Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…
What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
1 Like
Loved the show - just love listening to you guys… So this is a compliment, an encouragement, wrapped in a rant. 
(You can tell that part of the show struck a chord that I find difficult to grasp, somehow. But here’s me trying:)
There were alternatives on how to develop the segment on Google AMP.
It’s one of those news bits that technically brings out the big guns of “don’t be evil” (but then still turning out evil) so I kind of expected a longer discussion on what might be useful to do in light of a tech monopolist misusing its power. Great set-up for a deep dive in a well-known dive spot. I know, it has been done before, but … it’s an important place to explore, too.
But seconds later, Jeff shifts the central criticism off course and make the news about how AMP failed at “the holy cause of fixing medias’ websites” - as if that were the truly problematic aspect - and Stacey shares she was shopping for slippers during the discussion. Which then becomes the topic of the panel. By the end of the slipper segment, I was so far off a critical story that I almost forgot what I had heard last as news. Something with Google AMP. But also somehow that Google was supposed to make media’s websites better which suck today (do they, though?) and how did we get to slippers?
This confusion made me go back and check for signal to noise ratio on an important topic. The noise here drowned out a big part of the signal, in my opinion. Which makes “too-big-to-fail tech giant pretty close to getting caught at fraud” as important as buying slippers. That’s felt slightly Orwellian. This seldom sensation suggested me to share this.
Let me put a twist on what might read like an earnest rant: it’s not really a rant, it’s rather a hidden compliment and an encouragement (as if it needed those, but still…). It’s not a rant because I love you guys just talking to each other and often times goofballing around and we are allowed to tune in. It’s a rare delight to have the opportunity to listen to a four-person chat whose personalities, chemistry, and insights I all cherish - and to have that weekly. (And then get to post about it on their message board!) That’s why this cannot truly be a rant cause I don’t really want anything to change. There is no “do that differently, please”, here.
Hidden compliment time: what you say truly matters. Also in which order and at what times. I could not care less about what roughly 99% of people in media think - just give me more or less the facts, please. Conversely, you are among the 1% I am truly interested in how you guys are doing and what you are up to. And, to a certain degree, I even found the slippers story much more interesting and personable than whatever Google does. Google does what Google does. It’s a tech corp. Some things will be non-evil, others will be. They have great lawyers, so half of the evil stuff will pass, too. That’s how things go, big deal. If you guys are allotting more or less time to a topic, I trust you to make the wise decisions. (I’ll still have my observations, but I trust you guys - that’s also why I did not say this could have been better, but there were alternatives… - can’t even say for sure if they would have been better.)
Encouragement time: after having listened for the better part of ten years, I feel like being able to tell how draining it can be to keep a serious tone and straight face on many of the (often returning) topics. Especially the stern and earnest arguments among the panel will feel more taxing than lightly goofing around. This is just to say that it’s worth it to invest this energy - just as much as the goofing around. Can’t be all doom and gloom. It’s truly worth it when you are taking deep dives into the challenging and often (panel-internal) controversial parts of news. I am just writing that to underscore that these bits are of critical importance and value. You guys are dissecting and digesting the tech of tomorrow as well as social and corporate responses to it for us. If it were not for you, I would not have one tenth of the critical insight and (I feel) necessary level of information to understand how things in modern society are evolving. That’s critical insight to any citizen on planet earth, today. In my book, TWiT produces very accessible and fun educational content for digital citizens. Just never get the sense that investing in the tough bits is not worth it cause no one wants to listen to that. I kind of depend on it.
That said, I am checking out those slippers now. Need a new pair. Google’s been bad? News at 11! 
PS: Granted, this focuses on 10 minutes of an over two and a half hour podcast. “Generous” does not begin to describe TWiT.
3 Likes
I haven’t gotten to that yet, just finished WW on the way to work and now on Smashing Security, TWiG is next up.
But Google abusing the AMP idea, especially degrading ad performance to slow down other sites to make AMP look better is really a dirty move and worthy of an open and forthright discussion. But, as soon as you mentioned AMP, I had pretty much guessed that Jeff would try and redirect the conversation… In fact, I had already a suspicion that Jeff would do that, when the news broke at the end of last week/beginning of this week.
I’ll be interested to hear just how that went.
3 Likes
I find myself saying this in my head all the time and it’s exhausting. For most corps, actually. I appreciate this comment and the support. I totally forgot about the AMP segment and it’s only been a couple days. 
3 Likes
I am glad, @ant_pruitt !
I think part of what made me reflect on the observation was actually Steve Gibson going on a (I am still sticking with) fabulous rant last week - both things are related, but it’s kind of a curve ball.
Tech corps serve as much substance to be joyful as to be scornful about. Sure, my inner Jeff agrees that today is a miracle world thanks to technology and we should let this wonderful organism unfold to what fruits it might hold. But then again, my inner Stacey is critical and proposes a variation of “people first, tech second”.
From my perspective, big tech has so much steam, resources, and power that it does not need more support than a healthy share of our paychecks in high profit turnover each year anyhow. It’s a sobering fact that, for every dollar that tech giants do not pay in taxes each year, we might be paying two to three dollars in tech tax to the tech giants to participate in a digital world - be it in subscriptions, updating hardware, licenses, fees, advocation, or as advertising audience cattle. There is some sense in the notion of “to participate in a digital society, consumers pay taxes to the tech oligopoly”. And it’s not even all unwarranted: the roads of tomorrow are not built by and for taxed societies, but by private corporations.
I am getting off track. Back to Steve: time and again, he reminds me of Jerry Fletcher in the movie “Conspiracy Theory”. He sees things that simply escape rational explanation of a more traditional perspecitve on “how things should be done” and hard to discerne from systematic malfeasance. Like e.g., shipping software that is not ready to be shipped or that cannot even be mainained anymore by the provider. That deserves an outcry. Sadly, it’s a standard practice nowadays. So poor Steve, who is generally pretty much on the money (from the most demanding standpoint), sounds outlandish to rant. Even though he is not. His views seems outdated since the world changed - but it did not entirely change for the better. Steve’s a good yardstick to judge the detrimental effects of modern tech culture by. A good Gibson rant reminds me of Stephan Hessel with his noteworthy “Time for Outrage: Indignez-vous!” and call to action to highlight and stop madness when you see it happening. (Certainly, tech madness is just one of many, even more acute forms - but still, tech is the closest thing to the loom weaving modern societal fabric so we should be alert.) This might be another interesting but maybe polarising book for the upcoming book club, if a variation from sci fi theme. Plus: it is very short.
(Well, scratch that. Too political. Still interesting and thoroughly relevant as a blue print.)
Anywho - Jesus Christ, I am going on and on today - there is simply great value in criticism and those who voice it, especially facing powerful organisations, deserve commending. (And no-one was arguing that.)
3 Likes
One thing, the confirming quotes in Germany. Recording in Germany is a data protection issue. There are very strict rules about where and when and what for, when it comes to recording conversations.
For example, if you record a conversation for educational purposes, you can’t use it to write an article, to prove a breech of contract or use it in disciplinary proceedings or a court case. In Teams, there is an option to record or make a transcript, that is generally disabled at the system level for all users, because the rules are so complicated.
I don’t know how that is for journalists and interviews, but there are probably times where they couldn’t record and have to confirm the quotes.
I know from writing marketing material, that I had to go back to our customers and confirm the quotes from them we were using were correct.
Also, it didn’t go as off track as @carbonga indicated, I was expecting it to be much worse, and the slippers thing came up several minutes later.
For the record, I have Giesswein slippers, which were a Christmas present from my wife a few years back. They are still like new.
3 Likes
Touché, my mentioning of “seconds later” was not precise enough in hindsight. (What bit me was that I had actually counted the minutes per contribution but removed them before posting since it would have outed me as ever so slightly pedantic - I was merely trying to make sure my mind did not play tricks on me.)
I may have merely had a pedantic day, yesterday. Maybe it was just the bump in the road going from fraud to slippers that woke me up.
2 Likes
Speaking of AMP, a reminder for iOS users that there is a Safari extension in the App Store that will automatically redirect AMP pages to their actual URL. It is called Amplosion; well worth a couple of bucks:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amplosion-redirect-amp-links/id1585734696
3 Likes
I think I mentioned this previously @ant_pruitt but you need to be a lot more liberal with the “Long press > Not interested” button TikTok. Also hearting content you do like. Don’t worry about watching it for too long, as long as you mark it as not interested, it will avoid giving you that type of content in the future. Very useful for stupid trends like the crate one.
1 Like
I’ll try that more. Didn’t know about the long press. THANK YOU
I always weigh how important it is to keep a conversation on track versus entertaining and engaging. Usually the latter wins. I kind of think of myself as a carnival barker - I can set the milk bottles up but it’s up to the panelists whether they want to knock them down. And if they happen to see a squirrel in the meantime, I’m just as happy to follow them down that trail.
4 Likes
… and I am glad for it, Leo. I must have had a narrow minded day. You guys get to the bottom of things in so many shows more often than everyone else while I’m waldorfandstatlering around… Thanks for patiently sharing your thoughts on this!
1 Like
hahahahahahaha, yes, squirrel’s abound on TWiG
1 Like