Podcast appearances and mentions of david at

David was the chief software architect and director of engineering at Stitch Fix. He's also the author of a number of books including Sustainable Web Development with Ruby on Rails and most recently Ruby on Rails Background Jobs with Sidekiq. He talks about how he made decisions while working with a medium sized team (~200 developers) at Stitch Fix. The audio quality for the first 19 minutes is not great but the correct microphones turn on right after that. Recorded at RubyConf 2023 in San Diego. A few topics covered: Ruby's origins at Stitch Fix Thoughts on Go Choosing technology and cloud services Moving off heroku Building a platform team Where Ruby and Rails fit in today The role of books and how different people learn Large Language Model's effects on technical content Related Links David's Blog Mastodon Transcript You can help correct transcripts on GitHub. Intro [00:00:00] Jeremy: Today. I want to share another conversation from RubyConf San Diego. This time it's with David Copeland. He was a chief software architect and director of engineering at stitch fix. And at the start of the conversation, you're going to hear about why he decided to write the book, sustainable web development with Ruby on rails. Unfortunately, you're also going to notice the sound quality isn't too good. We had some technical difficulties. But once you hit the 20 minute mark of the recording, the mics are going to kick in. It's going to sound way better. So I hope you stick with it. Enjoy. Ruby at Stitch Fix [00:00:35] David: Stitch Fix was a Rails shop. I had done a lot of Rails and learned a lot of things that worked and didn't work, at least in that situation. And so I started writing them down and I was like, I should probably make this more than just a document that I keep, you know, privately on my computer. Uh, so that's, you know, kind of, kind of where the genesis of that came from and just tried to, write everything down that I thought what worked, what didn't work. Uh, if you're in a situation like me. Working on a product, with a medium sized, uh, team, then I think the lessons in there will be useful, at least some of them. Um, and I've been trying to keep it up over, over the years. I think the first version came out a couple years ago, so I've been trying to make sure it's always up to date with the latest stuff and, and Rails and based on my experience and all that. [00:01:20] Jeremy: So it's interesting that you mention, medium sized team because, during the, the keynote, just a few moments ago, Matz the creator of Ruby was talking about how like, Oh, Rails is really suitable for this, this one person team, right? Small, small team. And, uh, he was like, you're not Google. So like, don't worry about, right. Can you scale to that level? Yeah. Um, and, and I wonder like when you talk about medium size or medium scale, like what are, what are we talking? [00:01:49] David: I think probably under 200 developers, I would say. because when I left Stitch Fix, it was closing in on that number of developers. And so it becomes, you know, hard to... You can kind of know who everybody is, or at least the names sound familiar of everybody. But beyond that, it's just, it's just really hard. But a lot of it was like, I don't have experience at like a thousand developer company. I have no idea what that's like, but I definitely know that Rails can work for like... 200 ish people how you can make it work basically. yeah. [00:02:21] Jeremy: The decision to use Rails, I'm assuming that was made before you joined? [00:02:26] David: Yeah, the, um, the CTO of Stitch Fix, he had come in to clean up a mess made by contractors, as often happens. They had used Django, which is like the Python version of Rails. And he, the CTO, he was more familiar with Rails. So the first two developers he hired, also familiar with Rails. There wasn't a lot to maintain with the Django app, so they were like, let's just start fresh, fresh with Rails. yeah, but it's funny because a lot of the code in that Rails app was, like, transliterated from Python. So you could, it would, it looked like the strangest Ruby code in the world because it was basically, there was no test. So they were like, let's just write the Ruby version of this Python just so we know it works. but obviously that didn't, didn't last forever, so. [00:03:07] Jeremy: So, so what's an example of a, of a tell? Where you're looking at the code and you're like, oh, this is clearly, it came from Python. [00:03:15] David: You'd see like, very, very explicit, right? Like Python, there's a lot of like single line things. very like, this sounds like a dig, but it's very simple looking code. Like, like I don't know Python, but I was able to change this Django app. And I had to, I could look at it and you can figure out immediately how it works. Cause there's. Not much to it. There's nothing fancy. So, like, this, this Ruby code, there was nothing fancy. You'd be like, well, maybe they should have memoized that, or maybe they should have taken that into another class, or you could have done this with a hash or something like that. So there was, like, none of that. It was just, like, really basic, plain code like you would see in any beginning programming language kind of thing. Which is at least nice. You can understand it. but you probably wouldn't have written it that way at first in Ruby. Thoughts on Go [00:04:05] Jeremy: Yeah, that's, that's interesting because, uh, people sometimes talk about the Go programming language and how it looks, I don't know if simple is the right word, but it's something where you look at the code and even if you don't necessarily understand Go, it's relatively straightforward. Yeah. I wonder what your thoughts are on that being a strength versus that being, like, [00:04:25] David: Yeah, so at Stitch Fix at one point we had a pro, we were moving off of Heroku and we were going to, basically build a deployment platform using ECS on AWS. And so the deployment platform was a Rails app and we built a command line tool using Ruby. And it was fine, but it was a very complicated command line tool and it was very slow. And so one of the developers was like, I'm going to rewrite it in Go. I was like, ugh, you know, because I just was not a big fan. So he rewrote it in Go. It was a bazillion times faster. And then I was like, okay, I'm going to add, I'll add a feature to it. It was extremely easy. Like, it's just like what you said. I looked at it, like, I don't know anything about Go. I know what is happening here. I can copy and paste this and change things and make it work for what I want to do. And it did work. And it was, it was pretty easy. so there's that, I mean, aesthetically it's pretty ugly and it's, I, I. I can't really defend that as a real reason to not use it, but it is kind of gross. I did do Go, I did a small project in Go after Stitch Fix, and there's this vibe in Go about like, don't create abstractions. I don't know where I got that from, but every Go I look at, I'm like we should make an abstraction for this, but it's just not the vibe. They just don't like doing that. They like it all written out. And I see the value because you can look at the code and know what it does and you don't have to chase abstractions anywhere. But. I felt like I was copying and pasting a lot of, a lot of things. Um, so I don't know. I mean, the, the team at Stitch Fix that did this like command line app in go, they're the platform team. And so their job isn't to write like web apps all day, every day. There's kind of in and out of all kinds of things. They have to try to figure out something that they don't understand quickly to debug a problem. And so I can see the value of something like go if that's your job, right? You want to go in and see what the issue is. Figure it out and be done and you're not going to necessarily develop deep expertise and whatever that thing is that you're kind of jumping into. Day to day though, I don't know. I think it would make me kind of sad. (laughs) [00:06:18] Jeremy: So, so when you say it would make you kind of sad, I mean, what, what about it? Is it, I mean, you mentioned that there's a lot of copy and pasting, so maybe there's code duplication, but are there specific things where you're like, oh, I just don't? [00:06:31] David: Yeah, so I had done a lot of Java in my past life and it felt very much like that. Where like, like the Go library for making an HTTP call for like, I want to call some web service. It's got every feature you could ever want. Everything is tweakable. You can really, you can see why it's designed that way. To dial in some performance issue or solve some really esoteric thing. It's there. But the problem is if you just want to get an JSON, it's just like huge production. And I felt like that's all I really want to do and it's just not making it very easy. And it just felt very, very cumbersome. I think that having to declare types also is a little bit of a weird mindset because, I mean, I like to make types in Ruby, I like to make classes, but I also like to just use hashes and stuff to figure it out. And then maybe I'll make a class if I figure it out, but Go, you can't. You have to have a class, you have to have a type, you have to think all that ahead of time, and it just, I'm not used to working that way, so it felt, I mean, I guess I could get used to it, but I just didn't warm up to that sort of style of working, so it just felt like I was just kind of fighting with the vibe of the language, kind of. Yeah, [00:07:40] Jeremy: so it's more of the vibe or the feel where you're writing it and you're like this seems a little too... Explicit. I feel like I have to be too verbose. It just doesn't feel natural for me to write this. [00:07:53] David: Right, it's not optimized for what in my mind is the obvious case. And maybe that's not the obvious case for the people that write Go programs. But for me, like, I just want to like get this endpoint and get the JSON back as a map. Not any easier than any other case, right? Whereas like in Ruby, right? And you can, I think if you include net HTTP, you can just type get. And it will just return whatever that is. Like, that's amazing. It's optimized for what I think is a very common use case. So it makes me feel really productive. It makes me feel pretty good. And if that doesn't work out long term, I can always use something more complicated. But I'm not required to dig into the NetHttp library just to do what in my mind is something very simple. [00:08:37] Jeremy: Yeah, I think that's something I've noticed myself in working with Ruby. I mean, you have the standard library that's very... Comprehensive and the API surface is such that, like you said there, when you're trying to do common tasks, a lot of times they have a call you make and it kind of does the thing you expected or hoped for. [00:08:56] David: Yeah, yeah. It's kind of, I mean, it's that whole optimized for programmer happiness thing. Like it does. That is the vibe of Ruby and it seems like that is still the way things are. And, you know, I, I suppose if I had a different mindset, I mean, because I work with developers who did not like using Ruby or Rails. They loved using Go or Java. And I, I guess there's probably some psychological analysis we could do about their background and history and mindset that makes that make sense. But, to me, I don't know. It's, it's nice when it's pleasant. And Ruby seems pleasant. (laughs) Choosing Technology [00:09:27] Jeremy: as a... Software Architect, or as a CTO, when, when you're choosing technology, what are some of the things you look at in terms of, you know? [00:09:38] David: Yeah, I mean, I think, like, it's a weird criteria, but I think what is something that the team is capable of executing with? Because, like, most, right, most programming languages all kind of do the same thing. Like, you can kind of get most stuff done in most common popular programming languages. So, it's probably not... It's not true that if you pick the wrong language, you can't build the app. Like, that's probably not really the case. At least for like a web app or something. so it's more like, what is the team that's here to do it? What are they comfortable and capable of doing? I worked on a project with... It was a mix of like junior engineers who knew JavaScript, and then some senior engineers from Google. And for whatever reason someone had chosen a Rails app and none of them were comfortable or really yet competent with doing Ruby on Rails and they just all hated it and like it didn't work very well. Um, and so even though, yes, Rails is a good choice for doing stuff for that team at that moment. Not a good choice. Right. So I think you have to go in and like, what, what are we going to be able to execute on so that when the business wants us to do something, we just do it. And we don't complain and we don't say, Oh, well we can't because this technology that we chose, blah, blah, blah. Like you don't ever want to say that if possible. So I think that's. That's kind of the, the top thing. I think second would be how widely supported is it? Like you don't want to be the cutting edge user that's finding all the bugs in something really. Like you want to use something that's stable. Postgres, MySQL, like those work, those are fine. The bugs have been sorted out for most common use cases. Some super fancy edge database, I don't know if I'd want to be doing, doing that you know? Choosing cloud services [00:11:15] Jeremy: How do you feel about the cloud specific services and databases? Like are you comfortable saying like, oh, I'm going to use... Google Cloud, BigQuery. Yeah. [00:11:27] David: That sort of thing. I think it would kind of fall under the same criteria that I was just, just saying like, so with AWS it's interesting 'cause when we moved from Heroku to AWS by EC2 RDS, their database thing, uh, S3, those have been around for years, probably those are gonna work, but they always introduce new things. Like we, we use RabbitMQ and AWS came out with. Some, I forget what it was, it was a queuing service similar to Rabbit. We were like, Oh, maybe we should switch to that. But it was clear that they weren't really ready to support it. So. Yeah, so we didn't, we didn't switch to that. So I, you gotta try to read the tea leaves of the provider to see are they committed to, to supporting this thing or is this there to get some enterprise client to move into the cloud. And then the idea is to move off of that transitional thing into what they do support. And it's hard to get a clear answer from them too. So it takes a little bit of research to figure out, Are they going to support this or not? Because that's what you don't want. To move everything into some very proprietary cloud system and have them sunset it and say, Oh yeah, now you've got to switch again. Uh, that kind of sucks. So, it's a little trickier. [00:12:41] Jeremy: And what kind of questions or research do you do? Is it purely a function of this thing has existed for X number of years so I feel okay? [00:12:52] David: I mean, it's kind of similar to looking at like some gem you're going to add to your project, right? So you'll, you'll look at how often does it change? Is it being updated? Uh, what is the documentation? Does it look like someone really cared about the documentation? Does the documentation look updated? Are there issues with it that are being addressed or, or not? Um, so those are good signals. I think, talking to other practitioners too can be good. Like if you've got someone who's experienced. You can say, hey, do you know anybody back channeling through, like, everybody knows somebody that works at AWS, you can probably try to get something there. at Stitch Fix, we had an enterprise support contract, and so your account manager will sometimes give you good information if you ask. Again, it's a, they're not going to come out and say, don't use this product that we have, but they might communicate that in a subtle way. So you have to triangulate from all these sources to try to. to try to figure out what, what you want to do. [00:13:50] Jeremy: Yeah, it kind of makes me wish that there was a, a site like, maybe not quite like, can I use, right? Can I use, you can see like, oh, can I use this in my browser? Is there, uh, like an AWS or a Google Cloud? Can I trust this? Can I trust this? Yeah. Is this, is this solid or not? [00:14:04] David: Right, totally. It's like, there's that, that site where you, it has all the Apple products and it says whether or not you should buy it because one may or may not be coming out or they may be getting rid of it. Like, yeah, that would... For cloud services, that would be, that would be nice. [00:14:16] Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. That's like the Mac Buyer's Guide. And then we, we need the, uh, the technology. Yeah. Maybe not buyers. Cloud Provider Buyer's Guide, yeah. I guess we are buyers. [00:14:25] David: Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. [00:14:27] Jeremy: it's interesting that you, you mentioned how you want to see that, okay, this thing is mature. I think it's going to stick around because, I, interviewed, someone who worked on, I believe it was the CloudWatch team. Okay. Daniel Vassalo, yeah. so he left AWS, uh, after I think about 10 years, and then he wrote a book called, uh, The Good Parts of AWS. Oh! And, if you read his book, most of the services he says to use are the ones that are, like, old. Yeah. He's, he's basically saying, like, S3, you know you're good. Yeah. Right? but then all these, if you look at the AWS webpage, they have who knows, I don't know how many hundreds of services. Yeah. He's, he's kind of like I worked there and I would not use, you know, all these new services. 'cause I myself, I don't trust [00:15:14] David: it yet. Right. And so, and they're working there? Yeah, they're working there. Yeah. No. One of the VPs at Stitch Fix had worked on Google Cloud and so when we were doing this transition from Heroku, he was like, we are not using Google Cloud. I was like, really? He's like AWS is far ahead of the game. Do not use Google Cloud. I was like, all right, I don't need any more info. You work there. You said don't. I'm gonna believe you. So [00:15:36] Jeremy: what, what was his did he have like a core point? [00:15:39] David: Um, so he never really had anything bad to say about Google per se. Like I think he enjoyed his time there and I think he thought highly of who he worked with and what he worked on and that sort of thing. But his, where he was coming from was like AWS was so far ahead. of Google on anything that we would use, he was like, there's, there's really no advantage to, to doing it. AWS is a known quantity, right? it's probably still the case. It's like, you know, you've heard the nobody ever got fired for using IBM or using Microsoft or whatever the thing is. Like, I think that's, that was kind of the vibe. And he was like, moving all of our infrastructure right before we're going to go public. This is a serious business. We should just use something that we know will work. And he was like, I know this will work. I'm not confident about. Google, uh, for our use case. So we shouldn't, we shouldn't risk it. So I was like, okay, I trust you because I didn't know anything about any of that stuff at the time. I knew Heroku and that was it. So, yeah. [00:16:34] Jeremy: I don't know if it's good or bad, but like you said, AWS seems to be the default choice. Yeah. And I mean, there's people who use Azure. I assume it's mostly primarily Microsoft. Yeah. And then there's Google Cloud. It's not really clear why you would pick it, unless there was a specific service or something that only they had. [00:16:55] David: Yeah, yeah. Or you're invested in Google, you know, you want to keep everything there. I mean, I don't know. I haven't really been at that level to make that kind of decision, and I would probably choose AWS for the reasons discussed, but, yeah. Moving off Heroku [00:17:10] Jeremy: And then, so at Stitch Fix, you said you moved off of Heroku [00:17:16] David: yeah. Yeah, so we were heavy into Heroku. I think that we were told that at one point we had the biggest Heroku Postgres database on their platform. Not a good place to be, right? You never want to be the biggest customer person, usually. but the problem we were facing was essentially we were going to go public. And to do that, you're under all the scrutiny. about many things, including the IT systems and the security around there. So, like, by default, a Postgres, a Heroku Postgres database is, like, on the internet. It's only secured by the password. all their services are on the internet. So, not, not ideal. they were developing their private cloud service at that time. And so that would have given us, in theory, on paper, it would have solved all of our problems. And we liked Heroku and we liked the developer experience. It was great. but... Heroku private spaces, it was still early. There's a lot of limitations that when they explained why those limitations, they were reasonable. And if we had. started from scratch on Heroku Private Spaces. It probably would have worked great, but we hadn't. So we just couldn't make it work. So we were like, okay, we're going to have to move to AWS so that everything can be basically off the internet. Like our public website needs to be on the internet and that's kind of it. So we need to, so that's basically was the, was the impetus for that. but it's too bad because I love Heroku. It was great. I mean, they were, they were a great partner. They were great. I think if Stitch Fix had started life a year later, Private Spaces. Now it's, it's, it's way different than it was then. Cause it's been, it's a mature product now, so we could have easily done that, but you know, the timing didn't work out, unfortunately. [00:18:50] Jeremy: And that was a compliance thing to, [00:18:53] David: Yeah. And compliance is weird cause they don't tell you what to do, but they give you some parameters that you need to meet. And so one of them is like how you control access. So, so going public, the compliance is around the financial data and. Ensuring that the financial data is accurate. So a lot of the systems at Stichfix were storing the financial data. We, you know, the warehouse management system was custom made. Uh, all the credit card processing was all done, like it was all in some databases that we had running in Heroku. And so those needed to be subject to stricter security than we could achieve with just a single password that we just had to remember to rotate when someone like left the team. So that was, you know, the kind of, the kind of impetus for, for all of that. [00:19:35] Jeremy: when you were using Heroku, Salesforce would have already owned it then. Did you, did you get any sense that you weren't really sure about the future of the platform while you're on it or, [00:19:45] David: At that time, no, it seemed like they were still innovating. So like, Heroku has a Redis product now. They didn't at the time we wish that they did. They told us they're working on it, but it wasn't ready. We didn't like using the third parties. Kafka was not a thing. We very much were interested in that. We would have totally used it if it was there. So they were still. Like doing bigger innovations then, then it seems like they are now. I don't know. It's weird. Like they're still there. They still make money, I assume for Salesforce. So it doesn't feel like they're going away, but they're not innovating at the pace that they were kind of back in the day. [00:20:20] Jeremy: it used to feel like when somebody's asking, I want to host a Rails app. Then you would say like, well, use Heroku because it's basically the easiest to get started. It's a known quantity and it's, it's expensive, but, it seemed for, for most people, it was worth it. and then now if I talk to people, it's like. Not what people suggest anymore. [00:20:40] David: Yeah, because there's, there's actual competitors. It's crazy to me that there was no competitors for years, and now there's like, Render and Fly. io seem to be the two popular alternatives. Um, I doubt they're any cheaper, honestly, but... You get a sense, right, that they're still innovating, still building those platforms, and they can build with, you know, all of the knowledge of what has come before them, and do things differently that might, that might help. So, I still use Heroku for personal things just because I know it, and I, you know, sometimes you don't feel like learning a new thing when you just want to get something done, but, yeah, I, I don't know if we were starting again, I don't know, maybe I'd look into those things. They, they seem like they're getting pretty mature and. Heroku's resting on its laurels, still. [00:21:26] Jeremy: I guess I never quite the mindset, right? Where you You have a platform that's doing really well and people really like it and you acquire it and then it just It seems like you would want to keep it rolling, right? (laughs) [00:21:38] David: Yeah, it's, it is wild, I mean, I guess... Why did you, what was Salesforce thinking they were going to get? Uh, who knows maybe the person at Salesforce that really wanted to purchase it isn't there. And so no one at Salesforce cares about it. I mean, there's all these weird company politics that like, who knows what's going on and you could speculate. all day. What's interesting is like, there's definitely some people in the Ruby community who work there and still are working there. And that's like a little bit of a canary for me. I'm like, all right, well, if that person's still working there, that person seems like they're on the level and, and, and, and seems pretty good. They're still working there. It, it's gotta be still a cool place to be or still doing something, something good. But, yeah, I don't know. I would, I would love to know what was going on in all the Salesforce meetings about acquiring that, how to manage it. What are their plans for it? I would love to know that stuff. [00:22:29] Jeremy: maybe you had some experience with this at Stitch Fix But I've heard with Heroku some of their support staff at least in the past they would, to some extent, actually help you troubleshoot, like, what's going on with your app. Like, if your app is, like, using a whole bunch of memory, and you're out of memory, um, they would actually kind of look into that, for you, which is interesting, because it's like, that's almost like a services thing than it is just a platform. [00:22:50] David: Yeah. I mean, they, their support, you would get, you would get escalated to like an engineer sometimes, like who worked on that stuff and they would help figure out what the problem was. Like you got the sense that everybody there really wanted the platform to be good and that they were all sort of motivated to make sure that everybody. You know, did well and used the platform. And they also were good at, like a thing that trips everybody up about Heroku is that your app restarts every day. And if you don't know anything about anything, you might think that is stupid. Why, why would I want that? That's annoying. And I definitely went through that and I complained to them a lot. And I'm like, if you only could not restart. And they very patiently and politely explained to me why that it needed to do that, they weren't going to remove that, and how to think about my app given that reality, right? Which is great because like, what company does that, right? From the engineers that are working on it, like No, nobody does that. So, yeah, no, I haven't escalated anything to support at Heroku in quite some time, so I don't know if it's still like that. I hope it is, but I'm not really, not really sure. Building a platform team [00:23:55] Jeremy: Yeah, that, uh, that reminds me a little bit of, I think it's Rackspace? There's, there's, like, another hosting provider that was pretty popular before, and they... Used to be famous for that type of support, where like your, your app's having issues and somebody's actually, uh, SSHing into your box and trying to figure out like, okay, what's going on? which if, if that's happening, then I, I can totally see where the, the price is justified. But if the support is kind of like dropping off to where it's just, they don't do that kind of thing, then yeah, I can see why it's not so much of a, yeah, [00:24:27] David: We used to think of Heroku as like they were the platform team before we had our own platform team and they, they acted like it, which was great. [00:24:35] Jeremy: Yeah, I don't have, um, experience with, render, but I, I, I did, talk to someone from there, and it does seem like they're, they're trying to fill that role, um, so, yeah, hopefully, they and, and other companies, I guess like Vercel and things like that, um, they're, they're all trying to fill that space, [00:24:55] David: Yeah, cause, cause building our own internal platform, I mean it was the right thing to do, but it's, it's a, you can't just, you have to have a team on it, it's complicated, getting all the stuff in AWS to work the way you want it to work, to have it be kind of like Heroku, like it's not trivial. if I'm a one person company, I don't want to be messing around with that particularly. I want to just have it, you know, push it up and have it go and I'm willing to pay for that. So it seems logical that there would be competitors in that space. I'm glad there are. Hopefully that'll light a fire under, under everybody. [00:25:26] Jeremy: so in your case, it sounds like you moved to having your own platform team and stuff like that, uh, partly because of the compliance thing where you're like, we need our, we need to be isolated from the internet. We're going to go to AWS. If you didn't have that requirement, do you still think like that would have been the time to, to have your own platform team and manage that all yourself? [00:25:46] David: I don't know. We, we were thinking an issue that we were running into when we got bigger, um, was that, I mean, Heroku, it, It's obviously not as flexible as AWS, but it is still very flexible. And so we had a lot of internal documentation about this is how you use Heroku to do X, Y, and Z. This is how you set up a Stitch Fix app for Heroku. Like there was just the way that we wanted it to be used to sort of. Just make it all manageable. And so we were considering having a team spun up to sort of add some tooling around that to sort of make that a little bit easier for everybody. So I think there may have been something around there. I don't know if it would have been called a platform team. Maybe we call, we thought about calling it like developer happiness or because you got developer experience or something. We, we probably would have had something there, but. I do wonder how easy it would have been to fund that team with developers if we hadn't had these sort of business constraints around there. yeah, um, I don't know. You get to a certain size, you need some kind of manageability and consistency no matter what you're using underneath. So you've got to have, somebody has to own it to make sure that it's, that it's happening. [00:26:50] Jeremy: So even at your, your architect level, you still think it would have been a challenge to, to. Come to the executive team and go like, I need funding to build this team. [00:27:00] David: You know, certainly it's a challenge because everybody, you know, right? Nobody wants to put developers in anything, right? There are, there are a commodity and I mean, that is kind of the job of like, you know, the staff engineer or the architect at a company is you don't have, you don't have the power to put anybody on anything you, you have the power to Schedule a meeting with a VP or the CTO and they will listen to you. And that's basically, you've got to use that power to convince them of what you want done. And they're all reasonable people, but they're balancing 20 other priorities. So it would, I would have had to, it would have been a harder case to make that, Hey, I want to take three engineers. And have them write tooling to make Heroku easier to use. What? Heroku is not easy to use. Why aren't, you know, so you really, I would, it would be a little bit more of a stretch to walk them through it. I think a case could be made, but, definitely would take some more, more convincing than, than what was needed in our case. [00:27:53] Jeremy: Yeah. And I guess if you're able to contrast that with, you were saying, Oh, I need three people to help me make Heroku easier. Your actual platform team on AWS, I imagine was much larger, right? [00:28:03] David: Initially it was, there was, it was three people did the initial move over. And so by the time we went public, we'd been on this new system for, I don't know, six to nine months. I can't remember exactly. And so at that time the platform team was four or five people, and I, I mean, so percentage wise, right, the engineering team was maybe almost 200, 150, 200. So percentage wise, maybe a little small, I don't know. but it kind of gets back to the power of like the rails and the one person framework. Like everything we did was very much the same And so the Rails app that managed the deployment was very simple. The, the command line app, even the Go one with all of its verbosity was very, very simple. so it was pretty easy for that small team to manage. but, Yeah, so it was sort of like for redundancy, we probably needed more than three or four people because you know, somebody goes out sick or takes a vacation. That's a significant part of the team. But in terms of like just managing the complexity and building it and maintaining it, like it worked pretty well with, you know, four or five people. Where Rails fits in vs other technology [00:29:09] Jeremy: So during the Keynote today, they were talking about how companies like GitHub and Shopify and so on, they're, they're using Rails and they're, they're successful and they're fairly large. but I think the thing that was sort of unsaid was the fact that. These companies, while they use Rails, they use a lot of other, technology as well. And, and, and kind of increasing amounts as well. So, I wonder from your perspective, either from your experience at StitchFix or maybe going forward, what is the role that, that Ruby and Rails plays? Like, where does it make sense for that to be used versus like, Okay, we need to go and build something in Java or, you know, or Go, that sort of thing? [00:29:51] David: right. I mean, I think for like your standard database backed web app, it's obviously great. especially if your sort of mindset bought into server side rendering, it's going to be great at that. so like internal tools, like the customer service dashboard or... You know, something for like somebody who works at a company to use. Like, it's really great because you can go super fast. You're not going to be under a lot of performance constraints. So you kind of don't even have to think about it. Don't even have to solve it. You can, but you don't have to, where it wouldn't work, I guess, you know, if you have really strict performance. Requirements, you know, like a, a Go version of some API server is going to use like percentages of what, of what Rails would use. If that's meaningful, if what you're spending on memory or compute is, is meaningful, then, then yeah. That, that becomes worthy of consideration. I guess if you're, you know, if you're making a mobile app, you probably need to make a mobile app and use those platforms. I mean, I guess you can wrap a Rails app sort of, but you're still making, you still need to make a mobile app, that does something. yeah. And then, you know, interestingly, the data science part of Stitch Fix was not part of the engineering team. They were kind of a separate org. I think Ruby and Rails was probably the only thing they didn't use over there. Like all the ML stuff, everything is either Java or Scala or Python. They use all that stuff. And so, yeah, if you want to do AI and ML with Ruby, you, it's, it's hard cause there's just not a lot there. You really probably should use Python. It'll make your life easier. so yeah, those would be some of the considerations, I guess. [00:31:31] Jeremy: Yeah, so I guess in the case of, ML, Python, certainly, just because of the, the ecosystem, for maybe making a command line application, maybe Go, um, Go or Rust, perhaps, [00:31:44] David: Right. Cause you just get a single binary. Like the problem, I mean, I wrote this book on Ruby command line apps and the biggest problem is like, how do I get the Ruby VM to be anywhere so that it can then run my like awesome scripts? Like that's kind of a huge pain. (laughs) So [00:31:59] Jeremy: and then you said, like, if it's Very performance sensitive, which I am kind of curious in, in your experience with the companies you've worked at, when you're taking on a project like that, do you know up front where you're like, Oh, the CPU and memory usage is going to be a problem, or is it's like you build it and you're like, Oh, this isn't working. So now I know. [00:32:18] David: yeah, I mean, I, I don't have a ton of great experience there at Stitch Fix. The biggest expense the company had was the inventory. So like the, the cost of AWS was just de minimis compared to all that. So nobody ever came and said, Hey, you've got to like really save costs on, on that stuff. Cause it just didn't really matter. at the, the mental health startup I was at, it was too early. But again, the labor costs were just far, far exceeded the amount of money I was spending on, on, um, you know, compute and infrastructure and stuff like that. So, Not knowing anything, I would probably just sort of wait and see if it's a problem. But I suppose you always take into account, like, what am I actually building? And like, what does this business have to scale to, to make it worthwhile? And therefore you can kind of do a little bit of planning ahead there. But, I dunno, I think it would kind of have to depend. [00:33:07] Jeremy: There's a sort of, I guess you could call it a meme, where people say like, Oh, it's, it's not, it's not Rails that's slow, it's the, the database that's slow. And, uh, I wonder, is that, is that accurate in your experience, or, [00:33:20] David: I mean, most of the stuff that we had that was slow was the database, because like, it's really easy to write a crappy query in Rails if you're not, if you're not careful, and then it's really easy to design a database that doesn't have any indexes if you're not careful. Like, you, you kind of need to know that, But of course, those are easy to fix too, because you just add the index, especially if it's before the database gets too big where we're adding indexes is problematic. But, I think those are just easy performance mistakes to make. Uh, especially with Rails because you're not, I mean, a lot of the Rails developers at Citrix did not know SQL at all. I mean, they had to learn it eventually, but they didn't know it at all. So they're not even knowing that what they're writing could possibly be problematic. It's just, you're writing it the Rails way and it just kind of works. And at a small scale, it does. And it doesn't matter until, until one day it does. [00:34:06] Jeremy: And then in, in the context of, let's say, using ActiveRecord and instantiating the objects, or, uh, the time it takes to render templates, that kinds of things, to, at least in your experience, that wasn't such of an issue. [00:34:20] David: No, and it was always, I mean, whenever we looked at why something was slow, it was always the database and like, you know, you're iterating over some active records and then, and then, you know, you're going into there and you're just following this object graph. I've got a lot of the, a lot of the software at Stitch Fix was like internal stuff and it was visualizing complicated data out of the database. And so if you didn't think about it, you would just start dereferencing and following those relationships and you have this just massive view and like the HTML is fine. It's just that to render this div, you're. Digging into some active record super deep. and so, you know, that was usually the, the, the problems that we would see and they're usually easy enough to fix by making an index or. Sometimes you do some caching or something like that. and that solved most of the, most of the issues [00:35:09] Jeremy: The different ways people learn [00:35:09] Jeremy: so you're also the author of the book, Sustainable Web Development with Ruby on Rails. And when you talk to people about like how they learn things, a lot of them are going on YouTube, they're going on, uh, you know, looking for blogs and things like that. And so as an author, what do you think the role is of, of books now? Yeah, [00:35:29] David: I have thought about this a lot, because I, when I first got started, I'm pretty old, so books were all you had, really. Um, so they seem very normal and natural to me, but... does someone want to sit down and read a 400 page technical book? I don't know. so Dave Thomas who runs Pragmatic Bookshelf, he was on a podcast and was asked the same question and basically his answer, which is my answer, is like a long form book is where you can really lay out your thinking, really clarify what you mean, really take the time to develop sometimes nuanced, examples or nuanced takes on something that are Pretty hard to do in a short form video or in a blog post. Because the expectation is, you know, someone sends you an hour long YouTube video, you're probably not going to watch that. Two minute YouTube video is sure, but you can't, you can't get into so much, kind of nuanced detail. And so I thought that was, was right. And that was kind of my motivation for writing. I've got some thoughts. They're too detailed. It's, it's too much set up for a blog post. There's too much of a nuanced element to like, really get across. So I need to like, write more. And that means that someone's going to have to read more to kind of get to it. But hopefully it'll be, it'll be valuable. one of the sessions that we're doing later today is Ruby content creators, where it's going to be me and Noel Rappin and Dave Thomas representing the old school dudes that write books and probably a bunch of other people that do, you know, podcasts videos. It'd be interesting to see, I really want to know how do people learn stuff? Because if no one reads books to learn things, then there's not a lot of point in doing it. But if there is value, then, you know. It should be good and should be accessible to people. So, that's why I do it. But I definitely recognize maybe I'm too old and, uh, I'm not hip with the kids or, or whatever, whatever the case is. I don't know. [00:37:20] Jeremy: it's tricky because, I think it depends on where you are in the process of learning that thing. Because, let's say, you know a fair amount about the technology already. And you look at a book, in a lot of cases it's, it's sort of like taking you from nothing to something. And so you're like, well, maybe half of this isn't relevant to me, but then if I don't read it, then I'm probably missing a lot still. And so you're in this weird in be in between zone. Another thing is that a lot of times when people are trying to learn something, they have a specific problem. And, um, I guess with, with books, it's, you kind of don't know for sure if the thing you're looking for is going to be in the book. [00:38:13] David: I mean, so my, so my book, I would not say as a beginner, it's not a book to learn how to do Rails. It's like you already kind of know Rails and you want to like learn some comprehensive practices. That's what my book is for. And so sometimes people will ask me, I don't know Rails, should I get your book? And I'm like, no, you should not. but then you have the opposite thing where like the agile web development with Rails is like the beginner version. And some people are like, Oh, it's being updated for Rails 7. Should I get it? I'm like, probably not because How to go from zero to rails hasn't changed a lot in years. There's not that much that's going to be new. but, how do you know that, right? Hopefully the Table of Contents tells you. I mean, the first book I wrote with Pragmatic, they basically were like, The Table of Contents is the only thing the reader, potential reader is going to have to have any idea what's in the book. So, You need to write the table of contents with that in mind, which may not be how you'd write the subsections of a book, but since you know that it's going to serve these dual purposes of organizing the book, but also being promotional material that people can read, you've got to keep that in mind, because otherwise, how does anybody, like you said, how does anybody know what's, what's going to be in there? And they're not cheap, I mean, these books are 50 bucks sometimes, and That's a lot of money for people in the U. S. People outside the U. S. That's a ton of money. So you want to make sure that they know what they're getting and don't feel ripped off. [00:39:33] Jeremy: Yeah, I think the other challenge is, at least what I've heard, is that... When people see a video course, for whatever reason, they, they set, like, a higher value to it. They go, like, oh, this video course is, 200 dollars and it's, like, seems like a lot of money, but for some people it's, like, okay, I can do that. But then if you say, like, oh, this, this book I've been researching for five years, uh, I want to sell it for a hundred bucks, people are going to be, like no. No way., [00:40:00] David: Yeah. Right. A hundred bucks for a book. There's no way. That's a, that's a lot. Yeah. I mean, producing video, I've thought about doing video content, but it seems so labor intensive. Um, and it's kind of like, It's sort of like a performance. Like I was mentioning before we started that I used to play in bands and like, there's a lot to go into making an even mediocre performance. And so I feel like, you know, video content is the same way. So I get that it like, it does cost more to produce, but, are you getting more information out of it? I, that, I don't know, like maybe not, but who knows? I mean, people learn things in different ways. So, [00:40:35] Jeremy: It's just like this perception thing, I think. And, uh, I'm not sure why that is. Um, [00:40:40] David: Yeah, maybe it's newer, right? Maybe books feel older so they're easier to make and video seems newer. I mean, I don't know. I would love to talk to engineers who are like... young out of college, a few years into their career to see what their perception of this stuff is. Cause I mean, there was no, I mean, like I said, I read books cause that's all there was. There was no, no videos. You, you go to a conference and you read a book and that was, that was all you had. so I get it. It seems a whole video. It's fancier. It's newer. yeah, I don't know. I would love to hear a wide variety of takes on it to see what's actually the, the future, you know? [00:41:15] Jeremy: sure, yeah. I mean, I think it probably can't just be one or the other, right? Like, I think there are... Benefits of each way. Like, if you have the book, you can read it at your own pace without having to, like, scroll through the video, and you can easily copy and paste the, the code segments, [00:41:35] David: Search it. Go back and forth. [00:41:36] Jeremy: yeah, search it. So, I think there's a place for it, but yeah, I think it would be very interesting, like you said, to, to see, like, how are people learning, [00:41:45] David: Right. Right. Yeah. Well, it's the same with blogs and podcasts. Like I, a lot of podcasters I think used to be bloggers and they realized that like they can get out what they need by doing a podcast. And it's way easier because it's more conversational. You don't have to do a bunch of research. You don't have to do a bunch of editing. As long as you're semi coherent, you can just have a conversation with somebody and sort of get at some sort of thing that you want to talk about or have an opinion about. And. So you, you, you see a lot more podcasts and a lot less blogs out there because of that. So it's, that's kind of like the creators I think are kind of driving that a little bit. yeah. So I don't know. [00:42:22] Jeremy: Yeah, I mean, I can, I can say for myself, the thing about podcasts is that it's something that I can listen to while I'm doing something else. And so you sort of passively can hopefully pick something up out of that conversation, but... Like, I think it's maybe not so good at the details, right? Like, if you're talking code, you can talk about it over voice, but can you really visualize it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think if you sit down and you try to implement something somebody talked about, you're gonna be like, I don't know what's happening. [00:42:51] David: Yeah. [00:42:52] Jeremy: So, uh, so, so I think there's like these, these different roles I think almost for so like maybe you know the podcast is for you to Maybe get some ideas or get some familiarity with a thing and then when you're ready to go deeper You can go look at a blog post or read a book I think video kind of straddles those two where sometimes video is good if you want to just see, the general concept of a thing, and have somebody explain it to you, maybe do some visuals. that's really good. but then it can also be kind of detailed, where, especially like the people who stream their process, right, you can see them, Oh, let's, let's build this thing together. You can ask me questions, you can see how I think. I think that can be really powerful. at the same time, like you said, it can be hard to say, like, you know, I look at some of the streams and it's like, oh, this is a three hour stream and like, well, I mean, I'm interested. I'm interested, but yeah, it's hard enough for me to sit through a, uh, a three hour movie, [00:43:52] David: Well, then that, and that gets into like, I mean, we're, you know, we're at a conference and they, they're doing something a little, like, there are conference talks at this conference, but there's also like. sort of less defined activities that aren't a conference talk. And I think that could be a reaction to some of this too. It's like I could watch a conference talk on, on video. How different is that going to be than being there in person? maybe it's not that different. Maybe, maybe I don't need to like travel across the country to go. Do something that I could see on video. So there's gotta be something here that, that, that meets that need that I can't meet any other way. So it's all these different, like, I would like to think that's how it is, right? All this media all is a part to play and it's all going to kind of continue and thrive and it's not going to be like, Oh, remember books? Like maybe, but hopefully not. Hopefully it's like, like what you're saying. Like it's all kind of serving different purposes that all kind of work together. Yeah. [00:44:43] Jeremy: I hope that's the case, because, um, I don't want to have to scroll through too many videos. [00:44:48] David: Yeah. The video's not for me. Large Language Models [00:44:50] Jeremy: I, I like, I actually do find it helpful, like, like I said, for the high level thing, or just to see someone's thought process, but it's like, if you want to know a thing, and you have a short amount of time, maybe not the best, um, of course, now you have all the large language model stuff where you like, you feed the video in like, Hey, tell, tell, tell me, uh, what this video is about and give me the code snippets and all that stuff. I don't know how well it works, but it seems [00:45:14] David: It's gotta get better. Cause you go to a support site and they're like, here's how to fix your problem, and it's a video. And I'm like, can you just tell me? But I'd never thought about asking the AI to just look at the video and tell me. So yeah, it's not bad. [00:45:25] Jeremy: I think, that's probably where we're going. So it's, uh, it's a little weird to think about, but, [00:45:29] David: yeah, yeah. I was just updating, uh, you know, like I said, I try to keep the book updated when new versions of Rails come out, so I'm getting ready to update it for Rails 7. 1 and in Amazon's, Kindle Direct Publishing as their sort of backend for where you, you know, publish like a Kindle book and stuff, and so they added a new question, was AI used in the production of this thing or not? And if you answer yes, they want you to say how much, And I don't know what they're gonna do with that exactly, but I thought it was pretty interesting, cause I would be very disappointed to pay 50 for a book that the AI wrote, right? So it's good that they're asking that? Yeah. [00:46:02] Jeremy: I think the problem Amazon is facing is where people wholesale have the AI write the book, and the person either doesn't review it at all, or maybe looks at a little, a little bit. And, I mean, the, the large language model stuff is very impressive, but If you have it generate a technical book for you, it's not going to be good. [00:46:22] David: yeah. And I guess, cause cause like Amazon, I mean, think about like Amazon scale, like they're not looking at the book at all. Like I, I can go click a button and have my book available and no person's going to look at it. they might scan it or something maybe with looking for bad words. I don't know, but there's no curation process there. So I could, yeah. I could see where they could have that, that kind of problem. And like you as the, as the buyer, you don't necessarily, if you want to book on something really esoteric, there are a lot of topics I wish there was a book on that there isn't. And as someone generally want to put it on Amazon, I could see a lot of people buying it, not realizing what they're getting and feeling ripped off when it was not good. [00:47:00] Jeremy: Yeah, I mean, I, I don't know, if it's an issue with the, the technical stuff. It probably is. But I, I know they've definitely had problems where, fiction, they have people just generating hundreds, thousands of books, submitting them all, just flooding it. [00:47:13] David: Seeing what happens. [00:47:14] Jeremy: And, um, I think that's probably... That's probably the main reason why they ask you, cause they want you to say like, uh, yeah, you said it wasn't. And so now we can remove your book. [00:47:24] David: right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. [00:47:26] Jeremy: I mean, it's, it's not quite the same, but it's similar to, I don't know what Stack Overflow's policy is now, but, when the large language model stuff started getting big, they had a lot of people answering the questions that were just. Pasting the question into the model [00:47:41] David: Which because they got it from [00:47:42] Jeremy: and then [00:47:43] David: The Got model got it from Stack Overflow. [00:47:45] Jeremy: and then pasting the answer into Stack Overflow and the person is not checking it. Right. So it's like, could be right, could not be right. Um, cause, cause to me, it's like, if, if you generate it, if you generate the answer and the answer is right, and you checked it, I'm okay with that. [00:48:00] David: Yeah. Yeah. [00:48:01] Jeremy: but if you're just like, I, I need some karma, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna answer these questions with, with this bot, I mean, then maybe [00:48:08] David: I could have done that. You're not adding anything. Yeah, yeah. [00:48:11] Jeremy: it's gonna be a weird, weird world, I think. [00:48:12] David: Yeah, no kidding. No kidding. [00:48:15] Jeremy: that's a, a good place to end it on, but is there anything else you want to mention, [00:48:19] David: No, I think we covered it all just yeah, you could find me online. I'm Davetron5000 on Ruby. social Mastodon, I occasionally post on Twitter, but not that much anymore. So Mastodon's a place to go. [00:48:31] Jeremy: David, thank you so much [00:48:32] David: All right. Well, thanks for having me.

Overview David Bowles used to be a marketer for whiskey but now spends his time writing great western books based on real past events. And maybe some whiskey sipping. His family has lived in Austin for five generations. His series of books follows a family through multiple generations as they deal with the westward expansion and America changing. Book https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TNPPZXW?binding=kindle_edition&searchxofy=true&qid=1664217895&sr=8-2&linkCode=ll2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=f48c82d9de91dd1a77931dbbf8f01f08&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl Website https://westwardsagas.com/ Favorites https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003B0W234?&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=f4445198ce9f7bc366945165c90f5ba0&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il https://www.cactusbookshop.com/ YouTube https://youtu.be/gXhzMA1m3ds Transcript today on discovered wordsmith. I have David Boles, David. Good morning. How are you doing today? [00:03:20] David: Good morning. You Steve. [00:03:21] Stephen: David before we talk about your book let's find out a little bit about you. So tell us where you live and some of the things you like to do other than writing. [00:03:29] David: I'm presently living in San Antonio, Texas, been here for the last 14 months, but for the last six years my dog Beck and I have been traveling around the country in a a class, a motor coach telling stories and writing books. And we're fixing to get on the road again. I've just purchased a new RV and we'll be heading out north to the Rockies here on Wednesday morning. Nice. But I'm originally from Austin. I was born in Austin, fifth generation to be born in Austin. And this is about as far as I ever moved away permanently to San Antonio. And that was back in 1968 for hemisphere. Okay. [00:04:06] Stephen: All right. You've been traveling. What are some nice areas you've been to or good sites you've seen? [00:04:11] David: At 2000 and 17, we spent the summer in Alaska and Canada and that's the place for me and the thing. And I say one, my last Bookman trace. I, they sat on there. My editor wanted to know what I wanted to say on the back of the book about where you live. And I said tell 'em I live in Texas in the wintertime and a summer anywhere summer or anywhere, but Texas. So Texas is a, is my home, but it's, I don't tend to live here in July and August. [00:04:44] Stephen: Yeah. Not the most pleasant place that we could be at that time. [00:04:48] David: Yeah, it's been really, it's been really hot, but we love the Rockies. We spend time I spent two summers in angel fire in New Mexico, and I did storytelling there at at the RV camp, in the RV resort in sold a lot of books up there by telling stories. Nice. [00:05:05] Stephen: Beautiful. All right. Why did you wanna start writing these books and what got you into [00:05:10] David: writing? I always heard the stories my father told my grandparents told, and they really interested me and I came from a. A long line of porch setters. And that's what we had to do back when I was a kid, we didn't have air conditioning. And so we always sat out on the front porch. Neighbors would drive down the lane. They would see us on the front porch and they'd stop by. And boy, they'd tell some stories. I started listening to these stories and they just kept going around in my head. Some of 'em were my family and some of 'em were just neighbors, but there were stories that I thought needed told, and until I could retire and have the time to write these stories, I couldn't, but I did a lot of research over 20 years of research and I have the stories down pretty well. And I've got 'em in, I've written this westward saga series. And right now four books and it'll probably be another two books to finish it up, but it's the story of America moving west. Okay. So all the way to California. [00:06:17] Stephen: So you took the that's a,

El día de hoy, martes 26 de abril, en nuestro programa de radio Día a Día, comenzamos conversando con Gustau Alegret, periodista y director de noticias en EE. UU. de NTN24, sobre la guerra en Ucrania: “A partir de lo que estamos viendo en el terreno, claramente a Rusia no le están saliendo los planes como tenía previsto… Los rusos no esperaban ni la resistencia ucraniana ni la respuesta de Occidente o la ayuda militar”, dijo. “Rusia ha desestimado la idea de sustituir a Zelenski, prueba de ello es que se mantienen las conversaciones aunque sea a bajo nivel”, agregó. Con el economista Luis Oliveros conversamos sobre la situación económica venezolana: “La frase de que ‘Venezuela se arregló' me parece más bien una falta de respeto. Para nada se ha arreglado, falta muchísimo todavía por arreglarse… Esta es una economía que ha caído cerca de 80%. Creciendo 20% solamente estás recuperando 4 de ese 80%. Eso no es arreglarse”, expuso. Pero también destacó: “Sí podemos mencionar algunas cosas que están mejor que en años anteriores: el tema de la escasez ya no es un problema y pasamos de hiperinflación a una inflación un poco más bajo”. También escuchamos la reposición de la entrevista que le realizamos en el programa En Conexión a la parlamentaria ucraniana Inna Sovsun sobre la situación que se vive en Ucrania: “La situación en Mariúpol es crítica. Las autoridades de la ciudad estiman unos 20.000 muertos… Se ofreció un corredor humanitario, pero nunca se especificó cómo se implementaría. Los civiles no se sintieron seguros y por ello no se dio la evacuación”, dijo, y destacó: “Nosotros seguiremos adelante con la ayuda occidental y con todos nuestros esfuerzos al margen de lo que pueda decir el señor Lavrov o cualquier otro miembro del gobierno ruso”. Sovsun expresó: “Necesitamos la paz y que sea una paz estable. Lamentablemente, la salida para la paz es militar y la victoria es militar”. Sobre el caso de Melissa Lucio conversamos con la periodista y ex candidata a la Gobernación de Texas, Joy Díaz: “La evidencia nueva consiste en que el procurador general que dijo que Melissa tenía que morir, ahora está cumpliendo una sentencia de 13 años por corrupción… Otra evidencia es que la persona que hizo la autopsia y testificó que la bebé había sido abusada, hizo otro caso en el que a un papá se le sentenció a muerte y se demostró que había sido un accidente” explicó, y destacó: “Hay una posibilidad muy alta de que Lucio sea liberada en los próximos días”. “Texas es el estado que ha matado la mayor cantidad de gente en el país. Ya son más de 600 personas”, agregó la periodista. Y para cerrar, con el periodista especializado en tecnología, David Atías, conversamos sobre los planes de Elon Musk para Twitter: “Con la adquisición y privatización de Twitter, Elon Musk toma el control absoluto de la dirección de la compañía”, dijo, y explicó: “La promesa de Musk es abrazar un paradigma de descentralización hacia la plataforma, desde el punto de la moderación de contenidos y de su funcionamiento… Su propuesta es abrir el código de los algoritmos para que no haya dudas de cómo se ejerce esta moderación de contenidos”.

Hoy en Día a Día, comenzamos conversando con el reportero de ‘Político', Daniel Lippman, sobre la prohibición de EE.UU a importaciones de petróleo, gas natural y carbón de Rusia: “Esta medida fue muy bien recibida, porque hay una unanimidad en que la guerra es condenable y que de alguna manera hay que castigar a Putin”, aseguró. Además, destacó: “Todos en el Congreso estadounidense están en contra de Putin, independientemente del partido en el que militen. Putin, de alguna manera, los ha unido”. El director de Amnistía Internacional España, Esteban Beltrán, conversó con nosotros sobre el alto número de refugiados han escapado de Ucrania: “Son unas 2.300.000 personas que se dirigen a los países vecinos como Polonia, Moldavia y Hungría”, dijo. “El ejército ruso ha bombardeado hospitales y escuelas con munición de racimo, la cual está prohibida internacionalmente… Estas tienen bombas que explotan y bombas que no explotan, las cuales quedan esparcidas por toda la zona”, agregó. Desde Caracas nos atendió el abogado y director vicepresidente de la ONG Foro Penal, Gonzalo Himiob, para hablarnos sobre la liberación de uno de los ejecutivos de Citgo detenidos en Venezuela: “Se dio la excarcelación de uno de los ejecutivos y de un ciudadano cubano-venezolano”, nos contó. “Estas excarcelaciones revelan que las razones que mantienen a estas personas encarceladas son políticas y no jurídicas… El mensaje que se recibe es que le resulta ‘rentable' al gobierno venezolano tener presos políticos, porque puede llevarlos a la mesa de negociación”, explicó. También conversamos sobre el artículo ‘Putin no garantiza a Maduro las fortunas chavistas depositadas en la banca rusa' con la periodista de ABC en Venezuela y autora del mismo, Ludmila Vinogradoff: “Los oligarcas venezolanos pusieron todo su dinero en la banca rusa. Pero con las sanciones a Rusia, se les han congelado las cuentas”, explicó. “Allí figuran 23 generales encabezados por Vladimir Padrino López y el comando militar. Y también están incluidos Jorge y Delcy Rodríguez”, puntualizó la periodista. También nos atendió el periodista de TV Azteca y MVS Noticias, Juan Manuel Jiménez, para hablarnos sobre el arresto de las primeras 14 personas por lo ocurrido en el estadio de fútbol de Querétaro: “En el código penal de Querétaro, hay una cláusula de sanciones cuando se comete violencia en estadios de fútbol, delitos que pueden acumular hasta 50 años de cárcel”, dijo. Además, habló de las sanciones al Club Querétaro, tales como “Jugar sus partidos como local a puerta cerrada” y la multa de 1,5 millones de pesos. Y para cerrar, el periodista especializado en tecnología, David Atías, nos habló sobre el papel de las criptomonedas en las sanciones a Rusia: “Occidente intenta limitar la capacidad de que los jerarcas y oligarcas rusos muevan libremente su dinero”, explicó, y comentó: “Hay preocupación por el uso de las criptomonedas para evadir las sanciones”, dijo, pero “El gobierno de EE.UU ha sido bastante eficiente limitando este tipo de actividades de evasión, ya que ha confiscado fondos provenientes de ciberataques”.

04: Public Defense w/ David Carroll This week, Executive Director of the Sixth Amendment Center, David Carroll walks us through how he got into public defense, the issues with public defense, and solutions that we can implement now.   You'll learn the some the areas states continue to fail sixth amendment obligationa, the "the dirty little secret" of the American courtroom, and how the justice system can shift to support the public in this space.   Through David's expert experience and unique perspective, you'll get an inside view of the public defense system and the value of the sixth amendment being executed accurately.   Key Topics and Takeaways: Misdemeanor representation issues The impacts of excessive entanglement between judges and defenders Police officer's role in court and being held accountable on trial The way to successfully campaign on public defense reform in a blue state or a red state The diversity of public defense between states. How failing to find Indigent Defense also harms our next generation   Guests: David Carroll, Executive Director of the Sixth Amendment Center   Resources: Sixth Amendment Center https://sixthamendment.org/  American Bar Association 10 Principles of Public Defense    Memorable Quotes:   “America's little secret is that thousands of people are processed into jail every day, without ever speaking to an attorney, this is almost exclusively, but not entirely in misdemeanor courts.” (8:42, David)   “At the core of our justice system is the idea that the state has a burden, which that word should mean something, a burden to prove your guilt with evidence.” (11:20, Hunter)   “There should be a lawyer with the client. There should be a lawyer in the courtroom… it clearly shows to me that these aren't defendants who simply don't want to show up in court.” (17:46, David)   “Criminal justice is probably the largest expenditure of government's money at the state and local level. And we're not getting the aims we want with no one's feeling any safer. In fact, you're probably ruining people's lives and not making them productive citizens” (25:25, David)   “People are trying to do good by their communities. 95% of the people I've met even if they're doing some really, really problematic things, got into government or criminal justice because they did want to serve their communities.” (42:16, David)   “People hear fines and fees and they go, well, it's better than jail.” (58:20, Hunter)  

On the podcast I talk with Eric about the value destruction of App Tracking Transparency, the limitations of SKAdNetwork, and how to thrive as an app developer in this new paradigm.My guest today is Eric Seufert. Eric has deep operating experience, having worked in growth and strategy roles at consumer tech companies such as Wooga and Rovio, but he also founded and sold a marketing business intelligence company, Agamemnon, and is an active investor in the mobile gaming and ad tech categories. Eric has a depth and breadth of experience with mobile apps and games that few can match. Over the past year Eric has written extensively about App Tracking Transparency and the future of mobile advertising on his trade blog, Mobile Dev Memo.In this episode, you'll learn: Will Apple's ATT be a net loss for Apple? Can SKAdNetwork be saved, and does Apple want to save it? Is focusing on organic traffic a flawed strategy? What does the future of app install ads look like? Links & Resources Rovio Snapchat Apple's Private Relay Tim Cook Outbrain Taboola AllTrails SubClub AllTrails podcast episode Stitcher Eric Seufert's Links Follow Eric on Twitter Mobile Dev Memo Heracles Freemium Economics: Leveraging Analytics and User Segmentation to Drive Revenue  Eric is on LinkedIn Follow us on Twitter: David Barnard Jacob Eiting RevenueCat Sub Club Episode Transcript00:00:00 David:Hello. I'm your host, David Bernard, and for the first time ever, I'm flying solo today. RevenueCat CEO, Jacob Eiting is busy CEO'ing.My guest today, is Eric Seufert. Having worked in growth and strategy roles at consumer tech companies such as Wooga and Rovio, Eric has a depth and breadth of experience with mobile apps and games that few can match. He also founded and sold marketing business intelligence company Agamemnon, and is an active investor in the mobile gaming and ad tech categories.Over the past year, Eric has written extensively about App Tracking Transparency and the future of mobile advertising on his trade blog, Mobile Dev Memo.On the podcast, I talk with Eric about the value destruction of App Tracking Transparency, the limitations of SKAdNetwork, and how to thrive as an app developer in this new paradigm.Hey Eric, thanks for being on the podcast.00:01:09 Eric:Thank you for having me on the podcast.00:01:11 David:So, we're going to start off with a bit of a dead horse that's been beaten over and over again. Apple's motivation in enacting App Tracking Transparency, but I did want to take kind of a different perspective on it. The most interesting thing to me personally about Apple's motivation with App Tracking Transparency is what it says about what they are going to do in the future.Did they build SKAdNetwork purposely handicapped, or did they not really understand how handicapped it was? Were they really trying to kill Facebook, or was that a kind of a side benefit? I think that their motivations are important, because it forecasts what changes they may or not make moving forward as they start to see the impact.So, I think the first thing I wanted to ask you is, how do you see Apple's reaction and how they perceive ATT to be going, now that we're seeing snap drop 25% after the quarterly earnings report, and see more of the disruption that you and others were predicting, but maybe Apple didn't quite see coming? How do you think Apple sees this going currently? And what does that say about the future of privacy on iOS?00:02:42 Eric:I think Apple's primary motivation was not to capture mobile advertising market share. I don't think that was a primary motivation. I think that's happened, and I think they expected that to happen, but I don't think that was the primary driver of this decision.What I think they wanted to do was, there's kind of like a big picture idea here, and then an immediate consequence idea. I think what Apple did not like, was that they had kind of lost control over content discovery on the iPhone.When the App Store was first launched, that was how you discovered apps. It was through going to the App Store, and some small part search, but then in large part just like the editorial curation that Apple exposes there. That changed over the years, and up until the announcement, or the enactment of of ATT, the way that people discovered apps was through advertising, and primarily Facebook advertising.Apple totally lost control. The content that people interacted with on their phones was not the result of any deliberate decision on Apple's part or some deliberate consideration. It just happened to be whatever could scale ads the best. Whatever companies could scale their ads the most efficiently, that's what people interacted with. That's what became dominant on the platform, and Apple really had no say in that.Short term, narrow aperture view of this, they just wanted to regain control of that. They wanted to be the kingmakers. They wanted to be the tastemakers; the people that decided—the party that decided—what became popular on the iPhone and how the iPhone was used.And I mean, that's, it's, if you've worked in, in gaming, especially, but if you've worked in mobile apps at all and you've ever had to go and, you know, go, go through the whole process of pitching your app to Apple, and pleading for featuring You know, that that's what they want.They, they like to having that control because that allowed them to percolate their new iOS features into the app community through almost horsetrading it's like, you want featuring, We'd be happy to give you featuring, but you've got to integrate X, Y, Z thing into your app.Once you do that, we're happy to feature you. that, that was sort of the, that was the, the, the negotiating process. You know, that that process, even that process itself became less important and less prominent in the life of a developer over the last few years, In 2012 to 2015 that's what you did every time you were launching a new app, or even if you're doing a major update, you flew, you flew to San Francisco, you went to Cupertino, you went into a, conference room at Apple HQ and you pitch somebody.That just stopped being something that people did. Like just people realized that, even if we get featuring, it's not going to be that meaningful for our business, what we really need to be able to nail what we, what we have to do. Our success is dependent on our ability to scale the product with paid advertising, you know, and explicitly, you know, specifically through, through Facebook.So, I think that was the primary motivation to regain that control right now. I think there's a bigger picture idea here. There's a bigger picture motivation or, or like, projection here, which is that, you know, we're, we're moving into a paradigm where, you know, the phone you have, the, the device you have that you consume content with is totally unconstrained, in terms of what it accesses, right?Like, and, and how it accesses content. And that's what that's, that's the sort of, that's the behavioral, norm that, that people are moving into, they just expect their favorite stuff to be available from whatever device they have in their hand, at that moment, as long as it's connected to the internet, they expect to be able to connect to Disney to Hulu, to Netflix, to Facebook, to anything, they use every day.You get to a point where, you know, if you run this gatekeeping platform, like at the App Store or Google play If, if, if users have leapfrogged that paradigm into no, my favorite content is always available. It's, you know, sort of like, it's just, just persistent in the cloud and I should be able to access it however I want at any, at any given point in time.Then you've lost control of that sort of, of that gatekeeper positioning. I feel like what Apple wanted to do they, they, know that that's inevitable. we'll get there, but they wanted to prolong this dominance and the prominence of the App Store in terms of, you know, the consumer relationship, that's the first stop you've got to go through them to get to the content. because then that also, like that also provides them with some leverage over the, over the developer. And I think w w we've I think we've probably accelerated. But, but maybe not, maybe this, maybe this, you know, buys two to three more years of, okay, well, I have an iPhone that means I go through the App Store to get content, right.Or I have an Android. Maybe that means I go through Google play to get to content. And not that like, this is it. Matter what device I'm using, I'm using my Samsung TV or my iPhone and my iPad or my Facebook portal or whatever, or my, my, Amazon, echo. I want to get to the content that I have available to me in a persistent way in the cloud.Right. And so I think that was, that was also the primary motivation, or that was part of the primary motivation, but that was like, sort of like the bigger picture consequence of it.00:08:18 David:Right. I mean, where do you put, Apple's kind of stated motivation of privacy in this hierarchy of, of motivations and, and outcomes because, you know, a lot of people have said, oh, well, Apple was clearly acting anti competitively to favor their own ad business and crush these other ad businesses. It was, you know, primarily driven by the greed to expand their ad revenue.And then I think yours is really interesting as far as like the control, but then of course Apple goes and just in the quarter results recently and has stated over and over again. That it was 100% privacy motivated. do you just not buy that00:08:58 Eric:No, not at all. And I don't, I don't necessarily even think at this moment that consumer privacy, has been benefited or protected as a result of this. Right. And we can get into that in a second, but you know, I've been publishing a lot about, they're still allowing fingerprint and they said they wouldn't, that's in the policy.Right. It's explicit. Like there's no ambiguity there and they're allowing for it. Right. And they're not policing. And they could, because they've done it in the past. And so I think if you want it to be protective of privacy, That would be one of the things that you would prioritize is, preventing that from happening.00:09:33 David:And you don't think that? Not that I mean, diving into fingerprinting real quick, do you think that. It's potentially that they're just delaying the enforcement to kind of smooth some of the disruption that tra App Tracking Transparency has already caused it because them not enforcing it immediately doesn't mean they're not going to enforce it.So, but I find it baffling as well. That they're not. So do you see them enforcing it sooner do you think that this really is an indication that they don't actually care about privacy and that this is not ever going to be enforced?00:10:08 Eric:They can enforce it at some point and like they're there, there wise, like I think kind of a widespread. That in the developer community, that there was going to be a grace period. Right. They would introduce NTT, but they're going to allow for fingerprinting for some amount of time, because, you know, if, if you just, you know, made this very radical change and it was like absolute from day one, the impact would have been even more severe than, than what we saw.So I, there was a belief that there would be a grace period, but you know, we're going on like four months now. Right. And, and the thing is, you know, my, my sense was when, as soon as they, because they, you know, they talked about private relay at WWDC this year, I was like, oh, okay. That's how they do it.Right. Because, and I've talked a bunch about how it would be clunky to police fingerprinting through App Store review the store review process. Right. I talked about that in a piece. I just wrote two weeks ago or last week, and it would be clunky, but they could have introduced us in private relay.I thought that that's what they were going to do. Or at the very least they would roll private relay out. Cause it applies to, you know, safari traffic now. And they would say, look, well, we have to reach parody. Our treatment of the web and or treatment had been app traffic. And so therefore, you know, maybe for whatever technical reason we can't, we can't, obfuscate the IP address of in app traffic, it'd be too expensive or it's a technical challenge that we haven't solved yet.But like, this is the moment, you know, ad tech when you must stop fingerprinting. And I think if they said that, you know, these ad tech companies would, right, because the way that they've sort of implemented this in a lot of these solutions is it's like an option, right? Like they say, you can turn it off if you want.Right. Cause I think that these ad tech companies are surprised. They thought fingerprinting was going to be. More we're policed early on, maybe not on day one, but you'd get like two weeks a month. and so they kind of introduced this as like an optional feature. Right. And then, you know, and they, they presented it as like a, Hey, it's a feature for developers if they want it.And so, you know, it's, it's something that they could switch off and they, they they're ready to switch off. I think. So I think even if, if Apple just sort of like, you know, kind of pantomime those motions, people would stop doing it because, okay. It's, it's actually, you know, it's sort of like actually against policy now versus just before where it was like ignored, but, you know, I, I thought they were gonna introduce in iOS 15 for that reason, or at least again, like, just make the, go through the motions of saying that, that it's, it's not allowed, but, but so just, just back Betsy, it wasn't about like, where does privacy sit in the, in the sort of list of motivations?I think it's probably so my, my, the heart, the hard time that I have with like, reconciling this idea that like, and you hear this a lot, like Apple cares about policy that people say that privacy, Apple cares about product. How could it have Apples on a person Apple. Apple's a corporate structure.There's there's however many employees at Apple. They don't all agree on things. Right. Who and Tim cook is not a dictator. He can't just run the company like that. Apple shareholders, have some control. His board has some control. Right. And so, you know, at least they have influence. And so like, the Apple as a, it can't have is it doesn't have a monolithic opinion about stuff.It's not an entity in its own. Right. I I just don't buy this idea that a company can care about some abstract concept. Right? Like, here's another question for you. Apple makes the Apple watch, It's a health tracker. Does Apple care about your health Do they, are they really concerned? Are they genuinely, you know, invested in your health Or do they want to sell something. so the idea with privacy is okay. It gives us an opportunity to strike a juxtaposition juxtaposition against Android, which you know, has, is, is perceived, I believe, as less privacy-safe but even Android has gone to great lengths or Google has gone to great lengths to bring privacy to the forefront in Android.A lot of it is about informing consumers about their data being accessed, but still there. They've done some things. Right. So anyway, I just, I don't believe that a company, a corporate entity can care about an abstract concept. Right. putting that aside, what does privacy buy them It buys them that juxtaposition, and then it buys them cover, It buys them cover to do all this other stuff. Right. And then to, and then they spin up this big narrative that probably helps us sell iPhones. Because you know what I00:14:07 David:Or future AR glasses 00:14:10 Eric:Exactly 00:14:10 David:Some ways,Positioning themselves, they they care about privacy insofar as it's an incredible marketing tool for them. it, gives them cover for future devices. They become more and more and more and more private. this thing you wear on your wrist biometric sensors and tracking your sleep and everything else, customers are going to feel more comfortable wearing AR glasses that have cameras on.When it's Apple branded, than when it's Facebook branded, there's been backlash with the Ray-Ban, glasses from Facebook. So, yeah, I get, you I, you know, the Apple fanboy in me wants to believe that, you know, Apple you know, wants to do good in the world, but I've, since lost my Apple religion, but I, but I do think to a certain extent that they care about they do care about privacy whether or not any of that's motivated by Goodwill or otherwise it's incredible marketing for them.That being the case, you know, and this is where maybe our opinions diverge, or at least how we interpret some of, of what's been going on. I still am of the opinion, as naive as it may be that that privacy was a primary motivation for them, whether they're altruistic or marketing or, whatever other reasons they have to be to be positioning themselves this way.I still think that that that was primary and, and that, I don't know that they even fully understood or expected some of the. the things that have been happening, I think they thought SKAdNetwork was a better solution than it actually is. I don't know that they expected to see a company like snap that is actually fairly aligned with them, at least, in marketing and public perception as being a more privacy-focused company to see this company that has been reading and talking positively about App Tracking Transparency and see them drop 25% in a single day, because, and then say specifically it's because SKAdNetwork isn't delivering.I still think personally. This has more to do with Apple, not understanding and not listening to the industry, which we've seen for decades, Apple doesn't listen, they're not good at receiving outside feedback on roadmaps, on, on their APIs, on anything else. They think they know what to do.And they think as a product company, they can just build this product bring it to the world. And it's going to be the best thing since sliced bread SKAdNetwork is just another. Yeah. Another example of them trying that approach and then just falling flat on their face. I think this is important because if that is the case and if they really, if the primary motivation really was privacy, then maybe we do see an SKAdNetwork 3.0, that's way better than this current one.After they realized they've destroyed tens of billions of dollars of value, and also potentially handicapped their own platform because as ad efficiency goes down and as apps struggle to gain traction, they lose too. So, yeah, I mean, I guess just, I'd love to hear your kind of response to that. Cause I know we probably disagree on this a bit.00:17:37 Eric:I guess it doesn't really matter. Like it, you know, if we, I don't know, at this point it kind of seems like semantics a little bit. Cause it's like, well, all they care about privacy because privacy is good marketing messages. But my point is like, I don't think they genuinely care whether people's data is being accessed by advertising networks.Right. I don't think they cared about that to the, to the degree that, it didn't impact. It was, it was, it was happening sort of unawares, right? Like, or, you know, that these users were like sort of unawares, once it became, like a, like a sort of social rallying cry around, you know, Facebook and, you know, it's the congressional testimony and you're listening on our devices.And then once it became something that I think that they could, you know, exploit the insured, then maybe they care about it because it is a differentiator for the products and they can help them sell more products. Right. But, but I think so, first of all, so we are on a scanner 3.0, they released 3.0 3.0 is just like a minor improvement.So 3.0 added view through attribution. And I think it added one more thing. And then also with, I was 15, they allowed the post-bacc to be sent directly to the advertiser, not just the networks. I mean, those are improvements, but I don't see them continuing to do. S K I know work. I just, I just don't see that, but I think I do. I do agree. I agree with you that, that they didn't understand how consequential that this would be to the advertising. I think it's an example of like the left hand, not talking to the right hand.Apple is like a super secretive organization, not just to the outside world, right. Internally Apple teams are very secretive. Right. And, you know, I, I don't know that the App Store team was talking to the iTunes team. I, I mean, I don't even really know how that, how, how this sort of corporate structure separates those two teams.But my sense is that like the App Store team, the people that work with developers, Aware of this, like, and I I've been told that I've been told that they learned about it at WWDC two years ago. Right. And then they got up, they had to field a bunch of angry emails and phone calls. Right. you know, I think, there, there wasn't a whole lot of consensus internally around what the impact of this would be.I think the impact was underestimated. And to be honest, I don't think they would have released something if they knew that it was going to wipe out, you know, just a late, a quarter of snaps market cap in a day. Right. I don't think they would have released something if they knew it was going to annihilate a fifth of Zynga's market cap in a day last quarter, you know what I mean?I don't think they, you know, and what we saw with Facebook was that there's like this kind of slow erosion of, of, of market cap, you know, from, from like the all time high, a couple months ago. but you know, th the damage hasn't been just, just in terms of stock price, hasn't been as, as, as severe to Facebook, as it has to some of these other.You know, who weren't really doing the things that Apple wanted, you know, to sort of, to mitigate. Right. So I, I don't think that they fully, you know, first of all, they didn't, you know, workshop this with advertisers. Like I know that to be true, or, or I believe that to be true, unless some people did it in like, you know, deep secret and they've never revealed it, but I don't think they, I don't think that's true because I've talked to a lot of people.No one, no one was consulted about this that I've spoken with. you know, I don't think that they really truly grasped how sort of like fundamental performance advertising was, or is to a lot of these businesses, right. In terms of, they're just, they're, they're sort of, you know, operational success.Right. And so I think, because of that sort of differential between. I think what they thought was going to be the result of this and what the actual result was. You know, I, I feel like that does call into question, you know, not only just the wisdom of this, but you know, how well they can defend it, right.When, you know, against maybe some, some, some lines of inquiry, you know, that, that are, that are sort of like, you know, kind of a more powerful and, sort of socially instrumental than, than ours than mine are then, then app advertisers or app developers. Right.I think they've, they've invited a lot of questions about this through, through, through the severity of the impact that we've witnessed over the last couple of weeks and months.00:21:35 David:And that's where I totally agree with that. And that's been my perception as well. And I talk to folks as well, is that Apple didn't fully understand the implications. And if there were people inside Apple who had a better understanding of what might play out, they didn't have enough of a seat at the table.And that a lot of this was just ivory tower thinking was Apple building ski network thinking, oh, this is going to be a great solution with. Like you said, workshopping it with the people who would actually have to use it. And then, you know, coming up with a better solution. So then, then my question for you is, okay.You know, you were kind of chicken little for a year, the sky is gonna fall. The sky is gonna fall. The sky is gonna fall. I mean, you've been really one of the most vocal people about how big these impacts were going to be. And you had a lot of people in the industry saying, oh, it's not going to be that bad.It's not going to be that bad. Well, now the sky fell. I mean, you know, a public company having 25% of its market value wiped out in a day due to one specific policy from a platform like the sky is falling, you were right. But then so now Apple sees it. They can't, they can't avoid seeing it. What do they do from here?You said, they're not going to make SKAdNetwork better. You know, are they going to not police, fingerprinting to, continue to soften the blow? Like where does it go? That's that's, what's so interesting to me about okay, whatever their motivation, what they do in the future. In reaction to what's actually happening now that we're seeing actual results matters, you know, to, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.And, and one of the things I put in the notes to talk about is a lot of this value that's being destroyed is not accruing to Apple. It's not as if you know, a hundred billion dollars of market cap wiped out of Facebook and Google and snap and other folks, it's not like Apple is actually capturing that because they don't, they don't have the ad inventory.They don't they're, they're not a big player in the space. So, yeah. W where does Apple go from here if they painted themselves in a corner,00:23:38 Eric:Maybe, I mean, I think what I would, you know, if I was an Apple, I'd be worried about, you know, they've got a lot of theirs are, they're already under a lot of scrutiny, right. Like, you know,00:23:47 David:Right.00:23:48 Eric:What did the DOJ, what just three days ago, decided to re reopen the investigation in that, in the Apple, related to, to the way they operate the App Store.I just think it's really tough to, to maintain this line on one front while, you know, you're obviously having to lose ground on, on another front. Right. because as we've seen, like there's just been this steady trickle of them, you know, seeding ground developers or, giving up a lot of, you know, Exclusivity and, and, you know, PR preferential treatment they have with, with apps or operation, right.Like, it just feels like maybe it's maybe it's they felt like, well, that will, it we'll expand one area of that, that preferential treatment while we're sort of like forced to abandon other, areas of preferential treatment. But I don't know that they were, I don't, but that would only make sense if they actually really understood how dramatic the consequences of, of ADT would be, which I don't think they did.You know, I don't know. Maybe they have painted themselves into a corner. I mean, I don't know. So that's the thing about asking, I know work is like the way it was designed. It's got a lot of features that on their own would be smart, you know, tech, progressive privacy, protective, you know, mechanisms.Right. But in combination just renders this thing, like totally. Dysfunctional. And that's the problem because now if they go back and they get rid of any of these given features, so like, or not features, but restrictions, right. So let's say they say, okay, so first of all, I mean, and I'm assuming most people listening are at least familiar with this.I don't want to, I won't, I won't go into the whole thing, you know, description of Muscat network from zero, but let's say they give up on the privacy threshold, which would be weird because there's a privacy threshold for Apple search ads to be fair, but let's say they gave that up. Right. then, then, okay.You move a little bit towards, you know, something that, that is functional and helpful. but you're, you've, you've, you've made a pretty, sort of like very kind of public facing kind of Mia culpa decision, which I don't, you know, or announcement. Right.Which I don't know, that is an Apple's DNA to do that kind of thing.00:25:49 David:And giving up the privacy threshold would actually allow tracking, which is what they're saying, they're trying to prevent. So that's the other problem with giving much ground on some of these things with SKAdNetwork.00:26:01 Eric:Well, it could, it00:26:03 David:And that that's kind of the broader question is like, can S K I network even be saved and, you know, let's say regulators did come in and say, this was completely anti-competitive what's the solution.I mean, if you roll back and give unique identifiers to every app, you're going to have all the same unintended consequences that came with the IDFA. yeah, I mean, that's like four questions rolled into a statement, but, can I ask that network actually be saved while maintaining some level of privacy?00:26:32 Eric:Maybe, but I don't know that you do give up. So I don't, I don't think you totally Naval tracking. If you'd give up the privacy threshold, what you'd enable would be the advertiser would be able to link the specific campaign to an individual user in their data environment. Now, if they chose to share that with a third party, Platform or as platform, I guess that that would be their decision, I don't think by default it would sort of instantly, you know, make that trackable. Right. Cause all you're really doing is adding a little bit more context every post-bacc versus just some, because you already get, I mean, if you get rid of the privacy rest, it, that just means those NOLs go away.Right. And so you're able to get a little, you're able to track, you're able to sort of observe the less frequent, transactions. Right. Or just tell me what it is. If you tell me what it is that I can design around that. Right. But we don't even know if it's dynamic they've, they've apparently changed it like without telling anybody.And so all of a sudden the number of Knoll conversion values exploded. Right? I mean, that's the thing, just make it public because if you do that, then I'm going to say, you know what? Okay, I'm going to design my app, such that like. The people I care about are going to trigger this or not. Right. It's not something that's in its early funnel.It's something that it'll happen. You know, I can build my, I can, I can sort of like Intuit, you know, just through like kind of statistical modeling, what, where I need to place this in order for it to trigger the number of people that satisfies the privacy threshold, such that I get the data that I really need to make decisions.Cause right now you have no idea. And you know, I have no idea where to place that. What, what is that? Unless you just experiment a bunch of times, but, but even then it's, it's the, the broader environments to variable because the, the campaign could go up and down in terms of like DAU or DNA every day, you know what I mean?And then if they change it, then there's like a totally unknown exhaustion is variable there. Right? So it's impossible to tune your app such that you, you say, okay, look, I get it. You're not going to let me have. conversion value if fewer than 25 people did it. Well, I know how much traffic I'm driving through all these campaigns every day.So, so I need to consolidate my campaign, such that each one drives 400 in new, new installs every day, because I know that, you know, an eighth of the installs will trigger that thing, but those will be the users that really care about. Right. And if you did that, then at least I know, and I can design everything around that, but I don't even know.I don't even know if that changes over time relative to the number of installs I'm driving. I don't know if you're changing it on the back end without telling me like, it's just, you can't operate in with that kind of opacity. It's just, it's just not functional. And then you've got the a hundred campaign ID limit, you know, you've got no creative, parameters in the post-bacc like, you just can't do anything with this.00:29:04 David:Yeah. I mean, that's where it does seem like this was designed as an academic exercise. How do we prevent any. Identification of any individual ever from being even remotely possible. And, and it was an academic exercise that they played out. Whereas if they had workshops with the people who actually have to use it and had, thought through the kind of business use cases and you made a valid point earlier, you don't automatically, enable tracking by, reducing the privacy threshold.But I think, you know, Apple She kind of rethink some of the priorities around this so that you get better business metrics, even if one or two people can slip through the cracks of being able to be uniquely identified. And I think the argument there is like, it doesn't matter at scale, like if one person slips through the cracks, Facebook is not going to build technology around finding that person here and there that slips through the cracks because it doesn't matter to their business to find one or two.It matters too to have more data on everyone. So the campaign ID limit the creative ID, like all of these seem very ivory tower thinking that just is not going to play out in the real world. So, a few minutes ago you were saying you don't think Apple will improve SKAdNetwork, but now we're talking about how they could.Where does the rubber meet the road what's going to happen?00:30:31 Eric:I mean, I don't. Cause I mean, the thing is like, you know, we're just kind of riffing right now. Right? I think like if we sat, we sat down with the chocolate or the whiteboard or something, you know, because we, I wrote an article a couple months back, right. It was, it was like right after this was announced and I kind of like, here's some suggestions here's, here's what you can do to make STI work.More helpful and you know, some really smart people in the Mobile Dev Memo, slack pointed out holes in my analysis. They know if you do this, I, I, if we, if we had enough, post-tax going, I could sort of encode the idea of V over enough of the post-tax like, event in a post-tax. I could put like one character from the 90 fee and every single one, I could get the users.So it's, that's why you can only have one post-bac per install, right. Because if you did 50 or so, that makes sense. So, I mean, the thing is like, if I'm just ripping, what I do believe though, is like, you can eat, you can either have the privacy threshold or the random. Right because I need so like ramp the privacy threshold up to a million.I don't care, but let me have real-time install accounting because without that, I can't do anything. Right. If you, if I, if you're off you skating, even the date of installed in that I can't, I can't do in Sauk county. I can't, I can't, I can't, assess the economics of my campaigns because I don't even know when the installs are produced and I can't make changes to campaigns.Right. Without having to shut the whole thing down and wait, and to reuse that, one precious campaign ID within the, within the sort of like constraint of a hundred. Right. So. my sense is that like, if you just solve for that allow that allow real-time install accounting and then do whatever after that you have to do to prevent me from figuring out who those people are.Okay, that's fine. But at least then I know this campaign drove this many installs today. These were the targeting parameters. This was the audience I was reaching. This is how much I spent. Right. And like, even if we just went, cause I don't think you would lose a lot if you just went back. Cause right.You know, the, the frontier that we reached was like, we're in, especially on Facebook, I'm optimizing for value. I'm not demising for ROAS. Right. And that was like the sort of the final form of, of, of mobile advertising measurement is like, I'm telling Facebook, give me 110% ROAS on day seven. If you do that, I don't care how you target, who you target.You know, w how much you see CPI is, is irrelevant. I've got unlimited. You know, from a, from a sort of like practical standpoint on any given day spend as much as you can, but just make sure we'll get a hundred times that was the final form. And I think even if we sort of like retreated from there back to just like CPI, the average LTV of this campaign is X and the average, you know, the CPI was Y and so therefore I'm making money.That would be much less efficient, but still like it's workable right now. What we have is not workable.00:33:10 David:Yeah, well, I think you and I could riff on all this wonky stuff for another couple of hours and, I hope Apple's listening and actually going to make some changes and, listen better now that they're starting to see some of this stuff, but I did, I did want to change gears and kind of start talking through.What this means for developers and specifically, you know, sub club podcasts, what it means for subscription app developers and, and what you were just talking about. I think, I think is actually a really important, topic that not a lot of people fully understand you've written about it in the past, but I think it's still somewhat abstract enough, that I wanted to, to kind of have you describe it in more concrete terms.And that's the fact that with these, you know, day seven ROAS campaigns and value optimization and event optimization campaigns, Facebook with all of its data and AI in incredible targeting efficiency has kind of, in some ways been doing the job of developers. It's been finding. Those unique profiles, user profiles of who's actually going to spend money.Who's actually going to enjoy the app. And, and it's like, in some ways they, they became this really efficient black box of user profiling and understanding users that developers had kind of in the past done. And then maybe now need to get good at again in the future. know, again, you've written about this before, but just describe that process, maybe a little better of, of how amazing Facebook really was at finding the best users for an app.00:34:51 Eric:Well, they were very, you know, as you said, very, very good at it. Right. So, you know, it was based on like an approach that is, was very, simplistic, right? I mean, I just gonna, I'm gonna, if I can observe everything, then I know everything about this user and I can just target most relevant ads to them.Cause I know everything about what they interact with. Right. And I know what they like and you know, it gets to a point where that, that that ability to observe is so pervasive. That I, I do agree like that, that had, gone too far. Like the pendulum has swung too far in that direction.Like it is not, I find it unsavory to think that like, literally everything I do on my phone is observed and instrumented and ingested as a data point by one company. Right. Like that's, I'm uncomfortable with that. So, you know, and, but, but like, I think, you know, to your point, like going, you know, if you go back to when, when UAC was introduced, right.So Google their mobile product UAC is that's they describe it. I think that they themselves describe it as a black box as like a selling point. Right. Because it's like, look. Worried about any of that, you will handle all of this difficult analysis for you. We'll find the best users for you. You don't have to iterate across audience, definitions, or even creative, you know, and do all that experimentation yourself.We'll do that on your behalf with our superior tools. And when they announced it, there was a lot of, you know, disquietude in the, in the developer community. Cause people are like, look, we built this. We want to do it. I don't trust you to do it. I trust you to do it well, but I also trust it to do it to your advantage.Right, right. To pursue your best interest. Not necessarily mine, what I think you'll do. So this is, and this is exactly what these platforms do is they sort of, they take whatever boundary you set or whatever standard you set around efficiency. And they, they reached that. Right. They'll they'll get you to exactly what you say is like the sort of quality threshold or the efficiency threshold for your campaigns to keep spending money, but they won't give you any more than that.Right. So they could blow out your campaigns and get you 400% real ass. but if you told them you only need 110 by day seven, that's what, that's what you're going to get. And if they get you to that 400, then they're going to buy you a bunch of crappy traffic that brings the sort of average down until it hits that one 10.Right. And so, you know, that's, that's the power that they had, which, you know, to be fair, it's like, they were really good at that. And they would probably be, and, and, and them being really good at it. And then, and then present and providing that as a product productizing that and making that available to everyone.Meant that anyone could spin up a Facebook campaign, you know, any, any Shopify retailer, any Shopify merchant, any small time app developer and spend money and grow their product, grow their audience, right. Versus go back to 2012 and like, you know, the best UAA teams won. And, and a lot of times these were like big teams, big companies that raised a lot of money.You know, now, you know, it is way more egalitarian to open it up to anybody. And, you know, the small shop owner, in, I don't know, the middle of Kentucky or whatever could, could have access to this world-class machine learning infrastructure to grow their business. Right. And then they only really had to compete on the quality of their product and not the quality of their user acquisition infrastructure.So in a way it was, I mean, it was a giant gift to these SMBs and, and if the proof is in the pudding, look at Facebook's advertiser mix, 10 million advertisers, vast majority SMBs, right? 10 million average. Right. Think about any company that has 10 million customers, that's just an absurd scale. Right?And these are people spending, you know, in aggregate tons of money on Facebook. So like, it made sense, but, but, you know, there was a lot of pushback when UAC announced that. Cause developers said, look, we, that was our competitive advantage. Like, well, should it be, if we go back to basics and everybody has access to the same quality of infrastructure and the same quality of like, sort of like, you know, marketing tools and then you can be on the basis of your product.00:38:49 David:So then are we kind of going back to that world? I mean, after I think transparency is going to degrade, Facebook's targeting efficiency because they're not going to have that pervasive tracking where they know everything that's going on on your smartphone. So, so where do we go from, from here as far as, you know, what developers need to be thinking about?And, and I forget exactly when you were at this post, but, but I really appreciated you. You kind of talked through some, some tactics even around. developers needing to get better at capturing intent about potentially kind of bifurcating experience in the app is that we're we're developers should be headed of, okay.Now Facebook can't bring me the perfect user for my app as it exists today. and instead developers need to get back to the basics of understanding their user base and kind of building out those user profiles and understanding who they should be going after. Is it, is that where we're headed?00:39:48 Eric:I think so. I mean, I think we talked about this last time I was on this podcast, but like, you know, so when I wrote my book, Freeman, economics, I mean, this was like 2013. Right. And so this AEO didn't exist yet. You know, VO was didn't exist yet. This was, you bought installed. Right. And the idea of freemium or my sort of thesis with freemium is that like, it gives you the ultimate power to personalize.And so you need some minimum scale because you need a minimum amount of people to experiment with in order to make, you know, some small percentage of people that do monetize meaningful to you. but in order to do that, you need like a sort of like very large surface area for experimentation, right?You need a lot of content to be able to test against people and make sure that, you expose to them the exact perfect thing that they want. And in order to do that, you eat a lot. And so what ended up happening was that idea of flip. And it, and it became less about doing that in the product and more about doing that with the creative, right.And allowing Facebook to do that with four year on your behalf with the creative, then they found the perfect user and you need to do any personalization in the app because they probably the perfect user just make the app for the perfect user, that individual profile, that one profile. Perfect. You make that app, Facebook will find those people through like mass, you know, wide-scale experimentation with creative.Well, now it's flipped again. And so, you know, when someone comes into your app, you don't know who they are. You don't know how qualified they are, because the targeting has been degraded to the, to the point where, you know, th th there's, there's not a whole lot of, of sort of like operatory, you know, relevancy that you can Intuit there.And so you've got to parse that out from their behavior, show them something, see how they react to it. If they react positively to it, show them more of that. And if they don't show them more. And, and that kind of personalization though. I mean, it was very powerful and I talked and that's, I wrote a whole book about it, but it's hard to do.You need a big team, you need data infrastructure, you need that's, that's the thing. And then you revert back to like, well, only big developers can do this. Right. And so you've kind of just edged out the small guy. you know, the developers that are just like a couple of people and they got to just whiff, or they, they got to take a flyer on some idea, and they better hope that it works right.Versus being able to kind of iterate into that and provide one app that gives like personalized experiences to sort of everybody that comes through.00:41:56 David:Yeah. So then those, I mean, what would your advice be today knowing that you can't just, you know, throw a hundred grand at Facebook and let them figure out your perfect user? How, you know, if you're, if you're building an app today from scratch, or let's say you're at 20 or $30,000 in MRR and you want to make that leap and really grow, what do you do?00:42:18 Eric:Well, I think so. I mean, in that post, I mean the one thing that is, you know, it's a worthwhile exercise, but it is trying to instrument these, these signals with the conversion values for SKAdNetwork. Now, the problem with that was, you know, going into this before NTT was launched and, you know, I worked, you know, I worked with some companies to do this and it's like a data science exercise, right?You just, you, you run these, you know, you go back and you have like, kind of look back models and you find out what the commonality was amongst people that ended up being good users. And you try to surface that in the app and you encode that as a signal for a scanner. The problem is going into that exercise.You're thinking that sci network was like a good faith solution. it made sense, but now we realize, well, we don't even know when they're going to te when they're going to, how many of these we need to trigger before they even start reporting them to us. Right. And so like, it's like, okay, well, that's not really an option.You know, I think the other thing is, you know, you approach this as more of like a product marketing, you know, project and just trying to figure out who your audience is right here. And that's like, going back to basics, that's saying, okay, like, what are the demo features of the groups that like this type of product and that's what I have to target against.Right. And then just, and then trying to get, you know, cause you can't do mass creative testing anymore, at least on an iOS. And so, you know, trying to work out some pipeline of like, we try concepts on Android where we can still do kind of mass testing and then we promote the, the conceptual winners to iOS, but then we've got, you know, fewer, various success there.So we've got to kind of adapt that for the iOS environment. Like it's just, you lose a lot of, there's very lossy that each time you, you sort of transfer some sort of component of understanding from a totally separate platform. To iOS and then from iOS to like different environments to, to other environments on iOS, you just, you lose signal there, you lose precision.So I mean, it's it's, but that's it right. And then, you know, trying to get away. So I think another thing is that, you know, you talk to some of these companies and Facebook had become like kind of a drug for them. I mean, it's just like they were addicted to it. and it was just so easy to only use Facebook, right?Because you could accomplish everything you want it to, but you know, that's a classic, you know, sort of, that, that that's a classic sort of blunder from, from just a commercial perspective. You never want to be totally dependent on another platform. You know, now Facebook didn't make this decision.Apple did, but, you know, nonetheless, you know, your sort of devastated by it, right. Because of that dependency. So I think the other piece of this is just trying to, is doing, doing the work you should've done a long time ago, which is diversify your traffic mix. Right. And that's actually kind of difficult because Facebook, again, they did all that creative exploration for you.You know, they have such a broad user base that you could find all these different groups in scale, right at to, to scale like these even niche audiences, niche, look, any, any sort of like niche for X strategy game. You find enough people to build out, a big da you base and that's not true.I don't the other platforms. Right. And you got to really nail the form factor for those like snap is totally different. Like the way to approach the app is totally different. The Facebook, the way to approach tick talks to even snap, right? The way to approach Outbrain, Taboola totally different than any of those.You know, the way to approach YouTube is even different. Like every, all these, these are very, you know, particular, unique, channels and, and, and the way that the ads are are exposed in the products is different across them. And so you've to, you've got, gotta go through the work and the investment it's, you're investing in a data and, and, and sort of institutional knowledge.And all was never went through that exercise because it's like, I can just00:45:46 David:Right.00:45:46 Eric:Spend more Facebook.00:45:47 David:Yeah. And, where do you think organics fall into this mix? I know, like we talked to all trails on the, on the episode before that I said, not only are they a unicorn app, likely evaluation, but in, in their success with organics, I mean, there are apps that just find incredible success with that, right.Kind of search optimization or finding that right niche that really drives organic installs. Where do you think the average app should be placing organic and how much focus should they be putting on trying to get some of this free attention and build, you know, user generated content and links and things like that.00:46:35 Eric:I mean, do it to the extent that you can. I mean, why not? you know, I, I don't think you've got to choose one of the other, right. I mean, you should be ideally maximizing the effect of both of these strategies, but I will say one thing it's that you always have to turn on paid UI, right. You've always got to turn on paid marketing.There's varying, you know, sort of, timelines, you know, over which you have to confront that reality, but it is reality. You've always got to turn it on and like, I've done enough, like advisory for like private equity funds and just big companies that are looking to buy other companies.And it's always, the reason they bring me on is because I'm going to say, we could triple this business. If you did paid UA, right. We could cut Drupal this, like how, how, how much, how much bigger could this get? Right. And you know what I mean? Like, there's always a point where they've capped out. They never developed this, you know, expertise.Internally, right. It never became like domain knowledge that they possessed. And for that reason, there been a lot of false starts. Cause it's like, well, we can always sort of lean back on organic and it's going to take time to spin up paid and they bring someone in. And within two months they haven't really materially improve the business and they spend a bunch of money.So they get fired or, you know, they get the budget cut and they quit. And then they do that three more times and then they realize we're stalled out in growth. and no one wants to come work to be our CMO because like, it's pretty obvious that they're not gonna be. You know, the full freedom and the only way to sort of like break out of that cycle is to have the company get acquired right by a private equity fund is going to say, yeah, we're going to bring in a CMO and you know, these management's kind of gone and, or they're gone, but, or they can stay with it to play ball with the new, you know, the new execs and, and we're just gonna spin up paid marketing and that's, and that's how we grow this asset and that's how we make our money.So I've just been on enough of those deals where you always turn on page away. If you, even, if you, even, if you think you never will, it happens, you know, outside of your, approval.00:48:28 David:Yeah. I didn't mean to phrase the question anyway, that made it a black or white that you had to choose one over the other. And actually I was, I was trying to, to, to kind of, throw a softball at you, because I think your, your thinking on this, is great in that the sooner you do spin up some level of paid marketing, the sooner you, you can understand the different audiences that are going to be coming into the app.And, and that's something that you've talked a lot about that I think is really fascinating. Yeah. If you can find a good organic channel, go for it and bring traffic in, but know that when you spin up ads, those that traffic is going to look different. They're going to convert different. They're going to be interested in different things.And if you, yeah, I'm stealing your, your kind of playbook here. So yeah. Tell me why you think. even if you do have a very successful organic channel and maybe that's the strategy, you kind of get from 10 K a month to a hundred, 300 K a month. But to get from there to the millions a month, you're going to have to spin it up.So what's the playbook for, for kind of building that expertise in house. And when do you start, when do you have to start ramping it up?00:49:43 Eric:So thank you for reminding me of my thoughts here. so, so the idea, the idea there is like, organic's never going to be the ultimate scale channel, right? Like it's gonna, it's gonna, it's, it's gonna, you're gonna reach some sort of asymptote with growth there and it's gonna flatten out and probably at, you know, if you kind of close your eyes and you pictured your app at like the sort of greatest potential, right?Th this sort of like greatest sort of like intrinsic potential paid is 80% of daily, you know, new users, right. Or 60 or whatever, but it's a majority. And so if you've only. You know, grown via, you know, just sort of like organic traction and organic like magnetism, and you've, you've gone through like many sort of cycles of app or product iteration to sort of optimize the product for that group of people that do look distinct that will look distinct from people that have responded to some kind of stimulus, right.And have some sort of intent, sort of like, you know, driving their, their adoption of your product, then you've optimized for the group. That's that at the greatest potential scale of your, of your product is in minority. Right. And what you really want to do is you want to optimize the product for the majority, the, where all the growth, where the growth can be, right.And so that, you know, if you delay layering in pay traffic and you, and you delay, then you delay understanding what they want out of your product. And the sooner you bring that in the sooner you can sort of, Optimize the product for them, the more efficient your pay traction will be, and you'll get an organic halo effect from that.Right. And so like, it's like, well, the sooner that you do that, the faster that you sort of reach that, that sort of, you reached that potential on the organic side. So it's more about like, are you thinking about like how, I mean, an exercise that I always love to do is it's just like pause and think about like, what would success look like?And for most apps, success looks like, yeah, we're spending a ton of money on paid you way. And there's a lot of organic too, because that's just a function of being a successful app that a lot of people know about, but, but we're spending a ton on UI. That's a good thing. That's not a bad thing. It's a great thing.And so, but, but the majority of our users came in through paid UA and so we've optimized the app for them. and so we've, we've, we've made the economics better over time. And then the other piece is like in a, talked about this a lot too. It's like, you've got to change it. Over the life cycle of your app.It, because you know, a lot of times what you see as, you know, you see an app that's new they've got like explosive growth, right? And you look at the, just like a kind of stacked, a bar chart of the cohorts by age. And it's like, well, on any given day, the vast majority of users are new or they're less than a month old.Right. And then like you go, you fast forward two years or three years, and a really good app, that'll be flipped because you've, you've retained people. The vast majority of people that use your product every day are old. I mean, in terms of like when they adopted your product, because it's sticky because it's retentive, right.And that's a, that's a great place to be. But that, that you've got to change the way that you think about product optimization at that point. Like when you're going through the product iteration process, like, well, you're not optimizing for the newbies anymore because there's way fewer than you got to keep the old timers involved and engaged and.Right. Cause, you know, that's just where the vast majority of your revenue is coming from. Right. And, and, you know, and, and at that point you've probably reached, you know, some proportion of your Tam. And so you might not even be doing new user acquisition as such anymore. You might be doing a lot of retargeting re-engagement.And so it's just like, you gotta be very conscious of like the life cycle of the app, what the, what the user base looks like in terms of composition by age and like all that kind of stuff. And it just, it just takes a lot of consideration and it's it's, you know, and if you get to any point where like any of those, any of those distributions is skewed to an extreme, to an extreme one direction or the other, you probably got a problem.Like if you're all organic, you're not you leaving money on the table. If you're all old timers, when you're not growing anymore, if you're all 00:53:39 David:Right, 00:53:39 Eric:Retaining enough. Right. It's like all these different levers that you got to pull to make sure that you hit the optimal sort of combination.00:53:45 David:Yeah. That's great stuff. I love the way you put that too. I think there is some level of magical thinking that if I have just the right app, I never have to do marketing, marketing is a dirty word. Spending money on marketing is. It is wasteful or only companies with bad products have to do marketing and that's just not true.What's especially funny. a lot of these folks or indie developers who hold up Apple to be the end, all be-all Apple spends tens of billions of dollars on marketing, Apple measures that marketing while at the same time, you know, enacting ATT. App Tracking Transparency So it is funny that dichotomy of, and the magical thinking of I shouldn't have to pay for users.My product should be good enough it, really is just magical thinking. ultimately, spending money on marketing is a good thing. Not a bad thing. I love that perspective.00:54:39 Eric:Yeah, my, we had a Halloween party for my son and his classmates he's, he's very young and he was, he like, he did this thing where, you know, he wanted to be two things for Halloween. So they had like a, you know, a parade of their school. And then, we had, you know, we just had Halloween day country competing and stuff anyway, so he wanted to be a dinosaur.And then he decided he wanted to be a vampire for the Halloween day. so we had to get him a second costume. He was a vampire and a, and we're having this party and someone was like, oh, you look like such a scary vampire. I was like, I work in digital advertising.I'll show you what a vampire. looks like, It's this idea about digital advertising. Oh man. It's, so disgusting. it's crass gross. You have to spend money to acquire users That's that's that's that's so, vulgar, but in reality, you're leaving money on the table.If you could be doing it and you're not00:55:35 David:Right. 00:55:36 Eric:That's not good. 00:55:37 David:Yeah, totally. So, so, that, that's actually a great place to wrap up. Like where, where do we go from here? So ATT App Tracking Transparency is what it is. We don't know what Apple's going to do. We hope they make things better, but, what is the future of, of app install ads? What is the future of, of marketing your app successfully?00:55:57 Eric:It's funny because I, have been the biggest, crypto skeptic since day one. I remember people were telling me about Bitcoin in 2011 and I was like, this is a joke. Like, this is a, there's no need for this. There's no use case for this. I still feel that way, but it's gotten to a point where I feel like it's actually inculcating new behaviors where this is just.Crypto in general is probably the thing that introduces us to these ideas. it's like an imperfect way to implement them, but it makes us think about them. then there's going to be a solution that follows The structure of crypto. that is, is actually the better way to, to, to implement these ideas.But I've worked with a number of web 3.0 gaming companies. Right. And, and their challenge is that they can't be on the App Store. they're running like web properties. how do you promote that? And, the thing is if you're running it on the web, you can access it from your mobile device.I can access these games from my device It's just not on the App Store. if you get one of these that blows up, you get the halo of web 3.0 games. You get the, hit game that, creates the space for this category to thrive.Then. Maybe it just becomes, you know, acknowledged that yeah, we can go through the App Store if we want specific types of games, but if we want these other types of games, we just go straight to the browser. my big question is why did Apple do privacy really in the first place? maybe it was to actually route everything through the App Store, That would be the cynical conspiratorial take. It's that they want to prevent your access to the open web or they want to gatekeep it. so they're going to decide what you're able to access. But anyway, There are a lot of web 3.0 companies thinking about this right now.They can't go to the App Store, So there's no app install ads for them. It's all web-based. and, and also, you know, they've done a great loves Web 3.0 companies have done a great job of fostering community-driven marketing, Getting a discord server with 20,000 or 100,000 people in it.And That's where you advertise. you never have to pay for anything. now that's a first-mover thing. And I think that declines as more people enter the space. There are just, you know, there's just too many of these, these sort of games to, to sort of rely on that.But a lot of companies are thinking about that right now. How do we drive people to the web to do acquisition? Right. A lot of, you know, as, you know, a lot of, subscription companies, have been doing that for a long time, There are well-worn strategies for doing this. And they've been monetizing that way for a long time too.They haven't been screaming about it. But they've been doing it. now that, well, okay, now that's probably, that's, that's a policy that's allowed to, you're allowed to do that. Apple blesses. Well, they don't, they, anyway, they say we can't stop you. Maybe the consequence of this whole thing is that it just moves people into the browser. there's the web 3.0 piece of it, which, who knows maybe that is a dud. Maybe it's a gigantic category. I'm not convinced either way yet, but you've got people that are saying I'm going to set up web shops I made the point that like, look, I don't think that, you know, there's, there's, there are systematic reasons why that probably doesn't become a mass-scale solution.A lot of people are doing that anyway. A lot of games are doing that anyway. That's the other dirty little. secret A lot of gaming companies were sending emails saying, Hey, you know what, don't buy these IAPs in the app. Be

In this episode of the Becoming You podcast, I welcome David Kennet, musician, voice coach, and Intuitive. How did you get into sound healing? David: At birth, I was diagnosed with chronic severe life-threatening asthma. It was so debilitating that I really struggled to survive. My mom would rush me to the hospital in the middle of the night just to get me to the ER room when I would have an asthma attack. Ultimately, after seeing many different specialists, she would take me to medical doctors, naturopathic doctors, and healers; but, nobody could really help me. That was until, at 19 years old, I met this extraordinary man named Kenneth G. Mills who is a conductor, metaphysician, and musician who had this acapella singing group called the The Star-Scape Singers. My parents invited me to attend a rehearsal one day and, to my surprise, Kenneth Mills turned towards me and said, “Would you like to sing?” I was shy at first, but eventually my voice began to open up and I had a pretty good range of notes. Ultimately, the asthma slowly went away the more I sang. It was a complete miracle. I did some research and, sure enough, there has been a lot of clinical studies on the benefits of singing, vibration, and music on the body and our emotional and spiritual state. Aside from the grace of God, there is some actual science to back up the fact that I didn't have asthma anymore. I found out that our sound is our soul. The more we can feel comfortable with our own voice, metaphorically and literally, the healthier and more balanced we can be. Why is sound an essential part of us and why do we need to express it in order to feel full? David: Sound can express what is beyond mere thought. That's why we enjoy music so much, because we feel things that we can't quite express through words. Spoken language is limited. Sound is its own language, and frequencies have no limitation in what they can communicate. What made you decide to use singing as a modality to help others? David: I call it Quantum Sound Therapy, because I've found that sound can communicate on multiple levels and dimensions. It can obviously reach us on an emotional level, but it can also reach us on a physical level and a mental level. You can use sound to reprogram your subconscious and reach places that are otherwise inaccessible, because if you use sound with intention, you can carry that specific intention into your subconscious mind and rewrite programs that may not be serving you. It's really, really transformational work. What is the instrument you were playing earlier? David: It's called a euphone. Ultimately, the instrument doesn't matter. Your intention, based on love, does. You can use anything, even your voice, and move mountains. It's about your intention and the intention of the auditor—the person receiving the sound. Those two energies, coming together, can cause tremendous transformation. What is “sympathetic resonance”? David: Sympathetic resonance is when you can play, say, a tuning fork and you have another tuning fork that is attuned to the same note. Even if two instruments are not touching each other, they can cause one another to sing the same note. I saw your post on Instagram where you compare vocal chords to a woman's vagina. Please talk about what you meant by that post. David: The main reason I compared the two was that they visually do resemble each other. I found that intriguing because it makes sense: When we make a sound, we birth our reality. When we find our voice, we find liberation. In my work, I help people use sound to manifest their goals. Sound is a creative force. It makes sense that it resembles the organ that we come through. Learn more about David Kennet: His website: https://www.soul-sounding.com  Follow him on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/david_kennet 

Jules: Is it possible to make a film about vampires that is not a vampire film? The genre is perennial, with familiar tropes that filmmakers endlessly adjust to achieve varied ends. Power, class struggle, sex, death, eternal life and eternal damnation; each theme intersects vividly across the genre. Neil Jordan seeks transcendence for his antiheronies, from their plight, and their genre within film, with some success. David: At the heart of many a vampire story sits the dramatic tension between desire or love and the hunger to devour, and next to that the ultimate existential question - would immortality be a prize or a curse? Neil Jordan’s third foray into romantic horror and his second vampire-duo story (after Interview With The Vampire - 1994) this time with a gender flip, wanders among some interesting themes, though perhaps with more convolution and less art than it could have done.

Fx specialist David Leaver shares his wealth of trading experience in the global markets from London based US banks to high powered ‘eat what you kill’ trading houses (that only pay you a % of what you earn for them). David has "been there, seen it and done it" having experienced the highs and lows of a speculators journey yet STILL retains his love for the trading "game". He offers sound advice that you can’t but help hear his passion and the good trading sense he has built up over the years through thousands of trades. How good is David? At his best, he was making 75% winning trades! (That is a phenomenal record). These days with the introduction of market making "bots" it is not as high, however, he still sees plenty of opportunity to make good money! The main takeaways for anyone looking to improve their trading here are: Have a plan, Execute it well and Control your risk....then repeat and refine your good habits. All traders, especially the newbies, can learn how to plan their trading system, look for discipline in rules, calm your mind when losing and enjoy the winning. Be honest, do the hard work (you need to enjoy it too), follow the process and stick to your plan. Look at the numbers where you are losing and where you are winning. They don’t lie. Adjust accordingly to improve your chances of success. Note: Whilst recording the podcast, David was trading and monitoring his positions. If you listen to his voice, he is relaxed and in control. (The signs of someone who knows exactly what he is doing).

Panel: David Kimura Eric Berry In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panelists talk amongst themselves about their favorite software, equipment, and apps. Both Eric and David thoroughly share their preferred picks within these categories, and they explain how and why they use the specified item. Check out today’s episode to hear more! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Sentry.io 1:03 – David: Welcome! Today, Chuck is not feeling well. I am David and today we have Eric Berry on our panel today. It is just the two of us today. I want to talk about our development environment. What is your setup like? Do you have an office space and your hardware? 1:58 – Eric: I Have a room in my basement that has everything that I need. I do work from home. There is my guitar, my geek toys and more. For my hardware I am using 2017 MacBook Pro (16 GB of ram). The 13-inch is convenient, but I upgraded b/c I do a lot of traveling. I do pull the iPad out and use DUET. You no longer have to use a cord. I have a monitor that is 30-inches and it’s gorgeous. That is my hardware setup. I am not a mechanical keyboard guy, and I stick with the Apple super flat keyboard. I do use Bestand – it’s a holster for the keyboard and the track pad. What do you have? 4:35 – David: I have a Frankenstein setup. My needs change, over time, and when that changes my hardware changes. Back in the day I did not have a Mac and I used a Windows machine. I used to be a gamer, but then met my wife and then stopped b/c she didn’t like for me to waste time. My setup is more proper. I have a baseline iMac Pro b/c there was a great deal of $1,000 off. The other option was an iMac. I like the desktop b/c that’s where I do work – at home. It was a $4,000 investment. I am on my computer ALL the time it was worth it to me. I got the wall-mount for me, and I have more monitors wall-mounted, too. 8:00 – David: That is my monitor and computer setup. I have an eco-rhythmic keyboard b/c of childhood injuries. I have a really old Microsoft keyboard from 2005 something. It was cheap but I like the style of it. For my mouse I have a Logitech mouse. I love the feel of this thing. It has a side scroll left and right, and up and down. Especially when I am looking at code. It helps with my video editing, too. My mouse is my favorite to-date. I don’t have too much plugged into the Mac. I have a GoDrive, which has everything on it – my whole life’s work is on there. If there is ever an emergency I know to grab that. Back things up in case of an emergency would be my tips to you all. 11:40 – Eric: I have struggled with backing things up actually. The problem that I have is that I am constantly moving my laptop. I have this guilt and fear of doing it wrong. 12:33 – David: I have this work laptop – I don’t back that up every day.  David gives Eric his suggestions in regards to backing files up. David mentions Back Blaze. 14:05 – Eric: That makes sense. I live in the Apple eco-system. I have my phone, watch, 40 iPads, laptop – everything backs up to the Cloud. The date we are recording this is 10/30/18. Apple just announced a new upgrade. I feel like this could compete with an actual laptop computer. Eric asks David a question. 15:35 – David: ...My main problem with that is that you might already have a developmental machine. It’s a stationary computer then it’s not feasible to take on the go. I do have an iPad Pro and I will take that on the go. I can login to my home network. BLINK – I used on my iPad Pro. David continues to talk about his setup. 19:00 – Eric: I kind of agree with you. I have seen it used quite a bit. My brother does everything online for his job. The pros are that if you are training, and his company is configured that way. The pros is that you can code from anywhere on anyone’s computer. I am glad that it DOES exist. It’s not Cloud9 but someone does offer... 20:20 – David: I think going to a solo screen does hurt my productivity – working on the iPad vs. working on the computer. I could get faster and faster but only to a certain degree. If you have the resources – then I don’t think it’s sustainable. However, if you don’t have the resources it’s better than nothing. At least you are coding and that’s important. 22:15 – Eric: I think of the audience we cater to with Ruby Rogues. I wonder if our listeners are strapped for cash or if they do have the resources to get the job done? 22:48 – David: If you don’t have a lot of money, you don’t have to buy a Mac. If Cloud hosting isn’t your thing there are different options. You have DOCKER, and use Windows as your main editor, and the WSL. I wanted to do a test – I bout a laptop for $500-$700 and you can get away with doing what you need to do. Learning how to program and code with what you have is great! 25:00 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 26:05 – Eric: Let’s talk about the software developer environment. Nate Hopkins isn’t on today, but you can’t change his mind – I am VEM all the way. I think Cuck is EMAX. 26:43 – Eric: What do you do? 26:45 – David: I use VS code. David talks about the benefits of using VS code. 27:37 – Eric: Yes, 100%. I met the lead engineer behind VS code. They just made a new announcement. I have been using VS code for quite a while now. The integrated terminal and other features are awesome. Pulling me out of Sublime Text was a really, really hard thing for me. 29:28 – David: Sublime text, yes, but I got tired of the 40-year long beta, and the lack of expanding it, too. VS code has won my heart over. 30:53 – Eric: My guess is that they are going to leave it alone. I am sure they will connect the 2 teams. Think of how much work has gone into ATOM. That would be a hard pill to swallow. 31:20 – David: At the end of the day, though, it is a company. You don’t need 2 different editors when they do the same thing. 31:40 – Eric: I would have to disagree with you. Maybe they won’t merge the 2 but they just become different between ATOM (React and React Native) and... 32:22 – David: Why would a company cancel something only have 1 season? (Clears throat...Fox!) 32:58 – Eric: I open very large files with Sublime. Sublime handles this very easily. This goes back to: why am I opening up very large files? 33:31 – David: It’s a log file don’t lie. 33:40 – David: What browser do you use? Safari? 34:03 – Eric: Safari is nice for non-developers. Safari is lightweight and very fast. I have been a browser whore. I go from bedroom to bedroom from Opera to Firefox to Chrome. I fall into the Chrome field though. I have a problem with Chrome, though, and that it knows me too well. Google can sell my data and they do. 37:14 – David: With BRAVE, weren’t they doing something with the block chain and bit coin to reward you for browsing? 37:38 – Eric: Yeah I think that’s being run by... 38:03 – David: I still use CHROME b/c I like the extensions. It’s important to know why you are picking a certain browser. When you are talking about development you need to know who your target audience is. What kind of apps do you use? 39:54 – Eric: It’s interesting to see how much traffic the Android Browser gets. You want to switch over to other parts? For my tech software...I use Polymail.io for email. I use THINGS to keep me on-track, I use SLACK, BRAVE BROSWER, iTerm3 and MERT. I use FANTASTICO (calendar), and I use BEAR (for my note taking). What about you? 41:21 – David: I use iTerm3, too. I’m on 3 different Slack channels. I have been using DISCORD. Other tools that I use are SPECTACLE (extension) among others. I try to keep it slim and simple, though. Another one is EasyRez (free download) and you can adjust the screen resolution on your desktop monitors. It’s important to target my audience better. I do like PARALLELS, too. 44:24 – David continues: Screenflow, Apple Motion, and Adobe After Effects CC. 45:04 – Eric: I use 1 PASSWORD and BETA BASE. 46:04 – David: Have you heard of Last Pass? 46:15 – Eric: Oh sure! I have been using though 1 Password and I guess there some loyalty there. 46:54 – David asks Eric a question about 1 Password about pricing. 47:12 – Eric: I want to pay with money than with something else. 47:23 – David: It’s owned by LogMeIn, and they have tons of experience with security. 48:00 – Eric: I am going to put an article here that compares all these different apps so you can see the similarities and differences side-by-side. 48:40 – David: Anything else? Banking passwords? 48:54 – Eric: Nah, I am excited to see where we are. I like Mojave for the desktop but I don’t like it for the constant number of resets that I’ve had to do. I love what I do. 49:34 – David: Yeah, I agree. I haven’t experienced any major setbacks, yet. 49:55 – Picks! 50:03 – Eric: I think this whole episode has been PICKS! 50:15 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! End – Cache Fly! Links: Get a Coder Job Course Ruby Rust Ruby Motion Ruby on Rails Angular React React Native Komodo Bestand Duet Atom.io EasyRez Polymail.io Docker Adobe After Effects CC LogMeIn Brave 1 Password iTerm3 VS CODE iPad Pro Last Pass GoDrive Mojave EMAX Back Blaze Discord Sublime Text AWS Cloud9 StatCounter GitHub: Mert Bear App Process.st Pi-Hole Sponsors: Sentry Cache Fly Fresh Books Picks: Dave ProxMox Pi-Hole Eric Open Source Funders

Panel: David Kimura Eric Berry In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panelists talk amongst themselves about their favorite software, equipment, and apps. Both Eric and David thoroughly share their preferred picks within these categories, and they explain how and why they use the specified item. Check out today’s episode to hear more! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Sentry.io 1:03 – David: Welcome! Today, Chuck is not feeling well. I am David and today we have Eric Berry on our panel today. It is just the two of us today. I want to talk about our development environment. What is your setup like? Do you have an office space and your hardware? 1:58 – Eric: I Have a room in my basement that has everything that I need. I do work from home. There is my guitar, my geek toys and more. For my hardware I am using 2017 MacBook Pro (16 GB of ram). The 13-inch is convenient, but I upgraded b/c I do a lot of traveling. I do pull the iPad out and use DUET. You no longer have to use a cord. I have a monitor that is 30-inches and it’s gorgeous. That is my hardware setup. I am not a mechanical keyboard guy, and I stick with the Apple super flat keyboard. I do use Bestand – it’s a holster for the keyboard and the track pad. What do you have? 4:35 – David: I have a Frankenstein setup. My needs change, over time, and when that changes my hardware changes. Back in the day I did not have a Mac and I used a Windows machine. I used to be a gamer, but then met my wife and then stopped b/c she didn’t like for me to waste time. My setup is more proper. I have a baseline iMac Pro b/c there was a great deal of $1,000 off. The other option was an iMac. I like the desktop b/c that’s where I do work – at home. It was a $4,000 investment. I am on my computer ALL the time it was worth it to me. I got the wall-mount for me, and I have more monitors wall-mounted, too. 8:00 – David: That is my monitor and computer setup. I have an eco-rhythmic keyboard b/c of childhood injuries. I have a really old Microsoft keyboard from 2005 something. It was cheap but I like the style of it. For my mouse I have a Logitech mouse. I love the feel of this thing. It has a side scroll left and right, and up and down. Especially when I am looking at code. It helps with my video editing, too. My mouse is my favorite to-date. I don’t have too much plugged into the Mac. I have a GoDrive, which has everything on it – my whole life’s work is on there. If there is ever an emergency I know to grab that. Back things up in case of an emergency would be my tips to you all. 11:40 – Eric: I have struggled with backing things up actually. The problem that I have is that I am constantly moving my laptop. I have this guilt and fear of doing it wrong. 12:33 – David: I have this work laptop – I don’t back that up every day.  David gives Eric his suggestions in regards to backing files up. David mentions Back Blaze. 14:05 – Eric: That makes sense. I live in the Apple eco-system. I have my phone, watch, 40 iPads, laptop – everything backs up to the Cloud. The date we are recording this is 10/30/18. Apple just announced a new upgrade. I feel like this could compete with an actual laptop computer. Eric asks David a question. 15:35 – David: ...My main problem with that is that you might already have a developmental machine. It’s a stationary computer then it’s not feasible to take on the go. I do have an iPad Pro and I will take that on the go. I can login to my home network. BLINK – I used on my iPad Pro. David continues to talk about his setup. 19:00 – Eric: I kind of agree with you. I have seen it used quite a bit. My brother does everything online for his job. The pros are that if you are training, and his company is configured that way. The pros is that you can code from anywhere on anyone’s computer. I am glad that it DOES exist. It’s not Cloud9 but someone does offer... 20:20 – David: I think going to a solo screen does hurt my productivity – working on the iPad vs. working on the computer. I could get faster and faster but only to a certain degree. If you have the resources – then I don’t think it’s sustainable. However, if you don’t have the resources it’s better than nothing. At least you are coding and that’s important. 22:15 – Eric: I think of the audience we cater to with Ruby Rogues. I wonder if our listeners are strapped for cash or if they do have the resources to get the job done? 22:48 – David: If you don’t have a lot of money, you don’t have to buy a Mac. If Cloud hosting isn’t your thing there are different options. You have DOCKER, and use Windows as your main editor, and the WSL. I wanted to do a test – I bout a laptop for $500-$700 and you can get away with doing what you need to do. Learning how to program and code with what you have is great! 25:00 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 26:05 – Eric: Let’s talk about the software developer environment. Nate Hopkins isn’t on today, but you can’t change his mind – I am VEM all the way. I think Cuck is EMAX. 26:43 – Eric: What do you do? 26:45 – David: I use VS code. David talks about the benefits of using VS code. 27:37 – Eric: Yes, 100%. I met the lead engineer behind VS code. They just made a new announcement. I have been using VS code for quite a while now. The integrated terminal and other features are awesome. Pulling me out of Sublime Text was a really, really hard thing for me. 29:28 – David: Sublime text, yes, but I got tired of the 40-year long beta, and the lack of expanding it, too. VS code has won my heart over. 30:53 – Eric: My guess is that they are going to leave it alone. I am sure they will connect the 2 teams. Think of how much work has gone into ATOM. That would be a hard pill to swallow. 31:20 – David: At the end of the day, though, it is a company. You don’t need 2 different editors when they do the same thing. 31:40 – Eric: I would have to disagree with you. Maybe they won’t merge the 2 but they just become different between ATOM (React and React Native) and... 32:22 – David: Why would a company cancel something only have 1 season? (Clears throat...Fox!) 32:58 – Eric: I open very large files with Sublime. Sublime handles this very easily. This goes back to: why am I opening up very large files? 33:31 – David: It’s a log file don’t lie. 33:40 – David: What browser do you use? Safari? 34:03 – Eric: Safari is nice for non-developers. Safari is lightweight and very fast. I have been a browser whore. I go from bedroom to bedroom from Opera to Firefox to Chrome. I fall into the Chrome field though. I have a problem with Chrome, though, and that it knows me too well. Google can sell my data and they do. 37:14 – David: With BRAVE, weren’t they doing something with the block chain and bit coin to reward you for browsing? 37:38 – Eric: Yeah I think that’s being run by... 38:03 – David: I still use CHROME b/c I like the extensions. It’s important to know why you are picking a certain browser. When you are talking about development you need to know who your target audience is. What kind of apps do you use? 39:54 – Eric: It’s interesting to see how much traffic the Android Browser gets. You want to switch over to other parts? For my tech software...I use Polymail.io for email. I use THINGS to keep me on-track, I use SLACK, BRAVE BROSWER, iTerm3 and MERT. I use FANTASTICO (calendar), and I use BEAR (for my note taking). What about you? 41:21 – David: I use iTerm3, too. I’m on 3 different Slack channels. I have been using DISCORD. Other tools that I use are SPECTACLE (extension) among others. I try to keep it slim and simple, though. Another one is EasyRez (free download) and you can adjust the screen resolution on your desktop monitors. It’s important to target my audience better. I do like PARALLELS, too. 44:24 – David continues: Screenflow, Apple Motion, and Adobe After Effects CC. 45:04 – Eric: I use 1 PASSWORD and BETA BASE. 46:04 – David: Have you heard of Last Pass? 46:15 – Eric: Oh sure! I have been using though 1 Password and I guess there some loyalty there. 46:54 – David asks Eric a question about 1 Password about pricing. 47:12 – Eric: I want to pay with money than with something else. 47:23 – David: It’s owned by LogMeIn, and they have tons of experience with security. 48:00 – Eric: I am going to put an article here that compares all these different apps so you can see the similarities and differences side-by-side. 48:40 – David: Anything else? Banking passwords? 48:54 – Eric: Nah, I am excited to see where we are. I like Mojave for the desktop but I don’t like it for the constant number of resets that I’ve had to do. I love what I do. 49:34 – David: Yeah, I agree. I haven’t experienced any major setbacks, yet. 49:55 – Picks! 50:03 – Eric: I think this whole episode has been PICKS! 50:15 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! End – Cache Fly! Links: Get a Coder Job Course Ruby Rust Ruby Motion Ruby on Rails Angular React React Native Komodo Bestand Duet Atom.io EasyRez Polymail.io Docker Adobe After Effects CC LogMeIn Brave 1 Password iTerm3 VS CODE iPad Pro Last Pass GoDrive Mojave EMAX Back Blaze Discord Sublime Text AWS Cloud9 StatCounter GitHub: Mert Bear App Process.st Pi-Hole Sponsors: Sentry Cache Fly Fresh Books Picks: Dave ProxMox Pi-Hole Eric Open Source Funders

Panel: David Kimura Eric Berry In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panelists talk amongst themselves about their favorite software, equipment, and apps. Both Eric and David thoroughly share their preferred picks within these categories, and they explain how and why they use the specified item. Check out today’s episode to hear more! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Sentry.io 1:03 – David: Welcome! Today, Chuck is not feeling well. I am David and today we have Eric Berry on our panel today. It is just the two of us today. I want to talk about our development environment. What is your setup like? Do you have an office space and your hardware? 1:58 – Eric: I Have a room in my basement that has everything that I need. I do work from home. There is my guitar, my geek toys and more. For my hardware I am using 2017 MacBook Pro (16 GB of ram). The 13-inch is convenient, but I upgraded b/c I do a lot of traveling. I do pull the iPad out and use DUET. You no longer have to use a cord. I have a monitor that is 30-inches and it’s gorgeous. That is my hardware setup. I am not a mechanical keyboard guy, and I stick with the Apple super flat keyboard. I do use Bestand – it’s a holster for the keyboard and the track pad. What do you have? 4:35 – David: I have a Frankenstein setup. My needs change, over time, and when that changes my hardware changes. Back in the day I did not have a Mac and I used a Windows machine. I used to be a gamer, but then met my wife and then stopped b/c she didn’t like for me to waste time. My setup is more proper. I have a baseline iMac Pro b/c there was a great deal of $1,000 off. The other option was an iMac. I like the desktop b/c that’s where I do work – at home. It was a $4,000 investment. I am on my computer ALL the time it was worth it to me. I got the wall-mount for me, and I have more monitors wall-mounted, too. 8:00 – David: That is my monitor and computer setup. I have an eco-rhythmic keyboard b/c of childhood injuries. I have a really old Microsoft keyboard from 2005 something. It was cheap but I like the style of it. For my mouse I have a Logitech mouse. I love the feel of this thing. It has a side scroll left and right, and up and down. Especially when I am looking at code. It helps with my video editing, too. My mouse is my favorite to-date. I don’t have too much plugged into the Mac. I have a GoDrive, which has everything on it – my whole life’s work is on there. If there is ever an emergency I know to grab that. Back things up in case of an emergency would be my tips to you all. 11:40 – Eric: I have struggled with backing things up actually. The problem that I have is that I am constantly moving my laptop. I have this guilt and fear of doing it wrong. 12:33 – David: I have this work laptop – I don’t back that up every day.  David gives Eric his suggestions in regards to backing files up. David mentions Back Blaze. 14:05 – Eric: That makes sense. I live in the Apple eco-system. I have my phone, watch, 40 iPads, laptop – everything backs up to the Cloud. The date we are recording this is 10/30/18. Apple just announced a new upgrade. I feel like this could compete with an actual laptop computer. Eric asks David a question. 15:35 – David: ...My main problem with that is that you might already have a developmental machine. It’s a stationary computer then it’s not feasible to take on the go. I do have an iPad Pro and I will take that on the go. I can login to my home network. BLINK – I used on my iPad Pro. David continues to talk about his setup. 19:00 – Eric: I kind of agree with you. I have seen it used quite a bit. My brother does everything online for his job. The pros are that if you are training, and his company is configured that way. The pros is that you can code from anywhere on anyone’s computer. I am glad that it DOES exist. It’s not Cloud9 but someone does offer... 20:20 – David: I think going to a solo screen does hurt my productivity – working on the iPad vs. working on the computer. I could get faster and faster but only to a certain degree. If you have the resources – then I don’t think it’s sustainable. However, if you don’t have the resources it’s better than nothing. At least you are coding and that’s important. 22:15 – Eric: I think of the audience we cater to with Ruby Rogues. I wonder if our listeners are strapped for cash or if they do have the resources to get the job done? 22:48 – David: If you don’t have a lot of money, you don’t have to buy a Mac. If Cloud hosting isn’t your thing there are different options. You have DOCKER, and use Windows as your main editor, and the WSL. I wanted to do a test – I bout a laptop for $500-$700 and you can get away with doing what you need to do. Learning how to program and code with what you have is great! 25:00 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 26:05 – Eric: Let’s talk about the software developer environment. Nate Hopkins isn’t on today, but you can’t change his mind – I am VEM all the way. I think Cuck is EMAX. 26:43 – Eric: What do you do? 26:45 – David: I use VS code. David talks about the benefits of using VS code. 27:37 – Eric: Yes, 100%. I met the lead engineer behind VS code. They just made a new announcement. I have been using VS code for quite a while now. The integrated terminal and other features are awesome. Pulling me out of Sublime Text was a really, really hard thing for me. 29:28 – David: Sublime text, yes, but I got tired of the 40-year long beta, and the lack of expanding it, too. VS code has won my heart over. 30:53 – Eric: My guess is that they are going to leave it alone. I am sure they will connect the 2 teams. Think of how much work has gone into ATOM. That would be a hard pill to swallow. 31:20 – David: At the end of the day, though, it is a company. You don’t need 2 different editors when they do the same thing. 31:40 – Eric: I would have to disagree with you. Maybe they won’t merge the 2 but they just become different between ATOM (React and React Native) and... 32:22 – David: Why would a company cancel something only have 1 season? (Clears throat...Fox!) 32:58 – Eric: I open very large files with Sublime. Sublime handles this very easily. This goes back to: why am I opening up very large files? 33:31 – David: It’s a log file don’t lie. 33:40 – David: What browser do you use? Safari? 34:03 – Eric: Safari is nice for non-developers. Safari is lightweight and very fast. I have been a browser whore. I go from bedroom to bedroom from Opera to Firefox to Chrome. I fall into the Chrome field though. I have a problem with Chrome, though, and that it knows me too well. Google can sell my data and they do. 37:14 – David: With BRAVE, weren’t they doing something with the block chain and bit coin to reward you for browsing? 37:38 – Eric: Yeah I think that’s being run by... 38:03 – David: I still use CHROME b/c I like the extensions. It’s important to know why you are picking a certain browser. When you are talking about development you need to know who your target audience is. What kind of apps do you use? 39:54 – Eric: It’s interesting to see how much traffic the Android Browser gets. You want to switch over to other parts? For my tech software...I use Polymail.io for email. I use THINGS to keep me on-track, I use SLACK, BRAVE BROSWER, iTerm3 and MERT. I use FANTASTICO (calendar), and I use BEAR (for my note taking). What about you? 41:21 – David: I use iTerm3, too. I’m on 3 different Slack channels. I have been using DISCORD. Other tools that I use are SPECTACLE (extension) among others. I try to keep it slim and simple, though. Another one is EasyRez (free download) and you can adjust the screen resolution on your desktop monitors. It’s important to target my audience better. I do like PARALLELS, too. 44:24 – David continues: Screenflow, Apple Motion, and Adobe After Effects CC. 45:04 – Eric: I use 1 PASSWORD and BETA BASE. 46:04 – David: Have you heard of Last Pass? 46:15 – Eric: Oh sure! I have been using though 1 Password and I guess there some loyalty there. 46:54 – David asks Eric a question about 1 Password about pricing. 47:12 – Eric: I want to pay with money than with something else. 47:23 – David: It’s owned by LogMeIn, and they have tons of experience with security. 48:00 – Eric: I am going to put an article here that compares all these different apps so you can see the similarities and differences side-by-side. 48:40 – David: Anything else? Banking passwords? 48:54 – Eric: Nah, I am excited to see where we are. I like Mojave for the desktop but I don’t like it for the constant number of resets that I’ve had to do. I love what I do. 49:34 – David: Yeah, I agree. I haven’t experienced any major setbacks, yet. 49:55 – Picks! 50:03 – Eric: I think this whole episode has been PICKS! 50:15 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! End – Cache Fly! Links: Get a Coder Job Course Ruby Rust Ruby Motion Ruby on Rails Angular React React Native Komodo Bestand Duet Atom.io EasyRez Polymail.io Docker Adobe After Effects CC LogMeIn Brave 1 Password iTerm3 VS CODE iPad Pro Last Pass GoDrive Mojave EMAX Back Blaze Discord Sublime Text AWS Cloud9 StatCounter GitHub: Mert Bear App Process.st Pi-Hole Sponsors: Sentry Cache Fly Fresh Books Picks: Dave ProxMox Pi-Hole Eric Open Source Funders

I learn so much in every episode, it is sometimes hard to keep track of it all! Every once in awhile, I'll do a little recap. The first five episodes featured Dan Glickberg, CEO of Dan Glickberg Food; Lisa Almeida, owner of Freedom Boat Club Jacksonville; John Giglio, President and CEO of Freedom Boat Club; Barry Slade, VP of International Sales, Regal Boats; and David Karpinski, President of Taylor Made Products. Here are some great tidbits on equipment, destinations, boats, and advice if you are thinking about getting into the boating lifestyle! Equipment: My guests are very focused on safety which is great! Being a safe boater definitely makes it a more enjoyable experience. John mentioned a PFD (personal flotation device) as the best investment anyone can make. He also recommended a handheld GPS, something that can make sure you get out safely and get back in safely. Dan made a great point about protecting your eyes and making sure all your senses are operating well with a good pair of polarized sunglasses. He also suggested a couple of his favorite fishing manufacturers, Ugly Stik and Penn reel. Barry talked about the importance of a cell phone and something to charge it. Some of the apps he uses are Navionics and Garmin, and Windfinder. Lisa also mentioned Navionics, which I can tell you we recommend to all our members. He also discussed going offshore and having a float plan and a ditch bag, which has many things that you would potentially need in an emergency. Lisa went the fun route and introduced us to Maui Mats!  They are a blast, check them out. She suggested Being a BoatUS member and a Sea-Tow member as well. Dave let us know about the importance of having properly sized fenders for your boat to protect the important investment! They’ve continued to innovate in color with their new line called Storm Gard. Boating Destinations: Hearing about where my guests have boated and want to boat is one of my favorite parts of doing this. I know I have a lot of new places I want to check out! Dave started on the Sacandaga Lake in upstate NY and has been all over for his job but remembers very fondly a great fishing trip with his son to Ft. Lauderdale catching sailfish. Barry has traveled the world - Singapore and Hong Kong, the Red Sea, the Arabian Gulf, Gulf of Mexico, the Carribean, and more. They are all so unique and special, he recommends them all! A few places he would like to get are Croatia. Fiji and Bora Bora. Dan grew up fishing in Montauk and loves to fish in the Florida Keys for Tarpon - his favorite activity. He hasn’t been but would like to go to the Bahamas for bonefishing. John loves his Florida boating with his family and cruises through Lemon Bay and to Don Pedro State Park. Through his job he has loved boating in the Carolines, the Great Lakes, the West Coast of the US, every time he’s on the water he thinks it’s the most beautiful place, til the next trip! Lisa likes her boating events and wants to go to Put-In-Bay in Ohio and the Columbus Day Regatta in Miami, where thousands of boaters come together. The connectivity of these events is her favorite part of boating. She also loves boating around Fort George Island where it’s like a party of your 500 best friends. Advice for would-be boaters: Boating is an activity that appeals to lots of people who dream about it but can’t get off the fence. There are many perceived barriers to entry. I love to find out what kind of advice the guests have for these would-be boaters. Dan and Lisa say to stop thinking about it and do it! It doesn't have to be a dream. Just make it happen, make the decision, there’s no time like the present. Lisa, Dave, and Barry all suggest starting with a visit to Discoverboating.com. John and Barry both point out the importance doing your research on what type of boating is the right fit – buying, renting, joining a club. And take a class to make sure you’re comfortable! Barry also suggests researching your local dealers as a resource. Across the board, the biggest thing they all want potential boaters to know is that joining the boating lifestyle is a decision that will lead to great experiences, memories, and something that will make you very happy! Boats, boats, boats!: Our guests have been fortunate to have experiences on all types of boats, and still themselves dream of their ‘next’ boat. Barry was a first mate on a Hatteras and now has access to Regal boats through his work. He loves the idea of a trawler style and points to Nordhavn as a manufacturer to check out for this type of boat. Dan got his start on a 25 foot Mako fishing boat, and is ready for a Claude Torres fishing boat of his own like the one he later fished on as a child with his dad. While John has a fleet of over 450 boats in his club and a 14’ side console for his kids to learn on, he thinks for his lifestyle a 23-25 foot center console with a 4-stroke outboard is a perfect boat. Lisa got started on the family Glastron, and later a Wellcraft. She currently cruises in her 32 Monterey cruiser with twin Mercs and her 22 Sea Ray Sundeck. Because you know one is never enough! Lisa daydreams of upgrading to a 46 or 48 sedan bridge to enjoy the views from up top! Dave’s first experiences were on a 1969 Glastron IO boat that came with the family lake cottage. He currently has a 22 Regal bowrider which is great for his family boating activities.   Random Notes and Quotes: Lisa: It was always a mindset of, 'of course you can do this!' It's really not that hard, I believe it's more of a mindset that women can do it. It's really just about pushing through the fear of the unknown, of the not doing, and if you've got someone there coaching you, teaching you, and letting you just be like, it's okay you made a mistake, then gaining experience and confidence is just what it takes. It’s really fun to bring your animal on board, but you also want to remember that you're in charge of them. You want to make sure they're safe, so number one - your dog should have a life jacket that fits them well and makes them comfortable. Also, when you're coming down to the dock you want to have them on a leash because if it's a floating dock they might feel wobbly and uncomfortable. Then definitely you have got to have water and a water bowl for them. John: There are a lot of technological advances now, specifically with marine electronics. The electronics companies have really started focusing on customer experience. There’s been a huge focus on trying to engage minority boaters. They are cultures that didn’t necessarily grow up boating but that is a huge opportunity for our industry. What you are going to see over the next several years, as the baby boomers age out of boating and the industry continues to look for the young people to get engaged in the industry, people are going to focus a lot more on bringing those new markets into the boating industry. Boating should be fun. The people on the boat should have a fun time and a safe time. With the training that we offer and with some training the industry is going to be coming out with, hopefully that will solve a big part of the attrition with boat buyers moving out of the industry. If they’re going to make that leap and buy a boat or join a club, we want them here for a long time. Dan: I learned by doing it. To me there's no trick, it takes a little time, a little experience, but once you do it often being on a becomes second nature. It's really about putting in the time.  Being out on the water is really about the people you are with and the stories you tell. It's really a time when you can put everything else going on in your life away, put your cell phone away, and detach and focus on being in the moment.  Salmon is probably the easiest fish to cook. You can just put some olive oil, some lemon juice, and some fresh herbs on it. Put it on the pan, brown both sides, and put it in the oven for 5-10 minutes depending on how big a filet it is. With any fish, especially if the skin is on it, put the skin side down first, and then flip it to the filet side and you want to cook them for about the same amount of time. If you cook it well enough on the skin side, you can actually eat the skin. It tastes pretty good, very high in protein and Omega-3's.  David: At their younger age, everything is about respecting the boat, the people around you, the experience, the safety requirements. You can add on the lessons about navigation and tying knots but everything up until now is - we do it right and we do it safe. They’ll grow up to love boating, but they’ll have the base of knowledge and respect of the craft to do it right. The first piece of advice was from my dad – docking is the hardest part, have good fenders! His comment to me which I still take to this day is to take it slow. People don’t realize there aren’t brakes on a boat. When he taught me, he said do it deliberately, take your time, there’s no hurry to get into the spot, do it right and do it once. The other thing which is instilled in me is the entire safety component. Don’t drink and boat. Don’t be unsafe in the way that you boat, and respect the others around you and it will be a good day!  Barry: The first thing that is really apparent in the market is the trend towards outboards. They’re becoming immensely popular. The surf market, the tow boat market, is also one that continues to grow and attract boaters.  We want to connect with the emotional side of boats and boating. It’s a big discretionary item, there’s a lot of emotion involved. It’s also a memory making machine. We look at our boats as things that families will use to create memories that they’ll have for a lifetime. The younger generation still has that opportunity. Albeit they’re being introduced to a lot of different ways to come into boating. There’s boat clubs like the Freedom Boat Club, there’s the sharing economy through other vehicles, but once you’re there and you’ve had that experience, we’re all the same. The emotion is an integral part of boating.