TWIT 744: Boiling the Privacy Frog

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!

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This was a good show with good topics, and Alex and Justine were great as host and guest, but I feel like the perspectives offered on the more complex and political topics were somewhat narrowly and dogmatically approached. It’s too late in the day for me to write out any sort of “counterpoint,” but that’s not why I’m posting now anyway…

I’m considering, as a listener, posting my own video response to some of the issues raised and discussed, and I’m curious how the TWiT community feels about these style “reaction” videos. They used to be fairly popular on YouTube. I don’t think anyone does it with TWiT, but would anyone be curious enough in the differing opinions to actually watch listener “counterpoint” feedback here at TWiT.community?

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I found the discussion on drone deliveries for prescription drugs interesting.

The local apothecaries, where I live in Germany, have run a home delivery service for the housebound for decades. The doctor sends the prescription to the patient’s preferred apothecary and they have a small car (usually a Toyota Aygo, VW Up etc.) and they run deliveries a couple of times a day.

For patients that also have Caritas or other nursing care, the nurse picks up the prescription from the doctor and gets it dispensed, before they start their rounds.

Given the amount of ground they have to cover, I don’t know whether drones would be efficient.

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I also totally agree with the point about Silicon Valley. These companies have been selling remote working for decades, it is what many of them (Google, AWS, Facebook, Microsoft, dozens of communications platforms etc.) are trying to sell to us, yet when it comes to their own employees, the products they sell aren’t good enough? Hardly a good advert for the companies, when they are selling remote collaboration tools, then doing nothing to reduce the complaints about real estate prices and availability around their campuses.

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I think the problem is trying to migrate from the ‘big meeting in conference room’ mentality to individuals connecting to an online meeting. So what happened in practice at my last company was 50% of the attendees were in the room shouting at a conference phone, the other 50% were remote, unable to hear the 50% in the room.

So it degenerated to being in ‘listen mode’ for an hour (i.e. not participating), and then being asked for any input in a rush at the end of the session as everyone was packing up.

Remote or home working for me was a huge personal productivity plus, but a killer for collaboration.

I think companies need to commit to remote 100%, get rid of the conference rooms, the hybrid approach doesn’t work.

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I haven’t seen this week’s episode yet, however I have some experience in the remote working topic as I work for a mining client who has implemented the hybrid approach very succesfully.

The problem is organisations significantly under-estimate the investment needed to make remote working successful. While most people with think about the Technology investment (which to do remote working well is a massive investment in it’s own right); the far greater barrier is the organisational culture change needed to make remote working successful.

This takes years in a established organisation and requires constant re-inforcement and continual improvement (I know, I know, middle-management buzzwords; but it’s true).

Without that culture investment, and the resulting change in ways of working (another favourite management buzz phrase) to support remote working, organisations simply fail to realise any of the benefits and end up viewing remote workers as a potentially cheaper, but less productive resource.

I think the Silicon Valley Tech giants spend most of the resources elsewhere to make the time & culture investment needed in their workforce to really support this. As such, they will always seek out hubs to work together and the real estate issue near these hubs will continue to be a problem.

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Please don’t have Mr-Negatvie-talk-all-over-everyone-if-it’s-not-made-by-him-or-in-the-UK-it’s-garbage-Greg Ferro, on anymore. I made it to 48:37 of this episode. Stopped. Deleted. Poor iJustine.

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Sorry to pile on, but I just can’t listen to the show when Mr. Ferro is a guest. Constantly interrupting people in the middle of their sentences is just rude.

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Yeah, Ferro can be a real pill. I’ll never forget when Leo had to reprimand him for calling a co-worker “retarded” on air. (Poor Georigia Dow looked like she was going to blow a gasket.) I normally welcome anytime there’s a UK or international perspective, but he can be just awful. Glad I’m not the only one that finds his behavior obnoxious.

(Edit: To be fair I’ve also seen Greg be funny and good-natured – occasionally – and he’s even made some good points from time to time. He just has this way of behaving on-air that can be obnoxious, intransigent, and/or disrespectful to other guests, and it’s not fun to watch.)

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I’m in agreement here. The last time Greg Ferro was on, Christina Warren and others repeatedly debunked his views and it really didn’t phase him.

For me - I’ve just had my fill of his biting snark and absurd point of view. I don’t know if he’s adopted this persona for purposes of being provocative on shows (and then, by contrast, he’s less so in private life) - or if this is how he really approaches things - but I find real challenges in finding an informed perspective in his point of view.

To be fair, that could say a lot about me if others don’t share my perspective. And if I’m doing him a disservice, I ask that someone please correct me so that I can better appreciate his point of view - because right now, I don’t really.

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This is the first show ever, I just stopped listening to. And I’ve been listening for years to TWIT and TWIG.

It was like listening to Debbie Downer the whole episode.

Debbie-Downer

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Welcome to the community @pizzapanther.

I fell asleep like 5 minutes into this podcast last night so I can’t really comment much on it but if Greg really does talk over everyone like that then why didn’t one of the twit producer’s speak up and say hey, we need to make sure everyone gets to speak not just one person talking over everyone? Maybe a bit out of their role but if the lead host isn’t going to do it someone needs to.

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I don’t envy the host’s job in situations like this. It’s very hard to deal with and produce an entertaining show in these situations. Whoever deals with it has to be excellent in sticky situations.

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I like Greg and his perspective. I hope that he returns, but I agree with everyone regarding him interrupting others.

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Agreed. I’d also be interested to know the latency Justine was having to deal with. I reckon she was already on the back foot all other things being equal. Combine that with Greg in studio, you’ve got a situation that needs strong management. Greg was pitching in with his views the instant Alex paused. Alex was resorting to asking Justine direct questions, which isn’t really how the panel should operate IMO.

I’m not going to say anybody shouldn’t be on TWiT, I enjoy listening to all viewpoints, but the TWiT team have a challenge to make a panel work in this scenario.

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I have not listened to the epizode yet, but I already know Gregs opinion. Everything is crap and we are doomed. Nobody else will get their turn.
Alright, lets go confirm my assumtion :slight_smile: pressing play button

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Welcome @ipetrcz. I’m waiting to start the actual podcast to.

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When the unseen sound guy ended up getting more air time than the female guest, I just turned off the show. Leo, please fix this when you get back! Thanks.

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That said, Greg was spot on with his tirade against Twitter. I’ve been in software development for nearly 4 decades and the first thing you always do is make sure that the data is secure and that the user rights are in place.

It should never be an afterthought. Since GDPR it is actually a legal requirement that the system is secure from the get go.

But Google, Twitter, Facebook and Co. have made it there miodus operandi to ignore the law and security until it gets more expensive to pay the lawyers than to do things properly.

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Gregs life must be so sad! Everybody is an idiot and all companies are incompetent :slight_smile:
But what do I know, Im just a idiot in an expensive suit apparently :slight_smile:

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