Tomorrow - 179: Zuck Off

Episode Date: October 25, 2019

Welcome back to your second episode of Tomorrow in one week! You lucky listener, you. Josh and Ryan are back to discuss Mark Zuckerberg's embarrassing performance in front of Congress, the trouble with Chinese social media companies like TikTok, Josh's new Tesla, the commercials you'll have to watch during HBO's Succession, PlayStation 5's rumored killer feature, Kanye West's latest nonsense, quantum supremacy, and Google's Pixelbook Go. Listen! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey and welcome to tomorrow, I'm'm your host, Joshua Topolsky. Today on the podcast, we discuss the PlayStation 1 easy and quantum supremacy. I don't want to waste one minute. Let's get right into it. Here it is. We're back. Second time in a week. We said said we do it. We're doing it. You pod one week. If it is to be said, so it be so it is. We hear for you. Yeah, we hear for you. Can't make a Tom lit without breaking a few grigs. Fuck you. I showed that to John on the subway yesterday and we were doing it back and forth and this lady thought we were, I think she thought we were actually fighting because we would

just be silent and then randomly say, fuck yeah. Well, I'm sure you seem like the typical bad New Yorkers. Anyhow, what were we talking about? How do we get on this topic? I have no idea. We're, hey, we've got two pods one week. Uh, yes, that's right. We're treating you to this mindless banter that you're hearing

right now. Apparently Tim Cook, Obama and Robert DeNiro had dinner in New York. Listen, whenever you want to get a group of people together who one of them hates vaccines, one of them hates poor people and one of them, you know, did some drones, right? Who hates vaccines? Oh, DeNiro's an anti-factor, right? Yeah, I hate vaccines. Yeah, I think Laura wrote to me for the outline about De Niro being an anti-factor. It's weird because like you want to, it's like you got people, like, I mean,

De Niro's a little bit much with all this stuff. It's like, maybe just like, I don't know, I like De Niro. You can't, you can't, you know, you can't talk to De Niro. I don't just like him. I guess it's the, the annoying thing is that when someone's great and then they do one thing, you're like, come on, you were so good.

Yeah, I was just thinking of this thing when somebody on Twitter retweet somebody you hate. Oh yeah. And what is that, what is that feeling? Even if I personally just hate them, if it's just on, I'm like, oh fuck that guy. And there's not a really reason that anyone else should care.

I still am like annoyed that the person tweeted. All right, let's talk about the news. Let's get into it. I'm on a PC right now, by the way. Today I decided that I was gonna use the PC. And how's it going? I don't know, it's fine. The mouse is bothering me.

You wanna talk about the suck? The, oh yeah, he did a performance in front of Congress. You could call it that. You could definitely perform it. It's locked. It's locked to big time. Mark Zuckerberg got up, I mean, he literally was like cousin Greg,

I mean, people who made jokes about this, but he literally was like kind of like, it was a baffling performance. He had very bad answers. You know, he did this thing, he said this thing that I find the most and one of the most annoying responses about like the truth. You know, where these guys from the social networks are like, I think Jack Dorsey has said it too. It's like, you know, like we don't want to police the language.

You know, we think it's good to like let, you know, lies be out in the light and then when they're exposed in the light, like they can be, they can be, people can say that they're not true. And it's like, either you are so fucking stupid, you don't know how your network works or you're full of shit. I'm going to go for full of shit. He knows that the spread of disinformation and misinformation happens so rapidly and with so little ability to check it that by the time anybody can actually respond to the lie, it has already like

seeped into the groundwater and has already permeated people's brains and has already made its way around the world and been shared billions of times and been taken and copy and pasted onto other social networks. And it becomes a thing. And so this argument that like, I mean, the reality is like they are policing free speech by doing what they're doing. They're saying we will allow like blatant lies on our platform

and we don't really care about that. We think that's a good way for people to communicate on the internet. And it's weird because like they have a policy I believe now of taking down post personal posts from people that have like known lies in them, but they are not applying the same policy to the ads. They put on Facebook aren't paying them. It's like they're daring someone to regulate them. I mean,

if we had a responsible government that knew what the fuck it was doing, they should be in antitrust. Them and Google should be in antitrust hearings right now. This is too much power to be concentrated at companies that have no oversight whatsoever from like the citizens of the country or the countries rather. Here's an interaction between Alexandra Acasio Cortez and Mark Zuckerberg that I watched 100,000 times. Alexandra Acasio Cortez says to him, can you explain why you named the Daily Caller a publication with well-documented ties to white supremacists as an official fact checker for Facebook?

And he responded, Congresswoman, sure. We actually don't appoint the independent fact checkers. They go through an independent organization called the independent fact checking network that has a rigorous standard for who they allowed to serve as a fact checker. And AOC responds, so would you say a white supremacist tied publication meets a standard for fact checking? And Zuckerberg basically 404 at that moment, he just like, he started like looking around the room in a panic

and then said, Congresswoman, I would say that we're not the one assessing that standard, the international fact checking network is the one assessing that standard. But the thing is, he chose the international fact checking network, whatever

that is, and he contracts with them. He pays them to do that service. So if another service popped up and said, we are not pro daily caller, he hasn't chosen to give them that ability. He chose the one that would allow for white supremacists. So it's a really, really great way for him to have plausible deniability. And Facebook uses this method in multiple different areas of its business. When it does content review of a Gore porn, nudity, violent hate speech, they subcontract as Casey Newton outlined at the verge.

They subcontract that out to a company that isn't Facebook, but it's only client is Facebook, and it was set up by Facebook as an independent contractor so that they can have those people work for less than a livable wage and they can support them with almost no mental health benefits and like physically and psychologically abuse their bodies by subjecting them to all of this for no pay

until they get burned out and then they can just turn on to the next bunch of like, rubs to take the job for a couple of years. And they have complete plausible deniability. And when they do their corporate reporting, they can say, everybody at Facebook's make an average of this insane amount of money because all the poor people we've paid nothing to do the hardest jobs aren't technically employees of Facebook. They're using the strategy in multiple areas of their business, and they're using it now as a way to say, well, we are not the ones who decide what's a lie. You have to go talk to this other contractor we've hired.

But the contractor only exists because they chose to pay them. Right. I mean, listen, I'm really torn. First off, I mean, I don't really use Facebook. Now Facebook is bringing news back online, which is sure to create. That's the main aspect today. They're launching Facebook news, I say.

I mean, and one of the partners is BrightBart. You know, BrightBart literally had a section called Black Crime and has run basically white supremacists like content on their website. I mean, BrightBart's a pile of shit. It is a pile of shit. And which is fine. Like, listen, maybe there'll be some piles of shit. I don't really like the Wall Street Journal either,

but they're way more respectable than Breitbart, but supposedly they're gonna have human editors and they're working with real publishers and they're paying the millions of dollars or whatever. But I don't know, I think that, you know, I don't trust Facebook's instincts or ability when it comes to managing how people get information. It just, they just don't seem very fucking good at it.

And they seem like they don't care what destruction is like rot by their decisions. And it seems like there will be no repercussions for any of the destruction that comes from their decisions. The other thing is like, you know, the person in charge of the project has Campbell Brown, who is like, I mean, yes, she's a journalist, but she's mostly known for being like a host on TV.

And like, as far as I know, I mean, maybe, I don't know, maybe she's worked in lots of newsrooms and stuff, just a weird choice, like to run the news side of Facebook's business. You would think that there would be like a bit more of like people who've come from like newspapers or websites or magazines who worked up until 2016 or 2017 on the internet with news, because she definitely didn't, you know? And I don't know if anybody else who's involved in it, so it's like a really weird choice to like,

that's the person you're put, it's like, I feel like they just hired her because she's like known by people because she's on TV, basically. So it's, the whole thing's just, is, is, is shady. Like I just like the whole thing is bad. And I don't know. It's like, I wish I could trust Facebook. I wish I didn't feel so conflicted when I use Instagram, you know, I honestly wish that like Facebook didn't own Instagram. I wish that like, they had separate businesses

because Instagram is actually like, from what I can tell. I mean, I don't really love it because Instagram was being run independently by its founders who just left in a huff because Mark Zuckerberg demanded that they be able to, that Facebook proper, the actual Facebook site itself have access cross referencing to location and privacy data that Instagram had walled off

as a policy because Zuck wanted to be able to during the Cambridge Analytica scandal. And while he was scared of Snapchat, he wanted to be able to offer ad partners all of that targeting information, even though they just had a scandal with that targeting information that leaked because of their horrible APIs. My fiancee is a social media purchaser. He takes money from companies and maximizes their reach. The level of reach he can get because they now have opened up all of Instagram's privacy data

is absurd. He can find basically anybody he wants to with any demographic and show them anything he wants, any lie he wants, and Facebook is now fine with it. Instagram was so good for so long because its founders were like, say, they just said no. The only thing they really said yes to that Mark asked was to do Instagram stories so that he could compete with Snapchat. But that was like a feature ad. It wasn't really a negative to their user.

Well, that, I mean, that worked out for them to totally. But they, and I think they understood that. But when they came around asking to damage add, it wasn't really a negative to their user. Well, that worked out for them to do. Totally. I think they understood that. But when they came around asking to damage their users, we had a tacit agreement that we're not doing this. He was like, well, I don't care. The founders of Instagram left, they exited the company. I think we can look forward to that having some really bad consequences.

Yeah. look forward to that having some really bad consequences. Yeah, I mean, it's just like, I don't want to do this again. You know, like, I just can't believe we're still here. Right. I mean, I don't, I mean, look, the reality is Mark Zuckerberg is the wrong person to run Facebook. Like, there should be somebody who's more responsible and has a brain. And that doesn't seem like it's ever going to happen. I mean, I do think we need to get to a place where we start. I mean, I can't fucking believe we like regulated Microsoft.

We like brought Microsoft to court over an antitrust case. And yet, Google and Facebook and Amazon were like, yeah, it's fine, do whatever. Like, I'm just saying they don't need to be as big as they are, they don't need to be all encompassing, they don't need to be like the single point of entry for every human being on the planet onto the internet. It's fucked up, it's bad, it stinks, it has to stop.

Representative Joyce Beatty, it's talked to Zuckerberg during his congressional hearing about his work with on diversity about Facebook's housing crisis and the level of like complete had as a leader in diversity. And when asking him about diversity reports from top experts that they've had commissioned, Mark clearly had not read any of them. And when asked if any of their partners in financial holdings, if any of the companies that they subcontract with, if any of their legal representation, at all were of diverse ownership, Mark either didn't know or said that they weren't and eventually she quizzed him by saying one She asked him about the civil rights report that his own company commissioned and he asked him to name the top three findings Just the top three like top level report like it's on the front of the report is the first page He said one of them was around housing ads, which we talked about, and then he paused, and then said, another was about setting up

a civil rights task force, and BD asked, who's on the civil rights task force? And Mark said, Cheryl Sandberg is the person who, and BD was like, we know Cheryl is not really civil rights. I'm trying to help you here. She's your CEO. Oh, I don't think there's anything, and I know Cheryl Sandberg well about civil rights

in her background. So you have to come with a better answer than that. And he didn't. And it was so, how can you be the CEO of a company? Commissioning a report of that level of importance at a company that has been criticized so thoroughly for these issues and not have even read the report in preparation for a congressional.

Well, he's very busy. I'm not sure if it has access to the greatest communications team in the world. I mean, maybe he'd need to know not cards like Trump, you know, maybe need to end like with pictures and stuff. I don't really know. It's just so embarrassing. And honestly, like, I can't understand how if you're an investor in Facebook, you think that this guy is fit for the job at this point, other than being very famous.

Well, I mean, it seems to me like, as long as Facebook's making money, no one's going to say shit. fit for the job at this point other than being very famous well i mean it seems to me like as long as faced with making money no one's gonna say shit and i got and and facebook is in the power has the power to stop politicians from succeeding that would step in and right now it's interesting who knows what it means we can only we can only venture to to hope to fathom uh guess about what it all means. It's very dark and very upsetting.

Well, in lighter tech news, we have a review of the Pixelbook Go Up. I'm interested. It's on inverts, but that is from input. Yeah, we're posting some stuff on Inverse that all be brought over to input when we launch our sister site inverse lovely the lovely people at inverse are allowing us to utilize their their space. And anyhow, but so yeah, Raymond Wong did a review of the pixel book go, which I want I like and I and I have to say, like, is really snappy. I was like very, very impressed playing around with it. I just want the pink one. Like, I don't... The pink one, I saw it in person it is. I was like, it's really nice. It's everything that they're orange from. The problem is, like, number one, I don't need it. The

problem, number two, I already, every time I see it, like, I'm always like, oh, I'm going to get a Chromebook. I have pixel books here, I'm like, they're the old ones. I don't bust them out, I'm not using them. I don't really need them. I do like how small it is and how portable it is. I will say it is a better size. Even though I do prefer a taller screen, I think there's something that's actually kind of nice

about how compact it is. It's a really, really small device. I think that's something that's actually kind of nice about how compact it is. It's a really really small device. Like I think that um It is my like it is my um like ideal idea of what I would use as a laptop like in a perfect world outside of work I would use a pixel book like a Chromebook setup for everything. However, whenever I've tried to do that I want to like edit a meme or like I'm trying to like download a large file and move it over here and or I need to go in and, you know, I want to change some settings in an app so that I have like an ability to do something that I can't do and it just it seems like in conception, it's all there, but in actual practice, like the Android apps kind of run like shit.

And it's weird because they run natively, but we tried to play asphalt on that thing. And it's got keyboard inputs. You can play it with a mouse and keyboard. You can play that Android game that I love on the big screen. It looks okay, but the minute you get into the game, it runs like potato while it's like,

we're talking like, well, we have to say it again. I think it's kind of a hack to have the Android stuff on there. I mean, I do think that I mean, I was talking, we were, Ramin and I were talking to somebody on Twitter and they were kind of like, you know, is the touchscreen in gimmick? And I was kind of like, well, I think the touchscreen is there because it makes compatibility with Android apps a lot easier. But I will say it's like, it's definitely not. I don't know that Android apps are like the main focus for anybody on these devices.

I think it's like you've got to be. It's to fill in holes. It's like there's no native blank app, but there's got to be something on Android. So if you have to, you can figure it out. Yeah, you're definitely in it. But that's not the joy of a Chromebook. The joy of a Chromebook is that it's...

Right. And frankly, like, I think it's very bad to like, I just think it's like you're not, you know, you're not going to, you're not going to, you need to like, you need to be committed to the idea of a Chromebook to even think about buying this thing, you know? Like, you can't be like, well, I can use these, like, it's Android's not going to like, it's not your get out of JFRI pollution for something, you know what I mean? Like, it's a Chromebook, and so you have to love Chromebooks as a concept. And I do like Chromebooks as a concept.

It's just that every time I think, I'm going to use one, it's like, everything I think I'm going to use one, it becomes this weird thing where I like get to a point where I have to do something that I can't just, I'm like done. It's not going to work unless I switch to my MacBook, you know? I actually get more, this is so sick, but just because of the app stores, insane, like they're, they're the insane level of diversity of apps that it has, even though it is a hugely walled garden. And it allows app developers to use a lot less of like APIs

and of the hardware. I actually get more productivity done on an iPad when I'm away from like a real computer than I do from a Chromebook. And a Chromebook is trying harder to be a real computer. It's better to like edit an Excel spreadsheet. It's better to like type on, but those are so rarely the thing I need done that like I just would great iPad with me.

I just think both the iPad and the Chromebooks are racing to be Windows, but it's funny because we already have Windows and have OS. So like they're just gonna end up being where we are already. So I don't know who it's for. If I was to buy my parents a computer, I would probably opt for a Chromebook. A studio in a Chromebook sounds like

great option. My mom, probably, yeah. I know that. I feel like my parents would wanna like FaceTime and they'd be like, where's FaceTime on there? And that would be that. You know, I feel like there's little things like that that would be really aggravating to them.

Okay, another thing that I, that was coming up this week as a topic of discussion that I actually would love to dig into a little bit is that TikTok, the most beloved new social media company of all the teens and tweens, which has taken over like all viral content now comes from TikTok in a way that it used to come from Vine. And I actually feel really bad for the Vine creators who were trying to make like a Vine 2 called Bite, which is never gonna take off because TikTok exists now. But TikTok is a Chinese company used to be called musically. It started out being that company that you lip sync and make little funny videos, and now it's just a place for video content.

It's like massive in the space, but you can't find anything negative about the Chinese government on TikTok, and you'd be hard pressed to find a lot of pro LGBTQ content, and it kind of speaks to a larger issue that we're in, which is like what China says for the world, is now the world's policy. And we were talking earlier this week about how,

if the EU decides that it's against loot boxes, that means that game developers will be making two versions of games. We're now in a space where like, regionally, these walls are breaking down, and it's kind of China's the hardest ass of the large markets about free speech and about content. And we talked a little bit about Disney in China last week,

but now we're in a space where TikTok is supposed to be a platform, and if that's where everybody's going to express themselves, you can't say, fuck the Chinese government, support Hong Kong on that. I mean, it honestly shows that this huge divide between, you know, what, you know, well, not a divide, but rather like the kind of hidden cost of like, by the way, I don't think like China as a place is like somehow like inherently evil or bad or anything. But, you know, you understand like the hidden cost of like we, we looked at the

Chinese, you know, the Chinese government and what they were doing. And there was a point where we were like, okay, wow, like this communist, you know, their form of communism, which is basically, you know, a dictatorship, basically fascism, is bad. And we should reject it. And, you know, but weirdly, once that we saw that they they could be a place they could give us like cheap labor and cheap goods, that all sort of got pushed to the background. Like, the people in charge of our country who are supposed to be like, even if it's good for business, it's bad for people and we so we reject it, we're like, actually, we don't give a shit as long as like the money is working,

as long as like the numbers look good. And I just think it's like, the hidden cost is that you give up so much more than you think you're giving up in that situation. And so now it's like, yeah, some guy from the NBA is like not allowed to talk negatively about China because they own us, because they own some part of that business.

And it's like, I think there's a risk if sounding xenophobic or even racist when you talk about stuff like this, to be like they own us or whatever. But the reality is this is bad business. Like we traded our ideals, our democratic ideals, and what we want to like bring to the rest of the world, what America's supposed to stand for for the fucking bottom line. And I think that's pretty indicative of like what's wrong with America in so many other ways now.

Like, like, listen, I love the gadgets. I'm glad that I can buy a bunch of gadgets. But like, I'm glad that I can buy a bunch of gadgets, but I also recognize that the cost of those gadgets is human lives and people's freedom. There's nothing I can do about it. We could stop buying it, we could stop actually engaging in this, but it can't really come from there's not going to be, yes, it's good to actually think about it when you buy this stuff. I do. More and more, of course, I'm a guy it when you buy this stuff. And I do, like more and more, like of course, you know,

like I'm a guy who buys like so much random shit, but I have like gotten much more sensitive about how much random shit I actually buy and how much random shit I want, partially because I think it's wasteful, but also because I think that we've put ourselves in a really fucked up position where, you know, this sort of craft consumerism

has led us to basically tacitly endorse a really corrupt and bad government and an abusive government. And so, it is interesting that, it's like when the Foxconn suicide stuff was happening. I mean, I spoke to people, I spoke to people at Apple who were basically defending people who worked at Apple, who were basically defending to me that it's okay.

They're like, look, suicides happen. They even might have said some of the stuff publicly, I feel like. I mean, I think we might have written about it. They kind of were like, they were saying, it's okay because if you look at like suicides in population That the percentage is actually the same without realizing that you're talking the entire population I'm not telling people out jumping off a room of fucking specific factory, you know like Right that they work at and they're employed So what's the rate of people who come into a side that are employed and supposed to have mental health care and housing?

It's much lower than it is. So in a way like, you know, when you think about it like gadget and like goods goods from countries where people are sort of like Subjugated and put in horrible positions to make those good like slave labor like prices basically Thinking like it's sort of like Not Thinking about it is like the same way that most people come to like eating meat. You know, you don't really wanna think, I mean, it's like that saying, it's like, you know, you don't wanna know how the sausage is made

or whatever, like, but that's the truth. Like, most people don't need, don't will not, they will reject the idea of knowing how like a hamburger is made. Because when they know that how it's made, it makes them feel bad, and it makes it harder for them to do something that they enjoy as a pleasure.

And if everybody felt as bad as they should, there'd be a lot fewer meat eaters in the world. And I think it's probably true, and at some point we have to recommend this, and this is true of Amazon as well. I mean, we've seen all of this stuff about Amazon recently. Like, there is a human price for Amazon's like fast shipping. The human price is like the people who work, and their factories, and the people who work

in their warehouses. And there's a human price for the, for the fucking iPhone. You know, the iPhone's a thousand bucks, but it probably should be a lot more expensive. And we found like a really great labor force that can be abused and, you know, American companies tap into it and don't think about the repercussions. But like the end of all of this is that like the more we tap into those things, the more we are submitting to the treatment of those people, the more we are agreeing with the treatment of those people.

And the more it becomes like attention between like what we are supposed to be as like a democratic country that believes in personal freedom and believes in, you know, a freedom from oppression. And you know what we want and need monetarily and from like our goods providers. And so it's, look, I'm as look, I'm as guilty of this as anybody in the sense that like, we're launching a text site, we're gonna talk about gadgets. I do think that we will infuse some of that conversation

with a little bit more of the sort of thinking about these things. But the reality is like, I love this shit. I love fucking weird cameras and I love like phones. And like, I love the fact that these things exist and continue to evolve and get weird and interesting and are pushing us forward in all sorts of different ways. But there is a flip side to it.

We haven't thought much about it. But then again, this is new. It's pretty fucking new. I mean, there have always been, sorry, I'm really rambling now, but there have always been so I'm really rambling now, but like there have always been situations where where there have been human abuses, right? In the pursuit of commerce like that's like frankly the whole world has been built on that

But I think this whole idea of like the relationship that we have with China the monetary relationship we have with China is really fucking new I mean, it's really only in the past 20 or 30 years that it's been, it's come to the kind of like prominent point that it's at. So I think we just have a space to wrap with it. There was a tipping point, but there was a tipping point where they amount of investment. At first, it was just like, this Chinese money, I'll take a little of that. And there was a tipping point where we were most, where like a company becomes mostly owned by a Chinese company and then fully subject to Chinese laws that we have passed and we haven't, like, grappled with the repercussions

of the fact that we passed that threshold. And I think there's also the thinking of, like, these human rights aren't just good for the individual people, even though in the short term, obviously that's the point. They're also good business. Like we do, the products are better, and people like the economy is better,

and the world is better, and that way when the world is better, and people are healthier, they can also buy the products and invest in other like businesses outside of their own country, and Chinese money can flow into the US, and our US money can flow into China,

and we can have a relationship where we work together. And not to be all world peace, but in the long term it's better for everybody, it's better business practices. We have a country have decided that having weekends and having like health insurance makes the whole country better and business better in the long term. And so it's good that we like enforce that. But we have no way of like convincing another country to do that. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's frustrating because you get to a point where you're like, I feel like we end up trying to argue for these things

as if we're asking for an indulgence. But in fact, what we're asking for is them to do some smart business. Right, that's exactly right. It's a real downer of a topic. Yeah, it's a real bummer. What else we got? What else we got to pipeline here, Ryan? Forgive me, the fuck down, man. If you want something fun,

I do. I love, I love fun. Very cool, very fun. Have you heard about what PlayStation is doing with backwards compatibility? No, please inform me. I actually, I've been very not on top of the news this week, as you know, for various reasons, but we'll talk about that in a minute, but please inform me. So, so this has been rumored for a while, but it's been rumored multiple times and pretty emphatically by large leakers, including the people who dropped the dev kit pictures for us. Thank you so much, leakers. But it, and it's also been like Sony executives have been doing like a wink, wink hint sort of situation. But the rumor is that the PlayStation

5 will be a device that either through FPGA, through emulation, will be able to play every PlayStation game physical ever released from place except for PSP, obviously. Every, but that would be available through download. Every PlayStation game for every platform will be available either through a physical disk, the size of a CD, if it's the size of a CD, or through a download service, streaming, as a subscription package.

And that will be before the PlayStation 5 games themselves start to ship. And we already know the PlayStation 4 Pro games will be compatible with the PlayStation 5. They'll even be slightly better. But this news means that it would be the first console released ever that has the entire library available. Because with the Wii U, you had virtual console, which was a huge back catalog, and included multiple different companies and different systems. And it's kind of sad that

Nintendo walked away from that. But it was a great way to play like the library of classic games. This would mean that similar to Netflix or similar to Spotify for music, every PlayStation game would be available in one device on day one, giving the PlayStation 5 the biggest back catalog of games of any system other than the PC. I mean, I'm excited about that, except I kind of don't really love playing old games. I mean, it's a great idea. And I'm sure a lot of people will be really excited about it. But I just feel like I totally get it.

But you go far enough back in the game start to be pretty janky. Well, the other rumor is, and I'm not, this is the, this part of the rumor is highly speculative. However, Sony has a ton of patents, and they've done a box ton of research in this area, and they've already started doing it with some PlayStation 2 games, if you download them for PS4, they will upscale and also use AI to remake the textures. So you'd be able to hit a button in the menu and take a PlayStation 1 game from looking like a PlayStation 1 game to looking like a remastered PlayStation 1 game in one button click.

Mmm. I'm listening. And if you Google it right now, there are screen caps that people have done this for old Zelda games. They've done it for old PlayStation games. And it's not like it looks like a PS5 game But it certainly doesn't look like a PlayStation game It looks like a PS3 game and it's done instantly like no programming nobody has to go over it

And if they were to hire an army of programmers and developers to individually tweak each game we could have Game remasters of every PlayStation game ever released Like pretty quickly they could turn that they could spin that up in like two or three years, maximum. And that is a game changing, like selling point. Like even if the Microsoft could do that, the Xbox and Xbox 360 catalogs aren't as extensive and they're not as like classic. Well listen, I mean, you've got me interested,

I'll be honest with you. I'm not saying that I'm all the way in. I'm gonna buy the fucking thing, okay. I mean, we're all buying the thing. Let's not. We're gonna buy the thing. I mean, you know, I'm interested to know what they do in terms of, you know, like the design of the console. You know, my dream, which I'm hoping for that somebody does is a kind of switch slash super duper high-powered gaming combo, which involves a docking mechanism. I don't know if I'm gonna get what I'm asking for from Sony, but I might get it from Nintendo. I don't know, here's the thing though, I've been playing way fewer games recently. I guess it's probably because we're trying to launch a website

And also I've been playing a lot less games There's been a couple that I've picked up that I really loved but I haven't just had the sheer time to be like Oh, I beat untitled goose game and like River City girls and I'm also in the middle of I'm gonna pick up the outer worlds today and get through it this weekend. Like there's no feasible way for me to do that. I think people in general are a little overwhelmed by the amount of entertainment available as well. There's just a lot and I'm kind of like I'm just falling off. I'll be honest with you. I mean, there's so many things that I just can't bring myself to watch.

You know, like, I don't know. I mean, actually, Lauren, I've been working our way through SVU, law and order SVU, which is a special victims unit. I know if you've heard of it. Yeah, is that the one where they chop a woman up every week? And it's always in the new fun way. It's like, it's like all about sex crimes, basically. Laura's like, oh, she's giving me updates when I'm not around. She'll tell me what the one she's watching without me. She's like, oh, this one's about a sex addict.

She has to have it every day. I'm like, yeah, I don't feel like that's a sex addiction, but apparently someone died. She fucks someone to death or whatever. I feel like that could be a warning sign. If you know somebody who fucks somebody to death, they might have a problem. No, but like it's really crazy.

One of the things that's interesting, sorry, this is totally off topic, but SVU has something like really bad weird ideas about homosexuality in the early seasons. Like they really don't know what's up with gay guys. Gay guys definitely think gay guys like to like pee on each other and then stab the other one. Like that's definitely a lot of the show.

Like there's like two episodes in the first two seasons that are like about like weird like guys who are like don't realize that they're gay and they like do some like child murders. And then at the end they're like, oh right, I liked it. It's like, you know, I don't realize that they're gay and they do some like child murders. And then at the end they're like, oh right, I liked it. It's like, yeah, I don't think this is like a good depiction of a typical gay man.

Like literally the only gay characters you meet are like duos who are like closeted to themselves and also murder child murders. We'll never be able to like reckon with the fact that Michael A. League made all gay people who like had any nightlife experience or like any were weird in any way or dressed differently. Yeah.

Yeah. Look like serial killers during a plague where we were all being killed anyway. Should I mean like, it's going to take us a long time to like uncouple those events from like the reality, like of what, like the other perspective that television has on gay people is that we're like modern family gays who like cheek, peck kiss each other, and adopt kids, like that's all we do.

And the reality is I'm somewhere between a serial killer and Cam from modern family. And I'm happy like living in that space. I think we all are. Anyhow, sorry to get on topic, that's for you situation. But, what are we talking about? Content.

Content. Too much content. Yeah, that's why I'm, that's why I'm, you know, I'm not catching up. I'm not caught up. Too much tuna. You know, I don't know what's going on. Does a new bowjack, new season of bowjack came out today, apparently? I don't, I'm not gonna up. Too much tuna. You know? I don't know what's going on. Does a new bowjack,

New season of bowjack came out today, apparently. I don't, I'm not gonna have the time for that for a good long while. I mean, you know, Tarris House, like Laura doesn't want to watch Tarris House now because she says that the Bums are out. And I understand, I'm like, you know, we're like 18 episodes in and they've had their first kiss.

It is a little bit much. Like I don't know what's going on in Japan. I want to go over there and talk to some people. I'm a kid for you though. I'm very concerned about what's happening. We watched Modern Love on Amazon. I've never loved the Modern Love column and I wasn't excited about this, but the first episode is pretty good and then I was like, okay, well, I guess we're going to try this. Then we watched five minutes of every episode and it was like, I can't get through. These are all so bad.

The Tina Fey one that was written by Sharon Horton was palatable. It was definitely pretty good. It was like, okay, John Slattery goes a long way to like making those characters believable. But the show itself is like, it seems like it was designed by the Amazon algorithms to be clicked on by the prime user base and

not like artistically curated to be like someone's thesis about romance and the modern age and it's got some statements to make and some really funny people and everybody put their heart and soul into it. It seems like Amazon was like, okay, we need something based on an existing property that hits these five keywords and if we can get access to this talent, we could do a shoot at a couple companies or in these three places in New York over the course of two weeks and get it out by Christmas.

And that is essentially what the whole thing feels like. There's a whole episode that's basically shot in a Trader Joe's they got access to. And it's not supplemental in any way. It's a very weird thing for such a rich company to put out. Yeah. Well, you guys, don't they own A24?

Don't they kind of know how to make good movies? We live in a crazy time, okay? Kanye West is just putting a new record as we speak, right this second. He's literally hold up in the Oculus beneath one World Trade Center, and nobody knows why. I don't understand. I don't understand. We're't understand. I don't understand. We're all like fine with Kanye now. No, I don't think so.

Are you sure? I see these people on the internet. I think we're watching him. I think we're watching him like a train wreck, but I don't think we're. I don't think I don't know. It seems like everybody's just back to like, oh Kanye West has got some new music.

You know, great. It's great. We're excited. Like fucking complex, complex and genius in billboard are all like, oh, it's out. It's finally out. It's like, fuck you. This guy was walking around a year ago talking about how Trump fucking rules were in a fucking MAGA hat. And like, he was walking around saying that voting for Democrats was, it was like slavery as a choice. Like, can you fucking suck? Like, I don't understand what happened. Like, I get it, like, he's like,

wrote some good songs, but like, I feel like you put the manga hat on and like, I mean, unless you like Trump, like, you're kind of fucking canceled. I haven't heard him like, be like, I made a mistake, that was wrong, Trump sucks. The reality is, like, when you're rich, the, it's a different, you're just in a different,

you're, you're no longer, it's no longer thinking about like the things that matter to real people You know, which is why Alan and George W. Bush can fucking hang out We talked about this couple weeks ago, which is why Alan and George Bush can hang out in you know the fucking owner's box at a at a football game or wherever the fuck they were and she can be like You know, let's all just get along. It's like, yeah, like George Bush didn't fucking do anything personally to you, Rich asked famous Ellen, but he just said to all a bunch of other people.

And so now you guys are in the club where you're above all that shit. And that's like Kanye, I guess, is like, we're just gonna let him slide. We're just gonna let it slide, you know? I don't think cancel culture is real. And I think a perfect example is that Harvey Weinstein last night went to a comedy club that was a showcase for young actors and a female comedian went up there and said like,

some pretty, pretty light jokes about the fact that Harvey Weinstein was in the room and she was a rape victim who was uncomfortable. And she was called the C word and told to shut up and pushed out of the bar by the owners who then went on Facebook and they were like we really of course they went on Facebook and they were like we really feel we want everyone to feel welcome in our space not realizing that like Harvey Weinstein being made to feel welcome means that other people are made to not feel welcome, but we're in a place now where even if cancel culture doesn't exist and like so much as insulting a man is seen as like they're canceled whether or not it affects their income or something or if they've done actual crimes like going to prison and being up for like a rape trial isn't being canceled that's just what happens when you do a crime but anyway if cancel culture even exists which I don't think does, we're in a place where we're gonna get mad at Ellen and yell at her.

And if she doesn't respond beyond a quick, I don't give a shit and then doesn't respond, we are so overwhelmed with all of the shit we're supposed to be upset about that we can't get into every genius article and say like fuck Kanye West. Like Kanye West is so low down the tototodum pole and he still generates clicks.

So it feels like he gets a pass. Even though all of us are, most of us exist with the knowledge that we don't really care for him. He can continue to like saturate media because we don't have time to tell genius to stop publishing these articles and sucking his dick. Like we don't have the bandwidth as like people

who have jobs and have to like, you know, plan for tariffs, you know, and like try to organize people to vote. And like we're just so overwhelmed with the state of things that someone like Ellen, if she has on like actresses, we like and the actress does something funny, and we all wanna click on the video and be like, look at that Emma Stone playing, you know,

Tittly Winks with Ellen. If you wanna watch that video, you're stuck tacitly supporting her. And Emma Stone's not going to say no to Ellen because she's still going to get the viewers and it's still going to go viral. And it's kind of like a too big to fail situation, but with celebrities and politicians. And that sucks because we also get blamed if we call people out. Like the media gets blamed for being cancel culture and like not letting anybody apologize if we try to bring attention like the media gets blamed for being cancel culture and like not letting anybody apologize if we try to bring attention to the horrible things these people are doing. And I think we're like still very much in flux. We're still in a really weird time. And when we look back on

this like decade, I don't know that this decade will quote unquote end in 2020, even if Trump is out of office. We don't know like how this is going to shake out or what the internet's new dynamics are. Like it's still really inflow. Yeah, it's a disturbing time in our lives, disturbing. So news drop today that AT&T is planning on giving HBO Max, because AT&T owns HBO now, is planning on giving way HBO Max to its 10 million wireless customers, which is nice for them. But the other side of that news is that HBO Max will probably have commercials and eventually HBO

will probably get commercials, which means that's kind of the end of what HBO was. And I kind of knew in 18T bought or got ownership of HBO that it was going to ruin it eventually, but that this is happening so quickly is very depressing. I mean, look, I think they want to, here's the thing is HBO now has to compete with Netflix. I mean, they basically have to compete with Hulu, and it's compete with Disney Plus,

and they're like, how do we get more people watching our shit? And so their ideas, they're going to basically introduce like a free tier, right? Yeah, they want to have a free available to their you subscriber base, AT&T, and then we'll all pay, but everybody I think is gonna be. Yeah, I mean, listen, I don't know, I'm a lot of people I know have Hulu with commercials.

I personally, if I can pay to not have, the commercials I'll do that, you know, like there's certain things that I will pay. Like I find watching, you know, I find watching like our long dramas that have, with ads in between, like I find watching, you know, I find watching like hour long dramas that have with ads in between like I find that experience very interruptive. So I'm happy to pay something to not have that happen. I don't know what the level of advertising they're planning on doing is going to be.

I also understand that like sometimes you just need to get people into your platform and like a good way to do it is to offer a free tier with ads. Like, that's totally fine. I mean, I think, but if you're paying for it, you definitely shouldn't be seeing fucking ads, you know what I mean? Because then it's just NBC and I don't have to pay for NBC. Um, yeah. I mean, I, there's very little that's happening on NBC that I would pay for.

Like, you know, and there's, and there's, there's, I would like, I mean, what's on HBO right now that I actually watch on a regular basis? I mean, almost nothing. Almost nothing. They have like maybe one or two shows like a season. Yeah, watch me now. Watch me now. And right to gemstone.

So I'm not watching that. I'm not watching. I'm not really that interested in like his dark, the whatever his dark materials shit. Oh, I'm gonna be watching that. I'm not watching. I'm not really that interested in like his dark, the whatever his dark materials shit. Oh, I'm gonna be watching that. I read those books and I'll be all in on that. Yeah, I know the books are very popular. I didn't read them. So maybe, you know, that's just like, I'm just like not part of that whatever that movement. I watched succession, kind of hate watch succession. You know, what's the West world, I guess,

I'm gonna watch more of. But like, just very little I actually watch on HBO. That's the thing, like, I don't know, maybe other people are different. Yeah. I find myself like going through stuff on Netflix and Hulu and even Amazon, as I'm extent more than I'm, but then again, it's like, it's all you can eat, you know? Like Hulu and Netflix and Hulu, and even Amazon, as I'm extant more than I'm, but then again, it's all you can eat, you know?

Like Hulu and Netflix and Amazon have all you can eat sort of selection of things. Whereas HBO is just HBO stuff. So, I'm not sure, I guess HBO Max will be a lot more content. Maybe not, I don't know. I mean, I don't understand if they're expanding the catalog. I'm just like, I don't wanna have to manage all this shit.

That's my main gripe. Like, I wanna like, I wanna like not be involved in managing any more of these services. It's at all possible. So, yeah, the last I can get a $9.99 charge twice a week for random things I use one some months is great. Yeah, I don't know. But I'm not'm not like, I just the whole thing is a mess. We've talked about this before. The whole streaming like, world is a mess.

You know, anyhow, I don't know. I don't want to say about it. I mean, it's like, I'm probably not going to subscribe. Brian, I gotta subscribe to our final giant news story from the week, which I can't believe we haven't gotten to yet, is that Google announced that it reached quantum supremacy with its quantum computing project. Yeah, I mean, for the listener, if you're not well-versed in this experimental wing

of computing, quantum computer, normal computers are zeroes or ones. Quantum computers can be zeroes, ones, or nobody knows quantum entanglement. It's a one end to zero at the same time. And through doing that, you can calculate much, much harder problems, but it's really hard to do. And at the moment, they've only just created

a quantum computer that is faster than a supercomputer. But we also, we haven't developed coding languages for it, or what kind of programs would be best to run on it. Or there's no applications for it yet, and you'll never like, I want to dispel the myth right now, you'll never have like a quantum computer in your home, but we'll be able to get access to those programs or systems through the cloud. And quantum computers will be really good at things like biology, chaotic systems, like weather, breaking encryption keys eventually, not yet like 50 years down the line,

but Google and IBM are like an episting match to get their faster. Yeah, I mean, right now this is just a PR, this is all PR. I mean, like there are obviously practical real uses for this quantum computing that we keep here about. But it is like, you know, all of a sudden IBM's like, oh, actually, we're doing quantum entanglement or whatever. It's like, I always like, with all these things,

it's sort of like, what are the real world impacts of it? And you just listed some of the potential real world impacts. You know, Google just had this huge update to their, to the search algorithm, which uses more natural language processing. I think it's like when you think about 20 years into the future, what this sort of processing power could potentially do to things like searches

or to interact with our machines. Obviously, clearly there's like, clearly, there's a capability there that has yet to be fully unlocked. I don't know what it is or how it's actually going to impact our real lives. But, well, the machine that they currently have requires tons of nitrogen and enormous systems that the machine basically looks like a chandelier.

It hangs upside down. It can only work for a few seconds. They only have 54 qubits running. And- Only 50 qubits, disgusting. Well, for reference, you need millions of qubits to do like general purpose computing with a quantum computer.

And we only have like 50 at the moment. But when we get those millions, we'll be able to develop new drugs and we'll have super artificial intelligence. And we'll have a computer that will basically solve problems as we think of them. But we're nowhere near that yet.

So yeah, the more interesting stuff being developed right now is in machine learning and AI with classical computers. Right. Yeah, I mean, it's cool. I'm excited. I'm also really excited to see years of PR bullshit from all these companies about what they're going to be able to do and how they're actually the best. That's exciting, but I don't know.

It's hard to get excited about a thing that doesn't really exist. I don't want to be rude. I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be that. Yeah, no, it makes me. I don't want to be that guy. You know. I think that's a kind of it for the week. We have kind of a short amount of news that they're doing.

Two of us is this week, you know, so it's, you know, it's a lot. I'm very tired. Also I should say, let me just cap off the end of this podcast with a very sad note. I don't know if you follow me on, if you follow me on Instagram or Twitter, you may have seen this, but our dog Penny died this week. She was almost 14. She would have been 14 in December, I believe. And it's very sad.

She was very sick. You've probably heard me complain about her on the podcast, which now seems like cruel, because she had this like cough. Penny had this thing where she had this thing called a clap trachea where her like, it made her cough a lot. And for a long time, I mean, as far as I know, it was not life-threatening.

She had other problems like her heart was enlarged and stuff like that, but it was just like very annoying. She would wake us up at the middle of the night. She would be like, walk around the house coughing, and like, obviously But it was just like very annoying. Like she would wake us up with a little night she'd be like walking around the house coughing and like obviously probably not that comfortable for her. But so you know, she was old and she was sick and she was kind of cranky. You know, but she was our guy, our dog.

You're not our guy I guess, because she was a girl. But you know what I mean? She was our human man. She was our adult human white man. Sis, hat, dude, really out of the trachea.

Christian. I mean, listen, I mean, Penny, Penny, listen, just you know, she was a very unique dog. She had a lot of attitude, a lot of personality. I didn't have a lot of personality. She had personality for days, very, you know, very intense, very intense personality, and she'll be very missed anyhow. So that's kind of a big thing in our week and probably one of the reasons why

I've been somewhat distracted. But I can't imagine what else would be distracting you. It's not like we're long-hauled. It's also the website. The website, yeah, the website is kind of a big one. That's kind of a big deal. But yeah, anyhow, so you know, RIP penny, I don't think we're going to get another dog anytime soon. Because I think we have to recover from penny first, basically. But I just felt like I should let the listeners know about where I'm at emotionally

and spiritually. And that's it. That's where I am. And that's all I have to say. Do you have anything nice from your way? Do I nice things? I can have nice things. Do you want to have my nice things? Let's do nice things. Okay, you start. Obviously, we all know what I'm going to pick if you've been following me on social media. So yesterday was my 12th anniversary of my relationship with my fiance, John. It's absolutely insane and very worrying that 12 years have passed that quickly. Crazy, very crazy.

If you can be in a long-term relationship with your best friend, I highly recommend it. That I think can categorically we can agree is nice. I he's a wonderful person, but also yesterday we got to see Mean Girls the Musical on Broadway. I was very nervous about it because Mean Girls is a movie that I loved but was beaten to death by the internet and everything I found to joy in in that movie has been, you know, it has been sacked out over years of memes. But, so I was like, I, you know, if this is a rehash of the movie, I'm going to kill myself, but it wasn't. It was very original, very good. The cast is extremely talented and nobody was doing an imitation of the movie actor, which thank God. I loved it. It was, it was really, really, really great. But also yesterday,

John and I got approved for a new apartment. We've been living in, I don't know if I've talked about this in the show, the apartment that we got when we left college and first moved to the city. And it was crumbling when we moved in seven or eight years ago. And it is just unlivable. I have had three days this week.

I have had no hot water or electricity. And that's just standard stuff in this building. We had an intruder the other day that was smoking cigarettes outside my door for a half an hour, and then screaming at me and called me a crackhead and pissed on my door. We had to get the police to remove him. Nobody knows why he was here.

That's what I've been living in for years in order to save money. And yesterday we got approved for a gorgeous new apartment that is right across from the Natural History Museum on a beautiful street. And the Natural History Museum is my favorite museum and a place where John and I went on our first date. And it is kind of a beautiful full circle, Ramcom. You've got mail up or west side moment and we've saved and scrimped and eaten shit for a long time.

And it is a lot of money upfront. But we're in one perfect New York day, we got to see a great Broadway show and we got to get a new apartment which we're really excited about and it's beautiful. And yeah, it was a culmination of those 12 years of like work and bullshit and like eating garbage to get there. But it was a good day, so I guess it was all worth it. Yeah, it's great.

It's so really happy. So that was my nice thing for the last half week. That's good. My nice thing is I got a Tesla. I got a Tesla. I don't know how to feel about it, but I think I'm mostly pleased. I mean, I don't know. I got a very short lease. I got a two-year lease on a Tesla because I wasn't really sure to feel about it, but I think I'm mostly pleased. I mean, I don't know. I got a very short lease.

I got a two-year lease on a Tesla because I wasn't really sure that I'd like it. Is the GPS voice from the Tesla Grimes or? I don't know. I don't know. It's a separate... This is like Kanye and his music. You know, you got to separate the man from the music. I have to try not to think too much about Elon Musk when I'm in his car.

It is just like a crazy car. It's a crazy gadget. It's like, it's just a crazy gigantic gadget. And, you know, it seems very cool. I have some issues with it. I'm still trying to figure some things out, but it is unlike any other car I've ever driven. You know, so I guess that's sort of my nice thing. You signed a document for me while the car drove you? Well, I pulled over. But yes, I said through the magic of technology, I signed a document that I needed to sign on my phone

for you to be able to get your employment, sort of proof of employment document or whatever so you could get your apartment. Yes, it was magical, magical time. We live in an age of miracles, an age of wonders. Quick question, the Tesla does play porn or no? Have we figured that out? So it can load porn pages after Laura, because I put a picture in the input, on the input Instagram of it, with input on the web browser,

because I was like, oh, it has a web browser. So you can load porn, like porn hub, but it doesn't seem to be able to play the videos. Damn it. So, yeah, I don't know. You know, even parked, yeah, so I'm gonna keep working at it, you know, we'll see what happens. And I'll of course update you as I know more.

I do think it would be a problem if it did play videos. So maybe they've like disabled that functionality. I thought a video of two guy driving and his wife and the car was driving them and they were both asleep and then book up if someone was building them and I was like, this is bad. I'll be honest with you. I've put on autopilot.

I do not trust it at all. I do not think I would never fucking just let it drive the car without paying very close attention. I'm not sure if you're not with a child or a loved one in the car. Like, well, yeah, no, I mean, not with anybody. Like, it's just not there yet. It's just not, like, Zell does like really jazz about it. She's like, put on autopilot.

I'm like, I'm like, I'd really rather not. She's like, why are you so nervous about it? I'm like, because I'm an adult and I know that. These young people, they're gonna have their cards fly in everywhere. I know. I'm like, I know the computers are very good at many things, but like, they are not good enough to do this yet, and I'm fairly positive with that.

So, anyhow. I wish you go. I gotta go. There's a lot of stuff today. I gotta get out my Tesla start cruising around the neighborhood. Yeah, I gotta go hand to check for more money than it would cost to hire a contract killer to kill me In order to get my apartment So I'm gonna go hand that check over and I'll report back. Yeah

I'm gonna go ride around town blasting the new Kanye record in my Tesla watching Watching porn exactly Bye watching porn. Exactly. Bye. Bye. Well, that is our show for this week. We'll be back next week with more tomorrow. And as always, I wish you and your family the very best, though. I've just watched your family testify in front of Congress. And I'm going to say they did a very poor job.