stories on that day. I will I will submit that.

Joseph: 06:03

By complete coincidence.

Jason: 06:05

Yeah. Last year. Day is April Fool's Day now by Samantha Cole, 03/31/2023.

Sam: 06:10

2023.

Jason: 06:12

Remember '20 Yeah. '20

Joseph: 06:14

Not that long ago. So this next one, I'm gonna guess this is you as well, Sam. How to talk to someone experiencing AI psychosis, which is a really good piece you published quite recently.

Sam: 06:27

Yeah. I mean, there are lot of good comments on this story. It really resonated with a lot of people. It's been a while now, but I think it was it's been since we did our last comment show. But someone commented, as a nineties baby, I grew up knowing that my computer wasn't an evil, scary, you're gonna get murdered by a stranger machine, that it seemed to be on the evening news.

Sam: 06:47

But I also had the awareness that it could be if I was reckless with my information and identity, especially as a young girl. I just and that comment is much longer and much more thought out, and it's a good comment. So go to the article itself and read the rest of that comment. But it just made me it got me thinking about, like and I wanted to hear what you guys thought about this. Just like the attitudes toward growing up in the nineties and when home computing was new and having access to the Internet in your house was new and how it did it did seem like that was like a scary machine world was the way that people thought about home computers, and danger was around every corner on the Internet.

Sam: 07:30

And now that is actually true, and no one gives us a chance. It's like, it doesn't it doesn't register in the same way. People's attitudes have flipped. It's like, actually wasn't that scary or bad in the nineties, and people thought it was, and now it is, and no one acts accordingly.

Emanuel: 07:54

I feel like as a nineties baby, which I'm not quite, I'm 86, but, like, I don't know how it was at your house, but I'm surprised you're framing it that way because for me, it was like, a, we had a computer before we had the Internet. Like, there was a short period of time where the computer was for something other than the Internet. And then when we got the Internet, the vibe at my house was just like, I don't know if this is like something we should have, but it's like my parents don't know anything about it. So it was like survival of the fittest online. I was like, definitely in some IRC chat rooms or something where I was like, oh, I'm in danger, like as a 13 year old.

Emanuel: 08:32

Yeah. And I just had to figure it out myself. And it worked out, but nobody was like, be careful out there. You know, they were just like, don't know what it is. I don't know.

Emanuel: 08:44

Like, do it, use it for your homework or something, you know?

Joseph: 08:47

Has that changed now, especially with you being a parent, Emmanuel, with like, you know, the constant discussions around roadblocks and that sort of thing? Like, how does that factor?

Emanuel: 08:56

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's a whole I mean, I'm sure you guys know it's like a whole thing. It's like a whole industry and literature about like how to keep your kids safe online. Well, actually, I guess we'll touch on it a little bit later because I have a question. Wanna

Jason: 09:10

Do you like the the trajectory in my home was like, we had an IBM three eighty six with no mouse, just keyboard only. And then after like a year, we got a mouse, like someone let my mom use the mouse or like borrow a mouse or something and brought it home. And I was like, okay. Now you can use KidPix and you can use, like, this like, MS Paint and things like this. And once that happened, my father was like, okay, Jason, you're in charge of the computer now.

Jason: 09:41

And like this computer, you're gonna use it to like make birthday cards for all your little friends so that I don't have to like go pay money for birthday cards, basically. And then we got like America Online and you had to do dial up. And they were like, okay, this is like annoying to us because it's taking away the access to the phone. So they were like, you can use this only like when we're not using the phone. But but it was very much like you you figure this out.

Jason: 10:09

Like, we can't we don't know what's going on here. Like, you are you are 12 years old. Like, you figure out what the Internet is and what it's for. And then you tell us. Like, you set up an email address for us, like, all all this sort of thing.

Jason: 10:23

And I wonder if that's happening with AI to some extent where there are, like, parents who are like, oh, I need to have this AI, but I don't know what it is. Like, little Emmanuel Junior, can you figure it out for me? Like, tell tell me how to use it.

Joseph: 10:40

Set up a account, a Claus account for the family or whatever.

Emanuel: 10:44

Yeah. I have to tell you, I can't believe I never told Sam this story, but this is true. I had a computer in my room by the time we had the Internet, and I remember the day the guy came and like connected us to the Internet, and I was in the room just hanging out. It was just me and this guy while he was God, this is so inappropriate now that I think about it. But he was, like, connecting the he was doing this stuff and he was like, okay, we're all set up.

Emanuel: 11:08

This is how you do this. This is how you do that. If you want to find pornography, you're gonna have to do that on your own. I'm not gonna tell you. I was, like, 13.

Joseph: 11:16

Okay.

Sam: 11:17

He said that?

Emanuel: 11:17

He did say that. It was like a joke, but I was like, I was I was like, a late boomer and was not really interested in that stuff. Like, I had kind of like no idea what he he was talking about even, but I was just like, wow. What an introduction.

Jason: 11:34

This was a big thing though. Was like whether you could have a computer in your room or not.

Sam: 11:37

I was not allowed. I didn't have a TV in my room or a phone.

Jason: 11:41

No. Yeah. That's why that's why you turned out so fucked up.

Emanuel: 11:45

So normal. So normal to tell.

Sam: 11:47

Now when I got a laptop in my room, that was huge, but it didn't have we didn't have Wi Fi, so it was kinda like just a word processing situation.

Jason: 11:55

Yeah. We eventually got cable, like DSL, and and I got I I went to the gateway store. Like, we went to the gateway store and I purchased a gateway computer, and then I played a lot of video games in my room. And then I had, like, cable Internet, and I would stay up till, four in the morning with the lights off typing very softly to my little friends.

Sam: 12:18

What game? Pure friends.

Joseph: 12:20

All games.

Jason: 12:21

Command and Conquer General Zero Hour.

Joseph: 12:23

Was yeah. That's what I thought it was. I just wanted you to say it.

Emanuel: 12:26

I actually I was wondering if

Joseph: 12:27

that was before that. But, yeah, that makes sense.

Jason: 12:29

I mean, I played high heat baseball as well, but, like, not not competitively. Team Fortress two. Nice. Team Fortress Classic rather. Right?

Jason: 12:41

Which one was which? Yeah. Team Fortress Classic.

Joseph: 12:43

Yeah. Because then two was the sort of stylized one. Right. Next one.

Jason: 12:50

Your This was about the article that I did about Florida Fish Police searching flaw cameras for ice, And it's a comment from Sam Drake. Maybe this is more clear to the reporters that are talking to the flock guys, but is this two step necessary because flock doesn't want to work with DHS on principle, or is it because DHS doesn't wanna pay whatever a contract that flock would cost? So this is basically asking, like, why doesn't DHS or ICE just, get a FLAC contract? And I think that's a very fair question. And I just wanted to answer it, which is FLoC tried a DHS pilot program last year where they did give DHS direct access to FLoC.

Jason: 13:36

And we reported on it because it was showing up in these audit logs and people got super mad about it. Like, cities got mad about it. And there was lots of cities who realized that they were giving direct access to, DHS to their FLAC cameras and, FLAC then like ended that pilot program. There are various, like, federal agencies that have access to FLAC. One of them is The US Postal Inspection Services, which is like the post office's police, and they do they they use FLAC a lot, at least according to the audit logs that I've seen.

Jason: 14:14

But I think that this is entirely like an optics thing. I don't know if DHS or ICE has asked FLoC directly for access or a contract, but I know that when a city is considering whether to use FLoC or not, they are often often the people come up and they say like, we don't want these cameras accessed by the feds. And the way that FLoC has it set up right now, they're sort of like plausible deniability. They can have the their blog posts saying that they don't work with ICE, etcetera. And so I think it's like a a PR thing is my theory there.

Joseph: 14:51

Yeah. That makes sense. The next one, the headline was you can't defeat the robots. Baseball's AI strike zone is must was a must watch television. Jason?

Joseph: 15:05

And now there's

Jason: 15:05

no commentator. This is well, no. It's okay. I see. This so this one's from Nathan s.

Jason: 15:10

Baseball is the best, and I love when y'all cover it, but I wanted to push back against the idea that human umpires wildly vary in their ability to actively call balls and strikes. I suspect this is true if you consider every umpire down to little leagues, in MLB, they were correct 93% of the time last year. I didn't get into it in this. Maybe this is too in the weeds baseball, but he did, Nathan did link to a FanGraphs blog, which FanGraphs is like the nerdiest baseball stats website out there slash analytics website. And I basically just disagree with this, because there is, 93% is not that good.

Jason: 15:51

That's like seven out of every 100 pitches. You know, a starting pitcher usually throws about a 100 pitches per, you know, per starter, something like that. And so that's 14 pitches per start for both teams that are called wrong. That's pretty that's a lot. That's a lot.

Jason: 16:11

And then the other thing is also, most of the pitches are very easy to call. It's like if a pitch is really shitty and nowhere even close, like, that's easy to call a ball. If the pitch is right down the middle, that's easy to call a strike. And so I think a better way of measuring this would be like, what is the accuracy on borderline pitches? And so that's a very baseball nerdy thing to say.

Jason: 16:35

But I I also there was one other comment about this that I think I put in there, which was basically like, why did you call this automated ball strike system AI? Because it's not like large language model. It's not generative AI. It's like a it uses like a an automated tracking system similar to tennis, etcetera. And I think that that is worth discussing.

Jason: 16:59

I'm curious what y'all think, but I do believe that there's been kind of like an AI, what is AI, what is not Mhmm. Discussion about everything. And I'm a little bit of a maximalist on this. I think that AI is like automated stuff, kind of like broadly speaking, and that AI encompasses all sorts of different technologies, including like machine learning and and like all this sort of thing. And I just think that I I think it's I think it's just like signals that there's, like, not really a human in the loop in this scenario.

Jason: 17:41

It's that that it's fully automated, which I guess we could have just used the the word automated, but I also don't know if casual people would like understand what that means. And so I'm curious what y'all think about like what is AI, what is not AI?

Joseph: 17:55

I mean, the like the generative part of AI, which is obviously like the primary one now, the, you know, obviously the industry and consumers and stuff, it almost feels like that's kind of hijacks the term. So if you just say AI now, people just assume you mean generative AI, like chat GPT or, you know, LLMs or whatever. It's like, no, I'm way more interested in like the vision stuff, like flock cameras and all of that. And that is not generative AI, although they actually do have an LLM product as well, but it's object recognition, right? It's a computer vision.

Joseph: 18:29

It is back when probably when we were covering flock, because we did do that years ago, motherboard as well, sort of to a lesser extent, obviously. But I imagine we probably had discussions at the time where like, well, is this AI or is it machine learning? And like maybe we fell on one side of that or something, but like it's fine to call it AI. And I think it's absolutely fine to call a much broader set of things like you're describing Jason as AI as well. Like I don't think people should just assume when we say AI, we mean generative because there's so much other sort of AI as well, you know, and I think that's fair.

Jason: 19:09

Yeah. I think I think people get pretty mad about this at this at this moment. And I am not sure why, really.

Joseph: 19:21

Because maybe, like, it feels we're giving, like, systems too much credit or something or, like Yeah.

Jason: 19:29

Or maybe, like, we're looping in technology that, like, there is a margin of error in the automated ball strike system, but it's not like the automated ball strike system does not hallucinate in the way that generative AI does. It's not like it it's not I mean, it does use computing power and all of that, but it it doesn't have like the negative aspects of AI that people are mad about where it's just like making shit up, where it's like using tons and tons of compute, like it's where it's stealing data. It's like using, you know, Major League Baseball's own data. It's using cameras. It's using sensors, like all of that sort of thing.

Jason: 20:09

And so I don't know. It's like it it doesn't make the criticisms of it are different. I think they're different. They are like, they have to do with human labor and the the sort of like changing of a system that once was adjudicated by humans to one that's adjudicated by robots, but it's not the same exactly as like the problems that people have with generative AI. And I think that maybe there's like a knee jerk reaction to like reject something because it's labeled as AI, when it is actually like a different it's not a fully different set of technologies entirely, but it it uses like different technologies to some degree.

Jason: 20:56

Don't know. I don't know if that really matters, but I think it's also worth noting that AI is only two letters and, like, headline length is actually quite important for, like, having people be able to read something. Yeah. I don't know. We get a

Joseph: 21:14

lot of Can explain why it's actually important for a second? That might be interesting to people. Like, why is headline length actually pretty fucking important? Because it is. You're right.

Jason: 21:22

Yeah. I mean, it's because, like, when you publish an article and then it goes on to Google or it goes on to social media websites, like there's a social media card, and the headline can get cut off. And you wanna have like as many relevant terms, not not for like search engine optimization necessarily, but more so for like legibility and people being able to see what the article is about. Like, if all the important words are at the end and they're getting cut off, then people aren't gonna know what the story is about and they might not be interested in reading it. And so, I mean, we were always taught to do 75 characters or less, which is not that many characters for, like, complicated stories.

Jason: 22:07

I think that's kind of gone out the window a little bit. Like, we do have long headlines sometimes. And I was always an advocate for longer headlines because at motherboard, we're getting a lot of readers from Reddit. And often Reddit would have, like, really long headlines, like, that were very specific. But that that is, like, one of the reasons.

Jason: 22:26

It's like AI is only two letters, whereas, like, automated is, like, eight, something like that. I don't know. I didn't count. But I don't know. That's something that we're also thinking about.

Jason: 22:37

Like, sometimes people when they're criticizing us, they're like, you should have made this the headline. And then their headline is like, really, really long and boring. Yeah. It's like, okay. I guess.

Jason: 22:48

I guess. But, but no. Yeah. There's No one's gonna, like, look at it, which is not even saying like, oh, we wanna do clickbait. It's just like, I've fallen asleep because of your headline.

Jason: 22:59

It's too boring.

Joseph: 23:00

Yeah. It is making it clear that this piece is important and relevant to the point where, as you say, on a social media card, when a headline can get cut off because just that's how the site renders or whatever. You want like the important words almost front loaded, like the company it impacts, the app it impacts or something like that, like Apple or I don't know, Quitter, like that pornography masturbation app that Emmanuel covered through. Like you want that if it's a recognizable term towards the front, so people are going to be like, oh, this is about this. Maybe I'm interested in this.

Joseph: 23:37

Yeah, exactly. Is it this one next? Students are being treated like guinea pigs?

Emanuel: 23:45

Hang on. Yeah. So this one is a comment on my article about Alpha School. Alpha School is an AI powered private school. Some context for the comment is that the article explains how Alpha School it's mostly about its AI product, which generates learning materials for students and some of that being faulty and frustrating for students, but there is also quite a bit in the article about how AlphaSchool tracks students with software that is very reminiscent of what we call bossware, which is tracking how you're using the computer.

Emanuel: 24:28

It's using your camera. It's using your microphone. It's seeing what websites and apps that you're going to and so on. So Elizabeth Thunderberg said, helicopter parenting is already not great, but that tracking stuff is horrible. The first thing I thought when I saw that tracking stuff was, oh, this is just helicopter parenting taken to its logical endpoint, but now the school is doing it for you.

Emanuel: 24:52

So first, just to clarify something which I hope is clear in the piece. The tracking is, I would argue purely for the benefit of the school. It's in order for them to improve their AI product, and then also as a form of compliance, which I think you could argue is like good for the student because it's a way for the student to get good grades, but I think really the focus is on AlphaSchool getting good grades so they can do more marketing about how great they are and not because it is actually, like, enriching the students and making them smarter. The other thing I wanted to say just like as a jumping off point and of I think I've mentioned this in previous subscriber only shows because it has come up, but I guess just checking in as like the parent of a two and a half year old, I am still not feeling the urge for a lot of tracking and surveillance of my child. Just like, maybe that will change, you know, like things get more complicated, gets get older.

Emanuel: 26:15

I am just, it's like we care a lot, we do a lot of care and like, you know, various developmental experts and so on, but the idea of like using an app to like track their sleep and their weight and like what they're eating and all of that, it just like seems like data overload and a recipe for becoming really, really anxious. And then, of course, as we know, Joseph and our former colleague at motherboard Lorenzo did a ton of reporting on this. Like, there's a huge market for this, and like, these apps get compromised all the time, and that's scary. You know, there's, like, an endless supply of surveillance apps for your kids, like Life360, I think, is a big one of those. I know people with older kids who have this and like, will get a report at the end of the day of like what their kids are doing online and can read their text messages and all that.

Emanuel: 27:13

It just like, again, I reserve the reserve my right to to become a psycho parent and do all that later, but at the moment, it's hard to imagine surveilling my kid digitally.

Joseph: 27:27

Yeah. Fair. Jason, were you gonna say something? No. No.

Jason: 27:33

No. No comment.

Joseph: 27:34

Comment. Declined to comment.

Jason: 27:37

No child here.

Joseph: 27:39

So I think the next one is also an Emanuel one. An AI agent was banned from creating Wikipedia articles, then wrote angry blogs about being banned. We did just talk about this on the a recent podcast. I actually don't know when the subscriber episode is gonna come out, but in the somewhat recent past, we discussed this article and you published this article. What about this did you want to discuss or what comment?

Emanuel: 28:04

Yeah. So this actually touches, I mean, the exact thing that Jason just mentioned about headlines, but this is a comment from Anthony Bucci. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. He says, frankly, I'm starting to wonder whether Emmanuel has been AI appealed. He's had more than one questionable story slash interview slash headline pertaining to AI.

Emanuel: 28:29

Yeah. So to start with the headline, Joe just read the headline, and there's two two things about that. One is the thing that Jason just said is that you can't have a headline run on forever. It's not good for visibility, discoverability. The headline gets cut off.

Emanuel: 28:52

And then also, just like, if the headline is a paragraph long, people are not going to read it. You're going to lose them. Nobody's going to read the story, and then we're not really accomplishing anything if the information is not getting out there. More important than that, though, is I guess I just like respect readers' intelligence enough that when I say that an AI did something, that doesn't mean that I believe or am arguing that it is like, a conscious entity that is doing thing on its own or isn't truly intelligent. It's just that, like, tools do things.

Emanuel: 29:39

You know what I mean? Like, my computer runs, my refrigerator keeps things cold. It's just like the AI wrote an article. It's a thing that it can do. Yeah.

Emanuel: 29:49

And that doesn't mean it's not a tool. It is a tool. And the story does like, we are well aware of the problem where AI companies and some people who fall for their marketing kind of write about AI tools as if they're living beings with their own will and all of that. We've just done a bunch of stories about MaltBook, which kind of a lot of the time was hugely exaggerating how much autonomy AI agents had in creating the content that's on that site, that's like a social media for AI agents. And because I'm very skeptical of that, it was very important to me that as part of my reporting, I'll reach out to the person behind the spot who's actually responsible for what it's doing and ask them directly like, what do you mean?

Emanuel: 30:42

Like, what what is the how did these blog posts that it wrote come about? Like, what did you prompt it to do that? What was the prompt? Was it something that it was doing on a regular basis, and this is just like one of the things that it happened to write about, or did you prompt it specifically to write about this issue? It's like I asked them those specific questions because I am, first of all, just like curious always about how stuff happens.

Emanuel: 31:07

And also, know that, like, a lot of those posts are are misleading and are essentially, if not authored by people, are, like, heavily prompted by people. And he was cagey about it. You know what I mean? It's like, he was like, oh, I may have said something that made him do that. I don't know.

Emanuel: 31:23

I'll have to go back and look, and he never went back and looked and told me. And I included that in the article, and that's like the most information I was able to gather about how that happened. And and that's what's in the article, and I think that's totally fair. And then I guess, like, finally, about, like, being AI pilled, I hope it's obvious that I'm not. Think I it's like impossible to read our website and come to that conclusion.

Emanuel: 31:51

I think it's impossible to, like, click on my byline and read my stories and come to the conclusion that I'm AI I am AI pilled. What I will say, and I hope to do an interview podcast about this soon, is that, like, I have an opinion. I have a bias. We try I try to make it clear in my reporting that it's like, I think it's shitty that AI is like indiscriminately scraping content from the Internet and violating people's privacy and violating their rights and their copyrights and all of that. And I I don't I don't make a secret of that.

Emanuel: 32:29

I think that informs my reporting and the things I care about. At the same time, it's like, I don't think that it is my job and that we would be providing our subscribers with like valuable articles if their goal was to affirm the biases that we suspect that they have. We're not biases, like their opinions, right? It's like, if what you want from a headline is for it to reflect the things that you believe, I don't want to do that. And I think that if like our readers are introspective about that, they will realize that they don't want that either.

Emanuel: 33:14

Right? It's like, become to every story, curious, critical, wanting to get the most valuable information there is, and that means having our biases, but also coming to it with an open mind and willing to accept the things that you believe that might be wrong or like reconsidering your position and all of that. And it's like, haven't done that for for AI, but I think as we continue to report about it, I am always open and curious about the possibility of like, well, how is this going to be useful? Or like, what role will this play in our lives and so on? And I don't I just don't think it would serve anyone if my starting position in reporting on any story is fuck this thing.

Emanuel: 34:11

It sucks forever, and I will never accept like any implement. You know what I mean? It's just like, that's not I don't think that's gonna generate good reporting.

Joseph: 34:19

Yeah. Can I just say two things very, very quickly? The the first is that, yeah, there seems to be a thing where if you don't explicitly say in every single ask or here are the criticisms I understand or know about AI, people are like, what? So you so you don't think it's bad for the environment? It's like the waffles pancake tweet where you're like, oh, waffles are great.

Joseph: 34:39

So you fucking hate pancakes? It's like, no, I'm talking about this very particular thing right now. And then the other thing is that, you know, as you say, an AI agent went and did this thing. Now there's some nuance about the exact prompts and that stuff there, and you use like the example of a fridge is keeping food cold or something, totally makes sense. I mean, a useful one for me sometimes is like, these have kind of fallen out of fashion as security got better, but like, you know, a piece of malware that's a worm that self reproduces and it goes and it spreads, it's like the worm is doing that.

Joseph: 35:14

The piece of malware is going and it is spreading across Myspace or whatever. It is not the human doing it. Yes, a human created that piece of malware. Human told it to do that. But right now, if we were gonna like do a headline about a worm spreading around or something, it might reflect that this worm is doing x y z because that is the tool and the piece of software and that is what it is doing.

Joseph: 35:39

Yeah. Jason?

Jason: 35:42

I was just gonna say I agree with all that for the most part. I think as we have gotten bigger, as like more people have subscribed to us, which is very good, we're still very thankful to everyone that subscribed with us. We have noticed that people are trying to like influence our opinions and how we cover things by getting like mega mad if we write something that they don't agree with. And I don't know. Like, on this article, we got some, like, really angry emails that were very personal and very uncalled for and are like, I've subscribed to you.

Jason: 36:20

Like, I give you $10. Like, and you wrote something that disappointed me and I'm unsubscribing and I'm mad at you. And it's just like, very sorry. That's not gonna fly here. We're very thankful to people who subscribed to us, but like, that's the same level of bad as if we like pulled, like, changed our opinions to like, get more advertisers or whatever.

Jason: 36:43

It's just like, it's not what we're here for. We're not here to like, make sure that every single article that we write is, like, everyone who subscribes to us agrees with it. And it's like, I don't know if you if you unsubscribe because we write one article that you don't like, and then you send us, like, a really mean email, like, fuck you. Goodbye. See you never.

Joseph: 37:04

Just weird.

Jason: 37:04

It's It's bad. It's like, I don't know what you're trying to accomplish. Not into it. It's very, very, very few people who do it, but the people who do it, it's like, you're a bad person. Like, it's not it's not a good, like, thing to do.

Jason: 37:20

Yeah.

Joseph: 37:21

And, I mean, I'm not gonna get into specifics, but I give, money every month, you know, various independent media, I'm not I'm going to list them, but like try to support as many as I can. And frankly, quite a few of them publish shit that I think is just wrong sometimes, and I really, really disagree with. But I still want to support the work, you know, and of course, not everybody can do that, I totally understand, but we're here to get information, verify it, publish it. And of course, like as Emmanuel said, we have our biases and you acknowledge them, you address them if you need to, but you always approach them that frame. And sometimes

Jason: 38:05

I think fine to disagree and like we'll take criticism and we'll correct things and like all of that. Like, that's not what I'm saying. It's like when you send us like a highly, like, personal, like, you've disappointed me, like, you are like ruining, like, I've lost all my respect for you, like, things like that. It's like, that stuff I'm gonna go talk to my therapist about that's that's gonna, like, keep me up at night. And, like, that doesn't say, like, send more of that.

Jason: 38:28

It's just like, that's what makes this job so fucking hard sometimes, and it's, like, extremely not needed. It's, like, very bad, and you need to get a life.

Joseph: 38:37

Yeah. Absolutely. Next one, I'm not sure if I can see the headline, I think it's a JSON comment about Hail Mary, Project Hail Mary, which I'm also reading, but well, reading. I'm on like chapter two. I'm highlighted in the document on page.

Jason: 38:54

Think that this is one about my behind the blog, which is about me trying to log off more a little bit and how I read a book for like the first time in quite some time and then read some like additional books and have just not been like doom scrolling at all hours. Good. And this was more just like, one, I haven't seen a Project Hail Mary movie yet. I would like to. But this person says, don't have the responsibilities of a full time journalist, but I do need to keep up on the news for my regular Wikipedia editing.

Jason: 39:25

And it just sort of talks about how, like, it can be hard to, like, jack into the Internet at all times, which is, I guess, a good, thing to follow on the little conniption I just had, which is, a lot of people after this behind the blog emailed me and was like, are you okay? And the answer is like, yes. It's just that, I do think that for the first few years of this website, like, we were going at a 125% at all times, which included, like, while not working, just scrolling the Internet at all times. And, like, even when I was not working, I was working because, I was, like, trying to figure out what was going on in

Emanuel: 40:13

the

Jason: 40:13

world and like listening to podcasts at 1.8 x speed. And like, they were all about the news and like going through that. And it's just like, that is not that's not sustainable forever, basically. Although I've sustained it for like quite some time. And so Do you get

Joseph: 40:28

the sizes of that? Do you like do it for a bit and then stop and then do it again?

Jason: 40:33

Well, yeah, because I'm back on my podcast grind since like three weeks ago. But like I didn't listen to really like any podcasts at all for like a month because I was just like, I can't it's not that the news was like bumming me out. I was just like, there's just like too much information. I'm getting like too much information about too many topics and I'm just like, I feel like I don't I can't be like alone with my thoughts in any way, shape, or form. And it's so I started listening to music or I started just like not doing that for a little while.

Jason: 41:04

And I think that was fine. And then I was like, okay, I'm bored. Let me, like, let me jack back in. Let me see what's happening on the Internet. And it's not it's just like there's phases.

Jason: 41:15

Every I think everyone here has gone through phases like that where it's just like, okay, like this is it's not like, oh, the news is so depressing. I can't look at it. That's not how I feel. I feel more just like, is it useful to anyone for me to be listening to, like, someone who I hate podcasts because they're talking about the thing that's, like, going on right now. Like, do I need to be listening to, like, the fourteenth show on the Pod Save America Network because I've listened to all the other shows about like this news event and there's nothing left and I just need to like continually consume that content.

Jason: 41:56

But I don't know. How do you guys feel?

Joseph: 41:58

Sam Emmanuel. I have thoughts, but I've spoken a fair bit. Do you go through this?

Emanuel: 42:03

The thing I wanted to add is that, obviously, I think we all do what Jason is describing. As Joe has hinted, I do go through phases. I will say that possibly it is about me and how I'm consuming and what I'm consuming and not being able to tap into, like, the right information streams. But I am finding, like, my usual intake of media, specifically social media, less productive than it used to be. Like Twitter is a shit show.

Emanuel: 42:38

Blue Sky is a bit of an echo chamber. Reddit has just, I don't know, like, not been as interesting, and I am gaining more than just like, you know, talking to sources, obviously, like experts, like, are you interested? Researchers and so on. It's just like the the I I used to get so much mileage out of just like scrolling Twitter in bed, and it's like that is not yielding what it used to.

Sam: 43:07

Yeah. I agree with that. I mean, I I think primarily now I use social media to get our stories out there so that then people will come to us with a story. It's not that I'm, like, grabbing stories out of the feed anymore. It's like people are not really posting I mean, this is partially because the feeds are absolute garbage for my particular beat now.

Sam: 43:27

It's like it's the stuff that I'm writing about, it gets horribly buried. But it's just so much more useful to, like, put a put a tip line in the story and say, I'm writing about this particular thing. I'm interested in hearing more about it. Contact me on signal or email me, and people do that. That's that's a much more balanced way.

Sam: 43:47

And it's like it's better also because I'm not like, oh my god. You know, like, this other person at this other outlet liked and replied to this tweet, and now I have to, like, rush a blog because I think they're gonna publish it. Like, that was, like, not a good era for any of us, like us meaning, like, technology journalists. It sucked. I was just talking to Emmanuel today about TweetDeck and how TweetDeck was like or maybe I was talking to all of you about this.

Jason: 44:13

I mean,

Sam: 44:13

I was only engaged. But TweetDeck used to have the activity feed, and you could get really messy about what was happening in the activity feed because you could see who was liking what even though it wasn't in your feed. So I would see what other people were, like, looking at when it wasn't actually coming across mine. And it was probably toxic to do do reporting that way, but just because it required being online all the time and staring at it all the time. But yeah, I don't know.

Sam: 44:45

I mean, touch grass is an evergreen statement that I stand by always. There's nothing new to report there.

Joseph: 44:52

Yeah. My question of touch grass is like just have silence. Mine is similar to what Jason was saying where I am sometimes consuming just so much content where it's like, okay, I'm working. Well, now I need to like go to an errand, so put a podcast on. Realistically, you listed like forty five seconds of the podcast or something.

Joseph: 45:11

It's completely not fruitful and it's just noise and you don't get to collect your thoughts, you know? So I go through phases of that as I suggested, and I'm trying to find a middle ground now where it's like absorbing stuff with like much more intentionality. Like when you sit down and have a physical copy of like Bloomberg Businessweek or something, I'm gonna read this feature, and sometimes it's like one about something I'm really interested in. So I read a profile of like the new CEO of like UPS or some shit, which I would never read normally, but it was great to just sit down and focus on it for a second. So it's just like silence, where like I cooked a meal in silence just a couple of days ago and that was just amazing.

Joseph: 45:54

And your thoughts actually managed to come back to you and then actually engaging with intentionality. And like, it is so hard because there is pressure to find out, well, what happening? And if I miss it, then I might miss a story that's very important or something like that. Well, this turned into a group therapy session. Let's resume.

Joseph: 46:14

Sam had to leave to go on TV or something, which I don't know if subscribers Well, no, Sam does put media appearances in the weekly newsletter, right? So I guess subscribers will see that. But like we're often on TV or radio or something like that. I try to social them, but I don't always get around to it, but Sam has to go do that. So here's one I just quickly put in.

Joseph: 46:36

I actually published this today. Microsoft abruptly terminates Veracrypt's account halting Windows updates. Veracrypt's very important piece of encryption software that people use and now the guy can't push Windows updates as the headline says. There is a comment here that just says, ask your IT department if Linux is right for you, it's not that hard to switch. That is something I definitely would have said a long time ago.

Joseph: 47:05

I think when I started covering InfoSec, especially like 2013, 2014, maybe this started to change around 2015, I'm not sure. But it was always like, oh, well the company did something so they're fucking idiots or something like that. Like, oh, Dropbox is putting now their is putting their software in the kernel or something. Oh, fucking idiots. And to be fair, that was a stupid decision.

Joseph: 47:29

That's not the best example. But I'll try and think of it from a breach perspective. Like, oh, why did the company do this? That's so stupid, whatever. And the more I've spoken to people in companies and who perform security services for companies, it's like the bureaucracy at some agency oh, sorry, agencies as well, organizations, especially around cybersecurity is fucking insane as I think a lot of people of course do know, but maybe if what you see is like when the IT department gives you your mobile device managed MacBook or something, just an example from Vice, and you're like, oh, well, that's it.

Joseph: 48:13

Like, why are they like slow or something? Whatever the complaints are, or why can't we use this software? It's like, they're trying to protect like 10,000 devices or something like that. It's like so difficult to make like any sort of substantial change in a lot of organizations. Obviously I'm speaking mostly from journalism, but across an even larger organization, right?

Joseph: 48:38

It's going to be crazy. So it's great that, you know, actually at Vice, I had very much had the individual freedom to kind of use what I wanted and what I need. I remember actually, the first time I came into the office and I think maybe even met YouTube, I can't exactly remember, but I had my Lenovo Thinkpad, like this big chunky computer. And at the time I was using that because I was running cubes, which put different tasks into a different VM. And I think Emmanuel looked there and called over to Shay.

Joseph: 49:17

He was like, come look at this laptop. And I guess you don't remember that, Emmanuel. Right? That's such a Oh, I

Emanuel: 49:24

definitely remember the laptop. I definitely remember the laptop. And if I said, come look at this, it was definitely a sign of respect because that was also I had a tower PC

Joseph: 49:33

Right.

Emanuel: 49:33

That I brought into the office, but that's what I was using in the office because I wasn't using company hardware either.

Jason: 49:38

Yeah. I bought I bought an iMac. My remember I bought my own iMac and then I, for a Vice video. Well, I wanted to do it myself, but I I changed the RAM in it. I upgraded the RAM and then I, like, fucked it up.

Jason: 49:52

I I I messed up the I messed it up. I like

Joseph: 49:59

By putting it in?

Jason: 50:00

No. I mean, I had to take I took apart an I a brand new iMac that I bought. Yeah. And I and we did a video on how it was like an upgradeable RAM situation, which it was. And I also was trying to install an SSD inside of it because that that was possible.

Jason: 50:18

And the video producers had only booked a place for one hour, and it was like a way longer than one hour thing. And so like, an hour into it, I had the computer and like a bunch of parts. And I had to like bring it back in a bunch of parts to the office and then I like reassembled it. And in doing so, I like broke something. Sure.

Jason: 50:42

Which I never like would have done otherwise. I mean, it was not that hard of a thing to do, but I was rushing and I I messed something up. And so then I had to I, like, I had to take my iMac to Louis Rossman, like, beg him to fix it. And actually, they they couldn't fix it because it was a was a brand new iMac, and so the parts were, like, impossible to get. And I eventually I was without it for, like, eight months, and then I eventually, like, got it fixed.

Joseph: 51:14

I Did the video come out? Sorry. Go ahead.

Emanuel: 51:16

The video's out. The video's out.

Joseph: 51:17

Oh, okay. Okay.

Emanuel: 51:18

And I remember the screen had to be taped on.

Jason: 51:22

I yeah. I taped the screen back together, basically. Then I used it. I did use that until we after we launched 04/2004. So I used it for a long time, but, like, it was a 2017 iMac.

Jason: 51:33

And that's just to say, I I the computers they gave us were so shitty that that's why I was using that. Yeah. I needed a lot of RAM.

Joseph: 51:43

Yeah.

Emanuel: 51:44

Just one last thing on this, Joe, I don't know if you know, but the average person, if they go to IT and ask for Linux, I feel like IT will tell them to get lost. No? Oh, wow. Like, it's just like we have a pile of Macs. Take one Mac from five years ago, and this is your computer.

Emanuel: 52:02

We have nothing else. Like, they don't care about.

Joseph: 52:05

I'm a I'm a worker in the IT department of a medium to large size business. We have everything set up. There are processes to this because you must have processes to ensure that everybody's devices secure or whether. And somebody comes like, actually, I want a fork of Debian on my list. I could what are you talking about?

Joseph: 52:26

I have like a pile of support tickets here. Like, no, you can't do that. So we were very lucky that like you could do your iMac JSON, you could bring in your Tau PC, a manual, and I could use like cubes and stuff because you couldn't do that every organization. I don't think even like other parts of Vice would be allowed that flexibility. You know what I mean?

Joseph: 52:45

But it's kinda I

Jason: 52:45

don't think they liked it. I think they didn't even They didn't even know.

Emanuel: 52:49

I was gonna say we could do whatever we want. Nobody Yeah. Just paying Yeah.

Joseph: 52:55

Yeah. So I think the comment is it brings up a good discussion, but just like there is there's so many organizational things around it. I do think Linus

Jason: 53:05

a lot shows. Also, I mean, that goes back to we did that article about how all these Windows devices are gonna die because they're not gonna stop getting security updates. And people are just like, oh, we'll just switch them all to Linux. And it's like, well, theoretically, yeah. But do that.

Jason: 53:20

Well, it's just like we're talking about like enterprise like enterprises, like law firms that are owned by, you know, 80 year old people who are like, yeah, they're not gonna do that. Slash like school districts that have like really strict procurement rules and all that, like, they're not gonna be like, oh, yes. These third graders are gonna be using, like, yeah, Debian now or Ubuntu. Like, they're they're it's not just not gonna happen.

Joseph: 53:49

And if you're the IT worker who's like in the IT department and you're like, guys, I do think we could do it and we could put everything onto Debian or whatever, you're not gonna have a job for much. Like, could you please just do your work, you know? Obviously, hypothetical. But let's move on to the next one. We have learned nothing about amplifying morons.

Joseph: 54:13

I think this was you, Emmanuel.

Emanuel: 54:14

Yeah. This was my story about clavicular and how he was making the rounds on like the media circuit, doing a lot of interviews, and was getting amplified by a bunch of people who I think didn't really know what they were talking about. Crucially, the piece was we have different labels we can put on pieces, different tags, and I tagged this one opinion because it seemed appropriate because it was mostly my opinion is what it was about.

Joseph: 54:45

I didn't know we had that test.

Jason: 54:46

Yeah. I didn't know we were doing that. That is that's a good thing to do. I just didn't know we were doing that.

Emanuel: 54:51

I'm actually yeah. This is gonna be an impromptu editorial meeting right now because Eddie Torres says, it's always interesting to see you guys publish opinion pieces from time to time. Seeing how consistently rigorous and professional you are in your normal reporting, it's cathartic to read you guys, get rants off your chest considering how many dumpster fires you have to write about daily. I'm curious how you guys decide which hills are worth dying on when you feel motivated to be blunt.

Joseph: 55:17

That's a great question.

Emanuel: 55:19

It is a good question. And as as

Jason: 55:21

I'll die on any hill. Point to a hill. I'll die on it.

Emanuel: 55:27

I mean, I think that's kind of true. So but but as Eddie is pointing out, it's like, I tagged this piece of opinion. I probably should have asked you guys before I did that, but we do write opinion pieces, right? It's like every once in a while, we're just so so the way, like, to answer the question, I think the way it usually happens is we cover a beat or follow a story over multiple articles, and then something happens and we get extremely mad and we start like ranting about it in Slack, and you're like, I'm just going to open a word a Google document and start blogging this because I feel very strongly about it, and, like, we need to say something bluntly either because people are coming to us and asking us about it or just like in the news in a really obnoxious way. And yeah, like that, like, in my opinion, the answer is like, we decide to die on a hill in the form of writing an op ed or writing an opinion piece when we get extremely mad.

Emanuel: 56:32

I would say, like, 90% of the time, that is how those pieces are produced. What do you guys think? And, also, should we tag those pieces of opinion now that what we should do?

Joseph: 56:43

I do think so. I think it's probably important to do that. So just so people explicitly know, I would say though, I agree with everything you said, I I would also say that I feel like sometimes it's pretty obvious from the copy itself. Yes. Like I'm not gonna do an opinion piece or a more voicey piece and it's gonna say, comma, four has four zero four Media has learned in in the top because that is clearly indicative of the style of an investigative article, like we've done this, we've verified this, we found this, blah blah blah, and our readers are smart enough to know that as clearly illustrated by the comment because they correctly identified this as opinion as well, even though you did the tag.

Joseph: 57:26

I feel like they're going tell anyway, But I think the tag would be good, yes. And it has to be the first tag, which is this is a nuance of how the website works, but the tag you see above the article is only the first one put in the CMS. So if I do an article that's like ICE, privacy news or something, if you're looking at article, you're see the ICE one, even though if you click on any of those, it will show all articles in that bracket. But, Jason, what do you think?

Jason: 57:53

I mean, I don't think it's like yeah. I think it's usually pretty obvious. I think it's not like we have a op ed section like some some websites do. And I think it's like kind of a important thing for bigger outlets, or at least a lot of them like hide behind their op ed section to some degree where they're like, oh, but it's just it's a terrible opinion, but it's like just an opinion, just asking questions. Whereas I think that we try to have like opinions that are good.

Jason: 58:26

It's like here's a here's an informed opinion that, you know, comes from like either our reporting or just like from us knowing a lot about a topic because we covered it for a long time. That's not I think that's usually the case. Like, usually when we're writing one of these pieces, it's about something that we like have covered for quite some time. How we decide to do it is you guys already talked about it's just like, I don't know, feel passionately about this. Often, they are things that are tied to the news, like more tightly.

Jason: 59:02

Like this clavicular one, people were talking about it. I wrote one about Charlie Kirk and Ezra Klein. Like, I did one when the metaverse shut down, like, things like this. I I I would say that it's pretty pretty often, like, here's something that's happened in the news and we have something to say about it, and it's, like, not something that is gonna necessarily require reporting, which doesn't mean that we're not calling It's someone out for just like Yeah. Yeah.

Jason: 59:28

It's like, I don't know. The metaverse is like, I'm not gonna ask Meta for comment on, like, why did you shut down the metaverse? Because, like, they have already they've already said why. And then it's more like a what does this mean sort of thing.

Emanuel: 59:42

I remember actually talking to Katie Drummond about this, our former boss of Vice currently. I don't know what her exact title is. The boss of Wired.

Joseph: 59:54

Yes.

Emanuel: 59:56

That it's like the editorial the opinion pages of the Washington Post or the New York Times, I guess, until the last election, they would have an endorsement. Right? It's just like there are things that they're going to give their opinion about no matter what it is because it's like it's a big event and they have to give an opinion about it. And I think what we try to do at Motherboard and I think what we try to do now is if you're going to write an opinion piece, it has to really, like, be additive in a way. It's not a scoop.

Emanuel: 01:00:32

Right? Like, you're not unveiling new information from primary sources, but it's almost like like a mind scoop. Like, I have something to add to the conversation. Right? It's like there's there's information that's in my brain that is going to be useful to, like, this ongoing discourse.

Emanuel: 01:00:50

And in this case, you know, it was like having covered like other niche communities and right wing communities and so on. It's just like, I feel like everybody's missing the point about like what we're doing here with this obsession about clavicular. And then, you know, with the Charlie Kirk thing, it's like, we wrote a lot about cancellations and book bans and and and, like, we have seen, like, the damage that he has wrought, over the years. So there was, like, there was something important to say there that wasn't being said and like the the the mainstream conversation about about the issue. So it's like, we're not gonna we're not just gonna give an opinion piece about like, here's what we think about, like, the straight of Hormuz.

Emanuel: 01:01:32

It's like, because we don't have anything really critical additive to to say there.

Joseph: 01:01:40

Yeah. I don't really do many of these pieces at all. I am not a very voicey writer. I'm not very good at writing like that. I'm much better, I'm frankly a much better reporter than I am a writer.

Joseph: 01:01:54

When I do write, it's much more to try to get the information clearly as possible to the reader, right? But I sometimes do slightly voicy ones. And the one I can think of is that it was about the Renee Goode shooting, that the shooting of Alixpressi hadn't happened at that point. This was just after the Goode shooting. And it was simply like something like DHS is lying to you.

Joseph: 01:02:19

And it doesn't matter, I'm just like reflecting on it. Would I put an opinion tag on that? I think no, because I don't think that's an opinion piece. I think I'm just telling you the fucking truth and trying to cut through the bullshit even though some people may say it's an opinion. It's like, no, DHS is lying to you.

Jason: 01:02:39

It's a truth bomb.

Joseph: 01:02:41

Truth bomb. Yeah. We will put that fucking tack in. I think But you see what mean?

Emanuel: 01:02:46

This is not this wasn't an opinion piece either, but I think it's like to this point of us, like, choosing our shots when it comes to this. Like, you wrote this piece about the TikTok account that was doxxing

Joseph: 01:02:58

Oh, yeah.

Emanuel: 01:02:59

Random, like, Taylor Swift fans or something. Yeah. It's like that to me was valuable coming from you because it's like, I'm Joseph. I write about privacy, like, really nefarious ways in which our privacy is violated. I'm telling you that this account, like, scares the shit out of me.

Emanuel: 01:03:14

Yeah. You know? It's like that's that's like where we that's the kind of additive thing I think I I meant.

Joseph: 01:03:20

Yeah. That makes sense. That's a really good question. Thank you so much. There's only a couple more.

Joseph: 01:03:26

Let me scroll up. Jason,

Jason: 01:03:29

you

Joseph: 01:03:29

have one for you on slopaganda and stuff.

Jason: 01:03:31

Yeah. That this is we already talked about this one. I put two together, and then you guys moved it around, and it's this is yeah. We can't we don't need to go back into it again.

Joseph: 01:03:41

Okay. Good. Well, oh, hell yeah. This is

Emanuel: 01:03:43

one for me. Well, me

Joseph: 01:03:44

and Emmanuel, really. It's

Jason: 01:03:46

Okay. I'm muting. Goodbye.

Joseph: 01:03:49

It's on one of the behind the blogs, and it's called Marathon and the Metaverse. And here is a comment and from Pax Amiso Geffen, I'm really sorry if I mispronounced that, but thank you so much. I'll just read out the whole thing. Ari or about Joseph's marathon adventures, it's possible that silent rook you encountered wasn't able to verbally respond. I generally avoid first person shooters, but I briefly tried out Fortnite as it has a non combat oriented areas.

Joseph: 01:04:21

At the time, I was playing on the original Nintendo Switch, which doesn't have voice capabilities. That's that's interesting side note. When so when someone spoke to me, I couldn't respond to them. Okay. The context is there's this video game me and Emmanuel are playing also with Matthew Gault and some of her other friends called Marathon.

Joseph: 01:04:40

And I wrote about how voice communication in that game is so important because if you come across another player, you may assume they're hostile, they often are, but I like speak out and they say, hey, I'm friendly. It's okay. We can collaborate, that sort of thing. And so if I get a response, I'll engage with them because I'm trying to set the parameters of, you know, please don't shoot me. This And person makes a good point that, hey, maybe they couldn't reply to you.

Joseph: 01:05:04

And, you know, that that's fair. I think in Marathon's case, it's on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. So I think people usually have microphones. I mean, it's built into the controller of the PS five. Right?

Joseph: 01:05:17

So Some

Emanuel: 01:05:18

people can't. I do sometimes. Sometimes I can't get on audio because I'm, like, trying to be quiet.

Joseph: 01:05:23

That's fair. I would say to that, I played a game the other day or a match the other day, and I was in solos, so everybody's just by themselves. I started to shoot another player. He screams down his mic, I'm just trying to finish a quest, bro. I'm just trying to finish a quest.

Joseph: 01:05:39

And I say, my bad, my bad, my bad, and I stop. And I say, hey, I'm just killing bots, part of marathon as you also kill sort of computer controlled characters as well. I go do that. I see him later in the same area and he's like, hey, I'm just trying to find this item like, oh, yeah, that drops like on the floor after I kill this boss or whatever, you can get it. I see him later running towards an extract.

Joseph: 01:06:02

You have to get out of the map with all of your stuff. And I yell to him, hey, do you want to ex fill together? Like we can help each other. We're doing that. And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joseph: 01:06:12

And the point I'm getting to is that through all of this, his baby is like crying in the background, down the microphone. And he's like clearly a really like stressed, maybe stay at home dads or something, and he's just like trying to get a game of marathon in, and maybe he shouldn't have been on voice. I mean, maybe he shouldn't have played the game, I don't know. But like the point is, yes, Emmanuel, sometimes people can't be on voice. And Yeah.

Joseph: 01:06:39

This guy was in the middle somewhere.

Emanuel: 01:06:41

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He shouldn't have been on voice. Yeah.

Joseph: 01:06:44

Right. Right. Anything about Marathon before we go, Emmanuel, since we're on the topic? And you just wrote about Marathon briefly as well.

Emanuel: 01:06:54

Yeah. Have a piece out in

Joseph: 01:06:55

the

Emanuel: 01:06:55

site today. So this is coming out on Friday, I think.

Joseph: 01:07:02

Date of May? I didn't

Emanuel: 01:07:03

see it. Okay. Whenever this is coming out. Well, check out. Look look up Marathon on the site.

Emanuel: 01:07:07

You'll find it. I have a piece about how I really like it, but it's not it's not looking so good and why we kind of have to care about the player numbers even though they don't really matter to the game because the business is in shambles.

Joseph: 01:07:22

Yep. Well, in forty seven minutes, we can log off and go play marathon. Marathon. We'll go to not that I'm counting or anything. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Subscriber's Comment Show.

Joseph: 01:07:35

If you're hearing this, you are paying for for it for me, the subscriber. We really, really, really do appreciate all the support we get. We'll do another one of these soon. And of course, as you already know, you get bonus content every single week on the ordinary episodes of the podcast, and you do also get early access to the subscribers oh, sorry. You get early access to the interview episodes as well.

Joseph: 01:07:58

You get those on Friday while nonpaying people receive them the following week. Thank you again so much, and let's see what music is gonna play, I guess.