Do People Hate Tech Now? - DTNS Live

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2:18From payment processing to roadside assistance, flight rebookings to appointment scheduling, Parloa delivers the kind of customer experience that turns a one-time buyer into a customer for life. See Parloa's AI agents in action at parloa.com. That's P-A-R-L-O-A dot com. Hey, everybody. What you're about to hear is our DTNS Live Friday Hangout. So if you already get it in another way, you don't have to listen to it again. But it was such a good conversation with Ayaz Akhtar from PCMag just about where we've been with tech and people's feelings about tech that Amos and I thought it would make a really good weekend edition for everybody.

2:58So we are providing it to the DTNS audience as well. Please enjoy.

3:11Damn it. I was too slow on the banner and they got a sneak peek at us. Now they know Iaz is here. Hi, Iaz. How are you? Hey, Tom. I'm doing well. How are you? I'm good. It was like that Fight Club style. Did you see him? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I was looking at the Patreon live stream and it was just showing me a black screen until I clicked on the browser. And then it's like, no, no, I just wanted to scare you. It's fine. How's it going, man? It's going. We're all doing the WWDC prep, of course, because Monday It's the big day. Monday, the big day. Tim Cook's last one. We've got a lot of people on the ground there.

3:52So we're going to see what happens there. So we're, of course, as usual, people are worried about the live stream and everything else. So it's going to go great. It's going to be wonderful. Yeah. Are you guys doing the live coverage, live blogging, all that? Hey, Amos. Hey, Amos. We will be doing live blogging. We'll do the live pre-show at 1230 Eastern. So you can listen to myself, Andrew Gebhardt, Bridget Carey. We'll all be chatting about what we expect. Then the show happens. Then we come back with a post show explaining what the heck you just saw. If folks haven't kept up with you, let them know what you're up to these days because it's pretty cool.

4:31Yeah. So I'm an executive producer over at PCMag.com. And strangely enough, the company that owns PCMag.com, they bought CNET. Did you just collect a coin? I did. That's what just happened. So I got to turn my phone down. But yeah, so Zip Davis bought CNET and now CNET is a part of us. And I got moved to the CNET video group, which is even funnier because now I'm CNET again. So if you understood all that, I'm at CNET and at PCMag.com. Go to YouTube.com slash PCMag and you'll see my face regularly. I love this. I love this so much because your route is just as torturous as Ziff Davis's. And we got ZDNet back.

5:16So ZDNet is in Ziff Davis, finally. I started at ZDTV in 1999. All of Ziff Davis was owned by SoftBank. And Ziff Davis was ZDNet, ZDTV, um this this uh zd events which i think became key media or something uh and cnet was a separate company that operated uh like in its own place elsewhere then they sold off zd tv to paul allen and it became tech tv but they also sold off zd net to cnet oh that's how that happened yeah And then they sold the magazines to private equity and Ziff Davis became the magazines. ZDNet was CNETs. And for a while, we shared a floor, like a half of a floor was CNET because they own ZDNet.

6:15And the other half was Tech TV. Then when Tech TV got bought by G4, I went to CNET and I got reunited with ZDNet. but then cbs bought that uh and then that got spun out and it's far too complicated and boring to follow all the permutations but eventually the ziff davis that had been spun out as part of the publications ends up coming back around and buying zdnet and cnet and bringing everything back together including cnet which wasn't even part other than sharing the floor for that short period of time see the oddity of that like i could fill in this stuff after cbs it was cbs which turned into viacom and then viacom sold it to red ventures in south carolina red ventures that's right and red ventures has like health lines which is a really cool red ventures spun tech republic out because i was still doing top five for tech republic at that point i didn't know they had a piece of that yeah then then they got sold as if davis um hey red ventures i'm not a big fan of you guys i'm just not uh so i i'm gonna just say that because i what are you gonna do go find me from south carolina but you went from cnet to not cnet to pc mag and then back to cnet yeah because we it's the video team is very strange yeah because like they are outside of all the silos so we service all the different sites so you're like a central services for everybody yeah which is kind of how uh the cnet tv group was originally conceived of when they created it they created cnet tv as a video services group for cnet properties and that's when molly and i moved from doing like we were in some weird made-up group that was like we're in charge of the home page of cnet but also special packages and also like bathroom maintenance on the fourth floor it was just a bunch of stuff thrown together and then they moved molly and i to cnet tv which is this new group that ended up creating all the video stuff and the zedinet video people originally were conceived of like yeah you'll be part of that too but then they weren't and then they were and then jason howell was there and then he was on zedinet but then we wanted him on cnet and they're like well but it's not exactly the same thing so he has to leave zedinet um it was that was always weird but largely we were like the video place for news and download.com and reviews and all of that stuff so really what you're what you're doing is the error to that just wider because you've got pc mag and everything in the orbit now and what i want to say the hilarity of some time way back when this actually is not a current project but back when i was at seen that the first time uh there was this big push to do live content and like because we can talk to the community and i just kept thinking hey wasn't this all the podcasts i used to watch like i used to watch buzz out loud like yeah i'd be in the chat room i would watch like gadgets i'd watch uh oh i forget to dial in i watched all of this stuff right and i would just talk to people that way and i got to know this nerd group but the hilarity of the company trying to do it again and they wouldn't use any of the old property names i'm like why not like could you imagine we start with a thousand episodes yeah do it but anyway and brand equity and now that i'm an executive producer i can probably make something like that happen which is nuts um i'm looking forward to i'm looking forward to wwdc and i'm right now i'm doing an android show called inside the green bubble ah that's why you're hugging that big old green android statue in your video about dude they were there was somebody thanks for watching the hot dog video somebody was taking photos of us and uh us me and the android and the lady starts screaming kiss it kiss it and i looked at her i go i don't know who's touched this i go i'll cheat it yeah she was a google photographer okay so she wanted that photo op yeah i met ajit pai oh yeah yeah at google io i said hey are you a cheat buy and he's like yes i go hey i just wanted to say hi i've never met the head of the FCC before.

10:35I didn't give him my personal opinions about his policies. I don't think that was time and place. We got a selfie together. He goes, I'm sorry. I didn't have the giant mug. He literally said that. I was like, I'm like, all good, man. He went back to his Google Gemini Omni demo. And I went back to whatever the heck I was doing at this AI sandbox. Was he attending the Google Gemini Omni or was he involved in it somehow? I think he was just attending because he was he was meeting people there he was like oh hi i'm ajit and they were going to explain to him how something works so it didn't seem like he was uh brought in by we should have had ajit pi in our pi tournament amos definitely definitely the missed opportunity yeah that was a miss on our part uh is it but you know talking about like where where we've been and where stuff has happened and how many things have changed and then come back to not be changed.

11:33The one thing that I keep struggling with currently is the fact that everything around technology is coming from a place of, I don't trust them. Why is this bad? Whereas back in the Buzz Out Loud days of CNET 2007, it was, wow, this technology stuff, nobody else is talking about it, but it's pretty interesting. And not that we didn't have our like, this is bad Sony rootkit, you know, net neutrality conversations. But the general feeling was most people don't know about this stuff. And there's really interesting things going on versus now. It's like everyone knows about these companies and they all hate them.

12:16Yeah, it was a different group of people that would be paying attention to the tech news because tech news was literally its own section. yeah now that it bled into everything it doesn't matter what you're looking at if you're in the section if you're in uh actually i'm like what else is there in sports even because the amount of uh statistics that are just blown up by the gambling sites because you can see everything there's the abs reviews like all there's tech in so much different stuff that you can't escape it so now we have this this world of well everybody's got an opinion which is good and hopefully things get better but also it means that people who are less informed might just go along with it and then it's like too late essentially like like i got into facebook back then and i'm like oh i don't want to be on this thing anymore but i have to be professionally yeah like and if but if i heard the news way back and like okay they're going to be evil and they're going to suck and you might not want to be there like oh okay i won't use them as my won't use facebook connect to log in everywhere so i can't believe the better glasses are working considering facebook is Facebook.

13:17Yeah, because that stuff gets exaggerated. I'm not trying to whitewash what Facebook does. But what I'm exposed to, I think, is a bubble of my own, which is people who know technology. So when people say there's so many people who don't understand how bad these technology companies are, I'm like, that's all I ever hear from the people who are in my communities. is like no one's talking about the good stuff. Like I could think of five listeners, Laminar Rainbow is one of them, who are always like, yeah, no, this is cool. This is good stuff. But mostly I feel like the people in the audience and the technology press, like what I read people write is like, ah, here they go again, trying to fool us to think this is a good thing and here are all the downsides to it, which is not the way things were 20 years ago.

14:09No, basically, it's like we touched the stove and now we all know that the stove isn't as good as you thought it was. Because like, you know, it's hot. So like, is it that bad, though? Like, I'm not again, I'm not trying to say it's horrible, but I think sometimes people just jump to the conclusion like, well, it's all bad. And I'm like, I don't think it was any better 20 years ago. It's it's just that our perspectives and biases have changed to assume bad versus to assume good. So when did that change happen? 2016. Cambridge Analytica. Yeah, that's a good time for it. It just, let me think, why did this change?

14:53It just wasn't as bad then. I think we would know what was negative about it, but the companies were more forthcoming because they would clearly explain what was going on to the nerds. Like, here's what we were doing. Here's what we're trying to explain. We're trying to spin it for the general public. I think leads to unsatisfying results, but you can't satisfy everyone. I think the general public becoming more familiar with the products and the companies becoming big enough that everybody knows who they are is a big part of it. The Sony Rootkit thing that I mentioned earlier was horrible. And Sony denied, denied, denied that they even did it.

15:34It's exactly the kind of thing that everyone assumes every tech story is now. It wasn't as big back then because most people didn't understand what a rootkit was or were like, yeah, but I never install things. I play CDs in my CD player. Why would I play them on my computer? So it just didn't get the traction that it would get now. Because now the equivalent is they did something on your phone and everybody's like, oh, well, I have a phone. So they're coming for me. the other thing is that the changing society of you know anybody could say anything at any time and it doesn't mean anything so are you lying constantly are you expecting people to lie to you and if you're expecting them to be like even if even if a company has good intentions and they want to provide a service of some kind it's you're gonna have a skeptical eye because you're gonna go are you really like don't be evil google and you change like there was a was if then then that if then then if this then that thank you they at one point they had a service and i was paying like whatever the fee was per month and they said we will never ever increase the price if you lock in here so i did and eventually they had to change the price and i was like you went back i can't trust you anymore yeah that might be extreme but like i don't know yeah yeah they should have never that that is a a very short-term thinking promise you know in retrospect like no company should ever say they can't raise the price on something because inflation, even at its lowest is two or 3%.

17:10Like eventually you're going to, if you want to stay in business, you're going to have to raise the price. So that, that was kind of silly. Don't say it or like lock it in for like a year or two, but the forever part is the issue. And then you get the, you get the skeptic analysis essentially of, can I trust these people with my stuff? Because the other thing I think people are noticing is the amount of data that is being collected about them. And now they're realizing that, wait, what are you guys doing with it? What is it like versus, you know, when they were collecting data 20 years ago, we might've got a little bit of a better ad on the bottom corner or something, but not notifications for things, not getting spammed emails, not getting spam texts, like all of that stuff that says, Hey, you know, we got you from a list, please, you know, join our thing so yeah that one actually i think flipped with um uh oh gosh why can't i remember the guy he had to end up going to russia because he did the whistleblowing on sharing data snowden snowden yeah eric snowden i feel like edward edward eric eric i'm sorry you did nothing wrong it was edward snowden eric sitting in iowa right now going what did i do i didn't blow the whistle on anything and a lot of people don't think that edward snowden did anything wrong i uh but i think there was a change in perception of data there and this is something i don't think gets enough attention up until snowden if you went and talked to most people about third-party data sharing like hey you know google's collecting a lot of information on you they'd be like yeah and they're gonna serve me some ads whatever i don't care like that really was the attitude of like well whatever if they want to serve me some ads with it what's the worst i got nothing to hide kind of attitude snowden came along and the snowden story was that the government was collecting data on you and everybody freaked out like wait a minute the guy i don't want the government knowing stuff about me because that they could do all kinds of things with it the government has too much power i don't trust the government and there became all of this outrage about collecting data and it's One of the least covered phenomenon of technology is that within a year, that entire conversation had been pivoted to, I don't want companies collecting data on me.

19:38And no one was thinking about the government aspect very much. And today, if you talk to people about data, like people are collecting data on you, they will immediately think you mean Google or Facebook or something like that. They do not go to the fact that the government is still collecting exactly the same data that it was when Snowden said what he said. And nothing has changed on that. I know recently there's been some things about the renewal of the FISA courts and everything. So maybe it's changing now in 2026. But for for a long time, I I'm not I'm not pushing a conspiracy theory, but I find it quite interesting that backlash against government data collection metamorphosized into backlash against third party data collection.

20:27A thing that no one cared about before that. All right. I'm going to say this probably shifted because once you hear about the government doing something, you're like, OK, it's really big. there's a lot of people involved and all you people who thought this was happening you were right which is a whole other thing you basically have have uh you've validated a bunch of what was considered fringe people who are like yeah we're being watched by the government yeah they were totally vindicated but the thing is once you see a company do the same thing you and that company's making money they're going to be better at it so it's basically like you know are you going to be really worried about the government agency that's only running for a certain amount of hours collecting your data or Google, which is fantastic and getting all your data.

21:07And not only that, it's smart enough to figure out what to do with it. Like if they sell it to health care companies, we're screwed. If the government doesn't, at least you can have this air of impropriety, which used to be a thing we used to have here. But it's supposed to be wrong. But if the U.S. turns into a company, we would just I think we'd be as horrified. But they're just not as they're not as fast. and they won't theoretically we had trust in the government to the point where it wouldn't move fast enough to cause these worries like oh we wouldn't after a sheep was cloned it's like let's slow down let's figure this out do i need a human genome let's slow down ai is just like turning it like it's snowballing to the point where somebody's got to stop it for like a minute and go like what do we want okay dario amode i don't know who that is he's the ceo of anthropic And today there's a story about Amode saying we need breaks for AI development.

22:04Yeah, yeah, yeah. I might have seen it that way, but yeah, it would definitely be a moment where the government, not our government, but somebody with authority, the EU, goes, hey, slow down. Well, the EU already did that. And then suddenly they realized that they weren't getting any economic benefit out of AI. And now they're easing up on that. business is booming but you know what really helped zero the accounting platform for small businesses i used to think spreadsheets were just part of it but real-time cash flow wow invoices that chase themselves even better books that automate that's a big one and i can keep track from my phone while i get the job done no spreadsheet in sight what a life do right by yourself and your business and search Xero for your free trial.

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25:15I think part of the big shift on that whole transition was that Facebook was gathering your data. Google was gathering your data. You know, even Yahoo was still mining your data about stuff. But we knew, like, yeah, what are they going to do with it? Like, sell us a new ad? It was the fact that the government was using them, those other companies as sources to gather information we didn't know they were gathering for purposes they'd never disclose to us behind our back while telling us we're not gathering your data so it wasn't just a matter of the government gathering it it was about how and the obfuscation of of the data they were gathering but they weren't getting it from the same source they were getting it from telcos oh no they were getting it from other places as well but they were Now, you're conflating two stories.

26:04There's the Snowden revelations about the metadata collection from telcos. Then there are other stories that come out later, after the backlash starts, about the government buying data from third-party data brokers. but there there have been many attempts and in fact i'm glad you brought this up because i feel like the least conspiratorial explanation of why it shifted from backlash against the government to backlash against the companies is people just started to realize and i as you kind of touched on this like well wait a minute if the data collected on me can be used by the government i don't want anybody collecting that data so there's a little transference of like well i didn't care, but now I do.

26:49And there were stories that came out that were never validated that Google had a black box that would pass along data. There were black boxes in data centers that would pass along data. They were never validated. Companies denied them. Yes, you can say, well, I don't believe any of that, but that treads us off into the land of conspiracy. As far as what we know, nothing was ever shared directly from the data that companies like Facebook and Google collected directly with the government without a warrant. And so that gets conflated of like, yeah, no, if you have a judge tell you you have to hand it over, then Google will hand it over.

27:27That's true of anything. And there's this other story where these third party data brokers collect a bunch of information off the public Internet and sell it to anybody who will pay them. And the government does, has in the past paid them for it, just like anybody else can. But that's not the same as the Snowden revelations, which were we actually piped all the metadata from Verizon and AT &T and T-Mobile into a box that we could go and query when we wanted to. Those are separate stories, but they do get mixed up in everybody's head. And they just assume, you know what, that's too complicated.

28:03I don't want to think about all that stuff. I'm not hosting Daily Tech News Show. I don't need to keep it straight. I just don't trust any of them anymore. I think that's how we end up there. I just wish with all the revelations we had about what they were collecting on us, I think our lives should be much easier from day to day. Like, I don't need to go through TSA security anymore. You know, I'm going to like, I got plans. You know what I'm going to do. You can read my calendar. I've got other things to do than to mess with these guys. Or like, if I'm, I don't drive anymore, like I should get lower rates if I have insurance later on or maybe they go up because i'm not driving as much but like you already know this can i opt in for like benefits for this because it'd be nice at least with google and facebook you're like you're getting something out of it you're kind of enjoying theoretically their service yeah right right but i'm not enjoying our current service although new york city is pretty awesome right now with that mom donnie guy he's he's fun and like a person have you got your free groceries yet what what is it no it's bus rides bus rides we're supposed to i have not done a i've not gone to the free grocery place that's going to open up.

29:05I've not done a free ride yet, but it's just stuff happens here now. When it comes to data, the one that always gets me is I have at least one friend who has a top secret clearance and not just like the basic level top secret clearance, like an elevated top secret clearance, who still gets pulled over in TSA if he gets stuff. Do you think Joe Schmo over here is going to... That's not a smart system. You think he's going to find something that the FBI and the CIA don't already know about this guy? There's clear gaps in the information that is known and gets shared. Well, I think that's the other thing is the exaggeration of the competence of all of this, including the companies that gather all this third-party data.

29:51Like when I stop seeing ads constantly for the thing I just bought, I will start to pay closer attention to how smart these systems are. And it's actually starting to happen. But yeah, they're not as good as everyone fears they will be. We have this habit of saying, these companies are stupid. They can't do anything right. Also, they're incredibly competent and will target me down to the most minutest detail and exploit me. And it's like, yeah, it's probably somewhere in the middle, you know? Yeah. It's or both extremes are going to target you down to the most minute detail and still get it wrong.

30:31They're going to try and they're going to miss. Yeah. And sometimes they get it right. And when we get it right, we like it and we don't complain and we don't notice and we don't log it. That's the movie trailer. That's the movie trailer example I always trot out is like when you when you go actively go to YouTube to watch a movie trailer for a movie you're excited about. you're seeking out an advertisement and watching it right and so when when you get served something like that and you're like oh that's cool this happens on instagram all the time people are like oh i found out this cool thing and it's like yeah it was an ad but because it was cool and it targeted them properly they're not annoyed by it that's how it's supposed to work i love my instagram ads i love them i will say that because they got me down and anytime like i've been looking at a lot of different rigs to set up mobile shooting and things and it keeps giving me different sources about that advertisements now i don't know the quality of these things that's the thing look at them later but they're they there are so many like crazy ideas that somebody else is actually making i'm like this is great so this is actually something i would do like looking at but it's it's removing the the other part that i wanted to see like what my friends are doing because the the ads have gotten so good they're like i'm only looking at them apparently well and the way the algorithm works if you're looking at the ads it's like oh he likes the ads let's give him more you know you have to actively change your behavior to get the algorithm to give you the other stuff i i do that i have to consciously decide like nope nope nope nope okay yeah yeah um before we move too far beyond the pale on uh on how tech used to used to be and how the reporting used to be i would be absolutely remiss if i didn't remind people that the boztown archive exists so if you would like to go relive the heady days of sony rootkits and net neutrality rants from 2005 for about six years six and a half years of a big chunk of tech news right there starting these two people right here actually listen to the theme change from just standard to that remix I remember that yeah a couple times actually you would hear my name in the chat room a lot because EOS and then I changed the spelling to lowercase i cap y and they never said it wrong again and it was a good show I like the show yep I just want to throw that out there in case people don't know I'm available if you want to bring it back I'm available if you need a producer for it so let us know that would be kind of interesting we kind of could uh anyway we'll talk about that offline yeah yeah i shouldn't throw out ridiculous bombs like that live um because i'm actually i say i'm available like i have any time in my schedule yeah but i i this is helpful this is therapy for me today because i i keep running into this thing where like all i see in the tech press all i see in the emails to dtns are like this is crappy this is bad and i'm like man that's always been part of it but it always felt like when we were talking about the crappy and the bad that we were helping people understand the difference between hey this is helpful and good stuff and really interesting like the launch of twitter was really interesting you know and cool and this is the bad stuff these are the root kits and the things that are trying to undermine your ability uh to you know to get a decent deal on your isp and all of that.

34:08And these days, it's all very much like everyone starts with a presumption of like, I don't trust them, I don't like them guilty until proven innocent on everything. And it's hard to find those feel-good technology stories because even when you have them, sometimes people are like, yeah, but is it really? What's the downside? It's not just that. The feel-good stories, and I'm saying this from a media perspective, they don't do well. Yes, right. I know. This is one of the biggest problems. We have this, the negative stories do really well. You know, why I hate XYZ or why you shouldn't buy blah, blah, blah.

34:46Why do you think I named our live stream, do people hate tech now? Because I know as soon as you put hate in the title, people are like, you have my interest. What is this? And so you're probably like looking at Instagram and it's like what I do. If you look at the negative stuff, you might look at that more. So now you get this echo chamber happening, right? between that Twitter, sorry, X, Facebook, Google +, if somehow you're using that from the past and you're listening to this in the future and you somehow did it. But like you're getting this echo chamber of everything's negative. And that's, I think, how you see the world at that point because you're just like, yeah, everything does suck because I'm the one clicking, I hate this or why this, I did every one star massage place or whatever.

35:25Those are really interesting things, but they just do better. And that's unfortunate. That's always been true. I think the algorithms are more finely tuned these days maybe. Or I, yeah, I don't know. Cause it's not like, like I said, Molly and I were part of the team running the scene at homepage and we knew that we knew what stuff worked. It was controversy arguments, sexy, you know, implications seen. It never went like, you know, full sexy and titles, but anything that was like, Ooh, that's kind of, you know, hot phones. Wow. Yeah. Like that's as, that's as wild as we went on that end but but but stuff that gets people's emotions and usually negative and it doesn't have to be a negative story but a a title that makes you feel like wait that's not true is much more likely to get you to click or a title that's like oh that sounds awful versus like oh everything is fine like you're not going to click on everything is fine unless you see the dog in the fiery room then you're like ah it's not really fine i i've been using less social media and listening to fewer podcasts lately.

36:35And then I got stuck in the Dungeon Crawler Carl world where that encompassed all of my listening time was Dungeon Crawler Carl to catch up on the series. I have not listened to a podcast since I started listening to Dungeon Crawler Carl. Not a single one. You and everybody else. Yeah. But it's been... Like, I'm just now at the point where, you know what, I want to start adding some podcasts, but I don't want to add any of the podcasts I used to listen to because my overall listening was trending towards the negative. And even like something that I used to find a lot of pleasure in, 99PI, they're more often now having stories that are showing the darker side of things.

37:16I need to find some happy feel-good podcasts that I can pump directly into my brain holes as opposed to the political and the world is crumbling down stuff that I was gradually getting into. Luckily for me, I work on DTNS, so I see all the show notes. I don't have to listen to the show because I can read all the notes. Well, and our most popular episode of May was the episode on what to know about your neighborhood data center. which I positioned negatively. I positioned the episode as like, should you stop the data center from being built in your neighborhood or something like that? That's not exactly it.

37:58But the story, the actual episode was like, here's what you should know. Here are the claims against data centers that are exaggerated. Here's the ones that are valid concerns. If one's coming into your neighborhood, here are the things you need to make sure you get commitments on. Here are the things that you don't have to worry about. And it was not trying to scare people. It was trying to arm people with information to say like, hey, a data center has a lot of positive benefits if it's done properly, if it's not seated too close to people's homes so that noise isn't a problem. If it's a closed loop situation where you're not going to be using a lot of water, if they actually can commit to their power requirements, so they're not using the power that the community needs, then it can be very beneficial, dot, dot, dot.

38:45And it was our most popular episode, and we got so many people like, oh, this was great. Thank you for this, because there's just no one doing that right now. No one's saying like, hey, we're not picking a side. Data centers are evil or data centers will save the world. It's like, these are just things you need to know about. Yep.

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40:19And the other thing is even if you, let's say you do produce a show with a title that starts negative, but the whole discussion is positive like that. some people don't read past the headline but they don't click through so they just might think yeah this this does suck and then are they like do people hate tech now people hate tech now it's like i don't think everybody a better headline for the stream would have been people hate tech now but i i can't quite bring myself to abase my headline that much because i don't actually think people hate tech yeah i don't i think i think we've gotten to the point where everybody knows what should work and if they get frustrated like your phone's supposed to work a certain way your computer is supposed to work a certain way your tv is so like but the thing is they've also got increased complexity so now we can we can also complain a lot louder yeah that's another thing because if you think 20 years ago and you're talking about twitter like just coming out right we don't have the same we don't have the same uh social media aspect the people who were giving their opinions out were people like me who would create a blog and or you're like on live journal and we were all considered you know fringe idiots and you're like oh you got a blog you weirdo.

41:25But now it's normalized to have a micro blog or whatever you want to call these things, social media. So it's a fundamental shift in who you hear versus who we used to hear. It was the people covering tech or tech people, and maybe business people and enthusiasts, right? Like you had enthusiasts that talk about it. So now we have everybody saying everything about everything. So, and I'm not saying that's bad, but I think, I think the volume of it is what makes us think. Yeah. Yeah. It's the popularity and the mainstreamness of tech. Uh, and I, I hesitate to say it because public opinion can be very loud.

42:07Uh, I think people underestimate just how effective public opinion is because none of us individually can make public opinion happen. But when enough people do, like you say, there is a much bigger voice out there. You can bring people and companies down with enough public opinion. I don't think corporations are any more evil now than they were when I was growing up. It's just that we have more people talking about it in ways that we can hear. and there's also that thing where we kind of forget the way things were when we were younger and we think that this is worse than that even though it's usually not but it's not that google became evil google became big and big companies do stupid stuff sometimes it's evil stuff but i don't think it's because google has plans to be evil it's just because google is too big and big companies get much more self-interested they move less agilely they don't want to take chances uh you know we've both worked for for big companies enough that you know that like these big companies they're just kind of amoral and slow moving and sometimes dumb versus actually actively trying to do harm yeah amoral versus immoral that's that's a careful distinction yeah yeah it's not that they're doing ill they're just because i think the perception is like oh there's an evil genius at the helm who is trying to screw us all and it's i don't i don't know that that's actually true i think there's there is there's just a jim two door doors for me there's thousands of impulses pushing a company in directions that aren't always best for everybody but sometimes are.

43:58But the other thing is when like Google starts a long time ago, these web 1.0 companies, like theoretically they were changing the world. They wanted to do something different. So that death, that part of the story gets magnified and that's why they started this. This is why they put power into it. This is why they did it. And as you were saying, like as you get bigger, now you have more interest parties who are saying you need to start making money and you need to figure this out. And no, it can't just be cool. You can't just keep running a losses. You're going to have to figure this out, how to make money.

44:29And when they do, it starts getting a little uglier because how to make money can it's. There's all kinds of ways to make money, turns out, you know, and and most of them didn't turn to porn, which is the best way to make money like that. That is that is the way to get richest, fastest. And most companies are like, yeah, but we don't want to get into that. But anything short of that, we'll consider, you know, stay tuned for DTS after dark.

44:59yeah i don't at this point i would think within the next oh geez 20 years some major companies just flat out going to porn it's like yeah it won't be disney okay because they own everything but it'd be like paramount porn uh and i say that because they bought let's say they buy x videos of porn amount. Porn amount. How much did you pay for that? A porn amount. Not an F-tone. A porn amount. It's all right there in the name. Whomever buys it, I think it's... People get desensitized. And when you see enough stuff, eventually you just don't care. And it's weird because people hate stuff. There is this lack of caring.

45:47I'm like, nobody did like, yeah, it sucks. Yeah. And who cares? They are, they're collecting all my data. They know everything about me. I can't do anything about it anyway. And I, I think you were right about the origin story. I think, you know, the public always believes the marketing in, in, in aggregate, right? That's why people are so mad at Netflix because Netflix let them, they didn't even really market themselves this way, but they let people believe Netflix will someday give you everything, all the movies and all the TV shows for$9 a month. And people just decided to believe that Netflix, let them believe it.

46:21And the backlash against Netflix was when it was like, wait, it's now more expensive and you don't have all the movies until you're taking those movies off the service. And I think you're right. I think there's a backlash because when US Steel started or Standard Oil started, they didn't go Go out on a big like, hey, we're here to change the world and make things better the way almost all of the tech companies did back in the gas will forever be 15 cents a gallon. We promise. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Before we before we wrap up here, because I know IS has to go. Have you planned for your retirement? Where do you where do you see yourself going now that we've been talking about the past and where we've come from?

47:06Where do you think you're headed? I thought you were going to lead into a sponsor read about like some kind of life insurance. And I was like, what are you talking about? Have you thought about your retirement? Stay tuned for a great way to play. Retirement, Liz says I won't ever do it. So it would probably be, I just want a garden. Okay. When it comes to tech, when it comes to technology, I would love to make sure that, I would think smart homes will work the way they're supposed to at that point. So I'll have a nice smart home. Yeah. But I still, I don't know if I'll ever be, I don't know if I'll ever shut up.

47:43I know exactly what you mean. Because I have opinions and I think sometimes people need to hear them. And I like analyzing things. So it's fun. But at certain points, I know enough stuff where I'm like, look, if you want to come to me, go ahead. But otherwise, I don't need to scream it out. So either I'll be teaching at a school or I'll be – I don't even know what school is going to be like in retirement age. I have less energy than I did when I was younger. I therefore assume that in the future I will have less energy than I have now. So I'll probably slow down, but I don't think I'll ever stop.

48:21I'll want to do something like this and just enjoy doing it too much. Meth, Tom. Meth? Yeah, just microdose meth. It'll keep your energy up. No, because then I'll have a heart attack when you're over 70. That's not a good idea. Well, you're deciding where you're going to have a long life and the energy is going to – or you can compress the energy. Yeah, you have a finite amount of energy. You can burn it all at once or stretch it out. Yeah, that's what you've got. No, but when I think – I mean there's thinking about retirement in the sense of have you planned financially and 401K and all of that stuff.

48:54But, you know, assuming that you've got that covered somehow, like, what are you going to do with your retirement? I always I kind of just don't feel I'll ever retire from this. Like, this is my retirement. Basically. Like, I thought about that, too. Like, if I had all the money in the world, what would I end up doing? It's like I like talking about tech. And if I could get paid to do that, that's even more insane. So and I'm doing that now. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm happy to do a lot of it. And I want it. I would hope at that point, though, I've got enough series out there that people are informed and enjoying it.

49:31And tech isn't this black mark on their lives. It's just a part of it. Like, it's no different than having plumbing at a certain point. You saw the build thing. Everything is your computer in the future. So that's going to be interesting. Your rings and your glasses and your. I don't want to have to charge my glasses. And I just love ambient wireless power by then. Don't worry about it. And then the conspiracy theory would be like, the power is going through you. Five hacks to be more powerful, be more conducive. GPEG 84 says, IAS never shut up. Oh, the comma is really. The comma makes all the difference.

50:12Thank you, GPEG 84. I appreciate that. Yeah, I know a lot of people who don't agree with you. Hoppa Happiness says, my retirement is the apocalypse. I mean, okay, every morning. Right after Hoppa Happiness wrote, can we end on a happy note? My retirement is the apocalypse. Sure. My retirement is working for Tom. Literally, I retired from the Air Force. Oh, that's true. You are technically retired right now. Yeah. So this is my retirement. This is what I choose to do with my retirement is facilitate smart people talking about tech. Thank you for your service. I forgot that I'm technically retired as well as a lawyer.

50:51I had to sign papers. Right. And every time I have to do a continuing legal education, I have to tell them I'm retired. So technically I'm retired as well. I'm not as retired as Amos is, but you know, that's. I had the least retired of the three of us. Yeah. Come on, Tom. Step up your game. That's it. I'll see. Oh, he just left. Wow. Okay. That was the first retirement right there. There, there. I've done it. I'm back. During that time, he didn't podcast. He played baseball for the Barons and came back. He's here. He's ready. Still Dave says, I'm just tired. Does that count? It's getting there.

51:34It's close. Yeah, you got to be tired first before you can be re-tired. Right, exactly. Exactly. It's a phased-in process. Yeah, yeah. Well, Ayaz, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much. remind folks again where they can go find all of the good stuff that you're doing these days. Go to youtube.com slash PC mag. Go to youtube.com slash CNET. I lost my voice there. Go to those places because we've got tons of videos and a lot of me if you want to deal with that. I loved your hot dog video, by the way. I even commented that I loved your hot dog video. If you haven't watched the Google hot dog video, go for it.

52:10And by the way, tracking out hot dogs over there. Harder than you think. Yeah. See? I want the behind-the-scenes making of the hot dog. I'll work on that. Yeah, where's the cuts? Thank you, Ayaz. We'll see you later. Bye!

52:34Hey, it's Paige from Giggly Squad, and I want to let you know that if you want the newest and hottest beauty products, you have to go to Sephora. I'm obsessed with the One Size Liquid Blotting Paper Spray. It's the first of its kind blotting spray that mattifies for up to eight hours. It's unreal. There's also the Summer Friday Shade Drops SPF 50, which basically lives in my bag at this point. Oh, and the Kayali Eden Plush Pear smells so good. It's sweet, warm, and addictive. Like, people literally stop me and ask what perfume I'm wearing, which you know I love. So if you want the makeup, skincare, hair, and fragrance products, everyone's about to be obsessed with, shop only at Sephora.

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